My wife and I were having a discussion on this week Torah portion, and how she read a commentarie that Josephs wife stood up for Joseph while he was falsely accuse of trying to lie with potiphars wife, and after that she left all connection to paganism and idoletry and attach herself to the One true God, the God of Israel. It also came to mind, how today it is thought that a person is a Jew if he/she comes from a jews mother, but Ephraim and Manaseh did not come from a jews mother but from a gentile mother, yet Jacob still adopted them as its own and they became part of the 12 tribe of Israel. Rico Cortes, has a good article regarding adoption. In his facebook page call Wisdom in Torah. Adoption in the New Testament A few New Testament instances allude to the Old Testament view of adoption, perhaps even indicating the legal kind (e.g., John 19:26–27; Jas 1:27, which is about caring for orphans). But adoption is most often used in a theological sense. Paul uses adoption in Romans to describe the relationship between God and the followers of Jesus (Rom 8:15, 23; 9:4; compare Gal 4:5; Eph 1:5). He uses one Greek term for adoption: υἱοθεσία (huiothesia). The term υἱοθεσία (huiothesia) is rarely found in literary sources, but is prevalent in inscriptions and documentary papyri. Still, Paul had other options of words meaning adoption that were more explicitly tied to religious concepts (Scott, Adoption as Sons, 27, 45, 55). So, why did Paul use υἱοθεσία (huiothesia)? It may be significant that he chose a word that contains the word (υἱὸς, huios), which means “son.” His use of a term that invokes adopted sonship may have linked the term with other masculine terms in Romans, such as “seed” and “circumcision.” He may also have been challenging the authority of the emperor over the sons of Rome. Paul’s use of terms such as brothers and sisters, father, and adoption allows him to construct a family of people who are not biologically related—the community of believers (Rom 8:15–21; Gal 4:4–6). “Christ has enabled Jews and Gentiles to become related to each other as children of Abraham, but they do not cease to be Jews and Gentiles” (Eisenbaum, “Is Paul,” 521). In the Abrahamic line, the distinction is maintained biologically, but the family is created through adoption. At the time Paul was writing, a series of laws referred to as the Lex Iulia et Papia Poppaea required Roman citizens to bear children to build up the Roman population. Paul’s use of adoption as the means to grow God’s family stands in direct opposition to these laws. Paul’s theology not only made the family of God more open than the family of the Roman state, it also created a community that valued those who could not produce biological heirs. The family of God, created through adoption, is open to anyone who wants to be a part of it.
Posted on: Sun, 04 Jan 2015 05:27:55 +0000
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