Judges 1, Calvin's Hermeneutic

I finished Understanding Poets and Prophets: Essays in Honour of George Anderson. In this post, I'll talk about two essays.

1. M. Weinfeld, in "Judges 1:1-2:5: The Conquest Under the Leadership of the House of Judah", argues that Judges 1 glorifies Judah while denigrating Northern Israel, as well as the tribe of Benjamin. According to Judges 1, the Northern tribes did not drive out the Canaanites from their cities, but rather subjected the Canaanites to forced labor, which created the troubles that existed in the period of the judges. When the North did succeed, it was by means of deceit, not honest and direct warfare. And the Benjaminites did not drive out the Jebusites from Jerusalem. But Judah did succeed in its conquest of the South, along with Jerusalem. V 19 says that Judah could not expel the inhabitants of the plain, but, according to Weinfeld, the phrase for this is an infinitive that does not include a verbal agent ("but not to dispossess the inhabitants"), and this is because "it was impossible to relate failure or lack of success explicitly to Judah" (page 396).

Judges 1 attributes the conquest of Hebron to Judah, whereas Joshua 14:6-15 and 15:13-17 affirm that Caleb did this. Elements of Judges 1 discuss Caleb's conquests, but, for Weinfeld, this may be from a later hand. Still, Weinfeld regards the tradition that Caleb possessed Hebron as earlier and more authentic than Judges 1. The tradition that Hebron belonged to Caleb appears also in Numbers 13-14. Moreover, Weinfeld contends that the author of Judges 1 changed the subject of the tradition that appeared in Joshua 15:13-17---making Judah rather than Caleb the one who went up. The later "corrective footnote" in Judges 1:20---which connects Hebron with Caleb---was made because it "represents a well known fact that could not be contradicted" (page 396). For Weinfeld, the inheritances of Caleb and the Kenizzites were later swallowed up into Judah when Judah became "established in the south" (page 393). But the author of Judges 1 sought to exalt Judah, and, according to Weinfeld, this was because Judges 1 derived from the house of David.

The final form of Judges 1 demonstrates diversity---as it says that Judah conquered Hebron, while also discussing Caleb's role in the Conquest. And there are other traditions about the Conquest in the Hebrew Bible, according to Weinfeld. When was Jerusalem taken? Judges 1 presents Judah defeating Adoni-bezek of Jerusalem, whereas Joshua 10 tells of the defeat of Adoni-zedek of Jerusalem in the time of Joshua (and then there's the story that David himself took Jerusalem, in II Samuel 5). According to Weinfeld, Joshua 10 "is anchored in the cycle of stories that were creations of the tribe of Benjamin (Saul's tribe) and [its] scenes of battle are Gilgal, Jericho, Ai and Gibeon---all in the inheritance of Benjamin" (page 391). Whereas Judges 1 glorifies Judah, Joshua 2-10 "is interested in crediting the house of Joseph with the conquest" (page 392), and that includes praise of the tribe of Benjamin. (Regarding Benjamin, Weinfeld may believe that Judges 1 criticizes Benjamin because that was the tribe of Saul, the enemy to David. Weinfeld does not seem to say this explicitly, but he does mention Saul in reference to Benjamin.) Overall, Weinfeld argues that the North and the South used traditions to exalt themselves.

Then there's the Deuteronomistic layer, which (according to Weinfeld) differs from parts of Joshua and also Judges 1: Joshua 24 says that Israel served foreign gods in Joshua's time, whereas the Deuteronomist in Judges 2:7 affirms that Israel worshiped the LORD in those days; Judges 1 posits Canaanite enclaves in Israel, whereas the Deuteronomist in Joshua presents the Conquest as total. Weinfeld states that the ancient traditions in Joshua 24:1-28 and Judges 1:1-2:5 were inserted into the Deuteronomistic History, which originally ended the Conquest with Joshua's farewell speech in Joshua 23, and began the period of the judges with the "discourse in Judges 2.11-3.4" (page 388).

This is a good essay about the diversity of the Bible and agendas of historiography.

2. D.F. Wright's essay, "Accomodation and Barbarity in John Calvin's Old Testament Commentaries", was my favorite essay in this book. The essay is about Calvin's great struggle with what he considered to be barbaric passages in the Old Testament---such as the Conquest, and the Covenant Code's laws that one could beat his slave and sell his daughter into slavery. Sometimes, Calvin used the typical Christian spiel that God is higher than we are and that we should trust him. At other times, he seeks to resolve problems through interpretation---as when he says that the master in Exodus 21:21 was not to be punished for beating his slave because the slave emerged from the beating "sound and whole in every limb" (Wright's words on page 421), and that Exodus 21:22-25 regards the life of the fetus, not just the mother. (Calvin affirms that the fetus is a human being.) Then there are times when Calvin asserts that barbaric laws were a matter of accommodation: God was taking into consideration the hardness of hearts of the Israelites, as Jesus says that God did when he allowed Israelite men to divorce their wives (Mark 10:5). But, for Calvin, such laws do not reflect God's perfect will.

Calvin appears to judge the Bible according to a standard of morality, a standard that he says appears (on some level) among the pagans. A friend of mine recently said that Martin Luther and John Calvin had a "pick-and-choose" approach to the Bible. I knew that Luther did, since he had problems with the Book of Esther and the Epistle of James. But I did not think that Calvin had this sort of approach. After reading Wright's essay, however, I now have second thoughts about this, for Calvin did not believe that certain aspects of Scripture reflected the perfect will of God.

When to Ask Questions

I have started to reread Stephen King's It at nights to cure my insomnia. I'm being reminded that I really enjoyed "Part I: The Shadow Before", which gives background on the adult lives of the members of the Loser's Club. In this and other Stephen King books, I often find myself enjoying Stephen King's development of his characters, but then that becomes lost once the book starts to become a horror book---which is what Stephen King writes! But perhaps my impression of It this time around will be different, and I will see depth in the horror parts of the book, not just the parts about character development.

On and off, I will blog about parts of this book that stand out to me. This will be similar to what I did when I was reading two of Robert Heinlein's science fiction books and blogged about the bits of wisdom that were in them. Sometimes, what I blogged about was integral to the plot; often, it was not.

On page 10, Bill is fixing his brother Georgie's paper boat. We read: "George watched him closely, but without speaking or questioning. Bill didn't like George talking to him while he did stuff, but George had learned that if he just kept his mouth shut, Bill would usually explain what he was doing."

When should I be quiet, and when should I ask questions? When I was at Jewish Theological Seminary, an older lady was helping me with my Hebrew, and she often quoted to me (in Hebrew) an old Jewish saying that "the shy person does not learn." The meaning of this saying is that people who are bashful about asking questions will not learn.

There's wisdom to that, but things can get complex, at least in my life. There have been times when my mind has wandered, and so I end up asking a question that has already been answered. I guess that I was right to ask the question, for my knowledge became solidified once I received the answer. But I end up looking like a dunce. I should work on listening.

Then there were classes, in which participation was mandated. As a result, I had to come up with things to say. As a result, I asked a lot of questions, which probably annoyed people. I mean, once I teach, I hope that I don't get a student like myself---asking me questions that may require encyclopedic knowledge! But there were times when I talked, and it wasn't because of my participation grade. Some of it was a matter of drawing attention to myself---since I can easily become lost in a crowd (or a group smaller than a crowd), and I feel a need to impress people in order to make friends, or to advance academically, or whatever.

I don't really regret the times that I asked questions, for that was how I interacted with the material that I was taught. Plus, many of the answers that I have heard have stayed with me and guided how I see issues today. I think, however, that I should have tempered my asking of questions with other things: giving other students a chance to talk, listening rather than thinking of the next question I could ask, and even going to the library or doing research to try to answer my questions. Ever since I have stopped taking classes (on account of where I am in my doctoral program), I have come to appreciate doing the last one. And blogging has been conducive to my research.

Post-Exilic Joseph Story, Vanhoozer on I-Witness Testimony

I'm continuing my way through Understanding Poets and Prophets: Essays in Honour of George Wishart Anderson. In this post, I will comment on two essays.

1. In "Notes on the Joseph Story", J.A. Soggin dates the Joseph story to the late post-exilic period. He states that the story's message about God working things out for good was intended to comfort Jews who were dissatisfied with the Hasmonean dynasty and the failure of the Davidic dynasty to be re-established. Soggin thematically associates Joseph's accusation of his brothers of being spies with the later Pharaoh's suspicion of the Israelites in Exodus 1:9-12, and he wonders when an author would present tension between the Israelites and the Egyptians. Soggin does not think that the second millennium B.C.E. works because that was when Egypt controlled Palestine. He also dismisses the first half of the first millennium B.C.E. because that was when "Israel and Judah relied heavily on Egyptian help against Assyria first and Babylon afterwards" (page 340). Soggin believes that the date of the Joseph story must be from a time when Israel was "politically independent of Egypt which had become an independent power", and he posits two possibilities: the Persian Period, when Egypt frequently rebelled against its Persian overlord; and the early second century B.C.E., when Syria and Palestine were in the Seleucid empire, whereas Egypt was under the Ptolemies.

Soggin also discusses Genesis 43:32, which states that the Egyptians do not eat with foreigners. Soggin says that such a custom does not appear in ancient Egyptian sources, but it is "attested by later Greek authors" (page 341). Soggin's conclusion is that Genesis 43:32 was intended to promote the post-exilic belief that Jews should separate themselves from foreigners: "if the Egyptians were that strict, why cannot also you be at least as zealous?"

But I wonder if Soggin believes that there was an earlier stage of the Joseph story. He notes that Manasseh and Ephraim were technically "mamzerim", since they were not born to a Jewish mother, and he asks if this was a polemic against Northern Israel. But Soggin then states that the authors of the Joseph story tried to smooth this detail out---by presenting Jacob as adopting Manasseh and Ephraim and thereby making them legitimate. Soggin points out that later Judaism interacted with the same issue, for the first century C.E. Joseph and Asenath "makes Joseph's Egyptian wife pass through a complete ritual of conversion to Judaism, thus fully legitimizing the children" (page 341). For Soggin, was there an earlier version of the Joseph story that someone later attempted to smooth out?

I think that some of the things that Soggin mentions can fit the seventh century B.C.E.---the time of Josiah. That was when the Egyptians killed Josiah as they were racing north to assist the collapsing Assyrian empire. It was also a time of Egyptian nationalism, when Egypt despised what was foreign (see here). Regarding the issue of matrilineal descent, that is a complex issue (see the documentation here).

2. K.J. Vanhoozer's "The Hermeneutics of I-Witness Testimony: John 21:20-24 and the 'Death' of the 'Author'" contained things that I liked and disliked. I'll start with what I disliked. On page 377, Vanhoozer states, "After the indignities of being prodded and examined by historical critics, the deconstructed text now suffers the ultimate humiliation---interpretative rape." Vanhoozer is making a rather conservative point---against the tendencies of historical-criticism and deconstruction to nitpick the text to death. But I think he's being a little over-dramatic when he calls that "interpretative rape." It reminds me of over-dramatic people I've encountered in academia, such as a Union Theological Seminary student who called The Passion of the Christ "pornography".

But Vanhoozer does mention interesting points that others have made---or he makes profound points of his own. First, he states on page 374 that, "For Foucault, the idea of the author serves to give a false sense of textual unity and coherence." The idea here is probably that, when we take the author out of the picture and look at the text itself, we can see contradictions and incoherence. But this comment about Foucault reminded me of my reading of Ehud Ben Zvi's commentary on Zephaniah: that the Book of Zephaniah has different layers, yet all of these are brought together under a superscription that attributes them to the prophet Zephaniah.

Second, John 21:15-24 essentially says that the Beloved Disciple wrote the Gospel, and it contains a difference of opinion about whether or not the Beloved Disciple would die before Jesus' return. Apparently, there are scholars who have problems with the Gospel's claim in v 24 that the Beloved Disciple wrote it, for, if the Beloved Disciple is dead (as v 23 may imply), how can he claim to be the author in v 24? Vanhoozer's answer on page 373 appears to be that the Beloved Disciple wrote vv 23-24 when he was close to death. I was somewhat surprised by this discussion, for I thought many New Testament scholars assumed that vv 23-24 were added later. When v 24 says "This is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his testimony is true", why couldn't that be a later hand saying that the Beloved Disciple wrote about events that he saw? Why does it have to be the Beloved Disciple talking about himself?

Third, Vanhoozer challenges the hermeneutic of suspicion, saying that "Distrust should never be the first hermeneutical reflex, especially not with testimony" (page 379). He also raises good points about doubt and belief, on page 380: "The skeptic, at best, enjoys greater safety from error, but runs the risk of ignoring a narrative framework with greater explanatory power than the alternatives and of losing a number of beliefs that may be true. The believer runs the risk of acquiring false beliefs, but is open to receiving a greater number of true beliefs and an interpretative framework for understanding the life and fate of Jesus." Vanhoozer appears to advocate an Anselmian approach of "I believe, therefore I understand." I have issues with complete skepticism, but I also have problems with simply assuming the Christian worldview as true---which (in my opinion) amounts to tautology (which I've done myself).

The Wager

I watched a Christian movie just now entitled The Wager (2007), which starred Randy Travis, along with some familiar television faces, such as Candace Cameron Bure (Full House), Nancy Stafford (Matlock), and Bronson Pinchot (Perfect Strangers). And Travis' wife at the time, Elizabeth, was involved in the making of the movie.

The movie is about a Hollywood actor, Michael Steele (Travis), who is experiencing a lot of difficulties. His wife is leaving him because he devotes too much time to his work. As a Christian, Michael does not want to do sex scenes in movies, leading to clashes with the film's director (Pinchot). His co-star (Candace Cameron Bure) tries to seduce him, and he rebuffs her advances, but then finds himself the subject of a media-driven scandal. Later in the movie, his sister Annie (Stafford), a Christian who works in social services---with whom he is close and whom he frequently consults for guidance---dies of a disease that involves coughing up blood.

I read many reviews of the movie, and a lot of them were negative. And, to be honest, I can't really tell you what the main idea of the movie was. The Sermon on the Mount played a significant role in it, and Michael often saw passages from the Sermon on billboards and signs that people were holding up. Near the end of the movie, as Michael is on his way to the Academy Awards---which he believes is the only means for him to salvage his crumbling career---Michael chooses instead to save a child from abuse. He follows the signs of what he believes God is telling him, even though he acknowledges that he might lose everything. But he doesn't lose everything. The media, which before hounded him, now heralds him as a hero for saving the child's life. He wins the Academy Award, which his wife accepts on his behalf. He gets to act, as well as direct the movie as he sees fit. His wife comes back to him. Essentially, he trusted in God, and God provided.

This aspect of the movie was very idealistic---almost too idealistic. But what I really appreciated about the movie was the spiritual journey of Michael, along with the role of his sister Annie. Before, and especially during, his struggles, Michael wondered how to follow the Sermon on the Mount. His sister told him that he can't. After her death, when Michael is taking care of his sister's paperwork at her office, two of her co-workers ask him why he can't take her place as director of the agency. He responds that he does not have that special "something" that his sister had, and the co-worker responds that Annie always said that we bear fruit by being connected to the vine, namely, Jesus Christ. Indeed, his sister was a spiritual person, for she was winsome and committed to helping other people, plus I liked the part of the movie in which she and Michael were walking through the woods---and she said that she came there when she was troubled, and that she felt small whenever she beheld nature.

After Michael saves the boy, becomes a hero, and receives numerous offers for acting roles, he tells his agent (played by Jude Ciccollella, who has appeared in a number of movies) that he's thinking of doing things other than acting. He may be implying that he's open to working at his sister's agency. So, in one plot-line of the movie, Michael gets everything he wants in terms of his status as an actor: an Academy Award, a chance to direct and to continue his career, etc. And yet, there is also a plot-line in the movie in which Michael does not even want those things; rather, he prefers to follow the path of humble service, as his sister did. Apparently, listening to John Hagee and other preachers in the movie quote the Sermon on the Mount influenced him!

I appreciated this movie because I, too, struggle over not feeling that I have that special "something"---that winsome quality that some Christians, or even spiritual people in general, have. The idea in this movie appears to be that we gain that quality by acknowledging our weaknesses, receiving God's grace, and being reliant on the vine, Jesus Christ. And, apparently, the movie does not hold that going to church is sufficient for this, for, as Michael told his sister, their father went to church every week and heard the Sermon on the Mount, yet he did not live his life in all-that-Christian of a manner the other days of the week! Dependance on God is important, as far as this movie is concerned.

This movie had its flaws, but there was something beautiful about it.

Psalm 33

For my weekly quiet time this week, I'll be blogging about Psalm 33 and its interpreters.

Psalm 33 encourages the righteous to praise the LORD with musical instruments. It talks about how God is the creator---who made the heavens by his word, and the hosts of the heavens by his breath---and how the earth manifests his attributes: his truth, his righteousness, his judgment, and his goodness. Psalm 33 may be drawing from P's creation account (Genesis 1), for both Psalm 33 and Genesis 1 refer to God creating by word, as well as God gathering the waters together. Moreover, the Psalm affirms that God has been at work in the world since creation, for God frustrates the counsel of the nations and protects those who fear him and hope in his mercy, as God delivers them from death and protects them in times of famine. God is truly supreme, as far as this Psalm is concerned, for God has fashioned the hearts of all people, and trusting in God is a greater guarantee of protection than armies and horses.

I have four items for today:

1. I learned years ago that the Church of Christ does not believe in using musical instruments in worship. And, as I read Charles Spurgeon's Treasury of David, I found criticisms of this practice: from Spurgeon (who nevertheless supported Christian liberty for those who did want to use musical instruments), from Justin Martyr, from John Chrysostom, and from Thomas Aquinas. Their idea was that using musical instruments is Jewish, for Judaism is a very physical religion, which required external aids to keep the Israelites on the straight-and-narrow. But, in the minds of these Christian thinkers, we under the New Covenant do not need physical and external aids in our worship, for our worship is spiritual. I was somewhat surprised to see Aquinas endorsing this sort of attitude, since Roman Catholicism has physical elements (i.e., the mass, confession, etc.). In fact, Protestants criticize Roman Catholicism for being too ritualistic! Plus, whenever I have attended Catholic worship, musical instruments are used.

Personally, I like the use of musical instruments in worship, and I don't consider myself to be less spiritual on account of that. It's not as if advocates of spiritual Christianity have no physical rituals at all, for they go to church, sing, read their Bibles, pray, preach or listen to sermons, etc. I think that one can worship God without a lot of fanfare, but I doubt that there's anything wrong with allowing rituals to draw us closer to God, or to enhance our faith.

2. Psalm 33:6 reads (in the King James Version) that "By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth." Many Christians---such as Athanasius, Basil, Augustine, Martin Luther, and John Calvin---have offered trinitarian interpretations of this passage. Many equate the "word of the LORD" with the Word of John 1 who became Jesus Christ, and the "breath of his mouth" with the Holy Spirit, for the Hebrew word for "breath" can also mean "spirit".

Christian exegetes from the literalistic Antiochian school, however, shied away from this approach. Theodore of Mopsuestia (fourth century) says that the "word of the Lord" is not the Son, for the Son is called in Scripture the "Word", not the "word of the Lord". And the "breath of his mouth" is not the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit in Scripture is called the "Holy Spirit", "the Spirit", or "the Spirit of God", not "the breath of his mouth". For Theodore of Mopsuestia, Psalm 33:6 is saying that the breath is a corporeal expression of God's decision.

Another Theodore from the Antiochian school, Theodore of Cyrrhus (fifth century), maintained that the literal meaning of Psalm 33:6 for ancient Israel was that God's word alone was adequate for creation, without added effort on the part of God. (And Theodore may have believed that "the breath of his mouth" also referred to God's spoken word in creation.) But Theodore of Cyrrhus still thought that David by prophecy anticipated the New Testament doctrine of the Trinity.

I tend to rebel against Christological interpretations of the Hebrew Bible, probably because I've been turned off by Christian dogmatism about them. However, I have seen in evangelicalism a greater openness to the Theodore of Cyrrhus approach---that the Hebrew Bible meant something non-Christological for ancient Israel, but that it had a deeper significance that coincides with Christian doctrines. But, when I hear that, I wonder why I should assume that the Hebrew Bible foreshadowed Christianity at all. Where's the proof? Maybe the surface, literal meaning is all that there is!

At the same time, maybe I can appreciate that Christianity was a community of interpretation, and that it used the Hebrew Bible to define and to support a concept of creation. I do not think it's a coincidence that God creates by speaking in Genesis 1, and that the Son in John 1 is called the Word, by whom all things were made, that were made. I just have problems with Christians walloping others with their interpretations, and acting as if people who do not see the text their way are stupid.

3. I appreciated certain themes in Psalm 33: that God's creation reflects in some way God's nature---his reliability, his righteousness, his love, etc. I also liked the concept of God keeping the wicked in check, for that presents God as reasonable and practical. And there is a part of me that agrees with what Psalm 33 is saying. There are blessings from God's creation---such as food, good climate, sex, relationships, conditions suitable for life, etc. And there is something in the world that keeps evil in check. There are many cases in which evil contains the seeds of its own destruction. And evildoers can also upset others, which brings about their own downfall. Adolf Hitler, for example, failed to effect his sinister goals.

But I cannot treat things in Psalm 33 as an absolute. There are aspects of nature that do not make sense to me, such as the over-abundance of salt water. Moreover, does God deliver from evildoers everyone who trusts in him, or preserve all God-fearers in times of famine? I don't think so. And I'm hesitant to say that he does, because then that would make me judgmental towards those who encounter problems, as if their suffering is their own fault.

I think that God did make things good, but that human beings have corrupted God's creation. Many Third World countries had (or even still have) resources for food and wealth, but greedy people have plundered them for their own gain, consigning many people to a state of poverty and starvation. I believe that God one day will intervene in a dramatic fashion and eliminate evil, but I'd also like to think that, even now, God has some victories over those who hurt others---through the way that the world works (i.e., karma), or his intervention, every now and then.

4. Psalm 33 got me thinking last night about a question: What does God as creator mean to me? To be honest, as of late, the only time when the concept has entered my mind has been when I have thought that, even if there is evidence for an Intelligent Designer, that does not prove that the God is the God of Christianity. Again, I'm sick of Christian dogmatism and arrogance. But my mind wandered last night to a book that I read years ago: Athol Dickson's The Gospel According to Moses: What My Jewish Friends Taught Me About Jesus. The book got raving reviews on Amazon, but I had issues with it, to tell you the truth, for I felt that the author was reaffirming his own evangelicalism over and over, and I couldn't exactly tell how Judaism shaped his Christianity. Rather, Judaism served to prop up what he already believed.

But Dickson made a point that I remembered last night: he said that every blade of grass reminds us that there is a creator, and that we are not him! If I'm not mistaken, Dickson was taking this in the direction of saying that we all have sinned and deserve God's judgment, and so we need a Savior. But his point inspires me to ask: What are the implications of there being a creator God, who is not me---which means that God exists and is as he is, and that he may not conform to my subjective preferences for how God should be? Should this scare me? Well, it does, if the Christian conception of God is true---if God is one who torments most of humanity in hell forever and ever for not believing in the right doctrines, or for not bearing enough spiritual fruit. But if God is a God of love, then I wouldn't have a problem with there being a creator God, and that God not being me.

God Working, Psalm 73, Lamentations 3, Isaiah 26:19

I'm still reading Understanding Poets and Prophets: Essays in Honour of George Wishart Anderson. Here are some items that interested my in my reading for today:

1. D.L. Mealand, in "John 5 and the Limits of Rhetorical Criticism", mentions on pages 262 and 263 a Jewish debate about "how it can be that God does not observe his own sabbath law". Mealand elaborates: "Students of Jewish literature know that it is because children are born, and people die, on Saturday, that God is (rabbinically) held to work on his own seventh day". The idea here may be that God on the Sabbath day is causing births and deaths, and thus is working. Mealand does not provide more information than this, but he does refer to two sources: Raymond Brown's 1971 commentary on the Gospel of John, and C.K. Barretts 1978 commentary on that book. Mealand is discussing John 5:17, in which Jesus justifies his healing activity on the Sabbath by saying that his Father works, and so does he.

2. E. Nielson, in "Psalm 73: Scandinavian Contributions", discusses different approaches to Psalm 73. B. Duhm viewed it as a second century B.C.E. Pharisaic product that affirms a belief in personal immortality in vv 23-26, against the Sadducees. Although H. Gunkel believed that many Psalms were eschatological, he does not think that Psalm 73 fits that category. For Gunkel, Psalm 73 is a post-exilic wisdom Psalm, and Gunkel affirms that its message is that the Psalmist can endure pain in this life because the LORD is his portion. Sigmund Mowinckel dated the Psalm to Israel's post-exilic period because it is negative about the rich, and he denied that it is about an afterlife---for its message is that God has reassured the afflicted that God will punish the evil rich and prolong the lives of the devout, in this life. H. Birkeland, as Mowinckel does for many Psalms, applied Psalm 73 to the nation of Israel's suffering at the hands of foreign nations. But Birkeland added other ideas: that Psalm 73 indeed is about an afterlife, which is what enables the sufferer to stay with God forever (v 26); and that Psalm 73 is set in the time after Josiah had destroyed pagan sanctuaries, and the author was convinced that God would soon destroy idolaters. But Nielson is skeptical of this interpretation, noting on page 280 that "Birkeland does not ask why the wealthy oppressing class of foreigners are indifferent to what happened to their cherished sanctuaries of old!"

Nielson mentions another interesting point as well. On page 278, he refers to A. Bentzen's view that Psalm 73 is saying that the Psalmist was sinful to doubt God's justice. Indeed, in vv 21-22, the Psalmist does confess his foolishness after he goes into the sanctuary and learns that God will punish the wicked.

3. M. Saebo, in "Who Is 'The Man' in Lamentations 3?', talks about different interpretations of the lamenting individual of Lamentations 3. Is it Jeremiah? Or a typical "Everyman" sufferer? Or Israel described as an individual? Or King Jehoiakim? Saebo settles on the view that the lamenting individual is supposed to be King Zedekiah, the last king of Judah. Saebo's reasons include the reference to chains and apparent captivity in Lamentations 3:7-9, which calls to mind Zedekiah's fetters in II Kings 25:7, and his status as a prisoner; a possible allusion to Zedekiah's blindness in Lamentations 3:2, where the man complains about being in darkness rather than light; the similarities between Lamentations 3 and Psalm 89, which is about God's faithfulness to the Davidic king as well as the end of that monarchy; Lamentations 3:1's reference to a rod, which recalls II Samuel 7:14's statement that God will punish the erring Davidic monarch with a rod; and the reference to the king of Judah in Lamentations 4:20, which contains concepts that appear in a longer form in Psalm 89:19-38. Lamentations 3 ends on a hopeful note. If Saebo's interpretation is correct, does Zedekiah hope that he himself will be restored, or does he believe that his own time is past, and so he is hoping primarily for the restoration of the nation of Israel?

4. Isaiah 26:19 states (in the KJV): "Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead. " J.F.A. Sawyer, in "'My Secret Is with Me' (Isaiah 24:16): Some Semantic Links Between Isaiah 24-27 and Daniel", argues that Isaiah 26:19, like Daniel 12, is talking about the resurrection of individuals, not the entire nation---as Ezekiel's vision of the dry bones does when it symbolically describes the resurrection of Israel as a resurrection of bodies (Ezekiel 37). Both Isaiah 26 and Daniel 12 contrast the fate of the righteous with that of the wicked, and Sawyer also notes verbal similarities between the two passages, and so Sawyer concludes that Isaiah 26 is describing an individual (not a national) resurrection. Daniel 12 is about the resurrection of martyrs, and, for Sawyer, Isaiah 26's reference to resurrection may arise from a fear of martyrdom, or simply from piety.

Canon Questions, Abiya of Aleppo

I read two essays today in Understanding Poets and Prophets: Essays in Honour of George Wishart Anderson.

1. The first essay that I read was W. McKane's "Old and New Covenant (Testament): A Terminological Enquiry". McKane brought up some interesting questions, as well as solutions that he and R.M. Grant have proposed. The questions concern the reason that the early church used the Scriptures that it did. Why did the early church use the Septuagint rather than the Hebrew Bible in Hebrew, when it had a strong Jerusalemite element? And when did the early church begin to view the writings that entered the New Testament as Scripture?

Regarding the first question---on the use of the Septuagint---McKane says that "Greek-speaking Jews, who had returned to Jerusalem from the diaspora, played a prominent part in the founding of the Church and...Greek-speaking synagogues were the institutions out of which they emerged as the first Christians" (page 228). McKane does not elaborate on this point, but he does refer to pages 17-19 of a 1988 book that he wrote, Selected Christian Hebraists. McKane's scenario may coincide with the Book of Acts, for Acts 2 presents the conversion of Jews from the Diaspora to Christianity---in Jerusalem---and Acts 6 concerns how the apostles in Jerusalem sought to minister to the Hellenistic Jews in their midst. Perhaps the Septuagint was used in Jerusalem because that appealed to the Hellenistic Jews who were there, plus the Palestinian Jews understood Greek---and so everyone heard the Scripture in a language that he or she comprehended.

Regarding the second question---on when the New Testament became Scripture---Grant says that, in the early second century writings of Polycarp of Smyrna and Ignatius of Antioch, the assumption was that only the Septuagint was the Scripture of the church. But the threat of Gnosticism and this movement's rejection of the Septuagint led the church to reflect on the contents of its Scriptures. Clement of Alexandria (second century C.E.) claimed that the "Holy Spirit which is active in the Church is the same in substance and energy as the Spirit which informed the Old Covenant" (McKane's words on page 229). But Gnostics were also pushing for recognition of the Church's books as Scripture---as did Basilides in the second century---plus Marcion was putting on the table the question of which books were genuine. According to McKane, those factors may have influenced the church to take a stand on canon. At the same time, Christians wanted to preserve their common ground with the Jews of accepting the Hebrew Scriptures (in this case, the Septuagint) as authoritative. In the second century, Justin Martyr did not appeal to the Epistle of Hebrews in his debate with the Jew Trypho, although Justin was making a similar point to Hebrews regarding the New Covenant in Jeremiah 31:31-34.

Unfortunately, McKane does not interact with II Peter 3:16, which implies that Paul's writings are Scripture. Even if II Peter is a second century document, McKane should address that passage as he does other second century figures, such as Clement, Justin, etc.

2. Another essay that I read was A. Malamat's "A New Prophetic Message from Aleppo and Its Biblical Counterparts". In this essay, Malamat discusses a letter from Nur-Sin---Mari's ambassador to Aleppo---to Zimri-Lim, his lord. The letter contains a prophecy by the prophet Abiya, who represents Adad, a deity of Aleppo. Abiya speaks Adad's words concerning the king of Mari, which is dependent on Aleppo. In this prophecy---and also in a letter to a deity by Yasmah-Adad, an Amorite king of Mari---the first king of Mari, Yahdun-Lim, is said to have abandoned the god who granted him numerous countries, which was why the god rejected him. The country was taken from Yahdun-Lim and given to Shamshi-Adad, the king of a rival Amorite dynasty which was established in Assyria, and the father of Yasmah-Adad. But Shamshi-Adad's dynasty was overthrown by Zimri-Lim, the last king of Mari, who was later ousted by the Babylonian king Hammurabi in the early second millennium B.C.E. Zimri-Lim was related to the dynasty that Shamshi-Adad overthrew.

But the text is apparently set before Hammurabi did his damage, for it concerns the restoration of Zimri-Lin to his father's throne by Adad, and that is likened to the defeat of the Sea (a motif that appears often in ancient Near Eastern literature, but it's appearance in the Mari texts in novel). Aleppo in Syria is thus upheld as superior to Mari. A god then says that he had anointed Zimri-Lin king, and that Zimri-Lin is to do justice---to stand up for the wronged. Malamat states that the Mari prophets usually focus on "material demands", but that there are occasionally "moral, ethical commands" (page 238) in their messages. The god then says that Zimri-Lin is only to go on a campaign after he learns via oracle that the god is favorable.

Malamat compares Abiya's prophecy to prophecy in the Hebrew Bible. Both attribute the transfer of a kingdom from one person to another to the sin of the king who loses out. Both Abiya and the Hebrew Bible present the anointing of the king. Abiya has the demand for justice follow the coronation, but they are more intertwined in the Hebrew Bible, or, rather, the king's anointment is a "consequence of his righteous behavior towards the people" (page 239). And both Abiya and the Hebrew Bible say that one should go to battle after hearing from a god. In the Hebrew Bible, that is done via oracle or prophecy.

Malamat concludes by saying that "The prophecy from Aleppo, which represents the West, is exceptional in its high standard of theological and moral contemplation, but the real breakthrough in this respect came only with the Bible and especially with the Great Prophets."

I think that a difference between Abiya and many of the biblical prophets is that Abiya is an outsider criticizing the past kings of Mari, whereas the biblical prophets critiqued kings of their own country. (An exception would be Amos, a Southern prophet to the North.) At the same time, Abiya is someone from Aleppo who is talking about a king of Mari---who is also from Aleppo (or at least he fled there). His implication may be that Zimri-Lin should be faithful to the god and thus avoid the fate of his predecessors, who lost the throne due to their disloyalty to a god.