MetaCatholic

One new-to-me blog I’ve come across as a result of John Hobbins’ map is Biblical Theology. It’s a fairly clear and clearly conservative voice on biblical studies. The most recent article (at the moment) starts a series on the New Perspective. It does try to be fair to Sanders, and is certainly fairer than many critiques. I will be interested to see how it develops, but there is one point that illustrates a quite significant blindness, which is far too typical of conservative critics of the New Perspective. It comes right at the end:

We need to be extremely cautious about thinking that we have a better understanding of first-century Judaism almost 2,000 years removed than Paul did as one who grew up in it.

The problem with that is that it assumes that the traditional evangelical (and more broadly Protestant) understanding of Judaism, derived largely from the Lutheran reading of Paul, was in fact St Paul’s understanding. That is precisely what the NPP disputes, along with others who are not really NPP people.

What a great deal of (especially) post-Sanders scholarship is saying is that St Paul did not have the understanding of Judaism which Protestant tradition imputes to him, because no such Judaism existed. No-one is saying they understand it better than Paul, but better than Luther.

I hadn’t particular noticed it among the many treasures of John Hobbins’ Biblical Studies Carnival, but one paragraph says this:

Tim Glass at A Word on the Word passes on a list of the “Top Ten Bible Verses Used On-line.” They are the usual suspects, and represent the prism through which many evangelicals force all of Scripture. Tim just finished blogging the story of his journey out of evangelicalism into Catholicism. If Tim had to list the top ten verses one needs to know to understand what Scripture teaches, what would they be?

My own stumbling across this top verses stuff was pure synchronicity, but in a comment on that post, John repeats and broadens the challenge.

I know it’s a hard question, but I still want to repeat it - I asked it of Tim Glass, who drew attention to “the top 10″ before any of the rest of us noticed them:
What are our ten most favored verses? What do they say about who we are?

He doesn’t seem, however, unless I’ve missed it, to have answered his own question. I’ll get round to an answer shortly, and it seems this might make an interesting meme. But I want to offer some qualifications before doing so.

This is, in one sense, a particularly evangelical question. A list of quotations I live with would not simply be verses, but would include longer passages. One example would be what is (on the basis of Mark 12:29-31 = Matt 22:37-40) commonly referred to as our Lord’s Summary of the Law, an extension of the Shema. (Likewise, I find it hard just to pull verses from, say the Psalms.) In the list I give, I will include very short passages like this, but avoid longer stories, passages or parables that are equally important to me.

Nor would my choice simply include biblical references. There are treasured prayers and other quotations from the spiritual tradition (some clearly based on Scripture, others less so) which would feature in any such listing. In all of these I am careless of gender accurate language in private use. Three short quotations in particular, which I often find I come back to are these:

• “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you” (Augustine, Conf. 1.1)
• “The glory of God is a man fully alive, and the life of man is the vision of God.” (Irenaeus AH IV.20.7)
• “If you are a theologian, you will pray truly. And if you pray truly, you are a theologian” (Evagrius of Pontus, On Prayer 61)

Having noted those as treasured snippets, I will not include them in my list, but stick to biblical quotations as John requests. Although I number them in order, this should not be understood as a ranking. Each is quoted in the version I know best, not from the same Bible, and, being Anglican, I am going to cheat with the first one, which is a liturgical conflation of the Matthean and Markan versions of the Summary of the Law.

1. Our Lord Jesus Christ said: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord; and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. This is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. (Common Worship = BCP alternative)
2. He has showed you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8 RSV)
3. A bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice. (Isaiah 42:3 RSV)
4. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34 RSV)
5. The spirit of the Lord is on me, for he has anointed me to bring the good news to the afflicted. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives, sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim a year of favour from the Lord. (Luke 4:18-19, as excerpted from Isaiah 61:1-2a NJB)
6. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many. (Mark 10:45 NRSV)
7. We are God’s work of art, created in Christ Jesus to live the good life as from the beginning he had meant us to live it. (Ephesians 2:10 JB see this post)
8. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. (Romans 8:19-21 NIV – but in some sense standing for the whole passage)
9. So then, as you received Jesus as Lord and Christ, now live your lives in him, be rooted in him and built up on him, held firm by the faith you have been taught, and overflowing with thanksgiving. (Colossians 2:6-7 NJB)
10. Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. (Philippians 4:8 NRSV)

I don’t know what this selection says about me, but none of them are the same as the Top Verses Top Ten. I didn’t cheat: I didn’t actually go back and look at their list until I’d compiled mine. John described their list as “the usual suspects … the prism through which many evangelicals force all of Scripture”. I guess it’s not a major surprise that my list is not an evangelical usual suspect one, but I leave it to others to characterize it.

Well, it was John’s challenge, and I think it might be worth turning into a meme, but a restrained one, so I shall only tag two people, one has to be John Hobbins himself, so that he rises to his own challenge. The other is someone who seems to think entirely differently from me on so many things, Peter Kirk. Perhaps they should, like me, take enough liberty to allow up to three verse passages (but not longer).

Links so far (with John and Bob slightly changing the rules as they go!) :

John Hobbins, Nick Norelli, Bob MacDonald (with a second go), Sam Norton, Stephen (aka Q) with a second half, Tim Glass, James McGrath (with a second half),