Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ: Recently the Pennsylvania House of Representatives passed Resolution 535 proclaiming 2012 the “Year of the Bible”. In some circles of our community this has been very controversial.  One of the most active protests has been made by American Atheists and Pennsylvania Non-Believers. Among their points of contention is that the Bible is the primary source of validation for all the major social ills of our history. To dramatize this point they hired a billboard dominated by a depiction of a very negroid featured black man wearing a large neck manacle, with the Biblical text “slaves obey your masters” in smaller print. The billboard was in a predominantly African-American community in Harrisburg. This caused another type of protest by citizens of that community and the city (my op-ed, while not printed by the newspaper, is available here).   A representative from the American Atheists was interviewed shortly thereafter on local Public Television, and his anger with Christianity and the Bible was palpable.  While his interpretation of the scripture texts was without regard for or knowledge of context, I was amazed that his literal knowledge of scripture seemed equal to persons who have been nurtured in a fundamentalist tradition. His vitriolic reaction to callers who differed with him, sometimes devolving into personal attacks, caused the host to question his behavior.  As the conversation continued it was revealed that he had indeed grown up in a very fundamentalist, literal Christian tradition and in an unguarded moment intimated something of the hurt to him and his family.   I have no question that the best of our democracy, the inspiration for our rich artistic and cultural life, and also the historic movements to correct social and political injustices (which were often based upon misuse of scripture), have all been directly rooted in the Bible and Jewish and Christian Faiths.  The Founding Fathers, even those who were Deists or non-practicing Christians, clearly found the Holy Scriptures a base of inspiration for their work.  Like Jefferson regarding slavery, they also often found themselves conflicted between their political values and the Judeo-Christian values they sought to exploit in the political and economic compromises made to establish the Constitution. Besides the historic record of the Bible and our particular religious history as the inspiration for our democracy, there are independent sources such as Alexis de Tocqueville, the young French researcher who visited and wrote about the phenomenon of American Democracy. I doubt that there would be the strength of our democracy without the religious heritage which so greatly influenced our ideals, including a call to respect the religious faith (or non-faith) of others.   Having said the above, there is no question that the misuse of religion, particularly Christianity, has deeply hurt and even destroyed many.  As I listened to the angry, bitter representative of American Atheists, my heart hurt for the pain he felt, the betrayal he clearly experienced and his estrangement from the God with whom he continues to invest his life’s energy to deny and debase. But his anger, and that of many, is more rightly directed to us…the Christian Community.  Whether progressive or conservative, fundamentalist, evangelical or mainline—whatever our doctrine or tradition, in our efforts to “Love God with all our heart mind and strength” (cf. Mark 12.30) we too often have not Loved or shown a Godly respect for our neighbor.  I believe the most difficult promise we make in the Baptismal Covenant is “…respecting the dignity of every human being.”  This is especially true within our denominations and congregational communities.  When we differ on theological or political views how do we treat one another in our differing?  When persons are struggling with conflicts of Faith and their personal experience or need, do they sense from us our judgment or grace? Do we know how to speak truth with Love, knowing that Love is the only truth—for it instructs all other truths? Jesus’ chief command for the Christian community is found in John 15: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another…by this shall the world know you are my disciples because you have love one for another.”  Love (or the Greek word “agape”) does not mean agreement with one another or even warm affection for one another. It does mean seeing the other as someone loved by God; and that truth informs and shapes the character of life, even our conflicts, in Christian community.  Without it we destroy one another, the integrity of the Church, and create spiritually wounded souls who, in their pain and anger, may never be reconciled again to the God of Love— until, I pray, they come to the nearer presence of God, who takes away not only the sins of the world but also the sins inflicted by the Church. +Nathan

 

“God is Not in this Classroom” or Reading the Bible in a Secular Context

Description: Teaching biblical literature in a secular Liberal Arts environment requires allowing the texts to speak for themselves, so that students might hear what the texts have to say (which may not necessarily be what we want to hear). This is easier said than done since we must attempt to leave religious convictions, traditions, and specific agendas behind. At the same time, we must also recognize that we will not always be able to avoid our own historical context and bias. In light of these challenges and through my eight years experience as a Christian teaching courses in a Jewish Studies program at a secular university I have developed methods (and discarded others) for teaching the Hebrew Bible that include reading the texts critically as literary and historical sources while salting the course with Jewish, Christian, Islamic, and other interpretations. The goal is to use the potential handicaps of preconceived ideas and convictions as gateways into the material. God may well be in the classroom and miracles may well occur, but the students know that they have to determine that for themselves.

When I originally proposed this paper, as you can see from the description I intended to share with you how I sprinkled my courses on the Hebrew Bible with readings of various readings of the text. Next semester I will be teaching Genesis, for example, and in that course we will being by reading the biblical text itself and then read Bonhoeffer’s little work on creation. When we get to Noah we will read the Genesis Apocryphon and when we get to the story of Tamar we will look at a feminist reading of the text (and make oblique references to The Red Tent). But I think this approach is fairly self-evident, that by showing students multiple readings of the same or similar text they will begin to see the challenges and promise of reading a text that is so ancient and yet still so relevant to so many. I also realized, as I surveyed the field and looked at the other proposals for today, that this is an approach that many have found useful and I did not want to burden you with my rendition of this theme.

It seems that the sort of strategies most often employed in teaching the Bible in a secular liberal arts context involve teaching the Bible as something, e.g., “The Bible as Literature,” “The Bible as History.” Or we might provide “readings” of the Bible, such as a feminist, liberationist, modern, etc. Please note, this is not a criticism per se, these are legitimate and useful strategies and that I regularly employ, yet each of these methods is an attempt to read the biblical text as something other than it is.

Recently, and independently of preparation for these sessions, there has been a fair amount of discussion on the internet, on the so-called “biblioblogs,” about just how we teach the Bible in a secular, liberal arts context. On one site, Kevin Wilson’s BlueCord.org, a lively debate ensued as to whether or not one could read the biblical text purely as “historical” or whether or not, as Steve Cook asserted,

You are engaging a text whose existence is owed to the historical community’s valuing of it as Word/Witness to the transcendent. There is an inherent “theological” dimension to this text’s preservation until this very day and its existence in your hands.

In other words, by the very act of engaging with these texts that are both theological in content and theological in their preservation, we are dealing with theology.

I have become convinced that a very productive method of teaching the Bible, particularly where we are concerned with actually conveying some of the content of the text to our students, is to teach the Bible as what it is, a theological text. The vast majority of biblical texts are, after all, fundamentally theological texts and as Cook pointed out, Jews and Christians have viewed even the process of transmission as a theological matter. The challenge for us as teachers is that we are teaching in a fundamentally secular context. So how do we teach these theological texts without teaching or doing theology? Today I will offer a modest outline of a method for reading these theological texts.

This brings me back to my title, “God is not in this classroom.” This is the statement with which I begin my first lecture of most courses dealing with the Bible and I quickly follow it with the observation that it is not an assertion of fact since I cannot prove it and most religious traditions would argue otherwise. God may be in the classroom and God may not. God may be in the text and God may not. What is certain is that the authors (and most likely their audiences) believed that God was active and interactive and many of them, if not all, believed that God was indeed in the giving and receiving of the text. “The word of the LORD came to me.” The next question is what do we, the faculty and the students, believe about the texts?

Internal Inventory

We must first recognize that it is very difficult to isolate one’s own theological convictions (even and especially when we believe we do not have any) from that of the texts we are reading. It is difficult, but I do not think it is impossible. In an effort to deal with this I encourage students, without calling upon them to share out loud, to reflect upon what affect their own background and religious convictions or lack thereof has upon their reading of the texts. And I will then come back to that point throughout the course since often we are unaware of this influence upon our thought. This “internal inventory” is imperative, in my opinion. For example, I never ask my students to decide whether or not they believe the miracles in the Bible occurred, but I do ask them to consider whether they believe that miracles could occur and then consider how that conviction will influence their reading of the text.
At this point we also discuss briefly the history of textual reception, manuscript traditions, and translations. The task here is to make the students sufficiently aware of the complexities involved in textual criticism without causing them to despair of ever knowing what the text says in its simplest form. (I present the material following the Jewish canonical form for a variety of reasons, not the least of which because it is the most ancient structure and ordering that we have of these texts. See Childs.)

Historical-Theological Approach

Once a “base text” (as fictive as that may be) has been established we engage in a simple reading of the text. Trying to determine the basic meanings of the words we are reading and what they mean when placed together to form sentences and complete units. At this point we can begin to talk about content and ask “what is the text saying” and the related question “what does it mean.” This last question must be asked first and foremost, whatever later application one might have, in reference to the original author and audience. The challenge here is, of course, that we are radically removed from the author by thousands of years, miles, and cultures. But we must do our best.

I try not to present an extended lecture on the beliefs and practices of ancient Israel because any such reconstruction is bound to be a synthesis of disparate sources and mar the very object of our student. Instead I begin with the text in front of us and build out from there. As a result, for example, very quickly we being to discuss monotheism and the transcendence of God in reading Genesis 1 but only one chapter later we are discussing the immanence of the LORD God and the introduction of sin into the world. Both accounts provide very different “theologies” while also providing opportunities to discuss source criticism, literary criticism, and developing worldviews. We even touch on Creation, Evolution, and Intelligent Design.
This is in many ways an “historical” approach. The quotes around “historical” are present because I do not refer to teaching the Bible as history, rather teaching the historical beliefs and theological convictions of the authors and the communities that preserved these texts, in so far as we are able to discover them. In our secular context, where we are not bound by a creed or code, this provides us with the reassuring protection of being able to say “they believed,” thus distancing ourselves from whatever we say following that clause and absolves us from making any judgment about the validity of that belief. We are merely observers. It also serves, I hope, to at once both challenge and disarm those students who might have more traditional or orthodox views of these passages.

This is, I think, the first and necessary step in engaging both our students and the texts. If we truly want our students to understand what they are reading they need to have some sense of its importance, if not for themselves, than at least for the people who wrote and preserved them. In describing what they believed we will invariably (or we ought to) consider why they held these convictions and this often leads to very relevant and contemporary concerns. For example, the Deuteronomic assertions that God punishes his people for their sins may be foreign and unacceptable to many of us, but once we understand that these convictions developed, at least in part, as a means of explaining the suffering of seemingly innocent people in this world, we may begin to better understand that view even if we do not espouse it ourselves.

The theological concerns of the biblical authors are not so different from our own, even if we do not identify them as theological, and of course the Bible deals with many issues that may well not be defined as purely “theological,” but are pertinent nonetheless. The Psalms, for example, are full of emotion and pathos that we all can relate to, not least of all college age students. Any number of wisdom psalms and the Book of Proverbs itself, while couched within “god language,” are espousing a way of life that most of us would still value, even if we do not call on the LORD. That similarity will allow discussion of the concept of “the fear of the LORD.”

The Problem of Miracles

Perhaps the most difficult passages of all for us to teach are not, however, the assertions of God’s might and law or the horrible tales of murder and rape, but are the accounts of the miraculous. I try to walk the fine line between appearing to espouse the plagues, the manna, and the miraculous births as “the Gospel truth” and rejecting them as fantasies and so much nonsense. I find neither extreme to be pedagogically useful. This via media does not, however, mean that I look for or teach naturalistic explanations for what the Bible clearly depicts as miraculous. That is certainly one possible interpretation that is included in our discussion, but I do not redefine “miracle” in such a way that it no longer means what the primary definition of the word clearly is.

The New Oxford American English Dictionary defines miracle as “an event that appears to be contrary to the laws of nature and is regarded as an act of God.” The biblical authors, whether Tanakh or New Testament, clearly know that these things that they are reporting do not usually happen. That is the whole point of a miracle! The very fact that such accounts are in the text speaks volumes about the fundamental beliefs of the authors.

Still, some scholars feel they are doing justice to the text and modern sensibilities to “rationalize” the miracles such as those who explain the plagues of Exodus as natural phenomena or the feeding of the thousands as actually acts of shame and charity. Others attribute genuine malice to the author, asserting that he invented the accounts of the miracle to justify a particular action, teaching, or tradition (usually, of course, something that the modern scholar rejects). In rationalizing away the historicity of the miracles such scholars are removing an essential element of the text and context.

When I teach such passages I again start from the historical-theological perspective and point out to my students that the authors did indeed know that such events did not occur in the natural order of things and yet (at least we can be certain in many cases) the authors believed that they had occurred and they believed that they occurred through the intervention of God. The origins of these stories are lost to us and it is impossible to reconstruct what may or may not have happened. (Although we do discuss the various possibilities.) So the next step is to ask how these stories functioned in the narrative and the life of the community. It is clear that many others at the time and since believed that these miracles occurred, “perhaps some of you in this room,” I always point out, and that is significant. Here we can assess the literary, social, theological, and historical impact of these particular narratives. Because at some point we can and should get past the question of whether or not something actually happened and acknowledge the effect of people believing that they occurred.

A prime example of this is the account of the Ten Plagues. The order, nature, and character of the plagues are themselves a commentary on YHWH’s victory over Egypt and their gods. I find it important to point out that this does not presuppose that the Israelites did not believe in the Egyptian deities, but that they believed their God was stronger, even on their home turf, than their gods. The power of this story of liberation continues to suffuse Judaism to this day and serves as one of the primary metaphors for interpreting the purpose of Jesus’ death/resurrection and Christian baptism. The import of the story is thus not reliant upon the “historicity” of the events, yet neither am I compelled to dispel a student’s conviction of their veracity.

Conclusion

The biblical texts are fundamentally theological and we ignore that to the detriment of our student’s education. The various historical critical methods that most of us were trained in and come to rely upon are still valuable. This approach to the texts should, in fact, lead to their employ. (I should note that Gottwald has outlined and demonstrated a similar approach of integrating all of these various concerns, including theological, in his Introduction. I find, however, that his organization of the textbook and insistence upon certain hypothetical reconstructions makes it far too cumbersome for use in an introductory, undergraduate class.) Once we have mined the text for as original a meaning as we can discover, we can then bring these other resources to bear as we trace textual and hermeneutical history of the text. It is then important to take the time, even if only briefly, to present other readings of the text. The student will then have an historical perspective to judge the development and adaptation of the text to meet later needs, themselves often theological.

[So my approach is somewhat like WC Smith not in that we need to begin with a history of the formation of canon, how the Bible became scripture, but in that I present the Bible and attempt to have my students glimpse it as, to use Smith’s words, “not merely as a set of ancient documents or even as a first- and second-century product but as a third-century and twelfth-century and nineteenth-century and contemporary agent” (p. 134).]

In many ways I am sure that I have not said anything new, certainly not to any of us in this room. Yet at the same time I believe there is a reticence for those of us teaching in a secular context to address the theology of these texts perhaps for fear that we will be perceived as doing theology. In our effort to show parallels with other ancient Near Eastern texts, provide feminist readings that cut across the text, and liberate the text from its patriarchal moorings I think we often miss and therefore fail to convey to our students, the fundamental power that these words had for their original audience. Once we have caught a glimpse of that original vision we can then more profitably see how others have read them. After all, God may not be in the classroom, but he may be in the Text.

 

Rom. 12: 9- 21 (NRSV)

9 Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; 10 love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. 11 Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. 12 Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. 13 Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. 15 Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. 16 Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. 17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. 18 If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. 19 Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” 20 No, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” 21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

The Word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

 

Book titles, if they were written today

A great idea…this one in my favorite:
Then: The Gospel of Matthew
Now: 40 Days and a Mule: How One Man Quit His Job and Became the Boss

Thanks to my colleague for forwarding that along.

UPDATE: I am mortified to realize that I did not first read this on Tim Richuitti’s blog where he forwarded a forward and consequently did not cite him here. Let our source critics go to work on that stemmatology.

 

From Morning Prayer for 23 July 2009.

 

Dear Colleagues,

I wanted to take a moment to remind you once again to keep
the submissions coming for our 2009 SBL Mid Atlantic
Regional meeting.  If you have not done so already, please
email me your submissions by FRIDAY, DECEMBER 5 at
schipper@temple.edu.  We will be meeting on March 26-27,
2009 in Baltimore.  For further information regarding
submission guidelines, awards, locations, and hotel
reservations, please see the attached “call for papers” pdf.
(I have also copied this the pdf into the body of this email
in case you have trouble with the attachment.)  PLEASE FEEL
FREE TO POST THE CALL FOR PAPERS AND ENCOURAGE YOUR FRIENDS,
COLLEAGUES, OR STUDENTS TO PARTICIPATE IN THE CONFERENCE.
Information regarding conference registration will become
available in the coming months.

All the Best,

Jeremy Schipper
Assistant Professor of Hebrew Bible
Department of Religion
Temple University

SBL Mid-Atlantic Regional Coordinator

 

“This scroll tells us nothing of cleanliness or of uncleanliness, either of prohibition or permission. For what purpose, then, was it written? To teach how great is the reward of those who do deeds of kindness.” R. Ze’ira, Ruth R. II 14.

As cited in “Jewish Exegesis of the Book of Ruth” by DRG Beattie, p. 203.

 

As pointed out, Aramaic Studies offers a two-for-one!

Bonus Session – Two for the Price of One: SBL24-103, Aramaic Studies
11/24/2008, 4:00 PM to 6:30 PM, Room: Meeting Room 309 – CC
1. Ed Cook, Ralph the Sacred River (1st presenter, time 4:00 pm)
4Q541, Fragment 24 Reconsidered (Again)
2. Chris Brady, Targuman (5th presenter, estimated time 6:00 pm)
The Development of the Character of Ruth in Targum Ruth

 

Year A
Proper 27
RCL

Amos 5:18-24
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
Matthew 25:1-13

The Day of the Lord

Thus says the Lord, the God of hosts, the Lord: 
Alas for you who desire the day of the LORD!
    Why do you want the day of the LORD? 
It is darkness, not light.

We are all, I am sure, far more familiar with the last portion of our Old Testament reading from this morning, those words made fresh for the last 40 years by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.” But as powerful as those words are, they do not have their full meaning unless the preceding verses are read with them. And they begin with an odd even paradoxical challenge from the prophet, declaring that the day of the Lord is darkness and not light. Surely that cannot be right! That is not how we think of the “day of the Lord” is it? Actually, that is a good question, how do you think of the “day of the Lord”?

I think most Christians probably think it refers to the “Lord’s day,” meaning Sunday, the day of the week on which Jesus arose from the dead. But that is not what it means in the Old Testament. The day of the Lord was the day when God will come and bring his judgment to this world. This is what Amos was declaring and he was challenging those who felt so self-righteous that they were calling for God to hasten his day of judgment, not realizing that they are just as likely to suffer his punishment as any other. The role of a prophet was not, as people so often think, to predict the future. Rather the prophet was and is someone who reminds God’s people of the promises of God and their responsibility in that relationship. In ancient Israel that meant that the prophets reminded Israel of the covenant that God had made with them and that while God had promised to bless them if they were obedient he also promised to punish them if they refused to obey his law and will for them. Most often, but it would be wrong to think that it was exclusively, the royalty, the aristocracy and the priesthood were the subjects of the prophets’ message.

And the message was routinely reduced to “care for the widow, the orphan, and the stranger in your midst.” These were the groups who were the most vulnerable and if society was caring for them, then that would be a pretty good sign that it was following the rest of God’s laws. The problem that Amos is focusing on in this passage is the hypocrisy that we so often have in our own lives: we don’t have our priorities in order.

Even though God’s law calls for Israel to worship him with songs and sacrifices, if they are not being obedient in other matters, the matters of justice and righteousness, none of it…matters.

I hate, I despise your festivals
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them; 
and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals
I will not look upon.

It should be obvious that this is one Old Testament passage that does not require a great deal of exegesis to see its application in our own lives, in our corporate lives as a community of faith and in our individual and private spiritual lives. Our tradition places a great emphasis upon…well, tradition. Tradition and ceremony are central to our worship. But if that worship is not transforming us into servants of God and therefore servants of others, it is useless. It doesn’t matter how much we pray or how often we attend services, if we do not allow God to work in us and make us like Christ, taking up daily our cross and giving up ourselves for others, then it is all hallow and meaningless.

In the Law and the Gospels we are called to come together in worship and to offer up sacrifices to God. But God has also declared that he will despise and reject those very offerings if they are not accompanied with a pure and contrite heart. Consider Cain who brought a sacrifice before God, just as Abel had, and yet God only accepted Abel’s sacrifice. Why? Because it was “by faith [that] Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain’s” (Heb. 11:4). How do we bring our offerings God? Are our prayers, our tithes, our services offered in faithful obedience to God or merely obedience to tradition and habit? Do we return to God what is his while asking him to use us to bring his light and love into this world?

The day of the Lord that Amos declared is still coming and God will hold us accountable for our actions and our inaction. Our Gospel reading this morning is from a larger section in Matthew’s Gospel where Jesus tells his disciples what to expect in those last days, as the day of the Lord draws in. This story of the bridesmaids with the oil lamps, that I think sounds really rather odd and bizarre out of its larger context, is a parable of preparation and priorities.

On the one hand it is simply a reminder that we are always to remain vigilant and expectant for the coming of Christ. As Jesus says in the preceding chapter, we may not know the day or the hour, but we do know that he will come and God will mete out his justice. And don’t forget, Amos was already some 700 years before Jesus’ own time, so we cannot simply push Amos and all of this judgment talk aside as just so much “Old Testament nonsense.” Jesus certainly didn’t think so, but he did understand that we are not a patient people. Today our attention span barely lasts for a 15 minute sermon let alone two thousand years of waiting!

We are waiting for his return, but there is so much work to do. In the parable that follows today’s reading Jesus tells the story of the men who are each given a sum of money. One man is given five talents and he invests it, doubling his money. The man given two talents does the same. The man who is given a single talent buries it knowing that his master can be harsh. The ones who invested the money won their master’s praise but the one who did nothing with what he had been given was thrown out into the “outer darkness.”

We have been given great talents, in wealth and ability, in spirit and capacity for love. We have been charged by Jesus himself to go out into the world and share the Gospel message of freedom from sin and death. There is suffering and hardship in our world. There are so many who do not know the love of Christ and the transforming presence of the Spirit in their lives. Have we shared it with them all? Have we met and dealt with every injustice? His return may seem like it is long in coming but we certainly should not be bored, there is so much work still to do.

When the day of the Lord arrives, when Christ shall come again God will establish his order and set the world aright. In the meantime the command goes out to us “let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.” We are his agents to bring justice and righteousness to this world. Our own sense of justice can so often be flawed and unjust. What we think of as righteousness can often be simply self-serving. And that is why we must be ready, keeping oil in our lamps and our wicks trimmed by continuing to gather in worship, in prayer, and study so that while the bridegroom may be delayed we may grow to understand and live out in this in between time His justice and righteousness.

Take away from me the noise of your songs;
I will not listen to the melody of your harps. 
But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an everflowing stream.

These are not just the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This is the Word of the Lord.
Amen.