A great discussion on "Paul and Early Judaism"

Earlier this week my "Paul and Early Judaism" graduate seminar took a whirlwind tour of early Jewish writings with the aid of several chapters in John Collins and Daniel Harlow, eds, Early Judaism: A Comprehensive Overview (Eerdmans, 2012). We looked at James Kugel's chapter on "Early Jewish Biblical Interpretation," Loren Stuckenbruck's contribution on "Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha," Eibert Tigchelaar's chapter on "The Dead Sea Scrolls," and Katell Berthelot's review of "Early Jewish Literature Written in Greek." Though some students had also prepared the chapters on Philo and on Josephus, we (not surprisingly) ended up having to put those on hold until next week. In between student presentations and summaries of this material, we looked at a few examples that illustrated some of the dynamics of each corpus that were relevant to our course on Paul. For example, a look at columns 7-8 of 1QpHab (Pesher Habakkuk) allowed a glimpse at Qumran biblical interpretation, an introduction to the Teacher of Righteousness, and whetted our appetite for examining Paul's interpretation of Hab 2:4 in comparison with the Jewish interpreters at Qumran. At the end of the three-hour session, we took stock of the ground we had covered and looked for common themes that ran throughout some or all of the bodies of writing we had surveyed. The class came up with what to me was an impressive list of features.

First, students were struck by the diversity of this early Jewish literature, particularly when faced with it all at once. Even students with a strong background in this area were surprised to see the scope and extent of this literature. They noted diversity of genre and of language, diversity of provenance and purpose, diversity of topics these writings covered, and the diversity of views represented on those topics. Second, they noted a surprising number of "connections within the chaos"; commonalities within the diversity. Despite the differences, these disparate writings all showed some kind of engagement with religious and cultural ideas that were important to Jews of antiquity. Thus, they were truly Jewish writings and not merely writings by Jewish authors. Third, they noted a "critical undercurrent" which flowed through many but not all of the texts, as the authors wrestled with finding acceptable ways to appropriate the traditions of the fathers in the tumultuous times of the Second Temple Period. Fourth, and related to the critical undercurrent, my class noted a particular emphasis on attention to the Law (the Torah) and its proper interpretation. Finally, it was noted that nearly every text was, to some extent, interpreting earlier traditions. And interpretation itself took on diverse forms: from the pesher commentaries of Qumran to the philosophical treatises of Philo to the apocalyptic visions of Enoch. In these diverse ways, this literature demonstrated the authors' concerns for seeing themselves as participants within the continuing narrative that begins in the Hebrew Bible and continues throughout the Second Temple Period.

What did this session do for our understanding of Paul? This discussion set the stage for us to be able to read Paul more closely as a writer, theologian, and person of faith who was squarely situated within this world of early Judaism. A quick look at pp. 105-108 in Lars Kierspel's charts of Pauline allusions to inter-testamental writings (compiled from the appendices of Nestle-Aland 27) helped to bring this point home. Whether Paul had read many of these texts or was only familiar with some of their contents as stock themes of Jewish diaspora synagogue teaching, Paul was a participant in the dynamics noted above: a movement containing diverse Jewish writings, interconnected in spite of the chaos, offering particular views of the Scriptures of Israel in contrast to other views, and ultimately interpreting those Scriptures--and in Paul's case the events surrounding Jesus--as part of the ongoing narrative of God's creative and redemptive work in the world.

In the end, I applaud my students for their high level of preparation this week which allowed a potentially dry class session to come to life with animated discussion. I am already looking forward to next week's class. 

Thomas Aquinas and the Bible

Photo from The Guardian -- mouse-over to view link

St. Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) is honored today in the Roman Catholic Church, which makes this the perfect day to take a look at his approach to interpreting Scripture. I recommend reading this short section of the Summa Theologiae (Question 1, Article 10, Whether in Holy Scripture a word may have several senses?) in which he discusses his view about the several senses of Scripture and responds to objections. The four senses he lists are: historical (or literal), allegorical, tropological (or moral), and anagogical. Whether one's own theology of Scripture allows for such an approach or not, there is certainly a lot to consider here. Some theologians today see in Aquinas a way of getting past the pitfalls of modernity to a more faithful way of reading Scripture. Though I am not convinced that a return to a premodern worldview (albeit in modified form) is necessarily what is called for, there is a lot to be gained by at least considering this approach and what it offers. At the very least it provides a way of reading that challenges modern assumptions and that is open to God's speaking through Scripture in a multiplicity of ways. At the same time, this way of reading attends to the importance of grounding all interpretation first in the literal sense of the words themselves--or at least beginning there.

For a quick introduction to Thomas Aquinas as a biblical theologian (with references to some recent scholarship on the subject), see this blog post at The Sacred Page by Brant Pitre and John Bergsma. Drs. Pitre and Bergsma were both just a few years ahead of me in the Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity doctoral program at the University of Notre Dame.

Early Jewish Monotheism

Just a note to an interesting post on the topic of early Jewish monotheism over on Larry Hurtado's blog. Larry is a retired professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at the University of Edinburgh, and I have been following his blog for some time. Larry's posts are always informative, and our interests in early Christianity and the New Testament overlap considerably. His 2005 book, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity, is a good introduction to historical issues related to how Jesus came to be identified with the Divine in the practices of the early Christians. His post referenced above refers to an article of his coming out later this year. He proposes the term "ancient Jewish monotheism" to describe the early Jewish commitment to worship only the one God of Israel. Students in my Paul and Early Judaism class: take note! There will be material here to add texture and perspective to our discussion of Jewish creational monotheism as explained in N.T. Wright's Paul and the Faithfulness of God.

Authentic Doubt in Elie Wiesel's Night

Human suffering, whether one's own or that of others, has long been a central issue in theology; certainly for as long as there have been written records of human thoughts about the divine, that has been the case. Nowhere does the question of human suffering and Providence come into clearer focus than in the Holocaust. For school my son recently had to read Elie Wiesel's description of his experience of the Holocaust in his 1960 book, Night. My son was really moved by it and asked me to read it. I read it over two days and was deeply moved by it too. After reading it I found I wanted to think through it a bit more by writing out some of my impressions of a scene that was particularly powerful. So here are some of my thoughts.

A little over halfway through the book, Wiesel describes the celebration of the new year on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, as thousands of Jews gathered in silence in the assembly area of a concentration camp. As the officiant prayed and ten thousand Jews responded in unison, Wiesel shares with the reader his inner monologue of rebellion against God. He was appalled that God should allow God's people to suffer and be tortured and killed (even babies and children), and that these people would still praise the "Name of the Eternal." Of the many powerful and emotional scenes he describes through his measured prose, to me the glimpse of his inner life and conflict during this worship service was one of the most moving. Of his non-participation in the prayers of that service, he wrote:

"Once, New Year's Day had dominated my life. I knew that my sins grieved the Eternal; I implored his forgiveness. Once, I had believed profoundly that upon one solitary deed of mine, one solitary prayer, depended the salvation of the world.

"This day I had ceased to plead. I was no longer capable of lamentation. On the contrary, I felt very strong. I was the accuser, God the accused. My eyes were open and I was alone--terribly alone in a world without God and without man. Without love or mercy. I had ceased to be anything but ashes, yet I felt myself to be stronger than the Almighty, to whom my life had been tied for so long. I stood amid that praying congregation, observing it like a stranger" (Night, 64-65)

Naturally, I hesitate to compare my own struggle with God to anything like that of Wiesel or anyone who has gone through such unfathomable suffering. Nevertheless, there are those significant aspects of universal human experience that allow readers in another time and another place to relate, on some level, to an account as harrowing as his. So although I cannot enter into the pain of the unspeakable devastation that was inflicted upon the Jews during the holocaust, there are two element's of Wiesel's experience to which I found I could relate. On the one hand, I have known a similar kind of complete devotion to the faith in which I was raised, wherein which I "believed profoundly" about the cosmic importance of my own devotion; where the religion of my youth "dominated my life." In this, I think, I was not unlike Wiesel before his life took the unimaginable turn it took during his 15th year.

On the other hand, through my own experiences and my own coming to grips with how God does or does not work within the world, through my own doubts and through my eyes being "opened" to face harsh realities, I have known the feeling Wiesel describes of being a spectator, a stranger even, as others participated fully in acts of worship that could no longer hold the same meaning for me. While Wiesel's faith changed profoundly in an instant, mine has taken years to develop to the place where I could honestly and openly question God. I believe this questioning to be good and right; it is at the very least, authentic. But for me the process has been very uncomfortable, painful even, as necessary as it is.

Wiesel's life and mine are worlds apart in so very many ways. But I am grateful that he found the courage and strength to put his story into print. Aside from the powerful reminder of the atrocities of genocide that his book offers, he was able to put into words thoughts, feelings, and ideas that were for me, to a large extent, unformed. Through his confession, I could see a glimpse of myself. His words resonated with my own experience of faith and doubt and growth in the midst of pain, and gave me a way of framing that which I had not been able to adequately express.

At several places in the volume, Wiesel returns to this theme of questioning God and losing hope in the face of the harsh reality of the concentration camps. If time allows, I may explore others of these in the weeks ahead. Unless my son gives me another impromptu reading assignment.

Comparing stonecutters and theologians- a quote from Stanley Hauerwas

Here is a very brief excerpt from Stanley Hauerwas's memoir. He writes of theology as a craft requiring years of training in which one, as an apprentice, learns the tools of the trade, and learns to work skillfully with the raw materials one is given. Here is the excerpt:

Commenting on the craft of stonecutting and on the training required to work with stone, Seamus Murphy observes: “With hammer, mallet and chisel we have shaped and fashioned rough boulders. We often curse our material, and we often speak to it kindly—we have come to terms with it in order to master it, and it has a way of dictating to us sometimes—and then the struggle begins. We try to impose ourselves on it, but we know our material and respect it. We will often take a suggestion from it, and our work will be the better for it.” In like manner, I think of theology as a craft requiring years of training. Like stonecutters and bricklayers, theologians must come to terms with the material upon which they work. In particular, they must learn to respect the simple complexity of the language of the faith, so that they might reflect the radical character of orthodoxy. I think one of the reasons I was never drawn to liberal Protestant theology was that it felt too much like an attempt to avoid the training required of apprentices. In contrast, Karl Barth’s work represented for me an uncompromising demand to submit to a master bricklayer, with the hope that in the process one might learn some of the “tricks of the trade.”

Hauerwas, Stanley. Hannah’s Child: A Theologian’s Memoir. (William B. Eerdmans Publishing: Grand Rapids) 2010, 37.

I particularly appreciate Hauerwas's insight about the need to not only know our material but to respect it, as a stonecutter respects the stone with which he works. Not only know it and respect it, but "come to terms with it;" in other words, appreciate the material for what it is, while at the same time learning not to force the material to be something it is not. Further, Hauerwas's comparison raises the idea of apprenticing with a master craftsman, someone who knows the material well from years and years of consistent and good work. This notion reminds me to be grateful for the masters from whom I have learned my trade, the teachers and mentors I have had throughout my training. And it inspires me to think that, though I will always see myself as a learner in the things of God, I have all along been developing some skills, some perspectives, and some valuable knowledge that I can pass on to my own students.

My hopes for my students at the start of a new semester

As the spring semester begins, along with the nervousness and the "unknown" of what each new class will be like, it is a natural time for professors to think about what we hope for for our students and for ourselves. 

Naturally, I hope my students will find my class to be a challenging and rewarding learning experience. I hope they will gain new knowledge (in this case about Paul and early Judaism), sharpen their reading, writing, and thinking skills as graduate students, and move closer toward their goals of completing their graduate degrees. All good things, of course!

But more than the new insights, the greater knowledge, or the tangible outcome of a degree--or rather, alongside those things--I hope my students will develop a set of virtues that will serve them not only during the current semester, but for the rest of their lives. And here I refer to what A. G. Sertillanges calls the "intellectual virtues." These are the character traits that, aside from any special level of intellectual talent or natural genius, will enable a person to develop his or her mind in a way that is productive, satisfying, and personally rewarding.

What are these virtues? There are many that might be listed here, but my list includes such essential dispositions as studiousness, constancy, patience, perseverance, courage, and humility. Sertillanges explains the importance of many of these in his book, The Intellectual Life (see my earlier post on Sertillanges for some more background on this book):

"The virtue proper to the person of study is, clearly, [drum roll please...] studiousness" (25). And elsewhere, "You must bring to your work constancy which keeps steadily at the task; patience which bears difficulties well; perseverance which prevents the will from flagging" (215).

These first four virtues (studiousness, constancy, patience, and perseverance) are necessary for intellectual growth to the extent that they enable a person to navigate around and through the obstacles that are bound to come to anyone who seeks to develop her mind. Rather than seeking instant results, hoping for a quick fix to one's intellectual poverty, or expecting an easy road, these "old-school" virtues remind a person to stay on a path of growth that, although difficult, will ultimately lead to the desired results.

In addition, I hope my students will face my class with courage. Courage to question what they already think they know, with the goal that they could come to a deeper understanding of a given subject. Particularly in the realm of biblical studies and theology, it takes courage to question the truths and convictions that one has received from parents, from respected leaders, and other authorities as right. It takes courage to look at a subject from a new perspective and to be truly open to learning from that perspective. But if we are to be formed intellectually in our study of the Bible, we must have the courage to allow its contents to challenge our own cherished beliefs. It takes little courage to seek to affirm what we already think we know.

Finally, I hope my students will practice the intellectual virtue of humility. In my way of thinking, humility and courage go hand in hand. If one has the humility to recognize that one has not yet fully arrived at a final and indisputable way of understanding their beliefs, that one has not yet reached maturity in one's theology, then one can explore new and challenging ideas without feeling that one's identity is threatened in the process. I hope my students will have the humility to be able to listen to one another, and to be able to admit when they really do not know something. Such an admission takes both humility and courage, but it is certainly a gateway to gaining new knowledge.

As I run down this list of hopes for my students, it is surely obvious that these are hopes I hold for myself as well. When I have faced discouragement, disappointment, failure, and other setbacks in my own journey of intellectual development, it is these virtues, together with encouragement from others, that have kept me from giving up altogether. So may the weeks and months of this semester find us, faculty and students alike, putting these intellectual virtues into practice as we engage in the life-changing and life-challenging process of graduate education together.

Happy New Year! Time to forget the past?

There is a time to remember, and there is a time to forget. Very often the prophets of the Hebrew Bible called upon the people of God to remember the acts of God, the promises of God, the teachings of God, the covenant of God. This was evidently due to the human propensity to forget the past, to forget life-giving lessons learned the hard way, and to live in ignorance. On this New Year's Day I am struck, though, by the words of Isaiah 43:18-21 which exhort the Israelites to NOT remember the former things and to NOT consider the ways of old. 

Is. 43:18 Do not remember the former things,

or consider the things of old. (NRSV)

How strange these words sound compared to the chorus of prophetic calls to remember (even in the book of Isaiah; cf. Is 46:8-9). This call in Isaiah 43 to forget the past comes in the context of a contrast between the old things of the past and the new thing that God was about to do. Is. 43:19 continues, "I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?" The prophet wrote of God making a way in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, giving drink to his parched people, and even creating the conditions in which the untamed animals of the wilderness (metaphorical language for the non-Jews of the ancient world) would honor him. This message would presumably have given comfort and hope to the Israelities who were suffering in exile. Much later the earliest Jewish followers of Jesus came to the belief that God had begun to fulfill these promises through the life and ministry of Jesus. Though they understood that this new thing had come about through Jesus, they still awaited the physical, spiritual, and environmental renewal about which Isaiah spoke. 

And readers of the Bible today likewise find themselves in a similar position to the Israelites to whom Isaiah wrote, and to the early Christians who read the words of Isaiah with new perspective: remembering an idealized past which featured God's active presence (either in the temple or in the incarnation), looking ahead to an idealized future renewal, but living in a present which, to all appearances, falls short of the supposed glories of both past and future. It is in this kind of present that we sometimes need to be exhorted to remember the past and other times need to be exhorted to leave the past behind and open our eyes to see the new thing that God may be doing in our day. 

If I may offer a New Year's wish: For each of us, may 2014 be a year in which we find a healthy balance between remembering the old things in an appropriate way and also remaining open to the new things each day brings. 

Happy New Year! Forget the old; embrace the new.