Messy Revelation

In the May/June 2006 issue of Christianity Today, Susan Wise Bauer wrote a review of Peter Enns' Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament. It is revealingly titled: "Messy Revelation: Why Paul would have flunked hermeneutics." Bauer begins her review by recounting that, while reading Sumerian poetry, she came across this passage from "a 4,000-year-old epic describing the Sumerian paradise, a garden city free of evil and sickness where

the raven utters no cry …
the lion kills not,
the wolf snatches not the lamb,
unknown is the kid-devouring wild dog."

The connection to Isaiah 11 was as obvious to Bauer as it is to most readers familiar with the Old Testament. This, says, Bauer, is emblematic of the "opening dilemma" that Enns presents in his book. As Bauer states the dilemma:

The uniqueness of the Old Testament as a piece of literature has been seriously dented by the discovery of more and more ancient texts that predate (and anticipate) biblical forms. Creation story, flood story, prophecy, proverb: all of these were in use in Mesopotamia long before the first biblical book was penned.

So how can we claim that the Old Testament—and it alone from all the texts of that pre-Christian age—is divine communication from God to man?

How indeed? And moreover, the question is not only can we, but should we claim that the Old Testament writings are "divine communication[s] from God to man?" Is that, after all, the meaning of "revelation"? That the writings so labeled are "divine communication[s] from God to man?" And if so, what exactly does this mean--is it a useful characterization or, perhaps, a misleading characterization of the nature of these writings?

For the Christian there is, in fact, no particular reason to regard the Old Testament writings as "divine communication[s] from God to man"--that is, there would be no reason, but for the obvious relationship of Jesus to the world of the Old Testament. Even so, it is the fact of Jesus' resurrection that causes the Christian to ponder that relationship and to consider it to be part of a scheme that in some way fulfills God's will.

But in what sense is the Old Testament a communication from God to man, and is such a belief--at least one that is framed in such terms--necessary for Christian faith?

The One Who Is To Come

The October issue of First Things contains a review of Joseph Fitzmyer's new book, The One Who Is To Come. The review is by Gary Anderson, a professor of Old Testament at Notre Dame. As summarized by Anderson, the problem that Fitzmyer addresses is this:

The problem is one of historical anachronism: What beliefs can we determine that people held, before the birth of Jesus, about the coming messiah—when the coming of Jesus and the rise of Christianity so transformed all those beliefs? It is a very old methodological principle that the historian must learn again and again: What comes after does not always follow from what came before.

And so for the Christian claim that Jesus was the suffering messiah, long expected in the Sacred Scriptures. After the rise of the early Church and its claims to fulfill the hopes of the Jewish people, it was simply presumed that the coming of Jesus could easily be plugged into a pre-existent Jewish matrix. Modern biblical scholarship has seriously challenged that presumption. [my emphasis] The idea of a suffering messiah is difficult to trace in the Hebrew Scriptures, and even the notion that a single, royal messianic figure was expected is not easy to locate.

This is sometimes an alarming detail for Christian readers.

How does Fitzmyer's inquiry fare?

Misfortune and History - Continued

In “Misfortune and History” (from The Myth of the Eternal Return) Mircea Eliade deals at considerable length with “Hebrew” thought. This is, to my mind, perhaps the least satisfactory section of The Myth of the Eternal Return, due in part to its reliance on scholarship that has now been pretty definitively superseded but also due to faulty analysis.

Eliade characterizes as "Hebrew" thought what is now known to modern scholars as the Deuteronomic ideology, accepting the now discredited view that Israelite thought essentially underwent no development from the origins of Israel to the fall of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Modern scholarship has conclusively demonstrated both that the Biblical accounts of Israelite origins (the Exodus and Conquest) are not historical and that Israelite conceptions of divinity as well as religious practice underwent significant development and change. What I have characterized as the Deuteronomic "ideology" attained social effectiveness during the years between the fall of the northern Israelite kingdom (722 BC) and the final fall of the southern kingdom of Judah (586 BC). The so-called Deuteronomic "reform" was politically dominant especially during the reign of Josiah (649-609BC). The Deuteronomic ideology combined a rather advanced development of Israelite religion in the direction of monotheism, away from a more traditional West Semitic pantheon of gods, with a basically conservative "archaic" worldview. Where the "archaic" worldview saw misfortune in history as either a defeat of one set of gods by an opposing set of gods, or as the result of a failure to conform to divine will, the Deuteronomic ideology interpreted misfortune in Israelite history--and the misfortune that threatened in the form of the Assyrian and Babylonian empires--as the result of Israel's failure to conform to the Deuteronomic theology of Yahweh as the sole god of Israel and obedience to Torah. The history of Israel was rewritten to conform with this view. Thus, according to this ideology, the history of Israel could be understood according to a very simply logic: when Israel followed the commandments as set forth in the Deuteronomic books of the OT, all went well. When Israel failed in some respect--as when the Israelites followed their more traditional West Semitic religious traditions--things fell apart.

Religion and the Origins of Civilization

Christopher Dawson's Progress and Religion is a remarkable book. Written in 1929 when Dawson was not yet 40 it is, in effect, Dawson's attempt at an overall theory of history. While in many ways it addresses scholarship that is now dated, especially with regard to theories of the "origin of religion," it also has much in common with the later work of Mircea Eliade--in fact, in some respects Dawson goes beyond Eliade (whom Dawson preceded by several decades) by more explicitly relating archaic culture to later developments of large civilizations, world religions, and Christianity. (Eliade does seek to draw parallels between archaic thought and modern “existentialist” thought, but fails to fully consider much in between.) Nevertheless, because Dawson lacked an understanding of the archaic ontology of archetypes which Eliade elaborated, he was unable to fully exploit his unquestionably valuable insights. In what follows we will therefore attempt to evaluate Dawson's insights in light of Eliade's understanding of archaic man's ontology of archetypes and repetition.

In Chapter IV, “The Comparative Study of Religion,” Dawson set forth his views on archaic culture. In doing so he was at pains to oppose the materialist views of human culture that were current at the time. Then, in Chapter V, “Religion and the Origins of Civilization,” Dawson addresses the transition from “primitive” societies to the earliest civilizations.

The Terror of History

In the final chapter of The Myth of the Eternal Return Eliade contrasts what he terms "traditional man" (the man of archaic culture) with "historical man (modern man)." Eliade maintains that traditional man had a negative attitude toward history and sought to "abolish" history through various means, primarily through the philosophy or ontology of archetypes by which historical events were assimilated to constantly repeated or unchanging patterns. Thus, for traditional man, historical events have no value in themselves--their value is dependent upon the possibility of assimilating historical events to divine or heavenly archetypes. Historical man, on the other hand, says Eliade, "consciously and voluntarily creates history," giving historical events value in themselves. This "modern" view Eliade terms "historicism." But how much of a difference is involved in this distinction?

As a preliminary, let us observe that in point of fact historical man and traditional man both seek to endow history with meaning and value. It may well be, however, that traditional man is more clear sighted in this regard, for implicit in his view is the conviction that finite existence can have no meaning or value absent an explanation for its existence. Thus, for traditional man the explanation for existence is found in a cause: God. Historical, or historicist, man seeks to posit a meaning absent such a cause--his demand or declaration is that finite existence should have a meaning and value in and of itself, a meaning and value that is assigned by man as the primary actor in history. It can be said, then, that "historical man" simply wills the value or meaning of historical events--it is a declaration of meaning rather than a discovery of meaning.

Misfortune and History

In Chapter 3 of The Myth of the Eternal Return Mircea Eliade takes up the question of suffering, and the ways in which "archaic" cultures seek to "normalize" the suffering in historical existence. Of course suffering is inevitable and man is to a great extent powerless in its face, but suffering can be made bearable by a process of normalization. Briefly, we have seen that in archaic man's ontology what is truly real are the the divine or heavenly archetypes--it is these archetypes that confer reality upon the individual. It is natural, then, that archaic man should seek to find meaning in suffering by assimilating suffering to the divine order of the cosmos. Eliade notes that while pre-Christian humanity did not ordinarily grant value to suffering as an “instrument of purification,” suffering was “regarded as the consequence of a deviation from the 'norm.'” “[S]uffering is perturbing only insofar as its cause remains undiscovered.” Thus, if suffering can be assigned to a fault (a deviation from the 'norm'), “suffering becomes intelligible and hence tolerable.” In other woreds, it is "normalized." Notable in this is the implicit idea of a natural law--an intelligible norm that man can discover and violation of which is a violation of man's meaning in existence.

Eliade: The Regeneration of Time

In Chapter Two of Cosmos and History, The Regeneration of Time, Mircea Eliade attempts to apply his insights to the very common symbols revolving around periodicity in archaic man's life. That is to say, he applies his insights to what he sees as archaic man's desire to "abolish history" by renewing time and creation at the New Year and other events that are assimilated to his cosmogony.

Eliade begins by noting that in all cultures of which we have knowledge archaic man demonstrates 1) a conception of an end and a beginning of a temporal period, based on his observation of cosmic rhythms, and 2) a need for periodic regeneration. This concept of "cyclical regeneration," according to Eliade, "poses the problem of the abolition of 'history.'" It is at this point, I believe, that Eliade goes too far: this conception of an abolition of history reads modern ideology back into the thought of archaic man.

Eliade: Cosmos and History

Mircea Eliade (1907 - 1986) made his first attempt at a systematic exposition of his views on the problem of meaning in history in his short book The Myth of the Eternal Return: Cosmos and History (the original French edition, published in 1949, had the subtitle Archetypes and Repitition). Significantly, in the brief Foreword Eliade stated: "Had we not feared to be overambitious, we should have given this book a subtitle: Introduction to a Philosophy of History. For such, after all, is the purport of the present essay..." In this book, as in his other works, Eliade approaches the problem of man's search for meaning in existence and history by examining "the fundamental concepts of archaic societies." Eliade uses the expression "archaic" in its Greek etymological sense, meaning not "old" or "outmoded" but rather "original," the "principle" from which further developments are derived. The term thus comprises not only ancient "cosmological" civilizations (such as those of Egypt, the ancient Near East, China and India) but also peasant and tribal societies and, indeed, all societies of any stage of history that can be said to embody a "traditional" outlook.

Archaic Ontology in Homer and Aeschylus

Mircea Eliade based his theory of man in history on the claim that "archaic man" - by which he means man within "traditional" societies - has a characteristic ontology or theory of what it means for realities within his world to be "real." Building on the insight that the limited being of our universe must be dependent for its being on a divine "ground" of being, archaic man expresses this ontological vision in mythic form, giving expression to the view that to be real is to be an earthly expression of a divine or heavenly archetype. Only by sharing in or being an expression of this archetypal divine or heavenly reality does earthly reality become truly "real" and charged with meaning. There is, of course, also a moral component in this: for man to live a truly human life he must seek to conform himself to this divine pattern of humanity.