Posts
1. William P. Young, The Shack, page 11:
I suppose that since most of our hurts come through relationships so will our healing…
The Shack is a controversial book. It’s about a man who experienced a tragedy and had a conversation with Jesus in a shack. I’m eager to see what kind of theodicy this book offers. I hope it’s not the “same old, same old” (i.e., free-will defense, etc.).
Hurts come through relationships. So does healing. I realized this when I read a post on Bob’s Blog, 5-16-10, which Alise linked to here. Four years ago, a man shot Bob’s parents to death, and he misses them deeply. But Bob’s friends and his church community have helped him to repair his shattered life.
I’m hesistant to form relationships because I fear the hurts. Plus, I’m not very good in relationships, since I’m continually afraid of rejection.
Even in relationships where I know I’m accepted, I have problems with being comforted by others.
That’s all I’ll say about this, for now.
2. Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land, page 152:
Harshaw stopped long enough to remind himself that this baby innocent was neither babyish nor innocent—was in fact sophisticated in a culture which he was beginning to realize, however dimly, was far in advance of human culture in some very mysterious ways…and that these naive remarks came from a superman—or what would do in place of a “superman” for the time being…”
This is intriguing. The supposedly backward man from Mars is not exactly backward. There’s a logic to what he says—a logic that may very well surpass the logic of native earthlings!
Something I thought about not long ago: I tend to talk down to foreigners whose English is rudimentary, as if they’re slow. But I should realize that I’d probably appear backward in their country, since I can’t speak their native tongue. I’m not slow—at least not in everything. But I’d appear so in another culture.
And, come to think of it, I can think of times when I’ve been around people in another culture, and they don’t talk down to me. Rather, they mentor me to help me adjust to the situation.
3. Erhard Gerstenberger, Psalms, Part I with an Introduction to Cultic Poetry, page 224:
The point of departure in all these complaints [in Psalm 55] is the threat of death or “the fear of death” (v. 5b). All commentators agree on this fact. But it does not hold true that “the complaint songs have been composed in death peril”…and that they therefore reflect the individual’s concrete emotion of that experience…Rather, the psalm summarizes liturgically the archetypal expressions of an ultimate anxiety in the face of death that is regularly experienced in situations of extreme danger…
I guess this is saying that the Psalmist himself didn’t write this Psalm in the midst of a crisis, but he wrote it for people who may be experiencing a crisis. In those days, near-death crises probably existed, for there could be accidents or enemies who wanted to do people in.
4. Richard Sarason, A History of the Mishnaic Law of Agriculture: A Study of Tractate Demai, page 260:
We already have explained the mathematical computation behind this procedure.
Remember Chevy Chase as President Gerald Ford: “It was my understanding, that there’d be no math…”
5. Baruch Levine, Numbers 21-36, page 52:
It is also noteworthy that the provisions of Numbers 30:2-17 restrict the traditional rights of women as regards the validity of their vows and oaths. In no other biblical source do we read of the right of husbands and fathers to disallow the vows and oaths of their wives and daughters, respectively. Women continued to have the authority to make vows without the prior consent of their fathers or husband, but henceforth, these were to be subject to the approval of their fathers or husbands, as the situation dictated. It must be remembered that, traditionally, women were restricted in their right to own property and to assume legal obligations. The result is that their fathers and husbands were responsible for making good on the financial commitments undertaken by their daughters and wives. In principle, this might entitle men to have final approval over the commitments of their daughters and wives, although nothing of the sort is stated elsewhere. It is uncertain what specific realities account for the present restriction. It would be logical to suppose that if women had gained a degree of legal independence during the Achaemenid Period, they would have caused greater concern among the male population for this reason. The provisions of Numbers 30:2-17 may represent, therefore, a reaction against women’s freedom, aimed at maintaining the subservience of women to their fathers and husbands in matters affecting the disposition of wealth and property.
When I was reading Numbers 30 for my weekly quiet time, I was listening to evangelical preachers to get their take on this rule: the one that stipulated that a woman’s father or husband could nullify her vow. The preachers said that the wife could easily pledge the house, and so the husband needed the last word so he could overturn that kind of vow! In my opinion, that portrays women as flippant and unwise. But how can we understand this law? I can see the point that the entire family should have a say in the vows that a woman makes about her family’s property. But the woman doesn’t have veto power over the vows of her husband. How can we be sure that he won’t make an irrational vow? Why is this law so one-sided?
Also, Levine dates this passage pretty late—to the Persian Period.
6. Minimalist Thomas Thompson critiques John Van Seters’ Prologue to History: The Yahwist as Historian in Genesis as follows:
If it is granted that both the Babylonian and the Aegean dependencies are valid, as V. S. argues, this hardly renders a sixth-century or “exilic” date valid for J. The relations of Palestine, by way of Phoenicia and Cyprus, have a long history. The Greek alphabet itself is a profound witness to the pervasiveness of these intellectual relations from the very onset of Greek literary life. Moreover, as early as the end of the Late Bronze Age Palestine was host to many people from the Aegean; indigenous cultural forms comparable to those of Greece are to be expected. The later periods of ancient Palestine’s history also are profoundly influenced by the Aegean world, at least from the onset of hostilities between the Persian Empire and the Greeks, and, of course, after Alexander Jews from Palestine become rather significant contributors to Hellenistic intellectual life, not least in Alexandria. V. S.’s Babylonian analogy has comparable problems. West Semites were deported to Mesopotamia already early in the Assyrian period, and from that time on the intellectual interchange between Babylon and the West Semitic world was intense. Such interchange became even more intense in later periods. It is universally acknowledged, though often forgotten, that people who came to understand themselves as exiled Jews in Babylon, not only continued to do so until A.D. 1948, as Lemche has pointed out, but also developed a rich and profound indigenous Jewish culture in Mesopotamia that is reflected both in the Bible and in a long history of commentary, expansion, and revision.
Thompson is essentially saying that Van Seters is wrong to date the Yahwist to the exile because it resembles Greek historiography and Babylonian writings, for Palestine had relations with the Aegean world and Babylon in the pre-exilic period. It’s surprising to read this coming from Thompson, a minimalist, who dates much of the Hebrew Bible to Israel’s post-exilic time, the Persian and Hellenistic Periods.
Incidentally, conservatives have appealed to the long ties between Palestine and the Aegean world to argue against those who date the Book of Daniel to the Hellenistic Period. The book can be older than that and contain Greek characteristics, they argue, on the basis of these ties, which existed throughout Israel’s pre-exilic and exilic periods, and even the time of the Persians.
7. On Desperate Housewives last night, the strangler delivers Lynette’s baby. As he holds her in his arms, he says that he hopes that he can watch her grow up. I wonder if that was an epiphany to him: the young ladies he strangled were once babies like the one he was holding. They were somebody’s daughter. There were people who cared for them and had watched them grow up. Did he begin to humanize the women he had strangled, and women in general? Before, he was mad at attractive women because they had rejected him. While the pain may have still been there, did delivering Lynette’s baby—and contributing to new life rather than death—push him in the direction of empathy?
