Literature and History

After two years at the Silo, and after coming to believe that I was called to a teaching a ministry within the church, I decided to pursue further study. First I tried something unconventional — I enrolled for an old-school course called the Licentiate in Theology under the tutelage of David Boan. After trying this for a semester, I switched to a Master of Divinity (I know, it sounds like I was training to be a wizard 😛) through what was then called Vose Seminary. I enrolled at Vose in the second half of 2014, and completed my final research project at the end of 2017. During this time I learned a lot about the Bible, theology and church history. I can say with great certainty that how I engage with scripture was definitely shaped during this time.

Structural Markers

Looking back now, there are a few touchstones which immediately come to mind, and as I’ve reflected on these touchstones I’ve realised there are some other points of influence which I had forgotten. I’m going to start with the bits that I forgot and move onto the ‘touchstones’ afterwards.

While the first thing I thought of about learning Greek was the experience of reading in community, as I reflected on my later learning I remembered that one thing David went out of his way to teach us was what I’m going to call ‘structural markers’ in Greek. He did this using Steven Runge’s Discourse Grammar of the Greek New Testament. Basically, he taught us about the function of different words like ‘for’ and ‘in order that’ etc. and how they frame different parts of the text. It was during this time that I also learned about chiasms for the first time, and possibly also inclusio.

As I went on to study for the Licentiate with David, he got me to map out the structure of each biblical book that I was studying by first breaking it into very small sections (micro), and then trying to see how the smaller parts fit together into broader sections (macro). It was when doing this for the first time that I noticed how Genesis was structured around the Hebrew word toledoth. (I felt very pleased with myself when I was looking through my friend’s textbook and discovered that the pattern which I had found was widely accepted by biblical scholars 🙂)

Two touchstones

Now the touchstones. Two took place during the second semester of 2015 when I got to do my first exegetical units at Vose. The first touchstone was my introduction to the thought of Paul Borgman. In my unit on Genesis I had to do a book review of his book Genesis: The Story We Haven’t Heard. Borgman is a professor of literature and he treated Genesis as literature. He argued that we need to give heed to Genesis as a whole, particularly with reference to repetition and patterns. He drew attention to ancient literary techniques like word plays, doubled episodes, parallelism, and chiasms. This was in opposition to taking a ‘bits and pieces’ approach — e.g. just focusing on one story at a time. I was quite taken by Borgman’s approach. In retrospect, not only has it shaped aspects of how I read Genesis, but also how I approach most any book of the Bible.

On reflection, I was setup to be sympathetic to Borgman’s approach by David Boan having taught me to pay attention to structural markers and to the broader structure of each book.

Another source who has proven quite influential for me — although perhaps in a narrower way — is John Walton. Walton is well versed in Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) literature, and I found his treatment of the creation narratives in Genesis to be quite convincing. I now have his Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament as a permanent fixture in my relatively small personal library.

Looking back at how I have engaged with scripture since then and up ‘til now, I’d have to say that I’ve been more influenced by the literary approach to scripture than by my understanding of its historical context (although obviously a historical lens informs our understanding of the literary techniques of the time). If I’m honest, this could partly be because it’s easier to treat the text itself than it is to research the different cultural contexts that might inform my reading of the text. The timespan in which the books of the Bible were written is so vast, and the cultures surrounding the biblical narratives can be quite diverse! I do go hunting for primary sources from time to time, and I’m sometimes curious about how different Greek words were used in extra-biblical contexts, but I only tend to do these things if I have a specific question. I can’t envision setting aside time to carefully study Roman or Greek or Persian or Canaanite or Egyptian culture anytime soon…

Having said this, I don’t yet own any of Borgman’s books and It wasn’t that long ago that I pulled Walton off the shelf to better understand an aspect of the thought-world of the Old Testament…

Either way, I’ve learned a lot from David Boan, from Borgman, and from Walton. All three have definitely shaped how I engage with scripture.