ETS Report Part 1

Posted Wednesday, November 23, 2005 by Charlie Trimm

Well, I have recently returned from the land of bald headness and I thought I would spread the good cheer by reporting on a few of the seesions. Some were good, some were all right, some were just not helpful. I'll list mainly the more helpful ones. Go up O baldhead, and read the reports!
David Howard - The Rhetoric of Lament

This was the first one I went to and was a particularly fine session. He examined the genre of lament and then did a detailed study of Psalm 88. This is the lament par excellance, because it is so gloomy. On the other hand, it is not a good lament because there is no hope whatsoever in the psalm. The psalmist never "comes around" to the right answer. He applied this to the church by commenting that it is all right to have times when we cannot say praises along with the psalmist.

Richard Patterson - Prophetic Satire as a vehicle for Ethical Instruction

Examined many, many examples of satire in the prophets, both obvious ones (Go to Bethel and sin!) and more subtle. He said he started the paper not thinking there was hardly any satire present in the OT, and ended with wondering how he had missed the huge amount of it over the years. He backed down from applying a use of satire for us today, saying that the prophets could use satire only because they were inspired. I think that there might be more use for satire today than he is willing to admit, even though it goes against our American sentiments of "playing nice."

Tracy J. McKenzie - Use of the Pentateuch in Hosea and its implications for Hermeneutics

A basic introduction to inner-biblical allusion, using Hosea 1-3 as a starting point. I think some of allusions are a bit strained, but overall it was good. He argues for Hosea being based on the Torah, which necessitates that the Torah be written and known.

Robert Chisholm - The Yahwistic Apology in Judges - 1 Samuel against the backdrop of Canaanite religion.

In my opinion, I think that this was the best paper I heard. Chisholm examines various events in Judges and 1 Samuel as intended by the author to be anti-Baal or other Canaanite god. There are obvious examples, such as the name of Gideon (Jerubbaal), or the havoc caused by the ark in Philistine territory, or Samson bringing down the house. But more subtle examples include the dew test with Gideon: Baal was the god of the weather, including the dew, so if YHWH controlled the dew, then he would really be stronger than Baal. Or the thunderstorms in 1 Samuel 7 under Samuel against the Philistines would be against a storm god. A third example is Hannah, who does not go to the fertility cult, but instead to YHWH, who answers her prayer.

Brian Keen - Missing Scripture?

I'm not what I was expecting with this one, but it certainly was not what I was expecting. He turns out to claim to be an evangelical Eastern Orthodox. I didn't know those existed. He argued for accepting the canons of the Eastern church. Not a very persuasive argument, but it was rather interesting. Very sparsely attended, though.

Janson Condren - Following Yahweh's Cloud: Semantic Ambiguity and the Literary Function of Numbers 9:15-23.

He examines the unusual case of having "the mouth of the LORD," a very common phrase, apply to a visual object, the cloud. Why does the author put these two together? He claims that it is a preliminary application step: just like the cloud (mouth of YHWH) led them through the desert, so now they should follow the mouth of YHWH (Torah).

Earl Waggoner - If I Should Die Before I wake: Baptists and the Question of Infant Salvation.

He presented two case studies of how Baptists handle infant salvation. One extreme stated that God elects all infants, and the other extreme stated infants did not become sinners until much later in life and hence would not be punished by hell if they died as infants. The presenter did not say his own personal view in his paper (although he presented arguments against both of these views), but during the Q & A time he and many of the audience seemed to be leaning towards a "I don't know" view that does not say absolutely that all infants are going to heaven.

J. Charles Halton - Gods, earrings, and a dead nurse: The theology of Genesis 35:1-8.

This last minute additional session discussed why the text says they "hid" the idols verses "burying" them. He said that the verb secondarily means bury, but this verb was used to polemically mock the idols, who are now hid and cannot be used. Then the mention of the burying of the nurse in verse 8, which no one can explain why it is added, is explained by saying that the author wanted the readers to understand that the hiding really was burying, so he adds another story about burying to make the earlier burying clear.

There was another two presentations that were the most provocative which I will talk about later.

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