August 2011 - Pub Theologian

A friend sent me this article… Read it and let me know what you think.

In Jerusalem, scholars trace Bible’s evolution

Friday, August 12, 2011

JERUSALEM (AP) — A dull-looking chart projected on the wall of a university office in Jerusalem displayed a revelation that would startle many readers of the Old Testament: the sacred text that people revered in the past was not the same one we study today.

An ancient version of one book has an extra phrase. Another appears to have been revised to retroactively insert a prophecy after the events happened.

biblescholars — Scholars at work at Hebrew University

Scholars in this out-of-the-way corner of the Hebrew University campus have been quietly at work for 53 years on one of the most ambitious projects attempted in biblical studies — publishing the authoritative edition of the Old Testament, also known as the Hebrew Bible, and tracking every single evolution of the text over centuries and millennia.

And it has evolved, despite deeply held beliefs to the contrary.

For many Jews and Christians, religion dictates that the words of the Bible in the original Hebrew are divine, unaltered and unalterable. For Orthodox Jews, the accuracy is considered so inviolable that if a synagogue’s Torah scroll is found to have a minute error in a single letter, the entire scroll is unusable.

But the ongoing work of the academic detectives of the Bible Project, as their undertaking is known, shows that this text at the root of Judaism, Christianity and Islam was somewhat fluid for long periods of its history, and that its transmission through the ages was messier and more human than most of us imagine.

The project’s scholars have been at work on their critical edition of the Hebrew Bible, a version intended mainly for the use of other scholars, since 1958.

“What we’re doing here must be of interest for anyone interested in the Bible,” said Michael Segal, the scholar who heads the project.

The sheer volume of information makes the Bible Project’s version “the most comprehensive critical edition of the Hebrew Bible in existence at the present time,” said David Marcus, a Bible scholar at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, who is not involved with the project.

But Segal and his colleagues toil in relative anonymity. Their undertaking is nearly unknown outside a circle of Bible experts numbering several hundred people at most, and a visitor asking directions to the Bible Project’s office on the university campus will find that many members of the university’s own staff have never heard of it.

This is an endeavor so meticulous, its pace so disconnected from that of the world outside, that in more than five decades of work the scholars have published a grand total of three of the Hebrew Bible’s 24 books. (Christians count the same books differently, for a total of 39.) A fourth is due out during the upcoming academic year.

If the pace is maintained, the final product will be complete a little over 200 years from now. This is both a point of pride and a matter of some mild self-deprecation around the office.

Bible Project scholars have spent years combing through manuscripts such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, Greek translations on papyrus from Egypt, a printed Bible from 1525 Venice, parchment books in handwritten Hebrew, the Samaritan Torah, and scrolls in Aramaic and Latin. The last member of the original team died last year at age 90.

The scholars note where the text we have now differs from older versions — differences that are evidence of the inevitable textual hiccups, scribal errors and other human fingerprints that became part of the Bible as it was passed on, orally and in writing.

A Microsoft Excel chart projected on one wall on a recent Sunday showed variations in a single phrase from the Book of Malachi, a prophet.

The verse in question, from the text we know today, makes reference to “those who swear falsely.” The scholars have found that in quotes from rabbinic writings around the 5th century A.D., the phrase was longer: “those who swear falsely in my name.”

In another example, this one from the Book of Deuteronomy, a passage referring to commandments given by God “to you” once read “to us,” a significant change in meaning.

Other differences are more striking.

The Book of Jeremiah is now one-seventh longer than the one that appears in some of the 2,000-year-old manuscripts known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Some verses, including ones containing a prophecy about the seizure and return of Temple implements by Babylonian soldiers, appear to have been added after the events happened.

The year the Bible Project began, 1958, was the year a priceless Hebrew Bible manuscript arrived in Jerusalem after it was smuggled out of Aleppo, Syria, by a Jewish cheese merchant who hid it in his washing machine. This was the 1,100-year-old Aleppo Codex, considered the oldest and most accurate version of the complete biblical text in Hebrew.

The Bible Project’s version of the core text — the one to which the others are compared — is based on this manuscript. Other critical editions of the Bible, such as one currently being prepared in Stuttgart, Germany, are based on a slightly newer manuscript held in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Considering that the nature of their work would be considered controversial, if not offensive, by many religious people, it is perhaps surprising that most of the project’s scholars are themselves Orthodox Jews.

“A believing Jew claims that the source of the Bible is prophecy,” said the project’s bearded academic secretary, Rafael Zer. “But as soon as the words are given to human beings — with God’s agreement, and at his initiative — the holiness of the biblical text remains, even if mistakes are made when the text is passed on.”

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Link to original article.

When I was little, there were many magical moments. One such moment happened when I entered the living room and found presents under the Christmas tree. Call it Santa Claus, Kris Kringle, or whatever you want – but it was mysterious, and I was in.

This was a wonderful time – and perhaps you can remember such a time in your own life. Or if you have kids, perhaps you know the delight in ‘playing along’ with the story, vicariously experience the joy and innocence once again.

But it can’t last forever – can it?

I suppose we could all mutually agree to believe what we know isn’t the case – and in some ways, you could say that given our Christmas-overkill every year we do exactly that. We reinforce the illusion, by some mutual agreement (which must be some marketer’s dream).

But then a ten-year-old who has figured it out says to her younger brother, “You know Santa isn’t real, right?” And Christmas is ruined. If only he could go back to his child-like faith.

I wonder if there are parallels to this scenario in the life of faith. Jesus certainly commends children as ‘the greatest in the kingdom’ and calls us to receive the kingdom ‘like a little child’. The phrase ‘faith of a child’ or ‘child-like faith’ does not actually appear in the Bible, though the idea is certainly present.

I often hear this referenced when someone takes part in a discussion about hard to understand issues or when learning something that might challenge an aspect of his or her faith that perhaps had been taken for granted.

“But you just have to have a child-like faith.”

OK.

Yes.

But what is a child-like faith?

children-jesus-115 — For theirs is the kingdom of heaven

When Jesus mentions that children are the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, he is noting their humility – not their ability to believe certain things about God, nor their ability to believe almost anything. In Matthew 18 he is contrasting children with those who argue and fight about who is the greatest. (Though I know some kids who have the same argument!).

In Mark 10 he talks about receiving the kingdom like a little child. Here I think the focus is being open to what God is doing in the world. This may be in contrast to those who were skeptical or critical of the things Jesus was doing as he proclaimed the kingdom – teaching, healing, eating with outsiders, etc. So there definitely is an element of openness and embracing what God is saying and doing. Children probably didn’t have the status of adults, and Jesus may be surprising his listeners with who is actually included in the kingdom – children, prostitutes, tax collectors. The kingdom is for ‘the least of these.’

Simpler Times

We all know there is something about grown-ups that gets in the way of relationships, that makes simple things more complicated, that is less willing to trust, and so on.

Further, in a complicated, intimidating world we want something that is easily graspable, something that we can hold on to easily, something that soothes and calms our fears.

Even David in the Psalms yearns for the simplicity of a child:

“I do not concern myself with great matters
or things too wonderful for me.
But I have stilled and quieted my soul;
like a weaned child with its mother,
like a weaned child is my soul within me.”

There is a time to just sit and rest in God. He is vastly greater than we are, and it is a great comfort to simply trust in his goodness. That is a very biblical thing to do and is one of the supreme joys of faith.

Growing Up

So what are we to do when things get complicated, as they inevitably do? I suppose we could retreat and ‘find a happy place’. Or plug our ears and simply ignore whatever is going on. Or say, “I just want a child-like faith.” Or tap our heels and say, “There’s no place like home.”

But we do not remain children. We grow up.

And that is not necessarily a bad thing.

The Apostle Paul noted as much:

“When I was a child,
I talked like a child,
I thought like a child,
I reasoned like a child.
When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.”

Some say faith is becoming ‘too heady’. Perhaps we have Paul to thank for that. Or the church fathers. Or the desert fathers. Or the various councils that met early on to hammer out incredibly heady ideas. Or Thomas Aquinas. Or Duns Scotus. Or Anselm of Canterbury. Or John Calvin. Or the medieval scholastics who wrote volumes and volumes of incredibly dense theology.

The idea that faith is getting ‘more heady’ is probably not actually the case. In fact, perhaps we are coming out of a time of when the faith has been ‘dumbed down’, and now some are attempting to deconstruct a few of the concepts that came out of our dumbing down period (the explosive growth of fundamentalism in the 20^th century). So maybe there is a reapprehension of the faith taking place. A return to thinking. This might be painful to some, but, in reality – this probably happens in every generation.

One might also point out that the very things we might call the ‘simple aspects’ of faith are themselves the results of some very heady dialogue, hard work and intense thinking. Let’s take one issue: the Trinity. As Christians we take this aspect of God for granted, but it took centuries of thought and argument for this ‘simple’ concept to be worked out. Or the divinity of Jesus. This also took centuries to work itself out. Or pick your favorite ‘simple’ doctrine. The idea that there was a pristine time when faith was simple and we didn’t have to think about things but just trust in God is an illusion.

Even in Jesus’ day children were expected to memorize vast portions of the Torah, if not the whole Torah itself. That’s way too heady for most of us. And that was the expectation for children. So perhaps the faith of a child is the faith of one who takes their faith seriously. Who takes God seriously. Who commits their hearts and minds to knowing God as well as possible, by taking the textual tradition they’ve been handed seriously, and when the kingdom is breaking in around them (even in unexpected ways!) – they are open to it.

Additionally, Jesus himself was one who did quite a bit of deconstructing of what many took for granted. “You have heard it said… but I say to you…”

So when we look for cracks in the settled foundations of our assumptions, perhaps we are simply walking in the path of the Master himself, who called us to be as children, without actually becoming children.

After all, when I was a child, I thought like a child.

But we are no longer children, and we must – at some point – put childish ways behind us.