I recently learned that Frank Moore Cross
has passed on. Cross was a renowned scholar in the Hebrew Bible and
ancient Near Eastern languages. I blogged through one of his books, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic. To read my posts on that, see here, here, here, here, here, and here.
There were two things that Cross said that stood out to me.
The
first thing is not clearly in my mind, but he was addressing in an
interview the issue of biblical maximalism when it comes to the Exodus.
He said that there is a tendency among biblical maximalists to rob
Peter to pay Paul. What he probably meant is that many biblical
maximalists try to defend the faith by arguing that events in the Bible
actually happened (on some level), and yet their arguments tend to
undercut the faith. I forget the exact example that he used, but one
that comes to my mind is how some maximalists contend that we can say
that the Sea of Reeds parted for the reason that seas have parted at
other times throughout history. On the one hand, this argument supports
the historicity of the Sea of Reeds parting. On the other hand, it
treats the parting as a natural event that has occurred at other times
in history, which arguably takes supernatural intervention out of the
picture. I was one time giving a presentation on the historicity of the
Exodus for a class, and my professor chuckled when I quoted Cross'
remarks about the tendency within maximalism to rob Peter to pay Paul.
The second thing that stood out to me was something that I read on James Tabor's blog. See here.
Cross was talking about his own religious background as a Calvinist, a
tradition that valued the Old as well as the New Testament. But Cross
said that he preferred the world of the Old Testament because it's more
austere, whereas the New Testament has a lot of demons and spirits. I
could identify with Cross' comments on a couple of levels. I myself
grew up in a religious tradition, Armstrongism, that put a lot of
emphasis on the Old Testament, albeit not in the exact same way that
Calvinists do. And, for some reason, like Cross, I myself prefer to
study the Old Testament more than the New. My reason for this is not
entirely the same as Cross', for I don't have a great problem with
supernaturalism. Perhaps my reason is that the Old Testament is more of
a mystery to me that I enjoy trying to unravel----with its enigmatic
laws and prophecies. And there could be other reasons that I have yet
to identify!
R.I.P., Frank Moore Cross.