Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • Psalm 104 Article

    Since Psalm 104 is in the lectionary for Pentecost (May 11), I thought I’d take this opportunity to link again to my essay on that Psalm which dates from when I was working on my MA.

    I created a critical (or reconstructed) Hebrew text, provided a translation and notes, and did some analysis on the structure. Most of my conclusions I would still support today, even though more years have passed than I care to number.

    It’s a wonderful Psalm, and I hope my work on it will be of help to someone who is studying it along with the lectionary.

  • Question Everything, Including the Bible

    James McGrath (whose comments are well worth reading) pointed me to this post, and I responded here.

  • Police Can’t Afford to Jump to Conclusions

    . . . but reporters apparently can. I’m going to embed the fox video that set this off. I saw it on the TV while eating my lunch, and then looked it up for your viewing pleasure (or not).

    I’m pretty tense about any government official overstepping the bounds of their authority. Police face great danger for our sakes, but they also receive great trust, and they should be careful to merit that trust. Most of the time they do. When they don’t, I’ll speak about that.

    But very often I think the media doesn’t take the time to determine facts before they start pushing. Now the video I’m embedding isn’t horribly offensive. It’s just a reporter trying to push a spokesman for the Phoenix police department to say more than he knows. The death in question is very suspicious. But you see, I can afford to jump to conclusions and decide that a college professor in whose home an unconscious teenager was found is a pervert and possibly a murderer. I can, even though I won’t. If I did, however, the consequences are very minor, because I lack any form of authority to act.

    The reporter has more power than I do, based on the size of his audience. In my view, that should make him more responsible. Why should we come to conclusions before we have all the facts? Of course the answer is “ratings.” It’s much better for one’s ratings to announce the actual result first.

    The police spokesman, representing the Phoenix police department, has a much greater responsibility, one that he is carrying out quite well. He and his department can’t afford to jump to conclusions, however obvious those conclusions appear on the surface. He and his department are quite right to wait till they get all the facts, such as the coroner’s report and the tox screen. That is the best thing for justice. They’re doing that, as far as I can see. If the reporter had any evidence available that was not made public, he failed to make use of it, thus I would say that the “I don’t know” and “wait until the evidence is in” approach is the correct one.

    I feel for the police and prosecutors in a situation like this. If they go too far, too fast, they face the possibility of lawsuits, they ruin reputations perhaps needlessly, and they may muddy the waters so that justice will never be done. If they hold back, they face accusations that they aren’t working hard enough or are missing the obvious.

    I’m firmly on the side of caution. If we think things go too slowly in investigations, perhaps we should remember this at election time when tax issues are voted or candidates are elected who will decide on the budget. We must hold public officials, including police, accountable, but accountability minus appropriate resources is just bullying.

    I’m firmly on the side of letting them have the time to do their job. I sympathize with a family that is hurting. But the course of action that will most probably result in justice is to let the facts come in, be sorted out, and be taken care of. I certainly cannot be certain that their choice to hire a detective is wrong. I’m commenting strictly on the interview between the police spokesman and the Fox interviewer and their respective attitudes.

    And the interviewer should realize that when he jumps to conclusions, the worst consequence is a retraction by the network. If the police jump to a conclusion, many lives may be irreparably harmed.

  • Question Everything!

    Via Exploring Our Matrix, I found this post at Think Christian. Many Christians believe that one should never question the Bible, especially if one is a Bible teacher.

    I know this to be true, because I’m a Bible teacher, and I question the Bible with some vigor, and not only do I not answer all the questions I raise, I frequently emphasize that we don’t actually need answers to all our questions. Unanswered questions are the engine that drives an intellectually and spiritually full life.

    The claim that one does not question the Bible is often taken as an expression of great faith. The person who doesn’t question has anchored their faith so firmly that they no longer need or want to question. But I think it’s precisely the opposite. The person who has stopped questioning and wants to prevent others from doing so has become spiritually and intellectually dead. Their faith is not incredibly great; rather, it is weak and easily threatened by questions. It takes no faith to believe in an unquestioned God. Faith comes into play when we challenge God with our doubts, our fears, and our questions.

    Some of the greatest examples of faith in the Bible questioned God. Abraham did. Moses did. And what is questioning the Bible to questioning its ultimate divine source?

    I want to be a Bible teacher who questions and who challenges others to question. I want to study with other teachers who question and challenge me to question. I do not exclude anything in my life from examination and questioning.

  • An Example of Archaic Words – 1 Samuel 9:9

    In a comment to a previous post, someone brought up the case of Saul and the seer. In this passage we have the parenthetical note following the reference by one of the characters to a seer, indicating that a prophet was formerly called a seer. This was provided as an example of how to handle archaic words in the KJV–just explain them, or as this commenter suggested, look them up in an 1828 Noah Webster’s!

    In my response I indicated that I didn’t see anything new and referred readers to my Bible Translations FAQ, but it turns out that in this case while I have responded to someone on this issue before, probably on the Compuserve Religion Forum, I failed to include the answer in my FAQ file. In addition, I wanted to comment on an exegetical point. You can get the full context of the story by reading 1 Samuel 9:1-14.

    My exegetical point is a simple one. Any principle of interpretation you use should be one that can be applied consistently. The application of a principle–I’ll hold off trying to express it–that we see here is the observation that a Bible writer took a particular action, so that action is normative for similar circumstances. I would guess that the best way to express this principle would be that in comparable circumstances, one should consider the actions of a Biblical writer to be normative.

    Now here’s where I tend to annoy KJV-Only advocates and other extreme Biblical literalists. I would ask how they would apply that principle in other cases. For example, should we take the literary forms of the Bible as normative for the way in which we should write other material? It’s hard to respond precisely, because I have never seen anyone try to express this as a principle. Whenever I ask someone to express it that way or to apply it to other circumstances, they say I’m not staying on the subject. But I think that when interpreting the Bible, principles of interpretation are always relevant.

    A related approach is often used for other Bible stories. If a Bible character, normally limited to one of the good guys, did it, then it’s a good idea. Of course, until it isn’t. Because this “story” approach to Biblical norms is very rarely applied with any consistency.

    Can we get information from Bible stories? Indeed we can. For example, I believe that God calls women to leadership. One Biblical support for that position is the call of Deborah. But in that case I’m working with a clear statement that Deborah was a prophetess, and the blessing of God on her action. Further, I use the story not to create a common practice directly, as in “God called Deborah, a woman, to be a prophetess, so all women are called to be prophetesses.” Rather, I use the story to establish that any claim that God excludes women from his call runs up against this clear counter-example.

    Interpreting stories requires a good deal of thought and effort, and it is useful to be consistent. I have an essay on interpreting stories for those who are interested in some basic ideas.

    But let’s look at this specific case. There are several important points that I would note.

    1. The parenthetical comment provides historical information to the reader that is relevant to the story. Archaic words in the KJV provide knowledge of 17th century English, but provide no knowledge relevant to the story. The actual word used by the ancient Hebrews does not appear in the KJV here or elsewhere. I would suggest that if one consistently used this principle, one should enter in the translation every term with any technical element, and then explain it in a parenthetical comment. (The Complete Jewish Bible heads in this direction.)
    2. This type of comment is extremely rare in scripture. It doesn’t involve the relearning of an entire dialect so that people can have the privilege of using archaic language.
    3. While I’m sure using an 1828 dictionary is exciting to someone, I don’t plan on recommending purchase of such a dictionary to go with any Bible purchase. That is simply another barrier to hearing the word.
    4. In the New Testament we see Hebrew ideas primarily presented in Greek words. The very occasional transliterations (with translation) are for specific purposes.
    5. Finally, any argument in favor of forcing people to learn the language of the KJV applies with greater force to urging them to learn Greek and Hebrew.

    The problem here is an ad hoc interpretation desperately grabbed and applied to the KJV. The foundation of such an argument is the assumption that the KJV must be right, therefore we must find the way to preserve it. But other than as a great artifact of English language and literature, I fail to see any reason to try to do that.

    The Bible wasn’t written in English. It was written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. KJV-Only advocates seem to have trouble understanding that, but it remains a fact.

  • Another Good Review of Expelled!

    . . . from someone who has seen it, no less! It’s on The Creation of an Evolutionist, which blog also goes on my blogroll. (From a comment on an earlier post.)

  • We Can’t Have Acquittals

    . . . is what the former chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay, Air Force Colonel Colonel Morris Davis informed a court there he was told by superiors, according to the Washington Post.

    I do believe that we will need some special options for dealing with terror suspects taken in war. Many are not recognizing the fact of war in their criticism of detention. Yet most of the criticism is valid. There is no need to keep people as long as they have. There is no need to prevent civilian review and accountability as they have. It is certainly improper for political pressure to be placed on the prosecutors.

    This is yet another situation in which necessary goals have been pursued in a clumsy manner that creates injustice. What’s going on at Guantanamo Bay is not only immoral, it appears to also be incompetence.

  • Perspective on Vocabulary and Genre in Genesis 1-11

    Just how does one go about determining how to read these chapters? I’ve talked in previous posts about literary types and historicity, but this is more about approach.

    I have both heard and read places where people state that these chapters are obviously narrative history because they “sound like it.” But how should one’s ears, or eyes, be trained in order to discern this in ancient literature? I would suggest that if you go to the passage with a modern set of genres, you will often be led astray.

    Imagine for a moment that there is no Hebrew Bible, and you are an archaeologist. You carefully dig into a chamber that has been covered for millenia, and it is filled with clay tablets. There’s writing on the tablets. You don’t know what culture this material came from and you don’t know what it is. You set about deciphering the script and discovering the language, and there in your hands is the text of what we call Genesis 1-11.

    What do you call this text? How will you decide just what it is? Well, we have much precedent for this sort of thing. One looks at the texts from surrounding culture, giving greater weight to texts that are closer in time and culture, and one tries to fit it into categories. If it is sufficiently different, one may create new categories.

    In the case of Genesis 1-11 let me suggest two things. First, if we didn’t have it, but discovered it as a new text, we would have no problem categorizing it as an origin myth. Basically, that is. Second, we would be very exciting by this text, because there are unique characteristics that make it very different from other origin myths. So we would spend a great deal of time cataloging those differences.

    Of course, things happened in reverse. We discovered Babylonian and Sumerian myths, while we already had Genesis. This is unfortunate in some ways, because we get very tense in categorizing Biblical literature. In popular understanding, the debate is always over whether something was copied or not. Was Genesis 1 copied from the Babylonian or Sumerian myths? Liberals say yes, conservatives say no. Which, of course, oversimplifies everything!

    What’s really more interesting is looking at how the various documents might be related in terms of thought, vocabulary, cosmology, literary structure, and so forth. Two written works may be related without being copied. For example, if one writes a romance novel, one is using a literary genre, and there is a relationship between that work and others of the same genre. You may find similarities in vocabulary and style that fall far below the threshold for copying, but which nonetheless indicate influence, common knowledge, or even common culture.

    These are better questions regarding Genesis 1-11. It is clearly not copied, in my view, but it is also clearly not unrelated. I will comment further on why I believe this in later posts.

  • A Conservative Speaks on Intelligent Design

    . . . in NRO. Quoth he: “The ‘intelligent design’ hoax is not merely non-science, nor even merely anti-science; it is anti-civilization.”

  • Tolerance: A Value, Not an Absolute

    In watching some of the material on Dr. Jeremiah Wright today, I’m reminded of the potential problem of tolerance–getting it above its proper rank as a value. I have been confronted numerous times in face to face discussions with the statement that I cannot be truly tolerant, because to be tolerant, I must tolerate intolerance.

    But that is a sort of binary thinking that is, quite frankly, the basis for a great deal of stupidity. For me tolerance is not an absolute. Tolerance is something I value. I do not value it above all else. It is the sort of thing that when overvalued can become self-destructive. To illustrate from the physical world, I value my home. But when a hurricane is coming, I value my life and my family more highly than my home. So I evacuate when it’s appropriate. Some don’t, and end up dead or injured.

    There are a number of comments by Rev. Wright that I am quite willing to defend. I’m even willing, as you will have noted, to defend a large part of his “God damn America” speech, while confessing that I would never have expressed it that way myself. I can get behind the rhetoric to a good point.

    But in embracing Farrakhan, I believe Wright steps over that line to tolerating intolerance. Farrakhan has, in fact, done some good things in the African-American community. but he has more than balanced that with hateful speech and acts, and with his anti-Semitism. Barack Obama was correct to reject (and denounce!) his support. Rev. Wright does himself a disservice by embracing him.

    To quote from MSNBC.com:

    At the press club, he jokingly offered himself as Obama’s running mate and embraced Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan even though he said he doesn’t always agree with him. He criticized the U.S. government as imperialist and stood by his suggestion that the U.S. invented the HIV virus as a means of genocide against minorities. “Based on this Tuskegee experiment and based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything,” he said.

    To tolerate Louis Farrakhan in this fashion is to tolerate intolerance, and this is a liberal danger. We wish to be so careful not to be intolerant. We want to be even handed, and love all the disadvantaged, underprivileged, and oppressed people. Those are good impulses. But we need to be careful to draw moral lines. We can desire justice for the Palestinians without justifying their killing of Israelis. We can recognize the economic hardships that contribute to terrorist recruiting without justifying the use made of it by terrorists. We can recognize the need for pride in the African-American community without also justifying a new form of hate and racism.

    Besides embracing Farrakhan, who has stepped way over the line, he continues with the claim that HIV was produced by the U. S. government. Based on things done in years past, I would be prepared to hear it if evidence turned up that some secret agency had done this in some way. U. S. government agencies have done some quite evil things. But the key there is the need for evidence. Right now there is no such thing. One of the nastiest ways one can vilify one’s opponents is by suggesting that they have done the things that they are capable of. We are all capable of some form of evil, but we do not all do everything of which we are capable. Evidence should precede accusation; all else is a smear.

    Rev. Wright should be aware of this, considering that around 10% of the American public believes that Barack Obama is a Muslim. The accusation has been made, and it doesn’t matter how much evidence there is that he is not, some of the slime will stick. A pastor, especially should be very careful with his words.

    I am not going to get into the game of blaming associates of associates, i.e. that Barack Obama needs to distance himself further from his pastor so as to be distanced further from Farrakhan. I didn’t like the “associating with people who associated with communists” attitude during the cold war, and this one is certainly no better. But Rev. Wright is responsible for his own words, and along with quite a number of good challenging ones, he has spoken some that are dangerous, hateful, and irresponsible.