Greetings!
Peace, mercy, and grace be with you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Sunday, June 30, 2024
The Voice 14.26: Tobit
Tobit is one of those books which get me really mad at the medieval Roman Catholic magisterium.
Not that there aren’t generally good reasons for feeling that way, of course; but specifically their decision to reckon the Apocrypha as inspired.
Since they - on their own, contrary to rabbinic tradition, contrary to all previous patristic and early medieval tradition, contrary to Eastern Orthodoxy, and, quite frankly, contrary to what the books themselves actually suggest and say - decided to declare them inspired, conversations about them become all about inspiration. Not about what they might have meant in Second Temple Judaism, not about the fun believers today can have in reading them for personal encouragement or profit.
So we have to spend time pointing out many of the ridiculous details in Tobit to demonstrate how the book is quite uninspired. The protagonists are probably fictional.
But, again, it’s a fun little romance. You get Raphael the angel and Asmodeus the demon. You get redemption of the unfortunate Sarah. You get to see where the names Tobias and Edna come from.
It’s too bad so many aspersions have to be cast against books like Tobit, because they should be fun and a great edifying experience. It gets kinda lost when more is made of the book than anyone ever intended from it.
Another week’s image, another Assyrian relief. Why? Because the walls of Assyrian complexes and Assyrian objects could be transported from modern-day Iraq to the British Museum in London.
But this image does not come from a wall, and it has a lot of significance for those interested in the Hebrew Bible. This is part of the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, king of Assyria from 859-824 BCE. He’s the one standing. The one prostrate is identified as Jehu king of Israel (2 Kings 9:1-10:36). It is the only extant representation of any king of Israel or Judah.
Shalmaneser went campaigning in the Levant in 841, specifically against Hazael king of Aram, as attested on the obelisk. The Bible’s text did not talk about this event, but how Shalmaneser treated the lands of Aram would have given Jehu ample reason to pay a tribute to keep the peace.
On the Internets
Little money, few benefits: Retiring ministers struggle
Sometimes The Christian Chronicle decides to get real, and did they ever when discussing the prospect of retirement for evangelists/ministers/preachers in churches of Christ.
There are many important aspects to the de-institutionalized nature of our association, but preachers are at a major disadvantage in not having much access to many retirement vehicles outside of Social Security.
Throughout my life in ministry I’ve generally received perhaps 90% of what I actually need to survive, which makes saving for retirement all the more challenging. I do have a Roth IRA, and enough money in it to retire for maybe a month and a half. Two months at the most.
It is encouraging to see churches begin to treat their evangelists/ministers/preachers at least slightly better than before, but I am not sure how many churches are willing to fully provide for and support preachers the way corporations often are compelled to by the federal government and market standards. It requires a lot more than just what will cover the preacher’s housing, food, and basic necessities.
Who Are You Calling Palutian? On Writing Christian History
An interesting little exercise in remembering how the “winners” write the history. Otherwise we’d be known as the little sect of the Palutians.
Book Reviews
If you don’t know from where you have come, it’s hard to know who you are or where you might go. Such is the central conceit of the study of history; such is also the reason we do well to understand our forebears in the faith.
To this end, The Life of Elder “Raccoon” John Smith: With Some Account of the Rise and Progress of the Current Reformation by John Augustus Williams (affiliate link) proves illuminating and helpful for understanding many aspects of the Restoration Movement.
The book is certainly as advertised: the author delved into incredible detail regarding the life and work of John Smith.
Smith was born in what was the “wild west” of the late eighteenth century in western Virginia and would spend most of his life in eastern Kentucky. The author fully elaborated on the circumstances of his birth and the development of his faith among the (Calvinistic) Baptists. He yearned for formal education but received little, and yet proved a good student of the Bible and an incomparable speaker. He well developed as a preacher in advancing the Calvinistic ideology of the Baptists.
Yet not everything about the Calvinism of the Baptists sat right with John Smith, and his personal studies and qualms would converge with the advancement of “the reformation” (as the Restoration Movement was originally known) in Baptist circles in the 1820s.
At first Smith did not think much of Alexander Campbell but grew to appreciate him and his efforts. Yet whereas Campbell had been raised in a Presbyterian environment, as had his father as well as Barton W. Stone, and had significantly shifted in terms of church affiliation and association, John Smith had been a Baptist and still considered himself as among Baptists, continued to work with and preach for many of the same Baptist churches where he had previously advocated for a more Calvinistic understanding of things, and thus represented quite a compelling and controversial figure.
The author described in depth many of the heartbreaks, disasters, challenges, and forms of resistance which John Smith experienced throughout his ministry in the early nineteenth century. Yet it is striking how he managed it all with equanimity. The story of John Smith embodies the fullness of the restoration spirit: seeking to return to the Bible as guide to faith and practice, seeking to be Christians only, but never presuming to be the only Christians, approaching the faith with a gentle and kind spirit of association and not sectarianism. The author described how Smith would go to great lengths to never cause division; the underhanded tactics of his opponents were fully displayed, yet even though he strongly disagreed with their Calvinistic ideology, John Smith still loved those Calvinistic Baptists and did not himself demand their disassociation.
The full description of the beliefs and points of contention in the early 19th century prove instructive for us today. It can help explain why there has been so much emphasis on the resistance to Calvinism, and also how and why it proved easy to see Calvinism everywhere and in everything. Yet, ironically, the passage of time has also demonstrated how many Baptists and Evangelicals today would have been denounced for “Campbellism” by their 19th century forebears, especially in terms of the the demand for testimony as attesting to conversion versus accepting a believer’s confession of faith.
Throughout his life, John Smith remained a man of strong personal conviction with a sharp ability to proclaim the Gospel, yet retained a compassionate and kindly disposition toward others. Yes, many of the tendencies of the Restoration Movement can seem contradictory, but they can be held together in tension. John Smith reflected it well.
Think about the stories of the Greeks and Romans. Sure, women might be in the story in various places; they might even motivate some of the action in them. But overall the women are not doing much of the acting. They might be indispensable, but they certainly can be marginalized.
Sarah Pomeroy led the way in Classics with the first real history of women in the Classical world with her 1975 Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity (affiliate link). In this edition the author provides an updated preface but otherwise the work remains substantially the same.
Pomeroy began with the theology of the Classical world and how the Greeks and Romans imagined their gods and goddesses. She then considered what can be known of Greek women in the Bronze Age and in Homeric epic (~2500-1000 BCE), the “dark age” and archaic period (1000-500 BCE), women in Athens, public and private from 500-300 BCE, how women were portrayed in the literature of Athens at that time, women in the Hellenistic world (332-30 BCE), Roman matrons of the period around 150 BCE-100 CE, women of the lower classes of Rome, and finally how women functioned within Roman religion.
The story overall is one of marginalization, especially in classical Athens. While it cannot be doubted that the story presented in the Old and New Testaments has its points of misogyny, it becomes painfully apparent in this reading how much of the heritage of modern Western misogyny in fact stems from the classical Greek authors. Their view of women and their capacities was quite dismal. Women would obtain slightly more freedom in previous times and in the Hellenstic age, and Roman women would be able to enjoy slightly more freedom, but nothing approaching anything we would imagine as true freedom or equality in worth or value. As is noted in the text and more thoroughly in the epilogue, it would seem Greek and Roman culture had more men than women in it, which would be a function of choice in terms of which children were raised and/or favored. We can find modern parallels in certain cultures which to this day prioritize boys over girls and that gets manifest in population numbers.
For freeborn women in the Classical world, if they survived long enough, the vast majority would become wives. Some would be whores. A precious few would have significant roles in religious matters. A very large number would be slaves and treated as such. They would all have goddesses to honor, yet even they would generally be seen as less active or propitious than the male gods.
This book remains the standard of the field for good reason. It holds up very well despite being almost fifty years old - which for the field would otherwise be rather dated. Since many of the architects of our society were enamored with the Classical authors, and many to this day draw their inspiration from them, it is good to be aware of Classical perspectives on women and to be willing to call out its misogyny. Just because ancient Greeks believed something does not make it good or right, and we should never be so entranced with them as to disregard and degrade women today because of them.
May the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirits.
Ethan