Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Exegesis

  • Lent with Lectionary and the Mosaic Bible

    It’s been some time since I posted on the Mosaic Bible in connection with lectionary reading, but we’re entering an excellent season for using these tools together.  (For what it’s worth, I use The Text this Week for the lectionary passages.)

    While the passages don’t match for the first week of Lent, the Mosaic Bible reading does include Psalm 51 which is one of the Ash Wednesday passages.  But this isn’t the most important issue.  The readings are valuable and will provide an additional resource, including the scriptures (Gen. 2:15-17 3:1-7, Psalm 51, 1 Peter 3:13-22, and Matthew 4:1-11, which parallels Luke 4:1-13 from Lectionary year C).  There is a good reading from John Charles Ryle, a discussion of sacrifice and how it runs counter to our culture by Eileen Button, along with a couple of meditations that could be useful in your worship service.

    Again, I find the Mosaic Bible an exceptional devotional resource and frequently an aid to study following the lectionary as well.

  • On Etymological and Anti-Etymological Fallacies

    Clayboy has an excellent post on preachers who say “What the Greek really means…” or words to that effect.  I was drawn to this one because of my own experience.

    My wife tells me that when we first got married she quickly got used to watching me during sermons.  I need to tell you that my wife is extraordinarily observant and will catch people–especially me–trying to conceal feelings and reactions.  She told me that I was very good at concealing my reaction, but she would see me get a certain fixed expression on my face whenever a preacher said “What the Greek really means …”  (They rarely do it with Hebrew, but for what it’s worth, the comments on Hebrew are generally less accurate than those on Greek.)

    Often the preacher is simply replacing he word in his English translation with one that is possible, though not necessarily probable, but which better supports his point.  Besides the inaccuracy, I dislike the implication that someone with a couple of years of Greek can correct the work of translation committees in such an authoritative fashion.

    I also, however, understand the reservations expressed by Bob MacDonald in the comments in reminding us that etymology has value.  It can be useful in studying the history of words or in suggesting meanings for derived forms for which we have too few examples in the literature.  Of course, the context of the word in actual used, studied as synchronically as possible, governs, but the etymology can be very useful.

    I’ve encountered a few people who have heard of the etymological fallacy, and some of the very careless uses of etymology, especially in ancient near eastern studies, and have therefore determined that any use of etymology must be a fallacy.  There are legitimate uses.

    My suggestion to preachers and teachers has always been to use whatever skills they have in the original languages for they’re worth in preparing to teach, but to avoid making the sermon into a language lesson.  There are, after all, many factors other than the structure of language in understanding a text.

    I recall one professor I had in graduate school who was incredibly good at the structure and vocabulary of a language.  I took readings in Biblical Aramaic from him and I value highly the time I spent in his classes.  But while he could analyze the nuts and bolts better than anyone I have encountered, before or after, I would not rely on him for the exegesis of a passage.  The only thing he cared about were those nuts and bolts.  Which is fine–I’d build on his foundation any day.

    The problem, as I see it, is that when we use the language to give a single word for “what the Greek really means” or provide a few synonyms, we imply that getting the right gloss for the word is what using Biblical languages is all about.  It’s much better to learn to express the result in good English–assuming that’s the language in which we’re preaching.

  • 2 Corinthians – The Importance of the Story

    I’m reading Frank J. Matera’s fine commentary on 2 Corinthians, and today was reading about Paul’s recitation of his history with the Corinthians as the basis for what  he was about to teach them.  I warn you that this post is only partially about 2 Corinthians.  It is more broadly about the importance of seeing the stories involved in each passage of scripture.

    The word “story” gets used a great deal when talking about Biblical interpretation these days.  I want to be careful in explaining how I am using it here.  I am not suggesting that we each have a story (though we do) and that any story is equally valid.  Rather, I’m suggesting that the story of God’s revelation is important in understanding scripture overall, and that the particular stories of prophets, apostles, and audiences are critically important in understanding and applying passages effectively.

    More than one story can intersect as well.  In both letters to the Corinthians we can look at a story of God revealing himself to the believers in Corinth, using the apostle Paul and others in doing so.  There is the story of Paul living out his life as an apostle of Jesus Christ.  There is a story of preservation in that this content is made available to us.  Finally, there is a story of God bringing his word to me and to you in our particular circumstances.

    This doesn’t mean that just any story will do and that we must give equal credence to all stories.  In fact, paying close attention to the stories will bring us to a more focused view of the meaning of various passages.

    No commentator that I know of ignores the story of Paul’s interactions with the Corinthians.  I have previously enjoyed Gordon Fee’s commentary on 1 Corinthians, which I regard as the best single-volume, pastor accessible commentary I have ever read.  Fee is very concerned with Paul’s story as indeed he must be.  Similarly Matera is very conscious of that continued story in the commentary I’m currently reading.  I bring these two together, because both relate the story in such a way as to preserve the unity and the coherence of both letters.

    In 2 Corinthians, the story helps us see some important elements of being a servant who proclaims God’s word.  Paul can sound quite boastful as he defends his own ministry and integrity.  He is quite conscious of the problem as he writes, but nonetheless he knows that his integrity, his calling, and his reliability are inextricably linked to the proclamation of his gospel.

    This second letter, or more likely fourth letter assuming we’re missing two, teaches that the gospel manifests itself not merely in a set of beliefs, but also in a life.  It is especially important for those chosen to proclaim the gospel to display the gospel in their lives.

    I think 2 Corinthians is particularly susceptible to being mined for theological quotes, because the letter as a whole is difficult, yet it so obviously contains many theological gems.  But we may miss the emphasis of those gems by pulling them out of their setting.

    Let me illustrate this from 1 Corinthians, which I think is also very subject to quote mining.  Chapter 12 is frequently used in charismatic circles as a chapter about gifts.  The emphasis is on determining just what each gift means and what the person having that gift will be able to do.  But Paul is not primarily attempting to catalog gifts.  His concern is with the source of these gifts and how they are to be used.  He’s telling the church in Corinth that the gifts that they have are to be used in unity under the authority of the one Spirit.

    Chapter 13 is a beautiful chapter, but frequently those talking about gifts and worship skip straight over it to get to chapter 14 where we’re talking about nuts and bolts again–fun stuff!  But Paul didn’t just let his mind wander into some special spiritual realm in order to write chapter 13.  Read it carefully with chapters 12  and 14, and you’ll see how Paul’s definition of love is also a way to describe how one uses God’s gifts under God’s Spirit.  It connects closely with what precedes and follows it.

    Note here that in narrowing he focus from a general treatise on gifts to a discussion of the source and purpose of those gifts, we also broaden the discussion to cover Christian behavior in general.  Chapter 12 provides a pattern for using any and all of our gifts, talents, and resources, and then chapter 13 names that “love” and expands on just what it means.

    Chapter 14, in turn, is frequently mined for quotes to apply to almost any worship setting, but the fact is that most of our churches do not have a worship service like the one in Corinth that they need to bring into line with God’s Spirit.  Be honest now!  How many churches can say that at their worship services, “each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation” (1 Corinthians 14:26 ESV)?

    Yet I’ve heard verse 40 (“decently and in order”) used to argue that one can’t make any change in the bulletin at all, or that nobody other than the pastor and designated readers should speak.

    Getting into the pastoral situation in which Paul finds himself would help us apply this properly.  Perhaps we should move our focus from verse 40, as important as that is, and look more at verse 26.  When we actually have two or more people wanting to speak at once, then we could try working on some of the other verses.  Right now, most of the churches I visit are singularly short on “lessons” and “revelations” not to mention the rest.

    To return to 2 Corinthians, I am getting the feeling that God is challenging me through Paul’s experience to make myself a better example of the gospel that I claim to teach.

    But watch out even there, because 2 Corinthians also tells us about God using the weak.  How to I make myself a better example?  I let God use my weaknesses.  The gospel, after all, is about grace, not about my strength or brilliance.

  • A Look at Reader’s Version of Greek and Hebrew Bible

    A few days ago I found the Reader’s Version of Greek and Hebrew Bible (HT: Tim Ricchuitti), and while I think it is a good tool, I greet such tools with mixed emotions and I would like to point out some excellent uses for it, as well as some not-so-excellent uses.

    Much too often students see learning Greek and Hebrew (or any other language) as ending when one can use the proper reference tools to manage to gloss a text in the source languages.  I recognize that for many, that is really as far as you’re going to go.  That level of ability will allow you to read commentaries based on the source texts more effectively and to understand discussions of various translation and exegetical issues better.  It does not, however, constitute understanding the language in question.

    Such understanding comes through a combination of studying the various aspects (morphology, grammar, syntax, and so forth, not to exclude rhetorical issues), and becoming comfortable reading the text–lots of text.  (Speaking and hearing are also very valuable wherever possible.)  To use myself as an example, I can read most Biblical texts without reference works at hand.  Normally I don’t do so–I tend to check and recheck options, because I may be simply filling in a gloss from memory rather than understanding the word or expression.  By contrast, I “read” Syriac like many folks with a couple years of Greek read Greek–with all references open and painstaking work.  I’m not sorry I spent the time getting my Syriac to this point.  It allows me to check textual references, for example, but I would not really call it “reading.”

    One of my Greek teachers, with whom I spent a couple of pleasant years reading New Testament epistles, was Dr. Sakae Kubo, who also edited the Reader’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament.  Dr. Kubo would emphasize to us what we should and should not do with this tool.  Its purpose was to allow us to read larger quantities of Greek, not to substitute for learning vocabulary.  And believe me, Dr. Kubo could make you wish you’d memorized your vocabulary should you choose the path of laziness!  (There is now a New Reader’s Lexicon.)

    This online tool extends the vocabulary concept to grammar, giving a reader the opportunity to either check his basic knowledge of morphology or to cheat himself of the value of truly becoming proficient.  Knowing the basics of a languages morphology is even more important, in a sense, than simply knowing vocabulary, because it impacts how you understand every word.  So again, this morphology (or the morphology you find in your Logos or other Bible study software) is again a mixed blessing.  It can either help you become more proficient or it can cripple you and become a crutch.

    The difference will be a matter of discipline.  Do you become dependent? Do you force yourself to actually learn once you correct yourself according to such a tool?  Only you can make sure you get the right things from a tool such as this.

    There are several different modes of reading that I believe are of value to a student of Biblical languages, or of any language you are trying to learn to read:

    1.  Rapid reading.  This is important for true vocabulary building as well as for building your proficiency.  It allows you to see how words relate to one another and how ideas are expressed in a particular language.  The person who works his way through a passage looking up one word at a time and consulting charts for morphology will miss this level.  Further, I believe vocabulary will always remain difficult to memorize if one has never seen it in context.  I combined extended reading in Hebrew with memorization of all words that occurred more than 5 times in the Hebrew Bible.  I don’t regret one moment spent on either activity.  Indeed there are times when I wish I’d pushed it further when I was younger!

    2.  Study. In this case, rather than considering a passage read because you think you have basically “got it” you dig in study details and recheck things that you think you might know.  I know that even after writing a study guide to the book of Hebrews, for example, I still like to read a passage with all references handy.  You never know when someone else’s passing comment will give you a new insight.  This is what you practice in the early stages of Greek class.  Hopefully you will become much more effective at it over time.

    3.  Memorization. I’ve seen only a few people recommend this.  I suspect more would like to, but they know people react negatively to memorization, especially in a foreign language.  My first and second year Greek teacher at Walla Walla College (now university), Lucille Knapp, required a few verses of memorization of all students.  You should have heard the complaints!  But it was a tremendous blessing.  I’ve continued the practice, though there are only a few passages that are at the top of my memory.  I tend to go to memorizing something new rather than reviewing the old.  But even so, reviewing old passages will bring them back pretty quickly.  In the meantime, I find that vocabulary items and phraseology in those passages come to mind as I read elsewhere, even after I’m pretty sure I couldn’t simply recite the entire passage.

    As I said earlier, the key here is to use tools such as this to drive your learning rather than to substitute for it.  Unfortunately, having both taught Greek and Hebrew (infrequently) and tutored students, I have found that many don’t have that discipline.  My warning here is that if you don’t, you’ll make this into a crutch.

  • St. Gregory the Theologian on Ransom and the Bronze Serpent

    I was delighted to find this quote via the Orthodox Study Bible, though I must add to my complaints about that edition the fact that they cite church fathers by name, but without providing a reference to the particular work.  A visit to the St. Pachomius Library and then ewtn.com resolved the latter question.

    The quote is from St. Gregory the Theologian’s Second Paschal Oration, XXII:

    TWENTY-TWO

Now we are to examine another fact and dogma, neglected by most
people, but in my judgment well worth enquiring into.  To Whom was
that Blood offered that was shed for us, and why was it shed?  I mean
the precious and famous Blood of our God and Highpriest and Sacrifice.
We were detained in bondage by the Evil One, sold under sin, and
receiving pleasure in exchange for wickedness.  Now, since a ransom
belongs only to him who holds in bondage, I ask to whom was this
offered, and for what cause?

If to the Evil One, fie upon the outrage!  If the robber receives
ransom, not only from God, but a ransom which consists of God Himself,
and has such an illustrious payment for his tyranny, a payment for
whose sake it would have been right for him to have left us alone
altogether.

But if to the Father, I ask first, how?  For it was not by Him that we
were being oppressed; and next, On what principle did the Blood of His
Only begotten Son delight the Father, Who would not receive even
Isaac, when he was being offered by his Father, but changed the
sacrifice, putting a ram in the place of the human victim?  Is it not
evident that the Father accepts Him, but neither asked for Him nor
demanded Him; but on account of the Incarnation, and because Humanity
must be sanctified by the Humanity of God, that He might deliver us
Himself, and overcome the tyrant, and draw us to Himself by the
mediation of His Son, Who also arranged this to the honour of the
Father, Whom it is manifest that He obeys in all things?

So much we have said of Christ; the greater part of what we might say
shall be reverenced with silence.  But that brazen serpent [Num. 21:9]
was hung up as a remedy for the biting serpents, not as a type of Him
that suffered for us, but as a contrast; and it saved those that
looked upon it, not because they believed it to live, but because it
was killed, and killed with it the powers that were subject to it,
being destroyed as it deserved.  And what is the fitting epitaph for
it from us?  "O death, where is thy sting?  O grave, where is thy
victory?"  Thou art overthrown by the Cross; thou art slain by Him who
is the Giver of life; thou art without breath, dead, without motion,
even though thou keepest the form of a serpent lifted up on high on a
pole.

    There are two elements that particularly attracted me to this quote.  The OrthSB quotes the final section about the serpent, which goes well with this week’s lectionary texts.  I like the idea that it was precisely the fact that the serpent on the pole is dead that provides the healing.  He is a defeated serpent.  It would also provide some interesting context to the worship of the serpent up to Hezekiah’s time, that is until Hezekiah broke it up (2 Kings 18:4).  This differs from part of the interpretation I provided yesterday in my lectionary notes.

    If you’re missing out on the eastern church fathers regarding the atonement, you are missing out on a lot.

  • Psalm 107 and Artificial Divisions

    I did the Old Testament/Psalms portion of my lectionary reading today from the Jewish Study Bible.  The notes draw attention to the difficulty in separating Psalm 107 into the next book.  The division between books 4 and 5 of the Psalms occurs between Psalm 106 and 107.  But these divisions are later than the text itself.

    One should be aware that the Psalms are a collection, and that they are individually composed.  This makes their context within the book somewhat different in nature than the context of a particular chapter in another book.  For example, when I look at a chapter in Samuel-Kings, I look for it’s place in the overall scheme of the history presented.  In Isaiah or Jeremiah, while I realize that individual oracles were written at different times, I look for some sort of thematic arrangement.  The Pslams are a bit looser than that, or at least we are less certain of just why the collection was arranged.  Certainly, it is a collection of material by more than one author.

    The Jewish Study Bible points out that Psalm 107 fits into the theme of Psalms 103-106, and indeed resembles them more than it does Psalm 108.  They also suggest moving the word “Hallelujah” from the end of Psalm 106 to the beginning of Psalm 107.  I would need to look at this further, but I am less impressed with that suggestion, even though I suggested that the Hallelujah at the end of Psalm 104 be moved to the beginning of Psalm 105 when I wrote on it in graduate school.

    That change would result in an envelope of Hallelujah around Psalm 105 and again around Psalm 106, while Psalm 103 and Psalm 104 have an envelope of “Bless the LORD, O my soul.”  I think that single move I suggested back then works very well.

    The thematic difference is more impressive, but I do see some thematic ties that point in both directions.  I’m not certain this division should actually be changed, though we should realize it’s later than the original collection, if “original collection” is even valid in reference to the Psalms.

    I’m going to link to Bob McDonald at Bob’s Log,who has done much more work on the Psalms than I have (and that’s an understatement!), in the hopes that he will comment.

  • Thoughts on Leviticus 1

    I’ve now read through the first chapter of Leviticus using the Cornerstone Biblical Commentary on Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.  I want to caution readers that I’m reflecting on and responding to the text of the commentary, and not just repeating it.  If I don’t identify a thought as coming from Baker (David W. Baker, author of the Leviticus portion), don’t blame him for it.  I will try to clearly identify those portions.

    I decided to add a bit to my study by trying a new way to use the Orthodox Study Bible, which I have already reviewed negatively.  Since the translation tends to annoy me, especially in the Old Testament, I’m reading the Biblical text in Greek from Rahlf’s (on which the introduction says the translation was based), and then reading just the notes from the Bible.  I’ll comment on this a bit more below.

    One theme I’m following throughout the commentary is worship.  Baker used the phrase “handbook for worship” back in the introduction (p. 4) and I want to see how he works that out.  In his comments on the first chapter, he has been very clear.  On page 24 he introduces the question “What can we take from this chapter that will help us in our worship?”  He continues with about 1 1/3 pages of discussion.  I think a key to this is his comment that:

    …The whole being, not just the intellect, would have been caught up in this celebration of worship for the God who held life itself in his hand, who gave blessings and heard prayers, and who even smelled the scent of his people’s worship.

    Is not our contemporary worship too often more cerebral than sensory, thinking about God rather than celebrating him? … (p.25, emphasis mine)

    Baker goes on to indicate that beliefs and thinking are important as well, but that we are perhaps not balanced.

    What struck me throughout, and was mentioned in other sources I read on this book as well, is that the tabernacle worship was very visual, or indeed more broadly sensory.  One doesn’t get the impression of a quiet place of meditation, or a building of one’s personal relationship.  One’s gift is public, presented in the community at a tabernacle in the center of the community, to a God who manifests his presence in that tabernacle.

    All of the introductions also emphasize how revelation comes from the tabernacle.  God shows his presence there and he speaks to the community from there.  Leviticus is largely presented as divine speech, and this speech comes from that center (Lev. 1:1).  Often we–and I am certainly guilty here–present hearing from God as an individual activity to be done in our times of devotion, personal prayer, and reflection.  Leviticus presents a very different picture of God speaking in, from, and about the various rituals of corporate worship.

    The introduction from the New Interpreter’s Study Bible points out something interesting about the structure.  They note that the book has 36 speeches of God, introducted by “the LORD said.”  In addition, there are twelve major summarizing statements which tend to divide the book into 12 parts.  These kinds of structural elements are often subject to subjective judgment (NISB points out two minor summaries as well), but do indicate an intentional and careful creation of the final form of the book, irrespective of how one dates it.

    In reading from three sources this morning, the Cornerstone commentary, the NISB, and the Orthodox Study Bible, there was one issue on which three divergent opinions were expressed.  Baker understands the laying on of hands as indicating that the animal is a substitute (p. 22), and he dismisses the idea of indication of ownership.  The NISB, on the other hand (p. 148, note on Lev. 1:4) states that this laying on of hands indicated ownership.

    The Orthodox Study Bible phrases it differently, and I think this expression is consistent with Orthodox theology.  (Perhaps one of my Orthodox readers can confirm this for me or correct any error).  It says:

    Here, the worshiper placed his hand on the head of the animal and killed it, and in so doing united with the offering; for the animal’s death became the death of the offerer. … (p. 118, comment on Lev. 1:4)

    I am going to keep those three expressions in mind as I continue this study.  Which best expresses the understanding of sacrifice in Leviticus?  In protestantism there is a certain desire to get a “pure” substitution out of Leviticus, but I don’t see that clear of an expression.  On the other hand, Baker’s comment that ownership was already indicated by the worshiper bringing the animal, so what was added by laying on hands, is a cogent criticism of the “ownership” idea.

    It seems likely to me that the idea of identification, which the OSB then carries forward to the identification of the believer in baptism with Christ’s death, is closer to the thought of Leviticus.  Milgrom (150-153), however,  makes a fairly strong case for hand-leaning as an indication of ownership, and dismisses identification because of its magical nature.  This will be one to watch and think about as my study progresses.

    As a final note, I did find the OSB much more usable when I did not read the translation.  I’m going to continue the practice of reading the scripture from the Greek and then reading the notes while ignoring the translation for awhile.

    Abbreviations:

    OSB – Orthodox Study Bible

    NISB – New Interpreter’s Study Bible

    Milgrom – Milgrom, Jacob.  Anchor Bible:  Leviticus 1-16.

    Baker – Leviticus portion written by David H. Baker, of the Cornerstone Biblical Commentary on Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

  • Stories in a Chronological Context

    Several things over the last couple of weeks have called my attention to time.  My pastor preached about it last week, speaking of times of God’s extended silence.  I lost some of it while being sick this week which always makes me a bit tense.  Then I received a copy of 24/7:  A One Year Chronological Bible, which puts Bible readings into a chronological framework.  (I’ll get around to reviewing the Bible in a later post.)  Finally I was asked about God’s answers to prayer and the frequencies of his miraculous intervention.

    As Christians when we read scripture we need to be aware of these long periods of time.  There are times to lose our sense of times, especially when our liturgy calls us to become more aware of eternity and less aware of the present.  It is rare in my experience that the liturgy is successful in this call, but it is certainly worth it, and should be more frequent.  But the very experience of eternity impinging on our limited, dare I say puny, time requires that we be aware of time.

    Stories, on the other hand, tend naturally to give a false impression of time.  You cannot tell a story of a long period of time whilst truly giving the full impression of the extended time of waiting involved.  Frequently you’ll see phrases like “after a long time” or “after several months” or even “years passed.”  For the reader, whether it is a few days or a few years, they are passed in just a moment.

    Which in the ordinary course of reading a story is a minor issue.  You know that time passed for the characters, and you’re glad you don’t have hundreds of pages narrating when they ate, went to bed, got up, or went to the toilet.

    But when you go to reading scriptural stories, which provide us with an example (1 Corinthians 10:6), you need to think about this.  How long was it between one thing and the next.  Consider for a moment Judges 13:1:

    The Israelites again did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, and the LORD gave them into the hand of teh Philistines forty years.  (NRSV)

    Now how do we normally read this story?  Well, when I got it in church, I heard immediately about the arrival of the angel and then we wandered through the story of Samson as one overwhelming chain of miracles.  Of course, with all this miraculous intervention by God, we also shook our heads over Samson’s terrible failures.  How could he, when God was so obviously with him?

    But that view of the story misses two important things.  First, those forty years.  Forty years ago it was 1978, and Jimmy Carter had been president for nearly two years.  Forty years ago I was in college.  Forty years ago the PC was a pretty marginal idea.  Forty years ago there was no internet.  Forty years is a long time, and the Israelites had been under foreign domination for that length of time.

    Second, there’s the lifetime of Samson.  While the story of Samson can be covered in a Sunday School lesson or so, at least as stories are commonly covered in Sunday School, we’re told that Samson judged Israel for 20 years (Judges 16:31).  Twenty years is an awful lot of lifetime in which to hide those miracle stories.  It may be that Samson spent years between those miraculous interventions wondering whether God was going to do things for him.  Yes, we’re told he always had his strength, but it seems to have come into play only rarely.  All things considered, I would guess that Sampson did often long for God’s more direct intervention

    We can apply this principle to the entire Bible story.  I’m frequently asked why God doesn’t act today in the way he acted in Bible times.  Which Bible times?  Do we refer to the hundreds of hears the Israelites spent in slavery in Egypt?  Or perhaps we’re looking for century after century of the divided kingdom.  Maybe instead we should think about the 400 years or so from the time of the return from the exile to the opening pages of the New Testament.  Sure, we have a few interventions under the Maccabbees, but would you really want to suffer what those guys did in order to get a couple of divine interventions?

    My point here is certainly not that we should pray less, or ask less of God, nor is it to cut off hope.  More importantly, I think we need to cut off excuses.  We shouldn’t claim that God is more absent from our lives than he was from the lives of people in “Bible times.”

    Yes, there are moments in time when God’s intervention is pretty frequent, but even then remember that we are being told a few stories that cover a long time.  The book of Acts, for example, relates around 30 years of the history of the early church.  If we spread the number of miracles recorded in Acts over 30 years of the modern church, is it possible that people would complain bitterly about God’s absence?

    Stories are wonderful.  They can be encouraging or instructive.  But in the Bible they form part of a history of how God has intervened.  Understanding how they fit into time can be very important as we try to learn the lessons they offer for our lives.

  • Sacrifice then and Now

    What meaning is evoked in people’s minds by the word “sacrifice?”  One of the things I like to do when teaching is to simply write a word on the board that is commonly used in Biblical and/or Christian discourse and get people to give me various things that this word means to them.  I try not to specify the context too closely.

    The other day I did this while teaching a bit on the tabernacle service, and its relation to the theme of Hebrews 7-9.  Yes, I know, big subject.  But I started by writing the three words “temple”, “priest”, and “sacrifice.”

    The result was not entirely unexpected, but was instructive.  I’m going to stick with the word “sacrifice.”  The group focused on giving up things for others or for some benefit for oneself.  For example, one person talked about giving up certain things in life in order to pursue an avocation for tennis.  Others talked about sacrificing in order to help the poor.

    It is probably indicative of the group involved that, even though we were in Sunday School class, the “church” meanings did not come up.  When I brought up the idea of sacrifice for sin and the various ways in which that might be understood, people acknowledged it with an “oh yeah.”

    Now this was not a stupid group of people. Far from it.  They were one of the most interactive and constructive groups with whom I have had the privilege to work recently.  But what was uppermost in their minds was not quite entirely unlike a picture of sacrifice in the ancient world, but it was pretty close.

    The idea of offering a sacrifice “to” anyone–God, for example–again did not come up.

    When I have done a similar exercise with more conservative groups I will likely get all the words that relate to sin and atonement, but they will often miss the idea of a sacrifice in order to accomplish something, a simple offering for thankfulness, or the fairly common purification sacrifices.  Those are ideas that are not part of either the liberal or conservative universes.

    So how does one read and/or teach Hebrews in such a context?  First, I consider my use of that exercise completely justified.  I can get an idea of where people are, and then point out the differences and similarities between their view of sacrifice and that of the ancient world.

    Elements that may be missed by various groups include:

    • Any concept of substitution
    • Purification (clean and unclean)
    • Thankfulness
    • Appeasement
    • Magical rituals in which the animal is slaughtered less as a sacrifice and more as a part of the magical ritual.
    • Sacrifice as part of the continuing liturgy.

    There is a difficulty here, I think, in teaching a book like Hebrews without having some exposure to sacrifice, priesthood, and temples in the ancient world.  A good start on that exposure would be to look at the sacrifices as taught in Leviticus especially, but such a process tests the patience of the best of classes.

    I’m not one to maintain that the author of Hebrews was some kind of expert on the Torah.  On the other hand he certainly did have a working acquaintance, at least with the LXX version of it, and he would not necessarily see sacrifice in the same way we do.  In order to get some portion of his perspective, we need to do some reading of that same literature.

    Even simply looking at each of his quotes and perhaps their Old Testament context will be inadequate.  We need somewhat of a picture of how ancient Israelite religion worked, placed in an ancient near eastern context, before we can learn how one New Testament author wanted to change, or better, <em>transform</em> it.

  • Will We Let the Text of Scripture Change Us?

    On The Rev’s Rumbles (HT: Shuck and Jive) there is a discussion of Biblical authority. The writer quotes the following assertion favorably (from Kenneth Cauthen):

    NO CHRISTIAN ALLOWS THE BIBLE TO TEACH AS THE AUTHORITATIVE WORD OF GOD WHAT IS KNOWN OR BELIEVED (FOR WHATEVER REASONS) TO BE EITHER UNTRUE OR IMMORAL.

    EVERY CHRISTIAN FINDS WHAT THE BIBLE TEACHES AS THE AUTHORITATIVE WORD OF GOD TO BE IDENTICAL OR CONGRUENT WITH WHAT IS KNOWN OR BELIEVED (FOR WHATEVER REASONS) TO BE TRUE AND RIGHT.

    There is a great deal of truth in that statement. I can certainly observe these mechanisms in place as I discuss interpreting Bible passages. Try asking a group of Christians why they regard Leviticus 19:18 as a universal and binding command, but feel that they can ignore Leviticus 19:19, for example. There are certainly good reasons in Christian hermeneutics to do so, but those hermeneutical reasons are not the ones you are likely to hear.

    At the same time, such a statement can certainly be taken too far, whether or not it was intended by the author. (My own exposure to this particular author is limited to the quotes in this blog post, so please don’t take me as commenting on him; rather I’m commenting on the blog post that contains them and on some general approaches.) It’s easy to assume that nobody can change their impression of what is right and wrong based on their reading of a work they regard as authoritative. Such a change can be good or bad.

    It’s because of such issues that I think we should all spend time thinking about why we believe what we do, how we come to ethical decisions, and if we believe we base our decisions on the Bible, how we interpret what we read.

    I have frequently heard someone say that they do something because the Bible plainly says so, but when I point out another passage that speaks just as plainly taken at the same level of context as the first, they find a quick explanation for why it does not apply. The interesting point is to ask whether the same explanation will work for any similar scripture.

    Since one of the reasons one might reject Leviticus 19:19 while accepting Leviticus 19:18 is simply that Jesus reaffirmed Leviticus 19:18 (Love your neighbor as yourself), let me try again from Leviticus, this time with passages not so clearly affirmed (or not). Leviticus 18:22 is commonly read as forbidding homosexuality, and is used regularly by Christians as such. It is one passage regarding which I have heard the expression “the Bible plainly says.”

    When that was once quoted to me, I referenced Leviticus 19:33-34:

    Do not take advantage of foreigners who live among you in your land. Treat them like native-born Israelites, and love them as you love yourself. Remember that you were once foreigners living in the land of Egypt. I am the LORD your God. (NLTse)

    The immediate answer? “That’s different. Things are different now.”

    Now my point is not to debate just how these two texts would apply today. Rather, I would like to point out that if you quote one as “what the Bible plainly teaches” and then find reasons to avoid the other, you are not truly advocating “what the Bible plainly teaches” (an impossible task in any case), but are applying some other means of producing your result. That doesn’t mean you’re wrong on the result, but the process is not what you claim.

    I would argue that if “confirmed by Jesus” is the key, then Leviticus 19:33-34 has much better evidence of having been reaffirmed by Jesus than does Leviticus 18:22, though I actually think the “reaffirmed by Jesus” is not the best approach in any case.

    For me there’s a three step process, broadly described. The first is to ask just how I’m approaching the scripture. The second is to try to look at scriptures consistently. the third is to ask just how that might enlighten my decision making. I think God intentionally didn’t give us a working “plain meaning” model because he preferred us to go through the hard work of evaluating and making decisions.

    There is much in scripture that I believe should change me, or to be more accurate that God the Holy Spirit should use in changing me. I have to intentionally get away from using ad hoc interpretation to support my own view in order to let that happen.