The title of Rossi’s op-ed: "The Failure of a Generation." Rossi is an economist with little or no interest in partisan politics - therefore without "dimora fissa" - with no place to lay his head, politically speaking. He wrote with his head and from the heart in a way very few intellectuals do on the occasion of his resignation from the Italian Senate. His resignation was rejected by a large majority, by political opponents and allies alike. I translate it in full:

Resignation from the Senate, as I have chosen to do, can be understood – contrary to what many people believe – as a decisively political act.  That’s because, if only for a moment, it forces the political class to take stock of itself and its own attitudes. One attitude more than others concerns me, the attitude toward the younger generations.

I will try to explain. The average Italian who had the adventure of being 20 years old in the early 1930s – my father, for example, one among many – experienced for a great part of his life (up until he was 50 or so) a diet 35% less rich in calories than the generation which preceded his. The fault of the war, certainly, but also of the illusion of self-sufficiency (autarchy) of the regime. In the United States and in the United Kingdom, during the period of industrialization, the average height of the population (an index of prosperity almost as important as that of nutrition) perceptibly diminished. In the case of the United States, the average reduction in height between 1830 and 1890 was 4 centimeters; in England the period of decline lasted for a century, beginning in the second half of the 1700s. In both cases, the decline in average height was due at least in part to the urbanization that accompanied the process of industrialization in the two countries. The cities of the epoch were characterized by high mortality rates, endemic sicknesses, overcrowding and therefore rapid contagion, few if any systems of sanitation (no municipal sewer system and no access to drinkable water), not to mention high prices (relative to the ones we know) for fresh and nutritious foods. More recent Italian history offers similar examples; an instructive example concerns the height of Lombards in the second half of the 1700s, which declined ca. 3 centimeters between 1735 and 1835.

My goal is simple: to furnish a few examples capable of giving the lie to one of the many fables that has been believed and professed on the Left in particular: the ingenuous and misleading idea that the evolution of humanity is to be considered a linear process whose interruptions are to be thought of as anomalies. I'm sorry, but that is not the way it is. It never has been. It has often been the case that a generation has experienced levels of economic prosperity inferior to those of precedent generations. Young people today are not the first and will not be the last to have this experience.  

The way ahead for them is the same one that many before them have had to take in order to climb the hill: that of rolling up their sleeves, of studying and working better and harder in order to reconquer the lost levels of economic prosperity, of accepting reality and confronting it with eyes wide open, altering it if necessary and where possible. Without wasting a single second listening to the many who – with a hypocritical show of pity – commiserate over the current conditions of the younger generations. Without however forgetting that, in their case, there is an anomaly. The true anomaly concerns the generation that preceded theirs. By and large a generation made up - I can think of no more effective image – of locusts. Politicians – on the Right and on the Left – have done whatever they could to make it impossible (and they succeeded!) to give to younger generations less uncertain prospects and now, given that those same young people are now voters, are the first to show lively concern for their fortunes. Union leaders who betrayed their mission by giving to those who already have by taking away from those who do not yet have. Armchair journalists who see the problem only when it is too late to address it. Adults, men and women, of the Right and of the Left who for two decades did not hesitate to consume whatever there was, and, especially, whatever there wasn't: the same generation that today looks at younger generations with damp eyes and considers them an unfortunate exception.

To the new season of uncertainty, the political class ought to have responded, not with metanarratives but with policies (politics in the proper sense): reforming, for example, the state’s role in society such that it insures against risks that are otherwise uninsurable and such that it is freed from the burden of activities that by now belong to the market sphere. To be sure, in place of the effort to understand the nature of the new risks and construct new forms of insurance it is always possible to take the shortcut of stopgap measures in favor of the precariously employed and continue to make use of the public sector as the employer of last resort. In this way however one merely ends up swapping out the risks and uncertainties of the market for the extreme and intolerable arbitrariness that is typical of politics.

Nicola Rossi, Senator, Democratic Party

    The original in Italian is all over the net, for example, at Pietro Ichino’s place here.

    Spieckermann, a chief co-editor of an essential reference work in progress, the Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (note to Mike Heiser and friends: would that these volumes were offered through Logos), is eminently qualified to write a biblical theology. This is also true of Feldmeier, though I cannot claim to know that from first-hand knowledge of his scholarship beyond this book (the Jesus Festschrift or NT is of unparalleled importance to me, but is not the focus of my research). It does not surprise me that Der Gott der Lebendigen simultaneously appeared in the excellent translation of Mark Biddle, under the title God of the Living: A Biblical Theology (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2011). Spieckermann for one is a careful planner. The volume is available through amazon.de auf Deutsch, and in English through Amazon.

    God of the Living is extremely well written (it reads better in German). Its strengths are immense. A first introduction to the creative theological reflection of its authors and, to a lesser extent, of colleagues including Kratz, Köckert, Koch, and Janowski (the list is suggestive, not exhaustive), it is biblical theology in a new key, with careful attention to ancient Near Eastern and Greco-Roman backgrounds.

    Nonetheless, the truly intrepid scholar will not start with this volume. She will begin with the following monographs, available through Eisenbrauns:

Hermann Spieckermann, Heilsgegenwart: Eine Theologie der Psalmen (FRLANT 181/1; Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1989); idem, Gottes Liebe zu Israel: Studien zur Theologie des Alten Testaments (FAT 33; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001); further, a series of volumes edited by Spieckermann and Reinhard Kratz: Götterbilder, Gottesbilder, Weltbilder: Polytheismus und Monotheismus in der Welt der Antike. Band I: Ägypten, Mesopotamien, Kleinasien, Syrien, Palästina (FAT2 17; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006); Götterbilder, Gottesbilder, Weltbilder: Polytheismus und Monotheismus in der Welt der Antike. Band II: Griechenland und Rom, Judentum, Christentum und Islam (FAT2 18; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006); Divine Wrath and Divine Mercy in the World of Antiquity (FAT2 33; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008); Zeit und Ewigkeit als Raum göttlichen Handelns: Religionsgeschichtliche, theologische und philosophische Perspektiven (BZAW 390; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009); One God - One Cult - One Nation: Archaeological and Biblical Perspectives (BZAW 405; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010)

    The truly intrepid scholar will read more of Spieckermann and Feldmeier for herself, and (e.g.) Reinhard Kratz, Matthias Köckert, Klaus Koch, and Bernd Janowski. To be sure, most of the pertinent scholarship is in German and is only available, shall we say, at FAT prices. German language scholarship is expensive. At the same time, it is readily available in the best research libraries; otherwise, through interlibrary loan.

    God of the Living is not without significant limitations. I point them out without wanting to overlook the fact that this theology is very well-grounded in the disciplines of the study of the Old and New Testaments, its authors incredibly well-read in their fields. Still, the volume interacts very little with Jewish scholarship on the Old and New Testaments with respect to theological questions. The volume would have been stronger were it informed by sustained and explicit engagement with theses and insights of Abraham Joshua Heschel, Moshe Greenberg, Bernard Levinson, Jon Levenson (I am also thinking of the volume he co-authored with Kevin Madigan), Michael Fishbane, Benjamin Sommer, Israel Knohl, Jacob Milgrom, and Marc Zvi Brettler (a suggestive, not an exhaustive list).

    Nor is Jewish scholarship on the New Testament given adequate attention (for a first orientation, see the volume presented here). The lack of engagement with the scholarship of those who contributed to Christianity in Jewish Terms also represents a missed opportunity. Finally, is it possible to discuss love of God and neighbor without interacting with Meir Soleivichik’s seminal essay, The_Virtue_of_Hate?

    It is also frustrating that the work of non-Fachleute is generally overlooked (an exception: Jan Assmann). A biblical theology that takes into consideration the insights of Mary Douglas, Jacques Ellul, Emil Fackenheim, Franz Rosenzweig, and Emmanuel Levinas has yet to be written.

    Beyond that, it would have been nice to see a volume of German language biblical theology interact in a sustained fashion with output on the same topic produced in English, by (e.g.) Barr and Moberly; Ellen Davis and Mandolfo; Fretheim, Perdue, Brown, and Brueggemann; Goldingay and Patrick Miller. I also missed interaction with the theses of German language scholars including Ebach and Crüsemann; Lohfink, Zenger and Hossfeld.

    To be clear, the above lists reflect the limitations of my reading. Moreover, the proper response to such lists is probably: καὶ σὺ τέκνον? Not that I am interested in taking Caesar out. Nor am I ready to write a biblical theology of my own.

    A smidgeon of Sachkritik. So far as I can see, the greatest theological need of the moment is to correct common understandings of "God is Love" in light of passages like Nahum 1, Habakkuk 3, the book of Daniel, Mark 13, and the Apocalypse of John, not the other way around.

    It is the imperturbable response of resignation and disinterest vis-à-vis examples of systemic evil in the world today, the helpless approach of the majority of well-fed and well-heeled Jews and Christians to the same, that needs to be distinguished from the stance of God as the Bible speaks of God vis-à-vis examples of systemic evil. In our day regimes like those that grind the populaces of Syria, Iran, Zimbabwe, Belarus, and North Korea barely register in the consciousness of the typical citizen. If the witness of scripture is any guide, God's stance toward such regimes, and examples of systemic evil endemic to the generality of modern states, is one of implacable and undisguised contempt.

    A specific example: the Occupy Wall Street movement. Whereas I am unconvinced by the rhetoric of this movement, that does not mean I buy the rhetoric of Wall Street. Resources for an alternative to both are found in scripture. That so few utilize them is a judgment on the petit-bourgeois flavor of the generality of academic biblical scholarship. Not on the Bible, one of whose abiding strengths is its failure to legitimize that particular social location.

    The above comments push back at reflections found in God of the Living quoted by Joseph Kelly. In major strands of ancient theology, wrath and judgment are understood as the only proper response to egregious realities of various kinds; a nod to this fact is found in a footnote of God of the Living (fn 3 on p 339). What is love after all, if it knows nothing of what Jacques Ellul called “the violence of love” (introduction here)?

    God of the Living is a splendid accomplishment. It merits, not slavish agreement, but sustained engagement. 

Online Discussion of God of the Living

Larry Hurtado
Joseph Kelly
Charles Halton
Craig Adams

    Secondly, as Jeremy Hutton points out in his review of Bodi’s latest volume, The Demise of the Warlord: A New Look at the David Story (Hebrew Bible Monographs 26; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2010) [a close reading of 2 Sam 11-12, a fact one could not guess from the book’s title], “Bodi demonstrates a solid and diverse knowledge of previous interpretations (both modern and rabbinic), deep familiarity with ancient Near Eastern cognate literature, and a keenly sensitive reader’s eye.” That’s a winning combination. A broad interdisciplinary approach is fruitful if and only if the researcher who adopts it is sufficiently grounded in the languages and concepts of the primary sources. Bodi qualifies.

    Thirdly, Bodi’s scholarship attempts to exemplify what might be termed the “Moshe Held principle”, to wit, that “if one can show how insights gained from the study of newly discovered ancient Near Eastern texts have been anticipated by medieval rabbis who did not have access to these buried ancient Semitic documents, then the probability that one’s interpretation is plausible may be increased” (quoted by Hutton from p. 4 of Bodi, op. cit.).¹ The premise is that there is a native tradition of biblical interpretation; it deserves attention and is an important resource for historical interpretation in the modern sense.

    I could not locate a comprehensive bibliography of Bodi’s scholarship. Here is what I came up with.

Daniel Bodi Bibliography

The Book of Ezekiel and the Poem of Erra (OBO 104; Freiburg: Universitätsverlag; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1991) [reviews inter alia by J. N. Postgate in VT and Michael S. Moore in JBL]; "Les expressions פגרי מלכיהם dans Ez 43, 7b.9 et פגרי גלוליהם dans Lv 26,30 à la lumière des termes akkadiens pagrû(m)/pagra’u(m) et maliku(m) des textes de Mari," in Lectio difficilior probabilior? L'exégèse comme expérience de décloisonnement. Mélanges offerts à Françoise Smyth-Florentin (Thomas Römer, ed.; Dielheimer Blätter zum Alten Testament und seiner Rezeption in der Alten Kirche 12; Heidelberg: Wiss.-theol. Seminar, 1991) 87-101; “Der altorientalische Hintergrund des Themas der ‘Ströme lebendigen Wassers’ in Joh 7,38,” in Johannes-Studien. Interdisziplinäre Zugänge zum Johannes-Evangelium. Freundesgabe der Theologischen Fakultät der Universität Neuchâtel für Jean Zumstein (Martin Rose, ed.; Zürich: TVZ, 1991) 137-158; “Les gillûlîm chez Ézéchiel et dans l'Ancien Testament, et les différentes pratiques associées à ce terme,” RB 100 (1993) 481-510; “Le livre d'Ézéchiel et le Poème d'Erra,” ETR 68 (1993) 1-24; “La tragédie de Mikal en tant que critique de la monarchie israélite et préfiguration de sa fin,” Foi et vie 95 (1996) 65-105; “Polarité dialectique: Cheminer sur la route ou construire la cité?” Études théologiques et religieuses 72 (1997) 3-25; "Le prophète critique la monarchie: le terme nāśī’ chez Ézéchiel," in Prophètes et rois: Bible et Proche-Orient (André Lemaire, ed.; Lectio Divina hors série; Paris: Cerf, 2001) 249-257; “La clémence des Perses envers Néhémie et ses compatriotes: faveur ou opportunisme politique?” Transeuphratène 21 (2001) 69-86; Petite grammaire de l'Akkadien à l'usage des debutants (Paris: Geuthner, 2001); Jérusalem à l’époque perse: "Levons-nous et bâtissons!" (Paris: Geuthner, ²2006 [2002]); “Bible et littérature--Erich Auerbach et les débuts de la method,” Revue des études juives 161 (2002) 465-473; “Outraging the Resident-Alien: King David, Uriah the Hittite, and an El-Amarna Parallel,” UF 35 (2004 [2003]) 29-56 [pdf here]; “Corporation des charmeurs de serpents à Jérusalem à l'époque de Néhémie et en Babylonie,” Transeuphratène 28 (2004) 49-66; The Michal Affair, From Zimri-Lim to the Rabbis (Hebrew Bible Monographs 3; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2005) [reviews inter alia by Mark Chavalas in JNES, Zev Garber in CBQ; Eric Ortlund in ET, Peter Mischall in Bible and Critical Theory, and Nathan MacDonald in JSOT]; “Une locution proverbiale à Mari, El-Amarna et dans la Bible,” Journal Asiatique 29 (2006) 39-52; “Was Abigail a Scarlet Woman? A Point of Rabbinic Exegesis in light of Comparative Material,” in Stimulation from Leiden: Collected Communications to the XVIIIth Congress of the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament, Leiden 2004 (Matthias Augustin und H. Michael Niemann, eds.; Beiträge zur Erforschung des Alten Testaments und des antiken Judentums 54; Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2006) 67-79; “Les problèmes de la version grecque du livre d’Ezéchiel,” Semitica 52-53 (2005-2007) 57-81; “A Biblical Aramaic Hapax Legomenon yahîtû (Ezra 4:12) in the Light of Akkadian and Aramaic Texts,” Transeuphratène 34 (2007) 51-63; “Néhémie ch. 3 et la charte des bâtisseurs d'une tablette néobabylonienne de l'époque perse,” Transeuphratène 35 (2008) 55-70; “Ezekiel,” in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel (John H. Walton, gen. ed.; Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009) 400-516; The Demise of the Warlord: A New Look at the David Story (Hebrew Bible Monographs 26; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2010) [reviews by Jeremy Hutton and Peter Miscall; TOC here]; “Les apocalypses akkadiennes et bibliques: quelques points communs,” Revue des études juives 169 (2010) 13-36; “La crise économique et sociale à Athènes de Solon en 590 av. notre ère et à Jérusalem de Néhémie en 445: Comparaisons et contrastes,” Transeuphratène 40 (2011) 33-45

Note 

¹ The premier example of the Moshe Held principle involves the interpretation of the grammar of Gen 1:1-3: following the discovery of Enuma Elish (“When on high …”) and the Atrahasis Epic (“When the gods were like men …”), the interpretation of Gen 1:1-2 (“When God began to create”) as stage-setting for the first mainline event of Gen 1, “God said, ‘Let there be light’” (Gen 1:3), a view already advanced by Rashi, became more plausible. A host of modern interpreters, with or without knowledge or dependence on the discoveries, and with or without knowledge of Rashi’s interpretation, construe likewise (inter alia Heinrich Ewald, Max Geiger, Karl Budde, William Foxwell Albright, Otto Eissfeldt, Siegfried Herrmann, Harry M. Orlinsky, Ephraim A. Speiser, and Francis I. Andersen). I describe (but do not argue for) the “new-old” understanding of Gen 1:1-3 in a “Technical Note” here. Robert Holmstedt offers an analysis in terms of a type of relative clause: go here and here for online discussion).

For a discussion of rabbinic interpretations of the passage in question, see Peter Schäfer, “Berēšit bārā ‘Elōhīm. Zur Interpretation von Gen 1:1 in der rabbinischen Literatur,” JSJ 2 (1971) 161–66. On this view, Gen 1:1-3 finds its closest analogues in Gen 2:4b-7 and Hos 1:4. For variations on this understanding which however miss the fact that the wayyiqtol marks the matrix clause or mainline event, see Ibn Ezra and, among moderns, Paul Humbert, "Trois Notes sur Genèse I," Interpretationes ad Vetus Testamentum Pertinentes Sigmundo Mowinckel Septuagenario Missae ( = NTT 56 [1955]; Nils A. Dahl and Arvid S. Kapelrud, eds.; Olso: Forlaget Land og Kirche, 1955) 85-96 (ET here), repr. in idem, Opuscules d'un hébraïsant (Mémoires de l'université de Neuchâtel 26; Neuchâtel: Secrétariat de l'université; 1958) 193-203; idem, “Encore le premier mot de la Bible: à propos d'un article de M Walther Eichrodt,” ZAW 76 (1964) 121–31; and Walter Gross, “Syntaktische Erscheinungen am Anfang althebräischer Erzählungen: Hintergrund und Vordergrund,“ in Congress Volume: Vienna (John A. Emerton, ed.; VTSup 32; Leiden: Brill, 1981) 131-145. For the alternative view that Gen 1:1 represents an independent clause, see John H. Walton, Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2011 [I thank James Spinti for sending me a PDF of this important volume]) 123-127, and bibliography cited.

   In reference to that occasion in his Journal, John Wesley, who spearheaded the Methodist movement out of commitment to the spiritually homeless, reports that he adapted a treatise of the Puritan Richard_Alleine, "that blessed man," for the purposes of a covenant service.² Sensing the value, Wesley persisted in holding covenant services on subsequent rounds among the Methodist societies. 25 years later, 42 years into the revival (it began in 1738), he published Directions for Renewing Our Covenant With God (1780). In the alarm and call, in the focus on covenant, the influence of Puritan theology is clear.³ Covenant prayer has been a feature of Watch Night services ever since.

    Watch Night services are celebrated on New Year’s Eve or the first Sunday of the New Year by Methodist and Baptist congregations in various parts of the world. Similar services are part of the tradition of Moravians, Lutherans, and the Church of Scotland.

    A précis of Wesley's covenant prayer appears as #607 in the 1989 United Methodist Hymnal, previously printed in the 1936 edition of the Book of Offices of the British Methodist Church, and in the Book of Common Worship of the Church of South India, 1962.⁴ It goes like this. 

I am no longer my own, but thine.
Put me to what thou wilt,
rank me with whom thou wilt.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed for thee or laid aside for thee,
exalted for thee or brought low by thee.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things
to thy pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
Thou art mine and I am thine. So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth,
Let it be ratified in heaven. Amen.

   Devotion of this kind is found in prayer around the world in which an I-Thou relationship with providence is sought out. Except for the Trinitarian formula, analogous devotion to a personal God is typical of the bhakti movement associated with monotheistic Hinduism. From the standpoint of one monotheism vis-à-vis another, the fact might well be considered a manifestation of common grace. This is not to say that "God" is identical across the monotheisms of the world. On the contrary, as Stephen Prothero has argued, God is Not One.⁵ Theological differences are not a matter of indifference.

    I have fond memories of Watch Night services among Italian Methodists. In the kitchen and courtyard of the Methodist Church of Scicli in the province of Ragusa, Sicily, it was a time of joy and anticipation and fellowship over food – what else among Methodists? Dancing too, in Liberia, as my colleague Jakes Voker of Wesley United Methodist Church (Oshkosh WI) points out to me. This side of the Atlantic, the first Watch Night service was held on Nov 1 1770, at St. George’s Church in Philadelphia. The African-American community has always prized the Watch Night service.⁶ 

    In the antebellum South, at the end of the year, slave owners would count up their property and if necessary sell slaves to pay debts. Slaves did not always know on New Year’s Eve if they would stay together. New Year’s Eve was sometimes the last night a family of slaves remained united. The Covenant Prayer, re-read with that precipice in mind, is powerful.

    Watch Night was overlaid with new significance during the Civil War. President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation; it was to take effect on January 1, 1863. Slaves sat up the night before, Freedom’s Eve, waiting for freedom, if only haltingly and incompletely, to arrive at midnight. The Emancipation Proclamation continues to be read at Watch Night services in history-conscious African-American churches.

    From a phenomenological and theological point of view, covenant prayer in the style of Alleine and Wesley is a response to the anticipated initiative of a provident God. It is hope expressed in the language of dedication.

    James Weldon Johnson, an African-American author and hymn-writer who deserves to be better known, fuses the language of Jewish scripture with that of an African storytelling register to describe God's creation of man:

God sat down on the side of a hill where he could think. God thought and he thought until he thought, "I'll make me a man." Up from the bed of the river God scooped the clay, and by the bank of the river he kneeled him down and there the great God Almighty who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky, who flung the stars to the most far corner of the night, who rounded the earth in the middle of his hand, this great God like a mammy bending over her baby kneeled down in the dust, toiling over a lump of clay till he shaped it in his own image. Then into it he blew the breath of life and the man became a living soul.⁷

    The rielaboration of language and themes from Genesis 1 and 2 is clear. Elsewhere in Jewish scripture, the same God of whom Johnson sings promises that the time will come in which the words of his law will be written on the flesh of the heart of the house of Israel (Jer 31:33):⁸

כִּי זֹאת הַבְּרִית

אֲשֶׁר אֶכְרֹת אֶת־בֵּית יִשְׂרָאֵל

אַחֲרֵי הַיָּמִים הָהֵם

נְאֻם־יְהוָה

[וְ]נָתַתִּי אֶת־תּוֹרָתִי בְּקִרְבָּם

וְעַל־לִבָּם אֶכְתֲּבֶנָּה

וְהָיִיתִי לָהֶם לֵאלֹהִים

וְהֵמָּה יִהְיוּ־לִי לְעָם׃

For this is the covenant
I will make with the house of Israel:
"After those days,"
- this is the word of the LORD -
"I will put my law within them,
I will write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they shall be my people."

   In a Christian frame of reference, covenant prayer according to the model of Alleine and Wesley is easily understood as one way in which the promise of Jer 31:33, and the "I will be your God and you will be my people" formula, receives fulfillment. Similarly, it is easily understood as an identity-generating response to the prediction of Jer 50:5:

צִיּוֹן יִשְׁאָלוּ דֶּרֶךְ

הֵנָּה פְנֵיהֶם

[וּבָ]אוּ וְנִלְווּ אֶל־יְהוָה

בְּרִית עוֹלָם לֹא תִשָּׁכֵחַ

They shall ask the way to Zion
with their faces turned toward it;
They will come away and join themselves to the LORD
in a perpetual covenant that shall not be forgotten.

    In the register adopted by Johnson, "God thought and he thought until he thought, 'I'll make me a man on whose heart my intentions are written.' The great God Almighty who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky, who flung the stars to the far corner of the night, touches fingers to lips like a teacher of the mute, and gives his pupil a prayer to pray."

Notes

¹ Online here.

² In his journal entry for Aug 6, 1755, Wesley wrote: "“I mentioned to the congregation another means of increasing serious religion, which has been frequently practiced by our forefathers and attended with eminent blessing; namely, the joining in a covenant to serve God with all our heart and with all our soul.” I explained this for several mornings following, and on Friday, many of us kept a fast to the Lord, beseeching Him to give us wisdom and strength, to promise to the Lord our God and keep it."  On Monday, Aug 11: "I explained once more the nature of such an engagement, and the manner of doing it acceptably to God. At six in the evening we met for that purpose, at the French church in Spitalfields. After I had recited the tenor of the covenant proposed, in the words of that blessed man, Richard Alleine, all the people stood up, in testimony of assent, to the number of about eighteen hundred persons. Such a night I scarce ever saw before. Surely the fruit of it shall remain forever.”"  

³ A first introduction to Richard Alleine is available in Joel R. Beeke and Randall J. Pederson, Meet the Puritans: With a Guide to Modern Reprints (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2007). The relevant text: "Directions as to Prayer," in Richard [and Joseph] Alleine, Heaven Opened [the third part of Vindiciae pietatis, or, A vindication of godlinesse] (New York: American Tract Society, 1852 [1665]), available in digital form here. Wesley's adaptation in Directions for Renewing Our Covenant With God (1780), pdf of the second edition (1781) here. Presentation: David Tripp, The Renewal of the Covenant in the Methodist Tradition (London: Epworth Press, 1969 [Appendix II, 177-188]). For an introduction to the movement of "evangelical Calvinism" on which John Wesley depended, more than neo-Calvinists and neo-Arminians are wont to admit, see Dewey D. Wallace, Jr., Shapers of English Calvinism, 1660-1714: Variety, Persistence, and Transformation (Oxford Studies in Historical Theology; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). For a discussion of Wesley's dependence on Puritan sources, see Marion Jackson, “An Analysis of the Source of John Wesley’s ‘Directions for Renewing Our Covenant With God’”, Methodist History 30 (1992) 176-184. Further: Frank Baker, “The Beginnings of the Methodist Covenant Service” London Quarterly and Holborn Review 180 (1955) 215-220; Rupert Davies, “The Methodist Covenant Service” Theology 64 (1961) 62-68; William Parkes, “Watchnight, Covenant Service, and the Love-Feast in Early British Methodism,” Wesleyan Theological Journal 32 (1997) 35-58, online here; Roger L. Hahn, Douglas S. Hardy, and Jason D. Lewis, "Wesley's Covenant Service: A Relational Practice Connecting Biblical Doctrine with Communal Formation," Didache: Faithful Teaching 10:2 (Spring 2011) web version here. Parkes's comment on the "Covenant Prayer" is to the point: "The Covenant Prayer is a highly truncated version of the original, but both the spirit and content of its essential obligations remain. We might ask whether there could ever be a deeper consecration" (op. cit., 58).

⁴ For the prayer in context of the covenant renewal service of the Church of South India, go here. A simplified version of the same prayer appears as part of "Wesely's Covenant Service" on page 291 of the 1992 United Methodist Book of Worship. 

⁵ Reviews of Prothero's volume: Ken Chitwood and Trevin Wax.

⁶ Thanks to Ann Brock for blogging on this.

⁷ James Weldon Johnson, God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (New York: Viking Press, 1959 [1927]) 17-20; 20. Quoted by Garrett Green, Imagining God: Theology and the Religious Imagination (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998) 163; and by James C. Howell, The Life We Claim (Nashville: Abingdon, 2005) Kindle Edition, Location 679.

⁸ For acute reflections on the covenant concept in Jeremiah 31, see Adrian Schenker, Das Neue am neuen Bund und das Alte am alten: Jer 31 in der hebräischen und griechischen Bibel, von der Textgeschichte zu Theologie, Synagoge und Kirche (Gottingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 2006) partly available here.

    The curse, if you wish, which bedeviled Hitchens is that he knew of the existence of evil and sought to deal with it. One thing he could not do: take an arm-chair approach, the comfortable philosophy of “live and let die.”

    He refused to err on the side of caution, which led him to identify one paradigm of evil after another with phenomena as various as William Jefferson Clinton and his entourage, Mother Theresa, and the Jewish practice of circumcision. Hitchens’ moral indignation was often misplaced. At the very least, it was over the top. What to make of so much rank exaggeration, other than to note that he was well-suited to being a regular contributor to Slate and Vanity Fair?

    Hitchens strove in every way to be a militant. It is not ironic therefore that he became a militant American (a neo-conservative in the terminology of some). It was the path of penance he chose by which he might atone for the heart of darkness that revealed itself in Marxist Leninist practice, whose core ideology he once embraced.

    The essence of Hitchens is summed up in the fact that he would stare unblinkingly into an abyss of evil and then take up his sword. He had no explanation for the existence of evil; he offered no explanation as to why a non-believer ought to oppose evil; he remained “metaphysically challenged” to his dying day. He nonetheless trusted his instincts at the intersection of the moral and the aesthetic.

    His sword was not always misdirected. I would cite the example of the state erected on murder and torture in 1979 by Saddam Hussein. It was Hitchens’ friendship with Kurds and other Iraqis not afraid to die in the attempt to take the Baath regime down that compelled him to ask more from his friends in the anti-imperialist camp than said friends were willing to give.

    The radical evil of Saddam's reign of terror his Kurdish friends helped him see led Christopher Hitchens to the opposite conclusion of George Galloway: that a republic of fear like that of Saddam Hussein was worth toppling, if necessary, with the firepower of American empire. For Hitchens, the American- and British-led war against the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein and against the so-called Iraqi resistance thereafter was both just and necessary.

    No one has a right to pontificate about Iraq without first reading Kanan Makiya’s Republic of Fear. A stop gap solution: a slice of a Hitchens lecture with an accompanying video that records the banal horror of Baathist evil. The great Galloway-Hitchens cage-match at Baruch College, a match Hitchens won handily, is available here. It is a fantastic test of true and false prophecy to re-listen to the 2005 cage match in 2011. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Galloway belongs on a list like the one Orwell compiled. Hitchens, in his post-Nation iteration, clearly does not. To the utter disappointment of many erstwhile friends, Hitchens aspired not to be on the equivalent of Orwell’s list in his mature years. They, on the other hand, continued to imagine no higher honor than to be found on such a list.

    Hitchens loved to point out the irony of the time and energy Christians like Tony Blair must spend patching up problems Christianity itself produces (Exhibit A: Northern Ireland). It is ironic in its own way that Hitchens, after he got his second political wind, dedicated much of his time to confronting the demons of the socialist ideology he divorced, never to marry again. By then he only knew what he was not, not what he was. Marriage is forever, as they say. Divorce, on the other hand, is forever and ever.

    Christopher Hitchens’ ultimate claim to fame: his role as a spokesman of the “new atheists.” He often did a hack’s job of slashing away at one of his favorite targets – the God of Jews, Christians, and Muslims – though of course their God is not one, as Hitchens knew. He performed a service by taking on the most cherished beliefs of the Abrahamic faiths. In this sense, he may have done what he was supposed to do on God’s green earth red in tooth and claw. I speak of course as a believer.

    Hitchens’ capacity for courage counts for a lot if, as C.S. Lewis argued, courage is the greatest of virtues. Furthermore, his capacity for friendship got the better of him now and then. I know of no other explanation for the fact that he often sounded the note, in his last years, of “humanists of the world unite!” – notwithstanding the obvious truth that a motley crew of Vanity Fair and Hitchens book production reading individuals, however much each might function as the life of a dinner party, would stand no chance whatsoever of prevailing against the gates of hell, or any hell on earth, even if they acted of one accord, an oxymoron.

    Those who have the most to gain from taking Hitchens seriously are the believers he loved to lambaste. Perhaps he knew that.

    Hitchens was aware that he had misspent his youth; he tried hard to do better in his mature years. Did he succeed? Is it possible that he will someday hear the words, “Well done, my good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25:14-30)? In light of the previous paragraph, the possibility cannot be ruled out.  

    Hitchens died a slow death in the clammy hands of esophageal cancer. He set himself up for that. The disease taught him something he might not have seen with clarity beforehand, that he was, in his  words, “a fellow sinner” on a par with Christians. A greater gateway truth is hard to come by.

    How do we know that Hitchens made his way to that gate? A wonderful irony: the evangelical Christian Francis Collins, a physician and disease-fighter of the highest caliber, attended him in his final, losing battle with cancer. Atheists may well gnash their teeth, but Collins’ tribute to Hitchens in WaPo is revealing. You can only kick against the pricks so long. 

    Why is it the case that Jews plumb the depths of their own faith even as they read the New Testament? Writing from the perspective of Jewish scholars, Levine and Brettler put it thusly in their preface (xii-xiii): “there is much in the New Testament that we find both meaningful and compelling.” ‘[M]any of the passages in the New Testament provide an excellent encapsulation of basic, ongoing, Jewish values.” There are even passages in the New Testament Jews will find “deeply compelling” to the point of eliciting what the editors call – borrowing a phrase from Krister Stendahl – “holy envy.” The example given: Paul’s unsurpassed description of love in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7.¹ 

    The Jewish Annotated New Testament, hereafter JANT in this review, is meant to meet the needs of discrete (and occasionally overlapping) sets of readers: (1) Jews, (2) Christians, and (3) readers who approach the New Testament without any intention to appropriate what they learn within the framework of a Jewish or Christian metanarrative. JANT annotates the New Testament without attempting to persuade the reader to embrace a non-Christian perspective on the text. At the same time, it models a critical, empathetic, non-Christian reading of the New Testament at every turn.

    JANT is one milestone among many in an ongoing cultural project of paramount importance: the task of appropriation of everything from Qumran sectarian literature to 1-4 Maccabees, Tobit and Ben Sira; from Joseph and Aseneth, Jubilees, 1 Enoch, 4 Ezra, to 2 Baruch; from the New Testament and the Didache to Philo and Josephus, within the confines of a set of cultural loyalties in which the tradition of the Sages continues to occupy pride of place. The project is of interest to Jews, Christians, and uncommitted readers alike.

    Levine and Brettler state that “the New Testament helps Jews to recover some of our own history” – “our” history because Levine and Brettler do not hesitate to write from a confessional standpoint, precisely because they honor and respect the confessional standpoints of others.

    A number of questions present themselves: what do “we” mean when “we” identify ourselves and others as Jews? Where does the history of Judaism end and the history of Christianity begin? What did ancient authors mean when they identified themselves and/or others as Jews?

    The New Testament is a window into a room of the ancient world in which an intramural all-Jewish debate was going on, a room in which the debate participants were far from agreeing with each other on major and minor issues. What happens when that debate is transposed in a modern key? Levine and Brettler do not hesitate to affirm: “Jesus was a Jew, as was Paul; likely the authors known as Matthew and John were Jews, as were the authors of the Epistle of James and the book of Revelation” (xi). At the same time, as Levine and Brettler do not deny, the chief if not the only opponents of said Jews were fellow Jews: high priests and Sadducees; Pharisees - some, not all Pharisees, opposed fellow Jews who took Jesus to be the Messiah; and, in the case of Paul, fellow Jews who wanted to Judaize Gentile believers in Jesus. Despite important differences with the strands of faith and practice which came to definitive expression in the later Judaism of talmud torah, midrash, and piyyut, no one denies that the Essenes were also Jews; as were the Zealots, and those who followed their lead, bent first and foremost on removing the yoke of Roman oppression. So were Philo and Josephus, and so were the authors of 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch, and 4 Maccabees. Whether or not the authors of Mark and Luke and Hebrews were Jews in the later sense of having been born to an ethnically Jewish mother is not as important as it might seem. They no less than the others mentioned in this paragraph, they no less than Jesus and Paul and Caiaphas and Gamaliel and Philo and Tiberius Julius Alexander, are 1^st century CE witnesses to a set of questions 1^st century CE Jews asked in their time and place. Who is a Jew? Who is not a Jew? Who, even if a Jew, is an enemy of the Jewish people? Who, even if a Jew, is an opponent of God's will?

    To judge from New Testament passages as various as Matthew 5:17-20; 18:17; 19:28; 23:2-3a.3b-39; John 4:22; 8:44; Romans 9:3-5; 11:29; 1 Thessalonians 2:15; Galatians; and Hebrews, the questions, who is a Jew, who is not a Jew, not to mention who belongs to the “Israel of God,” received complex answers among 1st cent. Jews and Gentiles who acclaimed Jesus as Lord and prayed "maranatha" ["Our Lord, come!" in Aramaic]. “Seeing others as they see us” or at least understanding how others see "us" were challenging tasks for 1^st century Jews and Gentiles. They are no less challenging today.

    Shaye Cohen (“Judaism and Jewishness”), Joshua Garroway (“Ioudaios”), Mark Nanos (“Paul and Judaism”), and Daniel Boyarin as summarized by Daniel Langton (“Paul in Jewish Thought”) take divergent stances over and against the senses in which New Testament authors generated identity and defined themselves in opposition to, and in competitive emulation of, coeval overlapping ethnic and religious formations (513-515; 524-526; 551-554; 587; respectively). On this score, JANT reflects a fruitful and far from settled debate. I offer one quote in this context, if only because Paul, one of the most radical and original thinkers of all time, remains a favorite whipping boy of a large cross-section of progressive Christians and Jews:

    Daniel Boyarin (1946- ) maintains that despite the fact that Paul found the Law problematic, his letters (“the spiritual autobiography of a first-century Jew”) show him to be a Jew facing many of the same kinds of challenges that Jews face today; furthermore, as a fellow “cultural critic” Paul had asked the right questions (regarding universalist and gender issues in particular) in terms of how Jews should relate to the non-Jewish world. (587)   

    That Paul has become the favorite author of deeply traditional forms of Christianity and is viewed with scorn by contemporary cosmopolitans is seriously paradoxical.

    In the ancient world, particularisms and universalisms meshed and clashed in striking and sometimes bewildering ways. The same is true in the modern world. Those who would think deeply and philosophically about cultural particulars and universals cannot fail to give sustained attention to the pointed letters of Paul, the great missionary of emergent Christianity. Boyarin, Nanos, Levine and other Jewish scholars of the New Testament, each in their own way, contribute greatly to contemporary scholarship on Paul and reflection on cultural and religious particulars and universals. We are all in their debt. Students of the New Testament who overlook their contributions do so at their own unremitting peril. If nothing else, JANT stands a chance of introducing a large set of readers to the theses and insights of a set of authors who are currently unknown to the vast majority of those who read the New Testament.

    Theists and anti-theists define God and/or the gods from a vast plurality of opposing directions; there is no such thing as an essential unity of all religions relative to what divinity promises and asks of mortals; the belief that the true, the good, and the beautiful cohere in a dynamic or static unity, if not in phenomena, in the noumenal, or as a necessary postulate of pure reason, to be designated as "God," is not exactly an uncontested notion. “God is not one,” as Stephen Prothero recently put it. Nonetheless, Jews and Christians have believed, and continue to believe, that God is one, albeit in strikingly different ways.

    A strength of JANT is the attention it gives to the ways in which the “two-in-one” and “three-in-one” understanding of God found in diverse significations in the New Testament is prefigured and co-figured in precedent and coeval Jewish tradition. The essays by Rebecca Leeses (“Divine Beings”) and Daniel Boyarin (“John’s Prologue as Midrash”) are excellent brief introductions to the topic (544-546; 546-548, respectively).³

    Is JANT successful in annotating and reading the New Testament in Jewish terms, past and present? I would reply: not entirely. Methodologically, the volume is uneven, with some authors annotating in terms of background and context, but not trajectory (e.g. David Frankfurter on Revelation). At times it would appear that contemporary ideological perspectives allow a modern annotator to stand in judgment of an ancient author with insufficient allowance for differences in historical and cultural context.

    To be clear, the task of reading ancient texts in terms of their ancient coordinates is an onerous one for contemporary Jews and Gentiles alike. The only way to do so is to defend the texts from the deforming agendas of later readers – our own agendas included. Not surprisingly, JANT succeeds in defending the New Testament from misreadings thereof by Christians better than from misreadings thereof by Jews. Shaye Cohen’s reading of Galatians in JANT, to cite one example, strikes me as occasionally untouched by the insights of recent NT scholarship. On the other hand, I can think of no better starting place for evangelical Christians, to cite a circle of readers who stand much to gain by incorporating the insights of JANT into their understanding of the NT, than Cohen’s notes on Galatians.

    Once upon a time, it was common in Jewish circles to disassociate doctrine (philosophy) from practice (ethos). As if one might be indifferent about the first and insistent about the second. The rules have changed. On the one hand, both Judaism and Christianity will continue to be characterized by irreducible pluralism in the realms of faith and practice. On the other hand, challenges from within and without to particular Jewish and particular Christian practices and beliefs; counter-challenges to said challenges; attempts at making sense of Christianity in Jewish terms, Judaism in Christian terms, of both in “secular” terms – all of the above are pressing needs in the global village. Bring it on.   

    I am a Christian; the more I study Talmud and Midrash, the better Christian I become.² The converse is also true. Jews who study the New Testament become better Jews. Christians who learn to read the New Testament through Jewish eyes become better Christians.  

    If I had to name three “bridge” books Jews and Christians ought to read, in the interests of self- and mutual identity generation, they would be (1) the volume just introduced; (2) Post-Missionary Messianic Judaism: Redefining Christian Engagement with the Jewish People (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005), by Mark S. Kinzer; and (3) Christianity in Jewish Terms (Boulder: Westview, 2000), edited by Tikva Frymer-Kensky, David Novak, Peter Ochs, David Fox Sandmel, and Michael A. Signer.

Notes

¹ “1 Corinthian [sic] 13.4-7.” The copy editing of JANT is not up to the high standards one expects from Oxford University Press.

² To be clear, very few Christians dare affirm such a thing, and only a tiny minority of those who affirm it practice what they affirm. A diverse set of posts on this blog are meant to demonstrate the truth that the more a Christian swims in the sea of Talmud, Midrash, and Piyyut, the better she will navigate the currents of her faith tradition. Examples: the parable of the banquet in the Talmud (parts One and Two); a bedtime prayer; cleanliness is next to godliness: the talmudic source; the glories of ancient piyyut.

³ One might have wished that the authors would have provided select bibliographies.

    I heard some very fine papers, for example, one by Eric Cline announcing the end of Finkelstein’s low chronology; another by Cheryl Exum in which she masterfully described what we know and do not know about the author of Song of Songs; another by Chris Seitz on the sensus literalis and figural interpretation.

    What I like most about the meetings is the chance to catch up with colleagues and make new friends and have new experiences. Per my usual pattern, I enjoyed going native and staying outside of the tourist district, not in a hotel. San Francisco is a feast to the senses. Besides all the beautiful people walking around, there are billboards everywhere with giant-size representations of Steve Jobs, and a Starbucks on every corner. It's a kind of alternative reality.

    I will always remember the view of the bay from the Davis St. condo I slept in one night; the portion of an Oakland cannery redecorated as a fabulous apartment I ate in one evening with beloved friends; the hills I climbed to get to the 22^nd  St. apartment I shared with a delightful family. 

    I won’t forget two Orthodox priests, Romanian by heritage, whose love of life and learning is immense. One of them was very good at telling serious jokes, if you know the genre. Here is one he told, better, I think, than the joke’s creator, Stephen Colbert (go here). My retelling revises and abridges the version I heard.

A guy commits suicide. And he goes to heaven, which is not what he expected.

God greets him there, and the guy says, "I'm so surprised I'm here. First of all, I thought there was no God. Second of all, I thought if you killed yourself, you know, you were damned forever."

God replies, “I admit it often seems I’m not around. It's not the people who don't think I exist who worry me; it's the ones who think I do and are convinced that their wishes and my wishes are identical.”

"As for suicide, you know, it’s complicated. You have to take into account things like depression and jilted love. Everybody at least thinks about ending it, you know, about killing themselves at some point."

And God adds, "Even I've thought of it."

The guy says, "Can I ask, why didn't you do it?"

And God says, "What if this is all there is?"

    A better though very partial formulation of the question: how do contiguous cultures in conflict acquire and assimilate into their own frameworks elements of another framework they dearly wish to oppose? How does that work? What if such assimilative processes are of paramount importance? Here is Liverani:

    When we leave behind the level of static analysis and attain the level of dynamic and causal analysis, the role of external factors in the cultural development of a delimited region has been the subject of conscious and explicit debate. On the one hand, it is argued that culture evolves through internal mechanisms;¹ that contributions from the “outside” are inefficacious until they are assimilated to an “inside” and adapted and contextualized within a local system; furthermore, that a quantitative comparison between the few imported pieces and the mass of local materials, between the small number of episodes of cross-cultural contact and the seamless web of parochial quotidian life, reveals a crushing imbalance. The alternative, no longer an appeal to a simplistic version of diffusionism, retorts that important cultural innovations develop in contiguous time and space locations, according to a domino theory that refuses to postulate windowless monads; furthermore, that a cultural “region” is an abstraction of our own making; that even within the confines of a mental map of our own making it is not clear that centers are to be assigned more value than peripheries; finally, while it is no accident that it is possible to study the characteristics of a cultural area through time (its internal development), it is also possible to identify common traits within a limited time frame (by “centuries”) over ample spaces: in short, the study of culture occurs over the horizontal and vertical axes, with connections across space as well as time.  Given that one acquires culture through nurture, and given that one undoubtedly acquires it at an early age from one’s parents and from the community in which one is raised, it stands to reason that one may also acquire culture at an adult age, from one’s friends and, perhaps with even more significant effects, from one’s enemies.

    ¹ Explicit anti-Childean positions relative to the ancient Aegean on the part of C. Renfrew and his school would be of obvious and equal value relative to ancient Syria-Palestine. The awareness of the advantages of tracing internal development and of focusing attention on quantitative, objective data is a definitive acquisition of a long-established and rock-solid historiographical tradition. At the same time, mental reserve is warranted in the face of elements of drastic simplification of problems in the scholarship of this school, in reaction perhaps to even more simplistic theories of diffusion.

   The above is a translation of an excerpt from Mario Liverani, “Dall’acculturazione alla deculturazione. Considerazioni sul ruolo dei contatti politici e commerciali nella storia siro-palestinese pre-ellenistica.” In Forme di contatto e processi di trasformazione delle società antiche (Giuseppe Nenci, ed.; Atti del convegno di Cortona, 24-30 maggio 1981; Collection de l’École française de Rome 67; Rome: École française de Rome, 1983) 503-520; 505.

    If there is a region of the ancient Near East in which the phenomenon of acculturation presents itself as imposing and obvious, it is the Syro-Palestinian region. The region’s geographical position, a corridor between Egypt and Anatolia, a gateway from the Mediterranean to the Mesopotamian and Iranian heartlands, made it the privileged conduit of commercial traffic and cultural currents. Its political fragmentation (the result of topography, once again) made it the object of the large appetites of neighboring great powers. Its central position made it the pivotal locus in which knowledge of the non-indigenous (of several “others” in juxtaposition) resulted in innovation.

    In current historiography it is commonplace to note that Syria-Palestine is a stratified accumulation of acculturations;¹ beneath the accumulation there is nothing specific or original to the region – except for the originality of not being original. A society of merchants, caravan operators, and seafarers; of interpreters and translators, exoticizing artisans and hyper-receptive artists; at the level of larger numbers, a population of immigrants and of those forced to emigrate. Is this possible, is it reasonable?

    The stereotype, like every stereotype, is to be rejected as such, on the basis of sane critical and anthropological rigor, unless the choice is made to accept it as irremediably true. In that case a historical “truth” succeeds in having the upper hand. That would be tantamount to intellectual resignation, in which history no longer occurs in facts but in what is spoken and written, such that words are treated as more real than things.

    Less paradoxically, it might be said that the stereotype raises the question of the value to be assigned to, on the one hand, obvious and distinctive cultural manifestations embodied by a tiny subset of society and, on the other hand, the underlying connective tissue which, for the fact of being less visible, is not for that reason less real and enduring. It is the problem of the value to be assigned to activities of transformation and exchange, exposed without a doubt to the effects of cultural interaction, but constituting a very small quotient of economic activity, as opposed to the primary activities of production, less distinctive, less amenable to historical narrativization, except in terms of the long duration. The primary activities of production nonetheless constitute the structure on which the other activities rest.

    If one wishes, it is the problem of the relationship between, on the one hand, the specialized “elites” concentrated in the palace engaged in administration and distribution, speech and writing, establishing contacts - of these activities we have conspicuous if only intermittent testimonies – and, on the other hand, the great rural masses engaged in the work of hearth and field without much opportunity for travel or communication, without the possibility of knowing much outside of the horizon of their own village. Of these social strata more or less impacted by the effects of exchange and of acculturation we have little to no testimony – and when we have testimonials they disappoint because they are difficult to interpret historically and lack uniqueness; they lack “style.” Common household pottery one tends to throw away; the painted piece, the import, is conserved, studied, and published.

¹ To be sure, Oriental historiography does not make use of the term “acculturation,” insofar as it is thought I think to be a far-fetched and particularly inelegant coin given its sociological origin.

Reflections

    The opening paragraphs of Liverani’s 1981 essay move in the direction of privileging the study of a region, ancient Syria-Palestine, in terms of long-term historical structures as opposed to one-off events. The work of French historians who emphasized the “long duration” – e.g. Marc Bloch and Ferdinand Braudel - is not footnoted but taken for granted.

    The opposition in the above between common household pottery and painted imported ware is more than a metaphor for the redirection Liverani’s project entails. It is also to be understood literally in terms of the possibility and necessity of leveraging the massive amounts of “ordinary” data newer archeological methods collect in order to explicate long-term historical structures of interest.

    Since Liverani wrote his essay, the field of Syro-Palestinian archaeology has taken baby steps in the direction Liverani hoped for. It cannot be said that the knowledge so far acquired has been successfully integrated into the study of the history of ancient Syria-Palestine, assuming there is such a field of study (I have my doubts), or, for that matter, into the study of the history of ancient Israel.

    And what if the long-term historical structures constitutive of ancient Syria-Palestine impinge on the present of the same region? The innovations for which Syria-Palestine deserves to be well-known in the realms of philosophy (monotheism) and communication (the alphabet; “you” plural addressed political genres), after all, are of more than antiquarian interest. And what of the tight connection between particular examples of ethnogenesis and claims to land and resources? Four scholars who have addressed questions of this kind with rigor and originality are Albert Glock, Avraham Faust, Mark Smith, and Seth Sanders.  Liverani’s Antico Oriente, yet to be translated into English, is a massive attempt at exploring the entire ancient Near East in terms of long-term historical structures. On the other hand, Liverani’s 1981 essay poses a number of fundamental questions and sketches some solutions with greater clarity and concision than does his later monograph. In posts to follow, I will translate and comment on the entire essay.

Basic Bibliography

Avraham Faust, Israel’s Ethnogenesis: Settlement, Interaction, Expansion and Resistance (Approaches to Anthropological Archaeology; London: Equinox, 2006); Albert E. Glock, "Homo Faber: The Pot and the Potter at Taanach," BASOR 219 (1975) 9-28; “Archaeology as Cultural Survival: The Future of the Palestinian Past,” “Cultural Bias in Archaeology,” “Divided We Stand: The Problem of Palestine,” essays published posthumously in Archaeology, History and Culture in Palestine and the Near East: Essays in Memory of Albert E. Glock (Tomas Kapitan, ed.; ASOR Books 3; Atlanta, 1999); Mario Liverani, “Dall’acculturazione alla deculturazione. Considerazioni sul ruolo dei contatti politici e commerciali nella storia siro-palestinese pre-ellenistica.” In Forme di contatto e processi di trasformazione delle società antiche (Giuseppe Nenci, ed.; Atti del convegno di Cortona, 24-30 maggio 1981;  Collection de l’École française de Rome 67; Rome: École française de Rome, 1983) 503-520; Antico Oriente. Storia, società, economia (Manuali Laterza 17; Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1988 [10th ed., 2006; pp. x + 1031; Spanish trans. in 1995; Engl. and German trans. forthcoming]); Seth L. Sanders, The Invention of Hebrew (Traditions [gen. ed., Gregory Nagy; editorial board: Olga M. Davidson, Bruce Lincoln, and Alexander Nehamas]; Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009); Mark S. Smith, God in Translation: Deities in Cross-Cultural Discourse in the Biblical World (FAT 57; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008)

    Psalm 26 has 12 lines. Aside from the short initial appeal, a header of the whole, each line has a defined shape: two halves with an aggregate of 6-7 stress maxima (feet) and 15-17 syllables. The prayer is punctuated by seven references to יהוה, five of which are vocative, after the addition of יהוה in "redeem me, יהוה, show me your favor!" The addition is conjectural. Quite apart from the conjectural addition, the prayer is carefully configured from the point of view of meter and rhythm and the deployment of the trope of recurrence. In the English rendering I offer, an attempt is made to carry over a number of features of the source text which are often lost in translation. For more on Psalm 26, go here.

    Michael Kinsley has argued that an obese person is not fit to be that member of the First Family who serves as President of the United States. It is of course well known that many Americans expect the First Family to look and act like royalty – an expectation that creates more problems than it solves. What behavior to excuse; what behavior not to excuse? For Americans who see no overlap between the roles of president and a royal figure, the questions remain. Here is Kinsley:

Controlling what you eat and how much is not easy, and it’s harder for some people than for others. But it’s not as difficult as curing a chemical addiction. With a determined, disciplined effort, Christie [the overweight governor of New Jersey who flirted with the idea of running for President] could thin down, and he should -- because the obesity epidemic is real and dangerous. And the president inevitably sets an example.

Unfortunately, the symbolism of Christie’s weight problem goes way past the issue of obesity itself. It is just a too- perfect symbol of our country at the moment, with appetites out of control and discipline near zilch. And it’s not just symbolism. We don’t yet know much about Chris Christie. He certainly makes all the right noises about fiscal discipline and seems to have done well so far as governor of New Jersey. Perhaps Christie is the one to help us get our national appetites under control. But it would help if he got his own under control first.

    Kinsley self-identifies as a progressive. Is he? He is, precisely in the way he expects the personal and the political to cohere. His comments are an index of the fact that in the modern no less than in the ancient world, physics (the beautiful) and metaphysics (the true) are inseparable. The same is true of ethics (the good) and aesthetics (the beautiful).

    Another liberal commentator, Eugene Robinson, puts it this way:

On average, health-care costs for obese persons are 42 percent higher than costs for individuals whose weight falls into the “normal” range. It costs Medicare $1,723 more a year for an obese beneficiary than a non-obese one. For Medicaid the differential is $1,021, and for private insurers it’s $1,140. In other words, obesity is helping propel the rise in health-care costs, which are fueling the long-term rise in the national debt.

My intention is not to blame Christie for the federal government’s deficit spending — or, in fact, to blame him for his own obesity. Blame is not the point. Christie is just 49 and has four young children; politics aside, I’m sure he wants to be around to share the milestones in their lives. He prides himself on bullheaded determination and speaks often about the need for officials to display leadership. Well, Gov. Christie, lead thyself.

    In ancient Israel, the priesthood was reserved for a particular bloodline: the “sons of Aaron.” A physical impairment acquired at conception or in one’s lifetime did not disqualify a “son of Aaron” from the priesthood. Rather, he was assigned tasks other than the presentation of physically perfect animals to the deity. The list of physical impairments in Lev 21:17-21 that disqualified a priest from presenting physically unimpaired offerings to deity is not exhaustive but merely representative; the list is designed to mirror the list of physical impairments in Lev 22:22-24 that disqualify an animal from serving as an offering.

    It is unlikely that the obesity of the offerer constituted a problem since obesity in a fatted calf or lamb is in one sense a desired given and in another sense, a virtual impossibility (is there such a thing as an overweight calf, lamb, or goat?) Furthermore, thick was considered good in the ancient world, as opposed to thin (an exception: ancient Egypt).

    Eating disorders might nonetheless be singled out as grave sins; they still are. One of my father’s tasks in the military consisted of inducing vomiting in his commanding officer, who had an eating disorder. Few would deny that bulimia is downright disgusting, even if the disorder is understood today first and foremost as a medical condition, rather than a personal choice.

    Gluttony was and is considered a sin by many; in fact, eating animal products is considered immoral by a growing number of people. Everything we do takes place at the intersection of inherited predispositions, environmental pressures, and acts of the will (personal choice). All of the above play a role in someone becoming or not becoming a victim of anorexia or bulimia.

    In the Christian tradition, one might have expected that individuals would not be disqualified from the priesthood or the pastorate because of physical impairments. Priests and pastors, and all believers, are thought of as icons of the one who was physically disfigured by his assailants, “without form or majesty that we should look at him” (Isa 53:2). The following seems to have been the case in most times and places: pre-existing physical impairments were grounds for disqualification for the priesthood or pastorate. Impairments or disabilities acquired in the line of duty did not disqualify.

    Given recent technological advances and a growing awareness of the gifts of people with disabilities, a wheelchair-bound individual for example is no longer disallowed from entering a profession like that of teaching, law, or medicine; the same applies to the rabbinate, the priesthood, and the pastorate.

    What about intellectually challenged individuals? Until recently, a person with developmental difficulties might be excluded from any number of activities, religious and non-religious. Nonetheless, the mainstreaming of people with not only physical but developmental disabilities, those with “special needs,” has become a widely-held ideal. This ideal is often grounded in the Bible, and for good reason.

Here is an outline of a session on the topic of “The Bible and Disabilities.”

Assigned Texts: Lev 19:14; 21:16-23; Isa 35 ; Luke 14:15-24; John 9; 2 Cor 12:5-10 

Pop quiz on assignments 

Health Care and Early Christians (Hector Avalos)

Clips: Praying with Lior
Joni Eareckson Tada
L’Arche – Jean Vanier

Class discussion

¹ For Mesopotamian antecedents, see Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 17-22 [AB 3A; New York: Doubleday, 2000] 1842-1843. Beyond Lev 21:17b-21; 22:22-24; cf. Plato, Laws 6:759-760; 1QSa 2:4-9; Josephus, Ant. iii. 12, § 2; Philo, De Monarchia, ii. 5;  Seneca, Controversiae 4:2. By way of extension of the list of twelve representative imperfections of Lev 21, the Talmud details 142 disqualifying imperfections (b. Bek. 43a,b; Sotah 7:8).

The obesity issue in American politics discussed further here.

    Virginia Postrel writes eloquently about the conflict between kindness and truth, and the sense in which a premium placed on kindness destroys constructive discourse:

Kindness seeks, above all, to avoid hurt. Criticism -- even objective, impersonal, well-intended, constructive criticism -- isn’t kind. Criticism hurts people’s feelings, and it hurts most when the recipient realizes it’s accurate. Treating “kindness” as the way to civil discourse doesn’t show students how to argue with accuracy and respect. It teaches them instead to neither give criticism nor tolerate it.

    I agree with Postrel’s defense of criticism and her takedown of Harvard University, but I demur from her definition of kindness. When I think of kindness, I think of the book of Jonah, whose bat qol [divine voice] offers one demand and imperious question after another. The principle of truth (aka God) is compassionate in the book of Jonah. For that very reason, the bat qol requires Jonah to preach repentance and offer forgiveness. God does not allow Jonah to nurse feelings of resentment.

וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָה הַהֵיטֵב חָרָה לָךְ׃

יהוה said, “Are you right to be angry?” (Jonah 4:4)

    Jonah’s God is full of compassion but nonetheless pushes Jonah to the brink of suicide. Without necessarily going to those lengths, in the classroom, from the pulpit, in political discourse, it has to be possible to pull down, not only build up; to destroy, not just heal (Jer 1:10). It’s the feedback loop between the two poles that matters; if there is none, change for the better is impossible.

    We are killing people with kindness falsely so-called. We have become relentlessly affirming of anything and everyone, except those who do not share our commitment to relentless affirmation.

    What if we were to return to the Socratic method of cross-examination and self-examination – a method that dies on the vine in a context of relentless affirmation? If the Socratic method seems like old hat; it might be worth trying even older hat: the multi-directional cross-examination at the heart of biblical discourse. For a sampling of biblical truth-questions, go here. 

a fundamentalist religious zealot who, by opposing the global superpower of the age using terrorism, was able to drive western civilization out of the Middle-East.

    Anything Osama can do, Judah can do better. My problem, though, is another: if Mel Gibson plays Friedman’s Judah in the movie Warner Brothers wants to cash in on, and they will if ADL’s Foxman continues to offer free publicity, will I be able tell him apart from Rockatansky of Mad Max fame?

    Okay, the answer to that question is obvious. Still, I would enjoying seeing how the director of Showgirls handles the great battle of Beth-Zechariah, with the crazed elephants, the hills ablaze with gold and brass, and Eleazar the kamikaze (1 Macc 6:32-47).

אמר רב יהודה אמר רב

בשעה שעלה משה למרום

מצאו להקב"ה שיושב וקושר כתרים לאותיות

Rav Yehuda said Rav said:
When Moshe ascended on high
the Holy One was found in the act of sitting and tying crowns to letters.

[At death, Moses ascends into heaven and finds God hard at work. Some letters written in Torah scrolls are distinguished from others by crowns on their tips. God, the author of every detail of Torah, is fastening appropriate crowns to letters of Torah.]

אמר לפניו

רבש"ע מי מעכב על ידך

He said in his presence,
“Master of the World! Who detains your hand?“

אמר לו

אדם אחד יש שעתיד להיות

בסוף כמה דורות

ועקיבא בן יוסף שמו

שעתיד לדרוש על כל קוץ וקוץ

תילין תילין של הלכות

He said to him,
“There is a certain man who is yet to come,
at the end of many generations,
his name is Akiva ben Yosef;
he will one day seek on each and every tip
mounds and mounds of halachot.

[God is detained from attending to other tasks. He must prepare the way for Akiva, a renowned rabbinic exegete of the first centuries of this era (ca. 50–135 CE), who will draw out, from the jots and tittles of Torah, “tells” and “tells” of law for the good order of every facet of life].

אמר לפניו

רבש"ע הראהו לי

He said in his presence,
“Master of the World! Show me!”

אמר לו

חזור לאחורך

He said to him,
“Return to where you were!”

הלך וישב בסוף שמונה שורות

ולא היה יודע מה הן אומרים

תשש כחו

כיון שהגיע לדבר אחד

אמרו לו תלמידיו

רבי מנין לך

אמר להן

הלכה למשה מסיני

נתיישבה דעתו

He went and sat at the end of eight rows,
but he could not understand what they were saying.
His strength was deflated.
When he arrived at a particular exposition,
his students asked him,
“Master! Where are you getting this?”
He said to them,
“It is halacha given to Moses on Sinai!”
His mind was put at ease.

[In the Talmudic academies of Sura and Pumbeditha, the regular students were arranged in order of excellence in the first seven rows. Moses sits behind them, “at the end of eight rows.” He doesn’t understand the lesson, but he acquiesces when he hears that it is law given to him on Sinai which Akiva expounds.]

חזר ובא לפני הקב"ה

אמר לפניו

רבונו של עולם

יש לך אדם כזה

ואתה נותן תורה על ידי

אמר לו

שתוק כך עלה במחשבה לפני

He returned and entered the presence of the Holy One.
He said to him,
“Master of the World!
You have a man like this
and you give the Torah through me?”
He said to him,
“Silence! That is how it came to me in thought.”

אמר לפניו

רבונו של עולם

הראיתני תורתו

הראני שכרו

He said in his presence,
“Master of the World!
You showed me his Torah.
Show me his reward!”

אמר לו

חזור

חזר לאחוריו

ראה ששוקלין בשרו במקולין

He said to him,
“Return!”
He returned to where he was.
He saw his flesh being weighed out in a meat market.

[Moshe returns to earth to witness Akiva’s reward. Akiva died as a martyr at the hands of the Romans. Under torture, he refuses to recant his faith. According to this passage, his body was drawn and quartered and his flesh sold as meat in a butcher shop.]

אמר לפניו

רבש"ע זו תורה וזו שכרה

א"ל

שתוק כך עלה במחשבה לפני

He said in his presence,
Master of the World, this is Torah and this is its reward?
He said to him,
“Silence! That is how it came to me in thought.”

Other translations and online discussion of this passage:

“Such is My Will”: Musings on the Torah and its ‘Reward’ (Simon Holloway)
This is Torah and This is its Reward? (the Adderabbi)
Moshe and Rabbi Akiva as Givers of Torah (the Adderabbi)
Menachot 29b: Moshe in Rabbi Akiva’s Beit Midrash and the Authority of the Oral Torah (Dov Linzer)
Additional Thoughts (Dov Linzer)

That there are twenty-two letters among the Hebrews, the languages of the Syrians [Syriac] and the Chaldees [Aramaic] also attest, which for the most part correspond to Hebrew; the twenty-two elements have the same sound, but are different in script. The Samaritans also write the Pentateuch of Moses with the same number of letters, differing only in shape and ornamentation. And it is certain that Esdras the scribe, and doctor of law, after the capture of Jerusalem, and the restoration of the temple under Zorobabel, procured other letters [a different script, the Aramaic, as opposed to the paleo-Hebrew] which we now use, for up to that time the Samaritan and Hebrew characters were the same [paleo-Hebrew]. In the book of Numbers, moreover, under the census of the Levites and priests [3:39], the same total is presented mystically. And we find the four-lettered name of the Lord [the Tetragrammaton] in certain Greek scrolls written to this day in the ancient characters. The thirty-sixth Psalm [37], moreover, the one hundred and tenth [111], the one hundred and eleventh [112], the one hundred and eighteenth [119], and the one hundred and forty-fourth [145], although they are written in different meters, are all composed according to an alphabet of the same number of letters. And the lamentations of Hieremias and his prayer [Lam 1-2, 3-4], the proverbs of Salomon also, toward the end, from the place where we read "A strong woman who can find?" [31:10-31] count out according to the same number of letters or sections. Furthermore, five among them are double letters, Caph, Mem, Nun, Phe, Sade, for at the beginning and in the middle of words they are written one way, and at the end another. Whence it happens that, by most, five of the books are counted as double, [1-2] Samuhel, Malachim [1-2 Kings], Dabreiamim [1-2 Chronicles], Ezras [Ezra-Nehemiah], and Hieremias with Cinoth, i.e., his lamentations [Lamentations]. As, then, there are twenty-two elements by means of which we write in Hebrew all we say, and the human voice is comprehended within their points of departure, so we count twenty-two books, by which, as by letters and exordia, the still tender, lactating infancy of a righteous man is tutored in the doctrine of God.

Primus apud eos liber vocatur Bresith, quem nos Genesim dicimus; secundus Hellesmoth, qui Exodus appellatur; tertius Vaiecra, id est Leviticus; quartus Vaiedabber, quem Numeros vocamus; quintus Addabarim, qui Deuteronomium praenotatur. Hii sunt quinque libri Mosi, quos proprie Thorath, id est Legem appellant.

The first book among them is called Bresith, as we say Genesis; the second, Hellesmoth, which bears the name Exodus; the third, Vaiecra, that is, Leviticus; the fourth, Vaiedabber, which we call Numeri; the fifth, Addabarim, which is titled Deuteronomion. These are the five books of Moses, which they call, properly, Thorath, that is, 'law.'

Secundum Prophetarum ordinem faciunt, et incipiunt ab Iesu filio Nave, qui apud eos Iosue Bennum dicitur. Deinde subtexunt Sopthim, id est Iudicum librum; et in eundem conpingunt Ruth, quia in diebus Iudicum facta narratur historia. Tertius sequitur Samuhel, quem nos Regnorum primum et secundum dicimus. Quartus Malachim, id est Regum, qui tertio et quarto Regnorum volumine continetur; meliusque multo est Malachim, id est Regum, quam Malachoth, id est Regnorum dicere, non enim multarum gentium regna describit, sed unius israhelitici populi qui tribubus duodecim continetur. Quintus est Esaias, sextus Hieremias, septimus Hiezecihel, octavus liber duodecim Prophetarum, qui apud illos vocatur Thareasra.

A second class is composed of prophets, and they begin with Jesus son of Nave [Joshua], which among them is called Josue Bennum. Next they subjoin Sophtim, that is, the book of Iudici [Judges]; and to the same book they join Ruth, because the history narrated occurred in the days of the judges. Then follows Samuhel; as we say, first and second Kingdoms. The fourth is Malachim, that is, Kings, which is contained in the third and fourth books of Kingdoms. Far better to say Malachim, that is Kings, than Ma[m]lachoth, that is Kingdoms, for it does not describe the kingdoms of many nations, but that of one people, the people of Israel, which is comprised of twelve tribes; the fifth is Esaias [Isaiah]; the sixth, Hieremias [Jeremiah]; the seventh, Hiezecihel [Ezekiel]; and the eighth is the book of the Twelve Prophets, which is called among those Thareasra.

Tertius ordo αγιογραφα possidet, et primus liber incipit ab Iob, secundus a David, quem quinque incisionibus et uno Psalmorum volumine conprehendunt. Tertius est Salomon, tres libros habens: Proverbia, quae illi Parabolas, id est Masaloth appellant, et Ecclesiastes, id est Accoeleth, et Canticum canticorum, quem titulo Sirassirim praenotant. Sextus est Danihel, septimus Dabreiamin, id est Verba dierum, quod significantius χρονικον totius divinae historiae possumus appellare, qui liber apud nos Paralipomenon primus et secundus scribitur; octavus Ezras, qui et ipse similiter apud Graecos et Latinos in duos libros divisus est, nonus Hester.

A third class contains αγιογραφα [holy writings], and the first book begins with Iob [Job]; the second is of David, whose writings they divide into five sections and comprise in one volume Psalmorum [(the book) of Psalms]. The third is Salomon, having three books: Proverbia, which they call Parables, that is, Masaloth; Ecclesiastes, that is, Accoeleth; and Canticum canticorum [Song of Songs], which they denote by the title Sirassirim. The sixth is Danihel; the seventh, Dabreiamin, that is, Words of Days, which we may more accurately call a χρονικον [chronicle] of the whole of divine history, the book that among us is described as First and Second Paralipomenon [a Greek loanword meaning “Supplements”]. The eighth is Ezras [Ezra-Nehemiah], which itself is likewise divided among Greeks and Latins into two books; the ninth is Hester.

Atque ita fiunt pariter veteris legis libri viginti duo, id est Mosi quinque, prophetarum octo, agiograforum novem. Quamquam nonnulli Ruth et Cinoth inter agiografa scriptitent et libros hos in suo putent numero supputandos, ac per hoc esse priscae legis libros viginti quattuor, quos sub numero viginti quattuor seniorum apocalypsis Iohannis inducit adorantes Agnum et coronas suas prostratis vultibus offerentes, stantibus coram quattuor animalibus oculatis retro et ante, id est et in praeteritum et in futurum, et indefessa voce clamantibus: «Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus Dominus Deus omnipotens, qui erat et qui est et qui futurus est».

And so twenty-two books make up the old law; that is, five of Moses, eight of prophets, nine of hagiographa. Though some ascribe Ruth and Cinoth [Lam] to the hagiographa, and count these books in their computed number; thus there would be twenty-four books of ancient law. And these the apocalypse of John introduces under the number of the twenty-four elders, who adore the Lamb and offer their crowns with prostrated visage, while in their presence stand the four living creatures with eyes before and behind, that is, looking to the past and the future, and with unwearied voice cry out, "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come" [Rev 4:4-10; 8].

Hic prologus Scripturarum quasi galeatum principium omnibus libris, quos de hebraeo vertimus in latinum, convenire potest, ut scire valeamus, quicquid extra hos est, inter apocrifa seponendum. Igitur Sapientia, quae vulgo Salomonis inscribitur, et Iesu filii Sirach liber et Iudith et Tobias et Pastor non sunt in canone. Macchabeorum primum librum hebraicum repperi, secundus graecus est, quod et ex ipsa φρασιν probari potest.

This prologue to the scriptures may serve as a helmeted introduction to all the books which we turn from Hebrew into Latin, that we may be assured of knowing that whatever is outside them is to be set aside among the apocrypha [a Greek loanword and technical term for writings without dogmatic authority]. Thus Sapientia, which is commonly ascribed to Salomon, and the book of Jesus son of Sirach, and Iudith and Tobias, and Pastor [The Shepherd of Hermes] are not in the canon. The first book of Macchabei I find is Hebrew, the second is Greek, which can be proven from their φρασις [phraseology].

Quae cum ita se habeant, obsecro te lector, ne laborem meum reprehensionem aestimes antiquorum. In tabernaculum Dei offert unusquisque quod potest: alii aurum et argentum et lapides pretiosos, alii byssum et purpuram, coccum offerunt et hyacinthum; nobiscum bene agetur, si obtulerimus pelles et caprarum pilos. Et tamen Apostolus contemptibiliora nostra magis necessaria iudicat. Unde et tota illa tabernaculi pulchritudo et per singulas species Ecclesiae praesentis futuraeque distinctio pellibus tegitur et ciliciis, ardoremque solis et iniuriam imbrium ea quae viliora sunt prohibent. Lege ergo primum Samuhel et Malachim meum; meum, inquam, meum: quicquid enim crebrius vertendo et emendando sollicitius et didicimus et tenemus, nostrum est. Et cum intellexeris quod antea nesciebas, vel interpretem me aestimato, si gratus es, vel παραφραστην, si ingratus, quamquam mihi omnino conscius non sim mutasse me quippiam de hebraica veritate. Certe si incredulus es, lege graecos codices et latinos et confer cum his opusculis, et ubicumque inter se videris discrepare, interroga quemlibet Hebraeorum cui magis accomodare debeas fidem, et si nostra firmaverit, puto quod eum non aestimes coniectorem, ut in eodem loco mecum similiter divinarit.

Although these things thus obtain, I adjure you, reader, not to consider my work reproof of the ancients [who translated afore]. In God's tabernacle each one offers what he can, some gold and silver and precious stones, others byssus [fine cloth] and purple, scarlet and blue; for us it goes well if we offer hides and skins of goats [Ex 25:1-7]. And yet the apostle judges our more contemptible things greatly necessary [1 Cor 12:22]. Whence all that beauty of the tabernacle, in its several species, the distinctiveness of church present and future [of the old and new dispensations], is protected with hides and hair; the baser things keep away the heat of sun and damage of rain [Ex 26:7-14; Isa 4:5-6]. Read first, therefore, my Samuhel and Malachim — mine, I say, mine, for whatever we, translating repeatedly and correctly carefully, have understood and hold, is ours. And when you understand something of which you were ignorant afore, consider me a translator if you are grateful, a παραφραστης [paraphraser] if you are ungrateful, though I am not conscious of having changed anything at all of the Hebrew truth. To be sure, if you are incredulous, read the Greek and Latin manuscripts and compare them with these meager efforts, and wherever you see a discrepancy among them, ask whatever Hebrew you please, to whom you owe the assignment of greater faith, and if he confirms our efforts, I suppose you will not think him a soothsayer because he divined similarly to me in the same passage.

Sed et vos famulas Christi rogo, quae Domini discumbentis pretiosissimo fidei myro unguitis caput, quae nequaquam Salvatorem quaeritis in sepulchro, quibus iam ad Patrem Christus ascendit, ut contra latrantes canes, qui adversum me rabido ore desaeviunt et circumeunt civitatem atque in eo se doctos arbitrantur, si aliis detrahant, orationum vestrarum clypeos opponatis. Ego sciens humilitatem meam, illius semper sententiae recordabor: «Custodiam vias meas, ut non delinquam in lingua mea; posui ori meo custodiam, cum consisteret peccator adversum me; obmutui et humiliatus sum, et silui a bonis».

But I ask you, handmaidens of Christ, who anoint the head of the reclining Lord with the most precious myrrh of faith, who never seek the Savior in the tomb, since Christ has now ascended to the Father, that you, against the barking dogs who rage against me with rabid mouth and go around the city and to that end judge themselves learned when they disparage others, oppose the shields of your prayers. I, knowing my humiliation, will always remember this judgment: “I will guard my ways, so I will not offend with my tongue; I have placed a guard on my mouth, while the sinner stands against me; I was mute, and humbled, and silent from [saying] good things” [Ps 39:2-3 (38 in the numbering among Greeks and Latins); Jerome cites his liber Psalmorum iuxta Septuaginta emendatus, not his liber Psalmorum iuxta Hebraicum translatus]. 

    His supporter, Pope Damasus, bishop of Rome from 366 to his death in 384, is thought to have asked Jerome in 383 to take on a grand project: a critical revision of the text of the Latin Bible in light of the received Greek texts. The Hebrew from which various Greek translations had been made was not yet under consideration. The Latin Old Testament in use at the time was a translation of a translation, the authoritative Septuagint, sometimes corrected toward a Hebrew Vorlage close to the now dominant proto-Masoretic text, more often, not so corrected; the Old Latin New Testament was not as adherent to the received Greek text as one might have wished.

    After revising the Gospels and after more than one attempt at revising parts of the existing Latin translation of the Greek Old Testament on the basis of Origen’s Hexapla, Jerome changed course and decided to make a fresh translation of the Old Testament from the Hebrew. The result earned him the eternal gratitude of posterity and the hostility of his contemporaries. Jerome made enemies easily – he had a sharp tongue and was not afraid to use it – and ploughed ahead regardless. For that very reason he was suited to do something virtually no one in his age looked on with favor.

    In 393, Jerome finished a translation of the Hebrew of the Psalms and “Kings” (1 Sam-2 Kgs). He worked on the “Prophets” (Isa, Jer, Ezek, XII, and Dan) at the same time, then “Ezra” (Ezra-Neh) and what Jerome referred to, by a way of a calque of the Hebrew title, as verba dierum “Days’ Reports” (1-2 Chr). He then translated the “books of knowledge” (Job, Prov, Eccl, Song). The Octateuch (the Pentateuch + Josh, Judg, and Ruth) was completed in 404, Esther a year later.

    It took Jerome 22 years to satisfy the putative request of Damasus according to a formula Jerome at first did not imagine: he would translate from the Hebrew, not the Greek. Jerome’s proficiency in Hebrew has been doubted, without just cause, as the Israeli scholar Benjamin Kedar has taken pains to demonstrate (go here for an introductory discussion).

    The need for a translation from what Jerome referred to as the “Hebrew truth” was felt by few. Most were cool to project and product (cf., e.g., Augustine, De Civ. Dei, 18, 43). Nonetheless, after the headwinds Jerome ran into subsided, his translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, along with his revision of the Old Latin of the Gospels and revisions of the rest of the NT by anonymous continuators, gradually replaced the Old Latin to become the new “common”(ly used) Bible, or editio vulgata, of the Latin-literate world. Jerome’s translation was deemed equal in status to the Old Latin, and preferred, by Pope_Leo in the 6^th century. It had won the day by the 12^th.¹

    By virtue of the felt truths expressed on its pages, no book has had a deeper impact on Western European intellectual history than the Vulgate – the Septuagint had a similar impact in the East. Unsurprisingly, Jerome’s Bible was the first major book to be printed, in the 15^th century, upon the invention of movable type (the Gutenberg_Bible).

    The controversy in Jerome’s day was fierce. In the “helmeted” prologue of 394 to his translation of “Regnorum” [(the book) of Kingdoms] addressed and dedicated to Paula and Eustochium, a widow and daughter among Jerome’s circle of wealthy patrons – his opponents liked to make fun of him for dedicating his biblical labors to women of his acquaintance – Jerome defends his project and lists “the twenty two” books of the Hebrew Bible; the “elements” of the corpus he dubs the exordia or alphabet of the doctrine of God. There are in fact twenty two letters in the Hebrew alphabet. Five have two forms, non-final and final; correspondingly, Jerome avers, five books of the Bible are composed of non-final and final elements: 1-2 Sam; 1-2 Kgs; 1-2 Chr; Ezra-Neh; and Jer-Lam; the same might have been said (but isn’t) about Judg-Ruth. Jerome notes that there are twenty four books in the Hebrew Bible if Ruth and Lamentations are counted separately; these correspond to the twenty four elders who adore the Lamb in the apocalypse of John (Rev 4:4-10).

    From said books, and no others, according to Jerome, unimpeachable doctrine might be deduced. Though the Latin church went on to treat other books as canonical, at least in the sense of providing classical examples of piety and instruction fit for catechetical instruction and lectionary use in worship, it would also prove to be true, as a general rule, that not only Jews but Christians have taken precisely said “twenty two” books, and no others, as the alphabet of the doctrine of God.

    There are other ways of reading said books: as a witness to a bygone age, as a corpus whose thrust needs correction in light of a modern project of liberation. But a religiously competent reading in the Jewish and in the Christian tradition, in combination or not with other styles of reading, treats said books as the fundamental resource of theological and moral knowledge, within an optic furnished by the Talmud and Midrashim in the first case, and by the New Testament and a regula fidei (the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, or something fuller like the Heidelberg Catechism) in the second case.

    What books did Jerome have in mind? What were the names of the books known to Jerome? How do they compare to the names in use today? What is their order according to Jerome? How does that compare with the order in use among Jews and Christians today? Here is the information in tabular form:

5+8+9=22. 

Comment

    The names of biblical books Jerome gives as current among Jews are remarkable, though none are cause for surprise; the exception is משלות mashaloth as opposed to משלי [שלמה mashlei [shalomoh] the proverbs of [Solomon]; one is reminded of the received title of the Psalter, תהלים tehillim, which contrasts with the biblical תהלות tehilloth praises. The titles of the books of Moses are based on the first word or one or two of the first words of the work in question, the capacity of the incipit to evoke content or contrast to a sufficient degree with titles of the other books in the series are not evident concerns. The titles of the five parts of the Pentateuch in Greek are on the contrary content-based and utilitarian, as are the titles of the remaining books, in Hebrew (once in Aramaic), Greek, and Latin.

    The traditional Latin names of the books of the Bible are calques (Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomion, Paralipomenon, Zaccharias), adjustments (Leviticus), or translations (Numeri, Regnorum) of the received Greek names. This is not surprising: the Bible in Greek had tremendous prestige in Roman antiquity. Even so, over time, thanks to Jerome, some of the received Latin names were replaced by calques or translations of the Hebrew (Threni [>Qinot, a traditional Jewish title] >Lamentationes; Paralipomenon >Verba dierum; Regnorum>Regum; Paraoimiai>Proverbia; Asma>Canticum canticorum) or transliterations from the Hebrew (Ambacoum>Abacuc; Michaeas>Micha; Malachias>Malachi; Iesous>Iesu>Iosue). The trend is further developed, but never consistently carried out, in English names of books of the Bible.

    Jerome’s order of books and division into three classes may well correspond in full to a Jewish tradition of Jerome’s day. It is identical to that of both earlier and later Jewish tradition with respect to the tripartite sequence: law, prophets, and writings; the internal sequences involving the intercalation of Ruth after Judges and Lamentations after Jeremiah; the collocation of three works attributed to Solomon (libri Salomonis); and, correspondingly, the lack of a collection of “five scrolls” among the writings as found in later sources (Ruth, Canticles, Qoheleth, Lamentations, and Esther), did not win the day in later Jewish tradition, but are nonetheless reflected, in whole or in part, in earlier and later native tradition. The reason why Daniel is put at the head of Chr-Ezr-Est is not clear, but Daniel was a late addition to “the Law, the Prophets, and the other books of our ancestors,” the national religious literature Ben Sira’s grandson refers to in his prologue to his translation of his grandfather’s wisdom (ca. 117 BCE); Daniel is *not* among the prophets praised in Sir 48, though Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve, in that order, are all noted; Daniel *cannot* be considered to have been part of the corpus on which ben Sira depended. Nonetheless, Daniel quickly became an essential reference point following its publication in the 2^ndcent. BCE. It was classed with the "Prophets" in some strands of Judaism - for example in the tradition reported by Josephus in ca. 90 CE, who also has Chronicles and Ezra+Nehemiah in that division [5+13+4 are the counts in the divisions per Josephus] - but among the "writings" in other traditions (the uniform Jewish understanding at present). 

    A 22 book aggregate count, with the exclusion however of the book of Esther, the assignment of a number to Ruth, and a different threefold division of the whole is known from sources slightly earlier than Jerome (347-420): the 39^th Festal Letter (367) of Athanasius (296-373), and Carmen XII of the Carmina Dogmatica of Gregory of Nazianzus (329-389) composed near the end of his life. The “historical books” form a first division: the Octateuch (the Pentateuch + Josh, Judg, and Ruth), then Kingdoms and Supplements thereto, plus Esdras (Ezra-Nehemiah); a total of 12. The “poetic” books form a second division: the Psalms of David, and three books attributed to Solomon, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song, with Proverbs either the head or the coda of the trilogy, and Job either the head or the conclusion of the series; 5 books in all. 5 “prophetic” books form a third division: the Twelve, Esaias, Ieremias (with Baruch, Lamentations, and the Epistle counted with it as one book, according to Athanasius), Iezekiel, and Daniel. The total again is 22. Despite Jerome’s observations, the habit of putting the “writing” prophets in final position, with the Twelve or Isaiah as head and Daniel or the Twelve in coda, as opposed to the original third division in final position, with David or Job as head and ?, Ezra-Nehemiah or Esther in coda, became universal Christian practice.

    The 22 book limit (already reported by Josephus, ca. 90 CE) was also set aside. In later Catholic Bibles, Tobit and Judith are superadded before an expanded Esther, and 1-2 Maccabees conclude, the first division. In Orthodox Bibles, 1 Esdras (a work not translated into Latin, and not to be confused with 1 Esdras = Ezra of the Latin tradition), 2 Esdras (=1 and 2 Esdras of the Latin tradition), an expanded Esther, Judith, Tobit, and 1-3 or 1-4 Maccabees conclude the first division. Wisdom and Ben Sira are superadded in Orthodox and Catholic Bibles to the second division; moreover Psalm 151 and a collection of Odes, including the otherwise unattested Prayer of Manasseh, follow the 150 Psalms in Orthodox Bibles. In Catholic and in Protestant Bibles, in accordance with Jewish practice and Jerome, the Twelve conclude rather than head the division to which they belong; an amplified Jeremianic corpus and an amplified Daniel are common to Orthodox and Catholic Bibles.

    Even so, there it is: the point of departure of both Jewish and Christian tradition, the alphabet of true doctrine, is “the 22-book” collection described by Jerome in his letter to Paula and Eustochium, a collection identical to the “Old Testament” of Athanasius and Gregory of Nazianzus before him, with the addition of Esther and the exclusion of additions (Baruch, Epistle of Jeremiah) to the Jeremianic corpus, Daniel, and Esther. For a bilingual edition of Jerome’s letter, go here.

¹ Apart from the Psalms. Jerome’s revision of the Old Latin translation based on the Hexaplaric Septuagint (the “Gallican” Psalter) became part of the Vulgate. His translation from the Hebrew was put to one side – though not in the Codex Amiatinus, an early pandect, in which it appears in place of competitors, the “Roman” and “Gallican” Psalters. The “Roman” Psalter is also attributed to Jerome, but the ascription is uncertain.

² Jerome does not give the traditional Latin names of the Twelve, or of Lamentations, in his “Prologue to Kings.” The Latin names of the Twelve and Lamentations current in Latin before Jerome go back in every case to the names thereof in Greek, and are supplied above. In his translation, Jerome substituted Micha for Micheas, Abacuc for Ambacoum, Malachi for Malachias, and Lamentationes for Threni (the latter is a Greek loanword; both reflect a traditional Jewish title, קינות qinot).

    I was struck by this recent press release from Vienna ("Antworten" von Kardinal Christoph Schönborn in der Zeitung "Heute" am 26. August 2011):

Vorgestern erhielt ich einen erfreulichen Brief (das gibt es Gott sei Dank nicht so selten!), den ich gerne weitergebe. Ein Wiener Familienvater schreibt über seine beiden Kinder (15 und 17) voller Dankbarkeit über das, was sie vom Weltjugendtag aus Madrid mitgebracht haben: "Catherina und Constantin haben am Telefon, in sms und in ihrem Reiseblog vor Begeisterung regelrecht geglüht. Der Heilige Geist war bis in das heimatliche Österreich zu spüren". 

The day before yesterday I received a welcome letter (which, thank God, are not so rare) that I pass on to you. A Viennese father writes with deep gratitude for what his two children (15 and 17) took away from World Youth Day in Madrid. "Catherine and Constantine have been glowing with enthusiasm on the phone, in text messages, and in their travel blog. The Holy Spirit was felt all the way and as far as our native Austria." 

Und er spricht mir Ermutigung zu: "Machen Sie sich daher keine Gedanken betreffend der mageren oder stark einseitigen Medienpräsenz: Diese knapp zwei Millionen jungen Menschen werden von Madrid aus im Sinne des Wortes Jesu diese frohe Botschaft in einer wunderbaren Frische in alle Welt mitnehmen, in ihre Schulen, an ihre Arbeitsplätze, in ihre Familien und in ihre Pfarrgemeinden, und sie wird mit Freude aufgenommen werden. Meine Frau und ich haben davon einen kleinen Vorgeschmack erhalten…" 

And he encouraged me as follows: "Pay no attention to the lean or heavily one-sided media coverage of the event: these just under two million young people will take away from Madrid in the sense of Jesus’ language Good News with a wonderful freshness to all the world, in their schools, in the workplace, in their families and their parishes. They will be received with joy. My wife and I have given them a little taste thereof ... " 

Ich kann das nur bestätigten. Eine besondere Freude hat es mir gemacht, einige Pfarrer unserer Erzdiözese Wien zu erleben, die nicht die Mühe gescheut haben, mit Jugendlichen nach Madrid zu fahren, und die mit ihnen die Strapazen, aber auch die Freuden dieses Erlebnisses geteilt haben. Ohne viel Wirbel, aber umso nachhaltiger, geschieht hier die von vielen erhoffte Erneuerung der Kirche. Und sie setzt bei der Jugend an! Wo sonst? 

I [Bishop Schönborn] can only confirm the above. It gave me special joy to witness how some of our priests of the archdiocese of Vienna, who did not spare the necessary trouble, went to Madrid with young people, and shared with them the craziness, but also the joys of the experience. Without much ado, but in a more sustainable way, the renewal of the church hoped for by many is happening. And it begins with the youth! Where else?

    End quote. Since I am an evangelical Protestant, I am more aware of the global expansion of evangelical Christianity. I wish I knew more about the renewal going in the Catholic Church. It seems to be deep and wide, and to incorporate a strong commitment to (re-)evangelization. 

    James Carse in his The Religious Case against Belief (Penguin, 2009; the book, it must be said, makes a number of excellent points) brashly predicts the demise of Bible-believing Christianity within his lifetime. According to his lights, nothing would be sweeter. But his prediction is wish-projection and nothing more. Even in mainline Protestant contexts, most of the remaining kick is found among the more evangelical components. My prediction: full-orbed, brash belief is here to stay. To put it in a way that is sure to startle: the future of Judaism belongs to Chabad. After all, the same rules apply, sociologically speaking. The most one can hope for is that it will be faith that seeks understanding. 

Die Lösung

Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni
Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands
In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen
Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk
Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Und es nur durch verdoppelte Arbeit
zurückerobern könne. Wäre es da
Nicht doch einfacher, die Regierung
Löste das Volk auf und
Wählte ein anderes?

(Bertolt Brecht, 1953)

The Solution

After the uprising of the 17th of June
the Secretary of the Writers Union
distributed flyers in the Stalinallee.
On them it was made plain that the people
had lost the trust of the government
and could gain it back only
by redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
in fact for the government
to dissolve the people and
elect another?

The less said about the sinister connotations of the title of the poem, the better. 

    The strength of GNB– Nida’s great gift to Christianity and to the modern world – is that it knocks the crutches right out from under the reader of the Bible, and forces the reader to grapple with the content of the literature in new and fruitful ways. The weakness of GNB, for those who think of “tradition” as essentially positive (Nida, a typical Baptist, thought otherwise, which is why he “under-translated” paradosis in 2 Thessalonians 2:15 and 3:6, like NIV and CEV, two other evangelical Protestant translations), is that it severs the Bible from its history of reception – that is, it cuts the umbilical cord that tethers most English translations to the Tyndale-Geneva-KJV translation tradition.¹

    In that light, GNB is not fit to be a pulpit or pew Bible; in fact it rarely serves as such. But it is an excellent study Bible, at least for those who can compare and contrast it with the language of the originals or, less satisfactorily, with a literal translation like ESV or NASB. For all its faults, GNB is an excellent gateway Bible, a transparent window into a foreign thought-world via accommodation to ours, of use especially to readers who do not have the time or the inclination to acquire a relatively stand-alone code of signifiers and significants – the challenging task a literal translation forces upon its readers.

    It is instructive, I repeat, for a student of biblical literature to read the texts, alongside reading them over and over again in the original languages, in a translation that aims for dynamic or functional equivalence. So much goes wrong in dynamic translation – but so much finally goes right.

    Nida - an American Baptist, a faith tradition which has contributed to the common good of Christianity in almost inverse proportion to its numerical strength – had an enormous impact on modern evangelicalism. He was a keynote speaker at Urbana (of InterVarsity fame) in 1951 and 1961. He was instrumental in encouraging a number of then young people to offer up their lives as a living sacrifice in the name of Jesus Christ on mission fields near and far. Moreover, Nida rewrote the rules of Bible translation with mission in mind. Nida’s theory and practice of dynamic equivalence is eminently suited to the work of “tradition-free” evangelization (see note above). It is no accident, therefore, that the Catholic church, committed as it is to tradition and creed, continues to move steadily away from a short-lived post Vatican II acceptance of “free” translations even in official circumstances, and back toward formal equivalence translation in the slipstream of the first versions of the Bible in Greek by Jews, of Jerome’s Vulgate, and of other standard “literary” translations of the Bible, even if non-Catholic in origin, such as KJV.

    On the other hand, many Protestants and Catholics learned to love the Bible because they read it in the GNB version, the Living Bible version, or now read it in Peterson’s The Message. Put another way, Christianity now suffers from double vision in its reading of the Bible, thanks largely to the contribution of Nida. This is not necessarily a bad thing.

    Rich Rhodes, a linguist who teaches at UC-Berkeley, revisits the topic of dynamic equivalence over at Better Bibles. His post is well worth consideration; follow the comment thread.

¹ Even Nida seems to revise KJV rather than translate from the Hebrew or Greek on plenty of occasions.

(1) The first person of interest in the Bible is the one who is affirmed to have created all that exists, to raise up and cast down, the one who “gives courage to the orphan and the widow, but perverts the path of the wicked” (Ps 146:9); the same who chooses one nation out of many and covenants with its members, to their eternal dismay and eternal gratitude, who nonetheless, after making Israel accountable to a higher standard than any other nation, “rebuilds Jerusalem” and “gathers in the exiles of Israel” (Ps 147:1). This is the same person of interest biologist Richard Dawkins speaks of as a “moral monster”:

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all of fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty, ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. [The God Delusion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006) 31]

(2) The second person of interest is the one the Bible understands to have been made in the image of the first person of interest. At first blush, then, it would appear that Dawkins is right on the mark, since humanity, and not just in the Bible, exemplifies all of the character traits Dawkins ascribes to the first. “End of story,” perhaps, for Dawkins, since if it weren’t, his world view would collapse. The Bible on the other hand presents us with history (what “comes to pass”) and not just ontology (what “is”). God “is” the source of all that is true, good, and beautiful; he “is” all three; he “becomes,” in the choices he makes on the ground, party not only to redemption, healing, and palingenesis, but destruction, coercion, and structures of oppression (our culture is chock full of such structures, but we ignore that, and prefer to think our way of life is superior to that of cultures other than our own, and to the gods they imagined patronized their cultures).

    The first location in the Bible in which the first and second person of interest interact is in the beginning. The plot is thick and rich with anticipation. God is for and “over against” Adam and Eve; the snake is “over against” Eve. God takes a stand, once his word is “co-authored” by the snake and Eve in unhealthy fashion, against the snake, Eve, and Adam. Nonetheless he is still for Adam and Eve, at the same time. The same pattern is found in the next pericope: Cain against Abel; God against and for Cain. Topics: distortion of God’s word; the eternal blame-game; fratricide; originating sin; exile. Texts: Gen 2-3.

(3) The third person of interest is the one the first person of interest calls out of “Ur of the Chaldees,” - the anachronism is a patent hint to those in the diaspora of the Babylonian period to consider themselves called out in the same way: Gen 11:31; 12:1-3; compare Isa 48:17-21; Jer 51:45-58; and Zech 2:10-11. Again, God is for and “over against” Abraham; Sarah is “over against” Abraham for Isaac, and against Hagar and Ishmael; God is against Abraham, and Abraham against himself, before God is once again for Abraham and for Isaac. Topics: generation of personal and national identity; sacrifice in the name of a principle higher than the principle of care for one’s own offspring. Texts: Gen 12; 15; 21; 22.

    Whether your career focus is going to be nursing, business administration, or psychology, you will find the knowledge of the Bible you acquire to be an asset. Your capacity for understanding and critically participating in the biblical roots and symbols of our culture will be enhanced by reading the Bible for all it’s worth. Your capacity for raising questions will be increased through your study of "the radically other" conceptual world of biblical literature. If you think the Bible is true, you need to understand why others do not. If you think the Bible is useless, you need to understand why others believe the opposite.

    A burgeoning part of the economy is the non-profit/ NGO sector. Non-profits want employees who care about people, who care about the same things people care about. For example, since people care about what is beautiful, people who love beautiful things and have a heart of service are well-suited to working in a non-profit. People serving and people served mesh well together, given a shared appreciation of beauty. When I took a youth group down to partner with Bethel New Life in Chicago’s Garfield Park neighborhood this summer, we worked under the supervision of Halcyon Person (Princeton ‘10, Architecture) and Kathleen Connor (Princeton ‘11, Art History). My theory: Halcyon and Kathleen’s appreciation of architecture and art, respectively, go hand in hand with an appreciation of the people they serve, people like us all whose first need – dare I say it – is to be surrounded by beauty and see themselves as beautiful.

    The Bible contains stories of great beauty like Ruth and Jonah and the parable of prodigal son. It contains passionate love poetry, like the Song of Songs. It includes soaring hymns and prayers for justice, like Psalm 19 and Psalm 55. Almost everyone recognizes Psalm 23 when they hear it. How much better to understand it; to have a sense of its original purpose, and the purpose it has come to have over time (go here for a fresh translation). Would you enjoy working in the non-profit sector? You might consider a double major in religious studies and something like human resources or administration. The combination is winning.

    In-depth knowledge of biblical literature is required technical training for a number of high-paying professions. If you have a knack for relating biblical literature and knowledge about biblical literature to everyday life, you may be surprised to know that a promising career as a rabbi, pastor, priest, or teacher of religious education is open to you. A course in the Bible may set you off on paths less traveled by.

    At MIT, the Bible course (Ina Lipkowitz) is built on the premise that you must read it first, cover-to-cover, if you are going to stand a chance of understanding it. That was Augustine’s advice.

Erit igitur divinarum scripturarum solertissimus indagator,
qui primo totas legerit notasque habuerit,
et si nondum intellectu jam tamen lectione.
           (de_doctrina_christiana, liber secundus, caput octavus)

The most skillful investigator of divine scriptures, then,
is the one who to begin with has read them all and retained them in his mind,
if not with full understanding, with such a reading affords.

    Why again would that be important? As Augustine observed, scripture is – no doubt intended to be – a window onto worlds both past, present, and future:

praeteritorum narratio est,
futurorum praenuntiatio,
praesentium demonstratio.
       (de_doctrina_christiana, liber tertius, caput decimus)

It is a retelling of the past,
a prophecy of the future,
a description of the present.

    If the Bible is read at MIT, it is because homo faber, the technologist, also wants to be homo sapiens, the one who relates the end to the beginning, zero to infinity, the absolute minimum to the absolute maximum – in the Bible, God is described as all of these things: the beginning (arche) and the end (telos), the Cause of all that is, the One who makes all things new.

    At Yale, the Old Testament (Christine Hayes) and the New Testament (Dale B. Martin) are taught separately. Each course is a semester long and seeks to cover all the books of the two “testaments.”

    The Bible is thought of as a “testament” or twofold testament for a reason. A “testament” is a text that shares an author’s set of values, understanding of life’s lessons, hopes and dreams, and love and forgiveness for family, friends, and community. It is, in the final analysis, a blessing. The term in use today: an ethical will. Whereas the Bible contains ethical wills – for example, Gen 49 (the testament of Jacob) and John 15-18 (the farewell address of Jesus) – on this understanding, the Bible is God’s ethical will, a presentation of the values and expectations of its divine author - with a blessing. This is a traditional way of reading the Bible. Whether you read it that way or not, it is important to see what “happens” when the text is read as a text with a single divine author: it comes alive in a special way. 

    The most salient passage in the Bible evokes the Tree of Life of the Garden of Eden, re-situates it in the new heavens and the new earth, and says, “the leaves of the Tree are for the healing of the nations … nothing accursed will be there anymore” (Rev 22:2-3). The burden of apocalyptic literature is that of providing an alternative to the reflex of returning to the scene of the crime. Better said, the scene of the crime is evoked in the most universal of terms, and then transcended in the most universal of terms.

    Solarino’s comment on what it meant to make the film:

Non mi ero mai soffermata a pensare quanto sia difficile cancellare i traumi, anche piccoli, che colpiscono un bambino. Si cresce, si vive una vita nella normalità, ma se capita qualcosa che fa riaffiorare quella memoria, la ferita si riapre e si avverte il disagio di allora, forte come allora. 

“I never took the time before to think about how difficult it is to wash away the trauma, even just small incidents of trauma, inflicted on a child. You grow up, you live a normal life, but then something happens that makes the memory come to the surface. The wound re-opens, and you feel the same discomfort as before, as strong as before.” 

Yes, it is (don’t click through if you are offended by the kind of thing you can accidentally find on TV anytime, night or day). Does that mean that PETA is no longer a respectable organization? What an outrageous suggestion. That would be like calling the Huff Post a soft-porn news channel because of its obsession with … a number of things.

    PETA is well aware that its power of attraction is in direct proportion to its ability to project an aggressive and naughty image – all for – in my opinion - a worthy cause. Greenpeace is another example of an organization that like to walks on the wrong side of the road. Expect more stunts like these.

    Adam Kotsko is the first biblical and theological blogger to weigh in on the subject. I concur with his conclusion:

[T]here can be something sinister about animal rights activism, because there demonstrably is something sinister about the direction PETA is taking. More broadly, though, I’d say that there’s something potentially sinister about any rigorously single-issue type of advocacy.

    You can say that again. What single issue turns you into a sinister individual?

    Note to Steve Caruso: Stephen’s two blogs are among the most important in the annals of biblical blogging. Right up there with Doug Chaplin’s old Metacatholic: yes, Metacatholic, too, is at least in part available, in that case, thanks to the Wayback Machine.

    It seems to me nonetheless that Stephen aka ntWrong has indulged in ethnic cleansing on some of his comment threads. At the very least, I cannot find some of the conversations we once had on his threads.

    This post may be old hat to those familiar with the N T Wrong Disambiguation Notice (left sidebar, at bottom). I still wonder, though, about the most (in)famous names in anonymous biblical blogging. Will the identity of their authors – you know, the Stephens and Dougs [not Doug Ch., another Doug] and Deanes of this world – ever become public knowledge? Should they?