Top Posts of the Week (2nd in Lent)

I've decided to start collecting the posts that have caught my eye over each week. The only thread of continuity between them is that they interest me. In fact, as I look over this list I'm surprised by how much I read on current events in the Middle East. I truly believe that this area should be the focus of attention for the coming generation. The world is not the place it was (it never is), and the Church has profound challenges before it.

So here is my selection:

PaleoJudaica: The Ark of the Covenant. Jim Davila links to an esoteric (to say the least) story from Time Magazine on the latest theory concerning the lost Israelite ark. The article's closing line: "Animating all searches for the Ark is the hope — and fear — that it will retain the unbridled divine power the Old Testament describes."If this is what animates their search, then the searchers haven't read their Bible properly: 1 Sam 4.

Dr Jim West does the blogging community a favour by uploading Zwingli's 67 articles. I haven't time to read them, unfortunately, but it's good to know they're there when I need 'em.

Large Blue Footballs links to an important article on the suffering of Palestinian Christians. An important issue. As the author concludes: "It is an awful way to live. It is more awful still that so few know, or care about it."

Another story of brutality, this time by the Egyptian government against a blogger who criticised Muhammad and President Mubarak. His punishment: four years in prison. I thought Mubarak was above such barbarity?

Zionism and the State of Israel links to an interesting article on why Jews don't like Christians who like them. By "Jews" is meant "liberal Jews" and by "Christians" is meant "Christian-Zionists." I think it's clear where the problem lies.

For an example of communication between a Christian Zionist and a Jewish (religious) Zionist, check out this e-mail on the blog of Kumah. Fascinating.

Lubab No More hosted a fascinating guest thread by Avi, an Orthodox Jew turned non-believer who's still happily married with his Orthodox believing wife.

I'm always up for theological material in formats other than text, so I appreciate Chrisendom's providing us with video interviews with Bauckham, Wright and Charlesworth.

Ora et Labora has a sobering piece on the significance of the recent events in Kosvo for the Western world.

Point of no Return translates part of an article from a Saudi paper, highlighting the growing awareness in Arab countries that the exodus of Jews and Christians is not a good thing and in fact does not correspond to the traditions of the Middle East.

Davila posts on the Biblical Hebrew Ulpan, run by Randall Booth. The language is being taught as a living, spoken language ... oh how my heart yearns for that! The course probably costs a bomb.

The Literal and Spiritual Sense of Scripture

This post inaugurates the second section of my overarching thread dealing with the theological exegesis of Brevard S. Childs. An overview of the total structure can be seen in my programmatic statement here.

I have already established here that a theological approach to Scripture must first classify the text as a “witness” to divine truth. This introduces a distinction between the mere verbal sense of the individual texts and the reality to which they give partial access. When the verbal sense of the text is provisionally relabelled the literal sense and the ultimate referent the spiritual sense, we can see the continuity of Childs' approach with traditional Christian exegesis. Theological reflection must ultimately be on the text's subject matter, so that the basic thrust of theological interpretation is from the literal to the spiritual. This move also gives the concept of allegory a new currency, as long as allegory is understood to be a means of moving to the text's ultimate subject matter while respecting the literal sense of text itself (i.e. its “integrity” or its “own voice,” what Seitz calls its “per se witness”). For how these two dimensions of the text relate to each other, stay tuned!

Jim Back Online

Due to popular support, Jim is back on-line. His new blog can be found here: http://jwest.wordpress.com/

Support for Jim West

As is now well known on the blogosphere, biblioblogging patriarch Jim West has become the victim of internet terrorism. Some childish coward hacked into his Word Press website and using his password deleted everything, his entire work. Jim has decided that is not going to start again. It wouldn't surprise me if emotional hurt has a role to play in this decision; it would for me.

Jim has been blogging longer than most and has been something of a father-figure to many. He's advertised new blogs (including this one) and has done much to encourage networking and communication amongst those interested in the field of biblical studies. It's a genuine shame to see him go and its a scandal that there are people out there offended enough to want to make him go like this. Given that most of his controversial views were related to theology, I shudder to think that a "Christian" is responsible for this ... If so, public repentance can redeem him. But your heart has to be so hard in the first place to do such a thing that apology would be the last thing on his/her mind.

Some other blogs which have voiced support for Jim are the following:

James' Thoughts and Musings

Higgaion

Awilum

Dr. Claude Mariotinni

Lingamish

Sufficiency

Metacatholic

Abnormal Interests

Chrisendom posts a letter from Jim West

Update: Sibylline Leaves has a far more detailed overview than this here.

Excellent Online Audio Introduction to the Tanakh

A while back I linked to the website of Yale Divinity School, where you can download both audio and video recordings of a brilliant introductory course to the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible hat tip to Deane). I've pretty much made my way through the 24 hours of material and I have to say that I find it very well done. Christine Hayes is extremely articulate and engaging; at the end of each lecture I find myself itching to hear more. It's worth noting the very Jewish tone of the presentation: Hayes is herself from the field of Talmudic studies, the translation and study Bible she uses are Jewish, and the majority of the scholars she calls on are Jewish (Kaufmann, Levenson, Greenberg, Weinfeld).

I found the opening lectures on the Pentateuch the most rewarding. The sections on the histories was pretty much standard historical critical fare, along with her treatment of the prophets. I am disappointed by the underlying aggression to the apparent "distortions" of later Christian tradition (e.g. she's happy to point out the mistranslation of parthenos in Isaiah, but then, a few minutes later, fails to point out how Isaiah' wrestling with the problem of sin and forgiveness are taken up in the New Testament. References to the New Testament are consistently negative). I'm also disappointed by the way that Childs does not even get a mention, despite the fact that his entire career was spent at Yale and that she mentions in the course outline that she's interested in "canonical approaches." It only gets a first mention in lecture 21, and there she seems to be using the term in the way that Sanders used it. This is fair enough, but given Yale's post-liberal heritage I'd have thought that she would have at least pointed out the interpretative options. It is also surprising that in the same lecture, after announcing her decision to read the Psalms from the perspective of canonical criticism, she goes on to interpret them in the classic form critical categories of Herman Gunkel. There is no mention of the theological shaping of the book nor of the midrashic nature of the Psalm titles.

All in all it's well worth a listen. For those on a time budget, two lectures are particularly worth listening to:

1. The Priestly Legacy: Cult and Sacrifice, Purity and Holiness in Leviticus and Numbers (no#9; I was surprised to hear that she distinguishes between moral and cultic purity)


2. Biblical Law: The Three Legal Corpora of JE (Exodus), P (Leviticus and Numbers) and D (Deuteronomy) (no#10; beautiful outline of main emphases and its ancient context).

NB. Awilum has posted his thoughts on this course here.

Clarifying the Bible's "Subject Matter"

A certain Paul wrote an interesting response to my post yesterday on The Nature of the "Substance" of the Bible. I've decided to respond here, as the points he raises are important. His comments are in italics, my response beneath.

Seems to me the Bible is an anthology, multi-authored, composed over thousands of years, with some texts that are very similar and others widely disparate;

I'm in total agreement here. Yet the line of continuity between all these texts is that they have been used religiously by a particular community of faith throughout its history as a testimony and response to its God. Diversity and even logical contradictions don't exclude the possibility that there is one God behind it all, revealing himself to and guiding his people. Which is why, I think, Childs talks of the “substance” of the Bible as being “dynamic,” i.e. God in relationship in history. The central formulae of both Jewish and Christian faith are narrative in nature, rather than abstract description. Irenaeus, for example, spoke of a movement from “creation to incarnation to consummation.” The task of exegesis, an exegesis which wants to really get to the subject matter of the Bible, is to read each text both in its integrity as well as in relation to this (or another) broader picture. Christians believe in the Irenaen one. Others have other “meta narratives” by which to combine the parts into a whole (e.g. Marxist, existentialist, evolutionary, etc.).

the "substance" is always going to to be those elements and aspects that the particular theologian finds most meaningful and prefers to emphasize.

Subjectivity in exegesis is unavoidable. Bultmann, for example, chose to identify the existential dimension of the text as its “true” referent. Working with a Heideggerian understanding of this reality he then sifts out those texts which best accord with its truth claims (at least, that's what I see Bultmann doing ...). I think, however, that some ground rules are necessary, “boundaries of interpretation” or “a rule of faith.” This will depend on your confession, but Christians (of which I am one) not only confess that the Bible is Scripture and as such testifies to God (i.e. it is authoritative), but that it is a “canon,” i.e. a fixed rule which provides the boundaries within which theological exegesis can take place (I posted on this distinction a couple of days ago here). This canon provides the outer limits for exegesis, both a negative criterion marking the boundary between orthodoxy and heresy and a postive criterion, delineating the boundary within which diversity is allowed to flourish. Bultmann's problem, as far as I can see, is that he does not respect that “canonicity” of Scripture, in that he only selects certain strands as proclaiming “true existence” and he denigrates the Old Testament to the status of evolutionary precursor.

Which is why the potential for theological debate is truly eternal

I guess so, but it's not arbitrary. It's a matter of subjectivity within boundaries guided, hopefully, by the Holy Spirit.

The Nature of the "Substance" of the Bible

Childs often talks of the "substance" of the Bible. It is this reality to which all theological exegesis ought to "push through." Today I'd like to clarify Childs' use of the term, as it has acquired associations through usage which most Biblical Scholars have attempted to eschew.

Classically, the philosophical concept of “substance” denotes the essence of a thing in distinction from its accidents and its qualities. In traditional Western ontology an analogy of being was sought between human and divine reality which could be discerned to some degree by means of reason. As such, objections may be raised that Childs' concern with Biblical reality will end up with a static deposit, a “ground of being,” or an abstraction of timeless ideals.

Childs, however, treats the biblical witness as primary in order to fill these philosophical terms with meaning. The reality to which the Bible points is dynamic, rather than static. The narrative nature of the regula fidei (which Childs endorses, cf. here) already points to this. As Childs states, according to the Bible

“the reality of God ... has no true being apart from communion, first within God's self, and secondly with his creation. God is one whose being is in loving which is grounded in a freely given commitment toward humanity and this relationship is constitutive of his being.” [*]

[*] Childs, Biblical Theology, 82.