From Peter Enns, on his blog:

But if intention to remain “true” to a “tradition” (which already assumes its non-growth) drives an academic assessment of real evidence (most of which was wholly unavailable when the tradition’s trajectories were set), one runs the risk of adjusting evidence to what one already “knows” to be true. We do not tolerate such sloppy thinking in any other area of human discourse, but when it comes to theological discourse in some circles, it seems to be the preferred method of interaction. When one’s position is by definition unfalsifiable, any meaningful exchange of ideas functionally ceases. Any tradition that aims to promote truth rather than obscure it must be eager to be open to critical evaluation.

… of attempts to provide “scientific explanations” for ten historical plagues, see Michael Lukas’s Slate article today, “A Skeptic’s Guide to Passover.” But Lukas mistitled his piece. A true skeptic would simply treat the plagues as fictional elements in an ethnogenetic myth. Indeed, many sober believers would do the same. Many other believers—increasing in number as one moves toward the “right” along the “liberal-conservative” spectrum, would affirm the plagues as real-world, historical miracles. This business about affirming the plagues as historical events and then trying to elucidate scientific principles by which they might have happened belongs neither to skepticism nor to conservatism, but is the bast illegitimate offspring of a strange tryst between apologetics and scientism.

(Hey, Duane, does that qualify as a “rant”? I’m still working on it.)

This post’s title reproduces the title of an article by Tod Linafelt, associate professor at Georgetown and co-author (with Tim Beale) of the Berit Olam commentary on Ruth and Esther, in today’s Chronicle of Higher Education. Sadly, the article sits behind the Chronicle‘s subscription wall, so you’ll either need a subscription, a day pass, or a printed copy to read it. I’ll “tease” you with the first paragraph:

It is hard to deny that in many respects the Bible is the most unliterary work of literature that we have. Saint Augustine, already in the late fourth century AD, confessed that biblical style exhibits “the lowest of language” and had seemed to him, before his conversion, “unworthy of comparison with the dignity of Cicero.” It is easy to see what he means. Biblical narrative especially (things are different with biblical poetry) tends to work with a very limited vocabulary and consistently avoids metaphors and other sorts of figurative language, evincing a drastically stripped-down manner of storytelling that can seem the very antithesis of style.

In the remainder of the article, Linafelt interacts chiefly with James Wood’s recent book How Fiction Works. In that book, Wood apparently (I have not read it) argues that biblical characters—chiefly illustrated by David—have no “inner life.” Linafelt disagrees, and eloquently. If you have any interest in the literary qualities of biblical narrative, I urge you to find and read this short article, which concludes:

And what can be made of Wood’s homiletically tinged statement that David has “no past, to speak of, and no memory, for it is God’s memory that counts, which never forgets”? It is hard to imagine such a statement arising naturally from a close reading of the grittily realistic story of David. For example, the failing and bitter king shows an unrelenting memory when, on his deathbed in the first chapter of II Kings, he bids his son Solomon to murder the minor character Shimei, who made the mistake of publicly calling David a usurper and “a man of blood” some 15 chapters and many years earlier in the story. David himself had pledged not to kill Shimei, no doubt for political reasons, but he has not forgotten the slight, and he trusts that his equally ruthless son will settle this old score. Alas for Shimei, Wood is quite wrong in his claim that David has “no memory,” as Solomon arranges the murder after David’s death.

One does not need to deny the theological and ethical content of the Bible in order to recognize its distinctive and intentional literary style. It is true that the Bible is religious literature, but it is no less true that it is religious literature. As such, it may be read not only as a foil to Flaubert (and other novelists) but also as a precursor. Not all of the Bible’s narratives (or its poetry, which works with a very different set of conventions and techniques) are equally compelling or equally artful; but the best of them both demand and reward the sort of close literary attention that Wood gives to modern novelistic fiction.

I suppose I found the glosses on Genesis 6:1–6 by Scott Bailey, Jim West, and Claude Mariottini mildly entertaining. I suppose. And I realize that perhaps one shouldn’t take these sorts of parodies too seriously—just as one shouldn’t try to learn about Babylonian religion from Deutero-Isaiah. But I just can’t help myself.

Amused or not, I found the exchange confusing (or confused) with regard to the connections all three versions drew between historico-philosophical periods and the maximalist/minimalist categories bandied about in biblical studies. On the one hand, Scott and Jim associate maximalists with the Enlightenment, while on the other, Claude associates minimalists with postmodernity. This seems to me precisely backwards.

I have not yet quite figured out what Scott and Jim mean by “the sons of historicism,” particularly the word “historicism.” The many different possible meanings one may attach to that term make the word almost useless. Until someone corrects me, I will have to regard the term “historicist” here as roughly synonymous with “maximalist,” and I will have to attribute to it the sense, “one who attributes to biblical narratives a high degree of historical reliability.” But this fundamentalist/historicist/maximalist cluster hardly seems to me to describe an “Enlightenment-influenced” way of thinking. Undoubtedly, all contemporary biblical scholars have felt the Enlightenment’s influence, mostly in ways that I would consider good. However, part of the Enlightenment ethos involved casting off religious authority and elevating an individual’s own reason(ing) over against received tradition. I don’t see how this especially applies to the so-called maximalists. Christian fundamentalism, indeed, grew precisely from a rejection of the fruits of the Enlightenment and its heir, modernity. Maximalism vests biblical narratives with epistemic authority as an outgrowth of the Bible’s traditional religious authority, and suspects that if the free exercise of reason contradicts the biblical sources, then that reason has somehow gone astray. I see more of the Renaissance (ad fontes) than of the Enlightenment (sapere aude) here.

Claude’s linkage of minimalism with postmodernism likewise befuddles me. Admittedly, Jean-François Lyotard famously defined postmodernism as “incredulity toward metanarratives” (my apologies for omitting the precise citation, but my copies of Lyotard’s works sit snugly in a cardboard box somewhere in Pepperdine’s warehouse at the moment), and one might see in some maximalist rhetoric an incredulity toward what one might call the biblical metanarrative. But if, as Claude says in his “translation notes,” minimalists “say that only evidence can prove truth,” then minimalists stand very firmly on modernist—specifically, positivist or empiricist—ground. Yet postmodernist philosphers tend to reject positivism (for many different reasons, and with many different arguments).

Maximalists bear more resemblance to pre-Enlightenment or postmodern thinkers than to Enlightenment thinkers, not least by putting tradition and testimony on a par with (other forms of) hard evidence. Minimalists bear more resemblance to the modernist heirs of the Enlightenment, not least by (positivistically) insisting on hard evidence perceptible to the senses.

Perhaps this exercise would prove most useful if I were to offer some biblical analogies of my own. Forget Genesis 6:1–6 (well, not entirely, but for the purposes of this discussion). Instead, take as the maximalists’ credo Psalm 44:2 (44:1 in English versions):

We have heard with our ears, O God,
     our ancestors have told us,
what deeds you performed in their days,
     in the days of old.

And take as the minimalists’ credo Deuteronomy 19:15b:

Only on the evidence of two or three witnesses shall a [claim] be sustained.

Way back in May 2008, John Hobbins posted a link to a Templeton Foundation “conversation” on the question, “Does science make belief in God obsolete?” I’m just now getting around to reading those essays—shows you how far behind I am. I have no intention of giving a thorough review or response to each essay, but in the very first essay, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker pushed one of my “hot buttons.” Pinker wrote:

Start with the origin of the world. Today no honest and informed person can maintain that the universe came into being a few thousand years ago and assumed its current form in six days (to say nothing of absurdities like day and night existing before the sun was created).

Now I do agree that one requires incredible gyrations and willful rejection of overwhelming evidence in order to cling to a “young earth” cosmology. Nevertheless, I find it incredibly tiresome for atheists to out-fundamentalize the fundamentalists. I agree that it’s inappropriate to try to use the Bible as a science textbook—but “science textbook” and “worthless drivel” are not the only possible genres for Genesis 1 and similar texts.

Comments like Pinker’s imply that not only modern young-earth creationists, but also the biblical authors themselves and all the tradents in between are utter morons. Perhaps Pinker believes that; I certainly know that some folk today believe that. Yet let’s imagine for a moment that a literate Judean of the 8th-4th centuries BCE would also be smart enough to perceive “absurdities” in a text with no less facility than a 21st-century CE psychologist. With specific regard to Pinker’s parade example, I seriously doubt that any ancient Judean of any period could fail to notice that, “absurdly,” the Genesis 1 story operates on a cycle of evening and morning for three days in the absence of sun and moon, which allow humans to measure days. In fact, the narrator even calls attention to this “absurdity” by specifying that sun and moon function as timekeepers:

And God said, “Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. (Gen 1:14–15, NRSV)

The ancient believers who created, edited, preserved, and transmitted knew very well that you can’t measure days without reference to the sun. They knew very well that Genesis 1 presented a schematic account of creation rather than an historical (much less scientific) one. And, in a not-very-subtle way, they told readers as much in the very text of Genesis 1.

I submit to you that “absurd” chronologies and geographies serve in biblical narratives as genre markers informing readers that the discrete textual unit in which these markers appear is not to be taken as “history,” but must be read in a “non-literal” mode. This is not necessarily the only function of such markers; in Genesis 1, for example, the placement of celestial bodies on “day four” also serves as a kind of polemic against the worship of astral deities. Even so, when we encounter the “absurdity” of measuring days without the sun, or the “absurd” geography of Genesis 2, or the “absurd” chronologies of Daniel and Judith, our response ought neither be to apologetically defend the text (as if the “absurdity” were not really there) or to cynically discard the text, but to seek the genre mode in which the author wished for us to read the text—as meditation, myth, or edifying fiction, for example.

Everybody who spends any time with the Bible understands that the biblical writers consciously used various sorts of metaphors and other forms of non-literal language, but I often think that the biblical writers’ “metacognitive” awareness of what they were doing goes under-appreciated. But consider Psalm 19:

Day to day pours forth speech,
     and night to night declares knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words;
     their voice is not heard;
yet their voice goes out through all the earth,
     and their words to the end of the world. (Psalm 19:3–5 NRSV)

This poet seems to feel a need to acknowledge his use of metaphor, perhaps to proleptically counter charges of “absurdity.”

Please don’t misunderstand: I have no doubt that the authors of Genesis 1, Genesis 2, Psalm 19, and so on believed—like everybody else in ancient southeast Asia—that a deity had created the world by an act of special creation. But my point is that the person(s) who wrote Genesis 1, and expressed their creation faith in a schematic seven-day creation story, weren’t so foolish as to suppose that they were giving a precisely accurate timeline of the deity’s creative acts—and they told us so right there in the text.

Go for it. Knock yourself out. As long as you take your lead from the brilliant John Hobbins, you’ll be just fine.

This summer, one of my major projects is to enable a convergence of two of my geekdoms, role-playing games and biblical studies, merging them with my day job, teaching Old Testament courses to undergraduates.

For the past ten years, I’ve taught required Bible courses for first-year students at Pepperdine University and (before that) Milligan College—courses whose catalog descriptions billed them basically as Old Testament surveys. I’ve never been quite happy with the survey format, but I’ve taught the courses as such, not rocking the boat too much in terms of scope and sequence.

All that is about to change.

Back in the spring, I attended a conference of the Association of American Colleges and Universities in Boston. That meeting was mostly about assessment, and I dutifully attended the sessions and wrote little reports back to my colleagues who sit with me on an assessment committee. On the last day of the conference, however, I went to a session that was actually about teaching, and it knocked my socks off. Mark Carnes of Barnard College and some of his colleagues were there describing and demonstrating a history/humanities course used at Barnard and elsewhere. This course, called “Reacting to the Past,” involves students in complex live-action role-playing games to help them experience dramatic historical moments. Now, students don’t have to stat out characters or dress up (though I suppose they are allowed to dress up) or anything like that; basically, they spend a lot of time making speeches and politicking with each other. For example, one game casts students as Parisians during the French Revolution; another game I played in a conference at the University of Kansas cast us in the roles of Athenians debating democracy and other topics right around the time of Socrates’s trial and death.

I got so excited about this pedagogical method—which is not all fun and games, but requires a lot of reading and writing as well as public speaking from students—and resolved to employ it as a pilot project in my Religion 101 class this fall. The problem is that no Old Testament games currently exist using the Reacting method, so I’m currently grinding away at “alpha” versions of such. My goal is to have at least two scenarios ready to go by the beginning of the fall term—a very ambitious goal, but quite necessary if this is to work well.

Today I’m in the Samford University library working on the first of those scenarios, set in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah and focusing on issues of communal identity. Before anybody jumps on me, please know that I’m well aware of the potential pitfalls of using Ezra–Nehemiah (the books) for historical reconstruction. That’s part of the lesson the students will learn. But since the entire pedagogy is more or less based on students making persuasive speeches to one another, Ezra–Nehemiah is an excellent choice for this project. Davies—that is, Gordon F. Davies—explains why in the introduction to his Berit Olam commentary on Ezra–Nehemiah. Davies actually writes the following to support his use of rhetorical criticism as a primary interpretive strategy for these books, but his words apply equally well to my choice outlined above.

Rhetorical criticism is not the only approach for reading Ezra–Nehemiah. But the leaders bring the people around to their plans, and they do so without the violence of coercion or the grace of any theophany. Their strategies of argument to achieve their goals are a pass-key to the theological understructure of the book. To apply rhetorical criticism at its most straightforward we will concentrate on the public discourses and prayers. The very quantity of orations, letters, and prayers in Ezra–Nehemiah reflects its emphasis on the word. This approach to Ezra–Nehemiah fits it as a text of declamation more than action. (p. xiii)

From the “credit where credit is due” department: I stole the phrase “convergence of geekdoms” from a conversation with Joe Weaks.

Following Tyler’s lead, I took Scot McKnight’s “Hermeneutics Quiz.” I scored a 79, which McKnight’s key says makes me “progressive.” Well, okay. I like progress. But like Tyler, I’m not sure that these results are particularly useful or revealing (the key and its categories probably reveal more about McKnight’s own biases than about the respondents) … and I’m sure they’re not as fun as those from quizzes that tell you whether you’re Yoda or Mace Windu.

This week marks the beginning of my focused research on the reception history of Genesis 1. I actually prefer the term “use, influence, and impact” to “reception history,” as the longer phrase spells out in a bit more detail what I mean when I say “reception history.” I definitely will not ignore scholarly interpretations from any period—Philo and Maimonides will undoubtedly loom large, for example—but the project has a much broader focus than “history of interpretation.”

In The Cult of the Amateur (Currency, 2007), which I recently finished reading, Andrew Keen pooh-poohs the “wisdom of the crowd” philosophy upon which the whole idea of “Web 2.0″ rests. However, I consider Higgaion‘s readership a pretty educated bunch, and it includes biblical studies experts as well as well-read, well-informed non-professionals. I therefore see no good reason not to try to harness the wisdom of this crowd—and I mean you, dear readers.

So I ask you: whose interpretations of Genesis 1 would you consider the most important and influential in the history of the West? I mean for the word “interpretations” to have a very broad scope, embracing not only traditional religious and scholarly interpretations like those of Philo and Maimonides, but also reflections of Genesis 1 in literature, drama, music, visual arts, and pop culture. In addition to the most important and influential interpretations, do you know of some obscure or less influential interpretations that deserve more attention than they’ve gotten?

Please allow me to state one caveat. I would not really find it useful for you to post a comment like “I really like the interpretation that says that light is an intelligible effulgence of divine wisdom.” A comment like this one—which fails to give me sufficient bibliographical information to get started investigating—just doesn’t help much. On the other hand, I would derive great benefit from a comment like “Philo’s take on God creating the ‘intelligible world’ first and then the ‘sensible world’ (in De Opificio Mundiis an important bridge between Platonism and later interpretations like those we find in Augustine and Maimonides.” Also, comments like “My pastor once said that Genesis 1 is the most important text in the Bible” might be interesting but don’t really add much to my knowledge base—unless, of course, your pastor is John Chrysostom or Charles Spurgeon or Billy Graham or someone who can be said to have influenced many people’s thinking about Genesis 1.

Of course, I already have an ever-growing bibliography, but you needn’t hold back, thinking “I’m sure Chris already knows this.” Just go ahead and say it. If fifteen scholars or well-read non-professionals pop by and advocate the importance of Philo, that’s still helpful, even though I already know that Philo is terribly important. (Or maybe I’m just saying that to get on Ron’s good side.)

Thanks in advance for your participation.

Note: I offer you this snarky post mostly in jest. I will use specific individuals to exemplify a point. I do not mean to attack those individuals; what I’m attacking, if anything, is overly rigid categorizations.

So if Jim West is right that John Hobbins is right that systematic theologians make lousy exegetes, which of the following books should I throw away?

Note: If you think you might be missing the point of this post, please go back and reread the first paragraph. Thank you.

Update: Judging by Jim’s response, I think I’d better keep the systematics book and look elsewhere for exegetical guidance. Which word of “false dichotomy” didn’t he understand?