Chapter Two (Part 2 of 2) - Forum Post #4

In the last post, we discussed some of the key elements of Sailhamer’s compositional approach to “finding the author’s verbal meaning.”

In this second part, I simply wanted to outline two areas where Sailhamer supports his case in the history of interpretation.

Trading in “words” and “things”

First, Sailhamer argues that “lying behind most Christian discussions of biblical interpretation are the formative ideas of Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine” (74). He explains that “in that work Augustine focuses on the principles and procedures Christians should use to ground their beliefs in Scripture.”

Sailhamer points out that for Augustine, “the meaning of the Bible is found in the interrelationship of two features of texts: its ‘words’ (verba) and the ‘things’ (res) to which its words pointed, or the ‘things’ signified by its words.” In this model, “the purpose of a ‘word’ (verbum) is to point to a ‘thing’ (res) in the outside world” (74).

In addition, the “things” that the “words” of Scripture pointed to could also point to other things. In the precritical period, the “mind of God” is what determined the relationship between the things that the words of Scripture pointed to and any other entities that those “things” signified. With the rise of historical-criticism, the meaning of the “things” that Scripture pointed to were determined by what was deemed to be “historically” plausible. This meant that “history had grown larger than the Bible, and biblical history could locate its meaning only from within the coordinates of that larger history” (97).

For Sailhamer, the historical-critical emphasis on “the role of external reality” was “little more than a continuation of Augustine’s discussion of ‘words’ (verba) and ‘things’ (res)” (77).

Elements of a Precritical Reading of Scripture

In the above analysis, the center of meaning rests in “things” and their relation to other “things.” In contrast, Sailhamer argues that the center of meaning for a precritical understanding of Scripture rests in the words of the text. Sailhamer writes, “In the classical evangelical view of the ‘verbal meaning’ of Scripture, the meaning assigned to the things (res) referred to by the words of Scripture is founding the meaning of those words (verba) as parts of the ancient biblical language” (88). In other words, “the biblical words point to and assign meaning to the extrabiblical things (res) in the real (res) world” (88).

In sum, “the meaning of Scripture was tied directly to the meaning of its words (verba)” (89).

Sailhamer then summarizes four elements of a precritical reading of Scripture:

1. Biblical Realism: “In a precritical reading of the Bible (OT), it was taken for granted that if a biblical narrative was realistic (which they almost always are!) it must also be real, that is, historically true” (90).
   
2. A Single Story: “If the many individual real (true) stories in the Bible (OT) are part of one real world, they must all also be a part of the same real story, one that includes the NT stories and the storied world of the reader in all ages” (91).
   
3. Figuration: “Figuration is a way of recounting events so that their basic similarities and interconnectedness become apparent . . . The ‘similarities’ drawn between otherwise dissimilar stories in the Bible are meant to signal a connectedness of the stories and the events they recount. They belong together and are part of a single whole” (91).
   
4. The Bible is my Story: “Since the world rendered by the cumulative biblical narratives is conceived of as the only real world (res), it follows that it includes the world of the reader. It is thus the duty of the reader to fit his or her life into the events of the biblical story” (91).

For Sailhamer, the neglect of these elements in the interpretive task results in “the loss of biblical narrative” and the downplaying of the rich theology that the biblical authors have given us in their interpretation of the events that they record.

Questions to Ponder:

1) How do these two areas relate to or inform Sailhamer’s formulations in the first part of the chapter? Do you think Augustine's distinctions play the pivotal role that Sailhamer assigns them?

2) What is the relationship between what Sailhamer calls “figuration” and the interpretive practice of “typology”? Further, how does Sailhamer portray typology, and does this differ from how NT scholars understand and use the term?

As always, feel free to bring up any element of the chapter for discussion in the comments.

Chapter Two (Part 1 of 2) - Forum Post #3

Chapter Two- “Finding the Author’s Verbal Meaning.”

This month we are on chapter two of Meaning, “Finding the Author’s Verbal Meaning.” In chapter one, Sailhamer describes the nature of theology as a re-presentation of the biblical material. In this chapter, he outlines his approach to discerning the meaning of a text, and the Pentateuch in particular. This chapter is the most technical so far, as it deals with fundamental interpretive issues and the implications of his author-based hermeneutic.

The text-centered nature of Sailhamer’s approach is evident in the first sentence of the chapter: “In order to understand the Bible, one must read it” (68).

Sailhamer emphasizes that God has chosen to communicate his word to his people through the means of human language. If we want to hear a word from the Lord, we will have to read the texts he has given to us (and inspired). Sailhamer writes, “Many miracles are recorded in the Bible, but what is most remarkable about the Bible is the Bible itself.” He argues that “through human language, modern readers can understand the thoughts of biblical authors who lived thousands of years ago in a culture very different from our own” (68).

The Pursuit of the Author’s “Verbal Meaning”

For Sailhamer, the goal of biblical interpretation is the verbal meaning of the biblical author. Acknowledging the presence of a divine as well as human author, Sailhamer asserts that the divine intent “is the same as the human author.” By doing this, he assumes in relation to the OT that “what its human author intended to say is the same as what God intended.” In other words, “if we understand the human author’s intent, we will know what God intended” (69).

After establishing the important role of the author, Sailhamer clarifies what he means by “verbal meaning.” It is “the meaning of the words used by the biblical author” (69). He notes that language itself is not static and that authors cannot control the meaning of words in general. They can only make use of the language available to them, and they must utilize that language if they are to communicate to readers. Accordingly, “an author’s intent lies in the given meaning of the words he uses and in the way he uses them in a specific work” (73).

So, the meaning is “not merely in the biblical book; the meaning is the book. It is what the author has said by means of his book that constitutes his intended meaning” (73). Following these general hermeneutical guidelines, an interpreter should seek an author’s intended meaning in the words he has actually written.

For Sailhamer, this task involves knowing “the compositional, or literary, strategy within which the author uses his words” (73). This description is Sailhamer’s understanding of the “grammatical-historical approach,” which he attempts to apply to the Pentateuch consistently.

Summing up his interpretive approach, Sailhamer writes, “One finds the meaning and message of the Pentateuch not in asking why it was written or how, but in asking what was written as the book itself.”

Questions to Ponder:

1) One of Sailhamer’s foundational presuppositions involves the close relationship between the divine author and the human author. What do you make of his resolution of this tension? What are some of the pros and cons of this approach over other approaches (e.g., Sensus Plenior)?

2) One implication of Sailhamer’s text-centered approach is a downplaying of the importance of historical background information for discerning an author’s meaning. He notes that many of the OT books are anonymous and many are historical narratives. For Sailhamer, these are two reasons why focusing on background info is not very helpful (70-72). What do you make of Sailhamer’s point here? Can you think of a compelling counterproposal to his examples or overall conclusions?

Note: We will post the second half of our discussion of Chapter Two on February 15th.

Interview in Christianity Today

For those interested, Sailhamer has done an interview about The Meaning of the Pentateuch in Christianity Today this month. Here's the link to it.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/januaryweb-only/12-11.0.html

Andy

Forum Post #2 - Chapter 1

Chapter 1 – Understanding the Nature and Goal of OT Theology

This month we will be looking at Chapter 1 of Sailhamer’s Meaning, “Understanding the Nature and Goal of OT Theology.” In this chapter, S. gives us his opinion on what direction a proper theology of the OT should take. In doing so, he is also giving us important guidelines on his own approach.

For S., the task of any kind of biblical theology is to “state God’s Word (the Bible) to the church clearly and precisely” (63). In particular, theology “intends to state what should be heard as normative for the faith and practice of the biblical reader” (63). Thus, theology is not concerned with past religion, but with how God’s Word is to be heard and responded to today. To get here, S. discussed two issues with his readers: 1) How a theology based on revelation is different than one grounded on religion; and, 2) How theologies have been presented throughout the centuries.

Theology, Revelation, and Religion

There is a major difference between a theology that is based on revelation and a theology based on religion. For the vast majority of evangelical Christian scholars (of which S. identifies himself), revelation is “an act of God in which he makes his will known” (59). Religion, on the other hand, is “the human response to an act of divine revelation” (60). An OT theology, then, based on revelation is going to be one which is grounded on a study of divine revelation as it is presented in the OT itself. An OT theology grounded on religion will be a study of how humans have responded to God’s revelation.

One major implication of this difference is the authority with which theology can speak. A theology based on religion is nothing more than a human effort to make sense of past human activities. It says nothing in particular about who or what God actually is, but instead seeks to know how past peoples and cultures understand the divine. The opposite, a theology based on revelation, though also a human effort, is also an attempt to “speak on behalf of God’s revelation”, and should be handled with the same sensitive care that one handles the Scriptures themselves. In so far as revelatory theology “gets it right”, it speaks with the authority of the Scriptures. It is a theology that can actually demand something of us, just like the Scriptures do.

The Presentation of OT Theology

Sailhamer identifies five major “presentations” of OT theology in this chapter – four explicitly and one (his own) somewhat implicitly: systematic (which fits the content of the OT into predetermined categories), historical (which in some way takes Israel’s history as the organizing principle), central theme (which identifies a central theme and presents the message of the OT in terms of this theme), and “no central theme” (which posits that any attempt to identify a single central theme for organization would distort the message of the OT), and textual (which focuses on the text of Scripture). [I think one could argue that his approach is a kind of ‘no central theme’ approach.]

Sailhamer’s textual approach to OT theology grounds theology in a work of God – the revelation of God in the written text of the Bible. It treats the OT as revelation itself, not as a written record of revelation. That is, revelation is in the text itself – revelation is not played out in historical acts recorded and witnessed to in the Bible. What is revelatory is the text, not the events which are recounted in them. Being textual, theology “assumes the necessity of a serious study of the OT” (63). It is the end result, the capstone of much study and labor.

In the end, “Because it focuses on the text of Scripture, the aim of this kind of OT theology is not Israel’s ancient religion as grounded in the Sinai covenant. Its aim is Israel’s ‘new covenant’ with God as grounded in the message of the OT prophetic writings” (66).

Summary

In sum, an OT theology “must seek to make the message of the OT as clear and precise as possible to whatever audience it might have” (65). It must be able to show how the parts fit the whole, and how the whole fits together with a coherent message. For Sailhamer, it is important to note that the authors of Scripture, especially the Pentateuch, were theologians that work out their message through the arrangement and shaping of the textual material (64). Thus, the rest of the Meaning of the Pentateuch is going to be a study of the Pentateuch approached “in terms of the shape and mode of presentation reflecting its theology” (64).

Questions to Ponder

1) Do you think Sailhamer is taking the right approach here? By limiting himself to the shape of the Pentateuch is he missing out some important points gleaned by a more historical approach (e.g. Walt Kaiser, Promise-Plan)?

2) When we read through the OT, are we reading what the actual religion of Israel, or are we reading God’s critique of Israel’s beliefs and what they should have been?

New Post Arriving on January 1st

Thanks for contributing so far! I'm hoping that the more we get into the specifics of the book we will have some more focused discussions. I'm going to be posting the summary of Chapter 1 on January 1, and we will begin our new discussions then.

For now, we are having a good discussion about big idea's and author's intent on the first forum post. I invite you to contribute there for the next few days.

I hope you all had a merry Christmas, and will have a great new year!

Many blessings,
Andy Witt

Forum Post #1 - Introduction

Welcome to the online forum / group discussion of John Sailhamer’s book, The Meaning of the Pentateuch. I hope that many of us will be able to dive deep into this book, and I am happy we are taking it slow. Professor Sailhamer has spent his whole career writing this book, and if its introduction is any indication of things to come, the remaining portion of the book will be well worth the read. For those of you completely unfamiliar with the key features of Sailhamer’s methodology, wrapping your mind around his observations can take time – and time I hope to give you.

In this first post, I intend to summarize what I think are the three key features of the introduction of the book. I am assuming that you have at least a cursory idea about the content since I am assuming you’ve read it. If not, hopefully you’ll get the gist of it and go back to read it. Many of you who will contribute to this discussion are already familiar to many of Dr. Sailhamer’s foundational ideas about the Pentateuch and biblical hermeneutics. For you, I'm guessing that this introduction was not much of a surprise.

Feature #1 – The meaning of the Pentateuch is about hearing revelation, not studying religion.

Stated simply, revelation is different than religion. When we study the Pentateuch, we are not studying what the ancient Israelites believed, but what Yahweh wanted the Israelites to believe. For Sailhamer, modern evangelicals have confused this point. Rather than explaining what faith the text prescribes to its readers, evangelicals have focused on explaining what they think ancient Israel actually believed. As such, the text no longer confronts its readers, but gives its readers a history lesson. For Sailhamer, that is not biblical theology.

Instead, biblical theology is concerned with hearing the text. In his own words, “One can know the mind of God (mens dei) by reading the words of the human author” (12). When we do this, we find that the location and arrangement of texts can affect how a reader understands the text. The reader also finds that the Old Testament itself provides a hermeneutical (method of reading) strategy for the reader by interpreting itself. This is what Sailhamer calls a “prophetic echo”. Later canonical prophets “hear” earlier ones, exegete them, and then echo their texts with new clarity and relevance. That is, they articulate earlier texts for a better understanding. For Sailhamer, this suggests that there is intelligent life behind the biblical books.

In the end, this distinction is a very important one that gets at the heart of the matter in studies on the Pentateuch. Are we after the religion of the ancient Israelites (think Mount Sinai and the law code given through Moses), or are we after the message of the Pentateuch (something entirely different than the law codes at Sinai)? The past century abounded with theologies that focused entirely on Israel’s religion. What Sailhamer is telling us it that his book is not going to be about that at all; instead, it is how God is speaking to the reader through this written text.

Feature #2 – The meaning of the Pentateuch is found by reading it, and having a big idea which explains the most and most important features of text.

Hermeneutic books abound today, offering many different theories on how to best read a text. Here, Sailhamer does not give us anything new, but directs us back to a rather old goal of reading: finding the biblical author’s intent as it is realized in the work itself. We are after the “verbal meaning” of the text; that is, “what the words say as part of the book”. We are not after what this text means to me, or what this text meant to a more ancient audience. Rather, we want to know what the author intended to communicate in his book – and the best at getting that message is by reading the book itself. For the more academic, this is essentially the same idea put forward by Ernesti in his “historical; that is, grammatical” approach (read Sailhamer’s article on Ernesti). And if I remember correctly, it is also the view put forward by Hirsch (Validity in Interpretation) and recently defended by Vanhoozer (Is There Meaning In This Text?).

An important caveat of his hermeneutic is not equating words with the things that they refer to. Instead, they only point to those things and tell us about them. In this regard, words are much like paintings. Take the Rembrandt on the cover of the book. If we were able to go back and find a photograph of the real-life two men disputing, that photograph would certainly help us know more about these guys. But that photograph does nothing to help us understand what Rembrandt has actually painted. Applied more broadly, this also means that the words about events in a text are not equivalent with those events. Instead, the words point to the events and tell us about them. This means that to understand a book, one must read it, and not what lies behind it.

For Sailhamer, the most effective way to do this is to read toward a “big idea”. The big idea here is that the “meaning of the whole helps us see the importance and meaning of each of the parts.” And our guiding principle is this, that “the best big idea is that which explains the most and the most important features of the text” (20-21). Furthermore, what is most important should be related to the author’s intent. For more, read his summary on page 22.

Feature #3 – The meaning of the Pentateuch is best read by paying attention to how the author put his text together; that is, by using a compositional approach.

This last feature makes up the bulk of the introduction, and can really be split up into three sections: defining a compositional approach, the observations of a canonical approach regarding the Pentateuch, and the significance of those observations for the meaning of the Pentateuch.

What is a compositional approach?

A compositional approach begins with features 1 and 2 above. What we are after in reading is the author’s verbal meaning; that is, what the words mean as part of the whole book (words in context). When we think about biblical books, we begin by noting that biblical books are the product of much reflection and organization. The biblical authors chose their texts and words carefully. In doing so, they have left traces of a “strategy” in the final shape of the work (which can be quite subtle). This is because, in general, biblical authors take written texts and weave them together into a coherent whole so that the whole of their work has a center, a focus, and tells a complete story of real events. A compositional approach is after these, and the most direct indication of the author’s verbal meaning is the overall literary strategy in the book and the verbal seams that unite the final form of the text. That is, the final shape of the text represents a literary strategy in which the author strives to teach a theological message (in the case of biblical books).

This approach applies not only to narrative texts, like the Pentateuch or Kings, but also to poetic texts, like the Psalter or Proverbs. In applying the approach to the Pentateuch, Sailhamer provides us with a great example of how it works. And in doing so, he might surprise some with his important remarks concerning audience (pgs. 25-29). In the end, it will show us that the Pentateuch is not a book of law (as it is commonly understood), but is a source of divine wisdom and meditation, meant to “remind God’s people of their commitment to the Sinai covenant and the law give to Israel at Sinai” (28), and “to teach them about the new covenant” (28).

What observations does a compositional approach make regarding the Pentateuch?

When applying a compositional approach to the Pentateuch, several initial questions emerge. First, where and how does the book begin? And second, where and how does a book end? Sailhamer notes that the Pentateuch begins with creation, not a law, or a promise, or even with nature itself. This means that the Pentateuch begins with a theological beginning. It ends in an even more surprising way, with Israel still in the wilderness. What does this mean? That, “The author of the Pentateuch leaves open the question of the time of the fulfillment of the patriarchal blessings” (33).

Beyond the introduction and conclusion to a book, the next step is to look at what makes up the larger sections of the book, and also how the sections are structured. In this respect, Sailhamer has picked up on several important strategies employed by the author. First, poems are used in the Pentateuch to help link together collections of independent narratives. These poems are attached to the end of each narrative, and using the poems to provide an interpretive context for the narratives surrounding it. This strategy is principally used in Genesis 1-11, but is again used to help give meaning to larger texts as well (cf. Genesis 12-50). I cannot do the introduction justice, so read pgs 34-37 to get a hang of it. In my opinion, this is one of Sailhamer’s best observations.

And this is only the beginning. Sailhamer goes on to describe how the theme of faith is mentioned at very crucial sections of the Pentateuch, which suggests to him that “one of the overriding purposes of the Pentateuch is to teach the message of faith and trust in God” (39). He also introduces his “bag of laws” conversation, which from the looks of the table of contents, will take up a bulk of chapter 7. He finally speaks of his understanding of the relationship between the collections of law codes and narratives within the Pentateuch; and, in particular, the law codes within the Sinai narrative. This seems to be taken into greater depth in chapter 10.

What is the significance of these observations?

This approach suggests that “the Pentateuch was not the product of a long and complicated process of literary growth, but comes to us more or less as an updated edition of a single earlier Mosaic composition” (48). This “updated” version preserves the original composition, but also retrofits it within the broader context of Scripture. When this happens, meaningful relationships exists between the original (“Pentateuch 1.0”) and the updated version (“Pentateuch 2.0”). This new edition looks at the Pentateuch from the perspective of the end of Israel’s history and God’s further work with Israel and the nations.

Already explained briefly above, these observations change the entire nature of our discussion about the Pentateuch. Instead of being a book of law, the Pentateuch has become this carefully crafted reflection on the Sinai covenant – a reflection that principally notes the failure of the Sinai and calls for hope and faith in a new covenant. If this “big idea” put forward by Sailhamer has any merit (which it seems to have), then for most of us it calls for an entire re-reading of the book. Genesis is no longer the history of the primeval world and the patriarchs, but is important commentary on the Sinai covenant and its relationship to the new covenant. Also, how is the Abrahamic covenant related to these covenants? This is only one question among many that arises given this new approach.

Discussion Questions

As a final part of this opening summary, I want to recommend a few other works by S. that will certainly complement what you have read in this introduction. First, I recommend reading the introduction to The Pentateuch as Narrative (Zondervan). Almost everyone I have spoken with has agreed that it is perhaps the most important 80 pages the professor has written. Second, I also recommend reading the appendices to Introduction to Old Testament Theology (Zondervan). Lastly, for lighter reading (and a Christmas gift!) pick up his Biblical Prophecy (Zondervan). All three selections will give you both a broad and detailed glimpse into his approach to Scripture.

For our forum discussions, I wrote down several questions, but will only ask two:

1) One of Sailhamer’s most controversial key ideas is explaining the difference between revelation and religion, and it’s offspring, an emphasis on events. For him, there is a difference between the events as they stand in the text and the events which lie behind the text. The former can be studied through strategies of reading, or literary studies of the Scriptures; the latter, however, are not studied literarily, but historically. What is the significance of making this distinction? Or, is this distinction even necessary?

2) Many of us have been introduced to the Pentateuch as five separate books, rather than one complete text. That is, for many of us Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, stand on their own. Does our study of these texts change as radically as Sailhamer suggests when we look at them as a whole, or is he overstating his case?

Feel free to comment. Right now, I am not going to moderate comments. But, if need be, I will begin to. If this happens, I will do my best to moderate comments at least once a day, hopefully twice.

Blessings,

Andy Witt

The forum will start on December 1st

Hey everybody! I hope you've all had your fill of turkey! I certainly did. I've had great interest so far in this forum, and am looking forward to hearing your comments about the book. We're set to start on December 1st, when I will publish the first blog post on the Introduction chapter. I've lined up several other students of Professor Sailhamer's, some former and some present, to post in subsequent chapters, though I'm still looking to fill a few more slots if you might be interested. Please contact me if you are at all interested. As a way of introduction, I would like to lay down a few ground rules:

1) If you have not read the chapter under discussion, please refrain from commenting. Though this may sound a little brutal, it will greatly improve our conversations and keep us on track.
2) I am the sole moderator, and I expect your comments to be appropriate. I can ban you, though I hope from the outset that it would never come to that.
3) Within the opening blog, several questions will be posed by the blog author. My hope is that these questions will be the first to be addressed by your comments, before moving on to other questions you might have.
4) I am open for suggestions on how to better manage the site. Feel free to let me know how it can improve if you have a good idea.

Those seem simple enough. The plan is to start a new chapter at the beginning of every month. This will leave plenty of room for discussion. If this ends up being too much time, then we can shorten it. That said, I welcome you guys back here on the first of December.

Many blessings,
Andy Witt