J's Pages

(I have to be nice here, the author is kin.) (Actually, I'd be nice anyway, but I felt like bragging.)
Sometimes you just have to read something with which you don't agree. Okay, I didn't have to read it. My wife got it as a gift and I could have ignored it. But hey, it's a theology book, subtitled "The Political Intent of the Bible's Writers", and I was intrigued. Basically, Professor Sperling is trying to figure out why the writers of the Torah--the first five books of the Bible--wrote what they wrote. He's coming from the mindset that the Bible is a human creation and the parts that are written as history aren't necessarily true. So when he looks for motives as to why these stories were created and written down, he sees political agendas. In other words, various Israelite kings invented the tales of the patriarchs and the Exodus to add creedence to their own actions and agendas. It's an intriguing thought. However, I'm too much of a conservative to buy it. Granted, I haven't really looked into the historical-critical method of Biblical interpretation, so maybe I'm speaking in ignorance. The problem is, my few encounters with such interpretation haven't been all that convincing. To give an example--an example that is an example used by Professor Sperling--Numbers 34:25 reads "Of the tribe of the Zebulunites a leader, Eli-zaphan, son of Parnach." Now the histo-crit scholars would claim that passage was written in the sixth century B.C.E. rather than the thirteenth, since "Parnach" is really the Persian name "Farnaka" and the Jews didn't come into contact with the Persians until the sixth century. The problem I have with their reasoning is that nobody knows why Parnach's folks named him Parnach. It could have been a Persian name. They also could have made the thing up and it just happened to sound like "Farnaka". I mean, I read an article how a girl in the 13th century (C.E., that is) was named "Diot Coke". I really don't think for a moment that Coca-Cola's marketing department is that good. Anyway, like most folks, Professor Sperling makes some assumptions, builds on that with some interesting connections and occasionally fills in the gap with some speculation. Interesting reading, but even when I tried to suspend disbelief to consider his theory, I couldn't swallow the whole concept of the Bible as a fairy tale of human invention. I suppose I should keep that in mind when talking with folks who think I'm weird for believing the concept of the Bible as the inspired Word of God. Anyway, I honestly enjoyed this book enough to classify it as waiting room material. 

LibraryThing link

Labels: WaitingRoomMaterial

// posted by John @ 3:45 PM