Dr. Jim, Live and in Exile in Edmonton!

I was going to post this in my more serious Biblical blog “Dr. Jim’s Thinking Shoppe and Somewhat Quirky Biblical Blog” but force of habit led to it showing up here first. So it is now in both places.

I will be away from windy Lethbridge all next week attending the following Academic Extravaganza

Concept of Exile in Ancient Israel & its Contexts

A Workshop

Ludwig-Maximilians Universität, Munich & University of Alberta, Edmonton

April 7-11, 2008 at the University of Alberta

This workshop brings together scholars from the Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich (LMU) and the University of Alberta, along with colleagues from other European and Canadian universities. This workshop is part of a newly founded cooperation between LMU and the UofA and is conceived as the first of two workshops. The second is planned for Munich (2009).

The workshop is meant to explore, from multiple perspectives, the concept of “Exile” in ancient Israel, mainly but exclusively in prophetic literature, including the social and historical setting against which it evolved and in a way that is informed by comparative ancient materials.

On Exile

Physical destruction and ideological construction, history and memory, nightmares about the past, didactic knowledge and dreams of a utopian future, basic points of reference for self-identity and for self-narratives; all the above directly relate to the topic of the workshop as they are all involved in the concept of Exile.

A Babylonian campaign against Judah in 587 BCE led to a political and social disaster for many in Judah, and for most of Judah. The monarchy collapsed, Jerusalem was destroyed, along with its temple, and many areas suffered from a drastic drop in settlement. Some of local elite were exiled to Babylon and a concept of Exile began to develop.

In ancient Israelite literature (both prophetic and historiographic) Exile is construed as a central turning point within the course of the history of Israel. In these texts “the Exile” is a central ideological concept in itself and because of the ways in which it is connected to, and connects other fundamental ideological concepts. It serves to explain the destruction of the monarchic polities and the social and economic disasters associated with them in terms of YHWH’s punishment for Israel’s/Judah’s abandonment of YHWH’s ways. As it develops an image of an unjust Israel, it creates one of a just deity. But YHWH is not only imagined as just, but also as loving and forgiving, for the exile is presented as a transitory state: Exile is deeply intertwined with its discursive counterpart, the certain “Return.” Promises and announcement of the latter are often intertwined with those of Exile. As the latter comes to be understood as a necessary purification or preparation for a renewal of YHWH’s proper relationship with Israel, the seemingly unpleasant Exilic conditions begin, discursively, to shape an image of YHWH as loving Israel and teaching it. Exile is dystopia, but one that carries in itself all the seeds of utopia. As the latter is by definition unrealized (and unrealizable), it is no wonder that the concept of Exile continued to exercise an important influence in the discourses of Israel in the Second Temple period, and was eventually influential in the production of eschatological visions.

Exile becomes also a central turning point in the HB, and a theme in the basic metanarratives of Israel, in its construction of the past, and in the construction of collective memory and remembrance. Because of spatial discontinuity with the land, narratives of exile and return become archetypal for constructions of patriarchal narratives and Egyptian sojourn and slavery that led to the Exodus. As such, the concept of Exile links to concepts such as “Israel outside the land” and “Israel inside the land;” and, in turn, leads to images such as “the empty land” during the Babylonian period.

My paper is entitled “Myth of the Exilic Return: Myth Theory and the Exile as an Eternal Reality in the Prophets” and at present I’m not quite sure what it is about. Something about Chinese archetypal biographies and the failure of Jiang Quing (Mao Zedong’s widow) to successfully rehabilitate the mythic biographies of some ambitious and powerful women from China’s imperial past. Don’t ask how I got onto that, but I found a neat paper on the subject of “Archetypes of the Self” that dealt with it and the lack of a clear distinction in China between the persistent notion of a dichotomy between “mythic” and “historical” consciousnesses in Religious Studies. It is especially present in Biblical studies. So I want to look at the prophets as “mythic” characters, built on the archetype of Moses who then provide archetypes for the 2nd temple era scribes who put the prophetic corpus together. I’m going to argue that in doing so they also employed “cosmic” myths of creation and divine combat in new ways to articulate the historical experience of deportation and repatriation to Jerusalem as mythic events in their own rights. The biblical archetype of explusion (from the Garden of Eden, the ‘exile’ of the northern state of Israel) is one of no return: eternal banishment and the Torah affirms this in its construction of the covenant. The bible is deeply concerned with the southern remnant of the old Israelite United Monarchy, Judah, that persisted for several decade’s after the fall of the North.

In the second temple period, when Judah and Jerusalem were rebuilt, then, the ideologues and mythmakers of the 2nd temple period, then, had to employ this archetype but in a new way that allowed for restoration. In this, I’m going to talk about Wendy Doniger’s ideas on ‘metamyth’–myths about myths– to show the acceptance and yet repudiation of the “exit only” archetype. They do this by portraying the restoration as a fundamentally new creation, thus linking cosmic themes of origin to historical events.

Or something like that. Its not finished…

I have until Wednesday morning to finish it. It is not looking good.

The rest of the schedule is here.

Wish me luck

The mantic and mythic imagination in the Book of the Twelve

I’ve got my paper accepted to the Society of Biblical Literature’s national meeting in Boston in November! Yippee! Its been ages since I went, and I really enjoyed Boston last time. Here is the abstract for my paper. It will be in one of the two the Book of the Twelve prophets (i.e., “minor prophets”) sections.

The mantic and mythic imagination in the Book of the Twelve.

James Linville (University of Lethbridge)

According to a number of scholars the scribes who produced the prophetic corpus understood themselves as embarking on a quasi-prophetic or mantic quest for divine knowledge. This paper builds on these insights and combines them with a perception of the prophetic corpus as a part of a larger national mythology granting reason and meaning to the past. Moreover, it views the Twelve as a complex symbolic universe in which the historically contingent is revealed as instantiating eternal and paradigmatic truths. This discovery of the timeless within history is what bridges the gap between the eponymous prophet and the scribe, and makes the prophetic text eternally relevant and revelatory for the initiated interpreter.

By looking at Hosea, Zechariah, and Malachi in relative detail, I demonstrate how the Twelve opens and closes on depictions of heavenly and earthly relationship as a relationship between macrocosm and microcosm. This is expressed in the marriage imagery as well as other features. Moreover, the obvious cultic interests of these books suggest a textual, symbolic ritual of transformation and purification embodied in the idea of the “Day of the Lord”, rendering the experience of the writer and even the reader with this symbolic universe not so much as a voyeuristic encounter with the divine, but an active participant in the revelation of it.

Viewing the Book of the Twelve in this way provides a plausible scenario for explaining the desire to produce a tightly interrelated anthology of prophetic documents. Moreover, it can impact how scholars view ancient Judaism’s return to older mythological themes of cosmology, heavenly rebellion and combat, themes that are expressed in a number of apocalyptic texts of the late second temple period.

God in a snit. Part 3 of my 21 most badass Bible Passages

Is now posted! HERE

Yup. I’m looking at four passages in which God gets in a real snit and goes a-smiting!

Each of the seven parts to this series will have their own page and you can access them through the menus on the right.

SHUFFL POSTING DEARTH, Logically explained.

I’m too damn busy.

Alas, I have to fix the page proofs for my commentary on the biblical book of Amos. As I noted earlier, you can all pre-order the tome from Ashgate Publishers.

Amos and the Cosmic Imagination
James R. Linville
Series: Society for Old Testament Study

Said to contain the words of the earliest of the biblical prophets (8th century BCE), the book of Amos is reinterpreted by James Linville in light of new and sometimes controversial historical approaches to the Bible. Amos is read as the literary product of the Persian-era community in Judah. Its representations of divine-human communication are investigated in the context of the ancient writers’ own role as transmitters and shapers of religious traditions. Amos’s extraordinary poetry expresses mythical conceptions of divine manifestation and a process of destruction and recreation of the cosmos which reveals that behind the appearances of the natural world is a heavenly, cosmic temple.

I have a hardcopy of the next-to-final draft in pdf form and I have to meticulously check it for any remaining errors and make indexes of subjects, biblical passages and authors. Sounds like fun. Anyone want to help?

I also have a lot of Hebrew in transliteration to check. I hate transliteration, and I hope it got transferred to Ashgate’s computers without any screw ups. I would hate to have to redo it at the last minute. (that happened with my thesis…).

Anyway, I have until Valentine’s day to get it done, so back at it, I guess.

By way of a teaser, here is the first page or so:

The bay-trees in our country are all witherer’d
And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven;
The pale-fac’d moon looks bloody on the earth,
And lean-look’d prophets whisper fearful change.
Richard II, II.iv.8–11

Shakespeare must have had a deep appreciation for the prophets of the Hebrew Bible. The Welsh Captain in Richard II abandons his post, speaking of withered trees, frightened stars, and a moon both pale and bloody: ominous portents of the fall of a king. But the Captain does not actually quote his whispering prophets. They and their unheard whispers do not so much predict fearful change as they are its omens, symbols and embodiments. The biblical prophets, however, are not remembered for their hushed tones. Many are given speech after deafening speech, but they, too, find withered trees and darkened moons to be portents and symbols of the destruction of many a king and country. And still, when looking at the biblical prophets, we would do well to consider the ominous image painted by the Bard. The world of Amos, like that depicted in any literary text or play, is an imaginary one. Perhaps something might be said of the historical Amos but the real man is hidden. Yet, ancient Judah’s scribes have left a masterpiece of Hebrew literature in his name. We must only be careful not to mistake the portrait for the person, the landscape for any real time and place.

The book of Amos is all about transformations. Amos was a herdsman. Now he wears the prophet’s mantle and in so doing is accused of plotting the fall of a king. The world has corrupted itself. It will die and be reborn. Yet this transformation is timeless. All the political and military upheavals that the book gives as the backdrop of Amos’ preaching follow an eternal model of creation, destruction and recreation. The contingencies of time and place become subservient to the trans-historical processes of cosmic realities. This is the mythic world of our imaginary, literary Amos. It oscillates between heaven and earth, the past and the future.

It has long been realized that the Bible’s prophetic texts employ a wide selection of mythic motifs and images, and I will demonstrate something of this range in the book of Amos. I also will demonstrate how these are not mere literary figures or survivals from earlier religious conceptions, but are also fundamental to the book which is itself an articulation of paradigmatic cosmic themes. In this sense, it is a mythic text in its own right. Equally important, however, is that the Book of Amos, like the rest of prophetic literature, embeds these mythic themes and progressions in a new plot: that of the ancient (and often ignored) prophet of God. The cosmic myth articulated in Amos’ message is cast as words of a prophet who is himself an instantiation of a mythical prototypical messenger. Beyond the actual message of judgement, destruction and rebirth is an exploration of an idealized interaction between human and God; it is a model for the experience of producing the text itself.

So, there you are. To read the rest just order yourself a copy. I will be glad you did…

Dr. Jim’s List of Twenty One REALLY BADASS Bible Passages

A while ago, Natasha posted the link to Cracked Magazine’s bit on Nine Most-Badass Bible Verses. In my view, Cracked really missed some of the biggies, although it is pretty hard to really pick the best (or worst). I did figure more needed to be included than Cracked’s nine, so here is Dr. Jim’s  selection of Twenty One Really Badass Bible Passages.

When it comes to the Bible, of course, there is no shortage of bloodletting, sex, and so forth to choose what to comment on. Of course, the Old Testament wins hands down over the New, although I do get the Christian stuff here a bit and I will eventually make an “honourable mention” list of some stuff from the Apocrypha. I didn’t include the Apocrypha here since not all Christian Bibles contain it and, of course, it is excluded from the Jewish Bible.

For this list, I tended to leave out prophetic visions of myriads of sinners boiling in lakes of fire, the great flood that killed everyone except Noah and family, and stuff like that. I decided that however much death and destruction is in view it is not really “hardcore” enough in terms of gore and a debauched sense of ethics, morality and what not.Sure, dropping A-bombs on cities and killing 100,000 people is worse than a single murder (bad as a single murder is), but a single instance of a depraved maniac putting someone in a blender and then justifying it just has a certain, well, “badass” character to it, don’t you think? So, for my list I went for somewhat more down to earth violent debauchery, injustice serving of all that is sacred, and sadistic horrors in the name of good old time religion and family values. I was especially drawn to passages that not only display a rather hard-core cruelty, sexual violence, and so forth, but also are aware of the emotional shock of the described events. I also picked some biblical episodes because of later tradition’s attempts to justify the story or otherwise try to wiggle way out of seriously addressing the moral questions that normal folks might otherwise raise about the episode. One thing I’ve noticed is that there is a lot of fodder for a feminist critique here! There are a few exceptions to these criteria where I have included the actions of God and not people on behalf of God, but what the hell, it’s my list and I will do what I want.

I’ve tried to list them in terms of severity, but I failed. There is an increasing sense of morbid fascination with death and bodies (or at least parts thereof) as the list goes on, and I have saved the biggie for last, but I decided in the end to categorize them thematically. If you don’t like it, sue me.  This post is in seven parts and all Bible passages are from the New American Standard Version.

 

Part 1. Sex and Death #21-#19

Part 2. All in the Family #18-#16

Part 3. God in a Snit #15-#12 (coming soon)

Part 4. Weird and Spooky #11-#9 (coming soon)

Part 5. Vengeance is Best Served up Red, Wet, and Drippy #6-#8 (coming soon)

Part 6. Holy War #2-#5  (coming soon)

Part 7. The Biggie #1 (coming soon)

A Bible Lesson on Healing for Cash and a History Lesson on Cash for Healing.

This site is slowly turning into a rant against the “Prosperity Gospel” with loads of posts on Senator Grassley’s investigation of 6 popular evangelists who share the conviction that God intends people (especially themselves) to be rich. This prosperity gospel has stirred up a lot of debate from secular folks and people within the Christian church who feel their communities have been badly embarrassed by what they consider false teachings and exploitation of people. So, why stop now?

Another thing the Society for the Happily Unchurched Freethinking Folks of Lethbridge (that is, me, my cats, my plush purple buffalo Bixby, my pals Dan, Natasha, etc) can’t stand is the excesses of the Christian Right, be it in USA or in Canada. So, let’s try to combine the two!

The local Christian TV station, the Miracle Channel hosts a number of these evangelist’s shows and advocates the prosperity gospel to their own ends. My previous post has loads more details on the “Miracle Channel Review” website that likes to keep tabs on the broadcaster. Many of the Miracle Channel’s shows are American with a decidedly right wing political view, as are some of the Canadian shows it airs. So, in keeping with SHUFFL’s status as bit of a peanut gallery to in-house Christian debates, I thought I would just get right down to the nitty gritty and turn to the “good book” itself and see what it has to say about money and relate that to some good old Canadian history.

Surprise, surprise, I found a great little story that seems rather appropriate.

The book of Second Kings (chapter 5) has a great little story of the “Man of God” (i.e., a prophetic figure), Elisha, who is visited by a general from Aram (in modern Syria). This General Naaman is a great warrior but suffers from leprosy. On the advice of a captured Israelite slave-girl, he proposes to visit Elisha in Samaria. The king of Aram give Naaman a load of gold to present to the king of Israel. The Israelite monarch thinks something is up, figuring that the Arameans are seeking a pretext to go to war since it would be impossible to cure the disease. Elisha gets wind of this and sends for Naaman.  Elisha tells him to bathe seven times in the Jordan River (although nothing is said of the health of the NEXT person who bathes downstream…). Naaman thinks this is silly (do you blame him?) but his servants convince him to give it a go. Lo and behold (told you it was a Bible story), it works. Naaman then offers Elisha a gift. The prophet refuses. Naaman then gets a few mule loads of good Israelite earth and starts off for home convinced that the Israelite deity is the god for him.

As the now non-leprous general is on his way home, Elisha’s flunky Gehazi figures his boss should have taken the payment Naaman offered and thinks he could still get something if he acts quickly. So he runs after Naaman and asks for a talent of silver and some clothes (apparently there were designer shops in Damascus) since two prophetic disciples just stopped by Elisha’s place (apparently in need of cash and a change of clothes). Naaman, the enthusiastic convert offers Gehazi two talents and goes home.

Elisha gets his loin cloth in a knot and says, “Is it a time to receive money and to receive clothes and olive groves and vineyards and sheep and oxen and male and female servants? Therefore, the leprosy of Naaman shall cling to you and to your descendants forever.”

Why didn’t Elisha want money for his services? Why was it not time for prophets and healers to take offered money in Elisha’s day but self professed seers, visionaries, and faith healers now go to great lengths to solicit funds? It is not as if Naaman could not afford it. Hell, he would have been rich as was his king. Indeed, the Bible says he travelled to Samaria with 10 talents of silver, 6000 shekels of gold and ten cool designer suits. Gehazi was only asking for about a tenth of what Naaman was prepared to pay!

Is there an object lesson in this? Should this story be taught in Sunday schools (I presume it is in some)? Should it be taught on syndicated Christian TV as a counter to the “prosperity preachers” and the “Faith healers” who peddle book and blessing along side trumped up claims of miracles? 

This brings me to the Christian Right  and why Canada is sometimes labeled a ”socialist”  country in comparison with America. We have a (faltering) public health care system, highly subsidized universities, and a social welfare program that is relatively comprehensive (although it does not address all the needs of the poor in the country: its a bit broken, too). Where did these left wing, “godless commie” ideas come from?

Well, much of them, and much of the massive will needed to make them government policy, came from Christian clergy and a movement begun in the late 19th century called the “Social Gospel” (Canadian Encyclopedia Article; the short Wikipedia Article deals mainly with the movement in the US). This movement stemmed from a number of denominations that felt that they could see God working through social change to improve the conditions of those left destitute or oppressed by industrialization and so forth. The Canadian Encyclopedia says:

Its central belief was that God was at work in social change, creating moral order and social justice. It held an optimistic view of human nature and entertained high prospects for social reform. Leaders reworked such traditional Christian doctrines as sin, atonement, salvation and the Kingdom of God to emphasize a social content relevant to an increasingly collective society. The Social Gospel at large gave birth to the new academic discipline of social ethics and in Canada contributed most of the impetus to the first sociology programs.

I do not know why the movement did not have as much political clout in the US as it did in Canada, but a lot of (now-secular) social institutions stem from this movement.

A lot of it came from the likes of this guy:

 James Shaver Woodsworth (d. 1942), a Methodist minister, took an active role in helping the downtrodden, supporting labour unions and the anti-war movement. And then there is this guy:

Tommy Douglas was a Baptist minister in Saskatchewan in the 1930s and soon got into politics. He became Premier of the province and really is the father of Canada’s health care system. He was voted the greatest Canadian ever in a 2004 poll. The Canadian Encyclopedia sys this:

When Douglas moved to Weyburn, Saskatchewan, following his ordination in 1930, he found much suffering, for that province had been especially hard hit by economic depression and drought. Douglas soon became involved in ministering to people’s physical and spiritual needs, while he pursued further academic studies in Christian ethics. These studies, along with his experience of the GREAT DEPRESSION, led him to conclude that political action was necessary to alleviate the suffering. In 1931 he established a local association of the Independent Labour Party, and 2 years later he attended the first national convention of the new, avowedly socialist CO-OPERATIVE COMMONWEALTH FEDERATION (CCF). …

Though Douglas did not realize his dream of a socialist Canada, he and his colleagues had considerable influence on government. Programs such as Medicare, a Canada-wide pension plan and bargaining rights for civil servants were first advocated by Douglas and his party, and these are now more or less firmly in place and universally accepted in Canada.

Doubtlessly there would have been a lot an avowed SHUFFLer and Christians like Douglas and Woodsworth would have disagreed on, but it would be grossly unfair to say that atheists and freethinkers in this country do not own them a great debt of gratitude. Many Christians in Canada (and in the US, as elsewhere) continue to be tireless workers for the common good without judging people on their theology or pocketbooks. It would be a travesty if the Christian right held sway over the Christian left or Christian centre, even if they didn’t get much representation in secular politics. A lot of good has come from Christian social programs, volunteer work, and self-lessness. It would also be unfair to teach about the contributions to Canada made by folks like Douglas without mentioning their faith as primary motivations for them. They did what they did because they thought it was what their God wanted them to do. A secular society should not be afraid or embarrassed by the religion of its members working for the common good. I think this is why I’m so irate at Canadian versions of the prosperity gospel and the right-wing politics of some Christians in Canada: they seem to be mocking or selling out something a national character I am very proud of, and one, even as an atheist, I am not ashamed to say came from devout Christians.  I will let Tommy Douglas have the last few words.

“Improving people’s economic condition is not an end in itself, it’s a means to an end…. I never thought a man could save his soul if his belly was empty or that he could think about things like beauty and goodness if he had a toothache.”

Tommy Douglas in conversation, 1982, from Dave Margoshes, Tommy Douglas: Building the New Society, Preface

“The religion of tomorrow will be less concerned with the dogmas of theology and more concerned with the social welfare of humanity.” Research review, 1934

 Maybe he was wrong, but then on the other hand:

“We should never, never be afraid or ashamed about dreams. The dreams won’t all come true; we won’t always make it; but where there is no vision a people perish. Where people have no dreams and no hopes and aspirations, life becomes dull and a meaningless wilderness.”

From A. W. Johnson, Dream No Little Dreams, Introduction.

Oh, and read his story of Mouseland.

Fresh Oil Miracle Channel Fundraising Campaign. Rhetorical polish on a greasy collection plate.

Lethbridge’s own prosperity gospel proliferating T.V. station, the Miracle Channel is looking forward to reaping a harvest in their first big faith sowing campain of 2008, the Fresh Oil & New Wine campaign. Of course, this is in addition to all the fundraising done by the shows the station airs, including a number of those under investigation by Senator Grassley in the U.S. I’ve made some previous posts about this (e.g. Here). The Miracle channel hosts the shows of Benny Hinn, Creflo Dollar and some of the other infamous six. Here is what M.C. says about thier own bid for more cash.

It’s a brand new year and a great time to be anointed with Fresh Oil and refreshed with the New Wine of the Holy Spirit. Tune into the Miracle Channel during this upcoming special Partner Week called Fresh Oil and New Wine, January 28 - February 2, 2008 and start 2008 off with a fresh anointing of the Holy Spirit upon your life. …

…

If you plan to be in the Southern Alberta area, please come down to the Miracle Channel studios and be part of our live studio audience at 4:00 PM each night. For more information call (403) 380-3399, fax (403) 380-3322, or email us at mail@miraclechannel.ca

 Well, there you have it. You are invited.

There will no really “big” names attending, although they will be bringing up some folk from the U.S., including Fred & Val Bennett and Danny Diaz. An almost local speaker has the biggest claims about him in the blurbs.

 Al Derry comes from the Dream Centre in Medicine Hat, Alberta and brings with him great enthusiasm for the things of God. His prophetic giftings will inspire you as he speaks words of knowledge into people’s lives. [Medicine Hat is about an hour and a half drive's away from Lethbridge]

WOW!!! “Prophetic giftings”! … Excuse me but what the @#*!!@#% is a “gifting”???? This is another one for my jargon file!  (I’ve already commented on anointing and fresh oil there). What the hell is wrong with claiming the guy has a “prophetic gift”? Well,  he probably hasn’t got that, either, but at least it doesn’t offend the ear. As far as ears go, why doesn’t he speak his words of knowledge to people? How the heck does someone speak knowledge ”into people’s lives”? Makes him sound like his preaching is some sort of channel for some sort of divine energy. Oh yeah, that is what is being claimed. My bet is that he doesn’t say anything the frequent churchgoer hasn’t heard a hundred times. One thing I have discovered is that there is often a very blurry line in much religious rhetoric between literal meanings of words and metaphoric and figurative meanings. It works like this: a common occurrence is described in ambiguous language that portrays it as a supernatural event. The rhtoric comes so frequently an dthe ambuity often so intractable, however, that many listeners or readers fail to distinguish between the ‘real world’ event or situation being described and the ’supernatual’ reality being alluded to. In fact, in many cases, the conversation moves so rapidly and so often between the mundane and the extraordinary that the audience really loses track of just what is being discussed. Our writer at the Miracle channel is playing the grey area for all it is worth.

Earlier in the advert, we read this:

As we celebrate this new season, let us discern prophetically what God is saying for 2008. We are praying Joel 2:19-24 over you: The LORD will answer and say to His people, “Behold, I will send you grain and new wine and oil, And you will be satisfied by them; I will no longer make you a reproach among the nations…the threshing floors shall be full of wheat, And the vats shall overflow with new wine and oil.”

Ok, the biblical book of Joel does say what the Miracle Channel says it says. But how does reciting it back to God constitute “prophetically discerning” what God wants to say to the website’s audience? If someone asked God (on the assumption that he is there to answer requests) what he wanted to say to (as opposed to through) the Miracle Channel perhaps he would advise them to ignore Joel and read the Gospel of Matthew and then look in a mirror. Here are a few selections that come to mind:

Matthew 6:5 “And when you pray, you are not to be as the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners, in order to be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full.

Matthew 13:22 “And the one on whom seed was sown among the thorns, this is the man who hears the word, and the worry of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.

Matthew 23:14 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you devour widows’ houses, even while for a pretense you make long prayers; therefore you shall receive greater condemnation.

Matthew 23:23 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others.

The book of Matthew seems to have the largest number of uses of the word “hypocrites” in the Christian Bible (the verses above are taken from the New American Standard translation). It is interesting that a lot of these uses are in the context of chastising “scribes”. The fundamentalist rhetoricians and authors whose countless books are pedaled on every televangelist’s program seem to me to be the a valid modern equivalent of those who Jesus is remembered as criticizing. Scribes;scribbling and wittering away about “scripture” and interpreting it to suit themselves.

The Pharisees are castigated in the New Testament for their alleged strict attitude toward Jewish law, including the refusal to heal on a Sabbath. Jewish law, often derived from the teachings of the Pharisees, however, encourages the breaking of Sabbath law to save a life. The Pharisees are known for being the ancestors of “oral torah” the creative interpretations of Torah originally transmitted orally and then collected and greatly expanded in the Mishnah and Talmud.

The Pharisees really get bad press by the Christians scribes in the New Testament. This may be because key elements in Pharisaic theology were so similar to important Christian ideas: beliefs in the eternal soul, judgment and resurrection, and divine control of history while allowing for free will. If the NT writers could call the pharisaic movement a study in hypocrisy, one wonders what they would call the chief practicioners of the prosperity gospel and the fundamentalists who churn out new revelations, detect “shifts in the heavenlies“ and plead with people to give more and more, week after week, while glorying in the chance to claim humility in front of a TV audience.

Fearless Phoenicians to Set Sail Again

The Lebanese paper, Daily Star, has an article by Mohammad Zaatarti entitled,

“Modern version of Phoenician boat to spread Lebanese spirit”.

The 13 meter boat, named after the princess Europa—famous for being kidnapped in Greek mythology—will journey from Tyre to the continent that also bears the princess’ name. According to the myth, she was abducted by Zeus (who took the form of white bull) and taken to Crete.

Phoenicia thrived during the first millennium bce when the kingdoms of Israel and Judah existed.

Europa’s trip is planned as an exercise in national pride and to show the world that Lebanon has a grand history and should not be thought of solely as a place of strife and violence. Europa’s sail will be a giant Lebanese flag. Following ancient practice, the prow of the vessel will have the shape of a horse’s head, while the stem will resemble the tail of a whale.

The article itself did not have any pictures, but I found this one of a horse-headed boat on a different site:

I also found another site on ancient boat building with a page on Phoenician boats and what I think are two pictures of Europa itself.

 

Thanks to Dr. Jim Davila of the University of St. Andrews who posted on the Daily Star article on his great blog  “Paleojudaica”

Free Biblical Scholarship. Proceedings of the British Academy on line.

The proceedings of the British Academy Vol. 143 on “Understanding the History of Ancient Israel” are here.

A number of hte papers are available in full text without registration, so it is a great resource. Here is the cut and pasted version of the table of contents.

Author	Lecture	pages
H G M Williamson	Preface; List of Abbreviations	xiii-xx	ARTICLE
J W Rogerson	Setting the Scene: A Brief Outline of Histories of Israel	3-14	ARTICLE
Keith W Whitelam	Setting the Scene: A Response to John Rogerson	15-23	ARTICLE
Hans M Barstad	The History of Ancient Israel: What Directions Should We Take?	25-48	ARTICLE
Philip R Davies	Biblical Israel in the Ninth Century?	49-56	ARTICLE
Lester L Grabbe	Some Recent Issues in the Study of the History of Israel	57-67	ARTICLE
T P Wiseman	Classical History: A Sketch, with Three Artefacts	71-89	ARTICLE
Chase F Robinson	Early Islamic History: Parallels and Problems	91-106	ARTICLE
Amélie Kuhrt	Ancient Near Eastern History: The Case of Cyrus the Great of Persia	107-127	ARTICLE
David Ussishkin	Archaeology of the Biblical Period: On Some Questions of Methodology and Chronology of the Iron Age	131-141	ARTICLE
Amihai Mazar	The Spade and the Text: The Interaction between Archaeology and Israelite History Relating to the Tenth–Ninth Centuries BCE	143-171	ARTICLE
Christoph Uehlinger	Neither Eyewitnesses, Nor Windows to the Past, but Valuable Testimony in its own Right: Remarks on Iconography, Source Criticism and Ancient Data-processing	173-228	ARTICLE
M J Geller	Akkadian Sources of the Ninth Century	229-241	ARTICLE
K Lawson Younger Jr	Neo-Assyrian and Israelite History in the Ninth Century: The Role of Shalmaneser III	243-277	ARTICLE
André Lemaire	West Semitic Inscriptions and Ninth-Century BCE Ancient Israel	279-303	ARTICLE
Marc Zvi Brettler	Method in the Application of Biblical Source Material to Historical Writing (with Particular Reference to the Ninth Century BCE)	305-336	ARTICLE
Graeme Auld	Reading Kings on the Divided Monarchy: What Sort of Narrative?	337-343	ARTICLE
Rainer Albertz	Social History of Ancient Israel	347-367	ARTICLE
Bernard S Jackson	Law in the Ninth Century: Jehoshaphat’s ‘Judicial Reform’	369-397	ARTICLE
Nadav Na’aman	The Northern Kingdom in the Late Tenth–Ninth Centuries BCE	399-418	ARTICLE

The collection has some of the great names in modern Hebrew Bible scholarship: Whitelam, Barstad, Grabbe, Auld and Davies are among them (Auld was my PhD supervisor, and a fine one at that). Davies and Whitelam are perhaps the most controversial, both challenge the mainstream thought in biblical studies and try to shift it towards a more logical and sound methodology, not to mention criticizing its ideological underpinnings. Some of the others, e.g. Rainer Albertz, may be thought of as more conventional biblical scholars and historians of Israel, but these folks are hardly to be dismissed easily, and continue to do good work.

I haven’t gone through all the papers yet, but as usual, Philip Davies seems to capture a lot of my perspectives at the very end of his paper.

We need to acknowledge first, that ‘biblical Israel’ can never be the subject of a modern critical history, but is rather a crucial part of that history, a ‘memory’, no doubt historically conditioned, that became crucial in creating Judaism. This realization will enable us not only to write a decent critical history of Iron Age central Palestine but also to bring that history and the biblical narrative into the kind of critical engagement that will lead to a better understanding of the Bible itself.

Happy reading.

Fear of the Lord and the Fear of an Education

I found an interesting note on the Christian Worldview Network. Usually, this site is something I would just shake my head at, but this just struck home. I ended us shaking my head, of course, but out of a sympathetic disbelief at what a college prof. had to deal with. Even though she is teaching at an evangelical college–a thought that sends shivers down my spine–I can understand her frustration since the same sort of thing happens to me.

In A Disturbing Experience With the Concept of the Fear of the Lord, Carol, an instructor at a Christian college in Longview Texas, reports how she is supposed to hold a brief devotional moment before each class. She was not prepared for the reaction by a freshman class to her comments on “fear of the Lord” (a very frequent biblical concept) that she developed from Proverbs 1:7, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge”. She writes,

One after another, the students began responding quite negatively, saying that God was not to be feared. No, He was their friend, their buddy, their pal. Surprised, I repeated that this concept was all throughout Scripture, and in the New Testament, the Greek word used is phobos–“fear.” Their protests became more intense, to the point where I was being nearly shouted down.

It sounds like this class was a pretty juvenile bunch, with problems in “academics, discipline, attendance, and more”, but Carol thought they lacked a fundemental knowledge of the Bible and what it says about God. She is probably right.

Of course, I would never begin a class with a devotional, but I can fully understand what she went through since it also happens in secular classes. Many people simply think they know their own religion so well that they will not entertain any information that seems to contradict it—whether it comes from an insider or (in my case) and outsider. Some students do not want to learn: they want to teach. Colleges exist to confirm belief, not to educate.

The concept, “The fear of the Lord” is built around the Hebrew verb  yr´ that can mean general fear and loathing or a sense of being overwhelmed (with all of the accompanying terror) by an experience of the divine. I suspect that kids in ancient Israel had their own version of happy hymns about God’s love, but they would certainly have been taught that divine power was not something to take for granted. The message of the bible’s Wisdom literature–not to mention the prophets, etc– is that this deity will not be bound by cheap platitudes that he is everyone’s good buddy.  He is considered creator and master of the universe in these texts. “Fear” is rather appropriate.

The note brought back some memories of hostility I felt in my classes. People are often reluctant to appreciate the huge cultural gap between their own worldview–reinforced by their churches–and the world in which the biblical materials were produced.  How to get them on board the academic project is tough for either the believing instructor or the avowed atheist such as myself.  My sense is that Carol should have stuck to her guns and put the fear of charges of disrupting classes into her less than mature pupils.

Carol points to a general lack of biblical knowledge on he part of her Christian students. This seems to be a widespread phenomenon.  Stephen Prothero wrote a great book about this called Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know–And Doesn’t. I can highly recommend it. Prothero is chair of Religious Studies at Boston University. He argues that knowledge of religion is essential to a well-rounded education. The book has won tons of awards, and I highly recommend it.