Dissident Dispatches
Page 2
For all those reasons, I remain a scholastic citizen-soldier serving in the spiritual war for the soul of my people. I have continued to slog steadily along the academic path prescribed by the powers-that-be, hoping to qualify for a Bachelor’s degree by the time this book is published in mid-2017. Let us pray that many other Anglo-Saxon Christians, along with other white European counter-revolutionaries and neo-reactionaries, radical traditionalists and white nationalists, join the long march through the Anglican and other Protestant churches. White Protestant churches must learn anew how to “search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him” in the bosom of their ethno-nations (Acts 17:26–27).
2011: Culture Shock
THL 101 / New Testament Greek 1 / HD
THL 105 / Introduction to Old Testament Studies / DI
THL 111 / Introduction to Christian Theology / DI
THL 131 / The Rise of Christianity to 600 CE / DI
THL 113 / Being the Church / HD
THL 106 / Introduction to New Testament Studies / PS
1. Old Testament Exegesis: Psalm 22
“My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Christ died on the cross with the opening words of Psalm 22 on his lips.10 Following Christ’s Passion a gulf opened up between what the Psalm meant to ancient Israel and what it has come to mean for each successive generation of readers throughout the long rise and subsequent decline of Christendom. Over the past two millennia, most Christians understood Psalm 22 as a powerfully poetic anticipation of Christ’s Passion written by King David (ca 1040–970 BC). Ironically, however, the gap between such “trinitarian” readings of Psalm 22 and the intentions of the ancient Hebrew psalmist (whatever they were and whoever he may have been) is not nearly as wide as the rift that now divides the traditional Christian interpretation from its “relecture” by modern Jewish (and “Judeo-Christian”) scholars. It seems that contemporary academic theology promotes an ecumenical reading of Psalm 22, according to which it becomes an archetypal representation of individual suffering allegedly applicable to small religious communities in all times and places.
However contested its meaning may be, the twenty-second Psalm is clearly a poem, not a historical narrative or a legal code. As such, it is part “of a long practice of Israel in finding poetic, artistic ways to voice faith but poetic, artistic ways that were being impinged upon, no doubt in decisive insistence, by vigorous theological intention and urgent ideological advocacy”.11 In modern English, the New King James Version of the Bible comes closest to matching “the intensity and comprehensiveness” of the original text. The structure of the Psalm is a complex synthesis of different poetic forms. According to the Word Biblical Commentary, “the psalm contains at least three different kinds of material: (a) lament (vv 2–22), within which there are elements of (b) prayer (vv 12, 20–22), and finally (c) praise and thanksgiving (vv 23–32)”. There is a “sharp distinction between the two main sections (v2–22 and 23–32)” which “has prompted some scholars to suggest that originally there were two separate psalms that were fused into one.” Others are convinced that the text demonstrates the evident unity of “the two acts of prayer and praise and the two situations of affliction and salvation,” both of which “must be comprehended in one arc of meaning to express what is happening.”12
One’s sense of what is happening within the psalm is bound to be affected by one’s perception of its authorship. In accordance with a long-standing convention, a superscription to the poem identifies it as “A Psalm of David.” By the turn of the twentieth century the received view was being undermined by historical criticism. Even so, in 1903 Alvah Hovey concluded that while the evidence of “its Davidic origin is not conclusive,” on the whole, “the contents of the psalm” are “favourable to the hypothesis that it was composed by David before his terrible fall into adultery and murder.” But, he added, it is not necessary to suppose “that the writer…is making a record of his personal experience.” Instead “the suppliant sufferer of the twenty-second psalm” is “an ideal character” representing “in the mind of the writer…a loyal servant of God, tried by long continued and desperate sufferings, but at last delivered” from the depths of despair. Following his deliverance, the suffering individual offers up his “joyful praise among his people” while anticipating a future kingdom in which “All the ends of the world shall remember and turn to the Lord” who “rules over the nations” (v27–28). Given that Christ himself and the Gospel writers used the psalm to describe the isolation, humiliation, and suffering he endured during the crucifixion, Hovey pronounced it to be a “truly messianic” prophecy. Having “been fulfilled in the last days of the suffering Savior, followed by his speedy deliverance from death and the joyful message which he committed to his disciples for all mankind,” the psalm has clearly taken “on the appearance of anticipatory prophecy” in the eyes of countless other Christians over the centuries.”13
According to Leo the Great (ca 400–461 AD) the twenty-second psalm was a “prophetic locution” in which “[w]hat human ears did not yet know was about to be done, the Holy Spirit was announcing as accomplished.” The “history of the crucifixion has rightly been prefigured in the person of David” because “the Lord — who was going to take the suffering flesh from David’s stock — spoke through his mouth.” Modern Christian scholars still share Leo’s view that “this hymn is prophetic in character and eschatological in scope.” They shrink away in horror, however, from Leo’s blunt conclusion that “[a]ll the things, therefore, that the wickedness of Jews inflicted on the ‘Lord of Majesty’ had been fully predicted.” Few modern theologians are prepared to discuss frankly the possibility that first-century Jews betrayed both “the corporate vocation of Israel and the messianic role of David” by calling for the execution of Christ.14
In sharp contrast, few patristic writers were reluctant to identify the “dogs” who belonged to the “congregation of the wicked” who “enclosed” the Messiah figure of the twenty-second psalm; nor did they doubt that the psalmist imagined the Saviour being nailed to the cross, groaning “They pierced My hands and My feet.” (v 16) Eusebius of Caesarea (263–339 AD), for one, charged that it was “the rulers of the Jews, the Scribes and High Priests, and the Pharisees who spurred on the whole multitude to demand His blood against themselves and against their own children.” Eusebius taught that the other predictions of the psalm were “exactly fulfilled in Him,” notably in the words “They divide My garments among them, And for my clothing they cast lots.” He also saw the Church prefigured in the psalmist’s vision of a great assembly in which “all the families of the nations, Shall worship before You.” (vv 25, 27) For Eusebius, the piercing of Christ’s hands and feet and the division of his garments by a “congregation of the wicked” conveyed a clear warning to his contemporaries: “Yea, all who to-day insult the Body of Christ, that is the Church, and attempt to destroy the hands and feet and very bones are of their number.”15
Not surprisingly, the early Christian interpretation of the Psalm 22 eventually provoked a polemical Jewish response.16 Once Christians located Psalm 22 in “the new literary context of the Bible” where it functioned “as the personal prayer” of an “exemplary, even salvific” figure in their religious history, Jews followed suit in the form of “Esther’s prayer in the classic rabbinic commentary on the Psalms known as Midrash Tehillim” composed between the third and fifth centuries AD. On this rival Jewish interpretation, the twenty-second psalm anticipates “Esther’s prayerful speech and actions in the Persian court.” While “the queen’s personal plight remains the immediate focus of much of the commentary,” it also “involves the salvation of the entire Jewish people.” In the long run, the all-too-obviously contrived effort to compete with the Christian reading of Psalm 22 by converting “the remarkably secular Book of Esther into religious history” was a flop. Esther Menn concedes that the “connection between Jesus and Psalm 22 within the church is therefore deeper and more enduring than the connec
tion between Esther and the psalm within Judaism.”17
But Jewish scholars have not given up their age-old efforts to provide an alternative to the dominant trinitarian interpretation of Psalm 22. In recent years, a renewed campaign to deconstruct the Christian reading of Psalm 22 has been waged on two fronts. On the one hand, scholars such as Naomi Koltun-Fromm locate the genesis of the trinitarian interpretation of Psalm 22, not in the gospel narratives of the Passion, but in the “anti-Jewish polemics” of later patristic writers. She places considerable weight on the omission of the image of pierced hands and feet in the gospel accounts of the crucifixion. It was later writers such as Justin Martyr (ca 103–165 AD) and Tertullian (ca 160–220 AD) who first focused attention on that image of pierced limbs in verse 16 — itself derived from a corrupted Hebrew text — as “prooftext for their trinitarian readings, while at the same time claiming or indicating that the entire psalm has fuller significance.” Koltun-Fromm argues that “while certain verses may have been included in the passion narratives, the whole psalm’s wider trinitarian affirmation only comes to the fore in later Christian debates.” Her rhetorical strategy is likely to be an effective tactic in the campaign to de-Christianize Psalm 22. In today’s cowardly ecumenical climate, the suggestion that the trinitarian interpretation of the twenty-second psalm grew out of primitive anti-Jewish polemics in the early church stigmatises Christian efforts to assert a hermeneutically privileged affinity with the twenty-second psalm.18
More recently, Esther Menn has offered an alternative reading which appeals to what she claims was the original understanding of the psalm in small group rites that were part of everyday life in ancient Israel. She contends that the historicist identification of the psalm with exemplary figures such as David, Esther, and Jesus submerged its original liturgical, quasi-therapeutic function. On her reading, the psalm was first intended for use as an individual lament to provide “ritual expression” to “the estrangement and suffering of the ordinary individual and of his or her reincorporation into the community.”19 Her interpretation finds support in the work of contemporary “Judeo-Christian” theologians such as Ellen Davis. Turning her back on patristic writers such as Justin Martyr and Eusebius, Davis insists that the entire Book of Psalms is “the single most important resource for both Jewish and Christian prayer.” In her view, “these songs are the common property of all who worship the God of Israel.”20
Davis finds it difficult to conceive that contemporary Jews have anything in common with the “congregation of the wicked” who defied the God of Israel by killing Christ. Indeed, not only does she refuse to bear any such grudge, she comes close to throwing Christ under the bus. Even if one still hears the cry from the cross in Psalm 22, she cautions, it must not be understood as “a unique expression of agony” which identifies Christ’s Passion as a moment “unlike any other in history.” Her argument can be taken as a measure of just how steep the recent decline of Christianity has been. In a feminized theological academy, the poetry of Psalm 22 no longer evokes the death throes and resurrection of the heroic God-Man who — after his rejection by the Jews and the Islamic conquest of the Middle East and North Africa — found an earthly abode in the hearts of the nations of Old Europe. Nowadays, in the name of ecumenism, the psalm is being democratised and “humanised” so as “to inform the identity of countless other distressed individuals, whose lives are drawn into” the “foundational stories of suffering and deliverance” of every religious community.21 If Christ has no enemies, there is nothing special, much less heroic, about his suffering.
2. Old Testament Translation Essay: Deuteronomy 5: 8–10, 17
Every biblical translator must choose between fidelity to the original source language and the communicability to the target audience of the translated text. Translators who are concerned mainly with the “principle of complete equivalence” seek “to preserve all of the information” in the source text. Such a methodology is described as the formal correspondence school of translation. Other translators are more concerned with the cultural and social factors affecting the reception of the translated text by its target audience. They aim, therefore, to produce a free translation or paraphrase that reproduces in a new language the mood or impression conveyed by the original text to those to whom it was first addressed. This methodology, in short, seeks not word-for-word equivalence but a more “dynamic” equivalence between sentences or even passages.22
It seems that the King James Version (KJV) provided an English translation characterized by both formal correspondence between the source texts and the translated text and an exceptionally high literary quality. The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) continues “in the tradition of the King James Bible” and, accordingly, bills itself as “essentially a literal translation” in which paraphrase has been kept to a minimum.23 Not surprisingly, therefore, the rendering of Deuteronomy 5: 8–10 corresponds closely to that found in the New King James Version (NKJV).
Verse 8 in the NRSV is very similar to the NKJV rendition of that passage. The use of the word “idol” in the NRSV is somewhat more demotic than the “carved image” used in the NKJV. The KJV itself, of course, referred to a “graven image;” characteristically, a less accessible choice of words than either modern version.
In verse 9, both the NRSV and the NKJV, in common with the New International Version (NIV) and the New English Bible (NEB), eschew the Hebrew “Tetragrammaton” and use the capitalized “Lord” in place of YHWH. The NRSV version of this verse is very similar to that in the NKJV. The differences are mainly between the somewhat more elevated (some would say, “archaic”) language of the NKJV and the more “inclusive,” or politically correct, choice of words in the NRSV. The former speaks of “visiting the iniquity of fathers” upon children and the latter of “punishing” them for “the iniquity of parents.” It is not clear why the NRSV prefers the word “reject” to “hate” as in the other three translations of this verse. Interestingly, it is only the NKJV which capitalizes the word “Me” and “My” in the passage, thereby seeking to emphasize the sovereign character of God.
Both the NRSV and the NKJV translate verse 17 in the same way, using the word “murder,” although in a note the NRSV does offer “kill” as an alternative — the word used by the translators of the King James Bible.
The NIV translation of Deuteronomy is shorter and simpler than either the NRSV or the NKJV. This appears to reflect the editorial policy of the translation committee which strove “for more than a word-for-word translation.” The NIV attempted to achieve a dynamic equivalence between the English translation and the Hebrew original by modifying sentence structures, paying attention to contextual meanings of words and by cultivating a “sensitive feeling for style” in the finished product. A concern for the reception of the translation by its target audience led the editors to test samples of the translation “for clarity and ease of reading” among “various kinds of people — young and old, highly educated and less well educated, ministers and laymen.”24
In accordance with that policy, verse 8 in particular is boiled down to its essentials while in verse 9 the word “sin” replaces the high-toned “iniquity” of both the NRSV and the NKJV. In verse 10, the NIV uses the phrase “showing love” rather than “showing steadfast love” as found in the NRSV. Otherwise, verse 9, 10, and 17 are rendered by all three versions in very similar language.
The NEB is often associated with the dynamic equivalence school but that reputed penchant for free translation is not in evidence in its rendition of Deuteronomy except to a limited extent in verses 10 and 17. The NEB uses the phrase “keeping faith” in place of the showing of “love,” or “mercy,” or “steadfast love” in the other translations. That appears to be a significant deviation from the language used by the other versions. Also, in verse 17, the NEB uses the phrase “commit murder” rather than the verb “murder” or “kill.” In this way, the NEB may be trying to connect with a contemporary audience a
ccustomed to thinking in terms of a modern criminal code.
All of the modern translations may have found it difficult to achieve formal correspondence with an original language deeply rooted in a customary law which arose outside and apart from anything resembling a sovereign state. The King James Bible probably came closer by using the broader connotations attached to the word “kill.”
To speak of a commandment against “committing” murder rather than against “murder,” as such, calls to mind modern legal distinctions between intentional homicide and manslaughter. It seems unlikely that such distinctions were present in the minds of the original audience for the Deuteronomic code. On the other hand, perhaps the NEB translators thought that, by using the word “commit” they could underline the legal rather than merely moral force of the commandment.
There remains the question of whether a particular “theological bias” is evident within any or all of these translations. It may well be that the choice between the formal correspondence and dynamic equivalence schools of translation is related to preferences for a high church versus low church brand of theology. The word-for-word equivalence important to the formal correspondence school gives greater weight and reverence to the source of the translated text in the received word of God than those who are concerned mainly with the style and accessibility of the translation in a contemporary audience.