 |
|
     |
|
|
|
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
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
The first chariot-rider in the Bible is Joseph, who is praised as a ruler in Egypt as he rides in his chariot (Genesis 41:43), who takes amn entourage of chariots to greet his father’s entry to Egypt (Genesis 46:29), and who takes a “great company” of chariots and horsemen to his father’s funeral (Genesis 50:9). Joseph is the first to become like his heavenly Father, who makes clouds His chariot.
The next time we see chariots, Pharaoh is chasing Israel into the Red Sea (Exodus 14:6-7). Israel was greeted with chariots when they arrived in Egypt; they are “escorted” from the land by chariots. The strength of Egyptian chariots all depends on who’s driving (Joseph or PHaraoh) and whether they are greeting or chasing Israel.
A political parable for those who control the nuclear chariots of our time.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, December 23, 2011 at 8:15 am
In discussing “the only non-cultic text with a seemingly concrete object for kipper (Genesis 32:20), Feder argues that kapar doesn’t mean “cover” and he takes the common view that panayv doesn’t mean “his face.” Jacob does not send a gift to “cover” Esau’s “face.”
Feder’s analysis of the passage, though, fits neatly into that interpretation. He points out that “face” is used four times in the text: “I will propitiate his anger [cover his face] with this gift that goes before me [my face]. Then I will behold his face, perhaps he will show me favor [lift my face].” If we take “cover” and “face” more concretely, woodenly, the logic is this: Esau comes with an angry face. His “nose burns” again Jacob. Jacob wants a barrier between himself and Esau’s face, and the gift functions as that “veil” between them. Jacob moves toward Esau, but with some hope and confidence that the gift that goes before his face will screen Esau’s anger. If the gift achieves its purpose, then Jacob will eventually be face-to-face with Esau, and Esau will exalt/lift up his face as he bows it to the ground.
And this logic fits exactly the situation of an Israelite worshiper bringing an offering before the face of Yahweh. As kipper, the offering is an enacted “veil,” a ritual screen that covers Yahweh’s holy wrath so that the worshiper can draw near in hope that Yahweh will lift his face, in hope that he will stand before him face-to-face.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, November 29, 2011 at 9:51 am
Here’s a wonderful example of the depth of Yoder’s OT discussion: “Primal religion assumes the total known community as the bearer of meaning of sacral history: whether it be the whole village, the tribe, the kingdom of even the empire. The sacralization of life in primal cultures binds and unifies along every axis of possible differentiation. The crown and cult reinforce one another. The agricultural is not separated from the military, the government from the land; the regime is not distinguishable from the people nor any of the people from other people. With the call of Abraham that changes. A part of the whole creation is separate from the whole on the ground not of its intrinsic qualities but by the peculiarly selective wisdom of a distinctly identifiable God.”
With Torah, Israel is given her own form of “primal religion,” but Yoder is right: The call of Abraham is a cut in humanity and human civilization, a break with every tribal, temple, or civic order of ancient man.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, November 19, 2011 at 10:53 am
Noah is the restart of the human race after the whole human race has been wiped out. Abraham, also a new Adam, restarts the human race, begins a renewal of humanity and creation, within the world. He is leaven in the lump. A restart for humanity within post-Babelic humanity is a trickier business than restart after the flood. Noah had the advantage of having a clean slate. Yahweh decided not to do that with Abraham: No clean slate. Rather, He starts something within the race to transform it from within. This is an incarnational move. In Abraham, Yahweh enters into the flesh.
Abraham’s ancestors do not seem impressive. They are not the great men who make a name for themselves at Babel. They are like the descendants of Seth, with no cultural achievements, no cities, no invention of music or animal husbandry. Their history is just names and dates. But the chronology of Genesis is tied to them. They have nothing but time, nothing but the future.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 12:16 pm
Frymer-Kensky again, commending on the third day of the creation week: “on the very same day that the earth is created, God also creates the plants and trees. This double creation on the third day emphasizes the significance of the fact that on the very same day God creates the earth, God makes the earth fertile. There never was, not even for one day, a time that the earth was barren.” (Supplement at the origin!)
She draws from this the striking conclusion that “Just as people do not have to think about helping the sun to rise, because God created it to rise and set, so too they do not have to think about helping the earth to be fertile, for this is the way it was created.” Human beings can pollute the land by evil actions, and when they do there is no ritual purification available: “the pollution builds up until it reaches a critical mass, when the earth explodes or the land of Israel vomits out its inhabitants.” But, “in the absence of such disastrous pollution, the earth is an inherently fertile constant.”
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, November 4, 2011 at 1:25 pm
Gordon again, on Jacob’s return to Bethel (Genesis 35) and the command to change garments: “Jacob’s return to Bethel is an example of the homecoming, or nostos, motif common in ancient Near Eastern literature. In the Odyssey, Odysseus changes his clothes upon returning home to Ithaca; Sinuhe does likewise in the Egyptian tale bearing his name; and Gilgamesh also changes his clothes upon returning to his hom in Uruk. . . . this small detail in the story is a clue to the reader that Jacob has come home to Canaan, the land of the Israelites.”
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, October 31, 2011 at 2:37 pm
According to Cyrus Gordon (The Bible and the Ancient Near East (Revised Edition)
Applying this to Laban and Jacob, Gordon notes: “Laban knew that Jacob would still want to marry Rachel, which is exactly what transpired, but in so doing Jacob took a second wife and thus he sacrificed numerous rights. Another clause in this Nuzu tablet states that if in the future a natural son is born to Nashwi, then Wullu must share any future inheritance. . . . only at a later point in the narrative are sons of Laban mentioned, leading to the conclusion that they were born after the marriages of Jacob to Leah and Rachel. . . . From the legal perspective, especially upon Jacob’s subsequent marriage to Rachel, we see how Laban has forced Jacob into losing various rights.”
This intensifies obvious parallels with the exodus. And also gives us a sense of why Jacob had to sneak away from Laban.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, October 31, 2011 at 2:29 pm
Kahn again, using the story of Abraham to discuss the erotic foundations of both family and political order: “The Abraham story . . . tells us that meanings must be borne directly on the body. The covenant requires circumcision. . . . The flesh must bear the idea; it must appear as a text already named. Instead of man naming the products of creation, man himself becomes a name. This particular mark on the flesh is singled out because of its sexual, intergenerational connotations. The very organs of production are marked. Sex is the source of family and politics. They are the same not because the polity must be based on familial relations, but because all products of labor [in both senses!] must bear a divine meaning. What might appear most personal is given significance as a mark of the intertemporal project represented by the covenant. Naked, man still finds himself a representation of the covenant.”
When Abraham responds to God’s call to sacrifice his son with the simple “Here I am,” we have “the founding moment of a political community, and the origin of the intergenerational family. Not the social contract, but the covenant; neither reason nor desire, but faith: without faith, man’s labor will produce nothing that is not undermined by its inevitable return to dust.”
There is so much here: The denial that the body, its wants and desires and urges, is the source of its own meaning; the fact that a meaning is imposed, unchosen, on the bodies of children; the link that Kahn shows between covenant, sex, generations and the political project that is Israel; the “clothing” of the naked man in the covenant, and therefore the utter rejection of a simple public/private division; the overall import that modern politics is foundationally skewed by its efforts to rest social order on reason or desire or will.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, October 27, 2011 at 9:22 am
Josephus (Antiquities 1.3) says that the pre-diluvians lived a long time so they could make astronomical discoveries that required a lifetime of at least 600 years: “God afforded them a longer time of life on account of their virtue, and the good use they made of it in astronomical and geometrical discoveries, which would not have afforded the time of foretelling [the periods of the stars] unless they had lived six hundred years; for the great year is completed in that interval.”
Josephus claims that he has supporting evidence from other writers for this theory: “Now I have for witnesses to what I have said, all those that have written Antiquities, both among the Greeks and barbarians; for even Manetho, who wrote the Egyptian History, and Berosus, who collected the Chaldean Monuments, and Mochus, and Hestieus, and, besides these, Hieronymus the Egyptian, and those who composed the Phoenician History, agree to what I here say: Hesiod also, and Hecatseus, Hellanicus, and Acusilaus; and, besides these, Ephorus and Nicolaus relate that the ancients lived a thousand years. But as to these matters, let every one look upon them as he thinks fit.”
This knowledge was delivered to the post-flood world through Noah, who passed it on to his descendants, including Abram.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, October 22, 2011 at 9:26 am
Jacob has gotten a bad rap over the centuries, not least because of the way his two wives have fared in the hands of the allegorists. For Philo, beautiful Rachel represents bodily beauty and Leah beauty of soul: “Rachel, who is comeliness of the body, is described as younger than Leah, that is beauty of the soul. For the former is mortal, the latter immortal, and indeed all the things that are precious to the senses are inferior in perfection to beauty of soul, though they are many and it but one.”
By the same toke, Leah represents contemplative virtue and Rachel active virtue: “Thus one of the lawful wives is a movement, sound, healthy, and peaceful, and to express her history Moses names her Leah or ‘smooth.’ The other is like a whetstone. Her name is Rachel, and on that whetstone the mind which loves effort and exercise sharpens its edge. Her name means ‘vision of profanation’, not because her way of seeing is profane, but on the contrary, because she judges the visible world of sense to be not holy but profane, compared with the pure and undefiled nature of the invisible world of the mind.”
Jacob loved Rachel, not Leah, choosing the lesser good over the greater.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, October 19, 2011 at 6:12 am
Genesis ends with Jacob blessing his sons (Genesis 49). Deuteronomy ends with Moses blessing the tribes that have descended from Jaob’s sons (Deuteronomy 33). Moses is a new Jacob, the father of the tribes of Israel as Jacob was the father of the tribal ancestors.
As the father of a new Israel, Moses adds to and sometimes reverses the destinies that were spelled out by Jacob. The most striking example is the tribe of Levi. Because Levi joined with Simeon to slaughter the Shechemites, Jacob curses the two tribes by saying they will be scattered throughout the land of Israel, and have no tribal area. Moses, however, commends the violent zeal of the Levites, who did not consider father, mother, or brothers in avenging Yahweh’s name at Sinai and Massah and Meribah (Deuteronomy 33:8-11). Moses does not cancel Jacob’s curse, but he turns it inside out. Because Levi showed such zeal for the word of Yahweh, they shall teach that word to Jacob (33:10), and because of the prior curse of Jacob, that teaching will be widely scattered throughout the land.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, September 21, 2011 at 7:57 am
Ephrem the Syrian on Genesis 1: “The Holy Spirit warmed the waters with a kind of vital warmth, even bringing them to a boil through intense head in order to make them fertile. The action of a hen is similar. It sits on its eggs, making them fertile through the warmth of incubation. Here then, the Holy Spirit foreshadows the sacrament of holy baptism, prefiguring its arrival, so that the waters made fertile by the hovering of the same divine Spirit gave birth to the children of God.”
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 1:43 pm
In Genesis 1:16, the sun and moon are set in the firmament as rulers of the day and night. The word “ruler” or “dominion” is taken from the verb mashal, memshalah. Stars are called “rulers” of night in Psalm 136:9.
The LXX of Genesis 1:16 translates memshalah as archas., the very word Paul uses to refer to the “principalities” over which Jesus has triumphed (Ephesians 1:21; 3:10; 6:12; Colossians 1:16; 2:10).
The old covenant was ruled by the heavenly “principalities,” the stars, sun, and moon. Now there is a man above the firmament, teh true arche, who rules night and day until the endless day.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, September 8, 2011 at 1:46 pm
The Bible’s first kiss occurs when disguised Jacob receives a blessing from his father Isaac. Isaac is suspicious, and wants Jacob to come closer so he asks for a kiss (27:26-27).
From that point on, the book of Genesis uses the word “kiss” about ten times. Men kiss men (Genesis 29:13; cf. 1 Samuel 20:41), fathers kiss sons (Genesis 27:26-27; 31:28; 50:1; cf. Exodus 18:7; 2 Samuel 14:33); cousins kiss (Genesis 29:11). All these kisses are gestures of welcome, greeting, or departure. As such, the kiss is also a gesture of reconciliation (Genesis 33:4; 45:15).
Later, mothers kiss daughters (Ruth 1:9, 14); brothers kiss brothers (Exodus 4:27); homage is done to the king by a kiss, as Samuel kisses Saul as he anoints him (1 Samuel 10:1). Enemies can use kisses to deceive (Proverbs 27:6). Once the blessing is launched by Isaac, Israel becomes a kissin’ people.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, September 3, 2011 at 5:42 am
Before the fall, Adam and Eve were naked and not ashamed in the garden (Genesis 2:25). After the fall, they saw their nakedness (3:7), and their behavior manifests shame, even though the word is not used.
In the LXX, the two words “naked” and some form of “shame” are used together only twice. In Isaiah 20:4, the words are used to describe the people of Israel as they are driven into exile by Assyria naked and exposed. It is a new expulsion from Eden.
In Ezekiel 23:29, Yahweh threatens to hand Jerusalem and Samaria over to their enemies so that they will be stripped and exposed and theuir immorality will be evident to all. Tis like another fall of man.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, August 18, 2011 at 10:23 am
The table of nations (Genesis 10) initially lists Noah’s sons in the common order: Shem, Ham, Japheth. In the body of the list, however, the order is reversed: First descendants of Japheth, then Ham, then Shem.
In the history of Israel, the list is reversed again. Israel begins in subjection to Mizraim/Egypt, a Hamite people (Genesis 10:6). But during the closing days of Israel’s monarchy, they are successively subject to Shemites, Hamites, and finally Japhethites. Asshur is Semitic (10:22), and conquers Samaria and the northern kingdom. Babel is founded by Nimrod, a Hamite (10:9-10). Finally, the Jews are conquered by Greeks and Romans, Javanites, Japhethites (10:2).
The odd empire out is Persia, which doesn’t appear at all in the Old Testament until the end of 2 Chronicles.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, July 27, 2011 at 4:51 am
Back to Witherington, and I discern that nuance and subtlety are not Witherington’s style, at least not in these posts. He writes, “Gen. 3.15 is not in any way shape or form a messianic prophecy about a warrior messiah. The ‘he’ in question is the descendants of Eve of course and in any case, even if it were a reference to Christ, Christ solved the Satan problem not by being a warrior messiah and thus by killing but by dying on a cross!! Jesus was the antithesis of a warrior messiah when he came.” Emphasis added, though it hardly needed to be.
To his first point, it is hard to know what to say. Witherington and I read the Bible in such radically different ways that debating particular passages seems almost pointless. The difference perhaps boils down to the basic question of whether the Bible should be read as a unified book. If it is, then it’s perfectly natural that the hero of the story should be introduced under a veil early on. It seems that Witherington reads the Bible as a collection of more or less discrete texts.
I take it that Witherington’s plural “descendants of Eve” is deliberate, and I can agree to some extent: In the New Testament, Satan is trampled under the feet of the saints (Romans 16:20). But that is because the plural collective seed of the woman is united with the singular Seed that is Christ, thus forming one Christ, the one seed (Galatians 3). If Witherington has Abel in mind, I can agree with that too, provided we take Hebrews seriously that Abel is a type of Jesus the Seed. Any way you slice it, you can’t get Jesus out of the passage, and I’m baffled that Witherington would want to try.
On the plus side, I will only say that my Christological interpretation of Genesis 3:15, as I’m sure Witherington knows, is a common pre-modern interpretation of the passage:
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, May 14, 2011 at 8:56 am
I skip over Witherington’s second complaint for a moment and move to #3. For this one, he uses two exclamation points!! More than once!!
Witherington writes, “the enmity set between humans and ‘the serpent’ has nothing to do with an endorsement of war, it has to do with a spiritual battle against evil and the Evil One more particularly, or, if you prefer literalism enmity between Eve’s offspring and those of snakes!! Either way, the text has nothing to do with human wars. And indeed killing is what happens as a result of the Fall, almost immediately once outside the garden. Killing is not God’s creation order mandate for humans, it is a reprehensible act for which God places a mark on Cain. Adam’s fall was not a renunciation of war and so a capitulation to the enemy, as Leithart would have it (p. 334). Adam’s fall was caused by failure to avoid eating from a tree God prohibited!!”
Let me start with the last two sentences and work backward through Witherington’s comments. The fall is not capitulation, it’s disobedience. What about that?
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, May 13, 2011 at 8:34 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.
