The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah

Mark Hempsell, a researcher from Bristol University, has announced that a clay tablet containing cuneiform symbols may explain the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. According to the researcher, the clay tablet provides an eyewitness account of an asteroid that crashed into the Austrian Alps and is behind the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

According to the researchers, the tablet was found in the remains of the library in the royal palace at Nineveh in the mid-19th century and it “is thought to be a 700 B.C. copy of notes made by a Sumerian astronomer watching the night sky.”

Read the news report by clicking here.

This theory has created much enthusiasm among people who want to prove that the Bible is true. The proposed theory is attractive but it is difficult to prove that the asteroid described in the tablet was the cause for the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. One fact that militates against the theory is the date proposed for the asteroid. According to the researchers, the asteroid hit the earth on June 29, 3123 B.C. This date would put Abraham at 1120 B.C., a date that contradicts the chronology for the patriarchal age. The age of the patriarchs is generally dated in the Middle Bronze Age, between 1950-1800 B.C.

Good try!

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Abraham, Gomorrah, Sodom

Mario Liverani, the Bible, Jim West, and the Unicorn

My review of Mario Liverani’s book, Israel’s History and the History of Israel has been received in different ways by different people (see Jim's blog). It is possible that my post failed to communicate clearly my objections to Liverani’s book or else people misunderstand where I stand on the issue of history and the Bible.

Let me begin by saying that I am not a maximalist nor a minimalist; maybe I am a medialist, as Kevin has suggested. I am not a fundamentalist, I do not believe in inerrancy, and I am not a literalist. I believe that the Bible is sacred Scripture, that God has revealed himself in the history of Israel and in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, and that the Bible is a record of that revelation.

I do not adopt a literal interpretation of every fact and statement in the Bible. In my study of the Bible I use historical criticism and a literary approach to the text. I believe that the biblical narratives are based on historical events but it does not mean that history has to become the arbiter of faith.

As a Christian, I believe that the ultimate source for knowing what God has done in history and in the person of Jesus Christ is the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments. Everything we know about God we find in the Bible. In fact, without the Bible, our knowledge of God and what he has done would be minuscule. It is because of the Bible that we know the mighty acts of God in the events associated with the Exodus from Egypt and how they became the central focus of much of the Old Testament in the same way that the death and resurrection of Christ became the central focus of the New Testament.

However, the radical criticism and modern skepticism of biblical scholars have removed any possibility of historicity behind these events. To many scholars, these stories are only narratives that are metaphorically true even though they are not literally or factually true.

Marcus Borg, in his book Reading the Bible Again for the First Time (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2001), pp. 15-18, said that modernity has influenced the way most people read the Bible today: they know something to be true only when there is valid verification. Thus, one consequence of modernity’s impact on reading the Bible is that modernity has made people skeptical about spiritual realities.

It is this skeptical spirit that has impacted the study of Israelite history. The skeptical understanding of reality has influenced the way the Bible is read and has made the understanding of God and his work in the world a problem that goes against the very core of orthodox Christianity.

According to Borg, the logical outcome of this modern worldview is the kind of skepticism that leads to the rejection of the supernatural and eventually creates what has been called “the death of God theology.”

To me, it seems that biblical scholarship today has rejected the supernatural and developed a non-biblical view of God because of its preoccupation with factuality, that is, that for something to be true or historical it must be scientifically and historically proven by reliable evidence. In criticizing this view, Borg said that “modern Western culture is the only culture in human history that has identified truth with factuality.” He said Christian liberals are “fact fundamentalists,” that is, if a statement cannot be proved scientifically or historically, then that statement is not true.

Many biblical scholars are influenced by a postmodernity understanding of the Bible. This view affirms that historical events are culturally conditioned and in general, are historical reconstructions of the past. This is the view espoused by Liverani when he writes that the early history of Israel is an “invented history,” a reconstruction of the past in order to meet the political and ideological needs of the post-exilic Judean community.

It is the same view that led Borg to say: “The way of seeing and reading the Bible that I describe in the rest of this book leads to a way of being Christian that has very little to do with believing” (p. 18). Borg sees the Bible as the human product of two communities: Israel and the church. What the Bible says is the words of those two communities, not the word of God. Thus, the Bible as a whole does not have divine origin. The Bible is not divine in some parts and in some part human; the Bible is all a human product.

If the biblical narratives are invented history, then the Bible is no better than the Baal stories. If the Bible is only a human product, a work without divine origin, then there is no difference between the God of the Bible and Baal or Marduk.

The matter has to do how we teach and preach the biblical narratives. Now, here is where I need Jim West’s help and this is a sincere request since Jim teaches seminary students (as I do) and he pastors a church where he preaches to his congregation (as I do).

Let us suppose that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and David never existed, that they were part of this invented history created by a group of Zionists to justify their right to take the land from poor peasants who lived in Palestine in the sixth or fifth centuries BCE. My question is: how is the fact that these people did not exist, the fact that they are literary creation, the fruit of a fertile mind, how does this fact affect our understanding of the New Testament? Here are four examples:

1. In Exodus 3:6 God said: “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” This statement was quoted by Jesus when speaking about the resurrection: “But about the resurrection of the dead-- have you not read what God said to you, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living” (Matthew 22:31-32).

If Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob never existed, how can this statement be true, even metaphorically true? Or does it matter?

2. During the transfiguration of Jesus, Matthew 17:2-3 says that Jesus was talking to Moses. I know that this is only a vision but one that even Peter saw. However, how could Jesus speak to Moses if Moses was just an invention of a creative writer?

3. In John 8:58 Jesus said: “‘I tell you the truth,’ Jesus answered, ‘before Abraham was born, I am!’” This verse says something special about Jesus and in the process says something important about Abraham.

4. In the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1:1, Jesus Christ is called the son of David, the son of Abraham. However, how can this be true if David and Abraham never existed?

How do minimalists explain and understand these statements of the New Testament if these people never existed? Do we take the approach used by the people at the Jesus Seminar? How do Christians proclaim the truth of the gospel when these statement are based on a fictive history that tells the actions of people who never existed? I hope Jim (or any biblioblogger) has a good answer for me.

It is easy to say that Jesus was just quoting from the “invented history.” It is also easy to say that Jesus was accommodating himself to the knowledge of the people of his day, or that in his humanity he did not know everything, or that this is just metaphorical language, or that this is just the way the early church believed these things to be.

If the Bible is just a human book, the product of ancient Israel and the early church, then these four statements are only what those human writers believed these things to be. So, nothing needs to be historical because human beings can invent a history to provide political and religious legitimation to an ideology or a community either in the sixth century (ancient Israel) or the first century (the early church).

However, if the Bible is a record of God’s revelation in the history of Israel, if the Bible is the Word of God transmitted through human agents, then a metaphorical truth will not be sufficient to explain the biblical narratives. Contrary to what Borg wrote, reading the Bible from a Christian perspective has a lot to do with believing.

Whether one believes the history of Israel is based on historical events or is an invented history depends on whether the Bible is only the words of human beings or whether it is the word of God. I know where I stand and I can do no other.

In the end, Mario Liverani, Jim West, and Claude Mariottini may not amount to much. Some of my paranoid readers believe that the Second Coming of Christ will be in 2012. If Jesus does not come in 2012, then in one or two generations Liverani, Jim, and I will be history (whether invented or real the Lemches of the future will decide), but the truth of the Bible will remain.

Until now I have talked about Liverani, the Bible, and Jim West. But, how about the unicorn? As for the unicorn, we all know they never existed (read Duane’s post).

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Abraham, Bible, Marcus Borg, Mario Liverani, Revelation

Mario Liverani and the History of Israel

During the Christmas break I finished reading Mario Liverani’s Israel’s History and the History of Israel (London: Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2003). Last week I finished writing a review of the book that I will submit to a major journal for publication. The review is also part of the commitment I made to Chris Brady at Targuman to submit a scholarly work for publication during the Biblical Studies Academic Writing Month. The content of the present post is different from the review I wrote for publication and different from my previous post on Liverani’s book.

Liverani’s book is divided into three sections. In Part I, Liverani presents a description of the different archaeological periods of Israel’s history. In this section, which he calls “The Normal History,” Liverani studies the textual and archeological evidence that contribute to the proper understanding of what was actually happening in Israel and in the countries that form the land of the Bible during a time period that includes Palestine in the Late Bronze Age up to the Babylonian invasion and the exile of Judah in 587 BCE.

The second section is an Intermezzo, a section in which he discusses events that were happening in other parts of the world in the sixth century BCE, a time which he calls “The Axial Age.” In the Intermezzo, Liverani also discusses the diaspora and the myth of the empty land.

The third section, Part II of his book, Liverani discusses the “Invented History of Israel.” By invented history, Liverani means the ideological rereading and rewriting of the Deuteronomic history in order to undergird the political realities of post-exilic Judah. According to Liverani, the rewriting of Israel’s history served as a strategy to implement a program of national recovery that would provide political and religious legitimacy for the people who made a commitment to return and re-colonize Judah after the edict of Cyrus, king of Persia, allowed the exiles to return home.

Liverani makes a distinction between two groups of Jews in post-exilic Judah. Those Jews who were returning home from exile were the “returnees.” The returnees are also called “Zionists.” Those Jews who did not go into exile and remained in the land are called “the remainees.” The remainees are called “the people of the land” by the returnees. This pejorative term was used by those returning from exile to describe all those Jews who did not go into exile.

According to Liverani, the returnees needed a legal justification to take possession of the land that belonged to the remainees. Since the remainees occupied the land, the returnees needed an authoritative tradition assigning ownership of the land of Canaan to the tribes of Israel. This tradition needed to identify the returnees as the legitimate heirs of the land and declare that the remainees should be dispossessed of their land.

Thus, according to Liverani, those Jews returning from exile rewrote the Deuteronomic history and created a set of foundational myths that legitimized the claim of the returnees as the legitimate heirs of the promises of God.

The migration of Abraham from Babylon to Canaan and the promise of God to give Abraham the land of Canaan as an inheritance became the foundational myth to legitimize the returnees’ claim that God brought them from Babylon and gave them the land of Canaan. This idea is covered in Chapter 13: “Returnees and Remainees: The Invention of the Patriarch.”

Although the myth of the patriarchs gave the returnees a promise of the land, they needed another authoritative tradition that allowed them to actually take possession of the land. Thus, the foundational myth of the Exodus provided the returnees with the legitimation for a group of people from the outside to take possession of the land. The foundational myth of the Conquest provided the returnees with the legitimation to take the land from the remainees by force, if necessary. This idea is developed in Chapter 14: “Returnees and Aliens: The Invention of the Conquest.”

Thus, to Liverani, the history of Israel as presented in the biblical text is an invented history. He also deals with “The Invention of the Judges,” The Invention of the United Monarchy,” “The Invention of the Solomonic Temple,” and “The Invention of the Law.” In describing the aim of his work, Liverani wrote:

In the present work I have tried to write– at least in the form of a first draft–a new version of the history of Israel, starting from the results of textual and literary criticism as well as from data collected by archaeology and epigraphy. In doing so I felt free to change the Biblical plot, while keeping a properly historical approach.

Liverani’s history of Israel is a typical example of a minimalist approach to the history of Israel. The minimalists deny this historicity of the biblical narratives. Biblical minimalists say that the history of the patriarchs, the exodus, the conquest, the giving of the law, together with the historicity of Moses and Joshua and the existence of a united monarchy under David and Solomon are post-exilic inventions that were created to justify the political and religious aspirations of a group of Zionists who desired to take possession of the land from of group of people who had lived in the land for almost a century. So, the minimalists feel “free to change the Biblical plot” in order to sustain their presuppositions.

To biblical minimalists, the biblical narratives reflect a rewriting of history that created an ideal past in order to justify the realities as they existed in the seventh and six centuries BCE. To many minimalists, these stories were first created by the people who were involved in the reforms of Josiah in the seventh century. Others believe that some of these stories were “invented” in the sixth and fifth centuries to provide political and religious legitimacy to the post-exilic community of Yehud.

However, if Abraham, Moses, and the patriarchs never existed and if these stories were “invented” in the sixth century, how can we explain the mention of the names of some of those invented people in the prophetic literature of the eighth century?

For instance, in the eighth century BCE, the prophet Micah mentions Moses, Aaron, and Miriam and the exodus from Egypt (Micah 6:4). The Exodus from Egypt is also mentioned by Amos (Amos 2:10; 3:1) and Hosea (11:1) in the eighth century. In addition, Amos speaks of Israel sojourning forty years in the wilderness (Amos 2:10). All the eighth century prophets, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah, mention the patriarch Jacob.

In the Elijah narratives, a source most scholars believe to be independent from the Deuteronomist, when the prophet Elijah (ninth century BCE) seeks to go back to the source of Israelite religion, he goes back to Horeb, the Northern name for Mount Sinai (1 Kings 19:8).

If Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob never existed, then it is almost impossible to understand Jesus’ words when talking about the resurrection: “And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living” (Matthew 22:31-32). How can God be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and how can they be alive when Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob never existed?

The problem with the minimalists is that they use the same approach atheists use when they deny the existence of God. Atheists say to theists: “God does not exist. Now, prove to me that God exists.” Minimalists say that these stories are invented; now the burden of proof is with those who say that they are historical.

James Hoffmeier, in his book Israel in Egypt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 10, talks about the insistence of minimalists that a claim made in the Bible must be corroborated before the statement can be considered historical. Hoffmeier wrote: “[The] assertion that the burden of proof does not rest on the critical (minimalist) historian has become the prevailing attitude in biblical scholarship for the past several decades.”

The matter of the historicity of the biblical text is what prompts the debate between those who are called maximalists and those who are called minimalists. The minimalists accuse the maximalists of accepting the historicity of the biblical text because they presuppose divine intervention in human affairs. They demand proof of the historicity of the events narrated by the text. On the other hand, the maximalists accuse the minimalists of being skeptics and radical ideologues. They say that the minimalists reject Israel’s understanding of its own religious traditions as irrelevant because their views are based primarily on a literary interpretation of the text.

I would like to put the burden of proof on the other side. For once, I would like to see the minimalists prove that Moses did not exist.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Abraham, Mario Liverani, Maximalists, Minimalists, Moses, Patriarchs

God’s Promise To Abraham

When God called Abraham and told him to leave his country, his family, and his father’s house, God promised that he would give him a land in which he and his descendants would settle and become a great nation. The promise that God would give Abraham and his descendants the land of Canaan is one of the major themes of the Pentateuch. The promise of the giving of the land was made to Abraham and renewed to Isaac and Jacob.

God’s gift of the land to Abraham contains three elements: a promise, a covenant, and an oath. In addition, for Abraham to become a great nation, God also made another promise, the promise of progeny, that is, that Abraham’s own son would inherit the land.

The Promise

When God called Abraham to leave his country, God promised him that he and his descendants would become a great nation (Genesis 12:1-3). According to Walter Brueggemann (p. 106), “the promise is God’s power and will to create a new future sharply discontinuous with the past and the present. The promise is God’s resolve to form a new community wrought only by miracle and reliant only on God’s faithfulness.”

The promise that Abraham and his descendants would become a great nation contains implicit in it another promise, the promise that God would give him the land of Canaan, since a great nation cannot come into being without a land of its own. God’s promise to Abraham also implies that God would give Abraham an heir, a son who would carry his name and eventually inherit the land as the fulfillment of the divine promise.

But how could God’s promise to Abraham that he would become a great nation be accomplished when his wife Sarah was barren? The barrenness was a stumbling block to the fulfillment of the promise. How could an old man and an old woman be fruitful and become a source of blessings to many? Abraham trusted God’s promise and took God at his word: “I will bless you;” “You shall become a great nation.” God’s promise was enough for Abraham. He believed and in believing he was blessed. And in being blessed Abraham’s descendants became a great nation and his descendants received the promised land.

The Covenant

Believing in God’s promise, Abraham left Haran to go to Canaan. In Canaan Abraham was a stranger, a pilgrim in the land, sojourning from place to place, traveling through Shechem to the oak of Moreh and from there to Bethel and finally to the Negev (Genesis 12:6-9).

Abraham sojourned in Canaan waiting for the fulfillment of God’s promise that he would have a son and that through his son he would inherit the land that was promised to him. However, Sarah’s barrenness continued and Abraham remained childless and the fulfillment of the promise was in doubt.

In his anguish to have a son who would inherit the promise, and probably plagued by doubt of ever having an offspring, Abraham adopted Eliezer of Damascus, a servant and the steward of his house, as his heir. Abraham understood that the fulfillment of God’s promise required an heir, a son who was to be born from his family, in whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed. And yet, Abraham was old and was about to die childless!

It is at this time that God appeared again to Abraham, telling him not to be afraid because his reward would be great (Genesis 15:1-2). The reward that God had promised to Abraham was the land, but for Abraham to receive his reward, he needed a son. And God again promised Abraham that he would have a son: “This man shall not be your heir; your own son shall be your heir” (Genesis 15:4).

To confirm to Abraham that his promise would be fulfilled, that there would be a future for Abraham in the land of promise, God renewed the promise of a son by establishing a covenant with Abraham: “On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, ‘To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates’” (Genesis 15:18).

A covenant is an agreement enacted between two people in which one or both parties of the covenant make promises to perform a certain action. The Hebrew word berith, which in English is translated by the word “covenant,” comes from a root which means “to cut,” that is, the act of cutting or dividing of animals used in the covenant ceremony into two parts. As an act of establishing a covenant, the contracting parties pass between the two halves, thus ratifying the covenant.

The ritual, in which God passed between the two halves of the sacrificed animals, represents God’s unqualified intent to do what he had promised to Abraham. In the Ancient Near East, the passing between the two halves of the sacrificed animals meant the invocation of a curse. In one of his oracles, the prophet Jeremiah makes a passing reference to this ritual: “And the men who transgressed my covenant and did not keep the terms of the covenant which they made before me, I will make like the calf which they cut in two and passed between its parts” (Jeremiah 34:18).

In his covenant with Abraham, God is the only one who walks between the slain animals, signifying that God’s promise to give Abraham a son and the land of Canaan was binding on God as an eternal promise.

The Oath

God’s promise to Abraham was marked by the tension between promise and fulfillment. Twice God had made the promise to Abraham that his heir would inherit the promise. When Abraham left Haran he was seventy-five years old (Genesis 12:4). Twenty four years later, when Abraham was ninety-nine (Genesis 17:1), the promise that “your own son shall be your heir” (Genesis 15:4) had not yet been fulfilled. Sarah remained childless and the fulfillment of the promise was in jeopardy.

The reality of Sarah’s barrenness again brought anguish to Abraham. Would the promise God made while he was in Haran be kept? Would the promise God made at the time the covenant was established be fulfilled? Could God be trusted to fulfill his promise of an heir and of the giving of the land?

Hoping against hope, Abraham and Sarah took the initiative to work out the fulfillment of the promise by taking matters into their own hands. Instead of waiting on God to fulfill his promise, Sarah gave Hagar, her Egyptian servant, to Abraham as a wife. Although Sarah’s motive could be considered noble, the action itself was wrong because it came out of Abraham’s unwillingness to wait on God to fulfill his promise.

Out of this union Ishmael was born but Ishmael was not to be the heir of the promise. God appeared to Abraham to assure him that Sarah in her old age would become the mother of a son and that God’s everlasting covenant would be with Isaac and his descendants after him and not with Ishmael (Genesis 17:19).

The birth of Isaac marks the fulfillment of one of God’s promises to Abraham: the promise of an heir. Isaac had been the child of his parents’s many prayers and the fulfillment of a hope that for many years seemed beyond hope. But then, God came to Abraham and asked him to sacrifice his son Isaac.

God’s request appeared to be a denial of the promise. If God’s promise of the land would be fulfilled in Isaac, why would God ask Abraham to sacrifice his son? Without a son there would be no descendants, no one to inherit the land, no future for Abraham. And yet, Abraham was willing to obey God one more time, believing that the God who gave him a son could also give him a future without a son.

Without hesitation Abraham prepared to sacrifice his son. Three days after the divine request, Abraham came to the place God had selected for the sacrifice. As Abraham was about to sacrifice his son, God intervened and stayed the sacrifice of Isaac. In light of Abraham’s loyalty, God swore an oath:

“I am taking an oath on my own name, declares the LORD, that because you have done this and have not refused to give me your son, your only son, I will certainly bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and the grains of sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of their enemies' cities. Through your descendant all the nations of the earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me” (Genesis 22:16-18).

An oath is an appeal to divine authority to ratify the truth of an assertion. When the people of Israel wanted to establish the truth of a statement, they called on God to be a witness and to validate the truth of the statement. The oath that God made to Abraham in his own name was a sure guarantee that Abraham’s descendants would be numerous and that they would receive the land of Canaan as their inheritance, the land that God had promised to give to him because of his willingness to believe in God. God’s promise to Abraham that his descendants would receive the land included a covenant and an oath. God gave the descendants of Abraham the land of Canaan because God’s promises are faithful. God’s promise to Abraham was sealed by a covenant and affirmed by an oath. As the author of the book of Hebrews wrote:

“When people take oaths, they base their oaths on someone greater than themselves. Their oaths guarantee what they say and end all arguments. God wouldn't change his plan. He wanted to make this perfectly clear to those who would receive his promise, so he took an oath. God did this so that [they] would be encouraged. God cannot lie when he takes an oath or makes a promise” (Hebrews 6:16-18).

Reference: Walter Brueggemann, Genesis. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Abraham, Canaan, Covenant, Oath, Promised Land

Abraham’s Altars

The divine call came to Abraham while he was still in Haran (in the early patriarchal narratives. Abraham’s name appears as Abram. The new name of Abraham will be used throughout this article). The divine command was simple and yet demanding: “Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father's family, and go to the land that I will show you” (Genesis 12:1). Abraham’s response was striking: although he did not know his destination, he went without hesitation, without doubting God’s word.

When Abraham arrived in Canaan, he could not take immediate possession of the land because at that time, the Canaanites were still living in the land (Genesis 12:6). This statement implies that Abraham could not take possession of the land without a challenge. The only thing Abraham was able to do was to travel through the land which the Lord had promised to give to him.

After his arrival in Canaan, Abraham traveled through the land as far as Shechem and came to the site of the great tree of Moreh. In the history of Israel’s religious traditions, Shechem became an important religious site; it was the place where the Lord first appeared to Abraham after his arrival in the land of promise.

There, at Shechem, the Lord appeared to Abraham. This theophany was the first of many appearances of God to Abraham. Stephen mentioned that God had appeared to him while he was in Ur (Acts 7:2), but there is no mention of altars built by Abraham in Ur or Haran.

In Shechem, God renewed the promise he had made to Abraham: “I am going to give this land to your descendants.” Although the land was inhabited by the Canaanites, Abraham believed God’s promise even though he was an old man, seventy-five years old, and a man without a son.

In Shechem Abraham built an altar to the God who appeared to him in order to acknowledge, with a grateful heart, God's kindness to him and his family and by this act, he reaffirmed his trust in the promise which God had made to him (Genesis 12:7).

From Shechem, Abraham traveled south and set up his tent in the hill country, with Bethel to the west and Ai to the east. While at Bethel, Abraham built another altar and dedicated it to the Lord, and there Abraham “called upon the name of the Lord” (Genesis 12:8).

The expression to call upon the name of the Lord is a term for the worship of God. The expression appears in Genesis 13:4 and 26:5 in connection with the building of altars.

However, Abraham did not stay in Bethel very long. He had not yet found a permanent place in which to settle in the new land. He was only a stranger and sojourner in the land, wandering from place to place, stopping here and there to find adequate pasture to feed his flock. Thus, Abraham continued his journey south, until he reached the Negev.

The act of building altars conveyed a significant religious message to the inhabitants of the land. When Abraham arrived in the land of Canaan, he was a sojourner there, living among the Canaanites and their religious practices, and yet he was able to establish the worship of God in the land. An important factor in Abraham’s pilgrimage was that wherever he pitched his tent he also built an altar to God.

Although Shechem was a Canaanite city and although the site of Moreh was a holy place for the inhabitants of the land, Abraham’s altar was an implied message that his God was different from the gods of the land. Abraham could not worship with the Canaanites because the worship of YHWH was incompatible with the cultic practices of the Canaanites. As Walter Brueggemann (Genesis [Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982], p. 123) wrote: “Abraham is called always to be a minority report among those who live and manage society against the promise.”

In addition, the building of an altar in the land was, in fact, a form of taking possession of it. The worship of God in the new land expressed Abraham’s faith in the fulfilment of the divine promise. Abraham was already in the land of promise, and could leave the future implementation of the promise to God. Thus, Abraham was, by building those altars, taking possession of the land.

In the narrative of Abraham coming to Canaan, three places are mentioned: Shechem (Genesis 12:6), the region between Bethel and Ai (Genesis 12:8), and the area of the Negev (Genesis 12:9). These are three of the sites occupied by the Israelites in the conquest of the land of Canaan by Joshua and the army of Israel.

When Abraham arrived in Canaan, he went to Shechem and built an altar, thus claiming the land for his God. Then he went to Bethel, with Bethel in the west and Ai in the east and there he built an altar to God. From there he journeyed to the Negev and in Hebron he bought the field of Machpelah.

The places Abraham visited were the same places the armies of Israel conquered when they entered the land of Canaan. After the fall of Jericho, the first city the Israelites conquered was Ai, the location of which is expressed with the same words used in Genesis 12:8: “With Bethel on the west and Ai on the east” (see Joshua 7:2; 8:9, 8:12). After the conquest of Ai, the Israelites built an altar to the Lord on Mount Ebal, an area near Shechem (Joshua 8:30).

The building of altars by Abraham and his purchase of the field of Machpelah was an indirect way of claiming the land for God. Thus, in the theology of the patriarchal narratives, the conquest of the land of Canaan had already begun when Abraham built those altars and when he bought the land of Machpelah.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Further Reading:

For another perspective of this topic, read Abraham and the Promises of God.


Tags: Abraham, Altars, Machpelah, Promise

Does God Wait On Us?

Healtheland, writing at Jesus Christology, asked a very interesting question: “Do We Wait On God? Or Does God Wait On Us?” The question comes out of the writer’s discussion of the problem of prosperity preachers on the radio talking about people who have been tithing and giving their offerings to God but who have not received their blessing yet.

Healtheland wrote:

What is worse? What is more dangerous? The coercive idolatry of the conservative movement or the false doctrine of the prosperity teachers? Whatever the answer, it just so happened that my mood at that particular time was more conducive to suffering the latter than the former. And as it happens, the false teacher DID raise a sort of a theological dilemma for me. Does a sovereign omniscient timeless (meaning transcending and existing outside of time) God wait on man? And does man wait on God?

In answer to those two questions, Healtheland said: “I say that the answer to the former is unknowable.”

From an Old Testament perspective, it seems to me that it is possible to know the answer to Healtheland’s question. The Old Testament seems to point to the fact that, at times, God waits on us. We can learn this truth from the story of Abraham.

In the book of Genesis, Yahweh and his two companions come to pay a visit to Abraham to announce that Sarah would conceive a child and to tell him the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18). In the story, Yahweh’s two companions depart to go to Sodom and Yahweh and Abraham remain alone, with Abraham standing before the Lord, as a servant before his master and as man before his God (Deuteronomy 4:10; Jeremiah 35:19; 2 Chronicles 9:7).

The text says: “The men turned away and went toward Sodom, but Abraham remained standing before the Lord” (Genesis 18:22).

The footnote of the NIV has an important note. The note says: “Masoretic Text; an ancient Hebrew scribal tradition but the LORD remained standing before Abraham.”

According to the Masoretes, the text originally read, “And the Lord stood before Abraham,” but the scribes changed the text because, in their eyes, it was not proper to speak of God standing in the presence of a creature. This emendation of the scribes is called a tiqqune sopherim.

According to Masoretic tradition, there are eighteen passages in the Old Testament that have been emended by scribes for theological reasons. These changes were made by the scribes early in the transmission of the text to remove irreverent expressions concerning God. One of these emendations is Genesis 18:22 where the text was emended in order to remove the idea that Yahweh waited on Abraham.

Some scholars accept the text as it appears in the Old Testament and reject the idea that Genesis 18:22 is a tiqqune sopherim, that is, that the text contains a scribal emendation. However, as Walter Brueggemann (Genesis. Interpretation [Atlanta, John Knox Press, 1982], p. 168) wrote:

The relation of Abraham and Yahweh in this passage is worth noting in detail. We may observe a remarkable textual problem which illuminates the matter. As it stands, the text in 18:22 now says, “Abraham stood before the Lord,” suggesting the subordination of Abraham to Yahweh. This is what we should expect. But a very early text note (not to be doubted in its authority and authenticity) shows that the text before any translation originally said, “Yahweh stood before Abraham.” The picture is one which agrees with our comments about Abraham as Yahweh’s theological instructor. It is as though Abraham were presiding over the meeting. But that bold image of Yahweh being accountable to Abraham for this theological idea was judged by the early scribes as irreverent and unacceptable. Therefore, the text was changed to read as we have it. But the early version suggests with remarkable candor what a bold posture Abraham assumes and how presumptuous is the issue he raises. Whether the textual change is accepted or not, this text reports that Yahweh must think a quite different theological thought. God is pressed by Abraham to consider an alternative.

Brueggemann’s statement may be too radical for some people, but it clearly expresses the true character of the God of Israel as revealed in the Old Testament. This view of God may be foreign to modern readers of the Bible, but it was very familiar to Israelites who depended on the patience of a patient God.

So, the answer to Healtheland’s question is not “unknowable” after all. At times, the God of the Bible chooses to wait on us. Although many times we try the patience of God (Isaiah 7:13), the Lord is patient for our sake (2 Peter 3:9 NLT).

We should be glad that the Lord waits on us. As Peter wrote: “Bear in mind that our Lord's patience means salvation” (2 Peter 3:15).

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Abraham, Genesis 18, Patience, Tiqqune Sopherim

The Call and Recovering Our Hebrew Roots: A Response to Lauren Winner

Note: The article below is my response to Lauren Winner’s presentation at The Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future.

To read the text of the call in its entirety, click here.
To read a brief summary information about the program, click here.

Now, here is my response to Lauren Winner’s presentation:

I would like to thank Lauren for her stimulating presentation, "The Call and Recovering Our Hebrew Roots." If the church is to make a difference in the world today, the church has to pay attention to what biblical Israel has to teach us.

But in learning from Israel, the church faces a problem. Lauren reminds us that many Christians have abandoned the Old Testament. She said: “Christians, sadly, too often are default Marcionites, acting as though the Bible begins with the Gospel of Matthew.”

Godfrey E. Phillips, in his book The Old Testament in the World Church (London: Lutterworth Press, 1942), describes how the Old Testament was studied in China. He tells the story of a Chinese pastor who made a statement that reflects the same attitude that exists among the present generation of Christians. That pastor said: "Intending missionaries or evangelists waste their time if they spend a lot of it studying the Old Testament . . . The Old Testament teaching given in theological colleges in China is, in the experience of most students, devoid of interest or value for their after work. Reading the Old Testament is like eating a large crab; it turns out to be mostly shell, with very little meat in it . . . We don't need to start with Moses and Elijah. It is enough to teach our students about God as Jesus taught or revealed him" (p. 23).

The Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future is a challenge to Evangelical Christians to restore the priority of the divinely inspired biblical story of God's acts in history. And God’s acts in history include the call of Abraham and the liberation of Israel from Egypt.

The Call is also a summons to Evangelicals to take seriously the visible character of the Church. It is a call for the church to be committed to its mission in the world in fidelity to God's mission.

In her presentation, Lauren emphasized three practices that Jews and Christians have in common: Sabbath keeping, bereavement, and the sense of community. Since time is limited, I will restrict my remarks to the practice of Sabbath keeping and the idea of community as part of our identity as God’s people.

First, let me say that the concept of the Sabbath was unique to Israel. In the past, it was usual for scholars to trace the concept of the Sabbath to Babylonian religious practices. In the Babylonian calendar there were certain days in which the kings and the priests had to stop performing their official duties.

However, it is doubtful that these special days in Babylon and the Israelite Sabbath were identical. One reason for rejecting a Babylonian origin for the Israelite Sabbath is that these special days in the Babylonian calendar were associated with the phases of the moon, while the Israelite Sabbath was celebrated every seven days.

In addition, in the Babylonian calendar these special days were called “evil days,” while the Israelite Sabbath were festive days, days dedicated to the worship of God.

Second, the Sabbath became a special day in the life of Israel because it was celebrated as a sign of the covenantal relationship that existed between God and his people. In her presentation, Lauren spoke about the importance of identity. She said: “Identity is constituted through our practice, not through what we happen to believe at a particular moment.”

The Sabbath became the foundational element in the religious life of Israel. The Sabbath identified Israel as the special people of God. On the Sabbath, God’s people worshiped God and recognized his work in creation and redemption. Thus, Sabbath keeping emphasized Israel’s special relationship with God.

The Sabbath also became the basis for the social concern expressed in Israelite laws. For instance, on the Sabbath both people and animals should rest: “Six days do your work, but on the seventh day do not work, so that your ox and your donkey may rest and the slave born in your household, and the alien as well, may be refreshed” (Exodus 23:12).

The observance of the Sabbath was also designed to be a blessing to the person who kept it. The exilic prophet said that God promised blessings to those who kept the Sabbath. God said: “If you watch your step on the Sabbath and don't use my holy day for personal advantage, if you treat the Sabbath as a day of joy, God's holy day as a celebration, if you honor it by refusing 'business as usual,' making money, running here and there— then you'll be free to enjoy God!” (Isaiah 58:13-14).

The keeping of the Sabbath in Israel set Israel apart from the other nations. The uniqueness of Israel is established at the time God established his special relationship with the community of faith:

“Now, if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:5-6).

That uniqueness was sealed with the establishment of the covenant and the giving of the Ten Commandments. So important was the keeping of the Sabbath that God established it as one of the commandments:

“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy” (Exodus 20:8).

Lauren underscored that “Sabbath-keeping is counter-cultural, and must be undertaken by a community.”

As for the idea of community, we must remember that God called Israel to become an alternative community in the world and gave this alternative community a mission in the world: to be his special people, and mediate God’s Word to all nations. As the people of God, Israel was to become an alternative community to the dominant culture of its day. However, for Israel to be able to fulfill God’s mission in the world, Israel had to live in relationship with God.

The church stands on the shoulders of biblical Israel. The church looks at the world from the perspective God gave to the Hebrew people. That, I believe, is the aim of The Call. The Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future challenges the church to recommit itself to “God’s mission in the world.”

Lauren spoke of the Church’s need to recover Judaism’s recognition of community and practice as their identity as God’s people. In order for the church to speak with a prophetic voice to people in the 21st century, the church must become a “counter-cultural community” in the world. The church must be “in the world” without “being of the world.” The church must become what Walter Brueggemann has called “the alternative community of Moses, and the community of the Suffering Servant”: a community empowered by prophetic imagination, a community that refuses to accept the culture of death so prevalent in our society today.

This is precisely the challenge God gave to Israel. In Leviticus 18:1-4, the LORD said to Moses: “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘I am the LORD your God. You must not do as they do in Egypt, where you used to live, and you must not do as they do in the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you. Do not follow their practices.’”

This is the challenge Evangelicals face today. The Call challenges Evangelicals “not to do as they do in the land of Canaan,” the land of Canaan being our North American context. So, let me paraphrase: if the church is to have “an Ancient Evangelical Future,” the church must not do as they do in the land of Canaan and must not follow their practices. To the contrary, as The Call states, the church must “stand prophetically against the culture’s captivity to racism, consumerism, political correctness, civil religion, sexism, ethical relativism, violence, and the culture of death.”

If the church is to have “an Ancient Evangelical Future,” the church must separate itself from the official religion of optimism that is so prevalent today, a religion which proclaims that God’s only work is to maintain our standard of living in order to ensure that his temple will be a Crystal Cathedral.

If Evangelicals are to recover our Hebrew roots, we have to recapitulate “the alternative community of Moses” and “dismantle the politics of oppression and exploitation” by establishing “a politics of justice and compassion.”

If Evangelicals are to recover our Hebrew roots, we have to look at the first Hebrew, our father Abraham, for inspiration. God’s call to Israel to be his people in the world was based on God’s call to Abraham. Abraham was called by God to be a blessing to the nations. When God appeared to Abraham, the Lord said:

"I will make you into a great nation
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you."

If the church is to be a blessing to the world, we must pay heed to God’s word to Abraham: “All peoples on earth will be blessed through you."

In order for people on earth to be blessed though Abraham, Abraham had to be a blessing to people. God told Abraham: “and you will be a blessing.”

It is unfortunate that the English translations have missed the true meaning of the verb in Hebrew. In Hebrew, the verb is not future: “and you will be a blessing.” Rather, in Hebrew the verb is imperative: “and you, be a blessing.”

If the church is called to have an Ancient Evangelical Future, then the church must go back to that ancient call, God’s call to his people to become a blessing in the world. That is our destiny, that is our mission; we do not have any other choice. The church must be a blessing to people everywhere; this is what makes the church an alternative and unique community in the world, in the same way the Sabbath made Israel a unique people in the Ancient Near East.

I believe the church has a future. The Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future is a summons for the church to rise again as the people of God and take up a mighty task. The Call summons Evangelicals to the service of something greater than ourselves. God is calling us to be that alternative community and to serve his purpose in the world.

The church’s destiny is to be a blessing to all humanity and that destiny is before us today.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Lauren Winner, The Call, Evangelical, Sabbath, Community, Abraham

Abraham and the Promises of God

In an article dealing with the call of Abraham, Brian D. Russell wrote that the call of Abraham is the beginning of a story of holiness, mission, and community. Abraham left a legacy that affects all believers today. He became a “model for living as a sojourner in a foreign land.” (To read the article, click here)

Abraham’s legacy as a model of a believer living as a sojourner in a foreign land is based in part on God’s promise to Abraham. At the time God called Abraham, God told Abraham to leave his country, his people and his father's household and go to the land he would show him (Genesis 12:1).

Abraham left Haran and came to Canaan at the call of God (elsewhere, I have discussed whether Abraham left from Ur or Haran. To read my article on Abraham, click here). When Abraham came to Canaan, he “traveled through the land” (Genesis 12:6). In Shechem God promised Abraham: “To your offspring I will give this land” (Genesis 12:7).

The descendants of Abraham would be the heirs of what God had promised to him, but the promise was made to Abraham: he would receive the land. More than once God promised that he would give the land to Abraham himself:

“All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever” (Genesis 13:15).

“Go, walk through the length and breadth of the land, for I am giving it to you” (Genesis 13:17).

“He also said to him, ‘I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it’” (Genesis 15:7).

“The whole land of Canaan, where you are now an alien, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God” (Genesis 17:8).

God’s promise to Abraham was renewed to Isaac. At the time of the famine in Canaan, God told Isaac not to go to Egypt, and then made him this promise: “Stay in this land for a while, and I will be with you and will bless you. For to you and your descendants I will give all these lands and will confirm the oath I swore to your father Abraham” (Genesis 26:3). The promise to Isaac was that God would give to him, Isaac, and to his descendants, the land God promised to give to Abraham.

Then, the same promise was made to Jacob. At the time Jacob was fleeing from his brother Esau, God appeared to Jacob in a vision and promised to give him the land of Canaan. The Lord spoke to Jacob and said: "I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying” (Genesis 28:13).

Each of the patriarchs received a promise from God that they, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, would receive the land in which they lived. Throughout their lives, the patriarch lived as sojourners in the land God promised to give to them. Abraham “traveled through the land,” “pitched his tent” here and there, moved from one place to another, walking through the length and breadth of the land as if claiming the land God had given to him.

This brings me to Mr. Russell’s article. Writing about the fact that Abraham was a sojourner in the land of promise, Mr. Russell wrote: “Abraham died before seeing the fulfillment of God's promise of the Land of Canaan. It was for later generations to experience the gift of the land. Abraham spent his days moving around the land of Canaan living as a stranger in a strange land.”

However, if Abraham died before receiving the land, what then of God’s promise? God promised Abraham: “Go, walk through the length and breadth of the land, for I am giving it to you” (Genesis 13:17). And how about God’s promise to Isaac and to Jacob that they too would receive the land? Did the patriarchs die without receiving God’s promise?

There is, however, another way of understanding the fulfillment of the promise God made to the patriarchs. When Sarah died in Hebron, Abraham bought a parcel of land in Canaan (Genesis 23). In his dealings with the owners of the land, Abraham bought a cave in which to bury Sarah and a large field with many trees in it.

When looked at from the perspective of God’s promise to Abraham, the purchase of the cave of Machpelah is very significant. The writer of Genesis is emphasizing that Abraham became the owner of a portion of the land of Canaan legally, the same land that one day would belong to his descendants. In fact, the plot of land became the final resting place for the patriarchs and their wives. On the land Abraham bought to bury Sarah, he was buried. In addition, there Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Leah were also buried (Genesis 49:29-32).

In his book Old Testament Theology. Volume 1: Israel’s Gospel (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), p. 232-33, John Goldingay wrote: “Abraham and Sarah do come into secure legal possession of land in Canaan, even if it is a burial possession. It is a mere foothold, or rather skeleton-hold, in the land, but it means that Sarah, and in due course Abraham, Isaac, Leah and Jacob, will be able to rest there forever in the land Yhwh promised.”

God’s promise to give Abraham the land of Canaan raises a question: Can God’s promises be trusted? The narrative about Sarah’s death fits well within the perspective of God’s covenant with Abraham. Gerhard von Rad, in his commentary on Genesis (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1961), p. 245, wrote: “Did the patriarchs who forsook everything for the sake of the promise go unrewarded? No, answers our narrative. In death they were heirs and no longer ‘strangers.’ A very small part of the Promised Land, the grave, belonged to them.”

The writer of Genesis is showing that Abraham came into possession of the land as a gift from God, as evidence that God’s promise was already being fulfilled in the days of Abraham. In the New Testament, Paul says that the presence of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of believers is a “deposit, guaranteeing what is to come” (2 Corinthians 1:22). In death, the patriarchs received a portion of the land and that burial ground became a deposit, guaranteeing what was to come.

The above comment is not a criticism of Mr. Russell’s article. Rather, it is an attempt to clarify one important aspect of God’s dealing with Abraham. I encourage you to read Mr. Russell’s article.

Claude F. Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Further Reading:

For another perspective of this topic, read Abraham’s Altars.



Tags: Abraham, Hebron, Machpelah, Promise, Sarah