Believing in Jesus - it's a verb not a noun!

In the gospel of John the "verb believe (psiteuo) occurs 98 times, making it the most frequently used of John's keywords ... strangely, the noun faith/belief (pistis) ..., never occurs at all in [this] gospel." Adams, 2011, Parallel lives of Jesus, p.118, SPCK.

To overthrow or to turn around?

"And he cried out, ‘Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!’" Jonah 3v4b.

"Overthrown has", writes Alicia Suskin Ostriker in her book "For the Love of God: the Bible as an Open Book" (2007, p.110), "a double meaning. Hafak, overthrow or overturn, is the word  used for what happens to Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19.29, Deuteronomy 30.23, Amos 4.11, Jeremiah 20.16, Lamentations 4.6). However, as with oracles in classical Greece, which can mean the opposite of what they seem (in the most famous instance an oracle tells the Lydian king Croesus that if he attacks Persia a great kingdom will be overthrown, but neglects to tell him it will be his own kingdom),  hafak can also mean to turn over or turn around."

Bathsheba - from party girl to king maker [alt title: a party girl who grew up?]

Reading my way through the Bible I've been wading, in more ways than one, through the books of Samuel and Chronicles. 

Amidst all the fascinating characters and personalities mentioned is Bathsheba. She, like most of them, is only very lightly sketched out. However Wesselius, in an appendix (p349-51) to his article on Joab's execution [Wesselius, J. W. (1990). Joab's Death and the Central Theme of the Succession Narrative (2 Samuel IX-1 Kings II). Vetus Testamentum, 40(Fasc. 3), 336-351.] makes a compelling, albeit as he admits (p351), speculative case for Bathsheba and her family plotting and executing revenge on those responsible for her husband Uriah the Hittite's death.

It is clear to me that Bathsheba is a clever woman (Nicol, G. G. (1988). Bathsheba, a Clever Woman?. The Expository Times, 99(12), 360-363) and, if Rabbinic tradition is correct that King Lemuel is a poetic name for Solomon (eg Apple, R. (2011). The Two Wise Women of Proverbs Chapter 31. Jewish Bible Quarterly, 39(3), 175), then Bathsheba is the author of Proverbs 31, and so is v3 ("Do not give your strength to women, your ways to those who destroy kings) an echo of what she had helped to bring about? She understood, and had control over, what she was doing. With Nicol and contra Tamber-Rosenau (Tamber-Rosenau, C. (2017). Biblical Bathing Beauties And The Manipulation Of The Male Gaze: What Judith Can Tell Us about Bathsheba and Susanna. Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 33(2), 55-72), I think it most likely that she initiated the seduction of David and thus is also, albeit, unintentionally responsible for the death of her husband and some of his comrades.

How to reconcile these two, apparently, conflicting events?

One possible trajectory is that Bathsheba at the start of this story, a noted beauty, married to a great hero, was simply bored. All the young dashing warriors, her husband included, were off at war. Jerusalem had become quiet, dull, provincial. In a word it was no fun! The only really "interesting" male in her immediate circle was the great hero, warrior and a king to boot. Well there's a challenge to a bright but bored and frustrated woman! Adulterous affairs while soldiers were away are hardly unknown (see Todd, L. M. (2011). “The Soldier's Wife Who Ran Away with the Russian”: Sexual Infidelities in World War I Germany. Central European History, 44(2), 257-278. and London, A. S., Allen, E., & Wilmoth, J. M. (2013). Veteran status, extramarital sex, and divorce: Findings from the 1992 National Health and Social Life Survey. Journal of Family Issues, 34(11), 1452-1473.).

Anyway she lights on a very bold scheme to attract the king's attention. While it succeeds it is clear that neither had any serious "long term" intentions. Unfortunately for all, nature intervened in the form of a pregnancy. On this and the subsequent events the Biblical account becomes surprisingly frank. It led to the murder of Uriah and also a number of his fellow soldiers as "collateral damage". Then things become opaque. While Nathan's prophecy is clear,

["Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, for you have despised me, and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife. Thus says the Lord: I will raise up trouble against you from within your own house; and I will take your wives before your eyes, and give them to your neighbour, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this very sun.  For you did it secretly; but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun."See 2 Samuel 12:7-14 for the fuller context.]

quite how this actually comes to pass is not explained in any detail. Nathan interestingly is both the putative source of many of these stories (1 Chronicles 29:29 and 2 Chronicles 9:29) and also, and on this point I disagree with Wesselius (see p348), a close confidant of Bethsheba's (1 Kings 1:11-14).

At some point, so Wesselius suggests, the full horror of the events she had unwittingly played a part in setting in motion became known to Bathsheba. At this point she becomes, I would suggest, very conflicted. Guilt leads to a quiet (you can't be open about this for obvious reasons) fury with David and his family. At the same time this allies with a natural desire to see her son, Solomon, who is not favourably placed in the line succession, become king (see Song of Solomon 3v11). Thus we have a supremely potent cocktail of guilt, revenge and ambition. Combine that with her intelligence, connections (she is a member of a very well connected family some of whom become important actors in the events portrayed) and opportunity. All this could, as Wesselius outlines, quite credibly lead to the events portrayed in the latter part of 2 Samuel and beginning of 1 Kings.

Clearly this is only one possible trajectory but, as Wesselius suggests, a very telling and plausible one nevertheless which ties together many of the events and actors in the Biblical account.

I can't help think that so many playwrights have missed a great opportunity here. What could Shakespeare have done with this!? Though he never did use any Biblical stories if I remember correctly. History is indeed often stranger than fiction and what a great lesson we should take from this, even without the conjectured elements. In the words of another great story teller, Scott, "Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive."

Paul, the Resurrection and the empty tomb

Steven T Davies makes a very interesting point about Paul's knowledge of the empty tomb. In his book "Risen Indeed: making sense of the Resurrection" (1993) he writes the following (p76):

"But does Paul implicitly refer to the empty tomb in 1 Corinthians 15:4, where he mentions Jesus's burial? I believe it is quite probable that he does. Paul's own view of the nature of the Resurrection, in my opinion, requires that the tomb be empty (which is the reverse of what is sometimes claimed). This is because his simile of the plant growing from the seed (1 Corinthians 15:35-43) entails material continuity between the one and the other. That is to say, Paul's view would seem to imply that Jesus's body could not still be decomposing in the tomb, because it had been transformed into - it became - Jesus's Resurrection body (just as the seed becomes the plant).24"

 "n24: See also Romans 8:11, in which Paul seems to equate Resurrection with the spirit of giving life to a mortal body."

Scientism isn't science - an Easter thought!

Scientism - the "thought or expression regarded as characteristic of scientists ... excessive belief in the power of scientific knowledge and techniques."

This thought was prompted, once again, in this case while reading Davis, Stephen T, (1993), "Risen Indeed". In particular his observation that, in his experience (and mine) scientists, in particular he singles out physicists, are so much more open to miraculous events, than so many other non-scientists who shelter under Hume's, distinctly holey(sic), umbrella against the possibility of any miracles.

While "... Hume is correct that we have and rightly should have a powerful bias against accepting claims that extraordinary events have occurred. We can imagine cases [where] if massive evidence in favour continued to pile up ... the rational thing would be to lay aside or amend our bias against [such an event] and accept the claim that [it] had occurred. ... Critics of Hume are certainly correct in pointing out that there have been countless cases in which such biases and the expectations that they create have been rationally overcome. Rational people would once have scoffed at the idea of aeroplanes, vaccines and trips to the moon." (p5-6).

Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia!

The women who served at the entrance to the tent of meeting.

"[Bezalel or They] made the basin of bronze, with its stand of bronze, from the mirrors of the women who served at the entrance to the tent of meeting.” Exodus 38v8 (NRSVA)

I have read Exodus many times but today this verse jumped out at me. Why had I never noticed it before? Thereby hangs a tale. Sadly it does reflect well on the "un-fair sex"  and how apposite that adjective is! Unfair in acts, presuppositions and thought.

That women SERVED at the entrance to the tent of meeting aka The Tabernacle is also attested in 1 Samuel 2v22.

However if you have an older translation you will read that the women "assembled" (KJV, Geneva 1599). Much further back and the Septuagint translators were also less than forthcoming. Dr Kaiser Jr. says "“Women who served” at the tabernacle (Exodus 38:8 and 1 Samuel 2:22) offended the Greek translators of the Septuagint, so they rendered the phrase: “women who fast.”" (Kaiser Jr, 2005, "Correcting Caricatures: 
The Biblical Teaching on Women", Priscilla Papers, Vol. 19, No. 2  p.7).

I am relieved to say that RSV, NASB & NIV all correctly say "served"!

Let all serve God according to their calling regardless of gender for clearly God is far more inclusive than we are.