Vos on OT Shadows

This book, Vos’ Biblical Theology, is profound a thousand times.  Here’s one section that is stellar; it is on the types and shadows in the Mosaic economy (p. 147-148).

“The new thing is that now, in the time of Moses, a system of types is established, so that the whole organism of the world of redemption, as it were, finds a typical embodiment on earth.  The types are shadows of a body which is Christ.  If the body called Christ was an organism, then also the shadows of it, that came before, must have borne the same character.”

Brilliant, and Pauline (cf. Col 2.17)!  The Old Covenant was full of shadows, and the one that cast the shadow is Jesus.  The shadows make us look to the “caster” of the shadows, and the “caster” of the shadows directs us how to read the shadows.  Studying shadows can tell you the general form of the object, the approximate size of the object, but they can’t do what the object does.  You can’t touch a shadow or be embraced and saved by a shadow.  In other words, a shadow is something that forces us to look past it to the thing making it.  There is continuity and discontinuity.  There are also some parallels in the discussion of the sign and thing signified (sacramental language).

Vos goes on.

“In Gal. 4.3, Col. 2.20, Paul speaks of the ritual institution as ‘first rudiments of the world.’  He ascribes this rudiment-character to them because they were concerned with external, material things.  In a certain sense (though not in point of formulation) Paul placed the ceremonies of the Old Testament on a line with similar customs of pagan religions.  In paganism the religious rites possessed this character through their general dependence on the inclination towards symbolism.  In the Mosaic institutions this natural symbolism also lay at the basis, but here there was a special divine control in the shaping of the materials.  Because this truth found expression in physical forms, we say that it came on a lower plane….  In Heb. 9.1, the tabernacle is called ‘a worldly sanctuary,’ that is, a sanctuary belonging to this physical world.  It was appropriate that after this fashion a sort of artificial substratum should be created for the truth of redemption to rest upon.  The truth shuns suspension in the air.  In the New Testament it has the accomplished facts to attach itself to.  While these were yet in the making a provisional support was constructed for them in the ceremonial institutions.”

Again, outstanding.  In a nutshell, Vos says that the OT Israelite ceremonies’ earthiness had a reason.  Unlike pagan ceremonies, the OT ceremonies were shaped by God for a deeper purpose.  Symbols are not enough; they just hang in the air.  There must be something symbolized.  The problem with the pagan ceremonies is just that: they’re pagan, with no divine truth behind them.  In the shadow terms, a shadow cannot exist on its own; if it does, it is a ghost, a phantom, not a conveyor of anything true.  The judaizers in the NT were living in the realms of the shadows and refused to look to the One who cast the shadows; that is why Paul can call the OT shadows “first rudiments of the world.”  Apart from Christ, they’re empty as a tribal dance to the wind-god.  This is also why Yahweh – through the prophets – brought the lawsuit against Israel despite the fact that they were still sacrificing and celebrating feasts to some extent.  They (like the NT judaizers) were depending on the shadows and their performance in the shadowy world to keep them in God’s favor (Jesus uses words like “woe” for these kind!).

If you’ve not read Vos, or if it has been awhile, I very strongly recommend you grab this.  It is not easy to read, but it will keep on challenging you.  It also has a helpful subject and scripture index in the back, which makes it a great tool to use in later studies.  For you OT & NT students, you’ll appreciate the way Vos interacted with the “higher” critics of his day (c. 1940).  He utilized them, but well refuted some of their points by way of exegesis.

shane lems

sunnyside wa

Intro to ANE and OT Studies: Parallels

There are quite a few good books out there which serve the purpose of tying together or somehow relating the OT to the parallel ANE documents. A few that come to mind are Jack Sasson’s Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, Amelie Kuhrt’s The Ancient Near East, and the classic set edited by J. B. Pritchard, Ancient Near East. I recently also noticed Kenton Sparks’ Ancient Texts for the Study of the Hebrew Bible as well as Hess’ Israelite Religions: An Archaeological and Biblical Survey and Walton’s Ancient Near East Thought and the Old Testament. These texts are helpful, though some of these are quite expensive (Sasson & Kuhrt, for example).  Others of them may be too much for pastors or students who are not experts in the field (Hess, for example).   The Walton text is helpful, but you can’t read the ANE texts for yourself, if that’s what you’re after.  I admit I’m not the expert here, nor have I read the above books cover to cover.  I’ll let Andrew and our OT students comment more on these things.  ::::UPDATE May 29::::: John has a helpful post here (and elsewhere on his blog) if you want to dig a bit deeper in this realm (pun intended).

I used the Pritchard volume(s) in seminary, so I can and do vouch for those.  You can see pictures and the ANE texts themselves (translated, of course).   In these volumes you can read ANE war texts, temple dedication texts, letters, hymns, treaties, myths and so forth from ANE cultures/civilizations (Sumer, Assyria, Babylon, and so on).

One that I just purchased and have found useful is Old Testament Parallels: Laws and Stories from the Ancient Near East by Victor Matthews and Don Benjamin (the newly expanded/revised edition just came out a few years ago).  So far, I’ve enjoyed this book.  Basically, it follows the structure of the OT (Pentateuch to Prophets) and lists several examples from ANE texts of clear parallels.  There is a Scripture index in the back, so, for example, if you were preaching on Psalm 68 you’d see that on page 250 an ancient Baal text is listed.  It says,

“Listen to me, almighty Ba’al
Hear me out, Rider of the Clouds
Now is the time for you to strike
Slay your enemies and eliminate your rivals
Now is the time to found an everlasting kingdom
Establish your dominion throughout all generations!”

This echoes Psalm 68 (or Psalm 68 echoes it), where Yahweh arises and his enemies are scattered, driven away, and melted like wax.  Psalm 68 is a poem where Yahweh ascends on high, leading captivity captive and giving gifts to men while slaying his enemies.  The parallels are obvious.

All in all, the Mathews/Benjamin book is a good start when studying ANE/OT parallels.  Granted, they do not discuss comparative studies with regard to methodology, use of texts, archaeology, and so forth (Andrew will tell us where to go for that!), but it does give the reader a little window into some ANE texts which clearly are similar to OT texts.

Feel free to add to this post by way of comment; it is just the tip of the iceberg, sort of a “way to begin” thinking about reading ANE texts in the Christian’s study.

One more note: You’ll recognize the above names Walton and Matthews if you have The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament – they did much of the work on that, and it is a good though brief one volume OT/ANE parallel commentary, very much worth getting.

shane lems

sunnyside wa

The Sabbath and the Small Church

Here’s some more great stuff from Preaching and Worship in the Small Church by Willimon and Wilson (Nashville: Abigdon, 1980).  This time the authors write about the primary activity of the small church: Sunday worship.

The authors lament the fact that a hundred other things have taken the place of Sunday worship in American churches.  Sunday school, Wednesday night prayer services, youth groups, ladies’ groups, mens’ groups, singles’ groups, college groups, endless committee meetings, social-action programs, and so forth threaten the “centrality of Sunday” (p. 39).  “Sunday worship became the victim of the ‘full-program church’ mentality.”  Long ago, a defining part of the definition of being a Christian was: “he goes to church on Sunday.”  Now that person is “quickly informed that that was only a small part of the Christian life.  ‘What you do outside the church is more important than what you do inside the church,’ was how the slogan went.”  All the other programs and events and meetings and groups “conspired to convince people that worship was only one small part of the full program.”

“Such thinking had an undeniable appeal to the pragmatic, utilitarian, work-oriented society, such as we have in the United States.  Time spent in worship tends to be thought of as idle time – unused time.  We are a nation of doers and achievers.  How can ‘acts’ of worship compete in importance alongside activities such as Christian education, counseling, youth programs, board meetings, Bible study groups, and charitable work?  The ‘active’ church with its doors always open, meetings in progress every night of the week, newsletters recruiting participants for a host of activities, insuring that every person is kept busy throughout the week (provided that person truly wishes to be an ‘active’ church member) has become the paradigm for any church that aspires to greatness” (p. 40).  “Even the worship services of those [busy] churches frequently have a breathless, hurried, distracted quality” (p. 42).

The authors continue the discussion by explaining the fact that doesn’t seem obvious: small churches don’t (can’t!) usually have those programs, events, committees, and so forth, but that is good news.  Because they lack these programs, the authors argue, “small churches celebrate Sunday in a fashion that puts many of their larger sister churches to shame” (p. 41).   “Congregational worship is a reliable barometer of the life of the small church.  Here the church family will celebrate its victories, lament its defeats, act out its deepest needs.  The small church will often express an intense sense of ownership of its Sunday worship practices.”  Often, Willimon and Wilson note, many small church parishioners will violently react to radical change in Sunday service.   They say well that this should be viewed as a positive thing: it shows that the saints there value the Divine service above other church “stuff.”

This is a great word for those of us who are members of smaller churches (quite a few of us I’m guessing!).  It is tempting to emulate the mega-church down the street and literally “get busy” as a church.  The problem with this is, as the above notes reflect well, that the busyness swallows the Divine service on Sunday.  The church gets spread out so thinly that it is like a beehive with the saints all buzzing past each other.  The only time they actually stop doing something is during the pastor’s prayer and brief sermon on Sunday morning, around 30 minutes total.  The rest of the service is filled with activity, swirled in with the activity during the week.  The 30 minutes of “rest” or quietness becomes a footnote in the life of the saint: every second of the rest of the week has a full calendar screaming out to get to work!

I’ve noticed the benefit of worship in a small church.  Sunday is different.  We stop.  We think.  We laugh.  We cry.  We rest.  We sit still and be quiet, learning how to receive from God as passive listeners to his word.  We are fed by Jesus.  We teach our kids to quit fussing around (which we ironically do all week!), we practice the cycle of God’s time.  This goes against the grain of our nature and culture, but as Willimon and Wilson say, this is a great way for a small church to recover their own unique sense of mission and restore their positive self-image.  When we in small churches “boldly claim the fundamental significance of Sunday for [our] congregational life” we will be a great light of rest to the darkness of the busy world around us.  And above that, we’ll be reminded that we’re pilgrims who depend on God’s word to live each week of our lives.

shane lems

sunnyside wa

Historiography and Eisenhower, Part II

Earlier, I put a post out concerning historiography – the writing of history.  Basically, my main point was that though we well affirm the historicity of the OT texts, we don’t have all the answers when it comes to the methodology of the OT (human) authors.  We have a clear, authoritative, and accurate window into the OT, but it is a small one, one which will never answer all our questions.  This post is part two of the same subject, using the same book on Eisenhower by Korda.

The second thing about history writing I want to note from this book is how the author breaks conventional or normal ways of writing a biography by starting out with Eisenhower’s D-Day experiences (and the days leading up to it). But because Korda is not doing the “normal” way of writing history, he has to explain why he starts in the middle of Ike’s story: “History has to be written chronologically, but in life it is sometimes the big moments that count” (p. 24).  Korda knows well that the modern way of writing and reading history is A, B, C, D chronology, so when he does C A B D instead, he lets us know that he is doing it and why he is doing it.

We don’t have that same luxury when reading and studying OT texts.  The authors rarely outright tell us that they’re breaking the “norm” much less why they break the “norm.”  Further, as noted earlier, we’re not even 100% sure of the “norm.”  A quick read shows that the OT narrators were not overly interested in A B C D chronology; it wasn’t necessarily the “normal” way to write history. For the most part, the OT writers were following the writing standards of their day from an ideological/theological (not scientific/biological) point of view.

As I said in the last post, these things should make us pause when considering OT narratives; just when we think we “got it,” it slips away from us because there is more to think about than just a bare or nudus recounting of a story. There are writing standards followed, broken, and assumed by the authors which are very much different than our standards today.  All the while we have to be careful not to impose our standards on them.

If you’ve ever seen the TV show LOST, one of the reasons that it is so utterly fascinating is because it is so utterly huge and unpredictable – the viewer only has a little grip of the story.  Each time he thinks he understands it, an overwhelming and incredible new scene is introduced, and his grip of the story is loosed significantly.  So it is with the OT historiography.  It is exciting because it is 1000 times bigger than the reader; our understanding of it is just a teaspoonful of the Pacific.  Then a wave comes and rocks our boats and refills our little spoons.  But that spoonful we have is authoritative, sufficient, and able to do to us what God intended.

If we ever fully “get it,” we’ll be racked with more boredom than an 11th grade kid in biology!

shane lems

sunnyside wa

Lloyd-Jones on Treasures in Heaven

In his great collection of sermons on the Sermon on the Mount, Lloyd-Jones has an excellent piece on Matthew 6.19-20.

First of all, what is a treasure that we might have?  “‘Treasures’ is a very large term and all-inclusive.  It includes money, but it is not money only. …Our Lord is concerned here not so much about our possessions as with our attitude towards our possessions.  It is not what a man may have, but what he thinks of his wealth, his attitude towards it. …It is a question of one’s whole attitude towards life in this world.  Our Lord is dealing here with people who get their main, or even total, satisfaction in this life from things that belong to this world only.  …No matter what it is, or how small it is, if it is everything to you, that is your treasure, that is the thing for which you are living.”

Later in the sermon he asks, “How do we do this in practice?”

Answers: “The first thing is to have a right view of life, and especially a right view of ‘the glory.’  The great fact of which we must never lose sight is that in this life we are but pilgrims.  We are walking through this world under the eye of God, in the direction of God and towards our everlasting hope. …If we always think of ourselves in that way, how can we go wrong?  Everything will then fall into position.”

Next, says Lloyd-Jones, if we have the view that we’re pilgrims, then “we shall immediately take a right view of our gifts and our possessions.  We begin to think of ourselves only as stewards who must give an account of them. …The Christian starts by saying, ‘I am not the possessor of these things; I merely have them on lease, and they do not really belong to me.  …I do not cling to these things.  They do not become the centre of my life and existence.  I do not live for them or dwell upon them constantly in my mind; they do not absorb my life.  On the contrary, I hold them loosely; I am in a state of blessed detachment from them.  I am not governed by them; rather do I govern them; and as I do this I am steadily securing, and safely laying up for myself, ‘treasures in heaven.’”

From Studies in the Sermon on the Mount (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976), 353-357.

This book is great, by the way.  I use it in my sermon prep with great benefit (though it is well nigh depressing to use, simply because reading it makes me realize my sermons sound like a scared second grader trying to spell “stammer” in front of the large spelling bee crowd!).  Anyway, no one should preach/teach the Sermon on the Mount without this book on his/her shelves.

shane lems

sunnyside wa