The Bible and Beyond Podcast Episode
Justice and Peace for Christians and Jews in Hebrew Bible
An Interview with Barry Huff
Dr. Barry R. Huff, photo credit ericlinesdesign.com
Barry’s deep love of both the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) and New Testament inspires us to listen in new ways to familiar texts as well as the ones we’re not so aware of. They awaken our moral imagination to deeper values of justice and peace.
About Barry
Dr. Barry R. Huff is Assistant Professor of Religion at Principia College. His interests include wisdom literature, Psalms, Torah, creation theology, Intertextuality, ecological hermeneutics, and the reception history of the Bible. He received his PhD in Biblical Studies from Union Presbyterian Seminary, a ThM from Columbia Theological Seminary, and his MTS from Eden Theological Seminary.
Thank you, Shirley and Barry, for this very brief introduction to the relationships between Old and New Testaments. Barry’s commentary on Job was most interesting for me, where he even found parallels between Job and Jesus that I’d never seen before. Where he found Job resilient and persistent, more than patient.
Also some thoughtful quotes such as needing to understand the God of the Old Testament in order to understand the God of the New Testament.
There was also a lot where I wanted to say, “Wait, wait! Where did this idea come from?”
Or, “Wait, wait! What about this story or what about that account?”
So, thank you again for this appetizer into why we should be more familiar with the Old Testament!
Thank you, Sandi, for your meaningful comment. I love the spirit of discovery and inquiry that shines through your closing sentences, a spirit that leads to new insights in our journeys with the Hebrew Bible.
This was just wonderful! It comes on the heels of my listening to a 24-lecture audio course I purchased thru the Teaching Company called “Jesus and His Jewish Influences” – by Prof. Jodi Magness. It was virtually a history of Judaism with references to the Apocrypha (which i haven’t yet read) and even Alexander the Great, (I’d always wondered what if any influence he had on the people of Palestine in the 300’s B.C.) Anyway I liked Barry’s point of view better about Judaism. One thing that Prof. Magness said was that the religious view of God by the early patriarchs was not a true monotheism so much as what she called a “monolatry” (I think that was her term). It meant that the Hebrews probably believed there were other gods, but that theirs was best and even supreme over others. I wonder if the true monotheistic view might have become more prevalent after the destruction of the first temple and the diaspora to Babylon. I am also reading the Bible from cover to cover – An NIV version called the Bible in a year; each day there are chapters from the OT, NT, a Psalm and a Proverb. I am in Ezekiel now and share Shirley’s view about some of the horrendous things either attributed to or allowed by God. I am trying to look at some of these events more metaphorically than literally to eke out a positive meaning. Thanks so much for these enlightening and inspiring podcasts.
Thank you, Joan, for your gracious and insightful comment. Jodi Magness is a superb scholar. You are exactly right in discerning a connection between the Babylonian exile and the development of monotheism. During the final decade of the Babylonian exile, monotheism is repeatedly voiced in Second Isaiah (Isa 40-55) in passages such as Isaiah 45:5, “I am the LORD and there is none else; Beside Me, there is no god” (NJPS). It is also during the Babylonian exile, in the aftermath of Babylon’s destruction of Solomon’s Temple and Jerusalem, that Ezekiel will envision a New Jerusalem with water flowing from the temple that invigorates the landscape and nourishes trees with “leaves for healing” (Ezek 47:12 NJPS). Centuries later, following Rome’s destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple, the author of Revelation draws heavily on Ezekiel’s vision of New Jerusalem when depicting a New Jerusalem where water flows from God’s throne and nourishes the tree of life with leaves “for the healing of the nations” (Rev 22:2 NRSV).
Thanks so much, Shirley and Barry. It is excellent to hear your insights into the bible as based on both a close academic study and an inquiring discernment. I have been doing a close study of Revelation in a bible study group as I wished to appreciate far more about it as a text with spiritual underpinnings. I was amazed to find that Revelation has so many direct links to Old Testament visionary texts. In this interview, I liked the way Barry showed the Old Testament as a basis for the New Testament. I really appreciate the way that Jesus often quotes from the Omd Testament.
Thanks for your profound discussion.
Robin Clarke
Thanks so much, Robin! It’s great to hear about your Bible study group and discovery of how drenched Revelation is in imagery from and allusions to the Hebrew Bible.
This interview is a great gift to anyone seeking to see more linkage between the First and Second Testaments. What a gift are Dr. Huff’s insights into the grace evidenced in Job’s experience that reversed the retribution theology so often associated with Job–and how that grace is later seen in the life of Christ Jesus. I also appreciated the point he made about the moral imperative we have post-Holocaust to see the vital linkage between the two Testaments, how the Hebrew Scriptures provide the necessary foundation for the New Testament. Many other key points were made and only hope this interview circulates widely. So appreciate Dr. Paulson’s thoughtful questions as well. She clearly knows her subject and where to probe. A gift to all listeners. Thank you!
Thanks so much, Madelon, for your meaningful message and for highlighting this linkage in your own scholarship too.
Thank you Dr. Huff for sharing your thoughtful insights and very evident love of the Hebrew Scriptures. You mentioned Amy-Jill Levine, who is Jewish by faith, but a scholar of the New Testament. When directing a Bible Foundation in New England 20+ years ago, I invited her to come speak about the difficult parts of the Hebrew Bible to a mainly Christian audience. But the evening before her talk, she asked to go speak to the local synagogue, She encouraged the Jewish members to read the New Testament if they wanted to understand the Jewish world at the time of Jesus – the first century C.E. – illustrating just how Jewish Jesus was, as well as our New Testament.
I would also like to recommend the EXCELLENT source book edited by Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler called: “The Jewish Annotated New Testament” based on the NRSV translation (New Revised Standard Version). This volume “highlights in its annotations and essays aspects of first- and second-century Judaism that enrich the understanding of the New Testament: customs, literature, and interpretation of biblical texts” (from the Editors’ Preface).