[Sigh], Fr. Stephen: Yes, well, his most well-known work. Fr. How do we engage with it well? Sorry, everybody. I had always assumed that the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity took time to develop, and that the apostles wouldnt have been explicit Trinitarians. Dan: Yeah, the second question was: What was it about their understanding of the goats blood that was understood to have a cleansing or sanctifying effect over the various parts of the holy of holies and the Temple that you guys discussed? Theyre cursing him; hes taking away their sins. Another fun thing from Sunday school, ruined by Fr. I appreciate it. Andrew: Yeah, because if theres anything God does not want you to do, its worship anything, anything else. Fr. Stephen: Yes, of material objects and physical space. Fr. You could just call your band Mercy Seat and be like, Were a cover band, just like the title says.. Is atonement purely theoretical? [Laughter]. Stephen: Yeah, youre rubbing it into a bunch of people. Dont mention that! Johannes U. Ro and Diana Edelman, BZAW 534 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2021), 263-88. Stephen: Can you hear me? was your one question for tonight, unfortunately. He then has broken Azazels hold over the world, and so now the whole cosmos, the whole creation can become sacred space, can be purified and can be sacred space. The second thing that happenedand I was explicitly taught this in the Protestant church I used to attendis that because the apostles were worshiping Jesus as the Messiah, they inferred He must be God because you cant worship a merely created being. Stephen: Right, and that enlightenment imagery, like the caduceus and those kind of things that are attached to Baphomet is the same kind of things. And, one way or another, thats going to kill the goat. [Laughter] No, theyve got to both be great. Stephen: Right, and then you can add prefixes and suffixes and that kind of thing, but you have a root that is three letters. So, okay, Christ is both goats. He wants them to repent of those sins and to be purified by his coming. Fr. And as we talked about last time, at a fair amount of length, Passover representing this manumission, this freedom from slavery, slavery to sin, freedom from slavery to the hostile powers. Stephen: [Laughter] So well start with the good goat. Fr. [Laughter]. Religion of the Apostles: Orthodox Christianity in the First Century Fr. Andrew: Did you have a second question? Its quite all right. Fr. Stephen: Because of how its conjugated. There is literally no informationnow, this ritual, when you read Leviticus 16, theres a lot of detail here; weve already started with some of it, were going to have more detail as we go, but exactly whats to be done, there is no detail on how this goat is to be killed. Critical Review of Fr. Stephen De Young's "Here There Be Giants" Stephen has blogged about previously here as well. Stephen: [Laughter] Because exactly the question you just asked. Just read the passage, and you can see that that stuff is just simply not there. Stephen: Right, so this then plays out through the early chapters of the book of Acts, the idea that everything has now been cleansed. The A-Team. We might go a little further if we understand that the body is this nexus of powers or potentialities, to say, well, all of the human powers and all of the human capacities, but for St. Athanasiusand St. Irenaeus does something very similar before him by a couple of centurieshe means spatio-temporally, that Christ not only sanctifies humanity in its parts and in its powers, but the moments of a human lifebirth, childhood, young adulthood, adulthood, up to and including a human deathand that by living through those, not just, again, spatially, but temporally, those things are sanctified and purified by the union of Christs divinity and humanity in his Person. Fr Stephen explains it a way that finally makes sense. Stephen: The high priest would place his hands on the goat, on its head, to designate it for this purpose, and he would What is says is he would recite the sins of Israel. Fr. Fr. Okay, were going to go ahead and take our second break, and well be back with the third half of The Lord of Spirits. Fr. So Greek words in the New Testament are treated as these sort of independent entities without reference to what theyre translating, and then that allows you to pack a whole bunch of things in. So hes sort of the main motivator of that. Fr. Fr. The real question we want to know is which Christian tradition has faithfully carried on the legacy of the apostles. He is also the author of The Whole Counsel Blog on . Its funny: sometimes well getpeople will ask us questions like: Which Bible scholar says this? The scholar on Slavonic pseudepigrapha so if you want to get into Slavonic pseudepigraphaand who doesnt?is Andrei Orlov, and hes written a ton, and a lot of its available for free on the internet, if you want to read scholarly journal articles. Fr. Andrew: Right, right. And so, of course, as weve mentioned before in a previous episode, this is over against the Apkallu myth and other similar storiesPrometheus in the Greek tradition. Stephen: Yeah, and this was very clearly understood by the earliest readers, because every extra-biblical source we have from the Jewish world treats Azazel as a spiritual being. Stephen: Right, well, we cant hang that on all Protestants, but, yeah, sometimes. ", Nephilim: The Children of Lilith. He purifies and atones, coverscovers it by virtue of being here, by virtue of becoming human and going I dont know. Dr. Stephen De Young is Pastor of Archangel Gabriel Orthodox Church in Lafayette, Louisiana. Fr. En (James A.) Andrew: All right, well, welcome back to the third half of The Lord of Spirits. But that is a minor detail. The only time it happens is this, and that animal is not sacrificed. Stephen: Az is a goat. Stephens book with glee, looking forward to having ammunition with which to spar with the next Protestant who told me that all we need is the Scriptures, or the next Orthodox or Catholic who told me that all we need is Scripture plus the Patristics. Fr. These lists include some notes and clarifications later shared by Fr. Andrew: [Laughter] Yeah, actually we looked this up and we could find no link, but who knows? Stephen: Right, so as I mentioned, all of our earliest sort of interpreters within the Jewish world who talk about Azazel have him as this being, this actual demonic being, and the most prominent places where hes discussed in terms of what Second Temple literature are focusing on are 1 Enoch, whats called 2 Enoch or Slavonic Enoch, and the Apocalypse of Abraham. On our next episode, were going to be starting a two-part series on sacred geography. But of course, what is impossible for man is possible for God. Rather, the doctrine of God being multiple hypostases was already widely accepted even before the incarnation. Did it eradicate it? Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer. Theres a lot of people standing around; this is the person whom were setting apart for this purpose. Andrew: Dont you know that yalls body is the temple of the Holy Spirit? C. M. Furey et al (Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2021), 909913. And by the way, those handful of later Greek usages seem to be based on the Jewish use of it, meaning its used in contexts where someone is making some kind of offering to a supernatural being, to a spiritual being. So, sort of prophetically, it said theres going to be this sort of eschatological Day of Atonement thats going to take care of Azazel and take care of this sin and corruption and take care of sacred space sort of once and for all. Mr. You wouldnt like it. Stephen: And now Ive pre-empted the Where can I read more about this? messages we get after most episodes. Sometimes, yeah, thats interpreted Anytime someone puts their hands on an animal, thats interpreted as meaning that theyre putting sins on it. It makes no sense. Stephen: Yeah, and a solid 80% of kidding aside, the point you made about it being references to the Day of Atonement is again important. So, just what is a giant? Fr. Its just a good, good word for one thing, but yeah, yeah. We had the Sunday of the Last Judgment, so weve had goats on our minds. Fr. Im going to give you this job, so look this up, Richard. Andrew: No, I dont think so, but yeah [Laughter] Hello, all of you Jonathan Pageau fans out there. Mike Schmitz), The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Stephen: So that, through death, he might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, namely, the devil: destroy the devil. Fr. Stephen: [Laughter] Uh-oh! Fr. He preferred the terminology for the sacrament of the Lords Supper in order to present it as a meal,1 which he saw as standing in sharp contrast to the sacrificial conception.2 While Calvin himself consistently maintained that the Eucharist represented a real sacramental communion in the body and blood of Christ, this disassociation of sacrament and sacrifice led much of later Protestantism to reject even the sacramentality of the rite. So theres this orderly, beautiful, purified, sacred space where God dwells with his people, and then chaos is whats on the outside. So that was kind of over-translated. Fr. Andrew: Yeah, so you have two goats I suddenly remember that joke that goes around on Facebook: You have two cows and then it has this list of all these economic systems. Its a word thats core to our understanding of Christianity, and yet there are about as many theories of atonement as there are Christian groups. Stephen: Yeah, weve covered a lot, and a lot of big stuff, so this one is kind of the hardest button to button. Whats the deal with this super-big day of offering? Its a huge, huge deal, super, super important. Its not about some abstract concept or mechanism of salvation; its about the ritual that everyone that the people receiving this Gospel would have known, or, if they were coming in from the nations, they would have been told about this: it was part of their inheritance now, because theyre becoming part of Israel. All right, so weve covered the basics of the Day of Atonement ritual and the two goats, here on Goat Week on The Lord of Spirits, and were going to get back in just a moment, but first were going to take a short break, so well be right back. Disclaimers, Pauls Works of the Law in the Perspective of Second Century Reception, by Matthew J. Thomas A Review, John the Presbyter: Eusebius Imaginary Friend. Stephen De Young The V. Rev. Fr. About Fr. Fr. Bible Studies - Saint George Orthodox Christian Cathedral Fr. Fr. Stephen: Yeah, so this gets sort of double interesting, because not only do we have the made-up English word that is primarily reflecting, as you just described, an English concept than it is trying to reflect an original word The reason for that is the Greek word, ilasterion, doesnt occur anywhere that we still possess until Jewish folks start using it, meaning the Greek Old Testament and then works like Philo, Josephus, etc. I know weve said this several times already, but when atonement is talked about in the New Testament, its not referring to some abstract theological idea of atonement; its referring to what happened on the Day of Atonement and comparing, specifically, as were going to see, what Christ does, to that. It includes that, but the way that they tell the story is designed to teach you how Christ, in this case, is the fulfillment of what was given in the old covenant. Pauls Works of the Law in the Perspective of Second Century Reception, by Matthew J. Thomas A Review, John the Presbyter: Eusebius Imaginary Friend. The Bible provides us with some similes pertaining to height. Fr. Fr. Item No. Fr. because I know the Protestants like to interpret that as shifting their sins onto the animal so that it works with their penal substitution model. Fr. Stephen: And historically, especially with 1 John, its important to note that the general epistles, which is all those letters that St. Paul didnt write, the general or catholic epistles, the ones written by other people, out of all of those, in the very early history of the Church, were being utilized by some churches and not others. Andrew: Yeah. What is spiritual reality like? We experience them in worship, we experience them in our interactions with other people when we show the love of God to them, we experience them in the peace we receive from God, in the actual forgiveness and healing we receive for our actual sins on a day-to-day basis. Andrew: Awesome. Stephen: Yeah! And whats interesting there is people may know that these angelic names that end in -elEl is Godso Gabriel is Gibor-el, the mighty man of God; Michael is Micha-el: who is like God. The whole goat is burned after the blood is extracted. A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the School of Graduate Studies, Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion (2009). I think sometimes people take 1, 2, and 3 John as being like these little bonus bits toward the end of the New Testament before we get to the big, crazy dream-vision at the end. Amazon.com: Stephen De Young: books, biography, latest update How does that begin? With the exception of a few details, there is nothing that a good Catholic or Protestant shouldnt be able to say a hearty Amen to. This is. Andrew: And freedom being given by Christ from that. This is just in Hebrew, especially, the word that means what it says; it means cover. And the Greek word thats being used is being used to pick up that meaning within a ritual context. Fr. Andrew: Yeah, right! Dr. Stephen De Young, Orthodox priest and an expert in ancient languages and a scholar of Biblical theology joins me for an interview about his newest book. Andrew: Aw man. Andrew: Got you. And you know, when an apostle interprets the Old Testament for you? So it does end up being germane to our topic this evening. Stephen: Were going to talk about this more in the second half, but Azazel, this spirit, is seen as sort of the source of sin and corruption that has come into the camp, and so its basically being sent back to it. Hes coming; we have to get ready. Andrew Damick, Michael Landsman, and Ancient Faith Radio, Fr. Andrew in an outline group connected to the podcast group. So why isnt this more widely understood? Fr. Fr. But the much simpler way to read it is it just means cover. Christ is both goats. Stephen De Young is an Orthodox priest. Stephen De Young The Very Rev. It sounds like were FBI profilers. Immediately after they are mentioned, Genesis goes on to discuss how the heart and minds of people became continually evil, and Gods flood judgement in response. Two ancient sites, the Pergamon Altar in Berlin, as well as Rujum el-Hiri in the Golan Heights in Israel, will be included to demonstrate the possibility that these fallen ones may be loosed upon mankind during the time of the Time of Jacobs Trouble on earth. All right. Stephen: I know you really want Goat Week to be a thing. Andrew: Yeah, right, because there is not just the problem of the sins of the people. But people have sort of imbibed this idea, so they sort of cite it. Andrew: So, okay, a question that suddenly occurs to me is I mean, theres kind of a generalnow, maybe Im wrong about this, but I thought there was kind of a general rule of Dont touch the ark of the covenant, and of course Ive seen Raiders of the Lost Ark; I know what happens if you open it. Stephen: The Antiochus was obviously a family name of the Seleucid dynasty, and they all took these titles. Maybe he was So thats that pro-devil propaganda stuff again. When I say scholarly I mean that the book has emerged out of Fr. Fr. Stephen De Young begins the discussion of Revelation, Chapter 12. I expected the book to be my final vindication in dozens of ongoing debates with well-meaning brothers and sisters who keep telling me that knowledge of the Second Temple period (roughly the period in Jewish history from the reconstruction of the Temple at the time of Nehemiah through it its destruction in AD 70) is neither necessary nor helpful for understanding the New Testament. [Laughter] Go back where you came from. Thats why this is the day when everything has to be purified. Someone could stand there and say, Hes turning the page; what does that mean? Dan: Yeah, yeah, thats really helpful. Fr. I mean, the nature of this podcast is notthe purpose of it, I should sayis not to be apologetical; were not here to say, This is why Catholics and Protestants and various other kinds of religious people are wrong! But in this particular case, even though this episode is not primarily apologetical, as the whole podcast is not, there is a disconnect that happens for people when they read the Scriptures and, as weve seen, bring a lot of assumptions into the Scriptures. Disclaimers. Its also the Roman soldiers who are doing these Day of Atonement things in St. Matthews gospel. The early Christians did not deduce the doctrine of the Trinity from the fact that they were worshiping Jesus, nor did they come up with Trinitarian theology as a way of buffering the Church against heresy. [Laughter] Its the opposite! Like, no ones ever going to call it the Day of Purgation; it just doesnt have a ring to it. So, yeah, its literally the Day of AtoCovering. God Is a Man of War: The Problem of Violence in the Old Testament Fr. Andrew: Thank you very much, and God bless you all. Dr. Stephen De Young is Pastor of Archangel Gabriel Orthodox Church in Lafayette, Louisiana. Stephen: Right, and taken outside the camp. Stephen: [Laughter] Right. Just in case anyone wonders, I have not seen the film Fallen. He is also the host of the Whole Counsel of God podcast from Ancient Faith and author of the Whole Counsel Blog, as well as co-host of the Lord of Spirits podcast. Fr. Its everybodys sins. The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Strictly speaking, thats not Christianity; its Gnosticism. Fr. So it starts with, as we talked about last time, the idea of sin-offeringsit starts with a sin-offering by the high priest and his immediate sons who are going to be serving with him; its the high priest and only the high priest and only on this day, who was going to actually go into what we now call the holy of holies or the sanctum sanctorum, if youre a Doctor Strange fan. These are just a few examples of how Fr. Andrew: Right, because, again, what is sacrifice? Dont the daily offerings cover it? Fr. Fr. So thats what were going to do now. Father Stephen De Young is the pastor of Archangel Gabriel Orthodox Church (Antiochian) in Lafayette, Louisiana. Andrew: Yeah, like when were serving liturgy, we turn the page in the book. This is Christ as being the goat for Yahweh. Fr. Stephen: Yes, so allow me to feed that a little bit. God Is a Man of War Yeah, its You know, the unity of it alland including also the teaching of the Church Fathers and whats in the divine services and so forthits so impossibly unified; its so impossibly one. Stephen: Maybe it was once used to cover something. And so then, logically enough, when you find this in its noun formthese same roots are used for both verbs and nouns and also for adjectiveswhen its a noun it means a cover or a covering. Its not Yeah. So we dont know how it was killed. And from that perspective, it just doesnt make sense. Andrew: Yes, right, so the idea is to take the sins of the people and get them out of the place where sin does not belong. Photius Avant: I am. Andrew: Yeah, and theres this distinction, then, that is made I mean, this comes in the creation, where youve got the whole sort of world of chaos versus the ordered space that God sets up. They and their children were sprinkled at the blood at the beginning of the old covenant, and now we have been sprinkled and purified with the blood of Christ. So thats the non-narrative theology way to say it. But we have As we talked about last time, the sin-offerings that are being offered every day are not transactional. We are working to restore the entire archive of Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick finish their three-part series on sacrifice. Its amazing. But when Judaism was invented in the 6th century, they rejected much of their heritage that overlapped with Christianity, from the Septuagint to the doctrine of God being more than one person. Consequently, Christianity has more continuity with the religion practiced by the Pharisees than what we know of today as Judaism.. Andrew: Yeah, theres this veiling that happens. Stephen: So the name of this angel is Yahweh-God. What do we need this for? And where does that actually first show up? Andrew: Amen. Andrew: Yeah, so someone comes in: So what did you do, pal? [Laughter], Fr. This translation introduced a Jewish flavor into the text to make the Bible more Messianic. Later on in life Ive participated in everything from Passover Seders to Messianic services in an attempt to discover the Jewish roots of my faith. Two Orthodox priests, Fr. That would have been a great quest line. Thats just a good guiding principle here, super, super important; makes all these references to atonement in the New Testament make a lot more sense. So they rededicate the Temple, and although it didnt happen that time, when the tabernacle is dedicated, when the Temple was dedicated by Solomon, after everything is dedicated, after the blood is used to purify everything and consecrate everything, then the presence of God enters in as this fiery cloud. Stephen: Yeah, but were not just playing the Nope card. Copyright 2023 Apple Inc. All rights reserved. And that can lead to a lot of despair. That is not a false etymology, although usually etymologies that go like that are; theyre just nonsense. Stephen: Well, this is So, Hanukkah is the re-dedication of the Temple. All right. I have two good friends who left the Orthodox church and now refer me to the Old Testament to clinch some version of the following argument: See, substitutionary atonement is real, so the Orthodox are actually heterodox when they deny this. Well folks, the Orthodox Church does teach substitutionary atonement, and if you dont believe me, read chapter 7 of The Religion of the Apostles. Its this annual thing, so it must be a really big deal. Fr. All right, well, lets talk about St. Lukes gospel, and, of course, Acts; these two kind of form a single narrative together, with just the In the former treatise, O Theophilus, at the beginning. So its the same thing in terms of ordination. Stephen: It makes you wonder if that was a practicality, like, if a high priest dropped dead at some point, and everybody was kind of like, What do we do and how do we prevent this from happening in the future?, Fr. It has to be made holy, set apart again for the use of God alone. Emmaus isnt mentioned anywhere else in the Bible except 1 Maccabees and St. Lukes gospel right here. Fr. Fr. Fr. Stephen: Right, they have to be GOAT goats. Im just pointing out that you asked a perfectly logical question based on a bad translation. Andrew: [Laughter] Thats right. Fr. This isnt just an intellectual maneuver; this is something we can experience and participate in in real time, and thats what Lent and Holy Week and Pascha are going to be all about. They are not sitting down and having hors doeuvres with Azazel. Fr. But, yeah, the goat for Azazel has sins placed upon it, in contrast for the goat for Yahweh. Stephen, I know how dear this is to you. Fr. Andrew: Yeah, what is it about that blood that actually has that purifying effect? When hes turning three pages! Andrew: Yeah, yeah, yeah! Dont wait: go buy yourself a copy of The Religion of the Apostles: Orthodox Christianity in the First Century. And I say spiritual being because it includes in a couple cases its gods and in a couple cases its dead people, the spirits of deceased people, where there has been some issue between them and a living person, so some sort of offering is made to mend that relationship. Boom. Stephen began dismantling many assumptions that had been part of the taken-for-granted background to my understanding of Christian origins. Stephen De Young is not only leading the charge for Orthodox apologetics in a world of secular biblical scholarship, but he is also doing us all a favor by reviving the cosmic frame of ancient Christians, giving hope to a jaded culture desperately looking for a re-enchanted world in which it can fully participate. Fr. Fr. Fr. I dont say, I got up this morning and wrapped my clothes around me.. Stephen offers a firm, yet never harsh or condescending, corrective to any interpretation of the Old Testament that seeks either to allegorize or demythologize . Fr. Sorry. Stephen: Right, now, a couple of key things there. Thats why this. So the place where its the most threat, inside the sanctuary, thats the place that the Day of Atonement is concerned and focused on, purifying and cleansing from this taint. So it had this prominence beyond those other books. But in terms of using the term and talking about it as a concept, 1 John is the place. Fr. Stephen: Yeah, and St. Johns going to say this has happened. Fr. So this is sometimes expressed as there were arguments about them; in reality it was just some communities had them and used them and some other ones didnt have them and therefore didnt. Photius: Im sorry. This is like Joseph in Genesis. But thats how granular we get. A lot of them who didnt know 2 and 3 John existed accepted 1 John. Not so great for the goat, but it keeps that from happening, which would be a very awkward moment.
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