James B. Jordan

I was rummaging through the shelves at our local used book store near my house when I ran across this book - Covenant Sequence in Leviticus and Deuteronomy by James B. Jordan. I've never heard of him or this book. I picked it up because it was practically free.

Has anyone read it? Is anyone familiar with the author?

It is from his open-advocacy-of-theonomy phase (pub. 1989). ICE/GaryNorth is the publisher. Proceed cautiously.

From the link in your post, how do "sacrifices and laws of uncleanness in Leviticus, for instance, form an extended commentary on the creation and fall of man?" Did Moses mean to do that? Was Moses writing as directed and thinking he was writing one thing, but God was composing polyvalent literature? Should the Bible be read forward, or backward, or backward and forward at once?

Jordan taught (teaches?) a hermeneutical technique some have called interpretive maximalism. In short: if he thinks it up, provided he sticks to some form of rational procedure that seems to yield a set of coherent (to the interpreter) conclusions; then the HolySpirit must've put it in the text to be found. There are untold levels of meaning to a biblical text (because God is infinite and the Author).

It is quite possible there are some interesting insights Jordan gleans from the text. Such is the case of most thinkers with "fruitful" minds. I would be wary, however, of tenuous claims (in regards to understanding the meaning and purpose of the text) that largely bypass a passage or a book's clear intent, in favor of a form of meta-analysis with a tendency toward gnostic-flavoring. "Let JJ be your guide."

If you read him with the attitude that means to try to separate wheat from chaff, there may be a little profit to gain. If you read with the hope to be enlightened by a guru, you may be dazzled; and most who are, are also not able to reproduce similar clever and arcane effects in their private study.

I'm confident the biblical authors, starting with Moses himself, always wrote with previous revelation haunting their imagination. I know (as Peter tells us) they wrote more than they knew under divine inspiration. They were writing the story of Christ-expectancy, while they were directing their words for immediate concerns. Hopefully, what you get from JJ's book points you more to Christ (out of Lev. and Deut.) than to creation, fall, and ethics.

He’s a FV. Ask your pastor what he thinks.

Without him there would be no FV. The book has some interesting outlines, though I don't go for the "It is the Bible Code that Unlocks the Universe" that his internet followers make him out to be.

Contra_Mundum said:

If you read with the hope to be enlightened by a guru, you may be dazzled

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I appreciate your insightful thoughts, Bruce. The above-quoted sentence reminded me of NT Wright, though the false teaching is NPP rather than (eventually) FV.

I am sure that the book is a fantastic novel.

If you can ever find his stuff on the 2nd Commandment, it's worth a look. In fact, try to find some of his lectures on the second commandment. He is surprisingly good. We on this board are against images of Christ. Well and good. We are mere children in our rhetoric compared to him. He is harsh in his evaluation of High Church traditions on that point. I mean harsh.

He has done missionary work in Russia and he ties Russian culture with the icon (something that former librarian of Congress James Billington also did, cf. The Icon and the Axe).

None of that, however, takes away from my criticisms of him.

He has also done a lot to encourage psalm-singing, in fairness to him. Of course, none of these points outweighs the bad that he has done.

In seminary we were told the slogan: "Jim Jordan: sometimes you think he's on to something, and sometimes you think he's on something." The erratic immaturity of what I have read inclines me against what I haven't.

I think he's onto something regarding the Waters above in Genesis 1...but in that same commentary he started referencing the number 4 out of nowhere and linked them to the four natural elements and it just kept going...and going...and going...
oddly enough, I think he might be onto something regarding the Esther/Gog connection (per Demar's summary of it without the weird stuff). Everything else is so bizarre and require the largest leaps. He and Leithart have spawned a cult following around the grotesque hermeneutic.

A friend who got out of the Tyler Tx ARC fiasco before the star chamber excommunications started, and I were in Atlanta shortly after Korean flight 007 was shot down by the Russians in Sept. 1983, for a theonomy conference (not sure it was billed as; I would not have known either way; Dr. Morton Smith and Dr. Roushdoony were speakers at the church sponsoring the event, Joe Moorecraft's old congregation, and they were all still angry about the death of Rep. Larry McDonald who was on the flight). First night I think we stayed in Leithart's parents' house who were among those giving board to out of towners. My friend tried to warn them about their son's infatuation with Jordan, who is about the only one who will defend those excommunications (not sure now if he does post theonomy).

BayouHuguenot said:

If you can ever find his stuff on the 2nd Commandment, it's worth a look

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Worth a look if you’re trying to find arguments against the regulative principle of worship.

NaphtaliPress said:

A friend who got out of the Tyler Tx ARC fiasco before the star chamber excommunications started, and I were in Atlanta shortly after Korean flight 007 was shot down by the Russians in Sept. 1983, for a theonomy conference (not sure it was billed as; I would not have known either way; Dr. Morton Smith and Dr. Roushdoony were speakers at the church sponsoring the event, Joe Moorecraft's old congregation, and they were all still angry about the death of Rep. Larry McDonald who was on the flight). First night I think we stayed in Leithart's parents' house who were among those giving board to out of towners. My friend tried to warn them about their son's infatuation with Jordan, who is about the only one who will defend those excommunications (not sure now if he does post theonomy).

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I think I was at that conference in Atlanta! Small world.

Thank you to everyone who replied. I got the theonomy vibe right away. It's interesting about the FV connection. I'll definitely read this with careful thought and guidance.

jwithnell said:

I think I was at that conference in Atlanta! Small world.

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Indeed! Theonomy never got its hooks on me. My friend had put me on to David Lachman's Antiquarian book list and I received my first batch of books end of October early November 1983, including Durham's Concerning Scandal (1680 ed.) and was soon into Scottish Presbyterianism and planning Naphtali Press '84-85.

NaphtaliPress said:

...a theonomy conference...Dr. Morton Smith and Dr. Roushdoony were speakers at the church sponsoring the event...

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A point of clarification and curiosity: Was Dr. Smith speaking at the conference?

Taylor Sexton said:

A point of clarification and curiosity: Was Dr. Smith speaking at the conference?

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I don't recall. I would think so. My friend had mainly gone to make contacts to find a wife (to put it bluntly; he was eventually successful) and I forget why I tagged along (something to do; we both worked at the same place at the time). I don't recall much about the conference; it was not a theonomy conference per se as far as the billing. I remember Dr. Smith sitting with Dr. Rushdoony at I guess lunch break.

NaphtaliPress said:

I don't recall. I would think so. My friend had mainly gone to make contacts to find a wife (to put it bluntly; he was eventually successful) and I forget why I tagged along (something to do; we both worked at the same place at the time). I don't recall much about the conference; it was not a theonomy conference per se as far as the billing. I remember Dr. Smith sitting with Dr. Rushdoony at I guess lunch break.

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Come to think, probably I went for the idea we'd be looking for books at book shops; we stopped at Mt Olive Tape Library along the way and that was the first time I met George Calhoun who ran it. That was an important source of Reformed material in the days before digital.

NaphtaliPress said:

Come to think, probably I went for the idea we'd be looking for books at book shops; we stopped at Mt Olive Tape Library along the way and that was the first time I met George Calhoun who ran it. That was an important source of Reformed material in the days before digital.

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North Atlanta had a great reformed bookstore at the time, but the name escapes me. And yes, Mt. Olive was my first source for recorded materials.

I don't recall Dr. Smith at this conference, but had had lunch with him at a friend's house about this time.

Some of my assumptions from this era (theonomy/reconstructionism) still spook me, but I likely read far more deeply into God's law than I would have otherwise. I'm aghast that a fixation on developing "a Christian nation" made me miss a tremendous wonder in the new covenant: that God's people expanded from a tiny enclave in the mid-east to a kingdom without borders over all the earth.

Contra_Mundum said:

GaryNorth is the publisher

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Gary North strikes again!

Didn’t James Jordan eschew theonomy long ago?

I read through his entire massive Daniel commentary (out of which I received not a single preachable point), as well as his Through New Eyes. I've done nothing to deserve having to read any more of him.

greenbaggins said:

I've done nothing to deserve having to read any more of him.

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No man should be a judge in his own case. I think that forcing you to read everything that has ever proceeded from the pen of James Jordan would be a suitable act of penance.

Henry Hall said:

Didn’t James Jordan eschew theonomy long ago?

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Yes, James Jordan did reject theonomy. He produced a lecture entitled "A theocratic critique of theonomy" or something to that effect.

Reformed Covenanter said:

Yes, James Jordan did reject theonomy. He produced a lecture entitled "A theocratic critique of theonomy" or something to that effect.

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He makes some good observations on the text there, and what the nature of law codes look like (and don't look like). Unfortunately, if you don't presuppose his hermeneutical maximalism, then you can't make sense of anything. And he's clear on that.