Achan

I've previously discussed Achan here, here, and here. The passage was also recently discussed at Grow Mercy.

The standard conservative/literal reading of Joshua 7 is that Achan caused the defeat at Ai and that it was right and moral for Achan to be brutally killed with stones and fire.

Of course the 21st century mind sees no connection between Achan allegedly taking some spoils from Jericho and the defeat at Ai.

Achan is a precursor or an anticipation of the Christ figure. He is a man innocent of the crime which he is accused. He did not cause the defeat at Ai. I gotta tell you I don't trust any stories that come from lynch mobs. This story is being told by a lynch mob. Achan's confession may be like the confessions in Soviet show trials. This is a story about the formation of group unanimity and renewing the bonds of the group with a blood sacrifice.

Achan was murdered. Achan was viciously killed by a lynch mob. Regardless of how the so-called literalists want us to understand this text, God was on the side of Achan and not the lynch mob.

Joshua was supposed to be a "Shepherd". He was not a good "Shepherd. Jesus was a good shepherd, he didn't lose any of His sheep. In this story Joshua makes a human sacrifice of one of his sheep. Achan is sacrificed for group unity. Achan is sacrificed in Joshua's place. Jesus is the new Joshua. Jesus doesn't kill any of his sheep to save Himself.

After the defeat at Ai the group was on the verge of disintegration. Joshua knew that because as the leader he would sooner or later himself be sacrificed to restore group unity. Joshua wasn't a good shepherd. He knew that someone had to die, and it wasn't going to be him. He needed a scapegoat. Achan had all the signs of a scapegoat. Achan was not a man well-liked by the people. A sinner and hardened criminal. He didn't have friends. If Joshua pointed the finger at Achan, no one would come to his defense. It may have been a long time that people had been wishing for Achan's death. Joshua knew it was either him or Achan.

Numbers 27:15-21 would lead one to believe that the cause of the defeat at Ai was that Joshua did not lead his people into battle. In this section God commands Joshua to march at the head of the army. Now I think you could make a pretty good case that Joshua was in fact responsible for the defeat at Ai. Joshua was supposed to lead the army into battle, to "go out before them".
From the Legends of the Jews:

"He, however shall be a man 'which may go out before them,' who, unlike the kings of the heathens, that send their legions to war but themselves remain at home, shall himself lead Israel to war. But he shall also be at man 'which may come in before them;' may it be granted him to see the number of those returning from war no less than that of those going into war. "O Lord of the world!" continued Moses, "Thou hast led Israel out of Egypt, not to punish them for their sins, but to forgive them, and thou has not led them out of Egypt that they may be without leaders, but that they may indeed have leaders..."

Joshua is not the good shepherd, not only has he lost sheep, but he has intentionally sacrificed one. Did he stay at home out of pride and hubris?

Achan, if we believe what the text says, has realized that he is the lamb that will be sacrificed for group unity. He doesn't point the finger at others, he takes Joshua's sins and the community's sins upon himself and the community is cleansed and renewed by the death of Achan. Achan removes the sin of the community. The community has united around the dead and brutalized body of Achan. This story has many similarities with Isaiah 53. The Achan story is a real-life atonement event. Stories like Achan's are what underlie the Atonement ritual. Stories similar to this underlie the Gospels and what Jesus is doing. Jesus is uniting humanity around His broken body. He allows His body to be broken so that others won't have to be.

Isaiah 53:4 and Penal Substitutionary Atonement

It's been a while since my last post, I've been doing research for a novel I hope to someday write. I know, I have weird hobbies, I spend my time going back and forth between amateur theologian and amateur, aspiring novelist, but it keeps me busy.

I've also been reading a new blog, The Rebel God, Derek Flood has been doing a pretty good job struggling with the atonement.

Now on to today's brief observation.

Matthew 8:16-17 quotes from Isaiah 53:4

16When the even was come, they brought unto him many that were possessed with devils: and he cast out the spirits with his word, and healed all that were sick:

17That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses.

Penal substitutionary atonement states that God the Father laid the sins on Jesus, but I think what the Gospel of Matthew is saying here in it's quotation of Isaiah 53:4 contradicts this. The people brought their sicknesses, sins and infirmities to Jesus and Jesus took them and absorbed them. He bore/forgave their sins. God the father doesn't seem involved with any kind of laying on of sins here.

Luke 5:21 says:
21And the scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying, Who is this which speaketh blasphemies? Who can forgive sins, but God alone?

If penal substitution is the law, how can sins be forgiven before the penalty has been paid. How can Jesus forgive sins anyway, if it is God the Father who needs to be paid?

Jesus removed ritual impurites from the people. He restored the outcasts to the community. The cleansing of lepers, and the bleeding woman are examples. As Margaret Barker says, "the miracles were not general acts of healing; Jesus did not mend broken bones. The miracles all have a ritual significance and present Jesus as the restoring high priest. Paul presents the same ideas in a different way; the work of Christ brings sinners back into the community (he uses the term 'justification') and then no supernatural powers are ever again able to separate them and cut them off."

Again you must read Margaret Barker's essay on the atonement. She writes:

Third, there is additional information about the scapegoat in the Mishnah; people pulled out the goat’s hair as it was led away (m.Yoma 6.4). In the Epistle of Barnabas42 there is a quotation from an unknown source about the scapegoat: ‘Spit on it, all of you, thrust your goads into it, wreathe its head with scarlet wool and let it be driven into the desert’ (Barn.7). The goat suffered the fate of the Servant: ‘I gave my back to the smiters and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard. I hid not my face from shame and spitting (Isa.50.6); and ‘He was pierced for our transgressions’ (Isa.53.5). Barnabas continues: ‘When they see him (Jesus) coming on the Day, they are going to be struck with terror at the manifest parallel
between him and the goat.’ The reference is to the future coming of the LORD to his people. This is another Servant motif; the recognition of who the Servant is43. Barnabas, too, associates the scapegoat with the Day of the LORD: ‘They shall see him on that Day, clad to the ankles in his red woollen robe, and will say, ‘Is this not he whom we once crucified and mocked and pierced and spat upon?’ (Barn.7).

On Isaiah 53 she writes this:

Second, we see that Isaiah 53 could have been inspired by the Day of Atonement ritual. A few points must suffice.
1. ‘He shall startle many nations’ (Isai.52.15); yazzeh, the apparently untranslatable verb means ‘sprinkle’ in the atonement ritual (Lev.16.19). The Servant figure does not ‘startle’ many peoples; the original Hebrew says he ‘sprinkles’36.
2. The Servant ‘carries’ the people’s sicknesses or weaknesses (Isa.53.4).
3. The Servant has been wounded for their transgressions. Wounded, hll, is a word which carries both the meanings required by Mary Douglas’s theory of atonement, viz. to pierce or to defile.
4. ‘Upon him was the chastisement that made us whole’ (Isa.53.5b) can also be translated ‘The covenant bond of our peace was his responsibility’37. ‘With his stripes, hbrt, 38we are healed’ would then become ‘By his joining us together we are healed’, forming a parallel to mwsr, covenant bond. The primary meaning of hbr is to unite, join together.
5. The Servant pours out his soul/life as a sin offering, `sm (Isa.53.19). The `sm is,
according to Milgrom, the sacrifice which redresses the m`l, which is either sacrilege
against holy things or violation of the covenant.39 The soul/life was in the blood of the sacrifice, hence it was poured out.
All this suggests that the Servant figure was modelled on the one who performed the
atonement rites in the first temple40. This figure appears in Enoch’s Similitudes in his heavenly aspect as the Man, the Anointed, the Chosen One. In the ritual of the second temple, the figure became two goats: one bearing the sins away and the life/blood of the other being taken into the holy of holies where the ark, the throne had been41.

In pagan/primitive religion the people always believed that the god/person they just lynched restored peace and unity to the community through his beneficence and foreknowledge. It was his plan to be killed by the lynch mob so that the community could be united. This is how the lynch mob saw things. It wasn't the person that was brutally murdered that united them, it was their own collective violence directed toward the scapegoat.

I think it was Nietzsche that said Christianity is structurally the same as pagan religion. In Christianity the lynchers hear the cock crow. Jesus is not turned into a minor deity because people realize what they have done. They killed him, they were responsible for His death. Jesus poured his blood and soul out to them. He becomes the God of Love and Forgiveness who has bore/forgave their sins. So unlike pagan religions, where the people have to constantly reenact the original lynching by finding new scapegoats, Christians must follow Jesus and bear/forgive the sins of others and no longer give into violence and make more scapegoats.