The Upper Register Blog

If my previous post piqued your interest in studying the LXX, here are some good resources to get you started. The LXX (or Greek Bible) is an exciting field that is burgeoning these days, so there are a lot of great resources.

First and foremost, read and digest Jobes & Silva, Invitation to the Septuagint (Baker, 2000). Several other introductory books on the LXX have recently become available (e.g., Jennifer Dines, Natalio Fernandez Marcos, Martin Hengel), but this one is the best by far. Sidney Jellicoe is actually pretty good too, but it was originally published in 1968 and therefore is not as up-to-date as Jobes & Silva.

If you want to dig in and start reading the LXX, you’ll definitely need a Greek-English lexicon. There are two to choose from:

Lust, Eynikel, and Hauspie (=LEH) (Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2003)
T. Muraoka (Peeters, 2002)

They’re both good. I have used LEH extensively and found it to be fine. However, they give brief glosses, whereas Muraoka’s entries are more expansive. Also, Muraoka’s philosophy is slightly different from LEH’s. Muraoka defines words based on what a Greek reader with no knowledge of Hebrew would have thought, based on usage in context, whereas LEH defines words with reference to the underlying Hebrew, thus placing the emphasis on the intent of the LXX translators. Both approaches have their place. One drawback of Muraoka is that it is a lexicon “Chiefly of the Pentateuch and the 12 Prophets.”

For grammar, see Conybeare & Stock’s Grammar of Septuagint Greek. It’s old but excellent, and continues to be republished in various forms. It also has some selected readings from the LXX with notes. If you need help with parsing, get Bernard Taylor’s Analytical Lexicon to the Septuagint (Zondervan, 1994). Also indispensable is the concordance by Hatch & Redpath.

You also must get the New English Translation of the Septuagint (=NETS) (Oxford, 2007). Not only is it necessary to have a good English translation, but this volume is also a good intro to the LXX since it has extensive introductions to each book. See my blog review. As I say in my post, I also continue to find the old 19th century translation by Sir Lancelot C. L. Brenton useful, particularly the edition with the Greek and English in double columns for ease of use (Hendrickson and Zondervan have both printed it in the past). Note also that Rahlfs was reprinted in 2006 with minor corrections by Robert Hanhart.  

Finally, check out these excellent scholarly resources online:

http://www.kalvesmaki.com/LXX/

http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/ioscs/

http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/nets/

Mogens Müller, The First Bible of the Church: A Plea for the Septuagint (JSOTSupp 206; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996).

Historically … the Septuagint should be endowed with special significance considered as a translation, because, to some circles of Greek-speaking Jewry, it replaced the Biblia Hebraica, and thus became their Bible. Because it was accepted as conclusive evidence of the biblical revelations, it was used by the authors of the New Testament writings, and, accordingly, came to have a decisive impact on the theology of the New Testament. In a historical perspective, it became, to an even greater extent than the Biblia Hebraica, the Old Testament of the New Testament. [pp. 115-16]

It is fundamentally important to able to ascertain that the Old Testament testimony of revelation has preserved its integrity in the Greek translation. The Greek formal demands have been disregarded in places where they would have disturbed the essence and content of the original testimony. In other words, the translation did not bow to the Greek spirit …. It is of the utmost importance to establish that the Septuagint has retained its Jewish basis in spite of the circumstances where interpretation has had to walk a tightrope between an acceptable Hellenization and an unacceptable assimilation to Hellenism, and that distance in time and another milieu promoted a certain degree of independence. The Septuagint cannot be bypassed if we want to conjure the Judaism from which Christianity grew. [p. 117, emphasis mine]

Until the process began which insisted on monopolizing Hebraica Veritas as the only authentic Bible text in respect of the Old Testament, the Jewish Bible was in fact both the Hebrew and the Greek text. Added to this, the biblical theological context makes it abundantly clear that the textual form of the Septuagint was the most popular in the New Testament. Where the shape of the Jewish Bible is concerned, a one-sided preference for the Hebrew-Aramaic text as the original par excellence in those decades when the New Testament books were written should be precluded …. In a biblical theological context the Septuagint does in fact convey, more convincingly than the Biblia Hebraica, what the New Testament authors understood as their Holy Writ. [pp. 120-21]

The Septuagint has largely replaced Biblia Hebraica in the New Testament. For the New Testament authors this translation had tremendous impact. It influenced their perception of the wording of the Bible text decisively, and, to a varying degree, left its stamp on their language. [p. 129]

What about the Apocrypha? Müller argues that “the Septuagint’s part in the Christian reception of the Old Testament did not imply the inclusion of the Old Testament Apocrypha in line with the books contained in the Biblia Hebraica” [p. 121].  The Apocrypha were, for the most part, composed in Greek, and as such are witnesses to the Greek-speaking Judaism that created the Greek translation of the canonical books.

Müller probably goes too far when, in his concluding plea for the LXX, he suggests that the Christian Church should throw out the Hebrew Bible, so that the Bible of the church would be composed of the LXX + NT. A better formulation is that the Christian Old Testament must use both the Hebrew and the Greek (LXX) text as witnesses (similar to Müller’s line, quoted above, that the Jewish Bible was both the Hebrew and the Greek text, p. 120). Interestingly, if one uses Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS), for example, the text-critical footnotes are regularly sprinkled with references to the LXX. And as Emanuel Tov has shown, the LXX is one of the oldest witnesses to the original Hebrew text (see his The Text-Critical Use of the Septuagint in Biblical Research [2nd ed.; Simor, 1997]) long predating the textual developments that occurred after the destruction of the Jerusalem and the establishment of Rabbinic Judaism.

The key issue here is that textual criticism of the OT is directly relevant to biblical theology. How can we even begin to find the proper connection and relationship between the NT and the OT if we start by using the wrong textual basis for the OT (the Masoretic text, which has roots in the pre-Rabbinic period but which, in its final form, developed after the NT was written)? Should we not attempt, as far as we are able, to use the OT that the NT writers used? This is admittedly difficult, since the LXX that we now have printed in Rahlfs, for example, is based primarily on fourth/fifth century ecclesiastical manuscripts such as Vaticanus (B), Sinaiticus (S), and Alexandrinus (A), and therefore does not correspond at every point to the LXX that Paul and the apostles had. 

As covenant theologians we critique dispensationalists for not following the apostolic hermeneutic. Dispensationalists say that the apostles did things with the OT that we are not authorized to do. We rightly respond that submission to the apostles’ doctrine (Acts 2:42) also implies submission to the apostles’ hermeneutic, which, after all, was a hermeneutic they learned at the feet of Jesus himself. So submission to the apostles’ hermeneutic means submission to the lordship of Christ. Now, can we turn right around and say, with regard to textual criticism as it relates to biblical theology, we will try to make the connections between the OT and the NT using the Masoretic text which the apostles neither knew nor approved? The apostles quote consistently from the LXX. Even where their quotations differ from B, S, and/or A (i.e., Rahlfs), it is very unlikely that they were making their own translations into Greek from a Hebrew manuscript. More than likely they were using some version of the Greek Bible available to them. The discipline of biblical theology must be grounded not only in the apostles’ hermeneutic but also in the apostles’ text. 

Yes, of course, there are times when the LXX translators seem to misunderstand the Hebrew, and the Hebrew brings us closer to the mind of God. Yes, of course, the Hebrew is what was inspired by God, not the Greek translation. But we cannot even begin to sift through these issues if we begin by assuming the hegemony of the Masoretic text which was under the control of Jewish rabbis that rejected the church’s claims about Jesus. We must be open to using the LXX (and even the NT when it quotes the OT) to provide text-critical input into the OT as received and used by the writers of the NT.

Here.

Here’s my note on 1 Timothy 2:12:  Meaning of αὐθεντέω (hapax in NT and rare elsewhere) is hotly debated:  could be (1) negative, “to assume a stance of independent authority, give orders to, dictate to” (BDAG), “to usurp authority” (KJV); or (2) neutral, “to have/exercise authority over” (NASB, ESV, NIV). See Leland E. Wilshire, NTS 34 (1988): 120-34; and H. Scott Baldwin’s word study in Women in the Church: A Fresh Analysis of 1 Timothy 2:9-15 (ed. Köstenberger, et al.; Baker, 1995). 

I don’t say so in the notes, but I’m convinced that αὐθεντέω has a negative meaning here. This seems to be the general consensus of scholars. Note BDAG’s extended definition. See also the summary by John Jefferson Davis (without endorsing either his interpretation of 1 Tim 2:12-14 as targeting a specific problem in Ephesus, or his call to open the office of pastor/teacher to women). Even H. Scott Baldwin, who wants to argue for a neutral meaning in 1 Tim 2:12, cites plenty of evidence supporting a negative connotation. If Paul had intended a neutral meaning, why did he choose this word which occurs only here in the NT and is rare outside the NT? Why didn’t he pick a more common word such as προΐστημι which Paul uses six times in reference to church office/leadership (1 Tim 3:4, 5, 12; 1 Tim 5:17; 1 Thess 5:12; Rom 12:8)? 

Of course, the prohibition against women teaching remains. I’m not advocating an egalitarian position with regard to ordination to the office of pastor/teacher. But I do think it is important to face exegetical facts, even if they do not fit conveniently into our preconceptions. The practical rub:  if the word is negative rather than neutral, then 1 Tim 2:12 does not prohibit women from serving in non-teaching ordained roles in the church, e.g., the office of deacon. A deacon ought not to be assuming a stance of independent authority over anybody, but merely providing servant-leadership in the church in conjunction with other deacons and in submission to the session.

Denny Burk (formerly assistant professor of NT at Criswell College, but recently named as Dean of Boyce College) has published an article titled, “Is Paul’s Gospel Counterimperial? Evaluating the Prospects of the ‘Fresh Perspective’ for Evangelical Theology” (JETS 51 [June 2008]: 309-37). It’s a helpful article for several reasons: (a) Burk surveys the major players and books in this movement to read Paul as engaging in a “counter-imperial” polemic; (b) he shows that this movement is motivated by a critique of an alleged “American imperialism” and is therefore popular with the denizens of the evangelical left; and (c) he urges seven points of caution about the “Paul and Empire” movement for those committed to an evangelical view of Scripture:

1. Caution about the use of parallels. Certainly, verbal parallels can be found between Paul’s vocabulary and that of Roman imperial propaganda (e.g., kyrios, soteria, euaggelion, etc.). But Burk warns against “parallelomania” (Samuel Sandmel) and suggests that “we cannot rule out the possibility that some parallels are due to the fact that different movements are grabbing theopolitical language from the same linguistic bag” (p. 317). In addition, it is easily domonstrable that Paul’s use of some of these terms (e.g., kyrios) is driven more by his appropriation of the language of the LXX than by an alleged attempt to subvert the lofty claims of the Roman emperors. “Paul’s explicit and implicit allusions to the Septuagint stand as prima facie evidence that Paul’s theological lexicon was shaped primarily by Judaism” (p. 319).

2. Caution about the distinction between meaning and application (E. D. Hirsch’s distinction). Paul does not explicitly formulate his gospel as a critique of the Roman empire, but he does explicitly state that his gospel is the fulfillment of the OT scriptures. Thus, being “counter-imperial” is not part of Paul’s intended meaning, even if it could perhaps be a legitimate application.

3. Caution about the hermeneutics of the “Paul and Empire” movement. Burk points out that some of the more extreme practitioners like Richard Horsley self-consciously employ a postcolonial, reader-response hermeneutic that diminishes the role of authorial intent. The result is that this approach inevitably leads to distortion of Paul’s message, since the agendas and biases of the interpreter are given a controlling influence over the interpretive process. Burk quotes N. T. Wright (one of the more responsible members of this movement) as saying: “There is a danger — and I think Horsley and his colleagues have not always avoided it — of ignoring the major theological themes in Paul and simply plundering parts of his writings to find help in addressing the political concerns of the contemporary western world” (p. 325).

4. Caution about a narrow application to the Roman Empire. Paul opposed all false gods and pretended powers with the Lordship of Christ, not just the Roman emperors who claimed to be divine.

5. Caution about the “Paul and Empire” movement’s view of Scripture. Many of the members of this movement regard the disputed Pauline letters as pseudepigraphical. This is also related to the fact that they regard the genuine Paul as egalitarian, so obviously the passages in Eph and 1 Tim that teach the subordination of women could not have been written by Paul. Burk has an interesting comment about N. T. Wright in this section. Due to his higher regard for the OT-Jewish background of Paul’s thought and due to his less critical stance toward the disputed Paulines (at least Ephesians and Colossians), Burk thinks Wright’s “participation in this conversation is a needed counter-balance to some of the more radical, critical assumptions made by” others in the movement (p. 328).

6. Caution about the analogy between America and Rome. Here Burk makes an excellent point:  even acknowledging America’s huge economic, military, and cultural influence in the world, America cannot be simply equated with Rome. I loved this line: “Lining the Appian Way with crucified slaves is hardly the moral equivalent of lining the streets of foreign countries with outposts of American capitalism (like McDonald’s, Coca Cola, etc.)” (p. 329).

7. Caution about the interpretation of Romans 13:1-7. Paul’s positive statements about Rome in this passage seem to sit uncomfortably with the theory that Paul was engaged in “counter-imperial” polemic. So Burk looks at two scholars (Robert Jewett and N. T. Wright) who have written commentaries on Romans to see how they struggle to fit Rom 13 into their paradigm. Burk shows that their attempts to interpret this passage as a “subversive” or “implicit” critique of Rome are not convincing.

In conclusion, Burk argues that in spite of its popularity, this approach “does not offer a way forward for evangelical interpreters” (p. 337). I would have to agree.

I have little to say by way of criticism. I would only like to add an eighth item of caution to Burk’s list:  evangelicals should be concerned about this movement because it has the effect of shifting the focus of Paul’s gospel away from the existential issues of personal sin and guilt before a holy God, to structural issues in society as a whole. Sin is not that I have transgressed God’s will but that American foreign policy or global capitalism are oppressive forces causing suffering and pain. Instead of personal guilt, the focus is on systemic structural evil. Thus, Paul’s gospel is not (on this view) fundamentally a message about how Christ delivers us from the wrath to come through his atoning death and resurrection, but a message that God is on the side of the politically oppressed and the environment. And instead of calling fundamentally for a response of repentance toward God and faith/trust in Jesus Christ, this “gospel” (if one can call it that) calls for a new moralism with a political agenda. The “Paul and Empire” movement transforms Paul’s proclamation of Christ into a social gospel that in the final analysis could do without Christ. I do not think N. T. Wright is as guilty on this score as Horsley and others, but I fear that Wright is at least complicit in encouraging a social gospel interpretation of Paul’s gospel (witness his influence on Brian McLaren).

I heard Douglas Kmiec today on Larry Mantle’s Air Talk discussing his new book Can a Catholic Support Him? Asking the Big Questions about Barack Obama. Douglas Kmiec is a Roman Catholic, a Republican (he worked in the Reagan administration), and a con-law professor at Pepperdine. He is famous for having endorsed Obama and for being denied communion by a young priest soon thereafter (but not permanently - Cardinal Roger Mahoney corrected the priest’s error).

Obviously, in view of the Roman Catholic doctrine concerning the serious moral considerations involved in voting for pro-choice politicians, Kmiec has had to wrestle with the question, “Can a Catholic vote for Obama?” He answers, “Yes,” because if given a choice between an administration that would focus its anti-abortion efforts merely on the unlikely hope of overturning Roe v. Wade (which would not reduce abortions), and an administration that would support measures that could actually reduce abortions, the choice is easy.

Here is how he puts it in a recent interview with the New York Times:

There is a widespread misconception that overturning Roe is the only way to be pro-life. In fact, overturning Roe simply returns the matter to the states, which in their individual legislative determinations could then be entirely pro-abortion. I doubt that many of our non-legally-trained pro-life friends fully grasp the limited effect of overturning Roe.

Secondly, pundits like to toss about the notion that the future of Roe depends on one vote, the mythical fifth vote to overturn the decision. There are serious problems with this assumption: first, Republicans have failed to achieve reversal in the five previous times they asked the court for it; and second, it is far from certain that only one additional vote is needed to reverse the decision in light of the principles of stare decisis by which a decided case ought not to be disturbed. Only Justices Thomas and Scalia have written and joined dissenting opinions suggesting the appropriateness of overturning Roe …

Senator Obama is articulating policies that permit faithful Catholics to follow the church’s admonition that we continue to explore ways to give greater protection to human life.

Consider the choices: A Catholic can either continue on the failed and uncertain path of seeking to overturn Roe, which would result in the individual states doing their own thing, not necessarily, or in most states even likely, protective of the unborn. Or Senator Obama’s approach could be followed, whereby prenatal and income support, paid maternity leave and greater access to adoption would be relied upon to reduce the incidence of abortion.   

I like what this reviewer said on Amazon:

So polarized are our politics and our churches these days that it takes a Republican praising the Democratic candidate in order to create enough interest in the hidden truth beneath the 35-year struggle over abortion. Prof Doug Kmiec has written a deeply thoughtful, well-reasoned discussion of why the Democratic approach to solving the abortion problem should appeal to Catholics of all ideological stripes.

The extremists on both ends of the rope have profited handsomely over the years from playing up the pro-choice vs anti-abortion debate, to the frustration of most of the rest of us. The rarely acknowledged dirty little secret is that the vast majority of Catholics and other people of faith believe simultaneously in both positions: that the ideal would be to bring every baby into the world, but that there are grave unintended consequences from trying to criminalize the decision.

Conservatives love to talk about the 43 million abortions since Roe-v-Wade, but they never acknowledge the 43 million that came before 1973–when abortion was largely illegal. In other words, illegality has been tried before, and found to be sorely wanting as a strategy to fix the problem. Add on top of that the fact that abortions rose substantially under Reagan and the first Bush, and then fell steeply under President Clinton. Now the data shows convincingly that abortion rates have stagnated under President Bush.

Prof Kmiec points out that the punishmentalists have clearly been betting on the wrong horse, content to take a chance that abortion might possibly be outlawed sometime in the very distant future, rather than supporting a Democratic position with a proven track record of abortion reduction in the here-and-now. Reconciliation being a cardinal principle of Catholicism, Dr Kmiec makes a convincing case that supporting an Obama presidency is the more rewarding way to address the tragedy of abortion for anyone who has seriously grappled with this problem in all its complexity.

Also, here is a nice excerpt from the book on Beliefnet in which Kmiec addresses the slander that by voting against the Illinois Born Alive Act Obama is in favor of killing newborn babies.

Here.

I recently had a pastor who was preaching through 1 Thessalonians ask me about the textual problem in 1 Thess 2:7. Some manuscripts read “infants” (νήπιοι) and others have “gentle” (ἤπιοι). It is a difference of only one letter. In response, I wrote two emails:

—————

First email:

As I suspected, Metzger has a good treatment in his Textual Commentary. The majority of the UBS Editorial Committee opted for νήπιοι on the ground that the external evidence in its support was stronger. However, Metzger and Wikgren wrote a minority report opting for ἤπιοι, arguing that “despite the weight of external evidence, only ἤπιοι seems to suit the context, where the apostle’s gentleness makes an appropriate sequence with the arrogance disclaimed in ver. 6″ (p. 562).

From an internal text-critical point of view, the arguments for each side cancel each other out, since there is a logical transcriptional explanation for the rise of the secondary textual variant:  assuming that ἤπιοι is original, dittography would explain the origin of νήπιοι; conversely, assuming νήπιοι is original, then haplography would explain ἤπιοι.

From an external text-critical point of view, νήπιοι has better manuscripts in its support. But it also makes a reading that is harder to jive with the context (the abrupt switch from Paul describing himself as a child to then describing himself as a nurse).

Bottom line, this is one of those cases where the science of textual criticism does not yield a decisive conclusion, and ultimately you have to pick the option that seems to fit best in context. As F. F. Bruce says, the νήπιοι reading “is inappropriate in the immediate context, where the writers go on to compare themselves not to infants but to a nurse or a parent caring for her children” (WBC, p. 31).

Of course, one could still make a plausible case for νήπιοι on the grounds that (a) Paul has been known to mix his metaphors, and (b) it creates a rather startling image — Paul as an infant! — just the sort of radical, Christocentrically self-abasing thing you would expect from Paul.

However, as much as I am attracted to reading “infants,” I think the view of Metzger and Bruce is best, because I think Paul would have said, “we became as (ὡς) infants,” whereas in Greek it literally says, “we became infants” (assuming νήπιοι). I realize that this isn’t decisive, but the absence of ὡς makes me lean toward reading “gentle” (ἤπιοι).

—————

Second email:

So this morning I came to 1 Thess 2:7 in my Greek reading. The more I think about it, I’m convinced that “gentle” is the right reading. Here’s why:  the immediately preceding line is about Paul’s foregoing the right to receive financial support. “…  even though as apostles of Christ we could have been burdensome.” Being “burdensome” likely refers to the right to receive financial support (cp. the use of lexemes from the βαρ- group in v 9; 2 Thess 3:8; 2 Cor 11:9; 12:16). This financial reading of “burdensome” comports with Paul’s earlier statement that he did not come “with a pretext for greed” (v 5), and it fits with Paul’s boast that he worked night and day so as not to be a burden to the Thessalonians (v 9). So, if I am right in taking v 7a as having to do with not wanting to be a financial burden, then the very next clause (v 7b) should be descriptive of something that is an alternative to being a financial burden. “Instead/rather/but we became gentle among you” fits well. On the other hand, the reading “Instead/rather/but we became infants among you” does not fit well, and in fact creates considerable dissonance, since infants are totally dependent on the financial support of their parents.

—————

Anyway, I thought you might be interested in this little debate.

In a previous post I pointed out that there is a debate among New Testament scholars on the capability of Paul’s audiences. Some think they were largely illiterate converts from raw paganism. On this view, most of Paul’s allusions to the Old Testament Scriptures would have “befuddled” them. Others think that Paul’s audiences were a good deal more familiar with the Old Testament through their pre-Christian adherence to the diaspora synagogue as God-fearers or sympathizers with Judaism. 

Why is this important? Because if the latter view is correct, then the Septuagint is far more important as a background for analyzing the lexical semantics of Paul’s theological terms than secular Koine Greek. Here is what I wrote in a paper The Use of “Hellenistic Judaism” in Pauline Studies: 

“If Paul’s audiences were familiar with the Scriptures in Greek, then it stands to reason that we ought to pay more attention to the role of the Septuagint in influencing the semantic content of various Greek words used in the New Testament. Many of the lexemes used in the New Testament are non-technical terms the meanings of which are best defined by their usage in secular Koine Greek. However, there are certain terms, particular those with theological significance, whose meanings may be influenced by their usage in the Greek Bible as used by Greek-speaking Jews. For example, the old debate over whether ἱλαστήριον in Rom. 3:25 denotes the mercy seat receives fresh illumination when we presuppose a God-fearer base in the Christian community at Rome. The arguments fall into two main camps. Traditionally, commentators believed that the term should be interpreted in light of its usage in the Septuagint, where, in 21 of its 27 occurrences, it is used as a technical term for the mercy seat on the ark of the covenant. But ever since Deissmann, many scholars began to turn away from this interpretation, arguing that the absence of the definite article suggests that the term is merely a substantived, neuter form of the adjective ἱλαστήριος (’propitiating’), which is well attested in ordinary, secular Greek. On this view the word in Rom. 3:25 would best be translated ‘means of propitiation.’ Some have urged that this view best fits the largely Gentile character of the Roman church who, it was believed, would be unable to catch the allusion to the mercy seat. However, if we assume that the Gentile Christians in Rome were in contact with the Diaspora synagogues in Rome prior to their conversion, then the traditional view becomes less unlikely. It would be possible, in fact, to argue for a combined position in which the modern translation ‘means of propitiation’ is maintained, but at the same time acknowledging that Paul’s Septuagint-savvy audience would have been able to catch the allusion to the ἱλαστήριον that stood at the very heart of Israel’s cultic relationship with God. This conclusion is supported by the fact that Philo and the author of Hebrews (both of whom used the Septuagint as their Bible) employed ἱλαστήριον to refer to the mercy seat. This suggests that, for a wide cross-section of Greek-speaking Judaism, the Septuagint exercised a considerable influence upon the semantic domain of this particular lexeme. After Deissmann’s work proving that the Greek of the New Testament is ordinary Koine Greek rather than some specialized Semitic Greek, scholars have tended to downplay the role of the Septuagint in New Testament lexicography, believing that contemporary Koine usage is the final determinant of meaning. Deissmann’s work was a needed corrective in his day. But scholarship has over-corrected. The need now is to bring back a cautious use of the Septuagint to the discipline of New Testament lexicography.” (pp. 38-40) 

Ben Witherington has some good advice for evangelicals on how to decide this November. He says, Don’t be a one-issue voter. Rather, prioritize what you think are the most crucial issues facing the nation at this particular juncture in history and evaluate the candidates based on those issues. I don’t know if Witherington would agree, but for me, with pressing issues like the future role of American troops in Iraq, the instability in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the possibility of a nuclear Iran, as well as the most recent developments in the financial crisis, we do not have the luxury of voting solely on the basis of a candidate’s stance on abortion or other social issues. I understand the deep biblical conviction that drives some to this position, but it is ultimately a zeal that is not according to knowledge. The values of the kingdom of God are eschatological and heavenly, and cannot be so simply translated into the earthly transitory realm of public policy and civil law. To vote solely on the basis of a single-minded zeal to implement heaven on earth while overlooking the urgent, temporal problems of the city of man is not only to neglect the common grace arena but is, ironically, to work for its premature destruction. 

Christopher D. Stanley thinks that Paul’s audiences were largely illiterate Gentiles who converted to Christianity with no prior background in Judaism:

We can assume that except for the few people who had attended the synagogue as Jewish sympathizers, no one in Paul’s churches had any significant knowledge of the Jewish Scriptures before entering the Christian church … The idea that Paul expected his Gentile audiences to recognize and appreciate his many allusions and other unmarked references to the Jewish Scriptures appears to be mistaken … Paul grossly misjudged the capacities of his audience. As an educated Jew who was accustomed to thinking and arguing in biblical terms, Paul slipped naturally into biblical modes of discourse in the heat of his most argumentative letters without stopping to consider whether his audience, which was mostly Gentile and illiterate, could have understood his many references to the Jewish Scriptures. The bulk of Paul’s audience was probably befuddled by most of these references.

Christopher D. Stanley, Arguing with Scripture: The Rhetoric of Quotations in the Letters of Paul (London: T & T Clark, 2004), 45, 48-49. (To be fair, I should point out that the last quote on p. 49 appears as the second in a list of four possible explanations, but Stanley goes on to say that all four explanations contain elements of truth.)

But Margaret M. Mitchell writes:

There is probably some truth behind Luke’s picture of Paul finding adherents to his gospel among the ‘God-fearers’ or ‘devout,’ Gentiles who were already in some way associated with Jews, attending synagogue, learning Jewish sacred texts and lore or serving as benefactors, but not undergoing circumcision to become full converts … This can also explain how a message that relies so much on scriptural interpretation for its cogency and credibility could have been intelligible to Gentiles who would otherwise have been befuddled by claims about ‘the anointed one’, ‘the fulfillment of scripture’, and the necessity for deliverance from divine wrath.

Margaret M. Mitchell, “Gentile Christianity,” in The Cambridge History of Christianity, Vol. 1: Origins to Constantine (ed. Margaret M. Mitchell and Frances M. Young; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 119.

It would appear that there is a bit of debate among scholars on this point. I throw my hat in with Mitchell and think Stanley is way off base. (Interestingly, both scholars use the word “befuddled.”) 

I saw this cartoon slide-show back in March when Andrew linked to it (warning: contains profanity). It explains the underlying cause of the current financial crisis, but obviously written before the most recent developments. To me it all boils down to greed — on the part of borrowers (who wanted to get into the housing market while the interest rates were so low), on the part of lending institutions (who didn’t want to miss their piece of the action), and on the part of investment banks (filled with 28 year-old MBA grads concocting complex financial instruments in order to somehow cover up the smelly loans and then lie about the massive risks to investors).

And now we the taxpayers are going to save their butts to the tune of $700 billion? Paulson and Bernanke are warning us that if we don’t the consequences to the global economy will be dire. But my worry is — What are the long-term consequences of adding to our enormous national debt and nationalizing a significant portion of the financial services industry? Do we know enough to make this decision rationally? Why are we being scared into it? The whole thing just reeks of corruption and lies.

I am reminded of this verse:  Jesus Christ ”gave himself for our sins that he might rescue us from this present evil age” (Gal 1:4). The whole rotten garbage can of greed and wickedness, including the most recent addition to the heap, namely, the lie that the government can magically step in and rescue us from it all, pain-free!