We’re coming up on the end of the month of May, so it’s time to send in your votes for the bibliobloggers top 10. Email your list to bibliobloggerstop10 ( at ) yahoo.com and include a link to your own blog. Here’s last month’s list.
Monthly Archives: May 2011
Digital Research and a Shameless Dropbox Plug
Chris Brady has highlighted a new blog called Digital Research in the Liberal Arts. It’s associated with the iPad Summer Research Project, which Chris is luckily a part of. The newest post is about doing a manuscript review entirely electronically. The post is interesting, and I was glad to see a reference made to Dropbox. If you have more than one computer or portable device on which you’d like to have access to the same files, Dropbox is really the way to go. Every time you save a file in your Dropbox folder it updates the documents on all your other devices. You start out with 2 GB of space free. You should try it out, not just because it’s an awesome tool, but also because we would both get additional storage space for free if you go through this link and get set up with the program.
On the International SBL
I will not be able to attend the international SBL this July, although I would really like to be there. At first it was just to have the opportunity to get back to England, see some more of London, and go see a bunch of people at Oxford. Then I found out about a program unit there called “The Concept of Monotheism: Should it Have a Future in Biblical Studies?” The masters thesis I’m currently writing is about the development of monotheism. Specifically, I’m going to argue that scholarship has too long used the 17th century term “monotheism” prescriptively in analyzing ancient Judaism and Christianity. Although I think its original meaning has little value today, I do think the term can have heuristic value. I propose a descriptive understanding of the term based on modern notions of what it means and then I identify the rise of the key elements of that understanding in antiquity. You can imagine how annoyed I am, then, about missing the opportunity to attend the following papers and speak with their authors:
Rüdiger Schmitt, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster
Monotheism and Polytheism in Nineteeth and Early Twentieth Century Scholarship and Its Impact on Modern Research
The concepts of monotheism and polytheism as utilized in modern research are deeply rooted in the evolutionist paradigm of late 19th and early 20th century scholarship, which postulated a more or less linear development of religion from “savagery through barbarism to civilization” (Lewis Henry Morgan), or from polytheism to (Christian) monotheism. The paper examines the theoretical foundations of the concepts of monotheism and polytheism, in particular in the Deutsche Religionsgeschichtliche Schule, and its still strong impact on modern scholarship. It will be demonstrated that the universalistic theories of the evolutionist paradigm with its dogmatically biased views and artificial oppositions (polytheism vs. monotheism, magic vs. religion, Naturreligion vs. Offenbarungsreligion, etc.) cannot meaningfully be applied by contemporary scholarship to ancient Israelite and ancient Near Eastern religions.
Konrad Schmid, Universität Zürich
The Monotheism of the Priestly Code
“Monotheism” is not a biblical, but a deistic category from the 17th century CE and therefore may appear problematic for various reasons. Nevertheless, academic analysis of ancient texts allows and sometimes even forces scholars to use concepts that are originally alien to the objects of study (Dilthey, Gadamer, Danto). Therefore, it is not a priori illegitimate to use anachronistic terms like “monotheism” in biblical studies (the same is true for “religion”, “cult”, “history”, etc.). However, there is certainly a need for explanation, differentiation, and critical reflection. This paper seeks to carry out such an investigation of some of the major monotheistic arguments developed by the Priestly texts in the Pentateuch, aiming to understand their theological focus in their specific historical and sociological setting.
Saul M. Olyan, Brown University
Is Isaiah 40-55 Really “Monotheistic?”
Isaiah 40-55 is often understood as a work bearing witness clearly and unambiguously to an incipient monotheism, the monotheistic biblical work par excellence. Yet this paper will reconsider this particular understanding of Second Isaiah’s work in light of texts such as Isa 40:1-8; 40:25-26; and 51:9-11. If the evidence of Isaiah 40-55 is better explained without recourse to the concept of monotheism, why retain the concept to describe the ideology of Second Isaiah?
Thomas Römer, Université de Lausanne and Collège de France
Yhwh, the Goddess and Evil: Is “Monotheism” an Adequate Concept to Describe the Hebrew Bible’s Discourses About the God of Israel?
During the Persian period traditional Judahite religion underwent important changes. Influential priestly and lay groups in the Babylonian Golah and in the province of Yehud wanted to transform the former national deity into the only god of Israel and of all nations. In order to do so, they had to address the problem caused by the disappearance of a female deity traditionally associated with Yhwh and if and how the only god, Israel’s savior, could be held responsible for the existence of evil forces. The Hebrew Bible contains different attempts to resolve these problems. Interestingly in both cases some “solutions” give rise to divine figures such as the personification Hokhma and the figure of Satan. In this respect it appears difficult to apply a philosophical concept of monotheism to the Hebrew Bible.
Diana Edelman, University of Sheffield
The Hebrew Bible and Emerging Monotheism
While texts that assert monotheism are very rare in the Hebrew Bible, they exist, and the collection as a whole can be characterized as a dialogue about emerging monotheism. The texts reflect a time of transition within the religious community that calls itself Israel, situated in various locations in the Persian and Hellenistic empires. A range of religious beliefs and understandings about the divine realm are included in the various books, which logically reflect the attitudes of the community members. Yet various strategies are used to instruct the audience about what should be considered “the norm” and to wean people away from Iron Age beliefs and practices to a system that ideally is monotheistic, with adapted rituals and practices that reinforce this view.
André Lemaire, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes
Monotheism in Biblical Studies? In Favor of a Diachronic and Nuanced Approach
That there are biblical texts that claim that there is only one god is obvious. Though one is tempted to interpret these “One-God” texts as monotheistic, they may also suggest monolatry. This last interpretation is particularly obvious in sentences containing the phrase “Yahweh the God of Israel”. There are therefore at least two concepts of divinity in biblical texts and, moreover, some “One-God” phrases apparently meant first monolatry but were read again later on as monotheism. To understand this diversity and the problem of the use of monotheism in biblical studies, a diachronic approach to the Bible and to Israelite religion is necessary.
Christian Frevel, Ruhr-Universität Bochum
Beyond Monotheism: Implicit Exclusion, Exclusivity and Explicit Uniqueness
On the one hand, the concept of monotheism is burdened with trouble because of (a) its rootedness in the early modern era; (b) the implicit claim of systematization and the connection to a teleological development perspective; (c) an implicit apologetic truth claim; (d) diametrical opposition to polytheism; (e) the apparent unavoidable confusion of philosophical and historical approaches; and (f) the often reductionist shortcomings in the violence discourse. Thus, the concept seems inappropriate to be applied to the history of Israelite/Judahite religion. On the other hand, the term is essential in biblical studies, is most significant in the modern Western World, and has had an undisputed heuristic quality as a useful category of description for a long time. Thus, it also seems inappropriate to abandon it completely. Does this biased concept have a useful legacy or a unique explanatory potential with respect to the heterogeneous biblical evidence or the tension-filled relatedness of the biblical and historical record? This paper will opt for a reflected and differentiated use of the meta-language term “monotheism” by defining its boundaries, scope and direction of reference. Monotheism is understood as a relational concept which remains ambiguous without defining the frame of reference.
Rainer Albertz, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster
Developed and Underdeveloped Polytheism: The Evidence from the Levantine Onomastica
A close study of the theophoric elements in the Levantine onomastica of the first millennium B.C.E. reveals no opposition between monotheism and polytheism, but rather a distinction between different kinds of polytheism. The Hebrew, Ammonite and Moabite personal names show a restricted number of deities or divine epithets and seem to belong to an underdeveloped kind of polytheism, while the Aramean and Phoenician onomastica contain a considerably higher number. They obviously represent a more developed kind of polytheism. The difference seems to have to do less with beliefs of the individual family religions – they are very similar throughout the Levant – and more with the stage of development of the societies in question, and the extent of their integration in international commercial and political relations.
Philip Davies, University of Sheffield
M*n*th**sm
There are two aspects to this question. One is whether there is such a concept as ‘monotheism’ in the Bible. Should we try for a more precise description of the various conceptions of deity? The other is whether our discipline should operate within a monotheistic paradigm and continue to talk about ‘God’ rather than the various divine names and identities that the text presents us with. In both cases I am inclined to answer that the concept should not have a future within Biblical Studies, though the matter is complicated by the fact that so many scholars operate within the institutional climate of a seminary in which the existence of ‘God’ is a cultural assumption. So the whole issue of whether we can as scholars talk about ‘God’ (or even worse, ‘G*d’ ) will be contested. At the moment, however, there is not much of a contest: we all easily slip into ‘God’-talk, and perhaps it is time some of us made an issue of it. Even atheists often talk about ‘not believing in God’ when they really mean they don’t believe that gods exist!
Nathan MacDonald, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
The End of the Monotheism Debate?
The debate about monotheism amongst Old Testament scholars has operated within a particular intellectual paradigm where questions of the origins of monotheism are primary. Monographs devoted to the subject have a particular form. They begin with Yahwism’s origins in late Bronze Age polytheism, and make their way to the exilic breakthrough of “monotheism” by way of a faded Moses, a lionized YHWH-alone movement found particularly in Elijah and classical prophecy, and the Josianic reformation. Usually with Deutero-Isaiah the triumphal procession is brought to an apparently satisfactory end. It appears that monotheism is only important in its conception and gestation. This paper will draw on recent work to question assumptions about where the monotheism debate should end.
Bob Becking, Universiteit Utrecht
An Obsolete Anachronism: A Plea for Avoiding the Concept of Monotheism
The concept ‘monotheism’ is a mere anachronism when it comes to describing the period in the history of religion in Ancient Israel when only one God was supposed to be venerated. The idea was coined first, as far as I can see, by the British Platonist Henry More around 1660. It had been part of the theistic discourse in systematic theology. This discourse alienates the image of God from the lived religion in Ancient Israel. In my opinion we should therefore abandon this term. I would propose to use the concept of monolatry for the period mentioned above.
Mark S. Smith, New York University
‘Terms Limits’: Should the Term ‘Monotheism’ be Retired?
Any question involving “should,” as in the title of this session, may suggest an intellectual issue (intellectually, is the term worth keeping?) and perhaps a moral problem as well (ethically, is it right to keep it?). Given the term’s relatively modern development and role in assertions of western cultural superiority, not to mention its tendency to distort the ancient data, it might seem best to drop the term. On the other hand, its familiarity outside of academic settings suggests keeping it as part of a larger academic effort to communicate to the wider society in a critical manner about religion. The term’s familiarity as well as its problems arguably provide a teaching moment about religion that should not be abandoned prematurely. Many terms in the study of religion, such as “religion,” are problematic, but the field continues to use them. Such terms help people enter into the discussion, but the discussion then provides an opportunity for analyzing the prejudices embedded in them and to go past the terms and their difficulties and into the cultural and religious history that informed them in the first place. This paper will explore these problems as well as the merits that the use of the term, monotheism, may arguably provide.
Authoritative Scriptures in Ancient Judaism
Just finished reading a rather boring review of what looks like a fascinating book: Authoritative Scriptures in Ancient Judaism. The book comprises the proceedings of a conference held at the Qumran Institute at the University of Groningen that also marked Florencia García Martínez’s retirement. Here is the publisher’s blurb:
Many scholars of the Second Temple period have replaced the concept of canonization by that of canonical process. Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls has been crucial for this new direction. Based on this new evidence taxonomic terms like biblical, nonbiblical or parabiblical seem anachronistic for the period before 70 C.E. The notion of authoritative Scriptures plays an important part in the new paradigm of canonical process, but it has not yet been sufficiently reflected upon and is in need of clarification. Why were some texts more authoritative than others? For whom and in what contexts were texts authoritative? And what are our criteria to determine to what extent a text was authoritative? In short, what do we mean by “authoritative”? This volume focuses on specific texts or corpora of texts, and approaches the notion of authoritative Scriptures from sociological, cultural and literary perspectives.
Responding to James White (Part 6)
James White is apparently finished responding to my initial post. I have waited a bit and don’t see any indication he intends to address any of my responses, so I will let them stand in response to his first five posts. You can find both our posts here:
I will unfortunately have to divide my concluding remarks into two posts, since I want to address two lengthy issues White brings up in addition to the smaller details of his last five responses. I will start in this first post with White’s final remarks, since the concerns I have with it are fundamental issues that will illuminate the remainder of my responses (and my previous ones, too). In this final response White summarizes his fundamental concerns with the broad apologetic trend he sees represented in my comments. I’ve already discussed the problems with his assumptions about change within churches and theology in general, and Mormonism in particular (here), but in this final post White attempts to critique critical biblical scholarship as a whole. It is that critique that I intend to primarily address in this first post. I will first gather and summarize a number of points White makes concerning critical biblical scholarship in general. The intention is first to show that White’s approach to the entire endeavor of critical biblical scholarship is fallacious, uninformed, and is based on outdated and equally uninformed scholarship. I will then go on to show specifically where his arguments go wrong, and where his rhetoric misses the mark. Finally, I will try to touch on some smaller points made in this final post.
White begins by explaining that this last post of his is the reason he wanted to respond to my post in the first place, and it’s the reason he’s given his posts the title they have, “Guessing About God: Mormonism’s Inability to Resist the Onslaught of Modernistic Skepticism.” He explains that the shift he sees in Mormon apologetics is clearly seen in comparing Joseph Smith’s hermeneutic to those of modern critical biblical scholarship. His point of comparison is a 1966 book on Deuteronomy by Gerhard Von Rad. He then goes on to summarize the view of the Hebrew Bible that one must have in order for my argument to make sense. This rather lengthy summary characterizes “modern principles of skeptical criticism” in the following way:
“you do not look at the Old Testament as a whole; you do not even look at the individual books as singular units.”
“the foundation of this viewpoint is that of philosophical naturalism: that is, the basic assumption is of the disunity of the text”
“contradiction and error is the starting point, the first ‘given.’ That way we can produce theories that allow us to get ‘behind’ the ‘original’ and, well, to be perfectly blunt, get published and hope for tenure.
“While certain theories become predominant over time, it is not because those theories have been thoroughly tested (how do you test such things in the real world today?). In the main, once those theories find a “major” proponent they become widely accepted, whether they are sound or not.”
White thus characterizes critical scholarship basically as an old boys club filled with cynical people who can’t think for themselves and are really only concerned about publishing and tenure. White then rather unsubtly accuses me of some kind of academic elitism because of the way I presented my argument. “Many conservative Christians,” he states, “unfamiliar with the perspective of modern critical redaction theory, will not understand Mr. McClellan’s claims.” He continues parenthetically, “I find the willingness of redaction critics to throw out their conclusions without giving a thought to the fact that their readers will generally not have the means of understanding them rather educational.” White summarizes the approach of redaction critics in the following way:
You begin by refusing to allow any interpretation of these passages or terms used therein that is based upon looking at all that the Old Testament says. The many texts that say Yahweh is the only true God, and that all other gods are idols, such as Isaiah 43:10 or Psalm 96:5, must be seen as irrelevant, and kept separate from any texts that are under consideration. So, in the specific text cited at the end of the above citation, Deuteronomy 32:8-9, you cannot even consider testimonies to monotheism elsewhere even in the same book (since, on this theory, the book can be cut into small parts and isolated from any context at all, depending on the particular theory you are applying to the text). So, even though Deuteronomy 4:35 plainly states, “To you it was shown that you might know that Yahweh, He is God; there is no other besides Him,” that does not matter. That’s “over there,” and since Deuteronomy is a patchwork quilt of, well, whatever someone with a Ph.D. decides it is made up of, you can ignore that kind of thing. Remember, the basic assumptions include 1) internal contradiction, and 2) redaction of sources, often pagan in origin, must be looked to rather than any kind of divine revelation.
For White, redaction critics compartmentalize and then ignore inconvenient texts while overemphasizing other texts. The context is ignored so that atomistic considerations can apparently be thrown over the whole text. The inconvenient portions are ignored because of whatever reason someone with a PhD came up with, and divine revelation is precluded. To insist on consistency within the biblical text, according to White, is to guarantee you will never be published. The rest of his post addresses particulars of my argument, and I will get to that later, but for now I will respond to each of the points I’ve described above. (And for his specific claims about Deuteronomy and monotheism, see my posts here, here, and here. Obviously I am not simply ignoring those texts. White shows a marked naivety regarding what exactly critical scholarship argues.) I start with the way White characterizes critical scholarship.
Critical scholarship, according to White, is rationalistic, modernistic, and German. He quotes Von Rad. He calls critical scholars “liberal theologians.” He lumps their approach under modernism. White is here appealing to an early to mid-twentieth century characterization of liberal Protestant scholarship, particularly as found in the German school. This is an entirely obsolete view of critical scholarship that wasn’t even very accurate in its own day. What White is presenting is a broad and uninformed perspective he inherited from early and mid-twentieth century Fundamentalism. This is the kind of position that dominates in conservative seminaries and leads to students moving on to more academic programs thinking that no one has believed JEDP since it was debunked way back when The Fundamentals was published. That approach misunderstood scholarship in the early to mid-twentieth century and has continued to do so since.
A good example of how things are misunderstood and misrepresented is a 2002 article by one Colin Smith called “A Critical Assessment of the Graf-Wellhausen Documentary Hypothesis.” The article comes from White’s own website and argues against JEDP, which it exclusively identifies with the Documentary Hypothesis (which is incorrect). From the beginning the article shows it cannot and will not address JEDP as it currently is understood. It’s clear the author does not understand the theory or its foundation very well, either. He does not directly engage a single textual argument. Everything takes place at the methodological level. He seems to think that tearing down Wellhausen will tear down everything that has followed. The author confronts (although not directly) critical scholarship almost exclusively from the nineteenth and early to mid-twentieth century. He cites a number of Evangelicals from the late twentieth century who criticize the early DH, but I count only one critical scholar from after 1950 that is cited (Lester Grabbe), and even then he is only referenced and dismissed on two minor points. The most oft-cited publication in the footnotes (35 references) is a 1969 book by R. K. Harrison, followed by a publication by James Orr, who died in 1913. Wellhausen himself is only cited six times in the footnotes (via a Project Gutenberg version of the book that has no page numbers). This is the only discussion of JEDP I’ve been able to find on White’s site. I see no indication he’s aware of the work of Carr, Baden, Van Seters, Levin, Friedman, Haran, or numerous others from the last fifty years. There’s no need within his worldview, though, since everything’s been debunked for decades.
Not only is White’s position outdated, it is incredibly uninformed. White is not familiar with early or modern critical scholarship regarding the Pentateuch, he’s only familiar with the caricature of early critical scholarship that has been filtered to him through Evangelical Fundamentalism. That caricature is demonstrably false. White accuses biblical scholars of blindly sticking to mainstream ideas and of promoting those ideas only in the hopes of getting tenure. Basically, White is accusing the academy of standing in complete opposition to its own fundamental values, namely objectivity, originality, and scholarship for its own sake. White must simply assume that these academics secretly oppose the values they repeatedly affirm in conferences, publications, and university departments. This is, of course, ludicrous. Universities don’t pay professors to say the same stuff everyone else is saying. Grants, fellowships, and scholarships aren’t handed out so that people can just promote the status quo. Dissertation committees don’t sign off on dissertations for not adding anything to the academic discussion, or for refusing to be objective. White’s caricature is grotesque and naive.
Moving on, White insists that disunity is the presupposition with any critical literary analysis of the biblical texts. I will set aside for the moment the fact that he does not and cannot empirically support any case for the complete unity of the biblical text. Of course, he doesn’t have to; he’s not approaching this from a logical or evidence-based position, he’s approaching this from pure dogmatism. The people who presuppose disunity are simply wrong because he presupposes unity and he’s right (at least, as far as his intended readers are concerned). White cannot possibly defend his presumption of unity on intellectual grounds, so he has to simply insist that a presumption of disunity is problematic in and of itself. Let’s examine that, though.
While it is true that early source criticism sometimes got rather carried away with itself in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, it didn’t begin this way. In fact, the first person to propose specific sources for the Pentateuch was actually writing an apologetic text directly affirming the unity of the text, and he was French, not German. Jean Astruc’s eighteenth century Conjectures sur les mémoires originaux, dont il paraît que Moïse s’est servi pour composer le livre de la Genèse, employed methods used by Greek and Latin scholars for identifying manuscripts and evaluating Homer. It argues that Moses produced separate narrative traditions that were later conflated by editors to produce Genesis. Astruc proposed separate narratives because he felt the evidence simply pointed to separate narratives (which it absolutely does). He maintained their compositional unity, though, insisting on Mosaic authorship. While Astruc’s methodologies were later taken up by Eichhorn and other German scholars among whom the approach flourished, the vast, vast majority of scholars who have approached the question have been believing Jews and Christians who are first concerned with a factual and logical approach to understanding the Bible, and who have decided that the evidence simply points to separate traditions. Even Wellhausen describes his study of the Pentateuch as beginning from an assumption of unity.
When one arrives at the conclusion that the text is fractured and then proceeds forward from there, it’s hardly accurate to say they are beginning with a presumption of disunity. Additionally, subsequent scholarship is not responsible for laying out the entire case for disunity with each and every publication. At some point scholarship has to be able to agree that the conclusion no longer needs to be made from the ground up. White prefers to ignore these facts and insists that any scholar who arrives at the conclusion of disunity must have presupposed it.
White’s position is perplexing for other reasons, too. It insists that critical scholars presuppose disunity and will not engage the evidence that has arisen out of the presumption of unity. In other words, he’s asserting that scholars who argue for disunity have never had to engage an argument against it. Why does he say this? It’s because he presupposes unity and will not even allow for the possibility that his presupposition is incorrect. As a result, anyone who disagrees with him must be doing something wrong, and must not be aware of how weak their argument really is. This is another rather grotesque caricature of critical scholarship. Anyone familiar with source criticism knows that it is constantly in dialogue with the notion of unity and synchronic analysis. They let the evidence guide the evaluation whereas White predetermines what the evidence is and is not allowed to say and then pretends to interact with it.
His treatment of Deut 32:8 is a good example of this. He provides the notes from the apparatus of the Göttingen edition and then states simply that the reading is unsure and that’s that. He states this “without fear of contradiction.” I’m curious on what this fearless conclusion is based. Is it the fact that a couple scholars have actually argued for the priority of “sons of Israel”? Does this mean any time a scholar publishes a challenge to a scholarly consensus that the consensus is automatically undermined? The fact that an argument has been made in print for “sons of Israel” no more indicates academic uncertainty than the fact that millions of people believe Elvis is still alive indicates uncertainty about his death. To insist otherwise is simply naïve. Scholars who argue that “sons of Israel” is original are simply wrong, and I will be happy to fully and directly address any publications White can cite to the contrary. Certainly it can’t be that. Is it because the argument for “sons of Israel” is the strongest? He doesn’t say a word about how strong it is, so it can’t be that. Is it because there are several different variants attested in the critical apparatus? Certainly he’s aware of the priority of the different Greek manuscripts in this case, as well as the Qumran witness—the earliest of them all—that is not found in the apparatus. It can’t be that. Is it because there are a couple different suggestions for reconstruction? I don’t believe this is the case. There is absolutely no question whatsoever that the text did not originally read “sons of Israel” or “angels of God.” The uncertainty is whether the text originally read “sons of El,” “sons of Elohim,” or, as Joosten has argued, “sons of Bull El.” I am at a loss to explain why he feels his assertion is valid, much less why he feels fearless in asserting it, unless he does so simply because he presupposes it. Whether or not this is the case, in the end, all he does is sidestep an argument he knows he cannot win.
Let’s examine another problem with his caricature of the critical method. White states,
While certain theories become predominant over time, it is not because those theories have been thoroughly tested (how do you test such things in the real world today?).
I would first ask what evidence White can produce that these theories have not been thoroughly tested, but it’s clear he can produce nothing beyond his own assumptions. On the other hand, there is a mountain of evidence that flatly contradicts his assumption. Even as early as the 19th century scholars found ways to empirically test the methodologies of source criticism. Tatian’s Diatessaron was the first text to be pointed to as analogous to the processes suggested by source critics. Tatian took four separate gospels and conflated them into a kind of gospel harmony. Scholars have noted the sources for each word of the text and then examined the phenomena that occur at the major seams, pointing out that those phenomena are the same things source critics have used to identify separate sources. Objections were quickly raised on the grounds that the Diatessaron is too late to bear on the question of Pentateuchal composition. Later discoveries silenced those objections. Primary among these discoveries were a number of versions of the Gilgamesh epic, which actually preserved multiple stages of its literary development from millennia before Tatian. Again, when the major seams were examined, they attested to the same literary phenomena. The Septuagint, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and even the Samaritan Pentateuch, because they sometimes preserve earlier stages of a text’s development (or later stages), produced a number of similar examples, although on a smaller scale.
What this shows is that (1) the methodologies used by source critics are testable, (2) they have been thoroughly tested, and (3) they have been shown to be reliable. Additionally, it shows that source critics constantly have the question of unity vs. disunity before them, and that they consider both traits fully and honestly. Here is a short list of some publications that directly address source critical methodologies and their empirical testing, as well as the value of diachronic and synchronic approaches to literary criticism (in no particular order):
David Carr, Reading the Fractures of Genesis: Historical and Literary Approaches (1996).
John Van Seters, The Edited Bible: The Curious History of the “Editor” in Biblical Criticism (2006).
Ernest Nicholson, The Pentateuch in the Twentieth Century: The Legacy of Julius Wellhausen (1998).
Jeffrey H. Tigay, Empirical Models for Biblical Criticism (1985).
Jeffrey H. Tigay, Evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic (2002).
Jeffrey H. Tigay, “An Empirical Basis for the Documentary Hypothesis.” Journal of Biblical Literature 94.3 (1975): 329–42.
Z. Talshir, “The Contribution of Diverging Traditions Preserved in the Septuagint to Literary Criticism of the Bible.” Pages 21 to 41 in VIII Congress of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies, Paris 1992 (1995).
Michael V. Fox, The Redaction of the Books of Esther (1991)
George F. Moore, “Tatian’s Diatessaron and the Analysis of the Pentateuch.” Journal of Biblical Literature 9.2 (1890): 201–15.
Paul R. Noble, “Synchronic and Diachronic Approaches to Biblical Interpretation.” Journal of Literature and Theology 7.2 (1993): 130–48.
The remainder of the comments in White’s tenth installment covers the same rhetorical grounds as his earlier comments, so I’ll save myself the time. I will point to a couple final points, though. White argues in his final post that my accusation that his argument is nothing but petty sectarianism and dogmatism is ironic. He states,
I still find this kind of language coming from a follower of Joseph Smith to be ironic, given that Smith’s claims to prophethood are far more liable to such an assertion. Be that as it may, we have seen that in fact my arguments are logical, biblical, and compelling, and it is Mr. McClellan’s position that lacks a rigorous and, most importantly, self-consistent, foundation.
First, Joseph’s Smith’s claim to prophethood is quite a distinct claim that, as with revelation and the supernatural, is not open to empirical verification. It’s a religious claim, so it’s not really an analogy that serves to undermine the consistency of my argument (which has explicitly avoided all religious truth claims). I am perfectly happy to recognize that my belief in his prophetic calling is an exclusively faith-based claim. White cannot say the same about his beliefs. Next, I disagree entirely that White’s arguments are logical, biblical, or compelling, and I have provided numerous blog posts in defense of my position. He is free to engage my arguments if he wishes. But he will not. He cannot. He has yet to really engage my position directly. He’s only hurled fallacious and vague argumentation at a general methodological trend within LDS apologetics of which he believes me to be a part. He accuses me of not being “self-consistent,” but what he is really arguing is that that broad movement of which I am a part is inconsistent with Mormonism’s wider historical approach. That historical approach has nothing to do with me, of course, so the inconsistency he thinks he sees is not at all confined within my approach. I am being perfectly “self-consistent.”
White later argues that my appeal to the authority of self-definition is indicative of my unbiblical and corrupt worldview. As I already pointed out, in his responses to me White himself appeals to the authority of his self-definition as a Christian, so his argument is already thoroughly undermined. He now claims that respect for “self-definition” robs words of meaning. In another personal insult, White states,
rational, logical soul realizes that words have meaning
This is, of course, a rather ridiculous straw man. I never said words didn’t have meaning. My appeal to self-definition was intended to show, in part, that words mean different things to different people, and we can’t simply demand—based on nothing but our own dogmatism—that others adhere to our definitions of specific words. White’s definition of a Christian is not based on an objective or thorough look at the term’s usage (he stated that all of Christianity rejects Mormonism’s participation in Christianity, but this was obviously just an a priori assumption. I later showed that actual research shows the majority of Christians actually accept Mormonism as Christian). As I’ve shown, any objective definitions of “Christian” includes the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
White cites Gal 2:4–5 to show that Paul rebuked people who had pretended to be Christians in order to bring true followers of Christ “into bondage.” White insists that, by my criteria, they should be recognized as Christians. I did not say that self-definition was the only criterion, however. I said there were others, but that self-definition was the first and the most important. That is still true even in light of White’s text. If the people to whom Paul refers indeed joined his congregation under false pretenses in order to subjugate it to some kind of outside or harmful authority then obviously that has to be taken into consideration. White doesn’t recognize this either because he has not thought it through or because he has not read my comments carefully enough. Either way, his criticism is invalid.
Next, I didn’t think I would see White appeal to this canard, but he actually insists on the notion that Mormons promote a “different Jesus.” It is an odd situation when two people insist they believe in the Jesus of the New Testament, but one then insists that the other’s Jesus of the New Testament is a distinct Jesus from his Jesus of the New Testament. The only way this can make any sense at all is if each conceptualization of Jesus relies on identifiers absent from the biblical text, and the differences lie between those extra-biblical identifiers. If both believe only in the person described throughout the text, neither has a belief that differs from the other. The difference in belief must come from qualities not found in the text. In other words, White is comparing an extra-biblical view of Jesus to an extra-biblical view of Jesus. As long as he is comfortable recognizing that fact, I’m perfectly happy to recognize that the aspects of Jesus I recognize that are not found in the Bible differ from the aspects of Jesus that White recognizes that are not found in the Bible. The notion that this excludes me from Christianity, however, can only rely on a non-biblical definition of Christianity (and a definition that would also exclude most first century Christians). In other words, we’re back to dogmatism and sectarianism. White’s argument can never escape that gravitational pull.
Finally, White argues that I mischaracterize his argument when I state that he’s really only arguing that Mormonism isn’t Evangelicalism, and thus isn’t Christian. He states,
Ironically Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, historical Anglican (still seen in the African branches, and down in Sydney, Australia), etc., all confirm monotheistic Trinitarianism as well. This is not merely a matter of “Mormons are not Evangelicals,” it is simply, “Mormons worship a god utterly unknown to Christians.”
Of course, as I explained in my original post and in my fourth response, his personal maintenance of the boundaries of Christianity is not limited to the doctrine of God. It only has to do with the doctrine of God when it comes to a religion with which White disagrees regarding the doctrine of God. The definition of a Christian he accidentally gave when he was not intentionally trying to exclude Mormonism was very clear to draw the lines just around Evangelicalism (it came from this response):
I recognize the reality of God’s Spirit working in men and women who disagree with me on the non-essentials, and see a world-wide body of believers, the elect of God, united by a common confession that Jesus Christ is Lord, the gospel is the power of God unto salvation, and the Scriptures are sufficient for life and godliness.
As I pointed out, this highlights sola scriptura and excludes Catholics and Orthodox Christians. Contrary to White’s rather selective argument, it is indeed merely a matter of “Mormons are not Evangelicals”; White just has different tools in his belt that he utilizes for dealing with each of the different non-Evangelicals he wants to exclude from Christian fellowship.
We Want to Believe: Faith and Gospel in the X-Files
I bet James McGrath would love this book. I am at the Pacific Northwest regional meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature and they have put together a little round table on Sunday with the author, Amy M. Donaldson. I won’t be able to make it, but I can imagine it will be interesting.
Religious Statements: Against Their Environment or In Them?
Rainer Albertz gives several reasons in his introduction to the first volume of A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period for why he prefers a history of religion approach over a theological approach to writing a history of Israelite religion. In this post I’d like to highlight one of the reasons he gives and discuss its relevance to biblical interpretation. He states,
[The history of religion approach] takes seriously the insight that religious statements cannot be separated from the historical background from which they derive or against which they are reinterpreted.
In other words, religious statements are products of their historical background, as is their reinterpretation in separate historical backgrounds. Practically speaking, then, religious statements from different historical backgrounds are not going to be exactly identical. This flatly undermines a univocal reading of the Bible, which was written and edited over the course of around a thousand years by numerous writers from numerous different historical backgrounds. Some attempts to harmonize portions of the Bible to differing degrees were executed at different times in the course of the Bible’s literary and textual development, but this only partially mitigated the text’s overall pluriformity. But is this axiom accurate, or is it an assumption that evinces “anti-supernaturalism” or some other crippling bias that truly objective interpreters will avoid? Does the evidence support the ideological unity of the scriptures from beginning to end, and thus the notion that the Bible is inerrant and/or univocal?
The most obvious place to start is the comparison of Hebrew Bible material to its quotation in the New Testament. I will start with Messianic readings of select Hebrew Bible texts. One of two conclusions will be reached: either the religious statements will be shown to be identically understood in both, or they will be shown to be differently understood, according to their individual historical backgrounds. What about the notion that multiple readings are possible and even intended in Hebrew Bible texts? While polysemy was certainly a possibility back then, I would suggest that the notion that a Hebrew Bible text was written with a secondary interpretation in mind that didn’t manifest itself for centuries must be evidenced rather than assumed.
Let us start with Acts 15:15–17, which quotes a version of Amos 9:11–12. The aim of the text is to find scriptural support for the opening up of the gospel to the Gentiles. I quote the RSV version of Acts (simply because I have it open in a tab):
And to this agree the words of the prophets; as it is written, After this I will return, and will build again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down; and I will build again the ruins thereof, and I will set it up: That the residue of men might seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles, upon whom my name is called, saith the Lord, who doeth all these things.
The Hebrew does not mention the “residue of men,” though, it mentions the “remnant of Edom.” At the time, hegemony over Edom was a significant issue for Davidic idealists. “Edom” looks a lot like “men” in Hebrew, though, especially if you don’t have the internal mater lectionis like you do in MT (אדום = Edom; אדם = human/humanity). Acts is quoting from a Greek translation of Amos that has misread the Hebrew word Edom. The scripture James quoted in Acts 15 actually does not bear on humanity in general (nor does the Septuagint version mention seeking after the Lord). The New Testament interpretation of Amos 9:11–12, then, is far removed from the original sense of the verse and is based on a mistranslation, intentional or otherwise (See Glenny on this, but also Decker).
Let us move on to Heb 1:6, which quotes a Greek version of Deut 32:43 (or Ps 97:7). It states,
And again, when he brought the Firstborn in to the world he said, “Let all the angels of God worship him.”
The first indicator that this is an interpretation of the original text of Deut 32:43 (or Ps 97:7) that was never intended is that it does not exist in any Hebrew version of Deut 32:43 or Ps 97:7. It only exists in the Greek translations of those two texts, which date somewhere between the third and first century BCE. In the Hebrew both texts read, “Let all the gods worship him.” In both the Hebrew and the Greek, the object was not the messiah, though, it was Yhwh himself. The author of Hebrews appropriated it as a reference to the messiah and used it for a rhetorical purpose it simply cannot fulfill in its original form. In the early Hellenistic period the gods began to be identified with angels. The reading in Hebrews is entirely dependent upon that contemporary reinterpretation. The situation is similar for Heb 1:8, which takes a psalm directed explicitly at the king (v. 1: “I address my verses to the king”) and reinterprets it as directed at the messiah: “But to the Son he says, ‘Your throne, O God, is forever and ever . . .” At the time of the composition of Hebrews, Christians could not have read “O God” as a vocative aimed at a human king. When the text was first written, however, that would not have been objectionable.
We could count numerous other places where New Testament authors quote Hebrew Bible texts but either quote a secondary version or themselves alter them to make them fit their contemporary needs. For instance, in John 19:37 the author quotes Zech 12:10, but changes “they shall look upon me whom they pierced” to “they shall look upon him whom they pierced.” Matt 1:23 quotes Isa 7:14, but instead of “she shall call his name . . .” it reads “they shall call his name . . .” (Isa 7:14 was also originally a reference to the king Hezekiah, not to a messiah). Heb 2:6–8 quotes Ps 8:4–6, but reinterprets what was originally a reference exclusively to humanity as a reference exclusively to Jesus. In order to do this, of course, the author had to remove a portion of the quote which got in the way. “You have given him dominion over the works of your hands” is removed because the author believed that the universe was the work of Jesus’ own hands. Notice also that the Hebrew “you have made him a little lower than the gods” is changed to “you have made him a little lower than the angels.” The list goes on and on, but the two examples shared above make the case clearly enough.
For the most part, the New Testament’s usage of the Hebrew Bible is mediated by the Septuagint, which not only translated its text according to contemporary theological and linguistic norms, but also used Vorlagen that were transmitted under the influence of contemporary theological and linguistic concerns. Throw into the mix the coming of the messiah and the Christian interpretations are going to differ vastly from the original contexts. I would conclude then that Rainer’s axiom is supported by the evidence, whereas the notion of the univocality of the Bible is not supported. With each generation, the scriptures evolved to mean whatever that generation needed them to mean, given some continuity with the readings of the previous generation. Over several generations quite a disparity can develop. The benefit of being aware of this disparity is that we can better understand what the authors were trying to say. I propose this is a better exegetical guide than the notion that “you have to look at the picture on the box to see how the individual puzzle piece fits.”
More Biblical Studies Books for Sale
Awhile ago I posted some biblical studies books I was trying to sell. Well, I have two conferences coming up this month, PhD apps to begin, and the GRE to take over again, so I’m offering up some more books I’ve digitalized, have finished reading, or am afraid I will never have the chance to read. I send stuff by media mail, so shipping is cheap. If anyone is interested, shoot me an email at dan.mcclellan ( a ) gmail.com and we can arrange something.
Pierre Brodreuil and Dennis Pardee, A Manual of Ugaritic ($50 – four lines of highlighted text in foreword and erased pencil underlining in grammar section. Includes CD-ROM)
Barbara Nevling Porter, ed., What is a God? Anthropomorphic and Non-Anthropomorphic Aspects of Deity in Ancient Mesopotamia ($25 – New)
Franz Rosenthal, A Grammar of Biblical Aramaic, Seventh Edition ($35 – New)
Jan Assmann, The Price of Monotheism ($15 – New)
William G. Dever, Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From? ($10 – some highlighting and underlining [<20 pages])
A Reader’s Hebrew Bible ($25 – The box is gone, but other than that it’s like new)
Lee Martin McDonald, The Biblical Canon ($15 – scattered highlighting [<10 pages])
A New English Translation of the Septuagint ($20 – some underlining [<20 pages])
Michael Roaf, Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia ($30 – light shelf wear on the cover, clean interior)
Liddell & Scott, An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon ($20 – clean interior [as far as I can tell] and light shelf wear)
Blass, Debrunner, and Funk, A Greek Grammar of the New Testament ($30 – scattered light highlighting [<10 pages])
Lee Martin McDonald, The Biblical Canon ($15 – scattered light highlighting [<10 pages])
Jean Bottero, Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia ($10 – New)
Douglas Stuart, Old Testament Exegesis ($7.50 – like new, mine’s the third edition)
Koehler & Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, 2 vol set ($175 – clean interior [as far as I can tell] and light shelf wear)
Paul D. Wegner, A Student’s Guide to Textual Criticism of the Bible ($10 – clean interior and some light shelf wear)
