English
As the author of this essay, I take responsibility for the choices and processing that lead to the presented concept of the "Kingdom of God." I will use first-person writing to avoid any confusion with expressions of established exegesis. Assuming responsibility for this conceptual construction exempts me from being accused of a common confusion: many Bible exegetes present their research as discoveries of the "understood truth" secreted by God behind the letters. That is not my case.
Some, starting from the biblical text, calculate the year, month, day, and hour of God's meeting with Moses on Mount Sinai. While I respect their attempt, I view Scripture as a spiritual strategy rather than a historical narrative.
Certain physicists have employed the tools of science to elaborate theories about the origins of the Universe, finding that scientific data correspond precisely to the assertions in Genesis, while the Theory of Evolution has been "excommunicated" as it is said to contradict the Bible. Not my case.
The conceptual construction of the "Kingdom of God" belongs to me; it is not a "de-arcanization" of God's text, nor is it a "scientific explanation" of contemporary sociology and law based on their ancient sources (though we cannot categorically assert, due to lack of evidence, that it does not correspond to the Gospel of Jesus).
The concept of the "Kingdom of God" I propose in the following has nothing to do with archaeology (and very little with history), although its raw material is exclusively biblical. For a long time, I thought I would proceed similarly to restoring an ancient jug, starting from the disorder of the shards found at the same site. Importantly, from my perspective, is that the shards fit.
The construction here is not a reconstruction, as in the case of evaluating Deuteronomy as an ancient constitution. In the first third of the last century, the German Protestant theologian Albrecht Alt (1) compared the Commandments of Deuteronomy with other ancient legal codes, such as the Code of Hammurabi, to identify and understand the origins and development of Israelite legislation. Subsequent developments advanced the idea that Deuteronomy is the ancestor of constitutions, giving rise to works that highlight this idea, such as Daniel J. Elazar's essay (1934-1999), "Deuteronomy as Israel's Ancient Constitution: Some Preliminary Reflections" (2).
The difference between what Daniel J. Elazar (and others) presents and what I have conceived here is that my essay does not provide an overview of Deuteronomy (or the Bible) and does not explain the concept of the biblical text (as he does admirably and justifiably), but assembles the Commandments following the logic of structuring, based on values identified as "supreme" through personal choice, under cultural-subjective influence. For example, "freedom" as a moral value is a personal choice, even though the era in which I live has imposed it as such, and therefore it is not an originality - it also appears as a supreme value in "liberation theology" (5); likewise, "spirituality." The result of this processing I propose as the concept of the Kingdom of God.
Is this the concept that Jesus Christ preached? If we were to find discrepancies between the biblical text and the construction presented here, then the answer would be categorically negative.
But as long as the proposed construction consists exclusively of a good-faith assembly of Bible verses, we cannot provide a valid answer to this question, as we could invalidate the concept, but we cannot validate it-a characteristic of subjects with open interpretation.
In "The Unknown Kingdom of God," Timothy L Price observes (3): "The very complexity of the biblical teaching about the Kingdom of God is one of the reasons why such diverse interpretations have emerged in the history of theology. Isolated verses can be quoted to support most interpretations, which can be found in our theological literature. The Kingdom is a present reality (Matthew 12:28), and yet it is a future blessing (1 Corinthians 15:50). It is an inner spiritual blessing of redemption (Romans 14:17), which can only be experienced through being born again (John 3:3), and yet it will have to do with the governance of the nations of the world (Revelation 11:15)."
This means that, as long as it has a biblical basis, the interpretation becomes one variant among many, without excluding the others, and this is the applicable condition in the case of the current text. The construction of the concept of the Kingdom of God is an attribute of each generation, for otherwise, the ministry of Jesus would have no purpose, as shown by the famous verses from Deuteronomy 30: "11. For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. 12. It is not in heaven, that you should say, 'Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?'" Upon closer examination, the two verses are anti-Christic - what purpose does the incarnation have when "14. But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it"? Jesus's mission is not Moses's mission. The only scenario in which Jesus remains necessary is if he is not just a tanna repeating past teachings (he strongly demands respect for the Law) but gives the Law a coherent structure (which the Law lacks) and thus "fulfills it."
Two things result from this:
1.Conceptually, the Kingdom of God is a rational ordering of the Law.
2.The Kingdom of God preached by Jesus is a concept of Jesus's historical time.
If the New Testament had transmitted the Gospel of Jesus to us (and not just mentioned it), then the hierarchy of the Commandments would have been its main subject.
This could be considered the new tide brought by Jesus - the structuring of the Commandments into an ordered, hierarchical whole, constituting the concept of the Kingdom of God, in opposition to the traditional Jewish preference to enumerate the Commandments, out of respect for the word of God, avoiding ranking them, so we suggest you join this important point.
"At first sight, we are tempted to think that the finite form would be characteristic of those cultures that we consider mature, because they know the world around them and have identified and defined their order", says Umberto Eco (4) in "Vertigo. Infinite List" , continuing: "and the stringing procedure would be, on the other hand, typical of primitive cultures that still have an imprecise image of the universe and limit themselves to equally aligning the properties they know they call, without even trying to establish a relationship. hierarchical between them". ("Vertigo. The infinite list"/p.18/Editura RAO, 2009)
Although he was dealing with another topic, Eco cautiously says, "at first sight", and he does well to address the case of the Commandments here, because, among the Jews, maintaining them in the form of stringing is neither primitivism nor conservatism, but extreme piety.
Man cannot thirteen to "establish a hierarchical relationship" between the Commandments, except under divine impulse - it is a reasonable reason for recognizing the divinity of Jesus.
The fact that a systematic presentation of the Kingdom of God is missing from the canonical Gospels no longer seems to be a lacuna of the New Testament, but a call to the active search for the concept according to each age.
The gap can be an invitation.
On the one hand, the list of Commandments remains unchanged; on the other hand, the number of Commandments that systematize the Kingdom of God varies depending on conditions. This is the meaning of Jesus's statement in the "Sermon on the Mount" because - a less noticed aspect - he does not absolutely reject the flexibility of the Law: "18. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished." (Matthew 5) "Until all is accomplished"; but after that? Although Jesus suggests the immutability of the Law, its eternity is dependent on fulfillment, and when it comes to fulfillment, it involves evolution, variability, and adaptation to needs.
Moreover, the absence of the temple, the absence of the priestly class, and life in the diaspora nullify the possibility of applying a large number of the 613 Commandments of Maimonides - a list that was not known in Jesus's time (4).
For example, the restitution of lands alienated from the descendants of the people of Israel, which had been allocated to their ancestors upon entering the Promised Land - a prominent Jubilee Commandment - cannot be applied in exile.
Jesus is shown to be aware that, although the Commandments are valid, some have become without subject, as is the case with nationalist Commandments, for example: "11. I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 8).
The Gospel of the Kingdom of God preached by Jesus is suitable for his historical era.
(To be continued)
Notes
(1) Albrecht Alt (1883 - 1956) - "Die Ursprunge des israelitischen Rechts" (The Origins of Israelite Law), first published in 1934
(2) Daniel J. Elazar (1934-1999)- "Deuteronomy as Israel's Ancient Constitution: Some Preliminary Reflections" (https://www.jcpa.org/dje/articles2/deut-const.htm)
(3) (https://www.academia.edu/14195713/Chapter_1_The_Unknown_Kingdom_of_God)
(4) For example, Eliezer Danzinger states, in "How Many of the Torah's Commandments Still Apply?":
"Of the 248 positive commandments, only 126 are currently applicable. And of the 365 negative commandments, only 243 are still applicable. So in total, currently, 369 mitzvot are still operative."
But the number of Commandments with current applicability varies from one author to another.
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