Literary Structure of the OT

I posted on this excellent book earlier.  I also just noticed that the WSC bookstore now carries it – priced competitively with Amazon.  I’ll review this more later as I use it, but as many of you said earlier, it is a great work!  It is worth the 30 some bucks if you are studying or teaching the OT.

shane lems

sunnyside wa

OT Hebrew Literary Structure

This is an oustanding resource: David Dorsey, The Literary Structure of the OT (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999). It is a literary commentary on the OT.  Dorsey breaks down many sections of the OT into literary outlines, which helps the OT student see the narrative/literary “shape” of many OT stories and sections.

The first few chapters are introductory material, covering topics such as the arrangement of literary units in the OT, the structure and meaning of the units, and the importance and value of structural analysis.  After this, Dorsey goes through the books of the law, the historical books, the poetic books, and the major/minor prophets; he then outlines major parts of each.  This is a great help when preaching and teaching the OT.

Here are a few quotes which give a nice taste of Dorsey’s emphasis.

“The pages of the Old Testament reflect a keen interest in literary structure.  Hebrew authors and editors generally took great pains to arrange their compositions in way that would help convey their messages” (p. 15).

“The blandness of an ancient text’s appearance reflects… the cultural reality that ancient texts were written primarily to be heard, not seen.  Texts were normally intended to be read aloud, whether one was reading alone or to an audience.  Accordingly, an ancient writer was compelled to use structural signals that would be perceptible to the listening audience.  Signals were geared for the ear not the eye, since visual markers would be of little value to a listening audience” (p. 16).

“To investigate structure in the Hebrew Bible, the reader must lay aside Western expectations and watch for these less familiar structuring conventions that were indigenous to ancient Israel – much as modern linguists must do when working with unwritten tribal languages” (p. 16).

Here’s a statement that is one of the reasons why Dorsey emphasises structure: “The organization of a literary work contributes to and is an integral part of the work’s meaning” (p. 17).

I’ll write more on this later as I read more.  So far, so good; wish I’d have found it a few years ago!

shane lems

sunnyside wa

Hauerwas: Theses on Christian Ethics

 In The Hauerwas Reader, edited by John Berkman and Michael Cartwright, there is an essay of Stanley Hauerwas from 1981 called “Reforming Christian Social Ethics: Ten Theses.”  I’m not a pacifist (but I hate war and love peace), nor am I “with” Hauerwas in every way, but a lot of the stuff he says is provacative and very much worth pondering.  Here are a few examples.

Thesis Three: “The ability to provide and adequate account of our existence is the primary test of the truthfulness of a social ethic.  No society can be just or good that is built on falsehood.  The first task of Christian social ethics, therefore, is not to make the ‘world’ better or more just, but to help Christian people form their community consistent with their conviction that the story of Christ is a truthful account of our existence.  For as H. R. Niebuhr argued, only when we know ‘what is going on,’ do we know ‘what we should do,’ and Christians believe that we learn most decisively ‘what is going on’ in the cross and resurrection of Christ.”

Thesis Five: The primary social task of the church is to be itself – that is, a people who have been formed by a story that provides them with the skills for negotiating the danger of this existence, trusting in God’s promise of redemption.  The church is a people on a journey who insist on living consistent with the conviction that God is the Lord of history.  They thus refuse to resort to violence in order to secure their survival.  The fact that the first task of the church is to be itself is not a rejection of the world or a withdrawal ethic, but a reminder that Christians must serve the world on their own terms; otherwise the world would have no means to know itself as the world.”

Thesis Six: “Christian social ethics can only be done from the perspective of those who do not seek to control national or world history but who are content to live ‘out of control.’ …For to be out of control means Christians can risk trusting in gifts, so they have no reason to deny the contingent character of our existence.”

Thesis Nine: “For the church to be, rather than to have, a social ethic means we must recapture the social significance of common behavior, such as acts of kindness, friendship, and the formation of families.  …One of the most profound commitments of a community…is providing a context that encourages us to trust and depend upon one another.”

One more, thesis ten, without comment: “The church does not exist to provide an ethos for democracy or any other form of social organization, but stands as a political alternative to every nation, witnessing to the kind of social life possible for those that have been formed by the story of Christ.”

Stanley Hauerwas, The Hauerwas Reader, ed. J. Berkman and M. Cartwright (London: Duke University Press, 2001), chapter 5.

shane lems

sunnyside wa

Historiography….and Eisenhower

Andrew and I have been discussing OT history and historiography.  We’re wrestling through hermeneutical questions such as “What and how does the text tell us about history?”  We’re finding, as many others have already noted in various ways, that these are some tough questions because there are a thousand things to consider when answering them.

Let me explain with some excerpts and comments from a biography on Dwight Eisenhower by Michael Korda, namely, Ike: An American Hero (New York: HarperCollins, 2008).  Two things in this book are worth thinking about as we consider histories and historiography, or writing history.  I’ll mention just the first one in this post (the second to follow in a day or two).

First, here’s Korda: “It is not easy to get military ranks correct in dealing with several nations over a long period of time.  To avoid confusion, therefore, I have attempted throughout to give the people mentioned in the book their correct rank at the time about which I am writing” (xviii; emphasis his).  Korda also talks about how he deals with name changes due to change in rank and terminology over the years.

This begs many questions for those of us thinking of OT history and history writing.  From what period in Israel’s history did the author, when writing, utilize the the weights, city names, people names, measurements, numbering, ranks, etc.?  Would he use the standard terminology at the time he wrote, or of the time about which he wrote?  Would the original audience just pick up on these things because there was a “normal” way that people wrote back then, some sort of conventional way to write history that we don’t have much information about?  What if he didn’t follow the conventional way of writing, but it was so obvious to the readers that they understood the breach – but we don’t?  What about those parts of the OT that had editors/redactors (like the person(s) who finished the Pentateuch after Moses died)?  Which conventions did they follow when writing or editing?

In the OT, the author didn’t always give us the clues that Korda did; the project becomes more difficult when asking these types of questions.   Considerations like these should make us pause or at least hesitate when answering certain questions of historiography in the OT.  These types of questions and the difficulty in answering them results in less “I’ve-got-the-text-nailed-down” thinking and more amazement at the depth of OT text which portrays history.  It is not a boring scientific endeavor to make all the pieces fit like a mathematical 1 to 1 ratio; rather, it is a rich and thick mosaic that we just won’t “nail-down” as pilgrims.  Of course, we don’t have to throw up our arms in skepticism because the text we have is sufficient and accurate, able to instruct, teach, admonish, reprove, save, and so forth.

In theological terms, we don’t have some sort of univocal perspective on history/historiography, yet neither do we have an equivocal one.  Ours is the pilgrim one: analogical.

Stay tuned for part II next time – we’ll ask some questions on “rules” of history writing along with chronological history writing.  This book on Eisenhower, by the way, is a great read if you’re a history buff!

shane lems

sunnyside wa

Frei on Precritical Biblical Interpretation

I’ve been reading Hans Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative (New York: Yale, 1974) for the past few weeks.  This book is quite deep and thick and rich – I know for sure I’m only tracking with the main points that Frei is making.  I enjoy it, but it’s going to take one or two more readings for me to fill in all the blanks.  The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative is not for sissies!

In this book, among other things, Frei notes the huge change/morph in biblical interpretation from the pre-critical to the critical period (roughly speaking, before and during the enlightenment).  Here are two elements of biblical interpretation that changed radically.

First: In pre-critical hermeneutics “if it seemed clear that a biblical story was to be read literally, it followed automatically that it referred to and described actual historical occurrences.   The true historical reference of a story was a direct and natural concomitant of its making literal sense.  This is a far cry from taking the fact that a passage or text makes best sense at a literal level as evidence that it is a reliable historical report.  When commentators turned from the former to the latter interpretive use of literal meaning or used the two confusedly, it marked a new stage in the history of interpretation – a stage for which deistic convictions, empirical philosophy, and historical criticism form part of the technical intellectual background” (p. 2).  If I can reword this or comment on it, I think the difference Frei is pointing out is that in the pre-critical era, the text made sense because it described history accurately.  In the critical era, the shift is huge: the text made sense in so far as it described history accurately.  Hence historical criticism grew like a weed.

Second: In the pre-critical era, “if the real historical world described by several biblical stories is a single world of one temporal sequence, there must in principle be one cumulative story to depict it” (Ibid.).  Frei goes on to say that this means the many smaller narratives fit into the bigger or main one.  Hence, interpretation in the pre-critical era consisted of figures/types (which were the smaller narratives and stories) which pointed to the bigger or main story.  “Without loss to its own literal meaning or specific temporal reference, an earlier story was a figure of a later one” (Ibid.).    The OT types and figures were promises that were fulfilled in the NT, which was one huge thing that held the Scriptures together.  What happened in the critical era of interpretation was that the literal and figurative (typological) reading of the narratives ceased to be allies and instead became almost foes.  “Historical criticism and biblical theology were different enterprises and made for decidedly strained company” (p 8.).

To summarize, Frei makes a strong case for the huge and paradigmatic shift from precritical to critical biblical interpretation.  The former (precritical, which includes the Reformers and their scholastic successors) viewed Scripture as historically reliable with types/figures as arrows that pointed to the overarching story of redemption.  When the enlightenment-critical period came, the figural and historical were divorced and almost at odds.  The BT guys focused on the figural, and the critical guys focused on the historical, which resulted in much hermeneutical hay.

More on this later.  For a great study in this, don’t forget to read Richard Muller’s Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, especially volume two on Scripture.  Muller doesn’t fully chart the above shift, but charts the waters up to and a little into the shift.  It is fascinating to see how rationalism and deism hurt biblical interpretation.  It is also fascinating from our point of view to see how criticism can be done at a “faith seeking understanding” level; we can learn from the critics, even if we don’t adopt their methods.

shane lems

sunnyside wa

Prose and Poetry or Narrative Prologues and Poetic Epilogues

Some OT scholars make hay with the seeming discrepancies between Exodus 14 (the exodus narrative proper) and Exodus 15 (the poetic or hymnic reflection on the exodus).  For example, they discuss the history, authorship, and date of the two chapters.  It is true: on close reading of the two texts, one can see some differences such as how the Egyptians drowned, how the Lord did his work, and how the people passed through on dry land.  These “oddities” are what caused the older critics to snip the text up into different pieces.  Some older critics say that Ex 15 is a late poem which has features of both “J” and “P;” this accounts for some of the oddities.

An alternative way to answer these “oddities” is by utilizing the basic point that Richard D. Patterson made in his article, “Victory at Sea: Prose and Poetry in Exodus 14-15″ (Bibliotheca Sacra 161, Jan-Mar 2004).  Patterson first shows several older Egyptian texts that are very similar to Ex 14-15 in this way: there is prose about a battle by a great Pharaoh, then there is a poem about the Pharaoh’s prowess on the battle field.  Patterson then notes several places in the Pentateuch that follow this pattern.  His main emphasis is relationship between the narrative in Ex 14 and the poetic response (a sort of victory psalm) in Ex 15.  There are similarities (theme and vocab) and differences (cf. above) between the two, but this type of relationship between prose and poetry in ANE/OT texts is not abnormal.

How then do we deal with those differences?  “One must deal with the final form of the full story…including the use of poetry set within the flow of the narrative” (p. 50).  Furthermore, “the literary constraints attendant to the genres of prose and poetry inevitably require that each should be evaluated on its own terms.  The victory song of 15:1-18 should not be pressed with a literalistic hermeneutic and the prose narrative should not be expected to contain all the sensational features of the poem” (p. 52).  Though Patterson says more, notice these two. 1) We have to deal with the text as is, despite what one may think about history and author (cf. Childs in Exodus, p. 248).  2) Since they are different genres,  they need to be interpreted (evaluated) on their own terms.  In other words, of course poetry is going to be different than narrative!

Let me use Enns’ similar comments in his Exodus commentary to bolster what Patterson said.

“If we go through this song, as many have done, with a fine-toothed comb, looking for possible discrepancies with the narrative of chapter 14, we will find them; but in doing so we will have misread the song.  It is a modern Western penchant to require complete ‘consistency’ between accounts, but the biblical authors are not so concerned.  We must resist the temptation to impose our modern expectations on a text, which ancient texts are not always prepared [or meant to - spl] to shoulder” (p. 297).

The “oddities” are not insuperable or contradictory, but Ex 14 and Ex 15 give us different perspectives on the same event.  Ex 15 is “a poetic expression of what we have seen in narrative form in 14:14: ‘the LORD will fight for you.’  The battle is God’s; hence, from his vantage point, there is no struggle” (Enns, 305).  In other words, Ex 15 is different in genre (it is a poem with poetic features) and perspective (it is from heaven’s point of view) than Ex 14.  This accounts for the differences, not an amalgamation of textual snippets.

shane lems

sunnyside wa

God’s New Language

Here are a few thought provoking words for the day from Stanley Hauerwas.

“At Pentecost God created a new language, but it was a language that is more than words.  It is instead a community whose memory of its savior creates the miracle of being a people whose very differences contribute to their unity.  We call this new creation church.  It is constituted by word and sacrament, as the story we tell, the story we embody, must not only be told but enacted.  In the telling we are challenged to be a people capable of hearing God’s good news such that we can be a witness to others.”

“The creation of such a people is indeed dangerous, as we know from Babel.  For the very strength that comes from our unity has too often led the church to believe that it can build the tower of unity through our own efforts.  Not content to wait, we try to make God’s unity a reality for all people through coercion rather than witness….  Such a history of unfaithfulness has led many to downplay the peculiar mission of the church to witness to the world the reconstitution of humankind through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.”

“To be a disciple of Jesus is not enough to know the basic ‘facts’ of life.  It is not enough to know his story.  Rather, to be a disciple of Jesus means that our lives must literally be taken up into the drama of God’s redemption of this creation.   That is the work of the Spirit as we are made part of God’s new time through the life and work of this man, Jesus of Nazareth.”

Taken from The Hauerwas Reader (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), 148-9.  The article originally appeared in the festscrhift for Hans Frei that Garrett Green edited in 1987.

shane lems

sunnyside wa

John’s Gospel: Trial, Testimony, Structure, and Minor Characters

John’s Gospel is a gospel of trial and testimony. Trials take place: Jesus on trial, his followers on trial, the world on trial, the Pharisees on trial, the Jews on trial, the reader on trial – it is a book of trials. It is also a book of testimony – legal witness that Jesus is whom he says. There is verbal testimony (truly truly I say to you…) and there is visible testimony (miracles/signs). John’s Gospel contains word and work evidence that Jesus is who he says he is. If you remember from earlier posts, Andrew Lincoln is a great source for this trial/testimony theme in John’s Gospel (Trial and Testimony [Peabody: Hendrickson, 2000] as well as The Gospel According to Saint John [Peabody: Hendrikson, 2005]).

Not only is John’s Gospel a gospel of trial and testimony, it is also a narrative masterpiece. There is irony, humor, sarcasm, metaphor, word-play, story, character, conflict, resolution, etc. There are seven minor characters closely associated with Jesus’ words and signs (Jesus’ mother, the royal official & his son, the lame man, Peter, the blind man, Lazarus [including Mary & Martha], and Jesus’ mother once again at the cross). In a helpful article on these seven minor characters and the narrative aspect of John, James Howard argues that these seven drive the narrative along while emphasizing several key Johaninne motifs (belief, unbelief, glory, death, etc.). Howard’s article is good, but he doesn’t draw out the trial and testimony motif enough.

I would add to Howard’s list, following Lincoln, that these seven minor figures are also used by John as witnesses. They are actual and literary witnesses to the veracity of Jesus Christ and his own self-testimony. The minor figures sit on the witness stand of this cosmic trial, proving that Jesus is indeed who he said he was. Jesus is the light of the world: the blind man sees. Jesus is the good shepherd, who, like YHWH in the OT, heals and brings his sheep home: the sick son and lame man are healed. Jesus is the resurrection and life: Lazarus comes out of the tomb after 4 days of death. The list goes on. John brilliantly weaves these witnesses into the overall narrative structure of the gospel, so that as different witnesses take the stand, the reader is more and more convinced that Jesus is the I AM, the Messiah promised long ago, the true Son of God. There is progression in this trial: as it moves on, the witnesses become more convincing, the prosecutors become more hostile, and Jesus ultimately dies and rises again, which is the capstone of all witness, proving that his testimony is undoubtedly true. In all of this there is trial irony: Jesus and his followers are on trial the whole way through, while in the end through his death and resurrection he is the judge who puts unbelievers on trial. There is a divine table-turning as the accused becomes the accuser.

John can do this – he did actually witness these events, after all. Further, he wrote the gospel so that the readers believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God – and that by this faith they may have life in his name (John 20.31). Every drop of evidence proves as much. John could have given more testimony, but guided by the Spirit he chose just this testimony and ordered it just so for the purpose that we believe it, so the testimony frees us because it is the truth.  The minor characters as John uses them serve the purpose of testimony so that by our trust in this testimony we are not in the dock, but with Christ, cleared from all guilt.

The article mentioned above is James Howard, “The Significance of Minor Characters in the Gospel of John” Bibliotheca Sacra 163 (2006): 63-78.

shane lems

sunnyside wa

Jon Levenson on the Historical Prologue of the Treaty

Jewish OT scholar Jon Levenson again shines as he discusses the suzerainty treaty/covenant in the ancient Near East/OT.  Here he is speaking specifically of the historical prologue.  This is worth reading a few times!

“Israel began to infer and to affirm her identity by telling a story.  To be sure, the story has implications that can be stated as propositions.  For example, the intended implication of the historical prologue is that YHWH is faithful, that Israel can rely on God as a vassal must rely upon his suzerain.  But Israel does not begin with the statement that YHWH is faithful; she infers it from a story.  And unlike the statement, the story is not universal.  It is Israel’s story, with all the particularities of time, place, and dramatis personae one associates with a story and avoids in a statement that aims at universal applicability.”

“In other words, if there is a universal truth of the sort philosophers and even some religions aim to state, Israel seems to have thought that such truth will come through the medium of history, through the structure of public knowledge, through time, and not in spite of these.  History, the arena of public events (as opposed to private, mystical revelation and to philosophical speculation), and time are not illusions or distractions from essential reality.  They are means to the knowledge of God.  The historical prologue is a miniature theology of history” (Jon D. Levenson, Sinai and Zion: An Entry into the Jewish Bible [New York: Harper Collins, 1985], 39-40).

Wow.  This statement has huge implications for systematic theology, hermeneutics, homiletics, and so forth.  Similarly, notice how Brueggemann talks about “strong verbs:” the OT focus on verbs, he says, “commits us in profound ways to a narrative portrayal of Yahweh, in which Yahweh is the one who is said to have done these deeds” (Walter Brueggeman, Theology of the Old Testament [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997], 145).

shane lems

sunnyside wa