Christian Ambivalence Toward Its Old Testament Interactive Creativity Versus Static Obedience

Alexander Blair

"The Old Testament Torah and Prophets recount the history of an Israel understanding the essence of each person to be the sum of its interactive thus essence-creating social roles, such as citizen, parent, or employee. In contrast the European world has developed a culture described by Plato as emanating from the Logos but actually directed from its upper class. Each individual was to fill its logos-determined place in the social order, in contrast to Israel's God delegating responsibility to the human community (Genesis 1:27) for itself continuously creating its interactive social structure, its culture. In 325 BC Greece colonized the Near East and pressured the Jewish leaders to reinterpret their scriptures as static rules from above rather than interactive resource for learning from past experience. The Jewish reformer Jesus of Nazareth urged the people to maintain their...