Readers Reply

Should We Change Our Name?

Bible Bashing would be a much better name for your publication.

“Get Thee Behind Me, Satan”

Having reviewed several issues of BR I have only the following to say:

“Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men” (Matthew 16:23).

More Balance Needed

I subscribed to BR with the understanding that this was a scholarly publication that objectively presented various views of scripture. However, it seems that nearly all your published articles are from “liberal” scholars who have and promote the one position that the Bible is basically “not historical and Jesus is the product of faith.” Consequently, most traditional Christian beliefs are under attack by these scholars without any defense from the conservative Christian scholar who believes in the historicity of the Bible’s words and events.

I often wonder how many of your contributors can subscribe to the tenets of the Nicene Creed as meant to be understood by the Creed’s framers. (I add the latter comment since your publication has made clear how scholars can claim to agree to certain Christian beliefs by redefining words. In the same way, many Arian bishops signed on to creeds.)

Your bias towards liberal scholarship can give the false impression that all prominent scholars with any meaningful academic credentials are in concert with the liberal view. There are many very respected and highly educated conservative scholars who take a traditional view of Scripture and maintain that the Scriptural events, such as the resurrection, are real events in history.

An objective magazine would present articles from all viewpoints, including the very conservative. It may be that the conservative scholars are not heard from because they are busy proclaiming the good news of the Gospel.

Letters Add Meaning to the Articles

I look forward to receiving each issue of your magazine, which I read cover to cover. Although I must honestly say I often disagree with the opinions and analyses in the vast majority of the articles, I find that each issue often has a letter in Reader’s Reply that sheds the light of inspiration on an otherwise dry article. This is not meant as an insult to the authors. To the contrary, it demonstrates how their ideas stimulate the student of the Bible to dig deeper than the merely literal level for answers to biblical questions.

Too Much Brain Food

Please cancel my subscription. I found BR to be too intellectual. It is good to feed the intellect, but it’s most important to read materials that will also feed the spirit.

He Can Take Whatever We Dish Out

No! Wait! Hold on. I Don’t want to cancel my subscription! Astonish me …offend me…dismay me. Even so, I refuse to cancel my subscription.

I do enjoy an occasional chuckle at the things that appear in your journal. That’s the way it should be.

Scholars and the Pew

How to Bridge the Great Gulf

I appreciate Michael Coogan’s attempt to explain “The Great Gulf Between Scholars and the Pew,” BR 10:03. Much of what he said is quite accurate.

I would like to comment on two of his statements. The first: “But if we recognize that at least some of the Bible’s beliefs and practices are a product of their times and hence irrelevant for a contemporary audience, then the process of biblical criticism has begun, and its consequences are far-reaching.” The second: “They [the biblical authors] were not specially privileged, their experience of the divine was not qualitatively different from our own.”

These two statements, more than anything else he said, account for the great gulf between scholars and the pew. In the first statement Coogan points out that some of what the Bible says is irrelevant in our times because of its historical conditioning. The Bible’s alleged historical conditioning has been widely used by many scholars to jettison one or more of the Bible’s teachings. The average people in the pew, on the other hand, far from looking at scripture as only a historically conditioned tome, regard it as the standard by which their own history is conditioned. That is, they understand themselves to be addressed by a timeless scripture in their contemporary situation and do not make pronouncements upon scripture itself.

Mr. Coogan’s second statement (the last sentence in his article) demonstrates quite pointedly the great difference between many scholars and average laymen and women. Some scholars might think that they have as privileged an access to revelation as did the biblical authors, but the vast majority of believers do not. They do not equate their own spiritual experiences, for instance, with that of St Paul, who claimed to have encountered the risen Lord. They believe, as believers have maintained for centuries, that the biblical authors were specially inspired to write what they did. Scholarship is of a different stripe.

The gulf can only be spanned by dialogue and reasoned argument coupled with a reverence and honor for the text and for those with whom we speak. Mr. Coogan’s article is a step in that direction. Only when we openly discuss our assumptions about ourselves and our work will we build a meaningful relationship between the academy and the pew.

Study Is Not Enough

As one who has studied Scripture in graduate school, and as one who accepts the Word of God in the Bible as unequivocal and to be interpreted by the church, I can understand “The Great Gulf Between Scholars and the Pew,” BR 10:03, by Michael Coogan.

The gulf exists in large part because many scholars approach Scripture as something to be analyzed. They do not live Scripture in faith. Scripture is God’s message to be studied and lived. One without the other is conjecture.

Matthew Was Not Nuts

Come now, Mr. Coogan, must we question the Gospel writer’s sanity? Is Matthew 21:7 actually declaring that Jesus simultaneously sat on two animals as he rode triumphantly into Jerusalem? Can’t we assume that the colt’s mother simply went along? Perhaps Jesus rode each animal part of the distance.

If the Bible Is a Human Book

I appreciate Professor Coogan’s stimulating article. The question he raises is certainly one worth considering: “Why have the results of the historical-critical method, though broadly accepted by biblical scholars, had so little influence?”

Professor Coogan suggests that a key part of the answer is that churches have felt their authority to be challenged, and “Christian leaders especially have therefore restricted the exposure of most people to the Bible.”

It strikes me that a more significant reason is that churches and denominations that accept the historical-critical method have generally lost influence with the people in the pew. Pastors steeped in this method tend not to give serious expositions of the Scripture, and people in their churches tend not even to bring their Bibles to church.

Dean Kelley did a study of this problem while at the National Council of Churches, and he eventually published the results in a book entitled Why Conservative Churches Are Growing [Macon, Georgia: Mercer Univ. Press, 1984]. He found that one of the key characteristics of liberal, dying churches was that there was no longer a felt need for their “product.”

If the Bible is merely a human book, if the authors were not divinely inspired, if “their experience of the divine was not qualitatively different from our own,” as Professor Coogan writes, then the Bible loses its influence on the people in the pew. Why study it seriously if it is merely another book? Why bother going to church or synagogue if there is no God who holds us accountable to revealed standards of absolute truth?

Coogan Will Be on His Reading List

Some months ago I asked you to publish an article that would help us understand why so many believers find the work of biblical scholars scandalous. Some of your columnists have addressed the problem. But I found Michael Coogan’s “The Great Gulf Between Scholars and the Pew,” BR 10:03, a really satisfying answer. Not an answer, exactly; rather, an excellent way of looking at the problem. I intened to recommend it to all future students in my courses on the Bible.

Historical-Critical Method Destroys Faith

Michael Coogan’s article cogently states the dilemma faced by scholars. Why, after almost three centuries of enlightenment, has this intellectual movement “had remarkably little effect on the way most people in our culture, whether religious or not, think of the Bible?”

The proponents of the historical-critical method are paramount in their arrogance and condescension; they are such great intellects that they can look 3,000 years into the past and ferret out the truth of who wrote the Scriptures of the Bible and what they were thinking. A phrase translated from a clay tablet can be the basis for understanding a whole culture! Finding a small statue explains a whole religious system incorporating that image! Worst of all, these scholars believe each other’s theories and then base more of their beliefs on these theories. It’s all a “house of cards.”

As an example of this arrogance, Coogan tells us, “Nor is the authorship that the Bible credits to various ancient figures historically accurate. Moses did not write the Torah; David did not write most of the Psalms…” etc., etc. Coogan speaks as if these were proven facts, when all this is based on intellectual demagoguery where one scholar postulates a certain precept (some scribe wrote all the books and credited them to mythic figures) and then others spend countless hours proving the thesis by unbiased analysis of the scriptures and the aforementioned clay tablets.

No wonder the historical-critical method is not accepted “in the pew”! Even those of us not blessed with the magnificent, towering intellect of these scholars can see that the end result of this approach is the destruction of faith in the God of the Bible.

An Even Greater Gulf

I have just finished reading “The Great Gulf Between Scholars and the Pew,” BR 10:03, by Mr. Coogan. An even greater gulf exists between scholars and Jesus. If it were not for the fact that souls are at stake, one might find many of the articles and readers’ comments in BR downright amusing. They certainly do nothing to fulfill God’s purpose for sending his Son into the world.

What is being passed off as scholarship is largely historical information to which is appended the speculation of non-supernatural minds.

“Pious and Ignorant” Not Doing So Bad

For a long time I agreed with Michael Coogan’s position that “most people today view the Bible…naively and precritically,” but the exaggerated nature of his argument has pushed me to the other side.

Dr. Coogan tells us that the “common sense, logic and historical method” of biblical scholars makes them superior in understanding to “the pious and ignorant” (what a juxtaposition!), but he hardly demonstrates his point by the techniques he uses. He relies on very niggling details (“Was Jesus born in a stable or in a house?”); he accuses researchers of wasting “enormous amounts of time and energy” in minute analysis; he makes sweeping assertions based on debatable assumptions (pre-fifth century B.C.E. angels are “simply minor deities”; a passage in Matthew “can best be understood” as an attack on Paul); and he sets up whole armies of straw men (no church I have ever attended has “restricted the exposure of most people to the Bible”—quite the contrary).

Dr. Coogan criticizes “the pious and ignorant” for selecting, among all the books and passages of the Bible, those parts that most speak to their needs and hearts, and then ends his article by suggesting that we read the Bible “not as a complete and infallible guide…but as a series of signposts”—in other words, selectively! “Look at the parts of the Bible that are unusable!” Dr. Coogan shouts, “We know,” numerous believers reply, “that’s why we don’t use them.”

It strikes me that the “pious and ignorant” are not doing so badly at the task Dr. Coogan has laid out for them.

Is There a Good Bible Translation Out There?

“The Great Gulf Between Scholars and the Pew,” BR 10:03, brought to mind another great gulf—the distance between me and an accurate translation of the Bible. As Michael Coogan mentions, most Bible translations remain faithful to mainstream religion. In my opinion, many Bible Scholars also have personal agendas that taint their work. Can you recommend one or more reasonably objective translations (or even commentaries)?

Michael D. Coogan replies:

There is no perfect translation of the Bible, since all translators from antiquity to the present are of necessity interpreters who bring their own perspective to their work. But there are some very good ones; among the best of the more recent are the New Jewish Publication Society Translation (Tanakh) (1988) and the New Revised Standard Version (1990). When studying a biblical passage, it is a valuable exercise to compare a number of translations; in this way one can get a better sense of what the original says. One way of doing this rather easily is to consult The Complete Parallel Bible (Oxford 1993), which prints four translations side by side.

Jacob and Rachel

Did Jacob Swear an Oath with an Uplifted Right Hand?

If the thesis of Gordon Tucker’s, thought-provoking article (“Jacob’s Terrible Burden,” BR 10:03) is accepted, it may also throw new light on the time-honored crux interpretum of Genesis 35:18 concerning the change of name of Rachel’s second son. The usual suggestion is that Ben-’oni, (son of sorrow) may also contain a hint of vigor/strength (e.g. E.A. Speiser, Genesis, Anchor Bible Series), hence the wordplay in the change to Biyamin [Benjamin] (son of the right hand, the symbol of strength). It may be possible that in giving Laban carte blanche to search for his property and condemning to death whoever took it, Jacob swore an oath via an uplifted right hand (compare Isaiah 62:8; Daniel 12:7; Revelation 10:5–7).

If so, the name change would emphasize both Jacob’s recognition of the consequences of his awful oath and the accompanying fond hope that Rachel’s “added” child would yet prove to be a source of strength to him. The very name Benjamin, then, would further underscore Professor Tucker’s conclusions concerning Genesis 48:7, as well as Jacob’s hesitation to allow Benjamin to be whisked away to Egypt with his brothers.

Pillars Aren’t Always Bad

Gordon Tucker’s article “Jacob’s Terrible Burden,” BR 10:03, was fascinating. There are, however, more than the five cited instances in which the erection of pillars is not regarded negatively: Joshua 4:9, 4:20 and 24:26 should be added to Tucker’s lists.

Gordon Tucker replies:

Mr. Arkules is correct that the verses he cites from Joshua 4 and 24 reflect approved cultic ceremonies involving stones. But they cannot be an objection to the assertion that matzevot (pillars) “have an almost completely negative image in the Bible” because the word used in Joshua is not matzevot, but rather the more neutral ‘avanim (stones). Indeed, it is fascinating to note that the account in Joshua 24 has many striking linguistic affinities with the account of the return to Beth-El in Genesis 35. Thus Joshua’s instruction to the people to “put away the alien gods that you have among you” (Joshua 24:23) repeats almost verbatim Jacob’s admonition in Genesis 35:2. Moreover, Joshua’s cultic event took place at Shechem, and culminated in the setting up of a stone “at the foot of the ‘elah [a tree].” Compare that with the report in Genesis 35:4 that Jacob buried the foreign gods “under the ‘elah that was near Shechem.” It is thus particularly noteworthy that while Jacob’s narrative moves on to the raising of a matzevah at Beth-el, the Joshua narrative shuns the word matzevah and has Joshua setting up a stone (‘even).

There is, aside from the instance at Mt. Sinai noted in my article, one other occurrence of a matzevah that might not appear negative or condemnatory. That occurs in Isaiah 19:19, the oracle concerning Egypt. There Isaiah envisions an altar to God in the midst of Egypt and a matzevah to God at the border. Although this is a positive prophecy, I believe it is inescapable that this is a vision of how foreigners will worship the God of Israel, and not how Israelites are permitted to. That the matzevah is envisioned as something marking a boundary may underscore this point.

Bible Books

Be Prepared

Professor John P. Meier of Catholic University of America shows an unwarranted negative attitude in his review of The Five Gospels, The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus. (New York: Macmillan, 1993).

I would tend to agree with him that the identifying colors used to determine the categories of authenticity of Jesus’ sayings do leave something to be desired. However, once a reader becomes accustomed to shades of color, their meanings present no problem.

A person reading this New Testament translation should be prepared that they are going to be presented with the judgments of 74 critical scholars as to what Jesus (1) undoubtedly said; (2) probably said; (3) probably did not say, but the ideas are close to his own; and (4) did not say.

The Five Gospels offers new avenues of understanding the New Testament for those with a searching religious mind. It is not for those frozen in their beliefs and dogma.

Professor Meier overlooked what I consider one of the most important contributions of the book. Not only did the members of the Jesus Seminar give their opinion regarding the authenticity of Jesus’ statements, but they also explained how and why they arrived at each decision.

Dwelling on the Shades of Ink

As a doctoral alumnus of the Catholic University of America with a New Testament major, I was embarrassed by Professor John P. Meier’s peevish review of The Five Gospels (Bible Books, BR 10:03). I too can quarrel with the new translation. In fact, I have not seen a new translation in the last forty years without negative criticism, but for Meier to dwell on shades of ink is not the kind of scholarly assessment I would have expected from a person of his established competence. Moreover, there is no reason why The Gospel of Thomas should not have been included since the current conclusion of some serious scholars is that it represents a source as early as Q.

Idol Meat

Meaty Article

I greatly enjoyed “Why Not Idol Meat?” BR 10:03, by Ben Witherington III. The explanation of the social context of Paul’s concern in the Corinthian passages was excellent. The documentation of the supporting literary and archaeological details was great.

A View from the Corinth Dining Couch

Since my picture is included with Ben Witherington’s article “Why Not Idol Meat?” BR 10:03 (that’s me on the dining couch at Corinth in the photo; I was then a member of Helmut Koester’s Harvard research team studying Greek archaeological ruins), I feel constrained to give my view of the issues raised in the article.

I agree that one must understand the social setting in Corinth in order to interpret the issues of 1 Corinthians. But I disagree with much of Witherington’s reconstruction of that social setting and with much of his interpretation of the biblical text.

1) Witherington argues that “idol-meat” refers not just to meat that has been sacrificed, but specifically to meat eaten in a temple. I disagree. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 8:10, provides primary evidence that a meal in a temple was potentially harmless in itself, but that it could be misconstrued by someone who did not know this. Furthermore, virtually all meat sold in the Greco-Roman meat market originated as part of an animal sacrifice. Paul alludes to that point by finding it necessary to affirm that it was okay to eat meat from the meat market (1 Corinthians 10:25). So if eating at a temple and eating idol meat from the meat market were both acceptable, what constituted partaking of “the table of demons” (1 Corinthians 10:21)? The best answer is one that gives weight to the comparison that Paul makes. The cup of the Lord and the table of the Lord are contrasted with the cup and table of demons (1 Corinthians 10:21). Central to the two was the way in which they were surrounded by rituals that affirmed one’s membership into that religious community. So it was neither the meat nor the venue, but the ritual that made “idol meat” dangerous.

2) Witherington argues that pagan meals (and specifically temple meals) were characterized by sexual immorality. This is overdrawn and misleading. Certainly the symposium tradition in Greek and Roman sources has a strong erotic component, and the vase paintings from the Attic Greek period picturing sexual activities at banquets have titillated many a museumgoer (as they did the ancient diners). But the fact is that the evidence for ancient dinner parties is widely varied. Banquets were held in a wide variety of contexts—religious, secular, philosophical, civic and so on—and sexual activities are not a standard feature in any of these contexts.¹ That illicit sexual activities could take place at banquets is certainly true (just as illicit sexual activities can take place in hotels today); but that they were to be expected wherever a pagan celebrated a banquet—inherent to the event, as Witherington implies—is simply not the case. Even more to the point, the banquet and its customs were used by both Jews and Christians as a model for their own religious meals.²

If Witherington were to argue that there was a critique abroad among ancient moralists (Jewish, Christian and pagan) that Roman aristocrats were sexually loose at their banquets, he would be closer to the truth. But the argument that pagans did in fact regularly engage in sexual immorality at their banquets cannot be sustained. Paul himself saw nothing wrong with temple dining (1 Corinthians 8:10) or with accepting invitations to an unbeliever’s house for a banquet (1 Corinthians 10:27).

3) Witherington constructs a utopian scenario in which the apostolic founders of the church are found to agree on all important matters. Yet prior interpretations have argued that Paul and James, in particular, disagreed on requirements for Gentile Christians. These interpretations are based on solid evidence: Paul says as much in Galatians 2:11–14. Here James is connected not only with the circumcision faction but also with the group of Jewish Christians who would not eat with the Gentile Christians, evidently because then Jewish Christians observed the Jewish dietary laws.

Furthermore, Witherington’s argument that the edict attributed to James in Acts 15:29 really refers to temple dining is extremely far-fetched. The text reads: “You [Gentile Christians] [must] abstain [1] from what has been sacrificed to idols and [2] from blood and [3] from what is strangled and [4] from fornication.” This is presented as the ruling of the Jerusalem conference for Gentile Christians. What we find here in the first part is a variation of Jewish dietary laws, which, incidentally, always centered on the food rather than on the venue. This text as a whole has been interpreted as a form of the Jewish “Noahide” rules, a variation of dietary and other laws that had been worked out centuries earlier in Judaism as binding on Gentile “sojourners” in Jewish lands.³ To interpret the Acts account so that the sum of the conference was to state that Gentiles were to avoid dining at temples, as if dining at temples was what Gentiles were all about and that it was therefore the major issue dividing Gentile and Jewish Christians, is to miss the point of the text. The Acts text says nothing about temple dining, because that is not the issue. Witherington has imported that idea into the text to achieve his goal of having Paul and James agree.

4) Witherington implies that the Christian meal was not a type of Greco-Roman banquet. I disagree. His contrast between the fellowship meal at Corinth and the “ordinary Greco-Roman banquet, with its usual social inequities” is misleading, because it implies that the idea of a meal “where Christians of every social rank dined together” originates in Christian theology. In fact, the idea of equality at the banquet is a part of the cultural baggage of the Greco-Roman banquet itself.⁴ Paul uses this motif and places it in the context of a Christian theology of equality. Any implication that the idea of equality at meals originated with Christians is simply wrong. You can go all the way back to Homer on this one, where the meals of the heroes are regularly described as “equal feasts.”⁵

What is existing about the study of Christian origins is to discover the very human side of the story. For early Christians, banquets at temples as well as at private homes were a regular part of social life. In addition, they celebrated a banquet at their worship meetings that looked a lot like those other banquets. How to celebrate a distinctively Christian meal defining a distinctively Christian community was an issue facing the early leaders. In Paul’s letters we catch a glimpse of some of the messiness of the situation. Yes, there is nothing wrong with dining at temples, since the meals in themselves are usually harmless; but be careful not to mislead those who think it is wrong (1 Corinthians 8:9–13). Yes, you may accept an invitation to the house of an unbeliever, and may eat all the food whether or not it came from a pagan altar, for there is really no power in the pagan deities; but be careful not to let your host think you are also a worshiper of his god. (1 Corinthians 8:4–6, 10:27–33). Certainly the pagan meals look a lot like ours; thus it is important not to confuse the two. You cannot engage in a meal that makes you a member of the body of Christ on one occasion and a meal that makes you a member of a pagan religious community on another occasion; that is the kind of meal you must avoid (1 Corinthians 10:19–21).

Ben Witherington replies:

Dr. Smith’s letter, “composed from the Corinthian couch,” deserves a full response, which space does not allow me to give. I must accordingly refer the reader to my forthcoming Conflict and Community in Corinth: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on 1 and 2 Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, appearing Oct. 1994). Here I can only give a telegraphic and partial response.

1) First Corinthians 8:10 involves, in the Greek, a future conditional statement. This means it cannot be argued that Paul is regulating an existing practice to which he gives implicit approval. Rather, Paul is saying ‘If others should see you…’ There is nothing here that warrants Smith’s conclusion that Paul’s view is that a meal in a temple was potentially harmless in itself.

2) Paul’s polemic on this issue in 1 Corinthians 8–10 is in many ways typical of early Jewish polemics about idols, pagan temples, and what transpired there, and one must read 1 Corinthians 8 in light of what follows (especially in 1 Corinthians 10). Some evidence must be produced to demonstrate that Paul takes a much more open attitude to dining in temples than the early Jewish evidence suggests. First Corinthians 8–10 does not provide such evidence.

3) The attempt to distinguish simply dining in temples from pagan meals with rituals will not work. On the one hand, I know of no clear evidence from the first century A.D.or before that suggests that there were ever purely secular meals held in pagan temples, by which I mean meals without any pagan rituals (cf. quote of MacMullen below). On the other hand, as Smith says, almost all meat in a setting like Corinth would have been ritually sacrificed in a pagan temple. That is, whether one buys meat in a meat market or eats it in a temple, it has been part of a process involving religious rituals. If the problem was rituals per se, Paul should have objected to eating meat found in the market that had previously gone through pagan rituals. This he does not do.

4) I do not recall ever saying that sexual immorality always happened at pagan meals or even at pagan meals in temples. That it did happen with enough frequency for Greek and Ropman writers to comment on it repeatedly is quite clear. I do not know how Smith could possibly have enough quantifiable data to suggest that sex was so infrequent or uncommon at such meals that the evidence from the classics is misleading. In other words, while it is wrong to suggest sexual immorality always happened at such meals, it would be equally wrong to suggest that we have evidence that it was infrequent. I also do not believe that Paul’s elaborate typology in 1 Corinthians 10, which deliberately refers to sexual play happening at idolatrous meals (see verse 7) is meant to be purely hypothetical—Paul surely knows these sorts of things are going on in Corinth, not least because some of his own converts are still going to such meals and reporting about them to the apostle!

5) Smith’s view of Galatians 2 is based on the assumption that Acts 15 represents an occasion prior to the writing of Galatians. I and many other scholars would disagree, though I am in the minority on this issue. I am not suggesting that prior to the Jerusalem council Paul and James agreed on all these matters—they did not, as Galatians 2 shows. I also suspect that James and Paul may afterwards have understood the possible ramifications of the decree differently. I would not rule out the possibility that James may well have seen in them a statement about (Noachic) food laws. The reader is directed to my earlier scholarly version of the article on idol meat in Tyndale Bulletin (vol. 44.2, Nov. 1993, pp. 237–54), which more fully treats these issues. Some of the misunderstandings in Smith’s response might have been obviated if he had read the scholarly version of this article first, which apparently he has not.

6) Smith has misread the thrust of my article on two further points: a) I agree that many early Christian meals, including the one described in 1 Corinthians 11, probably were some form of Greco-Roman banquet, as I argue in my forthcoming Corinthians commentary. The question is what form and with what modifications. The equality Paul is talking about is indeed grounded in his theological concerns, as is shown by his quotation of the Last Supper traditions in 1 Corinthians 11 (and compare 11:27–34). b) I do not deny that some ancient banquets going back to hoary antiquity may have involved ‘equal feasts,’ but the bulk of the ancient evidence suggests this was not usually the case (it was usually a highly stratified affair), and I said nothing in the article about Christians first coming up with the idea of a meal of equals.

7) Finally, I quite agree with Smith that the situation in Corinth was messy, but I would urge that it is misleading to argue (as some have) that there were purely secular banquets, without any religious rituals, that took place in pagan temples. Rather there were more and less ritualized meals. As R. MacMullen, the great Roman and classics scholar, has constantly reminded us, we must not underestimate how religion was woven into the very fabric of ancient Greco-Roman society, including meals at temples: “[M]y aim is to place religion at the heart of social life as surely as it must be placed at the heart of cultural activities of every sort. For most people, to have a good time with their friends involved some contact with a god who served as quest of honor, as master of ceremonies, or as host …” (Paganism in the Roman Empire [New Haven, 1981], p. 40.)

BR Salvages a Little Religion

I am a 77-year-old retired college teacher with an M.A. magna cum laude and wise enough to realize I know very little. I am increasingly disillusioned the more I learn. I had quite given up on religion because of the Fundamentalists, but your magazine has salvaged a little of my hope for it. If it can be brought out of the Bronze or Stone Age and made contemporary, it may yet be helpful to humankind. Heretofore it has been a drawback.

Potpourri

Don’t Let the Faithless Drag Others Down

Does anyone agree with me that an alarming number of modern biblical scholars seem to have completely lost their faith and seem also to be very anti-Christian?

Your depressing interview with Oxford don Geza Vermes (“Escape and Rescue—An Interview with Geza Vermes,” BR 10:03) is a case in point. Here we have a “scholar” who tells us that “I turned my back on my Christian past…” and that he “ceased formally to be a Christian” (this after having been ordained a priest!). He then rather arrogantly proceeds to inform the world’s Christians that many of their ideas about Jesus are wrong, and that Jesus never intended Christianity to be Christocentric! What? Christianity not Christocentric?! This is easily the most bizarre of the many strange ideas I’ve seen advanced in your magazine. The number of times Jesus refers to Himself alone as the hope of mankind and as the source of salvation in the next world are far too numerous to be mentioned here.

In my view, the unfortunate Mr. Vermes has not only lost his faith but is actively encouraging others, through his “scholarship,” to do the same. Then, like so many modern “scholar,” Mr. Vermes tries to downgrade Jesus’ status and the meaning of his life and message in subtle “scholarly” ways. He tells that he thinks Jesus was nothing but an “eschatological hasid.” Oh really? My, my, what a clever, “scholarly” sounding putdown.

I used to think I was very tolerant of other people’s ideas. But now I find I’ve grown weary of reading dreary articles by “scholars” like Geza Vermes, whose main objective in life seems to be to try to undermine everyone else’s faith after they’ve lost their own.

Women Are Not Excluded from the Commandments

In an otherwise intelligent and sensitive article, Marc Brettler (“My View: On Becoming a Male Feminist Bible Scholar,” BR 10:02) argues that the Ten Commandments are addressed exclusively to male Israelites, as indicated by the verse “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife.” Furthermore, in preparation for this address, Scripture states: “And he said to the people, ‘Be ready for the third day; do not go near a woman’ [Exodus 19:15],” which Brettler finds especially distressing for it “clearly suggests that ‘people’ equals men.”

To the best of my knowledge, in biblical Hebrew there is no equivalent for the English “spouse” (or for “member of the opposite sex”). This lack of a gender-free word makes the use of “wife” (and “woman” in this context) an entirely reasonable alternative. To employ the his/her, husband/wife formula is simply too awkward. The standard Jewish commentaries took this for granted and therefore do not bother to note this point, as Brettler himself observes in his article.

That the Ten Commandments are addressed to women is evident from a simple reading of the Sabbath commandment. “The seventh day is Sabbath … you shall not do work, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, your manservant, nor your maidservant, nor your cattle, nor the stranger who is within your gates” (Exodus 20:10). If only men are being addressed, then why omit “your wife” when mentioning “your son,” etc.? (Feminists will no doubt argue that the Bible never intended to grant the wife a day of rest.) The “you” in the Sabbath commandment, as well as in the other nine, is clearly speaking to man and woman equally.

Marc Brettler replies:

Mr. Tur-Malka’s general point, that there is no clear way of saying “he/she” in biblical Hebrew, is correct. This creates tremendous problems for the scholar of biblical law regarding the many laws that begin with the Hebrew word ish, which may mean either person or man. However, I must disagree with his specific points concerning the interpretation of the Decalogue. Had Exodus 19:15 meant to include women well as men among the “people,” it could have related the law in the third person: “No man may go near a woman” [instead of “Do not go near a woman”]. This would have been a perfectly acceptable way of including women among “the people.”

His point about the Sabbath commandment is correct and leads us into the complicated issue of the history of the Decalogue. As suggested by internal evidence (the wide variety of forms of law contained within the Decalogue) as well as the variation in the wording of the Decalogue between Exodus and Deuteronomy, the Decalogue has gone through a very long and complex history of reworking, and need not be, in its final form, fully consistent. While the Sabbath law might intend to include women as addressees, though they are explicitly not mentioned, this is not the case with the final commandment, which explicitly singles out a man coveting his neighbor’s wife. Just as that commandment notes that it is forbidden to covet the male and/or female slave, it could have noted, had it meant to be inclusive, “Do not covet the husband or the wife of your neighbor, their male or female servant,” etc. The lack of mention of the husband is quite telling, suggesting that this law reflects legislation to men. I do not mean to suggest, however, that all biblical legislation is addressed to men; there are many ambiguities and many cases where women are specifically mentioned (the law of the Nazirite in Numbers 6:2 is a good example). Women’s exclusion in a law of the Decalogue and in the narrative surrounding the Decalogue, however, is quite noteworthy.

The Talmud Can Answer Biblical Questions

In Bernhard W. Anderson’s column “Miriam’s Challenge,” BR 10:03, he asks, “Why was Miriam so severely punished for challenging Moses’ authority while Aaron got off scot-free?” None of his six references is from the Talmud or associated rabbinic literature. This question, however, is discussed in great detail in the tractate Abot De-Rabbi Natan (The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan). In Chapter 9, Rabbi Nathan discusses Rabbi Shimon’s teachings on the Miriam question.

Moses’ wife, Zipporah, complains to Miriam that Moses is denying her conjugal rights. Miriam tells Aaron, and together they go to Moses to complain. Miriam’s argument is that both she and Aaron are prophets, and they do not deny their spouses their conjugal rights. So why should Moses? The argument is a foolish one. Moses, unlike his sister and brother, is on “24-hour call” to appear before the Eternal, whereas they are not. Moses’ situation is like that of the High Priest on the eve of Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement). If the High Priest has a seminal emission on the eve of Yom Kippur, he is ritually impure [until undergoing a ritual purification] and cannot appear before the Eternal in the Holy of Holies. Since Moses is always on call, he must always be ritually pure. Thus Miriam’s punishment is not a feminist issue. She was punished for being a talebearer and for ignoring Moses’ requirement for ritual purity!

Stegemann is a True Disciple

One reason for not changing your current publication practices in Readers Reply is that it allows the rest of us to contrast the righteous (?) indignation of some with the patient, charitable responses of some of your authors.

This was amply evident in some of the exchanges between your correspondents and Hartmut Stegemann (Readers Reply, BR 10:03). Dr. Stegemann shows not only significant scholarship, but the grace and patience of a disciple of Jesus.

I thank him … and you.

Jesus’ Healings Cannot Be Explained Away

Please do not cancel my subscription. I find many of your articles stimulating, which is a nice way of saying that although they strike me as far-out, they still make me think.

Such was Professor Fossum’s hypothesis (“Understanding Jesus’ Miracles,” BR 10:02) that the nature miracles had best be understood as symbolic. It is an engaging theory, but I have a problem with it. Nowhere do we find the faintest hint in the Gospels that that was what the evangelist had in mind. It seems anachronistic.

If my objection is valid, there is the further difficulty that Mark’s Romans and others not familiar with the Old Testament would have no way of knowing what was being symbolized.

Also, Professor Fossum joins those who would explain away the miraculous healings by attributing them to Jesus’ charismatic personality or powers of hypnosis. He says, “The majority of people whom Jesus is said to have healed suffered from disorders that may have had a heavy psychological or emotional component once characterized as hysteria. These include paralysis, blindness and the inability to speak and hear …. It is possible that Jesus used a kind of hypnosis.”

Professor Fossum speaks of “the majority.” Perhaps he is not including the man who was blind from birth (John 9:1–7), the woman who had been hemorrhaging for twelve years (Matthew 9:20), the man with dropsy (Luke 14:2), or Peter’s mother-in-law who had fever (Matthew 8:14). Their afflictions are not, in my unprofessional opinion, the sort of ailments that are susceptible of cure by hypnosis.

The professor’s lumping deaf people in with those who might have been treated by hypnosis struck home because I am deaf. I asked my otologist if he had ever heard of deafness being cured by hypnosis. He said he never had.

If Jesus effected just one cure—not many, just one—that we cannot explain on rational grounds, it cannot be denied that he had supernatural powers. And in that case, there is no compelling reason to posit naturalistic rationales for the other healings. It beats me why many of your very erudite contributors refuse to concede that Jesus was able to do things that mere human beings could not do.

If Jesus Was Wrong…

If Jesus preached the immediate coming of an eschatological (apocalyptic?) kingdom of God, and if Jesus was wrong, does that not call into question the reliability of all human religious experience? If Jesus was wrong why should I trust that the church’s apprehension of the truth is better? Or the writers’ of the Gospels? or Paul’s? Or my own religious experience? Or Buddha’s? Or Moses’?

Adding His Voice to the Bible’s Song

Somewhat to my surprise, your articles about the Old Testament stories seem to have the most lasting effect on me. These articles are accompanied by reproductions of wonderful artworks associated with the stories—but my orientation is musical, and perhaps you will forgive a metaphor along these lines: The stories are like songs, and they may be sung in many keys and in a variety of styles by people with widely differing voices.

In this spirit of contributing to the harmony, may I present another version of the Passover story? It is a poem by a young man named Wilfred Owen, who wrote from the trenches of World War I. His poem subtly weaves images of 20th century carnage into the Old Testament story and ends with a searing, anguished twist. It was used by Benjamin Britten as part of his text for the “War Requiem”:

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,

And took the fire with him, and a knife.

And as they sojourned both of them together,

Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,

Behold the preparations, fire and iron,

But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?

Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,

And builded parapets and trenches there,

And stretched fourth the knife to stay his son.

Saying, lay not thy hand upon the lad,

Neither do anything to him. Behold,

A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;

Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.

But the old man would not so but slew his son,

And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

Wilfred Owen was killed not long after he wrote this. May God have mercy on us all.

Should We Change Our Name?
Bible Bashing would be a much better name for your publication.