In a nutshell, when it comes to the Old Testament, Enns’ position is that evolution is a given, and that Adam in Genesis was designed by the biblical writers to typify Israel (see here for a brief overview of his view). He does a good job of briefly demonstrating that (incidentally, a longer academic monograph on this subject just appeared in print: Adam as Israel: Genesis 1-3 as the Introduction to the Torah and Tanakh). When Enns gets to the New Testament and Paul (if I read him correctly) his position is that Paul was wrong about Adam, but right about Jesus (who is the “second Adam”). To explain, Enns is saying Paul’s view of Adam assumed a single historical individual, which is untenable in the wake of evolutionary science. Paul’s use of that pre-scientific point of ignorance, however, does not mar the correctness of his conclusions about Jesus as being the necessary and exclusive Savior of all.

Readers know that I would agree that the Bible is a pre-scientific document. I would also agree that theological conclusions based (in part) on pre-scientific misunderstandings are not undone (presuming the idea and argument is demonstrable from the text in other ways — ways also used by the biblical authors). So, in principle, I’m not offended by Enns’ take; but I actually don’t agree with the way he expresses things. I would talk about Adam and Paul differently.  But that is for another post.

Getting to the review linked above, I’m wasn’t impressed with it, though others have been. It’s foundational criticism of Enns is not coherent, and that fact mars the efficacy of it as a critique. The brief excerpt below illustrates why. The author writes of Enns’ approach:

There is literally no mention (that I could find) in which the meaning of the Scriptures is linked to what the divine Author might have intended.[1]  So when Enns speaks of what Genesis means, he always and only refers to “the biblical authors” (xvii) or “the Israelites” (42)—these are the only operative “authors” in the entire analysis. . . . Note who populates the terrain of biblical interpretation here: Genesis (or the “authors of Genesis”), Paul, and us.  Does it feel like anything is missing?  Or Anyone?

His implication is that God is missing, but that reflects flawed thinking. The reviewer’s God is too small. When scholars like Enns (or myself, or John Walton, whom the review also mentions) insist that Genesis was produced by people, we affirm the (biblically and practically) obvious: God used people to produce the inspired text. When we insist that the product of their hands (and other hands, with respecting to any editing) resulted in what God wanted, God is still very obviously in charge.  He doesn’t take days off. We presume God was pleased with the result (and of course knew of the result). When we insist that the biblical material must — to be correctly understood — be interpreted in light of its ancient Near Eastern environment, as opposed to an interpretive context like the Reformation, the early Church, the Enlightenment, or modern fundamentalism and evangelicalism, we affirm God’s own decisions in the matter and process of inspiration. In other words, GOD chose the time, the place, the people, the cultural-religious context, the pre-scientific context, etc., for intervening in human affairs and lives to produce this thing we call the Bible.

To say Enns is divorcing God from the biblical content is to demonstrate ignorance of where Enns and other scholars are really at, intellectually and theologically. Think of it this way: Enns (and myself, along with other scholars) think of inspiration as a process akin to the way virtually all orthodox Christians (and so, surely, the reviewer) think of canonicity. Human fingerprints are all over the canonical process, but God was providentially present and active through the entirety of the process. Inspiration worked the same way. Inspiration of the biblical material came via a process, not a paranormal event. Why is the reviewer unwilling to take as a view of inspiration the precise view he (if he is in the orthodox mainstream) takes of the canon?

At any rate, I recommend Enns’ book since the issue is of great importance, and his work is readable. I’ll return to the topic at some point in the near future.

Technorati Tags: Adam, creation, doctrine, Enns, evolution, Genesis, Paul, theology

Technorati Tags: canon, esther, Qumran, scrolls

In this post I want to take a look at the New Testament. I have no problem with Jesus or anyone else associating the Torah or parts of the Torah with Moses in light of the above. But I have a question: Does Jesus or anyone else ever specifically quote anything in Genesis and attribute it to Moses? I raise this because in my earlier (and admittedly unsystematic) description of where I’m at on all this in light of the biblical data, I suggested that it was possible that none of Genesis came from Moses’ hand. Instead, Genesis seems best understood as the result of activity during the exile (Gen 1-11) and oral traditions about the patriarchs later codified at a time after Moses was dead.¹ Obviously, Moses lived after the events of Genesis, so there’s no necessary expectation that he’d be the writer of that book, but the phrase “law of Moses” includes it, however that phrase is understood. There’s just no specific indication in any other part of the Pentateuch that he wrote anything in Genesis.

So how about the New Testament in that regard? After all, the name “Moses” does appear 80 times in the New Testament. Any clear indicators that Moses wrote something in Genesis?

Not really — at least nothing without uncertainty.

Although many assume it, in the confrontation with the Pharisees over divorce (Matt 5, 19; Mark 10) Jesus does not mention actually Moses in connection with Genesis. He asks what Moses commanded, and the answer (the “bill of divorce”; e.g., Matt 19:7-8) comes from Deut 24. Jesus then talks about the first man and woman, but never actually says that Moses wrote it.

I think the best possible candidate for attributing something in the Torah to Moses directly is this exchange in John 7:21-23 21:

Jesus answered them, “I did one work, and you all marvel at it. 22 Moses gave you circumcision (not that it is from Moses, but from the fathers), and you circumcise a man on the Sabbath. 23 If on the Sabbath a man receives circumcision, so that the law of Moses may not be broken, are you angry with me because on the Sabbath I made a man’s whole body well?

The wording is odd. At first, the institution of circumcision (Gen 17) is said to be “from Moses” (v. 22). But then Jesus clarifies (?) that circumcision was not “from Moses,” but “from the fathers” (a very literal rendering, I might add; v. 22). I have yet to find a commentator that explains this language well, or that even considers that the comment might be an allusion to the kind of oral tradition that I and other OT scholars believe is behind the patriarchal narratives. If John was talking about some extraneous rule about circumcision *in verse 22*, he certainly could have made his language much clearer. But verse 23 actually makes it clear Jesus is not talking about a Pharisaical addition to the law, since his point is that one must still obey the law of circumcision (to circumcise the baby on the eight day) even if that happens to be the Sabbath. So how is it that this law is from Moses but not from Moses, being “from the fathers”?

I think my take on Genesis as oral tradition works quite well here, but a view that insists on Moses writing every word has a problem. And this is (surprise) the only passage in the New Testament that gets even close to having Moses responsible for something in Genesis. And lest I be misunderstood, I am not saying that all this means that first century Jews would have denied complete Mosaic authorship. It was their tradition. But that doesn’t mean it is factually coherent. But I doubt they would have cared in any event, as a clear association of the Torah with Moses was something everyone would have affirmed whether Moses wrote every word or not.

Lastly, I think this issue is a good example of where ancient apathy toward pseudonymity provides some helpful context. Recall that back in February I posted about this issue — the fact that many books in the ancient world are named after people who didn’t write them, even though (in many cases) they are written as though the named person was the author. People in ancient times were accustomed to this practice — designed at least in part to garner readership. They didn’t have our modern sensitivities in regard to things like copyright or correctness in citation. The practice wouldn’t have been viewed as an issue of honesty since it was familiar. Most readers would have known better than to think 1 Enoch was written by Enoch, for example, being content to know it was an ancient work about Enoch though it contained material that cast it as the product of Enoch. That was good writing back then; the “incongruity” didn’t dissuade people from taking such a work seriously.

What’s my point? That “law of Moses” would not necessarily have been reflexively understood as “Moses wrote every word” in this cultural context. Modern people immediately take the phrase in only one way, but that is unnecessary.

Technorati Tags: authorship, Jesus, john, law of moses, New Testament, Pentateuch, Torah

The commenter was curious about evidence for Deuteronomy re-purposing and adapting existing Torah laws for a later context. There are a number of examples of this, but in many cases someone could argue that Deuteronomy merely envisions being in the land and so the content of Deuteronomy at that point doesn’t actually reflect a later period, but looks forward to the conditions of a later period. I like the example that follows because there is no way to coherently make that explanation in this instance. The only way to explain the difference between the law of Exodus and that of Deuteronomy is that the latter law changed the former in response to later historical circumstances – circumstances that post-dated the Mosaic period.

In the left column we find the law concerning what needs to be done when a slave desires to stay in his master’s household. It is a famous passage. Part of the procedure is that the master would impale the slave’s ear with an awl (Hebrew: martsea’) to the doorpost of his house, signifying his permanent membership. This Hebrew term is used only one other place in the OT, Deut 15:12-18, so there is no confusion that these two passages are certainly speaking of the same situation and law. There are some minor differences between the two passages, but one major one. In the Exodus passage, this symbolic act is to be done “before ha-elohim.” The translation below translates ha-elohim as “God.” As part of the rather poor argumentation against a divine council of divine elohim in Psa 82:1b, some apologists who want to argue that the elohim of Psa 82:1b are humans go to this Exodus passage. They argue that ha-elohim refers to Israelite judges or elders. This would mean that the master of the house pierces the slave’s ear “before the human elders” (i.e., local authorities in Israel). So who is right?  Is ha-elohim plural or singular, and does it refer to God or “gods” that are actually people?

Determining who is correct takes us into the parallel passage and its key change:  there is no ha-elohim in the Deut 15 passage! It has been deleted. Why that change was made is directly tied to which view of ha-elohim is correct. Let’s unpack things (what follows is taken from my ETS 2010 paper on Psalm 82, with minor editorial changes to make it readable).

First, ha-elohim could be semantically singular, referring to the God of Israel. The promise about the status of the slave is being made in truth before God.  This is the simplest reading. However, there is evidence that the redactor-scribes responsible for the final form of the text did not interpret ha-elohim here as singular but plural—but ALSO did NOT interpret a plurality as referring to human beings! The key is the parallel passage in Deuteronomy 15. Later redactors apparently saw ha-elohim as semantically plural since the parallel to it found in Deut 15:17 removes the word ha-elohim from the instruction. This omission is inexplicable if the term was taken as singular, referring to YHWH for a simple reason: Why would the God of Israel need to be removed from this text? Moreover, if ha-elohim had been construed as plural humans, Israel’s judges, the deletion is just as puzzling. What harm would there be if the point of the passage was that Israel’s judges needed to approve the status of the slave?

The deletion on the part of the writer of Deuteronomy is quite understandable, though, if ha-elohim was intended as a semantically plural word that referred to gods, not people. Seventy years ago Cyrus Gordon pointed out that the omission in Deuteronomy appears to have been theologically motivated.¹ Gordon argued that ha-elohim in Exod 21:6 referred to “household gods” like the teraphim of other passages, which represented one’s deceased ancestors. Bringing a slave into one’s home in patriarchal culture required the consent and approval of one’s ancestors—departed human dead who were elohim (cp. 1 Sam 28:13, where the deceased Samuel is called elohim).  Under a later redaction after the time of Moses this phrase was omitted from the Exodus law. The context would logically have been the time of some reformer like Josiah or Hezekiah, who did much to eliminate idolatry in the wake of Israel’s struggle with idolatry during the Divided Monarchy under wicked kings. The fear prompting the editorial deletion was apparently that any reference to household elohim (teraphim figurines – sort of like our pictures of departed loved ones) might lead to a new spasm of idolatry.² Only a plural referring to multiple divine beings can coherently explain the deletion. As a result, this passage is also no support for the plural human elohim view with respect to the argument over Psalm 82:1b. And it also shows a clear alteration of a law in Exodus at a later period in Deuteronomy, one that Moses could not have written. But, as I have noted in several posts in this series, calling the Torah “the law of Moses” is entirely appropriate and coherent in my view since its contents are overwhelmingly associated with the life and work of Moses irrespective of how much of its contents can be traced to his own hand.

Technorati Tags: awl, Deuteronomic, Deuteronomist, editing, elohim, law, Moses, Pentateuch, slave, Torah

In the last post, I noted that, while the idea that the Pentateuch has been edited and was not entirely composed by Moses is a coherent (and biblically driven) notion, the standard JEDP theory is dissatisfying. Here are the problems I’ve drawn attention to so far, with standard JEDP responses.

1. Nearly 100 instances where two Hebrew source texts disagree as to the name for God (Yahweh or Elohim). JEDP response: sloppy translator; the problem can’t be the divine name criterion.

2. P vocabulary and concepts showing up in J’s version of the flood story. JEDP: that’s the editorial hand; he made it messy; the problem can’t be the vocabulary criterion.

3. A criterion for P (no anthropomorphisms) not being valid. JEDP response: I haven’t seen any specifically, though I’m betting it would be something like, “well, J and E do *more* anthropomorphizing, so they must be different authors with different religious views.” (A “counting noses” answer; the problem can’t be the “view of God” criterion — of course this also ignores later anthropomorphosms outside the Pentateuch, and anthropomorphic portrayals in Jewish literature after the biblical period — never mind that stuff).

Beside these specific items, I have alluded to the propensity of JEDP to defend itself by assuming what it seeks to prove, and then offering said assumptions as proof of an argument. In this post I want to illustrate this again from Friedman’s second chapter.

Toward the end of Chapter 2, Friedman writes: “J and E were written by two persons . . . the author of J came from Judah and the author of E came from Israel.” Friedman believes this difference in location explains differences in the sources, such as the divergence in names for God. Friedman then goes on for a few pages telling readers how items in the text “belong” to a Judah writer and an Israel writer.  But stop and think about this: Is he “seeing” these things *because* he already has J and E as sources in his head, or would you just read the Torah through and those things be self evident?  I think the former is at play in many respects, and that amounts to assuming what one seeks to prove. Any clever interpreter can come up with some reason why someone living in X location probably wrote this.” But is there any compelling reason why someone NOT living in X location could not also have written this? Friedman never considers such things (and, to be fair, he is trying to explain a theory).

At any rate, a number of scholars don’t buy the neat picture Friedman creates for the lay reader. For example, there is Rolf Rendtorff, a respected German scholar who says, “The positing of ‘sources’ in the sense of the documentary hypothesis can no longer make any contribution to understanding the development of the Pentateuch.”¹ And consider this quotation from The New Oxford Annotated Bible (2007; p. 6).

These are just sample, of course.

My take is that we don’t have four sources writers with competing agendas. Rather, there was a Mosaic core, patriarchal traditions that began as oral history, a national history, rules for priests and Levites, and a primeval history section. This sounds a bit like sources, but it’s not quite the same.  By way of a simplistic summary (this is just a loose description; I haven’t systematized this, since I find so many other things more interesting):

1. Israelites before Moses preserve the patriarchal traditions via oral history.

2. The above traditions pre-date arrival in the land, but got written down after Israel arrived at the land (at some point). That is, I don’t think Moses was writing them down during the trip, as most conservatives think. He had better, more pressing things to do. I don’t think this patriarchal document was written by two writers with competing agendas. I think the patriarchal oral history had “El language” for God since that was the name of God prior to the exodus event. The name of God associated with the exodus (Yahweh) was introduced by God as a way of commemorating the re-creation of the nation (this reflects my agreement with F.M. Cross at Harvard who saw “Yahweh” as meaning “he who causes to be”). Someone who took the Mosaic core (#3 below) and married it to the patriarchal material combined the names in various ways to ensure (and telegraph) theological unity.

3. Moses or someone soon after Moses’ death recorded events in Moses’ life and leadership period, from the exodus, to Sinai, and through the wilderness. I think the law and Sinai episodes were recorded, along with narration of events as the Israelites traveled. Who knows how much?

4. Parts of the above were included and re-purposed in Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy is therefore a hybrid: parts Mosaic; parts much later adapting Mosaic material and composing new material reflecting occupancy of the land, thereby necessitating adaptations in laws, for example. Same thing for Numbers and Leviticus; the material encompasses times, needs, and customs from the Mosaic period well into the monarchy. Moses, the law, the deliverance from Egypt, and the events at Sinai are constant touchpoints. And so the collective whole is, appropriately, the “law of Moses.” I don’t care what the percentages are of each hand. And I consider many hands played a role, not just four “source hands.”

5. Genesis 1-11 was written during the exile, as it has a Babylonian flavoring in terms of what it seeks to accomplish and respond to theologically (creation epics, flood recounting, Sumerian king list [antediluvian history], Babel. This section gives Israel’s rival understanding of the hand of Yahweh in pre-patriarchal history with specific counter-points to Babylon’s claims and the claims of other ANE religions (that is, in the process of composing Gen 1-11, the opportunity was taken to take aim at other belief systems / theologies besides that of Babylon).

All the above operated under the hand of Providence, regardless of how many hands and what order things were written. As many of you know, I view inspiration as a providential process, not a (small) series of paranormal events.

In my next and last post, I want to apply the above a bit to statements about the law of Moses in the NT.

Technorati Tags: authorship, Documentary Hypothesis, JEDP, Mosaic, Mosaic law

Friedman’s Overview

First, Friedman notes that Genesis creation accounts in Gen 1-2 are actually two creation accounts. The bases for this conclusion are:

• A different order for creation elements.
• Different vocabulary for God (Elohim vs. Yahweh)

He then notes that the same distinction between the names for God is seen in the flood story, and so that story must be two separate stories as well, woven together by someone.

Second, E turns out to be two sources itself as well (E and P). While P also uses “elohim” for the name of God, P has several distinctive markers, namely unique vocabulary that reflects priestly concerns (sacrifice, incense, purity) and shows an interest in dates, numbers, and measurements.

To illustrate how the separate source hypothesis is valid, Friedman proceeds to illustrate J and P comprise the flood story. They can be read separately as coherent stories.  The J flood story of course uses Yahweh for the name of God, while P uses Elohim.

Some Inconsistencies

Even at this stage of exposure to the theory a careful reader should notice some inconsistencies. Notice how P features oddly show up in J:

• numbers and date calculation (Gen 7:3-4, 10, 12, 17; 8:6, 12) — it’s unclear how J has “no concern for dates and numbers” when these verses are assigned to J.
• clean and unclean animals (i.e., purity concerns; Gen 7:2; 8:20) — “clean” is an important distinction for sacrifice, which J is not supposed to care about.

Of course, the response to these sorts of outliers is “Well, those inconsistencies are present because they are the work of the redactor (editor) who put the sources together.” And so we have it. Actually, that response is a classic instance of assuming what one needs to prove. And that sort of logic is found throughout the JEDP discussion. It’s coherent and neat except where it isn’t, and when it isn’t, we defer to (or blame — see below) the redactor.

My personal favorite among the inconsistencies is harder to detect, since Friedman gives such a small sampling. He insists that J uses anthropomorphic language for God but in P this quality is “virtually entirely lacking” (p. 60). Friedman is actually stronger on this denial of anthropomorphic language in P in his more academic treatment of JEDP in the Anchor Bible Dictionary. In his article on the Torah you’ll read this assertion:

“Blatant anthropomorphisms such as God’s walking in the garden of Eden (J), making Adam’s and Eve’s clothes (J), closing Noah’s ark (J), smelling Noah’s sacrifice (J), wrestling with Jacob (E), standing on the rock at Meribah (E), and being seen by Moses at Sinai/Horeb (J and E) are absent in P.” (ABD VI:611, R.E. Friedman; my emphasis).

The problem is, Friedman is simply wrong here. It took me about five minutes to come up with the query in the Andersen-Forbes syntax database of the Hebrew Bible to test his assertion (I wrote a paper on this topic a couple years ago for a regional academic meeting). For those who know some Hebrew, I should explain how my query was formed. The part of his quotation that struck me as suspicious was his notion that in P the anthropomorphism of being seen (Friedman uses the example of Moses at Sinai, J and E) are absent in P.  In the query I asked for all the places in P where a deity is the subject of Hebrew galah and ra’ah in the niphal (both mean “to appear” or “be seen/revealed”). Here’s what the search looks like in Logos 4 (note how the Andersen-Forbes syntax database contains searchable source-critical tags (J,E,D,P and others) and searchable tags for noun semantics (Subject: “deity”).

The results of the search uncovered clear instances in P of exactly what Friedman says isn’t in P. Here is the paper I read at that conference in case readers are interested.

The Point

What we have at this juncture (two posts on JEDP) are some issues that I think significant with respect to the some of the basic ideas that led to the source-critical view of the Pentateuch centuries ago:

1. (First post): Nearly 100 instances where two Hebrew source texts disagree as to the name for God (Yahweh or Elohim). If these textual variations were swapped in and out, there is no doubt the neatness of the name criterion for sources would be marred.

2. P verbiage and concepts showing up in J’s version of the flood story.

3. A criterion for P (no anthropomorphisms) not being valid.

Now, lest I be misunderstood, I am not claiming that the above destroys JEDP. That would be greatly overstated. Just because these criteria either fail or are not as neat / coherent as one presumes when reading about the theory doesn’t mean the theory is junk. It has other elements. (And we will look at those). What I’m saying is, here are some reasons I don’t trust the theory and wonder if there isn’t a better way to think about the authorship of the Pentateuch — one that doesn’t default to “Moses wrote every word” (something readers know I don’t believe either¹). Maybe Gen 1-2 are the way they are for some other reason — literary, perhaps. Maybe one of the creation accounts is from a different author — but is that justification for seeing it as part of a very large source that runs throughout the Torah? As we’ll see, there is a good bit of circular reasoning and extrapolation within the JEDP theory. More reasons to distrust it.  I just don’t like theories that over-promise and under-deliver.

And in case someone is wondering I did actually bring up some of this stuff in a course while in grad school. Specifically, I asked about the textual differences between MT and LXX with the divine names, and how that might undermine *that* single element of the theory. Believe it or not, the answer I got was “the editor was just sloppy.” Seriously? So, we’re supposed to breathlessly marvel at the skill of the editor (remember, he was so good it took painstaking work during the 18th and 19th centuries to tease out the sources), but then when there is a problem for justifying the source division we call the same guy a bungling doofus. That’s just self-serving illogic, not an answer to the question.

It just doesn’t build confidence in the approach. And there’s more.

Technorati Tags: anthropomorphism, documentary, E source, elohim, hypothesis, J source, JEDP, Mosaic authorship, P source, Pentateuch, Torah, Yahweh

For those unfamiliar with this hypothesis, known popularly as the JEDP theory, I was fortunate enough to find a PDF copy of the NY Times bestselling popular book on the subject: R. E. Friedman’s, Who Wrote the Bible (it sold over a million copies; we actually had to read this in my doctoral program, too). I would highly recommend reading Chapter 2 of that book to get into the subject along with the Wikipedia link above. In this post and others that follow, I’m going to be explaining why I think the theory over-reaches the data and falls victim to circular reasoning in several instances.

J and E (Yahweh vs. Elohim names for God)

In a nutshell, the JEDP theory posits that Moses didn’t write any of the Torah. Rather, the Torah is (in simplest terms) composed of four separate documents, named J, E, D, and P. J and E are named as such because the authors of those alleged sources respectively used Yahweh (J = Jehovah) and Elohim (or other El names) for God. That is, these authors didn’t use the other names. When the names are found combined in these respective sources (e.g., Yahweh-Elohim), that is the work of the editor who put the two sources together. Same for where the names are not consistent.

I’m skeptical of the name criterion for determining two of the Torah’s presumed sources. One significant reason is that the respective names are not consistent in other texts of the Hebrew Bible. That is, in other texts (namely the Septuagint) the “J” name is in E, and the E name is in J in many places. Friedman dismisses this fact of textual criticism in his Anchor Bible Dictionary article on the Torah:

Though periodically challenged in scholarship, this remains a strong indication of authorship. J excludes the word “God” in narration, with perhaps one or two exceptions out of all the occurrences in the Pentateuch; P maintains its distinction of the divine names with one possible exception in hundreds of occurrences; E maintains the distinction with two possible exceptions. (The LXX and Samaritan Pentateuch have minimal differences from the MT in divine names and have been shown by Skinner to confirm these authorial identifications.)

Friedman claims that there are “minimal differences” from MT (Masoretic Text) and LXX (Septuagint). Really? This isn’t the first time I’ve seen Friedman overstate a case. These days, anyone with the right databases can test this “minimal” claim. So I did. Frankly, I wouldn’t call nearly 100 instances minimal (by my quick-and-not-attempting-thoroughness search).  You can check the results here. Granted, some of the divergences in translation choices in LXX *may* just be the whim of the translator, but it stands to reason (until coherently demonstrated otherwise — and I will get to Skinner’s article to which Friedman alluded) that most of these divergences reflect a different text. And that means that the original text of the Torah may not lend itself to the neat divine name criterion JEDP upon which JEDP is (in part, mind you) defended.

As you digest these results and read through Chapter 2 of Friedman’s book, I’m guessing other potential reasons for skepticism about the divine name argument for JEDP may become apparent.We’ll surely revisit its problems.

Technorati Tags: divine names, documentary, Elohist, JEDP, sources, Yahwist

More specifically, in the last post we saw where Moses was described in the Pentateuch as the subject of a 3rd masc singular verbs (“Moses did XYZ”) vs. when the 1st person singular was used, as though Moses himself was writing (“I did XYZ”). The ratio was 7:1, with the 3rd person instances far outnumbering the 1st person. The conclusion was that it is reasonable to suppose that someone other than Moses wrote some of that third person material — i.e., they are not all self-referential. Put more bluntly: Why would Moses use the third person in a self-referential way seven times more often than using the simpler first person to indicate he was the author? I think that’s not only a fair question; it’s a good one.

In this post I want to explore person and number a bit more precisely (stop yawning).

Think of the book of Acts. The book is addressed to someone named Theophilus (Acts 1:1), just as the Gospel of Luke (1:3). There is therefore virtually unanimous agreement that Luke was the author of both. However, Luke was apparently only an eyewitness for the events of the book of Acts. This conclusion derives from the fact that he was Paul’s traveling companion, as indicated by Paul’s notes in Col 4:14; 2 Tim 4:11; and Philemon 24, as well as the author of Acts’ use of “we” when recalling events in Paul’s missionary journeys. It is this first person use that draws my attention at this point.

Under the assumption that Luke wrote Acts, one would expect there to be a number of 1st person usages in Acts 13-28, the space devoted to Paul’s ministry. If we do a search for the 1st person plural (“we did XYZ”) verb forms in Acts …

… we learn that there are roughly 82 instances in Acts 13-28 (110 overall). Here are the results. However, these 1cpl forms do not all read as though Luke is including himself in the group (e.g., the “we” may refer to conversation in another group Luke is writing about, such as Gentiles or Jews). If one looks through the search results, there are close to 50 instances where the writer uses the 1cpl verb form to include himself. (See the underlined instances in yellow highlighting). So, to put things in general terms, we have 50 good indications in sixteen chapters of Acts that are consistent with Luke as author of the book.

One wonders how many of these we might find in the Pentateuch — a much larger corpus.  I decided to look through the books of Exod-Deuteronomy, the books that encompass the lifetime of Moses — and, more specifically, the travels of Israel out of Egypt to Canaan under the leadership of Moses.  Here’s what the search looked like (I just changed the title of the book in the search range for each search):

The results are interesting. The numbers below represent the total number of occurrences of 1cpl verb forms in these four books — but remember, we’ll have to look through all of them to see which ones *specifically* show us the writer (presumably Moses in context) is including himself.

1cpl verb (total) in Exodus: 35
1cpl verb (total) in Leviticus: 3
1cpl verb (total) in Numbers: 64
1cpl verb (total) in Deuteronomy: 59

Here are the results in another PDF.  Once again I have gone through them and used yellow highlighting to mark the ones that clearly have the writer including himself in what is being written. Be advised that I exclude instances that are introduced by the THIRD person, as that reads like someone else is writing ABOUT Moses and then has Moses saying something in the first person. What we’re looking for is the kind of thing we saw in Acts with Luke — that is what we should expect from a known author’s narrative — first person and use of the first person to include himself since he was present. In other words, can we find 1st person self-references that aren’t introduced by the third person? I looked through these quickly, so if you want to make an argument for others, let me know.

Cutting to the chase, it was very difficult to find anything like we saw in Luke. It only happens when you get to Deuteronomy, and those “hits” are made somewhat questionable by Deut 1:1 (see my notes in the file).

So, I propose again — in view of the data, it seems reasonable to think that a lot of the Pentateuch was not composed by Moses. For me though (as you will see in the second PDF), there is evidence that suggests an original body of Mosaic first person narrative that was later woven into the larger book of Deuteronomy. And, as I noted at the very beginning of this series, the phrase “law of Moses” need not work only one way (as Moses being the author). The phrase seems entirely appropriate of the Pentateuch (or Exod-Deut) as meaning that the work is about Moses or intimately associated with him, so I don’t see any scriptural inconsistency in its use (only our own misuse). The fact that we moderns have misunderstood the phrase “law of Moses” does not mean it is an “errant” or illegitimate one. The problem is with our lack of precision, not the phrase.

Technorati Tags: authorship, documentary, JEDP, Mosaic, Moses, Torah

Here are some preliminary observations / thoughts as we (still) are saddling up to the Mosaic authorship of the Torah issue.

1. There isn’t a single verse in the OT where the “law” references anything in the book of Genesis. For sure the patriarchal stories are known in Exodus through Deuteronomy, but they are never associated with the “law of Moses.”

2. There is no verse in the OT that (key word) unambiguously uses the phrase “law of Moses” comprehensively — i.e., referring to the five books of the Pentateuch. Same goes for other references to the law in connection with Moses. As you read you’ll note that there are a few that *could* speak of the Pentateuch (or Exodus through Deuteronomy, since there is nothing to link the phrase to Genesis). But it isn’t clear; just a possibility.

3. You’ll notice that several of my notes refer to the issue of the date of Deuteronomy (and, more peripherally, to the date of that book and its chronological relationship to the book of Joshua). This introduces what for me is a key issue:  Was any part (or all) of Deuteronomy post-Mosaic in its origin?  Those who hold JEDP are categorical in this regard — Deuteronomy was composed and edited during the reigns of Hezekiah and (especially) Josiah. That means the story of its discovery by Hilkiah the priest (2 Kings 22; 2 Chron 34) needs to be viewed in some respect as either fiction or “fictional license” on the part of of the writer of 2 Kings. If the book was created in its entirety after the lifetime of Moses, the story is basically fiction. If Deuteronomy was part genuine Mosaic material + part application of the Mosaic material by someone who wasn’t Moses, then “fiction” is too strong and inaccurate. I would argue that (if this is the case), whoever wrote the 2 Kings account probably knew Deuteronomy was late but wanted to make clear that the laws in it were tied to Moses (either as a historical and iconic figure or in terms of actual material written by Moses). The scribe is thus doing due diligence to make sure everyone knows that when the laws of Deuteronomy conflict with the laws of Exodus (e.g., the Passover rules), the later laws are still derivative from and consistent with the spirit of the original exodus laws.¹

4. Note that the “book of the law” that is identified with Deuteronomy does *not* contain Deut 31-34 (see the phrase used in Deut. 31:24–26).

5. The instances where “law” is referred to are, in the majority of instances, identifiable (specific passages or sections; e.g., the decalogue, or the curses in Deut 27-28). That is, the association of some law or laws with Moses is very often (nearly always might be fair) specific, not aimed at identifying whole books as the source of the reference.

I’ll let you mull all this over before we hit the New Testament in the next post. Again, by way of summary explanation, my goal in this post is singular:  to ascertain what can and cannot be said about how the OT itself uses the phrase “law of Moses,” and whether Moses is ever associated with all five books. We’re looking only at OT for now, and this is a first step.

Technorati Tags: Deuteronomy, Hilkiah, law of moses, Pentateuch

Like the example from Exodus that I used in the earlier post, here’s a New Testament passage where there’s a lot more than meets the eye:

1 Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. 2 But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God. 3 And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. 4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

I’ll isolate the focus to verse 4. The questions should be obvious: (1) Who is the “god of this world”? and (2) What’s up with unbelievers being blinded from the gospel?

Let’s look at some selections (commentary types are described in my earlier post):

Popular Commentaries

Lone example (it’s long, and perhaps painful):

“Any of us who try to serve God in any way often have reasons for being discouraged. The awareness of our human limitation and the awareness of our imperfection gnaw at our self-confidence. Then, too, the indifference of people to whom we try to witness and share the gospel makes us wonder sometimes if it’s really such good news.

“It is easy to feel discouraged when we see the aggressiveness of evil in our world. And the disunity in the church and the lack of love among so many Christians certainly take the edge off of our witness. But when we read the Scriptures and the story of the lives of the early Christians, we discover that it has always been this way. Paul experienced this and yet wrote to his friends that in spite of everything, “we do not lose heart” (v. 1). And in the first six verses of the fourth chapter, he introduces the reasons for his encouragement.

“Paul felt that God had given him a ministry. There is a sense in which when he said, “we have this ministry” (v. 1), he was referring to the calling that had come to him out of God’s new purpose for his life. Before he met Christ his life was not without a purpose. After all, he had been a man obsessed with a mission, but it was a mission full of hatred and violence and destruction. Then when Christ captured his heart He made him a servant and gave him a ministry of love, of reconciliation, and of service. This is the pattern God has for all of us. He gives each of us a specific ministry—something we can do and that He wants done. Each life undirected has the potential to drift into an aimless, self-seeking, purposeless existence. But God comes to each one who trusts Him and gives something that needs to be done, and in the doing of it we find encouragement about ourselves and about life.

“My Aunt Orphea is a classic example of the way in which being given a ministry keeps our spirits up, keeps us encouraged. This isn’t to say that there isn’t a whole lot in Aunt Orphea’s life that couldn’t get her down. She’s in her seventies, has been a widow for years, has all sorts of problems with her health, and is trying to support herself in a time of high inflation on a small fixed income. There are just a lot of things in her life that could give her ample reasons for complaint. But the truth is that she is a very happy woman, and when we spend time with her, it is easy to see why she has a happy disposition.

“Her little church has made her responsible for the small children’s Bible study time on Sunday morning and she loves it. Each Saturday evening she has preparations to make: a gift to wrap, a song to learn, a game to plan, or a verse to copy. She has to be there early so she can greet the children and see that her room is the way she feels it ought to be. It was obvious that this “ministry” that she has been given is not only blessing all those with whom she works, but it is giving her life meaning as well. She feels needed and wanted and useful. Those Christians who do not have a ministry have missed God’s purpose for their lives.

“The apostle Paul was also encouraged by the gospel that he had been given to share. In verse 2 he has several things to say about the way in which he has shared the gospel. His wording suggests that he is answering some criticism which has been aimed at the gospel he preached. He contrasts himself with the methods of his critics.

“The gospel he preached did not include what he called “craftiness” (v. 2). The word translated “craftiness” here is translated “knavery” in other places and means the “readiness to do anything.” Paul was suggesting that his critics would stop at nothing in their efforts.

“Then Paul’s claim to not “handling the word of God deceit-fully” (v. 2) comes from a word which refers to a doctor adulterating medicines. His critics had accused Paul of adulterating the gospel, probably by not requiring persons to observe Jewish laws in order to become Christians.

“But Paul claimed that he would rest his case with “every man’s conscience in the sight of God” (v. 2). I think that the temptation to tamper with the gospel will always be with us. And every time we try to be clever or add something to it or take something away from it we empty the gospel of its power and our witness and ministry of its effectiveness.

“One rather prevalent temptation is to attempt to make the gospel more intellectually respectable. We are to love God with all our minds and to use our minds as we seek to communicate the gospel, but there has always been something in the very nature of the gospel that seems “foolish,” and people are often tempted to try to remove that stumbling block.

“There is also the temptation to try to make the gospel more acceptable. When this happens, repentance, the cost of discipleship, and the lordship of Christ are played down so it will be easy for people to respond. What Bonhoeffer referred to as “cheap grace” becomes acceptable.

“Still others use the gospel to support worldly values that are actually in conflict with the true Christian life. All the God-wants-you-to-be-rich messages that are heard so much today are nothing but a form of religious materialism. They ignore the extreme poverty of many early Christians and the fact that in many areas of the world today Christians pay a very high price for their faith in terms of material things. The temptation to “craftiness” and “deceitful” use of the gospel is one every Christian needs to continue to resist.

“We read in verse 5 that Paul was also encouraged by the fact that the gospel that he had been given to share centered in a person: “We do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord.” Two words—Jesus Christ—epitomized the message of the early church. The apostles and evangelists didn’t preach a book, a ritual, an institution, or a set of teachings, but a person. To them world evangelization was the sharing of Jesus Christ with the whole world.

“While the Gospels record many of the acts and teachings of Christ’s ministry, they were meant to point a person to the living Christ. Though the apostle Paul did a great deal of writing about the atoning work of Christ, it was not a theory of atonement that he preached, but a person who could forgive sins. It is this aspect of the gospel that makes it possible for all Christians to become witnesses. Evangelism in its most wholesome form is one believer introducing someone else to the person of Jesus Christ.

“Then again, Paul was encouraged by the fact that the gospel did not have to be accepted by everyone to remain valid. I have often shared Christ with people and they have acted absolutely indifferent to what I was talking about.

(Kenneth L. Chafin and Lloyd J. Ogilvie, vol. 30, The Preacher’s Commentary Series, Volume 30: 1, 2 Corinthians [Thomas Nelson, 1985], 221).

Yes, this really is the commentary on 2 Cor 4:1-6. Completely unhelpful. Where is the interpretive beef? It’s hard to know that it’s even the right passage. This is a classic example of talking about the text (loosely speaking) and not giving people the text. At best one could read this after spending some time in the actual passage. But if this is what pastors give their people in the pulpit, they shouldn’t expect them to grow in the knowledge of the Word. They’ll be lucky to find the Word in all that.

Expositional Comemntaries

Example 1

“In addition to their own love of sin, unbelievers reject the gospel because the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving. The unbelieving are the same ones described in verse 3 as those who are perishing; the two terms are synonyms. Despite the claims of some, there can be no such thing as an “unbelieving Christian,” since the unbelieving are the perishing. Ai?n (world) is better translated “age” (as it is in Matt. 12:32; 13:39, 40, 49; 24:3; 28:20; Luke 16:8; 18:30; 20:34; 1 Cor. 1:20; 2:6, 7, 8; 3:18; Gal. 1:4; Eph. 1:21; Col. 1:26; Titus 2:12; Heb. 6:5, etc.). The god of this world or age is Satan, (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11; Eph. 2:2; 2 Tim. 2:26; 1 John 5:19), who controls the ideologies, opinions, hopes, aims, goals, and viewpoints current in the world (cf. 2 Cor. 10:3–5). He is behind the world’s systems of philosophy, psychology, education, sociology, ethics, and economics. But perhaps his greatest influence is in the realm of false religion. Satan, of course, is not a god but a created being. He is called a god because his deluded followers serve him as if he were one. Satan is the archetype of all the false gods in all the false religions he has spawned.

“It is that massive and pervasive influence over society by which Satan deludes the unregenerate so that they might not see the light of the gospel. Except in rare cases, Satan and his demons do not directly indwell individuals. They do not need to. Satan has created a system that panders to the depravity of unbelievers and drives them deeper into darkness. In addition to being dead in their trespasses and sins (Eph. 2:1), veiled from the truth (2 Cor. 3:15), haters of light and lovers of darkness (John 3:19–20), unbelievers walk “according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience … [living] in the lusts of [the] flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and [are] by nature children of wrath” (Eph. 2:2–3). They are “of [their] father the devil, and [they] want to do the desires of [their] father” (John 8:44). All the evil of the human heart—crime, hatred, bitterness, anger, injustice, immorality, and conflict between nations and individuals—is pandered to by Satan’s agenda. The world system he has created inflames the evil desires of fallen people, causing them to be willfully blind and love their darkness.” (John MacArthur, 2 Corinthians [Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2003], 132)

Example 2

“Who are the unbelievers Paul mentions? Are they those Jews who refuse to accept Christ as the Son of God? Or are they those Corinthians who have heard the gospel but reject it? Because the Greek grammar of this verse is infelicitous, we do well to explain the term unbelievers as a synonym of “those who are perishing” (v. 3). The term, therefore, applies to all those who refuse to know Jesus Christ as Son of God. This term appears again in 6:14, where Paul warns believers not to be yoked with unbelievers. Faith stands in opposition to unbelief, and these two can never exist harmoniously.

“Paul calls Satan the god of this age, not to place the devil on a level with God, but to show that Satan is the ruler of this world. In the first few centuries of the Christian era, Gnosticism promulgated its doctrine that not God but an evil god had created and now controlled this world. Opposing this teaching, many theologians wanted to deprive Satan of the title god and ascribe it only to God. Thus they proposed the translation: “to those unbelievers of this age whose minds God has blinded.” But the Greek word order will not support this version. God does not want the death of anyone but desires that all repent and live (Ezek. 18:23, 32; II Peter 3:9). Satan is the adversary of God and his people. On this earth, he exercises the authority that has been given to him (Luke 4:6).

“Jesus calls Satan the prince of this world, but Paul designates him “god.” The Hebrew plural term elohim is translated in the singular as either “God” or “god.” When the writers of Scripture refer to a god, they usually do so with a qualifying genitive; for instance, “each cried out to his own god” (Jonah 1:5; see also Exod. 20:23; II Kings 19:37). When we translate the Hebrew text of Psalm 8:5 literally, we read, “a little lower than God” (NASB). But the Septuagint renders the verse as “a little lower than the angels.” Paul probably had in mind the Hebrew expression elohim, which he translated “god” and applied to the fallen angel, Satan.
Satan is capable of transforming himself into an angel of light (11:14) to deceive people. Through counterfeit miracles, signs, and wonders, he employs his evil schemes to deceive those who are perishing (II Thess. 2:9). He prowls around like a roaring lion searching for prey to devour (I Peter 5:8). And as the spirit (god) of the age, he has the power to blind the minds of unbelievers. The contrast is striking: preachers drive away the darkness of the world with Christ’s illuminating gospel; Satan strikes the unbelievers with blindness so that their minds are unable to see the light of the gospel. A veil covers their minds, much as the Israelites refused to see Moses’ face radiating God’s glory and as the Jews were unable to understand the message of the Scriptures (3:13–15). Conversely, Christians send forth the light of Christ’s gospel and reflect his glory. Satan has no power over the believers who stand firm in their faith, even though he tries to deceive them—if that were possible (Matt. 24:24; Mark 13:22). Believers not only see the glory of Christ through the illumination of the gospel, but also reflect his glory in their daily lives.” (Simon J. Kistemaker and William Hendriksen, vol. 19, New Testament Commentary: Exposition of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians [Baker, 1953-2001], 140).

Both of these commentaries presume that the “god of this world” is Satan (“god” is spelled lower case since that is the way it appears in the translation and commentary). Neither commentator even thought to look up the “blinding the eyes” referent in passage — Where might that come from? to what might it allude? Who blinds eyes in (what a novel suggestion) the Old Testament? This omission results in interpretive tunnel vision.

Scholarly Commentaries

To be honest, few scholarly commentators bother to ask themselves the blindness question I raised above. Sometimes you need to go beyond scholarly commentators, to where the real meat is at — academic journals and academic conference papers. The reason these resources are so valuable is that they are designed to devote 10, 15, 20, 25 pages to narrow questions, textual issues, and interpretive points. In other words, a good journal article is focused on very specific issues.

One of the few commentaries on 2 Corinthians that even gives us material to think in regard to the sort of “Scripture comparing Scripture” procedure that I hinted at above is the one by Murray Harris in the New International Greek Text series. Harris gives us a wonderful insight below, but then doesn’t follow his own trail. Apparently (pardon the pun) he was too blinded by the “obvious” conclusion that the god of this world must be Satan.

Harris notes on page 320 that there are some transparent parallels between the vocabulary used in 2 Cor 4:1-6 and 2 Cor 3:7-18. He puts the passages in parallel in Greek, but here’s a literalized English rendering to try to highlight what he directs readers to see:

Here’s the logical question that surfaces once this patterning is noticed: Who are the people whose minds are hardened so they cannot see the glory?

So, while Harris disappoints for not pursuing this question and its implications, his commentary did something for us that expositional commentaries won’t as a habit do — he searched for patterns in similar vocabulary across the Greek New Testament, specifically within Paul’s other letters (recall one of “Heiser’s Laws for Bible Study” – patterns are more important than word studies. The problem is that Harris didn’t take the pattern back into the Septuagint (or the English, since that’ll get you to what I want you to see).

Now for some homework. I’d like you to do two things before clicking on the link below to have your eyes opened (okay, it’s late, so another pun) to at least consider a fascinating alternative:

1. Answer the question about 2 Cor 3 I just posed.
2. Answer the earlier questions about the blinding issue I noted earlier.

Take a shot at those and then click away!