Many sermons have been preached on Isaiah 6, and I’ve heard my share of them, but I hadn’t made the connection I read about this evening between the sin of Uzziah and the vision of Isaiah as  I was working through Robert Cole, “Isaiah 6 in Its Context,” Southeastern Theological Review 2/2 (2011): 161-80.  Cole demonstrates that Isaiah’s vision in Isaiah 6 appears to be purposely contrasting with the narrative of Uzziah’s downfall in 2Chr 26:16-23.  For convenience, here are the two passages:

[16] But when he was strong, he grew proud, to his destruction. For he was unfaithful to the LORD his God and entered the temple of the LORD to burn incense on the altar of incense. [17] But Azariah the priest went in after him, with eighty priests of the LORD who were men of valor, [18] and they withstood King Uzziah and said to him, “It is not for you, Uzziah, to burn incense to the LORD, but for the priests, the sons of Aaron, who are consecrated to burn incense. Go out of the sanctuary, for you have done wrong, and it will bring you no honor from the LORD God.” [19] Then Uzziah was angry. Now he had a censer in his hand to burn incense, and when he became angry with the priests, leprosy broke out on his forehead in the presence of the priests in the house of the LORD, by the altar of incense. [20] And Azariah the chief priest and all the priests looked at him, and behold, he was leprous in his forehead! And they rushed him out quickly, and he himself hurried to go out, because the LORD had struck him. [21] And King Uzziah was a leper to the day of his death, and being a leper lived in a separate house, for he was excluded from the house of the LORD. And Jotham his son was over the king’s household, governing the people of the land.
[22] Now the rest of the acts of Uzziah, from first to last, Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz wrote. [23] And Uzziah slept with his fathers, and they buried him with his fathers in the burial field that belonged to the kings, for they said, “He is a leper.” And Jotham his son reigned in his place.
(2 Chronicles 26:16-23 ESV)

[6:1] In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. [2] Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. [3] And one called to another and said:
“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory!”
[4] And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. [5] And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”
[6] Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. [7] And he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”
(Isaiah 6:1-7 ESV)

Notice a number of connections:

1) Isaiah carefully dates his vision to “the year that King Uzziah died,” not the year that King Jotham began to reign (vs. co-reign).  ”Historical notice of that year served not simply chronological or historical purposes, but rather those illustrative, contrastive, and indeed theological.” (172)

2) Uzziah entered the temple to burn incense on the incense altar (26:16); the temple of Isaiah’s vision was filled with smoke (6:4, presumably from incense) and his lips were cleansed with a coal from the altar (6:6). (172)

3) The Lord in Isaiah’s vision is portrayed as both king (“throne”, v. 1; “King”, v. 5) and priest (“temple”, “robe”; the term for “robe” is used in 6 of its 11 appearances in the MT to reference the high priest’s robes — cf. Exod 28, 39).  ”His priestly dress and designation as ‘the king’ seated on a throne indicates he is the ultimate replacement of Uzziah” (173), for while Uzziah’s “pride led him to offer incense in the temple, a duty reserved exclusively for the priests,” the Lord (whom John identifies with Jesus) “is able to perform both sacerdotal and royal duties in direct contrast with Uzziah” (172).

4) Isaiah’s condemnations of Judah and Jerusalem preliminary to the vision of Isa 6, highlight the very sin of which Uzziah was guilty: “But when he was strong, he grew proud, to his destruction.” (2 Chr 26:16)  In Isaiah 2, Isaiah looks to the future and notes that

[11] The haughty looks of man shall be brought low,
and the lofty pride of men shall be humbled,
and the LORD alone will be exalted in that day.
[12] For the LORD of hosts has a day
against all that is proud and lofty,
against all that is lifted up—and it shall be brought low;
(Isaiah 2:11-12 ESV; also cf. Isa 2:15, 17; 3:16)

 

In 2006, Marcus Bockmuehl addressed several newer approaches to the NT — “final-form literary approaches” including text-linguistics, discourse analysis, narrative and genre criticism, and certain types of rhetorical criticism — from the perspective of the NT’s “implied readership”: what sort of reader does the NT presuppose?  I thought his comment thought-provoking:

[A]fter a quarter century of reflection on often genuine gains, it may now be permissible to ask if the study of the New Testament primarily as literature, narrative, or rhetoric will not inevitably turn out to be a somewhat impoverished exercise on at least two fronts.  First, judged by any broad-based esthetic standard, the  New Testament documents never invite, and rarely reward, interpretation from a primarily literary point of view.  They represent second-rate literature in often third-rate linguistic forms.  For good ancient literature one would surely go to Vergil or Euripides; for deliberate rhetoric, to Dio or Demosthenes.   Second, and more important, the texts in any case do not present themselves as concerned with either literature or rhetoric.  To view them primarily (rather than en passant) in this fashion is rather like using a stethoscope to examine a lightbulb: it can be done and does produce unfamiliar results, but it offers an analysis that does justice neither to the object nor to the instrument.

Markus Bockmuehl, Seeing the Word: Refocusing New Testament Study, Studies in Theological Interpretation (Baker, 2006), 48-49.

In the introduction to his The Religious Context of Early Christianity: A Guide to Graeco-Roman Religions (Fortress, 2003), Hans-Josef Klauck has a good summary paragraph of Greco-Roman religious practices (broadly speaking) referenced in Acts:

In Samaria, the first missionaries meet a man called Simon, whom Luke portrays as a magician (Acts 8:9) but whom the early Church fathers see as an ancestor of gnosis.  The Ethiopian whom Philip baptises (8:26-40) and the centurion Cornelius in Caesarea (10:1-48) were already open vis-a-vis Judaism.  Herod Agrippa puts on mannerisms that fit the cult of rulers (12:21f).  The proconsul Sergius Paulus on Cyprus has a Jewish magician and (perhaps) astrologer  at his court (13:4-12).  In Lystra, Paul and Barnabas barely escape from the plan of the priest of ‘Zeus outside the city’, viz. a ceremonial sacrifice of a bull to them (14:11-18).  In Philippi, Paul encounters a girl with a spirit of augury (16:16-18).  In Athens he is enraged at a city that is full of the images of idols, he holds discussions with Stoic and Epicurean philosophers, he discovers an altar to the ‘unknown God’, and comes suspiciously close to the Stoa in the words he uses in his sermon (17:16-34).  In Ephesus, where Jewish exorcists try their luck with the name of Jesus, the believers are filled with repentance and burn their books of sorcery, while the silversmiths present a united front in the name of the great goddess Artemis in their attack on Paul (19:11-40).  The inhabitants of Malta begin by looking on Paul as one cursed by the goddess of vengeance, and then acclaim him as a god (18:1-6).  We meet the language of the mystery cults — to cast our net a little wider — in 2 Cor 12:4, in Phil 4:12, in 2 Pet 1:16, and possibly in Col 2:18, since 2:8 also speaks in a polemical context of a philosophy.  Finally, the Pastoral Letters attack a ‘gnosis that is falsely given that name’ (1 Tim 6:20).

I did a good bit of research on the notion of “tradition” (paradosis) in the NT as part of my thesis a few years ago — fascinating topic.  (I’ve provided the pertinent appendix of my thesis as a pdf below.)  I concluded that when “tradition” is used in a positive sense in the epistles, it refers to the content of instruction that has been handed down authoritatively.  Specifically, the content of this new “tradition” (as opposed to the oral law of Judaism) seems to have consisted of certain interrelated categories of material, centered in the gospel: (1) a summary of the gospel message (cf. 1 Cor 15:1-8); (2) sayings and accounts of Jesus (cf. Luke 1:1-4); (3) teachings of Christian doctrine (cf. 2 Thess 2:15); (4) moral and ethical guidelines for believers (cf. Acts 16:4); (5) very probably, Jesus’ divine interpretation of OT Scripture, recorded in Luke-Acts as having been explained to his followers (cf. Luke 24:27, 44-48; Acts 1:3).

I’m currently reading through Paul Barnett’s The Birth of Christianity: The First Twenty Years (Eerdmans, 2005), and he makes a case for the apostolic tradition going very specifically back to Peter.  The point of this exercise is to establish that the christology of the very first believers was not primitive but quite “advanced” from the very beginning, as demonstrated by christological formulations in NT literature having roots in the very early church. As I understand them, here are at least some of the points of his argument, taken from his chapter “Earliest ‘Teaching’: The Influence of Peter” (86-94).

1) The NT literature clearly presents Peter as prominent and especially significant among the apostles. “According to Acts Peter is the first-named apostle and the only public spokesman in Jerusalem, and he later travels extensively as leader within the land of Israel (Acts 9:31-32). We have the same clear impression from Paul, who notes that Peter is the first witness of the resurrection (1 Cor 15:5) and the leader of the Jerusalem church (Gal 1:18), having his apostolate to the circumcised from God (Gal 2:7-8). This role of Peter post-Easter is consistent with his relationship with Jesus pre-Easter, where as confessor he is named as the ‘rock’ (Matt 16:18) on which the church is to be built, the one who is to feed Christ’s lambs (John 21:15-17).” (94)

2) Three “statements of Christ from the earliest period” of Christianity display striking similarities to Peter’s preaching in Acts (86-93). The three passages Barnett adduces are Acts 8:4-40 (Philip preaching to the Samaritans and the Ethiopian); 1 Cor 15:1-7 (a pre-Pauline tradition quoted by Paul); and Romans 1:1-4 (what appears to be another preformed teaching that Paul had “received” at a previous time. Barnett demonstrates parallels between Philip’s preaching and Paul’s traditional material, on the one hand, and Peter’s preaching in Acts on the other, leading him to conclude that “Peter must have been the prime formulator of the didactic outlines that were taken and applied by others, whether by Ananias, who instructed Paul, or by Philip, who instructed the Samaritans and the Ethiopian.” (94)

Appendix two, The Apostolic Tradition

Back in 1993, Martin Hengel, a well-published German scholar who focused on the New Testament and Early Judaism, gave a presidential address to the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas, which was translated and published in the Bulletin for Biblical Research in 1996 as “Tasks of New Testament Scholarship.”   Hengel was a master in his field, well worth reading, and this essay is no exception.  Some observations and quotes from this article:

Hengel rightly notes that the primary source material for NT studies is minuscule in relation to other fields of scholarly study.  This makes the immense amount of secondary literature even more striking.  The astronomical amount of writing that has accrued in the field has been oft-noted.  I remember first being apprised of it as I read Gordon Fee’s 1987 NICNT commentary on 1 Corinthians where he noted that “since 1953 [the year the previous NICNT 1 Corinthians commentary had been published] the literature on 1 Corinthians has burgeoned beyond the ability of any one person to master it–especially one whose primary calling is preaching and teaching.  A complete bibliography would include over 2,000 items” (x).  And that was in 1987!  Hengel noted in the present article that a catalog of literature on the Gospel of John from 1920-1965 ran to 3,120 items; a followup bibliography of works from 1966-1985 added 6,300 additional items; and Hengel estimated that “the total altogether since the Second World War may reach 15,000, and as it extends, it is shaped like a parabola.” (69)  And that was in 1993!

Corresponding with the volume of studies, specialization has increased.  Interestingly, there were no chairs of New Testament in educational institutions prior to 1898, when Adolf Schlatter assumed that position at Tübingen (although he was “also a dogmatician, ethicist, and Judaist” [69]).  In response to this increasing specialization, Hengel advocates a broader field of studies for the NT scholar, particularly the English-speaking one: the OT and Judaism, the ancient church and the Hellenistic-Roman world, patristics (and he would broaden the range of “patristics” to the third century), the history of the canon, gnostic texts, languages other than Greek (Latin, Semitic, modern languages) and secondary literature written in them, the history of exegesis, and more broadly, biblical theology, church history, and systematic theology.   He suggests that “every New Testament scholar should seek to find one or more areas of competence outside the New Testament.” (85)

As a passing mention, Hengel notes that Baur, Zahn, and Schlatter all argued for the priority of Matthew (as the ancient church did).  Hadn’t realized that.

Hengel believes that the increasing ecumenism in NT studies has been most helpful; indeed, he avers that “this increasingly close [ecumenical] collaboration has stimulated New Testament work [in the SNTS] during the last forty years more than anything else.” (82)  Interestingly, Hengel notes that “the confessional differences that had dominated previously have nearly completely disappeared in the methods and results of scriptural interpretation. . . . One can often no longer say on the basis of an author’s exegetical work whether he or she is Protestant or Catholic.” (82)

Ben Witherington, Is There a Doctor in the House? An Insider’s Story and Advice on Becoming a Bible Scholar (Zondervan, 2011)

A quick and enjoyable read.  Witherington gives a straightforward, candid look at the academic doctorate in biblical studies, offering succinct advice in the way of both encouragement and warning.  Below, I offer some notable quotes:

“If languages are not your gift, or at least not something you are prepared to work hard on, then abandon any hope at becoming a good biblical scholar, or a good graduate or post-graduate level teacher of the Bible. You cannot get around the language requirement.” (42)

“It is not enough to know the Bible well. Greater minds than ours have reflected on the Bible before we ever thought of doing so, and our reading of the Bible will only be enriched if we read the classic Christian works and so end up reading the Bible with the saints.” (72)

“The lifeblood of a good scholar is, of course, good researching, and then conveying what he or she has learned through good writing and giving good lectures based on the research.” (81)

“Without question a prerequisite to becoming a better researcher is being able to work with the three major research languages — English, French, and German. . . . Anyone wanting to be a good scholar has to deal with the primary and secondary sources in various languages. Period. Exclamation point!” (85)

“There are some acquired skills that can help make research less onerous and time consuming For example, there are shortcuts. You should start by reading through New Testament Abstracts and its English summaries of articles, monographs, and commentaries. You should look for seminal articles, monographs, and commentaries and read the footnotes carefully to see what sources these writers consulted. One should concentrate on the major NT journals everyone is expected to read: Novum Testamentum (NovT), New Testament Studies (NTS), Journal for Biblical Literature (JBL), Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft (ZNW), to name but four. You should start by reading those who have labored long in the Pauline vineyard or the Johannine vineyard and who are experts in these areas. They will survey the landscape for you and help you figure out quickly the most helpful resources.” (85)

“With the professionalization of ministry, including the ministry of teaching and of doing scholarly work on the Bible, one of the tendencies has been to judge a person’s fitness to teach purely on the basis of their knowledge or talent. Paul frankly would have found this tendency profoundly troubling. A person needs to grow up in the Christian faith, and indeed grow in faith, and as he or she does, that person is better able to rightly use the spiritual gifts and knowledge God has given. I have known Christian people of enormous intelligence and with good teaching gifts who nonetheless were not mature Christians, who were not growing in faith and in largeness of soul. Paul would have had some issues with that person being given free rein, without accountability, to teach God’s people as they want.” (98-99)

“As Jerome once put it: “’Defend the Bible? It needs about as much defense as a lion!’” (130)

“There is, in fact, no purely objective, value-free scholarship. It is just that some do a better job of admitting this and owning up to their presuppositions and inclinations. I dare say that those who are aware of their own commitments and take them into account and even correct them are those who really ought to be called critical scholars, whether they are persons of no apparent faith, agnostic, or of ardent faith A critical scholar is one who is capable of being self-critical and self-corrective, as well as being able to cast a discerning eye on the biblical text. A critical scholar is one who is honest about the text and about what they do and don’t understand about the text.” (131, original italics)

“One of the important things to say about graduate work, if you really are strongly led to be a teacher, is that you must learn all the biblical languages and take exegesis classes in both OT and NT to build a good foundation.” (146)

“. . . here is a list of twenty useful monographs for New Testamentlers that you might want to start with, and read them long before you get to the doctoral process:
Adolph Deissmann: Light from the Ancient East
Edwin Judge: The First Christians in the Roman World
Joachim Jeremias: The Parables of Jesus
E. P. Sanders: Paul and Palestinian Judaism
N. T. Wright: Resurrection and the Son of God
Richard Hays: The Faith of Jesus Christ
Ben Witherington: The Christology of Jesus
Anthony Thiselton: The Two Horizons
Gerd Theissen: The Historical Jesus 
Richard Bauckham: Jesus and the Eyewitnesses
Gordon Fee: God’s Empowering Presence
Raymond Brown: The Death of the Messiah
Craig Hill: Hebrews and Hellenists
Murray Harris: Jesus as God
Allen Culpepper: Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel
R. Tannehill: The Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts
Christopher Bryan: Render unto Caesar
Margaret Mitchell: The Rhetoric of Reconciliation
John Barclay: The Obedience of Faith
Ben Witherington: New Testament Rhetoric” (147-148)

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 24,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 9 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Are the Differing Narratives of Peter’s Denials Reconcilable?

More of a bookmark than anything, I’m posting a link here to Craig Blomberg’s recent post addressing the apparent contradictions among the Gospel accounts of Peter’s denial of Christ.

I read the first part of a recent volume by Eckhard J. Schnabel, Paul the Missionary: Realities, Strategies, and Methods (InterVarsity, 2008), and continue to hold Schnabel in high regard as to his scholarly acumen and helpful contributions to the field of NT backgrounds — see especially his Early Christian Mission.  A few notes from my reading (many more could be given!).

Since high school, I’ve understood there to be at least some wealthy people in the Corinthian church based on 1 Cor 1:26, and was confirmed in that understanding as I studied 1 Cor 11:17-34 in seminary.  Schnabel suggests a number of indicators (not all equally convincing, but collectively significant):

The range of problems in the young church that Paul discusses in his first letter to the Corinthians indicates that members of the local elite had become Christians as well: people who belong to the wise and powerful (1 Cor 1:26; 3:18), who expected orators to display brilliant rhetoric (1 Cor 2:1-5), who were able to initiate official legal proceedings (1 Cor 6:1-11), who visited prostitutes (1 Cor 6:12-18), who dined in the temples of the city (1 Cor 8:10), who covered their heads during the worship services of the church as signs of their superior social status, as priests did when they officiated in the temples (1 Cor 11:4), people who had time for meals in the afternoon (1 Cor 11:21-22). (105-106)

On the term “Christian”, I’ve noted that it was an appellation given by non-Jesus-followers: “were called Christians” (Acts 11:26).  Schnabel suggests more detail:

Luke concludes his brief report about Paul’s missionary work in Antioch with the note that ‘it was in Antioch that the disciples were first called ‘Christians’” (Acts 11:26).  The term Christianoi (Lat. Christiani) occurs in the New Testament only here and in Acts 26:28 on the lips of Herod Agrippa II during the legal proceedings involving the apostle Paul . . . and in 1 Peter 4:16 in the context of Christians in Asia Minor who face the possibility of having to give an account of their beliefs before the magistrates in the cities in which they lived. . . . The ending -iani suggests that this appellation originated outside of the church in Latin-speaking circles (a Greek-speaking context would suggest formulations such as Christeioi or Christikō.  Jews called the followers of Jesus usually Nasrayya or Nosrim (Gr Nazōraioi), that is “Nazarenes.”  Jews who did not acknowledge Jesus as Messiah would hardly have called the believers in Jesus “Followers of the Messiah” (Christeioi or Christianoi).  It is quite possible that the term Christianoi was an official designation coined by the Roman authorities in Antioch for the new religious group. (72-73)

It is important to realize that in Acts 13, when Paul and Barnabas are set apart for missionary work, that this is by no means Paul’s inaugural work in the way of “missions”.  After summarizing the likely chronology of Paul’s early Christian ministry, Schnabel concludes, “This means that when he left Antioch in A.D. 45 for Cyprus and Galatia, Paul had nearly fifteen years of missionary experience.  Neither Barnabas nor Paul were missionary novices: they were experienced missionaries who had seen many people come to faith in Jesus Christ, both Jews and Gentiles, who had seen churches established, who had taught new believers, and who had seen churches grow” (75, original emphasis).  Schnabel suggests that the scenario in Acts 13:1-3 doesn’t necessarily point to a “surprise” selection of Paul and Barnabas to missions work — that is, the church undergoing routine prayer and fasting and the Spirit suddenly indicating that Paul and Barnabas were to pack their bags — but Luke’s record is compatible with the church seeking divine confirmation of prior planning which involved two leading preachers and teachers of the church at Antioch engaging in missionary outreach in other locales.

Myron Houghton, Law and Grace (Regular Baptist Press, 2011).

I met with my NT professor Jon Pratt to try to gain a better understanding of the role of the law (if any) in the believer’s life.  He recommended this book.  I’m glad he did.  Houghton’s extensive theological studies under Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Methodist, Lutheran, and Dispensationalist teachers has put him in good stead to address the topic.  In this volume, he presents the Roman Catholic view of the law (mixes law and grace), the Reformed view of the law (presents the Law as a rule of life, Calvin’s “third use of the Law”), and finally his own Dispensationalist view of the law.  He spends a chapter or two on application of his theological work to several practical issues such as Sabbath-keeping, tongues-speaking, and stewardship.  I think it would be fair to characterize the book’s major thesis with this quote: “Believers today are not under the law, either as a way of salvation or as a rule of life” (157).

Houghton finds the typical “Law-Gospel” divide inadequate, in that it does not account for NT “demands” on the believer — the believer is not under the OT Law, and the Gospel does not make demands.  He therefore introduces the category of “Grace”, which includes (as an overarching category) “Gospel” and stands opposed to “Law”.  And Law-Grace is not to be understood as an OT-NT divide.  ”… law, gospel, and grace can be found throughout the Bible” (12).  ”Any passage that makes demands by causing the reader to be afraid of God, whether in the Old or New Testament, is to be considered law.  By the same token, any passage that offers God’s free forgiveness apart from demands, whether in the Old or New Testament, is to be considered gospel” (115).

Houghton demonstrates from the NT (especially Romans) that the believer is not under the OT law (Rom 6:14) in any sense or to any extent (not even the “moral law” of the Torah, or the summarizing Ten Commandments), but is dead to the law (Rom 7:4) and free from the law (Rom 8:2).  This is not to say that the believer is to live “lawlessly”, for grace makes demands on believers as we see in the NT (e.g., Tit. 2:11-14), and these are followed out of gratitude, not fear of God’s wrath.  To summarize Houghton’s summary (!) on the biblical teaching on Law and Grace, (1) The moral law should not be equated with the Ten Commandments; (2) Scripture indicates that the Mosaic Law was only in place for a certain period of time (Gal 3:18-19); (3) The function of the law is to make sin known to the unbeliever; (4) Law-giving is not a means of salvation or a means of living a godly life; (5) Though not under law, believers are under grace, which makes demands on believers.

I appreciate Houghton’s clarity of thought and writing.  I also appreciate his theological method: instead of proof-texting, he carefully works through the passage or two that he believes most directly and clearly addresses the issue at hand.