Abraham's Slaves?, Mechanical Christianity

1. For my comps, I’m reading John Van Seter’s Abraham in History and Tradition. His thesis so far appears to be that the Abraham story was written in the first millennium B.C.E., not the second millennium. People who believe in a historical Abraham tend to go with the latter date, since it’s closer to when Abraham supposedly lived (according to the Bible).

Thus far, Van Seters is arguing that Abraham doesn’t fit the profile of a nomad, the sort of person he would have been had he lived in the second millennium B.C.E. My impression is that Van Seters thinks the first millennium B.C.E. author is trying to portray Abraham as a nomad, but he doesn’t truly understand nomadic life, since it’s so far removed from him, being in the previous millennium and all. Consequently, the author includes anachronisms in his story. We encounter some of the usual debates in Van Seters: Were camels domesticated in the second millennium B.C.E., as the Abraham story narrates? (Van Seters says “no.”) What stood out to me was something Van Seters says on page 18: Why would a genuine nomad like Abraham need slaves (see Genesis 12:16; Genesis 14:14-15), when ”Such a slavery-based economy is not part of the nomadic way of life because it has no need for a cheap labor force, and there is nothing in the second millennium sources to suggest that nomads retained slaves as part of their social way of life”? According to Van Seters, “Slave ownership has its place in the settled urban economic system of antiquity with its stratification of society and its large private households, its royal and temple estates.” For Israel, that existed in the first millennium B.C.E., not the second, so the Abraham story reflects a first millennium context.

Personally, I don’t care much about the maximalist/minimalist debate. As I’ve said before, even if the maximalists are right and the Bible has historical accuracies, that doesn’t prove the Jewish or Christian religion, for the biblical authors’ interpretation of events remains unsubstantiated. Still, I can somewhat understand the maximalist agenda, for, if the events did not happen, that can jettison the legitimacy of the biblical authors’ interpretation of them. For maximalists with a religious agenda, there needs to be a historical Abraham for the religious significance of Abraham to be valid, and so they try to argue that Abraham could have existed against minimalists who say he could not. Do the maximalists prove their religion? No, but they hope to establish a prerequisite for their religion being true: the historical plausibility of the stories.

I don’t know enough to refute Van Seters, though there’s no shorter of conservative scholars who are out to overthrow minimalist arguments. But I’m not sure if the existence of slaves in the Abraham story is an anachronism. For one, the Egyptians gave them to him, and my hunch is that they were the sort of society that would have had slaves, even if Abraham’s tribe was not. They may have figured that Abraham would find some use for them. But, second, maybe Abraham did use them for certain labors, such as tending his flocks and herds.

That said, I’m not going to try to refute everything Van Seters says. The old fundamentalist James may have tried that, and he was a real digger for information. The current James, who doesn’t have a lot of time on his hands and isn’t interested in buttressing biblical inerrancy, won’t be excavating the world in an attempt to defend maximalism. All I’ll say is that there are people who do that, so what I read in Van Seters may not be the end of the story.

2. For Latin mass this morning, we had the priest who speaks about love. He was saying that we should prepare to meet our God this coming Christmas. He didn’t mean “die,” but he was making a point similar to what I said in yesterday’s post, I Kings 6: At the Library: in the midst of your own plans, be sure to remember God. But I had mixed reactions to the priest’s advice on how to do that. He urged us to examine ourselves. He also said that “counting our blessings” is selfish, since we should focus on sharing our blessings with others. And he urged us to remember the lonely, people who’d be happy to spend a few minutes with us.

On self-examination, I don’t care for that, notwithstanding II Corinthians 13:5’s command that we examine ourselves, whether we be in the faith. What’s the purpose of self-examination? “Oh, I have weaknesses, so I must not be a true Christian”? I don’t need that in my life!

Over my Thanksgiving break, I took a look at my old prayer journals. I was amazed at how hard I tried to be something I was not. I was supposed to pray for my enemies and their well-being, and so I did so, even though I hated their guts. I had to desire the conversion of non-believers, and so I prayed that people might become Christians. I asked God to take away my lust.

Years later, I don’t practice this mechanical form of Christianity, but I aim for some of the same ideals, even if I don’t shoot as high. I’m not going to pretend that I love my enemies, but I try to remember that God loves them, and that I have no right to undermine them. I don’t really pray for others to become Christians anymore, for faith is a personal choice. I guess that, if I follow that command in any manner, it’s when I pray that God might convince people that he loves them, giving them peace and hope. And God didn’t take away my lust, but I realize that I should regulate it, since it can lead to bad consequences. So I’m no longer seeking to adjust myself to a list of “do this, don’t do that, be this way, don’t be that way,” but I feel I’m more authentic now than I was then.

On counting blessings, I don’t go through the phone book of all my blessings and say “thank you.” I think I should say a blessing over my meals, but I don’t try to make myself feel better by counting the ways in which I’m better off than others. Maybe, in a stray moment, I’ll express gratitude over having a place to live, but I don’t list all of my blessings in my prayer times. But I do thank God for good days. For example, yesterday, I felt good. I had a good quiet time, people were nice to me, and I watched a good show on TV, Commander-in-Chief. That day was a blessing, so I expressed gratitude, not to fulfill an obligation, but because I looked at the day and realized it was good. 

Is counting blessings selfish? I once worked with people with mental retardation, and I had a spiritual advisor. He said that some people exploit others’ misfortunes as a way to make themselves feel better. He referred to the saying that “I didn’t appreciate my arms, until I saw someone who lacked one,” or something like that. I think I should appreciate what I have, but can I thank God, especially when there are many who don’t have certain blessings? Counting blessings can lead to a theodicy problem.

As far as comforting the lonely goes, I’m not sure how I’ll do that this year. I don’t always know what to say to people over the phone. Maybe I’ll figure out something!