Jeremy Thompson Catholic PhD in Biblical Languages, Programmer, Runner

HERE is a link to a free introduction to Genesis by Dr. Murray L. Newman a retired professor of Old Testament.  It is a 16 page introduction to the book as a whole.  It is in the Bible Briefs series made available by Virginia Theological Seminary.

I will not be blogging anything of my own today considering I am working on my dissertation.  However, I did not want to leave you without any food for thought for today.  HERE is a link to a post by Chris Brady on his reasoning for not using the term “myth” in his series on Genesis 1-2.  I feel like I have been linking to Chris’s posts a lot here lately, but the series on Genesis has just been so good.  And, it has sparked a lot of dialogue with John Hobbins, Daniel McClellan, and now Alan Lenzi among others.  The recent dialogue has really brought out some important issues of how scholars should speak with general audiences.  When speaking or writing for a general audience, should scholars use the word “myth” and try to make sure that people understand that term properly (i.e. it doesn’t necessarily mean that something is false)?  Or, should they jettison the term because of misunderstandings that people have about it?  I have tended to use the term, but to try to make sure that people I am speaking or writing for understand it properly; however, I can understand the opposing view.

HERE is a post by Chris Brady on the character of God in Genesis 1 that is well worth a read.  My favorite quote from the post is:

Given that God is the subject of almost every verb in the opening creation story of Genesis it is surprising that God is never provided with any sort of description or introduction. It is left to the reader to deduce from the text the nature of this creator from the text.

It really would be helpful to have some kind of theological description of God that would precede the creation account.  But, instead we work with what we have and try to describe God based upon what he does in the passage.

Yesterday there was a post on the Desiring God blog about “boring” passages in the Bible (why they put boring in quotes I don’t know; I would just call them boring), especially the Pentateuch.  There is so much wrong with the particular details of this post that it is difficult to really know where to go with this.  Do you deal with the fundamentalism or the anachronism or both?  I’ll try both.  I’ll just say a brief word about the fundamentalism.  Moses wrote the Pentateuch?  Really?  I’ll provide two quotes from the post, though there are a number:

For example, when listing out the instructions for how to build the tabernacle, Moses goes into great detail about all the materials and measurements. Did he intend for the reader of Exodus to actually build a tabernacle? No! That was Bezalel and Oholiab’s job (Exodus 31:1-11).

Rather, it appears that Moses included the full set of blueprints in order to convey to us, as we literally labor to read them, a greater sense of the weight and worth of God.

I thought that even the most conservative scholars that I respect were past this.  If you still think this, I recommend you read all of  Introduction to Reading the Pentateuch by Jean-Louis Ska.    Or, you should at the very, very least read chapter 3 of the book free HERE (or as much as you can free it’s probably my favorite book on the Pentateuch).  This is the best advice that I can give since most people who still believe Moses wrote the Pentateuch may take a lot of convincing otherwise.

Okay. Now, for anachronism.  How about this quote:

Consider this: Why does the Pentateuch contain so much material that describes the old covenant and its laws? One reason is that Moses wanted to increase our anticipation and appreciation of a new covenant.

Really?  Moses wanted to do that.  The covenant wasn’t even “old” yet; It was just the covenant.  Unless “Moses” was going 007, I really, really doubt this is what was going on.  “Okay I’m going to write down these laws, so that these people will think they are for them.  But, what I’m really doing is writing them to increase the anticipation and appreciation of some people over 3000 years from now.”  Maybe that’s being a little unfair, but that is literally what the post says is one thing that “Moses” wanted to do.  Do you truly think that “Moses” had anything to do with a “new” covenant in mind before the covenant was even “old.”