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1. Two quotes stood out to me in my reading today of John Van Seters’ A Law Book for the Diaspora:
Page 135: It is not typical of Dtr, who in one late instance in Deut 4:31 uses the epithet “merciful God”…to suggest Yahweh’s forgiving nature toward his people.
This is an interesting point, but it would be nice to read a scholarly treatment of the Deuteronomistic stance on divine forgiveness. God forgives in Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic History. Deuteronomy 30 says that God will restore Israel if she returns to him. In the Book of Judges, we see this in action, over and over again. At the same time, God doesn’t necessarily forgive totally in the Deuteronomistic History, for, even though Josiah repented, God still destroyed Judah on account of the sins of Manasseh (II Kings 23:25-26).
Page 140: Exodus 23:4 states that, if an Israelite sees his enemy’s ox or donkey wandering off, he’s to take the animal to its owner. Van Seters says that this shows the exilic context of the Covenant Code. Van Seters takes “enemy” to be Gentile nations, for Leviticus 26:34-35 calls the land of Israel’s exile “the land of your enemies.” And, although Van Seters doesn’t mention this, Exodus 23:22, 27 means hostile nations when it refers to “enemies.” Prior to the exile, Van Seters argues, it would be “extremely rare that [Israelites] would be able to identify a wandering ox as belonging to a particular Moabite, Ammonite, Aramean, etc.” But, during the Babylonian exile, when Israelites live close to the “enemy,” they’d probably encounter their enemy’s ox or ass.
2. Manlio Simonetti, Biblical Interpretation in the Early Church, page 73.
Theodore of Mopsuestia (fourth-fifth centuries C.E.) tended to interpret the Scriptures literally, in contrast to those who viewed Scripture as an allegory, pregnant with meaning beneath the surface. So how did Theodore interpret Galatians 4:24, in which Paul treats the story of Sarah and Hagar in Genesis as an allegory for justification by grace through faith versus trying to become justified through keeping the law? Essentially, Theodore says that Paul is making an analogy between the two, not that Paul maintains that the Genesis story has a deeper meaning (justification).
3. H.I. Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity, page 356.
The scribes’ veneration was also to be directed to “heroes”, i.e. divinised scribes, like the celebrated Imhotep, minister and architect to the old king Djezer who built the pyramid with steps in Saqqarah (twenty-eighth century) and later Amenhotep, the son of Hapu, a scribe under Amenophis III (1405-1370)…
This is Egypt, which had a rigorous conception of the afterlife. I’m not sure what’s meant by divinized scribes, though. I thought all of the dead went to the Underworld to be judged. Did some people go to heaven, or to a realm of the gods?
