If you feel like you're living in unprecedented times, you're not alone — not alone in your concern, your malaise, or your fear.
You're also not the first to feel this way. Two thousand years ago, the people who would eventually create Judaism and Christianity as we now know them also felt that they were living in unprecedented times. Here are three lessons they left to help us.
First some background. Jerusalem, founded by King David as God's capital around the year 1000 BCE, had been the center and most prominent symbol of a sacrifice-based Judaism for almost ten centuries. But in the middle of the last century BCE, religious zealotry and political infighting opened the door for the Romans to invade Jerusalem. A few decades later, the Roman despot Herod turned Jerusalem into a walking corpse.
Overtaxed and underserved, alienated, divided, and subject to increasing violence, Jerusalem's inhabitants felt that the very fabric of the universe was broken. The master historian Josephus even records reports of a cow giving birth to a lamb. People were terrified. In one sense, their fear was well founded, because Jerusalem was about to fall. In another sense, they worried for nothing, because unlike the mighty Romans, the Jews and Christians are still around, and their ancient lessons survive to guide modern lives.
The first lesson from 2,000 years ago is to be kind, a value we see highlighted in the Christian New Testament and in the Jewish Talmud, both of which were compiled in the aftermath of Jerusalem's destruction.
The Talmud and the New Testament alike ask the question: If an animal falls into a pit on the Sabbath, is it better to refrain from work in observance of the Sabbath and let the animal suffer, or to work on the Sabbath and save the animal right away? The answer in both the New Testament (Matthew 12) and the Talmud (Shabbat 128b) is that kindness to animals supersedes the strictness of the Sabbath. (The members of the ascetic Dead Sea cult came to the opposite conclusion. They are no longer around.)
Similarly, Jews and Christians devoted new attention to phrases like “love your neighbor” (for instance, in Matthew 22:39 and in the Jerusalem Talmud in Nedarim 30), and to compassion more generally.
The second lesson is to embrace progress. Particularly in troubling times, our innate tendency is to yearn for what was. Some long for the simpler days before technology, others for an imagined past that never was. But we can only move forward, a message embodied by Adam and Eve, who, no matter how much they might want it, can never return to Eden. Like the Bible's messages of kindness, Adam and Eve's struggle to move forward instead of looking back was revisited and reinforced in Jerusalem's final, turbulent days. (Learn more.)
The last lesson comes from the ancient book of Enoch. Though that literary and theological masterpiece no longer appears in most Bibles, 2,000 years ago it was as mainstream as Isaiah. It was so popular, in fact, that the Old Testament book of Genesis (6:4) assumes that readers are familiar with Enoch, and the New Testament book of Jude (1:14) quotes Enoch directly.
Enoch's message is that God's world has gone awry. We are not living in the perfect world God designed, so we err when we blame God for misfortune. Though sometimes shocking to modern religious readers, that message resonated deeply with the denizens of ancient Jerusalem, and it seems to have similar relevance today. We suffer not because of God but in spite of God. The book of Enoch teaches us to keep faith in the face of imperfection.
Though we may be living in unprecedented times, we are not the first and we are not the last. Like every teenager who thinks that he or she alone is going through puberty, we easily forget the Bible's calming words that there is nothing new under the sun. But we've been here before, and, equipped with kindness, optimism, and faith — both Jewish and Christian sources teach — we can face the most turbulent of times.
Dr. Hoffman is author most recently of The Bible Doesn't Say That: 40 Biblical Mistranslations, Misconceptions, and Other Misunderstandings, which explores what the Bible meant before the last 2,000 years of interpretation. He can be reached through his website at www.lashon.net.