Blue Cord

The Blue Cord Bible Dictionary has hit the ground running.  Having sent out an e-mail earlier this week asking for contributors, I have been amazed at the response.  So far we have ten contributors signed up, including one in the Netherlands and two in the Philippines.   A number of people who were not recipients of my original mailing have volunteered, which means the notice is getting passed around.  This is exactly what I hoped would happen, but it is happening faster than I had hoped.

Entries are already being written, and I am learning some new things myself.  One contributor has put up articles on intertextuality and the ideas of Mikhail Bakhtin, neither of which I knew anything about.  I am enjoying getting to read articles on topics that I have not explored before.

If you would like to contribute to the Blue Cord Bible Dictionary, I encourage you to sign up.  The more people we have working on this the quicker it will become a resource for students.  If you want to volunteer, send me an e-mail with the password you would like, and I will add you to the list of contributors.

I just got word that my new book, Conversations with Scripture: The Law, has been published. This is the second in the Anglican Association of Biblical Scholars Series that is aimed at helping people in the churches understand the Bible. Since the legal material in the Pentateuch is not an area that many lay people are familiar with, I am hoping this will stimulate some interest in that subject. As I note in the introduction, I have always been drawn to areas of the Bible that Christians do not read much, and the laws of the Torah definitely fall in this category.

On biblicalia, Kevin Edgecomb has responded to my criticisms of his criticism of my criticism of his post. So of course I wanted to respond.

He begins his post by clarifying that he does not deny that the Pentateuch has undergone development. What he doubts, however, is our ability to trace that development and to say anything significant about the documents that lie behind the Pentateuch. He says he agrees with Stephen Kaufman that source criticsm is a “consummately fruitless endeavor.” It is interesting to note, however, that he does not quote all of Kaufman’s quote. What Kaufman said is that “the attempt to identify and reconstruct those sources in other than their broadest outlines is a consummately fruitless endeavor.” With this, I would agree. But it is possible to say something about them in outline. We can come up with dates (relative, if not absolute) for the sources. And this allows us to say something about the time in which they were written. No one in modern source criticism thinks that we are reconstructing the original documents exactly as they existed. That would be a fruitless endeavor. But we have not been doing that since the early 20th century. Many do not even think that P was a source, but instead was a supplement to JE. In this, Kevin seems once again to be arguing with source criticism as it was practiced 80 years ago.

Kevin also takes issue with my saying that positing different hands at work in the text is the simplest way to explain the data found in the documents we have. Instead, he says,

[T]he simplest answer is this: in this literary work, for some reason the author has chosen to use simply one or the other or both terms. Applying a modern narrative logic to an ancient work is anachronistic.

This may be the case or it may not. If he thinks he can find a literary reason for why the author changes usage of the divine name, then I would be happy to see it. I have seen some arguments along these lines, and none of them are persuasive. Most of them involve far more special pleading than the idea of multiple hands in the text.

Edgecomb again and again accuses source criticsm of applying “modern narrative logic to ancient texts. I think source critcism easily avoids this criticism. There are numerous cases where there are things in the text that we consider problems, but which can easily be accounted for by understanding the difference between our ideas of texts and theirs. But we cannot ascribe every problem in the text to differences in narrative understanding. Exodus 6 has the narrator saying that God was not known to the patriarchs as Yahweh, while Genesis shows the patriarchs knowing the name of God. Unless we posit that ancient narrators were so different that they did not mind having passages in their text that completely contradicted what they say in other places, these present a problem. Unless Kevin wants to suggest that ancient authors did not care about such contraditions, he needs to explain this difference. It cannot be explained on a literary level, so source criticism is the simplest answer. Contradiction is not an invention of modern logic.

Kevin then dismisses my discussion of the difference in theology between P and D by stating that they were meant for different time periods (the wilderness and land respectively). But this is hardly the case. P is intended to be used in the land just as much as D is. The sacrifices in Leviticus were not just used in the wilderness but were the sacrifices for the land as well. This literary explanation does not cut it, so Kevin still needs to explain the difference in theology.

Repeatedly, Edgecomb asserts that if you look for something in the text, you will find it. He accuses source critics of merely imagining these things in the text. But he ignoring my argument. You cannot divide the texts and have the characteristics neatly divide into groups. One group of texts having characteristics A-C while another having D-F must be explained. Accusing us of imagining these characteristics is an attack on the scholar, not on his theory.

Kevin also accuses us of having a theory and then seeking data to back it up. This makes me wonder how many source criticial books he has read. It was the data that led scholars to seek a theory to explain these difference, not the other way around. I do more than dabble in source criticism, as Kevin says. I work at it all the time. And if the data were imaginary, I would not be able to find it. Until Kevin actually explains this data in the particular (instead of dismissing it in the abstract), his criticisms do no damage to source criticism.

Edgecomb’s theory is reading is this:

What I suggest (indeed, what I practice!) is a reading of these ancient texts that assumes them to be largely the product of one hand each, usually, even if that hand is just a final editor.

If he wishes, he is welcome to read the text that way. I have no problem with that. But when doing such a reading he has the choice of either ignoring the seams in the text (which is not a reading at all) or explaining them. Even positing an editor, as he does here, is a tacit admission of sources behind the text. An editor has to edit something to turn it into the final text. And that something is a source. If he does not think that we can say something about those sources, he will need to explain why different scholars are able to reproduce the same results by looking at the data in the text. We know fairly well what texts are P and which are non-P. Unless he wants to claim that scholars are sheep who merely follow what people before them said, he needs to explain this consensus.

Kevin ends by saying,

Thirdly, however, (and critics have nothing to say on this) one will, if listening with the proper hearing and reading with the proper sight, read or hear the voice of the timeless, cultureless, eternal God. In the end, that’s what most people are reading this book for, and wrangling over sources, whether they have been or can be defined, is irrelevant to them in their purpose for reading. It has been and always will be.

That is why I read the Bible as well, and source criticism has enhanced my understanding of that text. Whether or not most people find this irrelevant is irrelevant. When I have taught adult learners from churches, most of them have been excited the learn source criticism and found that it helped them understand some of the aspects of the text that had confused them. In addition, most people find textual criticism irrelevant as well, but I suspect Kevin will continue to practice it, even if he continues to pretend that textual critical data are somehow more objective than source critical data.

Yesterday, I sent out a notice to several friends announcing that the Blue Cord Bible Dictionary was now up and running and asking them to join as contributors. The response has gone far beyond what I expected. Apparently, some people passed the notice on to other biblical scholars they knew (as I had asked them to do), and several people who were not on the original list have already contacted me to join. It looks like there is a lot of interest in this out there.

Below is the letter I sent out. I also want to announce the call for contributors here, and since I don’t feel like retyping it, I will just cut and paste what I already wrote. Here is the letter:

Recently, I decided to acquire my own web space and domain name. So, www.bluecord.org was born. Heady with the thought of all the possible things I could do with the space, I began to think about how I could use this web site. The main reason I bought it was to host a biblioblog. For those who don’t know about biblioblogs, these are blogs devoted to the academic study of the Bible. Unlike most blogs, these actually have something useful to say. Mine is found at bluecord.org/biblioblog, and you can find a good list of other ones at www.biblioblogs.com.

But this was hardly going to take up my 15 gigabytes of disk space, so I set about trying to find something else to do with all that room. One of the things that guided my search was the frustration I have had with undergraduate students doing biblical research on the web. As we all know, the web has a lot about the Bible, but only a small percentage of it is worthwhile. Since beginning students have a limited ability to separate the wheat from the chaff, they often came back with bad research. I hate to limit them to library resources, especially since here in Lithuania our library is limited, but what else could I do?

What else I could do is the purpose of this letter. I decided to set up an on-line Bible Dictionary that would provide students and other people who are interested in the Bible with reliable information that would aid their study. This way, I could allow them to use the Internet but know that they were getting reliable information. So, I have installed a wiki. For those who don’t know, a wiki is a web site where anyone can edit the content of the site, creating new pages and links easily (the name comes from the Hawaiian word wiki wiki, which means ‘quick’). But unlike regular wikis, this one will be limited to authors that have at least a master’s degree in biblical studies or a related field (e.g., archaeology, classics, Egyptology, Assyriology).

This is where you come in. I would like to invite you to become a contributor to this on-line Bible Dictionary. If you join, this can be a project to which you can contribute at your own speed. You do not have to write complete articles. If you write a paragraph on one page, others can come in and write more. You can write as much or as little as you wish. Obviously, this is a volunteer project, so you will have no deadlines or quotas. You may write on topics you like, when you want. You can go months without writing or contribute daily. If you have a particular topic you would like to cover in class, you can write it up here so students can read more. And you may find that someone else has already written on it, which means you have a site to which you can send your own students for information.

The beauty of such a web site is that not only will it provide our students with reliable information, but it will always be up-to-date. For example, when new discoveries such as the Gospel of Judas are published, we can have a page up the next day. And, because of the collaborative nature, a diversity of points of view will be available for our students.

If you would like to check out the beginnings of the project (I have only worked on framework issues without writing any articles yet), you may go to www.bluecord.org/biblewiki. If you decide to become a contributor, please send me your name and complete educational history, and I will issue you a user name and password. The complete educational history is not so I can check whether you actually have the credentials (I will take your word for it), but so I can add your name and educational background to the contributors pages, so that users will see the high quality of scholars we have contributing to this work.

Another aspect of the web page is the front end, found at bluecord.org. Of interest to you here would be the resources section. I intend this to be a place where scholars can upload syllabi, Power Point presentations, handouts, and other information they would like to share. This will be of use to us as teachers as well as to anyone who comes to the site to do Bible study.

I hope you will give the proposal careful consideration. I look forward to hearing from many of you and to working with you on this project. Please feel free to pass this e-mail on to anyone you think might be interested in the project. The more scholars who contribute the quicker this will become a meaningful resource for our students.

Having taken some time out to get the blog carnival in order, I wanted to return to the critiques raised by Kevin Edgecomb.¹ I also note that Joe Cathey dislikes source criticism, and I would love to have him jump in on the conversation as well.

Kevin’s first critique is that source criticism was problematic in its beginnings and that the excesses of the early 20th century we not an aberration but the logical conclusion of the method. This is hardly the case, but even if it were it would not count as evidence against source criticism. Astronomy began with the ancients thinking that the earth was at the center of the universe, but that mistake hardly means that we should ignore all modern astronomy. Even Kevin’s particular field of textual criticism was guilty of problems in its early days. Witness the attempts to reconstruct “the original manuscripts.” While we would reject such an approach these days, that does not mean we should give up on textual criticism. He notes that people have backed off from dividing verses into small chunks, but it is quite a jump from saying that to saying that sources are unknowable.

Kevin then turns to Assyrian royal inscriptions, pointing out that those reliefs often switch between the proper name of the god and the title “my lord.” This is of course true. But it has nothing to do with source criticism.² In the Assyrian inscriptions, we simply have an author choosing to use one at one time and one at another. The biblical authors also do this. But if an Assyrian relief used only Assur in the first part of the inscription and “my lord” in the second, we would immediately wonder why. In source criticism, we are not simply looking at the different names in one passage. Instead, we are asking why in one chapter the divine name appears exclusively and in the next it is not used at all. The simplest answer is that we are looking at the work of two different hands.

His next criticism is that finding different theologies in the text is subjective, and that some of the theologies were around in many different periods in the ancient Near East. He says he assumes I am talking about Deuteronomy and its centralization. In actuality, I had in mind the difference between the theologies of the P and H tradents. But since he mentioned Deuteronomy, I will address that. He points to centralization in Deuteronomy and notes that most other civilizations in the ANE also had centralized worship. This is true, but it is hardly the point. The specific theology of Deuteronomy is of importance not because it did or did not reflect Babylonian practices, but because of its contrast with the theology of P. D fosters centralization. P does not. D allowed the non-sacrificial killing of animals in villages, while P required all slaughter to be ritual. D says that sacrifices may only be offered in Jerusalem, while P allows for then throughout Israel. This difference in theology needs to be explained, and division of these passages into sources is the most likely explanation.

Kevin also makes a rather simplistic assumption that source critics divide sources based on one criterium. He says that if you divide texts this way, then you automatically get texts with only the particular characteristic on which you are basing your division. But source critics do not divide on the basis of one source. Instead, multiple criteria are employed. And if you notice that the Bible has texts with characteristics A-F, it is an indication of sources if all the texts with characteristic A also have B and C but not D-F, while all of the texts with characteristic D also have E and F but not A-C. This could not be simply a coincidence.

One of the dichotomies that Kevin proposes is that textual criticism is based on data while source criticism is based on theory. He says, “Data speaks [sic]. Theory only suggests.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Data do not speak. They only lie there, waiting to be interpreted. And the interpretation of data is done by theories. A theory explains data. Without the theory, data is meaningless. ³

Nor is his field of textual criticism any less dependent on theory. Whenever one encounters textual varients, one seeks to explain the varients and determine which one is prior. Your explanation is a theory. For instance, the idea that the LXX of Jeremiah is based on a shorter Hebrew text instead of being an abbreviation of the MT is a theory. It happens to be a good theory, but a theory nontheless. Just because something is a theory does not make it unconnected with data. And source critics work just as closely with data as textual critics do. Kevin says that source criticism is built on imagination instead of data, which makes me wonder what studies of source criticism he has read. I encourage him to take a look at Milgrom’s second volume of his Leviticus commentary. There he will find source critical data beyond his wildest dreams.
In one of his follow-up comments, Kevin says,

“It’s ludicrous. It is not logical, when the text is better explained another way, and I’ll keep saying it until it sinks into all the bright and learning heads such as your own!”

He can keep saying it all he wants, but that will not make it so. The simplistic criticisms he has leveled against source criticism simply do not make a dent in it. Keep in mind that I am not against criticism of the Documentary Hypothesis. But not all criticism of it is valid. Before we start throwing out the theories of our academic ancestors, we better make sure our reasons for doing so are valid.

As a final note, I want to say that I would love to hear how Kevin Edgecomb (and Joe Cathey) explain the seams and uneveness that is found within the Pentateuch. If they reject source criticism, how do they account for this data?

1. We could do Old Kevin and Young Kevin, but since I am only two years younger I don’t think he would appreciate that. [back]
2. Assyrian inscriptions and biblical texts are not truly comparable in this way, as the inscriptions were written at one time while the biblical text came into existence over centuries. [back]
3. I am reminded of the joke that there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics. [back]