Ruth 2:3-7 Alter and music

You have seen the care with which I have followed concordance as a strategy over these past 6 years since the publication of my first book on the Scriptures, Seeing the Psalter.

I worked with the poetry of the Psalms first. Among my first works with the prose was the book of Ruth. So here I will compare the English of three versions.

Have I written English in my work? This is a question I have worried about. Reading and studying a foreign tongue twists ones own in unpredictable ways. Consider the language of Yoda in the Star Wars films. Sometimes I even followed Dr. Seuss as my model. (My tongue is in my cheek.)

But seriously, I am also supposed to be paying attention to the music. To be fair, I don't always try to underlay the text. I would be working for several more years to do this. But we have all the music available. So there's nothing to stop you all from doing this. Or from reading my close translation for the music.

Here are, line by line, Alter, NRSV, and Bob with music for Ruth 2:3 to 7. And each musical line shows the Hebrew, the pulse, and the cadences and ornaments. I do not know who invented these hand-signals but they are fantastically good for the text which itself is so dearly loved. It would be a shame to get it wrong. And they are much more accurate as to tone and rhythm than any abstract poetical concepts.

I am taking my information from the section of the review of Alter's translation by Adele Berlin, whose presentation skill I greatly admire.

I have put the line breaks where the cadence on the subdominant is in the music. This is a fascinating comparison. One can see the loves and fears about English in each translation. One can also see the rhythmic limitations of the English immediately.

Verse 3
A. And she went and came and gleaned in the field behind the reapers,
N. So she went. She came and gleaned in the field behind the reapers.
B. And she went, and she came, and she gleaned in the field, following the reapers.

Ruth 2:3 showing the pulse and cadence of the Hebrew text

Both Alter and NRSV miss the pulse of the first part of the verse. The musical notes give an accurate representation of the syllables if you are in to counting.

A. and it chanced that she came upon the plot of Boaz, who was from the clan of Elimelech.
N. As it happened, she came to the part of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the family of Elimelek.
B. And she chanced by chance on the part of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the family of Elimelek.

Why did Alter vary the gloss for field to plot? Quite unnecessary here. Both NRSV and Alter do not repeat the doubled verb. I often don't also. But in this case the lilt is unmistakable. Why not repeat it? The music reveals that this is a story to be told with a living pulse. It is not just a boring narrative.

Verse 4

A. And look, Boaz was coming from Bethlehem, and he said to the reapers, “May the Lord be with you!”
N. Just then Boaz came from Bethlehem. He said to the reapers, “The Lord be with you.”
B. And behold Boaz came from Bethlehem. And he said to the reapers, Yahweh be with you.

A. and they said, “May the Lord bless you!”
N. They answered, “The Lord bless you.”
B. And they said to him, Yahweh bless you.

Ruth 2:4 music

Why would Alter and NRSV omit the words 'to him'? I am baffled. Note the sudden high C - the appearance of Boaz. The music paints an unexpected coincidence.

Verse 5

A. And Boaz said to his lad who was stationed over the reapers,
“Whose is this young woman?”
N. Then Boaz said to his servant who was in charge of the reapers,
“To whom does this young woman belong?”

B. And Boaz said to his lad who was monitoring the reapers,
Whose is that lass? 

Ruth 2:5 music

Now the high C highlights the question to come before it is spoken - hey, who is this. Pop music 3000 years ago. Here Alter and even more NRSV have a fuller syllable count for the notes. But the emphasis in the English is really awkward when you set it. My spondee fits one word per note in this case: whose (A) is (g#) that (f) lass (e).

Verse 6
A. And the lad stationed over the reapers answered and said,
“She is a young Moabite woman who has come back with Naomi from the plain of Moab.
N. The servant who was in charge of the reapers answered,
“She is the Moabite who came back with Naomi from the country of Moab.
B. And the lad monitoring the reapers answered and he said,
She is the Moabite lass, she who returned with Naomi from the fields of Moab. 

Ruth 2:6 music

If you wish - rephrase as you set the music - and answered the lad ... that gets the ornament on the right word. To rephrase accurately (as opposed to paraphrasing), you need a concordant reading to work from. That's what you get with Bob's Bible, the only English reading that is for the music.

The silluq on Moabite draws in mystery by prematurely returning us to the tonic. Don't get involved with a Moabite. Alter repeats young woman accurately. NRSV just misses it. I chose lass to go with lad. NRSV servant is traditional but conflicts for me with אבד.

Verse 7

A. And she said, ‘Let me glean, pray, and gather from among the sheaves behind the reapers.’
N. She said, ‘Please, let me glean and gather among the sheaves behind the reapers.’ 

B. And she had said, Please let me glean, and gather among the bales following the reapers. 

A. And she has come and stood since the morning till now. She has barely stayed in the house.”
N. So she came, and she has been on her feet from early this morning until now, without resting even for a moment.”
B. And she came and she stood from then, the morning, and till this minute, sitting in the house briefly.

Ruth 2:7 music

I admit I could have avoided using the pluperfect. Note the sudden drop on zeh (this) and the ornament on morning (if you are setting English words to the Hebrew, feel free to leave out notes when the syllable count doesn't match.)

Identity

"The roots of my identity are not in time", Rowan Williams, Lost Icons, page 109.

We don't need the personal pronoun. He is using himself as a generic human. The roots of identity are not in time. What is 'in time'. He means, we can't construct by will or redemption our identity based on past experience. Past experience is too much intertwined with the experience of those we have affected by our lives. It is not under our control alone. Identity is therefore intertwined.

The first 100 pages of this little book are a difficult read. These 9 words are as succinct a summary as I can hear so far. (But I got them quite wrong. He means the opposite. He sees identity as so overlaid with temporal accident as to be unrecoverable except by extreme vulnerability - and no sense of an identity that is otherwise. But maybe I won't get it until I finish this puzzle.)

Williams on the cover in ecclesiastic splendour is himself a lost icon.

Now off to church... to find my identity, splintered all over the place, in past and future, each a foreign country.

New book - why did you read the Bible in Hebrew. Call it Translation. There is certainly a book there, on purpose, process, foreignness, and identity. Maybe I will right it some day. Then it would be a ship, my own arkish barge of pitched atonement.

Individual and Jesus Christ

There is an excerpt of a new book by Richard Bauckham here. I have seen him go hammer and tong with other theologians - love the passion. The first section is on the individual's relationship to Jesus. This is language quite foreign to scholars. He himself writes that he is quite against the search for the imaginary Johannine community.

I have been thinking of the individual recently because I recognize that although some things I have done are unique, they are all repeatable, and I am dependent on a myriad of technicians, scholars, theologians, and just plain old people, not to mention the formation of my language, the interpretation of foreign languages, the dictionaries, concordances, coding systems, and the internet and publishing companies and the whole distribution systems that keep me alive while I pursue 'my' project.

Example, no one to date, except me, has written a program to automatically read the Old Testament text and produce a musical score. But I could not have done this without the source in Unicode and the language MusicXML, not to mention the cantillation inferences of Suzanne Haik-Vantoura, all these things only available together in the last 10 years. Also I am dependent on a music program to read the XML and put it into a score that I can sing.

Many people also read in the ancient Hebrew - and I am a neophyte here. But what can I say about the Synagogue for teaching me, the ancient and modern publications in English, Hebrew, Latin, etc that allow me to reach into this mysterious place and pull out a gloss or two. And what can I say about the formation of English from Shakespeare and Tyndale to the abusive Latin teacher I had in the 1950s - even this man formed some of my ability to read, and sing, God rest his tortured being in us all. And even those philosophers I have only heard the names of affect my speech - Foucault, and Wittgenstein, and Kant, not to mention all the scholars too many to list alive and deceased..

None of us stands alone - so how can the individual be important? I am as Bauckham notes, among those who are closely entwined with the narrative of groups to which I 'belong' - though some of them might not even recognize that I am theirs. Are they scholars? So am I. Are they bibliobloggers? So am I. And what about all the other sticky labels that are attached to our backs. How can I even be an individual here?

I am derived.

I might enjoy this chapter.

Silence and sexual desire

Christopher Page tells me he gets much more traffic when he writes about homosexuality rather than Boblical Studies or his own profession as pastor. Well, I'm not so sure I want to try, but a Marginalia review of Diarmaid MacCulloch's Silence, A Christian History, reviewed by Sarah Coakley is hard to pass by.

The driving argument, or so it seems at the start of the book, is that the Church’s underlying instinct for silencing truth about sexual desire — or, more specifically, about outlawed homoeroticism — is somehow the underlying impetus for the other forms of (mandated) silence that the Bible and tradition have thrown up along the way.

But O dear, this excellent author, moved, I expect, by his own powerful inner impulse, to the extensive work he has done, is also unable to resolve this problem? So it seems from Coakley's comments at the beginning of this extensive review. And she is quite correct to point out MacCulloch's failure to explore some aspects of Biblical silence:

Oddly, he does not muse on the embracing of desert loneliness by various biblical figures (supremely Elijah, John the Baptist and Jesus himself), or on the commendation of judicious or awed silence to be found scattered at points through the psalms, the prophets or the wisdom literature.

Yet, at the end of the review, she comes close to justifying what seems to be an essentially confused and incomplete book.

silent devotion is precisely the condition under which an unspeakable God may disclose the secrets of the heart and give joyful voice to the politically voiceless and the sexually marginalized. So which is it, and how would we tell the difference? That is the spiritual and moral dilemma that this fascinating book most frustratingly never solves.

I find it strange that MacCulloch would somehow fail here. He is a clear and comprehensive writer, but sexuality is never a topic that can be addressed head-on by anyone. What a dilemma! Perhaps silence is vital, but there is some truth in the cultic noise of history. Lewis gets to it in The Great Divorce, and he succeeds only through the death of the cultic object. The image could well go unnoticed. The Psalms get to it. You would expect me to say that. The Scripture is supportive in all ways, but there are so many pieces of advice that it is hard to pick out the salient ones. The New Testament is much more explicit, but again you might miss it.

Perhaps it will not surprise you, that a lesser writer who spent his life running just a step ahead of many fears, ran nevertheless into a story (Seen from the Street edited by Ravinder Ozha) that could illuminate this dark place and 'explain' why circumcision is the sign of the covenant. And to boot, give hope to the marginalized and rebuke to the normal, who think themselves without need of deliverance from normality.

Perhaps a psalm of the anointed is appropriate as a conclusion: (from Psalm 17)

קוּמָה יְהוָה קַדְּמָה פָנָיו הַכְרִיעֵהוּ פַּלְּטָה נַפְשִׁי מֵרָשָׁע חַרְבֶּךָ	13	Arise יהוה confront to its face make it bow down Secure me from the wicked, your sword
מִמְתִים יָדְךָ יְהוָה מִמְתִים מֵחֶלֶד חֶלְקָם בַּחַיִּים וּצְפוּנְךָ תְּמַלֵּא בִטְנָם יִשְׂבְּעוּ בָנִים וְהִנִּיחוּ יִתְרָם לְעוֹלְלֵיהֶם	14	from men, your hand, יהוה from men, from transience, their share in their lives whose bellies you fill with your treasure Let them be satisfied with children and leave their surplus to their progeny
אֲנִי בְּצֶדֶק אֶחֱזֶה פָנֶיךָ אֶשְׂבְּעָה בְהָקִיץ תְּמוּנָתֶךָ	15	I in righteousness will gaze on your face I will be satisfied to awaken in your similitude

But the most obvious lack of silence on this subject is Psalm 139.

לַמְנַצֵּחַ לְדָוִד מִזְמוֹר יְהוָה חֲקַרְתַּנִי וַתֵּדָע	1	For the leader Of David, a psalm יהוה you have examined me and you know
אַתָּה יָדַעְת שִׁבְתִּי וְקוּמִי בַּנְתָּה לְרֵעִי מֵרָחוֹק	2	You yourself know my sitting and my arising you understand my thought from afar
אָרְחִי וְרִבְעִי זֵרִיתָ וְכָל דְּרָכַי הִסְכַּנְתָּה	3	my path and my lying down and stretching out you sift and all my ways you cherish
כִּי אֵין מִלָּה בִּלְשׁוֹנִי הֵן יְהוָה יָדַעְת כֻלָּהּ	4	For there is not a speech on my tongue but יהוה knows all of it
אָחוֹר וָקֶדֶם צַרְתָּנִי וַתָּשֶׁת עָלַי כַּפֶּכָה	5	rearguard and advance you fortify me and you lay on me your palm
פְּלִיאָה דַעַת מִמֶּנִּי נִשְׂגְּבָה לֹא אוּכַל לָהּ	6	Wonderful - knowledge beyond me I am set on high - I cannot accomplish it

But no psalm can be known solely as 'explanation'. Explanation is not knowledge. It is second-hand. First hand knowledge comes direct from the source through the experience of presence (thinking back to Qohelet chapter 8).

Songs of Ascents

Dr. David Mitchell's book on the Songs and with extensive analysis of the accents in the Hebrew text according to the theory of Suzanne Haik-Vantoura has now been published. I highly recommend this book if only for the delightful detective story on the ark of the covenant. You will find further details at this website.

Schmemann and Jobling, secularism and feminist readings

It is indeed one of the grave errors of religious anti-secularism that it does not see that secularism is made up of verités chretiennes devenus folles, of Christian truths that "went mad".

Alexander Schmemann in For the Life of the World, Sacraments and Orthodoxy. p. 111, St Vladimir's Press, 1973

He notes that secularism misses the Church as sacrament, but it does not miss many values that have arisen out of the religious framework that is common to many traditions. Among these he lists ethics, concern for truth, human kinship and solidarity, justice, abnegation, - in fact he says that secularists are often more passionate about these things than organized religious bodies. Even in the area of social, or spiritual 'help', he claims that the religious have to borrow the whole arsenal and terminology of various secular "therapeutics".

One criticism that he lays directly to the religious is that they have retreated into a distinction between the sacred and the profane, spiritual and material, etc, which he claims "has thus narrowed and vitiated its own message". (I would note that the distinction between holy and profane for those who are in the Anointed is sundered in the rending of the veil of the temple at the death of Jesus.)

Any changes since 1973? Or should I ask, what is the holy now that it is not confined to the Temple? Is it purely the might of the secular engine of government, of whatever stripe? Is it the monarch's person or the kleptocrat's persona or the rule-bender's might? Where is the accounting and the justice? Is there any good news?

Schmemann identifies the direction of an answer through the Sacrament of the Kingdom of God that is the Church. This might take some teasing out.

On a different topic I am reading David Jobling's 1 Samuel in the series ברית עולם, also a very fine read, exploring Hannah from a feminist perspective, and giving multiple readings of the text in tension with one another including the monarchist reading and an interesting section on Jonathan and his role in the promoting of David as King. 1 Samuel is on the horizon in my work. Its mountains may be somewhat visible in the distance. I may even postpone finishing my drafted readings of Qohelet and Job till I have more of other texts completed.

The human as a musical score to be read

Chris Hadfield ends his book, An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth with a metaphor of thanksgiving to his editor - "you have been through my words so many times, you truly scarily know me. It's an intimacy that conductors must have with new scores, ..."

Good book to read. Good advice and well balanced. A true 'zero'. Whole like the Hebrew letter samech, ס, in a sans-serif font.

Eugene Peterson on the Psalms

Oliver pondering the 2015-2016 Regina Symphony Brochure

A book on my unseen host's shelf.

We are here visiting Regina at the invitation of our son, Simon, to hear his new orchestra. He takes up his position as concertmaster full time in September. And of course we are babysitting Oliver while they house-hunt.

So I finished my book quickly, Acts and Omissions by Catherine Fox. This is a serious exploration of Anglicanism in the spirit of the Barchester Chronicles, a hoot and a severe criticism of policy and polity at one and the same time. Can anyone listen, I wonder, in this time of fear?

My project marks time since I am away from my host of lexicons and dictionaries that distract me necessarily when I am reading Hebrew.

So I have time to explore the books at our host's house. The host family is away and has kindly given us the house for the week, making this extended visit possible.

What do I find? A lot of books by Eugene Peterson including his translations of the Prophets. But what strikes me is this one on the Psalms: Answering God, The Psalms as Tools for Prayer.

So I pick it up and note a chapter that references Psalm 18 - a favorite, a rock. In which he says:

The dominant diction in this theater is metaphor. Metaphor is the witness of language that spirit and matter are congruent. Metaphor uses the language of sense experience to lead us into the world of the unseen: faith, guilt, mind, God. The visible and invisible, put asunder by sin, are joined by metaphor.

Not bad, I think. This is a little book, and I think I will give it a read.

Eros and The Christ, Fredrickson, David E.

Here are two conflicting reviews, both necessary, one potentially fearful, one potentially hopeful, of what looks like a suitable book for adults in the faith.

I won't be buying it, but it is suitable to read the reviews and give thanks that at least someone has perceived the overarching metaphor of Holy Scripture. I am just in the middle of Zephaniah 3 where the hidden love in the first two chapters becomes clearer. More to come.

I have also just finished a full second draft of Ruth. That's why all my old translation links have disappeared from the blog. (In case you noticed). Why such motivation? Reality not to be controlled or second-guessed. As Buckminster Fuller once wrote in a fine title: No More Secondhand God.

You might want to read this review

A book on Genesis 1 - What really happened in the Garden of Eden?

From inside:

The translation “rib” is discarded, as Zevit indicates that that was not even considered as one of the options by the early rabbis. His suggestion is that the limb/appendage referred to is the baculum—the bone that other species have in the penis but is absent in human beings (137–50).

I've requested a review copy - not holding my breath.

Divine desire purgatively reformulates human desire

Here's a review of Sarah Coakley's beginning of her trilogy on the Trinity. This first look makes me think that she is definitely on the right tack. The interpretation of Romans 8:26 configures itself congruently with my own experience and reflection.

Thanks to Daniel who did the last Biblical Studies Carnival for 2014.

Reviews and Books - the Popular and the Useful

Sometimes you are sitting on a rough-cut gem and not really making use of it. Sometimes a glass diamond glitters and you are captivated but the impact is short-lived. Sometimes you hold a rock which may be polished to a shine but does not reveal any depth.

From an old school copy of essays by Francis Bacon, I remember this advice:

Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.

There are many books but there is one you. There are many distractions but there is One who loves you and who wants to build you into the likeness of the Eternal. There are many others like you and like me who form this building, a temple suitable for the indwelling Spirit of the Most High.

It is not a simple thing to build this building. The One who teaches humanity knowledge is the One who builds and who knows the cost. The cost is in the cup of salvation, a cup prepared for the wicked to drink to the dregs (Psalm 75:9):
for there is a cup in the hand of YHWH
and the wine is red
full of mixture
and he spills from it
surely they will suck the dregs
all the wicked of the earth will imbibe

and yet it is drunk by the elect instead (Psalm 116:13):
the cup of salvation I will bear
so in the name of YHWH I will call

This word cup is the same as the word for owl, used in the prayer of Psalm 102:7
I am like an unclean bird of the wilderness
I have become like an owl of the desert

Here the cup is an image of the body, as in Psalm 23:5, where my cup is saturated.

The pointer forward to Jesus and his use of the image of cup is very clear - can you drink of the cup that I must drink? If we are to be a cup fit for the master's use, then should we not chew and digest our instruction, the same instruction from which Jesus learned his own calling?  There is no better way to do this than by meditation on the Psalms and the use of the imagery of these poems in both the New and Old Testaments.

This is the work of my book Seeing the Psalter. I use it myself to consider my own calling. I wrote it so that I could learn Hebrew poetry as fully as possible and it is serving me well on a daily basis. This useful book has now been reviewed by Professor Susan Gillingham of the University of Oxford for the Society for Old Testament Studies. The review is short but very encouraging. She calls it an "unusual commentary on the Psalms, in part technological, in part aesthetic, in part hermeneutical".

Yes - it is unusual. It is meant for growth for me and for the reader (that's the hermeneutical part). It does not waste time on distractions. She ends her review with these words for which I am deeply grateful:  "Overall this is an ambitious and intriguing project, but is still very much work in progress: interested readers should look at MacDonald’s shared documents at this website."

I concur with her comment that the book is a work in progress. It is like a huge canvas, impossible to finish. The Psalms are part of the infrastructure of the temple. A commentary is, like me and like you, a work in progress. But God forbid we should fail to progress towards the full scope of the image of power and love and a sound mind that we are called into and that is prepared for us.

[Susan's review is available online through Sage Publications, but hold your clicks. It is behind a pay wall. Sage offers a one month free access once a year. When it becomes available I will note it. I am pleased indeed that the review directly references my presentation at the Open University in London last year. It is a good summary of my intent. I will make sure this address does not get deleted any time soon. The summary is in no way a substitute for pondering the Psalms!]

Religion without God (4)

Continuing the previous posts on Religion without God, a very short book (30,000 words or so) by the late philosopher and legal expert, Ronald Dworkin.

Dworkin (p.24) divides religious values into godly convictions, worship, prayer, and obedience, and the value of ethical responsibility. He rejects the first three and accepts the last as a value shared with many who do not necessarily believe in God.  It seems to me that obedience and ethics might well overlap, but he doesn't make the connection. Worship and obedience do not appear in his index. Prayer only appears under the entry "prayer in public schools". In the third entry on this subject, he notes the US compromise of a moment of silence that allows for prayer or meditation, or just resting the eyes.

Worship would focus the dispute if he had addressed it. Perhaps he makes a stab with his appeals to truth and beauty from Keats Ode on a Grecian Urn, but neither the calling out of beauty with a loud voice (A Room with a View) not the engraved for ever panting and for ever young quite does the full job of suggesting a conscious and mature worship. And the brief mentions of Otto and Tillich on the numinous are likewise not satisfying, since many do not come to worship in such a state.

The most moving courses I ever took in school were on special relativity. Time dilation has gripped my soul ever since those heady for ever days. No one can convince me that eternal and everlasting are for ever in a linear sense. Even the universe as we see it in scientific theory has beginning and end. And the ancients also knew that whatever release there was from our troubled lives was for ever in a sense that is different from a linear model of time. So Revelation speaks of the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world. And Jewish tradition knows of the primal 'existence' of Torah.

Redemption is thus embedded in creation. (Psalm 75) Who can pay for our damage? (Psalm 49) How can we be forgiven? (Psalm 103) Time as a straight line is quite boring.

Dworkin approaches the beauty of science quite well in his chapter 2 on the universe. Yet even such awe, bordering on the numinous, does not come to the full recognition of that which is worthy of worship. Psalm 19 as I have noted before makes a direct connection between creation and Torah and the human problem of sin. The full recognition of worship is embedded in the story that is in the Psalms. For example, note Psalm 22, known for its famous verse 1: My God, My God, why have you forsaken me. In verse 23, the forsaken one announces your name to my kin. Then in verse 28, the poet proclaims:

All the ends of the earth will remember and will turn to יהוה [the name, YHWH]
All the families of the nations will worship in your presence

Verse 30 then notes:

All the sleek of the earth will eat and worship in his presence
All who go down to dust will bow

The parallel would suggest that it should read all who sleep in the earth. In Seeing the Psalter, I have translated the error into a single character slip in English from a single character adjustment in the Hebrew. Translation really can be fun. [(p. 81) sleek, דשׁן (dshn) fat, feels like a misprint for sleep, ישׁן]. Mind you sleek works too for it shows that the fat are economically exploiting the afflicted (verse 27).

The afflicted will eat and be satisfied
Those who search for יהוה will praise him
May your heart live for ever

Worship is associated with eating and being satisfied. It does not require a religious experience of the numinous. I say this for the majority who do not find such experience. Neither does it preclude the numinous. But justice with equity, and satisfaction, is the key to worship. If nations or tribes or nature or even the universe could bring about justice then patriotism, tribalism and sun worship would be justified. But they can't bring about justice, nor can vague appeals to beauty be satisfactory in themselves.

There's a lot more about worship in the psalms. They end, as is well known, with the great noise of Psalm 150 where all those who are engaged in the birthing of the universe breathe their thanksgiving. It is a remarkable collection of poems.

I have 16 references to the topic of worship in the psalms in my topical index. Read them - in fact, if you have enjoyed this series, read them in my translation with my comprehensive 55 page Hebrew-English and English-Hebrew glossary (471-526) and 7 part index where the wholeness of this poetry can be experienced. I did not shortchange you. The index alone was the work of several months. Software helps but completeness is a manual thing.

If you live in Victoria, you can order the book from me - in fact I have a few on hand. You will not be disappointed in 'the One' who is portrayed in the story and 'who teaches humanity knowledge'. (Kimhi). If you live far away, please order through Energion Direct. At 526 pages you will have plenty to occupy your capacity for poetry.

Now I am done with Dworkin. There is neither satisfaction nor completeness in Religion without God. There is no salvation either. אין ישועה בדת בלי אלוהים

Worship is most effectively expressed with praise and thanksgiving. So among many examples in the Psalms:

I will thank you for you have answered me
and you are my salvation

(Psalm 118:21)

The Bible's Cutting Room Floor by Joel Hoffman

"Perhaps surprisingly, their first question wasn't how to survive. It was why they had to survive. Or, more precisely, why no one was taking care of that for them."

So begins Joel Hoffman as story teller, page 171 of his new book: The Bible's Cutting Room Floor. I am grateful to St Martin's Press for sending me a pre-publication copy of this book. It has been a pleasure to have my attention drawn to this subject.

Cutting room floor is a modern expression first used in 1708 for the stone cutters, and only recently used in the context of editing of documents - but mostly of film. Here is a little of what the Oxford English Dictionary gives us: "(a) a room where the cutting of clothing materials, meat, etc. is done; (b) a room where surgical operations are performed; (c) a room where a film is cut or edited" (this is a cinematographic use of cut as in 'cut to scene 3').

Is the cutting room floor an apt metaphor for the editing of the Bible? Does it suggest a set of collectors, authors, editors, readers and critics preparing a volume for publication and accepting or rejecting the contents of the Festschrift for God? Or was God making a film? Applying this metaphor to the Bible leads me wondering about the means by which written texts were collected, used, stored, and modified. Why is there such a thing as a canon of Scripture? Without raising these questions explicitly, the book nonetheless addresses many issues that can arise from considering an ancient text that is called 'Holy'.

We are not talking modern editing or selection, and we are certainly not talking about surgical operations or film or butchery of meat. But clothing is apt, the Bible being a habit, as it were, and clothing a significant metaphor in the canon for both God and humanity. In the Psalms alone, the metaphor is applied to nature, hills clothed with flocks, to YHWH, pride clothed, and clothed with splendour and honour, even with the abyss. The garment will fade but the clothing is also renewed. See Psalms 22:19, 35:13, 26, 45:14, 65:14, 69:12, 93:1, 1, 102:27, 104:1, 6, 109:18, 29, 132:9, 16, 18.

But my thoughts are tangential to Joel's stated intent for the book: to start "in ancient Jerusalem" and venture "through a wide variety of texts", to bring us "back to modernity with a renewed appreciation for the Bible ... and a better understanding of some of the forces that were most influential in shaping Western society ..." (page 10). To do this, he focuses on a few of the stories that were somewhat contemporaneous with but were left out of the canon. This negative focus produces a book that tells stories we may not have heard of from their own point of view, yet addressing issues that may be compared with the treatment of the subject matter in the generally accepted canon of the Bible.

Joel deals with three main collections: The Dead Sea Scrolls (chapter 2), the Septuagint (chapter 3), and Josephus (chapter 4). These are a matter of record and he reports on them, introducing and telling the story behind each one. Then he has three chapters on specific examples of elaborations that are not in the Bible: The Life of Adam and Eve, (chapter 5) otherwise known as the apocalypse of Moses, Abraham's story from the apocalypse of Abraham (chapter 6), and 1 Enoch (chapter 7), so named for the one who 'walked with God'.

Enoch, with its imaginative historical visions, provides a clever back portion of the envelope for the book. The front portion of the envelope is Joel's summary of the 1000 year history of Jerusalem (chapter 1) in relationship to all the cultures of the ancient world, taken one at a time. Beginning with the siege of Jerusalem by Pompey in 63 BCE, he traces how this confrontation was prepared from David to the Maccabees, showing Jerusalem in conflict with Babylon, Persia, Greece, Syria, the influence of Lydia via the origins of banking, and Carthage through Hannibal's influence on Antiochus III. The back portion of the envelope (chapter 7) traces Enoch's vision of the animals as identified with many of the same historical cities and their rulers in conflict with Jerusalem.

This is a useful if brief history and will be helpful to readers who are unfamiliar with it or who have remembered isolated history lessons from their school days about Carchemish, Marathon, and the Punic wars, but have not seen them integrated into a single narrative focused around Jerusalem. One should not doubt that a reader of the Bible needs this extra-Biblical context in order to understand several of the Biblical words and stories. No language or story emerges fully formed without its meaning being enmeshed and, at least in part, defined by the surrounding culture.

Textual variations between versions of stories from the Septuagint, the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Masoretic Hebrew are particularly important and Joel cites some very good examples (e.g. pages 86-88 on the text of 1 Samuel 11). Here he describes the text of 4QSam(a) which has an additional section explaining why Nahash has such a brutal desire for the pact with Jabesh-Gilead. For this example, one might not question the appropriateness of the book's subtitle: The Holy Scriptures Missing from Your Bible. But the other pseudepigraphic stories are less than illuminating and more a set of anecdotes. These writings (including Josephus) are curious, useful, provide context or even data for clarification of the canon, but are they Holy?

Joel summarizes the big picture in a short chapter 8 making his key point that "we have an ancient culture that welcomed different opinions rather than focusing on one answer." The chapter on Josephus has a number of opinions on things related to the Adam and Eve story. But one doesn't need Josephus to know that there are multiple intertwined stories in the Bible admitting of differing opinions and interpretations. I doubt that anyone consulted Josephus as the canon was forming. Joel does a good job of showing how unreliable the Josephus tradition is including its most popular English translation, (but I note a counter to my negative take on Josephus where he is called "our single most important source for ancient Jewish history".)

Joel draws from Adam and Eve, from Abraham, from Enoch, three different reasons why humanity suffers and contrasts these with the reward and punishment of Deuteronomy and its counter-argument in Job, "which suggests that life is fundamentally impossible to understand" (Page 262). I suspect that Joel wants to get inside the closed mindedness that can be produced by a canon, but I am not sure he will succeed with this approach nor am I convinced of his conclusions. I agree, though, that Job is a direct response to Deuteronomy. Just to touch on the direct allusions to the covenant, consider the successive destruction of Job's livestock and children, Deuteronomy 28:31-32 and the final straw, Job 2:7 echoes Deuteronomy 28:35. All this in the context of blessings and cursings.

I tend at this time in my life to less breadth and more close reading. That's why I am not sorry that lots of things are not in the Bible. I have found enough to study already. The Psalms alone provide all the variety about the nature of human life that these apocryphal stories do. Reward and punishment, unjustified suffering, futility, love, and glory are all adequately dealt with in that one canonical text.

I suspect that the textual transmission even in what we have as canonical is far more complex at the detail level than can be contained in the curious elaborations that were left out. Examples of such thinking arrived across my desk as I was reading. Here for instance is an abstract of how harsh expressions may have been dealt with. Redressing the Calamity in the Transmission of the Bible by Alexander Rofé.

Joel cites many examples of copyist and translation difficulties, some from the Dead Sea Scrolls, some from the magical Septuagint translation, and some highlighted by texts gleaned from the unreliable Josephus. These variations are legion. One wonders where to start and how to manage the incoherence. Perhaps, therefore, the title of the book is apt, there being so many hands in the transmission of the text.

Those who should read such a book as The Bible's Cutting Room Floor in order that they be exposed to other ways of looking at the Biblical texts likely won't pick it up, but those who don't need to maybe will, and its introductory material will be helpful to them. I found reading it a fun trial of the questions and a good read but I do not find myself satisfied by the conclusions expressed or implied concerning the Holy, the Bible, or the nature of being human.

One needs the overview of the problems in the canon both of commission and omission. But to address the Holy, one must address also the problem of canon, of Israel as parable, and of the enemy, particularly the enemy that is within each of us, in order that somehow we might begin to achieve some co-inherence within our knowledge of good and evil. It may be that the canonical garment fits well enough to stimulate such wholeness and also that books such as Joel's can begin to help us avoid our tendency to embrace tight-fitting responses to the ancient texts.

"Their new reality was so shocking, in fact, that it would take them a whole week to realize that they were hungry." 

Joel has a delightfully titled blog, God Didn't Say That (rare posts this year - he's been busy). He is now working on the site The Unabridged Bible. He is a clear teacher. I remember with gratitude his patience and help to me many years ago when I could not yet distinguish וְֽהָיָה and יְהוָה. In this clarity, he follows in his father's steps. Lawrence Hoffman's Covenant of Blood was an in-depth eye-opener for my own reading in ancient Judaism.

The Bible's Cutting Room Floor is 276 pages, including a brief appendix on further reading. There is an index of sources and Scriptural references. I missed in the index (at the stage I saw it) a pointer to 'theology' since I did want to recheck some of his theological assumptions and reflections, but I was happy to see several references to 'good and evil'.

Religion without God (3)

Continuing the previous posts on Religion without God, a very short book (30,000 words or so) by the late philosopher and legal expert, Ronald Dworkin.

A great deal of Dworkin's arguments in the first three chapters have to do with the distinct universes of facts and values. In the last legal chapter, this distinction is recognized for how vague it is. Ultimately he cannot sustain the distinction without appeals to forms of words that are, as my mother would say, ridiculous. For example, he writes (p. 23) The science part [of a religion] offers answers to important factual questions about the birth and history of the universe, the origin of human life, and whether or not people survive their own death."

Can one even speak of fact, theory, or value when one considers the creation of the universe? No, one speaks or writes in mythic language, in story language, and experientially as one considers the presence of one's own thoughts. We are alive, we consider, and we react with story, history, myth, and derived value. Fact and value are not separated into science and value.

I am not a philosopher and I have no intention of citing Hume, Kant, Nietzsche or Putnam or anyone else for my justification of my own thoughts. None of these is an authority of necessity. Nor even is the so called idea of revealed religion. One must consider the story with one's self entirely engaged. And that is the problem in a nutshell. Engagement is frightening because there is no remainder of one's self that can stand objectively against the commitment.

This is faith. And it is permitted in all spheres, including the scientific, in sports, in music, in joy and in sorrow. Faith is not a blind leap, but it is a trust that tests its own assumptions as it matures, and that looks for a fruitfulness that is acceptable. The fact of acceptance, and the desire of acceptability are indistinguishable. There is no logic other than the paradox of self-giving. Dworkin does not approach this problem. He gets close in his brief on Tillich and the appropriate antinomy of affirming and denying simultaneously, and ultimately, he himself in his legal arguments approaches the same impasse without passing over.

Anyway, what do I know that I should dare an explanation? I know that an explanation will not satisfy. Satisfaction, the end of the story of Job, is impenetrable via logic. That is why Job's comforters fail, and YHWH presents himself via the mythical behemoth and leviathan, ciphers for Job and for God also. The psalmist writes of awakening: I will be satisfied to awaken in your similitude, in your likeness, created and brought forth after your own kind. (See this post which I wrote a few days before receiving Dworkin's book.)

Now - what is the story and are you willing to commit yourself into its keeping? The question requires some hard work, like any marriage, and its fruitfulness will be evident to others whether they are explicitly committed to this story or not. In fact, they will be your judges even as the salt-seafarers judged Jonah and in doing so themselves became mortals. My words are carefully chosen. I find it curious that these pagans, from Jonah's point of view, get the situation better than the reluctant prophet.

I hope to do one more post on this book, because Dworkin raises the spectre of worship. This requires a little more work from me, but so be it. The churches have a form of worship that has drama and character and a story - let's see if it can be found...

Religion without God (2)

Continuing the previous post on Religion without God, a very short book (30,000 words or so) by the late philosopher and legal expert, Ronald Dworkin.

The first phrase that caught my attention was on page 7, "In less violent places like America they fight mainly in politics... The fiercest battles are not between different sects of godly religion but between zealous believers and those atheists they regard as immoral heathens ..."

Well, I was taken aback by the offhand phrase, less violent places like America! My response to this one phrase is a post in itself.

I wonder how he was measuring violence. But it appears that physically violent crime rates have declined since the 1990's and are about the same as in the 1960's. Equally, despite the highest rate of gun ownership, and that we hear more news of gun crimes in the US, the rate is lower than many other countries. So let's allow this unsubstantiated phrase and consider the impact of the gridlock in congress these last 6 years over health care and other budgetary items like the debt ceiling and protecting the banks from collapse by quantitative easing and so on. These are the fiercest battles, as he calls them. They reveal to me a pent-up violence from the right wing, a wing often associated with conservative, religious, 'godly', values.

This battle was not between believer and atheist, but between believer and believer. But then, some who say they believe haven't done much listening. They say "if God cares for the widow and orphan, good then, I don't have to".  And they say to the government worker, "Come now, your job is not that important, give it up for 8 weeks and join our fight against this and that." The difficulty over this is that politics in America is not actually about God but all about money and how it should be spent and accumulated. This power is ultimately what the battle is about and it affects both domestic and foreign policy in left and right wing governments.

Of all the things that characterize humanity, violence in the defense of self-interest is perhaps the most obvious. It is much more obvious than "ethical independence". Many of us can make use of the controlled violence of constraint through the application of law via the police, but even this is violence, though limited. The nine original principles of western police forces are here. They are remarkably different from and far less violent than what one might expect. Externally, many of us must also depend on the violence that protects American interests abroad. Something is amiss here - and I am complicit, like it or not. I am complicit also in the capital accumulation issue. I profit from the stock market. I am a businessman, a corporate owner, whether directly or by proxy. I am not ethically independent here. I have delegated my portfolio to an expert. Though I hope that my benefits are not on the backs of others, it is possible that my son who struggles with home payments pays banking fees that show up in my dividends. At least he will inherit some day!

Where is the place of non-violence? Where is the place of innocence? How can we be innocent of this 'abundant transgression'? (Psalm 19 directly connects the numinous of the created order, the Torah, and our complicity in trouble.) How can we deal with the domestic and foreign fears we are all subject to? Can 'religion' do the job, or can the notion of ethical independence?  One has to ask also if God can do the job. Or faith in God, whatever that means.

Let me suggest that we live in the sixth day when God said - let the earth bring forth the living creature after its kind. We have not yet entered the seventh day when God rested. (See Psalm 95 and the interpretation in the letter to the Hebrews.) And we are the work in progress that God is creating after God's own image and likeness. So we see what we are to be, and it is not what we are. We are violent and self-protective. We say, you are my refuge, but we take refuge in guns and bank accounts and the social contract that excludes many who are not in our self-image and likeness. Could we do otherwise?

There is no immediate positive answer to this question, but it reveals our knowledge of good and evil. There are some negative answers. Our tools: economics and military might, and the coercion that accompanies them cannot provide our ultimate deliverance. They create and magnify the very evil we seek to manage. Abuse begets abuse. Capital for all its benefits lures the unwary into creating scams and bubbles. And killing terrorists begets more terrorists whose interests require a strong motivation to fight against our interests, which, of course, are not theirs. Our latest tools in worldwide communications at least raise our awareness, but by themselves, they are still subject to our will as we get more and more subtle with software.

Dworkin wanted to find solutions in all his difficult legal work. But what is the story that will support a solution and that will really gift us with a spirit of power - yes we have real capacity, and love - to see and care for the other, and the self-control that comes from a sound mind?

It will not do simply to be 'less violent'.

Religion without God (1)

Does morality precede God? Abraham asks YHWH, Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? This seems to imply that God is subject to a prior good.

Religion without God is the title of a very short book (30,000 words or so) by Ronald Dworkin, a philosopher and a substantial legal mind. He didn't use Genesis 18:25 but it would have supported his argument. I suppose though that he knew for whom he was writing and that maybe his first thoughts are for a legal argument and not a Biblical one. It's too bad, because I think if you want the weak-kneed to use your book and you know they read you with distrust and read their own book with fear (something he assumes without support in a number of places), then you should trick them with your knowledge of their book and use their own weapons against them.

I was given Dworkin to read by a friend. The thesis of the book is that the atheist has common ground with the theist in the perception of beauty and truth (He is a romantic like John Keats) and that freedom with respect to "ethical independence" should be considered as a suggestion for replacing freedom with respect to "religion" in the UN Declaration of Human Rights (and similar documents). He makes it clear with several examples how the two clauses of the First Amendment of the American constitution are in conflict with each other. The argument of the last section of the book is clearly the work of a legal mind operating within the judicial systems of the Western world. I more or less skimmed this chapter since I think my friend is more interested in my responses to the earlier chapters - which I will come to in another post. But I was very impressed with what I skimmed of the conflicts that freedom of religion has led to. These are conflicts we are familiar with. For example, the Quebec Charter of Values developed before the defeat of the parti québécois, or the Swiss prohibition of minarets in 2009, or conflicts over prayer in public spaces and of course over sexual and reproductive morality.

I have avoided writing about many of the religious problems that plague our southern neighbour and ourselves as well - such as evolution vs special creation or something called intelligent design, a name with a serious misuse of adjective. I have also taken for granted the equality of women once I realized that my youthful arguments from ignorant zeal were not going to win any day. The issues of belief and signs of religion in public places have not too much bothered me but they are always on the periphery of things that could be worrisome. It is fair to say that I would not have been happy hiring someone who wore a ceremonial weapon. I do not think weapons are a legitimate means of resolving problems and I know that people can be tempted to anger and impulse. I think Dworkin is approaching Religion without God primarily because of these divisive issues in American culture and religion. But he argues in the first sections of the book as a philosopher against God rather than as a lawyer recognizing the tension in the resolution of constitutional conflict.

His appeals to value are important and difficult, but they have nothing to do with proving anything about God from a philosophical, logical, or mathematical point of view. I gave up long ago trying to prove anything about God from the point of view of existence. It is futile. Provably so. There are things that are true that are not provable. And I was surprised to read a very clever mind trying to justify atheism. Equally futile, I think. Atheism is sometimes the only healthy option, but like God it is not provable. (I did not say like theism. God is not a theist.) The last half of the book was enjoyable because it embedded examples from the American and European story. The first half was disappointing because it seemed to completely lack story. My God is story based. The Bible is a record of encounters in a long story over millennia, a kind of Festschrift for God, a series of anecdotes, poems and stories about the perceived presence of the Holy. The Bible may be wrong in our experience about what is implied in the story, but it is not wrong to have included the story. And what it says about presence is what we know from other hints - from the cosmos, from beauty, from music, and so on.

It is easy to dethrone the gods that demand obedience to doctrine and patriotism. The God who governs should not be so trifled with. So look for a moment at the story in the Psalms.

First Psalm 45:7,
Your throne O God is now and for ever;
a sceptre of equity the sceptre of your kingdom.

This is quoted in the epistle to the Hebrews 1:8-9 concerning "the son". In Hebrew, it is immediately followed there (Hebrews 1:10-12) by a quote from Psalm 102:25-27. These two psalms were not about the future of a particular king when they were written, but were about love (Psalm 45) after the destruction of the temple (Psalm 44) and about a prayer of the poor (Psalm 102) reflecting the language of the prayer of Moses (Psalm 90) which in turn is a response to the failure of governance in Israel (Psalm 89 culminating the laments of Books 2 and 3 of the Psalter, Psalms 42-89).

Psalm 102 promises renewal even in the face of perishing of the heavens and the earth.
These will perish but you - you will stand
and they all like a garment will fade
as clothing you will renew them and they will be renewed

Psalm 90:7 reflects on the transient renewal of the mortal:
in the morning it blossoms and renews
of the evening it is cut down and dries up.

Book 4 encapsulates the rule of YHWH. Religion without God has no such pointer. It is good for the author's legal mind that he was not successful in resolving this particular problem. He closes the book with "a prayer" that theists accept atheists as having "the same grounds for moral and political conviction as they do". Here, he picks his limitations carefully and I think accurately - so also do I pick mine.

In another post, I will pick apart some of my particular beefs with the first sections of the book.

What's up Doc

Here's a good read by Amy-Jill Levine. How well do we listen and how often do we impose shuttered vision onto what we read?

I am ready to be able to see again - in 3 weeks left eye - then see double for 2 weeks - then right eye. And today walking strong - beginning my recovery with 2 to 3 km a day walks - increase gradually.

look at me and I will smile
ere I walk off and there is no me
(Psalm 39:14)

Larry Behrendt has suggested to me that I take a new project seriously. I am not qualified to do this thing - but that never stopped me before. He writes "There is a strong need to thoroughly explore the relationship between Jesus' nonviolence and the Jewish attitude towards violence in Jesus' time and place. There is a similar need to integrate the effort to interpret the Gospels to show a nonviolent message, with an effort to read the Old Testament with similar generosity and purpose."

This relates directly to the question posed at the beginning of Fretheim's book on the Suffering of God -
"It is not enough to say one believes in God. What is important finally is the kind of God in whom one believes." (Page 1!)

What kind of God? God from God, Light from Light, Very God of Very God. The question jumps to mind as I noted at Larry's blog: "there is a good argument for non violence as the core character of God. Note particularly the summary of the character of YHWH in Psalm 146:6-9.

[doing judgment for the oppressed
giving bread to the hungry
יהוה releasing the prisoners

יהוה giving sight to the blind
יהוה uplifting the disturbed
יהוה loving the righteous

יהוה sheltering the guest
orphan and widow he restores
and the way of the wicked he subverts]

The imitation of YHWH - to be complete, holy as YHWH is complete, holy is a worthy calling - exactly the same I think as the call to obedience that is given to those who follow Jesus. One could write an essay on this beginning with Exodus 34:6 as it is elaborated in the Psalms: 25, 86, 103, 111, 112, 116, and 145. "

What kind of God? And God said ... let the earth bring forth (Genesis 1:24). This word for kind will be used in the Psalms here - Psalm 17:15.

Here we are as beasts emerging from the earth - our creation and our true birth is to be made in God's image - after God's likeness. And there we are in Psalm 17 satisfied to awaken lie God.

I in righteousness will gaze on your face
I will be satisfied to awaken in your similitude

I would add that this is a God who cares about image. Psalm 73:20.

like waking from a dream
My Lord, when you are roused
you will despise their semblance

And one whose emerging children walk about almost oblivious of the image they are called to. Psalm 39:7.

surely in a semblance a person walks
surely futility they murmur
they accumulate things
and don’t know who will get them next

These two psalms use the same word as image in Genesis 1:26. Likeness is used only once in the Psalms in a verse that no one reads, Psalm 58:5.

their heat is akin to the heat of a snake
as the deaf adder plugs its ear

This verse describes the violent human and shows, perhaps if you like, a picture of how distorted humans are - but this is what we see in our humanity, violence magnified rather than the image of the Holy and Complete that we are called to. (And the original garden could be misleading if you think it is all about regaining lost innocence - far from it.)

Well there are some thoughts on a project - how should I discipline the work?

The Case for the Psalms - NT Wright

Well, I relented and bought a copy - in fact two copies of this book, The Case for the Psalms - by NT Wright, light though it is, scarcely more than a few ounces. Light - yet touching on a serious and, as Wright himself agrees, a preposterous topic - that God has chosen a small hill in Israel for his home. He didn't use Psalm 68 for this claim, though it too would fit.

Why be envious O hills
of mountain peaks this hill
God finds attractive for his seat
Also, יהוה will dwell here in perpetuity

"This is the point that Western modernity regards as so incomprehensible as to be laughable" (p. 79)

Not a good middle to The Case for the Psalms - as if this claim to divine space is going to convince the outsider. How does he then make the case? Wright does what his lecture did here - he makes particular the issues of time, space and matter as belonging to God. We may be embarrassed but this is the truth of the claim. Our time, our space, our bodies are caught up into the present place of God - if ...

for he will speak peace
to his people and to those under his mercy
but let them not turn to folly

Of course Wright is making the case for the insider to read the Psalms - not the outsider. It is not as if we, insider or outsider, are learning as we ought to. It is observable, however, that the outsider often behaves better than the insider. So the in and out are moot. Perhaps each of us is both in and out in the same material-space-time construct in which we live.

Here is one of my conclusions in my own (heavy) book, Seeing the Psalter. The psalms form a story that puts as its focus, the maturing of the merciful (the chasidim) and the formation of a governed and governing community of the merciful. (Do you not know that you will judge angels?) This is the role for the insider, who then binds the outsider in the bonds of the same mercy, a bondage that is equivalent to fetters of iron. The image is strong and violent, recalling the story of Joseph, but it is meant with the prayer of love that is embodied in Psalm 119.

The psalms also treat of justice and the end of war, another preposterous prayer. This is confirmed with a reading of Isaiah 2: they will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. The word for pruning-hooks is the same as the word for psalms!

I make the claim for the psalms that they are the leaves of the tree of life and therefore for the healing of the nations and the life of the world. In this claim, my words draw in the death of the son (the title of the first acrostic, Psalm 9-10) and the apocalypse of John. So these poems are neither parochial nor exclusive. In fact they claim for themselves repeatedly an inclusiveness for all who fear God. As Peter said somewhere, there is no partiality with God.

There above are four preposterous claims for one collection of poetry: that God came to live on earth, that poems form a merciful people, that war will end, and that healing through these leaves that do not wither is possible. And we are far from finished with the case for the psalms. But does Wright make this case? I expect he concurs with it - but how strong is his light book. Can his three-fold metaphysical conceit of God in our space-time-matter resolve the problem of violence that so many object to in these poems?  Now there's another problem - the violence is not exclusive to the psalms, nor is it absent from the New Testament, nor is it absent from our lives. I have a further simple conclusion: if we are to be like Jesus, then as in the psalms, if we are to be 'likest God', there is no warrant in any canonical text to take violence into our own hands.

One question that arises from this conclusion is - where are the hooks that draw us in and captivate us into the frame and network of the canonical poetry?  Is it just a matter of their blunt honesty? Is it the almost random shift in grammatical person that is so evident in this poetry and that moves us into conversation with the Most High? Is it the example of a coherent canonical history illustrating the problem of individual and communal self-interest that suggests there may be an alternative?

I enjoyed Wright's book. His final chapter, My Life with the Psalms, is a delight to read, especially his final rendition of Psalm 91. He plays the language game beautifully. The personal aspect of this poetry is where I began with my detailed journey into the psalms seven and more years ago. How does one learn obedience, the unplugged ear? Wright learned from what he calls 'pin-pricks of psalm-shaped memory' more gently than I (pp 174-175). I wrote then:

These poems are dangerous. I find it impossible to avoid the reality they portray - judgment and mercy; enemy and chosen; how can one cry out or whisper in safety when the answer comes from consuming fire?

Now - just what are these poems and the Psalter that they comprise? Are they a hymn book or a prayer book, a phrase that Wright uses several times? This is a limited analogy. Wright uses these terms because of his audience. Yes, they are prayers - though only 4 are labeled as such. They are hymns, though only some are labeled 'songs'. Only some are labeled psalms! The name in Hebrew for the whole is Tehillim - praises. That is where the Psalter leads - to the first Hallelujah at the close of Psalm 104 to a crescendo of praise at the end of Book 5. The hymn-book / prayer-book analogy is both limited and potentially misleading. The Psalter is nothing like modern day prayer books or hymn books. The Psalter is not a random collection. And though written to be sung - so was all the Old Testament. And Job and Proverbs have the same cantillation as the Psalms. What distinguishes the Psalter is its formation by poets and redactors across 500 years or so and through a covenant history that judges and forms, corrects and heals those who experience them.

Wright is very helpful on worldview and philosophy for the novice in these areas. He draws reader away from ancient-modern as a means of understanding and points out a distinction between the gods as distant (Epicurean) and Elohim as present in creation and covenant. Creation - evidence everywhere - permeated with science and knowledge - and covenant - evidence to be developed by each through life: how can God make a bargain with me? Creation and covenant stimulate the responsibility needed for us to respond to the character of the God who is present to all who call for help. Wright begins rightly with the call for help being answered from his Holy hill (Psalm 3) - but what is this 'Holy' that responds?  Therein lies the resolution of that preposterous scandal of particularity. There is so much more to say - you can find out some more pointers by buying a heavier book on the psalms - but even better, read them repeatedly in a close critical translation. No book can substitute for 'the One who teaches humanity knowledge'.

What is my 'case for the Psalms'? The strongest case for the Christian is that Jesus is represented in the epistle to the Hebrews as in conversation with his Father and the text for the conversation is taken almost entirely from the Psalms. Wright does not mention the epistle to the Hebrews. That is an oversight of some significance since it would contribute to the strength of his space-time-matter argument, particularly in the identification of the Anointed (whether Israel or Christ) in both testaments.

Generally, I like this book as far as it goes, but I have one particular cavil with his analysis, that is the emphasis on the 'you' at the beginning of Psalm 104 (pp 128-129). He is using an English translation to support the rhetoric. The repeated 'you' is not in the text of this psalm. The verbs are, like Psalm 146, a series of active participles. The series of active participles supports the presence of God's 'Yes' to creation (104) and to his care (146) even more than the use of the present tense.

But there are repeated uses of 'you' in the psalms and they are particularly important again to his space-time-matter theme. Psalms 74 and 89, two significant laments, outline the importance of an emphatic repeated 'You'. Psalm 74 reminds God of the power that creates and subdues the world - an emphatic 'Yes' to us that we should engage with God in spite of tragedy (in this case the exile). Psalm 89 then accuses God directly, with repeated 'You', of violation of the covenant. The poet is facing head-on the presence of the divine 'No' to the governance history of Israel. The modern world needs this divine 'No' equally strongly.

It is to be observed that God sits on the praises of the people (Psalm 22). One need only attend a Sabbath liturgy to observe this. We read of the seated rule of the divine Sovereign in the implied 'No' to the wantonness (Psalms 14, 53) of the human in the created order, a created order that proclaims without reservation the glory (Psalm 19) and prodigality (Psalm 77) of Yah (the short name for Yhwh). Wantonness and prodigality are the same word in Hebrew. With God there is prodigality, with the human, it is wantonness! So I agree that there is a case for the psalms, but I don't think NT Wright has made it as strongly as it could be made. This is good - it leaves us work to do.

Physically, The Case for the Psalms has seven short chapters and the shortest Scripture index of any I have seen, one tiny page, two sides - containing perhaps as many as 700 references! But at least it is there (though Hebrews is missing from it). I would not have bought the book if it had no index. I note also his gratitude to Susan Gillingham, one from whom I also have learned much and whose scholarship on the psalms is evident in her work, e.g. Psalms through the Centuries, Volume 1, Wiley-Blackwell. We must look forward to Volume 2. See for example my review of her lecture on the reception history of Psalm 137 at the Oxford Psalms Conference 2010 here.

PS - I feel I owe more to the review of Wright's implied anthropology and explicit Christology. Also a growing question in my thought is the effective application of the psalms as the prayer of 'the insider', a subject to be acted on.