Sorry for the delay

For those few of you who do read my blog, I apologize for the lack of posting last month. I am really being hounded by deadlines right now. I have been out of town for Christmas and I have to have my course in Biblical Hermeneutics written and sent by Feb 1, I have 60 Amos exams to grade by next week, and we've just begun a new series at Encounter on James so I have had to gear up for that the past few weeks. I will be back...promise. Pray for my next month as I finish up all these projects and take a break for a few months! [And by break I mean focusing on my pastoring, taking only one class, and only being a TA for Mike's OTI].

Top 10 Movies I Watched This Year

Keep in mind, I don't ever actually go to the movies, I always rent them, so these probably came out in 2007. I have chosen these not based on entertainment value but on impact, either intellectual, emotional, or spiritual. In no particular order:

1. Lars & the Real Girl

2. The Great Debaters

3. The Savages

4. In the Valley of Elah

5. For the Bible Tells Me So

6. The Last Kiss

7. Martian Child

8. Horton Hears a Who

9. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

10. When Nietzsche Wept

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.