_awakening

BCE/CE Dating.

Bible and Interpretation recently posted an article by Robert Cargill on Why Christians Should Adopt the BCE/CE Dating System. In it Cargill argues:

Thus, it is time for Christians to let go of the inaccurate, and to many, offensive BC and AD calendar labels and adopt the BCE/CE system. If using BC and AD to designate calendrical dates is the central identifier of a person as a Christian, then that person has bigger problems than an insistence upon a calendar. Likewise, adopting the BCE/CE system allays the discrepancies of the chronologies of Jesus’ life, while the archaic BC/AD system only highlights them. The BCE/CE system is the de facto dating system for the scientific community, joining the metric system as a standard that peoples of all nations and faiths can accept. This dating system is also the most widely used system outside of the scientific community. The BCE/CE system requires no conversions and no re-dating of historical events; only the renaming of BC to BCE and AD to CE is needed. And, as has been demonstrated above, because the AD/BC system is not actually based upon the birth of Jesus, but is rather off by approximately 7 years, there is no concern from non-Christian peoples to be suspicious of being surreptitiously forced into adopting a dating system based upon the life of Christ.

This is a fascinating discussion as I think it exposes much about one's thought of Christian influence on the culture, especially the "culture war" defense often imposed by Christians. Cargill takes the angle that Christians often are not aware of the problems, not only culturally but theologically as well, that are created by the BC/AD dating system. Interesting angle and well worth the read.

Personally, I whole heartedly embrace the BCE/CE dating system. No real reason, outside of the fact that it is becoming the standard nomenclature in the scholarly realm. While it may be an issue for some, it really has never become an issue for me.

The article did leave me with one question. If the nomenclature of a particular dating system is a threat to the faith, as it is often posited, what is this implying about our faith in the first place?

Love to hear your thoughts. Is this an issue worth fighting over?

Scripture as History.

Recently April DeConick posted some excellent thoughts on 10 commandments or operating principles for engaging a text from the historical-critical method. Her post is well worth the time to read and ponder. Once of her points struck a chord with some of the things we've been wrestling with in Community of God, namely to what degree are certain texts communicating "history." Here's one thing she had to say:

The text is not reporting history, it is reporting theology and it is using story to do so. This makes recovering history extremely difficult because all is not as it seems. We need to ask questions such as why is the author reporting his history and his theology this way? What other histories and theologies does the author know about? What traditions has the author received? How has the author shaped those traditions? Why has he shaped them in the manner that he has? Who has something to gain by this view of history and theology? Who has something to lose by this view of history and theology? What are the author's assumptions and how do these impact the author's narrative? How is the author's narrative related to other narratives? How is the author's narrative related to history? Etc.

Concerning the quote above, I tend to agree with James McGrath [see the comment section of her post] that certain texts may not be communicating what we would define as "history," as we have come to embrace it in our post-enlightenment mindset. As I've said before here, I think we need to temper our vision of "history" when we approach the text of the scriptures.

I think DeConick is correct in her assessment that even what may appear as a historical narrative in the text has some underlying assumptions and motivations that we need to be aware of. Texts that appear to be historical need to be read with the question of what theological, political, and social position the author is writing from, as this has an inherent impact on the way the historical portrayal is being painted. All scripture is theological, even portions that appear to be presenting a mere historical narrative.

Case in point from Community of God. We've been exploring the return of the exiles through the texts of Ezra and Nehemiah. One of the issues raised in these texts is the intermarriage of the Jews with the surrounding "foreigners." What is presented in the texts is a strict exogamy based upon "the Law." Yet this raises a few questions, like what are we to do with Moses, the receiver of the Law, who married a foreign wife? It appears that what is offered in Ezra 9-10 as a breaking of "the Law" is more of a theological and identity driven discussion, offered as in historical narrative. To make things even more complicated, we read Ruth alongside Ezra-Nehemiah. What appears to be a simple tale of a kinsman-redeemer takes on a different significance when we realize that Ruth was a foreign wife. It appears that the text is proclaiming God's greater acceptance of the foreigner, even the foreign wife.

So in two texts that appear to be recording history, we find a theological concern being set forth. Even more surprising, we find two absolutely opposing theological views being presented in the scriptures, each being couched in what appears to be a historical narrative. To read each of these merely as history is to miss the greater theological portrait being painted by each author about what and who constitutes being Jewish.

The Meeting of Heaven and Earth.

While reading Martin Jaffee's Early Judaism for Community of God this week, I came across these thoughts on the conceptual symbolism of the temple, perhaps some of the best I've come across:

The temple linked Jews to the world of heaven as well as serving as a visible link to the Jewish national past. Many regarded the temple as the earthly manifestation of an ethereal palace that existed in God's domain...

In addition to its capacity to evoke speculation about its heavenly counterpart, the temple was also viewed as a visual representation of the cosmos itself...

For the most, to see the temple on earth was to come as close as they would to heaven. Precisely because it was perceived to be an earthly version of a heavenly prototype, the temple was a powerful symbol of the unity of all elements of God's cosmic design. Within its boundaries, the heavenly, earthly, and social realms were all joined together into a seamless whole. Israelite priestly tradition tended to imagine the earth's surface as divided between the clean land of Israel and the unclean lands of the nations, the holiness of the land and the commonness of all other space. The ground plan of the Herodian temple mirrored this conception of things. [pp. 175-6]

Speaking of the Holy of Holies, Jaffee notes:

But these objects [the Ark of the Covenant and the cherubim] had been lost by 587 BCE. What remained, according to later rabbinic tradition, was a flat stone called the Foundation Stone. Upon it, some rabbinic sages insisted, the world had been created. Their insistence upon this point highlights the cosmic function of the Holy of Holies itself. The room served as the meeting of heaven and earth, where all the forces of creation were present in their most intense form. At the center of the temple's rings of holiness, therefore, was nothing at all, an emptiness filled with the potential of infinite presence. God's Glory of Presence (Hebrew: shekhinah), that part of his being capable of worldly embodiment, could descend through it from the heavenly throne at any instant. [p. 179]

On the priestly sacrifices:

When the spectacle of the victim's death and physical destruction was complete, the entire community in the temple court acknowledged the priest's success in bringing the power of life anew into the world. The worshippers sent their own adorations of God skyward with the aromatic smoke of the sacrificial victims whose death they had witnessed.

Although the priest did the work, the participatory witness of a communal audience was a crucial part of the temple's ritual life. The presence of witnesses, indeed, transformed the service from a private priestly rite into a public event that served as a tutorial in priestly conceptions of the world. These were made immediately tangible to the non-priestly majority through the powerful media of massive architectural presence and ritual pageantry. Indeed, the experience of the temple, rather than literary formulations of law and theology, were the primary means by which  common Israelites would have identified with the biblical description of Israel as "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" (Exod. 19:6). [p. 182]

On the Pilgrimage Festivals:

Thus, the calendar of Pilgrimage Festivals enabled the temple to transform the entire Jewish Diaspora into a series of spokes emanating from the center of the temple and its circumference. The rhythms of the sacrificial seasons transformed the temple into a kind of heart. Its beat circulated a stream of Jews throughout the body of Israel in a perpetuation systolic-diastolic rhythm, geared to the cycles of the seasons. [p. 187]

And one more for good measure:

While the priests were sustaining creation through their sacrifices, villagers were intoning the story of the world's creation. In a real sense, then, through the bystanders, the ritual life of the priests extended beyond the temple into the lives of the Judean population. Non-priestly Jews could incorporate the temple, as the center of the world, into their own experience around the temple's actual borders. [p. 188]

Given Jaffee's descriptions, the impact of the destruction of the temple in 70 CE at the hands of the Roman Empire cannot be overstated. At its core it was a devastating blow to the nation of Israel. Not only did cut off what they saw as their lifeline to God, it had a literal and tangible impact on the cosmos.

Biblical Historicity.

Any serious undertaking in the study of the scriptures has to address a central question - how are we to understand the historic value of the scriptures? Or put another way, when we say the scriptures are "a historical account," what exactly are we claiming about the nature of the scriptures? Are they "historically accurate?" Is "historicity" even on the radar of the writers?

For some the answer is obvious - of course the scriptures are historically accurate. If we cannot trust them historically, then how are we to trust them theologically? However, this kind of all or nothing thinking causes some difficulties. The scriptures are presented as being either 100% "correct and accurate" or 100% "inaccurate and untrustworthy." Hhhmmm.

While doing some reading for Community of God, I came across this:

Biblical examples of such literature ["historic" texts from the Second Temple period] are Daniel and Esther, both of which have proved problematic for those who believe they recount historical events...

... Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar (called a king although he apparently never did become one) are known from other sources, and Cyrus, too, is familiar. However, in Daniel he is not the conqueror of Babylon, and no one knows who is meant by Darius the Mede, pictured in Daniel as the immediate successor of Belshazzar and thus as the conqueror of Babylon. The Persian king Darius was not of Median extraction, while Daniel's Darius is said to be the "son of Ahasuerus, by birth a Mede, who became king over the realm of the Chaldeans" (9:1). These are only a few of the reasons that have led many scholars to conclude that the stories in Daniel are not historical literature...

... Neither Esther nor Mordecai appears in extra-biblical historical sources about King Xerxes (in them Xerxes has a wife by a different name), and the book has other improbable claims such as the existence of 127 provinces in the empire. So it too does not appear to be a historical account, but like the other texts mentioned above, it pictures capable Jewish people entrusted with high positions in the great foreign empire." [James C. VanderKam, An Introduction to Early Judaism, pp. 10-11.]

Faced with such historical issues, a whole host of questions necessarily arise that we must wrestle with:

How do these historic inconsistencies relate to theologies of scripture, like inerrancy for example? If the text displays historical inaccuracies, can we still claim inerrancy for the text or do we need to therefore amend our definition of inerrancy? Perhaps the issue of inerrancy is arguing the wrong point.

Is the historic accuracy of a particular text the only determining factor of the truth of a text? What is the role of parable and myth in communicating truth? [If Daniel, or Esther, or even Job for that matter, is not historical literature, does it make it any less true per se?]

Did the biblical authors work with the same sense of need for "historicity" that we modern interpreters do? In other words, were the biblical writers completely adverse to passing along traditions that were less than 100% historically accurate to make a theological point?

I think the last line of question is central to this discussion. My own hunch is that when we argue for a 100% historical position, we can actually miss what certain texts and writers are trying to accomplish. Not every writers is trying to portray "what actually happened, the way it actually happened." The main goal of the writers is to present truth utilizing the history, political and social settings, and literary genres of their day.

Thoughts?

The Road to Nicaea.

April DeConick recently started a new series of posts entitled Jesus on the Road to Nicaea. The series explores the issues, both theological and sociological, that influenced Nicaea. While definitely a quick overview, she provides some food for thought. You can read her posts here:

Jesus on the Road to Nicaea 1: The Controversies

Jesus on the Road to Nicaea 2: The Lay of the Land

Jesus on the Road to Nicaea 3: Anti-Semitism

Nooma 024 Whirlwind.

The latest Nooma offer, Whirlwind, has been posted by the good people at Flannel on their website to watch in its entirety. It beautifully explores suffer and Job. If you have ever gone thorugh difficult times, this is a much watch. Don't know how much longer it will be up, so swing by and enjoy.

[HT: Mike Todd]

Writing and a Question.

I'm spending the day doing some much needed writing on my thesis. [More on this later...]

In the meantime, I've been chewing a bit on this post by Robert Cargill. Maybe you're like me, I grew up hearing "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life" until it became a mantra. I've always felt a bit uncomfortable with this kind of thinking. It seems so trite and so self-centered, like God exists for me and my "wonderful plan." I've also never really been satisfied with how we reconcile the issues of pain and evil into this "wonderful plan" thing. Seems like our efforts are all to fraught with mental and theological gymnastics.

Cargill answers the pressing question, "Does God really have a wonderful plan for our lives?" His answer and thoughts may surprise you. It is a read well worthy of your time and pondering.

Enjoy.

Wright and Justification.

My copy of Justification: God's Plan & Paul's Vision arrived this week on my doorstep. I've been waiting to clear some room in my reading calendar in order to jump into this one. Before the book was released, Jamie and I had dinner with Tom and Maggie and asked him about the book. He said he was perhaps one of the most important books he had written. I'm sure I'll have more to add when I get some time to digest the book.

Until then, Scot McKnight has offered up some insightful posts and thoughts on the book in his series Justification and New Perspective [now up to thirteen posts]. You can follow and be a part of the discussion here.

Quote of the Day.

Peter Enns touches on something essential:

But if intention to remain “true” to a “tradition” (which already assumes its non-growth) drives an academic assessment of real evidence (most of which was wholly unavailable when the tradition’s trajectories were set), one runs the risk of adjusting evidence to what one already “knows” to be true.  We do not tolerate such sloppy thinking in any other area of human discourse, but when it comes to theological discourse in some circles, it seems to be the preferred method of interaction. When one’s position is by definition unfalsifiable, any meaningful exchange of ideas functionally ceases. Any tradition that aims to promote truth rather than obscure it must be eager to be open to critical evaluation.

You can read the rest of his blog post here.

[HT: Christopher Heard]

A Priori.

Scott Bailey over at Scotteriology had this to add to the "inerrancy discussion" as of late:

There is one giant problem I see with many discussions on inerrancy. On one level this problem is so insurmountable it is a discussion I don’t even bother having anymore with those of differing views because at the end of the conversation the beginning assumptions are so different that any “common ground” is almost impossible.

In a nutshell, one side of the discussion, conservative inerrantists, prefers a deductive synchronic approach to the text and the other, biblical scholarship, prefers an inductive diachronic approach to the text. These interpretive assumptions and methods are so different as to leave the opposing camps with essentially different Bibles, hence, the arguments.

I think he has hit upon something. When we enter a discussion with an a priori assumption, or pre-arrived understanding, we hinder ourselves from having our assumptions and understandings refined. In the case of the scriptures, it is all too easy to come at the text with a preconceived understanding of the nature of the text based upon a theological position, rather than one derived form the text itself.

Inerrancy is an implicit theological position in regards to the text, but is it explicitly demonstrated in the text?