Re: [asa] The Barr quote

Thank you all for very helpful comments.
And, Jack, in this lecture in the third from last paragraph, he says:

"Unfortunately, the Old Testament
makes it clear that, for it, chronology was important for religion, and the chronology was there

very precisely because chronology did matter for religion and indeed was a way of

communicating something that was essential for the faith of the Hebrews in biblical times; and all

this is lost sight of as soon as we treat the chronology as marginal or unimportant, or else in the

'conservative' manner distort it by squeezing into it long cosmological periods that it knew

nothing of."

This sounds to me as if he is saying that it was important for ancient Hebrew religion to consider Gen. 1 as truly meaning that God created the universe in six 24 hour days. Important for the religion, but not for describing reality. Is that it?

Randy

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Jack Haas
  To: ASA list
  Sent: Friday, May 16, 2008 9:57 PM
  Subject: Re: [asa] The Barr quote

  Greetings:

  The real Barr appears in the following lecture: http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/chronology_barr.pdf

  _____________________________________
  Biblical Chronology: Legend Or Science?
  James Barr, FBA
  Regius Professor of Hebrew,
  University of Oxford
  The Ethel M. Wood Lecture 1987
  Delivered at the Senate House,
  University of London on
  4 March 1987
  [p.1]
  The subject of biblical chronology can be seen in two quite different ways. Firstly, there is
  scientific or historical chronology, which deals with the real chronology of actual events. This is
  the way in which the subject is approached in most current books, articles and encyclopaedias.1
  You may ask, for instance, in what year Jesus was born, or in what year John the Baptist began
  his preaching; and the way to approach this is to consider the years in which Augustus or
  Tiberius was Roman emperor, in which Herod was king of Judaea, in which Quirinius conducted
  a census in Syria, and to try to set the relevant gospel stories in relation with these. If you were
  successful, you would end up with a date in years BC or AD, for example 4 BC which was long
  the traditional date for the birth of Jesus (since it was the year in which Herod the Great died),
  although most recent estimates end up with a date some years earlier.2 Or you might ask what
  was the year in which Solomon's temple was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, and you might
  produce the result of 586 BC, on the basis of historical data which could be mustered and verified
  historically. As we go farther back, archaeological methods may be used even more, and with
  these, in examining artefacts rather than written sources, we come even closer to the physical
  sciences: by carbon dating, for instance, we might be able to give a precise or approximate range
  of dates to a building found or to a piece of writing. All this belongs to the scientific or historical
  approach to chronology. + 16 more pages
  _________________________________________________________________________

  In case you wanted a quick look at where he stood, take a peek at the last two paragraphs!

  Jack Haas

  Jon Tandy wrote:
    I don't know about Barr's personal opinion or motives, but there seems to be a logical disconnect or two between the statement and the conclusions drawn from it.

    Barr doesn't say that all professors are YEC or that they believe the three points listed. All he said was that all professors BELIEVE THE WRITERS INTENDED to convey those ideas. I believe there are many on this list who would agree that those three points appear to be the straightforward understanding of the original writers, even though they simultaneously argue for (1) concordism to scientific principles that were not understood by the original writers, but which still make the Bible literally true, (2) errors in scientific or historical fact which were not understood by the ancients but which don't affect the substantial reliability of the text as inspired, or (3) literary understandings which remove the Biblical text from having to be precisely accurate, while still conveying depth of meaning to their time and our own. The fact that professors believe the original writers meant it to be straightforward history doesn't mean that that understanding was correct, or even that the professors in fact believe it.

    Further, the statement itself seems to me a fallacy of generalization, because how does Barr know every single professor of Hebrew or OT scholarship? Given that we've had over a century of evangelical and Catholic scholars accommodating Christian thought to Darwinian science and modernist Biblical interpretations, I find it very difficult to believe that it's even close to being true, at least of their personal opinions. Further, I believe it is a matter of fact that there are reputable Hebrew scholars who question even the supposed original meaning of the text (I'm thinking of John Walton, and you may be more familiar with others of repute), whether they are "professors at world-class universities" or not. It seems to me that both Barr's statement and AIG's use of it are a sham.

    Jon Tandy

    From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On Behalf Of Randy Isaac
    Sent: Friday, May 16, 2008 3:41 PM
    To: asa@calvin.edu
    Subject: [asa] The Barr quote

    I believe this quote from James Barr was discussed some time ago but I can't seem to find it or remember what the conclusion was. Can some of you please refresh my memory and give me the right perspective. A YEC'er who is in dialog with me brought up that quote as follows:

    "As for what competent Hebrew scholars think about chronological information in the Bible, here's a quote from James Barr, who at the time was Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford University:

         "... probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1-11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that:

         "(a) creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 we now experience,

         "(b) the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story,

         "(c) Noah's flood was understood to be worldwide and extinguish all human and animal life except for those in the ark." **"

    Obviously, the argument he was raising against me was that all OT scholars of repute are YEC.

    Randy

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Received on Fri May 16 22:13:04 2008