Larry Hurtado Reviews Staudt’s Der eine und einzige Gott

Larry Hurtado has some comments up about Darina Staudt’s 2012 Der eine und einzige Gott: Monotheistische Formeln im Urchristentum und ihre Vorgeschichte bei Griechen und Juden. Here’s a snippet:

This is a survey-analysis of the use of several “forms” (fixed expressions) used in ancient texts that figure in discourse about gods:  εἷς θεός (“one god”), μόνος θεός (“only god”), and οὐκ ἔστιν ἔτι πλήν (“there is no other”).  The main purpose of her study is to trace the background and possible influences upon the way in which “monotheistic” language is used in early Christian sources, and also how the risen/exalted Jesus is so readily incorporated into what we may call “God-discourse”.

Looks like an important contribution to understanding how early Jews and Christians conceived of God. I look forward to getting a hold of it.

Again on Ralph Ellis

Ralph has responded to my most recent blog post at great length after I invited him here to engage concerns with his scholarship directly. I told him I would not delete his posts, but I would not allow him to post if he showed himself unwilling or unable to address concerns with his arguments. I’ve consolidated my responses to his comments in the following:

Thank you for taking the time to post here, Ralph, but I invited you here to discuss Steve’s concerns with your claims, not your concerns with Tom or with his claims. Nevertheless, let it never be said that I am not accommodating. I’m not interested in engaging your personal attacks against Tom or anyone else, but I will respond to the claims you highlight from your book. However, I expect you to do me the same courtesy and fully address my concerns. If you refuse to do so, I will disallow future posting. I’m not going to delete anything unless it is vulgar or spamming, but I will ban you from commenting if you depart any further from the discussion I delineate, or attempt to sidestep my criticisms. I hope you understand that my time is important to me, as I’m sure your time is to you. I will not go diving down rabbit holes just to help you muddy the water.

Now, regarding your conflation of King Abgarus and King Monobazus, you don’t really provide any evidence, you simply assert their conflation at a sublevel. Instead of saying you conflated them because they were the same person (flagrant begging the question), you simply say you conflated them because their wives were the same person, as a result of Adiabene and Edessa being the same place. You’re still begging the question, you’re just moving the fallacy a couple steps away from your main claim to obscure it a bit. You do not provide a word of evidence for these identifications except for a forced inference you impose upon Josephus’ text in order to harmonize an artificial conflict. In other words, you see Josephus’ lack of reference to Edessa and assume—based on no evidence—that he would have had to have mentioned it.

Assumptions about what an historian would have had to have done do not form legitimate methodological bases for conflating toponyms and personal names, though. Historical authors frequently leave out quite important information for reasons that are not clear to us. For instance, some people claim that the absence of the mention of Belshazzar from Herodotus’ histories means Herodotus didn’t know about him, but they overlook the fact that Herodotus also never mentions Nebuchadnezzar, of whom Herodotus could not possibly have been ignorant. Josephus is actually quite infamous for glaring omissions from his retelling of Jewish history that he obviously felt did not reflect on Judaism the way he wanted. His Antiquities and his War are also inconsistent, crafting the narratives with different details to satisfy the rhetorical concerns of each composition. In short, I don’t see any reason whatsoever we are required to find Edessa or its rulers in Josephus’ text. If you wish to insist that we cannot leave the text without identiying Edessa within it, you will have to provide something well beyond the naked assertion that he just cannot have left it out.

Next, the existence of the kingdom of Adiabene is not in doubt, nor is there any historical need whatsoever to find some candidate from the archaeological record to identity with it. Its history, quite independent and distinct from that of Edessa, is narrated in a variety of ancient documents. For example, Strabo, Ptolemy, and Pliny all describe the geographic location of Adiabene, as well as the location of Edessa. There is some geographic overlap, but that is easily explained by the fact that Adiabene controlled the region for a time. See this text for discussion of the geographic descriptions of Adiabene. There is simpy no reason on earth to think that they are the same city. Josephus’ omission of Edessa is absolutely irrelevant. It certainly does not serve as evidentiary leverage for ignoring what other writers have to say about the two regions. The evidence unilaterally and unequivocally precludes your thesis, and there is simply no evidence whatsoever to support it. No responsible historian would ever subscribe to such a stunningly problematic thesis, and that is not rhetoric at all; the claim violates every single principle of historiography I can think of.

Next, you claim that you were constrained in your use of Greek and Hebrew fonts, and that you had to provide JPEG images of all occurrences of those scripts. You don’t make clear whether you produced the JPEGs or they were produced by Innodata using a text you submitted. If you did it, it would mean that whatever came through in the book was what was in the JPEG you submitted. They can’t edit the fonts in a JPEG image. If you mean to say you submitted the text and they turned it into a JPEG image, then there’s an interesting problem. The mistake was the confusion of a final sigma with a non-final one, which requires at least knowing the Greek alphabet and what the final sigma represents. I find it hard to believe that an Innodata inputer saw the final sigma, knew it was just the form of the sigma when it appears at the end of a word, but still managed to accidentally input a non-final sigma. No, the error found in your book is quite common to beginners who are typing out Greek from a transliteration. I am compelled to conclude that this was your error, but I am not going to pursue the argument any further; it does not seem to me that would admit it even if it were your error. The point of highlighting this error was to expose an obvious lack of familiarity with the relevant languages, which I believe is a valid and accurate conclusion, irrespective of the source of the error in your book.

As an example of some other concerns that are not based on inputter error, I would point to pp. 37–38, where you argue that the “Aramaic-Hebrew”  is a gentilic noun with the definite article, thus “The Adyab,” or “The Adia-bene.” You interpret it as a people because you understand the –bene suffix to represent the Hebrew word for “son” (thus “sons of Addai”). You also happen to fumble—or Innodata fumbled—the form of the final nun in the Hebrew בן (not בנ). You then accuse the Talmudic scribes of misunderstanding the word, resulting in the initial ḥet in two spellings and the final pe in one of those. Your analysis is staggeringly uninformed on several levels. The shorter form found in the Talmud and in the Syriac Chronicle of Arbela are original. The Greek Adiabene is secondary. We know this because the –ene suffix was one of a small number of Greek components attached to toponyms during the Parthian period when the Seleucid empire split up many Achaemenid satrapies into more manageable sizes. Compare “Adiabene” to the other names Osrhoene, Inigene, Tinigene, Akabene, Zabdicene, Dolomene, Sittacene, Mesene, Calachene, and Characene. The other widespread suffices that were added include –ena, -ia, and –itis. The –ene on the end of the toponym Adiabene has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the Hebrew word בן. It comes from a Greek suffix added to the names of the cities after their annexation and division by the Seleucids. The Aramaic form without the suffix is original.

Anyone with a grasp of the Hebrew would not have understood it as “Sons of Addai” anyway, since the word you have read as “son” comes at the end of the word, rather than the beginning (Aramaic and Hebrew don’t do that), and also because gentilic nouns (“people of . . . , or “-ites”) end in yod (the long /i/ vowel). Finally, the Greek is based on the Aramaic word, which is represented in the Aramaic and the Syriac primarily with the ḥet. It is the Talmudic rendering with the he that is mistaken, the very spelling you naively think is original. Your etymology is stunningly uninformed and is flatly wrong.

It doesn’t seem to me you have much facility at all with the languages, but I’m willing to be proven wrong. Can you translate the following Greek sentence and parse the verbal elements:

εἰσέλθετε εἰς ἀγορὰν δῶρα παρά γε τῶν ἀδικούντων ληφόμενοι

And then translate this sentence from the Aramaic and parse the verbal elements:

שלם מראן אלה שמיא ישאל שגיא בכל עדן

Both of these sentences were taken from beginning grammars. I would appreciate a direct response to these two requests, whether that means providing the answers or acknowledging that you are unable.

Moving on (I’m skipping over much of your concerns with Tom’s treatment of your claims), you claim Josephus saw three “acquaintances” (ἐγνώρισα) being crucified and arranged to have them released and treated. You nakedly assert that these “acquaintances” are “three leaders of the Jewish Revolt.” There is no basis whatsoever for this identification, it’s just something you’ve conjured out of thin air. The text says nothing about the prisoners being leaders of the revolt, and the fact that Josephus mentions them as acquaintances in no way suggests they were leaders. Josephus uses even more intimate language for all kinds of men, women, and children. As Steve Mason points out, Josephus finds 190 “friends” and “close friends” among people locked up in the temple in §419, as well as others on crosses near a village in §420. Authors in this period inflated their importance by multiplying their intimate associations. These are unquestionably not leaders of the Jewish revolt. Finally, even if we assume that these three people were leaders of the Jewish revolt, the notion that because “King Izas” was a leader of the revolt, he had to be one of these three is flagrantly fallacious. To call that notion “axiomatic” is utter nonsense.

You say one may not agree with the speculation, but “the comparison is legitimate.” This is simply false. The comparison is not legitimate in any sense of the word, nor do the rest of the stories match. You are forced in your effort to make these things align to fudge meaning, ignore details, and subjugate the contexts to your conclusion. It’s flagrant begging the question. Your concluding remarks about Tom’s neglect of the context and of the relevant primary texts is laughable, as you repeatedly ignore the context and the historical data in the interest of your naked assertions. You’re attempting to talk down to him and his methodologies, but you’ve yet to show a single instance of respect for professionalism or the standard methodologies of biblical studies, historiography, or anything related. Youre primary concern is quite clearly whatever methodology you naively believe will support your presuppositions.

Now, getting on to what I actually asked you to come here to address. You claim Caruso is ignorant of the “true” history that Josephus was hiding. You go on to state the following:

 you cannot apply the rules of grammar and syntax on sentences that were written as ‘in jokes’ for a privileged few.

This is the most ridiculous claim you’ve provided to date. Basically, you’re saying the standard exegetical and historical methodologies cannot hold in instances where you believe someone is masking the details in pseudonyms in a way that only the initiated will understand. In this way you attempt to insulate your argument from actual informed scholarship. No matter what anyone says, you just have to point out that they’re not initiated, and so no matter what they don’t know what’s going on. You are the sole arbiter of the truth, and the sole proprietor of the exegetical keys to the text. This is amateur nonsense. Obviously, the claim that an author is cryptically hiding details underneath the text requires quite clear and definitive evidence, yet you can provide none. The lynchpin for your entire claim is the notion that Josephus could not possibly have omitted Abgarus from his texts. You can provide nothing to support this claim except the strength of your own assertion. I’ve already addressed the fallacy of asserting an ancient historian had to have included this or that figure. The additional fallacy here is the argument by assertion. Your entire claim quite literally comes down to “because I say so.” You obviously can provide nothing beyond your own word. Josephus’ comment about Adiabene being “beyond the Euphrates” doesn’t support your argument in the least. It’s not a clue of anything. Adiabene was located beyond the Euphrates.

Your claim that Queen Helena of Adiabene was living in Edessa and married to Abgar, the king of Edessa, is equally without merit of any kind whatsoever. Numerous historians have addressed the separate identities of the rulers of Adiabene and Edessa, particularly because the two locales were so important to early Christian proselytizing. The confusion of historical figures in later histories is quite widespread in antiquity, including within Syriac sources like Moses of Chorene, whose testimony you so naively prioritize. You are now the one cherry-picking sources by ignoring what the chonologically much closer texts have to say in order to assert the accuracy of some writing 400 years later. Several other authors from that period conflated Helena of Adiabene with Helena, the mother of Constantine. Are you going to write another book claiming they’re all the same Helena?

You’ve also obviously not considered the contemporary concerns with the text of Moses’ history. The oldest extant manuscript comes from the 14th century, and it appears to be based on heavily edited editions from the 7th and 8th centuries. For instance, Moses refers to four different Armenias that were not established until Justinian I organized the provinces in the 6th century. Moses claims the Iranians advanced into Bithynia, but that didn’t happen until a war from the early 7th century CE. Moses has also been criticized precisely for conflating figures and altering historical texts in the interest of his rhetorical aims. Some scholars defend him, however, pointing out that that was how history was written back then. In short, your dependence upon a much later and very tendentious historian is misguided. The propping up of your entire thesis on the legitimacy of that historian’s claim is pseudo-history.

The worst methodological mistake you make throughout all of your texts, however, is your insistance on synthesizing select data from various different disparate sources, while dismissing data that conflict with your preconceptions. You refuse to acknowledge errors where errors are beyond doubt, while asserting errors where the texts are clearly accurate, all in an effort to manipulate the sources in the aid of your presuppositions. Then you bark about people not being in the know, and not understanding because they’re trying to do history instead of acknowledging that the truth is cryptically hidden underneath the surface of the text. This is pseudo-scholarship, pure and simple. You don’t really defend any of your claims, as far as I can tell, you just hide behind rhetorical contrarianism that amounts to little more than “Nu-uh!” I’ve yet to see you respond legitimately to a call for references or for argument. Most commonly, you just reassert your original thesis without further argument. And this despite the fact that you accuse others of not providing direct evidence, or not providing scholarly support. You ignore all the standards of historiography only to prop up asinine claims on your naked assertions. Your research contributes nothing to history or religious studies.

On Ralph Ellis

I recently had a comment posted to my blog’s About Me page that I think merits a bit of attention. The comment was posted by a Mr. Ralph Ellis, and it reads as follows:

I note you extensively quote from Tom Verenna.
I would not believe a word Verenna says. Verenna makes reviews without reading the book, and writes with an agenda rather than with balance. And then when he is caught out with errors and lies, he hides behind censorship like a little child, and will not debate his mistakes.

Tom Verenna biography:
http://thomasverenna.blogspot.nl

I very rarely delete comments, and I don’t plan to delete this one, but I’d like to briefly respond to Mr. Ellis’ concerns. First, this is a direct personal attack on Tom that I don’t find particularly informed or accurate. In my dealings with Tom I’ve found him to be a quite balanced and self-aware student of the ancient world. I’m broadly aware of his academic and non-academic background, and I see no reason to judge his contemporary contributions to the academy by a past zealous tendentiousness that he has directly addressed and moved beyond (here).

Second, I am generally well enough informed about the issues on which I comment on this blog to know when someone’s contribution is valid. I don’t need to be told that my endorsements are misguided.

Next, the link in the comment takes one to a website entitled “Thomas Verenna Is A Lying Idiot.” Obviously such an insulting and unprofessional attempt to undermine Tom’s credibility does more to expose Mr. Ellis’ own lack of scruples, but it gets worse. Ellis’ accusations of dishonesty are incredibly ironic in light of his rather transparent habit of posting multiple anonymous and/or sock-puppet comments on his and others’ blogs in an attempt to make it seem like his claims have broad support. This kind of childish and petulant behavior flatly undermines any and all claims on his part to objectivity or scholarly erudition. Mr. Ellis is apparently submitting comments like these all over the internet, and as the link above shows, he’s starting blogs to personally attack Tom.

Finally, in trying to find some kind of academic expression on the part Ellis I came across a series of self-published texts that assert simply impossible connections between Jesus and other historical figures (see a Google Books preview of his most recent one here). Ellis’ flagrant lack academic training and discipline is put on display in his tendentious syntheses of astrology, folk etymology, reductive symbology, and parallelomania. I began to put together a brief response to some of his linguistic claims about Izates and his family, but it appears that’s already been taken care of for me, so I will just defer to other analyses here and here. In sum, the etymological connections he makes are utter nonsense, and he stumbles naively over every inch of the linguistic and historical contexts he tries to navigate. He’s basically squinting at transliterated names until they are similar enough in English for him to just nakedly assert that one is just a poor pronunciation of the other. He has absolutely no evidence whatsoever for these connections beyond his mere assumptions. These wildly speculative links are then used as a foundation for manipulating and altering other historical data until they fit his theoretical presuppositions. Everything is then couched in academic-sounding vernacular, giving it a stale air of erudition and sincerity that would only fool those uncritical enough to ignore the atrocious cover artwork, the shameless self aggrandizing, and the conspiracy-theorist framework (“this book really does overturn all our preconceived ideas about the New Testament and the history it was trying to tell [or sell]“). This qualifies as scholarship only when that word carries the prefix “pseudo.”

As a result, I must condemn Mr. Ellis’ personal attack against Tom Verenna. Not only are such attacks unwarranted by anyone presuming to assert academic respectability, but his criticisms ignore the significant personal paradigm shift to which Tom has attested, and fail to even acknowledge (much less engage) real concerns with the academic value of Ellis’ work.

Another Update to “Religious Bigotry in a University Classroom?”

For the background to this story, see here and an update here. To bring everyone up to speed, just a couple of weeks ago Paul Derengowski decided to post an update regarding his situation to a blog dedicated to “Defending Christianity from Mormon Doctrine.” By way of summary, Paul is trying to sue those he considers responsible for forcing him to resign from his post at Tarrant County Community College, but all his efforts to find legal representation have been unsuccessful. I think it’s clear enough why that is.

SBL Proposal Accepted

I just received word that my proposed paper to the Theology of the Hebrew Scriptures session was accepted. That means, I believe, that my other proposal will be automatically pulled from the system, given the new rules about student participants. The paper will be entitled “YHWH and El: The Conceptual Blending of Their Divine Profiles.” Below is the abstract.

The point of departure for this paper is the theory that the patriarchal and exodus traditions represent originally independent traditions of Israel’s ethnogenesis. The most explicit—and perhaps original—attempt to link the two traditions and their concepts of God (Exod 6:3) acknowledges distinct divine names associated with the two traditions, namely YHWH and El Shaddai. Quite different theological profiles emerge from the disentangling of the traditions most closely connected with those names, but by the time of the composition of Exod 6:3, those profiles were fusing. Within the resulting composite view of Israel’s God, certain concepts associated with the earlier profiles were emphasized while others were marginalized. New concepts also developed out of the process and the socio-religious exigencies of the authors and editors. The complex and tensile conceptualization of YHWH found in the Hebrew Bible’s final form represents several centuries of conceptual blending and innovation against the backdrop of Israel’s scriptural heritage.

Scholars of early Israelite religion have dedicated a great deal of attention to the socio-religious impetuses for and results of the conflation of YHWH and El, but there is little that examines the cognitive processes that may have attended and influenced that conflation. This study seeks to fill that need. It will first isolate and schematize each tradition’s conceptualizations of its central deity, paying close attention to the centrality of the imagery to that deity’s representation. It will then evaluate the conceptual blending of the two schemas, highlighting the analogous and complementary concepts that facilitated that blending, as well as the conditions that contributed to the development of new divine conceptualizations. The fundamental goal is insight into why God was represented in the texts the way he was.

Cognitive Science and Theological Conflict

I am doing some interesting research on the way religious ideas, and specifically concepts of deity, developed in antiquity. One of the most fascinating things I’ve come across is the notion within cognitive science that certain perspectives on deity derive directly from universal patterns in human cognition. This is not to say that religion is indigenous to our minds, but that basic cognitive functions lend themselves consistently to particular conceptualizations of divinity. For instance, humans tend to interpret the ambiguous and the unknown in nature and society in terms of what is most important and influential to them, namely other humans. We are more likely to ascribe unknown events or entities to living agents—usually human—than to non-living phenomena.

For this reason, God and the gods are most naturally conceived of as anthropomorphic. They are also usually understood in terms of the cultural institutions and figures most ideal or central to a group: shepherds, kings, warriors, fathers, etc. As humans are social creatures, so too are deities. All deities have some manner of relationship with humanity. None operate completely independently, completely detached from humanity.

These are the intuitive and reflexive conceptualizations of the divine. Studies have shown that the brain is drawn to such ideas about deity, irrespective of theological orientation. For instance, Barrett and Keil (“Conceptualizing a Nonnatural Entity: Anthropomorphism in God Concepts,” Cognitive Psychology 31 [1996]: 219–47) conducted several studies that involved testing the recall of details about short stories that the participants read about deities. Through a variety of variables and controls, the authors were able to conclude that when deprived of the luxury of theological reflection, the human brain is drawn to anthropomorphic and anthropopathic concepts of deity. Even for people well acquainted with Christian orthodoxy, the mind substitutes those ideas where it is more cognitively efficient.

But religious traditions often have the luxury of time and reflection, which facilitates the development of more complex and intricate conceptualizations of the divine. There is still a cognitive predisposition to the more intuitive concepts, however. This leads to different kinds of theological incongruities. In the course of the study, one participant commented:

When I pray? Well, I normally, I just think about like . . . a human bring, like a typical human being, long hair and the beard, and I think of on a cloud up in Heaven, and just, like, listening. I just kind of always picture God as like an old man, you know, white hair . . . kind of old, I mean, but I know that’s not true.

As another example, a scholar mentions a close Calvinist friend who is a theological determinist, but who is still involved in evangelical ministry, as if he believes people have any freedom in the matter. This kind of incongruity is accepted as a part of religious living, for the most part.

One related phenomenon I’m working with is the notion of intermediary deities. In early Near Eastern theological thought there were multiple levels of deity, with authoritative deities on the top, the active “sons of God” on the second level, and the servant and messenger deities on the bottom. As Israelite religion gave way to Judaism, and YHWH was compartmentalized from the other gods, they were all demoted to angelic status, but continued to fill the same roles as messengers and active divine agents. Second Temple Judaism (and rabbinic to some degree) inflated and expanded those angelic roles and identities, but later Christian sensitivities would find that expanded junior pantheon unpalatable. Some traditions would nevertheless replace those intermediary figures with saints. Like the angels, they served intermediary functions, taking prayers before God and giving an anthropomorphic and familiar presence to God on earth. This trend evinces the fundamental cognitive predisposition to conceive of the divine as anthropomorphic and physically present, as well as reluctance to give them up.

Eerdmans Inventory Reduction Sale

Eerdmans is having an inventory reduction sale. There are quite a few titles. Check it out.

Review: Journal for Trinitarian Studies and Apologetics (2)

Introduction

The first article I’ll be engaging in my extended reviews is “Jesus’ Claims to be God: Answering the Objections,” by Edward L. Dalcour, senior lecturer of the North-West University Faculty of Theology. This post will broadly present the author’s main thesis before treating individual sections. Along the way, some issues of definitions and methods will be discussed as the material warrants.[1] This will make this review much larger than the others, but many of the articles appeal to the same presuppositions and definitions, so it should help to set the stage for some of the discussion to come.

Dalcour’s article is aimed at supporting the traditional Trinitarian notion of Jesus as one of the three persons constituting the one being that is God. Ostensibly, the article seeks to answer objections to this ideology, but in reality the few objections presented are weak hermeneutic claims broadly attributed to “all unitarian groups” (93). There is one section directly addressing the New World Translation’s rendering of “I have been” for John 8:58’s ἐγὼ εἰμί, but the bulk of the article is dedicated to positive exegetical support for the assertions that (1) the New Testament declares Jesus to be “God the Son,” (2) it does so in “the most unequivocal and explicit way” (114, all emphases will be in original), more so “than if he had literally said: I am God” (94), and (3) salvation is predicated upon acknowledgement of Jesus’ identity as God.

Methodological Considerations

The second proposition listed above is the starting point for Dalcour’s discussion. The premise for the idea that “I am God” would not have been explicit enough is the claim that the word “god” had a variety of meanings in the Bible “according to the context in which it appears” (94–95). In addition to “the true God,” the Greek θεός can also refer to “false gods,” and the Hebrew אלהים can refer to judges (Exod 21:6 and 22:8–9), angels, and “false gods.” None of these entities were gods “by nature,” and the entities actually thought to exist were only called “gods” because they operated as God’s representatives. Thus, Jesus’ claim to be God would have been understood rather as a claim to be a representative of God.

There are multiple methodological problems with this claim, and I use this opportunity to make some general comments about method and definitions that will bear on subsequent article reviews. First, Dalcour’s English phrase “I am God” is not as ambiguous as he would have you believe. “God,” with a capital G, is a title designating a very specific divine entity within the contemporary Judeo-Christian worldview. On the other hand, “god,” with a lowercase g, simply designates a member of the generic noun class “deity.” It normally follows an indefinite article in the kinds of ambiguous singular predicate nominatives Dalcour is describing. “I am God” and “I am a god” are quite different claims. The latter actually reflects the ambiguity Dalcour suggests, but he is markedly reticent to use such terminology. Even in his statement that angels, judges, and false gods are not “by nature, God,” he refuses to refer to the generic category (“not, by nature, gods”). His comment, as a result, does not mean angels, judges, and false gods are not deities, but rather that they are not YHWH himself. (He also fails to provide any evidence for such a qualification, or for the presumption that the Jews of Second Temple Palestine were so concerned with ontology.)

The reason for Dalcour’s equivocation is the fundamentalist position that YHWH, the God of Israel, exhausts the category of deity. The being of YHWH and the category “deity” are coterminous. There is no deity beyond the being of YHWH. It is thus impossible to be “a god” in the fundamentalist worldview. “Ontological monotheism” precludes it because YHWH leaves no space in the category. This is why the phrase “the deity of Christ” doesn’t mean “Christ’s divinity,” but “Christ’s identity as God.” Ironically, it is also why the frequent reference to other entities as “gods” throughout the Bible must be interpreted as mere honorific titles lent to representatives. Dalcour actually interprets the word to mean the one and only thing his theology allows it to mean, despite his claim that it can mean different things. Observe his comments on Exod 7:1:

‘See, I make you as God [Elohim] to Pharaoh.’ Of course, Moses was not actually made true deity, but only as God’s direct representative, he was made ‘as God’ to Pharaoh.

In other words, and in contradiction to his comment that “the term God in Scripture has an assortment of meanings according to the context in which it appears,” the word does only mean “God” (i.e., YHWH). The difference, for Dalcour, is that the title is simply borrowed by those who are operating as his “direct representative.” This is not a different “meaning,” it’s just a metonymic use with the exact same meaning. There is also a problem with Dalcour’s rendering of Exod 7:1. The Hebrew does not say “as God,” the Hebrew says נתתיך אלהים לפרעה, “I have made you a god to Pharaoh.” There is no hint whatsoever of the comparative particle “as.” Again, Dalcour cannot allow for a different meaning, despite explicitly stating that it has different meanings. Divine power has been given to Moses in Exodus 7, allowing him to function in the role of a deity in his dealings with the Egyptian king. “Deity” is not ontological here, but functional. This is how the term should be understood in Hebrew.[2]

This brings us to his examples about angels and judges. Simply put, the Hebrew אלהים never referred to human judges. I have discussed this previously here, but I have provided a more detailed discussion in this document. For this review, I make some summarizing comments and then move on. The Hebrew word for “judges” in Exodus 21–22 is פללים, as is made clear by Exod 21:22. Additionally, there is no reason for the individuals mentioned in each section to go before judges; appearance before judges is presupposed, as v. 22 also makes clear. The verse calls for whatever penalty the judges levy, meaning the verse presupposes the case has been heard by judges. These law codes were to be applied and enforced by the judges, so there is no need to prescribe appearance before them. The plural verbal forms in Exod 22:8–9 are likely to be understood as reflecting a singular sense, as in 1 Sam 28:13–14. The best reading is thus “to/before God.”

Next, while all angels were certainly deities in early Israelite religion, not all deities were angels. Angels were the servile lowest class of deity. Above them were the “sons of God,” who were the operative deities who had relative autonomy and were often petulant and lascivious. The story of their escapades with human women in Gen 6:2–4 is an example. Angels were not conceived of as disobedient within the Israelite worldview until the exilic and post-exilic periods, and that reading was itself rejected around the turn of the era in favor of a human reading (this is why the angelic reading of Gen 6:2–4 was vehemently rejected by many early Jewish authors and rabbis).[3] The presence of the “sons of God” in heaven and at the creation of the world (Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:7), their contrast with humans (Gen 6:2–4; Ps 82:6–7), and their direct inheritance of rule over the nations from El Elyon (Deut 32:8–9) makes it absolutely undeniable that they were conceived of as deities. Dalcour’s conflation of the two classes of deities reads later theological constructions into the Hebrew Bible. There is nothing to suggest the two were equated prior to the Greco-Roman period.

The next problem with Dalcour’s claim is actually the ambiguity he asserts for the term “god” in the Greek. “I am God” is quite unambiguous in English, but Greek lacks the definite article, meaning “I am God” is grammatically indistinguishable from “I am a god.” In the Greek, Dalcour’s concern for vagueness is justified, although his arguments in other portions of the article flatly ignore the very concern he expresses. In fact, many of them actually rest upon the very rejection of that vagueness. For instance, of Jesus’ claim to be one with God in John 10:30 he states, “the response of the Jews in verse 10:33 is an irrefutable confirmation of Jesus’ claim of being equal with God—God Himself: ‘For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy; and because You, being a man, make Yourself out to be God” (107). The term is supposed to be ambiguous, though. Dalcour equivocates once more. The verse could just as accurately be rendered “make yourself out to be a god.” Given Dalcour’s explanation of the inadequacy of the term θεός to specifically designate God himself, we would expect him to suggest this reading. He does not, though. In fact, he asserts that ambiguous predication to be an “irrefutable confirmation” that Jesus is God himself. Evidently is it explicit enough when Dalcour needs it to be. He also insists John 1:1 and 20:28 declare Jesus to be God himself (116), but again, we’re dealing with that ambiguous and indeterminate noun that just doesn’t serve to do what Dalcour wants it to do. He is arguing out of both sides of his mouth.

In reality, John 10:33 is best rendered as “a god,” since Jesus’ rebuttal is a scripture that designates other humans “gods” in the generic sense (according to the then contemporary reading of Ps 82:6).[4] That response would be a ridiculous strawman if the accusation were that he claimed to be God himself, rather than a member of the generic class of deity. That makes little sense. The Jews’ accusation is best understood to reflect a claim to be divine in the generic sense. To paraphrase Jesus’ argument, “why are you getting upset that I, as the son of God, am a deity, when your own scriptures, which you consider authoritative, call other humans deities?” No identification with the being of YHWH is at all intimated.

The third problem with Dalcour’s claim is his inconsistent notion of “context.” Above he refers to the individual literary contexts of each occurrence of the word “god,” but in his discussion of “sons of God” he claims that in a “Semitic (Jewish) context, to be the ‘son of’ something meant that one possesses or shares the nature of that something” (103). This again asserts a fundamental concern for ontology in early Judaism, but it also asserts an incredibly broad context, specifically the context of all Jewish language and literature. This is a bizarre claim, since it basically invalidates the influence of all possible literary contexts. He declares the phrase to mean the exact same thing no matter the immediate context, since the wider “Jewish” context establishes a single, consistent, and figurative (!) meaning.

This is nonsense, however, since “son of” can certainly refer to a variety of things within a “Jewish context,” including literal male genetic descendance. Figuratively, it refers most often to a shared functionality, rather than a shared essence, as in “sons of the prophets” (1 Kgs 20:35; 2 Kgs 2:3, 5, 7, 15; 4:1, 38; 5:22; 6:1), or “sons of Belial” (Judg 19:22; 1 Sam 2:12; 2 Sam 23:6; 1 Kgs 21:10). Dalcour is asserting a specific metaphorical sense for the phrase in all its usage within Jewish literature, although he then goes on to directly reject that sense. Immediately after stating the “son of” means one shares in the essence of the nomen rectum, he states that humans who are called “sons of God” (John 1:12) are so “by adoption.” Suddenly, “son of” does not mean a shared essence. Evidently the broad Christian ideological context obliterated the universal Jewish context. He elaborates even further, though:

Even though the phrase “son(s) of God” was applied to angels and men, when applied to Jesus, it was in a context of essence or nature. Whereas Christians are sons of God by adoption, Jesus is the Son of God by nature—which was a clear claim of deity.

Suddenly it is not the “Jewish” context that indicates a shared essence, but only the contexts in which Jesus alone is called “son of God.” He flatly contradicts himself in claiming the phrase specifically refers to shared essence in a “Jewish context” and then immediately claiming that only in those references to Jesus alone does the immediate context impose the sense of shared essence.[5]

The last broad methodological shortcoming I discuss is perhaps the most pervasive within the articles of this journal, and that is the claim that the scriptures must be read univocally:

We must take Scripture as a unit: All Scripture is theopneustos—“breathed out by God.” Hence, John 8:58 and the other absolute “I am” clams [sic] are all a part of 1:1 and 20:28, which are a part of 5:17 and 10:30. And these are a part of 1 John 5:20, which is a part of Romans 9:5; Philippians 2:6-11; and Colossians 2:9, which are all a part of Isaiah 9:6 and the prologue of Hebrews. In other words the entirety of Scripture must be considered when examining the “I am” claims of Christ.

There are several problems with this application of 2 Tim 3:16. First, the author of 2 Timothy never delineates what texts he believes to be scripture. That the modern Evangelical delineation of “Scripture” is intended is simply assumed by Dalcour. This, of course, means he is not engaging critics, but talking to people who already agree with him. It also conflicts with the scriptures themselves, as, for instance, the author of Jude obviously considered 1 Enoch to be inspired scripture.[6] Jude 1:14 states that Enoch prophesied (προφήτευσεν) of God’s coming in judgment with ten thousands saints, directly quoting 1 En 1:9.[7] Dalcour would never accept it as such, though, despite Jude’s clear belief in its inspired and authoritative status.[8] Even if one rejects the conclusion that Jude thought the text was scripture, the author unquestionably feels 1 En 1:9 preserves an authentic prophecy uttered by Enoch. Is the author of Jude mistaken here in taking 1 Enoch as the actual inspired prophesies of Enoch?

For the author of 2 Tim 3:16, “scripture” referred to the authoritative Jewish texts. There is no indication the author conceived of any texts that would subsequently be included in the then-non-existent New Testament as scripture. Certainly a couple later NT texts can be read to understand some Pauline texts as scripture, but that has no bearing on the position of the author of 2 Timothy, unless, of course, one commits to a circular argument by insisting that later texts must be interpreted univocally with 2 Tim 3:16 because 2 Tim 3:16 says so.

Next, the precise meaning of the word θεόπνευστος is unknown. We don’t know exactly what it meant to first century Christians to be “God-breathed”? Does that refer to the transmission of the scripture to the author, or all the way to the executed composition? Does  it entirely preclude any human filtering or influence? The fundamentalist answer will obviously be quick and decisive, but will also be based on nothing more than theological presupposition. “It means X to me today, so it meant the same to them back then.” There is no lexical or rhetorical context for the word in the first century CE, so there is simply no way to know how to answer the questions above. Even when the word does begin to show up in later literature, there is not enough specificity in its usage to say whether or not univocality is actually demanded by 2 Tim 3:16’s characterization of scripture. What ends up requiring univocality for modern Evangelicals is the imposition of Enlightenment-era philosophizing.

Next, univocality is flatly precluded by a number of texts from the Bible. For instance, Acts 15:16–17 ostensibly quote “the words of the prophets” in Amos 9:11–12 to defend the taking of the gospel to the gentiles, but in reality they quote a Greek testimonia that conflates the words of different prophets in v. 16 and then adapts the Septuagint’s misreading of Amos 9:12 in v. 17 (see my discussion here).[9] The resulting text has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the actual words of Amos 9, which refer only to the military reconquest of lands belonging to YHWH at Israel’s political height. We know the rendering must come from the autograph, since the Hebrew has no bearing at all on the question of taking the gospel to the gentiles. Only the Septuagint’s misreading bears on the context of James’ quotation. The author of Acts has James insist the prophets of the Old Testament say something they simply do not say.

Then there are the examples of outright disagreement between authors. For instance, Rom 3:28 says that “a person is justified by faith, and not by the works of the law.” Rom 4:1–4 argues that Abraham was not justified by works, asserting in v. 2 that if Abraham were justified by works, he would have something about which to boast. James 2, on the other hand, directly refutes Paul. In Jas 2:21 he responds to Paul’s assertion about Abraham, insisting he was indeed justified by works. In v. 24 he responds to Paul’s underlying claim about justification by works, stating, “You see, then, that a person is justified by works, and not by faith alone.” James flatly disagrees with the author of Romans and repeatedly emphasizes his position. Faith and works do not share a dichotomous relationship, but a vertical and dependent one. Faith is derivative of works, and thus salvation is very much dependent upon works. Many creative ways have been concocted to harmonize the two accounts, such as insisting Paul meant only the rituals of the law of Moses, or that James refers to a different kind of justification, namely public justification before people. Such eisegetic question-begging derives entirely and exclusively from the subjugation of the scriptures to modern tradition.

For these reasons and others, I can neither accept Dalcour’s insistence that we read the texts univocally nor the conclusions he rests upon that insistence. Univocality has absolutely nothing to support it; it does nothing but damage to the original message of the texts, and it serves only to obscure those aspects of the Bible that problematize contemporary conservative dogmas.

Dalcour’s Case

I now move on to the Dalcour’s arguments. He lists four claims found in the New Testament that he asserts “explicitly demonstrate that Jesus did indeed claim to be God, in the same sense as God the Father” (96):

(1) the seven ἐγὼ εἰμί declarations
(2) “The ‘Son of God’—in essence (i.e., God the Son)”
(3) John 10:30: “I and the Father are one”
(4) Jesus as “Alpha and the Omega,” “The First and the Last,” and “The Beginning and the End”

(1), (2), and (4) argue, essentially, that Jesus carried designations reserved in the Hebrew Bible exclusively for YHWH. (3) argues that Jesus’ claim to be “one” with God, and the Jews’ interpretation of his nature as God’s son indicating he is “equal” with God, is “irrefutable confirmation” of Jesus’ identity as God. Many of the details of these arguments, however, betray an inadequate understanding of the texts’ literary and cultural contexts. In the interest of space, I address only his discussion of the ἐγὼ εἰμί declarations and then draw some implications for argument (4). John 10:30 and “Son of God” have been discussed already.

Essentially, for Dalcour, Jesus’ seven “I am” claims (John 5:24, 28, 58; 13:19; 18:5, 6, 8) are non-predicated statements that allude directly to Deut 32:39 Heb. אני הוא; LXX ἐγὼ εἰμί), which was understood throughout Judaism to be a claim to self-existence which was attributed exclusively to YHWH. As a result, Jesus is claiming to be the “I am,” which is “a clear and absolute claim to deity” (97).

Dalcour’s presentation of the meaning of the ἐγὼ εἰμί fails to address the vast majority of the exegetical issues associated with the phrase. He addresses none of the nuances of the use of the non-predicated construction throughout the Septuagint or the New Testament (e.g., John 6:20; 9:9), or the relationship of that construction to the predicated construction. He does not address the fact that the predicate is implied in several occurrences of the non-predicated construction, often indicated by a clear antecedent (John 4:26; 8:24; 18:5). Additionally, he shows no familiarity with several important English publications on the Hebrew and/or the Greek phrase in question.[10] Rather, he describes the interpretation of the construction as black and white, which is a gross misrepresentation.

There are several ways to understand the construction that Dalcour insists could have only been understood one way. In John 8:24, for instance, it is to be understood as “I am he.” Not only is this indicated by the presence of the antecedent (the one “not of this world,” i.e., the heavenly Messiah), but also by the response, “Who are you?” rather than “you are what?” or “No, you’re not!” The Jews miss the messianic inference,[11] not only undermining the connection with YHWH himself, but also proving incorrect the notion that such a connection was “clearly understood” by the Jews. It was not. Jesus had to assert his preexistent relationship with God vis-à-vis Abraham for them to blow their collective stack.

Jesus stresses a unique relationship with God in vv. 26 and 28, but also stresses his subordination to God and the inertness of his own will. That’s hardly the context for claiming to be the very God of the Old Testament. J. F. McGrath points out, quoting C. K. Barrett,[12] that it is nonsense to read John presenting Jesus as saying, “I am Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament, and as such I do exactly what I am told.” That is exactly what Jesus claims in vv. 26 and 28, though. While the “I am” claim of John 8:58 appears to be absolute, and asserts a special relationship with God, there is simply no reason to understand that relationship to be one of identity or ontology.

The real ideological context of Jesus’ unique relationship with God and his name is the notion of divine agency. In the ancient Near East and in early Judaism one’s authority was connected with their name, and that authority was communicable along with the name. In the Hebrew Bible, God’s name is “in” the angel of YHWH, which grants him God’s authority to pardon or not to pardon sins (Exod 23:21). The temple in Jerusalem is also intended as the dwellingplace for God’s name, at least in the Deuteronomistic literature (2 Sam 7:13; 1 Kgs 5:5; 8:16, 18, 29; 9:3). In the first century Jewish Apocalypse of Abraham, the principle angel Yahoel (YHW[H]+El) bears God’s two names, and in chapter 10 it is explained that he exercises God’s power through that very name, which he describes as “dwelling in me” (vv. 3, 8). Phil 2:9 explains that God “highly exalted” Jesus, and “gave him the name which is above all names.” Complete subordination to the will of the divine patron makes sense of Jesus’ claim in John 8 to do what he is told. Jesus’ possession of God’s name is not unique within early Judaism, or even within early Christianity. According to Rev 3:12, he that overcomes will have God’s name and Jesus’ new name written upon him.

Jesus’ relationship with God in John is not one of identity, but agency. Ontology was not nearly as big a concern for Jews as functionality and authority. Concerns with ontology arose with the widespread assimilation of Greco-Roman worldviews in the second century CE and after.[13] As was explained above, the figurative use of “son of” in the Bible has nothing to do with “essence,” but rather with functionality. Dalcour repeatedly retrojects much later philosophical models and concerns into the texts of the New Testament. The fact that titles applied to YHWH in the Old Testament are appropriated by Jesus in the New Testament is not an assertion of ontological identity, but of divine agency. This extends also to the book of Revelation’s use of “Alpha and Omega” and other titles in reference to Jesus. The titles were appropriated for unique rhetorical circumstances, which meant they had specific reference to Jesus’ function as Messiah, but also reflected his connection with God.

Conclusion

Dalcour’s arguments only function within a fundamentalist Evangelical worldview, which means they’re not aimed at critics or the actual objections, but at others who already agree. Without already presupposing basically all the scriptural dogmas of modern Trinitarianism, a sustainable argument for the “deity” of Christ in the New or Old Testaments (in the sense of Jesus’ ontological identification as God) simply cannot be made. The evidence for the trinity’s slow development over time is quite clear, and the primary steps in the direction of that orthodoxy were taken during the apologetic era of the second century, when Christian ideologies were intellectualized and philosophized in an effort to facilitate their promulgation among the authorities and intelligencia of wider Greco-Roman culture.

This intellectualization caused orthodoxy’s eclipsing of orthopraxy, which is fundamentally responsible for Dalcour’s attempt to read the soteriological necessity of the trinity into John 8:24. As has been shown, however, John 8:24 does not refer to Jesus’ identity as God, but to his role as Son of God—the one “from above.” In other words, John insists on the belief that Jesus is the Son of God. This is consistent with the testimony of all the New Testament authors who address the question. The most repeated and ideologically significant claims about Jesus made throughout the New Testament are the assertions that he is the Messiah and the Son of God. Jesus himself links salvation almost exclusively with proper conduct and actions (he even identifies belief as a work), while other authors also give priority to the understanding of Jesus as (1) Christ and (2) Son of God. The authors of John themselves explain that this is the entire purpose of the existence of the gospel (John 20:31): “these things are written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.” For other examples of the priority of that identification, see Matt 16:15–16; 26:63; Luke 4:41; John 6:69; 11:27; Acts 8:37; 9:20; Rom 1:4; Eph 4:13; 1 Jo 4:15; 5:5, 10, 13.

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[1] Some of my analysis will treat presuppositions that are commonly shared among Christian groups. It may seem unfair to challenge such suppositions in light of the journal’s own desription as “for the church and by the church,” but two observations, I believe, warrant such challenging. First, the journal ostensibly adopts an academic approach and interacts with several scholars whose work does not presuppose the relevant dogmas. As an explicitly apologetic endeavor, it cannot expect freedom from critical analysis. Second, there is really little reason for apologetics at all if a layperson or scholar demands that certain dogmas be ceded without argument. How can one demand dogmas like inerrancy be given a pass while directly engaging objections to dogmas like Christ’s identification as God?

[2] This is why David can be called אלהים in Ps 45:6–7. It is why Hezekiah can be called “Mighty God” in Isa 9:6. Kings were thought to be intermediaries between the divine world and the human world, thus they were not infrequently called “gods.” See the essays in Nicole Brisch, ed., Religion and Power: Divine Kingship in the Ancient World and Beyond (Chicago, Ill.: Oriental Institute, 2008).

[3] See P. Alexander, “The Targumim and Early Exegesis of the ‘Sons of God’ in Genesis 6,” JJS 23 (1972): 60–71.

[4] See J. S. Ackerman, “The Rabbinic Interpretation of Psalm 82 and the Gospel of John,” HTR 59.2 (1966): 186–91; J. H. Neyrey, “‘I Said: Your Are Gods’: Psalm 82:6 and John 10,” JBL 108.4 (1989): 647–663. Heiser rejects this understanding of Christ’s reading on the grounds, primarily, that John would be reading things into the text that were not there (here), but  eisegesis was quite common in New Testament interpretation of the Hebrew Bible. Cf. my SBL paper on the contemporary LDS reading of Psalm 82, here.

[5] Of course, there is nothing in any context that demands such a reading. In every instance where Jesus is called “son of God,” the context indicates the possession of divine authority and functionality, not nature or essence. It is always about what power Jesus has, not what ontology he has. The literary context of the phrase “son of God” will be discussed in more detail below.

[6] Here the fundamentalist approach runs into more problems. Even if a modern reader decides that they believe the apologetic notion that the quotation formula used does not indicate canonicity, the author of Jude unquestionably believes that 1 En 1:9 actually contains a prophecy uttered by Enoch himself.

[7] Cf. R. Bauckham, “A Note on a Problem in the Greek Version of I Enoch i.9,” JTS 32 (1981) 136–38 and the numerous discussions in L. M. MacDonald’s publications on canon: The Formation of the Christian Biblical Canon. Second Revised Edition (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1995); “Identifying Scipture and Canon in the Early Church: The Criteria Question,” in The Canon Debate (edited by L. M. MacDonald and J. A. Sanders; Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2002), 416–39; The Biblical Canon: Its Origin, Transmission, and Authority (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2007); Forgotten Scriptures: The Selection and Rejection of Early Religious Writings (Lousiville, Kent.: Westminster John Knox, 2009). External evidence supports the authoritative position the book enjoyed in earliest Judaism and Christianity. For instance, there were more copies of 1 Enoch discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls than all other books of the Bible save Deuteronomy and the Psalms.

[8] It is Evangelical tradition and exegesis that is inerrant and inspired for Dalcour, not the scriptures in and of themselves. The Bible is subordinate to that tradition. This is nothing new, of course. All authoritative texts, whether religious or political, mediate the constant negotiation and renegotiation of a community’s past with its present, with the present taking priority. Those aspects of the texts and traditions no longer relevant to the community’s identity are reinterpreted, ignored, or sometimes even excised from the corpus. As an example, the New Testament has been read as supporting slavery for almost two millennia. Once that reading was no longer culturally prudent, it has either been culturally compartmentalized or flat out rejected. For more on communal memory, especially as it relates to the New Testament, see A. Kirk and T. Thatcher, eds., Memory, Tradition, and Text: Uses of the Past in Early Christianity (Atlanta, Ga.: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005).

[9] For more, see here, here, here, and, more recently, W. E. Glenny, “The Septuagint and Apostolic Hermeneutics: Amos 9 and Acts 15,” BBR 22.1 (2012): 1–26.

[10] For instance, R.E. Brown, ‘Appendix IV: EGŌ EIMI—I AM’, in The Gospel According to John (i-xii) (Anchor Bible Commentary, 29; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966), 533–38 P. B. Harner, The ‘I Am’ of the Fourth Gospel: A Study in Johannine Usage and Thought (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1970); D. M. Ball, ‘I Am’ in John’s Gospel: Literary Function, Background, and Theological Implications (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996); C. H. Williams, I Am He: The Interpretation of ’Anî Hû’ in Jewish and Early Christian Literature (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000); A. Y. Collins and J. Collins, King and Messiah as Son of God: Divine, Human, and Angelic Messianic Figures in Biblical and Related Literature (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2008), 178–81; P. N. Anderson, “The Origin and Development of the Johannine Egō Eimi Sayings in Cognitive-Critical Perspective,” JSHJ 9 (2011): 139–206.

[11] Note that in John 10:24 the Jews ask him to be explicit and tell them whether or not he is the messiah, the χριστός. He responds that he’s already told them, and they didn’t believe him. They never ask him if he’s God, they only ever ask if he’s the messiah.

[12] McGrath, The Only True God: Early Christian Monotheism in Its Jewish Context (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 61–62.

[13] For discussions of divine agency, see McGrath, The Only True God, 107–08: “The term ‘agent’ used here, like the term ‘angel,’ which is applied often to Jesus/the Logos in early Christian (and Jewish) writings, has to do with function and does not have ontological issues and considerations in view.” This concept was also found in the wider ancient Near East. Cf. B. Pongratz-Leisten, “Divine Agency and Astralization of the Gods in Ancient Mesopotamia,” in Reconsidering the Concept of Revolutionary Monotheism (edited by B. Pongratz-Leisten; Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 2011), 140–52.

The Economist on the Jordan Codices

The Economist has published an article about the Jordan Codices (HT Tom Verenna). The article broadly promotes suspended judgment and urges testing, wagging a finger at those who find the evidence of their forgery to be conclusive. The response of the blogging community to the codices is collectively characterized as “denunciation and ridicule.” I cannot say that I am pleased with the article’s insight or approach. The call to suspended judgment appears to me to be more an axiom than an informed conclusion.

SBL Paper Proposals

I just submitted two proposals for the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature. Here they are:

מלאך יהוה: The Textual Origins of God’s Divine Agent

Two theories are current regarding the earliest appearances of the mâlaḵ YHWH, in which his identity is not clearly distinguished from that of God. The more prominent theory is that the messenger is an aspect of God, a hypostasis, or some other extension of his identity. Alternatively, some scholars view the word mâlaḵ as a textual interpolation meant to obscure theologically problematic passages. There are later appearances of the mâlaḵ YHWH that are demonstrably original to their literary context, however, and even if the interpolation theory is correct, these appearances reflect the theological accommodation of the messenger as in some way identifiable with the God of Israel.

The present study will examine text-critical considerations that demonstrate the priority of the interpolation theory. It will then go on to examine the later biblical conceptualization of the relationship of the messenger to YHWH, emphasizing the concept of divine agency over and against that of divine identity. Textual, linguistic, and literary evidence will contribute to the conclusion that the messenger of YHWH was a secondary divine agent authorized to represent God and speak on his behalf in virtue of the indwelling of his name. The implications of this notion of communicable divine agency extend into Greco-Roman period Judaism and early Christianity.

 

YHWH and El: The Conceptual Blending of Their Divine Profiles

The point of departure for this paper is the theory that the patriarchal and exodus traditions represent originally independent traditions of Israel’s ethnogenesis. The most explicit—and perhaps original—attempt to link the two traditions and their concepts of God (Exod 6:3) acknowledges distinct divine names associated with the two traditions, namely YHWH and El Shaddai. Quite different theological profiles emerge from the disentangling of the traditions most closely connected with those names, but by the time of the composition of Exod 6:3, those profiles were fusing. Within the resulting composite view of Israel’s God, certain concepts associated with the earlier profiles were emphasized while others were marginalized. New concepts also developed out of the process and the socio-religious exigencies of the authors and editors. The complex and tensile conceptualization of YHWH found in the Hebrew Bible’s final form represents several centuries of conceptual blending and innovation against the backdrop of Israel’s scriptural heritage.

Scholars of early Israelite religion have dedicated a great deal of attention to the socio-religious impetuses for and results of the conflation of YHWH and El, but there is little that examines the cognitive processes that may have attended and influenced that conflation. This study seeks to fill that need. It will first isolate and schematize each tradition’s conceptualizations of its central deity, paying close attention to the centrality of the imagery to that deity’s representation. It will then evaluate the conceptual blending of the two schemas, highlighting the analogous and complementary concepts that facilitated that blending, as well as the conditions that contributed to the development of new divine conceptualizations. The fundamental goal is insight into why God was represented in the texts the way he was.