Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • Dangers of Comparing Translations

    I am frequently asked to compare various translations. Generally my questioner wants me to declare one translation correct, and the other incorrect, or at least to state that one rendering is better than the other. Translators know that this is frequently difficult to do, because there is no one-to-one relationship between source language and target language.

    The non-expert can easily be confused by the fact that two translations of a single passage can both be justified, or even many different renderings. The reason for this is that there are many different things that are conveyed by the text in its source language, and a translator will not be able to transfer all of those elements into a translation.

    • Each word has a range of meaning that is unique. Any word or phrase used to translate it will necessarily shift the emphasis.
    • The form of the source text may emphasize one thing or another, and the form is even more difficult to “translate” than are the words themselves. For example, the chiasm is a common structure in the Bible (a form in which the parallel thoughts are placed in a sort of V–ABCB’A’). You can maintain this chiasm in the translation, but does a chiasm mean the same thing to readers of modern English or another target language? Is there even a form that would emphasize certain phrases as the chiasm does?
    • There are different types of discourse/writing that are involved, and they may not totally correspond to forms in the target language.
    • The purpose of the translation itself may impact what is the best translation in any particular case.

    For these and other reasons it is very hard to tell something which of two translations is better, and even more difficult to label on right and the other wrong. It is important to remember that in answering that question I can only provide my opinion, as can anyone else. It is worthwhile to consider that with respect to most translations that provides the opinion of one person against an expert translation committee. It’s not certain that the individual will be wrong, but one ought to give careful consideration to all the issues before determining that the entire translation committee was simply out to lunch.

    A better question is to ask which of the two translations best communicates the intended message of the source text to the target audience of the translation. On this many people can have a valid opinion. In fact, as Wayne Leman from Better Bibles Blog regularly comments, this can be objectively tested by surveying the appropriate target audience. It is not my purpose here to discuss the details of such testing. I just want to point out that it provides some opportunity for objectivity in a complex situation.

    One final comment is that there must be a standard against which a translation is tested, and some goal for that translation, so that we can test to see if something particular is achieved. Without both of those elements any comments are pointless. In general for translations within the Christian tradition this means that the standard against which the translation is to be tested is the source text in the original languages–Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic–and the goal is that the meaning of the text is conveyed to some defined target population.

    An example of the failure of this process involves the KJV-Only comparisons of various modern versions to the KJV. There is no point in such comparison, because the KJV itself is a translation, and its rendering should be tested according to the source text and the goal of communicating that message to a particular audience. Similarly, modern readers now often compare new renderings against that of the NIV, or some other translation that has become standard in their community, and complain about the differences. The question again has to be how well the NIV conveys the meaning to the audience in comparison to how well the compared (usually newer) version does at the same task.

  • Working in your Call

    And YHWH spoke to the fish, and it spit Jonah up on dry land.
    Then YHWH’s word came to Jonah a second time, saying, “Get up! Go to Nineveh! . . . ” — Jonah 2:11-3:2a

    I knew a man who almost got a law degree, but dropped out during the last year of law school. He was incredibly intelligent and creative. He could have done many things. His parents thought a law degree was a good idea so that he could make money and have a respectable profession. Once he dropped out of law school he lived a life of frustration, always “almost getting there” with the things he really wanted to do.

    In secular life and in the church, you can create a life of frustration for yourself by not doing what it is that you’re actually called and gifted to do, something that usually corresponds to what you want to do deep down in your heart. I’m not talking about that desire to go fishing, or to spend your life on the beach and get someone to pay for it, but your genuine desire the accomplish something with your life.

    Too often, the people who are already out there, living their own frustrating lives, take out their frustration on the next generation by telling them that their goals and their dreams are somehow not respectable enough or important enough. We tell the talented musicians, artists, and actors that the church really needs pastors, secretaries, and administrators, and if they want to earn enough money and make it in the world, they need to be doctors, lawyers, or nurses. Sometimes instead we point them to easier paths than they would choose, because we think they can’t make it.

    I don’t mean we don’t need to encourage our young people to count the cost and decide on a realistic basis what they really want to do. I do mean is that we need to let people look inside themselves, listen to God, and choose where it is that they can really be fulfilled and can really make a contribution that counts eternally.

    As a Christian and member of the United Methodist Church, I believe I see this in our church structure. We are overwhelmingly focussed on the offices of the church and church staff positions that are aimed at maintaining what we already have. If we want to see revival in the United Methodist Church, and in the broader Church we need to start recognizing roles other than pastors and our standard staff. We need to have career paths for evangelists, teachers, apostles, and prophets, the other four from the traditional five-fold ministry. But that’s not enough. We also need paths for artists, dramatists, multimedia experts, and internet specialists.

    And when we have all those paths open, we must encourage people to find their call and follow it, and gear up the church membership to support it financially and with their time.

    Business as usual isn’t working now, and it’s not going to start working. For the church to answer God’s call we need members who answer God’s call. We need to let God out of the box, get out of our box, and be ready to affirm and empower others as they apply and share the gospel in the 21st century.

    Avoid the frustration! Get with God’s program!

  • Professional Arrogance

    Over on Locusts and Honey, John has a post On the Dangers of Being a Professional Wiseman, that I think should be read by everyone involved in pastoring, spiritual formation, professional counselling, or even just prayer ministry.

    The temptation to believe that because one has certain professional training, experience, ordination, licensure, or any one of many professional rites of passage is with us all. I know I don’t have that good of insight into other people, and yet the temptation is there to have the answer without taking the time to get to know the person. That makes me wonder about the temptation level for those who are gifted with insight. The call to go beyond one’s knowledge and wisdom and just solve the problem must be incredible. Time factors get involved as well, and that’s especially dangerous with spiritual formation.

    In any case John has given us all some things to think about.

  • Resources for Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible

    I’ve just located a wonderful series of blog entries on Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible online through my own complete laziness and the hard work of someone else! (Hat Tip: Suzanne McCarthy at Better Bibles Blog in her entry Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible. Suzanne’s entry is worthwhile itself for its list of resources.)

    This series covers textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible in much more detail than I have here and with excellent references. I’m sure I’ll go on popularizing the material, but Tyler Williams at Codex has now provided something to which I can refer those interested in spending a little more time. (I’ve found that the attention span of most church members on textual criticism is somewhere between a paragraph and a page, for which I don’t blame them, even though the topic fascinates me.

    In any case, the series begins with Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible – An Introduction (TCHB 1), and the most recent entry is The History of the Biblical Text. I list them this way, because if you start with number six, you will find links to all the previous entries. If you’re just interested in the basics of what textual criticism is and why we need to do it, you can just read the first article. The interevening articles are excellent–just follow the links.

  • Does KJV-Only Honor the KJV?

    One frequent accusation I hear because I prefer modern translations over the KJV for most purposes is that I hate the KJV. Presumably, the people who say such things think that they honor the KJV by means of their doctrine. Nothing could be further from the truth.

    I believe that the KJV was probably the single greatest achievement in Bible translation. It provided a sold English Bible for use by the church. It was a Bible written in language that the people could understand. Its translators developed substantial ideas in translation theory which they expressed in their document, The Translators to the Reader. Amongst their accomplishments was the understanding that the same Greek or Hebrew word need not be translated by the same English word each time it appeared.

    In addition, this group of men developed some of the basics of a committee produced translation and performed their job exceptionally well. They managed to eliminate much of the polemic from the notes, something that had been a major barrier to general acceptance of prior translations. They worked from the source languages throughout, though comparing existing translations and using the wording of the Bishops’ Bible wherever it expressed the thought of the original well.

    Now the KJV-Only camp wants to deny their accomplishments in an attempt to continue the use of the translation they made at a time when it was not appropriate. While they searched for the best translation, KJV-Only advocates try to defend whatever they found ad-hoc. The KJV-Only camp has no theory of translation, no understanding of textual criticism, no understanding of linguistics, and no respect for the accomplishments of the translators.

    The KJV translators used the best scholarship they had available. Scholarship has advanced since that time. We now have additional resources. A modern translator producing a translator using less than the best materials and scholarship available would be failing in his mission. He would be shirking his responsibility to the word of God. And yet this is precisely what the KJV-Only advocates want modern readers to do. They think to honor people who put out heart, soul, and mind in order to produce a wonderful new translation of the Bible to be satisfied with the old, to accept less than the best.

    It does not honor good translators to use their work in the promotion of ignorance. It does not honor them to expect people to read a Bible version that is not in their common, everyday language. Their memory is not honored by stubborn ignorance.

    I love the KJV, I just don’t recommend it to modern readers unless they are proficient in its language and anxious to read it either for its literary beauty or because they are familiar with it. I honor it as what it is–I don’t insult it by claiming it’s something it is not.

    (For more information, see the pamphlet What about the KJV?.)

  • An Alternative Outline for 1 Corinthians

    I found an outline and notes for 1 Corinthinas 12-14 that I wrote back in 2001. Now I have also been working with Gordon Fee’s commentary on 1 Corinthians, and he uses an outline based on the questions that Paul received in the letter to him from the Corinthians. I think his is a valid approach, but I also think that Paul’s logic leads toward a conclusion. I’m going to leave this outline as I first wrote it, though I would now add a note to chapter 15, that in that chapter Paul finally states what is truly spiritual–we will be truly spiritual when we are resurrected.

    1 Corinthians Outline

    1. Salutation (1:1-9)
    2. Divisions (1:10-3:23)
      Paul discusses the divisions in the Church based on knowledge, spirituality, origin and loyalty to particular leaders. This section is marked in the discourse by 1:10 “united in the same mind and purpose” and by 3:23 “you belong to Christ.”
    3. Judgment (4:1-11:34)
      Paul explains the ministry and rights of apostleship, apparently against a background of criticism which has suggested that the Corinthian believers have gone beyond their own leaders and the message that was passed on to them. Paul illustrates through a number of specific problems in the church. This section is marked by 4:1 “servants” and “stewards” and by 10:33 “not seeking my own advantage.” I have included chapter 11 in this block even though it appears to me that the rhetorical marker for the end appears at the end of chapter 10 because it continues the same type of topic, and a clear marker for a new topic appears in 12:1.
    4. Evaluating Spirituality (12:1-14:39)
      Paul tells the Corinthian believers how to examine and evaluate their own spirituality and spiritual practices. This section is marked by 12:1 “spiritual things (pneumatika)” and by 14:40 “prophesy”, “speak in tongues”, and “order.”
    5. Hope (15:1-58)
      The final hope and final spiritual standing. Marked at the start by 15:2 “believe in vain” and ended by 15:58 “not in vain.”
    6. Concluding Messages and Comments (16:1-24)

    In addition there are several key phrases and concepts which are used to link the various blocks together.

    1. Hope (elpis, elpizo) – links especially 13:7, 13 (IV) and 15:19 (V)
    2. Gift (charisma) – 1:7 (I), 7:7 (III), and 12:4,9,28,30,21 (IV)
    3. Spiritual matters or spirituality (pneumatika/pneuma) – 2:13 and 15 (II), 10:3 & 4 (III) 12:1 & 14:1 (IV), 15:44 & 46 (V)
    4. Baby or infant (nepios/nepiazo) 3:1 (II), 13:11 (IV)

    These lists are not exhaustive on the usage of the words. I will post my notes on chapters 12-14 and on some key Greek terms over the next couple of weeks.

    

  • Honoring God with your Mind

    I’m going to write today about a neglected part of God’s creation–the human mind. It is a wonderful element of creation, one that has provoked some of the most profound philosophical and scientific writing. No, I don’t mean merely that people think with their minds and then write philosophy and science. I’m referring to writing about how the mind evolved, how it functions, what consciousness actually is, and why the mind malfunctions from time to time. Those are all interesting topics.

    My topic, however, is how Christians can choose to honor God with their minds, and why they should. (I’m addressing Christians because that’s my own faith group, not to imply that other people cannot honor God with their minds.) Sometimes it seems that every element of our faith is used against the human mind instead of in cooperation with it.

    1. Our saving faith is sometimes seen as a termination of our ethical decision making
    2. Dependence on God is often seen as dependence on him solely in a supernatural sense, what God can do for you miraculously, but not in the natural sense
    3. The inspiration of the scriptures is seen as bypassing the people involved, whether, prophets, secretaries, or readers
    4. The church offices, especially those of teacher and prophet, are seen as bypassing good thinking
    5. Laziness replaces the hard work of good thinking, as when we accept something just because we saw it in a book, and it was written by someone holy
    6. An appearance of piety can replace wisdom. When someone announces–“God said it, I believe it, that settles it!”–without being certain that God says it, that bypasses the human mind.

    It would seem that simply from observation and logic we could discover that God wants us to use our minds. He provided them. They are necessary to our survival. Even if we didn’t have scriptural statements to confirm this, it is pretty obvious from nature. But we do, in fact, have scriptural confirmation.

    How long, simple-minded folks, will you love being simple?
    How long will scoffers delight in scoffing?
    And fools hate knowledge? — Proverbs 1:22

    Now I could spend my time listing texts that back this up further, texts that talk about thinking, wisdom, using our minds, and our choice. They are a strong theme in scripture. But I’m going to assume you either know or can find the texts. I’d just like to call your attention to two texts. The first is from the words of Jesus.

    15Watch out for false prophets, who come to you dressed like sheep, but inside they are ravenous wolves. 16It’s by their fruit that you’ll recognize them. 17People don’t gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles, do they? 18A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. 19That’s why you will recognize them by their fruit. — Matthew 7:15-19

    This is a sentiment that Paul repeats in Galatians:

    7Don’t be deceived! God won’t be mocked! Whatever a person plants is what he’ll harvest! — Galatians 6:7

    These two texts make it clear that God has not abrogated the law of cause and effect in his kingdom. The law of cause and effect is one that is basic to human thinking. It’s clear that God wants you to think about the consequences of your own actions, not to mention the words and actions of others. What people think, what they say, and what they do does have consequences. (I discuss choice and the kingdom in the pamphlet Seven Kingdom Principles of Choice, and its relationship to salvation in my essay A Fruitful Faith. I believe that the twin principles of choice and fruit operate throughout the kingdom of God.)

    So how can one honor God with one’s mind? Primarily by using it!

    Our saving faith is sometimes seen as a termination of our ethical decision making

    Some may have wondered about this first point in my list of excuses above. Aren’t we saved by grace? Are we not to accept salvation as a gift? Indeed we are. But Paul noted the same problem I’m noting. My point is certainly not original with me–it’s Biblical! Paul uses most of Galatians 5 and the first several verses of Galatians 6 dealing with the possibility that some would take their salvation as permission to sin. He makes it clear that’s the point. I think the best antidote to this type of thinking is for us not to think of salvation merely as a ticket to heaven, but as spiritual healing. When we think of it like that, we might find the question rather silly. If the doctor provides you with a cure for your disease, and does not charge you (a true miracle, I know), you have received the free gift of healing. But if you go home and say, “I want the disease, I’m going to get it back,” you may well be able to make yourself sick again. You can’t then complain to the doctor that his free gift failed. You set his gift aside.

    Christians sometimes depend on Jesus to save them from sin, while at the same time they indulge themselves in destructive behavior. I’ve been working on a paraphrase or representation of the story of Susanna (Daniel 13, from the apocrypha) for my literature and fiction blog, The Jevlir Caravansary. Update: The article is now completed, Susanna: A Transformation. What struck me as I read that story is that the elders who falsely accuse Susanna do everything possible to lead themselves into sin and eventual destruction. They dwell on their temptation. They hide the fact that they are being tempted. They get as close to sin as they can. When eventually they are caught, everything that follows is inevitable. Christians are often like that. “Why won’t God free me from my addictions?” someone asks, at the same time sitting with the object of his addiction readily available. Grace opens the door, grace makes it all possible, but no number of gifts will make you rich if you throw them all away.

    Dependence on God is often seen as dependence on him solely in a supernatural sense, what God can do for you miraculously, but not in the natural sense

    In my second point I mention depending on God only supernaturally. The problem here is that Christians take actions that will bear one form of fruit while expecting God’s supernatural intervention to produce other results. I am not denying miracles, or asking anyone not to pray for them. I pray for God’s power and God’s action myself. But I also know from scripture that God normally folllows the simple law of planting and harvesting, or as Jesus said, of bearing fruit.

    God’s supernatural power is not there to provide you with a license to ignore God’s laws, whether moral or natural laws written in the fabric of the universe.

    The inspiration of the scriptures is seen as bypassing the people involved, whether, prophets, secretaries, or readers

    This laziness is generally manifested when people simply use “God said” for anything in the Bible. There are portions of the Bible that are identified as the words of God, but there are also large portions which are not. I have even heard Job’s friends quoted as what “God said,” and they are soundly condemned by God right in scripture. It takes more work to find out what God is doing when he acts in history or in our own lives than it is simply to find a phrase that says what we want it to, and then to quote it, but it also means that very often we are ignoring what God actually meant, while taking on the appearance of affirming his word.

    The church offices, especially those of teacher and prophet, are seen as bypassing good thinking

    God put prophets and teachers in the church for a purpose–to help bring his word to the people. I’m going to be brief about this, but it’s very important! Please think about it! Now that we can all enter the sanctuary with confidence (Hebrews 10:19), we have as our goal getting everyone to approach God for themselves. The goal is not to teach people to accept what we, as teachers, prophets, or leaders, say, but rather to get them to think for themselves, and to listen to God for themselves.

    For the individual, the goal is to approach God individually, and not to depend on the teacher, preacher, or even prophet. It may be harder, but it’s the right goal.

    Laziness replaces the hard work of good thinking, as when we accept something just because we saw it in a book, and it was written by someone holy

    This is the printed version of the previous point. Some people think that just because it’s in a book it must be true. Many who know that one can’t trust it just because it’s in print, will trust it because it’s in print written by someone well known. But I have a secret (not really!) to tell you. There are plenty of Christian books in print that contain misinformation. I’m not talking about differences of opinion–I’m talking about things that people from many different perspectives could agree were just factually wrong. I find, for example, that a distressingly large number of “insights” brought from Greek or Hebrew in popular books are simply wrong, while many others are at least misleading because they don’t have the proper context.

    When you get information from a book, you need to check references, and then you need to assure yourself that the references themselves are reliable. There are some facts making the rounds in Christian books that have simply been quoted so many times that everyone “knows” they are right, but nobody knows precisely where those facts came from. You need to check back to a primary source–the person who actually observed and recorded the data in the first place–whenever possible.

    You are responsible for planting seeds in your mind. You are the one who is going to bear the fruit. You need to honor God with your mind by looking up the information.

    An appearance of piety can replace wisdom. When someone announces–“God said it, I believe it, that settles it!”–without being certain that God says it, that bypasses the human mind.

    It’s easy to dishonor God while sounding extremely pious. I cannot count the number of times I have heard someone say, “I’m just doing what the Bible says,” or “That is just God’s word!” when they are not, in fact, correctly quoting the material or are taking it badly out of context. (For some help with context, see my essay Understanding Context.) What God says for a specific situation should settle it, but what God says and what people say God says may well be two very different things.

    Always remember: You will harvest what you plant, and you are the one who chooses what to plant!

  • The Search for Ideological Perfection

    The Washington Post has a story about conservative intellectuals who are becoming infuriated with what they see as inaction in recent foreign policy decisions by the Bush administration. In the article, Bush faces backlash on the right, they quote a number of people in this category, but this one summarizes it:

    “It is Topic A of every single conversation,” said Danielle Pletka, vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank that has had strong influence in staffing the administration and shaping its ideas. “I don’t have a friend in the administration, on Capitol Hill or any part of the conservative foreign policy establishment who is not beside themselves with fury at the administration.”

    These conservatives–and the article points out carefully that this is not a consensus of all conservatives–are angry that Bush is seeking diplomatic, multilateral solutions on North Korea and Iran, and now on the clash between Israel and Hezbollah as well.

    What these people are seeking is ideological perfection. Within their ideology, the perfect foreign policy action is one in which the result comes both quickly and with finality and in which the United States achieves all of its goals. The time taken to talk and build consensus is wasted or worse. After all, why should we spend time talking to people who are so obviously wrong?

    Now let me be clear that I don’t believe that diplomacy alone will solve problems. There are those whose solution to every problem is to talk about it, and if talking fails, we should talk some more. But then there are those who think ordinary human relations are really unnecessary, and who think that violence is the one best answer to everything. Diplomacy, backed by sufficient force to deal with those who refuse to behave as part of the world community is the formula for succes in international relations. Of course there is a great deal of room for disagreement on the precise balance.

    But it’s not merely the foreign policy issue that I want to comment on here. These particular conservative intellectuals, and their counterparts on the left, pursue ideological perfection. They want a candidate who agrees with them on all issues and will keep all of their issues as a priority. There is no room for timing, no room for strategy, no room for compromise. It doesn’t matter that the vast majority of the American people are somewhere between these extremes, many of them very close to the center. They’re going to dump on, and in extreme cases abandon, office-holders and candidates who don’t fulfill all of their goals.

    In an election, that means that a center-right or center-left candidate has great difficulty succeeding because the so-called “base” refuses to stick with them. The simple fact is that those of us with strong convictions–and I count myself as one, even though my strong convictions are moderate–need to realize that in order to live in society we will not get everything we want, and that this is simply a part of living in society.

    I think we would be much better off if we could just acknowledge the necessity of compromise. What actually seems to happen is that people try to claim that they are carrying out their own convictions. We think there is something wrong with a politician admitting that he wanted one thing, but by the time negotiations were over, he got something else, and he thinks that’s the best he can do. The ideologues, of course, would jump all over such a statement and demand greater commitment, but commitment and determination are not always the greatest values.

    Which leads me back to the starting point. This all goes back to priorities and strategy. Would it be possible for us to carry out a military strategy in response simultaneously to Iran, North Korea, and Hezbollah in Lebanon? I’m not saying that none of these situations justifies a military solution, though the question of what practical military solution might be available for each, but to solve all of them simultaneously, working unilaterally? That’s an idea that could only find root in the head of a someone who only has to comment on, never to solve, problems. And yet at the same time they are complaining that we have placed insufficient troops in Iraq to accomplish our goals–on which point they are probably right. (Perhaps that suggests more that we should examine our goals than add more troops.)

    To live in community requires give and take, both in foreign policy and in our political life. Politics, conducted openly is not a bad thing. It’s a necessary thing.

  • A Story of Three Prophets

    This is a follow-up to my post Information or Conversation, and it would probably be a good idea to read that entry first.

    One element of God’s method of revealing himself to people is that he chooses specific people to accomplish specific missions. I want to look at the time of the exile, and three of God’s messengers, Jeremiah, Daniel, and Ezekiel. Now there will be those who accept a later date for Daniel and will question my using him in this part of the story. Let me simply state that I do believe that the stories of Daniel, though not likely the entire book, date from the time of the exile,were later written down and collected in what we now have as the Aramaic portions of Daniel. For more discussion see Dating the Book of Daniel.

    At the time of the exile there were three distinct situations, three distinct groups of people to whom God needed to communicate his message. The first was the people of Judah who were rapidly heading toward exile and destruction. The second group was those who were already exiled and living in Babylon. The third was the Babylonian court, both the Babylonian king and officials for whom God had a mission, but also the exiles who were living in a state of privelege and facing the temptation to compromise away their faith.

    The inhabitants of Judah were living in a dreamworld of security, based on the belief that the presence of the temple, and thus God’s presence, protected Jerusalem no matter what. The exiles in Babylon generally felt abandoned by God and either waited expectantly for their soon return or began to simply give up. At the same time the king of Babylon took the view that he was favored of the gods because of his successes, and those who lived in his court faced the constant danger of compromise of their principles in order to gain power and favor and even permanence in their new situation. Any of these attitudes presented a barrier to God’s plan.

    God’s response was not merely to protect the facts. The facts were that the exile would be long but temporary, and that in the end the people would return. Jerusalem would be destroyed, but it would be rebuilt. Nebuchadnezzar was a great king and conqueror, but he also was limited and temporary and the way to success for the Jewish young people who found themselves there was faithfulness, not compromise. But even if they suffered for their faithfulness, the consequences of compromise would be even deeper.

    Those were the facts, but God still needed messengers. None of the audiences actually wanted to listen, but there were ways to make things clear.

    For Judah, there was Jeremiah, the weeping prophet. Not only one who could speak the message, but one who could weep the message, whose very life symbolized God’s love for Judah and his unwillingness to give up his people. God’s sorrow was expressed in the form of a prophet who spoke, suffered, cried, and was ignored, but who never gave up, who kept speaking until there was nothing left.

    Ezekiel was himself an exile, capable of understanding the situation of the exiles. His inaugural vision (Ezekiel 1) reassured Ezekiel that God was still with the exiles, that in spite of judgment there was hope. The message became a part of Ezekiel. But the presentation was different from that of Jeremiah. Ezekiel was not allowed to mourn his own wife’s death (Ezekiel 24:15-27). Both his visions and his methods of expression were powerful and creative.

    Daniel was one tempted to compromise in the court of the king. He had every opportunity to go over to the side of the winner, and to accept Nebuchadnezzar as the once and always king of the world. But he stood quietly for God and for faithfulness to his message.

    Three messengers with similar messages, but different audiences, and different means to present that message–God involved in the daily activities of human beings, a microcosm of God acting in the flesh.

  • Information or Conversation

    I frequently get into discussions about the inspiration of the Bible. These discussions generally center around such texts as 2 Timothy 3:16, 2 Peter 1:20-21, or Hebrews 4:12. Now all of these are good texts from which to study about the nature of scripture, but it interests me that we build theology from these texts which we then try to impose on the remainder of scripture, rarely bothering to spend time observing just how the process of revelation has functioned.

    My idea here is not to find a different set of texts from which to extract theological propositions, but rather to look at the narrative, and ask how God has managed to reveal himself at various times and under various circumstances. By observing the narrative of scripture, we can get a better idea of what the propositions of scripture mean in practice. When 2 Timothy 3:16 says that scripture is profitable for certain things, we can ask precisely how scripture was used in accomplishing such things.

    I’m suggesting here a focus on the story rather than on the commentary, or one might say the experience rather than the propositions. This is not because the scripture does not contain propositional truth. I believe one can derive propositional truths from the story and from the explicit statements, but if we read these always in the context of the story, we will get better defined and understood propositions. After all, there must be some reason why God put so much story in scripture, and why even all those propositions arrived in the framework of the story.

    In a discussion some time ago, I annoyed someone when I made my normal suggestion to look at places other than these standard texts in discussing inspiration. In particular, I was recommending the story of Jeremiah and Baruch as they produced the scroll of Jeremiah’s prophecies (Jeremiah 36), to help us understand just how inspiration works.

    What can we learn from this story?

    • The prophecy itself may occur at some time earlier than the writing.
    • It may not be the prophet’s own pen that does the writing.
    • The writings of a prophet may be written at more than one time; this may point us toward an explanation for why we have multiple versions of the book of Jeremiah with material in a different order.
    • The prophecy in both spoken and written form is produced in response to a need.
    • God’s word sometimes comes at a considerable cost to the messenger.

    Those are just a few things. As we read the story of Jeremiah we can learn not only about God’s method of revelation but how God’s inspiration works with the inspired person. This is one of the things I mean by participatory Bible study. “Participatory” can mean simply to participate in the process of study–everyone in a group reads a text, makes a comment, looks something up in a reference source, etc. What I mean is investing oneself in the actual story of the scriptures. My question here is not just how Jeremiah heard from God, and what Jeremiah had to say, but how can I hear from God. My question is how I can hear from God, how I can build a relationship with God, and how Jeremiah’s experience can help mine.

    We go to the Bible looking for information; God goes to the Bible looking for conversation.

    God doesn’t merely want to inform you. That could be done much more easily than the process that brought us the Bible. God wants to relate to you, have a conversation with you.

    And if you can see that in Jeremiah, it’s going to help. The agony of his situation as people ignore his message. His horror as his nation continues to follow the path of destruction. His frustration as people won’t listen to his message. Then we get the command to produce this scroll. We see it destroyed and replaced. Live this with Jeremiah! How much is this like our Christian experience as God tries to get through to us, to get us to listen, to get us to persevere in his word?

    Off and on I’m going to present essays on this topic. I’ll be following this with one on the three prophets of the exile, but there are many more experiences of scripture that can teach us about God’s revelation and how we receive it.