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

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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

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Childs and Brueggemann: Canonical Text or Canonical Interpreter?

I’ve appreciated much of Brevard Childs’ work in terms of biblical theology and his discussion of the canon.  I’ve also enjoyed reading some of Walter Brueggemann.  In an adaptation of Childs’ Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments, namely Biblical Theology: A Proposal, Childs notes Brueggemann’s criticism of his canonical proposal.  This is pretty fascinating, but also rather involved, so I’ll do my best to summarize it in clear terms (the quotes are from Biblical Theology: A Proposal, pages 40-44).

First, Brueggemann says that Childs focuses on the theological aspect of Scripture using only the text as the authority instead of the theological content.  Brueggeman says the authority should be in the theological context rather than the text itself.

Second, Brueggemann parts ways with Childs by suggesting that the “canonical interpreter” is the decisive thing that hands over (tradent) the theological norm.  In other words, Brueggemann says the interpreter is engaged in the ongoing process of actualizing the text to recover the freeing concerns God has in the world.  Childs would disagree.

Third, Brueggemann emphasizes the need to read the theological substance of the Bible from the point of view of the oppressed in society, like Israel often was (or those within Israel were).  Basically, the theological substance of the Bible has to do with the oppressed being freed from alternative power structures.  Childs, of course, wouldn’t highlight this the way Brueggemann does.

Childs says that Brueggeman, in these critiques and differences, misses his main point: “The whole point of focusing on scripture as canon in opposition to the anthropocentric tradition of liberal protestantism is to emphasize that the biblical text and its theological function as authoritative form belong inextricably together” (p. 42).   Sharply, Childs notes that though Brueggemann would cringe at this suggestion, his (Brueggemann’s) hermeneutical move is identical to that of the Enlightenment.

Why or how?  Because, writes Childs, Brueggemann separates the text and the norm (content).  Brueggemann focuses on the norm or content within a certain community in which the text begins to work.  Childs describes Brueggemann’s method: “The inert text…receives its meaning when it is correlated with some other external cultural force, ideology, or mode of existence” (p. 42).  Childs says this  proposal of Brueggemann is radically different than his own.

Here’s Childs’ punch line, so to speak.  “The saddest part of the proposal is that Walter Brueggemann is sincerely striving to be a confessing theologian of the Christian church, and would be horrified at being classified as a most eloquent defender of the Enlightenment, which his proposal respecting the biblical canon actually represents” (p. 44).

Wow! That’s pretty significance.  If you’re interested on some background layers of this discussion (the “text v norm” or “text v interpretation”) you’ll have to voyage through Hans Frei’s Eclipse of Biblical Narrative .  Also, let me note, I’m pretty sure the serious student of the OT would find bigger sections of Brueggemann’s Theology of the Old Testament helpful, as I have, though some of his methodology  might make you scratch your head (if you agree with Childs as I do).

shane lems

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Exodus: A Book/Commentary List

I’ve been preaching through Exodus the last six months or so, and have found the following commentaries and books to be helpful, each in its own way.  The first part is the commentary list, the second is a list of books that contain parts of Exodus themes.  Note: I’ve printed out and used hundreds (literally!) of articles from CBQ, JETS, JSOT, etc., but for obvious reasons I’m not going to list them.  It is, however, more helpful at times to refer to specific journal articles than the commentaries.  Just for fun, I did the “star” rating (5 being tops).

An Exodus Book List (in no specific order)

Brevard Childs, The Book of Exodus in the OTL series. *****

Nahum Sarna, Exodus in the JPS Torah series (Jewish Publication Society) *****

Peter Enns, Exodus, in the NIV Application Commentary Series *****

Terrence Fretheim, Exodus in the Interpretation series ***

John Calvin, Harmony of the Books of Moses ***

Nancy Ganz, Herein is Love – a children’s commentary on the book of Exodus ***

Phil Ryken, Exodus in the Preaching the Word series *****

Walter Kaiser, Exodus, in the Expositor’s Bible Commentary ***

Selections from the following books: (again, in no specific order)

Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology *****

Peter Enns, Inspiration and Incarnation*****

Meredith Kline, Kingdom Prologue and God, Heaven, and Har-Magedon *****

Tremper Longman, Immanuel in Our Place in The Gospel According to the OT series ****

Vern Poythress, The Shadow of Christ in the Law of Moses ****

Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament ***

Various, Dictionary of Biblical Imagery (IVP) *****

Various, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament ****

Jon Levenson, Sinai and Zion *****

G. Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission***

Victor Matthews, etc. Old Testament Parallels: Laws and Stories from the ANE ****

—

Enjoy – and feel free to add more; I certainly have left some out.

shane lems

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The Difficulty of Ex 24: Childs’ Proposal

Ex 24 is anything but easy with regard to clear connection in and style of the text.  Even a quick read makes a person scratch his/her head, wondering why it is a bit choppy.  One example: not only is this section of Exodus out of chronological order, even this chapter is “dischronologized.”  It seems as if vv 3-8 interrupt the flow of vv 1-2 and 9ff.  Of course, the author(s) no doubt had a reason for this order, but that’s tough to discern.  Here’s how Childs handles the tension.

He speaks about two ways this tension has been approached.  One (the LXX and the Targums) “attempted to fill in the missing gaps in the ongoing narrative and to harmonize the difficulties.”  The weakness of this approach “lies in its failure to deal seriously enough with the given text, substituting one’s own opinion of what the text should have said.”

The second approach, found in the “recent critical commentaries,” abandoning all effort to obtain a coherent account.”  Thy point out all the discrepancies in the text and focus solely on historical reconstructions of the text.  The weakness of this approach “lies in its complete atomizing of the narrative in disregard of the final stage of the text, and its failure to realize that the whole is more than its parts.”

“What is needed (Childs’ approach) is a synthetic approach which, while recognizing the historical dimension of the text, will seek to describe as objectively as possible what the final editor actually accomplished with his narrative.  In this way the expositor does not himself go beyond the witness of the text (something which both above approaches do).  He is also able to offer some value judgments on how successfully the last literary stamping has dealt with the older material of the tradition which was reworked into a new form.”

I agree with Childs here; neither the first nor the second approach is laudable.  Possibly people in the “conservative” camp would fall into the first group, the “liberals” would fall into the latter (to generalize terribly!).  There’s a better way, however, as Childs notes.

I do have a question with Childs’ final sentence there.  I could be reading it incorrectly, but it seems to me as if Childs stumbles a bit.  Notice how he said the reader offers “value judgments” on how the final editor  reworked the old material into a new form.  I believe that we should say that the editor was successful in reworking the older material into new form, because he did it! The judgment should be on us: how successful we are in seeing how he reworked the older material into new form.

Again, just some thoughts.  I could be wrong.  If “value judgments” means “humble guesses,” then I don’t have a problem with it.  Also, I’m not sure how we can know the “older material of the tradition.”  Let me know if you have some ideas!  I could use them!

Quotes from page 503 of Childs’ commentary on Exodus (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1974).

shane lems

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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

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What is the Septuagint?

Since we just mentioned Everett Ferguson’s new book on baptism in the early church (the first 5 centuries), it may be helpful to mention his other work on the early historical context of the church: Backgrounds of Early Christianity. This is an awesome resource for NT studies – a 650 page treasure full of great info on the Roman, Greek, Christian, and Jewish government, society, religions, and traditions.  In the second section, Ferguson talks about (among tons of other things Jewish) Jewish literature, including the Septuagint.  Here’s a summary of his discussion of it.

The Septuagint is the Greek translation of the OT Hebrew.  The name Septuagint is Latin for “seventy;” hence the abbreviation of the roman numeral 70: LXX.   Ferguson talks about the legend that 70 (or 72) Jewish scholars translated the OT into Greek, resulting in the LXX.  However, he notes, there are some reasonable arguments against this legend.  Ferguson also discusses the different editions and recensions of the LXX, which the early Christian church used.  In fact, it was used so much, that “the number of manuscripts of the Septuagint, complete and fragmentary, reaches nearly 2,000, a total greater than for any other Greek work except the New Testament” (p. 434).

There are differences between the LXX and the Hebrew OT for the same reasons that there are differences between the NIV or ESV and the Hebrew OT, for example.  Some translation requires interpretation, some translation is a result of the socio-political concerns of the translators, some translation is nearly impossible because of the difficulty of the Hebrew.  Also, different translators of the LXX had different techniques of translation – literal, moderately literal, and also free rendition.  In other words, the LXX was translated by real people – brilliant scholars – but real people who were working in the context of their culture, scholarship, and personalities, which is why the LXX looks like it does.  It is a brilliant translation, but is not without its flaws and blemishes.

Here’s Ferguson’s take on the importance of the LXX (he advises that NT students get one!).

“The putting of Hebrew religious ideas into the Greek language was an important transitional step that prepared the way for Christian preaching.  Moreover, most of the NT citations of the OT follow the Septuagint.  The Bible of the early church, except for some Jewish believers and a few scholars, was the Greek OT.  The Septuagint was the most important literary event, perhaps the most important single development of any kind in the Hellenistic period, for the background of early Christianity” (p. 436).

For a great and in-depth study of the LXX, you need to get Invitation to the Septuagint by Karen Jobes and Moises Silva.  Enjoy!

shane lems

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Good Commentary on the Minor Prophets (Great Price Too!)

T. E. McComiskey has edited a great shorter commentary series on the Minor Prophets.  I own the older version in three separate hardcovers, but Baker recently republished it (Jan 2009) as a single volume (hardcover).   It is big and fat (just over 1400 pages), but it is well worth the 30 bucks (+ a small shipping fee) WTS books is selling it for. I paid just under $100 for mine a few years back…sigh….

I also appreciate the format of the commentary.  The author gives the translation as well as grammatical/textual notes along with a running commentary – the two are parallel, but separate on the page.  If you’re not up on the Hebrew, you can still benefit from the commentary without having to wade through the Hebrew syntax/grammar.  If you are up on the Hebrew, the text notes are great and easy to understand.  Each author also gives a helpful bibliography at the end of each commentary section.

Contributors include Raymond Dillard, J. A. Motyer, Joyce Baldwin, Bruce Waltke, Tremper Longman III, and other able scholars.  This one is a “must have” for a mere thirty bucks!

shane lems

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Goldingay on the Psalms: Help/Ezer

Goldingay has a great commentary series on the Psalms (3 vol); they came out in between 2006-08.  Each has a nice appendix in the back where Goldingay discusses some key terms found in the Psalter  (i.e. bow low, harm, Sheol, etc.).

I found a nice paragraph in the glossary on “help” (azar, ezer, ezra) while studying Ps 146.5.

“The context in which the words are used shows how helping does not denote assisting people who are doing their part but rescuing people when they are helpless, people such as the wretched or the orphan, who have no protection and no resources.  ‘Help’ is thus a rather feeble equivalent for ezer, which suggests a powerful person taking decisive action on behalf of a weak person who is in dire need.  In English, without ‘help’ we might manage OK but a little less comfortably; in Hebrew, without ezer we would often be dead (94:17; 107:12; 118:13; 124:8 in their context)” (vol. 3, p. 757).

I’ve only just begun to use these commentaries, but so far so good.

shane lems

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Theological Reflection in the Context of the Canon (Childs)

How does a student of Scripture relate the witness of Scripture to extra-biblical evidence?  In other words, how do you deal with a “tension” between an OT historical text and archaeological findings?

Childs has a nice section in Exodus (p. 299-302) where he wrestles with this question.  Below are a few of his statements.  I’m not going to comment on it much, because I’m still digesting it myself.

First, Childs says there are two basic approaches to this question, neither of which he likes.  The first way is the “supernaturalistic” viewpoint, which controls and corrects extra-biblical evidence.  Childs says this position wants to use extra-biblical evidence, but ultimately doesn’t let the evidence speak for itself.   The second way is that of rationalism, which “represents the opposite extreme.”  “It seeks to determine the truth of the biblical testimony on the basis of critical evaluation according to rational criteria, based on past human experience.”  This position eliminates the basic theological issues of the Scripture by scientifically and rationalistically explaining away everything in Scripture. (Side: later Childs says one example of rationalizing an OT story is explaining the water from the rock in Ex 17 as a parallel to modern examples of water breaking through the crust of rock in the desert.)

Childs: “In my judgment, a correct understanding of biblical theology in the context of the canon allows one to break out of this old impasse.  First of all, the theological concept of canon is a confession.”  The canon “serves a unique function in the relation between God and his people…. In other words, scripture is not simply one means among several others of testifying to a unique self-disclosure of God in Jesus Christ.  To take the concept of the canon seriously is to assign to scripture a normative role and to refuse to submit the truth of its testimony to criteria of human reason.”

Now Childs gives a however:  “However, the canon lays no claim to universal knowledge…”    “The integrity of the canon is maintained without calling into question legitimate areas in which the judgment of human reason is appropriate.”  I once heard an OT scholar say that extra-biblical evidence can be an occasion for reinterpretation, but not the grounds for it.  I think this is sort of what Childs is saying, if I “get” him here.

He closes this section like this: “The biblical exegete is forced to hear testimony from inside and outside the community of faith because he lives in both worlds (earlier he said that ‘both worlds’ speak the same language, share the same thought-patterns, and share similar experiences of daily life).  He dare not destroy the canonical witness by forcing it into the mold of the ‘old age,’ nor dare he construct out of the canonical witness a world of myth safely relegated to the distant past.  Rather, he confesses his participation in the community of faith by ’searching the scriptures.’  He seeks to share the bread of life with the church through the testimony of scripture.  He remains open in anticipation to those moments when the Spirit of God resolves the tension and bridges the gap between faith and history.”

shane lems

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