Docherty 2: Previous Scholarship

This weekend I'm trying to speed read Susan Docherty's book on the use of the OT in Hebrews. About two chapters to skim today.

Introduction

1. Chapter 2 is the predicable history of research chapter. We expect this chapter of any dissertation to conclude something like, "After looking at what everyone else has done, I conclude that my research project needs to be done." In that sense, this was an easy chapter to skim and mostly skip. However, it does provide a nice overview of some classic commentaries and works on Hebrews.

2. First she goes through major commentaries with a view to how they analyze Hebrews' use of the OT and how they engage the Greek text of the OT. Delizsch, Westcott, Moffatt, Windisch, Spicq, F. F. Bruce, Michel, Attridge, Lane, Ellingworth, deSilva, and Koester.

Then she goes through "theological and structural studies" of Hebrews. This begins with a claim that is not really defended. "It seems improbable that a valuable study of it [Hebrews] can be undertaken which does not engage seriously with the author's use of scripture" (51).

I'm rolling this section over in my head. Is she assuming that Hebrews' use of Scripture must play a role in its literary structure? Certainly some have proposed that, but it seems far from self-evident. And on that macro-level, I'm not sure it would play into her focal task. We shall see.

She then looks at Lehne, Nairne, Isaacs, Vanhoye, D'Angelo, Swetnam, I did not read this section although I know these names. Several of them are mentioned in my dissertation too. I'm not sure how this section contributes to her task.

3. The last section of the chapter gets down to business. This one is material to the project. "Studies of the Interpretation of the Old Testament in Hebrews." She looks at Caird, Markus Barth, Anthony Hanson, Kenneth Thomas, Friedrich Schröger, Cecil McCullough, Dale Leschert, Stephen Motyer, and George Guthrie.

I was struck in this chapter with the age of the sources. This dissertation was submitted in 2007 but its engagement with scholarship barely reaches into the 2000s.

One of the most important debates to surface in this section is whether Hebrews 1) feels free to intentionally alter the LXX text in front of the author (Kenneth Thomas), 2) sticks pretty closely to the Vorlage at hand (Cecil McCullough), or 3) perhaps chooses the exemplar before him that best fits his purposes (this could be her position).

A key feature of this debate, in my opinion, are the theological biases of the interpreter. For example, it is very difficult for some interpreters to handle anything but biblical authors who are as concerned to stick with the precise text and historical/contextual interpretation as they are. As someone from the holiness tradition, this is not a beef of mine and so I have long believed I am in a better position to be objective about such things than some others. You'll thus forgive me for completely ignoring the work of Dale Leschert.

4. She draws four trends from Guthrie's 2003 review important in concluding the chapter. First, more appreciation is needed for the complexity of the textual state of the Septuagint. Second, she believes the OT citations in Hebrews are the key to the structure of the letter. Third, more study needs to be done on the exegetical techniques used by Hebrews, and finally, the hermeneutical axioms of the author need to be identified.

NT Use of the OT

I'm making a couple new PowerPoint slides on the NT's use of the OT.  Here's a draft:

1. The NT drew on the OT for its sense of the story in which the early Christians were located.

• From Genesis, Paul takes Adam and Abraham.
• Other elements of the common Jewish story (exodus, kingship of David, exile)

2. The NT drew much of the eschatological context of Jesus' and John the Baptist's ministry from Isaiah.

• return from exile passages (Isaiah 40, 52-53, 61)

3. The NT read many Psalms and parts of Isaiah in relation to Jesus as Christ.

• Parts of Jesus life and ministry (Matthew's pesher, Mark's passion)

4. Early Christian prophets may have heard instructions through pesher interpretations

• e.g., Agabus and the famine, 1 Corinthians 14 

5. Paul's arguments over the inclusion of the Gentiles seemed to play out in Genesis.

• debates over the interpretations of certain passages (e.g., his Sarah and Hagar allegory)

6. Arguments over the function of the Law (from circumcision to tabernacle)

7. Passages like Daniel 11 played in expectations of the future.

• abomination that causes desolation

8. Some awareness of Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha

• Sirach, Wisdom, Enoch

Types of Interpretation

• some (especially Matthew) is a kind of "pesher" interpretation, where a text from one context comes to have a hidden prophetic meaning relating to the time of the NT
• some allegory
• some transferred placement of words on to Jesus' lips
• we can use the word typology as a descriptive term if we recognize that this was not a category in use at the time

Did you know? (Psalm 45 and the King's Wedding)

... that Psalm 45 calls the king of Judah "God" in the middle of a psalm celebrating his wedding?

Part 1: Getting a Sense of the Context
Verse 1 announces that the psalm is about the king, which--duh--anyone hearing it when it was written would have immediately understood to be about the guy that was their king.

Verse 10 addresses a woman, who is told to forget her father's house.  Verse 11 tells us the king thinks she's hot.  In verse 13 we find out she is a princess, and in verse 14 she is led to the king, with many maidens following her.  Then verse 16 tells us the king is going to have some children who will become successful princes.

No question what the most likely interpretation of this psalm in its historical context is.  The king's getting married, and this is a wedding psalm.  To think that an audience at the time this was written would think anything different is to be an incompetent exegete, incompetent at inductive Bible study.

Part 2: The King as god
So now we take this clear context and go back to verses 6-7.  "Your throne, O God, endures forever..."  Following the train of thought from the beginning of the psalm to this point, the king is clearly addressed as "god," following standard practice of the Ancient Near East considering kings as representatives of the gods, as divine sons (cf. 2 Sam. 7:14, which is about Solomon in context).  Indeed, verse 7 goes on to distinguish the king as god from God as the king's God.  The king is thus only god in a somewhat derivative and somewhat figurative sense.

Part 3: Christ as God
Hebrews 1:8-9 then, as the NT regularly does, read these verses with a "fuller sense" and redirects them in relation to Christ, who of course is God for Hebrews in a greater sense than the king is god in Psalm 45.

Did you know?

Does God directly cause suffering...

I've noticed that some bloggers, like some preachers, have a tendency to "preach from the same passage" over and over.  I know I have.  There are some topics I'm tired of because I've mentioned them over and over--and I'm sure you are even moreso. I have had a couple of instances these last few weeks, however, that give examples of old topics, namely, that the OT read in context is not yet Christian.

One such occasion had to do with the possibility that a certain external person at some point might teach a course in a non-religion context at IWU on suffering and disability. This person uses a book by John Piper for her theology piece: Suffering and the Sovereignty of God.  I have advocated for the Arminian position also being represented if the course ever materializes.

Our position is that God may sometimes cause suffering directly, but that God's normal mode of operation is to allow humans to act freely and, I would say, to allow the creation to follow through its normal course of cause and effect.  As humans act freely and as the creation plays out cause and effect, suffering happens.  God allows it, signs off on it.  Yes, he's sovereign.

But the whole Purpose Driven Life, "what is God trying to tell me by causing me to get a pimple," is narcissistic clap-trap.  Yes, you can probably learn something valuable from breaking your arm, maybe even getting a pimple.  But God doesn't micro-manage his creation.  Grow up, baby head, and take some responsibility for your own actions.

The potential visitor on suffering was quite willing to include the Arminian perspective and apparently already did, but without a real sense of how to justify it.  Three passages were offered with a sense that they were pretty clear to her: Exodus 4:11, Psalm 94:9, and Isaiah 45:7.  Does not God directly decide to make people blind?

My response was that one cannot explain the differences between certain OT passages and other biblical passages unless one supposes a development in understanding on topics like this.  I mentioned James 1:13 which says God does not tempt people, while the OT clearly says that he has led people to evil on various occasions (e.g., 2 Sam. 24:1; 1 Sam. 18:10).  The only way to find unity between these two passages is to conclude that these OT passages do not understand God as fully as the NT does.

My standard example of such development is to compare 2 Sam. 24:1 with 1 Chronicles 21:1.  In the first, God incites David to take a census.  1 Chronicles says it was Satan who incited him.  What we see unfolding in the history of ideas is a distancing of God from the direct causation of evil.  In the NT, we have Satan and demons who, in addition to human flesh and desire, tempt and do evil. In the earlier parts of the OT, God is given credit for the whole sha-bang.

A contextual reading of the OT is thus not yet Christian unless it is read in the light of the NT and a mature Christian understanding as it unfolded in the first few centuries of Christianity.  A Christian reading of the OT will filter its application through the NT and not directly apply it.