Ketuvim: the Writings of James R. Getz Jr.

Working through a variety of texts with students over the past year has made me appreciate the importance of an audience’s expectations when speaking of predestination, freewill, determinism and the like.

In traditional tales the audience undoubtedly knows the end before the action begins. This is as true for Hector and Achilles as it is for Moses and Pharaoh. In these scenarios, foreshadowing of events takes the form of prophecy.

Authors turn common knowledge into the inescapably inevitable and set their characters lose in a world that they cannot control. For example, everyone knows that Oedipus will kill his father and marry his mother; what makes Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyranus a great play is how the characters react in this unchangeable situation. Similarly, everyone knows that Moses and YHWH will free the Hebrews from slavery, what matters is the ritual retelling of events to inculcate a new generation with the full story. A modern example would be Titanic — the destruction of the ship is portrayed as inevitable, what happens to the characters in the midst of the predestine situation is what’s interesting.

Into this situation, the question that nags me is can we turn this around? Does the lack of predetermination in the plot line of an ancient text indicate that the author is taking liberties with the story? Injecting something new into the traditional material? Sophocles does this in his Theban plays. He inserts new twists in the plot, novel material that he uses to knock the audience about and dissettle them even more. Aeschylus does this as well with his play The Eumenides in The Oresteia.

Can we then infer a similar procedure in other ancient texts? What about Gilgamesh? If we look at the OB version(s) and at that of Sin-liqe-unninni, can we see places where the latter is doing something new and different with the traditional material? For example, perhaps Tzvi Abusch is right in seeing the inclusion of the journey to Uta-Napishti as a unique change to the epic; perhaps Siduri is Gilgamesh’s initial goal. Does this lack of heavy-handed predetermination indicate new material in a traditional story?

While I don’t plan any time soon on using the absence of prophetic predetermination as a metric for discovering novel elements in ancient texts, the possibilities are definitely interesting.

Dr. Claude Mariottini has a new post on those troublesome Nephilim. Since everyone loves a good human-angel lovechild, I was interested in the post. However, I’ve got some disagreements with his conclusions.

While Mariottini’s discussion mainly deals with Bruce Waltke’s An Old Testament Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007), he does outline his own views near the end (his full article on the subject is here):

After the people of Israel left Egypt, they came to the borders of Canaan, the land that Yahweh their God had promised to them. Before they entered the land, Moses sent 12 spies to investigate the land and its people (Num. 13). In a later passage Moses seems to place responsibility for the spies being sent on the people of Israel (Deut. 1:22). With the exception of Joshua and Caleb, the spies brought back a pessimistic report of their survey of Canaan. To 10 of the spies, the fortified walls of the Canaanite cities were an overwhelming obstacle for their conquest of the land (13:28). The spies also were terrified by the size of the inhabitants of Canaan. “They said, ‘The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them’” (Num. 13:32-33 NIV). In their exaggeration of the situation, the spies spoke to the assembly of the leaders of Israel of the terrible predicament awaiting the people of Israel. The spies added that, in addition of being people of gigantic stature, the Anakim were the Nephilim, the dreadful people who lived on earth in the days before the flood.

This then allows Mariottini to state emphatically that “the spies did not see any Nephilim for the Nephilim had died in the flood.”

While there are many points I places I disagree with Mariottini’s discussion, the one I’d like to focus on is his off-handed dismissal of Num 13.32-33. It isn’t simply that the situation of the spies is exaggerated. The text states in a parenthetical statement that the Anakim descent from the Nephilim. Let’s look at the text of v.33:

ושם ראינו את הנפילים בני ענק מן הנפלים ונהי בעינינו כחגבים וכן היינו בעיניהם

While one could possibly argue that the initial statement by the spies was an exaggeration (ושם ראינו את הנפילים) and the statement of the their feelings would definitely appear to be so (ונהי בעינינו כחגבים וכן היינו בעיניהם), neither of these concessions deals with the root of the problem: the genealogical information that the sons of Anaq came from the Nephilim.

Even if we allow the rest of the verse to be hyperbole (which I’m disinclined to do for the initial description of the inhabitants) one still needs to wrestle with this ancestral factoid. The information is not needed if the point is merely to add to the the hysterics. That is to say, it makes little sense for the spies to throw this in. Further, the fact that intertestamental works such as 1 Enoch as well as later rabbinic commentaries wrestled with these issues points out that it cannot be simply discounted as exaggeration.

The example of Og king of Bashan might be instructive at this point. According to Deut 3, Og was the last of the Rephaim and had a bed nine cubits by 4 cubits (roughly 13′x6′). Rabbinic tradition linked Og up with the Nephilim but ran across the problem of the flood. The rabbis generally held that Og had survived the flood (Niddah 61a) and came up with several ways to explain how he survived, ranging from him holding onto the back of the ark (Pirḳe R. El. xxiii.; Gen. R. xxxi. 13) to the assertion that the flood waters only came up to his ankles (Midr. Peṭirat Mosheh, i. 128). I want to be clear: I’m not making the claim that the rabbis did — that Og was somehow a Nephilim — but rather pointing out that there are ways to get around the issue of the flood and the continued existence of the Nephilim’s descendants.

So in the end, we’ve got a parenthetic statement in Num 13.33 that links the Nephilim with the Anaqim. The text does not seem to be a deliberate exaggeration that is to be taken metaphorically nor has the history of interpretation taken it that way. This of course blows the doors wide open for interpretations of who and what the Nephilim are and how their status endured into later days. But, that’s a post for another time.

Jim West has posted Biblical Studies Carnival XXIX over at his site. Be sure to check it out. My eschatological musings seem to have made the list this month.

BBC is reporting that Iraqi National Museum has received “some 700 artefacts looted after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.” The items in question were seized by the Syrian government in various raids and represents the largest return of artifacts since the museum’s looting in 2003. It’s a small drop in the bucket of the thousands of artifacts still missing, but every bit helps.

I’ve always had a soft spot for Herodotus. This might possibly owe to his apparent ADD or to his cameo in Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. Regardless, Daniel Mendelson reviews The Landmark Herodotus (ed. by Robert Strassler) and several other recent titles on the “father of history” in the latest New Yorker. Strangely and wonderfully, Mendelson goes a long way to show the importance of Herodotus to what might be referred to as postmodern history.

The following quote gave me all sorts of postmodern, web 2.0 pedagogical ideas:

He [Herodotus] pauses to give you information, however remotely related, about everything he mentions, and that information can take the form of a three-thousand-word narrative or a one-line summary. It only looks confusing or “digressive” because Herodotus, far from being an old fuddy-duddy, not nearly as sophisticated as (say) Thucydides, was two and a half millennia ahead of the technology that would have ideally suited his mentality and style. It occurs to you, as you read “The Landmark Herodotus”—with its very Herodotean footnotes, maps, charts, and illustrations—that a truly adventurous new edition of the Histories would take the digressive bits and turn them into what Herodotus would have done if only they’d existed: hyperlinks.

With the technologies afforded to us as educators through software packages like Blackboard, it would be possible to create a customized wiki-Herodotus wherein all of his zany tangents and digressions were relegated to hyperlinks. I, for one, would find the work worse for the effort; but it might provide an interesting pedagogical experiment if only to show students that all of Herodotus’ digressions are what make the work so much fun to read.

Probably due to Ben Stein’s new film, I’ve been noticing a lot of discussion on evolution and atheism in the media in recent days.

Christopher Heard has capped a series of interesting posts on Expelled with a personal review of the movie. It’s quite good, and I recommend it highly.

New York magazine has a piece by Sean McMans entitled Do Atheists Need a Church of their Own? discussing issues of religious structure among those who deny the supernatural.

Yesterday, Marty Moss-Coane from WHYY’s Radio Times interviewed Chris Hedges, author of the new book I Don’t Believe in Atheists ( Listen to this show via Real Audio | mp3). Despite the provocative title, Chris doesn’t have problem with the bulk of atheists or theists, but takes exception to those of both camp that operate with a militant fundamentalism. Many of the players from Expelled and the New York magazine piece show up in the discussion of how neo-Atheist neocons are impacting the discussion of religion in the larger global political structure.

Finally, this week kicks of the Year of Evolution celebration running now through the end of May here in Philly. I’m hoping to get over to the Penn Museum for some of the lectures over the next few weeks.

The blogosphere is a buz about the death of David Noel Freedman on April 8th, 2008. He was a giant of the field, a proficient scholar, prodigious editor, and pleasant man.

My interactions with Professor Freedman were conscribed to a few meetings at WESCOR. He was always generous with student papers, seeking to help those of us just coming up through the ranks. On one occasion, I had dinner with him and several other scholars from the regions (including Bill Schniedewind, Beth Alpert Nakkai, Ed Wright and Joel Hunt). But, being the youngest and most junior scholar at the table I was reticent to say much.

He will be sorely missed.

(HT: Targuman, Awilum, and Jim West)

This morning I taught on 1 & 2 Thessalonians. I take both letters as written by Paul and hold that they were written in Corinth soon after Paul was run out of town at Thessalonica (as per Acts 17). All this is standard, orthodox and happy in the evangelical environment in which I’m teaching NT. However, what struck me as odd is that Paul seems to be somewhat mistaken in both letters. I shrugged the problem off in class; but in light of John Hobbin’s post on What counts as an error in the Bible?, I’m begging to wonder if the issue is bigger than I thought.

In 1 Thes, it becomes evident that Paul didn’t quite teach the poor Thessalonians everything they needed to know. As such, he’s having to send a letter to explain his eschatology. In and of itself this doesn’t seem to constitute error of Scripture. The canonical corpus, no Paul himself, would be the issue. Paul’s correction of doctrinal confusion caused by the extenuating situation of his persecution doesn’t provide us with a smoking gun in this regard.

In 2 Thes, the saga continues. Paul’s vagueness in terms of an eschatological time line in 1 The has led some folks to abandon all work and take up waiting for Christ’s return as a full-time occupation. Paul is quite vexed by this. He sets them straight both doctrinally and practically. The former is my concern here.

In his discussion first in 1 Thes and then in 2 Thes as well Paul is working with an immanent eschatology. He really thinks that Jesus is coming back soon. In later letters, Paul (or “Paul”) takes a longer view on eschatology and ecclesiology, seeing the need to prepare for a longer haul in light of the delay of the Parousia. But, here in Paul’s earliest canonical letters, he believes that Jesus will return in the immediate future.

Does this constitute and error in Scripture? Can one hold that Paul is wrong and hold a “high view” of Scripture? Not being encumbered by ETS’s doctrinal statement and the Chicago Statement of Inerrancy, I’ve never really thought about this; but I’m beginning to wonder…

There is a “Hermeneutics Quiz” at Leadership Journal.net put together by Scot McKnight (Jesus Creed). While the quiz is designed to make explicit one’s (often implicit) hermeneutical strategies, I found myself wondering if it succeeded in this task.

Scott designed the quiz and ran it with a sampling of twenty “pastors, professors, and former students.” Based on this sample (small, to be sure) he came up a the following rubric:

< 52 Conservative
52-65 Moderate
66-100 Progressive

I took the quiz and scored an 88, which makes me squarely in the “progressive” camp of hermeneutics — no surprise here, really. I find it hard to believe there is no such thing as a “plain meaning” of any text. Everything is culturally conditioned, both Scripture and our interpretation of it. As such, understanding the community that Scripture was addressed to and the community that is interpreting it is crucial.

However, it occurred to me that this entire quiz falls apart if you come from a confessional background. For example, question 13 states:

The context for reading the Bible is: 1. The individual’s sole responsibility. 2. I fall somewhere between No. 1 and No. 3. 3. The individual in conversation and respect for Church traditions. 4. I fall somewhere between No. 3 and No. 5. 5. The confessional statement of one’s community of faith.

Is it “progressive” or “traditional” to go with answer 5? How different would a postmodernist and a conservative Catholic answer this question? I wonder how some of my Eastern Orthodox friends would score on the post (yes, I’m trolling). Would having a second metric indicating how important a question was to them be able to indicate more accurately someone’s hermeneutical paradigm?

As is often the case with these sorts of quizzes, I think that the metrics show more about the kind of person who wrote it, than those who took it.

(HT: Tyler Williams)

Chris Weimer from Thoughts on Antiquity is hosting The Real Biblical Studies Carnival XXVIII. He had already posted the not-so-real BS Carnival on April 1st (why are there so many scatological references in the blogosphere?); but this carnival was eminently more authentic and definitely less odious.