An Eccentric Reading List, Part 1

This and the following series of posts contains a suggested reading list that I first proposed to incoming students at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. I suggested that it would be helpful to read broadly through the history of Christian writing, and I intended to give them a list of books, one from each century of the history of the church, as a starting point for that broad reading. I never actually put the list together until now.

Some might expect such a list to focus on "devotional" reading. Over the last couple of decades Paulist Press has published a series called "Classics of Western Spirituality." For those interested in devotional reading, I would direct them to that series. I intended my recommendations to be more eclectic, and also intended more for pastors and would-be pastors than for laymen. The choices are mine, and I will be giving reasons for the choices. Some of the choices have been suggested by friends and colleagues, but ultimately it is my list, and therefore as eccentric as I am.

Through the history of the church, there have been hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of books published by Christian authors. Hundreds of these have survived, and those that have survived, especially from the church's early centuries, are probably all worth reading. However, no one has that much time. So starting with the second century, I am choosing one work from each century to recommend.

The second-century work that I have chosen is Against Heresies by Ireneaus. A number of reasons went into the choice. The work is fairly easy reading. It is fairly short. It also makes the point that even in the early history of the church there was a significant concern for orthodoxy. In our day, there are many scholars, such as Bart Ehrman and Elaine Pagels, who consider the rise of orthodoxy in the West to be a primarily political movement, motivated by desire for power and control. Ireneaus is a nice little corrective to that line of thinking. The work is also readily available, either in the Ante-Nicene Fathers set, or online through Google Books, or www.ccel.org.

Rejoinder on the Reading of Scripture

Adam has pointed out that the PCA BCO 57-3 and 57-4 speak of people when admitted into church membership, or when admitted to the Lord's Supper "should make a public profession of their faith in the presence of the congregation." This he likens to "testimonies." As Chapter 57 of the BCO continues, however, it seems pretty clear that this "public confession of faith" means the response to the membership vows, and not to any sundry "testimony."

Are testimonies thereby excluded? Not necessarily. However, my own sense of this is that the session of the church has the responsibility of oversight on such testimonies. Knowing the human tendency to speak at length when given the opportunity to do so, my preference is for testimonies in informal settings, not in the public worship. That, however, is up to the session of the local church. They may allow such testimonies. I also think that if the person intends to read Scripture during his testimony, the session should formally approve it, so that a woman would not be exercising an authority not properly hers.

The fact remains that the public reading of Scripture in the context of worship is by its nature an authoritative act. It is the responsibility of the session to guard that authority.

This will probably not satisfy Prodigal, but it's as much as he's going to get.

Follow-up Regarding the Public Reading of Scripture

The following question was prompted by my last post: A woman in the congregation shares her testimony during the service. Said testimony includes the reading of a passage of Scripture. Is such a practice allowable?

I'll probably get myself in trouble with my answer, as it will be so hopelessly out of date and so terribly rigid. Neither the Westminster Confession of Faith nor the PCA Book of Church Order include "testimonies" as an element of worship. Hence, I think testimonies ought not be allowed in the public worship of the church. They are fine in any other setting, such as group Bible studies or prayer meetings. By extension, someone reading a passage of Scripture in the context of such a testimony is disallowed.

Further, I think women reading Scripture in public worship is disallowed. The Word of God is authoritative, which makes its reading in public worship an authoritative act. This would be disallowed by the strictures of 1 Tim 2:12

On Reading the Bible to the Congregation

One word--preparation. First, you should look over the passage. Are there any words you doesn't know? Then you need to look them up and learn how to pronounce them. Are there names? Ditto. (On this point, I would recommend that anyone who is going to read Scripture in public should purchase a "self-pronouncing" edition of the KJV and learn how to use the diacritical marks for the pronunciation of names.) Third, look at the punctuation of the passage. Where are the commas, the semi-colons, and the periods? These tell you where the pauses are. Fourth, practice. Read it aloud to someone. Try to follow the rhythm of the text, pausing and stopping where the punctuation indicates, and stressing important words and phrases. Have your listener critique your reading. Then you are ready to read the passage to the congregation.

One further note on names. If you mispronounce them, do so boldly, with certainty in your voice, and without stumbling. The one or two people who know how the name is pronounced will value your lack of stumbling, and the rest won't know the difference.

Amenemope 6 "Literary Dependence"

I realized that I had left my Amenemope posts incomplete. What still needs to be considered is the answer to the question, "What constitutes literary dependence of one work upon another?" Or in other words, on what basis do we determine that one literary work has depended on another for part of its content? Obviously, there would have to be similarity of content. Without that similarity, there would be no reason to consider dependence. But similarity of content, while it might be necessary, is not sufficient. I would think there would also have to be similarity of wording, and similarity of design.

Now we have seen that there is similarity of content between Amenemope and Prov 22:17-24:22. There is also some similarity of wording. If one buys the "thirty" argument, then there is also similarity of design. But is this enough to demonstrate literary dependence?I think not. It seems that one more thing would be necessary to demonstrate literary dependence. That would be that the similarities could not be explainable on any basis other than that of literary dependence.

We have already looked at the similarities of content. To anyone familiar with Proverbs, and with the proverbial literature of the Ancient Near East as a whole, these similarities are found throughout the whole gamut of proverbial literature. There is nothing in the content of Proverbs tying it to Amenemope that would not also tie it to a number of other collections of proverbial literature. Second, the similarity of wording linking Proverbs and Amenemope is not distinctive to the Proverbs-Amenemope intersection. The language used is typical of the whole range of proverbial literature. Finally, there is no similarity of design between Proverbs and Amenemope.

In short, while there are indeed some similarities between Proverbs and Amenemope, they are more likely due to the common style of the literature and the similar cultural contexts out of which the literature arose. It is hardly likely that one was literarily dependent upon the other.

Mental Images of Jesus

The answer to Westminster Larger Catechism Q. 109 says in part that the second commandment forbids "the making any representation of God, of all or of any of the three persons, either inwardly in our mind . . ." If you are not in a denomination with the Westminster Standards as its doctrinal foundation, or if you are in the the PCA and the OPC but have been living in a fog, you don;t know that many, if not most, men now coming for licensure and/or ordination in these denominations take exception to this statement. Their rationale is usually along the lines that it goes beyond Scripture, or how can we avoid making an image of Jesus when we think about him, or when we pray.

My response is twofold. First, the commandment forbids the making of images as well as it forbids the worshiping of them. Second, tells us that the man who looks on a woman to lust after her has committed adultery in his heart. That is, the mental image constitutes a violation of the commandment against adultery. It seems likely then, that the making of a mental image of Jesus constitutes a violation of the commandment not to make images.

Second, as any godly man disciplines himself against the entertaining of adulterous images in his mind, so it should be possible for a man to so discipline his mind that he does not create for himself mental images of Jesus. In fact, it should be easier for a man to do this, than to discipline himself against lustful images. After all the particular woman may be right in front of the man, but the Scripture gives us no description of Jesus. Hence one really has to work at constructing an image of Jesus, which we know from the start is idolatrous, because it is false. We have no idea what Jesus looked like, so to construct any image of him is to construct a false image.

Exodus 6:3

This is one of those verses that "proves" the Documentary Hypothesis concerning the origin of the Pentateuch. This verse says, "And I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as El Shaddai; and my name Yhwh I did not make known to them." Hence every use of Yhwh in Genesis must be anachronistic.

This strikes me as a pretty literalistic reading of the text; far beyond the kind of literalism evangelicals are often charged with. The name Yhwh appears approximately 144 times in Genesis. Now either the writer of Exodus 6:3 was unaware of that fact, or he means something other than "pronounced" by "made known to." It has been commonly observed that though Yhwh is frequently used in Genesis, it is never explained there. It is not until Exodus 3 that some explanation is given of the meaning of God's name. Hence, the simple reading of the passage is "I did not explain my name to the patriarchs. They primarily knew me as El Shaddai."

Now this, by itself, does not prove the Documentary Hypothesis is incorrect. But it does suggest that such approaches to understanding the Old Testament as that promoted by the Documentary Hypothesis seem unwilling to deal with the Biblical text on its own terms. Rather, the scholars seek to create different terms for a basis on which to read the Old testament text. The Old Testament on its own terms is a dangerous body of literature. It always calls into question our assumptions about God and man, the world and our life in it. It is when we try to read the Bible on our terms that we tame it, and we no longer hear its corrective voice.

Amenemope 5: Thirty Chapters?

Under the influence of the idea that Proverbs 22:17-24:22 was dependent on "The Teaching of Amenemope," scholars have sought to find a thirty-part arrangement that parallels the thirty chapters of the Egyptian work. This is most obvious in the Good News Bible (GNB), which has each of the thirty sections numbered in the text. Most other versions are more subtle, indicating the arrangement of the "chapters" by the spacing of the text. But the difficulty for the translators and editors is to find a consistent division of the text that is really defensible.

For example, the GNB has Prov 22:17-21 serving as a sort of prologue to the entire thing, while 22:22-23 is the first chapter. It ends up with a total of thirty-one sections; the prologue and thirty numbered chapters. The HCSB on the other hand (by following the spacing of the text) has a total of twenty-nine sections--one short of thirty, and entirely absent a prologue. The ESV has only fourteen or fifteen sections (it's difficult to tell if they intend a new section starting at 24:1). It is difficult to tell on what basis one might divide sections, as there is little in the text itself to guide the division. Some sections clearly stand out on the basis of their content, such as the one on drunkenness in 23:29-35. However, much of the material is so generically "wisdom" that no real divisions seem to exist. Further, there seems to be nothing in the arrangement of the Hebrew text, or in word usage that would seem to lay out a clear pattern, let alone a clear thirty-chapter pattern. For example, the adverb of negation ('al) appears some twenty-five times in the text, but not in any way that allows for twenty-five subdivisions. The use of the imperative, and of the negative particle (lo') is even more infrequent.

In short, a comparison of various translations that uses "thirty" in 22:20 shows that there is no consensus in how the text should be subdivided, and most do not even achieve thirty sections. But clearly the attempt to find thirty (or almost thirty) sections in this material is driven by the assumption that Proverbs is dependent on Amenemope. Once again, the question, based on the evidence, becomes, "Is such.a dependence really likely?"

Amenemope 4: "Excellent Things" or "Thirty?"

In the KJV, Prov 22:20 reads: Have I not written to thee excellent things in counsels and knowledge? The ASV, published in 1901, and the Jewish Publication Society translation published in 1917 say essentially the same thing, having "of" in the place of "in," but otherwise identical. The NASB and the NASB update read the same. The ESV, and most other modern versions, read something like: Have I not written for you thirty sayings of counsel and knowledge?

How do the translators get from "excellent things" to "thirty sayings," and is that move legitimated by the text itself? The first thing to recognize is that the word that is so variously rendered is itself something of a difficulty in the Hebrew text. The consonantal text, as inherited by the Masoretic scribes, reads shilshom, but the scribes themselves indicate that the word is to be read shalishim.

The word shilshom literally means "the day before yesterday," more loosely meaning "formerly." However, it always elsewhere occurs as part of the phrase tmol shilshom meaning "yesterday and the day before" but with the general sense of "formerly." One could thus assume that this is simply a case where tmol has been omitted, and translate it, "I have written to you previously." This is suggested by the Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB) lexicon.

The word shalishim is the plural of shalish meaning an officer of some sort. This does not seem to fit the context, hence the BDB comment that this is impossible. The older versions seem to have taken the term "officer" as a figure for excellence, hence their renderings of this verse. (A fuller discussion of this view tracing the development of the thinking on the rendering can be found in the Keil & Delitzsch commentary on this verse.

The Septuagint is not helpful in clearing up the difficulty, because it renders the word by trissos, meaning "three times." This seems to be roughly equivalent to the meaning of shilshom. This is also the reading reflected in the Syriac Peshitta and the Targum.

How then, did the modern versions arrive at "thirty?" They arrived at this view under the influence of the supposition that this section of Proverbs was derived from Amenemope. None of the versions done prior to the discovery of Amenemope suggests taking the consonantal shlshwm as sheloshim. But virtually all of the modern versions do so.

One would think that if Prov 22:17-24:22 were in fact dependent on Amenemope that there would be stronger parallels in order and wording of content than there in fact are. One would also assume that one could easily find thirty "chapters" in the Proverbs material, matching the thirty chapters of Amenemope. But is that the case?

Amenemope 3

The previous post deserves a number of explanatory comments.

First, I listed the parallels following the order of Amenemope. The careful reader will note that this does not match the order of verses in Proverbs. If Proverbs really was literarily dependent on Amenemope, why the radical changes in sequence?

Second, Proverbs 22:17-23:11 consists of 24 verses. The full section is actually Proverbs 22:11-24:22, which is 70 verses, but there are no parallels to Amenemope in 23:12-24:22. Amenemope itself runs about 230 lines. If this section of Proverbs were dependent of Amenemope, would there not be more and more frequent parallels. In fact, only about one-fifth of the whole section "The Words of the Wise" (22:11-24:22) is paralleled by Amenemope. Even if one limits the Proverbs material to 22:17-23:11, only about 60% of the material is parallel. This does not make a strong case for literary dependence, or even necessarily familiarity.

Third, even a casual reading makes it clear that some of the parallels are strained. See especially, nos. 2, 5, 6, 8, and 10. More than a third of the "parallels" are at best questionable.

Fourth, you don't see this, and most of the commentators don't mention it, but the Pritchard text of Amenemope lists sixteen parallels between Amenemope and passages in Proverbs outside the bounds of that section supposedly dependent on Amenemope, some of which are parallels to passages in other books of the Bible.

All of this combined leads to the conclusion that Proverbs was not literarily dependent on Amenemope.

Amenemope, Part 2

The first of the three reasons I gave for scholars seeing Proverbs 22:17-23:11 as being dependent on Amenemope is that the Hebrew material often follows the Egyptian source word for word. The only way to show this and evaluate it is to give the Proverbs text and the Amenemope text together. For the text of Amenemope, I am using the translation given in James B. Pritchard, The Ancient Near East: Volume I, An Anthology of Texts and Pictures, pp. 237-43. I will cite by page and line number (counting lines from the beginning of each chapter). For Proverbs, I will use the ESV. I am using the parallels as they are specified in Pritchard.

First Parallel
Proverbs 22:17-18a Incline your ear, and hear the words of the wise, and apply your heart to my knowledge, for it will be pleasant if you keep them within you.

Amenemope (1st Chapter) p. 237, lines 1-3 , Give thy ears, hear what is said, Give thy heart to understand them. To put them in thy heart is worthwhile.

Second Parallel
Proverbs 22:18b-19 If all of them are ready on your lips. That your trust may be in the Lord, I have made them know to you today, even to you.

Amenemope (1st Chapter) p. 237, lines 8-10 They shall be a mooring-stake for thy tongue. If thou spendest thy time while this is in thy heart, thou wilt find it a success.

Third Parallel
Proverbs 22:22 Do not rob the poor, because he is poor, or crush the afflicted at the gate.

Amenemope (2nd Chapter) p. 237, lines 1-2 Guard thyself against robbing the oppressed and against overbearing the disabled.

Fourth Parallel
Proverbs 22:28; 23:10 Do not move the ancient landmark that you fathers have set. Do not move an ancient landmark or enter the fields of the fatherless.

Amenemope (6th Chapter) p. 238, lines 1-8 Do not carry out the landmark at the boundaries of the arable land, nor disturb the position of the measuring-cord; be not greedy for a cubit of land, nor encroach upon the boundaries of a widow, guard against encroaching upon the boundaries of the fields.

Fifth Parallel
Proverbs 23:11 for their Redeemer is strong, he will plead their cause against you.

Amenemope (6th Chapter) p. 239, lines 10-11 One satisfies god with the will of the Lord who determines the boundaries of the arable land.

Sixth Parallel
Proverbs 23:4-5 Do not toil to acquire wealth; be discerning enough to desist. When you eyes light on it, it is gone, for suddenly it sprouts wings, flying like an eagle toward heaven.

Amenemope (7th Chapter) p. 239, lines 17-18 They have made themselves wings like geese, and are flown away to the heavens.

Seventh Parallel
Proverbs 22:24 Make no friendship with a man given to anger, nor go with a wrathful man.

Amenemope (9th Chapter) p. 240, lines 1-2 Do not associate to thyself the heated man, nor visit him for conversation.

Eighth Parallel
Proverbs 22:25 Lest you learn his ways and entangle yourself in a snare

Amenemope (9th Chapter) p. 240, lines 13-14 Do not leap to hold such a one, lest a terror carry thee off.

Ninth Parallel
Proverbs 23:6-8 Do not eat the bread of a man who is stingy, do not desire his delicacies, for he is like one who is inwardly calculating. Eat and drink, he says to you, but his heart is not with you. You will vomit up the morsels that you have eaten, and waste your pleasant words.

Amenemope (11th Chapter) p. 240, lines 1-2, 8-10 Be not greedy for the property of a poor man, nor hunger for his bread. The mouthful of bread (too) great thou swallowest and vomitest up, and art emptied of thy good.

Tenth Parallel
Proverbs 22:26-27 Be not one of those who give pledges, who put up security for debts. If you have nothing with which to pay, why should your bed be taken from under you.?

Amenemope (13th Chapter) p. 241, lines 8-10 If thou findest a large debt against a poor man, make it into three parts, forgive two, and let one stand.

Eleventh Parallel
Proverbs 23:9 Do not speak in the hearing of a fool, for he will despise the good sense of your words.

Amenemope (21st Chapter) p. 242, lines 11-12 Spread not thy words to the common people, nor associate to thyself one outgoing of heart.

Twelfth Parallel
Proverbs 23:1-3 When you sit down to eat with a ruler, observe carefully what is before you, and put a knife to your throat if you are given to appetite. Do not desire his delicacies, for they are deceptive food.

Amenemope (23rd Chapter) p. 242, lines 1-6 Do not eat bread before a noble, nor lay on thy mouth at first. If thou art satisfied with false chewings, they are a pastime for thy spittle. Look at the cup which is before thee, and let it serve thy needs.

Thirteenth Parallel
Proverbs 22:22-23 Do not rob the poor because he is poor, or crush the afflicted at the gate, for the Lord will plead their cause and rob of life those who rob them.

Amenemope (28th Chapter) p. 243, lines 6-7 God desires respect for the poor more than the honoring of the exalted.

Fourteenth Parallel
Proverbs 22:29 Do you see a man skillful in his work? He shall stand before kings; he will not stand before obscure men.

Amenemope (30th Chapter) p. 243, lines 10-11 As for the scribe who is experienced in his office, he will find himself worthy to be a courtier.

This is the sum of the parallels indicated between Amenemope and Proverbs 22:17-23:11. I'l make some comments in my next post.

Teaching of Amenemope

It is commonly held that Proverbs 22:17-24:22 is dependent on the Egyptian wisdom text The Teaching (or Instruction) of Amenemope. This view is summarized as follows: "As has long been recognized, the first subsidiary collection (22:17-23:11) is closely related to the Egyptian Instruction of Amen-em-opet, which probably dates between the tenth and sixth centuries BC. The introductory poem (22:17-21) and the ten themes discussed (22:22-23:11) follow--often word for word--their Egyptian source. Even the division of this source into thirty chapters ("houses") seems to have been borrowed by the Israelite redactor for the entire collection 22:17-24:22 (cf. 22:20, where the RSV correctly reads "thirty sayings" for the Hebrew "day before yesterday" or "adjutants"). The redactor was not, however, a mere translator; he used a third of the Egyptian Instruction to produce an anthology that treats the themes in a different order; in 22:26-27 he has interpolated a saying of his own. The borrowing may have taken place toward the end of the Israelite monarchy." (Quoted from Introduction to the Old Testament by Georg Fohrer, Abingdon Press, 1968, p. 321.

The arguments for Proverbs' dependence on this Egyptian source are thus: 1) The Hebrew material in 22:17-23:11 often follows the Egyptian source word for word. 2) The "thirty chapters" of the Egyptian text is reflected in the arrangement of the Hebrew text. 3) The Hebrew word translated "excellent things" in the KJV ought to be translated "thirty." Whether this data is sufficient to support the conclusion will be examined in our next few postings.

2 Corinthians

For those with any facility in Greek, the contrast between 1 and 2 Corinthians could not be more stark. It is not that there is not affection and love in 1 Corinthians, or that Paul does not care deeply about the church at Corinth. It is more that in 2 Corinthians these things appear more fully in his language. It is as if 2 Cor is a more personal letter, dealing not so much with the issues at Corinth (though these are not absent) as with his heart for the people and their connection to him. The letter outlines as follows:

I. The character of Paul's ministry, chs 1-7
II. The giving heart, chs 8-9
III. The defense of Paul's ministry, chs 10-13

On Proverbs

The Book of Proverbs outlines quite nicely as follows:
I. Introductory discussions, chs 1-9
II. Proverbs of Solomon, 10:1-22:16
III. The Words of the Wise, 22:17-24:35
IV. Proverbs of Solomon copied out by men of Hezekiah, chs 25-29
V. The Words of Agur, ch 30
VI. The Words of Lemuel, ch 31

This makes clear a number of things. First, the majority of the book is from Solomon. Second, the book reached its final form no earlier than the time of Hezekiah (roughly 700 BC). The origins of "the words of the wise" are uncertain, though there is a certain consensus on the matter that I will call into question. As to who Agur and Lemuel are, the older commentators generally took the view that they were pseudonyms of Solomon. Modern commentators generally take them to be otherwise unknown wise men.

Purpose of Proverbs: The purpose is concisely, and poetically, stated in the first six verses of the book. It is a book of instruction, intended to exercise the mind of the reader. Thus, a number of key words for the book show up in those opening verses: wisdom, instruction, understanding, insight, prudence, simple, knowledge, discretion, etc.

Theology of Proverbs: It should be remembered first of all that the proverbs are not guarantees. They are divinely inspired observations on the ordinary course of God's providence in a fallen world. It should also be remembered that they are part of the Old Testament, when the nation of Israel primarily defined the people of God as a theocratic nation. Thus the Christian reader should expect that some of the things that would have been the ordinary course of providence in the Old Testament period, are somewhat different in the New Testament period. For example, the Book of Proverbs says nothing about the persecution of the saints, but the New Testament tells us that "all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted" (2 Tim 3:12).

Commentaries and such: That by Derek Kidner in the Tyndale Old Testament Commentary series is invaluable. Of course, in the brief span of that commentary he does not deal with each verse. He does, however, have an exceptionally helpful section in the Introduction that deals with several different themes in the book. The older commentary by Charles Bridges (kept in print by Banner of Truth) is also useful. The modern technical commentary that I would recommend for pastors or those who would be pastors is that by Bruce Waltke in the New International Commentary series. It is a masterful treatment even if I don't agree with all his conclusions.

Answering a Question

WCF 7.5 speaks of the Covenant of Grace being differently administered in the time of the law, namely through prophecies, sacrifices, circumcision, the paschal lamb, and other types and ordinances all foresignifying Christ to come.

My question is, could not David and Solomon be considered administers of the Covenant of Grace in their function of ruling and defending God's people and restraining and conquering all their and God's enemies?

The reading of the WCF is such that the statement "This covenant was differently administered" refers to God's administration of the covenant, not to the various administrators who would have been part of the covenant of grace. David and Solomon thus fit under the category of "other types." That is, in their role as kings, they typified the work of Christ as king. Likewise, the Aaronic priesthood typified Christ's priestly work, and Isaiah and the other prophets were types of the prophetic work of Christ.

It is true that David, Solomon, Aaron, Zadok and other were administrators of the covenant of grace, as elders are in the New Testament context, but that is not what the WCF has reference to in this paragraph.

The Shema Deut 6:4

Any look at a modern translation of Deut 6:4 will reflect the uncertainty that translators have concerning the proper translation of the verse. One rendering is, of course, given in the text, but usually several other possibilities are given in the margin.

A literal translation is: Hear, Israel, Yhwh our God Yhwh one. The verse is made up of three phrases. The first is straightforward, and all translations agree on the proper rendering. It is made up of the second person singular imperative, and a noun in the vocative; thus, Hear, O Israel. The other phrases are made up completely of nouns (not unusual in Hebrew, as a form of the verb "to be" is understood). Several ways of rendering these phrases are possible. One way is to consider them as parallel statements: Yahweh is our God; Yahweh is one. Another is to consider them as distinct clauses, with the second modifying the first: Yahweh is our God, Yahweh alone. Another way is to consider them as linked clauses: Yahweh our God is one Yahweh. All of these are grammatically possible, though the second option is usually dismissed, since it requires a use of the cardinal number one in an adverbial fashion, which the standard grammars and lexicons do not seem to recognize. The only standard grammar that gives any particular discussion of this verse is Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax by Bruce Waltke and Michael O'Connor, paragraph 8.4.2g.

However, in an article published in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 47 (2004): 193-212, and available online at http://www.freewebs.com/trinitytruth/How%20Many%20is%20God_JETS.pdf Daniel Block argues convincingly for the rendering "Yahweh is our God, Yahweh alone." Arguing partially from the fact of grammatical possibility, but mostly from contextual considerations that this rendering makes the best sense. For those with more than passing interest in the issue, I recommend Block's article.

On Kings vs. Chronicles "Contradictions"

It is often proposed that the material in Chronicles "contradicts" the similar material found in the books of Samuel and Kings. This is usually based on the observation that Chronicles tells us many things about the kings of Judah that are not told to us by the Books of Kings. That, of course, does not constitute a contradiction, merely a difference. Most of the differences between Chronicles and Kings can be explained by a consideration of the intent of the writer of Chronicles insofar as he makes it plain to us. It is clear, for example, that Chronicles is concerned primarily with the Davidic dynasty and the Solomonic temple, the latter attended by the Aaronic priesthood and the Levites. Note, as something of a programmatic text for that theme, 2 Chron 13:1-12.

In brief, the statement can be accurately made that the Books of Kings probably reached their final form during the period of the exile, and were written to demonstrate to the people that the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile itself were the just judgment of God upon a long disobedient people. The Books of Chronicles were written in the postexilic period with a view to encouraging the people that all hope was not lost, and that God was still merciful and gracious.

It is also apparent that the author of Chronicles knew the books of Samuel and Kings, since he drew a great deal of material from them, either verbatim or almost verbatim. Thus, it seems likely that he also supposed that his readers would have known those works, or at least to some extent have been familiar with them. Thus, material in Samuel-Kings, not suitable to the purpose of the author of Chronicles, has simply been omitted, the author knowing his readers would have been aware of the material in his sources. This explains the omission of David's committing of adultery and murder in the affair of Bathsheba. That episode was not pertinent to the author's purpose, and was thus omitted. Likewise, the repentance of Manasseh, found in Chronicles but not in Kings, suits the purposes of the former, but not the latter. The two accounts together give us a fuller view of the events of the period of the Israelite monarchy.

The most substantive discrepancies between the two accounts have to do with the numbers reported on various occasions. For example, compare 2 Sam 24:9 with 1 Chron 21:5. Both accounts treat of David's census. The first says, "in Israel there were 800,000 valiant men who drew the sword, and the men of Judah were 500,000." The second passage says, "In all Israel there were 1,100,000 men who drew the sword, and in Judah 470,000 who drew the sword." There are two possible ways of dealing with this discrepancy. The first is to take the view that we are dealing with textual difficulties in the source or sources used by the authors. That is certainly a plausible explanation. The second approach is to consider that the numbers have references to somewhat different groups of people. So with Israel, the 800,000 would be those who were "valiant men," whereas the 1,100,000 would be the total. For Judah, the 470,000 would be those who "drew the sword," whereas the 500,000 would be the total.

In short, most of the difficulties are more apparent than real. For intersted readers, I would recommend Haley's Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible and Gleason Archer's Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties.

The Books of Kings

In my daily reading schedule, we have now come to the Books of Kings. The outline of the books is pretty simple:
I. Solomon's Reign, 1 Kgs 1-11
II. The Divided Kingdom, 1 Kgs 12-2 Kgs 17
III. The Fall of Judah, 2 Kgs 18-25

These books are included as part of the Former Prophets in the Hebrew Canon. Once you get past the reign of Solomon, you can tell why. The story from 1 Kgs 17-2 Kgs 7 is devoted to the exploits of Elijah and Elisha. In other words, more than one-fourth of the two books is devoted to the lives of two prophets. As you read through, you will also see references to other prophets playing a significant role in the story. Thus, the books can be understood as the history of Israel from the perspective of the prophets, explaining why the kingdom started out so well, how it lasted as long as it did, and how it came to its ignominious end. This differs from the history in Chronicles, which tells roughly the same story, but from the priestly perspective.

Happy reading!

Blog Use

Dear Reader,

Whoever you may be. I intend this site primarily as a resource for Q & A. So if you have a question regarding the Bible, how should you pose it? My recommendation is that you pose your question as a comment on my most recent post. That way, even if you have questions about an earlier post, or even about something entirely unrelated, I don't have to scroll through all my previous posts in order to get to your question.

A Lament for America, July 4, 2008

Ah, America, what pride, luxury, lasciviousness, licentiousness, wantonness, drunkenness, cruelties, injustice, oppressions, fornications, adulteries, falsehood, hypocrisy, bribery, atheism, horrid blasphemies, and hellish impieties are now to be found rampant in the midst of thee! Ah America, America, how are the Lord’s sabbaths profaned, pure ordinances despised, scriptures rejected, the Spirit resisted and derided, the righteous reviled, wickedness countenanced, and Christ many thousand times in a day by these cursed practices afresh crucified. Ah, America, America, were our forefathers alive, how sadly would they blush to see such a horrid degenerate posterity, as is to be found in the midst of thee! How is our forefathers hospitality converted into riot and luxury, their frugality into pride and prodigality, their simplicity into subtilty, their sincerity into hypocrisy, their charity into cruelty, their chastity into chambering and wantonness, their sobriety into drunkenness, their plain dealing into dissembling, their works of compassion into works of oppression, and their love to the people of God, into an utter enmity against the people of God?

I have adapted this from Thomas Brooks’s The Privy (Secret) Key of Heaven, under heading 16: Consider, the times wherein we live call aloud for secret prayer. The only change I have made is to substitute “America” for Brooks’s “England.”

Romans 11:26

In Rom 11:26-27, Paul writes, I want you to understand this mystery, brothers, a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And in this way all Israel will be saved."

Some, perhaps many, seem to read this passage in this fashion: The Jews are being hardened now (that is, very few Jews are being saved), but once all of the elect Gentiles have been saved, then the hardening will be taken away from the Jews, and Jews will be converted in very large numbers." However, in the context, that is not what the passage says. Paul is writing about his present situation. That is, the Jews were cut off because of unbelief (vs 20), and the gospel has gone out not to Jews only, but to Gentiles as well. However, that hardening of the Jews was not total but partial (that is, it is not the case that no more Jews are elect). Paul, recognizing that fact (the mystery that though the Jews as a nation had rejected their Messiah, God nonetheless did not cut them all off) works to see both Jew and Gentile saved.

Thus, this partial hardening (that is, some Jews are hardened, others are elect) will continue until all the Gentiles have been brought in as well. Then all Israel (that is , the church, made up of both Jewish and Gentile believers) will be saved.

The reader needs to recognize that Paul does not use "Israel" in the same sense throughout the entire passage (chs 9-11). Note, for example, 9:6, where Paul says, for not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel; or, as a more literal rendering puts is, for they are not all Israel that are of Israel. So Paul sometimes uses "Israel" to refer to the physical descendants of Abraham, and sometimes to refer to the descendants of Abraham by faith, that is the church.

Are we to expect a future mass conversion of Jews?

Many Christians, in their discussions of eschatology, hold that there will be, near the time of Jesus’ return, the conversion of notably large numbers of ethnic/national Israel.

First, I am uncomfortable with the terms "ethnic" or "national" Israel. "Ethnic," as it is commonly used, implies a racial/genetic connection. Modern Jews have only the most tenuous racial/genetic connections with Israel as it existed in the first century AD. It is true that there are distinctive genetic markers that those named Cohen (or some variation thereof) share, but that is limited to that particular line. As far as I am aware, there is no indication of other genetic markers that would indicate that someone is “ethnically” a Jew. Likewise, “nation" generally implies a political entity. Modern Judaism is neither ethnic nor national in those senses. I prefer to use the terms Jew, Jews, and Judaism, because Judaism is a religious entity made up of many ethnic groups from many nations.

I do believe that many, many Jews will be converted to Christianity, and that many, many Jews have been and are being converted to Christianity. However, I do not expect that there will be some "mass conversion" of Jews that will occur shortly prior to Jesus' return, and I do not think that Paul teaches that. I also do not find that view to be out of accord with the Westminster Larger Catechism Question 191, which says in part “we pray, that the kingdom of sin and Satan may be destroyed, the gospel propagated throughout the world, the Jews called.” I do pray that the Jews will be called. I just don't have the expectations regarding that calling that my pre- and postmil brothers seem to have.

Why Does the NLT Do This?

The question has been raised (from my last entry) as to why the NLT would do this. The only answer I have is that it fits with the NLT's philosophy of translation. Much ink has been spilled over the last twenty years regarding translation philosophy; whether the translation should take a "formal equivalence" approach, or a "dynamic equivalence" approach. While that is a useful discussion, it does avoid questions about what a translation is supposed to do. If the only thing a translation is supposed to do is to transfer information, then I don't think it makes much difference how that is done, whether "formally" or "dynamically." If "information transfer" is all that is desired, then I don't really see the problem with the "summarized translation" of Numbers 7 as found in the Contemporary English Version. But I think more than "information transfer" should be the goal of Bible translation. I think a Bible translation ought to enable us to "see" the original. Thus, the annoying and extensive repetition of Numbers 7 ought to be presented in its entirety. The casting of Joseph's brothers as "the men" enables the reader to "see" the original in way that casting them as "his brothers" does not. We ought to be able to "see" the difference s between the style of Isaiah and the style of Jeremiah when we read a translation.

Unfortunately, most modern translations don't do that. And, unfortunately, the worst offenders are the "dynamic equivalence" translations. They end up turning the biblical text into generic English mush, where there is no difference between Isaiah and Hosea, no difference between Job and the Psalms, and everything is equally boring to read. No wonder people have a hard time reading the Bible. The translators have succeeded in making it all equally uninteresting.

Words Have Meaning, 2

We left off last time with Joseph and his brothers. We pick up at that same place. Compare the following translations of Gen 43:33-44:3. The first is the ESV, the second is the NLT.

Genesis 43:33 And they sat before him, the firstborn according to his birthright and the youngest according to his youth. And the men looked at one another in amazement. 34 Portions were taken to them from Joseph's table, but Benjamin's portion was five times as much as any of theirs. And they drank and were merry with him.
44:1 Then he commanded the steward of his house, "Fill the men's sacks with food, as much as they can carry, and put each man's money in the mouth of his sack, 2 and put my cup, the silver cup, in the mouth of the sack of the youngest, with his money for the grain." And he did as Joseph told him. 3 As soon as the morning was light, the men were sent away with their donkeys.

Genesis 43:33 Joseph told each of his brothers where to sit, and to their amazement, he seated them according to age, from oldest to youngest. 34 And Joseph filled their plates with food from his own table, giving Benjamin five times as much as he gave the others. So they feasted and drank freely with him.
44:1 When his brothers were ready to leave, Joseph gave these instructions to his palace manager: "Fill each of their sacks with as much grain as they can carry, and put each man's money back into his sack. 2 Then put my personal silver cup at the top of the youngest brother's sack, along with the money for his grain." So the manager did as Joseph instructed him. 3 The brothers were up at dawn and were sent on their journey with their loaded donkeys.

The first is, to my mind, a much more accurate translation, and a much more informative translation, than the second. Notice, for example, in the ESV, Joseph's brothers are identified simply as "the men" throughout the passage. This reflects the Hebrew. It intends to create a distance between Joseph and his brothers. The NLT removes that distance. Further, the NLT has, "Joseph told each of his brothers where to sit" while it is clear from the context that all Joseph's communication with his brothers is through intermediaries (again, keeping the distance).

In addition, Joseph puts his brothers in a difficult spot. He enables them to drink too much. That is really the meaning of the ESV's "were merry" and the NLT's "drank freely." Then he sends them out at daybreak. The NLT's insertion, "When his brothers were ready to leave" has no foundation in either the Hebrew text or in any of the ancient versions. This goes beyond paraphrase. The fact is, they are not ready to leave. They are hung over, and it is just barely daylight. In all this Joseph is testing his brothers, to see what they will do with Benjamin when they are forced into adverse circumstances. The subtleties of this interplay are at best muted and at worst eliminated in the NLT

Words Have Meaning

Any translator of any text can tell you that picking an appropriate English word for a word from another language can be a nightmare. It is usually the case that more than one English word can share some connotations with a particular word from another language. Specifically, that is the case when rendering Biblical Hebrew and Greek into English.

The English Revised Version attempted to solve that problem by always rendering a particular Hebrew/Greek word by the same English word. Anyone who has read that version knows that that is not really a solution. On the other hand, rendering for the sense can cause problems as well. For example, in Genesis 4:1, the KJV reads, "And Adam knew Eve his wife." The New American Standard reads, "Now the man had relations with his wife." Both of these renderings are accurate. But the NAS obscures something in the original that the KJV retains. In the opening chapters of Genesis, the word "know" (Hebrew yada') and its variants are important, and each of its occurrences are rendered by some form of the word "know" in the KJV. However, the NAS loses that by rendering the verb yada' by "had relations." Technically, it is accurate, but something is nonetheless lost.

Such losses become more significant when the English rendering is not even technically accurate. On Genesis 43:3, Robert Alter comments, "'The man' refers elliptically to the phrase the brothers previously used in their report to their father . . . Their repeated use of this designation aptly dramatizes their ignorance of Joseph's identity. In the second half of this chapter, there is pointed interplay between the references to the brothers as 'the men' . . . and to Joseph's majordomo as 'the man.'"

To be continued.

On Job

Now that the reading schedule has us most of the way through Job, I thought I'd put forth some information on the book. There are innumerable commentaries and study books on Job, most of them problematic for a variety of reasons. The critical commentaries all assume that the Book of Job was written very late. In addition, they mostly assume that some parts of the book are out of order (the reader can consult such study Bibles as the New Oxford Annotated Bible, or the Harper-Collins Study Bible to verify that much of modern scholarship holds these positions). The problem is that most of these textual relocations occur more in the mind of the commentator than they do in the text.

So the difficulty is first of all to deal with the text as it stands. The second problem, particularly for the layman, is not to lose sight of the forest for the trees. The classic case of the latter (at the risk of offending a number of my colleagues) is Joseph Caryl's Practical Observations on the Book of Job, which is twelve large volumes. Very few readers have the patience to labor through that kind of treatment. I would venture to add that very few of those who do would be able, after having completed the task, to give a synopsis of the development of the Book of Job, or to show how any particular passage relates to the book as a whole. No doubt the work of Caryl is very fine, and the man who reads it will learn much solid theology. He will, however, learn precious little about the Book of Job per se.

So to start, I think the beginning reader of Job needs a guide that will help him make sense out of the book as a whole. In attaining this end, he can do no better than William Henry Green's little book, Conflict and Triumph: The Argument of the Book of Job Unfolded. In 177 pages (in the reprint by Banner of Truth Trust) Green takes the reader through the entire Book of Job and helps him make sense of the whole thing.

Once the reader has an overall grasp of the book and its purposes, he can then profitably move on to more in-depth commentaries. To begin here, I would suggest David Atkinson, The Message of Job in the Bible Speaks Today series from InterVarsity Press. Another good work at this point is Francis Andersen's commentary in the Tyndale Old Testament Commentary series.

Christ and Jacob's "Ladder"

Benjamin Glaser asked what I thought about Jesus' use of this passage. For those who are unaware, Jesus made a clear allusion to the account of Jacob's dream in his response to Nathanael (John 1:43-51). In this statement Jesus identifies himself as the ladder. The reference probably has no better concise explanation than that found in the comment on Gen 28:12 in the Geneva Bible (this is the 1599 Geneva Bible, recently republished by Tolle Lege Press, not the New Geneva Bible, which became the Reformation Study Bible). That note reads: "Christ is the ladder whereby God and man are joined together, and by whom the angels minister unto us; all graces by him are given unto us, and we by him ascend to heaven."

The ladder (or stairway, or ramp) clearly represents the connection between God and man. The fact that angels ascend and descend on that ladder seems clearly to indicate that it is by means of the ladder that the ministry of the angels to men is enabled. The further fact that Genesis 28 is the account of the establishment of the covenant with Jacob makes the covenantal significance of the ladder quite clear. Thus, the ladder represents Christ, through whom the covenant is mediated to man.

Jacob's Vow: Genesis 28

The following is the note on this passage in the new Apologetics Study Bible: "Because Jacob's vision at Bethel was his closest encounter with God up to this point in his life, he was convinced this place was unique. For him it was 'the house of God,' (the literal meaning of Bethel, and 'the gate of heaven' (v. 17). At his stage in God's progressive revelation, he could not see that no earthly spot could play this role (Acts 7:48-50). Like his brother Esau, Jacob had not been a man of faith. But, even though the conditions he states toward the Lord (Gn 28:20-22) fall short of true faith, they represent a step in the right direction."

That is a common understanding of Jacob's vow: He is bargaining with God, attempting to manipulate God into dealing with him to his profit, just as he has dealt with his brother and his father. There are several things about the passage, and the vow in particular, that argue the wrongness of that interpretation. First, when Jacob awoke from the dream, he confessed both the presence of God and his own ignorance. He also stated his own fear, when he said "how fearsome is this place!" (v. 17). Many translations render that "How awesome is this place!" There are two difficulties with that rendering. First, the word "awesome" has been almost completely devalued in modern American English. Second, the root of the word rendered "awesome" is the verb "to fear." Hence my rendering "How fearsome is this place." (The Contemporary English Version has it, "This is a fearsome place!") Jacob was terrified by the fact that he was ignorant regarding the fact that God was there. This does not seem the sort of situation where Jacob felt himself in charge and able to manipulate.

Second, the vow itself has regularly been misunderstood. Any vow has two parts. The first part is called the protasis (the "if" part). The second part is called the apodosis (the "then" part). Though an argument regarding the Hebrew syntax can be made for either of the following possibilities, the second seems more likely, certainly fits the context better, and is more consistent with other vows in the Old Testament than is the first rendering. The first rendering is: If God will be with me and watch over me on this journey, if he provides me with food to eat and clothing to wear, and if I return safely to my father's house, then the Lord will be my God. This stone that I have set up as a marker will be God's house, and I will give to You a tenth of all that You give me (vss 20-22, Holman Christian Standard Bible). The second rendering is: Then Jacob vowed a vow saying, If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way which I am going, and will give to me bread to eat and clothing to wear, and I return in peace to the house of my father, and the Lord will be God to me, then this stone that I have set up as a memorial pillar shall be the house of God, and of all that you give me, I will tithe a tenth to you.

The difference between the two versions is where the "then" occurs. With the first, the then makes Jacob's acceptance of God conditional on God fulfilling the preceding items. In other words, according to this view, Jacob says, God, if you will do the following, I will do you the great favor of taking you as my God, and I'll give you a tithe. The second places the "then" after God, but before the pillar. The significance of that difference is as follows. First, in the wording of the vow, regardless of where the "then" is put, the bit about God is not that Jacob will take God for his own God, but rather that God will take Jacob for his own. It is the language of covenant relationship: "I will be you God, and you shall be my people." Second, the content of Jacob's vow is clearly a response to the promises that God made in the dream (vss 13-15). In other words, Jacob's vow is a response of faith to the promises of God, and to the fact that God has already taken Jacob on, being his covenant God

Long Time Gone

It's been about ten months since I posted anything, so it's time to get back to work. I'll be posting at minimum once a week this year. The posts will usually be prompted by the readings from my daily Bible reading calendar.

I try to read through a different version of the Bible every year, so after thirty years or so of doing that, I've obviously read through the English versions that are readily available. I have not, for example, read through the 1881 English Revised Version. As part of my reading this year, I am reading through Robert Alter's The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary, and Willis Barnstone's The New Covenant: Commonly Called the New Testament. The latter is a translation of the four gospels and Revelation by Barnstone, who is a professor of comparative literature at Indiana University, previously professor of Greek at Colgate University. Both of these translations have the strengths and weaknesses of individual translations. Translations of the Bible by individuals can certainly be more interesting than committee translations, because the committee system weeds out the eccentricities of the individual. A translation by an individual can be brilliant and insightful. It can also be pedantic and odd.

Alter's translation is generally quite good, and he makes an attempt to render Hebrew word-play into English. These attempts he usually highlights in his commentary. This is the sort of thing that most translations reserve for marginal notations, and it is nice to see them in the text. Some of them obviously work better than others.

Barnstone's translation tries to bring out the Semitic (Hebrew/Aramaic) background of the gospels. The most obvious way in which he does this is by rendering all the names in what amounts to the modern Israeli transliteration of Hebrew names. For example, Jesus is Yeshua; John is Yohanan; and Zebedee is Zavdai. He also renders John the Baptist as Yohanan the Dipper (Matt 3:1). This is certainly infelicitous. It assigns a meaning to baptizo that can certainly be defended, but probably not in every case. In addition, he then becomes inconsistent about it, because he renders the verb "immerse" in Matt 3:6, but "dipping" in 3:7. Still, it is refreshing to read a translation that makes one think about what the underlying Greek says. On the other hand, it also gives one a fair amount of respect for those early English translators who decided to simply transliterate with "baptize," rather than making an almost impossible choice regarding an English equivalent for the Greek baptizo.

If anyone has any questions or comments, please feel free to send them. Although I will be posting only once or twice a week, I will be checking the site every day.

Significance of Leviticus

Since we are now well into the reading of Leviticus, let me catch you up on the significance of many of these quite alien practices.

The Sacrifices
There are five main sacrifices in Leviticus, covered in chs 1-5, with some additional priestly regulations for them given in chs 6-7. The general significance of these offerings is briefly: first, the reality and enormity of sin--it must be dealt with; second, the principle of substitutionary atonement. These sacrifices were accepted in the place of the one bringing the sacrifice. Third, sacrifice is available for all. The wealthy could afford to sacrifice cattle, the "middle class" could afford a sheep or goat, and even the poorest could capture birds for sacrifice. Fourth, practicality. This was a system designed not only to afford sacrifice for all worshipers, it was also designed to create the income for the priests, who would not be able to spend their time farming. It also gives no specific requirements as to when or how often sacrifices were to be offered. Thus, those who lived far away from the tabernacle (or later, the temple), could bring sacrifices when they went to the tabernacle for the three pilgrimage festivals (Passover/Unleavened Bread, Pentecost, and Booths/Tabernacles). This seems, for example, to have been the practice of Elkanah (1 Sam 1).

The Whole Burnt Offering
This sacrifice was intended to teach first that no one profits from sin. The whole animal went up in smoke on the altar, and not even the priest received a portion of the sacrifice. Second, it reminds the offerer that sin requires death (see gen 2:17 and Ezek 18:4). That is, the sinner owes God a death, regarding which God is willing to accept a substitute. In the OT of course, those substitutes were the animal, but as Hebrews makes clear, they were only foreshadowings of the death of Christ for the remission of sin.

The Grain Offering
This offering is designed to teach that the sinner owes God a holy life. No leaven, nor honey (both corrupting agents) were allowed with the grain offering. Further, the grain offerings were accompanied by frankincense, which represented the aroma of a life lived unto God. This is the idea behind Paul's reference to "living sacrifices" in Rom 12:1. It is essential to note in this offering that no sinner, however redeemed he may be, lives a life wholly consecrated to God. Hence, the active obedience of Christ (his fulfilling of the law in all its demands) is imputed to the believer's account and substitutes for the failures of the believer.

The Peace/Fellowship Offering
Older translations generally translate this as the peace offering, while newer ones generally translate it as the fellowship offering. Both are adequate translations, and both contain the general idea of the offering. Notice that this is the one sacrifice in which the offerer partakes of some of the offering. This represents the fact that by sin peace/fellowship with God has been broken, and sacrifice is necessary to restore that relationship. This is the idea behind Paul's speaking of the ministry of reconciliation in 2 Cor 5:12-21. Thus the offerer is able to celebrate, by partaking of the offering meal, his restored relationship with God.

The Propitiatory Offerings
In regard to all three of these first offerings, the phrase "a sweet aroma to the Lord" is used. The significance of this phrase turns on the fact that the Hebrew word for nose, and the Hebrew word for anger are the same word. Thus there is by sacrifice a soothing of God's nose, that is, a placating of his anger. The technical theological term for this is propitiation. Hence, Christ fulfills these sacrifices as our propitiation (see Rom 3:25 and 1 John 2:2). These sacrifices are centered on God. They are objective with regard to the believer.

The Guilt Offering
The purpose of this offering is to teach that when man sins, even without intent, such as through ignorance, he incurs guilt. This guilt must be wiped away, and is done so by sacrifice. Christ took upon himself our guilt, thus removing the guilt from us.

The Sin Offering
This offering teaches that man also sins when he fails to live a life fully consecrated to God. This failure must be made up, by sacrifice. Here again, the active obedience of Christ, imputed to the believer, makes up for the believer's failures.

The Expiatory Offerings
These last two sacrifices are subjective with regard to the believer. Notice that the phrase "a sweet aroma to the Lord" is not used with these sacrifices. They are intended to make up for the believer's failures, and to remove the guilt of his transgressions. They operate on the believer, not on God. The technical theological term for this is expiation. Hence Christ's work is both propitiatory and expiatory, taking care of everything that stands between the believer and his enjoyment of fellowship with God.

Leviticus Outline and Survey

I'm sorry to be a couple of days behind on Leviticus, but this has been a crazy week. At any rate, here goes.

I. The Sacrifices chs 1-7
II. Aaron's installation chs 8-10
III. Clean and Unclean chs 11-15
IV. The Day of Atonement ch 16
V. A People Holy unto the Lord chs 17-27

In many ways, Leviticus is perhaps the OT book most alien to a modern American audience. It is all about sacrifice and ritual purity, things that are alien to our own experience, even to our Christian experience, since we don't pay much if any attention to the kind of religious ritual outlined in Leviticus. What then, is the purpose for Leviticus as it concerns a modern American Christian audience? I would say three things.

First, the content of the book focuses on the Day of Atonement. That is really the centerpiece of the book. Hence the primary theme of the book is maintaining the purity of God's people. In the OT this is expressed in a ritual fashion. The sacrifices (chs 1-5) and the festivals (ch 23) are the specifically religious aspects of that purity. The laws of cleanness (chs 11-15), the holiness laws (chs 17-20), and the sabbath year/jubilee year laws (ch 25) all show the necessity of purity in everyday life. In a certain sense, the Book of Leviticus is the expansion of Deut 4:6-8. It shows the people of Israel how they are to display the wisdom of God before a watching world. Christians, likewise are to display the wisdom of God before a watching world (see Eph 3:8-13).

Second, the rituals of the book, particularly the sacrifices, point us to the work of Christ, and fill out the richness of it for us, if properly understood (see the blogs that I will post in the next couple of days). Third, the book impresses upon us the importance of holiness not just in religious ceremony (that is, in public worship) but in the totality of life. Our lives are to be distinct in their holiness before a watching world.

Introduction to Mark

The organization of Biblical books is sometimes difficult to decipher, and often the outlines provided by commentaries are too detailed to be much help. This proposed outline is intended to provide a quick overview of the gospel, and thus a general sense of how Mark has organized it.

I. Prologue 1:1-13 The ministry of John the Baptist
II. Jesus' northern ministry 1:14-9:50
III. Jesus' Judean ministry (including passion and resurrection) 10:1-16:20

The reader should note that in the course of Jesus' northern ministry, there is a great amount of movement from one place to another, so much so that it is often difficult to be entirely certain where Jesus is. On the other hand, when Jesus moves to Judea, Mark's purpose here is clearly to show Jesus arriving in Judea for his final days. Thus, in chapter 10, Jesus moves into Judea, and already chapter 11 provides the account of his triumphal entry.

Many commentators have noted the vigorous nature of Mark's narrative, and the importance of euthus (immediately, straightway) to that narrative movement. Mark's is a gospel that focuses on the activity of Jesus, with a lower teaching-to-doing ratio than the other gospels. Pay attention to this as you read, and catch the urgency of Mark's story.

Date of the Exodus

The date of the Exodus has been a matter of debate for quite some time, even among evangelical scholars. There are currently two schools of thought on the matter. The older view bases the date of the Exodus on the information given in 1 Kings 6:1 which states that the building of Solomon's temple began in the fourth year of his reign, 480 years after the Exodus. The date of Solomon's reign is usually given as 970-930 BC (though there is some variation, as much as ten years either direction, depending on whose chronology you are examining). But 970 BC is widely agreed on, putting the fourth year of his reign at 966 BC. Adding 480 years to that number gives a date of 1446 BC for the Exodus itself, and a date of about 1406 BC for the beginning of Israel's conquest of Palestine under the leadership of Joshua. That would seem to fix the date pretty well. Such a date also seems to coincide well with the statements made by Jephthah in the preiod of the Judges (see Judges 11:12-28, especially vs 26).

But for some scholars, the problem with that date is that it does not seem to comport with the events and calendars from Egyptian history. Hence, in the 1950's and 1960's, many began to argue for a 13th century date for the Exodus. This view was set out briefly but forcefully by Kenneth A. Kitchen in Ancient Orient and Old Testament (1966), arguing for a 13th century date (1260-1250 BC). He has recently restated this view in On the Reliability of the Old Testament (2003, pp. 307-310). His view is largely based on considerations of Egyptian chronology and a harmonization of the Biblical materials with the Egyptian resources. He has to conclude that the 480 years of 1 Kgs 6:1 are not "real time" years. Unfortunately, his treatment seems to take the Egyptian material more seriously than it does the Biblical text. He dismisses Jephthah's statement in a most unscholarly fashion saying, "What we have is nothing more than the report of a brave but ignorant man's bold bluster in favor of his people, not a mathematically precise chronological datum" (p. 209). This sounds suspiciously like special pleading. A recent article in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society (I'll post the precise reference on Monday, since I don't have it with me at the moment) does an excellent critique of Kitchen's view.

In addition to Kitshen's dismissal of Jephthah, his earlier treatment concluded that the 480 years had to be a figurative number, perhaps indicating a complete set of generations (since 480 is 12 x 40, and we all know that 40 years is a Biblical generation, and twelve is a number of completeness relative to Israel). Unfortunately for Kitchen, the Bible nowhere defines a generation as forty years, and while both 40 and 12 are significant numbers in the Old Testament, they function in different spheres and are nowhere brought together.

Thus it is safe to conclude that the Exodus took place in the mid-15th century BC. Any apparent discrepancies between Biblical and Egyptian data should seek to harmonize the Egyptian data to the Bible, and not the other way around.

Thoughts on Sermons

Thanks to the fact that I teach at a seminary, I have the Logos Bible Software Scholar's Edition. I have noticed that any text I search on, lists of sermons come up. Now I admit, I haven't typed in Numbers 7 to see what comes up there, or 1 Chron 26:18. Nonetheless, printed sermons have been available for a long time, and have no doubt been used by less-than-scrupulou s ministers. The internet and the vast array of electronic resources have simply made the temptations worse.

At the individual level, each minister needs to commit himself to doing his own work. Now, I have no problem with a man on occasion using someone else's sermon, if he thinks it particularly appropriate, it adapts well to his own style, and he makes it clear that this is not his work. Such might even be appropriate on very special occasions. But as Andy has noted, our calling is to the ministry of the Word and prayer. Sermons written by someone else will never be ours regardless of whether on a technical level the sermon is better than one we might have prepared and delivered from the same text. It pleases God through the foolishness of preaching to save the lost and to edify the saints. That means that he uses earthen vessels for this task. Our calling is not: be Spurgeon! be J. M. Boice! be R. C. Sproul! be Jonathan Edwards! Instead my calling is: be Benjamin Shaw. Let his Word dwell in you richly, and let it come out from within as a result of your own study, prayer, and meditation on the text.

Perhaps the reason that "borrowed" sermons have become a greater problem is not their greater availability, but the loss of the sense of the importance of preaching. If preaching is old-fashioned, out-of-date, not where the action is; if the "real" life of the church is in the worship team, or the small-group ministries, or in anything but the preached Word of God, then what does it matter whose sermon I preach?

At the presbytery level, I can think of only one thing that will work to fix the problem (assuming it is a problem in our presbyteries) . That would be unannounced visitation of churches in the presbytery by other members of the presbytery. In other words, on any given Sunday, the pastor at 123 Presbyterian Church should know that 2-3 members of presbytery might show up in the service that morning, having found out ahead of time what the text for the morning is, and having researched to some extent the sermonic material that is out there, so they might be able to spot a canned sermon. Of course, that probably falls under the category of "meddling."

Exodus Commentaries

There are many more commentaries available on Exodus than there used to be. For some reason, when I was in seminary Exodus seemed to be much under-commented on. But a proliferation of new commentaries does not necessarily improve the situation much.

While I generally recommend Calvin, I have a hard time recommending his volumes that cover Exodus through Deuteronomy. I can understand why he took the harmony approach, but it has two serious difficulties. First, it is almost impossible to find a particular passage. The so-called Index of Scripture Passage in the Calvin Translation Society edition is virtually worthless. Second, the harmony approach loses the sense of each book as a distinct entity with a unique development of argument.

All that being said, here are my recommendations for Exodus. For the Pentateuch as a whole, I recommend John Sailhamer's The Pentateuch as Narrative. His view of the opening chapters of Genesis is loopy, but he does give you a sense of how the material progresses and ties together.

On Exodus in particular, I will divide the commentaries into three sorts: 1) academic technical, 2) study guide/lay commentary, 3) in between.

For academic/technical, I recommend Wm. Propp in the Anchor Bible series. It is new, and will give much help in matters of text (textual variants, vocabulary, grammar and syntax). Second, I recommend Brevard Childs in the Old Testament Library series (Westminster/John Knox). His work has a fairly good sense of the theology of the book, and it deals as well with the history of interpretation.

For in-between commentaries, I recommend John Currid (2 vols) in the series from Evangelical Press. I can't think of anyone better equipped to comment on Exodus, due to his work in Egyptology. I also recommend Douglas Stuart in the New American Commentary series. I listed this one here rather than in academic/technical simply because it is more accessible than most academic commentaries usually are.

Finally, in the study guide/lay commentary, I recommend Cole in the Tyndale OT Commentary series, John Mackay in the Mentor series from Christian Focus, and Bentley in the Welwyn series from Evangelical Press. These will all give good guidance in understanding the book, though they will not answer questions of a more technical sort that may arise.

Exodus Outline and Themes

The outline of Exodus is as follows:
I. Calling of Moses, chs 1-6
II. The Plagues and Passover, chs 7-13
III. From the Red Sea to Sinai, chs 14-19
IV. The Book of the Covenant, chs 20-24
V. Instructions for the Tabernacle and its Furnishings, chs 25-31
VI. The Golden Calf Episode, chs 32-34
VII. The Tabernacle Built and Dedicated, chs 35-40

The major theme of the book is obviously deliverance. Connected with that is the centrality of Moses as the human tool of God in the deliverance. In addition, you have the revelation of the name of Yhwh as the covenant name of God. This is not to say that the name was not known before (see, for example, Gen 4:26). Instead, there is a whole element to the significance of the divine name that had not been previously revealed.

This also calls for a brief note on the significance of names in the Old Testament. Many interpreters (for example, Henry Morris in The Genesis Record) attempt to give a meaning for every name that occurs. I am leery of that project for a couple of reasons. First, not all names are noted for their significance in the OT record. Second, the signifcance of the name often does not hang on the strict etymology of the name, but on a play on words involving the name. Now the name of Isaac is strictly etymological. It means "he laughs" and that laughter is the connection given to the name in Gen 21:6. On the other hand, the significance of Samuel's name is given as "I have asked him of the Lord" (1 Sam 1:20), implying that perhaps the name Samuel has some connection to the word "ask." But it does not. It sounds sort of like the phrase "God heard," but even there the connection is only aural. Thus, to assign a significance to a Biblical name when the text itself does not do so is a questionable practice.

Back briefly to the name Yhwh. There is perhaps some significance to the fact that the discussion of the divine name shows up near the beginning of the book (chapter 3) and again near the end of the book (chapter 34), providing an inclusio (parentheses) around the book, giving the focus of the book as God delivering his people according to his promise to the patriarchs.

Job Oultine

I apologize for those of you who have been waiting for my Job outline, since we are already at Job 11, but this has been a crazy week. At any rate, I will be posting more frequently on Job because it is a more difficult book. Here is one outline for the book, which I consider to be a content outline.

I. Prologue, chs 1-2
II. Dialogues, chs 3-26
III. Monologues, chs 27-41
IV. Epilogue, ch 42

This quick overview of the book shows the reader the character of the book as a collection of speeches. However, an expanded form of the outline can be even more helpful in following the discussion.

I. Prologue, chs 1-2 Job loses everything, including his health
II. Dialogues, chs 2-26
A. Round One, chs 3-14
1. Job's lament, ch 3
2. Eliphaz responds, chs 4-5
3. Job speaks again, chs 6-7
4. Bildad responds, ch 8
5. Job speaks again, chs 9-10
6. Zophar responds, ch 11
7. Job wraps up the discussion chs 12-14
B. Round Two, chs 15-21
1. Eliphaz speaks, ch 15
2. Job responds, chs 16-17
3. Bildad speaks, ch 18
4. Job responds, ch 19
5. Zophar speaks, ch 20
6. Job responds, ch 21
C. Round Three, chs 22-26
1. Eliphaz speaks, ch 22
2. Job responds, chs 23-24
3. Bildad speaks, ch 25
4. Job responds, ch 26
III. Monologues, chs 27-41
A. Job's final statement, chs 27-31
B. Elihu speaks, chs 32-37
C. God speaks, chs 38-41
IV. Epilogue, ch 42, Job is restored

The best brief study of Job is William Henry Green's work, Conflict and Triumph: The Argument of the Book of Job Unfolded. It was originally published in the 19th century, but has been reprinted by Banner of Truth. It follows the course of the argument of the book through the dialogues and monologues, relating all of it together. Most modern commentaries seem to have assumption that the speeches in the dialogues and monologues have little to do directly with one another, being merely set pieces for the pronouncement of views. But paying careful attention to what is said reveals how the speaker interact with one another. Green helps the modern reader do this.

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The Joseph Story: Genesis 37-50
There has been a great deal of literature on the Jospeh Narrative (as it is usually called) published in recent years.. Most of it has focused on either the literary structure of the material or the literary artistry of the narrative. Much of the latter perhaps springs from Robert Alter's The Art of Biblical Narrative (1981) of which chapter 8 (155-77): "Narration and Knowledge" deals exclusively with the Joseph story. In addition, the story comes in for discussion in numerous other places in the same book. The index references 19 other places in the book that deal with the Joseph story. This is probably the most accessible treatment of the artistic issues, though of course the discussion has moved a long way in 26 years. A much more recent work deals primarily with structural, as opposed to artistic issues. "The Literary Genius of the Joseph Narrative," by Dr. William D. Rainey (2004). I downloaded this from www.inthebeginning.org.

As useful and helpful as these studies are, however, they do not deal with the theological aspects of the story. They can't be faulted for this, since it isn't their aim. But unless the theology of the text is brought to bear upon us, then these investigations are nothing more than exercises in intellectual curiosity, on the level of "An Analysis of the Personal Names in Dickens' Fiction and Their Purposes in His Narrative Concerns." So the next several notes, as the reading moves through the Joseph story, will focus on this neglected aspect. Those interested in more of this can refer to George Lawson's Lectures on Joseph.

At the end of Genesis 36:43, we are told that those aforementioned chiefs of Edom according to "their dwellings in the land of their possession," and that Esau is the father of Edom. This is immediately contrasted with the statement (Gen 37:1) "Jacob dwelt in the land of the sojournings of his father." Esau (Edom) has a settled possession, while Jacob has only a place in the land where his father sojourned. This makes clear the point brought out by the author of Hebrews that the patriarchs were looking for a home beyond this world (Heb 11:10-22). The remainder of Genesis shows how Jacob is removed even from that toehold in the land.

Chapter 38 has often created a problem for those who study the Joseph story, because it seems to break the continuity of the narrative. Consider however, that Judah (the subject of ch 38) was the chief instigator against Joseph in ch 37. By his humbling in ch 38, God works in him to make him ready to be the chief protector for Benjamin when the brethren go down to Egypt the second time.

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Jacob's Vow: Genesis 28:10-22
This passage has a long history of both misinterpretation and mistranslation. In general, the passage has been read, especially vss. 20-22, as Jacob bargaining with God: if You provide for me, I'll believe in You. The problem with such an understanding is that is fails to realize that there is, as it were, no profit for God in such a deal. Further, it fails to take serious account of the context of the passage, and finally it fails to pay careful attention to the Hebrew syntax of the passage.

Dealing with the last first, the problem of mistranslation, based apparently on either a failure to comprehend the Hebrew syntax, or a misunderstanding of what is taking place, ranges all the way from the Geneva Bible (1599) to the God's Word translation (2003). As most English versions have it, the protasis (the "if" part of an "if/then" statement) begins in vs 20 with "If God will be with me." The apodosis (the "then" part of an "if/then" statement) begins at the end of vs 21 with "then God will be my God." Unfortunately, this follows neither the Hebrew syntax, nor the sense of the larger context. The Hebrew syntax is clear. The protasis begins with the particle im (if) and the imperfect form of the verb. The succeeding elements of the protasis are then linked by the conjunction vav and the perfect form of the verb. The last link in this chain is "and the Lord will be my God" in vs 21. The beginning of vs 22 breaks this verbal sequence (thus ending the protasis and beginning the apodosis) by starting the verse (the next clause in the vow) with a noun, not a verb. Thus, the vow should read: "If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way on which I am going, and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear, and I return in peace to my father's house, and Yahweh will be my God, then this stone, which I have set up as a pillar, will be the house of God, and of all which you give me, I will tithe a tenth to you." This rendering is found in the 1901 American Standard Version.

This rendering also makes the best sense of the context. Jacob, in the clauses of his vow, is taking Yahweh at his word (compare vss 20-21 with Yahweh's promise in vss 13-15, especially vs 15). Thus Jacob's vow is not a bargaining with God, but rather a confession of faith, in which he takes God at His word, and says so. What follows in the account of the life of Jacob is the account of the difficulties of the work of sanctification in the life os a man. Jacob often acts according to his name (character) "supplanter, heel-grabber," rather than according to who he is as a converted child of God. The vicissitudes of his life are not unlike those of our lives. This is set out as a series of examples for our instruction. Let us be instructed thereby.

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Exegetical Note Gen 12-22
This section begins with the promise to Abraham and concludes with the "Binding of Isaac" episode and its renewal of the covenant promises. (Incidentally, the title "Binding of Isaac" comes from the Jewish tradition. The more common Christian tradition is to call it the "Sacrifice of Isaac," which is technically a misnomer.) The reader should take note of the movement in this section. It begins with the promise to Abram. Abram immediately endangers the fulfillment of the promise by passing off Sarai as his sister. God restores Sarai to Abram. The blessing is then strengthened in two ways. First, by the blessing of Melchizedek, who is a type of Christ, and second by the institution of the covenant. What began as simply a promise now becomes a covenant with all the obligations on the maker of the covenant that are implied. Again, Abram endangers the fulfillment of the promise by means of Hagar and Ishmael. God moves to restore the promises with the giving of the covenant sign, and the emphatic statement to Abraham that Ishmael will not be the inheritor of the promises. Abraham, if you will, then denies his Lord a third time, by passing off Sarah as his sister again. God restores Sarah to Abraham, and demonstrates the fulfillment of the promise in the birth of Isaac. At this point, God himself moves to endanger the fulfillment of the covenant by ordering Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, then saves the covenant by the substitution of the ram. Then God reiterates the promise elements of the covenant. This multiple endangering of the covenant, with God removing the endangerment in each case, emphasizes as strongly as possible that this covenant is inviolable--neither by man, nor by God Himself. It is for this reason (among others) that Paul looks to the covenant with Abraham as the covenant under which the believer comes.

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Exegetical Note Gen 1:1-2
Almost two centuries ago, the otherwise great Thomas Chalmers seems to have invented the "Gap Theory" as a way of dealing with the apparent discrepancies between the "scientifically determined" age of the earth, and that indicated by the traditional reading of Genesis 1-11. At the foundation of the Gap Theory is the allegation that the verb hayetah at the start of verse 2 should be translated "became" rather than "was." The implication drawn from this is that time had passed between the end of verse 1 and the beginning of verse 2, and in that period the earth "had become" waste and empty. The Gap Theory became popular during the 19th century, though that popularity waned as the arrival of Darwinism later in the centruy necessitated an old human race as well as an old earth. The Gap Theory could provide the latter, but not the former, as it presumed that other than the Gap between vss. 1 and 2, the text of Genesis 1 was to be taken literally. Nonetheless, the view was adopted by C. I. Scofield in his study Bible, and the view retains some adherents among those whose "hope is built on nothing less than Scofield's notes and Moody Press" (no offense intended to Moody Press).

Over the last two decades or so, a fair amount of work has gone into the study of Hebrew syntax. One result is the realization that the Hebrew verb system is syntactically more complex and more subtle than many had thought. The sequence of verb "tenses" is important, and the relationship between successive verb forms is exegetically significant. The significance of this for Gen 1:1-2 is as follows: 1) Note that 1:2 begins with a noun, not a verb (unusual for Hebrew, which is normally verb-first); 2) the verb in 1:2 that follows the opening noun is in the perfect form without a connecting vav, which indicates a break in the sequence, and a shift of focus. What this means is that the first verse begins the story (it is not a summary statement of the whole chapter, as some hold). The second verse then shifts focus to one aspect of what is mentioned in the first verse. On this basis, I suggest the following translation for Gen 1:1-2. "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now, as for the earth, it was formless and void, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the deep." In other words, when God first created the heavens and earth, the earth was formless and void. The ordering of the earth then becomes the main subject of the following verses.