Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • Form Criticism

    We’ll begin our discussion of specific tools within the historical-critical method by looking at form criticism. I’m going to try to present this in a way that will be useful to lay students of the Bible, so note that I will be ignoring the more obscure forms and some technicalities of the method. The general outline I provide should help in the use of various critical commentaries. The key is to read critical judgments critically. (I would note that form criticism generally becomes less certain and therefore less useful in my view as it tries for greater and greater detail.)

    In my previous overview entry, I looked at the different phases of the production and transmission of a text, and showed that form criticism referred to the oral transmission stage. There was a time when I would have said that form criticism applied only when there was an oral stage of transmission, but more recent studies have shown that it can be applied to some texts that did not have an oral stage, such as epistles. There is a danger, however, of finding special oral forms everywhere just because one wants to apply form criticism. Watch out for this when you use critical commentaries.

    Form criticism is possible because in oral transmission and in some types of written transmission, particular types of material tend to take specific, repetitive forms. This is best illustrated in the beginning for children’s stories, “once upon a time.” Because these materials tend to take particular forms, we can discover something about their intended meaning and use from identifying the forms, and then comparing them to other material that displays the same form.

    In discussing the Parable of the Sower I mentioned the form only briefly, but now let’s look at some of the forms in the material that Jesus used. Parables, for example, could come in at least two types, the short, pithy comparison, or the illustrative story. The parable of the sower is of the second variety. So we would compare it in terms of form to parables such as the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, or other similar longer stories. This may not seem terribly profound, but it does lead us to ask just what differences there might be in interpretation of the two types of parables. For example, many interpreters (I’m one of them) will tell you to look for the one main point of a parable, and be very careful when trying to assign meaning to the details. But would there not be a difference in how one might understand the simple comparison and the longer illustrative story? Certainly there should be. The details of the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32; note that this is a good example on which to study the boundaries of the passage to be studied) are far more important to interpretation than the Pearl of Great Price (Matthew 13:45-46), for example.

    Most interpretation can be reduced to finding good questions to ask, and then looking for the answers. Often we look for answers in Bible study before we have considered our questions carefully. So what are the questions of form criticism?

    There are basically four three things we look for:

    1. The structural elements of the passage we are studying, which also involves finding the correct boundaries of the passage
    2. What type or genre is it?
    3. What is its setting and purpose?
    4. Compare and contrast to other similar passages.

    You may need to go through these elements a number of times. It’s convenient to start with someone else’s divisions of the text and someone else’s division of the forms into named types, but I would suggest trying to practice this yourself before simply accepting someone else’s division. You will find it especially helpful to reconsider your division of the text into individual passages after you have compared it to other similar passages.

    In the case of parables, I’ve already made some suggestions of types. But let’s look at another form–the proverb. This is a good early example to work with, because with the book of Proverbs we have many examples already laid out for us. Note, however, that not all of Proverbs consists of proverbs. Especially in the early chapters there are some other forms, such as the hymn to wisdom in chapter 8. But now consider some other examples of proverbs elsewhere in scripture.

    Ezekiel uses a proverb in Ezekiel 18:2, “The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are dull from grinding.”

    Now it’s very much in the form of a proverb. It’s a short, pithy saying that illustrates a point of common wisdom. What would it’s original setting be? We can imagine a situation in which children suffer for their parents’ actions, something that is not all that uncommon. This one is fairly easy. Ezekiel, on the other hand, is using it in another setting. He is using the form of a prophetic oracle. How do I know that? Well, the first clue is in verse one, when he says, “The word of YHWH came to me.” In his case, he’s using the proverb that was probably originally about the general human condition to discuss God’s action; God’s judgment is not going to fall on the children for what the parents did, but rather, God’s judgment will fall on the person who has committed the wrong. We can gain some understanding of the passage by realizing that this proverb was first an expression of an aspect of the human condition. It was probably first used by the Israelites to express how they felt that God was dealing with them, and then is reused in this oracle in Ezekiel to express how God was going to reverse that. The use of this one form in another can be considered an element of redaction, which I’ll discuss later.
    Now consider an instance in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. There he uses what is probably a proverb, “Nothing beyond what is written” (1 Corinthians 4:6). Now there is some question about the meaning here. Some would suggest that this is a call to use nothing outside of scripture. But considering when Paul wrote this, is it likely that Paul is saying to stick to written scripture? He’s still dealing with an oral form of the gospel message itself. So we can ask what might this parable have meant in its original setting. I’m going to suggest that there was a possibility that this is used as a statement about someone who is working entirely on material that has been passed on. It is not a compliment to someone who is sticking with the letter; it’s a criticism of someone who has nothing original to contribute.

    Paul is now bringing this to the Corinthians. Is it a criticism in his use? In one sense. He’s saying that the Corinthians have not (yet?) contributed anything to the message of the gospel, and yet they are acting as though they had created an original contribution and attained spiritual superiority. It would be like a student who presented a research paper consisting entirely of quotations, and then claimed to have accomplished original research.

    Let me conclude by listing some benefits of form criticism and some potential problems.

    Benefits:

    1. Gets us to look closely and in detail at a small portion of the text
    2. Encourages us to ask certain questions of the text
    3. Helps us discover other passages that we can use effectively in comparison
    4. Encourages us to discover, if possible, how a text has been used in various settings
    5. Helps us block off a subsection of text and to find its function in a larger passage

    Dangers:

    1. It’s a tree method rather than a forest method, i.e. it gets you to focus on a small portion of the text, and then often you won’t look more broadly. Avoid this by first surveying a larging scripture portion before looking at the individual passage.
    2. It tends to focus us back on the original setting and purpose of a passage. For example, the form critic is first interested in why a proverb or parable would have originated in oral use. It’s final use, such as by Ezekiel or Paul can be ignored. Avoid this by continuing your study after identifying and working with an individual passage as a form using other methods, especially using redaction, literary, and canonical criticism.

    The best way to build your skills with this type of criticism is to get good commentaries that include use of this methodology (most commentaries in the Old Testament Library or the Anchor Bible series do so, see my reader’s guides on Bible Study, Old Testament, New Testament, and Biblical criticism), then do your own work, and then compare that work to the results in the commentary.

  • Policy or Feeling?

    Eleanor Clift in Newsweek has a new column, Dem Feingold Tosses GOP a Life Raft, in which she points out that Feingold’s bid to censure Bush is not good political strategy. It certainly is not, and especially for any politician or political party that is trying to reach out to the center. I’m a passionate moderate, and this kind of thing makes me run looking for someone else. Unfortunately, we are very short on “someone elses” in politics right now.

    I think we need to look beyond the politicians to find out what the problem actually is with government in this country. In the same article, clift points out that 50% in a Wall Street Journal/NBC survey indicate that they would like the democrats to control congress. I think there is a big problem with that number, or any number that simply states what party we want to control congress. Because the parties are so diverse at this point, it can only be the result of a vague feeling we have about the two parties, and not a principled choice of particular candidates.

    In my own congressional district, I’m never sure which party I want to hold the seat until I know who has been nominated. My feeling about the national Republican or Democratic parties (usually very negative) doesn’t really play much in the decision. The question is whether this person will represent me and this district well in congress. But there is clearly a body of people in this country, large enough body of people in this country to sway elections, who are going to vote based on how they feel about a party. I say that because the politicians keep on winning, and they keep on playing games. The Republicans did it with Clinton, and now the Democrats are doing it with Bush.

    I’d like to be able to say that if either party wants to truly win the center, they will need to start behaving responsibly, as a party. In fact, however, I’m afraid I’d probably be wrong. The evidence is that politicians get elected by behaving like politicians. Both parties engage in this type of petty behavior, and both continue to have success with it. The primaries continue to produce the same type of candidates.

    That pushes the problem back to us, the people. Why is it that we allow our opinions to be swayed so much by the latest shenanigans of either party? Why is it that a politician that manages to smear his opponent best with negative ads can win? Why is it that politicians must avoid specifics about what they would do in office, resorting instead to vague generalities?

    I believe it’s because we, the people, don’t have the patience to really study the issues, and then choose the person who has the best grasp of them, and who reflects our values. What we vote for is the person who can give the best impression of supporting our values without tying himself down too much.

    That’s how we get politicians who promise major educational reforms without ever spending more money.

    That’s how a politician can say with a straight face that he will increase services and decrease taxes, and what’s more, get re-elected after failing to do it!

    If we, the people, don’t spend more time studying the issues, making intelligent choices, and then expecting our politicians to do likewise, we will continue to get the type of government we currently have, in which politicians spar over petty things instead of grappling with serious issues in a serious way.

  • The Man Has No Choice?

    Anderson cooper is blogging over on CNN getting ready for a program on a case that’s being called “Roe v. Wade for men.” The idea is that a man should have a choice about having a child, and about whether he should have to pay child support. I suppose there’s going to be a long discussion complete with handwringing and emotion, but I’m not going to watch.

    But let me give you one more links, to a story that has all the details in one place. Men’s activists launch ‘Roe v. Wade for Men’says a story on MSNBC.com.

    The story says that a group calling itself the National Center for Men is supporting this lawsuit. I don’t usually get this annoyed at a story. But is this the national center for men, or is it perhaps the national center for irresponsibility?

    This guy had a choice. He could choose whether or not to have the fun of making the baby. Now he wants out of the responsibility that results. I hear his arguments about the woman having the choice of an abortion. But I would make two points about that. First, even if one does support abortion rights, the situation of the man and the woman when pregnancy occurs is hardly comparable. But second, one type of irresponsibility is not the solution to another.

    Let me note simply that my position on the moral issues of abortion is different than my position on the legal issues. I think the proper moral place to make choices about reproduction is before you engage in sexual activity that might produce a pregnancy. This is true for the man or the woman. After that, your moral choices are different. At the same time I do believe that the best approach to preventing abortion is through education and support. By this I mean education in making responsible choices, and the necessary social support when the right choice, or for that matter when the wrong choice is made.

    In this case, the woman has made a responsible choice, and the man wants permission to make an irresponsible one. Well, he can. He can irresponsibly decide not to pay child support, and then like anyone else who doesn’t face his responsibilities, he can face the legal consequences.

  • Criticism Example: The Parable of the Sower

    The following chart is designed to allow persons who are not skilled in Greek to work with the parallel accounts of the parable of the sower, Matthew 13:1-9, Mark 4:1-9, and Luke 8:4-8. Notes cover very basic cocepts of textual criticism, form criticism, source criticism, and redaction criticism. In future entries I will expand on these issues and also discuss literary, tradition, genre and canonical criticism.

    As background, consult my pamphlet What is Biblical Criticism? which provides an extremely basic overview of the method. To that discussion, I need to add that not every portion of the general history of a document takes place with each document. For example, in the case of one of Paul’s letters, for example, there is no oral stage. In general, there are no sources, or sources provide only a very limited portion of the text. There are also no further redactions or editions of the text. Paul writes or dictates the letter, and then it is delivered. In this case form, source, and redaction criticism have very little to say. Sometimes scholars try to make use of these techniques on literature to which they are not well suited, and the results are not terribly helpful.

    If we limit ourselves to the limits of this single pericope (or short, defined scriptural passage), then most of our questions relate to form criticism. We are asking what the form of the parable is. A good way to think of this is to ask yourself what it was about this that told you it was a parable. In this case, it is labeled “parable.” But what if you just heard the starting point: “A sower went out to sow.” Would you still recognize it as a parable? Did Jesus very likely say, “I’m going to use a parable now?” So the phrase that introduces the parable, as well as the setting is part of the redaction, or a result of editing the text.

    To deal with sources we would have to look at more text. Within this parable, we can ask whether it is more likely that Mark was first, and Matthew and Luke copied from him, or was Matthew first? It would be a rather odd view these days, but logically one must consider whether Luke was first, and the others copied him. But in the passage in question, we see very little indication of who copied whom. Mark’s vocabulary and style is a little simpler, and Luke’s is more complex, but those changes could be made by any of the three.

    There’s a likely reason for this. On the assumption that Mark is first (which I might argue with, but I want to work with the consensus for right now), this parable is probably part of the ‘Q’ source. (Q is an abbreviation for German “Quelle” which means “source.”) This parable is also repeated in the Gospel of Thomas, verse 9, which provides support for the possibility that it was part of a sayings source. Note also that Thomas does not include either the setting (one would expect it not to) nor does it include the final “He who has ears, let him hear.”

    One major benefit of this sort of study is that it forces you to look in detail at every word and ask precisely how it fits into the intent of the author. Whether you agree with the work of any critical or scholar or not, that study cannot help but benefit you.

    The Parable of the Sower
    Matthew 13:1-9 Mark 4:1-9 Luke 8:4-8 Notes
    1On that day, when Jesus had gone out of the house, he sat beside the sea,2and large crowds came together to him,so that he into a boat embarked
    to sit.
    And all the crowd stood on the shore.    		 1And again he began to teach beside the sea,and a large crowd was coming to him,so that into a boat he embarked
    to sit on [in] the sea,
    and the whole crowd by the sea on the land were.    		 4Now a large crowd gathering, and people from various towns came together to him, Note that the setting of the story differs in Luke. One of the functions of form criticism is to find the boundaries of the orally transmitted unit. In the gospels, we are aided in this process by having the units embedded in three different documents that we can compare. In this case, Matthew and Mark place this parable in the context of Jesus teaching in a boat by the sea. Luke uses the same setting (Luke 5:1-3) but with different teaching.Redaction criticism then deals with the way in which the parable is used to express the theme of the particular book or document, while the individual differences in the story itself aid us in source criticism, as we ask the question of who, if anyone, copied from whom.In Matthew, compare verses 1 & 2 to verse 1 in Mark. There are manuscripts of Matthew and Mark that make them read alike in each of the cases. Why do we not accept the variants that make the two passages more similar? Besides the fact that they do not have the best text, scribes had a tendency to accommodate texts rather than differentiate them. See further discussion of textual criticism at my previous entry, Textual Criticism – Briefly.
    3And he spoke to them
    many things in parables saying,
    Look, one who sows went out to sow.
    4And while he was sowing,
    some [of the seeds] fell by the path,
    and when the birds came they consumed them [the seeds].    		 2And he taught them
    in parables many things and said to them in his teaching,3Listen! Look! Went out one who sows to sow.4And it happened in the sowing that some [seed] fell beside the path,and came the birds and ate it.    		 he said by means of a parable,
    5“Went out one who sows to sow his seed. Some feel beside the path and was trampled, and the birds of heaven ate it.    		 Now we get to the start of the parable. Just like “once upon a time” at the start of a children’s story “he spoke a parable” or something very similar begins the actual parable. There are frequent textual variants that accommodate the various passages.
    5But some, fell on the rocky grounds, where they did not have much dirt, and immediately sprouted leaves because they didn’t have deep dirt. 6But after the sun rose, they were scorched and because they did not have root, they withered.
    7But some others fell among the thorns, and when the thorns grew up they choked them.    		 5and other [seed] fell on the rocky where it did not have much dirt, and immediately it sprouted because it didn’t have deep dirt. 6And when the sun rose, it was scorched, and because it didn’t have root, it withered.
    7And other [seed] fell in the thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and fruit it didn’t bear.    		 6and other [seed] fell on the rock, and when it grew, it withered, because it didn’t have moisture. 7And other [seed] fell among the thorns, and the thorns grew together and choked it. Note that Luke has the shortest version and that there are minor grammatical differences between all three stories. These differences are to be expected in orally transmitted material.
    8But others fell on the good ground and bore fruit,
    some a hundredfold, some sixtyfold, and others thirtyfold.
    9Let the one who has ears hear.    		 8And other [seeds] fell into the good ground, and it gave fruit when it grew up, and got larger and bore one thirtyfold, and one sixtyfold, and one a hundredfold.9And he said, whoever has ears to hear, let him hear. 8And other [seed] fell into the good ground and when it grew it produced fruit a hundredfold.Having said these things, he called out: “Let the one who has ears to hear, hear!” All three parables end with the command for those with ears to listen, though Matthew leaves out “to hear.”Note that I do not include the interpretation of the parable as part of the unit. The parable itself is a unit used in teaching, and Jesus did not include the explanation in the original statement for it. In the gospels, the explanation is given very shortly afterward to the disciples. Many scholars believe that these longer explanations are the product of the early church, and were not part of the explicit teaching of Jesus.

    In future entries I will discuss the methods further and also bring examples from other texts, then eventually take a look at Isaiah 24-27 as a passage that can benefit from the work of form, source, redaction, and canonical criticism.

  • Prayer Training

    Over on the Pacesetters Bible School News blog I have posted an entry on prayer teams and prayer training.

    Prayer training seems to be quite rare in churches. It’s possible that we generally feel that prayer isn’t something that should be taught, but rather is something that just happens. Many pastors that I’ve talked to over the last few years tell me that they had no training in prayer prior to taking up their first parish, and that it is one thing they really wish they could have known more about.

    Basic prayer training, in my view, is largely a matter of clearing the ground. We have so many ideas about what we can or cannot say to God that it interferes with our ability just to commune with our heavenly Father. (Pacesetters offers programs on prayer, which I teach with my wife.)

    But when it comes to prayer ministry, there is a great deal more that can be said. . . .
    Read more at Prayer Team Training.

  • Biblical Doctrine of Creation

    In my pamphlet God the Creator I briefly answer the following question:

    What are some broad essentials of the Biblical doctrine of creation?

    In my answer I listed the following six points. I will list the points below and expand on them, below. But first, what am I trying to do here?

    One thing that Christians who accept evolution have often neglected to do is explain how our understanding of origins fits with the remainder of Christian doctrine. We may hold differing doctrines, we may hold variations on standard doctrines, or we may have our own understanding of how these elements of our belief fit in. Possibly because these explanations seem so obvious to us, we don’t take the time to explain the details. For example, for many Christians the idea of physical death prior to the fall (Genesis 3) is simply inconceivable. They’ve never entertained the thought. Old earth creationists, ruin and restoration creationists, and theistic evolutionists all share the belief that there was physical death before the fall, though ruin and restoration creationists believe such death came after the fall of Satan from heaven.

    In the next several entries I intend to talk doctrinally. My own doctrine of salvation and the fall is relatively orthodox (especially for me! :-)). I will discuss the Biblical evidence for these doctrines, and also relate the explanations of the various schools of thought as much as possible.

    (Bolded text is from the pamphlet. The remainder is my current brief commentary.)

    • God is the creator of everything (Genesis 1:1-2:4a, Psalm 104:24, Hebrews 1:2, Romans 11:33-36)

      God as an absentee landlord is not consistent with the Biblical view of God or of humanity. The Bible writers universally consider God to be continually present and active in the world he created. They also do not exempt anything from creation.An additional text on this topic is found in Isaiah 45:7: “I form the light and create darkness, I make well being, and create disaster. I, YHWH, do all these things.” There has been some considerable debate about the translation of the word I have rendered “disaster.” It can also be rendered “evil.” But the point actually remains the same. In terms of the structure of the poetry here, God takes responsibility for the entire range of results in his creation. God is not afraid to take responsibility for his own work.
    • God creates by simple command so His word is certain (Psalm 33:6-9)

      This passage also reinforces the previous. All of everything was created by God, and he accomplishes his word by simple command. Many take this to mean that God cannot use mechanisms, that creation must occur instantaneously as the result of God’s command. This would, however, contradict Genesis 1 & 2 on the creation of humanity. In Genesis 1:26-27 God simply creates, as he does everything, by speaking, yet in Genesis 2:7, God forms man from the dust and then breathes life into him. The process differs in two descriptions of the same event.The key issues here is that God is absolutely in command. What exists, exists because God wills it and commands it. He can, as he does, command natural laws, and those continue to accomplish his will. Because God doesn’t need to be concerned with dividing his attention, he can be fully attentive to everything at once. One point here that a Christian evolutionist such as myself must deal with is that God was and is present in every moment of the process of evolution; we see the creator in his creation.
    • God put personal care into creation (Genesis 2:4b-25)Three major stories of creation tell different stories about God’s relationship to his creation. Genesis 1:1-2:4a tells the story of command and power; Genesis 2:4b-25 tells the story of personal involvement, and Psalm 104 tells the story of continuous care. This aspect of creation is easy for all of us to miss. We can get so involved in arguing God’s power or God’s method that we neglect to actually hear the main point of all these stories–how God relates to us.
    • Human beings were created in God’s image (Genesis 1:27), they were good (Genesis 1:31), and later they fell from that state (Genesis 3) This is a key element of the story for a Christian theistic evolutionist who believes in the atonement, as I do. Humanity must begin in moral innocence, have the opportunity to be in an obedient relationship to God, and then fall away from that state. This does not mean that they had to live in some sort of modern paradise, or a technologically advanced society. This state of moral innocence could occur with only the simplest of language and bone tools, for example. But an essential story of the Biblical story from the Christian perspective is humanity’s need for redemption and the sacrifice of Jesus in providing it.I’ll save my supporting arguments for their own entry when I’ll have time and space to deal with this key issue.
    • God created wisely (Psalm 104:24, Proverbs 8:22-31)The fourth creation story (Proverbs 8:22-31) connects to the third (Psalm 104) in claiming that God’s creation is wise. What this means is very interesting, but I think at a minimum it means that we can derive valuable information about God from what he has created, how he creates, and how he continues to create. God reveals himself in action.
    • God continuously cares for His creation (Psalm 104, Acts 17:26-29)Again, God didn’t start the machine and leave it running. The laws we observe are God’s will made manifest. That divine will is so consistent that it (the natural world) can be studied scientifically. Methodological naturalism is simply a stance on studying things in the best way available for their category of information.

    My next several entries in this series will deal with these elements one at a time.

  • Why not Intelligent Design?

    As reported in various newspapers and summarized on the Florida Citizens for Science web site, (Textbook Debate Still Evolving, Letter to Brevard County School Board, and Textbooks Changed under Pressure) a school board member in Brevard County wants to adopt a science textbook including two paragraphs about intelligent design. I find the introduction of these two little paragraphs into the curriculum of a public school disturbing. (Please read the articles linked, or some of my discussion will not make sense.)
    Now some will (and some have) asked, why I should feel this way. After all, I’m a Bible teacher and an advocate for increased Bible study, though not at government expense. I’m an advocate of prayer, though not state sponsored prayer. I believe that the universe is designed. So what’s my problem?

    Well, I have several problems. Primarily, though, we are talking about a science textbook, and what is introduced here is not science. The contents of science textbooks should be material that has gone through the processes of science–proposal, study through the scientific method, publication after peer review, criticism by others qualified to do the criticism, and then normally after some time of discussion, acceptance as part of the body of science.

    These paragraphs do not represent any of that. They are there because people who could not get them accepted by active scientists, experts in the relevant fields, and so chose instead the process of public relations and political pressure. They abandoned the idea of seeking facts–accurate data–and instead sought popularity. They abandoned the idea of truth, and instead sought political force. What really gets on my nerves is that these are, in general, my fellow Christians. We supposedly share a commitment to openness and honesty. Most importantly, we should share a commitment to truth and to an individual’s freedom to test it, choose it, and express it.

    Now they sell this all as an issue of free speech. Shouldn’t we allow all sides of the topic to be discussed in public schools? But that is not quite the point. The marketplace of ideas is definitely open to them. They can, and do, express this in many venues. But free speech does not imply that all speech is equal in all settings. If I write a devotional article and submit it to Scientific American, just as an example, I could hardly expect them to welcome it and publish it. That wouldn’t be because they hate religion, but because that isn’t the sort of thing they publish. My freedom to write didn’t impose upon them a duty to publish, and more importantly, it didn’t impose on them a duty to accept what I say.

    The problem clearly isn’t free speech. There are ample opportunities for our children to hear these ideas. They can find them in books and they could hear them in Sunday Schools. It’s not the fault of our public education system that people don’t make adequate use of the available facilities. Since I do not accept the validity of intelligent design theory, I would oppose it–not the expression, but the viewpoint–in church settings or religious studies classrooms. But that, at least, would be the correct venue in which it should be discussed. Nobody is cutting off anyone’s free speech here. If they were, we would hear much less about all this.

    The problem is that government authorities are refusing a state platform for them. That is their real complaint. They don’t want free speech; they want a forced audience, and the forced audience that they want is our children. Don’t let anyone convince you that adding ID theory to the classroom is a matter of free speech. It is not.

    So what about evolutionary theory taught in the classroom? I could argue the evidence for evolution, but that is not the key issue here. The key issue is that evolutionary theory has gone through the process. It has made itself open to testing and refutation. The scientists who support it have proposed and done the experiments. They have had their ideas tested now for a century and a half. Evolutionary theory is science. So is the theory of gravity, of relativity, and many of the ideas of quantum theory. Each of these is equally subject to question, and each may, in the future, be revised or replaced by something that more precisely represents the data available.

    That is what we need to teach our children in science class. Science. There is little enough time to teach real science. That is one good reason to limit what we teach to consensus science–what is agreed upon by the experts as working science. But there is a better reason. In basic education about science, we need to provide science with integrity. Not all ideas are equal, and we will, no matter what, choose some to present to our students as part of the science curriculum in middle and high school, while some will be left out. We need to make sure that what we present represents the scientific method at its best.

    The theory of evolution does that. The very element that anti-evolutionists (not creationists–I believe in God the creator and I also accept evolution), use the most in attacking evolution is one of the strongest reasons why it should be part of the curriculum: Elements of the theory are being challenged and tested on a daily basis. There is effectively no scientific disagreement on the outlines, but in the details there is an abundance of excellent science being done. The debates that anti-evolutionists cite as a weakness in fact demonstrate the great strength of evolutionary theory as science.

    If we allow a couple of paragraphs like this to enter into our science textbooks we have also opened the door to another disaster for knowledge and free exchange of ideas. We will have allowed popularity to determine the truth value of an idea or theory. I would think that my Christian brethren who have taken this position would consider the nature of their argument. Looking at polls and depending on popularity to win a debate about ideas is monstrously wrong, and should frighten any Christian. We know from our history what it is like to be in the minority, arguing for a viewpoint that we believe to be true, but is not accepted by those around us. We should treasure the free exchange of ideas. We should treasure the filter that we have in deciding the curriculum of our public (state supported) schools. When we instead try to have truth determined by popularity, we are stepping into very dangerous territory. It seems that being in the popular majority, in a country primarily of Christians, has made some of us intellectually and spiritually lazy.

    Finally, I do want to add a brief note on my theological problems with ID. These issues are not the ones that should be involved in the textbook controversy. The issues there are and should be scientific. But ID proponents are claiming the support of a broad range of people who believe in God, even theistic evolutionists. We get included when it’s convenient and excluded when our ideas are distasteful.

    I reject Intelligent Design because I believe the universe was designed by God. ID is mislabeled. It should be theistic. Further, it doesn’t prove what Christians want it to prove and what many think it proves. It proves only a level of divine intervention, not the absolute primacy of God the creator. I believe that God operates through natural processes, but I also believe God always operates everywhere. Because of that, intelligent design theory is anathema to me theologically. It’s not just God in the gaps; it is God reduced to a convenient size to be studied in a lab. I’m not surprised at the limited success ID advocates have had in producing new science. God woudn’t fit in their labs, so whatever they are studying is likely something else.

  • Textual Criticism – Briefly

    Note: This is a second excursus in my series on Biblical criticism. When I begin my next entry, dealing with the parable of the sower, I will begin by discussing textual issues and applying these principles.

    I was encouraged to make a few notes on textual criticism after I read the collection of essays The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research. This reminded me of some of the issues of textual criticism that tend to give non-scholars problems in reading the Bible.

    Non-scholars usually encounter textual criticism when there is a note in their Bible that says something like, “Other ancient authorities read . . .” or “mss . . .” followed by an alternate reading for a passage. Sometimes this starts with brackets being put around a block of text. John 7:53 through 8:11, for example, is bracketed in my NRSV Bible with the note “The most ancient authorities lack 7:53-8:11; . . .” The question many laypeople have is what are these ancient authorities, and why should they care?

    Textual criticism is simply the study of the various manuscripts, or witnesses, to the text of the Bible in order to determine the text that is closest to the autograph. “Manuscripts” here may include Greek manuscripts, lectionaries, quotes in church fathers, or versions in other ancient languages. For textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible, some of the witnesses are different, as are some of the details of practice, but in general they are quite similar. In addition, many scholars are also interested in other stages of the text. They recognize that while we use the manuscripts to determine the original text, for the person who made the manuscript, and those who used it, that was their Bible. It wasn’t a stage leading to something else. They would use it as their scripture. We can learn something about them from the way that manuscript was made and copied.

    But for this entry, I’m focusing on how we work to discover the text closest to the autograph. First, no two ancient manuscripts are completely alike. Thus we must do textual criticism in some sense before we can have a Bible. We might just decide to grab one manuscript, presuming it’s complete, and use that one, but even that is a decision about the text. In practice, translators depend on textual critics, who produce editions of the text. An edition is basically a text produced by the editors’ best conclusions about the text of each passage. Usually, it will have a critical apparatus, which is simply a listing of the other variants, or options that could have been chosen.

    The textual critic is presented with two types of evidence:

    1. External evidence – the manuscripts, quotations, and so forth, that are available to him. From these he can get a picture of all the different readings for the passage he is working on.

    2. Internal evidence – the things that are likely to have happened in copying. We know from observing how people copy that certain errors are more likely. If copying is done by ear, with one person reading a manuscript, and the other writing down what he hears, similar sounding words may be confused. Letters that look similar can be confused when copying by eye, or the eye can skip over from one word to anther that looks much like it. This can result either in duplicating part of the text or in omitting part of it.

    There are some simple rules for this. In general, in evaluating external evidence, an older manuscript is better than a newer one, simply because it is likely that it has not been through as many generations of copying. You can see that a more precise rule would be to look for how many times a manuscript has been copied, i.e. how many generations it has been through. Unfortunately, we don’t usually know that for sure. On average, however, an older manuscript will have been through less generations.

    Internal evidence is more slippery. Here are some of the basic rules:

    a. Choose the more difficult reading, provided it is not nonsense. Basically, if a scribe corrected a passage, it was probably from something he did not understand to something he did.

    b. Choose the shorter reading. This is based on the notion that scribes generally tending to add rather than to omit. This has been called into question, however, by James R. Royse, “Scribal Tendencies in the Transmission of the Text of the New Testament” in The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research. He cites studies that have found that scribes tended to leave out more than they added. It would be easy to think this is more important than it is, but remember that each of these rules is simply one piece of evidence in the whole puzzle.

    c. Choose a reading that agrees with an author’s style. We know something about how Paul wrote. If a reading is substantially different, it might be an error.

    d. Choose the reading that best explains the others. One reading may create an error that another one corrects. The one that motivates the correction must be earlier than the correction.

    You can see that internal evidence is much more subjective, but it is often the only way to choose various readings.

    This is a very short introduction. I will comment further as I examine textual issues in the passages I use for examples in this series.

    For more information see my book What’s in a Version?. For more information specifically on textual criticism, see my review of The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research. In that review I link to some more basic volumes as well.

    [Updated January 18, 2015 to correct links to my book review of The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research.]

  • Dating the Book of Daniel

    Note: This is a small excursus in my series giving an overview of Biblical criticism. In this entry I want to apply some of the material I discussed about authorship and dating to the book of Daniel. Next, I will write an additional entry on methods of textual criticism in general, and then I will continue my overview of the method by working through the Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13:1-9/Mark 4:1-9/Luke 8:4-8) applying the methodologies I’ve been discussing. Then I’ll discuss the individual methodologies in a bit more detail, and then look at Isaiah 24-27 as a block to discuss how they are applied.

    In this entry I’m going to focus on the arguments as presented by Alexander Di Lella in the Anchor Bible volume The Book of Daniel. I intend to return to the book of Daniel a number of times as I discuss Biblical criticism and other issues of Biblical interpretation, and I expect to discuss dating further as well, but Di Lella makes an essentially conservative argument for the late dating of the book of Daniel. He is also a bit more respectful of arguments for an early date than are many critical scholars, though he does reject an early date unequivocally.

    If you are unacquainted with general issues of dating in Daniel, please read my entry Determining Date and Authorship, in which I discuss the basics of how a Biblical book would be dated, and also make reference specifically to the book of Daniel. There are two major views on dating Daniel, and several compromises between these views. First, there is the view that the book contains narrative history in its stories, and that it should be dated according to its internal chronology. This has generally been the conservative view of this book. This puts it in the 6th century BCE, and therefore sees the prophetic passages as definite and quite accurate predictions of the future. The second major view, which now has the overwhelming support of the scholarly community other than conservatives (and some conservatives as well) is that the book was written during or just before the time of Antiochus Epiphanes (175-164 BCE), king of Seleucia, and that the majority of the prophecy in it is retrospective rather than predictive. Depending on the details of dating and authorship in this second view, some of the final elements of each prophecy may be predictive in nature.

    Though I don’t intend to present my own views on Daniel at any length in this entry as I’m interested in methodology here, I will note that I would reject the idea that one can a priori reject the early date because such a date would involve predictive prophecy. Indeed Di Lella does not argue that the predictive element makes the early date impossible, though some scholars would. Norman Porteous, for example, in the Old Testament Library commentary Daniel, pages 169-170 comments on the point at which the book turns to genuine prophecy (in his view Daniel 11:21-45), in which he sees an inaccurate prediction of the death of Antiochus Epiphanes. Thus, the majority of the apparent predictions in the book, in his view, are accurate, but once we arrive at genuine prediction, it is inaccurate.

    Di Lella, on the other hand, makes the following statement: “. . . it should be emphasized that in no way at all does the argument presented above [which I will discuss below-HN] impugn or even call into question the sacredness, authority, and inerrancy of the Book of Daniel which are accepted here without question as truths of the Christian faith” (p. 54). Since I do not accept the doctrine of inerrancy, I have a hard time judging this, but this is the first commentary on Daniel that I have read that both affirms inerrancy and also a late date.

    Let me summarize the basic arguments, and then look at how they can be evaluated. Let me repeat that I’m not trying to present my own view on dating the book of Daniel, but rather a general set of arguments (using Di Lella in the Anchor Bible [AB] as model), and how they might be evaluated. I will present my own set of arguments in a future entry.

    1. Language – AB suggests imperial Aramaic, 700-200 BCE, and more specifically later than the Aramaic of the Elephantine Papyri (late 5th century BCE).

    2. Internal chronology – AB rejects the internal chronology of the book on the grounds that there are extensive historical errors that make it difficult to take seriously. The errors include the date of Daniel’s exile, which does not fit any known siege of Jerusalem, and actually comes a year before Nebuchadnezzar’s accession, the presence of the Median empire in the sequence of four empires in the book’s prophecies, the madness of Nebuchadnezzar for seven years (Daniel 4) for which there is no space available in the known history of Nebuchadnezzar. Di Lella would reject moving this to Nabonidus, who is known historically to have suffered a period of madness on the fascinating grounds of inerrancy; such a correction would save the outline of the story, but not the precise setting. Darius the Mede is not identifiable as an historical character, and thus the chronology related to his reign must also be rejected, along with the entire Median kingdom. It is precisely because of these historical errors that Di Lella rejects the sixth century dating. They convince him that the genre is not history, but rather edifying stories accompanied by apocalyptic.

    3. Externally, Daniel is quoted by I Maccabees (c. 100 BCE), but is not mentioned in the section of Ben Sira, on praise of the fathers (44:1-50:21) in which he mentions Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the minor prophets as a group, but not Daniel. This seems to comfortably bracket the reign of Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175-164).

    4. Given the interpretation AB espouses of the apocalyptic portions of the book, the predictions lead nicely into the time of Antiochus and end there.

    Now this short entry is getting rather long, but I do need to comment on some of the arguments.

    1. The language is an interesting argument, and in fact it first caught my attention as an argument in favor of an earlier date. Porteous (p. 13) describes the Aramaic as “late” and states it is not earlier than the 3rd century. (His copyright date is 1965.) The AB volume copyright date is 1978. Why is this significant? Because much evidence has been discovered since then, including the Genesis Apocryphon discovered amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls. Desmond Ford summarizes the linguistic evidence in his commentary (Daniel), pp. 31-33. That dating evidence is clearly in view in the AB comments on the language, which are much less precise, as they should be. (One of his major citations is Gleason Archer, in a book I do not have. I have it on request from interlibrary loan and will likely comment further once I have it in hand.)

    2. Internation chronology is much harder to deal with. I’m simply going to comment here that your understanding of the internal chronology is heavily dependent on your understanding of the prophecies of the book as a whole. For example, until I read Porteous’s commentary when I was in graduate school (1980), I was unacquainted with the view that the Median Empire formed part of the sequence of Daniel 2 & 7. Now that may be mostly an indication of my own ignorance, but it does show that one can’t assume that interpretation, and then use it for dating, without providing support. The AB does, indeed, provide support for that view, but before you accept the argument in terms of dating, make certain that you accept the arguments that underlie that point. In addition, note that a number of solutions to historical difficulties in Daniel are apparently excluded by Di Lella’s belief in inerrancy. For example, I’ve already noted the possibility of moving Daniel 4 to Nabonidus rather than Nebuchadnezzar. Is that a valid approach? That is another topic. Here I’m simply noting that it is a possibility that’s excluded.

    3. One should be concerned about the possibility of an argument from silence. But Di Lella is not guilty of such an argument here. That Ben Sira does not mention Daniel in his list is significant, in that it indicates that it may be possible that Ben Sira did not know of Daniel. If Ben Sira mentioned Daniel, of course, we could be certain that the book was extant at that time. As it is, the more convinced you are that Ben Sira was trying to be exhaustive in his list, the more likely you are to accept that passage as evidence that Ben Sira did not, in fact, know about Daniel. It cannot, however, prove it. Note that this does put some tension on the language evidence. The latest date for the language is suggested at 200 BCE, while Ben Sira wrote around 180 BCE. One option is to suppose that the author intentionally used archaic language.

    4. This point is contingent on interpretation. There will be some circularity here, as the interpretation also depends on the dating to a significant extent. The question will be how does it all fit together best?

    Again, let me remind you that I’m just outlining some material here. I will be more forthcoming about my own views in a later entry.

  • What Billy Graham Regrets

    Newsweek has an excellent interview with Billy Graham in their online edition. I think his response to the issue of the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina was excellent. Very often we can only answer “I don’t know” to the “why” questions that people have in times of trouble. Graham provides an example and encouragement as an experienced and respected pastor in being willing to give this answer.

    But the main reason I wanted to comment on his interview was to call attention to what he said at the end: “I have regretted that I have not spent more time in prayer, in Bible
    study and in the pastoral ministry that pas­tors are usually called to
    do.” (Make sure to read the whole interview.)
    It’s so easy for those of us involved in Christian ministry of any kind to get too involved in the busy work, in the nuts and bolts of keeping ministry going. Those things certainly need to be done. But we all need to remember our focus. If we don’t make our relationship to God our priority, we’re going to regret it.