Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Bible Backgrounds

  • 50 Great Books Every Christian Should Read

    At least so says the Online Christian Colleges blog.  I received a notice of the post in e-mail.  Usually that’s not a very productive way to get me to blog about something unless you’re someone I know, and more importantly, someone who knows what I like to blog about.  So, folks, don’t make a habit of it.

    In this case, I almost didn’t bother to look at the post, as lists of things every ____ should read generally drive me nuts, but I did go and look, and there are some rather interesting items but as a list of 50 books every Christian should read, I’d say, “Not so much.”

    For example, The Talmud.  Should Christians be acquainted with Judaism to some extent?  Yes, I would agree.  But reading the entire Talmud?  Have you tried?  It really isn’t a book to be read so much as one to be diligently studied.  And no, I haven’t read all or even most of it myself.  My interests went the other direction, back to the ancient near east.  Now Enuma Elish, the Hymn to Aten, Gilgamesh, and Hammurabi’s code–those everyone should read, and in the original languages.  (No, I don’t mean that about the original languages.  Just joking.)

    What about The Purpose Driven Life, #19 on the list?  In this case, I have read it, though I must confess to a “seminary read” of large portions.  I really don’t find it profound enough to be on the top 50.  If our pastor hadn’t been preaching through it, I would never have bothered.

    There are quite a few good suggestions, though I think many will object to particular selections, such as Tillich’s Systematic Theology.  I love it, but it is really slow reading for most.  I haven’t found that many people who want to hear quotes from it.

    In any case, check out the list.  What would you add?  What would you remove?

  • Inerrancy – Romancing the Term

    I’ve previously expressed my surprise about what some people can believe about the Bible and yet call their belief “inerrancy.” As an example, I responded to Earnest Lucas’s excellent commentary on Daniel in which he maintains that one can hold both inerrancy and a late dating of Daniel. I think a good one sentence summary of the approach is to say that what is asserted by a text differs by genre, and that inerrancy refers to what the text is actually asserting.

    Thus if Jonah is fictional, it is not trying to assert an actual size for the city of Nineveh (Jonah 3:3), thus this is not an error, even if that information is incorrect. Jonah is not a book about the sizes of cities, but rather a fictional account designed to deal with other issues. (Which those are is not important right now.) If Daniel relates a history of the Babylonian Empire which does not conform to history, that is not a problem, since it is a pseudonymous work of apocalyptic, and this was a common practice in apocalyptic. If Genesis does not relate well to science, it is not a problem, because Genesis is not a science textbook.

    Now I have no problem with any of those statements as such, but I do have some problem with their relation to the doctrine of inerrancy, though not in equal measure. But before I discuss why I have this problem, let me refer to a post today by John Hobbins on inerrancy. In this he is discussing people with relatively similar views about the inspiration of scripture, but a disagreement about the words. (The views are not identical, but they are close enough for my purposes.)

    In fact, I agree with most of what I read about inspiration on John Hobbins’ blog. I think in some cases he comes out more liberal on the issue than I am, as in this post on legend and history. It seems to me that he and some others are trying to assert that they can believe both in Biblical inerrancy and also that the Bible is a collection of myths and fairy tales.

    Now I think that “myth” and “fairy tale” are actually quite complimentary terms. I have no problem with finding myth in the Bible. In fact, for many purposes I find it to be a more admirable form of literature than some sort of pure, objective, narrative history. Each has its place, but we tend to treat history as good and myth as bad.

    And therein beings the problem. I must note in passing that I don’t think that the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy says quite what some folks are saying it says. I keep getting told that it allows for all this flexibility, but when I go back and read it, it doesn’t look that way to me. But that is a side issue for me.

    I find it odd that people who can recognize the changing meanings of words in a translation context fail so miserably in seeing the “street” meaning of a word in current usage. Apart from a few people who are trying to save the word “inerrancy” for their own use, almost nobody understands inerrancy to mean that a Bible book that claims to come from Paul might have been written by someone else after Paul was dead, or that a book can claim one author but have been written by quite a different author.

    Thus when someone claims to believe in inerrancy and then writes a commentary on Daniel, for example, it is not expected that the commentator in question will say that Daniel did not write the portions attributed to him in the text. Similarly, it will not be expected that a commentary on Ephesians written by someone who espouses inerrancy will suggest that it was not written by Paul.

    John Hobbins suggests a solution:

    To which I would say, where evangelicalism rules the landscape, it is time for saner voices to take courage with two hands and patiently, ever so patiently, advocate for a broader and safer use of the word “inerrancy.” This is precisely what I see Michael Horton doing, and I commend him for it.

    I would suggest that this is a fool’s errand. People who consider themselves intellectual leaders are constantly trying to save one or another term from the people who use it. It rarely works. If one salvaged inerrancy from those who use it, one would just have to invent another term to distinguish one from of belief in inspiration from another.

    I should note that I believe that the “rescuers” of the word inerrancy have another problem, which is that I don’t think it meant quite what they claim when it was first used. But that would take a different blog post and a number of additional references, so I’m going to leave it aside for now.

    For what it’s worth, my own view is that God always speaks his Word into a human matrix, to be understood by humans according to their knowledge and referents at the time. I believe that God’s Word in a situation is always true and that the Bible is precisely what God wanted it to be. But at the same time, that human matrix was not inerrant, and it impacts the message. I’m quite certain, for example, that early hearers of the story of Genesis heard it as a literal week, evidenced by references in Exodus 20, though not in the liturgy of Genesis 1. (Nonetheless, worshipers using that liturgy would not have distinguished the liturgical presentation from the historical events as I do.)

    That means that the message God sends to me is different in some way from the message that was first heard. Hearing God’s message requires prayerful care and interpretation. Once you have heard God speak, that is truth. In addition, I believe that if we knew all that God knew about those to whom he first spoke, we would understand why things were said as they were.

    It appears that some call that inerrancy. I think I would deceive most who heard me were I to do so.

  • On the Old Testament and Vengeance

    Peter Kirk linked to my post on “an eye for an eye” in responding to David Ker’s post What to do with the vengeance in the Old Testament? Skip it!

    As a result I’ve been able to follow a rather substantial number of posts discussing this issue.  One of these comes from John Hobbins, who tells us that one can’t be a “New Testament only” Christian.  I’m glad he used the word “only” because we all should be New Testament (or covenant) Christians.  As it is I can agree with him completely.  Dr. Platypus gets somewhat more helpful as he discusses the value of some of the difficult passages, especially in the Psalms.  Bob MacDonald also provides some good thoughts and resources.

    I emphasized Old Testament rather strongly in my studies and would certainly not want to be without it as part of my spiritual life.  I wanted to link in three more posts that provide videos of presentations made recently by one of my undergraduate professors, Dr. Alden Thompson.  I also am the publisher of his book Who’s Afraid of the Old Testament God?  You can regard this as a semi-commercial announcement.

    I have not yet watched this set of videos, but having both taken classes from Alden as an undergraduate, and must more recently hosted him as teacher of several seminars, I have no doubt that he will make a valuable contribution to this discussion.  One of the things he says regularly is:  “You may not like the Old Testament, but Jesus did!”

    Links to the videos:

    Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

    The presentations were at the Toledo First Seventh-day Adventist Church.  If you’re harboring some denominational prejudices I’d urge you to lay them aside for the time it takes you to benefit from Alden’s teaching.

  • Can the Bible Be Alone?

    Clayboy asks whether “the Bible alone” is an oxymoron.  Now I sympathize with the question, because I have been dealing in another forum (the issue arises in the last 100 messages or so) with someone who seems to think that a text can have meaning with no context at all, or more precisely that the obvious meaning of English words to a 21st century audience is somehow “the meaning of the text” as opposed to something built on the context in which it was actually uttered.  Using all that ancient language and culture stuff is changing what the text actually says.

    But that is a caricature of sola scriptura, but it is one which many people in the pews of our churches hold.  They believe that by sitting down with the Bible, and perhaps a concordance, they can discover what God actually said, and they don’t need to depend on anyone else–no tradition, no outside sources, no experts.  It’s an interesting view, but I don’t believe it is what the reformers intended by sola scriptura, and I’ve never encountered anyone who could be called “Biblically trained” who held that position.  (I responded on YouTube to someone who made that claim, and yet couldn’t get his English straight, much less his Greek.)

    But there is a more serious issue with the actual sola scriptura position, part of which has been raised in other discussions around the blogosphere.  Without tradition we do not have a Bible.  It is the tradition of the church that produced the canon as we have it, and there is not a 100% agreement even now with respect to just what books should be included in the canon, and whether the canon should be (or is) open or closed.

    But there is also the question of inspiration and just what can demonstrate that a book is inspired by God–God-breathed.  There are numerous ideas, but the question I would raise is just where those standards came from.  For example, why did the early church think there should be apostolic authority behind those books to be included in the New Testament canon?  To a certain extent I can accept the standard, though not completely.  For example, I don’t care whether Hebrews was written by Paul or some other person, whether Revelation by the apostle John or some other John, or whether the pastorals are genuinely Pauline or not.  I regard them as authoritative scripture in any case.

    Why?  Tradition.  It’s as simple as that.  I don’t even regard the books of the Bible as the only ones that are inspired, nor as the only ones that give me guidance.  They are the books that God guided the church to accept as the general authority for the church, and I submit myself to that general authority.  (The sense in which I do so is another topic!)

    There’s a sort of chicken and egg debate as to whether the church or the Bible comes first.  I don’t really see the answer to that as either possible or important.  The Bible and the community of faith grew together, with one supporting the other.  People lived as followers of God for many centuries without the complete canon, and yet somehow they managed.  Abraham believed God, as our lectionary passage for the coming week says, and it was counted as righteousness (Gen 15:6, loosely).

    Somehow Abraham managed to recognize God and believe him without a canon and also with precious little tradition.

    I do believe that the Bible is foundational, but one of the reasons I believe that is that it is the most tested source of tradition and experience–the experience of the community of faith with God passed down from generation to generation.

    It should be no surprise to anyone that one of the things that attracted me to the United Methodist Church was the Wesleyan Quadrilateral.  When I came to that in reading the United Methodist Discipline (and yes, I read the first hundred pages or so before I joined) I was hooked.  I do emphasize, however, that the quadrilateral should be more of a four layer filter than a four lane highway.

    In any case, my answer would be that the Bible cannot be alone, but more importantly is not, and has never been, alone.  We should not be afraid either to drive people back to the Bible as the source or to to admit that the history of our faith, God-guided I firmly believe, was the instrument God used to produce it.

  • More on 1 Corinthians 14:34-35

    … at Evangelical Textual Criticism.  (See also Dr. Platypus.)

  • Introduction to Numbers – Cornerstone Biblical Commentary

    I’m trying to return to my pattern of posting short notes from my morning reading.  My schedule has been disrupted recently to the extent that my “morning” reading sometimes has taken place in the evening.  But today I moved from Leviticus to Numbers in Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy (Cornerstone Biblical Commentary), and I read the introduction.

    I have my standard complaint about most commentaries on books in which there are substantial critical issues, which certainly includes any book in the Pentateuch, which is that whatever the author’s approach, the introduction and notes rarely take the time to get to the nuts and bolts.  I have to assume that this is audience driven.  Not that many people will take the time to hear the arguments of why an author accepts or rejects sources; they just want to hear the view proclaimed in a scholarly tone.

    As a result, many non-specialists who nonetheless do considerable reading on biblical topics simply assume that whatever their community and church culture accepts is pretty much established.  This applies, in my experience, to both conservatives and liberals.  Any of these scholars could address these issues, I’m sure, but they don’t do it all that often.  This even reflects my experience in undergraduate Bible classes in which, for example, I learned what the two and four source hypotheses were for the gospels, but didn’t learn just how one would go about demonstrating the validity of those views.

    Thus Dale Brueggemann dismisses JEDP in the course of two paragraphs (admittedly substantial ones), while establishing a relatively moderate position that claims substantial rooting in historical sources and even eyewitness accounts, but allows for added material and redactional effort.  I can’t really call this a criticism of his work, however, because those two paragraphs are better done, in my opinion, than the average for such material in a commentary not addressed primarily to experts.

    He goes on with an excellent introduction to the structure of the book, literary style, and major themes, and provides a welcome presentation of the large numbers in the book, which covers a wide variety of arguments and solutions, occupying six pages overall.  It’s interesting to see the difference in the amount of space dedicated to this issue as opposed to source and redaction criticism, but again I would say this is audience driven.  In my experience people want a yes/no answer on Pentateuchal sources.  They want to hear more about those big numbers.

    While I like the discussion, I would object to one part of the solution.  On page 226, Brueggemann states:

    … Any solution shold work for the high numbers elsewhere in the Bible, especially analogous numbers (e.g. military counts), …

    The problem I have with this is that it is quite possible that words like ‘elep might be used differently at different periods in Israel’s history.  I think it would be foolish to assume that the language remained the same over the several hundred years between this census (if one assumes it derives from a source near the time of the exodus itself, as Brueggemann seems to do) and the census in the time of David, or various military reports during the divided kingdom.  I am nowhere near clear enough on this to assert that the solution must be different; I simply don’t see sufficient reason to require that the same solution fit all.

    I’m being fairly nitpicky here, as I enjoy interacting with commentaries as I read, but despite my picky comments, I regard this as an excellent introduction to Numbers, especially for the pastor or teacher at the popular level.  You’ll get the material that your congregation or class members are most likely to be looking for.

  • More on the Khirbet Qeiyafa Inscription

    Douglas Mangum has some important new links and notes, particularly on the tendency to try to build too much on the reconstruction of a single inscription.  The cautions that apply here could be well applied to most discoveries, and generally are not, and likely will not be.  Caution and deliberate consideration are valuable!

  • Your Brain on Inerrancy

    This video is cute and edgy and well-produced. It has all the characteristics that make a good YouTube video. Since I also don’t accept the doctrine of inerrancy, what is the problem?

    I think it perpetuates the equation of biblical literalism, the verbal dictation view of inspiration, and the doctrine of inerrancy.  I have a problem with the wide variety of doctrines that go by the name “inerrancy” but many of the folks with whom I work and worship do accept the doctrine of inerrancy, and the main difference between their view and mine is the word we use to label it.

    There are many people who believe in inerrancy, or who use the term inerrancy for what they believe about inspiration who do not accept verbal dictation and are not Biblical literalists.

    (HT: Ketuvim)

  • Oldest Hebrew Inscription Found

    The biblioblogosphere is alive with discussion of the released photo, line drawing, and preliminary translation of what appears to be the oldest example of Hebrew writing to date.  I found it originally through Evangelical Textual Criticism, but have since read quite a number of posts about it.

    I’m afraid, however, that I must be missing something here with the claim that this will change the dating of Biblical texts by hundreds of years.  Which ones and why?  I already believed some sources of the Pentateuch dated from this period, and I don’t think oral transmission would be sufficient.  In addition, following Milgrom’s dating for P & H, there is already a strong proposal that places extended texts 300-400 years later than this.

    In other words, there were serious suggestions of written texts going back this far even before this discovery.  Now it’s nice to have confirmation that such writing existed, rather than just speculation that it might/must have, at that early date, but I think it was a reasonable inference that it did.

    At the same time, knowing that such things existed in this small form doesn’t really demonstrate that the longer literary texts existed at the same time, much as I’d like it to do so.

    Perhaps I have simply always assumed written texts were quite possible substantially earlier than our earliest example of them.  The question remains quantity and quality.  Writing a small text on an ostracon and writing the final, redacted Pentateuch are substantially different things.

  • Defining Inerrancy Yet Again

    Johnny Esposito, a KJV-Only advocate, states in a recent article (HT: King James Only?) that the basic premise of Harold Lindsell’s book Battle for the Bible can be summarized as:

    • When one questions the inerrancy of the Bible compromise is soon to follow
    • When one changes their position on the Bible compromise in other areas is soon to follow

    That wasn’t where I intended to start this article, but I want to observe here that in general when one holds a position that cannot be questioned, silliness is sure to follow.  I do not mean that one cannot be sure of any positions.  In fact, for me, the more certain I am of a position, the more comfortable I am entertaining challenging questions.

    “Entertaining challenging questions” is precisely what Darrell Pursiful did in a speech Why I Am Not an Inerrantist—Even Though I Am (or Vice Versa).  I found it easily the most helpful reasonably short article on the topic I’ve read.

    Way back when I was studying Biblical languages at the undergraduate level I rejected the doctrine of inerrancy.  I’ve stuck with that position since, but then I started to encounter some weird things, such as people who claimed to believe in inerrancy and yet took more liberal positions on many Biblical issues than I do.  While I understand how the definitions work, I still find it difficult to consider positions such as a late dating of Daniel or a view that early Israelite history is largely legend to be consistent with inerrancy.

    I’m not challenging the right of people to define terms and doctrinal statements as they find it necessary, and there is a certain value in letting experts define a term, but it seems to me that clinging to a term that has a much different meaning in popular circles, while denying that meaning is a bit linguistically perverse.  I can say that Daniel is apocalyptic and that pseudonymity is a characteristic of apocalyptic literature, and I can say that Joshua is some form of legend, and that legends are, well, not entirely historical, but what does it then mean to claim in turn that the Bible is inerrant?

    My own statement of inspiration would be simply that there is nothing in the Bible by accident.  God intends it the way it is.  I discover the way in which God inspires by reading the Bible and looking at what it is.  As a Christian what other standard do I have by which to determine inspiration?  Now I see how that can be defined as inerrancy, but it is not what people in the pews hear when they hear that word—not even close.

    Thus the following resonated with me from Dr. Pursiful’s article:

    The truth is, although all early Christians agreed that Scripture is truthful in all it teaches, formal doctrines of “biblical inerrancy” have only been around for the past 200 years or so. And as we shall see, not all inerrancies are created equal.

    We should note before we go any further that the early church was not naïve in its doctrine of inspiration. The church fathers were well aware of certain anomalies in the text that called for serious theological reflection.

    Inerrancy is a bit difficult to pin down sometimes.  First there is the debate over whether it is a new doctrine or not.  The distinction between the long-held conviction of the church that the Bible is true and modern formal doctrines of inerrancy (and there are many) is important.  Secondly, I really like the phrase “anomalies in the text that called for serious theological reflection.”  That’s really good.  I often say that the contradictions are what I like most in the Bible.  After all, as a Christian I believe that Jesus was both totally divine and totally human; I should be able to handle anomalies in the text that call for serious theological reflection!

    Later, Dr. Pursiful defines this change to more formal doctrines of inerrancy:

    Now remember, the new thing that happened in the 1800’s was not that somebody invented the idea that the Bible is “free from error” or “utterly reliable.” What was new was the way this affirmation came to be defined and defended. In particular, “inerrancy” came to serve as a theological shorthand for the idea that the Bible was error-free not merely in terms of what it taught about the life of faith, but what it taught in any area in inquiry: not merely theology but history, geography, science, psychology, and so forth.

    Again that is admirably clear and, I think, correct.  Our Christian congregations, marinated in the enlightenment, naturally think that Bible should give them accurate information on the stuff that is most important to them–history, geography, science, psychology, and so forth.  When the Bible writers actually try to tell them that those things are not the most important things in one’s life, they are not well equipped to hear it.

    My own note here is that when we assure them that the Bible is factually accurate in those areas, we may often be simply reinforcing their belief that those human ways of looking at things are just as important as they thought, and making it harder for them to find the truths of eternal value.  After all,  all of our history, science, and psychology are but instant’s in time and drops in the ocean to what God has to say to us.

    I am not going to comment point by point on the article.  I’d simply recommend reading the entire thing.  The title really reflects what is going on quite accurately.

    There is an affirmation that must be made about biblical inspiration and authority.  The question in my mind is whether that statement is best made with the word “inerrancy” or whether we need to start again and shed the baggage that word carries.