A Tale of Return and Change (Or, In Which I Explain My Woes in Deuteronomistic Terms)

Greetings, my gentle snowflakes! I am back, but not without having done some serious soul searching.

As all of you undoubtedly recall (for surely you all have grieved over my absence every waking moment of its duration), on the first week of March, which coincided with the First Week of Lent, my laptop’s keyboard suddenly gave up the ghost. I tried every imaginable fix (and here I must acknowledge the tireless assistance of Kevin Edgecomb, a friend tried and true), but in the end, it became apparent that the computer was beyond hope. The only way I could make limited use of it was by means of the on-screen keyboard, the use of which is so arduous that I am inclined to believe that it constitutes proof positive of the existence of Purgatory.

This tragedy, I must admit, became nearly too much for me to bear. One question was my constant companion through the dark night of functional computerlessness: Why? What could I have possibly done to deserve such a fate? Surely (so I cogitated in my inward being) I am a Good Person; nothing I may have done could have brought upon me a curse only comparable to those visited upon some of the worse covenant-breakers of salvation history.

But then, it hit me. I had indeed become a transgressor, and was receiving my just reward.

I know such a statement must come as a shock to many of you, but it is nevertheless true. You see, back in December I made a solemn public vow: I announced that I would “switch to WordPress effective on the implementation of threaded comments in that blogging platform.” Admittedly, I still had some doubts even then, and given WordPress’ laxity in implementing this feature, my zeal grew cold. As a result, once threaded commenting finally appeared on the scene, I neglected to make the switch. I broke my solemn public vow.

The distressing realization of my misdeed did not, however, paralyze me into inaction, but rather strengthened my resolve to fulfill my vow just as soon as computer functionality was restored to me. Having obtained a new computer this past Saturday, then, I joyfully announce that The Voice of Stefan has moved to WordPress.

http://voxstefani.wordpress.com/

Please update your blogrolls and feed aggregators to reflect the new address, and do not neglect to share with others this edifying tale of repentance and restoration.

(N.B.: All comments on this "Blogger" blog are now closed; please comment over on the new WordPress blog.)

This Is the Day of Resurrection

Χριστὸς ἀνέστη! Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη!

And as the prince Satan and Hades spoke this together, suddenly there came a voice as of thunder and a spiritual cry: "Lift up your gates, O ye princes, and be ye lifted up, O everlasting gates, and the King of glory shall come in." When Hades heard that, he said unto the prince Satan: "Depart from me and go out of mine abode: if thou be a mighty man of war, fight thou against the King of glory. But what hast thou to do with him?" And Hades cast Satan forth out of his dwelling. Then said Hades unto his wicked ministers: "Shut ye the hard gates of brass and put on them the bars of iron and withstand stoutly, lest we that hold captivity be taken captive."

But when all the multitude of the saints heard it, they spake with a loud voice of rebuking unto Hades: "Open thy gates, that the King of glory may come in." And David cried out, saying: "Did I not, when I was alive upon earth, prophesy unto you: 'Let them give thanks unto the Lord, even his mercies and his wonders unto the children of men: for he hath broken the gates of brass and smitten the bars of iron in sunder; he hath taken them out of the way of their iniquity.'" And thereafter in like manner Isaiah said: "Did not I, when I was alive upon earth, prophesy unto you: 'The dead shall arise, and they that are in the tombs shall rise again, and they that are in the earth shall rejoice, for the dew which cometh of the Lord is their deliverance?' And again I said: 'O Death, where is thy sting? O Hades, where is thy victory?'"

When they heard all these things from Isaiah, all the saints said unto Hades: "Open thy gates: now shalt thou be overcome and weak and without strength." And there came a great voice as of thunder, saying: "Lift up your gates, O princes, and be ye lifted up, O gates of Hades, and the King of glory shall come in." And when Hades saw that they so cried out twice, he said, as though he knew it not: "Who is the King of glory?" And David answered Hades and said: "The words of this cry do I know, for by his spirit I prophesied the same; and now I say unto thee that which I said before: 'The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle, he is the King of glory.' And: 'The Lord looked down from heaven that he might hear the groanings of them that are in fetters and deliver the children of them that have been slain.' And now, O thou most foul and stinking Hades, open thy gates, that the King of glory may come in." And as David spake thus unto Hades, the Lord of majesty appeared in the form of a man and lightened the eternal darkness and broke the bonds that could not be loosed: and the succour of his everlasting might visited us that sat in the deep darkness of our transgressions and in the shadow of death of our sins.

--From the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus

(Click above to hear the Paschal troparion sung in our Serbian melody.)

CHRIST IS RISEN! TRULY RISEN!

Kevin Edgecomb Explains Why 'The Voice of Stefan' Has Been Silent

Jim West grappled with the question, and Kevin offers the answer:

In case anyone's wondering, Esteban's computer is having trouble, so he hasn't been posting. He's got a Vista [*spit*] laptop that won't recognize its keyboard or a USB keyboard, and he simply cannot deal (as if anyone could!) with the onscreen keyboard. Hopefully that will be resolved soon.

I'm sure that he would say something like: "Patience, my little snowflakes!"

Thanks, Kevin. And indeed, patience, my gentle snowflakes! Hopefully the demons that are causing the malfunction will be exorcised sooner than later, and I'll finally be able to post, among other things, the Sundays with Silva installment on πίστις Χριστοῦ that I was about to type up when the keyboard mysteriously gave out.

The Arrogance of the Modern

A few years ago, I read some uproariously funny pieces by one Reverend Colonel Ignatius Churchward Von Berlitz, MA (Dom. Sci.) Oxon. (Oklahoma) gleaned by an acquaintance from the internet in its early days, the tone of which is uncomfortably representative of standard 19th century British and American scholarly writing (see here and here).

At that time, I was also revisiting the volumes of the Ante-Nicene, Nicene, and Post-Nicene Fathers, under the general editorship of The Rev. Philip Schaff, D.D., LL.D., successively Professor of the German Reformed Seminary, Mercersburg (PA), and Union Theological Seminary, New York. Now, as is well known, the introductions and notes in these volumes, a bona-fide product of 19th century British and American scholarship, ooze the same kind of haughty intellectual complacency. This is why I was quite surprised to read (by chance, as I usually ignore the introductions) these most reasonable lines from the pen of the editor of St Basil's 'Hexaemeron,' The Rev. Blomfield Jackson, M.A., Vicar of Saint Bartholomew's, Moor Lane, and Fellow of King's College, London:

"[T]he fact that Basil is not ahead of the science of his time is not to his discredit. It is to his credit that he is abreast with it; and this, with the exception of his geography, he appears to be. Of him we may say, as Bp. Lightfoot writes of St. Clement, in connexion with the crucial instance of the Phœnix, 'it appears that he is not more credulous than the most learned and intelligent heathen writers of the preceding and following generations.' He reads the Book of Genesis in the light of the scientific knowledge of his age, and in the amplification and illustration of Holy Scripture by the supposed aid of this supposed knowledge, neither he nor his age stands alone. Later centuries may possibly not accept all the science of the XIXth."

Ah, if only our contemporaries understood as much not only about the ancients, but indeed about their own work!

The Beginning of Great Lent

Jesus Christ, the "Land of the Living"¹

Today is Clean Monday, the day on which we begin the Lenten Fast. (In the Eastern Church, unlike in the Western, Sundays are included in the count of the 40 days, which therefore end on the Friday before Palm Sunday; at that point, we enter Passion Week, which in turn leads us to the radiant feast of the Resurrection of Christ.) Great Lent is officially inaugurated with the celebration of Forgiveness Vespers on the evening of Sunday, at the end of which all present ask forgiveness from one another as Paschal hymns are sung. The day that follows, and by extension the entire Fast, is "clean" not only because we have rid our homes of meat and other animal products that are not eaten during the Fast, but also (and indeed chiefly) because we have set out on the journey to Lord's Pascha having sought forgiveness of those closest to us, who are therefore also those we offend the most (and with the least remorse!). Since I interact with some of you nearly as much as I interact with those physically closest to me, I would like to take this chance at the beginning of the Fast to say to each and all:

Forgive me for all the ways in which
I have undoubtedly grieved and offended you.

I. On the Great and Holy Fast:

• The Fasting Rule of the Orthodox Church

• The True Nature of Fasting, by Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia (from his introduction to the Lenten Triodion, pages 13-28).

• On Keeping a True Fast, a homily by the ever-memorable Archbishop Averky of Syracuse and Holy Trinity.

• St John Chrysostomos: Against Overeating.

• On Fasting (a sermon by St Basil the Great).

• The Madness of the Stomach (selections from the works of St Dorotheos of Gaza), from Ora et Labora.

• On the Observance of Lent (a letter attributed to St Scholastica), from Logismoi.

• Of Why Fasting Is Good (a selection from the works of St John Cassian), from Logismoi.

II. Biblical lessons and other spiritual reading:

• The Lenten Prophetologion, a wonderful resource that features the full text of the three daily Old Testament lessons (comprising almost the entirety of Genesis, Isaiah and Proverbs) which are appointed to be read at weekday Lenten services. It should be noted that this is a translation of the Church's text of these biblical books, which sets it apart from any other English text currently available. The translation is by Archimandrite Ephrem (Lash), who also has these readings available in HTML format on his website.

• The Great Canon of St Andrew of Crete, the Scripturally rich centerpiece of the Services during the First Week of Great Lent, and an unsurpassed example of how the Church reads the Bible.

• The Lenten Triodion, the book that contains the liturgical texts for the entire Lenten Season (up to an including Holy Week), in a partial translation by the Holy Myrrbearers Monastery (Otego, NY).

• The Synaxaria of the Lenten Triodion.

• Commentaries on the Gospel Lectionary for every Sunday of Great Lent, taken from the Explanation of New Testament by St Theophylact of Ohrid.

• A Lectionary for Reading St John Climacus' The Ladder of Divine Ascent during Lent, prepared by Fr James Baglien with the assistance of Fr David Straut. The Ladder is appointed to be read at Hours every weekday during Lent, and this eminently useful Lectionary is arranged accordingly. (Many thanks to Fr James for his kind permission to distribute this document, and for providing a PDF file of it.)

• Saint Ephrem the Syrian's Homilies on Fasting (partial translation), and some Ascetical and Other Writings Extant only in Greek. As Father Ephrem Lash reminds us in his introduction to the latter collection, the writings of St Ephrem are appointed to be read at Matins every weekday during Lent, and as such, "they should form [part of] the regular diet of non-biblical spiritual reading for Orthodox Christians."

"Let us joyfully begin the season of the Fast, preparing ourselves for spiritual combats; let us purify our souls and cleanse our flesh. Let us fast from every passion as we fast from foods, delighting in the virtues of the Spirit and persevering with love; that, rejoicing in spirit, we all may be counted worthy to see the most sacred Passion of Christ God and His holy Pascha." (Third sticheron from the Tridion at Forgiveness Vespers)

"Let us joyfully begin the most sacred abstinence, shining with the bright radiance of the holy commandments of Christ our God, with the brightness of love and the splendor of prayer, with the purity of holiness and the strength of good courage. And so, clothed in light, let us hasten to the holy Resurrection on the third day, which irradiates immortality upon the world." (Third sessional hymn at Matins, Clean Monday)


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¹A mosaic from the Church of the Savior in Chora (now a museum), in the western district of Constantinople. The inscription reads, Ἰησοῦς Χριστός, ἡ χώρα τῶν ζώντων (cfr. Psalm 114:9, LXX).

Reading Scripture and Holy Love (Or, Cleary I Understand Nothing at All)

Roger Pearse, that veritable zealot of Christian antiquity and free access to information, has commissioned the translation of several letters of our venerable father, St Isidore of Pelusium, whose feast we celebrated last Tuesday, February 4/17. (Our good friend Aaron Taylor, as is his wont, produced a marvellous post on St Isidore for his feast.) Mr Pearse, of tertullian.org fame, has characteristically decided to freely share the commissioned translations by posting them in his blog. The latest installment contains a letter whose content is undoubtedly relevant for all those who undertake the reading of the Scriptures in faith, and particularly for those of us who wish to involve ourselves in the task of academic biblical studies in various ways and to various degrees. St Isidore writes:

27. (1.27) TO THE PALACE EUNUCH PHARISMANIUS.

I understand that it is said that you are interested in the divine books and that you make an appropriate use of their testimonies in every circumstance, but that you are a covetous man, furiously grabbing for yourself from the lives of others. I am extremely astonished that this assiduous reading has not blessed you with the divine love, a love which should have modified your former behaviour, something which not only prevents us from desiring the goods of others, but further prescribed us to distribute our own goods. So, when you read, understand, or, if you do not understand, read!

Which is to say that, even if I have the ability to quote the Scriptures right and left without ever doing violence to their context and with a keen awareness of their historical meaning, but have no love, I am nothing (cf., of course, I Corinthians 13, and also our friend James McGrath's 1 Corinthians 13 paraphrased for academics).

The way to recapturing the wonder is the way of holy love. After all, as we have seen, some things are better understood by means of practice, rather than by words alone.

Felix Culpa on the the OSB, Pars Quarta

A short few days after my evocative mention of the much-missed author of the best "Orthodox blog" in existence, the estimable Felix Culpa, we have gladly witnessed his return to the blogosphere (and with a vengeance—witness his seven posts in a short two days!). In his most recent post, he has taken up again his serial review of the lamentable Orthodox Study Bible, this time focusing on its shoddy treatment of Genesis 49:10, which is regarded as one of the pivotal Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament by both the Fathers and the Liturgy. As always, his post makes for required reading.

For my part, I expect to celebrate the return of Felix Culpa to the blogosphere by posting in the near future my long overdue treatment of the OSB's fallacious (mis)translation of λειτουργέω and λειτουργία, which I introduced in an earlier post.

Saturday à Machen: On Miracles

In the last Saturday à Machen, we had the opportunity to consider Machen's argument for the miraculous occurrences of the New Testament. But in order to arrive there, he had previously addressed the idea of the "supernatutural" and the character of miracles, in that order. Since we started at the end, so to speak, let us then pursue Machen's argument backward, moving from the particular to the general.

"[I]t has often been said that all events are works of creation. On this view, it is only a concession to popular phraseology to say that one body is attracted toward another in accordance with a law of gravitation; what really ought to be said is that when two bodies are in proximity under certain conditions they come together. Certain phenomena in nature, on this view, are always followed by certain other phenomena, and it is really only this regularity of sequence which is indicated by the assertion that the former phenomena 'cause' the latter; the only real cause is in all cases God. On the basis of this view, there can be no distinction between events wrought by the immediate power of God and those that are not; for on this view all events are so wrought. Against such a view, those who accept our definition of miracle will naturally accept the commonsense notion of cause. God is always the first cause, but there are truly second causes; and they are the means which God uses, in the ordinary course of the world, for the accomplishment of His ends. It is the exclusion of such second causes which makes an event a miracle.

"It is sometimes said that the actuality of miracles would destroy the basis of science. Science, it is said, is founded upon the regularity of sequences; it assumes that if certain conditions within the course of nature are given, certain other conditions will always follow. But if there is to be any intrusion of events which by their very definition are independent of all previous conditions, then, it is said, the regularity of nature upon which science bases itself is broken up. Miracle, in other words, seems to introduce an element of arbitrariness and unaccountability into the course of the world.

"The objection ignores what is really fundamental the Christian conception of miracle. According to the Christian conception, a miracle is wrought by the immediate power of God. It is not wrought by an arbitrary and fantastic despot, but by the very God to whom the regularity of nature itself is due—by the God, moreover, whose character is known through the Bible. Such a God, we may be sure, will not do despite to the reason that He has given to His creatures; His interposition will introduce no disorder into the world that He has made. There is nothing arbitrary about a miracle, according to the Christian conception. It is not an uncaused event, but an event that is caused by the very source of all the order that is in the world. It is dependent altogether upon the least arbitrary and the most firmly fixed of all the things that are—namely upon the character of God.

"The possibility of miracle, then, is indissolubly joined with 'theism.' Once admit the existence of a personal God, Maker and Ruler of the world, and no limits, temporal or otherwise, can be set to the creative power of such a God. Admit that God once created the world, and you cannot deny that He might engage in creation again."

(J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism [1923; reprint, Grand Rapids:Eerdmans, 1999], pages 101-102)

A Good Deal on Books that Calls for Immediate Action

Have you a copy of...

...G. E. Ladd's A Theology of the New Testament?
...Richard Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses?
...the outstanding Dictionary of Biblical Imagery?

No? Well, it is your lucky day!

Our friend Mike Aubrey is selling his copies of these enormously important volumes for a mere pittance. Read all the details here. Harrison's massive Introduction to the Old Testament is already gone (thanks a LOT, Nick Norelli!), as is Morris' classic study on The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross. Act in your library's interest before the rest of the books are sold!

UPDATE I: Mike has added Ridderbos' Paul: An Outline of His Theology and The Gospel to the Nations: Perspectives on Paul's Mission, a greatly stimulating Festschrift for P. T. O'Brien that includes an article by the infallible Moisés Silva. Regarding Ridderbos, simply allow me to say that anyone in any way interested in the interpretation of St Paul's epistles, no matter how minimal their involvement in that endeavor, can afford to be without this book. I plead with you: someone, please give at least Ridderbos' exquisite volume a good and loving home!

UPDATE II: All the books have now been sold.

And the Winner Is...

...Peter Lopez of Beauty of the Bible! Peter didn't get three entries for announcing the giveaway in two different blogs, as he suggested, but his eagerness must not have tempted the wrath of the whatever from high atop the thing, for in the end his name was clearly written on the winning ballot. (Sorry, no dangling chads here, folks.) So, congratulations to Peter! I will be mailing the book out to him shortly, though I might punish him by delaying all shipping activities a day or two on account of his grievous misspelling of my last name. ;-)

Pre-Revolutionary Russian Orthodox Church Shows Militant Americanists How It's Done

In a recent comment, Peter Kirk mentioned that the Tolkovaya Bible, a remarkable Orthodox study edition of the Holy Scriptures produced in Russia on the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution, was reprinted by the Institute for Bible Translation as gift of the Nordic countries (Denmark, Norway, and the Faroe Islands) to the Russian people on the 1,000-year anniversary of Christianity in Russia (1988).

Upon hearing of this wonderful study edition, the indefatigable Kevin Edgecomb undertook an exhaustive (Google) search that turned up a website on which image files of the entire work are available and may be accessed for free. Further, PDFs of the New Testament and selected Old Testament books are available here. I was once shown, very briefly, a copy of this Bible dating from pre-Revolutionary times, but had filed the information somewhere in the far recesses of my memory. I am therefore very glad to be reminded of its existence, and simply delighted that the whole thing is available online for all to see.

Now, Peter and I seldom agree, but allow me to quote his comment on this particular as though it were my own: "Perhaps [....] Orthodox [in North America] should translate this into English rather than sending the Russians second rate resources in English."

OSB To Leave the US in Attempt To Impose Militant Americanist Hegemony on Traditionally Orthodox Lands

It has just come to my attention that the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church of America (usually styled "the Metropolia"), with the blessing of its First Hierarch, has recently shipped 276 copies of the lamentable Orthodox Study Bible to various theological seminaries in Russia and the Ukraine. According to the news release, officials at the Theological Academies of St Petersburg and Kiev are reportedly "excited [to have] this resource available to their faculty and students."

I predict that their honeymoon with this jarring volume will be short-lived. After all, as the much-missed Felix Culpa has demonstrated at length, the notes and articles in the first few pages of this book embarrassingly fail to teach correctly on the dogma of the Holy Trinity and the doctrine of Creation, rendering both unrecognizable and even directly contradicting the teaching of the Holy Fathers at various points. I nervously await news of the first Archimandrite to collapse after reading a reference to the Holy Trinity as "They."

More puzzling to me is the fact that part of the money raised for the "Bible for Russia" program should have been used to buy Bibles in the English language (and such expensive ones at that!). I suspect that either the Bible Society or one of the presses of the Moscow Patriarchate would have been able to produce many, many more Bibles in Russian if provided with the same amount of money that the Metropolia shelled out to Conciliar Press and/or Nelson (perhaps some $9660, if they received the usual discount).

In related news, Henry Neufeld (whose other review posts I mentioned earlier) has wrapped-up his posts on the OSB—at least for the moment.

Fasting, Christians, and Jews in the Late First Century

It is well known that Orthodox Christians customarily fast on Wednesdays and Fridays throughout the year. There are four exceptions to this each year, however, one which is the Week of the Publican and the Pharisee: after hearing of the Pharisee who thanked God because he fasted twice a week, we take a break from our own fasting, lest we fall into a similar temptation.

The discovery of the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (usually styled the "Didache") by Metropolitan Philotheos of Nicomedia in 1873 not only corroborated the exceeding great antiquity of the Christian practice of fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays (tracing it back at least to the early sub-Apostolic age, if not earlier), but interestingly also set it in the context of the struggle between the emerging "normative Judaism" and "normative Christianity"¹. Consider this portion of the text:

Αἱ δὲ νηστεῖαι ὑμῶν μὴ ἔστωσαν μετὰ τῶν ὑποκριτῶν· νηστεύουσι γὰρ δευτέρα σαββάτων καὶ πέμτῃ· ὑμεῖς δὲ νηστεύσατε τετράδα καὶ παρασκευήν. (8.1)

But do not let your fasts coincide with those of the hypocrites: since they fast on Mondays and Thursdays, you must then fast on Wednesdays and Fridays. (8.1)

The term ὑποκριταί (hypocrites) is evidently borrowed from Jesus' rhetoric against the Pharisees and his other opponents in the Gospels, and it seems to be directed to the representatives of "normative Judaism" contemporary to the author of the Didache. The mention of Mondays and Thursdays help us make this probable identification, for as Shmuel Safrai has noted,

"Mondays and Thursdays, which were synagogue days, when country-folk came to town and the courts sat and the Torah was read, were the favoured days for public and private fasts. People would assemble for prayer, mention the reason for the fast, as follows from a baraita in the Babylonian Talmud. Most texts which mention fasting on Mondays and Thursdays are later than 70 C. E. though some are definitely earlier. Epiphanius says that these were the days of the Pharisees' fasts in Jesus' time, and the Didache warns against fasting 'along with the hypocrites' (the Pharisees) on these days, urging for Wednesday and Friday instead. The Pharisee in Luke who boasted of his twice-weekly fasting must have meant Mondays and Thursdays. But the custom was confined to certain circles among the Pharisees and their disciples"².

One further comment about the word ὑποκριτής itself: Moisés Silva has noted that, like its English cognate, it "indicates inconsistency between what one says and one does, but it would be difficult to prove that the Greek word carries the offensive overtones (such as dishonorable motives) that we normally associate with the English word. Paul describes the behavior of Peter and other Jews in Antioch as hypokrisis, but it is unlikely that he was thereby impugning their motives"³. This may be the case in the New Testament, of course, but as we all know, the word eventually became a term of abuse in later Christian discourse. It would be particularly interesting, then, to examine at which stage in the history of the semantic change of the word do we find its use in the Didache 8.1. My own sense is that by this point the word has at least become a technical designation for the "normative Jewish" opponents of "normative Christianity," and therefore is already a step beyond its New Testament use.


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Notes:

¹ It should be noted, of course, that both of these designations are problematic; however, properly qualified, they are eminently useful as descriptors of the dominant traditions that arose from the tensions of the first century. For the important qualifications that make the use of such terminology possible, see Arlan J. Hultgren, The Rise of Normative Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1988). For the seminal (and often criticized) work that introduced the term "normative Judaism," see George Foot Moore, Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era: The Age of the Tannaim, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1927-30).

² Shmuel Safrai, "Religion in Everyday Life," in S. Safrai et al. (eds.), The Jewish People in the First Century: Historical Geography, Political History, Social, Cultural and Religious Life and Institutions, vol. 2 (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1976), page 816.

³ Moisés Silva, "The Place of Historical Reconstruction in New Testament Criticism," in D. A. Carson and John D. Woobridge (eds.), Hermeneutics, Authority, and Canon (1986; reprint, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995), pages 115-116.

Edgecomb on the "Historical Pharisees"

Our good friend Kevin Edgecomb, in a welcome burst of autokeraphonia (his delightful term), comments:

"Last summer I worked up a series of posts (Notes on Pharisees; The Gospels on the Pharisees, Parts I, II, III, IV, V, and VI) investigating the treatment of the Pharisees and Sadducees in the Gospels, inspired by the Jacob Neusner and Bruce Chilton-edited In Quest of the Historical Pharisees (Baylor University Press, 2007). The book is required reading along with Saldarini's. They are the two most recent, most in-depth treatments on what is known about these complex groups."

Please do yourselves the favor to read Kevin's characteristically excellent posts on the subject. Regarding the book In Quest of the Historical Pharisees, I will regrettably have to let Kevin's recommendation stand without further observations. This is because its publishers, in spite of my warm hospitality, apparently didn't think The Voice of Stefan was good enough for them to send along the review copy I requested. As a result of this, then, I am unable to comment.

On the Use of the LXX (in Honor of International Septuagint Day)

Last year I noted with deep regret that I had come to find out too late about the IOSCS's International Septuagint Day, observed each year on February 8, and that therefore I was unable to write anything of substance in time for the festivities. (For the reason why February 8 was chosen, see my earlier post.) I had intended to produce an adequate treatment of a Septugintal question for this year, but in spite of my best intentions, the day passed me by until I saw Doug Chaplin's post, again too late to write anything worthwile on the subject. I was very pleased, then, to happen this morning upon the following bit by the great Frederick W. Danker on the use of the LXX as an aid to NT exegesis, in which he uses the Gospels' descriptions of Jesus' opposition to the Pharisees as a test case, and which I'm pleased to now share with you:

"The LXX offers exegetical help [....] in putting into proper focus the Pharisees' problem in Luke 18:9-14. Psalm 34:14 (35:13 MT) notes that the purpose of fasting is to assist in humbling the soul and stimulating appropriate prayer. In the prayer that "turns back into the bosom"—the phrase is obscure—we may see a parallel to the utterance of the publican whose words, coming as they did from a head bowed in humility, fell, as it were, into his bosom.

"Hatch and Redpath alert to seven ocurrences of the word πίπτειν within the space of five verses in Ezekiel 13. This passage in its context is the best commentary on Matt. 7:24-27. Some in the upper spiritual echelons in Israel misusued good intentions in Pharisaism for purposes of moral whitewashing. They sought refuge in their interpretation and hedging of the Torah. But the fortress was to collapse. Jesus' reiterated 'You have heard, but I say unto you' gains significance."

(Frederick W. Danker, Multipurpose Tools for Bible Study, 4th ed. [Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003], page 86.)

There you have it: Septuagintal, and even relevant to this week's topic. Happy (belated) International Septuagint Day to all! Also, for a couple of great posts celebrating the LXX on its day, see Tyler Williams' Reasons to Study the Septuagint and David Miller's Telescoped Scripture Citation in Acts 7:6-7. Enjoy!