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Tom Holland on the New Perspective |
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On As I mentioned in my book
review, He began his lecture by
describing what he regards as the failure of Evangelicalism: “We have not
focused on the texts of scripture; we have focused on the texts of the
confessions. Being reformed is not being committed to the confessions, it is
being committed to the convictions of the reformers, that of on-going
reform.” Doubtless many evangelical biblical scholars will concur, including
N.T. Wright, who has written of “the kind of serious biblical scholarship the
Protestant Reformation was built on,” a tradition he is proud to “carry on …
if need be, against those who have turned the Reformation itself into a
tradition to be set up over scripture itself” (The Shape of Justification). The bulk of He went on to quote J.H. Charlesworth on the Pseudepigrapha:
“In these writings, as in the Dead Sea Scrolls, we are introduced to the
ideas, symbols, perceptions, fears, and dreams of pre-AD 70 Jews. Since none
of them can with assurance be assigned to Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots or Essenes, it is wise not to describe early Judaism in
terms of four such sects; rather we must now think of many groups and
numerous subgroups.” However, I believe it may
be overstating the case to argue that the new perspective necessarily
presupposes an essential uniformity of thought among the various sects of
second-temple Judaism. The two scholars quoted above clearly argue against
homogenization, but that does not mean that they, like Similarly, in a recent
review of Craig A. Evans’ book Ancient
Texts for New Testament Studies, J.H. Charlesworth
has written that the collection “will assist all interpreters of Scripture.
The New Testament texts come alive with fresh meaning when read in the
context of the literature of their time. Evans demonstrates how these texts
provide meanings for words and concepts, clarify the history and sociology of
the period, and illustrate the historical, exegetical, hermeneutical, and
canonical context of the New Testament documents.” This is hardly the
commendation of someone who believes that noncanonical
literature cannot clarify the meaning of the scriptural text. Another point of
methodology criticized by He expressed the same
sentiment during the question-and-answer session, when I asked what he
thought about the use of the phrase “the works of the law” in 4QMMT since its
meaning there appears to approximate the meaning proposed by Dunn in the
letters of Paul. Simply put, I’m still not
persuaded that the literature of second-temple Judaism is irrelevant to the
study of Paul’s letters. The most interesting part
of ·
We have not appreciated the corporate nature of the NT ·
We have not appreciated the OT dimension of the NT ·
We have not appreciated the New Exodus paradigm of the NT ·
We have not appreciated the paschal model for the NT My review of his book
highlights these arguments and celebrates the willingness of a conservative
scholar both to question excessively individualistic readings of Paul and to
locate Paul’s meaning on the map of a historical, biblical narrative instead
of on the abstract grid of a systematic, philosophical construct. This is
where Dear
Mark, It was good to meet you at the
lecture in What you
have written is very fair and you have highlighted the things I wanted to
say. I am grateful for the positive comments in both your review of my book
as well as in the report on the lecture. It is clear that the major
difference we have relates to the Pseudepigrapha and its relevance to NT research.
I understand why you are unhappy with my position and naturally I want to
focus on this. I will, if you don't mind, also make reference to some other
reviews that challenge me on the same point, as it is an ideal place to deal
with this issue that has been raised elsewhere. All the reviews are available
on my home page www.tomholland.instant.org.uk for your readers to access. Firstly,
let me say from the outset that my position is not that of someone who cannot
step outside of the text of the Christian Bible through fear of losing his
way, or even his confidence, in those texts -- indeed it is the very
opposite. I was trained to interact with such texts and for many years used
this method to interpret the scriptures for the people I taught. I was a
Baptist pastor for eighteen years, and while the Pseudepigrapha did not figure highly in most
commentaries a couple of decades ago,
I was more than comfortable in using the insights my teachers imparted, which
were largely based on engagement with extra Biblical literature. But, I do want to correct a
possible misunderstanding. I have never said that the ITL is of no use, only
of limited use (see Contours p.
60). I accept that they give us a good idea of the main issues occupying Jewish
thought in the first century. These include the expectation of the Second
Exodus, the raising up of a descendent of David and the fulfilment of many
prophetic predications that related to this momentous event. I also accept
that they can alert us to a meaning of a word that clearly existed among some
of the communities of ITL that might fit the NT text in a surprisingly
helpful way. But before transposing the meaning great care needs to be taken
to ensure that the writer of the NT text is actually sharing the same
understanding. What I am anxious to underscore is that we cannot construct a
theology of ITL and use it as the key to NT thought.1 There was no
such thing as a Jewish theology, only Jewish theologies. Even Rabbinical
Judaism was a minority viewpoint at that time. Later, of course, it was to
become the dominant (and representative as far as So to
gather statements, for example about wisdom, and to argue that these are the
source of the ideas of wisdom in the NT, is an example of abusing these
texts. As you know, I have sought to use this as an example in Contours
(appendix 4) to show how this material has totally confused the real picture
of what the NT writers refer to in calling Christ "the wisdom of God".
I am naturally delighted at the widespread agreement that my argument has
elicited. To put my
case into the context of my visit to But even
within a community upholding a common tradition, there are divisions. In a
recent class of post graduate students, I asked for opinions on what the
baptism of the Spirit meant. It was clear that there were, even in a class
where the students had a common confessional position, a range of different
opinions. I asked them how they would feel if I listened to all their views
and then wrote up a position that they were to sign and embrace as their own.
The students response was a firm rejection -- such a
treatment would not represent the understanding they were concerned to
preserve. If we cannot do this reliably for a group of likeminded
theologians, what chance is there of doing if for such a disparate range of
theological opinion that existed in Second Temple Judaism? I have to
confess, that, since writing Contours, I have come to see that the usefulness of the Inter Testamental Literature is even more limited for NT
scholarship than I had previously appreciated. Even though Charlesworth has cautioned against misusing the Pseudepigrapha because of its complex theological diversity, from his
endorsement of Craig Evans' book he is obviously very positive about it as a
source of customs and social practices for Second Temple Judaism. Despite the
endorsement of such an able scholar, I am forced to warn of the danger of
assuming that customs were uniform throughout intertestamental
Judaism. In this area I have come to think that Charlesworth,
along with many others, is making a serious mistake. Let me
try to explain. In the early days of our married life my wife and I had
regular debates as to the correct way of doing things and the meanings of
certain practices and even words. We came from the same country, shared a
common history and had the same language, yet in her home area, some 150
miles from where I was brought up, there was a
slightly different culture from the one that had moulded
my thinking and expectations. I have
encountered this difference in other contexts. As a Baptist pastor, I have done
some itinerant preaching. It is interesting to find how practice and even
understanding varies from one congregation to another. Differences exist,
even between different congregations that are in the same town and of the
same denomination. I have no doubt that this is also found in other Christian
denominations. Words, rituals and practices all have a range of meanings that
are particular to that one congregation. Ask any minister of his experience
when he moves to pastor a new congregation -- there is always a steep
learning curve! An
example of the above variation is the way funerals are conducted. In the town
where I was a minister there were people from all over the Clearly
the tribes of So, even
in the useful information we get from the ITL about customs etc. we have to
be very careful that examples of practice or understanding are not forced
onto the NT text to support a meaning. The safest thing is to work with the
texts that are the product of the group of people we are seeking to
understand, and in this case, for the NT church, it is the OT biblical text.
But, even in that collection of literature, there are many variations that
ought to be recognised and respected! And this
is what is not being done! The Pseudepigraphal literature is being blindly used
without the controls that the specialists in these fields of study would say
are essential to good practice. I am forced to the conclusion that using this
literature to open up the meaning of the NT is fundamentally flawed and with
it are the conclusions which its adherents reach. Such an
example is found in Tom Wight's Jesus and the Victory of God (pp.
250-251). He draws our attention to how Josephus made demands on a man to
become his disciple and uses this to explain the calling of the disciples by
Jesus. The fact that Josephus had no religious mission, whereas Jesus
obviously did, ought to cause us to question the transfer of the model. But
other basic questions need answering. Is this practice related to Josephus'
social status? It was a status that Jesus clearly never had. Is it a practice
that was locally recognised rather than widespread
-- in other words does it reflect the customs of a region or the entire nation?
How can we establish its wider significance for Jewish practice? To use this
example as the cornerstone of a major argument is building on very unsure
foundations. This sort of analysis can be applied to much of the material
that is used to 'enlighten' the NT text. You
mention in your report that after the lecture you asked me about 4QMMT. I replied, asking how widely such
a text would be available for Paul's readers, or even Paul himself, to
interact with. You rightly say this is not the point; that the text shows
that such understanding did exist in Judaism. I agree with this, but the last
thing that must be done is to take this meaning (which certainly does not
have unanimous agreement) and impose it on the uses of the Greek form found
in the NT. I warn of this in Contours
pp. 217 & 232. Words can have different meanings in different contexts
and this is true in the NT just as much as it is in the Pseudepigrapha. Only a careful evaluation of the context,
and the argument being made can tell us how the word is being used and it is
my contention that the full range of meanings found in the semantic domain
for 'justify' is present in the NT writings. In some of these texts the
meaning seems to match that of Dunn's reading of 4QMMT, but in other passages
this is certainly not the case. I have
already argued in Contours that there are certainly 'covenantal nomistic' readings of the term present in Paul.3
However, I don't come to this conclusion by imposing the meaning from any
outside text but from the arguments that are being made within the letters. I
do not have a problem with the New Perspective view of justification being in
some of the Pauline texts, but I certainly have a problem in arguing that it
is in all of the uses of 'justify'. The point I have made is that Paul's
audiences were victims of different misunderstandings, and the errors of one
church must not be imposed on the other churches -- this would be just as
disastrous as imposing the meaning of 4QMMT, if we could agree on it, onto
the argument being made in any one of the NT documents. Because Paul writes
into the situation of individual churches, we must assume he knows the issues
they were struggling with and his argument was tailored to meet their needs.
What justification might mean in one letter must not be presumed to mean the
same in another, even though written by the apostle himself! This
response would be the same as I would make to Craig Evan's review of Contours.4
He also raises 4QMMT and adds that in 4Q521 we find
allusions to words and phrases from Isaiah, in connection with the appearance
of the Messiah. Evans argues that it is surely relevant to Jesus' reply to
the imprisoned John, where Jesus alludes to similar prophetic vocabulary. I
do not find any problem in this. It simply demonstrates overlap in the way
different Jewish groups interpreted scripture.
However, it would be quite wrong to conclude that there was strict
equivalence in their views of the Messiah and that of the NT writers. Indeed,
others have noted5 the danger of transferring DSS material into
the NT to understand theological details. Parallels do not necessarily
constitute sources and even more so when the nature of the 'parallel' is not
clearly understood. All that we have established is the widespread knowledge
and influence of the OT texts, and that is the very
point I have been seeking to make! However, how the different groups
interpreted the details of these texts is another matter. Just as I
have failed to convince you, I am afraid you have not convinced me. But what
I am anxious to make clear is that I am happy to embrace covenantal nomism for some texts, but not for others. I find no
difficulty in accepting that some Jews had this perspective, but I certainly
cannot accept that all Jews did. Sanders' conclusions have gone off the rails
because he failed to recognise the diversity of Intertestamental Judaism. Consequently, the arguments
that build on his conclusions are building on sand. Because of this, I cannot
agree with Wright that justification is about ecclesiology (although in some
Pauline texts it is!), and not about soteriology.
In excluding soteriology, Wright has misrepresented
the understanding of the reformers and has imposed one meaning on all texts.
Both are methodologically wrong. The issue
of methodology is very important. It has been my goal to keep to those texts
that the first-century believing community would have known, i.e. the
scriptures of And so, I
would claim from these two examples that the use of the Pseudepigrapha
has been hugely detrimental to gaining a clearer Biblical understanding. If
the method of exclusion has born such significant fruit, it would be wise not
to reject it too quickly in preference for a methodology of inclusion that to
my mind has fragmented and diminished understanding rather than adding to it.
I am encouraged by the range of scholars who have acknowledged that this
issue needs to be reflected on. So, any
suggestion that the reason I cannot cope with the development of Biblical
scholarship is a reflection of my conservative theological position, which
seems to be being suggested by Bird in RBL6,
does not understand either my development or myself.
As a young pastor, I had grabbed this method with both hands and used it for
many years before coming to realise its flaws. The last
mentioned reviewer says " I have to confess that the
argument that Bird has made is certainly, to my mind, weaker than the one he
has dismissed. He cites me correctly, saying that the gentile churches were
"presumably outside of access to most Pseudepigraphal writtings" which I
would have thought needs no defence, but he answers this by saying that three
works of the Pseudepigrapha were "probably
written in Bird then appeals to the apparent
citation of a part of 1 Enoch found in Jude as evidence that the Pseudepigrapha was
widely known. But this argument is far from persuasive. Why are these sorts
of quotations not found littering the NT text if they have had the influence
that they are supposed to have had on the thinking of the NT church? No one
is denying that some people in Furthermore, it is not until it
can be established that Jude is quoting Enoch, and not a commonly known oral
tradition that is attributed to Enoch, which inevitably a writer wanting to
pass a work off as the patriarch's would naturally include, can the weight
that he wants to give to the text of Jude be allowed. But even allowing it to
be a direct quote from 1 Enoch, it is a single document, written specifically
to Jews, possibly living in And finally, in response to Bird,
he claims that Jude cites from the Assumption of Moses. Bird is more
confident in the way he claims this than are the experts in the text. Charlesworth for example has provided an insightful
discussion and rejection of this proposal!7 I have also been criticised by
Craig Evans. He says: "Major complicated
questions of interpretation and criticism are treated too simply, with the
author frequently lapsing into the logical fallacy of excluded middle. For
example, NT interpreters err, H. says, in appealing to the Dead Sea Scrolls
and the Pseudepigrapha, because the theological
perspectives of these writings are not the same as the perspectives of the NT
authors." Evans goes on to say: "What he
identifies as a "growing dependence" is the ongoing effort to flesh
out and contextualize as much as possible the exegetical and theological
discussions of late antiquity, out of which the writings of the NT emerged. Often
it is this extracanonical literature that helps the interpreter understand
how a given OT passage quoted by a NT writer was understood. Failure to take
into account the parallels in the Scrolls, Pseudepigrapha,
and other writings from late antiquity may well result in faulty
interpretation and dubious theological inferences." I have to confess that the logic loses me!
Because I question the validity of using the Pseudepigrapha,
I am guilty of seriously faulty interpretation. But that is the case I am
making against using the Pseudepigrapha and I have
not been shown by Evans, other than by his deep commitment to this
literature, that there are grounds for relying on this corpus as a
hermeneutical key! The argument that I
have made has been ignored and the charge is made that I lapse into "the
logical fallacy of excluded middle". I am afraid that our thinking is in
different parts of the universe! I refuse to allow these documents to control
my reading of the NT text because I truly believe that they are the source of
a "logical fallacy of a polluted middle". If we apply the guiding principles that
Hays8 has given for establishing the presence of a previous text
in the argument of a text that we are considering, the possibility of Pseudepigraphal texts having any significant influence in
the NT is very low indeed. My position on the Pseudepigrapha
and the DSS is not in any way confessional, it is solely on scholarly grounds
that I refuse to give them the sort of control that many are allowing them to
have. If this is not understood then I am afraid that what I have written has
totally missed its mark.9 You have
done me a great kindness to say that Contours is groundbreaking. The
only reason I arrived at these conclusions was that I came to see that the
Greek world was being imported into essentially Hebraic texts. In fact, my
reservation about using the Greek texts and culture explains my concern about
using the Pseudepigrapha. Indeed, I think a more
reasonable case can be made for using these Greek texts than for the intertestamental texts because these writings, or at
least many of the practices they record, were widely known throughout the
Roman world and therefore their ideas were accessible to Paul's hearers and
readers. This was not so with the Pseudepigraphal texts. If I had stayed with the
methodology that Bird, Evans and yourself are so
committed to, I would never have made the 'groundbreaking' progress. Thank you
again for your interaction and all that you do in serving the wider community
interested in the theology of Paul. Your willingness to serve this community
is a very valuable contribution to the task of wrestling with the texts of
the Christian Scriptures. With my
very best wishes, Tom
Holland The
Evangelical Theological Notes 1I do accept Helyer's
argument that the ITL can show us trends that we can reflect on and see if
the same trends are reflected in NT understanding, but that is not the same
as relying on details of vocabulary as a key to exegesis, which Helyer practices, see Helyer,
R.L., "The Necessity, Problems, And Promise of Second Temple Judaism for
Discussions of New Testament Eschatology" JETS 47/4 (December 2004) 597-615. 2Hengel, M., Judaism and Hellenism,
2 vols. ET London, 1974. 3For a full discussion see Contours,
chapters 9 & 10. 4CBQ 68 2006 (3). 5Barrett, C.K., The Second
Epistle to the Corinthians, 6http://www.bookreviews.org/pdf/4443_4477.pdf#search=%22michael%20bird%20contours%20of%20pauline%22 7J.H.Charlesworth and J.C.Mueller, New
Testament Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha. A Guide to
Publications (ALTA Bibs 17; Metuchen, NJ: American Theological Library
and Scarcrow Press, 1987) p. 77. 8Hays, R. B., Echoes of Scripture in the
Letters of Paul, New Haven/London, 1989. See pages 29-32. 9I am encouraged by the warnings
given by Helyer "Problems" 609-614 who, though
he is very committed to the literature, cautions against their misuse by
using similar arguments to what I am presenting. |
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