The extent to which the Psalmist viewed human virtues as a reflection of the divine is nowhere better illustrated than in the twin acrostic Psalms 111 and 112. The attributes of God set forth in Psalm 111 are regarded in Psalm 112 as being reflected in the life of the true believer. Thus, just as the righteousness of God ‘endures forever’ (111:3b), so the righteousness of the upright ‘endures forever’ (112:3, 9); just as God is ‘gracious and merciful’ (111.4b), so the pious is ‘gracious, merciful and righteous’ (112:4b); just as God ‘gives’ foot for those who worship him (111:5), so the godly exhibit a similar generosity by ‘giving’ freely of their possessions to those in need (112:9); just as God acts with ‘justice’ towards his people (111:7a), so the pious will act ‘with justice’ towards each other (112:5b) and just as the works of God will always be remembered (111:4a), so the righteous will never be forgotten (112:6b). In fact, Psalm 112 may be understood as an elaborate way of saying that the characteristics of the pious mirror those of God himself, and that an element of conformity exists between the acts of the faithful and those of the God whom they worship. (107)

There are, of course, less subtle instances of the imitation of God principle in the Hebrew Bible, the least of which not being the holiness imperative—You shall be holy for I, Yhwh your God, am holy—that recurs throughout the book of Leviticus (19:2; cf. 11:44-45; 20:7, 26; 21:8). That having been said, the fact that the recently published Dictionary of Scripture and Ethics (Baker, 2011) did not include an entry on the principle demonstrates that it has yet to receive the scholarly attention it deserves. For a bibliography on this principle, see yesterday’s post (updated with two additional resources).

There has been some interest among a few scholars, too little in my opinion, in adopting a descriptive approach, investigating the ethical foundations of the Hebrew Bible. What does ethics look like when we take the text on its own terms? Understanding the ethical dimensions of the Hebrew Bible descriptively I believe to be properly basic to any attempt to use the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament/Tanak prescriptively.

What has emerged among scholars with descriptive aims is particular interest in two ethical foundations/principles: natural law/morality/theology and the imitation of God (often unnecessarily expressed by it’s Latin equivalent, imitatio dei). This area of study has been particularly interesting to me as of late, and my recent posts on the book of Ruth (here and here) have led me to reflect on its significance for the ethics of the Hebrew Bible. The quote from Tamara Cohn Eskenazi’s introductory essay “The Theology of the Book of Ruth” that I highlighted yesterday is worth revisiting:

The book seems to teach that the capacities and actions initially projected upon God by the book’s protagonists, in turn, empower people to emulate God. It helps them sustain one another through their blessings and wisdom, enabling them to act in God’s stead.

The imitation of God principle is an important part of the ethical program of the book of Ruth. Those who have written about the principle have not, to my knowledge, drawn attention to its presence there, much less to how the book of Ruth shapes our understanding of the principle. This narrative expression of the principle and its execution within the story demonstrates a sophisticated ethic and pedagogy. Even though the Hebrew Bible does not contain any philosophical treatises on ethics as an independent intellectual discipline, it is not unconcerned with or unrefined in its ethical ways of thinking and living. The book of Ruth helps to bear this out.

For those interested in the scholarly literature on the imitation of God in the Hebrew Bible, I have included a bibliography on the subject:

The book seems to teach that the capacities and actions initially projected upon God by the book’s protagonists, in turn, empower people to emulate God. It helps them sustain one another through their blessings and wisdom, enabling them to act in God’s stead. Human happiness and success are essentially the consequence of such personal actions in response to presumed divine providence. And it is only when people have taken care of one another that God intervenes. (lii)

Eskenazi ties this in well with the theology of ḥesed in Ruth, continuing the discussion from yesterday:

The central question one may ask is: What are we to believe or do in a world where God’s presence is not self-evident? If we view Ruth against the historical backdrop of Judges, this question becomes even more pointed: What are we to do in a world pervaded by chaos and violence? In answer to these questions, Ruth delineates a theology of ḥesed—generosity that goes beyond the call of duty. Human ḥesed, when rightly cultivated “for the sake of heaven” (in its later Rabbinic formulation), serves as a real power for good even when—perhaps especially when—God’s presence is not otherwise discernible.

In Ruth, it is human beings who bring God into the world, depending upon how they choose to interpret the texts of their lives. So, too, readers are invited to make interpretive choices when responding to the book or to moral ambiguities in their own lives. Ruth’s narrator would have readers weigh in on the side of ḥesed. (liii)

When people, based on their reading of the Bible, wonder why God used to be so involved in the mechanics of the world—performing signs and intervening in the natural order—and yet why God seems aloof in our own day, they often fail to recognize that many of the people written about in the Bible experience God within the natural order. The book of Ruth demonstrates that the Bible is comfortable when God doesn’t perform a litany of miracles to advance the human story.

Ḥesed might seem self-contradictory. On the one hand, God is said to have ḥesed “because you requite for each person according to his deeds” (Ps. 62:13), and the psalmist associates ḥesed with justice: “you love righteousness and justice, your ḥesed fills the earth” (Ps. 33:5). On the other hand, God will always perform good acts for the Davidic house, whether or not David’s descendants deserve it (2 Sam. 22:51), and Moses invokes ḥesed to prevent God from giving Israel the punishment that they justly deserve (Num 14:19). But this seeming contradiction actually conveys a profound message. The greatest act of benevolence God can do for us is to give us a sense that there is justice in the world, that there is some degree of predictability, and therefore that we can control our fate (at least to some extent) by controlling how we treat each other and how we act toward God. Yet, sometimes we don’t want justice because we have acted unjustly. Rather, we want compassion—we want to be forgiven, or to have our broken deeds fixed. In these moments, true benevolence chooses to suspend justice. It is as if ḥesed has cumulative force: one good deed provokes another and another, and each adds goodness to the world. Benevolence toward others and toward the world generates good acts even when they are not earned, and it certainly demands good acts when they are. But sometimes this force weakens and even fades away. Then, both we and God need to forget about the idea of measure for measure and simply perform good deeds—acts of random lovingkindness. (xlviii-xlix)

Insofar as loyalty does not necessarily imply unobligated acts of kindness, loyalty would not capture the image of ḥesed Frymer-Kensky identifies in the text of Ruth and the larger Hebrew Bible (though Tamara Cohn Eskenazi, Frymer-Kensky’s co-author, occasionally uses the word loyalty to describe Ruth’s actions in her subsequent introductory essay, “Ḥesed in Ruth”). Ruth’s loyalty “to the dead and to [Naomi]” (Ruth 1:8) is an act of random lovingkindness, internally motivated and not an obligation externally dictated. The question remains as to how much weight one should assign to the book of Ruth for defining ḥesed for the larger Hebrew Bible. That being said, it must be weighed!

Yhwh, Yhwh, a deity who is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and exceedingly loyal and faithful, guarding loyalty to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity, and transgression, and sin, but who will not surely acquit, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the sons and on the grandsons to the third and fourth generations. (my own translation)

He argues that “for each of these adjectives, . . . Israel must have available for itself a rich variety of verbal sentences that support and give credence to the adjectival claims” (Theology of the Old Testament, 216). Compare this with Fretheim who argues quite the opposite, “Regarding the nature of the discussion of God in OT theology, it must be attentive to the generalizations [Brueggemann’s “adjectival claims”] as to the history/story [Brueggemann’s “verbal sentences”]. It is the former which makes the latter intelligible and coherent” (The Suffering of God, 28, cf. 24-29).

Initially, I found Brueggemann’s argument consonant with my own inclinations. It makes little sense, intuitively, to speak of God as “compassionate” or “gracious” if God does not first act compassionately or graciously. We need verbs that speak to divine compassion or divine grace that allow us to characterize God as compassionate or gracious. Yet, when I read Fretheim on the matter, I found myself facing a sophisticated and not altogether implausible reading of the Hebrew Bible. Fretheim argues that Israel has abstract concepts of the divine which provide coherence to their experience with God, even and particularly when their experience lacks the verbal affirmations which, according to Brueggemann, funds the adjectival claims. He points to Lamentations, a text which he observes “never appeals to salvific events in Israel’s past”:

My soul . . . is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is thy faithfulness . . . . For the Lord will not cast off for ever, but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love. (Lam 3:20-32, cited in The Suffering of God, 27)

It would be an interesting study to explore throughout the Hebrew Bible the dynamic between story and generalization in greater depth. Has Fretheim sufficiently argued his case, or might Brueggemann have equally compelling evidence? Perhaps there is a third way, a true dialectic in the theology of the Hebrew Bible that will never subordinate story to generalization, or vice versa.

What do you think? How would you engage the tension between story and generalization as it pertains to God in the Hebrew Bible?

In Reinhard Feldmeier and Hermann Spieckermann’s God of the Living: A Biblical Theology (Baylor University Press, 2011), they appeal to interpretive tradition. Here, their point is not to argue that Paul does not read Genesis 2-3 historically, but rather that Paul’s connection between wrongdoing and death as it relates to Genesis 2-3 was already anticipated in Second Temple Jewish literature, and this connection was arrived at outside a historical interpretation to “the myth of the fall.”

It is a mistake to understand this interpretation of death [1 Cor 15:21; Rom 5:12-19] through recourse to the myth [Genesis 2-3] only as an explanation in the limited sense of a historical derivation. The Wisdom of Solomon, which refers to the devil as the author of death in its use of Genesis 3, already demonstrates quite clearly how the godless, by orienting themselves in relation to death as ultimate reality and savoring their lives as a “last chance” with no regard for what it costs others, reproduce the life-destroying power of death. In this manner, they “summon” death; in their blindness, they consider it a “friend” and make a “covenant” with it (Wis 1:16). The myth of the fall clearly functions heuristically here. It directs attention to the internal relationship between misguided human being and doing and the resulting disruption of cosmic order that makes room for the destructive power of death. (397)

The context of the text to which they refer, Wisdom of Solomon 1:12-16 reads:

Do not invite death by the error of your life, or bring on destruction by the works of your hands; because God did not make death, and he does not delight in the death of the living. For he created all things so that they might exist; the generative forces of the world are wholesome, and there is no destructive poison in them, and the dominion of Hades is not on earth. For righteousness is immortal. But the ungodly by their words and deeds summoned death; considering him a friend, they pined away and made a covenant with him, because they are fit to belong to his company. (NRS)

In Matthew R. Schlimm’s From Fratricide to Forgiveness: The Language and Ethics of Anger in Genesis (Eisenbrauns, 2011), Schlimm places emphasis on the metaphorical transference of the world and events in the narrative to the world and events of the reader:

Fundamental to all of Genesis, and to the discussion below, is the driving metaphor WE ARE EXPELLED FROM PARADISE. No reader of Genesis has literally been expelled from the Garden of Eden. No reader has seen firsthand the cherubim and whirling, flaming sword east of the tree of life. And yet, Genesis clearly invites its readers to adopt Adam and Eve as metaphorical representations of themselves. In fact, it is a casualty of translation that the Hebrew אדם and חוה are typically rendered ‘Adam’ and ‘Eve’, when in fact their names literally are ‘Humanity’ and ‘Life’. Few readers of the English Bible are aware of this connection, and thus they fail to realize how the text invites them to see these characters less as historical figures and more as metaphorical representations of the human race. Once one understands the driving metaphor WE ARE EXPELLED FROM PARADISE, however, suddenly the remainder of Genesis and even our own lives make much more sense. (125)

(I was a few chapters behind in my reading of the book when he posted this quote, so HT: James Spinti)

Finally, Pete Enns’ book, The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn’t Say about Human Origins (Baker Academic, 2012) is about to be released. Enns’ own arguments, the first fruits of which are available here (Adam is Israel, Paul’s Adam 1, 2, 3, 4, The Apostle Paul and Adam, and Creating Adam), follow similar lines of logic to Feldmeier, Spieckermann, and Schlimm. For Enns, the ANE background of the narrative in Genesis encourages a less-than-historical reading, at least in certain respects. Moreover, Enns finds Paul’s argument persuasive, even if Paul does not share a scientifically informed understanding of human origins. For more on his soon to be published book, see posts on his blog here and here.

The combination of wrath with love and hiddenness with revelation would suggest that both involve complementary options for divine behavior. Such, However, is not the case. By no means does the God of the Bible have “two souls in his breast.” Instead, the God who is “slow to anger” is known by the characteristics that express his intention not to be angry: by his graciousness and mercifulness and his abundant love (ḥesed). Accordingly, the New Testament says that God is a God of love (2 Cor 13:11), indeed , that he is love (1 John 4:8, 16), while the contrary statement, that he is a God of wrath, indeed, that he is wrath, is inconceivable. One can even intensify this clear asymmetry between wrath and love and between hiddenness and revelation further. God hides and grows angry because of his love and for the sake of his love. It must, therefore, be asserted emphatically that God’s wrath is his reaction to injustice and defiance (see Rom 1:18), not a divine affect, not one of God’s dark sides, and certainly not a divine attribute. (339-40)

In a quote recently highlighted by Charles Halton, Feldmeier and Spieckermann make it abundantly clear that “the craft of exegesis developed in academic theology” is an “indispensable path” for the knowledge of God. These two demonstrate great capacity for theological reflection as they navigate the text and the channels of life, be they ancient or modern. Nevertheless, one cannot deny the weight of the task of talking about God. In the conclusion where they reflect on “The Bowls of Wrath in the Revelation of John” they write:

The Revelation of John is the radical response to a situation experienced as radically corrupt. The fact that it opposes injustice and, in all its distress, still introduced a hopeful perspective, constitutes its significance. On the other hand, it bears the mark of an undifferentiated black-or-white viewpoint that results in the one-sidedness and gruesomeness of the vision cycles that require theological correction by reconnecting them to the overall witness of the Bible. The danger that lurks in language about God’s wrath if not appropriately distinguished from the wrath of believers is conspicuous here. (360)

This need to exercise caution concerning John’s portrayal of divine wrath reminds me of something which Terence Fretheim argued in The Suffering of God, “There is always that in the metaphor which is discontinuous with the reality which is God. God outdistances all our images; God cannot finally be captured by any of them” (8). To speak of the Bible as an “indispensable path” for the knowledge of God is not to resolve the challenges one faces in the task of talking about God.

There are innumerable factors that are relevant to such a question. I am particularly intrigued by the numerous references in the Hebrew Bible to extra-biblical literary sources:

The Scroll of the Wars of Yhwh (Num 21:14)

The Scroll of Jashar (Josh 10:13; 2 Sam 1:18)

The Scroll of the Acts of Solomon (1 Kgs 11:41)

The Scroll of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel (1 Kgs 14:19; 15:31; 16:5, 14, 20, 27; 22:39; 2 Kgs 1:18; 10:34; 12:19; 13:8; 14:15, 28; 15:11, 15, 21, 26, 31; 2 Chr 33:18)

The Scroll of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah (1 Kgs 14:29; 15:7, 23; 22:45; 2 Kgs 8:23; 14:18; 15:6, 36; 16:19; 20:20; 21:17, 25; 23:28; 24:5)

The Midrash of the Prophet Iddo (2 Chr 13:22)

The Scroll of the Kings of Israel (1 Chr 9:1; 2 Chr 20:34)

The Scroll of the Kings of Judah and Israel (2 Chr 16:11; 25:26; 27:7; 32:32; 35:26-27; 36:8)

Untitled work written by Isaiah about a character not prominent in the biblical book of Isaiah (2 Chr 26:22)

The Midrash of the Scroll of the Kings (2 Chr 24:27)

The Scroll of the Records of your Fathers (Ezra 4:5)

The Scroll of the Genealogy of those who Came up at the First (Nehemiah 7:5)

The Scroll of the Chronicles (Neh 12:23)

The Scroll of the Chronicles (Esther 2:23)

The Scroll of the Chronicles of the kings of Media and Persia (Esther 10:2)

(“Scroll” translates the Hebrew ספר, though the Hebrew could connote an inscription or some other kind of written medium. The versions refer to these works as books, which is an unfortunate anachronism.)

What are these sources, and did they ever exist? Such sources are characteristic of what we see being composed and preserved in neighboring cultures where a literary heritage from the Iron Age has been preserved. To speak definitively beyond this goes beyond the available evidence. Nevertheless, the available evidence suggests some such works were likely composed, particularly in royal circles in ancient Israel and Judah.

Naturally, this does not speak to the character of such sources. Do they present their material in a disinterested way and strive for objectivity, or are they ideologically motivated and biased in their presentation? Questions such as this raise interesting and important avenues of investigation.

Nevertheless, if it utilizes archival material in ancient Israel and Judah as source material for the narratives it constructs, then broadly speaking, the Hebrew Bible does indeed contain history.

The guidelines for student participation in the Annual Meeting are slightly modified from those announced last year:

• All first-time presenters (full and student members of SBL) must submit the paper to-be-read to the program unit chair(s) during the call for papers period.
• Student members of SBL may participate in two sessions as presider, panelist, or respondent but are limited to only one paper presentation.

I assume these are the only changes we are to anticipate. If so, then it looks as though the only new restriction is the limitation to present a single paper as opposed to two. I suppose there are some who would prefer greater restrictions on student presenters, but compared with the original emendations to the policy as it pertains to students, I believe this is a major improvement.

We owe our thanks to the Student Advisory Board who made our concerns heard and to John Kutsko and the SBL Council for listening to and acting upon our concerns!

The Bible gives the impression of being grounded in history. The story of the Israelites unfolds chronologically from creation to the Hellenistic occupation during the fourth to first centuries BCE. A rich assortment of stories, poetry, laws and prophecies reinforces the sense of historicity. So it can be disconcerting to learn how little of the biblical material is actually attested in written sources from the periods being described. . . .

The task of archaeology is not to verify details in the Bible but rather to uncover evidence from the past, whether or not it fits with biblical reports. In less than 200 years of digging, archaeologists have uncovered vast amounts of information. . . .

Today’s historical reconstruction provides an increasingly detailed and realistic portrait of life in ancient Israel. . . .

On the above subject of history and historicity, for example, the Bible’s take on events and personages can vary substantially from what modern historians reconstruct. Rather than trying to investigate historical evidence, biblical writers use the past to advance a particular point of view. . . .

These biblical perspectives on history should not be surprising. As we explain in “The Meaning of the Bible,” “The Bible is not a neutral or objective text — if there even is such a thing. It is a religious text that promotes a point of view, and this perspective affects the ways in which it relates history.” Modern historians can hardly be neutral or objective either. Yet by obtaining new information through archaeology, external documents and novel theoretical tools, we today are placed in the fortunate, though not always easy position of balancing two long-term projects: uncovering the history of this period and enhancing our understanding of the Bible.

It will be interesting to see how they develop this in their book. The article tends to sensationalize/exaggerate the disparities between the history of ancient Israel as modern historians are able to reconstruct it and the portrayal of history within the Bible. For example, the omission of Abraham from the archeological record is to be expected, even given a maximalist position on the historicity of the patriarchal narratives. After all, how many semi-nomadic pasoralists made it in to the archeological record by name and reputation? Moreover, they adopt an interpretation of the conquest in the book of Joshua that is currently under debate when they suggest we should identify 16 cities with destruction levels.

Nevertheless, the challenge the archaeological record presents to those interested in the history portrayed in the biblical narrative is real, as is our need to spend greater time reflecting on what these texts mean. How integral is the history as portrayed in the narrative to the truth claims of the text? Is there a way for those less optimistic about the historicity of certain events described in biblical narrative to understand the intent of the narrative more faithfully? It will be interesting to see how Knight and Levine develop these and other questions and answer them. I, for one, will be stopping by the Harper Collins booth at SBL this year.