Readers Reply

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Kids Nowadays!

I really like your magazine, and I especially enjoyed the article “Portraits in Heroism: Esther and Samson,” BR 15:01, by Naomi Harris Rosenblatt . I’m only ten, but when I grow up, I think I’ll order your magazine! My father home schools me along with my four sisters: Ana, Eve, Naarah and Abijah. We all have names from the Bible, and are Christians.

I also really liked the article titled “Eldad and Medad,” BR 15:02, by Elie Wiesel. I noticed you weren’t getting letters from any of your younger readers, so I thought I’d write to say I think quite highly of your wonderful magazine. I find it interestingly sapid [We admit we had to look that up.—Ed.] and lively—besides being biblical and informative. I can hardly wait for the next magazine. Keep up the great work! P.S. Other younger readers: Feel free to write!

Hidden Bible Book

Who Were HS’s Sources?

I was disappointed that BR so readily accepted the claim of single authorship of the article “A Long-Hidden Book in the Bible?” BR 15:02. While there probably was a single editor of the article (tentatively identified as HS), a critical analysis of the text clearly shows that he was dependent upon a number of sources.

Chief among them was a literary scholar (L). L’s fondness for book reviews suggests he is not an original author, but he demonstrates some literary prowess, and his contributions can easily be recognized in his use of terms of literary analysis.

Another major contributor was a historian (H). His affinity for German scholars in his review of the documentary hypothesis indicates that he is German himself.

Not to be overlooked is a mathematician (M) upon whom HS was dependent at a number of points. The work of M is apparent in the use of terms like Pentateuch and Tetrateuch and in the analysis of repeated words and phrases. The chart confirms that M’s specialty is indeed statistics.

The appearance of phrases such as “a convincing wholesale explanation,” “compelling case” and “weight of the argument” points to additional contributions by an attorney (A). Given their oversupply in the U.S., A is probably American.

All of these original sources appear to be male. In fact, L was no doubt a misogynist (most likely due to the failure of a working mother to bond with her son properly). Though HS tried to minimize this in his editorial capacity, L’s critical attitude toward women authors came out at the end of the article.

I trust that in the future BR will be more careful about accepting the claims of single authorship of submitted articles.

HS is himself a lawyer.—H.S.

Isaac and Ishmael

A Missing Resonance

Curt Leviant’s “Parallel Lives: The Trials and Traumas of Isaac and Ishmael,” BR 15:02, successfully shows how verbal resonances link narratives in the Bible. The verbal analogies linking the narratives of Ishmael and Isaac clearly indicate that the parallel narratives are variations on a common theme—the paternity of Abraham—as Mr. Leviant indicates. There are several other verbal resonances that link the narratives that Mr. Leviant did not mention, presumably because of lack of space. But I would like to point out how a “missing resonance” highlights an important difference between the two narratives. Describing the birth of Ishmael, the Bible says: “And 006Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram called the name of the son whom Hagar bore Ishmael (asher yaldah Hagar Yishmael)” (Genesis 16:15–16).

By contrast, describing the birth of Isaac, the Bible says: “And Sarah bore Abraham a son in his old age, and Abraham gave the son who was born to him, whom Sarah bore him, Isaac (hanolad lo, asher yaldah lo Sarah Yitshaq)…And Abraham was a hundred years old when there was born to him (bhivaleyd lo), Isaac his son” (Genesis 21:2–3, 5).

The difference between the births of Abraham’s two sons is more striking than the similarity. Whereas the Bible describes Ishmael as the son whom Hagar bore, it three times describes Isaac as the son who was born to Abraham. The absence of such language in the description of the birth of Ishmael constitutes what Helen Vendler, in analyzing Shakespeare’s sonnets, calls a “missing resonance,” the omission of a word or phrase when such a word or phrase might be anticipated from language previously used by the author (The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Harvard Univ. Press, 1997, p. xv). The Bible’s silence about the relationship of Ishmael to his father at the time of his birth, in contrast to the effusive way that it emphasizes that Isaac is the son born to Abraham, implies that it considers Ishmael to have a less close relationship with Abraham than Isaac.

Abraham’s Sons and the Goats of Atonement

Curt Leviant points out the extensive parallels between Ishmael and Isaac, the two sons of Abraham. Ishmael was sent out by Abraham to perish in the wilderness (Genesis 21), while Isaac was taken by Abraham to be sacrificed as a burnt offering to the Lord on Mount Moriah (Genesis 22). (Each son is saved at the last possible moment by divine intervention.) Leviant further mentions that these two stories are the traditional Torah readings in the synagogue on the two days of Rosh Hashanah: the Ishmael sacrifice story (chap. 21) on the first day, and the Isaac sacrifice story (chap. 22) on the second day. Conceding that “it is, of course, easier to find parallels than to explain why they exist,” Leviant offers no explanation for this remarkable parallelism. Let me offer one that I believe many readers may find compelling.

Rosh Hashanah marks the beginning of the annual Ten Days of Penitence, which conclude with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. The traditional Torah reading for Yom Kippur is Leviticus 16, which describes the central atonement ritual to be performed by the high priest in the Temple on the Day of Atonement: The high priest takes two goats and determines their fate by casting lots. One goat (the original “scapegoat”) is then taken out to perish in the wilderness (Leviticus 16:15–16). For millennia, Jewish tradition has identified Mount Moriah, where the akedah, the near sacrifice of Isaac, took place, with the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. One goat, like Ishmael, is to be sent into the wilderness to perish; the other goat, like Isaac, is to be sacrificed as a burnt offering to the Lord on the sacred mountain. For me, this parallelism is far too remarkable to be mere coincidence.

Abraham, the first patriarch, performed the primeval atonement ritual, with his 007two sons in the roles of the two goats. For his faithfulness in carrying out the Lord’s seemingly horrible instructions, he is specially blessed (Genesis 22:15–18). In the Yom Kippur service, Jews explicitly ask God for forgiveness for their sins on the basis of Abraham’s wholeheartedness in obeying the divine command.

I had expected to find this striking parallelism pointed out somewhere in 2,000 years worth of rabbinic exegesis, but I have searched for it in vain for some 20 years. My best explanation for this absence is that by the rabbinic era, the very thought of human sacrifice had become so abhorrent that any comparison between nearly sacrificing children with actually sacrificing goats was too terrible to contemplate. For most of us today, the idea of ritual sacrifice of animals has become sufficiently bizarre that it is easier for us to acknowledge the parallelism than it was for those whose memory of the sacrificial cult was still vivid.

Abraham’s Prayer

Curt Leviant’s contrast of Abraham’s attitude toward Ishmael and Isaac was quite interesting. I believe his contrast would have been assisted had he pointed out the rabbinic view, expressed in the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds (Ta’anit 2.4 and 15a) and reified in Jewish law as part of the liturgy, that Abraham prayed to God on Mount Moriah that Isaac should be saved, just as he was concerned about Ishmael (see my article on this point, “God Tests Abraham—Abraham Tests God,” BR 09:05, note 5).

Columnists

The Goodness of All Creation

Ronald S. Hendel is confused about how we in the West understand “Our Bodies, Our Bibles,” BR 15:02, if he thinks that the Renaissance and the Reformation held the same view.

Dualism—the belief that the material world is somehow sinful and that we can only become righteous by becoming unworldly—was a popular heresy in the early church. Before he converted to Catholicism, St. Augustine was a dualist; even after his conversion, he interpreted the faith in terms of neo-Platonism, a philosophy which held that things as they existed in the mind of God were purer than they were in reality. While still a dualist, Augustine fathered a son outside of marriage (to a dualist, even marriage was sinful, since it brought new people into this sinful world, so fooling around was no worse), and as a Catholic he held that sexual passion was sinful, in that it distracted the mind from pure thoughts. He taught that Adam and Eve, had they not sinned, would have been given children by God to avoid the necessity of sex.

On the other hand, St. Thomas Aquinas (who, as a young man, chased a prostitute that his brothers had hired to tempt him out of his room) held that sex was part of God’s creation and therefore good. Beauty and sensual delights were the mind’s 008appreciation of the goodness of God’s creation, and while the mind’s appreciation of the true and good could be corrupted by sin, the appreciation of the goodness of creation was no less pure than the appreciation of the truth. True art, in its integrity, proper proportion and clarity, represented the goodness of God’s creation and symbolized the beauty of the truth. True art would lead us to contemplate the beauty of creation, of virtue and of God, and to develop spiritual integrity, proper proportion and clarity of our own.

Renaissance art follows St. Thomas: For instance, Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus” (see Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus”) is, on one level, a picture of a naked babe and a neo-Platonic representation of a story from mythology. But it also represents the purified Christian soul emerging from the waters of baptism, given life by the winds of the Holy Spirit and clothed by grace. To the right stands an orchard of oranges, the mythological “golden apples of the sun,” which granted immortality.

To the Reformers, though, this was all sinful paganism. They stripped their churches bare of all the art that had decorated them, and that’s why we tend to thing that Gothic churches look like barren ruins.

But this outlook isn’t really biblical. True, St. Paul did contrast the soul (psyche in Greek, anima in Latin) with the spirit (pneuma in Greek, spiritus in Latin) in 1 Corinthians 15:36–49, but his point was that the spirit given to us by God should rule our animal passions—not that the spiritual is superior to the physical, as the New Revised Standard Version translates it.

Dizzy from Spin

Ronald S. Hendel ended his column “Our Bodies, Our Bibles,” BR 15:02, with the hope that Larry Flynt and Kenneth Starr do not find out about the long-running secret affair between our bodies and our biblical interpretations.

In the discussion of Richard Elliott Friedman’s new book, A Long-Hidden Book in the Bible? (see “A Long-Hidden Book in the Bible? Bible Critics Respond: An Interview,” BR 15:02), Hendel says, “The story of the rise of David is a masterful work not only of literature but also of political spin.”

Mr. Hendel is aware of political spin nearly three millennia past but is apparently not comprehending of the shameful work of our current spinmeisters. Anyone who would compare the pornographer Larry Flynt with Judge Kenneth Starr must be unable to realize how he has been brainwashed by today’s masters of spin, who have been successful in diverting attention away from the perjurer and adulterer and towards the man who investigated him.

Potpourri

A Loss of Nerve

Among Traditionalists

John Darr’s review of Stephen J. Patterson’s The God of Jesus (Bible Books, BR 15:02) contains material that many BR readers may find offensive. I am not a Christian, so I have no stake in the debate between the members of the Jesus Seminar and their critics. I do have an interest in history and religion, particularly first-century Judaism and Christianity. I have read Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan and Robert Funk, among others; I have also read Luke Timothy Johnson and Ben Witherington and now John Darr. I want an honest debate.

After reading and rereading Darr’s review, I am at a loss to explain one statement and the paragraph following it: (1) “In the end we must ask why the Jesus of Borg, Crossan, Funk and Patterson looks so much like Borg, Crossan, Funk and Patterson” and (2) “The responsible critic will make a serious attempt to identify his or her own values and agenda and to inquire honestly as to how they affect the task at hand. Only when the so-called renewed quest for the historical Jesus begins to take this responsibility seriously will it mature and contribute to a wider audience.”

I find neither evidence nor argument to support either of these statements. All four writers view Jesus in nontraditional ways (so, too, do Raymond Brown and John Meier, who are not members of the Jesus Seminar) but differ among themselves; individually, none of them resembles the Jesus of their writings. The only purpose of Darr’s statement seems to be to deprecate in high moral terms the character of the members of the Jesus Seminar. So far as I can tell, the Jesus Seminar is quite forthright about its values and agenda. Darr should apply his standards to himself.

I find traditionalists like Darr far more likely to use such rhetoric as a substitute for debate; it suggests a loss of nerve and an inability to articulate in cogent and persuasive terms their own views.

052

Paul vs. Jesus

Ben Witherington III is correct when he claims that Paul preached that the Law no longer had to be kept when one accepted Jesus as Savior (“Laying Down the Law,” BR 15:02). The only problem is that this is in direct contradiction to what Jesus taught!

Jesus instructed his followers not only to keep the whole Law, but to go beyond the letter and keep the spirit of the Law. Hillel, the Jewish sage, had summarized the Law by saying, “What is hateful to thee, do not unto thy fellowman; this is the whole law; the rest is mere commentary.” In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus saw this as a negative suggestion and turned it into a positive command, saying, “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets” (Matthew 7:12).

The very essence of Judaism was belief in God’s Law, which obligated every Israelite to obedience in works. Paul’s term “the law of Christ” meant freedom from the Law of Moses.

Jesus specifically sent the Twelve only to the Jews. They were not to go to the Gentiles or even the Samaritans (Matthew 10:5). I can’t believe Jesus would change his mind and tell Paul to go to the Gentiles but not tell that to the apostles, too.

So what is the problem today? The church preaches Pauline Christianity instead of apostolic Christianity as taught by Jesus to the apostles. Why should we follow the doctrine of Paul when we ought to be doing as Jesus commanded the Twelve: “Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely have you received, freely give” (Matthew 10:8).

It is only as we disregard Paul and pay attention to Jesus that we can do as Jesus demanded: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48).

Don’t Say Uncle

I would like to correct a common mistake that has crept in even in BR. In her otherwise fine article “Portraits in Heroism: Esther and Samson” BR 15:01, Naomi Harris Rosenblatt repeatedly calls Mordecai the uncle of Esther when, in fact, he was her cousin. The Hebrew Bible considers her bat dodo (“his uncle’s daughter”; Esther 2:7). Carey A. Moore calls her his cousin in the Anchor Bible series.

Any More on Lattimore?

We’re charter subscribers to BR, and we love it. It is the most-read, most-eagerly awaited magazine in our home. If there was a way to ensure a perpetual subscription, we’d do it.

Recently I purchased a New Testament translation by the late Richmond Lattimore, former professor of Greek at Bryn Mawr College. Lattimore was for many years one of America’s most distinguished classicists. He held as close to the original Greek as possible, particularly in matters of word order and syntax. The result, in my view, is a distinguished work of literature, faithful to the original. I am not an expert in Greek—far from it—but I can find my way around the Novum Testamentum Graece. What I find most compelling in Professor Lattimore’s work is that the different voices leap off the page rather than being submerged in the homogeneity one tends to find in any translation made by a committee. I haven’t found any other English version to compare.

Someday, when BR does another of its comparisons of different biblical translations, I’d be interested in seeing the reactions of those more learned than myself as regards Lattimore’s work, which has opened my eyes anew to a world I thought I already knew and understood (as well as a layperson can understand a time and place receding two millennia into the distance).

Many thanks. Keep up the great work.

Bruce M. Metzger, emeritus professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary, responds:

Richmond Lattimore’s training in the classics was good preparation for translating the New Testament by himself, and he produced what I regard to be a very satisfactory translation. Ultimately I have a muted sort of praise for Lattimore, however, because of his imperfect knowledge of Semitic languages. My feeling is that of appreciation, but of restrained appreciation.

Kids Nowadays!