Hebrew with Dr. Stuart

I have two classes with Dr. Douglas Stuart this semester -- Exegesis of Historical Books and Intermediate Hebrew. He is a phenomenal teacher and scholar, but he assigns massive loads of work. I'm spending almost half of the week just trying to finish his assignments. Also, I am just beginning to realize that translating Hebrew is probably 80% syntax and 20% morphology... meaning everything I learned in Hebrew 1 and 2 only gets me 20% of the way through translation, at least for the book of Micah, which is the hardest OT book to translate and which Stuart chose for us to decipher.

But lest you think I only have negative remarks, here's something awesome I learned from class last week. There is a phenomenon in Hebrew syntax called the repetition of endearment. When Hebrew repeats a name twice, it is a sign of emotion or intimate relationship. For example, 2 Samuel 19:1 says "בני בני" ("my son, my son" or "my dear son") when David is mourning for Absalom. Also 2 Kings 2:12.

Thus, when the NT authors used this same repetition with names, their Jewish listeners would have understood it to carry a meaning of emotion or endearment. When Jesus was dying on the cross, he called out "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" Those standing there and hearing it would have understood it to mean, "My beloved, dear Father..."

Dr. Stuart explained that you would only use this repetition of endearment with someone you are buddies with, someone with whom you have a close relationship. This becomes more significant when you consider how Jesus addresses Martha in Luke 10: "Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things." To Western ears, hearing someone being called twice like that sounds somewhat condescending, but this would not have been how Martha heard it. Even more amazing is the context of Saul's conversion in Acts 9. When Jesus appears to him on the road to Damascus, he address Saul with, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" Jesus doesn't use a tone of condemnation but of endearment.

But the passage that, for me, opened up in a whole new light from understanding the use of the repetition of endearment was Matthew 7:21-23. "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord', did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name? And then will I declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.'"

It's not enough to approach God on judgment day and simple say that you love him, even if you really mean it with all your emotions. There is only one way to the Father and it's through Jesus.

The Greeks

"Before the advent of Christianity, philosophy was needful to the Greeks for righteousness. Now it is useful to piety for those who attain faith through demonstration. Philosophy was a schoolmaster to the Greeks, as the law was to the Hebrews, preparing the way for those who are perfected by Christ." -Miscellanies, Clement of Alexandria.

In other words, philosophy paved the way for the Greeks to understand the gospel, because the gospel presented them with satisfying solutions to the questions they were asking in their philosophical discussions. Philosophy failed to provide an answer in the same way the law failed to provide salvation for the Hebrews. Both were catalysts for looking to the gospel for answers.

Sounds like Clement did some interesting work at Alexandria. He won over the young people of the educational centers of the classical world to Christianity by presenting the gospel as the ultimate answer. He started at a point of convergence with the current culture, taking what was good and useful from classical culture to point to theology. It never works to simply dismiss contemporary culture flat out. Rather than gaining an audience, it will only cause division from the outset. Clement's student, Origen, also recognized that in order to preserve Christianity, it couldn't simply appeal to the emotions but also to the intellect.

That's what I love about studying classical literature. You get to see how earnestly the Greeks were trying to figure out the big questions and problems of life. They give the best presentation of the human predicament in their literature and philosophy, but you can clearly see that there are no sensible, satisfying solutions. Antigone dies hoping the gods will be pleased since she forfeited her other way of escape. Orestes gets acquited for blood-guilt without any means of atonement. There is no hope of redemption, even for the repentant. Both Aeschylus and Sophocles conclude that you will never know a happy life until you come to the end of your life without misfortune. It is fascinating to read the classics with the perspective of one whose eyes have been opened to an all-satisfying solution. Clement and Origen were able to respond well with the gospel in that culture. But just because those questions came up in the 2nd century (or 5th cent. BC tragic poets) doesn't mean it's no longer applicable. The questions of the Greeks will essentially always be the same for those who are outside of the gospel because they ask the biggest philosophical questions that every human being will have to figure out for themselves: what happens in the afterlife, what is the purpose of suffering, who is God and how do we make peace with him, and what am I on earth for?

What a scary world.

"The more noise that we make, the easier it is to accept us." -David Silverman, president of American Atheists.

What a smart man. Isn't that how everything immoral gets accepted into current society? This new interfaith movement, gay marriage, bans on home education, just to name a few.

You just need to get enough people talking about it, get the media involved, and get the idea implanted into young people's heads so that they grow up with these concepts as the norm. Think of all the children who are growing up now thinking that gay marriage is just another aspect of everyday society.

Pretty soon, rhetoric, the skill of logical persuasion, will become obsolete and powerless in convincing an increasingly wishy-washy generation that blurs all the lines. It will be easy for anyone to brush off your argument as your own set of truth, because, after all, everyone has a little bit of truth so we're all right in our own way, right?

Dr. David Wells commented to me last semester how in our postmodern age, our strategy has to shift slightly toward appealing to pathos, real life experiences, and the question of suffering. That's what the new generation will listen to because there are no longer any standards to appeal to. I think Rob Bell recognized this shift when he wrote Love Wins. It's going to be a difficult battle because God is a God of truth. How do you teach truth to a blurry generation?

Even so, I refuse to abandon the teaching of logic and rhetoric as an ideal part of education. It may have taken a back seat in this generation, but it is still our responsibility to raise a new truth-seeking crop of folks to fix the mess we've left behind.