Greek Palindromes

by on May 24, 2012 in Great Quotes, History

Here’s a great post from Rod Decker:

A palindrome is a word or sentence that reads identically forward and backward, e.g., “Do geese see God?” The Greek palindrome inscription:

ΝΙΨΟΝΑΝΟΜΗΜΑΜΗΜΟΝΑΝΟΨΙΝ

is from the Hagia Sophia. (In Greek, Ἁγία Σοφία is short for Ναός τῆς Ἁγίας τοῦ Θεοῦ Σοφίας, “Church of the Holy Wisdom of God.” This was an Eastern Orthodox church building in Constantinople, constructed in the fourth century. For over a thousand years it was the Patriarchal Basilica of Constantinople. It is now a museum.)

Written in modern orthography the palindrome reads,

Νίψον ἀνόημα μὴ μόναν ὄψιν

and means, “Wash your sin, not only your face.” I first found this palindrome in Bruce Metzger’s Reminiscences of an Octogenarian, 23.

The word palindrome is itself a Greek word, παλίνδρομος, a compound of πάλιν, “again” and δραμεῖν, “to run”/δρόμος, “a race, race course.” There were apparently many Greek palindromes current in the ancient world. Another example that I’ve run across is:

ἀμήσας ἄρδην ὀροφόρον ἥδρασα σῆμα.

“Having reaped I established a lofty-roofed monument.”

(This one I found in Lloyd W. Daly, “A Greek Palindrome in Eighth-Century England,” American Journal of Philology 102 [1982]: 95–97.)

Comments { 1 }

The DOJ Pays $120,000 in Failed Attempt to Bully a Pro-Life Woman

by on May 22, 2012 in Current Events

The Department of Justice is doing all it can to hinder the pro-life cause.

I was sent a link to this post by someone whom the DOJ is pursuing a similar action against. Check out this story from the Daily Caller:

For several months now the Obama administration has been abusing our judicial system through a concerted political intimidation campaign via the federal courts. Obama has instructed the Justice Department to sue a number of pro-life counselors and volunteers for allegedly violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrance (FACE) Act.

—-

. . . the Justice Department has just faced an embarrassing smack down on the highest profile of these cases. It has dropped an appeal in Holder v. Pineagainst pro-life sidewalk counselor Mary “Susan” Pine, who is represented by the civil rights firm Liberty Counsel. The DOJ has agreed to pay $120,000 for this frivolous lawsuit which, as the evidence indicated, was intended to intimidate Ms. Pine and send a shot over the bow of pro-lifers around the country.

Mr. Holder unsuccessfully sought thousands of dollars in fines against Ms. Pine, as well as a permanent injunction banning her from counseling women on the public sidewalk outside the Presidential Women’s Center (PWC) abortion mill (or any other “reproductive services” clinic).

After 18 months of litigation, the DOJ’s case was thrown out of federal court, and the department was chastised in a scathing ruling by U.S. District Judge Kenneth Ryskamp for filing a case with no evidence.

Judge Ryskamp wrote that Holder’s complete failure to present any evidence of wrongdoing, coupled with the DOJ’s cozy relationship with PWC and their apparent joint decision to destroy video surveillance footage of the alleged “obstruction,” caused the court to suspect a conspiracy at the highest levels of the Obama administration. “The Court is at a loss as to why the Government chose to prosecute this particular case in the first place,” wrote Judge Ryskamp. “The Court can only wonder whether this action was the product of a concerted effort between the Government and PWC, which began well before the date of the incident at issue, to quell Ms. Pine’s activities rather than to vindicate the rights of those allegedly aggrieved by Ms. Pine’s conduct.”

Comments { 2 }

Inner-Biblical Allusions

by on May 22, 2012 in Biblical Theology, OT in the NT, OT in the OT

Here’s the body of a post from Charles Halton with a link to what looks to be an interesting article (haven’t gotten to it yet but hope to eventually) and a nice summary of it that resonates with an approach I’ve taken myself:

Jeffery Leonard: Identifying Inner-Biblical Allusions: Psalm 78 as a Test Case. It’s quite an interesting and helpful study which he divides into two parts: evaluating evidence for textual links and determining direction of influence. Here are the points that he considers under the two parts.

Evaluating Evidence for Textual Links

  1. Shared language is the single most importantfactor in establishing a textual connection.
  2. Shared language is more important than nonshared language.
  3. Shared language that is rare or distinctive suggests a stronger connection than does language that is widely used.
  4. Shared phrases suggest a stronger connection than do individual shared terms.
  5. The accumulation of shared language suggests a stronger connection than does a single shared term or phrase.
  6. Shared language in similar contexts suggests a stronger connection than does shared language alone.
  7. Shared language need not be accompanied by shared ideology to establish a connection.
  8. Shared language need not be accompanied by shared form to establish a con­nection.

Determining Direction of Influence

  1. Does one text claim to draw upon another?
  2. Are there elements in the texts that help to fix their dates?
  3. Is one text capable of producing the other?
  4. Does one text assume the other?
  5. Does one text show a general pattern of dependence on other text?
  6. Are there rhetorical patterns in the texts that suggest that one text has used the other in an exegetically significant way?
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Biblical Theology, Köstenberger’s JETS Editorial, and J. P. Gabler

by on May 21, 2012 in Bible and Theology, Biblical Theology, Center of Biblical Theology, Current Events

Andreas Köstenberger’s editorial in the most recent issue of JETS surveys the recent revival of biblical theology among evangelicals (“Editorial,” JETS 55 [2012]: 1–5). I am grateful that he took notice of my work in this area along with that of Greg Beale, Frank Thielman, and a host of others. A lot of good work is being done in biblical theology, and Köstenberger serves us by highlighting some of it.

I do, however, want to take issue with both Köstenberger’s characterization of my approach to biblical theology and his commendation of J. P. Gabler’s.

Köstenberger has this to say of God’s Glory in Salvation through Judgment: A Biblical Theology,

. . . it should be noted that Hamilton’s brand of Biblical Theology is in fact a hybrid of Biblical and Systematic Theology—Hamilton calls the two disciplines “equal tools”—and takes its cue from both theologians such as Jonathan Edwards and direct study of biblical texts (3).

A Hybrid?

I would first observe that a “hybrid” is the offspring of two animals or plants of different breeds. Regarding biblical and systematic theology as “equal tools” does not hybridize or merge the two but simply recognizes that they are both used for different things at different times. Observing that an ox and a cart-horse are “equal tools” at the farm does not result in an equi-bovine hybrid of the two animals.

My statement that biblical and systematic theology are equal tools adds to the usual assertion that we use biblical theology as a “bridge” or a “building block” toward systematic theology. I agree with that concept, but I also think that at points biblical theology is an end in itself and is taught directly to the people of God, rather than being merely a step in the process of assembling a full systematic theology. So the statement that biblical and systematic theology are “equal tools” does not hybridize the two, as though my book means somehow to merge them into one thing.

Taking Cues Not from Edwards but the Biblical Authors

Köstenberger then states that my “brand of Biblical Theology . . . takes its cue from both theologians such as Jonathan Edwards and direct study of biblical texts.”

I do quote Jonathan Edwards, and I use his distinction between subordinate and ultimate ends to define the “center” of biblical theology (47–49). What biblical theologians are looking for in the quest for the center of biblical theology is usually left unarticulated, resulting in confusion and uncertainty as to how to evaluate the various proposals.

I define the center of biblical theology as “the ultimate end ascribed to God in the Bible,” noting that it needs to be demonstrated that “the Bible’s description of God’s ultimate end produces, informs, organizes, and is exposited by all the other themes in the Bible” and shown “from the Bible’s own salvation-historical narrative and in its own terms” (48). In sorting through the Bible’s themes to determine which one the biblical authors consider to be ultimate, the distinction Jonathan Edwards makes between subordinate and ultimate ends is very helpful. But quoting Edwards on this point does not mean that my “brand of biblical theology . . . takes its cue” from him, as anyone who has read Edwards and my book will easily discern.

I have learned from and have great respect for Jonathan Edwards, but he did not define biblical theology as I do, nor am I pursuing an interpretive methodology that takes its cues from his way of operating. He was working at a different time with different dialogue partners.

If I am not taking my cues from Edwards, what am I doing? Here’s how I describe what I undertake in GGSTJ:

In this study, I will pursue a biblical theology that highlights the central theme of God’s glory in salvation through judgment by describing the literary contours of individual books in canonical context with sensitivity to the unfolding metanarrative. In my view this metanarrative presents a unified story with a discernible main point, or center. This study will be canonical: I will interpret the Protestant canon, and the Old Testament will be interpreted in light of the ordering of the books in the Hebrew Bible (see further below). It will be literary: I will seek to interpret books and sections of books in light of their inherent literary features and structures as we have them in the canon (44).

It’s not as though that’s the only time I say that sort of thing. A few pages later:

The purpose of biblical theology, then, is to sharpen our understanding of the theology contained in the Bible itself through an inductive, salvation-historical examination of the Bible’s themes and the relationships between those themes in their canonical context and literary form. In this book I am arguing that one theme is central to all others (47).

At this point, borrowing an image from Doug Wilson, imagine me dancing around in a circle waving a handkerchief trying to draw attention to what I’m about to say: My “brand of Biblical Theology” means to “take its cue” from the biblical authors. As I put it in GGSTJ:

We can think of the practice of biblical theology in two ways. On the one hand, we have the practice of the believing community across the ages. On the other hand, we have a label that describes an academic discipline. Regarding the first, I would argue that biblical theology is as old as Moses. That is, Moses presented a biblical-theological interpretation of the traditions he received regarding Cain and Abel, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers, and his own experience with his kinsmen. Joshua then presented a biblical-theological interpretation of Israel’s history (Joshua 24), and the same can be said of the rest of the authors of the Prophets and the Writings, the Gospels and Acts, the Epistles and the Apocalypse. The biblical authors use biblical theology to interpret the Scriptures available to them and the events they experienced. For the believing community, the goal of biblical theology is simply to learn this practice of interpretation from the biblical authors so that we can interpret the Bible and life in this world the way they did.

It seems to me, then, that the history of biblical interpretation in the church is a history of more and less success in accurately understanding the interpretive strategies used by the biblical authors. Some figures in the history of the church were more adept at this than others. Some failed miserably . . . (41–42).

So I mean for my “brand of Biblical Theology” to take its cue from the biblical authors. I think we should be attempting to trace the contours of their interpretive perspective, reflected in the way they have interpreted earlier Scripture and their own situations, so that we can embrace and apply that perspective as we interpret the Scriptures and our own situations.

Thus, the assertion, “Hamilton’s brand of Biblical Theology is in fact a hybrid of Biblical and Systematic Theology” does not, in fact, reflect either what I say I intend to do in the first chapter or what I then do in the body of the book: tracking through all 66 books of the Bible, making observations on near and canonical context, discussing literary structure and organic thematic development, contending that the glory of God, seen most clearly in his justice and mercy, is the center of biblical theology.

Gabler’s Goal and Mine

Köstenberger writes, “Hamilton’s approach thus differs from ‘The Proper Distinction between Biblical and Dogmatic Theology’ urged by Gabler” (3).

That’s right, it does. Gabler wanted to sift the biblical material to remove the time-bound bits that no longer apply. It seems that he would exclude from “pure biblical theology” statements that the biblical authors make that reflect merely their own time and do not apply to the people of God today. I’m after something different as I pursue biblical theology. I’m not seeking the pure silver amidst the dross (cf. Gabler: “what in the sayings of the Apostles is truly divine, and what perchance merely human”). I’m seeking the perspective from which the biblical authors write, which is not what systematic/dogmatic theologians are doing, either. I’m trying to get at the world-view shared by the biblical authors. That’s what I mean by “biblical theology,” the world-view, or interpretive perspective, reflected in the biblical writings.

We also need to be clear about what kind of “dogmatic theology” we’re after as opposed to what Gabler sought. Again, Gabler wanted to remove the time-bound statements the biblical authors made so that he could get the timeless truths, and the timeless truths would then be used to construct “a dogmatic theology adapted to our own times.” As explained above, I am not interested in Gabler’s program of sifting out the statements in the Bible, where he tried to establish “whether all the opinions of the Apostles, of every type and sort altogether, are truly divine, or rather whether some of them, which have no bearing on salvation, were left to their own ingenuity.” It’s not hard to imagine how this program would handle assertions that “have no bearing on salvation” but are culturally unacceptable—statements about gender or marriage or sexual orientation, for instance. I would not commend Gabler’s enterprise to anyone, as it would seem to enable us to reshape the message of the Bible according to what fits with our culture and its expectations.

I want to teach the people of God to understand how the biblical authors have interpreted earlier Scripture, that is, I want to teach them biblical theology. And my hope is that this will equip the people of God to interpret the Bible and their own lives from the perspective the biblical authors themselves model in their writings.

Check it out for yourself.

Comments { 4 }

Are We Training Parrots or Making Disciples?

by on May 17, 2012 in Bible and Theology, Biblical Theology, Discipleship

In a guest post on the Crossway blog I discuss the relationships between exegesis, biblical theology, and historical theology in the process of disciple-making.

Are your assumptions about the people who hear you preach and teach an affront to the reality that they are made in the image of God?

Here’s the intro:

Solid exegesis, biblical theology, and systematic theology are necessary for preaching and teaching. We don’t exercise these skills merely for our own excellence in sermon delivery, but because the people in the pews have the ability to think, analyze arguments, read the Bible for themselves, and formulate answers to questions that we may never even address from the pulpit.

The whole thing.

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How Revelation 19:20 Supports Historic Premillennialism

by on May 11, 2012 in Bible and Theology, Eschatology

Is there a chronological progression that unfolds in the book of Revelation? Amillennialists basically say No, there’s an ongoing recapitulation, a retelling of the same story over and over. So they would say that the millennium is happening now, at the same time as Satan is pursuing his war on the church (described, for instance, in Revelation 13).

Does this do justice to the actual details of the texts in question? I don’t think so. Consider Revelation 19:20,

“And the beast was captured, and with it the false prophet who in its presence had done the signs by which he deceived those who had received the mark of the beast and those who worshiped its image. These two were thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with sulfur.”

What John says about the beast and the false prophet here is intended to identify the beast and the false prophet as the characters we know from Revelation 13:13–18. Let’s take it phrase by phrase:

Rev 19:20a, “And the beast was captured, and with it the false prophet who in its presence had done the signs”
Rev 13:13a, 14a, “It [the false prophet] performs great signs . . . and by the signs that it is allowed to work in the presence of the beast”

Rev 19:20b, “by which he deceived”
Rev 13:14b, “it deceives those who dwell on earth”

Rev 19:20c, “those who had received the mark of the beast”
Rev 13:16–18, “…it causes all…to be marked on the right hand or the forehead…the mark…the name of the beast or the number of its name”

Rev 19:20d, “and those who worshiped its image”
Rev 13:14b, 15a, c, “telling them to make an image for the beast . . . allowed to give breath to the image . . . cause those who would not worship the image of the beast to be slain”

John has piled up these phrases from Revelation 13 to identify the beast and the false prophet captured in Revelation 19:20. These phrases from Revelation 13 that are reused in 19:20 refer back to the persecution of Christians seen in chapter 13, and in my view, that persecution refers to the satanic persecution of Christians in all of church history. Jesus ascended into heaven in Revelation 12:5, Satan was cast out of heaven because of the cross and resurrection of Jesus (Rev 12:7–12), and he went off to make war on the woman and the rest of her seed, Christians (12:13–17).

Satan went about making war on Christians by summoning a fake christ from the sea in Revelation 13:1. God has a Lamb standing as though slain, Christ (Rev 5:6). Satan twists this with his knock-off many-headed beast that has a head that seemed to have a mortal wound, but the mortal wound was healed (13:1–3). Satan has faked the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus with his un-lamb-like beast. The world responds to Satan’s parody the way it should respond to Jesus–all but the elect worship Satan and his beast (13:4, 8). Then the beast uses his authority to kill Christians (13:7, 15).

Note that John expressly says that Satan, the beast, and the false prophet (the satanic parody of the holy Trinity, cf. Rev 16:13) deceive those who dwell on earth. In other words, they’re doing throughout church history what they’re not able to do during the millennium.

Jesus comes and puts a stop to that deception by casting the beast and the false prophet into the lake of fire in Revelation 19:20, and the angel puts the dragon, Satan, into the pit for a thousand years “so that he might not deceive the nations any longer” in 20:1–3.

So it seems that John has referred back to the persecutions of Revelation 13 in Revelation 19:20 to show how all that has come to an end with the coming of Christ. Then Christ reigns for the thousand years in Revelation 20:1–6.

Some amillennialists think that the end of Satan’s ability to deceive in Revelation 20:3 means that the gospel can now go to the gentiles. That is, they think we’re in the thousand years now, and that Satan’s ability to deceive the nations has been stopped in the sense that he can no longer keep the true knowledge of God from the nations now that Christ has come, done his work, and sent his disciples to make disciples of all nations.

I submit that this explanation does not fit the narrative of the book of Revelation. I’m not imposing this narrative on the book. John himself highlights it by means of the kinds of details I’m pointing out: in the reuse of phrases from Revelation 13 in Revelation 19:20.

How does the narrative go? Satan, the beast, and the false prophet are deceiving the nations to worship the beast, and they’re killing Christians throughout church history (Rev 11–17). Christ comes and ends their deception of the nations (19:20; 20:3), raises the Christians they’ve killed from the dead (20:4–6), and reigns for a thousand years. Then Satan is loosed for the final rebellion (20:7–10) before the great white throne judgment (20:11–15) which is followed by the new heaven and new earth (Rev 21–22).

Note that it is only after the thousand years that Satan is thrown into the lake of fire, where the beast and false prophet already were. Revelation 20:10 states,

and the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.

Beast and false prophet thrown into the lake of fire at the second coming of Christ (Rev 19:20). Satan bound for a thousand years (20:1–6), released to deceive a last time (20:7–9), then he too is thrown into the lake of fire, where the beast and false prophet already were (20:10).

There is a chronological progression that unfolds here, and Revelation 19:20 contributes to it. It’s a symbolic chronology, but it is a chronology.

—

See further Revelation: The Spirit Speaks to the Churches, Preaching the Word. Wheaton: Crossway, 2012.

Comments { 11 }

Robert Gundry on N. T. Wright’s Translation of the New Testament

by on May 8, 2012 in Bible and Theology, Translation Philosophy

Calling it “Tom’s Targum,” Bob Gundry makes some important points about translation theory and much else in an entertaining and spirited review of N. T. Wright’s translation of the New Testament.

Some highlights:

Time was when everybody understood a translation to be a more or less word-for-word transfer of meaning from one language to another—”or less” because grammatical constructions differ in languages foreign to each other and therefore sometimes require renderings looser than word-for-word. On the other hand, everybody understood a paraphrase to be recognizably freer: more thought-for-thought than word-for-word. But translation of the Bible increasingly into languages featuring grammatical structures far different from those of biblical Hebrew and Greek, and carrying cultural freight far different from that of the Bible, made word-for-word transfer a lot less feasible.

Along came the dynamic (or functional) equivalence theory of translation. For the sake of languages and cultures exotic to those of the Bible, this theory incorporated paraphrase into translation, so that even in English versions of the Bible the boundary between translation and paraphrase became as porous as the border between the USA and Mexico. You can even hear Eugene Peterson’s The message, a paraphrase if there ever was one and self-identified as such, quoted as a “translation.” The incorporation of paraphrase into translation may best be illustrated by the shift from the marketing of Kenneth Taylor’s The Living Bible originally as “a paraphrase” to its being marketed now as The New Living Translation, though those who revised it (I was one of them) were told at the start to keep it recognizable as a paraphrase by Taylor.

In the wake of this development arrives The Kingdom New Testament (from here on KNT) by N. T. Wright, identified effusively in its back ad as “the world’s leading New Testament scholar (Newsweek)” and accurately in its gatefold as “one of the world’s leading Bible scholars.” Duly distinguishing between translation and paraphrase, Wright asks, “Is this new version really a translation or a paraphrase?” and answers, “It’s a translation, not a paraphrase.” Why a new translation? Because language is constantly changing, so that “translating the New Testament is something that, in fact, each generation ought to be doing.” (I leave aside the question whether for the present generation enough new translations have already been produced.)

KNT originally appeared in Wright’s series of popular commentaries on the New Testament—Matthew for Everyone et al.—and therefore sports a colloquial style. I’ll call Everyone “Joe the plumber” and “Jane the hairdresser.” Or to suit today’s American culture, should I say “Jane the plumber” and “Joe the hairdresser”? Either way, “J&J.” And since Wright calls me “Bob,” I’ll call him “Tom.” Colloquialism all around, then, so that KNT is to be evaluated at the level of J&J’s everyday speech.

—

“She will, however, be kept safe through the process of childbirth” adopts one of several possible interpretations of 1 Timothy 2:15 by translating “She will be saved” as “She will … be kept safe” and by injecting “the process of” into “through childbirth.” Perhaps the most obvious example of a translation slanted by interpretation appears earlier in 1 Timothy 2:11-12, which Tom renders as follows: “They [godly women] must study undisturbed, in full submission to God. I’m not saying that women should teach men, or try to dictate to them; rather, that they should be left undisturbed.” Tom first replaces learning (from men) in quietness with studying undisturbed (by men). Then he imports “to God,” with no support in the Greek text, to make God rather than men the object of women’s submission—against the making of men, especially husbands, the objects of women’s submission according to Tom’s own translations of 1 Corinthians 14:34-35; Ephesians 5:22-24; Colossians 3:18; Titus 2:5; 1 Peter 3:1, 5. Finally, he changes Paul’s “I don’t permit [a woman to teach men or dictate to them]” into a wishy-washy “I’m not saying that ….”

—

Does KNT work, then, as a translation in the sense taken for granted by J&J when reading both KNT’s subtitle, “A Contemporary Translation,” the back ad’s description of KNT as “modern prose that stays true to the character of the ancient Greek text … conveying the most accurate rendering possible,” and Tom’s own statement of having “tried to stick closely to the original”? No, not even by the standards of dynamic/functional equivalence, of which J&J are ignorant anyway. Too much unnecessary paraphrase. Too many insertions uncalled for. Too many inconsistencies of translation. Too many changes of meaning. Too many (and overly) slanted interpretations. Too many errant renderings of the base language.

But there is a body of religious literature characterized by all those traits, viz., the ancient Jewish targums, which rendered the Hebrew Old Testament into the Aramaic language. So KNT’s similar combination of translation, paraphrase, insertions, semantic changes, slanted interpretations, and errant renderings—all well-intentioned—works beautifully as a targum. Which apart from the question of truth in advertising isn’t to disparage KNT. For the New Testament itself exhibits targumizing, as when, for example, Mark 4:12 has “lest … it be forgiven them” in agreement with the targum of Isaiah 6:10 rather than “lest … one heals them” (so the Hebrew), and as when 2 Timothy 3:8 has “Jannes and Jambres” in agreement with a targum of Exodus 7:11-8:19, which in the Hebrew original leaves Pharaoh’s magicians unnamed. Hence, Tom’s Targum. Trouble is, J&J won’t know they’re reading a targum.

Read the whole thing.

HT: Bobby Jamieson

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“The Rolling English Road,” by G. K. Chesterton

by on May 1, 2012 in Art, Attempts at poetry

The Rolling English Road

by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,
The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.
A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire,
And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire;
A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread
The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head.

I knew no harm of Bonaparte and plenty of the Squire,
And for to fight the Frenchman I did not much desire;
But I did bash their baggonets because they came arrayed
To straighten out the crooked road an English drunkard made,
Where you and I went down the lane with ale-mugs in our hands,
The night we went to Glastonbury by way of Goodwin Sands.

His sins they were forgiven him; or why do flowers run
Behind him; and the hedges all strengthening in the sun?
The wild thing went from left to right and knew not which was which,
But the wild rose was above him when they found him in the ditch.
God pardon us, nor harden us; we did not see so clear
The night we went to Bannockburn by way of Brighton Pier.

My friends, we will not go again or ape an ancient rage,
Or stretch the folly of our youth to be the shame of age,
But walk with clearer eyes and ears this path that wandereth,
And see undrugged in evening light the decent inn of death;
For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen,
Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.

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A 600 Page Book in 500 Words

by on April 30, 2012 in Biblical Theology, Books, Center of Biblical Theology

Crossway had me fill out an Author Questionnaire on God’s Glory in Salvation through Judgment: A Biblical Theology, and one of the things they asked me do was summarize the book in 500 words. I thought back to this today as I wrote up a 500 word summary of another book for another Author Questionnaire for Crossway.

God’s Glory in Salvation through Judgment weighed in around 280,000 words. This next one is a short synthesis of the Bible’s big story, the symbolism used to summarize and interpret that story, and the patterns that emerge across it. It’s provisionally entitled What Is Biblical Theology?, and it weighs less that 25,000 words.

So here’s my attempt to summarize God’s Glory in Salvation through Judgment, a 280,000 word book that came to about 600 pages, in about 500 words:

Exodus 34:6–7 is determinative for the thesis of this book. When Moses asked to see God’s glory, God proclaimed his name and declared himself to be merciful and just. This experience of the glory of God profoundly shaped the first biblical author on record, establishing God’s glory in justice and mercy as the center of his theology, with justice highlighting mercy. Subsequent biblical authors learned and embraced this from Moses.

The wide angle story of the Old Testament is one of salvation through judgment. Adam sinned and was judged with exile from the garden and God’s presence, but the words of judgment brought a glimmer of hope: the seed of the woman would crush the serpent’s head. Like Adam, Israel (having been saved through the judgment of Egypt) sinned and was exiled from the land and God’s presence. The judgment at the exile had been preceded by promises of the salvation that would come through and after judgment, as the prophets pointed to a new exodus and return from exile. God acted for the sake of his own name. He showed justice, making his mercy precious, displaying his goodness and showing his glory. Israel experienced a partial, physical return from exile, but they had not yet returned from the exile from Eden.

The wide angle story of the New Testament presents the death of Jesus as the deepest, darkest moment of the exile—when the temple was destroyed and he became the curse. Here the justice of God was displayed, as the one who had redone the history of Israel right came under the full weight of God’s justice on behalf of his people. Jesus died as the Passover lamb, and his resurrection inaugurated the return from exile. This is no mere physical return. No, this is the return that will take those sojourning through the wilderness to the new and better Eden, the new heaven and new earth, where the dwelling of God will be with men.

When Jesus comes to consummate the story, he will come with judgment for his enemies, and through that judgment he will save his people. God will be glorified in salvation through judgment. Thus, the glory of God in salvation through judgment encapsulates the plot of the meta-narrative set forth in the Bible.

God’s glory in salvation through judgment is the plot of the Bible’s narrative, and it also informs the Wisdom of the Old Testament. The simple are urged to behold God’s justice against the wicked, turn from folly, and experience salvation through the announcement of God’s certain justice. Individuals who believe unto salvation are embracing this very message: they become convinced that God will judge their sin, and feeling the crushing weight of God’s judgment they flee to him for mercy, trust in what he has accomplished in Christ on the cross, and are saved by faith. The redeemed, saved through judgment, respond by glorifying God.

The glory of God in salvation through judgment is the center of biblical theology.

If you’ve read this book, what do you think of my attempt to summarize it? Would you leave anything out that I put in, add, or change anything?

If you’ll be at ETS this fall, watch for info on the Biblical Theology Session that will discuss God’s Glory in Salvation through Judgment and Gentry and Wellum’s Kingdom through Covenant. There’s time between now and November to read both!

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Canon Revisited by Michael J. Kruger

by on April 24, 2012 in Bible and Theology, Books, NT Canon

When I teach biblical hermeneutics, before we actually get to biblical interpretation I try to put down three boundary stones within which we will seek to determine the interpretive perspective of the biblical authors. The first of these has to do with clear thinking. This is a very basic introduction to logical and rhetorical fallacies. We want to be people who think well (here’s a helpful book). The third stone is inerrancy (on which I submit to you this essay), and the second stone is the subject of this post: the canon of Scripture.

The idea is that we have to think logically and well about the 66 books that have been recognized to be inspired by the Holy Spirit. These are the three boundary stones, the triangular space, within which we pursue the interpretive perspective reflected in what the biblical authors have written. In other words, this is the triangle within which we pursue biblical theology.

Michael J. Kruger has just published a book on the New Testament canon: Canon Revisited: Establishing the Origins and Authority of the New Testament Books.

I can tell you right now that this will be a recommended texts for my hermeneutics courses, so if you’ve already had the class and want to do more reading on this topic, you should check this one out. If you haven’t yet had the class (or won’t ever have it!) I’m confident that this book will help you think well through “the question about whether the Christian belief in the canon is intellectually justified” (11).

Congratulations and thanks to Michael Kruger and Crossway on this book!

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What Helps Me Most As I Prepare to Preach

by on April 23, 2012 in Bible and Theology, Biblical Theology, Books, Education, Jeremiah, Preaching

This post is a quick response to a question in a comment on my post on Jane Austen and Jeremiah 20:7. The question was what commentaries have helped me most as I’ve worked through Jeremiah.

My answer is along the lines of what I recently said about what seminaries are for, because what has helped me most as I’ve preached through Jeremiah has been reading the text in Hebrew.

I’m not boasting about being able to read Hebrew, here. It took me a long time to learn it. In fact, I had 8 Hebrew related classes as a Th.M. student at DTS, and when I got to SBTS I was served up a nice big slice of humble pie when Peter Gentry and Russell Fuller proved to me that I needed to re-take elementary Hebrew. I was humbled, ashamed, offended, but I knew they were right. They served me well, and I went back through elementary Hebrew as a PhD student. My pride made it difficult to accept, but I wanted to be able to read Hebrew more than I wanted to preserve the appearance of being a big smart PhD student.

God mercifully gave me the opportunity to study. He mercifully gave me patient teachers willing to tell me what I needed to do. He mercifully allowed me to have the time as a PhD student to re-take those courses.

And being able to read the Hebrew text of Jeremiah as I prepare to preach that book is the most useful part of my sermon prep.

I’m not dogging people who can’t read Hebrew. We all have different gifts and different opportunities and different privileges.

I am saying to people starting seminary or Bible college, or people in process at such schools thinking about where best to invest their time: an education is more important than a diploma. Get yourself an education, whether that amounts to a degree or not. Ideally the degree will come along with the education, but if you’re picking between the two, the education is the more important.

That is to say, I think it’s more important for you to learn the biblical languages than for you to get your credential. So I recommend that you take the biblical languages early and often. You can get other advice from other people with other concerns. That’s fine.

God has spoken in his word. His word is better than the commentaries upon it. His word is better than biblical and systematic theologies written about it. His word is the tool that he will use to change lives. If you have the chance, why wouldn’t you give yourself to his word in its original languages?

I think a valid reason for pursuing a PhD is developing what Peter Gentry refers to as “sovereign command of the biblical languages.” Obviously that’s a high goal, but we’re talking about the very word of God and the eternal souls of men, right?

So I’m not saying that I make no recourse to commentaries. When I need help, I make use of what I have available, and in God’s kindness I have access to a few books. Often, though, if I’ve done my work in the Hebrew text, I’m pretty clear on what’s going on and just glance through a few relevant books to make sure I’m not missing some juicy inter-textual connection or bit of background or historical information. Many commentaries are just rearranging one another’s footnotes.

The best thing is to hunker down over the Hebrew text, ask the Lord to give illumination by his Spirit, and then let the prophet speak.

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A Really Cool Math Fact About the Squares

by on April 22, 2012 in Art, Education, Math

My kids are in Classical Conversations (CC), which we love. This year they learned the squares (a number times itself) to 15, and they learned them to a song. The information in CC is wonderful. I wish I knew all this stuff. But apparently when I was in elementary school the “educational experts” had decided that it was cruel to kids (or something) to make them memorize “useless information.” Harumph!

Anyway, I mentioned to my wife that I wish I could learn this stuff, so she asked me at dinner what I wanted to learn. I said, “the squares.” So they taught me the song. You can get it here, and here are the numbers:

1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81, 100, 121, 144, 169, 196, 225

As I was thinking about these numbers and trying to learn the song, I remembered something I read in a Princeton Review book when I was studying for the GRE (this is one of the things that makes me grateful that I had to take the GRE, by the way, and one of the reasons I encourage students to study for it and really try to learn!).

Look at those numbers. Do you notice the space between them?

Between 1 and 4 are 3 points on the number line, then between 4 and 9 there are 5, between 9 and 16 there are 7, and it continues up by odd numbers as follows:

3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27, 29

That is cool. God made the world in an orderly fashion, and he built elegance and beauty into it, as though he expected people to come along and search out all his wisdom to marvel at his glory.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1).

“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (Psalm 19:1).

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Jane Austen and Jeremiah 20:7

by on April 22, 2012 in Bible and Theology, Biblical Theology, Books, Literature, Sermon Audio

The Lord provided for me on Saturday morning. I was preparing to preach Jeremiah 19–20, and I was really stuck on Jeremiah 20:7, which reads in the ESV, “O LORD, you have deceived me, and I was deceived; you are stronger than I, and you have prevailed . . .”

Some scholars say that Jeremiah is verging on the blasphemous. More liberal interpreters suggest that because this terminology is used elsewhere to describe sexual assault, Jeremiah is saying that the way the LORD has abused him that way. Balderdash! But what exactly is going on here?

That’s what I was wrestling with, when two of my favorite people, my 8 and 6 year old sons, came to me saying, “Dad, can we read?”

We’re reading through the Harry Potter stories, and we’ve recently started book 3, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. It’s Saturday and Sunday’s coming–that is, the sermon is hanging over my head! And I’m puzzling my way through this text with no idea what to make of it. I’m thankful that it’s so hard to say “no” to my sons, because it was in saying, “sure, guys, let’s read,” that the Lord provided for me.

I’ve listened to the (fabulous) audiobooks of the Harry Potter stories, so I know where things are going. Reading back through them aloud to my boys, I’m seeing how J. K. Rowling is setting her little traps for us, prepping us for her delightful surprises. No sooner had I begun to read this account of the escaped Sirius Black than I sensed the Lord giving me insight into what Jeremiah meant when he said the LORD had deceived him.

I didn’t want to give plot spoilers on Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban since my sons would hear the sermon, so I decided to illustrate the same idea with a novel I’ve heard J. K. Rowling loves, Jane Austen’s Emma.

Here’s the intro from the sermon:

In Jane Austen’s Emma, the author subtly misleads her audience. Austen misleads her audience by recounting Emma’s thoughts and impressions, and Emma is usually wrong. It is not as though Austen is unfair to her audience, however, for she supplies a reliable character, someone the audience can trust, in Mr. Knightly. Mr. Knightly regularly tells Emma that she is wrong, but Emma insists that she is right, and Emma is a delightful and sympathetic character through whose eyes the audience sees the story unfolding. So it is only natural for the audience to suspect what Emma suspects.

One aspect of this is what happens with another character in the novel, Jane Fairfax. Emma sees some suspicious things about Jane, and she jumps to some mistaken conclusions that fit the evidence she has but are nevertheless wrong. By giving us only Emma’s perspective, Austen shows us things that will enable us to understand everything when she reveals that Jane Fairfax is not in love with and loved by her best friend’s husband but rather she is in love with and loved by Frank Churchill. From her limited perspective, Emma thought there was something between Jane and her best friend’s husband, and the audience thinks so too. Once all is revealed, however, everything falls into place and the audience sees, with Emma, that all along what Emma took to be evidence of something between Jane and her best friend’s husband was actually evidence of the relationship between Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax.

We could say to Jane Austen what Jeremiah says to the Lord in Jeremiah 20:7, “You deceived me and I was deceived; you seized me and you prevailed.”

Austen knows more than we do, and she overpowers us with her subtle misdirections. She herself has not lied to us; rather, she has chosen to present us with Emma’s unreliable interpretations. And Jane Austen has not done this to us with malicious intent but with a loving intent. She has not set out to deceive us so that she can take advantage of us. She has good purposes in mind. She wants to teach us not to jump to uncharitable conclusions, and she gives us that lesson in the form of a charming story that delights us with a wonderful surprise at the end. She is teaching us not to be fools, and she teaches us that lesson in a way that pleases us and affirms us that she loves us.

And then when we came to Jeremiah 20:7 as we worked through Jeremiah 19–20:

I contend that Jeremiah is saying that the Lord has deceived him the same way I described Jane Austen deceiving her audience in Emma in the introduction of this sermon. Jeremiah is not accusing the Lord of wrongdoing.

Perhaps he is saying that he was mislead about how desperate the situation was; perhaps he means to say that though the Lord revealed to him that he would be an adversary to the people, he assumed (wrongly!) that he would be used to lead the people to repentance.

Perhaps he has seen some good fruit, which the Lord gave him to encourage him and keep him going, but which he concluded might mean that the people might actually repent. The reality has turned out, however, to be as the Lord told him at the beginning (Jer 1:17–19). He is the people’s adversary. They are not going to repent.

So I think in saying that the Lord deceived him, Jeremiah is saying that if he had realized that it would be this bad, he never would have agreed to do what the Lord called him to do. When he says that the Lord is stronger than he, that the Lord prevailed upon him, he is acknowledging that the Lord knew things he could not know, that the Lord controlled what information Jeremiah had access to, and that the Lord manipulated the circumstances such that Jeremiah did what the Lord wanted him to do.

I think the NET Bible captures the sense of the verse:

Lord, you coerced me into being a prophet,
and I allowed you to do it.
You overcame my resistance and prevailed over me.
Now I have become a constant laughingstock.
Everyone ridicules me (Jer 20:7, NET).

Not that the Lord has done anything wrong, but that the Lord has done what good authors do for good reasons. Good authors will allow their readers to be deceived so that they can surprise and delight their readers, the way J. K. Rowling does in the first of the Harry Potter books by allowing her audience to think that Snape is trying to kill Harry, when actually it was Quirrell.

Authors like Rowling and Austen are imitating the delightful surprises God builds into the great story for his people.

God will surprise and delight through the plot twists of the story. The Lord uses the authorial deceptions that Jeremiah is alluding to here to lay the groundwork for something better than Jeremiah ever could have imagined: the fulfillment of the exile in the death and resurrection of Jesus. All this judgment that Jeremiah is prophesying will be visited in 586BC, an event that is a type pointing forward to the cross.

God is writing the story of the world so that it culminates in Jesus.

I’m thankful that my sons interrupted my sermon prep, and I’m thankful that the Lord used them to lead me to this understanding of Jeremiah 20:7. I’m thankful, too, for J. K. Rowling and Jane Austen, who imitate the great Artist, the Lord himself.

If you’re interested, here’s the sermon: Jeremiah 19–20, “A Burning in My Bones”

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Camus’s Translator on Translation

by on April 18, 2012 in Bible and Theology, Books, Literature, Translation Philosophy

I have posted before on Dostoevsky’s translator, and I was pleased to read the “Translator’s Note” to Albert Camus’s The Stranger. Matthew Ward is the translator, and it seems to me that his comments weigh against “dynamic equivalence” in favor of a more literal rendering. Ward is actually critiquing the earlier more dynamic translation of Stuart Gilbert. Here’s what he says:

Camus acknowledged employing an “American method” in writing The Stranger . . . . There is some irony then in the fact that for forty years the only translation available to American audiences should be Stuart Gilbert’s “Brittanic” rendering. . . . As all translators do, Gilbert gave the novel a consistency and voice all his own. A certain paraphrastic earnestness might be a way of describing his effort to make the text intelligible, to help the English-speaking reader understand what Camus meant. In addition to giving the text a more “American” quality, I have also attempted to venture farther into the letter of Camus’s novel, to capture what he said and how he said it, not what he meant. In theory, the latter should take care of itself.

When Meursault meets old Salamano and his dog in the dark stairwell of their apartment house, Meursault observes, “Il etait avec son chien.” With the reflex of a well-bred Englishman, Gilbert restores the conventional relation between man and beast and gives additional adverbial information: “As usual, he had his dog with him.” But I have taken Meursault at his word: “He was with his dog.”–in the way one is with a spouse or a friend. A sentence as straightforward as this gives us the world through Meursault’s eyes. As he says toward the end of his story, as he sees things, Salamano’s dog was worth just as much as Salamano’s wife. Such peculiarities of perception, such psychological increments of character are Meursault. It is by pursuing what is unconventional in Camus’s writing that one approaches a degree of its still startling originality.

. . . .

. . . an impossible fidelity has been my purpose.

. . . time reveals all translation to be paraphrase.

Sentiments such as these are very close to my own reasons for thinking the Bible should be translated literally.

Related:

Dynamic Equivalence: The Method Is the Problem

What Makes a Translation Accurate?

“Son of Man” or “Human Beings” in the NIV 2011: What Difference Does It Make?

The Heresy of Explanation

Can Dostoevsky’s Translator Weigh in on Bible Translation?

Was Gender Usage in the English Language Shaped by the Old Testament in Hebrew?

The Word of God Is Living and Active (unless your translation philosophy emasculates it)

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Gerald Bray’s God Is Love

by on April 17, 2012 in Biblical Theology, Books

Crossway continues to bless us with great resources. I have long appreciated Gerald Bray. My favorite book of his (perhaps until I finish the book featured in this post) is his history of biblical hermeneutices: Biblical Interpretation: Past and Present.

My deep respect for Bray made me really happy to be alerted by Andy Naselli to the publication of what may be his magnum opus.

Justin Wainscott has interviewed Bray on his new book here.

Matt Smethurst’s interview on the same is here.

If you don’t already have it, you can get your copy of God Is Love: A Biblical and Systematic Theology here.

 

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What Makes a Translation Accurate?

by on April 16, 2012 in Bible and Theology, Biblical Theology, Translation Philosophy, Typology

What makes a translation accurate?

Its ability to preserve the way that later biblical authors evoke earlier Scripture. The Bible was written by at least 40 authors from Moses in the 1400s BC to John around AD 90. Everyone who followed Moses learned from his work, and the later authors made heavy use of what the earlier authors had written.

When we consider “accuracy” in a translation, one factor that should receive more attention is the question of whether the influence of earlier Scripture on later Scripture has been preserved. The biblical authors are not always engaging earlier passages in ways that are obvious. The authors of biblical narrative do more “showing” than “telling,” and the authors of biblical poetry and prophecy have very subtle ways of evoking the promises and curses, patterns and portrayals from the narratives.

There is, of course, a spectrum of opinion about how best to translate. Those who present a dynamic equivalent may “accurately” communicate the meaning of a particular passage in the language into which the Bible is being translated. But what if the translator did not see a subtle connection the biblical author made to an earlier passage of Scripture? This could result from the fact that while the translator may be an expert in the Psalms, he may not have spent as much time as he would like in Deuteronomy or Genesis. Or, what if the translator did see the re-use of words or even whole phrases from an earlier passage (or passages) but thought it was of no significance and so did not preserve it in his dynamic equivalent? Yet a third possibility is that the translator saw the connections, thought they were significant, but thought that clarity in the translation was more important than the preservation of intertextuality. If the translator does not present a formal equivalent, will readers of the translation have the opportunity to evaluate the significance of subtle connections to earlier Scripture?

The more dynamic a translation is, the more often one is faced with these questions. Consider, for instance, the possibility that there are connections at word and phrase levels between Genesis 12, Genesis 15, 2 Samuel 7, Psalm 72, Luke 1, and Galatians 3. Will these connections be evident if one scholar presents a dynamic equivalent rendering of the relevant statements in Genesis 12 and 15, then another scholar does the same for 2 Samuel 7, perhaps without concern for or knowledge of how Genesis 12 and 15 have been rendered? What if this process is continued by a third scholar working on Psalms, a fourth on Luke, and a fifth on Galatians? Then the dynamic equivalents of the various scholars are forwarded to a final committee. Will the committee be in position to bring all these dynamic equivalents together “accurately” to represent connections between these texts and the myriads of others whose influence is operative?

This issue is ultimately a great motivation to learn the biblical languages! Most people will not have that opportunity. Will they have the opportunity to see more or less of the Bible’s inter-connectedness? Won’t more of the Bible’s inter-connectedness be preserved if the translation is presenting formal equivalence instead of dynamic equivalence? Because the influence of earlier Scripture is so often determinative for the meaning of later Scripture, I prefer more literal translations.

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Originally posted at BibleGateway

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What difference does it make if we capitalize son in Psalm 2?

by on April 16, 2012 in Bible and Theology, Biblical Theology, Translation Philosophy, Typology

The promises to David from 2 Samuel 7:4–17 are clearly in view in Psalm 2, especially in verses 5–12. In 1 Kings 2:1–4 and several other passages these promises are specifically applied to Solomon. These promises are also significant in the accounts of kings such as Hezekiah and Josiah. There is a sense, then, in which the promises apply to the line of kings that descends from David. This line culminates in Jesus, in whom the promises are ultimately fulfilled.

The problem with capitalizing son in Psalm 2:7 is that it cuts straight from from 2 Samuel 7 to Jesus. It’s great to get to Jesus, but the short cut keeps readers from seeing the typological development that grows and deepens through the accounts of the sons of David. This can keep us from understanding what Jesus meant when he declared that one greater than Solomon had arrived (cf. Matt 12:42).

So capitalizing son in Psalm 2:7 gets the termination point right, but it can keep us from feeling the buildup of the development that swells and plunges between David and Jesus.

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Originally posted at BibleGateway

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