Here is a good article on the Biblical Archeology Society website by archeologist Jodi Magness. It should be noted that BAS is not in the business of finding archeological “proofs” of the Bible and that Magness is a mainstream scholar with impeccable credentials.
Here is Francis Bacon in Book II of the Advancement of Learning, explaining to King James why more funding is needed for university lecturers: “And because founders of colleges do plant and founders of lectures do water, it followeth well in order to speak of the defect which is in public lectures; namely, in the smallness and meanness of the salary or reward which in most places is assigned to them, whether they be lectures of arts or of professions.”
Amen, Francis.
From Francis Bacon’s “Advancement of Learning,” written in 1605:
“We see it is [an] error to rely upon advocates or lawyers which are only men of practice and not grounded in their books, who are many times easily surprised when matter falleth out besides their experience, to the prejudice of the cases they handle.”
This is one reason why we study theory and history along with practice!
Interesting side note on the Lost Tomb special: I got the current Biblical Archeology Review in the mail today, which of course went to press after all this and doesn’t cover the Lost Tomb question. There is, however, a thick two-page cardboard stock ad for the Discovery Channel Book Club. For $5.99 plus shipping and handling, one can receive the “Beyond the Bible” collection — consisting of five Bart Ehrman books, including “Lost Christianities,” “Lost Scriptures,” “Misquoting Jesus,” “Peter, Paul & Mary Magdalene,” and “The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot.” Ehrman is a leading proponent of the view that there was no center of orthodoxy in the early church, and that the Gnostic sects in particular were genuine heirs of the early Christian tradition before they were stomped out by the patriarchy. A key notion in the Lost Tomb special is that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and had a child. One can’t help but notice that Discovery Channel is riding the DaVinci zeitgeist for all it’s worth.
Note — if you’ve never seen Biblical Archeology Review, it’s a fascinating magazine. It is not about proving the Bible through archeology, as the title might seem to imply. In fact, many of the articles are written by “minimalists” who reject Biblical history altogether. Because there is sometimes a minimalist slant, you have to read the articles critically, but it is an excellent source for the state of academic archeology in the Holy Lands.
Recently I’ve been thinking about my understanding and views of the doctrine of scripture. Coincidentally — or maybe providentially — not long ago I found a copy of Donald Bloesch’s wonderful book Holy Scripture among some things in my attic. I’m very glad I dusted it off and began reading through it carefully. Bloesch captures many aspects of where I presently am in my journey concerning the nature of revelation and scripture and the relation of these concepts to theories of language and truth.
Let me start what I hope will be a series of posts with some of Bloesch’s thoughts about revelation. Bloesch offers a nice balance between a merely existential understanding of revelation and a rationalistic understanding. He puts it this way:
As I see it, revelation is God’s self-communication through his selected instrumentality, especially the inspired witness of his prophets and apostles. This act of self-communication entails not only the unveiling of his gracious and at the same time awesome presence but also the imparting of the knowledge of his will and purpose for mankind. This knowledge is conceptual as well as existential and can be formulated but never mastered in propositions.
Bloesch thus avoids the unfortunate over-emphasis on propositional revelation in some rationalistic streams of evangelicalism, but without discounting altogether the propositional form revelation sometimes takes. He notes that
I agree with Bernard Ramm that the phrase propositional revelation is ambiguous, because revelation comes to us in a myriad of literary forms. Yet I subscribe to the intent of this phrase — that revelation is intelligible and conceptual. It is more felicitous to say with Thomas F. Torrance that revelation is “dialogical,” for this term combines the personal and the propositional . . . . God’s revelation is his commandment and his promise, and these come to us in the form of written commandments and written testimonies. Yet they cannot be confined to what is objectively written, since their meaning-content includes their significance for those who hear God’s Word in every new situation.
This understanding of revelation as “dialogical” ties into the very human element involved in how the church appropriates the absolute truth of the revelation. Bloesch affirms that “we must not surrender the claim of the Christian faith that in the Bible we are presented with real truth, with truth that is absolute and unconditional because it is God’s truth.” And yet, he is clear that our apprehension of that truth is limited:
Against evangelical rationalism, however, I maintain that we mortals can know this truth only conditionally and relatively. Theology is not the ‘crystallization of divine truth into systematic form,’ but a very human witness to divine truth, a witness that remains tentative and open-ended because historical understanding is not transcendent knowledge, faith is not sight. The truth in the Bible is revealed because it has a divine source, but it is at the same time partial and broken becuase it has a historical matrix. It throws light on the human situation, but light that is adequate only for our salvation and the living of a righteous life, not for comprehensive understanding. As biblical Christians we are neither gnostics (fully enlightened) nor agnostics but pilgrims who nevertheless have a compass (the Word of God) that can guide us to our destination.
I love that last paragraph so much that it now has three exclamation points and a triple-underlined “yes” penciled next to it.
Coming soon: Bloesch’s very interesting, nuanced epistemology.
The Discovery Channel is set to air a special produced by James Cameron (of “Titanic” fame) about the supposed “family tomb” of Jesus.
This “discovery” of the tomb and ossuaries is actually about ten years old. The “new” evidence seems to be a DNA analysis, which proves only that the remains in the “Jesus” and “Mary” ossuaries were not related. Unfortunately, the Discovery Channel’s publicity gives the impression that the tomb and ossuaries are newly discovered — they are not — and that the DNA evidence proves Jesus Christ’s body was in the tomb — an obvious impossibility, as there are no remains of Jesus with which to run a DNA comparison.
Darrell Bock offers a good critique of the film on his blog. This, in particular, seems quite strong:
Third, we have to accept that as they scrambled to steal the body and yet preach an empty tomb and resurrection when they actually knew that Jesus was not raised. They had to SECRETLY buy the tomb space from someone, prepare an ossuary over a year’s period and then choose to adorn the ossuary of Jesus with graffiti-like script to name their dead hero. Surely if they had a year to prepare honoring Jesus, they would have adorned his ossuary with more than a mere graffiti like description. Not to mention that some of the family died for this belief, when they really knew Jesus had not left the tomb empty. This scenario seems quite implausible.
It would seem quite absurd for the first Christians to perpetuate, on pain of persecution and death, a false resurrection story, while at the same time housing Jesus’ body in a family tomb in an ossuary with his name emblazoned on it — and stranger still to leave the ossuary in situ with all the other family ossuaries where it easily could have been discovered by anyone.
Note also in Bock’s comments that several of the key experts associated with the film reject the hypothesis that this is really Jesus’ burial place:
Seventh, if one pays close attention to the special one will see that when the subject of the connection is raised with the most well known of these experts, they all say the connection is NOT credible because the names are so common. These experts have known about this locale for decades. NONE of the most well known experts are actually cited as embracing the claim of the special. Surely they asked them this question about a specific connection, did they not? In other words, the silence on such a lack of endorsements for the figures brought in to corroborate certain details is deafening.
Bock makes a number of other compelling arguments concerning the presence of the name “Matthew” on one of the ossuaries and concerning the name Mariamne.
Another good review of the film can be found on Ben Witherington’s blog. There is also an AP story in which a number of archeologists, including the person who first examined the site, criticize the film.
“We usually want to achieve power and overcome by power; God summons us to overcome by weakness.”
— Craig S. Keener, in the NIV Application Commentary to Revelation, commenting on Rev. 7:1-8.
My old Through a Glass Darkly site was overrun by comment spam. For that and other reasons, I’ve migrated to this WordPress site. I do not plan to moderate comments, but I do want to take advantage of WordPress’ commenter registration feature. I know this can be a pain, but in the long run, I think it builds a better discussion community. If you wish to leave a comment, I will ask that you register and log in. If you wish, you can leave a brief comment to this entry, which will allow you to complete the relatively painless registration form.
I hope to add some upgrades to this site in coming weeks. One very cool feature of WordPress is the ability to add “Pages” with supplementary content. I invite you to visit the “About” page for information concerning my philosophy for this site, and the “Scholarship” page for information about my legal scholarship. Other pages are coming soon.
Thanks for your readership and support. I look forward to continuing the discussion here at the new TGD.
Imagine we are a small tribe living in a woodland clearing near the end of the last ice age. The long frozen dark is slowly cracking, melting in bits and puddles, flecks of light playing here and there on crocus tips. We drink from those tiny pools, frigid fresh water that tastes like life. Sometimes we forget the still-dark parts of the wood, the hidden predators, the rumors of other people living in cold, dank caves without fresh water. Sometimes we wander deep into the brambles, chasing after tales of richer lakes hidden in the dark, finding ourselves scratched and snagged.
Most nights we gather near the hearth and tell stories. Our best stories are about the end of winter. The storyteller holds a polished stone, etched with the image of a verdant shore flowing with game into a vast water extending, it seems, forever. We can see ourselves, dimly, reflected in the stone, ghosts with a scene of eternity etched on our hearts. We lack words to capture everything this means to us.
We are like so many other stories from so many other lands.
“‘When Aslan said you could never go back to Narnia, he meant the Narnia you were thinking of. But that was not the real Narnia. That had a beginning and an end. It was only a shadow or a copy of the real Narnia which has always been there and always will be there: just as our own world, England and all, is only a shadow or copy of something in Aslan’s real world. You need not mourn over Narnia, Lucy. All of the old Narnia that mattered, all the dear creatures, have been drawn into the real Narnia through the Door. And of course it is different; as different as a real thing is from a shadow or as waking life is from a dream.'” (from The Last Battle, 1956)
Through a Glass Darkly is about living in the shadow, the copy, the reflection in a polished stone. It is the “already / not yet,” the “Alpha and Omega,” the “was, and is, and is to come.” It is the part of the story we know and the part still to be written. It is the pilgrimage, the journey, the waiting, the hope. It is a small, broken man writing a letter to his friends in an ancient tongue:
βλέπομεν γὰρ ἄρτι δι’ ἐσόπτρου ἐν αἰνίγματι τότε δὲ πρόσωπον πρὸς πρόσωπον ἄρτι γινώσκω ἐκ μέρους τότε δὲ ἐπιγνώσομαι καθὼς καὶ ἐπεγνώσθην — “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” 1 Cor. 13:12 (KJV).
Imagine we are a small tribe living in a woodland clearing near the end of the last ice age. The long frozen dark is slowly cracking, melting in bits and puddles, flecks of light playing here and there on crocus tips. We drink from those tiny pools, frigid fresh water that tastes like life. Sometimes we forget the still-dark parts of the wood, the hidden predators, the rumors of other people living in cold, dank caves without fresh water. Sometimes we wander deep into the brambles, chasing after tales of richer lakes hidden in the dark, finding ourselves scratched and snagged.
Most nights we gather near the hearth and tell stories. Our best stories are about the end of winter. The storyteller holds a polished stone, etched with the image of a verdant shore flowing with game into a vast water extending, it seems, forever. We can see ourselves, dimly, reflected in the stone, ghosts with a scene of eternity etched on our hearts. We lack words to capture everything this means to us.
We are like so many other stories from so many other lands.
“‘When Aslan said you could never go back to Narnia, he meant the Narnia you were thinking of. But that was not the real Narnia. That had a beginning and an end. It was only a shadow or a copy of the real Narnia which has always been there and always will be there: just as our own world, England and all, is only a shadow or copy of something in Aslan’s real world. You need not mourn over Narnia, Lucy. All of the old Narnia that mattered, all the dear creatures, have been drawn into the real Narnia through the Door. And of course it is different; as different as a real thing is from a shadow or as waking life is from a dream.'” (from The Last Battle, 1956)
Through a Glass Darkly is about living in the shadow, the copy, the reflection in a polished stone. It is the “already / not yet,” the “Alpha and Omega,” the “was, and is, and is to come.” It is the part of the story we know and the part still to be written. It is the pilgrimage, the journey, the waiting, the hope. It is a small, broken man writing a letter to his friends in an ancient tongue:
βλέπομεν γὰρ ἄρτι δι’ ἐσόπτρου ἐν αἰνίγματι τότε δὲ πρόσωπον πρὸς πρόσωπον ἄρτι γινώσκω ἐκ μέρους τότε δὲ ἐπιγνώσομαι καθὼς καὶ ἐπεγνώσθην — “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” 1 Cor. 13:12 (KJV).