Q. In one part of the divine violence chapter you talk about the Psalms. I like what Luther says— the Psalms speak for us, they truly and accurately reveal what is on the human heart, not necessarily what is on the heart or in the nature of God. So, while we have all these Psalms where the Psalmist in essence prays for vengeance, and even smashed Edomite baby heads, this does not necessarily reflect either the character or will of... Read more
Q. Most readers of the Bible do not seem to have an issue with God being a God of righteousness and justice, but when that involves punishment, even physical punishment in various cases, or even hell then issues tend to be raised about ‘a God of violence’ and how he could also be a God of love. What seems to me to be the case, [since the theme of justice and judgment is all over the NT as well as... Read more
Q. To the various Christians, even some Evangelicals, that want to argue that while there was no historical Fall or Exodus, or conquest, but that the stories still have theological value, I regularly reply ‘Ours is an historical grounded and founded religion, and nothing can be theologically true that is historical false, if the theological claims depend on the historical grounding. Would you agree? A. I totally agree and I do think all those things (and everything in the redemptive... Read more
Q. In my dealings with many conservative Christians one of the things I think that they often lack is any sense of progressive revelation, by which I not only mean that the clearer and fuller revelation of God’s character comes in Christ and in the NT, but also that we must take the hint from Jesus when he tells us things like ‘Moses gave you the permission of divorce due to the hardness of your hearts’. It seems to me... Read more
Q. A rather consistent strategy you use in the Exodus/ Conquest chapter and elsewhere is to argue that there is a historical kernel to this or that story which then has gone through a process of elaboration, sometimes involving hyperbole, like various of the ANE conquest narratives which involve lots of bragging and hyperbole (.e.g. ‘we wiped them utterly out of the land’ etc). How is the average lay person supposed to figure out what is the kernel and what... Read more
Q. When it comes to things like the issue of whether Israel was once captive in Egypt I like the dictum ‘absence of evidence is not the same thing as evidence of absence’. For example, as Kitchen points out, the Israelites likely lived in mud huts, which would be unlikely to be found by archaeological work millenia later. What do you think? A. I agree totally. And I believe the type of indirect evidence brought together by the eminent Egyptologist... Read more
Happy Easter everyone Christos aneste!! Here’s one of my favorite Easter poems (and note the shape of it). BW3 Lord, who createdst man in wealth and store, Though foolishly he lost the same, Decaying more and more, Till he became Most poore: With thee O let me rise As larks, harmoniously, And sing this day thy victories: Then shall the fall further the flight in me. My tender age in sorrow did beginne And still with sicknesses and shame. Thou... Read more
Q. Having spent a lot of time working with the Biblical Archaeology Society, I have run into quite a lot of interesting Jewish scholars, and lay persons interested in the history of Israel. What has really shocked me about many of them is their agnosticism not just about an historical exodus and conquering of Canaan, but even about Yahweh himself. And yet as you say, p. 102, this is the very foundation of Jews being a people, much less the... Read more
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