Van Seters on the Documentary Hypothesis

I continued through John Van Seter’s Abraham in History and Tradition while I watched Commander in Chief, which stars Geena Davis, Donald Sutherland, Zach from Saved by the Bell, Peter Coyote, Claire from Heroes (on one episode), and others. Lynette’s mom from Desperate Housewives is also on it, though she doesn’t bake her special marijuana brownies! (She has a gambling problem, though). And she dates Orsen Bean, Loren from Dr. Quinn, who’s on Desperate Housewives this season. I like the West Wing a little bit better, but Commander in Chief is still pretty good. Too bad they never released the final five episodes!

Van Seters doesn’t care much for the Documentary Hypothesis, which divides the Pentateuch into four sources: J, E, P, and D. One way scholars have tried to distinguish J from E is to say that J uses the divine name “Yahweh,” whereas E prefers “Elohim.” The problem is that there are cases in which “the alternation in the use of the divine name has resulted in the complete fragmentation of otherwise unified stories and episodes” (127).

This is something I noticed in high school, when I first learned about the Documentary Hypothesis and wrote a paper against it for my Bible Lit class. There are times when the division of sources makes sense and you can isolate two stories about the same topic (e.g., creation, perhaps the flood) that stand pretty well on their own. But there are also times when a source doesn’t make sense by itself but needs the details of the other source for the story to be coherent, and that’s where the Documentary Hypothesis fragments unified stories. I wonder, however, if that throws advocates of the Documentary Hypothesis, leaving them speechless. Couldn’t they just say that our Pentateuch doesn’t have all of E (to use an example), but that the people who combined J and E drew from E without quoting all of it?

Then, there’s the question of why J and E have parallel stories in the first place. Why do J and E both have similar stories about (say) Abraham? Biblical scholar Martin Noth proposed that both of them are relying on a common source: the Grundlage (G). But Van Seters is skeptical. He asks why J or E departed from the Grundlage, since their accounts differ from one another, notwithstanding their similarities.

I could be wrong, but my impression of Van Seter’s view on the composition of the Pentateuch is that he believes J offered the foundational story, and later writers added to it. For him, that’s a better way to account for the unity and diversity in the Pentateuch.

Avoiding a Suffering God; YHWH in the Underworld

Hi everyone! This will be a quick post. My home computer isn’t working, so I’m using one at the public library, and I only have 51 minutes left. So this will be fast! Anon15:5 and Elna: I read your comments, but I may not be able to respond to them today. Good comments, though!

At Latin mass this morning, the topic was Jesus suffering on the cross. Philosopher priest talked about various heresies in the early days of Christianity, and how they tried to avoid God suffering on the cross. Apparently, they had the same problem with the concept that Ken Pulliam talked about: based on Greek philosophy, they believed that God was always happy, so the idea that God could suffer was unthinkable for them! And so some said that the human Jesus suffered on the cross, while the divine “Christ” part of him left by then. Or some maintained that Simon of Syrene suffered on the cross in place of Jesus.

The priest seemed to agree that God could not suffer, for he made clear that the Father didn’t suffer, and also that Jesus as God did not suffer (if I heard him correctly). Yet, he also didn’t believe that Jesus’ human nature suffered while his divine nature did not, for that’s the heresy of Nestorianism, which held that Jesus had two separate natures, divine and human, which didn’t really have much to do with one another.

Personally, I don’t see what the big deal is about God suffering. The New Testament is clear that suffering produces character. God doesn’t need that, but I’d expect a loving and compassionate God to become sad at many things he sees in this world. Suffering is an indicator of love, sympathy, and empathy. Evangelicals have often prayed, “May my heart break at the things that break yours, Lord.”

So that’s my church write-up. For my Fishbane write-up (on Biblical Myth and Rabbinic Mythmaking), Fishbane on page 80 refers to an article by Alan Cooper, “PS 24:7-10; Mythology and Exegesis,” which appeared in the Journal of Biblical Literature 102 (1983) 37-55. Cooper argues that there are biblical passages that suggest that YHWH entered the netherworld. I find this interesting. It reminds me of the Christian idea that Jesus went to the underworld to preach to the spirits in prison. Off the top of my head (since I don’t have immediate access to BibleWorks), Psalm 139 says that, if the Psalmist goes to Sheol, God is there. For that passage, God is omniscient! Yet, there are other Psalms that suggest that God is absent from Sheol. Why would God go to the underworld? What would he try to accomplish?

I may get back to this, or I may not. Tomorrow, I’ll be covering another Fishbane topic! The HUC library opens in a half hour, so I may read the Cooper article.

Have a blessed Sunday!

To Know the Good…

G. Reale, A History of Ancient Philosophy: The Systems of the Hellenistic Age, trans. John R. Catan (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985) 60.

There is nothing to which Plato, right down to the end of his life, was more passionately opposed than the statement that the soul can know that is just without being just.

According to Plato (fifth-fourth century B.C.E.), the person who truly knows the good will want to do the good. This makes a certain amount of sense. If I truly know the good, then I recognize its beauty and the positive effects that it brings, which should inspire me to do it.

When I took a philosophy class at DePauw University, however, there were students who disagreed with Plato. “When I smoke a lot and cough shit up, I know that’s not good for me!,” a student exclaimed. “Yet, I keep on smoking.” If my memory serves me correctly, the professor brought Aristotle into the discussion, asserting that there’s such a thing as weakness of the will. In certain philosophical scenarios, one can know the good but be too weak to do it.

What are some biblical teachings on this topic? I suppose we get a mixed bag! Here are three teachings that come to my mind:

1. Knowledge of the LORD leads to ethical behavior. Isaiah 11:9 affirms, “They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea” (NRSV).

2. One can know the good and even delight in it, yet there’s a law within that person that inclines him to evil (Romans 7-8).

3. One can fall away from the faith after tasting the goodness of God. Hebrews 6:4-6: “For it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, since on their own they are crucifying again the Son of God and are holding him up to contempt.”

I’d like to think that knowing the good and why it is good would inspire a person to do the good. But maybe weakness of the will can inhibit us, or a short-sighted desire for our own self-interest.

Moshe Weinfeld and Dtr in II Samuel 7

I’m writing a paper, and blogging is one way for me to organize my thoughts. The topic is biblical intertextuality, which is when one biblical text interacts with another biblical text.

My professor recommended that I “discuss II Samuel [7], the deuteronomic emendations of that chapter, and then the intertextual links to 1 Kgs 8:1-30…This would require you to cross reference ‘Place of my name’ phraseology and its function within a theological framework.”

In this post, I want to highlight the Deuteronomic emendations of II Samuel 7. I will identify them using the late Moshe Weinfeld’s classic work, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1992), particularly his appendix on “Deuteronomic Phraseology.”

The translation is from the New Revised Standard Version, and I have colored the Deuteronomic emendations in red. I have also placed in parentheses the reference from Weinfeld, where he ties the phraseology to passages in Deuteronomy.

I’ll be writing posts for this paper off-and-on, since there will be days in which I’ll be researching rather than writing. My purpose in this post is to have something I can refer back to when I sit down and write my paper.

Here we go!

1 Now when the king was settled in his house, and the LORD had given him rest from all his enemies around him,
2 the king said to the prophet Nathan, “See now, I am living in a house of cedar, but the ark of God stays in a tent.”
3 Nathan said to the king, “Go, do all that you have in mind; for the LORD is with you.”
4 But that same night the word of the LORD came to Nathan:
5 Go and tell my servant David: Thus says the LORD: Are you the one to build me a house to live in?
6 I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle.
7 Wherever I have moved about among all the people of Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the tribal leaders of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, “Why have you not built me a house of cedar?”
8 Now therefore thus you shall say to my servant David: Thus says the LORD of hosts: I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep to be prince over my people Israel;
9 and I have been with you wherever you went, and have cut off all your enemies from before you; and I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth.
10 And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may live in their own place, and be disturbed no more; and evildoers shall afflict them no more, as formerly,
11 from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel; and I will give you rest from all your enemies. Moreover the LORD declares to you that the LORD will make you a house.
12 When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom.
13 He shall build a house for my name (p. 325#6), and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.
14 I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me. When he commits iniquity, I will punish him with a rod such as mortals use, with blows inflicted by human beings.
15 But I will not take my steadfast love from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away from before you.
16 Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me; your throne shall be established forever.
17 In accordance with all these words and with all this vision, Nathan spoke to David.
18 Then King David went in and sat before the LORD, and said, “Who am I, O Lord GOD, and what is my house, that you have brought me thus far?
19 And yet this was a small thing in your eyes, O Lord GOD; you have spoken also of your servant’s house for a great while to come. May this be instruction for the people, O Lord GOD!
20 And what more can David say to you? For you know your servant, O Lord GOD!
21 Because of your promise, and according to your own heart, you have wrought all this greatness, so that your servant may know it.
22 Therefore you are great, O LORD God; for there is no one like you, and there is no God besides you (p. 331#5), according to all that we have heard with our ears.
23 Who is like your people, like Israel (p. 328#11)? Is there another nation on earth whose God went to redeem it (p. 326#1) as a people (p. 327#16a), and to make a name for himself, doing great and awesome things (p. 329#17) for them, by driving out before his people nations and their gods?
24 And you established your people Israel for yourself to be your people forever (p. 328#11); and you, O LORD, became their God.
25 And now, O LORD God, as for the word that you have spoken concerning your servant and concerning his house, confirm it forever (p. 315#1, 1a); do as you have promised.
26 Thus your name will be magnified forever in the saying, ‘The LORD of hosts is God over Israel’; and the house of your servant David will be established before you.
27 For you, O LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, have made this revelation to your servant, saying, ‘I will build you a house’; therefore your servant has found courage to pray this prayer to you.
28 And now, O Lord GOD, you are God, and your words are true, and you have promised this good thing to your servant;
29 now therefore may it please you to bless the house of your servant, so that it may continue forever before you; for you, O Lord GOD, have spoken, and with your blessing shall the house of your servant be blessed forever.”

Some thoughts:

1. I’m not sure how much these parts in red are emendations, since the text doesn’t seem to make much sense without them. Maybe the emendations include things not in red as well. There are other commentaries that refer to “Deuteronomic additions,” and I want to take a look at them, too.

2. vv 5-7 define the issue as David wanting to build God a house “to live in” (Hebrew, yashav). For Weinfeld, the Deuteronomist does not have an anthropomorphic view of God that says he lives in a house, so he emphasizes in v 13 that the house is for God’s “name,” not God himself.

I wonder to what extent “pagans” believed that deities dwelt in their temples. Did they think that their gods only lived in temples, or that they lived elsewhere (e.g., heaven) as well? I read a commentary a while back that said that the priestly author of the Hebrew Bible–the one who stresses that God lives in an earthly sanctuary–did not think that the earthly sanctuary was God’s permanent residence, but rather that he only visited there in times of worship. I’ll have to dig that source up. Does yashav have to mean that God made the temple his permanent residence–as in, he’s there all of the time?

We do know that I Kings 8:27 stresses that God does not literally dwell in a house on earth, so I can see Wienfeld’s point that there is some anti-anthropomorphistic theology going on with the Deuteronomist.

I’d like to read Sandra Richter’s The Deuteronomistic history and the name theology, which is on Google books. She takes a look at scholarship on this issue. I’ll get to some of that this week.

In my next post for this paper, I may look at I Kings 8:1-30. I want to highlight the Deuteronomic emendations there, as well as the allusions to II Samuel 7.

Stay tuned!

Tom Harpur’s “Christ Within”

I’ve been reading Tom Harpur’s The Pagan Christ (New York: Walker & Company, 2004), which argues that the “Christ myth” came from ancient Egyptian legends about Horus.

Today, I don’t want to interact with that argument so much, except to say that I wish Harpur actually provided documentation from primary sources for many of his claims. And “Irenaeus says” does not count, unless I’m told precisely where Irenaeus said it! Maybe I can find documentation in the book advertised on God Discussion, D.M. Murdock’s Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection.

Throughout his book, Harpur argues that Jesus Christ was not a real person, but rather a symbol for the divine within each of us. In this approach, Christ’s healings, feeding of the multitudes, and calming of the storms are symbols for the strength and power of the Christ within: to heal us, to nourish us, to provide us with inner peace, etc.

Harpur discusses what he considers the weaknesses of seeing Jesus as an external person for us to imitate:

I am reminded here of what Carl Jung said about the weakness of the old Imitatio Christi approach. Jung obviously had nothing against people trying to be loving and kind. But, he said, “The Imitatio Christi will forever have this disadvantage: we worship a man as a divine model, embodying the deepest meaning of life, and then out of sheer imitation we forget to make real the profound meaning present in ourselves. If I accept the fact that a God is absolute and beyond all human experience, he leaves me cold. I do not affect him, nor does he affect me. But if I know, on the other hand, that God is a mighty activity within my own soul, at once I must concern myself with him.” If we follow a Christ “out there,” in other words, while ignoring the kingdom of God or the Christ within, authentic transformation never occurs.

This quote intrigues me for various reasons. Its use of the word “cold” struck me as ironic, since that’s how I’d describe Harpur’s version of Christianity. He says that there’s no real Jesus out there who loves me, and that all I have is myself? That’s pretty bleak!

At the same time, the quote does resonate with me on some level. The idea that there’s potential within me, already there for the tapping? I remember a lady at church criticizing the New Age notion that there’s potential within us that God wants to help us use. Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with that sort of notion.

Christians believe that God gives the Holy Spirit to believers, and that’s fine. But I kind of like Harpur’s notion that there’s something spiritual within each of us, Christian and non-Christian, since I’m not always sure if I’m in the “saved” category. If I had incredible potential just on the basis of being human, hey, that’s something I can appreciate!

Still, Paul’s teaching that humans are weak and need a power greater than themselves to regenerate them also resonates with me, since I realize that I am weak. Plus, I’m uncomfortable labelling myself divine in any sense of the word, for I think that an essential component of religion is worshipping some power greater than myself (though, granted, there are religions that view the transcendent differently from theists).

That’s why I have problems with the Armstrongite view that humans will become like God: I can agree that we’re advancing and growing towards something, but I believe that God should always be above us, since that’s part of the very definition of “God.”

Moreover, as I’ve expressed in my post Jesus Clones, I have my own set of problems with Imitatio Christi, which is essentially “What would Jesus do?” I don’t want to be totally like someone else, nor do I desire to imitate someone’s actions in a “monkey see, monkey do” sort of way. I want to be the best James Pate that I can be, according to the unique way that God created me.

Link on Neusner

I’m posting this link from Biblica because it may help me on my comps, so I want ready access to it:

Neusner’s Theology of the Oral Torah, chapter 7