by
John W. Wright

As the study of the Old Testament struggled for its independence from theological dogmatics in the late eighteenth century, it quickly became enslaved to a new master, the history of Israel. Historical "reality" became the touchstone for biblical theology. As Hans Frei has argued, this era "exemplified a massive scholarly movement for which there was a direct convergence of the meaning of the biblical narratives with the shape of events to which they refer."¹ Whether "liberal" or "conservative," theologians and exegetes placed the authority of the biblical narrative "behind" the biblical text in history, i.e., the events or religion referred to within the biblical text.²

What is not so apparent, however, is the ecclesiological commitment that accompanied such a theological understanding. The ecclesiology of the magisterial reformation, itself anchored within a tradition of Constantinian Christianity, undergirded such an agenda.³ Both "liberals" and "conservatives," Lutheran or Reformed, presupposed continuity between the Scriptures and the state religion of Israel.⁴ This tradition continues today. In general, scriptural authority lies behind the text in the divine revelation in history, either in the events of "biblical" Israel⁵ or in the ancient Israelite experience of God.⁶ In both cases, a commitment to the authority of the Old Testament has meant a commitment to the state religion of Israel.⁷ As holiness scholars have moved within the mainstream of professional biblical scholarship in America, they have tended to share this presupposition. There is no particular "holiness hermeneutic," only the shared attempt to discover what the biblical text meant historically.⁸

This whole theological enterprise, however, currently teeters on the brink of collapse. Scholarship within the last twenty years has undermined past scholarship precisely at the point of the continuity between the theological perspective of the Old Testament and the state religion of Israel.⁹ Archaeological findings,¹⁰ new critical investigations of the biblical literature,¹¹ and developments in literary theory¹² have converged to bring a profound unsettledness to earlier "assured results of critical scholarship."As a result, biblical theology remains in perpetual dis-ease.¹³ As we pass into a "post-Christian era" in the West, these results would seemingly doom biblical theological agendas shaped by the magisterial reformation.

Yet perhaps here also is an opportunity. Perhaps in the current ferment a specifically "holiness hermeneutic" may open a new space for an Old Testament theology. If the issue of biblical hermeneutics is ecclesiological,¹⁴ perhaps the ecclesiology of the American Holiness Movement, often at odds with the magisterial reformation, can provide a different hermeneutical approach to the theology of the Old Testament.¹⁵ It is the purpose of this paper to explore such a possibility. Drawing upon a "sectarian" ecclesiology within the American Holiness Movement, I will explore the possibility that the Old Testament emerged largely as a polemic against the normative practice of Israelite religion. In other words, I will probe the thesis that the Old Testament itself is a "sectarian" document, a text whose authority arose as it shaped the identity of a faithful minority group. Rather than reflecting the history and practice of the Israelite majority, the Hebrew Bible contains the vision of the faithful minority of those devoted to Yahweh, and Yahweh alone. As a test case, I will examine "the image of God, male and female" (Gen 1:26-28) as a monotheistic response to Israelite polytheistic devotion to Yahweh and his consort, Asherah, a goddess whose presence is attested in the Hebrew Bible and confirmed by recent archaeological finds in Israel.

Yahweh and His Asherah: The Image of God, Male and Female

It is hard to overestimate the importance of the concept of the "image of God" in Christian anthropology. If possible, the concept plays an even more significant role within the Wesleyan theological tradition.¹⁶ Textually, the concept is anchored in Gen. 1:26-28. If the significance of a text may be measured by the amount of commentary it generates, this text is amazing. It has been seen as central to Israelite religion and anthropology. Curiously, however, few intertextual echoes of the text exist within the canon of the Hebrew Bible itself¹⁷ and gender implications seem to have had no effect on the patriarchy of ancient Israelite society.¹⁸ This situation changes, however, within Second Temple Judaism. Here the text seems to have formed the imagination of many within nascent Judaisms.¹⁹

This simple observation raises an interesting point. It would seem that Gen. 1:26-28 became significant only as canon, i.e., a text that formed a particular theological community-not because it reflected a popular historical religious belief or social practice, but because of its authoritative status as Scripture. The text does not seem to reflect the practice of Israelite religion. Ultimately, however, this text unleashed intertextual echoes that exceeded the conditions of its production, echoes not lost on the American Holiness Movement. In order to defend this claim, it is necessary to examine the evidence of at least one "image of God" found in Israelite religion within the material remains of ancient Israel and reflected in the Hebrew Bible. Then it will be possible to return to Gen. 1:26-28 to clarify an important exegetical issue and understand the theological context that the text addresses.

Yahweh and His Asherah as the "Image of God."

Until fifteen years ago, the Canaanite goddess Asherah received little attention within the study of Israelite religion. She was deemed a foreign, deviant scourge rejected by the leaders of Israelite society.²⁰ Recently discovered inscriptions, however, have placed Asherah at the center of an important debate: Did Yahweh, the Israelite deity, have a consort?²¹ The inscriptions are not without their own ambiguity and interpretative problems.²² Nonetheless, it has become increasingly apparent that we must answer this question in the affirmative: in both popular and official circles, ancient Israelites worshiped both Yahweh and his consort, Asherah.²³

Asherah's cult spread throughout the ancient Near East.²⁴ We know most about her role in Canaanite religion from Ugaritic texts found at Ras Shamra.²⁵ Here Asherah is the wife of the head of the Canaanite pantheon, El. Surrounded by her children, her "pride of lions," she has the ability to seduce El (thus her role within the fertility cult of Canaanite religion). Iconographic evidence and the Hebrew Bible agree that her statue, her cult image, was a wooden pole.²⁶ Thus it was believed that Asherah was a pagan Canaanite goddess, the type of goddess proscribed by normative Israelite religion, though occasionally introduced within Israelite practice in a syncretistic cult.²⁷

This position no longer seems plausible. A series of inscribed potsherds, found at Khirbet Kuntillet 'Ajrud, a pilgrimage site in northern Sinai, provides an entry point.²⁸ Two eighth-century inscriptions, blessing graffiti left at the site, explicitly link Yahweh with the goddess Asherah. While the texts possess their own ambiguity, one inscription reads, "I bless you by Yahweh of Samaria and by Asherata,"²⁹ while another reads, "I bless you by Yahweh of Teman and by Asherata." The inscriptions suggest a wide geographical spread of this dual devotion to Yawheh and Asherah, with Yahweh, first designated, the more prominent male deity. Though found in a southern site, the inscriptions locatively assign Yawheh to the north in Samaria as well as in Edom in Teman, a geographical association found also in Hab. 3:3. Furthermore, drawings accompanying the inscription on Pithos A clearly signify the cult image of Asherah.³⁰

Perhaps these data could be minimized as the deviant religious beliefs of a few wayfaring Israelites were it not for a similar tomb inscription found at Khirbet el-Qom, a site in Judah between Lachish and Hebron. Accompanied by a hand reaching up, itself possibly a symbol of Asherah,³¹ this eighth-century inscription reads: "Blessed is Uriyahu by Yahweh and Masaryahu by Asherata, he has saved him."³² Again, devotion to Yahweh is accompanied by a female goddess, Asherah. Given that Uriyahu could afford a tomb with an inscription and its Judean location, it seems that devotion to Yahweh and Asherah existed among the Judean elite.

The evidence of the Kunjillet 'Ajrud and el-Qom inscriptions have brought a new perspective to the Hebrew Bible and previously discovered archaeological data. Firm evidence has emerged which displays both the geographic, demographic, and chronological breadth of the devotion to Yahweh with his consort in Israelite religious history. Perhaps most interesting is the study of the earliest cult object found at a known Israelite site, the beautifully preserved ninth century cult stand from Taanach. While earlier interpreted as devoted to Baal and Astarte or Asherah, J. Glenn Taylor has convincingly argued that the stand actually images Yahweh and his Asherah.³³ The stand contains no epigraphic evidence to aid its interpretation. Its iconography, however, reveals the same Israelite piety found in the Kunjillet 'Ajrud and el-Qom inscriptions.

Four tiers compose the stand. The first, uppermost level contains a horse below a solar-disk with wings, all flanked by freestanding pillars. The second tier contains an asherah, a wooden pole/tree with a pair of ibex reaching into it, with lions on its side. The third tier has a vacant space between two cherubim. There is no evidence that any image ever stood between the cherubim. Finally, the bottom, fourth tier has two lions, exactly like level two, which surround a naked woman with exaggerated breasts, a typical fertility goddess.

The key to the interpretation of this stand is the obvious identity (shown by the lions) between tiers two and four. Both tiers refer to Asherah, tier four personifying her image, tier two symbolizing her image in the asherah. Tiers one and three, therefore, would seemingly possess the same structure. Indeed, Taylor argues that such is the case, and that both tiers refer to Yahweh. Tier three personifies Yahweh's image as the one who sits between the cherubim (e.g., 1 Kgs. 6:23-38); however, since Yahweh had no human personification, the craftsperson left the space empty. Tier one, then, symbolizes Yahweh with a solar image, an identification found directly and indirectly in the OT.³⁴ Israelite Tanaach worshiped Yahweh with his consort, Asherah. As in the inscriptions, Yahweh, the male deity, receives the highest devotion in the top tier, supported below by his "wife" Asherah. Yet the two belonged together in the Israelite mind, the image of God male and the image of God female. While the above data take place relatively early in the history of Israel, evidence within the Hebrew Bible also indicates that this devotion continued throughout the sixth century, if not beyond.³⁵ Susan Ackerman has argued that the "image of jealousy" found in the gate in Jerusalem (Ezek. 8:3, 5) was an asherah, symbolizing the goddess of the same name.³⁶ Even more convincing is her argument that the joint worship of Yahweh and Asherah continued into the time of Third Isaiah, as attested in the cultic practice of burning incense on altars and sacrificing in gardens (Isa. 65:3).³⁷ While never condoned by the prophetic voices, both Ezekiel and Third Isaiah witness to a long and popular trajectory of Israelite worship of Yahweh and his consort, Asherah.

Unless we dismiss or ignore these data, the conclusion seems clear: Israelites imaged (the) god(s) as male (i.e., Yahweh) and female (i.e., Asherah). Yahweh, the male, owned the privileged place in the Israelite pantheon, with Asherah, the female, his subordinate. The evidence provided does not limit this devotion to a specific demographic, geographic, or chronological location. Israelites across many generations in various social strata, especially among the elite and within the cultus, imaged God as Yahweh and Asherah, a divine couple ensuring the fertility of the land. Though found elsewhere in the ancient Near East, Asherah was not a foreign import into normative Israelite worship, but an indigenous expression of normal Israelite piety.³⁸

"The Image of God, Male and Female" in Genesis 1:26-28. As Phyllis Bird notes, Gen. 1:26-28 has elicited untold amounts of commentary:

Indeed, the precise meaning of the image of God remains the crux in dealing with the passage. Yet the text also refers to a gender distinction within God's creative act: "male and female God created them" (Gen. 1 :27c). As Bird again points out, "the critical question addressed to the Priestly account concerns the relationship of sexual distinction to the divine image."⁴⁰ The "image of God, male and female" becomes the pressing issue arising from the biblical text.

"And God said, 'Let us make adam in our image, according to our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, and the cattle and all the earth and everything that creeps upon the earth.' So God created adam in his image; in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them and God said to them: 'Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, and every living creature that creeps upon the earth'" (Gen. 1:26-28).

Of all creation in the Old Testament, God only creates humanity, the adam, in the image of God. At one time, exegetes sought significance in the parallel expression "in our image, according to our likeness" (v. 26).⁴¹ While the terms do bear slightly different connotations, the expression exemplifies Hebrew parallelism. As Westermann states: "Both the nouns and the prepositions are interchangeable...; one verb covers both phrases we have not two but one expression.⁴² The phrase is adverbial in nature. It does not describe the nature of the adam per se, but the manner in which the adam was created by God, and thus, only indirectly the adam's nature. Thus, the controlling metaphor of the text is "the image of God."

What does this phrase mean? Karl Barth's extended dialogue with OT scholarship within his Church Dogmatics established an influential interpretation, an interpretation that has almost become "canonical" among recent holiness theologians.⁴³ Overturning an earlier consensus that argued that the image of God denoted a concrete physical representation,⁴⁴ Barth argued instead that the image of God referred to the human capacity for relationship with God, a capacity conferred upon humanity alone (CD 3/1:183-206). Barth's interpretation, however, borrowed more from his commitments to dialectical theology than from the Hebrew Bible.⁴⁵ A new consensus, therefore, has rightfully emerged that has returned to understanding the "image of God" in Gen. 1:26-28 as God's concrete physical representation within God's good creation.

The word "image" appears rarely in the Hebrew Bible. For Gen. 1:26-28, Gen. 5:3 is most instructive. In a key "toledoth" passage that structures Genesis 1-11,⁴⁶ Adam (now named) sires a son "in his likeness according to his image." Seth, within the patrilineal descent of the priestly genealogy, physically represents Adam within the next generation: he bears Adam's "image and likeness." The same logic seems at work in Gen. 9:6 as well, also from the priestly writer. As humans are made in God's image, a person shedding human blood must physically compensate by having their blood being shed. This corresponds well with the use of "image" throughout the Hebrew Bible. Here "image" most commonly refers to a cultic statue representing a divinity.⁴⁷ The priest/ prophet Ezekiel, with his social and theological affinities with the priestly writer, is no exception (Ezek. 7:20; 16:17). When not used in reference to a cult statue, the term refers to the iconographic representation of a human or animal in sculpture or painting.⁴⁸ While not precisely a technical term for an idol, image is not merely "a metaphor for likeness . . . concrete, formal, holistic-and 'empty,' lacking specific content."⁴⁹ The term primarily designates the physical, iconographic representation of another living being.⁵⁰

It is in this sense that ancient Near Eastern royal ideology enters into Gen. 1 :26-28.⁵¹ Throughout the ancient Near East, the kings promulgated an ideology that they represented the will of the divine on earth as the gods' vice-regent. Therefore, royal inscriptions depict the king as "the image of God." As summarized by Plantinga, "Creation in the image of God is at leastfor the purpose of ruling. Extrabiblical literature and recent archaeological discoveries heighten this likelihood: in remote parts of their domain ancient Near Eastern kings would sometimes place a statue, a selem, an image of themselves, to represent their dominion. In Gen. 1:26 the divine king similarly adorns his human vice-regents."⁵² The amazing thing about the Genesis text is how this royal ideology is "democracized." The image of God is not confined merely to one man, but to all humanity, male and female.⁵³ According to Gen. 1:26-28, created in the image of God means that God created human beings as the physical symbol or icon of God to represent God's rule within God's good creation.

This conclusion raises a second issue from the text, an issue that presses beyond the usage of "image" and the nuances provided by ancient Near Eastern royal ideology. Gen. 1:26-28 also introduces the gender distinction between male and female as related somehow to God's creative word. Does this gender distinction relate to the divine image and humanity's dominion or to the divine blessing for fertility and increase given to humanity, a blessing shared with all living creatures? Technically, the issue might be stated, Should Gen. 1 :27c be read primarily within the context of Gen. 1:27a-b or within the context of Gen. 1:28?

This issue is highlighted in a comparison of the readings of the text by Phyllis Trible and Phyllis Bird. Trible argues that Gen. 1 :27c, "male and female he created them," is rhetorically parallel to "God created adam in the image of God" (v. 27a) and "in the image of God he created him" (v. 27b). Thus the image of God is related to "male and female," even as male and female are distinguished from God by the fact of their creation. She therefore concludes that "God creates, in the image of God, male and female. To describe male and female, then, is to perceive the image of God; to perceive the image of God is to glimpse the transcendence of God."⁵⁴ Negatively, she concludes that "'the use of the phrase 'male and female' in 1:27 does not itself signify the potential for human fertility but rather indicates, along with other items, the uniqueness of humankind in creation. "⁵⁵ She thus divorces Gen. 1:26-27 from Gen. 1:28.

Phyllis Bird, on the other hand, distinguishes V. 27c from V. 27a-b, thereby linking it with v.28. Bird argues that "the second statement" [v. 27cJ adds to the first [v. 27bJ; it does not explicate it."⁵⁶ Bird reads the "male and female" in the broader context of the Priestly (P) emphasis on fertility and blessing, exhibited for humanity first in Gen. 1:28. Therefore, she concludes that:

While Bird has rightly criticized Trible and others who would artificially separate the gender reference in v.27 from the fertility blessing in v.28, she herself does not adequately account for the structural and rhetorical parallels that Trible highlights between v. 27a-b and v. 27c. It seems that Bird can maintain her reading only on the basis of a strong, nearly hidden presupposition that imaging God as male and female was foreign to Israelite religion, and especially to P.⁵⁸

It is precisely this presupposition that Israelite devotion to Yahweh and his Asherah calls into question. If within indigenous Israelite religion there was, as there seems to be, a notion of the physical icon of a god, male (Yahweh), and the physical icon of a goddess, female (Asherah), with obvious fertility implications, there is no need to separate artificially V. 27c, "male and female he created them," from either adam's creation in the image of God in V. 27a-b nor from the fertility blessing in v.28. Rather, the metaphors all originate within the same conceptual/social world within Israelite religion-cultic representations of the Israelite gods, both male and female, to ensure blessing.⁵⁹ V. 27c stands fully integrated with V. 27a-b in relating gender to the divine image in which humanity is created and with v.28 as the ensuing fertility of the adam for sustaining God's good created order.

As Mark Smith suggests: "The imagery of the human in terms of the Divine in Genesis 1 seems to assume a divine couple, male and female, since the human person is created in the image of the Divine, partaking of both maleness and femaleness."⁶⁰ Smith does not adequately recognize, however, what is vital to interpreting the text: the polemical nature of the Priestly re-interpretation of this "divine couple." The Priestly writer projects god, male, and goddess, female (with the superior male and subordinate female, thus legitimating the patriarchal Israelite society) onto one God, the image of which is male and female. Within Gen. 1:26-28, then, humanity's creation in the image of God signifies that fertility, God's blessing to enable the sustaining of God's good creation, arises from God's creation of male and female humans, simultaneously and equally created as the physical symbol or icon of God to represent God's rule within God's good creation.

Genesis 1:26-28 as a Polemic Against Israelite Religion.

Exegetes have previously read the creation narrative of Genesis 1 as a polemic, but always as a polemic against Israel's ancient Near Eastern neighbors.⁶¹ Without denying this, the text may contain a deeper polemic: a polemic of the Priestly writer against the cultic practice of Israelite religion, much like Ezekiel's polemic against the range of cultic practices within Yahweh's Jerusalem temple (Ezekiel 7). Given that the cultic devotion to Yahweh and Asherah was grounded in the very nature of the divine-god as male and goddess as female, the Priestly writer confronts the story at its most basic, fundamental stage, within the very nature of the Creator and the creation itself.

Beginning with the Israelite differentiated gender identity of Yahweh as male and Asherah as female, the Priestly writer denies this differentiation as the divine nature in two ways: (1) by including male and female within the (one) divine image; and (2) by transferring gender differentiation from the divine into human beings within the framework of the original creation. As a result, Gen. 1:26-28 opens up striking intertextual possibilities as it became and becomes Scripture, intertextual possibilities unusual within ancient Near Eastern creation narratives. Gen. 1:26-28 has a tendency to destabilize patriarchal structures by imaging male and female humans created both equally as God's physical representatives within creation and by defining God's one image as containing male and female dimensions. Further, by linking divine blessing with the creation of humanity, male and female as the image of God, the text functions to establish a social order based upon the equality of genders in care of God's good creation.⁶² Rather than reflecting normal ancient Israelite experience or practice, Gen. 1:26-28 seeks to form a community based on a different story. In this story Yahweh alone is God-and human beings, male and female, are creatures, created as the visible icons of God.

The dynamics of the polemic against Israelite religious practice in Gen. 1:26-28 formulates interesting similarities, yet differences, between human beings and God. Sexuality begins in humanity in accordance with the divine creative word, but its relationship to God is more complex. Human beings, both male and female, are sexual and image God; God, though gendered as both male and female, is one and therefore beyond sexuality (that is, God is not a male who has a consort).⁶³ While affirming analogical language about God, the text strains analogical language to its breaking point. The divine nature bears an ineffable quality that takes God beyond the realm of human experience. Human beings, created in God's image and likeness, are also clearly unlike God.

If this interpretation of Gen. 1:26-28 is persuasive, and if the dynamics of Gen. 1:26-28 represent the Old Testament as a whole (as I believe it does), it would seem that there is a sectarian, perfectionist, or "holiness" impulse embedded within the very fabric of Scripture itself. The text stands prophetically against the normal practice of Israelite religion, calling people forth in repentance to devotion to Yahweh alone as God. A "holiness hermeneutic" would both originate within and feed upon this impulse embedded within the Scriptures. Yet this sectarian impulse is not private, but political: it seeks to form a faithful community to tell and embody its narrative by word and life, even in opposition to other narratives that clamor for human allegiance.

A "holiness hermeneutic" would understand that, as in the early social history of the text, the text seeks, not to reflect or refer to a reality or history behind the text, but to create a new reality, a new place, a new community formed upon the vision of the text in faithfulness to the God witnessed within the text. Such an approach shifts the salvific impulse away from events "behind" the text that are referred to within the text and toward the history of the communities who possess the grace-full character to embody the text within their own historicity.

A "holiness hermeneutic," therefore, would bring about some fundamental changes in understanding the historical and theological role of the exegete. Within the discipline of Old Testament theology itself, this understanding would refocus the interest in the history of Israel from preexilic Israel (the history supposedly referred to within the text), to the emergence of early Judaisms (including early Christianity), the communities that accepted the text as Scripture in order to be formed by it.⁶⁴ The interaction between the text of the Scriptures and the social-historical conditions of its reading, whether in second-century BCE Israel, first-century CE Asia Minor, or nineteenth-century North America, becomes the object of study in order to understand how specific communities embodied the text within their common life. Moving from historical to constructive theology (if such a distinction may be made), the form of life shaped by the Scriptural discourse-what traditional holiness preachers might call reading in the Spirit-becomes the goal of theological reflection. Theologians, then, would work to help the contemporary church to embody faithfully the text within its own common life, and not have it subverted by forces which oppose the God revealed in the OT (in opposition to the God found "behind the text" in Israelite religion).⁶⁵

A "holiness hermeneutic" would no longer seek to obtain the objective, universal meaning of the biblical text, as if such a reading exists. Yet this does not lead to unbridled subjectivity in reading. The character of the exegete and his or her community must possess the grace-formed desire to take on the character of the biblical God revealed in the text. The "hermeneutical gap" that the exegete must overcome, therefore, is not primarily historical-getting from what the text meant to what it means, but moral-given our sinfulness, how might we read and live the text faithfully.⁶⁶

Sanctification, re-formation into the image of God in Jesus Christ, becomes an important qualification for the exegete to interpret the Scriptures well. Exegesis becomes an act of moral commitment to the God witnessed to in the text and the community which the text seeks to call forth. As noted by L. Gregory Jones and Stephen Fowl, "unless Christian communities are committed to embodying their Scriptural interpretation, the Bible loses its character as Scripture."⁶⁷ Given the nature of the biblical text, this is understandable. The "holiness" impulse embedded within it calls the text to function as Scripture, to form a community faithful to its narrative. Without this commitment to the "alternate discourse" within the Scriptures, the text loses its transformative power and becomes merely the Bible, a book that may be read like any other book.

A "holiness hermeneutic" would, therefore, re-place biblical authority. No longer would biblical authority exist within the religious history or experience of the Israelites (if it ever has). Biblical authority is not "behind" the text independent of its reading, but "before" the text in the life that the text produces. In essence, a "holiness hermeneutic" would shift authority from a Protestant "Scripture alone" to the "Wesleyan quadrilateral"-Scripture functioning within the tradition, the life of the church, with the aid of reason and experience. "To sustain this claim Christians need not believe that God dictated the text of the Bible to faithful scribes in ancient times. We do, however, need a view of Providence. Christian convictions about the canonical status of Scripture are sustained by a faith that the God who has called us to be the Church would not leave us bereft of the resources we need to follow that call faithfully."⁶⁸ Interestingly, theologians have already begun shifting the issue of the authority of Scriptures to a question of their function within the church.⁶⁹

To speak tautologically, the Scriptures bear authority only when they function authoritatively within the life of the church, and by extension, individual believers. The conservative evangelical theologian David Wells writes: "Two decades ago, the debate was over the nature of Scripture; today the debate should be about its function."⁷⁰ In a very real sense, a "holiness hermeneutic" would render issues like the inerrancy debate meaningless. The real issue that emerges is how the Scriptures have and may function within the church to call human beings to faithful living in relation to the God of Israel, the God of Jesus Christ, rather than the nature of authority inherently residing in the Bible independent of its reading within the context of the church. Again, writes Wells: "The issue of inerrancy basically focuses on the nature of the Bible. It is entirely possible for those who have sworn to defend the concept of biblical inerrancy to function as if they had no such Word in their hands. Indeed, it happens all the time."⁷¹ From a holiness perspective, Scriptural inerrancy is not an issue; Scriptural embodiment is. A holiness hermeneutic would shift biblical authority from "behind the text" in its historical accuracy or the experience of its authors-or even the Israelite community, to "in front of the text" as it was embodied within the social circumstances of its production and the history of its reception, and how it might be embodied within the contemporary community of believers.

A holiness hermeneutic, therefore, would have strong affinities with the questions raised by post-structuralist thought. Holiness exegetes, historians, and theologians would need a whole new set of questions. We need no longer hear the questions that have been rehashed for so long: Who really spoke? Is it really he and not someone else? With what authenticity or originality? What part of his deepest self did he express in his discourse? Instead, there would be other questions, like these: What are the modes of existence of this discourse? Where has it been used, how can it circulate, and who can appropriate it for himself? What are the places in it where there is room for possible subjects? Who can assume these various subject functions? And behind all these questions, we would hear hardly anything but the stir-ring of an indifference: What difference does it make who is speaking?⁷² Such questions are truer to the nature of Scriptures as an "alternate discourse," a polemic against Israelite practice that always is intended to form a community based on its story of God.

Finally, to accomplish answers to such questions, a "holiness hermeneutic" as outlined in this paper would seek to "forge links between literary and social criticism."⁷³ A narrative reading of the Scriptures must remain primary-the exegete and community are called on to embody this narrative by the nature of the text itself. Critical social-historical analysis of the text and Israelite history, however, can refine our understanding of the biblical imagery and its function within earlier communities. It may therefore both prevent the subversion of the text by other interests as well as help its faithful embodiment within the particular local worlds that the contemporary community inhabits. In more traditional holiness language, social criticism helps define the "world" as the forces to which the text responded and the "world" out of which the text calls us now so that we might live "Spirit-filled" lives faithful to Jesus Christ. A holiness hermeneutic, therefore, is sectarian in a critical, rather than an obscurantist manner.

A "holiness hermeneutic" as envisioned in this paper, then, opens a vast theological agenda, not merely for academically trained Ph.D. exegetes, but for church historians, systematic theologians, pastors, and laity as well. Understanding the Old Testament as a "sectarian document" calls the contemporary church to read the biblical text faithfully in order to avoid being absorbed by other discourses and powers. Ultimately:

If the holiness movement has this gift to give to the church in the form of a hermeneutic formed by its heritage, it will serve God well as Western culture moves into a post-modern, post-Christian age.⁷⁵

Notes

¹Hans W. Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative (New Haven: Yale University, 1974), 95.

²"A basic division . . . existed in nineteenth-century Old Testament scholarship. The theological significance of the Hebrew Scriptures for critical scholars lay in its reflection of the 'religious life' of the people of Israel; for the orthodox apologists, the significance was found in the 'historical truth' preserved in the biblical writings. [But] both sides were committed to the history behind the biblical writings" (John W. Wright, "From Center to Periphery: 1 Chronicles 23-27 and the Interpretation of Chronicles in the Nineteenth Century," in Priests, Prophets, and Scribes, ed. by Eugene Ulrich, et al.; Sheffield: JSOT, 1992, 28).

³While space does not permit a defense of this statement, it is possible to see this ecclesiological difference, for instance, in Jewish exegetical hesitation to promote a universal reading of the Hebrew Bible for Jews and Christians alike. See John J. Col ns and Roger Brooks (eds.), The Hebrew Bible or Old Testament? Studying the Bible in Judaism and Christianity (CJA 5; South Bend: University of Notre Dame, 1990); and John Levenson, The Hebrew Bible, The Old Testament, and Historical Criticism: Jews and Christians in Biblical Studies (Louisville: WJKP, 1993).

⁴See, for instance, the two "classical" OT theologies of the twentieth century: Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology (New York: Harper and Row, 1962-65); and Walter Eichrodt, Theology of the Old Testament (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1961-67).

⁵Cf., e.g., in a recent evangelical book on the "peoples of the Old Testament world." Alan Millard states that the "distinctive feature of ancient Israel" is "God's revelation of himself through its [Israel's] history" ("Foreword" in Peoples of the Old Testament World, ed. by A. J. Hoerth, G. L. Mattingly, and E. M Yamauchi, Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1994, 10).

⁶See, for instance, Paul Hanson: "We turn to our scriptural heritage, therefore, as an essential dimension of our response to God in an ongoing, living relationship. We draw on the patterns of transcendent meaning that emerge in Scripture as a guide to our own effort to make sense of an often baffling world. It is not with a merely antiquarian interest that we look to the people of God in the Bible. They are our spiritual ancestors, and their encounters with God were instrumental in the formation of a concept of life that has been bequeathed to us as the foundation on which we can construct an authentic life of faith and humaneness. As people responding to the creative, redemptive God today, we represent an extension of the biblical community of faith" (The People Called: The Growth of Community in the Bible, San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1986, 536).

⁷And often, by implication, a commitment to the scholars contemporary society; see, for instance, Paul D. Hanson, Dynamic Transcendence (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978)

8See Sherrill F. Munn, "A Response to the Paper Presented by John E. Hartley," WTJ 17:1(1982), 77-84. See now, however, John E. Stanley, "Elements of a Postmodern Holiness Hermeneutic Illustrated by Way of the Book of Revelation," WTJ 28 (1993), 23-43 which shares a common ecclesiological starting point, and many of the same themes and concerns as this paper.

⁹Morton Smith's Palestinian Parties and Politics that Shaped the Old Testament (New York: Columbia University, 1972; 2nd corr. ed., London: SCM, 1987) may be considered the groundbreaking work that brought this issue to light. See also works such as Giovanni Garbini, History and Ideology in Ancient Israel (trans. J. Bowden; New York: Crossroad, 1988); N. Peter Lemche, Ancient Israel: A New History of Israelite Society (Sheffield: JSOT, 1988); and Philip R. Davies, In Search of Ancient Israel (Sheffield: JSOT, 1992).

¹⁰See, for instance, Israel Finkelstein, The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement (trans. by D. Saltz; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1988) for the pre-monarchic period and David W. Jamieson-Drake, Scribes and Schools in Monarchic Judah: A Socio-Archeological Approach (SWBA 9; Sheffield: JSOT, 1991) for the monarch period. Each analyzes material remains that present a vastly different picture of Israelite history than that provided by the biblical text.

¹¹Especially prominent has been the re-thinking of the composition of the Pentateuch and its assignment to later dates than that given by the traditional documentary hypothesis. The crucial work in this regard is Rolf Rendtorff, The Problem of the Process of Transmission in the Pentateuch (Sheffield: JSOT, 1990). It has also been persuasively argued that rather than an early, fundament institution within Israelite society, the covenant appeared relatively late within Israelite religion. Cf. L. Perlitt, Bundestheologie im Alten Testament (WMANT 36; Neukirchen: Neukirchener, 1969) and Ernest Nicholson, God and His People: Covenant and Theology in the Old Testament (New York: Oxford University, 1986).

¹²For an early application of post-structuralist literary theory to the text of the Hebrew Bible, see Peter Miscall, The Workings of Old Testament Narrative (Philadelphia: Fortress; Atlanta: Scholars, 1983).

¹³While publications on OT theology have continued at an unprecedented rate in the last 20 years, this seems largely reflective of the uncertainty of what direction to take the field. As John J. Collins writes: "Biblical theology is a subject in decline. The evidence of this decline is not so much the permanent crisis in which it seems to have settled, or the lack of a new consensus to replace the great works of Eichrodt or von Rad. Rather the decline is evident in the fact that an increasing number of scholars no longer regard theology as the ultimate focus of biblical studies, or even as a necessary dimension of those studies at all. The cutting edges of contemporary biblical scholarship are in literary criticism on the one hand and sociological criticism on the other. Not only is theology no longer queen of the sciences in general, its place even among the biblical sciences is in doubt" (John J. Collins in The Hebrew Bible and Its Interpreters, W. H. Propp, B. Halpern, and D. N. Freedman, eds., Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990, 1).

¹⁴5ee Stanley Hauerwas, Unleashing the Scripture: Freeing the Bible from Captivity to America (Nashville: Abingdon, 1993), 7-44; and Stephen E. Fowl and L. Gregory Jones, Reading in Communion: Scripture and Ethics in Christian Life (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991). For the general theological perspective on which I depend, see Stanley Hauerwas, After Christendom: How the Church is to Behave if Freedom, Justice, and a Christian Nation are Bad Ideas (Nashville: Abingdon, 1991).

¹⁵For Wesley, like those within the radical reformation, felt that Constantine's conversion led to the corruption of the faith by merging "the Church and state, the kingdoms of Christ and of the world . . . that they will hardly ever be divided till Christ comes to reign upon earth" (Works, "Of Former Times," VII: 164). See Theodore W. Jennings, Jr., Good News to the Poor: John Wesley's Evangelical Economics (Nashville: Abingdon, 1990), 38-43. For Wesley's ecclesiology, see David Lowes Watson, The Early Methodist Class Meeting (Nashville: Discipleship Resources, 1985; rev. 1992), 9-38 and especially, 140-42. For the populist, Jeffersonian development (and perversion?) of this ecclesiology within early American Methodism and the early American Holiness Movement, see Nathan Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale University, 1989).

¹⁶For Wesley, it is humanity's creation in the holy image of God and our subsequent marring by sin in the fall that sets the anthropological basis for his order of salvation, i.e., the restoration of this image by the grace of God (see "Justification by Faith," Works, V:64-56). For the development of this in contemporary Wesleyan thought, see Mildred Bangs Wynkoop, A Theology of Love.' The Dynamic of Wesleyanism (Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City, 1972), 102-24, 145-48.

¹⁷Genesis 5:1, a recapitulation of Gen 1:26-28, and Gen 9:6 contain the only other references to humanity made in the "image of God." As Claus Westermann states, "What is striking is that one verse about the person, almost unique in the Old Testament, has become the center of attention in modern exegesis, whereas it has no such significance in the rest of the Old Testament." Claus Westermann, Genesis (BKAT, I; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchen, 1974), 148.

¹⁸For a brief survey of family structure in Israel and early Judaism, see C. J. H. Wright, "Family," ABD (2:761-69). The patriarchal nature of this family is seen in its most common name, "the house of the father."

¹⁹See, for instance, Jubilees 2:14 and The Life of Adam and Eve in both its Greek (Apocalypse of Moses) and Latin (Vita) forms. The concept plays an important role in Philo's theology and even finds its way into the early Jesus tradition (Mark 10:6-9; GTh 106) and through the Jesus tradition, into Paul. For the development of this concept in earliest Christianity, see Dennis R. MacDonald, There is No Male and Female: The Fate of a Dominical Saying in Paul and Gnosticism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987).

²⁰The most extensive pre-1970 study of Asherah is W. L. Reed, The Asherah in the Old Testament (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University, 1949).

²¹The literature on this issue exploded in the 1980's and continues to generate new scholarship. Perhaps the most accessible entry into the debate is found in the pages of the popular yet scholarly Biblical Archeology Review. See Ze'ev Meshel, "Did Yahweh Have a Consort?" BAR 5:2 (1979), 24-35; Andre Lemaire, "Who or What Was Yahweh's Asherah?" BAR 10:6 (1984), 42-51; Ruth Hestrin, "Understanding Asherah-Exploring Semitic Iconography," BAR 17:5 (1991), 58. For a more comprehensive introduction to both the biblical and extra-biblical materials, see Saul Olyan, Asherah and the Cult of Yahweh (SBLMS 34; Atlanta: Scholars, 1988).

²²See below.

²³To say that the field has arrived at a complete consensus on the issue would be inaccurate; see, for instance, the dissenting voices of D. Patrick Miller, "Absence of the Goddess," Hebrew Annual Review 10 (1986) 239-48, and Jeffrey Tiggay, You Shall Have No Other Gods: Israelite Religion in the Light of Hebrew Inscriptions (HSS 31; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986). Yet the conclusion of religious polytheistic pluralism in Ancient Israel has become inescapable even within evangelical scholarship. See the excellent article by Richard S. Hess, "Yahweh and his Asherah? Religious Pluralism in the Old Testament World," in One God, One Lord in a World of Religious Pluralism (ed. Bruce Winter and David Wright; Cambridge: Tyndale House, 1991), 5-33.

²⁴See J. Day, "Asherah," ABD 1:483-7.

²⁵See Michael David Coogan, Stories from Ancient Canaan (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1978), especially 96-101 for Asherah's role in the Canaanite pantheon as El's wife in relationship with Baal and the other gods.

²⁶See Hestrin, "Understanding Asherah."

²⁷See, for instance, W. L. Reed's conclusion that "the antipathy toward the Asherah on the part of the Hebrew leaders was due to the fact the goddess and the cult object of the same name were associated with the fertility religion of a foreign people and as such involved a mythology and a cultus which was obnoxious to the champions of Yahweh" (IBD 1:252).

²⁸For bibliography, see Hess, "Yahweh and His Asherah?" 19-20, fn 4.

²⁹As explained above, while Asherata is, in my opinion, the most plausible translation, all three of these readings are possible. For the purpose of this paper, the precise reading makes no difference for all three readings indicate the existence of a female goddess alongside Yahweh in religious devotion in Israel. The attempt, however, to deny a relationship between the cult image of asherah and the goddess, Asherah, seems unfounded. As stated by Susan Ackerman, "In the ancient Near East the idol was the god. . . . To associate Yahweh with Asherah's cult object or with some hypostasized female aspect of Yahweh is to associate Yahweh with Asherah" (Under Every Green Tree: Popular Religion in Sixth-Century Judah, HSM 46, Atlanta: Scholars, 1992, 63-4).

³⁰See R. Hestrin, "Understanding Asherah." It is interesting to note that, on Pithos B, a group of devotees gaze upwards as if towards the sun, possibly as a cult symbol or image of Yahweh. See J. Glen Taylor, "Was Yahweh Worshiped as the Sun?" BAR 20:4 (1994), 60-61, 90.

³¹See R. Hestrin, "A Note on the 'Lion Bowls' and the Asherah," The Israel Museum Journal7 (1988), 115-8.

³²See R. Hess, "Yahweh and His Asherah?" 32-33. For bibliographical data specific to Khirbet el-Qôm, see Hess, ibid., 32 fn 44.

³³The argument that follows depends heavily on J. Glen Taylor, "Was Yahweh Worshiped as the Sun?" BAR 20:4 (1994), 53-61, 90-1; idem, "The Two Earliest Known Representations of Yahweh," in Ascribe to the Lord: Biblical and Other Studies in Memory of Peter C. Craigie (ed. Lyle Eslinger and J. Glen Taylor; JSOT Sup 67; Sheffield: JSOT, 1988), 557-66; and idem, Yahweh and the Sun: Biblical and Archaeological Evidence for Sun Worship in Ancient Israel (JSOT Sup 111; Sheffield: JSOT, 1993).

³⁴See Taylor, Yahweh and the Sun and Hans-Peter Stahli, Slare Elemente im Jahweglauben des Alten Testaments (Freiburg/Göttingen: Unversitätverlag / Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1985).

35S. Olyan, in studying Asherah in the Hebrew Bible notes that polemic against Asherah emerges only in Deuteronomistic and later sources. See S. Olyan, Asherah and the Cult of Yahweh, 1-22. At Elephantine in the late fifth century, an offering list for contributions to the temple of Yahweh remains. At the conclusion of the list, however, the offering is divided up between three deities: Yaho (Yahweh), Ishumbethel (a male deity), and Anathbethel (a female deity). See ANET, 278-9.

36S. Ackerman, Under Every Green Tree, 55-66.

³⁷Ibid., 185-94.

³⁸Terminology used for El and applied also to Yahweh in early or archaic strata within the Hebrew Bible suggests that Yahweh replaced El in the Israelite religion through a process of assimilation. If so, it is possible to conjecture that in this process, Canaanites/Israelites maintained their devotion to Asherah, yet saw her as the wife of Yahweh, not El. For a similar hypothesis, see S. Olyan, Asherah and the Cult. For the adoption of terminology for El within Yahwistic circles, see M. Smith, The Early History, 7-12, 21-26.

³⁹Phyllis Bird, "'Male and Female He Created Them': Gen 1 :27b in the Context of the Priestly Account of Creation," HTR 74 (1981), 129-30. For a good bibliographical entry into modern OT scholarship on the subject, see Ibid., 129, fn. 2. For a more extensive treatment of the modern history of interpretation of the passage, see Gunnlaugur A. Jonsson, The Image of God: Genesis 1:26-28 in a Century of Old Testament Research, (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1988). For a historical typology of interpretations of the passage, see C. Westermann, Genesis, 147-55.

⁴⁰Phyllis A. Bird, "Sexual Differentiation and Divine Image in the Genesis Creation Texts," in Image of God and Gender Models in Judaco-Christian Tradition (ed. Kari Elisabeth B~rresen; Oslo: Solum Forlag, 1991), 11.

⁴¹See, for instance, W. Eichrodt, Theology of the OT, vol.2, 122-23.

⁴²Westermann, 145. An Aramaic text has been found on a cult statue with the Aramaic terms on it, both referring to the statue. See Paul-Eugene Dion, "Image et reseblance en arameen ancien (Tel Fakhariyah)," Science et Esprit 34 (1982), 151-3.

⁴³See, most recently, H. Ray Dunning, Grace, Faith, and Holiness (Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City, 1988), 150-7, and Michael Lodahl, The Story of God: Wesleyan Theology and Biblical Narrative (Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City, 1994), 64-72. Nor are these scholars alone in this influence. Barth's influence even shaped Claus Westermann in the most extensive commentary on Genesis of the twentieth century. See Westermarm, Genesis, 157-58.

⁴⁴See, especially, Paul Humbert, "L' 'imago Dei' dans l'Ancien Testament," in Etudes sur le recit du paradis et de la chute dans la Genese (Memoires de l'universite' de Neuchantel 14; Neuchantel: Secretariat de l'universite, 1940), 153-75, and Ludwig Koehler, "Die Grundstelle der Imago-Dei-Lehre, Gen 1:26," ThZ4 (1948), 16-22.

⁴⁵See J. J. Stamm, "Die Imago-Lehre von Karl Barth und die Alttestamentlich Wissenschaft," in Antwort: Karl Barth zum Siebzigsten Geburtstag am 10. Mai 1956 (Zollikon-Zürich: Evangeliseher Verlag, 1956), 94-5 and Bird, "'Male and Female'," 131-34. This is not to say that such theological interpretations of 'the image of God' are illegitimate. As Cornelius Plantinga, Jr. states, "The theologian is nonetheless perfectly justified in developing a systematic concept of the image of God, one including the whole range of respects in which human beings . . . resemble, reflect, manifest, reproduce, represent, or otherwise show likeness to God. And she may confidently refer to this set of likeness respects as the (systematic) image of God." "Images of God," in Christian Faith and Practice in the Modern World: Theology from an Evangelical Point of View (ed. M. A. Noll and D. F. Wells; Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1988), 52. Yet theologians should distinguish between the biblical image and the systematic image which they construct from the biblical text rather than projecting the systematic naively upon the biblical text.

⁴⁶See Joseph Blenkinsopp, The Pentateuch: An Introduction to the First Five Books of the Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 58-59. As Blenkinsopp states about Gen 5:1-3, "The brief passage immediately after the title (5: lb-2) links the genealogy with creation, and with the creation of humanity in particular; and the repetition of the phrase 'in his likeness, after his image' in the following verse (5:3) makes the point that the divine image is transmitted from the first man to his descendants" (Blenkinsopp, 72).

⁴⁷See Num 33:52; 2 Kgs 11:18; 2 Chron 23:17; and Amos 5:26. See also an Aramaic cognate used in this way throughout Daniel 2-3. This use of the term corresponds exactly to the Ararnaic use at Tel Fakhariyah. See n. 43.

⁴⁸In 1 Sam 6:5, 11, golden mice are made to represent real mice; in Ezek 23:14 paintings of males represent the physical desire for live males.

⁴⁹Bird, "'Male and Female,'" 140.

⁵⁰It seems to me that the only reason that has held exegetes from grasping the full force of this conclusion is their own presuppositions about the supposed "anti-anthropomorphic" stance of the Priestly writer and the biblical prohibition from making images for Yahweh. It may be that no images are allowed to be made for Yahweh because one already exists: living human beings created in God's image as God's icon.

⁵¹For an excellent summary of this interpretation, see Bird, "'Male and Female'," 140-44.

⁵²Plantinga, "Images of God," 54.

⁵³See, most recently, John van Seters, "The Creation of Man and the Creation of the King," ZAW 101(1989), 341: "Concerning Gen 1,26 and Ps 8 it has been clear for some time that the representation of the creation of mankind in these texts is dominated by royal ideology. With the new Babylonian text, however, it becomes virtually conclusive that the Priestly Writer has democratized the myth of the creation of the king in order to apply it to mankind in general. In this way mankind is created to be the ruler of the rest of creation."

⁵⁴Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978), 21. For the full breadth of Trible's argument, see 12-30

⁵⁵Ibid., 19.

⁵⁶Bird, "Sexual Differentiation," 17. See also idem, "'Male and Female'."

⁵⁷Bird, "'Male and Female'," 155.

⁵⁸Note the emphatic nature of Bird's statement: "The idea that God might possess any form of sexuality, or any differentiation analogous to it, would have been for P an utterly foreign and repugnant notion. For this author/editor, above all others in the Pentateuch, guards the distance between God and humanity, avoiding anthropomorphic description.... Consequently, the word that identifies adam by reference to divine likeness must be supplemented or qualified before the blessing of fertility can be announced." Bird, "'Male and Female'," 148. Note also she uses the presupposed monotheism of Israel to bolster this claim (148, fn. 49 and 50).

⁵⁹Gen. 1:26-28 parallels the imagery of the Kuntillet 'Ajrud and el-QTm inscriptions and the Taanach incense altar with the combination of the physical representation of Yahweh and Asherah, the male god and female goddess, and the association with blessing.

⁶⁰Mark Smith, "God Male and Female in the Old Testament: Yahweh and His 'Asherah,' "JTS 48 (1987), 339.

⁶¹See, for example, G. Hasel, "The Polemic Nature of the Genesis Cosmology," EvQ 46 (1974), 81-102, and P. Bird, " 'Male and Female,'" 143.

⁶²I would argue that this is exactly what we see within the intertextual echoes found within the early Jesus tradition (see D. MacDonald, There is No Male and Female). This life-form erupts occasionally within the history of the ecclesia as ecclesiola within it allow themselves to be formed by the story of the Scriptures. One might think, for instance, of the ordination of women within the nineteenth century American Holiness Movement.

⁶³My thanks to Gary Knoppers for this insight into the text.

⁶⁴For the degradation of post-exilic Judaism with the classic discipline of OT theology, see Joseph Blenkinsopp, "Tanakh and the New Testament: A Christian Perspective," in Biblical Studies: Meeting Ground for Jews and Christians (ed. L. Boadt et al.; New York: Paulist, 1980), 96-119, and idem, "Old Testament Theology and the Jewish-Christian Connection," JSOT 28 (1984), 3-15.

⁶⁵This understanding is deeply rooted within the Christian-and Wesleyan-tradition. As recently argued by Randy Maddox, "as Wesley understood and practiced theology, the defining task of 'real' theologians was neither developing an elaborate System of Christian truth-claims nor defending these claims to their 'cultural despisers'; it was nurturing and shaping the worldview that frames the temperament and practice of believers' lives in the world. . . . The quintessential practitioner of theology was not the detached academic theologian; it was the pastor/theologian who was actively shepherding Christian disciples in the world" (R. Maddox, Responsible Grace: John Wesley's Practical Theology, Nashville, Tennessee: Kingswood Books, 1994, 17).

⁶⁶See Stanley Hauerwas, Unleashing the Scripture: Freeing the Bible from Captivity to America (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1993), especially 29-38.

⁶⁷Jones and Fowl, Reading in Communion, 20.

⁶⁸Ibid., 38.

⁶⁹Kern R. Trembath in Evangelical Theories of Biblical Inspiration: A Review and Proposal (New York: Oxford Press, 1987) has begun thinking through the nature of the inspiration of the Scriptures from this perspective. Working within the evangelical tradition and extending the work of William Abraham, Trembath argues that" 'the inspiration of the Bible' should be taken to refer not to the empirical characteristics of the Bible itself but rather to the fact that the church confesses the Bible as God's primary means of inspiring salvation within itself" (5).

⁷⁰David F. Wells, God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams (Grand Rapids: Eerdrnans, 1994), 212. As Wells shifts the issue from the authority of the Bible to its function, it is interesting to note that he begins to develop a NT and, one might well add, Holiness Movement doctrine of the "world" that results in an ecclesiology much closer to the Holiness Movement than the Constantinian tenets of Reformed theology (Ibid., 37-59) It may be that both Wells and the Holiness Movement draw on an aspect of early Puritan ecclesiology that also influenced Wesley.

⁷¹Ibid., 150.

⁷²Michael Foucault, "What is an Author? in The Foucault Reader (ed. Paul Rabinow; New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 119-20.

⁷³Janice Capel Anderson and Stephen D. Moore, "Introduction" in Mark and Method: New Approaches in Biblical Studies (ed. J. C. Anderson and S. D. Moore, Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1992), 20. In addition to the test case in this paper, see a similar approach in Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark's Story of Jesus (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988) and its sequel, idem, Who Will Roll Away the Stone? Discipleship Queries for First World Christians (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1994). Interestingly, Myers grew up ~ practices his faith as part of the evangelical Quaker community, a community with historical affinities with the American Holiness Movement from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

⁷⁴Fowl and Jones, Reading in Communion, 29.

⁷⁵A version of this paper was presented at the Wesleyan Theological Society in Dayton, Ohio, on November 4, 1994. I also wish to thank Brent Strawn, Michael Lodahl, and Gary Knoppers for helpful and insightful comments on an earlier draft.

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