I’ve been away from the blogging community too long, but at least I finished up some writing that you might enjoy: http://www.vts.edu/ftpimages/95/download/FM.Hobbins.Habakkuk.pdf

I’m guessing that Stephen Cook of biblische Ausbildung would appreciate any comments you might have on the choice of format for the series, not nearly as innovative as your approach, but still striking for many when they see it for the first time.

The first thing I want to say about your podcast is how much I admire the clarity of your five minute presentation. That said, the picture of the children had me hoping that you would address the question of children as an audience for the book of Genesis, which I think is an interesting topic (my 8 year old daughter is mesmerized by her Manga Bible version of the Genesis narrative). I like what Fleming Routledge, a great preacher she, has to say on the subject:

In the case of Old Testament stories taught to children, we are constantly tempted to moralize them, to make them teach a useful lesson according to our own ideas of what we should be imparting to students. Not only does this domesticate and tame the unruly “strange world of the Bible”; it is also boring for children. … The pastors of congregations can help to guide the teaching of children by delivering sermons in the adult congregation which seek to impart a sense of wonder and amazement. Over time, the adults who teach children will pick this up.

Fleming Rutledge. And God Spoke to Abraham: Preaching from the Old Testament (Kindle Locations 360-366). Kindle Edition.

For the rest, to be honest (you know me) I think you would have done better to take a concrete example of how Genesis was heard from within the Hebrew Bible rather than speculate about Ezra and the Samaritans vs. the Yehudians and what not.

For example, several interwoven themes of Gen 32:10-13 are reprised, not just in Isa 48:19 but in the larger whole of Isa 48:1-21; in fact entire passages from the Jacob cycle, and beyond, are reprised in Isa 48. It will be seen forthwith that Israel’s triumph through an act of God in the court of history is at stake. Very often in Isa 40-55, Israel’s vindication in the court of history – its ?ed?q? – is understood, without remainder, as God’s vindication of Israel; very often God is, without remainder, Israel’s vindex. Isa 48, along with 46:12-13, aligns itself with the sola gratia and sola fide themes that reach expression in Gen 12; 15; 32-33; 35; and Isa 40-55 generally: the command to leave one’s home (Isa 48; Gen 12; 15); otherwise put, the command to return to the land of one’s ancestors (Gen 32-33; 35), along with God’s promises of success (throughout Gen 12-35 and Isa 40-55), are benevolent divine provisions the appropriation of which is contingent upon responding to the divine word with faith. Faith in the sense of reliance on God’s promises is expressis verbis in Gen 15. It is also perfectly clear that virtually every pericope of Isa 40-55, not to mention Gen 12:1-3 and parallels, aims to elicit faith in the same sense. In Isa 40-55, divine benevolence, the call to faith, and the expectation of salvation construed as justification cohere.

If I am not far off here, then we know quite a bit about who the audience of Genesis was at one juncture: Jacob/Israel in exile in the 530s BCE; survivors and descendants of the deportations of 598 and 586 BCE. We also know how they understood the book of Genesis: as a template for the hope of restoration and palingenesis after exile, want, and suffering.

I know how disappointed some people are to hear that Isa 40-55 is about justification received in faith thanks to divine grace, but that is, it seems to me, the long and short of it, even if a great deal of the Hebrew Bible has very different emphases.

The long and short of the book of Genesis is different, to be sure. I would say that “original sin” as it would later be called does not consist of the creature wanting to be like his Creator. Rather , it consists of pursuing something that is a right and proper end in itself – in point of fact, the most laudable end of all, to be like God – by forbidden means. The proper way to become like God is not through knowing more or knowing good and evil. The proper way to become like God is by being solicitous in all of one’s relationships. For the first couple that meant, within the purview of Gen 2, to cultivate and tend the garden they were given and to exist in mutuality with one another to a degree unlike what is possible between man and beast. Within the purview of Gen 1-3, mankind is meant to dominate his surroundings in full awareness of the goodness of all of God’s creation. He is meant, as are all other living creatures, to procreate in imitation of, dependence on, and distinction from, his Creator. He is like God precisely in his vocation to creative activity and power. He is meant to be God’s viceroy on earth. Instead, as Gen 3 points out, he allows a power other than God to dominate him, a trickster. To be sure, the plot of Gen 3 is more complex than that. It is the woman God gave man who is the focus of the story. Her desire, aesthetic and intellectual at the same time, awesome in itself, is the occasion of her downfall as soon as she acquiesces to a power at odds with the power who gave her life and breath. “Her command over her passive cohort,” as Ronald Hendel puts it, leads to his demise as well. When they do precisely what they were told not to do, their eyes are opened, just as the trickster predicted. But what they see, as Hendel pointed out, “is an ironic surprise – their nakedness, of which they are now ashamed.” Beyond the terrible and enduring consequences of the original sin, the narrative zeros in on God’s solicitous care for the creatures who defy him: “The Lord GOD made garments of skin for the man and his wife, and he clothed them” (Gen 3:21). They are banished from the place God originally gave them following their act of seeking to be all that one can be and to have all that one can have – by a prodigal path. Yet banishment is a far cry from death, the consequence God warned of should they do precisely what he told them not to do (Gen 2:17). The God who punishes is, at one and the same time, merciful and solicitous. The pattern is repeated in the case of fratricide (Gen 4). Cain is not repaid in the same coin. On this understanding, primal sin in Gen 3 and 4 has to do with humanity’s proclivity to allow itself to be dominated by a power other than God. The alternative understanding is comprehensible to modern human beings who know themselves, no less than Luther, to battle demons who threaten to undo them.

Moreover, it makes no sense to stop the account of original sins with the first pair, and fast forward to the designation of blood to atone for blood in Lev 4-5 and to the provision for expiation of wrongdoing through a blood rite, a transference rite, and acknowledgment of wrongdoing on an annual Day of Atonement, per Lev 16. The connection between the blood of Abel, the offence (?a????t) it represents, and the blood of the slaughtered animal which serves to purge (?i???’) the sanctuary of defilement through contact with a people of unclean hands and lips is salient, but there are other originating sins to which Genesis bears witness: that of the divine beings who mated with humankind and produced the nefarious heroes of old (Gen 6:1-4); that of the entire earth the inhabitants of which devise nothing but evil all day long (Gen 6:5); that of the residents of Babylon who sought to build a city able to dominate the four corners of the earth, and a tower able to reach into the heavens (Gen 11); that attempted by the men of Sodom, young and old, against innocent strangers (Gen 19); that of Sarah against Hagar and her son (Gen 21:8-21); that of Jacob against Esau, which triggers Esau’s fury (Gen 27); that of the brothers of Joseph who try to rid themselves of Joseph’s existence (Gen 37). The parade goes on in Exodus and Numbers. Everywhere we see a God who by no means clears the guilty, but also a God who is long suffering, mitigates punishment, forgives, and blesses.

Okay, enough rambling for now.

Re vs 11, all too seriously, I have been considering the missing nun verse in Psalm 145 – and the missing ‘all’ in that missing verse (it’s in the LXX).
Note that faithful is ?????? in his words
and merciful in all his deeds
Can committees pick words that are faithful?

On the flood, I’d see some (though clearly not all) the references to the chaos waters of creation as also carrying echoes of the punishing waters of the flood. I agree this is much more overt in the prophets, but in 104:9 it is fairly strong…

Ps 74 I think echoes both patriarchal stories and the flood… and I’d wonder if death by drowning or something more cosmic is behind Ps 69.

I wonder if I’ve overplayed that too much?

I wanted to introduce the documentary hypothesis and all that has flowed from it, but not to make that the main focus, in the old ISBE (which I looked at for the dictionary article) and in some Conservative introduction books fighting that “devil” displaces consideration of what Genesis is about

I enjoy your take on the theological significance of Genesis.

There’s a bit of awkwardness in this sentence: “Creation and human sinfulness that follows it in Genesis 1 and 2, and in Genesis 3 and 4, provides a necessary foundation to understand much of the theology expressed in the Old and New Testaments.” Perhaps “Creation and human sinfulness that follows it in Genesis 1 through 4 provide a necessary foundation …” would be less awkward.

I also appreciate your enthusiasm for Genesis. Good stuff, indeed!

On Paul’s “momentary involuntary digression” he was certainly more prone to them than many (most?) others, often though they were not “momentary” and I am not sure about “involuntary” either!

OTOH I am seldom content with the scissors and paste school of “solving” difficult Bible passages. (If that is what you were gently and tactfully hinting at

I’m delighted that you think people will be interested, if you can suggest ways to organise the material to make it easier to find what you want I’d be keen to hear. I don;t thing the blog/podcast format is the best for someone looking for a particular topic, but it has been very convenient when I was starting.

Mike Poteet, Havertown, PA

I found your blog recently while looking for five minute bible studies. I am quite impressed with what I have listened to so far in your series. I have been trying to find quality biblical information and hopefully scholarly information in my journey closer to God. I’d just like to drop a quick thank you as I could not find any contact info.

Cam

When the groom makes himself known, there is no doubt in the student’s response in the love of Torah, such adoration being expressed in psalms like 119 and 139 (following the Songs of Ascent and the celebration in the courts (135++). And the psalms which have lily in the inscription (45, 60, 69, 80) need to be read recognizing the relation to the Song and the joy and cost of such love. I think you give me an idea of why 57 and 60 are repeated in 108 – again working out the internal structure of the Psalter… Some of these things are noted in the posts at my Poetry of Christ blog, a series of notes that I will some day wind into several books…

I’m making the more ambitious claim that these items are “signs of humour”. When many of them are present a text is likely to have been intended to be funny. The advantage of this approach (if it holds water) is that once we have decided a text is meant to be funny we are free to laugh (or smile) with it, without the fear of causing cultural offense!

On the short ending of Mark, how could anyone NOT prefer it, so dramatic, openended and mysterious. It is just so much stronger than the more pedestrian versions. And the very fact that lots of people think it incomplete is a bonus

I’ve been doing a lot of reading of African authors. They really do seem to lean toward cause and effect, fatalism, consequences, and grim endings. I remember a decade ago collecting stories in Mozambique and they all read like Hillaire Belloc cautionary tales. Maybe that’s one of the attractions of the OT for Africans and they might even like the shorter ending of Mark.

Between the two of you, you have almost convinced me that (after Jonah) I should try my hand at an Ecclesiastes commentary… The book is so profound and funny, it is a great combination.

BTW I think my African colleagues would have appreciated Ecclesiastes 10:5-15, the Murphy’s Law aspects would have been laughed over, and the thought that none of us can foresee the future, we are the fools who “don’t know the way to town” is a very Congolese recognition.

I wish I’d had a chance to teach Ecclesiastes in Africa, but it is not a young man’s book, so I never had the chance.

I found myself wishing for a bit more specificity in explaining why the particular examples are funny. On one hand, things like the person falling in a pit he dug is simple pratfall funnies. But being bitten by the snake? I think the whole thing needs some explanation perhaps in terms of the elements you’ve identified as signaling humor. I agree with most of what you say about the examples being funny. But I’m trying to imagine what my African friends would think about this passage. Fatalism. Cause and effect. Not funny. Just the laws of the universe at work.

I’m sure you are right about these Psalms.

In Gen 22 there is no such easy explanation, which together with the use of straight ‘elohim by the angel and the change to Yhwh makes it all the more interesting

Aagh, I must get this blog fixed so it displays Unicode.

All it does not have from my list is:
* ingenuity

But it does have:
* exaggeration

Which you (rightly I think) suggested adding

“This passage has been typeset as poetry because many scholars regard this passage as poetic or hymnic. These terms are used broadly to refer to the genre of writing, not to the content. There are two broad criteria for determining if a passage is poetic or hymnic: “(a) stylistic: a certain rhythmical lilt when the passages are read aloud, the presence of parallelismus membrorum (i.e., an arrangement into couplets), the semblance of some metre, and the presence of rhetorical devices such as alliteration, chiasmus, and antithesis; and (b) linguistic: an unusual vocabulary, particularly the presence of theological terms, which is different from the surrounding context” (P. T. O’Brien, Philippians [NIGTC], 188-89). Classifying a passage as hymnic or poetic is important because understanding this genre can provide keys to interpretation. However, not all scholars agree that the above criteria are present in this passage, so the decision to typeset it as poetry should be viewed as a tentative decision about its genre.”

One thing that is a sure sign that something is NOT humorous is laughter. Unless of course you include mockery on the list. I don’t suppose that the crowd laughing at Jesus planning to revive the little girl was supposed to be funny. He was being ridiculed. Again, if we want mockery or ridicule to be considered a form of humor then those passages in which God laughs at the nations because he knows their time is coming, well then that’s funny.

I see what you mean about the Ox being out of place but wonder a bit about the identification with the horns of the altar… Though the thought of strength and untameability are interesting…

The bulls don’t form one of the circles – I expect the poet is referring to the horns of the altar. Have you noted the circles in the psalm?