Why We Need Latin Americans to Help Us Understand the Bible

I'm beginning to see the Bible with new eyes.

It began with a syllabus. Increased ethnic diversity at both of the universities where I teach has made me more conscious of how "white" and Western my assigned readings have been. With the help of my beautifully diverse Facebook community, I've made the effort to discover books written by Africans, Asians, and Latinos. Armed with a list of friend-approved favorites, I ordered copies of a half dozen or more.

I want to tell you about two favorites. Both are from Latin America. Both are slim, inexpensive, and accessible. Both are rocking my world.

Justo Gonzalez is known for his work as a church historian. But in Santa Biblia, he offers us a glimpse of what it's like to read the Bible through Hispanic eyes. Some of you may object: "We should be reading the Bible for what it says, not for what we bring to it. Our ethnicity doesn't change what the text means."

Agreed. But our social location can prevent us from seeing what is there. We make assumptions about the situations the Scriptures address because we see the world from a particular vantage point—say, white, middle-class, suburban American—unaware of the authors' context and concerns. We have blinders on.

Old Testament Israelites and New Testament Christians have far more in common with the average Latino, African, or Asian than they do with wealthy Americans. That's one reason the perspective of these communities is so valuable. They are a bridge.

Gonzalez is not engaged in a special hermeneutic, as far as I can tell. He is simply reading the Scriptures with his community and noticing what it says. But because of his life experience, he notices things I miss. In some cases, his observations simply add insight. In other cases, he turns my interpretation on its head.

Here's an example from his first chapter, focusing on marginality. Gonzalez takes us to Luke 4, where Jesus gives his inaugural sermon in Nazareth, quoting Isaiah 61. At first, Jesus' listeners are pleased (v. 21–22). Gonzalez notes,

"But Jesus suddenly changed his tune—or at least, it would seem so from the point of view of his audience. Until then he had said that they were at the very center of things. The Scripture was being fulfilled right there, 'in your hearing.' Now he tells him to expect no special privileges. He is not about to do in his hometown the things he did at Capernaum." (Gonzalez, 43)

Jesus brings up two Old Testament examples, Elijah and Elisha. Both prophets went to those at the margins, to non-Israelites—a Phoenician and a Syrian, in fact—to work their miracles. The mood in the room radically shifts. Gonzalez explains,

"This was no longer a message about how they were at the very center of things, seeing the Scripture fulfilled before their eyes. This was rather a warning that they should expect no privileges, for God often works at the margins rather than the center. No wonder they tried to hurl him off a cliff!" (Gonzalez, 43)

Imagine if Jesus appeared in your church this Sunday, announcing that God's kingdom had arrived, and that he was here to make all things as they should be. Great, right? But what if he told you his first plan of action was to welcome exponentially more Syrian and Lebanese refugees, to help them set up shop in your neighborhood, and to live among them? How would you feel then?

We tend to read Scripture as though it is God's good news to us. But in the case of Luke 4, the good news indicts those who prefer to keep all the kingdom benefits for themselves. I never noticed this until Gonzalez showed me.

In her book, The Scandalous Message of James, Elsa Tamez brings a similar perspective, but instead of offering examples from various places in Scripture, she works her way carefully through the book of James.

James is a practical book, addressing matters of wealth and poverty, among other things. Tamez explains how a Latin American reading of the book is different:

"For James the oppressors are the rich (plousioi). He does not hesitate to point them out as such. His antipathy toward them and his sympathy with the poor is undeniable. Interestingly enough, many of the commentaries on James dedicate long pages to the rich, thus consciously or unconsciously attempting to relativize this contrasting picture that James paints." 

"This great concentration on the rich is to be expected: on the one hand, many biblical commentaries from Europe and the United States are written in situations where there are many rich people in the churches. How does one tell these members that according to James there is no room for them in the church? We should note that many of the points made in these commentaries are accurate enough; what is striking is simply the angle of the perspective and the special concern for the rich. A Latin American reading of the epistle, on the other hand, fixes its gaze on the oppressed and dedicates long pages to them, their sufferings, complaints, oppression, hope, and praxis." (Tamez, 21, emphasis added)

By now it should be obvious why these books will not just be important for students of color, but for all of us in the classroom. Reading outside our tradition overcomes myopia.

I've heard it said (I don't remember where) that the Bible is intended to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comforted. Reading the Bible with people from other cultural and socio-economic backgrounds reinvigorates the Bible's message and sharpens its critique of our own complacency.

This won't be easy, but our brothers and sisters from Latin America stand ready to help. Together we can learn more, love more, and become more. Are we willing to listen?

why bother writing a dissertation?

Who even cares? And what difference does it make, really?

Pacific City, Oregon (Photo: C Imes)

Sometimes when I come face to face with an awe-inspiring panorama of natural beauty, I get to feeling very, very small. And I think about the hours I spend every day fiddling with footnotes, massaging sentences until they sound exactly right, poking my theories from every angle to make sure they stand up under scrutiny . . . In those moments my work seems so pedantic. 

Does any of this actually matter?

But when I turn back from a breathtaking view and stand squarely facing the church, I remember why this work must be done. I don't mean the church historic, anchored by creed, weathering the test of time. I mean the church in its messiest and most particular forms—the local church, my local church. Individuals of various ages and backgrounds and careers who share geographic proximity and have chosen to worship together on Sunday mornings at 9:00 or 10:45, coffee in hand, trying to shake off the spiritual lethargy of their week and tune in to what really matters. This church, my church, needs steady footing in the shifting sands of cliché and trend and platitude; they need to be guided to what is real and true and rock solid, what is profoundly biblical and yet fresh and relevant. People are weary of what they've already heard and tried and found wanting. They are tired of getting nowhere.

To speak with authority into the malaise of superficiality that confronts any local church, I must do my homework. I must wrestle each word to the ground, refusing to let it go until I understand, refusing to quit until I have clearly expressed what I see.

On any given day I consult books written by patient scholars who have done exactly this. Their insights have stood the test of time, like the majestic cliffs on the Oregon coast. I am grateful for their work—glad they didn't give up when things took longer than they planned—and inspired to contribute in some small way. 

And so I press on. 

Stay tuned. The best is yet to come.

on intellectual honesty

A number of months ago a kind reader introduced himself. He let me know that he was particularly interested in watching how I would be affected by the claims of critical biblical scholars (a.k.a. "liberals"). He's writing a book about how evangelicals respond to what he calls "extensive data that seems to pretty clearly rule out the traditional Christian dogma about the inspiration and authority (not just inerrancy) of Scripture, the messianic fulfillment of prophecy, the writing and canonization of the NT, etc." His big question is this: "how can one stay 'orthodox' and be intellectually honest?"

His question is a good one, and deserved a thoughtful response, so it took me quite some time to reply. You can read my full reply in the comments section here (which I deleted and reposted because I found some typos), but I came across two statements yesterday that speak to this whole issue. Both are from an essay by V. Phillips Long introducing the book Windows into Old Testament History: Evidence, Argument, and the Crisis of 'Biblical Israel.'

Long says this: "who we are as whole persons affects how we approach and assess evidence" (8).

And this: "we shall make little progress in understanding one another and in intelligently debating our competing historical judgments until we are willing more openly to explore how our judgments are fundamentally affected by our core convictions" (10). In other words, it goes both ways.

The beauty of Postmodernism is that it has made (almost) all of us aware that we speak and listen from a particular vantage point. What we find persuasive largely depends on what we already believe is true and what counts as evidence in our way of looking at things. I'm not saying there is no absolute truth. I'm simply pointing out that our disposition towards it is very much determined by where we begin.

Intellectual honesty is important to me. For that reason, I have changed my views on a number of things since I started out in seminary seven years ago. But my faith is stronger than ever. Take "messianic prophecy," for example. Meeting with Jehovah's Witnesses helped me to realize that my simple, connect-the-dots understanding of prophecy was not robust enough to account for Trinitarian doctrine. I was forced to go back to the Bible with harder questions, and I was profoundly awakened to the radical claims of the New Testament. The New Testament authors really "got" who Jesus was and what his coming meant for world history. They were not just connecting the dots. They saw Jesus as the ultimate fulfillment of what Yahweh himself had claimed to be and do. (You can read my posts on that topic here.)

I'll never forget my summer job after my senior year of high school. I was a "cast member" at Incredible Universe in Denver, where I welcomed "guests" for a shopping experience. One of my fellow cast members was a middle-aged man who worked in Software. We often talked about God in the break room. As I recall, he was not a Christian, but he admired my faith. He became concerned when he learned that I was going off to Bible College in the fall. He talked about how so many lose their faith in seminary (a.k.a. "cemetery"), and he didn't want the same to happen to me.

That was 1995. And here I am, more than 17 years later, still studying the Bible in academia and still loving Jesus. I do think about the Bible differently than I did in high school. My faith has been stretched and deepened in important ways. Some of my naivete about the Bible has been replaced, thanks to a better understanding of the ancient world and more time spent in the text. Its terrain is more exciting now than it was then, and I'm better prepared to pick up nuances in its message than I was before. Meanwhile, some of my "easy answers" about God have been replaced, thanks to the struggles of life. I no longer see him as the "anesthetist-in-chief" but my trust in Him is deeper than ever.

Wheaton is a place where students can engage openly with tough questions and other points of view and learn from critical scholarship . . . alongside professors and other students who are committed followers of Jesus, people who see the Bible as their authority for faith and life. Together we wrestle with the text and we wrestle with ourselves, seeking to live faithfully in light of what we learn. If Long is right that "who we are as whole persons affects how we approach and assess evidence," then approaching the Scriptures as believers will make a difference. It has for me.

on the place of intuition in biblical studies

John Barton's Reading the Old Testament is beautifully honest, carefully worded, and lucidly written. I wish I had read it years ago. His aim is to show that no one method in biblical studies can trump all the rest. Like an experienced tour guide, he leads students beyond the first impressions of youthful naiveté to forgotten hallways and shadowy basements of biblical criticism, showing tunnels that lead from one edifice to another as well as places where the foundations have cracked or shifted over time. Barton’s analysis is sometimes surprising and often uncomfortable, but his overall thesis is persuasive.

Barton has the courage to say what scarcely sounds "academic" enough to make it in the scholarly world: Bible reading is intuitive. Some intuitions, of course, are better shaped to handle the biblical text than others. A "perceptive reader" has what it takes.

"The primary thesis [of this book] is that much harm has been done in biblical studies by insisting that there is, somewhere, a 'correct' method which, if only we could find it, would unlock the mysteries of the text. . . . Instead, I propose that we should see each of our 'methods' as a codification of intuitions about the text which may occur to intelligent readers" (5).

So, in essence, that's what we spend a lifetime doing—shaping our intuitions so they can guide us more reliably in our reading of sacred Scripture. I will never get tired of doing it. What rich rewards await the patient and perceptive reader!

table talk: listening in on ancient conversations

Clement of Alexandria

I've spent most of today with Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther, though I did run into Tertullian unexpectedly in the library stacks. Yesterday it was Augustine, Origen, Ambrose, Gregory of Nazianzus, Hilary of Poitiers, and — my new buddy — Clement of Alexandria. I got lost in the stacks more than once trying to find all of them, and some are still hiding even today. Monday I listened in on medieval Jewish rabbis as they argued about the proper interpretation of what I'm calling the "name command" (Exodus 20:7 and Deuteronomy 5:11). I feel like an aural archaeologist, listening in on ancient sermons, reading ancient correspondence, digging through pages of books long-forgotten to find treasure.

Part of writing a dissertation is learning to listen. Before I start speaking I need to hear what others have to say. And they've been saying things for a long time. Things I, and all of us, need to hear. None of them wrote in English, so I'm navigating other languages (Greek, Latin, French, German) and a variety of translations, thankful for those who have labored before me. None of them shared my cultural context, so I'm also trying to understand what was important to each of them—what made them say it that way, thankful for friends who have more experience than I do in this strange, old world. By listening I've learned new words like apophaticism (don't ask me to explain that one), found new places in the library (the 270s) and online (http://www.tlg.uci.edu/), and discovered that I could spend the rest of my life listening and never get anything written.

After another day of digging it will be time to take stock of what I've learned and make a big decision: who will I invite to be part of my first chapter? Who best articulates the various ways God's people (Jewish and Christian) have understood the name command across the ages? There won't be room at the table for everyone, so I'll need to draw up an elite guest list and decide how to moderate this discussion. I'm sure all the church fathers are on pins and needles waiting to find out if they made the cut. Meanwhile, the library workers will all give a deep sigh of relief that Carmen is done digging, for now.

Review of BibleWorks 9 (part 3): not your grandma’s textual criticism

For all you scholars out there, here is the third installment of my BibleWorks 9 review.

I’m listening to an old Michael Card CD (The Word) at the moment (yes, I know that dates me). He’s singing, “so many books, so little time,” and I couldn’t think of a better excuse for this very belated third installment of my BibleWorks review. The folks over at BibleWorks were so generous to provide me with an upgrade to version 9 free of charge in exchange for a series of reviews. In addition to being generous, they have proved very patient with a busy doctoral student. You can find my first two installments here and here.

Are you sitting down? On the floor? Ok, good.

If you’re wondering whether the upgrade is worth it, prepare to be blown away by what BibleWorks 9 can do. But first, think back to your first Greek exegesis course, the one where your professor showed you how to do textual criticism. If your experience was like mine, you felt like you had entered a foreign land. Greek seemed easy compared to the steep learning curve as you tried to make sense of the apparatus. Every little symbol referred to something else that also seemed obscure, with its own date, provenance, and stylistic tendencies. And your task was to take all these numbers, letters, symbols, and dates and produce a chart showing which reading had the strongest support. Think of how long it took to flip through your Greek New Testament trying to find the key to all those symbols.

Now imagine that your professor offered to follow you around for the rest of your career, reading the apparatus for you and loaning you all the charts he or she had painstakingly made of textual variants. Imagine that you could spend your time thinking about which reading was the best reading and what theological difference it made rather than trying to decipher codes.

You can stop imagining, because it’s true. BibleWorks 9 includes two complete textual apparatuses for the entire Greek New Testament (CNNTS and Tischendorf). Each and every symbol is hyperlinked to its description, and each and every variant in the CNNTS  includes a chart of all the manuscript evidence for that variant. It’s a Bible scholar’s dream.
But that’s not all. Say that you’re working on a particular problem and you notice that one prominent manuscript has a surprising reading. You want to investigate more closely, because the reading seems suspicious to you. Now, from the comfort of your own study, you can look at high resolution images of some of the major NT manuscripts right in BibleWorks (including Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, Vaticanus and others). You can zoom in and out, change the lighting or the contrast, despeckle the image or adjust the sharpness. You can even view a photographic negative of the image to look for erasures, a change in handwriting, or help in deciphering ambiguous letters. The manuscripts are overlaid with hyperlinked verse references to the passages in any translation you choose, making navigation much easier. Learning how to use these new features is simple; detailed video tutorials are included.

I admit that part of me is tempted to tuck away what I now know in a dark corner somewhere, so that my students have to struggle as much as I did. But I’ve decided to be a hero and show them how to use these power tools. I’ll be sure to pepper my demonstration with stories of how rough the rest of us had it (“back in my day . . . “). Students will, of course, still need to learn how to decide between the strength of various witnesses. They will need to be aware of how geographical distribution of manuscripts affects textual decisions. And they will need to understand the principles of textual criticism and get practice applying them to particular cases. But all the ingredients for the text-critical cake have been assembled for them (and you!) in one easy-to-use location so they can focus on baking, not shopping for ingredients.

I have only one disappointment, but it is significant. Neither the text critical apparatuses nor the digital manuscript images are available for the OldTestament, and I’m told that it will be a good, long time (20 years?) before the gap is filled. (Perhaps I should have chosen a degree in New Testament!) But really these features are just the icing on the cake. BibleWorks is indispensable for rigorous study of the entire Bible, with or without these new power tools.

Review of BibleWorks 9 (part 2): spotlight on searching

Last semester I learned how to do a search that is proving incredibly powerful (I wish I had taken the time to figure out how to do this a long time ago). I can now search in Hebrew or Greek for a key word in a certain tense or person (or whatever morphological tag I choose), occurring in a specified proximity to another word of my choosing. For example, in class Dr. Block was curious if the Hebrew Bible ever used the expression “walk after Yahweh” the way it talks about walking after other gods in Deut 8:19. He suspected it did, but didn’t remember where.

Since “walk” occurs 1349 times, “after” occurs 812 times, and “Yahweh” occurs 5195 times in the Hebrew Bible, it would be enormously time-consuming to scan through each reference to find where they occur together. Thanks to BibleWorks, within a minute I had the answer. I simply typed the Hebrew root letters for “walk” + “after” + “Yahweh”, with the symbol *3 to indicate that I only wanted to see those passages where these words occurred within the space of  3 words. Immediately BibleWorks gave us the answer we were looking for. The Bible does indeed use this expression to refer to Yahweh. It is found in only 2 places: 2 Kings 23:3 and 2 Chr 34:31 (parallel passages!). There, Josiah is renewing Israel’s covenant with Yahweh (after reading Deuteronomy!) and affirming that he will not follow other gods, but Yahweh alone — a very interesting correlation.

For the sake of being thorough, I should add that this search did not bring up passages where Yahweh is talked about in the first person or as “he” (without using his personal name). Thanks to Moshe Weinfeld’s ‘Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School’ (332) I have discovered there are several more passages where this idiom is used referring to Yahweh: 1 Kgs 14:8; 18:21; Hos 11:10; and Jer 2:2. It would have taken a bit more time for me to come up with these using a BibleWorks search. I could have first narrowed by search to “walk” + “after” and then manually checked the results, or I could have tried a number of more specific searches such as “walk” + “after” + “me” and then checked the context of each. In most cases my initial search would suffice to help me find examples. 

I’ve said it before, but I simply can’t imagine attempting an MA or PhD in Biblical Studies without BibleWorks!

For Part One of my review, go here.

Review of Bibleworks 9 (part 1): a few of my favorite things

BibleWorks 9
is Now Available!

At Gordon-Conwell my professors recommended that I purchase BibleWorks software to help me study the Bible in Hebrew and Greek. I've been using BibleWorks now since 2007, and honestly, I can't imagine trying to study the Bible without it. I've used versions 7, 8, and now 9, and it just keeps getting better. I was glad to discover that my doctoral supervisor, Daniel Block, uses it as well for his own research. Here are the principal ways I use it:

• I have BibleWorks open on my laptop in all of my Bible classes. In a matter of seconds I can look up any passage the professor mentions and see it for myself in dozens of translations. I can do a quick search to find related passages and know that I’m looking at every passage that matches my search criteria.
• I have not opened the NIV Exhaustive Concordance in the past 5 years. It’s much faster to check BibleWorks. I can search in English, Greek, Hebrew, or any of the major modern languages such as Spanish, French, or German (not Tagalog, unfortunately). I can search by exact word or phrase in any language, or by root word in Hebrew, Greek, or Aramaic.
• I rarely use a Hebrew or Greek lexicon (is it ok to admit that?), unless I’m performing an exhaustive word study for which I need to consult both Bible Dictionaries and Lexicons. Just by rolling my mouse over any word in the Bible, I have immediate access to lexical entries from Holladay (for Hebrew) or Gingrich (for Greek). BibleWorks speeds my translation process without using an English translation as a crutch. I can work directly from Hebrew to see the definitions of any word I don’t already know. If I come across a strange grammatical construction, I can instantly compare all my favorite translations to see how they handle the passage.
• I have used BibleWorks to learn both Hebrew and Greek vocabulary, and I plan to use it for Aramaic. The BibleWorks flashcards are the best I’ve seen anywhere. I can sort words alphabetically or by occurrence, work on words that occur in a particular passage, time myself, hear them pronounced, and print review lists to have in front of me in class. Best of all, BibleWorks keeps track of the words I know and don’t know, so that my review time focuses only on the words I have yet to learn.

The folks over at BibleWorks were kind enough to provide me with a free upgrade to their latest version in exchange for a detailed 3-part review in both of my blogging venues (both here and at the Wheaton blog: www.wheatonblog.wordpress.com). Like any new program, it takes some time to learn how to use, but BibleWorks 9 provides plenty of training videos and helpful instructions, as well as occasional seminars on site at schools around the country. I do not consider myself technologically gifted (blogging is about as savvy as I get), yet I couldn’t get along without BibleWorks.