How Evangelical Are You?

When I was poking around Lark News today, this was one of the advertised links in the sidebar. Maybe WTS should put this on their website under the "employment opportunities" page?

Helpful ANE Resources

In case anyone is interested I found some helpful resources when dealing with the primary sources of ANE texts. Browse around. The first one looks hokey but the translations come from mostly standard sources or scholarly sources (such as the second link).

http://www.gatewaystobabylon.com/

http://www-etcsl.orient.ox.ac.uk/

Augustine & the Hot Dog

Too awesome not to post...

The Burdens of The Giver

One of my favorite books to read is The Giver by Lois Lowry. Not to get all reader-response or anything but I love it because it means something specifically to me and reminds me of my role as a pastor/theologian. Let me explain:

In The Giver the protagonist is a young boy named Jonas who lives in a utopian society where there are no skinned knees and there is no experience of pain. In this society the time came, at the age of 12, when children became adults and were given what was to be there destiny, their place in the community, the role they were to perform for the good of the community. There were all kinds of jobs but only every great once in a while was there a replacement chosen for the most revered role of all, the role of the Giver. This lot befell Jonas.

The Giver was responsible for bearing all of the painful experiences and painful memories of the community so that the community didn't have to (Christ figure?). At the end of the day, Jonas decides that the joys that come with pain are worth the pain and so he releases the pain back into the community.

So where do I see the pastor/theologian? S/he is the Giver in the community. The weight of theological and biblical "pains" must be borne by them, they are the gatekeepers of the faith. Not everyone who claims Christ needs to master or even be aware of the myriad questions and theological problems the pastor/theologian is constantly confronted with. But the questions and problems must be dealt with by someone. 

With this position is the utmost responsibility - deciding in what scenarios and relationships it is best for the community to be exposed to a little "pain." Do you keep bearing all of the burden to shield those in your care? Or do you let them in on a little of your experience? But when will it do good instead of doing harm? This is increasingly the role I find myself in as a pastor and as a student of the Scriptures. 

As I tell most people who aspire to know more about the Bible...be very careful that you don't have false expectations about what this knowledge will bring. This knowledge is not primarily a gift but a burden. If we are interested in having our egos boosted by our knowledge then pick another field because the ethical weight of Scriptural knowledge can be a weight under which our pride and self-sufficiency are crushed.

Textual Variant & the Sabbath

Interestingly, but not surprisingly, the NIV has smoothed over a difficulty in Genesis 2:2 with a "possible" reading.

The NIV reads: "By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work."

The ESV reads: "And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done.

The Hebrew reads: וַיְכַל אֱלֹהִים בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי, מְלַאכְתּוֹ אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה; וַיִּשְׁבֹּת בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי, מִכָּל-מְלַאכְתּוֹ אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה.

The problem is that the ESV is more accurate. To translate the bet-preposition as "by" is a stretch. To translate wayekal as a pluperfect ("he had finished") is also a stretch. Even more of a stretch is to translate bayom as "by...day" in the first instance and then translate the exact same phrase only 5 words later "on...day." Why does the NIV do this?

Well, because God is supposed to be resting on the seventh day, not finishing up his work. The same language is used in Exodus 20:10 and even explictly says that God made heaven and earth in six days. So what do we do?

Well, rather than trusting in all of these stretches Ronald Hendel in his apologetic for a critical edition of the Hebrew Bible called The Text of Genesis 1-11: Textual Studies and Critical Edition suggests taking the textual variant found in the Samaritan Pentateuch, Septuagint, Syriac Peshitta, and Jubilees 2:16 and replacing "seventh" with "sixth."

Now, typically I am skeptical of taking textual variants but Hendel makes a good case for it.

1. "...to posit that scribes or translators changed the text independently in three (or four) textual traditions is extremely unlikely, given our cognizance of the numerous shared readings in G, S, and Syr." Also, G of Genesis is known for conserving the Vorlage so that reading "sixth" for a Proto-G is warranted. So then, it is better to argue for a common root than independent traditions.

2. So the question must now be settled on text-critical grounds. While typically the harder reading is to be accepted, in this case there is another plausible motive for why "sixth" could have given rise to "seventh." Verse 2 can be split up in this way:

בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי מְלַאכְתּוֹ אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה
בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי מִכָּל-מְלַאכְתּוֹ אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה.

"With the exception of the stylistic variation of mkl in v 2b, the two sequences are identical but for the variation of ["sixth"] in the place of ["seventh"]. It is entirely possible that a scribe could have miswritten ["seventh"] in lace of ["sixth"] in the first clause, triggered by anticipation of the parallel in the second clause. This would be an accidental assimilation by anticipation" (33).

So the difficult reading is chalked up to scribal error. I like it, mostly because that's the best explanation I've heard so far.

Aliens & Genesis

I am currently writing a paper on the literary connections between the two creation stories found in Genesis. I am not at all interested in whether they come from two different sources (with a great redactor) or whether they are from one source, it makes no difference to me. Anyway, I have finally found the answer in a book entitled The Lost Tribes From Outer Space. Apparently Elohim was the creator God who created hominids and evolution and the whole bit and then this strange new guy, YHWH, came from outer space and created Jews (Adam & Eve) to colonize the earth. This also explains why Jews have been persecuted for so long, they aren't human! "their oppression is like the process of rejection that sometimes occurs in organ transplants" (19-20). That also explains why YHWH gets so ticked off about intermarrying, it's obvious that Aliens (Jews) shouldn't intermarry with lowly humans.

Whew, and I thought the enigma between Genesis 2:3 and Genesis 2:4 would never be solved...

Wasting Time

I was scolded by my wife the other day like I was a 5-year old. The reason? Because I "waste" a lot of time on Facebook, and the new culprit, failblog.org. Okay, I admit, I often do act like a 5-year old and I even scolded myself on how much time I spent looking at failblog.org.

But what can you do, it's probably the funniest website I have ever seen. A lot of it is inappropriate (although they now have a G-rated filter) but the rest fits my kind of humor like a glove. Of course my wife looks at me with disgust when I laugh my head off because a guy probably just broke a few ribs falling off a ladder he was trying to sell on an infomercial, but I just can't help it. Besides, being productive in life is over-rated. The point of this post?

1. To tell you why I haven't posted anything in a week. I have been busy on failblog.org.
2. To justify looking at failblog.org

Westminster Seminary (WTS) & South-Going School

From Dr. Seuss's The Zax: 

"And I'll prove to YOU," yelled the South-Going Zax,

That I can stand here in the prairie of Prax

For fifty-nine years! For I live by a rule

That I learned as a boy back in South-Going School.

Never budge! That's my rule. Never budge in the least!

Not an inch to the west! Not an inch to the east!

I'll stay here, not budging! I can and I will

If it makes you and me and the whole world stand still!"

"Well...

Of course the world didn't stand still. The world grew.

In a couple of years, the new highway came through

And they built it right over those two stubborn Zax

And left them there, standing un-budged in their tracks."

Scripture & Action

I always love the chance to show how relevant the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard is to modern day Christians.

When I was in college I started learning an incredible amount about the Bible and how we are supposed to be interpreting the Bible. I learned about commentaries and context, Greek and Hebrew (the languages the Bible was originally written in). And because of all my learning I started looking down on people who didn't have the same knowledge and I started making it my life goal to make sure everyone knew that they needed the knowledge that I had. Somehow I had bought into the idea that knowing more about the Bible makes you a better Christian.

When I started graduate school a few years ago I realized that such is not the case. The poor peasant Christian in Thailand who only owns one torn out piece of Scripture, say Matthew 22 ("Love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul, and with all your mind. And the second is like it - Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and Prophets hang on these two commandments") but actually lives this verse everyday, has come closer to the heart of what Christianity is all about than I was after all of my training.

Enter Kierkegaard:

"In other words, it is not the obscure passages in Scripture that bind you but the ones you understand. With these you are to comply at once. If you understood only one passage in all of Scripture, well, then you must do that first of all...God's Word is given in order that you shall act according to it, not that you gain expertise in interpreting it...Being alone with God's Word is a dangerous matter. Of course, you can always find ways to defend yourself against it: Take the Bible, lock your door - but then get out ten dictionaries and twenty-five commentaries. Then you can read it just as calmly and coolly as you read newspaper advertising.

With this arsenal you can really begin to wonder, "Are there not several valid interpretations? So you calmly conclude, "I myself am not absolutely sure about the meaning of this passage. I need more time to form an opinion." Good Lord! What a tragic misuse of scholarship that it makes it so easy for people to deceive themselves!

Can't we be honest for once! We have become such experts at cunningly shoving one layer after another, one interpretation after another, between the Word and our lives...and we then allow this preoccupation to swell to such profundity that we never come to look at ourselves in the mirror...

It is only all too easy to understand the requirements contained in God's Word ("Give all your good to the poor" etc.) The most ignorant, poor creature cannot honestly deny being able to understand God's requirements. But it is tough on the flesh to will to understand it and to then act accordingly.

Herein lies the problem. It is not a question of interpretation, but action."

From For Self-Examination & Judge For Yourself, 26-35

Sarcasm & Myth

As I was reading Kierkegaard's Philosophical Fragments today (as anyone is prone to do on a rainy Sunday afternoon) I ran into a small sarcastic quip that I thought again shows Kierkegaard extremely relevant for today. It is his introduction into one of his parables to explain how "the god" lisps to his loved one in order to have a reciprocal love:

"Suppose there was a king who loved a maiden of lowly station in life - but the reader may already have lost patience when he hears that our analogy begins like a fairy talk and is not at all systematic."

It seems that the problems we have today with systematic theologians has a long history (with Philosophical Fragments written in the first half of the 19th century).

Even then history was often considered more "truthful" than parable (or dun...dun...dun..."myth") and that "husking" the narratives of Scripture to get at the "kernels" is what is really important.

What a mean and petty God we serve who gave us a book that is mostly narrative and only partly propositional so that we have to spend all of our time finding out how to reduce the narratives to propositions...Wait a minute...

Brilliant - Facebook in Real Life

OT Thoughts - Exodus (Part 7

Old Testament thoughts is a weekly post where we'll be looking at some interesting aspects of some Scripture from the Hebrew Bible (what Christians call the Old Testament). Right now, we are looking at the first two chapters of Exodus.

Where did Moses get his name from? The text itself says that the etymology of his name is כִּי מִן-הַמַּיִם מְשִׁיתִהוּ (lit. because from the water I drew him)But there are a few slight problems with saying that Pharoah's daughter named him "Moses," "Because I drew him from the water." First, the probability of Pharaoh’s daughter naming the child with a Hebrew name is slim for two reasons. The first is that naming him with a Hebrew name would give away his identity as a Hebrew...and remember, her Dad is killing Hebrew boys at the moment. The second reason it's improbable is that she's not Hebrew! It's not very likely at all that she would have known Hebrew. The conquoring country rarely learns the language of the conquored country. Secondly, the term itself is more easily taken from the Egyptian noun ms ‘boy, child’ as a cognate of the Egyptian verb msỉ ‘to bear, beget’ and appears in such names as Ptahmose, Tuthmosis, Ahmose, and Harmose.

But then why did the Jewish author record the Hebrew etymology and not the Egyptian etymology of the name? To say that it was obviously due to the ignorance of the author of the Egyptian derivation misreads the purpose of the text and certainly isn’t obvious, contra Durham.

On the contrary, it is quite possible (and likely) that the purpose was theological and literary. Naming in the whole of the Old Testament was a highly theological and literary enterprise and is used by the writer on more than one level and for more than one purpose. “Moses’ name meant for the Israelites (and therefore for God, whose Spirit inspired the writers) that he was drawn out of water and would draw them out of water” (Peter Enns, Exodus, 64-65).

So maybe it’s not the validity of the answer that should cause worry but whether or not we are even asking the right questions. There is much more meaning, for the reader today and especially for the ancient Jewish reader, in the Hebrew etymology of the name than in the Egyptian, not that the Egyptian etymology shouldn’t be recognized. The problem comes when we start thinking that the only thing that is truly "meaningful" is modern notions of history and "what really happened."

But the origin of the name of Moses seems to be an intentional foreshadowing. This foreshadowing in the name of Moses as one drawn out of the water only to later himself ‘draw’ his people out of the water is also supported by the placing of Moses "in the reeds" (בַּסּוּף)in 2:3 and "in the midst of the reeds" (בְּתוֹךְ הַסּוּף)in 2:5. And later he will in fact lead God’s people through the "sea of reeds" (יַם-סוּף).

Then there is a final, broader connection that comes by way of the overall structure of the stories. Just as Moses begins outside of the house of Egypt (raised in the court of Pharaoh), then enters the house of Israel, then is dealt harshly by Pharaoh who tries to kill him and then chases him out, so goes the story of Israel in Egypt (cf. the story of Joseph and Exodus 1:1-14:31).

OT Thoughts - Exodus (Part 6)

Old Testament thoughts is a weekly post where we'll be looking at some interesting aspects of some Scripture from the Hebrew Bible (what Christians call the Old Testament). Right now, we are looking at the first two chapters of Exodus.

Was Moses's Mom That Superficial?

2:2 of Exodus: "The woman conceived and bore a son; and when she saw how beautiful he was, she hid him for three months."

This of course begs the question: If Moses was ugly would she have not hidden him and left him to be found by Pharaoh to be killed?

Well, actually, there is much more going on in this verse than the English translations allow. The verse literally says, "Then the woman conceived and bore a son and when she saw him, that he was good (ki-tov), she him him for three months." This is exactly the phrase we heard over and over at the beginning of Genesis, "and God saw that it was good (ki-tov)." It seems then that the author is taking us back to the creation story and making some sort of connection with Moses.

But what does it mean for Moses's mom to see "that he is good?" Many translators have tried to decide:

NIV: "When she saw that he was a fine child"
NASB: "When she saw that he was beautiful"
JPS: "When she saw how beautiful he was"
NLT: "She saw that he was a special baby"
KJV: "When she saw that he was a goodly child"

I think that the NLT is probably the closest to the point that the author of Exodus was trying to get across, this Moses is special. It's not trying to say that he was such a great baby, he never cried, never spit up on his dear parents. Nor is it trying to say that Moses was cute or beautiful. But the point is that God is now engaged in the life of his people and is going to work through a special child, Moses.

But why do so many versions translate the verse as talking about his looks? It actually comes from the Septuagint, or Greek version of Genesis. This would have been the Bible that the writers of the NT would have used since many of them probably didn't know Hebrew anymore, or at least not nearly as well as they would have known Greek. So they used a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, similar to the way we use an English translation.

And in the Greek translation the word is asteion or "handsome." In fact, this is the word Stephen uses when he recounts to the story of Moses in Acts 7:20.

Barthian Ruminations

As our Schleiermacher Reading Group at WTS is currently reading through Barth's Church Dogmatics section on Scripture, I have found myself having tremendous sympathies with his views on Scripture. Now, this is pretty scary and uncharted territory for me since I have it ingrained in me to consider Barth a hermeneutical and Christological heretic even though he opposed the theological liberals of his time (who I was also taught to consider heretical).

But I think that just as many of my fears about critical scholarship were unfounded so were my fears about Barth. For instance, he states:

"The demand that the Bible should be read and understood and expounded historically is, therefore, obviously justified and can never be taken too seriously. The Bible itself posits this demand: even where it appeals expressly to divine commissionings and promptings, in its actual compostion it is eerywhere a human word, and this human word is obviously intended to be taken seriously and read and understood and expounded as such. To do anything else would be to miss the reality of the Bible and therefore the Bible itself as the witness of revelation. The demand for a "historical" understnading of the Bible necessarily means, in content, that we have to take it for what it undoubtedly is and is meant to be: the human speech uttered by specific men at speciic times in a specific situation, in a specific language and with a specific intention. It emans that the understanding of it has honestly and unreservedly been on which is guided by all these considerations...To the extent that it [the concrete humanity of Scripture] is ignored, it has not been read at all."

What I love about this quotation is that it gets at the heart of what makes the Bible so uncomfortable for both theological conservatives and theological liberals: its historical situatedness. For theological liberals history is unimportant because it cannot be trusted to be accurate, so we tear off the husk of situatedness and grasp the kernel of moral truth behind the history.

For theological conservatives history is too concrete and not "transcendent" or "ontological" enough, so we tear off the husk of situatedness and grasp the kernel of "what the divine author really meant." We often read the text as though we want to always be getting behind the history rather than seeing the revelation itself as historical. I am not sure as to the implications of this but I do know that it gels much better with what we actually find in Scripture, that it was written by specific individuals, for specific individuals, for specific circumstances. We should probably then be spending our time figuring out how this fact affects our hermeneutic rather than expending all of our energy brushing this fact under the proverbial rug.

OT Thoughts - Exodus (Part 5)

Old Testament thoughts is a weekly post where we'll be looking at some interesting aspects of some Scripture from the Hebrew Bible (what Christians call the Old Testament). Right now, we are looking at the first two chapters of Exodus.

"Just as the men of Egypt cast their sons into the river, so He took revenge on one million, and one thousand strong and ardent men perished on account of one infant whom they threw into the midst of the river."
-Jubilees 48:14

At the end of the first chapter of Exodus we have Pharaoh commanding all male children (even Egyptian?) to be cast into the Nile. It has not failed interpreters, ancient and modern, to make a possible connection between the watery death of Israelite boys and the watery death YHWH brings on the Egyptians at the Exodus (see Exodus 14). Many Jewish interpreters saw this as an explicit demonstration of the Law, specifically the famous lex talionis, or "eye for an eye" law (Exodus 21:23-25).

Other sources that make this same connection:
Wisd. 18:5
Pseudo-Philo, Biblical Antiquities 9:10
Mekhilta deR. Ishmael, Shirta 4

Interestingly, James Kugel also points out in his The Bible As It Was, that there was also a tradition that it was actually the decision of Pharaoh's counselors to drown the children because these wise men had consulted the Hebrew Scriptures and determined that drowining would be the safest method against divine recompense. Kugel quotes b. Sota 11a, where after deciding that fire and sword are out because Isaiah 66 says that "the Lord shall come with fire...and by his sword [he will punish] all flesh," the counselors say, "Let us therefore sentence them [to die] by water, for God has already sworn that he will nevermore bring a flood into the world..."

What a creative gap-filling midrash.

OT Thoughts - Exodus (Part 4)

Old Testament thoughts is a weekly post where we'll be looking at some interesting aspects of some Scripture from the Hebrew Bible (what Christians call the Old Testament). Right now, we are looking at the first two chapters of Exodus

Today I just want to point out how Pharaoh is depicted here in the first chapter of Exodus. And, well, it's not looking good. Basically, he is shown to be two things: a sort of "anti-God" who acts against God's creation mandate and secondly, as a sort of "royal boob" (to quote an old He-Man movie) who is naive and foolish in light of God (see I Corinthians 1:19, alluding to Isaiah 29:14), despite his prominence and power among people.

1. Pharaoh as Anti-God: The picture of Pharaoh as the "anti-God" is painted most explicitly in 1:10 where Pharaoh tells his people, "Come, let us deal wisely with these Israelites or else they will multiply..." So Pharaoh is against the very thing God had told the Israelites to do in the creation narrative ("be fruitful and multiply," same word used here). But as we'll see, Pharaoh is no match for God and his purposes.

2. Pharaoh as Foolish: We see here in the first chapter of Exodus 3 failures on the part of Pharaoh in his futile attempt to keep Israel from fulfilling their mandate to be fruitful and multiply.

The first failure comes in verse 12: "But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied." Shouldn't the opposite be true? God's wisdom confounds the wise. Pharaoh's first attempt fails.

The second failure comes in 17: "But the midwives feared God and didn't do what Pharaoh had commanded them." Since Pharaoh's first attempt fails he gets a little more desperate: let's get the midwives to kill all the boys. But he gets outsmarted...By women! Of course, this could be read in a feminist way (which I am not averse to when it's warranted) but I think here the sense is this: "Pharaoh's plan has no hope, even the women outsmart him!" Also remember that a theme throughout the Hebrew Bible (OT) is that God is so powerful he often uses the weakest to defeat the powerful to show that it is His power and not ours. God's wisdom confounds the wise. Pharaoh's second attempt fails.

The third failure comes in the birth of Moses (Ex 2:2): After the two failed attempts by Pharaoh he gets frantic and outraged. Now, every son (possibly even the Egyptian?) is to be thrown into the Nile to die! Instead, a son comes out of the Nile to live! This is the climax of Pharaoh's failed attempts. God's wisdom confounds the wise. Pharaoh's third and final attempt fails, a savior is born.

OT Thoughts - Exodus (Part 3)

Old Testament thoughts is a weekly post where we'll be looking at some interesting aspects of some Scripture from the Hebrew Bible (what Christians call the Old Testament). Right now, we are looking at the first two chapters of Exodus

One thing I love about ancient Jewish readers of the Hebrew Bible (OT) is that they paid attention to the smallest details of a text. So our two examples today, about the midwives of the Hebrews (Exodus 1:15-21), will take their cue from ancient midrash.

First, I suggested in the last post that the midwives might have actually been Egyptian and not Hebrew (see below). Well, there is an ancient Jewish interpretation that suggests that they were Jewish. Not only were the midwives Jewish but they were none other than Jochebed and Miriam, the mother and sister of Moses! Now, there a few good reasons to think that it probably wasn't Jochebed and Miriam, including the fact that they are actually given other names in the text, but it's interesting to see how these interpreters filled in the "gaps" in the Bible. They took the names given for the midwives in the text to be "nicknames" or "descriptors" (like Jacob being called "heel-grabber") rather than their given names. Jewish interpreters loved doing this sort of thing (see Paul's use of Jannes & Jambres in II Timothy 3:8). Here is the passage in Jewish literature that relates the two:

"The Hebrew midwives (Exodus 1:15) were Yocheved and [her daughter] Miriam. Miriam, who was only five years old then, went with Yocheved to assist her. She was quick to honor her mother and to serve God (Eitz Yosef), for when a child is little, its traits are already evident. The name of the second (i.e., Miriam) was Puah (ibid.) for she gave the newborns wine and restored the babies to life when they appeared to be dead, she lit up Israel before God by teaching the women, she presented her face before Pharaoh, stuck up her nose at him, and said, "Woe is to the man (i.e., Pharaoh) when God punishes him!" Pharaoh was filled with wrath and would have killed her, but Yocheved appeased him, saying, "Will you pay attention to her? She is only a child, she has no understanding" (Shemot Rabbah 1:13)

Secondly, several Jewish interpreters noticed how improbable it was that there were only two midwives for all of the Jewish women (who were, if you remember, "increasing greatly"). So some suggest that these were simply the heads of the group of women who served as midwives. So they weren't the only ones, just the ones in charge. Of course, there are other explanations as well, although I think this is a pretty good one.

Old Testament Thoughts - Exodus (Part 2)

Old Testament thoughts is a weekly post where we'll be looking at some interesting aspects of some Scripture from the Hebrew Bible (what Christians call the Old Testament). Right now, we are looking at the first two chapters of Exodus.
Yesterday I posted we looked at some of the creation language and the significance of such language. Today we'll look at the "Account of the Hebrew Midwives," in Exodus 1:15-22.

Hebrew or Egyptian

Are the midwives of Hebrew or Egyptian descent? The verse is actually inconclusive about the nationality of the midwives. It literally says "Then the king of Egypt said to the midwives of the Hebrews..."

וַיֹּאמֶר מֶלֶךְ מִצְרַיִם, לַמְיַלְּדֹת הָעִבְרִיֹּת

Now, although it could go either way, here are a few reasons to support the view that they are Egyptian for three reasons:

1. The rest of the story reads like the women are not Israelites. They are referred to twice as "fearing God," a term often used for non-Israelites who nonetheless recognized God as God.

2. It also makes the story more believable. Why would Pharaoh believe Hebrew women, his slaves, when they said that they couldn't get to the women in time? Or why would Hebrew women even have midwives if they knew this was the case? Of course, some think that this is precisely the point, that Pharaoh is being portrayed as a complete oaf. While there is a trend here of women tricking Pharaoh throughout, I don't think that warrants taking the midwives as Hebrew instead of Egyptian.

3. The word "vigorous" or "lively" (כִּי-חָיוֹת) might be a negative way of referring to Israelite women. So the Egyptian women would be saying something like this, "Hebrew women are less refined and more animal-like than Egyptian women, they give birth quickly and don't even need a midwife." So the Egyptian women would be slamming the Hebrew women to more easily pull the wool over Pharaoh's eyes.

Of course, again, the answer is inconclusive and it doesn't really matter to the story, but some of the best things about a story can be found in the smallest details.

OT Thoughts - Exodus (part 1)

Old Testament thoughts is a weekly post where we'll be looking at some interesting aspects of some Scripture from the Hebrew Bible (what Christians call the Old Testament). Right now, we are looking at the first two chapters of Exodus.

After finishing up Jonah, I have been agonizing over what Scripture to talk about next. There are so many things to choose from and I don't really want to get bogged down with too many technical details of the text. So I landed on the first 2 chapters of Exodus, just up to the Burning Bush. I have already posted several of these on the other blog where I am a regular contributer ( Encounter blog ) so today I will just post all them successively to get caught up on this blog.

First up today, the first evidence of "creation language" in the first chapter of Exodus...

As we'll see throughout this series, the writer of Exodus 1-2 uses a lot of images and language that was also used in the creation narrative (Genesis 1-3) up through even the pre-Abraham narrative in Genesis 11. So when I say "creation language" I only mean that the writer of Exodus 1-2 seems to be consciously using images and language that was used in Genesis 1-11. The writer probably has a theological reason for doing this, namely, that the story of Exodus 1-15 is the story of the creation of God's people, the Israelites (see Ex. 4:22). Adam has failed as God's representative on the earth, so Israel has now been given the task.

For my post today I am only going to give one example, to further explain what I mean by "creation language."

In Exodus 1:7, the beginning of the story after the genealogical introduction, we have this: "The Israelites were fruitful and multiplied and became extremely numerous, so that the land was filled with them." Sound familiar? What do we have in Genesis 1:28 following on the heels of the creation of humankind?

"God blessed them; and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth..."*

So Israel is fulfilling the duty God gave to the first couples.

*N.B.: I will be using my own translations in all of these posts, as I did with the Jonah posts. If you have any questions about why I translate something the way I do, let me know, I'd be happy to explain it. Otherwise, just know that I will oftentimes translate in a way that emphasizes the connections being made in Hebrew (something most mass produced translations do not do) but I will never translate anything in a way deemed "unacceptable" by scholars.

Unity & Diversity

For my first post back after taking the summer off to be insane as a TA for summer hebrew I want to acknowledge something that has really hit me as a pastor.

We speak of unity in the midst of diversity in churches, but what we typically mean is one of two things:

1. We all think alike so that our diversity is really only make believe so that we can say we have "unity in diversity."

2. We all avoid the major issues that we disagree on so as to again pretend that we have unity where there is none.

Why isn't there unity between Democrat Christians and Republican Christians? Why no unity between Protestant Christians and Catholic Christians? Why no unity between "conservative" Christians and "liberal" Christians?

Well, you'll say, because insert my position here is right and insert the "other" position here is wrong. If they would just see that they're wrong, then we'd have unity. What kind of unity is that? It's supposed to be unity in the midst of diversity. Why can't we see that the resurrection of Christ is so much more important than the other issues that divide us? That's like not speaking to your sister because she wears GAP and you wear Banana Republic. The thing that unites makes the thing that divides almost superficial. 

I know, we'll still say, "But my issue is different. I am defending biblical Christianity." And I'll say...point proven.

If there is one thing my heart is set on for this year it's to more fully understand the mess we've made by making mountains out of theological mole hills and by defending fringe doctrine over unity in the Body.

Caputo on the "Right" & WWJD

Caputo's What Would Jesus Deconstruct is a really good book for anyone interested in Derridian philosophy and how it might bear on the church. It's quite simple and short but packs a lot of punch. I also love reading books that have great one-liners. Here are a few of my favorite things:

“It will be an eye opener to the Christian Right, who, having tried to blackmail us with this question [WWJD], will discover that the slogan they have been wearing on their T-shirts and pasting on their automobile bumpers all these years is a call for radical social justice!” (22).

“The question [WWJD] is tricky, not a magic bullet, because, everybody left or right wants Jesus on their side (instead of the other way around). It requires an immense amount of interpretation, interpolation, and self-questioning to give it any bite – and if it is not biting us, it has no bite – lest it be just a way of getting others to do what I want them to do but under the cover of Jesus” (24-25).

“We sing songs to the truth as if it were a source of comfort, warmth, and good hygiene. But in deconstruction the truth is dangerous, and it will drive you out into the cold” (27).

“The next time we look up to heaven and piously pray “Come, Lord Jesus,” we may find that he is already here, trying to get warm over an urban steam grate or trying to cross our borders” (30).

“The truth will make you free, but it does so by turning your life upside down” (30).

“The religious heart or frame of mind is not “realist,” because it is not satisfied with the reality that is all around it. Nor is it antirealist, because it is not trying to substitute fabrications for reality; rather, it is what I would call “hyper-realist,” in search of the real beyond the real, the hyper, the uber or au-dela, the beyond, in search of the event that stirs within things that will exceed our present horizons” (39).

"To announce the kingdom of God is to bring good news to all those who are poor in spirit and just plain poor, to those who hunger for justice and who are just plain hungry, to those whose minds are blinded by sin and who are just plain blind, to those whose hearts are bent by evil and whose bodies are just plain bent"

Jonah 7

Although there are dozens of other great literary features in the book of Jonah (like chapter 4's affinity with the book of Exodus) I will end this series with a discussion of how the Ninevites are portrayed in the book. The book makes it sound as though the Ninevites are no better than cattle.

Now, oftentimes, the Old Testament will call people animals. For instance, Amos rails against some foreign wives and says, "Hear this word, you cows of Bashan who are on the mountain of Samaria, who oppress the poor, who crush the needy!" But there in Jonah the comparison between the foreigners and cattle is a little more subtle.

This idea is seen in Jonah 3:7-8 and 4:11. In 3:7-8 the author lumps man and beast together in the proclamation of the king of Nineveh who says:

"Do not let man, beast, herd, or flock taste anything. Do no let them eat or drink water. But both man and beast must be covered with sackcloth and let them call on God earnestly that each may turn from his wicked way and the violence which is in their hands." So both man and animal (what a strange idea) must be covered with sackcloth (a traditional Hebrew rite for mourning) and let them (another strange idea) call on God.

Then in 4:11 he also lumps them together although the connection is not as explicit:
"Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?"

Son Lux

I very rarely listen to Christian music but when I was reading CT the other day they mentioned an artist that was obsessed with Radiohead and had won a contest and a chance to record with a label. Well, I took a chance and loved him. His name is Ryan Lott but his "alias" is Son Lux. Check out his myspace, though it only has songs from his old album, which is not nearly as good as the new one called at war with walls and mazes.

A Moral Statement?

Watching these videos back to back made my mind reel with thoughts of the ethical temperature of our society.

Jonah 6

Old Testament thoughts is a weekly post where we'll be looking at some interesting aspects of some Scripture from the Hebrew Bible (what Christians call the Old Testament). Right now, we are looking at the literary aspects of the book of Jonah.

Chapter 3 begins the way you would have expected the entire story would have (see the first post below). YHWH tells Jonah to "arise" and he does "arise" to go to Ninevah, instead of "arising" to "go down" to run away from YHWH.

Then he goes to Nineveh and says this, "Yet forty days and Nineveh will be haphak."

I will, for the sake of space and focus, not deal with how unlikely it would have been for the Ninevites to understand Hebrew, the language the Scriptures are written in. That is, what did Jonah really say? And did he say it in Hebrew? Or is what we have a translation? Ah...for another day...

But I do want to simply point out the ambiguity of the term haphak. If God (via Jonah) wanted to proclaim that in 40 days Nineveh would be destroyed there are several other words that would be unambigious. Instead, he uses the ambigious haphak, which could mean either "turned" or "overthrown." We obviously know which of those Jonah meant, he wanted Nineveh to be "overthrown."

Instead, verse 5 shows us that the Ninevites "turned" or "were changed," that is, they repented. Is that what God meant when he said, "40 days and Nineveh will be haphak"?

The interesting thing is that Nineveh wasn't destroyed. If you remember, in Deuteronomy, the mark of a true prophet is that his/her prophecy comes true. But Nineveh wasn't destroyed. So if Jonah took haphak to mean "destroy" then he is a false prophet. But as it is, and against Jonah's own wishes, Nineveh "turns," so maybe he wasn't a false prophet after all...

N.B.: Even the people of Nineveh thought (whatever language Jonah used) that God was planning on destroying them - see 3:9.

Jonah 5

Old Testament thoughts is a weekly post where we'll be looking at some interesting aspects of some Scripture from the Hebrew Bible (what Christians call the Old Testament). Right now, we are looking at the literary aspects of the book of Jonah.

The Psalms in ancient Israel are everywhere. They seem to be what the Israelites continue to go back to in order to explain where they are in life. David prays for deliverance in 2 Samuel 22 quoting extensively from Psalm 18, Jesus uses Psalm 22 to describe his current pain and abandonment.

In Jonah 2, the Psalms are used the same way Beatles songs are used in the movie Across the Universe. There is a pastiche of quotes from the psalms all stitched together to make a coherent prayer for Jonah in the belly of the fish. Here is a list* of verbatim uses of the Psalms in Jonah 2:

Jonah 2:3a=Psalm 18:7; 30:3; 118:5; 120:1

Jonah 2:3b=Psalm 130:2

Jonah 2:4b=Psalm 42:8b

Jonah 2:5a=Psalm 31:23a

Jonah 2:6a=Psalm 18:5; 69:2

Jonah 2:8a=Psalm 142:4; 143:4

Jonah 2:8b=Psalm 5:8b; 18:7

Jonah 2:9a=Psalm 31:7a

Jonah 2:10a=Psalm 42:5b; 50:14; 66:13

Jonah 2:10b=Psalm 3:9

The rhetorical effect of this is in providing a structure that lends itself to introspection, as many of the Psalms are, but also of identifying with Israel as a whole. Why else might the writer of Jonah use all these Psalms in the prayer of Jonah?

*List taken from A Poetics of Jonah: Art in the Service of Ideology by Kenneth M. Craig

New Septuagint Translation

For those (one or two) interested, there is a new English translation of the Septuagint (NETS) available for free online in pdf format.

The interview with Peter Gentry, a Baptist Septuagint scholar, reminded me of the excellent introductory book on the Septuagint, recommended to anyone interested in a basic understanding of what the Septuagint is and the issues surrounding it, called Invitation to the Septuagint by Karen Jobes & Moises Silva.

NETS Website

HT: Justin Taylor

Jonah 4

Old Testament thoughts is a weekly post where we'll be looking at some interesting aspects of some Scripture from the Hebrew Bible (what Christians call the Old Testament). Right now, we are looking at the literary aspects of the book of Jonah.

A shorter post this time we'll continue the theme from last time - who really is a God-fearer in the story of Jonah? The writer makes another contrast between Jonah and the "pagan" boat crew. Here it is:

When the folks from Ninevah sin, Jonah has no interest in mercy or in trying to save them from their impending doom.

When Jonah sins, the "pagan" boat crew do everything they can, even against their best interest, to save Jonah.

Even after Jonah told them that the only way to calm the storm was to throw him into the sea they still "rowed desperately to return to land but they could not."

This may give some evidence as to when and why Jonah was written, although such a question is a little off topic from the purpose of these posts. However, many think that Jonah was written around the time of the exile of 586 BCE, either just prior (pre-exilic), during (exilic) or just after (post-exilic) This is important because later in the life of Israel, around the time of the exile, they became unhealthily ethno-centric. This rhetorical effect (or maybe even the whole book) may be one example of the writer of Jonah trying to correct how ingrown Israel had become. God cares about and yearns to have compassion on all the nations, not just Israel. Israel had forgotten that. So here, to make the "pagan" boat crew more God-like than the prophet of God, Jonah, is a slap in the face to the Israelites...but a much needed slap.

Summer Reading List

Jonah 3

Today we'll look at the contrast of character between Jonah and the "pagan" boat crew.

The first contrast comes in the form of "fear." When the sailors cast lots to see who was responsible for this great storm and the lot fell on Jonah, they asked him who he was. He replied, "I am a Hebrew, and I fear (yare) YHWH." But does he really? He has just run away from YHWH and has disobeyed him.

But the sailors, on the other hand, go through a "conversion experience" so to speak here in the first chapter of Jonah. When the storm first came about the sailors became afraid (yare) and each one cried to their own god.

Secondly, after Jonah tells the men that he is running away from YHWH, the one who made the heavens and the earth, they become "extremely afraid" (yare).

Then, to complete the conversion experience, in verse 16, after they have thrown Jonah overboard and the sea stops its raging, they "fear YHWH greatly" (yare), so much that they offer sacrifices and make vows.

Oh the irony, the true "prophet of God" who is a "fearer of YHWH" doesn't fear him at all. Instead we have a whole boat full of pagans who see God for who he really is. They are appropriately afraid of the storm, then they become extremely afraid when they find out Jonah is running from "YHWH, the one who made the heavens and earth." You ran away from who? That God? Are you crazy? Then finally, when the storm suddenly stops, the pagan sailors become true God-fearers, ironically unlike Jonah.

Who is the true follower of God in this story?

Jonah 2

Still in Chapter 1, there are a few other nice literary features in the text to consider.

A Children's Story?

I had a professor tell me once that Jonah would've made a wonderful story for children (and maybe it was?). And he didn't say this after the VeggieTales got hold of it, but because of the personification and the hyperbole (do you remember your 9th grade English class?)

Personification - is when you give animate qualities to inanimate objects, such as emotions, willful actions, etc.

1:5 - The ship "reckoned that it was about to break" or "thought it was about to break"
1:15 - The sea "stopped its rage (or indignation)"

Hyperbole - exaggeration or a use of "extreme terms"

Look at all these:

1:2 - Ninevah the great city
1:4 - YHWH hurled a great wind
1:4 - there was a great storm
1:5 - the men hurled the cargo
1:10 - the men were extremely frightened
1:12 - the great storm
1:12 - pick me up and hurl me into the sea
1:15 - so they picked Jonah up, hurled him into the sea
1:16 - the men feared YHWH greatly
1:17 - YHWH appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah
3:2 - Ninevah the great city
3:3 - a great city, a three day's journey

Jonah 1

I have been posting about the literary aspects of Jonah over at the Encounter blog and thought they would be good to reproduce here. Comments, critiques, and questions are helpful.

For today:

Jonah's "going down"

The very first word in the Hebrew after the introductory verse is the word "Arise" (Qum) followed by "Go" (Lekh). It is God speaking to Jonah and they are not requests but commands (or imperatives)

"Arise and Go." That is how the book of Jonah begins.

How does Jonah react? He "arises" alright, but he arises to flee. So when you are reading it you would expect it to say "So Jonah arose and went," obeying God. But instead you have "But Jonah arose to flee."

But that's just the beginning. Jonah's disobedience leads him down the wrong path, literally. Instead of "arising" Jonah begins to "go down" to escape from God.

Verse 3: Jonah went down (yared) to Joppa
Verse 3: Jonah went down (yared) into the ship
Verse 5: Jonah went down (yared) to the hold of the ship
Verse 5: Jonah was asleep in the hold of the ship

As we'll see later, Jonah "went down" to escape from God, but could not. Instead God takes Jonah even further down than even he wanted to go.

1:15 - Jonah was thrown into the sea, even further down than the hold of the ship
1:17 - Jonah went into the belly of the fish
2:2 - In this poem Jonah tells God that the fish has metaphorically taken him all the way down to the "depths of Sheol (hell)."
2:3 - It was God who cast Jonah into "the primeval deep," into the "heart of the seas"
2:5-6 - Jonah "goes down" all the way to the bottom of the earth until he is "shut out" of creation, the ultimate "going down"

Then comes the climax. After Jonah, by his own disobedience goes down to Joppa, down to the ship, down to the hold of the ship, down to the ocean, down to the belly of the fish, down to the bottom of the ocean and the "great deep," down until he is shut out of creation, then we have the climactic statement in verse 6:

"But You have brought my life up from the pit, O YHWH, my God."

Talk about a powerful few chapters. No wonder Jesus alludes to it when he talks about his own suffering.

It seems as though the writer of Jonah knew what s/he was doing...

I'm Back - Now with a Son

I have not blogged for almost 2 months, but in my defense, I haven't really done much of anything but take care of Augustine for the last two months. Hopefully some cute pictures will make up for everything....

Liberty University in a nutshell

If you went to Liberty, this will most likely be hilarious. If you didn't, it might still be funny but only in the same way that sometimes you laugh at jokes that you think should be funny but then get really embarassed when someone asks you why you're laughing and you don't have a good answer.

God is the cause of Global Warming

I completely disagree with my friend Art who says that Satan and evildoers (like liberals, popes, people who don't believe in the rapture, et al.) are the cause of global warming. Although he does present some good evidence (click here to see his post), I have stumbled upon some counter-evidence that it's actually God and not Satan.

America and the Rapture Obsession

I don't know where I got this picture from but I found it in My Pictures as I was rumaging. I happened to be rumaging the same day I was reading through N.T. Wright's new book, Surprised By Hope and was even furthered in my conviction that we've made a mountain out of a non-existing mole hill in our Lahaye, Left Behind fervor. I for one don't believe in any sort of rapture, but like the sign says, in case of rapture, my eschatology will change. But it almost seems like there is this fear in some churches that if you don't believe in the rapture you won't participate in the rapture. If the idea of the rapture is somewhat debatable in Scripture the idea that if you don't believe in it you don't participate in the 2nd coming is not.

Anyway, Wright does a great job of dispelling the 2 (that's right, only 2) proof-texts given in favor of a rapture in favor of a much more holistic and culturally plausible exegesis of those texts.

WTS

My first post on the controversy at WTS. I have not been in the right mind before to post something I wouldn't regret, but I think I have calmed a little bit.

The Board of Westminster Theological Seminary had an emergency board meeting to discuss the orthodoxy and issues surrounding Pete Enns’ book Inspiration and Incarnation.

After the meeting the following announcement was sent to the board, faculty, and students of Westminster:

March 27, 2008
Thank you very much for your prayers for the special meeting of the Board of Trustees that was held on March 26 to address the disunity of the faculty regarding the theological issues related to Dr. Peter Enns’ book, Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament. After a full day of deliberation, the Board of Trustees took the following action by decisive vote:

“That for the good of the Seminary (Faculty Manual II.4.C.4) Professor Peter Enns be suspended at the close of this school year, that is May 23, 2008 (Constitution Article III, Section 15), and that the Institutional Personnel Committee (IPC) recommend the appropriate process for the Board to consider whether Professor Enns should be terminated from his employment at the Seminary. Further that the IPC present their recommendations to the Board at its meeting in May 2008.”

In order to provide the entire Westminster community with a more complete understanding of the Board’s decision and to offer an opportunity for questions and dialogue, the Chairman and Secretary of the Board will join the President on campus for a special chapel on Tuesday, April 1 at 10:30 am. Students and staff are encouraged to attend and participate. Following that special chapel, they will hold a separate meeting with the faculty.Our concern is to honor the Lord Jesus Christ and assure a faithful witness for Westminster for years to come. To that end, please pray for everyone involved during the next two months.

Jack White

Chairman of the Board

Peter Enns has shaped and formed my theology in ways that I will be forever grateful. I feel that WTS is losing an extremely important asset to their theological relevancy in the academic world. Please be praying for everyone involved.

Top Ten of 2007

I know the days of "Top Ten of 2007" are over but as an avid movie watcher I thought I would give you my list of the top 10 documentary/independent movies I saw in 2007. I love documentaries and indie films but my wife is not such a huge fan. Anyway, some are on the list because they really inspired me or helped me understand the world in a different way while others are on the list because I thought it was fascinating and interesting. I decided on listing only documentaries and indie films for 2 reasons: One, it was a much easier and smaller list to handle than all of the movies I saw in 2007 and Two, these are probably movies most of you haven't ever heard of so maybe you'll go pick a few up and give them a try. Without further ado, the list (in no particular order):

1. Ushpizin (2005): A Jewish sub-titled 'indie' film about the festival of Succoth. In the "helped me understand the world in a different way" category.

2. The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (2007): A documentary about video gaming culture and the journey of one "outsider" to break the long-standing Donkey Kong record. Definitely in the "fascinating" category.

3. The Agronomist (2002): A documentary following Jean Dominique, a Haitian journalist fighting for human rights. Category: inspiring.

4. Year of the Yao (2004): Documentary that followed Yao Ming, NBA star of the Houston Rockets, in his first year in America. Category: fascinating & interesting.

5. Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos (2006): Documentary about the soccer team the NY Cosmos and how they revolutionized soccer in America. Category: fascinating & interesting.

6. God Grew Tired of Us (2005): A Documentary following the Lost Boys of Sudan. Absolutely incredible. Category: ALL of the above.

7. Primer (2003): An incredibly low budget film made by 3 guys. highly involved and philosophical. Category: fascinating.

8. Color of the Cross (2006): A racially charged re-telling of the story of Jesus's death. Category: While not agreeing with the interpretation, it definitely widened my worldview in a healthy way.

9. The Heart of the Game (2005): Follows a high school girls basketball team. Category: Inspiring.

10. Devil's Playground (2002): A documentary that goes into the Amish teenagers "Rumspringa" or time of "sowing wild oats". Category: fascinating.

Honorable Mentions (all released in 2005 oddly enough): On a Clear Day, Grizzly Man, The Boys of Baraka, Chalk

Oprah & The New Age Jesus

I received a forward from my aunt a few days ago about Oprah and her New Age Jesus and how Christians should beware, boycott, the usual conservative response. Anyway, instead of just deleting it because I know it will make me upset, I actually read it and here was my response.

Oprah is successful and people listen to her because she is willing to give and love. People listen to her message because she seems to really care about them as people, providing for their material needs.

Conservative Christians on the other hand, typically are always on the defensive, willing to boycott and throw their hands up (and send forwards saying I am not a good Christian if I don’t send it on) at anything that challenges their “traditional values or beliefs.” What if we quit all that and started going on the offensive. We should start meeting people’s needs and caring for them (with our time and money as well as our prayers) instead of sitting around all day waiting for someone like Oprah to say one wrong word about Jesus and then condemning her for it. Maybe then people would start listening to OUR message of love and acceptance?

Maybe I would listen to people more if they were doing half of the good in this world that Oprah does. Now, she probably does have wacky views and I probably wouldn’t consider her a Christian, to be honest I don’t think I have ever even watched an entire show of hers, but I can’t help but applaud her for doing the work many Christians in this world SHOULD be doing (such as the school she started in South Africa for girls)…If we weren’t so busy talking so much about what we DON’T believe in.

Important P.S. What the heck does Oprah’s bad theology have to do with voting for Barack Obama?

This post will probably only make sense to those who received the forward, which is probably a lot of people since I got 2 in 2 days from 2 different folks. Anyway, just my thought on forwards that ask me to boycott/beware of things.

The Oscars & Art

Last night I went to my annual Oscar party, a night I look forward to each year. We each fill out a ballot to see which of us will win, which usually comes down to who guessed the winner for best short animated feature. The night was filled with sarcasm and criticism of movies and actors/actresses, red wine, popcorn, and Jon Stewart...what a great combination.

At some point in the night someone mentioned that it was great to see the Oscars because they judged movies on 'art' and not on mass appeal or box office numbers. And I want to second that notion, but also maybe go a little further with it.

According to Heidegger, 'art' is what a culture has/develops that not only encapsulates that culture but propels it, it not only symbolizes but creates. The Greek Parthenon, the ancient Catholic Cathedrals, etc, are works of art because they create the culture they are a part of. And they only do this when they are 'working' (insightful wordplay on 'work of art'). The Greek Parthenon is not 'for us' a work of art because it no longer 'works' as it did for the Greeks.

How does this relate to the Oscars? The movies that win Oscars are oftentimes what I would consider "works of art." They are movies that 'work' at creating our culture. There are many movies that have come out this year that were box office smashes, bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars. And I think that they are successful because they tap into the culture, they encapsulate the culture, they are, in a word, 'relatable.' But they do not move into the category of art, in the Heideggerian definition, because they stop at encapsulation and do no move on to propulsion. I would consider many box office smashes 'culture leeches' while I would consider many oscar winners 'culture propellers.'

Notice though that this is a general observation and not always the case since some box office smashes are also oscar winners and not all oscar winners are 'works of art,' but I did find that an interesting distinction as I sipped my red wine last night and made fun of Cameron Diaz and Miley Cyrus.

My Perfect Valentine

You know you have been married for a good amount of time and have an amazing wife when she gets you a JPS Hebrew-English TaNaKh for Valentine's Day. It also makes me think I am not a normal husband.

Zondervan's "A Reader's Hebrew Bible"

I wanted to advertise for the new Reader's Hebrew Bible that will be coming out in March that Pete told us about a few days ago. I have to admit I am excited. I use my Reader's Greek New Testament all the time, it was one of the best things I've ever bought for my study. The Hebrew Bible will contain in the footnotes all vocabulary occurring 100 times or less in the HB. It really does allow me to spend more time in the text and less time in the lexicon while at the same time not really losing any valuable study since I would be doing the same thing in a lexicon as I would by looking at the bottom of the page. The only downside is the lack of a critical apparatus but that allows for a much slimmer and light-weight Bible. I wonder if it would be okay to duct tape the Reader's GNT to the new Reader's HB?

Jim Wallis On the Poor

Yesterday I went downtown to the Free Library of Philadelphia to hear Jim Wallis speak about his new book called The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith & Politics in a Post-Religious Right America. To be honest, I actually wasn't looking forward to it all that much. I didn't know anything about Wallis or the books he'd written. But after hearing him, an evangelical Christian who teaches on faith and politics at Harvard on occasion, speak in politically neutral but passionately religious language about how it is up to us to bring revolution in the areas of poverty and other social justice issues, I was hooked.

He told a story about he a conversation he had had with Bono of U2 about the text of Luke 4:18, the first public appearance of Jesus in the synagogue. The text says this:

The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

"The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

Wallis didn't mention this but it is interesting that where Matthew has in his Beatitudes "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven," Luke simply has, "Blessed are the poor."

Wallis's point? If it's not good news to the poor (the oppressed, the forgotten), then it's not the good news of Jesus Christ. I think evangelicals are finally grasping the significance of that statement. It seems like "those liberals" were onto something after all.

The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience

In Ron Sider's great book entitled Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience: Why Are Christians Living Just Like the Rest of the World? there are some incredible statistics. The two most telling (for me at least) are those related to divorce and those related to tithing.

According to the sources Sider cites, only around 6% of Christians tithe (give 10% of their income to the church). If you are saying to yourself, "But the New Testament doesn't command us to give 10%, that's an Old Testament law," then you're missing the point. As Christians, we should give liberally and cheerfully. Personally, I feel as though something around 10% should be a minimum, but that's another story. What does this point to according to Sider? Rampant materialism and self-centeredness. We care more about having stuff and about taking care of ourselves than we do about other people and about the spread of the gospel. And I know this is true because if you're like me, even as I type this, I am justifying in 100 different ways why I don't give more than 10% of my income to the church and other gospel-oriented organizations. No wonder people like Jesus but not the church. Our money is certainly not where our mouth is.

Secondly, the divorce rate is no different among Christians than among non-Christians. In fact, of those Christians who divorced 90% were believers when they divorced (the other 10% got divorced before becoming a Christian). Why? As Sider's subtitle suggests, Christians are more interested in living just like the rest of the world, with perhaps a little more security and ticket to heaven thrown in for good measure. We aren't interested in "turning the other cheek." We think Christianity should make us happy and when it doesn't we get to take matters into our own hands.

Of course, many people suggest that statistics are unreliable, but I don't think anyone is surprised by these statistics. They aren't saying anything that we haven't already seen over the years. But the question remains, what do we do about? Or more directly, what do I do about it?

Jesus Wasn't The Messiah?

What? I saw this book in a local Christian bookstore the other day and I am actually really tempted to buy it. If there is anything I think that the Bible tries to make a case for it is Jesus's Messianic claim. I would interested to see how exactly Hagee argues for this. Without having read the book, this ad seems to say that Jesus himself never claimed to be the Messiah, was not therefore the Messiah, and therefore all of our Jewish hatred in Christian history has been unfounded and we should support Israel because Scripture clearly says we should do that.

First Problem:

Even if Jesus never claimed to be Messiah, that doesn't mean he wasn't. At least, that's what Peter and Paul think. If Jesus didn't intend to be the Messiah, we have some major doctrine of Scripture issues to work out because apparently none of the disciples got the memo.

Just doing a 5 second "biblegateway" search of the term "Christ" got me 467 times in the NT in which that term is used. Does Hagee think that was Jesus's last name or something? Any Greek-speaking Jew during the 1st century would have known "christos" to be the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew משיח or "anointed one," transliterated as Mashiach or Messiah. For more proof that this was how Paul took the term "Christ" see N.T. Wright's great book The Climax of the Covenant.

All 467 times aside though, is it true that Jesus never claimed to be the Messiah?

24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth."

25 The woman said, "I know that Messiah" (called Christ) "is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us."

26 Then Jesus declared, "I, the one speaking to you—I am he."

John 4:24-26

Without the myriad of other texts in which Jesus implicitly (as well as explicitly) shows himself to be Messiah, I think this one should be given a second thought.

But, to be fair to Hagee, I have not yet read his book. He may have some good answers to these questions, but my guess is, if he wanted to overturn all of Church History's understanding of Scripture, his book might want to be a little longer.

Oh yeah, and if I can apply Ockham's Razor to this situation, we probably shouldn't hate Jews because Jesus says we shouldn't hate anyone and should love everyone, even our enemy. Something tells me Hagee made it more complicated than it needed to be.