John H. WaltonRecensioni
Autore di A Survey of the Old Testament
Recensioni
Walton starts by comparing Genesis 1 to other ancient cosmologies. He does not claim that it is based on those other cosmologies. Rather, his claim is that Genesis 1 serves the same basic function as other ancient cosmologies because that is what the listeners would have expected and because it allowed the listeners to understand how their cosmology differed from others around them. Ancient cosmologies spend very little time worrying about physical creation and most of their time working to convey the function and purpose of creation. Genesis 1 does not seem to be an exception.
The second line of reasoning is looking at how some of the key Hebrew terms in Genesis 1 are used elsewhere in the Old Testament. This most important is how the word commonly translated as create is generally used for granting purpose, not physical creation elsewhere in the Bible.
The final line of reasoning starts to merge more with Walton's view of the consequences of taking a functional view of creation. This line of reasoning focuses on how many of the difficulties of reading the creation account as a physical account of creation go away if you interpret them as a granting of function instead. This, in turn, highlights that the key point to take away from the creation narrative is not that God created all -- that was a given in the ancient world -- but that all has purpose in the created universe.
There are two things I like about this reading. While we can never know the worldview of the people who first passed along the account in Genesis 1, we do know that many of the problems with modern readings of that account come from worldviews developed in the last 500 years. To put it another way, we don't know what exactly the right worldview is, but we know that the one we have isn't it. Thus, any alternate viewpoint can provide an interesting perspective shift.
This view in particular is interesting because, as mentioned above, much of what is problematic about the Genesis one account -- even if you ignore what we've learned through science and just look at internal consistency -- goes away with this alternate reading. This perspective just seems like it fits better.
Overall, a very worthwhile read for anyone interested in the debates about creation.
On the one hand, controversy arises when Old Testament laws seem either odd beyond comprehension (not eating lobster) or positively reprehensible (executing children). On the other, neglect results when we consider the law obsolete, no longer carrying any normative power (tassels on clothing, making sacrifices). Even readers who do attempt to make use of the Old Testament “law” often find it either irrelevant, hopelessly laden with “thou shalt nots,” or simply so confusing that they throw up their hands in despair. Despite these extremes, people continue to propose moral principles from these laws as “the biblical view” and to garner proof texts to resolve issues that arise in society. The result is that both Christians and skeptics regularly abuse the Torah, and its true message often lies unheard.
Walton and Walton offer in The Lost World of the Torah a restorative vision of the ancient genre of instruction for wisdom that makes up a significant portion of the Old Testament. In the ancient Near East, order was achieved through the wisdom of those who governed society. The objective of torah was to teach the Israelites to be wise about the kind of order needed to receive the blessings of God’s favor and presence within the context of the covenant. Here readers will find fresh insight on this fundamental genre of the Old Testament canon.
"We must take care not to attach the authority of the text to things it never intended to teach. For example, it is very possible to learn much about leadership from a study of Nehemiah. In the end, however, there is no indication that the author of Nehemiah was preserving and presenting his material so that readers could be instructed in leadership. That being the case, when leadership is taught from the book and life of Nehemiah, the authority of Scripture is not being tapped. Leadership is an important quality and one that is worth learning about, but one may just as well learn about it from the lives of Abraham Lincoln or John Calvin. There is no special merit in learning it from Nehemiah simply because his story is in the Bible while the others are not. The presence of Nehemiah's story in the Bible does not necessarily endorse his style of leadership or approve his leadership decisions. What makes the Bible unique is the things that it teaches with the authority of God. In the case of Nehemiah, the teaching of the book would concern such things as God fulfilling his promises of restoring the city of Jerusalem and his sovereignty in the way his plan was carried out through the yieldedness of Nehemiah. Although many of the principles interpreters derive may be sound, the book of Nehemiah is not God's authoritative guide for leadership."
I have realized that this is the problem with many Christian literary products today. When you create multiple full-length books based upon 1 verse like 1 Chronicles 4:11-12, you should not expect that any of those books' content is authoritative. Another set of authors has used just one verse (1 Corinthians 11:3) to completely rewrite orthodox trinitarian theology and created mounds of books to support this, just for the purpose of maintaining their own power.
I very highly recommend this book. I believe that it was developed as a textbook for Christian colleges, but it is very easily accessible to high school students and would also make a great book for a Bible study or Sunday School class. Nearly every two-page spread has at least one photo or chart or graphical depiction that directly aids in understanding the concept being taught there. I wish that this textbook had been available when I was in college, though I will say that A Survey of the Old Testament by the same authors was the textbook that I did have and it is not nearly as developed as this book.
AYUDAS PASTORALES / COMENTARIOS / COLECCIONES / COMENTARIO DEL CONTEXTO CULTURAL DE LA BIBLIA
I taught a course in our School of Ministry utilizing it and everyone enjoyed the rich features and solid academic content.
The work has much to commend it: it is important to understand what is going on in terms of the ancient Near Eastern world, and not our own. The authors do well at setting that groundwork, and suggesting how maintaining order is one of the primary concerns for life at the time.
The authors are most convincing in their more thorough treatment of the Hebrew word herem as not necessarily meaning "devote to destruction" as much as to "put under a ban," to have something's identity changed to be made more useful for the divinity. Sometimes things were destroyed when put under the ban, but it was not necessary to do so. The authors' application to the Christian being made devoted to God and have their identity changed is a good parallel.
The authors' arguments about the sinfulness of the Canaanites having nothing to do with their elimination from the land is a bit more of a stretch. They spend much time discussing it, attempting to reframe the language of certain verses about it, but one has to wonder why so much effort has to go into this particular idea. They at least demonstrate that the sinfulness of the Canaanites is by no means the driver of the conquest. But they go a bit too far in presuming that it had nothing to do with it.
For all of their profession of trying to understand the Conquest in terms of the ancient Near Eastern world, the authors' Protestant biases are on full display regarding works, morality, and the law. The idea that the Law, featuring situational laws, was not intended to be literally obeyed is absolutely not at all anything which makes sense according to the history of interpretation. At many points the Protestant confession of works having nothing to do with salvation is set forth, even though one would never get such an impression from the Old Testament at all, and one has to completely misread Paul to see it in the New Testament.
There's a lot of good and deep contextual forms of assistance in here, looking at how things are marked off as holy to a god in the ancient Near Eastern world, and illuminating the nature of warfare and the aspects of existence of other groups. It is disappointing that it gets muddled with much more modern ideologies and designs.
**--original galley received as part of early review program; final work was actually read.
4.2 / 5.0
The first five books (Torah) of the Bible are challenging for any person who believes the Bible inspired by God and having authority in one's life. John Walton, joined in this volume by his son, have written a series of books premised on the inspiration and authority of the Bible, as well as the fact that it is an ancient work, reflective of its Ancient Near East context. The Walton's argue that we often read these texts through our own cultural lens of how law and legislation work, and may be used to establish biblical "positions" or "precedents" for all sorts of modern moral questions. This is problematic not only because what we have is not a codified system of laws (there is much that is not addressed), and some of the laws support practices like slavery or requiring that a rapist marry the woman he has raped, that we would judge unacceptable. Like other "Lost World" books, they proceed by a series of propositions, with an appendix on the Decalogue.
The Walton's, identifying similarities between Torah and other ancient legal collections, argue that the purpose of these collections is not legislation but to articulate wisdom about how society is to be ordered under the ruler of the state. The purpose is order that reflects well upon the king. Additionally, in the case of Torah, it is a covenant document similar to Ancient Near East (ANE) suzerainty treaties, where the various provisions outline how the people are to remain loyal to their suzerain, in this case Yahweh or God. The statement, "you shall be holy for I am holy" is a conferral of status rather than an objective for the people of Israel, and Torah is wisdom for how they might be who they are by status. There is a distinction between ritual instructions in Torah and other codes. For others, rituals serve to meet the needs of the gods. Yahweh has no such needs and instead, these serve both as means of worship, and maintain and restore covenant order.
The Walton's then move beyond noting the similarities and differences of ANE codes and Torah to consider similarities and differences of context. They note that many of the similarities in provisions reflect not dependence on other codes but rather that they are both embedded in the same cultural "river." What differentiates Torah from these other codes is that it also reflects God's covenant with Israel and God's presence among them, instructing them how they might retain the enjoyment and blessing of that presence.
The final part of their work addresses the church's use of Torah and particular focuses on what Torah is not, and what interpretive practices are invalid. They discourage the common practice of dividing Torah into moral, civil, and ceremonial law, arguing that these divisions are both artificial, and undermine understanding Torah in context as an integral whole. Typically, we lift out the "moral" teachings, and seek to derive principles for our contemporary situation, perhaps along with New Testament teaching, situated in a different, Greco-Roman cultural river. They point to a number of areas in the Torah where this is problematic: marriage, economy, political system, social status and hierarchy, international relations, warfare, and diplomacy, respect of personhood, taxation, property ownership and rights, crime and punishment, and sexual ethics. They contend that Torah was not for salvation, but arose as instruction for living under the covenant. It is a metaphor of health, not a system of moral instruction, and cannot be used as prooftexts for contemporary problems. Taking Torah seriously reads it as a wisdom text disclosing the gracious character of God toward his people and God's intention that they flourish under his care as their suzerain, as they pursue covenant faithfulness in adhering to his wise instruction.
There is much here that is helpful. Instructions we would find morally objectionable (those upholding slavery or patriarchy, for example) fall in line with the kind of order one would expect in the Ancient Near East and commend Yahweh as ruler of his people, but do not serve as legislation for the contemporary church.
What I find missing, and perhaps troubling is how then we are to read scripture, including the New Testament, also embedded in a cultural river, and according to the Walton's, also not a source of moral instruction for us, but rather "wisdom." They write:
"The decision between 'do not conform to the pattern of this world' (Romans 12:1-2) and 'become all things to all people so that by all possible means [we] might save some' (1 Cor 9:22) does not default in either direction. It means that we exercise wisdom in knowing where to conform to the culture of our day. This wisdom must be exercised by those who can understand the culture well enough to understand the cost of either decision, and it is these people whom we should appoint to lead the community. But making those decisions is not the same thing as following a rigid set of rules, especially not a rigid set of rules that was written to a different culture" (p. 230).
I recognize the value of reading contextually and avoiding prooftexting, but I'm troubled here with language that seems to elevate the wise interpreter above the "rigid set of rules" they interpret. The language of "rigidity" reveals a disposition toward scripture that seems troubling. Were Paul's instructions to the Ephesians or Corinthians about how to lead a life worthy of their calling rigid? Or those of Jesus on divorce, grounded not in a particular culture but in God's creational intent? I agree that the Bible is not primarily a book of moral instruction, yet does not scripture aid those saved by grace, God's workmanship, who created for good works in which we are to walk (Ephesians 2:8-10)? The Waltons' conclusion smacks of a "hidden knowledge" accessible to the wise that seems a long way from the perspicacity of scripture. I would have been helped if they would spell out more of how scripture may be appropriated, and not mostly how it may not.
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.
One of the more troubling parts of the Bible are the narratives of Israel's conquest of Canaan, and the apparent genocide of the Canaanite people at God's command. Often this is justified as a judgement on the wickedness of the Canaanites. It is even more disturbing when these texts are appropriated to justify other "Holy Wars" or culture wars against evil in society.
In this fourth installment to the "Lost World" series, John H. Walton is joined by his son J. Harvey Walton, in a close study of the biblical texts often understood as God's command of Holy War against Canaan as divine judgement. Similar to Walton's approach in other books in this series, the authors combine careful work on cultural backgrounds with close reading of the pertinent biblical texts. Like other books, they present their study as a series of propositions, grouped into six parts.
First, they lay groundwork in asking the question of how we interpret the Bible, emphasizing that it is an ancient document and that often our problem is what our expectations of what the Bible is, which differs from its true nature. In this case the Bible is neither defining what goodness is for us nor telling us about how to produce goodness, but rather in the context of God's covenant with Israel, how God is bringing about the goodness he purposes. Thus, we must never read these texts as warranting Holy War or a kind of jihad in our own context.
Second, the Walton's argue that the Canaanites are not depicted in scripture as guilty of sin and that the usual textual indicators for divine retribution against the Canaanites are absent. Critical to their argument is showing that Genesis 15:16 does not indicate that the Canaanites were committing sin, but that God is deferring his action against the Amorites, with whom he had allied.
Third, they argue that the Canaanites are not guilty of breaking God's law because they did not partake of the covenant and its stipulations. Their expulsion from the land is not analogous to the expulsion of Israel from the land for their unfaithfulness to the covenant.
Fourth, the Waltons look at the language and imagery of the conquest and contend that the descriptions of the Canaanites follow ancient Near East conventions for describing an enemy as "invincible barbarians" Likewise, the behaviors described as "detestable" are from the framework of God's ideals for Israel under the covenant and not indictments against the Canaanites for crimes against a covenant they are not under. And finally, the language of conquest recapitulates that of creation, in which disorder (chaos) is replaced with order (cosmos). Disorder must be cleared, not as punishment against the Canaanites, but to establish God's covenant order through Israel.
The fifth part is perhaps most significant in its discussion of herem, most often translated as "utterly destroy." They argue rather that it involves the idea of removing something from use, so that a new order or use can be established. Killing people is not inherent in herem, but rather the destroying of the identity of a community, particularly the identity markers associated with idolatrous worship. Killing may happen in the course of this, as it tragically does in all ancient wars, but this is not the focus of herem.
Finally, the authors contend that this offers a template for understanding the New Testament, not in attacking those outside the community of faith, but making herem all identities in conflict with absolute allegiance to the Lordship of Jesus. What is to be attacked and removed from use is not outsiders, but our own false allegiances, false identities or any identity that competes for paramount status with our identity in Christ.
This, along with the argument that God does not command ethnic genocide in these passages is important. Yet this argument left me troubled. The plain reality is that even if this wasn't genocide, people died to set up this new order of God. If they died, not because they were guilty of sins or crimes against God (because they were outside the covenant and its stipulations), but simply as part of a process of destroying the identity of a community, this seems a distinction without a difference. The idea of retributive action at least seems to carry the sense of a just judgment, even if it does involve bloodshed. "Removing an identity from use" driving them from the land, seems more humane, except that the same number of people die, only as "collateral damage" of the conquest. There is something about this that seems more heartless. It also seems to dance around the plain sense of texts that herem in the context of the conquest does involve the destruction of lives in city after city. I did not feel the authors dealt adequately with this problem.
What I'm left with is that these are difficult texts, similar to Genesis 22 in which God commands the sacrifice of Isaac. The last minute substitution of the ram does not make this less challenging. Likewise demonstrating that these texts offer no warrant for genocide is only marginally comforting. Perhaps our difficulty is that we expect God to be nice, a "tame lion" as it were. We would rather a God who remains above the fray than one who gets involved in wars of conquest to effect his purposes. We don't like the idea of trying to justify the ways of God when they seem unseemly. We likewise are uncomfortable with a God who takes on flesh and blood and dies for us. Many Christian heresies are efforts to sanitize this event. I don't want to say that is what the authors are doing here. They obviously care deeply about scripture. But I also don't think we can soften the shocking effect of these passages, or should. These passages remind us both of the tragedy of the human condition, and that God accommodated that human condition in not remaining aloof from war and death even as God worked out redemptive purposes for humankind, first through Israel, then for all of us.
John Walton is one of the top evangelical scholars on the Old Testament, so I was very pleased to hear he had written a book on this subject. The book has very careful, respectful, orthodox scholarship and remains accessible due to the clear writing style and the book's format of 17 propositions each supported by a short chapter. I found his argument very compelling.
My summary of the argument:
Scripture never attempts to modify Israel's scientific understanding of the world: a flat world, the geocentric orbit of the sun, the intestines as the seat of the emotions, etc are assumed concepts in Scripture. As the view of divine creation in the entire ancient world was one of establishing function rather than material origins, we must not assume that Genesis 1 is necessarily correcting this understanding. In fact, the ancients' concept of existence was of fitting into an ordered, functional system, rather than being materially present.
A central piece of our understanding of the passage, then, is of the the word "create," or bara in Hebrew. In order to have the most literal understanding here, we can't assume that the definition of bara lines up at all points with the English word. Rather, our source for understanding the word must be its usage elsewhere in the OT. The word is used about 50 times in the OT, often clearly used to indicate establishing function, but never unambiguously used to indicate material creation. This makes establishing function the closest, most conservative understanding of this concept.
Thus Walton concludes that the (24-hour) days of creation was the period in which God established an ordered system, functioning as He intended. Walton also holds that God is responsible for the material origins of the cosmos, but that we are not told how or when God accomplished that.
Genesis 1, then, gives account of three days of establishing functions followed by three days of installing functionaries. For example, the first day, we can consider God to be creating time, as he called forth a period of light as "day." This also solves the question of how day and night occur before the material creation of the sun. The first three days establish time, weather, and food--the foundational functions of life. Days 4-6 still have a functional orientation, but focus on the functionaries. For example, in day 4, God establishes the task of the lights, which is to provide light and mark off days, festivals, seasons, years.
I won't summarize this part of the argument, but Walton demonstrates that Genesis 1 is a temple inauguration narrative, so all of the cosmos is God's temple and he takes up dwelling in it beginning on day seven.
Walton does not claim that Scripture supports evolution, only that we can view scientific conclusions as unobjectionable as long as we understand that whatever the material origins of the universe was, it was God's way of making the cosmos and he remains active in his Creator role.
However, some of this worry was unfounded, because Walton actually affirms a historical Adam and Eve, while also reconsidering their nature and role.
The gist of Walton's conclusions are as follows: per his previous book about Genesis 1 (see my earlier review), the creation account is about creation of order and functions in the world rather than material origins of the world. Eden is a center of sacred space, where Adam and Eve are established as priests. They are not the first people, but they serve as archetypes for all of humanity--the Genesis 2 narrative of their forming is true of all people, not just the two of them (for example, as Abraham and Job affirm, we are all made of dust). In their unique priestly role in the garden, they are given rules and accountability that the rest of humanity hadn't received and thus serve as representatives of humanity. And so sin truly enters the world via their disobedience.(or, restated, they let disorder into the order of creation)
I'll briefly reiterate part of his argument for why it's appropriate to reconsider whether they were the first humans:
-Theologically it isn't necessary to consider A&E to be the first humans (unless one holds the view that all are born with sin because they were seminally present in Adam, which I believe is a minority view). As representatives of humanity, they can still be the first ones aware of and accountable for sin.
-The Genesis 2 creation narrative of Adam and Eve is archetypal, intended to convey truths about the creation of each person, not just the two of them.
-In Genesis 4, Cain is driven away from his homeland, and presumably from his family, but he is afraid of the people who will find him in his exile. He later founds a city, so there seems to be a significant number of people on the earth at that time.
-If the Genesis account and theological conclusions made in the Bible do not necessitate that A&E are the progenitors of humanity, we're free to consider scientific conclusions on the topic, which do not indicate that all people are descended from a single human couple.
What I appreciated most about this book is Walton's reverence for the text: bringing the best understanding of the texts, culture, and original audience to bear on his propositions on the subject. His concern for the freedom of God and the authority and integrity of Scripture is impressive. I found that looking at Adam and Eve through Walton's insights made them seem much more historical to me, rather than less.
One weakness of the book is Walton's conclusions about the order/disorder/ordering dynamic in the narrative. As most OT scholars would agree, there is no question that bringing order to disorder is a significant theme in the creation account, as it is in all ancient near east creation stories. Walton sees sin as disorder, which is not untrue as an aspect of sin, but it doesn't seem necessary to systematize the order/disorder theme such that disorder is the primary descriptor of sin. Further, in his discussion about the first man (Adam) and the second man (Christ), Walton recounts the effect's of Christ's work as God's plan to get the cosmos back on track toward a state of perfect order. Though the effects of the incarnation aren't contradictory with order, I don't think we actually see this theme in the New Testament and so I don't agree with Walton's implication that disorder and order should be seen as the primary controlling motif of God's plan for the world.N.T Wright, author of one of the 21 chapters in the book, doesn't seem to see it as central either, as he doesn't make use of this theme in his examination of Paul's use of Adam. However, as part of the truth and as one metaphor among others, I agree that it's a helpful set of categories.
The Lost World of Adam and Eve is a very insightful, challenging book which is irenic and doxological in tone. I would recommend it to any Christian reader interested in human origins, hamartiology, and ANE backgrounds. The Answers in Genesis view of creation is driving so many young people away from faith that it has become an issue of pastoral urgency to be open to investigating what comprises the most informed, biblical understanding of cosmic and human origins.
Also, John Walton happened to walk by as I was reading this book (!) (It was at SBL, so this wasn't as unlikely as it would usually be). I told him that I had skipped the first few chapters since they appeared to be summarizing his argument from LWO Genesis One. He said this was legitimate, so feel free to do the same with the author's blessing if you have already read the previous book. I wish I had been further along in the book when I saw him so I could have asked him more about the order/chaos theme.
This is an important book, even if one disagrees with it profoundly. Every Christian concerned about the debate on human origins, and every non-Christian wondering at all the fuss about it, should give it a chance. In a way, it is a continuation of the same author’s _The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate_. It shares that book’s deep concern about proper exegesis of ancient texts according to their original context, too often ignored even after around two hundred years of archæological discoveries God provided for our better understanding of His Word.
But on another way, the present volume goes much deeper to the core of our disagreements. If Genesis 1 raises important, fundamental issues on the origins of the Universe, Genesis 2–3 raises just as important and fundamental issues on human origins; and naturally human origins are even more immediate to us, and to Christian life, and even to human life in general, than the more remote issue of the origin of the Universe.
The book fails to get five stars on my evaluation because it goes to unnecessary lengths to unfold all its authors’ concerns stemming from the exegesis of Genesis. For instance, while NT Wright contributes interestingly on Paul’s use of Genesis, the argument is too short, and ultimately it will be counterproductive with many Christians who might be open to the book’s arguments but who are deeply distrustful of Wright’s ‘New perspective on Paul’. I do think the same arguments could be made without appeal to such a divisive figure as Wright. In my case, it did convince me I have to read something by Wright, even if I suspect I will not like him much better than, say, Ellul, even if probably much better than Girard; but many people will be lost to the argument just by sighting Wright’s name on the cover, and that is lamentable, as the books’ contextualised exegesis arguments are so much more fundamental, better founded and essential than Wright’s ‘new perspective’.
I do hope Evangelicals, and specially Reformed Christians, will give it a hearing, even if disagreeing with much. Even if I myself disagree with its conclusion at points, I do think the exegetical information is essential to any debate on Genesis 2–3, and I hope a few Christians could gain enough insight into the questions raised to abandon a sometimes too belligerent position in this fundamental debate.
Ultimately, I think others will have to follow up on the path opened by Walton but with a less divisive approach: perhaps first explore all the exegetical insights opened up by contextualisation, and leave for a second stage the working out of applications on the debate with modern science or, as Francis A Schaeffer brilliantly put it, modern modern science; as it is, disarming the militantly anti-Christian bias of much of the scientific establishment by better exegesis could be a first step in a more profound critique of the modern modern science bellicose, self-sufficient, philosophically untenable attitude, by robbing atheism of its current straw men many well-intentioned Christian lamentably insist on erecting.
But I never summed up the book’s contentions. Essentially, it goes back to what Moses and the Hebrews most probably understood when reading (and hearing) Genesis 2–3, and perhaps more to the point what they probably never understood, but is a modern eixegesis we fail too see because it is water to us, in David F Wallace’s felicitous phrase. It then gives a much better Biblical footing to what CS Lewis and others have been claiming for almost a century now: that the big challenge God lays to the modern world in Genesis 2–3 is not aimed squarely at the technical claims of even modern modern science, but at its fundamental philosophical follies, as David P Goldman puts it: that modern philosophy attitude at death is like a child putting her fingers at hear ears and shouting ‘I can’t hear you!’ That Genesis ultimately, as Lewis put it, prepares ‘The funeral of a great myth’, that of Evolutionism, by contrasting a true story, even if one considers that true story to have nothing to say on biological evolution.
Granted Walton has to deal with strong objections, such as the hypothetical presence of death in a world before the Fall that God pronounced ‘very good’; and I hope someone will express his case later even better than himself; but all things considered I do think he fought a valiant battle, and has earned the right to be heard and understood, even in disagreement. I do think it is high time many Christians who deem to hold a high view of the Bible, but who think those who disagree with them on the material origins of man do not hold such a view, give their brethren the benefit of doubt and a fair hearing. And, to be sure, it is high time too that many atheists who like to tilt their lances at straw men learn that we have in the Christian camp many who do not fit atheists’ straw man molds.
On a note for the Reformed, one impressive point Walton makes is that there is precedent to his approach, at least analogically, in John Calvin himself, not to mention the Church Fathers.
And yet, this book is fundamental. I cannot imagine one sitting down today to exegete the Bible in good faith while willfully ignoring such useful information. How can we presume to try to interpret Scripture while refraining from understanding the very meaning of the cultural references embedded in it? Yes, we can expose it based on the long, useful body of knowledge accumulated by three thousand years of interpreters, first in the Jewish synagogue and now in the Christian church; but we can only honour both the Bible and its interpreters by making at least an effort to try to understand the meanings of words, idiomatic expressions and, ultimately, the cultural context where God first spoke his Word now written down for us in Scripture.
I will not comment on any specific example; the most interesting ones rely on too much contextual information to write down in this review. But it actually sheds light on many obscure passages for which no analogy in Scripture itself increase our understanding significantly. More than illuminating specific passages, it helps us receive the Bible, specially the Old Testament, as its original hearers understood it.
This book does not indulge in speculation, nor it proposes major reinterpretations as do other titles by the same author. Rather it collects much contextual ancient Egyptian, Anatolian, Levant and Middle Eastern information to both point where Scripture draws on its wider context and where it departs from it; it ends up showing how different Yahweh is from the pagan gods, and how different the religion He inspired in the Bible’s human, inspired authors. It is not light reading, nor a running narrative, yet it truly inspires one to gain better Biblical understanding.
I mentioned fundamentalism in the original sense: this is primary a book for fundamentalists adhering to Biblical inerrancy but wanting a better definition of it, and understanding of the Bible, based on Scripture’s original cultural context, including the role of orality in the genesis of texts and in their transmission. Incidentally, the author’s argument ends up supporting a Reformed emphasis they did not even mention: that the faithful preaching of the Word of God is itself God’s word for man.
I wish I could give it 4,75 stars, or five stars for contents and four for presentation. The format of a series of propositions instead of chapters seems didatic but odd, and the initial chapters (I really will not call them ‘propositions’) are presented against the Evangelical grain, even if they actually intend to serve Evangelicals, and thus may loose quite a few readers who will loose heart before they reach the end of the book, even if it is a much needed reading for everyone wanting to improve beyond the very basic level of exegesis as presented, for instance, in Fee & Stuart’s _Reading the Bible for all its Worth_.
Essentially, the authors propose we differentiate between roles or aspects of the same inspired Scriptural texts: locution (words used by the authors, in their original cultural context); illocution (meaning or communication intended, and only fully exposed by understanding locution in its cultural context); and perlocution (response hoped in readers or hearers). But the implications are multifold, and much beyond the scope of such a puny review as mine.
Essential.
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leandrod | 1 altra recensione | Oct 4, 2017 |
leandrod | 1 altra recensione | Oct 4, 2017 | The Lost World of Adam and Eve picks up where that volume left off (the first five chapters are a bit of review). As with his earlier book, the chapters are propositions on how to read Genesis sensitively to its ANE context, so a glance at the table of contents gives a detailed summary of the ground that Walton covers here. Walton focuses especially on Genesis 2-3, but also pays attention to the wider context of Genesis 1-5 (and how the hebrew ‘adam functions and the text). He also shows how his reading of the text functions within the rest of the canon of scripture. N.T. Wright provides a brief excursus in relationship to Proposition 19 ("Paul's Use of Adam Is More Interested in the Effects of Sin on the Cosmos Than in the Effect of Sin on Humanity and Has Nothing to Say About Human Origins").
If you are familiar with Walton's work, you will not be surprised by many of his claims here. Walton's project is to get us to read Genesis without expecting it to answer our modern questions. For example, the question of the material origins of the universe are not of particular interest to the Ancient world. Instead Genesis 1 is about the ordering of the world (i.e. the Spirit hovering over the chaos in Genesis 1:2) rather than creating ex nihilo. The text has more to do with functionality than materiality.
Walton claims that Adam and Eve's story casts them in the role of archetypes and federal representatives instead of untangling the riddle of human origins (see propositions 6, 8. 9). However this is not meant to imply that Adam and Eve were not also real, historical people. Walton eschews the term myth or mythological because the popular use of the term implies this unreality. He prefers the term imagistic (137) and sees the Hebrew writers using the 'shared symbolic vocabulary' and questions that other Ancient Near East people did (139).
In Walton's view, humans were created as male and female with mortal bodies (not ones that became mortal later because of 'the fall'), were provided for by God and given a role of serving in God's sacred space (200).Because 'creation in Genesis' is about bringing order to world, the serpent is a 'chaos creature' who promoted disorder by convincing Adam and Eve to place themselves at the center of the order. Sin and Death now affects all humanity because of disorder in the cosmos. Jesus is God's plan to restore order to the dis-ordered world (Romans 5).
Walton is not a theological liberal (he teaches at Wheaton). He is an evangelical who seeks to read the Bible well. His reading of Genesis is not at enmity with scientific explanations for global and human origins. He reads the text well while trying to unravel the questions and conceptual world of its author and original audience. Where evangelical/secular discussions often devolve into creation versus evolution debates, it is refreshing to have an approach to the text that is more interested in what the Bible communicated to the people it was originally written for. This gives space for some variety within the church on questions of cosmology and removes a potential stumbling block for those who find difficulty reconciling their reading of scripture with science (different sorts of texts, asking different questions).
There are implications in Walton's account which will be challenging to those of us with a traditional theological bent (i.e. Walton provides no grounding for creation ex nihilo in Genesis, pre-fall death in humans and nature, etc). Walton gives a careful, biblically sensitive and ANE aware case for his reading. He rolls out N.T. Wright, the world's foremost Pauline scholar, to prove that his reading makes sense of the New Testament usage of Adam and Eve as well. Still there is a significant challenge here for us to work through if we are to remain biblical rooted.
Regardless of your stance on the mode of creation (which is not the point), this book will challenge you and get you to dig into the text of Genesis. Walton is a good teacher and brings his readers into the realm of Ancient Near Eastern thought. I give this five stars and recommend it for anyone who wants to go back to Genesis.
Notice of material connection: I received this book from IVP in exchange for my honest review.
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But more importantly, the content is challenging. For those of us with a particular view of how scripture works and where its authority lies, you really have to wrestle with the implications. I come from a background that more-or-less assumes that Isaiah sat down one day and wrote sixty-some chapters (with near dictation from the Holy Spirit), signed his name at the end, and sent it off to the publisher, without any errors. There had been cracks in that model showing for a while, and this book systematically dismantles it.
A few major insights: There's a whole lot less writing going on, and a whole lot more speaking. There's also some amount of editing and variation. Authority is tied to the aut-, uh, excuse me, *speaker*'s intent and not to the words or style themselves. And the style of the words needs to be interpreted from the way that style worked in that time, not the way it works in ours.
And let's be clear that this is not an excuse to throw out scripture. The authors take a high view of scripture. They are not heretics. Scripture remains God's communication to humanity and is without error in what it affirms. They just use a whole lot more nuance than normal in saying that, including the importance of figuring out what is or is not being affirmed (the intention or "illocution") and observing that generating scripture was a much longer process than is often assumed (i.e. years of oral repetition, transcription, editing, and not just Samuel writing a book one afternoon).
It was badly needed, but uncomfortable. But at the end of the day, I want my view of scripture be based on reality rather than what is most comfortable. I'm not sure exactly what the implications will be over the long term, but I very much appreciate the adjustments coming from authors who still hold to the value of scripture even with the changes.½