Acts 2 and the idea of Israel

I’ve been reading Jason Staples’ excellent The Idea of Israel in Second Temple Judaism, which has given me a lot to think about in terms of how the language and vocabulary of Israel gets deployed rhetorically in the New Testament. One key claim Staples advances is that Israel language in Second Temple-era Jewish literature consistently functions both analeptically and proleptically, referring to either the full twelve-tribe complement of Israel past or the restored Israel of an eschatological future.1 Ἰουδαῖοι (Jews/Judeans), on the other hand, tends to refer to the people of Judah, the post-exilic subset of Israel that existed in the land at that time. Staples explains:

In keeping with this expectation [of future restoration], Jewish literature in this period consistently distinguishes between Israel (the whole) and the Jews (one part of the whole). Consequently, early Jewish texts that deal either with pre-exilic history or the eschatological restoration consistently prefer the term Israel, while those texts that refer to the contemporary (post-exilic) ethnos avoid that term, consistently preferring Ioudaios except when referring to biblical or eschatological Israel or in contexts of prayer or ritual… Thus Israel is the covenantal term for the full people of YHWH, but is also a scattered, fragmented, and incomplete entity at present. Only after YHWH fully restores and reunites his people will “all Israel” be complete again.2

I won’t try and rehearse Staples’ entire argument here, but I found his case for locating Israel language within the eschatological register of the once-and-future nation to be convincing. I would have previously (and perhaps unconsciously) parsed terms like “Jews” or “Judeans” or “Judah” as being more or less synonymous with “the people/land of Israel,” but Staples has shown that the usage of these terms in the Second Temple period was more nuanced than that. Naturally, I immediately wanted to take Staples’ insights for a spin and put them into practice! What follows is my attempt to take Staples’ conclusions about the eschatological connotations of Israel language and see how they might fit into a reading of the Pentecost pericope in Acts 2.3 I had already wanted to do a piece on my doubts concerning the Babel reading of Pentecost and there’s a bit of overlap here. So, the question is this: does the Pentecost episode depict the reversal of the chaos of Babel or the eschatological reunification of Israel? Further, does Peter’s deployment of Israel language clarify this situation at all? (Hint: I think it does.) I’ll begin by introducing the problem and then move on to a discussion of Israel language in this pericope. Caveat lector: While I do reference a couple commentaries in this piece, I haven’t done a full lit review on this topic, so I am, as they say, just spitballin’ here. My main purpose is to test drive some of what I learned from Jason’s book and see where it takes me. ‘Nuff said.

One misstep that I see fairly regularly in popular understandings of the Pentecost episode is a tendency to rush into reading the event primarily as a recapitulation and reversal of the Tower of Babel episode in Genesis 11:1–9. When I say primarily I mean that, for example, a sermon will have as its main exegetical point that Pentecost reverses the chaos of Babel by reuniting the linguistically-divided nations through the gift of the Spirit, evidenced by the miraculous tongues spoken by the Spirit-filled disciples. However, I see three problems with treating Babel as the primary allusion here.4

First, if the Lukan author has Babel in mind at all, it’s not readily apparent in the way that the story is told. In the Pentecost episode we see a gathering of Ἰουδαῖοι, or Jews/Judeans, drawn to Jerusalem from the Jewish diaspora (Acts 2:5). Although the Gentile mission has been hinted at in Jesus’s trajectory of Judea, Samaria, the ends of the earth, at this point the focus is firmly on the restoration of Israel through the coming of the Spirit. The collection of multilingual Ἰουδαῖοι does not come across as a binding together of the nations of Babel, but rather a reunification of scattered Israelites. While the multilingual nature of the assembled Jews nods towards the nations, Peter frames his discourse with the crowd as a conversation among kinsmen (e.g., Ἄνδρες ἀδελφοί in 2:29). The coming of the Spirit and the subsequent experience of the multilingual assembly of Ἰουδαῖοι seems more clearly related to the restoration of Israel and the reversal of Israel’s scattering rather than the Babel incident.

Second, the tenuousness of a Babel reading becomes especially apparent given Peter’s explanation of the events via the words of Joel 2, which is focused on God’s response to his people’s cry for mercy (Joel 2:15–17) with, among other things, the bestowal of a prophetic spirit upon the people (Joel 2:18–32). In fact, the characterization of the nations in Joel 2–3 is entirely negative: they quail in the face of the divine armies (Joel 2:6) and are put on trial for their crimes against Israel, specifically the offense of pillaging the land and scattering the people (Joel 3:1–16). The people are gathered in Zion (Joel 2:15–17), God takes pity upon his people, brings plenty, and removes the invader (Joel 2:18–27), and then then outpouring of the Spirit is enacted (Joel 2:28–32). Given this backdrop, the “Jews from every nation” (Ἰουδαῖοι… ἀπὸ παντὸς ἔθνους) shouldn’t be understood as representatives of those nations but rather as Jews who have been drawn out of the still-scattered Israel-among-the-nations to bear witness to the beginning of Israel’s reunification. The reference to “native language” (τῇ ἰδίᾳ διαλέκτῳ ἡμῶν ἐν ᾗ ἐγεννήθημεν) doesn’t read so much as a reference to Babel’s reversal, but rather points to the Spirit overcoming the linguistic effects of Israel’s scattering.

Third, this focus on eschatological Israel is further confirmed by the deployment of Israel language in this episode. The assembled crowd is initially described as being composed of “Jews living in Jerusalem” (ἐν Ἰερουσαλὴμ κατοικοῦντες Ἰουδαῖοι) in Acts 2:5. This lines up with what we might expect based on Staples’ account of the terminology of the period, i.e., people dwelling in Jerusalem live in Judea and are therefore considered Ἰουδαῖοι. So far, so good. Peter initially keeps in step with the narrator and addresses his audience as “men of Judea” (Ἄνδρες Ἰουδαῖοι). But note that as soon as Peter begins explaining what is happening via reference to Joel his language changes. The “men of Judea” now become “men of Israel” (Ἄνδρες Ἰσραηλῖται). As I mentioned above, I probably wouldn’t have attributed any significance to this terminological shift before reading Staples’ work, but given his account of how these terms were used, I think there’s something going on here. Peter goes from addressing those around him with a standard, mundane demonym to referring to those same people in a heightened, eschatological register. The gathered crowd is not primarily associated with the lands whose languages they speak or even the political entities of Judah or Jerusalem; rather, Peter’s language associates them with the once-and-future Israel that, according to Joel, will be gathered in Zion, experience a reversal in fortunes, and be delivered from the nations (Joel 2:28–3:21). Peter goes on to claim that Jesus’s death, resurrection, and ascension have secured the outpouring of the Spirit and thus the beginning of Israel’s restoration (Acts 2:32–33). The movement from “men of Judea” to “men of Israel” is both consistent with the pattern of contemporary usage and congruent with the trajectory of Joel 2–3 (i.e., a restored Israel gathering in Judah/Zion while the nations are judged).

The notion of a reassembled Israel being drawn out of the nations also lends a different perspective to Peter’s assertion in Acts 2:39: “For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away (εἰς μακρὰν), everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.” This verse is a common biblical source for thinking about the multigenerational nature of God’s salvation; at least in my own Presbyterian tradition, this is commonly used in support of paedobaptism. A common understanding is that Peter is continuing to speak about subsequent generations, i.e., the promise is for you, your children, and your children’s children, and subsequent generations that are “far away” in time. However, given the eschatological weight of the Israel language and the motif of scattered Israel being gathered in from the nations, I think the case for a spatial understanding of “far away” (εἰς μακρὰν) is strengthened.5 Peter is claiming that the promise of restoration is not only for the multilingual crowd gathered in Jerusalem and their families, but also for those Israelites who are still dispersed among the nations (just as the gathered Jews previously were) that God will nevertheless call to himself. While the idea of God calling people to himself will be expanded over the course of the Lukan narrative into the so-called Gentile mission, I think there is a distinct focus on the eschatological reunification of Israel through the outpouring of the Spirit that is worth emphasizing. It is, of course, that same outpouring that enables non-Israelites to participate in that eschatological restoration, but the specificity of Pentecost as a manifestation of the once-and-future Israel should not be missed. Jesus’s prescribed trajectory of Judea, Samaria, ends of the earth begins in Judea, and specifically Jerusalem, for a reason; the in-gathering of Israel properly begins in Zion. Pentecost portrays precisely that process.

In summary, Staples’ insights about the usage of Israel language in the Second Temple period can sharpen our reading when it comes to the rhetoric of Israel in Acts. In my estimation, closely observing Peter’s use of Israel terminology reveals a more deliberate focus on the eschatological reversal of Israel’s scattering. This has implications for our understanding of how Pentecost functions as an appropriate inauguration of the mission of the apostles and a congruent continuation of Jesus’s own mission of restorative Jubilee (Luke 4:16–21). I’m sure there’s much more to think about when it comes to the idea of Israel in the Pentecost episode, but I really appreciate Jason’s work for, among other things, instigating some fresh thoughts on a very familiar passage.

Footnotes

  1. “Israels of Future Past” would make a great article title or something. Just saying. ↩

  2. Staples, Idea of Israel, 341. ↩

  3. On a purely anecdotal note, I did a quick Logos search for instances of Israel language in Acts and found that the deployment of Israel and Ἰουδαῖοι is fairly consistent with Staples’ paradigm. Terms like Ἰουδαῖοι seem to mainly occur in more mundane contexts, e.g., referring to people from Judea, while Israel is used in eschatological contexts, e.g., the apostles’ various discourses with fellow Jews about the destiny of the nation. The distinction between a mundane political register and a heightened theological register seems to hold true. I’m sure a proper survey of that data would yield more conclusive results, but at a glance it seems like the Lukan author behaves consistently with Staples’ thesis. ↩

  4. Craig Keener presents various “subtle connections” to the Babel narrative, including the nations listed in Acts 2:9–11, lectionary connections between Babel and Pentecost, and the use of συγχέω to describe the crowd’s confusion. In my view, these connections are overshadowed by the eschatological context and trajectory of Joel, which is squarely focused on the restoration of Israel. This doesn’t necessarily rule out a legitimate biblical theological connection to Babel, but popular treatments often bypass Joel in favor of Babel without addressing the exegetical questions raised by Peter’s use of Joel 2. See Craig S. Keener, Acts: An Exegetical Commentary. Volume 1. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2012), 842–844. Cf. Mikeal Parsons, Acts, Paideia (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), 36–37. Parsons rejects a Babel reading as unsupported by the text, explaining that “there is little from the ancient historical and religious context to suggest that Luke or his audience would have made such a connection, despite the theological attractiveness of seeing Pentecost as the reversal of Babel.” Although the background that Keener marshals to support his reading is impressive, I’m inclined to follow Parsons on this one. ↩

  5. Parsons notes the multivalency here: “There is a rich ambiguity in this phrase; it may be a temporal reference to future generations, or a spatial reference to Diaspora Jews living in areas beyond Jerusalem and Judea, or, more likely, as an ethnic designation referring to Gentiles who will now be included in God’s mercies of salvation… In fact, from the narrator’s perspective, all these are true and will, in varying degrees of success, be fulfilled by the narrative’s end.” Parsons, Acts, 47. Keener regards εἰς μακρὰν as an allusion to Isaiah 57:19, which he notes could involve both diasporic return and Gentile conversion. Keener, Acts, 987. ↩