Ancient Hebrew Poetry

Reading the Bible with Hans Georg Gadamer

    Biblical scholars inscribe their interpretation of texts within a cultural project of large or small dimensions. Some read the Bible from a feminist point of view and/or from a post-colonial perspective. Others depend on a particular style of literary criticism, such as that attributed to Mikhail Bakhtin. Others come to the text armed with a methodology drawn from a discipline of wide application, for example, a linguistic theory of information structure at the clause, sentence, and paragraph levels. Many inscribe their reading of the Bible within a religious (or anti-religious) metanarrative. Readings of the latter type are especially appropriate. The Bible after all has generated and continues to generate vast communities of dedicated readers across barriers of language and culture. Most of these communities have a clear-cut religious and theological identity. Is there a method of reading the Bible that everyone should practice? I think there is. It is the method of reading proposed by Hans-Georg Gadamer.¹

Bible Translations and Christian Unity

    The Calvin Institute of Christian Worship puts together an excellent resource library on worship-related topics. A focal point of worship in most Christian traditions is the reading of Scripture. In an interview for the Institute, I argue that a translation that errs on the side of formal equivalence, for example the old RSV, the recent ESV, and the new NABRE, is the most appropriate for worship in a context that thinks of worship as a moment in which "the communion of saints" is realized.

Stanley Fish takes aim at Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker

    Why do scholars in the humanities take pleasure in deflating the pretensions of their colleagues in the hard sciences? Why does someone like Fish enjoy landing a few punches on the noses of the likes of Dawkins and Pinker? I have a theory; it goes like this: hard scientists are sometimes clueless when it comes to epistemology, that is, the study of justified belief.

America’s Theologian-in-Chief: Obama’s Passover/Easter Message

    So long as Barack Obama is president, the United States will have a theologian-in-chief. At Oslo, Notre Dame, and Tuscon; at the national prayer breakfast in Washington, the president has shown that not only faith (fides quae, a relationship) but theology (fides qua, specific content) matters to him and informs his politics. Obama’s recent Passover/Easter message is in keeping with his choice to make the interrelationship of his faith and politics explicit.

Reimagining the Historicity of the Bible

    If it is fair to say, with Robert Kawashima¹ and Arnaldo Momigliano,² that the very notions of history and universal history have their origins in biblical literature, it might be wise to insist on exploring the ways in which biblical narrative emplots and historicizes cultural memories, sources on hand, living traditions, personal and collective experiences, and future hopes.

    It might also be important to try again to conceive of a history of the religion of Israel, a history of emergent Christianity and normative Judaism, insofar as they can be constructed from biblical, post-biblical, and non-biblical sources. Now is an inopportune time to walk away from the questions which have animated modern biblical studies from the beginning.

    Passover and Easter allow further formulations. Beyond Hegel, beyond the Shoah, in light of the “unbearable lightness of being” (Milan Kundera), it is still possible to pose the question, with Emil Fackenheim, of “God’s presence in history.”³ The sense in which the following statement was meant to be true also remains of interest: “what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have observed and handled with our hands … we declare to you” (1 John 1:1-3).

    A sense of history and historicity is as important today as it has ever been. A historical approach to the Bible adequate to its object might provide insight into the shape of life not only then and there, but here and now.

The Bible is an anti-libertarian document

    Not to coin a phrase, but we are all libertarians now. It is important to people – everyone - that they be allowed to do whatever they want and think whatever thoughts they want. At the same time, people like the idea of belonging to something larger than themselves. Among those larger things are polities, institutions, movements, and traditions. Polities, movements, institutions, and traditions, it should not need to be pointed out, traffic in things like the rule of law, order, and rules of purity. All of the above class some things as wrong, other things as right, and define membership in those terms. Crimes of omission, commission, and opinion all come into play.

    People long to do whatever they want. They don’t want anyone to tell them what to do or what to say. But they also long to order their lives in accordance with a concept of right and wrong, and join forces with others who have a same or similar concept of right and wrong. People are in search of a constitution, a commonwealth, that suits them. The contradiction is blatant.

Standing up to Bloom and Bakhtin: The Virtues and Vices of Strong Readings

    Joseph Kelly is exploring the task of writing biblical theology. John Anderson, James Spinti, and I have joined the conversation. I agree with Kelly and Anderson that the discipline of biblical theology, variously construed, is livelier and more interesting than ever before. Like other subdisciplines of biblical studies (biblical archaeology; the history of the religion of Israel; source criticism), the discipline of biblical theology is no longer dominated by European and North American Protestants. It now benefits greatly from the contribution of scholars who inscribe their work in overlapping and sometimes opposing “projects of salvation.” To be sure, it is sometimes clear that a scholar’s opus is first and foremost an act of self-medication rather than the expression of a commitment to tikkun_olam.

Rowan Williams and the virtue of patience

    Rowan Williams, as everyone knows, is stepping down from the office of Archbishop of Canterbury and returning to academic life as master of Magdalene College at Cambridge University. Ben Myers of Faith & Theology links to an op-ed in which he discusses the transition. The op-ed is full of insight, as we have come to expect from Ben, but he does not overtly address the question on everyone’s mind.

Anti-Jewish Bias in Today’s University

    Two facets only of Jewish experience command the attention of the generality of media-literate individuals in the West: the Holocaust and the state of Israel. In the minds of a large number of people, a perverse equation is the end-result. Without remainder the identity of the Jewish people is associated with death and torture by the Nazis, and death and torture of the Palestinians by the state of Israel. Add to that a third facet, the wondering that dwells in the heart of many Christians and non-Christians, why did they crucify Jesus, what did he do to deserve that, and a situation is created in which a little knowledge is truly a dangerous thing.

What register is the Bible written in?

    When I asked my 8 year old daughter Anna what “register” means, she peevishly replied, “I don’t know; cash register?” But she does know what register is, because she asks for advice about register in her adventures as a budding writer. She knows how important register is. What would happen if Bible translators paid attention to the registers in which the Bible is written, and sought to be faithful to them in the task of translation?