the Old Testament among early Christians

I finished reading Ronald E. Heine's Reading the Old Testament with the Ancient Church: Exploring the Formation of Early Christian Thought (Evangelical Ressourcement; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007). I am relatively new to Patristics and the history of Christianity beyond 100 CE, so there's a lot I don't know here. But over the last ten months or so I've been doing quite a bit of reading, among both the literary remains of post-New Testament Christianity and the scholarship thereof, and Heine's book is perhaps the most engaging and wide-ranging of my recent reading.

At 194 pages and a list price less than $22.00 [USD], there's no reason why anyone should avoid this book. Heine draws together a diverse cross-section of primary materials, from the Apostolic Fathers, Justin Martyr, and Irenaeus, to Ambrose, Augustine, and Jerome. He touches on Ephrem and the Cappadocian Fathers. He treats Origen at length (relative to his treatment of other Fathers in this book).

Despite this broad scope, Heine's book exhibits a clear structure that remains in focus throughout. As the book moves from the Fathers' reading of the Law to their treatments of the Exodus, the Prophets, and the Psalms, I found myself always aware of our location within both the canon and Christian history. His treatment of such difficult topics as allegorical vs. literal hermeneutics is nuanced and even-handed. The last major chapter, "Living in the Text" (175–91), justifies the book's rather meagre cost by itself.

I would have liked to see some [more] explicit discussion of the Fathers' struggles (i) against the developing rabbinic expression of Judaism, and (ii) with theological and philosophical controversies arising within their ranks. But these discussions would likely have weighed down what is an otherwise clear, concise, and lucid text.

Heine has, in my view, provided the Church with a valuable sense of its past and its conviction that Israel's scriptures are its scriptures, that Israel's story is its story. He has also provided the Academy with a helpful way into the vast body of material that is the early Christians' reading of Israel's sacred traditions. Many of the writings from this material are readily available in print and online (see "English Sources for Exegetical and Homiletical Works of the Church Fathers" [195–97]), though too few of us—in the Church as well as in the Academy—are very familiar with them. Reading the Old Testament with the Ancient Church offers a helpful corrective to this problem.

Bible review

Over on Exploring Our Matrix, James McGrath has offered a helpful (and positive) review of my booty. (For those of you too unmotivated to follow the links, James has reviewed Zondervan's A Reader's Hebrew and Greek Bible, not any part of my personage.) At a list price of $74.99, I can understand if this volume is beyond most people's budget. But a little online research can find it on offer—new, even—for less than $45.00.

thank you, Zondervan

The folks on Zondervan's blog, Koinōnia, announced yesterday a Hebrew + Greek Bible Giveaway, in which Zondervan solicited readers' favorite Greek or Hebrew words. They selected five winners today. My entry, included below, was one of the five. Thank you, Zondervan, for my copy of A Reader's Hebrew and Greek Bible.

My entry:

ἀποτυμπανίζω, as in Dan. 7.11 [LXX (Old Greek)]:

I was then watching the noise of the great words, which the horn kept speaking, and the beast was beaten to death [ἀπετυμπανίσθη], and its body perished and was given over to burning with fire. (NETS)

According to the abridged LSJ, ἀποτυμπανίζω means "to cudgel to death." If language develops words to describe life, why did the ancients need a single word for "to cudgel to death"?

See my earlier post for my initial discovery of this word.

where does "pierce" come from?

I'm writing a (very) brief study of Psalm 22. Most English translations render Psa 22.16 somewhat along the lines of the NASB, which reads:

For dogs have surrounded me; A band of evildoers has encompassed me; They pierced my hands and my feet.

The third phrase of this verse—the one that, for obvious reasons, is most significant for Christian readings of this passage—differs significantly from the text published in the BHS:

כי סבבוני כלבים עדת מרעים הקיפוני דארי ידי ורגלי

kî sĕḇāḇûnî kĕlāḇîm ‘ăḏaṯ mĕrē‘îm hiqqîpûnî kā’ărî yāḏay wĕraglāy

For dogs have encircled me; a congregation of the wicked surrounded me. As the lion my hands and my feet.

The Septuagint is similar, except [*sigh*] for the final phrase:

ὅτι ἐκύκλωσάν με κύνες πολλοἰ συναγωγὴ πονηρευομένων περιέσχον με ὤρυξαν χεῖράς μου καὶ πόδας

hoti ekyklōsan me kynes polloi synagōgē ponēreuomenōn perieschon me ōryxan cheiras mou kai podas

For many dogs have encircled me; a gathering of evildoers has surrounded me; they have dug out my hands and feet.

Brenton translates ὤρυξαν pierced, so I did a (very) little bit of work among the lexica. BDAG offers three general definitions, all of which are related to digging (§5393). Louw-Nida is similar (§19.55), as is Liddell-Scott-Jones (§31131).

Clearly, the English translations (NASB, NLT, NIV, KJV; but not NRSV, NET) exhibit a preference for "pierce" at Psa 22.16, including Brenton's translation of the LXX. Does anyone know where this preference comes from? Granted that the BHS reading is incomprehensible and the LXX isn't obviously related to a Hebrew Vorlage, this verse is certainly perplexing. But given the theological freight that the phrase "they pierced my hands and feet" bears, especially in the very psalm Jesus is said to have quoted from the cross, can anyone provide any rational justification for this translation?