You May Want To Rethink Justification by Faith

Faith & Science Conversation
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Including here on Biologos!

I’ve been wracking my brain trying to recall how second-Temple Jewish thought handled the verse; my inclination is that they leaned towards what Paul used it as, but also that the verse is not the sedes for Abraham’s righteousness before God, which is related.
And I’m wishing I hadn’t let my Hebrew slide; thirty years ago I could have kept up with Michael with no problem; now I have to plod through things!

I was just reading one today (in some internet wandering) that came at it from the angle that Paul never stopped being a Jew nor did he abandon thinking like a Pharisee, but stood solidly in the mainstream of second-Temple Judaic thought – and in line with that thought, holding that πίστις should be translated as “covenant loyalty”.

I’ve had that thought before!

Cool – got an online reference?

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103

I would roll about laughing but I do not wish to show even more disrespect.

Writing papers and submitting them to journals is the Scientific way and I am appalled that anyone should think it appropriate for theology

Theology is not about human learning, nor is it about study. Faith is an emotional response that belies science.

I do not need or want peer review. I do not recognise human qualifications as valid. I understand and accept the need for such things within the formalities of churches and religion, but faith is not corporate, and nieiher is theology.

I have refrained from sarcastic comments every time some quotes a human and expects me to just accept what they say. (I am not going to mention names, or example) I do not take any human as having authority over my faith (Theology) be it the Pope, my own Synod Moderator, or any person of position past present or future. I bow to no one but God.

Richard

104

right, they way the grammar of the Hebrew should be understood according to your admittedly minority interpretation?

But perhaps, maybe I am simply misunderstanding you here……maybe this would help… how should the LXX have translated the passage? what kind of translation would you consider to have properly represented the subject in Hebrew as you insist?

you can put that Greek if you’d like, though it it is probably better for this thread and larger conversation to simply write what that would look like in English, but I think that would help me understand where you see this significant error in the LXX?

So how, exactly, should the LXX have translated Genesis 15:6.?

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People often use the Septuagint to try to resolve ambiguities in the Hebrew because it actually is assumed that they were bilingual and could read the implicit information that is opaque to us today. I think a better assumption when there are clear differences between the MT and the Septuagint and the quoted Septuagint is that textual variants have always existed and multiple variants were in circulation and translators were not always translating the variant we think they were translating and that differences sometimes arise when people learned the texts orally in a non-native language and then quoted them from memory. We shouldn’t assume the NT authors were consulting documents when they were quoting the Septuagint. They may have even sometimes been translating passages they learned in orally in Aramaic into Greek themselves and not referencing an authoritative Greek text. The whole idea that the written document is the authority is a modern Western construct that would have been foreign to ancient ways of thinking about authority that focused on the speaker of the text.

It seems to me that is fairly mainstream thought in BIble scholarship now. Maybe not that pistis should always be translated “covenant loyalty,” because it has a wider semantic range than that and “faith” is a perfectly acceptable English translation in many places. It’s more that the concepts attached to the word pistis included the idea of covenant faithfulness in ways our concepts attached to the word faith often do not, so we have to fill out or expand our own concepts in order to understand what the translated word intends to communicate. I’ve been working on exegetical resources for the Psalms and the concept of covenant loyalty is inextricably tied to the concept of faithfulness, God’s hesed, and both human and divine righteousness and justice.

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106

Nonsense. Theology is an academic discipline (definitely all about human learning/study) where people do academic things according to academic conventions. No one is conflating “doing theology” with “having faith.”

Good for you. But then maybe take a seat when people want to have academic discussions. Your vibes and feelings don’t really matter to the conversation and no one is requiring you to accept what they say. It adds nothing to just come in and say you are above it all. Who cares? Just scroll on by.

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107

Got it. The ancients were not usually referencing written texts. So when Jesus picked up the scroll of Isaiah, opened it, found the sction he wanted, and read from it, I’ll just take that as further evidence of his… illiteracy…

108

That is an opinion.

Your attempt at put down is poorly veiled

Ecclesiastes is proof enough of how Scripture view accademia., but who am I to criticise human learning?

Don’t let me stop you. I can be as condescending as the next person. I will let you be.

109

Here’s yer huckleberry.

I didn’t cite this source in my article (although in retrospect I probably should have.)
Cheers,
M

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110

I’ve answered this. If you don’t know Greek then use a lexicon (there are such things on line) and you do the translation yourself. Report it here and then we can discuss our two translations.

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Please forgive me, if you answered that I can’t find it - any chance you could post it again? I looked through the paper again, and all I see is your quote of Breton’s English translation of the LXX, and I couldn’t find a rendering of the Greek (or an English translation of what the Greek should have been) of Gen15:6 in our discussion above.

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My Greek is very very rusty, but if I were trying to “improve” the LXX to make a strictly literal and precise translation of what I see in the MT, my attempt at such would be as follows. This changes the second clause from passive to active, removes “Abram” as the explicit subject of the first clause, mirroring what I’m reading in the BHS, and changes “God” to “Lord” as the BHS has “YHWH” there… I’m afraid I’m not quite sure where or exactly how to put the “it” in the second clause,… but at least this may be enough to go on to discuss further?

καὶ ἐπίστευσεν τῷ Κυρίῳ καὶ ἐλόγισεν αὐτῷ δικαιοσύνην

And he believed in the Lord, and he reckoned to him righteousness.

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113

OK, we’ve beaten this linguistic horse to death. Maybe we ought to see what the narrative reveals. After all, according to my training, narrative context overrides grammar and semantics every time. So here goes my version of the story (which I have happily embellished).

Once upon a time an man named Abram was ordered to go to Canaan (12:1) in return for which YHWH issued His first promise to Abram, a promise to make Abram the Patriarch of a great nation (12:2). So Abram packed up all that he and his nephew had and took off. After they had arrived in Shechem YHWH appeared again and issued a second promise by offering to Abram all of the land of Canaan (12:7).

After some time, including a sojourn to Egypt and an uncomfortable separation of Lot, YHWH again appeared to Abram and repeated His promise, this time more detailed and grandiose from the first and second promises (13:13-17).

After a time, Abram’s nephew Lot was captured by the 5 Kings and Abram went to war, rescued Lot by defeating Lot’s captors. Abram then returned the spoils to Melchizedek who then blessed Abram.

But YHWH noticed that, despite Abram’s victory, Abram was uneasy, Anxious. Maybe even frightened or concerned that the 5 kings would rise up and come after him. Wishing to quell Abram’s anxiety, YHWH came to Abram and told him not to be afraid and that YHWH would protect him.

But then something strange happens. For reasons not clear, YHWH issues a totally different promise. A promise of protection. Protection from what? Abram had already defeated the 5 kings and protection was the last thing he needed. What about the land? What about the children? So he reminds YHWH,

"Promises, shromises. Where is the land, where are my descendants?.

But now Abram does the unthinkable. He challenges YHWH to live up to His promises.

“Behold!!!” says Abram, “You have given me no offspring as you have promised lo these many years and now I have nothing and when I die none of my possessions will go to my heirs.”

But, what does YHWH do? Yet again is repeats His promise to Abram (15:5) but in even more grandiose terms. Abram will have nothing of this. To himself he says, “Did He even hear what I’ve said? I recognizes that YHWH speaks the truth, but my faith has about run out.(15:6) but how long must I wait?”

But now YHWH is angry and plays His authority card, “I, not you, am the LORD here.”

Abram doesn’t back down and continues to challenge YHWH. “LORD, SHMORD. if you ever do get around to delivering on your promise, how will I even know this land is mine.”

YHWH has had enough. He puts Abram into a trance (15:13) and orders him to have faith. But YHWH is not done. He punishes Abram for his doubt. He decrees that Abram’s offspring will still come, but now must first suffer under Egypt’s lash. YHWH will then repatriate Abram’s descendants and, as for Abram, YHWH promises that he will live a long life.

After this experience, Abram is changed. No longer is He so vocal about his lack of faith, but when God later repeats His promise in much less grandiose terms, just a son, Abraham laughs silently to himself thinking that Sarah is too old to bear children. Abraham appears to have given up his faith in God’s ability to deliver on his promises. (17:18).

But this all changes. After a time, Sarah gives birth to Isaac and after Isaac is grown into a boy, God calls to Abraham and asks him to sacrifice his son.

Abraham, please go to Moriah and sacrifice your son. Without objection.

Now, something has changed in Abraham. Possibly it was the birth of his son but in any case without objection is sets out to murder his son at God’s request. But when the moment comes as Abraham raises his hand to plunge the dagger into his son, he is stopped by a voice that says,

"Stop. Do not murder your son because now I know you fear God.

What do we learn from this story:

The story is about a man whose faith originally depended on worldly things - land and descendants, and ends when Abraham demonstrates his faithfulness without the promise of reward. In Jewish tradition this story is called the “Aqedah,” and by Christians is known as “The Binding of Isaac.”

Here’s a summary:

  • Early on Abram develops a faith in God (promises, altars, etc.)
  • When God does not deliver on His promises, Abram’s faith begins to fade.
  • God tires of Abram’s skepticism and orders Abram to shutup and believe him.
  • The birth of Isaac, however, seems to have brought Abraham to the understanding that faith is not about reward.
  • God then requests (“please”), not command, Abraham to sacrifice his son.
  • When Abraham attempts to do what God requested, God stops him and judges Abraham’s faith as true and righteous (Gen 22:12) because he demonstrated his loyalty not by command but by request.
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114

We discussed that passage on the thread. Jewish boys learned to read and recite Torah in a specific way. It’s not how you learned to decode Dr. Suess. Jesus may have even memorized and recited Torah in Aramaic not Hebrew. Almost no one was literate in the way we conceive of literacy, where someone can sit down with an unfamiliar text and easily decode and comprehend it and use it to acquire new information, especially not in a second or third language.

There are currently whole populations of functionally illiterate Muslim boys in countries where Arabic is not the first language who can locate portions of Arabic script on a page and recite long passages of the Koran from memory. But they are neither fluent in Arabic nor able to decode texts they don’t already know, nor can they write an original sentence in any language.

Like I said, there are whole books written on the topic.

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I think @Christy is largely correct. Literacy was very rare, even in first century Israel. However, Hebrew ABCDiaries (sic) have been found in a few archeological diggings so teaching written Hebrew was not unknown. As for my self, I’m in the camp that Jesus was likely the exception that proves the illiteracy rule. I believe, He could read and understand Hebrew (but probably not write it) . The only evidence I can cite is His use of a form of argument called remez. Which requires a deep, even allegorical understanding of the Hebrew text. My understanding of remez began with this website: Remez In The Bible And The Humanity Of Jesus On The Cross. For more info you can use your favorite AI Bot or Google.

Jesus, as a skilled rabbi (an honorific in those days, not an ordained clergy), frequently used remez to convey profound messages efficiently. For example, when children shouted “Hosanna” in the temple (Matthew 21:15-16), Jesus quoted Psalm 8:2, “From the lips of children and infants, you have ordained praise.” His audience, familiar with the full psalm, would understand the next part, which speaks of silencing God’s enemies, implying a rebuke to the indignant religious leaders. Similarly, on the cross, Jesus cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46), quoting Psalm 22:1. This was a remez to the entire psalm, which describes suffering but ends in triumph, signaling Jesus’ messianic identity and victory, not abandonment.

Another instance is Jesus’ statement to Zacchaeus, “The Son of Man came to seek and save the lost” (Luke 19:10), alluding to Ezekiel 34, where God promises to shepherd and rescue His scattered flock. This hinted to listeners that Jesus was claiming to be the Messiah and God, while also critiquing the religious leaders for neglecting people like Zacchaeus.

Remez allowed Jesus to teach with authority, embedding rich theological insights in concise references, relying on his audience’s scriptural knowledge to grasp the full message. This method added depth, connected his teachings to the Hebrew Scriptures, and often challenged his listeners to reflect on their spiritual understanding.

The short story is that to use remez in argumentation meant that you had to have both a literal understanding of the text (memorization) but an understanding sufficient to make allegorical connections. To me this implies that He knew more than what might be known by someone who argued from a memorized passage. He understood the whole of the passage to which He was referring

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But he quoted Scripture in Aramaic, suggesting he had memorized Torah in Aramaic. There are some interesting papers that have been presented recently hypothesizing that the Targum existed in a formalized oral form before written copies were produced, after Jesus’ lifetime. Of course, Hebrew and Aramaic are related languages and the culture of Aramaic speaking Jews evolved out of the culture of Hebrew speaking Jews. All languages and cultures are on evolving continua in contact with neighboring languages and cultures. Abraham didn’t speak Hebrew, for example, he spoke Akkadian and Hebrew developed later alongside Aramaic. I think we are so culturally predisposed to prioritize the written word and so many of us are monolingual, we have a hard time conceptualizing multilingual oral societies. Their normal was not our normal.

Sure, but in oral cultures all this learning could have happened at the feet of his own rabbis, who taught orally, like Jesus himself did. If you aren’t memorizing alone from a document, if you are reciting in a communal setting with a group, the significance of the oral texts would be explained by the teacher and the teacher would also make many of the intertextual connections explicit for you, because they are memory aids. They also memorized entire scrolls, not just a verse here and there like kids in AWANA.

I’ve been working with some Hebrew exegetes on translation resources for the Psalms and they are full of poetic features and conventional structures that would have made them easier to memorize and recite, but some of the features aren’t even noticeable unless the poems are recited aloud.

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When you open your Bible you are reading a book that consists of discrete publications written by different authors, in different geographic locations, in different languages over a thousand year period — several millennia ago. We have no original manuscripts and in some cases only copies from hundreds of years later. The text of the Bible is reconstructed by teams of textual critics who study these manuscripts, patristic citations, etc, and they have to publish their views in books, peer reviewed journals, etc. They come up with a critical version of the text. Despite what some apologists might mislead you into thinking, this is a very complicated task and there is tons of controversy in certain areas. On top of that, teams of scholars have to go about translating this critical text into our native tongues. That is done by experts in the field,

There is no published Bible without critical scholarship or peer review. Scripture didn’t fall out of heaven written in English. Don’t saw off the branch you are sitting in.

Is it possible to discuss critical ideas you disagree with without presumptuous, backpedaling apologetics?

Vinnie

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118

For everything there is a season…

Academia has its place.

Snobbery does not.

That goes both ways and I can admit to belittling a valid approach to Scripture

As long as neither the academic, nor the apologist consider their approach to be superior or even essential.

.Two wrongs do not make a right, but sometimes the only response is hyperbole…

Richard

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119

No, it’s a definition.

That’s seriously also true of Ecclesiastes.

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120

Theology
the study of the nature of God and religious belief:

Study does not mean academic

Academic is used to describe things that relate to the work done in schools, colleges, and universities, especially work which involves studying and reasoning rather than practical or technical skills

So your assertion is incorrect.

Richard

121

Vinny, this has very little to do with apologetics, I am actually very sympathetic to his larger point, I am simply disagreeing with the specific grammar and his arguments about the LXX’s take of Gen 15

When I have time, I would like to address his larger point with which I have significant sympathy, in particular his take as it includes genesis 22.

But as you may know from other conversations I’ve had here, I am a stickler for a basic logic. With deepest respect to his clear excellence in language, Michael is engaging in a begging the question fallacy, by claiming outright that the LXX objectively made an error in translation.

The LXX made an error in translation if and only if his particular, minority, interpretation of the Hebrew of Genesis 15:6 is correct. And granted, that would a completely legitimate logical “if/then” statement. If a paper, and its discussion or conclusion, said something to the effect of “if this interpretation proves correct… Then the LXX is indeed mistaken in it in translation…”. That would be a perfectly reasonable and unobjectionable statement.

I am objecting to his claim that the LXX objectively erred in its translation, a conclusion that necessarily depends on His own, minority interpretation of the MT also being -objectively -correct.

And when his interpretation is disputed - as it is, and if indeed it is in the minority as it appears to be (among Both Jewish and Christian scholars, I don’t know about secular scholars)…

Then one simply can’t claim that your position on the MT is the objectively true one, therefore, logically one simply cannot claim that the LXX translation is therefore objectively incorrect because it didn’t follow your minority interpretation.

But claiming that the LXX objectively erred as he claimed it did, when the necessary premise for that conclusion is “objectively” disputed across all biblical scholarship, is simply begging the question.

That’s just not the way logical reasoning works. To do so is simply begging the question. He is assuming the truth of a premise in order to claim his conclusion is objectively true. That is my objection.

Am I missing something about the basic reasoning involved?