Devilishly Ambiguous Magical Words . . .

Magic Rules!
Image by Sophia Foster-Dimino

New York Times

Emily Croy Barker -- author of The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic -- writes in "The Rules of Magic" (New York Times, July 27, 2013) that in dealing with magical wishes, one must beware of ambiguous language:

"I WISH I was rich," says the little boy, just as most of us have wished at least once in our lives. But this little boy has a magic talisman that grants wishes. Instantly, right in front of his distraught siblings, he is transformed into "an elderly gentleman, handsomely but rather dowdily dressed, who was looking down at them through spectacles and asking them the nearest way to the railroad station." He can't understand why he finds himself surrounded by unruly children and instead of enjoying his newfound wealth, he heads to his office in London, presumably to make himself still richer.

This sly twist on what at first seems to be a fairly straightforward wish appears in E. Nesbit's 1907 children's classic "The Enchanted Castle." Any lawyer will tell you that vague or ambiguous language is an invitation to trouble. With wishes, as with contracts, it is wise to stipulate the details: exactly how you'd become rich, as well as how rich you'd like to be.

As disciplines, magic and the law are usually considered to have little in common. One is mystical, otherworldly, associated with phenomena that reason can't comprehend; the other is anchored in the affairs of this world and at least aspires to be governed by logic and principle. And yet, as literature shows us, if you want to dabble in magic safely and successfully, it helps to have the advice of a good attorney.

In my view, a good attorney is 'good' only if there's a good judge with the authority to pronounce a binding ruling. The 'magical' contract story often assumes that the 'ambiguous' character -- namely, the one who seeks advantage through ambiguous wording -- gets to provide the authoritative interpretation:

One of the most common forms -- most humans being nonmagical themselves -- is the power that comes from striking a bargain with a magical being. This is where a properly vetted contract is particularly important. Spirits and demons tend to have good legal minds, and while they will usually abide by the terms of an agreement, at the time of signing they are under no obligation to point out provisions that might be unfavorable to the other party. Dr. Faustus might have avoided a lot of trouble if he'd had a lawyer go over his contract with Mephistopheles, explaining carefully the consequences of each clause.

This is the point upon which turns my story, The Bottomless Bottle of Beer, for Mr. Em -- i.e., Mephistopheles -- lacks the authority to unilaterally rule on a contract's meaning after it has been signed, for the meaning depends upon what the contract could reasonably have been believed to mean at the time of its signing.

This requires a metaphysically authoritative judge who can discern the justifiable ground upon which a particular interpretation rests, or fails to rest, but as things turn out in my story, even the devil needs such a grounding to avoid a "might-makes-right" challenge to his own authority . . .

Quino's Fall from Eden

Eden

by

Quino

Yesterday, Dario Rivarossa posted the link to this political cartoon by Joaquín Salvador Lavado, better known as Quino, and provided the following details:

The Original Sin seen by the great Argentine comic artist Quino. From a mid-1980s book I just happened to reread.

But Dario neglected to specify the book, so I cannot provide proper and fitting attribution. I must therefore plagiarize . . . until such time as Dario posts a redeeming comment to get me off the hook. No, I'm not identifying myself with that serpent on the pole (which I assume is no visual pun on John 3:14 and Numbers 21:4-9; cf. Genesis 3:1-24) Anyway, would that Dario could likewise unhook Adam and Eve, who have gotten themselves into a tight spot, one with significant sociopolitical repercussions, I'd wager, "for the wages of sin is death"! Or so says Paul in Romans 6:23. By the way, I've never liked this verb "is" in this verse from the King James Version of the Bible, for it seems to 'sin' against grammar. Did the KJV translation committee think that "wages" is singular? Or that such wages do not apply to their grammatical sin? Or were they simply insincere? Quite a singular reading of a plural ending, in any case!

Anyway, the Adam and Eve story gets returned to again and again, subjected to hermeneutic reinterpretations, both before and after Paul, even by me here, if one is interested in finding out . . .

Lee Jae-min on Textual Interpretation

Korea Herald

Professor Lee Jae-min, of Hanyang University's School of Law, writes regularly for the Korea Herald, and his recent article, "Evolutionary text interpretation" (February 20, 2013), proved very interesting for me, though he was mainly referring to legal texts, which is not my expertise:

Once codified, texts are set in stone, but the world we live in continues to change. A critical question then is, should words in these texts be understood as they were agreed upon at the time of the signing or as they are accepted at present?

He offers a contemporary example:

Suppose legislation, enacted in 1990, contains the term "cellphone." Does it mean a cellphone that we knew as of 1990, a brick-sized portable phone, and its future extensions? Or should the term also cover the new electronic products, sporting "all-in-one" digital capabilities, that we carry in our pockets and bags in 2013? This question relates to what is called "evolutionary interpretation" or "dynamic interpretation" of texts, and poses a new challenge.

I was familiar with the concept, of course, but Professor Lee expresses himself exceptionally clearly, as below, where he considers one solution:

This phenomenon is almost inevitable. Even after the words are inscribed on pages and in texts, the world where they apply continues to change. So, a gap is always there. The trouble is, the pace of change continues to quicken -- sometimes to an astonishing degree in a very short time, which means the gap becomes wider and deeper. An amendment is always a possibility, but frequent amendment is neither easy nor feasible, particularly so when the text is a grand document such as a constitution or an important treaty.

Imagine how this applies to religious texts in our rapidly changing world. One can't generally even amend them. One is left with reinterpretation. But even that takes time and seriousness of mind. Meanwhile, the world moves on. I've noticed that the recent polls in America show a decline in religion. Are Americans headed down the European path? Is the reason a fast pace of change that makes religious texts seem ever less relevant?

And are Islamism's suicide bombers the death of Islam writ small as Muslims fail to reconcile Islam with a rapidly changing world?

"Memory as Performance" - An Old, First Draft of an Old, Neglected Article . . .

Neon Church

Justin Alley

I'm resurrecting several old articles in the hope of publishing them now, some of them from several years ago. The passage below is the introduction to an article titled "Memory as Performance: Toward a Biblical Soteriology of Remembering." I wrote it about ten years ago when I had 'tenure' and access to a theology library, just slightly prior to the time when that particular university decided that foreigners couldn't have tenure in Korean universities -- which I never believed and which doesn't appear to have been true -- and relabled me as a "Visiting Professor" on temporary contract. I put the article aside, partly from being shot off the course of my career trajectory, partly from lack of time to pursue the project, partly from je ne sais quoi . . . Anyway, here's the introduction to that nearly forty-page paper:

The exponential growth of information that characterizes the modern and inchoate postmodern ages has placed an enormous burden upon memory, whether individual or cultural.[2] Indeed, the emerging postmodern age stems in part from the breakdown of memory's integrative function,[3] for postmodernism's explicitly declared mistrust of metanarratives partially derives from recognizing that finite memory’s necessary selectiveness excludes an ever-vaster temporal landscape of events, perspectives, values, practices, and narratives. Postmodernists therefore reject metanarratives such as those propounded by Marxists, positivists, free-market liberals, and Christians and embrace instead a multifold particularity of experience. We see a material analogy to this in postmodern architecture, which often picks and chooses randomly from various architectural styles -- both past and present -- in its constructions. We thus would not find ourselves at all surprised if confronted by a Gothic church with glaring neon images flashing religious icons from recesses in the walls where traditional Gothic windows would originally have displayed their stained glass beauty. Postmodernism, then, employs allusion where previous epochs (including the modernist one) would have attempted to achieve integration. Yet, allusion itself relies upon memory -- even if merely of discrete memories linked at random. Such discrete memories, moreover, presuppose a memory of narratives within which each has an integrated sense borrowed even in its postmodern negation. Despite the burden placed on memory by the exponential growth of information, despite postmodernism's distrust of memory's integrative function, we confront the ineluctability of memory. Yet, how should we understand a Christian Biblical soteriology[4] of memory?[5] I suggest that we note two corresponding aspects of remembering as "doing": 1) memory as actively remembering the inauguration of the covenant through a symbolic re-enacting of the original covenantal institution as though one were reliving a personally experienced event; and 2) memory as actively remembering the covenant itself through the lived enacting of the covenantal principles in one's daily actions.[6] This article will present a number of Biblical passages relevant to memory in order to examine the evidence that these two aspects of remembering mutually characterize a Christian Biblical soteriology of remembering.

Here are the footnotes to this introduction, which start with footnote 2 because footnote 1 belongs with a quote that goes with the article's title:

[2] This is the case not only despite new technologies of information processing, transmission, and storage but especially because of them. See Aleida Assmann, Erinnerungsräume: Formen und Wandlungen des kulterellen Gedächtnisses (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1999): "In der westlichen Zivilisation verschärft sich das Problem des kulturellen Gedächtnisses unter den Druck der neuen Medien, die zugleich unvorstellbare Speicherkapazitäten freisetzen und Information in immer schnelleren Rhythmen zirkulieren lassen. Immer dichtere Kommunikationsnetze vergellschaften entfernteste Regionen. Radio und Fernsehen schicken ihre Programme pausenlos und gedankenschnell über Satelliten um den Globus. Die Speicherkapazität neuer Datenträger und Archive sprengt die Konturen eines kulturellen Gedächtnisses. Die Bilderflut des Fernsehens macht die Schrift als zentrales Gedächtnis-Medien obsolet; neue Speicher- und Informationstechnologien basieren auf einer anderen Art von Schrift, nämlich der digitalen, die in ihrer flüssigen Gestalt nichts mehr zu tun hat mit dem alten Gestus des Einschreibens. Diese Schrift läßt keinen trennscharfen Unterschied mehr zu zwischen Erinnern und Vergessen" (213-214). Translation: "In western civilization, the problem of cultural memory is growing ever sharper under the pressure of new media that simultaneously create unimaginable storage capacities and allow information to circulate in ever faster rhythms. An ever tighter communication net draws distant regions into society. Radio and television send their programs without pause and as quick as thought by satellite around the globe. The storage capacity of new databases and archives explodes the contours of cultural memory. The flood of images from television make writing as the central medium of memory obsolete; new storage- and information-technologies base themselves on a different manner of writing, namely, the digital, which in its fluid form has nothing more to do with the old gesture of inscribing. This writing no longer allows a sharp distinction between remembering and forgetting." Assmann here apparently means cultural remembering and forgetting, not personal remembering and forgetting.

[3] In fact, an earlier breakup of "comprehensive social memory," as Danièle Hervieu-Léger notes, "came with the emergence and historical development of modernity," itself as "[t]he affirmation of the autonomous individual, the advance of rationalization breaking up the 'sacred canopies,' and the process of institutional differentiation denote the end of societies based upon memory," in Religion as a Chain of Memory (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2000), 127. However, Hervieu-Léger also notes the more recent loss of memory that Assmann analyzes, and she points to much the same reason for this loss, i.e., overabundance of information: "The complexity of the world shown in the vast incoherent mass of available information is decreasingly amenable to being ordered in the more or less impromptu way that collective memory was able to achieve by finding explanatory links," 128. The growth of the internet is exacerbating this overabundance and constructing an informational ediface that evermore resembles that seductive and baffling labyrinth of an endless library described by Jorge Luis Borges in his story "The Library of Babel" (see the fine anthology of several of Borges's short stories: Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings (Norton, 1988), edited by James E. Irby and Donald A. Yates).

[4] Some would question the possibility of a Biblical soteriology (or theology) of anything since the Bible is a collection of various documents written at various times by various individuals. This misses two points: 1) these documents were written within a religious tradition in communication with itself over the same central religious experiences and issues, and 2) the historical process of the early Common Era that resulted in the Bible as the Christian canon has conferred upon the Church the privilege of interpreting for itself what this self-communication means to say. In other words, the method should not be one of simply adding up what the individual texts state as an expression of what the individual authors meant but one of working toward a more unified Biblical soteriology by looking at the texts within the context of the canon as a whole as interpreted by the Church. For the purposes of this article, I will be working within the general framework of what is known as canon criticism, an interpretive approach in which "exegesis endeavors to determine what a given passage means not only in the immediate context of its date, authorship and setting but in the wider context of the canon in which it was ultimately incorporated" (Joel B. Green and Scot McKnight, Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1992), 99a). Further on the issue of the canon, see Luke Timothy Johnson's "Epilogue: The New Testament as the Church's Book," in The Writings of the New Testament: An Interpretation (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1999), 595–619.

[5] Memory as cultural artefact has been the subject of analysis by cultural theorists. Aside, from Assmann, mentioned above, many others have addressed this issue. For instance, Harold Weinrich, Sprache in Texten (Stuttgart: 1976), pp. 291-294, analyzes two metaphors of memory: "Gedächtnis-Magazin" ("Memory-Storehouse") and "Tafel der Erinnering" ("Table of Recollection"). The former is a spatial metaphor, the latter more of a visual one. Both, however, are purely mental and mostly static. My suggestion in this paper is that the Biblical tradition presents a yet another understanding of memory in addition to storehouse and table. In the Bible, "to remember" very often means "to do." Thus, to remember God's covenant means to fulfill God's covenant. This does not rule out other meanings of memory -- memory as table emerges in a few places -- but the understanding of memory as action is pervasive in the Bible.

[6] This conceptualization of memory has a secular counterpart in that "to remember" can also mean to "to do." For example, the imperatival expression "Remember your promise!" means far more than simply to recall it intellectually; it implicitly means "Keep your promise!" Thus, the present article does not intend to draw a pragmatic-linguistics distinction between Biblical and secular expressions of remembering but, rather, to focus upon a neglected aspect of the Biblical understanding of remembering -- and which may also be neglected in its secular counterpart. Of course, the Biblical sense of remembering has a powerful soteriological significance lacking in its secular counterpart.

Such is the project upon which I labored, a hard labor cut short by a miscarriage of justice -- one might well call it the literary equivalent of a partial birth abortion! Actually, though, I did finish a draft of the projected article before the university terminated my tenure and put me on temporary contract, and I now hope to polish this article and send it off for publication somewhere or other. I confess that the writing sounds so much better than anything I could attempt today -- I can't even recall how I managed to write it, though I suppose that I still had hopes of a career in religious studies back then, and thus had the motivation to push myself beyond my usual intellectual limitations.

Wish me luck . . .

Terrance Lindall: Report on "Satan's Peculiar Grace"

The artist Terrance Lindall, who illustrated my novella, The Bottomless Bottle of Beer (available here), gave a lecture Saturday at the opening reception of the WAH Center's 14th Annual Salon Art Club Show and thereby offered his rather unorthodox hermeneutic thoughts on the figure of Satan in John Milton's epic poem, Paradise Lost, after some initial, introductory words:

I followed [the introductory remarks] with an extempore lecture on why Satan has graces, id est, he is God's hoe, weeding out the unfit, and because of him there was the "fortunate fall." He actually loved God and wanted God's love so much he became angered at being replaced by the Son. He is loyal to his followers and so much admired in Heaven that he took 1/3 of the angels with him against God Himself. I spoke of Satan's discovery of a greater depth in his own self after he was vanquished to find on the flaming pool of fire that he still possessed a remarkable "unconquerable will" and was through that able to rise up and rally his troops. I spoke of Bien's concept of Satan giving color to the world, inspiring artists and writers of all generations. And more. I threw in a lot of quotes from Paradise Lost describing the war in heaven, the rout, and Satan's meeting with his progeny at the gates of Hell. And I spoke of Milton's defense of free speech.

I'd like to have heard that lecture, and perhaps I still can, for Terrance seems to imply the possibility:

We will have more photos and a video soon.

And in the tradition of provocateur sponsoring provocateur, Terrance introduced the artist Bien, who apparently also possesses musical talent:

A fabulous evening! Bien started off with an intriguing and hair-raising Satanic Piano Free Rhapsody . . . . Afterward Bien played an even more exotic and inspiring Satanic Free Rhapsody while speaking out phrases and words like "666 . . . we are born into the world, we live, we die . . . Satan, etc."

Here's a photo of Bien from one of those two performances.

Concerning Bien's views on "Satan giving color to the world, inspiring artists and writers of all generations" . . . there's an ironic aspect of the Romantic Movement in the arts that sees itself as sharing something in common with the Devil, namely, his status as rebel, an irony in that human creativity in the arts is often considered a reflection of God's creativity. The resolution of these two diametrically opposed views lies in recognizing that Satan himself is an artist who mimics divine creativity even in his rebellion. Every little rebel borrows from whatever is being rebelled against, but those little eddies of resistance swirling against the tide refract and reflect the light in ways that do add color to the world, as Bien maintains . . .

Leviticus 10:10 - Parallelism or Chiasm?

The Common?

Free Dictionary Online

The Bible-study class that I've been attending has just finished analyzing the book of Hebrews, and we'll be taking a two-month break before starting up again on some new topic. I've suggested that we study the impurity system of the Old Testament because it stands in the background of the New Testament and needs to be thoroughly understood.

I believe I've previously called attention to verse 10 of Leviticus 10, but let's start here anyway, for it 'explains' why the Mosaic Covenant sets forth all sorts of rules, namely:

so as to make a separation
between the holy (qodesh) and the common (chol), and
between the unclean (tame') and the pure (tahowr);

I've borrowed this verse from Young's Literal Translation (YLT), available at the Blue Letter Bible site.

One question that arises is how to understand the structure of this verse: does the structure exhibit parallelism or chiasm?

Normally, the arrangement of a verse this way in the Hebrew Bible manifests parallelism, and this sort of structure is so common, it's called "Hebrew Parallelism." That would therefore be a good first guess.

Against parallelism, however, would be the fact that "the holy" (qodesh) and "the unclean" (tame') are opposites. That might seem the case with "the common" (chol) and "the pure" (tahowr) as well. And since the holy and the pure seem linked conceptually, and the unclean and the common also, then we might want to read this structure as a chiasm.

But not so fast!

If we know a bit more about these categories, then we realize that the holy and the unclean are both dynamic forces in the Hebrew Bible and that the common in its fundamental state is pure, so there seems to be some parallelism after all.

I therefore suggest that this verse is intended to be read as exhibiting both parallelism and chiasm, but we'll need to look into this issue some more another time, so let's just keep it in mind for now.

"Total Depravity" and Romans 1:20

Adolfo García de la Sienra

(Image from Metanexus Institute)

I have had a LinkedIn site for about a year now because an old Baylor friend wanted to link to me, but I did little with it until recently, when I began filling in my page with a few details, including my publications.

I decided to fill it in with more details only after I received a link request from Adolfo García de la Sienra, professor of philosophy and economic theory at Universidad Veracruzana in Mexico. I'm not sure why he wanted a link . . . though I might have had contact with him several years ago when I was doing some research concerning John Milton's views on divine grace and human free will, for his name is somehow familiar to me.

Anyway, I had a bit of time to spare when I received his link request, so I took a look at his paper on "Christian Faith as Trust" (Balkan Journal of Philosophy, Volume 2, Issue 1, 2010) and noticed that in one of his quotes from the Greek New Testament, he'd left off a verb. I therefore sent him a note on that and asked a few questions:

I read your article "Christian Faith as Trust" a few moments ago. Interesting, if a bit over my head. I happened to notice that your quote of Romans 1:19 on page 15B was missing the Greek verb "ἐφανέρωσεν" (showed [aorist]). This verb, by the way, is aorist.

The translation is not greatly affected, though I would use past (made it plain) rather than present perfect (has made it plain). Here are verses 19-20:

1:19 διότι τὸ γνωστὸν τοῦ θεοῦ φανερόν ἐστιν ἐν αὐτοῖς ὁ γὰρ θεὸς αὐτοῖς ἐφανέρωσεν

1:20 τὰ γὰρ ἀόρατα αὐτοῦ ἀπὸ κτίσεως κόσμου τοῖς ποιήμασιν νοούμενα καθορᾶται ἥ τε ἀΐδιος αὐτοῦ δύναμις καὶ θειότης εἰς τὸ εἶναι αὐτοὺς ἀναπολογήτους.

I have a question, however. The translation of "καθορᾶται" in verse 20 is given as "have been clearly seen" in your paper, but this is a present tense and should read "are clearly seen." Does this affect your argument, which seems to depend upon God's eternal power and divine nature to have been "originally visible, manifest and evident to all men" (emphasis mine)? The verb "καθορᾶται" would seem to imply that God's eternal power and divine nature are currently "visible, manifest and evident to all men."

I hope that this email is of some use.

I received an answer fairly quickly:

Your translation makes sense to me and I will certainly take it into account in my Spanish translation of the paper. The point is that God's eternal power and divine nature "are there" to be seen by men. The problem is that men can't see it due to a corruption of their spirit caused by sin. This is what Reformed theology calls "total depravity" (an inappropriate term for a clear concept). Spiritual regeneration removes this incapacity.

I understand his point. However, I don't see that this passage in Romans provides strong evidence for the Reformed (i.e., Calvinist) view. Look again at Romans chapter 1, verse 20, quoting this time from the Morphological Greek New Testament (though it looks to be identical this time to the Textus Receptus):

τὰ γὰρ ἀόρατα αὐτοῦ ἀπὸ κτίσεως κόσμου τοῖς ποιήμασιν νοούμενα καθορᾶται ἥ τε ἀΐδιος αὐτοῦ δύναμις καὶ θειότης εἰς τὸ εἶναι αὐτοὺς ἀναπολογήτους.

I'll just borrow a translation from the New King James Version:

For since the creation of the world His invisible [attributes] are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, [even] His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.

As I noted above, the translation of "καθορᾶται" in verse 20 reads "are clearly seen." The Greek verb comes from καθοράω and means "to see thoroughly, perceive clearly, understand." The sense of this verb seems to run counter to the Reformed view of "total depravity" since it appears to insist that human beings can infer the invisible attributes of God from the visible creation, and this human capacity for natural theology is precisely what leaves human beings "without excuse."

Whether or not Paul is right about this human capacity, his argument seems to assume that humans have the ability even in their sinful state, and that doesn't appear to be consistent with Reformed views on "total depravity."

But I'm no expert, and Professor Adolfo García de la Sienra may very well have an answer.

James V. Schall on Islam's 'Fragility'

James V. Schall

(Image from Georgetown University)

The Jesuit political philosopher James V. Schall has a recent short, reflective essay "On the Fragility of Islam" published at The Catholic Thing (August 23, 2011). In our time of aggressive Islamism, such a title is surprising, but perhaps it shouldn't be. Aggressiveness is often a cover for uncertainty, for lack of confidence. But why does Schall consider Islam "fragile"? Not out of ignorance, certainly. Schall first notes Islam's military success, its rapid spread through warfare from Arabia to "North Africa, the Mediterranean islands, much of Spain, the Balkans, the Near East, the vast land area from southern Russia to India and Afghanistan and even parts of China." Islam dominates in these places, as Schall notes with especial reference to formerly Christian territory, and appears powerful:

The Muslim conversion of former Christian lands seems to be permanent. What few Christians are left in these lands are second-class citizens. They are under severe pressure to convert or emigrate. Many forces within Islam desire a complete enclosure of Islam that would exclude any foreign power or religion. The Muslim world is divided into the area of peace and the area of war; the latter is what Islam does not yet control.

Given Islam's power, why does Schall consider Islam weak?

So with this background, why talk of the "fragility" of Islam? This instability arises from the status of the text of the Koran as an historical document. The Koran is said to have been dictated directly in Arabic by Allah. It has, as it were, no prehistory, even though it did not come into existence until a century or so after Mohammed.

Scholars, mostly German, have been working quietly for many decades to produce a critical edition of the Koran that takes into consideration the "pre-history" of the Koran. Due to the Muslim belief that any effort to question the Koran's text is blasphemy, the enterprise is fraught with personal risk to the researchers. The idea that the text cannot be investigated, of course, only feeds suspicion that even Muslims worry about its integrity . . . .

The fragility of Islam, as I see it, lies in a sudden realization of the ambiguity of the text of the Koran. Is it what it claims to be? Islam is weak militarily. It is strong in social cohesion, often using severe moral and physical sanctions. But the grounding and unity of its basic document are highly suspect. Once this becomes clear, Islam may be as fragile as communism.

Schall's argument reminds me somewhat of the secularization thesis, the long-held view that the secular forces of Modernity would undermine religious belief through critical thought, among other things. Outside of Europe, that hasn't quite happened yet, and Europe itself seems to be gravitating back toward religion, either through the growth of Islam there or in reaction to that growth among Europeans now becoming more aware of the Christian element of Western identity.

Moreover, if one compares Islam's textual situation with Christianity's, one sees that Christian fundamentalism, with its emphatic declaration of Biblical inerrancy, is partly a reaction to Modernity, especially to the threat of the scholarly world's modern approach to Biblical criticism, characterized by a hermeneutic of suspicion bent on demonstrating the incoherence of the text through focus upon inconcinnities that imply textual development reflecting theological struggles among early Christian communities rather than a divinely inspired textual revelation of theological truth at the outset, e.g., high Christology is seen as a late development of theological reflection rather than an early consequence of divine revelation. Christianity, in both its Catholic and its Protestant forms, has not fallen into theological ruin at such Biblical criticism.

But Schall might have a point. The Qur'an holds a uniquely central place in Islam, roughly analogous to the position of Christ in Christianity, and it is Allah's only verbal communication with mankind that has remained uncorrupted by those who have received it and is therefore as inerrant today as it was when the angel Gabriel dictated it directly to Muhammad. If critical hermeneutics applied to the Qur'an demonstrates that the text developed over time, i.e., that it drew upon previous scriptures and was rewritten in the decades following Muhammad's death, then Islam could suffer a critical shock, particularly if the very early Qur'anic texts found in the attic of an old mosque in Yemen should turn out to have significant textual variants.

But I don't think that a deconstruction of the Qur'anic text will happen without a fight, and not a purely academic one, at that.

Brian Small Comments on Hebrews 9:14-17

Brian Small

(Image from Polumeros kai Polutropos)

In a recent post, "Hebrews 9:14-17 on Covenant and Testament," I commented on the word diathēkē (διαθήκη), translated as "testament" in the old King James Version:

The word for "testament" in the original Greek is diathēkē (διαθήκη), which has a double meaning that might be significant, i.e., "testament" in the legal sense of a will and "covenant" in the legal sense of a contract, if I might be allowed to distinguish the two meanings in this way.

I note this because verse 16 states that "where a testament [is], there must also of necessity be the death of the testator." The author of Hebrews applies this to Christ, whose 'last will and testament' (διαθήκη) is effected by his death.

The old diathēkē (διαθήκη), however, is put into effect by God, who assuredly does not die. The term here therefore cannot mean 'last will and testament,' but "covenant" in the sense of "compact" or "contract."

I received a comment from Brian Small on this post:

Actually, this is a highly controverted passage. Many scholars interpret διαθηκη as "covenant" as you do, but many others take it to mean "testament" or "will" in this context. Personally, I think that the author is using a word-play on διαθηκη, as does Attridge. God does not die, but Jesus as the mediator of the new covenant/testament dies instead.

My first thought was that I had been misunderstood:

Actually, I'm also using it as a wordplay -- as "covenant" for the old arrangement and as "testament" for the new.

At least, I am putting forth this suggestion.

But after more reflection, I wonder if Mr. Small meant that the wordplay "covenant/testament" applies to both the old diathēkē (διαθήκη) and the new diathēkē (διαθήκη). I had applied the wordplay differently, "covenant" to the old and "testament" to the new. Perhaps Mr. Small means that Jesus was considered 'retroactively' to have died for the old covenant as well, but in doing so gathered in to the "testament" that is new all of those covered by the old covenant, such that it can be thought of as a "testament" as well.

I'm not quite sure that this logic works, but I'm also not sure that I've understood Mr. Small's point, so I'll perhaps need to inquire.

He has an interesting and useful website on Hebrews, by the way, titled "Polumeros kai Polutropos: A Resource Blog on the Book of Hebrews," which might be helpful to my investigations into this epistle.

Mr. Small also happens to be a doctoral student at my old alma matar, Baylor University, a good school that is getting even better.

Kenneth Schenck Replies on Hebrews 9:23

Professor Kenneth Schenck

(Image from Quadrilateral Thoughts)

As some might have noticed in a comment to my blog entry of two days ago, Professor Kenneth Schenck took an interest in my remarks on his interpretation of Hebrews 9:23, i.e., the cleansing of the heavenly tabernacle. Here's his comment:

I started to give a more precise sense of what I think it means to cleanse the heavenly sanctuary, but it started to get too involved for a comment. I think I'll post it as an entry on my blog tomorrow and post the link here.

If I remember correctly, I say something like the cleansing of the conscience comes the closest to expressing it. I don't think it's a completely adequate expression of what it is for the author, though.

He followed through and posted an entry on his blog Quadrilateral Thoughts, from which I lift his main points:

So the age old question is this--why would the heavenly sanctuary need cleansed? It's in heaven. Lincoln Hurst has given us a clarification that alleviates the problem a little, but not completely -- this is about inauguration of a sanctuary. But the reason inaugural sanctuaries need cleansed is still to make them pure and holy. Harold Attridge and others have suggested perhaps what Hebrews is pretty much talking about is the cleansing of the conscience.

Here is my personal sense of what's going on here in Hebrews. With language that is serving rhetorical purposes, you have to get a full picture of what is going on to really understand the significance of the language. So for Hebrews, the basic rhetorical point is that Christ's death has removed any necessity for the Levitical system and its sanctuary. We can debate whether the sanctuary is already gone and the author is, in a way, consoling the audience (my position) or whether he is dissuading the audience from using a standing structure.

The author's rhetorical strategy to make this point is to construct a complex metaphor in which every key element of the Levitical system is surpassed by Christ's death. So if the Levitical system had priests, Christ is a priest to end all priests, after the order of Melchizedek (Heb. 7). If the Levitical system had sacrifices, Christ is the sacrifice to end all sacrifices (e.g., 10:14), an "eternal spirit" sacrifice even (9:14).

With regard to the sanctuary, the author drew on existing metaphors that considered heaven the truest sanctuary of God, with the earthly sanctuary modeled after the universe (Philo, Josephus). I personally find no compelling evidence in the argument of Hebrews 8-10 to think that the author sees an actual structure in heaven with two rooms. Rather, I argue that the author sees the highest heaven as a kind of Most Holy Place where God dwells.

So the idea of "inaugurating the heavenly sanctuary" with a better sacrifice does not correspond neatly to one thing because it is part of an overall, complex metaphor. What is being cleansed here? An abstraction. "Inauguration of the heavenly sanctuary" means the commencement of that age of reliance on Christ's death as means of atonement or, in Hebrews' terms, the age of real atonement versus proleptic rain checks looking forward to atonement.

Professor Schenck's central point is that the author of Hebrews is speaking metaphorically about the inauguration of the new covenant. He is right about this point, as a glance at Exodus 24 shows, for the sprinkling of blood on the people there in verses 7-8, which inaugurates the old covenant, is alluded to in Hebrews 9:19-20. The sprinkling of the earthly tabernacle is not given in Exodus 24, though, for that structure has not yet been built. A consecration of that tabernacle occurs in Exodus 40:9, but through an anointing of oil. However, Hebrews 9:21 insists on a sprinkling and associates it with the covenant's inauguration (possibly drawing on Jewish traditions that linked the two events?), so I grant Schenck's point.

Professor Schenck focuses on the inauguration of the old covenant as a metaphor for the inauguration of the new covenant, hence his remark that "What is being cleansed here . . . . [is an] abstraction." In other words, nothing in heaven is unclean and in need of cleansing. I suppose that one could carry the argument one step further and cleverly note that the absence of a tabernacle at the old covenant's inauguration implies an absence of any heavenly tabernacle to be cleansed at the new covenant's inauguration.

But I think that the writer of Hebrews did think that an inauguratory sprinkling of the earthly tabernacle took place since he says so in 9:21 and that an inauguratory sprinkling of the heavenly tabernacle took place since he says so in 9:23 and goes on to speak of this heavenly tabernacle in the verses that follow. This heavenly tabernacle is the one upon which the earthly tabernacle is modeled, according to Exodus 25, verses 9 and 40, a point referred to in Hebrews 8:5 and also alluded to in Hebrews 9:23.

I'll also grant that one can take this language all as metaphor. One can always do that with language. But the author of Hebrews doesn't appear to me to be making that sort of rhetorical move.

But I'm out of time for today, so more on this another time . . .

Kenneth L. Schenck on Hebrews 9:23

Image from Wesley Seminary

Several days ago, I questioned Harold Attridge's view that the cleansing of the heavenly tabernacle signified the cleansing of the believer's conscience, but I now see that Attridge is not the only scholar to propose this interpretation, for Kenneth L. Schenck, of Wesley Seminary, has published an article, "Philo and the Epistle to the Hebrews: Ronald Williamson's Study after Thirty Years," in The Studio Philonica Annual (volume 14, 2002, pages 112-135 [1-29, this copy]). Like Attridge, Schenck uses Philo to unlock Hebrews:

Hebrews' distinction between body and spirit is also reminiscent of traditions found in the Philonic corpus. On the one hand, we should not confuse Plato's body-soul dichotomy with the Cartesian dualism of material/immaterial.[42] We would more accurately distinguish between corporeal/incorporeal, assuming that all heavenly realities are made of 'stuff' of one density or another.[43] Philo thus passes on a Stoic interpretation of Gen 2:7 in which the spirit God breathes into Adam is a fragment of the divine (e.g. Leg. 1.39-40).[44] Similarly, in Gig. 60 Philo speaks of the human mind as the heavenly component in us.[45]

In Hebrews, God prepares a body for Jesus on earth (Heb 10:5, 10), but Christ offers himself to God through 'eternal spirit' in heaven (9:14).[46] The blood of bulls and goats might clean flesh, but Christ's heavenly offering cleanses conscience (9:13-14). Angels in Hebrews are ministering spirits (1:7, 14), and Hebrews speaks of the human spirit as the part of us that pertains to the heavenly Jerusalem (12:23). God is the father of our spirits (12:9),[47] but Christ's time on earth was the 'days of his flesh' (5:7) when he partook of 'blood and flesh' (Heb 2:14). We might even read the author's sole reference to Christ's resurrection more as a passage upward from the realm of the dead rather than a corporeal reconstitution of some sort (13:20).[48]

Along with Hebrews' clearly drawn distinction between body and spirit is a latent emphasis on the rational. The author encourages the audience to exercise their senses (Heb 5:14; αἰσθητήριον [aisthētērion]), a Stoic technical term found a number of times in Philo.[49] Throughout Hebrews 9 and 10 he contrasts flesh with conscience (9:9, 14; 10:2, 22), where conscience is understood as a faculty of memory.[50] Indeed, we can best explain the need of the heavenly tabernacle for cleansing in Heb 9:23 by supposing that at this point of the argument the author is basically thinking of Christ's offering in the tabernacle as a metaphor for the cleansing of the conscience -- that rational/spiritual element of a human being that potentially pertains to the heavenly realm.[51] Perhaps it is no mistake that Hebrews seems to distinguish between 'sins committed in ignorance' (e.g. 9:7) and sins committed 'willfully' (10:26).

Hebrews thus draws clear lines between the human spirit/conscience and the body/flesh in the same way it draws distinctions between the created and the heavenly realms. The associations are more obvious and consistent than any apocalyptic writing. Rather, they bear a closer resemblance to the cosmology and psychology of the book of Wisdom (e.g. Wis 9:15) and Philo (e.g. Gig. 12, 31). On the other hand, there is nothing specifically Philonic about Hebrews' use of this distinction. The similarities point more to a common milieu than to specific dependence. (Schenck, "Philo and the Epistle to the Hebrews," pages 12-14)

[42] Cf. D. Martin, The Corinthian Body (New Haven 1995) 3-15.

[43] Cf. J. Dillon, 'Asômatos: Nuances of Incorporeality in Philo', in C. Lévy (ed.), Philon d'Alexandrie et le langage de la philosophie, Monothéismes et Philosophie (Turnhout 1998) 99-110.

[44] Cf. Tobin, Creation 21.

[45] Philo's understanding of the soul is generally tripartite, sometimes involving the mind (νοῦς, the rational part of the soul; cf. Leg. 1.39), sense perception (αἴσθησις), and the passions (τὰ πάθη, these two form the irrational parts to the soul; cf. Leg. 2.6). Cf. also Her. 55, where Philo calls the human spirit the 'soul of the soul'. Philo can also speak of the soul in terms of 1) reason, 2) high spirit and 3) appetite (Leg. 1.70; 3.115), and in another instance he speaks of a seven-part soul (Opif. 117).

[46] Most translations interpret 'holy spirit' in Heb 9:14 as a reference to the Holy Spirit. An allusion to the Holy Spirit is not impossible, but πνεῦμα is anarthrous, highlighting the character of the offering -- spiritual -- rather than the Holy Spirit as the specific spirit in question. Even more than the blood of Christ, it is the spiritual and thus heavenly nature of the offering that really contrasts with the earthly, fleshly blood of bulls and goats.

[47] While this comment is an allusion to Num 16:22, Hebrews' use of the phrase places it within its overall body/spirit dualism.

[48] Heb 13:20 uses ἀνάγω, which can mean 'brought up' as well as 'brought again'. However, Heb 6:2 uses traditional Christian corporeal language: 'resurrection of dead [=corpses]'.

[49] Philo himself uses the word eight times: Leg. 1.104; 3.183, 235; Det. 15; Post. 112; Ebr. 155, 201; Conf. 20. In my opinion, Williamson's attempt to distinguish between an emphasis on the organs of sense in Philo and a more metaphorical reference to the senses in Hebrews is not only questionable but also makes a distinction without a difference (Philo 114-16). Heb 5:14 reminds us of 4 Macc 2:22, where the mind is enthroned above the senses. Interestingly, Williamson claimed that Hebrews has a significant overlap in vocabulary (22 words that are hapax legomena in Hebrews) with 1-4 Maccabees (Philo 14-15).

[50] Note the parallelism between συνείδησις and ἀνάμνησις in Heb 10:2-3. An 'evil conscience' in 10:22, therefore, probably refers to an awareness of unatoned sins.

[51] Cf. W. R. G. Loader, Sohn und Hohepriester: Eine traditionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur Christologie des Hebräerbreifes, WMANT 53 (Neukirchen 1981) 169-70. (Schenck, "Philo and the Epistle to the Hebrews," pages 12-14)

The central statement is this: "Indeed, we can best explain the need of the heavenly tabernacle for cleansing in Heb 9:23 by supposing that at this point of the argument the author is basically thinking of Christ's offering in the tabernacle as a metaphor for the cleansing of the conscience -- that rational/spiritual element of a human being that potentially pertains to the heavenly realm." By "the need of the heavenly tabernacle for cleansing," Schenck means its need to be cleansed, just in case there should be any misunderstanding. But I have the same objection as with Attridge. Look again at Hebrews 9:18-23:

[18] Wherefore, not even the first covenant was inaugurated apart from blood. [19] For when every command had, according to the Law, been read to the whole people by Moses, he took the blood of the calves, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled the book itself and the whole people, [20] saying, "This is the blood of the covenant which God made with you." [21] And, similarly, he sprinkled the tabernacle and all the implements of the service with the blood. [22] Indeed, almost everything is cleansed with blood according to the Law, and apart from the effusion of blood there is no remission. [23] It is necessary therefore, that the copies of what is in the heavens be cleansed with these things, but that the heavenly things themselves be cleansed with sacrifices better than these. (Harold W. Attridge, Commentary on Hebrews, pages 253a and 260a)

[18] ὅθεν οὐδὲ ἡ πρώτη χωρὶς αἵματος ἐγκεκαίνισται [19] λαληθείσης γὰρ πάσης ἐντολῆς κατὰ τὸν νόμον ὑπὸ Μωϋσέως παντὶ τῷ λαῷ λαβὼν τὸ αἷμα τῶν μόσχων καὶ τῶν τράγων μετὰ ὕδατος καὶ ἐρίου κοκκίνου καὶ ὑσσώπου αὐτό τε τὸ βιβλίον καὶ πάντα τὸν λαὸν ἐράντισεν [20] λέγων τοῦτο τὸ αἷμα τῆς διαθήκης ἧς ἐνετείλατο πρὸς ὑμᾶς ὁ θεός [21] καὶ τὴν σκηνὴν δὲ καὶ πάντα τὰ σκεύη τῆς λειτουργίας τῷ αἵματι ὁμοίως ἐράντισεν [22] καὶ σχεδὸν ἐν αἵματι πάντα καθαρίζεται κατὰ τὸν νόμον καὶ χωρὶς αἱματεκχυσίας οὐ γίνεται ἄφεσις [23] ἀνάγκη οὖν τὰ μὲν ὑποδείγματα τῶν ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς τούτοις καθαρίζεσθαι αὐτὰ δὲ τὰ ἐπουράνια κρείττοσιν θυσίαις παρὰ ταύτας (Morphological Greek New Testament [mGNT])

There are two cleansings in the old covenant, according to Hebrews -- of the people and of the earthly tabernacle. In the new covenant, there would likewise be two cleansings -- of believers and of the heavenly tabernacle. Verse 23 refers to the cleansing of the heavenly tabernacle, whereas other verses refer to the cleansing of the believers, and I think that the author of Hebrews treats the purification of flesh and spirit in the new covenant as effected together -- foreshadowed by the old covenant cleansing of the people in verses 19-20.

But I'll need to think more about this.

Brooke Foss Westcott on Hebrews 9:23

Brooke Foss Westcott

1825-1901

(Image from Wikipedia)

In yesterday's comments, one reader noted this Seventh-Day Adventist (SDA) link, which cited the 19th-century biblical scholar B. F. Westcott on Hebrews 9:23 for what he states in his Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews (1889):

In what sense then can it be said that 'the heavenly things' needed cleansing?

The necessity for the purification of the earthly sanctuary and its vessels came from the fact that they were to be used by man and shared in his impurity (comp. Lev. xvi. 16).

Agreeably with this view it may be said that even 'heavenly things,' so far as they embody the conditions of man's future life, contracted by the Fall something which required cleansing (comp. 1 Tim. iv. 4f . . .). Man is, according to the revelation in Scripture, so bound up with the whole finite order, that the consequences of his actions extend through creation in some way which we are unable to define (comp. Gen. iii. 17ff; Is. xxiv. 5, 6; Jer. xxiii. 10; Rom viii. 18ff). (Westcott, Hebrews, pages 272-273)

In short, Westcott doesn't know why the heavenly things needed cleansing, but he speculates -- as some of us have done -- that this is somehow connected to the Fall.

More on this some other time . . .

Hebrews 9:23 - "heavenly things themselves be cleansed"?

Tabernacle

Model in Timna Park, Israel

(Image from Wikipedia)

Our Hebrews study group encountered a puzzle yesterday, which I'll get to in a moment, but some context is needed, so I'll quote several verses from chapter 9:

[18] Wherefore, not even the first covenant was inaugurated apart from blood. [19] For when every command had, according to the Law, been read to the whole people by Moses, he took the blood of the calves, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled the book itself and the whole people, [20] saying, "This is the blood of the covenant which God made with you." [21] And, similarly, he sprinkled the tabernacle and all the implements of the service with the blood. [22] Indeed, almost everything is cleansed with blood according to the Law, and apart from the effusion of blood there is no remission. [23] It is necessary therefore, that the copies of what is in the heavens be cleansed with these things, but that the heavenly things themselves be cleansed with sacrifices better than these. (Harold W. Attridge, Commentary on Hebrews, pages 253a and 260a)

[18] ὅθεν οὐδὲ ἡ πρώτη χωρὶς αἵματος ἐγκεκαίνισται [19] λαληθείσης γὰρ πάσης ἐντολῆς κατὰ τὸν νόμον ὑπὸ Μωϋσέως παντὶ τῷ λαῷ λαβὼν τὸ αἷμα τῶν μόσχων καὶ τῶν τράγων μετὰ ὕδατος καὶ ἐρίου κοκκίνου καὶ ὑσσώπου αὐτό τε τὸ βιβλίον καὶ πάντα τὸν λαὸν ἐράντισεν [20] λέγων τοῦτο τὸ αἷμα τῆς διαθήκης ἧς ἐνετείλατο πρὸς ὑμᾶς ὁ θεός [21] καὶ τὴν σκηνὴν δὲ καὶ πάντα τὰ σκεύη τῆς λειτουργίας τῷ αἵματι ὁμοίως ἐράντισεν [22] καὶ σχεδὸν ἐν αἵματι πάντα καθαρίζεται κατὰ τὸν νόμον καὶ χωρὶς αἱματεκχυσίας οὐ γίνεται ἄφεσις [23] ἀνάγκη οὖν τὰ μὲν ὑποδείγματα τῶν ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς τούτοις καθαρίζεσθαι αὐτὰ δὲ τὰ ἐπουράνια κρείττοσιν θυσίαις παρὰ ταύτας (Morphological Greek New Testament [mGNT])

What puzzled me -- and also the others when I pointed it out -- was verse 23. This verse observes "that the copies of what is in the heavens . . . [are] cleansed with these things," meaning that "the tabernacle and all the implements of the service . . . [are] cleansed with blood" (verses 21-22), and that's consistent enough with the view that earthly things must be purged of impurity to be prepared for a pure, even sanctified sacrifice. But what is to be understood by the final clause of verse 23? It states "that the heavenly things [τὰ ἐπουράνια] themselves be cleansed with sacrifices better than these," meaning that the heavenly tabernacle and all the heavenly implements of the service require purification. Why?

We didn't know and so left the point as homework for next Sunday.

I've since had time to see what Harold Attridge has to say about the verse. He offers an intriguing -- if ultimately unsatisfying -- analysis that refers back to verses 11 through 14, especially verse 14, which states that Christ offered himself through eternal spirit to cleanse our consciences. Attridge argues:

As the reflection on spirit and conscience in 9:14 suggests, the heavenly or ideal realities cleansed by Christ's sacrifice are none other than the consciences of the members of the new covenant, the "inheritors of eternal salvation" . . . . In Hebrews as in Platonically inspired Jews such as Philo, language of cosmic transcendence is ultimately a way of speaking about human interiority. (Attridge, Commentary, page 262b)

Attridge may be quite right about cosmic transcendence and human interiority in Philo, but verse 14 follows verse 13 in Hebrews, which Attridge translates together as saying:

[13] Now if the blood of goats and bulls and the ash of a heifer sprinkled on those who have been defiled sanctifies for the purification of the flesh, [14] how much more does the blood of Christ, who through eternal spirit offered himself blameless to God, cleanse our conscience from dead works so that we might serve the living God! (Attridge, Commentary, page 244a)

The cleansing of conscience in this passage parallels the purification of the people, not the purification of the tabernacle, so Attridge's point about Philo doesn't seem to work here.

This will require further thought . . .

Hebrews 9:14-17 on Covenant and Testament

Scale of Justice

(Image from Wikipedia)

In the study of Hebrews this week, our group looked at 9:14-17, which may have an unexpected implication, so I drew this to the group's attention, but first let's look at the text itself. I'm using the KJV and TR out of laziness and lack of time, but this makes no difference for my point. The preceding verse has just noted the use of "the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer" for ritual purification of the flesh under the Mosaic Law and goes on to draw a contrast:

[14] How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? [15] And for this cause he is the mediator of the new testament, that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions [that were] under the first testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance. [16] For where a testament [is], there must also of necessity be the death of the testator. [17] For a testament [is] of force after men are dead: otherwise it is of no strength at all while the testator liveth. (King James Version)

[14] πόσῳ μᾶλλον τὸ αἷμα τοῦ Χριστοῦ ὃς διὰ πνεύματος αἰωνίου ἑαυτὸν προσήνεγκεν ἄμωμον τῷ θεῷ καθαριεῖ τὴν συνείδησιν ὑμῶν ἀπὸ νεκρῶν ἔργων εἰς τὸ λατρεύειν θεῷ ζῶντι [15] Καὶ διὰ τοῦτο διαθήκης καινῆς μεσίτης ἐστίν, ὅπως θανάτου γενομένου εἰς ἀπολύτρωσιν τῶν ἐπὶ τῇ πρώτῃ διαθήκῃ παραβάσεων τὴν ἐπαγγελίαν λάβωσιν οἱ κεκλημένοι τῆς αἰωνίου κληρονομίας [16] ὅπου γὰρ διαθήκη θάνατον ἀνάγκη φέρεσθαι τοῦ διαθεμένου [17] διαθήκη γὰρ ἐπὶ νεκροῖς βεβαία ἐπεὶ μήποτε ἰσχύει ὅτε ζῇ ὁ διαθέμενος (Textus Receptus)

The word for "testament" in the original Greek is diathēkē (διαθήκη), which has a double meaning that might be significant, i.e., "testament" in the legal sense of a will and "covenant" in the legal sense of a contract, if I might be allowed to distinguish the two meanings in this way.

I note this because verse 16 states that "where a testament [is], there must also of necessity be the death of the testator." The author of Hebrews applies this to Christ, whose 'last will and testament' (διαθήκη) is effected by his death.

The old diathēkē (διαθήκη), however, is put into effect by God, who assuredly does not die. The term here therefore cannot mean 'last will and testament,' but "covenant" in the sense of "compact" or "contract."

The significance for the writer of Hebrews, therefore, is that those under the old diathēkē (διαθήκη) had a legally binding contract with God, whereas those under the new diathēkē (διαθήκη) have the benefit of a legally binding inheritance. To phrase this somewhat anachronistically, the old diathēkē was a 'business' agreement between partners, but the new diathēkē is an 'inheritance' arrangement between a parent and children.

There would seem to be some implications here, perhaps that the contract can be broken, whereas the inheritance cannot be rescinded, but I'd need to look into this further to determine if the author of Hebrews meant something of the sort.

Note, also, that the distinction means that the King James Version mistakenly used "testament" for the two different uses of diathēkē, though I'd actually need to investigate the meaning of "testament" in the early modern English of the 16th and 17th centuries to make certain of this.

Barak Mendelsohn on Jihadis

Barak Mendelsohn

Assistant Professor of Political Science

(Image from Haverford College)

I've not posted much on Islamism lately, having gotten busy with other blog issues, but I continue to pay attention and to read articles, for Islamist radicalism isn't disappearing anytime soon. I've therefore read with interest a recent article at FPRI by Barak Mendelsohn entitled "Teaching about Jihadism and the War on Terror" (The Newsletter of FPRI's Wachman Center, Vol 15, No 7, October 2010), especially given that I've offered courses that touch on this topic. In his article, Mendelsohn makes an interesting because non-pc remark concerning his method of teaching about jihadis:

As a first step, I clarify that I do not presuppose that jihadis represent a distortion of Islam. My approach is guided by my understanding of religion as being interpreted and mutually constituted with the people and groups who claim to adhere to it. With an extensive debate raging within Islamic circles on what "true Islam" really is, it would be pretentious for me to announce who truly represents the religion and who does not. I prefer to avoid questions of right and wrong [interpretation] and instead locate the jihadi movement in the broader battle for the shape of Islam and the leadership of the Islamic umma, while making sure that students are aware that comparatively few Muslims support jihadis.

There's a downside to this position, I think, in that it cannot recognize when a religion has reinterpreted itself so thoroughly that it has effectively become a different religion. Suppose -- as a thought experiment -- that Islam were to draw upon certain Qur'anic verses identifying Jesus as the Word of God (Suras 3:40 and 4:169) and develop a high christology that placed Jesus far above Muhammad and equivalent to the Qur'an, effectively divinizing him. Would this still be Islam even if it became the dominant view among Muslims? And what if it remained a minority view? What of those Muslims who have been evangelized by Christians and have come to believe in Jesus as divine but have elected to remain within the Muslim community and still attend mosque? Such individuals do exist. Are they still Muslim?

The upside to Mendelsohn's position is that it allows the scholar studying jihadis to take seriously the Islamic sources that the jihadis themselves draw upon, and when one does so, one sees that these sources are not marginal texts. For that reason, I maintain that Islamism is radicalism at the core rather than at the margins of Islam.

Whether or not Islamism distorts those sources is the pressing question, but would Mendelsohn's view encompass this question?

Harold Attridge on the Tabernacle of the "Epistle to the Hebrews"

Tabernacle and the Sacred Vessels

(Exodus 40:17-19)

Figures de la Bible

Illustrated by Gerard Hoet (1648–1733)

(Image from Wikipedia)

In preparing for Sunday's Bible study on the "Epistle to the Hebrews" and considering the possible date of composition, I was thinking about the fact that the verb tense used to describe the practice of the Jewish priests offering sacrifices is often the present tense, a fact that has often been used to support an early date for the letter's composition, for why use the present tense to describe sacrifices being carried out unless the Jewish temple itself is still standing, which would date the epistle sometime between around 30 AD and 70 AD, the death of Jesus and the destruction of temple, respectively?

This seemed somewhat plausible to me until I perceived something that had previously escaped my notice. In the entire epistle, the term "tabernacle" occurs twice, in Hebrews 8:2 and 9:11, whereas the term "temple" does not occur at all. All the sacrificial descriptions presuppose the mobile desert tabernacle used when the Israelites were wandering in the wilderness, not the immobile Jerusalem temple built by King Herod, which rather undermines the argument relying on the Greek present tense to describe sacrifices as dating the epistle prior to 70 AD, when the temple was destroyed.

I realized that I couldn't have been the first to notice this fact, and I in fact wasn't, for upon checking with Harold W. Attridge, The Epistle to the Hebrews, I found this remark:

Hebrews is not explicitly interested in the Herodian temple and contemporary high priests, but in the Torah and the cultic system of the desert tabernacle that it portrays. (Attridge, Hebrews, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1989, page 8)

This explicit interest in the tabernacle might even imply the temple's destruction, and thus date the writing of Hebrews to post-70 AD, for the tabernacle as a movable site of the sacred could better fit the time after the temple's destruction, when holiness was dispersed and peripatetic, moving to wherever Christians moved in setting up churches.

But I would need to think about this some more, for the point of Hebrews is that the true tabernacle exists in heaven . . .

Albert Barnes on "God-Breathed"

Albert Barnes

(Image from Wikipedia)

In searching more on a possible allusion to Genesis 2:7 in 2 Timothy 3:16, I discovered that at least one commentary (and probably more if I were to look further) allows for this possibility, the New Testament Notes, by the American Calvinist theologian Albert Barnes (1798-1870), who has this to say about θεόπνευστος in 2 Timothy 3:16:

Is given by inspiration of God. All this is expressed in the original by one word -- Θεόπνευστος Theopneustos. This word occurs nowhere else in the New Testament. It properly means, God-inspired -- from Θεός Theos, God, and πνέω pneō, to breathe, to breathe out. The idea of breathing upon, or breathing into the soul, is that which the word naturally conveys. Thus God breathed into the nostrils of Adam the breath of life, Ge 2:7; and thus the Saviour breathed on his disciples, and said, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost," Joh 20:22. The idea seems to have been, that the life was in the breath, and that an intelligent spirit was communicated with the breath. The expression was used among the Greeks, and a similar one was employed by the Romans. Plutarch ed. B. ix, p. 683, 9. τους ονείρους τους θεοπνεύστους tous oneirous tous theopneustous [the inspired dreams]; Phocylid. 121. της δε θεοπνεύστου σοφίης λόγος εστιν αριστος tēs de theopnoustou sophiēs logos estin aristos [the word of inspired wisdom is excellent]. Perhaps, however, this is not an expression of Phocylides, but of the pseudo Phocylides. So it is understood by Bloomfield. Cicero, pro Arch., 8. poetam -- quasi divino quodam spiritu infiari. [a poet -- as if breathed upon by a certain divine spirit] The word does not occur in the Septuagint, but is found in Josephus, C. Ap. i. 7. "The Scriptures of the prophets who were taught according to the inspiration of God, κατα την επίπνοιαν την απο του Θεου kata tēn epipnoian tēn apo tou Theou [according to the inspiration of God]" In regard to the manner of inspiration, and to the various questions which have been started as to its nature, nothing can he learned from the use of this word. It asserts a fact -- that the Old Testament was composed under a Divine influence, which might be represented by breathing on one, and so imparting life. But the language must be figurative, for God does not breathe; though the fair inference is that those Scriptures are as much the production of God, or as much to be traced to him as life is. Comp. Mt 22:43; 2 Pe 1:21. The question as to the degree of inspiration, and whether it extends to the words of Scripture, and how far the sacred writers were left to the exercise of their own faculties, is foreign to the design of these notes. All that is necessary to be held is, that the sacred writers were kept from error on those subjects which were matters of their own observation, or which pertained to memory; and that there were truths imparted to them directly by the Spirit of God, which they never could have arrived at by the unaided exercise of their own minds. Comp. Intro. to Isaiah and Job.

Barnes does not make a strong case for an allusion to Genesis 2:7 in 2 Timothy 3:16, but he offers more examples on "inspiration" for our consideration. He does offer an intriguing suggestion: "The idea seems to have been, that the life was in the breath, and that an intelligent spirit was communicated with the breath." The suggestion is intended to connect the two verses hermeneutically, life and intelligence being infused with the same breath given by God, but this depends upon an already established allusion to Genesis 2:7 in 2 Timothy 3:16, and that hasn't yet been shown.

Perhaps I'll try to check other commentaries . . .

"Absence Present in the Text"

The Abstract Text

1 Belly band and 2 Flap

3 Endpaper and 4 Book cover

5 Top edge and 6 Fore edge

7 Tail edge and 8 Right page, recto

9 Left page, verso and 10 Gutter

(Image from Wikipedia)

I learn something new every day, even when I'm not looking to . . . as in several of those ten things above.

But that's not what I'm blogging about this fine morning. No. Rather, I merely intend to post another exchange that I had with the impressive E. Bruce Brooks, a scholar of Chinese who has made a foray into New Testament studies to test his principle of inconcinnity (and related principles) for finding layers in the growth of texts.

Professor Brooks recently remarked on the Synoptic Listserve (i.e., a scholarly listserve focusing on the textual interconnections among Matthew, Mark, and Luke) that "rejecting a source is one way of using it" -- by which he meant that an author can be aware of a source and yet reject it, and that this can tell us something about the author's views.

I was struck at the point made by Professor Brooks and commented (Synoptic-L Message #2245):

Is there an ambiguity about "source" here? If an account is not drawn upon by a writer, is it a source?

This gets us up to some rarefied heights. For instance, I publish a lot on John Milton (to such depths have I fallen), and I read many articles that I do not use. But what if -- and this has never happened -- I really hated an article by some scholar and refused to 'use' it even though I was implicitly arguing against it. Would that article be a source?

Are there three sorts of sources:

1. sources used (presence in text);
2. sources not used, ignored (absence in text); and
3. sources rejected, but not ignored (absence present in text)?

Number one is what I ordinarily consider sources. Number two is what I ordinarily do not consider sources. But number three? I haven't thought about this before, not very carefully, at least.

Professor Brooks replied (Synoptic-L Message #2248):

I had suggested that other texts which a later writer decides not to incorporate are sources of a sort.

JEFFERY: But what if -- and this has never happened -- I really hated an article by some scholar and refused to 'use' it even though I was implicitly arguing against it. Would that article be a source?

BRUCE: Absolutely. It is something out there which shapes the thing that is in here. If you hate your father, and arrange your whole life to be the opposite of what your father represents, are you being influenced by your father? The psychoanalytic profession, here (for once) with support from myself, would unhesitatingly say so.

JEFFERY: Are there three sorts of sources:

1. sources used (presence in text);
2. sources not used, ignored (absence in text); and
3. sources rejected, but not ignored (absence present in text)?

Number one is what I ordinarily consider sources. Number two is what I ordinarily do not consider sources. But number three? I haven't thought about this before, not very carefully, at least.

BRUCE: I very much like the phrase "absence present in text." And I don't promise not to use it in other contexts.

Professor Brooks goes on to make several more even more profound points, but I don't want to give him too much credit since my point in today's blog entry is to glorify myself.

I trust that I have succeeded . . . even if merely through a bit of reflected glory.