Archive for category Reading
Luke Slighting the Rulers of His Day
Posted by Erik in Ancient History, History, Reading on January 20, 2012
Luke slights rulers he does not care for. He does it a lot actually. As I have been reading and researching through Luke, I have noticed this tendency.
It is especially evident in chapter 3 of Luke’s gospel when he is describing the rulers of John the Baptist and Jesus’ day.
1. Luke always refer to the Herodian kings as Herod (except Philip, the tetrarch of Ituraea and Trachonitis). This causes all kinds of confusion in history since Luke was our primary source for anything about the Herodians and the reason we even call them Herodians in the first place. Although the Herod who ruled Galilee in Jesus’ time was called Antipater by everyone, including his subjects, Luke calls him Herod. It is almost like some of the aristocrats of Victorian British society who always referred to their butler as Joseph, no matter what his real name was. It saved them the trouble of having to learn the name of the new guy.
So, if you’re Herod the Great or Herod Antipas or Herod Archelaus, it doesn’t matter to Luke. To Luke, they’re all interchangeable as the male lead in a long-running soap opera is today.
2. He refers to whoever the ruler of Abilene was at the time of John the Baptist’s ministry as Lysanias. The actual Lysanias died before Jesus was born, and the last known ruler of the area was his son Zenodorus. After Zenodorus’ death in 20 BCE, the region was placed under the rule of the Herodians. Luke seems to be mocking the ruler by calling him by his greater ancestor’s name.
Of course, this might have actually been the guy’s name, but to even list him seems a slight since he couldn’t have actually ruled anything. Luke heaps indignity on the Herodians and Lysanian rulers alike. After all, their insignificant principalities had no place being mentioned in the same breath as Tiberius Caesar.
3. Then there are the Jewish high priests. Luke adamantly refuses to write the name Joseph b. Caiaphas (Yosef b. Kayaffa in Hebrew) correctly. Instead he refers to him by his father’s name Caiaphas and always – always groups him with his father-in-law Annas.
According to Josephus, Caiaphas is something of a puppet in Annas’ hands. He does his father-in-law’s bidding. While he appears in Matthew and John’s gospels as one of many involved in Jesus’ trial. Luke does not even give him that much of a mention. Caiaphas is just a way marker for dating Jesus’ story.
The insult couldn’t be greater. Luke basically says, “There was this yokel ruler who thought he was something but couldn’t even live up to his dad’s reputation. He was just his father-in-law’s yes man.”
4. And in chapter 2, Luke writes of Quirinius being governor of Syria when Jesus was born, but Publius Sulpicius Quirinius was not the titular governor (legatus) of the province at the time. Although Quirinius would assume the post in 6 CE, at the time of Jesus’ birth the governor was Publius Quinctilius Varus – a bumbling politician who would later get himself and three Roman legions killed at the Battle of Teutoburg Forest.
This is actually a slight on Varus, not Quirinius; but the principle still applies. Luke ignores Varus entirely, which is exactly what Caesar wished he could have done. At the time, Quirinius was governor of Dalmatia but Caesar sent him to Syria to find out why it was taking nine years for Varus to complete a census only done once every ten years. So, Luke insults Varus. Not that it mattered to Varus. He had died decades before, but you get the idea.
(I know. I know. I like Latin names. I can’t help it.)
Luke intentionally slights these men. He holds them in contempt. Of course, one could certainly understand it. They aren’t exactly a bumper crop of geniuses and dignitaries. These people are epic failures of leaders.
Not surprisingly however Luke is very careful to give Tiberius Caesar his proper title, and the same applies with Pontius Pilate. These were men held in high regard, for the most part, by the Romans. Tiberius was a successful, acclaimed commander and leader, even if he was something of a mediocre emperor; and Pilate was something of a brute (he massacred people on at least two occasions) but he was respected.
I can’t even tell you how awesome it is when you find something like this hidden among all the overly-religious interpretations you have endured all your life. It is endlessly humorous when you strip away all the pomp and circumstance we heap on the Scriptures and see the humanity beneath.
That is all.
Real Marriage: Part 1, Chapter 1 – New Marriage, Same Spouse
Posted by Erik in Book Reviews, Marriage and Family, Reading on January 19, 2012
Mark Driscoll can be an arrogant chauvinist. He has admitted that freely, so I don’t think I am revealing anything he has not addressed himself.
When I finally went ahead and downloaded the controversial book Real Marriage, which he wrote with his wife Grace, it was not with the best of intentions. In fact, it was because he had given an interview with Justin Brierley in which Driscoll behaved himself like the animal Jesus rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.
It takes a lot for me to pick up a book by Driscoll these days. I would like to say his behavior in the Brierley interview was unusual, but it isn’t. He can be a real jerk sometimes, and I was afraid that this book on marriage would be more of the same.
That being said, the book is #1 on the New York Times Bestseller list, and everyone in the blogosphere is buzzing about it – both good and bad. So, I laid down my $8 and bought the Kindle version of the book. (Bless you, Amazon, for saving me $14!)
Reading the first chapter, I encountered something I did not expect. First of all, Driscoll openly confesses to his chauvinism and anger issues. He calls his behavior sin, which further surprised me since in other books I have read from him, he justified his behavior.
What really caught me was that he was treading over years he covered in Confessions of a Reformissional Rev and exposing the pain that was going on in his heart during those years. A lot of his bombast and arrogance was tied to a deep, secret problem in his relationship with his wife Grace.
It is never easy to be in the public eye and have deep, emotional, sexual sin causing your spirit to twitch. Driscoll was very much in the public eye – by choice – while his private world was a disaster, despite appearances. And even his explanations that he provided in Confessions were false because he was hiding the real problems – perhaps even from himself.
I expected bombast and arrogance. What I encountered was the honest dialogue from Mark and Grace about their failings and sexual frustrations. It surprised me. It caught me off guard, and I had to put down a lot of the preconceived fears I had about the book.
I’ll let you know tomorrow if I feel the same way after reading chapter 2.
Genre: Narrative
Hebrew narrative is generally poetic in nature, but it is not true poetry. It sets up poetry, but it has a different feel and rhythm.
Often narrative sets the scenes between poetic portions. So, for example, we have a narrative passage that introduces and connects the various poetic portions of the Exodus story. (YHWH’s words to Moses on Mt. Sinai are poetic, while his journey there is not.)
Narrative informs us, but it does not offer us normative teaching. When you read a narrative, and the Scriptures say so-and-so did such-and-such, that does not mean you should do the same. This sounds like common sense, but I cannot begin to tell you how many times people cite narrative as telling them how to live. (Joshua 1 is a favorite.)
Narrative tells us what happened, not how to live our lives. As the Word of God, the Scriptures present an accurate representation of events. That does not mean those events are to be emulated. Otherwise, it would be okay to commit adultery (as David did) as long as you confessed later. It would be okay to disobey God’s commands (as Elijah did) as long as you listen to him later. It would be okay to sacrifice a child, if that was the only way you could honor your promises to God.
A great example of narrative is the book of Judges. I won’t get into my thoughts on the ways Joshua and Judges overlap, but suffice to say, Judges tells us about a LOT of people doing a lot of WRONG THINGS in the name of YHWH.
So, here’s the rule with narrative: don’t form doctrine or application from it.
Genre: Poetry
The Old Testament was composed almost entirely in Hebrew. First and foremost, Hebrew is the language of Scripture. In other words, Hebrew is a language quite literally formed around its use in the composition of sacred writings.
This means that Hebrew has a unique structure and style. It is highly poetic, almost intentionally designed for uses that our own language struggles with. In English, poetry requires us to almost force the language into rhyme and rhythm. (Anyone who has had to try to compose a haiku in English knows that English is terrible for rhythmic poetry.)
In biblical Hebrew, words have specific syllabic structures and make different forms through somewhat complicated but almost ubiquitous rules. This means that rhythm and rhyme come quite naturally to the language.
As a result, the vast majority of the Old Testament is poetic in nature. It has to be because it is in Hebrew. This poetry is often lost in translation because English simply does not have the apparatus to express ideas the way Hebrew does. (In case you’re wondering, no English version does Hebrew poetry like the King James translation did. English was malleable enough at the time that the translators could bend it to conform to Hebrew. The same is not true of English today, which is why the King James translations often feel alien to us.)
Hebrew poetry employs a huge number of techniques, often rhyming ideas and cycling through images in ways we never would see in translation.
For example, consider the first chapter of Genesis. It is an intricate, carefully phrased poem. The author spins the entire poem around the number two. The entire thing is symmetrical. Watch:
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. (Genesis 1:1, 2 KJV)
In Hebrew, the word heaven is dual. English and most European languages lack this form, but it is used for things that are inherently two parts: like arms, eyes, legs, but also the “heavens”.
Think about all the ways that the “heavens” are dual in nature. There is a night sky and a day sky. There is a clear sky and a storm sky. There is the air we move through and the air “up there” where the birds fly. The depth of the simply grammatical form is tremendous.
Now, watch the dualities that emerge. The earth is “without form” and it is “void” – duality. There is “darkness” upon the face of the deep and the Spirit of God broods upon the face of the waters (also a dual form, by the way).
The author sets up a symmetry of duals and then he presents his narrative of the earth’s origin. At first glance, it looks like a linear narrative. God creates this on day one, then this on day two, etc. But look deeper.
DAY 1: Light and Dark Day 4: Sun, moon and stars
DAY 2: Separates the waters from the sky Day 5: Forms fish and birds
DAY 3: Forms dry land Day 6: Forms land creatures
See the dualities? In the first set of days he creates habitats. On the second set, he fills them with life. And even in that, there is a duality. You can spend hours, even days and weeks just marveling over how intricately constructed the poem is. (Trust me, I have.)
So much of the Hebrew Scriptures are written with this kind of artistic flair. It is dangerous to just read the Old Testament like it is a textbook. Poetry is not just limited to the Psalms and a few passages in Genesis either. Fully 2/3 of the Hebrew Scriptures are poetic. Whole books of the prophets like Isaiah and Ezekiel are poems. Poetry was the height of Hebrew composition. If it wasn’t poetic, it wasn’t worth reading. Even the levitical law has a poetic sensibility.
This is why I recoil every time someone refers to the Bible as a “User’s Manual” or “Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth.” It is nothing of the kind. Much of the Bible cannot be read like a manual or instructions. It would be like trying to form philosophy based on reading Shelley as if he were a commentary on politics or Dante as a geology text. It simply cannot be done.
One of the hallmarks of poetry is that the individual parts fall apart if you miss the main idea. If you read poetry line-by-line and try to analyze the lines in isolation, you entirely miss the point. Poetry is not about precision. It is about emotion and connection. It is relational language at its best.
How does one read Biblical poetry? How do you recognize it as what it is?
First, read the Scriptures in large pieces rather than in snippets.
Second, don’t analyze. Receive. Let the words resonate, bounce around in your head for awhile. Don’t be afraid to not understand what you read in the specifics.
Third, read in community. In the culture that gave us the Scriptures, reading was something you did together. You discussed the ideas; you let them stand up to communal scrutiny and appreciation.
One word of warning, however. Just because it is poetry, do not think that the Scriptures were not intended to be read literally. Poetry is often far more truthful than prose. There is often more fact of the human condition in the lines of a poem than there are in the sections of a textbook.
Think Different (Reading Steve Jobs’ Biography)
Here’s to the crazy ones.
The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.
You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify them or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.
Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do. (“Think Different” campaign, 1997)
The first thing that Steve Jobs did when he came back to Apple in 1996 was to commission a new marketing campaign unlike any used in the tech sector at the time. He latched onto what would later become known as “tribal marketing” and decided to make Apple unique among its competitors. Apple would regain a minimalist aesthetic. They would become identified with an idea rather than a product.
In fact, you might say that Apple produces ideas and the products are simply the means by which those ideas are transmitted.
The “Think Different” campaign was wildly minimalist – just black and white photos or video of people who changed the world, with Richard Dreyfuss reading the poem above.
Here is an alternate version with Steve Jobs reading the poem himself.
In reading the story of Jobs’ return to Apple in 1996, I could not help but be struck by a sense that he was very self-aware at that time. He was coming to rescue the company he had founded from the people who did not understand it. He threw himself into it, working often 7am to 9pm every day, with his long-suffering wife at home with their two children. He was in the midst of two revolutions as CEO of Pixar and iCEO of Apple.
What moved him to do this? At first I believed Steve had a narcissist streak in him – a streak a mile wide and running to the core of his being. But reading the way he tackled the revolution, I think there was something else there.
For my money, I believe that Steve Jobs could see what no one else could. It was not so much that he knew what needed to be done, but rather he knew what needed to not be done. He knew how to abandon good ideas so he could focus on great ones. And most importantly, he knew how to challenge others to do the same. Before his ouster in 1985, it was all about Steve Jobs. When he returned, Steve Jobs became about Apple.
He was passionate about the company he had started, but he was more passionate about what that company could become. He believed it was destiny, and he hammered at it with a single-minded focus that made him appear to be a jerk and a narcissist. He believed so strongly in the future he saw that he attacked the present with everything he had.
If Steve Jobs could do that because he was producing ideas – what should pastors be doing when their product is the glory of God?
Chosen (Reading the Steve Jobs biography)
Posted by Erik in Ecclesiology (Church), General, Personal, Reading on November 7, 2011
Abandoned. Chosen. Special. Those concepts became a part of who Jobs was and how he regarded himself. (Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson)
I know that sometimes it must seem like I obsess about Steve Jobs and Apple products, but there is something fascinating about their story. While Nichole was in surgery, I bought the Kindle edition of Walter Isaacson’s biography of Jobs. Only a few pages in, I hit this quote and I could not get away from it.
Why?
Because there is so much tied to the idea of being chosen – so much biblical imagery revolves around this idea. And here I recognized a theme that we often disregard. We forget that God chooses, and that he wants us to feel chosen.
What are the ties I observed?
Steve Jobs was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs in 1955. His biological parents, Joanne Schieble and Abdulfattah Jandali, were not married. Joanne’s Catholic family would have completely rejected her for marrying Jandali so she gave little Steve up. His adoptive parents never hid the reality of his adoption from him but at age six, a friend asked him, “So your parents didn’t want you?” He was heartbroken, but Paul and Clara reinforced to him that they had chosen him. They wanted him.
This was the reality of his adoption. He was wanted. He was chosen. He was special to his parents. Nothing before mattered. All that mattered was that his parents wanted him enough that they did not parent him out of a biological accident. They intentionally called him son.
Here’s what I extracted. Sometimes, we think God chose us because he had to, because no one else would take us. So sure, we might be God’s people but only out of obligation. If God had a choice, he would have chosen someone else.
Not only that, but we fall into the belief that we Gentile believers are God’s second choice. He chose Israel, but they turned on him, so he had to try again with us. Not only are we not wanted, but we’re the second choice.
Is it any surprise that Christians live in guilt and fear? We do not embrace the choice that God made. We misinterpret God’s justice as some kind of disdain.
We are God’s sons, joint heirs with Christ. (Romans 8:12-17) We are not taken reluctantly into His household, but joyously. (Luke 15)
This is because we are not chosen and then loved. We are chosen because we are loved.
What Is “Oral Tradition”?
It is very common for people to throw around phrases like, “The Gospels were oral tradition” as an excuse to criticize the content of the books or to argue against their inspiration. I have heard and read this statement so much that one day, I decided to figure out exactly what oral tradition means. Not surprisingly, most of the people who use the term have no idea what it means.
Oral tradition has a very specific meaning. In sociology, it is material that is held in common by a group of people over several generations. In a narrower sense, oral tradition is defined by a system of thought called Oral-Formulaic Transmission. Here is how it works.
In cultures where there is little or no writing, a specific group of people are commissioned by the culture to transmit that culture’s history through song or poetry. To do this, they go through rather intensive training to learn how to weave the poem for public presentation. These poems are marked by certain motifs used to tie the whole thing together. For example, Homer’s Illiad often features phrases like “wine dark sea.” They construct the narrative around certain metered portions and the motifs.
(A modern writer who mastered these motifs was Rudyard Kipling in his Just So Stories. Kipling constantly repeated motifs and forms, just as the oral traditions he encountered in India. He gives us an amazing example of what oral tradition looks like.)
This person is apprenticed to a master storyteller for decades, learning his craft. Only when the old storyteller passes or is incapable of speech does the new one come on the scene. These people tell the story over and over again. They memorize literally thousands of lines of poetry. It is a very, very intensive way of transmitting truth. The reality is that the cultures that practice this are able to transmit stories and ideas over a dozen generations with almost no variation outside of perhaps a few grammatical changes and updating descriptors.
And here’s the thing. While parts of the Hebrew Scriptures definitely fit the bill of oral tradition, the Gospels really don’t. There are bits and pieces of oral tradition within them, but the Gospels are composed works. They were written down very, very early in their existence and do not bear the hallmarks of oral tradition. They did not have time to become oral tradition. They were on paper, in circulation in the most literary empire outside of China within a generation of their composition. They are not oral tradition.
So when someone dismisses the Gospels as oral tradition, just ask them what exactly they mean. Then ask them how familiar they are with Oral-Formulaic Transmission. That will usually get them to change the subject pretty quickly.
Review – When the Word Leads Your Pastoral Search
Posted by Erik in Book Reviews, Ecclesiology (Church), Reading on June 1, 2011
I don’t know the statistics, but there are a lot of churches looking for pastors. Since the average tenure of a pastor is around two to three years, then the average church will go through a search three or four times every decade. Since there are tens of thousands of churches in North America, of which a healthy proportion have some kind of congregational voice in the calling of a pastor, there is a lot of searching going on.
I am the son of a pastor who served fourteen years at his first congregation and is in his nineteenth year at his second. As a pastor myself, I have served in the same congregation for six years. I say that to point out that my personal experience with pastoral search committees is very limited. That being said, I have heard some horror stories from congregations and pastors.
When Moody Publishers put Chris Brauns book When the Word Leads Your Pastoral Search on their review list, I knew I had to read it. To me, the idea of the Word (the Bible) dictating how you choose a pastor seems to be quite obvious, but I know that many churches choose a pastor for all the wrong reasons. They base their decision on a man’s age or education or they listen to a sermon or two and find him acceptable.
Brauns’ book is exactly what it purports to be – a manual for biblically, carefully discerning who God has called and gifted to be the pastor of a congregation. It is written primarily for churches who have a CEO-type pastor – a single elder who is supported by the congregation. In this type of polity, it is absolutely vital that a congregation make the biblical choose of pastor since they grant him a great deal of responsibility and authority in the congregation.
(As I have written before, we do not have this style of leadership among our congregation. I serve as a vocational elder and share the leadership of the congregation with several other Godly men.)
If your congregation is seeking a new pastor, Brauns’ book is a resource worth picking up. He walks you through the biblical precedence for a pastor. He then shows a biblical process for selecting which pastor is the man God has called and equipped for your congregation. Of particular usefulness is his list of “Frequently Asked Questions” at the back of the book. A search committee would benefit greatly from the book.
Personally, I think the book is also a great resource for congregations with elder leadership, especially when calling additional vocational pastors. Churches of all types drop the ball when calling assistant pastors because they take unqualified men and give them inflated titles with very little responsibility as elders.
All around, this book is worth putting on your book shelf.
A copy of this book was provided to me at no cost by Moody Publishers.
Hithchhiker’s Guide to the Interweb
Posted by Erik in Cross Posts, Reading on May 12, 2011
Back in 2005, my first foray into blogging was “Blogger’s Guide to the Galaxy” in which I explored the real life applications of Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and its five sequels. (It was a trilogy in six parts, according to Adams.)
Here is one of those posts, provided primarily for those geeks among us who appreciate the warped mind of Douglas Adams.
“Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.”
Adams’ universe was one of intense pessimism. Anything that could go wrong probably would. The difference between his characters’ reactions highlight the problem with humans. Although all but two of the characters are not, in fact, human, his point was clear.
Arthur Dent epitomizes the human reaction. At every turn, he is constantly seeking to understand what is going on. It isn’t until So Long and Thanks for All the Fish that he finally realizes his place in the galaxy. Thankfully, he simply accepts he can fly and lives blissfully happy to have a girl and his towel.
Ford Prefect on the other hand has been living on the short end of the galaxy’s stick for many years, and short of his surprise in meeting his semi-cousin Zaphod so improbably close to the Vogon ship that dumped them, he accepts pretty much everything as it comes.
Zaphod Beeblebrox is the zenith of the universe simply because he cares enough to not care and therefore is the most powerful being anywhere. Particularly, Zaphod’s off-hand conversation with the space cops at the end of H2G2 points out that he simply accepts everything that comes down the pike, no matter how improbable or ridiculous. Has has, in every way, embraced the chaotic nature of the universe and chooses not to try to understand it.
Marvin the Robot on the other hand understands the universe, and that is why he is depressed. Although many bill him as the “paranoid robot”, I don’t see it. He is just depressed because he sees the randomness of the universe as aimed at him, whereas Zaphod knows it isn’t aimed at anyone in particular.
Trillian is just there for…well, I still don’t see what purpose Trillian serves…
The point is that in Adams’ universe, the universe is inherently a good or bad place. It just is. We can choose to live our lives trying to alter it and trying to get back a sense of rhyme and reason, or we can accept that things happen and move on.
Hey, Rob Bell Wrote a Controversial Book!
Posted by Erik in Book Reviews, Cross Posts, Doesn't Fit in a Category, General, Other Bloggers, Reading, Theology, Things We Shouldn't Discuss on March 19, 2011
You may not have noticed, but here are some people who have.
http://www.redletterchristians.org/love-wins-rob-bell-and-the-new-calvinists/
http://www.patheos.com/community/jesuscreed/2011/03/19/rob-bell-reviews/
http://www.relevantmagazine.com/god/church/features/25030-is-rob-bell-a-universalist
http://www.albertmohler.com/2011/03/16/we-have-seen-all-this-before-rob-bell-and-the-reemergence-of-liberal-theology/
http://www.jesusneedsnewpr.net/my-thoughts-about-rob-bells-interview-lovewins/
http://www.russellmoore.com/2011/03/15/the-blood-drained-gospel-of-rob-bell/
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2011/april/lovewins.html
http://www.bpnews.net/BPnews.asp?ID=34868
These are just the links from the last day or two. The book was released on Tuesday and has been flying off the shelves. Christianbook.com announced on their website that due to the controversial nature of the book, all profits from sales would go to Compassion International.
And if you missed it, there was this hard-hitting (and a bit bizarre) interview by MSNBC host Martin Bashir.
The Christian blogosphere is all a twitter about this. And a friend from church who is currently serving overseas with the military sent me a Facebook message about it.
So, I broke down and bought the book. I’m reading it and I will let everyone know what I think in a series of upcoming posts.
For those who don’t know who Rob Bell is, he is a pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has written a number of controversial books but this one has really caused a stir.
Harper Collins, who publishes the book, must be loving it. Currently, Bell’s book is #2 on the Amazon.com bestseller list. It will quickly eclipse his other books in sales, guaranteeing that Rob Bell will keep stirring up controversy and they will keep profiting from it.
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