Michael S. Heiser's Blog, page 18

New 60 Second Scholar “Brief Insights” Series Ships Today

Zondervan’s re-publication of my 60 Second Scholars series officially launches today!  I hope that you’ll all order copies for yourself and friends. The books can be ordered via Amazon and chain bookstores like Barnes and Noble. If you order on Amazon, note that the first three titles at the link are the new series — you can tell by the covers and the absence of the ridiculous prices folks are listing for used copies of the original series.

 

The post New 60 Second Scholar “Brief Insights” Series Ships Today appeared first on Dr. Michael Heiser.

What is the Bible’s Big Story? Part 4

This post is a continuation of Parts 1, 2, and 3 by Dr. Ronn Johnson. Dr. Johnson recommends listening to some of the Leviticus podcasts at one point, and that’s good advice (see the episodes on Lev 4 and 5). For those who might remember the series on Leviticus, with respect to this installment, it’s good to recall that the blood of the sacrificed animal was never applied to the offerer who needed to bring it. It’s also good to recall that most of the sacrifices for sins in the OT were about being made fit for sacred space, not hatred for a moral sin (most of those had no sacrifice, only a penalty like the death penalty or restitution. — MSH

 

I am moving on to look at the next “brick” on the evangelical “Big Story wall”:

God’s holiness demands that he cannot be in the presence of moral sinfulness:

This cliché has certainly been around for a while. Even as a kid I knew it was not true, since God and Satan talked to each other in Job 1. Plus, I had a mom who seemed to show up every time I was bad, and I knew that God was in the same business. Sin does not make God hide his eyes, nor make him go away, which is what I wanted him to do. So if children understand this, what could this idea possibly mean, and where did it come from?

 

Let’s consider the meaning of God’s “holiness,” especially in its relation to sin. The Hebrew word most commonly translated as “holy” in the OT is qodesh (first appearing in Exod 3:5, “the place your stand is qodesh ground”), appearing over 400 times. The general meaning of qodesh is not contested (“holy or sacred; set apart as dedicated to God”), though its use within the Bible has at times led to confusion. Here is why: while we know that qodesh may be used to describe non-moral things, such as a day of the week or clothing (“Tomorrow is a qodesh Sabbath to Yahweh,” Exod. 16:23; “You shall make qodesh garments for Aaron your brother,” Exod. 28:2), qodesh also seems to appear in places where the story is trying to describe the non-sinfulness of something or someone (“So Aaron shall make atonement for the qodesh [place], because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel, and for all their sins,” Lev. 16:16 [emphasis mine]; “Joshua said, ‘You cannot serve Yahweh, for he is a qodesh God. He is a jealous God; he will not forgive your transgressions nor your sins,’” Josh. 24:19 [emphasis mine]). So it is easy to see why the idea of “being qodesh” has become associated with “being non-sinful.”

 

We do not have room for a full word study here, so I would recommend looking into “holiness” (and its cognate term “sanctify”) with the help of a careful Bible dictionary. Listen to Mike’s podcasts on Leviticus, if possible. I would even recommend scanning through each use of “holy/sanctify” in the OT on your own. Here is what you will find: qodesh consistently relates to, or is used when describing, the ceremonial or ritualistic elements within Israel’s religion. “Holy” does not mean “non-sinful.” It means “special/sacred.” So the opposite of “holy” will not be “sinful,” but “profane”—something along the lines of normal, regular, or common (“Everyone who profanes [the Sabbath] shall surely be put to death,” Exod. 31:14).

 

So if God’s “holiness” is not directly related to the absence of sin, where did this brick come from? Who came up with the idea that God cannot be in the presence of evil? I am guessing here, but I think it developed over time as we tried to express how God was opposed to or against moral evil. When we began to allow the word “holy” to poke its nose into the tent as the operative word for describing God’s sinlessness (“Holy, Holy Holy, Lord God Almighty, Though the eye of sinful man thy glory may not see . . . perfect in power, in love, in purity”), it was not long before we had a full-fledged doctrine announcing that God can’t be in the presence of evil. But this simply wasn’t true. This brick is therefore not useful as part of our Big Story of the Bible. As it turns out, God can be in the presence of moral evil if he so decides to be. He can also decide if he does not want to be in the presence of sin. It is his choice.

 

God’s holiness demands that sin must always be punished

Again, I have always doubted that this was true, even as a child. God can do anything he wants, including punish sin or forgive it. If a human can do this, so can God. So this must just be bad preaching, I thought, or a rumor I’ve picked up. When I got into Bible college and seminary, however, the textbooks said differently:

 

“Although God’s punishment of sin does serve as a deterrent against further sinning and as a warning to those who observe it, this is not the primary reason why God punishes sin. The primary reason is that God’s righteousness demands it, so that he might be glorified in the universe that he has created” (Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology [Zondervan, 1994], 509).

 

“God being God, he not only may act to preserve his own honor, he must do so. He cannot simply disregard it. Thus, he cannot merely forgive or remit sin without punishing it. Nor is it enough for us to restore to God his due. There must be additional reparation. Only with some form of added compensation can the things that have been disturbed by sin be restored to equilibrium. Sin left unpunished would leave God’s economy out of order” (Millard Erickson, Christian Theology [2nd ed; Baker, 1998], 815).

 

“…Moral offense entails a moral debt that must be paid. Therefore those who sin against God owe him either their own punishment, or some restitution or satisfaction for their transgression of his law. God’s justice demands such payment, but human beings cannot make satisfaction since they are guilty and are deserving of God’s punishment. Satisfaction can be made only by one who is innocent, so God himself makes this possible by the incarnation of Jesus Christ” (Evangelical Convictions: A Theological Exposition of the Statement of Faith of the Evangelical Free Church of America [Minneapolis, 2011], 120.)

 

This sounds like philosophy to me, not theology, and not that there’s anything wrong with philosophy. But again, I think it is fair to ask whether the Bible helps us here. Did these writers discover in the story of the Bible that God cannot forgive sin without also punishing it? I do not think so, as then it would have been easy to simply cite where this happens, or where it is taught. The only quotation of these three that included a biblical argument along the way was in Grudem’s text, where he concluded his statement with a passage from Jeremiah: “‘I practice steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth; for in these things I delight,’ says the LORD” (9:24). I will let you judge whether this verse defends his argument; in my opinion it does not.

 

So if this idea does not come out of Scripture, where does this brick come from? Who started the rumor that God cannot forgive sin without also punishing it? I know that Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) is generally credited with the theology of “satisfaction,” or the idea that God’s honor was in need of repair because of human sin, the kind of repair that could not be satisfied by mere forgiveness of sin. But it would be out of step for the evangelical movement, as well as for these respected authors, to depend on a Medieval theologian for their view of God and the punishment of sin, or at least one would think. We have the tradition of going to the Bible to define our views.

 

I have been around the block numerous times with my Reformed friends about this issue, and I think I have come to understand why they resist believing that God could just forgive sin without punishing it. It has to do with adding, as I just did, the word just. Erickson described the apparent problem this way: “But, we must ask, is sin really serious if God can forgive without requiring some form of penalty or punishment?” (p. 838). There it is. If God forgives sin—or “just” forgives sin, whatever that means—this means God does not think the sin was all that serious. Erickson has put into words what I thought all along was just a bad rumor: forgivable sins cannot be taken seriously. That is why they are forgivable.

 

All I can say to this is you’ve got to be kidding (not a very scholarly response, I realize). The very idea behind forgiveness is being able to punish, to know that the other person deserves punishment—and then deciding not to punish. I am not trying to be difficult when I say that I am honestly confused by this brick. Jesus told us to be forgiving people, even beyond seeming respectability (cp. “Up to seven times?” “No, up to seventy times seven,” Matt. 18:21-22), and I feel we are going down a very dangerous path, an opposite direction from that of our Savior, when we believe that forgiven sin cannot be seriously-taken sin. I have long ago thrown this brick away, and would recommend you throw it away as well. It has no part on the Bible’s Big Story wall. Of course sin is serious. That is why forgiveness is serious.

 

The reaction I have had to this last paragraph has been fairly consistent among my friends. To close up our thinking about this brick, here is a rough sketch of how the conversation usually goes (I have filled out our arguments a bit, or made them more explanatory, for the sake of this blog):

 

Me: I don’t think you need to believe that God has to punish sin. I think he can forgive sin if he wants to, and I think that our theology about salvation would function just fine with a forgiving God.

 

Friend: Since you mention salvation—what about Jesus’ death? Why else would Jesus have died than to pay the punishment that God required for sin? It sounds like you are minimizing the meaning of the crucifixion.

 

Me: I’m not following. What does one thing have to do with the other?

 

Friend: I think we can rightfully assume that Jesus must have died for a very great reason, and I cannot think of a greater one than paying the punishment I deserved.

 

Me: I agree that Jesus died for a great reason. Please don’t presume that I think otherwise. But I have to leave the definition of great to God. Sometimes it feels like we are competing amongst ourselves in trying to come up with the “greatest” reason that Jesus could have died, and then going with that reason, fearing that if we settle for a less important reason we would somehow dishonor the meaning of the cross. I don’t think that’s a wise way to come up with the meaning of the crucifixion.

 

Friend: Fair enough. But here’s how Jesus’ death seems to tie into God’s need to punish sin: The greatest reason that Jesus could have died would be to accomplish that which, if he had not died, would consign me to hell. In other words, I think it is fair to say that Jesus died to accomplish the greatest possible thing that I can imagine, and the greatest possible thing I can imagine is making me fit for heaven through that death.

 

Me: Let me reword that to see if I understand you: We want to guard ourselves against any theology that would have people ending up in heaven without Jesus dying. So in that sense Jesus must have died to somehow make it possible for people to go to heaven. That’s what you mean by saying that Jesus died “for the greatest reason I can think of.”

 

Friend: Right. And since sin is the reason we deserve hell, it makes logical sense that Jesus’ death somehow dealt with our sin. Otherwise Jesus’ death would not have been due to the greatest possible reason.

 

Me: I agree that Jesus’ death must have somehow dealt with our sin. Scripture says as much, that he “died for our sins” (1 Cor. 15:3). But I sense you take the “died for” to mean “died to take away the punishment for.”

 

Friend: We can get to that later. For now, follow my thinking: Since we know that God has already been in the business of forgiving sin in the OT, long before Jesus’ death (“forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin,” Exod. 34:7), Jesus’ death must have been for some other reason than forgiving sin.

 

Me: I totally agree. God was already forgiven people prior to Jesus dying, so the effect of Jesus’ death could not have been to forgive our moral sins.

 

Friend: And here is where God “having to punish sin” comes in. The only option left for Jesus dying would be to take on the punishment of sin in himself.

 

Me: I see where you’re going. So in this way, Jesus’ death is still necessary to get humans to heaven (“the greatest possible thing”) even while forgiveness was going on before the cross.

 

Friend: Right. So do you believe that God had to punish sin, as accomplished in the death of Jesus, and that God cannot just forgive sin?

 

Me: No. While what you did was interesting, the steps were not logically necessary. Plus, you are assuming too many things that I don’t think are true.

 

Friend: Like what?

 

Me: Five things come to mind: 1) I do not believe that Jesus had to die for a “great” reason in my understanding, nor even his. He may have died for no understandable reason at all, in his own mind, but just because the Father wanted him to. That may have been the “great” reason Jesus died. I have to leave that option open. 2) I do not think Jesus died to get people out of hell, nor into heaven. I believe people could be right with God before Jesus died, and so the effect of Jesus’ death could not have been to make them righteous. 3) I do not believe that my unpaid for sin sends me to hell, nor that forgiven sin allows me to go to heaven. My afterlife is not dependent on issues of sin management. 4) I believe that Jesus’ death dealt with our sin, but I see him doing what a priest did in the OT—handling sin or uncleanness in a ritualistic sense—in the end sanctifying us so that we could approach God’s presence in worship (think of the veil tearing). Since we don’t believe that priests made people righteous in the OT, it follows that Jesus’ priestly work was not making people righteous while on the cross. 5) I don’t think that God “having to punish sin” is therefore anywhere on the radar map of what we have just talked about, including the purpose of Jesus’ death. I feel like you are arguing backwards, taking your specific view of the cross and interpreting the entire story of the Bible through it.

 

Friend: Well, you haven’t convinced me either. I just think that if God could have forgiven our sin without Jesus dying, he would have. I guess we’ll agree to disagree.

 

God instituted OT sacrifices to teach of his hatred toward sin:

Evangelicals take a great interest in the subject of sacrifice in the Bible, but I find it interesting that we tend to think through the subject backwards. By this I mean that we don’t start where sacrifice starts—watching the ritual played out in pre-biblical Mesopotamia—but instead dwell on the sacrificial meaning of Jesus’ death and only then work our way back into such books as Exodus and Leviticus. If that sounds too bold an assertion, try this experiment the next time you go to church: lean over and ask your friend what sacrifice meant in the Bible. Then compare their answer to the article on sacrifice in The Dictionary of the Ancient Near East (University of PA Press, 2000). I’m not saying which answer is right…I am merely saying that the difference between these two answers exposes a more serious problem. We are approaching the subject of sacrifice from two different directions.

 

So what was sacrifice in the days of the Bible, and what did it mean? Who started it? We really know so very little of this ancient practice, largely because, well, it is just so very old. We are told that humans were sacrificing as early as Genesis 4 (Cain and Abel), but we are not told why. We are not necessarily told that God “instituted” sacrifice any more than he invented the harp and flute (Gen. 4:21) or the process of smelting bronze and iron (Gen. 4:22). I know we want to give sacrifice meaning, especially religious meaning, but we may be moving too fast. After Genesis 4 it will be hundreds/thousands of years and possibly millions of sacrifices before Moses is even born. From there, many of the whens and whys and hows associated with sacrifice in Torah are still left unanswered, and any ability to psychoanalyze the mind of the worshipper during sacrifice is simply not afforded us. In my reading, I get the sense that the ancient historian would give his left arm to be able walk up to the prehistoric sacrificer and ask, “Why are you doing this?”

 

Yet here is my opinion for what it is worth. In reading the Bible left-to-right, it appears that sacrifice was an early invention of mankind, possibly being associated with early “religion,” though that word reflects a rather modern construct. The individual participated in sacrifice as a communal event, such as during a feast, and in this sense it was not attached to individual belief as much as to some kind of public social performance. Here is how one historian understood the practice: “What mattered most was the expected traditional gesture, made in the right way, at the right time. For the population at large, traditional rituals reinforced confidence in the belief that the security of the community required the attention of the gods. Communal rituals [such as sacrifice] represented the group acting as one and invited the gods to participate in human endeavor. Conversely, failure to perform a communal ritual properly could put the entire community at risk” (Susan Cole, “Greek Religion,” from A Handbook Of Ancient Religion [Cambridge U Press, 2007], 276-7).

 

Though Cole is describing ancient Greek ritual tradition (going back as far as the 8th century B.C.), I think she is putting into words how Abraham (and maybe even Cain and Abel) would have interpreted sacrifice. It was a public means of communing with a deity, a human way of bridging the gap between the physical and spiritual worlds. Whether the deity would “accept” the sacrifice, or hear the plea of the sacrificer, was a difficult matter to determine. There were no guarantees. Sacrifices connected the community with the gods, but it also reiterated a kind of expected social order in which implied responsibilities existed between the humans and the gods. The supplicant constantly faced the possibility that he had offended his god in the smallest of matters (had he pronounced his god’s name correctly? was the fruit properly ripe?), and so sacrifices were often done in an over-the-top style in hopes that it would “take.” Animal sacrifice was considered the most impressive means of gaining the attention of a god, though vegetables or grains were more common (and certainly more affordable if the entire sacrifice was to be burnt away). The special requirements for participation in sacrifice (gender, status, kinship, profession, etc.) depended upon local interpretation of the god’s requirements, usually interpreted by the king or priest.

 

So if this is how scholars generally handle the subject of ancient sacrifice, what about our brick? Did God institute OT sacrifices to teach of his hatred for sin? I am going to side with the secular historian on this one and say no. I do not sense that God “instituted” sacrifice at all, but that it developed as a natural response among humans as we tried to commune with the world above us. It would be like asking who started the tradition of folding our hands and closing our eyes when we prayed as children. God certainly didn’t “tell” us to do this, but we somewhere along the way decided that it was a proper posture for talking to God (or to keep the kids’ hands to themselves in junior church). So why did individuals in the OT sacrifice? The biblical record shows that altars were constructed with regularity, whether by Noah (Gen. 8:20), Abraham (Gen 12:6 ff.; 13:18; 22:9), Isaac (Gen 26:25), Jacob (Gen 33:20; 35:1-7), Moses (Exod 17:15), Joshua (Josh 8:30 f.; cf. Deut 27:5), Gideon (Jdg 6:24 ff.), or David (2 Sam 24:18-25). I believe that these individuals were simply following cultural norm, whether living before or after Moses. This view is not uncommon among evangelical authors, by the way. Daniel Block argues that most of the categories of sacrifice found in Leviticus 1-5 are attested to outside of Israel, including the zebah (sacrifice, sacrificial meals), selamim (peace/well-being offerings), ola (whole burnt offerings), and mincha (gift, grain/cereal offerings) (“Other Religions in Old Testament Theology,” in Biblical Faith and Other Religions: An Evangelical Assessment [Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2004] 43-78).

 

But what about sin? When God instructed Moses on the practice of sacrifice at Sinai, was this in any sense due to His desire to teach Israel about the seriousness of moral sin, or his hatred of it? As much as I would like to say Yes to this idea—as it makes sense if I don’t think about it too deeply—I simply cannot find enough evidence to do so, and in fact find strong evidence in the opposite direction. (If the question was changed to “Did God instruct Moses within Torah about the seriousness of sin, and his hatred of it?” then the answer would be an easy yes; so notice that the issue here concerns sacrifice, not Torah.) See if my proposal works for you: If sacrifice had been designed to teach the seriousness of sin, then the rules on sacrifice would have looked much different than they do—namely, the bigger the sin, the bigger the sacrifice. But that is not what we find. The biggest sins of all (let’s say murder) had no sacrificial equivalent. So something else must have been going on with the meaning of sacrifice when it came to Moses’ teaching. We will deal with that when looking at the next brick. For now, toss this one aside.

 

If you would like to respond to this post, I welcome your emails to ronnjohnson7@gmail.com. I will certainly reply.

The post What is the Bible’s Big Story? Part 4 appeared first on Dr. Michael Heiser.

How To Argue From the Biblical Text for a Local-Regional Flood Instead of a Global Flood

I’ve gotten this question before in podcast Q & A, but I was reminded of it today when someone posted this article on Facebook, aimed at “flood geology”: Twenty-One Reasons Noah’s Worldwide Flood Never Happened. It’s by a retired geology professor. I don’t understand the science as I’m not a geologist, but I do know biblical studies. It’s actually not difficult to argue for a local-regional flood from the biblical text. In what follows I’ll show you how. My purpose is to say that, if a global flood really is geologically denied or impossible, you really don’t need to care with respect to biblical accuracy. The biblical text can indeed sustain a local-regional flood. Another purpose is to promote debate via inspection of the text, as opposed to pejorative or ad hominem attacks (i.e., promote charity among those who disagree). As you’ve heard me say many times on the podcast or elsewhere, we should care only about what the biblical text can sustain, not what tradition says. That means the task of both sides to read the text closely and think carefully about it. What follows is how a local-regional flood theorist would do that.

To begin, the argument / approach would go this way in a nutshell:

Demonstrating that the word “all” (כֹּל / kōl) doesn’t solve anything. Rather, it begs an obvious question: “all of what?” The same goes for words like “mountain” (הַר; har). What we think of as a mountain may not be what the word must mean. And let’s include the word translated “earth” in the flood account. It’s the frequently-found ʾerets (אֶרֶץ), which often means some point or piece of land.
Demonstrating that phrases like “all flesh” or “all humankind” or “the whole heavens” (all of which use kōl + noun) do not speak of exhaustive totality in various places in the Bible. Once that is known, you’d ask a simple question: are we justified in taking the “less than exhaustive totality” meaning back to Genesis 6-8 and interpreting the flood event accordingly — an event that did not cover the earth in exhaustive totality?
Supporting a “yes” answer to the above via context. Context in this case means interpreting Gen 6-8 in light of the known world at the time, described in Genesis 10. That also produces a question: Is there a textual way to connect Genesis 10, the nations that extend from the sons of Noah, to the flood account?

There are other ways to defend a local-regional view, but those are the backbone trajectories. So here’s the thought experiment….

The word “all” (כֹּל / kōl)

The word “all” (kōl) means nothing in and of itself, for it begs the question: “all” of what? If I say, “that vacuum sucked up all the dirt,” do I mean that there isn’t a single speck of dirt (every molecule of dust, e.g.) left anywhere? Of course not. In Gen 41:57 we read: “All (כֹל; kōl) the earth came to Egypt to Joseph to buy grain.” Are we to conclude that every last human being on the globe came to Egypt? Of course not. That would be ridiculous. We know this not only because it’s ridiculous, but because we know from the biblical story that Jacob and his sons and their families had not gone down to Egypt at the time of the statement (see ch. 42ff.). In regard to ʾerets, as noted above, the term often means a point of piece of land. Gen 41:56, the verse before the one cited above, is an example: “So when the famine had spread over all the land, Joseph opened all the storehouses and sold to the Egyptians, for the famine was severe in the land (ʾerets) of Egypt.” The “land” (ʾerets) of Egypt isn’t the whole world. Some global flood theorists like to argue that “land” + a qualifier (like “Egypt”) is necessarily limited, but “land” (ʾerets) without such a qualifier must mean the totality of the globe. Gen 41:57 contradicts that, and it isn’t the only such instance where ʾerets by itself cannot mean exhaustive totality (see Gen 10:11 – Shinar is the referent; Gen 12:7, 10; 13:7, 17; 15:18; 23:15; etc. etc.). The word for “mountain” in the flood account (har) is used elsewhere of a hill or, in general terms, something quite smaller than Everest (Gen 22:14; 36:8 [Edom]; Josh 13:19; 2 Kings 1:9; 23:13; Jer 3:6; Hagg 1:8 [trees don’t grow on very high mountains]). Even “high” doesn’t help much as a qualifier, as it begs the question, “How high is high?” Consequently, in response to the water covering “all the earth a local flood theorist would say, “Yep, the water covered the entire / all the earth in that region.” – and add that their view is defensible because of the *limitations* of the phrase “all” + noun elsewhere and their context argument (see below).

 

Word Combinations (“all” + noun) Found in the Flood Story That Do Not Speak of Exhaustive Totality Elsewhere

Here are some examples where the vocabulary of Genesis 6-8 (individual words or combinations or phrases) show up elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible where “all encompassing” interpretation isn’t coherent or even possible. In many such instances, the language is hyperbole or that of naked eye observation.

Combination of כֹּל  (kōl; “all”) and אֶרֶץ (ʾerets; “earth, land”)

Gen 2:11

The name of the first is Pishon; it flows around the whole (כֹּל) land (אֶרֶץ) of Havilah, where there is gold. (Are we really being asked to believe that every place in Havilah was infiltrated by this river? Or that a river surrounded the entire land? If so, the Bible would be in error when it comes to Havilah.

Gen 2:13

And the name of the second river is Gihon; it flows around the whole (כֹּל) land (אֶרֶץ) of Cush (Ditto the above)

1 Sam 14:25

And all (כֹּל) the land (אֶרֶץ) entered the forest, and there was honey on the ground. The word כֹּל presumes “people” here – but are we really to believe that every last person of the land of Israel entered into this single forest?

Isaiah 14:7

The whole (כֹּל) earth (אֶרֶץ) is at rest and is quiet … Really? No human or animal in the entire earth was making a sound?

Genesis 13:9 (Abraham to Lot)

Is not the whole (כֹּל) land (אֶרֶץ) before you? – No, Lot wasn’t looking at the entire globe, nor could he.

Genesis 41:57

And the people of all (כֹּל) the earth (אֶרֶץ) came to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph . . . Did everyone in the Mediterranean come? China? India? North America? Again, the hyperbole is obvious.

Judges 6:37 (Gideon)

Behold, I will put a fleece of wool on the threshing floor. If there is dew on the fleece only, and it is dry on all (כֹּל) the ground (אֶרֶץ), then I will know that Thou wilt deliver Israel through me – “all the ground” refers to a small portion of land in the area where Gideon was.

1 Samuel 13:3

Then Saul blew the trumpet throughout (כֹּל) the land (אֶרֶץ), saying, “Let the Hebrews hear.” – Obviously, Saul didn’t blow a trumpet loud enough for everyone on the globe to hear it (nor could he send trumpeters throughout all the earth).

2 Samuel 18:8

For the battle there was spread over the whole (כֹּל) land (אֶרֶץ) … (This battle didn’t take place in every portion of the entire globe).

1 Kings 10:24

And all (כֹּל) the earth (אֶרֶץ) was seeking the presence of Solomon, to hear his wisdom which God had put in his heart. (Everyone in the Mediterranean come? The Chinese? The people of Easter Island? Native American tribes?  Again, the hyperbole is obvious.

Combination of כֹּל  (kōl; “all”) and  בָּשָׂר (bāśār; “flesh”)

There are several instances where this combination cannot logically refer to every human on the planet (you can look them up — that will promote study!):

Ps 65:2 – What about people on the other side of the world?

Isa 40:5 – Is everyone awake at the same time? When this passage is quoted in the NT, it isn’t used for a universal reference, otherwise we’d have to adopt universalist salvation (which has serious problems).

Isa 66:24 – How will every person in the world see these bodies?

Jer 25:31 – God is judging the nations, not Israel, here, so it isn’t every person on earth.

Ezek 20:48 – The fire is in the Negeb (v. 47), so is every human being gathered to the Negeb to see this fire?

Ezek 21:4 – What about east and west? (The context and geographical reference of north and south refer to Israel, and so not all the people of the entire planet).

Joel 2:28 – Not everyone received the Holy Spirit when this passage was (at least partially) fulfilled in Acts 2. And not every person will be saved, either.

 

The Contextual Argument

What about context?  Context is king for interpretation. Context always dictates word meaning. So what is the right context for reading the flood account? Many (oddly) think Gen 1:1-3 is the context for the flood account. But why? There’s a better one — and one that is pretty explicit.

A regional flood theorist would direct you to Genesis 10 as the context for the flood account asking, What is “the world” to the biblical writer? Answer: Genesis 10. That chapter lists out all the nations descended from Noah’s sons. They cover only the Mediterranean and ancient Near East. There is no knowledge of Australia, China, Japan, North America, South America, etc. Hence they would take the language of Gen 6-8 and simply argue that, to the writer, the account covered all the known land masses, but the real-time event wasn’t global.

They would then take you to “all the earth” in Gen 9:19. Look at it carefully: “These three were the sons of Noah, and from these the people of the whole earth were dispersed.”

Since the sons of Noah produced all the nations of Genesis 10, and those nations do not represent the totality of the globe, Genesis 10 = “the whole earth.” The point is the phrase “all the earth” is getting defined in this verse as the places populated by the descendants of the sons of Noah. Those places are listed in Genesis 10, and that very obviously don’t add up to the entire planet.

The contextual argument helps the local-regional theorist to parse phrases like “the whole heaven.” They’d ask the obvious question: Did Noah see the sky over Australia? North America? Or just as far as the eye could see – covering tens of thousands of square miles? A local-regional theorist would point out that a flood of that magnitude (hundreds of thousands, even millions of square miles — but not the entire globe) is unprecedented and accounts for the language and the real-time experience of Noah.

The lesson here is that those who prefer a global flood reading of Gen 6-8 need to avoid calling those who don’t “unbiblical” in their position, or arguing “from science against the Bible” when taking a local-regional view. The above has nothing to do with science. It’s a text-based approach. So, if we’re going to argue about the biblical account of the flood, let’s do that from the text, not personal attacks.

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Peter Gurry of Evangelical Textual Criticism Blog Reviews “Fragments of Truth” Film

I recommend reading Peter’s even-handed review of “Fragments of Truth,” created by Faithlife Films. I’ve posted the trailer before, but here it is again. The visual quality is very high and, as Peter notes, it’s filled with many scholars whose expertise in New Testament textual criticism is well known in the academy.

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Mike’s Interview on the Exegetical Tools Podcast

Those who follow this blog and the Naked Bible Podcast might find the Exegetical Tools podcast worth your time. I was recently interviewed for that podcast. Enjoy!

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Mike Interviewed on the “Are You Real?” Podcast

The interview with Jon Fuller for his “Are You Real?” podcast was posted on Feb 18. I had forgotten to blog it, but was reminded of it today by an email from someone who really liked this particular interview. And so here it is!

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Free Video Course on New Testament Textual Criticism

The New Testament Textual Criticism blog posted this link to Dan Wallace’s course on the basics of New Testament textual criticism. It was created under the auspices of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM), Dan Wallace’s non-profit. Here’s the iTunes description:

Textual Criticism remains today as one of the most overlooked disciplines in Biblical studies. In this collection, Dr. Daniel B. Wallace of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) teaches people from the lay to the scholarly level about the basic principles and practices of New Testament Textual Criticism (NTTC). Dr. Wallace defines New Testament Textual Criticism and discusses topics like identifying textual variants, categorizing manuscripts, and interpreting the available evidence.

There’s really no better resource for learning about textual criticism — highly recommended.

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Is Easter Named After a Pagan Goddess?

Short answer: Nope.

A bit more of an answer: Nope, and let’s stop the “Easter is pagan” madness.

For the longer answer, keep reading — both what follows and the article I’ve linked to.

I thought I had posted this last year, but I guess I had not. I want to share a scholarly article specifically on the earliest known occurrence that connects the term “Easter” with a goddess figure (Ostara / Eostre). It’s quite interesting:

Richard Sermon, “From Easter to Ostara: The Reinvention of a Pagan Goddess?” Time and Mind The Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness and Culture 1:3 (2008): 331-343

The article was posted on academia.edu, so it should be accessible via the link. Here is the abstract (emphasis mine):

In most European languages the Christian festival of the Resurrection has a name derived from the Hebrew word Pesach for the Jewish Passover, when Jesus was said to have been crucified. However, in English and German the festival goes by a very different name: Easter and Ostern. This was first explained in AD 725 by the Northumbrian monk Bede, who wrote that Easter takes its name from an Anglo-Saxon goddess called Eostre. In 1835, Jacob Grimm proposed that the German equivalent Ostern must have derived from the name of the same goddess, whose Germanic name he reconstructed as “Ostara.” More recently it has been suggested that Bede was only speculating about the origins of the festival name, although attempts by various German linguists to find alternative origins have so far proven unconvincing. Nevertheless, there may be a more direct route by which Ostern could have entered the German language. Much of Germany was converted to Christianity by Anglo-Saxon clerics such as St Boniface (ca. AD 673–754), who could have introduced the Old English name Eastron during the course of their missionary work. This would explain the first appearance of Ostarun in the Abrogans, a late eighth-century Old High German glossary, and does not require any complex linguistic arguments or the existence of a Germanic goddess Ostara.

I have to admit I don’t understand the consternation that occurs every year (mostly in Christian Middle Earth) about Easter. Folks, there’s nothing wrong with remembering the resurrection. You’re celebrating an event and its meaning, not a term. And, as the article notes well, the term would have meant something that wasn’t pagan to those in whose language it arose.

As we discussed at length on the Naked Bible podcast in relation to Christmas, the reason that people in antiquity cared about a date or used a term is often lost to history or usurped and made to serve a different cause than its origin intended. Fixating on a contemporary, unfavorable connotation of the term “Easter” (due to its regular flogging) is like fixating on the Crusades to justify anti-Christian ideas. Even f the term had some pagan association (again, see the article — that’s dubious), why should we care if the content of the celebration is biblical? How about some biblical illustrations …

1) Josh 18:28; Judg 9:10-11; 1 Chron 11:4-5 (“redeeming” a pagan site) – When David conquered the pagan capital of Jebus (the Jebusites were targeted for removal in the conquest) and renamed it Jerusalem did he sin? I don’t think so. Maybe we should start a movement intolerant of anachronisms. What a work for God that would be.

2) The reverse (not re-naming a pagan site) – an excerpt from that book I’m working on about biblical astral-theology:

In Joshua 19:49-50 we read of Joshua’s retirement:

49 When they had finished distributing the several territories of the land as inheritances, the people of Israel gave an inheritance among them to Joshua the son of Nun. 50 By command of the Lord they gave him the city that he asked, Timnath-serah in the hill country of Ephraim. And he rebuilt the city and settled in it.

The point of interest is where Joshua retires—a city he requested—Timnath-seraḥ. After Joshua’s death he is buried in this city. The record of this burial in Josh 24:30 spells the city the same was as Josh 19:50. These are the only two verses in the Hebrew Bible that record this place name with this spelling. But in Judges 2:8-9 note the alternative spelling of the name:

8 And Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of 110 years. 9 And they buried him within the boundaries of his inheritance in Timnath-ḥeres, in the hill country of Ephraim, north of the mountain of Gaash.

Here the city name is spelled Timnath-ḥeres. The consonants of the last element of the place name are the reverse of what we see in Joshua 19:50 (Timnath-seraḥ). Why should we care? Because the word ḥeres is another word for “sun” (as opposed to the more common shemesh). In Job 9:7 it is God who “commands the sun (ḥeres), while in Judg 14:18 Samson’s riddle lasted until the seventh day when the sun (ḥeres) went down. The name of the city Timnath-ḥeres literally means “portion of the sun.” Why would Joshua ask for a city that was apparently dedicated to the sun as his retirement inheritance?

3) The Angel of Yahweh didn’t give Samson’s parents a name for the promised child, nor did God change Samson’s name after his parents bestowed it:

From the same book as above:

The issue of sun worship crops up a bit later in the story of Samson (Hebrew: shimshon; šimšôn) The discerning reader might have seen that the consonants of Samson’s name (shimshon) are the same as the word for sun (shemesh). The added –on is what is known as a diminutive construction in Hebrew, a suffix that makes its noun “little” in terms of meaning. The name “Samson” literally means “little sun.” Block notes in this regard:

Although names were chosen for a variety of reasons in biblical times, it is not clear what we are to make of the name Samson. It consists of the Hebrew word for sun, šemeš, with the diminutive ending, -ôn, hence Šimšôn, “little sun” [“sunny-boy!”]. A variety of explanations for the name have been proposed. It is tempting to give the name a positive spin as a celebration of the ray of light the birth of this boy represented in the dark days of the judges. Some have suggested it was given in anticipation of his “sunlike” strength. A more common view links the name with the solar cult, which provides the background for the Samson narratives. Strong support for this interpretation is found in the fact that Samson’s name incorporates the same element as Beth-Shemesh (lit. “house of Shemesh”), the name of an important town just a few miles from Zorah and Eshtaol down the Sorek Valley, once the focal point of sun worship. The interpretation of the Samson narratives as a whole as an adaptation of a solar myth seems forced, but it still seems best to find in the name a memory of the sun god, Shemesh. Theophoric names involving Shemesh / Shamash were common in the ancient Near East and are exemplified in the Old Testament by Shimshai in Ezra 4:8.

I would agree with Block’s caution about not reading too much into the story itself, but the sun elements are certainly not trivial. For sure Samson cannot be regarded as a shining example of orthodox Yahweh worship, and we know next to nothing about his parents, who gave the name to their son. At the very least it seems clear that by this time in Israel’s history some sort of cultic dedication to the sun had taken hold.

Daniel Isaac Block, Judges, Ruth (vol. 6; The New American Commentary; Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1999), 416–418. Block notes in a footnote found within this section: “According to Josh 19:41; 21:16, Ir/Beth Shemesh was allotted to the tribe of Dan. But Judg 1:34–36 reports the Danites were unable to conquer this territory. As noted at 1:35, the name הַר חֶרֶס, “Sun Mountain,” which occurs only there in the OT, may be associated with Beth-Shemesh (cf. 1 Sam 6:9–15; 1 Kgs 4:9). Beth-Shemesh is identified with modern Tell er-Rumeilah, sixteen miles west of Jerusalem.

I could go on but the post doesn’t need to be long. Why wasn’t a place name like Beth-Shemesh ever condemned? Renamed? And these sorts of passages are the tip of the iceberg. The only rationale conclusion is that neither God nor the biblical writers cared about the terms. They cared about believing loyalty.

So, can we stop getting hung up on proper nouns like “Easter” and focus on the message? I suspect that in today’s Christian Middle Earth, this bickering is ultimately going to land in the Hebrew Roots neighborhood. But why don’t the Hebrew Roots folks adopt biblical names like Timnath-ḥeres and Beth-Shemesh (and plenty of others) for their fellowships? It’s likely because those are Hebrew “forbidden terms” and they don’t want people to know that.

Again, doctrinal meaning trumps proper nouns. If all you do this weekend when you’re talking to either Christians or non-Christians is bring up your distaste for the name to let people know you’re deep because you’re into Hebrew stuff, or feel the need to telegraph to anyone listening that you avoid the term “Easter” because of its “pagan associations,” you’ve entirely missed the reason for the day.

He is risen no matter what you call the day (or not). That should be the subject of conversation. The Great Commission isn’t about purifying vocabulary. Its about sharing the message of the cross and the resurrection.

 

 

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Charges of Racism Related to the Atacama (Non) Alien

The Atlantic just published this interesting short article on the Atacama “alien” — a subject I have blogged about several times:  “The Controversial Study of a Girl Who Ufologists Called ‘Alien’.” As to the racism element, you can read the article — the short version is that the remains were foreign (as opposed to White European) and (likely) acquired and sold unethically — which White Europeans have a long, sordid history of doing. My interest in this article is a bit different. It offers some clear teaching points for “researchers” in (Christian or otherwise) Middle Earth (i.e., the wacky world of internet paleobabble). Here are some excerpts:

[The] DNA analysis was published last week—in Genome Research, a legitimate journal, and authored by a team of legitimate biologists led by Garry Nolan of Stanford University. That Nolan came to work with the makers of an alien-conspiracy documentary is unorthodox, to say the least. . . . Nolan . . . first heard about the girl when he caught wind of the making of Sirius. He studies immunology, and he had no particular experience with old DNA but he told the New York Times he contacted the filmmakers on a “lark.” . . .

In the documentary, Nolan says about his preliminary findings, “I can say with absolute certainty that it is not a monkey. It is human, or as close to human, closer to human than chimpanzees would be. But when you count up the number of mutations that we are observing, what we’re seeing is more than what we would expect to be caused by simple cell division.”

The rest of the discussion is meandering and technical enough that a nonexpert would come away with doubt. In the film, Nolan also says she has a Y chromosome—a mistake, he acknowledged to me, due to his inexperience with this kind of DNA analysis. (The extra mutations may also be the result of DNA degradation over the decades.)

Teaching Points:

(1) Nolan is a legitimate scientist. The Stanford website notes of him: “Dr. Nolan is the Rachford and Carlota A. Harris Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Stanford University School of Medicine. He trained with Leonard Herzenberg (for his Ph.D.) and Nobelist Dr. David Baltimore (for postdoctoral work for the first cloning/characterization of NF-κB p65/ RelA and the development of rapid retroviral production systems).” But guess what? Having a PhD (apparently in immunology) doesn’t make you an expert in genetics. By his own admission, he made a mistake in the analysis for the documentary featuring the specimen … which is why for the full genetic tests a team of true experts (specialists) was assembled. (Folks, your primary care physician has an M.D., but those doctors refer you to specialists because they aren’t specialists. Genetics has specialists like any other field. Even Nolan, who’s teaching at Stanford (the Harvard of the west coast) was out of his wheelhouse on this — and he knew it and did the right thing about it. You call in the real experts. This is why the team assembled by L.A. Marzulli is nowhere near adequate. (Captain Obvious note: Geography instructors, anthropologists, chiropractors, and biblical archaeologists are not genetics experts, or even forensic experts).

(2) Mutations in the specimen didn’t mean the specimen wasn’t human. Mutations are, well, mutations. The word “mutation” isn’t a synonym for “non-human.”

(3) Mutations can have a variety of causes. Their presence doesn’t mean the specimen was born with the mutation. Mutations “may also be the result of DNA degradation.”

Middle Earth researchers will of course dutifully ignore such things because they regularly employ the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy in much of what they do. It’s really a shame.

The thrust of the article is also a shame. It will be interesting to see what direction this takes. It may well cut off any sort of testing for future specimens that surface because, even if the provenance of the specimen is known, the questions will arise should you have taken it / purchased it? That will in turn force the question Should we conduct testing on it? It’s easy to see that the West is reaping what it’s sown here — centuries of tomb-looting and shipping materials hither and yon, knowing that if the specimens had come from “civilized” cultures their remains would have been treated differently, has now created this impasse and, perhaps, legal ramifications all along the way.

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Are the Hebrew Letters to be Interpreted from their Original Picture Signs?

I recommend the video below created by Dr. Michael Brown. It’s more than a debunking of the deeply flawed, nonsensical idea that the meaning of Hebrew letters is to be found in their original pictographic (picture) representations. Like myself, Dr. Brown is a trained Hebrew scholar and Semitist. He knows what he’s talking about here.

This tragically misguided idea is, naturally, alive and well in Christian Middle Earth. It needs to be exposed for the nonsense that it is. But you might say, “What’s the harm?” I suppose there’s no harm … if you’re okay with people being misled (or even lied to), and if you’re okay with people presuming, on the basis of this idea, that the real meaning of any given Hebrew word in the Bible is to be found in the picture of each letter of that word.

Does English work that way? Since the English alphabet derived from the Semitic alphabet, do we look at an English word and ask ourselves what the original letter shapes looked like — and then “read” the English word by those shapes? That produces gibberish, and you can make any word (or in this case, any Bible verse) say whatever you can imagine it to say.

Sorry, that isn’t good.

I can only say it one way to capture what this really is:  it’s divination.  This is taking the sacred text and divining a hidden meaning from it. It’s a new kind of Bible code that is just as erroneous.

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