Theological Hermeneutics and the Book of Numbers as Christian Scripture

Richard S. Briggs

Description

How should Christian readers of scripture hold appropriate and constructive tensions between exegetical, critical, hermeneutical, and theological concerns? This book seeks to develop the current lively discussion of theological hermeneutics by taking an extended test case, the book of Numbers, and seeing what it means in practice to hold all these concerns together. In the process the book attempts to reconceive the genre of "commentary" by combining focused attention to the details of the text with particular engagement with theological and hermeneutical concerns arising in and through the interpretive work. The book focuses on the main narrative elements of Numbers 11–25, although other passages are included (Numbers 5, 6, 33). With its mix of genres and its challenging theological perspectives, Numbers offers a range of difficult cases for traditional Christian hermeneutics. Briggs argues that the Christian practice of reading scripture requires engagement with broad theological concerns, and brings into his discussion Frei, Auerbach, Barth, Ricoeur, Volf, and many other biblical scholars. The book highlights several key formational theological questions to which Numbers provides illuminating answers: What is the significance and nature of trust in God? How does holiness (mediated in Numbers through the priesthood) challenge and redefine our sense of what is right, or "fair"? To what extent is it helpful to conceptualize life with God as a journey through a wilderness, of whatever sort? Finally, short of whatever promised land we may be, what is the context and role of blessing?

In general, whether something or some event is a blessing depends significantly (though not exclusively) on how it is perceived, and this is even true of those archetypal elements of Old Testament blessing: land and offspring. In this sense, the logic of blessing is not dissimilar to the much-discussed logic of gift, and the complexities of how one may be freely blessed and/or indebted by the receipt of the good wishes or good gifts that “bless” is worth probing. In Old Testament terms, we can at least note that “blessing” serves as an overarching perspective within which the pursuit of a life orientated toward God can be considered.

Thus if one prays the words of Numbers 6:26 over someone, this is in part the expression of a desire that the person prayed for will receive peace (shalom) as they go through the day. Obviously this is not an automatic guarantee of peace, but in the very invoking of it upon someone it does contribute to the possibility of their experiencing peace as they go on their way.

The Aaronic blessing of Numbers 6:24–26 locates the prerogative to perform such blessing with the priesthood, and this dynamic is retained in those church traditions today where only the (ordained) priest may pronounce a blessing in the context of a church service. In this text, YHWH ties his own blessing to the words of the priests, and thus the logic is that only those with the publically acknowledged role of representing YHWH can enact his blessing. Conversely, this paradigmatic version of the human act of blessing draws all Israel back to its dependence on God. This divine-human balance in blessing is the source of much reflection in the theological (and especially liturgical) tradition. Arguably, Numbers 6 inaugurates, or at least exemplifies, a period of “Old Testament time” in which the divine word is mediated through priestly blessing. Some might suggest that this can be contrasted, first, with the more family-orientated setting of blessings from father to son in Genesis, and then secondly, with the new situation that arises in Christ in the New Testament. But the converse point, that all blessing draws one back to dependence on God, is constant throughout.

The argument that the blessing found in Numbers 6 is no longer the Christian option is made by (among others) Karl Barth, whose engagement with the book of Numbers in the Church Dogmatics is largely restricted to this passage and the narrative of chapters 13–14 that we explored earlier. Here, in the midst of his discussion of humanity’s “allotted time” under the rubric of “the doctrine of creation,” Barth diverts to a consideration of blessing as he reflects on how Israel situated itself with respect to its own traditions being handed down, and thus “from whence” Israel came. “A blessing is the word which has divine power to pass on good things. It is thus clear that originally and properly the Word of God alone can be a blessing.” He then cites Numbers 6:24 as emphasizing this dependence upon God. But Barth is insistent that the practice of passing on blessing one to another is fundamentally altered in the New Testament. After considering a range of verses that do reflect practices of blessing there, he adds “We look in vain in the New Testament for a parallel to the Aaronic blessing of Num 6:22ff, or for the adoption of this blessing, or for any blessing of one Christian by another.” And the reason, he avers, is (“probably”) that “the divine word of blessing, as the New Testament sees it, has been uttered once and for all in the incarnation of the Word of God … and cannot therefore be repeated (as in Israel).”

This argument seems to go hand in hand, conceptually, with thinking that the notion of priesthood is a problematic one that the New Testament relegates to history. But as I urged in our reading of Numbers 16, this is not the only option open to interpreters. Indeed, it seems to me that Barth’s concerns might be met by the recognition that priesthood in Christian terms is always Christ’s, represented by the human priest. Priestly blessing, therefore, is indeed in New Testament terms, Christ’s blessing. It would take us too far afield to explore why Barth does not go down this route, though one can imagine reasons that are not unconnected to his particular theological commitments. In this case those commitments do seem to allow his supreme Christological focus to drift over into the “Christomonist” approach of which he is sometimes accused, and to do so particularly at the expense of other ecclesiological concerns.

(excerpted from chapter 8)

Preface

Abbreviations

Introduction: A Map of the Wilderness

1. The Figure in the Wilderness: Readings in the Book of Numbers

2. Trust and Suspicion: Approaches to a Holy Text that Invites Little Approach

3. “Fraught with Background”: Towards Ascriptive Realism and Figural Reading (Numbers 10–12)

4. “What Did You Go Out into the Wilderness to See?”: Theological Interpretation, the Eyes of the Heart, and Karl Barth’s Reading of Sloth (Numbers 13–14)

5. “It is the Text that Swallows Up the World”: The Eclipse of Numbers’ Narrative and the Literal Sense of Korah’s Rebellion (Numbers 15–16)

6. “The Rock was Christ”: Typology Between a Rock and a Hard Place (Numbers 20)

7. “‘Peace, Peace,’ when there is no Peace”: The Zeal of Readers in Defense and in Dissent (Numbers 25)

8. Blessing for an Unfinished Journey: On Reading Numbers as Christian Scripture (Numbers 6; 22–24; 33)

Bibliography

Indices

Sujets

• Biblical Studies
• Biblical Commentary
• Philosophie et théologie
• Exegesis
• Frei
• General officer
• Hermeneutics
• Theology
• Old Testament
• Religion
• General
• Auerbach
• Paul Ric?ur
• Barth

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 25 juin 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268103767
• Langue: English

Extrait

Theological Hermeneutics and the Book of Numbers as Christian Scripture
Reading the Scriptures
Gary A. Anderson, Matthew Levering, and Robert Louis Wilken, series editors
THEOLOGICAL HERMENEUTICS and the BOOK of NUMBERS as CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURE
RICHARD S. BRIGGS
University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
www.undpress.nd.edu
Copyright © 2018 by University of Notre Dame
All Rights Reserved
Published in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Briggs, Richard, 1966– author.
Title: Theological hermeneutics and the Book of Numbers as Christian scripture / Richard S. Briggs.
Description: Notre Dame : University of Notre Dame Press, 2018. | Series: Reading the Scriptures | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2018012504 (print) | LCCN 2018012582 (ebook) | ISBN 9780268103750 (pdf) | ISBN 9780268103767 (epub) | ISBN 9780268103736 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 0268103739 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Bible. Numbers—Criticism, interpretation, etc. | Bible—Hermeneutics.
Classification: LCC BS1265.52 (ebook) | LCC BS1265.52 .B75 2018 (print) | DDC 222/.1406—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018012504
∞ The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.
This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail]
To Matthew
Who has helped me to see each day of the journey we are on as a gift from God
Any effort to understand Christian figural reading as fundamentally a matter of texts and the presence or absence of meaning, rather than a matter of rendering God’s historical performances intelligible, is doomed to theological irrelevance, however much contemporary theoretical sense it might make.
—John David Dawson,
Christian Figural Reading and the Fashioning of Identity
Instead of looking through the Bible in order to understand the truth about the world , eighteenth-century scholars looked directly at the text, endeavoring to find new, ever more satisfactory frames of cultural and historical reference by which to understand the meaning of the text .
—Michael C. Legaspi,
The Death of Scripture and the Rise of Biblical Studies
It is not regret for a sunken Atlantis that animates us, but hope for a re-creation of language. Beyond the desert of criticism, we wish to be called again.
—Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil
CONTENTS Preface Abbreviations Introduction: A Map of the Wilderness ONE The Figure in the Wilderness: Readings in the Book of Numbers TWO Trust and Suspicion: Approaches to a Holy Text That Invites Little Approach THREE “Fraught with Background”: Toward Ascriptive Realism and Figural Reading (Numbers 10–12) FOUR “What Did You Go Out into the Wilderness to See?”: Theological Interpretation, the Eyes of the Heart, and Karl Barth’s Reading of Sloth (Numbers 13–14) FIVE “It Is the Text That Swallows Up the World”: The Eclipse of Numbers’ Narrative and the Literal Sense of Korah’s Rebellion (Numbers 15–16) SIX “The Rock Was Christ”: Typology between a Rock and a Hard Place (Numbers 20) SEVEN “‘Peace, Peace,’ When There Is No Peace”: The Zeal of Readers in Defense and in Dissent (Numbers 25) EIGHT Blessing for an Unfinished Journey: On Reading Numbers as Christian Scripture (Numbers 6; 22–24; 33) Notes Bibliography Index of Scriptural Passages General Index
PREFACE
This book explores the theological and hermeneutical nature of scriptural interpretation by offering readings of certain key narratives and other texts in the book of Numbers, the fourth book of the Jewish and Christian canons. Both books—this one and Numbers—have had long and complex gestation periods involving the assembling and reediting of materials produced in many and varied settings along the way. I cannot comment on exactly how this happened with Numbers, partly through lack of information, but also because it does not seem likely to be the key to reading the book today. I could, by contrast, comment at length on how it happened with the present book, but my hope is that if the editing process has gone well then such an account will not be particularly relevant here either.
One feature of that process, however, deserves a brief mention. This book stands in a certain kind of complex relationship to the genre of commentary. It will in due course offer extended commentary of many texts in Numbers, mainly narratives. At one time, I thought I was simply writing a commentary, but two things happened. One was that I became interested instead in rethinking the question of what it actually means to interpret biblical narratives (and other texts) theologically, and realized that the constant interrogation and renegotiation of interpretive commitments and frameworks that such a rethinking involved did not sit easily with proceeding through a whole biblical book from beginning to end with equal attention to all critical matters. The other was that I realized that the kind of commentary I could write on the whole of Numbers was of a kind that already exists many times over: worthwhile works that digest the riches of more probing studies and mediate them to the wider audience. But then, what is that wider audience?

A turning point occurred at an SBL international conference when a publisher informed me that they had dropped the UK distribution of one particular commentary series since, after all, “who wants to read a commentary on the book of Numbers?” Apart from the embarrassing moment that followed when they then asked, “So anyway, what are you working on?,” that question stuck with me. I may one day be able to write a widely accessible commentary on the book of Numbers that does not simply repeat what has been done before. In the meantime, I recommend the fine achievement of Dennis Olson’s Interpretation commentary. But in the end I have struck out across rather less well-charted territory, engaged in the project of attempting to reconceive aspects of the genre of commentary itself. Chapter 1 explores that dimension of the task. All of this to say: that is why this book is not straightforwardly a commentary. Or to put it differently: that is why this book is an attempt to repurpose the genre of commentary for the kinds of task that I think should weigh on critical and reflective readers rather more than one might think given the way that commentaries normally occupy themselves.
P ORTIONS OF THE book have appeared elsewhere, though in most cases they were originally designed to contribute to this project. I am grateful to the following for permission to reproduce edited and sometimes extensively reorganized sections of the following: Robin Gill, editor of Theology , for chapter 2’s reuse of about half of “Juniper Trees and Pistachio Nuts: Trust and Suspicion as Modes of Scriptural Imagination,” Theology 112 (2009): 353–63; Andrew Sloane for occasional paragraphs distributed throughout from “Hermeneutics by Numbers? Case Studies in Feminist and Evangelical Interpretation of the Book of Numbers,” in Tamar’s Tears: Evangelical Engagements with Feminist Old Testament Hermeneutics , ed. Andrew Sloane (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2012), 65–83; Matthew Malcolm for chapter 6’s adoption of an edited version of the heart of “‘The Rock Was Christ’: Paul’s Reading of Numbers and the Significance of the Old Testament for Theological Hermeneutics,” in Horizons in Hermeneutics: A Festschrift in Honor of Anthony C. Thiselton , ed. Stanley E. Porter and Matthew R. Malcolm (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), 90–116, reprinted by permission of the publisher; and Timothy McLay, and Bloomsbury T&T Clark, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, for incorporating into chapter 7 almost all of “The Zeal of Readers in Defence and in Dissent: Phinehas’ Spear, the Covenant of Peace, and the Politics of Hermeneutics,” in The Temple in Text and Tradition: A Festschrift in Honour of Robert Hayward , ed. R. Timothy McLay, Library of Second Temple Studies Series 83 (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 113–39.
T HE FRONT COVER shows a detail from Nicholas of Verdun’s altarpiece (twelfth century), at the monastery in Klosterneuburg, near Vienna. The full altarpiece imagines the drama of scripture on three typologically linked levels: at the top is “before the law” (not pictured), the bottom is “under the law,” and the central level is “under grace.” The central set of panels, shown here, includes the typological linking of Christ on the cross (top center) with the spies carrying back the grapes from the promised land (Num. 13; bottom center). According to the inscription around the lower panel, the pole of the wood points to the cross, while the grapes point to Christ’s blood in the Eucharist.
T HE LENGTHY AND unexpected twists and turns of six years’ work on Numbers have accrued many debts, and it is my pleasure to acknowledge some of them here.
Durham colleagues who have helped along the way include, first and foremost, Walter Moberly, for once again generously offering much encouragement, wisdom, and detailed critique in various coffee shops around Durham; Lewis Ayres, for sharing in writing trips to Starbucks and dissatisfaction with what can pass for biblical study these days, including pushing me to one final rewrite to make the theological argument(s) clearer; and Jon Parker, who happened to turn up to do a PhD on Numbers at the same time as I was wrestling with the book, and along the way became a good friend and critical dialogue partner