Andy Naselli

Thoughts on Theology

Exegesis

Osborne on Bible Study

by

“The big problem with Bible study today is that we think it should be easier than other things we do. We study recipes for quality meals, how-to books for all kinds of things—carpentry, plumbing, automobile maintenance and so on—and read vociferously for our hobbies. Why do we think the Bible is the only subject we should not have to study?! Let me challenge you—make the Bible your hobby. At one level I do not like the analogy; the Bible must be so much more than a hobby! But at another level, what if we spent as much time and money on Bible study as we do our hobbies? What if we took the same amount we spend on golf clubs and courses or on skiing equipment and skiing trips, and put it into Bible study? Yes, encyclopedias, commentaries and other reference materials are expensive. But so is everything we do. The question is about priorities: what is important enough for our time and money? I want to encourage you to get and use the tools that enable us to bridge the gap back to Bible times and authorial intention.”

–Grant R. Osborne, The Hermeneutical Spiral: A Comprehensive Introduction to Biblical Interpretation (2d ed.; Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2006), 25.

“One Night with the King”

by

Last weekend Jenni and I checked out from the library the DVD One Night with the King, a dramatization of the book of Esther. It was a disappointment.

1. About

2. Brief analysis: The film is deeply disappointing in both content and form.

  • Content: Jenni and I have grown up hearing and reading the book of Esther, and the biblical plot is fresh on our minds because we worked through the book of Esther in one sitting both the night before and the morning after watching the film. I am just stunned by reviews that claim that the film’s plot is faithful to the biblical plot. The film’s plot mutilates the narrative that God inspired. It would take a long essay to substantiate this, and I have no desire to take the time to do that. Suffice it to say, most of the key points in the film change significant details in the biblical narrative with both addition and subtraction.
  • Form: The film made us laugh—but for the wrong reasons. We laughed because many of the characters and lines are so corny. The film is light and comical with slapstick humor similar to The Princess Bride (but not nearly as funny!). Though not as outrageous as Veggie Tales, the form of the film does not fit the weightiness and gravity of the biblical narrative. Esther, for example, behaves like a flighty, immature teenage girl.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I’d rank the film at 1 or 2. It’s really that bad. I would go a bit farther than Phil Gons, who cautiously recommends watching the film. If you haven’t seen it, my advice is simple: don’t waste your time on it. Read the book of Esther instead. (And if you’re looking for a Bible film to watch, my top recommendation is The Gospel of John.) Films that take dramatic license with biblical narratives almost inevitably compromise the message of the text. Narrative is a literary genre that a film cannot perfectly reproduce. The problem with One Night with the King is not that it fails to reproduce the biblical narrative (that would be an unfair standard), but that it twists and distorts both its content and form.

3. Learning from the story of Esther

In 2002, I prepared a sermon on Esther entitled “Trusting God’s Silent Providence.” I’d no doubt tweak it if I preached it today, but my outline (which reflects Layton Talbert’s Not by Chance—see below) highlights many details in the biblical narrative that the film alters.

  • God’s silent providence directs man’s wrath.
    • It directed King Ahasuerus’ wrath (because of proud embarrassment) against Queen Vashti (1:12; 2:1).
    • It directed Bigthan’s and Teresh’s wrath (because of political hatred) against King Ahasuerus (2:21).
    • It directed Haman’s wrath (because of offended arrogance and racism) against Mordecai (3:5; 5:9).
    • It directed King Ahasuerus’ wrath (because of a mistaken impression) against Haman (7:7, 10).
  • God’s silent providence includes “chance.”
    • It included King Ahasuerus’ call for Queen Vashti and her refusal (1:10-12).
    • It included Esther’s replacement of Vashti as queen (1-2).
    • It included Mordecai’s uncovering of the assassination plot against King Ahasuerus (2:21-23).
    • It included Haman’s unexplained promotion (3:1).
    • It included the lot (“pur” in Hebrew) that Haman cast to determine when to destroy the Jews (3:7).
    • It included Esther’s hesitation to petition King Ahasuerus at the first banquet (5:6-8).
    • It included King Ahasuerus’ inability to sleep and the reading of Mordecai’s unrewarded deed (6:1-3).
    • It included the timing of Haman’s appearance at King Ahasuerus’ court when the king desired to reward Mordecai and Haman desired to murder him (6:4).
    • It included the reversal of what seemed to be certain destruction for the Jews (8-9).

4. Some recommended reading on Esther and/or the narrative genre

(If you’d like to share comments about One Night with the King, I’d recommend doing so here.)

Blomberg MP3s on NT Introduction

by

BiblicalTraining.org is now offering an “Introduction to the New Testament” course on MP3 by Craig Blomberg (Theopedia | Wikipedia). The first half, Gospels and Acts, is currently available in some thirty-five MP3s (available for free downloads). Blomberg, author of a number of books and articles on the Gospels, has recently penned From Pentecost to Patmos: An Introduction to Acts Through Revelation (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2006).

"The Gospel of John" Film

by

gospelofjohn.jpgThis weekend my wife and I watched The Gospel of John film on DVD again, and I’m glad we did. I think we’ll make this an Easter weekend tradition. We watched this film for the first time in January 2006 after Phil Gons tipped me off to it, and we enjoy it so much that we’ve watched it about ten times.

About The Gospel of John film:

  • It is a three-hour presentation of the Gospel of John in the Bible. (The 2-DVD set also comes with an abridged two-hour version, but I much prefer the three-hour version.)
  • It was produced by Visual Bible International, Inc.
  • It was released in some movie theaters in fall 2003.
  • More details and links are available at Wikipedia. See also the Plugged In review.
  • It included Bruce Waltke on its board. He is one of the scholars featured in the interviews in a supplemental DVD about the movie (included in the 2-DVD set).

The Gospel of John is the best Bible film that I’ve ever seen. I enthusiastically recommend it for several reasons:

  1. The film has an inspired script. The script is verbatim from the Good News Translation and it follows it unwaveringly. (This is not among my most preferred translations, but I agree with what the KJV translators wrote in the preface to the KJV: “the very meanest [i.e., poorest] translation of the Bible in English . . . containeth the word of God, nay, is the word of God.”) Except for occasionally excluding some narrative discourse indicators like “he said” or “she said,” the film script does not add or remove a single word, nor does it skip around or rearrange the material. It takes a little over two hours to read the Gospel of John straight through, so the other hour in this three-hour film is due to dramatic factors like pauses and setting the scene. Every other Bible film that I’ve seen irritates me in this regard by rearranging events, adding dialogue that is not in the text, and emphasizing themes that are not proportional to those that the text emphasizes (Cf. my review of One Night with the King.) The passion scenes, for example, include relatively little violence, which is in sharp contrast to Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ.
  2. The film is classy. The actors, film angles, picture clarity, and soundtrack are first-class. It is evident that professionals, not amateurs, produced this.
  3. The film is tasteful and modest, not offensive or flashy.
  4. The film is creative and thought-provoking. The interpretive ways it portrays the scenes and dialogue is mind-stimulating. (This is not to say that I agree with every last detail of the film.) One creative feature is the use of black-and-white flashbacks during narratives that reference previous events in the book.
  5. The film is instructional and edifying. A film cannot replace the written word, and it can even be detrimental. This film is valuable, however, because it makes you think more about the text in its historical context. (Aside: When we watch this DVD, we often turn on the closed captioning feature.) The film has provoked me to reread and re-listen to the text of the Gospel of John and check out commentaries (like this one, my favorite) on various passages. For example:
    • Every time my wife and I have watched the film, we have been struck with how arrogant Jesus’ statements must have sounded to other people. It is easy to read the Gospel of John today and forget about the context in which Jesus uttered his statements. Seeing someone speak those same words reminds us that a human being claimed to be Yahweh. Staggering.
    • Jesus’ healing of the man born blind is vivid (John 9).
    • Perhaps the most moving part of the film is when Thomas sees the risen Lord and declares, “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28). It brings tears to my eyes every time I see it.
  6. The film is reverent. I dislike paintings of “God” because of their historical association with veneration and because they don’t help me worship God (not to mention how they relate to the second commandment). While watching this film, it has never crossed my mind that the actors were actually the real Gospel characters; I know that because I’ve never felt like worshiping the person acting out Jesus! But the film has compelled me to worship Jesus for His perfect obedience in life and death.
  7. The film is affordable and accessible. (This reason isolated from the others is weightless!)

Other reviews:

  1. Ben Witherington, “The Gospel of John” (with other reviews after Witherington’s). Witherington later noted this sad news on his blog: “The makers of the wonderful verbatim version of the Gospel of John which had a terrific cast, after intending to also film the Gospel of Mark are bankrupt. They had worked through three scripts and planned to film, but the Gospel of John did not do well enough either in the theaters or on DVD.”
  2. Ted Baehr, “The Best Retelling of the Greatest Story Ever Told: The Gospel of John”
  3. S. T. Karnick, “The Word, According to John: A Gospel on the Silver Screen”

Updates:

  1. Randy Alcorn, “The Gospel of John DVD“
  2. “The Gospel of John, the Film” blog
  3. Justin Taylor highlights another film on the Gospel of John that uses the NIV (also available via Amazon Prime): The Gospel of John.

john

 

Decker’s Summary of Porter

by

Last week I finished reading the most challenging Greek monograph I’ve ever worked through:

Earlier this week I was very thankful to discover this:

  • Rodney Decker. “The Poor Man’s Porter.” This is a thirty-page “condensation and summarization” of Porter’s seminal work. I wish that I had read Decker before reading Porter! So if you are planning to work through Porter’s volume, you may be better off by reading Decker first.

For a relatively recent survey of verbal aspect theory (in language much more understandable than Porter!), see this:

Related: Andrew David Naselli, “A Brief Introduction to Verbal Aspect in New Testament Greek,” Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal 12 (2007): 17–28.

“Although” or “Because”?

by

What is the use of the adverbial participle ὑπάρχων in Philippians 2:6?
1. concessive: “although”?
2. causal: “because”?
3. something else?

  • GNT ὃς ἐν μορφῇ θεοῦ ὑπάρχων οὐχ ἁρπαγμὸν ἡγήσατο τὸ εἶναι ἴσα θεῷ,
  • NASB who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, [cf. ESV, NET, NRS, NLT, NAB]
  • NIV Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, [cf. Tyndale, Geneva Bible, KJV, NKJV, HCSB]

It appears that all of the major English translations render ὑπάρχων either (1) concessively or (2) nebulously or generically (e.g., “being” or “existing”). I haven’t found a single translation that renders it causally. Yet I’m becoming more convinced that a causal interpretation is the most likely. This evening I read a paragraph that reinforces this view (D. A. Carson, Basics for Believers: An Exposition of Philippians [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996], 44-45):

  • [T]he opening expression, both in Greek and in English, is slightly ambiguous. The phrase “being in very nature God” could be understood in one of two ways. It could be understood concessively: although he was in very nature God, he took the form of a servant. Or it could be understood causally: because he was in very nature God, he took the form of a servant. On the whole, the latter better suits the context. The eternal Son did not think of his status as God as something that gave him the opportunity to get and get and get. Instead, his very status as God meant he had nothing to prove, nothing to achieve. And precisely because he is one with God, one with this kind of God, he “made himself nothing” and gave and gave and gave.