Readers Reply
004
Introducing the Rules of the Game
Perhaps you should print a brief caveat at the front of each issue—something to the effect that BR uses a scholarly approach to issues in the attempt to discover truths, and readers should be aware that there is always the risk of reading something with which they may strongly disagree.
The statement should explain that this is the way all scholars work, regardless of discipline: that we have found exposure to a vigorous, healthy, critical evaluation by a wide variety of readers leads ultimately to new insights.
BR represents an enthusiastic, articulate group of writers/scholars trying to reach a broader public. But you have forgotten to introduce that broader public to the rules of scholarship, assuming that they are common knowledge.
While such an introductory statement might cause a few people not to subscribe, it seems to me that it would more accurately depict the magazine, clarifying naive expectations based solely on the name, Bible Review.
Walnut Creek, California
“God Can Do Very Well Without Your Scholarship”
I’d like to address two continuing criticisms of your magazine: that it is too intellectual and that the historical-critical method destroys faith. As to being intellectual, who said that to be a Christian is to park your brain outside the church? Jesus says that Love of God requires one’s whole heart, soul, mind and strength! I happen to be one of many whose faith and spiritual life have been fed by the brain as well as the heart and soul! The Christ I meet in prayer, worship and devotional reading seems perfectly happy that I have a brain and use it!
Secondly, those who see historical-critical methods as a faith-destroyer don’t understand that the methods are but tools for understanding the Bible. They are often guards against the abuses of proof-texters (of both left and right) and cultists. There are out-dated or faulty parts to these tools that need replacing at times. For the growth of my own faith, these tools played a part along with prayer, devotional reading, worship and servanthood.
As for both these issues, the great evangelical John Wesley has something to say. He was approached by a woman that told him: “God can do very well without your scholarship.” “Yes, He can,” replied John. “And God can do very well without your ignorance, also.”
Cazenovia, New York
Food for Thought
In August 1993 I made one of my weekly visits to the local magazine store. As a rule I go straight to the cooking magazines, but on this occasion the title “The Oldest Cookbooks in the World” caught my attention. Grabbing BR, I scanned it with great enthusiasm, thinking only of the great recipes that must be inside. Maybe with these recipes I could feed my friends and family with some great Hebrew delicacies. I was quite surprised at what I found.
Then I became a subscriber. Not only did I find recipes, but I found things that nourished me far more deeply. I discovered that the Bible is a splendid work of literature interwoven with great truths and profound symbolism. This was quite a revelation for me because I had not been taught to examine the Bible in such ways. BR has helped me to redefine and enhance my experience with this great book. This new knowledge truly affects how and what I believe. It is going to be an interesting, affirming journey of discovery from now on.
Whitby, Ontario
006
Talmudic Sex
Sexual Intercourse with Clothes On
Regarding the controversy surrounding Professor Graydon F. Snyder (“Unintended Sex Leads to Unintended Fall,” BR 10:04), it is useful to examine the text in question (Babylonian Talmud, Baba Kamma 27a). We are laconically told of the case of a man who has fallen from a roof and has injured a woman in some way. The Hebrew word used,
Whether Professor Snyder’s anecdote constituted sexual harassment in the context of a lecture in a theological seminary is indeed a matter for his colleagues to decide, not readers of the New York Times nor BR. He has, however, exaggerated the sexual imagery of his text in a manner that invites inquiry into his motives.
Haifa, Israel
Graydon F. Snyder replies:
It was probably presumptuous on my part, though most illuminating, to compare the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount with the Talmud. It would be more than presumptuous to engage Jewish scholars in a debate over the meaning of a Talmudic story—it would be absolutely foolhardy. However, I cannot resist a few observations. I wonder if Dr. Barron really wishes to imply that
All this leads to Dr. Barron’s last point. Yes, I said the roofer and the woman took off their clothes. No, it is not in the text. But isn’t Dr. Barron being a bit too literal? Or, perhaps I am wrong. Never will a man fall off a roof and accidentally have intercourse with a woman below. If one is going to use an impossible extreme to make an ethical point, why not go all the way? If the woman and the man are going to have intercourse, why not do it with their clothes on?
Saul
Don’t Be Misled by the Party Line on David
Kenneth Cohen (“King Saul—A Bungler from the Beginning,” BR 10:05) does an excellent job of laying out the Old Testament case for Saul as a bungler. His argument that this interpretation was intended by the compilers of our text is strong. But the accounts of the careers of Saul and David are complicated and contradictory.
The picture Cohen elucidates so well is the “party line” of the House of David, intended to justify the transmission of God’s favor to the Davidian kings of Judah. If Old Testament scholars are correct that these chronicles were compiled in their present form during the reign of Josiah (7th century B.C.)—the closest thing to a puppet king ever enjoyed by the Jerusalem priesthood—the vested interest of the scribes in validating the then-current regime is obvious.
Just as clearly, however, these scribes were saddled with old chronicles and traditions, some of which accord poorly with the view of the bungling Saul of whom God finally washes his hands. These accounts present Saul as a valiant and successful general (1 Samuel 14:47–48)—more successful evidently than most of his successors—and even as a 008prophet (1 Samuel 10:10–11). And against the implication that Saul was insufficiently bloodthirsty in pursuing God’s campaign against the Amalekites, compare 2 Samuel 21:1–9: There we are told that David handed Saul’s sons and grandsons over as human sacrifices because Saul had been too aggressive against the Gibeonites.
If our interest in reading these accounts is to clarify the views of their final compilers, surely Cohen has given us a lucid exposition. But what if we are interested in the chronicles as historical sources? Can we accept as historical the narrative of a Benjaminite war so obviously patterned to discredit a Benjaminite king? Can we accept as unbiased a text that curses a king for not exterminating all the Amalekites but blesses a pretender who serves as a vassal of the Philistines against Israel? Can we credit a prophet so unpatriotic as to anoint a known incompetent, or tribal leaders so dense as to rally to the call of an inept general whose “only apparent virtue is his size”?
No doubt David proved by his success that he was the better politician and the better general. But do Saul’s children rise up in arms against him or rape their sisters or kill their brothers? Does Saul or his grandchildren worship foreign gods? Who but a scribe writing from the hindsight of Josiah’s reign and knowing the ultimate (but short-lived) payoff for the priesthood could pronounce God’s support for the Davidian dynasty?
Doubtless Cohen is correct about the view of Saul held by these compilers. Fortunately they left enough evidence in their text that we can form our own interpretations.
Davis, California
Was There a Worse Bungler Than Saul?
In his article on Saul (“King Saul—A Bungler from the Beginning,” BR 10:05), Kenneth I. Cohen offers several interesting observations; unfortunately they are in large measure obscured by his ingenuous thesis that “Saul the bungler” was God’s punishment for Israel’s insistence on putting its military in the charge of a king rather than of a charismatic.
One does not get far in studying 1 Samuel before recognizing that it contains material from two traditions—the royalist and the anti-royalist—which show marked conflicts in both narrative detail and point of view. Cohen’s repeated references to “the biblical narrator” and “the biblical author” make it seem as if he is unaware of the exegetical problems built into the story by this tension. Cohen also seems unwilling to imagine that the monarchy might have been the natural result of a proto-democratic tug of war between a prophetic leader reluctant to accept new realities and tribal chieftains facing an increasingly powerful and well-organized enemy.
Furthermore, Samuel, the old priest loath to give up power and eminence, might well pick a tall, handsome farm boy whose lack of connections, self-esteem and sophistication would make him a convenient and easily controllable figurehead.
Trouble is, a figurehead sometimes starts taking himself seriously, and a crafty kingmaker may have to set him an impossible task to bring him to heel or trip him up. Was it really God who ordered the genocidal attack on Amalek? (Is that the kind of God we worship?) Or was it Samuel, who figured Saul was a little too soft to butcher Agag or too sensible to destroy a large number of perfectly good livestock? Today we call it hanging someone out to twist slowly in the wind. Such an obvious possibility deserves at least passing mention.
Finally, if David was God’s real choice, the king he chose “for myself,” then perhaps God was a worse bungler than Saul. Consider David’s record: an erstwhile brigand who lived by extortion; a turncoat who served the Philistine enemy until fired for possible loyalty conflicts; an adulterer who ordered a “hit” on a loyal soldier to try to cover his guilt; a king whose inability to inspire or even control his own children led to intra-family rape and murder, the revolt of his son the crown prince, palace intrigues over his succession, and, at last, the breakup of his kingdom and the end of Israel’s brilliant but short-lived moment in the sun.
In short, one who follows Cohen’s assumptions to their logical conclusion is likely to wonder if God had any idea of what he was doing.
Foster, Rhode Island
Saul Was Better Than What Went Before
As a new subscriber to BR, I commend you and your staff for producing a quality journal that is appealing to both the mind and the spirit. I am amused 010by those letters that accuse BR of propagating only “liberal” ideas. In my opinion, the articles are well-written and give evidence of balanced scholarship.
In “King Saul—A Bungler from the Beginning,” BR 10:05, Kenneth Cohen argues that Saul’s Benjaminite heritage was part of his problem. While the less than glowing history of this tribe is well-documented, I suggest that there may have been a good reason for selecting a king from the smallest tribe: Such a selection would have been less of a threat to the other tribes. Tribal allegiance still seems to have been strong. How would a selection from Ephraim or Judah have been received by the others? The division after Solomon suggests that national unity was never strong.
The suggestion that Saul was “a poor substitute for the judges of the prior period” (p. 56) does not strike me as a strong conclusion. The period of the judges was largely marked by failure. The irony was that Yahweh was able to work through misfits like Jephthah and cowards like Gideon (who, like Saul, was hiding when God called him). Saul was more like a judge than any of the kings that followed him.
I am sure that this brief response will not settle the question of whether Saul was flawed from the first or if he was a good leader who took a tragic tumble. There’s another option: Might it not be that Saul had potential for greatness equal to his potential paranoia? At any rate, I commend Mr. Cohen and BR for a stimulating article.
Chair, Department of Religion
Mount Olive College
Mount Olive, North Carolina
A Lesson for Our Time: Our Leaders Only Mirror Our People
Thank you for the excellent article by Kenneth I. Cohen. This was my first issue of BR and I was quite pleased with the scholarship and dedication of your contributors.
When studying academic readings of Scripture, I often ask whether the study has any relevance to daily life. The implied message of Cohen’s article seems to be very relevant to our own times. Instead of blaming our leaders for the continual messes we seem to get in, we need to look at ourselves and ask where we are placing our trust and reliance. If we are continually looking to God for direction, then our leaders will do the same. During the Civil War our country turned to God for answers and direction, and thus our leaders did as well. Lincoln is said to have corrected an advisor who had said, “I pray that God is on our side,” by saying, “I pray that we are on God’s side.” With this he illustrated that he did not place reliance and faith in the men around him, but rather in God and His leadings. National leaders reflect the thinking of the people, just as Saul reflected the rebellious and misdirected thoughts of his subjects. We should look at ourselves and correct our faults when our leaders seem misguided.
Lawrence, Massachusetts
Second Commandment
If They Don’t Exist, They’re Exempt
I greatly enjoyed “Did King Solomon Violate the Second Commandment?” by Victor Hurowitz. The art work and documentation of the supporting literary and archaeological detail were great.
I too had wondered about the cherubim in the tabernacle and later in the Temple. Did they violate the Second Commandment? Finally, I pushed aside the commentaries, lexicons and concordances, and read the text closely. Meditating on what it actually says, I came upon a simple solution that flashed through my mind. If cherubim, as depicted, do not in fact actually exist anywhere in the three-story universe (heavens, earth and watery depths), there can be no violation of the Second Commandment. Religious symbols such as cherubim, seraphim and the various beasts of apocalyptic passages in the Tanach [Hebrew Bible] or the New Testament are all exempt [because they are not images]. Has anyone considered this suggestion seriously?
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Victor Hurowitz replies:
The suggestion that images of the cherubim were permitted because they represent nothing real is interesting and 011original. Unfortuantely it is based on the false assumption that the cherubim were not real. In fact, the biblical authors considered cherubim to be part of God’s heavenly retinue. Genesis 3:24 reports that cherubs guarded the way to the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden. 2 Samuel 22:11 (=Psalms 18:11) reports that God rides upon the wings of a cherub. Most important, 1 Chronicles 24:18 implies that the golden cherubim in the Temple were to be a replica of the “chariot,” perhaps the quite real one described so vividly in Ezekiel 1 and 8. In other words, even through the Temple cherubim depict no amimal or human, they represent heavenly denizens of the divine realm, which for an ancient Israelite were very, very real.
Cherubs Were Mere Props
I just finished reading Victor Hurowitz’s fine discussion of the graven images present in Solomon’s Temple, seemingly in violation of the Second Commandment. To complement his presentation, I would like to make mention of one common explanation of the ark’s cherubim that is not found in the article.
Lawrence Boadt writed in Reading the Old Testament (New York: Paulist Press, 1984), p. 268: “Throughout the Ancient Near East, gods were often shown seated or standing on sacred animals such as a lion or a bull…These became the platform or special throne for the god.” Picture # 140 of J.B. Pritchard’s The Ancient Near East: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures (Princeton University Press, 1958) shows an eighth-century B.C. example of a storm god astride a bull. In the Bible, the formulaic expression “YHWH…who is enthroned on the cherubim” makes the connection between this depiction and the ark (1 Samuel 4:4; 2 Samuel 6:2).
If the cherubim were no more than a footstool for the almighty, then as Hurowitz points out so well, the cherubim did not constitute objects of worship. Indeed, if they were regarded as anything at all, they were shown in clear subservience to the one God worthy of all worship!
Sacred Heart Church
Lancaster, California
Victor Hurowitz replies:
I am pleased that my decision of the Second Commandment has piqued the interest of BR’s readers.
Dr. Kesterson has rightly called attention to some crucial evidence relating to the nature and function of the cherubim. The cherubim over the Ark, however, are not God’s footstool. Much work remains to be done on the topic of cherubim in the Bible—what did they look like, how many kinds were there, how did they function and which of the figures known from Ancient Near Eastern iconography do they resemble? God was a king, and like temporal kings He had ministers, servants and secretaries. Just as in a human court each term can refer to a wide range of employees, so in the Heavenly court officials of varying ranks could bear the same occupational designation—Cherub!
The Great Gulf
People in the Pew Can Be Trusted with the Truth
I am not surprised that you have received so many criticisms of Michael Coogan’s article, “The Great Gulf Between Scholars and the Pew,” BR 10:03.
I am retired minister and glad I tried hard all my ministry to bridge this gap—not between the scholars and the pew, but between the pulpit and the pew, for that’s where the log jam in this river of information really is. In my early ministry I almost had a nervous breakdown deciding if I was going to be honest with the laity about their Bible. I had to come to the conclusion, you have to know the truth about the Bible to be able to recognize the truth in the Bible.
I know the frustration expressed in those negative letters you received. They revealed a number of things:
(1) The lack of understanding of what historical-critical method really is. In seminary I brushed most of it aside, for my conservative faith just could not take it all in—and “it wouldnt preach.” It was only immediately following seminary that my curiousity drove me to really delve into it—all the way.
(2) The fear of going up against the high, thick wall of traditional “Bible thinking” in those you want to like you (and pay your unkeep). This also leads to much false and half-false criticism of the scholars.
(3)There are no church guides written on “how to do” this gap-bridging. 012Coogan is exactly right in saying “Christian leaders especially have therefore restricted the exposure of most people to the Bible.”
I read widely, and BR is the only journal I know of that keeps this Bible problem before its readers. Lay people are smart. They can be trusted with the truth shared in love. I have offended a few in the attention I constantly gave this as a pastor, but I have been rewarded tremendously by the many lay persons who have said they appreciated the opportunity to find out just what their Bible is—and is about. It helped instead of hurt their faith.
Mt. Vernon, Illinois
So There!
In their astounding arrogance, the headline “The Great Gulf Between Scholars and the Pew” and the accompanying article tell me there is little or no scholarship in the pew.
Since I am, therefore, not qualified to comprehend your articles, I have decided not to renew my subscription.
Columbia, South Carolina
Some of the Bible Is Not Timeless
A letter by Rev. Roy A. Harrisville III in the October BR comments on Michael Coogan’s “The Great Gulf Between Scholars and the Pew.” Rev. Harrisville attributes this gulf largely to the belief commonly held by scholars that the Bible was conditioned by the times in which its authors lived. He says the average churchgoer, in contrast, thinks the Bible is a “timeless scripture”; that it is not historically conditioned but rather “the standard by which [our] own history is conditioned.”
The letters following Rev. Harrisville’s letter illustrate his point. Marcus Rogers says Scripture as “interpreted by the church” ought to be accepted, not analyzed. Pastor Kurt C. Hedlund says the Bible reveals “standards of absolute truth.”
Consider 1 Samuel 15:3, which purports to record God’s command (through the prophet Samuel) to Saul: “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”
The writer of this verse reports that God ordered Saul to kill the Amalekite children. I think it is clear the writer was influenced by his own culture and point of view: 1 Samuel 15:3 does not reveal a timeless standard of behavior.
Woodstock, New York
Potpourri
Merit in Extra-Biblical Books
I enjoyed Carolyn Osiek’s excellent article on the Shepherd of Hermas BR 10:05. I have often thought that some of the writings that did not make it into our modern Bible would be worthwhile to study.
Westerville, Ohio
Wanted: Women Writers
Bernhard W. Anderson’s “Moving Beyond Masculine Metaphors,” BR 10:05, would have attracted me to your publication if it had been written by a woman—but it was not. In fact only one article in this issue was written by a woman. I was hoping you would provide scholarly thought from women on how they view their connections to the Bible and their reaction to the resulting theology. Since there seems to be a definite lack of such material, I am not interested in pursuing my subscription.
Pearland, Texas
We are conscious of this problem and try very hard to produce a better balance. It would be inappropriate to list the female scholars who have declined our invitation to serve as columnists on the grounds that they are too busy. Perhaps your letter will move one of them to change her mind.—Ed.
Ad Hominem Attacks Must Stop
I have tried to maintain a respectable distance from the fray that appears each issue in your letters column, but I can’t avoid it this time. Mr. Louis Testa (Readers Reply, October 1994) has taken it upon himself to calumniate Geza Vermes, whose credentials as a scholar (no quotation marks) were already established when the first edition of his Dead Sea Scrolls in English appeared in 1962, ten years after his doctoral dissertation on the same subject. As to his knowledge on the subject of Jesus, his books, Jesus the Jew, Jesus and the World of Judaism and The Religion of Jesus, certainly prove his scholarship on the subject.
Personal attacks like this, attacks that are not challenges to an author’s position, but are rather mean, abasing, truculent assaults upon the character or beliefs of the author simply have no place in a publication that carries the solemn appellation Bible Review. I’m afraid that the editor has also been guilty of the same kind of vicious, vitriolic vituperation, and I for one wish it would stop.
Let me close with a quotation from Leo Stein’s Journey into the Self: “The wise man questions the wisdom of others because he questions his own, the foolish man, because it is different from his own.”
Homosassa, Florida
Borg Missed One
I really enjoyed Marcus Borg’s “Profiles in Scholarly Courage,” BR 10:05.
However, I was disappointed that Borg omitted one of my theological heroes—Michael Servetus, who was burned at the stake at Geneva in 1553 on orders from John Calvin for Servetus’s writings questioning the doctrine of the Trinity. As Servetus died in the roaring fire, he cried “O Jesus, son of the eternal God, have pity on me!” If he had prayed “O Jesus, eternal son of God, have pity on me!” and thus satisfied the Nicean Creed, he would have lived!
Salem, Indiana
Marcus Borg replies:
Mr. Clark correctly calls attention to the fact that many people have been martyred for challenging the dominant religious teachings of their time and place. Like him, I also admire Servetus’s courage. In my essay, however, I confined myself to examples associated with the historical-critical study of the Bible, which began about a century after Servetus.
Shouldn’t Something Be Missing?
Perhaps someone amongst your staff or readership can answer my question. Why 046is Michelangelo’s otherwise magnificent David uncircumcised? Surely Mike was versed in the Old Testament.
Towson, Maryland
Harry Rand, senior curator, Smithsonian Institution, replies:
Michelangelo probably used a young Florentine as the model for David, yet this would only have been a starting-point for such an idealized figure. One is unlikely to find any evidence of circumcision in Renaissance art. However, Jewish circumcision rituals are referred to in illustrated manuscripts of the period. Renaissance artists were not concerned about the historicity of Biblical figures. This topic is extensively discussed in The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art (New York: Pantheon, 1983; forthcoming edition, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1995), by Leo Steinberg, emeritus professor of art history, University of Pennsylvania (“Resisting the Physical Evidence of Circumcision,” pp. 157–159).
Introducing the Rules of the Game
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