Answer: Ecclesiotelic Hermeneutics

This week I asked a question about the meaning of the song, “You Said,” by Hillsong, particularly the chorus:

You said, “Ask, and I’ll give the nations to you.”
Oh Lord, that’s the cry of my heart.

I think that it’s from Psalm 2:7-8:

I will tell of the decree: The LORD said to me,
"You are my Son; today I have begotten you.
Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,
and the ends of the earth your possession."

It’s a promise made to David, but the NT authors take it christologically as referring to Jesus (Rom 1:4; Acts 13:33; Heb 1:5; 5:5). Since the inheritance given to Christ is given to the church in him, Psalm 2:7 can be understood as a promise given to the church (cf. Gal. 3:29, 2 Cor 1:20). It’s an example of what Richard Hays calls an ecclesiotelic hermeneutic, reading the church as the end (goal) of OT text and story. David didn’t understand fully—he thought that the promise was to him and his physical descendants, and that YHWH would give him political/military victory over the nations. But in Christ the nations have been reconciled as part of New Israel. The prophets often spoke more than they knew.

I’m not sure that Darlene Zschech and company consciously thought through all the NT passages, but they clearly read the OT ecclesiotelically—and I think it’s pretty cool.

CTS

Carpool Tunnel Syndrome:

When you are carpooling and you enter a dark tunnel and get that "uneasy feeling" as you sitting next to someone you don’t "Really" know.

Example:

On the way out of Boston, Sally got Carpool Tunnel Syndrome from the new guy John.

Question

Question: have you ever thought about the song, “You Said,” by Hillsong, specifically, where the chorus comes from?

You said, “Ask, and I’ll give the nations to you.”
Oh Lord, that’s the cry of my heart.

Arbitrary Rules, Lady Catherine

I’m still quite sore from a Saturday morning game of touch football played with some friends and coworkers. I’m not the most limber person in the world, and when I’m out of shape and do a lot of running my hamstrings become tighter than the discourse of the Joseph Novella.

Nevertheless, I enjoy football. I think I have the body for it–6′3", about 225 lbs., not as much muscle as there could be, though. As a homeschool student, I never got the change to play high-school sports like Tim Tebow did. Sometimes I feel about sports the way Lady Catherine de Bourgh felt about music:

"There are few people in England, I suppose, who have more true enjoyment of music than myself, or a better natural taste. If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient."

I was thinking about the various aspects of athletic competitions and games that make them fun. Some sports are contests in a single area of strength (track and field). Others are individual games (tennis, golf, racing). Within the genre of team sports, some are relatively simple and elegant with few "arbitrary" rules, such as soccer and hockey. These games are relatively simple: get the ball/puck in the net, and don’t hurt each other (too badly).

Football and baseball have so many rules. I like these sports most because they require learning context and history to understand. Why does an incomplete pass or a run out of bounds stop the clock, but a tackle in bounds does not? Because in the early days of football they may have only had one or two game balls, and countless minutes of game time was wasted trying to find errant passes that went into the crowd. Who thought up the infield fly rule? Why does the second baseman not have to touch second base when turning a double play? Rules have stories, and stories are fun.

Presentation on November 4

My sister, Rebekah–formerly of ThinkHardThinkWell, now at The Primary Word–will present a summary of her Honors Thesis at Philadelphia Biblical University on Wednesday, November 4.  The lecture is entitled, “YHWH’s Cult Statues: ‘Image of God’ in an Ancient Near Eastern Context.”  It will be held at 8 PM in classroom BL225.  If you are available that evening, please do consider coming and also feel free to invite others to this event.  This will be a fun and interesting lecture–see the abstract below.

If you can’t make it, you should still read her earlier posts here entitled, “YHWH’s Cult Statues” (part1, part 2).

See you there!

_____

Abstract: “YHWH’s Cult Statues: ‘Image of God’ in an Ancient Near Eastern Context.”

Most Christians in our culture know the Bible teaches that humans were created in the “image of God,” however, there is much debate on what precisely this means. Some scholars on ancient Mesopotamian religions suppose that the reason the ancient Israelites were commanded by their God not to make “graven images” is because humanity was created in the “image of God.” Therefore, YHWH God, unlike the gods of the polytheistic Mesopotamian peoples, was not to be represented in statuary form (the graven image), for humanity was created as YHWH’s unique form of divine representation. This lecture will discuss the function of Mesopotamian cult statues as divine representation in order to better understand the term “image of god” in an ancient Near Eastern context and also how humans may function as images of YHWH God.

Facebook officially gone (again)

I have gotten rid of my Facebook account yet again.  I’m hoping it stays gone this time.  I ditched it a while back because I was spending too much time on it.  The main reason I reactivated my account was so that I could post links to my posts here at WordPress–so you all have to continue coming on your own instead of whenever FB reminds you.  You can subscribe via e-mail or RSS in your favorite reader (Google, for example) in order to stay up to date.  Hope to see you back often!

Benj

Article: Vatican Plans to Incorporate Anglicans

As a Reformed person, I’m sympathetic to the reforming or sectarian movements in the Anglican Communion. I was encouraged by the formation of the Anglican Church in North America.

So, this article came as a surprise: "Pope Sets Plan for Disaffected Anglicans to Join Catholics." Will this tempt any conservative Anglicans? I’m guessing that the responses from the British church and the American church will be different. Brits don’t have a significant Catholic population, and the small Catholic minority is a lot like the High-Church Anglicans. America has a long history of Catholic immigration and integration.

I’d be interested to hear your thoughts–is this gonna fly?

An Israelite Enthronement Festival?

This is completely premature.  But hey, that’s what blogs are for–saying something before you’ve thought it through–right?

As we passed the Jewish High Holy Days over the last few weeks, a couple of things I read and heard in class combined in my mind to form a strange theory (that I’m sure is not original) about Hebrew religion.

Gunkel and his followers advanced the form-critical approach to Scripture, most notably in Genesis and the Psalms. They went about through the Psalter, categorizing each song according to its postulated Sitz im Leben, the context in which such a song would have been used. While I’m more interested in a canonical approach to the Psalter, the form-critical method has some merit when not applied too rigidly.

Anyway, the Gunkelites theorized that the so-called “enthronement” psalms (e.g., Pss 93, 96) were part of an Israelite enthronement festival, not unlike those of some Mesopotamian peoples. The problem is, the Pentateuch as we have it does not explicitly contain such a festival.

Or does it? Could rosh hashanah, the zicaron terua, be the “Israelite enthronement festival”? Here are some points in its favor:

* The “enthronement” psalms often make the connection between YHWH’s act of creation and his kingship (Pss. 93:1, 96:10). Many scholars, recently G.K. Beale and J. Walton, connect the act of creation in Gen. 1-2 with YHWH’s kingship.
* Walton speculates that Genesis 1 could have been read at an enthronement festival (The Lost World of Genesis One, p. 91), just as Enuma Elish was read at a Marduk’s enthronement festival.
* Rosh hashanah, meaning “head of the year,” is the chiastic apex of the Jewish year. Even though it is the first day of the seventh (Sabbath?) month, Jews wish each other shanah tovah (“good year”).
* Rosh hashanah is connected to the Sabbath. When it is commanded in Lev. 23:23-25, the only commands are that it is to be a “day of solemn rest,” and that the trumpets should be blown.
* According to Jewish tradition, it is the day on which Adam and Eve were created.
* Rosh Hashanah signals the end of the Torah reading cycle, which ends in the seventh month and begins again in Genesis with at the simchat torah festival (22nd day of the 7th month).

It’s a theory, and I recognize there are some problems with it. Has anyone made this connection before? Of course if there is a connection the next puzzle is how this holiday came to be so marginalized in Israelite religion. If you look at the list of the Spring and Fall festivals the Feast of Trumpets is not the one you would pick out as the most significant–Yom Kippur or Passover would probably top that list.

Alternatively, maybe the whole seventh month was one big, long enthronement festival.

Second Amendment

“You think that’s clear enough?”

“Of course, everyone has the right to hang a pair of bear arms … on their wall; what could be vague about that?”

“I guess it’s OK.  But before we send it to the printer, let’s take out that thing about abortion.”

Acrostics Paper

For all you Hebrew folks out there, this is a paper I finished a little while ago for a summer study on DA in Biblical Poetry.  The title is, “Alphabetical Thinking and the Use of the Qatal Verbal Form.”

I’m thinking of presenting a version of this paper at the regional SBL meeting in March.  I would be grateful for any comments or suggestions.