Ancient Hebrew Poetry

Malachi 1:11-12

On his excellent blog, Brandon Wason takes a look at a slice of the history of interpretation of Malachi 1:10-12a, 14b. He asks for feedback, which I’m happy to supply. In conjunction with an as yet unfinished review of electronic dictionaries of ancient Hebrew, I recently reviewed the Malachi passage. The relevant discussion is excerpted here and serves as the point of departure for more far-ranging reflections. 

 

Academic Study of the Bible Today

Charles Halton jump-started an interesting discussion by daring to list The Top Ten Old Testament Scholars since 1800. Halton, Jim Getz and Michael Westmoreland White, all of whom are fine bloggers, added observations of their own here, here, and here.

I agree with Michael and Charles that Norman Gottwald has been very influential. Perhaps more to the point, sociological approaches and the use of social-scientific criticism have enriched the study of the Bible immensely.

I also wish to emphasize that archaeology no less than history and literary theory belong among the disciplines through which to approach the world of the Bible. The debates of “biblical archaeology” interest me little, but I do not regret for a minute having learned to look at material culture, society, and ethnohistory through the lens of archeology and the theory it has engendered. My teachers Albert Glock and J. S. Holladay, Jr. set me on a path that led to Lewis Binford, S. N. Eisenstadt, and Bruce Trigger; closer to home, Robert McCormick Adams, William G. Dever, Israel Finkelstein, Thomas Levy, and Lawrence Stager. The more or less revisionist approaches of Finkelstein and Dever to the study of the history of Israel/Palestine are less important than their common commitment to understanding, for example, the transition from “the regulated anarchy” of the period of the Judges to the dynastic monarchies and city-states of Jerusalem and Samaria. The archeology of society is a particularly fruitful discipline.

Lists of influential scholars are fun, but what we really need is a comprehensive dictionary of biblical studies capable of contextualizing them. To be any good the dictionary would have to run to several thousand pages and contain five components. The hot links I provide will take you to very helpful tables of contents and indices.

(1) History, trends, and prospects of the disciplines and approaches to the biblical texts would be surveyed. Two volumes that do this better than many are The Cambridge Companion to Biblical Interpretation (ed. John Barton; Cambridge Companions to Religion; Cambridge: CUP, 1998) and Oxford Handbook of Biblical Studies (ed. John W. Rogerson and Judith M. Lieu; Oxford Handbooks in Religion and Theology; New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). The interpretation of the Bible from the Renaissance through the end of the nineteenth century is often given short shrift. What Have They Done to the Bible: A History of Modern Biblical Interpretation (John Sandys-Wunsch; Collegeville: Glazier, 2005) provides a helpful introduction.

(2) Discipline-specific and approach-specific surveys need to be understood against the background of language-specific and confessional-specific surveys of the history of the study of the Bible. Essays of this kind are found here and there in the literature. So far as I know, a comprehensive overview is not available.

(3) Seminal contributions need to be properly highlighted, especially if they are “one-shot deals” by outsiders to the field (e.g., Erich Auerbach’s “Odysseus’ Scar.”). I have yet to see a reference tool do this, but it is a desideratum.

(4) Concise biographies, with an emphasis on confessional and intellectual commitments, and brief descriptions of the chief contributions of authors whose impact has been particularly significant are helpful to beginners and old-timers alike. Social and confessional location are not pudenda to be covered up and left to the imagination. Along with other factors, they codetermine what scholars say and how they say it. Four volumes that are helpful are Historical Handbook of Major Biblical Interpreters (ed. Donald McKim; Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1998); The SCM Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation (2d ed.; ed. Ronald J. Coggins and James Leslie Houlden, London: SCP Press, 2003 [1990]); Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation (ed. John Haralson Hayes; Nashville: Abingdon, 1999); Dictionary of Biblical Criticism and Interpretation (ed. Stanley Porter; London: Routledge, 2007). A fifth volume is forthcoming: Dictionary of Major Biblical Interpreters (ed. Donald McKim; Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2007).

(5) A guide to the thousand-and-one technical terms and abbreviations used in the discipline. Helpful volumes include Handbook of Biblical Criticism (3d ed.; ed. Richard N. Soulen and R. Kendall Soulen; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001; The SBL Handbook of Style for Ancient Near Eastern, Biblical, and Early Christian Studies (ed. Patrick H. Alexander et al.; Peabody: Hendrickson, 1999).

In a previous post, I responded to a list dominated by WASPMs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant males) with an alternative list that included no WASPMs. In my view, WASPM parochialism, especially evangelical WASPM parochialism, is a self-defeating and self-afflicted malady. Counter trends are visible, but the same old same old is also evident.

An illustration may prove helpful. The scholars discussed in McKim’s Historical Handbook of Major Biblical Interpreters for the 18^th, 19^th, and 20^th centuries are an interesting mix but the coverage also leaves the impression, by its sins of omission, that biblical studies was and is the almost exclusive domain of a WASP fraternity. It will be interesting to see if McKim’s forthcoming volume is less parochial. Let me put it this way: if it does not include (e.g.!) Shemuel David Luzzatto, Luis Alonso Schökel, and Gianfranco Ravasi in its 1000 pages, it might as well be retitled (as far as the 18^th-21^st centuries are concerned): Dictionary of Major White Protestant English and German Language Biblical Interpreters (with a few Catholics and Jews thrown in for good measure).

Reflections of a Biblical Literalist on Unfulfilled Prophecy (Round Two)

Avery Archer has responded to my response to his piece entitled The Philosopher vs. the Biblical Fundamentalist. The conversation is worth continuing because it illuminates issues of interpretation which come up again and again.

For example, it is typical in Judaism and in Christianity for a first text to be appropriated in a second text. The first text may be embedded in the Tanakh/Old Testament; the second, in a layer of rabbinic or Christian tradition. Later texts abstract elements of earlier ones and utilize them in the construction of a synthesis. Overall content and emphasis change, sometimes radically. Whoever supposes that the content and emphases of the later text are, by definition, implicit in the earlier, misunderstands the process. Whoever points out that content and emphases are dissimilar, and opines that said fact proves the inauthentic nature of the appropriation, also misunderstands the process. Later texts express a metanarrative whose fixed points lie outside of the earlier texts they appropriate. Later texts attempt to show that these fixed points are capable of coordination with fixed points in earlier texts. Discerned one-to-one correspondence (“this is that”) is not the same thing as identity.

To be sure, it requires a historical frame of mind to make the distinction between correspondence and identity. Interpreters ancient and modern make the distinction when it serves their purposes, which is not often, and otherwise elide it. But the interpreter interested in the sense a text had once upon a time, in its original or in a subsequent historical context, must protect the otherness of the text from premature conflation with an extraneous metanarrative. The philosopher, I assume, is bound by an identical hermeneutical deontology.

12 Outsiders to the Field of Hebrew Bible/OT in Need of (Re-)Discovery

Robert Alter (Literature)

Ferdinand Braudel (History)

Mary Douglas (Anthropology)

Benjamin Harshav (Literature)

Jacques Ellul (Theology)

Emmanuel Levinas (Philosophy)

Arnaldo Momigliano (History)

Jacob Neusner (Judaism)

Martha Nussbaum (Philosophy)

Rudolf Otto (History of Religions)

Paul Ricoeur (Hermeneutics, Philosophy)

Max Weber (Sociology)

22 Top (Non-WASPM) Scholars of the Hebrew Bible/OT

Luis Alonso Schökel

Adele Berlin

Joseph Blenkinsopp

John J. Collins

Cheryl Exum

Michael Fishbane

Michael V. Fox

Moshe Greenberg

Menahem Haran

Bernd Janowski

Jon D. Levenson

Bernard Levinson

Oded Lipschitz

Norbert Lohfink

Roland Meynet

Jacob Milgrom

Shemaryahu Talmon

Jeffrey Tigay

Emanuel Tov

Phyllis Trible

Moshe Weinfeld

Erich Zenger

The impact of each of these scholars on the field surpasses or will surpass, when the day is done, no disrespect intended, that of Norman Gottwald, John Van Seters, Thomas L. Thompson, and William Dever (all four show up on Halton’s Top Ten list).

20 Top DDD’s (Dead Deutschsprächige Dudes) in Old Testament/Hebrew Bible

For biobibibliographies of asterisked scholars, go here

*Albrecht Alt (1883-1956)

*Friedrich Baethgen (1849-1905)

*Joachim Begrich (1900-1945)

Ludwig / Lajos Blau (1861-1936)

Zur Einleitung in die Heilige Schrift (Budapest: [s.n.]. 1894); Studien zum althebraïschen Buchwesen und zur biblischen Litteraturgeschichte (Strassburg: Trübner, 1902)

*Karl Budde (1850-1935)

*August Dillmann (1823-1894)

*Bernhard Duhm (1847-1928)

*Heinrich Ewald (1803-1875)

Abraham Geiger (1810-1874)

Urschrift und uebersetzungen der Bibel in ihrer abhängigkeit von der innern entwickelung des Judenthums (Breslau: J. Hainauer, 1857)

*Hermann Gunkel (1862-1932)

Benno Jacob (1862-1945)

The First Book of the Bible: Genesis (New York: Ktav Pub. House, 1974); The Second Book of the Bible: Exodus (Hoboken: Ktav, 1992)

*Eduard Meyer (1855-1930)

*Martin Noth (1902-1968)

*Sigmund Mowinckel (1884-1965)

*Gerhard von Rad (1901-1971)

*Carl Steuernagel (1869-1958)

*Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918)

*Claus Westermann (1909-2000) [introduction in English]

*Walther Zimmerli (1907-1983)

*Leopold Zunz (1794-1886)

Is The Guild of Biblical Scholars a WASP Fraternity?

Charles Halton has an excellent blog. He got my goat, however, with his “Top Ten Old Testament Scholars since 1800” list.

 For starters, it is an all-WASPM all-the-time list. The only exception is Thomas L. Thompson (Catholic by background, I-don’t-know-what-anymore by choice).

 Is the field of OT Studies really a WASP fraternity? I can’t imagine that it was Halton’s intention to give that impression.

 Secondly, his top ten scholars, except for Wellhausen, belong to the twentieth and twenty first centuries, not to the nineteenth. This is skewed.

 Thirdly, with the exception of John Van Seters (a Canadian), everyone is either a German or an American. That’s pretty odd, too.

 Fourthly, since biblical studies makes progress in direct proportion to its ability to assimilate stimuli from adjacent fields of study, a list of all-Fachleute (guild members) all-the-time needs, at the least, supplementation. (Truth be told, Gunkel was a bit of an outsider, but that’s another story.) I like Halton’s idea of a “Top Ten Near Eastern Scholars Since 1800,” though it would be more helpful to have a list of Near Eastern Studies specialists whose work deserves to be better known by scholars of Hebrew Bible/OT. Charles might do that better than I.

 I am looking forward to Halton’s series on Stephen Kaufman. I never regret reading something Kaufman has written. It is always interesting.

 It’s not fair to leave it at that. See the next posts for alternative lists.

Dame Mary Douglas (1921-2007): The Truth She Told

 

I don’t think I understood the first thing about Leviticus until I read Purity and Danger by Mary Douglas. She emphasizes that food is a system of communication. She knew that rules, you know, the arbitrary kind that religion traffics in, like: don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t dance, and don’t play cards, are arbitrary on one level but symbolically important on another. She knew that her church, the Catholic Church, made a big mistake after Vatican II when it no longer pushed the “stupid” rules, like not eating meat on Fridays. Rules like that give structure and rhythm to life. Take them away, and you de-structure people’s lives. They end up looking for structure elsewhere. The secret of groups like the Jehovah’s Witnesses lies therein.

Keil and Delitzsch Online

For a downloadable version of this post, go here.

I can picture it in my mind’s eye. The marbled hall is overflowing with students intent on hearing a master expound scripture. In the mingling of young men from a hundred lands, the murmur of a Pentecost of languages fills the air. In full view a full-bearded rabbi-like figure is seated, and begins to give pointers to those gathered at his feet. “For the Old Testament,” he says, “you can do no better than purchase a copy of Keil and Delitzsch. I recommend it highly.”

 The “rabbi” who so spake was Luis Alonso Schökel, Society of Jesus, one of the great scripture scholars of the last century. The location: the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome; the year, 1982. At the time, I was the only non-Roman Catholic studying at the PIB.

 It was striking to hear Alonso invite his students to purchase the classic conservative Protestant commentary on the Old Testament, Keil and Delitzsch. The 10 volume Eerdmans 1980 English edition had just become available. For a bibliography of Alonso’s own voluminous output, much of which is available only in Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, go here.

 Keil and Delitzsch can be purchased in hard copy at a reasonable price through CBD. Together with a larger suite of resources, it is searchable, and hence more valuable, in the electronic edition of the Scholar’s Library of Logos Bible software.

 The German original is also available online, a huge plus for the serious student (Hat tip: Beat Weber). The pdfs alone are usable.The fourth edition is reproduced. This means that the fifth edition of the commentary on the Psalms, unfortunately, is not reproduced. It is always wise to read an author in the language she or he wrote in (except for Kant, as philosophers know). Nuances of various kinds carry over poorly from one language to another.

 The canonical version of Keil and Delitzsch on Isaiah in English is a translation of the third German edition, not the fourth. The reason why the fourth German edition does not form the base text of the English is that Franz Delitzsch crossed a red line of many admirers when he embraced the possibility of multiple authorship of the book of Isaiah in the last edition of his commentary thereto.

 Times have changed a little since. Nowadays most everyone wants to read fine scholarship, whether or not it contains unacceptable views. It is still possible, of course, for someone to lose their job or never be hired for espousing the position Delitzsch took in the 1889 edition of his Isaiah commentary.

Reflections of a Biblical Literalist on Unfulfilled Prophecy

I came upon a very well-written post via fides quarens intelllectum. Avery Archer is a fine thinker. He takes aim at those he qualifies as "biblical literalists" and "biblical fundamentalists." 

On the basis of Deut 18:22 and Jer 28:9, the gist of which is “If a prophet makes a prediction that does not come true, then that prophet is not sent by God,” Avery concludes that Jesus was not sent by God, because Jesus predicted that “the Son of Man is going to come in his Father's glory with his angels, and reward each person according to what he has done. Amen I tell you, there are those standing here who will not taste death until they have seen the coming of the Son of Man in his kingdom” (Matt 16:27- 28), but that isn't what happened. I concur: the prediction went unfulfilled.

A couple of comments.