This is the transcript of Restitutio episode 557: Bridging the Testaments with George Athas This transcript was auto-generated and only approximates the contents of this episode. 00:08 Sean Finnegan Hey there, I'm Sean Finnegan. And you are listening to Restitutio podcast that seeks to recover authentic Christianity and live it out today. 00:24 Sean Finnegan Many believe there is 400 years of silence between the old and New Testaments. My guest today is Professor George Athos, director of research and senior lecturer in Hebrew Old Testament and early church history at Moore Theological College in Sydney, Australia. 00:43 Sean Finnegan He's the author of bridging The Testaments, which covers four major periods including Persian, Hellenistic, has benian and Roman. By studying the four centuries before Christ, you can gain key insights to help you understand both the old and New Testaments. And you will discover that God was still speaking all the while. 01:03 Sean Finnegan Here now is Episode 557 bridging the testaments with Doctor George Athis. 01:17 Sean Finnegan Welcome to Restitutio, professor. Appreciate your time. 01:21 George Athas Thanks, Sean. It's good to be here. Thanks for having me. 01:23 Sean Finnegan Today we're talking about your book bridging the Testaments and it covers what many refer to as the intertestamental period. Now you don't care for that phrase, do you? Why don't you start by just explaining why you don't like that phrase? 01:33 George Athas Ohh that's going Perth. 01:37 George Athas Now. 01:41 George Athas Yeah, I certainly don't. I I I feel almost dirty now that you've said it it it is a very common phrase and it comes from this misperception I. 01:49 George Athas Say that there is a gap between the Old Testament and the New Testament, that there are 400 years of silence. Prophetic silence between the end of the Old Testament period and then the beginning of the New Testament period, and therefore the the Testaments are kind of apart and there is this intertestamental period where things happened but. 02:09 George Athas We don't consider them biblical, or really all that important. What I'm trying to do in the book is actually dispel this long standing myth, but it is a myth that these centuries were filled with prophetic silence. These centuries were anything but silent. God was. 02:26 George Athas In fact, still. 02:27 George Athas Active and a lot of the biblical literature was actually written during this period. God was actually still doing things prophetically, bringing his plans to fruition, and a lot of what we read in the Old Testament was in fact written during these centuries. And so the Old Testament period, I would argue. 02:47 George Athas Goes all the way up to the 1st century when Jesus comes on the. 02:52 George Athas I mean and if if I can put it rather starkly in two ways, no one in the New Testament believes that God has stopped speaking. None of the the New Testament writers believed. 03:03 George Athas That there was. 03:04 George Athas This pause before their time. Somehow God fell off the airwaves. Or, you know, something like that. They in fact argued that. 03:12 George Athas There was a crescendo of prophetic activity. Jesus sees John the Baptist. 03:18 George Athas As you know, the greatest of the prophets saying he's, you know, prophetic activity is ramping up all the way until John and then Jesus comes on the scene the other way. I would put this rather starkly is to say that the events of the Gospels. 03:33 George Athas Happen in the Old Testament period. They bring the Old Testament period to an end and it's from there that we get the the beginning of the New Testament period. 03:43 Sean Finnegan OK, you might cover this in your introduction, but there is a. 03:48 Sean Finnegan A verse in I forget if it's first or second Maccabees. I'm sure you're familiar with it where they said, oh, we can't decide on this until the profit comes. And and people point to that as evidence that. Ohh yeah, this is God is silent during this period. So how how would you respond to someone raising that objection. 04:05 George Athas Yeah, well, that's an interesting verse. It's from First Maccabees chapter. 04:09 George Athas 14 and it reflects something that happened in 140 BC. 04:14 George Athas A couple of. 04:15 George Athas Years earlier in 142 BC, the Jewish nation gained its independence. It became independent of any other foreign power. 04:24 George Athas Which was the first time that had happened in centuries, the head of state was the last remaining Maccabee brother. There were five Maccabee brothers, and the last one standing was Simon, Simon Vassey, and he was the high priest, and he was given power as head of state. 04:44 George Athas As a high priest, the Jewish nation had to figure out what kind of power Simon had. 04:50 George Athas This was a thorny question because not everyone believed in Judaism that the high priest should have civic authority over the whole nation, particularly because God had made promises to the Davidic dynasty. 05:07 George Athas So if we go back to second Samuel Chapter 7, we see God's promises there to David that he would establish the House of David, that the House of David would then build Yahweh's house build God's. 05:21 George Athas And the the House of Dave got himself. Basically, if you follow the logic of second Samuel 7, God himself becomes a member of the Davidic dynasty, he is the Eternal Father figure of the Davidic dynasty. 05:36 George Athas And so this is how God had chosen to govern his. 05:40 George Athas People. And so it was a non negotiable. The Vedic dynasty was was a given and God had through the prophets promised that he would restore the Davidic dynasty which had fallen when the Babylonians destroyed Judah in 586 BC. 05:53 Right. 05:57 Sean Finnegan Jeremiah. 05:59 George Athas Yeah. Jeremiah, Ezekiel. Zechariah, you. You know, so many of the prophets talk about God's promises to reestablish a divided Kingdom. The divided Kingdom is identified as the Kingdom of God. We read, for example, in second chronicles that when Solomon, the son of David, comes to the throne, he sits. 06:18 George Athas On the throne of Yahweh. 06:20 George Athas So the Kingdom of David, the Kingdom of God, are identified as the same thing, and so there are many people in Judaism in 140 BC. 06:30 George Athas Who believe that God is still going to make good on those promises and that they can't simply be set aside in favour of the situation that had prevailed in 140 BC, which is the high priest, had taken civic authority. If you invested all power in the high priest, you were effectively saying that. 06:50 George Athas Either God had changed his mind about his promises, and that raises questions about his trustworthiness, his faithfulness. 06:57 George Athas And. 06:58 George Athas Really, the character of God comes into very sharp question. If you abandoned the Vedic hope and invest all your hope in a priest. 07:07 George Athas Simon, the high priest was. 07:10 George Athas All for his own power and passing it on to his son. And so there was a there seems to have been a lot of debate in Judaism as they kind of put together their new constitution as an independent, no. 07:22 George Athas And there were. 07:24 George Athas Those who were OK. 07:27 George Athas With Simon's power as an interim measure, but not as an ongoing in perpetuity measure. But Simon didn't want to, you know, give way to this idea of Davidic hope that there was still someone else to come, that God would send more prophets. 07:44 George Athas To guide the nation and change their constituency and the way they had configured their governance. And so he started to say and his supporters started to say that God wasn't sending any more profits. He didn't need to because. 08:01 George Athas Simon, the high priest had fulfilled all of God's purposes, and you need look no further. There's no Messiah that you need to hope for. Simon is everything that we need. But there were those who were adamant. Know God will make good on his Davidic promises and so a compromise was reached and a clause was inserted into the constitutional document which we read in First Maccabees 14. 08:21 George Athas And the clause says that Simon can rule the Jewish nation in perpetuity and pass power on to his son in perpetuity. 08:32 George Athas Until a reliable profit arises. 08:35 George Athas And so in there we we hear that there are people. They're still believing that God is sending prophets. But of course by saying reliable prophet, the powers at the time, Simon and his supporters put a whole question mark over the the phenomenon of prophecy and whether God was in fact going to be sending any more prophet. 08:55 George Athas But we do know that God was indeed sending prophets during this time. 09:00 George Athas And continuing to guide the nations Davidic hope did survive. 09:05 George Athas And so by the time we get to the 1st century and we read in the Gospels what people are hoping for, they are still hoping for a Davidic Messiah. And so that's why. 09:16 George Athas And John the Baptist comes along and Jesus effectively identifies John the Baptist as that reliable prophet who would come to guide the nation in a new way. And of course, John the Baptist, when he did arrive on the scene, he pointed to someone else greater than he. That is the son of David to Jesus, who was a Davidic. 09:37 George Athas The same. 09:38 Sean Finnegan Very good. I love how you answered the question by laying out this. 09:43 Sean Finnegan Thick context, and that's really the benefit I think of studying history is that it gives us context so that we can avoid the error of cherry picking and just taking, you know, a sound bite and then running with that in the wrong direction. You cover 4 main eras. 09:56 George Athas Exactly, yes. 10:03 Sean Finnegan In the. 10:04 Sean Finnegan Look, before we get to those in any kind of depth, of course our depth will be very limited in this conversation. I was just curious what what got you onto this. I mean, you're an Old Testament guy and a church history guy. That's already weird, but now you're also. 10:24 Sean Finnegan In this Persian Hellenistic, Hasmonean and Roman period. 10:28 Sean Finnegan It's. Yeah. What? What drew you? 10:30 Sean Finnegan There. 10:30 George Athas Well, Old Testament is my home base. Yeah, in terms of teaching. So that's, you know, that's where my my first love is. I I love the Old Testament. OK. I love the New Testament too. It's one of my. 10:40 George Athas Favorite Testaments as well. 10:43 George Athas It's uh. I teach predominantly Old Testament courses here at Moore Theological College in Sydney, and I teach a course on the Book of Zechariah to my 4th year students. So they're they're in their senior year, the last year of their degree and. 11:00 George Athas The Book of Zechariah the Prophet Zechariah himself is in the late 6th century BC. He's part of the pioneering community that has come back from exile in Babylon to Jerusalem to rebuild under the leadership of the Davidic descendant Zerubbabel. But arguably the book of Zechariah isn't just simply about that. Period. 11:21 George Athas It actually covers a lot of ground over the next two centuries, all the way down to about 300 BC. 11:29 George Athas As I you know, I've been teaching this course for decades. 11:32 George Athas And in interacting with my students, I realized that this period, the post exilic period broadly was a largely unknown period to my students. They didn't really have a a very detailed understanding about what happened during these centuries. What were the theological developments that occurred. 11:53 George Athas You know, I'd be talking about things and trying to explain and they would all. 11:56 George Athas To ask me what's the one source that we can go back to? You know, what's the one book that we can consult to find out more about this period? And it's the logical developments and I'd have to send them to this book. And that book, which did little bits and pieces or journal articles here and there and in the end I thought, why don't I just write the book? Because I don't think the book itself actually exists. 12:19 George Athas And so I wrote the book. And then, yeah, as you, as you see, it's a big book. 12:23 Sean Finnegan Honestly, it's crazy. It doesn't. It's crazy it didn't already exist, right? I mean, we have how many books about the Old Testament? Old Testament studies, Old Testament theology, Old Testament history. 12:33 Sean Finnegan And about the New Testament, probably twice as many. And yeah, what what about that period in between? So that's. 12:36 George Athas Church. 12:40 George Athas Well, it it all comes back to that, that idea that these centuries were largely silent. And so we don't really need to worry about them. 12:46 George Athas Very much and and and. 12:48 Sean Finnegan Is utterly false. I mean, if your book proves one thing, it's that it wasn't silent during that period. 12:48 George Athas Unfortunately, that's it is completely false. 12:54 George Athas Yeah, and the irony is that it starts off as an anti messianic. 13:00 George Athas Idea. God is not going to send any more profits because we we're not going to be waiting for a Messiah and so with anti prophetic anti messianic and it was peddled by those who were in power who were just simply protecting their own power but ironically. 13:17 George Athas As anti messianic as it is, we still I still hear this idea from pulpits. 13:22 Oh yeah. 13:22 George Athas That God stopped sending profits, and I don't know why we as Christians keep peddling this anti messianic idea which when you look at the New Testament, no one in the early church thought that way at all. No. 13:33 George Athas One right, yeah. 13:35 Sean Finnegan The corporate could be these chronological Bibles, or read the Bible in a year. 13:41 Sean Finnegan And. 13:42 The. 13:43 Sean Finnegan The student who's reading the Bible, or the just? 13:45 Sean Finnegan The churchgoer gets. 13:46 Sean Finnegan To the end of Malachi in the. 13:49 Sean Finnegan Protestant ordering and flips to Matthew chapter one and you know, just assumes blithely assumes ohh well, you know, there's not nothing in between, you know. So this is kind of a a canonical issue as well. The Roman Catholic Canon does have the books of Maccabees. So they they kind of avoid that. 13:59 George Athas Yeah, that's right. 14:08 George Athas Your poker face. 14:09 Sean Finnegan Yeah. So that's kind of interesting. Well, let's, let's back up to the Persian period and you know, obviously you can't go into great detail about all the politics of the period. But I guess in a brief way, could you just answer the question? 14:24 Sean Finnegan How does learning about this period, the Persian period? How does it help us understand the Bible better? 14:30 George Athas It's a good question, Sean. The the Persian period helps us to see that after the destruction of God's people after they had lost their independence, being deported from their homeland, God was still wanting to something to do with his covenant nation. He he had every right to turn his back on them. There's nothing in the National Covenant. 14:52 George Athas That obliges God to continue dealing with his people after they have been exile. Exile is the big punishment under the Covenant and it spells. 15:00 George Athas The death of covenantal relationship and the prophet Ezekiel picks that up. He pictures the restoration of the nation as a resurrection that the you know valley of dry bones come together and form these actual you know bodies of flesh and blood that come to life. 15:21 George Athas Once again, the the nation has to be resuscitated, resurrected, and that's what God did in the post exilic period, which is largely, or at least it begins with the Persian period and the Persians. 15:32 George Athas The. 15:33 George Athas In the first place, a very unexpected arrival in the ancient Near East. I use of the line. You know, nobody expects the Persian Empire because they weren't a traditional superpower at all. And so they took down the Babylonian Empire. But no. 15:48 George Athas One thought that they'd stay. 15:50 George Athas But they do manage to establish a. 15:53 George Athas What I would call the first world empire, not just simply a regional empire, but a world empire that stretched across across a vast amount of territory, and in doing so and having one sovereign over that entire world empire. 16:12 George Athas They brought a whole lot of people groups with various ways of thinking together under one governance structure. And so it became much easier to start exchanging ideas and to think in new ways. And so the. 16:32 George Athas The Persians, who were kind of monotheistic more or less their way of thinking about their God. 16:39 George Athas Auto Mazda as his as he was known, provided some good categories for Judeans to think about their own God and what they believed about their own God, and to affirm monotheism, the one God who is over all the nations in a very similar way to the way that the Persian king was over all these nations. 16:59 George Athas And so we see. 17:01 George Athas Monotheism really start to gain traction to to flourish, to be assumed rather than just, you know, you have to make an argument that there's only one God. They start to just assume there is only one God and that is the God of Israel. 17:18 George Athas That is, the Judeans and the Samarians their their cousins in the north are descendants of the of the northern Kingdom of Israel. They all become, you know, fiercely monotheistic. 17:29 George Athas And so the and the. The other thing that the Persians do is they are, generally speaking quite well disposed towards the Judeans because the way the Judeans thought about their God, Yahweh was very similar to the way that Persians thought about their God, Yahweh the master. And so the the Judeans were able to flourish. 17:49 George Athas But of course, the Persians weren't about to give them their independence. 17:52 George Athas And so there is. 17:53 George Athas This tension that arises in the Persian era. 17:56 George Athas About God raising the Persians up to enable his people to return and start to rebuild and work towards the fulfillment of God's promises, which ultimately is the reestablishment of a divided Kingdom. But then the Persians become a problem in that because a divided Kingdom by necessity. 18:16 George Athas Has to be independent. You can't have Persian overlords of a Davidic Kingdom. It just doesn't make sense. God himself being a member of the Davidic dynasty, can't be subset. 18:25 George Athas Service to a foreign human king. So there's this interesting tension that arises. But so one of the things that the Persians do is they are very centralized in terms of how they have power. All power is invested in the king, and the religion is centralized. And so this enables Judaism to become very. 18:45 George Athas Thanks a lot. 18:47 George Athas Religion and. 18:49 George Athas This also creates a massive rivalry between the Judeans, who are based in Jerusalem, and the Temple in Jerusalem. We need to. 18:58 George Athas Remember the temple? 18:59 George Athas In Jerusalem is not just simply a place of worship. 19:04 George Athas It's also a political monument to the Davidic dynasty, because only the Davidic king can build the temple and so that's why Zerubbabel, who is the direct Davidic descendant, that's why he is the one who begins to rebuild the temple. 19:19 George Athas There's this incongruence throughout the Persian period that. 19:23 George Athas They managed to rebuild the temple. 19:25 George Athas Which is a testament to God's commitments to David. And yet they don't have it to be a king. They never get a Davidic king. They have a Persian foreign king. But then the other half of the Israelite nation, the Samarians, the descendants of the northern Kingdom of Israel, they build a rival temple. 19:45 George Athas To God at a site called Mount Gerizim in the mountains of Samaria, Central Samaria, and so there's this fierce rivalry between the two communities. 19:54 George Athas And while the biblical literature never specifically mentions the temple on Mount Airy is in it, actually, once you know what's going on with the temple in Mount Garry's and you. 20:04 George Athas Actually see the biblical. 20:05 George Athas Authors go out of their way to avoid mentioning the the temple on Mount Garry's in the the way I like to put it is they aim to deliberately cast. 20:16 George Athas Darkness on the temple on Mount Garry's in. They're not in denial that it's there. They just specifically want to cast darkness on it. And so there is this ongoing rival between Judeans in the South, Samarians in the north about. 20:31 George Athas Who gets to? 20:33 George Athas To find what it means to be Israel and that kind of reaches a critical point in about 350 BC and I would argue that part of Zechariah and all of the book of Malachi are about this. There is an attempt to reunite the Israelite nation. There was a there was a short period when the Persians. 20:55 George Athas Lost control of the region of Judah and Samaria, and everyone was declaring their independence. 21:02 George Athas And so there there was an attempt to reunify Israel North and South, Judah and Samaria, and they they even had the Edomites in on the deal as well. Which is, you know, completely anathema to to Malachi. But it was going to be a unified Israel under Samarian leadership, which. 21:21 Uh. 21:22 George Athas Would deny Jerusalem. 21:24 George Athas Deny the Davidic promises because the Sumerians they have absolutely no regard for the Vedic promises. A Davidic dynasty. They're not waiting for a Davidic Messiah at all, and yet they're the ones who are pushing this unification. Ultimately it fails, but it shows you that there is this battle for who is going to define. 21:46 George Athas Israel and if you get to define Israel, you get to define its theology and what it says about God. So the Persian period was really quite critical in developing the idea of one Israel under one God and raising the question. 22:02 George Athas What is God doing about his Davidic promises? 22:05 Sean Finnegan Yeah. So knowing the context, the political context, not just of the Persian Empire in general, but how the Persian Empire affected Samaria and Jerusalem in particular, and those who are claiming. 22:21 Sean Finnegan To worship yaha. 22:22 Sean Finnegan Way this is a great key to interpreting some of these Old Testament books that maybe we're reading in an exclusively spiritual sense and sort of ignoring the historical context just set of ignorance, probably. But let's move to the Hellenistic period. We do have Alexander the Great. 22:42 Sean Finnegan And his generals and. 22:45 Sean Finnegan Uh, the selucids and the Ptolemies in particular. How is studying them helpful for understanding the Bible as we? 22:52 George Athas Read it. I have a Greek heritage myself, so this is now warming the cockles of my heart to discuss this. So even though the Greeks get rather bad press in the Bible and you know for good reason, theologically there's a. 23:05 George Athas Common misconception that Alexander the Great brings Greek influence to the Middle East, the ancient near East. But the Greek influence began well before Alexander II would say he's the one who really completes it rather than begins. 23:19 George Athas Because there were Greeks within the Persian Empire, there were many, many Greek cities and Greek populations who were part of the Persian Empire, and so they were exchanging ideas. And you know, the Greeks were the ones who were doing philosophy and drama theatre and the sport and training of the gymnasium. 23:39 George Athas Its education aspects and so those kinds of ideas and practices that we see from Greek philosophers and Greek leaders. They are already starting to influence. 23:50 George Athas The Judeans and Samaria. 23:52 George Athas Yes. 23:53 George Athas Persia in the late three hundreds BC, the mid to late three hundreds BC their control over their very vast empire is starting to become very brittle. 24:06 George Athas And. 24:07 George Athas Before that time, the the world had kind of faced Mesopotamia, faced the city of Babylon, which was the biggest city in the Persian Empire in one of its four capitals. And yeah, the world was facing Mesopotamia. But throughout the course of the 4th century BC, the three hundreds BC. 24:27 George Athas The world started to turn towards the. 24:32 George Athas And that's because in about 400 BC, the Egyptians gained independence from Persia. The Persians always wanted them back and tried many times to conquer them, but the Egyptians became independent in about 400 BC, and by this stage the great conflict between Persia and Greece. 24:52 George Athas It already started, you know, almost a century beforehand and the the Greeks in what's today mainland Greece and the Greek islands they were, you know, very anti Persian. So as soon as the Egyptians become independent, they're, you know, anti Persian as well the Greeks show up on the scene. 25:11 George Athas And essentially say to the Egyptians, hey, let's get together and form this anti Persian alliance and so yeah and that basically creates a new centre of magnetism between the Augean world and Egypt and the world begins to face in that direction, away from Persia which is becoming weaker and weaker as time goes on. 25:14 Sean Finnegan Sport together. 25:32 George Athas Alexander the Great eventually is the one who kills off the Persian Empire. He conquers the Persian Empire in a very stunning campaign. Within a decade. He's not only destroyed the Persian Empire, but he's conquered even more territories. But of course he dies very suddenly in 323 BC. 25:51 George Athas And his generals are left to figure out what they're going to do with his empire, because Alexander has no air. His barbarian non Greek wife. He's pregnant when he dies. But his generals are not about to allow 1/2 barbarian child to become their ruler. 26:08 George Athas And so the empire that Alexander had conquered within a few decades essentially crumbles into smaller pieces, and his generals, his staffers, come to rule these pieces as independent kingdoms. Two of those kingdoms are really important for understanding. 26:29 George Athas Realism. 26:29 George Athas The time they are the Ptolemies who are ruling in Egypt, the most famous Ptolemy is Cleopatra of Julius Caesar and Marc Anthony. Yeah, the Cleopatra, the seven. The 7th actually. Yeah. 26:38 Sean Finnegan What number? What number you Patra, the 7th night. But there were many cleopatras, right? 26:43 George Athas There's there's 7th. 26:46 George Athas Yes, there are. That's right. Yeah. So the tomies are a Greek dynasty that are ruling Egypt. And so Greek culture, Greek thinking, Greek education ideas, religion, research. They are booming, especially in the city of Alexandria, which is which Alexa. 27:03 George Athas Founded the other Kingdom is the Solusod Kingdom, which is pretty much based in Syria. Again, a Greek dynasty that is ruling this territory of Syria and Judah or Judea as the as the Greeks call it. Judea and Samaria are essentially the rope in a tug of war between the Cholemia. 27:23 George Athas And the solutions you can read all about this in Daniel's last vision, Daniel 11:50 and there is constant warfare just in the 4th century BC. 27:35 George Athas Sovereignty over Jerusalem changed 10 times, and that's just one century. And then in the following century, following couple of centuries, the Ptolemies and solutions fought. It depends how you count them, but they they fought probably 7 wars over who owns Judea and. 27:55 George Athas Samaria, amongst other territories. 27:58 George Athas The Greeks are really important because they bring their philosophical way of thinking to Judaism and Judaism. Looks at these ideas and is. 28:09 George Athas Able to adapt. 28:10 George Athas To them, to their ways of thinking about their own religion. I think the most influential aspect of that was platonic philosophy. 28:17 George Athas So the philosopher Plato, who lived in the 300 specs C, His philosophical school of thought, was very influential in Judaism and Judaism, adopted his way of thinking and but adapted it. They adopted it and adapted it to a specifically Jewish way of thinking. 28:35 George Athas And they developed what we would call apocalyptic thinking, this idea that what we see in the world, the mundane world in which we all live. It's not all there is. There's a spiritual reality behind the physical world that we know. And it's the spiritual world that's actually more real than this physical world. 28:57 George Athas And it governs what happens in this physical world. 29:00 George Athas That way of thinking influences Judaism for centuries thereafter, it becomes a standard way of thinking when we get to the New Testament. 29:09 George Athas Every New Testament writer thinks in this way. They have. They've adapted these categories and this is how they view the world. Jesus himself uses this apocalyptic way of thinking. When you know, for example, just to pick one example in the Lord's Prayer, he says your will be done on. 29:29 George Athas Earth as it is in heaven, so on earth, in this mundane physical. 29:33 George Athas The world. 29:34 George Athas May your will be done as it is in heaven. 29:36 George Athas In the spiritual. 29:37 George Athas World and so that there's an alignment between the spiritual world and the the physical world, so that God's will may be achieved. And of course, you know, in the in the Gospels in the 1st century, Jesus is addressing people and with the Lord's prayers, disciples who are earnestly. 29:55 George Athas Expecting the fulfillment of God's purposes. 29:59 George Athas In a Davidic Kingdom and they've put all their their hope in Jesus as the Davidic descendant will bring about this Kingdom. So the Greeks were highly influential and some of the events that are in this Hellenistic period as as we call it, they're mentioned in the Old Testament. 30:20 George Athas But because we think this period is very silent, we fail to see. 30:24 That. 30:24 George Athas We think that the, you know, the the biblical literature must be referring to stuff that's much earlier. But now there's a lot of biblical literature that is about things that are happening in the Hellenistic era. 30:37 George Athas One of the I think most important. 30:39 George Athas Events that happens in the Hellenistic era, which is discussed in in the prophetic books mainly in book of Zechariah, but also we see some illusions in the Book of Isaiah, told me the first besieged Jerusalem in 301 BC. He captured the city. 30:58 George Athas The. 30:59 George Athas Mains got sovereignty over Judea in this way, but he then deported a whole lot of Jews down to Alexandria. 31:06 George Athas This is how the Jewish community in Alexandria begins and very quickly becomes the biggest Jewish community in the world at the time. 31:15 George Athas And so effectively, there's another exile. 31:18 George Athas And the Zechariah 12 to 14, the last Oracle. 31:23 George Athas In the Book of Zechariah is all about. 31:26 George Athas These events and seeing the catastrophe that it was and trying to imagine God correcting the dystopia that had developed as a result of this. So the book of Zechariah goes from a return from exiling Babylon and the high hopes of restoration too. 31:46 George Athas Ending with another exile, this time off to Egypt and the the loss of hope, and that they come to a point and the Book of Zechariah, I think is very important in. 31:56 George Athas This way they don't. 31:58 George Athas Know how God is going to achieve his purposes? 32:03 Sean Finnegan Let's talk about the next period that has many in period. I think a lot of us. 32:10 Sean Finnegan Are maybe a little more familiar with this because of Hanukkah. 32:13 M. 32:14 Sean Finnegan I live in New York, so there's lots of Hanukkah. 32:16 Sean Finnegan Celebrations. We have lots of. 32:17 George Athas Yeah, yeah, absolutely. 32:18 Jewish. 32:18 Sean Finnegan People, but there has been period is is really fascinating and why is this period in particular of Judean? I don't even want to necessarily say independence, but the the struggle for independence. And then depending on how you count it. 32:33 Sean Finnegan And then the subsequent Kingdom. 32:37 Sean Finnegan It's not really a Kingdom, it's a priest Dome, isn't it? How does this help us understand context for the Bible? 32:42 George Athas Yeah. 32:45 George Athas Yeah, it does become a Kingdom eventually. Yeah, it's a it's a very interesting period because Greek religion. 32:52 George Athas Is in contrast to the Persians, the Greeks and their religion were very decentralized. 32:58 George Athas The Greeks were never a united people. They were made-up of all these various city states, which were constantly at war with each other. You know, Athens and Sparta are perhaps the most famous of them, but there were so many Greek city states warring with each other, and religion was decentralized. There was no sense that all Greeks had to worship at one place in one. 33:18 George Athas At one time, in one way with one priest, and anyone could be a priest and you could worship in whatever way was acceptable to the gods, was very decentralized. And so as Greek influence came to. 33:33 George Athas There. 33:34 George Athas The idea of decentralization is it's interesting how that idea starts to blend with Judaism, which is highly centralized. Judaism must have one leader at this particular time under the solutions that the Greek dynasty that ruled Syria, they initially were very good towards the. 33:55 George Athas The Jews, once they had conquered the area off the Ptolemies, they gave the Jews a lot of latitude. This is 198 BC. 34:03 George Athas Towards. 34:04 George Athas And with that latitude just started to ask the question. Well, what? 34:09 George Athas What is Israel? 34:10 George Athas What does it mean to be a Jew and to be worshipping God in? 34:15 George Athas And who gets to define that? And so there were a lot of different groups that arose. This is the period in which we see the rise of such groups as the Sadducees, who are essentially a priestly group. 34:28 George Athas We see the rise of the Essenes, who eventually are the sect that settle at Qumran, and we have the Dead Sea Scrolls from them. 34:40 George Athas And the Pharisees as well, they they are a group that start to become prominent at this particular time. 34:47 George Athas And so there's this tension about who gets to define Judaism. Is it the ultra conservatives like the the Pharisees? Is it the mild conservatives kind of the the Essenes or is it the Sadducees at the time were were kind of conservative as well by the time we get to the New Testament, they're. 35:05 George Athas Actually very progressive. 35:07 George Athas And liberal, there are also a lot of help. 35:09 George Athas Anise, as they're they're called, people who are very willing to embrace Greek ideals in all their baskets. And so, for example. 35:19 George Athas They start to identify their own God, Yahweh, with the Greek God Zeus, right? 35:24 George Athas And that has theological implications about, you know, how can the character of Zeus who, when you read Greek mythology that you know this, this God is, there's not a lot to yeah, there's not a lot that's morally impressive about it. 35:41 George Athas And yet Yahuah is a perfect God, a holy God full of justice and truth and faithfulness, etcetera. And so there's a lot of theological tension that starts to build at this time. Eventually we get to one particular selucid, King Antiochus the 4th. 35:57 George Athas And this guy was really nasty. 36:00 George Athas He had he he was a megalomaniac. He had big tickets on himself. He wanted to conquer Egypt and join it to his Kingdom and out to Alexander and take on the Romans and all. All this kind of stuff. And eventually he intervened. He needs a lot of money to do. 36:17 George Athas Yes. 36:18 George Athas And so he eventually tries to get his hands on the money that's in. 36:21 George Athas The temple in Jerusalem. 36:23 George Athas The Liberal Jews are the ones who are. 36:27 George Athas At the time in power, the solutions really favour them and by giving them more and more power, they effectively decide that it's the the liberal progressive factions in Judaism that will have the right to define Judaism. When we look at what those particular leaders were doing especially. 36:48 George Athas People like the high priest himself mentally. 36:51 That's. 36:52 George Athas They are selling out to Greek culture and religion. They are, you know, Menelaus is very happy to send donations to worshipping the God, Hercules and the Demi God, Hercules and all this kind of thing. And that causes an absolute outrage in Judaism. 37:09 George Athas Eventually, the things reach ahead, breaking point in 167 BC, and there is a massacre of people in Jerusalem that Antiochus instigates, and the Conservatives and Ultra conservatives flee Jerusalem. At this point, 167 BC. 37:29 George Athas Some of those who fled were a group of five brothers and their their father that we know them as the Hasmonean family. 37:37 George Athas And they start to. 37:40 George Athas Build a kind of very small time guerrilla warfare style resistance movement. 37:47 George Athas Which they eventually called the Maccabeats, and they're called the Maccabees after the code name of one of the five brothers, Judas Maccabee. In Hebrew, the word Maccabee means. 37:58 George Athas Hammer and so judas's code name. Yeah, exactly. Judas's code. They all had code names. Very cool code code names. But Judas was the hammer. He was the military brains of the operation. And so all the resistance fighters from then on were called Maccabees. And. 38:15 George Athas They are surprisingly successful. They know how to take the solutions down, but they also take down the Liberal Jews as well. They they put them in the same basket as the Gentile Greeks the the solutions. 38:30 George Athas The Solucion authorities, though, eventually realise they they need to stamp out the Maccabees, and so they send, you know, a massive force to put them down. 38:39 George Athas And they're lining up for a battle. In 160 November, 164 BC. 38:46 George Athas And the Maccabees have no hope of winning this battle. It is very clear that they are going to lose this battle and their resistance movement will be snuffed out. And Judea will continue to be ruled by or governed by liberal people who are very much in favor of Greek ideals. 39:06 George Athas But just before. 39:07 George Athas The battle occurs. The solicited commander receives news that the solicit King Antiochus the 4th has died in another country on, you know, on on the edge of the Selucid Empire. And in order to secure the succession of the throne, he abandons the the war and. 39:26 George Athas He ends up going back to the solicit capital in Antioch and suddenly the the Maccabees. 39:32 Sean Finnegan They're on contesting. 39:32 George Athas They see this as, yeah, they they see. They see this as a victory, you know, instigated by divine intervention. And so they March on Jerusalem, they they capture part of Jerusalem. They can't capture all of it for the next 20 or so years. Jerusalem is largely a divided city. There's still a solution. Garrison there in the city. 39:53 George Athas Holding out. 39:54 George Athas The resistance movement again, it kind of ebbs and flows it, you know, gains momentum and then it takes step back and Judas Maccabeus himself in 160 BC he's killed in battle and that looks like the absolute end. 40:07 George Athas Of the movement. 40:08 George Athas But his two remaining brothers, Jonathan and Simon, they they are able to take up the mantle and at this point the Solucient Kingdom. 40:16 George Athas Starts to descend into civil war as people are trying to gain the throne and. 40:22 George Athas Jonathan, one of the Maccabee surviving Maccabee brothers, he's able to play off the different claimants to the Selucid throne, play them off each other to gain concessions for himself and. 40:34 George Athas For the Jews. 40:35 George Athas Before we know it, the Jews are on the verge of independence. Having an independent Kingdom. 40:40 George Athas Jonathan is ultimately betrayed by a solution, and he's he's murdered in 143 BC, but the following year is his brother, Simon, the last Maccabee brother gains independence for the Jewish nation, and he becomes the ruler of the Jewish nation, but not as a king. 41:00 George Athas Rather, as a high priest. And so we're back to, you know, the first question that you asked about, you know, forming a Constitution people and now having to ask the question what kind of power should our ruler have if especially we are waiting for it to begin to arrive. What are our profits going to tell? 41:01 Please. 41:20 George Athas Plus, there's no sense that God had stopped speaking. It's from this point onwards that those who are in power. 41:27 George Athas Or they now start to suggest no God has stopped speaking. He's not sending any more profits. We've reached the fulfillment of of God's purposes for Israel. We are now effectively a Kingdom of priests, or rather the the Kingdom of a high priest who who is head of state. 41:45 George Athas And so there's this tension that starts to build between those who largely ordinary folk lay people who are still hoping for the very Kingdom and those who now occupy the corridors of power, who are saying Simon as a high priest. That's all. 42:01 George Athas You need and so Judaism starts to develop as a higher ocracy a a nation that is ruled by a priest, but you've got a large portion of society waiting for it to be a king to arrive. Couple of generations later, Simon's Dynasty Aristobulus, who is Simon's grandson. 42:21 George Athas Declares himself king of the Jews, and so the what we see at this point is the the Hasmoneans, who had the Hasmonean family, the Maccabees, who had been so against the establishment of Greek ideals within Judaism. 42:36 George Athas And fighting against the soluciones they have now effectively become a Hellenistic Kingdom themselves. 42:43 Right. 42:43 Sean Finnegan And and you can tell by the names, right? 42:44 George Athas So that. 42:46 George Athas Yeah, exactly. Well, yeah. The the Greek names had start, you know, crept in much earlier, but. 42:50 Sean Finnegan Before long, there's a king named Alexander ruling over the Jews. 42:54 George Athas That's right. Yeah. Aristotle's brother, Alexander Janese. He has two names. He he has a Greek name and he has an. 43:00 George Athas Romagna. So he's known, you know, two Jews as king. Jonathan Jannaeus is kind of a short Aramaic form of the name Jonathan. And to the rest of the world, the Greek world. He's king Alexander. We see there the the blending of Greek ideals and Jewish ideals in the people of the Hasmonean. 43:20 George Athas Dynasty and they hold power up until the time that the Romans come on the scene, which is in 63 BC and everything that's going on in Judea is embroiled. 43:27 On the. 43:32 George Athas Other events and currents that are happening in the the rest of the Mediterranean world, and that's one of the things I try to capture in the book in bridging the testaments that you have to know what's going on in the wider Greco Roman world. 43:46 George Athas To understand what's going on within Judas and if you don't, you kind of you kind of missed the significance of what what is going on in Judaism? 43:55 George Athas And when we missed that significance, we're missing out on so much when we come to the Gospels. So for example, you know, just the statement in the Constitution that the Simon the High Priest, can rule until there is a reliable prophet. Well, that's John the Baptist. And if you don't know that that clause had gotten into the. 44:16 George Athas Russian. 44:17 George Athas You'd know John the Baptist is important, but you wouldn't realise just how important and why he was deemed such a threat to those who were in power to the chief priests who ruled the temple to Herod Antipas, who ruled Galilee, and Perea. And it also explains why Jesus has a showdown. 44:37 George Athas With the priests during the last week of his ministry, he rides into Jerusalem. He's acclaimed son of David. 44:45 George Athas He goes into the temple, which is run by the priests, and says tear this place down. I'll build a new temple here. Overturns the tables of the money changers. And the next day the priests are there, asking him, by whose authority are you doing this? 44:59 George Athas And Jesus very cleverly doesn't just give them a straight answer and he doesn't just simply pose this interesting curious academic Riddle. 45:07 Sean Finnegan It's not just a Riddle, yeah. 45:09 George Athas Yeah, he says. Well, you tell me. By whose authority did John the Baptist say what he said? 45:15 George Athas Remembering that actually John the Baptist is the Prophet, the reliable prophet who would come to point the nation in a new direction. And at this point the the priests themselves, if they say John the Baptist is a prophet. 45:27 George Athas They have to say well well. 45:29 George Athas OK, we've got to give up our own power and. 45:31 George Athas We'll hand it over. 45:32 George Athas To you, Jesus. But of course. 45:34 George Athas They're not about to do that, but they don't want to offend the people because the people will turn on them because they believe John was not just simply a prophet, but that's profit. The Trustworthy Prophet who would arise and. 45:47 George Athas If that's who John the Baptist is. 45:50 George Athas Then it implies Jesus is the Messiah. It's a very clever question that Jesus puts to them, and of course they avoid. 45:56 Sean Finnegan And we missed all of this. If we don't have the knowledge of the period before the time of Christ. 46:00 George Athas Her saucer. 46:02 George Athas Exactly. 46:03 Sean Finnegan We don't really have time to get into the Roman period, but there's lots of interesting events that occur there. You have Antipater parade and his chaos and you, you know, you go into that a little bit. So one thing I was thinking about, I I wonder if you would agree, is that. 46:22 Sean Finnegan The names of the disciples. They seem to me very Hasmonean and, you know, like Simon and and Judas and. 46:32 Sean Finnegan Even Matthew sounds to me like the original. 46:36 George Athas Yeah. Matter. Thoughts. Yeah. Yeah. 46:38 Sean Finnegan Mathias. Mathias. Yeah, and. And so would you, would you say then that people are naming their kids after these? 46:46 Sean Finnegan Independence fighting heroes because they're feeling. 46:49 Sean Finnegan Like the Romans need to get. We like somebody needs to have money in those or Maccabee those Romans. 46:57 George Athas Yeah, that's a good way to. 46:58 George Athas Put it, yeah, the it's interesting that everyone wanted the Romans to go. Very few Jews wanted to collaborate with the Romans. It was really those who were in power the kayak. 47:11 George Athas Prices and the anuses. Who were OK with the Romans because the Romans essentially propped up their authority. But the average dude wanted the Romans to go. And when we look at how the Romans gained sovereignty over the Jews, the Jews in Judea and Galilee really suffered, are quite significantly. The Romans initially were friends over the Jews. 47:31 George Athas Once they gain sovereignty, things changed. Yeah, quite dramatically. Jews in the rest of the Roman Empire actually fared reasonably well, but not in Judea and Galilee. When we read the Gospels, I think we we have this view that. 47:46 George Athas The Jews were. 47:47 George Athas Wanting a political Messiah to give them political independence and we kind of shake our heads and say ohh those silly people, they shouldn't have been thinking about that they really needed a spiritual Messiah. That's really what they needed and that's what Jesus was. 48:02 George Athas That, I think is a is a mistake. What Jesus does is very political. Jesus is the son of David. Come to establish a Kingdom of God, and that is not just simply a spiritual entity. It is something that is meant to make a difference in the mundane. 48:20 George Athas The world. 48:21 George Athas Jesus is not just a spiritual guru who kind of is a, you know, an impressive life coach. 48:29 Sean Finnegan Yeah. Spitting out liner aphorisms, it's. 48:29 George Athas Is the Messiah. 48:32 George Athas Yeah, exactly. And you know, Jesus is inhabiting the world of the Psalms, where the king is the one who puts an end to the enemies of his people, and the enemies of God. And this is what everyone's hoping for. And Jesus fulfills that role. 48:33 Sean Finnegan It's deeper than. 48:50 George Athas He just does it in a very surprising way because he doesn't pick up a sword to do it. 48:55 George Athas On the contrary, he gives his own life. He's then raised from the dead, ascends into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of God the Father from where he's given all authority in heaven and on earth. He doesn't need to pick up a sword, so Jesus does become the you know the the king who. 49:15 Sean Finnegan Throne Mason. 49:16 George Athas The yeah, that's right. The the summary of the gospel message is Jesus is Lord. The other flip side of that is Caesar is not Lord. 49:27 George Athas You know you can treat Caesar in a particular way, but he is not. Lord Jesus is the Lord, and this is the message that he's going to transform the world. And so the disciples, you know, their names, they're living in a RECO Roman world. Some of them are from Greek cities. So Peter. Simon. Peter. 49:48 George Athas Simon has a a Hebrew name, Simon. 49:50 George Athas Owen but his brother Andrew has a Greek name. Their friend Philip has a Greek name. They are all from the city of Bethsaida. That was its Jewish name. Its Greek name was Julius. It was actually a Greek police. And so, you know, they were speaking Greek fairly fluently. 50:10 George Athas That's why in what is it, John Chapter 12 in the last week of Jesus's ministry, some Greeks come to the temple in Jerusalem and they find Philip and they say we want to, we want to. 50:21 George Athas Chat with Jesus, please. 50:23 George Athas You know they're having this conversation in Greek and Jesus speaks Greek too. Yeah, the the the conversation that Jesus has with Nicodemus in John Chapter 3, it only makes sense in Greek. This misunderstanding about is it born from above or born again. You know what? Nicodemus has a misunderstanding. There's no such misunderstanding. 50:26 Sean Finnegan Much of this brings out. 50:43 George Athas The conversation occurs in Aramaic or Hebrew, but it does occur in Greek, so even Jesus himself is comfortable speaking Greek. And so yeah, the the whole of Judaism and Jesus, Jesus is in a circle. They are looking for the redemption of Israel. The, you know, the overthrow of God. 51:01 George Athas Ones are the enemies of God's people and the establishment of something new. But Jesus does it without a sword. 51:09 Sean Finnegan Very good. Well, there's just so much that we didn't get a chance to talk about so much with the Samaritans and. 51:18 George Athas Yeah, yeah. 51:18 Sean Finnegan A lot of other events that you skipped over you, you you really just gave the barest scratching up the surface of what you cover and. 51:27 Sean Finnegan The book, and yet we're already out of time. Let me ask you this for those who are interested. You know, obviously they can get the book. It's called bridging the Testaments published by Zondervan Academic. How else can people follow your work? 51:41 George Athas They can get online and go to academia.edu. If you search my name there at academia.edu, you'll find a lot of my other publications and research there. That's probably the best way. 51:57 Yep. 51:58 Sean Finnegan OK, very good. Anything else you final concluding thoughts you have before we say goodbye? 52:04 George Athas Yeah, the I I want to encourage people just to put to bed. Finally this idea that there were four centuries of silence it it's unbiblical. Please stop peddling this from from the pulpits grab my book. I'd love you to read my book and see the. 52:19 George Athas Evidence for that, and also just the richness of the Old Testament. Once that idea is put aside, it actually frees us to understand the Old Testament in a far deeper, far better way. And that sets us up to understand the gospels in a much deeper way as well. So I commend the book. 52:36 George Athas To your viewers. 52:38 Sean Finnegan Very good. Well, thanks so much for speaking with me today. 52:41 George Athas Thanks, Sean. Thanks for. 52:42 George Athas Having me. 52:50 Sean Finnegan Well, that brings this episode to an end. What did you think? Does it make you want to study this period more? 52:58 Sean Finnegan I hope it does, I hope it does. I hope you're just going to be thinking about Persians and Greeks and the Maccabean Revolution and the Hasmoneans that came. 53:08 Sean Finnegan Out of. 53:08 Sean Finnegan And the Romans, especially this period leading up to the time of Christ a lot of times we focus. 53:13 Sean Finnegan On the Roman Empire from the time of the apostle Paul, like in the 50s and the 60s AD. But there's a whole back story of how in the world Harrod even got to be in charge and how terrible he was, and what Pontious pilot was about and what he was doing. 53:33 Sean Finnegan So I encourage you, I think the more you study the history surrounding the Bible, the better you understand the Bible. 53:41 Sean Finnegan So I encourage you to look into this further if you have thoughts and questions or comments, go to restitutio.org, find Episode 557 bridging the Testaments and leave your comments and questions there in a previous episode 551 read the Bible for yourself Part 18 where I went over some. 54:02 Sean Finnegan Helpful tools to understand the Bible. I talked some about biblical languages, Suzanne wrote in saying. Sean, I'm so glad you spoke about the biblical languages. Of course, many people don't have the time, patience, or aptitude to grasp Hebrew or. 54:16 Sean Finnegan Greek I've been working on learning biblical Hebrew now for for a few years, quite steadily, and I'm barely beginning. Thank you also for mentioning daily dose of Hebrew. I listen to it religiously every day and olive with Beth. I think I have spent hundreds of hours on that site. My objective is one hour a day. 54:36 Sean Finnegan What's great about Beth and Andrew, Americans living in Mexico, teaching biblical Hebrew is that the 1st 100 or so videos covers something like 95% of all the words in the Old Testament that are used 500 times or more. In other words, all the main. 54:50 Sean Finnegan Words let me just break in here. Suzanne also Andrew Case has his own podcast on translations called Working for the Word a Bible translation podcast. And it's really good. He talks a lot about interesting translation issues that come up as a translation consultant working with people who are translating the Bible. 55:11 Sean Finnegan Into less common languages and the struggles that they face with, but he also has a lot of other stuff. He actually has a a really interesting book on the name of God, Yahweh. 55:22 Sean Finnegan And going through a lot of Nehemia Gordon's material and refuting his suggested Jehovah translation. So that's, I know a juicy topic for people that are into sacred name stuff. But anyhow, Suzanne goes on. Thanks again, Sean. I also would recommend Tim Mcninch's videos, especially the alphabet. 55:42 Sean Finnegan He teaches you a good song to memorize that and all his verb conjugation. 55:48 Sean Finnegan Well, there you have it. Also my guest today, George Athos, is a Hebrew expert and was involved in the BHS readers edition of the Old Testament, I believe, and that is where you have the text unadorned with English words all around, like an interlinear. 56:07 Sean Finnegan Is very actually hard to read because you can't not see the English. So whereas a reader would just give you the Hebrew text, but then words that are used less frequently will have footnotes at the bottom of the page with short, helpful definitions. So that is a tool that I use. I actually have the. 56:26 Sean Finnegan The reader's edition of the whole Bible, so it has the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament, and you know the less commonly used words on the bottom of each page. So yeah, I definitely am a big believer in that, though I typically just end up reading in my Bible software on like a daily basis or. 56:46 Sean Finnegan Either on my PC. 56:48 Sean Finnegan Or my phone. I use logos on my phone, so however, you're going to do it if you're into the languages how they recommend it. You know, history really helps us understand. 56:57 Sean Finnegan The Bible. 56:58 Sean Finnegan Studying the biblical languages really helps us understand the Bible and all of this is in an effort to restore authentic Christianity and live it out today. So thanks everybody for listening to. 57:08 Sean Finnegan The end May God bless you as you continue to seek and dig out the treasures of truth contained in the scriptures. That's going to be it for this week. If you'd like to support this ministry, you can do that at restitutio.org. We'll catch you next week and remember, the truth has nothing to.