The Bible As Fiction (?)

I'm currently taking a class on Ecclesiastes at Western. The teachers are my Hebrew teacher and the pastor from my church. The class is split in two... during the first hour my Hebrew professor walks us through the Hebrew exegesis, and in the second hour my pastor talks about how to present these things to your congregation.

One of the interesting things that we talked about this week is that Ecclesiastes may not have been written by Solomon. It seems reasonably clear that there is a "frame narrator" (i.e. someone who wrote the first and last chunks of the book, which refer to the main voice of the book in the third person). There are a wide variety of opinions on this question, and there are respected evangelical voices on both the pro- and anti-Solomon authorship question.

My professor thinks it was probably Solomon, but he said that the Hebrew style and vocabulary is a good argument for it being written later. He thinks that maybe it was edited at a later day to make the language more accessible to a later audience. He admits that this is a dangerous assertion.

What interests me is that *if* Solomon is not the author and some later wisdom author wrote Ecclesiastes, then what we have here is a work of fiction. I don't think this impacts its canonicity or its truth. I believe that some fictional accounts have more truth in them than historical accounts. It is interesting to consider, though. If the genre of fiction is something that God chose to use in the scriptures (and I think there may be other places we could argue that this is the case) then it introduces an interesting point into questions about the role of fiction and story in spiritual instruction. Of course, Jesus told parables which could easily fit the definition of fiction (although some have argued that they were his actual life experiences), but they are short, quick little stories. Ecclesiastes is on another scale entirely.

Tremper Longman III has an interesting discussion of the "genre" of Ecclesiastes in his commentary (required for our class) in which he compares Ecclesiastes with ancient Akkadian "ficitonal autobiographies", meaning biographies in first person written about famous people by someone other than those famous people. It appears to fit pretty well.

So, anyway, I'm mulling all this over today. I know this wasn't a fully detailed explanation of all the reasoning behind why Solomon may not be the author of Ecclesiastes, but what I'm more interested in for now is this question... did God use fiction at all in the scriptures? What do you think?

The Grave Robber

Studying Hebrew has really brought a lot of strange things to light for me.

One of these is the grave, or Sheol. I've thought about this a lot today, because it's Easter, the traditional celebration of Messiah's victory over death and the grave, Sheol.

In my mind, Sheol has always had the connotation of a sort of grey, dusty land. Everything is one color and the spirits wander about somewhat dispassionately. But while translating Jonah this semester I learned that's a very different concept than what ancient semitic peoples would have thought of when they talked about the grave.

After Jonah has been swallowed by the fish, he says in his prayer (2:3), "I cried in my distress to the Lord and he answered favorably. From the belly of Sheol I cried for help and you heard my cry."

Have you ever noticed the personification going on there? Sheol has a belly. It's always swallowing people and things. Sheol is Death and is described in ancient semitic myth as having, "a lip to the earth, a lip to the heavens... and a tongue to the stars." He has a constant hunger for the souls of men, and Death says, "My appetite is the appetite of lions in the waste... if it is in very truth my desire to consume 'clay' then in truth I must eat it by the handfuls."

Death and Sheol are terrifying, unstoppable forces before which we are only clay. There is no way to fight, no way to escape. They reach to the stars themselves and before them we have no choice but to fall into the maw of death.

And that is where messiah comes with his good news. He has been anointed to preach good news to the poor, he has been sent to bind up the brokenhearted. He has been sent to announce freedom and a release from darkness for the captives! To proclaim the time of God's favor toward us, to comfort us when we mourn, to provide for our grief and to give us crowns of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning and to clothe us in praise instead of despair.

He has taken Death's teeth. He has robbed the grave. He has destroyed terror and replaced it with his love.

"When my life felt weak, I remembered the Lord. My prayer, my God, went to your holy temple. Those who intently watch worthless vanities abandon their devotion. But I, with a voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will repay. Salvation comes from the Lord."

NOTE: If you're interested in the notes on Sheol or the quotes from Death, you should buy this book. And the text we've been using in my class to walk us through Jonah is this one.

Hebrew Midterm

93.25%!

Hip hip... Hooray!

כִּי מֶלֶךְ כָּל־הָאָרֶץ אֱלֹהִים זַמְּרוּ מַשְׂכִּיל׃

The Frightened Ship

I've finished my translation of Ruth from Hebrew to English and have learned a lot, and now I'm diving in to Jonah. I've already learned some interesting things. I thought I'd share a few here from time to time.

Numero uno, in Jonah 1:4 a literal translation would say something to the effect of, "And the Lord hurled a great wind at the sea, and there was a great storm on the sea and the ship thought it would be broken."

Did you see that little bit of weirdness at the end there? The ship is personified. The ship looks around at the winds and the waves and says, "Yikes! I am about to be destroyed!"

I like that. It's been completely washed out of any translation I've ever looked at. The author of my workbook (Chisholm) says that it's a dramatic point designed not only to show the severity of the storm, but also to drive home the fact that everyone and everything is reacting to God-- the wind, the ocean, the sailors, the captain and even the inanimate ship-- everyone and everything except Jonah, who is sleeping below deck.

I like to think that it's part of the comedy, too. One thing I can't get past as I read Jonah in Hebrew is that it's meant to be funny, at least in places. I think the thinking ship is part of the hilarity.