James Bradford Pate's comments on religion, politics, entertainment, books, and life
Welcome, Neighbor!
Thank you for sharing my journey with me. It's a bumpy ride, but hopefully you'll find it worthwhile! To reach out to me, send me an e-mail at jamesbradfordpate@yahoo.com.
My name is James Pate. This blog is about my journey. I read books. I watch movies and TV shows. I go to church. I try to find meaning. And, when I can’t do that, I just talk about stuff that I find interesting. I have degrees in fields of religious studies. I have an M.Phil. in the History of Biblical Interpretation from Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio. I also have an M.A. in Hebrew Bible from Jewish Theological Seminary, an M.Div. from Harvard Divinity School, and a B.A. from DePauw University.
In my reading today of Rolf Rendtorff’s The Old Testament: An Introduction, pages 189 and 192 stood out to me.
On page 182, Rendtorff criticizes biblical scholars who try to discern the original words of a prophet in the book that bears his name, as if those are the very words of God. Rendtorff doesn’t really explain why he feels as he does, but perhaps he thinks that we should honor the redaction, reinterpretation, and re-application of prophecies that occur within the prophetic books, for those things demonstrate the prophecies’ function as Scripture within a religious community, which seeks to apply them to its own context.
On page 192, Rendtorff states that we can’t establish the historical profile of Isaiah with certainty from the book the bears his name, for its portrait of Isaiah “has been deliberately shaped in retrospect”.
In my reading today of Rolf Rendtorff’s The Old Testament: An Introduction, the following passage stood out to me:
In their present form, the books from Joshua to Kings have a largely Deuteronomistic stamp. In 1943 Noth argued that what we have here is not a Deuteronomistic redaction but rather a systematically planned history.
I had an interesting conversation with a colleague today. He attended Liberty University, and he was talking about a question that he answered at Liberty for one of his Bible comps. He was asked why I-II Kings is so negative, whereas I-II Chronicles is much more positive. The expected answer was that parts of I-II Kings were written close to the time that they narrate, when the prophets were quite negative about Israel and her sins. That’s why I-II Kings is negative. I-II Chronicles, however, was written in exile, when the Jews needed hope, and so it is upbeat and positive.
Martin Noth would date I-II Kings to the exile, although many scholars since then have claimed that the work contains pre-exilic layers. Moreover, many scholars view I-II Chronicles as a post-exilic document, which is positive and upbeat because Israel is getting a fresh start and has a lot of optimism.
But I’ve often wondered why Martin Noth believed that an exilic author would compose a negative Deuteronomistic History. To kick Israel when she is down? I vaguely recall a professor of mine telling me that Noth was allowing his Lutheran bias to shine through his scholarship. Noth sought to portray the days of the Old Testament as a time of God’s law and wrath, in marked contrast to the grace and mercy that would come through Jesus Christ.
My professor believed that Noth’s reading of the Deuteronomistic History was too pessimistic, for DtrH contained numerous examples of the Israelites repenting before God, and receiving forgiveness and restoration. For my professor, DtrH’s message to the exiles was that they too can repent, and be restored to her land as a nation through God’s grace.
I Kings 8 somewhat intrigues me. In vv 33-34, Solomon prays that God might forgive Israel and restore her to her land, if she repents and makes supplication to God in his house. This passage interests me because it does not seem to describe a full-fledged exile. After all, the passage presumes the existence of a temple in which Jewish people can pray, implying (1.) that, in this scenario, there are Jewish people in the land, and (2.) that the temple was not destroyed in the situation that Solomon is describing. Solomon does not seem to be describing the events of 587 B.C.E., in which the Babylonians exiled the Jews and destroyed their temple. Can we point to this text to argue that the Deuteronomist believes that Israel in exile can be restored to her land? I’m not fully convinced that we can, for it’s describing a scenario that is unlike Israel’s exile.
Then we have vv 44-53, which actually does describe an exile. But what’s interesting is that Solomon does not explicitly pray that God might restore Israel to her land if such a situation were to occur. What’s up with that? Maybe the Deuteronomist didn’t want to be too dogmatic about the restoration of Israel, for he was uncertain that it would occur; rather, he preferred to leave the ball in God’s court. In the meantime, he would encourage Israel to get serious about her repentance and to focus on that, rather than her restoration to her land.
On page 134 of The Old Testament: An Introduction, Rolf Rendtorff states:
There is no formal connection by specific references in either direction between the primal history and the patriarchal history which follows. The Abraham story begins quite abruptly in [Genesis] 12.1-3. This marks a basically new beginning: from the general history of humanity there now emerges the history of the one people whose ancestor is Abraham. The promise to Abraham, and through him to all the families of the earth, which stands at the centre of these verses, points forwards to the future history of Israel and humanity. At the same time, in the present context, it also has the function of pointing backwards; the curses of primal history (3.14-19; cf. 8.21) are countered and contrasted with the promise of the blessing. In this way there is a bridge from the primal history to the patriarchal history.
Rendtorff appears to contradict himself in the course of a single paragraph. He says that the primal history and the patriarchal history aren’t connected, right before saying that there’s a bridge between the two. Then again, he does say that there’s no “formal connection”, so maybe the contradiction’s not as bad as I think.
Apparently, the question of whether or not the primal and the patriarchal histories are connected is a big one in biblical scholarship. In my first year at Harvard Divinity School, for my first paper in my Hebrew Scriptures class, I was asked to address whether or not there’s a connection between the primal history and the sacred history. My fundamentalist friend didn’t really understand the question! His response was that all of the Bible is sacred! I can understand his confusion.
Personally, I didn’t know at the time why I was asked that question, but I did believe that there was some connection between the primal history and the patriarchal history. In Genesis 9, Noah curses Canaan. In my opinion, that aspect of the primal history foreshadowed God’s promise to Abraham that Israel would possess Canaan.
Also, I suppose that the question did swim around in my mind before I took that Hebrew Scriptures class. As I took Bible classes at DePauw University, I became sensitive to the existence of different ways to interpret the Hebrew Bible: Jewish, Christian, and historical-critical. Reading the Bible from a Christian perspective that emphasized Jesus correcting the Fall had become boring to me. I wondered how other communities interpreted Genesis 3, and where Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob fit into that. At some point, I learned that some Jewish interpreters held that God chose Abraham in order to heal the negative effects of the Fall. So I guess that I was wondering what the connection was between the primal and the patriarchal histories!
When I take another look at Christian interpretations, I wonder if they are too far afield from that one Jewish view on Abraham: in a sense, even Christians acknowledge that God chose Abraham to correct the problems of the Fall, for Abraham was the ancestor of Jesus, through whom many nations would be blessed. At the same time, I can understand how Jewish interpreters would find such a perspective to be lacking. Abraham was to be more than the ancestor of Jesus. God chose Abraham because God knew that he would teach his children to walk in God’s commandments (Genesis 18:19). Abraham’s seed was to obey God and bless the nations in so doing, not just wait for Jesus to come.
1. In my reading today of Rolf Rendtorff's The Old Testament: An Introduction, I noticed the following on page 123:
The incorporation of apocalyptic texts into the prophetic books shows that there was a connection between the two for the final authors of the Old Testament books.
I wonder why. Was it because the prophetic texts described the defeat of God's enemies and the establishment of some sort of paradise, and that was consistent with the message of the apocalyptic texts? Of course, the final authors probably interpreted the prophetic texts apart from their historical contexts. The prophetic texts were discussing specific historical settings---in which Assyria and Babylon were influential. Once the global-political situation changed, however, perhaps Assyria and Babylon were viewed by interpreters as allegories for other nations. We see this sort of thing in the Septuagint, in which nations that the prophets discussed were replaced with the prominent nations of the translators' day. Such a mindset may have influenced those who incorporated apocalyptic texts into the prophetic writings.
But there were also interpreters who tried to be faithful to the original historical contexts of the prophets. One rabbi said that Hezekiah could have been the Messiah, had he played his cards right (my paraphrase). And so Isaiah's descriptions of the paradise that he hoped would occur in his day were not off-base: they just weren't fulfilled because of Hezekiah's blunders.
2. Last night, I watched two episodes of the West Wing late into the night (which was probably why I got up at 11 a.m. this morning). The first was called "The Supremes", and it was from the fifth season. And the second was called "Let Bartlett be Bartlett", and it was from the first season.
In "The Supremes", President Bartlett is trying to fill a vacancy for the Supreme Court, to replace a conservative justice who has passed on. Some of his aides really like liberal Judge Evelyn Lang, played by Glenn Close, but they fear that she won't fly before the Republican Senate. And so Bartlett leans towards nominating moderate Judge Brad Shelton, played by Robert Picardo, the holographic doctor on Star Trek: Voyager. Then, Josh Lyman has an idea: why not encourage an elderly liberal justice to retire, assuring him that the liberal Judge Lang will take his place. Then, there will be two vacancies. For the other vacancy, the President can appoint someone whom the Republican Senators recommend. The name that the Republicans propose is ultra-conservative Judge Christopher Mulready.
The episode has some classic moments, such as the scene in which Mulready is critiquing the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) from a conservative perspective, while Lang defends it from a liberal point-of-view. That should show that ideologies are not always predictable! Then there's the scene in which Mulready is debating affirmative action with Charlie, and he actually offers Charlie some tips on how to make a better pro-affirmative action case. "I should be writing some of this down!", Charlie says. That reminds me of a slogan that's on the back of the Opposing Viewpoints books: "Those who do not know their opponents' perspectives do not entirely understand their own."
But Mulready's meeting with President Bartlett is awesome! Mulready says that Bartlett can appoint a moderate like Shelton, but the thing about having a conservative or a liberal on the bench is that you'll get that lone dissent that will inspire a future law-clerk to make history---such as John Marshall Harlan's harsh criticism of Jim Crow, or Potter Stewart's rant against censorship.
And yet, Shelton himself was impressive in his own meeting with President Bartlett, and it wasn't just because of my love for Star Trek: Voyager! Shelton made a good case for judicial moderation---for judging on a case-by-case basis, with regard for the "eccentricities" of each case, rather than approaching each case with a heavy-handed ideology. When Bartlett asked Shelton for his stance on affirmative action, Shelton responded that he did not know, for he'd have to look at the specific case that came before him. I was waiting for Bartlett to pounce on Shelton like he was a dunce. Instead, Shelton offered an even-tempered, reasonable defense of judicial moderation.
Then there was the episode, "Let Bartlett Be Bartlett". The point of that episode was that President Bartlett was not aggressively promoting liberal values, for he was afraid of losing the next election. At the end of the episode, his Chief of Staff, Leo McGarry, encourages him to be himself: to take unpopular liberal stands and to elevate the political dialogue and debate in America. Some battles they'll lose, Leo says, and they may lose re-election. But, from now on, it's time to let Bartlett be Bartlett!
Both of these episodes reminded me of what I was watching on ABC's This Week yesterday morning. I believe it was Cynthia Tucker who was taking President Obama to task for trying to be all things to all people. She contrasted Obama with Ronald Reagan, who had to deal with a serious recession in the first two years of his Presidency. In the midst of all that, Reagan continued to proclaim his faith in free-market economics---tax cuts, deregulation, the whole biz. Obama, however, is not doing that sort of thing for his own viewpoints. Instead of aggressively defending his unpopular stimulus, he's saying that we should balance the budget to avoid economic catastrophe, the sort of message that his conservative detractors are proclaiming. Whereas Reagan stuck with his ideology even when it was unpopular and didn't appear to be working, Obama is equivocating about his agenda.
(I should mention: "Let Bartlett Be Bartlett" was based on the slogan, "Let Reagan Be Reagan".)
It's good to have moderates who are open to different ideas, but it's also nice to have people who rock the boat and make us think. And yet, those who try to rock the boat can be inflexible at times, as they make the perfect the enemy of the good.
1. In my reading of Rolf Rendtorff's The Old Testament: An Introduction, Rendtorff refers to the view that Ezra 6:3-5 contains a decree for the royal administration and is thus in Aramaic, the language of the Persian Empire. Ezra 1:2-4, by contrast, was addressed to the Jewish exiles, so it's in Hebrew. That relates to an issue I discussed last week, in my post, The Language of the Returning Exiles; Following Jesus: in what language did the returning Jewish exiles speak?
2. I finished Charles Perrot's French article, "The Reading of the Septuagint in the Hellenistic Diaspora." I could be wrong, but what I got out of today's reading was that the Pharisees and the Essenes read the prophets along with the Torah in their services, as if the prophets were a commentary on the Torah. The Hellenistic Jews, by contrast, focused on the Torah, and used commentaries on that in their services. If I'm not mistaken, Perrot views Philo's books of questions on Genesis and Exodus as such commentaries.
3. I went to Latin mass this morning, and here's a quotation from my bulletin:
Who are these people of the harvest who are coming to our church in record numbers and what draws them to us? One thirty-three-year-old man explained: "My best friend growing up was Catholic. It wasn't anything he said to me. It was just who he was. Even when we were young he seemed as if he had the answer to life's puzzle."
A shy young woman added, "For me, it was the handshake of a priest. I was feeling particularly down so I went to Mass at the Catholic church in my neighborhood. On my way out, the priest excused himself from a conversation and sought me out. After he introduced himself, he invited me back again. That was an important part of my journey of faith."
Personally, I don't feel compelled to act as if I have the answer to life's puzzle, when I don't. I do hope, however, to gain wisdom that I can share with others.
As far as extending hospitality in church goes, I'm reluctant to do so, because I'm not sure if others will accept it. I'm more prone to do that in AA meetings, where strangers go up to each other and introduce themselves.
Finding healing in community has been a topic that I have encountered this week. In this article, Tim Keller describes his faith journey. In college, Keller was depressed, socially-awkward, and very introverted, and yet faith in Christ and the Christian community gave him an opportunity to find peace and reach out to others. In his May 19, 2010 sermon (see http://revthom.blogspot.com), Thomas Belote discusses how Unitarian-Universalism saved his life: at one point, he was angry at the social dynamics and exclusion within his high school, but his UU church allowed him to serve people, and that brought him healing.
Christian community can also be a place that wounds. That's why I like Adam McHugh's Introverts in the Church: it's about how the church can welcome introverts and acknowledge their value to the community, rather than putting them down for not being spiritual enough. Over the next week, I will continue to discuss this book.
Notice that "Under God" is not in this Pledge of Allegiance, since this film was made in the 1930's. "Under God" was put into the Pledge in the 1950's. I watched this when I was a little kid. Porky's struggles saying the Pledge reminded me of my Mom making me say it over and over until I learned it---with "Richard Stands" and the whole bit! And Uncle Sam's lecture to Porky reminds me of my elementary school teachers who gave us a lecture about the greatness of America and freedom whenever we were saying the Pledge in a perfunctory fashion, or diverting our gaze from the sacred American flag while we recited it. "Some countries don't even allow rock and roll!", my second-grade teacher said. That's ironic because some would argue that rock music was a Communist plot to corrupt our youth---the very opposite of patriotism! BTW, did you know that kids used to say the Pledge while holding out their right arm? We stopped doing that salute once it became associated with the Nazis! In any case, this is a good little movie, and, although America's not perfect, I'm glad that I live here. And, like John Goodman on King Ralph, I'll always admire the American colonists for kicking the rear-end of the mighty British!
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