March, 2010

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On Scholarship, Evangelicalism and Book Reviews

Sunday, March 21st, 2010

Alan Lenzi has gone out on a limb and articulated a series of complaints over recent reviews written by Evangelical Christians in the Review of Biblical Literature. I’ve been following Lenzi’s posts on this and I have to say that I am in general agreement with him–to an extent. I do think that in some cases RBL really ought to require a more nuanced review from their reviewers. At the same time I want to be careful that requiring a more nuanced review does not lead to requiring the consensus position among critical scholars. I realize that this isn’t what Lenzi is suggesting, but it is a danger. Let me try to flesh this out a little by giving a concrete example.

The most recent review that Lenzi complains about may be found here. When I read this review I was taken aback by the following statement (also quoted by Lenzi):

Those who believe that the Bible is the literary product of divine revelation will agree that Oswalt has shown that the Bible is different from the other religious writings from the ancient Near East. Those who reject the notion that God has revealed himself in the history of Israel will remain unpersuaded that the Bible is a unique book containing divine revelation and that the religion of Israel is different from the other religions in the ancient Near East.

Why was I taken aback? Simple–I believe the Bible is a literary product of divine revelation, but based on the review I seriously doubt that I would agree that Oswalt had shown that the Bible is different from other documents in the ANE and thus divine revelation. I imagine I would come to the conclusion that Oswalt merely wanted to believe that to be the case, and so strung together a rather lengthy list of assertions to that end and called it a book. This is the kind of either-or thinking among Evangelicals that frustrates me. The thinking is that either the Bible must be entirely unique and unlike any human document or it is not divine revelation. I don’t understand why the Bible can not be quite similar to other ANE documents and still be divine revelation. Apart from this, the idea that one can prove that something is divine revelation is silly at best.

So, on the one hand I think that RBL needs to demand that reviews not simply summarize what is in a book, but rather offer thoughtful critiques of the good and bad within a book. On the other hand, I have no problem with RBL publishing a review of a book such as The Bible Among the Myths. I don’t even have a problem with the author of the review saying that in his or her opinion the book would be a good fit for some confessional schools (no matter how much I might disagree). However, there needs to be some critical engagement with the material. There needs to be a reason for why the reviewer concludes that the book might be a good fit for confessional schools. There needs to be some acknowledgment that the book steps outside the bounds of history, literary criticism, source criticism or anything else and enters into the realm of theology. My primary concern is that if one goes too far to the other extreme, any book written by a confessional scholar would simply be deemed “theology” and disregarded (e.g., Exploring the Old Testament: A Guide to the Prophets by J. Gordon McConville is published by IVP, and certainly comes at things from a confessional perspective. However, it interacts with critical scholarship and would be, in my opinion, an excellent introductory text for use at confessional schools). In other words, I think there is a place for scholarship that has a confessional audience in mind, but having a confessional audience in mind does not absolve it from the requirement that it be scholarly.

Balance is needed in this, as in all things.

Posted in Book Reviews, Posts by Calvin, Responses | 8 Responses »
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Eisenbrauns Deal of the Day – On the Way!

Friday, March 19th, 2010

My lame attempt at doing a little rhyme in the title of this post aside, I just wanted to express my excitement for today’s Eisenbrauns Deal of the Day. Among the Host of Heaven: The Syro-Palestinian Pantheon as Bureaucracy sounds like it will be a great addition to my growing library on ANE mythology, one of my personal interests. Of course, I won’t have the time to actually read it until the semester lets out, but I have added it to my “To Read” list for this coming year, and will be sure to post a review once I’m finished.

Posted in Ancient Near East, Posts by Mandy | 2 Responses »

A Shout out for the New Testament

Thursday, March 18th, 2010

Some of you may know that Greek and I have a love-hate relationship. This semester, I have had the opportunity to take Exegesis of Revelation with Dr. Sean McDonough. As part of the course requirements, we are asked to read the entire book of Revelation in Greek (which makes sense, of course). At present, I have finished through chapter 14. I am pleasantly surprised to find that it actually hasn’t been that bad. What do you know.

Now, I know that the Greek of Revelation is not the hardest to be found in the NT, but generally speaking I find myself able to read with some proficiency (if not very rapidly) and have even enjoyed reading the book in Greek.

Of course, some of this may have to do with the fact that the class itself is one of the best I have taken at GCTS. Dr. McDonough is not only knowledgeable, but is also very engaging (and hilarious) as a teacher. His passion for the book of Revelation clearly comes through when he teaches, causing me to in turn feel excited about the subject. Of course, anyone who regularly uses examples from fantasy literature and media such as Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter is okay in my book.

My previous knowledge of Revelation has up until now been limited to what I know from reading the book in English and what I learned in my dispensationalist upbringing and my dispensationalist Bible college. I have since fairly thoroughly rejected dispensationalism, but at least as far as the book of Revelation goes, I’ve never heard a good teacher teach on the subject from another perspective, nor have I really bothered to study it out on my own in any depth. In fact, I’ve rather avoided Revelation like the plague (second only to Paul).

That being said, I am amazed to find that Revelation is an absolutely beautiful, amazing literary masterpiece, with a powerful message that seems to have been completely lost in the midst of pop theology of the Tim LaHaye variety. Since my knowledge is so stunted, my mind has been a sponge in this class.

It makes me wonder what would have happened if I had had a New Testament teacher like Dr. McDonough in college in addition to an absolutely amazing Old Testament teacher. No, no, don’t worry, I’m not thinking about changing to New Testament studies. However, it just goes to show you what excitement a good teacher who is passionate about his or her subject can generate. It has been refreshing to feel again like I did in Bible College when first discovering the joys of the Old Testament. Sometimes it is so easy to get bogged down in the papers and exams and pressures of trying to “perform” well, and forget the initial pure joy of learning about something I love that set me down this path.

That being said, I have a Revelation test tomorrow morning for which I need to go study!

Posted in Christian Scriptures, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Greek, Posts by Mandy | 3 Responses »

The Floppy Hat Lives On

Tuesday, March 16th, 2010

As Calvin mentioned previously, we have in fact not fallen off the face of the planet. If the fall semester was especially busy for us, the spring has only been that much more so. Nevertheless, I am told by a certain person that I must find the time to start blogging again, if, in fact, The Floppy Hat is really not to fall off the face of the planet after all. Therefore, I will again seek to mortify the flesh (to use a phrase which I have learned from my Martin Luther class) by practicing semi-regular blogging.

Introductory notes aside, I have more to say today than to make excuses for our lengthy absence from the biblioblogosphere. After taking the necessary time for a bit of moping, we are now ready to announce to the blogging world at large that we unfortunately were not accepted into any of the Ph.D programs to which we applied this year.

Thankfully, we have received encouragement from not a few sources that (while there is always room for improvement) this is not because our applications were necessarily deficient. From what we have been able to gather, it seems that much of the issue this year was with economics. In other words, very limited funding and many well-qualified applicants. This is, of course, to some extent the case every year, but that much more so in the current economic climate.

What now? We will try again next year, and meanwhile, we will seek to improve our applications in any way we feasibly can during this intervening year. This includes learning German, attempting to get an article or a book review published, and of course, continuing in self-study by reading more in the text and in secondary sources. If anyone has specific suggestions, we would love to hear them.

As for The Floppy Hat, we can assure all that it is still open for business. You can expect that we will continue to blog on all things Biblical studies and beyond. In fact, it might even be the case that we blog more than we ever have before, once the semester is over. Though our immediate plans have been foiled, our long-term plans are still the same, which means that the march toward the Floppy Hat continues on!

Posted in Posts by Mandy, The Floppy Hat | 3 Responses »

Verbal Forms in Habakkuk 3

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

John Hobbins and I have been discussing Habakkuk 3 a bit via email, and he encouraged me to bring the discussion to my blog.

I’m currently working on the grammar of Habakkuk 3 for a class this semester. Any chance to learn more about Hebrew grammar is well worth taking, and Habakkuk 3 just makes things that much more enjoyable. One of the first things that pops out about the grammar in Hab 3 is that scholars don’t particularly agree on how to render the verbs. Below, I outline the three ways I’ve noticed scholars rendering the verbs in Habakkuk 3:

1. Some scholars render the yiqtol forms as present-future and the qatal forms as past. (e.g., J.J.M. Roberts, Sinker). In Roberts’ case, at least, this is because he views the poem in Hab 3 as a visionary experience of the prophet. However, he does not elaborate on why he has chosen present-future and past. It could be that he is trying to bring out the aspect of the verbs by using these English tenses (understandable), it could also be that he views Hebrew as tense-prominent. I’d disagree, but an aspect-prominent view of the language could produce a nearly identical translation.

2. Other scholars analyze the yiqtol forms in Hab 3 as short-form preterits (e.g., Hiebert, Robertson, Andersen). That is okay, but I think it is far from certain that the context requires such an explanation. Basically, the scholars who take this view are following Robertson, and I’m just not convinced that his arguments are strong enough to support this understanding of the forms in Hab 3. I’d be happy to be proven wrong, however.

3. The final way in which scholars understand the verbs in Habakkuk 3 is disappointing, to say the least. Some scholars simply flatten all the forms (yiqtol, qatal and wayyiqtol) into English present tense forms (e.g., Smith, O. Palmer Robertson, Haak). Now, it may be that the scholars who do so feel that there is some interplay between aspect in Hebrew that simply cannot be brought into English. However, none of the authors mentioned above discuss their reasons for translating the forms in this way. My reaction is to say that this option really ought to be avoided, as it’s no option at all.

So, those are the three ways I’ve noticed scholars handling the forms in Habakkuk 3. Have I missed anything? Perhaps someone out there would like to argue for one of the above three? I don’t personally find any of them entirely convincing. I’d rather posit some kind of interplay between unbounded action (yiqtol) on the one hand and bounded action (qatal) on the other. How this would be represented in English is, of course, difficult. The idea is also still somewhat nebulous in my mind.

Basically, I’m proposing wildly speculating that there is some interplay between imperfective and perfective aspect in the Hebrew. Perhaps the imperfective action simply paints somewhat broader strokes and the perfective action views smaller, particular instances? Alternatively it may be that the poet intends an interplay between the qatal and yiqtol forms that, in English, would require a vast array of constructions to represent–thus they could not adequately be represented by a simple 1:1 correlation of verbal forms. In either case it may be that all the verbs have the same time reference, but the aspect is what differs.

I’m very interested to hear what thoughts others might have on this topic.

Posted in Hebrew, Hebrew Bible, Posts by Calvin | 7 Responses »
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Spring 2010 Classes

Monday, March 1st, 2010

It is my custom to bore you by briefly highlighting the classes I take each semester. Because of my now broken blogging silence I have not done so this semester. So, without further ado…

Middle Egyptian II – This is, as the title should make obvious, the second semester of a year long course in Middle Egyptian at Boston University. Let’s be honest, which one of us hasn’t wanted to learn Hieroglyphs as a kid? If you’re a sci-fi geek, you know that there is a far more important reason for learning ancient Egyptian: you might be asked to join the Stargate Program. All joking aside, another ANE language under my belt is a very good thing. What I’m about to say will probably reveal just how much of a geek I truly am (as if the Stargate comment above didn’t already do that), but I can think of very few things I would rather do than learn an ancient language. Besides, Dr. Botta is simply excellent. I’ve been thoroughly enjoying this class.

Exegesis of Revelation – Dr. McDonough teaches this class and I’ve found it truly fascinating. Not only is the professor engaging, but the regular references to the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter are icing on the cake. I’ve not been a big fan of this, the final book of the Bible, but this class is changing that. It’s also helping to hone my Greek skills since we’re required to read the entire book in Greek.

Exegesis in the Minor Prophets – Another class with Dr. Stuart is always a good thing. Although I’ve covered the minor prophets in both undergrad, and in a more broadly focused class here at GCTS, I’m still finding this class informative. It is especially helpful because the majority of our class time is spent simply analyzing the Hebrew text, primarily from a grammatical perspective but also with attention to text criticism, structure, etc. In addition I’m writing a paper on Habakkuk 3 for the course, which is proving to be fascinating.

Applied Anthropology for Missions – As esoteric as the title sounds, this class is actually fun. I’m not an anthropologist, though I do find the subject interesting. Personally I think that there is a lot of payoff for Biblical interpretation in understanding one’s own culture as well as the culture of the text. I’m writing a paper on how epistemology influences the debate surrounding inerrancy. Although I’m fairly sure that this is going to be an eternal debate, at least it ties what I’m learning here back into Biblical studies.

Martin Luther – Really, what more can one say? Sometimes I think this guy really helped the church, and other times I’m convinced he’s the worst thing to happen to it since Constantine. Either way, the class is fun if for no other reason than we get into some heated discussions. This, of course, is one of the best ways to learn. If only I could figure out a way to manage a heated discussion in a Hebrew grammar class, I could feel I’ve accomplished something.

So, there you have it. Yes, I’m taking five classes my final semester. Yes, it’s possible I’m crazy. But what more can one do? There is so much to learn, and only a very short amount of time in which to learn it.

Posted in Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Posts by Calvin | 2 Responses »
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Falling Off the Edge of the Planet

Monday, March 1st, 2010

Mandy and I have not fallen off the edge of the planet, regardless of what the total lack of updates here at The Floppy Hat might imply. I have finally managed to rouse myself from blogging silence due to a comment on one of Charles’ posts. Truth be told, between finishing our final semester at GCTS, applying to PhD programs (more on that in a subsequent post), work and a few other responsibilities we have both been too busy to blog. But, I hope to make an effort to blog in spite of the fact that I have no time for such. Besides, after several months of not blogging I have a fair amount of thoughts I’d like to put onto the digital page.

Posted in Posts by Calvin, The Floppy Hat | 1 Response »