Docherty 4: Septuagintal Studies

Introduction
Chapter 2: Previous Scholarship
Chapter 3: Developments in the Study of Midrash

1. I found this chapter the most helpful so far. Docherty potentially challenges something I have said quite often, namely, that the New Testament authors felt free to modify the text of the Old Testament. Instead, she argues that the text of the Greek Old Testament was already pluriform and varied somewhat significantly. Thus, while New Testament authors may cite texts that differ from the Septuagintal text as it coalesced by the time of the great codices, she would imply that, at least as far as Hebrews is concerned, the author was probably not very innovative with the text.

First, she uses the word Septuagint in reference to "the whole transmitted tradition of Greek versions" (123). "Old Greek" thus refers to the earliest stage of Greek translation that can be reconstructed for any book. This follows Leonard Greenspoon's 1987 distinction.

Similarly, she follows with most scholars the sense of Paul de Lagarde that the Greek translations of each book likely began with an Urtext, a single individual translation of each biblical book. This is in contrast to the theory of Paul Kahle, who proposed multiple original translations that eventually coalesced. However, once the original text began to circulate, revisions began almost immediately.

2. The result is to see a lot of options in the mix from early on. Symmachus, Aquila, and Theodotion are no longer seen as new, late, and independent translations but continuations of previous revisions (125). Even some of the revisions of the Lucianic Recension of the 300s may actually be witnesses to the Old Greek (128). "The serious exegete can no longer be content with comparing the textual form of Old Testament citations in the New Testament with only the major Septuagint witnesses like Codices Alexandrinus and Vaticanus" (125). Even the NT itself serves "as a witness to textual plurality in the first century CE."

I must say that while I must be willing to swallow this pill, I want to see more evidence. For example, the last sentence is not evidence but could be a likely conclusion. She has me listening, but I'm not just going to take the word of the footnotes without further evidence.

3. She goes through some of the key psalm citations in Hebrews. She does convince that in most of these cases Hebrews is following some Greek text rather than freewheeling. One of the most interesting case studies is the use of Deuteronomy 32:43 in Hebrews 1:6. The Dead Sea Scrolls have, I think, shown that the author is following a form of the Greek that is actually more faithful to the original Hebrew than the Masoretic text.

The peculiarity is the subject "the angels of God" found only in the Odes and Ethiopic text, both of which are late (400s). Was this an invention of the author of Hebrews or another Greek tradition. I'm quite open to it being an alternative Greek tradition.

4. Aland's Greek New Testament has "like a garment" as an addition by the author. It is possible. It doesn't change the meaning. However, there is a DSS that has it (11QPs^a). This suggests to me that the author was following an exemplar here.

Docherty apparently didn't know that Philo quotes Genesis 2:2 exactly like Hebrews 4:4 does. (She would have heard me say it at SBL last fall though :-) I thus think that the author of Hebrews was following an exemplar here as well. Her mention of how the slight modification adding "God" to the verse could arise might just as well have been an Alexandrian modification.

In any case, her claim that Hebrews does not freewheel in its quotations is true. However, this does not prove her case that the author "held a very high view of the inspiration of scripture, scripture in its Greek as well as Hebrew form" (141). An atheist might be inclined to quote texts word for word.

She concludes: "The new research discussed in this chapter now places the burden of proof on those who would argue against a variant reading and for a definite theological alteration of a biblical source" (142).

I will mull this over. I will say that I would want to ponder beyond citations to allusions and echoes. She has just worked with quotations. She does mention in the chapter that she is just speaking of Hebrews and not the rest of the New Testament in this study.

Docherty 3: The Study of Midrash

Introduction
Chapter 2: Previous Scholarship

Chapter 3: Developments in the Study of Midrash
1. We now get to the good stuff, although I was a little disappointed. It has felt like Docherty was building up to our need to take on board recent developments in the study of midrash. But she does not go into great detail about its specific content. Maybe she will get into more detail when we get to her analyses of Hebrews. I feel like I keep waiting for what she's building up to.

I was eager to read this chapter because I am one of those NT people she mentions who is not greatly acquainted with rabbinic studies. I am also one of those who wonders whether it is anachronistic to bring too much of rabbinic Judaism into the study of the New Testament. The Mishnah dates to around AD200--nearly two centuries after Jesus walked the earth. Much of the rest of rabbinic literature is later... often by centuries.

I accept that there is likely tradition that goes back to the Tannaim of the second century, even to the time of Jesus. But it has surely been colored through the filters of later tradition in good Gadamerian fashion. And I do not personally think of the rabbis or church fathers for that matter as having a good deal of objectivity or historical consciousness in their processing of earlier material.

Let me attempt to record the scholars she catalogs:

• Renee Bloch - focus on the historical development of tradition from biblical times. She died in tragic plane crash on its way to Israel at about 30 years old, shot down over Bulgaria.
• Geza Vermes - over-played historical continuity, seeing it going even back into the Bible
• Isaac Heinemann - first theoretical description of midrash (1949). Focus on haggadah. Draws on middot (interpretive rules found in rabbinic literature, e.g., Hillel). Saw a creative element in rabbinic interpretation, as well as an awareness of the "plain sense" of Scripture. She critiques unquestioning use of the middot.
• Michael Fishbane - His classic is Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel. It deals with reinterpretation within the biblical texts themselves. Intertextuality. Creative exegesis - "exegetical imagination" involved.
• Daniel Boyarin - postmodern influence--rabbinic interpreters actualizing the polysemy of the texts. Midrash is "a radical intertextual reading of the canon, in which potentially every part refers to and is interpretable by every other part" (93). Midrashic exegesis both 'disrupts' and 'reconstructs' the meanings of biblical texts."
• Jacob Neusner - The authorship of midrashic documents involves a "coherent programme of themes which runs throughout the work" with consensual decisions about the organization of the material and its literary form. Neusner overreaches here. Too synchronic. Did contribute a good notation system.

Let me pause here because clearly Docherty means to promote the "Goldbergian School." The above scholars are preface.

• Arnold Goldberg - She likes him especially for his precise delineation and definitions of exegetical techniques as well as his interest in theological presuppositions inherent in those methods.
• A midrashic sentence is the fundamental unit. It involves a lemma (L) or small scriptural segment, on which a hermeneneutic operation is performed (o) producing a dictum (D).
• Because the same words can be employed to say different things in different contexts and arrangements, there is the expression itself (Aussage in German) in distinction from its meaning in a particular location (Bedeutung).
• "The editors of the rabbinic works were in fact not interested in what their citations were meant to say in their original contexts, but in what they can say now" (103). 
• Alexander Samely - pupil of Goldberg, introduced categories from linguistics. Identified over 100 different exegetical techniques in the Mishnah. The rabbis "privilege the linguistic signs above the meaning of the word as a whole" (110). "The presuppositions most important for rabbinic exegesis were an absolute belief in the relevance and consistency of scripture."
• Philip Alexander - Docherty's Doktor Vater. Has criticized the loose use of the word midrash among people like me. :-) Distinguishes between midrashic form and midrashic method. 
• "Midrashic texts always have the literary form lemma plus comment" in addition to other features like stringing numerous verses together, giving alternative interpretations, and quoting named authorities.
• Alexander has also catagorized other genres like rewritten Bible, pesher, and anthologies.
• With regard to underlying axioms, he has noted that midrashic interpretation is based on "the rabbinic belief that scripture as divine speech is polyvalent, containing innumerable latent meanings to be exposed by the authoritative interpreter, and that even apparent contradictions in scripture can be tolerated as they exist only at the human level and not in the mind of God" (113).

Helpful chapter in learning the lay of the land.

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.

Docherty's The Use of the OT in Hebrews 1

1. I have been in college administration for the last four years. One year teaching and then before that I had been Dean for six other years. In short, my focus for at least 10 of the last 11 years has been administration. That takes its toll on the scholar in me.

I don't know what the future holds: professor, pastor, administrative servant. But I have some scholarly work to do this month. To do it well, I really need to blow through some books. This weekend is the first.

2. Susan Docherty's work The Use of the Old Testament in Hebrews is pretty significant. It's also expensive but I bit the bullet. I want to read/skim it this weekend--206 pages. If I sleep 16 of those hours, go to church, eat at least 4, run twice. Well, let's say I potentially have 24 hours of reading (not going to happen, of course).

So let's say the goal is 10 pages an hour. Yeah, right.

3. In chapter 1, Docherty sets out her agenda. She believes NT studies has not kept up with research into Jewish exegetical techniques. She aims to bring Hebrews research up to speed. She also believes that NT study is behind in recent research on the text of the Greek Bible in the first century. Both of these aims make her book a significant read.

She then lays out the book. In chapter 2, she'll look at the last 150 years of Hebrews commentary work as it relates to the use of the OT. In chapter 3, she will introduce us to the Goldberg school of analyzing Jewish exegesis in relation to underlying assumptions about Scripture. Chapter 4 looks at recent studies on the Greek text of the OT in the first century. Chapter 5 applies Goldberg's method to Hebrews.

The game is on.