Revisiting the City of Ur

Michael Taylor, a former platoon leader from the 1-160th Infantry of the California National Guard, served in Iraq from 2007 to 2008. He is currently a graduate student in history at the University of California, Berkeley. While serving in Iraq, Taylor visited the ziggurat at Ur.

The Tower of Babel probably was something similar to the ziggurat at Ur.

Taylor has written an article about his visit to the ancient city of Ur. The article was published in the Archaeology Magazine. Below is an excerpt from the article:

Ur was one of a series of Sumerian city-states that arose in Mesopotamia roughly 5,000 years ago, fueled by agricultural surpluses and dominated by an elite that maintained the complex irrigation systems upon which the city's wealth depended. Around 2250 B.C., Sargon the Great made Ur part of his Akkadian empire, one of the world's first centralized states. Akkadian, a Semitic language distantly related to the modern Arabic now spoken there, gradually replaced Sumerian as Ur's language. Little of the architecture visible today dates to Ur's early history, though artifacts from early tombs can be viewed in the museums of London, Philadelphia, and Baghdad. The city's greatest and most enduring monuments were constructed in the period that followed the collapse of the Akkadian dynasty around 2050 B.C.

In 2047 B.C., Ur became the capital of its own centralized state, ruled by what historians call the Ur III dynasty. Its new king, Ur-Nammu, sought to create monuments to make the city equal to that status, and began construction of the ziggurat temple in honor of the city's patron deity, Nannar, god of the moon. But Ur-Nammu died before his greatest work could be finished, and the project was completed by his son, Shulgi.

The brickwork of the ziggurat attests to the kings' desire to create a lasting monument to their empire. The bitumen mortar—one of the first uses of southern Iraq's vast oil fields—is still visible between the burnt bricks. The sticky black substance, today a source of the region's instability and violence, once literally bound this civilization together. The use of bitumen as mortar and pavement has helped waterproof the otherwise fragile Sumerian mud-bricks, ensuring that the structures endured for millennia.

The article includes several picture of the ziggurat at Ur. Read the article by clicking here.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary


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Tags: Ur, Abraham, Ziggurat

Bless the Lord, O My Soul

“Bless the LORD, O my soul; and all that is within me, bless his holy name! Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the Pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good as long as you live so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s” (Psalm 103:1-5 RSV).

Psalm 103 is an individual thanksgiving Psalm presented by an individual who had much to praise for what he had received from God’s hands. The psalmist had faced a crisis in his life. He had been ill and his illness brought him closer to death. And yet, in his time of need, he prayed to God and God answered his prayer. God healed him and delivered his life.

Now, as an act of thanksgiving, he has come to the Temple to celebrate and to praise God, to worship the one who had delivered him. Together with the community of faith, the psalmist thanks God for His mighty act of deliverance. To him, worship was a celebration of the mighty acts of God. To him, worshiping was sharing with others the many blessings God had given to him.

He begins his song, his song of thanksgiving, blessing the Lord and inviting others to join him in praising God. “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me.” The expression “all that is within me” expresses the psalmist’s desire to use his mind and heart, his will and faculty in remembering God’s goodness in the past and in the present.

When people read the Old Testament, they discover that the people of Israel were constantly forgetting what God had done for them. Over and over again, the prophets called the people to remember: “Remember this and consider, recall it to mind, you transgressors, remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me” (Isaiah 46:8-9).

When one reads the Old Testament, one discovers that as early as Moses and as late as the last prophet of the Old Testament, the warning, “Do not forget what God has done,” was sounded in Israel.

And yet, because the people forgot what God had done in their lives, they were chased out of the Promised Land. They had to go into exile in Babylon, and there, in a foreign land, they discovered that only God could bless them if they were only able and willing to remember the past. The act of salvation God had begun in Egypt with the Exodus, God would continue at the time he would visit his people again and bring them out of Babylon.

The Book of Isaiah presents the people’s return from exile as a second exit–a new beginning, so that the people would remember what God had done in the past. What God had done in the past, God was going to do again in the present.

Moses, in the Book of Deuteronomy, warned the people of Israel not to forget the mighty acts of God. Moses said: “But take care and watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life; make them known to your children and your children’s children” (Deuteronomy 4:9).

Over and over again, the book of Deuteronomy uses the expression, “Remember!” “Remember what God has done. Forget not the mighty acts of God.” Deuteronomy strongly exhorts the people not to forget the Lord: “ Be careful not to forget the LORD” (Deuteronomy 6:12). Moses also warned the people: “Be sure you do not feel self-important and forget the LORD your God who brought you from the land of Egypt, the place of slavery” (Deuteronomy 8:14).

The reason the Bible exhorts and urges the people of Israel to remember and to be thankful is because the human heart, by nature, tends to forget that God is the real source of blessings. God’s blessings are many and apparent everywhere. Moses knew that the people had to remember their past because memory can be very deceiving. People tend to remember the bad things in life. People tend to accumulate all the problems of life in their hearts, but tend to forget how wonderful God has been everyday and every moment of their existence.

The people of Israel, soon after they left the land of their oppression, forgot their miserable condition in Egypt and what God had done to redeem them. They forgot they were slaves in Egypt, that they had lived as an oppressed people. When the people were in need of food and water in the wilderness (Exodus 16:3), they became discouraged and in their desperation they wanted to go back to Egypt.

In their rebellion the people did not remember the mighty acts of God in bringing them out of the house of oppression. This is why the psalmist reminds himself, “Forget not all of His benefits.” The “benefits” were all of the blessings that he had received from the hands of the Almighty God. The psalmist had to remember every one of those blessings. He had to thank God for every blessing he had personally received.

I believe that each one of us today must remind ourselves to look back into the past and see what God has done for us. How soon we forget that God has been present and real in our lives. Whenever trouble comes, whenever illness comes, we tend to think that God is not present in our lives. We tend to forget that God has been there with us all along.

“Bless the LORD, O my soul; and all that is within me, bless his holy name! Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits.”

Other Studies on Psalm 103:

1. Bless the Lord, O My Soul

2. The God Who Forgives

3. The God Who Heals

4. The God Who Redeems


Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary


If you enjoyed reading this post, subscribe to my posts here.

Tags: Hebrew Bible, Psalm 103

Deception at Nippur

The city of Nippur, an ancient city located in what is Iraq today, was one of the most important religious centers of the Sumerian civilization and it is considered one of the world’s earliest cities.

Archaeology Magazine has a brief article detailing a tale of deception involving the three men responsible for the early archaeology at Nippur.

Read the story here.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary


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Tags: Archaeology, Nippur

Landlessness and Parasocial Leadership in Judges

The latest issue of the Journal of Hebrew Scriptures, Volume 11: Article 2 (2011) is available online. This issue contains an article by Brian R. Doak, “‘Some Worthless and Reckless Fellows’: Landlessness and Parasocial Leadership in Judges.”

Below is an excerpt from the Introduction:

INTRODUCTION

This essay is an attempt to explore certain aspects of three provocative tales in the book of Judges—the rise to power of Abimelek in ch. 9 and Jephthah in ch. 11, and the actions of the landless Danites in ch. 18—and to interpret these stories in light of what evidence we possess regarding the existence of so-called habiru groups in the 2nd millennium BCE and in light of some anthropological theory regarding the behavior of “parasocial” bands in the formation of (at least) short-term political and military structures in the Near East.

The preponderance of ideological readings of Judges in the last 20 years may leave one with the mistaken impression that the book has value only as a kind of cultural or theological foil, meant to demonstrate the disastrous results of violence and power in a “backwards” ancient context. As stimulating as these studies are, commentators have sometimes ignored important historical and anthropological data embedded within the book of Judges’ depiction of certain figures and institutions, which, despite their overtly theological and legendary coloring in the present form of the book, provide a glimpse into the chaotic world of a nation in the process of political and social stabilization.

In this study, therefore, I argue that the presentation of bands of mercenaries, brigands, landless groups, and the careers of some pre-monarchic leaders have instructive parallels with what we know (or may surmise) regarding the activities of habiru-like bands in the Amarna letters, the Idrimi inscription, and other texts, and that the activities of such groups in Syria-Palestine at the close of the 2nd millennium are reflected in the narrative of the book of Judges.

You can read the article or download it in a PDF format by visiting the Journal of Hebrew Scriptures online (here).

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

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Tags: Hebrew Bible, Abimelek, Jephtah, Danites

Robert Alter on the Wisdom Books

People who study and teach the Old Testament are familiar with Robert Alter and his works. Two of his most influential books, The Art of Biblical Narrative (New York: Basic Books, 1983) and The Art of Biblical Poetry (New York: Basic Books, 1987), have shaped the way scholars read and interpret the Hebrew Bible.

Alter has embarked on an ambitious project: to apply his insights and theories into the translation of the Hebrew Bible into English. Toward that goal, Alter has already translated The Five Books of Moses (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2004), The David Story: A Translation with Commentary of 1 and 2 Samuel (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1999), and The Book of Psalms (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2007).

I have been reading Alter’s The Book of Psalms (thanks to the generosity of James Becknell, one of my Hebrew students). As I read this new translation of the book of Psalms, I have come to a new appreciation of the beauty and majesty of the psalms through the way Alter translates the original language of the psalmists.

Now, Alter has finished and published a translation of The Wisdom Books (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2010). In this new translation, Alter deals with the books of Job, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, three of the most interesting and challenging books of the Bible.

Adam Kirsch, writing for The Jewish Week, has published an excellent review of Alter’s book, with some commentary of his own. Below are two excerpts of Kirsch’s review:

One sign of the difference is that Job, Proverbs and Kohelet (Alter uses the Hebrew name, whose actual meaning is hard to ascertain, rather than the familiar Greek name Ecclesiastes) do not deal with Israel but with humanity in general. Job is a monotheist but not an Israelite; he lives in "the land of Uz," which Alter glosses as "a never-never land somewhere to the east." In Kohelet, God is referred to only occasionally, and then only as Elohim, not by his specifically Israelite name, Yahweh. And while Proverbs ascribes its often banal sayings to Solomon, at least one section of the book is an adaptation of an Egyptian text from the second millennium BCE, the "Instruction of Amenemope." Indeed, the scholarly designation "wisdom books" assigns these texts to a genre that is also found in Egyptian and Mesopotamian literature. "The perspective of Wisdom literature," Alter summarizes, "is international and, in many instances, one might say, universalist. It raises questions of value and moral behavior, of the meaning of human life, and especially of the right conduct of life."

. . . .

But Alter’s versions are not destined to replace the King James Version; they are meant to strip away its familiarity, to help us see the biblical text more closely and accurately. For this purpose, Alter’s commentary is as useful as the translation itself, as when he points out that the lines from Kohelet quoted above are a direct repudiation of Genesis.

In the Creation story, the human creature is brought into the world after the beasts and is enjoined to hold sway over all other living creatures. Here, man and beast are seen to share the same fate of mortality, and there is no qualitative difference between them.

Nothing but this was the radical insight of Darwin, which is why evolution is anathema to biblical fundamentalists; yet here is the Bible itself making the same disenchanting argument.

Kirsch’s review of Robert Alter’s The Wisdom Books is worth reading. You can read it here.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

If you enjoyed reading this post, subscribe to my posts here.

Tags: Hebrew Bible, Robert Alter, Wisdom Books, Ecclesiastes

You can buy Alter's books at Amazon.com



The Wisdom Books











The Five Books of Moses










The Book of Psalms












The David Story: A Translation with Commentary of 1 and 2 Samuel









The Art of Biblical Poetry

The Chinese Perspective on Judaism: The Western Wall

Chinese television broadcasted a documentary in which they presented an extended view of Judaism. The program consists of several segments, each dealing with a facet of Judaism.

The documentary is narrated in Chinese with English subtitles. Since a large number of readers of this blog are Chinese, I will post a few of these segments in the coming days for the benefit of my Chinese readers. However, I am sure you will also enjoy watching this documentary because there are many new things to learn just by watching this series of videos on Judaism.



Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary


If you enjoyed reading this post, subscribe to my posts here.

Tags: Chinese Documentary, Judaism, The Western Wall

The Chinese Perspective on Judaism: Masada

Chinese television broadcasted a documentary in which they presented an extended view of Judaism. The program consists of several segments, each dealing with a facet of Judaism.

The documentary is narrated in Chinese with English subtitles. Since a large number of readers of this blog are Chinese, I will post a few of these segments in the coming days for the benefit of my Chinese readers. However, I am sure you will also enjoy watching this documentary because there are many new things to learn just by watching this series of videos on Judaism.



Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary


If you enjoyed reading this post, subscribe to my posts here.

Tags: Chinese Documentary, Judaism, Masada

Professor Anson Rainey

Photo: Professor Anson Rainey





I received news that Professor Anson Rainey died on Saturday, February 19, 2011. Professor Rainey was Emeritus Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Cultures and Semitic Linguistics at Tel Aviv University.

Professor Rainey was a scholar who specialized in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East. He was a prolific writer with important works in the areas of biblical studies, historical geography, and the cultures and languages of the Ancient Near East.

Those who are not familiar with the works of Professor Rainey should read his Curriculum Vitae and his list of publications. They are posted here.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary


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Tags: Anson Rainey

Professor Alan Segal

Professor Alan Segal, who taught in the Religion Department at Barnard College died recently. The excerpt below was taken from his obituary published in the Columbia Spectator:

Former Barnard professor Alan Segal, who retired in December after 30 years of teaching in Barnard’s religion department, died of complications from leukemia on Sunday. He was 65.

Segal was primarily a Jewish studies professor and scholar, teaching courses at Barnard such as Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Judaism in the Time of Jesus. He was also known for his work on different views of the afterlife and the relationship between Judaism and early Christianity

You can read the news report about Segal’s death here.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary


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Tags: Alan Segal

Hannah and Her Sacrifice

Hannah was the wife of Elkanah, a man from Ephraim. We meet Hannah in the first chapter of Samuel as a distressed woman because she was childless. In a previous post, I called Hannah “the barren mother who bore seven.”

On one occasion, during her family’s yearly visit to the house of the Lord at Shiloh, the place where the Ark of the Covenant was located, Hannah made a vow to God, promising that if God would give her a son, she would dedicate him to God to serve in the temple as a Nazarite.

Hannah’s prayer was answered. She conceived and gave birth to a son whom she called Samuel. Two or three years later, after Samuel was weaned, Hannah fulfilled her promise to God. Hannah took Samuel to Eli, the priest of God who ministered at Shiloh, offered a sacrifice and dedicated Samuel to serve before the Lord in the temple.

The question is: what kind of sacrifice did Hannah offer in the temple? The versions differ on the amount of bulls Hannah offered to God. Was it one bull or three bulls?

Here is how the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) translates 1 Samuel 1:24:

“When she had weaned him, she took him up with her, along with a three-year-old bull, an ephah of flour, and a skin of wine.”

According to the NRSV, Hannah offered one three-year-old bull. This translation is followed by the ESV, the NIV, the Holman Christian Standard Bible, the New Jerusalem Bible, and many others.

Here is how the King James Version (KJV) translates 1 Samuel 1:24:

“And when she had weaned him, she took him up with her, with three bullocks, and one ephah of flour, and a bottle of wine.”

According to the KJV, Hannah offered three bulls, not one. This translation is followed by the ASV, the JSP Bible (1907), the Tanak, the NET Bible, and several other older translations.

The difference between these two translations of 1 Samuel 1:24 is based on the fact that most modern translations emend the Hebrew text in order to read “a three-year-old bull,” rather than to follow the text as written and read it “three bulls.”

The issue that prompts modern translation to emend the text is grammatical. The Hebrew text reads: bprym šlš, “three bulls.” Most modern translations, following the Septuagint, read bpr mšlš “a three-year-old bull.”

According to the proponents of the emendation, there are several reasons to emend the text. First, 1 Samuel 1:25 says that Hannah sacrifices only one bull. Second, scholars believe that when the Hebrew words were divided, the m was separated from one word and added to another word, thus creating the textual corruption. Third, the grammatical order of the words in Hebrew, the noun before the numeral, “bulls,” and “three,” is unusual.

Scholars give several reasons for sacrificing a “three-year-old bull.” Robinson says that the reason Hannah sacrificed a three-year-old bull was because Samuel was three years old (p. 18). Others say that a three-year-old bull was a valuable animal (see Genesis 15:9). Speiser, in an article published in BASOR said that the Nuzi tablets indicate that at Nuzi, animals offered in religious sacrifices had to meet an economic standard. Speiser wrote:

“Hence Hannah’s choice of a three-year-old bull is in harmony with the general background of her times, and the instructions to Abraham (Gen. 15:9) that he select sacrificial animals of the same age reflect a time-honored tradition” (p. 17).

In his defense of the “three bulls” translation, Ratner, citing Gesenius (GK) cautions against dependence on grammatical construction as a reason for emending the text. He cites several examples in the Hebrew Bible where the noun precedes the numeral (1 Samuel 25:2; 2 Samuel 1:1; 24:24). Ratner concludes, “If the formation in 1 Sam 1,24, pārīm šelōšā [three bulls], was an acceptable alternative for the writer to have selected, there is no necessary reason to emend the text” (p. 100).

In addition, Ratner quotes Genesis 15:10 to support the view that Hannah sacrificed three bulls, not one. In Genesis 15:9, the Lord asked Abraham to sacrifice two birds: a turtledove and a young pigeon. In Genesis 15:10, it is said that Abraham did not cut the birds in two. In the Hebrew text of Genesis 15:10, the word translated “birds” in English is singular, not plural. This means that the Hebrew word for bird, although singular, is used as a collective to designate both birds. Ratner finds a similar use in 2 Samuel 6:17-18.

Thus, Ratner believes that the word “bull” in 1 Samuel 1:25 is used as a collective and it should be understood as meaning the three bulls. Ratner (p. 101) translates 1 Samuel 1:24-25 as follows:

“And she brought him with her when she had weaned him, along with three bulls, one ephah of flour, and a skin of wine. . . . Then they slaughtered the bulls and brought the boy to Eli.”

If Ratner’s proposal is right, then there is no reason to emend the text, and I tend to agree with him.

Hannah’s sacrifice was evidence that she was grateful to have her disgrace removed from her. As a demonstration of her gratitude, Hannah offered her best to God, not a three-year-old bull and not even three bulls. Hannah offered to God her firstborn son. The greatest love a mother can show is to dedicate her children to God (see John 15:13).

Bibliography:

Ratner, Robert, “Three Bulls or One?: A Reappraisal of 1 Samuel 1,24,” Biblica 68 (1987): 98-102.

Robinson, Gnana. 1 and 2 Samuel: Let Us Be Like the Nations. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1993.

Speiser, E. A. “The Nuzi Tablets Solve a Puzzle in the Book o Samuel,” BASOR 72 (1938):15-17.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary


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Tags: Hebrew Bible, Old Testament, Hannah, Samuel

The Chinese Perspective on Judaism: The Jewish Kingdom

Chinese television broadcasted a documentary in which they presented an extended view of Judaism. The program consists of several segments, each dealing with a facet of Judaism.

The documentary is narrated in Chinese with English subtitles. Since a large number of readers of this blog are Chinese, I will post a few of these segments in the coming days for the benefit of my Chinese readers. However, I am sure you will also enjoy watching this documentary because there are many new things to learn just by watching this series of videos on Judaism.




The Series:

1. The Chinese Perspective on Judaism: The Exodus


Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary


If you enjoyed reading this post, subscribe to my posts here.

Tags: Chinese Documentary, Judaism, Jewish Kingdom

The Chinese Perspective on Judaism: The Exodus

Chinese television broadcasted a documentary in which they presented an extended view of Judaism. The program consists of several segments, each dealing with a facet of Judaism.

The documentary is narrated in Chinese with English subtitles. Since a large number of readers of this blog are Chinese, I will post a few of these segments in the coming days for the benefit of my Chinese readers. However, I am sure you will also enjoy watching this documentary because there are many new things to learn just by watching this series of videos on Judaism.



Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

If you enjoyed reading this post, subscribe to my posts here.

Tags: Chinese Documentary, Judaism, Exodus

The Androgyny of the First Human

Tyler F. Williams at Codex: Biblical Studies Blogspot, wrote a post, The Androgynous Adam: Sex and Sexuality in the Garden in which he commented on my review of Jennifer Wright Knust’s book Unprotected Texts: The Bible’s Surprising Contradictions About Sex and Desire (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2011).

Tyler’s main issue was my “quick dismissal of Knust’s notion that the first human was androgynous and only later sexually differentiated.”

Tyler wrote: “The notion that the original human was androgynous (or something similar) isn’t a new idea, nor perhaps is it so radical. Rashi, a 10th century Jewish interpreter, suggested the first human was male on one side and female on the other and that God had simply divided the creature in half .”

Tyler also quoted Phyllis Trible and her book God and Rhetoric of Sexuality (Minneapolis: Fortress Oress, 1986), who also deals with the issue of androgyny. Tyler wrote:

Trible argues that God created the first human without gender, “the adam” [human] was formed from “the adamah” [humus]. Rather than a man, “the adam” was an “earth creature” (as an aside, there is a great play on words in the biblical text: “Yahweh Elohim formed the earthling from the earth” or “the human from the humus”). Not until the woman is built from the side of the earth creature does the original human being acquire gender.

Now Trible’s interpretation has some basis in the biblical text. Despite most modern translations, the use of “adam” in Genesis 2 is not a personal name. The biblical text does not have “Adam”, but rather “the adam”(הָֽאָדָם) , i.e., the human, or the like. And it is only in Gen 2:23 (after the building of the woman) that text text [sic] refers to humanity as “male” and “female”(איש and אשה).

Tyler concluded: “I don’t agree with Trible’s interpretation.” He also said: “So I guess I don’t really disagree with Mariottini’s ultimate conclusion.”

I am glad Tyler does not agree with Trible. The issue is: why would God create a being that was both male and female and had the genitals of both sexes?

The biblical text is clear: “And God created man (אֶת־הָֽאָדָם) in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Genesis 1:27). The word “man”(הָֽאָדָם) is followed by a plural pronoun, “them.” Contrary to what Tyler wrote, that “it is only in Gen 2:23 (after the building of the woman) that[the] text refers to humanity as ‘male’ and ‘female’(איש and אשה).” Genesis 1:27 already presupposes that the “man” (הָֽאָדָם) was “male and female.”

The plural pronoun “them” does not presuppose a person with two sexes, but two different beings, a male and a female. God blessed the male and the female (הָֽאָדָם), and said to them: “Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28).

In is clear that the Hebrew word "man" (הָֽאָדָם) includes both male and female. In Genesis 6:7 the word "man" (הָֽאָדָם) includes both male and female: “So the LORD said, ‘I will blot out man (הָֽאָדָם) whom I have created from the face of the ground.’”

Thus, the view that the first person was both male and female and had the genitals of both sexes is contrary to the teachings of the Bible, notwithstanding what Rashi wrote and how Trible interpreted the text.

Many years ago, while I was in seminary, I remember reading a passage in the Babylonian Talmud in which a Rabbi concluded that Saul had two faces. I do not remember the exact place where this information is found in the Talmud, but I believe that no one takes seriously the view that Saul had two faces nor the view that the first person was both male and female.

I am glad that Tyler does not disagree with me either.

Read Also:

The Bible and Sex

What the Bible Doesn’t Say About Sex

Androgyny

The Androgyny of the First Human

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

If you enjoyed reading this post, subscribe to my posts here.

Tags: Adam, Androgyny, Genesis 1

Androgyny

On my post on The Bible and Sex, I wrote: “[Knust’s] premise is that the story of creation of the first human person in Genesis 1 was a case of androgyny, that is, that the first person was both male and female and had the genitals of both sexes.”

A reader, David Reimer, left this comment on my post: “Well, if you're going to plagiarize someone, it might as well be Plato.”

David is referring to “The Symposium,” a work by Plato that is dated to c. 385 B. C. “The Symposium” deals with the purpose and nature of love.

The following information about the content of “The Symposium” was taken from the Wikipedia:

Love is examined in a sequence of speeches by men attending a symposium, or drinking party. Each man must deliver an encomium, a speech in praise of Love (Eros). The party takes place at the house of the tragedian Agathon in Athens. Socrates in his speech asserts that the highest purpose of love is to become a philosopher or, literally, a lover of wisdom. The dialogue has been used as a source by social historians seeking to throw light on life in ancient Athens, in particular upon sexual behavior, and the symposium as an institution.

. . . .

Aristophanes (speech begins 189c): he at first skips his turn because of a bout of hiccups. The eminent comic playwright has become a focus of subsequent scholarly debate. His contribution has been seen as mere comic relief, and sometimes as satire: the creation myth he puts forward to account for heterosexuals and homosexuals may be read as poking fun at the myths of origin numerous in classical Greek mythology.

Below is a summary of Aristophanes’s speech in which he mentioned androgyny:

Aristophanes

Before launching his speech, Aristophanes warns the group that his eulogy to love may be more absurd than funny. His speech is an explanation of why people in love say they feel "whole" when they have found their love partner. It is, he says, because in primal times people had doubled bodies, with faces and limbs turned away from one another. As somewhat spherical creatures who wheeled around like clowns doing cartwheels (190a), these original people were very powerful. There were three sexes: the all male, the all female, and the "androgynous," who was half man, half woman. The creatures tried to scale the heights of heaven and planned to set upon the gods (190b-c). Zeus thought about blasting them to death with thunderbolts, but did not want to deprive himself of their devotions and offerings, so he decided to cripple them by chopping them in half, in effect separating the two bodies.

Zeus then turned half their faces around and pulled the skin tight and stitched it up to form the belly button. Ever since that time, people run around saying they are looking for their other half because they are really trying to recover their primal nature. He says some people think homosexuals are shameless, but he thinks they are the bravest, most manly of all (192a), and that many heterosexuals are adulterous men and unfaithful wives (191e). Aristophanes ends on a cautionary note. He says that men should fear the gods, and not neglect to worship them, lest they wield the axe again and we have to go about with our noses split apart (193a).

I want to thank David Reimer for this reference.

Read Also:

The Bible and Sex

What the Bible Doesn’t Say About Sex

Androgyny

The Androgyny of the First Human

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary


If you enjoyed reading this post, subscribe to my posts here.

Tags: Androgyny, Plato, The Symposium, Aristophanes

What the Bible Doesn’t Say About Sex

Katherine T. Phan, writing for The Christian Post, has published an article titled “What the Bible Doesn’t Say About Sex,” in which she presents the views of evangelical scholars who comment on Jennifer Wright Knust’s book, Unprotected Texts: The Bible's Surprising Contradictions About Sex and Desire.

Phan quotes some of my views about the book and on the issues Knust raised concerning the biblical view of sexuality. Read the article by visiting The Christian Post online. You can also read my post on Knust’s book. In that post I offer a more detailed review of Knust’s views.

Read Also:

The Bible and Sex

What the Bible Doesn’t Say About Sex

Androgyny

The Androgyny of the First Human


Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary


If you enjoyed reading this post, subscribe to my posts here.

Tags: Katherine Phan, Jennifer Knust, Sex, Hebrew Bible

The Bible and Sex

The secular press is buzzing with the release of two books dedicated to discussing a revisionist view of sex in the Bible. These books are: Michael Coogan, God and Sex: What the Bible Really Says (New York: The Hachette Book Group, 2010) and Jennifer Wright Knust, Unprotected Texts: The Bible’s Surprising Contradictions About Sex and Desire (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2011).

These two books have been featured in Newsweek, “What the Bible Really Says About Sex,” an article written by Lisa Miller. Knust was interviewed by Stephen Prothero in an article that appeared on the Huffington Post. Knust has also been writing a series of articles that are appearing On Faith, a blog published in The Washington Post.

Knust, who is an ordained American Baptist minister and Assistant Professor of Religion at Boston University has written the most radical, revisionist book on what the Bible says and teaches about sex.

Her premise is that the story of creation of the first human person in Genesis 1 was a case of androgyny, that is, that the first person was both male and female and had the genitals of both sexes. Then, in the creation story of Genesis 2, the sexes were separated and this separation created sexual desire in human beings. This desire drives man and woman to have sex so that they can become one again.

This view that God’s original plan for his creation was that a human person would have two sexes in one body is the creation of a fertile mind that finds no support in the Bible. Knust bases her view on ancient Jewish interpreters who were trying to explain why there are two creation stories in Genesis.

Knust’s interpretation is so radical that she reinterprets what the Bible says in order to present a modern view of sex and sexuality that is a complete departure from what the Bible has to say and teach.

In her interview with Prothero, Knust says that the Bible presents premarital sex as “a source of God’s blessings.” She finds justification for this view in the story of Ruth’s encounter with Boaz. She believes that the Bible presents the sexual relationship between men as positive because David and Jonathan were involved in a gay relationship. She also says Tamar’s desire to have children by dressing like a prostitute to have sex with Judah “trumps the prohibition against prostitution.”

Time and space will not allow me to give a detailed response to the issues Knust raises in her book. What follows is just a brief evaluation of the four issues Knust raises in these articles:

1. The Case of Ruth

Ruth 3:7, 14 says: “And when Boaz had eaten and drunk, and his heart was merry, he went to lie down at the end of the heap of grain. Then she came softly and uncovered his feet and lay down. . . . So she lay at his feet until the morning.”

It is true that the word “feet” can mean “genitals” in a few passages of the Old Testament. To say, however, that Ruth exposed Boaz’s genitals, is to read a sexual meaning into the text that may or may not be there. Even if Ruth exposed Boaz’s genitals, it does not mean that they had sexual intercourse. It is possible that Ruth was tricking Boaz into thinking they had sex.

Deception does not mean approval. Even if Boaz and Ruth had sex on the threshing-floor, it does not mean that premarital sex is recognized in the Bible as a source of blessing.

2. Premarital Sex

The case of Ruth cannot be used to give approval to premarital sex. If Boaz was tricked, then the Bible is not giving approval to premarital sex, as Knust suggests. Compared to sexual practices in our society today, Israelite society was not permissive. The lack of a moral code to guide people today prevents them from making the right choices when it comes to sex and sexuality. People’s choice are culturally conditioned and do not reflect a biblical understanding of human sexuality.

Premarital sex in Israel was so uncommon that the Bible does not give any law or regulation about it. The case of Amnon and Tamar could be considered an example of premarital sex. When Amnon tried to have sex with Tamar she said: “Do not force me! This is no way to behave in Israel. Do not do anything so disgraceful!” (2 Samuel 13:12). So, premarital sex was considered a disgraceful act in Israel.

Another example of premarital sex is found in Deuteronomy 22:28-29: “Suppose a man has intercourse with a young woman who is a virgin but is not engaged to be married. If they are discovered, he must pay her father fifty pieces of silver. Then he must marry the young woman because he violated her, and he may never divorce her as long as he lives.” So, if a man had sex with a woman outside marriage, he had to marry her.

In Israel, the sex act consummated a marriage: “This is why a man leaves his father and mother and bonds with his wife, and they become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). This is the reason the Apostle Paul says that Christians should not have sex with a prostitute, because when they have sex, they become one flesh: “Do you not know that whoever is united to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For it is said, ‘The two shall be one flesh’” (1 Corinthians 6:16).

The meaning of human sexuality taught in Genesis 2:24 and the mutual relationship established between a man and a woman when they come together emphasizes the reason premarital sex was not allowed in Israelite society.

In the Bible, when married people have sex with people other than the marriage partner, it is called adultery. Sex between people who are not married is called fornication: “But for fear of fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband” (1 Corinthians 7:2).

3. Tamar’s Prostitution

The case of Tamar is a unique case because it involves the issue of Levirate marriage. In Levirate marriage, the brother of a deceased man would marry his brother’s widow in order to provide an heir for the dead man. In the case of Tamar, her husband had died, so Judah, Tamar’s father-in-law, gave her his oldest son so she could have a child. Because the man refused to give her a child, he was struck dead because of his iniquity.

Judah then refused to give Tamar his other son, so Tamar dressed as a sacred prostitute and had sex with her father-in-law. Judah did not know that the woman was his daughter-in-law. When he discovered that Tamar was pregnant, he believed she should be killed because she was pregnant with the child of another man.

The Bible does not approve prostitution, but like in our society today, prostitution was very common in Israel and in the Ancient Near East. The reason Tamar dressed like a prostitute was because Judah violated a societal rule and refused to provide an heir for his dead son. So, she was forcing him to fulfill his obligation.

4. The Case of David and Jonathan

There is no evidence that David and Jonathan were gay partners. Both of them were married and had children. They were just friends who had the kind of friendship that was common in the Ancient Near East. This type of friendship is unknown today. This is the reason people mistake this kind of friendship with a gay relationship.

Jennifer Knust offers a radical revisionist interpretation of the biblical texts dealing with the matters of sex and sexuality. Her interpretation departs, not only from the traditional ways those texts are interpreted, but also from the true meaning of what the texts actually say.

In her interview with Prothero, Knust concluded: “Some biblical passages can support my point of view. Others do not. So, as firmly as I believe that ‘love your neighbor’ can capture God’s point of view, I cannot be certain that I am right.”

Ms. Knust, I can help you: you are not right.

Read Also:

The Bible and Sex

What the Bible Doesn’t Say About Sex

Androgyny

The Androgyny of the First Human


Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

If you enjoyed reading this post, subscribe to my posts here.

Tags: Hebrew Bible, Old Testament, Jennifer Knust, Sex, Tamar, Ruth

The Manifestation of God in the Old Testament

One of the greatest teachings of the Old Testament is that the God of Israel desires to have a personal relationship with his people. In his desire to establish a relationship with humanity, God does not always wait for people to come to him.

Rather, God takes the initiative and reveals himself to humanity. This manifestation of God is commonly known as a theophany. The Old Testament contains many stories demonstrating God’s immense love for his creation and the extent to which he is willing to go in order to bring human beings into fellowship with himself.

Many people today believe that God is an absent God, that he created the world and then left it to see what would happen to his creation. But the Bible contradicts this deistic view of God. The Bible teaches that God has a plan and a purpose for his creation and that he is at work to bring his creation back to himself: “For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the LORD, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope” (Jeremiah 29:11).

The belief that God acts in the world and that he manifested himself in the history of Israel is the central focus of biblical history. The Bible affirms that God is in control of his created world and that he has the ability to affect what happens within creation. The faith of the people of Israel was centered on the fact that God revealed himself to Moses on Mount Sinai and that he redeemed Israel “out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 4:20) to be his people and his special inheritance.

The physical manifestation of God to the patriarchs and to the people of Israel were designed to create a reaction and promote human response. The five books of Moses describe several manifestations of God to different people. God made himself known to the people of Israel in order to reveal his intentions for humanity. As God made himself known in the history of Israel, the people saw their God as a unique and special God, different from the gods of the other nations. He was not like Baal, he did not have a consort, and he was not related to the cycles of nature.

In his revelation at Sinai, God taught Israel that he could not be worshiped through images, that he did not reside in one particular place. At Sinai the people understood that their God was. He was transcendent and yet, he was a personal God. He was the Almighty God, the creator of the world. God is beyond human knowledge and yet he chose to reveal his personal name to Israel and make himself known to them.

The revelation of God to his people was designed to help them enter into a relationship with him. God manifested himself in different ways to demonstrate his glory and his desire to be their God. God revealed himself to Israel in order to teach them how to live as the people of God in the world.

God made himself known in many ways. He revealed himself as the creator by speaking creation into existence (Genesis 1:3). He appeared to Abraham in a vision (Genesis 15:1). He revealed himself through his angel (Genesis 16:7) who spoke on his behalf. God also appeared physically to Abraham (Genesis 18:1).

But God is not limited in the ways he reveals himself to his creation. God takes the initiative of when, where, and to whom he will reveal himself. God’s revelation of himself is designed to help people become part of his redemptive purpose for the world.

In the Bible, a common way by which God made himself known was through natural events such as a storm or an earthquake. Psalm 18 describes Yahweh’s theophany by emphasizing natural phenomena associated with a thunderstorm:

In my distress I called upon the LORD; to my God I cried for help. From his temple he heard my voice, and my cry to him reached his ears. Then the earth reeled and rocked; the foundations also of the mountains trembled and quaked, because he was angry. Smoke went up from his nostrils, and devouring fire from his mouth; glowing coals flamed forth from him. He bowed the heavens, and came down; thick darkness was under his feet. He rode on a cherub, and flew; he came swiftly upon the wings of the wind. He made darkness his covering around him, his canopy thick clouds dark with water. Out of the brightness before him there broke through his clouds hailstones and coals of fire. The LORD also thundered in the heavens, and the Most High uttered his voice, hailstones and coals of fire. And he sent out his arrows, and scattered them; he flashed forth lightnings, and routed them. (Psalm 18:6-14).

Many of the manifestations of God in the Old Testament, such as the pillar of fire and cloud, the revelation on Mount Sinai, and the many references to the wind of God, can be traced to the thunderstorm. As Psalm 18 reveals, darkness was “his covering.” His canopy was “thick clouds dark with water.” The voice of the Almighty was thunder and lightning was the arrow God used to defeat his enemies.

Another manifestation of God was when he appeared in human form to Abraham (Genesis 18). When God appeared to Abraham, he appeared with two other men to announce the birth of Isaac, and that he had come down to visit the iniquity of Sodom.

In this story God appeared as a man who spoke face to face with Abraham and then ate the meal Abraham had prepared for him. The narrative of God’s appearance to Abraham is shrouded in mystery. Although it is difficult to grasp the full significance of this event, the text is clear in affirming that God appeared to Abraham and that his appearance was in the form of a man.

The Bible affirms that God is still revealing himself to his creation. People of faith know that God has manifested himself to them: “In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son” (Hebrews 1:1-2).

Jesus Christ was the greatest manifestation of God to humanity. Jesus said: “He who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Through Jesus, God is still calling people to live in fellowship with him. People who believe in Jesus recognize that they can come into the presence of God. Through Christ, we experience the true manifestation of God in the world, if we are willing to accept God’s invitation to come to him. Jesus said: “No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary


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Tags: Hebrew Bible, Old Testament, Theophany, Revelation

Amos’ Fifth Vision and the Judgment of Israel

Today I conclude my study of Amos’ five visions by discussing his fifth vision. As I have shown in preceding studies, in the four previous visions, the Lord showed Amos what he was about to do: bring judgment upon Israel. In the fifth vision, Amos actually sees the Lord executing the judgment he had promised to bring upon the Northern Kingdom.

This is the vision Amos saw:

I saw the LORD standing beside the altar, and he said: Strike the capitals until the thresholds shake, and shatter them on the heads of all the people; and those who are left I will kill with the sword; not one of them shall flee away, not one of them shall escape (Amos 9:1).

As in the previous visions, Amos saw God. However, this time the Lord did not ask Amos what he was seeing. Rather, the Lord showed Amos what he was about to do: bring his judgment upon the wickedness of his people. The judgment against Israel had already been threatened in the first four visions and now God was about to bring a judgment from which none would escape. The fifth vision does not provide a reason for the judgment. The reason God does not specify why he is judging his people is because Amos had already proclaimed God’s charges against them. The apostasy of Israel was the reason for God’s judgment.

The judgment upon Israel will begin against the temple located in Bethel and against the people gathered in the temple for worship because it was there that the wickedness of the nation had its beginning. The executioner of the judgment is not mentioned, but probably it was a heavenly messenger as in Ezekiel 9:1,7. In Ezekiel’s vision, the Lord had selected six messengers to be the “executioners of the city” and God’s judgment would begin with the defilement of the temple.

By striking the capitals of the temple, that is, the foundation pillars of the temple, the blow would assure that the whole building would fall to the ground. Before it fell, the building would shake and eventually it would break into pieces and fall on the heads of the people who would be assembled for worship. Few would escape the destruction. Those who escaped the catastrophe would die by the sword.

Faced with the reality of God’s judgment, some people would try to escape the judgment, but soon they would discover that their attempt to evade the hand of God would in vain. Verses 2-4 shows that God is present everywhere and there is no hiding place from which the sinful people can escape from the hand of God.

God, who is present everywhere will send his hand, find the people who try to hide, and bring them to be judged. Those who try to climb the heights in defiance of God will be brought down. Those who seek to hide themselves in the depths of Sheol, God will find them and will bring them up. Those who try to climb to the top of Mount Carmel, God will bring them down. Even those who try to hide in the bottom of the sea, God will send a sea serpent to bite them. There will be no escape from God’s judgment.

People cannot hide themselves from God because God is present everywhere. David experienced the reality of God’s presence. In one of his psalms, David wrote: “Where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there” (Psalm 139:7-8).

Amos’ vision concludes with these words from God: “I will fix my eyes on them for harm and not for good” (Amos 9:4). The psalmist said that “the eyes of the LORD are upon the righteous (Psalm 34:15). When God sets his eyes upon the righteous, he does so to do them good. It is when God’s eyes are set upon his friends that people are blessed and filled with hope for the future. But what happens to people when the eyes of God, who is the source of all good, are set on them not for good but for evil? This means that God’s eyes are on them in order to bring judgment on them and not help them.

The fifth vision of Amos paints the frightful consequences of sin and the awesome power of God’s judgment. In his vision Amos sees God as being present everywhere and there is no place from which people can hide themselves from the reach of his hands.

But even with the threat of divine judgment, a judgment from which there would be no escape, the grace of God is seen. In the fulfillment of Amos’ prophecy, when the Northern Kingdom was destroyed in 722 B.C., what God threatened to do against Israel, God did not do. Amos indeed saw the coming of the Day of the Lord, a day when God would bring his judgment against his own people, but even in wrath, God’s mercy prevailed because the annihilating judgment predicted by Amos did not occur as he had prophesied.

Maybe the final judgment awaits for a future fulfillment, the day when the Lord comes back, not only to judge Israel but all the nations of the world.


Other Studies on Amos:

1. Amos and Social Justice

2. Amos, Justice, and the NIV

3. The Prophet Amos

4. The Call of Amos

5. Amos’ First Vision and the Power of Intercessory Prayer

6. Amos’ Second Vision and the Repentance of God

7. Amos’ Third Vision and the Plumb Line

8. Amos’ Fourth Vision and the Basket of Summer Fruits

9. Amos’ Fifth Vision and the Judgment of Israel

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

If you enjoyed reading this post, subscribe to my posts here.

Tags: Hebrew Bible, Old Testament , Amos, Visions, Prophet

Archaeological Sites in Saudi Arabia

In the News:

An Australian archaeologist working from his armchair in Perth has unearthed almost two thousand potential archaeological sites in Saudi Arabia.

Far and away from the Indiana Jones-style imagery archaeologists inspire, high resolution photography is allowing researchers to unearth world-changing discoveries using little more than Google Maps.

Professor David Kennedy, from the University of Western Australia, has never visited Saudi Arabia but scanned 1240 square kilometres of the country using Google Earth and found 1977 potential archaeological sites. This included 1082 ancient tombs shaped like tear drops.

Kennedy was able to confirm the legitimacy of two of the finds by asking a friend in Saudi Arabia to drive out to the sites and photograph them. He believes they may be up to 9000 years old.

Read the story here.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary


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Tags: Archaeology, Saudi Arabia

The Passibility of God

The Passibility of God

This quote on the passibility of God was taken from Matthew Henry’s commentary on Amos 9:1:

God is passible. He can be affected by the actions of his creatures. His possession of genuine character ensures his genuine feeling. The moral perfection of that character ensures his feeling appropriately. “There must be so much or such kind of passibility in him that he will feel toward everything as it is, and will be diversely affected by diverse things according to their quality” (Bushnell). Therefore “he is angry with the wicked every day.” Sin is to him as smoke to the eyes and vinegar to the teeth. It pains him inevitably, and leads to that infinitely pure recoil of his nature from evil, and antagonism to it, in which his wrath consists.

Few Christians believe that God is affected by the actions of his creatures, but he is. When people understand the view of a passible God, their appreciation for God and their understanding of God’s action in the world will grow.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary


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Tags: Passibility of God

UFO Over Jerusalem - A Hoax

Greg, one of my readers saw the UFO videos and then he sent me another video in which it shows that the UFO sighting is a hoax.

Here is the video:





Thank you Greg. Some day I will write a post presenting my views on UFOs and extra-terrestrial life.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

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Tags:

UFO

UFO,

The Hope of Israel

“O hope of Israel, its savior in time of trouble, why should you be like a stranger in the land, like a traveler turning aside for the night?” (Jeremiah 14:8)


The 14th chapter of the book of Jeremiah describes what happened to the people of Judah, the land, and even the animals when a devastating drought brought havoc to the community. Jeremiah realized that the devastation was the result of the people’s iniquity. Jeremiah prayed to God: “Our iniquities testify against us” (Jeremiah 14:7).

But the voice of lament in Jeremiah 14:1-6 is not Jeremiah’s and not even the people’s. The voice lamenting the situation of the people is that of God himself. The people are suffering and God is deeply moved by the suffering of the people.

God’s words to Jeremiah show the difficult situation confronting the people of Jerusalem:

Judah mourns; its gates fall apart. The people of Judah sit in mourning on the ground. Their cry goes up from Jerusalem. Important people send their assistants out for water. They go to the cisterns, but they don't find any water. They come back with their containers empty. They cover their heads, because they are ashamed and disgraced. The ground is cracked because there has been no rain in the land. The farmers are disappointed. They cover their heads. Even deer in the fields give birth and abandon their young because there's no grass. Wild donkeys stand on the bare hills. They sniff the air like jackals. Their eyesight fails because they have no green plants. (Jeremiah 14:2-6).

Touched by the despair of the people, Jeremiah intercedes with God on behalf of the people. Terence Fretheim, in his commentary Jeremiah (Macon: Smyth & Helwys, 2002), p. 219, said that the one who was lamenting was not the prophet but God himself. He wrote:

“Though it is common to claim that Jeremiah is the intermediary in these verses, there is no contextual marker to indicate this. . . . Given the absence of an introduction, these words are likely still a part of the word spoken by God to Jeremiah as with vv. 1-6. That God quotes the people’s prayer is a witness that God has indeed heard them and passes them on to the prophet.”

Whether it is Jeremiah or the people who is praying, the prayer recognizes that the people of Israel have sinned against God and in their iniquity they call unto God for mercy: “Do something, LORD, for the sake of your name, even though our sins testify against us. We have been unfaithful and have sinned against you” (Jeremiah 14:7).

The people ask God to act on their behalf: “Do something.” They appeal to God for the sake of his name. Thus, in their despair, the people appeal to God’s reputation and to his faithful love (his hesed) which he had demonstrated so many times on behalf of Israel.

The only grounds Israel had to appeal to God was God’s grace: “You are Israel's hope, the one who saves it in times of trouble. Why should you be like a stranger in the land, like a traveler who stays only one night?” (Jeremiah 14:8).

The people confessed that God was the hope of Israel and its savior. Since God was the hope of Israel, and since in the past he had delivered them from their troubles, they knew that he would save them again. But in their appeal to God, they questioned God’s constancy: “Why are you like a stranger?” The people believed that God was hidden from them, that he seldom made his presence known, since he was like a traveler who remained no more than a brief moment with them.

The complaint of the people is similar to the complaint of many troubled souls today. People who suffer and people who are in distress believe that God is unaware of their troubles, that he is like a stranger who does not care for their plight: “Why do you just stand there and stare, like someone who doesn’t know what to do in a crisis?” (Jeremiah 14:8 The Message).

But God is aware of our situation. In Jeremiah 14:1-6, God was giving voice to the suffering of the people, yet they were unaware that their suffering was affecting even God. The reason for the people’s questioning of God’s presence was that they were separated from God because of their iniquities.

There is a lesson for people of faith in the predicament of Israel. God is our hope and when we trust him, we know that even in our problems, there is a future with God. Although we may not know what will happen tomorrow, we know that our tomorrows are in God’s hands.

I don't know about tomorrow; I just live from day to day.
I don't borrow from its sunshine, For its skies may turn to grey.
I don't worry o'er the future, For I know what Jesus said.
And today I'll walk beside Him, For He knows what lies ahead.

I don't know about tomorrow; It may bring me poverty.
But the one who feeds the sparrow, Is the one who stands by me.
And the path that is my portion, May be through the flame or flood;
But His presence goes before me, And I'm covered with His blood.

Many things about tomorrow, I don't seem to understand
But I know who holds tomorrow, And I know who holds my hand.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary


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Tags: Jeremiah 14, Hope, Drought, Despair

UFO Over Jerusalem

Do you believe in UFOs?

Well, a few days ago, several videos were taken of a bright light that hovered over the Dome of the Rock, the Islamic shrine located on the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem.

Many people are skeptical about these videos, but they are having a difficult time explaining how the same event was recorded on video by different persons.

Below I give you two videos of the UFO event. Watch them and let me know what you think. Are these mysterious lights UFO or are they a hoax?








You can read the story here and here.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

If you enjoyed reading this post, subscribe to my posts here.

Tags: UFO

Disruptive Grace

Walter Brueggemann has published a new book, Disruptive Grace: Reflections on God, Scripture, and the Church. The three subtitles of this book, God, Scripture, and the Church reflect Brueggemann’s areas of interest throughout his illustrious career.

Walter Brueggemann is no stranger to students of the Old Testament. His work on Old Testament Theology has opened the doors for new approaches and new perspectives in the theological study of the Hebrew Bible. Brueggemann is a prolific writer whose works have inspired scholars, seminary students, pastors, and the laity. This new book will continue to provoke and inspire readers with his powerful approach to the text.

In his commendation of the book, Louis Stulman wrote:

Walter Brueggeman’s [sic] Disruptive Grace delivers a provocative and penetrating challenge to the powers and principalities of our contemporary world. This concentrate of ‘grace and truth’ not only exposes these forces of death but with master skill imagines a way out of the morass. One could only hope that the torrent from Brueggemann's pen never ends...for the good of us all!"

Disruptive Grace was published by Fortress Press. Fortress Press has made the first chapter available to the public in PDF format. The following is an excerpt from the first chapter:

Summons to a Dialogic Life

The church has its life from the God of the gospel. For that reason, the wonder and character of God matters crucially for every aspect of our life, the matters about which we trust, about which we are vexed, and about which we quarrel. Thus, I will think with you in these moments about the character of that God and the endlessly unfinished business about how to articulate that God faithfully and how to respond appropriately.

As the Bible has it, the God of the gospel bursts into the world with an utterance of promise and summons. There are all kinds of evidences and scholarly strategies to indicate that the God of the gospel in the Bible has important religious antecedents in the ancient Near East. That is not how the Bible has it. The Bible—after mapping the wonder of all creation and the peoples in it—presents the God who bursts in utterance. That divine utterance, in all of its surprise, is addressed to Abram, of whom we only know that he is the son of Terah in Ur of the Chaldeans, husband of a barren woman, Sarai. None of that matters, however, as the divine burst of utterance is unencumbered. It is a word of summons, the first word: “Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you’ ” (Gen 12:1). Abraham and his kin are summoned to depart their comfort zone in obedience to a God they do not know, toward a zone that remains unidentified. The utterance continues as a promise: “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen 12:2-3). The speech is dominated by first-person pronouns: “I will make . . . I will bless . . . I will make . . . I will bless.” Abraham is on the receiving end, passive recipient of divine commitment. And even the last phrase, “in you,” gives Abram no agency, simply a vehicle through which the divine resolve for blessing will extend to all the peoples of Genesis 1–11.

Abraham is required to leave the old regime of his life. Abraham is promised by this divine utterer a future, an heir, a land, and a material bodily well-being in the world. This God of promise and summons defines Abraham’s life. In Genesis 15, many heirs are promised: “He brought him outside and said, ‘Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your descendants be’ ” (Gen 15:5). And much land is promised:

On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.” (Gen 15:18-21)

The vision of “Greater Israel,” a force in our contemporary politics, is grounded in covenant: “On that day YHWH made a covenant.” It is all promise. In chapter 17, circumcision is a sign of that divine commitment. But there is no commandment. Scholars have noted that covenant began in the Old Testament with an unconditional divine promise, a commitment of divine power and divine purpose and divine fidelity to Abraham and his family.

You can see the Table of Contents here.

You can read the Introduction here.

You can read Chapter 1 here.


Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary


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Tags: Walter Brueggemann, Disruptive Grace