Blue Cord

No, this is not a post about Scriptural underwear.

I am pleased to announce that a small booklet I wrote for the Bible Briefs series is out today. The series, which is published by Forward Movement Publications in partnership with Virginia Theological Seminary, is intended to provide short introductions to books of the Bible. My contribution to the series is Leviticus. The booklet is available free of charge as a PDF file at the Virginia Theological Seminary website. I am also scheduled to write the “volume” on  Numbers.

Steve Cook of Biblische Ausbildung is the editor for the series. Here are his gracious comments on the new booklet:

Recent scholarship is revitalizing interest in priestly literature of the Hebrew Bible such as Leviticus, rediscovering it as life-giving tradition that informed and complimented the prophetic word. To read Dr. Wilson’s new introduction to Leviticus is to appreciate anew God’s gifts of holiness, ritual, and wholeness. Wilson’s booklet gives the church an easy entree into scholars’ new regard for the Bible’s priestly theologies.

Just think – in one small booklet that takes about ten minutes to read you will learn more than most people ever want to know about Leviticus.

Claude Mariottini has a remarkable post on the story of Rizpah from 2 Samuel 21:1-14. It is a Mother’s Day reflection unlike those you will probably hear in church this Sunday. I encourage you to check it out.

His post got me curious about a couple of issues, so I headed for my commentaries. I only found one commentary on Samuel. Walter Brueggemann’s commentary on Samuel in the ??????Interpretation series was resting among a legion of commentaries on Leviticus and Numbers.

Oddly enough, Brueggemann does not comment on Rizpah’s role in the story. He focuses exclusively on David and the question of whether to read David in a positive or negative light. A positive read would see David as doing what he must to save his kingdom from famine. A negative reading — which Brueggemann adopts — sees the private oracle as a fiction invented by David as an excuse to get rid of any remaining political rivals from the house of Saul.¹

But regardless of the interpretation of David’s role, I think Brueggemann misses an important element of the text in overlooking Rizpah. While David’s actions may be ambivalent,² Rizpah’s certainly are not. Her actions exhibit exemplary faithfulness. And they force (or shame) David into faithful action as well. In response to what she has done, David takes the bones of Saul and Jonathan and buries them in Zela. This is something that David should have done when they were killed at the beginning of his kingship, but only now does he do it at the end of his reign. Rizpah’s faithful actions bring benefit not only to her two sons and the five sons of Merab, but also to Saul and Jonathan.

1. Brueggemann, First and Second Samuel, 336–38. [back]
2. In the text, David’s actions are seen in a positive light. Although Brueggemann may be right in suspecting that the oracle is a historical invention, the text presents it as a reality. Brueggemann opts for a historical reading, while my interpretation for the purposes of this post is more literary. [back]

Scott Langston has an interesting article in this month’s SBL Forum entitled “What Makes the Bible Meaningful/Useful: The Ten Commandments and American Ideals.” Langston focuses on the reception history of the Ten Commandments and their use in politics during the Gilded Age of America.

Langston’s essay is well worth a read, particularly for those interested in how the Bible is used in politics. He notes that prior to the Civil War, the Ten Commandments were usually applied individually to address particular issues. In the Gilded Age, however, politicians began to refer to them as a whole as a text that expressed what it meant to be American. It is interesting to note that many of the uses of the Ten Commandments during that era were by progressives, which contrasts with the current situation where the Ten Commandments are more likely to be evoked by conservatives.

One of my favorite uses was by William Jennings Bryant, who accused the Republican’s of wanting to rewrite the Ten Commandments to say, “Thou shalt not steal on a small scale.” This sounds a lot like contemporary Republican rhetoric about revisionist history¹ and Democrats wanting to remove the Ten Commandments from public life.

Langston begins his essay by talking about recent controversies surrounding the use of the Ten Commandments, in particular their placement in the rotunda of the Alabama Judicial Building by Justice Roy Moore. Moore had done this to call America back to its moral foundation.

One of the arguments that is sometimes made by those who are advocating a return to biblical law is that the Ten Commandments are the basis for American law. While I would agree that American morality has traditionally been based in part on the Ten Commandments, the idea that the Ten Commandments underlie American law is demonstrably false. Nevertheless, it continues to be believed by a fidimplicitary portion of the voting public.

When I teach the Ten Commandments in my intro classes, I always have my students put this assertion to the test. We write the Ten Commandments on the board and then mark out the ones that are not American laws. Here is how it comes out:

1. No other Gods before Yahweh - Article I of the U.S. Constitution prohibits this from being an American law.
2. No idols - American law does not ban the making of graven images.
3. Do not take the Lord’s name in vain - The use of God’s name as profanity is not illegal, even on television. The FCC has ruled that while it may be offensive to some, it is not a violation of indecency laws.
4. Observe the Sabbath - We used to have Blue Laws on the books that prohibited some work on Sunday (if we pretend Sunday is the Sabbath for a second), but most of those laws are no longer in effect.
5. Honor your father and mother - There is no requirement in American law that we must honor our parents.
6. Do not murder - This is a part of American law.
7. Do not commit adultery - While not a federal law, some states do have laws against adultery. In Maryland, for instance, adultery is a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of $10. Such laws are rarely enforced.
8. Do not steal - This is a part of American law.
9. Do not bear false witness - This is a part of American law.
10. Do not covet - American law does not forbid this. If it did, most commercials would suddenly be illegal.

In other words, only the prohibitions against murder, theft, and perjury are unquestionably a part of American law. Of course, you would be hard pressed to find a legal system anywhere in the world that doesn’t include laws against these three things, even in societies that have never heard of the Ten Commandments. And even if we add ##3, 4, and 7 (which were the basis for laws in times past), that still means that only six out of ten of the Commandments are a part of American law.

Those are hardly grounds for claiming that the Ten Commandments are the basis for the U.S. legal system.

1. As if there were such a thing as a non-revisionist history. [back]

I’ve been watching Baseball Tonight on ESPN for the past couple of weeks. I often have it on the the background while doing something else. I noticed a few nights ago that when someone (often Ryan Howard of the Phillies) hits a home run, Steve Bertiaume will sometimes say “Fill thing horn with oil and go.” For those who don’t recognize the quote, it is what God says to Samuel in the KJV of 1 Samuel 16:1 when commanding him to anoint David as king over Israel.

I am not sure what this expression has to do with baseball. A quick search of the Internet reveals no answers except that this use of the phrase seems to be limited to Bertiaume. Anyone have a clue on this?

At the SBL meeting in 2006 I picked up Alice Hunt’s book Missing Priests: The Zadokites in Tradition and History. I wrote a review of it on this blog a couple of months later. While the book does make some good points, I ultimately did not agree with the conclusions. Hunt argues that there are no Zadokites until the Hasmonean period because she sees no stress on Zadokites prior to that, while I would say they were around in the preexilic period, but because of their position of power they did not need to justify their position.

This month’s Review of Biblical Literature has a review of Missing Priests by Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer. Tiemeyer has a slightly more positive view of the book, so if you are looking for a review with a different take on the book, check it out.