Parents for Sale

An item for sale on Craigslist:

Michael Amatrudo, a 51-year-old Madison resident and insurance executive, says in the ad that he's gotten "lots of use out of these guys over the past 50 years, but it's time to move on." He says he'll take $155 or a trade for a younger set of parents, an Erector set or a "hot blonde."

I wonder if this is a violation of the 5th Commandment: “Honor your father and your mother” (Exodus 20:12).

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: 5th Commandment

Beer in the Ancient Near East

The Brussels Journal has a review the book A History of Beer and Brewing (Cambridge, UK: Royal Society of Chemistry, 2003) by Ian Spencer Hornsey. The book provides a quick worldwide survey of ancient brews. The selection below is a section of the book review dealing with beer and brewing in the Ancient Near East.

Recorded human history begins with the rise of urban literate civilization in Mesopotamia and the Middle East, starting with the Sumerians and the cities of Uruk, Ur, Lagash and Kish in the fourth millennium BC. These civilizations had access to barley and wheat, which by consensus would be regarded as the preferred grains by most brewers. The origin of wheat and barley is believed to lie in the Fertile Crescent. Wild barley grew in Israel and Syria, the Jordan Valley with the extremely ancient Neolithic town of Jericho via eastern Anatolia to northern Mesopotamia and western Iran. Apart from barley, all of the major cereal crops such as wheat, oats, rye, millets, maize, sorghum and rice can and have been used to make beer. Some of the oldest written texts in the world contain lists of grains and ingredients for making beer. Sumerian Mesopotamia produced a great variety of beers, most of which were probably weaker than the European beers of medieval times. Wine was made in the Zagros Mountains in Iran and imported to the main urban sites. Beer was a popular drink in Mesopotamia during all eras and was consumed by all social groups, interlinked with mythology, religion and medicine, synonymous with happiness and a civilized life. Both filtered and unfiltered beers were brewed in the region.

According to I. Hornsey, “Beer that had not gone through any sieving or settlement phase was always drunk through straws, in order to avoid gross sediment. Numerous cylinder seals have been recovered which show individuals (usually two) drinking through straws from a communal vessel, something that supports the notion that drinking beer was a social activity….Drinking straws were usually made of reeds, and hence have long since perished, but one or two elaborate and more substantial structures have survived. Three such items were recovered from a royal tomb at Ur. One was made of copper encased in lapis lazuli; one was made of silver, fitted with gold and lapis lazuli rings, and the third was a reed covered in gold, and found still inserted in a silver jar. The silver tube was an impressive L-shaped structure, being ca. 1 cm in diameter, and some 93 cm long. A number of metal ‘straws’ have also been recovered from Syrian sites. Unfiltered Mesopotamian beer, which was thick and cloudy, was low in alcohol but high in carbohydrate and proteins, making it a nutritious food supplement.”

Beer played an important role in the ceremonial life of ancient Egypt, too. As Douglas J. Brewer and Emily Teeter state in their book Egypt and the Egyptians, second edition, “The most popular drink in Egypt was beer, and we assume that all Egyptians – rich and poor, male and female – drank great quantities of it in spite of advice such as ‘Don’t indulge in drinking beer, lest you utter evil speech, and don’t know what you are saying’ (from the ‘Instructions of Ani’). Wages were paid in grain, which was used to make two staples of the Egyptian diet: bread and beer. Beer was made from barley dough, so bread making and beer making are often shown together. Barley dough destined for beer making was partially baked and then crumbled into a large vat, where it was mixed with water and sometimes sweetened with date juice. This mixture was left to ferment, which it did quickly; the liquid was then strained into a pot that was sealed with a clay stopper. Ancient Egyptian beer had to be drunk soon after it was made because it went flat very quickly. Egyptians made a variety of beers of different strengths.”

All kinds of workers were paid in grain and in grain products such as beer and bread. People at all levels of Egyptian society drank beer, with brewing not as tied to the temples as it was in Mesopotamia, although there was some government interference and regulation here as well. Breweries in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and Syria could be large, but in the warm climate the beer would quickly become undrinkable and could thus not be transported too far or exported to distant regions. Baking and brewing often went on in shared quarters on the estates of Egypt since these two processes involved the same raw materials and similar equipment. Artistic evidence suggests a strong link between brewing and bread-making, both being domestic duties usually performed by women. Women made much of the beer in medieval Europe, too, until brewing become a major, capital-intensive industry and gradually became dominated by men. The roles of microscopic organisms in baking and brewing, however, were not fully appreciated until the scientific advances of nineteenth century Europe.

Beer was also consumed by many other ancient peoples, including the Hittites, Hebrews, Philistines, Thracians, Illyrians, Phrygians and Scythians. Some peoples, like the Nubians and the Ethiopians, would appear to have developed their own methods of brewing, making use of indigenous raw materials. The Eskimos drank chiefly iced water and warm blood before they were confronted by Europeans and their alcoholic drinks.

Wine has frequently throughout recorded history enjoyed greater prestige than beer and has often been the preferred choice of the wealthy and the privileged. It is difficult to say why. Maybe it was because wine was usually stronger than beer or that it kept longer. We cannot say with certainty that it always tasted better. Regardless of the reason for this, it is a fact that wine was often valued more highly. This attitude arguably still exists today, when beer is often viewed as the drink of the "common man," while those eating at expensive restaurants will normally prefer a glass of fine wine rather than a glass of beer to accompany their food.

Wine was widely consumed in the ancient Middle East, and sometimes its effects were enhanced by additives. Along with eating and drinking went song and dance. Egyptians and Mesopotamians found it difficult to grow large amounts of grapes for wine and instead imported what they could not make. Thousands of wine jars were deposited in the tombs of the first pharaohs of Egypt at Saqqara (Memphis) and Abydos, the main centers of the recently united country. The about 700 jars of wine found in the tomb of one of Egypt’s first kings at Abydos, Scorpion I, contain some of the earliest known hieroglyphic writing ever discovered in Egypt, from before 3100 BC. This wine was apparently imported from southern Palestine, and it is quite clear that there was large-scale production of wine in the Levant – present-day Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan – already at this early date.

If you like beer, this post is for you.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Ancient Near East, Archaeology, Beer, Brewing, Wine

Ancient Burial Site Discovered in Northern Greece

Nicholas Paphitis, writing for the Associated Press, is reporting that archaeologists have found a burial site that contains the remains of a person of nobility. It is possible that the remains belonged to a Macedonian royal. The following is an excerpt from the article:

ATHENS, Greece (AP) -- Archaeologists said Friday they have unearthed a lavish burial site at the seat of the ancient Macedonian kings in northern Greece, heightening a 2,300-year-old mystery of murder and political intrigue.

The find in the ruins of Aigai came a few meters (yards) from last year's remarkable discovery of what could be the bones of Alexander the Great's murdered teenage son, according to one expert.

Archaeologists are puzzled because both sets of remains were buried under very unusual circumstances: Although cemeteries existed near the site, the bones were taken from an unknown first resting place and re-interred, against all ancient convention, in the heart of the city.

Excavator Chrysoula Saatsoglou-Paliadeli said in an interview that the bones found this week were inside one of two large silver vessels unearthed in the ancient city's marketplace, close to the theater where Alexander's father, King Philip II, was murdered in 336 B.C.

She said they arguably belonged to a Macedonian royal and were buried at the end of the 4th century B.C.
. . .

Saatsoglou-Paliadeli believes the teenager's bones found in 2008 may have belonged to Heracles, Alexander's illegitimate son who was murdered during the wars of succession around 309 B.C. and buried in secret. The remains had been placed in a gold jar, with an elaborate golden wreath.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags:

Aigai, Archaeology, Macedonia, Saatsoglou-Paliadeli,


Aigai,
Archaeology,
Macedonia,
Saatsoglou-Paliadeli

Themelios

The Gospel Coalition is offering the articles published on Themelios journal free of charge.

Themelios is an international evangelical theological journal that expounds and defends the historic Christian faith. The journal is written primarily for theological students and pastors.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Themelios

When Christians Break the Law

Israel Today is reporting that some Palestinians believe that Jewish prayers on the Temple Mount is a violation of international law. This is how Israel Today reported the event:

Taking their misinterpretation of international law to new heights, the Arab League this week accused the Jews of Israel of violating the rules that govern global behavior by praying atop Jerusalem's Temple Mount.

The incident occurred on Sunday, when the head of the Temple Institute led a small group of Jewish tourists atop the Temple Mount. Israeli police at the site forbid non-Muslims from praying there or making any kind of outward religious gestures, such as kneeling or bowing.

But the Temple Institute told Israel National News that the group managed to hold a very brief prayer session without being detected.

After reading about the Jewish prayers at Judaism's holiest site, Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa called them "a serious blow to the holiness of the site."

Moussa insisted that under international law, Jews and Christians are forbidden from praying atop the Muslim-controlled Temple Mount.

I have not read Mr. Moussa’s statement nor his interpretation of the law that declares that Jews and Christians cannot pray on the Temple Mount. I have been to Israel several times and I have seen Christians praying aloud and silently on the Temple Mount.

If praying on the Temple Mount is a violation of international law, many Christians are guilty of breaking the law.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Prayer, Temple Mount

The Biblical Archaeology Society 2009 Publication Awards

The Biblical Archaeology Society has released their 2009 Publication Awards for the best books dealing with archaeology and the Hebrew Bible. This is their selection:

Best Scholarly Book on Archaeology

Israel’s Ethnogenesis Settlement, Interaction, Expansion and Resistance
by AVRAHAM FAUST
London: Equinox Publishing, 2007

In this book, Faust tackles one of the hottest debates in Biblical archaeology: the “ethnogenesis” (ethnic origins) of early Israel. Faust provides an overview and synthesis of the archaeological and Biblical evidence in a clear and concise manner, and without unnecessary jargon, despite the book’s strong theoretical underpinnings. But Faust goes beyond summarizing the state of the debate, presenting his own interpretations and views on the emergence of early Israel. This book is a must-read for specialists and is highly recommended for non-specialists looking for an introduction to the current debates.

Best Popular Book on Archaeology

From Eden to Exile: Unraveling Mysteries of the Bible
by ERIC CLINE
Washington, DC: National Geographic Books, 2008

In this engaging and well-written book, Eric Cline discusses popular Biblical mysteries such as the Garden of Eden, Noah’s Ark and the Ten Lost Tribes. He does an excellent job of explaining why many of the sensational claims made about supposed archaeological discoveries relating to these mysteries are unfounded, while providing readers with a clear and balanced account of what we do know about them. Cline’s book shows how archaeologists can responsibly and professionally involve the public in ongoing discoveries.

Best Book Relating to the Hebrew Bible

Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible
by KAREL VAN DER TOORN
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007

In the words of the author, “professional scribes ... are the main figures behind biblical literature; we owe the Bible entirely to them.” While scholars of the Bible have known this implicitly, no one until now has framed the matter as clearly as Professor van der Toorn in this pathfinding book. The author provides the ancient Near Eastern background concerning the cultural impact of scribes and their writings (covering both Egypt and Mesopotamia); he presents clearly the concepts of both anonymous and pseudonymous authorship in antiquity; he brilliantly creates a coherent narrative out of the many disparate passages in the Bible that deal with writing and the role of the scribe; and finally he treats such subjects as revelation and canon formation in the long process that ultimately produced the Hebrew Bible. The result is a superb work: well conceived, masterfully researched, broad in scope, and accessible to both scholar and educated lay person alike.

Best Book Relating to the New Testament

Romans: A Commentary
by ROBERT JEWETT
Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007

Robert Jewett’s commentary is a signal achievement, a treasury and reference work for generations to come. The mass of detail that he provides enhances the innovative argument that he pursues throughout the substantial volume. With attention to text critical details, rhetoric and style, economics and social life, and the historical circumstances of Jews under the Roman Empire, Jewett details how the Letter to the Romans fits into a broad first-century debate about honor, power and the status of the barbarian.

I will probably add the two books on archaeology and the book on the Hebrew Bible to my must-read list. The problem is that the list is growing so fast that it may be a long time before I am able to read these three books.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary


Tags: Archaeology, Hebrew Bible

The Fluctuations of the Dead Sea

In a recent post, I linked that post to an article and a video published by National Geographic which said that the Dead Sea is shrinking fast and may soon become a large lake.

Jim West, observant as he is, called my attention to another video which shows that the Dead Sea has been much lower than it is now and that its level fluctuates over time.

Watch the video here and make sure that, as you click play, you watch what happens to the Dead Sea.

Thank you Jim for this information.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Dead Sea

Mark 16, the NIV, and the Mark of the Beast

Here is another great gem from our favorite Internet preacher.

Question: How is the NIV, Mark 16, and the number of the beast in Revelation 13:18 related? Listen to the answer:




HT: PaleoBabble

UPDATE:

Read Mark Goodacre's comments at NT Blog.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary


Tags: 666, Mark 16, NIV

The Dead Sea Is Shrinking and May Disappear Soon

The National Geographic is reporting that the level of water in the Dead Sea is dropping fast and it may turn into a large lake within 50 years.

The Dead Sea is the lowest place on earth, about 1280 feet below sea level. However, in the last 40 years it has dropped more than 80 feet and it continues to drop about 1 meter per year.

Watch the video by clicking here.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary


Tags: Dead Sea

The Letter to the Hebrews: Star Wars Style

Aaron Rathburn has produced a great introduction to the first chapter of the letter to the Hebrews.





HT: Darrell Pursiful

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Hebrews

A Miniature Carving of Alexander the Great

Photo: Courtesy Tel Dor Excavation Delegation

Israel National News is reporting that a miniature carving of Alexander the Great was discovered in the excavations at Tel Dor. The following is an excerpt from the article:

Excavations in Tel Dor have turned up a rare and unexpected work of Hellenistic art: a precious stone bearing the miniature carved likeness of Alexander the Great. Archaeologists are calling it an important find, indicating the great skill of the artist.

The Tel Dor dig, under the guidance and direction of Dr. Ayelet Gilboa of Haifa University and Dr. Ilan Sharon of Jerusalem's Hebrew University, has just ended its summer excavation season. For more than 30 years, scientists have been excavating in Tel Dor, identified as the site of the Biblical town of Dor. The town's location, on Israel's Mediterranean Sea coast some 30 kilometers south of Haifa, made it an important international port in ancient times.

Historically, Alexander himself passed through Dor in 332 BCE, during his voyage to Egypt. It appears that the city fell to him without resistance. Since that time until its conquest by the Hasmonean Jewish King Alexander Yannai around 100 BCE, Dor served as a stronghold of non-Jewish Hellenists in the Land of Israel.

Read the news report in its entirety by visiting the web page of Israel National News.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary


Tags: Alexander the Great, Archaeology, Tel Dor

The Palestine Exploration Fund

The Jerusalem Post has a report about Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu visit to the offices of the Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF). Since most people are not familiar with the work of the Palestine Exploration Fund, I believe the information below with provide a wealth of information about the Fund. The following is an excerpt from the article:

Netanyahu . . . waxed poetic about it at a briefing with Israeli reporters, enthusing over the organization's collection of maps, pictures and documents of Palestine dating back to the mid-19th century.

"This is a treasure, it is something you all must see," he told reporters, as he kept returning to the subject and talking about the archival information there, and about the knowledge of the geography and topography of pre-state Israel housed in that building.

The PEF was founded in 1865 and is the oldest organization in the world created specifically for the study of the Levant, the southern portion of which - as the organization's literature makes clear - was conventionally known as "Palestine."

The organization publishes an internationally respected journal, the Palestine Exploration Quarterly, and brings the latest archaeological findings and research to the public in a series of regular lectures.

The PEF archives houses some 40,000 photographs of Palestine, Jordan and Syria dating as far back as 1850, and also includes archaeological artifacts, natural history specimens, maps, manuscripts and paintings.

The PEF was founded under the patronage of Queen Victoria in 1865 by a group of distinguished academics and clergymen, most notably the dean of Westminster Abbey, to promote research into the archaeology and history, manners, customs and culture, topography, geology and natural sciences of biblical Palestine and the Levant.

Figures associated with the PEF include Charles Wilson and Charles Warren, who carried out key excavations and land surveys in Jerusalem and Palestine in the 19th century.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary


Tags: Palestine Exploration Fund

King Tut: Born of a Virgin

Several months ago, I wrote a post showing the reconstructed face of King Tut. The reconstruction of King Tut's face was made with the help of more than 1,700 high-resolution CT-scanner images of King Tut’s mummy. In response to my post, a reader sent me the following email:

Subject: King Tut

"I can e-mail you an authentic pic of King Tut if you like which shows his Negro features. Why try to derive his face from a mummy when you already have a life size accurate picture of his appearance? Disinformation! They are hard to find anywhere in the world as the Egyptian government attempts to distance themselves from their African ancestry. Zahi Hawass is a pawn of the Egyptian govt that already has human right issues. Hawass can't be relied on for the truth. King Tut didn't have a father, like Christ he was born through immaculate conception. His mother was his wet nurse Maia (Maya). Her tomb was teh only tomb EVER found with a lion mummy in it. Maya was also the same name as Buddha's mother. He had 144 objects wrapped within the bandages of his mummy. 144,000 is the speed of LIGHT around the earth, thus associated with light beings (Revelations). Tribe of Judah is tribe of light contains 144,000 in numbers. Light travels 6.66 times the earth in a second. Humans are the beast. King Tut reincarnated as Christ to take to the next stage what was begun in Egypt. Old testament was derived from Egyptian mythology. King Tut, King Akhenaten, Moses, A was part of the trinity that started Monotheism"

Now, how do I respond to this amazing email?

Without trying to offend my reader, I have to say that there is no end to ignorance in this world.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: King Tut

Women, Pants, and Deuteronomy 22:5 - Part 2

Read Women, Pants, and Deuteronomy 22:5 - Part 1

In my previous post I discussed Kent Brandenburg’s attempt to prove that Deuteronomy 22:5 is teaching that women should wear dresses and skirts and men should were pants. In the present post I will show that the prohibition of Deuteronomy 22:5 deals with religious practices found in Canaanite religion.

As I mentioned in my last post, in order to support his position, Brother Brandenburg quoted several biblical scholars. In addition to Martin Luther and Keil and Delitzsch, he quoted Albert Barnes (1884-1885), The Pulpit Commentary (1897), Lange's Commentary (1884), Joseph Excell (1849), Vincent Alsop (mid 17th century), Matthew Poole (1560) and several recent commentaries.

However, what do all the authors and commentaries Brother Brandenburg cited have in common? Most of them were written before the rise of modern archaeology and the discovery of written material that clarify the religious and cultural practices of many nations of the Ancient Near East. In addition, none of these authors studied how the Hebrew word תוֹעֵבָ֥ה (tô`eba) is used in the book of Deuteronomy.

Let me begin with תוֹעֵבָ֥ה (tô`eba) in Deuteronomy. The noun occurs 117 times in the Old Testament and it is generally translated as “abomination.” The word is used to describe a sinful act on the part of Israel or an individual Israelite. The word appears several times in Ezekiel to describe an action that is cultically unacceptable.

In the book of Deuteronomy, the word tô`eba becomes almost a technical word that is used to describe pagan practices that are abhorrent to Yahweh. A few examples will suffice:

“When you come into the land which the LORD your God gives you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations” (Deuteronomy 18:9).

“There shall not be found among you any one who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, any one who practices divination, a soothsayer, or an augur, or a sorcerer, or a charmer, or a medium, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD; and because of these abominable practices the LORD your God is driving them out before you” (Deuteronomy 18:10-12).

“You shall utterly destroy them, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the LORD your God has commanded; that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices which they have done in the service of their gods, and so to sin against the LORD your God” (Deuteronomy 20:17-18).

“You shall not bring the hire of a harlot, or the wages of a dog, into the house of the LORD your God in payment for any vow; for both of these are an abomination to the LORD your God” (Deuteronomy 23:18).

I could cite several other passages in Deuteronomy where the word “abomination” is used as a reference to a religious practice that existed in the religion of the Canaanites and several other nations in the Ancient Near East. The last quotation above, Deuteronomy 23:18, forbids an Israelite to “bring the hire of a harlot, or the wages of a dog, into the house of the LORD” as a payment for a vow. Such an act was an abomination to the LORD.

The reference here is to the offering in the temple of the Lord of the wages received by the “harlots and the dogs,” that is, the female and male cultic prostitutes who offered themselves in the worship of Baal. Note the order of the words: the female is referred to first, then the male. This same order is also found in Deuteronomy 22:5: first the woman then the man (see below).

This is the reason Deuteronomy 22:5 prohibits Israelites from wearing garments of the opposite sex because these were the special garments female and male cultic prostitutes wore in the service of Asherah (cf. 2 Kings 10:22; 23:7).

Archaeology has shown that the exchange of roles in pagan cults, that is, where male acted as female and vice-versa, was common in the Ancient Near East. A few quotes will suffice to prove this assertion:

Abraham Malamat, in his article “A Forerunner of Biblical Prophecy: The Mary Documents,” published in Essential Papers on Israel and the Ancient Near East, edited by Frederick E. Greenspahn (New York: New Yourk University Press, 1991), p. 159, discusses the role of the assinnus. According to Malamat, the assinnu was “a male prostitute.” Malamat said that this cultic functionary “served in the temple at Mari and prophesied in the name of the goddess Annunitum, apparently while disguised and acting like a woman, perhaps like a modern-day transvestite.”

In a review of Louis Crompton’s Homosexuality and Civilization (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2006) published in The Yale Review of Books 7, vol. 2 (Spring 2004), Margaret Fox wrote:

Crompton quotes the King James translation of a verse from the Holiness Code in Leviticus 20:13: “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.” Crompton speculates that Levitical hostility toward homosexuality arose from the desire to keep the worship of Yahweh distinct from the cultic practices of other cultures in the Ancient Near East, in which transvestite priests often played religious roles.

Theodore Burgh, in his book Listening to the Artifacts: Music Culture in Palestine said (p. 69) that in ancient Mesopotamia, transvestites, men dressed like women, played and danced in the cult of Ishtar, performing erotic dances and pantomime.

Cyrus Gordon, in his book The Bible and the Ancient Near East (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1997), p. 160, wrote:

Another biblical law that now can be explained through recourse to the Ugaritic texts is the prohibition against transvestism in Deuteronomy 22:5. This act is described in the Epic of Aqhat as well. After the hero is slain, his sister Pughat seeks revenge against Anat for the murder. To do so, Pughat disguises herself as a male, replete with rouge (the coloration of males, especially warrior heroes), man’s clothing and weaponry. The Israelite reaction is to forbid transvestism, another aspect of Canaanite society that they found reprehensible. Again, one needs to place this in its proper context. No doubt the average Canaanite male or female dressed in proper fashion throughout most his or her life. But since Canaanite epic literature describes transvestism in a noble manner, we may conclude that this act not only was practiced but also was countenanced. A close reading of the biblical prohibition reveals that the female is referred to first then the male follows. This runs counter to most laws in the Pentateuch, which either are addressed to male solely, or are addressed to male first and female second. This is not coincidental; rather it suggests an even closer connection with Pughat’s action detailed in the Epic of Aqhat.

The temple functionaries known in Canaanite literature as qedeshim and qedoshot were male and female cultic prostitutes who engaged in sexual acts in the Canaanite cult in order to elicit rain and fertility from their gods. In his religious reforms, Josiah, king of Judah, “broke down the houses of the male cult prostitutes which were in the house of the LORD, where the women wove hangings for the Asherah” (2 Kings 23:7).

The Biblical text is very clear: the qedeshim and the qedoshot, the male and female prostitutes were inside the Lord’s house in Jerusalem and there the women wove hangings for the Asherah. This type of ritual drama that took place in the temple was unacceptable to the Israelites. This is the reason the Israelites rejected bestiality, homosexualism, transvestism, and temple prostitution and declared these practices to be an abomination to God.

The Biblical text was not written in a vacuum. The Biblical text was written within a historical and cultural context. When the Biblical text is divorced of its cultural and historical contexts, as Brother Brandenburg has done in his study of Deuteronomy 22:5, the text is made to say that which it never intended to say.

Brother Brandenburg wrote: “Our country practiced the pants as male dress and the dress or skirt as the female dress.” But Deuteronomy was not addressing a cultural issue in “our country” in the twenty-first century or in any other century. Deuteronomy was addressed to Israel as it struggled with Canaanite culture. Deuteronomy was written to address the many religious problems that were plaguing the worship of God, problems that compromised Israel’s uniqueness as a chosen people and problems that undermined Israel’s mission to the nations.

Deuteronomy 22:5 is not prohibiting women from wearing pants. In fact, the word “pants” does not even appears in the Bible.

Well, that is not totally true. The word pants appears twice in the Bible: “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God” (Psalm 42:1 NIV). But these are pants of another kind.


Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Deuteronomy 22:5, Pants, Transvestism, Women

Brian McLaren: A Generous Orthodoxy and the Old Testament

Brian McLaren is a very popular writer among evangelical Christians, especially among postmodern evangelicals who work in the emergent church movement and call themselves missional Christian leaders.

His new book, A Generous Orthodoxy (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004) has received wide acceptance in the evangelical community and is, in a sense, a document addressed to the emerging church movement.

Levi Felton at The Word has a good review of McLaren’s book. Felton calls A Generous Orthodoxy, “A Generous Orthodoxy’s Lesson on Intellectual Dishonesty.”

Felton offers a list of twenty-six intellectually dishonest arguments in Brian McLaren’s book. Felton wrote:

The list of intellectually dishonest arguments that you will find here is not complete and in no particular order. There are plenty more being used all over the world even as you are reading this very sentence. I have two goals to accomplish with this paper. The first is to discredit Brian McLaren’s book a Generous Orthodoxy. The second is to encourage others to learn the dishonest tactics of debate. When you learn these tactics and get yourself very acquainted with them, you’ll find that people use them more than you could have ever imagined and it will make you a better debater. Also, you will catch yourself from formulating your own arguments in dishonest ways and save yourself some embarrassment from getting caught.

I was interested in Felton’s seventh argument, the argument from adverse consequence. Felton wrote:

7. Argument from Adverse Consequences (Appeal to Fear, Scare Tactics)

McLaren contends that the Old Testament is simply not God’s word to people in our time. It, instead, was “God’s word to people back then.” He recounts many examples of violent acts and states that they mis-read the Old Testament. He commends a few well-known peaceful people saying that they have it right. In the end, he contends that there is nothing to learn from the Old Testament except what not to do. This compounds McLaren’s belief that works are what it means to follow Jesus. (This point is solidified by Gandhi being used as an example of someone who followed the way of Christ) The reader is left with a feeling that any belief that the Bible is God’s word to our generation can and will eventually lead to ethnic cleansing being justified. (pg 189)

Visit Levi Felton's blog and read the other twenty-five arguments.

Christians who reject the Old Testament as irrelevant commit the same error the followers of Marcion committed centuries ago. One thing many Christiana do not understand is that if the church today possesses the Old Testament in their Bible is because the leaders of the early church considered the Old Testament so important they decided to preserve it. Since the Old Testament (or the Hebrew Bible) is the Bible of Judaism and it is included in the Christian Bible, Christians today must take the Old Testament very seriously.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Brian McLaren, Emergent Church, Missional Leaders

Women, Pants, and Deuteronomy 22:5 - Part 1

My post on Transvestism in Ancient Israel generated much discussion about the issue of women wearing pants. Several readers, in private communication, called my attention to two posts (here and here) by Kent Brandenburg in which he challenged my conclusion that Deuteronomy 22:5 deals with pagan practices. Deuteronomy 22:5 reads: “A woman shall not wear man's clothing, nor shall a man put on a woman's clothing; for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD your God.”

In my post, I wrote the following:

Although scholars have rejected the anti-transvestism law of Deuteronomy 22:5 to be a ban on Canaanite practices, I take the view that this Deuteronomic prohibition is a protest against the immoral practices of Canaanite fertility religion.

In reply to my post, Brother Brandenburg wrote:

They simply speculate the intention of the biblical text. God prohibits women from putting on the male garment and men from putting on the female garment, but instead the intention was to avoid Canaanite worship rituals.

He also wrote:

Deuteronomy 22:5 isn't hard to understand. . . . The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God. . . . We see nothing in the verse about Canaanite worship or women in the military or transvestism. It is about as straightforward as it can get.

Brother Brandenburg concludes:

I've dealt with the interpretation of Deuteronomy 22:5. Now I will show you that women in dresses and skirts and men in pants is how that it has been practiced.

Our country practiced the pants as male dress and the dress or skirt as the female dress. Those were the designed distinctions. None other served as the distinction between the genders. They were erased by the culture because the culture didn't care to keep those distinctions any longer, despite what God had said. They were replaced by nothing.

To prove his argument, that Deuteronomy 22:5 teaches that women should wear dresses and skirts and that men should were pants, Brother Brandenburg quotes several biblical scholars and their comments on this text.

Brother Brandenburg begins his argument by quoting Martin Luther: “When the devil has persuaded us to surrender one article of faith to him, he has won; in effect he has all of them, and Christ is already lost.” When the issue of whether or not women should wear pants becomes an article of faith then we have enthroned a cultural practice into the realm of church doctrine.

Brother Brandenburg then quotes several biblical scholars on this issue. I will cite Keil and Delitzsch as an example. They wrote:

As the property of a neighbor was to be sacred in the estimation of an Israelite, so also the divine distinction of the sexes, which was kept sacred in civil life by the clothes peculiar to each sex, was to be not less but even more sacredly observed. There shall not be man's things upon a woman, and a man shall not put on a woman's clothes.

The distinction between the sexes is established by God and taught in the Bible. When God created human beings, he created them male and female. God blessed them and told them to increase and multiply. This is the reason that in the sexual act, a man joins his wife and they become one flesh.

Homosexuality, both male and female, violates this created order because it destroys this divine distinction between the sexes: homosexual relations do not include a man and a woman. The people involved in a homosexual relationship cannot procreate and they do not become one flesh.

Although sexual distinction between the sexes was established by God, Deuteronomy 22:5 is not teaching that women should wear dresses and skirts and men should wear pants.

There are several Egyptian monuments showing Semites (probably Hebrews or Hapiru) entering Egypt. The image below shows Hebrew men and Hebrew women pictured on monuments.
















It is clear from the image above that none of the Hebrew men were wearing pants. In addition, both men and women are wearing robes and in the image some of the robes of the men and women are identical in color and style.

In addition, on the various monuments of other nations of the Ancient Near East, men of various nations and different cultures are portrayed: none of the men are wearing pants.

In the image below, a representation of the obelisk of Shalmaneser III, Jehu, king of Israel appears bowing before the king of Assyria. Neither Jehu nor the Assyrians are wearing pants.








In the image below, several Hebrews are represented on the obelisk of Shalmaneser. The image shows that the men are not wearing pants.

















If Brother Brandenburg is correct, that Moses ordered men to wear pants, then all of these Hebrew men were violating God’s command. The truth is that Deuteronomy 22:5 is not teaching that women should wear dresses and skirts and men should wear pants.

A closer look at the monuments gives evidence that this statement is true.


Next: The Canaanite connection. Read, Women, Pants, and Deuteronomy 22:5 - Part 2

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary


Tags: Deuteronomy 22:5, Pants, Transvestism, Women,

A Sympathetic View of Immanuel Velikovsky’s Theory

When I discussed Immanuel Velikovski’s book, Worlds in Collision, I promised to provide two videos that discuss his theory. The first video discussed and criticized Velikovski’s theory about a comet coming into contact with Earth. The present video is more sympathetic to Velikovski’s theory.




Other Posts on Immanuel Velikovsky:

Immanuel Velikovsky and the Old Testament

Immanuel Velikovsky and the History of Israel

Video: Immanuel Velikovski: Worlds in Collision

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Immanuel Velikovski, Worlds in Collision

Immanuel Velikovski: Worlds in Collision

When I discussed Immanuel Velikovski’s book, Worlds in Collision, I promised to provide two videos that discuss his theory. This first video discusses and criticizes Velikovski’s theory about a comet coming into contact with Earth. The second video (coming) will be more sympathetic to Velikovski’s theory.






Other Posts on Immanuel Velikovsky:

Immanuel Velikovsky and the Old Testament

Immanuel Velikovsky and the History of Israel

Video: Immanuel Velikovski: Worlds in Collision

Video: A Sympathetic View of Immanuel Velikovsky’s Theory


Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Immanuel Velikovski, Worlds in Collision

Book Reviews - Old Testament

The Society of Biblical Literature has released its latest issue of The Review of Biblical Literature. Among the books reviewed, the following reviews are of interest to Old Testament students:

Bill T. Arnold
Genesis

Reviewed by Jan-Wim Wesselius

Description: This commentary is an innovative interpretation of one of the most profound texts of world literature: the book of Genesis. The first book of the Bible has been studied, debated, and expounded as much as any text in history, yet because it addresses the weightiest questions of life and faith, it continues to demand our attention. The author of this new commentary combines older critical approaches with the latest rhetorical methodologies to yield fresh interpretations accessible to scholars, clergy, teachers, seminarians, and interested laypeople. It explains important concepts and terms as expressed in the Hebrew original so that both people who know Hebrew and those who do not will be able to follow the discussion. "Closer Look" sections examine Genesis in the context of cultures of the Ancient Near East. "Bridging the Horizons" sections enable the reader to see the enduring relevance of the book in the twenty-first century.

Adam Green
King Saul: The True History of the First Messiah

Reviewed by Ralph K. Hawkins

Description: Spurred on by a childhood fascination with the Tanakh, which brought to his attention the discrepancy between the English rendering of Samuel 21:19 and the original Hebrew, Adam Green builds upon recent research to show that later authors revised 1 Samuel with the specific intention of defaming Saul. In the process, these revisionist authors glorified the character of David, significantly distorting the true nature of events. Green systematically works through the Biblical text, highlighting its illogical chronology, and drawing attention to apocryphal incidents, before reconstructing a more plausible sequence for the story. a fresh analysis of a maligned figure and a comprehensive guide to the First Book of Samuel, Green’s interpretation returns Saul to his rightful place as the one genuine Messiah.

Bernard M. Levinson
“The Right Chorale”: Studies in Biblical Law and Interpretation

Reviewed by J. Glen Taylor

Levinson’s book is a collection of twelve previously published essays dealing with Biblical laws and how they have been interpreted by scholars. According to the reviewer, this is how
Levinson’s describes the common theme to these essays: “The conviction underlying and unifying these essays is that theory—a model of hermeneutics—is already implicit in the biblical text” (vii). In other words, “the authors of the biblical texts were themselves readers and interpreters, conscious of their place in literary, legal, and intellectual history in ancient Israel, and aware that they were living in a world where the ‘word’ was already a textualized word, and was not simply immediate.”

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Book Reviews

Immanuel Velikovsky and the History of Israel

In my last post I reviewed Immanuel Velikovsky’s book Worlds in Collision and his theory that the plagues that afflicted the Egyptians during the days of Moses were caused by a comet which came into contact with Earth at the time the Hebrews were departing from Egypt.

In the same book Velikovsky also said that the comet, which eventually became the planet Venus, caused the sun to stand still in the days of Joshua and caused the shadow to turn back ten degrees on the sun dial of Ahaz when it collided with the planet Mars.

In his books Ages in Chaos (New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1952) and Peoples of the Sea (New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1977), Velikovsky continues developing the theory he proposed in Worlds in Collision and offers a radical revision of Egyptian and Israelite histories. Ages in Chaos is a reconstruction of ancient history from the Exodus to King Akhnaton and Peoples of the Sea is a reconstruction of ancient history from the Persian conquest of Egypt to the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great.

The key to Velikovsky’s reconstruction of ancient history is his belief that there exists a connecting link between the history of Egypt and the history of Israel. This link was provided by an Egyptian eyewitness who wrote a first-hand account of the catastrophe that came upon Egypt.

According to Velikovsky, the Papyrus Ipuwer, published under the title The Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage, describes the horrors and the ruins that came upon Egypt when the comet came into contact with Earth. On page 26 of Ages in Chaos, Velikovsky cites Worlds in Collision to affirm that “The papyrus of Ipuwer contains evidence of some natural cataclysm accompanied by earthquakes and bears witness to the appearance of things as they happened at that time.”

One key point in Velikovsky’s reconstruction of ancient history is a statement in the Papyrus Ipuwer (p. 38):

Papyrus 3:1 Forsooth, the Desert is throughout the land. The nomes are laid waste. A foreign tribe from abroad has come to Egypt.

According to Velikovsky, in the aftermath of the catastrophe caused by the comet, tribes from the Arabian desert invaded Egypt pillaging the country, raping women, and killing the population. This group of people were called the “Amu,” whom Velikovsky identified with the Hyksos. He wrote: “If the catastrophes of the Papyrus Ipuwer and of the book of Exodus are identical; if, further, the Hyksos and the Amalekites are one, then world history, as it really ocurred, is entirely different from what we have been taught” (Ages in Chaos, p. 99).

The issue for Velikovsky’s reconstruction of history hinges on the identification of the Hyksos. Although the identity of the Hyksos has been an item of debate, scholars believe that they were a Northwest-Semitic people who invaded Egypt and Syria. Since the Hyksos worshiped Canaanite gods, especially Baal, it is possible that some of them were Canaanites.

Velikovsky identifies the Hyksos with the Amalekites. The Amalekites were an Arabian tribe that lived in the Arabian desert. On their way from Egypt to Canaan, the Israelites fought against the Amalekites at Rephidim (Exodus 17:8).

Velikovsky uses Arabian sources to demonstrate that the Amalekites ruled in Mecca and from there controlled all other Arabian tribes. He also quotes Arab writers of the ninth and tenth centuries A.D. who say that the Amalekites conquered Egypt and Syria. Velikovsky quotes Abulfeda, an Arab writer of the fourteenth century A.D. who wrote: “There were Egyptian Pharaohs of Amalekite descent.”

The traditional view is that the Hyksos invaded Egypt in 1700 B.C (or 1650 B.C.) and were expelled by Amosis in 1542 B.C. This means then, that the Israelites came into Egypt during the reign of the Hyksos. However, in Velikovsky’s reconstruction of history, the Israelites met the Hyksos (or the Amalekites) on their (the Hyksos’) way into Egypt.

In order to demonstrate that the Amalekites were the Hyksos and that the Hyksos conquered Egypt a few months after Israel left Egypt, Velikovsky has to revise Egyptian history and chronology: “His reconstruction places before the reader this question–Are six hundred years missing in Israel’s history or have six hundred ghost years crept into Egyptian history” (this quote is taken from the front flap of the book).

The above quote is a paraphrase of the statement that appears on p. 101: “Six hundred years disappeared from the history of the Jewish people, or six hundred years were doubled in the history of Egypt and in the history of many other people as well.” Velikovsky wrote: “If the fault lies in Egyptian history, the only possibility is that events of that history are described twice, and six hundred years is repeated” (p. 100).

Beginning with the view that the Papyrus Ipuwer is an eyewitness version of what happened in Egypt at the time of the Exodus, Velikovsky lowers Egyptian chronology by several hundred years in order to synchronize Egyptian history with Israelite history. He said: “I shall set down the events of the time following the expulsion of the Hyksos-Amalekites, reign by reign and age by age, in Egypt and in Palestine” (p. 100).

The result of this attempt at revising Egyptian chronology becomes what I consider to be an amusing reconstruction of ancient history. Most people who will read this post may not be familiar with Egyptian history and how it is related to the history found in the Old Testament. Those who know that history will immediately recognize the incongruity of Velikovsky’s synchronisms.

1. The person who expelled the Hyksos from Egypt was Saul (p. 79).

2. King Amosis was fighting with Joab when Joab conquered the Hyksos (the Amalekites; p. 85).

3. Hatshepsut was the Queen of Sheba (p. 108).

4. Thutmose I was the Shisak of 1 Kings 11:40 (p. 104).

5. Thutmose III was the Egyptian pharaoh who conquered Palestine after the death of Solomon, (p. 144).

6. Shoshenq (the Shishak of the Bible) was King So of Egypt to whom Hoshea paid tribute (2 Kings 17:4; p. 176).

7. The Ras Shamra texts were not written in the 14th-13th centuries B.C. They come from the time of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, that is, between 870-840 B.C. (p. 229).

8. Amenhotep II was Zerah the Ethiopian (2 Chronicles 14:9; p. 214).

9. Amenhotep III and Akhnaton were contemporaries with Jehoshaphat.

10. In the El-Amarna letters, the city of Sumur was Samaria and the city of Gubla was Jezreel.

11. The kings mentioned in the Amarna letters:
Abdi-Hiba, king of Jerusalem was Jehoshaphat
Rib-Addi, king of Sumur was Ahab
Abdi-Ashirta, king of Amuru was Ben-Hadad of Damascus
Azaru, the son of Abdi-Ashirta was Hazael (but Hazael was not the son of Ben-Hadad).

12. The Obelisk of Shalmaneser III is contemporary with the Amarna Letters and the Ras Shamra literature.

In Peoples of the Sea Velikovsky says that Ramses III lived in the fourth century B.C., that the Peoples of the Sea were Greek mercenaries, and that the Pereset were Persians.

Time and space do not permit me to give all the details of Velikovsky’s reconstruction of ancient history. Anyone educated in Biblical studies, classical history, or archeology will clearly understand that this reconstruction of history is just not acceptable. Velikovsky wrote:

“The attempt to reconstruct radically the history of the ancient world, twelve hundred years in the life of many nations and kingdoms, unprecedented as it is, will meet severe censure from those who, in their teaching and writing, have already deeply committed themselves to the old concept of history” (Ages in Chaos, p. vii).

Those who “will express their disbelief that a truth could have remained undiscovered so long” will not learn the truth because “the guardians of dogma” will stamp out this new teaching “by exorcism and not by argument” (p. vii).

Velikovsky complains that none of the many people who have reviewed his book has been able “to prove the book or any part of it wrong or any quoted document spurious.” But how can anyone prove that Ipuwer was an eyewitness of the Exodus? How can anyone prove that Islamic writers, writing in the ninth, tenth, eleven, and twelfth centuries of the Christian era were not bragging that Arabians ruled Egypt in the ancient past? The interpretation of ancient documents can be skewed by the presuppositions of the interpreter and we must acknowldge that Velikovsky had a huge presupposition behind the reading of these ancient texts.

I am not a guardian of dogmas nor do I seek to stamp out Velikovsky’s teaching by exorcism. I believe Velikovsky loses by the sheer weight of historical evidence that militate against his theory. It is sad that such a brilliant author spent more than twenty years developing a theory that few people will accept. This is, as I wrote in my previous post, “a magnificent exercise in futility.”

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Ages in Chaos, Immanuel Velikovsky, Worlds in Collision

Immanuel Velikovsky and the Old Testament

Readers of the Bible struggle with some of the texts of the Old Testament, primarily with those passages dealing with miracles and those texts dealing with astronomical events. Many Christian thinkers have written books and articles trying to reconcile the claims of the Bible with the claims of science.

Among the difficult passages that are hard to explain, three texts in the Old Testament have been the focus of intense scrutiny from people who are antagonistic to the claims of the Bible and from people who believe that the Bible presents a true account of what happened in the distant past. These three texts are the passages in Exodus dealing with the plagues that came upon Egypt, the sun standing still in the days of Joshua, and the return of the shadow ten degrees on the dial of Ahaz.

One controversial attempt at explaining these three texts was provided by Immanuel Velikovsky in his book Worlds in Collision (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1950). Velikovsky’s theory is unique and has engendered a lively debate among scientists and Biblical scholars concerning the merits of his proposal.

One of my readers asked me to study and evaluate Velikovsky’s reconstruction of ancient history as developed in his books Ages in Chaos (New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1952) and People of the Sea (New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1977). Because I had not read any of Velikovsky’s books, I decided to read these three books before I passed judgment on Velikovsky’s reconstruction of history.

After finishing reading the books, I have decided to review Velikovsky’s three books as follows:

1. The present post will review Velikovsky’s theory presented in Worlds in Collision.

2. This post will be followed by a video presentation that is critical of Velikovsky’s theory developed in Worlds in Collision.

3. I will write another post reviewing Ages in Chaos and People of the Sea.

4. This second post will be followed by another video presentation that is more sympathetic to Velikovsky’s theory developed in Worlds in Collision.

Since Velikovsky’s reconstruction of history is based on the theory he developed in Worlds in Collision, I must begin my evaluation of Velikovsky’s reconstruction of ancient history with his basic work.

The Exodus from Egypt (Exodus 7:14-11:10)

According to Velikovsky, the events related to the ten plagues that struck Egypt at the time of the Exodus was caused by a comet that passed close to earth around 1500 B.C. This comet eventually became the planet Venus. Velikovsky describes this event:

“A celestial body that only shortly has become a member of the solar system–a new comet–came very close to the earth . . . The comet was on its way from its perihelion and touched the earth first with its gaseous tail . . . One of the first visible signs of this encounter was the reddening of the earth’s surface by a fine dust of rusty pigment. In sea, lake, and river this pigment gave a bloody coloring to the water” (p. 48).

Velikovsky believes that the "Papyrus Ipuwer", published under the title Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage provides an eyewitness of the tragic events caused by the approaching comet. In addition to this Egyptian eyewitness, Buddhist texts and Mexican annals also describe this cosmic event that caused much destruction.

The Long Day of Joshua (Joshua 10:12-15)

Fifty-two years later this comet returned again, this time the head of the comet passed so close to earth that it caused a rain of meteorites (the “huge stones from heaven” mentioned in Joshua 10:11). Earth’s encounter with the comet also caused the earth to depart from its regular rotation, thus causing the long day mentioned in the book of Joshua.

The Dial of Ahaz (Isaiah 38; 2 Kings 20)

About seven hundred and fifty years after the comet came close to earth, several celestial events took place that changed planetary history. In the eighth century B.C., the prophets Isaiah, Joel, Hosea, and Micah, the Hebrew prophets who “were verses in the lore of the heavenly motion” (p. 207), “insisted unanimously and with great emphasis on the inevitability of another encounter of the earth with some cosmic body” (p. 208).

In 747 B.C., on February 26, in the days of King Uzziah of Judah, a cosmic event, “brought about by an extraterrestrial agent,” caused a “disturbance in the motion of the earth on its axis and along its orbit” that made the old calendar of 360 days obsolete and created the present calendar of 365 days. Then, on the day that King Ahaz was buried, another celestial event caused the terrestrial axis to shift thus delaying sunset for several hours. Then another celestial event occurred in the days of Hezekiah that caused the prolongation of the day. Velikovsky wrote: “Talmudic tradition explains that the day was shortened by ten degrees on the day when Ahaz was buried, and the day was prolonged by ten degrees when Hezekiah was ill and recovered, and this is the meaning of the ‘shadow of the degrees which is gone down on the sun dial of Ahaz’” (p. 233).

These celestial perturbations, which occurred every fourteen to sixteen years, were caused by Mars. In the eighth century B.C., Mars and Venus collided and the collision changed the orbits of the two planets. This collision placed Venus and Mars in their present orbits. According to Velikovsky, this event is celebrated in the Iliad and in Mexican, Chinese, and Hindu literature.

Evaluation

I am not an astronomer or a planetary scientist but as a lay person in these field of studies it is difficult for me to accept Velikovsky’s theory. Although the collision of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter from July 16 through July 22, 1994 and the most recent collision of another comet with Jupiter in July 2009 prove that a collision between a comet and a planet in our solar system can occur within historical memory, it is almost unbelievable that the planet Venus did not exist until 3500 years ago and that Venus and Mars did not have their present orbits until 2700 years ago.

As an Old Testament scholar, it is hard for me to conceive that the plagues of Egypt were caused by a comet passing close to the earth about 1500 B.C. and that the comet with its trailing atmosphere brought with it many small insects and their larvae which became the cause of the plagues of insects that devastated Egypt at the time of the exodus (it is doubtful whether the Exodus happened in 1500 B.C.).

It is also hard to believe in the tenth plague, the people of Egypt (not “the first born” of Egypt but “the chosen ones” of Egypt) died because of a great earthquake and that the people of Israel escaped because their houses were huts of clay and reeds and more resilient to earthquakes than bricks and stones which were characteristic of Egyptian houses.

Velikovsky proves his theory by using cosmological myths from Egypt, Greece, Rome, India, China, Mexico, Assyria, and Babylon. These myths and Jewish legends are used to prove that earth came into contact with Venus and this catastrophic event is behind the narrative of the plagues in the book of Exodus.

To me, Velikovsky’s theory is more than science and more than theology. His book is a work of comparative mythology that uses philology, theology, archaeology, and a little bit of psychology to defend and to prove the reliability of the biblical text.

In a chapter titled “Collective Amnesia” Velikovsky explains the reason people of antiquity failed to preserve good records and evidence of these cosmic events. He wrote:

“There occurred more than one world conflagration; the most horrible one was in the days of the Exodus. In hundreds of passages in the Bible, the Hebrews described what happened. Returning from the Babylonian exile in the sixth and the fifth centuries before this era, the Hebrews did not cease to learn and repeat the traditions, but they lost sight of the fearful reality of what they learned. Apparently, the post-Exile generations looked upon all these descriptions as the poetical utterances of religious literature” (p. 298-99).

Velikovsky uses Freud’s idea of repressed memory and neurosis to explain the reason past generations did not keep a more precise record of these events. According to Velikovsky, these events were too painful and too dramatic to remember, so people buried the horrible events of the past deep in their subconscious minds. Thus, the myths and folklore of ancient peoples are expressions of these catastrophic events that occurred in the distant past.

What I wrote above is only a brief summary of Velikovsky’s theory. Velikovsky has an impressive collection of ancient written documents that he uses to prove his argument. The erudition that he demonstrates in presenting his theory is impressive but not convincing. Velikovsky has more faith in ancient myths, Jewish legends, and in the folklore of primitive people than established scientific theories. And these are the arguments he will use to offer a radical reconstruction of ancient history.

It is possible that Velikovsky is right and that scientists, astronomers, Biblical scholars, and many theologians are wrong, but I doubt it. So, it is just fair that I conclude this review with the words of Robert H. Pfeiffer, the late Chairman of the Department of Semitic Language and History at Harvard University. His words appear on the cover of Velikovsky’s book. Pfeiffer wrote:

“Dr. Velikovsky discloses immense erudition and extraordinary ingenuity. He writes well and documents all his statements with original sources . . . His conclusions are amazing, unheard of, revolutionary, sensational . . . If Dr. Velikovsky is right, this volume is the greatest contribution to the investigation of ancient times ever written.”

I cannot recommend Velikovsky’s book as a reliable source of information for the proper exegesis of the Biblical text but the book is fascinating reading; it is, together with his two other books, a magnificent exercise in futility, as I will show next.

Next: My review of Velikovsky’s reconstruction of ancient history.

Claude Mariottini

Professor of Old Testament

Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Ages in Chaos, Immanuel Velikovsky, Worlds in Collision,

Messianic Jews v. Homosexuals: The Law Suit

Michael Decker, the Senior Legal Advisor to the Jerusalem Institute of Justice, in an article published in Israel Today, has an article about the controversy between Messianic Jews and homosexuals over the issue of same-sex marriage. The following is an excerpt from the article:

Several months ago, a same-sex couple petitioned the courts in Israel in an attempt to sue the religiously affiliated commune Yad Hadmashona for punitive damages. According to the petitioners, the moshav prohibited them from holding their marriage celebration on its premises. Clearly, this subject strikes personal discord for both parties—the couple aims to expunge all forms of supposed discrimination and intolerance, while the institution struggles to function successfully within the parameters of its belief system.

Founded in 1971, Yad Hashmona was presented to the state of Israel as a gesture of solidarity by Finland. Today, the grounds function as a commune and serve the public by running a guesthouse, convention center, and banquet hall, which the couple sought to rent for their celebration. Administrators seek to maintain a specific religious ethos and as a result place limits on the type of events renters wish to host. Now, because Yad Hashmona denied its services for the purpose of a same-sex marriage celebration, the commune faces a moral and legal dilemma.

While this decision is not a reflection of the commune's feelings regarding homosexuals as individuals or citizens of the state, it is a direct reference to the institution’s devotion to the sanctity of marriage. Forcing Yad Hashmona to allow such events would defile the community's fundamental beliefs, business would be destroyed and Yad Hashmona may cease to exist.

Read the article in its entirety by visiting Israel Today’s webpage.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Homosexual Marriage, Messianic Jews, Religious Tolerance

Early Judaism

Fortress Press has released a revised edition of Early Judaism: Texts and Documents on Faith and Piety, a book edited by George W. E. Nickelsburg and Michael E. Stone. The book is a reader on early Jewish belief and practice.

Fortress has provided the following information about this revised edition of Early Judaism:

Jewish writings from the period of Second Temple present a rich and potentially overwhelming variety of first-hand materials. George W. E. Nickelsburg and Michael E. Stone, experts on this formative period, have updated their classic sourcebook on Jewish beliefs and practices to take into account current thinking about the sources and to include new documents, including texts from Qumran not available in the first edition, in a brilliantly organized synthesis.

Included are chapters on Jewish sects and parties, the Temple and worship in it, ideals of piety and conduct, expectations concerning deliverance, judgment, and vindication, different conceptions of the agents of God's activity, and the figure of Lady Wisdom in relationship to Israel.

Outline of Chapter 1

1. Sects, Parties, and Tendencies

The Samaritans

A Samaritan Story of the Formation of the

Judahite (Jewish) Sect

The Samaritan Chronicle II, J–L

The Judahites (Jews) on the Origins of the Samaritans

2 Kings 17

Samaritan and Judean Relations

Josephus, Antiquities 11:306–12

The Hasideans (Hasidim)

Psalm 149

Apocryphal Psalms, col. 18

The Psalms of Solomon

Passive Resistance

1 Maccabees 1:62–64

Revolt

Further Passive Resistance

1 Maccabees 2:29–38

The Hasideans Join the Armed Resistance

1 Maccabees 2:42–44

The Hasideans Abandon the Revolt

1 Maccabees 7:12–18

Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes

The Pharisees

Josephus, Antiquities 18:12–15

Josephus, Jewish War 2:162–63

Josephus, Antiquities 13:297–98

Nahum Commentary on 2:12 (col. 1:4–8)

Nahum Commentary on 3:1–4 (col. 2:1–10)

Nahum Commentary on 3:6–7 (col. 3:1–8)

Nahum Commentary on 3:8 (col. 3:8–9)

Nahum Commentary on 3:9b–11 (col. 3:12—4:8)

The New Testament

The Sadducees

Josephus, Antiquities 18:16–17

Josephus, Jewish War 2:164–66

Acts 23:6–10

The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan, A 5

The Essenes

The Essenes According to Josephus

Josephus, Antiquities 18:18–22

Josephus, Jewish War 2:119–61

Essene Texts from Qumran

The History of the Sect

Damascus Document 1:1–13

The Essene Teaching on the Two Spirits

The Rule of the Community 3:13–4:23

The Zealots

Judah the Gaulanite

Josephus, Antiquities 18:4–6, 9–10

Josephus, Jewish War 7:418–19

Josephus, Antiquities 18:23–24

Mishnah Sanhedrin 9:6

The Therapeutae

The Daily Life of the Therapeutae

Philo, On the Contemplative Life 24–33

The Dance and the Chorus

Philo, On the Contemplative Life 83–85, 88–89

Hellenism and Apocalypticism: Two Tendencies within Judaism

Hellenistic Judaism

4 Maccabees 1:1–6, 15–18

Apocalypticism

1 Enoch

1 Enoch 1:1–3

1 Enoch 93:1–2, 10; 91:11

1 Enoch 104:10–13

To promote Early Judaism to a wider audience, Fortress Press has made available the Table of Contents, the Introduction, and Chapter 1 of the book in PDF format.

Claude Mariottini

Professor of Old Testament

Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Early Judaism

Our Covenant With God

When Joshua renewed the covenant with the new generation of Israelites at Shechem (Joshua 24:1-27), Joshua challenged them to be faithful to God. He said: “Now fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your forefathers worshiped beyond the river and in Egypt, and serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:14).

This beautiful passage speaks of the solemn convocation of the people of Israel at Shechem in order to celebrate the renewal of the covenant with the God who had given them a special place to live: the land of Canaan, their promised land.

In worship, Israel prepared for this solemn occasion. The people came together to renew their vows to God and to dedicate their lives to his service. Joshua demanded three actions from the people before they could present themselves to God.

The first action that Joshua demanded from the people was that they should fear God. The fear of God was the attitude expected of every believer in the Old Testament. Fear of God was the attitude of reverence that children must have before their parents, the attitude of worship that a creature must have before his creator.

The second action that Joshua demanded from the people was their faithful service to God. The NIV Bible has “serve him with all faithfulness,” and the NET Bible has “with integrity and loyalty,” but the Hebrew has “in wholeness and faithfulness.”

Wholeness describes the harmony that must exist between the interior life (the life of faith) and the exterior actions (the work of faith). It is the kind of life that reflects faithfulness in words and actions toward God and other people.

The third action that Joshua demanded from the people was the renunciation of other gods. This exhortation meant that Israel must enter into a personal relationship with God and God alone. The God of Israel demands exclusive and absolute service and worship from his people.

Joshua asked much more than the people could give to God, but God deserves much more than Israel and we can give to him.

Today as you pray and worship him in the beauty of his holiness, let this time of prayer and worship be a time of covenant renewal. Come before God and offer him the same faithfulness and commitment that he has shown to you.

Claude Mariottini

Professor of Old Testament

Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Joshua 24, Prayer, Worship

The Serpent Was Right

Genesis 5:5 says that Adam lived nine hundred thirty years and then he died. The longevity of the patriarchs has been a matter of debate. The many different interpretations about the age of the patriarchs demonstrate that scholars have not yet found a good explanation for the longevity of the antediluvian population.

The statement that Adam died at the ripe old-age of nine hundred thirty years is surprising in light of God’s words to Adam in Genesis 2:17.

After God made man and placed him in the garden of Eden, God gave Adam the following command: “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die” (Genesis 2:16-17).

When Adam told Eve of God’s prohibition, he probably also told her that they were forbidden even to touch the fruit of the tree, for when the serpent enticed Eve to eat of the fruit of the tree, Eve said to the serpent: “God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die’” (Genesis 3:3).

In response to Eve’s reluctance to eat of the fruit, the serpent said to the woman: “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:4-5).

The serpent was right. The serpent did not lie, for everything the serpent said to Eve happened. This is what happened:

1. Eve touched the fruit (Genesis 3:6) and nothing happened.
2. Eve ate the fruit and gave it to Adam who was by her side (Genesis 3:6) and neither of them died.
3. Adam and Eve became like God, knowing good and evil. God himself said that, after Adam and Eve ate of the tree: “Then the LORD God said, ‘See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil’” (Genesis 3:22).

If the serpent was right and Adam and Eve did not die when they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, what then did God mean when he told Adam that “in the day that you eat of it you shall die?”

The Hebrew construction of the verb in Genesis 2:17 includes two forms of the verb מות (to die): the infinitive absolute and the imperfect. In Hebrew, the infinitive absolute emphasizes an action when it immediately precedes the finite verb.

Gesenius, in his Hebrew Grammar (113n) wrote:

“The infinitive absolute used before the verb to strengthen the verbal idea, I. e. to emphasize in this way either the certainty (especially in the case to threats) or the forcibleness and completeness of an occurrence.” He translates môth tāmûth (מ֥וֹת תָּמֽוּת) thou shalt surely die.

Thus, the full implication of God’s threat to Adam is clear: Adam must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil for the moment he would eat from it he would die. But Adam ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil and he did not die. So, how must one understand God’s prohibition in Genesis 2:17?

One way to interpret the divine prohibition is to say that since one day with God is like a thousand years (2 Peter 3:8), then Adam died before “the Lord’s day” was over.

Another way of interpreting the prohibition is by taking the infinitive form of the verb and translating it as a verbal noun: “dying you shall die.” Thus, God’s threat means that if Adam ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil then, he would eventually die. The Septuagint translates 2:17 as “you shall die by death.”

Another interpretation is that if Adam disobeyed God’s command, he would become mortal. However, this interpretation contradicts Genesis because the book seems to imply that humans were already mortal. The book of Genesis says that man would only live forever after eating from the tree of life: “Then the LORD God said, ‘See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever’” (Genesis 3:22).

In his commentary on Genesis 1-11 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1984), p. 224, Claus Westermann cites Th. C. Vriezen’s study of the expression “in the day” (Genesis 2:17) to explain that death would not occur the day Adam violated the command. According to Vriezen, the expression “in the day” has a general meaning in the Old Testament and that the expression must not be understood literally, inferring that death would occur immediately after the transgression.

According to Westermann, God’s words to Adam, “in the day that you eat of it you shall die,” “is not a threat of death, but rather the clear expression of the limit which is the necessary accompaniment of the freedom entrusted to humanity in the command. To say no to God–and this is what freedom allows–is ultimately to say no to life; for life comes from God” (p. 224).

I believe that the divine threat should be taken literally, that Adam and Eve should have died on the day they violated the prohibition not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

I disagree with Gordon J. Wenham’s interpretation of this threat as “death before death,” an interpretation that appears in his commentary on Genesis, Word Bible Commentary (Waco: Word Books, Publisher, 1987), p. 74. He wrote: “If to be expelled from the camp of Israel [as lepers were] was to ‘die,’ expulsion from the garden was an even more drastic kind of death. In this sense they did die on the day they ate of the tree: they were no longer able to have daily conversation with God, enjoy his bounteous provision, and eat of the tree of life; instead they had to toil for food, suffer, and eventually return to the dust from which they were taken.”

The reason the divine threat was not fulfilled was because the grace of God intervened and the penalty was not carried out. Probably the best commentary on this verse is found in 2 Peter 3:9: “The Lord is not slow in keeping his word, as he seems to some, but he is waiting in mercy for you, not desiring the destruction of any, but that all may be turned from their evil ways.”

This was the same position taken by John Skinner in his commentary on Genesis: The International Critical Commentary (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1910), p. 67. According to Skinner, the simple explanation why the punishment was not carried out “is that God, having regard to the circumstances of the temptation, changed His purpose and modified the penalty.”

Westermann also intimates a change in God’s decision to carry out the punishment. He wrote: “After the man and the woman have eaten from the tree, a new situation arises in which God acts differently from the way he had indicated.” God’s failure to carry out the punishment “shows that God’s dealing with his creatures cannot be pinned down, not even by what God has said previously” (p. 225).

Westermann concludes his study of Genesis 2:17 by saying: “And so even God’s acts and words are open to misinterpretation and the serpent makes use of this.” I believe it was Westermann who misinterpreted God’s word to Adam when he said that the words in Genesis 2;17 are not a threat but only a warning.

I do not think the serpent misunderstood God. The serpent knew that Eve would not die because it knew the true nature of God, that he was a compassionate God who is gracious to whom he wants to be gracious and who shows mercy on whom he wants to show mercy (Exodus 33:19).

As the Lord said to Moses at the time he had decided to consume Israel because of their great sin (Exodus 32:10): “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin” (Exodus 34:6-7).

So, when it comes to understanding God’s acts and words, Westermann was wrong and the serpent was right.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Adam, Eve, Genesis 2:17, Serpent

The Biblical Archaeology Society Publishes its 200th Issue

News Release

The Biblical Archaeology Society is celebrating the publication of the 200th issue of Biblical Archaeology Review (BAR) with a special double issue that includes a retrospective of its adventures over the last three decades, as well as a tribute to some of the greatest discoveries and people in the field.

We begin with one of our hallmark feature articles, “The Riches of Ketef Hinnom” by Gabriel Barkay. This long-awaited BAR publication of the fascinating Jerusalem site of Ketef Hinnom features two silver amulets that bear the earliest inscription of a Biblical text—nearly 400 years before the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Our special 200th-issue section begins with “How BAR Was Born,” which chronicles the evolution of BAR from an idea inspired by Hershel Shanks’s year-long sabbatical in Israel to a magazine that reaches out to hundreds of thousands people with every new issue. In “Letters We Loved” we reprint some of our favorite letters to the editor over the years to celebrate the opinions and thoughts of the readers that continue to make BAR so successful.

The ten stunning archaeological photos of “Biblical Archaeology in Focus” and their significance are a tribute to Jerusalem’s late David Harris, whose photographic genius documented some of the greatest archaeological discoveries of our time.

We also took on the daunting task in “Ten Top Discoveries” of choosing some of the most important archaeological discoveries published in our first 199 issues, and we looked at how they have influenced the field of Biblical archaeology.
“BAR’s Crusades” follows the pivotal—and sometimes controversial—role that the magazine and the Biblical Archaeology Society have played in some of the most dramatic debates, discoveries and issues in the last 35 years of Biblical archaeology.

Last but not least, for a bit of fun, our “Where in the Wide World?” quiz challenges readers to test their knowledge of the origins of some of our past WorldWide artifacts.

Read “How BAR Was Born” by clicking here. The following is an excerpt from the article:

In 1972 Hershel Shanks took a sabbatical from his legal practice in Washington, D.C. He and his family went to Jerusalem for a year. Once there, the Shanks family became part of a network of friends and colleagues who comprised some of the archaeological luminaries in the Holy Land at the time. That year proved to be the catalyst for the creation of the Biblical Archaeology Society (BAS) and its flagship publication, Biblical Archaeology Review. Hershel reflects below on the birth, evolution and legacy of BAR.

I spent 1972–1973 with my wife and two daughters living in Israel. Julia (or Yael, as she was called for that year) was three and Elizabeth (or Elisheva) was six. Every Shabbat my wife Judith (Yehudit), the kids and I would take a tiyyul, or outing, to explore an archaeological site.

By the time we got around to exploring Hazor, the whole family was expert in picking up sherds, the ever-present fragments of pottery at archaeological sites, and deciding whether it was a “diagnostic” sherd—a rim, base or handle—or just a plain body sherd. Before we ascended the tell, we visited the little Hazor museum at the nearby kibbutz. The museum displayed a case of these diagnostic sherds, including handles that had been impressed with seals. Pointing to one of those handles, I told the kids, “See? That’s the kind of thing we want.”

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Biblical Archaeology Review, Hershel Shanks

An Unsettling God

Walter Brueggemann is a prolific writer. He has written many books and hundred of articles that have influenced Old Testament scholarship in profound ways. Brueggemann has written a new book, An Unsettling God: The Heart of the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009). This new book speaks of Israel's testimony to a surprising God.

Describing the content of the book, John Goldingay of Fuller Theological Seminary, wrote:

“An unsettling God? ‘An unsettling Walter Brueggemann,’ some of my students would say. He keeps making them see things in the Old Testament that clash with what they have been told about God, and making them reframe and expand their understanding of God as the Bible describes God. He does that in these chapters from the heart of his Theology of the Old Testament. This is an unsettling experience but a constructive one.”

To promote Brueggemann’s book, Fortress Press has made available the Table of Contents, the Preface, and Chapter 1 of the book in PDF format.

An Unsettling God is another book that will be included in my long list of books that I must read in the near future.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Walter Brueggemann

Paul Preaching in Athens

Paul’s speech in the Areopagus before the Athenians (Acts 17:16-34) is a good example of Paul's preaching before a Gentile audience. The image below depicting Paul preaching in Athens may be considered a modern-day representation of what Paul preached.









Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Areopagus, Athens, Paul

The Four Pauls of the New Testament

Allen Dwight Callahan has written an excellent essay on Paul the Apostle. His essay appears in Religion and Ethics and it is a review of the book The Real Paul (New York: Harper Collins, 2009) written by John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg.

In his essay, Callahan also discusses other recent books on Paul. He also discusses Pope Benedict XVI’s announcement of a special jubilee year dedicated to Paul to celebrate the 2,000th anniversary of his birth.

The following is an excerpt from the essay:

Benedict emphasized in his vespers announcement of the Pauline year that it would have an important ecumenical dimension, explaining that “the Apostle of the Gentiles, who dedicated himself to the spreading of the good news to all peoples, spent himself for the unity and harmony of all Christians.” In that spirit John Dominic Crossan, an Irish Catholic biblical scholar and former Roman Catholic priest, and Marcus Borg, a Protestant biblical scholar and Episcopal canon theologian, teamed up to coauthor The First Paul (Harper Collins, 2009).

Borg, as the Protestant principal of the duo, writes, “As I look back on my experience of growing up Lutheran, it is clear that I was taught to see Jesus, God, and the Christian gospel through a Pauline lens as mediated by Luther.” Crossan recalls his days as a young priest in 1959 “when I first stood in St. Peter’s Square in Rome and looked at the statues of St. Peter … and St. Paul.” Together Borg and Crossan claim to cut through the hagiographical accretions to get to the original Paul, the first Paul, and say “our common hope is that we can get Paul out of the Reformation world and back into the Roman world.”

For Borg and Crossan there is more than one Paul in the New Testament and no less than three Pauls. The first is “the radical Paul,” author of the seven genuine letters that go under his name: Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, 1 Thessalonians, Philippians, and Philemon. Then there is “the conservative Paul” of 2 Thessalonians, Ephesians, and Colossians (“the disputed letters”) and “the reactionary Paul” of the Pastoral Epistles.

Some recent commentators do not mark differences between the Paul of the seven undisputed letters, the Paul of Ephesians and Colossians, the Paul of the Pastoral Epistles, and the Paul of Acts, differences explained with characteristic clarity and elegance by Garry Wills in his What Paul Meant (Viking, 2006). Yet among some entries to the ample bibliography of the Pauline Year, there is still some slippage. Raymond Collins’s The Power of Images in Paul (Liturgical Press, 2008), as its table of contents makes clear, treats the Magnificent Seven as authentic, devoting a chapter to each. The first chapter opens with a quotation from Titus 1:1-3, which Collins describes without further comment as having been written “toward the end of the first century, CE” by “an anonymous author.” But Collins freely refers to Acts to document that Paul was born in Tarsus and was a disciple of Gamaliel and a devotee of the Jerusalem Temple. Stephen Finlan, in The Apostle Paul and the Pauline Tradition (Liturgical Press, 2008), makes much of the importance of distinguishing the different sources of Pauline tradition and the theological difference that makes, without explicitly endorsing the judgment that the authentic Paul is the Paul of the seven letters.

Borg and Crossan, for their part, avidly endorse the persona of the seven-letter corpus as the real Paul, an anti-imperialist advocate of radical equality in imitation of his Lord Jesus Christ: “In Paul, the mystical experience of Jesus Christ as Lord led to resistance to the imperial vision and advocacy of a different vision of the way the world can be.”

But the best that has been thought and said about Paul’s purportedly anti-imperialist project has already been thought and said in a number of scholarly treatments in the last decade. The seminal collection of essays edited by Richard Horsley, Paul and Empire (Trinity Press, 1997), comes most readily to mind. Horsley and company first raised the question and set the scholarly agenda for answering it. The First Paul, subtitled “Reclaiming the Radical Visionary behind the Church’s Conservative Icon,” promises more of the same, if not better. But it is neither, and for one simple reason: the radical Paul of Borg and Crossan is not really very radical at all. This becomes painfully clear, among several other instances that could be adduced, in their contorted exegesis of Roman 13:1-7, Paul’s infamous exhortation to obey ruling authorities—read the Roman imperial regime—because they are “ordained of God,” who has given them the sword to enforce law and order.

Borg and Crossan explain that Paul feared his Roman audience would resort to “violent tax revolt” against Rome: “Paul is most afraid not that Christians will be killed but that they will kill, not that Rome will use violence against Christians but that Christians will use violence against Rome.” This danger of violent revolt whips Paul into a “rhetorical panic’ and causes him to “make some very unwise and unqualified statements with which to ward off that possibility”—the possibility that church folk in Rome would use their marginalized, persecuted faces to scuff the brass knuckles of Roman state terror. The hermeneutic here would be hilarious if Paul’s “statements” in this toxic text were not so “unwise and unqualified.” With radicals like this, who needs reactionaries?

The authors also identify a fourth Paul, the globetrotting hero of the second half of the book of Acts. The several and in some cases irreconcilable differences between Paul’s representation in Acts and his self-representation in his letters are treated at some length by Borg and Crossan in their third chapter, “The Life of a Long-Distance Apostle.” These differences have led some scholars to conclude that Paul’s letters and theology were either unknown to or ignored by the writer of Acts, who has woven a text about Paul’s career using threads of legend along with the whole cloth of his own imagination. Yet Borg and Crossan write, “Our primary source will be the seven genuine letters, supplemented when appropriate by Acts.” This begs the question, of course, of how Borg and Crossan know when it’s appropriate—a question they don’t answer in their book. This unresolved methodological issue must leave us in doubt about any conclusions they draw from harmonizing the first Paul and the fourth.

To read the essay in its entirety, visit the web page for Religion and Ethics.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Allen Dwight Callahan, John Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg, Paul, The Real Paul

The Problem of Theological Ignorance

I am back!

It was enjoyable spending quality time with my family and friends in Brazil. I had not returned to my country in more than twenty years. During this trip I was able to visit relatives that I had not seen in almost fifty years.

It is nice to be back home and to return to my work at the seminary and at church. It is also great to return to blogging.

One thing that impressed me as I returned to Brazil was the growth of the evangelical movement in Brazil. By evangelicals I mean the non-Catholic population. Brazilians do not call themselves Protestants; they prefer the word “evangélicos.”

In 1960, the year I joined the Baptist Church in Rio, Brazil was 95% Catholic and only about 5% of the population called themselves evangelicals. In 1978 the evangelical population was 18% and in 2009 about 38% of the populations calls themselves evangelicals.

The evangelical movement in Brazil is growing almost exponentially. Just last week I received an email from a missionary in Brazil saying that in a northern state of Brazil, 2,200 people made a commitment to follow Christ in an evangelistic crusade.

The fastest growing evangelical churches in Brazil are those associated with the Pentecostal movement. Pentecostal churches are almost everywhere. In the area where I used to live, within a three-block radius, there are nine churches, six of them Pentecostal or neo-Pentecostals.

The growth of the church in Brazil is comparable to the growth of the early church. With rapid growth comes also the development of problems in the church. The early church had to deal with theological problems within the church such as Gnosticism, Docetism, Ebionites, and many others.

Unfortunately, the same is happening in Brazil. I talked to several people about their experience in the church. I have to confess that I have never heard so many wrong things about matters related to Christianity, things that are not in the Bible.

I coined an expression to describe this problem. In Portuguese, I called it “Burrice Theológica.” This expression could be translated as “Theological Ignorance,” or better yet, “Theological Stupidity” (pardon my French).

One of the things that reflects this theological ignorance is the rejection of the Old Testament by many pastors and church members. According to one church member, his pastor said that Christians do not need to read the Old Testament anymore. According to this pastor, the reason Christians do not need to study the Old Testament is because the Old Testament has been superceded by the New Testament.

Someone told me that his pastor seldom preaches from the Old Testament. As a result, many church members do not know and do not read the Old Testament. These people are twenty-first century Marcionites.

The Marcionites were a heretical group that followed the teachings of a man named Marcion in the second century. Marcion and his followers rejected the Old Testament and taught that the God of the Old Testament was a tyrant.

Marcionites believed that the wrathful God of the Old Testament was not the loving and all-forgiving God of the New Testament. They believed that Jesus Christ was not the Son of the God of the Old Testament, but the Son of the good God, who was different from the God of the Old Testament.

Another form of theological ignorance is the rejection of theological education. Many of the Pentecostal pastors have less than a high school education. They believe that the Holy Spirit equips them for ministry and consequently they do not need to attend a seminary.

One of my relatives told me that her pastor had a six-month theological education before becoming pastor. Although we would consider this amount of education insufficient, it was better than many other Pentecostal pastors who have no education at all. I heard the story of a man who joined the church one Sunday, was ordained the following Sunday, and became pastor of a church one month later.

Today in Brazil there is a proliferation of seminaries and Bible institutes. However, at times, those who teach in these schools are people who may have little education themselves.

One church member told me that her pastor proclaimed that in his church there is no doctrine. I tried to tell this person that doctrine is everywhere in the church. As a result of poor teaching and poor preaching, the level of biblical knowledge among church members is very small.

One person told me that his pastor preached that all the problems the world is facing today is because the Antichrist is already living in the world. According to this preacher, the Antichrist is causing all this turmoil before he reveals himself.

Another problem that reflects theological ignorance is the exploitation of church members by churches preaching the prosperity gospel. Most of the Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal churches emphasize the gospel of prosperity.

I heard horror stories of how prosperity preachers ask for money. One pastor asks for donations in U.S. dollars. Others begin by asking people to give 1,000.00 Reals (about $500.00). One pastor was selling pages of the Bible for $10.00 each.

A famous Brazilian soccer player gave several million dollars to his church. His pastor and the pastor’s wife were caught smuggling most of that money to the USA. They are in prison now.

A large Pentecostal church built a magnificent sanctuary based on God’s Words to Abraham: "Look at the sky and count the stars, if you are able to count them." (Genesis 15:5). The ceiling of the church is decorated with a magnificent group of stars. The church has become a tourist attraction and visitors pay money to tour the church.

I heard of many false teachings, some of them bordering on theological heresies. Some of these popular beliefs have no biblical basis.

The rapid growth of the church and the proliferation of an uneducated ministry has generated many heretical views, similar to the theological problems the church faced in the first and second centuries of its existence.

People know very little of the Bible. They think that emotion is what is necessary for Christian growth. However, emotion does not produce knowledge of the Bible. The Bible says: “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have” (1 Peter 3:15). I doubt that many people are prepared to explain what they believe. And this is the reason people are easily deceived by false teachers.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Biblical Illiteracy, Theological Education