Category Archives: Biblical Studies

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Those Philistines!

Adding to Jim Davila’s post on the Philistines, among others, there’s another interesting tidbit to add.

The online Oxford English Dictionary’s etymology for Philistine refers us to the etymology for philister:

The use of the word in this sense is said to have originated at Jena in 1693, in a sermon from the text Philister über dir, Simson! ‘The Philistines are upon you, Samson!’ (Judges 16:9, 12, 14, 20) preached by Pastor Götze at the funeral of one of the students who had been killed in a quarrel between townspeople and students, but it was apt. in fact already in use in Jena in 1687.

The definition for philister is “An unenlightened or uncultured person; = PHILISTINE n. 3; (spec. in German universities) a townsperson, a non-student.” The earliest usages included in both entries date to the 1820s, however, so Pastor Götze is not to receive credit for introducing the connotation of Philistine as boor to the English. The Hebrew Bible itself also cannot be held accountable for this usage, as there’s no trace of the derogatory reuse of פלשתי in reference to those who are not ethnic Philistines. It’s not too surprising that later familiarity with the Old Testament along with some extrabiblical supersessionist ideas about Israel’s ancient neighbors led to this connotation among Europeans who considered themselves several rungs further up the ladder than even the Israelites. Fun stuff!

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That Jesus Tomb Stuff

Tyler Williams over at Codex has begun keeping track of the best posts amongst the Biblioblogs in response to the latest media pseudo-scandal about a particular tomb near Jerusalem being that of Jesus’ family, friends, followers, dog-walker, and pool-cleaner, no doubt. See particularly this post which highlights a response from James Tabor, who is marginally (and/or should that be “scandalously”?) involved in the project. Keep watching there, as I’m sure he continue with the round-ups.

In addition, see this excellent post by Jim Davila at Palaeojudaica, which includes input from his colleague at St Andrews, Richard Bauckham, who provides some fascinating information on the distribution of various Greek forms of “Mary,” particularly the surprising (to me) information that the Greek form μαριαμνη, “Mariamne,” is unique in Biblically-related literature to the Acts of Philip. I think I was thrown off on that score by the old Whiston-translated edition of Josephus’ works, which I internalized long ago. Whiston regularly uses “Mariamne,” where modern editions have μαριαμμη throughout. I wonder if that’s a peculiarity of the admittedly peculiar Whiston, or a peculiarity of the edition(s) he utilized? In any case, Bauckham’s careful statistical information on name distribution in among first-century Jews in his Jesus and the Eyewitnesses is a good read on the subject. His work is a lesson in how to do this kind of name research.

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Bauckham’s …Eyewitnesses

Having been reading Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses over the last few weeks when I could squeeze in the time, I have to say that I have found myself non-plussed. As I mentioned in response to several readers’ inquiries, I found E. Earle Ellis’ work on the subject of “traditioning” and his scenario for the production of the Gospels, as found in The Making of the New Testament Documents and in the shorter History and Interpretation in New Testament Perspective to be not only more convincing, indeed compelling, but in particular better in interaction with various other trends of scholarship. I have found Bauckham’s work to be very interesting, to be sure, but the digressions and the overall diffuseness of argumentation without specific referents for opposing viewpoints (perhaps something to be expected from an Eerdmans book, admittedly more popular than scholarly press?), the relatively scanty annotation, and the numerous distracting lists to lead me away from taking it as more than a thought excercise, a published notebook of sorts. In comparison, the treatment of tradition in NT formation by Ellis is well-argued, well-discussed, and well-annotated, particularly with reference to German Biblical scholarship, which is typically where the most serious opposition to traditionary approaches to New Testament (and Old Testament, etc) formation has come from. I suppose that Bauckham’s work is gaining the better press as it is coming from a press that has been able to distribute more copies at a lower price than both of Ellis’ above-mentioned works, which are published by Brill, so they are, of course, both out of print in hardback, were extremely expensive when in print, with only The Making of the New Testament Documents now in paperback, though even that appears to have run out of print now as well. That’s a shame, that such excellent work on this subject hasn’t received the attention that it deserves. Traditionary input is not even so much a matter of faith as it is common sense. Who else would even have cared about Jesus or the very first Christians? The Romans? The Judean authorities? The Galilean Gentiles? Hardly. Those who witnessed bore witness to it.

These accounts were passed on from that point, sometimes becoming garbled and adulterated. But there have always been groups of people receiving and faithfully passing on what was passed down from earlier generations, leading all through the years from those first disciples down to the present, otherwise all those books would have been lost long ago. In the same way, there have been those through the years who have taken that message and run with it in another direction. Depending upon the place and time, sometimes the former were in the majority, sometimes the latter, sometimes the traditional and “orthodox,” sometimes the innovating and “heretical.” None of this is in question except in perhaps the outer limits of extremely skeptical scholarship, I had thought. On second thought, perhaps not.

The reason that Bauckham and others are finding it necessary to belabor the point of traditionary input in the formation of the New Testament perhaps lies not only in the extreme reaches of skeptical scholarship, but also lies in the extreme anti-traditionary aspects of certain trends in modern popular religion. I’ve heard with my own ears and read with my own eyes various derogatory references to “tradition” in various thoughtless low-browed works. Of course, the same will reference “ancient Christian tradition” and even quote some Church Fathers when it suits their purposes, in a species of unreflective proof-texting run rampant.

Nonetheless, Bauckham is an interesting read, but not one that has managed to hold my attention at the moment, unfortunately. It has now joined McDonald’s The Biblical Canon (see my short review) on a particular shelf for me to return to when I actually don’t have something better to read. But that’s just me! I enjoy reading other reviews, and expect to see a number of them appearing on various blogs, as it appears that numerous Biblical studies bloggers are currently reading the book. It’ll be a good thing to compare notes, in the end.

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The Lord is my Shepherd

Here is a collection of some translations of Psalm 23/22 including a couple that are not widely available. In the Hebrew-based count of Psalms it is number 23, but Psalm 22 in the LXX-based count of Psalms.

King James Version
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
He leadeth me beside the still waters:
He restoreth my soul:
He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His Name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me;
Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies:
Thou anointest by head with oil;
my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life:
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord fore ever.

Continue reading “The Lord is my Shepherd”

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McDonald’s Biblical Canon

Consider this an explanation of the reason that I’ve yanked a 500+ page book out of my “Currently Reading” slot on the blog, after having read not even 100 pages. The book is Lee Martin McDonald’s The Biblical Canon: Its Origin, Transmission, and Authority (Hendrickson, 2007). I’m just not enjoying this book. In fact I’m finding it hard to read. I blame the editor. Its argumentation is diffuse and meandering. The writing is peppered with infelicities of expression, quizzical solecisms, and astounding propositions.

An example of a quizzical solecism: “These stelae, from around 600 B.C.E. to roughly 300 B.C.E., are quite uniform in style, progressing from one-dimensional to two-dimensional and finally three-dimensional stelae” [pp 39-40]. Now, I suppose he means the artistic depictions on the stelae go from painted (?) to bas relief (?) to sculpture in round (?), but that’s not what he says. A one- or two-dimensional stele is a physical impossibility.

As an example of an astounding proposition:

Along with the Prophets, a body of literature, some of which was written well before 200 B.C.E. and some perhaps even later (e.g., Daniel), circulated widely among the Jews. These writings circulated in Palestine and were later translated from Hebrew into Greek

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Like the sands of their own deserts

The spoilers are come upon all high places through the wilderness. The robbers shall enter into it, &c. [Jeremiah 12.12; 7.22]
The land of Israel has not only been given into the hands of strangers for a prey, and unto the wicked of the earth for a spoil, as foreign nations have successively subjugated and despoiled it; but it has also been the prey of bordering marauders, to whose assaults it has for ages been exposed. “These precautions, on the part of travellers, are above all necessary in the countries exposed to the Arabs, such as Palestine and the whole frontier of the desert.” [Volney’s Travels, vol. ii. p. 417.] “The Arabs are plunderers of the cultivated lands, and robbers on the highroads. —On the slightest alarm the Arabs cut down their (the peasants’) harvests, seize their flocks, &c. The peasants with good cause call them thieves. The Arab makes his incursions against hostile tribes, or seeks plunder in the country or on the highways. He became a robber from greediness, and such is in fact his present character. A plunderer rather than a warrior, the Arab attacks only to despoil.” [Ibid. chap. xxiii.] Such is the systematic spoliation and robbery to which the inhabitants of Palestine have been subjected for ages. Mr Stanley’s testimony may here be added: “In Greece and Italy and Spain, it is the mountainous tract which is beset with banditti—the level country which is safe. In Palestine, on the contrary, the mountain tracts are comparitively secure, though infested by villages of hereditary ruffians here and there; but the plains, with hardly an exception, are more or less dangerous . . . . The Bedouin tribes are the corsairs of the wilderness. Far up in the plains of Philistia and Sharon come the Arabs of the Tîh; deep into the centre of Palestine, into the plain of Esdraelon, especially when the harvest has left the fields clear for pasturage, come the Arabs of the Haurân and of Gilead. But now, like the sands of their own deserts which engulph the monuments of Egypt, no longer defended by a watchful and living population, they have broken in upon the country far and near; and in the total absence of solitary dwelling-places—in the gathering together of all the settled inhabitants into villages, and in the walls which, as at Jerusalem, enclose the cities round, with locked gates and guarded towers—we see the effect of the constant terror which they inspire.” [Stanley, pp. 135, 136.]

Rev Alexander Keith. Evidence of the Truth of the Christian Religion Derived From the Literal Fulfilment of Prophecy: Particularly As Illustrated by the History of the Jews and by the Discoveries of Recent Travellers. Thirty-Ninth Edition. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1872. Pages 189-190. Emphasis his.

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Biblical Archaeology

Over the past few decades, for a number of reasons “Biblical Archaeology” has fallen out of favor in the academy. One of those reasons, very much a charicature of the best of the field, was the perception that its practitioners were out to “prove the Bible.” Undoubtedly there were secondary and tertiary applications of the findings of Biblical Archaeology, usually tied to confessional interests, which abused the data, indeed claiming them to have proved the Bible correct in various ways.

Here is how G. Ernest Wright, one of the most eminent of the proponents of Biblical Archaeology defined the field in the beginning of his book on the subject:

Biblical archaeology is a special “armchair” variety of general archaeology. The biblical archaeologist may or may not be an excavator himself, but he studies the discoveries of the excavations in order to glean from them every fact that throws a direct, indirect or even diffused light upon the Bible. He must be intelligently concerned with stratigraphy and typology, upon which the methodology of modern archaeology rests and of which more will be said later in this chapter. Yet his chief concern is not with methods or pots or weapons in themselves alone. His central and absorbing interest is the understanding and exposition of the Scriptures.
Biblical Archaeology (Westminster Press, 1962), 17.

Interestingly, Wright describes Biblical Archaeology as a tool of exegesis, yet one rooted in realia rather than literary theory. Nowadays, some modern Biblical critics regard the Biblical texts as wholly fictional, tendentious, and lacking in all connection to realia, so to draw on archaeology for illuminating realia as Wright describes above is, in such perspectives, ludicrous. Such a severe disjunction is, however, generally considered extreme and unwarranted. The Bible is a document originating in the ancient Near East, in a particular territory, and describes various people, places, and events in that territory and others. And while various items of realia, the remains of cities, and so on do indeed support numerous elements of the Biblical narratives, to take those direct and indirect corroborations and illuminations and state that the entire Bible is thereby “proved” in its entirety by them, is likewise unwarranted. Wright also deals with this abuse:

In this perspective the biblical scholar no longer bothers to ask whether archaeology “proves” the Bible. In the sense that the biblical languages, the life and customs of its peoples, its history, and its conceptions are illuminated in innumerable ways by the archaeological discoveries, he knows that such a question is certainly to be answered in the affirmative. No longer does this literature project from the chaos of prehistory “as though it were a monstrous fossil, with no contemporary evidence to demonstrate its authenticity.” Yet the scholar also knows that the primary purpose of biblical archaeology is not to “prove” but to discover. The vast majority of the “finds” neither prove nor disprove; they fill in the background and give the setting for the story. It is unfortunate that this desire to “prove” the Bible has vitiated so many works which are available to the average reader. The evidence has been misused, and the inferences drawn from it are so often misleading, mistaken, or half true. Our ultimate aim must not be “proof,” but truth. We must study the history of the Chosen People in exactly the same way as we do that of any other people, running the risk of destroying the uniqueness of that history. Unless we are willing to run that risk, truth can never be ours.
Biblical Archaeology, 27.

That’s a very enlightening passage, which puts into relief much modern vituperation against Biblical Archaeology, complaints about “Albrightian” approaches, and so on. Wright was well aware, as was Albright, that the data were being misused by some unscrupulous authors in order to “prove the Bible.” To lump Albright, Wright, et alia, and this misuse of Biblical Archaeology together with such misuse is either misinformed or dishonest. Biblical Archaeology itself, properly understood as defined in the first quote above from Wright, is a perfectly legitimate practice. It is, in all actuality, simply archaeology.

On the other hand, since the term “Biblical Archaeology” has become entirely associated with that misuse, from the late twentieth century critical scholarship has been moving away from use of the term. Especially illustrative of this is that the journal The Biblical Archaeologist, published by the organization American Schools of Oriental Research, experienced a name change in 1998 to Near Eastern Archaeology. Largely this was due to the fact that the journal generally comprised articles that had nothing to do with biblical subjects, but the former name’s connotation indeed played a role, as discussions upon the proposition of the name change revealed.

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Temple, Church, Dome

Just last week, Eastern Orthodox Christians commemorated the entrance of Mary (the Theotokos, “God-birther,” the mother of Jesus) into the Jerusalem Temple. If you’re not familiar with this somewhat surprising story, as many western Christians aren’t, then you may read the tale in the Protevangelium of James, which, while it is certainly an apocryphal text and no part of the canon of Scripture, nonetheless it is recognized to contain many of the same traditions held by Orthodox Christians concerning Mary, which traditions are expressed in hymnography and hagiography. One of these is that Joachim and Anna, Mary’s parents, dedicated her to the Jerusalem Temple as a young girl, where she lived in the Holy of Holies (!) and was fed by an angel. Later, she left the Temple and was entrusted to Joseph. The rest of the story will be familiar.

What is important about this set of stories is its impact particularly among Eastern Christians, particularly early ones (note that the Protevangelium of James dates to roughly the middle of the second century, showing these stories took root very early), and most especially those wealthier among them who were responsible for building churches in the Holy Land. It was believed by early Christians that the child Mary literally lived in the Holy of Holies in the Jerusalem Temple, however unlikely or impossible this was, and however much we may rather prefer to find this allegorically describing her life of faith, purity, and devotion. This led someone, at some point prior to the late fifth century, to construct a Church of Mary Theotokos on the site of the ancient Jewish Temple, the plan of which is, I suggest, preseved by the current Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.

Several lines of evidence support this:
1.) The foundation of an identical Church of Mary Theotokos precisely atop the ruined Samaritan Temple on Mt Gerizim was built by Emperor Zeno in 484 AD. The choice of a Church of Mary Theotokos there would otherwise be odd, as no traditions relate her life to Gerizim or the Samaritan Temple. Yet, if Zeno were simply treating one set of Temple ruins like another, it would make sense to have the two matching ruins covered with two matching shrines. Thus, the church in Jerusalem will likely have been built earlier than his reign (474-491 AD), though named at the very least if not indeed constructed after the Council of Chalcedon, during which “Theotokos” was argued upon and accepted as the proper Christian title for Mary, indicating Jesus was God and not merely Christ/Messiah. So it was probably built (or at least begun) during the very active construction in the time when the former Empress Eudocia was resident in Jerusalem, roughly 441-460 AD. This founding in the later fifth century would explain why it is not mentioned by Egeria and Jerome.
2.) Justinian’s huge and famous “Nea” church was actually named the New Church of Mary Theotokos, requiring there to be an older church of Mary the Theotokos somewhere in the city, while none is specifically mentioned in the records. The most obvious location would be the Temple Mount, with a Church of Mary Theotokos there to commemorate her living there.
3.) All the known various elements of Mary’s life were commemorated by churches, even a stop for a break between Jerusalem and Ain Karem, the recently rediscovered Kathisma church, also octagonal in plan (as was the original eastern end of the Nativity Basilica in Bethlehem built in the fourth century over the traditional site of the birth cave of Jesus, and the fifth-century structure built over the house of Peter in Capernaum). It is highly unlikely that the otherwise precisely located and unused area of the ruined Jerusalem Temple, based upon the tradition of her childhood there, were not similarly commemorated.
4.) Recent and ongoing sifting of the fill from the Temple Mount has brought to light much evidence of an early Byzantine Christian presence on the platform, in contrast to the former belief that the site was abandoned and used as a dump, which tale was mere propaganda found solely in Islamic sources regarding the building of the Dome of the Rock. (While it is true that every church except the Basilica of the Nativity in Bethlehem was destroyed by the Persians in 614, and thus many churches were still in ruins at the point of the Arab invasion in 638, it does not follow that such ruins were of long standing.) The presence of this memorial Church of Mary Theotokos, undoubtedly one of the pilgrim sites in Jerusalem, would account for these materials.
5.) Further evidence is the choice of Quranic verses for the interior of the Dome of the Rock, denying Jesus being the Son of God, which were chosen not randomly, but in reaction to the former dedication of this church to Mary the Theotokos, which was essentially an important statement about the Son Mary bore being God, and not just a man.

In conclusion, it is, I think, beyond doubt that a Church of Mary Theotokos was constructed in about the middle of the fifth century on the Temple Mount over the ruins of the Jerusalem Temple in order to commemorate the Eastern Christian tradition of Mary having grown up in the Temple itself. It may even have been at that point that the stairway and cave beneath the central rock (the former floor of the Holy of Holies) was cut, in order to provide a “luminous cave” as found in various other of the commemorated Holy Land sites (Annunciation in Nazareth, Nativity in Bethlehem, Eleona on Mt Olivet, Anastasis in Jerusalem, etc), though this may even have been done in Crusader times. The plan of the presently standing Dome of the Rock preserves the plan of this ancient church (and perhaps even some of the structural elements as examination of the beams of the Dome of the Rock indicate they are older than they should be) which would have been destroyed by the Persians, along with most other churches in the Holy Land, only a few decades before the Dome itself was constructed. This makes the Dome of the Rock that much more interesting, I think, in addition to being the most beautiful building in Jerusalem.

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Genealogies and Monarchy

Probably the most foundational item of the hypothetical Priestly (“P”) source in Wellhausenesque source criticism of the Hebrew Bible, effectively the traditional scholarly standard, is that P is responsible for the genealogies in the OT, and various genealogy-like elements (lists, passages like Genesis 1 displaying a particularly repetitive structure, etc, considered so on the analogy of “things vaguely genealogy-like”). The source of this rather non-intuitive connection of genealogies in particular with priests is found in one of the stories of the return in Ezra 2, where certain of the returning priests were not able to be found listed in the (seemingly official) genealogies, and so were excluded by the governor (2.63) from eating the priestly portion of the sacrifices. The intervention of the governor, rather than the high priest, may also be taken to indicate that the genealogical information was under the governor’s control, not the priests’. Yet there is further indication that the genealogies are not particularly “priestly.” Firstly, in this particular instance in Ezra 2, we find the priests interested in their own genealogies, not particularly everyone else’s, with a particular focus on who is eligible to receive portions of the sacrifices. The importance of this ritual aspect of the interest in the families of the returned priests doesn’t, however, apply to all the various genealogies found in the Pentateuch and Former Prophets, where such ritual matters are completely unmentioned in connection with the genealogies. It’s a bit of special pleading to stretch the Ezra 2 evidence so far. Secondly, there is a trend to be found in the genealogies as they are found in the Pentateuch and Former Prophets, and this tendency or direction is an important one. It indicates that David, and thereafter the Son of David, is not only rightful king of Israel as seen through this genealogy, but he is essentially the firstborn son of God, and the firstborn or the entire human race.

Notice the “drilling down” of the genealogies and related stories, preserving the line of Adam’s firstborn in Genesis 5 and 11, leading to Abraham, then of course the unusual birth of Isaac in Genesis 21, then the birth of Jacob and Esau, and Esau selling his birthright to Jacob in Genesis 25 and Jacob tricking Isaac to receive the blessing in Genesis 27, and then the birth of all of Jacob’s sons, the eponymous heads of the tribes of Israel. Things then get tricky! Since Jacob has two wives and two concubines, and has had 12 sons and one daughter through them, which one is depicted as his firstborn? We find that this position of favored son moves around quite a bit. First, Reuben is Jacob’s true firstborn son (as explicitly stated in Genesis 35.23, 46.8, and 49.3), born to his wife Leah, followed by Simeon, Levi, and Judah, before any other children are born to any of the other ladies (Gen 29.31-35). Reuben, however, does the unthinkable and sleeps with his father’s concubine (Gen 35.22). This apparently bumps the favored son status in two different directions, however. Firstly, Simeon and Levi lose out because of their violence in killing all the incapacitated men of Shechem (Gen 34; cf Gen 49.5-7), and this leaves the role of head of the sons with Judah, as seen in Genesis 49.9-10. Secondly, some part of the birthright blessing is indicated as having moved from the sons born to Jacob’s first wife Leah, to those born of his second, more loved wife Rachel (cf the blessing of Joseph’s sons in Gen 48, and the explicit statement in this regard in 1 Chronicles 5.1). So, we see a split blessing, of rulership in Judah as the firstborn, and the “birthright” (of “firstborn’s blessing” likely referring to the “double portion” to be inherited by the firstborn, as in Deuteronomy 21.17) in Ephraim and Manasseh. It’s unclear whether the “double portion” for Ephraim and Manasseh is considered to be the two separate tribes themselves (Ephraim and Manasseh, rather than a single tribe of Joseph), or the large, Jordan-straddling territory of Manasseh in combination with the fertility of that land and that of Ephraim, or perhaps all of the above. And, of course, David was depicted as descended in a direct line from Judah through Perez (who possesses an unusual birth tale of his own in Genesis 38), and so on, down through Boaz and Ruth, to Obed, then Jesse, David’s father (see Ruth 4 and 1 Chronicles 2). While this part of the genealogy is fully preserved only in those two places, it would likely have been well-publicized in the days of David.

I suggest that part of that publicizing is precisely the Pentateuch and Former Prophets (Joshua through Samuel, with 1 Kings up through, likely, only chapter 10 initially) with the inclusion of Ruth. The original framework of the structure of Genesis, the genealogies upon which the stories are hung like charms on a bracelet, in connection particularly with the book of Ruth, lead in the direction of legitimizing David’s rule as not only as ruler of Israel through his birthright, but as ruler of the entire world as in the line of the firstborn son of Adam, and also thereby, the line of the firstborn son of God (see especially the high view of the newborn Son of David in Isaiah 7, and Psalms 2 and 110). This group of books, I suggest, was first put together in the days of Solomon to provide this legitimation, and to enhance the standing of the Son of David in his particular role religiously as Son of God, as well. In contrast to the Wellhausenian approach of removing the genealogies as a particular source, this suggestion views them as an important clue as to the original intent of the work in which they appear. The various gymnastics that are described in the transfer of the birthright blessings are typically not understood as leading in any particular direction, their being usually understood separate sources. However, they do tell an important story in the books as they stand, one of legitimation just as necessary to every new dynast as in any other ancient nation, where we find iterations of lists of prior kings to which the newcomer is always somehow related (see the Assyrian King Lists, especially relevant, which preserve the fiction [?] of only a single dynasty of rulers throughout Assyrian history). For this reason, the genealogies must be seen not as intrusive sections of a fictive Priestly source, but rather as a part of the original author’s work of providing a history that legitimizes David and his dynasty in the eyes of other Israelites as not only the heir to the Patriarchs, but indeed also as Son of God.

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