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Insights from the 2017 ETS conference

20 Monday Nov 2017

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This past week I attended the 69th annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society in Providence, Rhode Island. This is the major academic conference which brings together evangelical scholars from a cross-section of disciplines relating to biblical studies, theology (systematic, biblical, & practical), church history, and philosophy. Recordings of all the sessions are available from Wordmp3, and the plenary lectures will be published in JETS. What follows is a summary of highlights from the sessions I attended.

David Rohl was a special invited guest of ETS, and he presented two lectures on Egyptian history and the Bible. Although Rohl is not a Christian, he has a high view of the historical reliability of the Bible. Rohl has shown that the picture of consecutive Egyptian dynasties that is often presented is much too oversimplified. Dynasties often overlapped; at times Egypt was divided in multiple parts, with four or even up to twelve kings reigning at the same time. The result is a far shorter Egyptian chronology—one which comports with the biblical timescale. Further, since Greek, Cypriot, and Hittite dates are dependent on Egyptian chronology, a compression of the conventional Egyptian chronology also results in a downward revision of the other chronologies. Reactions to Rohl’s chronological proposals usually include the adverb “strongly.” I strongly support Rohl’s adjustments to the conventional chronology as correct in view of the biblical chronology, although I do not necessarily agree with every particular in his scheme.

For those who accept the validity of the biblical chronology (cf. Judg 11:26; 1 Kgs 6:1), the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt is calculated as having occurred in 1446 or 1445 BC. According to the conventional chronology of ancient Egypt, this was during the reign of Thutmose III. However, the reigns of Thutmose III and his son Amenhotep II marked the pinnacle of Egyptian power and grandeur. There was no economic or political collapse in Egypt, as the Bible indicates was triggered by the ten plagues and the destruction of the Egyptian army (cf. Deut 11:4). Thus, it seems that the conventional chronology of Egypt does not line up with biblical history. Rohl identifies the Pharaoh of the exodus with Dudimose, who reigned near the end of the 13th dynasty. In support of this, Rohl cites Manetho (quoted by Josephus), who calls the Pharaoh of the exodus “Tutimaeus” (= Dudimose). The 13th dynasty ended with the invasion of the Hyksos, whom Rohl identifies with the biblical Amalekites (cf. Num 24:20). Rohl identifies the pre-Hyksos Asiatics who lived at Avaris as the Israelites. Rohl’s theory has much to commend itself, although he advocates the “short” Egyptian sojourn (215 years), in apparent contradiction of Exodus 12:40-41.

Rohl also presented considerable, and convincing, evidence against the traditional identification of Shoshenk I with the biblical “Shishak” who was king of Egypt near the end of Solomon’s reign (1 Kgs 11:40), and who successfully invaded Judah in the fifth year of Rehoboam (1 Kgs 14:25; 2 Chr 12:2-9). While Shoshenk I does record an invasion of the area around Judah, Aijalon is the only Judean city in his lengthy list of toponyms on the Bubastite Portal. His campaign annals indicate that he did not invade Judah, but rather campaigned heavily in the Jezreel Valley and in other areas around the borders of Samaria. Rohl identifies Shoshenk I as the unnamed “deliverer” of 2 Kings 13:5 who saved Israel from the Aramean oppression around 805 BC and allowed them to reoccupy sites which had been colonized by the Arameans. Rohl interprets Shoshenk I’s campaign as a campaign against the Arameans on behalf of Israel. Rohl identifies the biblical Shishak with the great Egyptian Pharaoh Ramesses II. According to Rohl’s chronology, the reign of Ramesses II began around 979 BC, late in the period of David’s reign. Based on a Hittite cuneiform tablet which records a treaty made with Ramesses II, Rohl suggests that Ramesses II was known as “Shysha” in the ancient Near East, which becomes “Shishak” in the Bible. According to Rohl, a relief at Karnak temple depicts a battle which Ramesses II fought with Israelites/Judeans, in which the Israelites are depicted in chariots. Since the Israelites did not acquire chariots until the reign of David or Solomon, Rohl argues that this battle cannot predate the united monarchy period.

The First Baptist Church in America
With David Rohl
With Indeok Kim
With J. Stanley Lemons, historian of the First Baptist Church in America
With James Davis
At the Roger Williams National Memorial
Plaque in the First Baptist Church in America
Plaque in the First Baptist Church in America
The Rhode Island State House
Painting of Commodore Perry, a famous Rhode Islander
Episcopal Cathedral of St John

Also on the subject of archaeology, Randall Price presented a paper on his excavation of a new cave near the site of Qumran, in the general area where many of the caves with Dead Sea Scrolls were found. This cave is called Cave 53, but maybe will be called Cave 12 (12Q or Q12) as a result of discoveries made during its excavation. The entrances to this cave and parts of the interior of the cave were blocked by fallen stones prior to excavation. Many jars were found of the type used to store scrolls in the other caves, with linen to wrap scrolls and a string to tie around the scrolls. Most of the artifacts found were dated to the Second Temple period, including a couple of bronze tools used for cutting niches into the cave walls. A jar in the lower cave contained a leather scroll fragment—but unfortunately no writing is visible on the scroll, though it still needs to be analyzed using the most advanced techniques. Price’s excavations have convinced the Israel Antiquities Authority to excavate systematically all known caves and thoroughly re-excavate ones that have already been excavated in order to look for new scrolls. They are so convinced there are still new scrolls to be found that the Shrine of the Book museum in Israel is planning to build a new wing with the intention of housing new discoveries.

Stephen Meyer of the Discovery Institute and well-known philosopher J. P. Moreland presented on objections to theistic evolution. These scholars are part of the Intelligent Design (ID) movement. ID has been criticized by both secular evolutionists and biblical creationists for being an incomplete theory, as it simply asserts that life was designed without explaining who designed life, or when and how the universe came into existence. Many ID proponents are opposed to evolutionary biology but still accept the view of evolutionary geology and cosmology that the earth is billions of years old. While many in the ID movement are Christians, some are not. Nevertheless, ID proponents have advanced many arguments that are helpful to biblical creationists. The ID scholars who presented at ETS were contributors to the book Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique.

Stephen Meyer (author of Darwin’s Doubt) presented on scientific problems with biological evolution. The goal of his talk was to proclaim a liberation to theology and Bible professors, informing them that it is not necessary to accept evolution as a framework for understanding Scripture. Meyer said that there is no scientific consensus today on how evolutionary mechanisms work; evolution is a theory in crisis because it has “no theory of the generative,” according to evolutionary biologists themselves. Yet at the same time as evolutionary biologists (e.g., the Altenberg 16) are acknowledging serious problems with evolution, many theologians are pushing the church to accept theistic evolution as dogma. They are supported by highly public figures such as Richard Dawkins and science columnists and commentators in the media who strongly assert the validity of evolution for anti-Christian theological reasons; however, these television personalities and journalists present a very one-sided picture of the issue which does not acknowledge the issues being raised in current peer-reviewed scientific literature. Evolutionary biologists are increasingly recognizing problems with the explanatory power of natural selection and random mutations. Here are some of the dilemmas Meyer noted:

  1. If you want to build a new form of life, you need to have new code in DNA, which functions in a very similar manner to computer code. The problem is that if you start with a highly specific code, then randomly change the 0’s and 1’s, you will degrade the code and end up with a program that doesn’t work, rather than having a functional outcome. Since natural selection can only select what random mutations generate, if it is mathematically impossible for random mutations to produce the functional code in DNA even over a timescale of billions of years, then life lacks a mechanism to evolve.
  2. It is not just DNA that codes for the specific proteins needed for an organism to function. Recent discoveries have revealed that genes interact with each other in integrated circuits to produce proteins. If this “developmental gene regulatory network” is perturbed, it stops producing necessary proteins and the organism dies. Thus, evolutionary biologists are on the horns of a dilemma: a new developmental gene regulatory network is needed in order to produce new forms of life, but the network cannot be disturbed without the organism dying.
  3. In order for an organism with a new body plan to be produced, mutations must occur very early in the development of an organism, almost at conception (so that all the organism’s cells have the same genetic code). But new research by geneticists has found that mutations which occur early in the development of an organism are always deleterious, and cause the organism to die.
  4. Evolutionary biologists have traditionally focused on genetic mutations as the source of evolutionary change. But we now know that the development of some structures in the body are not controlled by DNA; scientists do not know at present what controls their development. Thus, DNA only provides the lowest-level assembly instructions; organisms have both genetic and epigenetic information which would both need to be reprogrammed for a new form of life to be generated.

J. P. Moreland argued that many of the questions addressed by evolution are primarily philosophical or theological questions, not scientific ones. Evolutionary science assumes a philosophical basis, which is often obviously faulty when analyzed from a philosophical point of view. One example is Stephen Hawking’s assertion that the universe could have originated from “nothing.” From a philosophical viewpoint, “nothing” means a total privation, whereas Stephen Hawking’s “nothing” included a “quantum vacuum.” Naturally, Hawking did not explain how the quantum vacuum came to exist.[1] One of the things which biological evolution seeks to describe is the origin of information. Yet when biologists are asked to describe what information is, they describe it as a non-physical entity—something which can exist in many different places at the same time. Thus, evolution attempts to explain the origin of a non-physical entity through a physical process, which is impossible. Some other philosophical questions which science cannot properly address include the origin of consciousness, free will, intrinsic value, and moral values.

Moreland noted that in spite of the fact that many theologians push the adoption of theistic evolution as a way to make Christianity acceptable, in fact studies have noted that theistic evolution has a negative effect on the Christian church and on people who are considering Christianity. People know in their gut that theistic evolution is a revisionist reading of the early chapters of Genesis, and this results in revisionist readings of other parts of Scripture, until the whole of biblical faith is undermined. The church needs to provide real answers to scientific questions; George Barna’s research showed that 1 in 6 people are leaving the church because it does not.

Moreland also addressed the question of whether it is rational to reject the theory of evolution when ninety-nine percent of biologists hold that it is true. He argued that (1) If you can show that the homogeneity of the majority is due to non-rational (sociological) factors, then their agreement does not lend intellectual support to their theory. In the case of evolution, there are institutional punishments for those who break with the standard scientific theory—it is a sociologically forced homogeneity. Also, Darwin was able to get God and theology out of science, which means that many scientists have strong religious motivations for supporting evolution. (2) If there is a minority of highly intellectually trained, well-credentialed “rebels” who do not accept the standard paradigm, then it is rational to deny the standard view—there is a rational alternative. This is also the case with regard to evolution, as there are many highly credentialed scientists in both the intelligent design and biblical creationist movements. Biblical creationists would add a third point: (3) If the belief of the majority is not based on the Bible, and is clearly in contradiction of the Bible, then it ought to be rejected.

Francis Gumerlock gave an interesting presentation on the development of the pretribulational rapture in medieval Christianity. I have heard the assertion many times by anti-dispensationalists that John Nelson Darby invented the idea of a pretribulational rapture in the nineteenth century, and that no one else in all of church history before him ever held to such an idea. Recent research by Gumerlock and others has challenged this historical reconstruction. Gumerlock published an article in 2002 in which he described a reference to the rapture in a fourteenth century sectarian text, The History of Brother Dolcino. In his presentation at ETS this year, Gumerlock showed how the description of believers being transferred to Paradise to be protected from the antichrist in Brother Dolcino appears to be a natural development of medieval thought. A common theme in medieval texts, based on biblical references, is that believers will flee to caves, deserts, and mountains to be protected from the antichrist. One text, the 14th century Apocalypse of Pseudo-Shenoute, describes the caves and deserts becoming an Edenic garden after believers flee there for protection from the antichrist. Another text, a 12th century Sermon on Antichrist, describes believers fleeing to the caves of a large river which flowed out of Paradise. Finally, various medieval versions of the Voyage of Saint Brendan describe how God will reveal the location of Paradise to His people when the antichrist comes, and how God will somehow bring His people to this Paradise. Thus, there is a progression from believers fleeing to a place which becomes Paradise, to believers fleeing to a place very close to Paradise, to believers fleeing (or being translated) to Paradise itself. For further reading on references to the rapture and to pretribulationalism or dispensationalism before the nineteenth century, see Gumerlock’s 2013 article and William Watson’s book Dispensationalism before Darby.

Besides attending sessions, I met a lot of friends, both new and old. The Exhibit Hall is always a highlight, with opportunities to buy both hard copy and electronic resources at deep discounts, to interact with top representatives from publishing houses, and to peruse the latest releases. I escaped from the conference a couple of times and went sightseeing. Providence has some nice attractions near the convention center, including the Rhode Island State House, the Old State House, the Roger Williams National Memorial, and the First Baptist Church in America. A short drive away are Battleship Cove and the Victorian mansions of Newport. The featured image at the top of this post shows a motto on the exterior of the Rhode Island State House, which comes from the colony’s Royal Charter of 1663. Hope to see everyone at next year’s ETS meeting in Denver!


[1] Because nothing comes from nothing, yet things do exist, it is obvious that something has always existed. It is further obvious that (1) Whatever has always existed must have the power to self-exist and self-sustain. (2) Whatever has always existed is non-physical, since everything that is physical exists in time, and everything which exists in time must have a beginning point. (3) The non-physical (spiritual) entity which has always existed has the power to create the physical world. (4) The Creator of the physical world also created the nonmaterial properties associated with it, such as information, design, moral values, and consciousness. (5) Only an omniscient being could have created the incredible complexity of the physical universe and biological life, with the whole system working properly. (6) Only an omnipotent being could have brought the universe and life into existence. (7) The things we observe in the physical world and especially in human history point specifically to the triune God who is revealed in the Bible as the eternal, all-knowing, all-powerful, yet personal and loving, Creator.

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Insights from Bible scholars at the 2016 ETS conference

20 Sunday Nov 2016

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This past week was the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society in San Antonio, Texas. About 2,500 evangelical scholars from around the world attended this year’s conference. The conference is a time for those who don’t see each other for the rest of the year to interact and share their research. In this post, I will summarize some insights from presentations I attended.

The theme of this year’s conference was the trinity. One of the more interesting presentations on that topic was given by Dr. Imad Shehadeh, the president of Jordan Evangelical Theological Seminary. Shehadeh argued that Islam did us a great favor by showing us what a system of theology would look like without the trinity. The main difficulty in such a theological system is that a unitarian “God” can have no essential relational or moral attributes. A one-person God could not have been loving before creation, since there was no one to love. A one-person God could not have been good or just before creation, since there was no one to show goodness or justice toward. This is the great theological problem in Islam. Islamic theologians say that all of God’s attributes arise from his will, not from his nature. God is merciful because he decides to be, not because mercy is part of his nature. And no one knows his will. The central attribute of God in Islam is power/will, not holiness. All of his relational attributes, including love and mercy, are subsets of his power. The result is a capricious and arbitrary god whose will is absolute, and can override even any stated promise or law. Muslim theologians will admit that they cannot be certain who will be in paradise and who will be in eternal torment, since making any such declaration would be placing a restriction on the will of Allah. There is even a question of how language could exist before creation in a unitarian system, since language is a means of communication, and a unitarian God would have no one to communicate with. In summary, any belief that God is good, loving, kind, holy, and so forth necessitates a belief in the trinitarian God of the Bible, for only a trinitarian God could have moral and relational attributes within Himself, as part of His essential nature.

David Falk gave an interesting presentation on Abraham’s 318 “trained men” (חָנִיכִים‎, a hapax legomenon), whom he led out to battle against a coalition of kings (Gen 14:14). These men are said to have been Abraham’s household slaves. While it may seem unusual for an individual such as Abraham (Abram) to have his own in-house military force, in Abraham’s historical context it was not so unusual. As a nomadic herdsman who lived in a land which lacked a central government, Abraham was responsible for his own protection and justice system. Abraham had to provide martial arts training for his slaves for his protection and theirs (they were protecting their own families as well as their master’s). Falk’s presentation focused on evidence from ancient Egypt for a martial arts tradition (qm’). Many reliefs and paintings from Dynasty 5 to Dynasty 22 in Egypt depict forms of wrestling and sport-fighting. Some of these depictions look similar to jujitsu. Some include a referee. Tomb 215 in Beni Hasan portrays 212 different types of martial arts techniques, including some using sticks and knives. The portrayal of similar scenes and techniques over such a long period of time (ca. 1,500 years) shows that this was a martial arts tradition, and not a mere fad. Often it is clear from the way the combatants are portrayed that they are foreign slaves. Since most native Egyptians were low-skilled farmers, ironically it was often foreign slaves who were given training for highly skilled jobs. Abraham had in fact spent time in Egypt and had been given slaves by Pharaoh (Gen 12:16), so he could have received a cadre of slaves with martial arts training, or he could have had his own slaves trained in Egypt. Esau may have inherited this group of slaves military training, as he came to meet Jacob with a 400-man security force, which he evidently used to conquer Seir/Edom (Gen 33:1). A second question Falk addressed was whether 318 men would be sufficient to defeat an army led by four kings. While Falk acknowledged that the army led by these kings could have numbered 10,000 or more based on figures reported in contemporary documents, the army would have been depleted after a long campaign of conquest and some major battles. Falk also cited numerous examples from the Amarna letters in which kings requested relatively small numbers of troops from Egypt in order to turn the tide of warfare against an opposing city-state. Often the requests are for 200-400 men, and in several cases they are for less than 100 men. Falk noted that only 300 highly trained Spartan warriors stopped an entire Persian army numbering in the millions at the pass of Thermopylae in 480 BC. The simple fact that Abraham’s men were highly trained in a martial arts tradition would have made them capable of engaging a much larger force. Abraham also employed astute military strategy, launching a surprise attack in the dead of night from two directions (Gen 14:15). Abraham did not completely wipe out the opposing army or kill the opposing kings, but he did force them to leave their captives and booty behind and flee (Gen 14:16). All in all, Falk’s research puts what has been a largely obscure passage in an interesting light.

On Wednesday morning, Crossway hosted a free breakfast with John Piper in order to promote Piper’s book A Peculiar Glory: How the Christian Scriptures Reveal Their Complete Truthfulness. Piper argued that even a child can know for certain that the message of the Christian gospel is true because the Bible is self-authenticating and does not need any external proof of its validity. If the Bible is the Word of God, then the glory of God cannot but shine through its pages—similar to the way the glory of God is seen through the created universe (Ps 19:1). In fact, 2 Corinthians 4:4-6 teaches that we come to know the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ by perceiving the glory of God in our hearts as we hear the Word of God. The whole Bible authenticates itself by the shining of the glory of God in and through it. The glory of God is self-authenticating to all who genuinely perceive it. I purchased Piper’s book at the conference.

I attended a lunch meeting on Wednesday for scholars who believe in a literal six-day creation. One of the points of interest to come out of this meeting was that the identification of God as Creator is central to the biblical theology of who God is. When Jonah was asked which God he worshiped, he replied that he worships the God of heaven, who created the world (Jonah 1:9). When Paul was explaining God to the pagan philosophers in Athens, he identified Him as the Creator of the world and the Lord of heaven and earth (Acts 17:24).

Dan Wallace gave the presidential address at the banquet on Wednesday evening. He noted that while it is unknown who invented the codex (book), Christians were largely responsible for its popularization. In the first 500 years of the Christian era, 90 percent of Christian books were codices, whereas only 14 percent of non-Christian books were. Scrolls were too unwieldy to hold the large collections of texts in the Christian Bible in a single volume, so Christians used codices instead. Wallace noted three landmarks in the history of bookmaking: [1] the invention of the codex (1st century AD); [2] the invention of the moveable type printing press (1454), one year after Constantinople fell to the Muslims and scribes from the east brought their manuscripts to the west (moved a memorizing society to a reading society); [3] the advent of the digital age (moved a reading society to a reference society; we now read only snippets, not books). Wallace also noted in passing the interesting observation that Nikita Khrushchev, who succeeded Joseph Stalin as dictator of the Soviet Union, likely memorized all four Gospels as a child. At the end of his address, Wallace took aim at people who supposedly do not want the Evangelical Theological Society to include the left wing of evangelicalism. In reality, the ETS leadership has been making executive decisions which support the left wing of evangelicalism against the larger right wing (primarily Baptists), especially on the issue of women in Bible teaching and leadership roles. The most conservative members of the ETS have also been given progressively less prominent places at the conferences. This has led to some tension within the ETS in recent years. When leaders were elected at the business meeting on Thursday, the Southern Baptists made nominations from the floor, but none of their preferred candidates won.

At a lunch meeting sponsored by Tuktu Tours, Mark Wilson summarized an article he coauthored with Thomas Davis in the Pharos Journal of Theology. Acts 13:13 does not say why young John Mark left Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary journey and returned to his home in Jerusalem. Quite possibly Paul and Barnabas were originally intending to sail to Alexandria, and John Mark dropped out after they changed plans and sailed to Perga instead. Ships sailing from Paphos, on the southern coast of Cyprus, typically followed the prevailing winds south to Alexandria; if Paul had originally intended to sail north to Perga, he would have planned to sail from a port on the northern coast of Cyprus. Alexandria had a large Jewish community, and would have been a natural place to go on a missionary journey. Church tradition strongly connects Mark with the church in Alexandria, so he and Barnabas did likely go to Alexandria after parting ways with Paul in Acts 15:39-40. What made Paul change his plans was his providential encounter with the proconsul at Paphos, Sergius Paulus (Acts 13:6-12). Inscriptions discovered in Turkey show that Sergius Paulus had family connections in Antioch of Pisidia. Thus, he probably made a personal plea to Paul and Barnabas to go to Pisidian Antioch and share the gospel with his relatives, which they immediately did (Acts 13:14-50). John Mark was accustomed to living in a large urban center—he had spent his entire life in a mansion in Jerusalem (Acts 12:12)—and he did not feel comfortable traveling through the small towns and rural areas of central Turkey (Acts 15:38). Evidence from the New Testament and church history places Mark’s ministry in four of the largest urban centers in the Roman Empire: Jerusalem, Syrian Antioch, Alexandria, and Rome.

Bryant Wood of Associates for Biblical Research gave a presentation on the location of Bethel. It is often difficult to identify the location of biblical sites (aside from the most prominent ones) because, while the general area of the site may be known, there are usually remains of many ancient towns and villages in that area, with no ancient signposts giving their names. Bethel lies in the vicinity of the modern city of Ramallah in the West Bank. W. F. Albright, Anson Rainey, and Israel Finkelstein are notable proponents of the view that Bethel is to be identified with the Arab village of Beitin. This is currently the consensus view in standard archaeology texts. However, Bryant Wood and his late colleague David Livingstone identify Bethel with the nearby site of El-Bireh. One of their arguments for this identification is that El-Bireh fits with statements made by the fourth century historian Eusebius about the location of Bethel. Eusebius states that Bethel is 12 Roman miles from Jerusalem. Several Roman milestones (mile markers) have been found on the road which leads north from Jerusalem, although a number is only preserved on the marker for Mile 5. Using these milestones and our knowledge of the approximate length of a Roman mile, we know that El-Bireh lies 11.5 miles from Jerusalem, whereas Beitin lies 14 miles from Jerusalem. In addition, Eusebius stated that Gibeon lies 4 Roman miles west of Bethel. While El-Bireh is 4 Roman miles east of Gibeon, Beitin is 6 Roman miles east of Gibeon. Wood also argued that the archaeology of El-Bireh fits much better with Bethel than does the archaeology of Beitin. Bethel became a prominent city during the divided monarchy period in ancient Israel, after Jeroboam made it one of the two main centers of pagan Israelite worship (1 Kgs 12:28-29). He built a great high place of sacrifice in Bethel, complete with a golden calf and a large altar (1 Kgs 12:32-33). The other high place of sacrifice built by Jeroboam was located in Dan; this site has been well-excavated, and its high place is very impressive. The site of Beitin has been well-excavated over a period of decades, but what was found there does not match what one would expect for Bethel. No cultic objects (i.e., idolatrous figurines and other objects used for pagan worship) have been found at Beitin, in comparison to 89 cultic objects from Tel Dan. Even Albright acknowledged that there was no evidence of Jeroboam’s sanctuary at Beitin; and there were few remains from the Iron IIA period, when Bethel reached its greatest prominence. Beitin is a very unimpressive site in comparison to Tel Dan. Wood suggests that the site of Ras et-Tahuna in El-Bireh is the likely location of the high place of Jeroboam. This is a hill with a large platform which lies 12 Roman miles from Jerusalem. While it is unexcavated, much pottery from the Iron IIA period is visible on the surface, including a horse-head cultic figurine which Wood displayed in his presentation. El-Bireh is also an unexcavated site, but surveys have shown that it has many remains from Iron IIA. El-Bireh and Ras et-Tahuna are also more directly east of the site of Khirbet el-Maqatir (biblical Ai) than is Beitin, which fits with the geographical markers given in Genesis 12:8 and Joshua 7:2. While some scholars suggest that the Arabic “Beitin” preserves the ancient name of “Bethel,” Wood argued that it is closer to “Beth-aven” (Josh 7:2). While Wood’s theory is hard to prove in the absence of archaeological excavations at El-Bireh, he certainly was correct when he observed that many conclusions in the field of archaeology are not based on evidence, but rather on the opinions of eminent scholars.

The renowned scholar Edwin Yamauchi, who has studied twenty-two languages, declared that this conference would be his last. He noted that while we often associate worship with music, the Hebrew and Greek words translated “worship” in the Bible actually mean “to bow down,” “to prostrate oneself.” Yamauchi also noted that verses from the Quran are inscribed on the façade of the Dome of the Rock, but they have variations from the current accepted text of the Quran, which leads scholars to conclude that the text of the Quran was still not fixed by the time the Dome of the Rock was constructed (late 7th century). Yamauchi also noted that in New Testament times there were basically no independent farmers in Israel, only tenants for landowners. This is because the tithing requirement in the Mosaic Law was interpreted as essentially a tax on agricultural products, which meant (in the minds of the rabbis) that only farmers had to pay tithes, and profits made through other occupations were exempt. Jews therefore generally avoided the occupation of farming in the first century AD.

Scott Aniol gave a well-researched presentation on the famed hymnwriter Isaac Watts’ views on the trinity. Essentially, Watts always considered himself to be an orthodox trinitarian, and his hymns are replete with sound trinitarian theology. However, Watts walked into a theological minefield later in his career while trying to precisely define biblical trinitarianism against popular forms of unitarianism and Arianism. Some of the things which he wrote in a treatise published in 1724­–25 were controversial, and he retracted them in later works. He still held some idiosyncratic views, but explicitly affirmed the Athanasian Creed. Claims that Watts was unitarian are wholly untrue. In the end, however, Watts’ theological legacy is the theology expressed in his hymns, not the theology expressed in his books. Watts’ hymns have served the church well in teaching correctly about the triune nature of God.

Beyond all the presentations, the ETS meeting was a great opportunity to meet with old friends, as well as to make new ones. The weather in San Antonio was perfect. The conference was held by the beautiful Riverwalk, and the unforgettable Alamo was less than half a mile from the hotel. It is hard to think of a better venue for a conference in November. For those scholars who would like to brave the weather in Rhode Island for next year’s meeting, details should appear on the ETS website within a few months. Hope to see you there!

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Some insights from the 2015 ETS conference

27 Friday Nov 2015

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This past week I attended the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society in Atlanta, Georgia. This is the largest annual gathering of evangelical Christian Bible scholars in the world. Here is a summary of highlights from some of the presentations I attended.

Ben Montoya gave a presentation on the Southern Baptist scholar A. T. Robertson, who published in 1915 a massive reference grammar for New Testament Greek that is still in print and in use today. It is interesting that this famous Greek scholar lost a Greek competition when he was in college. Montoya was unable to find the name of the guy who beat Robertson in the contest, which I suppose shows that such contests are not the ultimate test of competence. Some other interesting points from Montoya’s presentation:

  • Robertson handwrote the manuscript for his grammar. When he was finished, the stack of paper measured from the floor to the height of his desk.
  • The Lutheran theologian Oscar Cullmann told of a meeting he had with Pope John XXIII (reigned 1958-1963), during which he noticed a copy of Robertson’s grammar next to the pope’s Greek New Testament. Cullman asked the pope why he was using an English language grammar. He replied, “It is the best one available.”
  • Montoya said one of the things that makes Robertson’s grammar different from more recent grammars is that Robertson viewed language as reality. Modern grammars view language as a portrayal of reality.
  • According to Montoya, Robertson’s greatest mistake was the anachronistic application of grammatical categories from Latin to Greek, since Robertson had learned Latin before learning Greek. An example Montoya gave was Robertson’s category of deponancy, where modern linguists would see a middle-only verb. This criticism is, of course, debatable.

My friend Rodger Young presented on discrepancies between Carbon-14 (14C) dates and dates derived by conventional archaeological methods from about 2200 BC to 1400 BC. He said that, at present, there is an unresolved conflict between these two systems of dating. One problem with the 14C dates is that the data used to calibrate them has been kept secret. (One does not simply feed a piece of wood into a machine and receive an objective date; the scientists must “calibrate” the machine by inputting dates for various concentrations of radiocarbon in a material.) Three major universities analyzed the 14C dates in question—one in the U. S., one in the U. K., and one in Germany. All three universities have refused to release the dendrochronological (tree ring) data that they used to calibrate the 14C dates. The University of Belfast released a limited amount of data after a three year lawsuit under the British Freedom of Information Act, but this data was insufficient to understand the radiocarbon calibration curves. Hence, archaeologists suspect there is some sort of problem with the German oak data used to calibrate the 14C dates, but so far lawsuits have been unsuccessful in obtaining this data. Young’s handout is posted on his website. I personally am deeply mistrustful of radioisotope dating in general, as well as of archaeological dates that are not rooted in a biblical foundation.

Todd Chipman of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary gave a presentation on the Greek perfect tense in Hebrews. There has been a revolution in the study of biblical Greek and biblical Hebrew in recent years, as the product of a battle between traditional grammatical analysis of language versus an analysis based on modern linguistic theories. Part of this battle involves the study of ancient Greek verb tenses, which traditionally were seen as primarily temporal in reference, but which linguistic approaches say have more to do with aspect than with time. Three different linguistic approaches to understanding New Testament Greek verb tenses have been propounded by leading scholars in recent decades. Stanley Porter’s work, which applies the theory of a leading linguist to the Greek of the New Testament, is the basis of the modern discussion. Porter argues that that Greek verb tenses do not have temporal reference, just stative (perfect), perfective (aorist), or imperfective (present). Buist Fanning’s work Verbal Aspect in New Testament Greek is not based on linguistic studies, but it presents a theory of verbal aspect that is similar in some ways to Porter’s yet also differs in certain respects. A third linguist, Constantine Campbell, argues that the Greek verb tenses of the NT only have perfective and imperfective aspects, with spatial values of greater importance than temporal values. Ironically, he views the perfect and pluperfect tenses as imperfective in aspect. In his presentation, Chipman analyzed examples of the use of perfect tense verbs in the contexts in the book of Hebrews in which present tense verbs were nearby, and tested the passages according to these three linguistic models. He found that, in every test passage, the models of Porter and Fanning made better sense of the context in Hebrews than Campbell’s model. Yet Chipman seemed to think that aspect is not as important in discussions of Greek verb tenses as Porter and Fanning make it out to be.

Phil Silvia presented, in association with Steve Collins, on the event which destroyed Tall el-Hammam. Tall el-Hammam is the site of a very large ancient city just to the northeast of the Dead Sea, on the plain opposite the Jordan River from Jericho. Silvia, Collins, and some other scholars believe that Tall el-Hammam is the site of the biblical city of Sodom. The evidence in support of this conclusion is impressive—there are major cities in the area which can be identified with Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, along with many smaller suburbs. In addition, there is strong biblical evidence for locating Sodom in the geographical area of Tall el-Hammam. According to Collins and Silvia, Tall el-Hammam and the surrounding cities were not destroyed in the usual manner; they appear to have been virtually incinerated, with everything above the level of the ground gone without a trace. In addition, there are high levels of salt in the layer of soil from the time of the destruction, which explains why the cities were not reoccupied for a very long period of time (cf. Gen 19:26). Silvia’s presentation focused on a piece of pottery and a rock from the area with a type of surface melting that scientific experts say could only have been produced through exposure to a temperature of 12,000° C for a few milliseconds. The one aspect of Collins’ and Silvia’s theory that I cannot agree with is the date they propose for the destruction of Sodom—1700 BC. From a biblical point of view, Sodom must have been destroyed around 2067 BC; however, Collins claims that the archaeological evidence points to the major destruction of Tall el-Hammam occurring around 1700 BC. But because the methods used by archaeologists to date ancient sites are often very tenuous (e.g., pieces of pottery), and they often disagree with biblical dates, I am skeptical of the grounds for Collins’ date for the destruction of Tall el-Hammam. On the whole, I favor identifying biblical Sodom with Tall el-Hammam on the basis of biblical statements regarding the geographical location of Sodom (Gen 13:3, 10-12); one can expect this theory to be subjected to further scholarly review in the coming years.

On Wednesday night, filmmaker Timothy Mahoney showed Patterns of Evidence: Exodus. This is a very professionally-produced documentary which searches for archaeological evidence of Israel’s exodus from Egypt in response to challenges from archaeologists who deny that the exodus event ever happened. This film shows that there is in fact abundant archaeological evidence for the biblical account of the Israelites journeying to Egypt, becoming a great nation there, being enslaved, and leaving in a dramatic exodus. However, this evidence is not recognized by scholars who are committed to interpreting archaeological data within the conventional chronological framework, since the evidence is not from the right time period. Nevertheless, the methods used to date these early archaeological periods are very tenuous and generally conflict with the Bible’s chronology. Thus, Mahoney argues (correctly) that the archaeological chronology should be compressed, resulting in the evidence for the Israelites living in Egypt lining up with the biblical chronology. I suggested to Mahoney that some of the specific arguments he makes regarding the identity of the Semitic population in and around Avaris could be objectively tested by obtaining samples of the DNA in the bones of those buried there, and using these samples to determine whether the Jews are their modern relatives.

My former professor Todd Beall presented a paper on principles of marriage from the book of Genesis. While Beall argued for a traditional view of marriage, an increasing number of evangelical writers are supporting contemporary, non-traditional views. Surely one reason for this is the widespread denial of the historicity of Genesis 2, in which God created Adam and Eve and ordained the marriage relationship between a man and a woman. In general, the abandonment of the literal hermeneutic has opened the door for evangelical acceptance of the non-biblical views of marriage and sexuality that dominate popular culture.

Randall Buth, director of the Biblical Language Center, presented a review of a new Greek-Greek dictionary by Emiliano Caruso (Monolingual Dictionary of Ancient  Greek). Buth was enthusiastic about the dictionary as a good first step toward thinking about the meaning of Greek words within the context of the Greek world, rather than within the context of the English world. The dictionary does not include the complete vocabulary of the New Testament, but it does include many words that are used outside of the New Testament. Buth would like the next edition of this dictionary to be more complete, but he likes the idea of including words that are not in the New Testament, since there are words that were common in ancient Greek that do not appear in the New Testament for reasons of subject matter. Knowing extrabiblical vocabulary therefore enhances one’s understanding of the ancient Greek language. One problem with this dictionary is that it mostly defines words by synonyms and antonyms, some of which do not appear elsewhere in the dictionary. Entries need to be expanded, with descriptive definitions, more examples, and multiple meanings. Also, it would be ideal for a dictionary like this one to be compiled by a team of scholars, rather than by one individual. I noted that a Greek-Greek dictionary of ancient Greek was composed by Valerius Harpocration in the second century AD (Lexeis of the Ten Orators), and suggested that this work might still be useful for a project such as Caruso’s. After the presentation, I asked Buth if he knows of anyone who is fluent in both the ancient and modern forms of Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic. He said he knows a lot of people who are fluent in the ancient and modern forms of one of the three, but he does not think there is anyone in the world who is fluent in the ancient and modern forms of all three. Knowing the ancient forms of these languages is something different than knowing the modern forms.

Richard Oster of the Harding School of Theology gave a presentation which noted some archaeological finds relevant to New Testament studies. At the end of his presentation, he commented on the state of New Testament programs in evangelical seminaries. He said that in the late 1800s and early 1900s, evangelical seminaries included classical studies in their New Testament programs, especially at the Ph.D. level. Today, many New Testament Ph.D. programs do not even offer Latin—the language of the Empire—let alone require it. Classical studies and language studies in general have fallen on hard times in New Testament programs, which now tend to emphasize Jewish studies and theology. This is in contrast to Old Testament studies programs, which are much more engaged with the languages and histories of the peoples in the world around the Old Testament. Oster believes there is a greater need for New Testament scholars to know what was happening in the world in which the events of the New Testament took place.

Wayne Grudem gave a presentation which reflected on the scholarly discussion over the thirty years since his publication of a seminal article on the meaning of the Greek word κεφαλή (head). This has become a controversial issue because some egalitarian feminists argue that κεφαλή means “source” in 1 Corinthians 11:3 and Ephesians 5:23, in which the husband is said to be the “head” of the wife. Grudem said that no one has yet been able to present an example where κεφαλή means something other than “ruler” or “leader” when it is used of a person. He also discussed an article written in the standard reference work Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, published by InterVarsity Press (IVP) in 1993. The IVP editors selected a feminist named Catherine Kroeger to write the article on “Head” for this dictionary. In it, Kroeger literally invented multiple citations and quotations in order to argue that κεφαλή means “source,” not “ruler,” when affirming that the man is the head of the wife. Although Grudem has published multiple articles pointing out Kroeger’s dishonesty, the editors at IVP have never removed this article or corrected it! Grudem’s conclusion was that after all of the scholarly discussion of the passages related to male headship in the New Testament, it is as clear as ever that the Bible commands wives to be in submission to their husbands; there are no serious exegetical challenges to the traditional view.

Finally, I gave a presentation in which I summarized the arguments made in my Ph.D. dissertation and published book for identifying Daniel’s Darius the Mede with Xenophon’s Cyaxares II. The session was well attended, and included several scholars who had already read the book and given me feedback via email. I presented a bold theory which argues for the historical reliability of Xenophon’s account of the rise of Cyrus to power (which includes a Median king who corresponds to Darius the Mede) over the historical reliability of Herodotus’ account. Although modern scholarship favors Herodotus, the evidence supporting Xenophon is diverse and compelling. The questions and comments following the presentation were overwhelmingly favorable. Other scholars are beginning to argue for and reference the theory I have presented (which is not completely original with me), and it is my hope that these references in academic literature will eventually have an effect on the view of Darius the Mede in scholarship as a whole.

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