Dig Out Your Ears! Hebrews, the LXX and Psalm 40

Maer — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 20:37:31 +0000

In celebration of “International Septuagint Day” Tyler Williams presents us with some Reasons to Study the Septuagint (in Honour of International Septuagint Day). I had also recently listened to D. A Carson’s sermon/lecture at UCCF Staff Training Conference on Psalm 40 where he talks about his understanding of how the LXX translates verse 40:7 and how Hebrews uses this psalm. Then Michael Heiser blogs about Hebrews’ quotation of Psalm 40:6-8 in The Naked Bible. He links to an article by Karen Jobes The Function of Paronomasia in Hebrews 10:5-7 where she contends that the author was using paronomasia for rhetorical effect.

So I thought it would be interesting to talk about Hebrews’ use of Psalm 40:7 by looking at Carson’s exposition and raising some questions. The reason why I think Carson’s treatment is useful is because he is not trying to get into technical stuff but wants to make Psalm 40 understood as a whole. I also thought it was a worthwhile exercise to see how he dealt with Hebrews’ use of Psalm 40.

From Sabbath to Lord’s Day

Maer — Tue, 27 May 2008 14:01:31 +0000

I was not planning to write about the Sabbath as my next topic in hermeneutics, but I happened to come across a book in the library called “From Sabbath to Lord’s Day,” edited by D. A. Carson. Although I thought a book like this would be stimulating in many ways, my experience has been that, by the end of a book about the Sabbath, I am still left with this annoying feeling that I should have understood the big picture, but the questions are still there. But, after reading the short introduction by Carson, I thought “I gotta read this book!”

In the introduction, Carson listed some of the arguments and conclusions with which he and the writers disagreed:

“First, we are not persuaded that the New Testament unambiguously develops a “transfer theology,” according to which the Sabbath moves from the seventh day to the first day of the week. We are not persuaded that Sabbath keeping is presented in the Old Testament as the norm from the time of the creation onward. Nor are we persuade that the New Testament develops patterns of continuity and discontinuity on the basis of moral/civil/ceremonial distinctions. However useful and accurate such categories may be, it is anachronistic to think that any New Testament writer adopted them as the basis for his distinctions between the Old Testament and the gospel of Christ. We are also not persuaded that that Sunday observance arose only in the second century A. D. We think, however, that although Sunday worship arose in the New Testament times, it was not perceived as a Christian Sabbath. We disagree profoundly with historical reconstructions of the patristic period that read out from isolated and ambiguous expressions massive theological schemes that in reality developed only much later” (16).

Ancient Wisdom Today » D. A. Carson

Dig Out Your Ears! Hebrews, the LXX and Psalm 40

From Sabbath to Lord’s Day