Listening to the Word of God: Exegetical Approaches 3846901984, 9783846901977, 9783846901984

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Oberurseler Hefte Ergänzungsbände Herausgegeben von Werner Klän im Auftrag der Lutherischen Theologischen Hochschule Oberursel Band 16

Achim Behrens/ Jorg Christian Salzmann (Eds.) Listening to the Word of God Exegetical Approaches with translations by Marion Salzmann

Inh. Dr. Reinhilde Ruprecht e.K.

Mit 2 Abbildungen und 6 Tabellen. Für die Umschlagabbildung wurde ein Bild von Tekoa/Israel (erwähnt z.B. auf Seite 108) verwendet © 2010 Deror avi CC BY-SA 3.0.

Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen National­ bibliografie; detaillierte Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.ddb.de abrufbar. Eine eBook-Ausgabe ist erhältlich unter DOI 10.2364/3846901984. © Edition Ruprecht Inh. Dr. R. Ruprecht e.K., Postfach 17 16, 37007 Göttingen – 2016 www.edition-ruprecht.de Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Das Werk einschließlich seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urhebergesetzes bedarf der vorherigen schriftlichen Zustimmung des Verlags. Diese ist auch erforderlich bei einer Nutzung für Lehr- und Unterrichtszwecke nach § 52a UrhG. Satz: Jorg Christian Salzmann Lektorat: Kevin Armbrust und Fritz von Hering Layout: mm interaktiv, Dortmund Umschlaggestaltung: klartext GmbH, Göttingen Druck: Digital Print Group, Nürnberg ISBN: 978-3-8469-0197-7 (Print), 978-3-8469-0198-4 (eBook)

Inhaltsverzeichnis Vorwort /Preface ............................................................................................. 7

1 Historical Approaches/Historische Zugänge ......................................... 11 David L. Adams: Some Observations on the Historicity of the Biblical Creation Account .................................................................... 13 Achim Behrens: Erwiderung .......................................................................... 36 Achim Behrens: Response ............................................................................. 40 Jorg Chr. Salzmann: Auslegung von Mt 14,22–33 vermittels historischer Zugänge – Sinn und Grenzen der Methodik ................................................... 43 Jorg Chr. Salzmann: Exegesis of Matt 14:22–33 by Means of Historical Approaches – Significance and Limitations of a Method ................................ 55 Vilson Scholz: Response ................................................................................ 67

2 Literary Approaches/Literarische Zugänge .......................................... 71 James Voelz: Literary Interpretation of the Scriptures (Mark 8:22–26) .......... 73 Jorg Chr. Salzmann: Erwiderung ................................................................... 95 Jorg Chr. Salzmann: Response ....................................................................... 97 Achim Behrens: Linguistische und pragmatische Beobachtungen zu Amos 7,1–8,2............................................................................................ 99 Achim Behrens: Linguistic and Text Pragmatic Observations in Amos 7:1–8:2 .......................................................................................... 109 Paul Raabe: Response.................................................................................. 119

3 Contextual Approaches/Kontextuelle Zugänge .................................... 121 Timothy Saleska: Reading Psalm 1 in the Context of the Psalter: Voices in Conversation ................................................................................ 123 David Adams: Response .............................................................................. 140

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Dieter Reinstorf: Apartheid and Present Day South Africa as a Context in Reading Galatians 3:26–28 ......................................................................... 144 Timo Laato: Response ................................................................................. 163

4 Text and Authority/Text und Autorität ................................................ 167 Jeffrey Kloha: Theological and Hermeneutical Reflections on the Ongoing Revisions of the Novum Testamentum Graece .................... 169 Vilson Scholz: Response .............................................................................. 207

Appendix/Anhang.................................................................................. 211 Contributors to this Volume/Liste der Beiträger .......................................... 213 Acknowledgements/Danksagungen ............................................................. 214 Bibliography/Literaturverzeichnis............................................................... 216 Indices/Register.......................................................................................... 225

Vorwort Exegeten bewusst lutherischer Prägung erörtern Methoden der Auslegung der Heiligen Schrift. Alle Beiträge in diesem Band sind getragen von der gemeinsamen Überzeugung, die Heilige Schrift als Gottes Wort auszulegen. Und doch sind selbst in dieser eng verwandten Konfessionsfamilie unterschiedliche Zugangsweisen festzustellen, die miteinander ins Gespräch gebracht werden. Die Auswahl der in diesem Band vereinigten Beiträge zur Methodendebatte in den exegetischen Fächern ist somit in mehrfacher Hinsicht ungewöhnlich: Zum einen sind Alt- und Neutestamentler vertreten. Zum zweiten gehören alle Beiträger in das Spektrum des konfessionellen Luthertums. Und zum dritten bringen sie bewusst ihr jeweils europäisches, nord- wie südamerikanisches und auch südafrikanisches Gepräge mit. Dabei sind – mit einer Ausnahme – alle Vorträge auf die Auslegung je eines biblischen Textes fokussiert; jedem Referat ist eine kurze Erwiderung zugeordnet. Der Aufbau des Buches folgt den Arbeitsschritten eines Symposiums, das im November 2013 in Oberursel stattfand. Grob werden hier „Historische Zugangsweisen“, „Literarische Zugangsweisen“ und „Kontextuelle Zugangsweisen“ voneinander unterschieden. Der Beitrag unter der Kategorie „Text und Autorität“ befasst sich mit dem Sondergebiet Textkritik. Für die Drucklegung wurden die Beiträge überarbeitet und erweitert. Bei den Historischen Zugängen setzt sich David L. Adams mit dem religionsgeschichtlichen Vergleich für Genesis 1 auseinander und kommt zu dem Schluss, dass das geschichtliche Denken so etwas wie das Alleinstellungsmerkmal der biblischen Schöpfungsgeschichte ist. Jorg Chr. Salzmann bearbeitet die Geschichte vom Seewandel (Mt 14,22–33) mit verschiedenen Methoden und versucht dabei deutlich zwischen historischer Methodik in der Textbearbeitung und der Frage nach der Historizität von Ereignissen zu unterscheiden. Unter Literarischen Zugängen stehen je ein Beitrag von James W. Voelz und Achim Behrens. Die erklärte Absicht von Voelz ist, den biblischen Text für sich sprechen zu lassen und ihn nicht in eine moderne Welt einzupassen. Exemplarisch führt er das an der Heilung eines Blinden (Mt 14,22–33) durch und macht auf einzelne Züge dieser Erzählung auch und gerade innerhalb ihres markinischen Kontextes aufmerksam. Behrens führt unter dem Paradigma der „syntaktischen Wiederaufnahme“ am Beispiel der Visionen im Amosbuch (Am 7,1–8,2) vor, wie die literarische Gestaltung alttestamentlicher Texte unter den Gesichtspunkten einer Textgrammatik erfasst werden und zu neuen Deutungseinsichten führen kann. Der Beitrag von Timothy E. Saleska zu den Kontextuellen Zugängen verbindet den literarischen, von der Redaktionsgeschichte beeinflussten Zugang zur Psalmeninterpretation am Beispiel von Psalm 1 mit der Frage, wodurch die jeweils wahrgenommenen Kontexte bestimmt sind. Er kommt zu dem Ergebnis, dass hier letztlich

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der Kontext der Ausleger den Ausschlag gibt. Von einem ganz bestimmten, durch die Apartheid geprägten Kontext geht Dieter Reinstorf aus. Den methodischen Dreischritt von Kontextualisierung, Distanzierung und Aneignung führt er in seiner Auslegung von Gal 3,26–28 exemplarisch durch. Unter Text und Autorität schließlich verhandelt Jeffrey J. Kloha neuere Einsichten der biblischen Textkritik. Sein besonderes Augenmerk gilt der Frage, wie man mit einem nicht bis in die letzte Silbe hinein festgelegten, „plastischen“ Text umgehen kann, ohne dabei die Autorität des Gottesworts in Frage zu stellen oder gar zu verlieren. Was die jeweiligen Respondenten (zwei Nordamerikaner, ein Südamerikaner, ein Schwede und zwei Deutsche) in ihren kurzen Stellungnahmen anzumerken haben, lässt erkennen, wie spannungsreich, klärungsbedürftig aber auch ertragreich die Diskussion um die Auslegung der Heiligen Schrift innerhalb des konfessionellen Luthertums geführt werden kann – und muss! Dies nachzuvollziehen sei allen Lesern ans Herz gelegt, um noch tiefer in die Debatte einzusteigen. Dass der vorliegende Band keine erschöpfende Diskussion sämtlicher exegetischer Methoden bieten kann, versteht sich von selbst. Er will dazu anregen, selbst kritisch und reflektiert sowie mit methodischer Vielfalt an den biblischen Texten weiter zu arbeiten. Oberursel, im Oktober 2015

Achim Behrens/Jorg Christian Salzmann

Preface Exegetes with a markedly Lutheran standing discuss methods of Scriptural interpretation in this volume. All contributions are witness to the common conviction that Holy Scripture is expounded as God’s Word. But even in this closely related Lutheran “family” approaches vary and must be debated. The choice of articles incorporated in this volume is unusual in several ways. For one thing it includes Old- and New Testament scholars. For another all the authors are confessional Lutherans. Thirdly, each of these European, North American, South American and South African colleagues bring with them their own particular outlook. With one exception, each article focusses on the exegesis of a biblical text. Each presentation is followed by a short response. The book follows the structure of a conference held in Oberursel/Germany in November, 2013. “Historical Approaches”, “Literary Approaches” and “Contextual Approaches” are roughly grouped together. The article in the group “Text and Authority” is concerned with the particular area of textual criticism. The contributions have been revised and expanded for publication. In the group concerned with “Historical Approaches” David L. Adams compares Genesis 1 with ancient Near Eastern texts. He comes to the conclusion that historical thinking is a characteristic unique to the biblical story of creation. Jorg Chr. Salzmann applies various methods to Matt 14:22–33 (walking on the water) and attempts to differentiate clearly between using historical methods to interpret a text and determining the historicity of events. The “Literary Approach” is demonstrated by James W. Voelz and Achim Behrens. Voelz specifically intends to let the biblical text speak for itself without adjusting it to the modern world. He demonstrates this in Mark 8:22–26 (healing of a blind man) and calls attention to particular features of the narration, in particular in the Markan context. Behrens uses the paradigm of “syntactical resumption” to demonstrate in Amos 7:1–8:2 how the literary composition of Old Testament texts can be understood through their textual-grammatical structure, leading to new insights. The article by Timothy E. Saleska in “Contextual Approaches” contemplates Psalm 1. He combines a literary approach to the interpretation of the Psalms, influenced by Redaktionsgeschichte, with the question of how the perceived context of each text is determined. He concludes that ultimately the exegete’s own context is decisive for his interpretation. Dieter Reinstorf takes a specific context influenced by apartheid as his starting point. He demonstrates the methodical triad of contextualisation, dissociation and appropriation, taking Gal 3:26–28 as an example. And finally Jeffrey J. Kloha in “Text and Authority” debates recent insights in biblical textual criticism. His particular interest lies in the treatment of a “plastic” text – which is not determined down to the last syllable – without questioning or indeed forfeiting the authority of God’s Word.

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The comments made by the respondents (two North Americans, one South American, one Swede and two Germans) show that discussion of Scriptural interpretation among confessional Lutherans can be rich in tension and ambiguity while remaining fruitful – and that it is a “must”. We commend the responses to our readers for deeper access to the debate. It goes without saying that this volume cannot attempt to be an exhaustive discussion of all exegetical methods. It hopes to stimulate further work on biblical texts which is both critically reflective and methodically varied. Oberursel, October 2015

Achim Behrens/Jorg Christian Salzmann

1

Historical Approaches/ Historische Zugänge

Some Observations on the Historicity of the Biblical Creation Account David L. Adams I begin with a simple observation that ought to be self-evident among those whose profession it is to study historical texts, biblical or otherwise: It is not possible to determine the historicity of any event by the study of a text that purports to describe that event.

In saying that this principle ought to be understood, I am well aware that it is frequently either not understood, or that it is misunderstood. This seems to be especially true for those who comment upon the biblical creation account, for commentators frequently attempt to make some argument, or draw some conclusion, about the historicity of the biblical claim that Yahweh created the cosmos by making some reference to the text. For some, it is axiomatic that the mythic character of the biblical creation account precludes any question of its historicity. For others, the fact that the text is narrative rather than poetry, serves as evidence for the historicity of the biblical account of creation, the assumption being that narrative is inherently more ‘historical’ than poetry. More recently, John Walton has argued that the text must be read from a functionalist perspective and that, because the text is concerned with the function of the things created, no conclusion may be drawn as to the historicity of the events described. Arguing that the theological message of Genesis 1 is the establishment of the view that creation is the cosmic temple in which God has taken up residence, and from which he runs the cosmos, Walton writes of his work, “Genesis 1 has been presented as an account of functional origins … rather than an account of material origins … As an account of functional origins, it offers no clear information about material origins.”1 All of these positions are fundamentally flawed. No text, biblical or otherwise, can prove the historicity of any event. Moreover, no analysis of literary aspects, of the genre, or of the function of a text can prove or disprove the historicity of any event described in the text.2 Events and texts belong 1 2

John H. Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One (2009), 163. To be fair to Walton, this is consistent with his position. Walton’s error is not that the conclusion that he draws about the events is based on his understanding of the relationship between text and events. Rather his error is in his misapplication of an otherwise basically correct observation that, when speaking of the things created, the biblical creation account describes them primarily in terms of the function they perform. While the basic observation is correct, the broader conclusions

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to two phenomenologically distinct categories that do not intersect. As a result, the most that we can learn from a text is what the author believed to have happened, or what he wants the reader to believe about what has happened. Let me make my own position clear from the outset: I believe that Yahweh created the cosmos out of nothing over the course of six, literal, 24-hour days. Moreover, I believe that this understanding of the creation account of Genesis 1 is fundamental to biblical Christianity, so that the rejection of this position undermines the entire structure of the Christian faith. That this conviction is a matter of faith rather than an assertion proved by some spurious conviction about the relationship between literature and history is consistent with the Bible’s own view, as expressed by the author of the book of Hebrews (11:3): Πίστει νοοῦμεν κατηρτίσθαι τοὺς αἰῶνας ῥήματι θεοῦ, εἰς τὸ μὴ ἐκ φαινομένων τὸ βλεπόμενον γεγονέναι. – By faith (emphasis mine) we understand that the universe was formed by the (spoken) word of God, so that what can be seen did not come into being out of visible things.

This recognition, that our acceptance of the historicity of the creation account is a matter of faith rather than a matter that can be proved or disproved from the text of Genesis 1 (or otherwise, for that matter), does not mean that the text has no historicity. Rather, it leads us to approach the question of the nature of the text’s historicity from a different perspective: The historical significance of the creation account is the way in which the message of the text is rooted in, and directed at, its own historical context, and in the implications of the claims that it makes based on Yahweh’s actions in creating the world.

The biblical creation account presents an understanding of the nature of God, and of his relation to the material world, that is radically different from that of Israel’s ancient Near Eastern neighbors. Furthermore, it bases that understanding on the implications of Yahweh’s actions in creating the world. In that radical difference between the biblical creation account and those of Israel’s Ancient Near Eastern neighbors lies the Old Testament’s most fundamental understanding of who Yahweh is, and of how he relates to the material world and to us, as a part of it. To understand this – and especially to understand both its necessity and its significance for Christian theology – one must consider the biblical creation account in the context of other creation accounts from the Ancient Near East. that Walton draws from it, and his application of those conclusions to the theological understanding and significance of the biblical creation account are not correct. Moreover, it is not the case, as Walton appears to assume, that a text that speaks of material things primarily in terms of their function cannot also communicate something about the material substance of the things being described or the circumstances or manner of their coming into being.

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The Role of Myth in Ancient Near Eastern Thought In his work on the nature of mythology, G. S. Kirk identifies three main types of myths: (1) myths told for entertainment; (2) myths that have a transformative power over the material world, and which are often used in the cultus to bring about or sustain a desirable state of affairs, or to support an institution such as a kingship; and (3) explanatory or speculative myths, which attempt to account for the state of the world or the origin of a particular condition or practice.3 Of these, the second and third are particularly significant for Ancient Near Eastern religious thought. The creation accounts of the Ancient Near East clearly belong to Kirk’s third category, myths that attempt to account for the state of the world. It is fairly common for those raised within the intellectual framework of modern western thought to take it for granted that such mythological tales from the Ancient Near East are to be understood as fantastic, made-up stories about the gods of the ancient world. To us they all appear to belong to Kirk’s first category, as stories told for entertainment. It must be said at the outset, however, that this is not how the ancients understood their myths. From their perspective, myths were a means of exploring, explaining, and interacting with the cosmos. They were science, theology, sociology, anthropology, history, philosophy, and religious practice all together. As Christiane Zivie-Coche summarizes the nature of myth in Egyptian thought: The telling of myth, whether its implicit presence in the carrying out of rituals, or its actualization in a dramatic performance such as the one repeated each year for Horus of Edfu, perpetuated it and ceaselessly reactualized it in the present time. Stories about deities were necessarily true, because they expressed the reality of the visible and the invisible world, such as the Egyptians understood it, and because they were the metaphorical image that established a link between the real world and that of the imaginary. To ask whether the Egyptians believed in their myths is thus scarcely a meaningful question.4

Erik Hornung makes a similar observation about the reality of the deities of Egypt when he writes, “There is no need to enter into questions of belief, of the existence or nonexistence of God or of gods. The historical reality of the Egyptian gods is amply demonstrated by the fact that the Egyptians lived with them and carried on a lively dialogue with them for thousands of years.”5 Hornung is not arguing that the fact that the gods of Egypt worshiped for thousands of years proves their existence, but rather that it proves that the Egyptians believed in their existence and structured their lives accordingly. 3 4 5

Geoffrey S. Kirk, Myth: Its Meaning and Function in Ancient and Other Cultures (1970), 252– 261. François Dunand/Christiane Zivie-Coche, Gods and Men in Egypt: 3000 B.C.E. to 395 C.E. (2004), 37. Erik Hornung, Conceptions of Gods in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many (1982), 31.

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For the inhabitants of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, belief in the gods entailed belief in the myths by which knowledge of the gods was communicated. The truthfulness of the myths was no more susceptible of doubt than the existence of the gods themselves or of the material world through which the gods were manifest. As Christiane Zivie-Coche further observes: The reality of the gods was thus on the same plane as that of the sky, of the air, of the land, and of living beings. This is why belief and faith in these gods were not posed in the terms to which the revelation of monotheistic religions has accustomed us. Since the gods were phenomenological realities that belonged to he physics of the universe, and in this regard were immanent in it, it was absurd to believe or not to believe in their existence.6

Put it in other terms, to the inhabitants of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt their myths were as certainly, and self-evidently, true as the results of science are to modern man.

Creation in Ancient Near Eastern Thought When comparing the biblical creation account with the creation accounts of the Ancient Near East, an important distinction is necessary from the outset. This essay will continue to refer to those mythological texts that preserve some version of the coming-into-being of the world as ‘creation accounts’. Properly speaking, however, there is no such thing as a ‘creation account’ among the surviving texts from the Ancient Near East. While there are texts, both from Mesopotamia and Egypt, that speak about the formation of the world as it exists today, these texts are not, technically speaking ‘creation accounts’ for three reasons. First, the texts are more about the coming-into-being of the gods than the coming-into-being of the world. Given the understanding of the relationship between the gods and the material cosmos that existed in these religions, these two issues are ultimately different ways of saying the same thing. However, to the extent that it is possible, and from the modern perspective necessary, to distinguish these, the coming-into-being of the material cosmos is secondary to, and dependent upon, the coming-into-being of the gods. In the same way, the ordering of the relationships between the gods entails the ordering of the material cosmos as well. Second, what is said about the formation of the world in these texts is said in the context of discussing other issues. For example, the primary thrust of the most complete Mesopotamian account of creation, the Enuma Elish is to explain the ascendency of Marduk and the establishment of his primary sanctuary, the Esagila, in which the Enuma Elish was recited annually as a part of the New Year’s festival’s

6

Dunand/Zivie-Coche, Gods and Men, 6.

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ritual recapitulation of these events. There is no single surviving text whose primary focus is the creation of the world. Third, what the mythological texts say about the formation of the world as it exists today is not a description of ‘creation’ in the sense in which that term has been understood in its historic Judeo/Christian conception. None of these accounts relate the coming-into-existence of the fundamental substance of the material reality (what we might call matter per se, for the fundamental substance of reality -- i.e. matter -- is understood by them to be eternal). As the eminent Assyriologist Jean Bottéro summarized the Mesopotamian view: [C]ompletely absent from that culture was the idea that something had come from nothingness. There was never any notion of an ex nihilo creation. At the beginning of the world, at the beginning of everything, there was an enormous chaos, something huge and compact, in which every-thing was included and mixed together, and from which everything had gradually been extracted, made explicit, and put into place, through the intervention of an actor: a demi-urge.7

What is described in these accounts, then, is the coming-into-being of the individual gods, typically through a process of procreation, and the defining of the relationships that characterized the divine order. As a consequence of this the material cosmos is ordered and shaped into the form in which it now exists by the imposition of order upon the preexisting, unformed chaos that existed before the world as we know it came into being.

Creation in Mesopotamian Thought As we have noted, the best-known account of creation from Mesopotamia is preserved in the Enuma Elish. Several versions of this work have survived, and the differences between them are relatively minor.8 The text records the account of how Marduk rises to preeminence among the gods. As a part of this process the coming into existence of the gods is described through the procreation of Apsu and Tiamat (Tablet I). After one of their sons, Ea, foils Apsu’s plans by killing his father, civil war breaks out among the gods as Tiamat seeks to avenge the killing of her husband. Marduk, the son of Ea, emerges as preeminent by slaying Tiamat, cutting her body into pieces, and using the pieces of her body to arrange the material world

7 8

Dunand/Zivie-Coche, Gods and Men, 6. The name Enuma Elish (“When on high”) is taken from the first two words of the account as preserved in Akkadian language. The fullest and best-known version of the Enuma Elish consists of about 1100 lines of poetry covering seven tablets. Its composition is dated variously to either around 1700 or 1100 B.C. It is commonly believed to have been written to explain the elevation of Marduk to the central position in the Babylonian pantheon by King Hammurabi after he established the city of Babylon, whose patron deity was Marduk, as his capitol, around 1750 B.C.

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(Tablets IV and V). He also kills Tiamat’s consort, Kingu, and uses his blood to form mankind to act as the servants for the gods (Tablet VI). Insofar as it relates the origin of the world, the Enuma Elish begins by describing a state in which primeval matter exists without distinctions: When on high the heaven had not been named, Firm ground below had not been called by name, Naught but primordial Apsu, their begetter, (And) Mummu-Tiamat, she who bore them all, Their waters commingling as a single body; No reed hut had been matted, no marsh land had appeared, When no gods whatever had been brought into being, Uncalled by name, their destinies undetermined …9

As the Enuma Elish envisions it, the primeval state of the cosmos consisted of a single undifferentiated ‘substance’. In this primeval state not only was the material world not differentiated from the gods, but even the first gods, Apsu and Tiamat, are not distinguished one from another. The text describes this by saying, “Their waters commingling as a single body.” Apsu is the god, originally worshipped among the Sumerians of southern Mesopotamia, associated with the waters of the underworld, from which the springs come. Tiamat is the goddess, apparently of Semitic origin, associated with the waters of the sea. Bottéro notes that some of the lists of the ancestors of the gods give a name to this undifferentiated substance that is the ultimate source of all things, which he describes as being a solitary “figure, place, and matter” believed to be of a watery nature, known as “Nammu, the Lady of the God, the Mother who gave birth to the Universe.”10 In this stage the one primeval substance from which all things, divine and material, come is characterized as water. The characterization of this primeval substance as water is natural enough. Water is the only thing known to ancient man that has substance but no inherent form. Thus water quite naturally comes to represent chaos, i.e. unformed matter. The manner in which Apsu and Tiamat become individualized is not recounted, but the account continues with the emergence of two pairs of children born to this first divine couple: Lahmu and Lahamu, and Anshar and Kishar. The theogony continues with the births of two more gods through Anshar, Anu and his son Ea (Nudimmud). The tale assumes the birth of other deities who are not named because they are not primary characters in the plot of the unfolding story. In the subsequent violent internecine conflict between the gods, Anu and Ea realize that they are not strong enough to defeat Tiamat’s forces. They then call upon

9

Enuma Elish, Tablet I, lines 1–8; ANET, 60–72. Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations from the Enuma Elish and other ancient texts are taken from ANET. 10 Jean Bottéro, Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia (2001), 74–75.

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Marduk, the son of Ea, who agrees to fight for them after receiving the promise of the gods that he will reign supreme among them. Marduk confronts, fights, and ultimately kills Tiamat, then captures her consort Kingu. From the body of Tiamat he forms the material world. Then the lord [i.e. Marduk] paused to view her dead body, That he might divide the monster and do artful works. He split her like a shellfish into two parts: Half of her he set up and ceiled it as sky, Pulled down the bar and posted guards. He bade them to allow not her waters to escape.11

After appointing the places of the other gods by arranging their images in the sky, he completes the work of arranging the material world by arranging for the monthly cycle of the moon in relation to the sun: In her [i.e. Tiamat’s] belly he established the zenith. The Moon he caused to shine, the night (to him) entrusting. He appointed him a creature of the night to signify the days: 12 “Monthly, without cease, form designs with a crown.”

Upon the demand of the gods that they be relieved of the work they were required to do, Marduk proposes to create mankind to act as servants for the gods, to relieve them of the tedium of having to work to supply their own daily needs.13 This he does by consulting with his father, Ea, to kill Tiamat’s consort Kingu: They bound him [i.e. Kingu], holding him before Ea. They imposed on him his guilt and severed his blood (vessels). Out of his blood they fashioned mankind. He [i.e. Marduk] imposed the service and let free the gods. After Ea, the wise, had created mankind, Had imposed upon it the service of the gods …14

11 Enuma Elish, Tablet IV, lines 135–140; ANET, 67. 12 Enuma Elish, Tablet V, lines 11–14; ANET, 68. 13 As Bottéro, Religion, 114, puts it, “The faithful were convinced that humans had been created and put on Earth for the sole purpose of ensuring, through human industry and solicitude, that the gods led an opulent and worry-free life, free to concentrate on the government of the world and its inhabitants.” 14 Enuma Elish, Tablet VI, lines 31–36. The Atrahasis Myth provides an alternative, and more detailed, account of the creation of mankind. In it the basic reason for the creation of mankind is the same, the desire to relieve the gods of the labor required to produce their daily needs. In that account, however, the details are different. There, it is Ea rather than his son Marduk who is responsible for creating man, and it is a minor deity known as Wê who is slain and whose blood is used to create mankind.

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Having thus provided for the gods by creating man, Marduk appoints the gods to rule over the various aspects of the material world. The Anunnaki-gods respond by building the city of Babylon as a shrine and abode for Marduk, and declare fifty holy names for him as a testimony of his supremacy. From this brief survey of the Enuma Elish it should be apparent that in the Mesopotamian tradition there existed a single primeval substance from which everything – the gods, the material cosmos, and mankind – has its origin. This primeval substance has no origin, existing before the differentiation of the first deities, and may be described as at once divine (being the substance of the gods) and material (being the substance of the material cosmos). This essential understanding of the nature of the gods and the material cosmos is a decisive factor in the shape of Mesopotamian religion, both in terms of its conception of divinity and also of the character of its religious practice.

Creation in Egyptian Thought That Egyptian religion also held that before ‘creation’ there existed a state of being in which “there were not yet two things,”15 is apparent from the surviving texts that speak of the coming-into-being of the cosmos as we know it. Hornung summarizes the general process of ‘creation’ as the Egyptians understood it: The origin of the created world in a process of diversification, of the separation of elements that were previously united, dominates Egyptian ideas of creation. Earth and sky, which were originally united, are separated by Shu; light comes forth from darkness; land emerges from the primeval water; the creator god “divided (wpj) the nature of the one from that of the other,” thus endowing every being with its unmistakable individuality.16

Our knowledge of the details of the ancient Egyptian understanding of creation is limited both by the lack of a clear and detailed narrative in which the creation is described and by the competing theological systems of the various Egyptian religious centers. The most common understanding appears to have been that the god Atum emerged from within the goddess Nun (representing chaos, or undifferentiated matter). The god Atum then generated four pairs of gods. These eight deities represent the parts of the body of Atum, which he generates by naming them. These eight gods (together with Atum) were known as the Ennead (i.e. the Nine). From the mating of one of these pairs, Nut and Geb, have come both the other gods and the material world as we know it. By this means it appears that the order of the cosmos 15 This phrase is used to describe the initial state of existence in the ancient Egyptian coffin texts. Raymond O. Faulkner (ed.), The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts (1973–1978), 2, 396b; 3, 383a. 16 Hornung, Conceptions, 171–172.

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is regarded as the creation of Atum, by whom it is preserved until he allows it to return to a state of chaos (Nun). This Egyptian tradition is both less fully articulated and less consistent in detail in the surviving sources than its Mesopotamian counterpart.17 Despite the many differences in detail between the surviving versions, the fundamental cosmology is nevertheless quite consistent. In the Egyptian conception the initial state of the cosmos consists of an inchoate and undifferentiated primeval watery matter, characterized as the deity Nun.18 From this state arises the ‘creator god’ Atum/Re at what was called the ‘First Occasion’. In one version from Heliopolis Atum/Re speaks: “I am Atum when I was alone in Nun; I am Re in his (first) appearances, when he began to rule that which he had made.” Who is he? This “Re, when he began to rule that which he had made” means that Re began to appear as a king, as one who was before the liftings of Shu had taken place, when he was on the hill which is in Hermopolis … “I am the great god who came into being by himself.” Who is he? “The great god who came into being by himself” is water; he is Nun, the father of the gods.19

The passage alludes to the primeval state in which there existed a single ‘substance’, Nun, the undifferentiated waters of chaos from which come all things. From Nun the sun-god, Atum/Re, is differentiated by arising on a primeval hill, which emerges from the chaos. The details are obscure and appear to conflict in the various versions of the myth. Sometimes Atum/Re is characterized as the Benu bird sitting on the Ben-ben hill, the primeval hill that is the prototype for the pyramid. In 17 In neither Mesopotamia or Egypt was there a coherent collection of holy writings that were regarded as authoritative. For Egypt, especially, there are relatively few early written religious texts. What we know of Egyptian religion, especially of the early periods, must be pieced together from a variety of fragmentary, inconsistent and sometimes contradictory literary sources, supplemented with a careful analysis of the material remains from Egyptian archaeology that reflect religious ideas through artwork and architecture. Moreover, many of the texts that do discuss the origin and order of the cosmos appear only in relatively late sources. The result is a necessarily incomplete and unsatisfying picture. The further fact that a large proportion of the surviving texts come from the genre of funerary texts should further caution us that our picture of Egyptian religion maybe distorted in the direction of funerary and afterlife concerns, and certainly does not represent the wide range of concerns that constitute the daily practice of religion in ancient Egypt. 18 A very good, if necessarily artificially reconstructed, summary of the process of the mythological history of the cosmos in Egyptian thought, including especially the coming-to-be of the world, is provided by Geraldine Pinch, Egyptian Mythology (2002), 57–89. 19 Another Version of the Creation by Atum, ANET, 3–4. In this less detailed version of the mythological system from Heliopolis, the Ennead begotten by Atum includes four pairs of deities: Shu (god of air) and Tefnut (goddess of moisture); Geb (god of earth) and Nut (goddess of the sky); Osiris (the god of afterlife) and Isis (goddess of fertility); Seth (god of storms and the desert) and Nephthys (goddess of divine protection). From the mating of these four pairs everything else comes into existence.

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other cases Atum/Re appears to be the hill itself. In either case, emergence of Atum is the beginning of creation, in the sense that it is the first distinction in the undifferentiated primeval substance that is Nun, and from which come all of the remaining distinctions that comprise the form and order of the material world. Atum then generates the first pair of deities, Shu and Tefnut. That the emergence of Atum/Re as the first differentiated being marks the beginning of the process of the formation of the world as it is known to man is even more clear from the creation account preserved in “The Book of Overthrowing ‘Apep” from the Bremner-Rhind Papyrus: Thus spake the Lord of All [Atum/Re] after he had come into being: It was I who came into being as Khopri. When I came into being, ‘Being’ came into being, and all beings came into being after I came into being; manifold were the beings which came forth from my mouth ere the sky had come into being, ere the earth had come into being, ere the ground and reptiles had been created in this place … I alone made every shape ere I had spat out Shu, ere I had expectorated Tefenet, ere there had come into being any other who could act with me … I indeed made excitation with my fist, I copulated with mine hand, I spat with my own mouth; I spat out Shu, I expectorated Tefenet … They brought back to me mine Eye with them after I had united my members; I wept over them, and that is how men came into being from the tears which came forth from mine Eye … I created all reptiles and all that exists among them. Shu and Tefenet begat Geb and Nut, and Geb and Nut begat Osiris, Horus Mekhantenirti, Seth, Isis, and Nephthys from the womb, one after another, and they begat their multitudes in this land.20

Other theological centers in Egypt offered variations on this mythological account of creation. Among the most significant of these variations occurs in the “Theology of Memphis” in which the god of Memphis, Ptah, is given a prominent place in the cosmology by being associated with the primeval deity, Nun, from which all things come.21 Through identification with the undifferentiated substance of chaos, from which arise the gods and all things, Ptah(-Nun) is said to be the source of all that exists:

20 The Bremner-Rhind Papyrus (British Museum no. 10188) is a relatively late manuscript – the Colophon dates the copying to c. 312 B.C. – containing 4 ritual texts: the Songs of Isis and Nepthys, the Ritual of Bringing in Sokar, the Book of Overthrowing ‘Apep, and the Names of ‘Apep, which shall not be. The quoted text is from the third of these, believed to be a ritual text intended to provide magical protection for the sun-god from the storm-demon ‘Apep during the former’s daily transit of the sky. The translation is from Raymond O. Faulkner, The Bremner-Rhind Papyrus: III: D. The Book of Overthrowing ‘Apep, JEA 23 (1937), 172. 21 ANET, 5. According to this version Ptah begets Atum, who in turn generated the other eight gods of the Ennead by masturbation (cf. also The Repulsing of the Dragon, ANET, 6) and by naming them. In the version preserved in The Repulsing of the Dragon Shu and Tefnut were generated by Atum, and the other deities of the Ennead came into being through their procreative acts.

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And so Ptah was satisfied, after he had made everything, as well as all the divine order. He had formed the gods, he had made cities, he had founded nomes, he had put the gods in their shrines, he had established their offerings, he had founded their shrines, he had made their bodies like that (with which) their hearts were satisfied. So the gods entered into their bodies of every (kind of) wood, of every (kind of) stone, of every (kind of) clay, or anything which might grow upon him, in which they had taken form. So all the gods, as well as their ka’s gathered themselves to him, content and associated with the Lord of the Two Lands.22

The later ascendancy of Thebes introduces other variations to the creation mythology of Egypt, in which the god of Thebes, Amun, takes the place of honor. Despite the considerable variation and contradiction in the details, the theological systems of the rival cultic centers at Heliopolis and Memphis and Thebes nevertheless reflect an essentially consistent underlying cosmology that is, in terms of its conception of the relationship of the divine to the material world, quite close to that of Mesopotamia. In both Mesopotamia and Egypt the prevailing cosmology conceived of a single undifferentiated primeval ‘substance’ from which both the gods and the material world have their being. Despite many differences in details, the gods and the material world come into being through a process that is most often characterized as procreative. As Hornung notes: The process of creation is precisely the emergence from the single creator god, whose sex is not differentiated, of a sexually differentiated divine couple, Shu and Tefnut, who in their turn conceive other couples of both sexes and thus initiate procreation and birth. One of the characteristics of the world before creation is therefore that “birth had not come into being” in it, and the oldest god had to arise “of himself.”23

Curiously, by our standards at least, the origin of mankind does not seem to play a major role in the creation myths of Egypt. As seen in the excerpt from the “Book of Overthrowing ‘Apep” quoted above, to the extent that it is described at all, mankind’s origin is attributed to tears shed by the ‘creator god’ Atum/Re, or in some versions by the deity known as ‘the Sole Eye’ of Atum sent out by him to survey his creation.24 Whatever the details, it is noteworthy that in Egyptian mythology, like that of Mesopotamia, humans have their origin in the material substance of the 22 Ibid. 23 Hornung, Conception, 171. 24 It is difficult to assess the significance of mankind coming into being through the shedding of tears. Noting that the Egyptian word for mankind, remetj, forms a pun with the word for tears, remi, some are inclined to see little significance in the process. Others find more meaning there. Pinch, for example, notes that the origin of mankind in the tears of the creator-god suggests a sorrow-filled conception of human life: “It is these tears of sorrow and loneliness that produce humanity. In contrast, deities arise as a byproduct of Ra’s joy when his mother, Neith, returns. So, most versions of the tears myth provide an explanation for the perpetually sorrowful and imperfect state of humanity.” Pinch, Mythology, 67.

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deity (tears in Egypt, blood or semen in Mesopotamia), and so share to a limited degree in the divine life and power. Here also the continuity of the material world with the world of the divine is emphasized.

Creation in Biblical Thought On the basis of the preceding summary we may identify some points at which the biblical creation account is like the creation accounts from Mesopotamia and Egypt, and other points at which they differ. Yet it must be said that even at those points where the biblical account of creation is most similar to the mythopoeic accounts, they are not the same. For example, we observe that the end result of both the biblical and the mythopoeic accounts is the ordered and functioning cosmos within which humans live. Yet in the mythopoeic accounts the coming-into-being of the cosmos is a side-effect of the coming-into-being of the gods, a concept entirely absent from the biblical account. Similarly, in the biblical account of creation the undifferentiated matter that God first brings into being is characterized as water (Gen 1:2, 6–7), the same characterization given to the undifferentiated eternal material substance/deity (Nammu in Mesopotamia and Nun in Egypt) in the mythopoeic accounts. However in the biblical account the water is never characterized as a deity, but as a thing brought into being by the creative activity of Yahweh. A fuller analysis of the similarities and differences between the mythopoeic accounts of creation and Genesis 1 would reveal that the similarities fall into two general categories: verbal similarities (i.e. the use of cognate, or related, words) and metaphors. Given the relations between the Akkadian languages of Mesopotamia and biblical Hebrew, verbal similarities are both frequent and inevitable. Their presence in the creation account by itself neither constitutes evidence of direct borrowing of material at the literary level nor is it evidence of an equality of shared ideas in the underlying conceptual framework. Similarly, given the broader cultural connections and related nature of the subject matter, some overlap of usage from the limited stock of available metaphors is to be expected. As with the occurrence of cognate words, this overlap in the use of metaphors by itself tells us nothing about the underlying conceptual framework. As a result, what emerges as distinctive in a comparison of the biblical creation account from similar accounts from the Ancient Near East is much more important than such superficial similarities. In particular, three elements of the biblical creation account stand out as substantially, even radically, different from the creation accounts from Mesopotamia and Egypt. Each of these elements represents a critically important component of the theology of the Bible.

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God and the Material Cosmos The first area in which the biblical creation account differs from the mythopoeic accounts of creation is in the relationship between the divine and the material cosmos. The creation accounts of Mesopotamia and Egypt both express an understanding of reality in which the fundamental material substance from which both the gods and the material cosmos are derived is eternal. Thus, from their perspective the gods are, in a very real sense, material beings and the material cosmos is, to the same extent, divine. It is this recognition that stands behind the observation of Christiane Zivie-Coche: The reality of the gods was thus on the same plane as that of the sky, of the air, of the land, and of living beings. This is why belief and faith in these gods were not posed in the terms to which the revelation of monotheistic religions has accustomed us. Since the gods were phenomenological realities that belonged to he physics of the universe, and in this regard were immanent in it, it was absurd to believe or not to believe in their existence.25

The biblical creation account is a forceful polemic against such a view. Writing of the traditional interpretation of Genesis 1, the Jewish scholar Nahum Sarna reflects an awareness of the profound difference between it and the religions of the Ancient Near East on the question of the nature of God: It … makes a momentous assertion about the nature of God: that He is wholly outside of time, just as He is outside of space, both of which He proceeds to create. In other words, for the first time in the religious history of the Near East, God is conceived as being entirely free of temporal and spatial dimensions.26

25 Dunand/Zivie-Coche, Gods and Men, 6. 26 Nahum Sarna, Genesis (1989), 5. This is not the place for a detailed discussion of the grammatical and syntactical alternatives for translating Gen 1:1. Nor is it necessary. It is quite true that the syntax of the first few verses of Genesis can be read in the way that Sarna and others suggest, though it requires modifying the Hebrew text as we currently have it. It is in the nature of Hebrew grammar that more than one way of reading the text is frequently possible. But possible is not probable. The appropriate question is not whether it is possible to read the Hebrew text in this way, but whether reading the Hebrew text in this way is consistent with its context. The answer to this question is that it is not. In the first instance, nothing in Genesis 1 suggests, or even allows for, the possibility that God emerged from the undifferentiated substance and is therefore consubstantial with the material cosmos, which would be required if one were to adopt the parallel with the Enuma Elish. In the second place, the whole of the creation account specifically places God ‘outside’ of time and space, to use Sarna’s phraseology, since God proceeds to bring time into existence by introducing temporal distinctions into the material cosmos (Gen 1:3–5) and to bring space into existence by introducing spatial distinctions into it (Gen 1:6–8). If one were to modify the text of Gen 1:1 in order to read it in a manner consistent with the beginning of the Enuma Elish, it would then be inconsistent with the view of the relationship between God and the material world presented in the remainder of the chapter. Thus the traditional reading of the first few verses of Genesis 1 is the reading that best fits

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Even the most cursory reading of Genesis 1 establishes one fundamental point of contrast between the creation accounts of Mesopotamia and Egypt and that of the Old Testament: in the biblical account there is only one actor, ‫אלהים‬. But it is not merely the numerical singularity of the divine that distinguishes the view of God in Genesis 1 from that of its ancient Near Eastern neighbors. In addition to the monotheistic perspective, the view of God in the biblical creation account stands apart from its Ancient Near Eastern counterparts in that in it ‫ אלהים‬does not emerge from a perpetually existing undifferentiated chaos, but is entirely distinct from it. He speaks matter into existence and acts upon it. Unlike the creation accounts from Egypt or Mesopotamia, the biblical creation account does not conceive of God as being comprised of the same essential substance as the material cosmos. Indeed, it precludes such a view. Here there is no panoply of deities whose emergence from undifferentiated matter is presented as a procreative process. Here there is no array of gods whose differentiation corresponds to the differentiation of the various aspects of the material world, to which they are related and by which they are represented within the material world. There is one divine being who speaks time and space and all things into existence. The significance of this difference can hardly be overstated. From the outset the Old Testament presents the reader with an understanding of the relationship between God and the material world, and hence of the presence of God within the material world, that is fundamentally at odds with the understanding that prevails in the religions of the nations that surround Israel. For the first time in the religious history of the Near East, God is conceived as being entirely distinct from the material world, and thus entirely free of any material aspect. This radical difference in the understanding of the nature of the divine and the relationship between the divine and the material world presented in Genesis 1 not only precludes the common Ancient Near Eastern view of how the divine is understood to be present within the material world, it shapes both the religious ideas (i.e. the theology) and the religious practices (i.e. the cultus and the moral ethos) of the Old Testament in a variety of ways that make the religion presented in the Old Testament radically different from the religions of Israel’s neighbors. The brevity of this essay does not permit exploration into the theological and religious implications of this distinction in any detail. But we should at least note some of the areas of the theology of the Bible that are directly affected by the different understanding of the nature of God and his relationship with the material cosmos expressed in the biblical creation account. Chief among these are: The Theology of the Word. While the idea that the divinely-spoken word has the power to effect change is commonplace in the Ancient Near East, the elevation of the spoken word to the primary instrument of God’s creative power, replacing both

the context of what is said in the rest of the account, and is to be preferred over modifying the text to create an artificial parallel to the Enuma Elish.

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differentiation and procreation, shapes both the prophetic tradition (with which it is associated) and lays the foundation for the use of ‘word’ as a theonomaic term for the presence of God. The Prohibition of Images. Throughout the religions of the Ancient Near East the image (Hebrew ‫ )צלם‬plays a critical role in religious practice. The prohibition of images in the Old Testament is a direct consequence of the conception of the presence of God associated with and articulated in the biblical creation account. The Prohibition on the Practice of Magic. Magic is a fundamental religious practice of all the religions of the Ancient Near East outside the Israel. The biblical prohibition on the practice of magic (cf. Deut 18:9–14) is a direct consequence of the understanding of the relationship between God and the material cosmos reflected in the biblical creation account. The Role of Man. The biblical creation account articulates a view of what it means to be human that is unique in the Ancient Near East. In both Mesopotamia and Egypt, mankind was understood to have been created as slave-labor to provide for the needs of the gods. The biblical creation account elevates man to the role of the ‘image’ of God, in the sense that mankind both acts as steward to govern creation on God’s behalf and reflects his character within the realm of creation. This, in turn, shapes the unique relationship between God and humanity that is reflected throughout the biblical witness. The Theology of the Divine Presence. All of the preceding points are related to the broader biblical concept of the presence of God. Since, as the creation account makes clear, Yahweh is not inherent within the material cosmos, the Old Testament develops a distinctive theology of the presence, communicated through a variety of theophanic and theonomaic terms as well as through the theology of the tabernacle and temple, to express God’s presence and activity within the realm of creation. This, in turn, influences much of the theological language and religious practice of the Old Testament. The Incarnation. The theology of the presence of God reflected in the biblical creation account leads directly to the New Testament concept of the incarnation of God’s messiah. The biblical concept of ‘incarnation’ is distinct from the ‘manifestation’ that characterizes the appearance of gods of the ancient world within the material world in the mythology of the Ancient Near East. This list is not exhaustive, but nevertheless it illustrates the extent to which the concept of the nature of God and his relation to the material world that is expressed in the biblical creation account determines the shape of the theology of the Old Testament, and consequently of the New Testament.

Temporal Structuring The second area in which the biblical creation account differs from the mythopoeic accounts of creation is in the temporal structuring of the account in terms of seven

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days. No other Ancient Near Eastern creation account is temporally structured in any form. Thus the temporal structuring of the biblical creation account is a distinctive, intentional, and significant feature of the account. The temporal structure of the biblical creation account culminates with God resting from his creative activity (Gen 2:2), and with his blessing the seventh day and setting it apart (Gen 2:3). This state of rest is more than simply the last event in the story of creation; it is the telos, or goal, of God’s creative activity. By describing the state of rest as the telos of God’s creation we mean to say that the temporal structuring of the creative activity reveals God’s intention that this state of rest should characterize all that he had made, and should be the on-going experience of his creation. The character of the seventh day is established by God’s own activity on it: he rested (Hebrew ‫)שׁבת‬. However, this seventh day of creation is not technically the Sabbath, for the Sabbath, i.e. the weekly religious observation of a day of rest, was instituted by God as the sign of the covenant that he makes with Israel at Mt. Sinai (Exod 20:8–11; 31:12–18). Thus it would be anachronistic to refer to the day at the conclusion of God’s creative activity as the Sabbath in this sense. Rather, this day of rest, which constitutes the goal of God’s creative activity, is the foundation of the later Sabbath day, which both serves as a sign of God’s covenant with Israel and anticipates the end-time restoration of creation to the state of rest that characterized it at the completion of God’s creative activity. For the material world, the overall condition that characterizes the state of rest that was God’s intention for creation is described by another distinctive feature of the biblical creation account, the use of the word ‘good’. In this case the Hebrew term ‫ טוב‬should not be understood to imply the moral quality that we typically associate with the term ‘goodness’ (i.e. goodness as opposed to evil), but rather it connotes ‘goodness’ in the sense of a thing that has been brought to completion and which functions as it was intended to function.27 That is why God pronounces his creation to be ‘good’ at the end of each stage of his creative work,28 and why the whole of God’s creation is described as ‘very good’ when the entire creative activity is complete (Gen 1:31). In concrete terms, the goodness that characterizes the state of rest consists of three closely-related blessings: fecundity (fruitfulness), security, and the rule of God. The temporal structuring of the biblical creation account is related to other significant theological constructs. Chief among these are:

27 This is evident also from the first thing that God calls ‘not good’: the state of man’s being alone (Gen 2:18). When God says that it is ‘not good’ that man/Adam was by himself he is not saying that being alone is a moral evil, but rather that it is an incomplete state. Specifically, in being alone Adam is incomplete insofar as he is unable to participate in the blessing of fecundity that God bestows on all living things. This is manifest by the steps that God takes to rectify the ‘not good’ condition of the man. 28 Gen 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25.

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The Biblical Conception of Time. Throughout the religions of the Ancient Near East time is understood as circular. The cycles of month and year were thought to anticipate a time to come when the government of ‘creation’ would fail and chaos would re-emerge. While the biblical view of time acknowledges circularity within nature, it presents a conception of time that is ultimately teleological, which anticipates the restoration of the state of shabbat which God intended to establish as the on-going state of his creation, before it was disrupted by the disobedience of Adam and Eve. The Sabbath Day. The most obvious application of the temporal structuring of the biblical account of creation is the setting aside of every seventh day as a day of rest which both recalls the establishment of rest at the end of God’s creative activity (Exod 20) and celebrates God’s redemptive activity, by which the state of rest will eventually be restored (Deut 5). This establishes the cycle of time that we know as the ‘week’, the only temporal cycle in the Bible that is rooted in a religious observance rather than a process of nature. It is noteworthy in this regard that the setting aside of every seventh day as a religious festival is unique in the ancient world; no other nation in the Ancient Near East practiced a weekly day of rest as a religious observation. The Theology of Rest. The Sabbath day is but one expression of a broader theology of rest in the Old Testament that encompasses the role of the land and the establishment of the rule of God among his people. This theological emphasis is both critical to the overall theology of the Old Testament and serves as a type of God’s redemptive activity in Christ, through whom the people of God may enter into God’s sabbath rest (cf. Heb 3–4) and who promises to give rest to all of those who come to him (Matt 11:28–29). The Eschaton. As suggested above, the teleological nature of the biblical view of time entails a different ‘end’ to the material cosmos than is envisioned in any other system of religious thought in the Ancient Near East. The biblical notion of an eschaton in which the state of rest that was God’s intended goal in creation is derived from the temporal structuring of the biblical creation account. Fall and Restoration The third area in which the biblical creation account differs from the mythopoeic accounts of creation is in the characterization of the world created by Yahweh as ‘very good’, the loss of this condition through human disobedience, and the intention of God to restore the lost state of his creation. In neither Mesopotamia nor Egypt is the created cosmos characterized as having an initial state of harmony that is disrupted as a result of human disobedience. The closest that any of the creation accounts of the Ancient Near East comes to the concept of a ‘fall’ is the assertion in the Atrahasis Myth that the god Enlil wished to destroy mankind because the noise that men made disturbed his sleep. According

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to the narrative, the gods having created mankind to do work as slave-labor to provide for their needs, Enlil becomes disturbed that their numbers have multiplied to such an extent that they keep him awake: The land became wide, the peop[le became nu]merous, The land bellowed like wild oxen. The god was disturbed by their uproar. [Enlil] heard their clamor (And) said to the great gods: “Oppressive has become the clamor of mankind. By their uproar they prevent sleep. [Let] die flour [be c]ut off for die people, [In] their [belli]es let the greens be too few.”29

In order to get a better night’s sleep, Enlil introduces disease, drought, and famine to limit the number of humans. When this fails to bring about the intended results, Enlil decides to destroy mankind entirely by means of a flood. The other gods do not want to have to go back to work to do the tasks that the humans were doing, and so Enlil’s intention is foiled by the intervention of Ea. In the end, Ea apparently convinces Enlil that it will be possible to limit the growth of the human population by introducing shorter lifespans, infertility, and infant mortality. While this account would parallel the biblical fall narrative insofar as the end result of each is death, hardship, and suffering, the two accounts operate from a substantially different starting point, and with a substantially different world-view. The Atrahasis Myth does not present the newly-created world as essentially ‘good’, nor does the divine judgment flow from an act of disobedience to the divine commands. The gods act entirely out of self-interest. More importantly, the mythopoeic accounts never suggest the possibility of a restoration to the earlier state. Indeed, as we have noted, both Mesopotamian and Egyptian religious thought anticipated that the cosmos would eventually revert to a state of chaos that characterized all things before the ‘creation’.30 The concept of a ‘fall’ from which the cosmos is to be redeemed and restored is an essential component of the biblical narrative. The divine judgment upon the disobedience of Adam and Eve entails the loss of the three primary blessings associated with the presence of God in the creation account, fecundity, security, and

29 The Atrahasis Myth, ANET, 104–106. The quotation is from the Old Babylonian Version, Tablet II, lines 2–10; ANET, 104. 30 If the interpretation of Pinch and others is correct (see note 24 above), Egyptian religion is even farther from the biblical conception. In Egyptian thought, they maintain, the creation of man from the tears of the gods suggests that from the outset human life was understood to have been characterized by sorrow and suffering. And as in Mesopotamia, no restoration of the cosmos to an earlier, better state is ever suggested.

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the rule of God.31 Both the Old Testament and the New offer promises of God’s intention to restore these lost blessings. This understanding helps to shape several key elements of the biblical narrative. The Land as a Type of a Restored Creation. We noted above the connection of the promises associated with the land to the concept of a restored shabbat. Insofar as the promises associated with the land are not fulfilled in the natural land of Israel, the biblical writers project their fulfillment into a future in which the land of Israel serves as a prototype of a restored creation. The Expectation of a Messiah. Both the Old Testament and the New Testament speak of an anointed one who is to be the agent by which God restores creation to the ‘good’ state that was lost as a result of human disobedience. The Eschaton. As previously noted, the expectation of a state in which the blessings of shabbat, i.e. the state of the cosmos as God intended it to be before the fall, are restored is the foundation of the eschatological expectations of both the Old and the New Testaments.

Conclusion: What Difference Does It Make? In dealing with the biblical creation account as an historical text, we began by noting that it is not possible to determine the historicity of any event from a text that purports to describe that event. Thus, as the letter to the Hebrews notes, the only epistemological principle to which we can appeal is faith. This being said, we have approached the question of the historicity of the biblical creation account from a different perspective, the perspective shaped by the 31 Jewish interpretation of the Tanak has frequently held that the consequences of the disobedience of Adam and Eve affected them alone, and that these consequences do not constitute an on-going disruption of the relationship between God and his creation. That this view is incorrect is demonstrated in several ways within the narrative itself. First, the narrative of Gen 3 contains within it a direct statement that the consequences of God’s judgment extend beyond Adam and Eve as individuals. Specifically, the reference to the conflict between Eve’s descendents and the descendents of the serpent requires the reader to understand that the consequences of the disobedience of Adam and Eve are not limited to them only. Second, there are certainly examples within the Tanak of the consequences of transgression effecting individuals. In general, the judgment of God upon transgressions entails not only the individual, but the family and, in many cases, the entire people. The curse upon the land as a result of Adam’s disobedience reflects this same idea that the effects of an individual’s actions can, and do, extend beyond the individual. Third, the narrative of Genesis presents the consequences of the disobedience of Adam and Eve as extending beyond themselves in the aftermath portion of the account. The spread of the violence described in Gen 4 represents a loss of security that stands in stark contrast to the description of the state of affairs in Gen 2, before the disobedience. In this way the narrative demonstrates the spread of the consequences of their disobedience to extend to the next generation. Fourth and last, evidence that the consequences of the disobedience of Adam and Eve extend beyond themselves comes from the unfolding biblical narrative. There the effects of God’s judgments – alienation, loss of fecundity, hardship and suffering in the fulfillment of one’s natural role in creation, and death – all continue to be experienced by subsequent generations down to the present.

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question of what is at stake, theologically speaking, if the biblical creation account is not true in the literal, historical sense. To answer that question we have examined the way in which the biblical creation account stands as a polemic against the mythopoeic understanding of the coming-into-being of the gods and the cosmos, and of the relationship between these two. While this addresses the significance of the text’s historical contextuality, it does not, of itself, address the question of its historicity. More specifically, we are left with this question: to what extent does the theology of the biblical creation account depend upon its historicity? To answer that question we must set the biblical creation account within the broader framework of the Old Testament revelation. The Old Testament provides us with two paradigms for understanding the will and ways of God: the prophetic theological tradition and the wisdom theological tradition.32 The prophetic theological tradition interprets the character and work of God as they are revealed through the acts of God in history. The wisdom theological tradition interprets the character and work of God as they are revealed through the order that God has built into creation. The biblical creation account blends elements of both the prophetic and the wisdom traditions. It is, however (like the bulk of the Pentateuch), predominantly within the prophetic tradition. While the account presents us with the ordering of the cosmos, the central theological tenets of the narrative are not derived from observing the order itself (as is the case with the wisdom tradition), but from the nature of God’s actions in establishing that order. As with the other elements of the prophetic tradition, the biblical creation account does not present us with a ‘spiritual’ theology based on some symbolic or abstract theological speculation. Rather, it asserts that God may be depended upon to keep his promises in the future because he has shown himself to be both compassionate and faithful by what he has done in the past. Thus the psalmist declares (Ps 143:5): I remember the former days. I meditate on all your deeds. I consider the work of your hands.

In this way the theological claims about the person and will of God are rooted, according to the prophetic tradition, in the actual deeds of Yahweh in the past. Like the deliverance of Israel from Egypt and the restoration from the exile, the theological validity of the creation account is rooted in Yahweh’s actions in, with, and under history. For this reason the creation account has no theological value if it did not actually happen. The core theological ideas that we have discussed in this 32 By referring to these as ‘theological traditions’ it is my intention to distinguish between these two approaches as ways of reflecting on God and his works and the literature that embodies these reflections, which we commonly call ‘prophetic literature’ and ‘wisdom literature’.

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presentation are all primarily rooted in the view of the biblical authors that Yahweh’s nature, character, and will are revealed by how he has created the world. The inescapable corollary to this view is that if Yahweh did not create the world in this way, there is no grounds for believing that Yahweh differs at all from the gods worshipped by the surrounding cultures of the Ancient Near East, or that any of the theological implications described above as related to the creation account has any validity. It is for this reason that I said at the outset of this study that the rejection of the historicity of the biblical account of creation effectively undermines the entire structure of the Christian faith. If Yahweh did not create the world out of nothing then Yahweh is no different from the other gods of the ancient world. And if Yahweh is no different from the other gods of the ancient world then everything else that the Bible says about Yahweh is in vain, and your faith is in vain. Thus, while we cannot prove, and should not claim to be able to prove, the historicity of the biblical account of creation according to the canons of the study of history, the inner of the theology of the Bible compels us to confess with the author of the letter to the Hebrews (11:3): By faith we understand that the universe was formed by the word of God, so that what can be seen did not come into being out of visible things.

Summary “It is not possible to determine the historicity of any event by the study of a text that purports to describe that event.” Starting from this, the question of the historicity of Genesis 1 is approached, and the author asks what is at stake, theologically speaking, if the biblical creation account is not true in the literal, historical sense. The study demonstrates that the mythopoeic accounts of creation from the Ancient Near Eastern cultures surrounding Israel all work from the understanding that both the gods and the material world are derived from a single eternal, unformed, primitive substance. The emergence of the individual gods from that substance (and the corresponding distinctions within the material world) arises through a process that is most commonly described in terms of procreation. By contrast, Genesis 1 presents an account of creation that is fundamentally at odds with the mythopoeic view: the being of Yahweh is not derived from an eternal unformed primitive substance, and the coming-into-being of the cosmos is not characterized as a procreative process. There are three ways in which the biblical creation account differs at the fundamental conceptual level from the mythopoeic accounts of the surrounding cultures: in the relation between God and the material cosmos; in the temporal structuring of

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the creation account; and in the concept that God’s creative work resulted in a ‘very good’ state. The subsequent rebellion and fall, and God’s intention to restore creation to that ‘very good’ state, provide the trajectory of the remainder of the biblical understanding of history. The prophetic theological tradition, to which the creation account belongs, builds its understanding of God, his will, and his ways on the basis of God’s deeds in history. As a result, a rejection of the historical nature of the biblical creation account is tantamount to the rejection of the biblical concept of God, and of the theology that flows from it. Thus it is necessary that creedal Christianity should affirm with the author of the book of Hebrews (11:3), “By faith we understand that the universe was formed by the word of God, so that what can be seen did not come into being out of visible things.”

Zusammenfassung Man kann die Historizität eines Ereignisses nicht dadurch erweisen, dass man einen Text untersucht, der dieses Ereignis beschreibt. Von dieser Feststellung ausgehend betrachtet der Autor Genesis 1 und fragt, was theologisch auf dem Spiel steht, wenn der biblische Schöpfungsbericht nicht im wörtlichen, historischen Sinn wahr ist. Die Untersuchung zeigt sodann, dass die mythischen Schöpfungserzählungen des Alten Orients aus der Umgebung Israels alle auf der Annahme basieren, dass sowohl die Götter als auch die materielle Welt von einer einzigen, ewigen, ungeformten Ursubstanz herrühren. Die Entstehung der einzelnen Götter (und der entsprechenden Distinktionen in der materiellen Welt) aus dieser Substanz kann am besten als Prozess von Fortpflanzung und Geburt beschrieben werden. Demgegenüber steht der Schöpfungsbericht von Genesis 1 in fundamentalem Gegensatz zu der mythologischen Weltsicht: Jahwes Existenz kommt nicht aus einer ewigen ungeformten Ursubstanz, und die Entstehung der Welt wird nicht als ein Prozess von Fortpflanzung und Geburt charakterisiert. Der biblische Schöpfungsbericht unterscheidet sich auf dreierlei Weise fundamental von den mythischen Schöpfungserzählungen seiner Umgebung: im Verhältnis zwischen Gott und der Welt, in der zeitlichen Strukturierung des Schöpfungsberichts und in dem Konzept, dass Gottes Schöpfungswerk zu einem „sehr guten“ Ergebnis führte. Die nachfolgende Auflehnung und der Fall sowie Gottes Absicht, den „sehr guten“ Zustand der Schöpfung wiederherzustellen, sind die Grunddaten für das gesamte übrige biblische Geschichtsverständnis. Die prophetisch-theologische Überlieferung, zu welcher der Schöpfungsbericht gehört, gründet ihr Verständnis von Gott, von seinem Willen und seinen Wegen auf Gottes Taten in der Geschichte. Dementsprechend wäre die Ablehnung der histori-

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schen Natur des biblischen Schöpfungsberichts dasselbe wie eine Ablehnung des biblischen Gottesbegriffs und der sich daraus ergebenden Theologie. So muss ein bekenntnisorientiertes Christentum mit dem Autor des Hebräerbriefs sagen: „Durch den Glauben erkennen wir, dass die Welt durch Gottes Wort geschaffen ist, so dass alles, was man sieht, aus nichts geworden ist.“ (Hebr 11,3)

Some Observations on the Historicity of the Biblical Creation Account Erwiderung Achim Behrens Vom Nutzen des religionsgeschichtlichen Vergleichs Die zahlreichen altorientalischen Parallelen zum Schöpfungsbericht in Gen 1 sind in der deutschsprachigen Forschung vor allem in den Kommentaren von Hermann Gunkel und Claus Westermann behandelt und einer interessierten Öffentlichkeit zugänglich gemacht worden.1 Dabei folgt die Auseinandersetzung mit diesen Quellen und/oder Parallelen – vor allem dem mesopotamischen Enuma Elisch und neuerdings Texten aus Ugarit – einer Wellenbewegung: Das Interesse schlug bei der Erstentdeckung dieser Texte hoch2, fand in den Arbeiten Gunkels und der religionsgeschichtlichen Schule einen ersten wissenschaftlichen Höhepunkt, nahm unter dem Einfluss der dialektischen Theologie wieder ab. Heute erleben wir ein neues Interesse, vor allem geweckt durch neue Funde von Texten, aber auch der Ikonographie.3 Im Moment lautet der Trend – vereinfacht gesprochen – „der religionsgeschichtliche Vergleich lehrt uns, dass der Glaube Israels nichts Besonderes ist, sondern lediglich eine Ausprägung eines allgemein verbreiteten syropalästinischen Religionstypus darstellt. Jahwe ist dann ein Wettergott des BaalHadad-Typus und kann von daher auch als Schöpfer verehrt werden.“4 Demgegenüber macht David Adams in seinem Vortrag noch einmal, wie ich finde, beispielhaft deutlich, worin der Sinn eines religionsgeschichtlichen Vergleichs für die Exegese in theologischer Perspektive liegt. Zum einen wird klar, dass die Sprache und Denkwelt biblischer Texte nicht völlig aus ihrer altorientalischen Umwelt herauszunehmen ist. Es gibt motivliche Berührungen, Anspielungen, ja bewusste Aufnahmen aus dem Weltbild des Alten Orients, für Gen 1 vor allem aus der Mythologie des Zweistromlandes. Zum anderen wird aber an der Art und Weise der Aufnahme – was wird wie genannt, einander zugeordnet? was wird weggelassen? – das Spezifikum biblischer Schöpfungsvorstellungen deutlich. Gerade dieser Ver1 2 3

4

3

4

Vgl. Hermann Gunkel, Genesis ( 1910); Claus Westermann, Genesis Kapitel 1–3 ( 1999). Vgl. Reinhard G. Lehmann, Friedrich Delitzsch und der Babel-Bibel-Streit (1994). Vgl. Othmar Keel/Christoph Uehlinger, Göttinnen, Götter und Gottessymbole. Neue Erkenntnisse zur Religionsgeschichte Kanaans und Israels aufgrund bislang unerschlossener ikonographi3 scher Quellen( 1995). Vgl. zu dieser zugegebenermaßen leicht simplifizierten Sicht der Dinge Reinhard Müller, Jahwe als Wettergott. Studien zur althebräischen Kultlyrik anhand ausgewählter Psalmen (2008).

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gleich zeigt Besonderheiten der Botschaft der biblischen Texte. Diese Eigenarten gegenüber der Umwelt berühren bis heute den theologischen Kern der Texte.

Von der Mythologie zur Geschichtsschreibung: Exegetische Vertiefungen Für Gen 1 lässt sich das durch einige Beobachtungen am Text vertiefen5: – Auch die Bibel kennt die Vorstellung vom Chaos, wie es sich in Begriffen wie ‫ תהום‬oder ‫ חשך‬ausdrückt. – Gott aber, von dem nie eine Theogonie berichtet wird, ist Herr dieses Chaos: Er ordnet, er benennt, er ruft ins Dasein, er trennt (Wasser und Land; Licht und Finsternis). – Ihm kommt mit der Vokabel ‫ ברא‬eine Tätigkeit zu, die ausschließlich ihm gebührt. Dabei ist nicht in erster Linie an eine creatio ex nihilo gedacht, denn auch Jakob (Jes 43,1) oder der Psalmbeter (Ps 51,12) können „geschaffen“ werden. – Die ‫ התנינם‬in Gen 1,21 erinnern an die Tiamat aus dem Enuma Elisch; hier aber werden sie ausdrücklich als von Gott geschaffen (‫ )ברא‬bezeichnet. – Die Bezeichnung der Lichter in Gen 1,16 vermeidet die Begriffe Sonne und Mond; denn diese gelten in Mesopotamien als Gottheiten. Vielleicht verbirgt sich hinter dem Verb herrschen noch eine solche Vorstellung: Aber in Gen 1 sind die Götter zu „Lampen“ depotenziert.6 – Der Mensch ist von Gott zur stellvertretenden Herrschaft über diese Erde von Gott als sein Abbild geschaffen (‫)צלם‬. Das gilt im AO sonst nur vom König so.7 – Die Strukturierung der Zeit im Wochenrhythmus mit dem Sabbat8 als Ziel und das Geschehen „am Anfang“ machen klar: Hier mögen mythische Elemente vorliegen, aber Gen 1 ist kein Mythos, sondern ein Stück „Geschichtsschreibung“; denn Israels Gott handelt nicht in ewigen Kreisläufen, sondern in der Geschichte auf ein Ziel hin.

5

6

7 8

Hier kann nun im vorliegenden Kontext wirklich nur eine unvollständige Stichwortsammlung geboten werden. Aber die genannten – und andere – Fragen werden in neueren und neuesten Untersuchungen bedacht und berühren Kernfragen der Theologie und Anthropologie des Alten Testaments. Dies wird man auch sagen können, selbst wenn man im Gegensatz zu älteren Forschung hinter Gen 1 nicht eine ausdrückliche Polemik gegen die babylonische Umwelt sieht; vgl. Jan Christian Gertz, Antibabylonische Polemik im priesterschriftlichen Schöpfungsbericht?, ZThK 106 (2009), 137– 155. Vgl. Ute Neumann-Gorsolke, Herrschen in den Grenzen der Schöpfung. Ein Beitrag zur alttestamentlichen Anthropologie am Beispiel von Psalm 8, Genesis 1 und verwandten Texten (2004). Vgl. Alexandra Grund, Die Entstehung des Sabbats. Seine Bedeutung für Israels Zeitkonzept und Erinnerungskultur (2011).

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Glaube und Geschichte Wohlgemerkt: Wenn Gen 1 von mir als „Geschichtsschreibung“ charakterisiert wird, dann ist das nicht mit modernen (historisch inzwischen überholten) Vorstellungen davon zu verwechseln, dass Geschichtsschreibung der unmittelbare und dann „objektive“ Niederschlag von tatsächlichem Geschehen ist. David Adams hat völlig recht: „we cannot prove, and should not claim to be able to prove, the historicity of the biblical account of creation.“ Der Akt der Schöpfung ist mit Mitteln der Geschichts- oder der Naturwissenschaften weder verifizierbar noch falsifizierbar. Dann aber irritiert mich David Adams’ starkes Beharren auf der Tatsächlichkeit einer Schöpfung in 6 x 24 Stunden mit der Implikation, „that this understanding of the creation account of Genesis one is fundamental to biblical Christianity, so that the rejection of this position undermines the entire structure of the Christian faith.“ Ein starkes Statement. Aber hier zeigt sich, so scheint es mir, ein fragiles theologisches System, bei dem alle loci wie Dominosteine nebeneinander stehen. Sie bleiben entweder alle miteinander bestehen, oder sie fallen alle, wenn eins fällt. Ich glaube das nicht. Und ich möchte das mit David Adams eigenen Worten unterstreichen, indem ich seine Beobachtung festhalte: „That this conviction is a matter of faith.“ Das Bekenntnis zur Welt als Gottes Schöpfung ist der Frage nach historischer oder naturwissenschaftlicher Evidenz gar nicht ausgesetzt, denn es ist ein Glaubenssatz. Nirgends wird dies deutlicher als in Luthers Erklärung zum ersten Glaubensartikel im Kleinen Katechismus: „Ich glaube an Gott, den Vater, den Allmächtigen, Schöpfer Himmels und der Erde.“ Luther antwortet auf die Frage „Was ist das“ nicht mit dem Bekenntnis zur historischen Wahrheit eines SiebentageWerkes, das dann entweder vor 6000 oder einer Milliarde Jahren historisch zu verorten wäre. Nein Luther bekennt: „Ich glaube, dass Gott mich geschaffen hat …“9 Die Rede von der Schöpfung ist demnach keine Thematisierung der Vergangenheit (wann immer die war), sondern ein Beziehungsbegriff. Das Bekenntnis erkennt den Schöpfer als Urheber, Erhalter und Herrn dieser Welt an. Für Luther und das lutherische Bekenntnis gibt es einen Zugang hierzu nur über den zweiten Glaubensartikel, das Bekenntnis zum Erlöser Christus. An seinem Werk hängt die „gesamte Christenheit“ samt ihren biblischen Begründungen. Das führt zurück zum Wortlaut von Gen 1; denn dieses Kapitel hat sein eigentliches Ziel in der Menschenschöpfung. Die Schöpfung von Mann und Frau wird in besonderer Weise von den anderen Schöpfungswerken unterschieden. Nur der Mensch bekommt einen Herrschaftsauftrag von Gott und ist somit in ein besonderes Verantwortungsverhältnis zum Schöpfer gestellt.

9

Vgl. Achim Behrens, „Am Anfang schuf Gott Himmel und Erde“. Grundlagen eines biblischtheologischen Schöpfungsverständnisses aus der Perspektive lutherischer Theologie, LuThK 34 (2010), 251–284.

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Die genaue Exegese von Gen 1 führt zu der Erkenntnis: Gegen antike Mythologien, aber auch im Unterschied zu manchen modernen Mythen über Natur und Umwelt, haben wir bei der Schöpfung vor allem vom Schöpfer zu reden. Dies aber können wir nur, wenn wir auch vom Erlöser reden. Dann lässt sich die Vielfalt der alttestamentlichen Rede von der Schöpfung (die sich ja nicht nur in Gen 1 findet) samt ihren Konsequenzen entdecken und entfalten – bis hin zu der Hoffnung, dass diese Schöpfung zu einem Ziel hin unterwegs ist, einem neuen Himmel und einer neuen Erde.

Some Observations on the Historicity of the Biblical Creation Account Response Achim Behrens The Benefits of the Religio-Historical Comparison The many Ancient Near Eastern parallels to the creation account in Genesis 1 have been discussed in German research and made accessible for the wider public above all in the commentaries by Hermann Gunkel and Claus Westermann.1 The debate about these sources and/or parallels – in particular the Mesopotamian Enuma Elish and more recent texts from Ugarit – waxes and wanes in waves. Interest was great when the texts were first discovered2 and reached a first academic peak in the work of Gunkel and the religio-historical school, only to recede again under the influence of dialectical theology. Today we experience increased interest again aroused by the discovery of new texts and also through iconography.3 The – simplified – trend at the moment is that the religio-historical comparison teaches us that Israel’s faith is nothing special but rather only one manifestation of a prevalent Syro-Palestinian type of religion. Yahweh, then, is a weather god of the Baal-Hadad-type and can therefore also be revered as a creator.4 In comparison David Adams makes very plain in his essay, in an exemplary manner, the significance of religio-historical comparison for exegesis from a theological perspective. For one thing, the language and thinking of biblical texts cannot be completely removed from their ancient oriental context. There are points of contact, allusions and even intended borrowing from ancient oriental conceptions of the world, in Gen 1 from the mythology of Mesopotamia in particular. On the other hand the manner in which things are taken over – what is named in what way and how is it related to other things, what has not been adopted – makes the specific biblical perception of creation evident. This comparison in particular displays the specific features of the message contained in the biblical texts. These idiosyncrasies

1 2 3

4

Cf. Hermann Gunkel, Genesis (1910); Claus Westermann, Genesis: Kapitel 1–3 (1999). Cf. Reinhard G. Lehmann, Friedrich Delitzsch und Babel-Bibel-Streit (1994). Cf. Othmar Keel/Christoph Uehlinger, Göttinnen, Götter und Gottessymbole. Neue Erkenntnisse zur Religionsgeschichte Kanaans und Israels aufgrund bislang unerschlossener ikonographischer Quellen (1992). Cf. for this admittedly rather simplified view of things Reinhard Müller, Jahwe als Wettergott: Studien zur althebräischen Kultlyrik anhand ausgewählter Psalmen (2008).

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which differ so significantly from the surrounding environment, touch on the theological core of the texts to this day.

From Mythology to Historiography: Exegetical Consolidation We can enlarge on this for Genesis 1 with several observations:5 – The bible, too, knows the idea of chaos expressed in terms such as ‫ תהום‬or ‫חשך‬. – God, for whom a theogony has never been recorded, is the Lord of this chaos: he organizes, names, calls into being, he separates (water and land, light and darkness). – The term ‫ ברא‬describes a function which is God’s alone. This is not primarily creatio ex nihilo, for Jacob, too, (Jer 43:1) or the psalmist (Ps 51:12) can be ‘created’. – The ‫ התנינם‬in Gen 1:21 are reminiscent of Tiamat in Enuma Elish; but here they are expressly named as being created (‫ )ברא‬by God. – The appellation of light in Gen 1:16 avoids the terms sun and moon; these are regarded as gods in Mesopotamia. Perhaps the verb ‘rule’ includes this notion: but in Genesis 1 the gods have been reduced to ‘lamps’.6 – Mankind was created by God in his image (‫ )צלם‬for vicarious sovereignty over the world. In the Ancient Near East this role was reserved for the king.7 – The structuring of time in a weekly rhythm with the Sabbath8 as the objective and events “in the beginning” make clear that even if mythological elements are present, Genesis 1 is not a myth but part of the ‘historiography’. Israel’s God does not act as part of an eternal cycle; he acts in history with a goal in sight.

Faith and history Please note: if I describe Genesis 1 as ‘historiography’ then this should not be confused with modern conceptions – incidentally historically obsolete – that the writing of history is an immediate and ‘objective’ account of actual events. Adams is quite right, “we cannot prove, and should not claim to be able to prove, the historicity of the biblical account of creation”. The act of creation cannot be verified or falsified with the means of historical scholarship or science. 5

6

7 8

For this particular context we can only offer an incomplete compilation of key words. But the named questions, alongside others, are part of newer and newest theological studies and touch on core questions of the theology and anthropology of the Old Testament. This can be said even if, contrary to older research on Gen 1, we do not see explicit polemic against the Babylonian environment, cf. Jan Christian Gertz, Antibabylonische Polemik im priesterschriftlichen Schöpfungsbericht, ZThK 106 (2009), 137–155. Cf. Ute Neumann-Gorsolke, Herrschen in den Grenzen der Schöpfung. Ein Beitrag zur alttestamentlichen Anthropologie am Beispiel von Psalm 8, Genesis 1 und verwandten Texten (2004). Cf. Alexandra Grund, Die Entstehung des Sabbats. Seine Bedeutung für Israels Zeitkonzept und Erinnerungskultur (2011).

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But then Adams’ adamant insistence that the world was created in six twentyfour hour days, with the implication “that this understanding of the creation account of Genesis 1 is fundamental to biblical Christianity, so that the rejection of this position undermines the entire structure of the Christian faith” is rather irritating. A strong statement. It infers that we have a fragile theological system here in which all loci stand next to each other like dominoes. Either all of them remain standing or all of them fall down if one falls. I do not believe this. And I want to emphasise this with Adams’ own words when he observes “that this conviction is a matter of faith”. The confession that the world is God’s creation does not hinge on historicity or the evidence of science, for it is a dogma. In the Small Catechism, Luther’s explanation to the First Article of the Apostle’s Creed states this quite clearly, “I believe in God, the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.” Luther does not answer the question “What does this mean?” by declaring his belief in the historical truth of a seven day creation which can be located 6000 years ago or a billion. No, Luther declares: “I believe that God has created me …”9 Discussing creation is therefore not about the past, whenever that was; it is a term of relationship. The confession recognizes the creator as the originator, the upholder and the lord of this world. Luther and the Lutheran Confessions can only approach this via the second article, declaring our belief in Christ as the redeemer. The whole of Christianity relies on his work with all its biblical substantiations. And this in turn leads us back to Genesis 1; the real purpose of this chapter is the creation of mankind. The creation of man and woman is distinguished from the other works of creation. God gives mankind a mandate to rule over creation so that his relationship is marked by responsibility to God. A detailed exegesis of Genesis 1 will result in the perception that contrary to ancient mythology and in contrast to many a modern myth concerning nature and our environment, when we talk about creation we talk above all about the creator. We can only do this if we also talk about the redeemer. Then we can discover and unfold the whole diversity of ways in which the Old Testament talks about creation (not only in Gen 1) with all its consequences – culminating in the hope that this creation is steering towards a goal, a new heaven and a new earth.

9

Cf. Achim Behrens, “Am Anfang schuf Gott Himmel und Erde.” Grundlagen eines biblischtheologischen Schöpfungsverständnisses aus der Perspektive lutherischer Theologie, LuThK 34 (2010), 251–284.

Auslegung von Mt 14,22–33 vermittels historischer Zugänge Sinn und Grenzen der Methodik Jorg Chr. Salzmann Vorbemerkung Unter Historischen Zugängen verstehe ich nicht in erster Linie die Frage nach der Historizität des Inhaltes biblischer Texte, sondern die Behandlung der Texte als von Menschen in einer bestimmten Zeit und Umgebung sowie mit bestimmter Absicht verfasst.1 Mit historischen Zugängen versuchen wir, möglichst viel von der Geschichte der vorliegenden Texte zu erfassen, vor allem aber dem nachzuspüren, was sie in ihrer eigenen Welt aussagen sollten und ausgesagt haben.2 Im Nachfolgenden werde ich versuchen, den Text Mt 14,22–33 in knapper Form3 mit dem Instrumentarium historischer Methoden4 zu behandeln, um dann über das Potential der Methodik zu reflektieren und einige Grundlinien der Auslegung dieses Textes zu präsentieren.

Matthäus 14,22–33 Übersetzung 22) Und sogleich nötigte er die Jünger, ins Boot zu steigen und ihm voraus ans andere Ufer zu fahren, bis er die Menge entlassen hätte.

1

2 3 4

Die Feststellung menschlicher Verfasserschaft mit ihren historischen Implikationen ist auch dann sinnvoll, wenn das biblische Wort als Gottes Wort verstanden wird. Vgl. z.B. Hermann Sasse, Zur Lehre von der Heiligen Schrift (1950), in: Ders., Sacra Scriptura. Studien zur Lehre von der Heiligen Schrift (1981), 203–244. Auch die Erhebung der Textwelt als textinterner Welt ist von der zeitgenössischen oder von vorhergegangenen Welten abhängig, die gewissermaßen als „Bildgeber“ fungieren. Es besteht also nicht der Anspruch, den Text erschöpfend zu behandeln; vielmehr geht es um eine Skizze mit dem Ziel der Demonstration und Reflexion der angewendeten Methodik. Der Ausdruck „historisch-kritische Methoden“ ist aufgrund seiner eigenen im Ansatz antidogmatischen Geschichte belastet. Dennoch sind historische Methoden selbstverständlich auch kritisch, denn sie führen sowohl zur Einordnung und Beurteilung von Texten und ihren Aussagen als auch zur kritischen Selbstreflexion des Auslegers, seiner Vorverständnisse und Verstehensvoraussetzungen – all das wiederum unbeschadet dessen, dass letztlich Gottes Wort den Menschen beurteilt und nicht umgekehrt.

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23) Und nachdem er die Menge entlassen hatte, stieg er auf den Berg, für sich, um zu beten. Als es aber Abend geworden war, war er allein dort. 24) Das Schiff war schon viele Stadien vom Land entfernt und die Wellen setzten ihm zu, denn es war Gegenwind. 25) In der vierten Nachtwache aber kam er zu ihnen und wandelte auf dem Meer. 26) Die Jünger sahen ihn auf dem Meer wandeln und erschraken sehr und sagten: Es ist ein Geist!, und sie schrien vor Furcht. 27) Sogleich aber redete Jesus mit ihnen und sagte: Seid guten Muts, ich bins, fürchtet euch nicht! 28) Petrus aber antwortete ihm und sagte: Herr, wenn du es bist, dann befiehl mir, auf dem Wasser zu dir zu kommen. 29) Der sagte: Komm! Und Petrus stieg aus dem Boot aus und wandelte auf dem Wasser und kam zu Jesus. 30) Als er aber den starken Wind sah, bekam er Angst, und weil er anfing zu sinken, schrie er und sagte: Herr, rette mich! 31) Sogleich streckte Jesus seine Hand aus, ergriff ihn und sagt zu ihm: Du Kleingläubiger, was soll dein Zweifeln? 32) Und als sie in das Boot stiegen, legte sich der Wind. 33) Die im Boot aber warfen sich vor ihm nieder und sagten: Du bist wahrhaftig Gottes Sohn. Textkritik Zwei Stellen sind in diesem Stück textkritisch interessant. Zum einen V 24, weil es dort eine gut bezeugte5 Überlieferung gibt, nach der das Boot nicht „viele Stadien vom Ufer entfernt“ war, sondern „mitten im Meer.“ Das Stichwort Stadien taucht im Paralleltext Joh 6,19 auf,6 die Rede vom Meer im Paralleltext Mk 6,47.7 Am plausibelsten erscheint, dass die Schreiber die abstrakte Rede von den Stadien durch das leichter vorstellbare „mitten im Meer“ ersetzt haben, deshalb der Nestle-Aland-Text in der vorliegenden Form als „lectio difficilior“.8 Der Text mit Stadien lenkt das 5 6 7 8

Die Bezeugung durch Majuskeln ist sogar erheblich besser als die für den Nestle-Aland-Text. Der Wortlaut ist deutlich anders als in Mt: ἐληλακότες οὖν ὡς σταδίους εἴκοσι πέντε ἢ τριάκοντα (als sie nun etwa fünfundzwanzig oder dreißig Stadien weit gekommen waren). Der Mk-Wortlaut ist der Mt-Variante vergleichbar, hat aber ἐν μέσῳ τῆς θαλάσσης (in der Mitte des Meeres) statt μέσον τῆς θαλάσσης (mitten auf dem Meer). Wegen der sprachlichen Differenz (s. vorige Anmerkung) ist eine Beeinflussung durch die MkParallele weniger plausibel. Vgl. zur Diskussion von Mt 14,24 Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Com2 mentary on the Greek New Testament ( 1994), 30.

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Augenmerk auf Jesu Seewandel, der Text mit Meer eher auf die Rettung in der Not – hier werden wir auf eine Grundspannung in der Geschichte aufmerksam: Es gibt darin mehrere Pointen. Die andere Stelle ist V 29, dort heißt es in einer gut bezeugten9 Variante, dass Petrus auf dem Wasser wandelte, um zu Jesus zu kommen. Hier scheint der NestleAland-Text („er kam zu Jesus“) die schwierigere Form zu sein: Wie konnte Petrus noch versinken, wenn er schon bei Jesus war? Es könnte also theologische Reflexion der Schreiber sein, die zu der „distanzierteren“ Form führte: „um zu Jesus zu kommen“.10 Mit „er kam zu Jesus“ ist es allerdings plastisch vorstellbar, dass Jesus Petrus bei der Hand fasste, so dass wir hier zugleich die narrativ bessere Form vor uns haben. Textaufbau und Kohärenz Nach einer allgemeinen Einleitung, welche erklärt, warum die Jünger auf dem Wasser sind und Jesus nicht bei ihnen ist (V 22–23), folgt die Geschichte von Jesu Seewandel und der Stillung des Sturms (V 24–27 und 32–33). Hier liegt anders als in der Geschichte von der Stillung des Sturms Mk 4,35–41 (parr) das Gewicht auf der Erscheinung Jesu. Der Kampf des Bootes mit den Wellen und dass die Wellen sich legen wird eher en passant erzählt.11 Die Erzählung stellt nicht ausdrücklich eine Verbindung zwischen Jesus und der Stillung des Sturmes her wie in Mk 4, wo Jesus den Sturm durch sein Wort stillt.12 Eingeschoben in die Geschichte vom Seewandel Jesu ist nun mit den Versen 28–31 die Geschichte vom Seewandel des Petrus. Sie wird knapp erzählt und ist klar zweigeteilt: Der zunächst erfolgreiche Seewandel des Petrus aufgrund des Befehls Jesu (V 28–29), und dann Angst und Versinken des Petrus sowie die Rettung durch Jesus (V 30–31). Der Seewandel des Petrus hat eine andere Botschaft als derjenige Jesu: Wird bei Jesus seine göttliche Vollmacht betont, so geht es bei Petrus um die Kraft des Glaubens bzw. um Jesu Macht zu retten. Zugleich hebt der (ohne Jesus misslingende) Seewandel des Petrus noch einmal den Seewandel Jesu in seiner Souveränität hervor.

9

Die Textzeugen für die genannte Variante und den bei Nestle-Aland gedruckten Text halten einander in etwa die Waage. 10 Vgl. Metzger, A Textual Commentary, 30; Jeffrey A. Gibbs, Matthew 11:2–20:34 (2010), 757; vgl. ferner gegen die Annahme, die Form „um zu Jesus zu kommen“ impliziere, dass Petrus überhaupt nicht auf dem Wasser gelaufen sei, Richard T. France, The Gospel of Matthew (2007), 570; dort sprachliche Argumente und der Schluss: “Most interpreters, whichever reading they adopt in v. 29b, agree that we are intended to see Peter’s attempt as initially successful, until doubt overcame him.” 11 V 24b, V 30 aα und V 32b. 12 Mk 4,39 (parr Mt 8,26; Lk 8,24).

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Wir finden in unserer Geschichte im Grunde drei wichtige Elemente: Die Stillung des Sturms, den Seewandel Jesu und den Seewandel des Petrus. Die Geschichte vom Seewandel des Petrus ist mit den Versen 28–31 nicht komplett erzählt; sie ist auf die vorhergehende Situationsschilderung angewiesen (vgl. auch den Bezug der Antwort des Petrus auf des Reden Jesu: „ich bins – wenn du es bist“13). Ein Seewandel Jesu auch ohne das Element von Wind und Sturm wäre denkbar, aber die beiden Motive sind in der Geschichte so verflochten, dass sich keine zwei unterschiedlichen Erzählfäden von einander abheben lassen.14 Dennoch zeigt Mk 4,35–41 (parr), dass die Geschichte von der Stillung des Sturms auch für sich stehen kann und nicht auf das Element des Seewandels angewiesen ist. Literarkritik Es gibt drei Versionen der Geschichte: Mk 6,45–52, die hier behandelte Form Mt 14,22–33 und Joh 6,16–21.15 Die Geschichten bei Mk und Mt laufen eng parallel. Der Unterschied zwischen beiden – dass nämlich der Seewandel des Petrus bei Mk nicht erzählt wird – bestätigt die schon zum Aufbau der Geschichte gemachte Beobachtung, dass bei Mt die Verse 28–31 eingeschoben sind. Es handelt sich um Sondergut des Mt,16 das auch bei Joh nicht auftaucht. Ein weiterer wichtiger Unterschied ist, dass nur bei Mt die Jünger am Ende Jesus als Gottes Sohn bekennen.17 Die Joh-Version ist wesentlich knapper erzählt. Das Vokabular weicht stark ab.18 Die Entfernung zum Land wird, wie schon in der Textkritik bemerkt, bei Joh in Stadien angegeben. 13 V 27 und V 28. 8 14 Rudolf Bultmann, Die Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition ( 1970), 231, nimmt an, dass in der Erzählung bei Mk der Seewandel ursprünglich sei, „zu dem das Sturmmotiv (aus 4,37–41) sekundär hinzugekommen ist.“ Er folgert das aus einer seiner Ansicht nach nicht plausiblen Abfolge der Aussagen in den Versen 48–50, bei welcher der Satz „er wollte an ihnen vorübergehen“ sich nicht mit dem Motiv der Hilfe beim Sturm vertrage und am ehesten ursprünglich sei. Bultmann will jedoch (a.a.O.) schließlich nicht entscheiden, ob die Vermischung der Motive dem Mk schon vorgelegen habe oder erst von ihm stamme. Vgl. auch Joachim Gnilka, Das Evangelium nach Markus. Mk 1–8,26 (1978), 266. – Auch für den Mk-Text gilt, dass sich hier nicht zwei Erzählstränge klar voneinander abheben lassen und man lediglich von einer möglichen Verknüpfung der Motive reden kann. 15 In der Synopse von Aland Nr. 147. 4 16 Nach Walter Grundmann, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus ( 1975), 366, handelt es sich aufgrund sprachlicher Beobachtungen um „eine von Matthäus schriftlich formulierte mündliche Petrustradition“. 17 Bei Mk hören wir vom Entsetzen und Unverständnis der Jünger (Mk 6,51–52), während Joh überhaupt keine Reaktion der Jünger erzählt (Joh 6,21). Grundmann, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus, 367, überlegt, ob Mt die Mk-Fassung bewusst aufgrund von Od.Sal. 39 (Bild von der Überschreitung des Todeswassers auf „den Spuren seines Glaubens“) geändert habe. 18 Identisch immerhin die Worte für Boot, See, gegenüber (Mt 14,22/Joh 6,16); Stadien (Mt 14,24/Joh 6,19); auf dem Meer wandeln (Mt 14,26/Joh 6,19); ich bin’s, fürchtet euch nicht (Mt 14,27/Joh 6,20). – Verschieden z.B. Abend (Mt14,23)/Dunkelheit/Joh 6,17), Gebet Jesu bei Mt (14,23), nicht bei Joh; viele Stadien (Mt 14,24)/etwa zwanzig Stadien (Joh 6,19); sie erschraken

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Auffällig ist, dass die Redewendungen, wie die Jünger Jesus sehen und wie Jesus den Jüngern Trost zuspricht, fast identisch sind: sie sahen (Mk/Mt ἰδεῖν, Joh θεωρεῖν) Jesus auf dem Meer wandeln (Vokabeln identisch, Wortstellung anders) [folgt die Beschreibung des Erschreckens, deutlich verschieden], dann die Antwort Jesu: habt Mut (nur Mt/Mk),19 „ich bins, habt keine Angst“ (bei allen dreien wörtlich identisch)20. Hier scheinen wir auf so etwas wie den harten Kern der Geschichte zu stoßen. Der Schluss der Geschichte weicht bei Joh von Mk/Mt ab, weil die Jünger nicht dazu kommen, Jesus ins Boot zu nehmen, denn sie sind sogleich dort angekommen, wo sie hinwollten. Aus moderner Sicht klingt das nachgerade entmythologisierend, als hätte Jesus am Ufer gestanden;21 doch das wird kaum das Verständnis des antiken Erzählers sein. Johannes wahrt vielmehr die Distanz zwischen Jesus und den Jüngern; merkwürdig ist, dass er auch nicht wie die beiden anderen erzählt, dass der Wind sich legt. Er stilisiert damit die Erzählung so, dass das ganze Gewicht auf dem Wort Jesu liegt: „Ich bins, fürchtet euch nicht.“ Das ist auch genau die Wendung der Geschichte, bei welcher der Hörer/Leser sich selbst am leichtesten ankoppeln kann.22 Wichtig ist zu beobachten, dass auch die Reihenfolge der Geschichten bei den Evangelisten übereinstimmt: bei allen dreien – Mt, Mk und Joh – folgt der Seewandel auf die Speisung der 5000, und es schließt sich die Notiz an, dass die Menge Jesus um den See herum folgt. Das ist besonders dann auffällig, wenn man annimmt, dass die Erzählungen bei Johannes nicht auf unmittelbarer Kenntnis eines synoptischen Evangeliums fußen. Der Vergleich mit Johannes würde dann zeigen,

19 20 21

22

und schrien vor Furcht (Mt 14,26)/sie fürchteten sich, als er nahe ans Boot kam (Joh 6,19); fasst Mut (Mt 14,27) nicht bei Joh; sie stiegen ins Boot (Mt 14,32)/sie wollten ihn ins Boot nehmen (Joh 6,21); sogleich war das Boot an Land (nur Joh). Θαρσεῖτε. Aγώ εἰμι, μὴ φοβεῖσθε. Vgl. Folker Siegert, Das Evangelium des Johannes in seiner ursprünglichen Gestalt (2008), 318: „Der Ort ist immerhin bezeichnend: Es ist der See Genezareth, an welchem … in der Morgen- und Abenddämmerung Himmel und Erde verschmelzen.“ Auffällig ist allerdings bei der Mt-Fassung, wie stark sich hier Petrus als Identifikationsfigur anbietet; vgl. z.B. die theologische Deutung der Mt-Perikope im Kommentar von Luz, welche sich fast ausschließlich mit diesem Textteil auseinandersetzt (Luz, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus [1990], 2, 411–412); dagegen Gibbs, Matthew 11:2–20:34, 764: “The fisherman is not a positive role model in this account. The portrait of all the disciples in 14:22–33 functions primarily as a contrast, as a foil for the portrait of Jesus.”; ähnlich France, The Gospel of Matthew, 567--568: “… the eventual failure of the experiment perhaps suggests that Matthew does not intend it to be taken as a model for others to follow, but rather as a cautionary tale. Peter’s proposal might be regarded as coming rather too close to the ‘testing’ of God which is forbidden in 4:5--7.” -- Anders folgert Charles R. Carlisle, Jesus’ Walking on the Water: A Note on Matthew 14. 22--33, NTS 31 (1985), 151--155, aufgrund eines Vergleichs mit Mk: “Matthew … uses Simon Peter as a model, almost as an archetype, of the role of a disciple of Christ.” (155), denn: “The Rise--Fall--Rise of Peter’s faith leads to the proclamation by the Church (the Twelve) of Jesus Christ as Lord …” (154). Carlisle betont die Gemeinde bzw. Kirche allerdings über Gebühr -- bei Mt steht Jesus im Mittelpunkt.

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dass auch Abfolgen von Geschichten überliefert wurden, ohne dass die Nutzung einer schriftlichen Quelle angenommen werden muss.23 Zugleich zeigt dieser Vergleich aber auch, wie dicht gerade Mk und Mt sprachlich zusammenliegen – eine Nähe, die sich in der Tat am besten damit erklären lässt, dass Mt das Mk kannte.24 Traditionsgeschichte Wenn nicht literarkritisch, dann traditionsgeschichtlich lohnt auch ein Blick auf die andere Erzählung von der Stillung des Sturms: Mk 4,35–41/Mt 8,23–27/Lk 8,22– 2525. Außer der Tatsache, dass in dieser Erzählung Jesus mit im Boot ist und nicht von außen dazu kommt, fallen weitere Unterschiede ins Auge: So wird in der Geschichte von der Stillung des Sturms der Wind bzw. Sturm weitaus drastischer geschildert als beim Seewandel; zudem beschwört Jesus hier den Sturm, während beim Seewandel nur gesagt wird, dass der Sturm sich legt. Daneben gibt es aber auch Gemeinsamkeiten. So sind die Jünger in beiden Erzählungen erst einmal auf sich gestellt, hier bei der „Stillung des Sturmes“, weil Jesus schläft. Ferner betrifft seine Rede an die Jünger – jedenfalls bei Mk und Lk (Mt lässt das weg) – ihren Mangel an Glauben; das ist eine gewisse Parallele zum Seewandel des Petrus, wo dessen Kleinglaube gescholten wird. Auch Furcht und Erstaunen der Jünger angesichts des Wunders, von denen bei der Sturmstillung am Ende erzählt wird, kommen wenigstens in der Markusversion des Seewandels vor (bei Mt abgewandelt in der Proskynese). Die Furcht vor dem Wetter war in beiden Geschichten nicht mit dem Stichwort φόβος ausgedrückt worden, sondern bei der Sturmstillung durch den Hilferuf der Jünger, während sie beim Seewandel vor Angst schreien – hier allerdings, weil sie Jesus für ein Gespenst halten. Eine weitere Gemeinsamkeit zwischen Sturmstillung und Seewandel ist das Motiv, dass Jesus ans andere Ufer des Sees will.26

23 Man kann auch die Version des Joh heranziehen, um eine Erklärung für die Eile in den synoptischen Erzählungen zu finden, mit der die Jünger die Szene der Speisung verlassen, weil nämlich die Menge Jesus als den Messias ausrufen und womöglich unter seiner Führung losschlagen wollte (Joh 6,14--15) -- vgl. z.B. William Lane, The Gospel According to Mark (1974), 234. Das führt aber kaum zu der Folgerung, dass Mk das Joh benutzt habe, sondern viel eher zu der Annahme gemeinsamer Überlieferungen (s.u.). 24 Oder umgekehrt – wobei mir die Theorie von Mt-Priorität weder mit dem Befund bei Lk noch wirklich mit den Unterschieden zwischen Mt und Mk zusammenzupassen scheint. Vgl. dazu Udo 8 Schnelle, Einleitung in das Neue Testament ( 2013), 205–242, v.a. 240–241; Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament (1997), 111–125; D.A. Carson/Douglas J. Moo, An Intro2 duction to the New Testament ( 2005), 85–103 (mit Einschränkungen zur Allgemeingültigkeit der Zweiquellentheorie, die dennoch als „working theory“ benutzt werden solle). 25 Aland Nr. 90. 26 Stillung des Sturms: Mk 4,35; Lk 8,22; Mt 8,18. Seewandel: Mk 6,45; Mt 14,22; in Joh 6,16 lediglich die Feststellung, dass die Jünger ans andere Ufer kamen.

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Die beobachteten Verwandtschaften zwischen den beiden Geschichten lassen allerdings insgesamt eher einen anderen Schluss zu, dass nämlich keine literarische Abhängigkeit besteht, sondern die Ähnlichkeiten sich aus mündlichen Überlieferungsprozessen ergeben haben. Dieser Eindruck verstärkt sich, wenn man noch Joh 21,1–8 mit hinzuzieht, die Erzählung von der Erscheinung des Auferstandenen am See Tiberias. Hier steigt nämlich Petrus wie beim Seewandel nach Matthäus als einziger aus dem Boot, um zu Jesus zu kommen; allerdings schwimmt oder watet er ans Ufer.27 Hier wie dort spielt auch das Motiv eine Rolle, dass Jesus erkannt wird, nachdem er zunächst unerkannt geblieben war.28 Ulrich Luz folgert aus der Ähnlichkeit eine Abhängigkeit des Mt von einer Überlieferung, wie sie uns im Joh begegnet, und behauptet: „Die Umgestaltung (sc. durch Mt – J.C.S.) kann man sich nur als bewußten Versuch einer ‚symbolischen‘ Verwendung einer anders gemeinten Überlieferung denken.“29 Das ist m.E. nicht zwingend, selbst wenn die Geschichten aufgrund ihrer motivischen Ähnlichkeit wirklich verwandt sind: Es ist im Zuge mündlicher Überlieferung durchaus denkbar, dass verschiedene Geschichten miteinander verknüpft und ‚weiterentwickelt‘ werden, ohne dass dabei ein „bewusster Versuch einer symbolischen Verwendung einer anders gemeinten Überlieferung“ vorliegen muss. Joh 21,1–8 schlägt auch noch eine Brücke zu der Geschichte vom wunderbaren Fischzug, Lk 5,1–11.30 Damit haben wir einen Kranz von Geschichten um Jesus und seine Jünger am bzw. auf dem galiläischen Meer, welche sich zwischen Jesus und seinen Jüngern abspielen31 und vor allem die göttliche Macht Jesu erweisen. Es scheint denkbar und ist nicht unwahrscheinlich, dass diese Geschichten sich im Lauf der Überlieferung gegenseitig beeinflussten. Daraus würden sich die beobachteten Ähnlichkeiten am einfachsten erklären lassen.

27 Vgl. Luz, Matthäus, 2, 405. 28 Joh 21,4.7; Mt 14,26; Mk 6,49. 29 A.a.O., 405–406. Vorsichtiger z.B. John Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew (2005), 598: “Perhaps Matthew has created a symbolic narrative drawing together fragments of tradition and extrapolations from other traditional material …”. – Umgekehrt kommt Patrick J. Madden, Jesus’ Walking on the Sea. An Investigation of the Origin of the Narrative Account (1997), zu dem Schluss, es handle sich bei der Geschichte vom Seewandel Jesu ursprünglich um eine Auferstehungsgeschichte (z.B. 41 und 138: „a displaced resurrection narrative“). 30 Folker Siegert, Das Evangelium des Johannes in seiner ursprünglichen Gestalt (2008), 300, sieht in dem Stück mit Fortna (Robert T. Fortna, The Gospel of Signs [1970], 89--98) eine ursprünglich vorösterliche Semeia-Erzählung und sagt: „Der synoptische Vergleich (Aland-Synopse Nr. 41) erweist diese Perikope als Parallele zu Lk 5,1–11 (Fischzug des Petrus).“ Man kann die Nähe zu Lk 5,1–11 beobachten, ohne den literarkritischen Thesen Siegerts zustimmen zu müssen. 31 Den Bezug zu den Jüngern beobachtet Klaus Berger, Formen und Gattungen im Neuen Testament (2005), 366; daraus als Funktion dieser Überlieferungen abzuleiten, sie sollten die Nähe der Jünger zu Jesus und seiner Macht demonstrieren, scheint hergeholt und eine etwa im Blick auf Zweifel und Kleinglauben der Jünger geradezu gegen den Text gerichtete Deutung.

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Formgeschichte Die Geschichte vom Seewandel Jesu ist als Epiphaniewunder einzustufen;32 es geht also um die Erscheinung der göttlichen Macht Jesu. Dazu gehören die Herrschaft über die Elemente (Wind und Wasser) sowie das Motiv des Erschreckens der Jünger vor dieser Macht und schließlich die Huldigung Jesu als Gottessohn. Davon abzuheben ist die Geschichte vom Seewandel des Petrus. Sie wird gewöhnlich als „Petruslegende“ bezeichnet;33 an Petrus wird exemplarisch etwas deutlich – wir könnten z.B. sagen: es wird deutlich, dass der Glaube trägt. Der „Sitz im Leben“ für diese Geschichten ist wie immer nur hypothetisch auszumachen. Vielleicht ist es besser, von der Textpragmatik zu reden. Da geht es um die Verkündigung von Jesus als machtvollem Sohn Gottes; und es geht darum, Vertrauen auf die hilfreiche Macht dieses Gottessohnes zu wecken.34 Motivgeschichte, Religionsgeschichtlicher Vergleich Hinzuweisen wäre auf die LXX-Fassung von Hi 9,8, wo es über Gott heißt: „… der du allein den Himmel ausspannst und wie auf dem Boden wandelst auf dem Meer“ (hebräisch: „der du einhergehst auf dem Rücken des Meers/des Iam“). Ähnlich Hi 38,16, wo von Jahwe gesagt wird, dass er auf dem Grund der Urtiefen wandelt. Hier ergibt sich aus der mythologischen Redeweise ein Brückenschlag zum Exodus. Dort jedoch läuft das Volk nicht auf dem Wasser, sondern auf dem Trockenen durch das Meer. Das Meer (Iam) steht für Bedrohung durch Todesmächte, die beim Exodus aber unter dem Befehl Jahwes stehen und für sein Volk kämpfen.35 Hier bei Jesus und Petrus mag es Anklänge daran geben, doch ist das Setting deutlich dasjenige der Fischer am Galiläischen Meer. Es gibt im griechisch-hellenistischen Raum, aber auch schon im GilgameschEpos eine Reihe von Texten, aus denen hervorgeht, dass die Fähigkeit, auf dem Wasser bzw. den Wasserwogen gehen zu können, ein göttliches Attribut ist.36 Darüber hinaus wird immer wieder auf einen buddhistischen Text hingewiesen.37 Hier überquert ein Mönch meditierend einen Fluss und geht dabei auf dem

32 Vgl. Berger, Formen und Gattungen im Neuen Testament, 345 („Theophanie-Erzählung“); Wolfgang Wiefel, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus (1998), 276; Madden, Jesus’ Walking on the Sea, 86--88; Robert A. Guelich, Mark 1--8:26 (1989), 353. 33 Z.B. Bultmann, Die Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition, 379. -- Das Stichwort Legende sollte noch kein Urteil über die Historizität einer solchen Erzählung beinhalten; allerdings wird es oft so verstanden. 34 Wiefel, Matthäus, 276, verweist noch auf den Gemeindebezug (Jünger als Akteure, Petrus mit Zweifel und „aufgerichtetem Glauben“ als Repräsentant der Gemeinde). 35 Vgl. Gnilka, Markus, 1, 269. – Grundmann, Matthäus, 367, verweist noch auf Od Sal 39,5–12. Für die Rettung des Petrus aus dem Wasser s. Ps 18,17; 69,2.15–16; 144,7. 36 Der entsprechende Band des Neuen Wettstein liegt noch nicht vor. Eine ausführliche Sammlung von Belegstellen aber im Kommentar von Luz, Matthäus, 2, 407–408.

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Wasser, bekommt aber auch Angst und fängt an zu sinken. Im Blick auf die alten Handelsrouten und den insgesamt erstaunlichen Austausch schon der frühen Antike mit dem Osten scheint es nicht unmöglich, dass das Motiv in den Westen gewandert ist; insgesamt aber scheint es mir doch buchstäblich recht weit hergeholt. Wichtig sind noch die Worte Jesu: Das „Fürchtet euch nicht“ ist ebenso wie das „ich bins“ im Alten Testament verwurzelt.38 Luz bringt es etwas überspitzt auf den Punkt: „Jesus präsentiert sich hier im Gewand eines hellenistischen Heros und mit der Sprache des alttestamentlichen Gottes.“39 Dabei geht es m.E. weniger um Theorien zur Entstehung der Geschichte als vielmehr um die Erzählweise sowie um mögliche Assoziationen der antiken Hörer, die wir durch Erhebung von Motiv- und Religionsgeschichte nachzuvollziehen versuchen. Redaktionsgeschichte Die Geschichte vom Seewandel des Petrus trägt viele für Mt typische sprachliche Merkmale.40 Wenn mit Luz zu sagen ist, dass sich Mt hier „als Meister redaktioneller Gestaltung“ zeigt,41 dann ist damit eben dies festgestellt, das Matthäus die Geschichte gestaltet, jedoch nicht einfach, dass er sie erfunden hat. Eine solche Gestaltung wird nötig gewesen sein, um die Geschichte in den Rahmen der Geschichte von Jesu Seewandel, die Mt von Mk übernommen hat, einzupassen. Wir wissen nicht, ob Mt für den Seewandel des Petrus eine schriftliche Vorlage verarbeitete oder auf mündliche Überlieferung zurückgriff. Matthäus lässt als einziger die Geschichte in ein Bekenntnis münden: „Du bist wahrhaftig Gottes Sohn!“ Dies Bekenntnis taucht hier im Evangelium zum ersten Mal auf; es erinnert den Leser aber an die Gottesstimme bei der Taufe: „Dies ist mein geliebter Sohn, an dem ich Wohlgefallen habe“ (Mt 3,17), und in Mt 8,29 hatten die Dämonen bereits Jesus als Gottes Sohn erkannt und benannt. Das Bekenntnis des Petrus hat bei Mt die Form: „Du bist Christus, Sohn Gottes des lebendigen“ (Mt 16,16), und in Mt 17,5 sagt die Gottesstimme erneut: „Dies ist mein geliebter Sohn, an dem ich Wohlgefallen habe“. Die Passionsgeschichte spitzt sich bei Mt zu mit der Frage des Hohenpriesters: „Ich beschwöre dich bei Gott dem lebendigen, dass du uns sagst, ob du der Christus, der Sohn Gottes bist“ (Mt 3

37 Z.B. Martin Dibelius, Die Formgeschichte des Evangeliums ( 1959), 113 u.176 Anm.2; Luz, Matthäus, 2, 410. 38 Zu „fürchtet euch nicht“ vgl. Günther Wanke, φοβέω κτλ B., ThWNT 9, 194–201, hier 199. – Zu ἐγώ εἰμι vgl. Gnilka, Markus, 1, 270. 39 Luz, Matthäus, 2, 408. 40 Vgl. Luz, Matthäus, 2, 405 Fußn. 14 und 15; Wiefel, Matthäus, 275. Dagegen z.B. Julius Schniewind, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus (1950), 180, der die Geschichte auch aus sprachlichen Gründen (nicht näher spezifiziert) der Urgemeinde zuweisen will; vermittelnd schon Erich Klos4 termann, Das Matthäusevangelium ( 1971), 130: „Trotz der Sprache … ein Stück einer Überlieferung, die sich mit Petrus besonders beschäftigte, ähnlich Act 1–12.“ 41 Luz, Matthäus, 2, 405.

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26,63), und das Motiv wird bei der Verspottung Jesu am Kreuz wieder aufgenommen (Mt 27,43 – so nur bei Mt), bis schließlich der heidnische Hauptmann nach Jesu Tod noch einmal bekennt: „Dieser ist wahrhaftig Gottes Sohn gewesen.“ (Mt 27,54 – auch in den synoptischen Parallelen) So spannt Mt ein Netz von Aussagen zum Gottessohn über sein Evangelium.42 Die Huldigung in unserer Geschichte kann sich formgeschichtlich an das Epiphaniewunder (Jesu Seewandel) nahtlos anschließen. Wichtig ist hier aber, dass sie nun auch mit dem Seewandel des Petrus verknüpft ist: Es geht nicht einfach um Jesu Hoheit, sondern darum, dass in ihm die göttliche Macht den Menschen zu Hilfe kommt. Damit wird das wieder aufgenommen, was durch die matthäische Geburtsgeschichte mit dem Immanuelmotiv (Immanuel = Gott mit uns) bereits programmatisch an den Anfang gestellt war.43 Methodische Überlegungen Was die Erhebung der Geschichte von Texten kann: Sie kann Plausibilitäten für die Entstehung des vorgefundenen Materials aufzeigen. Sie kann den Blick schärfen für Schwerpunktsetzungen und erzählerische wie redaktionelle Absichten. Was sie nicht kann: Sie kann kein historisches Urteil über Wahrheit oder Unwahrheit fällen. Im Fall unserer Geschichte: Wenn ich voraussetze, dass es unmöglich ist, auf dem Wasser zu wandeln, dann kann am Ende nur herauskommen, dass die Geschichte erfunden ist. Hier ist Offenheit nötig und Abstand von einem geschlossenen angeblich (natur)wissenschaftlichen Weltbild. Die Anwendung historischer Methoden ist seit der Aufklärung häufig mit dem Postulat eines rationalistischen Weltbildes verknüpft worden; das muss aber nicht sein. Für unsern Text halten wir fest: Zum See Genezareth gab es einen Kranz von Wasser-Geschichten, die erzählt wurden und sich womöglich auch miteinander vermischten. So kann das Erlebnis der Sturmstillung durchaus einmalig gewesen sein, sich aber dann mit verschiedenen Erzählungen so verknüpft haben, dass im Ergebnis der Eindruck entsteht, dass es mehrere Sturmstillungen gab (prominentes Beispiel solcher Prozesse: Die Speisung der 4000/die Speisung der 5000). Auch die Geschichte vom Seewandel könnte als Erzählung davon, dass Petrus am Ufer Jesus durchs Wasser entgegenlief, ihren Anfang gehabt haben. Sie will aber, so wie sie

42 Wer Mt 14,33 kritisch als „inkonsequente“ Vorwegnahme von Mt 16,16 betrachtet und deswegen nach einer Steigerung von Mt 14 zu Mt 16 sucht (vgl. dazu Klostermann, Matthäusevangelium, 129, der sich gegen das Moment der Steigerung wendet und immerhin die „Inkonsequenz“ stehen lassen will), verkennt m.E. die redaktionelle Absicht des Evangelisten. Auch die Meinung, Mt wolle die Jünger als Repräsentanten der Gemeinde entlasten, wenn er an die Stelle ihres Unverständnisses bei Mk hier das Bekenntnis setze (Klostermann, ebd.), greift zu kurz. 43 Mt 1,23.

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erzählt wird, keineswegs „rationalisiert“ werden (als hätte der Seewandel in flachem Wasser stattgefunden oder dgl.).44 Wenn eine Entstehungsgeschichte für einen Text plausibel ist, dann kann das zu der Auffassung führen, der Endtext bilde nicht eins zu eins ab, was geschehen ist. Es wäre aber kurzschlüssig, daraus zu folgern, dass das Erzählte nicht geschehen sei, weil es nicht hätte geschehen können. Vielmehr ist für den Glauben die Annahme plausibel, dass die erzählte Macht Gottes tatsächlich so groß ist wie dargestellt – und noch größer. Was die Erhebung von Textgeschichten auch nicht kann: den Text unmittelbar hermeneutisch aufschließen. Das ist vielmehr ein Auslegungsvorgang, der sich allemal in verstehender Aneignung, jedoch nicht ohne die Wahrnehmung des Textes in seiner eigenen Welt erschließt. Stichworte zur Auslegung von Mt 14,22–33 Wenn wir über den Seewandel oder auch über die Sturmstillung predigen, gilt: Wir fahren nicht ans Wasser, um die Geschichte nachzuvollziehen. Vielmehr deuten wir die Erzählung gleichnishaft. Insofern ist es nicht nötig, dass sie sich tatsächlich so zugetragen hat. Der Zugang zur Geschichte wird aber blockiert, wenn wir sagen, dass sie sich gar nicht so hat zutragen können.45 Die Geschichte will uns mitnehmen zu dem Bekenntnis, dass Jesus Gottes Sohn ist. Zugleich will sie die Möglichkeit eröffnen, in Krisen und auch angesichts des Todes der rettenden Macht Gottes in Jesus Christus zu vertrauen. Das Meer kann ganz im Sinne der alten Mythologie für die Mächte des Todes stehen. Petrus als Identifikationsfigur wird einerseits durch den Glauben gehalten, dass er nicht versinkt. Andererseits hat er auch Angst; daraus kann ihn nicht sein Glaube retten, sondern Jesus, den er um Hilfe anruft. So zeigt sich, dass der Glaube nicht eine uns verfügbare menschliche Macht ist. Selbst ein Petrus ist „kleingläubig“; er bleibt wie wir alle auf die rettende Macht Gottes angewiesen.

44 Vgl. Donald A. Hagner, Matthew 14–28 (1995), 416: “… the walking on the water … involve(s) direct contravention of natural law. If the world view of the interpreter does not allow this possibility, implausible naturalistic explanations will be sought … Such explanations are far from the intention of the evangelists and out of line with the Gospel narratives.” 45 Das führt zu so problematischen Sätzen wie: „Wir haben es nicht mit einem Ereignis aus der Geschichte des vorösterlichen Jesus zu tun“ (Grundmann, Matthäus, 366); Grundmann versucht das aufzufangen, indem er die alte These vorsichtig zustimmend aufnimmt, der Text reflektiere eigentlich eine Ostererscheinung, die dem Petrus zuteil geworden sei – vgl. Johannes Kreyenbühl, Der älteste Auferstehungsbericht und seine Varianten, ZNW 9 (1908), 257–296. Kreyenbühl formuliert allerdings recht krass: „Die erste ,Auferstehung Jesu‘ ist in Galiläa erfolgt. Sie ist im Geiste des nach Kapharnaum zurückgekehrten Simon erfolgt. Am See von Galiläa wandelt sich das Bild des gekreuzigten Zimmermanns, an dem sich alle Juden stießen, um in den Glanz des Messias, der von der Lichtwolke Jahves überschattet wird.“ – a.a.O. 261.

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Zusammenfassung Die Geschichte vom Seewandel Jesu und vom Seewandel Petri (Mt 14,22–33) wird hier mit verschiedenen Methoden historischer Auslegung untersucht. Dabei zeigt sich, dass das Erzählstück wohl zu einem Kranz von „Wasser-Geschichten“ um Jesus gehört, die erzählt wurden und sich womöglich auch miteinander vermischten. Während der Seewandel Jesu dessen Majestät betont, geht es beim Seewandel Petri um die Stärke des Glaubens und seine Angewiesenheit auf die Hilfe Gottes. Bei der Anwendung historischer Methoden ist darauf zu achten, dass sie zwar Plausibilitäten zur Entstehung eines Textes aufweisen, nicht aber einfach zu einem Urteil über seinen Wahrheitsgehalt führen können. Ein solches Urteil ist vielmehr vom Weltbild der Ausleger und ihrem Glauben mit geprägt. Die Grenze der Methodik liegt auch darin, dass sie die Gegenwartsbedeutung eines Textes, seine Bedeutung für den Glauben nicht unmitttelbar aufschließen können.

Exegesis of Matt 14:22–33 by Means of Historical Approaches Significance and Limitations of a Method Jorg Chr. Salzmann Introduction I understand the term ‘historical approach’ as the way we treat texts written by people in a particular time and environment with a particular intention.1 The historical approach is not primarily concerned with the historicity of the content of texts. By applying an historical approach we try to gather as much information as possible about the historical surroundings of a text, and in particular to try and trace what it was intended to express in its own world and how it was understood.2 I shall attempt to treat Matt 14:22–33 briefly3 with the tools of the historical method4 and conclude with a reflection on the potential of this method and then present some of the principles for the hermeneutics of this text.

Matt 14:22–33 Translation (ESV) 22) Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. 23) And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone,

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Stating that the authors were human with all the historical implications continues to make sense when we declare that the biblical word is God’s word. Cf. e.g. Hermann Sasse, Zur Lehre von der Heiligen Schrift, in: Id., Sacra scriptura: Studien zur Lehre von der Heiligen Schrift (1981), 203– 244. Even the description of the world of the text from an internal viewpoint depends on contemporary or previous worlds which act as ‘models’. I do not pretend to treat the text exhaustively; the intention of this short sketch is to demonstrate and reflect on the methods used. The expression ‘historical-critical method’ is weighed down by its own essentially anti-dogmatic history. Nonetheless historical methods are as a matter of course also critical for they classify and assess texts and their statements and cause critical self-reflection on the part of the exegete with his preconceptions and premises – regardless of the fact that ultimately God’s word evaluates humankind and not vice versa.

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24) but the boat by this time was a long way (many stadia) from the land, beaten by the waves, for the wind was against them. 25) And in the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea. 26) But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, and said: “It is a ghost!” and they cried out in fear. 27) But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying: “Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.” 28) And Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” 29) He said: “Come”. So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus. 30) But when he saw the (strong) wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out: “Lord, save me.” 31) Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him, saying to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” 32) And when they got into the boat, the wind ceased. 33) And those in the boat worshipped him, saying: “Truly you are the Son of God.” Textual Criticism Two passages are of particular interest in this text. First v. 24 is of interest due to a 5 well attested manuscript which reads that the boat was “in the middle of the sea” as in the parallel text Mark 6:47,6 instead of “it was many stadia from the land,” which is similar to John 6:19.7 It is plausible that the copyists replaced the abstract “stadia” with the more vivid “in the middle of the sea,” hence the Nestle-Aland text in the present form presents a “lectio difficilior.”8 The reading, “stadia,” points our attention towards Jesus walking on the sea, whereas the “the middle of the sea” points to the aspect of help in deep trouble. We are thus made aware of a basic tension in our story; it contains several meanings. The other instance of textual criticism is in v. 29 wherein a variant with a strong tradition9 reads that Peter walked on the water in order to come to Jesus. The Nes5 6 7 8 9

The attestation by uncials for this variant is much better than that of the Nestle-Aland text. The wording in Mark is similar to that in Matthew but also has ἐν μέσῳ τῆς θαλάσσης (in the middle of the sea) The wording is markedly different from that in Matt: ἐληλακότες οὖν ὡς σταδίους εἴκοσι πέντε ἢ τριάκοντα (when they had travelled 25 or 30 stadia). Due to the differing language, influence from the Mark parallel seems unlikely. Cf. for discussion on 2 Matt 14:24: Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament ( 1994), 30. The textual witnesses for the named variant and the Nestle-Aland text are of equal value.

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tle-Aland text (he came to Jesus) appears to be more difficult here – how could Peter sink if he was already with Jesus? It could therefore be theological reflection on the part of the copyists which lead to the more ‘distanced’ version that Peter walked “in order to come to Jesus”.10 The phrase “he came to Jesus” allows us to imagine vividly that Jesus took Peter by the hand; narratively this is the better version of the story. The Structure of the Text and its Coherence Verses 22–23 form an introduction to this story and explain why the disciples are on the water – without Jesus. The narrative of Jesus walking on the water and of the stilling of the storm follows (vv. 24–27 and vv. 32–33). Unlike in the story of the stilling of the storm in Mark 4:35–41 the focus here lies on Jesus’ epiphany. The struggle of the boat with the waves as well as the actual calming of the waves are only mentioned briefly in Matt 14;11 the narrative does not explicitly connect Jesus with the stilling of the storm here as it does in Mark 4, where Jesus stills the storm by what he says.12 The story of Peter walking on the water (vv. 28–31) is inserted into the story of Jesus walking on the water. It is recounted concisely and is clearly divided into two parts: Peter initially walks successfully on the water on the strength of Jesus’ command (vv. 28–29), and then fear grips his heart, he sinks, and is rescued by Jesus (vv. 30–31). The story of Peter walking on the water has a different message to convey than that of Jesus’. While Jesus’ divine authority is highlighted by walking on the water, the Peter account is about the power of faith as well as Jesus’ power to save. At the same time, Peter’s attempt to walk on the water (failed without Jesus) underlines the sovereignty of Jesus’ walking on the water. This story contains three important elements: the stilling of the storm, Jesus walking on the water, and Peter walking on the water. Verses 28–31 do not provide the complete story of Peter walking on the water; this passage is dependent on the information given previously (see also the correlation between Jesus saying “it is me”, and Peter’s reply: “if it is you …”13). It is conceiveable that a story about Jesus walking on the water without wind or storm may stand on its own, but the two

10 Cf. Metzger, A Textual Commentary, 30; Jeffrey A. Gibbs, Matthew 11:2–20:34 (2010), 757; cf. also versus the assumption that the form “to come to Jesus” implies that Peter did not walk on the water at all, Richard T. France, The Gospel of Matthew (2007), 570; here he adds his conclusion to his linguistic arguments: “Most interpreters, whichever reading they adopt in v. 29b, agree that we are intended to see Peter’s attempt as initially successful, until doubt overcame him.” 11 V. 24b, v. 30 aα, and v. 32b. 12 Mark 4:39 (parr Matt 8:26; Luke 8:24). 13 V. 27 and v. 28.

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strands of the story are so intertwined that it is not possible to separate them.14 Mark 4:35–41 shows nonetheless that the story of the stilling of the storm is enough in itself and is not dependent on the element of walking on the water. Literary Criticism There are three versions of our story: Mark 6:45–42, the version treated here (Matt 14:22–33), and John 6:16–2115. The narratives of Mark and Matthew are very similar. The great difference between both – Peter’s walking on the water is not told by Mark – confirms the observation already made on the structure of the story, that in Matthew vv. 28–31 have been inserted. This is material unique to Matthew16 which does not appear in Mark or John. Another important difference is that only Matthew includes the disciples ultimately confessing Jesus to be the son of God.17 John tells the story in much shorter form and with very different vocabulary.18 The distance between boat and land is given in stadia, as previously discussed. It is striking that the phrases describing both how the disciples see Jesus and how he comforts them, are almost identical: they saw (Mark/Matt ἰδεῖν, John θεωρεῖν) Jesus walking on the sea (identical words, different order; only the following description of the disciples’ fear differs markedly); and then Jesus’ answer, identical in all three gospels (Mark, Matt, and John): “it is I, do not be afraid” 19 8

14 Rudolf Bultmann, Die Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition ( 1970), 231, presumes that in the narrative in Mark walking on the sea was the original tale “to which the storm motif (from 4:37–41) was a secondary addition”. He deduces this from the, in his opinion not plausible, sequence of statements in verses 48–50 in which the phrase “he was about to pass by them” does not fit well with the motif of helping in the storm and is most likely the original. Bultmann, however, (loc.cit.) does not wish to decide whether the mixture of motifs was known to Mark or was created by him. Cf. Joachim Gnilka, Das Evangelium nach Markus. Mk 1–8,26 (1978), 266. It also applies to the Markan text, that we cannot clearly identify two narrative strands here and that we can merely consider a possible connection of the motifs. 15 In the synopsis by Aland no. 147. 4 16 Walter Grundmann, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus ( 1975), 366, says that on the grounds of linguistic observation it is “eine von Matthäus schriftlich formulierte mündliche Petrustradition” (an oral tradition about Peter formulated in writing by Matthew). 17 In Mark we hear about the disciples’ consternation and incomprehension (Mark 6:51–52); John says nothing at all about the disciples’ reactions. Grundmann, Matthäus, 367, considers whether Matthew changed the Mark-version deliberately because of Od.Sal. 39 (image of crossing death’s waters “following his faith”). 18 The words for boat, sea, on the other side are at least identical (Matt 14:22/John 6:16); also stadia (Matt 14:24/John 6:19); walking on the water (Matt 14:26/John 6:19); it is me, do not be afraid (Matt 14:27/John 6:20). – Differing words e.g. evening (Matt14:23)/darkness (John 6:17), Jesus’ prayer in Matt (14:23), missing in John; many stadia (Matt 14:24)/about twenty stadia (John 6:19); they were terrified and cried out in fear (Matt 14:26)/they were terrified as he approached the boat (John 6:19); take heart (Matt 14:27) not in John; they climbed into the boat (Matt 14:32)/they were willing to take him into the boat (John 6:21); immediately the boat reached the shore (only in John). 19 γώ εἰμι, μὴ φοβεῖσθε.

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(introduced by “take heart” 20 in Mark/Matt). Here we seem to have discovered something like the heart of the story. The end of the story deviates from Matthew/Mark in John, because the disciples, due to their immediate arrival at their destination, do not get a chance to take Jesus into their boat. For modern ears this almost sounds demythologizing, as if Jesus had been standing on the shore.21 But this is not what the narrator in antiquity had in mind. It is more plausible that John maintains a distance between Jesus and his disciples. It is rather strange that John does not mention that the wind dies down as do Matthew and Mark. John stylizes the narrative in such a way that all the emphasis of the story is on Jesus’ statement: “It is me, do not be afraid.” This is also the part of the story which the hearer/reader can latch on to most easily.22 It is important to observe that the sequel to the stories is the same with all three evangelists who record the story: Matthew, Mark and John all have the story of the feeding of the five thousand first, followed by Jesus walking on the water, and then the comment that the multitudes followed Jesus around the lake. This common sequence is particularly striking if one assumes that John did not have immediate knowledge of a synoptic gospel. The comparison of John and the synoptics reveals, in this case, that sequels of stories were transmitted even without written sources.23 The comparison also shows how similar the language is between Matthew and Mark, an affinity best explained by the theory that Matthew knew Mark.24 20 Θαρσεῖτε. 21 Cf. Folker Siegert, Das Evangelium des Johannes in seiner ursprünglichen Gestalt (2008), 318: „Der Ort ist immerhin bezeichnend: Es ist der See Genezareth, an welchem … in der Morgen- und Abenddämmerung Himmel und Erde verschmelzen.“ (= The place is signifiant: the sea of Galilee where ... heaven and earth melt into one at dawn and dusk.) 22 It is remarkable in the Matthew version how strong Peter as a figure of identification is; cf. e.g. the theological interpretation of the Matthew pericope in Luz’ commentary which concerns itself with this part of the text almost exclusively (Luz, Matthäus, 2, 411–412); in contrast Gibbs, Matthew 11:2–20:34, 764: “The fisherman is not a positive role model in this account. The portrait of all the disciples in 14:22–33 functions primarily as a contrast, as a foil for the portrait of Jesus.”; similarly France, Matthew, 567–568: “… the eventual failure of the experiment perhaps suggests that Matthew does not intend it to be taken as a model for others to follow, but rather as a cautionary tale. Peter’s proposal might be regarded as coming rather too close to the ‘testing’ of God which is forbidden in 4:5–7.” A different conclusion is drawn by Charles R. Carlisle, Jesus’ Walking on the Water: A Note on Matthew 14. 22–33, NTS 31 (1985), 151–155, on the basis of a comparison with Mark: “Matthew … uses Simon Peter as a model, almost as an archetype, of the role of a disciple of Christ.” (155), for: “The Rise-Fall-Rise of Peter’s faith leads to the proclmataion by the Church (the Twelve) of Jesus Christ as Lord …” (154). Carlisle emphasises the congregation and the church excessively, it must be said. In Matt Jesus is the focus. 23 John’s version can be used to explain the haste with which the disciples leave the scene of the feeding of the five thousand in the synoptic narratives, because the crowd proclaim Jesus as the Messiah and appear to intend a revolt under his leadership (John 6:14–15) – cf. e.g. William Lane, The Gospel according to Mark (1974), 234. This can hardly allow the conclusion, however, that Mark used John; it is far more likely that both had access to the same sources (see below). 24 Or the other way round – although the Matthew-priority theory does not seem to me to fit the findings in Lk nor to explain the differences between Mt and Mk. Cf. Udo Schnelle, Einleitung in

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Tradition history It is worth throwing a glance at the other narrative concerning the stilling of a storm: Mark 4:35–41/Matt 8:23–27/Luke 8:22–25.25 This narrative presents differences from Matt 14, in addition to the fact that Jesus is in the boat and does not come to join them from elsewhere. Stilling the Storm depicts the storm in much more dramatic terms than Walking on the Water. In addition, Jesus rebukes the storm here while in Walking on the Water all we learn is that it simply dies down. Similarities are also present. In both stories the disciples are on their own at the outset, in Stilling the Storm because Jesus is asleep. Moreover, in Stilling the Storm Jesus accuses the disciples of lacking faith (in Mark and Luke; Matthew omits this) which offers a certain parallel to Jesus scolding Peter for lacking faith when he sinks into the water in Walking on the Water. The disciples’ fear and wonder in the face of the miracles told at the end of Stilling of the Storm also appear in the Mark-version of Walking on the Water (in Matthew in the proskynesis). In both stories their fear in the face of the weather was not expressed by the term φόβος; in Stilling the Storm the disciples call for help while in Walking on the Water they cry out in fear – because they think Jesus is a ghost. The motif of Jesus’ intention to go to the other side of the lake is a further common feature.26 The observed affinities between the two stories encourage the inference not of literary dependence but of oral transmission. This impression is reinforced by the story of the appearance of the resurrected Jesus at the lake of Tiberias in John 21:1–8. For here, as in Walking on the Water in Matthew, Peter is the only one who leaves the boat to come to Jesus; admittedly he swims or wades to the shore.27 In both, the motif that they recognise Jesus, who they had originally not recognised, is important.28 The similarities lead Ulrich Luz to consider it likely that Matthew was dependent on a transmission congruent with that which is apparent in John. He claims “that the restructuring (by Matthew – JCS) can only be seen as an intentional attempt at a ‘symbolical’ usage of a transmission not meant for this use.”29 This deduction is 8

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das Neue Testament ( 2013), 205–242, esp. 240–241; Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament (1997), 111–125; D.A. Carson/Douglas J. Moo, An Introduction to the New Tes2 tament ( 2005), 85–103 (with reservations on the universal validity of the two source theory, despite which it should be used as a ‘working theory’). Aland no. 90. Stilling the storm: Mark 4:35; Luke 8:22; Matt 8:18. Walking on the water: Mark 6:45; Matt 14:22. – John 6:16 only establishes that the disciples came to the other side of the lake. Cf. Luz, Matthäus, 2, 405. John 21:4.7; Matt 14:26; Mark 6:49. „Die Umgestaltung (sc. by Mt – J.C.S.) kann man sich nur als bewußten Versuch einer ,symbolischen‘ Verwendung einer anders gemeinten Überlieferung denken.“ Luz, Matthäus, 2,405–406. More cautious e.g. John Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew (2005), 598: “Perhaps Matthew has created a symbolic narrative drawing together fragments of tradition and extrapolations

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not necessary even if both stories are indeed related as the similarity of the motifs suggests. It is quite possible that in oral tradition different stories were combined and developed without a conscious attempt to impose a symbolic meaning onto an originally non-symbolic story. John 21:1–8, too, is related to the story of the miraculous haul of fish in Luke 5:1–11.30 This leads to the observation that there was a cycle of stories situated at or on the Sea of Galilee which all focus on the inner circle of Jesus and his disciples,31 and which above all demonstrate Jesus’ divine power. It seems possible and not improbable that these stories influenced each other in the process of transmission. This would be the simplest explanation for the observed similarities. Formgeschichte The story of Jesus walking on the water is a miracle of epiphany;32 its main purpose is the demonstration of Jesus’ divine power. This power is shown through control over the elements of wind and water, the disciples’ fear in the face of this power, and their ultimate reverence for Jesus as the son of God. The story of Peter walking on the water must be distinguished from this. It is usually qualified as a legend about Peter (“Petruslegende”)33 which shows something in an exemplary fashion – e.g., that faith sustains us in every situation. The ‘Sitz im Leben’ for these stories can, as usual, only be construed hypothetically. Perhaps it is better to talk about the pragmatics of the text such as the proc-

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from other traditional material.”; Patrick J. Madden, Jesus’ Walking on the Sea: An Investigation of the Origin of the Narrative Account (1997), comes to the conclusion that originally the story of Jesus walking on the water was a resurrection story (e.g. 41 and 138: “a displaced resurrection narrative”). Siegert, Johannes, 300, sees in this section with Fortna (Robert T. Fortna, The Gospel of Signs: A Reconstruction of the Narrative Source Underlying the Fourth Gospel [1970], 89–98) an originally pre-Easter Semeia-story and says. “Der Synoptische Vergleich (Aland-Synopse Nr. 41) erweist diese Perikope als Parallele zu Lk 5,1–11 (Fischzug des Petrus).” (= The synoptic comparison proves this pericope to be a parallel to Luke 5:1–11 …) We can notice the proximity to Luke 5:1–11 without having to agree with Siegert’s literary-critical theories. The connection with the disciples is noted by Klaus Berger, Formen und Gattungen im Neuen Testament (2005), 366; to imply that the function of this transmission was to demonstrate the close relation between Jesus and his disciples and his power seems far-fetched; considering the doubt and lack of faith on the part of the disciples, an interpretation indeed contrary to the text itself. Cf. Berger, Formen und Gattungen, 345 (“Theophanie-Erzählung”); Wolfgang Wiefel, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus (1998), 276; Madden, Jesus’ Walking on the Sea, 86–88; Robert A. Guelich, Mark 1–8:26 (1982), 353. E.g. Bultmann, Die Geschichte der synopstischen Tradition, 379. The term legend does not include any judgement concerning the historicity of such a narrative although it is often understood in this way.

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lamation of Jesus as the powerful son of God and belief in the helping power of this son of God.34 History of Motifs, History of Religion Some possible biblical reference points for our narrative can be named. The LXX text of Job 9:8 reads: God, “who alone stretches out the heavens and walks on the sea as on the ground” (the Hebrew text has the more mythological phrase: “who walks on the back of Iam/of the sea”). Similarly Job 38:16 says that Yahweh walks on the ground of the abyss. This mythological figure of speech brings Exodus to mind. In comparison with Jesus (and Peter) walking on the water, however, the people in Exodus did not walk on the water but on dry land through the sea. The sea (Iam) stands for the menace which the powers of death exercise but which stand under God’s command during the exodus, fighting for his people and 35 not against them. This understanding of the sea may be present in our narrative of Jesus and Peter, but clearly the setting here is the life of the fishermen on the Galilean sea. There are a number of texts in the greco-hellenistic world and also in the Gilgamesh-epos which show that the ability to walk on water or on the waves is a godly attribute.36 One story often mentioned in commentaries which seems to offer parallels to Peter’s walk on the water is found in a Buddhist text37 in which a monk traverses a river, walking on the water deeply immersed in meditation. He, too, becomes afraid and begins to sink. It is not impossible that a story like this crossed the great distance from east to west, considering that there were a number of important trade routes and an amazingly vivid exchange of information within the world of antiquity. But on the whole the idea of this Buddhist text shaping our biblical narrative appears quite literally far-fetched. It is important to look at the words of Jesus: “Fear not” and “it is I”; they are 38 deeply rooted in the Old Testament. Ulrich Luz pinpoints the mixture of motifs as follows: “Jesus presents himself here in the cloak of a hellenistic hero, using the language of the God of the Old Testament.” („Jesus präsentiert sich hier im Gewand eines hellenistischen Heros und mit der Sprache des alttestamentlichen Gottes.“)39 34 Wiefel, Matthäus, 276, points to the connection with the congregation (disciples as players, Peter with his doubts and his ‘restored faith’ as a representative of the congregation). 35 Cf. Gnilka, Markus, 1, 269; Grundmann, Matthäus, 367, points to Od Sal 39:5–12. For Peter’s rescue from the water see Ps 18:17; 69:2, 15–16; 144:7. 36 The respective volume of Der Neue Wettstein is not yet published. An extensive collection of references can be found in Luz, Matthäus, 2, 407–408. 3 37 E.g. Martin Dibelius, Die Formgeschichte des Evangeliums ( 1959), 113 and 176 n. 2; Luz Matthäus, 2, 410. 38 For “do not be afraid” cf.Wanke, φοβέω κτλ, ThWNT 9, 194–201, here 199. For ἐγώ εἰμι cf. Gnilka, Markus, 1, 270. 39 Luz, Matthäus, 2, 408.

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The point of investigating a text by means of the history of motifs and the history of religion does not lie in theories about the origins of the narratives, but in the comprehension of how they are told and of possible associations for the listener at that time. Redaction History Matthew’s specific use of language is particularly evident in the story of Peter walking on the water.40 If we agree with Luz that Matthew presents himself here as a “master of redactional creation” (“Meister redaktioneller Gestaltung”)41 this only means that he moulds the story but not necessarily that he invents it. It was necessary to shape the story carefully in order to insert it into the framework of the other story, i.e., that of Jesus walking on the water, which Matthew took over from Mark. We do not know whether Matthew used written source material (‘Vorlage’) or whether it came to him as an oral tradition. Matthew is the only one who ends the story with a confession: “You are truly the son of God!” This confession appears here for the first time in the gospel; but it reminds the reader of the heavenly voice at Jesus’ baptism: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matt 3:17). In Matt 8:29 the demons had already recognised and named Jesus as the son of God. Peter’s confession is worded in Matt 16:16: “You are the Christ, the son of the living God”; and again the heavenly voice states in Matt 17:5: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” The passion narrative in the Gospel of Matthew culminates in the high priest’s question: “I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God” (Matt 26:63), a motif taken up in the mockery of Jesus on the cross (Matt 27:43, like this only in Matthew). Eventually the heathen centurion confesses again after Jesus’ death on the cross: “Truly this was the Son of God” (Matt 27:54, Mark and Luke use the same words here). Matthew creates a web of references to the son of God throughout his gospel.42 The homage done in our narrative of Jesus walking on the water is fitting to the rules and pattern (‘Gattung’) of an epiphany story. But what is important here is 40 Cf. Luz, Matthäus, 2, 405 n.14 and 15; Wiefel, Matthäus, 275. Contrary e.g. Julius Schniewind, Das Evanmgelium nach Matthäus (1950), 180, who wants to ascribe the story for linguistic reasons (not stated in more detail) to the original Christian community; intermediary here already Er4 ich Klostermann, Das Matthäusevangelium ( 1971), 130: “Trotz der Sprache … ein Stück einer Überlieferung, die sich mit Petrus besonders beschäftigte, ähnlich Act 1–12.” (= Despite its language a piece of a tradition which focussed on Peter.) 41 Luz, Matthäus, 2, 405. 42 Those who criticize Matt 14:33 as an inconsequential pre-emption of Matt 16:16 and therefore seek an increase from Matt 14 to Matt 16 (cf. here Klostermann, Matthäusevangelium, 129, who rejects the increase, allowing the ‘inconsequential’ to remain) misconstrue the editorial intention of the evangelist in my opinion. The theory that Matthew wants to exonerate the disciples as representatives of the congregation when he exchanges their lack of understanding in Mark for confession, also falls short.

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that it is also connected with Peter’s walking on the water: we do not simply hear about Jesus’ sublimity but also that the power of God comes to help mankind through him. The motif found in the birth narrative at the beginning of Matthew’s gospel recurs: Immanuel (Immanuel = God with us).43 Methodical considerations An investigation of the history of texts can fulfil certain functions: it can show plausibilities for the formation of the extant material and sharpen our awareness of emphases and priorities as well as the intention of both narrator and redactor/editor. However, the investigation into the history of a text cannot pass judgement on the truth of the related story. In the case of Matthew 14 this means that if it is assumed that it is impossible to walk on water, then the story would be assumed fiction. The use of historical methods has frequently been connected with a rationalist conception of the world ever since the enlightenment. But this is not unavoidable if one remains open to preserve a healthy distance to a closed, so-called scientific conception of the world. As far as our narrative is concerned we can summarize that there existed a cycle of stories concerning water which were told, retold, and possibly also mixed. Thus the stilling of the storm may have taken place once but then have been taken up in several stories in a way that eventually created the impression that it happened several times. A prominent instance of such transmission processes is the feeding of a multitude of 5,000 people and the feeding of 4,000 people. The narrative of Peter walking on the water could have its roots in a story in which Peter ran from his boat towards Jesus on the shore. Whatever the historical roots of the narrative, this story should not be ‘rationalised’ (as if Peter’s walking on the water had happened in shallow water or in similar ways).44 The plausible development of a text revealed through historic investigation can lead to the conclusion that the final text does not represent what happened to begin with. But it is a faulty conclusion to think that the event which is related did not happen because it was impossible. On the contrary: faith knows as a plausible reality that the power of God related in a narrative is as mighty as depicted in this story – or even greater. The consideration of the history of a text also cannot open up a text hermeneutically. This is a process of interpretation which in any case means acquiring understanding and cannot happen without a perception of the text within its own world.

43 Matt 1:23. 44 Comp. Donald A. Hagner, Matthew 14–28 (1995), 416: “… the walking on the water … involve(s) direct contravention of natural law. If the world view of the interpreter does not allow this possibility, implausible naturalistic explanations will be sought … Such explanations are far from the intention of the evangelists and out of line with the Gospel narratives.”

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A brief outline of the interpretation of Matt 14:22–33 We do not go to a lakeside in order to preach about walking on the water or stilling the storm. This is not the way we comprehend the story. Rather we interpret it like a parable. Insofar it would not be necessary that it really happened: but if we claim that it simply could not have happened we block our own access to the story.45 The story’s intention is to take us by the hand so that in the end we can confess with the disciples that Jesus is the Son of God. At the same time it wants to open up the possibility of trusting in the saving power of God in Jesus Christ if we are in a crisis or even if we are facing death (represented here, as in old mythology, by the sea). Peter is a figure with whom we can identify. He is held by faith on the one hand so that he does not sink. On the other hand he is overcome by fear. His faith (as a personal quality) cannot save him from it; Jesus alone, whom he implores, can save him. Therefore it becomes evident that faith is not a human power at our own disposal. Even somebody like Peter is “of little faith”; like the rest of us, he remains dependent on the saving power of God.

Summary The story of Jesus and Peter walking on the sea (Matt. 14:22–33) is here investigated using various methods of historical exegesis. These methods show that this narrative belongs to a garland of “water stories” told about Jesus which possibly became intermixed. Whereas Jesus’ walk on the sea accentuates his majesty, Peter’s walk on the sea is concerned with the power of faith and his dependence on God’s help. Employing historical methods may reveal plausible developments in texts. They may not necessarily, however, lead to a verdict on their verisimilitude. Such verdicts depend far more on the interpreter’s own philosophy and faith. Methods are also

45 This leads to problematic statements like: “Wir haben es nicht mit einem Ereignis aus der Geschichte des vorösterlichen Jesus zu tun” (= This is not something that happened in the story of Jesus before Easter), Grundmann, Matthäus, 366. Grundmann tries to counterbalance this by agreeing (with reservations) to the old theory that this text reflects an Easter apparition which happened to Peter – see Johannes Kreyenbühl, Der älteste Auferstehungsbericht und seine Varianten, ZNW 9 (1908), 257–296. Kreyenbühl, 261, says rather crudely: “Die erste ‘Auferstehung Jesu’ ist in Galiläa erfolgt. Sie ist im Geiste des nach Kapharnaum zurückgekehrten Simon erfolgt. Am See von Galiläa wandelt sich das Bild des gekreuzigten Zimmermanns, an dem sich alle Juden stießen, um in den Glanz des Messias, der von der Lichtwolke Jahves überschattet wird.” (= The first “resurrection of Jesus” happened in Galilee. It happened in the spirit of Simon who had returned to Capernaum. Here, at the sea of Galilee, the image of the crucified carpenter, which was a stumbling stone to all Jews, changed into the splendour of the Messiah who is overshadowed by the bright cloud of Yahweh.)

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limited in that they cannot directly disclose the meaning of texts for the present or their importance for faith.

Exegesis of Matt 14:22–33 by Means of Historical Approaches Significance and Limitations of a Method Response Vilson Scholz Part of this response is a reaction to the exegesis as such and part is a reaction to the use of the method, which should be the main focus. I come to this from a more literary or ‘narrative critical’ perspective, which is a dimension that I usually add to the exegesis of Biblical narratives. Salzmann aims to investigate what the text had to say in its own world, trying to bypass the question of the historicity of what the text narrates. He proposes to divest the historical method of its connection with a rationalistic worldview. Yes, what the text tells us could have happened. Not necessarily in the way it is being told (p. 7) and not necessarily more than once, which might be a way of saying: don’t expect it to happen again. This is mildly critical or, depending on who is assessing it, far too critical! At the same time, Salzmann presents a few guidelines for the interpretation of Matthew 14:22–33. It remains to be seen if this hermeneutical section is closely related to the historical analysis or not. I was left wondering about the structure of this exegesis. It makes sense to begin with textual criticism and end with a short interpretation of the text, which I see as a way of pointing to the homiletical use of the text. It also makes sense to deal with Formgeschichte before Redaktionsgeschichte, but I don’t know exactly why that particular order of topics. Is that the standard way of dealing with a text from a historical point of view? Is this way of dealing with the text unique to Salzmann? Is it prompted by the nature of the text itself?1 I raise these questions not to say that the sequence of steps or procedures is inadequate; I’m just curious. As far as textual criticism is concerned, I wonder if, in v. 24, there are different viewpoints of the copyists involved. It could be simply a translation variant. Yes, copyists were also theologians. However, they were basically editing the Bible for their audience. In a sense, they were revising the standard version of the Greek Bible which they knew. They were not preparing ‘witnesses’ or ‘ancient manuscripts’ for contemporary textual critics to evaluate and use. My point is this: The

1

One could argue that this is the ideal movement: from text to method.

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outcome may be interpreted in different ways, but this does not mean that the copyist’s purpose was to create a different perspective. In terms of literary criticism, the Markan priority is assumed, as usual. However, is it so evident, apart from a prior preference for Mark which won the day only in modern times, that since Matthew and Mark are very similar the best explanation is that Matthew had access to Mark? Yes, indeed, Matthew’s narrative is more elaborate, inasmuch as it adds the Peter episode. However, as usual, in the part of the narrative where both Gospels are parallel, Mark is longer or more ‘verbose’. What if we turned this around? Supposing that Mark wrote after Matthew and had access to Matthew (or tapped into the same pool of tradition), why would he, who traditionally is seen as the ‘interpreter of Peter,’ have dropped the episode of Peter walking on the water? Would it be so because it puts Peter in a not so favorable light as a man of “little faith”? To what extent is it strange to have a Peter episode in Matthew and only in Matthew? Who is Peter in Matthew’s Gospel after all? How do Peter and Jesus interact elsewhere in the Gospel of Matthew?2 The historical method prompts one to look for similar stories in the Gospels and beyond. Salzmann refers to a collection of stories about Jesus and his disciples on the Sea of Galilee. However, apart from a passing reference, the preceding context, the feeding of the five thousand, is not taken into consideration. I understand that historical studies favor the vertical dimension over against the horizontal. A more horizontal investigation would probably mean ‘doing violence’ to the historical method.3 In a search for parallels, there is an incursion into religionsgeschichtlich territory. There are a few parallels (even a Buddhist one), but I agree that even though the hearer is able to draw a mental line between the story in the Gospel and extra-Biblical narratives this does not mean that the narratives are dependent on each other. The author indicates his preference for a text-pragmatics, rather than a Sitz im Leben. He proposes something like “Jesus is proclaimed the powerful Son of God”.4 This aspect of text-pragmatics sounds interesting. The question is: In what sense is it more concrete than a putative Sitz im Leben? Or is there no need for it to be ‘concrete’?5 2 3

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Salzmann cannot be ‘blamed’ for not dealing with some of these questions, since they are more of a ‘narrative-critical’ nature. Salzmann’s approach is avowedly ‘historical’. From a more ‘narratival’ approach, one cannot fail to notice that Matthew 14:22–33 is in a sense the last of the ‘sea and boat’ stories in Matthew and Mark. More so in Matthew than in Mark. In Matthew, there is only one additional reference to a boat, in 15:39. Yet, given the fact that there is no reference to Jesus ordering the waves to calm down in Matthew, where does the power of Jesus stand out in Matthew, apart from the reaction of the people in the boat, at the end? One has to agree that many proposals of Sitze im Leben for Biblical texts are far from concrete. However, in doing ‘historical’ exegesis one has to come up with a more concrete Sitz im Leben. I once was struck by someone who, in reading a essayon Mark’s Gospel, was quite emphatic in saying that if you are going to read it historically you have to be very specific about a Sitz im Leben. You cannot say something vague as: “Mark’s audience was somewhere out in Galilee”. You may be

Response to Jorg Chr. Salzmann, Exegesis of Matt 14,22–33

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In terms of redaction criticism, Matthew is seen as a “master of redactional creation”. However, Salzmann does not go into the details of Matthew’s Sondergut, which is Peter’s walking on the water. From a more ‘narrative critical’ perspective, it could be interesting to investigate how Matthew’s Sondergut ties in with the rest of the Gospel.6 Redaction criticism seems to favor ‘theological motifs’, and this appears to be confirmed by the emphasis on the confession, “You are the Son of God”. However, isn’t this confession part of the “Jesus walking on the sea” narrative, and not so much of the so-called Petruslegende, which seems to be the focus of the exegesis? What can the historical method deliver? What is its potential? This is the focal point or climax of Salzmann’s essay. If the method cannot determine the truth of what is being narrated or rule out the possibility of it happening, one must draw the conclusion that Salzmann’s view that it could have happened has nothing to do with the method as such. So, what’s the use of the historical method? It can unveil certain emphases and redactional perspectives. One must agree that a purely narrative approach (just Matthew and no Synoptic criticism) would be unable to unveil this dimension and tell the preacher: “Don’t miss the Sondergut, for it won’t be around until three years from now”.7 On the other hand, historical investigation is usually not very productive in terms of the hermeneutical appropriation of a text. It tends to be more negative or deconstructionist. In the case of Matthew 14, it leads the exegete to be cautious and say something like “yes, I believe it happened, but not necessarily the way it is being told and certainly not more than once”. However, one may wonder if it is worth our while to spend much time discussing all the historical questions related to the text and, in a sense, look through the text and beyond it. What is left for us to preach after a thoroughgoing historical investigation? Before you jump to the conclusion and say, “nothing”, I would suggest that one could say at least this: “Hey, kids, don’t try this at home near the swimming pool!” On the other hand, such an investigation of the truth of the text – in a referential sense, and not so much in an intra-textual sense or as the truth ‘in the world of the text’ – will lead our audience to ask: Could this really have happened? This is an honest question, and not only in our day. Those who raise this question (ourselves!) will be in the good company of an ὀλιγόπιστος Πέτρος. Many tend to downplay this element of skepticism, arguing that the good news is that only believers can be described as having “little faith”. Others, if not overlooking that disturbing “Lord, if it is you”, almost turn it into a

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wrong, he added, but you have to venture something more concrete: Hiding in the mountains during the Judean war! It turns out that this Sondergut is typically Matthean. For instance, the verb keleuo, “to order”, occurs 7 times in Matthew; it is absent from Mark, with one occurrence in Luke. Oligopistós, “man of little faith”, is typically Matthean. Distázo, “to doubt”, is dis legomenon: here and Matthew 28. Here I am assuming the use of a Triennial Lectionary.

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confession: Since it is you!8 I would rather go with Salzmann: Forget about Peter and his faith, strong or weak, and focus on what Jesus says: “Come!”

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As it has been repeatedly observed, this is a neat (and unfortunate) way of turning an invitation to dialogue into a lecture. From “if” to “since”!

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Literary Approaches/ Literarische Zugänge

Literary Interpretation of the Scriptures (Mark 8:22–26) James Voelz The Problem The “literary swerve”1 in Biblical interpretation arose in the later 20th century in reaction to the developments of the Aufklärung/Enlightenment, specifically ‘modern’ approaches to and methods of interpretation of the Biblical text. The definitive analysis of this phenomenon is presented by Hans Frei in his magisterial work published in 1974 by Yale University Press – and still in print – entitled The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics. The most far-reaching of his conclusions is this: with the passing of the medieval world and the dawn of the age of modernity, a reversal of the direction of interpretation and understanding occurred.2 Before the Enlightenment, those who read the Scriptures attempted to fit their own world into the Scriptural world. Thus, the Scripture’s world has angels, people possessed by demons, a God who intervenes in human history, etc., so their own world had these factors and forces, as well. The Scriptures spoke of a Second Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, so they, too, looked forward to his coming. But, with “the dawning of the light,” as it were, all of this was reversed, all changed 180 degrees. Now, Scriptural interpreters attempted to fit the world of the Scriptures into their own world. Now, what reason determined to be sensible and true, that became the touchstone for reality, and the world of the Scriptures had to be accommodated to that contemporary, ‘sensible,’ world. “Interpretation was a matter of fitting the biblical story into another world with another story, rather than incorporating that world into the biblical story.”3 The results were, first, that a sort of ‘wheat and chaff’ analysis of the Scriptures could take place. Some material was now seen as useful, while other was not deemed to be so, and was, as a result, rejected as inappropriate for the contemporary world.4 Second, and more important, however, there arose in the interpretation of the narrative or stories of sacred Scripture a neglect of the story that was actually being told. In the words of Frei: On apologetic as well as historical grounds the question of the factuality of biblical reports, and the cognate debate over whether its putative factuality or the recognition of some ideational themes was really the important thing about the Bible, pre1 2 3 4

Stephen D. Moore, Literary Criticism and the Gospels: The Theoretical Challenge (1989), xiii. Hans W. Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics (1974), 6. Frei, Eclipse of Biblical Narrative, 130. Frei, Eclipse of Biblical Narrative, 111–113.

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vented any serious attention to narrative shape in its own right. In both cases what the biblical narratives are all about is something other than their character as cumulatively … articulated stories whose themes emerge into full shape only through the narrative rendering and deployment itself.5

The Biblical story became a ‘vehicle’ for something else – it became a tool for another purpose – generally one of four things: 1. A revelation of general truths, especially truths able to be discovered independently by human reason. The Dutch Jewish interpreter Benedict de Spinoza exemplified this approach: “The truth of a historical narrative, however assured, cannot give us the knowledge nor consequently the love of God, for love of God springs from knowledge of Him, and knowledge of Him should be derived from general truths, in themselves certain and known.”6 For him, universal religion is common to all men and “does not depend on the truth of any historical narrative whatsoever.”7 2. A revelation of truths of the human mind, of human understanding, especially at a given stage of religious development. The radical analysis of David Strauss exemplified this approach, as he understood the stories of the Gospels to be sensuous mythic expressions of the religious consciousness of the earliest Christians, as they encountered Jesus Christ.8 3. The reconstruction of the historical events that lay behind the descriptions present in the text. This was the ‘error,’ as it were, also of conservative Scriptural interpreters and can be seen in efforts to prove the factuality of Biblical accounts. Arguments that attempt to ‘prove’ the inerrancy of the Biblical narratives fall, essentially, into this category of analysis. Even the revered Lutheran church father Albrecht Bengel can be seen as problematic in this respect, with his emphasis upon literal interpretation and descriptive accuracy.9 4. A reconstruction of the background of, and of the processes and details of, the composition of the Scriptural text. This is commonly known as the HistoricalCritical Method. This method makes use of the texts of Scripture to reconstruct the process of composition that lay behind those texts. Elements of such an approach include (among other things) attempts to recapture the details of the oral transmission of material now incarnated in the written texts (Formges-

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7 8 9

Frei, Eclipse of Biblical Narrative, 150. See also the following comment by Frei (135): “Clearly historical-critical analysis can be no more sympathetic than religious apologetics to an interpretation of the narrative text for which the narrative shape, theme, and course are of the greatest interest because they constitute the story’s meaning.” Benedictus de Spinoza, The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza (1951), 1, 61, cited in Frei, Eclipse of Biblical Narrative, 44. See also Frei’s discussion of mediating theologians (the Neologians), 60–61, 260, 262. Frei, Eclipse of Biblical Narrative, 43. Frei, Eclipse of Biblical Narrative, 233–236. Frei, Eclipse of Biblical Narrative, 4, 56, 80, 86–87, 175–179.

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chichte), attempts to understand the use to which such orally-transmitted material was put by editors/redactors, as they assembled and bound into a larger literary whole their textual material (Redaktionsgeschichte), and attempts to understand how various written sources (may have) used one another in the production of the larger literary whole (Source Criticism). This approach does not view a text as a literary whole, whose meaning resides chiefly in what it is actually depicting for the reader or what it is saying to him. Recent trends have pushed such sort of developments even further. Post-modern interpreters tend to see a text as providing ‘raw material,’ as it were, for meaning construction. More mild forms (e.g., Wolfgang Iser and the School of Konstanz) can be said to work with a kind of ‘stars and constellation’ model. The features of a text are like the stars in the sky, between which the readers/interpreters draw lines to produce what they see – the Great Bear/the Plough/the Big Dipper.10 More severe forms (e.g., Stanley Fish) push that analysis to its limits, asserting, in effect, that even the stars that form the basis/anchors for the constellations are themselves constructs of the readers/interpreters, according to their perception and understanding.11

The Response How, then, should we proceed? The analysis of Bernard C. Lategan is helpful here. He pictures textual interpretation – e.g., narrative interpretation – as a kind of triptych,12 drawing upon the medieval altar piece construction, comprising a central panel and two side/wing panels that can be open from it (see, e.g., the wellknown Isenheim Altar in Alsace).

10 Moore, Literary Criticism and the Gospels, 101. 11 Moore, Literary Criticism and the Gospels, 127. Related to the post-modern understandings here described are two major moves of Deconstruction, a severe form of a post-modern approach to texts. One form sees no definite contours or limits to a text, and, therefore, no determinate meaning in it, because the meanings of signs are always “deferred” or postponed as one interprets (each sign can be understood only within the context of further signs, which themselves can only be understood within the context of further signs, etc. [e.g., Derrida]). The other sees texts as tools for the assertion of power, whose meaning provides an expression of the interests and purposes of those who interpret them (e.g., Lyotard). See especially Gary A. Phillips, Exegesis as Critical Praxis: Reclaiming History and Text from a Postmodern Perspective, in: Gary Phillips (ed.), Poststructural Criticism and the Bible: Text/History/Discourse (1990), 7–49. 12 The model presented here is an adaptation of that provided in Bernard C. Lategan, Current Issues in the Hermeneutical Debate, Neot 18 (1984), 1–17, 3.

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In his viiew, three factors are to bee considered whenever w a written w docum ment is interpreteed. The left haand panel reprresents ‘text production,’ p those t elementts related to the geenesis of the teext, includingg the intention nality of the au uthor. The cennter panel represen nts the text ittself, the marrks on the paage perceived d as signifierss and the concepttual signifieds/meanings thhat arise from m them. The riight hand pannel represents ‘teext reception,’ those elemennts that are at play when a text is receivedd, including the reader/hearer r r, his knowledgge, skills, attittudes, etc. Lattegan’s point iis that all three pa anels must be in play when never a text iss interpreted, for that takess seriously the prroduction of the t text, incluuding its histo orical situation n, the text itseelf (comprising its i signifiers and a the conceeptual signified ds that they in nvoke), and thhe reception of the text, inclluding what tthe readers/h hearers ‘bring g to the tablee’ in the process of interpretation. This anaalysis helps us u to see whatt has gone wrrong with modernist and contem mporary textuual interpretaation, viz., intterpretation hhas, generally, become ‘stuck’ in either thee left hand or the t right hand d panel. In co ontrast to mo odern/contem mporary appro oaches, a prop per approach suggests that all three t panels be b involved in n the task of teextual interpre etation. This, iin fact, is the soluttion of literary y interpretatiion. Such an approach a com mprises two par arts: Firstt, it is necessa ary to return tto a focus upon the centerr panel of the triptych, instead of o focusing up pon the left or right hand paanels, because e the text is thhe central feature of written do ocuments. If a return to th his focus is ac chieved, the ffollowing obtains: On th he one hand, one can see thhe artistry of the language of the author. This can be obserrved in the caase of the Gosspel of Mark in a number of o ways. Firstt, there is specific and deliberaate patterningg in the lists of o Mark’s Gosspel, if one alllows the verbiagee to stand and d to communnicate on its own. o See, e.g g., intricate paatterning present in the explanation to the PParable of the Sower of the Seed in 4:15 –20 (see

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Exhibit 1 on page 84).13 Second, the placement in the Gospel of Mark of the socalled ‘historical present’ tense indicatives, which foreground and highlight action, is significant. Such verb forms are not simply scattered throughout this Gospel. Rather, foregrounding and highlighting through them occurs rather standardly in key pericopes, particularly those that focus upon the person of our Lord (including his authority), as well as his actions in the story of salvation. Especially to be noted are 2:1–12, the discussion concerning authority to forgive sins; 4:35–38, the demonstration of Jesus’ power over nature (the stilling of the storm); 5:22–23, 35– 43; the demonstration of Jesus’ power over death (the raising of Jairus’ daughter); 14:32–42, Jesus’ temptation in the Garden in the face of his impending death; 15:16–24, Jesus’ passion and crucifixion.14 Third, variations in the Greek of the Gospel of Mark occur, and that on a predictable, if not regular, basis. The Greek of Mark’s Gospel is not consistent throughout. Rather, it changes in a steady way from the early portion of the book until the last. The first portion of the Second Gospel is characterized by Semitic features, the latter portion by more Hellenic features. While this general change is not as stark as it is in the Gospel of Luke (contrast Luke 1:1–4 with Luke 1:5ff), it is noticeable nonetheless, if one is ready to see the artistry of the author’s completed text. See Exhibit 2 on page 87 for details and examples.15 On the other hand, and more important, when focusing upon the central triptych panel, one can focus upon what a document is arguing or depicting in a meaningful way, and that in toto. This is, of course, true for letters, e.g., the Epistles of Paul. Rhetorical analysis is especially helpful here. One can see, e.g., that, when they are considered holistically and from this perspective, Paul’s letters exhibit features that are congruent with basic rhetorical principles.16 See especially the arrangement of the elements of thought in his Epistle to the Galatians.17 Perhaps more significantly, such a focus is also true for narrative. When one interprets narrative, especially on “Level 2” (i.e., reading the meanings of the deeds that they depict [e.g., the meaning of Jesus walking upon the water in Mark 6:45–52, or the fact that he could not do miracles in his home town, Mark 6:5]),18 several things can 13 This exhibit is from James W. Voelz, Mark 1:1–8:26 (2013), 286–288. This commentary takes a literary-critical approach to grammatical and theological interpretation. See especially pages 40– 61, 62–67, and 68–73. 14 See also 3:31–35, the discussion concerning Jesus’ true family, and 11:27–33, the discussion of Jesus’ authority (whence John’s baptism). 15 For a more complete discussion, see Voelz, Mark 1:1–8:26, 11–12, 22–24. 16 See especially George A. Kennedy, New Testament Interpretation through Rhetorical Criticism (1984). 17 In accord with classical rhetorical analysis, Gal. 1:1–5 can be seen to provide the initial Exordium, 1:6–10 the Propositio/Partitio, 1:11–2:21 a Narratio, 3:1–5:6, the Probatio, 5:7–12 a first Peroratio, 5:13–6:10 an Exhortatio, and 6:11–17 a second Peroratio. This conforms in large measure to the outline of “deliberative rhetoric,” which addresses a problem in a community and focuses upon future action (Aristotle, Rhetoric, Book 1, ch. 3, 1358b). 18 For a complete discussion of Level 2 interpretation, see James W. Voelz, What Does This Mean?: 2 Principles of Biblical Interpretation in the Post-Modern World ( 2013), 156–165.

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be observed. First, one can see features of the story as a whole. An excellent example is the picture of Jesus presented in the Gospel of Mark. Read literarily, the story of the Second Gospel is the story of ambiguity throughout:19 – The protagonist is divine: he casts out demons, who name him Son of God (ch. 1); he raises the dead (ch. 5), as Yahweh says that he will do (Isa 26:19), and he walks on water (ch. 6), as Yahweh is described in the Psalms (Ps 77:14) and in Job (9:8) as actually doing. – But he is also a frail human being, who gets angry when his opponents resist his work (ch. 3), who is ignorant when his garments are being touched (ch. 5), who cannot do miracles, when the people do not believe (ch. 6).20 – Moreover, he is a strange and scary human being, for he hides from the crowds, even though he has come to preach the Word to them (ch. 1); he dresses down a man whom he has healed, after he has had mercy on his plight (ch. 1); and he curses a fig tree, though it was not the season then for the figs (ch. 11). No clear, unambiguous picture is consistently presented overall. Second, one can see development in a story, both in the features of its plot and in the meanings those features convey. This allows individual deeds/events to be placed within a narrative context, and the meaning of those deeds/events to be understood within the context of the meaning of the larger whole. The Gospel of Mark presents several good examples. Consider the placement of the Parable of the Sower of the Seed at the beginning of ch. 4 (vv.1–9). Jesus’s telling of this non-literal story follows directly after ch. 3 of the Gospel, in which our Lord experiences genuine success (3:7– 12) and positive reactions (3:13–19), but at which time real opposition against him also arises (the Jewish leaders plot to kill him [3:6], his relatives think that he is crazy [3:20–21; 31–35], and the Scribes from Jerusalem believe that he is in league with Satan [3:22]). The Parable of the Sower, then, seems to be Jesus’s commentary on the reaction to his preaching of the Word: there is resistance for various reasons, but success will also bear abundant fruit. Consider also the placement of the story of the Syrophoenician woman with the demon-possessed daughter in ch. 7 (vv. 24–30), directly after the long (for Mark) discourse on laws, purity, and defilement (7:1–23), and shortly before the Feeding of the 4,000 (8:1–9) in the area of the Decapolis. Jesus’ actions with the woman incarnate the teachings of his prior discourse on the abolition of Mosaic regulations, while the abundant feeding that follows ‘says’ that Gentiles will not receive merely the crumbs that the Gentile woman requested but the full blessings of God’s eschatological visitation in Christ Jesus, even as have the Jews.

19 I say “ambiguity” in somewhat clear distinction to “paradox”, which is often asserted to be a characteristic of Mark’s portrayal (see, e.g., Richard T. France, The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary on the Greek Text [2002], 670–673). 20 Note also the oddity of it taking two attempts to heal the blind man in 8:23–25, though more may be afoot in this incident (see below).

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Both of these elements (the artistry of the author, and the development of meaning-laden plot elements in his text) can be seen in and illustrated by Mark 8:22–26 (see Exhibit 3 on page 88)21.Linguistic Artistry is apparent in the unusual, if not tortured, syntax of v. 24, which can be understood to reflect the confusion of the man healed in two stages (see the discussion on pages 517–518 and 521–522 of Exhibit 3).22 With regard to the development of the story, the two stages of the healing of the blind man are congruent with the two stages of sight/insight regarding Jesus’ ministry and mission in the Gospel of Mark – a partial sight that is characteristic of the first half of the book, with its focus upon the miraculous, healings, the demonic, etc., the reports of which Jesus consistently tries to suppress (see, e.g., 1:44; 3:12; 5:43; 7:36), and a fuller sight that dawns after the miracle of 8:22– 26, with the 3 Passion Predictions (8:31; 9:31; 10:33–34) and the immediate restoration of full sight to Blind Bartimaeus that follows these predictions (10:46–52), reports of which Jesus never tries to suppress. (Note that 8:22–26 corresponds, as it were, to the concluding Blind Bartimaeus story at the end of ch. 10, and thus provides the beginning of a Marcan intercalation, with the Passion Predictions as the inner element of this A-B-A’ structure.)23 See the discussion in the introductory comments under the “Commentary” section of Exhibit 3 and the concluding thoughts. Second, the triptych of B.C. Lategan suggests that a document is the centerpiece of a communicative act. In other words, such a document is not, in the first instance, an historical artifact such as the shard of a clay pot. Rather, with it an author attempts to “say” something to an audience. Such a communicative act is first and foremost semantic. Once again, this is clear in rhetoric, in the details of actual, explicit argument – λόγος, in Aristotelian terms (Rhetoric Book I, ch. 2, 1356a). The Pauline epistles again provide examples of this phenomenon. Paul is actually attempting to change the thinking of his readers/hearers with his letters; he is not simply making doctrinal pronouncements for their own sake. This can be seen in Galatians 3:1–14. It is clear from vv. 1–6, that Paul’s doctrinal statements that follow in vv. 7–14 are intended to provide argumentation to convince the Galatians of the rightness of Paul’s position concerning faith and the Law. They are not abstract assertions that outline the apostle’s thinking on several articles of the Christian faith. But it is also true in narrative, if one understands how narrative actually works. A contemporary analysis congruent with the Lategan triptych is useful here: 21 This exhibit is from Voelz, Mark 1:1–8:26, 517–523. 22 See also the inventive relationship between syntax and meaning in Mark 4:19 in Exhibit 1. 23 This intercalation strongly suggests the interpretation offered above, given that the inner elements of Marcan intercalations seem to provide a hermeneutical commentary upon the outer elements. See especially the death of John the Baptist, depicted within the sending and return of the 12 in 6:7–30, the cursing of the fig tree, depicted within two visits of Jesus to the Temple in 11:11–17, and Jesus’s trial, depicted within the confrontation between Peter and the maid in the High Priest’s courtyard in 14:54–72. For further detail, see Voelz, Mark 1:1–8:26, 46–47.

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2

3

4

5

The ‘real author,’ #1, who exists in the real world outside a text (dark, outer line), creates, through the semantics of the text (thin, inner line), a ‘world,’ #3, with the deeds/ideas evoked by the words/signifiers of the text. He does so to communicate with an ‘implied reader,’ #4, which he imagines. In reading the text, an ‘actual reader’ in the real world, #5, enters mentally the ‘world’ of the text, #3. In so doing, he (also) recreates an image of the author = the ‘implied author,’ #2, but even more important, in entering the ‘world’ that he encounters, his own ‘world’ comes into dialogue with it, is informed by it, and is altered by it.24 And the (real) author intends to engage the (real) reader in precisely this way through the medium of the story. (Note that all three panels of the Lategan triptych are now in play.25) This experience can be seen clearly with the incident depicted in Mark 8:22–26 (Exhibit 3). As we enter the world of this portion of Mark’s text and its surrounding pericopes, we cannot help but wonder why blindness is such a problem with Jesus’ closest followers (see especially Mark 8:14–21), how partial sight followed by full sight can be understood, and how we fit into the picture being drawn. But there is more. A communicative act employing a text also has a pragmatic dimension to it. Here the work of J. L. Austin, the proponent of Speech Act Theory, is important.26 Austin understood that

24 Cf. the concept of “the fusion of horizons (die Horizontverschmelzung)” of Hans-Georg Gadamer, 3 Truth and Method ( 1975), 273, which does not involve eliminating the distance between oneself and a text, nor the wholesale adoption of the perspective of a text. Note also the similarity to the analysis of Paul Ricoeur, Metaphor and the Central Problem of Hermeneutics, in: Id., Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action and Interpretation (1994), 165–181, who speaks of the world ‘behind’ a text, the world of a text, and the world ‘in front of’ a text. In using this phraseology, Ricoeur asserts that by ‘world’ he means ‘Welt’ not ‘Umwelt’ (177). John Goldingay, Models for Scripture (1994), 65, presents a much less sophisticated, if more popular, understanding of this process: “The narratives in Scripture … invite people to live in their world as the real world, even if it contrasts with the world of their hearers’ current experience. They invite us to make their story our story.” 25 The real author/implied author are congruent with the left-hand panel, the text and its story with the center panel, and the implied reader/real reader with the right-hand panel. 2 26 See especially John L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words ( 1975). Also important with significant refinements is the later work of John R. Searle, Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts (1979).

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… there is a purpose behind the words, and he distinguished three aspects or “subacts” of language each time it is used: the locutionary act, approximately what we call “meaning” (the sense of the words) (Austin, 109), the illocutionary act, the “force” of an utterance, what it “counts as” (e.g., a command, a promise, an offer, a rebuke, etc.) (109), and the perlocutionary act, “what we bring about by saying something such as convincing, persuading” (109), i.e., what is to be accomplished in the recipient.27

Again, this is clear with rhetoric, especially in epistolary literature. Aristotle understood the element of πάθος in presentations, working the emotions of the audience (Rhetoric, Book 1, ch. 2, 1356a). Note Paul’s focus on πάθος in the initial appeals to the Galatians in 3:1–6. An equally important example can be found in the ‘deliberative species’ of rhetoric in NT letters. This type of classical analysis shows that a rhetorical presentation does not simply put forth information; rather, all elements of such a communication, including the ordering of material, seek to accomplish something in the reader/hearer. Thus, Paul’s letter to the Galatians is ‘deliberative,’ seeking to reinforce resolve concerning a theological matter with real-life implications.28 Once again, however, what we have said is true of narrative also, especially of Mark’s Gospel. This Gospel seeks to have a specific impact on its hearers, both on the level of individual pericopes and overall. All pericopes, in fact, have a pragmatic dimension to them, though it is not always obvious. But it is quite apparent in Mark 4:10–20. The parables were manifestly designed to impact their original hearers in their original telling, and they are designed to impact us, as well. See pages 295– 296 of Exhibit 1. More broadly, the Gospel of Mark as a whole is designed to have a pragmatic effect, an impact, upon its recipient. As noted above, the picture of the ‘character’ Jesus is one of ambiguity. One may now observe that the plot of this Gospel is not straightforward, either.29 The total picture – the ‘world’ created by the Gospel of Mark – presents an ambiguous, confusing picture: Just who is Jesus? 27 Voelz, What Does This Mean?, 276–277. 28 See the rhetorical analysis in footnote 17, above. In Gal 1:6–10, which provides the Propositio/Partitio or theme of the letter (reprised in each Peroratio near the end of the missive) Paul seeks to persuade the Galatians that they should not follow a Judaizing understanding of the Gospel but his own, true apostolic understanding. By contrast, 1 Thessalonians is likely “judicial” rhetoric (see Aristotle, Rhetoric, Book 1, ch. 3, 1358b), designed to provide a defense of Paul’s own personal activities in the past and to cause the Thessalonian Christians to react positively toward him. In such a design, an account of historical facts, the Narratio, 1:6–2:16, precedes the Propositio/Partitio in 2:17–20, and the remaining sections. 29 The voice declares from heaven, “You are my beloved Son” (ch. 1 [cf. ch. 9]); he does miracles (chs. 1–7) and reveals the mystery of God’s kingdom to those who follow him (ch. 4); the crowd is dumbstruck at his deeds, declaring that he has done all things very well (ch. 7). Yet his relatives think that he is crazy, as does his closer family, as they attempt to seize him and remove him to their home (ch. 3); the disciples wonder to themselves, “Who is this, that both the wind and the seas obey him?” (ch. 4), and he cries out in seeming desolation on the cross, though he truly is the Son of God (ch. 15).

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What is his nature? And what do his actions and the actions done to him mean? What we see is quite unclear.30 There is, however, one thing in this Gospel ‘world’ that is not ambiguous or confusing – and that is the word of Jesus. His word is trustworthy at every turn. For example, in addition to predicting his suffering, death, and resurrection three times (as in the other Synoptics) in 8:31; 9:31; 10:33–34, he predicts that there will be a colt ready for him to use for entry into Jerusalem (11:2), and it is so; that a man bearing a water jar will appear to lead the disciples to the place where he will eat the Passover with his followers (14:13–16), and it is so; and that his followers will abandon him (14:27), and it is so. Most important, he also predicts his appearance in Galilee after his resurrection (14:28), a prediction referred to by the young man at the tomb: “There you will see him, just as he told you” (ἐκεῖ αὐτὸν ὄψεσθε, καθὼς εἶπεν ὑμῖν, 16:7) and one which we can be confident will come to pass, even if the Gospel is seen to end at 16:8. Which means that the result of entering the ‘world’ of this Gospel text for believers is profound pragmatically. Pragmatically, the ‘world’ of the Gospel of Mark seeks to provide comfort and assurance, eliciting trust from those who enter it. What can be seen with the human eye, this text says, will never be clear and unambiguous to us; in fact, it never was. What is clear and unambiguous is Jesus’s word. And that word is ever sure. Jesus’s promises are ever sure. And those words of promise will be sure until promise turns to sight, when “you will see him, just as he told you.” You can trust these words of promise as the anchor of your Christian life.

Conclusion A literary approach to Biblical interpretation directs us to the text of Scripture and to the ‘world’ of the text, rather than toward making use of the text for other ends. It takes seriously the ‘world’ of the text and, especially with the Scriptures, seeks a ‘direction of fit’ that conforms our ‘world’ to the ‘world’ of the text, not the other way around.31 Questions, of course, remain, especially questions relating to narrative and history,32 on the one hand, and to the role of the reader/hearer on the other.33 30 In this Gospel seeing is not believing; seeing leads to ambiguity. This is the perfect Gospel for any who may have been or may be thinking: “We want to be confessors of the Faith. We want to be faithful followers in the way. We are not ashamed of the gospel message of the Christ (see Mark 8:35– 38). But it would be so much easier to endure, if we could see some proof or sign. If only we had been there when Jesus walked the earth! If only we had been there on that Easter morn! It would be so much easier to endure.” This Gospel ‘says’ semantically that you are not at a disadvantage, no matter when or where you live. 31 But see also footnote 24, above. 32 The question of the relationship between history and narrative is a vast topic not able to be addressed in this essay (e.g., the relationship between history, fiction, and historical fiction must be explored). Intriguing is the statement of Hans W. Frei, Conflicts in Interpretation, ThTo 49 (1992), 344–356, here 354, “Christians do have to speak of the referent of the text. They have to speak his-

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But the strength of a literary approach is that it respects the text as meaningful and regards it as a communicative address to those who encounter it.

torically and ontologically, but in each case, it must be the notion of truth, or reference, that is reshaped extravagantly, not the reading of the literal text. Any notion of truth that disallows the condescension of the truth to the depiction of the text, to its own self-identification, with, let us say, the four-fold story of Jesus of Nazareth taken as an ordinary story, has itself to be viewed with profound skepticism by the Christian interpreter.” (emphasis added) Generally, the work of Paul Ricoeur is significant for this endeavor. Ricoeur shows that story and history are intimately related to one another, not only by employing “selection” (Paul Ricoeur, The Narrative Function, in: Id. Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action and Interpretation [1994], 274–296, here 290), but also as they deal with human reality as a historical phenomenon (293– 296) and are concerned with “communication” (295). As the former “make[s] reality appear in such and such a way” (293) – what Ricoeur calls “productive reference” to the world (293) – the “historicity of human experience can be brought to language only as narrativity” (294). 33 For the role of the reader, see James W. Voelz, Reading Scripture as Lutherans in the Post-Modern Era, LQ 14 (2000), 309–334, especially 315–320.

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Exhibit 1 1 4:14–20 What follows is a decoding of the parable by Jesus, i.e., the actual subjects of the actual activities he seeks to describe (the “tenor,” to use technical vocabulary) are laid bare. This is a necessary first step in the interpretation of all non-literal speech. But interpretation cannot stop there! Once the story has been decoded, the “real story” has an overall meaning in and of itself – as does any (other) narrative, e.g., Hamlet. (This meaning is the narrative’s interpretation on level 2) Furthermore, the story and its meaning also have an illocutionary force – an intended impact – upon the hearer/reader. Yet all of these further semantic and pragmatic factors are dependent upon the elementary step of decoding: knowing what the story to be interpreted actually is. Two further general observations on these verses are also in order. First, the grammar is surprisingly complex and Hellenic. Especially noteworthy are the “sandwich” constructions with the attributive position participles in 4:16a, 18 (twice), 20a (Matthew’s Greek is similar [see Matt 13:20, 22, 23]. Substantive participles such as these are in attributive position to a assumed noun. Thus, ὁ σπείρων (Mark 4:14) is equivalent to ὁ σπείρων [ἄνθρωπος].), and the rare participle positioning in 4:19. A much higher frequency of S-V word order also is in evidence. Second, another example of asymmetrical pattern is on display. While not exactly replicating the patterning of the telling of the parable (4:3–9), similar sorts of features are to be seen, involving not only vocabulary and syntax, but morphology as well. See the chart below. Again, the second of the three “bad soil” descriptions comprises much lengthier verbiage (4:16–17; cf. 4:5–6), and, again, the discussion of “the rich earth” provides a kind of conclusion to the entire discourse (4:20; cf. 4:8).2

Vocabulary οὗτοι (4:15) παρά (4:15) –x– (4:15) εὐθύς (4:15)

οὗτοι (4:16) ἐπί (4:16) τὸν λόγον (4:16) εὐθύς (4:16)

ἄλλοι (4:18) εἰς (4:18) τὸν λόγον (4:18) –x– (4:18)

A-A-B A-B-C A-B-B A-A-B

Morphology –x–

σπείρομενοι

σπείρομενοι

A-B-B

1 2

James Voelz, Mark 1:1–8:26, 286–288. In the chart below, elements that are repeated are in plain (roman) type. The first element that is different from the others is in bold type. If another element is different from all the others, it is in bold and italic type.

Exhibit 1

Syntax οἱ … ὅπου σπείρεται ὁ λόγος (4:15) οἱ … σπείρομενοι (4:16) οἱ … σπείρομενοι (4:18)

A-B-B

(καί) (4:15) οἵ (4:16) οὗτοί εἰσιν (4:18)

A-B-C

ὅταν ἀκούσωσιν (4:15) ὅταν ἀκούσωσιν (4:16) ἀκούσαντες (4:18)

A-A-B

ἔρχεται ὁ σατανᾶς … αἴρει (V/S/V) (4:15) λαμβάνουσιν … οὐκ ἔχουσιν (V/no explicit subject/V) (4:16–17) αἱ μέριμναι … ἡ ἀπάτη … αἱ … ἐπιθυμίαι … συμπνίγουσιν … γίνεται (3 subjects/V/no explicit subject/V) (4:19) —x— (4:15) Genitive absolute + εὐθύς + σκανδαλίζονται (4:17) —x— (4:18)

A-B-C

A-B-A

If the fourth soil, “the rich earth” (4:20), is added, the following patterns emerge: Vocabulary οὗτοι (4:15) παρά (4:15) –x– (4:15) εὐθύς (4:15)

οὗτοι (4:16) ἐπί (4:16) τὸν λόγον (4:16) εὐθύς (4:16)

ἄλλοι (4:18) εἰς (4:18) τὸν λόγον (4:18) –x– (4:18)

ἐκεῖνοι (4:20) ἐπί (4:20) τὸν λόγον (4:20) –x– (4:20)

A-A-B-C A-B-C-B A-B-B-B A-A-B-B

Morphology –x–

σπείρομενοι

σπείρομενοι

σπαρέντες

A-B-B-C

Syntax οἱ … ὅπου σπείρεται ὁ λόγος (4:15) οἱ … σπείρομενοι (4:16) οἱ … σπείρομενοι (4:18) οἱ … σπαρέντες (4:20)

A-B-B-B

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(καί) (4:15) οἵ (4:16) οὗτοί εἰσιν (4:18) ὅιτινες (4:20)

A-B-C-B

ὅταν ἀκούσωσιν (4:15) ὅταν ἀκούσωσιν (4:16) ἀκούσαντες (4:18) ἀκούουσιν (4:20)

A-A-B-C

ἔρχεται ὁ σατανᾶς … αἴρει (V/S/V) (4:15) λαμβάνουσιν … οὐκ ἔχουσιν (V/no explicit subject/V) (4:16–17) αἱ μέριμναι … ἡ ἀπάτη … αἱ … ἐπιθυμίαι … συμπνίγουσιν … γίνεται (3 subjects/V/no explicit subject/V) (4:19) παραδέχονται … καρποφοροῦσιν (V/no explicit subject/V) (4:20)

A-B-C-B

—x— (4:15) Genitive absolute + εὐθύς + σκανδαλίζονται (4:17) —x— (4:18) —x— (4:20)

A-B-A-A

Exhibit 2

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Exhibit 2 Early and Late Pericopes in Mark’s Gospel 1 Earlier pericopes: frequent occurrence of εὐθύς, very frequent occurrence of καί as the basic conjunction, much less frequent usage of δέ, V-S word order, frequent usage of 1st principal part verb forms (both presents and imperfects), and frequent omission of subjects of main verbs. Mark 3:1–6 is typical: 3:1 Καὶ εἰσῆλθεν πάλιν εἰς τὴν συναγωγήν. καὶ ἦν ἐκεῖ ἄνθρωπος ἐξηραμμένην ἔχων τὴν χεῖρα. 2 καὶ παρετήρουν αὐτὸν εἰ τοῖς σάββασιν θεραπεύσει αὐτόν, ἵνα κατηγορήσωσιν αὐτοῦ. 3 καὶ λέγει τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ τῷ τὴν χεῖρα ἔχοντι ξηρὰν ἔγειρε εἰς τὸ μέσον. 4 καὶ λέγει αὐτοῖς· ἔξεστιν τοῖς σάββασιν ἀγαθὸν ποιῆσαι ἢ κακοποιῆσαι, ψυχὴν σῶσαι ἢ ἀποκτεῖναι; οἱ δὲ ἐσιώπων. 5 καὶ περιβλεψάμενος αὐτοὺς μετf ὀργῆς, συλλυπούμενος ἐπὶ τῇ πωρώσει τῆς καρδίας αὐτῶν λέγει τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ· ἔκτεινον τὴν χεῖρα. καὶ ἐξέτεινεν καὶ ἀπεκατεστάθη ἡ χεὶρ αὐτοῦ. 6 καὶ ἐξελθόντες οἱ Φαρισαῖοι εὐθὺς μετὰ τῶν Ἡρῳδιανῶν συμβούλιον ἐδίδουν κατf αὐτοῦ ὅπως αὐτὸν ἀπολέσωσιν. Later pericopes: much higher frequency of δέ (though καί is still clearly in evidence), much higher frequency of S-V word order (often related to the presence of δέ), more use of the aorist in narrative, “better Greek” (e.g., tense usage with reference to verbal aspect, nominative participles following the main verb, hyperbaton), and rather frequent use of ἀποκρίνομαι. Mark 15:6–15 is typical: 6 Κατὰ δὲ ἑορτὴν ἀπέλυεν αὐτοῖς ἕνα δέσμιον ὃν παρτοῦντο. 7 ἦν δὲ ὁ λεγόμενος Βαραββᾶς μετὰ τῶν στασιαστῶν δεδεμένος οἵτινες ἐν τῇ στάσει φόνον πεποιήκεισαν. 8 καὶ ἀναβὰς ὁ ὄχλος ἤρξατο αἰτεῖσθαι καθὼς ἐποίει αὐτοῖς. 9 ὁ δὲ Πιλᾶτος ἀπεκρίθη αὐτοῖς λέγων· θέλετε ἀπολύσω ὑμῖν τὸν βασιλέα τῶν sουδαίων; 10 ἐγίνωσκεν γὰρ ὅτι διὰ φθόνον παραδεδώκεισαν αὐτὸν οἱ ἀρχιερεῖς. 11 οἱ δὲ ἀρχιερεῖς ἀνέσεισαν τὸν ὄχλον ἵνα μᾶλλον τὸν Βαραββᾶν ἀπολύσ αὐτοῖς. 12 ὁ δὲ Πιλᾶτος πάλιν ἀποκριθεὶς ἔλεγεν αὐτοῖς τί οὖν ποιήσω ὃν λέγετε τὸν βασιλέα τῶν sουδαίων; 13 οἱ δὲ πάλιν ἔκραξαν σταύρωσον αὐτόν. 14 ὁ δὲ Πιλᾶτος ἔλεγεν αὐτοῖς· τί γὰρ ἐποίησεν κακόν; οἱ δὲ περισσῶς ἔκραξαν· σταύρωσον αὐτόν. 15 ὁ δὲ Πιλᾶτος βουλόμενος τῷ ὄχλῳ τὸ ἱκανὸν ποιῆσαι ἀπέλυσεν αὐτοῖς τὸν Βαραββᾶν, καὶ παρέδωκεν τὸν sησοῦν φραγελλώσας ἵνα σταυρωθῇ.

1

See James W. Voelz, The Greek of the New Testament: its Place within the Context of Hellenistic Greek, in: Chrys Caragounis (ed.), Greek: A Language in Evolution. Essays in Honour of Antonios N. Jannaris (2010), 177–196, especially 193–194. See also James W. Voelz, The Greek of Codex Vaticanus in the Second Gospel and Marcan Greek, NT 47 (2005), 209–249, especially 241–242, 246–249.

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Exhibit 3 1 8:24 ἀναβλέψας – This verb (ἀναβλέπω) can denote either looking up (e.g., 7:34) or regaining sight (e.g., 10:52). An argument can be made for either meaning here, but the latter seems preferable in this context, given the fact that Jesus has spat into his eyes (so that at this point he is probably not looking down). βλέπω τοὺς ἀνθρώπους ὅτι ὡς δένδρα ὁρῶ περιπατοῦντας – This is a difficult construction. One of two possibilities obtains. The first is to take all words and syntax fairly straightforwardly. βλέπω τοὺς ἀνθρώπους is a complete statement, with the arthrous noun τοὺς ἀνθρώπους as the direct object of βλέπω: “I see the people.” Then the second verb of seeing, ὁρῶ, “I see,” takes as its direct object the participle, περιπατοῦντας, which is understood as a substantive, “walking (people),” i.e., “(people who are) walking.”2 This understanding gives the first option in the translation: “I see the people, because I see (people who are) walking around as trees.” A second and attractive possibility understands the first verb alone to be a complete statement: βλέπω, “I do see.” Then the following definite noun, τοὺς ἀνθρώπους, “the people,” anticipates the ὅτι clause. This τοὺς ἀνθρώπους is also the object of the second verb of seeing, ὁρῶ, “I see,” which is in the ὅτι clause. And τοὺς ἀνθρώπους, “the people,” is the definite noun which the participle, περιπατοῦντας, “walking,” in fact, modifies. This gives the second suggested translation: “I do see, because I see the people walking around as trees” (with “the people” emphasized). This complex construction, with one element (τοὺς ἀνθρώπους) of the subordinate clause pulled out into the main clause, does occur elsewhere in the NT, most notably in Acts 19:4: ‘Ιωάννης ἐβάπτισεν … λέγων εἰς τὸν ἐρχόμενον μετ’ αὐτὸν ἵνα πιστεύσωσιν, “John baptized … saying in the one coming after him that they believe,” i.e., “that they believe in the one coming after him” (and not meaning that they should believe in the “him” who is John the Baptizer). It is critical to realize that, generally, translations and interpretations sit quite loosely on the Greek at this point. The common understanding that the man saw people “like trees walking” is incorrect, since δένδρα is neuter and περιπατοῦντας is masculine. Furthermore, translations standardly either omit the ὅτι (e.g., KJV) or translate it as “but” (e.g., RSV, ESV). It can be omitted only when it introduces direct discourse (ὅτι recitative), and it does not carry the denotation “but” in any context.3 It must be emphasized that the Greek does not say that the man sees “people like trees walking” but, rather, “people (who are) walking around as trees.” But why does the man say ὡς δένδρα, “as trees”? Perhaps human hair is seen as the foliage of trees. 1 2 3

James Voelz, Mark 1:1–8:26, 517–523. As a parallel, see the substantive participles in this phrase: κλαίοντας καὶ ἀλαλάζοντας, “weeping (people) and crying (people),” i.e., “(people who are) weeping and crying,” in 5:38. See LSJM, ὅτι.

Exhibit 3

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8:25 ὀφθαλμούς – Mark switches to the more common vocabulary for “eyes” here; cf. the rare noun ὄμματα in the second textual note on 8:23. διέβλεψεν – While it is logical to adopt the common meaning “see clearly” for this verb (the second option given in the translation: “he saw clearly”), a number of Classical Greek authors (Plato, Plutarch, and Aristotle) employ διαβλέπω with the meaning “stare with eyes wide open,”4 which may, in fact, be intended here (the first option in the translation: “he stared with eyes wide open”). ἀπεκατέστη – This aorist form, a double compound (with ἀπό and κατά) of ἵστημι, contains two augments (both epsilons: ἀπεκατέστη). This is characteristic of later Greek.5 While an aorist passive form (e.g., ἀπεκατεστάθη) might be expected in this context, forms with the strong aorist active stem (here, -στη), which are normally intransitive, are also used for the passive and transitive meaning “be restored.”6 καὶ ἐνέβλεπεν τηλαυγῶς ἅπαντα – The verb ἐμβλέπω means “look straight at someone/something,”7 or it may simply mean “look.”8 It is joined, however, with the adverb τηλαυγῶς. In and of itself, this adverb can be taken to mean “clearly.”9 It is, however, from the adjective τηλαυγής, which carries the notion not only of visibility from a distance (e.g., “far shining”10 or “visible from afar,” Lev 13:4 [of leprosy!]), but also (and relatedly) of “far seeing,” used of perception (ἄισθησις) and of the spirit (ψυχή).11 It would seem, therefore, that a non-literal connotation, if not denotation, may well be possible – perhaps as a double entendre – referring to and denoting both the man’s fully restored sight (in contrast to his partial vision in 8:24) and his insight into Jesus and his mission: “he began to look at all things from afar/into all things clearly.” 8:26 μηδὲ … εἰσέλθῃς – This is a standard negative command with the aorist stem (especially with the second person singular/plural), i.e., a form of μή plus an aorist subjunctive (not an imperative form): “do not enter.”

LSJM, διαβλέπω, I. See LSJM, ἀποκαθίστημι. See LSJM, ἀποκαθίστημι, II. Note in this section of the entry that the use of passive voice forms and the strong aorist active can also convey an intransitive active meaning. They are used for planets completing a revolution and for stars returning to their places in the heavens, and, more relevant for this Marcan context, also of sicknesses “subsiding” (Hippocrates, Aphorisms, 6.49). 7 See LSJM, ἐμβλέπω, 1 a. With εἰς, it means “look into” or “consider someone/something” (see LSJM, ἐμβλέπω, 1 b; see Mt 6:26). 8 See LSJM, ἐμβλέπω, 2. 9 Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca historica, 1.50, with ὁράω. 10 Pindar, Olympian Odes, 6.4. 11 Hippocrates, Epistles, 17.22. 4 5 6

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Commentary This pericope bears great similarity to the final pericope of part 2 of Mark’s Gospel (1:9–7:37), the healing of the deaf and mute man, 7:31–37. The following correspondences may be detailed:12 1. Both begin by people “bringing” (φέρουσιν, 7:32; 8:22) a man to Jesus, one deaf, the other blind. 2. They “plead” with him “that” (παρακαλοῦσιν … ἵνα, 7:32; 8:22) he physically touch their friend. 3. A compound of λαμβάνω is used to denote Jesus “taking hold” of the man, each in the form of an aorist middle participle (ἀπολαβόμενος, 7:33; ἐπιλαβόμενος, 8:23). 4. The man is taken away privately, either from the crowd or out of the village (7:33; 8:23). 5. Jesus spits, which act is conveyed by the participle form πτύσας (7:33; 8:23). 6. Jesus’ spittle is applied to the non-functioning body part (the “tongue” [7:33] or the “eyes” [8:23]). 7. Jesus places his “fingers” (7:33) or “hands” (8:23) on the man. 8. The participle ἀναβλέψας, “looking up” or “regaining his sight,” is used as a descriptor (of Jesus [7:34] or of the man [8:24]). 9. Healing occurs and the man’s body functions properly (ἐλάλει ὀρθῶς, “he began to speak properly,” 7:35; ἐνέβλεπεν τηλαυγῶς ἅπαντα, “he began to look at all things from afar/into all things clearly,” 8:25). 10. Restrictions are enjoined (ἵνα μηδενὶ λέγωσιν, “that they tell/try to tell no one,” 7:36; μηδὲ εἰς τὴν κώμην εἰσέλθῃς, “do not enter into the village,” 8:26). Unlike the incident in chapter 7 (see 7:36), however, there is no indication that Jesus’ injunction to silence is disobeyed in 8:26. As does 7:31–37,13 this pericope directs us to Isa 35:5–6, the great vision of the renewal of all creation at the eschatological visitation of Yahweh himself, when “the eyes of the blind will be opened” (Is 35:5). Here we see the instantiation of the eschatological visitation of the reign and rule of God. Unlike Mk 7:31–37, however, the instantiation does not go smoothly. This is, no doubt, part of the “odd” picture of Jesus developed by Mark, similar to the Lord not knowing who touched his garments (5:30) or being unable to do mighty works in his home town (6:5).14 But it may also be an indication that the implementation of God’s reign and rule is to be seen as occurring during the time of the continued existence of the old aeon, the old creation. Otherwise expressed, not only is the proleptic coming of the eschatologi-

12 See Marcus, Mark 1–8, 476, for a congruent but different analysis and presentation. 13 Indeed, it has been mooted by Gnilka that the two pericopes originally circulated together and that Mark has divided them. See Marcus, Mark 1–8, 476–77, citing Gnilka, Markus, 1, 296. 14 For Jesus as odd or strange, see point 6 of “Jesus Christ” in “Literary Features of Mark’s Gospel” in the introduction in Voelz, Mark 1:1–8:26, 42.

Exhibit 3

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cal reign and rule of God in principle and not without remainder15 – e.g., not all the blind receive their sight and not all the deaf receive their hearing – but it is also resisted by the forces of corruption, by the fallen, old creation, as those forces fight back, as it were, being still very much a factor. Furthermore, it may provide an anticipation of the soon-to-be-uttered passion predictions (8:31; 9:31; 10:33–34), which state explicitly that there will be resistance before triumph and suffering before glory. Here, even in his restoration of creation, more than personal enemies (e.g., the Jewish leaders [3:1–6] or even unclean spirits [1:23–24]) oppose Jesus’ gracious reign and rule. Still further, in addition to their literal signification, these verses may well carry with them a more-than-literal meaning, conveying in some way a mental/spiritual coming to see in two stages, namely, first indistinctly and then clearly. This is strongly suggested both by the language of the text, which contains striking vocabulary (e.g., the noun ὄμματα for “eyes” in 8:23; διέβλεψεν, “he stared with eyes wide open/saw clearly,” and ἐνέβλεπεν τηλαυγῶς ἅπαντα, “he began to look at all things from afar/into all things clearly,” in 8:25), and by the thoughts – seeing indistinctly and then seeing clearly – all of which follows directly after an extensive discussion of (not) seeing and (not) understanding in the previous pericope, concerning “fermented dough” (8:14–21). 8:22 Regarding Jesus touching the man, see the commentary on 7:32. 8:23 Regarding Jesus leading the man away from other human beings, see the commentary on 7:33. In this incident/instance the man is also brought outside the village, which reminds us of Heb 13:13 and its exhortation “let us actually come out to him [Jesus] outside the camp” (ἐξερχώμεθα πρὸς ἀυτὸν ἔξω τῆς παρεμβολῆς), a passage easily understood to denote extracting oneself from Judaism (see Heb 13:10–12, including the mention of Jesus suffering outside the gate16). Of interest is the phrase following in Heb 13:13: τὸν ὀνειδισμὸν αὐτοῦ φέροντες, “bearing his reproach.” Perhaps this additional thought is also in play: coming outside the village (cf. camp) results in reproach on account of Jesus, because now one is cut off from one’s prior faith and personal relations (see 8:26: “do not enter into the village”) and is no longer under the contours of the old covenant, which is now declared to be surpassed (see 7:1–23). This additional thought also anticipates the passion predictions of the next three chapters of Mark’s Gospel (8:31; 9:31; 10:33–34), for association with Jesus involves association with the one who will suffer before his triumph and who will invite those who follow him to take up their own cross even as does he. (See the suggestion in the initial section of the commentary on this pericope that the contours of this miracle story anticipate the passion predictions and the rising re15 See the first textual note and the commentary on 1:15; the commentary on 4:20; and the commentary on 4:29 in Voelz, Mark 1:1–8:26, 146–147; 151–153; 294–296; 316–318. 16 Note the variant reading to “gate” (πύλης) in Heb 13:12, namely, “camp” (παρέμβολῆς) found in mss. P46 and P and in the Bohairic version.

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sistance against Jesus.) It is not by accident that this final miracle before the fourth section of Mark’s Gospel (8:27–10:52) with its passion predictions contains elements of difficulty, lack of immediate success, and alienation. It should be understood that we are not here contending that Mark is referencing Hebrews 13 or that the author of Hebrews is referencing Mark 8. Rather, we are suggesting that the notion of being “outside” the normal habitation area of the people of Israel was a metaphor for being outside the orbit of their laws, customs, and beliefs, and it was likely a commonly understood linguistic usage. Regarding Jesus applying spittle and the placement of his hands, see the commentary on 7:33, 34. ὄμματα, “eyes” (8:23): The appearance of this poetic Greek word, rare in prose (see the textual note), is another indication that something more than a simple, literal account may be afoot with this pericope. ἐπηρώτα αὐτόν· εἴ τι βλέπεις; “he proceeded to question him, ‘Do you see anything?’ ” (8:23): Jesus did not question the man about his healing in the parallel story in 7:31–37, which may well be an indication that the narrative here is about to take a turn/development beyond its chapter 7 parallel. 8:24 The turn is seen in this verse, with only “partial success” on the part of Jesus, as it were. The difficulty with the syntax probably reflects the agitation of the man as healing begins to dawn, in which case perhaps the second translation (“I do see, because I see the people walking around as trees”) offered above (see the second textual note on 8:24) is to be preferred. But note Jesus’ reaction. It suggests that the man’s reply is not simply a false description of a true perception, because our Lord takes further action in the next verse (8:25). In other words, the man’s sight really is not fully correct. This corresponds to contemporary medical understanding. There is evidence that a change in brain activity on the part of those formerly blind is (also) necessary for true sight to be obtained. The receipt of perceived images, occasioned by the retina of the eye, must be accompanied by the brain’s ability to process those perceptions and to interpret the images.17 But even if this is the case, the conundrum of this passage still remains, namely, Jesus’ first action solves only half the problem. 8:25 The assertions of this verse, including the detailed description of seeing (including possibly looking into all things clearly), are further indications that a more-than-literal understanding of this pericope is likely (cf. 8:23, 24). See the initial section of the commentary on this pericope. See also the fifth textual note and the commentary on 3:5 for a discussion of the theological significance of Mark using the verb “restore” (ἀποκαθίστημι, 3:5; 8:25; 9:12) to describe Jesus’ healing activity in 3:5 and 8:25, with parallels to Elijah, who, Jesus declares, comes first and “restores all things” (9:12).

17 See “Physiology of Vision and the Visual System” in The Eye: Basic Sciences in Practice by John V. Forrester et al. (3d ed.; Philadelphia: Elsevier, 2008), 263–317.

Exhibit 3

93

8:26 μηδὲ εἰς τὴν κώμην εἰσέλθῃς, “do not enter into the village”: For a consideration of not returning to the village, see the commentary on 8:23 and the commentary on 7:33. Here we may observe that the man is brought by Jesus under the proleptic eschatological reign and rule of God and away from all that hinders that reign and rule, whether that be a context that views Jesus as a wonderworker only, or one that is steeped in the old covenant/old ways and understandings (see 2:21–22; 7:1–23). If our (additional) understanding is correct, the man – and the hearer/reader of the narrative – is not to return to his previous mode of understanding and allegiance. As 8:22–26 concludes, it is hard not to understand this pericope as also “allegorical” in meaning, related to giving “sight” in two stages, as indicated in the initial section of the commentary on this pericope. Given the immediately preceding context, it is logical to see the subject of the two stages of “sight” as Jesus’ disciples, who do “see” in some sense, having followed Jesus (e.g., 1:16–20) and having been given the mystery of the reign and rule of God by him (4:11), but who do not yet “see distinctly,” as shown by, e.g., their question concerning who Jesus is that the wind and sea obey him (4:41), and so their “seeing” can be called into question, as in the previous pericope (8:14–21), when Jesus asks them, “Although you have eyes, do you not see … ?” (8:18). Further developments in Mark’s narrative will both confirm and refine this analysis, plus the narrative will suggest a further/different analysis involving a different subject of the initial blindness and the subsequent full “sight.”18 It should also be observed that the “Janus-faced”19/musical chord construction20 of the Gospel of Mark is evident in this pericope. These verses conclude part 3 of Mark’s narrative (8:1–26) but are also the presupposition for the beginning of part 4 (8:27–10:52). Indeed, this pericope provides the first of the two “bookends” surrounding part 4, the second one being the healing of blind Bartimaeus (10:46– 52). Thus, two pericopes concerning the restoration of “sight” surround part 4, a section anchored by Jesus’ three passion predictions (8:31; 9:31; 10:33–34). This pericope of sight before the passion predictions (8:22–26) is characterized by indistinct vision, and the pericope of sight after them (10:46–52) is characterized by no such issue. This construction represents another Marcan intercalation.21

18 See “The Story” in “Literary Features of Mark’s Gospel” in the introduction for a preview of this analysis, which will be developed in the forthcoming followup volume to Voelz, Mark 1:1–8:26. 19 See point 7 in “Characteristics of the Plot” in “Literary Features of Mark’s Gospel” in the introduction to Voelz, Mark 1:1–8:26, 47. 20 See point 6 in excursus 4, “The Hermeneutics of Narrative Interpretation”, following “Literary Features of Mark’s Gospel” in the introduction of Voelz, Mark 1:1–8:26, 72–73, including the footnotes. 21 See point 6 in “Characteristics of the Plot” in “Literary Features of Mark’s Gospel” in the introduction to Voelz, Mark 1:1–8:26, 46–47.

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Summary Literary Biblical interpretation arose in the later 20th century in reaction to ‘modern’ approaches to the Bible stemming from the Enlightenment. Hans Frei, in his magisterial work The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative, analyzed this development and concluded that with coming of the age of modernity a reversal of the direction of interpretation occurred. Before the Enlightenment, those who read the Scriptures attempted to fit their own world into the Scriptural world. But, with the ‘dawning of the light,' all of this was reversed. Now, Scriptural interpreters attempted to fit the world of the Scriptures into their own world. As a result, they began to neglect the stories that were actually being told, and the Biblical stories became a vehicle for something else (e.g., the revelation of general truths, or the reconstruction of historical events). Literary interpretation attempts to rectify this flaw, by focusing (1) upon the contents of the texts of the Scriptures, including especially the features of the stories narrated by them, and (2) upon both the meanings that they convey to the reader/hearer (semantics), and the impact that they have upon the reader/hearer (pragmatics).

Zusammenfassung Die ‚literarische‘ Bibelauslegung entstand im späten 20. Jh. als Reaktion auf ‚moderne‘ Zugänge zur Bibel, die aus der Aufklärung herrühren. Hans Frei hat in seinem Meisterwerk The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative diese Entwicklung analysiert und geschlossen, dass es mit dem Zeitalter der Moderne zu einer Umkehrung der Richtung in der Auslegung kam. Vor der Aufklärung versuchten die Leser der Schrift ihre eigene Welt in die Welt der Schrift einzupassen. Aber mit der ‚Erleuchtung‘ durch die Aufklärung wurde das genau umgekehrt: Jetzt versuchten die Ausleger der Schrift die Welt der Schrift in ihre eigene Welt einzupassen. Das Ergebnis war, dass sie anfingen, die Geschichten zu vernachlässigen, die ihnen erzählt wurden, und dass jetzt die biblischen Geschichten als Vehikel für etwas anderes dienten (z.B. die Offenbarung allgemeiner Wahrheiten oder die Rekonstruktion historischer Ereignisse). Die literarische Bibelauslegung versucht, diesen Mangel zu beheben, indem sie 1. sich auf den Inhalt der biblischen Texte konzentriert und dabei besonders auf die einzelnen Züge der Geschichten achtet, die sie erzählen, und 2. sowohl die Sinngehalte wahrnimmt, die sie dem Leser/Hörer mitteilen (Semantik) als auch den Einfluss, den sie auf den Leser/Hörer haben (Pragmatik).

Literary Interpretation of the Scriptures (Mark 8:22–26) Erwiderung Jorg Christian Salzmann Das von Voelz vorgestellte Modell eines Triptychons (nach Lategan), bei dem der Text die Mitteltafel darstellt, setzt sich mit den hermeneutischen Problemen der Rezeptionsästhetik, aber auch einer historischen Auslegung auseinander, welche mehr nach den historischen Gegebenheiten der Textentstehung als nach der Botschaft des Textes selbst fragt. Hier wird gegenüber einer zu starken Betonung der Textgenese wie auch der Rezeption der Eigenwert des Textes beibehalten. Dem ist zuzustimmen. Problematisch ist es, wenn der Text als Mittelteil des Triptychons nur für sich gesehen wird; dann haben wir es mit einem Fragment zu tun, dessen Sinn und Bildprogramm wesentlich schwerer und unzuverlässiger zu entschlüsseln ist als wenn das ganze Triptychon vorhanden ist. Deshalb müssen bei der Auslegung auch der Autor und der intendierte Leser sowie die Textgeschichte im weiteren Sinne mit bedacht werden. Ebenso muss hermeneutisch auf die eigene Situation, die eigenen Voraussetzungen und die eigenen Fragestellungen reflektiert werden, um den Text in verantworteter Perspektive zu sehen. Gerade dann sollte es möglich sein, dem Text selbst gerecht zu werden und ihn auch in seinem Eigenwert wahrzunehmen. Eine genaue sprachliche, grammatische und rhetorische Analyse von Text und Kontext war zu den Zeiten, als man anfing, das Instrumentarium historischer Kritik auf biblische Texte anzuwenden, bei der Textinterpretation eine Selbstverständlichkeit. Es gehört zu den Desideraten unserer modernen Bildung, dass diese Selbstverständlichkeit verloren gegangen ist. Insofern ist einem Programm genauer Text- und Kontextanalyse ebenfalls zuzustimmen. Wiederum gilt, dass die Frage nach der Textgeschichte im weiteren Sinne hier dazu helfen kann, das Bild zu präzisieren und plastischer zu machen. An die von Voelz vorgestellte genaue Text- und Kontextanalyse kann man die Frage stellen, ob sie gelegentlich in zu starkem Maße den Autor eines Textes besser versteht als er sich selbst. Das vorgestellte Instrumentarium muss sich daran messen lassen, ob es vorstellbar ist, dass ein Leser bzw. Hörer des Textes bei entsprechender Bereitschaft, sich auf den Text einzulassen, in der Lage ist, ohne die Hilfsmittel der analytischen Methodik den Text im herausgearbeiteten Sinn zu verstehen. Darüber hinaus ist es gerade bei der narrativen Sammelliteratur der Evangelien die Frage, ob die eingesetzten sprachlichen Mittel unmittelbar diejenigen des Evan-

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gelisten sind. Beim Matthäusevangelium etwa gibt es eine große Texttreue zu dem als Quelle verwendeten Markusevangelium. Hier lassen sich eben nicht alle sprachlichen Eigenheiten einfach auf die Absicht des Evangelisten Matthäus zurückführen. Genauso ist es denkbar, dass auch Markus seine Quellen, seien sie mündlich, seien sie schriftlich, nicht in der Weise bearbeitet, dass alle zu beobachtenden sprachlichen Mittel von ihm bewusst eingesetzt oder bewusst aufgegriffen werden.1 Zu klären wäre auch, was nicht da steht bzw. warum in Mk 8,22–26 Jesus zur Heilung kein Wort sagt, warum keine Reaktion des Blinden mitgeteilt wird und warum das Element des Erstaunens und der Anbetung am Ende fehlt. Konkret finde ich die Frage spannend, ob in der Geschichte von der Blindenheilung Mk 8,22–262 die Heilung in zwei Phasen wirklich als Gleichnis für die spezifische Blindheit der Jünger verstanden werden kann. Der unmittelbar vorausgehende Tadel Jesu am Unverständnis seiner Jünger legt es nahe, bei der Geschichte von der Blindenheilung auch an Blindheit der Jünger im übertragenen Sinne zu denken; dazu gehört gerade auch das Zitat von Jer 5,21 in Mk 8,18, welches wiederum auch den Rückbezug zu Mk 7,31–37 (der Heilung eines Taubstummen) eröffnet. Um diesen Zusammenhang zu sehen, braucht es noch keine genaue sprachliche Analyse; diese kann aber hier stützende Wirkung entfalten. Der Gedanke, nun auch die zwei Phasen der Heilung auf die Jünger zu beziehen, ist reizvoll, aber m.E. nicht zwingend. Immerhin unterstellt das Jesuswort in Mk 8,18 den Jüngern einfach Blindheit; sie befinden sich nicht in einem Zwischenstadium des halb Sehens oder noch nicht ganz Erfassens, sondern sie haben es wieder einmal nicht verstanden. Die von Jesus Geheilten sind dazu Kontrastfiguren; an ihnen wird deutlich, dass letztlich nur der Herr selbst die Ohren öffnen und die Augen sehend machen kann. In der Anwendung der Geschichte von der Blindenheilung könnte man dann so weit gehen zu sagen, dass ein solches Öffnen der Augen nicht immer mit einem Schlag geschieht, sondern auch in einem Prozess geschehen kann. Allemal aber bleibt auch in solchem prozessualen Geschehen Jesus der Herr, und es wird nicht an eine Besserungsfähigkeit der Jünger appelliert. Bleibt also neben der Faszination der Idee von der Übertragung der phasenweisen Heilung das Fragezeichen, ob man mit dieser Idee an dieser Stelle nicht mehr in den Text hinein transportiert als dasteht.

1 2

Wer eine Matthäuspriorität gegenüber Mk annehmen will, müsste entsprechend davon ausgehen, dass viele Eigenheiten des Mk auf Mt zurückgehen. S. dazu oben „Exhibit 3“.

Literary Interpretation of the Scriptures (Mark 8:22–26) Response Jorg Christian Salzmann The triptych model (according to Lategan) presented by James Voelz, in which the text represents the middle panel, intends to come to grips with the hermeneutical problems of the reader-response theory and also the problems of an historical exegesis which is more interested in the historical circumstances of a text’s genesis than in its message. The intrinsic value of the text is preserved in contrast to the strong emphasis on the genesis of the text and its reception. It becomes problematic, however, when the text, the middle panel of a triptych, is contemplated only for itself. For it is then a fragment; the meaning and the iconographic programme become much more difficult to decipher, more unreliable in their assertions than if the whole triptych were present. Therefore the exegesis must include questions about the author and the intended reader/hearer as well as the history of the text. We must reflect hermeneutically on our own situation, our preconceptions and the issues which preoccupy us in order to be able to consider the text responsibly. And then it should be possible to do justice to the text itself and to appreciate its intrinsic value. A detailed linguistic, grammatical, and rhetorical analysis of the text and its context was taken for granted in the times when the tools of historical criticism began to be used to interpret biblical texts. The loss of this belongs to the desiderata of our modern education system. Again I can only agree that detailed text and context analysis are necessary. It must be stated, though, that the consideration of text history in its broader sense can help at this point to render the picture more precise and vivid. One could ask whether the detailed text and context analysis presented by Voelz sometimes understands the author of a text better than he knew himself. The value of the tools introduced must be judged by whether readers/hearers can understand the interpreted text without being aware of the analytical tools used. In addition we must ask whether the linguistic means used in the narrative collective literature of the gospels were actually those of the evangelists. Matthew’s gospel, for example, follows the text of Mark’s gospel, used as a source, very closely. Not all the linguistic characteristics can be attributed to the intentions of Matthew himself. It is similarly possible that Mark did not edit all his sources, whether oral or

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written, in such a manner that he deliberately employed or adopted all the linguistic means we observe.1 We would also need to clarify what is not said, or rather why Jesus does not say a single word in Mark 8:22–26 about the healing, why we do not hear how the blind man reacted, and why the element of wonder and worship is missing at the end of the story. In particular I find the question very interesting whether the healing in two stages can really be understood as a parable for the disciples’ specific blindness in Mark 8:22–26.2 Jesus rebuked his disciples for their lack of understanding in the section directly prior to our text; this suggests that the story of healing the blind man can also apply figuratively to the disciples’ blindness. The quotation from Jer 5:21 in Mark 8:18 belongs in this context and raises the possibility of a reference back to Mark 7:31–37 (the healing of a deaf mute). A detailed linguistic analysis is not necessary to see these correlations but it can be helpful. The idea of applying the two stages in the healing to the disciples is appealing but not necessarily mandatory in my opinion. The disciples are simply ascribed blindness in Jesus’ words in Mark 8:18; they are not at some intermediate stage of seeing or not quite understanding everything – rather once again they have not understood. Those healed by Jesus stand in sharp contrast. Through them it becomes clear that ultimately the Lord alone can open ears and make eyes see. The application of the story could go so far as to say that eyes are not necessarily opened in a single blow; it can be a longer process. Jesus remains the Lord even in such a process; amendability on the part of the disciples is not part of the equation. The question remains whether the fascination exercised by the transferral of stages from the healing imports more into the text than is actually there.

1 2

If Matthew is given priority to Mark then it would have to be assumed correspondingly that many characteristics in Mark can be “traced”back to Matthew. Comp. above “Exhibit 3.”

Linguistische und pragmatische Beobachtungen zu Amos 7,1–8,2 Achim Behrens „Exegetical Approaches“ Wer im Kontext der theologischen Wissenschaft von Exegese sprach, der meinte in den letzten einhundert Jahren – vor allem im deutschen Kontext, aber auch im nordamerikanischen theologischen Mainstream – die historisch-kritische Exegese. Ich bin überzeugt, dass die Fragen dieser historischen Exegese für das Verständnis biblischer Texte hilfreich, ja unerlässlich sind. Allerdings kommt es dabei oft zu einer Verengung der Auslegung auf die Frage der Entstehung und der Literarhistorie biblischer Texte. Es besteht die Gefahr, dass sich das Verstehen biblischer Texte dabei auf die Entstehungssituation im 1. Jt. v.Ch beschränkt. Gerade im kirchlichen Kontext ist die Bibel aber die Quelle und der Maßstab für Glaube und Leben 1 der Christen und für die Lehre der Kirche. Immer wieder sind daher in unterschiedlichen Zeiten unterschiedliche hermeneutische Zugänge zur Schrift gesucht und gefunden worden. Neben die Frage nach dem historischen Ursprungssinn treten biblische Theologie, dogmatischer Schriftgebrauch, kontextuelle Zugänge (wie postcolonial oder queer studies, sowie die Befreiungstheologien) aber auch neue literaturwissenschaftliche Leseweisen.2 Bei der Frage nach der jeweiligen Angemessenheit dieser Methoden wird einerseits der Text der Maßstab sein und dann auch die Frage, wie ein methodischer Zugang einen Text für eine Rezipientengruppe aufschließt. Insofern dabei der Textsinn nicht ver-, sondern erschlossen wird, bleibt Exegese für die Theologie insgesamt ein lebensnotwendiger Arbeitsschritt.3 1 2

3

Vgl. den Summarischen Begriff der Formula Concordiae, BSLK, 767f. Vgl. Manfred Oeming, Biblische Hermeneutik. Eine Einführung (1998). „Linguistische Methoden können Aufschluss über den Charakter eines Textes […] geben“, vermerkt dann auch das jüngste Hermeneutikpapier der SELK, vgl. Selbständige Evangelisch Lutherische Kirche (Hg.), Biblische Hermeneutik (2012), 11 und dazu: Jorg Salzmann, Als Kirche verantwortlich die Bibel verstehen. Das Papier „Biblische Hermeneutik“ der Selbständigen Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche, LuThK 37 (2013), 63–74; Klaus Grünwaldt, Biblische Hermeneutik. Ein lutherisch-landeskirchlicher Blick auf ein neues Dokument der SELK, LuThK 37 (2013), 75–87; Achim Behrens, „Eine Jung(e)frau wird schwanger…“. Jes 7,14 und die „Polyvalenz“ biblischer Texte, LuThK 33 (2013), 88–102; Andreas Schwarz, Bemerkungen zur Vorlage „Biblische Hermeneutik“ der Theologischen Kommission der SELK, LuThK 37 (2013), 103–114; Christoph Barnbrock, „Da werden gewislich diese gedancken zu geschlagen sein“. Rezeptionsästhetische Beobachtungen zu einer Lutherpredigt, LuThK 37 (2013), 115–129. Vgl. Achim Behrens, Exegese des Alten Testaments als theologische Disziplin, LuThK 33 (2009), 195–224.

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In seiner Theologie der Lutherischen Bekenntnisschriften fragt Gunter Wenz zunächst nach dem Verhältnis von „Schrift und Bekenntnis“ und stellt fest, dass der Rechtfertigungslehre im lutherischen Bekenntnis eine „hermeneutische Leitfunktion“4 zukomme. Es geht also hier nicht um das Verstehen der ganzen Schrift in einem quantitativen Sinne. Vielmehr wird stets beim Bibelgebrauch auf das Heil des Menschen vor Gott „allein aus Gnaden“ abgehoben. Dass dies tatsächlich der zentrale Inhalt der Bibel schlechthin ist – diese Erkenntnis wirkt der Heilige Geist im Menschen. So scheint diese Einsicht einer methodischen Zugangsweise zunächst verborgen zu sein. Dann aber fügt Wenz einen interessanten, vielleicht sogar brisanten Gedanken an und beruft sich dabei auf die Verwerfung von CA V, wonach der Glaube zwar vom Heiligen Geist gewirkt werde, „ubi et quando visum est Deo“, dass aber zugleich die verworfen werden, die lehren, dass der Geist ohne „leibliches Wort“ (verbum externum) wirke.5 Und um dieses „äußeren Wortes“ willen kann gute Theologie nie auf die sorgfältige Betrachtung der Sprachgestalt der Bibel verzichten. Schriftauslegung darf sonach niemals subjektivistisch im Sinne eines bloßen Reflexes eigener Glaubensunmittelbarkeit sein. Die Externität des Schriftwortes und dessen inhaltlich bestimmter eigener Sinn sind vielmehr ernst zu nehmen auch und gerade dann, wenn sie der subjektiven Selbstwahrnehmung als befremdlich erscheinen. Solch strikt geforderte Nichtbeliebigkeit der Schriftauslegung schließt die Kenntnis bestimmter Regeln der Texterschließung notwendig ein, die nicht nur die Syntax, sondern auch die Semantik und Pragmatik von Texten betreffen...6

Syntax, Semantik und Pragmatik von Texten sollen also wahrgenommen werden. Grammatischer Aufbau und Struktur, die Bedeutung, aber eben auch die Funktion, die Leistung im Kommunikationszusammenhang (eben die Pragmatik) soll beachtet werden. Man kann nach der pragmatischen Funktion einzelner Ausdrücke, Sätze oder Formeln fragen, aber eben auch nach der Leistung größerer Texte. Will man aber diese Dinge erheben, gelingt dies nur über die genaue Beobachtung der sprachlichen Eigenarten am hebräischen Wortlaut. Auch durch die Bezugnahme von Texten und Textteilen aufeinander mittels bestimmter syntaktischer Konstruktionen wird die Rezeption eines Textes durch den Leser (bzw. Hörer) vorstrukturiert. Hier zeigt sich einmal mehr die hermeneutische Relevanz sprachlicher Beobachtungen und hier lässt sich – soweit es sich um das Alte Testament handelt – auch die theologische Relevanz der Hebraistik aufweisen.

4 5 6

Vgl. Gunther Wenz, Theologie der Bekenntnisschriften der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche. Eine historische und systematische Einführung in das Konkordienbuch (1996–1997), 1, 180. Vgl. BSLK, 58. Wenz, Theologie, 1, 191. Hervorhebung von mir.

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Textgrammatik und alttestamentliche Texte Lange Zeit galt der Satz als die größte Einheit der grammatischen Analyse und damit auch als eigentlicher Gegenstand der morphologisch orientierten Grammatik, weil man nur auf dieser Ebene eine geregelte formale Verknüpfung zwischen sprachlichen Gegebenheiten beobachten zu können glaubte. Die Textlinguistik hat aber überzeugend gezeigt, dass es auch jenseits der Satzgrenzen noch formale Verknüpfungsrelationen zwischen sprachlichen Einheiten gibt, die einem Text eine morphologische Kohärenz verleihen. Sie hat dargelegt, dass es nicht nur grammatische Satzbildungsinstruktionen gibt, sondern auch grammatische Textbildungsinstruktionen. Außerdem hat sie klargestellt, dass Texte eigentlich immer Exemplifikationen von Textsorten bzw. Kommunikationsmustern darstellen, die bestimmte Formeigentümlichkeiten aufweisen.7

Dieses Zitat stammt von einem Nicht-Hebraisten, dem Sprachphilosophen Wilhelm Köller, dennoch eröffnet die Frage nach „Textbildungsinstruktionen“ auch einen relevanten und fruchtbaren Horizont bei der Betrachtung hebräischer Texte. Die Rede von Textsorten und Kommunikationsmustern weist zudem auf die bleibende Relevanz formgeschichtlicher Fragestellungen im weiteren Sinne. Aber das wäre ein Thema für sich. Zunächst einmal wäre danach zu fragen, ob sich im biblischen Hebräisch „jenseits der Satzgrenzen noch formal Verknüpfungsrelationen zwischen sprachlichen Einheiten“ ausmachen lassen. Dass dem so ist, dürfte seit der verstärkten Wahrnehmung sog. „Stichwortverknüpfungen“ zwischen Texten, Textteilen oder auch unterschiedlicher biblischer Bücher (ja sogar zwischen Kanonteilen) nicht mehr strittig sein. Das haben wir auch der intensivierten redaktionsgeschichtlichen Fragestellung zu verdanken. Aber alttestamentliche Texte sind noch durch andere Phänomene als die Aufnahme markanter Stichworte miteinander verbunden oder aufeinander bezogen. Eine solche „formale Verknüpfungsrelation“ meine ich in syntaktischen Wiederaufnahmen sehen zu dürfen. Mit dem Begriff „syntaktische Wiederaufnahme“ wird hier die signifikante Mehrfachverwendung einer syntaktischen Konstruktion im Hebräischen bezeichnet, die der Verknüpfung oder Bezugnahme einzelner Texte oder Textteile untereinander dient.8

7 8

Wilhelm Köller, Philosophie der Grammatik. Vom Sinn grammatischen Wissens (1988), 337. Hervorhebungen so im Original. Vgl. Achim Behrens, Die „syntaktische Wiederaufnahme“ als textgrammatisches Phänomen im biblischen Hebräisch, Kleine Untersuchungen zur Sprache des Alten Testaments und seiner Umwelt 6 (2006), 1–31.

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Die Visionsschilderungen in Am 7–8 und die Amazjaperikope Am 7,10–17 In Am 7,1–8,2 finden sich vier Visionsschilderungen9, die formal sehr parallel aufgebaut sind und sich untereinander noch einmal in zwei Paare teilen lassen. I. Am 7,1–3: Der Heuschreckenschwarm

II. Am 7,4–6: Die große Dürre

1. Visionsteil – Eröffnung mit einer Form von r’h: V. 1aα ‫„ כה הראני אדני יהוה‬So ließ mich mein Herr Jahwe sehen …“ – Beginn der Schilderung der Schau durch e einen Nominalsatz nach w hinne: V. 1aβ ‫„ והנה יצר גבי‬und siehe: einer bildete einen Heuschreckenschwarm …“

1. Visionsteil – Eröffnung mit einer Form von r’h: V. 4aα ‫„ כה הראני אדני יהוה‬So ließ mich mein Herr Jahwe sehen …“ – Beginn der Schilderung der Schau durch einen Nominalsatz nach wehinne: V. 4aβ ‫„ והנה ֹקרא לרב באש‬und siehe: einer rief zum Streit mit Feuer …“

2. Dialogteil – Beginn mit einem ‫ו‬-Imperfekt von ’mr: V. 2aβ ‫„ ואמר‬Da sprach ich: …“ – Erster Redebeitrag direktiver Sprechakt10 in Form eines Imperativs: V. 2aβ ‫„ אדני יהוה סלח־נא‬Mein Herr Jahwe vergib doch!“ – Abschlussformulierung im Munde Jahwes: V. 3 ‫נחם יהוה על־זאת אל תהיה אמר יהוה‬ „Jahwe erbarmte sich hierüber. ‚Es soll nicht geschehen‘, spricht Jahwe“.

2. Dialogteil – Beginn mit einem ‫ו‬-Imperfekt von ’mr: V. 5aα ‫„ ואמר‬Da sprach ich: …“ – Erster Redebeitrag direktiver Sprechakt in Form eines Imperativs: V. 5aα ‫„ אדני יהוה חדל־נא‬Mein Herr Jahwe, halt doch ein! …“ – Abschlussformulierung im Munde Jahwes: V. 6 ‫נחם יהוה על־זאת גם היא אל תהיה אמר‬ ‫„ אדני יהוה‬Jahwe erbarmte sich hierüber. ‚Auch dies soll nicht geschehen‘, spricht mein Herr Jahwe“.

9

Vgl. Achim Behrens, Prophetische Visionsschilderungen im Alten Testament. Sprachliche Eigenarten, Funktion und Geschichte einer Gattung (2002), 32–104; Ders., Vision/Visionsschilderung AT, wibilex 2006 (http://www.bibelwissenschaft.de/stichwort/12115/); Ders., „Grammatik statt Ekstase!“ Das Phänomen der syntaktischen Wiederaufnahme am Beispiel von Am 7,1–8,2, in: Andreas Wagner (Hg.), Studien zur hebräischen Grammatik (1997), 1–9. 10 Die Terminologie „direktiver Sprechakt“ folgt der Sprechhandlungstheorie nach John Austin und John Searle, vgl. Andreas Wagner, Sprechakte und Sprechaktanalyse im Alten Testament. Untersuchungen im biblischen Hebräisch an der Nahtstelle zwischen Handlungsebene und Grammatik (1997).

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III. Am 7,7–8: In seiner Hand: Zinn

IV. Am 8,1–2: Das Ende ist gekommen

1. Visionsteil – Eröffnung mit einer Form von r’h: V. 7aα ‫„ כה הראני‬So ließ er mich sehen...“ – Beginn der Schilderung der Schau durch e einen Nominalsatz nach w hinne: V. 7aβ ‫„ והנה אדני נצב על־חומת אנך‬und siehe: Adonaij stand auf einer Mauer aus Zinn...“

1. Visionsteil – Eröffnung mit einer Form von r’h: V. 1a ‫„ כה הראני אדני יהוה‬So ließ mich mein Herr Jahwe sehen“ – Beginn der Schilderung der Schau durch einen Nominalsatz nach wehinne: V. 1b ‫„ והנה כלוב ֹקיץ‬und siehe: ein Korb mit reifem Obst“.

2. Dialogteil – Beginn mit einem w-Imperfekt von ’mr: V. 8aα ‫„ ויאמר יהוה אלי‬Da sprach Jahwe zu mir: “ – Erster Redebeitrag direktiver Sprechakt in Form einer Frage: V. 8aα ‫מה־אתה ראה‬ ‫„ עמוס‬Was siehst du, Amos?“

2. Dialogteil – Beginn mit einem w-Imperfekt von ’mr: V. 2aα ‫„ ויאמר‬Da sprach er:...“ – Erster Redebeitrag direktiver Sprechakt in Form einer Frage: V. 2aα ‫מה־אתה ראה‬ ‫„ עמוס‬Was siehst du, Amos?“

– Abschlussformulierung im Munde Jahwes: V. 8bβ ‫הנני שם אנך בֹקרב עמי ישראל‬ ‫„ לא־אוסיף עוד עבור לו‬Siehe, ich bin dabei Zinn mitten unter mein Volk Israel zu bringen. Ich werde nicht mehr schonend an ihm vorübergehen“.

– Abschlussformulierung im Munde Jahwes: V. 2b ‫בא הֹקץ אל־עמי ישראל לא־‬ ‫„ אוסיף עוד עבור לו‬Gekommen ist das Ende für mein Volk Israel. Ich werde nicht mehr schonend an ihm vorübergehen“.

Jede der Schilderungen beginnt mit einer formelhaften Thematisierung des Sehens, worauf ein Visionsteil mit einer Schilderung des Geschauten folgt und daran schließt sich endlich in allen vier Fällen ein Dialogteil an. Aber nicht nur durch den gleichartigen Aufbau, sondern auch auf dem Wege der Stichwortverknüpfung und der Wiederaufnahme bestimmter syntaktischer Konstruktionen sind die Visionen miteinander verbunden. Dies soll nun noch mit einigen Detailbeobachtungen unterstützt werden: Alle vier Visionsschilderungen beginnen mit dem ‫„ כה הראני אדני יהוה‬So ließ mich mein Herr Jahwe sehen“11, und in allen vier Fällen folgt hierauf eine Schilderung des Geschauten durch einen mit ‫ והנה‬eingeleiteten Nominalsatz. Schon durch diese beiden Merkmale sind alle vier Visionsschilderungen deutlich aufeinander bezogen.

11 Dass in Am 7,7 nur ‫ כה הראני‬begegnet, kann als mögliche Variation gelten und spricht nicht gegen den Aufbau des Zyklus insgesamt, vgl. Francis I. Andersen/David Noel Freedman, Amos (1989), 618.

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Im Fortgang der jeweiligen Visionsschilderungen lassen sich dann deutlich zwei Paare voneinander abheben. Die erste und zweite Vision sind als Paar dadurch miteinander verbunden, dass Amos, nachdem er jeweils ein drohendes Unheil (Heuschrecken in Am 7,1 und eine Feuersbrunst in Am 7,4) geschaut hat, Jahwe um Erbarmen (V. 2: ‫ )סלח־נא‬oder Einhalt (V.5: ‫ )חדל־נא‬bittet (jeweils nach der Redeeinleitung ‫)ואמר אדני יהוה‬. In beiden Fällen unterstützt Amos seine Bitte mit der rhetorischen Frage ‫„ מי יֹקום יעֹקב כי ֹקתן הוא‬Wie kann Jakob bestehen, wo er doch so klein ist?“ (V. 2.5). Und schließlich wird ebenfalls in beiden Fällen Jahwes Erbarmen konstatiert: V.3: ‫ ;נחם יהוה על־זאת לא תהיה אמר יהוה‬V.6: ‫נחם יהוה על־‬ ‫זאת גם היא לא תהיה אמר אדני יהוה‬. Die ersten beiden Visionen sind also durch Stichwortverknüpfung und die Verwendung der gleichen syntaktischen Konstruktionen deutlich aufeinander bezogen und bilden ein Paar. Inhaltlich ist dieses erste Visionspaar vor allem durch den gelingenden Einspruch des Amos gegen geschautes Unheil geprägt. Auch für die dritte und vierte Visionsschilderung lassen sich ganz ähnliche Verknüpfungen aufzeigen. Nachdem Amos in beiden Fällen Gegenstände geschaut hat, die der Deutung bedürfen (Amos 7,7: ‫ ;אנך‬8,1: ‫)כלוב ֹקיץ‬, fragt Jahwe in beiden Visionen wortgleich den Propheten: ‫( מה־אתה ראה עמוס‬7,8; 8,2). Darauf antwortet Amos jeweils mit einem einpoligen Nominalsatz nach ‫ואמר‬, in dem er den je entscheidenden Gegenstand der Vision noch einmal ausspricht. In beiden Visionsschilderungen folgt hierauf eine Deutung Jahwes: Er wird ‫ אנך‬nach Israel bringen (7,8)12. Das Ende für Israel ist gekommen (8,2). In beiden Fällen wird die Bezugsgröße für das drohende Unheil mit ‫ עמי ישראל‬bezeichnet. Beide Visionsschilderungen schließen endlich mit dem jeweils gleichen Fazit Jahwes ‫לא־אוסיף עוד עבור לו‬ „Ich gehe künftig nicht mehr schonend an ihm vorüber“. Dabei bindet die Syntax dieser Abschlussformel – mit ‫ לא‬verneinter Verbalsatz in PK – die dritte und vierte Vision an die erste und zweite Vision zurück (vgl. 7,3.6: ‫)לא תהיה‬. Ein solches Phänomen lässt sich als syntaktische Wiederaufnahme bezeichnen. Auch die dritte und vierte Vision bilden also ein Paar. Inhaltlich ist aber in diesen zweiten Visionspaar gegenüber dem ersten eine Wende eingetreten. Das Unheil ist jetzt unabwendbar. Das Ende kommt ganz gewiss, ja wird von Jahwe selbst initiiert.

12 Das entscheidende Stichwort der dritten Vision ist dieses ‫אנך‬. Dabei bedeutet dieser Terminus nicht wie früher meistens angenommen „Bleilot“ o.ä, sondern bezeichnet Zinn als Bestandteil der Bronzelegierung und damit als waffenfähiges Material. Vgl. dazu Walter Beyerlin, Bleilot, Brecheisen oder was sonst? Revision einer Amosvision (1988), und Jörg Jeremias, Der Prophet Amos, (1995), 101ff. Wenn Jahwe hier ‫ אנך‬mitten in sein Volk trägt, bedeutet das militärische Bedrohung; Am 7,9 expliziert das durch das herkömmliche Lexem ‫חרב‬. In der dritten Visionsschilderung wird allerdings der Terminus ‫ אנך‬verwendet, weil hier (genau wie in der vierten Vision) ein Wortspiel vorliegt. ‫ אנך‬würde dann an ‫ אנכי‬anklingen, was darauf hinweisen soll, daß Jahwes Gegenwart inmitten Israels bedrohlich sein wird. Im Akkadischen ist eben dieses Wortspiel belegt, vgl. Jeremias, Der Prophet Amos, 103 Anm. 27.

Linguistische und pragmatische Beobachtungen zu Amos 7,1–8,2

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Es lässt sich also zwischen den beiden Paaren ein dramatischer Fortschritt vom abwendbaren zum unabwendbaren Unheil feststellen. Wie aber kommt es zu diesem dramatischen Fortschritt? Dieser Zyklus wird nach der dritten Vision (Am 7,7f.) jäh unterbrochen durch den einzigen erzählenden Text des Amosbuchs, die Schilderung des Konflikts des Propheten mit Amazja, dem Priester von Beth-El. Diese Konfliktgeschichte ist deutlich zweigeteilt (V. 10–13; V. 14–17), wobei die beiden Teile schon untereinander mittels syntaktischer Wiederaufnahmen verbunden sind. Im ersten Teil des Textes ist Amazja der Protagonist. Der Abschnitt ist geprägt von der Empörung des Priester, die er seinem König, Jerobeam II., mitteilt (V. 10f.). Dem König gegenüber begründet der Priester seinen Vorwurf, Amos verschwöre sich gegen den König, mit einem vermeintlichen Zitat des Propheten. Dieses Zitat ist eingeleitet durch die Botenformel ‫( כי־כה אמר עמוס‬V. 11).13 Dem wird Amos später das (syntaktisch gleiche) ‫( כה־אמר יהוה‬V. 17) in seiner Antwort entgegenhalten. Den Vorwurf des Priesters, Amos habe die Exilierung der Israeliten angesagt, wird der Prophet dadurch bestätigen, dass er die Formulierung Amazjas wiederholt ‫„ וישראל גלה יגלה מעל אדמתו‬Israel wird ganz gewiss von seinem Ackerland weggeführt werden“ (V. 11 und 17).14 Schon diese beiden Fälle – die Wiederaufnahme der Botenformel aus V. 11 in V. 17, sowie die Wiederholung der Exilierungsankündigung im Munde des Amos – lassen sich als syntaktische Wiederaufnahmen zum Zwecke der Verknüpfung bezeichnen. Aber das Phänomen lässt sich auch in den beiden folgenden Fällen markant verdeutlichen: Nachdem Amazja sich bei seinem König über Amos beschwert hat, wendet er sich noch direkt an den Propheten und weist ihn aus Israel nach Juda aus. Er tut dies mit den Worten: ‫„ לך ברח־לך אל־ארץ יהודה‬Geh, troll dich ins Land Juda“ (V. 12). Dem hält Amos den Auftrag Jahwes entgegen: ‫„ לך הנבא אל־עמי ישראל‬Geh, rede gegenüber meinem Volk Israel prophetisch“ (V. 15).15 Hier wird ganz deutlich: Amos benutzt die gleiche syntaktische Konstruktion – ‫ לך‬+ Imp. + ‫ אל־‬+ Objekt – um einen geradezu konträren Inhalt auszusagen. Er ist nicht Prophet in dem Sinne, dass er genauso gut auch in Juda auftreten könnte, sondern Jahwe selbst hat ihn eben nach Israel gesandt. Die gleiche syntaktische Form macht den inhaltlichen Gegensatz nur umso deutlicher.16 So wird aber gleichzeitig die zweite Formulierung auf die erste bezogen und damit eine Verknüpfung hergestellt. 13 Hierbei handelt es sich also um eine profane Verwendung der sonst vor allem im Munde von Propheten begegnenden Botenformel. Vgl. Andreas Wagner, Prophetie als Theologie. Die so spricht Jahwe-Formeln und das Grundverständnis alttestamentlicher Prophetie (2004), 153ff. Vgl. Reed Lessing, Amos (2009), 470: „Amaziah claims to be quoting Amos.“ 14 Vgl. Andersen/Freedman, Amos, 791. 15 Dabei entspricht die Zielgruppenangabe ‫ אל־עמי ישראל‬der Nennung der Adressaten von Jahwes Gericht in der dritten (und vierten) Visionsschilderung (vgl. 7,8; 8,2). 16 So drückt sich hier auch syntaktisch der Autoritätenkonflikt zwischen Jahwe einerseits und einem eigenmächtigen Israel andererseits aus. Vgl. auch Anders Jørgen Bjørndalen, Erwägungen zur Zu-

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Noch deutlicher lässt sich das Gemeinte an V.13 zeigen: Amazja hatte also Amos nach Juda verwiesen, dort könne er ja ruhig als Prophet auftreten. Nun fährt der Priester fort: ‫„ ובת־אל לא־תוסיף עוד להנבא‬Aber was Beth-El anlangt: fahre nicht fort, [dort] als Prophet aufzutreten“, und als Begründung führt er an: ‫כי מֹקדש־מלך‬ ‫„ הוא ובת ממלכה הוא‬denn ein königliches Heiligtum ist es und ein herrschaftliches Haus ist es.“ Damit werden aber hier im Munde Amazjas gleich zwei syntaktische Konstruktionen wieder aufgenommen, die in den Visionsschilderungen eine erhebliche Rolle spielten. Da ist zum einen die Wendung des „Nichtfortfahrens mit...“ (7,8; 8,2: ‫ ;לא־אוסיף עוד‬7,13: ‫)לא־תוסיף עוד‬, die als Abschlussformel des zweiten Visionspaares in 7,8 und 8,2 das Ende des Erbarmens Jahwes aussagt, und hier das prophetische Reden des Amos beenden soll. Amazja begründet dies mit einem Pochen auf die Stärke und Dignität Beth-Els in Form zweier Nominalsätze, deren ‚Subjekt‘ jeweils von der Anapher ‫ הוא‬gebildet wird.17 Mit einer syntaktisch gleichartigen Konstruktion hatte aber im ersten Visionspaar Amos zweimal seine Bitte an Jahwe um Erbarmen für „Jakob“ begründet: ‫„ כי ֹקתן הוא‬denn klein ist er“ (Am 7,2 und 5). Wiederum macht die Gleichheit der aufgenommenen Syntax den inhaltlichen Kontrast nur umso deutlicher, und wieder wird so ein deutlicher Bezug von einem Text zum anderen hergestellt. Die Amazjageschichte wird mit den Visionsschilderungen verbunden: „Jakob“, repräsentiert durch den Priester des Reichsheiligtums, erkennt nicht, dass er klein ist, sondern pocht auf eigene „Kraft und Herrlichkeit“ und will dem Propheten die Verkündigung des Wortes Gottes verbieten. Eben darin liegt der Grund für das Ende des Erbarmens Jahwes.18 Gerade das Verbot, prophetisch zu reden, wird Amos in V. 16 noch einmal aufnehmen und er wird sein ‫ לכן כה־אמר יהוה‬anschließen, das dann die schaurige Ankündigung des Exils einleitet. Deutlich ist jetzt: Nicht nur mittels verschiedener Stichwortverknüpfungen19, sondern auch auf dem Wege syntaktischer Wiederaufnahme ist die Amazjageschichte mit den sie umgebenden Visionen verknüpft. Die Art und Weise dieser Verknüpfung und die Tatsache, dass gerade bestimmte syntaktische Konstruktionen aus den Visionen (besonders in Am 7,13) wieder aufgenommen werden, erklärt dem Leser den dramatischen Fortschritt vom abwendbaren zum unabwendbaren Unheil innerhalb der vier Visionen. Weil Israel das prophetisch vermittelte Wort kunft des Amazja und Israels nach der Überlieferung Am 7,10–17, in: Rainer Albertz u.a. (Hg.), Werden und Wirken des Alten Testaments (1980), 236–251. 17 In der Terminologie der Michelschen Nominalsatzgrammatik handelt es sich um zwei Nominale Mitteilungen mit der nach ‫ כי‬regulären Satzteilfolge Chabar – Mubtada, vgl. Diethelm Michel, Grundlegung einer hebräischen Syntax Teil 2. Der hebräische Nominalsatz (2004), 164 und 181. 18 “His [i.e. Amaziah’s] rejection of Yahweh’s Word explains why Yahweh says in the third and fourth vision, ‘I will never again forgive’ Israel (7:8; 8:2). Amaziah’s of Amos is Israel’s rejection of Yahweh” (Lessing, Amos, 496). 19 Zu den zahlreichen Stichwortverknüpfungen, die hier nicht aufgeführt werden können, vgl. Jeremias, Der Prophet Amos, 107 und Helmut Utzschneider, Die Amazjaerzählung (Am 7,10–17) zwischen Literatur und Historie, BN 41 (1988), 76–101.

Linguistische und pragmatische Beobachtungen zu Amos 7,1–8,2

107

Jahwes nicht hören wollte, seine Schwäche nicht erkannte, sondern auf eigene Stärke pochte, musste letztlich das Ende kommen. Dies wird dann die vierte Amosvision abschließend konstatieren.

Schluss Ebenso wie der Maler dem Bilde dadurch eine größere innere Autonomie geben kann, dass er die Korrelation zwischen den einzelnen Bildelementen und die Korrelation zwischen den Bildelementen und den möglichen Betrachtern fest vorstrukturiert, so kann auch ein Sprachproduzent seinen Äußerungen dadurch eine größere innere Autonomie geben, dass er Korrelationsverhältnisse fest vorstrukturiert, was insbesondere in schriftlichen Äußerungen gut zu bewerkstelligen ist. […] Auf der Ebene des Textes kann er durch grammatische und stilistische Mittel Äußerungen so eindeutig als Textsorten kennzeichnen, dass sie auf eine ganz bestimmte Weise rezipiert werden können oder müssen.20

Die syntaktische Wiederaufnahme ist ein Mittel im biblischen Hebräisch, zwischen verschiedenen Texten oder Textteilen Korrelationen herzustellen und so auch die Art und Weise der Rezeption zu strukturieren. Die Verwendung von Textsorten mit signifikanten sprachlichen Eigenarten wäre ein anderes Mittel, wobei noch einmal neu das Anliegen der klassischen Formgeschichte in den Blickpunkt rückt. Auf die hermeneutische und theologische Dimension solcher Betrachtungen hatte ich eingangs bereits hingewiesen. Es ist doch erstaunlich, dass nach 2000 Jahren allein der christlichen Exegese des Alten Testaments immer noch Aspekte der hebräischen Sprache zu entdecken sind. Für unser Bemühen um das Verstehen biblischer Texte dient mithin immer noch und immer wieder die Sprache als Schlüssel. Zugleich wird deutlich, dass sich neuere linguistische Fragestellungen nicht nur auf hebräische Texte aus dem Alten Testament anwenden lassen, sondern neu ein sinnvolles Textverständnis erschließen. Seit langem ist aufgefallen, dass Am 7,10– 17 als einziger narrativer Text des Amosbuchs die Visionsschilderungen unterbricht. Es wird aber angesichts der textgrammatischen Einbindung des Textes in seinen Kontext deutlich, dass es sich hier keineswegs um das Fragment einer ansonsten verschollenen Amosbiographie handelt.21 Auch ist dieses Fragment nicht zufällig oder willkürlich an seinen heutigen Ort hinter Am 7,8f. gelangt. Die Amazjaperikope ist mit an Sicherheit grenzender Wahrscheinlichkeit genau für ihren jetzigen literarischen Kontext formuliert worden. Das machen die zahlreichen syn-

20 Köller, Philosophie, 159. Hervorhebungen so im Original. 21 Vgl. zur Diskussion dieser These, die auf Karl Budde zurückgeht, bereits Hans Walter Wolff, Joel und Amos (1969), 354f.

108

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taktischen Wiederaufnahmen deutlich.22 Zugleich wird mit der Syntax auch eine theologische Botschaft vermittelt. „Jakob“ erkennt seine Kleinheit und Hilfsbedürftigkeit nicht. Vielmehr muss man das Gotteswort in Gestalt der Worte des Amos gar nicht hören, da man selbst etwas darstellt. So wird klar: Genau darin liegt die Ursache für den dramatischen Umschwung innerhalb der vier Visionen in Am 7f. Gott übt nur dann Erbarmen, wenn sein Wort nicht wie durch Amazja brüsk zurückgewiesen wird. So entfaltet Am 7,1–8,2 insgesamt in der vorliegenden Endgestalt seine Botschaft ganz neu. Dabei machen die linguistischen Beobachtungen ganz ernst mit dem Gotteswort als schriftlichem Text. Die Texte haben eine eigene Pragmatik – eine kommunikative Funktion und Leistung – völlig unabhängig von Fragen der Datierung oder der Verfasserschaft. Unter dieser Perspektive geht es weder in den Visionen noch in der Amazjaperikope um das Erleben oder die Biographie des Amos aus Tekoa. Vielmehr wird in diesen Texten das Schicksal des Gotteswortes deutlich. Und so wirkt es als zu verstehender Text auch bis heute. Ein Teil dieser Wirkweise lässt sich mit exegetischen Mitteln – hier der Textlinguistik – verstehbar und nachvollziehbar machen. Dass dieses Wort aber als Gesetz und Evangelium Herzen verändert, bleibt Wirken des heiligen Geistes ubi et quando visum est Deo.

Zusammenfassung Der Aufsatz nimmt das Phänomen der Textgrammatik im biblischen Hebräisch in den Blick. Texte oder Textteile innerhalb des Alten Testaments sind nicht nur auf dem Wege der Stichwortverknüpfung miteinander verbunden, sondern nehmen auch durch die signifikanter Wiederverwendung bestimmter syntaktischer Konstruktionen aufeinander Bezug. Dies nennt der Autor „syntaktische Wiederaufnahme“ und verdeutlicht das Phänomen anhand einer Exegese der Amosvisionen in ihrem Kontext in Am 7,1–8,2. Daraus ergeben sich auch textpragmatische Fragen: Welche Funktion hat die Verwendung bestimmter Textsorten, die auch durch das Herausarbeiten von Stichwortverknüpfungen und syntaktischen Wiederaufnahmen als solche bestimmt werden. Dabei wird auch die Kommunikation zwischen biblischen Texten mit einer bestimmten pragmatischen Funktion und den Leserinnen und Lesern deutlich. Nicht zuletzt werden dabei Erkenntnisse in Erinnerung gerufen, die sich bereits in der klassischen Formgeschichte und Gunkels Gattungsbestimmungen andeuteten. 22 Dies bedeutet nun freilich nicht automatisch, dass es sich bei Am 7,1–8,2 um eine ursprüngliche literarische Einheit handelt. Es bleiben ja die auffälligen Beobachtungen, dass die Amazjageschichte die Visionen unterbricht und im Gegensatz zu ihrem Kontext aus der Perspektive der 3. Person erzählt wird. Wenn also auch Am 7,10–17 von einem späteren Verfasser als die den Text umgebenden Visionen stammt, so kann die Amazjageschichte doch ihre sprachpragmatische Leistung nur an diesem Ort entfalten.

Linguistic and Text Pragmatic Observations in Amos 7:1–8:2 Achim Behrens Exegetical approaches In the last one hundred years exegesis in academic theology – particularly in Germany but also in the North American theological mainstream – meant historicalcritical exegesis. The questions posed by historical exegesis are very helpful and indeed essential for understanding biblical texts. However, this approach can pare down exegesis to the question of the origin and the literary history of biblical texts. The danger is that we reduce our understanding of Old Testament texts to the manner of their origin in the 1st millenium B.C. For the church the Bible is the source and the gauge for the faith and the lives of Christians and for the teaching of the church.1 In differing times and ages differing hermeneutic approaches to the Holy Bible have been sought and found. Biblical theology, dogmatic or contextual approaches (such as postcolonial or queer studies, and Liberation Theology), and new literary critical methods emerge alongside the question of the original historical significance.2 How appropriate these methods may be depends first on the texts themselves and then second on how well a particular approach makes a text accessible for the hearers in question. Provided that the meaning of texts is not concealed but instead revealed, exegesis remains a vital procedure for theology.3 In his Theology of the Lutheran Confessions Gunter Wenz looks first at how “scripture and confession” relate to each other. He considers the doctrine of justifi-

1 2

3

Cf. Epitome of the Formula of Concord, BSLK, 767–768; BC, 486–487. Cf. Manfred Oeming, Biblische Hermeneutik. Eine Einführung (1998); “Linguistische Methoden können Aufschluss über den Charakter eines Textes […] geben”, the latest essay on hermeneutics published by the SELK notes, cf. Selbständige Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche (ed.), Biblische Hermeneutik, 11, and also Jorg C. Salzmann, Als Kirche verantwortlich die Bibel verstehen, LuThK 37 (2013), 63–73; Klaus Grünwaldt, Biblische Hermeneutik. Ein lutherisch-landeskirchlicher Blick auf ein neues Dokument der SELK, LuThK 37 (2013), 75–87; Achim Behrens, “Eine Jung(e)frau wird schwanger …” Jes 7:14 and the “Polyvalenz” biblischer Texte, LuThK 37 (2013), 88–102; Andreas Schwarz, Bemerkungen zur Vorlage “Biblische Hermeneutik” der Theologischen Kommission der SELK, LuThK 37 (2013), 103–114; Christoph Barnbrock, “Da werden gewislich diese gedancken zu geschlagen sein”. Rezeptionsästhetische Beobachtungen zu einer Lutherpredigt, LuThK 37 (2013), 115–129. Cf. Achim Behrens, Exegese des Alten Testaments als theologische Disziplin, LuThK 33 (2009), 195–224.

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cation to be a “hermeneutic indicator”4 for the Lutheran confession. The point here, therefore, is not to understand the whole of Scripture quantitatively. On the contrary, the Bible unfailingly emphasises the salvation of man in the face of God through grace alone. That this grace is the work of the Holy Spirit in human beings is quite simply the central content of the Bible. This realisation would appear initially to remain hidden to a methodical approach. However, Wenz then adds an interesting, maybe even controversial, thought. He refers to the reprobation of CA V where it states that faith is admittedly wrought by the Holy Spirit “ubi et quando visum est Deo” but at the same time those who teach that the Holy Spirit works without the “physical word” (verbum externum) are 5 rejected. And for the sake of this “external word” good theology can never refrain from a meticulous consideration of linguistic form in the Bible. Exegesis may therefore, never be subjectivistic in the sense of being a mere reflex of personal intuitive faith. The externality of the written word and its contentually determined significance must be taken seriously even, and indeed particularly, when it appears odd to our subjective self-perception. The strict stipulation that arbitrariness may not play any role in exegesis makes the knowledge of certain precepts in text analysis necessary, not only syntax but also semantics and text pragmatics …6

Syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of texts should, therefore, be studied. The grammatical construction and structure of a text, its meaning and function, and the role it plays in communication (the pragmatics) must all be considered. We can investigate the pragmatic function of single expressions, sentences or formulas, but also ask what function longer texts perform. This can only be achieved by a precise analysis of the linguistic characteristics in the Hebrew text. The reader’s/hearer’s reception of a text is pre-structured through the way in which texts and parts of texts relate to each other through certain syntactical constructions. This proves once again the hermeneutic relevance of linguistic observation and the theological relevance of Hebrew Studies for the Old Testament.

4 5 6

Cf. Gunther Wenz, Theologie der Bekenntnisschriften der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche: eine historische und systematische Einführung in das Konkordienbuch (1996–1997), 1, 180. Cf. BSLK, 58; BC, 40–41. Wenz, Theologie, 1, 191; emphasis Behrens. “Schriftauslegung darf sonach niemals subjektivistisch im Sinne eines bloßen Reflexes eigener Glaubensunmittelbarkeit sein. Die Externität des Schriftwortes und dessen inhaltlich bestimmter eigener Sinn sind vielmehr ernst zu nehmen auch und gerade dann, wenn sie der subjektiven Selbstwahrnehmung als befremdlich erscheinen. Solch strikt geforderte Nichtbeliebigkeit der Schriftauslegung schließt die Kenntnis bestimmter Regeln der Texterschließung notwendig ein, die nicht nur die Syntax, sondern auch die Semantik und Pragmatik von Texten betreffen …”

Linguistic and Text Pragmatic Observations in Amos 7:1–8:2

111

Text grammar and Old Testament texts The non-Hebraist, philosopher of language, Wilhelm Köller states: The sentence was long considered to be the biggest unit in grammatical analysis and therefore the intrinsic subject of a morphologically orientated grammar. For it was thought that this was the only level on which a regulated formal connection between linguistic situations could be observed. Text linguistic, however, has demonstrated very convincingly that formal connective relations between speech units beyond the boundaries of sentences exist which bestow a text with a morphological coherence. Text linguistic has shown that not only grammatical instructions for the construction of sentences exist but also grammatical instructions for the construction of texts. It has also made clear that texts are always exemplifications of text types or communication patterns which display certain form characteristics.7

The search for “text construction instructions” opens up a relevant and fruitful horizon in the treatment of Hebrew texts. Consideration of types of text and communication patterns also demonstrates the ongoing relevance of form-critical questions in a wider sense. But this is a topic in its own right. To begin with we must ask whether we can detect “formal connective relations between linguistic units beyond the boundaries of sentences” in biblical Hebrew. That this is the case is no longer a point of contention due to the increased awareness of so-called “keyword relations” between texts and parts of texts and even between various biblical books (indeed even between parts of the canon). Intensified redaction criticism has also been influential. Old Testament texts are, however, connected and related to each other by more phenomena than the incorporation of distinctive keywords alone. I am convinced that we can see such a “formal connective relation” in syntactical resumptions. I define syntactical resumption as significant multiple use of a particular syntactical construction in Hebrew which serves as a connection or reference between single texts or parts of texts.8

7

8

Wilhelm Köller, Philosophie der Grammatik: Vom Sinn grammatischen Wissens (1988), 337, (emphases by Köller): “Lange Zeit galt der Satz als die größte Einheit der grammatischen Analyse und damit auch als eigentlicher Gegenstand der morphologisch orientierten Grammatik, weil man nur auf dieser Ebene eine geregelte formale Verknüpfung zwischen sprachlichen Gegebenheiten beobachten zu können glaubte. Die Textlinguistik hat aber überzeugend gezeigt, dass es auch jenseits der Satzgrenzen noch formale Verknüpfungsrelationen zwischen sprachlichen Einheiten gibt, die einem Text eine morphologische Kohärenz verleihen. Sie hat dargelegt, dass es nicht nur grammatische Satzbildungsinstruktionen gibt, sondern auch grammatische Textbildungsinstruktionen. Außerdem hat sie klargestellt, dass Texte eigentlich immer Exemplifikationen von Textsorten bzw. Kommunikationsmustern darstellen, die bestimmte Formeigentümlichkeiten aufweisen.” Cf. Achim Behrens, “Die syntaktische Wiederaufnahme” als textgrammatisches Phänomen im biblischen Hebräisch, Kleine Untersuchungen zur Sprache des Alten Testaments und seiner Umwelt 6 (2006), 1–31.

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Vision Descriptions in Amos 7–8 and the Amazia-pericope Amos 7:10–17 Amos 7:1–8:2 describes four visions,9 which formally speaking, have a parallel construction and can be subdivided in two pairs. I. Am 7:1–3: The swarm of locusts

II. Am 7:4–6: The great drought

1. the vision

1. the vision

–

–

–

opens with a form of r’h: v. 1aα ‫“ כה הראני אדני יהוה‬This is what the Lord Yahweh showed me …” begins the description of the vision with the nominal clause after wehinne: v. 1aβ ‫“ והנה יצר גבי‬and see: he formed a swarm of locusts”

2. the dialogue – –

–

begins with a ‫ו‬-imperfect of ’mr: v. 2aβ ‫“ ואמר‬And I cried out” first speech directive speech act10 in form of an imperative: v. 2aβ ‫אדני יהוה סלח־נא‬ “My Lord Yahweh forgive!” concluding phrase from the mouth of Yahweh: v. 3 ‫נחם יהוה על־זאת אל תהיה אמר‬

‫יהוה‬

“The Lord relented. ‘This will not happen’, the Lord said.”

9

–

opens with a form of r’h: v. 4aa ‫“ כה הראני אדני יהוה‬This is what the Lord Yahweh showed me” begins the description of the vision with the nominal clause after wehinne: v. 4ab ‫“ והנה ֹקרא לרב באש‬and see: he called for judgement by fire …”

2. the dialogue – –

–

begins with a ‫ו‬-imperfect of ’mr: v. 5aα ‫“ ואמר‬And I cried out” first speech, directive speech act in form of an imperative: v. 5aα ‫אדני יהוה חדל־נא‬ “My Lord Yahweh, I beg you stop!” concluding phrase from the mouth of Yahweh: v. 6 ‫נחם יהוה על־זאת גם היא אל תהיה‬

‫אמר אדני יהוה‬

“The Lord relented. ‘This will not happen either’ said the Lord Yahweh”.

Cf. Achim Behrens, Prophetische Visionsschilderungen im Alten Testament: sprachliche Eigenarten, Funktion und Geschichte einer Gattung (2002), 32–104; id., Vision/Visionsschilderung AT, in: wibilex 2006 (http://www.bibelwissenschaft.de/stichwort/12115/); Achim Behrens, “Grammatik statt Ekstase!” Das Phänomen der syntaktischen Wiederaufnahme am Beispiel von Amos 7,1–8,2, in Andreas Wagner (ed.), Studien zur hebräischen Grammatik (1997), 1–9. 10 The term “directive speech act” is taken from John Austin and John Searle, cf. Andreas Wagner, Sprechakte und Sprechaktanalyse im Alten Testament: Untersuchungen im biblischen Hebräisch an der Nahtstelle zwischen Handlungsebene und Grammatik (1997).

Linguistic and Text Pragmatic Observations in Amos 7:1–8:2

III. Am 7:7–8: In his hand: tin 1. the vision

IV. Am 8:1–2: The End has come 1. the vision

–

–

–

opens with a form of r’h: v. 7aα ‫כה הראני‬ “This is what he showed me” begins the description of the vision with a nominal clause after wehinne: v. 7aβ ‫והנה אדני נצב על־חומת אנך‬ “and see: Adonai was standing on a wall made of tin”

2. the dialogue –

–

–

begins with a ‫ו‬-imperfect of ’mr: v. 8aα ‫יהוה ויאמר אלי‬ “The Lord spoke to me” first speech: directive speech act in question form: v. 8aα ‫מה־אתה ראה עמוס‬ “What do you see, Amos?” concluding formula from the mouth of Yahweh: v. 8.b ‫הנני שם אנך בֹקרב עמי‬ ‫“ ישראל לא־אסיף עוד עבור לו‬Look I am setting tin in the midst of my people Israel. I will not again pass by them any more.”

–

113

opens with a form of r’h: v. 1a ‫כה הראני אדני יהוה‬ “Thus has the Lord showed me …” begins the description of the vision with a nominal clause after nach wehinne: v. 1b ‫והנה כלוב ֹקיץ‬ “and see: a basket of ripe fruit”.

2. the dialogue –

–

–

begins with a ‫ו‬-imperfect of ’mr: v. 2aα ‫ויאמר‬ “And he said …” first speech: directive speech act in question form: v. 8aα ‫מה־אתה ראה עמוס‬ “What do you see, Amos?” concluding formula from the mouth of Yahweh: v. 2b ‫בא הֹקץ אל־עמי ישראל‬ ‫“ לא־אוסיף עוד אבור לו‬The end has come upon my people of Israel; I will not again pass them by any more.”

Each of the descriptions begins with a formulaic phrase of seeing, followed by a vision section with a description of what was seen and finally in all four cases a dialogue section. The visions are not only connected with each other through their similar construction, but also through keyword relation and the restatement of certain syntactical constructions. This observation is supported by several detailed observations: All four vision descriptions begin with ‫“ כה הראני אדני יהוה‬The Lord Yahweh let me see the following”11, and in all four cases this is followed by a description of what was seen, introduced by a nominal sentence beginning with ‫והנה‬. These two features reveal already how closely all four vision descriptions relate to each other.

11 In Amos 7:7 ‫ כה הראני‬is used which can be seen as a possible variation and does not contradict the structure of the cycle as a whole, cf. Francis I. Andersen/David Noel Freedman, Amos: A New Translation with Notes and Commentary (1989), 618.

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As the respective descriptions continue two distinct pairs become clear. The correlation of the first and the second vision as a pair is seen in that Amos, after seeing threatening disaster (locusts in Amos 7:1 and fire in Amos 7:4), pleads with Yahweh for mercy (v. 2: ‫ )סלח־נא‬and for an end to disaster (v. 5: ‫ ;חדל־נא‬each time after the introduction ‫)ואמר אדני יהוה‬. In both cases Amos promotes his request with the rhetorical question ‫“ מי יֹקום יעֹקב כי ֹקתן הוא‬How can Jacob survive? He is so small!” (v. 2.5) And finally, in both cases Yahweh’s compassion is verified (v. 3: ‫ – נחם יהוה על־זאת לא תהיה אמר יהוה‬v.6: ‫נחם יהוה על־זאת גם־היא לא תהיה אמר אדני‬ ‫)יהוה‬. Therefore, the first two visions clearly refer to each other and form a pair through keyword relation and the use of the same syntactical construction. The content of this first pair is characterised by the success of Amos’ plea against the disaster he saw arising. Similar connections are evident within the third and fourth visions. After Amos has, in both cases, seen items which need to be interpreted (Amos 7:7 ‫ ;אנך‬8:1 ‫כלוב‬ ‫)ֹקיץ‬, Yahweh questions the prophet in both visions with the same words ‫מה־אתה ראה‬ ‫( עמוס‬Amos 7:8; 8:2). Amos then answers (again in both visions) with a unipolar nominal clause after ‫ואמר‬, in which he names the particular object. In the description of each vision Yahweh then gives an interpretation: he will bring ‫ אנך‬to Israel (7:8);12 Israel has come to an end (8:2). In both cases ‫ עמי ישראל‬is described as the relation of the threatened disaster. And finally, both vision descriptions end with the same conclusion by Yahweh ‫“ לא־אוסיף עוד עבור לו‬I will spare them no longer.” The syntax in this concluding formula – verbal clause in preformative conjugation negated with ‫ – לא‬relates the third and fourth visions with the first and second (cf. 7:3.6 ‫)לא תהיה‬. This type of phenomenon can be called a syntactical resumption. The third and the fourth visions are therefore also a pair. As far as the content, this second pair of visions displays a turning point in comparison to the first pair. Disaster is now inevitable. The end is certain and is in fact initiated by Yahweh himself. A dramatic development from avertible to inevitable has taken place between the two pairs. How did this dramatic development come about? The cycle is interrupted suddenly after the third vision (Amos 7:7–8) by the only narrative text in the book of Amos, the description of the prophet’s conflict with Amaziah, priest of Beth-El. The story of this conflict falls into two parts (v. 10–13 and v. 14–17), bound together by syntactical resumption. The first part of the text features Amaziah as the protagonist. This section is characterised by the priest’s outrage which he makes known to his King, Jerobeam II (v. 10–11). He substanti12 The crucial keyword in the third vision is this ‫אנך‬. This term does not mean “plumb line” as has usually been assumed but means tin as one component of bronze alloy and therefore as a suitable material for weapons. Cf. Walter Beyerlin, Bleilot, Brecheisen oder was sonst?: Revision einer Amos-Vision (1988); and Jörg Jeremias, Der Prophet Amos (1995), 101ff. If Yahweh transports ‫אנך‬ to his people here then it is a military threat; Amos 7:9 makes this explicit with the conventional lexeme ‫חרב‬. In the third vision description the term ‫ אנך‬is used, however, as a play on words (as in the fourth vision). ‫ אנך‬plays on ‫אנכי‬, which implies that Yahweh’s presence in Israel’s midst will be of a threatening nature. This pun is documented in Akkadian, cf. Jeremias, Amos, 103 n. 27.

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115

ates his accusation that Amos is conspiring against the King with an alleged citation of the prophet’s words. This is introduced by the messenger formula ‫כה־אמר עמוס‬ (v. 11).13 Later Amos retorts ‫( כה־אמר יהוה‬same syntax, v. 17). Amos confirms the priest’s accusation that he prophesied that the Israelis would be sent into exile by repeating Amaziah’s formula ‫“ וישראל גלה יגלה מעל אדמתו‬Israel will surely go into exile, away from their native land” (vv. 11, 17).14 Both these examples – the restatement of the messenger formula in v. 11 and v. 17 and Amos’ repetition of the exile announcement – can be called syntactical resumption, which is employed to connect the texts. The phenomenon is also evident in the following cases: After Amaziah has complained about Amos to the King he addresses the prophet directly and expels him from Israel to Juda with the words ‫לך ברח־לך אל־ארץ‬ ‫“ יהודה‬Go, push off back to the land of Juda” (v. 12). Amos retorts with the words of Yahweh’s commission ‫“ לך הינבא אל־עמי ישראל‬Go, prophesy to my people Israel” 15 (v. 15). It is very clear that Amos uses the same syntactical construction – ‫לך‬+ imp. + ‫אל־‬+ object – to state a diametrically opposite meaning. He is not the kind of prophet who can work just as well in Juda; Yahweh himself has sent him to Israel. The use of the same syntactical form underlines the contrary content very effectively.16 At the same time a connection between the second phrase and the first phrase is established. This linking can be demonstrated even more clearly in v. 13. Amaziah had pointed Amos to Juda where he could act as a prophet. He goes on to say ‫ובת־אל‬ ‫“ לא־תוסיף עוד להנבא‬Do not prophesy any more at Beth-El” explaining ‫“ כי מֹקדש־מלך הוא ובת ממלכה הוא‬for it is the king’s sanctuary and the king’s mansion”. Two syntactical constructions which played an important role in the descriptions of the visions are put into the mouth of Amaziah here. The first is the phrase “will not again” (7:8; 8:2 ‫לא־אוסיף עוד‬. 7:13: ‫ )לא־תוסיף עוד‬which expressed the end of Yahweh’s mercy as the concluding formula in the second pair of visions (7:8; 8:2) and is intended here to end Amos’ prophetic speech. Second, Amaziah justifies this by insisting on the power and dignity of Beth-El in two nominal clauses where in

13 This is a profane use of the messenger formula, found otherwise in the speech of prophets. Cf. Andreas Wagner, Prophetie als Theologie: die so spricht Jahwe-Formeln und das Grundverständnis alttestamentlicher Prophetie (2004), 153ff. Cf. Reed Lessing, Amos (2009), 470, “Amaziah claims to be quoting Amos.” 14 Cf. Andersen and Freedman, Amos, 791. 15 The target-group ‫ אל־עמי ישראל‬corresponds to the name of the addressees at Yahweh’s tribunal in the third (and the fourth) vision description (cf. 7:8; 8:2). 16 The authority conflict between Yahweh on the one hand and an Israel which has taken things into it’s own hands on the other hand is also expressed here syntactically. Comp. Anders Jørgen Bjørndalen, Erwägungen zur Zukunft des Amazja und Israels nach der Überlieferung Am 7,10– 17,” in: Rainer Albertz (ed.), Werden und Wirken des Alten Testaments: Festschrift für Claus Westermann (1980), 236–251.

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each case the “subject” is formed with the anapher ‫הוא‬.17 A similar syntactical construction was used twice by Amos in the first pair of visions to underline his plea that Yahweh have mercy on Jacob ‫“ כי ֹקתן הוא‬for he is so small” (Amos 7:2, 5). Again the parity of the syntax demonstrates the contrast in content all the more clearly, again establishing a clear connection between the texts. The Amaziah story is linked to the vision description: “Jacob”, represented by the priest in the kingdom’s sanctuary, does not perceive that he is small and insists on his own “power and glory” and wants to prohibit the propagation of God’s word. This is the reason for the end of Yahweh’s mercy.18 Amos reiterates in v. 16 precisely this interdiction, to prophesy, followed by his ‫לכן כה־אמר יהוה‬which introduces the gruesome exile announcement. It is now clear: the Amaziah story is not only connected with the surrounding visions through various keyword relations19 but also by syntactical resumptions. The character of these connections and the fact that particular syntactical constructions from the visions (especially Amos 7:13) are used, elucidates the dramatic development from avoidable to inevitable disaster within the four visions for the reader. The end had to come exactly because Israel did not want to hear Yahweh’s words given in prophesy, nor did Israel realise his weakness, insisting instead on his strength. This then will be established conclusively by the fourth Amos vision.

Conclusion “Just as a painter can bestow greater inner autonomy on his painting by considering the correlation between the single elements in the picture and the correlation between these elements and the possible beholders beforehand, a speaker can give his utterances greater inner autonomy by pre-structuring the correlation ratio. This can be done particularly easily in written utterances. He can mark types of text so clearly through grammatical and stylistic tools that they have to be and are received in a certain way.”20 17 In the terms of Michel’s “Nominalsatzgrammatik” we have two nominal messages here with the regular clause sequence Chabar – Mubtada after ‫כי‬, cf. Diethelm. Michel, Der hebräische Nominalsatz 2. Grundlegung einer hebräischen Syntax (2004), 164, 181. 18 Lessing, Amos, 496, “His [i.e. Amaziah’s] rejection of Yahweh’s Word explains why Yahweh says in the third and fourth vision, ‘I will never again forgive’ Israel (7:8; 8:2). Amaziah’s of Amos is Israel’s rejection of Yahweh.” 19 For the numerous keyword relations not listed here cf. Jeremias, Amos, 107, and Helmut Utzschneider, Die Amazjaerzählung (Am 7,10–17) zwischen Literatur und Historie, BN 41 (1988), 76–101. 20 Köller, Philosophie der Grammatik, 159 (emphasis from original). “Ebenso wie der Maler dem Bilde dadurch eine größere innere Autonomie geben kann, daß er die Korrelation zwischen den einzelnen Bildelementen und die Korrelation zwischen den Bildelementen und den möglichen Betrachtern fest vorstrukturiert, so kann auch ein Sprachproduzent seinen Äußerungen dadurch eine größere innere Autonomie geben, dass er Korrelationsverhältnisse fest vorstrukturiert, was insbesondere in schriftlichen Äußerungen gut zu bewerkstelligen ist. […] Auf der Ebene des Textes kann

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117

Syntactical resumption is a means used in biblical Hebrew to establish correlations between texts or parts of texts, and in this way to structure the reception of a text. The use of text types with significant linguistic characteristics is another tool which then calls our attention anew to the intentions of classical form criticism. In the beginning of this essay, the hermeneutical and theological dimensons involved in syntactical resumption were discussed. It is astonishing that after two thousand years of Christian exegesis of the Old Testament new aspects in the Hebrew language can still be discovered. In our striving to understand biblical texts language ever remains the key. At the same time it is evident that newer linguistic approaches can not only be used for Hebrew texts from the Old Testament. They open up a meaningful understanding of texts. The observation of Amos 7:10–17 as the only narrative text, which interrupts the vision descriptions, has long attracted attention. In light of the grammatical integration of the text in its context it becomes very plain, however, that we are by no means considering a fragment of an otherwise forgotten Amos biography.21 This fragment did not take its place as we see it today after Amos 7.8f by coincidence or randomly. With a probability bordering on certainty, the Amaziah percope was written precisely for its present literary context. The numerous syntactical resumptions make this very clear.22 The syntax also conveys a theological message. “Jacob” does not recognise his smallness and his need for help. Indeed he does not need to hear God’s word as it is purveyed through the words of Amos because he is so complacent. Thus it becomes quite clear that this is exactly the reason for the dramatic turnaround which takes place within the four visions in Amos 7f. God only exercises mercy when his word is not curtly rejected as by Amaziah. Altogether, therefore, Amos 7:1–8:2, in this current final form, presents its message anew. The linguistic observations take seriously God’s word as a written text. The texts have their own pragmatism – a communicative function and capacity – which are completely independent from any question concerning dating or authorship. As far as this is concerned neither the visions nor the Amaziah pericope have anything to do with the life or biography of Amos from Tekoa. Instead the fate of God’s word becomes apparent in these texts. It is a text which must be interpreted to the present day. In part we can effect this interpretation and comprehension by the use of

er durch grammatische und stilistische Mittel Äußerungen so eindeutig als Textsorten kennzeichnen, dass sie auf eine ganz bestimmte Weise rezipiert werden können oder müssen.” 21 Cf. for the discussion on this subject which harks back to Karl Budde see Hans Walter Wolff, Joel und Amos (1969), 354ff. 22 This does not, however, automatically mean that Amos 7:1–8:2 is an original literary entity. The conspicuous observations remain, that the Amaziah story interrupts the visions and is told in the third person, unlike the context. If therefore Amos 7:10–17 is the work of a later author than the surrounding visions then it remains to be said that the Amaziah story can only unfold its speech pragmatism power at this spot.

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exegetical tools – here it is text linguistic. It remains the ministry of the Holy Spirit to use this word as law and gospel to change hearts ubi et quando visum est Deo.

Summary This essay draws attention to a phenomenon of textual grammar in biblical Hebrew. Texts or several parts of one text can be joined together not only by use of connecting key words, but also by use of the reiteration of certain syntatical constructions. This is called “syntactic resumption” by the author, and identified as a stylistic feature of textual grammar in biblical Hebrew. The significance of this phenomenon is illustrated through a close reading of Amos 7:1–8:1. Knowledge of syntactic resumption is thus shown to be a useful tool for biblical exegesis. It leads, for example, to questions of linguistic pragmatics: What did the author of a biblical text intend by the use of certain text types that can be identified through connecting key words or syntactic resumption? This kind of textual grammatical evaluation may open up a fresh look at form critiscism and prompt scholars to renew their interest in text types, which eventually may have a close resemblance to Gunkel’s “Gattungen”.

Linguistic and Text Pragmatic Observations in Amos 7:1– 8:2 Response Paul Raabe In his essay, Achim Behrens shows how texts or several parts of one text can be joined together not only by repeating key words but also by repeating syntactic constructions. He illustrates how this works with Amos 7–8. Form critics typically separate the vision reports of Amos from the Amaziah narrative. Hans Walter Wolff, for example, divides the book into six layers and attributes the visions to the second layer and the Amaziah narrative to the third layer.1 Behrens shows how syntax helps to unite the Amaziah narrative with the surrounding vision reports. He calls particular attention to 7:13. Here Amaziah explains why Amos must leave: “But at Beth-El you will no longer continue to prophesy – ‫לא־תוסיף עוד‬, for it is the king’s sanctuary and it is the kingdom’s house/temple.” The first clause syntactically picks up on what Yahweh says in visions three and four: “I will no longer continue to pass by it” – ‫( לא־אוסיף עוד‬7:8; 8:2). Amos responded to the threatening vision by imploring God that Jacob cannot withstand this judgment “for he is small” – ‫( כי ֹקתן הוא‬7:2, 5). Amaziah uses the same nominal sentence syntax as the reason why Amos must leave Beth-El, “for it is the king’s sanctuary; it is the kingdom’s house/temple” – ‫( כי מֹקדש־מלך הוא ובת ממלכה הוא‬7:13). These similar syntactical constructions help cement the Amaziah narrative to the surrounding vision reports. Behrens then interprets the significance of these literary connections on what James Voelz calls level 2.2 God will no longer pass by Israel (7:8; 8:2) because Israel, unlike what Amos said in his petition (7:2, 5), does not consider itself to be small but considers itself to be strong (7:13). Behrens moves the discussion in the right direction. His approach helps reveal how the Amaziah episode fits into its present context. As he emphasizes, it was not accidentally or arbitrarily inserted into its present location. We should study the text as it presently stands and notice the connections that are made between verses in terms of word choice, word repetition, and grammar and syntax. Then we should

1 2

Hans Walter Wolff, A Commentary on the Books of the Prophets Joel and Amos (1977). James W. Voelz, What Does This Mean? – Principles of Biblical Interpretation in the Post-Modern World (2013), 156–164.

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try to interpret the section in a more holistic way rather than atomistically dividing the text and separating verses from one another. I wish to move this holistic reading approach further by asking a simple question. It is not a question about how the text was composed or developed in its origin. It is more of a literary-narrative question, a question from the point of view of the reader rather than the point of view of the author. The question is this. When Amaziah commanded him to leave Beth-El, did Amos leave? A simple question. Here I suggest that we take the present narrative shape of the text seriously. If we read chapters 7–8 holistically as one continuous narrative, we can take it this way. Amos is proclaiming to the people at Beth-El the personal visions he received from God. For the first two, Amos interceded and God repented. Then for the third vision, God did not allow Amos to intercede. Instead God preempted Amos by asking Amos a question, “What do you see, Amos?” Now Amos had to answer God’s question, to which God then made the declaration that he will no longer pass by Israel. Then Amaziah interrupted Amos’s speech by commanding him to leave. Now Amos responds to Amaziah by reporting that God called Amos and commanded him to prophesy to Israel. Then Amos proclaims the future fate of Amaziah and Israel by using Amaziah’s own words from 7:11, “Israel will surely go into exile from off its land” (7:17). Then what? Does Amos leave? No, Amos does not leave. Instead he continues with his speech and reports the fourth vision he received from God as recorded in chapter 8. In other words, it is possible to read Amos 7–8 as conveying one continuous narrative flow. Amos is speaking. Amaziah interrupts. Amos deals with the interruption. Then Amos continues with his speech. The atomistic approach of Formgeschichte would never allow the reader to read this way. It would insist on breaking the chapters up into smaller units and then trying to interpret each small unit on its own. Instead of that atomistic style of reading, Behrens’ attention to syntactic resumption helps encourage and foster a more holistic way of reading the Old Testament prophets. This is good. We need to continue moving in this holistic direction. Finally, to further the conversation I will close with two questions for Behrens: 1) If studying the grammatical linkages could open up a fresh look at form criticism, what would be the value of a renewal of form criticism? 2) Is the same syntactical construction by itself is enough to tie verses together or only when used in conjunction with other literary devices?

3

Contextual Approaches/ Kontextuelle Zugänge

Reading Psalm 1 in the Context of the Psalter: Voices in Conversation Timothy Saleska Introduction The idea that Psalm 1 is an Introduction to the book of Psalms goes at least as far back as Origen. But it is only fairly recently that scholars have suggested that the Psalter isn’t simply a collection of poetic texts gathered together without an overarching intention. On the contrary, modern scholars argue that editors intentionally arranged the psalms as we have them. And they argue that Ps 1 was intentionally placed at the beginning of the book to guide readers in how the book as whole is to be read. Scholars often repeat the metaphor made popular by Gerald Wilson that Ps 1 provides the “hermeneutical spectacles” through which to view the psalms that follow it.1 But “Ps 1 as a guide” or “Ps 1 as hermeneutical spectacles” are abstractions that need to be explained. In addition, they are not the only scholarly descriptions of how Psalm 1 functions in the context of the book. In this essay I hope to introduce you to the conversations scholars are having about Psalm 1 and the meaning(s) that emerge when the psalm is assumed to introduce an intentionally composed book and when it is read in the context of the rest of the book.

The Shift in Conversations About the Psalter As I have said, scholarly conversations about Psalm 1 are only part of a larger series of conversations that scholars are having about the nature of the Psalter and the way that it should be interpreted. It is fairly well known that in the last thirty years or so, Psalms scholars have become interested in talking about different things and debating a different set of questions than earlier twentieth-century Psalms scholarship. Up until this recent shift in the conversation, the interests and questions of form critics, led by pioneers such as Hermann Gunkel and Sigmund Mowinckel, dominated the conversation among twentieth-century Psalms scholars. Gunkel tried to define psalms according to categories of literary genres (Gattungen) and to discover the original life-setting (Sitz im Leben) of the genres and the psalms belonging to particular genres.2 To this end, he formulated his genres by comparing the psalms 1 2

Norman Whybray, Reading the Psalms as a Book (1996), 38. The history of scholarship related here and in what follows is taken from David C. Mitchell, The Message of the Psalter: An Eschatological Programme in the Book of Psalms (1997), 50–65; Ger-

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with the literary forms of other recently discovered oriental literature. He also took into account the theme and content of individual psalms in making his broad categorizations. As a result Gunkel worked through the Psalter, collecting together the psalms and their various genres. In working this way, he basically ignored the headings and subscripts of the psalms. Gunkel did not think that there was an overarching purpose to the arrangement of the Psalter and believed that it had originated by a process of gradual evolution. He writes, One cannot recognize a unifying principle for the transmitted sequence, although perhaps various viewpoints are demonstrable for their combination of individual psalms (similarities of specific ideas, agreement of particular catchwords, common author, equivalent superscriptions). This result forces one to conclude that the book of Psalms owes its current state to a complicated process of origin.3

Sigmund Mowinckel, Gunkel’s student, built on his teacher’s research, but stressed the need to understand the Psalms in relation to their cultic function in Israel. While Gunkel believed that some psalms were of cultic origin, Mowinckel believed that the majority had originated in the cult, and so in addition to defining their Sitz im Leben, he also tried to reconstruct the festivals in which they originated.4 As far as the editing of the book is concerned, Mowinckel did not accept the idea that it was composed as a hymnbook but thought that the main redactional impulse behind the collection was the desire to preserve ancient, historical texts. He thought that the five-book division was a coincidence that developed when the doxologies were brought into the Psalter along with their preceding psalms.5 Because of the influence of these scholars, the majority of scholars in the decades after Gunkel and Mowinckel took no radical steps out of the form-critical mode established by these scholars. The significance of the genres of similar psalms (thus isolated and individual psalms) was emphasized, and the importance of canonical order was minimized.6 The focus was on forms and cultic Sitz im Leben, and there was not much interest in inter-psalm links.7 Virtually all of them agreed that the

3

4

5 6 7

ald H. Wilson, The Editing of the Hebrew Psalter (1985), 1–6; David M. Howard, Editorial Activity in the Psalter: A Consideration of Editorial Linkage in the Book of Psalms, in: J.Clinton McCann (ed.), The Shape and Shaping of the Psalter (1993), 52–70. Hermann Gunkel/Joachim Begrich, Introduction to Psalms: The Genres of the Religious Lyric of Israel (1998), 335. Later, he adds, “The entire collection of psalms arose from small individual collections” (Gunkel/Begrich, Introduction to Psalms, 340, 343–348; Wilson, The Editing, 1.) Howard, Editorial Activity, 53; Mitchell, The Message, 51, says that Gunkel thought the majority of psalms were spiritualized imitations of earlier psalms, deriving from conventicles of pious laymen. He adds that the most well known of Mowinckel’s reconstructions is the annual ‘enthronement of Yahweh’ festival, by analogy to the annual ‘enthronement of Marduk’ ritual of the Babylonian autumn new year festival. He said about 40 psalms were connected to this festival. Sigmund Mowinckel, The Psalms in Israel’s Worship (1962), 197, 202–206; Mitchell, The Message, 51–52. Wilson, The Editing, 2. Howard, Editorial Activity, 53.

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Psalter’s redaction was piecemeal and that the arrangement of the individual psalms reflected only the order in which the various collections had been added to each other.8 Some scholars believed that the final collection was deliberately redacted for temple or synagogue worship. But others thought that the Psalter was only the result of a conglomerative tendency inherent in psalm collections. However, in the 1970s and early 1980s, scholars began to turn their focus more to the final form of the Psalter and its redaction, rather than on the origin, literary genre, or cultic function of individual psalms.9 This switch in focus may have been due to the increasing interest in pursuing literary approaches to the Bible in general. It may also have been because of the development of canon criticism and the interest in final form studies, which was pioneered by Brevard Childs.10 At any rate, the scholarship during this time paved the way so that it became not only possible for scholars to ask different questions and have different conversations about the book of Psalms, but acceptable and appropriate.11 Scholars began to read the Psalter with the assumption that it was not only a collection of liturgical materials from ancient Israel and Judah but also a coherent literary whole that had a message greater than the sum of its parts.12 And so they began to discuss the literary or theological rationale responsible for the final form of the Psalter, and they began to see that whatever rationale was responsible for the final form, it reflected a nonliturgical Sitz im Leben.

The Function of Psalm One in the Context of the Psalter Theme-oriented approaches Because of its position at the beginning of the book, Psalm 1 has been a major topic of discussion in the conversations that scholars continue to have about the character of the Psalter as a whole. Gerald Wilson’s comments are instructive: The introductory character of Psalm 1 seems to have won general acceptance in the modern period. There is much to commend it, and little to dispute it. Manuscript evidence supports Psalm 1 as having been placed as a preface, with some manuscripts leaving it unnumbered altogether. Some New Testament manuscripts of the Western tradition refer to a quotation from Psalm 2 with the phrase “in the first psalm,” indicat8 9

Wilson, The Editing, 2–4, Howard, Editorial Activity, 57–70, mentions scholars such as M. D. Goulder, J. P. Brennan, Brevard Childs, G. T. Sheppard, J. Reindl and various others who, to one degree or another, are interested in the Psalms as a book. Some approach the book at the higher level of collections and large, organizing principles and some at the level of links between adjacent psalms (p. 68). 10 Mitchell, The Message, 56. 11 Evidenced, for example, by the establishment and early work of the Psalms Group in the Society of Biblical Literature. 12 J. Clinton McCann Jr., preface to The Shape and Shaping, 7.

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ing either that Psalm 1 did not as yet exist or that it was still unnumbered. Indeed, the use of a thematic or programmatic composition to provide an interpretive Introduction to a large collection is undisputed, and here it does not appear inappropriate.13

Here, Wilson gives a tentative description of Ps 1’s function, “Indeed, the use of a thematic or programmatic composition (emphasis mine) to provide an interpretive Introduction to a large collection is undisputed, and here it does not appear inappropriate,” he says. So, how does Wilson see Ps 1 functioning as an interpretive Introduction to the Psalter? I have already mentioned that Wilson thought that Ps 1 served as the “hermeneutical spectacles” through which the rest of the book should be read. By this he means that Ps 1 enables readers to read the psalms that originated in the communal liturgy of the cult in a new light. Following Brevard Childs, Wilson maintains that the effect of the editorial fixation of the first psalm as an introduction to the Psalter is to alter subtly how readers view and appropriate the rest of the psalms. The emphasis is now on meditation rather than cultic performance and on private, individual use over public participation. He writes, “In a strange transformation, Israel’s words of response to her God have now become the Word of God to Israel.”14 He goes on to say that the designation “Hymn Book of the Second Temple” for the Psalter is an unfortunate label because it has the effect of focusing a disproportionate amount of attention on the individual compositions. It obscures the indications that in its final form the Psalter is a book to be read rather than to be performed, to be meditated over rather than to be recited from. Psalm 1 turns attention away from the cultic setting of single psalms and to the larger literary context of the whole. As an introduction, it stresses the importance of this approach; i.e., it is a matter of life and death.15 It is important to point out that for Wilson, while Ps 1 provides the hermeneutical principles for the correct approach to the psalms, it does not provide a key to the nature of the message contained within.16 The key to the message of the Psalter is found in other formal characteristics, like the five-book division (1–41, 42–72, 73– 89, 90–106, 107–150), the arrangement of certain psalms and groups of psalms within the divisions, information in the superscriptions and doxologies, the content of individual psalms and so on.

13 Gerald H. Wilson, The Shape of the Book of Psalms, Interp. 46 (1992), 129–142, 132; Wilson, The Editing, 304, mentions a number of factors that indicate Psalm 1’s intentional placement as an Introduction, such as: the lack of a superscription, the lack of authorship attribution, and Acts 13:33, in the western text, which cites Ps 2:7 as the first psalm, a statement compatible with a text form found in several Mss in which Ps 1 is the initial psalm, but unnumbered, with enumeration beginning with our Ps 2. 14 Wilson, The Editing, 143, 206. 15 Wilson, The Editing, 206–207. 16 Wilson, The Editing, 207.

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To summarize briefly, Wilson analyzes these data as they occur in the five books of the Psalter and comes to the conclusion that by the time the reader gets to the end of book three (Ps 89), the impression is left of a covenant remembered but a covenant failed. The Davidic covenant introduced in Ps 2 has come to nothing, and the combination of books 1–3 concludes with the anguished cry of the Davidic descendants.17 Wilson, in spite of the many lexical connections that can be observed between Pss 1 and 2, resists the conclusion that they are a unified composition.18 Psalm 2 introduces the Davidic covenant. If the message of books 1–3 is the failure of the Davidic covenant, book 4 is the ‘answer’ to the problem. Briefly, the answer is (1) Yahweh is King, (2) He was our refuge in the past, before the monarchy even existed, (3) He will continue to be our refuge now that the monarchy is gone, and (4) Blessed are those who trust in him.19 Book 5 is intended to be an answer to the plea of the exiles to be gathered from the diaspora. The answer that book 5 gives is that deliverance is dependent on an attitude of dependence and trust in Yahweh. David is the model of trust (Pss 108–110 and 138–145). Book 5 emphasizes Yahweh’s power and his former acts of mercy as proof of his trustworthiness. The attitude of dependence on Yahweh leads to obedience to his Law as is set forth in the central Torah Psalm 119, which serves as the guide to the way of righteousness and life. At the very end of the Psalter, Pss 145–146, David returns to the theme of Yahweh’s kingship, which echoes book 4 and is in tension with books 1–3. Yahweh is the eternal king. Human kings fade away but Yahweh’s steadfast love endures forever.20 A number of scholars have followed Wilson’s conclusions about the function of Pss 1 and 2 and the message of the Psalter as a book. J. Clinton McCann, for example, after noting the near unanimous scholarly agreement that Ps 1 was intentionally placed at the beginning of the book, says, “The next logical step, which many commentators failed until recently to take, is to conclude that this editorial activity has the purpose of informing the reader how to understand and appropriate the entire collection.”21

17 18 19 20

Wilson, The Editing, 213. Wilson, The Editing, 205. Wilson, The Editing, 215. Wilson, The Editing, 227–228; Wilson’s account strikingly resembles George Mendenhall’s popular historical reconstruction. As summarized by Dennis McCarthy, Covenant in the Old Testament: The Present State of Inquiry, CBQ 27 (1965), 217–240, 220, Mendenhall constructed “an interpretation of the history of Israel in terms of an original covenant mediated by Moses, then a falling away from this early pure Mosaic covenant under and because of the monarchy in which the religious community tried to become a civil community and was thus corrupted, and finally a reform, a return to the pure Mosaic tradition of the covenant” (I am indebted to my graduate student, Adam Hensley, for this reference.) 21 J. Clinton McCann, The Psalms as Instruction, 118.

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For him, the word torah, which appears twice in Ps 1:2, is an important clue. He argues that torah means “instruction,” not “Law,” and so Ps 1 suggests that the “happy” are those who delight in the instruction of the Lord and meditate day and night on his instruction. He concludes that Ps 1 is an invitation to be open to God’s instruction and an invitation to readers to receive all the material which is in the Psalms as a source of God’s instruction. He goes on to compare the five-book structure of the Psalter to the Pentateuch and concludes that like the Pentateuch, the Psalter is to be read as God’s instruction to the faithful, not the response of faithful persons to God.22 Other scholars build upon these descriptions of Ps 1 and its function as an introduction. They also vary from them to one degree or another. So, for example, we have seen that Wilson resists the notion that Pss 1 and 2 should be seen as a unified composition. That is, Ps 1 gives readers the hermeneutical principles for the approach to the book, and Ps 2 provides information about the message of the book. But other scholars see a much closer connection between the two psalms and see both of them functioning together as an Introduction to the rest of the book. G. T. Sheppard provided an early voice in the conversation that went against the traditional opinion that Ps 1 alone was the introduction to the Psalter. He examined the shared vocabulary and themes of the two psalms and argued that the editors paired Pss 1 and 2 together to present a combined portrait of the ‘two ways’ of wisdom and folly. He said that the effect of their combination was twofold: (1) It clues the reader that a primary topic of the book will be the comparison of the righteous and the wicked, their character and their fate, and (2) The content of the Psalter is associated with wisdom, and by implication, with Torah.23 Sheppard says that Pss 1–2 give a complete picture of the righteous and the wicked. In Ps 1 the picture is general and ‘timeless’. In Ps 2, there is a more historically anchored example of foolishness, which is seen in the kings who oppose themselves to Yahweh’s anointed, and wisdom, which is seen in those who ‘seek refuge in Yahweh’ (Ps 2:12). Together, they describe the content and purpose of the entire Psalter: to reflect on the way of wisdom and folly, directing readers to a life lived in dependence on Yahweh.24 James Mays, expands on some of these ideas. For example, he also labels Pss 1 and 2 as the book’s two-part Introduction that tells readers some important things about the book. He agrees that Ps 1 identifies the book as Torah of the Lord and that the Psalms provide torah that can be learned by study and meditation.25 He also takes Sheppard’s more explicit thematic approach. Psalm 1 introduces a topic that 22 J. Clinton McCann, A Theological Introduction to the Book of Psalms: The Psalms as Torah (1993), 25–27; McCann, The Psalms as Instruction, 119; McCann mentions other scholars such as James Mays, Claus Westermann, and Klaus Seybold who also suggest this possibility. 23 Jerome F. D. Creach, Yahweh as Refuge and the Editing of the Hebrew Psalter (1996), 16. 24 Creach, Yahweh as Refuge, 78. 25 James L. Mays, The Lord Reigns: A Theological Handbook to the Psalms (1994), 121–122.

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is constant and crucial in the book: the opposition between the righteous and the wicked – an opposition that will be dealt with in different ways in the psalms to follow. Ps 1 lays down principles basic to every particular that will be encountered in the book: life is at stake, and the sovereignty of the Lord is at issue. The reader is instructed by Ps 1 to pay attention to this topic in its constant recurrence in the book.26 Psalm 2, the other half of the Introduction, has a complementary function. It introduces another central topic in the book: the kingship of the Lord. He reigns on Zion and through the chosen king as his representative. Zion as the city of God and the king as the Lord’s anointed will be the subject of many other psalms. It is this theme of the reign of God that is the “integrating center” of the theology of the entire book.27 James Mays also observes a thematic opposition in Ps 2: the contrast between the reign of the Lord and the nations and their kings. About the two-part introduction that is Pss 1–2 he concludes: The autonomy of the individual in the presence of the Lord’s torah and the autonomy of social groups and their leaders in the presence of the Lord’s reign are together and in interrelated ways the poles of the problematics of the Psalter. The torah of the Lord is the answer to the first, and the anointed king is presented in the Second Psalm as 28 God’s response to the second.

For Mays, Pss 1–2 together call for a piety of obedience and trust that is fostered by the entire book. Delight in torah and taking refuge in the Lord make up the faith that is nurtured by the Psalms. Mays’s ability to describe the relationship between Pss 1–2 as he does is enabled by his assumption, with which most scholars generally agree, that at the time the Psalter was being completed, the psalms dealing with Yahweh’s kingship were understood eschatologically. They refer not only to what was enacted in the cult, but refer also to what was promised in prophecy. This means that Ps 2, reread as a goal of history, puts the torah-piety of Ps 1 in an eschatological context. That is to say, the end of the wicked and the vindication of the righteous (Ps 1) can be understood in terms of the coming kingdom of God, and so the pairing of Pss 1–2 by editors is a work of theological synthesis.29 Building on the work of Walter Zimmerli, Mays explains that the fact that other psalms were composed and arranged in pairs to create more comprehensive theological statements, suggests that editors did this with Pss 1–2 as well as other wis-

26 27 28 29

Mays, The Lord Reigns, 122. Mays, The Lord Reigns, 122. Mays, The Lord Reigns, 122–123. Mays, The Lord Reigns, 133.

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dom psalms such as Pss 19 and 119.30 He does not think it an accident that Pss 18 and 118, with their emphasis on Yahweh’s sovereignty over other nations, are paired with Pss 19 and 119, which emphasize torah as the center of life. Both Pss 18 and 118, like Ps 2, can be reread eschatologically. The upshot of what appears to be the intentional pairing of Pss 1–2, 18–19 and 118–19 is that the editors of the Psalter were committed to torah as the divinely willed way of life. Their theology was that “Yahweh knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.” Of course, that’s not how things worked out in their actual experience. As the rest of the psalms show, the righteous often suffer, and they pray to Yahweh for help. Yet, Mays says, they never surrender their faith. The reason they do not give up is the eschatological context of the torah-piety – the hope for the coming kingdom of God.31 The idea that the editors of the Psalter understood Ps 2 (and other “royal psalms”) eschatologically and intended Ps 1 (and the rest of the psalms) to be interpreted within that framework, has been developed much more extensively by David Mitchell. He believes that the Psalter’s redactors purposefully arranged the psalms with an eschatological message. This eschatological message, like other Jewish documents from the second temple period, consists of a sequence of eschatological events, such as Israel in exile, the appearing of a messianic superhero, the ingathering of Israel, the attack of the nations, the hero’s suffering, the scattering of Israel, the appearance of a superhero from the heavens to rescue them, the establishment of his kingdom on Zion and so on. Mitchell attempts to show that the Psalter contains this kind of eschatological event-sequence.32 He suggests that the redactors may have wished the messianic Psalms to ‘infect’ the interpretation of the whole Psalter. For him, Pss 1–2 function as the Psalter’s Introduction, but the influence moves more from Ps 2 to Ps 1, rather than vice versa. So, he says that the collection of psalms is about ultimate war between Yahweh’s Messiah and his foes, his triumph, and the establishment of his kingdom, centered on Zion. He writes, The combined effect of Psalms 1 and 2 together may be that Psalm 1 foretells the triumph of the righteous divine king who meditates on Yahweh’s Torah, and Psalm 2 shows him going forth to battle with its predicted outcome. Or Psalm 1 delineates the person who will share the king’s triumph, possibly as a warrior, and Psalm 2 pronounces that one’s blessedness. The two psalms together announce that the ensuing

30 For example, Pss 111–112 and 105–106; cf., W. Zimmerli, Zwillingspsalmen, in: id., Studien zur altestamentlichen Theologie und Prophetie (1974), 261–271. 31 Mays, The Lord Reigns, 134. 32 Mitchell, The Message of the Psalter, 15, 297–303.

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collection is a handbook for the eschatological wars of the Lord, describing the coming events and the Yhwh-allegiance required of those who would triumph.33

Mitchell’s proposal explicitly argues against Wilson’s hypothesis of viewing the Psalter historically instead of eschatologically. It is better compared, he says, not to Mendelssohn’s Elijah, with its historical themes, but to Handel’s eschatological Messiah.34

Explicitly Theological Approaches Although the theme-oriented approaches to Ps 1 that we have discussed above are certainly ‘theological’ in many aspects, there are a few scholars who describe the function of Ps 1 in ways that are more explicitly ‘theologically oriented’ than we have so far seen. These approaches are grouped into separate categories. Psalm 1 in theological tension with other Psalms Walter Brueggemann is one scholar who hears in Ps 1 the simplistic theological claim that the lives of those who live in obedience to the commands of the Torah will prosper and be blessed, and those who fail to live such lives of obedience will be “like the chaff which the wind blows away.” In other words, the author of Ps 1 is assumed to operate with a naïve quid pro quo concept of retribution/reward. Good deeds reliably lead to good consequences and vice versa. On this reading, Brueggemann assumes that the author ignores or is unaware that actual experience can be quite different – sometimes the righteous suffer, and the wicked prosper. The canonical context exposes Ps 1 as false to experience.35 If readers take Brueggemann’s interpretive path, then they will hear in the word torah (1:2) a reference to God’s laws and commands, and they will interpret the psalm as a “confident summons to obedience that provides assurance about the 33 Mitchell, The Message of the Psalter, 87. Patrick D. Miller, The Beginning of the Psalter, in: J. Clinton MacCann (ed.), The Shape and Shaping of the Psalter (1993), 83–92, 91–92, says that the dual introduction creates ambiguity in the reading of the psalms. The subject introduced to us is clearly the king against the enemies. But it is also the îš against the wicked, that is, anyone who lives by the Torah. He writes, “Psalm 1 placed before Psalm 2, therefore, joins Deuteronomy in a kind of democratizing move that stands in tension with the royal one arising out of the placing of Psalm 2 as the lead-in to Psalms 3ff. While Psalm 2 invites the reader to hear the voice of the Lord’s Anointed in the following psalms, Psalm 1 says that what we hear is the voice of anyone who lives by the Torah … the Anointed One is simply a true Israelite even as he is a true king. “ 34 Mitchell, The Message of the Psalter, 303. 35 Walter Brueggemann, The Psalms and the Life of Faith (1995), 189–213; Walter Brueggemann, Response to Mays, “The Question of Context,” in: Clinton MacCann (ed.), The Shape and Shaping of the Psalter (1993), 29–41, 40, says, “I suggest that canonical context requires a playful posture which at the same time insists on the claims of Psalm 1, and yet exposes Psalm 1 as false to experience.”

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consequence of obedience” (emphasis mine).36 They will understand that the “prosperity,” which one rooted in torah enjoys (1:3), is a life of well-being in this world, a life that, as Brueggemann says, “knows no failure of nerve, no doubt or cynicism concerning the simple, trustworthy outcomes of a life of obedient faith.”37 And “the judgment” and “the congregation of the righteous” in which the wicked will not stand (1:5), refers to human society and its institutions. People who fail to share in Torah obedience “have no staying power in society.” They cannot stand in the company of obedient people and they cannot endure when life becomes difficult (1:5–6).38 When Ps 1 is read this way, it looks similar to one particular stream of “Wisdom theology” – the theological perspective of Job’s friends – who often reiterate that Job’s predicament must be the result of something he has done. “Remember now, who ever perished being innocent?” Eliphaz asks Job. (4:7) And Bildad insists, “If your sons have sinned against Him, He has cast them away for their transgression. If you would earnestly seek God and make your supplication to the almighty, if you were pure and upright, surely now he would awake for you and prosper your rightful habitation.” (8:4–6)39 In the book of Job, God condemns the speech of Job’s friends, “For you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.” (42:7) These “wise men” were not speaking wisely. Job’s friends were guilty of making God subservient to his own law. They assumed that they knew the mind of God and that God himself was subject to an abstract principle of how justice operates under the law. If Ps 1 is read this way, much like the speeches of Job’s friends vs. Job, it functions as a foil for the lament psalms in which voices protest against the simplistic theological affirmations of Ps 1.40 The claims of Ps 1 are thought to be in tension with the psalms that follow. Brueggemann writes, “When read unencumbered by Psalm 1, many of the other psalms assert that the wicked are not cut off from the community and that even the righteous have doubts about these claims. Psalm 1 wants, however, as much as possible to preclude such an awareness. That indeed is its canonical purpose.”41 For Brueggemann, the theological progression from Ps 1 to Ps 150 is from obedience to praise. The move from naïve obedience (Ps 1) to unencumbered doxology (Ps 150) is by way of the suffering heard in the complaints and the hope expressed in the 36 Brueggemann, The Psalms, 190–191. 37 Brueggemann, The Psalms, 191. 38 Brueggemann, The Psalms, 191; Nahum M. Sarna, On the Book of Psalms: Exploring the Prayers of Ancient Israel (1993), 45–46, says that the idea in Psalm 1:5–6 is that reward and punishment are meted out by God in this life in response to virtue and wickedness so that the ‘judgment’ is actually life’s vicissitudes. This simple belief eventually became theologically problematic (cf. Job). But in Psalm 1, the pristine doctrine is assumed. 39 See also 5:17–18, 18:5, 22:21 et al. 40 Brueggemann, The Psalms, 197. 41 Brueggemann, The Psalms, 192.

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hymns. Between the margins of Pss 1 and 150, God’s hesed is under suspicion, but in the glimpses of wellbeing and hints of God’s presence Israel is led to hope and trust.42 John Goldingay and others take a slightly different path than Brueggemann. These scholars categorize Ps 1, not with the simplistic wisdom of Job’s friends, but as the expression of a general truth similar to how some passages in the Wisdom of Proverbs are interpreted. This interpretation assumes that there is an underlying moral order to the universe. Those who choose to live in accord with God’s will generally fare better than those who do not. Goldingay thinks that the author of Ps 1 is aware that sometimes, righteous people suffer and wicked people prosper. The voice in the psalm is not naïve enough to think that obedience to God’s law always leads to happiness and prosperity.43 However, generally speaking, those who are “rooted” in God’s torah are happier, more prosperous, and experience longer and more fruitful lives than “the wicked.” Psalm 1 describes justice as it is worked out in the world.44 Just as a tree planted by a good source of water naturally flourishes, so also the person who avoids evil and meditates on God’s instruction naturally prospers because he is living within the Creator’s guidelines. The righteous man lives wisely in accord with the Creator’s plan for human life.45 When Ps 1 is read this way, a person’s “happiness” is not given them automatically by God but is a direct result of their choices: avoiding the advice and lifestyle of the wicked (1:1) and living in accord with the torah. Torah is wider than “law” but can include other parts of God’s revelation, which functions as a guide to life. “Delight” in torah contributes to long life, peace, and prosperity.46 The “prosperity” that the righteous enjoy is the result of the lives that they lead.47 They discover that they become people of good fortune and things eventually work out for them, in contrast to the wicked, whose lives inevitably turn out to be unfruitful.48 As Nahum Sarna says, “Because the world is under God’s governance, and because, therefore, there is inescapable accountability on the part of every human being, the fate of the wicked is ineluctable.”49 “The judgment” in 1:5, therefore, does not refer to an ultimate or eschatological judgment, a final reckoning, but to the here and now, perhaps a human assembly, 42 Brueggemann, The Psalms, 192, 211; see also Whybray, Reading the Psalms as a Book, 24. 43 McCann, A Theological Introduction, 24. 44 Compare Prov 10:27–28, “The fear of the Lord prolongs days, but the years of the wicked will be shortened. The hope of the righteous will be gladness, but the expectation of the wicked will perish.” See also Prov 11:8, 12:2–3, 12:7. 45 Peter C. Craigie/Marvin E. Tate, Psalms 1–50 (2004), 61; John Goldingay, Psalms 1-41 (2006), 88–89, says, “Both Psalm 1 and Proverbs 1 assume that practical insight, faithful living, and religious devotion go together and reinforce each other.” 46 Craigie/Tate, Psalms 1–50, 60. 47 In this interpretation, the “all” in “all which he does prospers,” or “he prospers in all that he does,” is hyperbole. “All” means “usually,” or “most of the time.” 48 Goldingay, Psalms 1–41, 84; Craigie/Tate, Psalms 1–50, 60–61. 49 Sarna, On the Book of Psalms, 45.

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like a court of law, where the wicked will have to account for their crimes, or the vicissitudes of life.50 Yahweh is at work behind the scenes; i.e., Yahweh recognizes (‫ )יודע‬the path of the faithful and is involved in it. (1:6)51 If Ps 1 is a description of how life generally works out for the righteous, then there is also some tension with many of the psalms that follow it. Therefore, John Goldingay calls Ps 1 a “preemptive strike” with regard to the prayers that follow, prayers reflecting the experience of attack, shame, fear, isolation, abandonment, and divine anger. He says that these psalms could leave the impression that such experiences are characteristic of the life of the godly. But Ps 1 attests that this is not so. The other psalms reflect exceptional, not regular circumstances.52 Psalm 1 as an anchor for the rest of the book The author of this paper, however, argues that instead of reading Ps 1 with the speech of Job’s friends, or as the ‘general truth’ in Proverbs, Wisdom provides yet another ‘theological stream’ with which Ps 1 can be read. If we continue to assume that the author does know that often the righteous suffer and the unrighteous prosper, another stream of Wisdom enables us to see Ps 1 functioning not as a foil, or a preemptive strike for the rest of the psalms, but as an anchor to which readers can continually return. The truly wise person knows, maybe from their own experience (cf. Job), that in this present world virtue is not always rewarded nor is vice always punished. They know that while justice is sometimes visible in this fallen world because the Creator created the world to work this way, quite often – as many psalms attest – it is not. The world often seems unjust, and God seems arbitrary. The wise person, like Job, knows that you cannot always reason back from a person’s circumstances to something they must have done or not done; nor can you easily reason back to how someone stands in God’s eyes from what happens to them in this world. In other words, appearances can be deceiving. However, those who are wise in Israel certainly know as well that Yahweh, the God who rules all things, is the gracious God who has chosen a people for his own and made a covenant with them. They know Yahweh not only as the Creator and Judge of all, but also Israel’s Redeemer. They know that Yahweh has chosen a people that he loves and will not forsake them. A person’s ‘righteousness’ therefore, is not a matter 50 Sarna, On the Book of Psalms, 45. 51 Goldingay, Psalms 1–41, 88–89; Craigie/Tate, Psalms 1–50, 61, says, “The two lines of v. 5, in synonymous parallelism, reflect essentially the same thought, namely that the wicked hold no weight or influence in the important areas of human society. Where the righteous meet for the pursuit of justice and government, the wicked have no place and are not recognized. They live for themselves and cannot participate in the affairs of those who live for others and for righteousness.” 52 Goldingay, Psalms 1–41, 90; Goldingay, 90, also says, “Psalm 1 prepares the way for what follows also in its nature as implicit exhortation. From time to time the Psalter will remind readers that their access to Yhwh’s presence and their claim on Yhwh’s commitment depend on their living a moral and social life that meets with Yhwh’s expectations (e.g., 15; 24; 50).”

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of personal merit or deserts, but depends on where he stands in relationship to God and his promises. A ‘righteous man’ is one who is in a right relationship with God, not solely as a result of what he does, but because God regards him as such on the basis of his covenant. This would mean that the subject of Ps 1 is the person who lives within Yahweh’s covenant, who confesses Yahweh as his Creator and Redeemer.53 When Ps 1 is read in this way, the exclamation, “How blessed is the man who” (1:1) is a joyful exclamation not based exclusively on “what is seen.” It is a conviction held even when the world provides no obvious support because it is based on the promises of Yahweh that have been revealed to Israel. To “the righteous” tempted to stray from the path, it is an implicit exhortation to “stay the course” that Yahweh has provided. The torah in which the blessed one delights and on which he meditates (1:2) is comprised not just of “laws” but of the entire word of God, especially the story of God’s 54 gracious dealings with his people. Parallel to verse 1’s exclamation, “How blessed is the man who,” the assertion that the person “rooted in torah” “prospers in all that he does” (1:3) does not refer exclusively to the here-and-now world, nor is it a deduction from experience, but it is an assertion of faith based on the revelation of God in his torah. As can be seen in other psalms, sometimes the “prospering” is hidden under adversity. The stability and prosperity of the righteous is a conviction to be believed.55 Likewise, the instability of the wicked (1:4) is not now apparent. They do not know how unstable their lives really are. But based on Yahweh’s promise the speaker knows that evil will not ultimately prevail. These statements in Ps 1 are meant to create peace and hope in their faithful readers.56 53 Horace D. Hummel, The Word Becoming Flesh: An Introduction to the Origin, Purpose, and Meaning of the Old Testament (1979), 396, says, “Perhaps the first thing to stress is the difference between an explicit theological statement and one which is assumed or implicit. Formally, much of wisdom literature is of the latter type, but if Scripture is ultimately one, it must be understood and interpreted in the light of not only the more explicit wisdom statements, but of all of Scripture, of the ‘canonical context.’ … Its [Wisdom literature’s] ‘universalism’ involves, indeed, God’s claim on all the universe, but one realized and realizable only in His gracious covenant. Its Sitz im Leben is the daily life of people who confessed Yahweh as Creator, Judge, and Redeemer.” Typically, Wisdom literature describe the life of God’s people as it is lived on the horizontal plane, that is, life as it is lived in this world and in relationship with other people, rather than discussions on the vertical plane, that is, discussions of how one gets right with God. It falls more in the systematic categories of “sanctification” and “third use of the law,” rather than “justification.” 54 Hans-Joachim Kraus, Psalms 1–59 (1993), 116–117, says, “We must reject the traditional translation, ‘law,’ which immediately imports all kinds of nomistic prejudices and reflections. ‫ ּתו ֹרָ ה‬is ‘instruction’ in the sense of the ‘merciful revelation of the will of God‘ – cf. Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology: The Theology of Israel’s Historical Traditions (1962), 1:190ff.” 55 See Luther’s explanation in LW 14, 304. 56 Martin Buber, Good and Evil (1952), 54, says, “Perhaps the Psalmist even intends to hearten the very man of whom he speaks against the despairing moods of a Job, by helping him to distinguish between apparent and true happiness, and by teaching him to penetrate into the profundities of true happiness and to feel it more passionately.”

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Given this reading of the psalm, 1:5 is a pivot where the speaker begins to deal with the balancing of overdue accounts, “Therefore, the wicked will not stand/rise in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.” The wicked do not realize that there will be a final accounting when they will be asked to pay what they owe. The speaker knows that there is a higher justice that is disjoined from the visible world of rewards and punishments. He trusts Yahweh, and so he knows that ultimately the experience of faith will be turned to the experience of sight. In other words, “the judgment” may refer to other times in history where Yahweh comes as judge or savior. But all these point ultimately to the Day of Judgment when Yahweh will put all things right. Only on that day will the eternal disjunction of the “two ways” be revealed.57 Psalm 1:5, then, can be catalogued with other ‘Wisdom’ texts that explicitly highlight the ultimate revelation of the black-and-white contrasts that Wisdom literature makes and that are blurred in our present experience. See, for example, Pss 49, 73, 139, and Job 19:25–27. When read with this Wisdom stream, a different meaning emerges for the details of Ps 1. And its function as an anchor, not a foil or preemptive strike, can be seen. The final verse of the psalm is the revealing moment of the poem and a comforting reminder for all the voices in the psalms that follow. Up to this verse the speaker has spoken confidently about the contrast between the lives of the righteous and the lives of the wicked. But what is behind his confidence? What’s going on behind the scenes that explains how this could be true? In 1:6, Yahweh finally makes his appearance, “for Yahweh knows the way of the righteous; but the way of the wicked will perish.” “Yahweh knows the way of the righteous” does not mean only that Yahweh “knows about the way.” This is “knowing” as we hear it in Yahweh’s gracious words to Israel, “I knew you (looked after you) in the desert, in a thirsty land,” (Hos 13:5; cf. Nah 1:7); “You only have I known (chosen) of all the families of the earth” (Amos 3:2); or to the prophets, “Before I created you in the womb, I knew you (selected you)” (Jer 1:5; cf. Exod 33:12); or to other faithful men, “Yahweh knows (cares about) the days of the innocent” (Ps 37:18). When he says, “Yahweh knows the way of the righteous,” the speaker reminds us that Yahweh has a special relationship with those who belong to him. The righteous are under his care, and – since he knows the way – he keeps them from evil (hence they are blessed not to walk in the council of the ungodly … cf. 1:1), and he guides them in their life and to the destiny that he has promised.58 Thus, the last verse of the psalm undergirds everything else that has been said and is the touchstone for everything else that will be said in the poems to come. 57 Hummel, The Word Becoming Flesh, 399. 58 Sarna, On the Book of Psalms, 47; Buber, Good and Evil, 57, says, “However cruel and contrary this destiny might appear when viewed apart from intercourse with God, when it is irradiated by His ‘knowing’ it is ‘success’, just as every action of this man, his disappointments and even his failures, are success.”

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Psalm 1 is a fitting Introduction to the Psalter because other voices in the psalms will deliver to us dilemmas that “the righteous” face along the way – perplexities and mysteries that are not easily resolved (but joy and hope as well). But the righteous never lose faith in the rightness of their path. The way is certain because it is not theirs. It is Yahweh who knows the way.

Conclusion So, what do we make of all the voices in this conversation about the function of Ps 1 in the context of the Psalter? Well, something that Nobel-Prize-winning economist Daniel Kahneman says in his book Thinking Fast and Slow applies in this situation. In a chapter entitled “The Illusion of Understanding,” he maintains that in our continuous attempts to make sense of the world, we cannot help dealing with the limited information we have as if it were all there is to know. He writes, “Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance.”59 What is true in our attempts to make sense of the world perhaps applies in our attempts to make sense of the Psalter and the story behind its editing. Certainly, this kind of literary approach to the book as a whole has given us many useful insights on key theological themes in the book of Psalms. It has also led to numerous fruitful questions and helped us to see characteristics in the book that have not been noticed before. But Kahneman’s words also remind us that we ought to keep our attempts at constructing interpretive stories in perspective and our expectations modest, because there is a whole lot more that we don’t know than what we know. We don’t know who the editor(s) were, when they worked, how they worked, what materials they had available to work with, what assumptions, beliefs, obsessions, experiences motivated them, or under what conditions they did their work. The gap in our knowledge about these and other items is significant. Indeed, James Mays is one scholar who explicitly makes us aware of some of the difficulties and admits that trying to discern the literary character of the book of Psalms is fraught with problems. He acknowledges that there does not seem to be one uniform literary shape or plan to the book into which everything fits, a literary scheme that accounts for everything. And he admits that in trying to read the Psalter as a book one is always in danger of “overbidding the material, of imagining connections and patterns.” Topics are so typical and language in the world of the psalms so formulaic that it is difficult to decide whether collocations and correspondences and contrasts are accidental or intentional, and if the latter, what to make of them.60 59 Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow (2011), 199–201. 60 Mays, The Lord Reigns, 126.

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All of which means that it is important to remember that the most important context for interpreting Ps 1 as the introduction to the Psalter is not the collection of features that follow the Ps, i.e., the surrounding text that we normally think of as ‘context.’ Rather, the important ‘context’ is the structure of assumptions, beliefs, and presuppositions that we hold and which hold us. Our various interpretations on the function of Ps 1 as the introduction to the Psalter and our various interpretations on the message of the book arise from the web of beliefs, and the set of shaping conventions and interpretive strategies that we hold. Out of these emerge our various attempts to figure out the author’s/editor’s intentions. It should also be pointed out that we are all members of interpretive communities and as extensions of the communities of which we are members, we share points of view, standards of judgment, canons of evidence and so on. And these will differ between interpretive communities. And they seem to continually be changing. We can certainly see that in the scholarly community’s turn from form criticism to literary approaches. And in the various interpretations of Ps 1, we can clearly see the communal nature of the interpretive act. This, of course, helps to account for both disagreement and agreement in our accounts of Ps 1’s meaning and its function in the book as a whole. The conversation about Ps 1 and its relationship to the rest of the book is certainly a lively one. And it is not likely to stop until the need to interpret ceases. And that won’t happen until our Lord returns.

Summary After summarizing the way conversations about the Psalter have shifted in recent scholarship, this essay examines how scholars interpret Psalm 1 in various (sometimes conflicting) ways when they assume that it functions as the Introduction to the entire Psalter. This essay makes the point that the interpretive variety illustrates that in the interpretive task, the phrase “context is everything” is true, not primarily in reference to the “book context,” but rather in reference to the structure of assumptions, beliefs, and presuppositions that we hold and which hold us. In other words, the “context” of the interpreter’s mind.

Zusammenfassung Nach einer Einführung über den Wechsel in den Diskursen der jüngeren Forschung zum Psalter wird untersucht, wie Ps 1 von verschiedenen Auslegern auf je andere und z.T. gegensätzliche Art als Einführung in den gesamten Psalter verstanden wird. Der Beitrag will zeigen, dass die Unterschiede in der Auslegung den Ausdruck „Kontext ist alles“ bewahrheiten, und zwar gar nicht in erster Linie im Blick auf den „Buchkontext“, sondern vor allem im Blick auf das Gefüge von Annahmen, Glaubensvorstel-

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lungen und Denkvoraussetzungen, die wir haben und die uns beherrschen. Mit anderen Worten: Es geht um den „Kontext“ der Gedanken des Auslegers.

Reading Psalm 1 in the Context of the Psalter: Voices in Conversation Response David Adams In general I agree with Timothy Saleska’s summary of the state of scholarship on the question of how Ps 1, or perhaps Pss 1 and 2 together, are used as an introduction to the Psalter as a whole. Perhaps, however, I can add something to his essay through reflection on what strikes me as important, both in the essay and going forward from this point, and to pose some questions that seem to require further reflection on the part of the reader. Saleska has provided a fine survey of the various views regarding the use of Ps 1 within the context of the Psalter as a whole, to which there is not much to add or to challenge. Perhaps unintentionally, he has also provided us with a fine case-study of the difficulties of attempting to interpret the intentions of editors. It is difficult enough to properly interpret the meaning of a text when we have an actual text in front of us. When it comes to understanding the editing and arrangement of a collection, we have an additional problem, especially when, as is the case with the Psalter, we have the end-result in front of us but we do not have the state of the various texts that comprise the collection before the editor did his work so that we might compare them with the final result. As a result, we cannot know exactly what the editor did. We do not know which texts he omitted, or why. Nor can we be certain of the criteria and the presuppositions that guided his arrangement of the final collection. If we do not know exactly what the editor did, it is rather difficult to assess why the editor did what he did. Consequently, discussions about the editing and arrangement of texts or collections of texts such as the Psalter always have to make their own assumptions about what the editor was attempting to do as he assembled the collection. The result, for those who have the intellectual integrity to recognize and admit it, is the necessary acknowledgement that whatever one says about the actions and purposes of the editor(s) is rooted in our own speculation about what they were attempting to do, and the way that we perceive them to have gone about their work. Demonstrating this, I think, is one of the most significant benefits of Saleska’s study. Indeed, the conclusions that the various interpreters have drawn about the way that Ps 1 serves as an introduction to the whole Psalter tell us as much, if not more, about the thinking of the interpreters than they tell us about the intention of the authors of the individual psalms or the editors of the Psalter. To choose just one

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example from Saleska’s survey, for anyone who has read much of Walter Brueggemann’s work, the idea that Brueggemann would read Ps 1 as part of a message that one must move from naïve confidence in God’s promises to “unencumbered praise” through the path of doubt rooted in suffering is an entirely expected one. The salutary benefit of doubt as a counterbalance to naïve trust in God’s word is one of the themes of Brueggemann’s work. The way that Brueggemann interprets the placement of Ps 1 is consistent with his general approach. It is a distinctly modern perspective, and it requires a significant stretch of the imagination to think that anyone among the post-exilic Judahite community in which the Psalter achieved its final form would have looked at the world, and more especially at faith in God, in such a way. At the hazard of adding further to the alternatives, and at the same time revealing something about my own perspective, I am inclined to think that if Ps 1 and Ps 2 should be seen as the ‘hermeneutical spectacles’ through which one should read the Psalter as a whole, they do so by highlighting the two main interpretive traditions of the Old Testament: the wisdom tradition, with its emphasis on the two ways and the significance of meditating on the Torah, and the prophetic tradition, with its emphasis on the revelation of God’s work in, with, and under history, through the earthly kingship, and looking forward to the ultimate eschatological fulfillment in the work of God’s anointed one. Both of these themes are significant components of the message of the first two psalms, the wisdom tradition reflected most strongly in Ps 1 and the prophetic tradition reflected most strongly in Ps 2. In addition the themes commonly associated with both of these traditions recur with regularity throughout the Psalter as a whole. Thus it may be that the placement of Ps 1 and Ps 2 at the head of the Psalter serve to highlight the two dominant traditions/themes of the whole. Another salutary observation in Saleska’s essay highlights the problem of thinking that we know more than we know. He cites with approval Daniel Kahneman’s observation that humans have an almost unlimited ability to ignore our own ignorance. This ability, to ignore what we do not know, is, frankly, a disease of epidemic proportions among biblical interpreters in general, especially among Old Testament interpreters in particular. In promoting editorial activity as a key to interpreting biblical texts, what Saleska says of the Psalms should be heard by all of us, regardless of which text we are interpreting: “We don’t know who the editor(s) were, when they worked, how they worked, what materials they had available to work with, what assumptions, beliefs, obsessions, experiences motivated them, or under what conditions they did their work. The gap in our knowledge about these and other items is significant.” Another possible task of a respondent is to ask the question of where the essay leads us, and leaves us. In reading Saleska’s presentation, several other problems emerged which seem to require significant further discussion going forward.

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First, there is the problem of the relationship between the message of the whole and the message of its parts. As Saleska has noted, “Scholars began to read the Psalter with the assumption that it is not only a collection of liturgical materials from ancient Israel and Judah but also a coherent literary whole, which has a message greater than the sum of its parts.” Setting aside for a moment the obvious, and important, question of whether this assumption is true, this observation raises an important exegetical question: To what extent, and in what ways, would – or perhaps one ought to say ‘should’ – the interpretation of specific individual psalms be driven by their place in the collection? Moreover, given what we do not know about the editorial process, how can we justify allowing any theory of the assembly of the whole determine the interpretation of its actual constituent parts? This is a problem that remains to be solved. There arises a second problem, related to the first: how does one balance the concern for interpreting the psalms in the light of their supposed Sitz im Leben versus interpreting them in their canonical context? Both the form-critical approach and the canonical approach make significant assumptions. Much of what form criticism has said about the Sitz im Leben of the individual psalms is little more than educated guesswork. Moreover, we have already noted the problem of assuming that we really understand what the editors who assembled the canonical form of the Psalter were attempting to accomplish. Even if we did fully and certainly understand the original Sitz im Leben of the individual psalms, and even if we did fully and certainly understand how the editorial process functioned in combining the individual psalms into the Psalter that we have today, we would still be left with the question of whether to place greater emphasis in interpretation on the individual psalm or upon the relation of the individual psalm to its context within the canonical Psalter. Will it not make some difference to how we interpret a specific psalm if our emphasis is on the hypothetical Sitz im Leben of the psalm in the worship of the community as opposed to engaging it during the course of our private reflection as individuals who are meditating on the psalms within the context of the entire canon? This is, of course, not a new problem. However, there remains no real consensus among interpreters over which ought to prevail, or why. This leads to a further, related question: Is it not possible that the entire issue of the significance of the placement of the individual psalms within the collection is guided by a false notion of how the ancient hearers would have encountered the psalms? We are examining the significance of the placement of an individual song within the whole of the Psalter, but the ancient worshippers would not have encountered the psalms in the context of that whole. In an age in which the majority of people were illiterate and in which large-scale written documents were quite rare, the majority of ancient worshippers would have had no access to a large written collection of psalms. Thus the ancient worshippers for whom the collection was presumably assembled would never have encountered the question of the relation of the individual psalm to the whole because they would never have encountered the

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whole. This raises the question of the significance of the entire issue, at least from an historical perspective. Finally, there is the problem of appropriation. All of the approaches highlighted by Saleska are primarily focused – and naturally so – on the interpretation of the text per se. The question remains how we should appropriate the message of the psalms for the life of the church today. To judge by the actual use of the psalms in the life of the church today, it is doubtful that anything that has been said about the role of Ps 1 and Ps 2 as the “hermeneutical spectacles” for reading the Psalter actually makes any difference at all when it comes to the question of how the psalm can, or should, be used in the life of the church. At the conclusion of the process, all of the speculation about the historical setting and the editorial process of the psalter is inevitably set aside when one begins to proclaim the psalms as Word of God for the people of God of today. These questions, among others, illustrate the tensions inherent in the background of Saleska’s fine examination of this scholarly approach to the Psalter. These tensions, the gap between what we know and what we think we know about the editorial process, between the emphasis on the individual psalm as an artifact of a specific historical Sitz im Leben and the emphasis on interpretation of the individual psalm within the context of the literary Psalter, and the tension between the priority of literary interpretation and priority of the use of the psalms in worship and proclamation will undoubtedly continue to push forward the conversation that Saleska has summarized.

Apartheid and Present Day South Africa as a Context in Reading Galatians 3:26–28 Dieter Reinstorf Introspection As a regular preacher of God’s Word it happens more than I wish to believe that I hold a well prepared sermon, the end result of an extensive biblical exegesis, only to discover that the listeners are switched off. Although the reasons for this may vary, one reason is doubtlessly the lack of contextualization, meaning that the questions I asked when reading the text and the answers I provided – truthful or insightful as they may be – had little to do with the context or the world of my listeners. This was the reality of a large sector of the South African society during the dark years of apartheid. Although the Republic of South Africa always professed to be a Christian country, which adhered to Christian values and norms, the gospel message preached brought hardly any good news to the masses of marginalized and oppressed people in their everyday, ordinary lives. This does not mean there was no contextualization at all, but the contextualization was more often than not that of the privileged preacher, who in the case of the Free Evangelical Lutheran Synod in South Africa (FELSISA), the church to which I belong, preached to a privileged audience that benefitted both politically and economically from the apartheid laws of the country. The lack of contextualization in this time refers to the oversight or possibly even the unwillingness to identify with and to observe the context of the other who suffered as a result of the discriminatory laws of the country and to raise awareness of the plight of the other amongst the privileged elite. A contextual approach to the interpretation of Scripture as it will be described in this essay never formed part of my own theological training, which commenced in the early 1980’s during the height of apartheid. The first section provides some background to the rise and understanding of contextual theology in South Africa. This is followed by a short evaluation in which some potential weaknesses will be highlighted. The third section addresses methodological issues, paving the way for a contextual analysis of Gal 3:26–28.

Contextual Theology in South Africa In South Africa the term “contextual theology” is closely linked to the formation of the Institute of Contextual Theology (ICT). The ICT evolved out of the demise of the Christian Institute (IT), which was banned by the South African government on October 19, 1977 along with all the major Black Consciousness Movement or-

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ganizations.1 In an effort to circumvent the law that illegalized the formation of another organization, which had the same intentions as the one banned, the decision was taken to establish the Institute of Contextual Theology.2 This name was vague enough not to be identified with any “black” or “liberation” movement that opposed the apartheid government. The term “institute” in turn would enable its proponents to say at least publically that the goal of the institute was theological reflection. Once the institute was established it immediately sought to realize its vision to develop methods of doing theology in the context of the real life of ordinary people in South Africa, hence the term contextual theology. That it was also politically motivated in the sense that it wanted to address the atrocities of apartheid and alleviate the hardships of the poor is obvious. In seeking to do contextual theology there was a conscious shift in focus in the way Scripture was explicated. Gerald West summarizes this endeavor with these words: “[O]ur experience has taught us that we will only find a new message from the Bible when we find a new way of doing Bible study.”3 The new way was the conscious shift to start the interpretation of Scripture within the context of the reader. The word “Bible Study” in turn indicates that the ordinary South African was to be involved in the reading process. In an effort to provide this shift with some kind of a descriptive model various scholars have highlighted different approaches to reading. West explains: One mode of reading emphasizes the historical and sociological context of the Bible. This mode concentrates on what is behind the text. Another mode of reading emphasizes the literary and narrative context of the Bible. This mode concentrates on the text itself. And another mode of reading emphasizes the thematic and symbolic context of the Bible as a whole. This mode concentrates on what is in front of the text.4

The latter mode is that of contextual theology, where what is in front of the text, the context of the ordinary people, indeed the reader him/herself, becomes the starting point of exegesis. Needless to say, in the light of the failure of the churches to address the hardships of the ordinary South African, much criticism has been leveled at the theolog1

2

3 4

J. R. Cochrane, On Contextual Theology in a Post-Apartheid Era. Contextual Theology Revisited (2008), 68. Online: http://www.academia.edu/437343/ On Contextual Theology Today. The IT came into existence after the controversial Cottesloe Church Consultation that was held from 7 to 14 December 1960 after the shocking events at Sharpeville on 21 March 1960 in which 69 people were killed. Beyers Naudé was the first national director of the IT (see R. Vosloo, The Dutch Reformed Church, Beyers Naude and the ghost of Gottesloe [2010], online http://uir.unisa.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10500/4632/Vosloo.pdf.) The request to establish the ICT originally came from Allan Boesak to establish some organization to which the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians could relate (see Cochrane, Contextual Theology in Post-Apartheid Era). Gerald O. West, Contextual Bible Study (1993), 8. West, Contextual Bible Study, 24.

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ical institutions that trained the ministers and the interpretive methods used to expound the Scriptures, inherited from the Western world. These methods are of course not invalid, but run the risk of being presented, not only as universally valid for everybody, but eternally true – the one and only way to read Scripture. In line with the three modes of reading presented above Jonathan Draper provides a critical historical overview of those methods inherited by and widely employed by the academic institutions of South Africa.5 He advocates that ministers trained within the churches originating from the English-speaking world (one may add the German-speaking world as well) were heirs of the historical-critical tradition of Western Europe. This diachronic approach aimed at the elucidation of the genesis of the text (what is behind the text), that is questions concerning, among others, the author or the author’s environment (Sitz im Leben). However questions of the meaning of the text were bracketed off and often relegated to systematics or homiletics. This led, according to Draper, to a break in the interpretative process, which Bultmann tried to address with his existentialist interpretation. This is not the place to engage Bultmann’s hermeneutics, but his efforts highlight his conviction that historical “reconstruction” stands in the service of “interpretation.” The point being: Scripture has something to say to the present. The failure of the historical-critical method to address pertinent issues in South Africa led to a new school of synchronic interpreters who refused to go behind the text and focused on the text itself. According to Draper this new hermeneutic was enthusiastically adopted by most biblical scholars originating from the Afrikaans6 speaking community. In doing so at least some ministers isolated themselves from the challenge of the Enlightenment and also of the socio-political crisis in South Africa that was on the brink of exploding. Seminars and conferences that employed these text immanent approaches provided “interesting readings,” but they hardly served to address the suffering of the ordinary South Africans, who were angrily asking why they should read the Bible at all. These emotions are captured by the following quote: “What is the point of literary theory? Why bother with it in the first place? Are there not issues in the world more weighty than codes, signifiers and 7 reading subjects?” Both the historical-critical method and text-immanent methods in isolation represent a failure of the hermeneutical endeavor. The failure is closely linked to the distinction drawn by Ricoeur between explanation and understanding.8 Both readings remain at the level of explanation and fail to address the question of what a 5

6 7 8

Jonathan A. Draper, “For the Kingdom Is Inside of You and It Is Outside of You”: Contextual Exegesis in South Africa, in: P. J. Marttin/J. H. Petzer (ed.), Text and Interpretation: New Approaches in the Criticism of the New Testament (1991), 235–257, 235–238. See also Bernard C. Lategan, Current Issues in the Hermeneutical Debate, Neot 18 (1984), 1–17. Draper, Kingdom Inside You, 236. Terry A. Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983), 194, cited in Draper, Kingdom Inside You, 237. See Draper, “Kingdom inside You,” 238.

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particular text means to its readers, in particular the present day readers. This failure may not be universal, but seems to have characterized the practice of theology in South Africa during the apartheid years. Albert Nolan, a Catholic priest schooled in the halls of the Dominican Order and a member of the ICT from its inception, regards these “academic theologies” as the tools that allowed the oppressors to legitimize their domination and exploitation of the people.9 What was needed to free the Bible from its “Babylonian captivity” is a reading from below, which in South Africa is the very heart of a contextual approach to the Bible. It remains however notoriously difficult to explain exactly what it means. Especially in post-modernism there is a rising global awareness that all theologies are contextual. The context determines the interpretive questions and the reader is always involved in the interpretive task. There is no such thing as a detached, neutral, or universal reader. The question then arises: If all theology is contextual, how can one speak of a special brand of theology called “contextual” theology? For Albert Nolan the answer lies at hand: “Contextual theology is fully aware right from the start that it is being thought out in and from a particular context, a particular life-situation.”10 This also means that the interpreter realizes from the outset that there are biases that determine his/her reading, which in turn raises the awareness that theology is not an individual enterprise, but a “community exercise,” a form of cooperation and crosscontextual sharing. For West a useful answer in determining the components of a contextual reading of Scripture is to examine the commitments of the people.11 He identifies four central commitments: (1) A commitment to read the Bible from the perspective of the South African context, particularly from the perspective of the poor and oppressed. (2) A commitment to read the Bible in community with others, particularly with those from contexts different from yours. (3) A commitment to read the Bible critically. (4) A commitment to individual and social transformation. It was these commitments, among others, that gave rise to the Kairos Document12 and, indeed, contributed to the transformation in South Africa and led to the democratic dispensation in 1994.

9

See Larry T. Kaufmann, Good News to the Poor: The Impact of Albert Nolan on Contextual Theology in South Africa, in: T. Speckman McGlory/Larry T. Kaufmann (ed.), Towards an Agenda for Contextual Theology: Essays in Honour of Albert Nolan (2001), 17–32, 24. 10 See Kaufmann, Good News, 25. 11 West, Contextual Bible Study, 11–12. 12 Καιρός, The moment of truth: “The time has come. The moment of truth has arrived”, Online, http://ujamaa.ukzn.ac.za/Libraries/manuals/The_Kairos_Documents.sflb.ashx

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Potential Weaknesses of Contextual Theology No theology is without its weaknesses, and contextual theology is no exception. In the space provided I wish to highlight only two: The lack of a modus operandi in the light of a changed South African landscape, and the methodological deficiencies of the past. The Kairos Document challenged churches to redefine their identity in terms of a God who sides with the oppressed (Ps 103:9). However, with the dawn of the new South Africa the framework in which this theology was practiced changed. The oppressor was defeated and the churches that had opposed apartheid became effective allies with the new government of National Unity. A number of prominent church members and Christian activists, such as S. Mkatswha, Bernard Ncube, A. Stofile, A. Boesak, Dean Farisani, and F. Chickane all took the seats in the corridors of political power.13 However, less than a decade later it became obvious that all was not well within the new social order. Apartheid elites were replaced by a new group of elites. Although various social ills were addressed, there is general consensus today that the gains of social democracy have not translated into economic benefit for the poor. In fact, the poorest of the poor are poorer than ever. Corruption, nepotism and abuse of power for personal gain are as widespread as ever. The unity so prevalent amongst contextual theologians when facing a common enemy has become rather fragmented in the post-apartheid era. Those contextual theologians that entered parliament, were soon being accused of having ‘sold out’ to the government and of no longer representing the core values and commitments of what defined the ICT at its inception. Frank Chickane responds in direct defense of this accusation that it was important that the “collective who worked together to end Apartheid, would work together to reconstruct South Africa.” 14 There has always been the need for contextual theology to establish and defend itself. During the apartheid years, its theology was often criticized on the basis that it was open to a totally relative and arbitrary use of the Bible, largely characterized by an allegorical interpretation of Scripture. Now that the field is fragmented, the need for a defense and a common goal is greater than ever. Quo vadis contextual theology? In response to this question some have called for a second Kairos Document and the need for a renewed “prophetic ministry” to address the systemic injustices of society.15 But what constitutes a prophetic ministry theologically has 13 D. van der Walter, A Legacy for Contextual Theology: Prophetic Theology and the Challenge of the Kairos, in: T. Speckman McGlory/Larry T. Kaufmann (ed.), Towards an Agenda for Contextual Theology: Essays in Honour of Albert Nolan (2001), 31–64, 47. 14 See J. R. Cochrane, Questioning Contextual Theology, in: T. Speckman McGlory/Larry T. Kaufmann (ed.), Towards an Agenda for Contextual Theology: Essays in Honour of Albert Nolan (2001), 67–86, 77. – It should be noted that others, like Desmund Tutu, who chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), remained a critical voice outside of government. 15 See van der Walter, A Legacy for Contextual Theology, 50–53. Leaders such as Beyers Naudé and Desmund Tutu, among others, stand out as prophetic leaders of the past.

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hardly been defined, and the old symbols with which apartheid were attacked no longer apply. James Cochrane, a co-founder of the ICT in the 1980’s, in reflecting on the past and the impasse of contextual theology today, raises various critical questions: What constitutes a theology that it makes it worthy of the descriptor “contextual”? Does it mean a theology that transforms a context? If that is the case, what does “transformation” mean, and what is the goal of transformation? Will any goal do as long as it is deemed acceptable to oneself and to one’s vital constituency? Or is it a matter of who one speaks to?16 It is the latter question that provides him with direction which he then pursues further.17 Key for him is the question of the other who forms part of the interlocutors in the conversation. Clear to him is that the other is at least not the self. He writes: “To pay attention to the other at least means that it is their context, as much as one’s own that counts.”18 What, then, is important in a contextual approach to Scripture is that one does not only seek affirmation for one’s own position, but also that the other always forms part of the conversation. Cochrane observes further: If the voice of the other is already strong, clear, available, fully fore-grounded, then we are likely to have less trouble hearing it than if it is not. But what if it is not fully foregrounded, if it is a subjugated voice, even perhaps driven into silence; what then? Whose voice then “is not” heard or present?19

The answer to this question varies. But invariably, as Cochrane notes, it will point to those people in society who are not in power, whose interests are suppressed. Importantly, however, the other is not an abstract other – a generalized race group, gender, age or disability – but a person. And persons are not abstract, either. They exist and are impacted upon, often by others who are more powerful and have their own interests at heart. The dynamic of power over the other pervades society, including the church. History, however, teaches us that this power invariably changes hands, leading to a new context. Cochrane further asserts that “critical engagement” with government (the preapartheid context for the contextual theologians) can and should not be confused with “critical solidarity” (as often has been the case in the post-apartheid context).20 It is not the task of the church or of the (contextual) theologian to show solidarity with any state institution. Instead, the solidarity is always with those who

16 Cochrane, Questioning Contextual Theology, 67–86. 17 See also the chapter “Voices of the Other” in J. R. Cochrane, Circles of Dignity: Community Wisdom and Theological Reflection (1999), referred to by Cochrane, Questioning Contextual Theology, 74. 18 Cochrane, Questioning Contextual Theology, 74. 19 Cochrane, Questioning Contextual Theology, 74. 20 Cochrane, Questioning Contextual Theology, 85.

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are hurt, subjugated or otherwise marginalized. Contextual theology has as its starting point the subjugated other. The greatest weakness of contextual theology in South Africa, however, points to methodological deficiencies. In the words of Cochrane, “[I]t is instructive to know that this nomenclature [contextual theology] had nothing to do with theological methodological considerations, and everything to do with finding a relatively innocuous name for an enterprise that, at least in some respect, sought to continue the legacy of the Christian Institute of South Africa (IC), at a time when such inten21 tions were explicitly outlawed.” In short this means: Preparing a sound methodology on interpreting Scripture was not high on the agenda, despite the fact that the Kairos Document states explicitly that it represents an attempt to restore a genuinely biblical theology: To be truly prophetic, our response would have to be, in the first place solidly grounded in the Bible. Our KAIROS impels us to return to the Bible and to search the Word of God for a message that is relevant to what we are experiencing in South Africa today.22

The return to the Bible seems to have been a largely naive, allegorical, pre-critical reading of the Bible (at least amongst the ordinary people), which came to haunt contextual theologians in the post-apartheid era, when the common enemy had been defeated.23 However various scholars since have addressed (some of) the methodological deficiency to which we now turn. We will restrict ourselves primarily to the works of Jonathan Draper.

Theory and Methodology for a Contextual Interpretation Draper is well aware that in the process of interpretation the historical context of the text cannot be ignored, as often was the case in the early reservations which contextual theologians expressed towards the historical-critical approaches to Scripture. Instead, “the historical locatedness of the text and the historical locatedness of the reader must wrestle through to an appropriation of meaning for to-

21 J. R. Cochrane, On Contextual Theology in a Post-Apartheid Era, 1. 22 Καιρός, The Moment of Truth, 63. 23 The impasse of the post-apartheid contextual theologians also highlights the lack of a sound “soteriology”. When transformation does not include the act of reconciliation with God, the purely sociopolitical liberation of the people – once completed – leaves a void that can hardly be filled and inevitably leads to new forms of social and political injustices. On this topic see Peter Beyerhaus, Theology as an Instrument of Liberation: The Role of the New “People’s Theology” in Ecumenical Discussion (1986).

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day.”24 In defining an African contextual hermeneutic, Draper draws on Hans Georg Gadamer’s emphasis on language as the medium of the hermeneutical experience, with conversation as the fundamental analogy.25 The emphasis on “conversation” is important as it highlights that conversation is a two way process, in which each person involved interrogates the other. In an oral conversation the process of communication is made easier by means of tonal inflections and gestures (illocution) and a possibly shared situation (perlocution). In the case of text, however, these conditions are missing and there is a need for re-contextualization. This paves the way for Gadamer’s “fusion of horizons”, in which the reader (in his/her present day context) and the text (in its historical context) meet and a successful discourse takes place. “Successful” should not be understood in absolute terms, however, as a fixed or single understanding. No text has absolute or neutral meaning applicable from one age to the next. The same text will have a different meaning depending on who is engaging in a conversation with it and what the new conversation partner brings to the dialogue. As “contextual exegesis,” Draper proposes “A tri-polar exegetical model,” one which consists of three exegetical stages: (1) Contextualization, (2) Distantiation, and (3) Appropriation.26 Although it does not really matter where one starts, a contextual approach tends to give priority to the context of the “reader.”

Contextualization Contextualization involves the process of analyzing who we (the present day readers) are and what our location in society and history is. The context of readers, including the questions they ask and the challenges that they face, differ and will impact the act of interpretation. This does not only mean that the African contexts differ from the Western Europe or North American contexts (and may lead to a different meaning) but that the African contexts, as, indeed, every context, do not stay the same. As a reader of a text we need to understand who we are as readers and what we bring to the text, including our presuppositions and prejudices. It is a process that also includes the other, who forms part of the greater community in which we live. Many different tools can be helpful to open us up for our context.27 Where we focus on the meaning of the text for the individual, psychological models may be helpful.

24 Jonanthan Draper, Reading the Bible as Conversation: A Theology and Methodology for Contextual Interpretation of the Bible, GaT 19 (2002), 12–24, 13. 25 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (1989), 383–491. 26 Jonathan A. Draper, Old Scores and New Notes: Where and What is Contextual Exegesis in the New South Africa, in: T. Speckman McGlory/Larry T. Kaufmann (ed.), Towards an Agenda for Contextual Theology: Essays in Honour of Albert Nolan (2001), 135–157, 153; Draper, Reading the Bible as Conversation, 16–23. 27 Cf. Draper, Old Scores and New Notes, 157.

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When the focus falls on the community, sociological, economic and anthropological analysis can be applied. The failure of the churches in the past to address pertinent issues in South African society can largely be traced back to the failure of contextualization. Texts are read from within the context (and with the questions) of the Western world that at times simply do not address the questions asked locally. The (ordinary) reader him/herself needs to speak.

Distantiation In order to avoid an anachronistic reading of text, it is vital for the reader to gain ‘critical distance’ from the text, to suspend what he/she previously understood the text to mean and to open him/herself up to a new understanding that may contradict and challenge his/her presuppositions.28 This is all the more important in a community where the Bible is regarded as “sacred text” and is accepted as normative for faith and life. The text must be allowed to speak for itself, and the reader needs to listen rather than to speak. The text is not just another object but a subject that calls into conversation. It may challenge or even judge a prevalent understanding, but, as part of a conversation, it also allows words of our own as we bring our questions, problems, and difficulties to the text and the context in which it featured. The tools at our disposal comprise historical, sociological, and literary approaches to a text. The reader needs to realize that the text is rooted in a very specific historical, social, cultural, economic, and political context, which is, indeed, very foreign to one’s own world. The process of distantiation (historical reconstruction) is essential to providing a counter-balance to the possible domination of one’s own context over against the context of the original speakers. This is what was often lacking in the contextual approaches of the past in South Africa.

Appropriation Appropriation is the climax of the interpretive process. “Appropriation” is the word that Draper uses instead of “interpretation” or “application.”29 The text, foreign as it may be, is also appropriate to my own situation. I accept the meaning, uncomfortable as it may be at times, for my context and community and take responsibility for it. I own the word and allow the word to own me. Appropriation is more than just understanding as a cognitive or rational activity. It is an understanding that results in changed behavior, in action in and through my community of faith in society. Appropriation implies also more than mining the text 28 Cf. Draper, Reading the Bible as Conversation, 17. 29 Draper, Old Scores and New Notes, 157; cf. Draper, Reading the Bible as Conversation, 18.

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for doctrine. It has consequences which the reader/interpreter needs to face up to. It implies praxis. Again, this is only the case insofar as the Bible is a particular kind of book, one that is normative for those who belong to the faith community. It is quite possible to do a purely historical study of the Bible, as may be the case for a reader who belongs to another faith or no faith community. Appropriation, as advocated by Draper,30 is that stage of the process of a contextual exegesis of Scripture that is inherently emic, that is, from within the faith community, rather than etic, that is, from outside that community, or, possibly, from a position where questions of faith are bracketed for another discipline. Contextual exegesis pays attention to all three stages, not only to two.

A Contextual Reading of Galatians 3:26–28 The model described above will now serve as the structure of my contextual interpretation of Gal 3:26–28. It can in no way be an exhaustive treatment, but it will merely serve as an illustration of how I personally would engage the passage and allow the passage to engage me, within the context of the questions that I grapple with in my own church. Due to space constraints, our contextualization will focus upon the recent past, the present day context, and some of the challenges the church faces today. Contextualization: A church in transition In 2010 the synodical convention of the FELSISA was held in English for the first time, instead of German. This provided Afrikaans- and English-speaking congregations the opportunity to send non-German speaking delegates to the synod. At the same synodical convention, the synodical council tabled a motion for associated membership of a large ‘African’ congregation in Diepkloof, Soweto (Johannesburg). Although individual non-Europeans had become members of various city congregations of the FELSISA in the post-apartheid era (as they moved into what previously had been medium to up-market ‘white’ residential areas), this synodical convention marked a new era for the FELSISA. Although the said motions were accepted with a large majority, they sparked controversy among congregation members afterwards. Especially members of the German-speaking FELSISA congregations, the backbone of the FELSISA for the last hundred years (and for the foreseeable future) felt threatened by a loss of (cultural) identity. Europeans, especially German speaking Europeans, form a minority in South Africa. The gradual shift from German to English, also at synodical festivals and youth camps, evoked fear that listening to God’s Word and praising him in liturgy and song in one’s 30 Draper, Reading the Bible as Conversation, 18.

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mother tongue would soon be a matter of the past and that cultural forms that drastically differ from one’s own would soon be the order of the day. This resulted in a survey to gauge whether enough support could be garnered to form a “German district,” within the FELSISA, possibly even leading to parallel synods along cultural and language lines. Speaking for such a structure is the emphasis within the FELSISA and the Mission, supported by past history, that people are best reached by the Gospel if preached in their mother tongue. However, apart from the fact that the FELSISA is too small to run parallel structures, the survey raised the question of motive. Was the idea of forming separate synods possibly (among certain members at least) still rooted (on a subconscious level) on racial discrimination that could 31 threaten the unity of the church? Furthermore, contextualization is not just a question of my context, but also (and perhaps especially) the context of the other, which raises the often puzzling question why “African” congregations (like Diepkloof and more recently also the Evangelical Lutheran Congregation in Arcadia, Pretoria) would wish to join the FELSISA, if, indeed, their acceptance leads to a different form of segregation in the future. When the survey for the formation of a German district did not gain the necessary support, the pastors of the FELSISA made an effort to shift the debate from cultural distinctions to spiritual unity, by preparing a booklet entitled “FELSISA: 32 Values, Mission and Vision, 2012,” which describes biblical “core values” that are shared by all, despite cultural and social diversity that characterize the church. Apart from those values that highlight the centrality of God’s Word, the cross of Christ, and the means of grace, two other (aspirational) core values that relate to this particular essay are: Welcoming all people33 and Caring for the world.34 Paul’s letter to the Galatians, with particular reference to Gal 3:26–28, was, among other passages, foundational in identifying and providing contents to the first of these values.

31 Andries van Aarde, Plek vir “middelgrond” en “modaliteite” in die Hervormde Kerk, THT 1 (2013), 128–150. 32 This unpublished booklet obtainable from the office of the bishop of the FELSISA. 33 Welcoming all people: “We believe that God is the creator of all people and that all people are valuable to him and loved by him equally. Likewise we believe that Christ died on the cross for all people and that every believer forms part of the ‘one body’ of Christ. This motivates us to be inclusive and to welcome all people joyfully into our fellowship, irrespective of their social class, cultural and ethnic background. United in Christ and in love for one another we also seek to create the necessary freedom for cultural expression without judgment or domination, each regarding the other more important than himself. (Matt 28:9; Rom 14:1–4; Gal 3:26,28; Eph 2:19; Phil 2:3–4; 2 Pet 3:9).” 34 Caring for the world: “We believe that the message of God’s eternal grace leads to acts of mercy for the needy in this world; Christ himself being the prime example of caring for those in need. Acts of mercy are seen to be the ‘fruit of faith’ of all those who have become aware of God’s gracious dealings in their own lives. Having experienced God’s grace in a world largely devoid of love, we heartily care for others. (Deut 15:4; Mark 10:45: Matt 25:35–39; 1 John 3:16–18).”

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Distantiation: Exploring the context and content of Paul’s letter to the Galatians The letter to the Galatians was written by the apostle Paul.35 There is, however, some degree of uncertainty regarding both the addressees and the date of the letter. The debate is informed primarily by the relationship between Galatians and the Book of Acts, and to whom the term Galatia refers. The term can be used both ethnically to refer the descendants of the Gallic tribes that settled in the heartland of Asia Minor in the third century B.C. or administratively to the Roman province (so designated from 25 B.C. onwards) and its inhabitants.36 Whatever reference is accepted, the Galatians became Hellenized and then Romanized. The fact that Paul wrote a wellcomposed, rhetorically sophisticated apology suggests that he founded the Galatian churches not amongst the poor and uneducated, but rather among the Hellenized and Romanized city population.37 Generally the date of composition is set between 50–55 C.E., shortly after Paul’s difficulties with his opponents, rather than at an advanced stage. Regarding Paul’s opponents there is greater agreement. Various verses (inter alia 5:2–12, 6:12–13) indicate that they were “Jews”38 who promoted circumcision and adherence to the law. It is equally clear that they were, or at least saw themselves as, “Christians,” that is, believers in the Messiah Jesus. This is implicit in the way the gospel or the gospel of Christ is common language between them and Paul (see 1:6–9). With a high degree of certainty it can also be deduced that these Jewish Christians presented themselves as “apostles” or missionaries preaching the gospel (see 1:1, 11–12, 15–24), rejecting that the gospel preached by Paul emanated from a direct revelation from Christ and that it is God-given (1:12).39 Although not rejecting Christ they saw the need to “complete” the converts of Galatia by integrating them fully into the heirs of Abraham through circumcision and bringing them “under the law.” A broad structure of the letter distinguishes three basic sections, a historical section (chs. 1–2) a theological section (chs. 3–4) and an ethical section (chs. 5–6), with Gal 3:26–28 forming part of Paul’s theological argumentation, which is firmly rooted and already developed in section one, which itself contains the first testimony of Paul’s teaching on justification (2:15–21). Chapter 3 (and in particular verses 26–28) should therefore be read against the backdrop of chapter 2.

35 There is general consensus on the authenticity of this letter. 36 James D. G. Dunn, The Epistle to the Galatians (1993), 6. 37 Hans Dieter Betz, Galatians: A Commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Churches in Galatia (1979), 4. From a Jewish/Judean perspective the Galatians were “Gentiles” (cf. 4:8; 5:2–3; 6:12–13). 38 Strictly speaking the term “Jew” (and its derivatives) is an anachronism. A more precise translation is “Judean.” See J. J. Pilch, Are there Jews and Christians in the Bible, HvTSt 53 (1997), 119–125; Dieter Reinstorf, Metaphorical Stories in Luke’s Narrative World: A Challenge to a Conventional Worldview (2002), 88–94. 39 See Wilfied Eckey, Der Galaterbrief: Ein Kommentar (2010), 11.

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Following a contextual approach it is important that we focus on the context in which Paul developed his theology leading to his programmatic and conclusive statement in Gal 3:26–28. I seek to address context primarily by means of the debate elicited by the so called New Perspective on Paul, which has attempted to lift Paul’s letters out of the Lutheran/Reformed context of the 16th century and has sought to interpret them based on an understanding of first-century Judaism. The name “New Perspective on Paul” goes back to an article published by James D.G. Dunn,40 who interacted with the monumental volume on ancient Judaism and Paul by E.P. Sanders entitled Paul and Palestinian Judaism.41 This is not the time to engage the New Perspective(s) as such,42 but it is informative that the context in which Paul developed his teaching on justification (in particular in his letter to the Galatians), differs quite drastically from the context of Martin Luther. Luther explored the topic in the context of his torturing question on how to obtain salvation at a time when the Catholic system of merit took center stage. Paul’s context, however, is that of ethnic distinctions in a missional situation, providing the motives why in Christ Jews and Gentiles all are to be regarded as sons of God (Gal 3:26). The story of Peter (Cephas) withdrawing from table fellowship in Antioch when certain (prominent) individuals from Jerusalem arrived (2:11), and Paul’s public rebuke that in trying to Judaize the Gentiles Peter was not in line with the truth of the Gospel (2:14), is well known and cannot be repeated here in full. But striking is that Paul starts his reproof of Peter by appealing to something that is generally accepted by all natural Jews, in other words, a view held not only by ‘Christian’ Jews but all Jews, namely: “a man is not justified by observing the law” (Gal 2:16). This statement raises the question of what Paul could have meant with “works of the law.” In the past this phrase was interpreted as referring to human effort (moral law) to do good works to meet God’s standards (works’ righteousness). But according to Paul this is the view held not by Jews, but by Gentile sinners, as intimated in verse 15: “We who are Jews by nature and not Gentile sinners, know that a man is not justified by works of law” (my emphasis). Although the New Perspective agrees that Paul opposes any view that one can merit salvation and clearly criticizes Gentile believers who had begun to rely on the Torah to reckon Jewish kinship, it argues that “works of the law” were to be seen as an expression of the covenant that God made with Israel, and not as a means to obtain it. In the light of this, Dunn argues that “works of the law” are to be seen as “identity markers” or “badges” that distinguish the Jews from others.43

40 James D. G. Dunn, The New Perspective on Paul, BJRL 64 (1983), 95–122. Online: http://markgoodacre.org/PaulPage/New.html. (page numbers taken from online version). 41 E.P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (1977). 42 For a critical evaluation see N. Thomas Wright, New Perspectives on Paul, 2003. Online http://ntwrightpage.com/Wright_New_Perspectives.htm; and Frank Thielman, Paul and the Law: A Contextual Approach (1994). 43 Dunn, New Perspective, 6.

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From Paul’s letter to the Galatians it can be deduced justifiably that on hearing the phrase “works of the law” first century readers in Antioch would have thought in particular of two primary identity markers that characterized the Jews of that time, (1) circumcision and (2) food laws, with possibly the observance of special days and feasts being a third (see Gal 4:10).44 These identity markers were deeply ingrained in Jewish life. Although adherence to them did not achieve covenant relationship, it set the Jews apart from others and identified them with God’s chosen people. No devout Jew would therefore easily ignore them, as the council of Jerusalem testifies (Acts 15:19–21). In Antioch Paul was, therefore, hardly criticizing adherence to the “works of the law” as such. If a Christian Jew wanted to be circumcised, or wished to abstain from certain foods, he could do so. However – and this is the crux of Paul’s argument – these “identity markers” may not be used to justify separation, that is, Jews (like Peter and Barnabas) abandoning table fellowship with Gentiles in support of national identity. This separation causes confusion, as if being “Judaized” (following certain customs) is a necessity to attain a covenant relationship with God, which all natural Jews know is not the case. The focus on these identity markers diametrically opposes God’s ultimate purpose of saving the entire world through faith in Christ (Gen 12:18; Isa 49:6). When that happens “justification by faith in Christ” (Gal 2:15) is not only disregarded but renounced. The seriousness of the matter calls for a public denouncement, duly carried out by Paul. It should (again) be noted, Paul does not exclude a ‘cultural’ or ‘ritual’ expression of faith as such. But when these are the cause for separation (thereby becoming a divisive ethnic or racial expression), then what was juxtaposed in a complementary manner before is now posed as direct opposites: “We … are not justified by works of law, except through faith in Jesus Christ” (Gal 2:16). Faith in Christ, as the primary identity marker, renders all others to be superfluous.45 The argument that “faith” and not “works of law” determines our covenant relationship with God is further developed by Paul in Gal 3, Abraham being the exam-

44 Dunn notes (New Perspective, 6) that these “identity markers” were also widely recognized by others in the Greco-Roman world. Roman and Greek writers such Petronius, Plutarch, Tacitus and Juvenal all noted that “circumcision, abstention from pork, and the Sabbath” were typical observances that marked out the practitioners as Jews. 45 With continued opposition by his Jewish opponents, Paul’s expressions in his other letters are even more forthright. When adherence to “works of the law” pose the threat of an “own righteousness”, Paul in his letter to the Philippians, for example, “rubbishes” his own typical Jewish identity markers of the past (“… circumcised on the eight day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew amongst Hebrews …” and declares: “I consider them as rubbish that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ … I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his suffering, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow to obtain the resurrection of the dead.” (Phil 3:8–11)

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ple. Long before the law was given (430 years), Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness” (Gal 3:6; 17–18). Against this backdrop Gal 3:26–28 is to be interpreted as a summary statement. Verse 26 caps the preceding argument: “For all (πάντες, Jews and Gentiles) – are sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.”46 “Sons of God” (υἱοὶ θεοῦ) appears only here in Galatians. Despite the fact that Paul used the expressions “sons of Abraham” before (Gal 3:7), this is not surprising, as “sons of God” is the logical extension of Paul’s theological thinking. The Gentiles are now part of the Israel that was “God’s son” (Exod 4:22–23; Jer 31:9; Hos 6:1). This has been made possible by two factors (1) through faith (the train of thought from 2:16–13:14) and (2) in Christ Jesus. This indicates that as faith has replaced the law as the distinctive marker of “sons of God,” so Christ has replaced “ethnic Israel” as the social context of this sonship.47 The elaboration of the “in Christ” formula reminds its readers of the act of baptism (Gal 3:27). The debate whether the reference to baptism, which otherwise does not feature in this letter, was drawn from the baptismal liturgy of the early church is not decisive at this point.48 Following Betz it can, however, be assumed that baptism served the purpose to inform its candidates that they had now (irrespective of their ethnic or social background) officially received the status of “sons of God.”49 The pairings of v. 28 (“There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female”) serve to show what this new status through faith in Christ meant. They all serve to break down the boundaries that hitherto had caused divisions.50 As such they are revolutionary in nature,51 all the more so if their inclusion was a conscious attempt to counter the “three blessings” as part of the morning prayer in rabbinic literature: “Blessed be He [God] that he did not make me a Gentile; blessed be He that He did not make me a boor [i.e. an ignorant peasant or slave]; blessed be He that he did not make me a woman.”52 Lategan notes that similar expressions of gratitude in various formats are also ascribed to Thales of Socrates and to Plato for being born as a human being and not as an animal, as a man not as a woman, and as a Greek and not as a barbarian. These pairings can of course all be explored individually, but informative is that the rabbinic and Greek pairings are 46 That πάντες is meant to be emphatic is indicated by its position at the beginning of the sentence. 47 Dunn, Galatians, 202. 48 See Betz, Galatians, 186–189, and Richard N. Longenecker, Galatians (1990), 154–157. See also Wright’s critical remarks (New Perspective, 3) on Dunn’s anti-sacramentalism. 49 Betz, Galatians, 186. 50 The pairings, the first one of which seems to flow logically out of Paul’s preceding arguments, have widely been described as pre-Pauline formulas. For an opposing view see Bernard C. Lategan, Reconsidering the Origin and Function of Galatians 3:28, Neot 46 (2012), 274–286. 51 Betz, Galatians, 190. 52 These three berakot are credited to R. Judah ben Elia (ca. 15 AD) in tBer 7.18 and jBer 13b. See Longenecker, Galatians, 157.

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described as blessings and expressions of gratitude respectively, thereby highlighting their deep-seated hierarchical and discriminatory ethos. Paul would not have been unaware of this kind of derogatory and divisive language, which in Israel marked the age of the “law”.53

Paul’s statements in Gal 3:28 offer a fundamental critique of this attitude from the perspective of one who has discovered the new existence in Christ, his point being that, although the distinctions may not have been removed (that is, Jews are still Jews and Greeks are still Greeks and so forth), their status before God is equal: They are all one in Christ and all are sons of God. Verse 29 serves to round off the argument. Appropriation: Consequences to be drawn and further areas to explore Lategan notes that it is “a well-known interpretative strategy to internalize or ‘spiritualize’ theological principles in order to avoid their social impact.”54 As a result many a segregated church has professed the unity of the church as a “spiritual” unity that left the reality of segregation and discrimination untouched. Various South African churches of the past, including the FELSISA, testify to this. Galatians 3:26–28 provides a radical challenge based on nothing less than what Lutherans have identified as the central article of the Augsburg Confession, the article on “Justification” (CA IV). A church that adheres unequivocally to this article of faith and practices baptism through which all are incorporated into the one body of Christ may not justify segregation in support of continued adherence to one’s own ethnic or cultural identity markers. It is this core truth that the FELSISA pastors have tried to address with the notion of core values, in particular with the core value “Welcoming all people”. The question of drawing practical consequences, especially with regard to Sunday services and festivals of the FELSISA that are attended by various ethnic/cultural groups (but remain largely informed by a German-European heritage), remain as acute as before. Furthermore, does the act of appropriation mean that the quest to internalize a Christ-identity, based on the justification of the sinner by faith in Christ Jesus (alone), necessarily mean that one’s own ethnic identity, including its social and cultural expressions, should be relinquished? This and similar questions and the fact that in a country like South Africa the question of ‘race’ still determines most discourses (be it continued apartheid or 55 affirmative action) has led to a wide scholarly debate on ethnic identity. It poses 53 Lategan, Reconsidering Galatians 3:28, 278, with reference to G. N. Uzukwu, The Unity of Male and Female in Christ: An Exegetical Study of Gal.3:28c in the Light of Paul’s Theology of Promise (2011), 31. 54 Lategan, Reconsidering Galatians 3:28, 284. 55 This debate is complicated by the fact that there is no universal definition on ethnicity. Richard Jenkins, Rethinking Ethnicity: Arguments and Explorations (1997), 165, cited by Markus

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the question to what degree the maintenance of ethnic identity, which is a global phenomenon, is relevant to the church. Much has been published on this topic recently, which cannot be covered in this essay (see especially the work of Cromhout and Nebrede).56 Reference to and a short summary of Cromhout’s 2001 paper The avoidance of ethnic tension and conflict in South Africa: What can Paul’s experience teach us?57 (my translation) will need to suffice. Making use of a historical approach with reference to ethnicity and social identity theory, he affirms our own analysis above, that initially Paul adopted a radical approach, which basically rendered ethnic identity as irrelevant. For Paul the social game of “we” (the good) in contrast to “them” (the bad), and of “us” enjoying privileges from which “they,” the pagans, are excluded is over. For him the “we” now includes both the Jews and the Gentiles that all live within the domain of the Spirit. According to Cromhout,58 however, in Paul’s letter to the Romans the pendulum swings slightly back. Also addressing a multiethnic audience, Paul clearly gives room for ethnic diversity, leading to what can be described as a common identity and sub-identities, which (can and should) serve one another without causing division or separation. Regarding the common identity Paul says: “Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes … For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile – the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him” (Rom 10:4, 12). At the same time, however, Paul addresses the need for sub-identities, especially those of the Jews by saying: “One man’s faith allows him to eat everything, but another man, whose faith is week, eats only vegetables … One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers everyday alike. Each should be fully convinced in his own mind” (Rom 14:2–5). It seems critical however, both for first century followers of Christ as well as the present day church, that the foundational and, indeed, radical truth that all are Cromhout, Paul’s “Former Conduct in the Judean Way of Life” (Gal.1:13) … or not?, HTS 65 (2009), 126–137, 127, proposes the following “basic social anthropological model”: – Ethnicity is about cultural differentiation (bearing in mind that identity is always a dialectic between similarity and differences). – Ethnicity is concerned with culture – shared meaning – but it is also rooted in, and the outcome of, social interaction. – Ethnicity is no more fixed than the culture of which it is a component, or the situation, in which it is produced and reproduced. – Ethnicity is both collective and individual, externalised in social interaction and internalised in personal self-identification. Dennis Duling, “Whatever Gain I Had …”. Ethnicity and Paul’s Self-Identification in Philippians 3:5–6, HTS 64 (2008), 700–818, 800–803. 56 See inter alia Markus Cromhout/Andries van Aarde, A Social-Cultural Model of Judean Ethnicity: A Proposal, HTS 62 (2006), 69–101; Markus Cromhout, Jesus and Identity (2007); Cromhout, Paul’s Former Conduct, 1–12, and S. R. Nebreda, Christ Identity: A Social-Scientific Reading of Philippians 2.5–11 (2011). 57 Markus Cromhout, Die vermyding van etniese spanning en konflik in Suid Afrika: What kan Paulus se ervaring ons leer, HTS 67 (2011), 238–245. 58 Cromhout, Die vermyding van etniese spanning, 243.

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justified by faith through Christ Jesus (alone) needs to be accepted and internalized first, before ethnic and cultural diversity within the church of Christ can and should be addressed. In describing the core value of “Welcoming all people”, the FELSISA pastors sought to address this (also in proper sequence) by formulating: “United in Christ and in love for one another we also seek to create the necessary freedom for cultural expression without judgment or domination, each regarding the other more important than himself.” If, indeed, this freedom is given, there should be no need to formally organize separate groupings (like a German district) within the church, but there can be joy and appreciation for a diversity of culture within a united church. The journey of appropriation has only begun.

Conclusion A contextual approach to Scripture provides a focus on the context of the reader and his/her involvement in the interpretation process and the importance of appropriation. As all approaches it has limitations and is prone to misuse or even abuse. But whatever the verdict, it seeks conversation.

Summary In South Africa a contextual approach to the interpretation of Scripture has been largely informed by the resistance to the injustices of the Apartheid government. Historical and literary approaches failed to address the plight of the everyday South African resulting in a detached theology that had little to say to the suffering masses. This led to a conscious shift on how Scripture was read. The contextual approach has as its starting point the context of the reader, in particular the subjugated other, who is not the self, but nevertheless forms part of the interpretative community. With its focus on liberation the contextual approach employed during the years of Apartheid largely lacked a clear methodology. This deficiency is largely addressed by Jonathan Draper, who proposes “A tripolar exegetical model,” which consists of three exegetical stages: (1) Contextualization, (2) Distantiation, and (3) Appropriation. This model is used both in interpreting Galatians 3:26–28 and applying it to the context of the author and his church, the Free Evangelical Lutheran Synod in South Africa. The contextual approach may not be without deficiencies, but it is invariably challenging based on the assumption that Scripture has something to say to its present day readers.

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Zusammenfassung Der „kontextuelle“ Zugang zur Auslegung der Heiligen Schrift ist in Südafrika weitgehend durch den Widerstand gegen die Ungerechtigkeit der Apartheid-Regierung bestimmt. Historische und literarische Vorgehensweisen ließen die alltägliche Misere der Südafrikaner außen vor und führten zu einer abständigen Theologie, die der leidenden Masse der Bevölkerung wenig zu sagen hatte. Das führte zu einer bewusst anderen Leseweise der Bibel. Der kontextuelle Zugang geht von dem Kontext des Lesers und insbesondere des unterdrückten Anderen aus, der nicht man selbst ist, der aber einen Teil der Auslegungsgemeinschaft bildet. Der kontextuelle Zugang war in den Jahren der Apartheid auf Befreiung fokussiert, jedoch fehlte ihm eine klare Methodologie. Diesen Mangel wollte Jonathan Draper beheben, der ein „tripolares exegetisches Modell“ vorschlägt, das aus drei Stufen besteht: 1. Kontextualisierung, 2. Distanzierung und 3. Aneignung. Dies Modell nutzt der Autor bei der Auslegung von Gal 3,26–28 sowie für die Anwendung auf sich selbst und seine Kirche, die Freie Evangelisch-Lutherische Synode in Südafrika. Der kontextuelle Zugang mag seine Mängel haben, aber er stellt allemal eine Herausforderung dar, weil er auf der Annahme beruht, dass die Schrift den Lesern von heute etwas zu sagen hat.

Apartheid and Present Day South Africa as a Context in Reading Galatians 3:26–28 Response Timo Laato In his stimulating essay A Contextual Approach to Gal 3:26–28 from a South African Perspective, Reinstorf takes up one central passage in Galatians. Nevertheless, he mainly concentrates on the methodological basics of a contextual approach. Such a procedure is consistent with the goal of our symposium in Oberursel (Dies Academicus) to discuss not so much “the contents (and related theological issues) of the biblical texts but rather the methods and approaches.”1 The thoughtprovoking interpretation of Gal 3:26–28 is found in the latter part of the paper. Many important details are discussed in short and convincingly. I fully understand that Reinstorf seeks to address the context of Gal 3:26–28 “primarily by means of the debate elicited by the so called New Perspective on Paul” with the intention of lifting “Paul’s letters out of the Lutheran/Reformed context of the 16th century” and interpreting “them based on an understanding of first-century Judaism.”2 The whole theory of ethnic distinctions as the background of the Pauline discussion on the justification fits well together with the “contextual” situation in the South Africa. Still, the New Perspective on Paul in this respect has serious weaknesses (see below). A little bit more problematic is Reinstorf’s interpretation of Gal 2:16. He contends: But striking is that Paul starts his reproof of Peter by appealing to something that is generally accepted by all natural Jews, in other words, a view held not only by ‘Christian’ Jews but all Jews, namely: “… a man is not justified by observing the law” (Gal 2:16) … But according to Paul this is the view held not by Jews, but by Gentile sinners, as intimated in verse 15: “We who are Jews by nature and not Gentile sinners, know that a man is not justified by works of law” (my emphasis).3

Galatians 2:16, however, refers to Christian Jews (“we”) who believe in Jesus Christ (see context). Moreover, in Judaism the righteous man is the one who observes the law. Only in that way he remains in the covenant. This is the overall view,

1 2 3

th

Achim Behrens and Jorg Salzmann in their email of 19 July 2013. See above, 155. See above, 158.

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shared also (and fervently) by those who represent the New Perspective on Paul.4 Consequently, Gentile sinners do not hold the view opposed by Paul. They do not even possess the Mosaic Law. Concerning the interpretation of the expression “works of the law” as “Jewish identity markers” (such as circumcision, food laws and feasts) there are various critical remarks worth considering. Some short comments on selected passages (discussed by Reinstorf): The justification of Abraham in Gal 3 and Rom 4: Abraham lived before the giving of the Mosaic Law. He believed in God even before being circumcised. Consequently, “works” cannot refer to “Jewish identity markers” in that case. Note that Rom 4:2 does not mention the works of the law but only works. Besides, v. 5 suggests that Abraham was justified while still being ungodly (a moral statement). In addition, vv. 7–8 identifies being justified apart from works with having all sins forgiven. Paul’s own righteousness in Phil 3: Paul does not only reckon with some Jewish identity markers but his own achievements as well (vv. 5–6). His “fleshly” boasting rests upon six utterances: A. Origin (the inborn prerogatives): 1. circumcised on the eighth day (no proselyte), 2. of the stock of Israel, the tribe of Benjamin (no son of proselytes), 3. a Hebrew of the Hebrews (the genuinely Jewish part of the people). B. Attitude to the law (the acquired prerogatives): 4. according to the law a Pharisee, 5. according to the zeal a persecutor of the church, 6. according to the righteousness of the law without fault. Obviously, the Jewish confidence – as far as Paul recognizes it – culminates in the last utterance. Jewish morning prayer: The underlying sense of the Jewish morning prayer concerns the question: Why is it of so great consequence to be a Jew (and not a Gentile), free (and not a slave), a man (and not a woman)? The answer lies at hand: A Jewish free man knows (in contrast to Gentiles) the Mosaic Law, he has (in contrast to slaves) the freedom to obey it and (in contrast to women) the duty to fulfill every single one of its commandments. In other words, he rejoices in possessing the whole law, not merely some detached Jewish identity markers.

4

See e.g., Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 544–545 (et passim); James D. G. Dunn, Romans 9–16 (1988), 593 (et passim): “Israel’s mistake was not that they had understood righteousness as obedience to the law (for that is what righteousness shows itself to be).”, and Timo Laato, Paulus und das Judentum. Anthropologische Erwägungen (1991), 264–265; id., Paul and Judaism: An Anthropological Approach (1995), 210. Cf. Timo Laato, “God’s Righteousness” – Once Again, in: L. Aejmelaeus/A. Mustakallio (ed.), The Nordic Paul: Finnish Approaches to Pauline Theology (2008), 40–73.

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Further, Reinstorf writes somewhat surprisingly about the “confusion, as if being ‘Judaized’ (following certain customs) is a necessity to attain a covenant relationship with God, which all natural Jews know is not the case.”5 But if the “works of the law” refer merely to “Jewish identity markers” (especially circumcision), how could anyone deny that at least circumcision “is a necessity to attain a covenant relationship with God”?6 Reinstorf’s main conclusion presents a difficult ambiguity. On the one hand he argues: This is not the time to engage the New Perspective(s) as such, but it is informative that the context in which Paul developed his teaching on justification (in particular in his letter to the Galatians), differs quite drastically from the context of Martin Luther. Luther explored the topic in the context of his torturing question on how to obtain salvation at a time when the Catholic system of merit took center stage. Paul’s context, however, is that of ethnic distinctions in a missional situation, providing the motives why in Christ Jews and Gentiles all are to be regarded as sons of God (Gal 3:26).7

On the other hand Reinstorf contends, “Galatians 3:26–38 provides a radical challenge based on nothing less than what Lutherans have identified as the central article of the Augsburg Confession, the article on ‘Justification’ (CA IV).”8 The New Perspective on Paul (as is well known) regards the Lutheran doctrine on justification as a (total) failure. After accepting that perspective on Paul, it appears incongruent to allegedly acknowledge “the central article of the Augsburg Confession”, explicitly the article on “Justification” (CA IV).9 Similarly, Reinstorf maintains, “It seems critical however, both for first century followers of Christ as well as the present day church, that the foundational and, indeed, radical truth that all are justified by faith through Christ Jesus (alone) needs to be accepted and internalized first, before ethnic and cultural diversity within the church of Christ can and should be addressed.”10 However, if the New Perspective on Paul is right and the Pauline discussion on justification does refer to ethnic and cultural diversities between Jews and Gentiles, it follows that no one can accept and internalize the truth of justification first, before ethnic and cultural diversities within the church of Christ are addressed. Both aspects go hand in hand.

5 6 7 8 9

See above, 157. Cf. my discussion in Paulus und das Judentum, 185–190, and Paul and Judaism, 147–150. See above, 156. See above, 159. For an extremely harsh judgment on the “Lutheran” interpretation of the Pauline soteriology, see in particular Francis Watson, Paul, Judaism and the Gentiles: A Sociological Approach (1986). In the second (revised and expanded) edition of his book he apologizes for his former unqualified views. See his Paul, Judaism, and the Gentiles. Beyond the New Perspective (2007), xii–xiii. 10 See above, 160.

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To conclude, I would like to share some detached remarks on Reinstorf’s contextual approach. He asserts among other things: Cochrane further asserts that “critical engagement” with government (the preapartheid context for the contextual theologians) can and should not be confused with “critical solidarity” (as it often has been the case in the post-apartheid context). It is not the task of the church or of the (contextual) theologian to show solidarity with any state institution. Instead, the solidarity is always with those who are hurt, subjugated or otherwise marginalized. Contextual theology has as its starting point the subjugated other.11

What does it mean to have no “solidarity with any state institution”? Is that in other words “revolution”? Where is the biblical thought of “subordination” (not identical with subjection)? Further, how does this intersect with Luther’s doctrine on “the two kingdoms”? In addition: Is it true that “no text has absolute or neutral meaning applicable from one age to the next”? Or that “the same text will have a different meaning depending on who is engaging in a conversation with it and what the new conversation partner brings to the dialogue”?12 What is “universally valid for everybody” and “eternally true”?13 Is there anything like that? Who finally determines what the Bible really says? Does God have his own voice, his own opinion? Is he able to speak only if we allow him to speak through our conversations?14

11 12 13 14

See above, 149f. See above, 151. See above, 146. For further discussion cf. Timo Laato, Romarbrevets hermeneutik: En lärobok för teologer om vetenskaplig metod (2006) (forthcoming in English), and K.J. Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text? The Bible, the Reader and the Morality of Literary Knowledge 1(1998).

4

Text and Authority/ Text und Autorität

Theological and Hermeneutical Reflections on the Ongoing Revisions of the Novum Testamentum Graece Jeffrey Kloha The Current Status of the New Testament Text Since 1975, pastors and teachers have had a single, unchanged Greek text of the New Testament to serve as the basis for their work. The 3rd, corrected edition of the United Bible Societies text, published in that year, was matched by the 26th edition of the Nestle-Aland text in 1979. Since then, the textual apparatuses of both editions have been updated – but the text itself has remained unchanged. This has given a false sense of stability to users of the Greek New Testament, as if the work of textual criticism had been completed and we had attained the original text. Indeed, the situation today may be compared to the situation in the 18th and early 19th centuries, when the Textus receptus was thought by most people to be ‘the original text’ of the New Testament. Along the way, those working in the field knew differently – Lachmann, Griesbach, Mill, and others had been compiling manuscript evidence, studying the early versions and patristic texts, and refining the methodology. When Tischendorf and Westcott-Hort came along in the 1860s and 70s, the tide of new evidence was too much, and the Textus receptus was overwhelmed. In 1963 the evidence of the newly-discovered papyri forced a reconsideration of the text again, resulting in the 25th edition of the Nestle-Aland text. And barely a decade later further work resulted in the 26th edition. New Testament textual criticism has again reached a breaking point. New manuscript discoveries, further and refined study of the patristic material, more precise study of the early translations, and quantum leaps forward in methodology have all led to a breakthrough: A new edition of the standard text of the Greek New Testament is in the process of being produced – and is indeed partly already available. The text used for most, if not all, of our professional lives is being changed. This will impact not only the texts that we preach and teach and comment upon, but may well impact our ways of understanding and describing the nature and authority of the biblical text. For if the Nestle-Aland text is being changed, what does that say about the Scriptures’ origins, their inspiration, and the way that we affirm the authority of the text in light of these ongoing revisions? This is, inevitably, not merely an interesting – or perhaps, being textual criticism, a very boring – scholarly question. For changes in the Greek text will slowly but inevitably be incorporated in the translations used by the people in our congregations. Changes in translation do raise issues about the nature of the biblical text

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and its authority. For the last 125 years, since the advent of modern critical editions of the Greek text and translations based on them, the church has been dealing with questions about the stability and nature of the biblical text. These questions will only continue and multiply, when even long-standing translations like the NIV and RSV/ESV will be altered to match the new critical text now under production. The Lutheran tradition seems not to have adequately resolved the problem of the lack of a fixed and perfectly stable text of the Scriptures. The divine origin of the Scriptures, their inspiration, and consequent inerrancy, have all been rightly emphasized.1 But how best to affirm the divine source when working with humanproduced manuscripts of the New Testament text with their differences in wording was not always clear. Minor textual variants were known in the early 18th century through the work of John Mill and Richard Bentley,2 but Lutheran dogmaticians of the classical period did not see the significance of the problem, even though eventually far more significant textual problems came to light through manuscript discoveries. Robert Preus notes that the later dogmaticians did not deal with this problem adequately: There is certainly no reason to doubt that he [Quenstedt], like Hollaz, was aware of the fact of variant readings among the manuscripts … But he never faces the issue as it existed even in his time, for he fails to take into consideration what will be the case if the copy is not at all times accurate. The dogmaticians of the seventeenth century were scarcely informed and were not especially interested in the subject of textual criticism.3

He notes his dissatisfaction with their lack of discussion of this topic: The dogmaticians do not consider the inspiration of the apographa except occasionally in their discussion of the authenticity of Scripture. This fact perhaps accounts for their rather limited and unsatisfactory presentation of the whole question.4

The reality of the unstable text and the significance this has for the authority of Scripture has, according to Preus, been insufficiently discussed and unsatisfactorily

1

2 3 4

The official position of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod is found in A Statement of Scriptural and Confessional Principles (1973). The document provides positive statements and a list of errors that are rejected. Positively, the document states “We believe, teach and confess that all Scripture is given by the inspiration of God the Holy Spirit and that God is therefore the true Author of every word of Scripture.” See William Baird, History of New Testament Research, Vol. 1: From Deism to Tübingen (1992), 25–30. Robert Preus, The Inspiration of Scripture. A Study of the Theology of the Seventeenth Century Lutheran Dogmaticians (1957), 48–49; emphasis added. Robert Preus, Inspiration of Scripture, 49.

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resolved by the classic Lutheran dogmaticians.5 The new edition of the standard Greek New Testament text forces us to again wrestle with the issues: The reality of the wording of the text of the New Testament being passed down in thousands of manuscripts, all different from each other, yet at the same time affirming the divine origin and authority of those words.

Impetus for the New Edition: Manuscript, Patristic, and Versional Evidence Why is a new edition of the New Testament now being produced? There are several driving forces. Since there is no fixed, external method for assessing the evidence of the manuscripts, New Testament textual criticism has always had to adjust its methodologies as new manuscript discoveries and textual evidence came to light. The discipline is again in this situation, as new methodologies for reconstructing the text have been developed to deal with new data. The first and primary piece of new data is the discovery of new manuscripts themselves. When the 26th edition was printed in 1979, there were about eighty papyrus manuscripts known. Today there are one hundred twenty-seven; while the majority of these have been fragmentary, many are quite early and illumine the critical second and third century period of the transmission of the text.6 While new manuscript discoveries are perhaps the most exciting development, more significant are the new methods for analyzing known manuscripts. Rather than treating manuscripts as mere letters in the apparatus, manuscripts are now studied as individual instantiations of the text, each with their own reason for production, editorial preferences, scribal habits and characteristics, and history of use.7 Instead of saying that “P46 is a good manuscript,” researchers now say something like “P46 tends to lose insignificant words, harmonize to the near context, and produce conflations based on at least two predecessor manuscripts.”8 And, with the development of computers and specialized software, manuscripts are no longer simply compared to a standard base text in order to determine their value. Instead a manuscript may be compared to any other manuscript instantly via textual databases. The most signif5 6

7 8

Efforts by two twentieth-century Lutheran dogmaticians to resolve this issue are discussed below [pp. 191–194 below]. Recent studies of new discoveries from this early period include J. Keith Elliot, The Nature of the Evidence Available for Reconstructing the Text of the New Testament in the Second Century, in: Christian-Bernard Amphoux/J. Keith Elliot (ed.), The New Testament in Early Christianity: Proceedings of the Lille Colloquium, July 2000 (2003), 9–18. The latest papyrus discovery, a fifthcentury manuscript of Acts (P127), is notable in that it contains a unique form of the text. It differs both from the cluster of manuscripts related to Codex Vaticanus (which the Nestle-Aland text tends to follow) and the distinctly longer text found in Codex Bezae. See David C. Parker/Stuart R. Pickering, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Volume LXXIV (2009), 1–45. David C. Parker, New Testament Manuscripts and Their Texts (2008), 133–158. See James Royse, Scribal Habits in Early Greek New Testament Papyri (2008).

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icant result of all this for the production of an edition of the Greek New Testament is that the methodologies used to produce previous editions are now recognized to be inadequate, and even wrong. Text-type theory, which divided the manuscripts into western, Alexandrian, Byzantine, and occasionally Caesarean texts is now known to be a vast oversimplification and has been essentially abandoned.9 Furthermore, judgments about “best manuscripts” are now known to be insufficient for assessing the evidence, so methodologies like “reasoned eclecticism” have been significantly modified. The point is, the methodology used to produce the Nestle-Aland text in 1979 is now known to be inadequate. Since the methodology and data are different, the text must be changed as well. Not only have new manuscripts of the New Testament been discovered, but also new manuscripts of patristic texts and early translations, especially Latin, Syriac, and Coptic. These new discoveries, and again the refined methodologies used to study them, have greatly illumined the state of the New Testament text prior to the fourth century. New critical editions of all the early translations are now in development, some are now partially printed. For example, we have new critical texts of the Pauline and Catholic epistles in Syriac published in the last twenty years.10 The Latin text is nearing completion, while a new critical edition of John is being published in fascicles.11 And patristic material is constantly being reassessed. The state of the discipline has advanced so far so quickly that any analysis of a church father’s text produced more than about twenty-five years ago is hopelessly out of date and virtually useless.12 Note that all these resources post-date the production of the last revision of the Nestle-Aland text in 1979; since then the discipline of textual criticism has not stood still. Now the time has come for the curtain to be drawn back and the results incorporated into a new text: the 28th edition of the Nestle-Aland text. My purpose is to provide you teachers in the church with some background on this new edition and alert you to some of the changes for the edition. Furthermore, for those of us with a high view of the Scriptures, its inspiration, and its authority, I would like to initiate a conversation regarding the implications this might have for the way that we understand, teach, and use the New Testament as the source and norm of life and faith.

9

A summary of the issues is provided in Parker, New Testament Manuscripts and Their Texts, 171– 175. 10 See Peter J. Williams, The Syriac Versions of the New Testament, in: Bart D. Ehrman/Michael W. Holmes (ed.), The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research: Essays on the Status 2 Quaestionis ( 2013), 143–166. 11 See Philip Burton, The Latin Version of the New Testament, in: Bart D. Ehrman/Michael W. Holmes (ed.), The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research: Essays on the Status 2 Quaestionis ( 2013), 167–200. 12 For an overview of the value and evaluation of patristic evidence in general, see Parker, New Testament Manuscripts and their Texts, 108–118. See also the essays in The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research (previous note) by Fee and Mullen, Houghton, and Brock on the Greek, Latin, and Syriac patristic evidence.

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Methodology: Genealogical Coherence Method13 For those of us raised on Bruce Metzger’s Text of the New Testament and even the book by Kurt Aland and Barbara Aland with the same title,14 it may come as a bit of a shock to hear that no textual critic operates with the same methodology as those laid out in the standard text books. Notions of ‘text-types’ have been abandoned, as mentioned above, and even the Alands’ methodology of the ‘Local-Genealogical’ method, outlined in their 1987 text, has been significantly altered and adapted by their own students. The Genealogical-Coherence Method takes as its starting point the recognition that scribes and editors produced texts in small units. In contrast to the mechanical and now electronic means of reproduction that we enjoy today, up until the 15th century scribes worked one phrase or word at a time. And so the alterations and errors they produced came about individually, one word or phrase at a time. As a result, the reconstruction of a text must proceed one phrase or word at a time. That is to say, a manuscript may be a ‘good manuscript’ in that it preserves the ‘original’ reading in many places, but will not do so in other places. And so every place of variation must be analyzed (including the hundreds of thousands of alternative/variant readings that are not provided in the Nestle-Aland apparatus), one unit of variation at a time. Codex Vaticanus might have preserved the correct reading at, say, Jude 5a, but did not at, say, Jude 5b. So, Jude 5a has a different history of transmission than does Jude 5b. Therefore, a different history of transmission exists at every place of variation – at Jude 5a, Jude 5b, Jude 5c, and so on, nearly to infinity (or so it seems). The recognition that no manuscript preserves the original reading in each place of variation has long been recognized – even the Textus receptus is not the text of a single manuscript. Every printed Greek New Testament ever produced is what is called an ‘eclectic text,’ that is, a text produced one reading at a time at each place a variant exists; it is not the reproduction of a single manuscript (as is the case, for the Biblia Hebraica editions, which print, essentially, the text of the Leningrad Codex). A second feature of the Genealogical-Coherence method is its comprehensiveness. Because it uses a computer database, the evidence for every manuscript at every place where there is variation can be stored and analyzed. In the case of the 13 The most comprehensive discussion of the methodology, with numerous examples, is provided in Gerd Mink, Contamination, Coherence, and Coincidence in Textual Transmission: The Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (CBGM) as a Complement and Corrective to Existing Approaches, in: Klaus Wachtel/Michael W. Holmes (ed.), The Textual History of the Greek New Testament: Changing Views in Contemporary Research (2011), 141–216. See also Klaus Wachtel, Towards a Redefinition of External Criteria: The Role of Coherence in Assessing the Origin of Variants, in: H.A.G. Houghton/D. C. Parker (ed.), Textual Variation and Theological Tendencies? (2008), 109–127. 14 Kurt Aland/Barbara Aland, Der Text des Neuen Testaments. Einführung in die wissenschaftlichen Ausgaben sowie in Theorie und Praxis der modernen Textkritik (1982); Bruce M. Metzger, The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration (1964).

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Catholic Epistles, this means that 164 manuscripts have been checked in all 3046 places of variation, and each manuscript’s reading entered into the database at every place. So, for the first time, all the evidence is available for analysis, not only for selected manuscripts as has been the case heretofore. As an aside, it should be obvious that this requires huge amounts of manpower and time. All this evidence is available because these projects are now collaborative, involving many people from many countries. Once all the readings of the manuscripts are entered into the database, analysis may begin. It must be recognized that the software itself does not decide which reading is ‘original.’ One does not push a button and let Steve Jobs or Bill Gates produce the text. All the software does is provide a snapshot of every manuscript at every place of variation in a given book. The researcher decides, based on whatever methodology he or she chooses, what they think the original reading is in that place. Then one moves on to the next place of variation, makes a separate decision to determine the original reading, and so on, reading after reading, until the entire text is edited. The software is then run, and a stemma of readings is produced for every place of variation. So if, for example, Codex Vaticanus (B) has what you decided was original reading at Jude 5a and at Jude 5b, and Sinaiticus has the secondary reading at both Jude 5a and Jude 5b – and then in multiple other places – one might want to take a second or third look if the reading one selected as the original at, say, Jude 5c turns out to have chosen a reading attested by Sinaiticus as preserving the source reading and B the secondary. The scholar may decide then to adopt a different reading, run the software again, and see how the manuscripts relate to each other. I question one significant decision made by the editors: to print what they label the Ausgangstext – usually glossed in English as ‘The Initial Text’ rather than printing what they consider to be the ‘original text’ of the writings of the New Testament. In this new edition, the editors do not claim to print the ‘original text’ of, say, The Epistle of James. Instead, they print the reconstructed text of the putative archetype manuscript from which all copies of James now in existence were made. This is a necessary consequence of their methodology, for if one is creating a stemma of readings in the tradition then one can only reconstruct what is found in the tradition back to its earliest manuscript. I believe this is problematic, not because I believe that the original text is coterminous with the extant manuscripts, nor because the original text, whatever that might be in the case of individual books, is able to be reconstructed perfectly with our current evidence. Rather, I believe this is problematic because it does not allow full use of the tools available to textual criticism, including the patristic and versional material and most especially the use of conjectural emendation.15 15 A positive assessment of the value of conjectural emendation is offered by Jan Krans, Conjectural Emendation and the New Testament, in: Bart D. Ehrman/Michael W. Holmes (ed.), The Text of the 2 New Testament in Contemporary Research: Essays on the Status Quaestionis ( 2013). An exam-

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Thoroughgoing or Reasoned Eclecticism? It should be noted again that the Genealogical-Coherence Method does not merely replace the human editor with an algorithm. It is a tool – a helpful tool – but still only a tool. The textual critic is in complete control of the decisions as to which reading to consider original. The Genealogical-Coherence Method provides a way for the editor to check his results, and reconsider decisions as many times as he or she chooses. Significantly, for this reason, such a text will always be provisional. Room is open for new witnesses, new methods of analysis, new arguments. Theses simply need only be entered into the database, the software run, and the decisions assessed anew. And, given that the Nestle-Aland text will now also have an online version, the text can be changed ‘on the fly’ at any time, not needing to wait for a print run to sell out to add more data or even change the text.

Early Results: Novum Testamentum Graece Editio Maior (ECM) The early results of this new methodology have been available for the Catholic Epistles since 1995 in the Novum Testamentum Graece. Editio Critica Maior. This project was announced by Kurt Aland in 1969, but the first volume, James, did not appear until 1995. Successive volumes have come more quickly: 1 & 2 Peter in 2000 and 2 & 3 John, Jude in 2005. I will not here describe the format of the printed edition; but scholars and teachers working on these writings must take these editions into account.16

Changes in the New Nestle-Aland Text (NA28) The new text produced for the ECM project is now being incorporated into the Nestle-Aland text. In the Catholic Epistles, the editors chose to make thirty-four changes to the Nestle-Aland text. This does not seem like many changes. However, this is the result of several factors unique to the Catholic Epistles. First, the limited amount of data – only some 164 manuscripts, a selection from around 560 known to exist still today. For the gospels there will be roughly six times the amount of manuscript evidence. Second, the late date of the material for the Catholic Epistles. There are very few patristic citations of these books, no early translations, and a relatively cohesive manuscript tradition – all the result of the questionable canonical status and lack of liturgical use for the Catholic Epistles throughout the history

28

ple of where I would disagree with the NA text is at 1 Cor 6:5, where limiting the reconstruction to the available manuscripts results in a nonsense reading. See Jeffrey J. Kloha, 1 Corinthians 6:5: A Proposal, NT 46 (2004), 132–142. 16 See, as an example, the interaction with the Editio Critica Maior in Bruce G. Schuchard, 1– 3 John (2012).

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of the church.17 By way of comparison, in the Vetus Latina, the critical edition of the Latin New Testament, the volume of the Catholic Epistles is about the same size as that for Philippians and Colossians alone. Nevertheless, a few changes in the Catholic Letters are significant. 1 Peter 4:16 εἰ δὲ ὡς Χριστιανός, μὴ αἰσχυνέσθω, δοξαζέτω δὲ τὸν θεὸν ἐν τῷ ὀνόματι τούτῳ “Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name.” (ESV) εἰ δὲ ὡς Χριστιανός, μὴ αἰσχυνέσθω, δοξαζέτω δὲ τὸν θεὸν ἐν τῷ μέρει τούτῳ “Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that case.”

Notably, the NA27 reading is supported by ‘good’ manuscripts: P72 ’ A B 33 1739. The decision to adopt μέρει appears to rest on the argument that this is the more difficult reading, and an analysis of the genealogical coherences. It seems that ἐν τῷ ὀνόματι τούτῳ may have arisen multiple times, independently in different manuscripts, from a predecessor that read ἐν τῷ μέρει τούτῳ. Jude 5 ὅτι [ὁ] κύριος ἅπαξ λαὸν ἐκ γῆς Αἰγύπτου σώσας τὸ δεύτερον τοὺς μὴ πιστεύσαντας ἀπώλεσεν (“that the Lord delivered his people out of Egypt, but later destroyed those who did not believe.” NIV) ὅτι ὁ ἰησοῦς ἅπαξ πάντα λαὸν ἐκ γῆς Αἰγύπτου σώσας τὸ δεύτερον τοὺς μὴ πιστεύσαντας ἀπώλεσεν (“that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.” ESV)

This is a famously difficult passage, as seen already in the difference between the NIV and ESV translations. ̓Ιησοῦς, supported by B, was viewed as the more difficult reading (how could Jesus have saved Israel out of Egypt?) – another reading here in the manuscripts at this place is θεός. Likely, though unexplained by the editors to this point, the genealogical coherences were such that led to the change. A second feature of this edition is the use of dots in the text. These were used in the ECM to signal several things: “Sometimes it signals alternative readings which were considered of equal value. Sometimes the reasons for the reading in the primary line were regarded as superior, but not sufficiently to rule out with complete confidence the claims of the indicated alternative reading. In any event the dot indicates a passage that calls for special critical consideration. Further research may well lead to a new solution for it or confirm the present decision. In many instances, however, the resources of textual criticism may appear to have been ex-

17 Parker, New Testament Manuscripts and Their Texts, 283–310.

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hausted.”18 In the NA28 edition dots have a slightly different function. They signal places where “the editors had to leave open the decision as to which of the variants is the initial text.” (p. 51*). In other words, these are places where the editors do not view the printed reading as firm and certain. This is used very frequently in the ECM – in 1 Peter, there are sixty-one words enclosed within bold dots, out of 1,661 words in total; so 3.7% of the words are considered doubtful by the editors. This is a significant number, and a number that will no doubt be higher in the books of the New Testament with more complex manuscript traditions. 2 Peter 3:10 ἐν ᾗ οἱ οὐρανοὶ ῥοιζηδὸν παρελεύσονται στοιχεῖα δὲ καυσούμενα λυθήσεται καὶ γῆ καὶ τὰ ἐν αὐτῇ ἔργα εὑρεθήσεται. (“… and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.” ESV) καὶ τὰ ἐν αὐτῇ ἔργα ουχ εὑρεθήσεται (“and the works that are done on it will not be found”)

Significantly, this reading is not found in any Greek witnesses, though there is versional support. Many would consider such a procedure problematic and even label it a conjecture and thereby dismiss it altogether, though I believe that ruling out such proposals and readings altogether is problematic.

Original or Ausgangstext ? The adoption of a poorly-attested reading, such as was done at 2 Pet 3:10, highlights a significant shift in how the editors view the text. The editors are no longer proposing to produce the “original text” of the New Testament.19 Rather, the editorial goal in the current edition is to produce what is labeled the Ausgangstext, or in English, the ‘Initial Text’. This reconstructed text is not “what left the pen of the evangelist” (even if that is actually what took place in the first century). Rather, the editors are producing the text from which all existing copies derive. This is a significant change. No longer are the editors proposing to reconstruct, say, the letter that Paul sent to Rome. Rather, they are reconstructing the form of Romans that became part of the Corpus Paulinum sometime by the end of the first century, and from which all extant manuscripts derive.20 In the case of the gospels this becomes even more 18 Editio Critica Maior: Peter, 24*. 19 For discussions of this problem by textual critics, see Holger Strutwolf, Original Text and Textual History, in: Klaus Wachtel/Michael W. Holmes (ed.), The Textual History of the Greek New Testament: Changing Views in Contemporary Research (2011), 23–41; Eldon J. Epp, The Multivalence of the Term ‘Original Text’ in New Testament Textual Criticism, HThR 93 (1999), 245– 281. 20 David Trobisch, Die Entstehung des Paulusbriefsammlung (1989); Harry Y. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts (1995), 58–62.

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problematic, for if the goal of this edition is to reproduce the text of, for example Mark, they will be reconstructing the text of Mark as it was transmitted in the four gospel codex, from which virtually all of our gospel manuscripts derive. Not being reconstructed is the text of Mark as it existed in the first century, let alone “as it left the pen of the author.” This could have a profound impact on how we view the Greek New Testament that is sitting in front of us as we teach and preach. The problem that we must deal with is this: Can this edition be considered the ‘original inspired’ text? Or is it only the form of the New Testament that existed in the second century, or even later?

A New Text Finally, a few observations about the format of the Nestle-Aland text. First, the new edition will be available in two formats. One is the traditional print format. But this text will change slowly, and not reflect the up-to-the-minute research being carried out as the project moves ahead. It will continue to do what it was designed to do quite successfully: to present a limited amount of data regarding the manuscript tradition (and some patristic and versional evidence) in a concise and easily portable format. It is a hand edition, not a tool for the reconstruction of the text of the New Testament. In addition, the Nestle-Aland 28th edition will be available in electronic/online format. This will provide not only text, but also full apparatus, links to full text of the manuscripts being cited, and, where possible, links to images available online (currently online is a prototype that gives only the text, no apparatus).21 This text will be updated regularly as the project moves forward. So, perhaps disconcertingly, your students who are accessing their Greek texts online may have a different text in front of them than the one that is sitting on your podium. Second, and related to the first, the Editio Critica Maior fascicles, which provide the base text for the Nestle-Aland text, will be updated on a regular basis. The ambitious (and now delayed) schedule is as follows: 2013 Acts, John; 2018 Mark; 2018–2026 Pauline Epistles; 2024 Matthew; 2030 Luke, Apocalypse. Eventually, these changes will be incorporated into the Nestle-Aland hand editions. So, we will be dealing with a constantly changing edition of the New Testament for at least the next 25 years.

Orality and New Testament Backgrounds Related to the specific problem of the reconstruction of the New Testament text is a broader movement in both biblical and ancient studies toward a recognition of the oral environment of the Roman world. This research, which recognizes the very low 21 The Nestle-Aland online site is: http://www.nestle-aland.com/en/extra-navigation/digital-editions/.

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literacy rate in the ancient world (perhaps 5–10%) and that literacy was limited to the elite classes, raises a number of fundamental issues about our understanding of ancient texts, including the New Testament. A recent study by Richard A. Horsley summarizes the extent of the challenge for classic New Testament studies: The combined results of the lines of recent research indicate a number of interrelated and overlapping ways in which biblical studies would have to abandon its standard concepts and procedures as well as assumptions in coming to grips with the realities they have hidden or obscured.22

Horsley provides a lengthy and disconcerting list of “realities” that have been “hidden and obscured” by assumptions which, he argues, must be abandoned. Among them: Versus the assumption that it is possible to “establish” an original or early text (wording) of written (NT) texts, the extreme variation in early (fragments of) manuscripts suggest that there were multiple versions of written texts that were later included in the New Testament. Versus the assumption that (NT) texts were read from written copies, the Gospels, for example, were evidently orally performed for many generations, successive lectors learning the texts from hearing them. Versus the assumption that the Gospels were “written” by “authors” and/or “editors,” the Gospel stories and speeches were evidently composed/developed in repeated performances in community contexts.23

Scholars dispute, of course, whether all of these ‘assumptions’ must be abandoned. It should be noted, however, that a recognition of the oral environment in which the biblical writings were produced has implications for all manner of biblical criticism: ‘lower critical’ methodologies such as textual criticism and lexicography but also ‘higher critical’ methodologies such as source/redaction criticism and form criticism. It should also be noted that modernist conceptions of fixed texts having inherent reliability and stability while orally transmitted material has inherent unreliability and instability (perhaps reinforced by ‘the telephone game’ played in childhood classrooms) is being abandoned. Recent research into the orality of the ancient world finds remarkable stability and faithful transmission of oral material. In fact, teachers in the early church show evidence of preferring oral teaching in place of a written text. According to Eusebius, Papias said: I did not rejoice like the many in those who say much, but in those who teach the truth, nor in those who recall the commandments of others, but in those who recall those things given to the faith by the Lord and derived from the truth itself. But if an22 Richard A. Horsley, Text and Tradition in Performance and Writing (2013), xi. 23 Horsley, Text and Tradition in Performance and Writing, xi–xiii.

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yone ever came who had followed the ancients, I inquired about the words of the ancients – what Andrew or Peter or Philip or Thomas or James or John or Matthew or any other of the Lord’s disciples said, and what Ariston and the Presbyter John, the Lord’s disciples, were saying. For I did not suppose things from books would benefit me so much as things from a living and abiding voice.24

For Papias, the person of the speaker gives testimony to the truth content of the discourse.25 Written texts – manuscripts – are produced by anonymous individuals and are prone to alteration and errors in transcription. There is no way, obviously, to ask questions of a manuscript, to probe it, to interact with it, or to seek clarification. The content of the discourse is the critical element for Papias; the written document must be compared with what is already known to be true as taught by those who are known to be reliable. The church first flourished in an oral environment, as is evidenced even in the texts themselves.26 Perhaps a return to understanding the church’s Scriptures within that context may help to understand more clearly both their nature and – more importantly – meaning.

Implications We now have a text of the New Testament that makes no claim to being fixed and stable, for it is subject to continuous improvement and change. This, however, is not an entirely new problem. For the text has always been subject to revision and change,27 even if we were not aware of it. Copies have been made for millennia, and all different from each other. In the modern age critical editions have reconstructed something conceived of as ‘the original text,’ yet each successive edition changed its predecessor’s text. Most often the changes were minor, to be sure, but in some passages more significant changes were made. However, the publication of this new critical edition and the new methodologies it employs forces us, perhaps for the first time, to acknowledge that the biblical texts we use are, necessarily, alterable. We are confronted with the recognition that reconstructing the ‘original text’ of the New Testament writings is a goal that may never be ultimately reached. This will inevitably have an impact on how we view that text. Should we, as teachers

24 Eusebius, H.E. 3.39.3–4. Translation from Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church, 39. 25 Perhaps influenced, directly or indirectly, by Aristotle’s Rhetoric (2.1.5–9), in which ἔθος is one of the three modes of persuasion. 26 For example, 1 Thess 5:27 is a command “to read the letter to all the brothers” (ἀναγνωσθῆναι τὴν ἐπιστολὴν πᾶσιν τοῖς ἀδελφοῖς); and the three-fold blessing in Rev 1:3 upon the reader, the hearer, and the doer of the words of that book of prophecy. 27 Augustine noted in his hermeneutics text, De doctrina christiana (II.14.21): “For those who are anxious to know the Scriptures ought in the first place to use their skill in the correction of the copies, so that the uncorrected ones should give way to the corrected.“ His presumption is that the manuscripts that he uses for teaching and preaching will have mistakes, and need correction.

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and preachers, simply accept what is printed in critical editions as authoritative? I believe that we should not. How do we account for this in the teaching and preaching task? When we are writing commentaries?28 When dealing with apologetic issues? And, when the text is changing regularly, online, live before our eyes, if you will, how do we continue to pray Verbum Dei manet in aeternum? We are now being presented with a continuously improving, if never finally perfect, text. We are being given the tools and resources for analyzing and understanding that text that previous generations could not imagine, but this forces us to formulate a sound hermeneutics and a theology of the Word in light of realities of which our predecessors were not aware.

Theological and Hermeneutical Reflections on Textual Criticism How will a Lutheran theology of the Word deal with these new editions of the Greek New Testament, editions that will change on a regular basis? How might this affect our hermeneutics? How can we best confess and use it as inspired and authoritative? There are resources in our tradition, both Lutheran and καθολική, to do so. I will begin with the former.

The nature of the Scriptures I have learned from my teachers (by writing, if not firsthand) Sasse, Franzmann, and Voelz to understand the Scriptures as both divine and human. This has profound implications for how we hear them. Allow me to cite Sasse at length: And likewise it has been recognized that, corresponding to the doctrine of Christ’s person, both the true divinity and the true humanity of the one Holy Scripture must be asserted … everything is divine and everything is human. Just as Christology since the Council of Chalcedon has to steer a course between the Scylla of Nestorianism and the Charybdis of Monophysitism, even so the doctrine concerning the Holy Scripture must be careful not to suffer shipwreck on the cliffs of a rationalistic, history-of-religion’s understanding of the Scripture and a super-naturalistic, docetic understanding of the Scripture. The Holy Scripture is God’s Word. The Holy Scripture is man’s word. But the Word of God and the word of man are not two Holy Scriptures – perhaps, someone might say, the kernel in the Bible which might be designated God’s Word – but one Holy Scripture. This self-same one Holy Scripture is complete,

28 Notably, a new commentary on Mark by Lutheran theologian James W. Voelz (Mark 1:1–8:26 [2013]) reconstructs a distinct Greek text that differs from the Nestle text “at a rather large number of places” (26). This commentary, intended primarily for preachers and teachers, recognizes that the Greek text is in a constant state of revision and, indeed, plasticity.

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unabridged Word of God, and complete, unabridged word of man, not a mixture of the two, not a synthesis which a person can again separate.29

The genesis, authority, and use of the Scriptures entail both the divine and the human, God’s Word in human words. As God’s Word, they carry his authority and do his work; as human words they participate in all the complexities and uncertainties of human language and its transmission, reception, and interpretation. We ask the Spirit to guide us into all truth as we hear the Word, but this does not guarantee that he will hear our prayer, or even that we will know if that prayer has been answered. There is no special ‘Holy Spirit hermeneutics’ that we learn at baptism which enables us to comprehend perfectly when we hear the Scriptures. The history of the church has demonstrated this again and again. Although our predecessors have spoken of the Scriptures in incarnational terms, it may be more helpful to use a sacramental framework. Primarily because the incarnational model (as is true with any metaphor) has limitations, especially since the incarnation of the Son of God is a unique event.30 But also because the Word of God is a means of grace; it is a means by which God accomplishes his work in his church. In the Lord’s Supper, in, with, and under the bread and wine is the body and blood of the Lord. The bread may be made of one of several varieties of grain; the wine red or white, the vessel which holds it made of silver or clay or plastic. It is the Word at work in the elements which is effective. Whether in Baptism or the Lord’s Supper, the working of the Word accomplishes the purposes of God, regardless of the contingencies of the earthly elements.31 In much the same way the Spirit spoke through historical and physical human authors. So the Word is God’s Word, spoken and heard through and to people, all of which takes place in specific times and places. Which means that we have more of a mess on our hands than we would prefer. For as soon as the human enters the picture, our own human limitations of time, space, context, social setting, education, personal agenda, and all the other things that go along with being human come along. Therefore, we must study the Word of God as also human communication. We must take into account linguistics, genre, historical background, and, for our purpose today, the transmission of the text and hermeneutics. 29 Hermann Sasse, Letter 14, in: Jeffrey Kloha/Ronald Feuerhahn (ed.), Scripture and the Church. Selected Essays of Hermann Sasse (1995), 78. Sasse continues to use this analogy throughout his career; cf. Hermann Sasse, Inspiration and Inerrancy – Some Preliminary Thoughts, RTR 19 (1960), 47–48. Similar analogies may be found in Martin Franzmann, Seven Theses on Reformation Hermeneutics, CTM 40 (1969), 235–246, which was also adopted by the Commission on Theology and Church Relations of the LCMS; and James W. Voelz, What Does This Mean?: Princi2 ples of Biblical Interpretation in the Post-Modern World ( 2013), 233–234. Voelz explicitly applies the Chalcedonian Christological formula to the nature of the Scriptures. 30 Cf. Robert Preus, The Inspiration of Scripture, 205. 31 We might also note that the same holds for the spoken word of forgiveness in absolution, and also the preached Word of God from the pulpit. The Word is effective not because of the agent (in fact, even at times in spite of the agent!), but because God has attached his Word to that human voice.

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Prejudgments Before I proceed further I want to state three assumptions – prejudgments32 – that guide my discussion. First: The Scriptures are inspired and authoritative. This is a creedal given: The confession that the Holy Spirit “spoke by the prophets” is the starting point for any discussion of the nature, purposes, and use of the Scriptures. It is also a theological a priori, based on the biblical claim that the Scriptures are θεόπνευστος (2 Tim 3:16). I wish to make clear that this is a fundamentum of any discussion of the Scriptures. But what is not always clear is how the creedal assertion of biblical authority results in a hermeneutics that recognizes both their divine origin, nature, and purpose while also being able to hear them as words spoken in human history, through the Apostles and Prophets (Eph 2:20; 3:5), as words with history-making power.33 In other words, we must keep clear and absolute the theological a priori of the inspiration of the Scriptures as we examine the historical reality of the manner in which the Spirit worked through inspiration to bring the Word to the church. In this church that Word was received, recognized, “handed down,”34 copied, and interpreted as God’s Word throughout history. Keeping firm this confession is all the more urgent when confronted with the reality of a historically transmitted, constantly revised text of the Scriptures. For example, in The Rite of Ordination used by the LCMS, candidates are asked: “Do you believe the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments to be the inspired Word of God and the only infallible rule of faith and practice?” Now this question asks a great deal of the candidate. It is not only a ‘doctrinal’ question, but asks the candidate if his teaching, preaching, and life will be guided solely and unquestionably by these writings (and no other). Will you conduct your service as slave of Christ and servant of this congregation based on this book? Anyone who does not answer this question affirmatively is not able to rightly handle the word of truth (2 Tim 2:15). But the church in this rite did not specifically list the books that make up the canon. It only asks about ‘the canonical books.’ The list of books that are canonical and infallible would be different for Martin Luther and Martin Chemnitz than the list

32 That ‘prejudgments’ are necessary and positive, especially over and against a historicist approach, is laid out by Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (2004), see esp. 277–278. Also Voelz, What Does This Mean?, 207–211 and 217–223. 33 Martin Franzmann, The Word of the Lord Grows (1961), 2, states, “If, then, we are to hear the divine word of our New Testament on its own terms (and that is the whole task and function of interpretation), we must study it historically. We must learn to see it as the growing and working divine word, as God Himself, active in history. We must come to know it and comprehend it as a word that has its point of origin (as divine word) in human history, as word that is essentially history, and as a word that has history-making power, as a dynamic and creative personal power of God at work among men.” 34 This critical term (παραδίδωμι) in the NT occurs in connection with the handing down of the gospel message and the teachings of the Apostles in Luke 1:2; 1 Cor 11:2, 23; 15:3).

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that we would likely produce today, for example (discussed further below).35 Neither does it define which Hebrew or Greek texts to use as authoritative, nor which modern translation reflects those most accurately. And while this question asks a great deal of the candidate, it does not go into a great deal of detail about exactly why or how to use this inspired Word of God. There are a lot of blanks to be filled in, and we fill them in many different ways. But, I want to make clear from the beginning that the confession of the Scriptures as the inspired Word of God given by the Spirit through the prophets and apostles and the only source and norm for faith and life is not in question; this is not what I am exploring in this essay. To the contrary, I am exploring how we identify and determine which are the inspired texts and readings of the Scriptures, received by and used in the church from the beginning. As I will discuss below, we have an accounting that risks not being specifically Christian in that it is not clearly rooted in the work of Christ or the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, our standard treatments of Scripture36 can sound implausible and unpersuasive in our present context of books like The Davinci Code and Misquoting Jesus, to say nothing of television ‘documentaries’ and web sites. As a result, I fear that we have left our hearers, our congregations, the people of God, vulnerable to anti-Christian apologetics and argumentation. For in our present context we seem to have adopted, perhaps unknowingly, a Rationalistic view of truth and authority, one that must subject the Scriptures to some kind of absolute ‘test’ to prove their authority. This has opened the door for the Scriptures to be criticized using a philosophical framework that is foreign to the Scriptures, which grounds their authority in a demonstrated, observable method, one that cannot involve any human role. This is the way that Islam views the Koran – a divinely-given text that had no human role whatsoever, either in its production or transmission (even to the point of insisting that translations of the Koran cannot be considered authoritative). That is to say, by insisting on a certain way of talking about the Scriptures, we have not described them as they have been received and passed on by the church nor in a way that points to the solus Christus. I will propose such a way forward at the conclusion of this essay. My second prejudgment: In avoiding one error in talking about Scripture, the error of ignoring the divine Word and its authority, some readers of the Scriptures have fallen into another error – ignoring the Scripture as God’s Word in human words. Assuming that we have an oracle-like, perfect text of the Bible is convenient. Because then it becomes quite easy to ignore all the messy context and setting of the biblical authors and assume that God is speaking directly to my heart. To see the result of this approach in American pop religion, I googled the phrase, “Inspirational Bible verses.” The first link was to a page called, appropriately

35 See the comprehensive discussion of the issue in J.A.O. Preus II, The New Testament Canon in the Lutheran Dogmaticians, Springfielder 25 (1981), 8–33. 36 As discussed later in this essay.

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enough, “Inspirational Bible verses: Real. Powerful. Timeless.”37 What are some of these verses? “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.” (Josh 1:9) What a promise! Now I can go ahead and do that presentation at my job tomorrow, for God will give me power and go with me all the way to my new promotion. It does not matter that this was spoken to Joshua as he was leading the chosen people into the land promised to Abraham. This passage is for you, a direct promise from God. If you don’t like that one, you can click on some of the links on the side of the page: “Comfort Bible verses”; “Confidence Bible verses”; “Blessings Bible verses”; and verses for all occasions: “Bible verses for graduation”; “Babies Bible verses”; “Bible verses for birthdays”; and if you can’t get a date, “Dance Bible verses.” If you have a big football game coming up you can click on “Sports verses”: “For the Lord your God is going with you! He will fight for you against your enemies, and he will give you victory!” Amen. It does not matter that God is speaking to Israel upon entering the promised land in Deuteronomy, and that the enemies are worshippers of false gods who would corrupt Israel and cause them to be unfaithful to the covenant. And that “victory” in Deuteronomy is not putting more points on the board, but putting people to death. The only way to have “Real. Powerful. Timeless. Verses.” – oracles from outside human time and space, as has Mormonism and Islam (and this web site) – is if they are solely divine. And if they are solely divine, that is, God’s direct speaking apart from any human setting, reception, transmission, or interpretation, then it does not matter if they were spoken to Joshua, or Israel, or that they didn’t have birthday parties or graduations or baby showers in Philippi. “I can do all things through him who strengthens me” – And I get to pick the things that I want to do. The problem is, I hope, obvious. Allow me to give a theological example: πᾶσα γραφὴ θεόπνευστος (2 Tim 3:16). This is the decisive proof for the divine nature of Scripture, the a priori, ultimate and unquestionable statement that everything in the Bible is from God, as noted above. But this passage is not easily applied to the New Testament writings unless one views the text as ahistorical, a text that provides propositional truths to be mined apart from any human setting, context or participation. Exegetically the use of this passage to make the claim that all of the ‘Bible’ is “God-breathed” is not so obvious. For God spoke this through the Apostle Paul to Timothy, who from infancy had known the sacred writings. When Timothy was an infant there were no letters of Paul yet written, let alone recognized as authoritative. There were not yet any written gospels. Πᾶσα γραφή in 2 Tim 3 refers only to what we now call the Old Testament, whatever the exact limits and contours of that was in the early 60s A.D. (indeed, since Timothy is using it, even a Greek translation of the Old Testament). In fact, every passage that uses the word “The Scriptures” (ἡ γραφή/αἱ γραφαί) 37 http://www.topbibleverses.com.

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refers to – and only to – the Old Testament. Included in these are passages that we use to demonstrate the divine source and authority of the ‘Bible,’ such as “The Scriptures cannot be broken” (John 10:35) and “No prophecy of Scripture comes from the will of man” (2 Pet 1:21). Unless these passages dropped out of the sky like the Book of Mormon, or came like water through a pipe as Islam claims the Koran did, then they do not speak directly to the source and authority of the New Testament writings. The move to the authority of the New Testament may be made based on these passages,38 but we must acknowledge and account for the moves that we are making. But the false alternative is a denial of the divine. The consequences of accepting only a human side of Scripture and not recognizing also the divine is evident in the way that the ELCA has dealt with matters such as homosexuality and the church. The document, “Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust,” adopted by the August, 2009 Church-Wide Assembly, ignores the two clear NT references in Romans 1 and 1 Corinthians 6, as well as any reference to the behavior in the Old Testament. This is the case because a prior church study had determined that those passages were exclusively human, spoken into specific settings and contexts in such a way that they have no relevance or application to present-day situations. The “Background Essays on Biblical Texts” from a 2003 Task Force of the ELCA concluded: … the remaining passages speak clearly of same-gender sexual relationships as inherently prohibited … The relationships are themselves “against nature” and contrary to the will of God expressed in creation from the beginning. Other interpreters – on reading the texts with care also – conclude, however, that the same passages pose challenges. Those in Leviticus seem to be the clearest at the purely descriptive level, but as the discussion above has shown, some interpreters question their relevance beyond their time and place.39

Notice the two moves: First, all biblical interpretation is contingent on human readers, and therefore we cannot derive any authoritative meaning from texts; second, they have no relevance ‘beyond their time and place.’ There is nothing ‘divine,’ the texts are entirely humanly conditioned, and therefore they have no authority and no role in that church’s discussion of the homosexuality issue. Again, I hope that the problem is obvious. 38 For example, Jesus connects the authority of the Old Testament “Scriptures” to himself: “You examine the Scriptures (τὰς γραφάς) because you think that in them you have life; it is these very things that are testifying about me” (John 10:35); also Luke 24:27: “And beginning from Moses and from all the prophets he explained to them in all the Scriptures (ἐν πάσαις ταῖς γραφαῖς) the things concerning him.” The writings of the New Testament likewise testify to Jesus as Lord and Christ (e.g., John 20:31) and therefore come from the same source, carry the same authority, and accomplish the same work as “the Scriptures.” 39 Arland F. Hultgren/Walter F. Taylor (Jr.), Background Essay on Biblical Texts for „Journey Together Faithfully, Part Two. The Church and Homosexuality”, ELCA Studies on Sexuality (2003), 3–24, 18.

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So how do we avoid the kind of exegesis we find on ‘Inspirational Bible Verse’ web sites, but at the same time avoid passing off the Scriptures as unclear, opaque, unusable, non-authoritative, and irrelevant? It begins with understanding the nature of the text and its authority. Before I propose a way forward, however, I will state my third prejudgment, which must also be incorporated into our hermeneutics: The reality of the historical nature of the transmission of the text and canon of the Scriptures. My explicit concern is this: The theological a priori we have at times used to argue for the authority of the Scriptures does not address the historical data that we now have regarding the formation of the canon and the manuscripts of the New Testament. We need a way of understanding the authority of Scriptures that is able to deal with the challenges raised by the historical questions of our day. Allow me to begin with Sasse, who raises the basic epistemological question: In the conflicts between Fundamentalism and Modernism our sympathy belongs with those who fight for the truths of the ancient Christian faith, and if we had to choose between the two, we have no doubt as to where our sympathy would lie. But this sympathy with the Fundamentalists dare not hinder us from recognizing that Modernism is the natural, legitimate child of Fundamentalism, even as nothing seems to happen more swiftly than the conversion of a Fundamentalist to extreme Modernism, at least among our young people.40

Sasse wrote this in 1951, and some 44 years later Bart Ehrman describes his conversion, as a young man, from Fundamentalism to Modernism: If one wants to insist that God inspired the very words of scripture, what would be the point if we don’t have the very words of scripture? … this became a problem for my view of inspiration, for I came to realize that it would have been no more difficult for God to preserve the words of scripture than it would have been for him to inspire them in the first place. If he wanted his people to have his words, surely he would have given them to them … The fact that we don’t have the words surely must show, I reasoned, that he did not preserve them for us. And if he didn’t perform that miracle, there seemed to be no reason to think that he performed the earlier miracle of inspiring those words … Before this – starting with my born-again experience in high school, through my fundamentalist days at Moody, and on through my evangelical days at Wheaton – my faith had been based completely on a certain view of the Bible as the fully inspired, inerrant word of God. Now I no longer viewed the Bible that way. 41 The Bible began to appear to me as a very human book.

This book by Ehrman, provocatively titled Misquoting Jesus, caused a rather large stir in evangelical circles and among some in the LCMS as well. It was a NY Times

40 Sasse, Additional Notes, in: Scripture and the Church, 164. 41 Bart D. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (2005), 11.

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bestseller in religion, Ehrman made appearances on late night talk shows, and there is now an entire cottage industry of Evangelicals who ‘respond’ to Ehrman. Why is Ehrman so successful? Why does recognizing that the text and canon of the Scriptures were developed historically cause no end of consternation, and even provoke outrage? I would submit that it is because our hermeneutics does not have a way of adequately dealing with a whole host of issues relating to the authority of Scripture. We (rightly) assert that the Scriptures are ‘inspired’ (again, usually with reference to 2 Tim 3:16). We accept its divine origin and authority. But without an understanding of that Word coming in history, in space and time through and to specific individuals and in specific situations, we risk treating this Word as if it were simply a something like a collection of divine oracles from which we might draw theological conclusions apart from any historical setting or context. What is the history of the church’s reception of the Word? Full treatment is, of course, not possible here. In this essay I will attempt to resolve the problem presented by the text of the New Testament by drawing upon a related issue of textual authority: the development of the NT canon.

The Canon of the New Testament In the 17th century Quenstedt rooted authority primarily in the act of inspiration itself, the autographs, and the presumption of virtually error-free copies: “Although inspiration and divine authority inhered originally in the autographa, these attributes belong to the apographa [copies] by virtue of their derivation, since they were faithfully transcribed from them so that not only the sense but also the words were precisely the same.”42 That is to say, the inspiration of the Spirit guaranteed the authority of the original, and he comes very close to claiming that there are no variants in the manuscripts.43 However, we now know that such a position is not tenable. Quenstedt was writing at a time when there was little information about the New Testament manuscript tradition. There were no Greek New Testaments that had a critical apparatus listing the hundreds of thousands of alternative readings. No one knew about the different endings of Mark, or the absence of the pericope de adultera in the earliest manuscripts. There were no competing editions, all Greek New Testaments were essentially reprints of the Textus receptus. Quenstedt could assume that if there was a problem with the copies, then those problems were not

42 Cited from Theodore P. Letis, The Protestant Dogmaticians and the Late Princeton School on the Status of the Sacred A p o g r a p h a, in: id., The Ecclesiastical Text: Text Criticism, Biblical Authority, and the Popular Mind (1997), 38. 43 In fact, Quenstedt apparently makes this claim as well: “Not only the canonical books of the sacred volumes themselves, but even the letters, points, and words of the original text survive without any corruption, that is, the Hebrew text of the O[ld] T[estament]...and also the Greek text of the [N]ew [T]estament...have been preserved by the divine providence complete and uncorrupted.” Cited from Letis, The Ecclesiastical Text, 38.

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significant enough to cause any difficulty or concern. As pointed out in the introduction to this essay, Robert Preus notes that Quenstedt’s statement is rather uninformed: But he never faces the issue as it existed even in his time, for he fails to take into consideration what will be the case if the copy is not at all times accurate. The dogmaticians of the seventeenth century were scarcely informed and were not especially interested in the subject of textual criticism.44

The “consideration” that Preus notes was never dealt with by the 17th century dogmaticians is now upon us, as new tools and methodologies thrust new text before us. It will not be helpful to continue to dismiss the problem, for if we do we will never be able to reconcile God working in history with his ever-present Word and authority, even in spite of the exigencies of history. Critics of the Scriptures and their inspiration will be able to demolish, and in fact already have, this naïve argumentation. And it has caused doubt among our people. Furthermore, our failure to take into account the textual problems may mislead us into an over-simplification. If we assume that we have the perfect wording of the text, we might assume that we will have a perfect understanding of that text. Some 250 years later, however, after the great 19th century Greek New Testament editions of Tischendorf and Westcott-Hort replaced the Textus receptus, Pieper’s Dogmatics uses argumentation similar to Quenstedt’s regarding the variations among the manuscripts.45 He starts with the assertion that the integrity of the biblical text is assured both a priori (that, is on the basis of passages such as John 8:31–32 and 17:20, where Jesus urges his disciples to “remain in my word”), and a posteriori, that no doctrine,46 and I emphasize that he states that no doctrine, rather than the text itself nor the meaning of any individual passage, has been affected by the variant readings. That no ‘doctrine’ has been affected by the readings discovered to this point in the manuscript tradition is still true, and such a statement may be helpful for maintaining doctrinal formulations. This is so because we have a ‘Scripture interprets Scripture’ hermeneutic. However, this does not resolve the problem created when manuscripts present different words in a passage used for those doctrinal formulations. For example, John 1:18 is a key passage for Christology, yet there is considerable uncertainty regarding the precise wording. The Greek manuscript tradition attests to four readings:

44 Robert Preus, Inspiration of Scripture, 48–49; emphasis added. 45 Francis Pieper, Christian Dogmatics (1950–1953), 1, 237–239. 46 If the statement were made that no ‘dogma’ was affected by the variants, this would be stronger, since ‘dogma’ is not dependent on the interpretation of any single passage. I am using the term ‘dogma’ in this sense: “In the accepted Christian meaning the term signifies a religious truth to be established by Divine Revelation and defined by the Church.” Cross, F.L./E.A. Livingstone (ed.), The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, (1997). s.v. ‘Dogma.’

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μονογενὴς θεός ὁ μονογενὴς θεός ὁ μονογενὴς υἱός εἰ μὴ ὁ μονογενὴς θεός

The meaning of this passage is, of course, significantly affected by the choice of wording. However, Christology is not affected because other passages, which do not have variant readings, also teach that Jesus Christ is God (John 1:1) and the unique Son of God (John 3:16, 18). But when called upon to preach John 1:18, which of the manuscripts and editions do we preach from? That is to say, which exact words are inspired and authoritative? The weakness of Pieper’s “no doctrine is affected” argument for dealing with the problem of the exact wording of the text seems evident to Pieper himself, since he knows that the autographs are not available to us. He therefore grounds the certainty of the Scriptures not in the words, but in the meaning: So we know a priori, before any investigation, from the promise and the testimony of Christ, that in the Scriptures now at the disposal of the Church we have a reliable text, or in other words (was dasselbe ist), the authentic doctrine of the Apostles and Prophets, that is, of God, in spite of the variae lectiones in the copies.47

Although the topic Pieper is dealing with is the multiple readings in the manuscript tradition, he does not actually resolve the problem. Rather, discussion about the reliability of the ‘text’ switches to discussion about the reliability of ‘doctrine.’ Pieper supports this statement with the common claim – and rightly understood, still true – that no doctrine is affected by the variants in the manuscripts: “Compare the newer critical editions … with the textus receptus … and you will be completely cured of the fear that the collection of many thousands of variant readings which modern textual criticism has recorded demand a change in a single Christian doc48 trine.” But this seems to leave us only with a text that gets us close enough for doctrine, he does not provide an argument that can ‘prove’ that the exact words of the Greek text being used can be considered inspired. Regarding Pieper’s views on this issue, Rast and Knepper conclude: “[Pieper] did not limit the authority and divine character of the Scriptures to the original autographs.”49 This observation is correct, but one wonders if the argumentation provided by Pieper is still convincing in light of the realities of the state of the text and its modern editions.50 This lack

47 Pieper, Christian Dogmatics, 1, 239; (emphasis added). 48 Pieper, Christian Dogmatics, 1, 239. 49 Lawrence A. Rast/Grant A. Knepper, Collecting Autographs: Missouri’s Assumption of Princeton’s Doctrine of the A u t o g r a p h a, in: Dean O. Wenthe et al. (ed.), All Theology is Christology: Essays in Honor of David P. Scaer (2000), 364. 50 Martin R. Noland diagnoses the fundamental shortcoming of Pieper’s attempts to respond to Rationalistic challenges through the appeal to the testimonium Spiritus Sancti, an appeal that, Noland notes, “is not persuasive to anyone who has imbibed from the fountains of modern theology or

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of clarity in switching between doctrine and text, autograph and copy, depending on the argument, leads both to confusion and, more importantly, uncertainty as to whether or not the text in front of me on my desk is authoritative. Where Pieper is careful, later dogmaticians in the LCMS adopted foreign concepts and terminology in their discussion of this issue. According to Rast and Knepper, beginning with Paul Kretzmann (and perhaps earlier), the distinction between the “inspired autographs” and the “copies” is “precisely the language of Princeton and, we might add, of Fundamentalism.”51 In 1944 Theodore Engelder, another dogmatics professor at Concordia Seminary, continued this line of argumentation in The Scripture Cannot be Broken: Six Objections to Verbal Inspiration Examined in the Light of Scripture.52 Thirteen pages of this book are spent on what he labels, “The variant reading sophistry.” He describes this as the argument that, “Because we have no reliable Bible text … consequently, verbal inspiration must go by the board.” (181). Like Pieper, he concludes, “The fact that our copies offer a multitude of variant readings has no bearing on the thesis that everything written by the holy writers was verbally inspired and remains verbally inspired. We insist that these two matters be kept separate.” (182). Now, this presents an obvious problem. We have no original manuscript, nor does Engelder supply a way to get from the copies back to the autographs. Engelder acknowledges this, though he dismisses the problem by analogy: The laws of the land are effective and in force, even though very few have actually read the original laws as passed by the legislature. So, he says, “The Bible did not lose its force, its authority, the divine power of its words, through its transmission to us by way of written or printed copies.” (192). Here is where exegetes become uncomfortable. Having a text that is “good enough for doctrine” is not the same as being certain that we have the precise wording of a text as we do our teaching and preaching. Engelder’s solution does not resolve the problem of the lack of an autograph. Rast and Knepper argue that this perspective came to frame conservative Lutheran discussion of the topic: “Thus by the year 1958, the doctrinal formulation first emphasized by the theologians of the Princeton Seminary came to be approved by the very heart of conservative Lutheranism.”53 Ehrman’s book challenges the kind of argumentation for Scriptural authority described above. And the people in our classrooms and pews, who have been taught by us and by our students, have had their faith rocked to the core by Ehrman and his manuscripts, and Elaine Pagels and her gnostic gospels, and by the “Gospel of philosophy.” Martin R. Noland, Walther and the Revival of Confessional Lutheranism, CTQ 75 (2011), 214–215. 51 Rast/Knepper, Collecting Autographs, 365. 52 Theodore Edward William Engelder, Scripture Cannot Be Broken: Six Objections to Verbal Inspiration Examined in Light of Scripture (1944). 53 Rast/Knepper, Collecting Autographs, 368. Later on this same page, Rast and Knepper raise “several more pressing questions” which the Lutheran church must deal with, including: “does adopting the ‘style’ of Fundamentalist constructions regarding inerrancy threaten the Orthodox Lutheran substance.” The authors do not provide an answer to this important question.

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Judas,” and by The Davinci Code. To use Sasse’s metaphor, we have avoided shipwreck on the cliffs of a rationalistic, history-of-religion’s understanding of the Scriptures only to crash into the rocks of a super-naturalistic, docetic understanding of the Scriptures. Again Preus’ rare criticism of the 17th century dogmaticians is important here: The dogmaticians do not consider the inspiration of the apographa [copies] except occasionally in their discussion of the authenticity of Scripture. This fact perhaps accounts for their rather limited and unsatisfactory presentation of the whole question.54

In our present-day context, our task is to remain faithful to the core goal of maintaining the inspiration and authority of the biblical text – passed down to us in apographa and printed editions – and to develop a response to recent challenges to the authority of Scripture that is satisfactory from a biblical, creedal (Lutheran) perspective.

Toward A Lutheran Approach I propose as a way forward that issues of the text are identical to issues of the historical development of the canon of the New Testament. My starting point is an observation made in an essay on the Lutheran understanding of the canon by J. A. O. Preus II: The same Scriptures which convinced the early Christians that they were truly Godbreathed books convince us of the same, if we approach them with the attitude which Christ requires of all those who will worship Him and be His disciples. Perhaps the Lord in His wisdom has dealt with the Canon in the same way as He did with the text. There is confusion, uncertainty, and a host of unanswered questions; yet the Scripture continues to accomplish its mighty acts among men. There is a peculiar combination of faith and history involved in the study of the Canon. We can be scientific and scholarly up to a point, but at that point faith must take over. Where faith is lacking, not only the Canon falls, but so does the Bible and ultimately the Christ to whom the Scripture testifies. Strict logic and adherence to probable historical data will go part of the way only. That is the reason that much modern scientific theology has failed.55

Key to an older Lutheran approach to questions of the authority of the Scriptures is to view them as God’s Word spoken in the church, by and to those who first heard the Gospel message from Christ himself. The content of the writing (clear Gospel teaching) and evidence of early use in the church were important elements; the act of ‘inspiration,’ narrowly understood, was not in question. However, the ‘act of 54 Robert Preus, Inspiration of Scripture, 49. 55 J.A.O. Preus II, The New Testament Canon in the Lutheran Dogmaticians, 30.

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inspiration’ in and of itself was at the same time not exclusive evidence for the authenticity and authority of a given book. This was exemplified by Luther, particularly in his prefaces to his German translation56 and then developed more formally by Chemnitz in his Examen Concilii Tridentini. Furthermore, in our generation of skeptics, to claim ‘inspiration’ without any evidence of historical use is unlikely to be persuasive. Chemnitz’ discussion remains among the most comprehensive and helpful discussions of biblical authority. It was written in the context of debate concerning exactly which texts are authoritative and how is that determined – the very question that confronts us today, as we wrestle with changing texts and non-canonical ‘gospels.’ Chemnitz’ context is the debate with Rome, the Council of Trent, and their claim that a single text (the Vulgate translation, including the apocrypha of the Old Testament and the antilegomena of the New Testament) was authoritative. Chemnitz places the locus De Scriptura first, even though this was not the first canon of the Council, because he realized its central importance. Chemnitz, however, does not default to an argument that some texts were ‘inspired’ and some were not; he realizes that this is the very issue: how does one determine what is, in fact, inspired? To this question Chemnitz answers: The canonical Scriptures has its eminent authority chiefly from this: that it is divinely inspired, 2 Tim 3:16, that is, that it was not brought forth by the will of men that the men of God, moved by the Holy Spirit, both spoke and wrote, 2 Peter 1:21. But in order that this whole necessary matter might be firmly established against all impostures, God chose very certain definite persons that they should write and adorned them with many miracles and divine testimonies that there should be no doubt that what they wrote was inspired … And as the ancient church at the time of Moses, Joshua, and the prophets, so also the primitive church at the time of the apostles was able to testify with certainty which writings were divinely inspired. For she knew the authors whom God had commended to the church by special testimonies; she knew also which were the writings which had been composed by them; and from the things which she had received by oral tradition from the apostles she could judge that the things which had been written were the same teaching which the apostles had delivered with the living voice.57

For Chemnitz, God is the source of authority, but that individual writings were in fact, from God had to be ‘judged’ and verified by the church, both as to the human 56 E.g., Luther’s preface to James: “Although this epistle might be helped and an interpretation devised for his justification by works, it cannot be defended in its application to works [2:23] of Moses’ statement in Genesis 15[:6]. For Moses is speaking here only of Abraham’s faith, and not of his works, as St. Paul demonstrates in Romans 4. This fault, therefore, proves that this epistle is not the work of any apostle.” Apostolic content is the main criteria for Luther, who was quite willing to discuss the historical reception of the individual books as additional evidence. See J.A.O. Preus II, The New Testament Canon in the Lutheran Dogmaticians, 9–10, 24–25. 57 Martin Chemnitz, Examination of the Council of Trent (1971), 176; (emphasis added).

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authors and to their content. This took place historically, and Chemnitz goes to great lengths in his ensuing discussion to cite historical evidence from the church fathers, beginning with the earliest then available, that affirms this process of ‘judging’ the authorship and content of the writings. I would urge the same approach today: That we assume inspiration as an a priori, and then do the challenging and difficult work of going back to the earliest and most reliable sources in order to ‘judge’ and verify which readings are, in fact, apostolic. I will demonstrate some examples below. The pattern laid out by Chemnitz was the framework used, to greater and lesser degrees, by subsequent Lutheran dogmaticians (at least until the 20th century). A thorough treatment of the issue of canon in the Lutheran dogmatic tradition by J. A. O. Preus II concludes that proper use of historical criteria was always considered essential: A study of the forgoing material reveals that basically there are four criteria which appear in the thinking of the dogmaticians: 1) content, 2) apostolic authorship, or supervision, 3) the use of the book in the early history of the church, and 4) inspiration. The dogmaticians all use these criteria, so that actually there is not such a great 58 difference among them as would first appear.

Item 3 in particular is the item that I believe needs to be revived in our teaching today as we deal with issues of canon and textual problems. He goes on to note, however, that this criterion, and in fact the first three, lost importance in the later dogmaticians: The later dogmaticians emphasized the criteria of inspiration more than some of the other criteria and more than did the early dogmaticians. Yet it was by no means their only emphasis … the differences among the dogmaticians was not one of exclusiveness but of emphasis.59

To bring historical issues to the question of the inspiration and authority of the Scriptures is, therefore, an important and helpful approach. Study of the history of both the canon and the text, in particular that of the New Testament (for which

58 J.A.O. Preus II, The New Testament Canon in the Lutheran Dogmaticians, 24. He states again in summary (27–28): “It is important to note, too, that no dogmatician is satisfied to build his case on only one of these criteria. As Calov says, they must be taken collectively. No single one of these criteria is sufficient by itself to establish the canonicity of a book. Inspiration cannot be posited of a book, regardless of its excellent contents, unless it is known from the witness of the early church that the book came from an apostle or one working under an apostle. Apostolic authorship cannot guarantee the acceptance of a book, as in the case of the EpistIe to the Laodiceans, unless there is the additional evidence that the book had strong testimony from the early church, and contained divine doctrine.” 59 J.A.O. Preus II, The New Testament Canon in the Lutheran Dogmaticians, 25–26.

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there is an abundance of historical evidence) does not call inspiration into question. Indeed it allows us to confirm what the ancient church received as God’s Word.

The NT Canon in Historical and Theological Perspective The extent of the canon, in particular in the second and third centuries, was not as obvious as it now seems to us, comfortable as we are with our twenty-seven-book Novum Testamentum Graece, always the same books, always in the same sequence. Recall that, in the early church, discussion of the shape and extent of the canon continued for centuries. The homologoumena (essentially, the Four Gospels and the Thirteen Pauline Letters) were firm and certain from the earliest periods. However, other writings, the antilegomena, were questioned into the fourth century and even into the sixteenth century; other writings were judged to be notha, or spurious. The most detailed discussion of the situation in the early church is provided by Eusebius (Eusebius, H.E. 3.3), and his terminology and lists are repeated, unaltered, by Chemnitz in both his Examen and his Enchiridion (a handbook for pastors). That is to say, for several hundred years the church debated whether or not some writings were inspired and authoritative. 60 Some books that are not today regarded as canonical were allowed to be used and copied as if they were canonical. For example, the Codex Alexandrinus (fifth century) has one of the earliest lists of the books of the Old and New Testaments. All our present-day New Testament writings are included in that list under the heading καινὴ διαθήκη. But also included in the ‘New Testament’ list are 1 & 2 Clement, writings used in some churches but not in others, and of course not in ours today. After the New Testament books are named, the list in the Codex Alexandrinus concludes with the words ὁμοῦ βίβλια (“the whole of the books,” a phrase never used in the patristic literature). This indicates the end of the list of canonical books. Beneath this phrase is the title Psalms of Solomon, a writing also used by some in the early church but not included in either the Council of Trent’s or the Greek Orthodox list of canonical books. The Psalms of Solomon were therefore not listed among either “The New Testament” or among the canonical books in Codex Alexandrinus – but 1 & 2 Clement were part of the New Testament list. Other manuscripts reflect this uncertainty about the relative status of some writings. Another example is the Codex Sinaiticus (fourth century), which includes The Shepherd of Hermas and The Epistle of Barnabas without demarcation of secondary authority. Some churches in the early centuries read the Diatessaron in place of the four gospels; a handful even read the Gospel of Peter, at least until the newly-appointed bishop Serapion read it for himself.61 1 and 2 Peter and Jude are copied in the same manuscript as The Nativity of

60 A helpful recent study of the canonical development is John Barton, Holy Writings, Sacred Text: The Canon of Early Christianity (1998). 61 See Eusebius, H.E. 6.12.

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Mary, Odes of Solomon, Homily on the Passover by Melito of Sardis, and the Apology of Phileas, all second century writings (in the manuscript that is today labeled P72).62 Apparently at least the users of this manuscript saw 1 & 2 Peter and Jude as having the same kind of status as several non-canonical writings produced in the second century. All this exemplifies that it was centuries before the scope of the antilegomena was sorted out. While this sorting process was occurring, the teaching of the church – especially its Christocentric, Gospel focus – continued to be based on the writings of sure and certain authority, the homolegoumena. Chemnitz summarizes the early church position on this as follows: No dogma which does not have a certain and clear foundation in the canonical books dare be constructed from these [antilegomena] books. Nothing that is in controversy may be proved from these books if there are no proofs and confirmations in the canonical books. But what is said in these books must be explained and understood according to the analogy of what is clearly set down in the canonical books. There can be no doubt that this is the meaning of the ancient Church.63

It is worth repeating that the homologoumena – one might say, the ‘core writings’ – were never in dispute. The four canonical gospels were never questioned and were universally recognized as authoritative at least by the mid-second century (only some fifty years after the traditional date of the Gospel According to John). The thirteen Pauline letters were universally recognized even earlier – no later than the last decades of the first century, and perhaps even earlier. Even after the canon has been relatively clearly established among Christians – perhaps more by the printing press than by any church decree or council – Lutherans still recognize that there are three categories of books. First, the homologoumena, that is, writings which are of primary authority (writings of the ‘first rank’); antilegomena books, which are of secondary authority, only to be used once we’ve got things straight according to the homologoumena, and third notha, that is spurious or apocryphal writings, which have no authority but may be good, pious writings which a Christian may read with benefit.

Proposal for a Canonical-Textual Approach I propose that we apply this traditional canonical distinction not only the books but also to the individual words in those books. That is to say, the variant readings presented by the manuscript tradition can be classified as to their canonical status.

62 A review of the presence of various disputed books in NT manuscripts is provided in James Keith Elliott, Manuscripts, Codex, and Canon, JSNT 19 (1997), 105–123. 63 Chemnitz, Examination of the Council of Trent, 19. A modern Lutheran appropriation of this distinction is offered by Voelz, What Does This Mean?, 150–154 (titled, “The Canon in Hermeneutical Perspective – Part I”).

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Individual readings may be classified as ‘homologoumena’ readings – those ‘used by all’ the manuscripts and firmly in the text. Others would have to be considered ‘antilegomena’ readings – those ‘spoken against’ by the manuscript tradition and not to be considered firmly authoritative. And finally ‘notha’ readings – those readings that are clearly spurious, secondary additions or alterations and therefore not to be considered authoritative. This ‘canonical-textual approach’ allows us to view the changing of the wording of new editions within the theological and historical framework that the church has always viewed the biblical text. It helps us to realize that we are still today sorting out the antilegomena from the homolegoumena as we continue to sort out the best readings from those which are later alterations in the manuscripts. But this process of sorting the canonical status of the biblical writings is something that the church had to wrestle with for centuries, indeed throughout the Reformation period and even today with the recovery of ‘lost gospels.’ This framework will help us to deal with the problem of a regularly changing standard Greek edition of the New Testament, just as it has helped the church deal with canonical questions. There is historical precedent for handling textual problems with canonical categories. For example, a group of medieval manuscripts labeled “Family 1” are the result of a scholarly edition which may have been produced as early as the fourth century. This group of manuscripts has a unique note immediately at the end of Mark 16:8: The evangelist is finished up to here in some of the copies, up to which point also Eusebius Pamphilius considered [the text] canonical (ἐκανόνισεν). But in many [copies] also these things are added.64

A second parallel to a ‘canonical-textual approach’ lies in the way that several church fathers dealt with difficult textual problems. Specifically, when confronted with two readings they would often simply dismiss one of them, regarding one as ‘homologoumena’ and one as ‘notha.’ But significantly, in a number of places Irenaeus, Jerome, and especially Origen would offer comments on both readings. For example, commenting on Heb 2:9 Origen interprets both the reading “Christ died apart from God” and “Christ died by the grace of God,” the difference being whether one reads χάριτι θεοῦ or χωρίς θεοῦ.65 The fact that Origen is willing to com64 Greek text provided ad loc. in all editions of the Nestle-Aland text. That Eusebius considered Mark 16:9–20 as spurious is demonstrated by his letter, Quaestiones ad Marinum; translation and discussion in James A. Kellhoffer, The Witness of Eusebius ad Marinum and Other Christian Writings to Text-Critical Debates concerning the Original Conclusion to Mark’s Gospel, ZNW 92 (2001), 78–112. 65 The most comprehensive study of the discussion of textual variants in the church fathers is found in Amy M. Donaldson, Explicit References to New Testament Variant Readings Among Greek and Latin Church Fathers (2009). Her discussion of Origen’s commenting on multiple readings (also Rom 5:14; 8:22) is found on pp. 99–100.

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ment on both readings indicates that he is working with ‘antilegomena,’ as it were, with readings that are not yet settled, but either may yet prove itself to be canonical. So he explains both, just in case.

Exegesis in light of the state of the text In practice, then, how would this work, if we were to bring canonical questions to bear on the matter of the text? In the vast majority of cases, when all the study and research is complete, there is really no question as to which is the wording that we should use for teaching and preaching (even though some or many manuscripts may have an alternative reading). These are clearly ‘homologoumena.’ On the other hand, there are some places where the archetypical reading is in question: Does John 1:18, for example, call Jesus the μονογενὴς θεός or the μονογενὴς υἱός? I can tell you what the Nestle-Aland text chooses to print – at least until the revised text of John is released. I could also look at what commentaries decide, and I can render my own judgment. But ask me to examine the question again tomorrow, perhaps with new evidence and perhaps even with a new edition of the Greek New Testament, and I might give you a different answer. In these cases, we must concede that, to this point, we can consider either reading only ‘antilegomena’ – that is, a reading which is spoken against. I emphasize, however, that it is spoken against not by the critic but by the manuscripts themselves. There is no ‘original text’ out there, separate from the manuscripts themselves, which we can access to determine the right reading. All we have are the manuscripts, with their differences. At some point, further research or manuscript finds might lead to a consensus that one reading was indeed the one received by the church – perhaps here θεός might then slip into the apocryphal, as did the The Shepherd of Hermas. Until that consensus is reached, however, I would consider either μονογενὴς θεός or μονογενὴς υἱός as antilegomena – the church is not certain which is authoritative because the church’s manuscripts are not certain which is authoritative. Therefore, in our teaching neither reading is independently authoritative, but each has a secondary authority. Turning to John 1:14 and 3:16, for example, quickly answers the question of whether Jesus is the μονογενὴς υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ; turning to John 1:1 quickly answers the question about his divinity. If those questions come up, I would turn first to those certain, undoubted readings, and secondarily to John 1:18. How, then is it decided which reading is apostolic and has been received as such by the church? The church has been and continues to be led by the Spirit into all truth as it hears ever again the Word. And the church has always taken the greatest care to ensure that what it teaches and preaches is indeed apostolic. That work continues today, in light of new evidence and historical study. However, it is not the assuredness of our historical judgments or our methodologies that guarantees the

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Word but the Lord of the Church who gave that Word and who continues to work through that Word, among whom that Word continues to be used for his purposes.66 In large measure, which passages are homolegoumena and which are antilegomena is not difficult to sort out. Neither are the notha – the spurious and false readings which may not harm the reader but are not accepted as authoritative in the church of God. These do create the most discomfort: The Endings of Mark; the Pericope de adultera, the Comma Johanneum. We already know what the Greek Orthodox Church decided – that has become enshrined in what we call the “Majority Text” or the Textus receptus. Rome went a different way; the Vulgate has a textform very similar to that of Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus. Twenty-first century Christianity has tended to follow the latter track – Protestantism of every stripe (save Baptists and Fundamentalists), the Roman Catholic Church, and even at least to some degree the Greek Orthodox Church have accepted the ‘standard text,’ essentially, the Nestle-Aland text (which historically has been based primarily on Sinaiticus and Vaticanus). Indeed, if one were to claim that the text that should be used is the one that is most widely used by the church, one would have to recognize the Nestle-Aland text as the only text in the history of Christianity to receive such broad recognition. Yet the Nestle text exists only in ink, paper, bits and bytes. It will change, or another will take its place, and this is necessary, because it is wrong in many places.

Resolving the problem of the lack of access to an autograph As noted above, the new Nestle-Aland text claims to reproduce only an Ausgangstext, not the ‘original text’ or the ‘autographs.’ Can we teach and preach from this edition if it is not ‘the autograph’? Can we have an authoritative text without a single, externally verified ‘perfect’ manuscript or reconstruction or critical edition? I am certain that we can, because the church has done exactly this from the beginning, even if we have not acknowledged it. While the 6000 or so copies of the Greek New Testament are remarkably, even stunningly, similar, nevertheless there are in places significant differences that affect the words and meaning of a passage. The church knew this (see Augustine’s comment, footnote 27 above). Yet they did not have difficulty continuing to consider the text in front of them as the inspired Word of God. Even in modern times, twenty-eight editions of the standard Greek New 66 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 334, highlights the problem of a faulty historical approach: “The historian approaches his texts the way an investigating magistrate approaches his witnesses. But simply establishing facts, elicited from possibly prejudiced witnesses, does not make the historian. What makes the historian is the significance of what he finds … We have already shown that traditional hermeneutics artificially limited the dimensions of the phenomenon, and perhaps the same is true of the historical approach. Is it not the case that the really important things precede any application of historical methods? A historical hermeneutics that does not make the nature of the historical question the central thing, and does not inquire into a historian’s motives in examining historical material, lacks its most important element.”

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Testament have been published, and the church has been able to continue to teach and preach faithfully even with the changes to the text that each new edition brings. Later Lutheran dogmaticians worked with the assumption that there never was really any question about the extent of the canon, that the act of inspiration guaranteed a verifiably perfect text form, and that the variations in the manuscripts were not a problem. As Robert Preus notes, “Gerhard … apparently did not understand that this problem, if it was to be a real problem, was definitely a question of the divine authority of these disputed books as well as one of authorship.”67 We can no longer work with those assumptions, for the evidence is too great to dismiss. The untested assumption that we tend to operate with is that what we have in our BHS and our Nestle-Text is the original text – or at least close enough that we don’t have to worry about the precise wording. My concern is that to speak of a single act of inspiration (in much the same way that Islam describes the Koran) that produced a set of single normative books that now comprise the ‘Bible’ without fully acknowledging and dealing with the historical evidence leaves us vulnerable to rhetoric which denies the authority of the biblical text. But God works in history. The Spirit created the church through the power of what was spoken by the apostles (1 Cor 1:21; Acts 2:38–41). That word continued to be taught, in some cases via specific writings produced by the apostles and their co-workers (2 Thess 1:1; 2:1), and in other cases via indirect authorship, as Mark (who was not an apostle) summarizes Peter’s preaching or Luke researches and investigates what was ‘passed down’ by the eyewitnesses. These writings would have been read, out loud, to the church at Corinth (1 Cor 1:2) or Theophilus (Luke 1:4) or unnamed recipients (as in the case of Matthew and Mark). Subsequently, copies were made by the church and read even to churches that were not the original intended audience (e.g., Laodicea in Col 4:16). This already is the beginning of the process of canonization and selecting some writings as authoritative and others not – as indeed the church did not receive Paul’s letter to the Laodiceans as canonical. In these churches that final version was heard and was received as the Word of God, and handed down to us as normative Scripture by those who believed through the apostolic preaching of that Word. And all of this takes place through and among living, breathing human beings, in history. The older Lutheran dogmatic tradition, exemplified by Chemnitz, was careful not to base the argumentation for the authority of Scripture solely on ‘inspiration’ through a single act of ‘dictation’ by the Spirit to the penman.68 It seems that later 67 See Preus’ criticisms of the dogmaticians on this matter: “The views of the dogmaticians regarding canonicity seem to misunderstand and therefore fail to meet the issues of the question as they existed in the ancient church” (xi); “Their views (starting with Gerhard) show a marked departure from the position not only of Luther, but also of Chemnitz” (xi); “Quenstedt does not consider the problem of the antilegomena seriously, since he regards the problem as one of authorship rather than one of authority.” (Robert Preus, Inspiration of Scripture, xi–xv.) 68 Robert Preus, Inspiration of Scripture, 71–73. Cf. also David Scaer, The Word Was God: Inerrancy or Christology, in: Tapani Simojoki (ed.), Built on the Foundation of the Apostles and Prophets:

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Lutheran writers oversimplified the understanding of ‘inspiration’ in an attempt (indeed, a much-needed attempt) to preserve biblical authority over and against Rationalist claims. But in so doing they seem to have adopted, as Rast and Knepper argue, non-Lutheran categories and terminology, and have left us without the resources to confess the inspiration of Scripture in a way that addresses recent historical evidence. I am not trying to impute false motive to the dogmaticians; so far as I can tell they never considered what the act of writing a letter, or a gospel narrative, let alone the Psalter or the Book of the 12 would have looked like, nor did they have the historical resources that we have available to us today. This is not a radical way to think about texts in the ancient world, however. We can comfort ourselves with our dogmatic formulations based on a single, original autograph, and repeat those formulations to our hearers, and in many cases that is enough. Soon enough, however, there will be another Bart Ehrman or Gospel of Judas or History Channel show that will cause the people in our congregations to question their trust in the Scriptures. And their faith, firmly based on the Christ made known in the Scriptures, becomes shaken. Certainty is lost, because we have instructed them to place their faith in a hypothetical reconstruction of how the Scriptures were produced and copied, which, however, is not based in history nor, ultimately, in the One who works in history – even at times in ways that are not comfortable to us.

Grounded in the Gospel Our hermeneutics must ground its view of the authority of the Scriptures in nothing other than the work of Jesus Christ, focused in his death and resurrection,69 who sends the Spirit to lead us into all truth. To this point we have not talked about the Christ. Much should be said here, however the purpose of this essay is not to develop a theology of the Word but to deal with the hermeneutical problem of the New Testament text as we have it. Sasse’s last published article on the topic pointed out that … it is only by receiving the Bible from God’s hand as his Word, as it is, and not by trying to make it what our reason expects of a divine book that we will be in a position to believe and understand it as the book of eternal truth.70

Sola Scriptura in Context. The Second International Symposium on Lutheran Theology, Westfield House, Cambridge, 15-18 Aug, 2012 (2013), 57 n. 36, who notes, “Writers of the New Testament were not blank slates which needed to be supernaturally informed of the commonly held beliefs of the early communities and which were in every sense the Spirit’s Word.” 69 A helpful recent attempt to lay out what a Christocentric grounding of biblical theology might entail is Peter Nafzger, “These Are Written”: Toward a Cruciform Theology of Scripture (2013). 70 Hermann Sasse, Concerning the Bible’s Inerrancy, in: Jeffrey J. Kloha/Ronald Feuerhahn (ed.), Scripture and the Church: Selected Essays of Hermann Sasse (1995), 408. Originally published as Zur Irrtumslosigkeit, Kirchenblatt 116 (1966), 206; LuthBl 19 (1966), 111–112.

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That is not resignation. To receive the Bible from God’s hand as his Word, as it is, with all the messiness of its writing and gathering into canon and copying, is not capitulation to the skeptics. It is a statement of confidence. That here God does his work, here, in my space and my time, by this his Word – even in this edition of the text – which makes us his people.71 The early church fathers and older Lutheran dogmaticians did not see this as a flaw, a weakness of the argument for the authority of the text. Rather, they saw it as the way that God has chosen to deal with his people, by coming to them and working among them in ways that are not obvious, even in ways that are “foolishness” (1 Cor 1:20–25) and not as glorious as we might prefer. The early fathers referred to this as the ‘accommodation’ or ‘condescension’ (Greek συγκατάβασις) of the Spirit to the authors and their hearers.72 This took place in every working of the Spirit, from the ‘moving’ of men to speak his Word, to researching and compiling by the authors (Luke 1:3), to reading it to the churches (Col 4:16), to copying and passing it down, even to our own day. In the same way God in Christ, and God speaking, is not obvious. Jesus Christ looked like any other human; he sounded like any other teacher. We have a God who comes to us, not as we would have a divine figure to be – mighty, in power, awing the nations before him. But as the incarnate Son of God he is humbling himself, participating in our space and our time and our flesh, even to death on a cross, to restore us in love. And so it is with his Word. It comes to us not as we may want it to be, but participating in our time, and in our world. What of the Bible? What of all those manuscripts? What of the ‘original text’? The evidence that we now have (evidence that Luther did not have) is that Mark 16:9–20 was added in the second century. That does not make its content wrong nor suggest that its content contradicts Scripture. It is just not Scripture. It is notha. And we can find textually certain passages that discuss baptism, spreading the good news, drinking poison, and handling snakes (Acts 28:1–6). John 7:53–8:11, the Woman Caught in Adultery, is a free-floating story about Jesus that in older manuscripts is not connected to John (and often connected to Luke). It may portray an actual event in Jesus’ life, though we have no way of knowing this. Rather it is notha, and should not be used in the church’s

71 Robert Preus, The Theology of Post-Reformation Lutheranism: A Study of Theological Prolegomena (1970), 304, summarizes the Post-Reformation position similarly: “a book of Scripture is authoritative by virtue of its inspiration. The church witnesses to this fact, and insofar as she does so can make a beginning toward convincing us that certain books are canonical; but ultimately the Scripture must testify of itself, and the Holy Spirit must convince us through the Scriptures. What long ago persuaded the hearers of the Word to believe the preaching of the prophets and apostles now persuades us to believe their writings.” 72 See Robert Preus, Inspiration of Scripture, 62–64 and 195–197. With more vigor Sasse emphasizes this point, for the authors, for the readers, and for the process of receiving and transmitting the Scriptures. See Inspiration and Inerrancy – Some Preliminary Thoughts, RTR 19 (1960), 47– 48 (repr. CJ 36 [2010], 115–118); also his Hexaemeron: Theology and Science with the Church Fathers, RTR 17 (1958), 65–73.

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teaching and preaching.73 Elizabeth may well have sung the Magnificat, not Mary.74 Jesus may have been “angry” and not “compassionate” in Mark 1:41. Romans 15 and 16 are probably not often the source for pastoral care or theology. With large parts of the ancient church, we can follow Christ faithfully without Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, or Revelation. At the same time, pick any NT manuscript from the six thousand Greek copies that we have today, and those words will urge Christ. Pick any of the ten thousand Latin manuscripts, and those words will urge Christ, or most modern translations (those which can legitimately claim to be a translation). The Spirit caused the church to hear the voice of the shepherd even through those initial spoken words – sermons, in a sense. At times those words were handed down in poorly copied, mistake-riddled manuscripts. In spite of this, however, the Word given by the Spirit continued to have its way with the church as it was led by her Lord through history. The final words of J. A. O. Preus’ essay on the NT canon supply a helpful summary of the way forward: … we need have more of the dogmaticians’ reverence for Scripture as the Godbreathed, authoritative Word, which we recognize on the basis of its authorship, human and divine, its content, and the history of its use through the ages of the church.75

In answer to the question, then, are the words printed in my Nestle text authoritative? Yes they are, because it is the text that the church has received and used as the inspired Word throughout her history. Christ her resurrected Lord is preached in that text, and through that text the church has heard the apostolic teaching and preaching. The church is the body of Christ that was created by that external Word and is sustained by that external Word. And this church recognizes that the Lord works through that very text as the Lord of creation unfolds history. This binds the authority of Scripture to Christ, and recognizes also that the church is the people among whom this Word is spoken, received, effective, and handed down. The toofrequent alternative is to ground authority in a humanly constructed set of criteria, through which we can view the text as authoritative because we can prove it to be so.76 This approach cannot be accepted because it removes authority from the text itself – and from Christ. Furthermore, ‘proofs’ of historical decisions, whether 73 Note that the Sunday lectionary system used in the LCMS since at least The Lutheran Hymnal includes neither Mark 19:9–20 nor John 7:53–8:11 as part of the Scriptures to be read in worship for preaching. 74 The most thorough review of this textual problem remains Adolf von Harnack, Das Magnificat Der Elisabet (Luc. 1,46–55) Nebst Einigen Bemerkungen Zu Luc. 1 Und 2, in: id., Zur neutestamentlichen Textkritik (1931), 62–85. Additional patristic evidence for the reading “Elisabeth” is provided in Jeffrey J. Kloha, The New Testament Text of Nicetas of Remesiana, with Reference to Luke 1:46, StPatr 54,2 (2013), 115–129. 75 J.A.O. Preus II, The New Testament Canon in the Lutheran Dogmaticians, 32. 76 The LCMS’ A Statement (IV) notes that “We recognize that the authority of Scripture can be accepted only through faith and not merely by rational demonstration.”

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made by copyist or editor or pope or council or Rationalist remain open to judgment and will never be fixed beyond any doubt.77 The task before us is to carry further the work of Luther and Chemnitz, who faced challenges to the authority of the writings of the Scriptures not only (and not frequently, for that matter) with simple assertions of ‘inspiration.’ Rather, they saw the Scriptures as God’s Word breaking into history, received, copied, and handed down in history, and that historical evidence could be cited to demonstrate that the ancient church had made the correct ‘judgments’ in accepting them as the Word of God. I am convinced of the same. The more we study the manuscripts of the New Testament and the writings of the early church the more confident we can be that the church did receive the inspired Scriptures for what they are. At times mistakes were made in copying, and at times some people thought that some writings were apostolic which turned out not to be so. At times a few writings and readings were added for the sake of clarity or to ensure faithful teaching and practice. But these can be identified and dealt with as we turn our attention to the earliest witnesses – the “primitive church” of which Chemnitz spoke, so that we can be preserved faithful and steadfast to the same Scriptures in our day. Therefore, I can use this text with confidence – so long as I recognize that some authoritative readings are in fact in the apparatus. This should not concern me for two reasons. First, because I know that the text as I have it has had most of the questions about which reading is authoritative worked out. We have more data, more evidence, and methodologies that make better sense of the data than did Tischendorf and Hort and even than did scholars of only a generation ago. And our text today is far more certain than that used by Pieper and Erasmus and Luther. History is actually useful in affirming the authority of Scripture, as Chemnitz had argued. And now we have far more certain historical and textual evidence than that available to Chemnitz. Second, we can read with confidence because we read the text with a ‘Scripture interprets Scripture’ method, which interprets unclear passages in light of clear passages – and I propose also reading textually uncertain passages in light of textually firm passages. This should make me careful as a pastor and teacher and theologian that I turn first to the homologoumena, and only if I need to, then do I turn to the antilegomena. As a preacher, my sermon should not hinge on a difficult variant. As an exegete I make sure that my argument does not stand or fall on an uncertain text. As a theologian, I am careful that my arguments are based on the homolegoumena texts and readings. I can see my text as authoritative within the canonical framework that the church has always, at least until the

77 The rationalist approach to the Scriptures, which demands absolute empirical certainty before accepting any statement as true, has been a challenge to confessional Lutheranism and its view of the Scriptures since the early 18th century; see Noland, Walther and the Revival of Confessional Lutheranism, 202–203. Noland offers a solution (215–216), drawing open the writings of Kurt Marquart, which corresponds to the solution developed in this essay.

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modern age, used to view its texts as authoritative. All this means that there is still work to be done, “while it is still day.”78

Summary The 28th edition of the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece presents a new text of the Catholic Epistles, with ongoing revisions to the rest of the NT occurring regularly over the next decades. This new text results from the implementation of new methodologies and from a decision to print what the editors call the Ausgangstext, the ‘initial text’ of the manuscript tradition but one not identified with the ‘autographs.’ While the recognition that we do not have access to the autographs may be viewed problematically, the church has always recognized that the biblical text was written within and passed down by the church, and it has always been viewed as authoritative even without access to an autograph. Classic Lutheran dogmaticians such as Martin Chemnitz recognized the value of a theological and historical approach to the authority of the New Testament canon. This model is adopted in this paper, which argues that biblical inspiration and authority should be assumed and that the means of determining which books and which readings are authoritative must account for the fact that the text was passed down in history and requires sound historical study. Just as the church recognizes that the canonical process took place historically, this paper proposes a ‘canonical-textual’ approach. Through this approach, we can recognize that some individual readings in the manuscripts are authoritative while others are not. Just as the church has used printed editions of the New Testament for five hundred years, a new edition such as the 28th edition of the Nestle-Aland text can be used as the basis for faithful teaching and preaching.

Zusammenfassung Die 28. Auflage des Novum Testamentum Graece von Nestle-Aland bietet einen neuen Text für die Katholischen Briefe, und in den nächsten Jahrzehnten werden 78 At the conference in Oberursel the participants received a document titled Biblische Hermeneutik which was passed by a 2009 pastors’ conference of the Selbständigen Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche and also by its 2011 synodical convention. One section addresses “Besondere Fragestellungen,” among which is a discussion of “Ränder des Kanons” (pp. 12–13). I was gratified to see that the proposals of the SELK paper correspond to the argumentation of this essay. It also deals with the question, “Welche Schriften werden ausgelegt und welcher Wortlaut?” The paper also relates the text-critical problems to the Lutheran canonical view, which does not define a specific list of books. Futhermore, it also recognizes that there is no fixed certainty about the biblical text (“Die Diskussion um den Textbestand ist ständig im Fluss”). And, most helpfully, it also grounds the authority of the text, regardless of text form, in “die Bestimmung von Jesus Christus als Mitte der Schrift.”

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weitere Revisionen der neutestamentlichen Texte erscheinen. Der neue Text resultiert aus der Anwendung neuer Methoden und der Entscheidung, den von den Herausgebern so genannten „Ausgangstext“ der Handschriftentradition abzudrucken, welcher nicht einfach mit den Autographen identifiziert werden kann. Zwar kann man die Erkenntnis, dass wir keinen Zugang zu den Autographen haben, für problematisch halten, aber die Kirche hat doch immer anerkannt, dass der biblische Text innerhalb der Kirche geschrieben und von der Kirche überliefert wurde; und immer hat man diesen Text als autoritativ angesehen, auch wenn man keinen Zugang zu einem Autographen hatte. Klassische lutherische Dogmatiker wie Martin Chemnitz haben einen theologischen wie historischen Zugang zur Autorität des neutestamentlichen Kanons für wichtig erachtet. Dies Modell wird in dem vorliegenden Aufsatz angewendet, der die Auffassung vertritt, dass Inspiration und Autorität der Bibel anzunehmen sind, und zugleich, dass die Mittel für die Entscheidung, welche Bücher und Lesarten autoritativ sind, in Rechnung stellen müssen, dass der Text in der Geschichte überliefert wurde und mit solider historischer Forschung untersucht werden muss. So wie die Kirche anerkennt, dass die Kanonbildung in der Geschichte stattfand, wird hier ein „kanonisch-textueller“ Zugang eingebracht. Mit Hilfe eines solchen Zugangs kann man zwischen autoritativen und nichtautoritativen Lesarten in den Manuskripten unterscheiden. So wie die Kirche seit 500 Jahren gedruckte Ausgaben des Neuen Testaments nutzt, kann auch eine neue Textausgabe wie die 28. Auflage des Nestle-Aland als Fundament für rechtgläubige Lehre und Predigt genutzt werden.

Theological and Hermeneutical Reflections on the Ongoing Revisions of the Novum Testamentum Graece Response Vilson Scholz It comes as no surprise that Jeff Kloha, being an expert in textual criticism, should bring us up to date on matters related to the 28th edition of the Nestle-Aland and post-modern views of the original text, or, to be exact, the Ausgangstext. Living, as we are, in a post-modern era, we have to deal with what Kloha calls a ‘plastic’ text. Not long ago, as moderns, we were happy with Kurt Aland’s conviction that the Nestle-Aland edition (from its 26th edition on) was ‘the original text’. Perhaps even those who were not as optimistic and enthusiastic as Kurt Aland will look back and say, “We were happy and we did not know it”. Now we have to live with an Ausgangstext rather than the Grundtext, even though, for all practical purposes, it is to a large extent and for the time being identical to Aland’s ‘original text.’1 Kloha emphasizes that Holy Scripture is God’s word in human words. It is important to formulate it just this way. If we had ‘God’s words,’ rather than ‘God’s word in human words,’ we would not be allowed to translate the Bible into any other language.2 Kloha takes seriously this ‘human’ aspect of the Holy Scriptures. He challenges “the manner in which we account for the inspiration and authority of Scripture”. He warns against a fundamentalist approach that, for instance, led the young Bart Ehrman to unbelief or agnosticism.3 Kloha’s desire is to avoid crashing “into the rocks of a super-naturalistic, docetic understanding of the Scriptures”.4 To be fair to Francis Pieper, one of the dogmaticians referred to by Kloha, one has to say he is not a staunch supporter of the textus receptus, even though he tends to downplay the differences between the critical text and the textus receptus. For instance, Pieper emphasizes that 1 John 5:7–8 should not be taken into consideration when it comes to the doctrine of the Trinity. He does not argue for a ‘perfect text’ either. He does not say: Unless we know for sure that this is the original text we 1

2

3 4

Old Testament scholars are probably more familiar with the concept of Ausgangstext, inasmuch as, to my knowledge, this concept has been put in circulation in the context of a reconstruction of the history of the text of the Old Testament in the light of the complete evidence derived from the findings in the Judean desert. This possibility of translating the Bible is uniquely Christian, at least in the context of the great monotheistic religions. Orthodox Jews do not translate the Torah; Muslims do not translate the Quran. Ehrman was led to this position when he became aware of New Testament variants. Here Kloha is following Hermann Sasse.

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cannot teach anything with confidence. Pieper comes from a different direction, asserting the inspiration and authority of the Scriptures and arguing that the existence of variants does not detract from the inspiration of the Bible. To be sure, Pieper downplays the importance of textual variants, but at the same time points to the importance of doing textual criticism.5 Essentially, he is saying that textual variants do not challenge the basic confession, which is given as an a priori, that the Bible is the Word of God. And, being a dogmatics scholar, Pieper is less bothered by textual variants than a New Testament exegetical scholar who has been trained to pay attention to minutiae. I must confess that I was struck, in a positive sense, by Kloha’s thesis that issues of the text are identical to issues of the canon. This is an honest way of dealing with the reality of textual variants, especially the more difficult ones. Thus, in John 1:18, both readings (“only God” or “only Son”) are antilegomena – the church is not certain which is authoritative because the church’s manuscripts don’t give a clearcut answer. Therefore, neither reading is independently authoritative, but both have a secondary authority.6 Does this mean that we are to give up on textual criticism in a more objective way? Do we have to review each and every variation unit over and over? Are all variants born equal? It is well known that Ehrman’s book Misquoting Jesus is misleading inasmuch as it gives the wrong impression that all variants are of the same kind, i.e., are as complex as the ending of Mark and the pericope de adultera in the Gospel of John. Kloha does not fall into this trap. “In the vast majority of cases ... there is really no question as to which is the Ausgangstext (even though some witnesses have a variant). These are clearly homologoumena” (p. 198). This statement deserves emphasis especially because variation units like John 1:18 could leave us with the impression (in an ‘Ehrmanian’ fashion) that we are completely in the dark, which is not the case. On the other hand, the realization that by and large we are dealing with variants that may be described as homologoumena should lead us to nuance a little bit the statement (on p. 201) that we put our people at risk “because we have instructed them to place their faith in a hypothetical reconstruction of how the Scriptures were produced and copied, which, however, is not based in history nor, ultimately, in the one who works in history”. We can be a bit more confident, inasmuch as (if we go by the apparatus of The Greek New Testament and the decisions of its editors) only about 1400 variants are worth mentioning (of which a good many are not important at all when it comes to translation). However, I understand that Kloha’s point is that we have to be honest with our people in telling them that the text of the New Testament is “the text of the New Testament with its variant readings” and that the Masoretic text printed in the Bib5 6

He informs his readers that modern textual criticism was part of the curriculum at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis. Pieper would, perhaps, argue that we can live with this ambiguity, because this is not the only New Testament text dealing with Christology (or, for that matter, the doctrine of God).

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lia Hebraica Stuttgartensia is nothing but “a form of the text that was edited in the Middle Ages.” Some may cherish or extol the bliss of ignorance, but in this case too much seems to be at stake. Kloha puts it in this neat way: “I can use this text [i.e., my Nestle text] with confidence – so long as I recognize that some authoritative readings are in fact in the apparatus” (p. 204). The issue of Bible translation is not part of Kloha’s discussion, but it is not unrelated either. In fundamentalist circles around the world, people involved in Bible translation, particularly translation consultants, have to deal with the same kind of attitude in relation to the Scriptures: the standard translation or first translation is seen as ‘inspired,’ as ‘the original text by extension,’ and no further translations are allowed or tolerated. One could respond to this by pointing to the attitude of the writers of the New Testament: although here and there the exact wording matters (one is reminded of Paul’s exegesis in Gal 3:16 – “to his offspring” and not “to offsprings”), they are more interested in the message or overall sense of the text. They have no problem quoting an Old Testament translation (the Septuagint or Old Greek) that, in many instances, is far from ‘accurate’ (at least by modern standards). Jerome used the example of the apostles in the New Testament to argue for a theory of translation that comes close to what we nowadays call ‘dynamic equivalent translation.’ This approach, which is in a sense pre-modern, could be added to the discussion of how we handle the Biblical text in this post-modern era. Minor variations and the existence of a ‘plastic’ text do not paralyze us, in the same way as we are not stuck until we reach an agreement on which is the best translation of the 7 text. On the contrary, the proclamation of God’s word in law and gospel and the formulation of doctrine continue. Eugene Nida once said that potential translators of the Bible resist the idea of reproducing the meaning rather than the words “because they’ve grown up worshipping words more than worshipping God”.8 By this he meant that people insist in seeing always the same words in the same place, no matter if the resulting translation is meaningful or not. One could say that they are not ready for a more ‘plastic’ view of the text. It is quite obvious that Nida was in favor of the message, no matter which words are used to express it. In the opposite camp, many see the Biblical text as a revelation of mysteries. In this case, translators should give the impression that they have not changed the original text in any way and readers that are familiar with the Biblical languages will cherish it as a ‘faithful’ translation. However, seen as a piece of communication, it is so to speak plastic, bendable and, therefore, translatable in more than one way. My point is that as much as I can refer to any translation, even one that people would dub as ‘a lousy periphrastic translation’, and say “this is the Word of God”, I can also point to my Nestle-Aland with its more than ten thousand variation units and say “this is the Word of God”. Not only because church 7 8

My point is that in many respects and in many cases textual variants are tantamount to translation variants. We can live and work with both. Eugene Nida, Meaning-full Translations, ChrTo (October 7, 2002), 46.

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tradition tells me so (which is true) or because this Word is the power of God for salvation (which cannot be denied), but ultimately because Christ, in the context in which he spoke about the παράκλητος, promised that he would not leave us as orphans (John 14:18). In short, it is a confession of faith, derived from the basic confession that Jesus is Lord and from his promise that the Holy Spirit would guide his apostles into all the truth (John 16:13). To be sure, we cannot make an ‘uncertain’ or plastic text more ‘certain’ or fixed than it is (at least when seen from a historical perspective), particularly not by the use of questionable arguments based on tradition or arguments of a fundamentalist type. That is why Lutheran theologians (like Chemnitz, for instance) have always insisted that councils or church resolutions cannot alter the historical fact that some Biblical books were antilegomena in the ancient Church. Kloha is carrying this over to textual variants. We can live with them and in spite of them confess the inspiration of the Scriptures, as Kloha also does. The major issues are not dependent on this or that variant, on more or less texts, as Pieper also pointed out, but on the more fundamental hermeneutical question: Are these texts still relevant and applicable? Is this God’s final word on this or that issue? In a sense, the real issue has to do with hermeneutics.

Appendix/Anhang

Contributors to this Volume/Liste der Beiträger –

Dr. David Adams ist Associate Professor für Exegetical Theology am Concordia Seminary in St. Louis.

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Dr. Achim Behrens ist Professor für Altes Testament an der Lutherischen Theologischen Hochschule Oberursel.

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Dr. Jeffrey Kloha ist Direktor des Center for the Study of Early Christian Texts und Associate Professor für Exegetical Theology am Concordia Seminary in St. Louis.

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Dr. Timo Laato ist Dozent für Neues Testament an der Församlingsfakultet in Göteborg.

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Dr. Paul Raabe ist Professor für Exegetical Theology am Concordia Seminary in St. Louis.

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Dr. Dieter Reinstorf ist seit 2011 Pastor der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Immanuel Gemeinde in Pietermaritzburg/Südafrika. Davor war er Gemeindepastor in Pretoria, Greytown und Kapstadt. Zugleich ist er seit 2010 Bischof der Freien Evangelisch-Lutherischen Synode in Südafrika.

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Dr. Timothy Saleska ist Associate Professor für Exegetical Theology am Concordia Seminary in St. Louis.

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Dr. Jorg Christian Salzmann ist Professor für Neues Testament an der Lutherischen Theologischen Hochschule Oberursel.

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Dr. Vilson Scholz ist Professor für exegetische Theologie am Concordia Seminário in São Leopoldo und Übersetzungsberater der Bibelgesellschaft von Brasilien.

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Dr. James Voelz ist Professor für Exegetical Theology und Leiter des Exegetical Department am Concordia Seminary in St. Louis.

Acknowledgements/Danksagungen Acknowledgements The articles in this volume are the product of an international symposium held from 7–9 November 2013 at the Lutherische Theologische Hochschule in Oberursel (LThH) under the title “Listening to God’s Word – Exegetical Approaches”. Its purpose was to explore exegetical methodological diversity within international confessional Lutheranism in a unique cooperation between the LThH and Concordia Seminary St. Louis, MO. In a frank and free atmosphere, for once relaxing the focus on Scriptural theology, various methodological approaches to Holy Scripture were discussed. Responses to the main lectures lent the symposium a discursive character, as did extensive workshops in which not only the speakers but also the listeners could participate. This approach was felt without exception to have been a great success. This volume presents the main lectures and responses (revised and expanded for publication), delivering impulses for further work and keeping the issues alive. Both the conference and this volume would not have been conceivable without the help of numerous people and institutions. Above all we thank the Kreis der Freunde und Förderer der Lutherischen Theologischen Hochschule (Friends of the LThH), Concordia Seminary St. Louis, MO and the Selbständige Evangelisch Lutherische Kirche for financing the symposium. The staff of the LThH and a large number of student volunteers helped to make the conference a great success. In addition we are grateful to the members of the faculty, Prof. Dr. Christoph Barnbrock, Prof. Dr. Gilberto da Silva and Prof. Dr. Werner Klän, as well as Pfr. Dr. Armin Wenz for leading the workshops. Dr. Kevin Armbrust from Concordia Seminary St. Louis and stud. theol. Fritz von Hering were instrumental in the completion of the manuscript and deserve our grateful thanks for many patient hours of work. Werner Klän agreed to include this volume in the series Oberurseler Hefte Ergänzungsbände. The Friends of the LThH, the faculty of the LThH, as well as the Selbständige Evangelisch Lutherische Kirche generously helped with the publishing costs. Our grateful thanks! Oberursel, November 2015

Achim Behrens/Jorg Christian Salzmann

Acknowledgements/Danksagungen

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Danksagung Die Beiträge des vorliegenden Bandes gehen auf ein internationales Symposium zurück, das vom 7. bis 9. November 2013 an der Lutherischen Theologischen Hochschule in Oberursel stattfand. Es trug den Titel „Listening to God’s Word – Exegetical Approaches“ und sollte die methodische Vielfalt der Exegese im Rahmen des weltweiten konfessionellen Luthertums ins Gespräch bringen. Dabei handelte es sich um eine bis dahin einmalige Kooperation der LThH mit dem Concordia Seminary St. Louis, MO. In großer Offenheit und Freiheit konnten – einmal nicht auf schrifttheologische Grundsatzfragen fokussiert – unterschiedliche methodische Zugänge zur heiligen Schrift diskutiert werden. Den diskursiven Charakter der Veranstaltung machten jeweils kurze Korreferate („Responses“) zu den Hauptbeiträgen aus, sodann aber auch ausführliche Workshops, in denen nicht nur die Referenten, sondern auch die Zuhörer miteinander und mit den Vortragenden ins Gespräch kamen. Diese Arbeitsform wurde durchweg als gelungen empfunden. Die – hier im Buch überarbeiteten und erweiterten – Beiträge des Symposiums halten über dessen konkreten Termin hinaus die Fragestellungen wach hält und liefern Impulse für die Weiterarbeit. Sowohl die Tagung als auch dieser Band sind ohne die Hilfe zahlreicher Menschen und Institutionen nicht zu denken. So gilt unser Dank zunächst dem Kreis der Freunde und Förderer der Lutherischen Theologischen Hochschule, dem Concordia Seminary St. Louis, MO und der Selbständigen Evangelisch Lutherischen Kirche für die Finanzierung des Symposiums. Zu danken ist dann den Mitarbeiterinnen und Mitarbeitern der LThH, sowie zahlreichen freiwilligen studentischen Hilfskräften, die einen reibungslosen und sehr angenehmen Ablauf der Tagung erst ermöglichten. Ein extra Dank sei den Kollegen aus der Fakultät, Prof. Dr. Christoph Barnbrock, Prof. Dr. Gilberto da Silva und Prof. Dr. Werner Klän, sowie Pfr. Dr. Armin Wenz für Leitung der Workshops gesagt. An der Fertigstellung des Manuskripts waren maßgeblich beteiligt Dr. Kevin Armbrust vom Concordia Seminary und stud. theol Fritz von Hering von der LThH. Ihnen gilt unser Dank für viele mühevolle Stunden! Werner Klän sei gedankt für die Aufnahme des Buches in die Reihe der Oberurseler Hefte Ergänzungsbände. Namhafte Druckkostenzuschüsse leisteten der Kreis der Freunde und Förderer der LThH, die Fakultät der LThH, sowie die Selbständige Evangelisch Lutherische Kirche. Auch dafür herzlichen Dank! Oberursel im November 2015

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Bibliography/Literaturverzeichnis Aland, Kurt/Aland, Barbara, Der Text des Neuen Testaments. Einführung in die wissenschaftlichen Ausgaben sowie in Theorie und Praxis der modernen Textkritik, Stuttgart 1982. Andersen, Francis I./Freedman, David Noel, Amos: A New Translation with Notes and Commentary, AncB 24a, New York 1989. Austin, John L, How To Do Things with Words, Cambridge (Mass), 21975. Baird, William, History of New Testament Research, Vol. 1: From Deism to Tübingen, Minneapolis 1992. Barnbrock, Christoph, „Da werden gewislich diese gedancken zu geschlagen sein“. Rezeptionsästhetische Beobachtungen zu einer Lutherpredigt, LuThK 37 (2013), 115–129. Barton, John, Holy Writings, Sacred Text: The Canon of Early Christianity, Louisville 1998. Behrens, Achim, „Am Anfang schuf Gott Himmel und Erde.“ Grundlagen eines biblischtheologischen Schöpfungsverständnisses aus der Perspektive lutherischer Theologie, LuThK 34 (2010), 251–284. – „Eine Jung(e)frau wird schwanger …“ Jes 7:14 und die „Polyvalenz“ biblischer Texte, LuThK 37 (2013), 88–102. – Exegese des Alten Testaments als theologsiche Disziplin, LuThK 33 (2009), 195–224. – „Grammatik statt Ekstase!“ Das Phänomen der syntaktischen Wiederaufnahme am Beispiel von Am 7,1–8,2, in: Wagner, Andreas (Hg.), Studien zur hebräischen Grammatik, OBO 156, Göttingen 1997, 1–9. – Prophetische Visionsschilderungen im Alten Testament: sprachliche Eigenarten, Funktion und Geschichte einer Gattung, AOAT 292, Münster 2002. – Die „syntaktische Wiederaufnahme“ als textgrammatisches Phänomen im biblischen Hebräisch, Kleine Untersuchungen zur Sprache des Alten Testaments und seiner Umwelt 6 (2006), 1–31. – Vision/Visionsschilderung, wibilex 2006 (http://www.bibelwissenschaft.de/stichwort/12115/). Berger, Klaus, Formen und Gattungen im Neuen Testament, Tübingen, 2005. Betz, Hans Dieter, Galatians: A Commentary on Paul‘s Letter to the Churches in Galatia, Hermenia 62, Philadelphia 1979. Beyerhaus, Peter, Theology as an Instrument of Liberation: The Role of the New „People’s Theology” in Ecumenical Discussion, Cape Town (RSA) 1986. Beyerlin, Walter, Bleilot, Brecheisen oder was sonst?: Revision einer Amos-Vision, OBO 81, Göttingen 1988. Bjørndalen, Anders Jørgen, Erwägungen zur Zukunft des Amazja und Israels nach der Überlieferung Am 7,10–17, in: Albertz, Rainer (Hg.), Werden und Wirken des Alten Testaments: Festschrift für Claus Westermann, Göttingen 1980, 236–251. Bottéro, Jean, Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia, Chicago 2001. Brown, Raymond E., An Introduction to the New Testament, ABRL, New York 1997. Brueggemann, Walter, The Psalms and the Life of Faith, Minneapolis 1995. Brueggemann, Walter, Response to Mays “The Question of Context”, in: McCann, J. Clinton (Hg.), The Shape and Shaping of the Psalter, JSOT.S 159, Sheffield 1993, 29–41. Buber, Martin, Good and Evil, New York 1952. Bultmann, Rudolf, Die Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition, Göttingen 1970.

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– Romans 9–16, WBC 38B, Dallas 1988. Eagleton, Terry A., Literary Theory: An Introduction, London 1983. Eckey, Wilfried, Der Galaterbrief. Ein Kommentar, Neukirchen-Vluyn 2010. Ehrman, Bart D., Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, San Francisco 2005. Ehrman, Bart D./Holmes, Michael.W (Hg.), The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research: Essays on the Status Quaestionis, NTTSD 42, Leiden 22013. Elliott, James Keith, Manuscripts, Codex, and Canon, JSNT 19 (1997), 105–123. – The Nature of the Evidence Available for Reconstructing the Text of the New Testament in the Second Century, in: Amphoux, Christian-Bernard/Elliot, J. Keith (Hg.), The New Testament in Early Christianity: Proceedings of the Lille Colloquium, July 2000, HTB 6, Lausanne 2003, 9–18. Engelder, Theodore Edward William, Scripture Cannot Be Broken: Six Objections to Verbal Inspiration Examined in Light of Scripture, St. Louis 1944. Epp, Eldon J., The Multivalence of the Term “Original Text” in New Testament Textual Criticism, HThR 93 (1999): 245–281. Faulkner, Raymond O. (Hg.), The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts, 3 Bde., Warminster 1973– 1978. – The Bremner-Rhind Papyrus: III: D. The Book of Overthrowing ‘Apep, JEA 23 (1937), 166–185. Forrester, John V./Dick, Andrew D./Mcmenamin, Paul G., The Eye: Basic Sciences in Practice, Philadelphia 32008. Fortna, Robert T., The Gospel of Signs: A Reconstruction of the Narrative Source Underlying the Fourth Gospel. MSSNTS 11, Cambridge 1970. France, Richard T, The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIC, Grand Rapids (Mich.) 2002. – The Gospel of Matthew, NIC, Grand Rapids (Mich.) 2007. Franzmann, Martin, Seven Theses on Reformation Hermeneutics, CTM 40 (1969), 235‒ 246. – The Word of the Lord Grows, St. Louis 1961. Frei, Hans W., Conflicts in Interpretation, ThTo 49 (1992), 344–356. – The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics, New Haven (Conn.) 1974. Gadamer, Hans-Georg, Truth and Method, New York 22004. – Truth and Method, London 31975. Gamble, Harry Y., Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts, New Haven 1995. Gertz, Jan Christian, Antibabylonische Polemik im priesterschriftlichen Schöpfungsbericht, ZThK 106 (2009), 137–155. Gibbs, Jeffrey A., Matthew 11:2–20:34, ConCom, St. Louis (Mo.) 2010. Gnilka, Joachim, Das Evangelium nach Markus. Mk 1–8,26, EKK 2, Zürich/NeukirchenVluyn 1978. Goldingay, John, Models for Scripture, Grand Rapids (Mich.) 1994. Goldingay, John/Longman, Tremper III. (Hg.), Psalms 1–41, BECOT, Grand Rapids (Mich.) 2006. Grund, Alexandra, Die Entstehung des Sabbats. Seine Bedeutung für Israels Zeitkonzept und Erinnerungskultur, FAT 75, Tübingen 2011.

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Indices/Register Subject Index/Sachregister actual reader 80 Ancient Near East 14–16, 24–29, 33, 40–41 antilegomena 193, 195–200, 204, 208, 210 Apartheid 8, 144–145, 148, 150, 161– 163 apocrypha 193 apographa 170, 188, 192 apologetics 73–74, 181, 184 appropriation 9, 69, 143, 150, 159, 161, 196 Apsu 17–18 archetypical reading 198 Atum 20–23 Atum/Re 21–23 Ausgangstext 174, 177, 199, 205–208 author, authorship 14, 33–34, 68, 76, 79, 80, 92, 97, 117–118, 120, 124, 131, 133–134, 138, 146, 161, 178 autograph 191, 199, 201, 205 Beth-El 105–106, 114–115, 119–120 canon 111, 125, 142, 183, 187–188, 192–196, 200, 202–203, 205, 208 canonical-textual approach 197 chaos 17–18, 20–22, 26, 29–30, 41 church 59, 74, 109, 143–144, 148–149, 153–154, 158–161, 164–166, 170, 172, 176, 179–180, 182–183, 186, 188, 191–200, 202–205, 208–210 communicative act 79–80 confessionalism 9–10, 204 context 9, 14, 16, 25, 40–41, 68, 75, 78, 88–89, 93, 97–98, 117, 119, 123, 126, 129–131, 135, 137–138, 140, 142–145, 147, 149–156, 158, 161, 163, 165–166, 171, 180–182, 184– 185, 188, 192–193, 207, 210 contextual approach 109, 144, 147, 149, 151–152, 156, 161, 163, 166 contextual theology 144–145, 148– 150

contextualization 144, 151–154 covenant 28, 91, 93, 127, 134–135, 156–157, 163, 165, 185 creation creation accounts 14–16, 24–26, 29 criticism 173, 175, 198 form criticism 117, 120, 138, 142, 179 historical criticism 97 literary criticism 68 redaction criticism 69, 111, 179 culture, cultural 17, 24, 152–154, 157, 159–161, 165 Davidic covenant 127 diachronic 146 dramatic development 114, 116 eclectic, eclectisicm 173 Enlil 29–30 Enuma Elish 16–20, 25, 40–41 epistle 193 Esagila 16 eschatology 129–131 ethnic identity 159 faith 14, 16, 25, 31, 33–34, 38, 40, 42, 47, 56–62, 64–65, 68–69, 79, 91, 109–110, 129–130, 132, 135–137, 141, 152–154, 157–161, 165, 172, 179, 183–184, 187, 191–193, 201, 203, 208, 210 fiction, fictional 64, 82 gospel 59, 63, 82, 97, 118, 144, 155, 178, 183, 201, 209 hellenistic 62 hermeneutics 109–110, 146, 151, 189 history 14–15, 21, 25–26, 32–34, 41, 55, 60, 63–64, 73, 82, 97, 109, 123, 127, 129, 136, 141, 151, 154, 171, 173, 175, 181–183, 188–189, 192, 194, 199–201, 203, 205, 207–208 historical approach 55, 160, 199, 205 historical present 77 historical reconstruction 127, 152

226

Indices/Register

historicity 9, 13–14, 31–33, 38, 41– 42, 55, 61, 67, 83 holistic reading 120 homologoumena 195–198, 204, 208 human words 182, 184, 207 identity markers 156, 157, 159, 164–165 in Christ 29, 42, 78, 154, 156–159, 161, 165, 202 interpretation 9, 65, 75, 92, 97, 120, 131, 138, 140, 142, 156 interpretive communities 138 Jewish 25, 31, 74, 78, 91, 130, 155–158, 160, 164–165 Juda 105–106, 115 Kairos Document 147–148, 150 keyword relations 111, 116 language 17, 27, 40, 56, 59, 62–63, 76, 81, 83, 91, 111, 117, 137, 151, 154– 155, 159, 182, 191, 207 lectio difficilior 44, 56 Leningrad Codex 173 literalism 14, 32–33, 74, 78, 83–84, 89– 92 literary interpretation 76, 143 literary swerve 73 logic 192 Lutheran Confessions 42, 109 Lutheranism 38, 42, 135, 156, 165–166, 183, 193, 200, 202, 204 manuscripts 22, 56, 169, 170–175, 177– 178, 180, 188–191, 195–196, 198– 199, 203, 205 Marduk 16–17, 19–20, 124 Mark 9, 48, 50, 56–61, 63, 68–69, 73, 76–82, 84, 87–93, 95, 97–98, 154, 178, 181, 188, 197, 199–200, 202– 203, 208 Markan priority 68 myth 15, 21, 23, 41–42 narrative interpretation 75 Nestle-Aland 44–45, 56, 169, 171–173, 175, 178, 197–199, 205, 207, 209 New Perspective on Paul 156, 163–165 New Testament 9, 27, 31, 44, 48, 56, 60, 77, 87, 125, 146, 169–174, 176, 177– 181, 183–189, 192–195, 197–199, 201, 203–205, 207–209

Old Testament 9, 14, 26–27, 29, 31–32, 41–42, 62, 109–111, 117, 120, 127, 135, 141, 185–186, 193, 207, 209 orality 179 original text 169, 174, 177, 180, 188, 198– 200, 202, 207, 209 patristics 169, 172, 174–175, 178, 195, 203 Petruslegende 50, 61, 69 prayer 58, 158, 164, 182 preaching 65, 69, 78, 144, 169, 178, 190, 199, 204 programmatic 126, 156 prophet, prophetic writings 114–115 prosperity 131–134 psalm, psalms 123–126, 131, 133, 136, 142–143 reader-response 97 real author 80 reason 19, 32–33, 73–74, 116–117, 119, 130, 134, 144, 170–171, 175, 187, 192, 201 religio-historical comparison 40 religion, religions 20–21, 26, 30, 40, 63, 74, 181, 184, 188, 192 religionsgeschichtlich 68 revelation 16, 24–25, 32, 65, 74, 94, 113, 119, 133, 135–136, 141, 155, 209 rhetoric, rhetorical 77, 79, 81, 200 righteousness 128–137, 163 scholar, scholarship 25, 131, 137, 174, 208 science 15, 16, 41–42 Sea of Galilee 61, 68 Second Temple 126 Septuagint 50, 62, 209 Sitz im Leben 50, 61, 68, 123–125, 135, 142–143, 146 speech 62, 84, 111–113, 115, 117, 120, 132, 134 spirituality 32, 91, 154, 159 synoptic 59, 61 syntax 25, 79, 84, 88, 92, 110, 114–117, 119 syntactic constructions 119 temporal 25, 27–29, 33

Biblical References/Bibelstellen

text-immanent method 146 textual criticism 9, 56, 67, 169–172, 174, 176, 179, 189, 190, 207–208 thematic 126, 128–129, 145 theme-oriented 131 Tiamat 17, 18, 19, 37, 41 torah 128–131, 133, 135 truth 42, 64, 69, 74, 83, 133–134, 147, 156, 159–160, 165, 179, 180, 182– 184, 189, 198, 201, 210 variant 56, 67, 91, 170, 173, 189–191, 196, 204, 208, 210

227

wisdom 19, 32, 128, 132–135, 141, 192 word of God 14, 33–34, 135, 187 works of the law 156–157, 164, 165 world 9, 14– 30, 33, 40–42, 53, 55, 62, 64, 67, 69, 73, 80–83, 94, 132–137, 141, 144, 146, 152, 154, 157, 178– 179, 201, 202, 209 worship 98, 125, 142–143, 192, 203 Yahweh 13–14, 24, 27, 29, 32–33, 40, 62, 65, 78, 90, 106, 112–116, 119, 124, 127–130, 134–137

Biblical References/Bibelstellen Old Testament/Altes Testament Gen 1 Gen 1:1 Gen 1:2 Gen 1:3–5 Gen 1:4 Gen 1:6–8 Gen 1:6–7 Gen 1:10 Gen 1:11 Gen 1:12 Gen 1:16 Gen 1:18 Gen 1:21 Gen 1:25 Gen 1:31 Gen 2 Gen 2:2 Gen 2:3 Gen 2:18 Gen 3 Gen 4 Gen 12:18 Gen 15:6 Exod 4:22–23 Exod 20 Exod 20:8–11 Exod 31:12–18 Exod 33:12

13, 24–26, 34, 36–42 25 24 25 28 25 24 28 28 28 37, 41 28 28, 37, 41 28 28 31 28 28 28 31 31 157 193 158 29 28 28 136

Lev 13:4 Deut 5 Deut 15:4 Deut 18:9–14 Josh 1:9 Isa 26:19 Isa 35:5–6 Isa 35:5 Isa 43:1 Isa 49:6 Jer 1:5 Jer 5:21 Jer 31:9 Hos 6:1 Hos 13:5 Am 3:2 Am 7–8 Am 7:1–8:2 Am 7:1–3 Am 7:1 Am 7:2 Am 7:3 Am 7:4–6 Am 7:4

89 29 154 27 185 78 90 90 37, 41 157 136 96, 98 158 158 136 136 102, 108, 112, 117, 119f. 7, 9, 99, 102, 108f., 117–119 102, 112 102, 104, 112, 114 102, 104, 106, 112, 114, 116, 119 102, 104, 112, 114 102, 112 102, 104, 112, 114

228

Indices/Register

Am 7:5 Am 7:6 Am 7:7–8 Am 7:7 Am 7:8 Am 7:9 Am 7:10–17 Am 7:10–13 Am 7:10 Am 7:11 Am 7:12 Am 7:13 Am 7:14–17 Am 7:15 Am 7:16 Am 7:17 Am 8:1–2 Am 8:1 Am 8:2 Nah 1:7 Ps 1–41 Ps 1–2 Ps 1 Ps 1:1 Ps 1:2 Ps 1:3 Ps 1:4 Ps 1:5–6 Ps 1:5 Ps 1:6 Ps 2 Ps 2:7 Ps 2:12 Ps 15 Ps 18 Ps 18:7 Ps 19 Ps 24 Ps 37:18 Ps 42–72 Ps 49 Ps 50 Ps 51:12

102, 104, 106, 112, 114, 116, 119 102, 104, 112, 114 103, 113f. 103–105, 113f. 103–106, 113–117, 119 104, 114 102, 108, 112, 117 105, 114 105 105, 115, 120 105, 115 106, 115f., 119 105, 114 105 106, 116 105, 115, 120 103, 113 103f., 113f. 103–106, 113–116, 119 136 126 128–130 7, 123, 125–138, 140f., 143 133, 135f. 128, 131, 135 132, 135 135 132 132f., 136 134, 136 126–130, 140f., 143 126 128 134 130 50 130 134 136 126 136 134 37, 41

Ps 69:2 Ps 69:15–16 Ps 73–89 Ps 73 Ps 77:14 Ps 89 Ps 90–106 Ps 103:9 Ps 105–106 Ps 107–150 Ps 108–110 Ps 111–112 Ps 118 Ps 119 Ps 138–145 Ps 139 Ps 143:5 Ps 144:7 Ps 145–146 Ps 150 Job 4:7 Job 8:4–6 Job 9:8 Job 19:25–27 Job 38:16 Job 42:7 Prov 11:8 Prov 12:2–3 Prov 12:7

50 50 126 136 78 127 126 148 130 126 127 130 130 127, 130 127 136 32 50 127 132f. 132 132 50, 62, 78 136 50, 62 132 133 133 133

New Testament/Neues Testament Matt 1:23 Matt 3:17 Matt 6:26 Matt 8:18 Matt 8:23–27 Matt 8:26 Matt 8:29 Matt 11:28–29 Matt 13:20 Matt 13:22 Matt 13:23 Matt 14 Matt 14:22–33 Matt 14:22–23 Matt 14:22

52, 63 51, 63 89 48, 60 48, 60 45, 57 51, 63 29 84 84 84 69 7,9, 44–46, 53–56, 58f., 68 45, 57, 65, 67 46, 48, 58, 60

Biblical References/Bibelstellenregister

Matt 14:23 Matt 14:24–27 Matt 14:24 Matt 14:26 Matt 14:27 Matt 14:28 Matt 14: 28–29 Matt 14:28–31 Matt 14:28 Matt 14:29 Matt 14:30–31 Matt 14:32–33 Matt 14:32 Matt 14:33 Matt 15:39 Matt 16:16 Matt 17:5 Matt 25:35–39 Matt 26:63 Matt 27:43 Matt 27:54 Matt 28 Matt 28:9 Mark 1 Mark 1:9–7:37 Mark 1:16–20 Mark 1:23–24 Mark 1:41 Mark 1:44 Mark 2:1–12 Mark 2:21–22 Mark 3 Mark 3:1–6 Mark 3:5 Mark 3:6 Mark 3:7–12 Mark 3:12 Mark 3:13–19 Mark 3:20–21 Mark 3:22 Mark 3:31–35 Mark 4 Mark 4:3–9 Mark 4:5–6 Mark 4:8 Mark 4:10–30 Mark 4:11

46, 58 45, 57 44, 46, 56, 58, 67f. 46f., 49, 58 47, 58 46, 57 45 46, 57f. 46, 57 45, 56 45 45, 57 47 52, 63 68 51f., 63 51, 63 154 52, 63 52, 63 52, 63 69 154 78 90 93 91 203 79 77 93 78 87, 90 92 78 78 79 78 78 78 77f. 78 84 84 84 81 93

Mark 4:14–20 Mark 4:14 Mark 4:15–20 Mark 4:15 Mark 4:16–17 Mark 4:16 Mark 4:17 Mark 4:18 Mark 4:19 Mark 4:20 Mark 4:35–41 Mark 4:36–38 Mark 4:35 Mark 4:37–41 Mark 4:39 Mark 4:41 Mark 4:48–50 Mark 5 Mark 5:22–23 Mark 5:30 Mark 5:35–43 Mark 5:38 Mark 5:43 Mark 6 Mark 6:5 Mark 6:7–30 Mark 6:45–52 Mark 6:45 Mark 6:47 Mark 6:49 Mark 6:51–52 Mark 7:1–23 Mark 7:24–30 Mark 7:31–37 Mark 7:32 Mark 7:33 Mark 7:34 Mark 7:35 Mark 7:36 Mark 8 Mark 8:1–26 Mark 8:1–9 Mark 8:14–21 Mark 8:18 Mark 8:22–26 Mark 8:22 Mark 8:23–25

229

84 84 76 84–86 84–86 84–86 85 84–86 79, 84, 86 84–86 45f., 48, 57, 60 77 48, 60 46 45, 57 93 46 78 77 90 77 88 79 78 77, 90 79 46, 58, 77 60 44, 56 49, 60 46, 58 78, 91, 93 78 90, 92, 96, 98 90 90f., 93 88, 90 90 79 92 93 78 80, 91, 93 93, 96, 98 9, 73, 79f., 93, 95–98 90f. 78

230

Indices/Register

Mark 8:23 Mark 8:24 Mark 8:25 Mark 8:26 Mark 8:27–10:52 Mark 8:31 Mark 8:35–38 Mark 9:12 Mark 9:31 Mark 10 Mark 10:33–34 Mark 10:45 Mark 10:46–52 Mark 10:52 Mark 11 Mark 11:2 Mark 11:11–17 Mark 11:27–33 Mark 14:13–16 Mark 14:27 Mark 14:28 Mark 14:32–42 Mark 14:54–72 Mark 15:6–15 Mark 15:16–24 Mark 16:7 Mark 16:8 Mark 16:9–20 Luke 1:1–4 Luke 1:2 Luke 1:3 Luke 1:4 Luke 1:5 Luke 5:1–11 Luke 8:22–25 Luke 8:22 Luke 8:24 Luke 24:27 John 1:1 John 1:14 John 1:18 John 3:16 John 3:18 John 6:14–15 John 6:16–21 John 6:16 John 6:17

88, 90–93 79, 88, 90, 92 88, 90, 92 88, 93 92f. 79, 82, 91, 93 82 92 79, 82, 91, 93 79 79, 82, 91, 93 154 79, 93 88 78 82 79 77 82 82 82 77 79 87 77 82 82, 197 202 77 183 202 200 77 49, 61 48, 60 48, 60 45, 57 186 190, 198 198 189f., 198 190, 198 190 48, 59 46, 58 46, 48, 58 46, 58

John 6:19 John 6:20 John 6:21 John 7:53–8:11 John 8:31–32 John 10:35 John 14:18 John 16:13 John 17:20 John 20:31 John 21:1–8 John 21:4 John 21:7 Acts 1–12 Acts 2:38–41 Acts 15:19–21 Acts 19:4 Acts 28:1–6 Rom 4 Rom 4:2 Rom 4:5 Rom 4:7–8 Rom 5:14 Rom 8:22 Rom 10:4 Rom 10:12 Rom 14:1–4 Rom 14:2–5 Rom 15 Rom 16 1Cor 1:2 1Cor 1:20–25 1Cor 1:21 1Cor 11:2 1Cor 11:23 1Cor 15:3 Gal 1–2 Gal 1:1 Gal 1:1–5 Gal 1:11–12 Gal 1:12 Gal 1:15–24 Gal 1:6–10 Gal 1:6–9 Gal 1:11–2:21 Gal 2:11 Gal 2:14

44, 46–47, 56, 58 46, 58 46–47, 58 202f. 189 186 210 210 186 186 49, 60f. 49, 60 49, 60 51, 63 200 157 88 202 164, 193 164 164 164 197 197 160 160 154 160 203 203 200 202 200 183 183 183 155 155 77 155 155 155 77 155 77 156 156

Biblical References/Bibelstellenregister

Gal 2:15–21 Gal 2:15 Gal 2:16 Gal 3–4 Gal 3 Gal 3:1–5:6 Gal 3:1–14 Gal 3:1–6 Gal 3:6 Gal 3:7–14 Gal 3:7 Gal 3:16 Gal 3:17–18 Gal 3:26–28 Gal 3:26 Gal 3:27 Gal 3:28 Gal 3:29 Gal 4:10 Gal 5–6 Gal 5:2–12 Gal 5:7–12 Gal 5:13–6:10 Gal 6:11–17 Gal 6:12–13 Eph 2:19 Eph 2:20

155 157 156f., 163 155 157, 164 77 79 79, 81 158 79 158 209 158 8f., 144, 153–156, 158f., 161–163, 165 154, 156 158 154, 158f. 159 157 155 154 77 77 77 154 154 183

Eph 3:5 Phil 2:3–4 Phil 3 Phil 3:5–6 Phil 3:8–11 Col 4:16 1Thess 5:27 2Thess 1:1 2Thess 2:1 2Tim 2:15 2Tim 3 2Tim 3:16 Heb 2:9 Heb 3–4 Heb 11:3 Heb 13 Heb 13:10–12 Heb 13:13 James 2:23 1Pet 4:16 2Pet 1:21 2Pet 3:9 2Pet 3:10 1John 3:16–18 1John 5:7–8 Jude 5

231

183 154 164 164 157 200, 202 180 200 200 183 185 183, 185, 188, 193 197 29 14, 33–35 92 91 91 193 176 186, 193 154 177 154 207 173f., 176

Zuletzt in der Reihe erschienen Achim Behrens Theologische Reflexionsgeschichte des Alten Testaments Exegetische Studien im Kontext evangelisch-lutherischer Theologie Oberurseler Hefte Ergänzungsband 15 348 Seiten, Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-8469-0194-6 Book auch als

Volker Stolle Das Markusevangelium Text, Übersetzung und Kommentierung (unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Erzähltechnik) Oberurseler Hefte Ergänzungsband 17 416 Seiten mit 3 Abbildungen und 20 Tabellen Hardcover, Fadenheftung ISBN: 978-3-8469-0175-5 Book auch als

Inh. Dr. Reinhilde Ruprecht e.K., Postfach 1716, 37007 Göttingen www.edition-ruprecht.de