Mark Chancey writes about the NCBCPS Bible in History and Literature curriculum for The Christian Century. If you’ve been following the controversy, you won’t learn much more from this article, but if you haven’t, it’s an excellent introduction to the issues. Thanks to Jim West for the pointer.

Bible and Interpretation has posted an excerpt from Steven McKenzie, How to Read the Bible: History, Prophecy, Literature—Why Modern Readers Need to Know the Difference, and What It Means for Faith Today (Oxford, 2005) on genre determination and its importance, using Jonah as an illustration. Here’s a representative paragraph:

Our previous treatment of Jonah illustrates the importance of the discernment of genre for interpretation of the Bible. As we have seen, Jonah, like many literary works, does not identify its genre but leaves it to the reader to discern. Still, the book gives significant clues about how it was meant to be read. Readers who have misconstrued the genre of Jonah as history have therefore approached it with an erroneous set of expectations and have often tried to force it to fit their expectations. When it is discovered that the book does not fit those expectations, the tendency is often to blame the book, declaring it “untrue” and implying that it is somehow of less significance because it does not describe historical events. It is important to recognize, therefore, that the problem in the interpretation of Jonah does not lie with the book itself but with its readers—readers, who fail to discern its genre from internal clues and thereby fail to appreciate its true nature and purpose. The problem is only exacerbated by the fact that Jonah is an ancient piece of literature from a foreign culture and written in a foreign language.

If the rest of the book is up to the quality of this excerpt—which appears to come from the introduction—then it looks like an excellent volume. I’m eager to read it. According to the Oxford UK web site, it’s due out in late October 2005. Here’s the online blurb for the book:

More people read the Bible than any other book. Indeed, many try to live their lives according to its words. The question is, do they understand what they’re reading? As Steven McKenzie shows in this provocative book, quite often the answer is, “No.” McKenzie argues that to comprehend the Bible we must grasp the intentions of the biblical authors themselves—what sort of texts they thought they were writing and how they would have been understood by their intended audience. In short, we must recognize the genres to which these texts belong. McKenzie examines several genres that are typically misunderstood, offering careful readings of specific texts to show how the confusion arises, and how knowing the genre produces a correct reading. The book of Jonah, for example, offers many clues that it is meant as a humorous satire, not a straight-faced historical account of a man who was swallowed by a fish. Likewise, McKenzie explains that the very names “Adam” and “Eve” tell us that these are not historical characters, but figures who symbolize human origins (“Adam” means man, “Eve” is related to the word for life). Similarly, the authors of apocalyptic texts—including the Book of Revelation—were writing allegories of events that were happening in their own time. Not for a moment could they imagine that centuries afterwards, readers would be poring over their works for clues to the date of the Second Coming of Christ, or when and how the world would end. For anyone who takes reading the Bible seriously and who wants to get it right, this book will be both heartening and enlightening.

I can hardly wait. Memo to me: “Patience, grasshopper.”

I’m a bit behind the curve on the New York Times series on faith and science. On Tuesday of this week, the Times ran a story entitled “Scientists Speak Up on Mix of God and Science.” The following section struck me as particularly poignant:

But disdain for religion is far from universal among scientists. And today, as religious groups challenge scientists in arenas as various as evolution in the classroom, AIDS prevention and stem cell research, scientists who embrace religion are beginning to speak out about their faith.

“It should not be a taboo subject, but frankly it often is in scientific circles,” said Francis S. Collins, who directs the National Human Genome Research Institute and who speaks freely about his Christian faith.

…

Dr. Collins, who is working on a book about his religious faith, also believes that people should not have to keep religious beliefs and scientific theories strictly separate. “I don’t find it very satisfactory and I don’t find it very necessary,” he said in an interview. He noted that until relatively recently, most scientists were believers. “Isaac Newton wrote a lot more about the Bible than the laws of nature,” he said.

But he acknowledged that as head of the American government’s efforts to decipher the human genetic code, he had a leading role in work that many say definitively demonstrates the strength of evolutionary theory to explain the complexity and abundance of life.

As scientists compare human genes with those of other mammals, tiny worms, even bacteria, the similarities “are absolutely compelling,” Dr. Collins said. “If Darwin had tried to imagine a way to prove his theory, he could not have come up with something better, except maybe a time machine. Asking somebody to reject all of that in order to prove that they really do love God – what a horrible choice.”

Amen to Dr. Collins.

Another highlight of the article is a good, but brief, discussion of the flaws in Stephen Jay Gould’s oft-cited concept of “non-overlapping magesteria.” According to Gould’s NOMA model,

In Dr. Gould’s view, science speaks with authority in the realm of “what the universe is made of (fact) and why does it work this way (theory)” and religion holds sway over “questions of ultimate meaning and moral value.”

Yet the Times article quite rightly quotes several scientists who insist that these “magesteria” do inevitably overlap, and should.

At the bottom of page 2 and top of page 3 (of the online version), the Times article quotes and paraphrases comments by Kenneth R. Miller, a professor of biology at Brown University and a devout Roman Catholic, and Joseph E. Murray, a Nobel laureate in medicine (1990, for his work on organ transplantation) and a member of the Pontifical Academy. Both see their faith as compatible with rigorous science.

The Times article opens with a report of a panel at the City College of New York, during which one of the panelists strongly denounced not just a mixing of science and faith, but of their compatibility:

At a recent scientific conference at City College of New York, a student in the audience rose to ask the panelists an unexpected question: “Can you be a good scientist and believe in God?”

Reaction from one of the panelists, all Nobel laureates, was quick and sharp. “No!” declared Herbert A. Hauptman, who shared the chemistry prize in 1985 for his work on the structure of crystals.

Belief in the supernatural, especially belief in God, is not only incompatible with good science, Dr. Hauptman declared, “this kind of belief is damaging to the well-being of the human race.”

Yet others on the panel disagreed, stunning Hauptman. The Times story ends by returning to Hauptman, who seems surprised at the amount of religious conviction among his scientific colleagues:

Since his appearance at the City College panel, when he was dismayed by the tepid reception received by his remarks on the incompatibility of good science and religious belief, Dr. Hauptman said he had been discussing the issue with colleagues in Buffalo, where he is president of the Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute.

“I think almost without exception the people I have spoken to are scientists and they do believe in the existence of a supreme being,” he said. “If you ask me to explain it – I cannot explain it at all.”

So there are some things science can’t explain after all. The development of the human species isn’t one of them … but it seems that the development of religious faith may be.

The Canadian Jewish News reports that filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici has produced a 26-part documentary series on biblical archaeology, entitled “The Naked Archaeologist.” Jacobovici accuses “biblical archaeologists” of being motivated chiefly by politics and anti-Semitism:

But what really got him going was his perception that archeologists generally treat chunks of the Bible as fiction rather than fact.

“The received wisdom of academia on biblical archeology is that the earliest parts, from Exodus onward, are mythological stories and fairy tales.”

Archeologists who indulge in such practices are falsifying the truth, somewhat like Holocaust deniers who deny that six million Jews were murdered during World War II.

Jacobovici, who became an Orthodox Jew more than a decade ago, stands firmly in the camp of the believers.

“From a historical aspect, I take the Bible as history, unless someone demonstrates it’s not. I have no reason to believe the stories in the Bible didn’t happen.” He paused, asserting, “If you don’t think it’s true, prove it!”

He argued that some biblical archeologists are motivated by crass politics and a dislike of Jews.

Modern archeology emerged with the rise of fascism, and some archeologists were plainly anti-Semitic, he said.

And in the case of Palestinians seeking to delegitimize Israel’s claim to the land, archeology is merely another tool in their arsenal, he added.

I’m sure it will come as a surprise to the likes of Israel Finkelstein and even Bill Dever that doubting the historicity of the exodus makes them fascist, crassly political, anti-Semitic, and close cousins to Holocaust deniers. Although the writer of the CJN article was at least careful to include the word “some” at important points in the excerpt above, Jacobovici clearly seems to be engaging in something of a smear campaign to promote his own point of view. Notice Jacobovici’s use of a vague chronological correspondence to impute anti-Semitism to “biblical archaeologists”: “Modern archeology emerged with the rise of fascism.” But so what? Any such correspondence would be meaningless in terms of causality or in terms of characterizing individual archaeologists or archaeologists generally. Sir William Flinders Petrie excavated in Palestine between 1927 and his death in 1942, and fascism was ascendant in Italy c. 1922-1943; but it can hardly be said that Petrie was motivated by fascism, as had practiced his techniques in Egypt starting around 1880–some forty years before fascism took hold in Italy. Sure, some archaeologists may have been fascists (though Jacobovici may also have watched Raiders of the Lost Ark one too many times), but Jacobovici’s attempt to smear an entire discipline by an alleged chronological coincidence is just ridiculous.

It’s interesting too that Jacobovici seems, as represented in the article, to use the term “biblical archaeology” to encompass modern Syro-Palestinian archaeologists who don’t accept the historicity of (some of) the biblical stories. If that’s really Jacobovici’s language, he’s got it all wrong; the “biblical archaeologists” were those who precisely went digging “with the Bible in one hand and a spade in the other,” and modern Syro-Palestinian archaeologists tend to prefer other terms.

Finally, Jacobovici—who is neither a biblical scholar, nor a historian, nor an archaeologists, but a filmmaker—seems ignorant of good historicial methodology: “From a historical aspect, I take the Bible as history, unless someone demonstrates it’s not. I have no reason to believe the stories in the Bible didn’t happen. … If you don’t think it’s true, prove it!” Jacobovici seems to be serious, but he’s a walking caricature of the worst sort of “maximalist”: someone determined to believe what the Bible says, just because the Bible says it, unless given a reason to believe otherwise. Well, there are plenty of reasons that Syro-Palestinian archaeologists and biblical scholars could give Jacobovici to doubt the veracity of certain stories, but that’s beside the methodological point.

The CJN article doesn’t mention whether Jacobovici’s 26-part “The Naked Archaeologist” will air in the USA. It does, however, reveal that

Currently, Jacobovici is editing and polishing his next documentary, The Exodus Decoded, which will be broadcast on the Discovery Channel come November and privately screened around the same time.

There is not a single shred of archeological evidence to support the thesis that the events in Exodus occurred, he allowed.

But in his forthcoming 90-minute film, a mix of The Matrix and The Da Vinci Code, he excavates proof that Exodus is not a figment of the imagination.

Sigh. We’re supposed to take that seriously?

New Age guru Deepak Chopra posts today in support of “intelligent design without the Bible.” That is, his column argues in favor of intelligent design, but against identifying that designer with the Judeo-Christian God. In so doing, Chopra exploits the rhetorical areligiosity of some ID advocates. Writers with more or less transparent evangelical Christian commitments have tried to offer up ID as a “nonreligious” alternative to Darwinism, but they seem to have a not-so-hidden agenda of trying to get the Judeo-Christian God assigned the role of designer. In today’s post, Chopra proclaims:

It is disturbing to see that the current debate over evolution has become us-versus-them. To say that Nature displays intelligence doesn’t make you a Christian fundamentalist. … It’s high time to rescue “intelligent design” from the politics of religion. There are too many riddles not yet answered by either biology or the Bible, and by asking them honestly, without foregone conclusions, science could take a huge leap forward.

Chopra goes on to pose a number of questions about biological evolution, questions that he seems to think somehow invalidate the theory, including this gem:

7. What happens when simple molecules come into contact with life? Oxygen is a simple molecule in the atmosphere, but once it enters our lungs, it becomes part of the cellular machinery, and far from wandering about randomly, it precisely joins itself with other simple molecules, and together they perform cellular tasks, such as protein-building, whose precision is millions of times greater than anything else seen in nature. If the oxygen doesn’t change physically — and it doesn’t — what invisible change causes it to acquire intelligence the instant it contacts life?

That’s right: oxygen becomes intelligent when it enters your body. So says Chopra. Then he concludes with this:

But if you think the answers are in safe hands among the ranks of evolutionary biologists, think again. No credible scientific theory has answered these dilemmas, and progress is being discouraged, I imagine, thanks to fundamentalist Christians. By hijacking the whole notion of intelligent design, they have tarred genuine scientific issues with the stain of religious prejudice.

In fact, evolutionary biology does provide reasonable answers to all of Chopra’s reasonable questions, as documented briefly on Pharyngula by P. Z. Myers. But leaving that aside, it’s quite strange for Chopra to accuse Christians of “hijacking” ID, since Christians invented ID. Who’s hijacking what? And what does the hijackability of ID say about its theological quality? But I will have more to say some other time about ID and biblical creation faith.

The third-quarter 2005 issue of Restoration Quarterly recently reached my mailbox. For readers who don’t know RQ, it is one of the two academic journals published by members of the Churches of Christ and our close cousins in the Christian Churches and Churches of Christ. This quarter’s RQ includes one article of interest to Tanakh scholars:

Clark, Ronald R., Jr. “Schools, Scholars, and Students: The Wisdom School Sitz im Leben and Proverbs.” Restoration Quarterly 47 (2005) 161-177.

I have not yet had time to read Ron’s article carefully, but this paragraph will give you his thesis and a brief outline:

However several arguments suggest the existence of [Wisdom] schools in pre-exilic Israel: (1) the existence of schools in surrounding cultures, (2) archaeological finds in Israel and other cultures, (3) similarities with Wisdom literature in other countries (mainly Egypt), and (4) allusions to scribal training in the Hebrew Bible. (pp. 162-163)

Unfortunately Ron’s article is not one of those made available online by RQ (at this time, anyway), so you’ll have to scare up a print version somewhere or ILL it to read it.

The Baptist Standard, a news journal for Texas Baptists, ran on August 19 a story about the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools controversy raging in Texas right now. The article by Ken Camp seems to be a fairly well-balanced presentation. Camp carefully notes that the opposition to the NCBCPS Bible in History and Literature curriculum is coming from people of faith:

Ryan Valentine with the Texas Freedom Network agrees with Kiesling about the importance of public school students learning about the Bible, but he faults the National Council’s approach.

“The Texas Freedom Network is all for teaching the Bible in public schools as long as it satisfies the two criteria we keep harping about. It has to be nonsectarian in purpose, and it has to be academically rigorous. The problem with this (curriculum) is that it fails miserably on both counts,” said Valentine, director of the Texas Faith Network, a branch of the statewide civil liberties group.

The end of Camp’s article clearly exposes the misguided “us-versus-them” mentality behind the NCBCPS responses to the Texas Freedom Network’s objections:

The public statement quotes Ridenour: “It is ironic that a group which claims to be against censorship is now attempting to become the biggest censor in the state of Texas. At its root, the (Texas Freedom Network’s) real objection to our curriculum is not the qualifications of our academic authorities, but the fact that we actually allow students to hold and read the Bible for themselves, and make up their own minds about its claims. This is something no other Bible curriculum does, and (the Texas Freedom Network) can’t stand it.”

The Texas Freedom Network fears genuine academic freedom, and it wants to deny local school districts the right to decide which elective courses to offer students, she asserted. “That is not freedom; it is totalitarianism.”

Both Chancey–a former Baptist Student Union summer missionary who now attends a United Methodist church–and Valentine–a deacon at University Baptist Church in Austin, a congregation affiliated with the Alliance of Baptists and the American Baptist Churches, USA–disputed the charges that they are anti-religion and want to ban the Bible.

“I teach the Bible because I love the Bible,” Chancey said. “I wrote this report because I wanted to make sure that when the Bible is taught, it’s taught with the best possible curriculum. And I wanted to make sure our students didn’t have to worry about groups with sectarian agendas. That’s what this is all about–to make sure the Bible receives the respect and the treatment it deserves.”

Valentine believes the National Council’s curriculum trivializes a very serious and sacred subject.

“Responding as a Christian–as a Baptist–the most dangerous part about this curriculum is it makes Christians look silly, and it makes our Scriptures look trivial,” he said. “And that’s the last thing we need to broadcast to society at large–particularly to students who may be making their minds up about faith choices. To treat the Bible such a trivial fashion is deeply hurtful to all Christians. That’s why, in my mind, Christians should be leading the charge against this in the schools.”

“We’re not out to ban the Bible,” Chancey added. “We’re out to protect the Bible from curriculum that doesn’t do it justice.”

This fight is not about opponents of Bible classes trying to shut down advocates of Bible classes. It’s about advocates of high-quality biblical study opposing bad Bible curriculum. All best wishes to those on the side of quality.

The Miami Herald-Tribune reported last week (free registration may be required to read the article) about a new creationist museum to open this fall on the campus of Calvary Chapel in Fort Lauderdale. Here’s just a sample of what visitors to the museum can expect:

In a pre-flood panorama, Adam and Eve will be pictured alongside dinosaurs — illustrating the Bible’s claim that God created all the Earth’s creatures in six days. (For those wondering why the mural won’t picture T-Rex devouring our Biblical forbearers, DeRosa has a ready answer: Like Adam and Eve, dinosaurs were vegetarians before Adam and Eve were kicked out of Eden.)

I’m preparing a long post on this whole controversy, newly stirred up by the Kansas Board of Education’s end-run around the scientific majority of its Science Writing Committee in favor of a minority (eight out of twenty-six, if I remember correctly) pushing the intelligent design crowd’s “teach the controversy” back-door strategy. For now I’ll just say, “Ugh.”

CNN (and I’m sure they’re not alone) reports this morning:

Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson has called for the United States to assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, calling him “a terrific danger” bent on exporting Communism and Islamic extremism across the Americas.

“If he thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it,” Robertson told viewers on his “The 700 Club” show Monday. “It’s a whole lot cheaper than starting a war.” …

Robertson, a contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 1988, called Chavez “a dangerous enemy to our south, controlling a huge pool of oil, that could hurt us badly.”

“We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability,” Robertson said. “We don’t need another $200 billion war to get rid of one strong-arm dictator. It’s a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.”

Robertson accused Chavez, a left-wing populist with close ties to Cuban President Fidel Castro, of trying to make Venezuela “a launching pad for Communist infiltration and Muslim extremism all over the continent.”

“This is in our sphere of influence, so we can’t let this happen,” he said.

You can read the whole story here, and even see video footage of Robertson’s comments, but the above excerpt gives you the thrust of Robertson’s comments.

Now, I am too much steeped in the Hebrew scriptures to be a thoroughgoing pacifist, or to think that God is such, but even in the bloodiest sections of the Hebrew Bible, assassinating a ruler because it’s convenient never seems to be on the radar screen. I guess one could make a case out of the Ehud story (Judges 3:12-30), but even that does not really compare to Robertson’s call to assassinate Chavez, as the USA is not in a comparable position vis-à-vis Chavez as Ehud’s Benjaminites were to Eglon (the thought of Chavez “oppressing” the US is laughable). Leaving aside questions of historicity and just looking at the biblical narrative, David condemned Ishbaal’s (Ishbosheth’s) assassins (2 Samuel 4) even though he was at war with him; apparently, this story reflects a value system in which killing in open warfare is honorable but assassination is dishonorable. Farther away still is Elisha’s conversation with Hazael (2 Kings 8:7-15). Elisha was no pacifist, but he certainly didn’t make any violent move against Hazael, even though he foresaw that Hazael would be a dangerous enemy to Israel’s northeast that would hurt them badly. Biblicism is a language Robertson is supposed to understand …

I wonder who will be the first to try to draw a connection between Robertson’s comments and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s involvement in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler (you can read about it briefly in the Wikipedia entry on Bonhoeffer, with all the caveats that go with reading Wikipedia). Bonhoeffer made an agonizing decision and put himself at great personal risk to try to stop Hitler’s genocidal reign of terror. Bonhoeffer saw the assassination plot against Hitler as a regrettable but necessary step to save millions of lives. Robertson seems to see his proposed assassination of Chavez as a convenient political opportunity. Bonhoeffer acted for the sake of Hitler’s victims. Robertson said nothing about the people of Venezuela in his remarks proposing assassination of Chavez; instead, he commented on Venezuela’s oil reserves, Communism (what decade is it?), and Muslim extremism. Need I go on? Pat Robertson is no Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

After I posted my photograph of my desk area, Jim West asked whether I could show a closer-up picture of the painting on the wall. That painting, entitled “Babylon Falls to Chaos: Jeremiah 50-51,” was done by Ginger Dillon, one of my students at Milligan College, for a class project several years ago. Ginger has now given her permission for me to post a close-up shot. Please don’t blame Ginger for my poor photography skills or any distortion of the colors caused by the digital camera or computer screens.

Here’s the whole painting:

And here’s a detail of the lower right-hand corner, featuring someone who I take to be Jeremiah: