NA28 + LXX

Check this out:

I just saw that this nice volume from the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft is putting together both the Septuagint and the NT together into one massive text.

According to Eisenbrauns, this book runs at over 3,100 pages!

It will include an apparatus criticus among other things, so seems like a great resource for those of you who want access to both the LXX and NT in one book. Though at 3,100+ pages, I wonder what kind of dimensions it will have. I tried to search to find what its thickness would be but could only find its length and width dimensions and no depth.

I already own their standard Septuaginta and the recently published NA28, so I probably won't buy this, but I thought some of you might be interested. Forthcoming Fall of this year.

New issue of Interpretation

The October issue of the journal, Interpretation, is out. Over the summer, I read a book titled, The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture, by Christian Smith, so this issue is especially interesting given Joel B. Green's review of the book. He recognizes that he is not an "expert" in the field by any means (he is a Harvard-trained sociologist) but at the same time tries to give his own account of how some of the fundamentalist reading of Scripture has become untenable. I thought it was a bit of fresh air to see how someone outside the biblical-studies guild would engage this issue, and though I haven't read Green's review (I will later today), it should be interesting to see how an "expert" in the field receives Smith's account. One interesting fact: Christian Smith was a professor of sociology at UNC prior to his appointment at Notre Dame, and apparently, he is a good friend of one of my former teachers at Duke, Douglas Campbell (at least it seems that way from Smith's Foreword in the book).  

If you haven't read Smith's book yet, I highly recommend you do so (it's a quick read), then jump over to Joel Green's review and see how he understands Smith's arguments.

HT: Nijay Gupta

Testimonium Flavianum

I've been just trying to understand a bit more about what Josephus offers in NT studies, and today's post is just one small intersection between Josephus and the NT. The title of the blog post is about a passage (which scholars call testimonium flavianum) from Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews, which contains the following (at least as the text we have today):

About this time comes Jesus, a wise man, if indeed it is proper to call him a man. For he was a worker of incredible deeds, a teacher of those who accept the truth with pleasure, and attracted many Jews as well as many of the Greek. This man was the Christ (ὁ χριστὸς οὗτος ἦν). And when, in view of [his] denunciation by the leading men among us, Pilate had sentenced him to a cross, those who had loved at the beginning did not cease [to do so]. He appeared to them on the third day alive again, for the divine prophets had announced these and countless other marvels concerning him. And even now the tribe of the "Christians"—named after him—has not yet disappeared.
Ant. 18:63-64

What's striking is the sentence in the Greek shown above, a succinct and unqualified assertion that Jesus was the Christ. In all of the Josephus corpus, he only uses the term "Christ" twice (here and in Ant. 20:200). I think most (if not all) scholars would be agreed that Josephus was not a Christian by any means, and therefore, this statement is somewhat at odds with how Josephus normally thought and wrote in the rest of his literature. This then engenders a few questions:

(1) Is this testimonium original to Josephus?
(2) Is this a later whole cloth creation by later Christian scribes?
(3) Did Josephus mention Jesus in some other way that provided the foundation from which later editors were able to create this assertion?
(4) Was Josephus a Christian? (if we were allowed to entertain this as a viable option)

I can understand why most scholars view this as a later redaction (or insertion) by Christian scribes, but I suppose if that was true, why only here and why in such a brief note? I would think that if they wanted to make Jesus available within Josephus' writings, they might as well scatter a few more pieces of information elsewhere (and possibly in larger chunks)...

Know your Bible

This CNN article lists various "phantom passages" that are often mistaken as being found in the Bible. Some interesting ones are:

"This, too, shall pass"
"God helps those who help themselves"
"Spare the rod, spoil the child"
"God works in mysterious ways"

I think I've actually heard some of these phrases used as if one was quoting from Scripture. Have you heard of any others?

What's up, Michelangelo?

I always wondered why some sculptures of Moses, including this one from Michelangelo, looked like this (do you see what I see?):

Moses has horns!?! I learned today that it was due to a mistranslation of the Latin Vulgate of the theophany described in Exodus 34. Exodus 34:29 reads, "Moses came down from Mount Sinai. As he came down from the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant in his hand, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God." The word "shone" here is the verb קָרַן which is a very rare verb in the OT (which can cause translation problems as we can see here). In one sense, it can mean "to send out rays" but in another "to display horns." The Latin Vulgate translates this verse as: "cumque descenderet Moses de monte Sinai tenebat duas tabulas testimonii et ignorabat quod cornuta esset facies sua ex consortio sermonis Dei." The verb here is translated as cornuta which is a derivation of the word cornu for "horn." I guess it's too bad for Moses that one of the greatest artists of the Renaissance didn't read Hebrew...

What's in a letter?

Q.

J.

E.

D.

P.

These are all letters that are short for certain hypothetical documents that according to source criticism, redactors have used to form certain documents of the Old Testament (e.g. the Pentateuch) and the New Testament (e.g. the Gospels). Obviously I'm not at the level of a, say, Julius Wellhausen, but still, these hypothetical sources still confuse me at best and annoy me at worst. How do scholars posit such a certainty of these documents when as far as I know, no independent sources apart from the current "redactional" states (i.e. the forms as it is appropriated in the Scriptures) exist? I'm currently in an OT interpretations class, and the lectures have been very stimulating so far, but when it comes to the issue of Documentary Hypothesis, I've never been fully convinced no matter where I hear it (not when I heard it first at Talbot and not now at Duke). Is there something to these conclusions through source-criticism that I'm not getting? I guess I'm not too terribly off-track on some levels because even one Professor here at Duke, Mark Goodacre, rejects "Q."

Anyone else have any thoughts on this? What's your take on source-criticism in general, and these specific sources specifically?

WWJHLL

What would Jesus have looked like? (WWJHLL) Here are some popular and past depictions:

Many popular depictions show Jesus with light-brown hair, sharp blue eyes, and a well trimmed beard with very European features. One of the pictures above even shows an Asian depiction of Jesus. In Popular Mechanics 2002, they think he looked more like this: I suppose that does more justice to his Palestinian roots, it was just very different than any other depictions of Jesus I've seen. WWJHLL?

Maundy Thursday

This year, it happens to fall on that odd day we call April Fool's. Well, today happens to be a much better day than that: Maundy Thursday, the day that Jesus enjoyed the Last Supper with his disciples.

I always wondered why they called it "Maundy", so I just did a little bit of digging regarding the origin of the name. There are various theories, but I think there was one that was particularly fitting: It is a derivation of a word from Old French, mandé from the Latin mandatum. This happens to be the first word from John 13:34 in Latin:

Mandatum novum do vobis, ut diligatis invicem; sicut dilexi vos, ut et vos diligatis invicem.

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another.

There are two other important statements from the Gospel accounts that are titled after the first word that appears in Latin: (1)The Magnificat, the Song of Mary in Luke 1:46-55 and (2) The Benedictus, Song of Zechariah in Luke 1:68-79. So, in my opinion, the Latin verse origin of Maundy Thursday seems like a good guess. Also, if we follow the Gospel accounts of Jesus' activities, John 13-17 happens to fall on Thursday, so that seems to fit. Of course this is all in the realm of conjecture, but better than April Fool's.

How did the disciples...

know what Moses and Elijah looked like? I never gave it much thought but today, I just started wondering about this scene in Mark 9:2-10 (pars. Matthew 17:1-9, Luke 9:28-36) when Jesus took his inner circle (Peter, James, and John) up to the mountain where he talks with Moses and Elijah in transfigured form. I don't know if this is an irrelevant question, but honestly, in a day without pictures or videos, how would you be able to identify someone a thousand years past? Would they tell their children, "Look son, if you ever see a man with a long white beard with a cool staff, he's Moses, and if you ever see a man wearing a garment of hair with a leather belt, he's Elijah"...? Or did Jesus say, "By the way guys, this is Moses and Elijah, say hi"? I might be missing something altogether, but this was very odd to me as I was reading the passage today... Anyone have any thoughts?

Paul's Use of the OT

Romans 1:16-17 stands as one of the great statements of the apostle Paul, capped by Paul's quotation of Habakkuk 2:4. Notice the slight difference in Paul's quote from the OT context:

Romans 1:17
For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, "The one who is righteous will live by faith." (ὁ δὲ δίκαιος ἐκ πίστεως ζήσεται)

Hab. 2:4 MT
Behold, his soul is puffed up; it is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by his faith. (וְצַדִּ֖יק בֶּאֱמוּנָת֥וֹ יִחְיֶֽה)

Hab. 2:4 LXX
If he should draw back, my soul has no pleasure in him: but the just shall live by my faith. (ὁ δὲ δίκαιος ἐκ πίστεώς μου ζήσεται)

Richard Hays writes in his book:

In the Hebrew text of Habakkuk, God's answer to the prophet is an exhortation to keep the faith: "The righteous one shall live by his faithfulness," that is, the person who remains faithful will be rewarded in the end by God. The LXX, however, has reinterpreted the dictum as a promise about the character of God: "The righteous one shall live by my faithfulness," that is, God's own integrity in preserving the covenant with Israel will ultimately be confirmed. As Paul allows the quotation to reverberate into the text of Romans he elides the crucial personal pronoun, so that we hear only "the righteous one shall live by faithfulness." Whose faithfulness? We are not told. The ambiguity thus created allows the echoed oracle to serve simultaneously as a warrant for two different claims that Paul has made in his keynote formulation of the gospel: in the gospel God's own righteousness is revealed; and the gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.

I think Hays comment is very shrewd and Paul's use of the Scripture is brilliant!

The Maker

One of my favorite bands is Dave Matthews Band, and here is Dave Matthews jamming with Tim Reynolds... great song:



"The Maker" (by Daniel Lanois)

Oh, oh deep water, black and cold like the night
I stand with arms wide open
I've run a twisted line
I'm a stranger in the eyes of the Maker
And I could not see for the fog in my eyes
I could not feel for the fear in my life

From across the great divide
In the distance I saw the light
Of John Baptist walking to me with the Maker
My body is bent and broken by long and dangerous sleep
I can't work the fields of Abraham and turn my head away
I'm not a stranger in the hands of the Maker

Brother John, have you seen the homeless daughters
Standing there with broken wings
I have seen the flaming sword
There over east of Eden
Burning in the eyes of the Maker
Burning in the eyes of the Maker
Burning in the eyes of the Maker

Oh, river rise from your sleep
Oh, river rise from your sleep
Oh, river rise from your sleep

Why are you throwing down your crowns?

Revelation 4:9-10 has a very interesting picture of the elders before the throne of God:

And whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to the one who is seated on the throne, who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall before the one who is seated on the throne and worship the one who lives forever and ever; they cast their crowns before the throne...

I've been reading through D.E. Aune's Apocalypticism, Prophecy, and Magic in Early Christianity, and he gives a few good quotations from Greco-Roman lit. that helps to understand this scene:

Embassies (πρεσβεῖαι) also in the meantime came from Greece, and their envoys (πρέσβεις) themselves crowned, came forward and crowned Alexander with golden crowns, as if they had come on a sacred embassy to honour some god (Anab. Alex.; LCL trans.)

The Italian cities sent delegations (πρεσβεῖας) of their prominent citizens dressed in white, wearing laurel wreaths and all bringing with them the statues of their local gods and any golden crowns that were among their dedications (Herodian 8.7.2; LCL trans.)

He ends this paragraph by stating, "The heavenly scene of the twenty-four elders throwing down their crowns before the throne has no parallel in Israelite-Jewish literature, and become comprehensible only in light of the ceremonial traditions of Hellenistic and Roman ruler worship" (Aune, 107).

Interesting!

φυσικὴν χρῆσιν?

Today, I read part of another chapter in J. Paul Sampley's Paul in the Greco-Roman World titled 'Paul, Families, and Households' by David L. Balch. So far it's been very interesting and good read overall, but I knew somewhere down the line I would run into something that would raise my eyebrows and today was it:

"Another key text for understanding Paul's attitude toward sexuality is Rom 1. Focusing on Greco-Roman philosophic and literary ways of conceptualizing sexual matters, Fredrickson concludes that 'in Romans 1:24-27 Paul points to the problem of passion without introducing the modern dichotomy of homo-hetero-sexuality.' Like his contemporaries, Paul writes about 'natural use' (φυσικὴν χρῆσιν) and 'unnatural use' (χρῆσιν … τὴν παρὰ φύσιν) of sexual desire (1:26, 27), which was thought to be analogous to the natural use of hunger. The pleasure of sex, then, is to be limited by satisfaction, just as a wise person with a full stomach limits eating. As we saw above, this use of 'natural' does not raise the question of the gender of either the subject or the object of sexual desire. Plutarch (Advice to Bride and Groom 144B) also refers to the wife's 'use' of the husband, to which Paul probably refers in Rom 1:26... which is not then a reference to lesbian sexual activity... Fredrickson agrees with Martin: by 'against nature', Paul means not 'disoriented desire' but 'inordinate desire.'" (Sampley, 277-278)

While the argument seems cogent enough, it seems to me that if we properly read Rom. 1:25 that establishes the Διὰ τοῦτο ("for this reason") in 1:26, it cannot be understated that the indictment found in this section is rooted in creation (e.g. serving the creation more than the Creator). Here's what a few people have said regarding this paragraph:

C.E.B. Cranfield, Romans: A Shorter Commentary, 35:

"By 'natural' and 'contrary to nature' Paul clearly means 'in accordance with the Creator's intention' and 'contrary to the Creator's intention', respectively. It is not impossible that Paul had some awareness of the great importance which 'nature' had in Greek thought for centuries; that he was aware of it use in contemporary popular philosophy is very likely. But the decisive factor in his use of it is his biblical doctrine of creation."

Douglas Moo, Romans (NICNT), 114-115:

"Paul generally uses the word 'nature' to describe the way things are by reason of their intrinsic state or birth, and in these cases there is no clear reference to divine intention. Some scholars in recent years especially, noting this, have argued that Paul does not here brand homosexuality as a violation of God's will... But Paul's use of the word 'nature' in this verse probably owes much to Jewish authors, particularly Philo... Sexual sins that are 'against nature' are also, then, against God, and it is this close association that makes it probable that Paul's appeal to 'nature' in this verse includes appeal to God's created order.

I'm just very skeptical that Balch is pushing for Paul's reference to Plutarch over against Philo and other Jewish writings...

What do you guys think?