Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Hebrews Paper Snippets

Here are some more Hebrews paper snippets as I try to blaze a trail in preparation for Scotland.
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"Hebrews arguably presents us with at least seven distinct ways in which God speaks in the biblical text: 1) pre-modernly, as the character of God speaks in the biblical text, 2) by way of straightforward exempla, stories of the Scriptures that serve as examples to emulate or avoid, 3) in straightforward, ‘timeless’ truth, 4) as prophetic script (e.g., to be placed on the lips of Christ or the contemporary audience), 5) in shadowy illustration, which is closely related but distinct from 6) parabolically/allegorically, and, finally, 7) directly to the audience through God’s Holy Spirit. Several of these categories are not those of the author of Hebrews himself, and several embody fine distinctions from our contemporary hermeneutical perspective. Nevertheless, they provide a helpful rubric for us to describe and discuss Hebrews’ own use of Scripture within its own paradigm."
....

"Within such a pre-modern paradigm, narrative framing plays out in a reader or audience’s mind much as the scene direction of a screenplay. The narrative context is not read as text, but is experienced as action in the drama. It is for this reason that pre-modern interpreters confuse the main speaker of a biblical narrative with the author of that narrative. Moses the main speaker of the Pentateuch becomes Moses the author of the Pentateuch.

"Accordingly, narrative about God speaking is experienced as God speaking. For this reason, the author of Hebrews attributes the Septuagint of Deuteronomy 32:43 to God when in fact this text is obviously about God, not God himself speaking (Heb. 1:7). Similarly, we might add the author’s citation of Deuteronomy 32:35 in Hebrews 10:30b to the list of quotations the author attributes to God. This verse was about God, but the author likely thought of it as a word of God."

4 comments:

JohnLDrury said...

ken,
I followed the previous post' argument regarding the mistaking of subject for author, but the particulars here for hebrews are even more interesting. I am intrigued as to whether there are levels of sophistication even with in the NT on this matter. E.g., Luke speaks of the Holy Spirit speaking through David (Acts 4). No there is the problem regarding Davidic authorship, but even Luke seems to have some kind of dual-authorship in mind (which is not always in the case in other NT writers). Any thoughts on the presence of such levels?

Ken Schenck said...

Hey James, I'll be in and out of Edinburgh 22nd to 25th ish, so let's see if we can get together.

John, I would say that Hebrews is aware of human instrumentation (e.g., "when it says in David", 4:7), but the author seems intentionally to distance meaning from these authors ("someone somewhere says...", 2:6). But it is interesting to me (and I'm still writing the paper so I keep hashing and rehashing these things in my mind) that the pre-modern dynamic applies to the literal meaning. When the author moves into allegorical interpretation, the text becomes an objectified witness to truths spoken by the Holy Spirit.

Other NT authors, it seems to me, pay less attention than Hebrews to the literal meaning and tend to see individuals like David as prophets of future meanings only (e.g., 1 Pet. 1:11; the Acts 4 verse you mention). Paul denies that God cares for oxen but (as a good city boy) assumes that the "muzzling the oxen" verse in Deuteronomy is completely for us (1 Cor. 9:9-10).

All that is data working toward an answer...

Ken Schenck said...

I think I should say original meaning rather than literal meaning. I'm saying that they thought the literal meaning was a future meaning.

Ken Schenck said...

John, I should say further that the author of Hebrews does not only treat narratives as movies. He can treat them as texts as well, such as when he speaks of the elders being witnessed [by the text] to have faith (11:2, 30). I'm wrestling to categorize the complex wrinkles of detail from my hermeneutical understanding and then to try to conceptualize and translate that into the author's understanding...