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Emmanuel | Christmas Day

December 25, 2011 Poetry, Readings, The Text, Theology Comments are closed

by Frederick Buechner:

Christmas is not just Mr. Pickwick dancing a reel with the old lady at Dingley Dell or Scrooge waking up the next morning a changed man. It is not just the spirit of giving abroad in the land with a white beard and reindeer. It is not just the most famous birthday of them all and not just the annual reaffirmation of Peace on Earth that it is often reduced to so that people of many faiths or no faith can exchange Christmas cards without a qualm.

On the contrary, if you do not hear in the message of Christmas something that must strike some as blasphemy and others as sheer fantasy, the chances are you have not heard the message for what it is. Emmanuel is the message in a nutshell. Emmanuel, which is Hebrew for “God with us.” That’s where the problem lies.

The claim that Christianity makes for Christmas is that at a particular time and place “the high and lofty One who inhabits eternity” came to be with us himself. When Quirinius was governor of Syria, in a town called Bethlehem, a child was born who, beyond the power of anyone to account for, was the high and lofty One made low and helpless. The One whom none can look upon and live is delivered in a stable under the soft, indifferent gaze of cattle. The Father of all mercies puts himself at our mercy. Year after year the ancient tale of what happened is told raw, preposterous, and holy — and year after year the world in some measure stops to listen.

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. A dream as old as time. If it is true, it is the chief of all truths. If it is not true, it is of all truths the one that people would most have be true if they could make it so.

Maybe it is that longing to have it be true that is at the bottom even of the whole vast Christmas industry the tons of cards and presents and fancy food, the plastic figures kneeling on the floodlit lawns of poorly attended churches. The world speaks of holy things in the only language it knows, which is a worldly language.

Emmanuel. We all must decide for ourselves whether it is true. Certainly the grounds on which to dismiss it are not hard to find. Christmas is commercialism. It is a pain in the neck. It is sentimentality.

It is wishful thinking. The shepherds. The star. The three wise men. Make believe.

Yet it is never as easy to get rid of as all this makes it sound. To dismiss Christmas is for most of us to dismiss part of ourselves. It is to dismiss one of the most fragile yet enduring visions of our own childhood and of the child that continues to exist in all of us. The sense of mystery and wonderment. The sense that on this one day each year two plus two adds up not to four but to a million.

What keeps the wild hope of Christmas alive year after year in a world notorious for dashing all hopes is the haunting dream that the child who was born that day may yet be born again even in us.

Emmanuel. Emmanuel.

Common Sense Jesus?

October 25, 2011 Culture, Economy, Entertainment, Politics, Pub Theology, The Text, Theology Comments are closed

Some fun in light of a recent politician’s statement about Jesus:

“For over 2,000 years the world has tried hard to erase the memory of the perfect conservative, and His principles of compassion, caring and common sense.”

What do you think? Did Jesus have an uncommon amount of common sense?

Consider the following from the site Common Sense Jesus:

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and finally:

What do you think? Was Jesus all about ‘common sense’?

I tend to agree with this blogger:

I’m pretty sure Jesus’s principles were anything but common sense. In fact, in my recollection, they were the complete opposite. The story of the Gospel is Jesus openly challenging the prevailing norms, social structures, and power dynamics of his day and turning them on their heads with a radical message of humility, non-violence, selflessness and faith in the seemingly impossible.

But what do I know? I have been accused of lacking common sense myself.

Post your thoughts below!

The Intimidating Task of Bible Study, Part 4

October 13, 2011 Readings, Relationships, The Text, Theology Comments are closed

(Fourth and final in a series of posts taken from Wes Howard-Brook’s introduction to his commentary on the Gospel of John, Becoming Children of God: Read the first post here. The whole introduction to this book, of which these posts are a small part, is terrific, and probably worth the price of the book alone. This is the last post I am making from the intro, so enjoy!)

Still another aspect of my own reading perspective is important to note at the outset. I am not a member of the academic guild of Bible scholars. My reading of the Bible generally, and the fourth gospel in particular, comes not out of the context of university conversation – whether secular or theological – but rather from the perspective of radical discipleship. That is, I am interested in the biblical texts not simply as objects of study and intellectual interest but as paradigmatic tales of God’s relationship to our ancestors and to us. If I did not believe that the Bible offered insights that are essential to our negotiation of our way out of the desert of the decaying American empire and toward a more hopeful future, I would quickly move on to some other pursuit and urge all listeners and readers to do likewise.

university_of_sydney — the halls of academia

Of course, many academic scholars share a commitment to the power of the Bible to liberate people and social structures. I do not intend by this description of my own reading location to characterize academia broadly as an ivory tower or as otherwise irrelevant. Many of my own ideas have been the fruit of seeds planted by scholars, and many people in universities actively promote the Bible’s liberating message. What is central here is not a critique of academia but an awareness of the different but equally credible reading perspectives that flow from university and “grassroots” standpoints. The university environment is capable of nurturing conversation among other scholars, both within biblical studies and across disciplines. The radical discipleship environment is capable of nurturing conversation among people of various experiences and traditions about the value of the Bible for social transformation. Each standpoint has strengths and weaknesses too numerous to list here. But it is important for those who read the Bible without a doctorate to recognize that their own readings are not necessarily diminished as a result.

It is, of course, almost trite to note that Jesus was not an academic; nor were his first followers; nor were the first Christian preachers, teachers, and other leaders. The development of the perception of a privileged reading position by academics is a relatively recent phenomenon, based not on biblical criteria but on principles stemming from the Enlightenment’s notion of the primacy of “scientific” reason.

This is not, to be sure, to revert to the celebration of naïve or accidental interpretations that come from the fabled random opening of the Bible, with the expectation that God speaks through whatever passage one happens to land upon (Admit it – you’ve done this!). Bible study, whether from within academia or from some other social location, requires hard work for our generation, so removed from the Bible’s own worlds and ways of speaking and thinking. My own interpretation flows from the attempt to pay a respectful and sincere visit to the house of academia and then to share the insights gleaned from within with those whose daily lives do not allow the luxury of such a visit.

Finally, a personal element of my experience that cannot be separated from my reading of the fourth gospel: I grew up Jewish as a member of the first post-Holocaust generation. Although this upbringing was largely a matter of ethnicity than religion (perhaps, in the end, a false distinction, no matter what one’s beliefs about God), it seared into my consciousness a deep understanding of the capacity of human beings for evil as well as the ability of Christians to kill others in the name of Christ. It is a difficult social dislocation for someone of this background to learn to see the wisdom of Jesus and come to claim the Christian tradition as one’s own. It is particularly difficult to embrace the fourth gospel, given centuries of powerful misreadings that have found the text’s characterizations of “the Jews” as a basis for two millennia of mistreatment, mayhem, and murder. My own experience of being a Jew who has come to accept the power of the church’s memory of Jesus has given me a perspective on the experience of the first Johannine community that is certainly different from those whose Christianity came with their “first” birth. I engage John’s story of Jesus with the knowledge that this aspect of who I am both reveals and conceals.

I invite readers to consider how their own stance affects their reading process. This is not a matter of “confessing” one’s “sins” or “prejudices” as much as engaging in a reflective process that has been made necessary by insights gleaned by the deepest sort of philosophical and literary thinking. The powerful tool known as deconstruction challenges us to dig beneath any viewpoints that claim to be “objective” or “foundational” for the preconceived notions and commitments that underlie them. If we believe that God calls us to break down the altars of idolatry that pose as divine centers in our society, we should also be willing to examine both our own false gods and the images of the true God that animate us.

The Intimidating Task of Bible Study, Part 3

September 27, 2011 Culture, Politics, Readings, Relationships, The Text Comments are closed

Third in a series of posts taken from Wes Howard-Brook’s introduction to his commentary on the Gospel of John, Becoming Children of God: Read the first post here.

Approaching the Gospels

One of the curiously powerful aspects of the gospels in general that stands out for readers familiar at all with other ancient literature is the social context in which their stories are told. Whereas almost all other national epics and myths speak of the important events and struggles in the lives of gods, kings, or other nobles, the gospels’ concern is almost exclusively with the lives of the poor and marginalized.

streetkids — stories of the unremarkable

Even literature after the New Testament, up until the Romantics’ discovery of the tragic narrative power of stories of street urchins and other outcasts, primarily focused on the trials and tribulations of people of wealth and authority. Lives existing amidst material splendor and social power have always intrigued those who look longingly on what they imagine to be the “good life.” In contrast, the lives of the poor have generally seemed banal and trivial, devoid of interest because of the supposed monochromatic pattern of hard work and routine demands.

If we have relatively lately learned to “enjoy” the stories of the poor and have come to accept the harsh beauty of emotions and minds living on the tense edge of daily despair, such a perspective would have been virtually unthinkable to those of biblical times. The biblical patriarchs were wealthy herdsmen who, with their families, became landowners of distinction in their local communities. If the exodus portrays the desperate struggle of an enslaved people, it is only to show that their imprisonment first in Egypt and then in the desert is but a temporary obstruction on their way to the Promised Land where they will eat their fill and gather abundant land and cattle. The longest continuous biblical narrative is the saga of Israel’s poignantly ironic marriage to monarchy, in which the main characters literally stand head and shoulders above their peers (e.g. 1 Sam 10:23). Even the prophetic promise/threat of exile was of concern primarily to Israel’s elite, as the majority of poor people remained in Palestine even after the Babylonian conquest. And the postexilic narratives of rebuilding are the stories of priests and scribes, the intellectual and cultural leaders of the Persian colonial territory that had once been a great nation.

In this context of national journey from the perspective of the leaders and other powerful figures, the gospels sound a harshly discordant note. Their tales of lepers, blind people, bleeding women, and landless peasants searching desperately for hope are a shocking contrast to their biblical predecessors. For as we know, the New Testament was originally a collection of writings aimed at providing a message of divine love and healing for people who could not hear such a word in the established religious institutions. Although the Christian “Way” amazingly quickly swept across social classes and national boundaries in its first centuries of proclamation, the stories themselves are most easily understood by people who have experienced for themselves the failure of governments and clergy to relieve either physical or spiritual hunger.

John’s gospel, in contrast with Mark and Luke in particular, has little to say about poverty and God’s promise to provide good things for those who have gone without because of injustice. The fourth gospel proclaims not that the poor are “blessed” but that they are “always with you” (Jn 12:8) – although the Johannine perspective is not the cynical acceptance of the permanent presence of an underclass that it might seem to be when heard out of context. In the fourth gospel, characterization and plot focus not so much on economic exclusion as on the social barriers of ethnicity, ritual impurity, and lack of “proper” belief. Those who have been denied privilege in the dominant culture because of their “wrong” birth (e.g., the Samaritan woman and the one born blind) are the ones upon whom Jesus’ compassion centers. At the same time, those who are willing to be reborn, regardless of original birthplace (e.g., Nicodemus and the “Judeans”), are invited into the community to which the gospel calls its readers.

Beyond Reading

And this reality leads directly to the negative and positive poles of my own reading stance. As a “white” male citizen of the United States at the end of the twentieth century, I must engage in strenuous acts of imaginative projection and concrete insertion in order to begin to hear the power of this gospel’s word to those on the margins. It is a twofold task that cannot be done exclusively from the comforts of my warm home.

Each experience I have had in which I have, albeit hesitatingly and feebly, touched the actual lives of the poor in our culture has been a hermeneutical gift of immeasurable proportions. An hour with street people in downtown Seattle metamorphoses the abstraction of “the homeless” into the broken yet still human lives of Junior, Charles, and Althea. A few days in jail transforms one’s vague notion of “criminals” into a perception of ordinary people whose lives have either gone sour along the way or existed on a road of shattered glass from the moment of their births. Many of us are, regardless of our good will, faith, or love, at a huge distance from those in our inner cities or in the Third World to whom the gospels speak clear and almost obvious truths. Only by pushing out from our easy chairs and into the cold darkness of the streets, prisons, public hospitals, and other havens for outcasts can we begin to catch the radicality of the gospel’s word.

If this is true at the level of our personal zone of daily life, it is all the more the case with regard to our political and social privilege. I come to recognize more and more each day how the wealth of our nation has been systemically taken from the mouths of others. Indigenous peoples of North America, Africa, Latin America, and Asia all cry out as just prophets condemning our theft, indifference, and brutality as a nation. The increasing clamor for immigration limits and border patrols bears powerful testimony against our claim of being a just and free land, open to accepting the world’s poor. And, more to the point of the fourth gospel, we have again increased the sickening acceptance of racial and ethnic scapegoating, whether against poor African-Americans or wealthy Japanese and other Asians.

All this puts us as a people squarely on the opposite side from the Johannine Jesus and the community of the fourth gospel. But this brings us to the positive pole in my own prerelationship with the text. Despite my personal and national privilege and responsibility for massive injustice, I believe in a God who invites peoples such as myself to work and pray with others for the liberation of all peoples. While acknowledging my participation in unjust structures and in enjoying the fruit of rotting trees, I trust in the God of all life, who constantly calls me to focus on God alone and the way of shalom. Without attempting to express a complete personal philosophy in this space, it is important to proclaim my commitment to helping to shape a future in which all creation will sing joyously of the God of nonviolent and interdependent love.

Thus, I come to my own reading of John with a dual awareness. My birthplace veils the gospel from me in certain ways, leading me to find new experiences that help penetrate into the place from which the text seems to speak. At the same time, my commitment to a God who breaks down injustice and generates true love and freedom for all people opens me in other ways to hear the text speak its challenges to the status quo.

Stay tuned for Part 4!

The Intimidating Task of Bible Study, Part 2

September 18, 2011 Culture, Readings, Relationships, The Text, Theology Comments are closed

Second in a series of posts taken from Wes Howard-Brook’s introduction to his commentary on the Gospel of John, Becoming Children of God: Read the first post here.

If we choose to accept this life-changing invitation, how do we start? How do we know that the path we take is not simply a trail that loops back to Egypt ends in a cul de sac in the desert? If we journey alone, we indeed run a high risk of picking a futile road to nowhere or, worse, to a place of great danger. The Bible’s narrative of God’s mighty acts and words is heady stuff that can, to the misguided, justify the worst sort of violence and brutality.

The antidote is the one given by the Bible itself in nearly every story: to journey not alone but in the community of fellow travelers. Whether that means starting a Bible study group, going to church, or delving into the scholarly conversation, the joyous task of encountering the Bible makes sense only as part of an interpretative community. From Eden to Revelation, the Bible’s various forms of discourse present one of the most intensely social collections of writings known to humanity. Its people are constantly in dialogue, either with other people or with God directly.

And its questions are persistently in the first-person plural: Who are we and where are we going? The Bible contains virtually no notion of the isolated individual, no flinty-faced Marlboro man gazing outward with a private vision. The first challenge of reading, then, is to share in whatever ways we can in acknowledging this most basic premise of the text.

This book is an attempt to share some of my own reading of a particular text from the Bible. By putting my reading into writing, I am aware that I risk the same freezing of live conversation that the gospels writers themselves risked. Each day, new insights unfold for me about the fourth gospel, as I continue to grow in my self-awareness and my awareness of the gospel’s own intertextual and intercultural contexts. But, as with the gospel, I hope that readers of this writing will continue the conversation, albeit at a distance, by continuing to think, pray, and act in response to what they read here.

This work, as with the Bible, is the product not of an isolated individual but of the collection of energies that make up the matrix in which I journey. In the following section, I will state openly some of my life commitments and reading strategies. I do this not so much to persuade readers that these are the best or the correct perspectives, but in the interest of encouraging all Bible readers to continue the process of demythologizing the notion of the “objective” or “scientific” reading.

In the next section we will note the importance of asking the question: “Where are you from?”, in order to name one’s commitments before encountering the Word.

Stay tuned for Part 3!

The Intimidating Task of Bible Study, Part 1

September 13, 2011 Culture, Readings, Relationships, The Text, Theology Comments are closed

Taken from Wes Howard-Brook’s introduction to his commentary on the Gospel of John, Becoming Children of God:

Attempting to read a biblical text challenges us in ways that quickly threaten to sink us in a quicksand of questions. Which translation is “best” if we don’t read ancient Greek or Hebrew? And even if we try to learn something about these long-dead languages, how do we move forward in our language to talk about the text? Once we start getting enmeshed in inquiries about language, the paradoxes of words and their relationship to reality “out there” can become powerfully mind-boggling. Linguistic and literary theory are minefields in which much heat is radiated but precious little light remains after the explosions.

At the same time, the biblical texts – like almost no others still widely read in our time – confront us with worlds confoundingly foreign. Names of people and places seem unpronounceable, and locations are obscure. People behave in ways strange to our “normal” practice, but we cannot easily discern whether their behavior is strange to those with whom they interact in the stories. Much of the context involves situations with which we have absolutely no experience or concern. Furthermore, few sources of information from the ancient world are available to enlighten us on these crucial matters. A few pieces of broken pottery or tablets and miscellaneous scraps of documents are hardly sufficient to recreate for us a sense of the long lost world of Israel. What would future cultural historians do with a couple of our daily newspapers and a handful of random paperbacks from the best-seller list? Would such artifacts allow for reasonably certain inferences about our daily lives and concerns?

What Is One To Do?

Beginning to consider these questions and the infinite corollaries that cascade from them can lead to several responses among prospective biblical readers.

First, we can attempt to close our minds to the questions and, like fundamentalists, pretend in effect that the Bible was written in English in the recent past, interpreting its “plain words” according to our (unspoken) cultural assumptions. This is the de facto reading “method” of most people of goodwill who have grown up with the Bible as a book on the shelf to be read among other selections from history or literature. Whether because the questions are threatening or simply because they have not occurred to us to ask them, we read the Bible naively and come up with naïve – and often dangerous – interpretations.

A second option is to allow the questions to take us over and move toward becoming biblical scholars at one level or another. One can very easily be swept up into methodological questions – for instance, questions of form criticism and hermeneutics – and never return to the Bible itself. Or one can attempt (impossibly) to consider all that has been written on a particular biblical text in an effort to cull the wisdom of “better” and “more qualified” readers than oneself. This project runs into the barriers of one’s own linguistic competence (biblical scholarship speaks many languages) and the supply of periodicals in local theological libraries. Not to mention the financial and social costs of giving up one’s job and family to create the time to read such a mountain of material!

A third possibility in the face of the mammoth nature of the undertaking is to give it up altogether. The Bible is too arcane, too distant, too complicated to be of much practical use for those of us struggling to discern the Creator’s path for humankind in our troubled era. Why bother to conjugate lost languages to figure out how to act in the face of racism, poverty, and the infinite oppressions of everyday life in the American empire? The very act of attempting to dig out from under the mound of questions is evidence enough of the privilege we should probably be about the business of renouncing.

Each of these options avoids in a different way the challenge and opportunity to learn from our ancestors what the Bible offers. Whether one chooses fundamentalism, ivory-tower academia, or some “new” religious approach disconnected from the biblical tradition, the result is to deny the invitation to acknowledge that we stand on the pinnacle of the mountain of human experience. Our “age” – whether we conceive of that term as signifying the baby boomers, generation X, millenials, the period of technology, or the era of democratic capitalism in the West – is only the most recent chapter in a human story spanning many millennia. The simple fact remains that the Bible is the deepest echo of our ancestors’ own cries of “Who are we?” and “What are we to do with our lives?”

So, if we are to choose an alternative to abandoning or getting lost in the search for biblical wisdom, we must begin with a humble acknowledgement that our efforts are limited by many factors that cannot be overcome. Rather than denying either the invitation to learn or the existence of barriers, I urge us to name our limits and continue to move forward.

Who We Are Matters

This very process has also been taking place from within the formal institution of biblical scholarship. Where once professional Bible readers (are there such things?!) claimed “scientific” methods that obviated the need to claim the personal positions and limits of the interpreter, more and more we find scholars admitting what has been true all along. That is, each reader or community of readers comes to the Bible with a panoply of prejudices and commitments that necessarily play a powerful part in shaping how one hears the word of God speaking. Poor peasants in Latin America can connect with Jesus’ parables drawn with images of farming far more readily than clean-fingered university professors in the United States or Europe. Women can hear both the pain caused by the patriarchal mind-set that permeates the Bible and Jesus’ shocking invitations to reshape that mind-set in ways that men such as myself can never do. People anywhere committed to the transformation of unjust social structures into God’s realm of shalom will pick up the pervasive political context of the gospels when readers satisfied with the status quo find only “spiritual” messages.

This is not to suggest that one particular cultural perspective or sociopolitical ideology is “better” for reading the Bible. Rather, it is to call all prospective readers to the enlightening and humbling task of paying attention to how who we are affects who we believe the God of the Bible to be. At the same time, it is not to succumb to a trackless pluralism in which anyone and everyone can read the Bible and find their “opinion” equally valid. Criteria do exist for distinguishing among readers, just as distinctions between faith in Yahweh and faith in Baal, Marduk, or Caesar are not mere tricks of the text. Our image of God and sense of God’s will for us and for creation powerfully influence our sense of what makes for a “right” world. Are we simply part of a dog-eat-dog, survival-of-the-fittest struggle to survive, or ought we to aim together for a harmonious interconnectedness that respects the dignity of all life? Our biblical interpretations are crucial to answer this eminently practical inquiry.

Beginning the Journey

This getting to know ourselves in order to get to know the Bible can, of course, produce the same avoidance of the question as does the attempt to get to know the Bible “directly.” We will never completely know ourselves any more than we will completely know the Bible. But just as we should not allow our ignorance of Greek or Pharisaic practice to prevent our encounter with the sacred texts, we should not stop reading the Bible simply because some unrevealed prejudice may be affecting our reading. Instead, we can, like the Hebrews in Egypt, courageously accept the invitation to leave our captivity behind and begin the journey toward liberation.

Stay tuned for Part 2!

The Bible Project

August 18, 2011 The Text, Theology Comments are closed

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

In Jerusalem, scholars trace Bible’s evolution

By MATTI FRIEDMAN Associated Press

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.

On a Child-Like Faith

August 10, 2011 Philosophy, Relationships, The Text, Theology Comments are closed

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.

The Argument

July 12, 2011 Culture, Readings, The Text, Theology Comments are closed

–the first in a series of posts exploring the nature of the Bible–

In the beginning was the Argument, and the Argument was with God, and the Argument was: God. God was the subject of the Argument, and the Argument was a good one.

Who is God?
What is God like?
What does God require of us?
What is God doing about injustice?
What is God doing, if anything, to relieve the human condition?
Is God benevolent, malevolent, or simply indifferent?
Is there any divinely-infused meaning to human existence, or is it all just senseless?

So begins Thom Stark’s book, The Human Faces of God.

I have recently posted a blog series – The Wars of the Lord – based on his chapter on violence and genocide in the Old Testament. These posts were uncomfortable for some, and really made the question: ‘what is the Bible?’ come to the fore.

So what is the Bible? A very good question, a central one. Many of us grew up with a certain idea about what the Bible is, and what it is not. It is the Word of God. It is whole. It is unified. It clearly and unequivocably is the voice of God. It is without error. It is entirely different than any other books that have ever existed.

Upon deeper study of the Bible, many – myself included – have needed our understanding of this ancient text to be altered a bit. The simplified understanding of equating the Bible with a unified book with no errors or contradictions, showing up at our doorstep directly from God – probably in the King James Version – needs to be revisited.

Many of us have unconsciously assumed the Bible speaks with unanimity on every topic it covers. The Bible speaks with one voice. So I can pick a verse from one place, say the Psalms, and expect that to be in line with a verse from the gospels, or one of Paul’s letters, or Revelation. Simple, right?

Consider an alternative to this ‘single-voice’ approach:

Throughout history, worshipers of Yahweh have been engaged in this argument, and for every question posed, they have proposed a plurality of divergent answers. In the beginning, long before there was the Word of God, there were the words of God’s people. That is to say, before there was a Bible – a “Word of God” as a singular entity – there was an argument about God, reflected in diverse texts and traditions; and it is in fact that argument that is today enshrined in the Judeo-Christian canons of scripture. As John Collins has it, the Bible is a “collection of writings that is marked by lively internal debate, and by a remarkable spirit of self-criticism.” To put it bluntly: the Bible is an argument – with itself. (Stark, ch.1)

What do you think of this approach?

It is worth considering. I like it because it preserves the rabbinical idea that God is present in the community as it debates the text together. In other words, as we wrestle with the text together, God is there. The wrestling is a necessary part of hearing the voice of God in scripture. It is not a simple, one-off pronouncement of X or Y, but a divinely-inspired communal wrestling with the ways God has interacted with his people in the past. As we do that, we may find God is at work among us today. The text is not static – it is living and active.

This approach also acknowledges the discrepancies and alternative voices found within the Bible that we often ignore or attempt to impossibly reconcile in our attempt to squeeze the Bible into the box we’ve created for it.

The Bible is where I encounter God. And as I approach it, I must remember that the Bible itself is a library of sorts – an ancient library, and like any library, contains various books written by different people that don’t all say the same thing (and some of the books themselves are products of the community). That doesn’t mean that God isn’t speaking, but is, perhaps, the evidence that God has spoken.

—

I will follow up this post with several examples, but for now, just wanted to whet your appetite with a different approach that I feel does justice to what the Bible actually is, rather than what we want it to be.

Pub Theology Recap May 19

May 26, 2011 Philosophy, Pub Theology, The Text, Theology Comments are closed

An interesting night last week. If I remember right, I can’t remember what we discussed. So no recap, just the sheets:

Topics:

1. ‘The meal table is the birthplace of culture.’
How are we shaped by our eating practices?

2. “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”
What do you think?

3. “There are no facts. Only interpretations.”
Discuss objectivity vs subjectivity.

4. “Inerrantist dogma is as much a human construction as the biblical criticism that inerrantists deride.”

5. Why does beer go through your system so fast?

6. Is there any divinely-infused meaning to human existence, or is it all just senseless?

Backside:

Local thoughts on the rapture (these are actual quotes):

“Hold on to what is going to be raptured out of here and forget the rest.”

“Forget your stupid careers and businesses.”

“Forget about how much gas is gonna cost. That isn’t the kind of thing we need to worry about.”

“We just need to get by until we can get out.”

“I’m not saying you should stockpile, but I think every Christian should have at least two or three weeks worth of food in their homes.”

“Take all your money out of the bank and go on a vacation.”

“There is no rapture.” (OK, this last one was me).

Old Jewish story:

A traveler arrived in a village in the middle of winter to find an old man shivering in the cold outside the synagogue. “What are you doing here?” asked the traveler.

“I’m waiting for the coming of the messiah,”

“That must be an important job,” said the traveler. “The community must pay you a lot of money.”

“No, not at all. They just let me sit here on this bench.
Once in a while someone gives me a little food.”

“That must be hard. But even if they don’t pay you, they
must honor you for doing this important work.”

“No, not at all, they think I’m crazy.”

“I don’t understand. They don’t pay you, they don’t
respect you. You sit in the cold, shivering and hungry
What kind of job is this?”

“Well, it’s steady work.”