Readers Reply

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Inspired

I want to thank you for being a part of my spiritual growth. Your magazine has had a large inspirational effect on me.

Informed

As a leader of a Bible study group of 80 to 100 people at my local church, I want to commend you on the combination of scholarship and readability in your publication. I plan to share the February 2004 issue with the group and to encourage them to subscribe. Your article on Peter (by Pheme Perkins) represents a wonderful example of scholarship for lay people, and your discussion of The DaVinci Code (in Jots & Tittles) will answer many questions that have arisen over the past few months.

Indexed?

Your magazine is just about the only one I have continued to read for several years, and I would like to have an annual index so I can quickly find articles when I need to reference them. This would be extra helpful in preparing homilies.

Our most recent print index covers every issue of BR (as well as Biblical Archaeology Review and Archaeology Odyssey) through 2001. It costs $29.95 (+$6.95 shipping and handling) and is available by calling 1-800-221-4644, ext. 3. Before the end of the year, BR will also be available to preachers, professors and students in a fully searchable online archive (for institutions only). The online archive will include all editorial content and all images (everything but the ads!) from every issue of BR, BAR and Odyssey. It can be searched by index term, author name, biblical citation or any word or phrase. Contact Matt Weinbaum at 1-800-221-4644, ext. 204, for more information.

Ten Commandments

No No-Brainer

While I enjoy your magazine and always look forward to the next edition, Ronald S. Hendel’s latest column, “The Ten Commandments and the Courthouse” (February 2004), was infuriating to say the least. I am sure that Professor Hendel is a very knowledgeable man when he stays in his field. His discussion of an Alabama court’s decision to remove Judge Roy Moore, however, was completely off base.

Judge Moore was removed because he refused to take down a statue of the Ten Commandments in the state courthouse. Hendel writes: “The principle of the separation of church and state is so central to our democracy that the court’s action in this case was a no-brainer.”

The decision may have been a no-brainer but not the way Hendel suggested.

Most people think that the phrase “separation of church and state” is somewhere in the U.S. Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. In truth, this phrase appears in neither document. The phrase originated in a letter from Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury, Connecticut, Baptist Association on January 1, 1802. The Baptist congregation was alarmed by a widespread rumor that another denomination, the Congregationalists, was to become a national religion. Thomas Jefferson was trying to assure the Baptists that this could not happen in the United States under our Constitution. He wrote:

“I contemplate with solemn reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church and State. Congress [is] thus inhibited from acts respecting religion, and the Executive authorized only to execute their acts.”

Jefferson is here quoting and commenting on the First Amendment of the Constitution, which reads in part: “Congress 004shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

The First Amendment’s straightforward admonition simply prohibits Congress from passing laws that would establish a national religion or that prevents the free exercise of religion.

James Madison, the principal author of our Constitution, said, “We have staked the whole future of American civilization … upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves … according to the Ten Commandments.”

Chief Justice William Rehnquist of the U.S. Supreme Court has stated: “The secular application of the Ten Commandments is clearly seen in its adoption as the fundamental legal code of Western Civilization and the Common Law of the United States.”

An image of the Ten Commandments is carved on a wooden door in the U.S. Supreme Court. Why then cannot Alabama display the Ten Commandments in a public place? Why not indeed?

Ronald S. Hendel responds:

I was relying on the consensus view of legal experts that the court’s ruling on this issue (which was upheld by the Supreme Court) was in accord with previous rulings on the intention and scope of the First Amendment. It would take, as Mr. Berg notes, a legal expert to explain this fully, which I’m not competent to do.

Thanks

I am thankful that at least a few scholarly voices are willing to speak up on the various attempts to “legalize” the Decalogue. It seems clear to me that the real intent of many of the Decalogue legalizers is not to legitimize the biblical text but to blur the church-state distinction.

Core Values

I do believe Ronald Hendel missed the point. Obviously, as he well says, we cannot legislate the Decalogue. We Christians can’t even decide among ourselves how to properly observe the Sabbath, and there is no way we are going to reinstitute the old Blue Laws. We want to uphold the sanctity of marriage, but we don’t want anyone snooping around our bedrooms trying to enforce the commandment on adultery.

But that is not what this is all about. Rather, the Alabama judge’s actions should be seen as part of a desperate search for core values. In a day when all societal values are being questioned, people need to know what core values, such as the Ten Commandments, are holding us together.

The challenge before us this day is how to appeal to the divine outside of society while being mindful of the diversity and pluralism within that society.

Ronald S. Hendel responds:

I agree with Mr. Peterson on the challenge that our society faces and the need for thoughtful and inclusive solutions. But the Alabama judge’s actions seemed to many (myself included) to be a divisive move, and his disrespect for the law certainly enhanced this impression.

006

Please Help Hendel

I just received your subscription renewal form with the apocalyptic headline “TIME IS RUNNING OUT!” Having subscribed for some 17 years, I find myself vacillating between letting it lapse versus extending it for another year just to see what new outrage will be foisted on readers by your enfant terrible, Ronald Hendel.

Let me think awhile about subscribing. In the meantime, may the readers of your journal take pity on the poor fellow and, in a spirit of love and patience, help him to the light.

Peter

The Bold Apostle

Thanks for the excellent article “Peter” by Pheme Perkins in the February issue.

I do take issue, however, with her opinion that “the most striking characteristic of Simon Peter” may be his “hesitance.” It seems to me Peter’s inclinations were quite the opposite. He reacted quickly when Jesus called him to be a fisher of men; he was so eager he even tried walking on water. He was the first disciple to answer when Jesus asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” He did not hesitate to confront Jesus when he learned about the necessity of Jesus’ suffering. He was quick to whip out his sword at Gethsemane. And even though John beat him to Jesus’ tomb, Peter was first to enter. Peter was hardly slow to act; he was just slow to develop a theology that saw the necessity of a suffering Messiah. Once he did, he was hardly hesitant in proclaiming it.

Potpourri

Pharaoh’s Daughter

In a letter in the February 2004 issue, the sixth-grade class of Karin Eason requested the name of Pharaoh’s daughter in Exodus 2:5.

According to The Legends of the Jews, by Louis Ginzberg, Pharaoh’s daughter is named Thermutis in Josephus’s Antiquities and in the extrabiblical Book of Jubilees. However, in rabbinic tradition her name 046is Bithiah or Bat-yah, literally, “daughter of God.” The Israelite God named her Bat-yah in recognition of her kindness and compassion toward the infant Moses.

There are many midrashic stories about Pharaoh’s daughter. According to these Jewish legends, she was originally named by her father, but the Bible does not record this name because it incorporated the name of her father, the deified Pharaoh, and thus incorporated the name of an Egyptian god. According to midrashic tradition, Pharaoh’s daughter went to the Nile River seeking relief from a painful skin condition caused by an extreme heat wave. God had ordained the nasty weather to ensure that Bat-yah would bathe in the river and discover the infant Moses. A different tradition suggests that she went to the Nile to symbolically cleanse herself of the idolatries or Egypt. She left Egypt with the Israelites and later married Caleb, for whom she was a perfect match. Just as Caleb, along with Joshua, defied the majority of spies to reaffirm his faith in God (Numbers 13), so too did Bat-yah defy her evil father and turn to the God of Israel.

Inspired
I want to thank you for being a part of my spiritual growth. Your magazine has had a large inspirational effect on me.