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  • From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • To: Deborah Millier <deborahmillier AT yahoo.com>
  • Cc: hebrew listserve <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] God vs angels in Ps 8:5
  • Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2005 20:12:02 +0100

On 29/03/2005 12:27, Deborah Millier wrote:

...

Oh come now Revd Crick, is it possible to leave MT Psa
8:5 “as is”? Or even desirable? Then what have you
got?

To arrive at *meaning* for a biblical text,
interpretation must be employed, right? People have
gone to other HB passages . . . even books to shed
light on MT Psa 8:5.

And a Jew might draw from usage, quotes, and/or
allusions to said passage in the Mishnah, Midrashim,
Targumim, Rashi, etc. Correct? He/she might even dip
into the NT along the way for its say on a text’s
history of interpretation.

How much more Christians!

I understand that you are trying to sensitively avoid
pushing Christian beliefs on a biblical Hebrew forum
open to members of various communities. But where the
NT touches on a topic germane to Hebrew, why take the
long way around? NT evidence is at least that:
evidence.

--Michael Millier
Manila, Philippines


Michael, I am not sure quite what you are getting at here. Perhaps you need to distinguish more clearly between exegesis, which is usually understood as finding out the meaning intended by the original author, and the meaning of this passage which may be applied today, to your life and to that of those around you. Or maybe you are understanding exegesis as trying to find the meaning intended by God as the ultimate author of inspired biblical texts - and assuming a harmony in God's intentions between the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. As an evangelical Christian, I would agree with you on this last assumption (although of course many on this list would not), but would consider it presumptious to try to find God's ultimate meaning for a text rather than that of the human author.

Or maybe you are simply suggesting that Jews of the 1st-2nd century CE (whether NT or Rabbinic authors) had a better understanding of the Hebrew Bible than we do today and so their writings may inform our exegesis. I would have no quarrel with this one, but it must be recognised that they made use of the texts in ways which we would not nowadays consider to be valid exegesis. And I think the use of Psalm 8:5 in Hebrews 2:9 is surely an example of this. But the quotation of the psalm in Hebrews 2:6-8 is rather different: it does not identify the "son of man" of the Psalm with Jesus, but the interpretation starts in verse 9 where Jesus is introduced as a (possibly partial) fulfilment of the message of the Psalm.

I have written more on this theme on the Bible Translation list, http://www.geocities.com/bible_translation/list/. See for example https://lists.kastanet.org/Lists/Bible-Translation/Message/32969.html. That may be a more appropriate place than this is for a discussion which inevitably includes looking in detail at NT interpretations.

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/



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