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My reading today in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, X, Hebrews was unusually rich, commenting on Hebrews 10:1-11. This is the first of three extracts. As usual, I’m taking these from CCEL and I urge you to support them as you can.
Well, it may not be as spontaneous as all that. And with that, commercial warning … My company, Energion Publications, is sponsoring a contest and inviting people to blog about Christianity during Consider Christianity Week, (March 21-27) which is the project of one of my authors, Elgin Hushbeck, Jr. You can get full details on Energion.net. For the blogswarm, we will link to each post of which we are notified that fits into a Consider Christianity Week topic from both the company blog and from Energion.net. This means at least two links for each post. In addition, I personally will be trying to link to each from this blog and my Threads blog with some sort of classification and a bit of commentary. Please note: This isn’t just for Christians. We will link to posts opposing Christianity as well as to those supporting it. When I link here, my preference will be for posts which are in conversation with one another. The contest involves one particular question, with a $50 Barnes & Noble gift card to the best (by popular vote) post in the affirmative, and another to the best post in the negative. Again, see Energion.net for details. I know the fact that this is company sponsored may keep some folks away, but I would certainly appreciate any publicity you can give. I’d like to see a good number of posts on Christianity linked together. I’ve previously expressed my surprise about what some people can believe about the Bible and yet call their belief “inerrancy.” As an example, I responded to Earnest Lucas’s excellent commentary on Daniel in which he maintains that one can hold both inerrancy and a late dating of Daniel. I think a good one sentence summary of the approach is to say that what is asserted by a text differs by genre, and that inerrancy refers to what the text is actually asserting. Thus if Jonah is fictional, it is not trying to assert an actual size for the city of Nineveh (Jonah 3:3), thus this is not an error, even if that information is incorrect. Jonah is not a book about the sizes of cities, but rather a fictional account designed to deal with other issues. (Which those are is not important right now.) If Daniel relates a history of the Babylonian Empire which does not conform to history, that is not a problem, since it is a pseudonymous work of apocalyptic, and this was a common practice in apocalyptic. If Genesis does not relate well to science, it is not a problem, because Genesis is not a science textbook. Now I have no problem with any of those statements as such, but I do have some problem with their relation to the doctrine of inerrancy, though not in equal measure. But before I discuss why I have this problem, let me refer to a post today by John Hobbins on inerrancy. In this he is discussing people with relatively similar views about the inspiration of scripture, but a disagreement about the words. (The views are not identical, but they are close enough for my purposes.) In fact, I agree with most of what I read about inspiration on John Hobbins’ blog. I think in some cases he comes out more liberal on the issue than I am, as in this post on legend and history. It seems to me that he and some others are trying to assert that they can believe both in Biblical inerrancy and also that the Bible is a collection of myths and fairy tales. Now I think that “myth” and “fairy tale” are actually quite complimentary terms. I have no problem with finding myth in the Bible. In fact, for many purposes I find it to be a more admirable form of literature than some sort of pure, objective, narrative history. Each has its place, but we tend to treat history as good and myth as bad. And therein beings the problem. I must note in passing that I don’t think that the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy says quite what some folks are saying it says. I keep getting told that it allows for all this flexibility, but when I go back and read it, it doesn’t look that way to me. But that is a side issue for me. I find it odd that people who can recognize the changing meanings of words in a translation context fail so miserably in seeing the “street” meaning of a word in current usage. Apart from a few people who are trying to save the word “inerrancy” for their own use, almost nobody understands inerrancy to mean that a Bible book that claims to come from Paul might have been written by someone else after Paul was dead, or that a book can claim one author but have been written by quite a different author. Thus when someone claims to believe in inerrancy and then writes a commentary on Daniel, for example, it is not expected that the commentator in question will say that Daniel did not write the portions attributed to him in the text. Similarly, it will not be expected that a commentary on Ephesians written by someone who espouses inerrancy will suggest that it was not written by Paul. John Hobbins suggests a solution:
I would suggest that this is a fool’s errand. People who consider themselves intellectual leaders are constantly trying to save one or another term from the people who use it. It rarely works. If one salvaged inerrancy from those who use it, one would just have to invent another term to distinguish one from of belief in inspiration from another. I should note that I believe that the “rescuers” of the word inerrancy have another problem, which is that I don’t think it meant quite what they claim when it was first used. But that would take a different blog post and a number of additional references, so I’m going to leave it aside for now. For what it’s worth, my own view is that God always speaks his Word into a human matrix, to be understood by humans according to their knowledge and referents at the time. I believe that God’s Word in a situation is always true and that the Bible is precisely what God wanted it to be. But at the same time, that human matrix was not inerrant, and it impacts the message. I’m quite certain, for example, that early hearers of the story of Genesis heard it as a literal week, evidenced by references in Exodus 20, though not in the liturgy of Genesis 1. (Nonetheless, worshipers using that liturgy would not have distinguished the liturgical presentation from the historical events as I do.) That means that the message God sends to me is different in some way from the message that was first heard. Hearing God’s message requires prayerful care and interpretation. Once you have heard God speak, that is truth. In addition, I believe that if we knew all that God knew about those to whom he first spoke, we would understand why things were said as they were. It appears that some call that inerrancy. I think I would deceive most who heard me were I to do so. Peter Kirk linked to my post on “an eye for an eye” in responding to David Ker’s post What to do with the vengeance in the Old Testament? Skip it! As a result I’ve been able to follow a rather substantial number of posts discussing this issue. One of these comes from John Hobbins, who tells us that one can’t be a “New Testament only” Christian. I’m glad he used the word “only” because we all should be New Testament (or covenant) Christians. As it is I can agree with him completely. Dr. Platypus gets somewhat more helpful as he discusses the value of some of the difficult passages, especially in the Psalms. Bob MacDonald also provides some good thoughts and resources. I emphasized Old Testament rather strongly in my studies and would certainly not want to be without it as part of my spiritual life. I wanted to link in three more posts that provide videos of presentations made recently by one of my undergraduate professors, Dr. Alden Thompson. I also am the publisher of his book Who’s Afraid of the Old Testament God? You can regard this as a semi-commercial announcement. I have not yet watched this set of videos, but having both taken classes from Alden as an undergraduate, and must more recently hosted him as teacher of several seminars, I have no doubt that he will make a valuable contribution to this discussion. One of the things he says regularly is: “You may not like the Old Testament, but Jesus did!” Links to the videos: The presentations were at the Toledo First Seventh-day Adventist Church. If you’re harboring some denominational prejudices I’d urge you to lay them aside for the time it takes you to benefit from Alden’s teaching. I previously reviewed e-Sword and found it a pleasant surprise in the free Bible software category. Note that my review was written in 2006, within a few days of my starting this blog, and a great deal has happened since then. Hopefully I will manage to write an updated review soon. But there is more exciting news. I got an e-mail today from Thought-Sight Consulting regarding an REB module for e-Sword. You can go straight to the purchase page here, but the first page I linked has a great deal of valuable information. Many of us object to paying for modules to add to free software, but if you want the REB, you’re going to have to pay. It’s under copyright, and the publishers are not giving permission for free distribution.  An Eye for an Eye Church Sign At first glance, this is a good sign for a Christian. After all, Jesus replaces “an eye for an eye” with “Do not resist the one who is evil” (Matthew 5:38-39). But I think it illustrates the way we fail to understand certain phrases as they were intended. “An eye for an eye” or lex talionis was originally also a way to keep the whole world from going blind. It was intended not to mandate revenge, but to limit it. Modern Christians understand it as some sort of command to mass mayhem, and are thankful that Jesus overruled it. But in fact Jesus simply moved us further along the same path. Limiting revenge was good. Forgiveness was even better, though in justice we still find some value in the idea of proportional penalties. This sign demonstrates a quite frequent response to the Old Testament, and in many cases to other things that are old. In seeing the New Testament as good, these Christians have to see the Old Testament as bad. It is almost as though there was no grace for thousands of years and then suddenly at the appearance of Jesus God’s grace came into being. But in fact the grace that Jesus taught was also taught in the Old Tesament, with the teaching accommodated to time and place. So yes, I think Jesus improved on the attitude of “an eye for an eye.” But “an eye for an eye” was, in its time and place, also a forward looking measure of justice. As I’ve noted before, I’m now reading Calvin J. Roetzel, 2 Corinthians In arguing against the unity of the book, Roetzel says:
This seems to me to be an odd statement. Though it is not explicit, it appears to aim to place all views on a level playing field, from unity to the five letter hypothesis. But that doesn’t seem the correct approach. If I have a letter with an essentially unified textual history, in this case meaning that the partitioning of the letter is nowhere evident in the textual history as we have it, then we might give at least slight preference to the notion that it is, in fact a letter. When it fulfills all the forms, that suggestion is strengthened. I suppose that the idea that the letter is a unity is, indeed, an hypothesis, but it seems a rather obvious one. Suggestions of Paul’s changes of mood and/or rhetorical intention are based on observing the text based on this first and most obvious hypothesis. On the other hand multiple letter hypotheses are immediately much more complicated. First one has to assume that someone combined multiple letters into one, cutting out the salutation of at least one and the conclusion of another. If we assume five letters, then the situation becomes more complicated. There are clearly shifts or seams in 2 Corinthians. The question is why? The problem for multiple letter hypotheses, I think, is to answer the question not just of why such seams are there (which they answer by proposing multiple letters), but also just why someone should put the document together in this way. I don’t see this addressed anywhere. What is the purpose of the redactor? If he wishes to preserve all the letters why not just copy them in succession? If he has some theological purpose, then the question goes right back to the start–what is the meaning of the text as it stands? (I would welcome comment from someone who has spent more time studying New Testament than I have.) I’m suggesting two things. First, that the hypothesis that the letter as we have it is a unity should be privileged in discussion to some extent, because it is supported by the best possible evidence–that’s what the letter looks like now. Second, that a theory that involves redaction must also explain the actions of the redactor. Simply producing plausible pieces and providing a chronology for them does little without some reason why they would have been combined as they were. Let me illustrate from some texts where I feel I’m on more solid ground. Many people try to solve the chronological differences between Genesis 1 and 2 by attributing them to two sources. Now I believe they are from two sources. I think the evidence is fairly solid for that. But having said that, I have solved nothing regarding the difference in chronology between the two chapters, because I still must think about a redactor who somehow thought that putting them together made sense. So now I must ask about his motivations and what message he intended to convey bringing them together. In the case of Isaiah, we again have a composite book, but here were have a hypothesis for why redactors would want to add to the book. Very likely there was a school of prophets or scribes who preserved Isaiah’s work and added to it from time to time. Their motivation is to preserve the prophet’s (or prophets’) words. They are not cutting pieces out and combining them, but rather putting the pieces together, generally as they were. I don’t see any similarly plausible hypothesis for 2 Corinthians, which makes me find the arguments for unity much more plausible in view of the lack of solid reasons for someone to sew the book together from two to five pieces as various theories suggest. |
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, in the Abingdon New Testament Commantaries series. I want to emphasize here that I accept the use of historical-critical methodology in Bible study. That does not, however, force me to find all critical theories plausible. I’m arguing against this specific set of theories, not against historical-critical methodologies generally.
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Book Notes: Roetzel on 2 Corinthians
I’ve given up the enterprise of reading this book through from cover to cover, so these notes are based on using it as reference while I’m reading 2 Corinthians itself.
The fact is that I found the book impossible to read straight through. As I mentioned previously in using it as a comparison to Matera’s commentary
, Roetzel divides the book into five letters:
I find this reconstruction unconvincing not because it isn’t well thought out. In fact, it proposes a rather interesting set of correspondence. What I find unconvincing is any theory of why it would have been combined in the way it was by any redactor. I simply see no logic, and Roetzel doesn’t seem to provide any, for why anyone should join the various letters together in this particular fashion. In my view, that is a fatal flaw. What does the letter mean as constructed? Why would one construct it in that particular way.
Since Roetzel then writes the commentary according to his reconstruction, one almost is required to accept the reconstruction in order to read it comfortably. Now that isn’t necessarily a criticism. I suspect Roetzel would say that a person who follows the canonical form is requiring people to accept that (re)construction. (See his comments on hypotheses on pages 24-25.)
Using the index, one can still find the commentary useful in studying particular passages, and the introduction to the whole book as well as the introductions to the various sections are still quite useful.
Due to space constraints, the commentary covers many of the major theological issues in the book very briefly. That will actually be a feature to many readers, especially to pastors who are trying to prepare a sermon. On the other hand, the pastor doing sermon preparation will have to work through the table of contents to find where his or her particular passage is covered.
The language of the commentary is commendably clear, easy to read, and the referencing is light, and does not use footnotes. That makes individual sections easy to read and to follow, again an advantage to the pastor of Sunday School teacher wishing to find the answer to some issue of interpretation. Omissions in the discussion are entirely due to the size of the commentary. You’ll find a great deal of information for the size of book involved.
In the final analysis, I would have to say that I cannot overcome the negative factor of the book’s arrangement, and that goes back to my personal evaluation of the author’s hypothetical reconstruction of the book. Were one to accept his reconstruction, the same things that I find annoying might be seen as helpful.
As it stands, I must say that I prefer Matera’s commentary
in all ways, and give this one three stars out of five.