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Friday, 07 August 2009 |
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Mike Heiser, over at The Naked Bible, makes some good points on how to approach the Bible in terms of it's own cultural and historical context. Here's an excerpt:
One of [my] responders [accused] me of being extrabiblical in my approach to Romans 5:12.
Actually, I’m being explicitly biblical, since I refuse to
de-contextualize the Bible in favor of rendering interpretations that
are comfortable, or that are European, American, or anything else
besides the original culture in which the Bible was inspired. My
approach yields something that not only gets Jesus off the hook (still
unaddressed, I remind you all), but makes sense within the ancient
cultural situation. Here’s the bottom line: The Bible is NOT to be
interpreted through the grid of modern culture or our own cultures
which are modern. It is to be interpreted in light of the context in
which it was given. If anyone has any interest in getting to what the
text meant when God inspired its creation, THAT is the proper method —
not appealing to 16th century Europeans or anyone else outside the
divinely chosen cultural context. The latter is to recreate or filter
the Bible in or through our own image.
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Friday, 07 August 2009 |
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John Anderson, over at Hesed we'Emet, has put up a very interesting couple (series?) of posts concerning the concept(s) of God in the Hebrew Scriptures and in relation to the NT and Jesus (here and here). Here's a few excerpts in which he quotes Brueggemann and Fretheim:
God is, to my eye, quite unpredictable. Walter Brueggemann has argued as such:
In its core testimony, Israel has uttered [YHWH] as a
God who is straightforward in dealing with [YHWH's] partners. In
Israel’s cross-examination, [YHWH] emerges not only hidden as in wisdom
theology but also on occasion as devious, ambiguous, irascible, and
unstable . . . . These voices of witness, nonetheless, constitute a
part of Israel’s countertestimony, and while these texts are commonly
disregarded in more formal theology, they are important data for our
understanding of who [YHWH] is said by Israel to be (Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy, 359).
Preconceived notions of God that one brings to a text are ultimately
unhelpful if used as a grid within which the text must fit tidily. It
won’t fit. Indeed, the text should not be expected to conform. Nor
should God. Fretheim writes:
God’s appearance in human form reveals God’s
vulnerability . . . . It suggests an entering into the life of the
world that is more vulnerable, where the response can be derision (see
Gen 18:12-13) or incredulity (Judg 6:13-17). It is to put oneself
concretely into the hands of the world to do with as it will. It is
revealing of the ways of God that the word is enfleshed in bodies of
weakness within the framework of commonplace, everyday affairs, and not
in overwhelming power. For, even in those instances where the
vestments of God’s appearance are threaded with lineaments of power,
they clothe a vulnerable form. There is no such thing for Israel as a
nonincarnate God (106).
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Friday, 07 August 2009 |
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Baruch Halpern, Chaiken Family Chair in Jewish Studies at Pennsylvania State University, is spot-lighted in a brief Discovery Channel piece on forgery experts: http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/cool-jobs-forgery-expert.html
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Saturday, 01 August 2009 |
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A conversation about God in my family yesterday:
Amy (my wife): Jake, you need to turn the flashlight off or the batteries will run down.
Jake (4 year old): Does God's battery ever run down?
Me: I don't think God's battery runs down. But that's a good question.
Abby (7 year old): God's battery doesn't run down because God's battery is love.
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