What is wrong with Canaan?

Professor Beth Tanner is writing a book a concise history of Israel and Judah. She poses the question what do you call the region. She observes that Palestine is a Roman term. So we might want to avoid it because it is clearly anachronistic. Further the Roman term was the designation of the region during the British colonial rule in the area. The situation is complicated even more because the language of Palestine has been in the forefront of the conflict between  groups since the birth of the  modern nation of Israel.

Professor Tanner raises an interesting question for our Christian Scriptures class. Naming land is an expression of power. Whether one is a mapmaker or a historian to name a section of land puts one amidst an exercise of power.  Let me give you an example. In 1982 Argentina sought to assert sovereignty over the Islas Malvinas. In 1982 British newspapers reported that Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands a British colony since 1833. You can tell the politics of the commentators often by their decision to call the islands by their British name Falklands or their Spanish name Malvinas.

The Bible itself gives no easy help. The phrase “to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites” names the land by listing the occupants This list of occupants of the land changes in order but the people groups are fairly consistent.  (See Ex 3:8, 17; 13:5; 23:23, 28; 33:2; 34:11; Deu 20:17; Jos 3:10; 9:1) If we take these references as central then we could use the term Canaan as a broad geographical reference to the land of each of the people groups named in these lists.

Canaan is problematic for other reasons.  The promise of the land is the promise that the Israelites would have the land of the Canaanites, Hivites, Perrezites and Canaannites. Niels Peter Lemche in his book The Canaanites and Their Land argues that this easy slip from these sorts of references to posit a culturally coherent Canaanite menace is precisely one of the key missteps in biblical studies today.  For Lemche there never was a land of Canaan. He would replace the term Canaanite religion as the religious competitor of Yahwistic pre-exilic religion. Instead he suggest that there was diversity in West Semitic religion.  One wonders if one might called the West Semitic  region.

Reading Genesis and Time Magazine Together

Isaac in his blog wrestles with the topic of the infighting between Rachel and Leah. We will look at the various marriage models in Genesis. What Isaac is observing is the conflict that happens in soral polygyny. Tomorrow we will have a biblical simulation on the birth of Isaac. The birth of Isaac Genesis 21 recounts the joy of the birth and the anguish of the discards Hagar and Ishmael.
The reflection on the marriage in Genesis quickly brings the modern reader to the topic of endogamy, marriage within a certain social group and exogamy marriage outside that social group. The marriages of Genesis accent the Hebrew commitment to endogamy. But whenever we read these texts it provides an opportunity to reflect on marriage today. Typically American student balk at endogamy and arranged marriages. They ask: where the romance is? Where is the choice? Exogamy embodies the Enlightenment ideal.November 29, 2010 Time Magazine cover-story was Who Needs Marriage? However, this is more in the imagination than actuality. If anything according to Time magazine endogamy is more the norm. Persons are increasingly marrying persons from their own social class and educational background. The article points out that the upcoming marriage of Prince William and Kate is more endogamous. They both went to the same university. They are about the same age. They have been friends for some years. This is in marked contrast marriage of Prince Charles and Diana. Endogamy is in.
Also the Time study raises the issue of class just as Genesis does. That is to say monogamy was probably the norm in ancient Israel but not the book of Genesis. The Pew Time study found “A marriage gap and a socioeconomic gap have been growing side by side for the past half-century, and each may be feeding off the other.”
The book of Genesis is a etiology of the origins of the people but it is also a map to an appropriate view of marriage in their time. These stories are not only meant to reflect the marriage rules but also to reinforce those rules. Look at the trends in the marriage debate still ask the question of marriage as a social instruction.

Makes you wonder what to do with these early dysfunctional families.

Think like a Biblical Theologian

Next week the next semester’s Christian Scriptures 1 class begins. I want to take some time to reflect on what worked well last semester. I remember the film the “Paper Chase”. The professor Kingsfield said to his charges “You will teach yourself the law. I will teach you how to think like a lawyer.” After experience in the Baylor Summer Institute for Teaching, the Wabash Center workshop on teaching I come back to this. It is not about a faculty centered transfer of data; it is more about mutual formation.

We continued to use a model of active learning. Students began by sharing their background and learning style through the journal function of Blackboard (a course management system used by Baylor). This positioned so that they could build personal learning contracts. This seems appropriate for professional schools such as seminaries. More than that it fits the philosophical commitments fo Truett seminary. On the whole I was very happy with the shift from faculty centered learning to a more student centered learning.

Active learning was part of the structure of the games we played. We created a FAQ (frequently asked questions) game in which the students created objective questions from the class discussion that they then needed to answer during the game. It was fun and from what I can tell pedagogically helpful. However, the focus was mostly on biblical content. I hope that historical and scholarship discussion will play a bigger part in the questions in this next semester.

We had three biblical simulations. These were the vehicles to make the resources of Benjamin and Matthews The Social World of Ancient Israel and Life in Biblical Israel by Stager and King. We experienced a funeral, wedding, and sacrifice. This semester I will take the lead on the first simulation, the birth of Isaac. Students will have the option to lead the subsequent biblical simulations.

Last semester we had students report form the Africana Bible, the Global Bible Commentary and the Women’s Bible Commentary. These reports allowed us to hear challenging interpretations of Scripture. We will want to continue this in the future. This time I will need to be more intentional about how the students report out to the class.

We used a wiki where the better note takers could post their notes for the entire class. This was an underutilized resource. Likewise the student blogs were insightful reflections but were underutilized by members of the class.

Last semester was a great experience and now I am ready for another one.