April DeConick announced today that her new edited volume, The Codex Judas Papers, will be out shortly. She managed to secure a 25% discount from Brill for her blog readers, so head on over and become one so you can find out how to snag that deal.

If any of you find yourselves without a thing to do in New Orleans on Sunday morning, may I suggest session 22-149 – Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible?

11/22/2009
9:00 AM to 11:30 AM
Room: Balcony K – MR

Theme: Textual Criticism and Problems of Method and Interpretation

Brent A. Strawn, Emory University, Presiding
Emanuel Tov, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The Latin, Aramaic, and Syriac Translations of Hebrew Scripture vis-à-vis the Masoretic Text (25 min)
Steve Delamarter, George Fox University
Preparing to Write the Textual History of the Ethiopic Old Testament: Of Digitization, Social Editing and the Sociology of Scholarship (25 min)
Daniel O. McClellan, University of Oxford
Anthropomorphisms and the Vorlage to LXX Exodus (25 min)
Andrew Teeter, Harvard University
Textual Criticism and Legal Hermeneutics: The Problem of Profane Slaughter and the Text of Leviticus 17 (25 min)
John D. Barry, Logos Bible Software
How the Digital Version of the BHS Apparatus Assists Text-Critical Research (25 min)

Here’s my abstract:

It has long been recognized that the Greek translations of the Hebrew Bible often tend away from literal renderings of anthropomorphic passages. LXX Exod 24:10, interjecting “the place where God stood” in an effort to avoid intimating that God has a visible form, is a clear example of this theological emendation. The use of the resumptive adverb εκει in the Greek, however, betrays a uniquely Hebrew syntactical construction, and seems to reveal a Hebrew parent text that already contained the de-anthropomorphic element. This paper will investigate the LXX translations of anthropomorphic passages from Exodus and evaluate the possibility that the Hebrew Vorlage to LXX Exodus already contained a number of the de-anthropomorphic elements traditionally attributed to the exegesis of the translators.

I found out through Nick Norelli that Rob Bowman has a challenge up to debate the Trinity. He wants to take six weeks to cover a bunch of topics, with 10,000 word limits for each initial post. It sounds like an interesting debate, but I don’t come close to having enough time to commit to that much debate. In addition, I think some of the rules are a little squirrely. Here are two specific rules and why I don’t like them:

The individual must defend a specific understanding of God, of Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit. That is, the individual must defend a specific theological alternative to the doctrine of the Trinity. It can be anything — Mormonism, the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ doctrine, Oneness Pentecostalism, Biblical/Evangelical Unitarianism, etc. — but it must be a specific, identifiable, existing belief system.

This is kind of restrictive. I can’t speak for other traditions, but for Mormonism I can state unequivocally that there is no specific systematic theology of which to speak. There are a few fundamental doctrines, but the intricacies of the makeup of the Godhead are not set forth, and so there is a spectrum of belief concerning that. No two Latter-day Saint scholars would have the exact same perspective, given 10,000 words to expound, and there’s no consistent literature to which one could appeal for verification (much less six definitive books, as Rob wants). That may not be what Rob is looking for, but I’m sure he’d love for a Mormon to take him up.

The individual must agree (as I will) that for the purposes of the debate, everything the Bible says pertaining to God, and specifically pertaining to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is true and authoritative, and that the purpose of the debate is to determine which of our two doctrines is most faithful to the teachings of the biblical authors as a whole.

This is my biggest problem. The Bible is not a theologian. It does not contain “a theology.” It is a collection of theologies. The Bible is neither univocal nor infallible. It does not present the same theology from chapter to chapter, much less from beginning to end. Synthesizing it all into one unified theology gives us an artificial worldview not held by any of the authors of the Bible (or anyone who ever lived, really). It comes down to a game of who can squeeze all the pegs into different shaped holes the best, and who can point to the most difficult conflicts in the theology of the other. It will regress into who is interpreting what correctly, and inevitably those key interpretations will rest on appeals to conflicting sets of scriptures.

Lastly, my instinct would be to argue from the perspective of a first century Christian, which, I believe is clear, would have not been a Trinitarian. I’m not so much concerned with promoting a modern Christian ideology as promoting a correct view of the earliest Christian ideologies. I think that’s the best way to approach a “Trinity Challenge,” but it falls outside the scope of what Rob wants to do. We’ll see who finally takes him up on his challenge, and I hope it is a good debate, but it’s not for me.

 

I’m trying to facilitate Michael Heiser’s dissertation, “The Divine Council in Late Canonical and Non-Canonical Second Temple Jewish Literature,”  for use in my master’s thesis, but the only place I can seem to find it is in the University of Wisconsin – Madison library, and they ain’t sharin’ (at least not with someone in the UK, as far as I can tell). I’ve emailed Dr. Heiser to ask about it, but he’s said on his blog he can’t respond to email, so I don’t know if he’s read it or not. Does anyone out there know where I can get a copy?

Something I run across rather frequently on the internet and occasionally in person is the idea that the Hebrew אלהים was used to make reference to human rulers or judges. Some are quick to point out that the BDB gives “rulers, judges” as the first definitions for the word. Some modern translations of the Bible even render these verses with “judges.” My intention today is to explain that this is simply wrong. Cyrus Gordon addressed this issue in JBL (54.3 [1935]: 139-44), and that pretty much settled the issue for academia, save a short note on Psalm 82 by one Roger O’Callaghan in CBQ (15 [1953]: 311-14) that was never considered very convincing.

The main texts from which this idea derives are Exod 21:6; 22:7, 8, 9; 22:27; Judg 5:8; 1 Sam 2:25; Ps 82:1, 6; 138:1. In Onkelos and the Peshitta Exod 21:6 (Herbew = והגישו אדניו אל־האלהים) has the word “judges” in Aramaic and Syriac, respectively. The Septuagint has  τὸ κριτήριον τοῦ Θεοῦ, or “the tribunal of God.” These readings are based on two ideas: (1) we certainly can’t translate it “God,” or, even worse, “gods,” and (2) the context is juridical.  The Septuagint does less damage to the text, but they all misrepresent it. Deuteronomy 15:17, where this law is repeated, omits the entire beginning clause. In Exod 22:27 (“You shall neither curse the gods nor curse a ruler of your people”) the Septuagint and the Vulgate both leave the word “gods,” but Onkelos uses “judges.” Several later Rabbinic texts would follow Onkelos, although interpretations and translations varied.

The rationale behind these translations is no longer an acceptable excuse for seeking out an alternative translation. To begin with, the presence of numerous gods thoughout the Hebrew Bible that exist with God’s approbation and even act under his authority is unquestionable. Divine Council ideology pervades every historical layer of biblical literature, from the monarchy (and before) to the late Second Temple Period.  This council acted in an administrative capacity, but also in a juridical one. Psalm 82 is the best example of this, where YHWH judges in the midst of other judging deities. He condemns them for their neglect vis-a-vis humanity and is called upon by the psalter to rise up and take over their stewardships. Gods, then, are perfectly comfortable as judges in human juridical contexts. Verse 6 precludes reading the אלהים as humans, since their death, which will be like that of humanity, is strongly contrasted with their nature as sons of Elyon. The word אכן, especially in connection with אמרתי, marks a strong contrast. See Isa 49:4; Zeph 3:7; Ps 31:23; Jb 32:8.  כאדם is frontloaded and emphasized, and there is nowhere in the Bible to find a justification for the idea that the בני אל can be considered humans.

Others have argued that the “come before the gods” passages refers to תרפים, which are “household gods,” or penates. This is another possibility. Gordon’s paper points out several Assyro-Babylonian parallels where oaths were sworn to the gods and where judgments were passed because individuals were afraid to swear before the gods. He also points out a Nuzi tablet (N 1.89.10-12) that has an Akkadian phrase that is identical to the Hebrew קרב אל־האלהים, “come before God/the gods.” That Akkadian phrase, ana ilani qarabu, uses ilani to mean penates.

These examples show that there is no reason to search for a different meaning for אלהים. The context does not support a reading of “judges,” but strongly supports “gods,” or “God.” Rejecting it based on the idea that it isn’t monotheistic ignores Israel’s history and some of the most prevalent literary conventions used in the Hebrew Bible. In sum, אלהים does not mean “judges.”

I attended a paper at a conference a while ago that argued that the early Semitic worldview was largely orthopraxic, in contrast to a dominant Greek worldview that emphasized correct thinking, or orthodoxy. It went on to discuss early Judaism and Christianity as originally orthopraxic traditions that, once assimilated into this Greek philosophical worldview (largely through apologists and scholars) shifted toward an orthodoxic soteriology.  This is why many in modern Christianity care more about your perspective on Christ’s ontological relationship with God than about how you interact with your neighbors and family.

James McGrath shared a witty cartoon in a post on biblical literalism that grazes across this issue and reminded me of it. Thanks for the cartoon, James.

I put together a very brief video tour of the Yarnton Manor grounds just in case anyone is interested in seeing where I’m living whilst I’m working on my masters. I sound like I have a cold in the video, but you still get a good idea of the layout. If you want to see anything else here on the manor or in Oxford let me know and I may be able to put something together.

I attended a David Patterson Seminar last night here at Yarnton Manor. The speaker was James Kugel, who has been doing a series of lectures over the last couple weeks and is staying here on the manor. His paper was titled, “The Moment of Confusion: A Glimpse at How Some Ancient Israelites Conceived of God.” In it he discussed angelic manifestations in the Hebrew Bible which were accompanied by moments of confusion, that is, when the angels weren’t recognized, but were thought to be human beings. His three primary pericopes were Joshua and the captain of YHWH’s hosts, Abraham entertaining the three angels, and Manoah’s visitation.

He began by discussing two models of God’s nature. One is the more recent, in which God is omniscient, omnipresent, and incorporeal. The second was a model he proposed could be better understood through a proper understanding of his pericopes. In them, the angels are not just heavenly messengers, but literary representations of God himself, who had finite and human form, and is portrayed asking questions and moving from place to place to see what is happening. For Kugel, angels did not exist as independent and separate entities from God, but as a means of portraying God’s physical presence on earth. Around the time of the Babylonian exile and exposure to other worldviews, these angels take on a life of their own and develop an entirely distinct literary tradition.

I happen to disagree on his main point. I think these pericopes, for the most part, originally had no mention of angels at all, but were later emended to support a less anthropomorphic view of deity. I spoke with him briefly about it after the presentation and he thought it would be a good idea to get together next week and go over some ideas. (Cool, huh?) It was an interesting lecture, and it was great to listen to Prof. Kugel speak. They also had soy chicken nuggets at the reception, which were tasty (all the food they serve at the manor is kosher, so they don’t allow meat at these receptions because it may contaminate the dishes).

Pete Bekins is beginning a series of posts which will follow him as he puts together his dissertation on the particle את. (Don’t steal any of his ideas.) Here is the thrust of his discussion, after a brief introduction to the particle as a direct object marker and such:

In Biblical Hebrew, the study of definiteness has been somewhat neglected. The grammars suggest that definiteness in Hebrew is similar to English, and thus scholars only work with only an intuitive notion of definiteness. In my research, I will provide an overview of recent work on definiteness and use the profile of object marking to develop the notion of definiteness as a scalar within BH.

Information structure comes into play in the explanation of DOM. Some have argued that DOM serves to help differentiate the subject from the object, while others have suggested that it is related to the transitivity of a clause. However, the influence of definiteness and animacy on grammatical structures seems to be related to the pragmatic role of topic. Topics must be definite, and topic-worthiness is also related to animacy.  Roles such as subject and object seem to grammaticalize the structure of a proposition related to the topic, specifically subjects are overwhelmingly definite and animate and are usually taken to be the topic by default. I will argue, therefore, that the role of DOM is not to differentiate subject from object per se, but to specially mark the grammatical role of object when it might compete with the subject in topic-worthiness.

Should make for an interesting series.

Enjoy: