Problems
with the Transformational View of Prophecy of Michael Fishbane
For many of us who worked with
prophecy in the Old and New Testaments both with prophets since the beginning
of time and prophets later in what is the prophetic genre collected in the
Masoretic Canon, it is quite natural to see a continuity, a harmonization of
what everyone is saying. The gap one left in the description is filled by
another prophet. There never occurred the idea that one prophet is trying to
outsmart another or one prophet is trying to change the message another prophet
brought. In my understanding always, if that happens the second prophet is a
false prophet since the standard of the message is that content that cannot be
different than what was before. False prophets there were in the history of
Israel and they also had interpretation but their prophecies were not taken up
in the Canon of recognition by the Editor the Holy Spirit.
The layers of skepticism in
true prophecy were always there since the beginning of man. It originates from
a mind of someone who is 1. Humanistic (more important what man says than God
or a god); 2. Foretelling is not possible since it was all just forthtelling 3.
Wellhausen is an icon of source conflation analysis for the Old Testament
making everything late if it is talking about certain content that sounds post-exiliic.
4. Prophets are dissected in clusters of early, clusters of late material put
together under one prophets name. 5. Daniel did not write Daniel and his
prophecies are not about long distant future events, e.g. the seventy weeks prophecy
of Daniel 9. 6. The events of Daniel centers around the actions of Antiochus
Epiphanes in 164 BCE putting a statue of Zeus in the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem
7. All these scholars utilizing these ideas thought they were progressive but
did not realize that there is also such a phenomenon as degressive.
It is with such a scenario
that one has to approach M. Fishbane[1] and
his outline of the Interpretation of the Bible in Ancient Israel. Fishbane used
an umbrella statement called “Mantological Material” to refer to any material
that is related to prophecy in the Old Testament. Fishbane blames that not enough
exegesis was done on these phenomena in the Old Testament but why would there
be such investigations if people are skeptical as to their content or the width
of their messages as Klaus Koch indicated in his work outlining the confusing
status of eschatology in scholarship. Historical Critical Method (HCM) is the
task of puncturing the tires of a prophetic bicycle and keep them flat so that
they run nowhere. So why study the phenomenon involved? Fishbane should have
known the answer.
Fishbane
does not belief that there is a traditio or an attempt to reinterpret what was
said long time before but only a traditum and its interpretation.[2] Care
is taken to transmit what is said directly and only to the prophet. Saying this
fine as long as Fishbane is not saying that one traditum contradicts another. It
is better to say that they are talking one consistent message cohesive touching
on other aspects not mentioned before but not in conflict with it. Is this
requirement too difficult for Fishbane? But Fishbane cannot. “The essential
hermeneutical issue rather arises for this traditum when later prophets regard
its manifest content as having failed, and so as being in need of revision….”[3]
Just
as one expects from Fishbane, as preterist he lays down the rule that a
traditum of an oracle is prospective and not in need of immediate exegesis,
which is a point one can still work with but then the statement: “its
exegetical traditio is a later, retrospective phenomenon”. Wait a minute. In
Daniel there was the traditum of the angel but also the traditio by the angel
and definitely not retrospective but also prospective. R. Carroll considered
the option that prophecy fails, a situation that is a taboo in the context of
the whole Old Testament.[4] Fishbane
agrees with this doubt of Carroll saying: “The cognitive crisis arises when
valued oracles have not been actualized, when their manifest meaning is cast in
doubt, or when events seem to refute them”.[5] What
does the preteristic scholars expect when they are propping Daniel 9 in the
events of Antiochus Epiphanes in 167-164 BCE when those numbers do not fit or
correlate. Why? Because it was not Antiochus Epiphanes that was in mind by
Daniel and thus to blame Daniel that he predicted what did not come true is
shooting oneself in the leg and then blame the gun that it is able to do that.
Fishbane
cut the vision and its interpretation in two and separate it by time so that it
is retrospective. No wonder he has problems. He sees the role of the exegesis
of interpretation of the vision as an attempt to give confidence in the oracle
or vision and “more importantly, to establish its closure, i.e. to show how the
oracle has been, or will soon be, actualized”.[6] Soon
actualized? This is Preterism language. I can guarantee Fishbane that he is
going to have problems with visions and oracles and their interpretations successfully
with this forced “soon” approach. It harpers back to the axiom of Rationalism
that lock prophecies in the prophets own time so that they can only meant not
mean. They forthtell what already happened rather than predict what was going
to happen. This stance of Fishbane that the oracle or vision and the
interpretation is separated in time and one before the event and one after the
event, is not correct. The descriptions in Daniel explicitly say that both were
done during one cohesive time event. Is Fishbane now going to say against the
text of Daniel that he is lying? He may. For they are already doubting whether
he wrote it all. These are scholars with historical telescopic eyes that can
successfully see exactly the reality of the past. That is modern scholarship.
They should rather be on their knees than behind their computers.
Fishbane
discussed Daniel 7 as if there is a separation between the dream and its
interpretation. Daniel made it plain that the dream that was reported and
interpreted by a divine being (Fishbane acknowledged this).[7]
But
then Fishbane wants to play with words. He indicated that Daniel wrote down the
dream (7:1). But in his thinking the interpretation of the dream was later and
based on recitations of the lemmata of the written text of the dream. But that
is not what the text means. Daniel wrote the dream and interpretation down. It
is all a condensed summary of what he saw. That is what Daniel said. There is
no mention of two time zones involved in the process. When one start reading
the text the interpretation flows automatically from the reception of the
dream. Fishbane is not successful in his dissection here.
In
Zechariah 4 Fishbane blames the scribes of the Masoretic Text that they
interpolated into the traditum of the oracle other oracles 4:6b-7 and 4:8-10a.
By content they are different so his observation is shocking: “To be sure the
Massoretic punctuation has obscured this insertion; but the original textual
consecution (of the visions) can be re-established on the basis of the
exegetical form which we have been analysing.” No human has the right to
dissect the Word of God ad hoc on the basis of their own feelings or
perceptions. It does not matter how many people accepts the division as a
conflation of insertions. Quantity cannot establish truth. “To say smoking
causes cancer, well, fifty million people smoking cannot be wrong.” What a haux
argument.
Then
there is the case where Fishbane swallowed the comments of the 1907 article by
D. H. Müller, hook and sinker to expound his own view.[8] It is
a mirror of Müller’s theorizing. Müller compared Zephaniah 3:3-4 with Ezechiel
22:25-28 and came to the conclusion that Zephaniah was the prototype that
Ezechiel used to copy and elaborate with his own messages.
Zephaniah
3:3-4 Ezechiel
22:25-28
(3a)
Her princes in her midst are roaring lions (25)
Her princes[so Fishbane] amongst her are like a
roaring
lion, tearing prey; they have devoured
life,
seized
treasure and wealth, that widows multiply
therein.
What
is the conclusion of Müller and Fishbane? Ezechiel copied from Zephaniah and
elaborated (italics supra).
What
is the problem with their view? First of all, they do not accept the Hebrew
text as the Word of God and they think that they can use the socalled LXX to
modify the Hebrew text to “harmonize” and that panelbeating job of theirs will
help them arrive at their opinion more securely. Securely no. Z. Frankel[9] as
well as Paul Kahle[10]
would not have agreed with them since to arrive at the original LXX is an
Utopia which will never be achieved they already indicated in the Victorian
period. Even J. Wevers in the Genesis
introduction of the famous Stuttgartensia edition of the LXX made it clear that
he does not claim that with his product he has reconstructed the original LXX.
So where is the LXX? That is the thorny issue here. We do not have it. There
are so many variants and cases of corruption and editorial harmonizations that
we do not have the literal original Septuagint. The corrupt one yes. So why is
Fishbane and Müller using the “corrupt” LXX or Septuagint to modify the Hebrew
Word of God? Some scholars will say: “Yes but the Masoretic Text is also a can
of worms”. Answer: the Masoretic vowel system addition to the consonants is a
can of worms but the consonants are proven to be exact to the point of nearly
99% for the book of Daniel form Qumran. That is over a millennium of accuracy!
No version including the socalled LXX can claim this accuracy. Is Hebrew the
Word of God, the consonantal text that is? Yes. By all means.
So
the reading of “princes” in Ezechiel 22:25 is not in the original just in the
corrupt LXX that survived for us. Superimposition of what is from a corrupt
text over the Word of God is a red-card. Ezechiel is reading “prophets”.
Zephaniah
was an older prophet than Ezechiel. He prophecied around 620 BCE if Amariah’s
birth was around 712 BCE and Gedaliah around 690 and Cushi around 675 then
Zephaniah’s birth would be around 650 and his calling around 620 BCE.
Prophets
read each other’s works that were in circulation. That is what Daniel did with
Jeremiah. Ezechiel could have done it with Zephaniah. There is nothing wrong
with that and in fact he can continue the message of Zephaniah since it is also
the Word of God. The same God spoke to him that spoke to Ezechiel. The sins
remained the same: they were worshipping Asherah and Baal on hills and mountain
shrines at green trees where they had woman ordination, priestesses,
prostitutes, fashion parades with clothing for these gods and scholars like
William Dever indicated that this problem was throughout the whole monarchy.
The same messages were sent by God to many prophets to Israel to no avail. They
did not listen. Ezechiel will mirror the same words as Zephaniah earlier for
sure.
Zephaniah Ezechiel
(3b)
Her judges are evening wolves, (27)
Her officers [Fishbane wants to read it ‘judges’]
that
do not store for the morning in
her midst are like wolves tearing prey; shedding
blood
and destroying human life toget illgotten gain.
Again
both Müller and Fishbane replaced a Hebrew word in Ezechiel 22:27 with a
different one in order to keep to a harmonization of images in Zephaniah. One
cannot change the Hebrew of Ezechiel. It is reading officers or rulers in
Ezechiel here for that is what the word śārêhāh means. This adjustment by these
scholars is an activity that cannot be done. Period.
Fishbane
concluded that Ezechiel does some homiletical embellishments designed to
clarify and specify the imagery and general condemnations. This is correct.
That is what Ezechiel and all prophet did. They believed that their peers or
predecessors were also sent by God and that their message were also true. Fishbane
found that Ezechiel elaborated with content from Leviticus 10:10 in Ezechiel
22:26a. That is fine. Moses is also a man of God. They all spoke the same
language, no problem. In the other verses like 27 and 28 Ezechiel was using
some older material of his from Ezechiel 13. What is wrong with that? It is
still God speaking whether it is Ezechiel 13 or Ezechiel 22. “In the present
context, of course, there is no reference to the fact that Ezechiel’s denunciation
is basically derived from inherited doom rhetoric, nor any suggestion that the
homiletical elaborations derive from the prophet. The doom prophecy and the
expansions are rather presented as one seamless whole – the revealed words of
YHWH to Ezekiel.”[11]
[1] M. Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985 reprinted in 1989.
[2] Fishbane 1989: 444.
[3] Ibid.
[4] R. Carroll, When Prophecy Failed (New York: Seabury,
1979).
[5] Fishbane 1989: 445.
[6] Fishbane 1989: 445.
[7] Fishbane 1989: 447.
[8] Fishbane 1989: 462.
[9] Z. Frankel, Vorstudien zu der Septuaginta. Leipzig:
Fr. Chr. Wilh. Vogel, 1841.
[10] P. Kahle,
“Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Pentateuchtextes.” Theologische Studien und Kritiken 88 (1915): 399-439.
[11] Fishbane 1989: 463. This
is exactly what one finds with the work of Ellen White.