Guide Me into Your Truth: Essays in Honor of Dennis T. Olson

By Rolf A. Jacobson and Jacqueline E. Lapsley

In his forty-plus years of work as a biblical scholar, Dennis Thorald Olson has illumined the meaning of the Bible for his readers and hearers in diverse ways. Among the topics he has taken up in his scholarship and teaching are the nature of leadership, life in community, the relation of science and theology, Jewish-Christian relations, repentance and forgiveness, and many, many more. In this essay collection, a number of Dennis's students, colleagues, and friends respond to the profound values and seminal ideas at the heart of his work and take up the profound question of truth as it pertains to Scripture, a question that Olson himself urged biblical scholars to consider in his inaugural address from over twenty years ago.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Release date: Nov 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666766691

Book preview

Part One

Setting the Table

1

Dennis Olson as Teacher

Katharine Doob Sakenfeld

It was my privilege and honor to serve as faculty colleague with Dennis from the day he began teaching at PTS until my retirement in 2013. I had the joy of team teaching the introductory OT course with him and sat with him in more department and committee meetings than one would want to count. My own experience, and the experience of the many others I’ve contacted for their input, could be summarized in a series of adjectives: smart, clear, knowledgeable, focused, kind, compassionate, patient, attentive, funny, level-headed, respectful . . . Such a list could go on and on, but even a longer list could scarcely convey who Dennis has been as teacher of so many over the years. So let me add a bit of narrative to color the picture.

It is reported on good authority that Dennis rarely reads anything beyond his professional preparation. But for him that doesn’t mean just OT, or Bible, or ancient world. Whether for the seminary classroom or church or conference presentations or for publication, he seeks to relate the world of the Old Testament to our contemporary context. As just one example, consider this title: Revenge, Forgiveness, and Sibling Rivalry: A Dialogue between Scripture and Science. Presented in scholarly gatherings, published print, adult classes, and other contexts, Dennis here draws upon many authors of scientific literature on sibling relationships in the animal world (including birds and fish) as well as on human psychology to inform his literary approach to biblical texts.

Teaching alongside Dennis is always a fully shared enterprise, as others of his co-teachers attest. From syllabus construction to integrating lecture material to the less fun task of grading, Dennis is always there. Colleagues beyond the OT area express fond memories of their time working with Dennis: Creativity and ease as we planned the course . . . "It was fun! Brainstorming together ways to help a student who was struggling. Integrating material into my own courses going forward . . . It was sheer joy!"

As a newer department member in his early years at PTS, Dennis took on thesis advising in challenging contexts. In one instance he took over advising a student well underway with a topic begun under a faculty member who had retired; the thesis aimed to add evidence for one of two contested positions on the topic. Although Dennis himself held the opposite position, he didn’t reveal that to the student, but rather helped the student develop the best possible rationale, thinking it through again himself and moving the thesis forward to successful oral defense with rigorous but kind questioning of a position with which he still disagreed. In another instance, he agreed to advise a thesis using literary methodology, which was not then much known in biblical studies, and little understood or appreciated by his more senior colleagues. Over the years, he continued to welcome dissertation proposals with fresh ideas or approaches, never looking just to advance his own views or clone himself. And as many former doctoral students can testify, he was without fail prompt in commenting on drafts. He might require a major rewrite, but always to improve the argument or its presentation, and students’ initial discouragement turned the corner to appreciation as the work developed. His way of offering challenge while still encouraging advisees to find their own best argument, along with his quick response with detailed notes, remains a model and standard for graduates who now advise theses themselves.

Dennis gave the same care and attention to M.Div. theses as he did to those of doctoral students, always taking seriously the interests and projects of those who had no plans for pursuing graduate work. As one wrote, What a pure luxury it was to have had such a brilliant and caring teacher and advisor . . . Dr. Olson’s patience, wisdom and gentle guidance has left an indelible mark in me. What a blessing!

M.Div. students speak of Dennis creating community within their classroom, and of his good humor: he has a great laugh and is happy to play along with our antics so that we feel free to be our full selves. He gives of himself in the same way that he asks us to give of ourselves. He considers himself a part of the same community as the students. His pastoral sensibility is on full display especially in the introductory course. Students who come from very conservative or literalist biblical backgrounds, some who have been warned about the danger of losing their faith at PTS, discover that Dennis does not dismiss their fears or concerns. He patiently and pastorally helps them to consider that a more academic approach to Scripture need not destroy their faith. At the same time, students who arrive from the opposite background, who have previously experienced academic biblical scholarship as irrelevant to faith, also discover through Dennis that academic pursuits and spiritual practice can actually strengthen one another. Dennis’s way of teaching enables students from such diverse backgrounds to realize, in the words of one former student, that Someone else is at work when we study and learn. The Holy Spirit is still shaping all of our hearts and minds, helping us hear God’s presence amid the difficult questions and growth into more mature faith.

Yet much of Dennis’s teaching happens beyond the formal lecture moment: Prayers at the opening of class, brown bag lunch discussions of faith and the practice of ministry, a listening ear in the office, his constant presence in the pew at daily chapel, his sensitivity to student questions in or beyond class, with let me get back to you when any issue requires more time or consideration than the immediate context allows. His campus presence teaches the same message that comes across in the classroom – everything is about community, and thus preparation for ministry. He is, as one correspondent put it, "the embodiment of that admonition in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together to appreciate the Christian community not as a wish-dream but as a gift to be received."

This reflection wouldn’t be complete without mention of Dennis’s more than two decades of engagement with the cohort of Lutheran students on campus, work mostly unknown beyond the Lutherans and their close friends. He has been long-time convener of the official Lutheran Studies Concentration at PTS, advising students for candidacy in the ELCA, serving on the ELCA candidacy panel, and serving as faculty representative and chauffeur for an annual gathering of Lutheran students from PTS, Union, Yale, and Harvard (or planning adviser when PTS students host the gathering). He and his wife Carol host a now legendary annual lefse making project, inviting Lutheran students and local pastors (and some non-Lutheran hangers-on) to an Advent gathering in their home, where they learn to make this traditional Norwegian Christmas treat according to his mother’s recipe, followed by a potluck gathering of some thirty to forty people.

Finally, a brief note about Dennis as teacher beyond the world of PTS. Publishing for Dennis means teaching a much broader audience than his local classroom. His CV with its diverse publication venues reveals the wide range of audiences he has reached over the years in both church and academy. Likewise, his speaking engagements have multiplied the audiences for his teaching far beyond the Princeton Seminary campus. His leadership in his local congregation, Abiding Presence Lutheran Church in Ewing, has included teaching in perhaps surprising ways. He carried on the ancient church tradition of teaching through the visual arts, as he served as theological adviser to the planning of a series of twelve stained glass windows that tell the biblical story from Creation in Genesis 1 to the New Creation in the Revelation to St. John. Remarkably, at Abiding Presence his committee of choice over the years has been not the Education Committee, but rather the Evangelism Committee, seeking ever to draw others toward the hope and joy of the Good News.

Thank you, Dennis, from your colleagues and your students, from those you have touched in person in the church and wider community, and not least from those who have experienced your teaching indirectly, through publication and especially through being taught by your former students. Know that new and far-flung generations, in distant classrooms often unknown to you, hear your lecture content reconfigured for their settings and experience your generous and interactive style of teaching communication, as your students seek to carry forward your teaching presence. We are all so grateful.

Part Two

Pentateuch

2

An Abolitionist Hermeneutical Experiment

Reading Genesis 15 for the Black Lives Matter Movement

Justin Reed

Introduction

¹

Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi founded the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, also known as the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), in the wake of George Zimmerman killing seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin (1995–2012). Over the years, the BLM movement has generated enormous momentum in response to the perennial killing of Black people by police and vigilantes.² I continually grieve the killings that spark protests, but I have also been inspired by the conscientization³ and organizing happening in communities of which I am a part. While I was a graduate student, I lent my body and voice to the movements going on in multiple cities and institutions of higher learning. I was welcomed into spaces where I learned immensely, and the things that I learned not only contributed to my general well-being as a Black person, but also surprisingly benefited my scholarship. For example, a teach-in by Justin Hansford (a current Howard University Law School professor) about critical race theory in legal scholarship and civil rights activism⁴ provided an epiphany for the most inscrutable issue on biblical authorship in my dissertation. What an unlikely cross-pollination of ideas? At the time, I reflected that perhaps everything is a nail to a hammer. Constantly ruminating on my dissertation might have compelled me to inappropriately force the pairing of biblical criticism with critical race theory. But Dennis Olson encouraged my experiment, and I have now come to see that the seedlings nurtured in the BLM movement could also sprout into my own fruitful academic pursuits. The following is an experiment with making that relationship more mutual. How might my scholarship on BLM and biblical interpretation also assist the Movement for Black Lives?

Rather than a general symbiosis of BLM and biblical interpretation, this exercise more narrowly focuses on the abolitionist movement and Genesis 15.⁵ Within the broader activism and perspectives that have gathered under the banner of BLM, there is a specific movement to abolish police and prisons.⁶ This modern abolitionist movement is not championed by everyone who proclaims Black Lives Matter, but an abolitionist paradigm is the specific articulation of BLM that I find most appealing. In three sections of this essay, I apply an abolitionist hermeneutic to interpretation of Genesis 15 by homing in on three core elements of an abolitionist paradigm: it is rooted in a specific understanding of justice; it is a radical, intersectional approach to harm reduction; and its efficacy comes from the creative, imaginative combination of hope and praxis. Although this does not come close to exhausting the depth of the abolitionist thinking or its potential to influence biblical interpretation, it does give a taste of how I recently have been interpreting passages in Genesis as true and relevant.

Justice

In 2020, Ekom Udofia was killed by the police while experiencing a mental health crisis. He was a Black Stanford graduate and former NFL player. If one focuses only on these facts, it seems like his death-by-police fits with a prominent BLM narrative that racism threatens Black lives regardless of individuals reaching the marks by which society tends to measure success and promise. But Ekom’s name did not become popular. In a season in which millions of people were marching around the country in support of Black lives, protesters did not rush to inscribe Justice for Ekom on placards. As of January 1, 2022, #EkomUdofia, #justiceforEkom, and #justiceforEkomUdofia had combined to account for less than 10 mentions on Instagram posts, and the numbers are similar for Twitter. While his name is included in lists of Black people killed by police,⁷ his story is not generally known. The only reason that I know the facts surrounding his death is because I knew him personally.

Many people think of justice relative to the BLM movement as the unbiased prosecution and punishment of police and vigilantes for killing Black people who did not pose a deadly threat.⁸ By such standards, some would say Ekom has yet to receive justice. Others might argue that the police acted reasonably or constitutionally, and therefore, there is no injustice to redress. However, BLM activists within an abolitionist framework understand justice as not contingent on prosecution, punishment, or assessing the reasonableness of police force. As Derecka Purnell writes, punishment is not justice, and I do not believe that we can secure justice for anyone killed by the police. Justice is a process where people decide and create the conditions that help us thrive and it involves the people who are most impacted by those conditions. The dead cannot participate in this process.⁹ Of course, we care about their deaths and want some outcome. But Purnell points out that the understandable desire for punishment is not the same as justice. In light of Ekom’s death, justice—that is, creating conditions for thriving—might focus on decapacitating police from killing others, healing for the people impacted by Ekom’s killing, and providing fulsome resources and networks to treat the mental health of people similar to Ekom.

Since he is dead, Ekom cannot be a part of this justice process. The same is true for literary characters in the ancient narratives of Genesis. However, understanding Ekom’s life and death can help us, in the land of the living, engage in the work of justice for people like him. Turning from Ekom to Genesis 15, this abolitionist understanding of justice leads me to ask, which biblical character(s) should I focus on in order to have a deep impact for people today who are most negatively impacted by current conditions?¹⁰

When reading Genesis 15, most interpreters focus on Abram’s relationship with God. The chapter begins when Yhwh¹¹ shows up to shore up Abram’s hope in previously iterated divine promises (Gen 12:2–3, 7; 13:14–17). When focusing on Abram, the main problem is that Yhwh’s promises of land and offspring to Abram cannot be fulfilled if, as Abram laments, I remain childless (15:2)¹² and you [God] have given me no children (15:3). In both verses Abram adds the unpalatable consequence: Eliezer of Damascus,¹³ his slave, would end up being his inheritor. Scholars point out that this recourse might fit with ancient cultural practices, but it would be a great misfortune.¹⁴ As Walter Brueggemann writes, "An heir stands in contrast to a slave who only continues the hopeless present [ . . . ] a slave is no sign of the future, for slaves bespeak necessity, fate, compulsion."¹⁵ Since commentators are intent on foregrounding Abram’s perspective, his lack of a proper heir is the problem.

Obviously, Abram’s ability to thrive is hampered by the delayed fulfillment of divine promises. But an abolitionist framework pushes me to consider whether focusing on Abram’s needs is the most pertinent way for creating the conditions that help everyone thrive. Although Abram lacks an heir, he does have a lot of resources to help him thrive. Aside from a great deal of wealth (12:16)—so much that the land cannot support all that he and his nephew own (13:6)—Abram has God to help him prosper. I do not think Abram needs my advocacy. Instead of foregrounding Abram, seeking justice leads me to focus on Eliezer, the character whose concerns are (universally?) ignored by Genesis commentators.¹⁶ What conditions would help Eliezer and people like him to thrive?

A good start would be to understand Eliezer’s condition in the biblical text.¹⁷ As noted already, Eliezer is enslaved. Cross-cultural sociological research on slavery can supply some background of what slavery entails at the most basic level. As a slave, Eliezer would have been treated as an alien, severed from the bonds of kinship, religion, and ethnicity of his homeland. He would have been denied the power and authority that Abram had, which makes him dependent upon Abram for his own social status. And, as an extension of his master Abram, Eliezer could be used (and abused) by Abram.¹⁸

Going beyond the general image of slavery across cultures, what historical form of slavery does this passage assume Eliezer experienced? Although the general language of servant/slave was used metaphorically in ancient Israel and neighboring cultures to describe hierarchical relationships, scholars conventionally assert that ancient Israel included three main practices worthy of the term slavery in a stricter sense: forced labor, debt slavery, and chattel slavery.¹⁹ Of these three, chattel slavery, viz., perpetual enslavement where the individual is owned as property, is the form of slavery reserved for foreigners like Eliezer.²⁰ Unlike Israelites who face hard times, foreign chattel slaves had little protection from cruel treatment (Lev 25:44–46). As Douglas Knight asserts, any protections they enjoyed derived largely from the pragmatic considerations of their owners.²¹

Although this reconstruction of slavery for Eliezer seems dismal, some might point out the potential for enslaved people to rise in status. For example, Potiphar appointed him [Joseph] over his house and all his possessions he gave into his [Joseph’s] hand (Gen 39:4). Similarly, most translations take the obscure phrase mešeq bêtî (Gen 15:2) as indicating Eliezer’s elevated status as the steward or the heir of my [Abram’s] house. As noted above, ancient documents from neighboring cultures attest to a cultural practice whereby an enslaved person could become an heir, and this is apparently the issue that Abram brings before Yhwh.²² Such a scenario might lead one to assert that attending to the conditions that help Abram thrive directly benefits Eliezer. However, this would be a misguided assumption. Note, for example, how Abram/Abraham and Sarai/Sarah subject Hagar to cruel oppression before and after Sarai/Sarah has delivered the promised child (Gen 16:6; 21:14). Similarly, Eliezer’s privileges remain constrained by the volition of Abram; regardless of his prosperous life, he does not, in the end, include Eliezer among his inheritors (Gen 25:1–6).

Although Abram has the ability to create conditions for Eliezer to thrive (to the degree that one can within the constraints of slavery), Abram has no such desire. He pleads with God for some other course of action. In doing so, the emphasis is not on Eliezer’s description with the phrase mešeq bêtî (whatever it means), but rather as a slave born in my house (Gen 15:3 NRSV). The Hebrew literally describes Eliezer as ben bētî, a son of my house; the extremely common Hebrew noun translated slave, ʿebed, is not used. While there is no question that son of my house denotes Eliezer’s enslaved status (compare Eccl 2:7), the significance of this phrase is that it can provide additional insight into Eliezer’s story in the world of Genesis: Eliezer was born into slavery with Abram as his master, not bought by or gifted to Abram in Gen 12:16. Like Hermann Gunkel, we might surmise that Eliezer was one of the 318 enslaved (male?) people born in his [Abram’s] house that made up the military force Abram used to recover his captured nephew Lot (Gen 14:14).²³ If we allow our imagination even more room to speculate, we might read that Eliezer did not defect from Abram’s fighting force even though he passed Damascus (the city Abram identifies him with) in the course of routing Abram’s adversaries (14:15). Did it cross Eliezer’s mind to attempt to join the community in Damascus? Did he feel any bonds of kinship toward them? Would it have been practical or beneficial to leave Abram?

Although some interpretive traditions have developed midrashim of Eliezer’s life far beyond the above reconstruction,²⁴ in this limited space I cannot explore the valuable potential for the reader’s sanctified imagination to fill in the gaps of Genesis.²⁵ Instead, I return to the initial question of justice. Where does all of this leave us relative to seeking justice?

Understanding justice within an abolitionist framework means that an abolitionist biblical interpretation should not merely read along with the traditional focus on biblical protagonists. An abolitionist definition of justice pushes me to turn my attention in Genesis 15 toward understanding the conditions of Eliezer, the character most in need of changes that can lead to thriving for everyone. Even though I understand that Eliezer, like Ekom, cannot participate or reap the benefits of this attention, I believe that this intentional foregrounding of Eliezer in the text is a crucial step toward making the Bible a practical resource for the work of justice today.

A Radical, Intersectional Approach to Harm Reduction

Having established Eliezer as the specific focus for biblical interpretation, one might be tempted to assert that an abolitionist hermeneutic would simply entail denouncing slavery. In the text, slavery is clearly a problem, and, in my context of the USA, the term abolitionist has obvious ties to the historical movement to abolish slavery. However, a modern abolitionist approach aims to abolish much more than an evil institution (whether it is slavery, policing, or incarceration). As an approach to harm reduction, abolitionist work is radical, which means that abolitionists focus on the root causes of harm. Slavery, policing, and incarceration grow from roots—historical circumstances and ideological underpinnings—of capitalism, colonialism, racism, classism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and more. Since we have built police and prisons on these foundations, these institutions maintain and exacerbate harm in society regardless of our conditioning to think of police and prisons as the solution to harm. Thus, an abolitionist hermeneutic must attend to root causes of harm. Since the diverse root causes overlap to compound oppression, a radical abolitionist approach also requires attention to intersectionality.²⁶

When I turn my focus to Eliezer and his condition of enslavement, an abolitionist hermeneutic leads me to recognize classist and ethnocentric ideologies as root causes of the specific harm experienced by Eliezer in this text. Through an intersectional lens, I can theorize how these two ideologies intersect. The primary position of privilege that Abram inhabits relative to Eliezer is one of class. When he describes Eliezer as a son of my house (Gen 15:3) rather than the child of a father (which is a typical way of introducing people in the Hebrew Bible), Abram exudes a classist ideology of sharp difference—he pictures Eliezer as mere property rather than a full person. A worldview that discriminates against Eliezer for his ethnic difference multiplies the oppression of this primarily classist enslavement.

The ethnocentric element is not just evidenced by Abram referring to Eliezer as a Damascene (Gen 15:2).²⁷ After all, it is common practice to note a character’s ethnicity in the Hebrew Bible. The real issue is that ethnicity (like gender)²⁸ is a crucial variable distinguishing one’s condition of enslavement in the broader context of the Hebrew Bible (Lev 25:44–46). Regardless of Abram’s intent when referring to Eliezer’s ethnicity or the fact that the book of Genesis has examples of foreigners depicted compassionately, an abolitionist hermeneutic should attend to the foundational ethnocentric