@NickolaosPappas, @tailspin, @marta:
I have you three people in mind as I write this post. Whether or not any of you will find anything of interest in what I say remains to be seen; however, I want to share something from a traditional, Conservative Jew, which I have found useful. [Note: I refer to the Jew as “traditional” in order to distinguish him from Messianic, or non-religious. agnostic, and atheist Jews. I refer to him as a capital “C” Conservative Jew in order to distinguish him from Reformist, Orthodox, and Hasidic Jews.)
- The Jew to whom I refer is Benjamin D. Sommer (not Sommers).
- [He] joined The Jewish Theological Seminary faculty as professor of Bible in July 2008. Previously, he served as director of the Crown Family Center for Jewish Studies at Northwestern University, where he had taught since 1994. Dr. Sommer has been a fellow at the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the Tikvah Center for Jewish Law and Civilization at the New York University School of Law, and the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. He has served as a visiting faculty member in the Department of Bible of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and at the Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth, Texas. He has received fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Yad Hanadiv/Berakha Foundation. [Professional Biography]
- Publications:
- Revelation and Authority: Sinai in Jewish Scripture and Tradition. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015 (Anchor Bible Reference Library). At once a study of biblical theology and modern Jewish thought, this volume describes the ways biblical authors and contemporary theologians alike understand the process of revelation and hence the authority of the law.
- Jewish Concepts of Scripture: A Comparative Introduction . Editor. New York: New York University Press, 2012.
- A Prophet Reads Scripture: Allusion in Isaiah 40–66 . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998. Dr. Sommer examines the ways Deutero-Isaiah drew upon and reworked older biblical texts, and the implications of the prophet’s frequent recourse to older texts for our understanding of the history of Israelite religion. Winner of the 1999 Salo Wittmayer Baron Prize in 1998.
- The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel . New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Dr. Sommer addresses perceptions of divine embodiment in ancient Israel, Canaan, and Assyria, and how these perceptions reappear in later Jewish philosophy and mysticism. Winner of the 2009 Jordan Schnitzer Award of the Association of Jewish Studies in the category of Biblical Studies, Rabbinics, and Archaeology, and winner of the 2010 Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion (Textual Studies category) from the American Academy of Religion.
- Podcast The Bible For Normal People - Episode 147: Benjamin D. Sommer - Does God Have a Body? (Shorter content and presentation than the preceding video.)
- Dr. Sommer is the editor of the Psalms volumes of the Jewish Publication Society Bible Commentary series and is writing the first book of that five-volume set.
- Now this is specifically what I wanted to share: In Dr. Sommer’s book, Revelation and Authority, he writes:
- Throughout this book I use the terms “participatory theory of revelation” and “participatory theology” to speak of approaches to revelation that view the Pentateuch (and Jewish tradition generally) as the result of a dialogue between God and Israel. According to the participatory theology, the Pentateuch not only conveys God’s will but also reflects Israel’s interpretation of and response to that will. This view of revelation puts a premium on human agency and gives witness to the grandeur of a God who accomplishes a providential task through the free will of human subjects under God’s authority. We may contrast participatory theologies with a better-known view of revelation, which I term “the stenographic theory of revelation.” According to the latter theory, God dictated all the words of the Pentateuch to Moses, and Moses recorded God’s words without altering them. In the stenographic theory, all the words of the Pentateuch are God’s. In the participatory theory, the wording in the Pentateuch is a joint effort involving heavenly and earthly contributions; or the wording may be an entirely human response to God’s real but nonverbal revelation. Especially in the second chapter of this book, I argue that the Pentateuch itself gives voice to both stenographic and participatory theologies of revelation.
Χριστός ζει!
Christ lives.