Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Bible Study

  • The Danger of False Assumptions

    Every so often it’s fun to look through an ICR document or so. It’s so nostalgic, considering that this was the sort of stuff that I found very convincing when I was young. I would like to emphasize that this is not by any means the definition of Christianity. It’s just some of the noisiest.

    Yesterday I took at look at Impact #81, Theistic Evolution and the Day-Age Theory, and I think it deserves some comment on the methods of Biblical interpretation involved. But first, I must note that it is a bit bizarre, in that it tries to respond to theistic evolutionists on a “proof-text” basis, something that very few theistic evolutionists, if any, would find relevant. This approach to debates about the Bible is not uncommon. The only productive discussion that can be held between people with contradictory approaches to interpretation is one that deals with the methods of interpretation themselves. It is likely, however, that ICR’s Impact #81 is actually written to reassure the troops, and actually is not intended to respond to actual theistic evolutionists.

    The basic approach to interpretation taken in this article is literal, and the specific variant is proof-texting.

    The first is illustrated by the following statement: “The biblical text, at least to the unbiased observer, indicates a universe and earth that were formed in six days . . . ” (emphasis mine). It is this idea of the “unbiased observer” that is the problem. Biblical literalists follow a rule of interpretation that says that a text is to be taken literally unless it cannot be, and only if it cannot be taken literally should figurative explanations be considered. This is a principle stated by Tim LaHaye, amongst others and underlies a great deal of fundamentalist, conservative, and charismatic Biblical interpretation, though charismatics should know better. (See my review of LaHaye’s book, How to Study the Bible for Yourself for more information.)

    Now this is clearly a bias, and that bias is toward literal interpretation. I would suggest as an alternative that one always look at every passage of scripture and allow the nature of the passage, its setting and context, statements about it by the author, and comparison to similar literature help you to decide whether it is to be taken figuratively or literally. I’ve been told this is also a bias, and I will allow that it can be, although it is a quite neutral bias. The actual opposite bias to LaHaye’s (and the ICR’s) approach would be to assume everything is figurative and only take it literally if I can’t find a figurative interpretation.

    The simple fact is that this common rule of Biblical literalists comes close to guaranteeing that they will misinterpret the Bible. The reason is that there is a substantial portion of the Bible that is intended figuratively. Let’s consider, for example, applying this rule to the plays of Shakespeare. I could quite easily construe many of the plays as portrayals of actual history on that basis. The signs that we have a dramatization would likely not be enough to convince me that they were fictional or fictionalized. In a previous entry, I indicated that one of the strengths of the young earth position is simply that if one assumes literal interpretation, it accords with the Biblical data. But that assumption of literal interpretation is the key.

    Now let’s go forward to the ICR’s response to the day age interpretation in Genesis. The first 10 objections to the day-age interpretation are simply reiterations of the literalistic and proof-text style interpretation. They could have simply said, “If you take all this literally, you will take all this literally. Note also that the day-age interpretation is normally used by old earth creationists. Theistic evolutionists normally take a different view. (See my comparison in Creation, Evolution, and Genesis 1-11.)

    Their entire approach to the definition of the word in Genesis 1 reads as though it was written by someone without a basic knowledge of linguistics. To allow you to compare, let me give you the basic steps for studying the meaning of such a word:

    1. You collect examples of usage. In the Bible, this often means at least looking at every usage example.
    2. You divide these up by definition and construct tentative definitions.
    3. You take note of the particular constructions, contexts, and types of literature in which the word is used.
    4. You look at the particular example, and see where it fits best, or you may even find you need to construct a new definition.

    This is generalized somewhat, but it makes the basic point. The procedure followed in the article is to see if there is a proof text available that says that a day is long enough to suit the needs of evolutionary change and the established age of the earth. Since there is no such text–why should there be?–the author concludes that the day-age theory is wrong. But the specific type of argument he is refuting is not the type of argument that the day-age proponents use. (For a discussion of the day-age theory, see Consider Christianity, Volume 1: Evidence for the Bible, pages 119ff.)

    The 11th point relies on the previous 10, that is, if a day is 24 hours in Genesis 1, it must be 24 hours in the 4th commandment. At the same time, if it is not 24 hours in Genesis 1, it would not be 24 hours in the fourth commandment, which simply refers to that passage. In a quotation or allusion, one first assumes that the meaning of the word is unchanged from the original. Out of context quotations, or intentional adjustment or paraphrasing. Thus there is nothing new here.

    Now the oddity is that we go from the beginning to the end of the article, and we find that the entire argument is simply that the days of creation are 24 hour literal days. This argument is one designed to challenge old earth creationism, though it does so very ineffectively, but not theistic evolution.

    What they are missing is the simple discussion of literary genre. What type of literature is Genesis 1? This is the question that most theistic evolutionists (and for that matter old earth creationists) answer differently than do young earth creationists. And every single argument presented in Impact #81 is totally irrelevant to this question. The young earth creationists make the assumption that the first 11 chapters of Genesis are narrative history to be taken literally. But how do they come to that conclusion?

    Well, it is simply their bias. If you assume that everything is to be taken literally, if possible, then provided one isolates oneself completely from the scientific evidence, Genesis 1 can be taken as narrative history. Otherwise, it bears practically no resemblance to it at all.

    How do we recognize a type of literature? Here are some normal clues:

    1. Labeling – we buy a book that is labeled as a novel, and we expect it to be a novel. If it is labeled “mystery” or “historical novel” those additional elements will impact how we understand the literature. This labeling is only rarely applicable in the Bible. Ancient literature was not commonly labeled as to genre.

    2. Literary characteristics – there are certain characteristics of various types of literature, such as key phrases like “once upon a time” or the presence of footnotes. One doesn’t expect reference footnotes in a novel, and one doesn’t start a scientific paper with “once upon a time.”

    3. Fantastic events – if we are dealing with a literary type that includes fantasy, we may find fantastic events that we know don’t happen every day. For example, in C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe even if we didn’t know the book was fiction from the label, we would assume it was fiction when the children go into another world through the wardrobe. In the Bible, the parable of the trees (Judges 9:8-15) is clearly a parable, even without a label, and we know it from the moment that it starts “The trees once went out to anoint a knig” (NRSV). Why? Trees don’t do that.

    Now, the first of these can’t be applied to Genesis 1, but the second and third certainly can, and they should be, and that’s precisely what the young earth creationists are never going to do, because the moment you apply these principles without the assumption that it is literal, then there is plenty of evidence that it is not. For example, the description of day and night prior to the creation of the heavenly bodies (and yes, I’m aware of the explanations), suggests that the author lacks a concern with that literal detail. The events of the sixth day, if one takes Genesis 2 seriously as well, are simply too much for one 24 hour period, no matter how much one tries to word around it.

    But there is something further that young earth creationists are not going to do, and that is comparing this literature with other similar literature, such as creation myths from the ancient near east. And there we will find both similarities and differences, but we will certainly find similar literary characteristics. (See my essay Genesis Creation Stories – Form, Structure, and Relationship.)

    Is it better to assume what type of literature Genesis 1 is based on our twentieth century knowledge and attitudes, or would it not be better to look at it in comparison to other literature that is contemporary to it?

    One last point, going back to the beginning. The author is not able to correctly state evolutionary theory either.

    Two elements are essential in any evolutionary scheme, whether it be theistic or atheistic: long periods of time and the assumed validity of the molecules-to-man evolutionary scenario.

    Of course, long periods of time are not assumed, they are demonstrated by excellent scientific evidence. Biological evolution is not a “molecules to man” theory either. Biological evolution operates on existing life. Abiogenesis is another matter.

    Theistic evolutionists, however, profess a certain allegiance to the Scriptures and must attempt to harmonize the biblical account with the evolutionary scenario. The biblical text, at least to the unbiased observer, indicates a universe and earth that were formed in six days; evolutionists suppose at least six billion years. The mechanism by which theistic evolutionists harmonize the two is known as the day-age theory.

    Actually, as I’ve pointed out, few theistic evolutionists take Genesis 1 literally enough to care one way or the other about the day-age theory. I certainly do not, though I find it interesting as a point of interpretation. It is essential to most old earth creationists and their case is, in fact, quite good, assuming one takes Genesis 1 even that literally.

    Thus, ICR’s Impact #81 manages to fire a dud at the wrong target.

  • Genre and Canonical Criticism

    Continuing my discussion of Biblical criticism and the tools that make up that method, let’s look at genre and canonical criticism together. I do that, because they look generally at the same point in the production of the text as we have it, but look in different ways at that point in time.

    We have already encountered the term “genre” in discussing form criticism. Make sure to distinguish the way in which “genre” is used in “genre criticism” as opposed to the way it is used in form criticism. In the former, it is a category of short elements, normally of orally transmitted material, that takes certain forms due to that process of transmission. Here we are looking at the genre of a larger literary document.

    You may gather from that definition that we have shifted our focus away from the prehistory of the text and its development, to looking at the document as we have it now. At the same time we move from looking at smaller portions or even fragments of the text to looking at it as a whole document. Thus if we consider the book of Matthew, for example, form criticism is concerned with the individual sayings of Jesus and reports of his deeds, source criticism looks at how these were collected into documents which became sources for the author of Matthew, redaction criticism looked at how those sources were combined into the whole gospel in order to tell us what Matthew himself was trying to accomplish. Tradition criticism looked at this whole process. Genre criticism looks at the gospel of Matthew as a whole, asks what its genre “gospel” may be, what are its purposes, and how was it used by the community that saw it as a gospel. Canonical criticism looks at the whole of Matthew but looks at it as part of the canon of the bible and of the New Testament, and insofar as it is interested in a community, it would be the one that first saw this as authoritative for the church.

    Genre Criticism

    Recently I’ve been doing some study of the book of Daniel, in which genre criticism can be extremely important. Previously, I discussed the dating of Daniel, particularly from the point of view of Anthony Di Lella, author of the Anchor Bible commentary on the book. Di Lella believes that the book is pseudonymous, written in the 2nd century BCE, and also that its stories are not generally historical, but rather are edifying stories. (See Dating the Book of Daniel.) At the same time he maintains that this view does not conflict with inerrancy. How does he do that?

    The issue is simply one of genre. He believes that one of the characteristics of apocalyptic is that it is pseudonymous, and he determines on various grounds that the stories are edifying tales and not historical, but he also determines that the use of this genre was to encourage people in a particular time of persecution, looking at the community that first received the book as a whole, and the purposes for which they would use the book.

    On a much less radical note, genre criticism of the gospels asks just what type of literature the gospels are. Are they histories, and if so what type? Are they novels as some literary critics have proposed? For many, the answer is that there is a specific genre of “gospel” which is not identical to any other form of literature. Once we have determined the genre, we ask just what that genre was intended to do. It would appear that a presentation of a coherent chronological picture was not part of the plan, as the various gospels, even though they show signs that the authors were acquainted with certain of the others, do not present a consistent chronology. These are the types of questions that genre criticism is supposed to cover.

    Canonical Criticism

    Canonical criticism is concerned with where those gospels fit in that broader scheme. In studying the gospels one might ask why there are four, and just four, gospels, and just where Matthew fits into that scheme. How does this one gospel contribute to the function of the “gospel” genre (or whatever one may have determined that genre was)? Why do we have “gospels” in the canon at all?

    In the case of Daniel, there are also issues of canonical criticism. Where does this type of literature fit into the faith life of the church? Why would we value an apocalypse, whether we see its stories as historical or not? Daniel itself is placed in different positions in the Jewish canon and in the Christian canon. Is there a reason for this? Canonical criticism is not largely a matter of looking at the order of the books, of course, but rather looking at how the book functions as part of the community’s Bible as a whole. Nonetheless the fact that the Christian canon seems to put a higher value on Daniel than the Jewish canon is probably significant in the way each community sees that book.

    One can continue by asking what role Revelation plays in the New Testament canon. Many people didn’t think it should be there, and even some moderns don’t feel the right choice was made. When they say that Revelation should not be canonical, are they commenting on its usefulness in the church, its potential use, or the way in which it has been used or abused? These are questions that the canonical critic applies in study.

    Putting things Together

    Though this is not my last entry, the introduction of these two tools of Biblical criticism provides an opportunity for me to comment on the use of the tools in general. Too often Bible students who do start to use critical methods get tied up on one or two methods. These tools provide different ways of looking at the text, but in order to understand both the text itself and how it applies to the modern church or community, one needs to look at it in a variety of ways. Commentaries that focus solely on one aspect can be quite hard to use practically. A form critical commentary, for example, will look heavily at the prehistory of the text, paying much attention to hypothetical material while passing over the text as we have it. On the other hand, a canonical critic can be tempted to ignore the fact that a text does have a prehistory and act as though it dropped from heaven whole.

    The Bible student who wants to get the most from the text will use a balance of tools as they are appropriate to the particular text he is studying.

  • God is Creator of Everything

    In a previous post in my series on Christian view on origins, Biblical Doctrine of Creation, I listed six elements of a Biblical doctrine of creation. I need to specify this more precisely as a Biblical doctrine of creation based on the Christian Bible and on one or another Christian approach to Biblical interpretation.

    Excursus – What is Biblical?

    Very often debates on whether any particular doctrine is Biblical founder on the fact that people are using different approaches to interpretation, and thus a text that applies in one way in one person’s argument means something completely different to the other, simply because of a different approach to interpretation. Since this is so important as I start discussing a Biblical doctrine of creation, let me give a simple example.

    In Matthew 5:17 Jesus says, “Don’t think that I have come to destroy the law and the prophets. I have not come to destroy, but to fulfill.” Now I interpret this text to mean that Jesus came to bring the law to fruition, that is to give it its deeper meaning, something defined by the texts that follow indicating a new way to look at various laws. Murderous anger is now like murder, lust like adultery, and so forth. In each case Jesus discusses the motive. I see these as examples of how Jesus invites his followers to look at the law.

    Now some people will say that Matthew 5:17 means that Jesus came to put an end to the law by keeping all of it, and would not see the following instructions as examples of that, but as a separate topic. When Jesus died, according to these folks, taking the penalty of the law, he removed the law and now we live by the Spirit. Others hold that since all of the preaching of Jesus was given to the Jews, the moral instructions of this chapter only apply to Jews. Christians belong to the church age, and are under grace. Somewhere in there most Christians will have found an approach to interpreting Matthew 5:17 that resonated with them, and may feel that the alternatives are quite weird. (I might not have included your view, and I certainly oversimplified them all.)

    Those differences in interpretation illustrate what I mean when I say that everyone approaches Bible study within some kind of interpretational matrix, and that if yours matrix is different from mine, we can debate about the matrix (or paradigm), but likely we’ll just degenerate into yelling if we try to argue what is “Biblical” and what is not based on completely different interpretational matrices. In the first three chapters of his book Faith, Form, and Time, Kurt Wise builds a case for a literal reading of the Bible in general and the early chapters of Genesis in particular. Thus he believes in a literal creation week of 24 hour days, patriarchs who literally lived hundreds of years, and a worldwide flood with all creatures preserved on the ark. For him this is Biblical, and any view holding that these materials are not narrative history, but rather are of other literary genres and thus should be understood very differently, would be unbiblical. For me, on the other hand, Wise’s view is not Biblical, because he is reading genres such as liturgy, myth, and legend as narrative history, and thus makes them mean things that are inappropriate to those genres.

    Note that the doctrine of inerrancy is not at issue here. While I do not accept the doctrine of inerrancy, there are theistic evolutionists who do. The issue is intent. An inerrantist can read the book of Jonah and determine that it is not historical. How is this possible? Because if he determines that the genre is “edifying story” it is not an error that the book is not historical. One doesn’t test a work of fiction based on whether the characters in it actually existed and did the things described. (For a connection of this same concept to the book of Daniel, see Dating the Book of Daniel.)

    So keep in mind as I discuss these various views that when I discuss how each view handles the Biblical materials relating to a particular doctrine, I’m considering their approach to interpretation. I’m not trying to say that all views are Biblical; I’m simply pointing out how each group relates its view to the Biblical material.

    Creator of Everything

    Major passages: Genesis 1:1-2:4a, Psalm 104:24, Hebrews 1:2, Romans 11:33-36, Isaiah 45:7.

    Most of these passages are quite self-explanatory in connection with this topic, though they are subject to different interpretations in terms of how and when God created. The key common element is that nothing is attributed in Christianity (or Judaism as I understand it) to any entity other than God. There are some points in Christian theology in which negative results have occurred in creation based on the activities of hostile entities. It is common, for example, for Christians to credit Satan with the “creation” of evil.

    The problem here is the understanding of God’s responsibility for the actions of creatures with free will. Many Christians remove God from responsibility for evil simply by attributing it to Satan. But Satan himself is a created being, again according to the Bible. (Note here that this statement is a bit loose, as the doctrine of Satan is not clearly fixed, especially in Hebrew scriptures.) In general, however, if someone makes something that causes damage, one is regarded as responsible for that damage. If I light a fire in my back yard, and then don’t control it, and it burns out of control and damages my neighbor’s yard, I cannot claim that the fire is responsible but I am not.

    That is not quite analogous to our case, however, because God is creating a creature that can choose what behavior it will engage in. Nonetheless, God created a creature who was capable of becoming evil, and thus set in motion the process of evil coming into existence. While most of the texts I listed simply speak of God creating everything, one text is more specific.

    7Forming the light,
    Creating the darkness,
    Making well-being,
    Creating disaster,
    I YHWH do {or make} all these things.

    There is some debate about the word I have translated “disaster” and the KJV translates “evil.” Some people think this alternate translation solves the problems. But this passage is actually using two words indicating the extremes in order to include everything between. No matter how light it is or how dark it is, God is the one who made it. No matter how good things get or how bad they get, God is the one who made it. God is absolutely the creator of everything. We may look for excuses (Satan did all the bad stuff), but God is not looking for such excuses. According to the Bible, he readily claims responsibility for the creation of everything.

    This doesn’t mean that I’m unaware of texts speaking of the devil. It does mean that I see the Bible as ultimately attributing all creative activity to God. For some reasons (best know to God, presumably), God created entities that were capable of evil, and gave them the freedom to exercise that option.

    In my view all of the Christian views of origins potentially fulfill this first requirement. Some Christians use the concept of the devil to avoid divine responsibility, but one can’t even make a generalization there, as many do not.

    Nonetheless, thestic evolutionists are frequently accused of not seeing God as the creator of everything, but rather of maintaining that all living things are produced by evolution, and thus not created by God. This accusation is itself unbiblical.

    It’s clear (I think) to both creationists of all varieties as well as to evolutionists that there are things in the world that come into existence on a regular basis. (I’m leaving stellar evolution for a later article discussing whether God is still creating.) For example, a new island might be formed by a volcanic eruption. I recall a visit to Crater Lake in Oregon, which was formed in only moments ago geologically speaking. Would any Christian claim that the lake and islands are not created by God?

    But the text of Isaiah gets very specific on this by calling God the creator of Israel (Isaiah 43:15). Now God clearly did not create Israel out of nothing. Rather, their ancestors were called, went through the normal processes of population growth, migration, and conquest, and eventually became the people to whom the message of 2nd Isaiah was proclaimed. Thus God is still the creator even of things that are produced through natural processes. Finally, let me mention every human baby, and in fact every form of new life, all of which is a creation of God, even though it is the result of natural processes.

    That is the first element of a Biblical doctrine of creation, and I believe that all of the views of creation we have discussed so far are consistent with it.

    For other entries in this series see Post Series.

  • Applying Divine-Human Scriptures

    I’ve used the term phrase “divine-human combination” or something quite close to it several times over the last few days. It’s easy to make it appear that this concept of inspiration, sometimes called “incarnational” is largely a tool to deal with the difficult parts of scripture. When I read “love your neighbor as yourself” I don’t have to apply such an interpretation, but when I read “go kill all the ____” then I must resort to a special understanding of inspiration. The feeling might be that Biblical inerrancy is fine, except for a few annoying passages. But this is not my approach.

    An incarnational understanding of scripture places the burden on the community and on the individual, who make decisions in their faith, practice, and in their daily lives. There is a certain truth to the accusation that this more liberal approach to scripture is more people-centered than God-centered. This should be seen as a good thing. I take some of my warrant for this view from 1 John 4:20, which reads: “If anyone says ‘I love God,’ but hates his brother, he is a liar. For how can one who doesn’t love his brother, whom he has seen, love God, whom he has not seen?” The focus of our actions is to be people, even though those people-oriented actions are accepted by God as service to him.

    This is not, however, solely a characteristic of the incarnational model. It’s openly acknowledged and celebrated by those who use an incaranational model of inspiration, but for everyone, the word of God as it comes to your own mind, is mixed with the human element. Even if you believe that the Bible in its current written form is perfect, your understanding of that word will always be imperfect. There is simply no way to get perfect knowledge into an imperfect mind. In this sense, the incarnational model puts more of the emphasis on God, because God is seen as active throughout the process. The Holy Spirit is present inspiring the prophets and remains active inspiring listeners, writers, copyists, and finally even modern exegetes, of Bible students known by less pretentious titles.

    The question becomes simply “How does God’s message get to me?” or “How does God’s message get to my community?” In answer to these questions we have a model in scripture as we have it in canonical form.

    1. We hear from God in the events of history, and specifically in God’s involvement, or even uninvolvement in them. This is represented in scripture by the strong historical element of the faith. Whatever you may believe about the historicity of the various details, if you are a Christian you must believe that at some point and in some way God has inserted himself into human history.
    2. We hear from God through the common pool of community wisdom. This is represented by the wisdom literature. The easier part to read is Proverbs, where we have pithy sayings that sound like common sense. But there is another approach in Ecclesiastes which looks at the personal struggle of a teacher and lets us come along side his experience. I think those who reinterpret Ecclesiastes into some God of triumphant affirmation of God, as is required for some people’s view of inspiration, lose its primary value as an experience that skeptics and cynics can relate to.
    3. We hear from God through direct inspiration. This is the one that many modern Christians want the most, and they want it to be the primary and overarching form of revelation. It’s most comfortable when we can say, “God told me ____.” We feel much less secure saying, “Experience teaches me ____” or “After due consideration of historical precendent _____.” But direct affirmations are only part of God’s revelation.

    I think we lose part of that pattern with the more modern understanding of special and general revelation. Those categories are not without some merit, but I think they lose some of the “many portions and many ways” (Hebrews 1:1) in which God has spoken and continues to speak. In modern times I would add simply that God speaks through the natural world. I think this is simply an extension of point #1, God speaking through is action in history.

    What this means in my daily life, however, is that I must make decisions. I bring all these elements to bear on the issue. I ask what is the appropriate principle to apply, and then in the end I take responsibility for what I have done. And this applies whether you are a charismatic believer receiving a “word from the Lord” via a modern day prophet, or someone searching the Bible for wisdom. You have to ask what all of these elements of God’s revelation are telling you, and then you combine them using your human reasoning, enlightend by the Spirit of Truth.

    No, it’s not “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it.” You don’t have that one-to-one correspondence, but then you never did. Everyone has a scheme for determining what part of the Bible applies. The question is really not whether you are responsible for making the decision. It is whether you will acknowledge your responsibility and exercise it appropriately.

  • Slavery and the Bible Condensed

    I’d like to condense the major arguments with regard to the Bible and slavery, as it appears that at least a couple of people have missed the point at which I’m hooking into this debate. (Please resist the idea that because I use lists when summarizing that I’m actually trying to reduce this to formal logic.)

    First, the starting point argument could be summarized as follows:

    1. Slavery is immoral
    2. The Bible condones slavery
    3. God or God’s word cannot condone something immoral
    4. The Bible therefore cannot be God’s word.

    I originally entered this debate after reading posts and comments on Ed Brayton’s site. His Slavery and the Bible – Take 2, was particularly clear. I want to reference Mark Olson as well, whose Slavery and the Word of God illustrates some of the approaches I’m discussing here.

    Now one can attack the position expressed in my little list at several points. For example, one might believe that slavery is not immoral. One might believe that God’s word does not condone slavery. We have seen the following:

    1. A response using both points #1 and #2, i.e. that the Bible does condone some sorts of slavery, but what it condones is not the sort of thing we condemn.
    2. A response based simply on God’s authority–God gets to do whatever he wants, which really deals with point three. In this response God indeed cannot condone something immoral, because apparently what he commands is transformed into something moral. (Theologically this is possible, but in practice there is the simple question of how one tells when God is commanding something if God can command anything. Why not child sacrifice, for example?)
    3. My own response which deals with the relationship of the Bible to the concept of God’s word. There’s an unstated assumption almost everywhere in this discussion that the Bible and God’s word are either equal or unrelated. My argument comes in here and is simply this: The Bible is a human-divine cooperation, and therefore shares imperfections of the human element. There will be things in the Bible that we do not want to implement today.

    My approach allows me to take several options with some of the nasty points in the Bible. I used the example of the commanded genocide of the Midianites in Numbers 31, and I’m going to continue to use that.

    1. It’s quite possible that the incident never happened. We’re still left with the fact that the slaughter is forcefully commanded. I would note that at a minimum, I would say that the numbers killed and enslaved are almost certainly exaggerated. Again, I don’t view this as a real solution to the moral dilemna for a Bible student. “Slaughtered” is bad. “Slaughtered a few less people” remains bad.
    2. The people wanted revenge, and conveniently became convinced that God had commanded it. This would be an all too human situation. I could use the story as a moral story with precisely that moral. In fact, I see this very human side throughout the stories of the conquest.
    3. God gave a command adapted to circumstances. This one disturbs me to some extent. I do believe that God gives commands adapted to circumstances, and this is in fact the type of approach that Alden Thompson uses in chapter 6 (The worst story in the Old Testament — Judges 19-21) of his book Who’s Afraid of the Old Testament God?. I’m uncomfortable with that option here simply because I cannot see the moral justification for the additional slaughter. I do think that was common to the culture, and it seems more likely to me that people simply exercised their desires and justified it by appeal to God’s command.

    Since I said “condensed” let me just say one thing in response to Mark Olson (post linked above). I do believe that one can find good in the Bible, and that one can even find the ideal to pursue. I believe, however, that in order to find that ideal one does have to recognize the human-divine combination in scripture which means that not everything can be fitted into the divine ideal. Paul certainly embraces the equality of slave and free (Galatians 3:28) but he doesn’t do anything public about it. Rather, he gives instructions for slaves to be subject to their masters. I think he’s walking a very difficult line here with the Roman Empire, and Romans 13 is part of that. I cannot, however, see where Romans 13 is simply a softening of the rest of the letter, but then I often find that N. T. Wright presents arguments that are thoroughly researched and brilliantly argued, but that I think are wrong. In this case, I will certainly make the effort to acquire Wright’s comments on this text and see if he can change my mind.

    [Note: In the interests of full disclosure, let me note that I am the publisher of Who’s Afraid of the Old Testament God?.]

  • Biblical Decision Making

    My previous post, Does the Bible Condone Slavery?, has produced some interesting responses, and one very valid question is just how I think the Bible should be used in making decisions. I’m going to try to keep this brief, but I’m not very good at that, so bear with me!

    The most common analogy I’ve encountered for the Bible is that it is like a boy scout manual. The problem is that as far as I can see the Bible is almost totally unlike a boy scout manual. The Bible is a book containing a large number of stories, and materials from a variety of documents, often ones written from a different perspective. By assuming the kind of unity that would be expected of a scout manual, we often miss what the Bible is actually saying. For example, which attitude toward foreigners is more appropriate, that of Jonah, in which God saves them even though that makes his prophet angry, or that of Nehemiah who runs all foreigners out?

    I often use the analogy of a toolkit, though this is only one of many. My basis for this starts with Proverbs 26:4-5: “4Do not answer fools according to their folly, or you will be a fool yourself. 5Answer fools according to their folly, or they will be wise in their own eyes” (NRSV). OK, so which is it? Should one continue to forgive over and over again (Matthew 18:22), or should one take the matter to one’s congregation (Matthew 18:15-17)? It would depend on the specific circumstances. I know that I have often encountered cases in which a fool required answering (and what do I do about the command of Jesus not to call anyone a fool?), and many other cases in which the best choice was silence. I take the tool from my toolkit that seems to work best, and I hope I have wisdom to use the right one.

    Further, nobody actually keeps all the Biblical commands, especially those who are the loudest in claiming that they do. Consider the ten commandments case in neighboring Alabama. We had the odd image of Christians bowing down in front of the monument to the ten commandments (I know, they weren’t worshipping it, they were praying about it), and protesting its removal. Removing the monument was supposed to be a major blow to moral values. But the vast majority of the people who were protesting do not keep the command written on that monument to keep the seventh day of the week as the Sabbath. I’m sure they have good reason to ignore or alter that command–I don’t keep Saturday as the Sabbath either–but nonetheless isn’t it interesting to place a monument to a command that most seem to agree was altered? Or how many of those people do you suppose have pictures of Jesus on their walls at home or at church? Does the word “image” come to mind? Now I really have no problem with pictures of Jesus, other than that I’ve rarely seen one that has even a prayer of looking anything like the real thing, but certainly at least the Jewish interpretation of one of those commands forbids all images.

    In the area of selective commands, what about Leviticus 18:22, “You will not lie with a man as with a woman.” Now I’ve heard this one proclaimed many times with firm tones or pulpit pounding as appropriate. But I frequently then point these individuals to Leviticus 19:33-34, which says, “33When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. 34The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God” (NRSV). When I quote the second verse, I am always presented with plenty of reasons why this is not applicable in modern America, because the foreigners will overrun us and bankrupt the treasury when they all go on welfare. But why is one applicable and not the other?

    I present these illustrations to show that generally those who claim to follow the Bible do, in fact, pick and choose according to circumstances. The difference is that I openly acknowledge that I do it, and I think it is the right way to do things. In fact I’m frightened by people who thing they can and should keep all the commands, because they might actually try to do it! In Deuteronomy 21:18-21, we have the instructions for arranging for one’s rebellious son to be stoned. Is that applicable or not? Both the Jewish and the Christian traditions have dealt with such commands in such a way as to make them more humane, if they apply them at all. Those Christians who are about to complain about my use of references from the Hebrew scriptures should consider Acts 5 and the story of Ananias and Sapphira.

    My approach is to look at all the tools available, and make the best choice for my particular circumstances. This means that in many cases my tools may come from something other than scripture. The Bible provides me with input, but it is not the only source of input that I have. In each case, I have to consider the source of my material, and its cultural background. But the key to my approach in the Bible is simply that I use the scriptures more to teach me about listening to God than I do to discover specific principles. I think that if you can discover where God is headed in a passage, that will be a good principle to work from, but it is often very hard to discover that principle. I have a number of approaches that I use in applying scripture, but the key one is what I call the hanging principle (Hanging Your Interpretation). This simply suggests that since Jesus said that all the law and prophets could hang on two laws–love God and love your neighbor–if your application of a scripture won’t hang there, perhaps you should look elsewhere. Those two laws are widely attested in scripture and in tradition. Because the Bible contains both the ideal and the real, that approach keeps one looking to the ideal.

    But the bottom line is that I simply don’t expect the Bible to make my decisions for me. In other words, I don’t expect to find a specific command for my time and circumstances. I have to make decisions and live with the consequences. One thing that I can see happening in the Bible, in the scriptures of many other faiths, and in a broad range of human literature is that people wind up living with the consequences of their actions. One of the things we accomplish in literature is to examine potential situations, the principles by which one might live in those circumstances, and the consequences of those decisions. Note that I do not limit my study to the Bible, although it is important to me. I also don’t limit my study to literary works. The products of natural science are as likely to produce valuable information to me in my decision making process.

    In this process, I am responsible for what I choose. I reject the excuse that I’m just doing what God commanded. Even if I am doing so, I’m basing the claim on what I believe God commanded. Unless God caught you with a burning bush and told you that I’m right, I have no reason to expect you to believe my claim. When I’m making a decision in the public sphere I should be able to support it with reasoning. I think it’s important to be able to defend claims about public policy to people who disagree completely. I know a number of atheists and agnostics who are unafraid to tell me to my face that they find my belief in God somewhere between silly and incomprehensible. At the same time, I can work together with these people because we often agree on public policy goals–separation of church and state, sound science education including evolution, equal protection of the law, environmental issues, public education, and so forth. We may have come to those views from different directions, but we have learned to dialogue about them.

    So let’s make it simple. I am responsible for my decisions. I look for every form of input I can find, which in my case includes the Bible, I listen to God, I make a decision. Once I make a decision, I take responsibility for the decision.

    In this process the Bible functions in two ways: 1) It provides me with extended illustrations of how others interacted with God, and 2) Because I believe that these people interacted with God, I commonly find that if I remove cultural and time factors from the experience, I may find the ideal principle to which God is leading and thus pursue that.

  • Tradition Criticism

    Tradition criticism is an overview method that encompasses all four of the critical tools I have discussed previously, textual, form, source, and redaction criticism. Tradition criticism differs in that it is an overview process of studying the entire history of the text, looking for ways in which the expressed tradition has changed, and the circumstances that were involved in that change. It assumes an oral stage of the text, and is again not very effective in studying something that was originated in written form without a prehistory.

    In order to put tradition criticism into action, one normally begins with textual criticism, in order to have a good text from which to start the process. In some cases, such as the oracles against the nations in the book of Jeremiah that I referenced previously in my post on form criticism, textual criticism can give us some insights into the history of the tradition as well as helping us accurately discover the final text. Form, source, and redaction criticism each deal with an aspect of the history of the text, but they tend to rather arbitrarily divide the process into discrete stages, each of which is studied by a different method. Tradition criticism tries to bring these stages together, and ask questions such as what was important to the people who told these stories, why did they tell these stories and not others, and how this reflects on their culture and their understanding of history.

    In doing so, tradition critics identify motifs, such as the successful foreign courtier in the Joseph story, the threatened ancestral figure, such Sarah barren or taken by a foreign ruler, or particular types of prophetic oracles. These often combine into themes, such as the overall protection God gives to the ancestral line.

    In understanding how the culture saw its own history, we can come to understand the final product better. For example, in modern eyes, the story of the flight into Egypt (Matthew 2:13-15) is either predicted by Hosea 11:1, or Matthew made an error. Now it is clear from context that Hosea 11:1 is not Messianic, and in no way intends to predict anything about the Messiah. But by understanding how traditions were shaped in telling and retelling, such as the exodus from Egypt and the exile to Babylon and return, we can add the option that Christians, in developing this tradition about Jesus, were tying their story into the continuing story of Israel’s experience. Notice here that tradition history is not concerned with determining historicity; it is only concerned with the way in which the story is told and passed on.

    Thus tradition criticism is one of those “forest” types of tools that looks at a broader picture. There is a danger in tradition criticism, just as with form, source, and redaction criticism, that one builds too much on too little evidence. A few conjectures are necessary in historical study, but when conjecture is built on conjecture, the final result can be improbable indeed! Tradition critics must be careful to admit they don’t know when they don’t know.

  • Does the Bible Condone Slavery?

    Ed Brayton, on his blog Dispatches from the Culture Wars, started a bit of an exchange over slavery and the Bible with his post Slavery and the Bible, which was answered over on In The Agora by Eric Seymour in his post Does the Bible condone slavery?. Just so you have the whole story, Ed then responded in Slavery and the Bible, Take 2.

    It seems in this exchange that Ed, who states that he “can no longer accept the Bible as the word of God,” seems to be able to read it with refreshing clarity, while its defenders seem to need to work around what the Bible actually says in order to get it to mean what they would prefer it to. The comments from those giving an “Amen” to Eric Seymour’s response are even more revealing than the original article. I hope you will read the comments as well as the article itself. One poster, John R., states: “I don’t expect, however, this Ed’s unbelief will be alleviated by the truth. When one has put his own moral authority above God’s, there’s not much room left convincing.” But assuming that what John R. has found in the Bible is God’s moral authority, John R. should realize that one can as easily put one’s own authority over that of the written message by weasel-worded interpretations as by simply rejecting a particular concept outright.

    Though my intention is not to deal with the specific interpretation in detail, I’m concerned that this particular defense of the Bible could lead to immoral behavior in itself. It distinguishes between the 19th century American variety of slavery and the Biblical variety as a reason why the Bible might not condemn slavery. That, of course, ignores the difference between slavery as practiced between Israelites (the rules they cite, as Ed correctly notes), and the practice of slavery in the Roman empire which is what Paul failed to condemn. But would Israelite style slavery, i.e. indenture for indebtedness, be a moral option today? Is this really what Christians should feel comfortable arguing? Should we be able to have a debtor sold into slavery, and provide rules to allow how much he or she can be beaten? Is this a moral position we really want to take?

    But back to the subject. If we take the basic approach to scripture that both of these arguments are taking, and accept that if something is condoned in the Bible, then the Bible condones it, then the answer is clear and obvious–the Bible condones slavery. There really is no way around this. People who are convinced that it must not be so will continue to believe that they have somehow chopped up the evidence, but it is still there. Ed can see it. Apparently some of my fellow Christians cannot.

    But let’s take another step down this path. Does the Bible condone or command things that we would consider immoral? I could go through a list of laws from the Torah that would make most modern people shudder. (There are those who think they should apply, which makes me shudder!) But there’s a pretty clear case in Numbers 31. Here the Israelites have attacked an enemy, one that they consider grossly immoral and deserving of extreme treatment. Let’s leave aside any debate about the level of guilt of the opposing party, and simply accept that the Israelites had a right to be angry at their opponents. Assuming this, let’s look at the treatment commanded, and then accorded to the enemy:

    Let’s look at the characteristics of this war (all verses from Numbers 31):

    1. They did battle to execute YHWH’s vengeance (v. 3)
    2. They killed every male (v. 7)
    3. They took the women captive (v. 9)
    4. Well, not quite all the males; they took the little ones captive (v. 9)
    5. They burned everything left (v. 10)
    6. They took the spoil and the captives to their camp (v. 12)

    If any of you are acquainted with ancient near eastern records, this is not an atypical battle. This sort of thing happened all the time. The Israelites are behaving much like their neighbors, with the exception that they seem to have killed a few more people and taken less captive, but even that difference is marginal. There is even an attribution of the authority behind the attack to their god, just as would be fairly common in other ancient near eastern inscriptions.

    Before we go on, let me ask you: Is there any enemy of the United States that you believe should morally be accorded this treatment? To be precise, an enemy whose country we could destroy completely, killing every adult male, irrespective of their specific, personal guilt or innocence and taking all the women and children captive? In modern terms, is this a moral act?

    Well, let’s see what the reaction is to the return of the warriors. Moses is indeed angry at them (v. 14), but his anger is not at how many they killed, but rather at who they left alive. They left alive all the adult women. Here comes the command of Moses:

    17Now kill every boy among the children, and every woman who has known a man by having sexual relations {sleeping with} him. 18But every girl who has not known a man by having sexual relations with him, keep alive for yourselves.

    In the end, it turned out that there was quite a number of female slaves left for the people to have “for themselves.” Continue to read to the end of the chapter to get the story.

    May I ask again, would there be an enemy group or nation against whom you would consider this a moral action, even assuming that nation to be thoroughly despicable?

    So if we ask the question, “Does the Bible condone slaughtering your enemies?” the answer must be “Yes.” Again, this is based on the same type of interpretation that has been used in defending the Bible from the charge of condoning slavery.

    At this point, many of those who are still reading will be thinking I’m about to declare that the Bible is not God’s word, and that I’m going to have nothing to do with it. But in fact I’m a Christian and a Bible teacher, and I love the Bible. What I think is going on here is that we have entirely the wrong set of expectations of the Bible and of divine revelation.

    How do we determine what it is that the Bible is supposed to be? I find that people have quite an assortment of expectations for the Bible, or for any book claiming to contain “God’s word.” Then, based often on those very expectations, they produce interpretations that cause the Bible to say what it is that they want it to say. Clearer thinkers see what the Bible is actually saying and start questioning the foundation, and then either reject the Bible because it does not fulfill expectations, or change the expectations. It’s pretty easy for the latter two groups to condemn one another. Those who reject the Bible claim that those who change the expectations are moving the goalposts, or something similar, while those who change the expectations accuse those who reject the Bible of accepting the fundamentalists’ standard.

    It’s not my intent to condemn anyone here. I think it’s easy to rationally disagree on the point. The problem is that we really don’t have any external standard by which to decide just what God’s word should contain and what it should accomplish. We make assumptions, or create lists, but these are either derived from our own hopes and dreams, or are extracted from something we already regard as scripture. An earnest, well-educated Muslim friend of mine tried to convince me that the Qur’an is God’s word. It was clear that it made him joyful. “It provides an answer for every detail of my life,” he said. I answered that I didn’t find that an attractive feature in a book of scripture. It was really very difficult to discuss from that point, because the question became just what I should want in my holy book. Without a holy book telling you that, just how do you determine what you want?

    (I’ve discussed inspiration in general quite extensively elsewhere. I’d suggest my primary essay Inspiration, Biblical Authority, and Inerrancy, and my inspiration series, which is listed in my Post Series page. This also lists series of posts on Biblical Criticism and on origins. I have found that most people who wander by to condemn me for my views don’t bother to read them in any detail, but I at least have not provided an excuse!)

    So how do I see the word of God? First, I don’t regard the Bible as the equivalent of the word of God. While it conveys the God’s messages, and is an expression of the word of God, the actual word of God is much more than that. The Biblical view is that everything is the product of God’s word.

    6By the word of YHWH the heavens were made,
    And all their host by the breath of his mouth.

    Thus the scientist doing field work is also studying God’s word, specifically a product of it. That is why I am extremely distressed to see Christians doing shoddy science and making poorly thought out claims in the name of science in order to defend some theological preconception. A Christian doing science should do the work with the awareness that he is playing with the product of God’s word. This doesn’t mean that he will discover God by the scientific method. Rather, it means that he will examine an expression of God by that means. (Intelligent design fails theologically, in my view, on precisely this point. All nature is equally the product of God. The idea of detecting God more in one place than another using the scientific method certainly is certainly not a search for the God I know.)

    In the scripture, I believe we have a record, not of God’s pronouncements on all things, though there are some pronouncements, but rather, of God’s interaction with people. There is a human/divine combination in scripture. The people are not perfect. They are not even close. Some are despicable. But God works with them, and we have the record of the interaction. We should not expect to go back to the beginning of our relationship with God and find the same moral standards that we have at a later point. More importantly, we should expect every expression in scripture to occur in a cultural matrix, and to apply to a particular situation. When Romans 13 says that the authorities are given their authority by God so we should be subject to them, we can rightly ask just what were the circumstances that brought for that declaration. In fact, this was Paul’s practical, pastoral advice to the church in Rome at a time when Christians saw Rome more as a defender than as a persecutor. Their fear, at that time, was of persecution by Jews. Later, the fear became changed.

    I use an illustration in my essay (Inspiration, Biblical Authority, and Inerrancy that I think helps to understand what I’m trying to say.

    How the Bible impacts our understanding

    The point here is that the primary method of extracting data from the Bible in modern, conservative Christianity is the picture on the right. The Bible stands between the person and God, mediating what God has said. I’m advocating the approach on the left in which one listens to God directly, as well as through all available avenues, while the experience of scripture enlightens one’s own process of doing God’s will. Dr. Alden Thompson discusses some similar ideas (though he’s somewhat more conservative than I am) in his essay God’s Word: Casebook or Codebook. He also discusses some of these same issues in his book Who’s Afraid of the Old Testament God?.

    Now some are still going to ask how I handle the really nasty material I pointed out from Numbers 31, which is certainly not the only nasty occasion in the Bible. I have no problem there. The actions described are morally wrong. I think our expectations can change over time, and that we need to avoid judging something from the 2nd millenium BCE from our 21st century CE standards. But if you’re looking to the Bible to contain a codebook of good things to do and bad things to avoid, then Numbers 31 is a problem for you, because it involves a command to do a bad thing. For me this says that the Israelites acted in accordance with their culture and time, and that God led them in some ways, while in others they were not ready to be led.

    And to be blunt, I see Paul’s advice on slaves as a practical matter. I certainly don’t expect Paul to advocate a slave revolt. For revolution, you need the possibility of success. A slave revolt in the 1st century would have been a bad idea. The underground railroad in the 19th century was a good idea. Unfortunately when we nitpick through the Biblical commands in order to make them fit a pattern, things don’t work so well. What the folks who started and maintained the underground railroad had to do was discover a moral imperative in their own time and place, using their own minds, and carry it out.

    Again, does the Bible condone slavery? By my view and method of interpretation, “The Bible” doesn’t do anything of the sort. It provides examples of someone condoning slavery. But the Bible is not a substitute for the human mind reading it, or the Spirit of Truth guiding that mind. The Bible can provide light. It doesn’t make moral decisions. Pretending it does will only bring trouble.

  • Redaction Criticism

    After discussing Form Criticism and Source Criticism, Redaction Criticism is really quite easy to deal with. Redaction is simply another term for editing. It is the study of how an editor works the sources he has into a final document, the document that we would commonly refer to as the autograph. Again, it is important to remember that there is no necessity to assume that the final copy of a document as we have it in scripture went through a stage of redaction. The epistles of the New Testament are good examples of documents that would require either no redaction, or would only involve minimal redaction.

    In the Parable of the Sower, elements introduced by the redactor–in this case the gospel writer–include the setting of the parable, the place where Jesus is said to have related the parable, and possibly the interpretation. It is commonly thought that Jesus did not include interpretations with his parables. I would suggest that the form of the parables gives some support to this theory. They are best suited to use in stimulating thinking, without long explanations. But in my opinion that doesn’t mean that Jesus and his disciples never discussed the meaning. Thus multiple applications of a parable could legitimately have arisen during the lifetime of Jesus. The placement of all the interpretations, and some of the interpretations themselves then would be redactional elements. It is unlikely that Jesus immediately followed parable with interpretation in his normal style of teaching.

    Another example comes from Matthew 5:3 and Luke 6:20. Luke 6 reads “Blessed are the poor . . . ” but Matthew reads “Blessed are the poor in spirit . . .” Because of the form of this saying in the Gospel of Thomas, v. 54, which also reads just “poor” it is likely that Luke’s is the more common, and possibly more original form of the saying. Thus the addition of “in spirit” by Matthew (as redactor) indicates something about his theology and his intention in writing his gospel. (Note that use of the Gospel of Thomas is controversial here, because there is some debate on its date and whether it constitutes an independent witness to the sayings of Jesus.)

    To look at an example of sources and redaction, see my essays The Two Flood Stories and Genesis Creation Stories – Form, Structure, and Relationship.

  • The Locus of Biblical Inspiration

    I was doing my morning reading a couple of days ago from the book of Hebrews. One of the verses that caught my eye this time was Hebrews 2:6-9, and particularly verse 7, quoted from Psalm 8:5 (all verse numbers from the English Bible, Psalm 8:5 is 8:6 in Hebrew). Now this quotation is an excellent example of a couple of translation problems, and though that is not my purpose here, I need to outline them in support of my major point.

    First, there is the issue of translation in Psalm 8:5. Translations split between reading “a little lower than the angels/heavenly beings” or “a little lower than God/the gods/a god.” It’s interesting that mainstream to liberal translations such as the NRSV and REB find themselves in at least partial agreement with the very conservative NASB on this issue. (The NASB’s “than God” is a little less jarring to Christian ears than the REB’s “little less than a god,” perhaps, but both tend in the same direction.)

    In Hebrews, you will find the quotation consistently translated as “lower than the angels” or something quite close to that. The reason for the consistency in Hebrews is quite simple. The quotation is from the LXX (Septuagint), which translated this passage as “angels.”

    The other translation issue of note is whether to translate the Greek “brachu” as “for a little while” or “a little.” The Greek word could possibly handle either interpretation, but the context and grammar tends to suggest “a little while.” Some translations, such as the NIV, try to accommodate the two translations, using “a little lower” in Hebrews 2:7, and keeping the translation as consistent as possible with Psalm 8:5, but adding a footnote to the alternate translation. Others, such as the NASB and the NRSV again simply translate the text of Hebrews without concern for consistency with Psalm 8:5.

    Note here that I’m justing making note of these translation choices, not criticizing any of them. With very little work I could justify the actions of each translation team, and considering that alternatives are indicated in footnotes in many cases, I have no problem. What I do what you to see is that there are a couple of differences between the LXX text as quoted by the author of Hebrews, and the Hebrew text as we have in our Old Testaments. And that’s why this particular verse caught my eye this time through.

    I’ve been writing about Biblical criticism in a number of recent posts. (This isn’t part of that series, but it does relate.) One of the things that got me thinking when I first started looking at the tools of Biblical criticism, especially form and source criticism, was that an author would grab hold of his favorite tool and apply it to every scripture in sight willy-nilly, and with interesting results. Many times the main objections to the use of a critical tool could be eliminated by carefully defining the tool itself and the types of texts on which it could be effective, and then carefully applying that tool only in those places.

    But there was a further problem. Even in the case of texts in which a particular tool applied, many students would use just the one tool and then be done with it. For example, in studying Isaiah, one might use form criticism to define the boundaries and structure of a prophetic oracle, then define it down to a subcategory of oracle, place it in the appropriate setting, and come up with a plausible (hopefully!) understanding of what Isaiah intended when presenting that oracle orally to its original audience. A person dedicated to form criticism as a method of interpretation would stop there. The study of the book of Isaiah was simply a study of a series of oracles. The book of Isaiah itself tended to disappear.

    Another example comes from Genesis 1 & 2, which have some contradictions or apparent contradictions (I don’t care which for the moment) in terms of the chronology of creation. (I mentioned these in my previous post on source criticism.) A source critic may simply respond to these problems by stating that the two chapters come from different sources, and consider the question answered. But we are left with the question of why an apparently intelligent person (and anyone who has studied the literary structure of Genesis must concede that its author is intelligent) would put the two chapters together with such obviously (to us) contradictory content. The fact that he did put the two chapters together suggests that to him they are not contradictory, and that if we understand them as contradictory, perhaps we are missing the point. That doesn’t mean that he may not have had two creation story sources or traditions in front of him as he wrote. It does mean that he understood those sources as compatible and thought that each had a necessary message.

    Many of these problems have been alleviated considerably by the use of such methods as canonical and genre criticism. A good example of the use of canonical criticism is Brevard Childs’s commentary on Isaiah (OTL). This is one I’m studying right now, and it has grown on me as I use it. Childs is really a remarkably good commentator. I would note, however, that this canonical approach to criticism has by no means won the field. Much of the work on the historical Jesus, especially that of the Jesus Seminar, is heavily based on the approach of form criticism, whether that is admitted or not. The starting point for Jesus Seminar material is in breaking the text into blocks on which the analysis is performed to determine just how authentic that saying is. As oral material–Jesus himself didn’t write it down–the sayings of Jesus are well suited to study through form criticism. My topic here, however, is whether such study is all we need to do here. Compare The Five Gospels with Darrell Bock’s Jesus According to Scripture to see both methods in action clearly.

    But back to Hebrews 2:6-9. I think it is clear that the author of Hebrews is getting a somewhat different point from Psalm 8 than was actually intended. Psalm 8 celebrates God, and the position of humanity in God’s creation. Hebrews 2 uses that passage either as a prophecy or a type of Jesus, who is made lower than the angels for his earthly ministry, and then crowned with glory and honor afterward. My modern mind can get a little twisted with that. After all, the author is not doing exegesis, at least not such as would get an ‘A’ grade in seminary. He’s using the wording of the text in a slightly different way than it was intended. What’s more, assuming that since he seems to translate loosely himself in some places, and may well have had the Hebrew text available to him, he is cherry picking his translation to suit his message! What gives?

    In my view, what gives is that he was inspired. We are heavily trained both by a modern worldview to look for the source, for the original meaning, for the oldest form. (However much we talk about postmodern, most of the public still has more “modern,” I believe.) Because of this bias we are quite susceptible to the claims of certain critical methods. Form and source criticism will get us closer to the original. Who wouldn’t want that? The methods are challenged primarily on the basis of results–they didn’t get us to where we thought they would–but not on the goal itself.

    Where did God act?

    I think that’s the wrong question. Perhaps we should more be asking “Where didn’t God act?”

    I’m confident that Isaiah made prophetic utterances orally. I’m confident that they were later written down and collected, and that they were finally shaped into the book as we have it today. As authority in the church, we accept the book of Isaiah, because that is canonical, i.e. that is what we have officially made authoritative. But from the historical point of view, and also based on my interest in knowing how God has worked with people throughout history, I’m interested in the whole process, because that tells me something about God.

    I don’t mind the search for the historical Jesus. I’m interested in precisely what Jesus said. But from the practical point of view isn’t it somewhat odd to try to filter out the voices of the first century Christians who wrote down and collected what Jesus said, and those who shaped the result into gospels, in favor of filtering purely through my own mind? While I do want to know precisely what Jesus said (though I’ll have to wait until the kingdom to actually know), I suspect the filter of the early Christians is actually more reliable than my own. It’s interesting to hear people claim that the early Christians quickly corrupted the teachings of Jesus and at the same time assume that they can extract the true story.

    I think it’s perfectly valid for the author of Psalm 8 to make one point, and the author of Hebrews to use his words to make another. In fact, I think those points are typologically related. Where did God speak? Well, he spoke in Genesis, which was probably in the mind of the Psalmist as he wrote. He spoke in Psalms 8, which is a wonderfully encouraging passage. He spoke again through both the words and deeds of Jesus, especially his death, resurrection, and exaltation at the side of the Father. He spoke again through the author of Hebrews who points us to the change of status that Jesus accepted, and who provides an interpretation of those actions for us.

    I believe God speaks in all these things, and that we can get valuable insights from the whole experience of God’s action in the world. Hebrews 2:6-9 gives us a snapshot of inspiration in action.

    (I ran across this text again because I’m preparing to teach a series on the book of Hebrews from my study guide, To The Hebrews: A Participatory Study Guide. One of the 13 lessons in that volume invites students to look at the use of Old Testament passages in the book of Hebrews.)