Tag: Rewritten Bible

Research on (Re)writing Prophets in the Corinthian Correspondence

“Rewritten Bible” is a fascinating phenomenon in Second Temple literature.1 Prime examples are often found in texts like Pseudo-Philo’s Biblical Antiquities, Josephus’s Jewish Antiquities, the Genesis Apocryphon, and others.

Discussions of “rewritten Bible” often focus on generic characteristics. The aim is to define what common thread(s) hold together this kind of literature.

The Hermeneutics of Rewriting

Such research is good and profitable. But it certainly isn’t the only dimension of this literature that’s worth exploring.

It’s also quite valuable to contemplate the hermeneutical process that produced a given “rewriting” of a biblical text.

When this process is brought to the fore, there’s also a readier basis for comparing these texts and their hermeneutics with Paul’s letters and his interpretive work in them.

Rewriting Boasting

For example, in both 1 Cor 1:31 and 2 Cor 10:17 Paul quotes the same maxim: “let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.”2

In 1 Cor 1:31, the quotation is direct and completes Paul’s claim that his argument is “just as it is written.” In 2 Cor 10:17, the quotation is indirect, but the wording is identical to 1 Cor 1:31.3

Wording like this occurs in Jer 9:23 (MT, OG; ET: v. 24). It also occurs in 1 Kgdms 2:10.

(Generally speaking, 1 Kingdoms is the Greek version of 1 Samuel. But the language Paul quotes to the Corinthians occurs only in the Greek text, not in the Hebrew.)

Among “rewritten Bible” texts, Pseudo-Philo transforms 1 Kgdms 2:10 (LAB 50:2). The Targum of the Prophets reworks Jer 9:23 (MT, OG; ET: v. 24; Tg. Neb. Jer 9:22–23).

Comparing how these works interpret their biblical base texts helpfully illuminates how Paul interprets one or both of these same base texts. In particular, it highlights the Corinthian letters’ world-restructuring narrative of divine action in Messiah Jesus.

If you want to read further, drop your name and email in the form below, and I’ll send you a copy of the full article.

  1. Header image provided by Tanner Mardis. ↩

  2. Translations here are mine. ↩

  3. On direct and indirect quotations, see J. David Stark, Sacred Texts and Paradigmatic Revolutions: The Hermeneutical Worlds of the Qumran Sectarian Manuscripts and the Letter to the Romans, Jewish and Christian Texts in Contexts and Related Studies 16 (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013), 48. ↩

Daily Gleanings: RBL (17 June 2019)

Among recent releases from the Review of Biblical Literature:

  1. David Briones reviews Thomas Blanton IV’s A Spiritual Economy: Gift Exchange in the Letters of Paul of Tarsus (YUP, 2017). Briones offers some constructively critical comments but assesses Blanton’s contribution by saying, in part,

Much of what Blanton writes about the nature of the gift is insightful, and his interaction with the Roman context and secondary literature on Paul is impressive. One can also appreciate Blanton’s interdisciplinary approach to Paul and gift. It certainly is a bold and admirable attempt to “become all things to all people” in a single volume. It therefore makes sense that he would invite his readers “to exercise clemency in their judgments” because of the various fields he engages in a single volume .…

pp.3–4
  1. Marc Groenbech-Dam reviews Jesper Høgenhaven, Jesper Tang Nielsen, and Heike Omerzu, eds., Rewriting and Reception in and of the Bible (Mohr Siebeck, 2018).
    2. Groenbech-Dam’s summary assessment is that

Overall, this volume is well-crafted and an interesting read as it presents several creative essays on the nature of rewritten Bible and the reception of the Bible. The book is suited for biblical students/scholars and students/scholars of comparative literature, or anyone who wishes to see some of the fruits of the Univeristy of Copenhagen’s research on the gospels as rewritten Bible (Evangelierne som genskrevet Bibel), which was spearheaded by Mogens Müller and Jesper Tang Nielsen. The latter part of the book contains insightful essays on how one can appropriate Müller’s ideas into a different and sometimes more modern context, which makes it not only a fitting gift to Müller but also a contribution to biblical scholarship in general.

p.5

Bulletin for Biblical Research 22, no. 2

The latest issue of the Bulletin for Biblical Research arrived in yesterday’s mail and includes:

  • Beat Weber, “Toward a Theory of the Poetry of the Hebrew Bible: The Poetry of the Psalms as a Test Case”
  • Grant LeMarquand, “The Bible as Specimen, Talisman, and Dragoman in Africa: A Look at Some African Uses of the Psalms and 1 Corinthians 12–14”
  • Craig Keener, “Paul and Sedition: Pauline Apologetic in Acts”
  • David Stark, “Rewriting Prophets in the Corinthian Correspondence: A Window on Paul’s Hermeneutic”
  • Ayodeji Adewuya, “The Spiritual Powers of Ephesians 6:10–18 in the Light of African Pentecostal Spirituality”

Adewuya’s article is a revision of his engaging lecture at this past November’s Institute for Biblical Research meeting in San Francisco. My own essay discusses “rewritten Bible,” or “rewritten scripture,” particularly with a view toward using this literature as an aide in discussions of Pauline hermeneutics.