Tag: Christology

Daily Gleanings: Paul in RBL (2 July 2019)

Reading time: 2 minutes

In the Review of Biblical Literature, Nicholas Elder reviews Channing Crisler’s Reading Romans as Lament: Paul’s Use of Old Testament Lament in His Most Famous Letter (Pickwick, 2016). According to Elder,

The monograph’s central argument is that Paul is thoroughly indebted to the language and logic of Old Testament/Hebrew Bible lament in his letter to the Romans. Crisler employs both biblical scholarship on lament in the Hebrew Bible and Richard B. Hays’s well-known criteria for detecting quotations, allusions, and echoes of antecedent biblical texts in Paul’s writings. [Crisler’s] thesis that “the experience of OT lamenters is echoed in Romans, and those echoes largely shape the way Paul discusses suffering in the letter.”
…
More explanation on the choice of texts and their relationship to each other and Romans as a whole would improve the monograph. Nonetheless, Reading Romans as Lament contributes to the ongoing discussion of Paul’s metonymic recall not only of Jewish Scriptures but also the lament genre. (1, 4)

For the balance of Elder’s review, see RBL‘s website.

In the Review of Biblical Literature, Chris Kugler reviews David Capes’s Divine Christ: Paul, the Lord Jesus, and the Scriptures of Israel (Baker, 2018). According to Kugler, the book

reprises much of [Capes’s] foundational work, Old Testament Yahweh Texts in Paul’s Christology (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2017 [1992]), and argues that Paul’s appropriation of “YHWH texts” with reference to Jesus represents a remarkable development in earliest Christianity and can only indicate that Paul regarded Jesus as fully divine. (1)

Kugler citiques Capes’s sketch of Second Temple Jewish monotheism (3) but also acknowledges the debt that discussions of early high Christology owe to Capes’s work (1).

For the balance of Kugler’s review, see RBL‘s website.

Hurtado on (Not) Yahweh’s Return to Zion

Reading time: < 1 minutesLarry Hurtado has kindly made available the pre-publication version of his essay “YHWH’s Return to Zion: A New Catalyst for Earliest High Christology?” in the recent God and the Faithfulness of Paul: A Critical Examination of the Pauline Theology of N. T. Wright, edited by Christoph Heilig, Thomas Hewitt, and Michael Bird (WUNT 2/413; Mohr Siebeck, 2016).

Biblical Theology Bulletin 43, no. 2

Reading time: < 1 minutes

Image:BTB vol 40 no 1.gif
Image via Wikipedia

The next issue of the Biblical Theology Bulletin includes:

  • Richard E. DeMaris, “Sacrifice, an Ancient Mediterranean Ritual”
  • James F. McGrath, “On Hearing (Rather Than Reading) Intertextual Echoes: Christology and Monotheistic Scriptures in an Oral Context”
  • Madison N. Pierce, “War: Fighting the Enemies of God, not Man”
  • John J. Pilch, “Exploring Periods of Psychological Development in MENA (Middle East North Africa) Societies: A Tentative Model”

My Glory

Reading time: 4 minutes

David between Wisdom and Prophecy
David between Wisdom and Prophecy (Paris Psalter [BnF MS Grec 139], folio 7v; photo credit: Wikipedia)
Psalm 7 is an individual lament,1 and the superscript situates it as “concerning the words of Cush, the Benjaminite” (Ps 7:1 HB; על־דברי־כושׁ בן־ימיני‎).2 This situation is rather difficult to pinpoint precisely in the biblical narratives of David’s life.3 The OG reading Χουσί is reflected in Augustine’s text and leads him to relate Ps 7 to 2 Sam 15:32–37.4 Yet, this rendering seems as though it may suggest a different Vorlage than is available in the MT.5

In connection with the Ps 7’s individual perspective and taking ל roughly as “by” (Ps 7:1 HB), the psalm is ostensibly “by David.” Within Ps 7’s larger lament, vv. 3–5, 8 (Eng) particularly profess David’s innocence concerning the accusations (cf. דברים; Ps 7:1 HB) leveled against him.6 As a unit, the contribution that vv. 3–5 (Eng) makes toward this profession entails some textual difficulties.7 To demonstrate his innocence, however, one of the appeals David makes is that, if his profession should prove false, his “glory” should be set in the dust (Ps 7:5 HB; כבודי לעפר ישׁכן‎; 7:6 Eng).

Within the life of David, the setting of David’s glory “in the dust” doubtless refers to the denigration of his “personal and official dignity.”8 Even so, Yahweh’s own dignity is, to some extent, at stake in David’s experience of oppression despite his innocence.9 Yahweh is righteous, and in his righteousness, he saves the upright (Ps 7:11–12, 18 HB; 7:10–11, 17 Eng). Indeed, in delivering David, Yahweh himself becomes David’s glory (Ps 3:4 HB; 3:3 Eng),10 and failing to deliver David would lay in the dust also Yahweh’s promise to David of a perpetual kingdom (e.g., 2 Sam 7:16). Yet, in faithfulness to his servant, Yahweh is he who lifts David’s head (Ps 3:4 HB; מרים ראשׁי‎; 3:3 Eng). In so doing, he has raised David’s countenance to be sure, but still more has he raised from the dust he who is both David’s son and the perpetual head of the house from which he comes (e.g., Matt 22:41–46; Mark 12:35–37; Luke 20:41–44; Acts 2:22–36).

1. Jeffrey H. Tigay, “Psalm 7:5 and Ancient Near Eastern Treaties,” JBL 89, no. 2 (1970): 178; see also David G. Firth and Philip Johnston, Interpreting the Psalms: Issues and Approaches (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2005), 295–300, for a survey of form-critical categorizations for the traditional Psalter.

2. The Psalms targum reads this portion of the superscript as “concerning the slaughter of Saul, the son of Kish from the tribe of Benjamin” (Tg. Ket. Ps 7:1; על תברא דשאול בר קיש דמן שבט בנימן).

3. Franz Delitzsch, Psalms (Commentary on the Old Testament 5; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1866; repr., Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2006), 84; see also S. E. Gillingham, “The Messiah in the Psalms: A Question of Reception History and the Psalter,” in King and Messiah in Israel and the Ancient Near East (ed. John Day; Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement 270; Sheffield: Sheffield, 1998), 226–27.

4. Augustine, Enarrat. Ps., 7.1 (NPNF 1, 8:20).

5. Cf. Delitzsch, Psalms, 84.

6. Tigay, “Psalm 7:5,” 178.

7. For a discussion, see Jacob Leveen, “Textual Problems of Psalm 7,” VT 16, no. 4 (1966): 440; Tigay, “Psalm 7:5.”

8. Delitzsch, Psalms, 86.

9. Augustine, Enarrat. Ps., 7.4 (NPNF 1, 8:21–22).

10. On reading the Psalter as a unified collection, see Jamie A. Grant, The King as Exemplar: The Function of Deuteronomy’s Kingship Law in the Shaping of the Book of Psalms (Academica Biblica; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2004), 11–19.