Be Kind Anyway

This is from Kent Keith’s Have Faith Anyway: The Vision of Habakkuk for Our Times (see here):

“People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self centered. Forgive them anyway.

“If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.

“If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway.

“If you are honest and sincere, people my deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway.

“What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway.

“If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway.

“The good you do today, will often be forgotten. Do good anyway.

“Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give you best anyway.

“In final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.”

I really needed to read this today.  I have my share of anger against people, and I often wonder why I should be nice, when people think that I’m only doing so to ingratiate myself for selfish reasons, or when I feel that anything nice I do will be forgotten.  But, as Kent Keith says, I should be nice anyway!

Recovering from Wisdom Teeth Operation

Over the next few days, I’ll be recovering from having had three of my wisdom teeth pulled, so, if I don’t get to your comments during that time, it’s not because I’m being stuck up.  I’ll probably still be writing blog posts—which may be short while I’m recovering—but it may take me a few days to get to the comments.  I also don’t know if I’ll be attending my church’s Wednesday night Bible study this week—it will depend on how I feel tomorrow.  But, even if I don’t attend, I’ll probably still write about the reading I did for this coming Wednesday’s session.

Last Sunday at church, my pastor prayed for me and for those who will be taking care of me, which, in my case, will be my Mom.  It was appropriate for him to pray that, for I can be quite an impatient patient!  But I told my Mom that I will try really hard not to manifest my grouchiness.  I’m looking forward to eating cottage cheese, yogurt, and jello!  I also have my Season 1 of the Dead Zone on-hand, and there is a good chance that I will chill while watching it.  I’ll also put my academic reading slightly on hold, though it will not appear that way to my readers, since I write my academic posts ten or eleven days before they appear.  Maybe I’ll read and blog about something else for a post that will appear ten or eleven days later, or I’ll just stick with writing my daily posts about The Stand.  Stay tuned!

Beginning Sternberg’s Poetics of Biblical Narrative

I started Meir Sternberg’s The Poetics of Biblical Narrative.  I have three items, which are quotes on which I will comment.

1.  Page 17: “However this may turn out, the laissez-faire gestures (‘You go your way and I’ll go mine’ or, more belligerently, ‘You keep off my grass and I’ll keep off yours’) made occasionally from both sides of the ‘literary-approach’ fence only confuse the issue.  They speak as if there were one Bible for the historian, another for the theologian, another for the linguist, another for the geneticist, still another for the literary critic…Given their interdependence, accordingly, the two orientations must join forces within each and every inquiry.  For the literary critic, success or failure in the reconstruction of the world (above all, the culture) behind the Bible is success or failure as a professional reader, not as an amateur historian.  For the historian, success or failure in the interpretation of the biblical text is success or failure as a reconstructor of the past, not as a criticaster or a dabbler in hermeneutics.”

In this quote, Sternberg appears to support both literary criticism and also historical-criticism of the biblical text.  My impression is that he opposes tendencies to isolate the two from each other, as if literary criticism is an a-historical approach to the Bible.  How this will come into play in Sternberg’s book, I do not know.  A while back, I read his discussion on Dinah in Genesis 34, and his focuses seemed to be on the story itself, not on the political or social ramifications of the story within a historical context (i.e., Richard Elliott Friedman claims that the story was bashing the Northern site of Shechem).  In my reading today, Sternberg talked a lot about Greek and ancient Near Eastern literature, but, mostly, that was for the purpose of comparison with the Hebrew Bible, not so much for providing a historical context for the Bible’s storytelling methods.  (At least that was my impression.)  At the same time, Sternberg is seeking to identify where the Bible overlaps with other ancient stories, and where it diverges.

2.  Pages 37-38: “Now, if biblical narrative is didactic, then it has chosen the strangest way to go about its business.  For the narrator breaks every law in the didacticist’s decalogue.  Anything like preaching from the narrative pulpit is conspicuous for its absence.  So is its immemorial mate and nearest equivalent—black-and-white delineation of agents, motives, causes, processes.  Instead of polarizing the reader’s emotional and ethical response in line with some preconceived scheme of values, the Bible habitually generates ambivalence: consider Jacob, Aaron, Gideon, Saul, David, Solomon, Jehu…Rather than aligning divine election and moral stature, it usually foregrounds their discordance.  Rather than imposing an automatic or at least intelligible system of rewards and punishments, it undermines every rule of thumb, every simple proportion…The characterization is complex, the motives mixed, the plot riddled with gaps and enigmas, behavior unpredictable, surprises omnipresent, the language packed and playful, the registration of reality far more governed by the real and the realistic than by the ideal.  In short, where didacticism would insist on subordination, one encounters proliferation; where the discourse should move in a straight line, it weaves a net; where propositions should readily follow from premises, the premises themselves often remain ambiguous or double-edged and the propositions become multiple; where transparence is expected, we have to struggle with opacity on all levels, from word to word to thought.”

I both agree and also disagree with Sternberg here.  I think that there are moral judgments made throughout the Hebrew Bible.  Heck, the Deuteronomist labels kings good and evil in the sight of the LORD!  But there is also complexity within the Hebrew Bible.  Many characters are neither good nor evil.  Reward and punishment is often quite neat, but not always so (e.g., Josiah dies, even though he’s a good king).  And we’re not always told whether a character’s act is good or bad.  It just is!

3.  Page 89: “The Homeric narrator stands above the gods, varying their access to knowledge to suit his own requirements.  The biblical narrator and God are not only analogues, nor does God’s informational privilege only look far more impressive than the narrator’s derivative or second-order authority.  The very choice to devise an omniscient narrator serves the purpose of staging and glorifying an omniscient God.  The means-end combination typical of ancient literature this gets practically reversed in the framework of monotheistic art.”

This is a theme that occurred a lot in my reading today: that the biblical narrator is omniscient—in that he knows of the thoughts of the characters—because he is depicted as godlike.  And Sternberg talks about such issues as the inspiration of poetry and history in the ancient world, and also the omniscience of prophets in the Hebrew Bible (e.g., II Kings 6:8-12, where Elisha is said to know what the king says in his bedchamber), even as the Hebrew Bible in places tries to take the prophet down a few notches so that God gets the glory.  God is also omniscient in parts of the Hebrew Bible.  Sternberg may be correct that the Hebrew Bible (for the ancient Israelites) functioned as a divine commentary on history, but could there be another explanation?  Maybe the narrators put thoughts in the minds of characters because they think that’s what they thought—based on their actions.

Suzanne and Rachel

Congratulations to Suzanne McCarthy of Suzanne’s Bookshelf for being Number 1 on the June 2011 Top 10 Biblioblogs.  Certain conservative Christians have moderated her out of their blogs, or have shed crocodile tears over her spiritual condition.  It is for both of these reasons that I root for her success as a blogger!  Anyone who draws gasps from right-wing Christians cannot be that bad!

Number 10 is Rachel Held Evans.  Scotteriology is raising the question of whether she is technically a biblio-blogger.  Some may care about semantics, and that’s their prerogative.  But, if I were to vote in the Top 10 Biblioblogs every month, I would vote for Rachel.  Not only are her posts insightful, but the comments are excellent, too.

Some are applauding that the Top 10 has women bloggers.  To be honest, I don’t plan on applying an affirmative action policy to my own determination of what blogs I like or will vote for.  I like Suzanne and Rachel because they are talented, insightful bloggers, and they’re not afraid to take on the status quo.

Concluding Sparks’ Ethnicity and Identity in Ancient Israel

I finished Kenton Sparks’ Ethnicity and Identity in Ancient Israel.  Here are two items:

1.  Regarding Abraham, Sparks states on page 327:

“The Abraham figure first appeared in the book of Ezekiel as the forefather of the Judean remnant community.  This tradition existed alongside the Exodus origin tradition and was quickly appropriated by the exilic community, which transformed Abraham into an exile returning to Palestine and integrated him into the previously existing patriarchal and exodus origin traditions.”

Abraham is mentioned in Ezekiel 33:24.  There, the inhabitants of the wastes of the land of Israel—those who are left in Israel after the Babylonians have ransacked the land—are saying that the land is their inheritance.  After all, they point out, Abraham was one, and he inherited the land.  But they are many, so how much more will they inherit it!  But Ezekiel tells them not to comfort themselves, for God does not like their sin.

So, according to Sparks, we see that Abraham first appears as a person who inherited the land of Canaan—and he was considered the forefather of the “Judean remnant community.”  Later on, however, Abraham was made into a nomad from Mesopotamia—and this occurred during the exile, when there were Jews who were in Mesopotamia and wanted to go to Palestine.  But that point doesn’t excite me too much, to tell you the truth.  I just mention it because it might be important for me to know.

What I really want to talk about is Sparks’ discussion on pages 308-309—about such juicy topics as the new covenant and Abraham’s justification by faith in Genesis 15.  Jeremiah 31:31-34 predicts a new covenant in which God will write his law on the hearts and the minds of the people of Judah and Israel.  According to Sparks, Isaiah 51:1-2, 7 has been associated with this new covenant.  There, God says “hearken to me” to those who pursue and know righteousness, and, in v 7, they are said to have God’s law in their hearts—which sounds like the new covenant in Jeremiah 31:31-34.  Isaiah 51:1-2 tells these exiles to look to Abraham their father, and, for Sparks, what we see here is that Second Isaiah is making Abraham into a paradigm of the new covenant.  Sparks then refers to Genesis 12 and 15—which, together, say that Abraham was declared righteous because he trusted the LORD’s promise that he would have children and a homeland.  But Abraham had to leave Mesopotamia to receive the fulfillment of these promises.  And that is what Second Isaiah was encouraging the righteous exiles to do: to leave Mesopotamia (which was an act of faith), return to Palestine, and receive God’s blessing of progeny, a homeland, and prosperity.

Sparks’ discussion here interests me because of the ways that Christians have handled the new covenant and Genesis 15.  Some say that Abraham believed in God apart from works and God declared him righteous—and, similarly, when we trust in the work of Jesus Christ, God justifies us, even before we have done good works.  Then, God gives us the Holy Spirit, which is the means by which God writes his laws on our hearts and our minds.  Others argue that we do not believe in order to become spiritually regenerated, but that spiritual regeneration precedes faith—since sinful human beings cannot turn to God without God’s work of regeneration inside of them.

What I see in Sparks’ discussion is that God talks to those who are already regenerated—who have God’s law on their hearts—and he encourages them to take an action of faith—which is not apart from works, but which is expressed by works.

What to do with this, I do not know.  I’m not a big fan of Lordship Salvation, to tell you the truth, for I’d like to believe that God loves me and accepts me, even when I don’t have too many good works to my name or am too timid to step out on faith.

2.  On my list of comps readings, Sparks’ book is under “Sociological and Anthropological Approaches”, and so I should probably talk about Sparks’ interaction with sociology and anthropology.  I’ll do this by drawing from his summary on pages 328-329, as well as other parts of Sparks’ book when necessary.  Sparks praises F. Barth’s ideas regarding ethnic boundaries, and he defines those on page 3, where he states that Sparks considers ethnicity to be “a social boundary that partitions population groups on the basis of one or more of the following distinctions: (a) genealogical characteristics; (b) cultural traits such as language, religion, customs, shared history; and (c) inherited phenotypical characteristics, with the first of these three being the primary carrier of ethnic sentiment.”  As examples of ethnic markers, Barth refers to “skin tone” and “the ability to participate in the community’s in-group discourse” (Sparks’ words on pages 3-4).  But Sparks states that ethnicity is not the same as culture, for culture does not “necessarily include social identities that are rooted in a perceived genealogical connection between the group’s members” (page 5).  Consequently, Sparks thinks that archaeology is useless for identifying ethnic groups, for we can, say, identify a distinctive type of pottery in a location, but we cannot conclude from that pottery that the people in that location saw themselves as ethnically related.

While we’re on the issue of ethnic markers, I want to note something that Sparks says on page 272, where he is evaluating the E. Theodore Mullen’s treatment of the Book of Deuteronomy’s view of Israelite ethnicity.  Among the “issues that are integrally related to ethnicity”, Sparks lists “Questions about the forefathers, the patriarchs, ‘brother theology,’ holy war, and ethnic separatism”, and Sparks criticizes Mullen for not exploring those issues.  We see here what Sparks regards as significant in identifying an ethnic consciousness: Is there a belief in common ancestry?  Does the nation distinguish itself from other nations?

Back to page 328, Sparks says that Israelite ethnicity does not emphasize “language and phenotypical appearance.”  As far as language goes, the Israelite language overlapped significantly with that of other people-groups in Palestine and the Transjordan.

What was the origin of Israel’s ethnic consciousness?  Sparks refers to a variety of factors.  Competition for resources intensifies ethnic consciousness.  Wallerstein said that “ethnic sentiments appear and intensify when peripheral social modalities fall under the domination of a core imperialist power” (Sparks’ summary)—which Hosea demonstrates (and Hosea was ethnic because he referred to a common ancestor for Northern Israel and a common history, as well as sought to protect Israel’s uniqueness by opposing her practice of foreign religious customs).  But Sparks argues that Wallerstein is not entirely correct on this, for Isaiah was responding to Assyrian imperialism, and yet we see in his work, not an intensification of ethnic identity, but rather of religious identity.  Isaiah, after all, does not radically separate Israel from the nations, but envisions the day when all nations will worship the LORD.

Another thinker Sparks discusses is van den Berghe, who argues “that ethnicity is a natural extension of kinship” (Sparks’ summary).  Deuteronomy’s attempt to posit a brotherhood between Northern Israelites and the people of Judah is an example of this.

Overall, I enjoyed Sparks’ book.  I have heard that he wrote another book, God’s Words in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of Critical Biblical Scholarship.  I may read that at some point, since, right now, I’m not sure how I can reconcile critical scholarship of the Bible with faith.

No Decalogue in J?

One of John Van Seters’ main arguments in Life of Moses is that J used Deuteronomy as a source, rather than vice versa.  Regarding J’s use of Deuteronomy 4-5 in Exodus 19-20, Van Seters argues that J rigidly follows the sequence of events in Deuteronomy 4-5—even though Deuteronomy does not regard those events as chronologically ordered, but rather as Moses’ retrospective musings on the past.  The result is that J creates a narrative that doesn’t always make sense—the Israelites agree to obey what God has already commanded before God has even delivered his commandments—and also that J makes Moses go up and down the mountain a bunch of times—and Van Seters’ argument is that J is giving Moses a separate mountain trip for interactions that Deuteronomy says Moses had with God (Deuteronomy 4:10-14).

Van Seters also contends that J replaces God’s divine voice in the theophany with a trumpet blast to provide an etiology for the use of the shofar in the cult.  Moreover, for Van Seters, J does not present God speaking directly to the people, for J wants to confirm Moses’ role as mediator.  In J, Moses receives the commandments from God to communicate them to the people.  But what were these commandments?  I am unclear about whether or not Van Seters includes the Decalogue in his definition of God’s commandments in J.  On page 276, he says that the Decalogue does not fit into the Yahwist’s scheme, but, on page 279, he says that, in J, additional commandments are given at Sinai.  But, if there is no Decalogue in J, are those commandments (the Covenant Code) really additional?

How Does Quickpress Work?

I’m just writing this to see how QuickPress works.

Van Seters on Genesis 2-3, Babel, and the Documentary Hypothesis

I’m continuing my way through John Van Seters’ Prologue to History.  Here are two items:

1.  The first item is J’s creation story in Genesis 2-3.  I’ll use something that Van Seters says on pages 128-129 as a starting point:

“In the interests of the religion of Yahweh, [the Yahwist] has rationalized the role of the mother goddess by replacing her with the first woman/mother, Eve, ‘the mother of all living.’  By restricting the creation of humanity to a single pair, he has also created a ‘historical’ beginning from which a genealogical chronology could be developed.  This is a ‘western’ innovation not reflected in the eastern tradition.”

Keep in mind that Van Seters means “Greek” when he says “western”, and “Mesopotamian” when he says “eastern”.

According to Van Seters, J uses a variety of sources.  There are clear similarities between Genesis 2 and the account of Marduk’s creation: both begin by saying that certain things were not yet “in existence”, both refer to a water source from which “creation begins”, and both present the creation of plants and animals as occurring after the creation of humanity (page 123—quotes are Van Seters’ words).  But the account of Marduk’s creation says that the goddess Aruru “created the seed of mankind with” Marduk (Van Seters’ words).  Genesis 2, however, affirms that Eve is the mother of all living.  There is another difference between Genesis 2 and Mesopotamian texts: “the Mesopotamian texts speak of people being created in various numbers but never as a primal pair”, and “This is also the case for the Greek myths” (page 116).  (On page 142, however, Van Seters refers to a Phoenician tale that the first-second century C.E. antiquarian Philo of Byblos discusses regarding Genos and Genea, who were considered to be “the original human pair”.)  But Genesis 2 has a single pair from which all humanity descends.

Mesopotamian traditions have nothing about a woman contributing to the “downfall of humanity”, Van Seters states, but J may have used Greek traditions, such as Hesiod’s story of Pandora, which is about the “first woman after man was already in existence”, the origin of “married life”, and “the beginning of trouble for the human race”, which was caused by a woman, Pandora (page 125).

Van Seters also holds that J drew from the Book of Ezekiel.  Ezekiel 28 is about the king of Tyre being expelled from Eden on account of his pride regarding his beauty and wisdom.  Van Seters suggests that Ezekiel 28 was based on a Neo-Babylonian story (which is in a text) about the creation of the king “alongside of, and distinct from, the rest of humankind” (page 120).  In his creation, the king was endowed with “all the appropriate attributes of royalty” (page 120).  The text does not present the king being expelled for some sin, but Van Seters notes that, every New Year, Babylonian kings had to confess their sins before the high priest to “continue in office” (page 121), and so the concept that the king was a sinner could have been derived from this.  But Van Seters settles on the idea that Ezekiel turns a Babylonian story about “the myth of royalty” into a prophetic condemnation of the hubris of kings (page 121).

What does this have to do with Genesis 3?  In Ezekiel 28, the king of Tyre claimed to be divine on the basis of his wisdom, and, in Genesis 3, Adam and Eve ate fruit from the Tree of Knowledge because they believed that, by doing so, they would become like gods. 

Another thing to note: Van Seters talks about scholarly tendencies to notice bumps in Genesis 2-3, which leads some scholars to the conclusion that Genesis 2-3 was not a full-flowing composition, but rather different traditions being put together in a clumsy manner.  (For example, the Tree of Life is at the beginning and end of the story, but the middle focuses on the Tree of Knowledge, without even mentioning the Tree of Life.)  But Van Seters says that there are juxtaposed oracles in Ezekiel 28 that J is drawing from, and that causes “some tension within the composition of the Yahwist” (page 122).  I noticed Van Seters taking this sort of route in Life of Moses: Van Seters doesn’t like to divide J up more than he has to, nor does he want to see J merely as a compiler of diverse oral traditions, for he believes that J was a creative author (who still used sources).  And so, when Van Seters sees bumps in J, he attributes that to J trying to make due with the sources that he has.  J is trying to produce a coherent history out of his sources, and the result can get pretty bumpy!

I want to comment on the Tower of Babel, for I found Van Seters’ discussion of that to be fascinating.  Van Seters thinks that J is basing that story on different sources, such as a Mesopotamian tale about Enki confusing languages to disrupt the worship of Enlil, as well as the attempt of Esarhaddon (of Assyria) to restore the Babylonian ziggurat Etemenanki, only for it to be destroyed “in the time of Ashurbanipal”, after which time Babylonian kings rebuilt it, employing a labor force of various people-groups, speaking different languages (page 183).  For Van Seters, J’s story of the Tower of Babel is from the exile, and it is lampooning the efforts of the Babylonian kings to rebuild Etemenanki.  Van Seters states that “The etiology of the name ‘Babel’ is meant as a kind of ‘historical evidence’ that divine judgment was passed on the city in primeval times and could perhaps happen again” (page 184).  This leads into another point of Van Seters: that J’s message is universal, affirming that all people should obey God and do good, lest they suffer divine judgment (page 191). And J is making this statement in exile, which explains his use of Babylonian sources and exilic writings by Ezekiel, as well as events that are occurring during the time of Babylonian hegemony (e.g., the rebuilding of Etemenanki).

2.  On pages 161-165, Van Seters takes on the traditional Documentary Hypothesis’ approach to the Flood story.  The traditional Documentary Hypothesis says that J and P had two separate Flood stories that were combined by a redactor.  But Van Seters’ position is that J wrote the base story, and that P added some supplements—dealing with “the chronology of the flood, its nature and relationship to all of the cosmos, the numbers and types of the creatures taken into the ark, and so forth” (page 165).  The traditional Documentary Hypothesis identified J and P by the names for God that each source used, assuming that J used “Yahweh,” whereas P used “Elohim.”  But Van Seters says that “we have already seen a few instances where J has used Elohim instead of Yahweh” (page 161).  Can vocabulary help us to distinguish the sources?  Not necessarily, for both J (Genesis 7:1b) and P (6:10) say that Moses was righteous in his generation, leading even Wellhausen to conclude that P must have been dependent on J (page 161). 

I’ll stop here, for today.

Not Much on Segregation?

In Booker T. Washington’s Up from Slavery, I read Chapter 15, “The Secret of Success in Public Speaking.”

This chapter covered a lot of topics.  It’s like “Everything you wanted to know about Booker T. Washington” (my words): his hobbies, what he likes to read, the games he likes to play, how he takes short power naps, how he enjoyed molasses on Sundays when he was a kid, etc.

His advice on public speaking is essentially what my Dad told me one time: have something to say!  Also, speak from the heart.  My problem in the days when I was delivering sermons was that I didn’t have anything to say!  Or let me say this: I wasn’t enthusiastic about preaching what the church liked to emphasize (e.g., evangelism).  Plus, my own spiritual house was not in order, so how could I tell others what to do?  And so I really couldn’t speak from the heart, either.  But those were the days when I felt that I had to believe in a certain way, and I wasn’t overly comfortable with the doctrines I thought I had to accept.  It’s one thing to believe in doctrines because I think that I have to accept them, since they’re from God.  It’s another thing entirely for me to become enthusiastic about proclaiming those doctrines, especially when I feel that there’s no evidence for them that would convince anyone who doesn’t already believe in them.  Often, it seemed that churches and Christian movements were trying to pressure me to do precisely that.

But Booker T. Washington had something to say.  He had strong ideas about the advancement of African-Americans, based on his experience.  And he thought that the advancement of African-Americans coincided with the well-being of society as a whole—an attitude that I also encountered when reading W.E.B. Du Bois.  So he was sharing something valuable.

On my blog, do I have something to say?  To be honest, I really don’t care.  I like to write, and so I write.  I don’t need to justify my blog’s existence to anyone, including myself.  I doubt that the world would be a worse place if people did not read my posts on, say, biblical criticism.  But, all in all, I do find a need to express myself—at the very least for my own benefit.  And I hope also that people can get from my blog that things aren’t clear-cut all of the time—that there are shades of gray.

One line that stood out to me in my reading was James Creelman’s quote of a speech by Booker T. Washington, which said, “In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.”  Was Booker T. Washington tolerating segregation?  After I read that quote, I asked myself, “Have I read much about segregation in the writings of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois?”  To be honest, I don’t think that I have.  That’s my impression, and it could be wrong.  But it’s interesting that segregation—the issue that was at the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960′s—does not loom large as an issue in the writings of two great African-American leaders at the turn of the century (the early 1900′s).

Both of them think that social interaction between the races is important, however.  W.E.B. Du Bois said that one problem that contributes to discriminatory attitudes is that whites and African-Americans do not really know one another; although Du Bois detests slavery, he points out that at least there was interaction between the races in slavery days (see here).  Booker T. Washington makes a similar point—when he reminds his white audiences that slaves fought to protect their masters and masters’ families.  And Booker T. Washington also encourages Tuskegee students to get to know their white neighbors, to seek their advice on how to vote, and to impress their white neighbors with their intelligent contribution to the larger community.  For Booker T. Washington, that is how African-Americans advance in society.  Throughout the book, Booker T. Washington talks about the morality of African-Americans because there is an attitude within white society that they, as a race, are immoral.  Washington actually says that in this chapter!  But Washington believes that white society does not really know African-Americans.

Back to the issue of segregation.  Come to think of it, there are times when Du Bois and Washington talk about African-Americans being excluded from certain things (e.g., hotels, etc.) on account of their race.  Du Bois tells these sorts of stories with an attitude of sadness and dejection, whereas Washington tries to maintain his sunny “Don’t let this get you down” attitude (my words).  But, overall, my impression is that both of them focus on African-American success, rather than the integration of African-Americans into white society.  Du Bois desires that African-Americans vote so that white society is not unjustly infringing upon their progress through legal means, and Washington encourages African-Americans to learn skills so as to become self-supporting.  It’s a somewhat insular approach, and yet Du Bois and Washington are emphatic that such is not the case, for they believe that African-Americans have, can, and should contribute to all of society—African-American, white, etc.

This is just my take on the two thinkers, and I could be mistaken.

Numbers 16: Three Approaches

In my write-up today of Robert Alter’s The Art of Biblical Narrative, I want to talk about Alter’s approach to Numbers 16, which is about the rebellion of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram.  Before I get into Alter’s literary treatment of the chapter, however, I’ll summarize Richard Elliott Friedman’s source-critical division of it in Who Wrote the Bible? I’ll  also refer to R.N. Whybray’s treatment of the chapter in Making of the Pentateuch.

Here’s Friedman’s source-critical division of Numbers 16:

In JE, Dathan, Abiram and On, from the tribe of Reuben, rise up against Moses.  Moses calls them, and they refuse to come up.  They accuse Moses of lording it over Israel, and they say that he has failed to bring Israel into the land flowing with milk and honey.  Moses beseeches the LORD not to accept their offering, and Moses contends to the LORD that he has not taken any Israelite’s donkey, nor has he wronged any of them.

Moses and the elders of Israel go to Dathan and Abiram, and Dathan and Abiram go outside and stand at the entrance of their tents, with their wives and children.  Moses vindicates his own authority by calling on the earth to swallow Dathan, Abiram, and all that belongs to them, and the earth does so.  The Israelites are then afraid.

In P, Korah—who is a Levite—and 250 princes of Israel gather against Moses.  They ask why Moses and Aaron exalt themselves over the LORD’s community, when all of the congregation is holy.  Moses instructs Korah and the congregation to take incense-burners, to put fire in them, and to set them before the LORD the next day—and the LORD will demonstrate who is holy.  Moses then chastises the sons of Levi for seeking the priesthood, after the LORD had separated them to be close to the LORD, to perform the service of the Tabernacle, and to serve the LORD’s congregation.

The next day, the 250 men and Aaron take their incense-burners and add fire and incense to them.  The glory of the LORD appears, and the LORD instructs Moses and Aaron to separate themselves from the congregation, for the LORD will consume the congregation instantaneously.  Moses and Aaron intercede for the congregation, asking God if he will be angry at the entire congregation for the sin of one man.  The LORD then tells Moses to instruct the congregation to get away from the tabernacle of Korah.  Moses does so, warning that, if they do not obey his instruction, the Israelites will be destroyed with the sinners.  The congregation obeys, and a fire from the LORD then goes out and consumes the 250 princes offering the incense.

Now on to Whybray, a critic of the Documentary Hypothesis (of the sort that Friedman champions).  Whybray states the following about Number 16, on pages 90-91:

“And there are clear inconsistencies which appear to be due to the combination of two originally separate stories concerning Korah and his associates on the one hand and Dathan and Abiram on the other, but here again conventional documentary analysis does not solve the problem of composition.  The documentary critics agreed that the evidence for a separate E strand here is of a very insubstantial nature: the analysis of J and E ‘can only be carried into detail in the most tentative way’ (Gray, p. 190).  Yet on the other hand they agree that the remainder, although attributed to P, is not straightforward and can best be explained on the hypothesis either of a double source or of a later redaction of an original P.  Thus the discrepancies in this narrative seem to suggest the presence not of the three ‘classical’ documents but rather of a quite different set of elements or traditions peculiar to this chapter, the history of whose composition remains obscure.”

There’s a lot that I don’t know about the scholarly debates about this chapter, but I’ll just say my impressions, before I move on to Alter.  JE appears to be a continuous narrative in Numbers 16, and that may be why source critics find it difficult to separate J from E, in this case.  P, however, looks rather bumpy.  There appear to be two conflicts in P.  First, there’s a competition over the priesthood between the Levites and Aaron.  Second, Korah leads 250 princes (who are not identified as Levites) against Moses, with the proclamation that all of Israel is holy, not just Moses and Aaron.  So what is the conflict in the priestly source of Numbers 16 about?  Is it about whether the Levites or Aaron should have the priesthood, or whether all of the congregation of Israel is holy, meaning that Moses and Aaron should not exalt themselves as special?  I can see why there are scholars who divide up P in Numbers 16.

Now, on to Alter.  I appreciated Alter’s citation of the twelfth century Jewish exegete, Abraham Ibn Ezra, who tries to solve problems in Numbers 16.  Abraham Ibn Ezra states:

“Some say that Korah was among those swallowed up, and the proof is ‘The earth swallowed them up, and Korah’ (Num. 26:10).  Others say he was incinerated, and their evidence is ‘And Korah, when the congregation perished, when the fire consumed’…And our sages of blessed memory say that he was both incinerated and swallowed up.  But in my opinion, only in the place of Dathan and Abiram did the earth split open, for Korah is not mentioned there; in fact, Korah was standing with the chieftains who were offering the incense.”

The rabbis’ harmonization—that Korah was both incinerated and swallowed up—reminds me somewhat of how some Christian fundamentalists have sought to reconcile Matthew 27:5—which says that Judas hung himself—with Acts 1:18—which says that he fell and burst open, as his bowels gushed out: that his bowels gushed out after he hung himself.

I liked that Alter pointed out that the revolt of Dathan and Abiram was a claim of political authority—”appropriately enough, if one recalls that Reuben is the firstborn of Jacob” (page 134).

But let’s look at Alter’s approach.  Alter attempts a synchronic reading of Numbers 16 in three ways:

First, he argues that there is “evidence of some careful aesthetic and thematic structuring in the story” (page 136).  The Korahite rebellion begins with the phrase “It’s too much for you,” and Moses replies to Korah, “Isn’t it too much for you?”  The “Reubenite speech of rebellion” also begins with “Isn’t it enough?”  So a common phrase is in both stories.  Another example: “the recurrent thematic key-word” in the Dathan and Abiram story is “to go up,” and, at the end of that story, Dathan and Abiram “go down” into the underworld.  In the story about Korah, we see the Leitworter “to take” and “to come [or bring] close,” which are “terms of horizontal movement toward the center of the cult instead of vertical movement toward or away from dominion.”

I’m not clear about what implications Alter’s observations have for the authorship of Numbers 16.  Do these parallels mean that one person wrote all of Numbers 16, or that one story copied the structure of the other?  Alter appears to believe that the two stories are from separate sources, so does he think that the redactor put the parallels into the two stories?  But these parallels appear to be fairly integral to the stories, so I have a hard time seeing them as later additions.  Or maybe the two stories existed in general forms, and a Hebrew writer brought them together, phrasing them in his own words and connecting them together.  Alter calls him the “Hebrew writer” here, not a redactor.

Second, Alter raises the possibility that the punishments in the two stories echo other biblical tales.  The earth swallowing up Dathan and Abiram may echo the earth swallowing up the blood of Abel—in response to the first act of human violence.  And the consuming fire from heaven may refer back to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah with fire from heaven—Sodom and Gomorrah being a society “utterly pervaded by corruption” (page 136).  So the two stories of Numbers 16 are united in their appeal to archetypical stories about human evil (that’s my impression of what Alter is saying).

Third, Alter states that the Hebrew writer perhaps brought the two stories together to say that political rebellion and an attempt to subvert the priesthood are both acts that challenge the authority of God, “and so both must be told as one tale” (page 136).

Alter’s point is that a Hebrew writer brought the stories together for some reason—and so he seeks to identify that reason, rather than merely pointing out the existence of different sources.