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Saturday, July 14, 2007

The one who is to come

Posted on behalf of Steve Hays

Joseph Fitzmyer has published a book on messianic prophecy.1 Oddly enough, this is published by a nominally Protestant publisher rather than a Catholic publisher. Was no Catholic publishing house prepared to go to press with his work? Is the assumption that only Protestant readers would take an interest in messianic prophecy?

The work is what we’ve come to expect of Fitzmyer. Fitzmyer is a learned liberal with a magisterial command of the primary sources. He has also made an effort, in this work, to acquaint himself with some of the conservative Evangelical scholarship on messianic prophecy. Unfortunately, he overlooks the best evangelical writers on the subject.2

In certain respects, the book is useful as a supplementary study to messianic prophecy. At times it is helpful for its philological analysis, survey of the Biblical and extrabiblical literature (e.g. Intertestamental, Talmudic), as well as comparative analysis of the MT and LXX.

However, the work suffers from a number of basic methodological flaws which severely and arbitrarily muzzle the OT witness to the messianic expectation.


  1. Perhaps the most fundamental methodological flaw in his analysis is his myopic focus on the occurrence of the word Messiah (in Hebrew and its Greek translational counterparts in the LXX and NT).

    The basic problem here is that he is confounding the meaning of a word with the meaning of a concept. But the Messiah is a complex theological construct, involving many different attributes and lines of evidence. The Messiah is a generic title to denote an individual with a variety of traits and prerogatives. The messianic concept is by no means exhausted by the usage of the word or title.

    Now, in fairness to Fitzmyer, this is not an unconscious oversight on his part. His restriction is quite deliberate:

    Mowinckel himself admits at the outset that “’Messiah,’ ‘the Anointed One,’ as a title or technical term for the king of the final age, does not even occur in the Old Testament,” but then he goes on to use it in a broader sense at times, which creates difficulty. In doing so, Mowinckel claims to be adopting “early Church” usage, but he then anachronistically reads back into certain Old Testament passages Christian “messianic” meanings. Thus, he fails to respect the history of ideas and the proper delineation of how the notion of a promised Coming One, even an Anointed One, gradually developed into that of a Messiah as an expected anointed “King of the final age.” As a result, the terms “Messiah,” “messianic,” and “messianism” have been given a rubber-band comprehension, so that even “the Servant of the Lord” and “the Son of Man” are said to be “messianic” figures in Judaism.3

    Let it be said at the outset that I have no difficulty in imitating “early Church” usage and in seeing Jesus of Nazareth as “the Son of Man,” “the Servant of the Lord,” and even as “the suffering Messiah,” because New Testament writers have predicated all these titles of him, sometimes distinctively and sometimes in conjunction with others, so that they all become titles of him who is for Christians “the Messiah.” Hence, in Christian usage, “Son of Man,” “Son of God,” and “Servant of the Lord” can be called messianic titles. The problem, however, is whether such titles were used in a “messianic” sense in pre-Christian Judaism, in the Old Testament or in other pre-Christian Jewish writings.4

    One has to respect, however, the historical development within the Old Testament itself and not anachronistically use the later term to describe passages that may only be building toward such an emergence. One cannot foist a later Christian meaning on a passage that was supposed to have a distinctive religious sense in guiding the Jewish people of old.5

    A Christian interpreter of the Old Testament should be able to agree with a contemporary Jewish interpreter of the Hebrew Scriptures on the literal meaning of a given passage, even one mentioning masiah, or one related to such a concept, before the Christian invokes his or her canonical meaning…For the Christian canonical sense of the Old Testament is a “plus,” a sense added to the literal meaning of the Old Testament.6

    It is important, however, to note this meaning of the terms “Messiah” and “messianic,” since in the rest of my discussion it will be used in this strict and narrow sense, of an awaited for future anointed agent of God. I emphasize this narrow meaning because there have been and are many attempts to use “Messiah” and “messianic” in a broad sense, which enables one to use diverse promises of a coming or eschatological salvation, redemption, or deliverance of people in the Old Testament as part of its messianic teaching. The broad sense is found at times even in the writings of other Jewish scholars.7

    All of this reveals, however, how in modern discussions “messianism” or “the messianic idea” has become a “rubber-band concept” that is made to embrace far more than “Messiah” was ever meant to denote when it first emerged and gradually developed in Palestinian Judaism in pre-Christian times…this extension is often made by Christian writers, who may begin with the correct understanding of Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah but, in using hindsight, impose, perhaps subconsciously, on various passages of their Old Testament a meaning that has developed only with the emergence of Christianity and its way of reading the Hebrew Scriptures.8


    Here he’s raising intricate and perennial issues over the apostolic exegesis, the interrelation of the Testaments, and the meaning of meaning. But his own position is, in many respects, intellectually confused, contradictory, and hermeneutically naïve.

    It is quite true that we need to guard against anachronistic interpretations. But what, exactly, does that mean?


  2. Ordinarily, an author writes to be understood by his audience. So, as a rule, we should avoid an interpretation that runs contrary to what the target audience or implied reader could have understood. A classic case would be an interpretation that relies on later knowledge unavailable to the original audience.

    However, we must also make allowance for the literary genre of the writing or speech-act. For example, the OT punctuated by oracles of judgment and salvation.

    Now, in the nature of the case, a prophecy is future-oriented. Its fulfillment lies in the future, not the present. Although the timing of the utterance is contemporaneous with the immediate audience, the timing of the fulfillment lies in the future—even the distant future. Its realization may not occur until long after the original audience is dead. So the present perspective of the original audience is inadequate to supply the complete, interpretive framework.

    Therefore, the interpretation of a prophecy as fulfilled prophecy is inherently dependent on future information. On information which may well be inaccessible to the author or his target audience.

    So given that the genre of prophecy and typology is, by definition, future-oriented, it is not anachronistic to interpret a prophecy with the benefit of hindsight. The fulfillment completes the prophecy, for the prophecy involves an internal relation between the past and the future. Although prophecy is prospective, the interpretation of prophecy is—of necessity—retrospective, since the fulfillment is after the fact.


  3. Pace Fitzmyer, this doesn’t mean that we read a surplus meaning into the oracle. In principle, the oracle, as originally framed, gives us enough information to recognize its fulfillment. The fulfillment doesn’t add to the meaning. Rather, fulfillment adds the concrete, historical referent.

    In general, a prophet doesn’t know how, when, or by whom a prophecy will be fulfilled. What a prophet gives us is a partial job description.


  4. What would be anachronistic? It would be anachronistic to invest earlier, ordinary, generic usage with a later, more developed, technical or specialized import. This is a question of lexical semantics. The meaning of words.

    It would also be anachronistic to read the entire messianic concept back into any particular, OT type or prophecy. For example, in OT expectation the Messiah plays more than one role. He is both a suffering servant and a conquering hero. One wouldn’t read the warrior motif into passages dealing with the suffering motif or vice versa. Each passage is allowed to make its distinctive contribution to the constellation of messianic attributes.

    But although we don’t read the whole messianic construct back into any particular verse or passage, there’s nothing wrong in reading those verses with a view to where they’re heading. Of how they contribute to the whole.

    Indeed, it’s unclear from Fitzmyer’s atomistic approach how it would even be possible to trace or retrace the thematic unfolding and eventual convergence of various messianic motifs as they culminate in the NT. He methodology compartmentalized that it would be difficult if not impossible to chart a trajectory or trend.


  5. Moreover, there are many messianic candidates who might seem to fulfill a particular messianic motif. What would distinguish the true heir to the messianic promises from the pretenders is precisely the degree to which all of the messianic promises are fulfilled in his person and work. So the complete theological construct is directly germane to the true identity and historic arrival of the Messiah. That is how you know when The One Who Is to Come is The One Who Has Come.


  6. Furthermore, typology is an intra-Testamental feature as well as an inter-Testamental feature. For example, you already have a new Eden motif as well as a new Exodus motif in the later OT writers. So it’s not as if NT typology is alien to the OT perspective.


  7. Fitzmyer also sidesteps the question of context. Where does the context begin and end?

    For example, do we construe each verse in isolation, or do we treat the Bible, or subsections thereof, as a literary unit? Put another way, are certain verses forward-looking—as well as backward-looking? Clearly, many of the later OT passages—as well as NT passages—allude to earlier OT passages. But does this process also work in reverse? Are some early verses written with later verses in mind?

    Take the famous oracle in Isa 7:14. Should we construe this text in splendid isolation? Or should we view this through the telescopic lens of a larger literary unit, comprising Isa 7:1-11:16?9

    Likewise, do we treat Gen 3:15 in isolation, or do we treat the Pentateuch as a literary unit, and therefore construe Gen 3:15 as the first step in a seminal theme that threads its way through the patriarchal period and beyond?10

    This is not a value-free question. For it’s bound up with higher critical questions regarding inspiration and authorship. An atheist will give a different answer than a Christian. But from the viewpoint of the OT writers, prophecy and providence were genuine phenomena. It would not be anachronistic, from their perspective, to view later events with the benefit of hindsight. God makes promises, and God keeps promises.

    Ironically, it’s liberals like Fitzmyer, with their secular historiography, who easily succumb to anachronistic interpretations. Because they don’t believe in genuine prophecy or typology, they reinterpret the Bible consistent with their closed-system viewpoint. Even if they don’t subscribe to metaphysical naturalism, they operate with methodological naturalism in their version of Biblical hermeneutics, following the lead of Troeltsch.11


  8. Fitzmyer also erects an artificial disjunction between “Christian” and “Jewish” interpretation. For him, the NT interpretation of the OT represents a Christian interpretation as over against a Jewish interpretation, and—by his yardstick—that makes the NT interpretation of the OT anachronistic. Needless to say, this also squelches a major witness to the content and character of the messianic expectation.

    But what is actually anachronistic is his classification scheme. Clearly the NT writers didn’t perceives themselves anything other than Jews. Indeed, they regarded their interpretation of the OT as more authentically Jewish than the religious establishment, when it seditiously repudiated the messianic claims of Jesus.


  9. Fitzmyer’s review of Intertestamental is useful in filling in, to some degree, the pre-Christian Jewish expectation. At the same time, this material is rather spotty.


  10. But the citation of this material can also be misleading. For the implication is that any interpretation of OT messianism at variance with traditional assumptions and expectations is anachronistic and tendentious.

    And yet modern commentators don’t believe that they are bound to construe the OT the way Philo, Josephus or the Talmud interpret the OT.

    This is even true of modern Jewish scholars. Modern Jewish scholars make use of Bible archaeology. Jewish scholars like Frank Kermode, Robert Alter, and Meir Sternberg apply the techniques of secular literary criticism to the narrative theology of the OT.

    So even if a Christian scholar were to find more messianism in the OT than one can document from extrabiblical Jewish sources of that period, this doesn’t necessarily mean that he is foisting a Christian gloss onto the OT. To the contrary, he is doing nothing in principle which modern scholars don’t do as a matter of routine, since it’s quite possible for a modern scholar to understand parts of the OT better than a 1C rabbi.


  11. It is also quite blinkered of Fitzmyer to insist that:

    a Christian interpreter of the Old Testament should be able to agree with a contemporary Jewish interpreter of the Hebrew Scriptures on the literal meaning of a given passage, even one mentioning masiah, or one related to such a concept.


    For that begs the question of whether an OT passage is open to the NT, or self-contained within the enclosure of the OT. Is the OT going anywhere? Does an OT passage have any directionality?

    If, indeed, various OT passages are prepositioned to terminate on the advent of Jesus, then a Christian interpreter cannot agree with a Jewish interpreter on the overall meaning of various OT passages inasmuch the historical referent is supplied by the NT. If these passages are forward-leaning, and if they find their terminus in the person and work of Jesus, then the Jewish interpretation will misinterpret the passages in question by short-circuiting their historical aim.


  12. Another artificial disjunction lies in his dichotomy between Jewish and Christian interpreters. But this leaves out of account modern Messianic Jews like Michael Brown.12


  13. There are also times when his commitment to the historical-critical method predetermines the conclusion. When he dates Daniel to the 2C rather than the 6C, then, by definition, this is a late witness to OT messianism. But that conclusion is an artifact of his liberal dating scheme—as well as his narrow definition of messianism.

    In general, though, his liberalism makes less difference to his analysis than you might anticipate, for the reason he rules out so many messianic prophecies, traditionally considered, is not due to his dating scheme, but to his truncated definition of what constitutes a messianic prophecy. Put another way, it has less to do with the definition of a messianic prophecy, than with a messianic prophecy. The sample group is largely confined to that particular word-group.



1 The One Who Is to Come (Eerdmans 2007).

2 Cf. T. D. Alexander, “Messianic Ideology in the Book of Genesis,” P., E. Satterthwaite et al. eds. The Lord’s Anointed: Interpretation of Old Testament Texts (Baker 1995), 19-39; The Servant King (Regent College 2003); J. A. Motyer, Look to the Rock (Kregel 2004); “Messiah,” The Illustrated Bible Dictionary, 2:987-94; J. Sailhamer, The Pentateuch as Narrative (Zondervan 1992); http://www.etsjets.org/jets/journal/44/44-1/44-1-PP005-024_JETS.pdf

3 Ibid. viii.

4 Ibid. viii.

5 Ibid. viii-ix.

6 Ibid. ix.

7 Ibid. 4. In which connection, he mentions Joseph Klausner’s The Messianic Idea in Israel.

8 Ibid. 6.

9 J. A. Motyer, The Context and Content in the Interpretation of Isaiah 7:14,” TynB 21 (1970), 118-25.

10 T. D. Alexander, Genealogies, Seed and the Compositional Unity of Genesis,” TynB 44 (1993), 255-70; Further Observations on the Term “Seed” in Genesis,” TynB 48.2 (1997), 363-68.

11 Cf. I. Provan, “In the Stable with the Dwarves: “Testimony, Interpretation, Faith, and the History of Israel,” V. Long et al. eds. Windows into Old Testament History (Eerdmans 2002), 161-97.

12 M. L. Brown, Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus (Baker 2000-2007); cf. E. V. Snow, A Zeal For God Not According to Knowledge (iUniverse, Inc, 2005).

20 comments:

  1. When someone earlier had asked you to review this book I ordered it and read it too. Yours is an excellent review of his book from the Christian conservative perspective. I, however, found Fitmyers' book persuasive, and I still do, even after reading your review.

    As I've said before, we're dealing with the same evidence, but how we see the evidence makes all of the difference in the world. Your whole critique depends upon a rejection of higher critical thought and is premised on the notion that God exists and he did in fact actually utter prophetic statements. But aren't you putting the cart before the horse here?

    Even if God exists how do you know he was the one who uttered these prophecies in the OT? Maybe these so-called prophecies are not from his mouth? Maybe he never revealed anything except what we can learn from his creation? So why not examine these prophecies just like you reviewed Fitmyer's book to see if what they predict was fulfilled exactly as they depict? Why not subject them to the same critique you'd give of Nostradamus' prophecies? Why not look for the evidence of fulfilled prophecy rather than assuming what needs to be proved here?

    Take this statement of yours:

    Although prophecy is prospective, the interpretation of prophecy is—of necessity—retrospective, since the fulfillment is after the fact.

    True enough, if there are in fact prophecies in the Old Testament from God. But that's the question I want answered, and the evidence from the so-called prophecies just don't show much of anything. If God wants us to believe, why are the so-called prophecies so vague and unclear? We who are skeptics find it easy, and I mean easy, to discount them all.

    Tim Callahan [Bible Prophecy: Failure or Fulfillment? (Millennium Press 1997)] has examined hundreds of so-called prophetic passages in the Bible and subjected them to four simple questions: 1) Is the prophecy true, false or too vague to be specifically interpreted? 2) If the prophecy is true was it written before or after the fact? 3) If it was written before the fact, was its fulfillment something that could be predicted based on a logical interpretation of the events of the prophet's day? 4) Was the prophecy directive or deliberately fulfilled by someone with knowledge of the prophecy? After examining these texts he concludes that not a single one of them satisfies the demands of these four questions.

    God could’ve predicted any number of natural disasters. He could’ve predicted when Mt. St. Helens would erupt, or when the Indonesian tsunami or hurricane Katrina would destroy so much. It would save lives and confirm he is God. Then too, he could’ve predicted the rise of the internet, or the inventions of the incandescent light bulb, Television, or the atomic bomb, and he could do it using non-ambiguous language that would be seen by all as a prophectic fulfillment. God could’ve predicted several things that would take place in each generation in each region of the earth, so that each generation and each region of the earth would have confirmation that he exists through prophecy. God could've told people about the vastness and the complexity of the universe before humans would have been able to confirm it. He could have predicted the discovery of penicillin, which has saved so many lives, and if predicted it would have speeded up its discovery.

    When it comes to Jesus, why did God hide many the prophecies inside the pages of a devotional book like Psalms, which when read it their context are not predicting anything at all?

    I think I know how you'll answer, if you do, given your Calvinistic theology presuppositionalist apologetics. It's still a matter of how we see things. I just wanted to share how I see things, that's all.

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  2. The link Steve provides in the first note doesn't work for me. Here's an alternate way to view the page:

    http://216.239.51.104/search?q=cache:ThX9qBNDO6sJ:www.etsjets.org/jets/journal/44/44-1/44-1-PP005-024_JETS.pdf+http://www.etsjets.org/jets/journal/44/44-1/44-1-PP005-024_JETS.pdf&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us

    In note 12, Steve refers to Michael Brown's series of books responding to Judaism. For those who are interested, volume 3 in that series focuses on Messianic prophecy.

    Robert Newman has some good material on prophecy as well. He's edited a book on the subject, The Evidence Of Prophecy (Hatfield, Pennsylvania: Interdisciplinary Biblical Research Institute, 2001), and an organization he's associated with has a web site that carries a lot of his material on prophecy:

    http://www.ibri.org

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  3. Your whole critique depends upon a rejection of higher critical thought and is premised on the notion that God exists and he did in fact actually utter prophetic statements.

    Of course "higher critical thought" changes like the wind and the hemlines of skirts. That's the problem with higher critical theories. It's easily debunked on close examination.

    I'd add that many "higher crticial theories" like the Documentary Hypothesis have long ago been abandoned even by liberals, as in the case of the rising tide of scholarship supporting a single-author hypothesis. It's only sloppy hacks and C seminary students like you, John, that take them as seriously as you do.

    I'd further add that we could say that much of what you say depends on your acceptance of higher critical thought, but I don't recall your side of the aisle ever doing much of providing supporting argumentation for those theories. Rather, you repeat them as gospel truth.

    Tim Callahan [Bible Prophecy: Failure or Fulfillment? (Millennium Press 1997)] has examined hundreds of so-called prophetic passages in the Bible...

    Yes, he examined what less than a dozen works from the conservative side; used something like 2 sets of commentaries, and has, what 20 or less works from his side of the aisle, no knowledge of the original languages, and seems mighty fond of the encyclopedia. Is this a scholarly work, John, or a middle school term paper?

    God could’ve predicted any number of natural disasters....

    All this does, of course, is substitute a series of ethical objections in place of exegetical objections, which is the underlying reason, no doubt, that you arrive at your conclusion about biblical prophecy.

    If God wants us to believe, why are the so-called prophecies so vague and unclear? We who are skeptics find it easy, and I mean easy, to discount them all.

    A. Some of the same prophets you deny include oracles like that of Isaiah 6 on blinding. So, the text provides your own answer.

    B. Further, the "hiding" of "mystery" is a theme in the NT. Did you fail NT theology in seminary?

    C. On top of this we have your consistent assertions that involve some sort of universality to the revelation of God, as if God, if God is to be good, must reveal Himself clearly and unambiguously in some sort of of woodenly literal form not only in the OT but to the present day. But why should we accept this version of God? God is obligated to target only the elect and, perhaps, enough of the covenant community itself to be understood on common grounds, not the reprobate.

    When it comes to Jesus, why did God hide many the prophecies inside the pages of a devotional book like Psalms, which when read it their context are not predicting anything at all?

    The Psalms provided the liturgy for the Jewish nation from the time of Solomon forward. They are considered to be prophetic, even by Jewish standards. In fact, the Psalms were routinely seen as messianic by ALL 1st century schools of Judaism.

    The Psalms are addressed to the covenant community, not pagans, John. The target audience understood them to be Messianic. The fact that you don't only proves you aren't part of the target audience, not that they aren't Messianic. It also shows your unwillingness to deal with the text on its own terms, inclusive, that is, of the exegetical methods of the time.

    Many of these are typological in nature. There's a difference between an oracle and typology.

    But the most relevant issue is the exegetical method at the time the NT was composed. The proper question to ask isn't "What does the text mean at the time of original composition?" The proper question, John, is "Do the NT writers employ exegetical methods that are "out of bounds" for first century Jews? For if so, then their interpretations of Messianic fulfilment was illicit. If not, then the interpretation of these passages would not be illicit.

    What you do, by way of contrast, is lay down your 21st century (dare I say 19th) predilections upon the text and the castigate it for failing to measure up.

    In The Right Doctrine From the Wrong Texts, Beale writes:

    "The Jewish roots of Christianity make it a priori likely that the exegetical procedures of the New Testament would resemble to some extent those of then contemporary Judaism. This has long been established with regard to the hermeneutics of Paul vis-a-vis the Talmud, and it is becoming increasingly clear with respect to the Qumran texts as well. Indeed, there is little indication in the New Testament itself that the canonical writers were conscious of varieties of exegetical genre or of following particular modes of interpretation. At least they seem to make no sharp distinctions between what we would call historico-grammatical exegesis, midrash, pesher, allegory, or interpretations based on "corporate solidarity" or "typological correspondences in history." All of these are used in their writings in something of a blended and interwoven fashion. Yet there are discernible patterns and individual emphases among the various New Testament authors.

    "In almost all of the New Testament authors one can find some literalist, straightforward exegesis of biblical texts. Occasionally some allegorical interpretation is also present. The pesher method, however dominates a certain class of material, namely that representative of Jesus' early disciples: principally Peter's preaching recorded in the early chapters of Acts, the Gospels of Matthew and John, and 1 Peter. Here these authors seem to be taking Jesus' own method of using Scripture as their pattern. By revelation they had come to know that "this" manifest in the work and person of Jesus "is that" of which the Old Testament speaks. Yet other New Testament writers, notably Paul and the author of Hebrews, can be characterized by a midrashic type of biblical interpretation (except where Paul uses a pesher approach in describing his own apostolic calling). Midrashic interpretation in the hands of these authors starts with Scripture and seeks to demonstrate christological relevance by means of a controlled atomistic exegesis.

    In Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period, Longenecker summarizes the 7 rules of the Hillel school:

    1. Qal wahomer: what applies in a less important case will certainly apply in a more important case.

    2. Gezerah shawah: verbal analogy from one verse to another; where the same words are applied to two separate cases it follows that the same considerations apply to both.

    3. Binyan ab mikathub 'ehad: building up a family from a single text; when the same phrase is found in a number of passages, then a consideration found in one of them applies to all of them.

    4. Binyan ab mishene kethubim: building up a family from two texts; a principle is established by relating two texts together; the principle can then be applied to other passages.

    5. Kelal upherat: the general and the particular, a general principle may be restricted by a particularisation of it in another verse; or conversely, a particular rule may be extended into a general principle.

    6. Kayoze bo bemaqom 'aher: as is found in another place; a difficulty in one text may be solved by comparing it with another which has points of general (though not necessarily verbal) similarity.

    7. Dabar halamed me'inyano: a meaning established by its context.

    And Beale (above title) and Ellis (The Old Testament in Early Christianity: Canon and Interpretation in the Light of Modern Research) both provide us with examples of each:

    Rule 1 (Inference a fortiori): Matt 12.11ff, Luke 12.24,28; 2 Cor 3.7-11; Heb 9.13ff; Luke 6.3-5; Rom 5.15,17; Rom 11.24; I Cor 6.2f; I Cor 9.9; Heb 2.2ff; Heb 10.28f; Heb 12.24ff; John 10.31-38.

    Rule 2 (Inference from similar words): Mark 2.23-28; Luke 6.1-5; Rom 4.3,7; Heb 7.1-28; Jas 2.21ff.

    Rule 3 (General principle from one verse): Mark 12.26; Jas 5.16ff.

    Rule 4 (General principle from two verses): Rom 4.1-25 (Abe and David); I Cor 9.9, 13 (from Deut 25.4 and 18.1-8); Jas 2.22-26 (Abe and Rahab).

    Rule 5 (Inference from a general principle): Mark 12.28-34; Rom 13.9ff (from Lev 19.18).

    Rule 6 (Inference from an analogous passage): Mark 14.62 (anlgy of Dan 7.9 with Ps 110.1); Gal 3.8-16 (anlgy of Gen 12.3 and 22.18); Heb 4.7-9 (anlgy of Josh 1.13-15 with Ps 95.7-11); Heb 8.7-13 (anlgy of Exod 19.5ff with Jer 31.31-34).

    In other words, John, the NT writers were not at all innovative in their approach.

    Rule 7 (Interpretation from the context): Matt 19.4-8; Rom 4.10f; Gal 3.17; Heb 4.9f.; heb 11.1-13; Heb 11.35-40.

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  4. John Loftus,

    Steve was responding to a request to comment on Fitzmyer's book. He's addressed issues like the ones you've raised in other posts, and some of the sources he references in this post are relevant to your objections. I've discussed Biblical prophecy with you in the past. I discussed some of the prophecies related to the infancy narratives this past Christmas season, and we've discussed other prophecies and some of the broader issues you've raised in other threads. Glenn Miller and J.P. Holding have a lot of material on prophecy at their web sites as well, including responses to Tim Callahan.

    As I've said before, the issue is whether prophecy is sufficiently detailed, not whether it's exhaustively detailed. God would know what degree of specificity is needed (Acts 17:26-27), and His objectives wouldn't be limited to what you refer to (saving lives from natural disasters, etc.). Many of the prophecies are specific enough to motivate critics to propose highly speculative and unlikely theories in an attempt to give the books late dates. Dismissals of such prophecies are only as good as the late date theories. In other words, they're not good. And in the cases in which late dating would be so absurd that critics rarely or never even attempt it (arguing that Isaiah was written after Jesus' lifetime, for example), the naturalistic explanations that are offered are often dubious. See my posts last year on the historical evidence we have for Jesus' Davidic ancestry and Bethlehem as His birthplace, for example. The relevant Evangelical commentaries also have a lot of good material: John Oswalt on Isaiah, Bruce Waltke on Micah, etc. When critics argue that Bethlehem in Micah 5 is a person or a clan, not a city, or that Jesus was born in Nazareth instead, for instance, the fact that they're able to come up with such arguments doesn't demonstrate that those arguments are more likely than the Christian alternative.

    When you write...

    "We who are skeptics find it easy, and I mean easy, to discount them all."

    ...the readers should keep in mind that such skeptics also find it "easy" to propose widespread hallucinations, unusual memory lapses among large groups of people, that the early Christians were wrong about the authorship of the large majority of the New Testament books, etc.

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  5. Gene wrote:

    "God is obligated to target only the elect and, perhaps, enough of the covenant community itself to be understood on common grounds, not the reprobate."

    That's a significant point often neglected by critics, and it's what I was addressing with my reference to Acts 17:26-27. But even critics acknowledge the sufficient specificity of many of these prophecies, whether they intend to or not, when they attempt to late date books, propose ridiculous alternatives to Jesus for the fulfillment of something like Isaiah's Servant prophecies, etc.

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  6. Gene,

    ___
    On top of this we have your consistent assertions that involve some sort of universality to the revelation of God, as if God, if God is to be good, must reveal Himself clearly and unambiguously in some sort of of woodenly literal form not only in the OT but to the present day. But why should we accept this version of God? God is obligated to target only the elect and, perhaps, enough of the covenant community itself to be understood on common grounds, not the reprobate.
    ___

    So this suggests you believe for reasons that are do not follow from purely rational lines of reasoning: Election selects for saving belief in the absence of formally established “good reasons” for said belief? Or would you say that *your* reasons for saving faith good enough “by definition” since you are, after all, regenerate?

    ___
    The Psalms provided the liturgy for the Jewish nation from the time of Solomon forward. They are considered to be prophetic, even by Jewish standards. In fact, the Psalms were routinely seen as messianic by ALL 1st century schools of Judaism.
    ---

    What makes this the normative interpretation? Why should 1st century schools of judaism set the standard? What standard establishes the authenticity of 1st century Judasim as the “right way” of viewing the matter? What rules out any alternative interpretive controls?

    ___
    The Psalms are addressed to the covenant community, not pagans, John. The target audience understood them to be Messianic. The fact that you don't only proves you aren't part of the target audience, not that they aren't Messianic. It also shows your unwillingness to deal with the text on its own terms, inclusive,
    that is, of the exegetical methods of the time
    ---

    Again, what makes the exegetical methods of the time the “gold standard”? Why is the received interpretation the “right one”. And even *if* the received interpretation is the “right one”, how can you be sure you really know how the original audience received it? Probablility? How do you establish probability as more than *your* disposition to consider the evidence to be more likely than not to support your claims? What if your native instincts have gotten it wrong?
    ___

    But the most relevant issue is the exegetical method at the time the NT was composed. The proper question to ask isn't "What does the text mean at the time of original composition?" The proper question, John, is "Do the NT writers employ exegetical methods that are "out of bounds" for first century Jews? For if so, then their interpretations of Messianic fulfilment was illicit. If not, then the interpretation of these passages would not be illicit.
    ___

    What establishes this as the “proper question”? Is it the Bible? What makes “the meaning of the text at the time of original composition” the right question to ask? Is it just your disposition to make this claim? Or, is its normativity *clearly* scriptural?

    ___
    What you do, by way of contrast, is lay down your 21st century (dare I say 19th) predilections upon the text and the castigate it for failing to measure up.
    ___

    So why shouldn’t I lay down my 21st century predilictions as a controlling factor on biblical interpretation? What clearly establishes this as the “wrong” approach? The Bible itself? How so? What automatically makes my 21st century predilictions wrong?

    ___
    In Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period, Longenecker summarizes the 7 rules of the Hillel school
    ___

    Are you really suggesting that the Hillel school sets any kind of exegetical standard? Why? Maybe Hillel is bunk.

    In short, you bring an interpretive grid to biblical interpretation. What makes your grid the right one?mj

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  7. Higher critical theories that are debated have to do with reconstructive how the Bible was created. There is a overwhelming consensus though, as expressed by James D.G. Dunn, "it would be flying in the face of too much evidence and good scholarship to deny this basic affirmation: that the Pentateuch is the product of a lengthy process of tradition."

    Here’s just some of the evidence:
    1) Deuteronomy tells where Moses is buried and states "no one knows his burial place to this day." This indicates that this was written some time after Moses' death because it is remarkable that no one knows to this day--i.e. in a time far removed from his death. Even conservatives admit that Moses didn't write this. Usually, they say it is Joshua, but that really wouldn't make sense of the "to this day" comment. 2) In Genesis 14, it states that Abraham chased his nephew's captors to the city of Dan. The problem is that Dan wasn't a city until the time of Samson (Judges 18:27) some 331 years after Moses died. Moses could not have known about Dan. This one is better. Was it a different Dan in the same location 300 years before it was renamed "Dan"? Unlikely. 3) In Genesis 36:31 it lists some kings of the other countries "before any king reigned over the Israelites." In Moses' life there were no kings in Israel. This didn't happen until Saul, hundreds of years after Moses died. And the fact that they say any king implies that there have been at least more than one before this passage was written. Moses couldn't have written this. This is pretty difficult to get around. Sure, Moses was a prophet, but the fact that this statement is said so matter-of-factly is notable. One wonders why Samuel wouldn’t have brought it up when the people were calling for a king hundreds of years later. 4) Exodus 16:35 reads, "The Israelites ate manna forty years, until they came to a habitable land; they ate manna, until they came to the border of the land of Canaan." Moses was dead before the Israelites reached the border. Hmmm. Doesn't sound like a "prophecy" to me. Sounds like a statement of fact. 5) In trying to prove the existence of giants, Deuteronomy 3:11 says, "Now only King Og of Bashan was left of the remnant of the Rephaim. In fact his bed, an iron bed, can still be seen in Rabbah of the Amorites.” In this passage, this bed is already an ancient relic that can still be seen in Rabbah (a city which was not even conquered until King David ruled over Israel). This is much too late for Moses to write.

    Then there's Isaiah. The main reason why the unity of Isaiah was accepted for so long despite the problems with the different historical contexts was because of a predisposition to believe in the verbal inspiration of the Bible as a whole, modeled on the prophetic paradigm. But eventually, with the rise of historical consciousness, scholars challenged this assumption with the facts of Isaiah itself. Professor James D.G. Dunn again: "we can speak of an overwhelming consensus of biblical scholarship that the present Isaiah is not the work of a single author. It is not simply a question of whether predictive prophecy is possible or not. It is rather that the message of Second Isaiah would have been largely meaningless to an 8th century Jerusalem audience. It is so clearly directed to the situation of exile. Consequently, had it been delivered a century and a half before the exile, it would be unlike the rest of Jewish prophecy."

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  8. Other than what I just said, I think you should address searchers questions. They are good ones.

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  9. JOHN W. LOFTUS SAID:

    “As I've said before, we're dealing with the same evidence, but how we see the evidence makes all of the difference in the world. Your whole critique depends upon a rejection of higher critical thought and is premised on the notion that God exists and he did in fact actually utter prophetic statements. But aren't you putting the cart before the horse here?”

    Without God, there is no cart or horse.

    This is a book review. I’m not attempting in the course of a book review to defend my views on higher criticism or the existence of God. I’ve done that elsewhere. So have others.

    “Even if God exists how do you know he was the one who uttered these prophecies in the OT? Maybe these so-called prophecies are not from his mouth? Maybe he never revealed anything except what we can learn from his creation”

    The assumption underlying this question is not self-explanatory. Are you saying that even if these oracles were genuinely predictive, we should not attribute such feats of precognition to God? Do you believe in human precognition?

    Or are you claiming that these prophecies are uninspired because they’re failed predictions (in your opinion)?

    Or are you claiming that they’re so vaguely worded that they’re unverifiable and unfalsifiable? What is your argument?

    “So why not examine these prophecies just like you reviewed Fitmyer's book to see if what they predict was fulfilled exactly as they depict?”

    As Jason points out, liberals scholars do regard many of these oracles as descriptively accurate. And because liberals don’t believe in divine revelation, they actually cite their descriptive accuracy as a reason to deny their predictive accuracy. They automatically reclassify all accurate prophecies as vaticinia ex eventu. They wouldn’t postdate the prophecies of Isaiah, Daniel, &c. unless they acknowledged their descriptive accuracy.

    “Why not subject them to the same critique you'd give of Nostradamus' prophecies? Why not look for the evidence of fulfilled prophecy rather than assuming what needs to be proved here?”

    There are two distinct issues here:

    i) Is modern/extrabiblical prophecy possible?

    ii) Is Nostradamus a good candidate?

    Once again, what’s your argument?

    There are various reasons for thinking that Nostradamus was a charlatan, but I don’t need to make a life-study of the subject, for my worldview doesn’t preclude the possibility that an infidel could accurately predict the future. Indeed, the Bible makes explicit allowance for that possibility (Deut 13:1-5).

    Even if Nostradamus could foresee the future, that in no way falsifies Christian theology. So I don’t have a dog in that fight.

    “True enough, if there are in fact prophecies in the Old Testament from God. But that's the question I want answered, and the evidence from the so-called prophecies just don't show much of anything.”

    I’ve cited writers like T. Desmond Alexander, Alec Motyer, and John Sailhamer who, in my opinion, do a good job of presenting the evidence. If what is convincing to me is unconvincing to you, then that’s your problem, not mine.

    “If God wants us to believe, why are the so-called prophecies so vague and unclear? We who are skeptics find it easy, and I mean easy, to discount them all.”

    In my theology, God is not attempting to convince everyone—only the elect. It works just fine for me.

    “Tim Callahan [Bible Prophecy: Failure or Fulfillment? (Millennium Press 1997)] has examined hundreds of so-called prophetic passages in the Bible.”

    Assuming that Callahan has succeeded in debunking Hal Lindsey’s school of exegesis, that’s hardly a problem for my own position.

    “God could’ve predicted several things that would take place in each generation in each region of the earth, so that each generation and each region of the earth would have confirmation that he exists through prophecy.”

    You’re welcome to run this objection by your friendly Arminian next door. It doesn’t make a dent in my theology.

    “When it comes to Jesus, why did God hide many the prophecies inside the pages of a devotional book like Psalms, which when read it their context are not predicting anything at all?”

    You’re begging the question.

    “Higher critical theories that are debated have to do with reconstructive how the Bible was created. There is a overwhelming consensus though, as expressed by James D.G. Dunn, ‘it would be flying in the face of too much evidence and good scholarship to deny this basic affirmation: that the Pentateuch is the product of a lengthy process of tradition’."

    These are stale objections. The fact that scribes may occasionally update a few historical references in the Pentateuch is scarcely an objection to Mosaic authorship. And, in the meantime, you disregard evidence for the antiquity of the Pentateuch as well as evidence against resituating its composition to the Exilic era.

    “It is rather that the message of Second Isaiah would have been largely meaningless to an 8th century Jerusalem audience. It is so clearly directed to the situation of exile.”

    To the contrary, the whole point is to show that God is faithful to his promises. It is not merely for the benefit of the preexilic audience, but for the exilic and postexilic audience, so that they can see that God made good on his promises. He said he would do something, and he did it. He’s a God who announces the end from the beginning. That’s a recurring theme in Isa 40-48.

    “Consequently, had it been delivered a century and a half before the exile, it would be unlike the rest of Jewish prophecy."

    There are other long-range prophecies in Scripture, like we find in Daniel.

    Remember, too, that the “century and a half” figure is a retrospective calculation, supplied after the fact. Isaiah had no idea when these events would transpire. Dunn is confusing hindsight with foresight.

    “I think I know how you'll answer, if you do, given your Calvinistic theology presuppositionalist apologetics. It's still a matter of how we see things. I just wanted to share how I see things, that's all.”

    You see Bible prophecy the way a color-blind spectator sees a rainbow.

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  10. >It's only sloppy hacks and C seminary students like you, John, that take them as seriously as you do. ...

    >God is obligated to target only the elect and, perhaps, enough of the covenant community itself to be understood on common grounds, not the reprobate.


    Gene, you and the other Triablogue members ought to make up your minds on this issue. On the one hand, you regularly chalk up unbelief to intellectual inferiority (altough Paul says otherwise in 1 Cor. 1:18-31). On the other, you assert that unbelievers are simply unable to grasp the truth because of a blindness that befogs the nonelect.

    OK, which is it. Stupidity or nonelection?

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  11. >You see Bible prophecy the way a color-blind spectator sees a rainbow.

    But Steve, only a mean-spirited jerk would blast the color-blind man for failing to see the rainbow.

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  12. AaronC said:

    Gene, you and the other Triablogue members ought to make up your minds on this issue. On the one hand, you regularly chalk up unbelief to intellectual inferiority (altough Paul says otherwise in 1 Cor. 1:18-31). On the other, you assert that unbelievers are simply unable to grasp the truth because of a blindness that befogs the nonelect.

    OK, which is it. Stupidity or nonelection?

    *****************************************

    Since Aaron has bungled my stated position on the question at issue, there's nothing I need to respond to.

    http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/09/only-objections-are-stupid-objections.html

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  13. Steve said...You see Bible prophecy the way a color-blind spectator sees a rainbow.

    You are blinded by your presuppositions to consider any other conclusion. It is so clear to me. In what other area of disagreement about any other topic, besides the Bible, would you say that about anyone who has a different opinion? Which diet is the best to lose weight? Which car is the best?...or which basketball team was the best one in history? Do you say, "you are just blind not to see that Wilson balls are better than Spalding balls?" Why the double standard, since by your own admission you have a fallen intellect?

    I've seen you take fellow professing Christians to task here too. You argue as if you and you alone have the whole truth and nothing but the truth. You don't seem to admit that any of our questions are sincere or even legitimate ones.

    Once again, your misplaced unquestioning faith reminds me of what psychologist Valerie Tarico wrote: “it doesn’t take very many false assumptions to send us on a long goose chase.” To illustrate this she tells us about the mental world of a paranoid schizophrenic. To such a person the perceived persecution by others sounds real. “You can sit, as a psychiatrist, with a diagnostic manual next to you, and think: as bizarre as it sounds, the CIA really is bugging this guy. The arguments are tight, the logic persuasive, the evidence organized into neat files. All that is needed to build such an impressive house of illusion is a clear, well-organized mind and a few false assumptions. Paranoid individuals can be very credible.” (p. 221-22). This is what Christians do, and this is why it’s hard to shake the Evangelical faith, in her informed opinion.

    Steve, with so many options in the religious and non-religious world held by sincere and intellegent people around the globe, what are the odds that you have chosen the one and only set of presuppositions to understand the Bible? If presuppositions lead us to our conclusions, then what if you have the wrong set of presuppositions? If you do, you could be exactly like the paranoid person Tarico wrote about. I'm willing to admit I might be wrong and I learn from you while arguing with you. But you on the other hand argue with me like I'm stupid, or that I'm in willful denial of the truth because I'm not among the elect, and that both fascinates and disturbs me to no end.

    Anyway thanks again for the excellent review from your perspective. I wish you well.

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  14. John W. Loftus said...

    "Steve, with so many options in the religious and non-religious world held by sincere and intellegent people around the globe, what are the odds that you have chosen the one and only set of presuppositions to understand the Bible?"

    I didn't choose the Christian faith—it chose me.

    This is not a question of the "odds," like flipping a coin or rolling the dice.

    And I've commented on the various options at one time or another.

    "If presuppositions lead us to our conclusions, then what if you have the wrong set of presuppositions?"

    Other issues aside, who cares? It's like having cancer—you can do something or you can do nothing.

    Even if it's possible, that the chemo therapy won't cure you, it's not as if the other option (stay home and die) is any better or even as good. Rather, the alternative is a total loss.

    I have no religious doubts, but even if I did, your alternative is moral nihilism followed by oblivion. Those are the consequences of you "option" just in case (argumentum ad impossibile) you are right.

    As I've said before, your "option" and my "opion" are asymmetrical. Given your option, if you lose you lose, and if you win you lose.

    "If you do, you could be exactly like the paranoid person Tarico wrote about."

    Of course, this illustration is reversible, is it not? It could be reapplied with equal ease to the unbeliever.

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  15. I didn't choose the Christian faith—it chose me.

    Now how do you know this? This is an experiential reason is it not? And what could it mean? That you believed what you ended up believing? That's true of me too. That faith has a will and choose you? Naw. God right?

    How do you truly make the connection between the faith you ended up with and the conclusion that God chose you to have this particular faith? There are other options beside my beliefs. You can only justify drawing the connection to yourself. The truth is you just ended up believing as you do. That's the only thing you can say with any great degree of certainty. Billions of people disagree, and while the fact that others disagree doesn't automatically make what you believe to be false, it should sure temper the confidence you exude about your faith.

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  16. So this suggests you believe for reasons that are do not follow from purely rational lines of reasoning:

    Scripture determines what is rational, not your ipse dixit. Have I said anything that is illogical or that is not deducible from Scripture? No.

    Election selects for saving belief in the absence of formally established “good reasons” for said belief? Or would you say that *your* reasons for saving faith good enough “by definition” since you are, after all, regenerate?

    I am merely approaching the text on its own terms. The doctrine of election would select for the target audience being the one that God to whom God is obligated by His own covenant to reveal Himself, not every pagan on the planet.

    If I write a letter to my wife, I am not obligated to make it understandable to every human being. Only the target audience, my wife.

    John argued out of his Arminian upbringing, so I answered him on that level. God is not obligated to reveal Himself with wooden clarity to every generation of humanity in all places and times; rather He is only obligated to the covenant community/the elect. My answer is pegged to John's objection.

    What makes this the normative interpretation? Why should 1st century schools of judaism set the standard? What standard establishes the authenticity of 1st century Judasim as the “right way” of viewing the matter? What rules out any alternative interpretive controls?

    Messianic interpretation of the OT is the provence of NT writers. They are approaching the text on the level of their first century counterparts. If you wish to deny the prophetic import of the OT, then you can either (a) deny the understanding of the Jews of that century and those before, or (b) deny the exegetical methods of the NT writers.

    Typically, critics do (a) by denying (b). But (b) is an illicit and ahistorical move, for the writers of the NT are doing nothing innovative by the standards of their day. So, critics attempt (a) by fallback by using their own 21st century predilections and then castigating the NT writers and the OT text itself for failing to measure up to those standards.

    It is not I who needs the supporting argument.

    Again, what makes the exegetical methods of the time the “gold standard”? Why is the received interpretation the “right one”. And even *if* the received interpretation is the “right one”, how can you be sure you really know how the original audience received it?

    a. Grammatical - historical exegesis of the raw text.

    b. Historical information from Judaica.

    Probablility? How do you establish probability as more than *your* disposition to consider the evidence to be more likely than not to support your claims? What if your native instincts have gotten it wrong?

    If this objection was true, it would cut both ways, both for the critic and the apologist.

    Jason and Steve have already discussed probability and the GHM on this blog. I don't need to rehash that. It's in the archives.

    I've said nothing about my native instincts.

    What establishes this as the “proper question”? Is it the Bible? What makes “the meaning of the text at the time of original composition” the right question to ask? Is it just your disposition to make this claim? Or, is its normativity *clearly* scriptural? So why shouldn’t I lay down my 21st century predilictions as a controlling factor on biblical interpretation? What clearly establishes this as the “wrong” approach? The Bible itself? How so? What automatically makes my 21st century predilictions wrong?


    What makes 21st century predilections right? It is you who has the burden of proof to discharge. This all makes for a nice POMO thought experiment, but if the rules of the GHM are invalid, then why are you employing it to understand what I am saying right now? I'm merely approaching the text within its own constraints by standard exegetical standards.

    Higher critical theories that are debated have to do with reconstructive how the Bible was created. There is a overwhelming consensus though, as expressed by James D.G. Dunn, "it would be flying in the face of too much evidence and good scholarship to deny this basic affirmation: that the Pentateuch is the product of a lengthy process of tradition."

    All this shows is that Loftus is able to quote higher critical theories, but Dunn is dated. Moises Silva and others have long ago debunked the Documentary Hypothesis, John. For one who is often concerned about what the latest scholarship has to say, you seem awfully dimwitted about current Assyriology and current theories of OT developement. The single author hypothesis is the preferred hypothesis for the very text you cite, and the updating of the text is not a barrier to the single-author hypothesis. Nobody says that the text as we have it came to us in ur-Hebrew from Moses hand. Rather, the text we have comes to us by the hands of scribes who updated it, making place names up-to-date, etc. along the way, etc.

    All you've shown us that, exactly like I pointed out, we could say that much of what you say depends on your acceptance of higher critical thought, but I don't recall your side of the aisle ever doing much of providing supporting argumentation for those theories. Rather, you repeat them as gospel truth. Thank you for reinforcing this.


    Gene, you and the other Triablogue members ought to make up your minds on this issue. On the one hand, you regularly chalk up unbelief to intellectual inferiority (altough Paul says otherwise in 1 Cor. 1:18-31). On the other, you assert that unbelievers are simply unable to grasp the truth because of a blindness that befogs the nonelect.

    OK, which is it. Stupidity or nonelection?


    Aaronic has given us a stellar example of the all or nothing fallacy. The answer, of course, is both. I'll call Intellectual inferiority, as you state it, (a) and blindness (b).

    My objections are pegged to John's examples. On the one hand, he speaks of "higher critical theories," so I answer him at his own level. Then he makes a remark about the text itself with ethical objections relating to what God should supposedly do in order to be understood universally. A response relative to the doctrine of election answers him on that level. In the context of 1 Cor. 1, (a) can be a product of (b) and / or a means to confirm (b).

    See the article to which Steve linked.

    You are blinded by your presuppositions to consider any other conclusion.

    If so, then why are you not blinded your presuppositions? Why do you object to presuppositionalism?

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  17. John W. Loftus said:

    "Now how do you know this? This is an experiential reason is it not?"

    Many of our beliefs are formed on the basis of experience. In some cases, they can be confirmed on the basis of further experience.

    At the same time, the psychological process by which we form a belief, and the rational grounds on which we defend our beliefs, are two different things since what makes a belief true, and what makes me believe it are logically distinct.

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  18. >If I write a letter to my wife, I am not obligated to make it understandable to every human being.

    Gene, there's a problem with this analogy: You're not threatening to cast every human being who doesn't respond to that letter into a lake of fire (or whatever metaphor you prefer for eternal punishment).

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  19. Dunn is dated.

    This made me chuckle.

    I suppose you think Hume has been refuted too, :-)

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