THREAD: Jesus is King!

#David, #Nebuchadnezzar, #Doves, and the #Messiah.

Matthew opens his Gospel with a statement of Jesus’ right to occupy David’s throne.

Mark and Luke do too, but they do things their own way,

and reveal a lot about kingship in the process.
Kings were always part of God’s plan.

Back in Genesis 17, Abraham was told kings would come forth from his loins.

And they soon did.
From Israel’s perspective, however, kings were a two-edged sword.

They could bring about the best of times and the worst of times.
In Deuteronomy 17, Moses was quite candid about the potential problems with kings.

They could easily acquire ‘lots of horses’...

...and/or ‘lots of wives’

...and/or ‘lots and lots of silver and gold’,

which would lure both them and their people away from God.
In addition, their hearts were likely to be ‘lifted up’ in pride (Deut. 17).
Before long, Israel became familiar with such issues.

Consider, for instance, the life of David.
The text of 2 Samuel 8 documents some of David’s early victories as a king.

Mixed in with David’s victories, however, are notable causes for concern.

As a result of his victories over the nations, David amassed large amounts of silver and gold (cp. ‘lots of silver and gold’!).
In addition, he chose to keep ‘a hundred chariot horses’ for himself,

which is the first time horses are numbered in Israel (cp. ‘many horses’!).

And a further note of intrigue is added by David’s appointment of his sons as ‘priests’ (?) (kohanim),
...which may have been an early indicator of his pride (cp. the way in which the pride of king Uzziah’s heart led him to perform a priestly task: 2 Chr. 26.16).
Hence, when David fell in 2 Samuel 11, the stage was set. David already had at least six wives, and possibly concubines to boot (1 Chr. 3.1–9) (cp. ‘many wives’!).
But David’s fall wasn’t an isolated event in history.

Other kings fell in similar ways,

which shouldn’t surprise us, since their hearts were similarly affected by Adam’s fall.
Consider some of the parallels between the way in which David and Nebuchadnezzar fell (cp. 2 Sam. 11–12 w. Dan. 4).

✅ One day, both men decided to take a walk on their palace roof—that is to say, they raised themselves up—, which was the precursor to their downfall.
✅ Despite their sin, both men thought they’d avoided God’s attention, yet were shaken out of their slumber by a familiar voice (cp. Nathan’s pronouncement in 2 Sam. 11.27 and 12.7 with the watcher’s in Dan. 4.31).
✅ Due to their pride, both men were brought low and exiled from their kingdom.

✅ And, while both men were restored at the end of seven periods of time (cp. 2 Sam. 2.18–24), their sons inherited their sinful tendencies (cp. the sexual sin of Amnon and the pride of Belshazzar).
David and Nebuchadnezzar thus fell in very similar ways.

At the outset of his Gospel, however, Mark introduces us to a man who inverts the experiences of Nebuchadnezzar: Jesus.
Consider the (inverted) parallels between the fall of Nebuchadnezzar and what befalls Jesus at the outset of Mark and Luke’s Gospels.
Unlike Nebuchadnezzar, Jesus is a man who can be trusted with power.

His temptations don’t expose any weaknesses in him; on the contrary, they serve to highlight his moral purity.
And the next time something is ‘rent’ (σχίζω) in two in Mark’s Gospel (in ch. 1 the heavens, in ch. 15 the temple veil), we have another inversion of the notion of kingship.
We see the king of the Jews, enshrouded in darkness, ready to lay down his life for the sake of his people.

For more on Daniel, tune in to @_Theopolis’s podcasts.

Thanks to @zugzwanged, @jeffmeyers, and @PLeithart for the inspiration and ideas.
P.S. Substack version below. Finally worked out how to get images on there:

jamesbejon.substack.com/p/jesus-and-ki…

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More from @JamesBejon

3 May
THREAD: Belshazzar’s Riddle.

SUB-TITLE: When I consider the work of your hands...

#Babylon, #Numerology, #MedoPersia, #Stargazers: what’s not to like?

Later, a substack link. As a taster, however, let me (try to!) intrigue you with some data.
The text of Daniel 5 is patterned around a whole array of threefold groups and structures.

It consists of three paragraphs and thirty verses.
It contains three notable triplets, namely:

✅ Daniel’s trio of attributes (‘light, insight, and wisdom’),

✅ Daniel’s threefold ability (‘the ability to interpret dreams, explain riddles, and solve problems’), and
Read 28 tweets
18 Apr
THREAD: We three kings of Israel aren’t.

SUB-TITLE: A method to Matthew’s apparent madness.

As is well known, Matthew’s genealogy (in Matt. 1.1-17) consists of three groups of fourteen generations.

P.S. Substack version available at the end.
As is well known, Matthew’s genealogy (in Matt. 1.1–17) consists of three groups of fourteen generations.

Between Abraham and Israel’s first great king (David) we have fourteen generations;

between David and Israel’s great disaster (the exile) we have a further fourteen;
and between the exile and Israel’s great deliverer (the Messiah) we have our final fourteen.

Every fourteen generations, an event of epochal significance takes place, which makes Jesus’ arrival right on cue.

‘It’s almost as if God planned it’, Bart Ehrman says.
Read 36 tweets
6 Apr
<THREAD>

Pharaoh & the NT’s birth narratives:

arguably not the most seasonal of threads, but then we’ve had a bit of snow in the UK today.

And let’s face it, it’s been a strange year all round.
Raymond Brown has written a 750-page monograph on Matthew and Luke’s birth narratives. That’s about 8,500 tweets’ worth.

On pp. 34–37, Brown says the two birth narratives are largely ahistorical.
Matthew would have mentioned Luke’s census if it had taken place, Brown says,

and Luke would have mentioned the massacre of the infants.

Let’s see if we think Brown’s right.
Read 82 tweets
23 Mar
THREAD: More on the Birth Narratives.

Each year, Nativity plays combine aspects of Matthew and Luke’s narratives into a single drama (or something like one).

The journey to Bethlehem, the shepherds, the wise men, a few camels for good measure (?):

so the list goes on.
No small number of scholars, however, see Matthew and Luke’s narratives as fundamentally at odds with each another.

‘Not only do they tell completely different stories about how Jesus was born’, @BartEhrman says, ‘some of their differences appear to be irreconcilable’.
So then, let’s see how different Matthew and Luke’s narratives really are.

Below are their main components, set out side by side (in what I take to be their implied chronological order).
Read 74 tweets
18 Mar
<THREAD>

Matthew and Luke’s genealogies are often dismissed as irreconcilable.

Elsewhere, I’ve tried to show that they’re not.

Here, I’ll simply highlight some of their numerical and thematic harmonies,

which, I claim, have significant implications.
Matthew’s genealogy (1.1–17) exhibits at least a couple of non-trivial properties.

First, it’s patterned around the numbers 14 and 42.

And, second, it contains multiple allusions to the notion of a Jubilee.
Consider, for a start, how Matthew’s genealogy is patterned around the number 14:

🔹 It traces the fulfilment of YHWH’s promise to Abraham (‘I will make of you a great nation…’: Gen. 12.2), which has a gematrial value of 1,400.
Read 17 tweets
15 Mar
<COVID THREAD>

Boris Johnson now says he thinks he should’ve locked down sooner.

Yet, last March, his chief scientific adviser—Sir Patrick Vallance—claimed his decision was the right one.

So does the PM think he should’ve *ignored* his scientific adviser?…(cont’d below)
If so, does that make him a ‘science denier’?

And from whom should he now seek advice?

Last March, Vallance said that, while a four-month lockdown would temporarily suppress the spread of Covid, it would make it return all the more severely in the winter,
and he said that ‘all of the evidence from previous epidemics’ supported him.

Was he right?

Would the winter have been *worse* had we locked down earlier/harder?
Read 10 tweets

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