 |
|
     |
|
|
|
The Glory of Kings: A Festschrift for James B. Jordan
Fyodor Dostoevsky
(Christian Encounters Series)
Athanasius
(Foundations of Theological Exegesis and Christian Spirituality)
The Four: A Survey of the Gospels
Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom
From Behind the Veil: The Epistles of John
Deep Exegesis:The Mystery of Reading Scripture
1 & 2 Kings
Brazos Theological Commentary
The Promise Of His Appearing: An Exposition Of Second Peter
A Great Mystery: Fourteen Wedding Sermons
Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, And Hope In Western Literature
Miniatures & Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen
The Priesthood of the Plebs: A Theology of Baptism
A Son To Me: An Exposition of 1 & 2 Samuel
From Silence to Song: The Davidic Liturgical Revolution
Ascent to Love: A Guide to Dante's Divine Comedy
Blessed Are the Hungry: Meditations on the Lord's Supper
A House For My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament
Heroes of the City of Man: A Christian Guide to Select Ancient Literature
Brightest Heaven of Invention: A Christian Guide To Six Shakespeare Plays
Wise Words: Family Stories That Bring the Proverbs to Life
The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church
Toward the end of a polemic against Judah’s idolatry, which occupies every hill and mountain and leafy tree, Jeremiah makes this comment: “the shameful thing has consumed the labor of our fathers since our youth, their flocks and their herds, their sons and their daughters” (Jeremiah 3:24). ”Shameful thing” is bosheth, which could mean, abstractly, “shame.” Jeremiah follows with an exhortation to “lie down in our shame, and let our humiliation cover us” (v. 25). Shame is clearly an effect of idolatry. But in Jeremiah 11:3, the same word refers to an idol for which Judah sets up altars and to which they burn incense. In 3:24, the context supports the NASB translation as “shameful thing,” the shameful idol that causes shame.
Devotion to the shameful thing not only causes shame, but impoverishment. Quite literally, idols eat (‘akal) our labor and its products. All the time invested in raising sheep, oxen, goats literally goes up in flames when offered to a nothing. Sons and daughters pass through the fire, and all the invested hopes and energies are consumed. For Scripture, the same things offered to Yahweh are glorified and multiplied; not shame but glory is the product of sacrificing our labor to Him.
Our idols are as insatiable as ancient ones: Addictions, for instance, consume money, time, energy, life, children, marriages – and for what? The only product is humiliation.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, January 27, 2012 at 7:36 am
An excerpt from my forthcoming book on empires is posted at http://www.firstthings.com/ today.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, January 27, 2012 at 5:06 am
In Selling Worship
He provides a superb illustration of the latter by highlighting the “rate of change that the use of popular culture in worship has introduced into evangelical life.” One writers describes how the church has been “invaded by an astounding upsurge in newly-created forms of music,” which creates a rapid turnover not only of songs but of musical styles. Ward notes, “So quickly do songs come into fashion and out again that worship groups and congregations have a repertoire which changes every year.” He cites another worship leader who says that “There is a real pressure to keep up to date with the latest songs.”
Ward summarizes, “A media generated and transmitted religious culture is one that is affected by the pace of change and communication, which is characteristic of contemporary culture. While there are more songs from which to choose, and many of these songs may be seen as being relevant, there is also a tendency for a rapidly changing consumer-based worship culture to itself appear less than genuine. The more involved and engaging the mediated cultural environment within worship is constructed, the greater the possibility of a perceived threat to authenticity.”
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, January 26, 2012 at 12:07 pm
Isaiah 31-32 constitute a single passage, a single “woe” pronounced against those in Judah who rely on Egypt for help. The passage is structured in a simple chiasm:
A. Weak flesh of Egypt v. strength of Spirit, 31:1-3
B. Yahweh defends Zion and turns away Assyrians, 31:4-9
C. Yahweh establishes a just king and princes in Zion, 32:1-8
B’. Women of the city are captured and stripped as slaves, 32:9-14
A’. The Spirit poured out to renew the land, 32:15-20
A couple of additional notes.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, January 26, 2012 at 10:48 am
Many commentators suggest that Paul borrows his notion of a Christological Rock that follows Israel through the wilderness from intertestamental commentary on the OT. That may be, but the notion of is already evident in the OT itself. Yahweh after all is the Rock of Israel, and both leads and serves as rear guard for the people.
Isaiah 32:2 hints at the connection between Yahweh the Rock and Yahweh the glory-pillar. Describing the princes who will rule Zion in justice, Isaiah implicitly compares the princes to Yahweh. Like Yahweh, the princes will be “like the shade of a rock of glory in an exhausted land.” The reference is clearly to Yahweh the Rock in the wilderness, and that reference to the Rock doubles with a reference to the Lord’s kabed, His glory. Yahweh is Rock and Glory, the Glory-Rock of Israel.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, January 26, 2012 at 10:07 am
Zion, like Eden, is a well-watered place: There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God (Psalm 46:4). Yahweh Himself is teh river of delights that refreshes Jerusalem’s inhabitants and nourishes its life.
In Isaiah 32:4, the prophet foresees a new Davidic king surrounded by princes who, like Yahweh, are “streams of water” to their subjects. The parallel between Yahweh and the princes is strengthen by Isaiah’s word play on “Zion.” The princes are rivers “in a dry country,” and the word for dry country is tzayon, identical to “Zion” (tziyon) apart from the initial vowel. Zion itself means a “parched place” or perhaps a “sunny mountain.” To survive as a site for a city, Zion needs a supply of fresh water. Zion is a desert place that only becomes fruitful because of the presence of the Rock of Israel, the Rock that springs with water and drips with honey.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, January 26, 2012 at 9:58 am
Enns again: He admits that Paul, given the culturally assumed and conditioned conceptual framework he inherited from Judahism, believed that Adam was a primordial man whose disobedience was the cause of sin. Enns doesn’t believe that Adam is a historical first man, and acknowledges that he is leaving Paul behind: “my suggestion here leaves behind the truly historical Adam of Paul’s thinking.” He argues, accurately I think, that anyone who wants to “bring evolutionary and Christianity together” will have to leave Paul behind in some fashion. Still, Pete says, we don’t lose those features of “Paul’s theology” that are “core elements of the gospel” – the universality of death and sin and the event of Christ’s death and resurrection.
In addition to the standard objections to this line of thinking, I have two questions: What does Pete think Paul’s theology (or biblical theology as a whole) is if it is not an interpretation of history? And, having left Paul behind, how does he account for the contingency of sin and death – which, it seems, is a necessary presumption if we are going to talk about Christ’s victory over death and sin?
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, January 25, 2012 at 5:21 pm
There’s something to object to on nearly every page of Peter Enns’s Evolution of Adam, The: What the Bible Does and Doesn’t Say about Human Origins
This seems to me a complete non sequitur. After all, even if one accepts Pete’s relative dating of the two texts (Genesis much later), it is possible that the historical truth is something like this: God created the world as described in Genesis; this was widely known in the ancient world; Babylonians wrote down a version of the story; so did Hebrews and, under divine inspiration, got it right. This fits the textual evidence as well as Pete’s theory. I cannot see how similarities between two texts, or their conceptual worlds, can prove that the texts are not “scientifically or historically accurate.” Darwin and Dawkins give similar accounts of origins, and share a conceptual world; therefore. . . . ? Similarities might in fact be taken as evidence of the historical validity of an account, rather than the opposite. I suspect it’s not the similarities of the texts that lead Pete to his conclusions, but the scientific evidence.
About that “therefore being wholly distinct….” clause: I’m not sure who Pete is aiming at, since nearly everyone with the thinnest exposure to ANE literature knows that there are lots of overlaps with the OT. But how different does a conceptual world have to be to be a different conceptual world? Pete rightly notes that the Babylonian epic is creation-by-combat, and that Genesis account isn’t. The fact that both Babylonians and Hebrews look up and see a blue dome above them (which is what I see too!) pales in comparison with the radical difference between a cosmogony of violence and a cosmogony of peace.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, January 25, 2012 at 4:56 pm
Epicurus wrote an essay, now lost, on gifts and graces (peri doron kai charitos), and Norman DeWitt calls Horace’s epistle 1.7 to Maecenas a “sermon” on the theme of Epicurus’ essay. He commends the generosity of Maecenas, contrasting him with a proverbial “Calabrian host” who urged a guest to take as many pears as he pleased. ”I’m as grateful as if I’d been sent away weighed down,” says the recipient, to which the hose replies, “As you wish: you’re leaving them for the pigs to guzzle.”
Hardly a gift that inspires gratitude. Horace comments that “Lavish fools make gifts of what they despise and dislike,” and observes that the benefactor’s attitude toward his gift can only provoke ingratitude from the recipient: “They yield, and will forever yield, a crop of ingratitude.” Giving must be generous, but it must also be wise, and wisdom in giving manifests itself in two ways: The wise and good must be “ready to help the worthy,” and they must also know “how real and false coins differ.” This latter point is not entirely clear: Horace apparently believes that givers must know the real value of their gifts, neither overestimating nor underestimating their value. And they must also be careful to give gifts that are desirable – not pears destined for the pig sty. Presumably too the wise man will be careful to distinguish between true and false worthiness in the recipient.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, January 25, 2012 at 4:11 pm
This is the doctrine of Epicurus, but in a 1937 article in the American Journal of Philology, Norman DeWitt places this slogan in the context of that slogan in the context of the Epicurean doctrine of gratitude. He cites Seneca’s summary of the Epicurean view that “The life that lacks wisdom is void of gratitude and filled with apprehension; its outlook is entirely toward the future.” (Stulta vita ingrata est et trpida; tota in futurum fertur.)
DeWitt explains that the positive flip side of this negative statement is the “principle that the wise man is grateful for the gift of each new day and lives in the present,” and adds: “Although the elaboration of this doctrine is not preserved in any of the extant remains of Epicurus, one might venture the conjecture that it found a place in the essay On choice and avoidance in the following shape: ‘Do not try to know the future but make the best possible use of each day as it comes.’ This is the pattern, at any rate, into which Horace throws the advice to the mythical Leuconoe: Tu ne quaesieris . . . carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.”
Seizing the day doesn’t mean ignoring the past. For Epicurus, it means the opposite. It means accumulating a store of memories from the past that enable one to live in daily gratitude for benefits received.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, January 25, 2012 at 3:34 pm
In the aforementioned article, Rabin suggests that the poet of the Song lived in a time of extensive trade between Judea and the east, and that this fits the time of Solomon. He also suggests that the poem was likely written as an allegory: The poet “had in mind a contribution to religious or wisdom literature, in other words that he planned his work as an allegory for the pining of the people of Israel, or perhaps of the human soul, for God. He saw the erotic longing of the maiden as a simile for the need of man for God,” similar to the comparison of the longing Psalmist of Psalm 42 with a deer panting for water.
Religious uses of eroticism make yet another connection with India: “In Indian legend love of human women for gods, particularly Krishna, is found as a theme. Tamil legend, in particular, has amongst its best known items the story of a young village girl who loved Krishna so much that in her erotic moods she adorned herself for him with the flower-chains prepared for offering to the god’s statue. When this was noticed, and she was upbraided by her father, she was taken by Krishna into heaven. Expressions of intensive love for the god are a prominent feature of mediaeval Tamil Haivite poetry. The use of such themes to express the relations of man to god may thus have been familiar to Indians also in more ancient times, and our hypothetical Judaean poet could have been aware of it. Thus the use of the genre of love poetry of this kind for the expression of religious longing may itself have been borrowed from India.”
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, January 24, 2012 at 11:31 am
In a 1973 article comparing the Song of Songs to Tamil poetry, Chaim Rabin points to evidence of contacts between the Indus Valley and lower Mesopotamia during the time of Solomon. On the spices listed in Song 4:12-14, he writes that these verses evoke the “atmosphere of a period when Indian goods like spikenard, curcuma, and cinnamon, as well as South Arabian goods like incense and myrrh, passed through Judaea in a steady flow of trade. This can hardly related to the Hellenistic period, when Indian goods were carried by ship and did not pass through Palestine: it sets the Song of Songs squarely in the First Temple period.”
Supposed Hellenistic loan-words (appiryon in 3:9 and talpiyyot in 4:4) don’t disprove this earlier dating: “The phonetic similarities between the Greek and Hebrew words is somewhat vague [the Greek source words are phoreion and telopia], and this writer considers both attributions to be unlikely, but even acceptance of these words as Greek does not necessitate a late dating for the Song of Songs, since Mycenaean Greek antedates the Exodus.” He admits that if pardes (garden, Paradise) in 4:13 is Persian, then “it would necessitate post-exilic dating,” but he thinks it more likely that both the Hebrew words and the Greek paradeisos have a “different origin.”
What Rabin does not say, of course, is that a linguistic parallel cannot by itself tell us the direction of influence. Is it impossible that the Greeks and Persians borrowed words from Hebrew?
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, January 24, 2012 at 11:19 am
Gill again, stating the obvious: “Neither those who dominate and lead our industrialism – that is our bankers and financiers – nor those thousands and millions of men and women who are its more or less irresponsible instruments – neither, that is to say, the masters nor the men, are moved, inspired, by the notion that the object of working is sanctification, and that the work done, the things made have for their primary reason of being a collaboration with God in creating, and that is to say a collaboration with God in His praise of Himself. Nor have either masters or men any idea that the most important product of their factories is the men and women who work in them – that all things made are made to minister to persons and therefore partake of the nature and end of personality.”
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, January 23, 2012 at 8:12 pm
In his 1939 lecture on Sacred and Secular in Art and Industry, Eric Gill compared the artist and the modern industrial laborer. They have much in common: “Both are normally engaged in making things. Both are normally workers with their hands. Both are normally paid for what they do and not paid if they don’t do it. (In this respect unlike either the man of business or the politician.) Both are commonly instructed as to what is required of them before they begin working.” Gill argued that the key difference is one of responsibility: “The artist is responsible for the form and quality of what his deeds effect; he is the responsible workman; he has responsibility and would be insulted if he were denied it; but the workman, the labourer, the hireling, the factory hand has been, as the theologian puts it, reduced to a sub-human condition of intellectual irresponsibility; he neither has responsibility nor does he now desire it. He is too deeply corrupted by his serfdom. The hireling flieth, because he is a hireling.”
Gill argues further that the detachment of labor from artistic responsibility for the products of labor distorts modern understanding of the “fine arts.” Fine arts are “very important and even enthralling,” he says, but “only as important and enthralling as they now are by reason of the fact that the common arts in our sort of mechanized society do not give any scope for the satisfaction of those specially fine feelings which our fine artists are now the special purveyors of.”
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, January 23, 2012 at 3:34 pm
INTRODUCTION
Isaiah pronounces a double woe against those in Judah who rely on Egypt (30:1; 31:1; cf. Isaiah 13:1-14:27). When Judah repents and casts away her idols (31:6-9), Yahweh will set up a just king (32:1) and pour out His Spirit to renew the land (32:15-20).
THE TEXT
“Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, and rely on horses, who trust in chariots because they are many, and in horsemen because they are very strong, but who do not look to the Holy One of Israel, nor seek the LORD! . . .” (Isaiah 31:1-32:20).
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, January 23, 2012 at 7:47 am
In the midst of a swirling, fiery description of Yahweh’s appearance as a flame-snorting Warrior, Isaiah refers a few times to Israel’s liturgical institutions (30:27-33). While Yahweh’s Name is taking care of Israel’s enemies, Israel will be singing in their homes as they do on Passover night or as they do in processions toward the temple (v. 29). Yahweh will make war with tabrets and harps (v. 32).
The last phrase of verse 32 might also point to another aspect of liturgical warfare. It can be translated as: ”and in battles of tenuphah he will fight with it.” Tenuphah is typically “wave offering” (eg, Ex 29:24, 26-27). Yahweh carries on His war against Assyria through “lifting up” of a wave offering, a Eucharistic sacrifice. Plus, the verb “fight” is lacham, so the last phrase is tenuphah nilcham, which might strike a Hebrew reader as being very close to tenuphah lechem, “wave offering of bread.”
More generally: Would ancient Hebrews have missed the pun on lacham and lechem, David’s hometown a “house of bread” and a “house of battle”?
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, January 21, 2012 at 9:07 am
Isaiah 30:18 is arranged as a neat chiasm:
A. Therefore waits Yahweh to be gracious
B. and therefore He will be exalted with compassion
B’. for a God of judgment is Yahweh
A’. Blessed all who wait for Him.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, January 21, 2012 at 8:19 am
Yahweh makes up an insulting nickname for Egypt, which the NASB translates as “Rahab who has been exterminated” (Isaiah 30:7). The Hebrew is rahab hem shavet, and each of the main terms of the phase is significant.
Rahab means “fierce” but it is used mainly in contexts where Yahweh speaks of His victory over Egypt at the Red Sea, when he cut fierce Egypt in pieces (Psalm 87:4; 89:10; Isaiah 51:9). shavet puns on shavat, “to cease” or, more technically, “to keep Sabbath.” It is a multilayered pun: Egypt offers a false rest, a false Sabbath; Israel should know, since the Egyptians offered them no Sabbath at all during Israel’s Egyptian sojourn. But fierce Rahab will come to a sabbath, an end, a ceasing, and so will not be able to protect Judah from Assyrian attack. Rahab’s fierceness will cease, and leave Judah ashamed.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, January 21, 2012 at 7:25 am
In a dense phrase, Isaiah captures the idolatry at the heart of Judah’s attempt at a political alliance with Egypt. He pronounces a woe against the rebellious sons who “make counsel but not of me” and who “pour a pouring but not My Spirit” (30:1). The last phrase is an intricate knot of allusions. The verb nasak, pour, is the standard term for pouring libations (Genesis 35:14; Exodus 30:9; Numbers 28:7; etc.). ”To pour” to Pharaoh is shorthand for entering into a covenant sealed with sacrificial rites.
But in Isaiah, the thing being poured is not a libation. The typical word for libation is nesek (Exodue 29:40-41; Leviticus 23:13). In Genesis 35:14 and Exodus 30:9, someone nasaks a nesek. The object of nasak in Isaiah 30:1 is massekah, also derived from nasak; this term refers to something molten, not a drink poured out but liquid metal poured into a mold, usually to make idolatrous images. The word is often translated as “molten image” though the term means, more woodenly, simply “molten thing” or “poureed thing” (e.g., Exodus 32:4, 8, 17; Leviticus 19:4; Deuteronomy 9:14). The Bible’s first uses of the word are found in Exodus 32, the story of the golden calf. When a delegation from Judah travels back to Egypt to form an alliance, it is as if they are repeating the sin of the golden calf, “pouring out” libations to make a covenant with Pharaoh and effectively making a “poured image” that will be an alternative God.
The second part of the phrase is also important: “to pour a pouring but not My Spirit” is an awkward but literal translation of the clause. There is perhaps an implied continuation of the same verb: “to pour out a pouring but not [to pour out] My Spirit.” Alliances, it seems, are always forged by pouring, whether of molten images or of the Spirit of Yahweh.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, January 21, 2012 at 7:04 am
The Hebrew word massa’ introduces a number of oracles in Isaiah’s prophecy (13:1; 14:28; 15:1; 17:1; 19:1; etc.). It is often translated “oracle,” but it comes from a root (nasa’) that means “carry” or “bear,” and is thus sometimes rendered as “burden.”
Isaiah 30:6-8 is a brief massa’ concerning the beasts of the Negev, and it confirms that Isaiah was aware of the etymological weight of the term. The oracle describes a wilderness wandering in reverse, as Israelites laden with treasures go through the beast-infested wilderness back to Egypt to form an alliance with their former masters. Instead of plundering Egypt and taking Egypt’s treasures to the land, they have plundered Israel and are taking Israel’s treasures to Egypt.
In the massa’, the prophet sees donkeys and camels that nasa’ riches and treasures on their backs (v. 8). It is a burden about burdens, an oracle shouldered by the prophet, who bears God’s treasures on his shoulders, about animals that bear Israel’s treasures on their shoulders.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, January 21, 2012 at 5:55 am
Permission is given to use material on this site, provided the source is cited, blog entries are republished in full, and the author is notified in advance.
