Blue Cord

The final day of the SBL began with me at the Pentateuch section. This was the second Pentateuch section that was held together with the Deuteronomistic History session. Although four presenters were scheduled, Mark Zvi Brettler and Albert De Pury were not able to attend.  So, we only heard two papers, but fortunately they were both very good.

Thomas B. Dozeman’s paper “The Golden Calf in the Enneateuch” was first.  The is probably the best paper I heard at the conference, mostly because he combined excellent scholarship and new interpretive approaches in a paper that was logically organized and easy to follow. He discussed the passages that discuss the Golden Calf: Exodus 32, Deuteronomy 9-10, and 1 Kings 12.  He argues that Exodus 32 is the latest of these and is engaged in innerbiblical exegesis on the other two texts.

This has implications for some of the work I am doing.  Obviously, Exodus 32, which is non-P, is pro-Levite and anti-Aaronid.  This would suggest that it was composed around the same time as texts such as Ezekiel 44 and the reworking of Numbers 16-18 by HS. It seems a part of a larger dialog taking place in the post-exilic period about the place of the Levites.

The second paper was “The Envisioning of the Land in the Priestly Material: Fulfilled Promise or Future Hope?” by Suzanne Boorer.  She argued that Priestly material does not continue into the book of Joshua, which leaves the promise of the land unfulfilled in the Priestly document. Although it was a good paper, I disagree with her. As I argued in a paper last year at the EABS, I think there is a good deal of P in Joshua 13-21. But I do agree with Boorer that at some point the promise of land was broken off when Joshua was removed in the process that created the Pentateuch out of the Hexateuch.

Some of the discussion surrounding the papers was helpful for my own thought process.  One idea that came to me is that the Priestly layers in Joshua might have been added by HS in the post-exilic period in order to encourage people to return to Judah/Yehud from Babylon. A focus on the land would make sense at that point.

After a quick run through the book sale, I headed to the Kansas City Barbecue place across from the Hyatt.  Some scenes from the movie Top Gun were filmed there, and being an aficionado of  barbecue I thought I should give it a try.  The barbecue was OK, but not quite up to the standards of North Carolina, although the sweet potato pie I had for desert was excellent.

I will be heading to the airport this afternoon.  I have a red-eye flight back tonight at 11:00 pm.

Next year in Jerusalem Boston!

Revised Common Lectionary, Year C, Proper 21 (series reading)

This reading is the final reading in the six week series on Jeremiah.  The first two verses sets the date of this oracle in 587 BCE, when Nebuchadnezzar (here called Nebuchadrezzar) is besieging Jerusalem. This is the second siege of Jerusalem.  When it is over, Jerusalem and its temple will lie in ruins and a good portion of the people of Judah will find themselves carried off to Babylon.

In the reading, Jeremiah is basically under house arrest at the order of the king due to previous prophecies. While he is there, his cousin Hanamel comes to him and offers to sell him a piece of property in their ancestral town of Anathoth.  Hanamel apparently has to sell the property, and according to the Torah it must be sold to someone in the family (Lev. 25:25). Jeremiah purchases the property for sixteen shekels of silver.

From an economic standpoint, this is a bad move.  When a foreign army is besieging your city, it is not a good time to be investing in real estate.  The entire area is about to belong to Babylon, and they are not particularly interested in who owned individual lots prior to their arrival.

But Jeremiah’s purchase of the field in Anathoth is an act of hope.  Jeremiah has prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem and the Babylonian exile, but he also knows that this is not the end of Israel.  God will bring the people back to the land again.  Jeremiah may never make use of the field, but his children and grand-children will.  Jeremiah not only believes that God will return the people, but is willing to bet money on it.

Revised Common Lectionary, Year C, Proper 19 (series reading)

I wanted to start the commentary on this week’s lectionary reading by apologizing for last week’s post on the Revised Common Lectionary. My brain was apparently on vacation, and I posted on the reading for Year A. Currently, we are in Year C, so that post won’t be useful for preachers until September 2008.

This week, I am back in the correct year. The OT reading for this current Sunday is Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28, which is fourth reading in a six week series on Jeremiah. The lectionary reading here is divided, with vv.13-21 left out. I don’t like it when lectionary committees split up the readings like this. It breaks the canonical shape of the passage. Apparently they think the additional nine verses are either unimportant or too long for a congregation to endure.

The larger block of material to which this reading belongs is 4:5-31, an oracle in which Jeremiah prophesies the coming of Babylon and the destruction of Jerusalem. Vv.11-12 announce that the coming destruction is not about cleansing the people from their sins. The time is past for that. The sin of Jerusalem is too severe. The punishment will be more severe as well.

The passage picks up again in v.22, which lays out the indictment against the people of Israel:

They are skilled at doing evil, but do not know how to do good.

The word skilled is a form of the word hokhmah, the word usually translated as wisdom. Wisdom, after all, is skill at living. Here, it is said that the people are skilled at doing evil, but do not even know how to do good.

This is followed by a description of the destruction in vv.23-28. The almost apocalyptic imagery in vv.23-26 pictures the earth a laid waste before the anger of the Lord. Yet even in the midst of the destruction, there is a small note of hope. God promises not to make a full end to the people (v.27b). What is a small glimmer of hope here in Jeremiah’s prophecies prior to 587 BCE will turn into a major theme of his message afterwards.

Revised Common Lectionary, Year C, Proper 12 (series reading)

The OT reading from the Revised Common Lectionary for this Sunday is Hosea 1:2-10. This is the theme reading, although the connection between this passage and the NT readings is not immediately clear (assuming there is one).

The Hosea is passage is well-known to most preachers. It would be hard to imagine a seminary class on the OT that didn’t deal with this text when covering Hosea. The danger with such familiar passages, of course, is that we allow our prior understanding of the text to take the place of doing the exegesis again. Because of that, I wanted to point out something that seems to me to be a surprising element in the text that a preacher might not have noticed in previous readings.

The first of these is the fact that Hosea names his first child Jezreel, because God is going to punish the Jehu Dynasty for the coup in Jezreel that brought them to power. This is an interesting statement, because the coup in Jezreel was originally done at the command of God through the prophet Elisha. A common way of dealing with this is by saying that Jehu went overboard when he killed everyone in the Omrid Dynasty, but this is not supported by the texts we have. In 2 Kings 9:7, Jehu is told specifically that he is to destroy the house of Ahab. It is hard to go overboard when you are told to destroy something, as destruction involves wiping something out completely.

It seems to me that the direction of theological reflection on this text seems to me to be the multiple voices that the Bible is presenting concerning Jehu’s coup. Hosea views the coup negatively, at least in the way it was carried out. The DtrH, on the other hand, views it positively. The question for preachers is how to hear both voices and allow each to have its say without privileging one text over the other. The canon does not set the texts at odds with each other, but neither does it resolve the tension. Preachers can draw on that tension to provide energy to their sermons.

I am a bit behind the curve on this one, but it doesn’t bother me much because my interests outside the OT are more Egyptological than Assyriological. Nevertheless, for those readers who have not heard about this, I wanted to offer a brief post on the Nabu-sharrussu-ukin tablet that has been making waves in the biblioblogosphere.  The news is reported in the London Times.

The story, in a rather simplified form, boils down to this. Michael Jursa, a researcher at the British Museum, has recently translated a Babylonian tablet from the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, the king who attacked Jerusalem in 597 and 587 BCE and deported the people of Judah to Babylon. The tablet is a receipt for a donation to the temple, presumably so Nabu-sharrusu-ukin could claim the deduction on his taxes.  (If you think filing taxes is hard now, just think of what it must have been like to fill out a 1040 form in clay.)  The tablet reads as follows:

(Regarding) 1.5 minas (0.75 kg) of gold, the property of Nabu-sharrussu-ukin, the chief eunuch, which he sent via Arad-Banitu the eunuch to [the temple] Esangila: Arad-Banitu has delivered [it] to Esangila. In the presence of Bel-usat, son of Alpaya, the royal bodyguard, [and of] Nadin, son of Marduk-zer-ibni. Month XI, day 18, year 10 [of] Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon.¹

The excitement comes from the fact that Jursa identifies Nabu-sharrussu-ukin, the chief eunuch, with Nebo-sarsekim, the chief eunuch in Jeremiah 39:3.  In that verse, Nebo-sarsekim is one of the officials at the head of Nebuchadnezzars army when it besieges Jerusalem.  The name appears in the form Nebo-sarsekim in the NIV but not the NRSV.  For the reason for this and a discussion of why the NIV is probably correct in this case, I direct you to Chris Heard’s excellent post.

It would be easy to over-state the implications of this, as it is always exciting to find a biblical figure mentioned in a non-biblical text from the same time period.  There are reasons to be cautious about this identification, and Chris Heard deals with those in the post mentioned above. 

But even if the identification of Nabu-sharrussu-ukin with Nebo-sarsekim is correct, it does not add much to our knowledge of the period.  All it suggests is that whoever wrote this section of Jeremiah knew the names of the Babylonian officials who attacked Jerusalem. The historical accuracy of names like this in document concerning the fall of Jerusalem is not surprising.  Those sections in Jeremiah and 2 Kings were written very close to the events they narrate.  While they certainly give their own interpretation of the events, the accuracy of their knowledge of names and places has not often been questioned.  It is when these documents are writing about events centuries before that most historians begin to wonder about their accuracy.

1. The translation presented here is taken from the London Telegraph.  Presumably the translation is that of Jursa, the researcher who made the initial reading. [back]