Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Bible Books

  • Prologue to To the Hebrews: Continuity and Reliability

    I’m continuing to read from the commentary on Hebrews by David L. Allen (Hebrews in the New American Commentary). I’m bound to get way ahead in my reading but I want to make a few remarks about the prologue, which both Dr. Allen and I would say goes through verse 4.

    I have written on this before (comments and translation notes), and I haven’t found any reason to alter what I said in those posts on the subject. What I want to discuss here is how the prologue relates to the theme.

    I think the prologue states the theme. We will find at later points in the book that we can refine the particular nature of the situation addressed and the causes of problems that are addressed, but we already have the basic story right here. The author is interested in two major points, I think: continuity and reliability. He states these in terms of God’s relationship to his people.

    Often people get the idea that Hebrews is about discarding the Old Testament. I recall some participants in discussions I have led telling me that it is obvious that he is making the New Testament supersede the Old, or Jesus to supersede all that came before. People can become quite distressed that I do not see such an obvious conclusion. But if you are looking at the structure of the book, you realize that the entire thing falls apart if the author thinks the Old Testament is somehow wiped away. That isn’t the argument at all.

    Rather, a certain view of the Old Testament is wiped away, most particularly the view that it is the scriptures and is the end, or that in the Torah one would find the ultimate revelation of God. Rather than saying that the Torah is flawed, he is saying that God didn’t finish by presenting the Torah. There is a new center point, and that center point is the revelation of God through Jesus. I would also suggest that our author is not here saying that this is a change from what the Old Testament writers themselves would have said. I think he would maintain that he is correcting course, that the idea that the Torah was everything was never correct, but rather than it was always God who was the focus, and that until God became manifest in Jesus, we didn’t have the opportunity to see that particular radiance.

    So now he is putting the focus of all revelation on God, and letting us know that we can receive God’s message, and that we can enter into a relationship with God because that has been made possible through Jesus Christ, the exact representation of who God is. There is no suggestion here that this eliminates all that other revelation; instead it illuminates it.

    So why do I say the structure would fall apart if the author was simply discarding the Old Testament revelation? Surely he can be arguing that the Old Testament was good enough for its time, but now we have something better, and even the Old Testament writers realized they would be superseded. But I disagree. He is not simply aiming at continuity. He is aiming at reliability. Those Old Testament writers were not some kind of failure on God’s part. Rather, they were leading up to the present time (the author’s and ours!) and that chain of connections shows that not only does the revelation continue, but it can be relied upon by us, just as it was relied upon by the patriarchs (and matriarchs, for that matter). But we now have this additional communication and evidence of reliability. God did come through, did send Jesus, did and does still lead us, and will continue to do so until we reach that (to us) coming Mt. Zion.

    One of the refinements of this theme comes in chapter 11 in which we have the patriarchs represented as more faithful than they actually were in the Old Testament text. But in God’s faithfulness they are even more faithful than they would appear to us to be in their story. Well before the time of Jesus, when they were weak, he was strong.

    I’d suggest spending quite some time with this passage. I’ve read it more times than I can recall. I have the entire book of Hebrews recorded on my phone in Greek so I can listen to it in my car. But I always feel tremendously inadequate as these words roll over me and I realize the freight that has been loaded into these few sentences.

  • Starting Ecclesiastes in Sunday School

    Starting Ecclesiastes in Sunday School

    9781938434662mWhile I was off teaching Revelation elsewhere, my Sunday School class at First United Methodist Church of Pensacola studied from Harvey Brown’s new book Forgiveness: Finding Freedom from Your Past. Harvey’s book is just 40 pages (it’s in our Topical Line Drives series, and that’s the limit), and we discovered just how many questions can be raised in 40 pages!

    Today we’re starting a study of Ecclesiastes, using the participatory study guide just published in November. This guide is written by Russell Meek of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and though I may be biased as editor and publisher, I think it’s one of the best studies you could do on the book of Ecclesiastes. Still, I’m going to have to tell the class that I disagree with a number of the conclusions in the book.

    But that, you see, is the great thing. Russ presents those conclusions so well, that I’ll have a run for my money making a case against things that he says, even with him absent. And in that discussion, I hope, the members of our small Sunday School class we’ll learn how these things are done.

    We’ll be talking about date and authorship today. This is an area of biblical studies that I think lay people in the church need to understand better. They take dates given in their study Bibles and assume they are either absolute, or at least they are a scholarly consensus. But how is it that serious biblical scholars make determinations about these things. Russ’s lengthy and very readable discussion of authorship is an excellent place to start.

    As I’ve been reading Ecclesiastes in preparation for this class, I’ve been struck by the interesting question of what the inclusion of such a book in scripture means about inspiration. No, I don’t mean about inerrancy, but rather about the way in which God chooses to communicate with us. I think we are often misguided in our discussions of inspiration because we are asking the wrong questions. Then we adjust our views of inspiration according to how effective scripture is at answering our questions. But what if God never intended to answer those questions through scripture in the first place? We might be doing something like querying our physics text to learn how to deal with our emotions.

    So I will also ask the class to think about just what questions might be answered by the inclusion of Ecclesiastes in the canon as well as by the text of the book.

  • Reflections on Teaching Revelation

    Reflections on Teaching Revelation

    Revelation: A Participatory Study GuideThis past Sunday I completed teaching a four week series on Revelation for one of the Sunday School classes at Chumuckla Community Church. It’s always interesting to try to teach a short series on the book of Revelation. There is so much there, and so much background information is needed. It’s difficult to be effective.

    This series turned out well. My goal was to suggest some ways to read Revelation more profitably. We discussed the nature of the book and looked at some specific passages as examples. I hope that the material I was able to share will help folks dig deeper into other books of the Bible as well.

    Here are some points that impressed themselves on me during this series.

    1. I’m more convinced than ever that we need to read Revelation more for theology and spiritual growth and less for trying to lay out timelines for the end of the world. I find good theology and good principles in many of these passages even if we continue to disagree on the specific referents.
    2. I have a great deal of sympathy for the preterist position, even though that is not precisely what I believe. Symbols generally do find credible referents in the immediate time and place. The problem with the preterist position, in my view, is that it is easy to leave all the book’s other lessons in the past as well. Revelation spoke to its own time, but it also speaks to the future.
    3. Revelation is possibly the most violent book in the New Testament. But it’s not about the violence. It’s about God’s faithfulness.
    4. Revelation is an unfolding of the gospel. It begins with Jesus with his church/people, and it ends with Jesus with his people. The rest assures God’s people that God is paying attention and is with them even when he doesn’t appear to be.
    5. In teaching Revelation we need to emphasize the persecuted church more. When you get to the fifth seal, for example, and the souls under the altar are asking “How long oh Lord?” it helps if we understand what persecution was and is like. I have always discussed persecution as an historical phenomenon. This time I spent more time discussing the present and what some of these passage might mean viewed from the perspective of people suffering persecution right now. Like Hebrews, Revelation speaks to people suffering or soon-to-suffer great hardship. We American Christians, in our ease, are likely to have a hard time hearing the message.
    6. The most important thing a Bible teacher can so, I believe, is teach people how to study for themselves. It’s not about getting across all of my beliefs or particular interpretations. What people need is to find a way to experience God for themselves—to hear God’s voice—through the pages of scripture.

    In addition, I was impressed by how badly I need to revise and improve my study guide. I’m still very happy with the basic approach, but there is so much more that could be said. I’m going to redo the layout, expand my notes and move them to the beginning of each lesson, and spend more time in the study guide talking about the lessons one can learn in this important book about reading scripture and allowing it to change our lives.

  • Numbers 13: Biography of a Rumor

    Yesterday I was recommending the chapters in Numbers, starting around 11, as “thinking fodder” regarding the way God works with people. But there’s some really good stuff there about how people deal with people as well.

    Even though many won’t remember that it comes from Numbers 13, the most famous line from the chapter is some version of “we even saw giants there” (v. 28, NLT). It’s good to think of how we overcome the giants in our lives. I note that the Israelites were just fine until nearly the end. Some commentators object to the sending of the spies, citing Deuteronomy 1:20-23, but according to this passage, that was at God’s command. They looked, they evaluated, then they returned to the people in command.

    Those who have worked in military intelligence will know that the guys who collect the information don’t make the decisions about what is to be done. Your job is to find things out. You report to competent authorities who then make the decisions as to what action to take.

    The Israelite spies were asked to discover precisely the sort of things they reported. What they weren’t asked to do was determine whether an invasion was possible. They got ahead of the game. Now I know these guys weren’t professional spies. They were, themselves, leaders. But they didn’t separate themselves from the emotions of the moment and think the situation through.

    But the interesting thing here is to read the actual report of the spies in verses 27-29 and then compare it to the rumor that is spread in verses 32-33. Have you ever observed something similar? A small financial problem mentioned in the finance committee, if leaked, can become an imminent closure of the church by Sunday. The results of that can be much like those in Numbers 14.

    I’m skipping over the idea of divine aid in this case. The Israelites were defeated by their rumor before they’d even considered a strategy.

    Finally, I’d just note that this is one of the things I find most interesting in Torah (or the Pentateuch). It reflects human ideas and attitudes in a very raw form. Often we allow the miracles, the environment, and the very different cultural background to overtake the simple human drama that is taking place.

  • Impartation: In Which I Say I Was Wrong

    For those who are not familiar with it, impartation, at least in charismatic circles refers to passing on a gift, or even on occasion a calling or anointing when one person or persons lays hands on another. I’m not going to try to summarize the various views on this. First, I’m not fully acquainted with them. Second, that’s not my purpose.

    Bottom line is that the whole concept of things passed on via laying on of hands with prayer or blessing is something that I have not liked very much from the first time I heard of it. It sounded too much like people treating the Holy Spirit and spiritual gifts as a personal possession, sort of like that pair of socks one received for Christmas and then passed on, hopefully before it got holes in it. On a more serious note the conflict is really between an idea of complete divine sovereignty over the gifts and the idea of human involvement.

    What I have believed and taught up until now has tended to focus on divine sovereignty. God decides who to give the gifts to, and if anything human action is required at all it is simply a recognition of what God has already done. Similarly I would maintain that God does healing with or without any particular action on our part, and thus would not recognize a continuing gift of healing as such. We take action; God heals; the two don’t relate a great deal.

    Two things have combined to change my view. The first was our Sunday School study using Bruce Epperly’s book Healing Marks. I cannot point to just one place, but with support from the healing stories of Jesus, Bruce emphasizes the way in which God works with and through people. It may seem to “protect” God to emphasize how little control we have, but it doesn’t reflect the way in which scripture speaks of God’s activity in the world.

    I’m not going to go through all of the arguments here. They involve multiple chapters in the book. I think both the ideas involved with healing and of impartation share a common element, in that in both we have God’s gifts, and in both we have a danger both of losing the divine and the human elements.

    I think my way of expressing this over the last few years has tended to lose the human element.

    This coalesced in reading Numbers a couple of days ago. An amazing amount of my thinking has developed while reading the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. In this case I was reading the story in Numbers 11 in which Moses complains to God, and God tells Moses to bring 70 elders from the tribes. Numbers 11:35 reports that God took some of the spirit that was on Moses and gave it to the 70. (We later find out that two more receive the spirit, which brings up some interesting thoughts.)

    There are even some commentators who believe this “taking” of the spirit from Moses was some kind of punishment for his complaining, but I think this is contradicted by the rather vigorous way in which the complaints of Miriam and Aaron are dealt with in chapter 12. There’s some important material there I will incorporate in my comments on Hebrews later. There the special position of Moses as one who spoke with God face to face is strongly re-emphasized.

    Now this story is in no sense a proof-text for my change of view. In fact, one could read this story either way. I read it in the context of what I learned of Leviticus when studying Jacob Milgrom’s three volume commentary in the Anchor Bible series. God moves the people of Israel in the ceremonies he commands from the idea of some sort of magic or human manipulation of God to an understanding that God acts. It is not the ceremony that makes God act. For example, one offers a sacrifice, but God forgives.

    What this story did for me was outline the ideas that are in conflict. It is the spirit that is on Moses (the human) that is taken and imparted to the 70 who are gathered. We are not told of any ritual or ceremony, but there may well have been. Then at the same time God touches two people who aren’t actually there. (I commend to your attention Numbers 11-14, with particular emphasis on how divine and human action combine. It’s interesting reading!)

    God is always working, but he in scripture he is continually presented as working in and with human beings. It is possible that when you touch someone and pray for their healing, a healing “power” will go out of you and help the person for whom you are praying. It’s the “out of you” with which I have been uncomfortable. I think I’ll have to learn to live with it!

     

  • The Numerous Authorship Proposals for Hebrews

    I was reading this morning from the introduction to Moffatt’s commentary on Hebrews in the International Critical Commentary (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, Ltd, 1979), and found an interesting quote on the variety of proposals for the authorship of the book.

    Few characters mentioned in the NT have escaped the attention of those who have desired in later days to identify the author of Pros Hebraious. Apollos, Peter, Philip, Silvanus, and even Prisca have been suggested, besides Aristion, the alleged author of Mk 169-20. I have summarized these views elsewhere (Introd. to Lit. of NT., pp. 438-442), and it is superfluous here to discuss hypotheses which are in the main due to an irrepressible desire to construct NT romances. Perhaps our modern pride resents being baffled by an ancient document, but it is better to admit that we are not yet wiser on this matter than Origen was, seventeen centuries ago. … (p. xx, transliteration mine)

    I would note in passing a different view in a book I recently published, The Authorship of Hebrews: The Case for Paul (Gonzalez, FL: Energion, 2013), p. 25-26, as well as in the appendix where Dave Black provides his own translation of Origen’s comments. Moffatt quotes these in full in Greek, providing sufficient context to judge.

    My point here is not to argue for a particular author. In fact, I’ve been agnostic on the subject of authorship since the first time I studied it. While I feel that Dave Black has provided the strongest argument for Pauline authorship possible within limited space, I have not yet been moved from “possible” to “reasonably certain.”

    But other hypotheses strike me much as they apparently struck Moffatt. There is simply too little information available to make such hypotheses seem more certain than “not absolutely excluded.” The study of internal evidence requires some literature to use in comparison, and other than Luke, we don’t have that much (if any) from any of the proposed authors. If Paul and Paul with Luke as amanuensis are excluded, there simply isn’t enough material available to produce a serious study.

    I wrote about the problems of evidence back in 2007 when reviewing (or writing notes on) Ruth Hoppin’s book Priscilla’s Letter. While the process of editing and publishing Dave Black’s book has provided a better basis for the claim of Pauline authorship, I would still stand by almost everything I wrote at that time.

  • Off to the Printer – The Authorship of Hebrews: The Case for Paul

    Just sent another book to the printer, in this case The Authorship of Hebrews: The Case for Paul by David Alan Black. I’ve heard some comments about my motivations for publishing this little book (just 42 pages). Money was mentioned, along with a burning desire to uphold traditional views. Those who know me will probably realize that my attitude is more “traditional views beware”!

    Considering we’ll be retailing the book for $4.99, and the ebook for just $0.99, I don’t think money is the strongest motivator, and it happens I’m not convinced of Dave’s thesis, even though I think he’s written about as convincing a case as could be written and has poked some serious holes in the scholarly consensus.

    What I think he does accomplish is to demonstrate how one challenges a scholarly consensus. First, one has to pay one’s academic dues. Then one has to thoroughly examine the data. Dave includes some of his own translations of patristic material, for example, and does some very significant work on vocabulary, style, and theology.

    One big question that remains–and a critical question it is!–and that’s just how much weight one puts on the patristic evidence. There are, of course, details in weighing particular sources, but there is also the more general question of how likely one believes it is that early Christian authors actually knew the answer to the question.

    I think Dave does an exemplary job of laying out his case and deserves to have it challenged and discussed on technical grounds. I’m also creating a blog/book site to support this, even though it’s a small book. I wanted a place to keep Dave’s comments on authorship and to stimulate discussion of the topic. Don’t expect too much on that new site until some time tomorrow.

  • Next Steps on Hebrews Outline

    I’ve been thinking about the Hebrews outlines, but not posting them. I’ve printed out a copy of my outline and translation and I plan to color code the text according to major themes that I see in the book of Hebrews. It will be interesting to see how well that works. One test of the major themes will be what the color coding looks like, I think.

    I’ll post more on this soon.

  • The Old Testament in Hebrews – An Example

    I’ve been reading Isaiah through this year following the readings outlined for the Facebook group Greek Isaiah in a Year. This is actually my second time (mostly) through Isaiah in the LXX, though last time I stopped ten chapters short. When I saw this reading plan, I had to decide between finishing my previous start or doing it again, and I chose to do it again.

    In my reading this week I came to Isaiah 35:3, “Strengthen the weak hands and make firm the feeble knees” (NRSV). Hebrews 12:12 doubtless alludes to this particular passage, and reading it again in context, I found that it strengthens a conviction I already had, that the author of Hebrews assumes he can draw in the context of his allusions into his argument.

    Interpreters often make the assumption that New Testament writers are taking texts completely without regard to context, and sometimes this is absolutely correct. In many cases this is simply a New Testament writer, steeped in Old Testament language, making use of that language in his particular case. Sometimes, I believe, it is using a different understanding of inspiration and a different approach to interpretation than we do, but that is another topic. But in some cases, I think the usage is quite intentional, and there are a number of examples in Hebrews.

    In this case Isaiah is speaking to a similar situation to the one in which the readers of Hebrews would have found themselves: in trouble, needing endurance, needing to be assured that God would be faithful, with redemption near. Isaiah 35 is a beautiful passage of scripture, made even more beautiful by the largely unremitting gloom and doom of the preceding passages. But this admonition is part of a passage of encouragement and joy, not one of rebuke.

    Consider:

    The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad,
    the desert shall rejoice and blossom;
    like the crocus 2 it shall blossom abundantly,
    and rejoice with joy and singing.

    The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it,
    the majesty of Carmel and Sharon.
    They shall see the glory of the Lord,
    the majesty of our God.

    3 Strengthen the weak hands,
    and make firm the feeble knees.
    4 Say to those who are of a fearful heart,
    “Be strong, do not fear!
    Here is your God.
    He will come with vengeance,
    with terrible recompense.
    He will come and save you. (Isaiah 35:1-4, NRSV)

    Doubtless a writer whose text fairly drips with allusions to Hebrew scriptures, and whose audience must have been used to such text, was not unaware of the source of his text, nor did he use it unintentionally. This passage, in its own way, states the message of Hebrews.

    One of the dangers of using quotations from the book of Hebrews is simply that it is so easy to read the text out of context. Even quoting longer passages can miss the point. Hebrews 6 is frequently quoted as gloom and doom, but the author is confident that the negative implications do not apply to his audience.

    This is often read as a “buck up and get to work” passage, and certainly we are called upon to remain faithful, to wait for our salvation with confidence. But this isn’t a “you better get to work because that’s what God requires” passage. It’s encouragement.

    What’s the difference? Throughout Hebrews we find the call to be faithful. Why should we be faithful? Because God is faithful. How can we be faithful? By means of God’s faithfulness. I’m not going to quote a single text here, but rather suggest reading the book with that in mind. Look for the passages. (I’m thinking of creating a color coded text to make some of these points, but that will be some time.)

    A good example of this, however, is Hebrews 11. Many people have noticed the difference between the description of these people in Hebrews 11 as opposed to their story in the Old Testament. Moses, for example, leaves Egypt “not fearing the wrath of the king” (11:27), whereas in Exodus he is very afraid (2:14). This is the “faith view” or even better, the view from the perspective of God’s faithfulness.

    Hebrews is not a call for us to do lots of stuff so we can attain our reward. It is a call into God’s faithfulness which will, in turn, produce our faithfulness.

     

  • Some Comments on Hebrews Outlines

    I’ve posted a few links to various outlines for the book of Hebrews, though there are, of course, plenty of others. For summary, here are the main links:

    Dave Black commends Vanhoye’s work on the chiastic structure. I have a kind of perverse difficulty with chiasms. I tend to be skeptical of them precisely because I keep seeing them all over the place. At the same time, this is the best I’ve seen.

    Bob MacDonald’s contribution helps a great deal by color coding the material and helping one to see the connections.

    For a flat outline, David Reed’s outline is clear. I see it’s strengths as making the warnings stand out and connecting the doctrinal sections and exhortations. One outstanding characteristic of David’s outline is the presentation of Old Testament sources. I’m going to mention one of these in my next post.

    What I’m aiming for, however, is to make the themes that carry through the book clearly visible in the outline presentation. I’m going to try a flat outline plus color-coding and see how that works.

    So I’ll be commenting on all this some more as I play with it.