Christianity – Page 73

AACC Liveblog: Getting Published – Ross McKenzie

Ross is a physics professor at UQ. He also has a blog which you should read. His interests are quantum physics and the intersection between theology and science.

Publication is important for the church

Historically, evangelicals have ceded the academy to liberals and atheists.
Publication is the key to the intellectual world. It is the currency of respectability in the academy. You have to be published to be taken seriously.
Publishing leads to engagement with the broader culture. It is apologia and kategoria. If we want to be engaging in the crucible of ideas and knowledge you need to be getting published.

Publication is important for your college and denomination

It maintains intellectual vitality.
It keeps teaching content and research supervision abilities up to date.
It raises the profile of a college and help in recruiting new staff and students.
The process reduces isolationism and forces faculty to engage with other thinkers.
It’s becoming increasingly important for government funding and accreditation of the Australian College of Theology.

Publication is important for you

It maintains your own vitality.
It puts your ideas out there for critique
It helps maintain your employment (if you’re an academic).

Ross’s Guide to Peer Reviewed Publications

Write a draft.
Choose a suitable journal. If many references in your paper come from one journal then that’s probably a suitable publication. Electronically available journals are preferable, especially journals available in tertiary institutions. Narrow journals with small audiences aren’t ideal. The Australian Research Council ranks journals.
Put the article in the format of the journal.
Ask a colleague who has published in that journal, or a similar one, to give feedback. Take that feedback on board.
Submit it.
The most likely responses are: rejection, or a request to resubmit.
If you’re rejected make the changes and submit it elsewhere. Keep repeating steps 2-6. If changes are requested make them. Swallow your pride.
Don’t give up.

Peer review may help reduce self delusion and sloppy thinking – Richard Dawkins hasn’t published a peer reviewed paper for 30 years.

June 29, 2010

AACC Liveblog: Getting Published – From Concept to Publication with Michael Bird

Apart from running one of Christendom’s most popular blogs, Michael Bird is a widely published author. His presentation this morning is a piece of self reflection on his process from student to scholar, and the process from idea to publication. Though “A Bird’s Eye View on Paul” was not his chosen title.

Motivations for Publishing

To disseminate research
If you end up in an academic career publication is linked to funding. This is especially the case in the UK where universities depend on world class, brilliant, erudite publications for grants. Lots of institutions expect their faculty to be research active in their fields.
To contribute to scholarly discussions and academic knowledge.
To contribute resources for the wider church, to be a bridge between the academy and the church.

Bad reasons to publish

Fame and fortune – most publishers would only be expecting to sell 300 copies of PhD dissertations. Most monograph series don’t pay royalties.

Getting Started

The initiative more often than not comes from the writer, not the publisher (unless you’re famous).

Origen: “A biblical scholar is like a hunter walking through a forest when a flash of movement catches their eye.”

Mike’s story: In the late 90s he read through Jesus and the Victory of God got him thinking “how did Christianity move from a fringe Jewish movement into a movement, within 50 years, that a Gentile emperor was making policy about.” Looking to explore that question became his PhD thesis.

Looking at what’s around on a topic and thinking about how to contribute to a conversation is a good start. Don’t think of your book as the definitive word on a subject. It’s a conversation that will continue after your contribution. That is how you should think about it.

How do you get this idea to the market?

Who is your audience? Academics? Students? Lay people? Once you’ve picked your audience find a publisher who will meet your audience.

If you’ve killed your academic audience through publishing journal articles then look at other audiences (possibly more lucrative too).

Bird says, on the question of when to start writing, sooner or later you’re going to have to start, so it might as well be sooner.

Preparing Your Submission

Step 1. Get ready for rejection. If you can’t handle rejection do not try to publish books.

Step 2. Write a proposal. Don’t bother with unsolicited manuscripts.

Writing a Proposal

Proposals look a little something like this:

Title
Short bio of yourself
Summary
Audience
Need
Competing volumes
Potential endorsers
Word Length
Submission Date
Sample Chapter

Getting the Proposal heard

Meet an editor – network like crazy, meet people, schmooze. You’re incredibly unlikely to be published via an unsolicited manuscript. Your chances dramatically increase if you know the publisher. The editor has to believe in your project over and above the other projects on the table. They have to sell it to their editorial colleagues and the publishing company.
Consider the market, ethos, values and theology of the publisher.
Be willing to make changes. Negotiate on the size, the scope, the content, the audience… everything is on the table.
Be prepared for it to be a long process filled with corrections, proof-reading, endorsers, indices…

Be Prepared for…

Some more things to be ready for in the process:

A long delay waiting for a response, it’s ok to make enquiries about the status of your proposal a few months later
Rejection
Work and family commitments, your circumstances can change which will effect delivery dates.
Editors can be brutal, there’s a difference between an academic supervisor and an editor. Supervisors want you to produce defendable work, editors want you to produce marketable work.
Copy editors can be incompetent
Publishers can change stuff
Criticism in reviews

In the writing of books there is much sorrow, mainly for the authors. Bird writes because he learns the most in the publication process. Autonomous learning is the goal of any Christian scholarship. The first beneficiary of the process is yourself, but it’s good to see others. Writing is an avenue for participating in the debate, being part of the conversation, it’s fun.

How the blog interplays with books

Starting a blog was one of the best things he ever did. In the year after submitting his PhD he got several knockbacks. The blog opened doors with publishers (they even took him out to lunch). Some posts now prompt emails from publishers.

The blog has been great for bouncing ideas off people. and nutting out ideas.

June 29, 2010

AACC liveblog: Getting Published: Bruce Winter: Advice from a Veteran

Bruce says “always contribute to the body of knowledge”…

Argument should take place in the main body of the thesis, not in the footnotes. Some have used footnotes to disown arguments.

In the metamorphous from student to scholar we need to move on from attributing every notion or idea in footnotes and be prepared to argue things out in the text.

What does it mean to be a Christian and an Academic?

Bruce resolved never to engage, in his writings, with trashing other scholars. He believes that evidence should be argued out in the pages without playing the man.

A non-Christian friend made the comment that one of Bruce’s books “wasn’t an easy read.” He came to the realisation that the first paragraph has to be engaging if we are to grab the attention of a reader. Bruce’s rules of thumb:

The heading must entice.
The first sentence must grab the attention.
The second sentence must inform.

This, in my opinion, a good rule of thumb for writing anything. Basically you’ve got to think about how you yourself approach a text – how many academic books have you read right through?

Bruce resolved to agonise most over headings and sub-titles, and introductions. They are important.

Chapter headings need sub-headings. They need to be well thought out structures. We must write with purpose.

Bruce reads the preface, the chapter headings, the chapter introductions and the conclusions (including the links between chapters) before deciding whether to read the whole book. His approach to writing follows his approach to reading.

There must also be a Christian approach to criticism, and especially to the review process. Some journals offer authors the right of reply to reviews – how do you take this opportunity without trashing someone who has trashed your work? We want academic interactions to also be Christian interactions.

Bruce avoids fads in academic circles because they pass. Some publishers love fads and are always in search of the next new thing.

We are accountable to Christ – not to reviewers or audiences.

Questions to ask of your work.

Have we added to the body of knowledge?
Have we illuminated the text?
Have we built people up?
Who are we writing for?
What we write is the application of our gifts for the benefit of others. So does it benefit others?

Publish or perish is not the motto of the Christian.

June 29, 2010

AACC liveblog: Getting Published: Eisenbraun’s guide to getting published

If you have a monograph you want published here are Jim Eisenbraun’s tips for getting there.

Start with a well thought out proposal – including your idea, its genesis, how it compares to other works in the field or underway, what need it meets. Is there a market?
The right time to submit a proposal is a bit of a Goldilocks question – you want to have the ability to provide more information upon request without too big a gap in time, but you don’t necessarily need an entire manuscript. Sometimes things come in the form of an expanded article. Which is fine, and a good basis for decision making. Writing a Phd dissertation with publication in mind is useful (if the adviser will permit that). There are dissertations that aren’t worth publishing as a monograph. They’re always so tuned in to the adviser’s goals and philosophy that they can become unmarketable.
Publishers like to be asked what they want, and they are fine with dispensing advice on how to edit a work to make it publishable.
Don’t send an entire manuscript right off the bat – give something that can be read in 15 minutes.
Put effort into your proposal – a badly written proposal will go no further. Grammar matters. Write well. Publishers love good writing. If they have to do a lot of work to your prose it will give them pause. The biggest cost in publishing is human – it’s not the paper and ink. Time spent fixing a manuscript raises costs.
Good English is plain English. Sometimes academics get stuck in the notion that esoteric or made up words sound stronger. That’s not the case. Avoid jargon that I can’t understand what they’re saying. If the publisher, who works in the field, can’t understand what’s being said then what chance does the market have. Unclear jargon is faux-academic.
How to Edit Your Own Writing is a great book full of “aha” moments. The Chicago Manual For Style is the American publisher’s bible.
Eisenbrauns will ask for a proposal, then a chapter, then check with others in the field to make sure the idea will fly. They’re always looking for manuscripts that will advance the discussion, unless it’s a textbook that summarises the state of knowledge.
If it’s a monograph that’s presenting a new idea the question is “will this carry scholarship forward?”
Academic publishers care. They are engaged in the process of developing scholarship.
Eisenbrauns’ review process is double blind and shared – reviewers and writers are not named.
After the review process Eisenbrauns have to make a market decision. There are valuable materials that might only have 50 readers. Print on demand is an option but it looses some of the aesthetic value of the hardback high quality tome.
Eisenbrauns still copy edits. Unlike some other publishers. Authors look at two sets of proofs. They print using traditional offset printing.
The decision to publish, and a contract, may be made at multiple steps in this process. Even from the proposal. Especially if it is someone with a reputation. For first timers a contract is likely to come after seeing some of the finished work. If you want to be published multiple times avoid entering contract limbo.
Finding the right publisher is an issue for writers – find the publisher that markets to your audience. Anybody can publish a book, with a few dollars, the test of publishing is to market. Rejection may not be a question of the quality of the work, find a shoe that fits. Publish with a publisher who prices things in a way that mortals can afford them. $200 monographs are unaffordable.

June 29, 2010

AACC Live: Getting Published – Jim Eisenbraun

I’m at the Annual Australasian Christian Conference this week – so expect a bunch of posts reporting on theologs and their new and interesting ideas.

Today kicks off with “Getting Published” a guide to those looking to get published now, or in the future.

This morning we’ve got Jim Eisenbraun, the CEO/owner of Eisenbrauns Publishing.

“The rate and volume of publication is expanding rapidly, and that is a challenge for everybody in the academic world.”

It’s no longer possible to read everything in your field – there’s so much out there in terms of the history and the stuff being written in our time, even last month.

The challenge is now to pick what to read.

The reality for publishers is that fewer copies of any work are selling. The rate of publication is increasing while the rate of purchasing is decreasing – you don’t have to be an economist to see a problem. This explains why academic books are so expensive.

Publishing in an esoteric area you’re looking to sell about 350 copies. Publishing is an economic exercise. Electronic publishing is becoming a factor.

You can charge for content, but people are unwilling to pay for content when it’s online. There’s a changing social component in the move from printed content to content online – are we willing to pay for something that we can’t physically carry away with us. There’s something psychological at play. There’s less of a reality in our minds.

Publishers are facing this difficulty. Publishers primarily provide a service, not a product. They take a manuscript and turn it into a reader friendly format. Print will stay with us for a while – but the future is electronic. Which creates piracy concerns.

Information wants to be free. Even as a publisher Eisenbraun agrees with that philosophy. But somebody needs to be paid for their efforts. This has an effect on the way publishers view their role and their product. Dealing with this clash between commercial imperatives and the public’s view that information should be free is the modern publisher’s job.

The Google Books program is kind of an uneasy marriage between Google and libraries, and Google and Publishers. Nobody is entirely happy with where it is going, but everybody sees the value of continuing.

There’s a view that the distribution mechanism for academic works is broken – and that the institution should own the copyright to works published by their staff. Harvard make any work produced by their academics freely available – which removes some incentive from academics to publish.

The manuscript review process is being scrutinised by academics and by those seeking to be published. There’s a perception that publication in the modern age does not signify quality. In the past, when a publisher had to put significant resources into publishing there was an understanding that the final product would be worthwhile. One solution is to let the market sort it out – buyers will decide what’s worthwhile and what’s not. Eisenbraun doesn’t think this works. I think The Shack is a case study in why this doesn’t work.

June 29, 2010

If the Sermon on the Mount was on YouTube

Sermon on the Mount gets the YouTube comment treatment.

Via here.

June 26, 2010

Rudd and Theology

Oh yeah… and while I’m on the subject of Rudd bowing out of the Prime Ministership… I’ve said before that Rudd likes hitching his wagon to whatever engine is driving past at the time… but who did he think he was pleasing when he paused for his moment of theologising when he tacked “or her” on the end of thanking God… it was looking so good up until that moment – a loser thanking God, which helpfully combats every winning sporting superstar who claims God gave them victory as though he’s in their sports bag… bowing out with grace… but “or her”? What? How can “or her” be referred to as “our father”? Bonhoeffer would be rolling in his grave. Maybe he was caught up in the moment – seeing Gillard’s siezing the throne as divine. Maybe when he said “theology” he meant “self reflection” and his God complex was catching up with his loss of power? I don’t know. But it was dumb.

June 26, 2010

The age old question…

Al Mohler is the thinking evangelical’s favourite Southern Baptist, he’s reformed, he’s intelligent, he’s eloquent. He seems like a nice guy. But in a talk at the Ligonier Ministries conference in the US he basically did the anti-Wattke (Wattke was the OT scholar who moved institutions after publishing his views on the possibility that Genesis 1 might be compatible with evolutionary theory). Mohler (as reported at Challies.com) says it’s not. And furthermore, that not holding to a young earth, 6 day, 24 hour, view of creation leads to theological disaster.

If there’s one thing I dislike more than stupid theological debates that can’t be resolved, it’s people who make such debates the yardstick of theological orthodoxy. There are people I love, and respect, on both sides of this debate. And I’m pretty sick of posts like this that caricature opposing views in order to attack them. There’s a word for that logical fallacy. It’s a strawman.

Here’s the first “strawman” from Challies’ post – it’s a rebranding of the “literary theory” that is pretty narrow, and doesn’t look like the literary theory any reformed evangelical I know holds to while questioning the function of Genesis 1-11:

“The literary theory. Here we take the first eleven chapters of Genesis as literary, understanding that the Creation story is merely myth, a story as understood by ancient Hebrews.”

It’s almost never held to be “merely myth” – any literary theorists will affirm essentially the same theological truths as the six day young earth adherent. This is a nasty carricature that pays no heed to the complexities of the debate, and certainly rules out any knowledge that we may bring to the text based on ancient Hebrew literature…

Mohler’s (or Challies’) conclusion based on that first strawman is another fallacy:

“The literary theory has to be rejected out-of-hand since it otherwise contradicts inerrancy. We cannot hold to a robust theory of biblical inerrancy and interpret the chapters in this way.”

Why does reading the Bible as literature, or at the very least, pondering the genre of the received text, rule out a “robust theory of biblical inerrancy”? It seems that by including the qualifiers “robust” in this sentence, and “merely” in the first, Mohler can dismiss anybody who agrees with him 90% of the way by lumping them in with the people who disagree with him 100% of the way. This shouldn’t be a question of semantics – a “plain reading” of Mohler’s views is that unless you hold to a young earth six day creation you think the Bible is an errant myth. This just isn’t true of most of the reformed guys I’ve read this year (and in the past) when it comes to disagreements on Genesis 1. Every big name in American reformed circles seems to have a different view on the question – Piper, Driscoll, Mohler, Keller… the reason thoughtful people reach different conclusions is simple – we weren’t there at creation (and neither was Moses), we weren’t there when Genesis was written, and any postulation on the question of the mechanics of creation (past the “God did it by his word” idea) is purely speculative. It’s guesswork. Some guesses may be more educated than others. But to make this some sort of yardstick for theological orthodoxy is perilously stupid.

This is the kind of issue people lose their jobs over. Because of this ludicrous desire to see the issue at front and centre. The bit I think is the most frustrating is the clamouring over the “reformed” label for your view – as though disagreement on the issue is new. Here’s what Calvin said (in a commentary on Genesis 1:16), if you want to be reformed you at the very least want to be agreeing with Calvin. Right?

“I have said, that Moses does not here subtly descant, as a philosopher, on the secrets of nature, as may be seen in these words. First, he assigns a place in the expanse of heaven to the planets and stars; but astronomers make a distinction of spheres, and, at the same time, teach that the fixed stars have their proper place in the firmament. Moses makes two great luminaries; but astronomers prove, by conclusive reasons that the star of Saturn, which on account of its great distance, appears the least of all, is greater than the moon. Here lies the difference; Moses wrote in a popular style things which without instruction, all ordinary persons, endued with common sense, are able to understand; but astronomers investigate with great labor whatever the sagacity of the human mind can comprehend.”

June 21, 2010

You do the math, you do the monkey math…

Thanks to RodeoClown, in the comments of that last monkey theorem quote, I now know the magnitude of improbability involved in a monkey creating the works of Shakespeare (or, even just one line from Hamlet).

The balance of probability is so incredibly weighted against a monkey even getting the right sequence of letters in order (every time the monkey strikes a letter there are 31 other keys he might press rather than getting the next stroke right that it is only the constraints of logic that mean we can’t call the situation impossible.

Which kind of makes you think. One of the arguments against God is broken down into two similar questions of probability (which seem a bit like a paradox to me) – those suggesting the idea of the God of the Bible occurring is so improbable that it’s impossible are, at the same time, suggesting that the improbability of the universe must, by definition, have occurred given infinite time and space. To me, both seem equally improbable. In any moment prior to the world (as we know it) existing it was much more likely not to start existing than it was to start existing. That little conundrum seems to be pretty easy to resolve to me – if one is true, then both can be true, but if one is false then both must be false. Wouldn’t an infinite universe over infinite time inevitably produce each possible permutation of God until it produced one able to control the parameters? Namely, the infinite space part? I think at this point it’s more logical that something pre-existed the nothing. That skews the probability pretty dramatically. Am I getting something wrong with my logic here? Now that I’ve read the math guy’s answer right to the end I can see that he agrees with me. He also wrote a follow up piece in which he answers my conundrum from the previous post.

“So what happens if you have an infinite number of monkeys typing away? Do we get a script for Hamlet as Mr Adams suggests? Yes, we do! In point of fact, we get every combination of letters possible with the given typewriter, and that in infinite quantities. So not only do we get Hamlet, we get Shakespeare’s complete works, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, this document, and incomprehensibly vast quantities of random garbage. (Note that this document may also qualify as garbage, but I object to it being described as “random”.) An infinite number of monkeys typing randomly will rapidly produce every possible written work. “

The Math

Each time it presses a key, there is a one in 32 chance that it will be correct. To get our little snippet of Hamlet, it will need a total of 41 consecutive “correct” keystrokes. This means that the chances are one in 32 to the power of 41. Let’s look at a table of values.

Keys Chances (one in…)
————————————
1 32
2 32*32 = 1024
3 32*32*32 = 32768
4 32*32*32*32 = 1048576
5 32^5 = 33554432
6 32^6 = 1073741824
7 32^7 = 34359738368
8 32^8 = 1099511627776
9 32^9 = 3.518437208883e+013
10 32^10 = 1.125899906843e+015
…
20 32^20 = 1.267650600228e+030
…
30 32^30 = 1.427247692706e+045
…
41 32^41 = 5.142201741629e+061
…
204 32^204 = 1.123558209289e+307

The last figure is included only because it is the largest value that the MS Windows calculator can handle — it’s doing better than my hand-held Casio (old faithful!) which only goes up to 1e+99. Okay, so these figures are pretty vast, but we have a lot of monkeys and they can type fast. So how long will it take, on average, for one of my monkeys to type a line matching that sentence? Hard question. Let’s get an idea of how long we are talking here. How many lines can my monkey type in a year, given that it types at a rate of one line per second?

1 line per second
* 60 seconds per minute = 60 lines per minute
* 60 minutes per hour = 3600 lines per hour
* 24 hours per day = 86400 lines per day
* 365.24 days per year = 31556736 lines per year

If you have access to Unix, you can calculate this with the dc command, but be warned that it may take quite a while to calculate and annoy other users because the computer is so slow. Use of the nice command is suggested. The syntax, should you care to try, is as follows. Type the dc command, then type the following lines.

99k
1 1 32 41 ^ / – 60 ^ 60 ^ 24 ^ 365 ^
p

The figure that is eventually printed will be the probability (expressed as a value between zero and one) of our monkey not typing our little phrase from Hamlet in the space of one year’s worth of continuous attempts. The answer that it prints looks like this:

0.99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999938
6721844366784484760952487499968756116464000

Notice all the nines? Even to fifty or more significant figures, this reads 100%. Okay, so realistically, there is no way that our monkey can do its job in a year. Maybe we should start talking centuries? Millenia? As I understand it, common scientific wisdom suggests that the universe is about 15 billion years old (although they may have revised their dating since I last heard about it). We can easily extend our current figure of one year to count many years. Our calculator will be much faster if we break the calculation down to powers of two and just use the “square” operation, so let’s choose a nice even power of two like 2^34, which is about 17 billion (17,179,869,184 to be precise). The new figure is:

0.99999999999999999999999999999999999999999998946
3961512816564762914005246488858434168051444149065728

June 16, 2010

Old Testament 101: Judging Judges (Webb)

Barry Webb, in his seminal work analysing the structure of Judges, departed from Noth’s view that it fit into a deuteronomistic history. Noth believed the Judges period began in Judges 2:6 and ended in 1 Samuel 12, this overlap between books meant that few saw Judges as a piece of literature in its own right.

Arguing for the literary cohesion of Judges as a stand alone text does not dismiss its place in a framework of Biblical Theology.

Webb believes Judges is internally coherent. That it deals with two primary characters God, and Israel. God is angry at Israel for disobedience but continues to show faith to his promises. Webb suggests the dynamic is more complex than a simple “repentance/deliverance” cycle. That it is more the case of consistent mercy in the face of apostasy.

Webb says the emergence of the monarchy is the next major narrative movement at the end of Judges. Judges ends “to be continued.” He sees “now after the death of…” as a common biblical means for introducing a new chapter in Israel’s history. From Moses (Joshua), to Joshua (Judges), to Samuel, to Saul (2 Samuel 1), and to David…

Webb suggests any approval of the monarchy in Judges is an approval of the Davidic/Judaic monarchy. Webb argues that the monarchy isn’t fully realised until Yahweh’s chosen king (based on Deut 17), David, takes the throne. Saul is “a king like the other nations” while David is a king after the Lord’s heart. But he sees the monarchy as a secondary issue to the relationship between Israel and Yahweh.

He sees a parallel in the downward spiral of kingship with the downward spiral of the judges, comparing Othniel to David.

Webb’s structure of Judges

Webb, like Wenham, identifies Chapter 1:1-3:6 as a prologue, or Overture.

1:1, opening with “after the death of Joshua” represents both continuity and discontinuity. Chapter one concludes essentially revealing the hopelessness of Israel’s attempts to meet the expectations as laid out. The overture climaxes with the meeting with Yahweh’s messenger who makes it clear that they are not to make agreements with the inhabitants of the land (2:1-5), and God’s speech in 2:20-22 about his faithfulness.

Chapter 2:20-22 lays out Yahweh’s rationale for not giving the whole land over to Israel as promised. They failed their end of the bargain. The structure of the overture is:

Israel comes to terms with the Canaanites (1:1-2:5)
Israel is ensnared by their Gods (2:6-3:6)
Israel is now in conflict with Yahweh (2:20-22)

Webb identifies the same pattern of “The Israelites did what was evil” – six times throughout 3:7-16.31. He identifies motifs like improvised weaponry, worthless fellows, seizure of the fjords of the Jordan, weak women overcoming male heroes, and flaming torches that emerge throughout the narrative. And the following issues as thematic:

Israel’s special status as a nation separated to Yahweh (a holy people)
Israel’s going after other gods in willful violation of this status,
The implied contest between Yahweh and those other gods
The freedom of Yahweh’s activity compared to Israel’s presumption that it can use him as required.

Samson epitomises the Israelite condition – he is set apart, chases foreign women, and calls on Yahweh when he gets into trouble.

Webb calls the concluding chapters (divided along the same lines as Wenham) a coda, because he sees it as bringing balance to the book in terms of literary symmetry. He sees some chiastic closure with Judah receiving prominence in chapters 1 and 19, Jebus/Jerusalem and the Jebusites in 2:1-5 and 19:10-12, the weeping at Bethel and the weeping at Bochim (2:1-5 and 20:18, 26), and the Danite migration in 19 as closure for Dan’s failure to secure territory in 1:34.

June 9, 2010

Old Testament 101: Judging Judges (Wenham)

For my next trick, I’ll tackle the question of how the structure of Judges impacts interpretation. I’ll be interacting with two texts on the subject – Wenham’s superb “Story as Torah” and Webb’s “Judges: An integrated reading”.

Wenham seeks to extract ethical principles from Old Testament narrative. Ethics have traditionally been ignored in interpreting these narratives because the narrator often passes no explicit judgment on the acts reported, he simply reports and the events speak for themselves.

Wenham applies historical, literary, and rhetorical criticism to these narratives. He recognises that ethics ultimately don’t rely on the historicity of the text but the literary approach. If only I’d read this when writing my violence essay… that would have been another footnote. Essentially I agree with him. Though I didn’t know it at the time…

Wenham notes that the narrator of the Old Testament is omniscient – aware of the thoughts and feelings of characters in the story. Some use this as justification for seeing the narrative as fiction, others as part of the case for divine inspiration.

Wenham suggests the first readers of the text read them as though they were historical, which legitimises the approach of extracting ethical principles from the stories as though they are indeed historical…

Wenham on the structure of Judges

Judges opens with Israel’s inability to conquer the land (and thus their inability to meet God’s requirements), and closes with the gloomy “in those days there was no king in the land, and everybody did what was right in their own eyes.” These ideas bookend (and perhaps technically bookbegin) the book.

The stories within the book are intended to shock the reader, and beg the question “what should this character have done” (which I think is one of the best ways to understand the spiraling despair of Judges – 2 Kings, and probably any narrative, it’s one of the first questions I ask – the second is the hypothetical “what would things have looked like if they had” because I like speculative ideas).

The stories in Judges follow a pattern of conquest by foreigners, an agent of delivery acting in Israel’s interest, followed by a period of stability, followed by their deaths, followed by Israel “doing evil in the eyes of the Lord.” Wenham argues this idea is tied to Deuteronomic principles (I reckon Deuteronomy 30 is a pretty key interpretive rubric for these passages – Israel’s national autonomy is linked to their obedience to God).

Wenham identifies three sections in Judges:

The prologue: 1:1-3:6
The Core “Book of Deliverers”: 3:7-16:31
The Epilogue: 17:1-21:25

The epilogue and prologue are split into two parts. The prologue contains a summary of the conquest (failed) of the land (1:1-2:5) and a commentary on the constant apostasy of Israel in the Judges period (2:6-3:6). The epilogue deals with a disturbing civil war and essentially a chaistic repetition of chapter 1 with the repetition of “who shall go up? Judah shall go up” (1:1-2, 20:18).

The six major judges in the middle of the book arise in a formulaic manner – the people do what is evil, they are sold into enemy hands, they pray for deliverance, and the Lord raises up a judge.

These judges follow a downward spiral from Othniel who escapes uncriticised to Samson who is the ultimate flawed hero.

The narrative represents the narrators dismay with the state of Israel’s faith, but delight in the actions and methods of deliverance. Within Judges we see people killing enemies with ox goads and jaw bones, stealth (and toilet humour) and after setting fire to fields using foxes tied together by their tails.

Judges 2:2-3 provides a useful interpretive schema for the whole book: “I [God] said, ‘I will never break my covenant with you, and you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of the land… But you have not obeyed my command… So now I say I will not drive them out before you but they shall become adversaries to you, and their gods shall be a snare for you”

This becomes a key theme in the book.

Judges 1 contrasts Joshua 1 while dealing with the same circumstances. Wenham says Joshua is celebrating the success of the conquest while Judges paradoxically declares it a failure. This represents the different literary/rhetorical purposes of the narratives.

Critical wisdom suggested that the epilogue came from a different hand, but it seems more valuable to read it as a commentary on the preceding chapters using the closing refrain as a literary marker (first in 17:6). Wenham argues that it is entirely consistent with the rest of the content. He suggests “doing right in their own eyes” mirrors “doing evil in the eyes of the Lord” but represents an evolution (or devolution) from that position.

Wenham sums up his commentary on the structure as: “Judges portrays Israel becoming progressively more lax in its religious practice, and ever more prone to disunity between the tribes, it reaches a climax with outright idolatory amongst the Danites and a civil war that could have destroyed the nation (nb. which also incidently foreshadows the ten tribes semi-rebellion under David in 2 Samuel and the eventual split of the kingdoms). The reader is driven to conclude that this must not continue, if the new nation is to enjoy harmony at home and peace abroad. A new way of life under new leadership is required…”

Wenham on the date of Judges

A variety of theories – most plausible seems to be for a composition under David prior to his capture of Jerusalem and shoring up of authority (due to a repudiation of Benjamin and Gibeah – Saul’s tribe and birth place), while a post Assyrian editing under Hezekiah (because 18:30 refers to the “capturing of the land” – this editing possibly took place to explain why the southern kingdom survived while the north didn’t) is also plausible if 19-21 are downplayed. The first view almost relies on the capturing of the land being a mistranslation of “the capturing of the ark”…

June 9, 2010

A timeline of (post documentary hypothesis) Old Testament Theology

1870s – Wellhausen’s Documentary Hypothesis (Source Criticism): Identifies JEDP – the four voices alleged in the Pentateuch. Breaking the texts into parts based on their use of names for God, theological focus (on ritual, or law), and on literary style. This followed about 100 years of source criticism.

Here’s what the breakdown of the text looks like (from Wikipedia):

1890s – Vos takes up a position as a professor of Biblical Theology in Princeton in a move designed to combat the emergence of text criticism as the dominant interpretive paradigm. Princeton was apparently looking for someone familiar with the German school and committed to a framework of Biblical Theology, Vos, having studied under the German school was perfect.

1940s – Noth and Von Rad (following Gunkel) introduced the idea of common oral sources (form criticism) for significant moments in Israel’s history. Noth also pioneered “the Deuteronomistic History,” the idea that Joshua to Kings represented a cohesive sociological-historical account of Israel for post exilic (7th century BC) use, at the same time both he and Von Rad saw Joshua as part of the same unit as the Pentateuch, arguing for a hextateuch (to me it seems like only a small step from Joshua to Judges which would make a septicheuch).

1941 – Cassuto, a Jewish Rabbi who wrote in Italian, offered a substantive criticism of the Documentary hypothesis that was not translated into English until 1961. He proposed that the Pentateuch was a single text, written by one author in the tenth century BC. His dating was a subsidiary to his criticism of the Documentary Hypothesis. He demonstrated that textual criticism – the notion of examining inconsistencies in the text to identify separate voices – was essentially cultural imperialism reading modern mores into ancient writings – and that the style of writing presented in the text was entirely consistent with Hebrew literary structure.

1976 – Schmid (another German) almost singlehandly removes the notion of the Jahwist voice (J), and some see him as having done away with all but the Deuteronomist.

1977 – Rendtorff went a step further than Schmid, he did away with both J and E, suggesting a Deuteronomic School was the most likely final editor of the OT, though allowing for a later “priestly” redactor.

My thoughts

Given my bias for Biblical Theology (ie a unified view of the text and an emphasis on inspiration), I’m glad the Documentary Hypothesis is on its way out the academic door. But I think it has provided useful insights (provided it sits under the umbrella of divine inspiration).

So here’s what I think.

The Pentateuch was probably around in some sort of oral/written form pretty early on, which was discovered (and possibly edited into a more cohesive form) under Josiah (there’s reference to a book of law being found in the temple under his reign so it must have existed before then), though compiled in its final form, and attached to the “deuteronomistic history” post exile as Israel struggled to come to terms with its identity. I think the Old Testament as a whole is a subjective retelling of Israel’s history so sociological and literary approaches to the text are useful, historical criticism is useful only insofar as it assumes the accounts will be flavoured in favour of Israel and genre is taken into account.

June 9, 2010

Biblical Theology: Tying it all together

So, in summary, if I was answering a question like “how is Biblical Theology useful for understanding the Old Testament?” I would make the following points (probably with reference to Goldsworthy, Scobie, Dumbrell and Demster):

1. It grounds us in the notion that the Bible is a unified text not a hodgepodge of disparate parts strung together because no other documents existed.

2. It puts other forms of literary criticism in their place as subsets of this view (here I would reference Von Rad, Brueggemann, Barr, the documentary hypothesis and anything else that would demonstrate I knew what was at stake in terms of viewing the Bible as a loose collection of texts).

3. It helps us chart the development of God’s redemptive plans for creation from go to woe. Starting with creation and the fall, through the creation of his people with covenant obligations, the development of kingship, and ultimately culminating with the new creation and Jesus as king.

4. It reminds us that themes carry on, and develop through the Biblical text that are helpful for guiding our exegesis and our preaching.

None of the ideas put forward as unifying concepts for the Bible are entirely satisfying on their own, they all miss something of the complexity of the text (any simplification or summary will inherently do that), but they all play a role in shaping our interpretation. Pointing out linking themes is useful. Provided you don’t want to turn it into the only thread that holds the Bible together.

June 9, 2010

Biblical Theology 101: Demster’s Dominion and Dynasty

Just to add another Biblical Theology into the mix, Demster’s work is part of Don Carson’s “New Studies in Biblical Theology” series.

Like everybody else in the Biblical Theology world he starts with a bit of background on the discipline. He says “of the sixty biblical theologies written in the last hundred years there are almost as many theologies as there are theologians.”

Demster, in a vaguely Hegelian movement, critiques the application of both postmodernism and modernism to Biblical text. This is a cool quote:

“Theologians sailing in the waters of contemporary western culture have to avoid two opposite errors: they have to navigate between the Scylla of modernism and the Charybis of postmodernism. The error of modernism is objectivism, that is the idea that individual subjects can attain the entire value-free truth when examining an object – they can see it as it really is; while the error of postmodernism is subjectivism, the idea that because observers are never value-free or objective, they see the object according to their subjective perspective – they see it not as it is, but as they are (and therefore never really see it). A truly Judeo-Christian epistemology will navigate between these extremes…”

That’s a nice elegant critique with a reference to old school Greek mythology right there…

Barr championed the notion that the books of the Bible must be read separately because they were written separately, and stored as such until a later collation. He says notions of unity are “read into the text” rather than “read out of it.” The same could be said of the Lord of the Rings.

Demster provides a good quote for anybody tackling a question about the ordering or importance of keeping particular books in the Pentateuch:

“The larger literary context of the Tanakh has significant hermeneutical implications. For example, it begins with Genesis rather than Exodus, signifying that Israel’s national history is subordinated to that of world history.”

And one for anybody writing on Judges (this afternoon’s readings) – “The monotonous refrain at the end of Judges that there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25) supplies the appropriate context for interpreting the rise of kingship in the subsequent book of Samuel.”

Demster affirms the cohesive literary value of the whole Old Testament, under its primary role as “scripture.” T.S Eliot said “the Bible has had a literary influence upon English literature not because it has been considered as literature, but because it has been considered the report of the word of God.”

Here’s another cool Eliot quote about primarily enjoying the Bible as ‘literature’:

“While I acknowledge the legitimacy of this enjoyment, I am more acutely aware of its abuse. The persons who enjoy these writings solely because of their literary merits are essentially parasites.”

He uses the analogy of approaching the Bible with a wide angled lens (Biblical theology) as well as a zoom lens (textual criticism). It’s only really worth interpreting with the latter if you understand it in perspective.

Demster, in his summary of the story from Adam to David (conveniently the period covered by our exam) says:

“This story is about the reclamation of a lost human dominion over the world through a Davidic dynasty. In short it is about the coming of the kingdom of God, and it is unfinished.”

His understanding of the Kingdom is essentially the same as Goldsworthy’s, though curiously (given that it was written in 2003) does not reference or interact with his work at all.

Then he brings out the hourglass structure – God’s people starting as humanity, narrowing to Israel, narrowing to Judah, narrowing to Benjamin, and then narrowing to David, before expanding. And he sees this as a typology of Jesus, the new David.

June 9, 2010

Biblical Theology 101: Scobie

Scobie’s “The Ways of Our God” is a significant tome introducing a slightly altered framework of Biblical Theology – God’s Way, God’s Servant, God’s People, and God’s Order…

It opens with a history of Biblical Theology that alone is worth the price of admission – he charts scholarly thought from Augustine (and earlier) through to the reformation, and finally the last 500 years (or thereabouts).

Consensus, at least in the “German School” of textual criticism which sees the Bible as a patchwork document of odd bits and pieces thrown together at the last minute and missing lots of valuable pieces that have been lost forever, is that Biblical Theology is impossible, not only is a unifying idea for the whole Bible impossible in their minds, but to suggest such an idea is possible for either the New Testament or Old Testament is lunacy. Scholars can be dumb. There. I said it. This is one of my most significant epiphanies. Academia is “the emperors new clothes” come to life… let me give you a tangential rant…

Hegel was the ultimate hater of conflict. He’s a compromiser. And proud of it. Hegel believed that in any conflict there were two sides just waiting to be synchronised. This may be a strawman version of his actual position, but it’s a strawman many people have since dressed up and carried around Oz looking for a brain to give him. Hegel’s dialectic works a bit like this:

Someone comes up with an idea (it doesn’t really matter if it’s a good idea or a bad idea). This is the “thesis”…

Someone voices a disagreement with the thesis (it doesn’t really matter if it’s a good disagreement or a bad disagreement). This is the “antithesis”…

We have conflict. Now, suddenly, it’s a good idea to bring those two positions together. In balance. Rather than rejecting either faulty thesis. And that gives us our understanding, until another idea comes along.

There doesn’t, in my mind at least, seem to be any sense of quality control. And so, to continue the Wizard of Oz metaphor, we end up down a yellow brick road wondering why we’re no longer in Kansas, but rather in a mythical land created by our imaginations.

This is pretty much what happens with scholarship. This digression is now over. Lets get back to Scobie’s history of Biblical Theology. Textual criticism (be it sociological, historical, structural, or form) started by doing away with any notion of authorial intent (how very postmodern). As a writer I find that pretty insulting. What’s the point of writing something if you’re just going to interpret it with zero regard to why I’ve written it? I don’t write for writing’s sake. I write to communicate something. The convenience for textual and form critics is that redactors (later editors) play a big part in their understanding of the writing of scripture – which means that anything that disagrees with their presuppositioned conclusion (yes, it is an oxymoron) can just be attributed to an editor and cast off as the scholar burrows into the “true meaning” of the text. Which is whatever they want it to mean. Dumb. Don’t get me started.

Scobie, in discussing the presuppositions that are inherent in any textual criticism makes the following point:

“The underlying assumptions of many practitioners of historical criticism have frequently been positivistic and rationalistic. While claiming to be neutral and objective, many scholars have in fact ignored the most central assertions of the Biblical texts themselves, those relating to the presence and activity of God.”

To paraphrase, Scobie is saying these guys may as well be atheists. That’s how they approach the text.

Brueggemann is more interested in sociological criticism – understanding how texts functioned in terms of shaping the identity of the reader, how they were intended to function in that manner, and how the identity of the writer shaped the writing. This is much more useful, so long as it is approached from a position of acknowledging that God plays some part in shaping the identity of his people via the pen (or quill, or chisel) of the writer.

Scobie concludes his piece on the textual critics by acknowledging that such criticism has a place in establishing the “world behind the text” but he suggests this must play a subsidiary role to the theological function of the texts. And particularly the Biblical theological function of the text. Scobie argues that textual criticism should be focused at the level of the canon as a united work, rather than in parts.

Brueggemann, and others, also want to treat the Bible as literature, paying attention to genre and the art of the text. Which is, I think, my default interpretive position (with the assumption that that will reveal the theological truth). The problem with some of the language used surrounding this literary approach – rhetoric, literary, etc – is that it creates a dichotomy between literature and truth. Not all literature is fiction. Not all fiction is untrue. Fiction – through fables, analogies, allegories, and extended metaphors (all pretty much the same thing) – can be used to express truth. History can be recorded with literary flair.

Scobie shares a good quote from Longman:

“While the Old Testament prose narrative consists of selective, structured, emphasised and interpreted stories… a literary analysis of a historical book is not inconsistent with a high view of the historicity of the text.”

He follows his history of scholarly thought with a short history of the Biblical canon before arriving at the bit that is of interest – a reflection on frameworks or themes identified in popular Biblical Theologies.

He mentions covenantal theology as “foundational” and tracks its development under Eichrodt. Who took the covenant as a heading and proposed:

God and Nation
God and World
God and Men

As three sub-themes of the Old Testament.

Kaiser goes with one idea – “The Promise”…

Von Rad (who has an awesome name) said of the Old Testament, in response “there is no focal-point such as there as in the new.”

He acknowledges the sovereignty of God as a key theme identified by Goldsworthy, and “redemptive history” as a product of German thinking (notably Von Rad).

Scobie says that while the debate has failed to identify one major unifying theme it has recognised multiple important themes that run through the whole Bible.

He comments on a work by Dumbrell that loosely identifies Revelation 21-22 as positing five themes, which Scobie synergises into his own four themed approach which he bases on a proclamation/consumation model of interaction between Old and New Testaments.

His themes and their explanations follow:

God’s Order

Essentially a rebrand of Goldsworthy’s “God’s Rule” – encompasses God’s role and relationship with his creation. It is fulfilled in Christ who brings the dawn of the age, promised in the Old Testament. He brings five sub-themes under this heading.

The Living God
The Lord of Creation
The Lord of History
The Adversaries
The Spirit

God’s Servant

This is obviously fulfilled in Jesus, but the role is played by other characters in the Old Testament – from Israel holistically to kings, prophets and priests… This is essentially a rebrand of part of Goldsworthy’s “God’s People”. But it also tracks the development of messianic themes and other prophecies in the Old Testament that are fulfilled in Jesus.

God’s People

The part of Goldsworthy’s “God’s People” that wasn’t expressed by those specifically acting as God’s agents (above), falls under this category. This captures the ideas of covenant, the theme of God relating to people, and doctrines like election and the church. He also brings Goldsworthy’s “God’s Place” under this heading, arguing that God’s people were always, and are always, intented to be in God’s promised land – from Eden to the New Creation.

God’s Way

Here Scobie departs from previous frameworks to include things like the law, righteousness, ethics (particularly Old Testament ethics – following Childs (1992) who argued that “the Old Testament portrayal of ethical behaviour is inseparable from its theological content.” These ethics are ultimately consummated in the ethics of Jesus and the injunctions of the Epistles.

June 9, 2010