Review of Chapter 5 of Peter Enns Book Inspiration and Incarnation Ã¢â‚¬å“the Big Picture

Peter Enns. Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament. Baker Academic, 2005. (197 pages)

Preface

The aim of this book is non novelty just synthesis. My focus is twofold: (one) to bring together a diversity of data that biblical scholars piece of work with every day for readers who do not have immediate familiarity with these data and (2) to expect at these data with a clear view toward discussing their implications for an evangelical doctrine of Scripture. (9)

1. Getting Our Bearings

What I Hope to Accomplish in This Book

The purpose of this book is to bring an evangelical doctrine of Scripture into conversation with the implications generated by some important themes in modern biblical scholarship — especially Old Testament scholarship — over the past 150 years. (13)

In my view, what is needed is not merely for evangelicals to work in these areas, only to engage the doctrinal implications that work in these areas raises. (13)

My aim is to allow the collective evidence to affect not just how we understand a biblical passage or story hither and there within the parameters of earlier doctrinal formulations. Rather, I want to move beyond that by allowing the testify to touch how we recollect nigh what Scripture equally a whole is. | The end result, I truly hope, will exist to provide a theological image for people who know instinctively that the Bible is God'south word, simply for whom reading the Bible has already become a serious theological problem — perhaps even a crisis. (fifteen)

The bug many of us feel regarding the Bible may take less to practice with the Bible itself and more to do with our own preconceptions. (15)

I want to focus on 3 issues…

The Old testament and other literature from the ancient world: Why does the bible in places expect a lot like the literature of Israel'due south aboriginal neighbors? Is the Old Testament really that unique? Does it not just reflect the ancient globe in which information technology was produced? If the Bible is the word of God, why does it fit so nicely in the ancient earth?
Theological diversity in the Old Testament: Why do unlike parts of the One-time Testament say dissimilar things almost the same matter? It really seems as if in that location are contradictions, or at least large differences of opinion, in the Old Testament.
The manner in which the New Testament authors handle the Old Testament: Why do the New Attestation authors handle the Old Testament in such odd means? It looks similar they just take the Former Testament passages out of context.

The first issue deals with the Bible's uniqueness.
The 2nd concerns the bible's integrity.
The 3rd deals with the Bible'due south interpretation.

What is needed is a way of thinking about Scripture where these kinds of issues are addressed from a very different perspective — where these kinds of issues terminate existence problems and become windows that open up upwards new ways of agreement. (17)

A Way toward Addressing the Problem: The Incarnational Illustration

The starting indicate for our word is the post-obit: as Christ is both God and human, so is the Bible. In other words, nosotros are to retrieve of the Bible in the same style that Christians recall virtually Jesus. (17)

How does Scripture's total humanity and total divinity affect what we should await from Scripture? (18)

"scriptural docetism" …Merely the man marks of the Bible are everywhere, thoroughly integrated into the nature of Scripture itself. Ignoring these marks or explaining them abroad takes at least as much energy as listening to them and learning from them. (18)

Hither are some of these human marks of Scripture…

The Bible was written in Hebrew and Greek (with a little Aramaic).
The erstwhile Testament world was a earth of temples, priests, and sacrifice.
Israel every bit well every bit the surrounding nations had prophets that mediated divine will to them.
Through much of its history, Israel was ruled by kings, equally were the nations effectually it.
Israel's legal arrangement has some striking similarities with those of surrounding nations.

That the Bible, at every plough, shows how "connected" it is to its own world is a necessary effect of God incarnating himself.

People are time leap, and then God adopts that characteristic if he wishes to reveal himself. (20)

It is essential to the very nature of revelation that the Bible is not unique to its environment. The human dimension of Scripture is essential to its being Scripture.

What I propose, however, is an approach that accepts neither culling as offer the final globe. That the Bible bears an unmistakable man stamp does non atomic number 82 to the necessary conclusion that information technology is merely the words of humans rather than the word of God. To those who hold such a position the question might be asked, "How else would you have expected God to speak? In ways wholly disconnected to the aboriginal world? Who would have understood him? (21)

With this in listen, we tin can at present look at some of the evidence that has been part of the scholarly chat for several generations, not to determine whether the Bible is God's word, but to meet more clearly how it is God's word. (21)

two. The Former Testament and Aboriginal Almost Eastern Literature

The Impact of Akkadian Literature

An Important Discovery . Between the years 1848 and 1876, archeologists working in the library of Male monarch Ashurbanipal (668-627 BC) in ancient Nineveh (the capital metropolis of Assyria, located in modern-24-hour interval Iraq) discovered thousands of dirt tablets with markings on them. …the language came to be known every bit Akkadian, the linguistic communication of two prominent nations: Assyrian and Babylon. (24-25)

Enuma Elish . "when on loftier." 7 tablets, dating to the 7th century BC, merely a date erstwhile in the second millennium BC is the consensus position for the age of the story, possibly the primeval likely dates is the 18th century BC.

The degree to which Genesis and Enuma Elish are truly parallel is a debated point, merely some of the more agreed upon similarities are the post-obit:

The sequence of the days of cosmos is similar, including the creation of the firmament, dry out country, luminaries, and humanity, followed by rest.
Darkness precedes the creative acts.
At that place is a division of the waters (waters in a higher place and below the firmament).
Light exists before the cosmos of the sun, moon, and stars.

…both Genesis and Enuma Elish "breathe the same air."

Overflowing: Atrahasis and Gilgamesh. …earliest copies of Atrahasis date to the seventeenth century BC. …tells of a flood that was the result of the prescript of the god Enlil to destroy humans because they were making too much dissonance. Atrahasis, through the help of the god Ea, escapes the wrath of Enlil by building a big gunkhole in which to save humanity. | The earliest copies of Gilgamesh are Sumerian and are dated to the kickoff half to the second millennium BC. (27)

Israel's Ancestors: Nuzi .

Law: The Code of Hammurabi. 18th c. BC.

Code of Hammurabi 195-97	Exodus 21:23-25
If a son has struck his father, they shall cut off his hand. If a nobleman has put out the eye of another nobleman'southward bone, they shall break his os.	But if at that place is serious injury, you are to accept life for life, centre for eye, tooth for molar, hand for paw, foot for foot, fire for burn, would for wound, bruise for bruise.
Code of Hammurabi 198-201	Exodus 21:26-27
If he has put out the eye of a commoner or broken the bone of a commoner, he shall pay one silver mina. If he has put out the eye of a nobleman's slave or cleaved the bone of a nobleman'due south slave, he shall pay one-half of its value. If a nobleman has knocked out the tooth of his equal, they shall knock out his tooth. If he has knocked out the tooth of a commoner, he shall pay one-third of a argent mina.	If a man hits a manservant or maidservant in the eye and destroys it, he must let the retainer go gratis to recoup for the center. And if he knocks out the tooth of a manservant or maidservant, he must let the retainer go free to compensate for the tooth.
Code of Hammurabi 209	Exodus 21:22
If a nobleman has struck some other nobleman's daughter and has caused her to have a miscarriage, he shall pay x shekels of silver for her fetus.	If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the adult female's husband demands and the court allows.

What can we say virtually the uniqueness of the Bible when, in and so many areas, it bears striking similarities to the behavior and practices of the other nations? This is precisely where the tension lies: the truth faith of Israel and the faux faith of her neighbors looks like. (32)

Another Ancient Virtually Eastern Texts

Deuteronomy and Hittite Suzerainty Treaties . The biblical texts and the Hittite treaties have many things in common:

The treaties begin with a preamble or historical prologue announcing the proper name of the rex and what he has done for the vassals. Thus, the Ten Commandments begin, "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery." God announces himself and and then reminds the Israelites of what he has done for them.
Afterward this introduction the Hittite treaties have some stipulations (or laws) that the vassal is meant to obey, the most important of which is loyalty to the rex. This is not unlike the commencement commandment: "You lot shall have no other gods before me."
The Hittite treaties include an explicit demand that vassals remain leap past oath to the king, otherwise they volition have the gods to answer to. Some empathize the tertiary commandment to be functioning in a like manner: "You lot shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God."
Then follows a serial of blessings and curses, blessings for those who obey and curses for those who practise not. In the Ten Commandments, such a approving is institute in the fifth commandment, to honor one's mother and male parent: "And so that you may alive long in the state the LORD your God is giving you."
One final parallel concerns the Ten Commandments beingness written on two tablets. Hittite treaties were written in 2 copies, 1 for the rex and the other for the vassal. Although information technology cannot be proven conclusively, it is very inviting to run across the two tablets of the X Commandments in the same light. Throughout history, the explanation for why Moses came downward from the mountain with two tablets has been that half of the commandments (or perchance the first four) were on the beginning tablet and the remaining commandments were on the 2d. That may be, but the Hittite evidence introduces some other possibility: the Israelites were given two complete copies of the Ten Commandments. Regardless of how i answers these specific questions, the Hittite prove affects how one goes about respond them.

Not only the X Commandments but hte structure of the volume of Deuteronomy as a whole also seems to reverberate the construction of the Hittite treaties. Each section of Deuteronomy reflects a section of the Hittite treaties:

preamble (1:one-5)
historical prologue (i:6-four:49)
stipulations (laws) (5:1-26:19)
blessings and curses (27:1-xxx:20)
the futurity (royal successor, among other things) (31:1-34:12)

David and the Tel Dan Inscription . Aramaic dating to 9th or eighth century BC. business firm of David.

Hezekiah and the Siloam Tunnel Inscription . 2 Kings 20:20. ~701 BC.

[The day of] the breach.
This is the tape of how the tunnel was breached.
While [the excavators were wielding] their selection-axes, each man towards his co-worker,
and while in that location were however three cubits for the brea[ch],
a phonation [was hea]rd each human being calling to his co-worker;
because there was a crenel in the rock (extending)
from the s to [the north].
And so on the mean solar day of the alienation,
the excavators struck, each human being to meet his co-worker,
option-axe against pick-[a]xe.
Then the water flowed from the spring to the pool,
a distance of on thousand and two hundred cubits.
One hundred cubits was the elevation of the rock higher up the heads of the excavat[ors].

Omri and the Mesha Inscription . Mesha was the king of ancient Moab around 830 BC. He erected a monument recounting his deeds equally rex. 2 Kings 3:4-5.

Proverbs and the Instruction of Amenemope. Proverbs 22:17-24:22 bears hitting similarities to the Pedagogy of Amenemope.

What Exactly Is the Problem?

The affect of these texts leads to questions like these:

Does the Bible, particularly Genesis, report historical fact, or is it just a bunch of stories culled form other aboriginal cultures?
What does it hateful for other cultures to have an influence on the Bible that we believe is revealed by God? Can we say that the Bible is unique or special? If the Bible is such a "culturally conditioned" product, what possible relevance can it accept for us today?
Does this mean that the history of the church, which carried on for many centuries before this evidence came to light, was wrong in how it thought about its Bible?

Is the Bible still the give-and-take of God?

Below I group into three headings the ten texts that we looked at above.

Creation and the flood: Enuma Elish, Atrahasis, and Gilgamesh
Customs, laws, and proverbs: Nuzi documents, Lawmaking of Hammurabi, Hittite suzerain treaties, and Instruction of Amenemope
Israel and her kings: Tel Dan Inscription, Siloam Tunnel Inscription, and Mesha Inscription

Group 1 — Creation and the Flood: Is Genesis Myth or History? If we can properly ascertain the nature of that relationship, debates about the implications of that relationship will fall into place. (40)

A more generous way of defining myth is that it is an aboriginal, premodern, prescientific way of addressing questions of ultimate origins and meaning in the class of stories: Who are we? Where do we come up from? | Ancient peoples were not concerned to describe the universe in scientific terms. (40)

Are the early stories in the Old Testament to exist judged on the basis of standards of modern historical inquiry and scientific precision, things that ancient peoples were not at all enlightened of? Is information technology not likely that God would have allowed his word to come to the ancient Israelites according to standards they understood, or are modernistic standards of truth and error then universal that we should expect premodern cultures to accept understood them? The sometime position is, I experience, better suited for solving the problem. The latter is frequently an implicit assumption of modern thinkers, both conservative and liberal Christians, but it is somewhat myopic and should exist called into question. What the Bible is must be understood in light of the cultural context in which it was given. What the Bible is must be understood in calorie-free of the cultural context in which it was given. (41)

Group 2 — Customs, Laws, and Proverbs: Is Revelation Unique?

…the problem actually turns on what revelation means. What seems to be falsely implicit in the word is that revelation is past its nature unique, significant that revelation will necessarily be thoroughly distinct from the surrounding civilisation. After all, it is idea, revelation is from God, but civilization is a human product. But this is precisely the assumption that the aboriginal Near Eastern evidence forces us to wait at more carefully. And this evidence indicates that (1) portions of the law and wisdom in the Old Testament have clear parallels in other ancient cultures, (ii) those aboriginal Near Eastern parallels are older than their Old Attestation counterparts, and (3) at least one of those parallels (Amenemope) seems to exist the source for the biblical material. | In other words, the Bible seems to be relativized. (42-43)

What needs to be called into question is the supposition that both sides of the argument are making, namely, that the situated/enculturated nature of the Bible poses a problem to the definition of divine revelation. (43)

Grouping 3 — Israel and Its Kings: Is Practiced Historiography Objective or Biased?

What were the ancient conventions for writing history? What did it mean to record history? What can be chosen good or authentic history writing by standards that were in beingness when the Bible was written? In fact, one must question the entire supposition that adept history writing, whether modern or aboriginal, is concerned to transmit but bare facts of history. Is there really whatever such thing equally a completely objective and unbiased recording of history, mod or premodern? (45)

How Have These Problems Been Handled in the Past?

…the result began to shift from "What did the original documents look like?" to, "What did the documents hateful in their original contexts?" (45)

The "context of Scripture" became the primary determining factor in defining what the Bible is. … The conservative's reaction was besides problematic in that it implicitly assumed what their opponents too assumed: the bible, being the discussion of God, ought to exist historically accurate in all its details …and unique in its own setting. (47)

In other words, conservative scholarship, allowing modernistic scholarship to set the agenda while still trying to maintain older doctrinal commitments, was well positioned to listen to some evidence only not all. | To extravaganza somewhat, if historical context was everything for liberal scholars, regardless of its implications for Christian doctrine, for conservative scholars doctrine was everything, regardless of the historical evidence that challenged doctrine. (47)

How Can We Think Differently through These Issues?

As I run across information technology, the issue concerns the assumptions fabricated by both sides of the debate most how to empathize that evidence. …If, in full chat with the biblical and extrabiblical evidence, we can adapt our expectations well-nigh how the Bible should behave, nosotros can begin to motion across the impasse of the liberal/conservative debates of the last several generations. (48)

Toward that stop, I wish to make clear two assumptions that will be important in what follows:

I assume that the extrabiblical archeological and textual evidences should play an important role in our agreement of Scripture. Ours is a historical religion, and to uproot the Bible from its historical contexts is cocky-contradictory. In and of themselves, these evidences are not wholly determinative; some are clearer and more relevant than others. They must be looked at carefully and patiently and thus interpreted as to their importance. Though they are not determinative, they are wholly relevant to how nosotros sympathize today what the Bible is. To country the opposite, I refuse the notion that a modern doctrine of Scripture can be articulated in blissful isolation from the evidence we have.
All attempts to articulate the nature of Scripture are open up to examination, including my own. I firmly believe — although it may seem somewhat paradoxical — that the Spirit of God is fully engaged in such a theological process and at the same fourth dimension that our attempts to articulate what God's word is have a necessarily provisional dimension. To put it succinctly: the Spirit leads the church to truth — he does not simply drop usa downward in the centre of information technology. To say this is non a low view of Scripture or of the role of the Holy Spirit. it is simply to recognize what has been the example throughout the history of the church, that diverse views and changes of opinion over time have been the constant companions of the church and that God has non brought this process to a closure.

Is Genesis Myth or History? I question how much value there is in posing the choice in Genesis as either myth or history. (49)

But one might ask why it is that God can't use the category we call "myth" to speak to ancient Israelites. (50)

Myth is an aboriginal, premodern, prescientific way of addressing questions of ultimate origins and meaning in the form of stories: Who are nosotros? Where do we come from? (fifty)

We must begin our thinking by acknowledging that the aboriginal Near Eastern myths are almost certainly older than the versions recorded for united states of america in the Bible. How can we say this? For several reasons. (l)

First, Israelite culture is somewhat of a latecomer in the aboriginal Near Eastern earth. …Second, the culture of Israel's ancestors was certainly oral. …Third, the Hebrew language we know from the One-time Testament did non exist in the second millennium. (50-51)

…when [did] the stories of Genesis [come up] to be written in Hebrew? (51)

First, the Semitic alphabet, which formed the basis for non only Hebrew only besides other Semitic languages (e.g., Aramaic, Moabite, Edomite, Ammonite) — not to mention the Greek and Latin alphabets — did non come on the scene until almost 1700 BC so only in a very rudimentary fashion, and it did not take hold of on right away. …Second, we have no extrabiblical testify for the existence of Hebrew before the start millennium BC.

Earliest Hebrew text: Gezer Calendar. (10th c. BC. At that place is nevertheless some qustion, however, nearly whether it is written in Hebrew or in Phoenician, Hebrew'south parent language. The text is fairly short [nineteen words], and so there is not much to go on.)

Earliest biblical manuscripts are the Expressionless Bounding main Scrolls (no before than the second century BC).

The Mesopotamian world from which Abraham came was one whose own stories of origins had been expressed in mythic categories for a considerable length of fourth dimension. Moreover, the land Abraham was going to enter, the land of the Canaanites, was likewise rich in its ain myths. (53)

We must surely assume that Abraham, as such a human, shared the worldview of those whose world he shared and non a modern, scientific 1. The reason the opening chapters of Genesis look and then much like the literature of ancient Mesopotamia is that the worldview categories of the ancient Virtually Easter were ubiquitous and normative at the time. (53)

What makes Genesis different from its aboriginal Virtually Eastern counterparts is that it begins to make the point to Abraham and his seed that the God they are bound to, the God who called them into being, is dissimilar from the gods around them. (53)

Ancient Near Eastern religion were hierarchical and polytheistic. (53)

…the bespeak here is non ane of textual dependence but of conceptual similarity. (55)

To put it this way is not to concede basis to liberalism or unbelief, just to understand the unproblematic fact that the stories in Genesis had a context within which they were beginning understood. And that context was not a modern scientific one but an ancient mythic one. (55)

Therefore, the question is non the degree to which Genesis conforms to what we would recall is a proper clarification of origins. It is a central misunderstanding of Genesis to expect information technology to answer questions generated by a modern worldview, such equally whether the days were literal or figurative, or whether the days of creation can be lined upwards with modern science, or whether the flood was local or universal. The question that Genesis is prepared to answer is whether Yahweh, the God of Israel, is worthy of worship. (55)

The point I would like to emphasize, however, is that such a firm grounding in ancient myth does not make Genesis less inspired;… (56)

We must resist the notion that for God to enculturate himself is somehow below him. This is precisely how he shows his beloved to the globe he made. (56)

Is Revelation Unique? However indelicate such a family dynamic may appear to us, the point is just this: what constituted Israel's proper social — and, in this case, even ethical — behavior seems to be a matter of cultural convention. There is no suggestion in Genesis that these social customs are there by God's design and that is what makes them "okay." These customs were simply at that place, before Abraham came on the scene. (57)

What makes State of israel's laws revelatory is not that they are new — a more than about-face vis-a-vis the surrounding nations — but thatthese are the laws that were to exist obeyed in lodge to form Israel into a godlike customs. (57)

…despite the common, even secular feel (as some put it) to Proverbs, it is at the same time a book that claims that, in following the path of wisdom laid out therein, 1 is connecting with God's wisdom. …To put it another way, God's police force and wisdom are incarnated in the world of the ancient Most East: they fit. (58)

Is Skilful Historiography Objective or Biased? Historiography is non the mere statement of facts but the shaping of these facts for a detail purpose. To put information technology another manner, historiography is an effort to relay to someone the significance of history. (60)

…all historiography exhibits the interplay between consequence, presentation, and purpose. To exist direct, there is no historiography that does not take a incomparably interpretive element. (62) [VIA: Past definition, history is biased. If it is not biased, it is not history.]

Chronicles was probably non written merely to supplement Samuel-Kings. Rather information technology is an independent piece of historiography that, although certainly interacting with Samuel-Kings, is yet intended to stand on its ain and be understood on its ain terms. (63)

Chronicles is not interested in but recounting past events for the sake of it. Rather the author is employing Israel'south past for the purpose of interpreting its own nowadays circumstances in terms of the broadest possible context. The writer is reminding the people that despite their hard present circumstances, they accept a heritage that is long and honored. To put information technology another way, the returning exiles were asking whether they were nonetheless the people of God, whether his promises to them were still true. How can they still exist God'southward people if all these promises have been dashed? Chronicles retells Israel's past in guild to encourage the Israel of the present. (64)

To insist that, somehow, Samuel-Kings and Chronicles must say the same thing almost the aforementioned event tells us more than nigh the modern interpreter than it does about the biblical texts. moreover, it flies in the face up of both the bear witness and common sense. The apparently fact of the matter is that in Scripture we have ii divergent accounts of the same event. The only question before us is how to handle this fact with integrity. (65)

It is a distortion of the highest club to argue that Jesus must have cleansed the temple twice. …it is based on an assumption about what constitutes skillful historiography that the Gospels themselves practise not support, namely, that historiography must maintain chronological order. (65)

…what is true of all historiography is also true of biblical historiography — it is non objective. In fact — and this is getting more to the eye of the thing — in the strict sense of the word, at that place actually is no such thing every bit objective historiography. (66)

To be able to confess that the Bible is God's word is the gift of religion. To understand this confession is an ongoing process of greater description and insight, a process that volition non finish. (66)

Predictably, this raises the very good result of the relationship between the text of the Bible and the events information technology reports. So, what did Nathan actually say? What 2 Samuel reports? What one Chronicles reports? Neither? A footling of both? The answer is, "I don't know, and neither does anyone else." In fact, I am beginning to suspect that this is not the primary question the Bible is set up to reply. I am past no means maxim that history does non thing. I am saying that the reporting of historical events — historiography — always involves the shaping of history for detail purposes. How much shaping goes on in the Bible and for what purpose is no doubtfulness the topic of ongoing word. In the example of Samuel-Kings and Chronicles, I gave the explanation of their differing purposes that I experience makes the best sense of the bear witness. Just how we reply that question, as such answers may shift over fourth dimension, is not most as important equally the posture from which we attempt these answers: that we fully respect the Bible as God'due south word at the outset, not because we can make sense of it all but despite our inability to do so at times. (66)

How Does This Affect U.s.a.?

First, a contemporary evangelical doctrine of Scripture must account for the Old Attestation as an aboriginal Near Eastern phenomenon past going across the mere observation of that fact to allowing that fact to bear upon how we retrieve about Scripture. (67)

Second, such a worked-out doctrine of Scripture should have implications for how Christians today utilize information technology. (67) …how we conceive of the normativity of authority of the One-time Testament must exist in continual chat with the incarnate dimension of Scripture. In other words, what the Bible is should affect what nosotros as Christians do with it. It simply volition not do to presume that what was binding on Israel is binding on us because it is written in the Bible, and the Bible is God'south give-and-take, and therefore all of it is of equal weight through all fourth dimension. (67)

All this to say that the central function of the Old Testament may non exist there to "tell us what to do." It may be more a part of a larger story that God brings to an terminate many hundreds of years later in Christ. And this story, which ends with the incarnation of God's Son, had an incarnational dimension from the start. (67)

Tertiary, the incarnational dimension of Scripture continues today.

3. The Old Attestation and Theological Diversity

The Problem of Theological Diversity in the Old Attestation

For the Jews, the Bible is a problem to be solved. For Christians, information technology is a message to be proclaimed.

(Knowing the original Hebrew does not ever make the text "come live"! It often introduces obscurities that English readers are not aware of.) (72)

The stress seems to exist non on solving the bug once and for all only on a community upholding a conversation with Scripture with creative energy. (72)

At this juncture I simply wish to make the observation that Christianity, at least the Christianity with which modern evangelicalism is familiar, followed a dissimilar path. As quite distinct from Jewish interpretation, the history of mod evangelical interpretation exhibits a strong degree of discomfort with the tensions and ambiguities of Scripture. The assumptions oft made are that Scripture should have no tensions and that whatever such tensions are non real merely introduced from the exterior, namely, by scholarship hostile to evangelical Christianity. (72)

The Christian task has been more divers by relegating such tensions and ambiguities to the background in favor of proclaiming a unified message. After all, the Old Attestation is not there to set us on an interpretive adventure, but to tell u.s.a. what God is like, what he has done, who we are as his people, and what we are to do in response. (72)

It is not simply a question of acknowledging diversity and then setting it bated at a safe distance. Rather, it is to ask what such diversity tells u.s.a. most what the Bible is and who God is — a God who has given u.s. Scripture that looks like this. (73)

Multifariousness in Wisdom Literature

Proverbs. …there is more to wisdom than simply reading a maxim. One must too have the wisdom to read the situation, to know whether a saying is plumbing fixtures. (74)

The point to exist stressed here is that all of these proverbs are wise. All are correct. The question is not whether they are correct, but when. (76)

Ecclesiastes . …the contradictions in Ecclesiastes are there for a reason. They are not there to be resolved. (77) Wisdom does non guarantee a payoff, and this frustrates Qoheleth. (79)

Diverseness is woven into Onetime testament literature. But annotation that diversity in no way implies chaos or error. (80)

Diverseness in Chronicles

Diversity in Police force

The Ten Commandments . …regardless of what theory of pentateuchal authorship on subscribes to, the simple fact of the matter is that Deuteronomy presents Moses as someone who, twoscore years after the fact, recounts God'southward words differently than they were given in Exodus. There is diversity fifty-fifty in the Ten Commandments. (87)

God seems to be perfectly willing to allow his police to be adjusted over fourth dimension. (87)

In other words, in that location seems to exist a situational dimension to constabulary, but as nosotros saw with wisdom literature. …When we put flesh on the bare bones of the X Commandments, nosotros see that there is a "wisdom dimension" to whatever effort to keep the law. (88)

God and Diversity

I God or Many Gods? What I am interested in, however, is discussing how the Former Testament speaks of the being of 1 God in the context of the religious systems of the surrounding nations. (97)

Pharaoh does not know who Yahweh is. The next several capacity, culminating in the Ruby Bounding main incident, are designed to accustom Pharaoh and all Egypt with Israel'southward God. (100)

Does God Change His Heed? Yet, in diverse places in the Erstwhile Testament, God acts more as a character in the story. Another fashion of putting information technology is that he acts more humanlike than godlike. (103)

I am non trying to drive a wedge between the Bible and God. Actually, and somewhat ironically, this is what I see others doing. I experience spring to talk nigh God in the way(due south) the Bible does, even if I am not comfy with it. (106)

What Does Diversity Tell United states of america about Scripture?

To have the diversity of the Sometime Testament is not to "cave in to liberalism," nor is it to seek later novelty. It is, rather, to read the Old Testament quite honestly and seriously. And if diversity is such a prevalent miracle in the Old Attestation, it would seem to be important to practise more than than simply have note of variety and file it away for futurity reference. We must enquire why God would do it this style. Why does God's give-and-take look the way it does? (107)

In other words, once we confess that the Bible is God's word, we tin look at how it is God'due south word. (108)

After all, it was written over a very lengthy catamenia of time, at least five hundred years and perhaps closer to one one thousand years. (108)

…the messiness of the Old Testament tells us that God is very real to his people and very near. (110)

Christ is the ultimate example of how God enters the messiness of history to save his people. He did not continue his distance, merely became one of us. This is true of Christ, the embodied word. Information technology is also true of the Bible, the written give-and-take. To put it this way is to plough the entire debate on its head: the multifariousness of Scripture — and the tensions that this diversity introduces — bears witness to God's revelation rather than detracts from information technology. (111)

iv. The Erstwhile Testament and Its Interpretation in the New Attestation

Do New Testament Authors Misuse the Old Attestation?

It is a common occurrence for preachers to have a poetry from the Old Attestation, or part of a poesy, and derive meaning from it that serves their agenda rather than clarifying the text. (114)

…I will land my conclusions up forepart:

The New Attestation authors were not engaging the Erstwhile Testament in an endeavor to remain consistent with the original context and intention of the Erstwhile Attestation author.
They were indeed commenting on what the text meant.
The hermeneutical mental attitude they embodied should be embraced and followed by the church today.

To put it succinctly, the New Testament authors were explaining what the One-time Testament means in low-cal of Christ'due south coming. (116)

Biblical Interpretation in the Second Temple Menses

A convenient label frequently attached to such an arroyo is "grammatical-historical," meaning that the words of the text in front of you must be understood in their original grammatical (i.e., interpreting the text in the original language) and historical contexts. (117) …the principle that "original context matters" must be practical not merely to grammer and history but too to the hermeneutics of the New Testament writers. (117)

Interbiblical Interpretation: The Old Attestation's Utilize of the Former Testament.

ii Chronicles 35:xiii and Passover law.
Daniel nine prophesied by Jeremiah (25:11; 29:10). 70 years? "Seventy sevens" of years? Deportation was in 587 BC. Return begins 538 BC. Outset wave of deportation began in 605 BC. Second Temple completed in 516 BC.
Luke 24:44-48.
Hosea half-dozen:2 as a proof-text for the resurrection?

…he is proverb that all Scriptures speak of him in the sense that he is the climax of Israel'due south story. | The Sometime Testament as a whole is about him, non a subliminal prophecy or a couple of lines tucked away in a small prophet. Rather, Christ — who he is and what he did — is where the Sometime Testament has been leading all along. (120)

For the Qumran community, biblical estimation was non a ways of discovering ancient meaning just of using the Bible to validate the present self-agreement of the Qumran customs. (131)

What Tin We Learn from Second Temple Literature? …we tin now plough to the New Testament, which is too a Second Temple interpretive text. This is not to say that it reflects precisely the examples above. Nevertheless, we should expect the New Testament, being a Second Temple phenomenon, to bear in a fashion that would make information technology recognizable to its contemporaries, rather than expecting information technology to adapt to our own 20-offset-century expectations. (131-132)

Apostolic hermeneutics every bit a 2nd Temple Phenomenon: Interpretive Methods

Exodus 3:6 in Luke xx:34-38. It is precisely because Jesus employed Second Temple techniques that his interpretation was able to have apologetic import. (132)
Matthew ii:15 and Hosea xi:1.
2 Corinthians 6:2 and Isaiah 49:eight.
Galatians 3:sixteen, 29 and Abraham's "Seed."
Romans 11:26-27 and Isaiah 59:20.
Hebrews iii:7-11 and Psalm 95:9-10.

Apostolic Hermeneutics every bit a 2nd Temple Phenomenon: Interpretive Traditions

James and Jambres. 2 Timothy 3:8.
Noah, the Preacher of Righteousness, 2 Peter 2:v. Peter refers to Noah in a way that has no explicit biblical support but is found in other ancient sources. Peter is non working on his ain here. (Josephus, Antiquities one.3.one §74; Sibylline Oracles 1.125-95; a portion of the Babylonian Talmud, tractate Sanhedrin 108a).
The Dispute over Moses' Body. Jude 9. The Assumption of Moses (as well called the Attestation of Moses). The extracanonical origin of Jude's annotate is beyond debate. (145)
Jude and 1 Enoch. Jude fourteen-15; ane Enoch 1.nine. Why would Jude, an inspired canonical author, cite an uninspired noncanonical volume? The more important issue is the traditions about Enoch that were in circulations and to which early interpreters — including Jude — had access.
Moses' Egyptian Education. Philo'south Life of Moses, 1.5 §§21-24; aboriginal play by "Ezekiel the Tragedian," Exagoge lines 36-38 (second century BC). (147)
The Constabulary Was Put into Issue through Angels. Galatians 3:19; Acts 7:52-53; Hebrews 2:2-3; anchored in Deuteronomy 33:2-iv? …angelic activeness between Moses and God on Sinai is non a biblical notion but, for whatever reason, a Second Temple 1. (149)
Paul'south Movable Well. 1 Corinthians 10:4; By calling the rock Christ, Paul is certainly Christianizing this Old Attestation story. Only Paul's Quondam Testament is 1 that has already been subject field to a rich history of interpretation. It is not just the words on the page but the interpretive tradition as well that made up Paul'due south Old Attestation. (151)

What Makes Apostolic Hermeneutics Unique?

The driving strength backside their Sometime Testament interpretations was their belief that Jesus of Nazareth was God with usa and that he had been raised form the dead. It was, equally mentioned earlier, their conventionalities that the eschaton had come in Christ. (152)

Another fashion of putting the problem is that apostolic hermeneutics violates what is considered to exist a fundamental interpretive principle: don't take things out of context. …It is not that the Old Testament words are taken out of context and tossed into the air to fall where they may. Rather, the New Testament authors take the Old Testament out of one context, that of the original man author, and place information technology into some other context, the one that represents the last goal to which Israel'southward story has been moving. (153)

The term I prefer to utilize to draw this eschatological hermeneutic is christotelic. I prefer this over chrostological or christocentric since these are susceptible to a indicate of view I am not advocating here, namely needing to "come across Christ" in every, or nearly every Old Testament passage. Telos is the Greek give-and-take for "stop" or "completion." To read the One-time Testament "Christotelically" is to read it already knowing that Christ is somehow the terminate to which the Former Attestation story is heading. (154)

There is a diversity in how the apostles handled the Old Testament, and I have no desire to gloss over the fact. I maintain, withal, that the shape of churchly hermeneutics is best explained by bearing in mind the Second Temple world in which they thought and wrote, as well as the key conviction that Jesus is the telos of the Old Testament. These factors are seen again and again on the pages of the New Testament. (155)

Should We Handle the Old Testament the Manner the Apostles Did?

I advise that we distinguish between hermeneutical goal and exegetical method. (158)

"What difference does the death and resurrection of Christ make for how I sympathize this function of the Old Testament?" Our privileged status to be living int he postresurrection creation must be reflected in our understanding of the Quondam Testament. (159)

What drives apostolic hermeneutics is not adherence to a method. …To speak of the apostles' exegetical methods may atomic number 82 us downward the wrong path to begin with. I do not hateful to make sweeping statements against exegetical methods or grammatical-historical exegesis. But when we find what the apostles did with their Scripture, we tin can only conclude that there must be more than to Christian biblical interpretation than uncovering the original significant of an Sometime Attestation passage. | The New Testament writers were so consumed by Christ that their understanding of God'southward past actions was brought under the authority of God'south present act, the climax of his covenant with Israel, the person and work of Christ. (160)

What Nosotros Can Learn From Churchly Hermeneutics

…biblical interpretation is at least as much art as it is science. (161)

Moreover, inasmuch as Scripture is the word of God, I would await multiple layers of meaning insofar as no one person, school, or tradition can frazzle the depth of God's word. (161)

Perhaps, and so, we can too appreciate that biblical estimation is at least every bit much community oriented as it is individually oriented. …biblical interpretation is a truthful community activity. | Mayhap we should think of biblical estimation more equally a path to walk than a fortress to be defended. (162)

The goal toward which the path is leading is that which gear up us on the path to begin with: our having been claimed by God as coheirs with the crucified and risen Christ. The reality of the crucified and risen Christ is both the starting time and finish of Christian biblical interpretation. (163)

5. The Big Picture

What Is The Bible, and What Are Nosotros Supposed to Practice with Information technology?

Whatever words Christians employ to speak of the Bible (inerrant, infallible, administrative, revelational, inspired), either today or in the past, must be seen equally attempts to draw what can never be fully understood. (168)

Perhaps, then, it makes more sense to speak of the incarnational parallel betwixt Christ and the Bible. (168)

We are to place our trust in God who gave united states of america Scripture, not in our own conceptions of how Scripture ought to be. (169)

To put it more positively, the Bible sets trajectories, not rules, for a practiced many issues that face the church building. (170)

Standing the Conversation: Learning to Listen

…the attitude of an academic quest is very different from judgmental suspicion… (172)

We do not honor the Lord nor do nosotros uphold the gospel past playing make-believe. (172)

Our God is much bigger than we sometimes requite him credit for. It is we who sometimes wish to keep him small by controlling what can or cannot come into the conversation. (172)

What would be a breath of fresh air, non to mention a testimony to those around us, is to come across an temper, a culture, among conservative, traditional, orthodox Christians that models basic principles of the gospel:

Humility on the function of scholars to be sensitive to how others will hear them and on the function of those whose preconceptions are being challenged.
Honey that assumes the vest of brothers and sisters in Christ, not that looks for any difference of opinion every bit an excuse to keep the set on.
Patience to know that no person or tradition is beyond correction, and therefore no ane should jump to conclusions almost another'south motives.

We must be very careful not to confuse God's kingdom with our own. (172)

We must, therefore, be ever vigilant to inspect our own motives, lest we fall into the well-worn estrus of thinking that study of the Bible prepares us to lead rather than to serve. (173)

— VIA —

The beginning and the end of this book are worth reading several times. Embracing the lessons of historiography when it comes to context and data are primal and fundamental to any interpretive do. I'one thousand thankful for Enns'southward lay elucidation of this. As well, the imploring of each of us to beloved, humility, patience, understanding, bank check of motives, and the opportunity to see things differently is a never worn-out reminder. Thus the idea that the Bible is both human and divine is a helpful framework for approaching the Bible.

Nonetheless, I can't assist but be left even more unsettled than before reading this book when it comes to the complex challenges of Sometime Testament and New Testament, historical context, evangelicalism and the entire hermeneutical enterprise. Enns mentions that understanding the Hebrew "often introduces obscurities that English readers are non aware of." (72) I suppose as ane becomes more educated, the more one will have to become comfy with said obscurities, in addition to ambiguities, complexities, and non-conclusive results. Then, hither's what emerges:

If the NT authors dismissed context, and in many ways recontextualized a passage for their setting (due east.g., the fulfillment of Christ), does this not mean that any text is essentially subject area to the whims of the readers? Does this hateful that meaning is only contemporary, and cannot be historical?

How can the paradox of multiple interpretations (multiple lenses, or refractions) truly exist viable? At what point can anyone say to any interpretation, "That's incorrect"? Is Enns'due south avoidance of Christological or Christocentric readings necessary? Why should those readings not be allowed?

Even if OT and NT authors/readers/interpreters created a hermeneutics of meaning that dismissed historical-cultural context, should we non "fix" that in our era, a fourth dimension when we understand better the nature of hermeneutics, and the boundaries and guidelines of interpretation? Or, exercise we even really understand?

And my primary problem is that a Christotelic reading of the Scriptures is narrow and sectarian, limited only to Christians. But the whole indicate of truth is that the writings, whatever they may exist, are elevated beyond whatever sect, cult, or religious dogma. At that place ought to be a ameliorate way to understand the truthful nature of these writings beyond a "simply Christian" way of seeing them; an agreement that both includes and transcends (this to me includes a Jewish approach to interpretation).

Bottom line, read this book, and set up to perhaps know more than than when you lot started it, but definitely understand less after finishing it. Thankfully, Enns openly says this is the beginning of the conversation, not the end. I capeesh that humility, and will hold him duly responsible for the confused conversations I must now engage with.

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Source: https://vialogue.wordpress.com/2012/07/22/inspiration-and-incarnation-notes-review/