James was found riding his bike every other Saturday.

Allow me a moment to apply a term to this sentence that isn’t normally used: story*.  You understand that the sentence is attributing an action (riding his bike) to a specific person (James) within a certain time frame (every other Saturday)—but this doesn’t have to be a beginning or an ending.

It remains as a self-contained Happening in James’ world. It’s believable to enter into that world. There’s no logical contradictions encountered. It just exists.

From here, you can walk away from this story and remain happy. The story stands on its own.

When reading Scripture we encounter Stories—several in fact. Folk who deny inerrancy have no problem with Story but they have a problem with the placement of Story.

This is a mistake, they say, notice the variance of the story being used here verses there.

Maybe they’re speaking about the chronology of a Gospel account, or maybe they’re talking about the differences of an account recorded in Kings vs. the Chronicles or maybe they’re even highlighting the differences in Paul’s conversion story. Whatever the case may be, they refuse to read the story with a charitable ear to the author; rather they see that the authors are, somehow, mistaken. It doesn’t matter, they say, at least the Author’s point was clear.

What winds up happening is that the Point is treated like a gem, to be lifted up out of the muddied context from whence it came. It’s polished, repositioned, and it is put on display: the messy text, on the other hand, can remain safely ignored.

And yet, this completely ignores the way a story (like words) can be used in different contexts to highlight different points. A story placed next to another might reflect The Actual Point.

For example, let’s go back to James:

Janet, James’ shrew of a wife, spent years complaining that they were growing apart. She screeched. She yelled. She cajoled. Every fortnight of this, he couldn’t help it—he had to get out. James was found riding his bike every other Saturday.

Well, the original story is the same but the context is near another story: the story of James’ Wife. Now that the two stories are next to each other, the Point is not merely that James was found riding his bike but the man was using it to escape!

Now, are there any mistakes? The details of both stories seem pretty important.

“Well,” says the Objector “there are no problems here since it expands on the story of James’ riding.

Well, let’s up the ante:

James’ co-worker Gina was a beautiful woman: friendly, flirtatious and fine. Every other week, she enjoyed swimming, in the buff, at a private lake in the State park. James noted, if he scheduled his day just right, he could catch a late afternoon vision of exquisitely exposed beauty. James was found riding his bike every other Saturday.

Story One (the original) still remains the same but now the story three in the same context gives a naughty edge to James’ bike riding.

But how does it affect Story Two? Has that story now been relegated to wrong? Do we now have an errant account of the life of James with the Point being whatever we can separate from the conflicting accounts?

You see, Story Two and Story Three can both remain as unchanged as Story One. Put next to each other they gives us a picture of James’ Life; told separately, they highlight certain aspects of that life without being contradictory or errant. The only sure thing you see in telling the story is that the Author has a different reason for sharing the information that he does and that using the same story near other contexts may reveal some of the author’s mind.

So what the reader should be doing is entering into the story and notice the details within the story as it stands. And then, the reader should be noting the near context of the story: why was it placed here instead of there?  Why is the author organizing his material in this way? What does it say about the Author’s Point?

The Story is important; it’s placement near other Stories is equally important. The Point, then, doesn’t function like a gem—hidden in the grime, just waiting for some person to remove the entire messy Story away from it. Rather each story should function as part of the whole presented by the author—the dimmed lights, the soft jazz, the scented candles, the roses littering the floor—that when put together tell you what’s really going on.

Words are, therefore, special though they mean nothing without context. But Stories define context, and when placed near the vicinity of other Stories, the reader should be careful (and respectful) enough to allow the Author’s positioning of those stories to reveal his flow of thought.

*I borrowed and modified the example from one of my mentors but I don’t want to use his name online. Some of the terms I borrowed from another mentor: J.R.R. Tolkien.

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“—um, wait one moment Sir.”

“What’s that? Come again?”

“Yes, I’m not quite sure how to get across what you’re talking about.”

“What ever do you mean?”

“Well, all facts are interpreted facts: in the end there’s nothing but the text and that just collapses on itself. It’s not like I’m going to transport you to the reader; the reader comes at the text with their own perspectives.”

“Okay…”

“So, for example, Ariel uses a  ‘Dinglehopper’ for combing her hair; the purpose of which was conveyed by a seagull who told her. Imagine her embarrassment when she sees a fork on her dinner table and starts combing her hair with it thinking ‘what a lovely dinglehopper’! Someone else called the thing a fork but she knows it as a different term.”

“Your point…?”

“The object might be real but we humans bring our interpretation to bear on it and turns it upside down. It really is a dinglehopper to Ariel. So, right now, you’re going to give me words to write: You know what you’re talking about (surely) but I will invariably interpret it for myself and that will necessarily be a misinterpretation. This is exacerbated by putting it in text form since neither I (nor you) really go along with the text. Whatever reality exists, all that we have are words and their context and in our situation, the context shifts: the words get a new life of their own. Even if I were to mentally project a context, it would still be an interpretation of that context and that mental projection isn’t carried over to later readers. What I would need is a community to help, and not just any community. A community that can stick around but isn’t constrained by the dangerous naiveté of modernistic thinking that they can just read and understand.”

“Indeed…”

“For example, ‘Human’ is a handy term but really, what if you’re referring to some guy named Human. That’s not my name, after all. Worse, remove the reader by 2,000 years and they might come up with all sorts of things. What if the reader is an alien who has never seen a Human? What then? What could you, Lord, asks the reader, possibly mean by such terms—even ‘speaking’. You obviously don’t have lips since you’re invisible so you must be giving me this information in some way maybe images in my head—but some other community might say that it means revealing with pulsating light but you would have to tell us which one is right. There’s just an infinite amount of play whenever it comes to terminology. In the end, what’ll happen is that for each person reading whatever it is you will have me ‘write’ (whatever it is you mean by that) will interpret the information differently. No one will really get it unless done in a sort of community that you approve as having done it right.”

“But that would only happen after the fact, eh…?”

“Yes, exactly. We’d each have to do it and then you’d have to give your mark of approval. But frankly, even then the mark of approval is up for interpretation and ultimately way too overbearing. What’s important is the text and the reader. It’s just the way it works with finite creatures who come at the world with a point of view. You’re going to have to speak down to us, in our weakness but even then it won’t be good enough: we are limited by what we see and our understanding of it. We’d just have to trust you (or whatever we think you’re saying) and do what we like—or what the community demands.  It’s enough to give me a headache! So, Lord (or whatever I have interpreted that to mean) I’m sorry, but I think we need to make sure we don’t expect too much out of this whole writing business.”

“Ah. I understand. Well then, do you see that bottle labeled rat poison over there?”

“Yes Lord, this one?”

“Yes. Take some for your headache.”

“Um, it says rat poison…”

“Here, hand me it real quick. Okay, there…now it says Tylenol.”

“Okay…”

“Take some for your headache.”

“I think you’re missing the point, Lord: it said Rat Poison; the context is that in my community, we define Rat Poison as going in there…”

“Come now man, that’s an interpreted fact. Nothing exists beyond the text! Whatever the objective meaning of the thing doesn’t matter—it’s not like you tasted it to find out if it’s really poison or not. You’re simply misinterpreting whatever the author of that text meant when he wrote Tylenol (or Rat Poison) on that bottle. Your community has told you that such things labeled ‘rat poison’ are rat poison but all that is a matter of traditional thinking; you should really turn that modernist idea upside down and challenge it. The label reads Tylenol now. And now I’m telling you that I have approved the message on the bottle.”

“But Lord, it’s really poison! It said so!”

“Are you suggesting, O’ Human, that someone, yes a stupid, fallible and finite Human, was able to communicate information that points to objective facts despite the notion that you believe all facts are interpreted?”

“…”

“Are you noting, O’ Human, that there is something beyond the text ? That indeed, there is a limited sphere of play between the words ‘rat poison’ and ‘Tylenol’?”

“…”

“Are you suggesting that if another community removed by 2,000 years believed that this bottle contained Tylenol, or say Licorice, or whatever phonemic symbols they decide to attach to something perceptually Good instead of Rat Poison (or anything deadly) and ate it, their headaches would be magically cured? Does not the poison remain poison despite your interpretation of that?”

“…”

“Better yet, do you think that I—the one who created the tongue, who formed the mouth, who originated language, who created light from the basis of my imagination—can’t use language, even your language, to give objective facts? I who can slay a man and raise him up again, I who can make the Leviathan play, I who can dot the canvas of the heavens with stars and galaxies—I can’t speak perfectly with the language that I created and subsequently have someone record that?”

“…”

“If you can speak perfectly introducing yourself, writing books, and pointing to rat poison, do you think me so weak, in my infinite power and majesty, that I can’t possibly reveal truth, objective truth, without it fizzling when it reaches your insignificant ears? I am the Infinite God who formed man, who saw the cosmos before they were formed, who knows the end from the beginning and is never taken by surprise: my word does not come back empty—and you choose to put the stop at the spigot of Infinite at your community’s contextualized interpretation?”

“…”

“Now, Derided Human, pick up your quill and write. Again, from the top: These words are faithful and true; he who has an ear to hear let him hear…”

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Ishmael (Gen 16, 21; Gen 37:25-28; 1 Chr 1:28-31)
The Promise: Abraham’s descendants would be blessed. Ishmael is not to be the means of implementing God’s promises, but he is blessed from his attachment to Abraham; Ishmael would be made fruitful, father of a nation, be blessed. Even though Ishmael gets kicked out of the house, God tells Hagar (twice) that her son will have a future history (Gen 16:11-12; Gen 21:18) and goes about recording his successful beginnings by saying He was with him (Gen 21:20). Indeed, he’s called the father of twelve kings, a fact which the Chronicler goes on to record (1 Chr 1:28-31).

Isaac (Gen 24-26)
The Promise: Abraham’s descendants would be blessed; those who curse Abraham would be cursed. Isaac, directly being the Son of Promise reveals a blossoming of the promises of God that it is not to be fulfilled only in physical terms but directly correlated to the establishing word and power of God. God’s covenants would come through direct ancestry and by miraculous orchestration of events and circumstances. Isaac’s wife is taken by Abimelech (mentioned in another post) and Abimelech winds up cursed. Isaac lives in the land most of his life not as a sojourner but as one awaiting the promises of God.

Joseph (Gen 37, 39-45)
The Promise: The Nations would be blessed through Abraham, Abraham’s descendants would be great, Abraham would be a blessing. Joseph’s story is directly connected to Jacob’s story for it is the means that God uses to bring about God’s promises to Abraham in light of the  nations. Joseph, rejected by the sons of Jacob (and sold into the hands of the Sons of Abraham via Ishmael), winds up being the savior of the nations and the savior of the sons of Jacob on account of his position and familial relationship. God plans it that way, a fact that Joseph brings up, while becoming what Noah was to all of creation.

Esau (Gen 28, 33; Num 20; Jud 11; 2 Kings 8; 1 Chron 18:13; 2 Chr 21:10; Jer 49; Oba 1, Mal 1 Luke 23)
The Promise: those who curse the Sons of Abraham would be cursed. This one is interesting. The promise was made that the Elder would serve the Younger, that Esau would bow down to Jacob and yet in Jacob’s lifetime Esau never bowed down to Jacob: indeed, Jacob bows down to Esau! The one time in the history of Edom that there was any bowing down was when the Edomites were made subject to David—but that didn’t last long. Some years later, Jesus would stand before a Son of Esau (Herod the Idumean), reigning in Israel (of all places!) demanding that the Jesus perform tricks. Jesus didn’t respond for the Lord had already spoken to Edom as we recall the many prophecies regarding Edom, how he would be wiped away, how he would be subject to the Younger. Edom as a whole suffers the curse of God while Esau remains quite fine with Jacob.

Jacob/Israel (Gen 27 – 50)
The Promise: The Nations would be blessed through Abraham, the descendants of Abraham would be great. The promises of God are established through Jacob, and yet Jacob’s life is an interplay of cursing that is actually blessing. He cheats his brother out of his inheritance and has to run from the land he was promised, yet he returns richer than before. He gets a bum deal with a wife but that deal winds up being the means God uses to bring to fruition the covenant to Abraham. He has a couple of sons through his favorite wife and winds up  losing Joseph, fully expects to lose Benjamin, and if Joseph wasn’t really Joseph and some random angry Pharaoh assistant, he would have lost Judah too. But in the end he winds up with an even bigger family, being the means of blessing for the nations, being a blessing to all his children, and personally blessing a gentile ruler. Even his son Judah winds up being one to whom the scepter properly belongs, taking a child under his wings (His and Tamar’s) and standing in Benjamin’s place.

The Sons of Israel in Egypt (Exo 1 – 12)
The Promise: Those who curse Abraham would be cursed. Joseph is forgotten, so Exodus says, and the children of Israel are oppressed as they curse the Israelites with slavery. God rescues them performing wonders that are greater than those that were performed with another Pharaoh, two Abimelechs, and one Laben. They are rescued with miraculous signs, God’s provision of salvation, and even rescued through the waters of the Red Sea. The promises to Abraham seemed to blossom before their eyes as they stand at the foot of Sinai and are told that they will find blessing in the Land as long as they keep the covenant to be a kingdom of priests, but would be cursed in the Land if they abused the covenant at Sinai.

The Sons of Israel in the Wilderness (Leviticus; Deuteronomy; Numbers)
The Promise: Those who curse Abraham would be cursed; the seed of Abraham would multiply; they would inherit the Land that God showed to Abraham. The Seed of Abraham are tested in the wilderness but are also oppressed. Edom refuses to let them through and they are cursed. Moab winds up being cursed. Canaan is allowed to momentarily defeat the Israelites as chastisement, but the people of Abraham’s loin are not cut off. For a moment, God says he plans to restart the promises of Abraham by establishing His covenant with Moses—to which Moses refuses saying he would rather die with the rest of the Sons of Israel. In the end, the first generation dies out and it is the second generation that makes it into the land, covenanting with each other to ensure that the Land is conquered.

The Sons of Israel in Canaan (Joshua; Judges; 1 Sam)
The Promise: Those who curse Abraham would be cursed; the descendants would inherit a Land. The Children of Israel are often victorious as they fight in the land. They find curses when they actively reject the covenant they have entered into in Sinai. Joshua ends stating that all the promises to the Forefathers were fulfilled and yet, we see that the entire land is not conquered (Joshua 21:45). What the writer is saying is that every single one of the promises God made was blossoming before his eyes, a sentiment which is repeated (Jos 23:14). And yet in the book of Judges we see the Israelites suffering under the oppression they’ve faced in the past. They wind up oppressed by the Gentiles/Canaanites (Judges 4, 5), the Moabites (Judges 2), the Midianites (Judges 7) and even each other. It’s a pitiful time where they are given over to idolatry—yet their enemies are still repeatedly cursed.

The Nation Receives A King (Gen 38; Ruth; 2 Sam 7; Psalm 2; Psalm 89)
The Promise: The nation would be a Kingdom; the descendants would be a blessing to the nations; those who curse Abraham would be cursed. The nation eventually asks for their own King, ahead of time, which God provides and uses to castigate the people but eventually the promises to Abraham blossom to reveal that a King was part of the plan and David’s house is established carrying forth the Covenant to Abraham. David, surprised, realizes the breadth of this thing where God does better than men while submitting to promises and keeping them in such an extravagantly gracious way.

The Nation is Sacked (Esther; Daniel):
The Promise: The descendants will inherit the Land; God will bless them; God will curse those who curse them; they will be a blessing to the nations. The nation, repeatedly standing in opposition against God’s covenant at Sinai finds the curses in the Land increasing as they curse the Land by refusing to give it it’s Sabbath rest. The Land is eventually sacked first by the Assyrians (in the North) then the Babylonians (in the South) but even while out of their land, Jews (like Daniel or Esther) wind up being a blessing to those around them, being a means of salvation and blessing for their people and holding onto the promises of God to return to the Land. Daniel is so confident about the thing that he reads the prophecies of Jeremiah, does the math (talk about being literal!) and realizes that he should be praying harder. God indeed confirms his prayers and tells him that for now he will “go to sleep” but one day he will come back to his plot—his inheritance.

A New Covenant Promised (Jeremiah, Isaiah, Zechariah, Joel, Ezekiel):
The Promise: The promise to Abraham is an eternal covenant; Abraham will be a blessing to the nations. God tells the Israelites that he will make a new covenant which is not like the covenant that was made at Sinai. The problem with Sinai is that it demanded a lot of action by the recipients to secure the benefits of the covenant—a problem that was not inherent in the promise to Abraham. This Covenant blossoms out from Abraham’s covenant pulling in elements from the Mosaic Covenant in such a way that God personally does the work in the people. The Nations find blessing via Israel, the Spirit of God is poured out because of Israel, the bones are given new life because of God’s outpoured spirit, Israel no longer has to tell her neighbors “Know the Lord” because all will know the Lord, all will have God’s mandates written on their heart because they are empowered by God, and they will find blessing in the land as they offer up their sacrifices in thanksgiving and appreciation in such a way that has never been done before. We discover that this Covenant, tied to the Spirit of God, is tied to the Day of the Lord, tied to the Last Days, tied to the revelation of a prophet-priest and to a king-priest who is the Son of David.

It’s plain as day; the concluding observations are unnecessary. Although God would cast away the Sons of Israel as an adulterous wife (on account of transgressing her covenant with God at Sinai), they still are regarded as his wife on account of the Covenant with Abraham.

I don’t normally do this at the end of a blog post, but I can’t help it: oh the wonder of it! The incalculable riches and wisdom and mercy and love of God! The God who would do above and beyond what any man would expect but gets down at the level of men, not only to make promises but to ensure that those promises come to be by ensuring he keeps to them in time!

This tells me that God has kept his promises to His elect (Isaiah 45:4) and will keep His promises, to the uttermost! That although people (in this case, the Israelites) have seriously screwed up, that God in His goodness and mercy and condescension remains faithful. If they’ve been slaughtered, they haven’t been wiped out; if they were made captives, they haven’t disappeared; if they were punished, it wasn’t to wipe them out; if they have stumbled, it wasn’t to fall. God made promises to Abraham and he has kept them and, if past activity is any measure of activity, he will continue to keep them.

Thank you blessed God for when you speak to me for salvation, you speak clearly and honestly: me, a sinner, that by believing on you and the One whom you have sent I am given eternal life, am seated in heavenly places, will reign with your Son for all eternity, and will be an administrator of some sort—I know that you mean it and am astounded! You have spoken clearly to the fathers—Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and you have continued to keep your promises to them with their children! Thank you God because it’s not by my steam, or my strength but by your word that your promises stand! Thank you Lord! Thank you, O’ God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob—and now Rey! Thank you!

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We have already demonstrated through the use of Form Criticism that Rey’s missive did not suddenly appear in its final form as a result of him sitting down and simply typing the text. It was the result of a collaboration of his community with various members providing their own oral traditions that resulted in the text as we now have it. Those oral stories would eventually have come down in written form, and Source Criticism will help identify the sources the author must have used in putting together his own retelling of the accounts.

When studying something like the Synoptic Gospels, which allow us to compare and contrast the differing accounts of the life of Christ, it is easier to identify various sources. Such is not the case with the text in front of us, which means we will have to rely on what we already know about use of sources by authors.

The text reflects disparate sources connected by transitions such as “and” and the use of punctuation, particularly “.” (period). It is safe to say that Rey had before him at least five sources: (1) information about the time of day, (2) some sort of weather report, (3) a meteorological report showing both sunrise and sunset times for the date of the incident, (4) evidence from an unknown source about the status of the grill (whether “turned on” or not), and (5) a document or portion of a document revealing the existence of something called “online,” which is apparently a state that human beings can enter into and become.

It is very likely, however, that later collections that included some but not all of the aforementioned fragments were extant at the time and available to the author. These may be referred to as S (for “Situation”) and P (those documents pertaining to the “Petition” itself). A Two-Source Theory (no longer held by conservative scholars) maintained that Rey had at his disposal S and P but none of the other source materials. A more recent and thus truer theory-become-fact position is known as the Two-Plus-Some-Others Theory. This position (held by most at Theologica) reveals that the author relied on S and P, plus an unknown number of specific fragments (ranging in number from 1 to 43,234).

Whatever the number of sources, however, the priority of S – which simply means that it was written first – is maintained by all. It was the first source to come into the author’s possession and served as a template for all additional information, even though some of the later sources might have been earlier.

Equally obvious to the Source Critic is the absence of any sort of search engine that the author might have used to discover recipes for his family’s meal that did not involve time, weather, astronomy, grills, or “onlines.” It goes without saying that, had the author had such information or access available, he would have utilized it and we would not now have the text we have. Rather, it would have taken the form of “Hey, I found a cool recipe for boiling catfish” or some such thing.

With the enlightenment of Source Criticism, therefore, we can now understand that Rey relied on written documents no longer in existence to compile his account as we now have it in the text. The individual sources, upon with the author heavily relied, contributed to the final form of the passage.
___________

Finally, we will look at Redaction Criticism to further enhance our understanding of the text. Only then will we be able to say with confidence that we understand the story, whether historical or not, as written by Rey.

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Our text under consideration now is a petition that Rey made recently:

According to Carson, Moo, and Morris – which is not a law firm – there are a half dozen assumptions made by FC scholars that we will adapt and apply when possible to Rey’s text.

1. “The stories and sayings . . . circulated in small independent units.”

2. “The transmission of the material can be compared to the transmission of other folk and religious traditions.”

3. “The stories and sayings . . . took on certain standard forms . . . for the most part still readily visible [in the text].”

4. “The form of a specific story or saying makes it possible to determine its Sitz im Leben (“setting in life”) . . .”

5. “As it passed down the sayings and stories . . . [the] community not only put the material into certain forms, it modified it under the impetus of its own needs and situations.”

6. “Classic form critics have typically utilized various criteria to enable them to determine the age and historical trustworthiness of particular pericopes.”

Such is the nature of form criticism and how it enables us to better understand the otherwise completely incomprehensible text provided by the Rey Community.
___________

Next we will further our understanding of Rey and catfish through the lens of Source Criticism.

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