Wootten R CWTH4010 Assign 1
In
2000 words in total, critically reflect on the nature of any two of the
following genres of Old Testament literature: Prophecy, Psalms, Apocalyptic.
You should give attention to their purpose and distinctive features and
consider their importance in their own time and what might be their value for
today? Your answer should draw on at least one text from each of your chosen
genres and show evidence of interaction with Bible commentaries and
contemporary scholarship.
Introduction.
In
this assignment I have chosen Psalms and Prophesy.
When
dealing with anything in the Old Testament it is important to understand that
we, in our context, were not the intended original audience. In order to
understand the Old Testament, we discussed in the course literature on the
first seminar day the technique of two horizons. The first horizon is the
original context in which the passage is set and the second is the contemporary
context in which we live today. The Two Horizons Technique is attributed to
philosopher Paul Gadamer.
Introduction
to Psalms section.
In
order to critically reflect on the psalms as a genre, I have made use of both contemporary
works and biblical commentary. In this section I will introduce different ways
of reflecting on the Psalms and will use Psalm 137 as an example.
The
psalms do not appear to be in chronological order, thus whomever organised the
psalter this way, did so for a reason. We cannot fully know why all the psalms
were written as this piece of historical evidence is unfortunately lost to us.
Looking at the psalms is akin to looking at a jigsaw puzzle without seeing the
picture. However, we do know that the people of the 21st Century
were not the intended audience. Hence, all psalms require interpretation to
bring contemporary meaning to them. In their book ‘The Old Testament World’,
Rogerson and Davies discuss the problem of sacrificial ceremonies of Leviticus
and state that we can no longer piece together the reasons for the sacrifices
and that the same problems arises with the psalms (Davies, 2007) . We know the psalms
exist and in most cases who the author is but the reason that they are arranged
in the Bible in their current order is lost to us.
The
psalter is divided up into five books. We have evidence from the Dead Sea
Scrolls that even up to the first Century CE the order was not yet fixed. (Davies, 2007)
Psalm
137 is by an unknown author. There is wide spread belief that David wrote the
majority of the psalter, at least the psalms attributed to his name and those which
are of anonymous authorship. However, picking up on research by Marc Zvi
Brettler in the co-authored book The Bible and the Believer, he suggests that
several scholars from the medieval Franco-German school understood that Psalm
137, due to the content, was written around the time of the exile (Brettler, 2012) . Reviewing the
verses it is reasonable to deduce that
it was written in exile as the author talks about remembering Zion (verse 1)
and singing songs of God in a foreign land (verse 4) with verse 5 stating ‘If I
forget you, Jerusalem’ and verse 7 asking what the Edomites did the day
Jerusalem fell. With the exception of v7, which is the only verse addressed to
God, the psalmist is in mourning for a lost land. It can therefore be said that
this psalm comes from a time of circa 580 BC-500 BC. To bring it to it into a
modern interpretation psalm 137 could be used by someone in an oppressed or
occupied country such as Palestine or Tibet.
According
to Brueggemann’s categorisation, this is very much a psalm of disorientation (Brueggemann, 1984) . It has within it a
sense of abandonment, humiliation and torment as in verse 3 it says ‘sing us one
of the songs of Zion’ (Brueggemann, 1984) . It is a bitter lament from a place of
anguish that reaches the pinnacle of despair. In verse 9 ‘Happy is the one who
seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks’, this conjures up images
from war ravaged places. However, in the Life application Study Bible (NIV) it
says that verse 9 is the Psalmist crying out for God’s judgement against the
Babylonians and is asking them to be treated the way the Israelites have been
treated (Life Application, 2011) .
Brueggemann
placed the Psalms into the following three categories:
· Orientation
– songs of guaranteed creation;
· Disorientation
– songs of disarray; and
· New
orientation – songs of surprising new life.
A more
contemporary way of studying the psalms was introduced by Hermann Gunkel
(1862-1932) (Davies, 2007) and known as Form-Critical study entailing
the arrangement of the psalms together based around their content. For example,
individual and communal laments along with communal and individual thanksgiving
psalms. It is important to note here that many psalms start as a lament and end
in thanksgiving and far from being a series of historical books, it is a living
text that has been sung, spoken and prayed by generations of Jews and
Christians (Woodhouse, 2015) .
Rather
than asking “what are the psalms?”, a better question would be “what are the Psalms
to us now?” (Woodhouse, 2015) . This unpacks the question and asks it
at a deeper level. The Anglican and Catholic faith uses the psalms frequently in
liturgy, hymn and prayer. Used in both corporate and private prayer, the Psalms
speak to us. For example, Psalm 137 can be used by someone in a war-torn
environment to express their feelings of helplessness and rage at their
situation.
Conclusion
In
conclusion, the psalms are a group of five books which form part of the cannon
of scripture. We know that many of the Psalms were authored by David but not
all of them may bear his name. Brueggemann categorised these in to three
different themes: orientation, disorientation and new orientation, whilst Gunkel
organised them by content. Neither Gunkel nor Brueggemann are correct or
incorrect as they are different ways of reviewing or organising the text. Essentially,
we are not the intended audience, but the people of Israel are and the reason
they have been included and ordered in the manner they are is now lost to us. Scholars
such as Brueggemann and Gunkel can help us to understand and draw meaning into
our everyday life, however whist there is much that we do not know, it is interesting
to note how emotionally authentic they are. They contain individuals’ passion,
grief, pain and longing coupled with worship, thanksgiving and praise.
Prophecy
Introduction.
For
this section of the essay I will discuss the genre of prophecy in the Old
Testament.
Prophets
in the Old Testament are generally divided into the Former prophets and Latter
prophets; within the latter prophets are contained the 12 lesser prophets.
On our
second seminar day we discussed prophecy as “speaking truth to power”. This
could be a dangerous occupation and could lead to persecution, for example the
plot against Jeremiah 11.18-23. Another role is that of social commentator. In the
Tyndale Old Testament commentary, David Baker states ‘One of the roles of the
prophet was to serve as intermediary between God of Israel and His people’ (Baker, 1988) . He later goes on to
say that another role was to indicate when the people had strayed from His
covenant. Thus, we have three things a prophet should do: serve as an
intermediary to God, speak truth to power and be a social commentator. In this
section we will specifically look at Habakkuk as he is slightly different in
that he does not seem to prophesy for a specific king or monarch. Unlike apocalyptic
literature, prophecy foretells the future and assures us that God will prevail.
Very
little is known about Habakkuk the person. We do not know his hometown, his
genealogy or his tribe and some scholars state that even his name is not Hebrew
(Baker, 1988) .
However, the book is set around the time when Babylon was becoming the dominant
world power, which Judah would soon have to face but as with other prophetic
writing (such as Isaiah), the book may have been written much later and/or by disciples
of the prophet. We are unable to certainly establish whether or not the author
is Habakkuk.
Other
prophets give warnings that if God’s people turn away from Yahweh, they will
face persecution. We see these prophesies play out in the Exile. In his book “Prophecy
and the Prophets in Ancient Israel”, Robinson discusses the issue of Babylonian
polytheism which developed a family or pantheon of Gods not unlike those
developed in Roman and Greek culture (Robinson, 1967) . Therefore, it appears that around this
time there are two dominant religions in ancient Israel.
Baker
sets out the Book of Habakkuk into its component parts:
1. The
Problem of unpunished wickedness
2. Yahweh’s
response
3. The
problem of excessive punishment
4. Awaiting
an answer
5. Yahweh’s
second response
6. Habakkuk’s
psalm.
Where
Habakkuk draws away from the other prophets is that he appears to call God to
account. The book of Habakkuk is short with only 3 chapters. In fact, in chapter
three Habakkuk seems to have a cadence to it, which may indicate that it was
used as a Psalm.
Chapters
one and two are complaints to and answers from God. Unlike other prophets such
as Job, Habakkuk receives direct answers, however we are not told how God
answered him. Habakkuk had strength of faith which we see at the end of Chapter
1 Verse 17 where he says ‘I will look to see what He [God] will say to me, and
what answer I am to give to this complaint’.
Habakkuk
saw a broken world around him and called on God to explain (Life
Application, 2011) .
He asked God difficult questions about why he allowed evil to exist, something
that scholars have wrestled with since the dawn of the scholastic movement. We
also learn in the Life Application Bible that at the time of Habakkuk the last
four Judean Kings were wicked men who rejected God (Life Application, 2011) . This leads us to
believe that at the time of Habakkuk his land and people would have been
persecuted and it would have been an almost lawless society.
How do
we view Habakkuk today, what message does he have for us? Habakkuk’s prayer or
psalm is considered one of the most moving professions of faith and trust in
the scripture (Baker, 1988) .
The message is one of a person in doubt and returning to faith. It is easy in
today’s society to see the world as broken. It is easy to look at how we have
stewarded God’s creation and made a mess of it, as everyday we see news of war,
suffering or more recently knife crime and pollution. We can easily doubt God’s
plan for us, but we can appeal to God – and he may speak to us through the
words of the prophet Habakkuk.
Conclusion
Prophecy,
for us today, is relevant. We see wickedness, evil and suffering in every news
bulletin. Understanding and learning from the prophets allows us to see what is
wrong in our world and to stand up for it or those people who need our help. In
fact, as Christians we are called to aid those in need. We can look to contemporary
thought leaders such as Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King as modern-day
prophets. Both told the authorities as it was, and both got into serious
trouble for doing so. Both had a vision of a better world and both took high
profile action to achieve it.
We
cannot take the book of Habakkuk literally as we are not the intended audience,
but like many of the psalms and books of the Bible we can ascribe some meaning
to it. The message we glean from the book is to have faith, to hold fast and to
trust in God. This tends to be the
message generally from the prophetic biblical writings.
Bibliography
Baker, D. W., 1988. Nahum,
Habakkuk and Zephaniah. 2 ed. Nottingham: Inter-Varsity Press.
Brettler, E. H., 2012. The Bible
and the Believer. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Brueggmann, W., 1984. The
Message of the Psalms. Minneapolis: Augsburg.
Davies, J. R. a. P., 2007. The
Old Testament World. London: T&T Clark international
Life Application, 2011. Life
Application Study Bible NIV. Great Britian: Hodder & Stoughton.
Robinson, T., 1967. Prophecy and
the Prophets in Ancient Israel. Edinburgh: Gerald Duckworth & co ltd.
Woodhouse, P., 2015. Life in the
Psalsm. London and New York: Bloomsbury.
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