Musalaha - an organization worth checking out

Musalaha is a non-profit organization that seeks to promote reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians as demonstrated in the life and teaching of Jesus. We endeavor to be an encouragement and advocate of reconciliation, first among Palestinian and Israeli believers and then beyond to our respective communities. Musalaha also aims at facilitating bridge building among different segments of Israeli and Palestinian societies according to biblical reconciliation principles.

Do people know of other, similar organizations?

Update: They also have a new blog: Musalaha's Musings. Their posts are sporadic at the moment but they hope to change that. The first is an excerpt from the youth leadership training seminar for youth leaders in the West Bank. It emphasises the importance for youth leaders of practicing what they preach, as youth tend to justify their actions on the basis of those of their leaders. Palestine really does need decent leaders.

Jonah and the nations: a "figurative" reading

What is the correct context for interpreting the Book of Jonah, the context that gets us to the substance of its witness? The classic historical approach would locate it in its post-exilic setting and come up with something along the lines of Blenkinsopp: the forgiveness of the evil Assyrians represents "the breaking of the bond of divine causality" inside the prophetic office (Seitz, Prophecy and Hermeneutics, 147). What about its canonical/literary context, however? I've posted on Seitz's understanding of typology, both as inner-biblical literary technique as well as prophetic hermeneutical intention. What would it mean to read Jonah as a book “figured into” a larger divine history? Seitz offers the following thoughts on how the canonical “universe of associations" into which the book of Jonah “has been figured and within which it establishes its ongoing prophetic address as the fifth witness of the Twelve” (147) creates a different picture of divine forgiveness and the nations:

Yhwh is “slow to anger”—but he his also “great in might, and YHWH will by no means clear the guilty” (Nah. 1:3). Of Assyria it was ultimately said, “for upon whom has not come your unceasing evil?” (3:19). Jonah ended with a question about divine compassion. Nahum ends with a question about worldly power and its capacity to look divine grace in the eye, as well as an episode of true repentance, and then carry on according to its own dark designs. Here Nahum is telling no detached theological truth, but is speaking of the way of worldly power as it moves through the chapters of history. And Habakkuk sees a worse chapter coming than the one about which he registered his initial complaint (1:2).

This makes me furious

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1074678.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/world/middleeast/30mideast.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

My sister's a nun

OK, mine isn't, but this blogger's is. Susan Pigot, the author of the blog OT Prophetess has written a delightfully eloquent post on her sister's becoming a nun - of the "full-blown habit-bedecked cloister-enclosed sort" - and what that meant for her initially traumatized family.

Check it out: My Sister the Sister.

What is the Psalter?

Based on positioning of the "framing" Psalms (Rahmenpsalmen) 1-2 and 146-150, here is Erich Zenger's answer, first in English (my translation) and then in the German original:

It is

a praise of the divine, universal rule of Yhwh, which he desires to assert in an act of eschatological judgement. This rule is grounded in Tora and creation, and will be asserted by means of both his (messianic) king (cf. Ps 2), who Yhwh has established in Zion, as well as his messianic people (cf. Ps 149, who exist amongst the nations (cf. especially Ps 2:10-12 and Ps 150, but also Ps 148).

Es ist ein

Lobpreis der universalen in Schöpfung und Tora grundgelegten Gottesherrschaft (vg. besonders Ps 2,10-12 und Ps 150, aber auch Ps 148) ... , die Jhwh durch seinen auf dem Zion eingesetzten (messianischen) König (vgl. Ps 2) und durch sein messianisches Volk (vg. ps 149) inmitten der Völkerwelt in einem eschtatalogischem Gericht durchsetzen will. [*]

Three questions:

1) How is my translation? This seems to be an example of the marvelous German ability to pack a lot of concepts into one sentence. I had no trouble understanding it but struggled with the translation.

2) Is it true? I certainly want to believe it.

3) How does this quote relate to the image (I don't know who it's by; I just typed eschatological judgement into google image)?

[*] Zenger, Einleitung.

Update: If this topic interests you I'd recommend peeking at the comments. John Anderson's are pariticularly informative, as I'm learning to expect! There is also an very interesting dialogue on this on Richard's blog here.

Prophetic intertextuality

In my post Biblical figuration as literary technique I pointed out that Biblical figuration is, well, a literary technique. The next question is why? What was the hermeneutical intention animating the creation of such literary associations? For Seitz, the term figural denotes the way in which the prophetic tradents wished to direct our attention towards the effect of their juxtapositioning of later and earlier witnesses.

Literary associations are not made for reasons of esthetic matching or for smoothing out possibly rough literary transition (if such had been the intention, we would struggle to spot secondary editing and derivative association in the first place, quite apart from interpreting its possible hermeneutical significance). Rather, these associations are made on the basis of theological convictions concerning God's character through time, God's sovereign purposes with the nations, God's deliverances of judgment and of mercy through time, and God's eschatological determinations derived from protological announcements and anticipations in the events of his historical life with Israel (250).

Barth's Dogmatics, searchable and for free, online!

Jim West, via Stephen Cook, links to an amazing online resource: Karl Barth's entire Church Dogmatics, in English, searchable and for free on the Internet!

Is there anything else that can brighten up your day more than that?

Update:

OK, something else brightened up my day today. On this post, John Hobbins said this:

The most vital form of biblical criticism has always been Sachkritik, that is, straightforward engagement, disagreement not excluded, with the substance of a biblical text.

The word Sachkritik and its emphasis on substance has become so central to me over the past couple of years, yet, apart from Childs, I've not come accross anyone who uses it. So thank you John: you also made may day!

When was the Psalter closed?

John Anderson of Hesed we'emet has shared some extremely informative insights in the comments section of this post. I thought I'd share them here and add a few thoughts by Erich Zenger from his Einleitung:

Re: the closing of the Psalter, I used to have this information very much at the tip of my mind, but alas, much of it has gone away. Here, though, is how I would respond:

The issue is of course a complex one, especially with the Qumran material now in play. Wilson's The Editing of the Hebrew Psalter notes three possibilities with the Qumran evidence in mind: 1) a sequential linkage [i.e. 11QPsa-->MT150]; 2) parallel collection [i.e., 11QPsa a more inclusive collection, with MT 150 becoming official canon at the end of the first century CE]; 3) MT 150 stabilized prior to the 4th century BCE [thus making the Qumran material of a different sort]. The Qumran pss material certainly seems to point to a fixity for Books I-III early on, and a greater fluidity with Books IV-V even into the first century. This issue is compounded all the more, I think, by how one understands the Qumran community (just how 'sectarian' are they?) and, more importantly, what constitutes scripture for them? I would argue the Qumran community certainly has a much looser view of Scripture (see, for instance, the double citation and intentional alteration of 'scripture' in two lemmata in the Habakkuk pesher (1QpHab), or even the many Rewritten Scripture texts, or Genesis Apocryphon, or Jubilees), and thus it is conceivable to me--but still equivocal--that the Qumran pss material may not be decisive in solving the question . . . but it is no doubt seminal.

Peter Flint, in his The Dead Sea Psalms Scrolls and The Book of Psalms argues that the corrections in 4Qpse suggestion an earlier edition (11QPsa) that was corrected toward a text similar to the MT. He thus sees three editions of the Psalter at Qumran: 1) early edition [Pss 1/2-89] used before the founding of the community ca. 150 BCE; 2) Edition IIA [11QPsa], which has scriptural status; Pss 90ff joined with Edition I before the Qumran period by those advocating the solar calendar; 3) Edition IIB [the MT 150], completed prior to the Qumran period. Flint also points out that the fact the MT arrangement is attested in a LXX trans in the second half of the 2nd century BCE corroborates this view).

Two other views deserve brief mention. Patrick Skehan sees 11QPsa as dependent upon MT 150. George Brooke argues that Books I-III are stable in the early Second Temple period, but Books IV-V compiled at a later date (cf. Wilson).

Now that I've done my history of scholarship (wink) . . . it seems to me the Qumran evidence provides a terminus ad quem of around the first century CE. But the LXX attests to a period a few centuries earlier. This point, however, cannot be an unequivocal terminus ante quem . . . one would have to go back further and have other mss. evidence to corroborate. There are, though, compelling arguments for reading the Psalter in a post exilic (Persian?) context. That said, I would conclude with two provisional points.

1) The Psalter achieved its final canonical form sometime between, roughly, the 4th century BCE-1st century CE. A huge span of time, but right now, without doing further reading to refresh my memory, I don't feel safe getting any more specific.

2) 11QPsa--and other Qumran pss material--likely knew and derived from at the very least a well established Books I-III, or perhaps even the entire MT 150.

Here are some additional thoughts from Erich Zenger, who tries to narrow the time frame down to 200-150 BCE. History of thought issus seem to play a significant role:

1) The editorially placed Psalter framework (Pss 1-2 and 146-150) reflect the language and theology found in Jesus Sirach (175 BCE).

2) The same goes for Qumran's wisdom text musar lammebin and the "Book of Mysteries" (Tora wisdom, eschatology, ethnic-cosmological dualism, praise of God).

3) The Qumran Pesher 4QMidr.Eschat(a ) (71-63 BCE) combines the sequence of Ps 1:1 and Ps 2:1f. with other Biblical quotes and applies them eschatologically to the Qumran community. For the order of the Psalter to have had such authority, A. Lange reckons it must have accepted with the grounding of the community in 152 BCE.

4) The LXX translation (Jerusalem, 100 BCE?) affirms the MT ordering and the number of Psalms.

5) The paleographic manuscript Masada Psalms b (2 half of 1st cent. BCE) confirms the order.

6) The differing order in 11QPs [a], could, as you say, be due to liturgical usage. It may even have been made to compete with the MT, which would just confirm the dating.

A new OT blogger

There's a new Old Testament blogger on the scene, a certain John Anderson, with a taste for literary/synchronic reading (though not the the exclusion of the diachronic). His academic interests

include the book of Genesis, specifically the texts of deception in the Jacob cycle; Old Testament Theology; Psalms; historical Jesus; Gospel of Matthew; ancient and modern Jewish history and philosophy; and anything pertaining to the study and origins of Judaism.

He's a third year PhD student at Baylor University and has decided to call his blog Hesed we'emet.

Welcome to the blogosphere, John!

[HT: Ancient Hebrew Poetry]