Ancient Hebrew Poetry

Stanley Fish Takes Three Atheists to the Cleaners (Part Two)

In his latest (June 17, 2007), Fish once again punches holes in the reasoning of Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens. The three turn out to be believers, caught in a web of belief, argument, and working hypotheses, as we all are. Dawkins and Harris believe in such things as the ability of natural selection to produce altruism, including, one assumes, the capacity of one person to lay down her life for another. I have no brief against the natural selection hypothesis. It is nevertheless counter-intuitive in relation to certain sets of data. Which reminds me of the God-hypothesis.

The three claim to reason not at all like the believers they choose to skewer. How wrong they are.

The piece includes a quote from and link to Francis Collins, a scientist of the same caliber as Dawkins. Collins, however, happens to be a Christian. He’s not afraid to talk about it in the public square. I am thankful for him.

If you want to read Fish and do not have a subscription to the New York Times, a free trial subscription will get you in.

For my review of Fish’s initial critique of the three, go here.

 

Thinking About Canon (Seventh Update)

Thinking about Canon continues to receive the incisive attention of other bloggers.

Peter Kirk, Doug Chaplin, and I have been going at it on Peter’s blog, Doug’s blog, and mine. It seems I attacked Peter’s positions with exaggerated vigor. For a calmer presentation of the viewpoint I express, see the fine post by Kevin Edgecomb. Doug Chaplin, Chris Heard, Kevin Edgecomb, and Bob MacDonald continue their series of insightful posts in response to mine. Iyov makes a number of interesting points in the comment sections of the Thinking about Canon posts. Enjoy.

For the Thinking about Canon essay in its entirety, now slightly revised, go here. I have also updated my blogroll to reflect my reading habits more accurately.

I’m on my way to Italy where I will be vacationing with family and friends. It remains to be seen how often I will be able to go online in the next couple of weeks. I will do my best to check in now and then.

Ancient Manuscripts of Books with a Claim to Canonicity in One or More Traditions

Counts of copies of ancient manuscripts of books with a claim to canonicity in one or more traditions, taken together with other lines of evidence, are an index of the relative importance attached to said books.

Counts of copies of books discussed in Thinking about Canon in the caves of Qumran are as follows: Gen (15); Exod (17); Lev (13); Num (8); Deut (29); Josh (2); Judg (3); 1-2 Sam (4); 1-2 Kgs (3); Isa (21); Ezek (6); the Twelve (8); Ps (36); Prov (2); Job (4); Song of Solomon (4); Ruth (4); Lam (4); Qoh (3); Esther (0); Daniel (8); Ezra (1); Neh (0); 1-2 Chron (1); Tobit (4); ben Sira (2); Letter of Jeremiah (1); Psalm 151 (1); precursors of 1 Enoch (20, counting copies of the Book of Giants); Jubilees (15 or 16); precursors to the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (7 or 8).[1]

The books/traditions which appear in the most copies are the following: Psalms (36); Deuteronomy (29); Isaiah (21); Enoch (20), and Jubilees (15 or 16). That Jubilees in particular was accorded a high degree of authority by the Qumran sect is suggested by several indicia; the high number of extant copies is, taken with the others, one more.[2] Psalms, Isaiah, and Deuteronomy (in that order) are, as is true at Qumran, the three most quoted books in the New Testament. It thus transpires that said books were top-tier in a cross-section of late Second Temple Judaism.[3]

That Esther is missing is probably not a coincidence. The sect did not celebrate the holiday the book mandates. The holiday and the book that mandates it may not have gained general currency within Judaism until the first cent. ce. It received universal or near universal approbation later still.

Pre-Christian biblical papyri in Greek, including Qumran fragments, attest to the following books: Gen (1); Exod (1); Lev (2); Num (1); Deut (4); Epistle of Jeremiah (1); the Twelve Prophets (1). The pattern of attestation is a witness to the exceptional importance of the Pentateuch, and Deuteronomy in particular, in 1^st to 2^nd cent. bce Greek-speaking Judaism.[4]

Christian biblical manuscripts of the 2^nd to 3^rd cent. ce attest to the following books: Gen (8); Exod (8); Lev (3); Num (1); Deut (2); Josh (1); Judg (1); 2 Chr (2); Esther (2); Job (1); Ps (18); Prov (2); Qoh (2); Wisdom of Solomon (1); Ben Sira (2); Isa (6); Jer (2); Ezek (2); Dan (2); the Twelve (2); Bel and Susannah (1); Tobit (2); 2 Maccabees (1).[5] The importance attached to Psalms, Genesis, Exodus, and Isaiah by early Christians is reflected in the counts.

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[1] Data from James C. Vanderkam, The Dead Sea Scrolls Today (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994) 29-42; 149-58.

[2] For further discussion, see Vanderkam, Dead Sea Scrolls, 153-55.

[3] The alignment of Qumran and NT data in this sense is well-known. Cf. Martin Abegg, Jr., Peter Flint, and Eugene Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible (New York: HarperCollins, 1999) xvii.

[4] Data from Johan Lust, “Septuagint and Canon,” in The Biblical Canons (ed. Jean-Marie Auwers and H. J. de Jonge; BETL 163. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2003) 39-55; 42.

[5] Data from Larry W. Hurtado, The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006) 19-20.

Thinking About Canon (Appendix C)

Soft and Hard Supersessionism

Supersessionism takes many forms. If the term is used exclusively to refer to a variety of replacement theologies (as in, the New Covenant renders the Old null and void; the Quran is the one inspired divine word such that the Old and New Testaments are deprived of authority; the teachings of Bahaullah supersede all others; etc.), the tip of an iceberg only is described.

The larger reality is that replacement and displacement are universally deployed strategies of religious and doctrinal development. Christianity “baptizes” and supplants pagan practices in the celebration of Christmas. Judaism endows originally non-religious activities with a religious meaning in the celebration of Purim. New tradition inevitably displaces old tradition even if the old is retained. A vital religious tradition will, by definition, replace competing tradition in its environment with an alternative of its making (Hanukkah thus becomes an alternative to Christmas), and displace tradition within its own matrix by retaining and transcending said matrix in a larger unity (e.g. Mishneh Torah and Shulchan Arukh over against precedent tradition).

Avowedly tradition-less traditions (an oxymoron, I know) replace and displace as well, but lack a vocabulary to describe what they do. Avowedly tradition-bound traditions continuously abrogate precedent tradition, but the emic vocabulary used to describe the dynamic conceals rather than reveals the extent of what takes place.

Examples of soft supersessionism include: the New Testament, which, correctly understood, retains and transcends the Old; the Mishnah and the Talmuds, which retain and transcend, in halachic and aggadic terms, the contents of the Tanakh.

Jewish and Christian scholars now agree that the historical sense of the contents of the Tanakh/Old Testament (in whatever iteration) is of exegetical interest apart from the resignified sense of same reflected in subsequent Jewish and Christian tradition. Of course, not all Jewish and Christian scholars subscribe to this consensus.

Reading the Deuterocanonicals according to Christian Coordinates

Those without experience in a tradition which reads from Ben Sira, Wisdom, Baruch, Tobit, 1-2 Maccabees, and other Jewish literature of late Second Temple times according to a lectionary cycle are unlikely to know what it is like to read passages from said literature according to Christian coordinates. A port of entry into this world is provided by Testimonia ad Quirinum. Each string of testimonia listed below, a sample only of the work’s contents, is a tour de force of intertextuality.

The Latin text of Books Two and Three of Testimonia ad Quirinum I draw from is that found in PL 4 (1891) cols 723-810, online here.

 

Who is Yehuda Amichai?

Yehuda Amichai (1924-200) is thought by many to be the greatest Israeli poet the contested land he called his own has given us so far. ֓The poem that follows, one of the most moving in all of literature, shows why. For those who know biblical but not modern Hebrew, do not despair. With the help of a dictionary, you can read the poem I supply here. My translation is indebted to earlier efforts, but goes its own way.

A comparison of modern Hebrew poetry with ancient Hebrew poetry reveals similarities and differences. For an example of Amichai's craft, in Hebrew and in translation, go here.

The High Valuation of the Septuagint Preserved in the Talmud

Simon Holloway has an excellent post in which he patiently draws out the sense of a number of passages from the Talmud which relate to the Septuagint, that is, to the 3^rd cent bce translation of the Pentateuch into Greek. The term “Septuagint” was later used by Christians in reference to the received translation of a wider corpus of texts inherited from Judaism.

Simon’s essay complements a post in the Thinking about Canon series. Under the heading “A Dual Dynamic," I draw out the sense of passages in the Talmud which report rabbinic authorization of the work of the translator Aquila.

Simon has many excellent posts on his blog. Check it out.

Thinking About Canon (Sixth Update)

The conversation about canon continues. Doug Chaplin, Iyov, and Peter Kirk, all of whom are excellent bloggers, add multiple remarks. I am especially thankful for Peter’s comments. They tie in with an earlier comment by Chris Heard. In this update, I will limit myself to discussing one of Doug’s posts and Peter’s comments.

Thinking About Canon (Appendix A)

Loci of Authority at Qumran

1QSerek haYaḥad 8:1-16 and Beyond

The authority of a text to author a way of life, to distinguish truth from falsehood, and to serve as a light unto one’s path cannot be divorced from the authority granted to other texts, acknowledged teaching authorities past and present, and the ongoing process of interpretation among the faithful. A passage from a constitutional document of the Qumran sect serves as a point of departure for a discussion of loci of authority in the sect.

Text and Translation

בעצת היחד שנים עשר איש וכוהנים שלושה תמימים בכול הנגלה מכול התורה לעשות אמת וצדקה ומשפט ואהבת חסד והצנע לכת איש אם רעהו לשמור אמונה בארץ ביצר סמוך ורוח נשברה ולרצת עוון בעושי משפט וצרת מצרף ולהתהלך עם כול במדת האמת ובתכון העת.

In the assembly of the community, twelve laymen and three priests, perfect in all that has been revealed of the Torah, are to practice truth, justice, judgment, the kindness of love, and unassuming behavior each with his fellow; keep faith in the land with self-control and a contrite spirit; atone for sin as doers of justice, suffer tribulation, and comport themselves with all by the standard of the truth and in accordance with the time.

Thinking About Canon (Part Five)

The Canon Debate

Opposing errors are rampant in discussions of canon. On the one hand there are the maximalists, who insist that a set of books identical to the “twenty-four” of mature rabbinic Judaism existed within the precincts of the Temple from the mid-second century bce forward. The MT goes back to them in a straight and uneventful line. Aside from the lack of evidence in favor of this reconstruction, it misidentifies the defining fact of scriptural authority. Uniformity of the word to which one turns is not what counts. It is the turning itself that matters. First of all, it is God who is understood to turn to the listener in the text that is read. The reader/listener turns in response. Scriptural authority is realized in that event, or it is not realized at all.

On the other hand, there are those that emphasize the degree to which interpreters and readers control what the canon has to say. On this view, the text has no meaning of its own, or if it does, it is assigned a new one in a process of resignification. Cartloads of evidence might be cited in favor of this reconstruction. It is still wrongheaded. The purpose of canonizing a text is to allow it to stand over against the one who hears it. The maximalists, therefore, are right to insist that the concept of canon correlates with an unparalleled degree of consent on the part of those for whom the canon is meaningful. Canon-making, furthermore, is about according authority to this text and not another. A particular text is accorded authority, even if maximalists define that particularity with unconscionable inflexibility.

Whether the consent that is given is genuine is another matter. To claim that it never is, based on an appeal to reader-response theory or a postmodern hermeneutic, is fashionable but preempts the possibility of a genuine discussion. Given that the definition of fashion is something that goes out of fashion, the wisest response may be to pay no heed. To those who pleasure themselves with the deconstruction of non-postmodern interpretation, I say: enjoy your miniskirt while you can. You will turn a few heads; in the long term, you are likely to be ignored.

Of course the hearer shapes the text in the act of interpretation. The point of canon is another. Genre-specific explanations may illustrate. Setting apart a narrative text in a canon is meant to facilitate the appropriation of the particular past the text embodies, and the particular future to which it points. Setting apart a text of ethical construction in a canon is not meant to stop ethical construction in its tracks, but to provide an inevitable point of departure for subsequent ethical construction. Setting apart a collection of texts which fuse oracle and diatribe establishes a model of predictive discourse in which soothsaying and parenesis reinforce one another. Setting apart a collection of texts which envision the past, present, and future in terms of an apocalyptic hope – the book of Daniel – establishes the terms of redemption of universal history. Setting apart a collection of cries of despair and hymns in a canon is meant to furnish models of prayer and praise. Setting apart a comedy[1]– the book of Esther – sanctifies a specific instance of a genre which might otherwise be thought to fall beyond the reach of redemption. Setting apart a collection of aphorisms in which wisdom herself demands obedience sanctifies everyday ethical behavior. Setting apart a book like Job sanctifies the protest of the innocent in a world of injustice. Setting apart the ruminations of a grumpy, wise, and self-absorbed old man – the book of Qohelet – was, in brief, a stroke of genius. Even when a text is treated as a tabula rasa, as in traditional interpretation of Song of Songs, the resignification of the text is far from arbitrary. The resignification reflects a metanarrative whose fixed points cannot be ignored by the interpreter. At the intersection of scripture and metanarrative, God is presumed to speak.