Readers Reply
004
Why?
Why do I continue to renew my subscription to BR? I subscribe because you do print some real gems now and then. I just wish I didn’t have to go through so much chaff to get to the wheat.
Webster, New York
Gospel of John
John’s Human Jesus
In contrasting Mark’s gospel with John’s, the Rev. Griffith-Jones notes that Mark’s gospel illustrates the humanness of Jesus by depicting him as a man with feelings (“The Un-Gospel of John,” BR 18:01). Over against this portrayal, the good reverend notes that in John’s gospel, Jesus “never loses control of his situation.” Perhaps. But one cannot deny there is a certain amount of “losing it’ demonstrated by John 11:35, where the gospel reads, “And Jesus wept.”
Mt. Sinai, New York
Who I Am Is
Robin Griffith-Jones suggests that John’s use of the phrase “before Abraham I AM” (John 8:58) is a reference to what he calls an abbreviated form of God’s name, “I AM WHO I AM” (Exodus 3:14). The meaning of the language in Exodus 3:14 has long intrigued commentators. The Septuagint translates it as “I am the Being,” and it is likely that John is alluding to these words. The suggestion that Jesus is referring to himself by God’s name must be treated with some skepticism, however. While his language implies that he attributes to himself the quality of God’s mysterious being, it does not imply that he attributes to himself God’s name.
Los Angeles, California
The Beloved Discipless
Why does the “beloved disciple” have to be a man? Why not a woman? The author says that this “disciple Jesus loved was standing beneath the cross, and so was the eyewitness.” Why couldn’t the eyewitness, or the beloved disciple, be Mary Magdalene? She was there by the cross in the Gospel of John, and she obviously had a very close relationship to Jesus. And then there were the sisters, Mary and Martha of Bethany. In John 11 it says that Jesus loved Martha and Mary very much. So why could not either one of them qualify as the beloved disciple? I suspect it is just that men have been doing the interpreting too long and they just assume that the disciple must have been a man. But whenever I hear that phrase, “beloved disciple,” I picture a woman.
I want to tell you how much I enjoy your magazine. When a new issue arrives, I usually drop everything and read it right away.
Seattle, Washington
Bible as Poetry
Robin Griffith-Jones invites us to see how much is achieved by the poetry in John’s gospel: The poetry takes “readers ‘through’ the process of new birth,” and prepares them “to hear the esoteric discourse of [John 13:17].” The author’s own words, too, are often poetic; for example he describes worship as “that strange place halfway between earth and heaven.”
In the same issue, Ronald Hendel (“The Birth of the Canon,” BR 18:01) similarly highlights the importance of poetry.
Following both BR authors, I reread parts of the Bible as poetry. Genesis 1 is also wonderfully poetic, as is Aaron’s blessing. So are many portions of Isaiah, such as “Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee” (Isaiah 60:1, King James Version).
005
We already know the Psalms and the Song of Solomon as poetry. Thanks to Hendel and Griffith-Jones we can now understand much more of scripture in a new way—as poetry. Perhaps that is how Ezra read the Torah to the people.
Reno, Nevada
Esther & Judith
Esther’s Even Worse
In “Esther Not Judith: Why One Made It and the Other Didn’t,” BR 18:01, Sidnie White Crawford suggests that Judith was excluded from the canon (and Esther wasn’t) because she was too dangerous. Both women are babes who use their looks to commit acts that are justifiable only because they’re done in self-defense. True, Judith uses her looks to get Holofernes to drop his guard so that she can assassinate him. But Esther rises to the top of the king’s harem by “pleasing” the king more than the other concubines and does so only to be head concubine. Then she gets the king to order a campaign of genocide by falsely accusing Haman of sexual harassment (Esther 7:8).
Which is scarier: the woman who might tempt you into dropping your guard or the woman who is willing to lie to kill you?
Allentown, Pennsylvania
Judith Did Make It
In “Esther Not Judith,” BR 18:01, Sidnie White Crawford states that Judith is “considered canonical by the Orthodox church and deuterocanonical (belonging to the secondary canon) by the Roman Catholic Church.” This is just plain wrong. There is no such thing as a “secondary canon” in the Roman Catholic Church. In Catholic usage, deuterocanonical does not mean that certain biblical books have a lesser canonical status, nor even that these books are chronologically secondary. Rather, it is simply a convenient moniker to designate those seven Old Testament books (and parts of Esther and Daniel) whose canonicity is disputed by other faiths. Recognizing early Christianity’s customary use of the Septuagint, various fourth-century councils affirmed the full canonical status of Judith and the other deuterocanonical books, a judgment reiterated at the Council of Florence in 1442 and the Council of Trent in 1546.
006
From a Catholic and Orthodox perspective, therefore, the title of Crawford’s article is a non sequitur, because Judith did “make it.” Hence, Crawford’s stinging social critique that Judith was not included in the canon because patriarchal forces were threatened by the story of a “dangerous woman…[who] refuses to fulfill—and in fact subverts—the gender expectations of her society” applies only to the Protestant and Jewish traditions. Within Catholicism the story of Judith stands in all its canonical glory to challenge our understanding of gender roles. As a Catholic, I thank Crawford for, in an indirect way, reminding me of the value and wisdom of the Catholic Church in retaining the full Christian canon.
Theology Department
Mount Mary College
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Sidnie White Crawford responds:
Professor Russell is correct that Judith is fully canonical in the Roman Catholic tradition, and I am sorry if my article seemed to imply otherwise.
Biblical Blunders
In her excellent article (see “Esther Not Judith,” BR 18:01), Sidnie White Crawford points out that the Book of Judith begins with a “whopping historical blunder,” but she fails to mention the full extent of the anachronisms in the story. In the story we have seventh-century B.C. Assyria, under the rule of a sixth-century Chaldean (Babylonian) king, invading a fifth-century restored Judah, with an army led by a fourth-century Persian general (Holofernes was the Persian general under Artaxerxes III in the successful Persian campaign against Egypt in the fourth-century B.C.). In truth, no major attacks were made on Jerusalem while under Persian rule in the fifth and fourth centuries (an unprecedented period of peace for war-weary Canaan).
Those who claim the historical accuracy of Esther point to the book’s familiarity with Persian customs, laws and the accurate description of the palace in Susa (essentially confirmed by archaeology). Those that deny it is based on history point out that 1) none of the individuals except Xerxes (Ahasuerus in the Bible) is named in secular Persian history, 2) Xerxes’s queen’s name was Amistris, not Vashti or Esther (as the author notes), 3) in the tenth month of the seventh year of Xerxes’s reign, when he allegedly married Esther, the king was in fact fleeing from Greece after having watched the Greeks destroy most of his fleet in the battle of Salamis and defeat his army in the battle of Plataea, and 4) other than the Bible, there is no record of the decrees supposedly issued by Xerxes or of a revolt or massacres on the 14th day of Adar in any year. Ancient Elam, whose capital was Susa, was a rival of Babylonia and Assyria for centuries. However, in 640 B.C. Ashurbanipal of Assyria destroyed Elam and Susa. The Babylonians later destroyed Assyria and rebuilt Susa (the site of Esther). In the process, the Babylonian god Marduk (Merodach in Persian) and goddess Ishtar (Esther in Persian) replaced the Elamic male and female gods Hamman and Vashti. In the book of Esther, Mordecai and Esther replace Haman and Vashti. Are the similar names a coincidence or literary structure?
Tulsa, Oklahoma
008
Babel und Bibel
For Better or Worse
Bill T. Arnold and David B. Weisberg’s article “Babel und Bibel und Bias,” BR 18:01, on the German scholar Friedrich Delitzsch was fascinating, timely and chilling. Even today, how often do popular conservative writers—not to mention Sunday school teachers across the nation—treat Judaism as nothing more than a straw man for Christianity? Typically, the perceived dichotomy is couched in terms of Judaism as the religion of hopeless, mind-numbing legalism versus Christianity as the religion of God’s grace, love and hope. Scholars such as E.P. Sanders have shown that such an approach is manifestly unfair and inaccurate for both historical and current Judaism. But Judaism still remains a target.
I have to wonder what thoughtful scholars a hundred years from now will think of the present generation of Christian scholars and leaders regarding our relationships with other religions.
Taylor, Texas
Which Delitzsch?
I was stunned and shocked by “Babel und Bibel und Bias,” BR 18:01, by Arnold and Weisberg. Is this the same F. Delitzsch who wrote the famous Commentary on the Old Testament with Carl Friedrich Keil?
Burke, Virginia
Bill Arnold and David Weisberg respond:
No. That F. Delitzsch was Franz Delitzsch (1813–1890), Friedrich’s father, who was one of the most beloved and revered professors of the Hebrew scriptures of his generation.
We have every indication that Franz and Friedrich enjoyed a favorable relationship. However, in a brief autobiography written shortly before his death, Friedrich failed to make any mention of his famous father or his devout Lutheran upbringing, though the formative influence must have been significant. Once Friedrich had rejected the inspiration of the Hebrew Scriptures, and denied their validity and usefulness for contemporary Christians, he must have been painfully aware of the gap between his views and those of his beloved father, who died long before Friedrich’s controversial positions were published. Scholars today are perplexed by Friedrich’s silence on the subject of his father. It is possible that he wanted to distance himself from his childhood faith.
A Living Bible
I was disconcerted by the following passage in Bill Arnold and David Weisberg’s article “Babel und Bibel und Bias,” BR 18:01: “The idea of an ever-improving progression from primitive expressions of faith to higher and more noble versions is foreign not only to early Christianity, but also to contemporaneous Judaism. Instead of encouraging progression beyond earlier formulations, both Judaism and Christianity warn of the dangers of moving beyond the original constitutional formulations of faith.”
I teach the Bible in university literature courses, but I would refuse to teach the course if I were not able to say that it shows progress in the understanding of God and in the understanding that 009our moral obligations extend beyond racial and tribal loyalties. There are places in the Bible where God commands ethnic cleansing and genocide. The Bible is hopelessly patriarchal. The fact that the Bible contains “primitive expressions of faith” is unavoidable, but it also reveals progress towards a higher and more noble version of faith.
The words of the Bible are dead without a living tradition, and a living tradition is a tradition that changes. Undoubtedly Delitzsch’s anti-Semitism was destructive, as your authors say, but there is no salvation in refusing to move on beyond “the original constitutional formulations of faith”—whatever those might be.
Professor Emeritus
Fairleigh Dickinson University
Bronx, New York
Bill Arnold and David Weisberg respond:
The “constitutional formulations” we have in mind are the Exodus from Egypt in the Hebrew Bible and the sacrifice of Jesus in the New Testament, which are commemorated (institutionalized in perpetuity) in Judaism’s Passover and Christianity’s Eucharist, respectively. These salvific events constitute the foundational core that the rest of the Bible is devoted to understanding, applying or proclaiming. Nowhere does the Bible charge readers to go beyond these or to evolve somehow beyond their religious significance. On the contrary, the prophets and the apostolic authors forcefully call readers back to these foundations of genuine faith.
Professor Becker has conflated two very different issues when he asserts that the Bible “reveals progress towards a higher and more noble version of faith” on the one hand, and at the same time implies that it is somehow necessary for us as readers of the Bible to progress beyond its message. While we admit there is a general or progressive evolution of religious expression in the Bible, we would not grant that it is possible for today”s readers to reach a loftier expression of faith that somehow supersedes the biblical teaching. There simply is no “higher and more noble version of faith” than that contained in the pages of the Bible.
The issue of how today’s readers interpret and relate to the Bible’s use of Yahweh-war and to its patriarchal society is a matter of hermeneutics. The features in question are cultural problems that we all must filter in our biblical interpretation. Moreover, it is questionable whether Professor Becker’s use of “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide” are warranted for the biblical phenomena, just as we have come to realize that “holy war” is not adequate to describe what is happening in Joshua and elsewhere. Of course the Bible is not advocating such things for today’s readers. But to say that we are to take the biblical definitions of how humans relate to God and extrapolate to a higher religious understanding is an entirely different matter.
Finally, Friedrich Delitzsch’s convictions about evolutionary progress were more profoundly troubling than Professor Becker implies. Delitzsch believed that he and his contemporaries had progressed to such an elevated religious understanding that the Exodus story, along with Judaism itself, could and should be rejected entirely. He argued that retention of the Hebrew Scriptures was detrimental to Christianity in his day. Delitzsch illustrates the point: We aren’t to progress beyond what the Bible teaches; rather we are to be formed and shaped by it.
045
Potpourri
First Church
Do you have any information on when the first Christian church building was built?
Grants Pass, Oregon
Thomas Mathews of the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, responds:
The “earliest Christian church building” was the home, according to the reference in Acts 2:46 to the apostles “breaking bread in their homes.” The first Christians were Jews and they frequented the temple and the synagogues of their compatriots, but for peculiarly Christian rites, such as the Eucharist, they gathered in the home of a member of their community. By the early third century, however, early liturgical documents such as the Apostolic Constitutions refer to proper churches, with spaces separately allocated to various classes in the community. Eusebius, too, in his Ecclesiastical History mentions good-sized buildings in the period before the Peace, but they have not survived. The earliest archaeological remains we have of a Christian church are from the unique house in Dura-Europos in Syria, which the community converted into a church (c. 250) by unifying a couple of rooms into one for the congregation, and by inserting a baptismal font into another room. The baptistery was decorated with paintings. (See Ann Perkins, The Art of Dura Europos [Oxford, 1973].) The early “tituli” of Rome were of a similar nature, domestic gathering places identified by the name of the original holder of title to the property. The earliest surviving church building in Rome is San Sebastiano, originally Sancti Apostoli, on the Via Appia, built by Pope Miltiades in about 311.
An Aramaic New Testament
I read with great interest Petra Verwijs’s review of The Syriac Version of the Old Testament: An Introduction (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1999) by Michael Weitzman. Do you know whether a book of comparable value has been written regarding the Aramaic (or Syriac) version of the New Testament?
President
Society for the Study of Metaphysical Religion
Belleville, Illinois
Petra Verwijs responds:
No comparable book has been written about the Syriac New Testament. Two Syriac New Testament scholars consulted, Terry Falla and E. Jan Wilson, suggest the following books for helpful information: Kurt and Barbara Aland, The Text of the New Testament (Eerdmans, Brill: 1989); Jeffrey P. Lyon, Syriac Gospel Translations (Peeters, 1994); Bruce M. Metzger, The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration (Oxford, 1992); and E. Jan Wilson, The Old Syriac Gospels (Gorgias Press, 2002).
Why?
Why do I continue to renew my subscription to BR? I subscribe because you do print some real gems now and then. I just wish I didn’t have to go through so much chaff to get to the wheat.
You have already read your free article for this month. Please join the BAS Library or become an All Access member of BAS to gain full access to this article and so much more.