In any discussion of Qohelet, one needs to quickly decide how the epilogue is to be understood because, in a way, this will inevitably drive the interpretation of the entire book. Because of the seemingly unorthodox character of Qohelet, many commentators have proposed the recognition of glosses that either contradict or soften his “unorthodoxy.” Murphy says that

the tendency today, however, is to recognize such a procedure [contradicting and sugar-coating glosses] as arbitrary; the “contradiction” may well lie in the interpreter’s understanding of the text, rather than with Qoheleth. Hence it seems better to take the book as all of one piece, despite the difficulties. This allows for tensions that would have existed within the author himself, and it attempts to explain the book as it stands (52).

I recently heard a preacher say that the end of Ecclesiastes is really all that matters. The implication is that most of the book contains little that will be of ultimate value. I have become quite intrigued by the difficulty that most of us have in reading Qohelet. But I have to admit that part of the problem is the interpretation of the book and that this interpretation, as Murphy says, “began with the editing of the book itself” (59). Read more »

Holmgren, Fredrik C. The Old Testament and the Significance of Jesus: Embrancing Change – Maintaining Christian Identity. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1999.

This book is interesting for many reasons. One of them is that the author tries to show the relationship between Christianity and Judaism, both of which share in common what Christians call the Old Testament. He tries to explain the various interpretive methods that Jews and Christians use to understand “their Bibles.” For example, he argues that Christians did not find Jesus by reading the OT but tried to explain their experience of Jesus through the Scriptures. This involved a depth/imaginative interpretation (which I think is his way of referring to midrash). For this reason it is hardly fair for Christians to criticize Jews for not seeing Jesus in their Bible. Of course, the same holds true for Jews who also engage in depth/imaginative interpretation for their own purposes. Jacob Neusner says:

Judaism inherits and makes the Hebrew Bible its own, just as does Christianity. But just as Christianity rereads the entire heritage of Ancient Israel in light of the “resurrection of Jesus Christ” so Judaism understands Hebrew Scriptures as only one part, the written one, of the one whole Torah of Moses, our rabbi” (124).

The author then talks about the meaning of “and it was fulfilled” in the NT. For the author the Greek word for “fulfill” can have the meaning of “corresponds to,” “is similar/analogous to,” or even “reminds one of” (42). Then he tackles the subject of Jesus and the sinaic covenant (in other words, how Christians came to see the law). He attempts to show that the attitude towards Torah in the NT is not unified and failure to understand the different emphases is due to a failure to pay attention to the context within which the subject of Torah is being treated. He then talks about the “New Covenant” in Jeremiah 31:31-34 both in the OT and NT. Read more »

Marshall, I. Howard. Beyond the Bible: Moving from Scripture to Theology. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academy, 2004.

This book is a collection of three lectures by I. Howard Marshall entitled “Evangelicals and Hermeneutics,” “The Development of Doctrine,” and “The Search for Biblical Principles.” These lectures are followed by two responses by Kevn J. Vanhoozer and Stanley E. Porter. Marshall’s third lecture is where he lays out his arguments of how one goes about finding biblical patterns and principles for going beyond previous Scripture. There are basically three: 1) Christian interpretation of the OT took place in light of the NT, 2) Jesus’ teaching was given “between the times,” and 3) we need to understand apostolic preaching in light of the whole revelation of the gospel. In Vanhoozer’s mind, this comes very close to William Webb’s “redemptive trajectory” approach. I think this is exactly where Howard is heading. Read more »

Ehrman, Bart D. Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why. HarperSanFrancisco, 2005.

Very interesting book about textual criticism. The first 5 chapters are very informative and give us a good background on the history of the copying of manuscripts and the different considerations that critics have to make. Another good thing about this book is that it asks lots of questions and makes you think about the implications of textual criticism.

Chapters 6 and 7 are geared towards using the methods laid out and tackle some of the disputed textual variants. However, I got the feeling that there was a clear agenda in the author’s motives due to his presentation and that becomes extremely clear in his conclusion where he basically says that we all engage in interpretation, which I agree, and that’s what the scribes did (and we certainly see evdence of that). But the scribes not only engaged in interpretation but maliciously changed the text.
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There are many contributions on the discussion of the Sabbath in this book. The biblical data is considered when looking at Jesus’ attitude towards the Sabbath in the four Gospels, Luke and Acts, the Pauline epistles and Hebrews. What we can safely say from these discussions is that there was not a transfer from the Sabbath to Sunday. As a matter of fact, there is doubt as to when Sunday as a day of worship actually began and, whenever it was, it was not a substitute for the Sabbath. Richard Bauckham walks us through the history of the Lord’s day, including the book of Revelation, from the post-apostolic period to the Reformation which comprises a big chunk of the book. A. T. Lincoln then tries to synthesize the results from the previous articles.

In a way, reading A. T. Lincoln will be enough for most people since they can always go back to the articles that interest them for further details. One thing that I noticed, especially in the more exegetical sections, is that the authors were responding to other scholars on the relationship between the Sabbath and Sunday. This made some sections a little tiresome to read although I see their necessity. Read more »

Sparks, Kenton L. God’s Words in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of Critical Biblical Scholarship. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academy, 2008.

There are some books that have the ability to drastically shape your worldview. This is one of them, at least for me. I found the book to be quite a challenging read and made me think about things I had never thought of before.

This book sort of reminded me of my experience reading Peter Enns’ book “Inspiration and Incarnation.” Whereas Enns focused primarily on the Old Testament, the scope of this book is a lot broader, and I felt that the author wrote as much as he wanted to get his points across without worrying about making it easier for a general audience. To me, that’s one of the strengths of the book. I liked Enns’ book quite a bit and, after all the controversy surrounding it, I have come to the conclusion that one of Enns’ book’s primary weaknesses is that it should have probably been double its size. Although Enns wrote the book for lay people at a popular level, it is quite apparent that many evangelicals are not ready for this type of book (given all the objections against it). You not only have to be nuanced when writing about the nature of Scripture, you also need to spend the time building your case from the ground up. You need to interact with other people and attempt to answer more questions than you ask even if they are tentative or preliminary. And I think Sparks’ book does a better job in that sense.
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I am finding Roland to be a quite thought-provoking writer. This has been especially true of his chapter on Job. He says that “while the Book of Job can comfortably be classified within wisdom literature, it remains wisdom of an unusual kind. Scholars often speak of a crisis of wisdom in connection with Job and Ecclesiastes” (34). I think that sort of captures part of what makes the book of Job so fascinating. As Roland said, “the entire work is a sophisticated literary achievement” (35).

I especially liked his provocative discussion on the prologue, so I would like to focus this post on it. I had studied about the satan (adversary) before and it was apparent to me that our view of “Satan” today tends to influence our understanding of the way the satan figure is used in the OT. For one thing, it is not clear that the same being is in view every time the satan is mentioned. Quite intriguing is the role of the satan in the prologue of Job. It raises several questions to which I think most Christians tend to give simplistic answers. Roland says “from a perverse point of view, one might even say that Satan is concerned about God’s true glory and that God not be deceived by these humans whom Satan knows so well!” (36) Read more »

This was pretty much a survey of the attitude of the Jews towards the Sabbath at the beginning of the Christian era. Rowland talks about the book of Jubilees, the Damascus Document, the Rabbinic tradition and Philo. What I am going to do is just include a few excerpts and let them speak for themselves.

Here are two excerpts from Jubilees that will give you a flavor of the author’s attitude towards the Sabbath.

And He finished all his work on the sixth day -all that is in the heavens and on the earth, and in the seas and in the abysses, and in the light and in the darkness, and in everything. And He gave us a great sign, the Sabbath day, that we should work six days, but keep Sabbath on the seventh day from all work. And all the angels of the presence, and all the angels of sanctification, these two great classes -He hath bidden us to keep the Sabbath with Him in heaven and on earth. And He said unto us: ‘Behold, I will separate unto Myself a people from among all the peoples, and these shall keep the Sabbath day, and I will sanctify them unto Myself as My people, and will bless them; as I have sanctified the Sabbath day and do sanctify (it) unto Myself, even so will I bless them, and they shall be My people and I will be their God. And I have chosen the seed of Jacob from amongst all that I have seen, and have written him down as My first-born son, and have sanctified him unto Myself for ever and ever; and I will teach them the Sabbath day, that they may keep Sabbath thereon from all work.’ And thus He created therein a sign in accordance with which they should keep Sabbath with us on the seventh day, to eat and to drink, and to bless Him who has created all things as He has blessed and sanctified unto Himself a peculiar people above all peoples, and that they should keep Sabbath together with us. And He caused His commands to ascend as a sweet savour acceptable before Him all the days . . . (Jubilees 2:16-22)

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Allert, Craig D. A High View of Scripture? The Authority of the Bible and the Formation of the New Testament Canon. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academy, 2007.

This book is about the formation of the New Testament canon. The author does a great job describing the Evangelical movement to set the context of the debates about the authority, inspiration, canonicity and inerrancy of the bible. He basically talks about how the bible came to be formed and looks at the merits of three different theories: 1) the NT was a spontaneous occurrence, 2) the NT was formed in the second century and 3) the NT was formed in the fourth century (p. 41). The differences in these theories can be attributed to the way historical evidence is interpreted (p. 87). The rest of the book analyzes these three theories and concludes that, while we can talk about Scriptures being recognized as authoritative in the first and second centuries, it is anachronistic to talk about a canon in this period. Even in the fourth century, despite the list of Athanasius in the West and Carthage in the East, there was still a lot of fluidity. Read more »

Harold H. P Dressler begins his discussion on the Sabbath by looking at the different theories about its origin. One of those theories is the Babylonian Origin which states that the Israelites learned about the concept of a seven-day week from the Canaanites who, in turn, learned it from the Babylonians. Other theories are the Lunar, Kenite, Socioeconomic and Calendar Origin. However, Dressler does not see why the Sabbath could not have originated with the Israelites specially since there is not a lot of evidence to refute it. Even the etymology of the word shabbat is not helpful since some scholars don’t see any interdependence of this word and the verb shabat (to cease, stop). Dressler summarizes: “since all available sources have failed to produce conclusive evidence for an alternative origin of the Sabbath, we suggest that the Sabbath originated with Israel and that with the Sabbath came the seven-day week” (24). Read more »