Bible Books

010

Discovering God in the Ordinary

Wisdom in Theology

R. E. Clements
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1992), 188 pp., $16.99(paperback)

Trying to understanding the biblical Wisdom literature is rather like trying to understand life. Many things are crystal clear, but the ambiguities and conundrums range from puzzling to painful.

Distinguished Old Testament scholar Ronald E. Clements, of King’s College, London, presents in this book a fine, semi-popular introduction to many issues raised by Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes and Ben Sira. His overarching concern is theological. But since the genius of Wisdom literature is to discover God in the ordinary, much of Clements’ little book is devoted to worldly affairs. Thus he presents chapters on Wisdom in relation to the world, health, politics and the household. The book concludes with “Wisdom and the Divine Realm.” Useful footnotes and a bibliography enable the reader to pursue these subjects further.

Clements’ main focus is on the post-Exilic period (that is, after 538 B.C.E.). He believes, with most scholars, that the main work of editing Proverbs occurred then and that its first nine chapters were written in that period. These chapters are crucial because they serve as the prologue and interpretive context for the (generally pre-Exilic) collections of short sayings in chapters 10–29.

The post-Exilic period was a time of transition. Old certainties and institutions had been shaken or destroyed. The Babylonian conquest of Judah, the Exile, and the subsequent Diaspora and partial return left Israel in need of a new, overarching world view. The sacral institutions of Temple and Davidic kingship had been destroyed. Sacrifice no longer had the same significance. Those in the Diaspora lived on “unclean” turf, while the returnees lived under the sway of rulers who did not acknowledge Israel’s God as Lord.

In such a setting Wisdom literature provided a way to live meaningfully in the world. The wise shifted focus from the cult and its rituals to a more universal engagement with God in the affairs of daily life. Family and home became centers of “spirituality.” (Clements makes an analogy to Puritan England here.) God created the world through Wisdom (Proverbs 8); therefore Wisdom, built as it were into creation, addresses all human beings. The focus of faith in God shifted from the cult to a practical knowledge of reality. The patterns and order of the world, including human nature, could be discerned as his handiwork. The fabric of this world showed forth its Maker. Wisdom was thus not a matter of miracles and prophetic insight, but of practical insight and rational activity designed to foster health and well-being for individuals and the community. God could be recognized in the ordinary.

And yet Israelite Wisdom knew its limits in the face of divine freedom. Even for sages life presents anomalies: things do not always work out as expected, and sometimes good folk suffer while the evil prosper. Various proverbs communicate that “man proposes, God disposes.” The truly wise were realistically humble. They put their ultimate trust in God, even as they pursued understanding and mastery of this world with a profound passion.

The issues in Wisdom studies are complex and controverted. One may ask if Clements’ view of a historical shift from cult to Wisdom adequately explains Proverbs. After all, cult and Temple were restored after the Exile, and cultic biblical texts found their final form in the same historical setting as the Book of Proverbs. (And this Protestant reader wonders if Clements too much devalues the cult, in typical Protestant fashion, on pages 58–64.) A 011recent book (Würzeln der Weisheit [Roots of Wisdom]) by the German scholar Claus Westermann makes a very different argument than does Clements. Westermann believes that the short, originally oral, sayings of Proverbs 10–29 are more able to address the needs of a pluralist culture than are chapters 1–9, which he views as particularistic. Such issues will continue to be discussed. Meanwhile Clements provides an engaging, fair-minded and readable entry into the world of biblical wisdom literature.

Songs of the Heart: An Introduction to the Book of Psalms

Nahum M. Sarna
(New York: Schocken Books, 1993), 308 pp., $25

Songs of the Heart is essentially a collection of exegetical essays on ten psalms—Psalms 1, 8, 15, 19, 24, 30, 48, 82, 93 and 94. Nahum Sarna, professor emeritus of biblical studies at Brandeis University, is especially well qualified for the task, having had a distinguished career in biblical studies as a scholar and teacher. His commentaries on Genesis and Exodus have opened up the historical and religious meaning of those books for thousands of students. He was a major contributor to the production of the new Jewish Publication Society Bible. His intimate and comprehensive grasp of all dimensions of the interpretation of the Hebrew Bible is evident throughout this volume. Combined with his scholarship is an appreciation of the texts as sources of truth and guidance for life today.

The essays emphasize different aspects of a psalm, depending on the character of the particular psalm and the problems it raises for critical interpretation. The essay on Psalm 1 is virtually a composite of theological word-studies expounding the meaning of almost every word in the text Psalm 8 is compared to ancient Near Eastern myth, while Psalm 19 is set against the background of religious texts from Egypt and Ugarit. Sarna regularly—and helpfully—notes correlations with other texts in the Hebrew Bible. The literary texts of early Judaism and the resources of rabbinic biblical study are brought to bear appropriately. The essays are based on a broad foundation of scholarship represented only in part by the book’s rich annotation; the essay on Psalm 1, for instance, is equipped with 120 endnotes.

Sarna avoids some current fashions in psalm criticism. Rhetorical analysis (a study of the elements by which an author tries to persuade his audience) and form-critical (the study of the structural features of a text and of its setting, such as liturgical or familial) identifications are largely absent. A redactional history (a study of the stages in which a work was edited and of the significance of the changes made in it) of a psalm is considered unlikely, and there is no interest in the shape and formation of the Book of Psalms. Sarna asserts that the pursuit of most questions in these areas is unprofitable. The Psalms are interpreted as texts of a biblical religion that is consistently monotheistic, anti-mythological and polemically opposed to pagan religions.

In spite of their scholarly character, the essays are composed for the general public (BR readers will recall that adaptation of the book’s introduction and afterword appeared in“Songs of the Heart,” BR 09:04). For Sarna the Psalms function as Torah. They “make statements … inculcate fundamental ideas.” His aim is to “share some of these worthwhile ideas with a wider audience” and he frequently draws religious and moral implications from the text to fulfill this, aim.

There is a certain incongruence between the book’s title and introduction on the one hand and its principal contents on the other. It is not “An Introduction to the Book of Psalms;” the selection of psalms is not representative. The description of the psalms in the volume’s introduction best fits the individual prayers for help, the largest group in the Psalter, but not one of them is discussed. The author explains that he has used the term “introduction” because he has tried to present “something of the thought-world of the authors,” but he has not done so in an organized, comprehensive way. The essays would have been better presented and published for what they are: an ad hoc selection of psalms-studies from a senior scholar.

From Synagogue to Church: Public Services and Offices in the Earliest Christian Communities

James Tunstead Burtchaell
(Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1992), 375 pp., $15.95

Whether it was John Wyclif of England, Martin Luther of Germany or John Calvin of Switzerland, many early Protestant reformers attempted to undercut episcopal and papal authority by reading into the New Testament their own beliefs and practices. By doing so they tried to establish claims that Jesus and his apostles were really the first Lutherans, or the founders of Calvinism, and so on. The author of From Synagogue to Church convincingly shows how “the Episcopalian has sought to find episcopacy, the Presbyterian Presbyterianism, and the Independent a system of independency” in the church order of New Testament times.

After critically analyzing the major Reformation movements and their theological reconstructions of early Christian communities, James Tunstead Burtchaell turns to the 19th century and examines the theories propounded by such prominent theologians as Richard Rothe, Albrecht Ritschl and Adolf von Harnack These scholars often concluded that, in Burtchaell’s words, “the liberating forces Christ had brought” gradually regressed to the “worst aspects of the Jewish Law and the temple priesthood.”

In the 20th century such fine scholars as Hans Lietzmann, Rudolf Bultmann and Hans Freiherr von Campenhausen challenged some of the previous hypotheses about early Christianity. Only recently, however, have Christian theologians begun to acknowledge, according to Burtchaell, that “much of what we might consider to be distinctively and creatively Christian was in fact an outgrowth of its Jewish antecedents.”

Although Burtchaell ably critiques these earlier interpretations of first-century Christianity and Judaism, his own reconstruction of the period falls short because his evidence rests largely on the Talmud, the New Testament and the tendentious writings of Josephus. Since the Christian scriptures 012were canonized and the Jewish law codified during much later periods, we are unable to determine with any certainty what belongs to the crucial first century and what was added later to the original narrative. Although Burtchaell writes that the “Sanhedrin enjoyed eminent domain” and that the Galatians had a “Law they had known as Jews,” these statements are simply conjectures; we know little about the “Law” in the first century.

In addition, the author accepts without question the common equating of proseuche with synagogue, although only a scholarly consensus, and no substantive evidence, supports this equation. Proseuche is usually understood to be a house of prayer, but we have no idea what prayers may have been uttered there or what the purpose of the proseuche was. We do know that the synagogue was not a house of prayer until after the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E.; up to that time it served almost exclusively as a place for learning and for reading the Bible.

Some important contributions to this field, such as those made by Howard Clark Kee, Paul Corby Finney, Richard Krautheimer, Stefan Reif and Ellis Rivkin, apparently were not known to Burtchaell, but they would have greatly enhanced his research.

From Synagogue to Church is an important scholarly contribution. But the extent to which the synagogue was the point of reference for the emerging church must await more detailed, critical study.

046

Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament

Host Balz and Gerhard Schneider, editors
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1993) three volumes; $49.99 each

Pastors, theological students and educated lay readers of the New Testament will welcome the translation and publication of the final volume of Exegetisches Würterbuch zum Neuen Testament, the joint work of over 90 eminent European New Testament scholars (and a smattering of Americans and Israelis), originally published in Germany a decade ago. Several features set the Exegetical Dictionary apart from the more well known Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (edited by Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich; ten volumes; [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964–1976]) and commend it to readers of BR

The Exegetical Dictionary is less than a third the size (and the price) of the TDNT, and focuses exclusively on New Testament uses of words rather than providing the exhaustive historical and epigraphic data available in the TDNT. This dictionary is deliberately accessible to non-specialists, unlike its venerable predecessor, whose audience is scholarly. Although the goal of the Exegetical Dictionary is to describe meaning an usage of every word in the Greek New Testament, the entries do not presume extensive knowledge of Greek grammar. After the first appearance of a word, which is in Greek characters all subsequent mentions of the word are in transliteration. The form and etymology of the word are given, so one can gather a sense of the related vocabulary as well as information about the word itself.

The reader of the New Testament who does not know Greek therefore needs two other tools to make use of the Exegetical Dictionary: a Greek-English interlinear New Testament, which provides a wooden word-for-word equivalency, and an analytical concordance, which provides the root (or dictionary form) of the word under consideration. Use of both requires only knowledge of the Greek alphabet, something any college fraternity or sorority member possesses. An extensive English index lists potential Greek equivalents for English words, but may not necessarily direct the reader of all English translations to the precise originals. Although the New Revised Standard Version, for example, translates kauchaomai as “boast” at Romans 5:2 (rightly, I think), the older RSV used “rejoice,” and the word “rejoice” in the index of the Exegetical Dictionary does not indicate that. The surer route to an understanding of Paul’s vocabulary in Romans 5:2 is to consult Paul’s usage in his own language.

All such dictionaries are interpretive, since the scholars who write the essays necessarily make judgments about how language functions in given texts, but the average length of the essays in the Exegetical Dictionary constrains their authors in this regard. The essay by Franz Schnider on prophetes, (“prophet”) for example, runs a little over three pages, as contrasted with the 80-page essay in the TDNT by Gerhard Friedrich. It is sometimes said, only half in jest, that the TDNT is not really a primary source (that is, a reference tool about the New Testament) as it is a secondary source that provides insight into German New Testament scholarship. Rudolf Bultmann’s classic article on ginosko (“I know”) tells the reader much more about his theory of gnosticism than it does about the various uses of “knowledge” in the New Testament. The Exegetical Dictionary comes much closer to being a companion or guide to exegetes by calling attention to the occurrences of words with out necessarily asserting an interpretive framework.

For serious students who possess Greek reading skills, there remains no substitute for 048one’s own consultation of a Greek lexicon and concordance when considering a New Testament author’s use of language. For them, Exegetical Dictionary frequently provides only a short-cut that could inadvertently encourage carelessness in reading, although it sometimes also alerts one to the presence or absence of similar language in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible), Josephus, Philo and contemporary Christian literature, and is useful for that reason.

Discovering God in the Ordinary

Wisdom in Theology