This article considers the legacy of James Barr’s The Semantics of Biblical Language. Ideally, his criticisms of theology’s use of philology would have been assimilated already into the field. But the kinds of abuses that Barr so clearly identified and critiqued are still commonly found. As a way of exploring this state of affairs, the case of μετάνοια (“repentance”) in New Testament studies is taken up in the first part of this article.
The second part of the article considers the ways in which Barr’s thoroughgoing critique of its specious appropriation for theology has left many justifiably skittish about employing it to any significant effect and has contributed, perhaps, to a sense that ongoing engagement with the original languages of biblical literature is not a necessity and, certainly, not an avenue to creative scholarship. Examples will be adduced from biblical Hebrew ידע (“know”), לב (“heart”), and אהב (“love”) for how we might approach language and its deployment as a way of engaging difference, in this case, in and through ancient Israelite thinking about “mind” and “emotions.”
The article concludes with the suggestion that we might move the practice of philology forward in biblical studies by attending more fully to the positionality of its practitioners. In particular, what emerges throughout the study is the dominance of a certain interiorizing language of the self, whereby biblical Hebrew terms are made to conform to a modern dichotomy of mind and body.
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James Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language (London: Oxford University Press, 1961). Overviews of Barr’s work can be found in Samuel E. Balentine, “James Barr’s Quest for Sound and Adequate Biblical Interpretation,” in S.E. Balentine and J. Barton (eds.), Language, Theology, and the Bible: Essays in Honour of James Barr (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), pp. 5–15, and John Barton, “James Barr as Critic and Theologian,” in ibid., pp. 16–26. For Barr’s collected essays, see John Barton (ed.), Bible and Interpretation: The Collected Essays of James Barr (3 vols.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013–2014). References to his articles below will be to the original publications.
E.P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), pp. 106–113.
J. Lunde, “Repentance,” Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels (Downers Grove: Intervarsity, 1992), p. 669. See also Dale C. Allison, Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian Prophet (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), p. 104.
See, further, David A. Lambert, How Repentance Became Biblical: Judaism, Christianity, and the Interpretation of Scripture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 181–83.
Ceslas Spicq, “μετανοέω, μετάνοια,” Theological Lexicon of the New Testament (ed. and trans. James D. Ernest; Peabody: Hendrickson, 1994), vol. 2, p. 475.
Reimarus, Fragments (ed. C.H. Talbert; trans. R.S. Fraser; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1970), pp. 65–71.
N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), pp. 246–58.
See now Dru Johnson, Biblical Knowing: A Scriptural Epistemology of Error (Eugene: Cascade, 2013), which in many respects represents an advance. See also Meir Malul, Knowledge, Control and Sex: Studies in Biblical Thought, Culture and Worldview (Jerusalem: Graphit, 2002).
T. Collins, “The Physiology of Tears in the Old Testament: Part I,” CBQ 33 (1971), pp. 18–38. See further, for a summary of her similar approach to Greek literature, Ruth Padel, In and Out of Mind: Greek Images of the Tragic Self (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 39–40.
See further Carasik, “The Limits of Omniscience,” pp. 221–28. Here, Carasik questions the mode of knowing, reconfiguring it as “testing,” but not the object of knowledge (i.e., the human mind). The point is still to discern through “external actions” what is “‘in’ the Israelites’ hearts” (p. 224).
Tigay, Deuteronomy, p. 77. See also Stephen A. Geller, “The God of the Covenant,” in B.N. Porter (ed.), One God or Many? Concepts of Divinity in the Ancient World (Chebeague: Casco Bay Assyriological Institute, 2000), p. 294. Indeed, לב is frequently used as a way of grounding “sincerity” in the biblical text. See Michael L. Barré, “Hearts, Beds, and Repentance in Psalm 4,5 and Hosea 7,14,” Biblica 76 (1995), pp. 53–62; and Moshe Greenberg, Biblical Prose Prayer: As a Window to the Popular Religion of Ancient Israel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), pp. 48–51.
See James Barr, The Garden of Eden and the Hope of Immortality (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), pp. 36–47; David J.A. Clines, “The Disjoined Body: The Body and Self in Hebrew Rhetoric,” in G.A. van der Heever and S.W. van Heerden (eds.), Biblical Interpretation (Pretoria: University of South Africa, 2001), pp. 48–57; and Robert A. Di Vito, “Old Testament Anthropology and the Construction of Personal Identity,” CBQ 61 (1999), pp. 217–38.
H.L. Ginsberg, “Heart,” Encyclopaedia Judaica (Jerusalem: Keter, 1972), vol. 8, pp. 7–8.
Smith, “Heart and Innards,” p. 431. See also the attempt to find a physiological basis for לב in Hans Walter Wolff, Anthropology of the Old Testament (trans. Margaret Kohl; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974), pp. 40–58.
Francis Brown, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1951), p. 523.
Gary A. Anderson, A Time to Mourn, A Time to Dance: The Expression of Grief and Joy in Israelite Religion (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991).
Quoted from James I. Porter, Nietzsche and the Philology of the Future (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), p. 14, and see pp. 1–31 for his general discussion of the place of philology for Nietzsche.
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This article considers the legacy of James Barr’s The Semantics of Biblical Language. Ideally, his criticisms of theology’s use of philology would have been assimilated already into the field. But the kinds of abuses that Barr so clearly identified and critiqued are still commonly found. As a way of exploring this state of affairs, the case of μετάνοια (“repentance”) in New Testament studies is taken up in the first part of this article.
The second part of the article considers the ways in which Barr’s thoroughgoing critique of its specious appropriation for theology has left many justifiably skittish about employing it to any significant effect and has contributed, perhaps, to a sense that ongoing engagement with the original languages of biblical literature is not a necessity and, certainly, not an avenue to creative scholarship. Examples will be adduced from biblical Hebrew ידע (“know”), לב (“heart”), and אהב (“love”) for how we might approach language and its deployment as a way of engaging difference, in this case, in and through ancient Israelite thinking about “mind” and “emotions.”
The article concludes with the suggestion that we might move the practice of philology forward in biblical studies by attending more fully to the positionality of its practitioners. In particular, what emerges throughout the study is the dominance of a certain interiorizing language of the self, whereby biblical Hebrew terms are made to conform to a modern dichotomy of mind and body.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 834 | 117 | 11 |
Full Text Views | 355 | 20 | 1 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 299 | 46 | 4 |