Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Biblical Criticism

  • Interpreting the Bible I: Obvious Exegesis

    I’m starting a short (I hope) series on interpreting the Bible. This is in response to a series of posts I read recently. The first two were from EvolutionBlog, OEC vs. YEC and The “Terrible Texts” of the Bible. I then encountered A question for Christians on Positive Liberty, which discusses some poor (in the both mine and the post author’s opinion) exegesis used with regard to homosexuality. Though I do read Positive Liberty, I actually went to that post via Dispatches from the Culture War, who agreed with and commented further on the post here.

    I have two more kind points of meta-posting. First, what interests me in these posts in particular is that all of the authors involved are people I read regularly and respect, though obviously I disagree with them on some issues. I’m not talking here about stupid approaches to the Bible, but rather, misunderstanding of Biblical studies as an academic enterprise and also of the role of the Bible in Christianity. Second, I’m posting this here on my Threads blog, rather than on my Participatory Bible Study blog, because I’m most interested in commenting on the social aspects.

    Now for those who were not too bored by the introduction . . .

    What distresses me here is that while those involved in scientific endeavors quite rightly expect others to note technical nuances in their fields, or at least to admit those nuances are inaccessible to them, they often don’t grant similar respect to another field. I’m going to get to material on the Bible and homosexuality in later posts, but right now let me just illustrate from the creation vs. evolution debate.

    It’s quite common for a scientist, let’s say an evolutionary biologist, to comment on how some creationist fails to comprehend details of an issue because that person is a non-specialist. This is very important and quite appropriate, because people who don’t understand certain issues precisely can make wildly silly remarks about it. An engineer may not be well equipped to understand cell development. I’m not really all that well equipped to understand any of the above, which is why I stick my nose in a book when posting on science and/or get someone more expert to check what I write. (On a blog, I can count on correction in the comments, but those usually come from people who know even less than I do.)

    Similar courtesy is often not extended to experts in Biblical studies, however. Scientific experts are quite quick to comment on just how people in Biblical times understood the world, and what their statements on such topics actually mean. One example is the common statement that the Bible “clearly” supports young earth creationism, so that anyone who is a Christian but doesn’t support a young earth is “going against the Bible.” It’s one of the few things on which non-theistic evolutionists and young earth creationists can agree!

    But stating that the Bible “clearly” supports young earth creationism is an example of “obvious exegesis.” I use that particular collocation of words in my title because it makes my hair stand on end. I hope I can make some of my readers feel similarly about it as I write.

    In discussing this I’m going to look at two aspects of Biblical interpretation. First, exegesis. I’m going to simplify by restricting the word “exegesis” as I use it here to mean “getting to understand what the original author meant to the people to whom he originally spoke or wrote.” (We’ll find, however, that even such an apparently simple label as “original author” is somewhat complex.) Second, we have application, or the way in which people who use the Bible in their lives in some way take Biblical statements and apply them. This one isn’t so simple either, and not just because modern Christians try to accommodate the Bible to modern science.

    For this introductory post, let me simply take a look at one statement from Jason Rosenhouse:

    But for all of that, I do still have quite a bit of sympathy for their interpretation of Genesis. It sure looks to me like twenty-four hour days and a young-Earth were what the Biblical authors intended. The text itself describes the days as being bracketed by an evening and a morning, which is a very odd way of speaking if something other than twenty-four hour days were intended. . . .

    Now oddly enough, Rosenhouse gets around in the paragraphs following this one to a couple of the key points of exegesis that do not fit into a young earth model, but he misses significant details, and also some of the key ways in which an expert in appropriate areas in Biblical studies would look at the text. Note here, of course, that I am not an “expert” in the “doctoral degree and academic involvement” sense. I’m a popularizer. That’s important, because an expert in any one of the areas I’ll touch on would make this more complex than I do, not less.

    So is it so obvious that Genesis describes creation in seven literal 24 hour days? That all depends. In what context are we studying what part of Genesis? Rosenhouse does not that Genesis 2 is different from Genesis 1, but he only notes the length of time involved, not the key point, which is that Genesis 2 is itself a creation story that differs from Genesis 1, that it does not have any days of creation at all, and that it is chronologically incompatible with Genesis 1. If I step beyond Genesis I should point out that Psalm 104 is also a creation story that skips that part.

    So when we do exegesis, we have several levels at which we can look:

    1. The textual pre-history, in this case Genesis 1:1-2:4a vs Genesis 2:4b-24. We will get a different answer to our questions in looking at the original intent of each author. (Note that I have a breakdown of these stories according to the sources here.)
    2. We can look at the redactor who somehow combined the two stories. The interesting thing here is that he is unlikely to have been unaware that the two stories do not share a time framework, and are not actually chronologically compatible. In interpreting the combined text, we have to take that into consideration. Did he mean Genesis 1 to be taken as the chronological framework, which should then be imposed on Genesis 2, or did he see them as compatible in another sense? (If, as I argue below, Genesis 1 is liturgy, while Genesis 2 is a narrative sharing many, but not all, characteristics with myth, then it is quite possible that he intended the reverse–that Genesis 2 is closer to the history, while Genesis 1 is the way in which it is celebrated liturgically, and the time framework is entirely liturgical.)
    3. We can look at their canonical position as part of the Torah. This involves adding the Sinai experience and the 10 commandments, which pushes us back in the direction of a literal creation week.
    4. We can look at them in the broader canon of scripture, in which case we must not only add those points at which a literal creation week is described, but those texts, such as Psalm 104 or Proverbs 8 that describe creation differently.
    5. Finally, we get to the point of application, as in what is the community that uses the Bible as scripture expected to believe about this material. This is where those who are not part of the community, and especially those who once were but no longer are tend to be very dogmatic. The “true” Christian way is to figure out what the original author said and then to believe that. I’m going to deal with this in a later post, but I will simply note for now that this has never been the actual approach, even when people most vigorously claimed it was.

    So what would the “obvious” exegesis of Genesis 1-2 be, actually? I hope I’m giving you the sense that this is not quite so simple. Rosenhouse is certainly right on one point, in my view. Genesis 1-2 was not intended to describe the process of evolution. As he says:

    Ultimately, it is very hard to believe (to put it kindly) that a writer setting out to communicate a lengthy creation process over billions of years would have written anything like what Genesis records. . . .

    Just so. It’s hard to believe, and you shouldn’t believe it.

    But then he says:

    Or you can take the most sensible approach. That’s where you recognize that the Bible (more specifically the Torah) is not inerrant, and it is not the word of God. . . .

    While I certainly agree that the Bible is not inerrant, the rest simply does not follow. A simplistic idea of how one gets from scriptural text to doctrinal belief is posited and then discarded. An idea of the word of God that may or may not be correct (or more importantly held or not held by a community) is assumed and then dismissed.

    If I believe that errancy is incompatible with the phrase “word of God” then obviously I must discard it if I discover error–or, perhaps, alter my view. But having discovered that Genesis does not describe evolution does not remove the option of allegory, or any number of other points. (I’m going to discuss the meaning of “word of God” in a later post in this series.)

    So let’s go back to the initial point of “obvious exegesis.” Just what did the Biblical writers think they were writing in this case. Was it chronology? Was it narrative history? Allegory? Myth? Here is where I find myself most annoyed with superficial looks at what the Bible might mean, whichever end of the spectrum they come from. Allegory is a particular type of literature. Myth is a particular type of literature, as is narrative history, theology, liturgy, and so forth. All of these occur in the Bible, and all of these are written to answer different questions or to serve different roles.

    Those liberal Christians who call Genesis “myth” are doing as much or more disservice to the Bible as those Christian fundamentalists who treat it as science or history. It is none of the above. In fact “it” cannot be so classified, because “it” combines different types of literature into one text.

    The redactor of Genesis had before him (or in his head) genealogies, stories from various sources, poetic elements, liturgy and theology, which he wove into a new text we call Genesis. I would argue that Genesis 1 is liturgy, and that is a fairly common view amongst experts. Now liturgy is not myth and it’s not allegory, though it may partake of aspects of both. For example, when the minister on Easter Sunday morning announces “He is risen!” as part of the liturgy, nobody supposes that he is claiming that Jesus just rose from the dead, nor does one suppose that the liturgy means that this rising occurs annually. Nobody who understands the liturgical calendar supposes that this statement is made precisely (even to the day or week) of the anniversary of what it celebrates.

    Neither does Genesis 1 necessarily mean that the writer or those who used it in their liturgy actually believed that the earth was created in six literal days followed by a literal day of rest. In fact, allegorical interpretations of the seventh day come much before modern times, as, for example, in the book of Hebrews. But even earlier you get sabbatical years and cycles of seven years, all based on this same concept.

    Were you to ask the Israelites just what they believed at the time when Genesis took on its current form, I would personally guess that they would believe something like a literal week “a long time ago.” (I would note that Daniel seems confused on some chronology that occurs over only a few centuries. We’re talking millenia. That probably means “ancient times.”) I also think they would be surprised at the question, simply because it didn’t occur that much in their world. My guess as to their answer is not obvious, however, it’s just my guess. They might have just looked at the questioner oddly and had him locked up as nuts!

    Genesis does not answer the kind of questions we seem to want answered regarding origins, because those were not the questions that the authors wanted answered, and they wouldn’t have had a clue as to the answers even if they had asked them.

    Note that I have not excluded Jason Rosenhouse’s view. Much of what he says the Biblical text doesn’t mean is quite likely correct. But looking at what it does mean is substantially more complex. Understood in its historical context I would say that the Bible provides very little comfort for any of the groups. The Biblical authors would, I think, be equally surprised by efforts of young earth creationists to lock their days and their chronology into stone, by the day-age efforts of old earth creationists, and by efforts of some Christian evolutionists to suggest that the Bible really teaches their view. It simply doesn’t tell any of these stories, or answer the questions these stories intend to answer.

    I intend to continue with posts on the meaning of the phrase “word of God,” on how scriptural application is determined, and how this relates to the issue of the Bible and homosexuality as I continue.

  • Source and Redaction Criticism: Ehrman on Job

    In chapter six of his book God’s Problem, Ehrman tackles the book of Job.  (My notes on the book as a whole are here.)  He describes the book as coming from two sources, one containing the narrative portions, and one containing the poetic dialogues.

    This view is not that exceptional, though one should also consider a very common alternative, that the dialogues were written separately, but that one and same person wrote the narratives and redacted the entire book.

    Ehrman says:

    Most people who read Job do not realize that the book as it has come down to us today is the product of at least two different authors, and that these different authors had different, and contradictory understandings of why it is that people suffer. . . . (p. 162)

    The prose author, he says, sees suffering as a test of faith, while the author of the dialogues believes that there ultimately is no answer.

    Ehrman correctly notes differences of genre, and differences of style.  The seams in the book suggest the possibility of multiple sources.  Ehrman adds to this a difference in the portrayal of Job.  While I have been aware of the possible sources since college, and have read the book many times, I have never seen a problem with the characterization of Job.  I chalk this one up to the common scholarly exercise of trying to make people more coherent and logical than they normally are.

    Ehrman also feels that the parts were not combined very well.  On page 167 he notes the reaction of God in chapter 42:

    . . . It is obvious that a bit of the folktale was lost in the process of combining it with the poetic dialogues, for when it resumes, God indicates that he is angry with the three friends for what they have said, in contrast to what Job has said.  This cannot very well be a reference to what the friends and Job said in the poetic dialogues, because there it is the friends who defend God and Job who accuses him.  And so a portion of the folktale must have been cut off whent he poetic dialogues were added.  What the friends said that offended God cannot be known. (p. 167)

    All of which treats the final redactor as an idiot.  This is one of the key problems when source and redaction criticism are viewed as providing “the” answer to the meaning of a passage or book.  Source critics tend to think they’re done when they have finished identifying the sources and mourning the missing parts.

    But is the redactor (or final author) actually so silly that he fails to miss the fact that the friends are defending God and Job is challenging him?  I think there is good evidence to suggest not.  In the dialogues, the friends hold that Job is guilty of something and that God is punishing him.  The narrative portions clearly state that this is not the case.  In other words, the friends have been making false claims about God and accusing Job of wrongdoing, when no such wrongdoing has taken place, according to the narrative portions.

    If one takes the resultant whole as a polemic against the Deuteronomistic approach (or at least a supplement to it, as the two are not completely incompatible), which holds that blessing comes to those who do right and curses to those who don’t, then I think the combined text makes quite good sense.  It is not a theodicy.  I want to scream when people insist it is; there is no intention of justifying God in the book of Job.  If there is, it is a miserable failure.  It is not a coherent picture of why people suffer.  In fact, it makes clear that one cannot know.  From the point of view of the text as a whole, Job never gets to know what the problem was.  He may have been enduring a test of faith, but all he knows is that he is a) innocent and b) suffers.  He is satisfied that God appeared, and he is affirmed as a righteous man by God’s actions.

    I think a better redaction theory would be that the narrative author had the dialogues before him, which fail to present an answer.  Suffering there is mysterious, and the issue is never resolved.  He wraps this in a story that makes the mysterious suffering have a cause, in this case, the test.  While Job still remains in mystery, he is satisfied that at least God showed up.

    Ehrman comments on Job’s response to God’s presence:

    . . . God is not to be questioned and reasons are not to be sought.  Anyone who dares to challenge God will be withered on the spot, squashed into the dirt by his overpowering presence.  The answer to suffering is that there is no answer and we should not look for one.  The problem with Job is that he expects God to deal rationally with him, to give him a reasonable explanation of the state of affairs; but God refuses to do so.  He is, after all, God.  Why should he have to answer to anybody?  Who are <em>we</em>, mere mortals, to question GOD? (p. 188, emphasis in original)

    The problem, in my view, is that this does not give adequate credit to even the literary concept of an encounter with God, much less the reported personal experience.  People speak of being terrified, spent, and shattered, yet they come out encouraged and feeling positive.  Those who have had mystical encounters, amongst whom I count myself, may well not record such encounters as entirely joyful, and may not come out with all answers, but at the same time, generally don’t feel that they can no longer seek answers.

    In this concept, the friends have to repent of trying to represent God, and doing so incorrectly.  They have to repent of accusing an innocent man.  Job, on the other hand, at the same time repents of thinking he’s going to be able to handle it and understand it, yet he is not condemned for seeking an answer, and for upholding his own innocence even in the face of seemingly irrefutable theological positions.

    The redactor is thus not an idiot.  I personally don’t find his approach to suffering all that helpful, but I do find it challenging.  It provides a way to think further.  This redactor, or final author, if he is trying to present Job as squished into the dust and intimated into no longer seeking answers, has a rather odd way of doing so.  He presents a book that seeks after answers, challenging old ones and suggesting new ones.

    I think that Ehrman has misunderstood the narrative portion, and done so in such a way as to present some unknown final redactor in the worst possible light.  Careful reading of the final whole finds a viewpoint that is worth considering in itself.

    This doesn’t detract fromt he sources, though personally I think that there is only one source, the poetic dialogues.  The author of our canonical book took those dialogues and wrapped them in prose, forcing them to serve him.  Far from being an idiot who couldn’t tell that his ending didn’t match his beginning, he was a creative author who molded older material into a new and useful form.

  • Critical Methods and Modern Tests

    Over the last few days there have been a flurry of posts at Language Log that could be related to Biblical criticism, though that is not the intent of their authors. What they are actually discussing is authorship identification and then spin spotting, with an interesting twist at the end.

    Here are some key posts to check:

    Why does this remind me of Biblical criticism? It seems to me that it demonstrates how easily one can be misled on things like this, and how important it is to thoroughly check such claims. It’s quite easy for an expert to say that, based on his careful study of certain criteria, a certain document was written (or not written) by a particular author. But when you go and ask for the basis of that claim, you may find that the expert has very little material with which to work.

    Noting that an author uses phrases that he doesn’t use elsewhere is significant if you have a large body of that author’s work. If you have only a small amount, you really have little to work with. Statistics work that way. You need significant samples before the numbers mean anything.

    I recall an experiment I did while a college student. I wanted to test my ability to decode something in a simple substitution cypher. I explained the process to my sister, and she created her cypher and then encoded some text using it. It was just a short paragraph, but I after an hour or so I gave up and asked her what it was.

    My problem? She had chosen a passage from Encyclopedia Britannica discussing the history of one of the Chinese dynasties. I don’t remember which, but the names of the emperors made all the probabilities off kilter. Even though the paragraph was in English, there were so many transliterated Chinese names that my probability charts were all off. I think I should have figured it out anyhow, but the fact is that I didn’t. A larger sample would have made the work quite trivial.

    Similarly the effort to automatically spot “spin” relies on sampling. Not every instance of the passive voice is intended to obscure agency, even if one correctly identifies the passive, as this program did not. One would have to find better criteria than simply passive voice.

    The ease with which some people are deceived on this is also very interesting. If someone talks authoritatively enough, provides enough technical sounding detail, people will tend to believe them. I think we build this view of expertise in many mystery shows today. How many people get their idea of what expert examination can accomplish from fiction? There the “expert” confidently points out a few items that make the case air tight. In reality, of course, such testimony will be placed in context, and alternative explanations will be provided by the defense. (See! I have indicated agency quite clearly in a passive sentence.)

    I like Biblical criticism, and I like to apply critical methodology to various texts. I’m not arguing against that. What I am suggesting is that in Biblical studies we generally have very small samples, and thus we are often drawing substantial conclusions from insubstantial evidence. You work with what you have. At the same time, we need to be very careful to state our conclusions with the appropriate humility.

    There are very few “assured results” in textual studies.

  • Witherington: What Have They Done with Jesus?

    I have two books on my “to be read” shelf that I also intend to blog through. Since I just completed Random Designer, by Dr. Richard Colling, and I have Francis Collins, The Language of God which also deals with evolution, I decided to take Ben Witherington III, What Have They Done with Jesus? next. I’ll get to Collins’ book next.

    In addition to giving me a change of subject, its topic is also closer to areas in which I have some expertise. The word “some” should be noted here–I’m not a New Testament scholar. I’m largely a popularizer, and my academic training emphasized Hebrew scriptures. But working in a church, rather than an academic environment, I have been forced to spend a great deal of time on the New Testament just because that’s what most church members want to study.

    My procedure for blogging through a book is to read a chapter or block of chapters and then write my reaction on the blog immediately, rather than read the whole book and then write a more comprehensive review. This can result in some need to correct my impressions later, and in the case of Random Designer, that did happen. It is perhaps a slightly post-modern way to read a book, but I don’t think I’m very post-modern, so maybe I do it just for fun.

    (more…)

  • Anchor Bible: 2 Corinthians – Introduction

    One of my more esoteric goals in life is to complete a study of every book of the Bible form the original languages working with a commentary that takes critical issues into account. I have read the Bible through in its original languages. This is a different type of study. I will generally read other sources, but I choose one critical commentary that I think should be pretty solid, and I study the book with that on.

    In the case of 2 Corinthians, I chose the Anchor Bible Commentary by Victor Paul Furnish. It’s a 620 page (without front matter) volume that does interact intensively with some of the major critical theories, and also looks carefully at the theology of the book. I have used the Anchor Bible commentary in a number of my studies, and generally have found them to be fine volumes.

    This time I’m going to blog a bit about the experience as I study through. Using my own study methods, I’ve been reading the book through daily for the last couple of weeks, using different translations and getting an overview. Today I read the introduction, which occupies 57 pages. Most of it is fairly straightforward, dealing with dating the book and looking at where it fits with what we know of the life of Paul. Of those pages 18 deal with the history and the culture of Roman Corinth. Following that we get a substantial history of Christianity in Corinth as it is known from other sources.

    The entire introduction is good, and is expected of an Anchor Bible volume. But the section on the literary integrity of the book is exceptional, working through the logic that has been applied, and should be applied to various theories of authorship. One important point is made on page 38: “Any proponent of a partition hypothesis is under an obligation to offer some plausible explanation(s) of how originally independent units could have come to be combined into a literary whole.” That’s an often disregarded point.

    Dr. Furnish does accept one partitioning of 2 Corinthians. He believes chapters 1-9 represent one letter, and 10-13 a follow-up letter. His hypothesis for the combination of the two elements is that the two were put together as a collection, and joined by the simple expedient of dropping the ending salutations of one and the opening salutation of the other. He even provides examples of such collection practices in the ancient world. In doing so, however, he rejects a large number of very complex hypotheses.

    I’ll be reading the comments on the relevant passages with some interest to see how strongly he bolsters his case.

    For those interested, the introduction is followed by about 35 pages labeled “Select Bibliography.” All I can say is that I would hate to imagine what would have happened had the author not been selective!

  • Faith and Creation – Some Links

    I encountered a few posts related to these to words, to which I’d like to call your attention. First, via Higgaion I navigated to this post about taking things on faith.

    The author, Dr. James F. McGrath, makes some excellent points on just what faith means from a Biblical perspective. One thing I would emphasize is that while we may believe certain things on limited evidence, we rarely believe based on no evidence at all, or contrary to the positive evidence. Usually we at least believe that there is some evidence with us.

    Let me quote one key comment that ties this in with creation:

    There is no reason to think that the author of Genesis expected his readers to believe his creation story ‘on faith’. He does not dispute the basic facts of the natural world as understood in his time: that the world is mostly land with a large gathering of connected basins filled with water called seas; that there is a dome over the earth; that above the dome are waters; that there are lamps placed in the dome (the moon, like the sun, being viewed as a source of light). He says all of this because it is what people thought in his time. None of it is anticipated to require faith to believe it. What the author offered was an alternative story of creation, not alternative facts about that which was created.

    This is an extremely important paragraph. Those who have never tried it, have no idea how difficult it would be to express both a new view of God and a complete new cosmology simultaneously, and have it connect with hearers. Those who look for a modern cosmology in the Bible are really asking the wrong questions of the text. We tend to ask how accurate the text appears to us, when a better question would be what the text communicated to those who first spoke/wrote or heard/read it. I don’t mean here to say that the historical meaning is the only meaning of a religious or spiritual text, nor that we can be 100% certain we know. But we will do much better starting with that historical text, then by immediately trying to read it from a perspective unknown and unimaginable to the first audience.

    The second related post is the beginning of a series by Dr. Westmoreland-White on Levellers. He has written an initial post that consists largely of suggested reading, and has now continued with an initial post looking at the texts, starting from Genesis 2:4b-25.

    Dr. Westmoreland-White notes regarding this passage:

    All this is clearly to say that those who told this story and those who wrote it down and included it in our Bibles were NOT asking scientific questions. They were asking about God and humanity and our relation to each other and the world (as they knew it). By the time of the early monarchy when this was written, Israel was in conflict with surrounding nations who all had their own gods and goddesses. The constant question was “Who is this YHWH of yours anyway!” since Yahwism was relatively new to Canaan. . . .

    There is a similarity in the way in which the two bloggers are viewing the text, and I agree with them both on this. This series is likely to be good.

    With reference to the sources of the early chapters of Genesis, I have thus far presented a working translation of the first 10 chapters of Genesis, and I plan to post the 11th either later today or sometime tomorrow. The purpose of using my own translation is not that I think mine is better. In fact, due to a number of factors I would consider it worse. But I wanted a copyright free, modern language translation which I could slice up according to the sources. You’ll find these posts with the sources color coded in category “Genesis” on my Participatory Bible Study blog.

    I think that will do for now.

  • Biblical Studies Carnival XXIII Posted

    . . . at Ancient Hebrew Poetry. I don’t have a post in there this time, but that’s not a complaint–I can’t think of what I’d nominate in this case. I will certainly get some blogging fodder from reading the posts. There are certainly a substantial number of excellent biblioblogs available.

    Speaking of which, John continued his postings with things he left out of the first one and then a map of the world of Bible bloggers. The latter is especially useful.

    Enjoy!

  • Crossway ESV Literary Study Bible

    Regular readers of this blog (that imaginary group every blogger hopes he has!) will know that I am not a fan of the [tag]ESV[/tag]. More precisely, I’m not a fan of the hype that surrounds it in certain circles. It’s not a bad translation in my view–it’s just not very special.

    Thus I was not immediately attracted to ESV, The Literary Study Bible despite the very attractive title. I think literary study of the Bible is one of the key elements that is lacking in Bible study by many Christians. Besides the specific benefits of the various literary disciplines, simply relating Biblical material to the metanarrative can improve one’s memory, if nothing else. I’m reminding of a lady who was in a study group I led. After about six months she suddenly got an expression of wonder and surprise in the middle of a session and announced, “I finally see it! It’s all connected!”

    Adrian Warnock has printed an extract from this Bible (12 Literary Features of the Bible) with the permission of Crossway, and that one section is enough to spark my interest. I will certainly place this on my list to buy and use, and perhaps review here once I’ve had time to enjoy it a bit myself.

    I must note that there are some nuances of the 12 features that I would state a bit differently, but without context, it’s hard for me to tell just how far I differ, so I will save my quibbles until after I have actually read and worked with this Bible. As it stands, I welcome a new tool for students of the Bible in English. Anything that directs people to another perspective from which to study will be helpful.

  • Genesis 10: The Table of Nations

    Genesis 10 is one of those chapters that Bible students often try to avoid, because it is filled with names that are difficult to pronounce, and it’s hard for our modern ears to hear it as anything other than an interruption. But to the redactor of Genesis, these genealogies were serious business.

    Genesis 5 provides a key genealogy, and its major purpose is to show the preservation and continuity of the patriarchal line. We will see another genealogy much like it in Genesis 11. But Genesis 10 provides genealogies that deal with a number of people and nations.

    The key point here, I would suggest, is to show Israel as part of the world, related to those with whom she would interact over the centuries. As suggested in the Interpreter’s Bible (Exegesis on Genesis 10:1-32), this may be the beginning of Israelite universalism. God (YHWH) is not just interested in Israel, he is interested in the whole world. All the world’s peoples are in one family, however distant they may be. This idea is fairly weak in Genesis, but it will get stronger, especially in 2nd and 3rd Isaiah (40-55; 56-66).

    The Bible Knowledge Commentary comments:

    The table of nations is a “horizontal” genealogy rather than a “vertical” one (those in chaps. 5 and 11 are vertical). Its purpose is not primarily to trace ancestry; instead it shows political, geographical, and ethnic affiliations among tribes for various reasons, most notable being holy war. Tribes shown to be “kin” would be in league together. Thus this table aligns the predominant tribes in and around the land promised to Israel. These names include founders of tribes, clans, cities, and territories.1

    Other commentators generally agree on the purpose of the list, but vary in their view of the historicity.2

    There is a final question of historicity. I think this is really the wrong question to ask here. The story thus far tells us of the population of the earth. If the flood is to be regarded as a large, but nonetheless local event, then the issue is one of the groups of people most closely related to Israel. I believe there is good reason to expect that these lists arose from traditions, and not from some kind of direct revelation, and thus should be seen to paint a general picture and not to provide historical details.

    In particular, the interchange of personal names with the names of people groups is a key. The interest is less with the historical descent of the people involved than it is with the way the land is divided and their relationship to one another, and particular to the chosen people.

    Chapter 10, combined with chapter 11, forms a bridge between the history of the world in general that runs from Genesis 1-11 and the very specific history of Israel that begins in chapter 12 with the call of Abraham.

    I have only a small number of notes on this chapter. If you are looking for details on the various names, you will need a Bible dictionary, and even there facts will be a little bit scarce. I based the following working translation on the ASV simply to save myself the trouble of getting the transliteration of all the names in standard form. None of the transliterations are mine.

    Finally, this is an excellent example of Biblical criticism, particularly source and redaction criticism, in action, though one shouldn’t assume that there is sufficient information in this one chapter to build a character of the sources. Nonetheless there is a critical pattern in the language used that helps identify the sources, in this case J (Yahwist) and P (Priestly). I will use blue text for P, and black text for J. In addition, I will underline the key introductory phrases that separate the sources.2

    It is very likely that each source contained overlapping material, but the redactor combined all of this information into a single picture suitable for his purpose–displaying Israel as God’s servant in the broader world.

    The translation and notes will be below the fold.

    (more…)

  • Reading Part 6 (On Inerrancy)

    I somehow got the idea that the inerrancy series to which I linked yesterday was in five parts. A comment from the author let me know that I was wrong on that point, and how I got the idea I do not know, consider that the statement “*Part 6 will conclude with reflections on why the doctrine of inerrancy is important.” occurs at the end of the notes to part 5. But such is life in the blogosphere.

    You can now read part 6, and it does tie the package together. I would like first to quote portions of the author’s comment to my previous post here to set the stage. After gently reminding me of the sixth part, he said:

    I don’t want to give the impression that some people, such as yourself, are “too far away” to connect with. This was a paper I wrote for seminary last year, and given the space limitation I had to narrow down my argument rather strictly. To engage every possible position on inerrancy was not possible within the scope of the paper, but I believe I had something original to say to those who claim some sort of “limited inerrancy.”

    This is a good point which I did note. Now I don’t find that the premises he lists at the beginning of part 6 catch me. When he says “The Bible’s claims about its own integrity are a matter of faith and practice” as the second premise, I’m not sure I’d agree, but then I’m truly not one of the limited inerrantists whom he is addressing, and thus I might not evaluate that statement properly. I reject inerrancy in all its forms and I have problems with the term “infallibility” in many contexts. I’ll write more about that below.

    I have been frequently shocked by positions held by people who do claim to accept inerrancy. There seem to be people out there who profess some form of belief in inerrancy who are more liberal in their handling of the scriptures than I would be able to accept. One of these points is the late dating of the book of Daniel, which I have grave difficulties reconciling with inerrancy. I commented on this point in Earnest Lucas’s fine volume in the Apollos Old Testament Commentary series, in which he doesn’t specifically affirm a 2nd century date for Daniel, but does argue that one can affirm inerrancy and yet hold to a late date. I’m supposed to be the liberal on this issue, and I accept a mixed dating, with a historical Daniel and some fairly old stories supplemented by later Hebrew additions.

    You said “it’s a bit odd to use either a proof-texting approach or the approach of systematic theology to determine what the Bible must be.” I’d like to clarify that the argument I presented makes no claims to what the Bible must be (or must not be). My argument is more modest in that I’ve only argued what the Bible claims to be. Whether or not the Bible is what it claims is an entirely different point, and I’ve yet to present any argument regarding that.

    On this point, I understand the objection to my comments, but in the broader picture, the doctrine of inerrancy seems to me to result from systematic theology more than it does from observation of the Bible. In fact, the claim of inerrancy produces a considerable effort in explaining those elements of the Bible that don’t appear to fit the picture. I’m not only talking about explaining errors or reconciling contradictions, but also looking at the process. The synoptic gospels, for example, display signs of copying from one to another. The simplest explanation for stories with slight variations is that they are the same story remembered or passed on with slightly different details. The doctrine of inerrancy forces one to explain how the details really worked. An extreme version of this is Lindsell’s explanation of the cock crowings and denials that reconciled the stories in the gospels. Now one can’t be absolutely certain that Lindsell was wrong, but it seems very improbable that he was right. (I see a reference to this here. I don’t have a copy of The Battle for the Bible on hand to check the accuracy of that reference, however.)

    My preferred approach is to sit down with the Bible and ask, “Just what does this book appear to be, and what does it appear to do?” Having gotten a start at answering that question, I will move on to what precisely it is, and then I have some basis on which to interpret and apply statements such as 1 Timothy 3:16-17 (which winds up being very important in my view of inspiration as well) or 2 Peter 1:20-21.

    Welll, I started this post with “Biblical inspiration” fatigue, as in I’ve written way too much on the subject recently. But I should still say something about what I do believe. (Note that this is not in response directly to Roger’s series. I simply feel that I should make a positive statement to connect with any criticisms, thus giving people equal opportunity to criticize my views.)

    First, I do not think a doctrine of scripture, apart from a more general doctrine of how one discovers God’s will is likely to be valid. That is sort of like a view of how a house will be laid out sole by expressing the accuracy of the measuring tape. In such a case the measuring tape can be 100% accurate, but it’s practical accuracy is limited by the people who receive the information.

    This leads to my second point, which is that as human beings, we are always speaking of God’s word as we receive it. God’s word in God’s mind is always true and absolutely accurate. If we believe that God is infinite, his word in his mind is also without perspective, or perhaps more accurately with absolute perspective. We, on the other hand, never comprehend something without perspective, and those moments in God’s presence that simply hint at God’s absolute perspective are overpowering.

    Third, I hold that this perspective issue applies to the prophet who initially receives the revelation as much as to any other human. He will not absolutely comprehend the message, and based on recorded statements in scripture as well as observations of the written product, I see no validity in the idea that God’s inspiration involves dictation. (Now please don’t assume that I think inerrancy necessarily involves verbal dictation. The vast majority of inerrantists I know do not.) My particular point here is that the prophet understands and expresses the message as a human, and thus the received communication is itself limited. I would argue further that the received message is imperfect, but I have little time to follow that trail.

    Fourth, this results in the possibility of error at any stage of the transmission other than the thought in God’s own mind. The possibility of error applies to everything that is communicated because everything communicated goes through a human mind, is then copied by a human mind, and is later interpreted and applied by a human mind–all imperfectly.

    Inerrantists of my acquaintance accept that interpreters are all fallible, and certainly fallible in faith and practice as well as history and science. They accept that copyists may have made errors, though they would maintain those are few and of small import. I simply extend that one more step. Any human mind that transmits the word of God will do so in a limited way, i.e. imperfectly.

    So why read and depend on the Bible? Well, first, I don’t “depend on” the Bible as such. But generally this question tends to make me crazy. I depend on potentially fallible materials in my daily life. I am a fallible person who makes imperfect decisions, many of which I now know, from the eminence of 50 years (!) to have been really, really bad. I deal with imperfection. It is important to me that God is perfect, but I see no need for any human to be perfect.

    Now the Bible is a core element in my reception of God’s word, but by itself it is words on paper. I must bring all elements of God’s revelation together in order to have the faintest prayer of a chance of getting anything right. And that “prayer” of a chance is precisely what I do have. For me the Bible comes in a Spirit-filled community and is guaranteed to me not by the factual content of the text, on which I may change my mind in the next several seconds, but rather on the Spirit and the community with all the gifts and wisdom that God can give us. Even so I know that we will be in error from time to time.

    But even more importantly, I think we spend most of our times in the questionable areas, things on which we can quite reasonably disagree, while most of our actual problems come in areas on which we know what is right, and yet aren’t doing it. But again, that’s another point.