The Merit of Scripture… paraphrasing

Honzo March 19th, 2008

I have had a terrible approach to the study of scripture since the great fracture of 2002 (my adventures at Central Christian College of the Bible). As I am reapporaching my faith in the wake of that experiance, I am looking for good ways to reapproach the Bible. One of my convictions is constructing a book by book Biblical theology. Another one that I am looking to start is paraphrasing the Bible, one chapter at a time. Basically, all it would/has entail[ed] is the translation of a passage of scripture into my own vernacular. I think this helps one see the curves of the narrative of the passage, but this paraphrase would be an excellent item to revisit the next time you go to approach the same text.

What do you all think? Does this idea sound fruitful? Do any of you utilize this approach in your study of the Word of God?

An Installment on the Interaction of Intercourse and Economics

tom December 13th, 2007

One of the more disconcerting passages in all the Bible is the rape of Tamar, David’s daughter, by her half-brother Amnon (2 Samuel 13). As the narrative goes, Tamar is “loved” by her brother because he was tormented by her beauty. He feigns an illness to be alone with Tamar. When she brings him food to eat, he seizes her and rapes her despite her fervent resistance. After the rape, Amnon loathes his sister more than he ever “loved” her. He thrusts her away as a slave, a piece of property which was expended and now retains no value. To Amnon, she is no longer “Tamar,” she is now “this woman.” She is no longer a person who is “loved,” she is chattel to be discharged.1

Amnon learned this behavior from his father – that is, he learned to treat people, especially women, as property instead of humans created in God’s image. Just in the previous chapter David is finally confronted about his rape of Bathsheba and his clandestine execution of Uriah. People and their lives were mere objects to be consumed to David. He cared little for love, for family, for holiness. He cared only for consumption, and people are just another thing to be procured, retain, owned, and conquered.

What I find interesting in this whole matter is how intercourse and economics relate. As the narrative advances, we find Solomon, in the climax of his rule, with infinite wealth and thousands of sex-slaves. Women are objects to be owned – he too learned this from his father. Relationships, love, or devotion have no place in his world. Only objects exist, objects which are bought and sold, owned and operated, controlled and dominated.2

When economics and power become the chief agenda of a people, the objectification of others comes to dictate the landscape. This is particularly the case with sex. Sex becomes nothing more than, in our world, two consumers devouring one another, envision the other as an item whose individual purpose is to satisfy my desires without regards to the consequences of this behavior. That’s what consumerism is at its nastiest – a inexhaustible sport of stockpiling objects for one’s own agenda without considering the consequences of that consumption either for the earth, the other person, the community, or the world. It’s all about the ego.

Intercourse and economics – isn’t staggering how a person’s view on one stimulates certain assumptions about the other? When one views economics as merely a means of consumption and gaining wealth, power, and property, one will perceive sex the same way. But if economics is principally about honoring God through the giving away of one’s possessions, one will see sex differently as well. It is not about my desires, it is not about my consumption; it is about the other person, their will, their enjoyment, their desire. People are no longer objects to be owned and dominated (such as in pornography), they are people made in the Image of God! The denial of the ego in economic areas translates into the denial of the ego in the bedroom. This is why Paul lists greed right along side a bunch of sexual sins in Colossians 3. He realized the connection!

Its seems, then, that if we yearn for holiness, maybe our deity of covetousness and wealth ought to go first. If economics is linked to intercourse, imagine what else it is relates to – violence, anger, division, quarreling, pride! Maybe dispossession isn’t only about abnegation,3 but about sanctification in all areas of life.

  1. there is some credence to the thought that this objectification of women is inherent within the Torah. After all, women are listed among the property not to be coveted in the 10 Commandments. [↩]
  2. Solomon’s disregard for others in favor of his own economic advancement is well documented among biblical scholars. This actually ends up splitting the kingdom after he dies, if you remember. [↩]
  3. Thanks Theotica! [↩]

Acts as History

Honzo October 14th, 2007

Is the Acts of the Apostles history?1 Boy, I bet that could set off a good debate `round these parts! (But please see the first footnote and the links contained therein before you jump all over me.) This is an interesting and valuable question indeed. Late last month a couple of scholars that I enjoy reading brought up this very issue.

April DeConnick, at the Forbidden Gospels Blog, brought this topic up in her post: Is Luke a trustworthy historian? In the post, she asks why Acts is written off as a Lukan myth. She acknowledges that in the past people have trusted in its historical value a little too much and not treated it as histories should be treated. However, the conception of Acts as history has shifted to the other extreme. She argues that Acts must have been based off earlier sources and that understanding these sources is valuable in learning about the earliest Christians traditions and as a consequent constructing the earliest Christian history. Her argument is as follows:

  1. When Luke uses Mark, he does not rework Mark as much as Matthew.
  2. When Luke uses Q, Q-scholars tell us that he retains Q better in terms of verbage and order than Matthew. In fact, our reconstructed Q is versed according to Luke.
  3. Luke tells us in the beginning of his gospel that he relied on older sources to rewrite the Christian narrative which we apparently trust given our hypothesis that Luke is a second edition of Mark.
  4. If we think that Luke used Mark and Q as literary sources, wouldn’t the best assumption be that he also used older traditional sources for the composition of Acts?
  5. If 4 is valid, then shouldn’t we be trying to figure out what those older traditions are and what they tell us about Christianity earlier than Luke?

The first comment on DeConnick’s post summed up my thoughts on this issue quite nicely. Judy Redman asked why do people think that Luke’s gospel is reasonably accurate but that in writing Acts Luke engaged in “wild flights of fancy“? Judy points out that just because something is written “from the perspective of a particular faction of the early church does not make it myth.”

Mark Goodacre, over at the NT Gateway Blog, picks this question up and first goes into a critique of the use of Q (an interesting discussion in its own right) and ends with a rather positive view on Luke as a historian with qualifications. It is quite obvious that there is no video taping of history in Luke or Acts (or in any of the Biblical books for that matter), but that the situation is not as bleak as some modern scholars might think.

One of the other comments on April’s original post, left by JC Baker, asked the excellent question: What, if anything, can we know about history from our texts? DeConnick wrote up a great post in response that is worth reading now matter you interest in the Bible23: How can we know anything from our texts? She outlines four steps everyone should take when glistening a text’s modern historical value.

First, one should seek to identify the “authorial revision of received tradition” because every furthered tradition has been recieved by an earlier tradition and most likely been edited to some extent. After this is accomplished, one must “read against the grain” to seek out the parts of the narrative that are inherently troublesome for the author. These troublesome bits are most likely to be historical.4 Next, one should try to identify the back story that the author does not give, but the recipients would be familiar with. Lastly, use contemporary texts to compare and identify agreements (more likely to be history) and disagreements (most likely to be functions of the point of view of the author or community than history). Using these methods one can begin to ascertain a text’s historical value.

In conclusion, Acts is not a history in the modern sense of the world. Acts is useful in many respects for building a history of the early church before 100CE but is not completely authoritative as history5 and should not be used in lieu of a history book. There just was not the intention there to write the same sort of thing we look for in a modern history. However, that is not to say that Acts has zero historical value. Instead, through the processes outlined above, one can sift through Acts and use it to piece together a modern history of the early Christian movement.

Further reading: Danny at Danny’s Blog Cabin takes up the issue of the Harmony of the gospels and comes to a very negative conclusion. While I disagree with some of his conclusions and demands of the text, it is a very open and honest approach to the issue and worth reading and wrestling with.

  1. I am talking about what our idea of what history is, namely an accurate description of events, both in chronology and substance from an unbiased 3rd-person perspective, not the way the ancients viewed history, which were stories that were designed to illustrate lessons to be learned by the reader. [↩]
  2. devotional, scholarly, or any mix of the two [↩]
  3. or of any text, for that matter [↩]
  4. note, this does not by itself invalidate the bits that serve the author’s purpose, but the bits that don’t we can be more sure about their historicity [↩]
  5. See the conflict between Acts 9 and Gal 1 for an example [↩]

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