Chapter 5: Textual Strategies in the Tanak (Pt 1)

This month's discussion of The Meaning of the Pentateuch is going to be split up into three separate discussions. I did this because 1) the chapter is long; and 2) the chapter is dense. So, if you are following along, we will discuss pages 221-243 in this discussion, followed by pages 243-265 and 265-282 later on in the month.

The previous four chapters were largely focused on what Sailhamer called “text as revelation.” There, he broadly described his hermeneutical approach, how he comes up with a “big idea” for a text, and issues dealing with authorial intent and the nature of Old Testament theology. Starting here, Sailhamer is now going to turn specifically to the Pentateuch: chapter five on textual strategies within the Pentateuch, chapter six on the composition of the Pentateuch, and chapter seven on how the legal codes within the Pentateuch have been composed and structured.

For those of you familiar with Sailhamer's previous works (especially his articles), much of this first discussion is based on his article entitled, "The Messiah and the Hebrew Bible." It's from JETS in 2000, and was his presidential address at ETS that year. Personally, that article changed my life (and I'm not being cliche!). It was through that article that I began to appreciate the Hebrew Bible for what it said, rather than what the NT said about it. Too often our exegesis of the New Testament, especially in those places where it quotes or alludes to the Old Testament, is shallow. When we use the OT to shed light on NT passages, some big theological links begin to take place. For instance, I am currently teaching through Isaiah for an adult Bible study, and we recently discussed Isaiah 40-55. As we considered Isaiah 40, and especially those parts of that chapter quoted in all four Gospels, I wanted the class to consider why the New Testament authors decided to quote that text in relationship to John the Baptist’s ministry. What we found intriguing was Isaiah 40’s focus on the return from exile. That chapter offers comfort to Israel by telling it that its exile is over and that a way should be prepared for them to return to Jerusalem and behold the glory of the Lord. In quoting this text in relationship to John, the NT authors are not only saying that the Messiah is Yhwh (which is a pretty bold statement in itself!), but that the coming of the Messiah is linked with the end of the exile. That is, it was not enough for the people to simply return to the land, the end of the exile was bigger than that. Instead, the end of the exile meant that the people of Israel would have a change of heart initiated by the arrival of the Messiah. Without this Isaianic background, NT exegesis of the passage would miss the main thrust of the quotation, and runs the risk of misunderstanding the mission and theological role Jesus plays for the early Christian community.

A Prophetic Echo

Much of Sailhamer’s discussion in this first part of the chapter is compared and contrasted with the views of the eighteenth century theologian, Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg. He first uses Hengstenberg to discuss the idea of an “echo” in divine revelation, and then later to contrastively put forward his own views on the relationship between the Messiah and the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament).

Hengstenberg’s idea of an “echo” in divine revelation essentially boils down to the idea that the prophets in Israel took the liberty to borrow earlier prophetic words (e.g. Isaiah borrowing from Moses), and then giving the words back with interpretations attached to them. That is, by “weaving their interpretations and ideas into the verbal fabric of those texts” (222). Thus, the Pentateuch, in its canonical form, ends up being the words of Moses plus the prophet’s inspired commentary.

For Sailhamer, this is similar, but not quite the same as Walter Kaiser’s analogy of antecedent Scripture. Kaiser’s analogy essentially says that later biblical texts build off of the message of earlier texts, chronologically-speaking. A later biblical book was able to offer commentary on earlier books, even if the prophetic author had a passive role to play. For Hengstenberg, the role of the prophetic author was much more active, and served in an almost conversational role with earlier texts. Importantly, the idea of original author is maintained with Hengstenberg, since the meaning of the texts remain the same, even though there may be a deepening and broadening of the message.

In the end, Hengstenberg’s prophetic echo relates very similarly to Sailhamer’s method of interbiblical interpretation.

The Messiah and the Old Testament

In this section of the book, Sailhamer contends that much of the current trends in evangelical understanding of messianic prophecy can be summarized by a discussion of the comparison and contrast of Hengstenberg and another eighteenth-century theologian, Johann von Hoffman.

Hengstenberg believed that God’s work in the world was accomplished by specific divine interventions. For him, these divine interventions were historical (since they happened), but were not part of history. This is because God’s acts in history have a rather short-range effect, much like a stone which is thrown into a river. It may make a splash, but in a few short yards the effects disappear and the river continues to flow just as it always has. Like the stone, God’s acts in history are certainly present, but are lost outside of the biblical history recorded in Scripture. Biblical history, then, is a record of the diverse instances of those interventions.

For Hengstenberger, the prophets were given visions in a similar way that God acted in history. Their messianic visions were rather short-lived, and would fade out of their minds quickly. The prophetic books represent the prophet’s best attempt to record these visions before they would disappear from his mind’s eye. Thus, “to discover Christ in the OT means finding all the bits and pieces of the one grand messianic puzzle and piecing them back together” (228). Here, the New Testament is an indispensable guide in putting the pieces together, much like top of a puzzle box.

Von Hoffman’s approach was quite different. For him, the texts of Scripture are not messianic at all. What was messianic was the history which is recorded in the text. Said another way, “It is not Israel’s historical writings that are messianic, but the history that Israel itself had experienced” (229). Thus, for Von Hoffman the full messianic sense of the Hebrew Bible is only seen when one observes Israel’s history unfold into the first century and the life of Jesus.

Both of these figures leave important legacies, many of which have been picked up by modern day evangelicals in an attempt to understand the Messiah in the Old Testament.

The first part of Hengstenberg’s legacy is that the meaning of any one messianic prophecy is not immediately transparent. There is some need for translation, which usually happens through a “spiritual” interpretation (typology). Here, the NT is the key, since it holds the anti-type. Second, the messianic meaning of the OT consists primarily in its predictive ability. Thus, in order to be messianic, a text must predict the historical events of Jesus’ life, indexed against the picture of Jesus in the Gospels. Again, here the NT holds the key to the meaning. A third legacy left by Hengstenberg is that the value of messianic prophecy is largely apologetic. Essentially, if the prophetic words are historically true and predictive, then Christianity is true.

Von Hoffman’s legacies are different, in that almost everything in his approach can be taken as messianic, as long as it is historically on its way to Jesus in the first century. In order to understand messianic prophecy, one must understand history as moving toward Christ. Thus, his first legacy is that history, though informed principally by Scripture, needs to be a revelatory prophetic history reconstructed and augmented from the modern picture of the ancient world. That is, if history is messianic, we need to reconstruct it as best as possible to understand its messianic intent. A second legacy is that the OT is not apologetically linked to Christianity. In his method, fulfillment does not verify or validate prophecy, but history. “It is history that validates Christianity, not the miracle of fulfilled prophecy” (232).

One can see the links to modern evangelical approaches. Beyond this, however, Sailhamer wants to provide an alternative to these legacies. Some he likes, others he does not.

Alternatives

The first alternative he suggests is that prophecy is a visions “for” the future. Prophecy is not just a vision “of” the future, but a roadmap on how to get to that future; is it “for” the future. That is the case because Sailhamer thinks that OT messianic prophecy contains elements of both prediction and description/identification of the messiah. They explain and prepare for the future, as well as reveal it.

One of the implications of this alternative is that “the Hebrew Bible [Old Testament] is as messianic as any passage in the NT” (237). This is what separates Sailhamer’s understanding of the Old Testament from other prominent evangelical scholars writing on the topic today in canonical and theological interpretation circles. Many think that the messianic thrust of the OT can only be fully appreciated only once the Jesus rises from the dead, teaches a messianic hermeneutic to the disciples, who in turn write the NT. For Sailhamer, “To say that the Pentateuch is about the Messiah is not yet to say that it is about Jesus. Those are two separate and equally important questions. We must first ask whether the Pentateuch is about the Messiah, and then ask whether Jesus is the Messiah. The Pentateuch (and the rest of the HB) tells us that there will be a Messiah. The NT tells us that Jesus is the Messiah spoken of in the HB. It does so by identifying Jesus as the one about whom the HB speaks” (242n8).

In other words, before the NT can make the claim that Jesus is the Messiah, one must demonstrate from the OT texts that a Messiah was expected. For him, “The prophet’s vision was such that it preserved and carried with it a people who both understood the prophets and were there waiting for the fulfillment of their vision. By falling in line with that vision, the NT writers show not only that they accepted the OT as pre-interpreted, but also that they were in fundamental agreement with its interpretation. That interpretation…began long before the time of its fulfillment” (236).

A second alternative Sailhamer suggests is that the NT is the “goal” of the OT, not the “guide” to understand the OT. Here, again, if one does not understand the OT picture of the Messiah, than one cannot understand the NT picture of Jesus. Instead of the NT, the OT is the messianic searchlight.

A final alternative he suggests is that the fragmented messianic vision we find in the OT does not represent a puzzle, but rather a stained-glass window. This is because the visions follow along a recognized pattern, which will be the main topic of the discussion in upcoming sections. For now, it is enough to say that the vision begins in the Pentateuch, so that the Prophets and Writings are not intent on giving a new vision of the future, but intend to help understand and explain the vision laid down in the Pentateuch (see pg 239-240).

In the end, for the meaning of the Pentateuch, these alternatives suggest that “the Tanakh is an early attempt to formulate a biblical theology that stresses the meaning of the OT as the new covenant” (235).

Andy

Questions for discussion:

1) Are Sailhamer’s critique’s of Hengstenberg and von Hoffman valid? If so, does he understand the relationship between current messianic hermeneutics and those of the 18th century correctly? If not, why?

2) What are aspects of Sailhamer’s messianic hermeneutic that should be affirmed? What are aspects that deserve criticism?

3) In a response article to Sailhamer’s treatment of Hosea 11, Peter Enns came down hard on him and called his solution to Matthew’s quotation of Hosea an “extensive manipulation (i.e., his own midrash) that a messianic assumption can be worked into Hosea. If Hosea himself had intended to say something about Messiah, surely he could have said it more clearly than by a convoluted and mysterious play on an alleged subvocalized theme in the Pentateuch.” After reading about Sailhamer’s method, and his close reading of the structure of the Pentateuch, do you think Enns criticism is correct? Are the messianic ideas of Numbers 23-24 construed by Sailhamer “an alleged subvocalized theme in the Pentateuch,” or is Sailhamer on to something that is worth considering? (Note: Enns entire article is very critical of Sailhamer in general, and I invite you to read it in full from his blog, which I’ve provided links for here in this post)