BIBLICAL Horizons, No. 41
September, 1992
Copyright 1992, Biblical Horizons
Several years ago, the Wall Street Journal gave prominent recognition to a book called Who Wrote the Bible? The book was a popularization of the famous "Documentary Hypothesis," which claims that the Pentateuch was not the work of Moses, but was a (rather incompetent) pastiche of contradictory sources written much later in Israel’s history. This theory labelled the four main sources "J" (for Jehovah), "E" (for "Elohim," a name of God), "D" (Deuteronomist), and "P" (the Priestly writer). Such theories have been around in some form for well over 250 years, so I was surprised that a major newspaper would give so much space to what is really an old theory.
The article was a reminder that the theory is far from dead. Even evangelical scholars today employ some of the methods and conclusions of the Documentary Hypothesis. The longevity of the theory is all the more surprising when one considers the weakness of its foundations. Orthodox Christians have demolished it repeatedly, but they are generally ignored. A half century ago, the Jewish scholar Umberto Cassuto raised damaging questions about the theory. His conclusions were summarized in a little book called The Documentary Hypothesis and the Composition of the Pentateuch (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 1941).
Cassuto claimed that the Documentary Hypothesis was based on five sets of observations:
1) the use of different names for God;
2) variations of style and language;
3) contradictions in the text;
4) duplications and repetitions; and
5) signs of composite structure in the text.
Anyone familiar with the Pentateuch will admit that many of the things observed by the proponents of the Documentary Hypothesis have a surface plausibility. There is, after all, considerable variation in the use of the names of God. The book of Genesis seems, moreover, constantly to repeat itself. The creation accounts of Genesis 1 and 2 seem, at first glance, to contradict one another in important details.
Cassuto admitted that the Documentary Hypothesis is based on some valid observations. But he made three crucial counter-arguments. First, he said that the dificulties of the text do not require the conclusion that there was more than one source. He consistently raised the question, "Is there an easier way to explain the dificulties?" Second, he showed how in an unbiased reading of the text the alleged contradictions would vanish. Finally, he consistently called attention away from the history of the text to the content and form of the existing text. Over and over, he emphasized that the Documentary Hypothesis explained nothing; even if there is evidence that an editor used contradictory sources, we still have to explain why the editor used those sources in the way that he did. Each of the five "pillars" of the theory, Cassuto argued, crumbled to dust upon investigation.
Let me summarize a few examples of Cassuto’s approach. If the Documentary Hypothesis has a central pillar, it is that the use of different names for God is evidence of different sources. If we find a section of the Pentateuch that uses the name "Elohim" for God, then we have a text that comes from the "E" source. If we find a text that uses "Yahweh," we have a text that comes from the "J" source. (The "P" source is also said to use "Elohim.")
While acknowledging the obvious fact that the Pentateuch uses different names for God, Cassuto showed that each name had a specific meaning. The name "Yahweh," he argued, is the covenant Name of God, and is used when His relationship to Israel is in view. The name "Elohim," by contrast, points to God as the God of the whole world, and is used when God’s relationship to the nations or to the universe is in view. Thus, Psalm 47:1, when it exhorts "all nations" to praise God uses the name "Elohim." In the prophetic literature, which is directed to Israel, the name Yahweh is predominant.
This becomes especially striking in the first chapters of Genesis. Genesis 1 uses the name "Elohim" since it is describing God’s creation of the universe. Genesis 2, however, uses the unique combination "Yahweh Elohim," showing to the Israelite reader that the God who entered into a covenant with Israel is also the God who created all things. The different names of God, then, are not evidence of separate sources. Instead, they are used to call attention to different attributes and activities of God.
Cassuto’s discussion of the creation accounts in Genesis 1 and 2 is especially helpful. The two chapters clearly differ in a number of details. The question is, are they contradictory? Cassuto examined five alleged contradictions:
1. Genesis 1 says that the creation was done in a week’s time, but Genesis 2:4 speaks of the "day" of creation. Cassuto explained that the phrase "in the day when He created" can mean "at the time when He created" (cf. Num 3:1).
2. According to the Genesis 1, the earth came out of the waters, but 2:5f. appears to indicate that the creation began with dry land. Cassuto argued that this argument assumes that the two chapters are contradictory. If we assume the two chapters to be a single narrative, there is no contradiction.
3. Genesis 1:27 says that God created male and female together, but Genesis 2 shows that there were two separate acts of creation (2:7, 21-22). Cassuto argued that Genesis 1 gives a general statement, and Genesis 2 fills in the details, a literary device found frequently in the Pentateuch.
4. Genesis 1 says that the plants were made before man, but Genesis 2:5, 9 seems to indicate that the plants were made after man. But several points suffice to explain the apparent contradiction. First, Genesis 2:5 mentions specific types of plants, not plants in general; it is these specific plants that had not grown. Second, the implication of Genesis 2:5 is that other types of plants were already growing. Third, comparing 2:5 and 3:18, Cassuto argued that the plants that were not yet growing in Genesis 2 are the plants that "sprang up" as a curse for sin. Fourth, Genesis 1:11-12 emphasizes by insistent repetition that only seed-bearing plants were created on the third day. Finally, Genesis 2:9 has specific reference to the Garden of Eden (see 2:8): God produced new individual trees for the garden, but not new species of plants.
5. Genesis 1 says that the beasts and flying creatures were created before man, but Genesis 2 seems to say that man was created before the other creatures. Cassuto first noted that 2:19 says that God produced from the ground every "beast" and "bird," but not "cattle" (domestic animals). The implication is that the cattle were already with Adam in the Garden, since he later gives names to them (2:20). The reason why God formed the other animals was so that they could pass before Adam. As with the trees of the Garden in 2:8-9, 2:19 does not show God creating new species, but producing new individual animals for Adam to name.
Finally, Cassuto’s discussion of the "attack on the matriarch" story that is repeated several times in Genesis (12:10-20; 20:1-18; 26:1-11) showed that the story is repeated to make a theological point, not because the "editor" wished to include variant versions of the story. He wrote, "The purpose is undoubtedly to teach us that the acts of the fathers are a sign unto the children. . . . This episode . . . contains an implicit promise that was given to Abram and Sarai and was realized in their offspring."
BIBLICAL Horizons, No. 41
September, 1992
Copyright 1992, Biblical Horizons
The epistle of James has long presented dificulties for New Testament scholars. Its seemingly moralistic tone, its apparent inattention to theological concerns, its defense of "justification by works" all have made it dificult for interpreters to discern its compatibility with other New Testament books. Luther’s dismissal of James as an "epistle of straw" was only a characteristically blunt expression of an attitude shared by many students.
Recognizing the parallels between James and the gospel of Matthew points us toward a more correct assessment of the epistle’s character. In his superb commentary on James, Ralph Martin lists many of the themes common to the two books. I will cite only a few: rejoicing in trials (Mt. 5:12; Jas. 1:2); perfection (Mt. 5:48; Jas. 1:4); meekness (Mt. 5:3, 5, 9; Jas. 3:13, 17-18); anger (Mt. 5:22; Jas. 1:20); the poor (Mt. 5:3, 25:35; Jas. 2:5, 16) (see Martin, James. Word Biblical Commentary #48 [Waco: Word, 1988], pp. lxxv-lxxvi).
Several passages, moreover, show that the epistle of James has a more theological orientation than many commentators acknowledge. In particular, there are several passages in which James alludes to the early chapters of Genesis in ways that display a penetrating grasp of biblical theology. Let us discuss two such passages.
1. James 1:12-18. The epistle of James begins with a discussion of two types of temptation. In 1:2-4, James encourages his readers to rejoice even in the midst of trials and aflictions. Such "temptations" bring endurance and perfection. In the background of these verses is James’s confidence that the Lord is working even trials and afliction for the good of His people.
In verses 12-18, James turns to a discussion of temptation in the moral sense. In this sense, James insists, we cannot say, "We are being tempted by God." God governs the circumstances that aflict and try us, but He cannot be accused of encouraging sin. For James, this is axiomatic, a simple implication of the holy and just character of God; the reason we cannot say, "God is tempting me," is simply that "God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone" (v. 13).
In 1:14-15, James argues that we are enticed to sin not by our external circumstances but by our own evil desires or lusts. James uses conception and birth as an analogy for the process by which temptation leads to sin. Having given into temptation, lust conceives (the word describes the female role in conception) and then bears sin. Sin, in turns, fulfills itself in death. Already, we can see a faint reference to the temptation of Eve in Eden: She first desired the fruit, and then, having conceived, her desire gave birth to sin and her sin led to death.
That Genesis forms the background to these verses is confirmed when we examine verses 17-18, where James continues and develops the conception-birth imagery. Men give birth to sin; God, by contrast, is not the Father of sin, but the Father of lights. This is clearly a reference to Genesis 1’s account of God’s creation of the lamps of the firmament on the fourth day. Only good things come down from the One who created light; no darkness comes from Him; all His works are very good.
The phrase, "Father of lights," however, is dificult. If James has only the creation account in mind, it is an odd way to speak of God’s relationship with the luminaries of heaven. "Creator," "Lord," or "Prince" of lights would be more expected. The use of "Father" thus points not only to the Creator but to the Redeemer, and suggests that the "lights" in view are the Lord’s sons and daughters. The thought becomes clearer when we recall that the heavenly lights are often symbols of God’s redeemed people (Gen. 26:4; Dan. 12:3). Specifically, the heavenly lamps signify God’s people as a royal race. James’s thought, then, is this: God does not tempt because He is not a God who gives birth to sin and death; instead, He is Father to a righteous, royal race that shines like the lights of heaven. His children are not death and sin, but lights.
The remainder of verse 17 emphasizes that since the Lord is the Father of lights, He does not change as the heavenly bodies do. Using several technical astronomical terms, James indicates that the Creator is not subject to the variation or darkening that the world is subject to. The light of the sun disappears each night; in the creation, God separated darkness and night. But the Creator is pure, eternal Light.
The birth imagery is carried on into verse 18. By the same word that brought about the first creation, God brings forth His people as the firstfruits of a new creation. Adamic man gives birth only to sin and death; the Father of lights brings forth a new creation. "Lights" and "firstfruits" are therefore two ways to describe the Lord’s re-created people.
This passage, then, shows that James had a theological foundation to his moral exhortations. Here James comes very close to Pauline theology, especially in the use both make of the creation of light in drawing an analogy between creation and redemption (e.g., 2 Cor 4:6; 5:17).
2. James 3:7-8. One of dominant themes of the epistle is the proper use of the tongue. Much of the third chapter is devoted to exhortations to control the tongue.
Verses 7-8 provide another example of James’s creative use of biblical theology, and of the early chapters of Genesis in particular. Verse 7 is an obvious allusion to the mandate of Genesis 1:26-28, though James’s list of animals is different from that of Genesis (interestingly, it includes reptiles). Both passages are concerned with human mastery over the lower creatures.
But James gives a remarkable twist to this allusion. Instead of considering the "dominion mandate" as a continuing project, he says that it is completed. Every animal of the heavens, earth, and sea have been brought under the yoke of man. Even the serpent-like "reptiles" have mastered. Yet, though the creation mandate is completed, man has not yet tamed his own poisonous tongue (v. 8).
James would surely admit that some animals have not been tamed. The point, however, is to bring attention to the true character of the Christian’s dominion. The unrighteous frequently rule the lower creation, but are incapable of reining in their own sin. Having died and risen with Christ, the Christian is freed from the mastery of sin and given resurrection power to live in holiness and righteousness. The most important dominion is not dominion over the lower creation, but dominion over the flesh. Controlling the tongue, James implies, is one of the chief manifestations of this Spiritual dominion.
Man’s initial act of dominion involved the tongue: naming the animals. His fall also involved the tongue. Adam stood by and failed to interrupt the serpent’s attempt to seduce Eve, and then Adam lied to God. Thus, James is reflecting on the place of the tongue, the human image of the word of God, in directing human life. The "Father of lights" spoke the world into existence; man corrupted it with his words. All of this shows an intense theological reflection upon Genesis 1-3.
(We welcome James R. Rogers to Open Book. Mr. Rogers is an Instructor and Doctoral Candidate at U. of Iowa in Political Science.)
The fall of 1992 completes the second year of publication for the new, semi-interesting journal The Responsive Community: Rights and Responsibilities. The journal is the for something called "The Responsive Community," which is an organization of "progressive" communitarians devoted to correcting the hyperindividualism of modern liberal theory.
This journal is sta_ed by some impressive notables including the likes of Amitai Etzioni, Mary Ann Glenden, Robert Bellah, and Nathan Glazer. This isn’t too shabby for intellectual _repower.
Still, for all of their interesting chatter about the need for a policy re-emphasis on the much forgotten fact that man is a social creature, they tend to speak in generalities, even with the release of their communitarian platform.
At present, their program for "progressive" social renewal seems to be limited to jawboning o_enders back into their proper social roles. Ironically, this leaves these self-proclaimed progressives sounding a lot more like a caricature of their reactionary cousins than the reactionaries themselves.
To wit, in a recent issue of their journal, Gregory Curtis, president of the Laurel Foundation, takes on the lack of "moral seriousness" in popular culture. His foil in this discussion is Francis Ford Coppola’s _lm, The Godfather, Part III.
Curtis argues that "Although The Godfather, Part III bears witness to the cinematic virtuosity of its creators, its plot re_ects a lack of moral seriousness that corrupts the entire venture." (Remember, this guy is a liberal.)
For Curtis, moral seriousness "requires the maker of popular culture to work within the context of the moral and ethical sensibilities developed as the result of the best (that is, the most lasting) accumulated experience of human communities."
Curtis complains about the thematic heart of the _lm: At the center of the _lm is Don Michael Corleone’s attempt to extricate himself and his family from all organized-crime activities–to go straight once and for all. Corleone’s struggle for personal redemption is obstructed at every turn by the mob and even by supposedly legitimate businesses in which Corleone wished to invest. So far, so good, but Coppola isn’t serious about the redemption business. He treats it as he would any other plot device–that is, trivially–and his _lm slips away from him.
But in this last point, Curtis misses the touching and realistic portrayal of the "redemption business." That is, its fragility and contingency for folk like Corleone.
Curtis complains that Coppola doesn’t treat the theme of personal redemption "with respect," which, for Curtis, would be to portray Corleone as making "a clean break with the past." Yet it is Curtis’s own belief in "clean breaks" that trivializes redemption. That is the myth of self-creation; the myth that humans can disconnect themselves experientially from their personal histories.
Yet aside from some eccentric Anabaptist sects and old-time Methodism, the story of redemption told on a personal level is not that of "clean breaks" but is rather one of the old man struggling with the new man. As with all utopian theories, "progressive" communitarianism denies the lasting marks of the curse on the human soul and embraces the Pelagian error that humans can have "clean breaks" with their pasts. But the story of personal redemption, particularly in the Jewish and Christian traditions, is that there are no such "clean breaks." Original sin leaves its marks permanently.
In this light Coppola portrays Corleone’s struggle to _nd grace–and leaves the viewers in a respectable state of ambiguity as to whether he really _nds it or not. Thus, in a touching scene with the cardinal who would become Pope John Paul I, Corleone is gently nudged to confess his deepest sin: that he killed his own brother; a sin against both blood and water.
But did he _nd grace? Corleone seems changed, but there is no simplistic "clean break." The last scene of the movie leaves us in suspense. The aging don is sitting quietly in a beautiful garden outside his home. His death is one of quiet bliss: He is alive, then goes to sleep, slumping forward a little in death. It is the picture of a blessed death, but the curse is still present: A skinny scavenger dog shares the scene with the don. Thus ambiguity follows Corleone, as it does all of us, to the grave.
It is this ambiguity–the will to ignore the e_ect of original sin on the human soul–that Curtis and the other progressive communitarians seek to avoid. But in so doing they cut themselves o_ from the reality of personal continuity and from the implications that has for political and social renewal. For all its brilliance, "progressive communitarianism" remains an oxymoron. The only true community rests with those who recognize the delicate interplay between certainty and ambiguity in personal and social redemption. That is, with those who recognize that man cannot be remade in another’s image.
Ordinary People
by James R. Rogers
Pity the harpsichord. So con_ning did musicians _nd the keyboard instrument’s lack of dynamic range–its inability to play loud or soft at a _nger stroke–that the successor instrument’s boast over the harpsichord was its very name: the pianoforte. In Italian, quite literally, the "soft-loud." In the modern era, the name has been shortened to the now familiar piano.
One prestigious music dictionary put it bluntly: The harpsichord lacks "the dramatic and expressive qualities of the pianoforte." The lack of this potential–the potential to be very loud or very soft, to be dynamically dramatic–doomed the instrument to near extinction after the invention of the piano.
Who can blame musicians for throwing over the harpsichord and embracing the piano? In so doing they were acting only as good moderns. After all, the modern conceit–an aptly egalitarian conceit–is that within us all, somewhere, lies the potential for striking expressiveness if only we dare to experience it. The modern soul writhes angrily and resentfully against the monodynamism of "ordinary" life, against the small life of pattern and the commonplace.
Indeed, that true artists should expose and explode the meaninglessness of such pitiable lives–at least in how they live and work if not in the actual lives of those they sneer at–is the de_ning platitude of "truly" artistic and expressive circles. (The only exception to the rule is, of course, that this community leaves unacknowledged and undiscussed the monumental triteness of its own central public sentiment.)
In addition to its mean-spirited condescension, this celebrated gloss on ordinariness–this well-toed party line of the self-proclaimed creative element–caricatures unrecognizably the lives of billions of unknown souls. Indeed, the desire to deny and destroy the ordinary, the pattern of ordinary life, just because it is ordinary, is fatuous and puerile.
Thus, Rameau’s harpsichord composition, "Gavotte Varieé," like every other piece written for the harpsichord, is con_ned by the technical limits of the instrument. Yet I know of no composition that exceeds its passion.
The con_nement of the instrument is not the enemy of the form, but rather is its very environment. Rameau _lls the form, writes through the form, and so breathes deep passion into the piece because of the form. The monodynamism of the instrument limits nothing worthy of expression. (And, indeed, the cheap titillation of many, if not most, Romantic-era compositions perhaps issues from the fact that the piano and full symphonic orchestras induced composers of the period to substitute the cheap thrill of dynamics for a more subtle, yet more profound, passion.)
The tragedy of the modern soul is that it fails to understand this. And so it declaims the truly profound and beautiful ordinariness of life’s patterns as empty and vain.
This is one of the lessons of Henry James’s story, "The Beast in the Jungle." The life of the central character, John Marcher, was not to be one of the harpsichord–one of con_nement–but was to be a life of pianoforte. As the one con_dante in his life, May Bartram, puts it: "You said you had had from your earliest time, as the deepest thing within you, the sense of being kept for something rare and strange, possibly prodigious and terrible, that was sooner or later to happen to you, that you had in your bones the foreboding and the conviction of, and that would perhaps overwhelm you."
And it was mere ordinariness against which Marcher rebelled. Like so many others today, including ever increasing numbers of criminals who seemingly brutalize their victims as a form of exhibition, Marcher felt that it "wouldn’t have been failure to be bankrupt, dishonoured, pilloried, hanged; it was failure not to be anything."
The neglect of the pedestrian details of life, however, ends in tragedy for Marcher. Too late of a satisfying life, he recognizes that his very belief in the personal possibility of pianoforte, the eschewing of a monodynamic life, had denied him the chance to live truly in the small: "One’s doom, however, was never ba_ed, and on the day she told him his own had come down she had seen him but stupidly stare at the escape she o_ered him.
"The escape would have been to love her; then, then he would have lived. She had lived–who could say now with what passion?–since she had loved him for himself, whereas he had never thought of her (ah how it hugely glared at him!) but in the chill of his egotism and the light of her use."
Not Love–love in general and in the abstract–but love of her, May; the dreary, monodynamic life of love in the particular–of growing old together–was Marcher’s path to living. But Marcher couldn’t see it because he knew, he just knew, that true life and true passion are pianoforte. And in so knowing that, he spurned both.
Misreading Foucault’s
Pendulum
by James R. Rogers
In his letter to Stephen Spender, T.S. Eliot wrote that the literary critic, in order to criticize a work truly, must undergo three moments: surrender of self to the text, recovery of the self, and then–and only then–criticism in light of the _rst two moments.
While I abuse Eliot’s sentiment by applying it not only to works of poetry and _ction, but also to works of non- _ction, in judging a work of criticism–that is, in reading a critic critically–I _nd it useful to begin with Eliot’s dictum that "You don’t really criticize any author to whom you have never surrendered yourself."
To be sure, even with a surrender prior to criticism, the work may be found poor. And if found poor, the critic who has _rst surrendered can explode the work. The critic who has not _rst surrendered, who has not been inside the work, can at best only critically chisel from the outside.
Rachel Hadas’s review of Umberto Eco’s novel, Foucault’s Pendulum, in a recent issue of The Partisan Review exempli_es the danger of criticism without surrender. Her most serious criticisms fall wide of their mark. In Foucault’s Pendulum, Eco, an Italian semiotician and author of the widely acclaimed novel, The Name of the Rose, touches upon the comedy and tragedy of the all-too-human desire to construct a distinctly human reality. Or, better, the desire to construct a theory of reality manageable by and owned wholly by the human mind.
Through three hapless book editors, initially out just to have some sport at the expense of occultists and New Age kooks, Eco takes the reader into a bizarre and inverted world–a world constructed of a huge, all-encompassing conspiracy that began with the Templar Knights of the Crusades and reaches through cabalists, Masons, Rosicrucians, Gnostics (both old and new), the Illuminati, and folk of similar ilk.
Many critics, including Hadas, have expressed tedium with Eco’s attention to the minutiae of these beliefs. "Surely," the critics lament, "no serious story can be told through this world of crackpots."
What the critics mean is that the beliefs of these crackpots are so crazy (which they are) that they _nd it inconceivable that any large number of people could take them seriously. If only it were so! Yet even a little knowledge of history is su_cient to motivate Eco’s supposition.
After all, so serious did many Americans treat the "Masonic threat" in the last century that a large political movement arose to oppose Masonry. (Most of us best know Masons through the Shriners–those guys who wear goofy hats and drive tiny cars in parades.) And in fringe American political movements one can still hear tales of "Jewish-Masonic" conspiracies. In the Soviet Union such crackpot theories had more than just a fringe constituency.
Since most of us are quite unfamiliar with these types of folk and with what they believe, Eco must introduce the uninitiated into how they talk and behave. The so-called minutiae are necessary to give the reader a real feel for this very real, very eccentric world. And this Eco does with panache. As the conspiracies are described one after another, chapter after chapter, it becomes pretty clear that Eco intends to wear down and disgust the reader with these gnostic absurdities.
Just because the characters in Eco’s story are o_-the-wall doesn’t mean that Eco writes an untelling story. In fact, it is through these bizarre characters and scenes that Eco has his three editors–and with them his readers–reappraise what they think they know about the human condition.
Hadas most seriously misreads Eco’s story, however, when she accuses him of an infantile and pedantic nihilism: "The one heroic gesture in the novel is of the gran ri_uto variety: the dangerous admission that there is no meaning." Here she cites editor Casaubon’s late statement that "I have understood. And the certainty that there is nothing to understand should be my peace, my triumph. But I am here, and They are looking for me, thinking I possess revelation They sordidly desire."
Yet taking this statement to be nihilistic is to read the line without bene_t of the book’s previous 640 pages. The book embraces and celebrates both practical reasonableness and even grace, though that obliquely. The "understanding" that doesn’t exist isn’t the things common folk understand, but it is "gnosis," or secret, occult wisdom accessible only to the few who have "puri_ed" their minds su_ciently.
Through the course of the book, Casaubon comes to realize that the answer to the question, "Bin ich ein Gott?" ("Am I a god?") is no. He recognizes that the human mind is too weak to construct a world. And when we have the pretense to try, when we engage in the Pelagian error of self-salvationism, we only recapitulate the Fall and the chaos it caused.
This is the true wisdom which the character Diotallevi understands only at death’s door; namely that the pretense of human autonomy spells death: "[My bodies’] cells no longer obey. I’m dying because I convinced myself that there was no order, that you could do whatever you liked with any text. I spent my life convincing myself of this, I, with my own brain. And my brain must have transmitted the message to them. . . . I’m dying because we were imaginative beyond bounds."
It is this will to gnosis–that is, to be a human yet to believe oneself "ein Gott"–which is the "understanding" that Eco repudiates. The lesson is not that understanding doesn’t exist, but that we humans can know only as humans and not as God. The lesson is "that seeking mysteries beneath the surface reduce[s] the world to a foul cancer."
If Hadas had surrendered to the text rather than rested satis_ed to criticize from without, then perhaps she would not have criticized Eco for preaching nihilism when, in fact, he teaches quite the opposite.
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