Dan Olinger

"If the Bible is true, then none of our fears are legitimate, none of our frustrations are permanent, and none of our opposition is significant."

Dan Olinger

Chair, Division of Biblical Studies & Theology,

Bob Jones University

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Immanuel, Part 3: Marriage 

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Part 1: Creation | Part 2: Covenant 

After the wedding, as they say, comes the marriage. And we all know that in human marriages, there are ups and downs, times of bliss and rockier roads. 

God’s marriage to his people is half human; his people are sinful beings, and this marriage exhibits that kind of instability—due not to any instability in God, but rather to the deep brokenness of his wife, his people. 

The trouble begins before we even get out of Exodus. There are multiple instances of Israel’s unfaithfulness, most notoriously that of the golden calf, which the people worship even before Moses has returned from the mountaintop. Soon after, they refuse God’s wedding gift of the land of Canaan, fearing that their new husband is not powerful or faithful enough to defeat the land’s imposing inhabitants on their behalf. Forty years they wander in the wilderness, slow to learn of their husband’s goodness and strength. 

Eventually God returns them to their gift, and they take the land. But they refuse his command to destroy the inhabitants, setting up centuries of unfaithfulness in worshiping the various Canaanite gods. 

How stupid do you have to be to worship the gods of people you just defeated in battle? 

Once in the land, they stumble into a government of sorts, entrusting their fates to judges who they believe will protect them from the enemies that surround them. They have not learned, apparently, from God’s defeating of the Canaanites. But the judges, while sometimes temporarily successful, are generally disappointing—Samson the most—and by the end of the judges era their land is chaotic and dysfunctional. 

And so they look for a king. 

Now, God has always wanted them to have a king; Jacob had prophesied on his deathbed that “the scepter shall not depart from Judah … until the one to whom it belongs2 comes” (Ge 49.10). But the Israelites, once again, are focused on the strength of their enemies rather than the strength of their God, and they go for the tall guy. (Don’t get me started.) He has no heart for God and little to no personal character, and after a full 40-year career God rejects him—and his line, as represented in David’s friend Jonathan. 

This should not be a surprise; Saul, the people’s choice, is from the tribe of Benjamin, and Jacob’s prophecy has identified the royal tribe as Judah. 

So God chooses Judah’s David, a man after his own heart. And at the anointing of the young shepherd boy by Samuel, we’re told that “the Spirit of God came upon David from that day forward” (1S 16.13). There are a dozen or so people of whom the Old Testament says that the Spirit “came upon” them—warriors and prophets, mostly—but it is said of no one else that the Spirit came upon them “from that day forward.” I suspect that David was the only person before Jesus to experience the permanent indwelling of the Spirit. 

God dwelt with him. 

The rest of the Old Testament is largely a story of frustration. David and Solomon both fall into great sin; the kingdom is divided. Then every single king of Israel is evil, while most of the kings of Judah are evil as well. The prophets present countless examples of the Israelites’ unfaithfulness to God, their husband. Israel goes into exile in Assyria; Judah in Babylon. 

In Jerusalem as Nebuchadnezzar’s army approaches, Jeremiah writes God’s message: 

And I saw, when for all the causes whereby backsliding Israel committed adultery I had put her away, and given her a bill of divorce; yet her treacherous sister Judah feared not, but went and played the harlot also (Jer 3.8). 

Living in the exile community in Babylon, Ezekiel describes a vision in which the glory of God—the pillar of cloud and fire—departs from the Temple (Ezk 10.18). 

Divorce. Departure. 

But, my friends, the divorce is not final. 

God’s final prophetic word to his ex-wife is “Curse” (Mal 4.6). 

But there is a page yet to turn. 

2 The KJV famously renders this as “Shiloh.” That’s the underlying Hebrew word, and it may be a proper name. But if it is, the Bible gives us no further information about the person, and it never refers to Jesus with that name. Several other translations parse the Hebrew word as a contraction of sorts, consisting of “sh,” a possible contraction of asher, meaning “which,” and “l,” a preposition meaning “to,” and “h,” which as an ending in Hebrew often means “him.” Thus “which to him,” or “which is his.”

Part 4: Turning the Page | Part 5: Forever

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Immanuel, Part 2: Covenant 

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Part 1: Creation 

God begins our story by emphasizing that he wants to fellowship intimately with us. The book of Genesis contains many indications of that idea not mentioned in the previous post—his fellowship with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob most notably, a story punctuated with the building of altars and the offering of sacrifices that speak of such fellowship, and indeed of love. 

As we move into Exodus, the theme continues. 

God has promised Abraham that he will give his descendants a certain land—the land God has directed him to, and on which Abraham has already walked—the land of Canaan. As Exodus opens, Jacob (Israel) and his handful of descendants have left the land of promise—because they were in danger of starving in the famine—and have relocated to Egypt, at the clear providential direction of God through Jacob’s son Joseph. And under Joseph’s protection, they flourish there. 

But dark times come. A new Pharoah arises, who knows nothing of the centuries-old stories of Joseph, the savior of Egypt, and who sees Jacob’s descendants as simply a supply of free manual labor. 

So the Israelites become slaves—toiling under merciless taskmasters, and for free. 

But God sees, and he hears their cries, and he raises up Moses, providentially raised in Pharaoh’s very courts, to take a message to Pharaoh: 

Let my people go. 

Did you hear that? 

My people. Mine. 

Family. Intimacy. Love. 

And through a series of plagues, which are clearly direct attacks on and defeats of Egypt’s many gods, the LORD brings his beloved people out of Egypt, through the Red Sea to Sinai, where he meets with their leaders—face to face with Moses—and enters into a covenant with them. That covenant is rich and multifaceted; he is their Lord, their King. But he is also their Husband. 

He marries them. 

And during an extended period with Moses on the mountain, he gives extensive instructions for a Tabernacle, a tent where he will dwell among them. When Moses returns down the mountain, his face shines with the intensity of his fellowship with God. 

And with the energetic cooperation of the people, skilled and gifted craftsmen build the tent to the exact specifications God has given. They call it “the Tent of Meeting,” because in that simple edifice both Moses and the high priest can meet with God. The Tabernacle is set up in the very middle of the camp. 

And as the crowning element of this marriage ceremony, the visible light of God’s presence, the pillar of cloud and fire1, descends and hovers over the tent, directly over the Holiest Place, the section of the tent where the Ark of the Covenant is placed. 

This Ark is a gold-plated box containing the Ten Commandments—the marriage license, if you will—and Aaron’s rod, the symbol of priestly authority. Its solid-gold lid, the Covering or Mercy Seat, features images of two cherubim facing each other, and God says that he dwells there on the Mercy Seat, between the cherubim. It is there that the high priest, once a year on the Day of Atonement, sprinkles the sacrificial blood that will cover the sins of the people for another year. 

God dwells among them. 

He has married them, and now they move in together and set up house. 

Next time: the theme continues. 

1 In my loosely held opinion, there were not two pillars, one of “cloud” during the day and another of “fire” during the night, with daily transitions from one to the other. Rather there was a single bright white pillar, which looked like a bright cloud during daylight hours and then, with darkness, appeared more luminescent, like fire. The cloud is referred to as a “pillar [singular] of cloud and of fire” in Ex 14.24. This seems consistent with Solomon’s statement that the Lord “would dwell in thick darkness” (1K 8.12 // 2Ch 6.1; cf. Ex 20.21; Dt 4.11; 5.22). 

Part 3: Marriage | Part 4: Turning the Page | Part 5: Forever

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Immanuel, Part 1: Creation

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One of the key pursuits in Biblical Studies is discerning the central theme of the Bible. In Biblical Theology, which is essentially the study of the Bible as literature, this question is the end of the entire discipline, the goal toward which all the other work is pointing. In German scholarship it’s called the Mitte, or center. 

Over the years several candidates have been suggested. A popular one is “kingdom”: Thurman Wisdom and Thomas Schreiner have both recently favored this idea in one form or another. Another popular suggestion is “covenant,” suggested influentially a century ago by Walther Eichrodt. And recently Peter Gentry and Stephen Wellum have combined the two ideas. 

For a time I toyed with the idea of “Messiah” as the central theme. I noted that the Hebrew Canon has three parts—the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings—each of which introduces us to offices (priest, prophet, and king, respectively) that were filled by disappointing people, all anticipating the perfect Prophet, Priest, and King who would lead without disappointment. He was, of course, the Messiah, the Anointed One—and all of these offices typically involved anointing. 

I think that’s a defensible suggestion for a central, governing theme; it seems comprehensive, with good explanatory power for all the biblical contents. 

But lately I’ve been meditating on another possibility, a theme that has been observed and commented on by a number of other students of the Word. 

It’s the idea of God dwelling with, among, his people. 

I’d like to spend a few posts tracing that idea through the Scripture. 

__________ 

We begin, of course, in Genesis, in the primeval history. The first thing we learn is that God is the author of creation; he made all things (Ge 1.1). Later in that first chapter we see him creating the first humans and distinguishing them from the other living creatures: they are in the image of God (Ge 1.26-27). In fact, rather than just speaking them into existence, as he had other living things (Ge 1.11-12, 20-21, 24-25), he intervenes personally, seemingly physically, to form Adam from the dust of the ground (Ge 2.7) and then to form Eve from one of Adam’s ribs (Ge 2.21-22). This seems much more intimate, much more personal, than the way he created the animals. Along the way we hear God give Adam and Eve dominion over all the earth (Ge 1.28), intending them to use plant life for their sustenance. 

Now, I need to deal with a misconception. I suppose this misconception was most artfully rendered in James Weldon Johnson’s God’s Trombones: 

 And God stepped out on space, 
 And he looked around and said: 
 I’m lonely — 
 I’ll make me a world. 

Johnson’s work is worthwhile reading by every American for its cultural and historical significance, its lyricism, its artistry. It is a remarkable piece of literature. 

But God was not lonely. 

God is, and always has been, completely satisfied in himself. There is no lack, no need, no shortcoming in him. 

And thus he did not need to make us. 

And yet, he wanted to. 

Why? If he didn’t need us, why did he make us at all? 

We get a tiny, possible hint shortly later in the narrative. Adam and Eve have sinned (Ge 3.6) and then tried to cover their newfound shame (Ge 3.7), and 

they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day (Ge 3.8). 

Now, we’re not told that this had been a daily practice. Perhaps God, knowing that his creatures have sinned, is coming to announce their judgment (Ge 3.16-19)—and their eventual glorious deliverance (Ge 3.15). 

But this does speak of God desiring to be in company with Adam and Eve—perhaps even to walk with them in the beauty of the Garden, to point out its delights, to savor the wonder and joy in their faces as they realize what he has given them. 

Of course, sin has changed all that. 

But even so the fellowship continues. Just two scant chapters later, we find Enoch “walk[ing] with God” (Ge 5.22), and in the next chapter, Noah doing the same thing (Ge 6.9). 

God wants to fellowship with his people, to interact with them in loving and friendly and intimate ways. 

From the beginning it has always been so. 

And as the story continues, the evidence will continue to accumulate. 

Next time, from a family to a nation.

Part 2: Covenant | Part 3: Marriage | Part 4: Turning the Page | Part 5: Forever

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How God Speaks, Part 3

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Part 1 | Part 2

In Part 1 we noted that in biblical times God spoke a lot—as Hebrews 1.1 puts it, in different times, in different ways, to different people. But the same passage also says that with the incarnation there’s come a change; now things are different, and radically different. Part 2 lays out my reasons for saying that.

Some people find that sad. How great would it be to hear Isaiah preach, or David sing, or Moses thunder! And how much greater would it be to hear the Son himself teach, and see him heal, and watch him work! And wouldn’t it be great if God spoke to us, directly, in our heads? Isn’t it sad that we can’t do any of these things today? Don’t we feel a little bit … well, deprived?

No, we’re not deprived, regardless of how we feel. How do I know that? Because it isn’t in God’s character to deprive his people. He sometimes chastens us (Heb 12.6), but he doesn’t hold back from us anything we need (Php 4.19), or anything good (Ps 84.11). Jesus told his disciples that it was better for them that he go away (Jn 16.7). The same book that tells us about this change in the way God speaks also has as its primary point the great superiority of the New Way over the Old.

We may not feel like it’s better not to have prophets among us, but it is.

What’s better about it?

Let’s begin by making the obvious point. God still speaks to us today, but he does so in very specific ways. He speaks through his created works (Ps 19.1; Rom 1.20), but that medium is tainted by sin (Rom 8.22) and therefore unreliable as revelation. He spoke fully and perfectly by revealing himself in the person of his Son, as Hebrews 1.2 says. And as the Son told his disciples, after he left them he would send the Spirit, who would do certain things in and through them—most specifically, he would “bring all things to [their] remembrance” (Jn 14.26) and “guide [them] into all truth” (Jn 16.13). When did he do that? When they wrote the New Testament, completing the Scriptures.

So how does he speak authoritatively today? In the written Word, which is the Spirit-given record of the living Word, the incarnation, “the express image of [God’s] person” (Heb 1.3), “the image of the invisible God” (Col 1.15), the one “in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Col 2.9). And that’s much better than the old way.

How?

Let me suggest three ways; I’m confident there are more.

  1. The Word is objective. It’s written down, for all the world to see. The words are on the page; there’s a permanent record. It’s not a fleeting impression in your mind. There’s no question of whether it’s from God or just the product of your own imagination. It’s there.
  • The Word is firsthand. The Spirit of God directly guided the biblical authors so that they wrote what he intended (2P 1.21), down to the letter (Mt 5.18). We don’t have to depend on somebody else’s account of a dream he had once.
  • The Word can’t be faked. About that guy and his dream—how do you know if God really told him that? How do you know he’s not a crook? These days we have a pretty lousy record of discerning the spirits of preachers. Elmer Gantry is not entirely fiction, is he? We’re really good at being duped, because our flesh wants us to be. Jesus calls us sheep for a reason, no?

Back in the late 1970s I went to a healing service in Greenville featuring Ernest Angley. I decided to see what would happen if I asked to be healed. I got there about 10 minutes before show time and headed for the front row on the left side, from where I knew he called up the people he was going to heal. About 10 rows from the front an usher stopped me and asked if he could help. I told him I wanted to be healed. He told me that if God told Brother Angley to heal me, he’d call me out of the crowd regardless of where I was sitting. And he told me to go sit further back.

Which I did, about the middle of the house. And over the next 10 minutes I saw people trickle out, one by one, from behind the curtain and take their seats in the front row on the left. Those were the people he healed.

I don’t really need to tell you what was going on there, do I?

The written Word, my friends. The New Covenant. It’s better. It’s all we need.

Hear it.

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How God Speaks, Part 2

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Part 1

A slight change of plans.

In Part 1 of this series, I said that in Part 2 I’d write about how God speaks today, and how the current way is better than the old way. But in the meantime I’ve gotten some really good questions from a friend, and I’d like to insert a longer-than-usual post here to respond to them.

My friend had three questions—

  • “Is it possible that the contrast [described in Heb 1.1-2] is not exclusive, but the change is that God didn’t speak through his son in the past (though some would posit he did through Christophanies), and now he has?”
  • Or could “the focus of the change could have been on salvation–previously presented by prophets and the law, later presented by the incarnation and work of Jesus”?
  •  “Also, what about the many passages predicting prophecy, dreams, and visions as an outpouring of the Holy Spirit? I’m curious how you account for God speaking in those? (Acts 2:33, 10:45; Rom. 5:5)”

Good questions, all.

I’ll observe that this takes us to a full-scale discussion of the disagreement between continuationists and cessationists, which I can’t possibly address sufficiently in a blog post or two. But I hope to lay down the seeds of my thought process enough that they can sprout in your mind if you’d like to seek a harvest in the topic.

So, to be brief, I find the options in the first and second questions above insufficient with regard to all the major disciplines of theology—

  • Exegetical Theology
    • I note that all the major English versions follow the KJV in rendering the main verb here as a perfect tense, “God has spoken,” implying completed action in the past. I also note, however, that the Greek tense is not perfect, but aorist—and the Greek bodies among us know that the aorist usually has little to no temporal significance in Koine; it’s the default tense, the tense you use when you’re not emphasizing tense. Yet all the major English versions render it as perfect. Why is that? I suspect that like me they see the strongly constrastive structure of the passage and conclude that the contrast is between speaking partially through mediators and speaking completely and directly in the divine Son.
    • I also note that larger context (the book of Hebrews) is all about the qualitative difference between the Old Covenant and the New—because Jesus is superior as to his person (Heb 1-4) and his work (Heb 5-10). This is all-encompassing and should not be restricted to just a part of God’s plan or providential activity.
  • Biblical Theology
    • The Bible tells many stories, but through them it is telling just one Big Story, or metanarrative—and that story is about Christ as the perfect and complete revelation of the Father. I’ve written on that before, how the Old Testament purposely creates in us a longing for the very offices that Christ perfectly fills—one of which is Prophet.
    • Hebrews 1.1-2 is the climax of that larger story—Christ, in permanently uniting the divine nature and the human nature in a single person, unites his people with God. So John tells us that the Son is the “Word” (logos) (Jn 1.1) who perfectly “exegetes” the Father (Jn 1.18). We should not seek to minimize this climax by making it anything less than the center of the story.
  • Systematic Theology:
    • I’ve gotten a little ahead of myself in the previous paragraphs, noting the “person” and “natures” and “work” of the divine Son. Those terms more properly belong to systematic theology.
    • And what does Christology tell us? That Christ is perfect and complete in every way, and that he thereby perfectly reveals the Father. I ask, what part of God’s revelation of himself in Christ may we find insufficient? What remains to be said? I’m not trying to sound like the fabled head of the US Patent Office who allegedly suggested in 1889 that the office should be shut down because everything had already been invented. We’re not talking about human inventors here; we’re talking about the Son, one of whose offices is to reveal the Father perfectly. I’d suggest that there are Christological implications of continuationism, at least in the form promoted by most Pentecostals and Charismatics.
  • Historical Theology
    • I think it’s noteworthy that until the 20th century, every orthodox church leader that I’m aware of agreed that the Canon was closed because special revelation had ceased. The gift of prophecy, and the concomitant gifts of tongues and interpretation of tongues, disappeared from the practice of the church except in a few cases, which were unanimously accompanied by doctrinal deviancies (Montanism, Paulicianism) that rendered those particular practices suspect even to modern continuationists.
  • Practical Theology
    • It’s no secret that the last few decades have seen continuationism move from Pentecostal and Charismatic groups to what we might call mainstream conservative evangelicalism. But that change has come with its own set of inconsistencies. Both John Piper and Wayne Grudem, for example, have had to argue that the very nature of prophecy has changed since biblical times and that modern “prophets” can be mistaken. I would argue that what Grudem has done is to find a modern phenomenon that isn’t prophecy, redefine prophecy so as to call the modern phenomenon prophecy, and then claim that the gift of prophecy therefore continues.

Which brings me to my friend’s third question.

What about Joel’s prediction, cited by Peter at Pentecost, that “in the last days” God would “pour out” his Spirit, and there would be a renewed outbreak of prophesying? I suspect that this passage has played a significant part in the continuationist thinking of Piper, Grudem, and their fellow travelers.

  • As I’ve noted before, I understand Scripture to say that God does not intend our interpretations of prophetic material to be reliable until the prophecy has been fulfilled, so I don’t think anybody—cessationist or continuationist—can be dogmatic on this point.
  • Some interpreters (e.g. E. J. Young) think that Joel’s entire prophecy was fulfilled at Pentecost, and others would say it was fulfilled at or before the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. I don’t find those approaches convincing, especially in light of Joel 2.30-31 // Ac 2.19-21.
  • So I hold out the possibility that in the runup to the Second Coming, there will be a new outpouring of the prophetic gift.
  • But as a pretribulationist, I also (tentatively) understand the Bible to teach that the church will have been removed by the time those gifts appear. Maybe I’m wrong about that.

In the meantime, we all should agree that the Scripture is the overriding authority, and that all of our mental impressions must be subordinated to it. We all should further agree that the Scripture we have is sufficient to direct and inform our relationship with God and our service for him in the days he’s given us. And if that is the case, then the expression “the Lord told me” should mean precisely nothing to the hearer.

Tip o’ the hat to my friend, whose insightful questions prompted all this.

Next time, we’ll consider some ramifications.

Part 3

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How God Speaks, Part 1

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We’ve all heard people say that God “told them” something.

Most of the time, they’re wrong.

I’m not saying that God can’t interact with our thought processes or, as some folks say, “lay [something] on my heart.” The Spirit who indwells us interacts with us all the time, convicting, teaching, directing, influencing our thinking and our actions.

But that’s very different from saying that God speaks to you, in your head.

I’d like to spend a post or two examining why I hit the off switch when someone tells me that God spoke to him.

As always, to evaluate this claim we have to go to the Scripture—which is replete with cases of God speaking to people.

God speaks all the time—

  • He speaks throughout the biblical timeline, from the very First Day—“Let there be light!” (Gen 1.3) to the very end of the very last biblical book to be written, 60 or more years after the death of Christ—“Surely I am coming soon!” (Rev 22.20).
  • He speaks on all sorts of occasions—
    • Both formal (in his throne room, Is 6.8) and informal (while Gideon was threshing wheat, Judg 6.14)
    • Both happy (the baptism of Jesus, Mt 3.17) and unhappy (Elijah in the wilderness, 1K 19.9)
    • Both to encourage (to Paul in prison, Ac 18.10) and to condemn (to the king of Babylon, Isa 14.4-23)
  • He speaks in all different sorts of ways—
    • In one-on-one conversations
      • With Adam (Gen 2.16-17)
      • With Noah (Gen 6.13ff)
      • With Abram, in the door of his tent (Gen 18.20ff)
    • To people who are sleeping, in their dreams
      • To Jacob, of the staircase (Gen 28.12ff)
      • To Joseph, of his brothers bowing down to him (Gen 37.5ff)
      • To Pharaoh, of the coming famine (Gen 41.1ff)
      • To Nebuchadnezzar, of the coming kingdoms (Dan 2.1ff)
      • To Joseph the carpenter, of Mary’s pregnancy (Mt 1.20)
    • To people who are awake, in visions
      • To Abram, concerning his offspring (Gen 15.1)
      • To the boy Samuel, concerning the death of Eli (1S 3.1-15)
      • To Nathan the prophet, about David’s future son (2S 7.4-17)
      • To Ezekiel, about the judgment and restoration of Judah (Ezk 1.1)
      • To Paul, about heaven (2Co 12.1ff)
    • In an audible voice
      • A loud one, from Sinai, to the people of Israel (Ex 19.16-20)
      • A normal one, to Hagar, when she ran away from Sarai (Gen 16.11-13)
      • A quiet one, to Elijah, alone in the wilderness (1K 19.12)
    • Through representations of his presence
      • A burning bush (Ex 3.1ff)
      • A pillar of fire (Ex 13.21)
      • A glory cloud—which may have been the same as the pillar of fire (Ex 40.34)
      • Urim and Thummim—whatever they were (Ex 28.30)
      • A whirlwind (Job 38.1ff)
      • An asterism (Mt 2.2)
  • He speaks to all different sorts of people—
    • Prophets, throughout both Testaments
    • Wise men, such as Solomon, as in Proverbs
    • Rulers, such as Nebuchadnezzar, as noted above
    • Ordinary people
      • A little boy sleeping in the Tabernacle (1S 3.2ff)
      • A peasant woman in a nondescript village (Lk 1.26ff)
      • A shepherd on the west side of the desert (Ex 3.1ff)
    • And even a donkey! (Num 22.23ff)

So why am I suspicious of people who claim that he has spoken to them today?

Because the same Bible that tells us of all these past revelatory acts of God has also told us that things have changed:

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son (Heb 1.1-2).

The writer of Hebrews, whoever she was ( :-) ), first notes what I’ve delineated extensively above: that God has spoken in many times, in many ways, through many different people.

But, the author says, things are different now.

Now God has spoken through his Son.

This passage is structured as a contrast: God’s revelation used to happen a certain way, but it doesn’t happen that way anymore. Today, God has spoken in Christ.

In Part 2, we’ll talk about how we’re supposed to hear today what he has spoken, and I’m going to try to convince you that the new way is better than the old way—by a lot.

See you then.

Part 2 | Part 3

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On Reading Jonah, Part 4

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Last time we began our consideration of whether the Jonah story is fiction or non-fiction. We noted that the inspiration of Scripture doesn’t necessarily rule out the possibility that it’s fiction. And then we concluded, tentatively, that the evidence we’ve considered so far leans us toward non-fiction, but we have yet to consider a category of evidence that the story might be historical fiction, a fictional story made up about an actual historical character.

How do we know that historical fiction is, after, all, fiction?

Two possible ways: because the author tells us he’s fictionalized it, or because it contains things that we know didn’t happen.

The author of the book of Jonah gives us no hint that he’s fictionalizing.

Critics, then, note the unbelievable things in the story—as I listed them last time—as evidence that it’s fictionalized.

There’s no reliable record of anyone ever being swallowed by a whale, let alone surviving. (That James Bartley story is pretty suspect.)

How about the repentance of Nineveh? Well, in fact, that’s not much of a stretch. The passage doesn’t say that they became monotheistic, only that they were afraid of a foreigner’s tribal god and tried to appease him. That sort of thing happened all the time in the ancient world, where syncretistic religion was common. Douglas Stuart notes, “From Assyrian omen texts, we know of four circumstances that could move a people, and its king, to fasting and mourning: invasion by an enemy; a total solar eclipse; famine and a major outbreak of disease; and a major flood. We know that enemy nations, such as Urartu, had beaten the Assyrians in a number of military encounters in the time of Ashurdan III and that a major earthquake occurred in the reign of one of the kings with the name Ashurdan—but not for certain Ashurdan III. Moreover, on June 15, 763 bc in the tenth year of Ashurdan III, there was a total solar eclipse over Assyria” (New Bible Commentary on Jonah).

And what about the plant? Some plants do grow rapidly—we Southerners know all about kudzu—and in a very hot, dry wind (Jon 4.8), shriveling could happen in a hurry. Not outside the realm of possibility, but not common either.

But experienced Christians know what’s going on under the surface here.

The real issue isn’t the fish or the plant or the worm or the wind.

The real issue is that some people just reject the supernatural out of hand. Ax heads don’t float. You can’t feed 5000 people with 5 buns and 2 small fish. And people don’t rise from the dead.

And, in their mind, that’s that.

So Jonah never happened.

Well, I’ll grant you that I’ve never seen a miracle and that I’m pretty suspicious when other people claim that they have. It’s safe to say that they’re exceedingly rare.

In fact, even in biblical times, and even if you take the miracle claims at face value, they’re still pretty rare. With just 2 or 3 exceptions, all the recorded biblical miracles occurred in just 3 relatively brief periods of time:

  • The active careers of Moses and Joshua (80
    years)
  • The active careers of Elijah and Elisha (80
    years)
  • The earthly lifetime of Jesus and for a few
    years following (maybe 60 years)

That’s maybe 200 or 250 years out of 6000 years of earth’s history—assuming you’re a young-earth creationist, and a fan of Ussher’s dating at that. Right at 4.2% of history at the most, and if you hold to billions of years (I don’t), that 4.2% shrinks to practically zero.

But how “scientific” is it to say that they don’t happen at all? How “scientific” is a universal negative? How often have universal negatives been debunked?

I long ago decided that rationalism simply didn’t have a strong enough record to merit my faith. I see strong evidence that the Bible is not of ordinary human origin, and I’ve seen it vindicated any number of times, and so I freely confess that I’m inclined to believe it. So the events in Jonah aren’t an obstacle to me.

I think it happened.

Note: For a clear and concise discussion of the alleged fictional nature of Jonah, see Billy K. Smith and Frank S. Page, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, New American Commentary Series (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1995), pp. 209-19, “Genre and Purpose.”

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On Reading Jonah, Part 3

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The question that’s been asked about Jonah more than any other is a simple and straightforward one—

Did any of this ever happen, or not?

Is it fiction, or is it non-fiction?

Critics point out all kinds of allegedly laughable events in the story—

  • A man survived inside a fish for 72 hours (Jon
    1.17).
  • The entire city of Nineveh, under the urging of
    its king, repented of their notorious and culturally ingrained cruelty and
    worshipped the true God of Israel (Jon 3.5-9).
  • A plant grew large and shriveled up on 2
    consecutive days (Jon 4.6-8).

What nonsense, they say.

Well.

Let’s back waaaaay up and consider the question as carefully as we can in a blog post or two.

For starters, we should consider whether or not the question is important. Does it matter whether the story ever actually happened?

We know that the Bible contains fiction, from a fable recounted by an Israelite king (2K 14.9) to a story about a prodigal son told by Jesus himself (Lk 15.11-32). Supporters of historicity note that Jesus referred to the “fish story” (Mt 12.39-41), but we also know that literary allusion is a perfectly legitimate rhetorical device—so in theory Jesus could refer to the story of Jonah as a metaphor for his own death and resurrection without necessarily viewing it as a historical event. But I note that Jesus spoke of the men of Nineveh, who repented, condemning Jesus’ hearers because they (the men of Nineveh) had repented at the preaching of Jonah (Mt 12.41)—and that really wouldn’t make any sense if the Jonah event wasn’t actually historical.

We also know that there’s a genre we call “historical fiction,” in which stories are made up about real historical characters (e.g. Barabbas or Daniel) that are fictionalized. So the fact that Jonah is described elsewhere in the Bible as a historical figure (2K 14.25) doesn’t render it impossible in theory that the book of Jonah is a fictionalized account. As I’ve noted in my thoughts on the story of Job, sometimes you can’t answer this kind of question with absolute confidence.

But.

Having said that, I note that Jonah is independently verified in the biblical text as a historical character, and Jesus does use his experience with the fish as a figure of his own death and resurrection, and (for what it’s worth) the rabbinical traditions never seem to have entertained the idea that the story was fiction, so barring substantive evidence that it’s fiction, we ought to assume that it really happened.

What kind of evidence would that be? I think there are two kinds that we could consider.

The first is evidence that it conforms to some common fictional genre that was used at the time it might have been written—sometime between, say, around 789 BC, when Jereboam II began to reign (2K 14.25), and around 200 BC, when we know the book of Jonah was in the Septuagint. (That’s being very generous.)

Critics have suggested that it might be an allegory—but this document doesn’t seem to have the characteristics of an allegory. Whom do the various characters represent? Where are the multiple levels of meaning? Where is the object personification?

Another possibility is that it’s fable. But again, it doesn’t read like fable. For starters, it’s too long and complex. And the whale doesn’t talk, nor does the gourd or the worm.

Well, then, maybe it’s a parable. The moral lesson is there, all right. But it’s still too complicated, and the levels of meaning don’t seem to be there.

You know what it sounds like? It sounds like a narrative about an actual historical character. Our inclination to this point is to consider it non-fiction.

But I noted above that there are two kinds of evidence that a historical narrative is fictionalized. We need to consider the other type. We’ll get into that next time.

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On Reading Jonah, Part 2

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Part 1

Last time we looked at the recurring theme of “greatness” in this brief biblical book. This time I’d like to notice a couple more literary features. 

Have you noticed the parallel structure? 

  • In chapter 1, unbelieving Gentiles (the sailors), fearing the wrath of Jonah’s God, seek deliverance by responding to the prophet’s word—and throwing Jonah into the sea, with prayers that God would accept the obedience they offer. 
  • In chapter 2, Jonah prays to God, praising him for his deliverance. 
  • In chapter 3, unbelieving Gentiles (the Ninevites), fearing the wrath of Jonah’s God, seek deliverance by responding to the prophet’s word—and repenting of their sin, with hope that God would accept the obedience they offer. 
  • In chapter 4, Jonah prays to God, raging at him for his deliverance. 

Two episodes, in exact parallel. 

And here’s the odd thing—while the unbelieving Gentiles are moving in the right direction, the allegedly believing prophet is moving in the opposite direction—against what he already clearly knows. 

In chapter 1, Jonah seeks to “flee from the presence of the Lord” (Jon 1.3, 10) despite the fact that he knows that the Lord “made the sea and the dry land” (Jon 1.9), and despite the fact that he knows God can and will send a great storm in response to his disobedience. 

In chapter 4, Jonah knows that the Lord’s nature is to show mercy to those who repent (Jon 4.2), yet he hardens his heart against the Lord’s will. 

The irony is strong in this one. 

Something else to notice—in the previous post I referred to Jonah as “the character for whom the book is named.” That may have struck you as awkward. Why not call him “the hero,” or “the main character,” or, to use the more academic term, “the protagonist”? 

Simple. Because he is none of those things. He not the main character; as I noted last time, he’s a foil. There I said that he’s a foil for the other prophets; in many ways the book of Jonah is a study in contrasts with all the other prophetic writings. But here I’ll note that within the book itself, he’s a foil as well—a foil for the true main character. 

And who is that? 

It’s not the fish. 

And, perhaps contrary to our expectations, it’s not the king of Nineveh, as positive a character as he is. (And if you know anything about the Assyrians, you’re as surprised as I am that I just called an Assyrian king a “positive character.”) 

Who’s the main character? Who’s the protagonist? 

It’s God. 

He the one doing all the things— 

  • Calling the prophet and specifying his message 
  • Sending a great storm—and calming it when the sailors obey the words of the prophet 
  • Appointing a great fish—and graciously delivering the disobedient prophet, through regurgitation, when he prays 
  • Responding with grace to the repentance of a deeply evil people by reversing his earlier pronouncement of judgment—even taking pity on the Assyrian cattle (Jon 4.11). 

The book itself doesn’t note this, but we know from later history that this repentance was short-lived. It wasn’t long before the Assyrians were at it again, perpetrating cruelty and violence all across the region, crushing any who opposed them, extorting the wealth of their neighbors, being in general just the big bully of the known world. 

And a bit more than a century later, God sent another prophet—Nahum—with a similar message of doom for Nineveh, and this threat would certainly be carried out; by the end of the century—605 BC, to be precise—near a town called Carchemish on what is now the Turkish-Syrian border, the Babylonian armies crushed the Assyrians, who in their desperation had even sought help from the Egyptians. And just like that, Assyria was history. 

As I say, God knew all that, from the beginning of time. 

But when Nineveh repented, ever so briefly and ever so imperfectly, God forgave them. And spared them. 

That’s the kind of person he is. 

You know, you are of much more worth than an Assyrian cow. Even though you can’t repent worth a nickel, God will forgive you, too. 

That’s the kind of person he is. 

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On Reading Jonah, Part 1

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Every so often I’ve been posting my thoughts on reading various biblical books. There’s no formal plan; I just comment when I have something to say about a particular document. Along the way I’ve posted on Leviticus, Numbers, and Job—sometimes taking just one post, sometimes two. In this post and the next one, I’d like to notice some things about Jonah. (I note that so far these have all been Old Testament books. There’s no particular reason for that.)

Everybody knows the story of Jonah and the whale; we all learned about it in Sunday school. A lot of people note that the Bible doesn’t actually call it a whale—it calls it a “great fish” (“huge fish” NIV), and as we all know, whales aren’t fish.

Well, wait a minute. Of course it’s true that whales bear live young and breathe through a blowhole, while fish have scales (um, not instead of live young, but you know what I mean) and use gills to extract oxygen dissolved in water. Fair enough.

But the zoological taxonomic system, including its definitions of words like fish, was developed long after the Bible was written. (And accusing the Bible of “scientific error” for this is to apply an ex post facto law, which is specifically forbidden in the US Constitution, Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 3. So there.)

The Old Testament cultures called marine creatures “fish,” just as they called flying creatures “birds,” even if a specific flying creature (e.g. the bat [Lev 11.19]) was later to be classified with mammals, for very mammalian reasons.

So maybe it was a whale. Or maybe it was a really big fish of some kind—maybe even a special fish created just for the occasion. The point is that it was there at that moment, and that God had directed it to be. A “great fish.”

Speaking of which, have you ever noticed how often the word great is used in this short book?

  • Jonah is sent to “Nineveh, that great city” (Jon 1.2; 3.2, 3; 4.11).
  • God sends “a great wind” (Jon 1.4) and “a great storm” (Jon 1.4, 12) before he sends “a great fish” (Jon 1.17).
  • The sailors “feared greatly” (Jon 1.10, 16).
  • The people of Nineveh repented, “from the greatest to the least” (Jon 3.5), and the repentance proclamation was issued “by the king and his great ones” (Jon 3.7).
  • When they repented, Jonah was “greatly displeased” (Jon 4.1)—but when the Lord sent a plant to bring him shade, he was “greatly happy” (Jon 4.6).

This is a book of extremes. God does extreme things to see that his will is accomplished, and the characters respond extremely to what they see going on around them. God’s actions greatly humble a great city and its great people.

But the character for whom the book is named is the most extreme of all—oddly extreme. He goes to great lengths to disobey the great One whose message he is appointed to deliver. He delivers it with no compassion for his hearers—compassion that is clearly the motive of the One who sent him (Jon 4.11). Jonah’s actions and reactions are extreme, like those of the other characters, but they are ironically extreme—the opposite of what we expect.

Other prophets take on difficult assignments and deliver their messages in the spirit in which God sent them—and often no one listens to them (Isa 6.8-13; Jer 13.10-11; Ezk 2.3-7). Jonah delivers the message only when he is forced to—and the people repent en masse. And then, to our astonishment, Jonah is angry at their repentance, revealing himself to be an unreconstructed bigot.

Jonah is a foil for all the rest of the prophetic writings. He is the unprophet.

Have you ever heard it said that God can’t use a dirty vessel? Oh, yes he can. And with such a small and weak messenger, he can bring a great city, filled with great men, to great repentance, and he can show them great mercy.

He’s that great.

Part 2

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