Biblical Philosophy Essay Midterm

*Note: All scripture citing is from NIV unless otherwise noted.Question one

The authors of our textbook have broken the study of the Bible into three different paths or 'worlds'; the literary world, the historical world, and the contemporary world. One site worded it a bit different and I believe makes it a little easier to understand. They called them the world behind the Bible, the world inside the Bible, and the world in front of the Bible. Let's break down each of the different worlds and look a little deeper into what each entails.

The historical world or world behind the Bible is most typically the first one to be studied. One most surely wants to know where the book they are placing so much faith in, comes from. In studying this world, one will look into Biblical authorship, the histories of communities and civilizations of that time, and pre-biblical texts. They may also want to investigate how the Bible was gathered together and why it contains what it does. This process took a long period of time, the Old Testament is fully canonized by 100 C.E. and the New Testament is not canonized until the fourth century. Even after the canonization, the decisions were widely disputed. Another area of study is who actually wrote, or whom did God use to write his words? He used a wide range of people from different regions of the world and different professions over a long period of time. There are about 40 authors whose writing spans about 1500 years. Texts that were written before the bible also are an area of study that enlightens you to more about the type of world the Bible was in. One such book that came up repeatedly was the Gilgamesh Epic.

The literary or world inside of the Bible is the next way to better understand the Bible. To study this, you have to break down the different parts of the bible, even down to syntactic level and take a deep look at how it all fits together. One way to better understand a passage is to categorize it by what type of passage it is. Is it a genealogy as in Genesis 1-11? Or perhaps an oracle as in Numbers 23-24? Another area of study can be the structure of writing and word choice. In the torah, there are several different authors and each has a distinct writing style. For example, the 'P' source uses YHWH and Elohim to reference God and he describes God as powerful and majestic.

The contemporary or world in front of the Bible is a place we are living today. We are creating and defining this world. Glancing back in history, we can look back and see ways in which the Bible was interpreted for good and bad. One quick example that comes to mind is when the Catholic Church burned heretics at the stake and molded the Bible to put them in a place of power. The Bible also appears in political issues, as stated in the text. It has been used to support banning abortions and supporting the care of underprivileged.

People usually pick and choose which world to emphasize and it is based on how deep they really want to get into it. If one wants a true understanding of why and how the Bible came to be as it is today, they take a hard look at all three worlds.

Question Four

The Prophet Ezekiel

The section of the book on Ezekiel tells us he was a priest who lived with the Babylonians in 597 B.C.E. under the rule of Nebuchadnezzar. He was a married man as seen in 24:15-18 and though confined in Babylonia, the Jews were able to live a relatively free life. There were about 10,000 Jews exiled to Babylon along with Ezekiel and a new king, Zedekiah, was put in power in Jerusalem. The times of Ezekiel were ones of much tension with rebellions and lots of political upheaval. The book also raises what the rabbi's of the late first century found questionable about the book. The problems they found are twofold; the first being his vision of the Chariot of the Lord being mystical speculation, and second was his temple plan which differed from the Leviticus plans.

The message of Ezekiel is broken into four different sections, an oracle against Israel, oracle against the nations, oracles for hope, and finally a reconstruction plan for the Temple. In these different sections, Ezekiel reports that he levitates, has visions and dreams, and many other strange happenings. I think Ezekiel is one of the more "extremist" prophets in the Bible, as seen in chapter 4 and 5. In chapter 5, he shaves his head and beard and describes an intricate process of what to do with it when your days of siege come end.

Much of the content of Ezekiel deals with the sovereignty of God. It is also the book that displays God's control and initiative more so than any other. Sovereignty is defined by Easton's 1896 Bible dictionary as: "his absolute right to do all things according to his own good pleasure (Dan. 4:25, 35; Rom. 9:15-23; 1 Tim. 6:15; Rev. 4:11)". Ezekiel dwells on this subject because not only are the Israelites falling into sin, they are defiling the Temple and the city of Jerusalem. God showed his sovereign power by being merciful and carefully leading the nation back to him instead of betraying his covenant. God could have left the Israelites and judged them for their wrong doings, leaving them open to destruction, but he did not.

I chose Eziekel because of its discussion of God's absolute sovereignty. He has the right to rule and the ability to carry it out. He is a good and just god. He shows it throughout the chapter.

The Prophet Malachi

The history of Malachi is difficult to put an exact time on, though some scholars believe that he wrote it around 425 B.C. The Israelites have returned from Babylon under Zerubbabel who finished the temple in 516 B.C. Judea is still under Persian rule. In the past, Nehemiah had done much work in Jerusalem to help the poor and began rebuilding the walls. When he left in 433 B.C., Jerusalem was cast back into sin and Malachi addressed a few of these issues.

The meat of the chapter deals with the coming of the King to judge his people and to restore them. The Jews have thrown many of their beliefs out, many not keeping the Sabbath or tithing. Malachi sets them straight for doubting God. He also tells of the coming of the Lord, describing it as a 'refiner's fire' as stated in 3:1-4. Malachi is one of several of the prophets who predict the return of the Lord. Daniel is another and I am not sure how the Jews or I would have taken it, considering Jesus Christ has not come to be man yet. Near the end, Malachi also tells the Jews of Elijah's return to bring them back to their ways (4:5-6). Another main topic of the chapter is tithing. Tithing is not only the giving of money and goods too support the church, it is more importantly a portrayal of trust and submitting yourself to your God. Malachi claimed that the Jews have been robbing God and offering blemished sacrifices. Since this is pre-Christ, the sacrifices are very important for their salvation. A blemished sacrifice would be a major insult to God and defeats the purpose of a sacrifice.

I wrote on Malachi because of the hope he gives to the Jews. He puts their declining faith into perspective, shows how they can change their ways, and gives them a hope for the future; a hope of the lord coming like a refiner's fire. He also discusses the fact the God never leaves you, but he does not bless those that have fallen away.

Question six

The question asks how do the books address theodicy? Allow me to define theodicy first. According to Wikipedia, it is the attempt to reconcile the existence of evil and/or suffering in the world with the assumption of a benevolent God. In other words, how can a just God allow bad things to happen to good people?

The Book of Proverbs

Proverbs is hailed by the book as being the blessings of wisdom, and contains many short sayings, stories, and poems. Many of the sayings in the book are observations of the way things are in life, though they are not tied together by theme in the book. I personally enjoy reading this book because it not only contains theological wisdom, but practical wisdom that we can put to use today. I read it and I envision a wise old man with a beard sitting his grandson on his knee and telling him these words of wisdom. Perhaps that is what the author wanted us to envision, us being the kid and God the wise grandfather. Proverbs claims to be rewarded, you must be wise or you will fall. The book has a sentence that I really enjoy bringing a part of proverbs together, 'righteous poverty is more desirable than wicked wealth.' Presenting the good and then the opposite point of view was the authors main stylistic strategy, a compare and contrast of how life should be lived.

The Book of Job

If I had to pick one of the top few of my favorite books of the Bible, Job would be up there. It seems to be the book on theodicy in the Bible. The book titles the book as the limits of wisdom, where God pushes the envelope and tests Job's faith. God allows Satan to do many terrible things to a righteous and upright man of faith to attempt to make him curse God. Satan literally made Job's life a living hell, killing his family, ripping his belongings away, and cursing his health to summarize some of the suffering Job had to endure. Even Job's wife told him to curse God and die, but he still said blessed be the name of the Lord. It is the ultimate story of faith, both from Job and of God. God would not have put Job through this if he did not have faith that he could withstand it.

The book states there are two main themes to Job, if you hold faith through tough times you will be rewarded, and suffering may be God testing your faith. God also is leaving some responsibility of maintaining the moral order in our hands; it would be easy to love him if we were all moral and didn't struggle with sin. The last sentence in the book talking about Job I found entertaining, 'God is not a heavenly behavioralist who practices operant conditioning on humankind', he does not reward/punish our every good/wrongdoing.

The Book of Ecclesiastes

Ecclesiastes questions the purpose of human existence. Why should we do good or bad if we all end up dead in the end? The book titles Ecclesiastes as the 'futility of wisdom', again challenging the doctrine that the righteous are rewarded and wicked are punished. The book also notes the purpose of life is not pursuing things like fame and fortune to find happiness, but rather finding it in your everyday work (Ecc. 9:7-9). The intended audience is primarily the youth of the nation at this time, who are most likely striving after futile things of this world.

Many scholars have tried to link together the portions of the book, but it has been decided that it is probably just a collection of poems, proverbs, and sayings that are not tied together specifically. Ecclesiastes is similar to Job in that it states that the ways of God are not open to our full understanding and that God does not guarantee justice, but in Ecclesiastes, God does not directly interact. Overall, it is a rather depressing book.

Each book brings up good and evil, wisdom, and our purpose in life. All three claim that God acts in a realm outside of our understanding and we will never fully understand why some things happen.

Question five

The book defines being a prophet as someone who predicts future events before they occur. I think it needs to be narrowed down a bit more than that, because I can predict that if I don't go to class all semester, I will not pass the class and that does not make me a prophet. I think that a prophet is someone who can predict something that is not common knowledge and can do it repeatedly. That being said, prophets are seen in all different kinds of societies. The book looks into those of the near east, where shamans used models to teach people in the ways of medicine and in the Bible the prophets are said to have the hand of God on them or in the court of the King as seen in 1 Kings 22. People loved to have prophets because they usually gave very descriptive and, unlike other ways to access the spiritual realms, concrete answers. People considered the prophets words to be the Word of God and they were deemed holy people, to be revered and protected.

It is natural for a society to make a connection to a higher power and a spirit realm. The native Americans did it and they had their shamans who spoke to the gods on their behalf, as did the Egyptians, Celtic, and many other societies. They often spoke of future events, such as Isaiah did in Is. 7:14 when he told King Ahaz about the coming child named Immanuel. We can even make a parallel to our modern world, do we have modern day prophets? Yes and no.

Today, we have prophetic people, but they are not necessarily in contact with the spiritual realm to say. They usually have more to do with looking out for social injustice and taking a distinct stand against it. Some of the modern day prophets may include Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, and others. They all stood up for those who could not stand up for themselves and most paid dearly for it, either through imprisonment, self-denial, or even death. Likewise in the prophets, many of them made a stand against injustices they encountered in their lives. Such as in Ezekiel and Malachi, who made a stand against those defiling God and His temple. They directed and guided those to instigate a change.

Some people could argue that people researching scientific issues could be considered a prophet, it could go either way in my opinion. Is predicting global warming and overpopulation prophetic? Or is it deciphering data? The Bible also warns of false prophets, those who claim to be of God, but teaching things that go against His word. We must be careful and compare the teaching of people today with the Bible in order that we are not led astray.

Question two

Two techniques used to study Bible is an intrinsic study and an extrinsic study. Wikipedia describes both well, 'an intrinsic property is a property that an object or a thing has of itself, independently of other things, including its context. An extrinsic property is a property that depends on a things relationship with other things.' Reading the sections in the book regarding this, it becomes apparent that intrinsic has to do with primarily the literary study of the Bible and the extrinsic is focused on the historic world around the Bible.

The book breaks down the intrinsic study into six main sections: boundaries of text, types of literature found in the text, prose and poetic qualities, themes, surface structure, and integrated reading of the text. I will touch on a few of these, but it would require quite a long paper to look into each in depth. Studying the different types of literature is a great place to start when studying. There are many types, including short stories, poems, songs, and even myths. People today are trained in school that a myth is a fairytale dealing with Roman gods, but in a Biblical context it simply means a story about the actions of a divine being. A good example of a Biblical myth is in Genesis 6:1-4 and in Exodus 15. These myths are used primarily to answer simple questions of life such as who are we and why did we get the way we are? Oracles are also used many times, especially in the prophetic books of the Old Testament and they proclaim knowledge of the future from someone of authority, one is found in Numbers 23-24. Studying themes also guides scholars in studying the Bible. It organizes the book, guiding the reader through it like a map, usually the most common topic or topics of the book. Two excellent examples of a pretty distinctive theme is in Song of Solomon, which is hailed as the love book. For the scholar who chooses to dive into the Bible, they will learn much from an intrinsic study, but a casual reader will most likely not draw nearly as much since it does require significant study.

An extrinsic study is two-fold. The first studies the history of the physical Bible and the things that make it, and the second uses it to build a historical timeline for that period. Scholars term the study of this as a criticism. Traditional criticism deals with the passing on of traditions and stories between generations as seen in Deuteronomy 6:20-25 and allows the reader to follow how the story has been shaped and molded throughout its past. Source criticism seeks to find the author of the writings of the Bible. We discussed this in detail in our early class sessions and it was also termed the documentary hypothesis. This method lead scholars to believe that the Torah was actually penned by four different sources, J E D P. The most influential part of this type of study seemed to be archaeology, at least by the emphasis given it by the book, which is the study of the remains left by societies. Critiques of the Bible would be sorry to hear that when looking at the past through archeology, it tends to prove the Bible rather than disprove, or so Dr. Mendel's archeologist friend claims.

As we keep looking into the historical and literary study of the Bible and its era of time, new things are constantly arising. For instance, archeologists believe they may have recently discovered the tomb that Jesus was laid in. Another discovery that significantly changed our ideas of the bible was the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Every discovery that we stumble upon will support either those defending the Bible or those attacking it, but they always change somebody's viewpoint.

Question three

According to a source on the internet ((My internet died after I got the PDF file and I could not get the cite back up)), the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy are broken down into three main parts all dealing with God's delivery of Israel and keeping with his covenant. The covenant that God made was with Abraham and is accounted for twice in the Bible. The first is in Gen 12 and the second in Gen 17, but both say generally the same thing. God promises three things, land, a great nation, and all his people are blessed. This covenant is unconditional, meaning he promises these things to him and does not expect anything in return. If he lets Israel down in Egypt, he breaks his covenant.

Part one is the preview of how it is all going to take place, setting the stage for God to save the day. In Exodus 1, Israel is being persecuted because God is blessing them and they are multiplying, so the Pharaoh Thutmose I decides to enslave them using them to build many monuments for the Pharoah. Then takes it further by declaring that all male babies are to be killed to ensure that they cannot rebel.

Part two is the overview of how God deals with the situation and rides in to save the day and spans Exodus 2 through Numbers 36. The majority of this section deals with Moses. He is the Prince of Egypt (Exodus 2:4-10), a shepherd of Midian after marrying a shepards daughter (Exodus 2:16-22), and the lawgiver of Israel. The last title spans the majority of the section. He rescues his people from Egypt and calls down the ten plagues (Ex 5). He parts the Red Sea (ch 14), establishes the Sabbath in chapter 31, disobeys God and strikes the rock, receives the Ten Commandments (ch 19), establishes the Tabernacle (ch 35), established the tribes of Israel (Numbers 2),