The Book of Isaiah: A Working Outline

These days I'm thinking about the Book of Isaiah. Most of this relates to a series of lessons I'm preparing to teach at church.

It's been a long time since I engaged this behemoth of a book. Isaiah is vast. Vast in its time scale, its place in Judaism and in the life of Jesus, and its influence in the New Testament and in the history of the Christianity. It would be hard to find another piece of literature comparable in size that has made such an impact.

Trying to get some idea of the broad contours of Isaiah, I recently consulted my own notes and then took a look at the outlines found in various commentaries. Here's what I've settled on, for now, as a good working outline of the entire book.

The most basic way to think about the outline of Isaiah is to divide the 66 chapters of the book like this:

1-39

40-66

Anyone who reads Isaiah all the way through will notice the difference in tone from one section to the next, a shift often described as a change from judgment and condemnation to hope and comfort. Beyond that, Isaiah can be further divided into the following seven sections:

1-12
13-23

24-27

28-35

36-39

40-55

56-66

For what it's worth, the foregoing corresponds to the outline found in Isaiah: A Commentary, written by Brevard S. Childs, and first published in 2000. Most of today's scholars divide it similarly with only a few variations.

Brevard Childs on the Biblical Tabernacle

In his monumental 1974 commentary on the Book of Exodus, Yale professor Brevard Childs provided an overview of the long history in which both Jewish and Christian interpreters have sought to understand the tabernacle.[1] Childs noticed a consistent and common fascination with this unique place of worship. The biblical description of the tabernacle, he wrote, "has been regarded from the beginning with the greatest possible interest by Jewish and Christian scholars alike."[2]. And what has been the reason for this? Childs offered a two-part explanation:

First, the dimension of the tabernacle and all its parts reflect a carefully contrived design and a harmonious whole. The numbers 3, 4, 10 predominate with proportionate cubes and rectangles. The various parts--the separate dwelling place, the tent, and the court--are all in exact numerical relation. The use of metals--gold, silver, and copper-- are carefully graded in terms of their proximity to the Holy of Holies. In the same way, the particular colors appear to bear some inner relation to their function, whether the white, blue, or crimson. There is likewise a gradation in the quality of the cloth used. Finally, much stress is placed on the proper position and orientation, with the easterly direction receiving the place of honor.[3]

In addition, Childs highlighted how in the biblical account it is the Almighty who issues each one of the many directions for the construction of the Tabernacle. "Every detail of the structure reflects the one divine will and nothing rests on the ad hoc decision of human builders."[4] Consequently, both Jewish and Christian scholars assumed that these details are rich in meaning, laden with significance. And this naturally led those interpreters to take a figurative, symbolic approach. In the post-Reformation period, Christian studies of the Tabernacle reveal a distinctive effort "to demonstrate the typology between the kingdom of God in the symbolism of the tabernacle and the church."[5]

Notes

[1] Brevard S. Childs, The Book of Exodus: A Critical, Theological Commentary, The Old Testament Library (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1974), 537-50.  I refer to this work as "monumental" because, with only a handful of possible exceptions--most notably Karl Barth's commentary on Paul's Letter to the Romans--very few twentieth-century commentaries on any book of the Bible made a greater impact than did Childs's work on Exodus. Much of its prominence stemmed from the author's construal of the task of commenting on a biblical text. At the outset, Childs revealed his intention to break new ground by reclaiming what was essentially old ground. Compared to "the majority of scholars within the field," he set out to present "a different understanding of the role of biblical interpretation." While the majority apparently considered historical-critical scholarship an end in itself--particularly investigations of the so-called depth dimensions of the text--Childs intended to use higher criticism as a means whose end was nothing short of what he often referred to as "the recovery of theological exegesis" (ix). And this explains the subtitle he gave to his commentary.

[2] Ibid., 547.

[3] Ibid., 537-38

[4] Ibid., 540.

[5] Ibid., 548.

Brevard S. Childs on the Message of Habakkuk

Brevard Childs was a first-rate biblical scholar, a real master of the various critical analyses so basic to his craft. But he did not consider any of the methods as an end. He understood them as means.

It seems to me that Childs was really a bit of a preacher, a believer in Christ who was convinced that the ultimate goal of even the most intricate Bible study was to reveal the message of the sacred text so that the people of God might be instructed and edified to His honor and glory.

I wrote that while preparing my Bible class for next Sunday. This is from the conclusion of Childs' discussion of Habakkuk:

"Righteousness is not judged by human capacity to understand the mind of God in world history, but rather in a faithful response of obedience which lives in God's promise. The prophet's testimony (3:18f.) witnesses to this faith which rejoices in God's salvation and awaits the end in spite of a human situation which oppresses the people of God (3:17)." --Introduction to The Old Testament as Scripture, p. 453.

Onslaughts and Olive Branches, 2nd of 2

In the previous post I highlighted a few of the onslaughts: the places where Christianity Today magazine has taken a negative view of modern Old Testament scholarship.

What's interesting, however, is that for every pejorative remark regarding scholarship outside the evangelical camp, one can find another that is much more neutral, if not downright friendly. In many cases, the evangelical writer feels compelled to say that, yes, the work under review might be offensive to some. But then the writer goes on to vouch for the good intentions and correct points, even extending a welcome—where one might expect a warning—to the CT readership who are encouraged to study such works for all they're worth. For example, in 1959, remarking on Walter A. Maier’s commentary on Nahum, David Kerr observes:

If any trend distinguishes the direction of Old Testament studies at the present time, it is that which recognizes that the substance of biblical writing is often more important than the source. In some instances this trend is carried so far as to attempt to hold a fairly orthodox theology along side the most radical views of the literature of the Old Testament. In some other instances it has led to a higher respect for the integrity of biblical documents. [1]

In the 1960 review of recent books, although some writers are said to espouse what is called “Wellhausenism,” their efforts are credited in the warmest of terms. [2]

The Old Testament: Its Origins and Compositions by Curt Kuhl is calmly reviewed by Fred E. Young: “In simple and non-technical language, the PJED thesis is posited. He begins with P, although he dates it later than D.” The book, says Young, “is a good presentation by a critical mind on the books of the Old Testament and should receive wide reading by students interested in a critical approach to Old Testament scholarship.” [3]

Likewise, Carl Armerding notes that William L. Holladay's book Isaiah: Scroll of a Prophetic Heritage “is not committed to the literary unity of Isaiah." Nonetheless, says Armerding, "he finds in the varied materials of Isaiah a theological unity that will provide a thematic guide to a solid biblical theology.” [4]

Finally, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture by Brevard Childs (pictured above) is called “the notable event in Old Testament publication for 1979.” Armerding sums up his brief review by calling it “fresh, responsible, and devoid of irresponsible speculation.” [5]

What should we make of those much-different attitudes in the same publication representing the same group? In a final post on this subject, I'll take a stab at interpretation.
_____________________________

[1] CT, III (February 16, 1959), 8-9. It's interesting, I think, that Kerr's description of Maier's commentary sounds much like the later works of one Brevard S. Childs.

[2] CT, V (November 7, 1960), 43-44 and (December 19, 1960), 38.

[3] CT, V (July 3, 1961), 36.

[4] CT, XXIII (March 2, 1979), 30.

[5] CT, XXIV (March 7, 1980), 28.

John Calvin (1509-2009)

July 10th of this year will mark the 500th anniversary of the birth of John Calvin. It's safe to say that he changed the world.

During my undergraduate days, most everything I heard about Calvin was negative. After all, someone named Calvinism after him. And that was bad. One of my classmates was required to read part of his Institutes of the Christian Religion. My assumption was that the assignment was for the purpose of figuring out all the places where Calvin went wrong.

A few years later, when I was a graduate student, I noticed that biblical scholar Brevard Childs rarely missed an opportunity to make some glowing statement about Calvin's commentaries. I wondered how someone I respected so much could say such great things about John Calvin.

My interest at the time was the so-called Pastoral Epistles: 1 and 2 Timothy, and Titus. So I started working through an English translation of Calvin's commentary of that part of the New Testament.

Wow! What I discovered in that commentary was nothing short of marvelous. Not only did Calvin offer many great observations about the text, he did something else that modern commentators avoided: He "preached." His comments were at once studious and unabashedly theological. He didn't seem to understand the modern rule that biblical scholars weren't supposed to be preachers as well. To Calvin, one thing naturally lead to the next. I loved it and wished that today's Bible scholars were a little more like him, eager to say something about God in the midst of their serious studies.

Oh, sure. There were parts of Calvin that I didn't like so much. For instance, he sometimes went out of his way to take shots at "the Papists." But those places were easy to overlook when there was so much rich material all around them.

It's been a long time, too long, since I read much of John Calvin. I still reject his predestinarian ideas and wish that they didn't have so much influence. (If you haven't noticed, Calvinism is very popular among twenty-somethings today). But the depth and the warmth of his commentaries cannot be denied. I think I'll revisit some of them this year.

How about you? Ever read much from (as opposed to about) Calvin? What did you think?

The Old and the New: Brevard Childs and Barack Obama

I've enjoyed my year of focusing on mostly older books, "older" meaning the book had to be published before 1968.

Many of my books for this year were written in the early part of the 1900s, not especially old, but earlier than the arbitrary line. It all began with a recommendation from C. S. Lewis, advice I've tried to follow in 2008.

I've cheated a few times. A couple of recent memoirs, a couple of recent novels, etc. But for the most part, it's been older books. For the record, Lewis didn't object to new books. He just thought a good number of old books, real classics, should be a part of anyone's diet.

One of my reads this year doesn't qualify technically, but in another way it does. It's Old Testament Books for Pastor and Teacher by my former professor, the late Brevard S. Childs. Published in 1977, this one is almost entirely about OT scholarship that pre-dates 1968.

Anyway, as I walked through Childs' evaluations of the Old Testament Introductions, his comments on the various OT commentaries, etc., I was again struck by his real appreciation for scholarship from every era of the church. Most biblical scholars and students of our time favor a monopoly of the modern. If it isn't recent, it can't be the best. If it's older, then it might be of interest to the historian, but it has no value for the scholar or preacher.

If anyone had an excuse for entirely focusing on the work and results of modern biblical criticism, it was Childs. He was trained as a biblical scholar in Germany during the the mid-1900s. But to his credit--and this is a major part of his immense influence--Childs saw both the weaknesses of the modern critical approach and the strengths of biblical scholarship as it was practiced before the Enlightenment. Here are a few of his observations about commentaries on the Book of Psalms, classic Childs:

The opinion is widely held that the historical critical approach to the Bible has rendered works on the Psalter prior to the late nineteenth century largely invalid, and that therefore one needs to begin with a critical introduction that sets out the method afforded by modern form criticism before listing the modern critical commentaries. I do not share this opinion. In my judgement, it has resulted in a disastrous reduction for theology, liturgy, and preaching. Rather, I would argue that each period--of course including the modern critical period--has made its peculiar contribution, and that these differing expositions all need to be critically assessed. The real issue is between good and bad interpretation, both of which have been represented throughout the history of the church (p. 60).

Later, along the same lines, he writes,

Probably the gravest indictment against the historical critical method is that it has effectively blocked all access to the richness of pre-critical interpretation of the Bible, both Jewish and Christian. To some extent the church's liturgical use of the Old Testament Psalms has been able to survive the impact of critical exegesis. In my judgment, it is absolutely imperative for the serious and theologically robust use of the Psalms once again to regain this lost heritage. Obviously traditional forms cannot be simply repristinated in the post-critical age, but neither can the great giants of the past be simply ignored without serious impoverishment of the Christian church (62).

- - - - - - -

I'm not very old. But I'm old enough to remember a time not so long ago when it would have been unimaginable for anyone but a white man to be elected President of the United States.

I drove to work Wednesday morning, by myself, in silence. Why silence? I wasn't being spiritual. The radio in my 1992 Ford Crown Victoria doesn't work anymore. Unlike most folks, I don't get to drive with an electronic distractor. I've thought about getting the radio fixed. But most days, I like to imagine that I'm better for having to sit there with myself. Anyway, as I drove along in silence, impressed with my humility, I couldn't help thinking that I was living at a real turning point. I did not support the candidacy of Barack Obama. But now that he has been elected President of the United States, I'm proud to have seen the day when this could and did happen. And I pledge myself to pray for President Obama and to be supportive of his administration.

The great William Faulkner considered brutal racism to be the great sin of the United States, one that would for a long, long time haunt our national life. He evidently believed that the U.S., especially the South, would remain under a lingering curse. The past is not in the past, he said. It is not yet present. The sins of the fathers would be visited upon subsequent generations, a common theme of his fiction.

No, not all of what Faulkner saw has been put to rest. Far from it. But Tuesday was a historic day. This is the beginning of a different time in the U.S., I think. Do you think so too?

Tagged, Tellin', Taggin'

I got “tagged” by Wade Tannehill. Now I’m supposed to tell about five odd or interesting things about me that people would not ordinarily know. Here goes:

1. For starters: Some of the more interesting-or-odd things about me I just won’t tell here because they involve me breaking the law, acting immorally, being idiotic, or some combination thereof.

I sometimes think that God sends out Jack Bauer-type angels to protect young men during those high-testosterone years. (Their show would be called “At Least 24 Months”). Suffice it to say that one of the most interesting-and-odd things about me is that, thank God, I’m still alive.

2. Privilege and Accomplishment: From the ignoble to the proud. My second graduate degree is from Yale Divinity School, which looks like this.

I really loved the time I was able to spend at Yale. One of the neatest things was I got in on the last classes ever taught there by Abraham Malherbe, Brevard Childs, and Leander Keck. Along with colleagues like Robert Wilson, Wayne Meeks, and Christopher Seitz, they made up one of the best Bible Departments in the world. (Not that the School suffered when the next generation arrived: John J. Collins, Adela Yarbro Collins, Harry Attridge, Miroslav Volf, et al).

One of the University’s best-kept secrets is Victoria Hoffer, the lady who taught me Hebrew. A brilliant person and the mother of five, she’s one of those folks who can work on fifteen projects at once and get them all done on time, with flair, while smiling and well-dressed. Not to mention that she’s a terrific teacher and that she literally wrote the book on Biblical Hebrew. I’ll always thank God for her.

I should do more posts about my teachers. I didn’t say anything here about that other great school. No, not Harvard. It’s HARDING Graduate.

3. Bad habit: I’m what you might call “a hoarding messy.” (Try saying that with a high British accent). I irrationally hang on to all kinds of things. In fact, just about everything that comes into my possession I keep. And I don’t organize it very well. My wife will not allow my messy collections to take over the house, and I’ve actually developed some fairly-tidy habits there. But at my work office the demon runs wild. As I write this, my desk is piled about 4 inches deep in papers, folders, notebooks, etc., and there are nearly as many books stacked on the floor as there are on the shelves.

Now, that’s not particularly interesting, but there is an odd part here: there are pockets of my life where everything is immaculate. I’m very picky, for example, about what I eat, what I wear, written work, and presentations.

I sometimes comfort myself by remembering that people like me are said to be unusually creative. But most of the time, I just wish I would get a handle on my sloppy ways. And I worry. I worry about what this glaring bad habit says about my character and my inner world. I’m trying to do better.

4. Unforgettable experience: In the summer of 1985, I took five consecutive flights, over a period of 24 hours, and my ears wouldn’t clear. One flight attendant told me that giving me an aspirin was a no-no. At one point the pain was so terrible, I asked the Lord to just let me die.

Having made it from Manaus, Brazil to Altus, Oklahoma in that fashion, the next day I went to the doctor who gasped when he got a look at the raging infection in both of my ears. The day before my excruciating series of flights, I had gone with a group out onto the Amazon River. At the end of several hours on the water, the tour guide and captain stopped the boat’s engine and told us that if we wanted to tell our friends that we’d gone swimming in the Amazon, this was the time and place. I was one of the first to jump in.

Of course, not planning to swim in the river from which we had earlier pulled piranhas, none of us had a towel. I never thought to dry my ears. The big bad bugs of the Amazon went to work overnight, and I wound up learning some important lessons.

My ears got better. My life was forever changed by my experiences with the churches in Manaus and especially Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

5. Jobs: One of my first real jobs had me operating two commercial radio stations—one AM, one FM—for hours on end . . . by myself . . . for $3.50/hour. Hard to believe, but it’s true.

The AM was a Country & Western format--“KWHW 1450”--one of the truly great institutions of Altus. The FM was an automated Top 40. The intros and music for that station were purchased pre-recorded on these giant reel-to-reel tapes.

I would come to work at about 4:00 p.m. and record local news, sports, and weather, as well as the few commercials they’d let me do. Then, I’d put the carts into just the right slots in one of three huge carousels. The tapes and the carts had inaudible signals that tripped whatever was supposed to play next. That system for the FM station worked perfectly, almost all of the time.

At 6:00 p.m. I’d start a six-hour board shift on the AM, while minding the automated FM station that was broadcasting from literally the next room. For all of that time, I was the only person in the building (except for a couple of times I let a current girlfriend come in and check out the world of Mr. DJ; every job has its perks).

Long after midnight, the time when both stations signed off, I’d still be cleaning the machines, changing the tapes, and then setting up everything on the AM side for the morning man (the morning people are the prima Donnas of radio).

After several months of that, I told the program manager I was more than ready for that promised-but-overdue raise to $4.00/hour. With all the grace of a train wreck he let me know that I really hadn’t come along like he hoped I would and that he was reneging. I gave my two weeks notice on the spot. And so ended my glorious career in radio.

And here’s the tag: Ken Danley, Arlene Kasselman, Steve Duer, Greg Newton, and Royce Ogle? Yur-rit!