Episode 7 | St. Paul and the Scrolls | Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls

[Music] i was in the store the other day and i saw something i'd never seen before it's called a weighted blanket and in big letters it said 15 pounds now i'm sure it's good for you i'm sure that it heals all kinds of ills and takes away it just doesn't make any sense to me if you think about it so much of our life we we feel that weight a burden i suppose a burden of expectations responsibilities things that need to get done the burden of do this and don't do that or do this better or we just have all of these things that are weighing us down what breaks my heart is that for some people religion is like that for some people the spiritual life is like that for some people a relationship with christ is like that they they feel this weight or this burden like they're just not quite measuring up or just not quite doing it right and that is not jesus's desire jesus came literally to take that weight and that burden and those anxieties and that pressure to be able to free us from that the holy spirit wants to breathe life into us so that we might be freed so that we might be healed so that the weight of all that burdens us is taken away from us [Music] [Music] [Music] and welcome to jesus and the dead sea scrolls i'm father dave ivanka i'm president of franciscan university of steubenville joined today with dr john bergsma here he is a theology professor here at francis university and the author of this book jesus and the dead sea scrolls which is just great it's been a pleasure talking about it and getting an insight of how the dead sea scrolls help us understand the church better the scriptures better is there anything that dead sea scrolls can't help us figure out uh they're not going to help us find jimmy hoffa's body oh well plan b okay so i thought one of the most interesting really interesting topics was that the dead sea obviously between and you you provide just i think just a great um witness to this the way protestants see the world and the way catholics see the world are not often the same or how they see the scriptures but the dead sea scrolls can actually give shed some light on some of the huge questions that we've had between catholics and protestants faith and good works and how are we saved but they can actually help us understand that better correct yeah that's that's right tell us you know there's there's um some uncommon phrases that are only present in the writings of saint paul and in the dead sea scrolls and this is just a shocker you know you think a relatively simple phrase like works of the law which is really theologically pivotal in the epistle to the romans and the epistle to the galatians and was a big source of debate between luther and his catholic uh interlocutors you know in in the time of the reformation what does works the law mean okay you'd think that phrase would be found in a lot of ancient literature just a very simple phrase right it's actually not uh we only found it outside of saint paul when we dug up the scrolls there's a there's a document in the scrolls um uh that scholars call by an acronym 4qmt that's clever yeah very clever i wish i thought of it myself it stands for mix-up i was going to say the same thing i knew you were but i wanted to beat you to it but it's it's a what that means in hebrew that means on some works uh on some works of the law because the topic of the document is is yeah it's precisely about that it's on 22 uh different works of the law um why 22 it's the numbers of the hebrew alphabet and when we when we analyze this document we find that it was actually a letter sent from the essenes probably at qumran up to jerusalem to the pharisees and at that time the pharisees were in control of how the temple was run and how people interpreted the ritual laws and the essenes had a lot of issues with how the pharisees interpreted the ritual law for example if you have clean water in a pitcher and you pour it into an unclean cup there's a question does the uncleanliness go backwards up the stream of liquid into the pitcher or does the uncleanness stay in the cup the pharisees said oh for heaven's sake the uncleanness stays in the cup and the answers are like no no no obviously it could pass backwards up the stream of liquid and contaminate your pitcher so this is a big deal for yeah that was considered a work of the law that was considered a work of the law those types of things so when we when we look at this yeah this letter 4qm2 we've got these 22 issues that they discuss with the pharisees things like how to treat leather how to handle dogs what do you do with grain grown by gentiles can't offer it in the temple you know cleanliness of liquids and stuff like that at the end of the letter the essenes say now we have written to you about some works of the law and i think that's very instructive you know these these kind of issues were felt under that category now was there anything like helping little old ladies across the street was there anything about you know acts of mercy towards the poor no none of that nothing that we would consider to be a good work or a work of mercy so what we understand as the in this debate about works right are the things you just mentioned that i can do works but they're talking about um like ceremony things they're okay not not faith not moral or anything like that no no what we're discovering from the scrolls is that this phrase works the law really referred to what we call in the catholic tradition the ceremonial law of the old testament that's how you know augustine and aquinas divide up the law they have the moral law civil law and ceremonial law from moses the ceremonial laws were those works of the law and i think that sheds a lot of light when we go to then romans and galatians we as modern christians we read those epistles of paul when paul says no man is justified by works of law but rather by faith in past like romans you know 3 28 and so on we think oh what he's saying is you just believe in jesus and what you do doesn't matter like no okay what he's saying is things like circumcision kosher the observation of the mosaic liturgical calendar you know sac you know offering grain in the temple these things are passing away and we have a new a new faith in christ we have new sacraments we have new rites etc so it's contrasting basically the new covenant with the old covenant that's the the fundamental meaning there so okay so i'm clear the only place it's found is in the dead sea scrolls and then in paul's writings works the law yeah that seems we've been debating and fighting over this for a long time that seems pretty clear not not so complicated why is it still complicated it seems so to me well i mean because we we have 500 years of polemic that we're trying to undo now we find the scrolls they shed light on this and it's amazing the resistance and so question how our protestant brothers and sisters viewed that there's there's a lot of pushback you know it's like well they're not really relevant well they're using this phrase in a different way this doesn't doesn't really shed light on paul and granted father we we all know paul you know starts there talking about works of law and faith and then he develops into romans 7 and he gets more d more uh it gets deeper more kind of speculative you know on the nature of what is a law and it comes ultimately to romans 8 where he says look no law could ever save us we need the power of the holy spirit that's true you know and we've always known that so paul definitely goes off into discussing other theological categories but i think it's really helpful to frame his epistles by understanding he starts from a jewish perspective about what's salvific is it obeying the laws of moses these works of law you know keeping kosher observing the sabbath day so on or is it faith and just so for the jewish person at this time that was i mean your your holiness your virtue was by how well you obeyed those laws part that was part of it for sure yeah when we look at it but you know there's the sense of this weight right that it becomes this weight that one has to bear right okay and and they didn't have a clear distinction between you know uh what we would think of as moral laws and ritual laws it kind of all kind of blended together and then you know with with the essenes part of the reason they were out there living in the desert was to stay away from everyone so that you know they never run into a dog you know never stepping in cow poo you know this stuff hate when that happens yeah and uh so they can always be in the state of both you know cleanliness and holiness and that and this is another phrase that that only occurs in paul and well other parts of scripture and then the scrolls like reckoned as righteousness you know that that key phrase going back to abraham we find that too in this letter for qnt that if you keep all of these works of the law it will be reckoned as righteousness so those phrases are clues that when we read paul's epistles he's coming out of a background of jewish debate and discussion on how to keep these ceremonial rituals and that's that kind of that's the foundation of his discussion he goes on to other areas i think that's very helpful and those are huge issues in this time yeah they are right they're huge this is why you have 10 ritual bathing pools in the monastic community so they can always be dunking and always keep this and there's differences between the sadducees the samaritans the pharisees and the essenes about exactly how you keep these rituals and how you rest on the sabbath how you interpret the food laws you know these kind of things how do you see we've tried to this during this whole series is to try to wrestle with what difference does this make for us today yeah how do you see us today wrestling with those same things the the rigidity about washing and fear honestly and sometimes any any correlation going on today in the church or in people's lives today you think yeah well you know i could just speak from my own experience you know growing up as a protestant and thinking that works of the law meant you know basically any human effort father i'm ashamed to admit but i just didn't take seriously the need to grow in holiness as a christian and uh you know along with many of my uh non-catholic brothers and sisters we we had this notion well just that story you told when a buddy of yours went and you were going door to door and the woman gave her life to the lord just recount that because i think that's really powerful and and speaks to i think where you're going yeah when i was trained in evangelism you know my pastoral mentor was taking us out door to door we knocked on this lady's door went up to her upstairs apartment sat down she was unusually open to you know hearing about religious things we asked her if she wanted to hear you know the gospel and how it can be saved through jesus she said yes so my mentor began to present the basics of the gospel as we understood it with a very you know kind of protestant edge to it and you know got to the end of the presentation do you want to receive jesus do you hear him knocking on the door of your heart revelation 3 20. and she said yes so we we prayed with her the sinner's prayer and um and it was beautiful and after the prayer was over you know the sense of the holy spirit that was a that was a wonderful thing that was a great step forward in her spiritual life grace was available but then what happened next was not as edified so so my mentor begins to catechize her so to speak and he says okay now that you're saved what if you went out tomorrow and shot somebody would you still go to heaven she's just taken back a backpack like uh uh and so he he makes it sharper and he says well yeah and if next week you know you robbed a bank and skipped town would you still go to heaven he's like uh no and he says yes you would because because salvation is purely by faith your works don't matter once saved always saved so you made an act of faith in christ and now nothing you can do can ever make you lose your salvation but it john that i think that story is so telling because this this woman who was new to the faith i don't know what her background was but there was something that she she knew instinctively that how she lived and what she did and how she treated people mattered right yeah indeed yeah i mean there's this instinct to say well if i've given my life to god that has to manifest itself in my my actions my behavior everything and while i'm watching this interchange no it was 20 something at the time you know i didn't know nothing and uh i was supposed to be learning from this guy right but i'm watching this going on and all these verses are popping into my head things like uh he who would come after me let him deny himself take up his cross daily and follow me you know not everyone who says to me lord lord shall enter the kingdom of heaven but only he who does the will of my father who is in heaven and i just you know my own even though i had raised in that tradition i had this sense that no somehow that's just not right uh the the growth and holiness the growth and discipleship really is an integral part and that just seems to be what jesus is saying and that's what i think just this desire and this understanding of living a holy life and really allowing i mean what the spirit does is works works and wonders and miracles are great but it's the sanctifying spirit that draws us into a deeper intimate relationship with jesus and that that reality shows itself by not just how we wash our dishes and all these kinds of things but by how we live our life and how we care for one indeed yeah yeah the spirit's the whole key to understanding saint paul romans um you know the the big problem with moses law isn't isn't the commands uh necessarily it's that moses's law did not give us the power of the holy spirit and that's a that's a burden to have this sense of you're supposed to do something or you're invited to do something and yet not to be able to have the power to do that oh that's beautiful that's beautiful well we've got a lot more to talk about and we're going to talk a bit about the church and how the dead sea scrolls help us understand the church so stay with us [Music] so the dead sea scrolls help us understand what paul was speaking about about the works of law were there any other areas where the dead sea scrolls give light to paul's writing particularly sure you know one of the favorite areas that i think is just mind-blowing is how the the epistle to the ephesians has always been one of my favorites i love ephesians because it talks so much about the holy spirit the body of christ the church the role of the church such a wonderful epistle you know a lot of scholars doubt that it comes from saint paul and i said no this isn't really saint paul this is some later person writing under paul's name and it's interesting to do the research and find out why scholars don't believe it and it's really has to do with the fact that ephesians does speak so much about the church you know the per the church is the new temple the church is christ's body and a lot of secular scholars and this is even influenced the thinking of christian scholars as well you know have the attitude that well paul could not have put so much emphasis on the church what sense does that make he expected jesus to come back any time why bother uh you know establishing an institution if you think that the messiah is going to return and likewise they they bring that view over to you know the teachings of our lord in the gospel and in times when our lord speaks about the church like in matthew 16 they say well that can't really have been something that jesus said because jesus didn't intend to found a church he taught that he was coming back soon so you have this real doubt that's kind of yeah so a sense that a church was never part of the plan yeah yeah that's that's it you you get this you know hopefully a good idea yeah oh you know this does trickle down sometimes you know to local congregations and so on but uh most maybe most practicing catholics are not aware that these views are around but you certainly get them in the universities you know you go for a theological degree and that's what they'll tell you oh jesus not at franciscan university not a franciscan doctor john bergsman's class michael asked no way but uh but definitely in the classes i took at the institutions i went to you know so but but this is the thing that's what why the the scrolls again are so illuminative the essenes thought that the messiahs or melchizedek as we've talked about they thought it's going to show up at any time and yet they formed an institution with the hierarchy and we're performing sacred rituals and we're all organized and so they saw no contradiction between organizing as an institution and as a sacred body and waiting for the mosiah to come back so if they could do something yeah i'd do something while you're waiting so if they could have that concept you know obviously the early church could as well and the apostles and so on so um and and then when you look uh father in in the in the scrolls and the view that they had of their sacred community um you know they they call it well they usually they use the hebrew word for community a yacht and sometimes they even use the hebrew word for church to describe themselves as a cahal that's what it is in hebrew in greek it's ecclesia and then it becomes church in english and you know the holy spirit flows through the community the community helps save you um the the sacred rights that are performed in the community are part of your your path of salvation uh the community is united with the holy ones and the angels in heaven when it worships you know just like we say you know with the angels and the saints in mass you know uh so it's just fascinating so they had they had what what scholars call an ecclesiology and that is a a theology of the community and in in point by point it's very similar to what saint paul teaches us in the epistle to the ephesians do you do you know or is there speculation about what was paul's any connection to the essene community or to the writings of the scene community or how did that all come about yeah sure well we you know in their last segment we talked about uh 4qmt this letter that the essenes wrote to the pharisees a very formal letter so they the essence kept several copies of it and they studied it and used it as kind of like a theological document so there was what we would think of as like high level ecumenical discussion going on between the essenes and the pharisees like formal theological treatise type of stuff point by point stuff and and paul was of a high-ranking pharisee you know trained under gamaliel so he probably was un you know involved he might have been part of the ecumenical committee you know that goes for discussions uh with this stuff so yeah saint paul no doubt in my mind that he was familiar with essene theology and you know in his from his background in judaism and i think you know in the light of christ and having received the holy spirit he takes up some of these concepts and some of the language that he was familiar with his theological training and it all takes on new light in in christ he says oh now jesus is the one who's who's brought the temple of humanity or the temple of a man you know the a temple which is a you know a mystical body it's so fascinating one of my favorite phrases from the from the dead sea scrolls is actually the phrase uh they call them their own community a temple of adam and that word adam as we know has many different shades of meaning that can mean a temple of a a man it could mean a temple of humanity a temple composed of human beings but that's the same idea we see the church in ephesians a temple of living stones we say right each of us is living stones in in the temple we're replacing the stone temple in jerusalem with a neutral in place of god and all of us are part of it you know we have the the old sunday school thing you know the church is the people right it's not really a building you know that's a simple concept you know it's very profound and it was a as a sea change in in thought for for god's people so what does it say to us today in how we see the necessity of the church the beauty of the church how is this going to speak to us how is paul going to speak to us about the beauty of the church how is the dead sea scrolls yeah you know i just think that for so many of us baptized christians uh especially in america there's this idea it's just me and jesus you know i go to church if i feel like it you know maybe i attend services but i can just watch at home on tv if i want to but my salvation is like this personal uh you know relationship you know contract thing that i have apart from everybody else who's been baptized but when we look at what jesus teaches us what what the apostles teach us it's about a communal body it's really the body of the people of god that what we call the mystical body of christ and that body has a real important role in our growth and holiness and we cannot you know jesus describes itself as a vine and each one of us has branches and we have to be united to that vine in john 17 he prays that we may all be one that was a chapter that powerfully impacted me before i became a catholic i was like where is that unity that jesus prays for and i don't see it and i don't see how we can have it when everybody can have their own interpretation of the bible and you've got these all tens of thousands of different interpretation of the bible so you know that that unity that idea of being all part of the one vine that is christ that idea being part of the body of christ that we see in ephesians that's so important and we as christians can't have this lone ranger mentality i know it gets you know hard uh you live in community i'm sure you know you have some friction with your oh okay i'm sorry some communities do but not the tors right okay but i mean even at our local parishes you know we have friction we read about even friction between cardinals and and and you know bishops and so on uh and so there's a lot of reason to you know or a lot of things that could cause us to complain and and resist that but you know we have to put that complaining aside and recognize that we are all sinners saved by the grace of christ but he saves us as a as a people he saves us as a family and embrace that and i think that's what's so important for us is that oftentimes we we we look at one another at what they're not or what they should be or what we want them to be and we forget one of the quotes that i've been thinking a lot about mother teresa recently is she says that we've forgotten that we belong to one another you know that when we gather together and pray we say our father and and there's it's not just my but we come together as a community as a body and and the church provides us you use a home that we ought to be able to feel safe we ought to be able to feel loved and cared for and then also allowing me to be able to offer that to other people the reason i became a religious is because i didn't want to do this by myself that i knew that i was going to need brothers and sisters they were going to help me that were going to challenge me they're going to encourage me and the church i think provides us that it's i was gonna say it's easy i was just talking to somebody who's who's single and they said i can sin even though i'm single you know so we don't just need other people right but that you help me the witness of your life helps me be holy and god willing my witness helps you be holy and and that's the beauty i think of the church particularly our our church is that it's so diverse and has so many different charisms all of which are beautiful and we begin to you use the term yesterday the the wall builder or whatever we have to tear down those walls and be able to see that we're part of the body together yeah yeah st paul uses that image in ephesians he talks about how jesus has taken down the dividing wall of hostility and what saint paul was talking about was really there was a literal wall in the jerusalem temple that separated gentiles from the place where jews could go and now in the church there's no distinction between gentile and jew male and female greek and barbarian etc those walls and those barriers are are broken down that we can all worship the father and the body and i think that's a particular word a word for us today in the with all the civil unrest that we are you know the lord looks upon us and he looks upon us with the light and with love and the same spirit that purifies the church purifies us and allows us to be able to see that that's that's phenomenal yes we should probably pray with that i think so how about you lead us absolutely you know the father son holy spirit amen heavenly father we thank you for the church which despite our sins and the sins of our brothers and sisters is your holy bride is the the body of christ the the means by which you chose to save your people and bring the message of salvation to the whole world lord help us always to see the holiness of the church with the eyes of faith help us to love our brothers and sisters help us to practice the principles of forgiveness that you taught us in your prayer that you gave us the lord's prayer that you would forgive us our sins but we need to forgive others their trespasses as well help us to be people of forgiveness that embrace each other as brothers and sisters in christ and together move down that road of holiness that ends in that beautiful vision of yourself in heaven we ask this through christ our lord amen amen may almighty god bless you the father the son and the holy spirit amen [Music] amen [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Franciscan University of Steubenville

Views: 12,991

Keywords: Franciscan University, Steubenville, Ohio, Catholic, college, Franciscan University of Steubenville, Franciscan University of Steubenville (College / University), Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls, Fr. Dave Pivonka TOR, Dr. John Bergsma, Dead Sea Scrolls

Id: 1NH2gRp_4GM

Length: 27min 53sec (1673 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 30 2020