Tag: Christianity

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.)

[Note, 3/25/06 — the original post was truncated due to a syntax error I made in the HTML. This is the corrected version.]

(Continuing my series on Biblical criticism, from my last post From Criticism.)

If Form Criticism can properly be called a “tree method” rather than a forest view, Source Criticism might be said to be a “grove method.” It looks at a broader swath of the text than Form Criticism, but still is not looking at the passage as a whole. To see the relationship between these various forms, look at my chart in the pamphlet What is Biblical Criticism?.

Again, I must emphasize that this tool assumes certain stages of the text, that is a point in time when various literary elements were gathered together into larger documents, which were in turn gathered into the larger document that we have before us. In many cases this textual history will not be true. In a prophetic book such as Isaiah, for example, the prophet made certain proclamations of God’s word. These proclamations were then gathered into a larger document. It’s possible that there were a number of larger documents that were smaller than the final book of Isaiah (1-35, 36-39, 40-55, 56-66, for example), though in the case of Isaiah we discover these documents through literary study of the text itself.

In Jeremiah, on the other hand, we have direct internal and external evidence of a process such as would be expected by Source Criticism, and so would be studied by this tool. In Jeremiah 36:4ff, Baruch receives some of Jeremiah’s prophetic oracles and writes them into a book. Note, in addition, that this copy of Jeremiah’s work was destroyed, and then was recreated (Jeremiah 36:32). The individual oracles that Jeremiah dictated would be of the general form of “prophetic oracles” (there are many types of prophetic oracle), and the document that Baruch wrote would constitute one of the source documents of the book of Jeremiah. How do I know this was not the actual book of Jeremiah as we have it today? Because Jeremiah ministered for some years after this incident (see 36:1-3 for dating), and we have a record of those incidents.

Further evidence of sources in Jeremiah comes from the differences between the Septuagint and Masoretic text of the book. I’m not here discussing the differences in length between the two texts, but rather the position of the oracles about foreign nations, which is chapters 46-51 in the Masoretic Text, but is instead located at chapter 26 and following in the LXX. This is not proof that this is a source, but it strongly suggests that we have at least two sources in the book of Jeremiah, one the Baruch scroll, and the second a document containing prophetic oracles against the nations.

In an earlier post I used the parable of the sower as an example of a parable that is attested in three gospels. Having the same form (parable) in three different larger documents helps us to study the nature of the form. The gospels are even more useful as an example of forms in action. There are blocks of text in Matthew, Mark, and Luke that show very close verbal parallels, suggesting some form of copying one from another. The question is what was copied, and who copied whom.

These blocks involve text that is in all three synoptic gospels, some that is in Matthew and Luke, but not Mark, and some that is in Matthew or Luke, but not in any other gospel. The most common explanation for this phenomenon is known as the two source or two document hypothesis. This suggests that Matthew and Luke copied from Mark and an unknown source known as ‘Q’ for ‘Quelle’ which is German for ‘source.’

You can identify various elements in this system using a gospel parallel. Where you find all three gospels in agreement, you are generally dealing with Markan material. When Luke and Matthew agree but Mark does not, you are dealing with Q material, when Matthew or Luke are alone in a reading, they are dealing either with their own independent material, or with further hypothetical sources ‘M’ or ‘L’. There are cases in which this loose equation doesn’t work, for example there are some elements of Q that appear in Mark, or there can be cases where only Luke or Matthew copy Mark. Note also that this is not the only theory of how the gospels were composed. (For related information see Understanding the Search for the Historical Jesus.)

Careful source criticism is useful in understanding the history of the text and how it was composed. It can tell us about the people who were involved in creating the text. It is also a necessary adjunct to redaction criticism, which I will discuss in my next entry on this topic.

There are a couple of dangers in source criticism, however. First, like all critical methods, it often must be based on limited evidence. Speculation added to speculation can get very doubtful. Second, there are cases in which Bible students conclude that they have solved a problem because they have identified the sources.

As an example, Genesis 1:1-2:4a and Genesis 2:4b-25 are normally regarded as coming from two separate sources. There are differences in the way creation is described, and some potential issues in the order of creation. One response is simply to assume that they are different sources, and thus it’s no big deal that they tell a different story. But that is to miss an important element of interpretation. Even if you believe that the two passages come from different sources, someone seems to have thought they fit together. An interpreter must consider also what they mean when combined. Source criticism shouldn’t be used to shortcut a full exegesis of a passage.

The following chart is designed to allow persons who are not skilled in Greek to work with the parallel accounts of the parable of the sower, Matthew 13:1-9, Mark 4:1-9, and Luke 8:4-8. Notes cover very basic cocepts of textual criticism, form criticism, source criticism, and redaction criticism. In future entries I will expand on these issues and also discuss literary, tradition, genre and canonical criticism.

As background, consult my pamphlet What is Biblical Criticism? which provides an extremely basic overview of the method. To that discussion, I need to add that not every portion of the general history of a document takes place with each document. For example, in the case of one of Paul’s letters, for example, there is no oral stage. In general, there are no sources, or sources provide only a very limited portion of the text. There are also no further redactions or editions of the text. Paul writes or dictates the letter, and then it is delivered. In this case form, source, and redaction criticism have very little to say. Sometimes scholars try to make use of these techniques on literature to which they are not well suited, and the results are not terribly helpful.

If we limit ourselves to the limits of this single pericope (or short, defined scriptural passage), then most of our questions relate to form criticism. We are asking what the form of the parable is. A good way to think of this is to ask yourself what it was about this that told you it was a parable. In this case, it is labeled “parable.” But what if you just heard the starting point: “A sower went out to sow.” Would you still recognize it as a parable? Did Jesus very likely say, “I’m going to use a parable now?” So the phrase that introduces the parable, as well as the setting is part of the redaction, or a result of editing the text.

To deal with sources we would have to look at more text. Within this parable, we can ask whether it is more likely that Mark was first, and Matthew and Luke copied from him, or was Matthew first? It would be a rather odd view these days, but logically one must consider whether Luke was first, and the others copied him. But in the passage in question, we see very little indication of who copied whom. Mark’s vocabulary and style is a little simpler, and Luke’s is more complex, but those changes could be made by any of the three.

There’s a likely reason for this. On the assumption that Mark is first (which I might argue with, but I want to work with the consensus for right now), this parable is probably part of the ‘Q’ source. (Q is an abbreviation for German “Quelle” which means “source.”) This parable is also repeated in the Gospel of Thomas, verse 9, which provides support for the possibility that it was part of a sayings source. Note also that Thomas does not include either the setting (one would expect it not to) nor does it include the final “He who has ears, let him hear.”

One major benefit of this sort of study is that it forces you to look in detail at every word and ask precisely how it fits into the intent of the author. Whether you agree with the work of any critical or scholar or not, that study cannot help but benefit you.

In future entries I will discuss the methods further and also bring examples from other texts, then eventually take a look at Isaiah 24-27 as a passage that can benefit from the work of form, source, redaction, and canonical criticism.