The Order of the Hebrew Bible, Part 2

Last time, I began talking about Julius Steinberg's Die Ketuvim, and specifically his argument that the sequence of biblical books, especially in the Ketuvim, is significant for interpretation. In answer to the question of how order can be important when there are so many orders around for the Ketuvim, Steinberg responds to a series of three possible objections to his approach. In the previous post, I dealt with the first objection. Now for the second and third.

Second objection: Still into the Christian era, most biblical books were contained on individual scrolls, since for technical reasons a particular maximum scroll-length could not be exceeded. Only with the emergence of codices did the question become important regarding the proper sequences of the scriptures. Can a collection of individual scrolls actually possess an intended structure?

Steinberg sensibly responds to this objection with several observations: (a) the latest scrolls could actually hold more material than the earliest codices, so the way of formulating this objection is not quite accurate; (b) in any case, one can as easily conceive of structure across multiple scrolls and one can today recognize structure across a multi-volume work; (c) lists of biblical books--with inherent order necessarily--precede the emergence of the codex.

So, I agree with Steinberg: existence of books on individual scrolls does not exclude the possibility of some macro-structure theoretically binding those scrolls together; but, of course, neither does it suggest as much.

Third objection: In light of the variety of orders, how can one maintain the view that one particular order is 'right'? 

Steinberg says that he does not say that one particular order is 'right', but he also says that not all orders are equal. They should be evaluated based on age, claim to authority, group membership, and diffusion rate.

This leads him to address the first question mentioned last time in a section titled: "The order according to Baba Bathra 14b as appropriate starting point." Steinberg gives the following rationale: (1) The order is authorized by the Rabbanan, the keepers of the oral tradition, and therefore it is an old 'official' Jewish arrangement (Steinberg points to his next ch. for detailed argument). (2) The arrangement corresponds to early historical references to a tripartite canon, such as the Sirach prologue. (3) The five Megillot are not yet collected together, as they are in the later Masoretic manuscripts. (4) The arrangement corresponds to inner-textual observations with regard to canonical 'closure phenomena', such as the concluding position of Chronicles. At the conclusion of this section, Steinberg emphasizes once again that this particular list was authorized by the Rabbanan, it is very old, and it corresponds to the internal evidence for arrangement.

How to respond to this? How in the world we know that the baraita in Baba Bathra precedes its encapsulation in the Talmud, I don't know. I suppose I'll have to wait for Steinberg's ch. 2 to see how he argues this. I know, however, that Beckwith's argument for this is deeply unsatisfying. As for Sirach's prologue, I am very suspicious of interpretations that see in it a closed third section of the canon corresponding to the list in Baba Bathra. I think John Barton (and others) has rendered this idea dubious. (I also want to note that David Carr's new book, The Formation of the Hebrew Bible [Oxford, 2011], takes a line very similar to Barton in ch. 5. Perhaps I'll be able to say some more about Carr's book in a later post.) The third argument, about the Megillot, simply shows that the list in Baba Bathra is older than the arrangement in the Leningrad Codex (eleventh century), not all that impressive. And the fourth argument is the main theme of my SECSOR paper; for now, I'll just say that I don't see how intertextual allusions, which are common throughout the Hebrew Bible, can indicate a certain canonical placement for a biblical book.

Steinberg concludes this part of his discussion with a section called: "Three Levels of Legitimation for a Structual-Canonical Interpretation of the Ketuvim according to Baba Bathra 14b." He says that because of the dearth of sources, historical reconstructions of the canon will always be debatable. But that does not nullify his project. Rather, an evaluation of the hermeneutical implications of the sequence according to Baba Bathra 14b is justified because: (a) this order, like every order, determines the reception of the text since it provides a type of context; (b) it was authorized by the Rabbanan, is very old, agrees with the canon structure attested by the Sirach prologue, and corresponds to the evidence of canonical shape internal to the Hebrew Bible; (c) it is one of the best candidates for the originally intended arrangement of the Hebrew Bible, assuming there was such an arrangement.

The first of these I will concede. The second and third I consider dubious, as I've said.

The Order of the Hebrew Bible

Is canonical order important for interpretation?

In preparation for my SECSOR paper on Chronicles, I'm reading through Julius Steinberg's book Die Ketuvim: Ihr Aufbau und ihre Botschaft, BBB 152 (Hamburg: Philo, 2006) (reviewed by Tim Stone). The basic idea of the book is that there is an intentional order to the Ketuvim ('writings'), i.e., the third section of the Hebrew Bible, and that we should attend to this order in our exegesis. Of course, one problem is choosing the correct order, and Steinberg agrees with Roger Beckwith (The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church [Eerdmans, 1985]) that the correct order is presented in the beraita of Baba Bathra 14b (Babylonian Talmud).

I am inclined to disagree with this entire line of thought. Here I want to gather some thoughts in response to one of Steinberg's brief sections. [The book itself is not brief--491 pages!] The translations of the German are my own.

On pp. 84-89, Steinberg has a sections called, "The Necessary Prerequisite for the [Structural-Canonical] Approach: A Fixed Order of Books." He recognizes that sometimes the selection of an order of books has been rather arbitrary (such as choosing the order in BHS), and he knows that there are many different orders to choose from. So he presents this two-fold question:

1. Which of the transmitted orders [in the ancient canonical lists and manuscripts] should serve as the starting point for a structural-canonical approach?

2. In view of the variety of orders, is it useful at all to evaluate the hermeneutical implications of a particular order? 

He takes the second question first, and responds to three possible objections to the idea of an order of books as hermeneutically significant:

First objection: The history of interpretation shows that the order of books practically never played a roll. Can someone then actually claim that the consideration of order is so important?

This is an objection that I myself think valid. Steinberg responds in two ways.

(1) He relies on Meir Sternberg's work on Hebrew narrative (The Poetics of Biblical Narrative, Indiana University, 1987) to argue that subtle arrangements of the text can be significant, and can add to interpretation, even if they are missed by the majority of interpreters. Fair enough. [But I would still like to know who's order I'm interpreting, but more on that in another post.]

(2) Steinberg also argues that the order of books has, in fact, played a significant role in the history of interpretation. His evidence for this assertion: (a) the many different sequences of books known from ancient lists and manuscripts--sequences themselves that reveal certain principles of order (Steinberg points to his following chapter for more discussion)--suggest that whoever devised these sequences did feel that order was important; (b) some canon lists (Baba Bathra 14b, the second Rabbinic Bible, Adath Deborim) claim to give the correct order, meaning that the compilers of these lists deemed order important; (c) the position in the canon sometimes has been taken as hermeneutically significant, as for instance for Malachi at the end of the prophets, Genesis at the beginning of the Torah, Chronicles at the end of the Bible, and as evidenced by the influence of the historicizing sequence of the Greek Bible upon the reception of the OT.

This second answer to the first objection is not very compelling. Steinberg tries to make the variety of sequences for the Ketuvim work to his advantage, but I think unsuccessfully. True, the different orders to reveal different thoughts about how the Ketuvim should be arranged, which suggests that the 'arrangers' were concerned with sequence. But it also suggests that these 'arrangers' did not consider a single order to be intrinsic to the canon, or did not recognize one to be so. That is, if Baba Bathra 14b is taken as the original canonical order for the Ketuvim (Steinberg will argue this in ch. 2, pp. 106-95), so that other orders are deviations from it, the question still remains why others felt so free to deviate, sometimes severely, from the canonical order. Why did they not recognize this particular order as 'written into' the canon? They were not changing out the canonical books, but they apparently did not consider the preservation of this original sequence to be all that important; rather, they thought they could improve it.

The canonical lists mentioned by Steinberg are all rather late, and that is an issue I look forward to seeing him address later in his book. That is, even if there is some intentionality behind the order in Baba Bathra 14b, why should that concern me? After all, as Steinberg has said, there is intentionality behind a plethora of orders. Why does Steinberg think this one in Baba Bathra is worth my time? But, as I say, Steinberg will get to that, so I'll have to wait to see what he says. I assume he'll agree with Beckwith that the order of Baba Bathra actually derives from the second century BCE.

As for the third point (letter c), Steinberg is very brief, so it is difficult to know what he means. Who takes Malachi's position at the end of the prophets to be hermeneutically significant, and what do they mean by that? Does Steinberg mean ancient commentators? I would think of ancients as more important than moderns if one is addressing the history of interpretation in this way, but Steinberg does not say what commentaries he has in mind. The way he phrases it, I would assume modern commentaries. But do these commentators see the significance to be that Malachi is placed last of the Twelve, or last of the canonical prophets altogether, or last of the second division of the Hebrew Bible called Prophets, or last chronologically of the prophetic books we now have in the Bible? I can see modern commentators taking all these positions, or none of them, but in any case I don't think it's very significant for the way Malachi's position in the canon has been viewed throughout time. For that, I'd rather know about what Jerome's commentary on Malachi says about the sequence of prophetic books, or Theodore's commentary, or Cyril of Alexandria's, or Calvin's, or the midrashim. The brevity of Steinberg's treatment of this question does not allow him to delve into this at all.

The placement of Genesis in the canon, and Chronicles, and the influence of the Greek order on the Christian understanding of the OT, are all different and still not compelling as evidence for the point Steinberg wants to make. So, this objection--that the idea of a canonical order with bearing on interpretation is a modern construct--still remains valid in my mind.

But this post is somewhat long, so next time I'll see if I can deal with Steinberg's other points in this section.

The Word 'Disciple' in the Bible

I just discovered this bit of information, and thought it worthy of sharing. The Greek word μαθητής (mathetes, disciple, student) appears 261x in the Bible, but only in the NT (i.e., never in the LXX). Furthermore, it appears only in the Gospels and Acts. Here are the numbers.

Matthew: 72x, mostly speaking of the Twelve. Additionally, John the Baptist has disciples (11:2; 14:12), and the Pharisees do too (22:16), and Jesus speaks of a 'disciple' generally (10:24-25), and there do seem to be disciples of Jesus besides the Twelve (cf. 8:21). But it would be interesting to see if Matthew uses the word mathetes to describe followers of Jesus other than the Twelve after it is clear in Matthew's narrative that Jesus has specially commissioned the Twelve as his disciples (which apparently in Matthew happens in 10:2-4, where Matthew names the disciples). On a quick perusal, I did not find any instances.

Mark: 46x. Same issues as above. Interesting that the last appearance of mathetes is 16:7 (i.e., it does not appear in the longer ending of Mark). I'm not making an argument, just an observation. Of course, it doesn't appear in Mark's first chapter, either.

Luke: 37x. Weird that Luke, the longest Gospel, has fewer instances of mathetes than Mark, which Luke almost certainly knew (assuming Marcan priority, with the vast majority of scholars). Does this mean that Luke edited out the word mathetes from his Gospel? Does he have a word that he prefers to mathetes for naming the followers of Jesus? I'll try to think about those issues the next time I read through Luke. I'm not an NT scholar, so very probably if work has been done on this, it would have escaped my notice.

After typing the above, I looked through some of the verses in Luke, with some interesting initial results. Luke does use mathetes in reference to disciples of Jesus other than the Twelve--19:37: at the Triumphal Entry, "the whole crowd of the disciples" were rejoicing. Matthew (21:8-9) has only "crowd", and Mark (11:8) has "many" (πολλοί). Also, at 6:17, immediately after naming the Twelve, Luke tells us that a "large crowd of his disciples" were gathered to hear him. 

Luke is also the Gospel that uses the word ἀπόστολος (apostolos) most frequently, though still not very often: Matthew uses it once (10:2), Mark once (6:30; but see the variant at 3:14), John once (13:16, but not in reference to the Twelve--just a general reference to 'one sent'), and Luke uses it six times (6:13; 9:10; 11:49; 17:5; 22:14; 24:10), at least five times in reference to the Twelve (maybe not 11:49). This of course does not count the many appearances of the word in Acts (28x), some of which do not refer to the Twelve (14:4, 14, in reference to Paul and Barnabas).

Back to mathetes:

John: 78x. I'm not interested right now in looking through these to see if they are always about the Twelve or are more general. A project for later.

Acts: 28x. I believe (from a quick perusal) that it is never used in reference to the Twelve in Acts. Instead, the Twelve are termed 'apostles', and mathetes is used in reference to general believers. See, for instance, ch. 6 (vv. 1, 2, 7), the first chapter where the term appears.

And that's it for the NT. Again, the word 'disciple' never appears in Paul's letters, or anyone else's letters. Christians are called 'saints' or 'believers' or 'brothers' (these terms are also used in Acts), but they are not called 'disciples' (or 'Christians', for the most part).

Blog Changes

Some will notice several significant changes about this blog. For one thing, there's content. More on that in a minute. Also, I have updated the look of the blog quite a bit.

As for the new look, I'll tell you why I did that--I figured out how. I'm not very tech savvy (understatement!). I have a phone that is capable of (1) actually making a phone call and (2) sending a text. I have never sent a text, and I'm wondering if I can get a phone that wont do that. It's annoying to receive texts. Actually, I'd like to get rid of the phone altogether, but my wife wont let me. Anyway, so I'm not tech savvy; thus it took me a while (4 years or so) to figure out how to change the look of the blog and add features, such as a blogroll, that you now see down the right column. I hope the new look makes for a more pleasant experience with this blog.

Now for the content. If you peruse the archives, you'll notice that Feb. 2012 has seen an explosion of posting on this blog in comparison with what I've done over the past couple of years. In all of 2011, I had one post, in January. In 2010, there were three months in which I posted something, for a total of seven posts. In 2009, I had two posts, both in October. The high year for this blog all time in terms of number of posts was 2008, with 17 posts. In April 2008, I had six posts, the high month.

This post represents number nine for 2012, and number nine for February. So, this is already the new high month, and 2012 is well on its way to a new high year for this blog. The reason I've been posting more things is because Charles Halton has shown me the light. I knew that blogging could be valuable to one's scholarly profile, but Charles' post still opened my eyes.

Also, I've seen the value of this blog as an outlet for my ill-formed ideas, ones that I don't have the time or inclination to develop fully, but ones that I still want to note and remember. So, hopefully, this blog will continue to feature new content, especially of the weird ideas about biblical studies and patristics that pop into my head. But I also plan on posting more significant and thought-out articles arising from my research.

So, happy reading, and do let me know what you think. 

Colossians 2:14 in Song

Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross (Col. 2:14, KJV)

erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross. (Col. 2:14, NRSV)

I grew up hearing that this meant that the Law of Moses, or maybe even the Old Testament (which usually amounted to the same thing, for those from whom I heard this), was nailed to the cross by Jesus, and that's how we know we don't have to follow the laws in the Pentateuch.

I understand that the exact referent of 'handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us' is still debated by NT scholars, some of whom do hold that this refers to the Law (not the OT). However, the interpretation of this passage in the sense that the handwriting of ordinances is some type of IOU makes so much sense to me, especially in context (v. 13--"having forgiven us all our transgressions"!), that I don't really see why there is debate. What Jesus nailed to the cross was our sin, the debt laid against us, our 'bill' before God, the 'handwriting of ordinances' condemning us because of our sin.

It seems to me that our song writers, anyway, may have so understood the passage. The verb 'to nail' appears in the Bible in the KJV and NRSV only in this passage, increasing the likelihood that the following two well-known hymns were written with this passage in mind. Granted, Spafford and Breck may have simply been reflecting on Jesus himself being nailed to the cross, and his bearing our sin, but the thought and the very wording agree so well with Col. 2:14 that they may also have relied on it.

My sin--oh the bliss of this glorious thought,
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more.
Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord, oh, my soul!

Second stanza of "It Is Well With My Soul," written by Horatio Spafford (1873)

There was One Who was willing to die in my stead,
That a soul so unworthy might live;
And the path to the cross He was willing to tread,
All the sins of my life to forgive.
They are nailed to the cross! They are nailed to the cross!
Oh, how much He was willing to bear!
With what anguish and loss Jesus went to the cross,
But He carried my sins with Him there.

First stanza and refrain of "Nailed to the Cross," written by Carrie E. Breck (1899)

Graduate Seminars

Mark on your calendars Wednesday 29 February, when the graduate program of Heritage Christian University will convene its first of four graduate seminars for this semester. It'll be during lunchtime (11:30-1:00), and the lunch will be complimentary for those who attend.

I'll be presenting a paper at this first seminar. It's actually the same paper I noted here, which I will be presenting at SECSOR two days later.

The plan is to hold these seminars every two weeks on Wednesdays during lunch for the rest of the semester. Brad McKinnon will present some of his research on Churches of Christ in Vietnam at the second seminar, and then Jeremy Barrier will present some recent research on The Acts of Paul and Thecla (on which he has written a commentary), and then I'll present another paper (my NAPS paper) to close out the semester. Hopefully next year we will continue these seminars, and maybe we can get some of our graduate students involved, presenting their original research that forms part of their theses.

The format will be something like this: at 11:30 we'll eat, at about noon I'll present a paper for about 25 minutes, and then we'll have 30 minutes or so for discussion.

These seminars are open to everyone, including local ministers, but graduate students are especially encouraged (and, perhaps in the future, required) to attend. What could be better?--free lunch, dissemination of knowledge, discussion about the Bible and its reception.

Joseph and the Eunuch's Wife

A recent article in JBL discusses the sexual use of slaves: Joseph A. Marchal, "The Usefulness of an Onesimus: The Sexual Use of Slaves and Paul's Letter to Philemon," JBL 130.4 (2011): 749-70. I have not read the article, though I am skeptical of the main thesis.

It did remind me, though, of an idea I had sometime back about Joseph in Potiphar's house. Now, a couple of times, Potiphar is called in Hebrew a saris (Gen. 37:36; 39:1), a word used in the Pentateuch only here and a little later in Genesis, in reference to Pharaoh's 'chief cupbearer' and 'chief baker' (40:2, 7). The word is used 42x in the Hebrew Bible: 9x in the Former Prophets (i.e., historical books), 2x in Chronicles; 12x in Esther; 3x in Isaiah; 5x in Jeremiah; and 7x in the first chapter of Daniel.

The NRSV splits its translation of saris between 'officer' (or some such) and 'eunuch', which is the way it renders it in 2Kings 9:32; 20:18; 23:11; every time in Esther and Isaiah; Jer. 34:19; 38:7; 41:16. On the other hand, the LXX consistently translates saris with the Greek eunouchos, opting for a different translation only a handful of times. In fact, twice (Gen. 37:36; Isa. 39:7) the LXX uses a different Greek word, spadon, that also means 'eunuch'.

The point of this review of the philological data is to say that when Potiphar is called a saris, almost all English translation render this 'officer', but an equally viable translation would be 'eunuch', and this was certainly the view of the earliest interpretation on record, the LXX. I believe that the main reason that English versions stay away from 'eunuch' in this context is because Potiphar is married, and it is thought unlikely that a eunuch would have a wife.

Actually, I think that provides an interesting reading to the story. We all know that Mrs. Potiphar comes off as rather sex-crazed, and this could be explained by the fact that she is married to a eunuch. But why would a eunuch get married? Well, he's a high-ranking public official, who needs to give the appearance of a wonderful home life. At least it's not hard to think of modern analogies to this (perhaps anachronistically) hypothesized situation. I believe I have come across this interpretation somewhere, but I can't remember where.

But I have never seen the suggestion that Joseph may have been purchased by Potiphar specifically to fulfill this need of his wife's. And that's where Marchal's article could help with supplying data for the sexual use of slaves in antiquity (though I understand that Marchal is looking specifically at a Greco-Roman context, not an ANE one). It is worth thinking about, anyway, whether Potiphar may have wanted to purchase this good-looking slave (39:7) to satisfy his wife, or even to raise up offspring to himself. Well, does it at least sound like something JSOT might print?

But yesterday my friend Nathan Daily pointed out that if I'd actually read the text, I'd see that Joseph said to Mrs. Potiphar quite clearly that Potiphar has withheld her from him (Joseph) precisely because she is his (Potiphar's) wife (39:9).

Too bad. That seems like it kills my interpretation. I only see two options for retaining it. Perhaps Joseph was unaware of Potiphar's plans for him, and Potiphar counseled his own wife to seduce the handsome slave. Now, that really sounds like JSOT material. Or, maybe the final redactor of Genesis has attempted to cleanse the story of these impious elements through some crafty editorial work, but he failed to do his job well enough that we can't recover the original form of the story. And, of course, we do that by the oft-used scholarly technique of 'making-it-up'.

Now that sounds like I've got something for VT or ZAW. But I think I'll leave the matter alone. Dear readers, feel free to develop the idea yourselves, but perhaps you'll want to start with a conference paper.