Born Again

At church this morning, the pastor preached about John 3, the chapter about being "born again." Or, actually, the word translated as "again" in so many English versions, anothen, can mean "again" or "from above." I did a search just now on my BibleWorks, which looked at the Septuagint (including the Deutero-canonical books) and the New Testament. Most of the time, anothen was used to mean "above" or "from above." A few times, however, it meant "again" or "anew."

But the pastor said that Jesus meant "from above," whereas Nicodemus thought that Jesus meant "again." That was why Nicodemus asked if a man had to enter his mother's womb a second time. Bible translators must be in a bind. If they translated Jesus' words as "born from above," Nicodemus' confusion would make no sense. "A person must re-enter his mother's womb a second time? Who is saying that a person must do that, Nicodemus?" And so translators opt for "born again," even if "born from above" makes more sense. And yet, I suppose that "born from above" does entail being "born again," since, if you as a human being have to be born, it would be a second birth. I do think that Nicodemus thought that Jesus was talking about being "born again," for, if he interpreted Jesus to mean "born from above," he would have realized that Jesus was speaking of a spiritual rebirth, not a physical one---and he does seem to think that Jesus is talking about a physical rebirth, for he asks if he must re-enter his mother's womb.

In the Gospel According to Jesus, however, John MacArthur disagrees. He states:

"Nicodemus’s reply has often been misunderstood: 'How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born, can he?' (v. 4). Nicodemus was not speaking in literal terms. We must give him credit for a little common sense. Surely he was not so feebleminded as to think Jesus was really talking about reentering the womb and literally being born again. A teacher himself, Nicodemus understood the rabbinical method of using figurative language to teach spiritual truth, and he was merely picking up Jesus’ symbolism. He was really saying, 'I can’t start all over. It’s too late. I’ve gone too far in my religious system to start over. There’s no hope for me if I must begin from the beginning.'"

MacArthur's words are sobering, for they say that, regardless of how much I may have accomplished in this life, it does not matter to God, for I need a spiritual rebirth. God wants me to start anew, relying, not on my own works and accomplishments, but on his love and grace in Christ. Paul talks about this in Philippians 3:4-11. I find comfort when I remind myself that, regardless of how much or how little I have accomplished, God loves me. I'm probably taking MacArthur's thought in a different direction from whence he intended, but it's refreshing for me to reflect on God's unconditional love, and to focus on that rather than patting myself on the back for my accomplishments, or beating myself up for my lack thereof. Moreover, in my opinion, it's good for me not only to reflect on God's love, but to build my life on that.

But I still think that Nicodemus understood Jesus to be saying in a literal sense that people needed to re-enter their mothers' wombs to be reborn. We see this sort of literalizing misunderstanding elsewhere in the Gospel of John. In John 6, for example, Jewish leaders interpret Jesus to be saying that people must literally eat his flesh, whereas Jesus is speaking more in a spiritual sense: eating his flesh and drinking his blood is believing in him---with a focus on what he accomplished at his death. John 3 has that same focus, for it talks about Jesus being lifted up.

So There Was a Fall, but Paradise Was Not Ideal!

On pages 169-170 of Gaia and God, Rosemary Ruether says the following about "female-headed households," which are a "survival unit" in "the slums of industrial America". She states:

"In such female-headed households, the mother or adult female group becomes the male provider, working long hours at low pay, while also trying to play the nurturing role in the family. The husbands and fathers are marginal visitors, and all too often the sons grow up to repeat the same patterns. Adult male prestige, denied as economic prowess, is acted out through physical and sexual domination of women. The unemployed son or husband, demoralized by the dominant patriarchal and hierarchical society, disdains to help with housework and childcare lest he compromise his 'masculinity' thereby."

In certain families, women are dominant, whereas men are secondary, and thus feel useless. Consequently, for Ruether, the men seek to exercise power in oppressive ways.

Yesterday, I said that Rosemary Ruether does not accept the narrative that societies used to be matriarchal, until foreign patriarchal hordes came in and took over. In my reading today, however, Ruether says that there were ancient tribes in which women had a prominent role, but resentful men within (not from outside of) the communities got control. Why would the men be resentful? Ruether states that women were primary in reproduction and "food-gathering", which rendered men "auxiliary to the life-sustaining processes" (page 167). And, if men are not given an "affirmative role", Ruether argues, then they will define their "masculinity in hostile negation of women" (page 167).

And that is what happened in ancient history, according to Ruether. Proto-Neolithic and Neolithic women celebrated childbirth, while relegating "male virility" to a secondary role. Food gathering (gardening and collecting plants) supplanted hunting in a number of places, and women predominated in the food-gathering department. As society became agricultural, however, men got prominence, since men were strong in plowing the fields. And male strength was also useful when communities were competing against one another for resources, since males could serve as warriors.

Unlike certain feminists, Ruether does not romanticize those ancient societies in which women played a prominent role---though she does hold that some tribes have been successful in achieving gender parity. Nor does Ruether agree with Mary Daly, who labeled men "parasitic." Rather, Ruether supports both men and women finding a function within society. After all, men will not go away! And, for Ruether (if I'm understanding her correctly), if they can't find a fulfilling role in a capacity that helps society, then they will seek to dominate in oppressive ways.

On a side note, last Women's History Month, I blogged through Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, in which Friedan discussed the disastrous consequences of women not finding fulfillment outside of the home. In today's reading, Ruether talks about what can happen if men do not find a fulfilling role, in which they can make a contribution.

Psalm 16

For my weekly quiet time this week, I'll blog about Psalm 16 and its interpreters. Psalm 16 is called a "Michtam" in its superscription. What is a "Michtam"? There are different proposals! This post will use the different interpretations of Michtam as a fulcrum.

1. The most popular answer that I found was that the term Michtam indicated that Psalm 16 was an inscription on a monument, celebrating the deliverance of the Psalmist from peril. The Septuagint goes with that interpretation. Peter Craigie states that ancient Near Eastern texts have analogies to that. E.W. Bullinger cites Jeremiah 2:22, in which the root ch-t-m occurs. There, Jeremiah uses the root to express that Israel's iniquity is marked before God, even though she has washed herself. I draw here from the King James Version, which translates nichtam as "marked," but other translations render the word as "stain." Ct-t-m appears to relate to leaving a permanent mark, which is consistent with viewing michtam as writing that is on an inscription. Psalm 16 would be on an inscription to remind Israelites on a permanent basis that they can trust God to preserve and deliver them, and so they should not go after idols.

2. While the interpretation in (1) associated the term michtam with salience and permanence, another view sees michtam in the opposite manner. W.O.E. Oesterley states: "It may well be...that Mowinckel has hit upon the true meaning; he connects the meaning with the Assyrian Katamu 'to cover', i.e., to cover sin; so that Miktam would be employed in reference to a Psalm which dealt with the subject of covering, or atoning for, sin, or uncleanness, or else sickness, the result of sin; it might even have been held that the saying or singing of the Psalm was of atoning efficacy."

But is there anything about atonement in Psalm 16? The eleventh century Jewish exegete Rashi interprets Psalm 16:2 in light of that sort of theme: that the Psalmist is saying that God does not favor him on account of his (the Psalmist's) virtue. The fourth-fifth century Antiochian Christian thinker Theodore of Mopsuestia offers a similar interpretation of Psalm 16:2: that God needs nothing from us, and that is what distinguishes God from other gods, who need honor, since they do not possess honor in themselves. Others have interpreted Psalm 16:2 to mean that the Psalmist's only goodness comes from God. I suppose that, either way, Psalm 16:2 is an expression of humility, which is the attitude that people have when they ask God for forgiveness. And yet, at the same time, the Psalmist does appear to brag about his righteousness in Psalm 16, as he denies any involvement in idolatrous worship. But is he really bragging about his own righteousness there, or is he bragging about God, his portion, who blesses him richly, and whom he can trust even when his life is in peril?

3. Oesterley offers another definition of the term michtam: "Another word with which it might be connected is Katham, something 'hidden'; in this case the term would mean that the psalm was of hidden import, not understood by all." There are Christian interpreters who love this definition, for it helps them to make sense of Psalm 16:6-10, which Acts 2:25-28 and Acts 13:35 apply to the resurrection of Christ. Many scholars argue that Psalm 16:6-10 is about God's deliverance of the Psalmist from death---which refers, not to an afterlife, but to God's rescue of the Psalmist from a near-death experience. But some Christian interpreters have speculated that maybe those verses have a deeper import, one that was not even apparent to the author of the Psalm, and that import concerns the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

Then another Christian view of Psalm 16:6-10 is that the Psalmist himself was talking about Christ, and actually knew that he was talking about Christ. When the Psalmist says in v 10 that God won't leave him in Sheol, or permit his Holy One to see corruption, some have contended that the verse refers to two separate things: God will resurrect the Psalmist from Sheol, and God will keep Christ (his Holy One) from experiencing corruption. After all, Peter in Acts 2:29-31 makes the point that Christ did not experience corruption, whereas David did, and so the character of Peter was applying the second part of Psalm 16:10 specifically to Christ.

Many scholars would see parallelism in Psalm 16:10, contending that the verse is saying a single thought in two different ways for poetic emphasis---that God would deliver the Psalmist from death. But there were rabbis who did not believe in parallelism, for they did not think that God would be redundant. Although rabbinic literature emerged after Acts, could such an attitude have affected Luke's interpretation of Psalm 16:10, leading him to conclude that v 10 refers to two events: God's deliverance of the Psalmist, and God's resurrection of Jesus Christ? But why would the author of Psalm 16 mention Christ's resurrection? According to some Christian exegetes, David was saying that his own hope for a blessed afterlife was based on what God would do in the future: raise Jesus Christ from the dead.

4. The medieval Midrash on the Psalms offers two other interpretations of Michtam. One reads the term as Machtam, dividing it into two words: mak ("meek") and tam ("undefiled"). The point, according to this interpretation, is that David was meek and undefiled. There are some rabbinic sayings that highlight the righteousness of biblical characters, and there are other rabbinic sayings that acknowledge the biblical characters' feet of clay. I think that it's good for me to remember that everyone has strengths and weaknesses, for that can help me to keep myself and others in perspective. I have a tendency to beat up on myself and others in my mind, or to amplify others' goodness, or to amplify my own. What I need is a balanced perspective of myself and others, one that realizes that we're all human.

Moreover, I can acknowledge that there were positive and negative elements of David's character as it is portrayed in the Hebrew Bible: David did not try to usurp the throne of Saul, he returned good for evil, and he found strength in God. And yet, David also killed Urijah to get Bathsheba. In my opinion, I should try to live according to goodness, and not evil, as I use the goodness of others for inspiration, and view any evil that they do as a warning, and also as an opportunity for me to remember that I, too, have feet of clay.

The other rabbinic view associated Michtam with ketem, which means "fine gold." This is why Jews and even Christians have referred to Psalm 16 as the "Golden Psalm."

Ruether on Matthew Fox (Not Jack from LOST)

In my reading today of Gaia and God, Rosemary Ruether talks about the view that cultures long ago were matriarchal, until a patriarchal horde came in and imposed patriarchy. Ruether, a feminist, actually doesn't find the evidence for that tale to be all that convincing. She does talk about tribes, however, in which women are valued---tribes that see more importance in sharing than in acquisition. But I won't go into detail about that in this post.

Something that I like about Ruether's book is her summary of different theological positions---whether she's looking at the Bible, or Origen, or Augustine. One summary of hers that I read today was that of Matthew Fox, who, in this case, is not the guy who played Jack on Lost, but rather a Dominican theologian. Or, actually, he was a Dominican theologian, but now he's an Episcopalian.

I first heard of Fox at DePauw University. I knew two religion students who were writing their thesis on him. One lady told me, "You wouldn't like him," since she realized that I was conservative. Nowadays, who knows? Maybe I would like him.

For Fox, the essential goodness of creation is more important than its fallenness or evil. After all, he notes, the cosmos is fourteen billion years older than humanity, and so "original blessing" is older than human sin. But, according to Ruether, Fox traces sin to the rise of patriarchy "some four thousand to six thousand years ago" (page 146). So does he believe in the narrative that Ruether critiques---the narrative that society was matriarchal, and fell to become patriarchal?

For Fox, the Christian theology about Fall and redemption promotes alienation, and the West's imposition of this idea on other cultures has been sad, especially because these other cultures highlighted the importance of harmony with nature before the West colonized them. According to Ruether, "Fox's creation spirituality stresses forms of meditation, liturgy, and therapy designed to free us from cultures of alienation and restore our harmony with the original blessing that remains the true 'nature' of things" (page 146).

I may take a look at Fox's book, Original Blessing, sometime in the future. Personally, I find that seeing people (even myself) and things as "bad" alienates me from them. I'm not saying that I'm "good," per se, but, yes, there is good within me, and I'd like to do a better job of acknowledging the goodness of others, even those I do not like. Saying "well, we're all sinners" doesn't give me all that much of a warm feeling towards others, even when I'm acknowledging that I'm no better than they are. I think that many of us respond better to encouragement rather than to being put down---even when it's a collective put-down of "us."

But evil should not be swept under the rug, either. It should be addressed.

Finishing Lemche's Israelites in History and Tradition

I finished Niels Peter Lemche's The Israelites in History and Tradition. Here are some points:

1. In my opinion, the main point of Lemche's book is on page 155: "The only thing that remains is the tradition of two tiny states of Palestine in the Iron Age, which were long after their disappearance chosen as the basis of a history of a new nation to be established on the soil of Palestine in the postexilic period. The tradition may have been preserved by descendants of the people who were really carried into exile by the Assyrians and Babylonians, or by others, who simply inherited the tradition and re-created it as their own story."

The following from pages 165-166 also summarizes Lemche's argument: "It is one of the theses of this book that the Israel found on the pages of the Old Testament is an artificial creation which has little more than one thing in common with the Israel that existed once upon in time in Palestine, that is, the name. Apart from this not insignificant element, the Israelite nation as explained by the biblical writers has little in the way of a historical background. It is a highly idealized construct created by ancient scholars of Jewish tradition in order to legitimize their own religious community and its religio-political claims on land and religious exclusivity. This literary society has been built up around a model of the league of twelve tribes of Israel, almost as borrowed from Greek tradition, and has been provided with the necessary features to make it appear to be for a people. It is, however, so far removed from the sociopolitical and religious realities of Palestine in the Iron Age that it can be difficult to find anything of relevance except in the name of the god Yahweh. The home of this god may have been to the south of Palestine, but he was in the Iron Age clearly a very popular deity in most of Palestine, in contrast to the biblical Yahweh, however, related to the female deity Asherah in some way."

For Lemche, there is no evidence that there was an ancient Israel that was a national religious community in the Late Bronze and Iron Ages, as we encounter in the Hebrew Bible. The Merneptah Stele mentions an "Israel," but how do we know that this is the Israel of the Hebrew Bible, which extends from Abraham to after the exile? Ancient primary sources refer to the "House of Omri," but how can we be sure that what the Hebrew Bible says about Omri and his line is historically-accurate, especially when it was written long after the time of Omri? Many have tried to identify an Israelite material culture or evidence for a Solomonic kingdom, pointing to a specific house-type, or collared-rim storage jars, or a six-chambered gate. But these things also exist outside of the land that supposedly was Israel. The house form is in the Transjordan, and a six-chambered gate is in Ashdod, in Philistia. So they're not proof that there was a nation called Israel in the Iron Age, for they exist elsewhere. (As far as I could see, Lemche doesn't interact in this book with the argument that the absence of pig bones in the central hills is a cultural marker of ancient Israel.) The people in the central hills, for Lemche, were not different from their neighbors---even the language was roughly the same (as the Hebrew Bible mostly depicts)!

So how did there emerge the notion that there was an Israel that was a sort of national church, intended by God to be separate from the pagan nations? Lemche believes that the history of Israel was a post-exilic creation, either by those who went into exile from Samaria and Judah, or by people claiming the identity of the people who once inhabited that land. They gave themselves a constitution, and the Conquest was a story justifying their claim to the land, expressing their hope that its other inhabitants would die. They sought to be separate from other nations, and yet they recognized that interaction with other nations would occur, and so Genesis 17 discusses the circumcision of foreigners.

Lemche refers often to parallels between the Hebrew Bible and Greek legends. My favorites are when Lemche compares the wilderness traditions to what we find in Greek literature. On page 119, Lemche says that "The desert is, like the Greek ocean, a dangerous place where every sort of danger can be encountered." And he notes on page 207 that, in Odyssey XII.260-450, Odysseus is prevented from reaching his home because of a deadly sin committed by his men, the abduction of the oxen of the Helios..." As in the Pentateuch, Greek legends have stories about traversing a large, dangerous area, and of sin having an effect on how long one spends in that area. But I'm not sure if Lemche is positing dependence on the Greek traditions on the part of the biblical authors, for he says that there are similarities between biblical tales and "the traditions of King Arthur and the Round Table or of Charlemagne's heroes" (153), and he mentions the Egyptian Middle Kingdom legend of Sinuhe, who experienced exile and return to his land (page 207). But Lemche does believe that parts of the Hebrew Bible reflect Greek times, for he holds that Numbers 24:24 is describing the Macedonians, and thus dates to the "late fourth or third centuries B.C.E." (page 160).

2. On pages 156-157, Lemche discusses a French biblical scholar from over a century ago, by the name of Maurice Vernes. Vernes dated the biblical literature late---to Israel's post-exilic period. Vernes argued that we should start "from a relatively late date, when there can be no doubt about the existence of this literature", and then work back in search of "fitting circumstances which may form the background of the individual books." Vernes' conclusion is that the Hebrew Bible comes from "great schools of theology which flourished in Jerusalem between 400 and 200 B.C.", and that "The composition of it lasted about two or three generations." Vernes contends that there is a "uniformity of thought in biblical literature", although there is freedom in expressing that dogma. The dogma is "a monotheism on a high moral and spiritual level, and [it] confirm[s] that the deity among all the nations of the earth has elected the people of Israel in order to overwhelm it with his gifts if it follows his laws." (These are from quotations of Vernes in Lemche's book.)

But Vernes' name became lost in the history of biblical scholarship, after his views were dismissed by the respected Danish scholar Frants Buhl, who (in Lemche's words) "claimed that according to Vernes the Old Testament came out of the late postexilic period like a shot out of a pistol." Yet, Vernes' ideas resembled those of the later revisionists, among whom Lemche includes himself.

3. I like what Lemche says about Genesis 3 on page 210: "It is up to humanity itself to decide its future, as happens when it decides for knowledge against eternal life (Genesis 3)." What is the knowledge of good and evil in Genesis 3? Perhaps it is our ability to make decisions---to obey God and to be blessed, or to disobey and to be punished. But the choice is ours. When Adam and Eve ate from the fruit, they opened the door to have to make moral decisions on a continual basis, decisions that would affect their fate. They no longer had the security of the Garden (even though, of course, the Garden had the moral dilemma of the Tree of Knowledge itself, along with the tempting serpent).

Ruether's Version of Original Sin

On page 142 of Gaia and God, Rosemary Ruether says something that we can learn from the Pauline-Augustinian tradition (original sin and the sinfulness of the flesh), after she's criticized it:

"From the Pauline-Augustinian tradition, we derive a profound existentialist recognition of the divided self, acting against its own interests and desires. In the concept of inherited sin, we also recognize that evil is not simply the sum of individual decisions. We do not start with a clean slate, but we inherit historical systems of culture and cultural organization that bias our minds and wills negatively. Our freedom to choose good is not only limited by the fluid boundaries of finitude, but also distorted by a heritage of deception and injustice masquerading as good...Only by eschewing paranoid projection of all evil onto malignant 'aliens' can we begin to reconstruct the tissues of relationship in a way that produces more biotic plenitude and less toxic violence."

I've known people who think that I should feel guilty because I am a white male, which means that, somehow, I play a role in oppression as well as benefit from it. I have the same problem with that as I do with original sin: I feel like I'm being blamed for something that is not my fault. But Rosemary Ruether is not like one friend of mine---who thought that 9/11 was God's punishment of America for racism against African-Americans, and who said that God would punish America as he punished Egypt. Granted, Ruether does believe that our current path is leading towards disaster, but she does not exult in that disaster, nor does she blame it on God. Rather, she blames it on our path. Therefore, I don't have to walk around feeling guilty on account of my being a white male, for God accepts me. But, once I acknowledge God's acceptance of me, I should take a look: to what extent do I promote injustice, and how can I make this world a better place?

Another point: it's not easy to go against the grain---not just for me, but for many others as well. I wish I could believe that God would take care of me if I took a bold stand for righteousness, but I'm not sure if that's always the case in the real world. But are there other options out there? Sure, I may not want to, say, take a job where I have to laugh at racist, sexist jokes in order to fit in and advance. (I'm not experiencing this sort of situation right now, but others very well may be.) But are there other jobs out there---maybe even jobs in which I can accomplish some good?

Lemche on the Tel Dan Stela, the End of the Bronze Age, and Machir

I started Niels Peter Lemche's The Israelites in History and Tradition. Here are some points:

1. Lemche is known as a biblical minimalist, which means that he is skeptical about the historicity of much of the Hebrew Bible. Or let me sharpen that a bit: he doesn't think that scholars should just assume the historicity of the Hebrew Bible, as he believes that so many of them do. What's odd, however, is that, when Lemche disputes the interpretation of the Tel Dan Stela advanced by Avraham Biran and Joseph Naveh, he points out that it contradicts II Kings 11:21-29 (page 40). Whereas the Tel Dan Stela (according to Biran and Naveh) says that an Aramean king killed King Ahaziah of Judah, II Kings 11 says that Jehu did so. Lemche argues strongly in this book that the Hebrew Bible is not a primary source, for it talks about events several years after they occurred, as well as mixes kernals of history with legend. Why, then, does he treat II Kings 11:21-29 as an authority in his critique of an interpretation of the Tel Dan Stela?

Moreover, on page 41, Lemche appears open to the possibility that the Tel Dan Stela is a forgery. He says that it jumbles together Aramaic and Phoenician as well as employs phraseology that resembles that of the "Mesha inscription and the Aramaic Zakkur inscription near Aleppo" (page 41). Lemche adds that "some of the circumstances surrounding its discovery may speak against its being genuine" (page 41). But why would someone forge a document that contradicts the Hebrew Bible?

Lemche explores other possibilities besides the Tel Dan Stela being a forgery. He notes that "Betdawd" in the Stela is one word, and so it is most likely not to be translated as "House of David." In the Hebrew Bible, "Beyt David" is two words, and "dynastic names of states in Syria and Mesopotamia" also use two words for the house of someone (page 43). But place names with "beyt" in the Hebrew Bible, such as "Bethel," appear as one word, so Betdawd may be a place. Or perhaps "Dawd" is the name of a god. In the Mesha inscription, we see the god Daudo. Lemche says that there is "at least a possibility that we also in the Tel Dan inscription have a reference to what might be a local temple of the same god, or a god carrying the same surname" (page 46).

2. On pages 66-67, Lemche talks about the end of the Late Bronze Age and the beginning of the Iron Age. Iron was used in the Levant before the Iron Age, but it was too brittle for weapons and utensils, for which bronze was used. But "materials had to be imported" to make bronze, which was a "mixture of mainly copper and tin", and the "breakdown of international trade, which was a side effect of the diversified troubles that hit most of the civilized world between 1300 and 1000 B.C.E.", cut off the lifeline to bronze. And so it was replaced by iron.

3. On pages 99-100, Lemche discusses critiques of Martin Noth's view that Israel was an amphictyony of tribes that came together, much like tribes in ancient Greece. An argument against this is that there are there are lists of tribes within the Hebrew Bible that differ from each other. If there's not a uniform list of tribes, one can ask, how can we be so certain that twelve specific tribes joined together into an amphictyony before the composition of the Hebrew Bible?

Lemche refers to a tribe in the Song of Deborah (Judges 5) that "is not otherwise in the Old Testament reckoned an independent tribe" (page 100). On page 203, he elaborates: "Machir being artificially reckoned a half-tribe, the son of Joseph's son Manasseh; see Gen. 50:23. Machir in Judg. 5:14, however, is not thought of as different from the other tribes mentioned here."

And, indeed, Machir is mentioned with other tribes in Judges 5:14---Ephraim, Benjamin, and Zebulun.