Forward. Fr. Pat's OT Lectures, Week 1, Page 1 of 5

Size: px

Start display at page:

Download "Forward. Fr. Pat's OT Lectures, Week 1, Page 1 of 5"

Augustus Rice
5 years ago
Views:

1 Fr. Pat's OT Lectures, Week 1, Page 1 of 5 Forward I am a NT scholar who has come to realize that quite a lot of water has gone under the bridge since I took most of my OT classes back in the seminary in the early 1970's. When I did my doctoral studies I specialized in NT. I took all of my electives over in the Semitics Department, so my linguistic skills are pretty good in the OT (for a "NT guy"). However I took only one doctoral-level seminar in OT, a seminar on Genesis At the CBA meeting in August 2016 I attended a session, "OT Update for Those Who Teach NT," and it became obvious to me that my own OT understanding was in serious need of an update. "If you want to learn something, teach it." So I have begun some reading with the help of some of my OT colleagues. I am especially grateful to Fr. Jerry Walsh and to Alice Logan for their suggestions on reading, and for the feedback they have given me on my understanding of what I have read. As part of my "personal update," I purchased The Old Testament, one of The Great Courses by my friend and colleague Dr. Amy Jill Levine. My current plan is to use her lectures to structure my personal tour through the OT. Typically I will offer reflections on what I have learned from her, and follow that by lectures on related matters that I have read elsewhere. Eventually I will probably use some of these lectures to supplement and update my online teaching. However, as I begin this project, there is no course scheduled that needs these lectures. I am therefore free to take my time, and to proceed through this material, and whatever other supplementary material I might find. For instance, I have already ordered a PBS NOVA video on The Bible's Buried Secrets which I intend to view and discuss with my "Thursday Morning Bible Study" at the Catholic Center in Shreveport, LA. I am indebted to these students whose perceptive questions sharpen my thinking, and who are sharing my learning journey with me. Patrick J. Madden April 14, 2016 Shreveport, LA

2 Fr. Pat's OT Lectures, Week 1, Page 2 of 5 Week 1, Lecture 1. First Reflections: Comment's on Levine's Lecture 1, Part 1 1 Of Interest to Church / Synagogue & Academy Most seminary scripture profs pal around with theologians. People who work at universities rub shoulders with Various scientists: physicists, astronomers, biologists, archeologists Artists: various schools of literary criticism; drama, dance [the following was unintentionally omitted] The primary emphasis of seminaries is pastoral: the faith life of the community: Answerable to Church authorities The primary emphasis of of the academy is secular: University professors do not answer to bishops. We would be naive indeed, however, if we imagined that there are no academically PC ideas! When we have extra-biblical evidence for a monarchy The idea is that it is not until you have a king and scribes that extensive writing and storage of writing begins. The earliest reference to an OT monarch is Omri King of Israel (the Northern Kingdom) The earliest references are on monuments (or pieces of monuments) that have survived. The first thing we shall find is that direct and explicit links [to extra-biblical history] are singularly rare, and for the earliest phases non-existent. Of all the characters in Israel's history the earliest to be mentioned in any contemporary monument is Omri, king of Israel about B.C.... Not even Solomon, the son-in-law of a Pharaoh, still less Moses, Joseph, or Abraham, has left his name on any of the monuments. 2 Push-back Some of the more radical critics are proposing that David and Solomon were my like "desert sheiks" than kings. There has been some push-back among academic archaeologists. Different Genres: No problem for Catholics since 1943, Divino Afflante Spiritu Concerning Abraham, Moses, Joshua, Samson: Are these real people? Notice that the question is not asked about Adam and Eve. The presumed answer will be: of course these are not real people! Similarly for Cain & Abel, Noah, and everyone else in Genesis Discussing whether or not these people were "real" in one sense is a bit like asking if the world is "really" flat. That question has been settled! At least in the university. There are many people in the pews in churches & synagogues who are not comfortable with this answer! Did Moses get a law "of some sort?" Note: we are not talking about the 10 commandments going back word-for-word to Sinai. For one thing, there are 2 different versions of them, one in Exodus 20, and one in Deuteronomy 5. The historical question is: was there some sort of meeting at Sinai? Were some commandments involved? These are modest questions. But even modest questions can be difficult to give a historical answer to. Were there really Israelites enslaved in Egypt? We are not asking if the Cecil B. DeMille version with a "cast of hundreds of thousands" is accurate. From time to time small bands of slaves would escape. Were some of the ancestors of Israel in one of these bands? Also worth noting: at the time of the Exodus, the Canaanite city states were subservient to Egyptian overlords. An extremely large group of people suddenly appearing would have been rounded up and returned to their masters. 1 These are reflections prompted by viewing the following video: Amy Jill Levine, "In the Beginning," lecture 1 of The Old Testament, The Great Courses. Anyone who wishes a personal copy of these excellent lectures will find them available from The Teaching Company at their web site: 2 Oxford Bible Atlas, ed. by Herbert G. May et al., third edition (Oxford University Press, 1984) 107.

3 Fr. Pat's OT Lectures, Week 1, Page 3 of 5 Simply to walk into the populated areas of Canaan would have been like escaping from the frying pan into the fire! (More on history in a later lecture.) Covenant: a legal contract between [ancient Israel] and God. Two types of ancient covenants: suzerainty & parity. Suzerainty covenants were between a "great lord" and vassal kings E. g. the Pharaoh of Egypt, and the smaller kingdoms that paid tribute to him. Parity covenants were between roughly equal powers. E.g., Egypt & Babylon. Israel imagined it was in a suzerainty covenant: the LORD was the "great king;" Israel was the vassal. Prophets are fantastic poets! Synonymous Parallelism Antithetic Parallelism A wise son is the joy of his father. A foolish son breaks the heart of his mother. Chiasm (connect the corresponding phrases to make an X (a Greek chi) A wise son is the joy of his father His mother's heart is broken by a foolish son The "Diaspora" Jews who do not live in Israel are part of the diaspora, "spread around" other parts of the world. After the Exile, Babylon and Egypt were the two main places in OT times. By NT times Jews had been in Rome, and throughout the Mediterranean world for over a century. Today Jews living outside the state of Israel are regarded as being part of the Diaspora. They do not always agree with each other; we will not always agree with them! Week 1, Lecture 2. The Bible as a Historical Source 3 Ancient Historians (Simkins, p. 33) History, as first practiced by the classical historians Hecataeus, Herodotus, and Thucydides, entails not only the collection of tales and traditions about the past, but also the inquiry... into the reliability of the traditions and plausibility of the tales. [Although they used different standards, they had standards!] Whereas, in the New Testament only the writer of Luke-Acts (Luke 1:1-4) claims to have investigated his sources in order to present a reliable account to Theophilus, the Old Testament writers made no such critical judgments. They were not historians in either the modern or classical sense. 4 Problem: Chronological Gap In most cases the biblical authors did not witness the events they described. They often lived centuries later. 5 3 This lecture is a summary of the main points made by Ronald A. Simkins, "Biblical History and Archaeology: Old Testament," The Catholic Study Bible, Third Edition, RG Simkins, " History & Archaeology," Ibid.

4 Fr. Pat's OT Lectures, Week 1, Page 4 of 5 Reliability of the Sources The relied on written and oral sources The reliability of these sources of these sources and their use by the biblical writers is unknown.... When no source material was available -- for private events for example -- the biblical writers would simply fill in the historical void in their presentation one way or another, ultimately by pure invention. 6 Private Events Conversations between Jacob & Esau, between Abraham & Isaac, between Abraham and Sarah. Any private conversation. (Story from Michigan) Comment on Inspiration. An inspired folk tale is still a folk tale! Being inspired does not make it more historically reliable than uninspired folk-tales Chronology Early Bronze Age BC Middle Bronze Age BC Late Bronze Age /1150 BC Iron Age 1200-??? Week 1, Lecture 3. Remarks about Archeology 7 Scientific Archaeology first began in excavation of Tell el-hesi by W. M. Flinders Petrie Tell (Arabic) Tel (Hebrew, e.g., Tel Aviv) NOVA: The Bible's Buried Secrets. 2 hour video. Stratigraphy: The earliest materials are deeper. Typology The study and classification of groups of objects (artifacts) on the basis of shared characteristics (shape, material, decoration) 8 Relative Chronology Correlating stratigraphy & Typology from various sites -- establish a relative chronology (34) Absolute Chronology Datable objects: coins, documents mentioning the reigning Pharaoh. Scientific techniques, e.g., Carbon 14 Archaeology is Interdisciplinary paleobotanists geologists physical anthropologist (pottery experts?) zooarchaeologists ecologists cultural anthropologists 6 Ibid. 7 See Simkins, "History & Archaeology," Simkins, 34.

5 Fr. Pat's OT Lectures, Week 1, Page 5 of 5 Scientific methods Carbon 14 Thermoluminescence (for dating pottery) the property of some materials that have accumulated energy over a long period of becoming luminescent when pretreated and subjected to high temperatures, used as a means of dating ancient ceramics and other artifacts. 9 Post lecture remark: The "radiation" that is being dated is the heat radiation from when the clay was fired. Neutron activation analysis (for tracing the origin of clay) The problem of "ethnicity" Ethnicity involves both material and ideological components. The identification of the early Israelites in the archaeological record as been a continual problem... for the early Israelites appear to share the same material culture as the Canaanites. 10 Limitations of Archaeology Archaeology can demonstrate that the city of Hazor in northern Israel was destroyed near the end of the Late Bronze Age, and that the city of Lachish in Judah was destroyed approximately a century later. It cannot answer the questions: Who destroyed the cities? Was the same agent responsible for the destruction of each city? Why were the cities destroyed?... What happened to the inhabitants of the cities after they were destroyed? 11 Archaeology and the "Truth" of the Bible Finally, archaeology cannot demonstrate the truth or confirm the meaning of the biblical texts. The meaning of the biblical text is not found in the degree to which the texts correspond to what really happened in the past. Rather, the meaning is found in the message that the biblical writers were communicating to their ancient readers Israel's Religious Practices 13 Artifacts tell us about culture The widespread abundance of terra-cotta female figures, for example, attests to a dominant concern for female fertility that is given little attention in the biblical texts. Similarly the graffiti found at Kuntillet ʽAjrud refers to "the LORD (YHWH) and his asherah." Apparently there were significant differences between the "official religion" and "popular piety." More on this in later lectures. 9 Google 10 Simkins, " History & Archaeology," Ibid. 12 Ibid., Ibid.

Week 9, Lecture Amihai Mazar: The Patriarchs

Week 9, Lecture Amihai Mazar: The Patriarchs OT Lectures, Week 9, Page 1 of 5 Week 9, Lecture 23. 1 Amihai Mazar: The Patriarchs Source. "The Patriarchs, Exodus, and Conquest Narratives in Light of Archaeology." 2 Cuneiform Documents Name Location