Uploading the Old Testament

To be perfectly honest my sermons don't usually contain a lot of illustrations. This is due to my inability to think of appropriate illustrations rather than for any theological or homiletical reason. And when I do think up illustrations, they often aren't that good.

Except on Sunday. On Sunday I did alright. In fact, I was so happy with it I'm going to use it again this Sunday.

Sunday last we were looking at Jesus walking on water in Mark 6. In the text the disciples look at the information provided to them - Jesus walking on water in the middle of the lake in the middle of a gale in the middle of the night - and they make an assessment of who he is - he's a ghost (6:49). Mark however writes his account in such a way as to provide us with more information - he walks on water (cf Job 9:8-11) he goes to pass the disciples by (cf Ex 33:21); he declares his name (cf Ex 3:14) - and we should make an assessment of who he is. But we can only make that assessment if we understand the information - if we see what is happening in front of us.

And here's the illustration. Chuck is a programme on here in NZ on Wednesday evenings. Chuck is an unwilling secret agent - he's had the Intersect - a top secret database containing details of all major threats to the government - accidentally uploaded into his brain. What that means is that when he sees a person, a building, hears a voice or views a code which is in the Intersect he 'flashes' - all the information about the item he's seen comes flooding into his head. It allows him to understand what is in front of him.

In exactly the same way when we read Mark 6 (and indeed all of the New Testament) we should 'flash' - the information stored in our heads about the Old Testament about the types and promises of Christ, about God's overarching plan of salvation, should come flooding into our heads, that we might understand what is happening in front of of us. And yet of course the problem for many Christians is that we don't know our Old Testaments. We don't read it. We don't preach on it. We find it difficult to understand and apply and so we just abandon it. And so it isn't in our heads. We have no information upon which to 'flash'. And of course that means that when we read the New Testament - when we're confronted with the person of Jesus and God's action in and through him - it is impossible to really understand what is happening. And the danger is that we make the same mistake the disciples did - we identify, and therefore respond to, Jesus wrongly.

And in case you're wondering, I'm going to use the Chuck illustration again this week because we're starting a four week series on why and how we should read the Old Testament. Nothing like putting your money where your mouth is.

Hays on Paul and the OT 2

One of the questions we ended with in the last post was how we can tell if Paul was alluding to an OT passage. Recognising that absolute certainty is impossible, and that discerning echoes of the OT is 'less a matter of method than sensibility', Hays lists seven tests that may help identify echoes of the OT in Paul (the NT in general).

1. Availability. Was the proposed source or echo available to the author and/or original readers? The answer to this one will inevitability be yes - given that Paul and his readers shared a very high view of (what is now known as) the OT.

2. Volume. The volume of an echo is determined primarily by the degree of explicit repetition of words or syntactical patterns, but other factors may also be relevant: how distinctive or prominent is the precursor text within Scripture, and how much rhetorical stress does the echo receive in Paul's discourse?

3. Recurrence. How often does Paul elsewhere cite or allude to the same scriptural passage?

4. Thematic Coherence. How well does the alleged echo fit into the line of argument that Paul is developing?

5. Historical Plausibility. Could Paul have intended the alleged meaning effect? Could his readers have understood it?

6. History of Interpretation. Have other readers, both critical and pre-critical, heard the same echoes?

7. Satisfaction. With or without clear confirmation from the other criteria listed here, does the proposed reading make sense? Does it illuminate the surrounding discourse? Does it produce for the reader a satisfying account of the effect of the intertextual relation?

The second question I raised in the last post about how much exegetical weight we should give to the allusion or echo if we think it is there is more difficult. Perhaps - though not directly related - the next post will give some answers.

Richard Hays on Paul on the OT

Richard Hays has written a very significant book on Paul’s use of Scripture. In it he argus that Paul will often allude to the OT without formally quoting it.
CH Dodd proposed something similar when he spoke of how when a NT writer does make a formal quotation of the OT they often had the total context of the OT passage in view. However, Hays goes further and argues that we cannot adequately understand Paul ‘unless we seek to situate his discourse appropriately with what Hollander calls the “cave of resonant signification” that enveloped him: Scripture’. That is unless you read Paul as someone who was saturated in the OT, you will never understand him.
To take a couple of examples, when Paul says in Romans 2:6 that God will ‘render to every man according to his works’ he does not (despite the punctuation of most English versions) actually signal that he is quoting from the OT, but his words are lifted exactly from Ps 61:13 or Proverbs 24:12. That is an easy example as he is referring to a whole phrase.
Sometimes, however, he will allude to an OT passage with just a word or part of a phrase.
To take an example. In Phil. 1:19 Paul says:
for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance

Very few commentators pick up on the fact that the last part of the statement is an almost verbatim quotation of the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the OT) of Job 13:16. This raises two very important questions:

i. How do we know if Paul is actually alluding deliberately to an OT passage?

ii. If he is alluding to it, how much exegetical weight should we give this fact?

Using Hebrew in Pastoral Ministry III

Why do I need to work with the Hebrew when I can never do it as well as the 'professionals?'

This is perhaps the strongest reason for not keeping up with Hebrew – the investments seem huge and the pay-off seems minimal. I can spend 4 years studying at college, a chunk of time each week keeping it up but when I come to work on the text for a sermon I can barely do more than produce a basic translation. I am still heavily reliant on commentaries for serous insight. Why keep going? Let me give you several reasons why I intend to keep going:

-I think my Hebrew is actually getting (very slowly) better with use. Certainly reading regularly means I can read more fluently. At college I tended to concentrate on getting to know our set-texts in detail, but I am now reading a little more widely and my fluency is (very slowly!) improving.

-Even if my Hebrew is still pretty rudimentary, the tools for serious engagement are there – that is the potential to evaluate the insights of commentaries.

-In practice I read the Hebrew in parallel with the English – and rely on the English. However, I use the Hebrew to check insights I gain from reading the English. So, I recently preached a sermon on Jeremiah 30. Reading the English I noticed the repetition of first person verbs from the Lord's perspective. For example:

v8: I will break his yoke from off your neck, and I will burst your bonds, and foreigners shall no more make a servant of him. 9 But they shall serve the LORD their God and David their king, whom I will raise up for them.

I got quite excited about this and was ready to go to town on it in my sermon. However, a very quick scan of the Hebrew showed me that the personal pronoun (for emphasis) was only used a couple of times throughout the chapter. While it is still true that the LORD is the subject of most of the verbs, the Hebrew is not quite as strong as I thought the English was.

So, in short my interaction with the Hebrew is not particularly profound, but it is something that I want to continue to develop and something that I think is already and will continue to be valuable.

Next time: Some conclusions...

Using Hebrew in Pastoral Ministry II

I am too busy and Hebrew is too difficult to maintain after college.

Hebrew is a difficult language to keep up. I am not speaking from a great deal of experience being only out of college a few months, but the following are ideas that I have heard from others or am intending to follow myself:

i. Most importantly be convinced it is important. Perhaps this post is in the wrong place as we haven't dealt with all the objections yet, but unless you are convinced that it is worth keeping up with Hebrew you never will.

ii. Practically, I think 'little and often' is the key. I have worked out that I have about 15 minutes a day to keep up my Hebrew, so I try and read as much as I can in that length of time. But however much time you have, it seems better to do it every day than just reading big chunks once a week say. I also try and read aloud which helps with my concentration.

iii.One of the books that I have been most excited to buy this year is the Reader's Hebrew Bible. This contains the text of the BHS but footnotes every word that occurs less than 100 times in the Hebrew Bible. This has two advantages. Firstly, it means that you can read the Hebrew text without constantly looking up a lexicon. The editors label the footnotes as 'glosses' – which they are. And they emphasise that they should not be used instead of lexica for detailed exegetical work. Secondly, when you come across a word that does not have a footnote, it means that you should know it. This forces you to pause and try and remember the word rather than simply looking it up. Words that appear more than 100 times are listed in an appendix and as there are only about 500 (?) of them, this is a manageable amount of vocab to maintain.

Using Hebrew in the Pastoral Ministry I

Questions are frequently raised about the value of Hebrew for the Pastoral ministry (see for example the debate here). The pain of learning Hebrew is thought too high for the limited gains that a busy Pastor can draw form working with the OT Hebrew.

I thought over the next few posts I would address three reasons that we might think like this.

Firstly, at the most fundamental level, some might argue that since the NT is the final revelation of God, the 'shadowy' OT is of limited value – and with it the study of Hebrew. Now that we have the superior NT we don't need the OT (good as it may have been at the time). So, I know one well known preacher who never preaches on the OT. He doesn't deny that the OT is the word of God but argues that since we are NT Christians, he should concentrate his efforts on the NT. Now, I imagine that very few evangelicals would express it this way, but nevertheless this can be our underlying, sub-conscious attitude to the OT. The NT is where the action is and we preach the OT occasionally to ease our consciences. However, it is worth reminding ourselves that when Paul says this he had the OT in mind:

2 Tim3:16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Now, the NT is Scripture too and brings all of these benefits, but the OT – on its own if you like - is able to thoroughly equip us for every good work. And if we don't have that conviction about the OT then we will never give it the place it deserves.

Further, the OT does give us so much value that we would lose if we only preached from the NT. It is not so much that the OT gives us anything we would lack if we didn't have it. Rather, I think, it fleshes out and exemplifies much of what the NT teaches.

Take the example of Romans 6:22 But now [...] you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God.

You get much of the same imagery in Jeremiah 30:8-9

8 "And it shall come to pass in that day, declares the LORD of hosts, that I will break his yoke from off your neck, and I will burst your bonds, and foreigners shall no more make a servant of him. 9 But they shall serve the LORD their God and David their king, whom I will raise up for them.

But why preach on these verses when you have Romans 6:22? Well, the problem is that when we read of being enslaved to God in Romans 6 it can evoke a negative image to us because of contemporary examples of slavery or because of our post-modern distaste for authority. But actually it is Jeremiah – who expands on what slavery actually looks like, who helps us to understand it:

10 "Then fear not, O Jacob my servant, declares the LORD nor be dismayed, O Israel; for behold, I will save you from far away, and your offspring from the land of their captivity. Jacob shall return and have quiet and ease, and none shall make him afraid.

You see being God's slave is not a negative thing. It is not what we would describe as servitude – it is not slavery in the modern sense at all– no it is a life of quiet, of ease of not being made afraid. It is a life verse with God on our side to save us. It is being in a relationship with God where he makes an end of our enemies. Jeremiah helps us see what a positive thing slavery to God is. That it is more the idea of being bound to someone in a dependent relationship rather than being mistreated and cruelly worked to death. I think Paul expected his readers to read his words on slavery with an OT understanding. So the OT and the NT complement each other so well that we can't neglect the OT without impoverishing our understanding.

Next time, we will get down to the nitty-gritty of using Hebrew: I am too busy and Hebrew is too difficult