Do not thump the book of G’Quan. It is disrespectful.

Many discussions around the Bible founder on the shoals of factual accuracy. The “facts of the matter”, and claims that they are either accurately or inaccurately reported, generate much heat (and for those who like good knock down arguments¹ delight). This should not surprise us, for since the Enlightenment, we have worshiped “facts”.

Indeed respect for the facts has served us well. Truth is found when the facts are reported and marshaled into arguments accurately.

Yet, always, but especially in matters of relationship, there is another sort of truth. Faithfulness too can be truth. In fiction when a character acts in ways which ring true to their nature (as built up elsewhere in the story or the corpus) and to the relevant aspects of the world as we know it (remembering that willing suspension of disbelief plays a role in all poetics) we say the story is “true”. Likewise when the other things all good fictions communicate, the attitudes and elements of worldview “fit” with (i.e. are faithful to) what we believe, we say the story is true. Similarly, in the ancient world,² when an ambassador spoke a message that represented faithfully what his lord would have intended, his words were true. This would have been so even if the message was in fact contradicted by a written communication that spoke differently – if the lord would indeed have spoken differently in the changed circumstances.

To expect the Bible to conform to the first sort of truth, in a world which lived by the second, is mere fundamentalism (a thoroughly modern system).

Of course, to interpret a text which seeks to be faithful requires more skill and judgement than to interpret one which aims at the facts. And isn’t it interesting how often “the facts” serve to support and sustain the status quo?³

Amanda at Cheese-Wearing Theology has posted this month’s Biblical Studies Carnival, in what ways is the “world” (of bibliobloggery) it presents true?

1. What H. Dumpty described as “glory”.
2. Before modern technologies made swift or even almost instant communication at a distance possible.
3. At least until the pressure for change becomes almost irresistible, at which point somehow those flighty facts change sides.

Here is an extract from the long video I linked to the other day. The extract covers reasons why we should teach theology to adults and children together.

Until more complex theories of aerodynamics were developed accepting the possibility of "the flight of the bumblebee" required a suspension of disbelief - Photo by by stuant63

Yesterday I was asked: If Noah lived before the law was revealed to Moses, how did he know how to distinguish “clean” and “unclean” animals?

It is still holiday time (it’s the summer in NZ, though with all the rain and cold in recent weeks you wouldn’t believe it) so my answer was less full than it ought to have been:

Hmm… on Noah, Moses and the animals, there are two likely lines for an answer (a) the story of Noah is being told after the delivery of the law and so the telling reflects those categories; (b) there was perhaps a cultural practice of distinguishing clean and unclean animals even before the law was revealed to Moses (as there was already such a practice of not eating pork).

Of course the short simple answer is “we really don’t know” but people don’t like that one ;)

But it’s not as simple as that¹ behind any attempt to answer such a question lie two fundamentally different ways to read.

One way looks at the text from the outside, and reads as a “critic”. For a couple of centuries, in academic biblical studies, the most frequent way to thus “objectify”² the text has been to examine it historically to see where it came from and how it got to us. Such an approach noticing that there seems to be a “continuity error” here suggests that the text was written at some time later than the events described, and uses this and other signs to work out when and by whom. We could objectify the text in other ways, by examining it as an example of a particular genre or class of texts, against its sociological background…

The other way enters the “world” of the text, and reads it from the inside. This is to behave like a “reader” for this is how we read novels and other stories, indeed it is how we read physics textbooks too ;) In the case of Noah’s distinction my second answer (though it depends on a historical hypothesis and so perhaps looks like the same kind of answer as the first) tends in this direction. It is asking how we might explain this, not as a continuity error (the critic’s approach), but within Noah’s world (a readerly approach).

The great medieval Jewish commentator Rashi took a different readerly approach he explained it thus:

Of all the clean animals: that are destined to be clean for Israel. We learn [from here] that Noah studied the Torah. (From Chabad.org)

Each basic direction of reading offers several different options or styles. But the basic question facing a reader of any text whether to read as critic or as reader. “Readers” must offer the text a willing suspension of disbelief³ Indeed the idea of a need to suspend disbelief can be helpful in thinking about the reading (as opposed to the criticism) of all narrative. For in a laboratory report also there are elements of the narration of the experiment that are omitted, or poorly described, where the reader must suspend disbelief. Despite the variety of both critical and readerly approaches, and despite the fact that they can even share approaches (as above either can examine the text historically), on the suspension of disbelief they differ fundamentally.

[Incidentally,⁴ Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair has a really interesting meditation for Purim on "The Willing Suspension of Disbelief".]

1. Except the last answer, because we really do not know ;)
2. Make into the object of study and examination.
3. The phrase is Coleridge’s from the Biographia Literaria of 1817, to explain how readers might approach the fantastic or supernatural elements in his work, but has been widely used in thinking about how readers can read many sorts of fiction. (( JRR Tolkein has also nuanced it speaking about “secondary belief” based on an inner consistency to the reality described in the narrative. But that’s getting too complicated for a short blog post ;)
4. Though not at all a HT ;)

Photo from Soil-net

I have read the Bible professionally, and encouraged and taught others to read it, in three continents. The situations differed, including an African and a Western University, a Baptist theological college and a Bible School in a refugee camp. I have also supervised some exciting theses that develop interesting perspectives on understanding the Bible. So I am delighted to be participating in a project Global Perspectives on the Old Testament and Global Perspectives on the New Testament, I’ll be writing on Gender-bending as a male reader of Esther and on Jeremiah, possibly taking account of my current context (fencing a piggery and building a pig house ;)

Mark is looking for more contributors, so please read the Call for Contributions below, and think about writing something, or at least repost it on your blog and so share in an interesting project :)

Mark Roncace is seeking contributors for two volumes, Global Perspectives on the Old Testament and Global Perspectives on the New Testament. Pearson Prentice Hall is publishing Global Perspectives on the Bible this year. Next, separate OT and NT volumes, also to be published by Prentice Hall, will be produced. Both books will feature much of the same material as the original Bible volume, but with added essays.

The books—designed as entry level college textbooks—gather four different essays around one biblical text. The essays are brief (about 1,000 words and need not be “scholarly”) and articulate insights from a particular geographical, social, cultural, economic, religious, or ideological context/location. Here is the list of texts/books for which he need essays.

• Genesis 6-9
• Numbers 22-24
• Leviticus
• Judges
• 1-2 Kings
• Jeremiah
• Ezekiel 1-25
• Esther
• Ecclesiastes
• Daniel
• Crucifixion narratives
• Acts (other than chapter 2)
• Corinthians
• Galatians
• 1-2 Thessalonians
• James
• Pastorals (1-2 Timothy, Titus)
• 1-3 John
• 1-2 Peter

Please let Mark know if you are interested (mroncace@wingate.edu) in writing an essay on one (or two) of these texts and he will forward specific guidelines and a sample. In addition to scholars, Mark is particularly interested in gathering perspectives from non-professional readers. He is trying to run on a tight schedule: final OT essays are due April 1 and final NT essays are due June 1 (but remember they are only about 1,000 words).

Psalm 90 makes a fine reading for a new year. Through the psalm, time (and especially the haunting disparity between short brutish human time and the timeless divine reality) is a strong theme. The psalm is peppered with time words:

• dor generation in v.1 (x2)
• b’terem before in v.2
• shanah year in vv.4, 5, 9, 10 (x3), 15
• yom day in vv.4, 9, 10, 12, 14, 15
• ashmorah night watch in v.4
• boqer morning in v.5, 6, 14
• ereb evening in v.6
• chish quickly in v.10

The psalm opens in the distant past with a heading associating it with Moses the great leader from Israel’s pre-monarchic origins.¹

The rest of the first verse forefronts the two key ideas of the psalm, time and our relationship with God. The wording of the opening stresses the persons involved. Very literally it would read: “Lord, a dwelling, you, you have been for us from generation to generation.”

This attention to time carries on through the psalm, and is straightaway extended in the next verse from a human timescale from “generation to generation” to extend from before the birth of the world into the “age”²  to come:

Before the mountains were born
or ever you had given birth to the earth and the world,
from age to age you are God.

From verse 3 to 11 the focus on time stresses time and again that the human and the divine timescales are incommensurable, and that humans suffer the divine wrath. This is not a psalm for the faint hearted, or for people living the comfortable smooth lives our TVs and magazines tell us should be ours. This psalm is not compatible with the Western dream.

But it “works” in a world full of natural disaster: earthquakes (still going on in Christchurch after over a year), floods (and even the minor ones in the Bay of Plenty yesterday cause pain and disruption), and all of man’s inhumanity to man (although 2011 was a year with more glimpses of hope for Burma that anyone expected as 2012 begins the Army is still attacking ethnic villages and destroying their crops, the political prisoners kept in inhuman conditions in the jails can still be counted as over a thousand).

Ps 90:10 is often quoted in something approximating to the fairly literal KJV: “The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years” this with its mention of strength suggests (or in the last few generations reminds us) that we might even live longer. However, in the psalm the effect is quite different, to quote the whole verse:

The days of our years are threescore years and ten;
and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years,
yet is their strength labour and sorrow;
for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

The whole point of the verse is that even if our life is long it is marked (sooner or later) by toil and trouble, and in any case (by any measure but our own pitifully brief one) are so short. Anyone who has reached “a certain age”³ will recognise how the years begin to fly away faster and faster.

So far, if I have presented it as I think it should be read, Psalm 90 is as far from contemporary cheery upbeat “worship songs” as it is possible to be ;)

Yet, it was my grandmother’s favourite psalm. Perhaps because the hymn based on it “Our God, our help in ages past…” used to be sung every “Remembrance Sunday”, and she had cause to remember. Her groom, my father’s father, was killed in the first world war leaving his new wife and toddler. Psalm 90 is a good new year reading in such circumstances. For as well as human mortality it reminds us of the divine author and finisher of our lives. “…our hope for years to come!”

There are two more reasons why this psalm is a favourite of mine. It is one of the few passages in Scripture to deal seriously and in any depth with human aging. And it contains one of the Bible’s few descriptions of creation as birthing:

Before the mountains were born
or ever you had given birth to the earth and the world,
from age to age you are God. (Ps 90:2)

As a result it gets a brief appearance in my new book Not Only a Father,⁴ and will deserve much fuller treatment in the one on human aging, if I ever write it ;)

1. Although there is considerable evidence that the headings may have been added to psalms after they were first written and used, there is no textual evidence for them being absent from the psalms that have them in most modern translations. Rather the reverse the early Greek  translation and the Qumran psalms scrolls seem to have more of these headings, suggesting that they were later additions.
2. Whatever exactly ‘olam means.
3. 50, 40, 30…?
4. I will add a link to the print version soon, for now the text is already available online in discussable format.

Click for full graphic

Sadly the students who need this advice most probably don’t read my blog ;)

However, for students and others who do here  is some good sensible advice and a quick revision of some of the more useful operators one can use in searching Google.

HT: Lifehacker from HackCollege.com

PS more than 70% of students in NZ do not use Macs, they still cost too much for most students.

It’s the silly season, I’ve nearly finished the marking, but only “nearly”. So I needed some silliness. In an effort to demonstrate “scientifically” that Ruth was written by women I submitted the first chapter in various translations to the Gender Analyser. The results were uninspiring, it reckons with varying degrees of confidence that the chapter was written by a man. But then I guess all that proves is that the translators were (almost) all men. So to cap off the silliness I asked about this blog. Aparently my previous post (like my entire Repentant Carnivores site) was written by a woman.

Results

We have strong indicators that http://bigbible.org/sansblogue/spirituality/the-everyday-spirituality-of-marking/ is written by a woman (93%).

So, what I want to know is, who has been writing guest posts without telling me!?

Photo by liber

Back in 2004 on the 15th of November I was also bogged down in marking (is there nothing new under the sun?) so i posted this little gem:

Blame Steve Taylor for this post, that or the end of the year has finally got to me… But Steve’s post “everyday spirituality of ironing” which reads:
| One of the neat things about ironing,
| is the chance to pray for those who wear the clothes,
| in a whole range of life and work situations.
made me think of marking, it’s the boring chore that I do most often. Barbara does the ironing, I do the cooking (and I love cooking, little time to think or pray though – when the flame hits the pot!) I suppose I could pray while mowing, but that does not work as well, I’m no St Francis to pray for the Mynas and the Thrushes, or even the cats that prey on them!

But marking, like the huge pile of exam scripts on my desk right now, that I do lots of, and it is boring (largely, though with the occasional gem) and it needs breaking up… So, I’m going to try praying for each student as I finish their script!

Nice one Steve!

I did, and it worked well for a few years, deepening the experience of marking and enriching my prayer. it works less well now though since Carey (unlike the University) does not always show a student’s picture in the LMS when I upload the mark. I need pictures I can’t recognise who is who as well with just names :(

My ex-boss has been reading John Piper & DA Carson’s The Pastor as Scholar and the Scholar as Pastor. These two are among the most prominent poster-boys for Conservative Evangelical (with very big Cs and Es) views. I have more sympathy for what I’ve read of Carson, but neither really connects with the things that interest me most of the time. Yet Paul’s summary of their ‘twelve lessons for the scholar as pastor with brief quotations includes this gem:

Fight a common disjunction (the ‘critical’ vs the the devotional reading of Scripture)
“My response, forcefully put, is to resist this disjunction, to eschew it, to do everything in your power to destroy it … when you read ‘devotionally’, keep your mind engaged; when you read ‘critically’ (ie with more diligent and focused study, deploying a panoply of ‘tools’), never, ever forget whose Word it is. The aim is never to become a master of the Word, but to be mastered by it.” (91)

That is SO true. One of the biggest problems with theological education in the last fifty years is that too often we have failed to help our students to “get” this. We’ve allowed them to develop schizophrenic lives where intellectual understanding and lived faith fail to meet. And that has been killing churches.

I’d disagree fundamentally and at almost every turn with Carson and with Piper on the conclusions of critical reading, but I agree 100% with this quote. It (together with Paul’s other extracts) is so good, it almost makes me want to read the book!

By English 090 http://english090.wikispaces.com/ CC-BY-SA-3.0 - www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

One of the interesting results of nearing retirement from Carey is that I find myself becoming more aware of “elephants in the room”. Somehow while I was still counting my remaining teaching at Carey in multiple years they remained, by and large, unnoticed.

In this post I’d like to address the “elephant” of struggling students. Like many, perhaps most, theological institutions in Western traditionally English-speaking countries Carey has an increasing number of students whose origin or previous education have been in non-Western contexts. Some of these students, picked for intelligence and ability, perform excellently. Others, despite their intelligence, diligence and other qualities frankly do not perform well.

Their difficulties are varied, but often some or all of these elements are present:

• poor command of English, or at least of that strange dialect of English used in the academic world:
• this sometimes leads to complex sentences with strange (to a native anglophone teacher) word-choices or uses
• on other occasions it results in a student who fails to understand something, but who the teacher assumes does understand because they can echo the “right” words and phrases (often it is only in more complex situations like a final essay where the misunderstanding becomes clear)
• some students, believing that education is about the ability to know and repeat certain key information and ideas, will “plagiarise” copying the words or ideas of a perceived authority (which may be a textbook, academic article or item found through googling – for such students are often not well-equipped to judge the quality of material they access)
• poor quality work produced with good intentions after a hard struggle by the student leads teachers (and not only the erroneously soft-hearted teachers ;) to award a passing grade (just) to work which ought to fail.

Our standard procedures and mechanisms would lead to either a poor pass for a student who should be getting good or excellent results, a mention on the institution’s plaigiarism register, or a fail. Because teachers workloads (in terms of numbers of student-classes and assignments) have roughly doubled in the last twenty years¹ we do not have enough time to provide sufficient help to assist the student to overcome their difficulty (or, e.g. in the case of language knowledge, we do not have the skills needed to help).

This situation is not new, but I think it is getting worse. The result is students who receive diplomas but who do not really exhibit the qualities and understanding that the institution’s graduate profile would suggest.

A quarter of a century ago in another place we used to sometimes refer scathingly to certain European and American institution’s habit of granting “African Doctorates”. Such awards, given with the best of motives, do not help the “developing world” or minority cultures. They are dangerous lies!

1. This is a very rough figure, and is based only on my experience and observations, but I believe is at least approximately representative at least of the situation in NZ.