Ancient Hebrew Poetry

Beware of Apologists for God

Eastern Orthodox theologian David B. Hart blasts away at all the latter-day comforters of Job, who, in the wake of the disasters that have hit China and Myanmar, speak glibly of God’s providence according to which punishments and rewards are distributed according to our just deserts. He nails it with this affirmation:

[T]here is no more liberating knowledge given us by the gospel — and none in which we should find more comfort — than the knowledge that suffering and death, considered in themselves, have no ultimate meaning at all.

The same truth is jealously guarded by Judaism. Which is why Judaism, no less than Christianity, would be without meaning without the hope of resurrection. Suffering and death have no meaning whatsoever except insofar as they will be vanquished forever. Think about it until the point sticks. Otherwise, I dare say, the one who would be God’s defender becomes God’s enemy.

Wake up, you drunkards, and weep! Joel 1:2-12

Joel 1:2-12 is a 22-line composition, the opening salvo of a larger unit in which the prophet calls the inhabitants of Zion to repentance in the wake of a locust plague and drought. “Wake up, you drunkards, and weep!” (1:5) tars the people as a whole, not just a component of the whole (cf. Isaiah 28:1).

Disaster Response in the Bible: Joel 1-2

Events in Myanmar and China have captured the world’s attention. Accidents and disasters are part of life at various levels; the questions which arise: why was so-and-so taken away, and why am I still here, are unavoidably searing. Pragmatic questions are no less compelling. We measure ourselves against the response we make to the disasters life throws in our path. For theists, it is not “life” so much as God who “giveth and taketh away.” The challenge disasters pose is all the more acute for theists, insofar as fatalistic resignation is hardly an option. This is one of the irreplaceable teachings of the book of Job. If Job was patient, then patience must be redefined to mean the ability to endure and crack and endure again, coram Deo, in the presence of God, until God responds to an indictment of his ways.

All Roads Lead to Rome

Michael Bird describes his faith journey with charming candor in this must-read post. I laughed my way through reading of the twists and turns.

My own journey has been full of even more twists and turns. By some inscrutable plan, I was raised as a doctrinally flunky United Methodist surrounded by saints rich in spiritual gifts, including the Pentecostal ones, only to discover Reformation theology through reading and Calvinist friends once at the university, the only ones among my friends who knew how to carry on a theological conversation.

The verb ברא in Genesis 1

Chris Heard has an excellent analysis in this post. Enjoy. It looks like he is just getting started, so stay tuned.

Introducing a new site: Biblioblogs: An Aggregate of Sites geared to Biblical Studies

Here’s the link. Okay, I admit, it’s not new at all. The only thing new about it is that I was asked by Jim West and Brandon Wason to join them as editors of the blog. That was fine with me. The site is most famous for its fascinating interview series with biblical bloggers, and it appears I’m next in line to be interviewed.

Biblioblogs also keeps a list of – biblioblogs. A blog to get on the list must meet the following conditions and jump through the following hoops:

A pre-Christian prediction of a Messiah who will die and be raised again on the third day: is it authentic?

For a description of the significance of the find, go here. Israel Knohl wrote me in response and was kind enough to summarize the evaluation by experts so far:

The stone and the text were checked by three great experts: The archaeologist Prof. Y. Goren of Tel Aviv University who checked the stone itself; the best epigrapher of this period, Dr. Ada Yardeni, who checked the script; and the president of the Israel Academy of Hebrew Language, Prof. M. Bar Asher, who checked the language. All three agreed that there is no sign of forgery. Yardeni and Bar Asher agreed that the script, the grammar and the style of the document are authentic and that the text is to be dated around the turn of the Common Era.

A pre-Christian prediction of a Messiah who will die and be raised again on the third day

A new inscription has come to light which appears to support the view that the suffering son of God figure who atones for Israel attested in Jewish eschatology of later centuries was part and parcel of Jewish eschatology before Jesus was born. Not only that; it would now appear plausible that pre-Christian Jewish eschatology predicted that this messianic figure, after being killed, would be raised from the dead after three days.

In light of this, it is impossible to disagree with this statement by Israel Knohl:

The publication of this text is extraordinarily important. It is a discovery that calls for a complete reassessment of all previous scholarship on the subject of messianism, Jewish and Christian alike.

Simon Holloway on Yom HaShoah and Zionism

I meant to link to this post earlier. It is a biting cri du coeur which hits me hard, and in the right place. The part about Zionism is in the comments.

Presidential campaign ad: “That day Obama felt a beckoning of the spirit and accepted Jesus Christ into his life”

It’s a beauty of a campaign ad, actually two, with a mighty fine cross in the background in one of them. Not a wimpish subliminal one like the one the media took Mike Huckabee to task for.

This is a fun campaign. I love to be pandered to. Only one criticism of the campaign ad: it would have been better to word it: “a beckoning of the Holy Spirit.” We evangelicals are easily conned, but nonetheless sensitive to details like these.

For Mark Twain’s response, go here. For a Jewish response go here.

Debunking Christianity: Bible Blogging by anti-Christians

It’s Christianity, and indeed all religion, that this blog seeks to debunk, but it’s the Fundamentalist Religious Right that scares the bejesus out of the blog’s team. You know, the people who support the greatest threat to humankind the world has ever seen: the Republican party. At least these guys are honest about it.

Introducing the Bible to a Hindu Audience

That’s what Ravi Vyas does in a review for a famous Indian English-language daily. It makes a fascinating read. He calls the Bible “the climate of thought” of Western civilization. True enough. Some key graphs:

Genesis 1 is also about making things: John Walton’s thesis revisited

Chris Heard beat me to the punch in coming back to John Walton’s thesis that Gen 1 recounts the dedication of the universe and the assignment of functions to its components over a seven day period, whereas the coming-into-being of the universe and its components is not recounted. Chris does a fine job of pointing out why the thesis is improbable. I look forward to his promised post on ברא, in which he will almost certainly improve on my cursory treatment of that verb in a previous post. For John Walton’s detailed rejoinder to that post, go here.

Like Chris, I also want to emphasize that Walton makes a number of excellent points.

A Smackdown of Postmodernism

Doug Chaplin does the honors. His characterization of Tards in the comments will not easily be forgotten. Kurk Gayle, in a comment, is right about humility. But what I’m looking for is humility on the part of pre-moderns and post-moderns such that they are able to recognize the truths inherent in modernism. Once upon a time, someone had choice words about drawing from treasures old and new. If only.

On the need to disestablish the Jewish religion in Israel

Gershom Gorenberg makes the case. Here is the key graph:

The end of atheism as we know it

David Brooks has a thoughtful piece on breakthroughs in neuroscience that is must reading. Brooks might be summed up this way: the idea, no matter how much it continues to be trumpeted by a few atheist apologists, that we are just material boys and girls, does not stand up to critical scrutiny. The material girl herself knows better, even if Hitchens and Dawkins do not (I leave Harris out, because friends who have heard him speak recently say he could well be in the midst of changing his mind). Here is the key graph:

The Vatican: It’s fine if you believe in God and extraterrestials

That’s not quite what a spokesperson for the Vatican said, but that is what the headlines say: “Vaticano: possible credere in Dio e negli extraterrestri.” The headlines remind me of a widespread modern phenomenon which no doubt is not without analogies in cultures of most times and places: it’s easy to find people who are unsure about whether God exists, but firmly believe in the devil, the Bermuda Triangle, and UFOs.

Responding to natural disaster in Zion of yore and Myanmar and China today

The book of Joel repeatedly calls the inhabitants of Zion to lamentation and repentance in the wake of a locust plague (1:2-12; 1:13-20; 2:1-11; 2:15-17). A divine oracle reinforces the call, without, however, making a firm promise of a reversal (2:12-14). The “who knows?” of 2:14 is my favorite part of the book of Joel. I could preach on that for an hour straight.

A call to repentance in the wake of an “act of God” is not at all surprising. It is a universal of human culture to respond to “acts of God” such as hurricanes, drought, earthquakes, and plagues by soul-searching and re-examination of one’s ways, not to mention weeping and lamentation. Chapters 1 and 2 of Joel contain powerful poetry. 1:2-20 is a magnificent 40 line composition (22 + 18 lines); 2:1-17, a 36 line composition. More on that in future posts.

News reports coming out of Myanmar and China demonstrate that many people in those countries frame the natural disasters they experience in terms of a judgment on the powers that be, whose claim to have a “mandate from heaven” is thrown into question, first of all, by the cyclone or earthquake itself, and then, by the powers’ clumsy or even sinister response to it.

A New Directory of Bible Bloggers

Here is the link. The directory includes a number of blogs I’m familiar with, and many more I want to check out.

The directory is an initiative of Logos Bible software, whose selection of products of interest to Bible scholars continues to grow by leaps and bounds every year.

Logos, like anyone else, is entitled to include and exclude whomsoever they wish from a directory of their making. The flavor of the directory is interesting, with an emphasis on home-grown blogs both in English and Spanish.

It would be helpful if the directory included a link to the email address of the list’s keeper. Of course that will create a lot of work for the keeper as soon as that is done.

1 Samuel 13:1 in the hands of angry inerrantists

Art Aboulet is looking for a doctrine of Scripture which stands up to critical scrutiny. “The reason I am bringing this up,” he says, “is because many Christians are taught that Scripture has been kept completely pure in all ages. And then they go to college or watch a special on the History Channel only to find out that what they have been taught does not hold up to what the Bible actually is. Then they have a crisis of faith and usually the only people that they will now listen to are critical scholars (most times they are unbelievers) because these critical scholars, from this person’s point of view, are the ones who are dealing honestly with the texts. This person feels lied to by their faith community, or at least that they have had the wool pulled over their eyes.”

The example Art chooses to look at, 1 Samuel 13:1, is a helpful one. But it’s foolish to suggest, as Art seems to do, that Jews or Christians with a high view of Scripture should stop saying things like “Scripture has been kept pure for all ages” because the texts in our possession contain errors of the kind we find in 1 Samuel 13:1.

Who officiated at Jenna Bush’s wedding?

Most people, I realize, are clueless when it comes to the ins and outs of American Christianity. Below the fold, some little-known facts related to names in the news.

A Mother’s Day Story

Jordana’s story is heart-rending and heart-mending at the same time. Here’s the link. Enjoy.  

Thoughts on “An Evangelical Manifesto”

It’s about time: a clear description of what evangelicals believe and where they stand on issues which roil the public square. Unveiled at the National Press Club four days ago, on May 7th, “An Evangelical Manifesto” defines evangelicalism over against its demons within, and stakes out a middle ground between liberal revisionism and conservative fundamentalism. There are some excellent passages in “An Evangelical Manifesto,” but it falls short of being a document worthy of a movement that counts John Woolman, Catherine Booth, and William Wilberforce among its forebears. It has also failed to attract the support - at least so far - of many both right and left of center within the evangelical movement.

Speaking in Tongues

Pentecost, according to the calendar of Latin Christianity, is upon us. According to Acts 2, the gift of speaking in tongues was conferred on the followers of the Galilean on that day some 2000 years ago, and Jews and proselytes in Jerusalem for the festival from every nation heard their own tongue in the mouth of Peter and his companions. This event recapitulates another we know of, not from the Bible, but from extra-biblical tradition: a linguistic miracle associated with the gift of the Torah on Mount Sinai. More below the fold.   

Nightfall: Ugo Foscolo’s Alla Sera between 1 Kings 19:4-5 and Psalm 4:9

This post presents a sonnet by Ugo Foscolo (1778-1827), perhaps his greatest. He assigned it the role of proem in the canonical collection of his sonnets. Romanticism’s love-affair with sorrow and death stands in the background of this poem. Still, it is not death but evening prefiguring death that holds Foscolo in her embrace.

The death-wish found in Job 3, by contrast, contains no soft edges whatsoever.

Two passages from the Hebrew Bible which know whereof Foscolo speaks as it were are 1 Kings 19:4-5 and Psalm 4:9. More below the fold.