Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Pastor Mark Eddy" <markeddy AT adams.net>]

Thanks for responding. Comments below.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Yigal Levin"
> Dear Pastor Mark,
>
> Despite my Jewish reading, I am capable of assuming, as do many critical
> scholars, that the superscription "A psalm of David" may NOT be part of the
> original text of Ps. 110. I don't KONW who the original author is -

Why assume that the compiler(s) of the 5 books of Psalms did NOT know who 
wrote the Psalms? Why assume
that we today know more than they did? Isn't it best to place more weight on 
primary documents rather than
on the doubts of people who lived over 2000 years later? There is absolutely 
no ancient evidence to
contradict the Davidic authoriship of this Psalm. If we don't know who wrote 
this Psalm, we don't know who
wrote Plato's writings, or Josephus's works. It seems best to accept the 
testimony of the compilers of the
Psalms. If they didn't know who wrote a Psalm, they left it without title. 
They knew that David wrote Ps.
110. We need really good reasons to assume that they didn't know this.

> and I only said that I assumed that "my lord: was a priest because of the
> refference to "a priest after the order of Melchizedek".

Melchizedek's priesthood had no conncection with the priesthood of Israel. It 
was not based from Aaron's
priesthood. There is no evidence that any individual ever served in a 
priesthood "after the order of
Melchizedek" during the time covered in the Hebrew Bible. Melchizedek was 
both kind and priest at the same
time (Gen. 14:19). The Messiah was expected to be this sort of king-priest. 
Based on any textual evidence,
there is no reason to rule the Messiah out as the referrent of the Adon(a)i 
of Psalm 110. In fact, this
seems to be the only possible referrent, based on biblical evidence alone. 
There is no evidence that David
(or whoever you believe the psalmist is) knew any person in his day who acted 
in such a priesthood.
However, there is evidence that the post-exilic prophets of Judah envisioned 
a Messiah whose priesthood
was higher than that of Israel's levitical priesthood. The "mesenger of the 
covenant" of "the Lord [Adon]
whom you seek" of Malachi 3:1 was going to come and purify the sons of Levi 
(Mal. 3:3) in an event very
similar to the Day of the Lord of the pre-exilic prophets (and of Mal. 3:23). 
This "Lord" would be like
Moses, who first purified Aaron and his sons before they could become 
Israel's first priesthood. See Deut.
18:15ff and Deut. 34:10-12. This lead/king/priest was someone who would come 
after the Hebrew Bible was
complete, before the Day of YHWH. Who else could fill this but the Messiah?

> But even if it was David, his calling a priest "my lord" would not bother 
> me.

But such usage of the term "my lord" was totally unprecedented. Priests 
called kings "my lord." Not the
other way around. But if the "priest after the order of Melchizedek" was also 
a king, then Psalm 110 makes
sense. Remember that Samuel didn't want Israel to choose a human king, 
because YHWH was their King (see 1
Sam. 8, especially verse 7). Even after the Davidic kingdom was established, 
believing Israel still
confessed that YHWH was King (see e.g. Psalm 24). Isn't it much more likely 
that David would call the
future, divine, messianic King his "Lord" than that he would call a 
contemporary, human priest "my lord"?

> However, presuming to read a trinitarian godhead into this context does.

I am sorry if what I did bothers anyone. I do not "presume" a trinitarian 
godhead. I find Him revealing
Himself in the Hebrew Bible in many places. We can forget about the 
post-biblical Christian terminology
about "Trinity" for this discussion. That term was just a label used to 
discribe the biblical evidence of
both the Hebrew Bible and Greek Bible. One of my Old Testamet exegetical 
profs used the term "polynity" to
describe what we see in the Hebrew Bible. Nobody on this list needs the 
evidence that the Hebrew Bible
taught that YHWH was "one" and that He is the only God who lives and exists. 
But this one God speaks of
Himself in the plural in many places (e.g. Gen. 1:26, which I mentioned 
yesterday). And this one God could
send a Messenger/Angel who is also called YHWH (e.g. in Ex. 3, which I 
mentioned yesterday).

> The use of this verse in Jesus' polemic with the Pharisees in Matt.
> 22:42-45/Mark 12:35-37/Luke 20:41-44 means nothing other than that "Mark"
> (or his source), writing the story some decades after Jesus, already
> assumed that Jesus was both "Lord" and "Son of David/Messiah/Christ".

Why do you assume that what they wrote was an "assumption"? Why do you assume 
that "Mark" was the first
Gospel. The early Christian fathers thought that Matthew was first. And he 
was a disciple who accompanied
Jesus for years and saw Him alive after His crucifixion and resurrection.

> You will notice that the NT (I assume following the LXX) uses "Lord"
> (KURIOS) for both the "YHWH" and "Adoni" of the Hebrew. Assuming that
> "Mark" the Greek-speaking Gentile had no knowledge of the Hebrew, this
> could even make sense.

But Matthew knew Hebrew. He often translated direct from the Hebrew Bible, 
instead of just quoting the LXX
(see e.g. Matt. 2:15). Why would Matthew not mind using KURIOS for both YHWH 
and ADON? Because by the time
Jesus rose from the dead he had been convinced, as was the skeptical disciple 
Thomas, that Jesus was both
"My Lord and my God" (John 20:28, to which Liz referred last week. And, no, 
he wasn't taking God's name in
vain. He was confessing his faith that Jesus actually was his Lord and his 
God.) The Jewish writers were
of what we call "the Gospels" were convinced by the historical fact that 
Jesus had been killed by
crucifixion, but now He was living again, as He had predicted. Jesus was 
properly charged with blasephemy
by the priests of His day, because Jesus was making claims to be the divine 
Messiah. If His claims were
false, they rightly condemned Him to death. But since He was able to rise 
from the dead, it appears that
His claims were not false. So He really was the Messiah of the Hebrew Bible. 
That statement is not an
assumption. It is a deduction from the textual and historical facts.

And, by the way, why do you assume that Mark was a Greek speaking Gentile? 
Obviously he spoke Greek. He
wrote in Greek. But what evidence is there that he did not know Hebrew or 
Aramaic? Mark was living in
Jerusalem around the time of Jesus' crucifixion. His mother Mary's house was 
the gathering place for the
Christians in Jerusalem early on (Acts 12:12), before Gentiles were fully 
accepted in the Jerusalem
church. Mark himself was a companion of Jesus' disciples in Jerusalem (Acts 
12:25). There is
circumstancial evidence that Mark himself was the young man who followed 
Jesus and His disciples to the
Garden of Gethsemane on the night Jesus was arrested (This is recorded only 
in Mark 14:51f). So it is an
unproven assumption that Mark didn't know Hebrew. The early Christian church 
did claim that Mark wrote for
a Gentile audience, since he later served with Paul/Saul of Tarsus and Peter 
(both of whom were Jews,
acquainted with Hebrew) when they were in Europe. The evidence shows that the 
Greek Bible writers could
use the word "Lord" (KURIOS) about Jesus, because in any sense in which the 
word was used among the Jewish
Christians, that word applied to Jesus.

> But WE are trying to understand the Hebrew - let's
> do it without preconceptions.

Is it possible to do anything without "preconceptions"? We always come to a 
text with our previous
knowledge in mind. You have your preconceptions. I have mine. The question 
is, "do our preconceptions
stand up to the facts of history and the evidence that was left behind by 
those events?" If our goal is to
understand the Hebrew Bible, and since I know that evidence from other ANE 
cultures is fair, why not
evidence from later history that backs up what the Hebrew Bible claimed would 
happen in the future? Let
all our preconceptions be changed or confirmed by actual evidence. I'll 
gladly leave out the opinions of
modern scholars who didn't live back then. But I can't leave out historical 
and textual evidence from my
"preconceptions."

In search of the truth,
Mark Eddy