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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
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
Over on his blog (I can see it in the distance), Ben Witherington has been working through my book on Constantine. His latest post criticizes my biblical arguments at the end of that book. I hope to address some of his criticisms over the next few days, and I’ll start with his charge that my reading of the Adamic mandate is “atrocious” because I claim that Adam was called to “guard the garden”: “Adam was not called upon to guard the garden!” exclaims Witherington, emphatically.
Perhaps there’s atrocious exegesis in my book, but it’s not here. I wouldn’t have thought the point controversial. In fact, it’s so elementary a claim, so easily supported by a quick check of a lexicon and a few standard commentaries, that I’m surprised that Witherington finds it “atrocious.” Holladay lists “watch, guard” as the first meaning of the verb shamar and its first example is Genesis 2:15: “obj. garden.” BDB lists Genesis 2:15 under the meaning of “keep, have charge of,” and elsewhere in the article defines “keep” as “protect.” BDB doesn’t provide as strong support as Holladay, but “guard” is still within the range of meaning.
Commentators frequently agree with Holladay.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, May 12, 2011 at 1:39 pm
Yahweh put Adam into deep-sleep, death-sleep, in the garden. When he woke he found Eve waiting for him.
So too the last Adam, who does into death-sleep, and whose first sight after waking are the women come to minister to Him.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, March 7, 2011 at 6:02 am
Some thoughts arising from a sermon by Toby Sumpter yesterday, where he worked out an understanding of holiness whose roots are in the first use of “holiness” terminology in Genesis 2.
Sabbath is the original holy “thing,” and it is holy time, which is consummated time, the time at the end. This suggests several things. First, biblical holiness should be construed as fundamentally temporal rather than spatial. This is perhaps in contrast to the conceptions of holiness in other ancient religions, as detailed, for instance by Mircea Eliade.
Second, though, holy space in other ancient religions has a temporal dimension, but in general it is backward looking. Holy space is the space where one can encounter the moment of origin. Ritual is a recapitulation and recovery of a past event, reactualizing mythic time (Eliade again). Biblically, perhaps, holy space is instead the space where the future has already been realized. It is not a throwback but an anticipation forward.
And, third, this perhaps gets at what it means for God to be the Holy One: He is the God who has always already reached the end, the One who not only was and is, but is to come, the God of eternal Sabbath. Plug in Jenson.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, January 31, 2011 at 5:41 am
Genesis 1:1:9-11: Then God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear”; and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters He called Seas. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself, on the earth”; and it was so.
The exodus is a creation event. Yahweh the Creator shakes heaven, earth, and the seas under the earth. He shakes until one world topples so He can begin a new one. He repeats the third day of creation, dividing the sea so that dry land appears, gathering the sea into one place to drown Pharaoh.
In the original creation week, the division of the waters and gathering of the sea is not the only work of the third day.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, January 30, 2011 at 7:30 am
On Day 3, Yahweh gathers the sea and dry land appears. But the language of Genesis 1:9-10 concerning the “gathering” of seas is odd. IN verse 9, the verb most frequently means “wait” or “look for” (Genesis 49:18; Job 3:9; Psalm 25:3, 5, 21; 27:14; 37:9, 34; etc.).
The noun form “gathering together” in verse 10 sometimes means a “gathering” of material, whether water or yarn. But it is also used to mean “hope” or “expect” (Ezra 10:2; Jeremiah 14:8; 17:13; 50:7).
Clumping the water to make the sea expresses a hope, a hope that the knowledge of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea, a hope that the sea of nations will be gathered together before Yahweh, as a crystal sea before His throne.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, January 29, 2011 at 5:43 am
Genesis 17 is the great transition in the story of Abraham. Just prior, he has fathered a child with Hagar. It’s the high point of the story so far: Abram, the Big Father, finally has a son. But it’s not the son who will carry the promise. It’s the best flesh can do, but it’s still the best flesh can do. Flesh can do no better than father sons of the slave-woman.
Once flesh is cut off, though, Abram can be Abraham, and instead of fathering a slave-son with the slave-woman, he fathers a Spirit-son with the free woman.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, November 12, 2010 at 7:17 am
What would Israel learn from telling and retelling the story of Abraham, the father of their nation? For one thing, they would be receiving a far different discipleship and pedagogy than nations whose fathers were phallic gods.
David Leeming notes that “All Australian male ancestor gods of myth time are creative fertility father figures, indicated by the fact that their genitals are exaggerated to the point of comedy, as in the case of the Yolugu Djanggawul, who fathers elements of creation with his sisters, and the Kakadu Wuraka, whose giant penis must be dragged along the ground and who uses that penis to impregnate the mother of the world. These Australian myths have numerous analogies in the ancient world.
By contrast, father Abraham had no children, fertile though he was. And as if that weren’t bad enough, instead of parading his potent phallus, he cut it short in circumcision. Father Abraham – the anti-ancestor.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, November 9, 2010 at 9:43 am
In Genesis, circumcision is a sign of the weakness of flesh. Abraham’s flesh is a good as dead, and Sarah’s womb is barren. Yahweh’s promise will be fulfilled only if Yahweh does something that flesh cannot do. Circumcision is a renunciation of hope in flesh, a confession of impotence.
That is not what it appears to mean in some other ancient cultures. Egyptians practiced circumcision, but from the fragmentary evidence it seems that it was a sign not of impotency but of virility. Boys of 13 were circumcised, and in an extant text a boy boasts about how manfully he endured the procedure, without “hitting out” or “scratching.” Circumcision gave boys boasting rights.
In the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the sun god Ra circumcises himself, and the blood of his circumcision produces two minor guardian deities. Here circumcision enhances fertility; it is a sign of potency and not of impotence.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, November 3, 2010 at 9:00 am
In his commentary on Genesis (Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible)
In Christ and through His circumcision, we are now all priests, circumcised to the four corners of our bodies.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, November 2, 2010 at 8:34 am
Genesis 17 is chiastically organized, with internal chiasms spinning out of it. The overall chiasm is:
A. Abe 99, v 1a
B. Yahweh appears, v 1b
C. El Shaddai: establish covenant, v 2
D. Abram falls on face, v 3a
E. God speaks: changes Abe’s name, vv 3b-8
F. Circumcision, vv 9-14
E’. God speaks: changes Sarai’s name, vv 15-16
D’. Abraham falls on face and laughs, v 17
C’. God: covenant with Isaac, promises to Ishmael, vv 18-21
B’. God ascended from Abe, v 22
A’. Abe circumcises, 99 years old, vv 22-27
Following John Breck, we can read the center of this chiasm helically:
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, October 30, 2010 at 11:33 am
Abram builds altars all over the land (Genesis 12:7-8; 13:4, 18; 22:9), wherever Yahweh appears to him. But what does he do at those altars? He “calls upon the name of Yahweh” (12:8; 13:4). None of the normal terminology of sacrifice is used in these passages – no “offering” or “ascension” or “cause to go up.” Only calling on Yahweh. Abram is like a rebirth of the line of Seth (cf. 4:26).
Abram’s only offering/ascension occurs in Genesis 22. Suddenly the text abounds in the use of ‘olah (noun in 22:2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 13; verb in 22:2, 13). Yahweh tells him to offer Isaac on Moriah as an ascension (22:2), and he prepares the altar with wood, knife, and a sacrificial victim (22:9-10). In the end, instead of “causing Isaac to ascend as an ascension,” he “causes a ram to ascend as an ascension in the place of his son” (vv. 2, 13). Isaac – actually, the substitute ram-Isaac, the replacement “son” – is the only offering Abraham offers.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, October 30, 2010 at 10:33 am
A few days ago I said that the flood was the first time flesh was cut. That is true with respect to the particular phrase “cut off flesh” (Genesis 9:11). Several readers have pointed out, though, that there are a couple of cutting episodes prior to the flood.
Adam’s “flesh” is opened and closed so that Yahweh can build Eve from a rib, and animal flesh is implicitly cut in order to make robes for Adam and Eve. If we bundle these together as part of the background for circumcision, we come to this: Circumcision is the division of humanity in two, into “male” and “female,” so that they can be reunited in the one flesh of Jesus. Circumcision is the cutting of the flesh to “cover” nakedness and sin, and hence is a prelude to the sacrificial system, centered on the “day of coverings.”
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, October 29, 2010 at 1:46 pm
The first cutting of flesh took place in the flood (Genesis 9:11).
The second was the cutting of flesh in circumcision (Genesis 17:14), particularly the cutting off of those who refuse to cut the flesh.
Circumcision is a sign of the division of the human race, its cutting into Jew and Gentile. Circumcision is a sign of a coming flood, the cutting off of flesh at the cross when the flesh is cut in the circumcision of Jesus so that He can rise in the Spirit.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, October 26, 2010 at 11:23 am
Why is the creation account in Genesis 1:1-2:3 outside the toledothic structure of the book as a whole? The reason is bound up with the meaning of “toledoth.” Rooted in the word for “beget,” it means “the begettings of” or “the product of.” Genesis 2:4-4:26 recounts the begettings of heaven and earth, 5:1-6:8 the begettings of Adam, etc.
Genesis 1:1-2:3 is a record of creating not begetting. God does order earth to bring forth plants and animals during the creation week, but still Genesis conceives of that as God’s own work rather than the begetting of earth. When we get to Genesis 2, earth is seen as a more active partner in making – Watered by rain from heaven, the earth will sprout with plants (2:5), and though God forms man from the dust of the ground, still man is presented as one of the “begettings” of heaven and earth, the product of earthy dust and heavenly Breath.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, October 26, 2010 at 7:57 am
A stab at discerning a pattern in the Genesis toledoth sections:
Creation, 1:1-2:3
1. Generations of heaven and earth, 2:4-4:26 (beginnings, along with fall in Eden and Cain’s fratricide)
2. Generations of Adam, 5:1-6:8 (genealogy with ages)
3. Generations of Noah, 6:9-9:29 (lengthy narrative)
(New Creation, 8:1-9:29; see below)
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, October 26, 2010 at 7:24 am
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