Which text?, part 2

In the previous post, I called attention to the thesis of Brevard Childs:  "that the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible is the vehicle both for recovering and for understanding the canonical text of the Old Testament."¹

Pace Childs, I argued that partisan considerations may have been at work in the standardization of the Masoretic text. In this post I will consider a specific verse, Amos 9:12, in light of the question at issue.

Variant texts of Amos 9:12

Amos 9:11 begins, "In that day I  [YHWH] will raise up the booth of David that is fallen"²:

Masoretic	Septuagint	Acts 15:17-18
… that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations who are called by my name," declares the Lord who does this.	… so that the remnant of men shall seek,* and all the Gentiles upon whom my name is called, says the Lord, who shall do these things. ~~~~~~~ *several manuscripts supply objects for the verb:  e.g., "shall seek Me".	… that the remnant of mankind may seek the Lord, and all the Gentiles who are called by my name," says the Lord, who makes these things known from of old.

Surely Christians must take note of the correspondence between Acts 15:17 and the Septuagint translation of Amos 9:12, and inquire into its significance.

James's appeal to Amos 9:12

The issue at stake in Acts 15 concerned the place of the Gentiles in salvation history:  i.e., whether Gentile converts could be added to the Christian community without first agreeing to obey the Law of Moses. James, as the head of the church in Jerusalem, had to persuade a constituency that was vehemently pro Moses.

If Luke's account is historical, and James appealed to Amos 9:12, he must have known a Hebrew text that read, "… that the remnant of mankind may seek the Lord, and all the Gentiles who are called by my name." The Septuagint wouldn't have been authoritative enough to satisfy James's Hebrew-speaking constituency. And a text corresponding to the Masoretic text ("… that [Israel] may possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations who are called by my name") would not have served James's purpose.

Indeed, we may presume that James would not have taken such a pro-Gentile position in the first place unless he had found it in scripture.

Minimal difference between the LXX and the MT

According to Michael Braun,³ only two minor emendations are required to arrive at a Hebrew text which corresponds to the Septuagint:

• To change Edom into adam (= man) requires no emendation. "In earlier MSS. the former word would have appeared without pointing, so that in the non-vocalized texts with which the Masoretes worked there would have been no difference between the words."


• To modify yyrsw ("they [Israel] shall possess") into ydrsw ("they [the nations] shall seek"), one consonant must be emended. It is not an unlikely variant:  "In the history of the transmission of the OT there was a time when d and y were virtually indistinguishable."


• To supply an object for the verb seek ("they shall seek" — who, or what?), "the sign of the accusative in the MT (’t) [could] be emended to ’l, an ancient Semitic title for God." Braun adds, "Dahood suggests that the Masoretes would at times confuse ’l for ’t, failing to recognize the older, shortened title for God."

In sum, the difference between the Masoretic text and the Septuagint is very slight. The question is, which text is original? "They shall possess the remnant of Edom"? Or "the remnant of mankind shall seek the Lord"?

Jewish opposition to Christian proof texts

Childs would evidently give the benefit of the doubt to the Masoretic Text, and assume the Septuagint to be secondary. It seems to me that Christians must be a little more cynical about the Masoretes' motives.

Braun calls attention to a targum:⁴

Tg. Jonathan shows that there was considerable theological difficulty with Amos 9:11-12 in the Jewish community. It reads:  "So that they shall possess the remnant of Edom and of all the peoples, even the house of Israel, upon whom my name has been called." The flagrant gloss, "even the house of Israel," was certainly added to exclude the Gentiles from any hope of salvation.

The Targum says that God's name has been called upon the house of Israel:  not upon the Gentiles, per Amos 9:12. Here (and elsewhere) we have evidence of Jewish antipathy toward a Christian appeal to scripture.

Such antipathy is perfectly understandable, given the historical circumstances (the desperate position Jews were in after the events of 70 C.E.). Regardless, we must recognize the severe pressure the Masoretes were under to protect the faith against threats, particularly threats emerging from within the Jewish community.

Christianity was just such a threat.

Conclusions

I will respond here to some of the comments that were made on my previous post.

• Two readers (both much more knowledgeable than I am) indicated that it is inaccurate to speak of "the" Septuagint. D.R. Driver commented, "It's surprising how much of the literature still refers to this unproblematically, whereas it is a highly eclectic text."
  
  Point taken. And it suggests that the title of my first post is misleading:  we are not choosing between the Masoretic text and a similarly standardized Septuagint text.
  
  Nonetheless, the observation doesn't obviate the point that I wanted to make. I set out to problematize Childs's emphatic preference for the Masoretic text, and I believe I have successfully done so.
  
  It would be a mistake to assume that the Masoretes had pure motives as they went about standardizing the Hebrew text. Variant Greek manuscripts (however ecclectic) may testify to an original text that was distorted by the Masoretes:  perhaps inadvertently, or perhaps as part of a deliberate campaign to undermine the claims of Christianity.


• The same readers objected to one of my statements in the first post:  "… at many points the Septuagint is more open to a Christian reading than the Masoretic text." I concede that the statement is a generalization that I cannot justify.
  
  On the other hand, Tim pointed to a couple of important verses (Is. 7:14 and Ps. 22:16) in support of my contention. Allow me to restate my position more cautiously:  in some cases, the Greek text(s) is more open to a Christian reading than the Masoretic text.


• John stakes out an intriguing position. In cases where the Greek text differs significantly from the Masoretic text (e.g. Jeremiah), John maintains that exegetes should explore both versions. John comments:
  

  I think a return to the older pre-Reformation and pre-Tridentine tradition is in order, in which the outer limits of the canon and the precise contents of the text of the component books were up for grabs. Why not return to allowing a degree of fluidity on these matters?

  This is certainly an acceptable proposal to me.
  
  The title of my previous post set up a false dichotomy between the Masoretic text and the Septuagint, as if we had to choose either one or the other. I suppose the title was poorly chosen. I never intended to argue that Christians should prefer the Septuagint to the Masoretic text in every case. (Nor did I state such a thing anywhere in the post.)

My thesis ought not to be controversial. I submit that any responsible interpreter must take all variant readings into account. (Certainly that is the practice among New Testament scholars.)

I understand why exegetes begin with the text in the original language, and only secondarily turn their attention to versions. However — and here is where I part company with Childs — there are extenuating circumstances to consider with respect to the Masoretic text. The Masoretes were under extraordinary pressure to undermine any distinctively Christian reading of scripture.

Therefore:  (a) when an Old Testament passage is taken up in the New Testament, and used as a proof text for a distinctively Christian doctrine; and (b) there is a significant difference between the Masoretic text and the New Testament quote (or allusion); then (c) the Christian interpreter must seriously consider the possibility that the Masoretic text is corrupt.

Amos 9:12 is an outstanding illustration of my point.

If Luke's account of the so-called Jerusalem council is not historical, then we cannot trace the apologetic use of Amos 9:12 back to James. In that case, it is Luke himself who appeals to Amos 9:12 as a proof text.

Even so, the Christian interpreter must seriously consider the possibility that the Masoretic text of Amos 9:12 is corrupt.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
¹Brevard Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament As Scripture. Fortress Press, 1979, p. 97.

²Scripture is quoted from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version.

The English translation of the Septuagint text comes from Michael A. Braun, "James' Use of Amos at the Jerusalem Council: Steps Toward a Possible Solution of the Textual and Theological Problems", JETS 20 (June 1977) 113-121 (translation of LXX at p. 115).

³Braun, ibid., p. 117.

⁴ibid., p. 116.

Which text: Masoretic or Septuagint?

I'm currently studying two topics. (1) I'm reading Brevard Childs's Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture, in preparation for two posts on the canonical approach. (2) I'm familiarizing myself with the book of Amos, because I plan to blog my way through the whole book.

Childs's proposal:

The two topics have come together this week, at least in my mind. It was triggered by Childs's assertions about the Masoretic text:

The thesis being proposed is that the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible is the vehicle both for recovering and for understanding the canonical text of the Old Testament. …

There were many different Jewish communities in the Hellenistic period with different authoritative texts. Why should the one community which finally supported the Masoretic text be singled out? The reason is that only this one historic community has continued through history as the living vehicle of the whole canon of Hebrew scripture. …

But was not the relation of canon and text very different for Christians from what it was for Jews? Did not Greek-speaking Jewish Christians continue to use the Septuagint as an authoritative text, as the New Testament and early church fathers appear to demonstrate? Why should decisions within the Jewish community, some of which extended chronologically after the rise of Christianity, be deemed normative in any sense for Christians? …

The crucial point to be made is that the early Christian community of the New Testament never developed a doctrine of scripture apart from the Jewish. It made no claims of having a better text of scripture, as did, for example, the Samaritans. …

In sum, the church's use of Greek and Latin translations of the Old Testament was valid in its historical context, but theologically provides no grounds for calling into question the ultimate authority of the Hebrew text for church and synagogue.¹

I wish to make two points in response to Childs's proposal.

Two objections:

First, "that the early Christian community of the New Testament never developed a doctrine of scripture apart from the Jewish" is completely irrelevant. We should not think, anachronistically, in terms of a formal council giving its official imprimatur to a specific canon of books and a specific (Masoretic) text.

There was no promulgation of a canon even at Jamnia, as Childs knows. The various books were recognized as normative by the religious community (or communities) in a piecemeal fashion. The Law and the Prophets were agreed upon first. But the boundaries of the Writings and what we regard as the apocryphal texts were still disputed during the formative era of the Christian Church.

The determinative consideration was the practice of the various communities:  which books they treated as normative when they gathered for worship and instruction. Therefore it is irrelevant that Christians did not develop a doctrine of scripture.

As Childs indicates, the New Testament and the Church fathers appealed to the Septuagint as an authoritative text. This matters, because at many points the Septuagint is more open to a Christian reading than the Masoretic text is.

Which brings me to my second point. The establishment of a normative text was not a purely spiritual act, but also a socio-political one. The stabilizing of the Masoretic text enabled the religious authorities to seize control of the theological agenda. As Childs indicates (p. 98),

Following the stabilization of the Hebrew text, the various Jewish communities began to establish their identity on the basis of the Masoretic text.

Childs sees that development as constructive; and no doubt it was, in large part. But consider the very different perspective of Joseph Blenkinsopp. He says that the decisive factor in delimiting the canon

was the need to resolve conflicting claims to authority, the point at issue being the interpretation of the received corpus of tradition. This may not lead us to view writing, with Lévi-Strauss, as an instrument of oppression and control, but it should alert us to the possibility that it will embody claims of a polemical and tendentious nature.²

I submit that this polemical impulse — an impulse to seize control of the theological agenda from one's opponents — applies not only to the selection of a canon, but also to the many choices which had to be made as the text of the Hebrew Bible was standardized.

Childs indicates that the Masoretic text was stabilized around the end of the first century. In other words, it was stabilized after the core documents of the New Testament had been written.

We ought to consider whether partisan considerations were at work in the formation of the Masoretic text. In a follow-up post, I will consider the text of Amos 9:12 in light of that question.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
¹Brevard Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament As Scripture. Fortress Press, 1979, pp. 97-99.

²Joseph Blenkinsopp, Prophecy and Canon: A Contribution to the Study of Jewish Origins. University of Notre Dame Press, 1977, p. 4.

Scot McKnight on emerging Christianity

Last week, Scot McKnight spoke at a convention which brought together three scholarly societies:  the Evangelical Theological Society, the Society of Biblical Literature, and the American Academy of Religion.

For those who don't know, McKnight is a professor, the author of 20 books, and a blogger. He is solidly evangelical in his convictions. Nonetheless, he has embraced emerging Christianity, perhaps with some reservations about its postmodern orientation.

I was surprised to see that the meeting of academics included on its agenda a forum on the Emergent Church. And I'm grateful that Andy Rowell recorded the sessions he attended, including the Emergent Church Forum.

Here is a ten-minute excerpt. McKnight begins by telling a story about a blue parakeet (which symbolizes emerging Christians) stirring up the sparrows (evangelical / orthodox Christians) in his backyard. And then he identifies six uncomfortable questions that emerging Christians are asking.

You can listen to the audio, or read my summary (verbatim at some points, a free paraphrase at other points) below.

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1. What kind of truth can be found in scripture?
   Emerging Christians are beginning to ask questions about scripture that an older generation thought it had answered. The questions include, Just how human is this book? and Is it possible that the story of Jonah and the whale is just a myth? Emerging Christians hear that there might have been three Isaiahs, and they aren't too bothered about it — it isn't even interesting to them.
    
   
2. Questions about science:
   My students put it like this: If evolution isn't true, I would like to ask God why he made a world that looks so much like evolution. This is a generation that isn't even attracted to questions about proving that Genesis 1-11 is a historical record. They don't care about creation science. They believe in evolution, and that's just the way it is.
    
   
3. Questions about Christians and how they behave:
   Emerging Christians grew up with the scandals of Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker and the priests, and they just don't trust institutional leaders. Behind closed doors, church leaders do things that are despicable. Emerging Christians ask this question:  If Paul says that those who are in Christ are a new creation, why are there so many old creatures in the Church?
    
   
4. Questions about hell:
   I've had students say to me, Scott, my evangelical pastor tells me that people who haven't heard the gospel are going to hell. Is he really telling me that everybody in North Korea who never has a chance to hear the gospel is going to hell? Well, I just can't believe that's true.
    
   
5. A moral critique:
   I've had students say to me, Why is Jephtha in the Bible? And why is he valorized and heroized in Hebrews 11? That is a serious question. It's easier to talk about how many Isaiahs there are than it is to answer that question.
    
   
6. Questions about social location:
   Emerging Christians are aware that what we are interested in comes out of the world in which we live. There are other people in other parts of the world who don't care about our questions.
   
   Social location matters to everything we talk about, the language we use to discuss it, the way we shape theology, the way we respond to the gospel, etc.
   
   Emerging Christians don't just admit that, they delight in it. They're not seeking a universal theology. They're willing to live with a theology for the midwest, or the east coast.

I have a few comments of my own. First, none of the questions that McKnight points to are particularly new (except perhaps the last one, which brings us into the realm of postmodernism). What is new is the degree to which the traditional answers — answers which satisfied a previous generation of evangelicals — are now regarded with suspicion. As McKnight puts it at one point in his presentation,

This is not a question that evangelicals and orthodox Christians can simply give a traditional answer and get by with it anymore.

Second, the refusal to settle for easy answers may be related to McKnight's third point, the distrust of institutional leaders. The traditional answers were never intellectually satisfying. They were accepted largely on the say-so of the priest or the Doctor of Theology, who was regarded as a trustworthy authority. Given the new cynicism about church leaders, emerging Christians aren't taking things on authority; they're waiting for an argument that they deem reasonable.

Third, I think emerging Christians within evangelicalism look particularly shocking in the US context. In Canada, you will find extremely few Christians, evangelical or otherwise, who insist that the earth was created in seven 24-hour days. Evolution is perhaps somewhat more controversial, but I think most Canadian believers accept, at the very least, that theistic evolution is a legitimate position.

Finally, the six "questions" of McKnight's presentation do not touch on all the elements of emerging Christianity. McKnight knows that:  he has given a very different summary of the movement in a Christianity Today article.

My top ten verses of scripture, part 2

(Continued from the previous post.)

6. "And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules." (Ez. 36:26-27)
   
   I could never figure out why this verse isn't quoted in the New Testament. Anyway, it says several significant things:  (1) That we're a disobedient people in need of cleansing and regeneration; (2) That God isn't going to forsake us in our corrupt state — God is going to provide a solution for what ails us; and (3) That the solution necessarily involves the indwelling of God's Holy Spirit.


7. … whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness … so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. (Ro. 3:25-26)
   
   We are near to the heart of the Gospel here.
   
   Why was it necessary for Jesus to die? This question takes us into deep theological waters. Rather than supply a final answer to the question, I am content simply to point to Paul's language here:  Jesus died so that God could justify us without committing an injustice.
   
   God was determined to have mercy upon us; and yet it would have been unjust of God to "clear the guilty" without providing some sort of propitiation for sin. It may confound human understanding, but Jesus Christ is the solution to that otherwise insoluble dilemma.


8. "The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!" (Luke 24:34)
   
   The testimony of the Eleven to Cleopas and another, anonymous disciple.
   
   It isn't easy to select a single verse about the resurrection (raised for our justification? if Christ is not raised, we have believed in vain? Christ, the firstborn from among the dead?). But I love the resounding confidence of the assertion, "The Lord is risen indeed!"
   
   Sin, death, and the devil do not have the last word in scripture. Christ's resurrection provides sufficient ground for Christians to persist in hope — even in the face of terrible tragedy, if it comes to that.


9. He [Christ] is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature. (Heb. 1:3a)
   
   And here is the other great achievement of Jesus Christ:  he makes an otherwise dimly perceived God known to us.
   
   Jesus is God's Son in a unique sense. When we contemplate his words and deeds we gain insights into God's nature that are otherwise unavailable to us.


10. "There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him." (Mark 7:15)
    
    This verse is perhaps an odd choice to make it into my top ten. However, the importance of the issue touched on here — whether Christians are obliged to be circumcised, abstain from pork, and observe other elements of the Law of Moses — is obvious from the trouble it stirred up in the early Church.
    
    The saying quoted above was interpreted expansively by Mark ("Thus he declared all foods clean," 7:19) and restrictively by Matthew ("To eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone", Mt. 15:20).
    
    It was the determination of this issue that set Jews and Christians on divergent paths. It opened up the church to Gentiles without requiring that they first convert to Judaism. This development made it possible for Christianity to be, at least in principle, a universal religion.


11. He has shown strength with his arm;
          he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of
          their hearts;
    he has brought down the mighty from their thrones
          and exalted those of humble estate;
    he has filled the hungry with good things,
          and the rich he has sent away empty. (Luke 1:51-53)
    
    This survey would not be complete without a reference to the social justice element of Jesus' ministry (in continuity with the prophets before him). Jesus befriended not only the poor, but those who were marginalized for whatever reason:  lepers, the demon-possessed, Samaritans, women, even those who were considered slack in their observance of the Law. Jesus joined them at the dinner table in an anticipation of the eschatological feast, which will take place when the kingdom of God is consummated.
    
    Note:  God not only exalts the humble, God also humbles the exalted. The finished work of Christ is the great leveler of society.
    
    But the completion of Christ's work awaits the arrival of the eschaton. Maranatha! — our Lord, come!

OK, I ended up with eleven verses in my "top ten"! Consider it a symbol of God's grace:  your cup has been filled to overflowing.

I can't help thinking of other verses I've left off my list. The Great Commandment, for example; and the Lord's prayer, and the words of institution of the Eucharist. Moreover, I'm aware that different verses could be substituted for the ones I have chosen, perhaps to better effect.

However, this survey represents the sweep of biblical teaching, from my perspective. I'll be curious to hear what essential pieces others think I've left out.

I think I'll tag James McGrath at Exploring Our Matrix to do this meme. It seems to me it's his sort of thing.

Finally:  for a very thought-provoking approach to this challenge, see John Hobbins's ten paradigmatic questions from the Bible.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
¹Unless otherwise indicated, scripture is quoted from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version.

My top ten verses of scripture

Doug at Metacatholic has started a meme:  list your top ten verses of scripture.

It may sound like a mushy, sentimental idea, but it isn't. Not if you understand the context. Topverses.com has "analysed thousands of pages of teaching material to determine the most frequently referenced Bible verses." Evidently they think this is a helpful way to prioritize Bible searches:

Try our word search feature! When you use Top Verses to search the Bible for a word, our results start with familiar verses, rather than Genesis. Next time you are hunting for a reference, you will find it quicker at Top Verses.

Doug points out (in an earlier post) that Leviticus 18:22 — "You shall not lie with a man, as with a woman. That is detestable" — is the 101st most popular verse in the Bible.

Doug's idea is that bibliobloggers should post their own top ten. Perhaps ours will come a little closer to what Christianity is really all about. Doug didn't tag me, but here are some verses that come to mind, with annotations.

1. The Lord … proclaimed, "The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation." (Ex. 34:6-7)¹
   
   The Bible is about YHWH. If we put anything else at the centre of our faith, we have gone astray.
   
   But this verse also introduces a point of significant tension:  God is merciful; yet God "will by no means clear the guilty." The juxtaposition is awkward, but both halves of the equation are crucial to who God is.


2. Now the Lord said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation. … In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." (Gen. 12:1-3)
   
   Salvation history arguably begins here. When St. Paul lays out his apology for the Christian faith, he reaches back, beyond Moses, to Abraham. Before the covenant with Moses, grounded in obedience to the Law, came the covenant with Abraham, grounded in faith. There we have God's promise (so important to Gentile Christians!) to bless all the families of the earth in Abraham.
   
   Bonus:  the text concerns Abraham's pilgrimage from Ur to the Promised Land. That pilgrimage is an apt metaphor for a spiritual journey:  of Abraham himself, of biblical Israel, or of contemporary Christians.


3. "It was not because you [Israel] were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers." (Deut. 7:7-8a)
   
   Grace:  God's election of a people who possess no outstanding merit. E.P. Sanders has performed a great service by clearing away a misunderstanding here. Christians had created a caricature of Israel's religion, insisting that Jews believe in salvation by works. Sanders demolished the caricature:  even those texts that appear to teach a works-righteousness in fact presuppose the framework of God's gracious election of Israel.
   
   The principle is profoundly paralleled in the Christian faith:  "God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Ro. 5:8).


4. "Are you not like the Cushites to me,
         O people of Israel?" declares the Lord.
   "Did I not bring up Israel from the land of Egypt,
         and the Philistines from Caphtor and the Syrians
         from Kir?" (Amos 9:7)
   
   A countertestimony; a minority voice within the dominant narrative of God's peculiar regard for Israel. Here Amos reminds us that God's care extends to all peoples, including Israel's enemies — indeed, to the whole of God's creation.
   
   Those who become proud because they have a covenant relationship with God are making a serious mistake. We can never presume to have a corner on the market of God's loving kindness.


5. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
         I will fear no evil,
   for you are with me;
         your rod and your staff,
         they comfort me. (Ps. 23:4)¹
   
   The Hebrew scriptures are honest enough to acknowledge that the path of faith is not always unobstructed or triumphant. Sometimes the believer is brought low — very low. When no other comfort can be found, we take comfort in God's strong and compassionate presence.

(This post is continued here.)


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
¹Unless otherwise indicated, scripture is quoted from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version.

Brevard Childs: champion of orthodoxy

This is a continuation of my previous post:  the second part of my response to Brevard Childs's critique of Walter Brueggemann's Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy.¹

I began the previous post by saying that the article isn't very flattering to Childs. In this post, it will become clear why I see it that way.

The little texts and the Great Tradition:

First, allow me to juxtapose two of Childs's statements. The point is to demonstrate that Childs's criticism of Brueggemann is unjustified.

criticism; pp. 230-31

summary; p. 228

The biblical editors retained the radical scepticism of the book of Ecclesiastes largely in an unredactored [uncensored] form. But they added in an epilogue a rule for properly interpreting the book, namely, it is to be heard within the framework of Torah (Eccles. 12:13f.). When Brueggemann assigns an independent role to such traditions as counter- testimony, he is running in the very face of Israel's canonical witness.

[Brueggemann's approach] would seek to do justice to the radical unsettlement evoked by the new postmodern epistemological situation with its insistence on pluralism. … Accordingly, interpretation is defined by Brueggemann as an ongoing process of negotiating among the full range of conflictional testimonies which avoids any absolute claims — whether historical or ontological — beyond the court of appeal found in the biblical text itself.

The criticism of Brueggemann's method, on the left, has already been explored in the previous post. However, I now call your attention to the statement highlighted in yellow. As long as the book of Ecclesiastes is "heard within the framework of Torah", the biblical editors were content to allow the community of faith to study it.

Now consider Childs's summary of Brueggemann's method, on the right. The claims of the various testimonies are to be adjudicated by "the court of appeal found in the biblical text itself."

The biblical editors insisted that we must hear Ecclesiastes within the framework of Torah; Brueggemann is committed to precisely the same thing. Childs's objection appears to be unjustified.

Brueggemann falls into error, according to Childs, when he assigns an independent role to Ecclesiastes (and other such countertestimonial texts). But Brueggemann emphatically denies the charge:

Of course nothing could be further from the truth. I have consistently said that the different testimonies are endlessly in tension with and corrected by other testimony. None is freestanding, none is isolated, none is cut off. (p. 235)

The slight variation between [Professor Childs's] approach and mine I believe to be a more benign variation than his rhetoric suggests. What is at issue is the endlessly tricky relation between 'The Great Tradition' and the 'little texts.' … It is my concern that in future generations, the Church will be able to attend to the 'little texts,' even as it commits to the Great Tradition. (p. 237)

I think that's sage advice:  attend to the "little texts"; commit to the Great Tradition.

Childs, champion of orthodoxy:

Childs, on the other hand, approves of the subordination of some of the voices found within the biblical text. I am not putting words into his mouth. I quoted his statement to that effect in the previous post:  "the biblical editors subordinated [certain] voices", including the radical scepticism of Ecclesiastes (p. 230).

Childs approves of this work of subordination. Brueggemann errs because "he feels free to reconstruct voices on which Israel's authors had already rendered a judgment" (p. 230).

Indeed — and here's the point I have been building up to — Childs attempts to marginalize Brueggemann's voice. Childs makes himself the champion of orthodoxy:  he argues that Brueggemann's method tilts carelessly toward heresy.

It may be that one is philosophically justified in characterising Brueggemann's approach as postmodern. However, from a theological perspective the closest analogy is found in the Early Church's struggle with Gnosticism. …

One does not have to look far to discover the striking analogies between Brueggemann's postmodernism and ancient Gnosticism. Both operate within an overarching philosophical system in which [Brueggemann's] 'imaginative construal' closely parallels Gnostic 'speculation' as a means for correcting the received biblical tradition. Both approaches work with a sharply defined dualism between a God of creation who is known and predictable, and one who is hidden, unknown, and capricious.

By characterizing Brueggemann's method as analogous to Gnosticism, Childs sets out to consign Brueggemann's Theology of the Old Testament to a place outside the pale of orthodox Christian teaching.

I submit that Childs's canonical approach has a natural tendency in that direction. If you accept that the biblical editors deliberately subordinated unsettling voices like that of Ecclesiastes, and you regard that subordinating activity as legitimate, inevitably you will be tempted to subordinate unsettling voices like Brueggemann's to your vision of orthodoxy.

The lived reality of the believing Church:

Childs speaks of "an established range of truthful witness". Brueggemann would not disagree with that way of expressing things.

But for Brueggemann, the radical scepticism of Ecclesiastes (and other countertestimonial texts) are within what is, by Childs's admission, a range of truthful witness. Here Brueggemann appeals to the lived reality of the believing Church:

What I have done is to give 'other voices' a serious hearing, for there is no doubt that in Scripture there are voices of witness in profound tension with each other. The issue turns on which witnesses are truthful, but it has been the lived reality of the Church that different witnesses in Scripture have been heard as truthful on different occasions. …

The silence and absence of God is indeed a lived reality that must be fully taken into account. I have not wanted to let any 'large' ecclesial claims censor the lived reality of the believing Church.

(pp. 235-36)

Update:  I wasn't quite satisfied with the ending of this post last night, but I couldn't think what to add. Here's the point I didn't quite get to.

One of the great insights which emerges from Brueggemann's approach is that "postmodern" experiences are not at all new or unprecedented. The silence and absence of God; anomie; alienation; fragmentation; meaninglessness; doubt and confusion — all these postmodern themes were known to the ancient Israelites and reported honestly in scripture.

Brueggemann's approach is explicitly pastoral. He recognizes the immense potential of the "little texts" of scripture to address the distinctive needs of a postmodern people. Hence his determined effort to reclaim these voices in the service of the Church.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
¹Scottish Journal of Theology vol. 53, no. 2, 2000, pp. 228-233, with a reply by Brueggemann at pp. 234-238.

Two heavyweight scholars slug it out

Phil Sumpter suggested that I read Brevard Childs's critique of Walter Brueggemann's Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy. The critique, with a reply from Brueggemann, was published in the Scottish Journal of Theology seven years ago.¹

Readers of our respective blogs will know that Phil's theological sympathies lie with Childs, whereas mine lie with Brueggemann. I found the exchange between Childs and Brueggemann illuminating, but not very flattering to Childs.

The core disagreement:

Here's an excerpt from Childs's article which directs our attention to the key difference in the two scholars' approaches.

The present form of the biblical literature emerged during a long process of collecting, shaping and transmitting a wide variety of different traditions arranged in sections of Torah, Prophets, and Writings toward the end of serving communities of Israel as an authoritative guide of faith and practice.

In this process various editors exercised a critical function in registering from the received traditions that which they deemed truthful and authoritative. This shaping thus involved a Sachkritik [i.e., the editors passed judgement on the texts that had been handed down to them] which was not simply reflective of private, idiosyncratic agenda, but which arose from actual communal practice and belief. Accordingly, Moses not Korah, Jeremiah not Hananiah, were judged to be faithful tradents of divine revelation.

In a word, Israel shaped its literature confessionally to bear testimony to what it received as containing an established range of truthful witness. At the same time, the biblical editors subordinated other voices, either by placing them within a negative setting, or omitting them [from the canon] altogether as deleterious to Israel's faith.

(p. 230; both the emphasis and the paragraph breaks were added by me)

Here we have a concise description of Childs's "canonical approach" to Old Testament interpretation. The editors of the Bible did not pass on Israel's traditional texts uncritically. They shaped the texts during the process of transmission; they contextualized the texts by inserting editorial remarks; and they left other texts out of the canon altogether. Hence the canon functions as a control, subtly determining how the reader interprets any individual text.

There's nothing unique to Childs about the analysis so far. Critical scholars agree that this editorializing activity went on during the transmission of Israel's traditional texts. They also agree that the goal of that activity was to set boundaries on interpretation — i.e., to subordinate certain voices.

Where Childs stands apart from other critical scholars, including Brueggemann, is in maintaining that canon as an instrument of control is good. According to Childs, we must respect the boundaries that have been marked out for us. Evangelicals would likely agree with that statement, but it's unusual to hear it from a critical scholar.

Childs tests Brueggemann's book against this standard:

In contrast, when Brueggemann seeks to describe a category of countertestimony to the so-called core tradition, he feels free to reconstruct voices on which Israel's authors had already rendered a judgment. … [For example,] the biblical editors retained the radical scepticism of the book of Ecclesiastes largely in an unredactored [uncensored] form. But they added in an epilogue a rule for properly interpreting the book, namely, it is to be heard within the framework of Torah (Eccles. 12:13f.). When Brueggemann assigns an independent role to such traditions as countertestimony, he is running in the very face of Israel's canonical witness.

Yet it is also obvious that Israel's genuine complaints before God constitute a major positive witness within a large portion of the Bible. They are present in the Psalter, Prophets, and Wisdom literature as a truthful testimony to Israel's experience before God in order not to contradict, but rather to establish its core tradition of faith.

(pp. 230-31; emphasis added)

Ecclesiastes as a case study:

In the reference to Ecclesiastes, we have a case study of the differences between Childs and Brueggemann.

Ecclesiastes seems to be a very humanistic book. For example:

For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity. All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return. Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down into the earth? (3:19-21)²

Clearly this text stands in uneasy tension with other parts of the Bible.

In Brueggemann's view, it is a mistake to try to eliminate that tension. We must allow Qoheleth to testify to his experience. It is an authentic experience that many believers can identify with; it is a legitimate countertestimony to Israel's core tradition. We must not paper over the cracks in the biblical witness.

Childs, on the other hand, says that the editors of scripture have already passed judgement on the book of Ecclesiastes. He agrees that Ecclesiastes is a truthful testimony to Israel's experience. But he adds that the editors have carefully circumscribed (subordinated) Qoheleth's voice by appending a critical comment at the end of the book:

The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil. (Eccl. 12:13-14)

According to Childs, the apparent problem now vanishes. Ecclesiastes doesn't contradict the rest of the Bible. Because of this editorial appendix to the book, Ecclesiastes establishes Israel's core tradition.

Conclusions:

I have more to say, but I will do so in a follow-up post. For now, let's draw some conclusions.

• The distinction between "liberal" and "conservative" is sometimes facile, and Childs illustrates one way in which it can break down. Childs is "liberal" insofar as he is a critical scholar. Evangelicals typically insist that the Pentateuch, for example, was written by Moses, under YHWH's inspiration. They would be reluctant to concede that editors have altered the text in the process of transmission.
  
  But Childs ultimately arrives at very conservative conclusions. He champions orthodoxy, insisting that voices like that of Qoheleth must be subordinated to the witness of the canon as a whole. For that reason, Childs is likely to appeal to evangelicals, who engage in a similar practice (the "harmonization" of scripture).
  
  So is Childs a liberal or a conservative? Answer: Yes.
  
  And Childs is not so exceptional. James Dunn, for example, is a New Testament scholar who works within liberal presuppositions but often arrives at conservative conclusions.


• One can see that there is considerable agreement between Childs and Brueggemann, because they both accept the findings of critical scholarship. They agree that considerable editorializing activity has taken place during the process of transmission of the biblical texts.


• In the end, the difference between them boils down to a value judgement. Childs considers the data and deems the editorializing activity good. Brueggemann considers the data and deems the editorializing activity suspect.
  
  We all know that the Church (and the synagogue, though it's not my place to say it) has a long, problematic history of suppressing dissenting voices. Leaders in the Church have a vested interest in retaining their position of privilege. To do so necessarily means that marginalized people must be kept on the margins.
  
  One clear example of this is the subordination of women to male leaders. Consider the data. At one point, St. Paul says there is no male or female, for we are all one in Christ Jesus. But at other points, Paul says that women must not speak in the assembly; and they are not to teach or to exercise authority over men.
  

  As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church. (1Co. 14:33b-35)

  What shall we make of this text? Is this Paul's voice? Or — as the evangelical scholar Gordon Fee argues — is this an interpolation by a later editor of Paul's letter to the Corinthians?
  
  If it is an interpolation, should we accept the opinion of the later editor? (That would seem to be the logical conclusion of Child's canonical approach.) Or should we insist that the editorial activity distorts Paul's voice, and allow Paul to have his say? In my view, we should follow Paul's egalitarian principle and open up church leadership to women.
  
  Thus I come down firmly on the side of Brueggemann. The editorializing activity really did take place, as Childs and Brueggemann agree. But this tendency of the orthodox to suppress voices that make them uncomfortable — I regard it as suspect, with Brueggemann, pace Childs.

More to come in the next post — probably 48 hours from now.

(update:  the follow-up post can be found here)


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
¹SJT vol. 53, no. 2, 2000, pp. 228-233. Brueggemann's reply is at pp. 234-238.

²Unless otherwise indicated, scripture is quoted from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version.

A recitation of Hebrews 9-10

Hat tip to Knotwurth Mentioning — my university-aged son! — for calling attention to the video embedded below.

It's very cool that my son is old enough to be a partner in dialogue! Knotwurth was responding to my post on philosopher Paul Ricoeur, Spoken Word, Sacred Text. He quite rightly saw that this video illustrates Ricoeur's point:

It is the function of preaching to reverse the relation from written to spoken. In that sense preaching is more fundamental to Hebrew and Christian tradition because of the nature of the text that has to be reconverted to word, in contrast with Scripture.

 
At one point, people are moved to applause — but tentatively, as if they're not sure it's an appropriate reaction. Later, they just let 'er rip. It isn't often that a congregation is transported by scripture like this!

Spoken word, sacred text

1. Spoken words:

The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.
(Jesus, John 6:63)¹

The above verse from John's Gospel establishes a correlation between (1) words, (2) spirit, and (3) life. But note that the verse refers explicitly to spoken words.

Like many bloggers, I love books and texts in general. But in this post I wish to argue for the primacy of the spoken word in Christianity. (Perhaps in other religions also, but it is not my place to make such a judgement.)

The spoken word has a unique spiritual power — greater than the spiritual power of the written word. The spoken word is quasi-magical in its capacity to impart life to the hearer. These are the three elements brought together in John 6:63:  spoken words; spirit; life.

2. Sacred text:

This post was inspired by an essay by philosopher Paul Ricoeur, "The 'Sacred' Text and the Community".² Ricoeur confesses that he is frightened by the notion of a sacred text (p. 72). In Ricoeur's view, any text that is closed (immutable) ceases to be revelatory.

Ricoeur comments, "The notion of sacred text may have been alien to the Hebraic and pre-Christian tradition" (p. 71). No doubt he is thinking of the fact that both communities were initially founded on oral tradition which was later reduced to a fixed, "sacred" text. He points out that Christians (in particular, Protestants) continually redirect us away from the written word back to the oral:

It is the function of preaching to reverse the relation from written to spoken. In that sense preaching is more fundamental to Hebrew and Christian tradition because of the nature of the text that has to be reconverted to word, in contrast with Scripture; and therefore it is a kind of desacralization of the written as such, by the return to the spoken word. (p. 71)

Thus Ricoeur depicts an arc, a movement from the spoken word to the sacred text and back to the spoken word again.

Ricoeur looks back, yearningly, to the early decades of the Church, when the community was highly creative in generating novel interpretations of the life of Christ:

The text was frozen and the process of interpretation stopped because of the fight against heresies; this was, I think, a very destructive activity. (p. 69)

Thus Ricoeur laments the closing of the New Testament canon.

3. Letter vs. spirit:

Having closed the canon, the Church then fixed its interpretation of scripture. Ricoeur doesn't note (at this point I move beyond Ricoeur and offer my response to his provocative essay) that this development constitutes a betrayal of the Protestant ideal. The Reformers had a motto, semper reformanda — always reforming:

A shortened form of a motto of the Protestant Reformation, Ecclesia reformata semper reformanda est secundu Verbum Dei ("the reformed Church must be always reforming according to the Word of God"), which refers to the Protestant position that the church must continually re-examine itself, reconsider its doctrines, and be prepared to accept change, in order to conform more closely to orthodox Christian belief as revealed in the Bible. The shortened form, semper reformanda, literally means "always about to be reformed", but the usual translation ["always reforming"] is taken from the full sentence.

First the text was fixed (the canon was closed) and then the interpretation of the text was fixed. The result, in many churches, is the preservation of a dead word. As St. Paul put it,

For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
(2Co. 3:6)

Here is an echo of the scripture with which I opened this post; Paul (like John) asserts a positive correlation between spirit and life. Moreover, Paul assigns the written text (the letter) to the "death" side of the ledger.

The written word correlates with death because it is fixed and therefore static. It cannot respond to the express needs of the community; a closed canon is, by definition, unresponsive. Here Ricoeur can claim a biblical ground for his observation that a closed, immutable text is incapable of revealing God.

Conclusion:

My response to this problem is certainly not to repudiate the Bible. Rather, I would argue, with Brueggemann, that the biblical witness is multivocal; pluriform.

Let us begin by recognizing that the biblical authors do not all represent a single perspective. Then we can find the right biblical text, the right voice, to address the express needs of the community in any given instance. Thus we preserve the life-giving power of scripture; whereas those who would collapse the multivocal testimony of scripture into a single, harmonious system effectively neuter the text. In many instances, well-intentioned believers shut out the very voice of God.

I share Ricoeur's regret that the interpretation of scripture is essentially fixed. Certainly among evangelical Christians, it is, as we see (for example) in the backlash to the "new perspective" on Paul. Human knowledge advances, but the Church's first instinct is always to resist new insights. As Ricoeur puts it, "Revelation is a historical process, but the notion of sacred text is something antihistorical" (p. 72).

As a preacher, I have observed the life-giving power of the spoken word. Admittedly, there have been stages of my (rather convoluted) pilgrimage when I have not been very effective from the pulpit. But on numerous occasions, the response to my preaching has actually startled me:  my words were clearly "life" to the congregation to an extent that seemed to go beyond the content of anything I had said.

Those are humbling experiences, when the preacher realizes that s/he is not responsible for the spiritual dynamic. The preacher has been the conduit for a mysterious external force:  a power (ruach) that cannot be summoned at will, but comes and goes at the pleasure of Another. And then the preacher shares in the experience of Jesus, delivering spoken words which are spirit and life.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence.
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¹Unless otherwise indicated, scripture is quoted from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version.

²In Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination, Fortress Press, 1995, pp. 68-72.

A study in depression

I'm curious how many of my readers are familiar with the Latin word, verisimilitude. It is a technical term used primarily in literary criticism, but I encountered it in my theology studies. Here's a good definition:

The sense that what one reads is "real," or at least realistic and believable. For instance, the reader possesses a sense of verisimilitude when reading a story in which a character cuts his finger, and the finger bleeds. If the character's cut finger had produced sparks of fire rather than blood, the story would not possess verisimilitude. Note that even fantasy novels and science fiction stories that discuss impossible events can have verisimilitude if the reader is able to read them with suspended disbelief.

Note the phrase, "the reader possesses a sense of verisimilitude …". The term tells us something about the text, to be sure, but it isn't a characteristic we can define objectively. It's fundamentally about the reader:  his or her subjective response while reading the text.

The word verisimilitude came to mind yesterday as I was reading this text:

Elijah went a day's journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree. And he asked that he might die, saying, "It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers." And he lay down and slept. (1 Kings 19:4-5a)¹

I find this story about Elijah startling and deeply moving. I don't have any deep theological or psychological insight to share with you. I just wanted to say, here's a text that has verisimilitude.

Years ago, I received some training before I began to work at a crisis support centre, answering telephone calls from people in distress. The trainer was a clergyman, and he drew our attention to this passage as a textbook example of depression.

Elijah has reached the end of his rope. He can't cope any longer. He wants nothing more than to die. He sleeps.

The story is especially remarkable if you read it in context. It comes immediately after Elijah's triumph on Mount Carmel, where he had proven that Baal is a false god and the prophets of Baal were false prophets. It was the high point of Elijah's career; but immediately afterward, he was plunged into a state of depression.

The sequence is true to human psychology. Whenever you have a peak experience, you can expect to feel a letdown afterward. But the word "letdown" is hardly adequate in Elijah's case!

To be fair, I should point out that there was one intervening event. Queen Jezebel had threatened to murder Elijah:

[King] Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how he had killed all the prophets [of Baal] with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, "So may the gods do to me and more also, if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by this time tomorrow." Then he was afraid, and he arose and ran for his life. (1 Kings 19:1-3a)

Elijah was also suffering from the burden of carrying too much responsibility. He lived in an era when Israel had broken faith with God. He was the point man in God's campaign to bring Israel to repentance.

And Elijah came near to all the people and said, "How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him." And the people did not answer him a word. (1 Kings 18:21)

This is a heavy burden to bear. The religion of Israel mattered profoundly to Elijah. He felt that its very survival rested on his shoulders, and his alone.

Elijah came to a cave and lodged in it. And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, and he said to him, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" He said, "I have been very jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts. For the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away." (1 Kings 19:9-10)

So Elijah's depression has three² identifiable causes:  (1) the inevitable letdown after his triumph on Mount Carmel; (2) Jezebel's threat on his life; and (3) the onerous burden of responsibility he carried.

"It is enough," he says, with profound understatement. "Please — just let me die."

Sceptics deride the Bible for its fantastic stories, and I understand that point of view. Elijah is associated with a series of outstanding miracles. It is as if earthly limitations don't apply to him:  rather like Jesus walking on water.

Even if faith says that the stories are historical, it's still difficult to relate to a superhuman hero.

It's worth noting that the Bible also has this other side. In most cases — Abraham, Moses, David, Elijah, and Jeremiah come to mind — the veil is lifted at least occasionally, and we see the frail, human side of the Bible's heroes.

It is then that the Bible seems truest to us:  it is then that the reader experiences this subjective response, verisimilitude.

(Cross-posted on Outside the Box.)



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
¹Unless otherwise indicated, scripture is quoted from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version.

²Four, if we include physical exhaustion:  "And the angel of the Lord came again a second time and touched him and said, 'Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you'" (1 Kings 19:7). This, after Elijah had run a great distance to escape Jezebel's wrath.

The "Uh-oh" principle, part 2: Poetic justice in the prophets

I've decided to write two more posts on the David and Bathsheba story.

First, in this post, I want to explore a concept that Walter Brueggemann flags as a core element of rhetorical criticism. Brueggemann maintains that there is a very close relation between what gets said (the message of the text) and how it gets said (the literary or rhetorical techniques utilized by the author).

But let's quote Brueggeman himself on the subject. Here he is, contrasting historical criticism with rhetorical criticism:

Historical criticism, as it has come to be practiced, has been notorious for its lack of interest in the actual expression of the text itself. Indeed, the primary references for historical criticism characteristically are outside the text or, as is often said now, "behind the text" in the historical process. …

The commentaries are characteristically occupied with sorting out what is "genuine" in the text and with identifying parallels in other cultures. Such treatment of the text does not at all attend to the statements of the text itself, but is in effect a sustained raid on the text, looking for clues that support historical reconstruction. …

Rhetorical criticism is a method that insists that how what is said is crucial and definitive for what is said, so that the theology of the Old Testament does not trade in a set of normative ideas that may be said in many ways, but in a particular utterance that is spoken and/or written in a certain way.

It is now agreed that the primary impetus for rhetorical criticism as an intentional Old Testament enterprise stems from the address of James Muilenburg, "Form Criticism and Beyond," presented in 1968 and published in 1969. …

Muilenburg almost single-handedly made credible the practice of close reading, whereby one notices the detail of the text, such as word patterns and arrangements, the use of key words in repetition, the careful placement of prepositions and conjunctions, and the reiteration of sounds of certain consonants. … He held that such detail in the text is characteristically intentional, and that the force of the text cannot be understood apart from noticing such detail.

(Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, dispute, advocacy, Fortress Press, 1997, pp. 53-55.)

I am attracted to rhetorical criticism, in part because it puts evangelicals and liberals on common ground, at least to a significant extent.

To be clear, Brueggemann does not suppose that everything in the text is historical, or that the various Old Testament texts agree with one another. On the contrary, he maintains that scripture speaks with many voices:  there are diverse agendas at work in the texts as they have been handed down to us.

But insofar as rhetorical criticism begins with the text as it appears in the Bible, seeking meaning in (not behind) the text, evangelicals will find the method amenable.

Personally, I am at a disadvantage because I do not know Hebrew. Many of the details of importance to Muilenburg do not carry over into an English translation. But some of them do, so we will work with such details as are present to us.

With this method in mind, let's take another look at 2 Samuel 12. I'm using a different format this time, highlighting certain keywords:

(past experience of God's grace)
Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, "I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you out of the hand of Saul. And I gave you your master's house and your master's wives into your arms and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah. And if this were too little, I would add to you as much more.

(present moral failure)
Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and have taken his wife to be your wife and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites.

(impending consequences)
Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife."

Thus says the Lord, "Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house. And I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun. For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and before the sun."

(2 Samuel 12:7b-12)¹

The reader should note the pattern that emerges when the text is colour-coded in this way. The word "wife" recurs in all three sections of the text (past experience of God's grace, present moral failure, and impending consequences). The word "sword" appears in the latter two sections.

Rhetorical criticism tells us to be alert to the repetition of keywords. The literary technique is a clue to the meaning of the text. In this case, it tells us something interesting about the worldview of the author:  what I have called "poetic justice" in the title of this post.

• David sins with Uriah's wife (present moral failure), even though YHWH has already provided him with wives² (past experience of God's grace); poetic justice deems that his own wives will be taken by another man (impending consequences).
  
  
• David uses the sword to rid himself of a problem (present moral failure); poetic justice deems that David's kingdom will never be free of the sword (impending consequences). (That is, Israel will never be at peace with its neighbours while David is king.)

The idea of poetic justice is found not only here, in Nathan's oracle to David, but elsewhere in the prophets as well. It seems to be an important element of the prophetic worldview.

Klaus Koch describes this phenomenon in an evocative way. He is commenting on Jeremiah 1:13-16 —

The word of the Lord came to me a second time, saying, "What do you see?" And I said, "I see a boiling pot, facing away from the north." Then the Lord said to me, "Out of the north disaster [literally, evil] shall be let loose upon all the inhabitants of the land. For behold, I am calling all the tribes of the kingdoms of the north, declares the Lord, and they shall come, and every one shall set his throne at the entrance of the gates of Jerusalem, against all its walls all around and against all the cities of Judah. And I will declare my judgments against them, for all their evil in forsaking me. They have made offerings to other gods and worshiped the works of their own hands.

This text is not laid out in the same neat pattern as the one in 2 Samuel 12. There is no mention of God's prior grace to Israel. Moreover, the "present moral failure" is the last element mentioned. Israel's moral failure consists of forsaking YHWH to worship idols:  "… all their evil in forsaking me. They have made offerings to other gods and worshiped the works of their own hands."

Even though the pattern is not as tidy, we see a similar repetition of a keyword:  evil. Israel has committed evil, and evil (calamity) will be turned back upon Israel. Here's what Koch says:

In the prophetic genres, key words generally form the pivot in the logical progression from the 'now' to the 'impending'. … The word ra'a [evil] is used ninety times in [Jeremiah] and becomes the common denominator, both for human transgression that has already taken place and for a catastrophe that is going to break in from outside. …

For the prophet, ra'a is not an abstract power. It is an aura, with effects on the world, an aura encircling the particular agent, who brings about his own destiny.

(Klaus Koch, The Prophets II: The Babylonian and Persian periods, Fortress Press, 1982, p. 20.)

This is an evocative picture:  an aura of evil surrounding Israel which then attracts evil upon Israel. In the same way, David's aura of adultery or his aura of "the use of the sword" attracted precisely those consequences upon him in punishment. It is poetic justice.

I'm not convinced that we should take Koch's description at face value. It might better be understood as a metaphor rather than a literal, Magical Mystery principle of the cosmos.

Regardless, our rhetorical analysis of these two texts leads to an enriched understanding of the "Uh-oh" principle. When people do evil, "Uh-oh!" — that same evil will be turned back on their heads.

(Next up: a consideration of Bathsheba's voicelessness in the 2 Samuel 11-12 narrative. Whereas the first two posts have been evangelical in their treatment of the text, the third post will explicitly adopt a critical perspective.)



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence.

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¹Unless otherwise indicated, scripture is quoted from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version.

²YHWH's assertion, "I gave you … your master's wives into your arms" is odd:  we're not told any such thing in the narrative where David assumes the throne. However: (1) it was customary in that era for a new king to take the former king's wives, perhaps as a symbol of his succession to the former king's place; (2) David and Saul both had a wife named Ahinoam, although we can't be certain that it is the same woman in both references.

Holiness, justice, and same sex marriage

This is a follow-up to the previous post, where I quoted Walter Brueggemann:

Sinai interpretation goes in two directions: holiness and justice.

The prophetic books:

Later in his survey of the Old Testament, Brueggemann points out that this dual emphasis carries over into the prophetic books. For example, Isaiah elevates justice above piety:

"What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?"
says the Lord;
"I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams
and the fat of well-fed beasts;
I do not delight in the blood of bulls,
or of lambs, or of goats. …
Your new moons and your appointed feasts
my soul hates;
they have become a burden to me;
I am weary of bearing them. …
Your hands are full of blood.
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes;
cease to do evil,
learn to do good;
seek justice,
correct oppression;
bring justice to the fatherless,
plead the widow's cause." (Isaiah 1:11-17¹)

The social justice orientation of the prophets is familiar to us. But Brueggemann points out that the prophet Ezekiel fits into the other category:  he is a "holiness guy".

Ezekiel 8 describes various abominations by which the Temple is desecrated. In reaction, the L_ORD's glory leaves the temple by stages:

Successive steps are marked in His departure; so slowly and reluctantly does the merciful God leave His house. First He leaves the sanctuary (Ezekiel 9:3); He elevates His throne above the threshold of the house (Ezekiel 10:1); leaving the cherubim He sits on the throne (Ezekiel 10:4); He and the cherubim, after standing for a time at the door of the east gate (where was the exit to the lower court of the people), leave the house altogether (Ezekiel 10:18,19), not to return till Ezekiel 43:2.
(Jamieson Fausset Brown commentary)

Brueggemann comments,

In Ezekiel, it's not Israel that goes into exile, it's God, because God can't stay there.

— i.e., in a polluted Temple.

Thus, on the one hand, there is Isaiah's emphasis on social justice; while on the other hand, there is Ezekiel's emphasis on holiness. This is the same duality Brueggemann pointed out in the previous post, with reference to Leviticus and Deuteronomy.

The Gospels:

The same duality then carries over into the New Testament texts:  in particular, the Gospels. Jesus was primarily concerned about justice whereas the Pharisees were primarily concerned about holiness:

And as [Jesus] reclined at table in [Levi's] house, many tax collectors and sinners were reclining with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to his disciples, "Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?" And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners." (Mark 2:15-17)

Here we see that Jesus was inclusive (tax collectors and sinners were welcome to join his community) whereas the Pharisees were exclusive:  they maintained a strict separation from tax collectors and sinners in order to avoid contracting uncleanness.

I maintain that the Pharisees are portrayed in a very unsympathetic light in the Gospels. Christians should not assume that we are given a full, unbiased picture; rather, we are shown the worst side of Pharisaic religion.²

Consider this:  the Pharisees' emphasis on separation and purity has a rich pedigree in the Old Testament and the intertestamental texts. For example:

But Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king's food, or with the wine that he drank. …

[Daniel said to the steward] "Test your servants for ten days; let us be given vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then let our appearance and the appearance of the youths who eat the king's food be observed by you, and deal with your servants according to what you see." So he listened to them in this matter, and tested them for ten days. At the end of ten days it was seen that they were better in appearance and fatter in flesh than all the youths who ate the king's food. So the steward took away their food and the wine they were to drink, and gave them vegetables. (Daniel 1:8-16)

There are a series of texts like this one in the Old Testament and the intertestamental literature:  i.e., texts in which people of faith refuse to eat certain foods, or otherwise distinguish themselves from the surrounding pagan community.

Thus the Pharisees were not the "bad guys" they are often characterized as from Christian pulpits. They were trying to be faithful to Israel's holiness tradition, as Orthodox Jews are to this day.

Indeed, the Pharisees tried to uphold priestly standards of purity in their everyday lives per Exodus 19:6, "You shall be to me a kingdom of priests."

Jesus took the other path:  the path of justice and inclusiveness. He reached out not only to tax collectors and sinners but to lepers, the demon-possessed, Gentiles, Samaritans, women, and (not least!) the poor.

All such individuals were spurned by the Pharisees. For example, women were assumed to be in a state of continual menstrual impurity. Thus Mark 5:25-34 and Luke 7:36-50 are remarkable texts. On both occasions, Jesus allowed a woman to touch him; in Mark 5, it is explicitly a woman with a flow of blood.

Divorce and homosexuality:

Some "liberal" Christians support homosexual rights on the basis of this social justice tradition in the Gospels. This is an issue that cannot finally be resolved, in my opinion. (Though I personally support same sex marriage and other rights for gays and lesbians.)

On the one hand, we have explicit statements condemning homosexual acts — not from Jesus, but from Paul. Thus it is surely a biblical position to argue, from a holiness standpoint, that homosexual acts are not an acceptable practice.

On the other hand, there is Jesus' radical commitment to social justice and inclusiveness. But let's take a step back, to consider the subject of sexual purity more broadly.

Jesus was at his most conservative on the subject of divorce. Scholars believe that Mark 10 preserves the original form of Jesus' saying on divorce. That is, Jesus did not make any exceptions:  divorce was not permitted even in cases of adultery (contra Matthew's version of the same saying).

Arguably, however, Jesus was not concerned about sexual purity per se. When he prohibited divorce, he may have been responding to the vulnerability of women in that society:  women were economically dependent on their husbands. Thus easy access to divorce ("Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?" — Mt. 19:3) was terribly harmful to the interests of women.

Jesus never addressed the subject of homosexuality. The subject presumably wasn't being debated among Jews in that era.

But what would Jesus say if he was facing this issue in contemporary society? One cannot assume that Jesus would have sided with the "holiness" impulse instead of supporting justice, mercy, and inclusiveness. That, in effect, is the stand taken by "liberal" Christians like me, who support rights for homosexuals.

Conclusion:

We might summarize the data like this:

Holiness, separation	Justice, inclusiveness
Leviticus	Deuteronomy
Ezekiel	Isaiah
Pharisees	Jesus
some Pauline texts	other Pauline texts

As you can see, Paul is the wild card here. But I won't attempt to analyze the Pauline texts in this post.

Yes, the table represents a simplification of the data. As I indicated in the previous post, Deuteronomy shows some interest in holiness and Leviticus shows some interest in justice. But in terms of emphasis, the table is accurate.

I know evangelical readers insist that there is no necessary conflict between the holiness and justice traditions. But the split between Judaism and Christianity illustrates the powerful centrifugal forces at work here; so does the more recent divide between evangelical Christianity and "liberal" Christianity.

In the previous post, I maintained that the Church must learn to live with this inescapable tension instead of trying to enforce uniformity. Jamie responded:

How, then, would you propose we deal with the issue of homosexual marriage? Surely you can’t support (respect, tolerate) those who oppose these marriages; that would go against your view that such people are propagating an injustice. …

With gay marriage, there can only be one "right" way. It cannot simultaneously, in the same circumstances, be right both to forbid gay marriage and to embrace it. Nor could God simultaneously both approve of and forbid the practice.

Jamie is right when she asserts that same sex marriage is either right or wrong — it can't be both. However, she is wrong to assume that I cannot respect and tolerate the position of Christians like her, who disagree with my conclusions on the issue.

In my view, we cannot finally be certain of the right answer to many of the vexed questions that roil the Church. To quote Brueggemann once again:

[The Bible] invites us to do an interpretation for now, knowing that we’re going to have to go back to Sinai and do it over again and again and again.

Indeed, I think that figuring out obedience is like having a teenager in the house. Having a teenager means, nothing stays settled. You’ve got to do it all over again.

Sometimes we think a certain issue is settled; but then someone goes back to the scriptures and mounts an argument that we hadn't considered before.

Similarly, a change of social context forces us to reconsider issues that we thought were settled. The exile forced Israel to reconceptualize its theology. Likewise, modernity forces the Church to revisit first principles with a fresh perspective.

Every conclusion we reach is provisional. We must therefore respect and tolerate the convictions of those who think differently than us.



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence.

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¹Unless otherwise indicated, scripture is quoted from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version.

²After the death of Jesus, the Pharisees became the primary opponents of Christianity. Some of the conflicts of a later era appear to have been inserted into the Gospels anachronistically. For example, John 9:22 — "the Jews had already agreed that if anyone should confess Jesus to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue." Scholars insist that excommunication from the synagogues was not introduced until several decades after the death of Jesus. The point is, these later conflicts colour the presentation of the Pharisees in the Gospels.

The problem with the Ten Commandments

A profound insight into scripture, courtesy of Walter Brueggemann:

What I want you to notice about the Ten Commandments is that it's not very clear what they might mean. If you're a judge in Alabama you like to think you know exactly what they mean. But just think of, for example, the commandment, Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy. What does that mean? Well you know Orthodox Jews think it means you can't turn a light on. Etc., etc., etc.

Or Thou shalt not kill. Well of course we all agree on that. Well except maybe capital punishment … maybe war … maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe. Which led very early to the awareness that the Ten Commandments have to be interpreted and therein lies all the problem. …

The Torah commandments invite interpretation that is disputatious and that ends in pluralism. They didn't all think the same.

Let me give you that specifically. If you read the book of Leviticus (a lot of you have read the book of Leviticus lately? Hello?).

The book of Leviticus has, as its theme in Leviticus 19:2, You shall be holy as I am holy. Holiness, purity, order — these are rough synonyms — serenity …. It's all about right worship. If you read the book of Leviticus it's all about how to have holy priests and holy sacrifices and holy offerings and holy shrines and holy bread and holy festivals and holy everything.

Uncontaminated. This yields a kind of a static notion of worship which arises from Mt. Sinai by people [of sincere faith].

Now if you read the book of Deuteronomy, it has a little bit of this, but not much. Deuteronomy is really about civic justice.

The particular text that I want to refer you to is Deuteronomy 24:17ff. It says that when you harvest the grapes of your vineyard, you're going to miss some — don't go back and pick them up. Leave them for the widow, the orphan, and the illegal immigrant. (A translation of "alien" — those people that didn't belong there.)

[The text says the same thing about harvesting olives and grain.]

Scholars say that this provision is the first social welfare program in the history of the world:  that society is obligated to make provision for people who do not have economic means.

Extraordinary! What an incredible moment of interpretation that is all derivative of the Ten Commandments. I suppose that all comes out of, Thou shalt not covet. If you covet, you're taking stuff when you go back that ought to belong to your neighbors.

Now what I want you to observe about this is the way the Pentateuch works. Sinai interpretation goes in two directions:  holiness and justice.

I have no idea where your congregation is about the gay and lesbian thing in the Church and I don't really want to get into that. Except to observe that Leviticus 18 and Leviticus 20 are the two texts about homosexuality in the Old Testament. In between, in Leviticus 19, it says (the verse that Jesus quotes), You shall love your neighbour as yourself.

In the current practice of the Church, the holiness tradition is what we have come to call "conservatism". Deuteronomy is into justice; that's sort of what we've come to call "liberalism".

I'm wanting you to see that the Sinai obedience and hope is open to huge interpretive possibility. So what do you hope for? Well I hope for a society that is pure — not all this goofiness.

What do you hope for? I hope for a society in which the poor get their share. …

Scripture is complex and plural and they didn't agree from day one. The extraordinary thing about the Old Testament is that the holiness people were not able to vote the justice people into silence, and the justice people were not able to vote the holiness people into silence. So some committee (some General Assembly) in ancient Israel said, We're going to put all of this in.

What that means is, our deepest obedience cannot be an absolute norm because it must make room for other serious covenant members who are practising a different obedience. …

This part of the Bible does not finally permit us to get it right. It invites us to do an interpretation for now, knowing that we're going to have to go back to Sinai and do it over again and again and again.

Indeed, I think that figuring out obedience is like having a teenager in the house. Having a teenager means, nothing stays settled. You've got to do it all over again. I'm sure that Moses thought he was leading a bunch of teenagers.

The quote is from Brueggeman's lectures on the Old Testament:  specifically, on Exodus (beginning at 12 minutes 30 seconds) and Leviticus (ending at 9 minutes 40 seconds). I have tidied up the language at various points because speech always has patterns that seem odd when reduced to text.

Note that both Leviticus and Deuteronomy include both holiness and justice elements. That's the point Brueggemann is making when he quotes Leviticus 19:18, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Sandwiched between two "holiness" texts (which would rid the community of homosexual practices) is this core "justice" text.

Brueggemann reveals his perspective on scripture when he comments, "Some General Assembly in ancient Israel said, We're going to put all of this in." In Brueggemann's view, the texts kept evolving long after the death of the original author. (This is a consensus opinion among scholars.¹) Brueggemann's point is, the text evolved in this dual direction:  each school of thought made sure its interpretation was represented in successive drafts of the text.

Finally, I should perhaps apologize for the title of this post, which refers to the "problem" with the Ten Commandments. It isn't really a problem except for those who can't cope with the resultant tension.

The tension is permanent and inescapable; God's people must learn to live there, uncomfortable though it may sometimes be. As Brueggemann says, our deepest obedience cannot finally be reduced to an absolute norm; it must make room for other sincere believers who are practising a different obedience.

(Cross-posted on Outside the Box)

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¹For example,scholars maintain that there are three "Isaiahs" represented in the Old Testament book as now stands. Similar arguments are made for certain New Testament passages:  e.g., some scholars (even some evangelical scholars) regard 1Co. 14:33b-36 as an interpolation.