Reading the letter or the spirit? A case study.

I've often argued on this blog that genuine exegesis needs to wrestle with more than the linguistic, historical, and authorial-intentional dimensions of text. It needs to get to grips with its subject matter, the reality it is talking about. In traditional Christian exegesis this is referred to as going through the literal sense to get to the spiritual (see my thread on the subject here).

This isn't as odd as it sounds. Getting to the "spirit" of a law, for example, rather than simply fulfilling its "letter," is a foundation for the implementation of justice in society - though extremely difficult to implement in practice. Here's an example from the Bible:

The third commandment forbids using the LORD's name in vain, as it would dishonour him:

You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain (Exod 20:4).

What would it look like to keep the letter of this law but not the spirit, and thus bring disrepute on God's name in a far more subtle manner?

In his last days, King David confirmed a series of oaths by evoking the name of God (1 Kings 1:17; 2:8, 23, 42). It is characteristic of these stories that they are extremely ambiguous. For example, David swore by the LORD that he would not put his enemy Shimei to death by the sword. At his death, however, he commanded his son Solomon to carry out the deed.

Did David break the Third Commandment by bringing disrepute on God? Strictly speaking the oath is not broken. Nevertheless, David resorts to a form of deception in order to execute his vengeance.

I believe that the legal issue represented here represents the crux of genuine theological exegesis. It is not enough to remain at the descriptive level. We need wrestle with the true subject matter of the text, which cannot always be so easily read off the surface. The result of not doing so can have dire consequences.

[These thoughts are taken from Childs' Old Testament Theology in a Canonical Context, 69.]

Quote of the day: Revelation in law and history

[I]n the Old Testament God reveals himself neither in history nor in law in some general sense, but in his special covenantal history with Israel. In the act of creating a people for himself history and law are not antagonistic, but different sides of the one act of divine self-manifestation.

Childs, Exodus, 402.

Jesus and Jewish tradition

Here's what Hermann Diem has to say, taken from my notes on his excellent Dogmatics (the continuity with Childs' canonical approach should be clear!):

Jesus grew up in the Jewish faith in the tradition of Sinai, and recognised its validity by His attitude. In arguments with pharisees, Jesus does not reject the paradosis [Greek for tradition] as such, but applies to it a critical norm as follows: (155)

“where the Law as the content of the paradosis is no longer understood to be the present concrete requirement of God, demanding the self-surrender of man, but rather serves as a form of human righteousness which can be manipulated by man himself in the interests of his own self-justification, then the law in question is to be rejected.” (155)

Jesus

“opposes the tendency to establish the Law as an absolute by putting forward the point of view that the Law exists for the sake of man and not man for the sake of the Law. By this means He refers us back from the Law to the Lawgiver, and thus changes as radically as possible the meaning of the Law itself by restoring its original connexion with the divine Covenant. The Rabbis have forgotten the consolation and the promise of the law and no longer envisage the Scriptures as a whole, as the Book of the Covenant, the document which bears witness to the Covenant grace of God.” (157)

Thus we see His connexion with the Rabbinic tradition of teaching and at the same time the source of His conflict with it. He does not violate the authority of the Scribes and Pharisees ... (Mt. 23:2f), just as much as no iota of the Law will be allowed to perish until all things be accomplished (Mt. 5:18).

For a related post, see my Jewish and Christian appropriation of the Law of Moses

Jewish and Christian appropriation of the Law of Moses

A friend wrote me an e-mail today with a question on the differences between Jewish and Christian appropriations of the Law of Moses. As anyone mildly acquainted with this blog will know, I can't do anything other than think in Childsian categories, so I post the spontaneous answer I wrote with the hope that if I'm wrong some kind soul on the Internet will point this out:

This is a complex area, Jewish and Christian hermeneutics. I think B.S. Childs had the best insights, but his views are hard to understand and not particularly systematically worked out in one place (they presume a knowledge of other works, such as Barth and Hägglund, which I'm still trying to get through). His point is that regardless of the hermeneutic we use to interpret the Bible, it is always undergirded by a specific theology. Christianity inherited the Old Testament as Holy Scripture, just like the Jews, but how it functioned within the community was different. This is seen in the fact that for Jews midrash was the primary mode for appropriating Scripture, whereas for Christians it was allegory. For the Jews, with their focus on Torah as the centre of Scripture, there was a strong emphasis on making the various parts fit into an interconnected whole which could then be put into practice. The boundaries of the canon, the order of the books, the language of the text, where all firmly fixed so that the text could be "applied" as strictly as possible. The church however, confessed that the centre of Scripture is Christ. The text was seen to point beyond itself to another reality, which was not necessarily to be identified with the literal meaning of the text but which as the same time could only be accessed via it. Hence the development of "allegory" as a means of moving beyond the literal and on to the spiritual sense.

This has implications for how the church appropriates the law. Along with the rest of Scripture, it can't be taken literally - read "legalistically," - as to do so runs the danger of missing the real point. The law is connected with God's eschatological will for His people and makes ultimate sense within that framework. Reading it in the light of Christ, then, provides the church with the angle of reading that can open up what the text "is really all about," what its true kerygmatic function is within the overall economy of God.

This doesn't give you a concrete answer, but I think it shows a starting point. I think the hermeneutical implication is that for the Christian the narrative framework relativizes the legal content by placing it within its utlimate eschatological framework (e.g. Genesis 12.1-3). I don't know how a Jew relates law and narrative in this sense. A great way of seeing these two different theological hermeneutics at work is to look at the history of interpretation. Childs' 1974 commentary on Exodus does this helpfully. I strongly recommend you get hold of it and read the section on the Ten Commandments. He outlines the history of thought and looks for general trends, differences and similarities between the two traditions.

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 it 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.

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).