In Search of Jesus Some scholars seek answers in history and redefine the meaning of his life and deedsREINVENT CHRISTIANITY
Even now, when Robert Funk addresses an audience, there are hints of the precocious young preacher who once led revival meetings in rural Texas. In a field characterized more often by esoteric discourse than revivalist fervor, the renowned biblical scholar and head of the controversial Jesus Seminar still has an evangelist's dramatic flair, frequently cajoling listeners to repent their errors and behold Jesus.
But the Jesus who Funk commends to his audiences bears little resemblance to the Savior of his gospel-preaching youth. Stripped of what he now considers to be the artificial accretions of centuries of church tradition, the historical Jesus of Nazareth, in Funk's view, was probably more akin to a Jewish Socrates--or perhaps a Lenny Bruce--than the divine Son of God. The goal of his seminar, Funk recently told a California audience, is to "set Jesus free" from the "scriptural and creedal prisons in which we have entombed him. We aspire to no less than to roll away the stone from the door of the rock-cut tomb."
It is Funk's evangelistic zeal, as much as his unorthodox views, that has placed him and his California-based seminar at the forefront of the modern historical-Jesus quest and at the center of the scholarly storm. They have drawn criticism both from mainstream academia, where Funk is viewed as something of a publicity hound, and from conservative scholars who consider him an enemy of traditional Christianity and of the Bible
Schooled in biblical studies at Vanderbilt University, he taught at Texas Christian, Harvard and Emory universities, among other places, and became a leader in the Society of Biblical Literature, an organization of some 6,000 biblical scholars. But he split from the group in 1980, frustrated in his attempts to prod his colleagues into bridging the gap between the insulated world of biblical academia and real-world religious practice. "I tried to get them to go public with what we were doing to raise the literacy level of the public," he explains. "Without that, our religious traditions become crass, unhealthy and even demonic."
Funk organized the seminar in 1985 and set it to work examining the historicity of words and deeds of Jesus from the gospels and then reporting the results in press releases and in books published by its own Polebridge Press. Applying some conventional methods of textual analysis and other more disputed rules of evidence, the seminar, made up of about 50 religion professors, concluded that no more than 20 percent of the sayings and even fewer of the deeds attributed to Jesus are authentic. Among the castoffs: the Lord's Prayer, the sayings from the cross and any claims of Jesus to divinity, the virgin birth, most of his miracles and his bodily resurrection.
The Jesus that remains, which Funk describes in his forthcoming book Honest to Jesus, is a secular sage and a social critic who satirized the pious and championed society's poor and marginalized. He spoke in parables and aphorisms, often using humor or irony to make a point. "Jesus was perhaps the first stand-up Jewish comic," says Funk. He was "not political, not programmatic" and offered no detailed prescriptions for dealing with the issues of the world. Starting a new religion, says Funk, "would have been the farthest thing from his mind."
Funk now sees the seminar's role as laying the foundations for a new Reformation. "Christianity as we have known it is anemic and wasting away," Funk told a California audience at a recent seminar meeting. It is time, Funk said, to "reinvent Christianity," complete with new symbols, new stories and a new understanding of Jesus. "I don't know whether the churches will wake up to this," he says. "Most church officials regard us as a threat. But then, the Roman [Catholic] church regarded Luther as a threat. That's the way it is with reformers."THE MYSTICAL TOUR
A long and winding road has led Marcus Borg to his conclusion that the historical Jesus was a "spirit person, subversive sage, social prophet and movement founder." Born and raised of Scandinavian stock in North Dakota, Borg began his journey with childhood Lutheran hymns and, eventually, through study in college in Minnesota. His spiritual evolution, which he sometimes calls "tao" after Buddhist philosophy, included bouts of serious skepticism. At times, he says, he was a "closet agnostic" and a "closet atheist." He wrote of that period: "The bottom line was that I finally did not know what to do with the notion of God. On the whole, I thought there probably was no such reality."Marcus Borg
At Union Theological Seminary in New York and then at Oxford University, where he received his doctorate, Borg found himself on a less traveled path. "The news that the `Jesus of history' was very different from the Jesus I had heard about growing up in church seemed important to me," he writes in his 1994 book Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time. He was on the road to discovering a Jesus who was more concerned about this life than the afterlife, who taught subversive wisdom and who was intent on revitalizing Israel. He was also a "healer or holy person"--something of a Jewish mystic. "It seemed vaguely scandalous, and something I shouldn't tell my mother about," Borg wrote. "But I was hooked."
After studying sources as varied as the mystic novelist Carlos Castenada, the psychologist and philosopher William James and the Buddha, Borg concluded that there were two Jesuses. One was the "pre-Easter Jesus, a powerful witness to the reality and character of God" and a radical cultural critic who preached the politics of compassion. The other was the "post-Easter Jesus, a living spiritual reality, God with a human face." Taken together, says Borg, these two Jesuses "made it possible for me to be a Christian again."
He alloyed conventional research, including sessions with the Jesus Seminar, with four-day fasts and excursions into the works of those seeking alternate realities (such as Castenada's Indian seer, Don Juan). Sometimes, he contemplated his "big thoughts" during pipe-puffing sessions with his notebook and a pint of Full Sail Ale at Bogart's pub in Portland, Ore.
Partly because of new archaeological evidence contained in things like the Dead Sea Scrolls, but mainly because of new methods to interpret centuries of previous studies, Borg believes that contemporary scholars understand "the world of Jesus better than any generation since perhaps A.D. 200." He has argued that the onset of the millennium will intensify the already burgeoning international interest in the historical Jesus and "a lot of `Second Coming' talk."
Borg lives with his wife, Marianne, a priest at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, in Portland. He describes his children from his first marriage: "My son is gay and my daughter, who's adopted, is black. I never thought I'd be so politically correct." That may be the only thing about Borg and his work that is.A ROUGH SKETCH
The small book on the historical Jesus that John Meier set out to write in 1989 was supposed to have been a brief warm-up for a much weightier project he had long anticipated--a definitive, multivolume explication of the gospel of Matthew. The brief diversion turned into A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, a two-volume work in 1,600 pages. Now, Meier is working on a third volume, and he's not certain it will be the last. Matthew is still waiting. That, says Meier, a professor at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., is the compelling nature of the historical-Jesus quest. "It seems to have a life of its own."
Like many of his academic colleagues, Meier finds that the New Testament gospels have limited value as historical records. Still, he considers them to be the best information source on Jesus's life, offering far richer historical detail than the ancient biographies of many additional important figures. Among the conclusions Meier draws regarding the life of Jesus
:.John Meier
He was born probably around 7 B.C. in Nazareth, not in Bethlehem as the gospel of Luke says
Despite official Catholic teaching that Mary, the mother of Jesus, remained a virgin all of her life, Meier says Jesus had four brothers and at least two sisters, details that emerge from the gospels of Mark and John and from the writings of Paul. The virgin birth of Jesus, says Meier, "cannot be proven or disproven" by historical investigation.
He had a brief ministry in Galilee as a teacher, prophet and worker of deeds that were perceived by some as miracles.
He was arrested in Jerusalem and crucified under Pontius Pilate somewhere around A.D. 30. His followers claimed he rose from the dead.
As interesting and as accurate as those facts may be, says Meier, they do not constitute "the real Jesus." The best that historians can hope for, says Meier, is "sufficient data to draw a rough sketch."
Meier is widely regarded by his peers as meticulous and tidy as a historian, although some criticize his work as unimaginative and too beholden to official Catholic doctrine. A priest in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, Meier was raised in a Catholic neighborhood in the South Bronx, educated and ordained in Rome and taught in a New York seminary before moving to Washington. He remains close friends with New York's Cardinal John O'Connor.
Meier keeps his academic work and his faith separate. He notes, for example, that while he firmly believes in the virgin birth, the miracles and the resurrection of Jesus, "as a historian, I cannot claim the ability to either confirm or deny those." Too often, he says, "historical scholars make theological claims about Jesus" that "go beyond the realm of historical research. You can't mix theology and historical research without causing tremendous confusion."
Even so, says Meier, good historical data on Jesus "can help inform theology." And while it will never "create faith where there is none, it does say to the ordinary believer: You are not putting your faith in a fairy tale or some ahistorical symbol, but in a real person who was crucified in the first century."UNCONVENTIONAL WISDOM
Jesus was a revolutionary peasant who resisted economic and social tyranny in Roman-occupied Palestine. He was a Jewish cynic who wandered from town to town, teaching unconventional wisdom and subverting oppressive social customs. He was a preacher who proclaimed "God's radical justice" and lived the idea so powerfully that it inspired a movement that changed the course of history. And if the clarity of his life and message, now long obscured, could be fully grasped today, the same could happen again.
That's the gospel according to John Dominic Crossan, one of the most prolific of the modern questers, whose 1991 book, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant, broke new ground in the field of Jesus research. Since then, the former Roman Catholic priest and professor emeritus at DePaul University in Chicago has written two abbreviated works for popular audiences.John Dominic Crossan
Born and raised in Ireland, Crossan considers himself "Catholic through and through" despite the fact that he quit the Servite order to marry in 1969 and hasn't attended mass regularly since then. "There has never been a more empowering figure than Jesus," he explains. "If you are empowered by Jesus's life, in my judgment that makes you a Christian."
Like many of his colleagues in the historical Jesus movement, Crossan rejects most of the gospel record as inaccurate. Using modern sociological and anthropological studies of ancient Palestine as a backdrop, he attempts to reconstruct the historical Jesus from early "Jesus traditions" buried within the gospels and other noncanonical texts from the early church. While he has come up with a vivid description and a list of sayings he believes can be traced to Jesus, Crossan thinks the evidence he's gathered would rule out most of Christianity's traditional teachings. Biblical accounts of the Last Supper and appearances of the risen Jesus, he says for example, are merely attempts by his devout followers to express their "continued experience" of his presence after the Crucifixion.
While Crossan's Jesus seems much more of a political animal than the traditional version that is made vivid in the nation's pulpits, he warns that it would be "the ultimate betrayal of Jesus" to make him either "totally political--he tried to start a political movement" or "totally religious--he was talking about the afterlife." The historical Jesus, says Crossan, "proclaimed God's radical justice, which is extremely critical of the structures of almost any society--including ours."THE COUNTEROFFENSIVE
As he surveyed the landscape of historical-Jesus research not long ago, Luke Timothy Johnson saw plenty that troubled him. Concerned that an "obsessive Jesus fixation" among biblical scholars posed danger for traditional understandings of Christianity, both among academics and the Christian faithful, he decided to join the fray. His new book, The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels, already has marked the former Roman Catholic monk as one of the sharpest critics of the field and a hero among conservative Christians.Luke Timothy Johnson
Johnson, a professor of New Testament and Christian origins at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University, takes his academic colleagues to task for producing what he considers ill-focused, often flimsy scholarship that reduces the "still powerfully alive" Christ of Christianity to a shadowy figure behind a thin chronology of sayings and deeds etched in unreliable ancient texts. The Christian faith, he argues, has never depended on the ability to verify details of Jesus's biography. "Religious knowledge," he says, "is not the same as historical knowledge." Rather, says Johnson, the faith of most Christians is sustained primarily by the "witness of the Holy Spirit in their present-day lives."
Johnson argues that the four gospels, the letters of Paul and a few "outsider texts" from the first and second centuries provide a credible, if patchy, history of Jesus's life and ministry, including some firsthand accounts. They establish, says Johnson, that Jesus was a Jewish peasant who preached love and selflessness, gained some notoriety and was tested, tried under Pontius Pilate, crucified and buried and later appeared before witnesses who took him for the Messiah and dedicated themselves to spreading his gospel. Beyond that, he says, the historical process is hard-pressed to venture.
Indeed, the general acceptance of the historicity of the gospels among conservative scholars explains why so few of them have joined in the historical-Jesus quest, except to respond to the skepticism that often seems to dominate the scholarly writings. Among those who have entered the debate are British scholars James D. G. Dunn and N. T. Wright, both of whom have published works seeking to buttress the historical accuracy of the gospel portraits of Jesus.
But Johnson argues that most historical-Jesus research misses the biblical boat. While it may be interesting to examine the social, political, anthropological and cultural contexts of Jesus and his time, pinning down the historical Jesus "is hardly the point of Scripture," which is "more concerned with describing the character of Jesus" and his message.
Christianity, says Johnson, is an organic, evolving religion based, above all, on personal leaps and tests of faith. Johnson, who received his Ph.D. at Yale University in 1976, says his own most sacred religious beliefs are confirmed in experience, not in texts. Orphaned at 10, he was separated from his five siblings and entered a Catholic minor seminary at 13. For the next 15 years he lived a monastic life, teaching and preaching until he fell in love with a student who "happened to be a divorced woman with six children." When they married, he left the priesthood and was banned from teaching at Catholic schools.
Though he might easily have soured on the church, Johnson says such struggles have only clarified and strengthened his relationship to Jesus and the church. "For me, the truths of faith are the truths of the heart," he says. That's the sort of religious knowledge that simply can't be challenged on paper.
BY JEFFERY L. SHELER WITH MIKE THARP AND JILL JORDAN SEIDERfrom Britannica Online Jesus: The Christ and ChristologyThe Gospels.
The most important sources for the life of Jesus are the Synoptic (parallel view of sources) Gospels: Mark, Matthew, and Luke. The Gospel According to John, the Fourth Gospel, assumes a special position. Though it offers some parallels to the other three, and though the independent traditions in it may in individual cases have historical kernels, the tradition in John shows that the gospel has reached an advanced theological state. Because a theological conception has been incorporated in the account to such an extent, this Gospel cannot be directly used as a historical source. It is also the latest of the Gospels, written about AD 100.
That the gospel literature was capable of developing in very different directions is also shown by the extracanonical tradition about Jesus, which is preserved in fragmentary form in quotations by the early Church Fathers and in other sources and which is marked by legendary features and tendencies. The Coptic Gospel of Thomas (written in the 2nd century by Gnostic Christians; i.e., heretical believers in esoteric, dualistic doctrines), which was found in 1945 in Naj` Hammadi (Egypt), is an example of such extracanonical literature. It contains 114 sayings of Jesus loosely strung together, which have some points of contact with the sayings of Jesus in the canonical Gospels. But this Gospel has no earthly, historical contours in its account of Jesus (e.g., no accounts of the Passion and Easter). As a bearer of heavenly revelation in this Gospel, Jesus instructs the esoteric circle of his disciples about the foreign world of matter that they must renounce in order to participate in the imperishable, transcendent world of light from which they originate. The Gospel of Thomas, thus, is of no use as a source for the historical Jesus.
The Synoptic Gospels were originally anonymous. According to questionable 2nd-century tradition, they were written by the immediate disciples of Jesus or companions of the oldest Apostles. Most probably the Gospels were composed between AD 70 and 100. That they were written at such a relatively late time does not detract from their historical significance, however, because an older, oral tradition is collected in them and has left its traces everywhere. The character and structure of the individual traditions are incorporated into the Gospels, which definitely do not have a historical or biographical interest in facts, circumstances, and the course of events. They do not reproduce the story of Jesus as such but, instead, recount history interpreted from the viewpoint of the Christian faith. What Jesus says, does, and suffers is interpreted as the fulfillment of the Old Testament promises, and his story is slanted toward his end (the Passion and the Resurrection), his significance as the divine Saviour, and his Second Coming. In other words, the Gospel texts do not intend to describe the Jesus of the past but rather to proclaim who he is for all ages of time. These perspectives of the post-Easter church to which the writers belong and for which their reports are intended must continually be taken into consideration.
A comparison of the first three canonical Gospels reveals a strange blending of agreements and differences. Mark, Matthew, and Luke contain, by and large, the same traditional material. Some parts, however, are to be found only in Matthew and Luke, and a considerable amount of material is peculiar only to Matthew or only to Luke (and a small amount to Mark, as well). According to almost all critical biblical scholars, Mark, the shortest Gospel, is viewed as the oldest--not Matthew, as was earlier assumed--and served as the main literary source for the other two. They also believe that the material common to Matthew and Luke comes from a second source (called Q, from the German Quelle, "source"). This second source (Q) consisted almost exclusively of sayings (logia) of Jesus and contained no Passion or Easter tradition and is therefore known among scholars as the logia, or sayings, source.
Investigation of the Gospels by German biblical scholars such as Karl Ludwig Schmidt, Martin Dibelius, and Rudolf Bultmann--who developed what is known as form criticism, the study of the origin and development of the traditions in the Gospels--has shown that the basic stock of the tradition consisted of numerous small, self-contained units (single sayings, parables, debates, anecdotes, and miracle stories), originally without any relation to each other, and mostly without any interest in dates, places, or historical circumstances. It was the Gospel writers (or some earlier collectors) who first joined these individual pieces together editorially, forming a kind of "discourse" out of sayings and groups of sayings and, through linking individual scenes, creating the impression of a connected chain of events. They used a very modest set of tools for this; e.g., short introductory and connecting phrases, stereotyped, generalizing indications of time ("next," "a few days later"), and frequently repeated, indefinite indications of place (mountain, field, road, house, lake). These editorial turns of phrase are, as a rule, easy to sever from their context and are employed very differently by the separate Gospel writers.
In methodically distinguishing and separating traditional and editorial features, form criticism of the Gospels has apparently dissolved the presuppositions for a historically sound, connected life of Jesus, which scholars have again and again attempted to write in the course of the last 200 years. But such an analysis was only a first step of research into the older material itself. Popular oral tradition, to which the Synoptic material belongs, makes use of fixed forms appropriate in each case to the contents, so as to be easily fixed in the memory. The tradition about Jesus offers many examples of this: prophetic sayings, the Beatitudes, pronouncements of woe, wisdom sayings similar to proverbs, legal sayings, church rules, dialogues, and others. In a corresponding way, many miracles of Jesus are narrated by means of motifs and other features also known from reports of other miracle workers. From this one perceives that this tradition is interested not so much in what was historically unique as in what was typical. Thus, with regard to the Gospels, it has to be considered that their tradition was formed and collected from the point of view of the faith of the post-Easter church, under the influence of its ideas and ways of thought and in close connection with its vital interests and the ways in which its life found expression. When interpreting the texts, scholars must therefore be concerned with the question of their setting in life (Sitz im Leben) in the church as well.
This critical survey of the sources shows that there are limits set on a portrayal of the historical Jesus. Many questions are still under debate or have to remain open.
Copyright (c) 1996 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. All Rights Reserved
From: JohnDominicCrossan@info.harpercollins.com (John Dominic Crossan)
Subject: Jesus Debate: Week 1, Primary Message (Crossan)
Jesus Debate on E-Mail: Week 1, Primary Message (Crossan)THE NECESSITY OF HISTORICAL JESUS RESEARCH FOR CHRISTIAN FAITH
John Dominic Crossan
Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies, DePaul University, Chicago
INTRODUCTION
Luke Timothy Johnson's recent book The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels (HarperCollinsSanFrancisco, 1996) and his article "The Search for (the Wrong) Jesus" in Bible Review for December, 1995, raise a question of profound importance for Christian faith and theology. What is the relationship between the historical Jesus and Christian faith? This posting summarizes a longer reply to appear in Bible Review for April, 1996.
Basically, and in summary, to his words "misguided" and "wrong" I oppose my word "necessary."
Our disagreement is actually the contemporary restatement of a very, very ancient debate, one as old as Christianity itself, the fight between Catholic or Universal or Incarnational Christianity and Docetic or Gnostic or Spiritual Christianity. Do not confuse that ancient term Catholic with the contemporary term Roman Catholic.
Catholic/Universal/Incarnational Christianity believed that the material universe was created by the one and only good God and was radically good. The human body was therefore profoundly good. And Jesus was utterly, fully, and totally human just as we are, and that to confess his divinity could in no way diminish his true humanity. Docetic/Gnostic/Spiritual Christianity distinguishes between the Good God of pure spirit and the Evil God or Godling who created the material universe which, so created, was therefore radically evil. We humans were good spirit trapped in evil matter. Jesus' body could only be a docetic, apparent, or seeming one (dokein is to seem in Greek), and that to confess his true humanity was to render his divinity absurd. There were, of course, all sorts of divisions within those two groups and other groups besides them in the rich plurality of earliest Christianity, but, for my present purpose, that somewhat over-simplified divergence can stand. My counter-proposal to Luke is that historical Jesus research is theologically necessary for Christianity or, at least, for Catholic as distinct from Gnostic Christianity.
PART I. A WAR OF GOSPEL TYPES
Here is the basic question. There was only one Jesus and there should be only one Gospel about him, only one "Good News" that proclaims him as both good and news, so why are there four gospels in the New Testament? By four, I mean more than one, two is already a problem. Even as that fourfold canonical set was slowly attaining ascendancy within Catholic Christianity in the second century, Marcion, in the 140s, wanted to eliminate all save one and Tatian, in the 170s, wanted to laminate them all into a single integrated super-gospel. One Gospel therefore one gospel. Why then these four?
There were actually at least four different TYPES of gospel as Christianity moved from the first into the second century and when that is recognized it becomes clear that our fourfold canonical set represents the choice of one TYPE over the others. It was not just a war of gospels but a war of gospel types and eventually one TYPE won and to make that clear, all its representatives were retained.
TYPE 1 is the Sayings Gospel model represented, for example, by the Q Gospel (discovered as a source within Matthew and Luke) or the Gospel of Thomas (discovered in Coptic at Nag Hammadi in 1945 and thence recognized in Greek fragments from Oxyrhynchus at the turn of the century). In this type the emphasis is on the words of Jesus, on sayings, parables, short dialogues, but not so much on incidents, events, miracles, or on passion accounts and risen apparitions.
TYPE 2 is the Biography Gospel model represented, for example, by Mark or any of the canonical gospels. In this type the emphasis is on the life of Jesus, on words and deeds together, and it ends with a detailed passion, risen apparitions, and the departure of Jesus.
TYPE 3 is the Discourse Gospel represented, for example, by the Apocryphon of James (also discovered in Coptic at Nag Hammadi). This type begins where that previous one ends. It starts with an apparition of Jesus and continues thereafter with heavenly revelations usually in the form of questions and answers between disciples and Jesus. It is almost the distinctive gospel type of Gnostic Christianity.
TYPE 4 is the Biography-Discourse model represented, for example, by the Epistula Apostolorum (discovered in Coptic and Ethiopic versions at the turn of the century). In this type there is a deliberate fusion of Biography in sections 1-12a and Discourse in sections 12a-51 as Catholic Christianity attempts to subsume for itself that distinctive gospel type of Gnostic Christianity.
When my initial question is placed against our much wider contemporary knowledge of gospel types, a relatively clear answer is possible. The basic fight is between Type 2 and 3, between the Biography or narrative gospel of Catholic Christianity and the Discourse or revelation gospel of Gnostic Christianity. Within that antagonism, Types 1 and 4 had no future. Type 1 was too ambiguous: it could be drawn, as was the Q Gospel, into the Synoptic tradition, or, as was the Gospel of Thomas, into the Gnostic tradition. Type 4 was also too ambiguous: no matter how Catholic its content, its dominant format was too Gnostic for comfort. What was necessary, in this fight, was a clear indication that only Type 2 was normative for Catholic Christianity and, to make that point, the major available examples of that type would ALL be accepted. Thereafter, it was hoped, when one spoke of gospel, one spoke only of Type 2.
PART II. INTERLUDE FOR CONFESSION
Before continuing, a few words of theological confession are in order. First, my own religious sensibility is profoundly and irrevocably within Catholic Christianity rather than within Gnostic Christianity. I probably could no more change that than I could change being Irish. It is far deeper than documentation or anything that I can fully understand.
Second, I can understand and sympathize with Gnostic Christianity. I can acknowledge its early, continuing, and important conflict with Catholic Christianity. I can accept, in the first or the twentieth century, both Catholic and Gnostic believers within the community of Christianity. Third, if (and it is a very big if) a Gnostic Christianity would have involved the true equality of women and men at least within the ideal community of the Church, I could mourn its failure to prevail as normative Christianity.
Fourth, I do not presume that Catholic Christianity itself had necessarily to prevail. If, for example, the Roman Empire had officially declared at a very early date that Christianity was an illicit superstition and that denouncers would obtain a Christian's possession, I could easily imagine Christianity, had it survived at all, becoming officially and normatively Gnostic. As their world became more and more experientially evil, Gnostic rather than Catholic Christianity could easily have become the much more persuasive option. Finally, I think that Catholic rather than Gnostic Christianity is in far greater continuity with the historical Jesus but I do not know whether that is an historical or a theological judgment or even how to decide which it is.
PART III. THE NORMATIVITY OF THEN-IS-NOW
I take as conclusion, from that preceding analysis, that the four canonical gospels are normative as type within Catholic Christianity. They are normative not just in their content but in their form, not just in their matter but in their mode, not just in their product but in their process. But what is that form, mode, process? It is that peculiar interpenetration of past and present, that special intertwining of then and now whereby those gospels always go back to the historical Jesus and speak thence to new situations and problems. Jesus-then becomes Jesus-now. No, better: Jesus-then is Jesus-now. They are always talking about and from the 20s of that first common-era century. But they are also talking about and to the 70s with Mark, or the 80s with Matthew and Luke, or the 90s with John. Gospel is good news: good means from somebody's specific point of view; and news means it must be permanently updated for different times and places. But the way the gospels of Catholic Christianity do that is always to have the one and only Jesus of the 20s speak directly to the changing presents they represent.
Lest this discussion is too abstract, I give you concrete examples of what I have in mind by comparing the start and end of the passion narratives in Mark and John. Watch as each author goes back to the same moment in time and place and has the Jesus-of-then speak very differently as the Jesus-of-now.
We call it the Agony in the Garden but there is no Garden in Mark and no Agony in John. In Mark it is Jesus who is prostrate on the ground (14:33-35), who asks if the cup of suffering could be avoided although he is willing to accept it if necessary (14:35-37), and who watches his disciples abandon him and flee (14:50-52). In John it is the full 600 soldiers of Jerusalem's auxiliary cohort who are prostrate on the ground (18:4-6), while Jesus asserts his unqualified intention of accepting the cup of suffering (18:10-11), and then commands the cohort to let his disciples go (18:7-9). Two radically different interpretations of the same event. As history, they cannot both be true, even if we were never able to tell which, if either, actually happened. But as gospel they are both true. Mark describes the Son of God almost out of control, arrested in agony, fear, and abandonment. John describes the Son of God in total control, arrested in foreknowledge, triumph, and command. Each interpretation spoke directly to and from the experience of the writers' communities but different experiences begot different theologies of the passion's inception.
If we turn to the ending of the passion in Mark and John we find exactly the same process. The moment is the same in each, the last words of Jesus on the cross just before his death. In Mark 15:34-37 Jesus cries out "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" The bystanders mistake Jesus' last words by taking "My God" or "Eloi" for "Elijah" and derisively attempt to keep him alive for a few extra minutes to see if the prophet comes to his aid. The drink is their own mocking idea. In John 19:28-30, of course, there is no cry of desolation and no mockery, and the drink is Jesus' idea and brought at his command. For Mark, the passion of Jesus starts and ends in agony and desolation. For John, the passion of Jesus starts and ends in control and command. But I repeat, as gospel, both are equally but divergently true. Both speak, equally but divergently, to different times and places, situations and communities. Mark's Jesus speaks to a persecuted community and shows them how to die. John's Jesus speaks to a defeated community and shows them how to live.
My main point, however, is to note how each evangelist goes back to moments in the life of the historical Jesus, be it arrest or death, and builds a dialectical process of past/present and then/now in which those twin elements interpenetrate and interweave totally together. Those are but focal instances of how the Catholic Christian gospels consistently work and my counter challenge to Luke Johnson postulates that dialectic as normative for Catholic Christianity past, present, and future. Jesus-past acts and speaks as Jesus-present; Jesus-then acts and speaks as Jesus-now. And that is how he is Christ and Lord. We are asked, by the New Testament, to watch that process occur four times. Four should be enough to get the point since, at least in Indo-European tradition, a triple repetition is usually considered adequate to establish pattern. Those four are our mistress models, our master examples. Catholic Christian faith IS that dialectic itself, modeled in our canon, repeated again and again in our tradition, and proposed anew today wherever faith is dynamically alive.
That means that modern Catholic Christians have work to do which involves bringing two sides of a dialectic into contemporary fusion. And that fusion is both necessary destiny and dated doom. That is not because of our errors but because of different places, not because of our mistakes but because of different times, not because of our failures but because of different people.
First, the historical side of that dialectic involves our very best reconstruction of the historical Jesus by contemporary standards not because they are infallible but because they are our best available. No cheating and no special pleading. No history masquerading as theology nor theology masquerading as history. That reconstruction is of "the facts of history" within, of course, all the permanent vagaries and uncertainties that incarnation celebrates.
Second, Christian faith must confess what that historical Jesus means for now. Faith is never in facts but always in a fundamental meaning or profound interpretation of those facts. If we had a totally accurate video of Jesus' life, we would know that some people found him criminal and wanted him executed, others found him divine and wanted him worshipped, and others, I suppose, found him boring and wanted him ignored. We would, when the video ended, still have to decide where we stood or knelt.
The "real" Jesus, to borrow Luke's titular term, is neither Jesus-then OR Jesus-now but the dialectic of them both. The "real" Jesus is, and always has been within Catholic Christianity, BOTH Jesus-then AND Jesus-now, but so integrated that they are Jesus-then AS Jesus-now.EJP
Your dialogue with Professor Johnson is an example of the fact that the hard questions in the study of scripture and history remain methodological and philosophical. You are forced back into the Bultmannian and neo-Bultmannian debates because the methodic issues were never satisfactorily resolved. The problem revolves around the questions of interpretation and truth, myth and science, myth and history. The conflict is between two methods of approaching history: Existential History (the historic -- Geschichte -- and Critical History -- Historie. The Christ of faith is the historic reality as the objective of Existential History; the Historical Jesus is the historical reality as the objective of Critical History. At some point the historical inquirer must say something about the coincidence or non-coincidence of the historical and the historic approach to the same reality.
The methodic question is: What is the basis for the different procedures of Existential and Critical history? Critical history as a method did not exist before the nineteenth century when historians like Ranke asked, "What really happened?" "What was going forward?" Thus it is anachronistic and silly to ask what people would think today if we had videos of the life of Jesus. I am not saying that you do not recognize a level of silliness in your imagined hypothesis, but do you really understand how your "imaginative hypothesis" might itself be symptomatic of a problem with your understanding of historical method? Consider this: If someone took videos of events today, the questions remain: Who is the camera man? Why is he shooting these events and not some others? Who is the director? Who is cutting the film? And why is he editing it this way? I assume that if the body of Jesus were consumed by the dogs at the foot of the cross and someone shot the video, we would have some evidence to consider that judgment as true, but we would still have to check it against available evidence for its probable truth. The problem is historians need to imagine possible scenarios to understand the past as a set of events, but they must be able to distinguish --methodically differentiate -- their "imagined scenarios" from their critical, historical understandings and judgments.
So what is the methodic difference between Critical and Existential history? First there is no event without some level of interpretation operative in identifying it. The answer to the question: What happened? requires the inquirer to UNDERSTAND a WHAT = some level of interpretation. So critical history cannot eliminate interpretation, but then neither does it concern itself primarily with interpretation unless it becomes a cover story for some ideology, whether secularist or sacralist does not matter much. Critical history subordinates historical interpretations to discovering the events. As Collingwood said unlike the classical historian who relied on believing certain witnesses, the critical historian is more like a detective who, by using his head (intelligence and methods of investigation), can discover who committed a crime even if all the witnesses were lying and all the clues were planted (this would the hardest case scenario (e.g.. A. Christie's "Murder on The Orient Express").
In the period after the rise of modern historical critical methods, existential history must recognize that it proceeds by subordinating interpretation to events. The events are important and need to be established critically by critical historians using arguments and evidence that stand up to criticism, but the interpretation in the sense of Existential Interpretation: What does this MEAN for the TRUTH about how we should live our lives well as human beings? What does this set of events -- The Life and Death of Jesus and the Claim that God did not let His Holy One See Corruption MEAN for our relation to a Loving and Transcendent God? Etc.
At some point in the early history of the Christian faith the followers of Jesus made the Events of Jesus' Life and Death itself the MEANINGFUL and TRUTH-TELLING (REVELATION) ACT OF GOD and the faith in the Risen Lord became the SYMBOL -expression- of that Act of Faith. To call Jesus the Christ is to identify Jesus (historical events) with the Event of God's Liberating Act. The climax of this faith process (to use your language) is found in John's Gospel where the process of events (sayings, discourses, narrative processes) becoming Event is symbolized as INCARNATION and Resurrection means Jesus Returned to His Father (in that light whether or not his body passed through canine intestines becomes irrelevant). The mature Christian believes that the historical events of Jesus' life were prelude to the revelation of God's Act In Him. If this is what the good professor Johnson is saying, I agree with him. However, if he means that it does not matter whether Christians abdicate their intelligence and reasonableness by refusing to find out what the historical events of Jesus life were and dismiss all attempts like yours and the Jesus Seminar's -- flawed, methodologically confused, and sometimes ideologically driven though they might be -- to understand, reconstruct, and make true historical judgments about what happened with and to Jesus (events), then I am on your side. [I have not yet read Johnson's book, but I have it and will get to it. Fideism and sacralism, not gnosticism and secularism is the danger here. I hope that is not what we have here: Crossan=Gnostic (secularist) versus Johnson=Fideist (sacralist). If it is, I am wasting my time on a Saturday afternoon.]
I find your discussion of Gnosticism interesting but not philosophically grounded. You are right, Gnosticism is anti-incarnational and a false spiritualism. But Gnosticism must be criticized methodically and foundationally. Methodically it is an undifferentiated common sense version of spirituality. That is the basis for its faulty dualism of matter (bad - female) and spirit (good - male). The Gnostic thinks conflicts are all natural and unavoidable because they are really just natural tensions. For the Gnostic the tensions: Up/Down, Left/Right, Male/Female, Day/Night, Light/Darkness are on the same level as the basic conflicts: Meaning/Meaningless, Truth/Falsity, Good/Evil. This is nonsense: conflicts are necessarily destructive and tensions are not necessarily so -- though they become so when they are implicated in the basic conflicts. [Notice how John's Gospel solves the problem of preserving the truth of the Greek wisdom tradition without falling into the Gnostic trap of identifying conflicts with tensions: Although the Gnostic symbolism is used, it is used in a transformative process in which tensional symbols are interpreted in terms of a basic conflict. John's Gospel identifies the basic conflicts as rooted in the act of faith as a decision for or against God in Jesus -- in other words for John the conflicts do not arise from nature or human nature (God so loved the World), they arise from self-destructive decisions of human beings [who refuse to recognize that God could love humans to the point of identifying Himself with Them in Jesus --Incarnation]. "For this is the will of my Father, that every one who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day."
Let me turn to your seminal remarks on the 4 Gospel types. Actually you have only three basic types: Sayings, Narrative, and Discourse, with one variation of type by subordination of one to another (Narrative/Discourse). It is quite probable that your typology comes from your way of organizing your historical knowledge: What you have reconstructed as the probable course of the development of the sacred writings. The sayings-type is methodically the most primitive and the temptation would be to say it is also historically so, but you need good evidence to make that claim. I am not convinced by the arguments that Q-Gospel was not narrative very early on so that before its narrative version it was nothing but a collection of sayings. Nor am I convinced that the Gospel of Thomas is contemporary with Mark (70's) or earlier as you try to argue. You need good evidence like a reference in an earlier work. The Sayings-type would be a process that began as a way to preserve in memory what was said by Jesus to APPLY what was said first to similar then to NEW occasions when things changed as you suggest. Here is the then-now tension you spoke about.
What brought the Narrative-type into play so early on was the need to unify the now-then and then-now tensions. [Even Q was implicated in narrative.] Notice that then-now is not quite the same as now-then. Then-now is the relation of Jesus to his disciples as the given paradigm of how to live. Now-then is the relation of the disciples to Jesus, the application of the paradigm to a new situation of the disciples. Mark for example reads the now--the persecution of the disciples -- in terms of the then--the narrative of Jesus as the Suffering Servant of God. Notice how Mark's question is: What does it mean to be a true disciple of Jesus (then-now)? John reverses the relation and reads the then--Jesus as Incarnate Word Visiting Us in terms of the now--the true disciples suffer because of their faith in the Word Made Flesh: So Jesus (then) was expelled from the synagogue because (now) the disciples are driven from the synagogues. John's question is: Who Do YOU THINK Jesus IS? (Now-Then and Now) This accounts for the difference between Mark's and John's understanding of the same Jesus as the Christ. Narrative becomes the crucial process for the integration of the tensions of faith and understanding.
Why the discourse-type? As the process of living the life of a disciple becomes reflective, the discourse type emerges to deal with the problem of the ambiguity of the then: The Then as Past/Present Paradigm and the Then as Future Possibilities. Future Possibilities becomes a problem when the parousia is clearly recognized as postponed. In Luke we find proto-discourses i.e. the Nazareth Sermon of Jesus. Or when the parousia is understood as accomplished. In John we find the whole gospel dominated by the discourses of Jesus with the discourses being the way to unify the narrative and not vice versa. The discourses interpret and determine the narrative in John. The Gospel's climax is the farewell discourses. That is why Jesus has to die when the paschal lamb is slaughtered: "Behold the Lamb of God." In John Jesus becomes the Discourse of God, the Reflective Word of God's Truth. The purpose of narrative (understanding) gives way to the purpose of the Discourses (Truth) in John.
There is no conflict between Narrative and Discourse types. There is a tension that arises from the different problems solved by the types. The conflict comes from misunderstanding and poor judgments or from lack of methodic differentiation. The primary objective of existential narrative is to make sense, unify meanings. The primary objective of discourse is to affirm truths. Discourse gives way to doctrines in historic, theological reflections when the questions of meaning are distinguished from the questions of truth. Doctrines lead to the need for theory and system when multiple affirmations must be made coherent (Abelard's "Sic et Non"). Doctrines and systems, narrative and discourse, require methodic differentiation and foundational appropriation in post-modern thought.
Your "Then is Now" is an indication of your undifferentiated position. Borg is right to challenge you on it and Johnson will make hay with it. I want to help you out of it. If "Then is Now" you can interpret the Christian Fact any way you want in order to deal with the problems of your present world. I wonder who is the Gnostic here or are you all Gnostics by my definition of undifferentiated, common sense spirituality?
Let me suggest something that occurred to me while I was thinking about the Gospel of Thomas in terms of your gospel typology. It seems to me-- and I am not professional scripture scholar just a philosophical student of the scriptures -- that the Gospel of Thomas might have been written as an answer to something like John's transformation of Gnosis by the faith-understanding dialectic. Thomas seems like a discourse-gospel posing as a sayings gospel. Certainly there is primafacie evidence that it is more reflective and discourse-like than a simple collection of sayings. To eliminate the narrative is to make the THEN APPEAR AS NOW, thus removing the limits from the past placed upon present discourse. Recognizing spiritual truth implies recognizing limits. For the Christian, God is The Mystery that motivates understanding but remains mystery. The gnostic gospel might be involved in a kind of archaism to hide its rejection of the God as Mystery and the authority of faith -- its elimination of the faith-understanding dialectic in favor of a false kind of understanding without faith. That is the metaphor behind the name of the Gnostic -- these are not lovers of wisdom -- as Socrates says only the Gods are wise-- these are wise guys. They posssess the wisdom of the gods! They have that in common with the sophists who peddle wisdom. The Gnostics can become sophists when they peddle spiritual wisdom. I would be loath to think that of you, Dominic, someone I admired since I read your "In Parables". Maybe you are right after all -- maybe there is a conflict between types but not between the four types in your typology but between the Gnostic and the Christian as types of interpretation and ways of life.
I wish you all well and hope your discussions lead you closer to the truth.
Emil J. PiscitelliFrom: "Marcus J. Borg" <MarcusBorg@info.harpercollins.com>
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Let me begin by mentioning that I have never met Luke Johnson. So I want to say "hello." I also want to acknowledge that I have admired your work for some years. In particular, during the two years I was a visiting professor of NT at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, I used your intro to the NT as the required textbook. I thought it was the best in the field (even though I disagreed with some things, such as your argument for Pauline authorship of the pastorals).
Because my response to Dom Crossan's first contribution involves his assessment of Johnson's argument, let me begin by stating briefly what I understand to be most central to Johnson's The Real Jesus. His book has two central arguments.
1) He criticizes the work of contemporary historical Jesus scholars (including Crossan and me), finding our reconstructions to be inadequate. I may comment about this in a later entry, but in this one I will focus on his second point, which is: 2) He argues that any (and every) historical reconstruction of the Jesus behind the gospels is a mistake. Thus, for Johnson, it finally doesn't matter how adequate or inadequate various reconstructions are; even a superbly persuasive and compelling reconstruction would be irrelevant. Instead, what matters for Johnson is the Jesus who meets us on the surface level of the gospels and the NT. This Jesus (the canonical Jesus, or the narratival Jesus) is "the real Jesus." (And if I've got this wrong, I trust that Johnson will correct me).
This is the background for understanding Crossan's rather striking claim that Johnson's position is "gnostic." As I recall, Crossan doesn't say explicitly "Johnson is a gnostic," but it seems to me that that's the upshot of Crossan's analysis of four gospel types in early Christianity. The charge (as I understand it) is that Johnson, by denying the significance of historical reconstructions of Jesus, has severed the connection between the gospels and history. It is this separation that, for Crossan, makes Johnson's position "gnostic."
We are not accustomed to using the word "gnostic" this way, especially of someone who like Johnson takes the canonical gospels so seriously. We tend to think of "gnostic" as referring to a body of literature containing "gnostic ideas". But Crossan is using "gnostic" to refer to a way of doing theology, and it refers to "process" as much as (or even more than) "content."
So I'm curious about a couple of things. To Johnson, three questions. First, what do you think of being called a gnostic? Second, how would you respond to the claim that your position severs the connection between the gospels and history, between the gospels and incarnation? Third, what do you think of Crossan's claim that the canonical gospels themselves provide the warrant for "that peculiar interpenetration of past and present" whereby they "always go back to the historical Jesus and speak thence to new situations and problems," so that "Jesus-then becomes Jesus-now"?
To Crossan. Sometimes I find myself admiring and intuitively agreeing with some of your marvelous rhetorical flourishes, and then realize that I don't know what they mean. Specicically, I would love to hear you say more about your concluding paragraph: "The `real' Jesus. . . is neither Jesus-then or Jesus-now but the dialectic of them both. The `real' Jesus is, and always has been within Catholic Christianity, BOTH Jesus-then AND Jesus-now, but so integrated that they are Jesus-then AS Jesus-now. And, please: more than an aphorism.
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Dear Colleagues,
The pressure of events this week kept me from this machine until this morning, and I discovered that you, Professor Borg, anticipated perfectly my response to Professor Crossan! And since you posed the questions to me, I will pick them up and try to respond. For those who are "overhearing" this conversation, it may be helpful to note that Marcus Borg and I have never met, and John Dominic Crossan and I have had only one long conversation together. Our conversation has been joined by their shared constructive work in historical Jesus research, and my criticism of their books in my recent challenge to such efforts. I appreciate the irenic tone with which this debate has opened, and much prefer addressing matters of substance rather than of style. Finally, of all the authors I consider in my own book, Borg and Crossan (together with John Meier) are perhaps most clearly operating within a positive (if not easy) conversation with the classic christian tradition. Although much of my book was taken up with the question of what history can and cannot legitimately do (is "history" to be equated with "reality"? is "historical knowing" the same as "all knowing"? Does historical knowledge trump religious knowledge?), this opening volly takes up an issue that is very much "in house" to Christians.
I. Crossan compares this debate to that in the ancient church between Gnostic and Catholic forms of Christianity. Borg correctly, I think, suggests that this implies my own position is the Gnostic one. To this, I reply:
a) My strong reading of the resurrection as the originating "religious event" of the Christian movement, as the inevitable perspective from which all Jesus traditions were perceived and interpreted even in their earliest transmission, and as pointing to the "real Jesus" for christian faith ---that is as a living presence to the world even to this day, is by no means a denial of what Crossan calls Catholic Christianity, but the opposite, its grounding.
b) To affirm the resurrection this way does not imply a denial of incarnation, that is, the reality of Jesus of Nazareth as a historically locatable human person of the first century who lived a genuinely and fully human life, nor does it deny an essential continuity between that human Jesus and the resurrected one. But I would assert that the creedal statement concerning "born of Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate"--- while certainly a "historical affirmation" is not the same as a "historical Jesus" as currently construed, for that affirmation has a "mythic" lead in (it is God from God who is so born) and mythic follow up (rose from the dead and will come again).
c) the strong view of the resurrection, indeed, is a way of affirming the value of the body and the world, for it holds out the hope of transformation of the body and the world, rather than seeking salvation in a mystic or epistemic flight.
II. Crossan asserts that the church chose "type 2" gospels over other competitors. As Borg suggests, Crossan is never less than stimulating, even when his casting of things enables them to be read different ways. To respond, I would like to distinguish.
a) his assertion is wrong, in my view, if it is taken as meaning that such a variety of gospels were all contemporary contenders from which a conscious choice was made. In fact, there are no gospels of any type older than the four narrative gospels in the canon. Q, despite its hypostatization by scholars, remains a hypothetical document, or, at best, a remnant culled from material shared by Matthew and Luke (whose full extent or character can never be known with certainty from those elements which do appear in those respective compositions). The Gospel of Thomas may contain early traditions (MAY contain them), but in its composition certainly postdates even John. Type 2, as Crossan calls it, is earlier in composition and circulation than other types ---or at least that is the state of our evidence.
b) his assertion is correct, in my view, if it means that the processs of canonization confirmed those gospels which correponded to a certain SENSUS ECCLESIAE concerning Jesus and christian identity. I agree that it is no mistake that only narrative gospels were included, for nothing so strongly refutes radical dualism than a savior who is part of a narrative, consecrating thereby the body, the world, and time itself. It is not by accident that narrative gospels (despite their many differences) also contained passion accounts central to their story, for such an emphasis agreed with the understanding of Jesus as one who in obedience to God gave his life in service to others. In a word< the character of these gospels agreed with the CHARACTER OF JESUS as apprehended in orthodox Christianity.
III. Crossan speaks of a dialectic between "Jesus then" and "Jesus now." Borg rightly notes that there is something too easy in the way the statement is framed. Very briefly, to respect the limits of our exchanges---and mine has already been too long extended--- I will again agree and disagree by making a distinction.
a) Crossan is certainly in agreement with my position if he means that the experience of the risen Jesus (through the power of the Holy Spirit, through the continuing religious experiences of people in the world) continues the process of God's revelation, and that these experiences must always be in conversation with the Jesus found in the Gospels ---as I argue in my book, the images of Jesus inscribed in the Gospels as literary compositions, images that are both diversely shaded and yet deeply joined on the issue of Jesus' basic character). To dwell only in the present experience IS to be Gnostic (or something). To dwell only in a historical reconstruction reduces Jesus, ultimately, to Socrates or Apollonius. I, for one, will not deny that the divine DAIMON worked through either. But for the tradition that I claim, Jesus' presence continues in a way more powerful than mere memory or mere reconstruction. Here is why continuing conversation with JESUS IN THE GOSPELS is essential: for THAT Jesus is also one "read from the resurrection" yet grounded in the experience of him as well in his human existence. THAT mode of contact cannot be replicated, and those interpretations of Jesus retain their distinctively normative character for those wanting to claim the identity of Christians.
b) Crossan is wrong, in my view, when he says this conversation is between a "Jesus Now" (what does HE mean by this, anyway? I don't know how strong a view of the resurrection he espouses, but his language in his books is elusive), and a "Jesus then" WHICH IS A HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTION. Indeed, Crossan's own textual example is a sort of midrashic conversation with the Gospel's diverse versions, rather than an attempt to "get behind the text" to HISTORY. What's going on here? Is what Crossan means by "historical" simply what I mean by the Jesus of the Gospels? If so, why did he write all those books that got to Jesus by deconstructing the four Gospels?
I have enjoyed this first exchange. I will wind-up and pitch on Monday. Luke Timothy Johnson
Robert W. Woodruff Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins Candler School of Theology Emory University
Subj: Primary Message Week 2 (Johnson)
Date: 96-02-25 19:03:49 EST
From: LukeJohnson@info.harpercollins.com (Luke Johnson)
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Johnson Post
I. Faith and History (Revisited)
In my book, I challenged the assumption that history could be normative for faith. I did this in two ways. First, I defined history narrowly in terms, not of what happened in the past, but the construction of human knowledge about the past. By so doing, I emphasized the inevitably selective and partial character of all history, as well as its revisionist character. Second, I gave a strong reading of the resurrection as the originating and defining element in earliest Christianity, and as a religious experience that can be called "real" even if it cannot be verified historically.
My point in this is that history ought not to be equated with reality, and that it is possible to speak of dimensions of human experience that are at once profoundly real yet properly not historical. Much of what is most interesting about human existence, in fact, escapes the cognitive net of the historical, without in the least ceasing to be real; leave aside religion: think only of music, art, dance, and all the shades of being in love.
From the time of Strauss's LIFE OF JESUS CRITICALLY EXAMINED, the appropriate methodological EPOCHE concerning the transcendent has slipped into an inappropriate ontological denial of the transcendent, thus: as historians we cannot touch miracles, because history deals with the world of human events in time and space, a universe of secondary causes and effects...fine...but this quickly becomes, as historians we can declare that miracles don't happen. Where such epistemological distinctions become pertinent to the study of Jesus is obvious. It seems appropriate to engage in the strictest, most critical analysis of "what can historically be ascertained about Jesus." Although that quest has certain frustrations built into it, still it is a reasonable venture. Given the nature of historical inquiry, furthermore, such analysis can legitimately bracket the transcendent. Thus, such study can confirm that Jesus had a reputation as a healer. It can even argue to the occurrence of healings (someone who was sick got well). But as history, it cannot say anything about God's power at work in such events. But by the same token, neither can history DENY God's power at work in such events.
This comes home especially with the resurrection. If the resurrection is understood as the continuing powerful personal presence in the world among believers, history can neither confirm nor deny the reality of that claim. It can only confess its inability to verify it. Nor should history seek to reduce such a claim to something that it can call historical, and thus adjudicate (it was a vision, a dream, an hallucination, a cognitive adjustment).
History is not the only way of knowing nor the supreme adjudicator of reality. I find it odd when those who align themselves in some way with the christian tradition also adopt the opposite position from the one I have just sketched, and propose that historical reconstruction of Jesus should not only be taken as defining his "reality" but also be determinative/normative for christian belief, in which the resurrection has been the key to the true perception of his identity.
II. Personal History: Events or Character?
In this section, I want to shift gears and address the issue of what is "historical" about persons, anyway. In my book, I observe that, with some variations, historical Jesus books do five things.
1. They isolate traditions about Jesus from other canonical writings (especially the letters of Paul).
2. They dismantle the narrative structure of the canonical gospels, seeing them as theological constructs.
3. They put the individual units (pericopes) of the gospels concerning what Jesus said and did through a process of testing for authenticity, in comparison and competition with other non-canonical Jesus traditions.
4. They use an alternative "framework" for understanding Jesus in place of that provided by the Gospel narratives, derived from historical analogy, anthropology, etc (for Crossan, "the peasant," for Borg, "the charismatic").
5) The "authentic pieces" are then fitted into this new framework, to provide the "historical Jesus."
The fourth and fifth steps make perfectly good sense, once the first two steps are made. The reason? A pile of pieces ---sayings, deeds--- do not constitute a story, and without story there cannot be character, and without character, there cannot be meaning. Once that given by the gospels is abandoned, another must be imported. All the sifting and sieving of the individual pieces leads nowhere by itself. Crossan calls the opening selection of authentic traditions in his HISTORICAL JESUS a "score to be played." More accurately, it is a set of notes that still needs scoring, which is what his social reconstruction does, put the notes into a score.
The procedure bears unwitting testimony to the fact that when it comes to an individual human beings, history involves not so much what they said and did as it does the pattern of their lives, their CHARACTER. A quick analogy. If I were quizzed about Mother Theresa's birthplace, age, language, career moves, I may well be wrong on every count. I am certain that I know none of her sayings, and have only a vague grasp of her specific deeds. Yet, if I say that "Mother Theresa has lived a life of service to the poor in India during my lifetime in a way that has made her a symbol of selfless devotion," I would come close to capturing her historical character and significance. In contrast, if I knew every one of her words and deeds, and had all the facts perfectly, yet said, "While posing as a lowly nun, Mother Theresa worked to overthrow the Indian government by establishing cells of local resistence," I would miss the most important thing about her, the meaning of her life, both for herself and those who knew her.
Now, what puzzles me most about current historical Jesus work are the first two stages enumerated above. Why discard the evidence of Paul (and other early writings like Hebrews and James)? Why deconstruct the narratives of the Gospels? It is not because the narratives themselves divinize or dehumanize Jesus. On the contrary. Despite the wonders and the post-resurrection perspective that creeps in and pervades the story, the Jesus of the Gospels is remarkably recognizable as a specific human person. What is more remarkable is that, despite the Gospels' notorious inconsistency on matters such as the wording of Jesus' sayings, or the time and place of his deeds, or even which deeds he did, they are as equally consistent on the matter of Jesus' character. This character is found, not in the indiviudal pericopes, but in the NARRATIVE PATTERN OF THE COMPOSITIONS THEMSELVES. Jesus' character in the canonical Gospels is as a man who in obedience to God gives his life in service to other humans.
Now, Paul is also notoriously lacking in specific references to the incidents of Jesus' life (except for a few sayings). But Paul does confirm, in various asides, the fundamental elements of the story-line as found in the Gospels. More significant by far, Paul adverts with some frequency and in key places to the same NARRATIVE PATTERN as that found in the Gospels. He also shares the understanding of Jesus as a Jew who in obedience to God gave his life in service to others.
Paul and the canonical Gospels precede all other evidence about Jesus by a long stretch. They agree on this critical point of Jesus' character. And when Paul in 1 Cor 11:23-25 quotes the words of Jesus at the last supper precisely to remind the Corinthians of the essential pattern of self-giving that should be theirs if they are to have the "mind of Christ" (1 Cor 2:16), pattern and specific memory coalesce.
I know, my colleagues, that my proposal goes against the grain of current scholarly orthodoxies that insist on Paul and Palestinian Christianity being kept in sealed and non-commubnicating compartments. I am fully aware of the position that the Gospel pattern is itself taken over from Paul's theology and imposed on the Jesus traditions at a later date. My question to you is, do these recent theories really best account for the evidence? Does it really work to term this character of Jesus cultic/mythic? If it is not for Martin Luther King or Ghandi or Mother Theresa, why should it be for Jesus? Doesn't it make good sense of human experience, and make good historiographic method as well, to suppose that the memory of the basic story pattern is the first and most formative, preceding the collection and organization of sayings and deeds? I think so. And in the case of Jesus, I argue that the evidence of Paul, Hebrews, and the four canonical Gospels point to the earliest formative memory of Jesus being that of his character as a human person giving his life in service to others. Unless and until earlier and more reliable evidence suggests that this was not Jesus' character, then I think this gets us ---far more than the sorting through of sayings and specific actions --- as close as we can to "the historical Jesus."Review Of The Real Jesus
From: 102733.3234@compuserve.com (H. Alan Brehm)
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Mark Brokering thought this might be of interest to the list; I waited until Prof. Johnson had the chance to have his say first. I would invite any comments on the list. A shorter version of this review will be published in the Southwestern Journal of Theology at a future date, and the contents of this longer version will be published at a future date in an article on the Third Quest.
The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels. By Luke Timothy Johnson. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco. 177 pages. Hardcover, $22.00.
Luke Timothy Johnson, Robert W. Woodruff Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at Candler School of Theology, is the author of numerous works, including commentaries on Luke, Acts, and James. In this book he critiques the deliberately iconoclastic and sensational efforts of the "Jesus Seminar" to redefine the "historical Jesus" as someone other than the figure depicted in the Gospels. He examines various publications related to the "Jesus Seminar" and takes the authors to task for assuming a conflict between history and faith, for taking the path of rationalist reduction, for being excessively skeptical about the historical reliability of the New Testament texts, and for assuming that historical knowledge (i. e., "critical" reconstructions of what "really" happened) is normative for faith, and for . In each case those who would "correct" traditional views of Jesus are guilty of dissecting the Gospels into pieces that are sorted according to "criteria" of authenticity (which are applied according to the authors' arbitrary assumptions) and then rearranged to producing a picture of the "real" Jesus who looks nothing like the Jesus of the Gospels.
Johnson believes that this approach to Jesus is a symptom of the current institutional collapse in seminaries, schools of theology, and divinity schoolsaround the country. He relates this collapse to the problem of integrating Christian faith with the modernity of contemporary society. He also thinks it stems from the crisis caused by biblical scholars' preoccupation with producing research directed toward the academy rather than teaching students who will serve Christian communities for whom the Bible has significance. Johnson thinks that this radical revision of Jesus oversteps the limitations of "history," strictly defined as the product of human interpretation of (necessarily limited and selective) data about past events that can never speak in terms of anything more than probability. It also erroneously equates what is "historical" (in the sense of "history" strictly defined) with what is "real" and begs the question by disregarding the controls of the evidence available in the New Testament in order to reconstruct "what really happened."
Johnson rightfully calls attention to the fact that the limitations of history apply to the effort of reconstructing Jesus' life as well as to any other historical endeavor, since the New Testament does not provide an exhaustive account and deals with experiences of supernatural realities that are beyond the scope of "history" strictly defined. Nevertheless, based on converging lines of evidence from external sources like Josephus, the Gospels, and incidental references in other New Testament documents, Johnson argues that a number of salient points of Jesus' life and ministry "can be regarded as historical with a high degree of probability" (123; this of course is the most that is possible to know about any event of the past).
Johnson criticizes the approach of the "Jesus Seminar" for abandoning the framework of the Gospels, which provides meaning to the specific deeds and sayings of Jesus recorded there. This step leads to a dead end because it is impossible to establish a pattern of meaning for Jesus' life and ministry by selecting only those specific items that can be verified by a strictly historical method. Johnson also questions the assumptions of the "Jesus Seminar" concerning the connection between faith and history. He argues that "Christian faith has never . . . been based on historical reconstructions of Jesus, even though Christian faith has always involved some historical claims concerning Jesus" (133, emphasis original).
In contrast to these claims of the "Jesus Seminar," Johnson insists that the "real" Jesus is the Jesus whom the early Christians experienced as powerfully alive and present to transform them, the Jesus whom Christians experience today, and the Jesus portrayed in the New Testament. He demonstrates that the Gospels, the letters of Paul, and the rest of the New Testament documents recount a consistent pattern of Jesus' obedient and sacrificial suffering in service to others which serves as the basis for a call to discipleship that consists of emulating this pattern. To reject this pattern is to reject the "Jesus who truly challenges this age" (177).
In place of the current biblical scholarship in crisis, Johnson seeks a "truly critical biblical scholarship" that is aware of its own limitations, that is genuinely self-critical, and "combines a commitment to [Christian] tradition with intellectual integrity and freedom" (169-70). Such scholarship would engage in critical reflection on the "diverse voices in the canon" in conversation with the "diverse voices of contemporary experience" while also utilizing the texts themselves as the basis for criticizing current church tradition and practice.
Johnson conducts a perceptive critique of the "Jesus Seminar's" manipulation of the American media and the mantle of "scholarship" to promote their own speculative versions of the "real" Jesus. He exposes the critical problems with biblical scholarship and seminary education when divorced from the believing community and calls for a renewal of commitment on the part of scholars to serving the churches who look to the Bible for guidance and inspiration.
Johnson issues a timely reminder concerning the limitations of "history," strictly defined, and the fallacy of basing faith on the ever-changing reconstructions of "what really happened." He rightfully stresses the necessary role the narrative framework of the Gospels plays for understanding the "real" Jesus.
On the negative side, in stressing the present experience of the "living Lord Jesus" as the object of Christian faith, Johnson seems to underplay the continuity between this perspective and the emphasis in the New Testament on authentic witness to the "historical figure of Jesus" as the basis for faith.For example, Johson makes statements like "Christianity in its classic form has not based itself on the ministry of Jesus but on the resurrection of Jesus" (134) and "Although the Christian creed contains a number of historical assertions about Jesus, Christian faith as a living religious response is simply not directed at those historical facts about Jesus or at a historical reconstruction of Jesus" (141). These statements seem to create a false dichotomy between the witness of Christian tradition to the "historical figure of Jesus" contained in the canon of the New Testament as a basis for faith and the present experience of the "living Lord Jesus" as a basis for faith.
While granting that the resurrection experience lies beyond the boundaries of historical knowing,to suggest that the claim that "Jesus is risen" is less than historical or that it is irrelevant whether the resurrection "really" happened runs against the grain of the New Testament. Johnson recognizes that the Christians of the First Century asserted continuity between the historical figure of Jesus and the living Lord Jesus, but in this he seems to downplay that continuity. Reflecting on statements like Paul's that "if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain" [1 Cor. 15:14], it seems as if it is important to Paul that the resurrection actually happened--that the "living Lord Jesus" stands in continuity with the "historical figure of Jesus."
Again, granting Johnson's argument that history does not determine faith, if by "history" one means the efforts of individuals to reconstruct and reinterpret Jesus' life, it is unnecessary to pose a sharp distinction between the "historical figure of Jesus" and the "living Lord Jesus." Why can one not say that the "real" Jesus is a figure of the present as well as a figure of the past? If that is not the case, would not the witness of the New Testament seem to be irrelevant? While granting Johnson's point that "Christian faith is directed to a living person," but why does that mean that it is not directed at the same time toward the "historical facts" of Jesus' life and ministry (e. g., his proclamation of the Kingdom of God, his pattern of obedience to the Father, his interpretation of his own death at the Last Supper, his resurrection)? How can one make a distinction between the "facts" of Jesus' life and the "meaning" of his life as Johnson does (160, 162, 167)? If the Evangelists simply imposed on the "facts" a "meaning" which has no relation to the "facts," then how would that differ from the speculative "lives of Jesus" which Schweitzer and others like Johnson critique so well? It is impossible for anyone to recover all the "facts" with certainty in terms of an exhaustive biography of Jesus like Sandburg's Lincoln. Yet is it not a different matter altogether to assert a continuity between the "facts" of Jesus' life [if nothing more than the basic outline based on converging lines of evidence] and the "pattern of meaning" attributed to them in the Gospels?
In short, it would seem more of an accurate reflection of the New Testament perspective that the "real" Jesus of the New Testament and of Christian experience stands in continuity with the man from Nazareth who died on the cross and was raised again. This is something altogether different from the historical positivism of those who demand an "all or nothing" proof of Jesus' ministry down to the least detail and from a naive equation between "history" and reality.
While it is true that Christian faith is primarily confirmed by one's experience with the Lord Jesus who is powerfully alive and present with his followers, this does not negate the importance and validity of asserting that the basic facts that can be established as historically probable stand in continuity with the pattern of Jesus' life as presented in the Gospels.
Despite these criticisms, Johnson conducts an incisive treatment not only of the "Jesus Seminar's" work but also of the problem of the historical Jesus in relation to the Jesus of the Gospels and the method for relating historical interpretation to faith.
H. Alan Brehm Ass't. Prof. of NT Southwestern Bapt. Theol. Seminary
P. O. Box 22000 Fort Worth, TX 76122 817-923-1921 ext. 6800
FAX 817-922-9005 E-mail 102733.3234@compuserve.comCrossan Reply
Subj: Week 2, Response Message (Crossan)
Date: 96-02-27 10:39:03 EST
From: JohnDominicCrossan@info.harpercollins.com (John Dominic Crossan)
Sender: owner-jesus2000@info.harpercollins.com
To: JESUS2000@info.harpercollins.com
My response involves a shorter reply to each of your Week 1 Response Messages to me and then a longer one to Luke's Week 2 Primary Message. I have also read all the CrossTalk posts and my Preliminaries reflect that reading.
PRELIMINARIES
FIRST, this debate is not simply about the historical Jesus but about the relationship between the historical Jesus and Christian faith. A debate about the historical Jesus would be quite appropriate for another time and place (Jesus at 30?) but Jesus at 2000 is not its venue. I was invited to respond to Luke's book and BR article, as I noted at the start of my Week 1 Primary Message. Luke's thesis, as Marcus summarized it, is that "any (and every) historical reconstruction of the Jesus behind the gospels is a mistake." In Luke's own titular terms it is either "misguided" and/or "wrong." I responded by an opposing thesis using "necessary" against "misguided/wrong" and using "historical Jesus research" as a more precise term for "historical Jesus."
SECOND, I have never used the term "real" Jesus but I accept Luke's definition of the term for this debate. It means the Jesus of "christian faith that is as a living presence to the world even to this day." Were I myself to use the term "the real Jesus" I too would use it to mean the Jesus of 2000 years of Christian faith.
1. REPLY TO MARCUS' WEEK 1, RESPONSE MESSAGE.
FIRST, the canonical or Catholic Christian gospels have a formal structure which involves the Jesus of the late 20s (for short: "Jesus-then") speaking and acting directly into divergent times and places, situations and communities of the 70s, 80s, and 90s (for short: "Jesus-now"). But those quite divergent and extremely creative interactions do not differentiate between then and now by saying, for example, Jesus said or did this then BUT here is what it means for us now. They simply have Jesus-then speak and act as Jesus-now. And, of course, such combinations of then/now are mutually interactive and necessarily multiple. That is not an aphorism. It is the simplest language I have to explain how I understand the logic of those gospels. As an example, I said that John has Jesus in total control of his own passion and has Jesus judge Pilate rather than the reverse. It is, on the one hand, Jesus and Pilate (then) but, on the other, seen through a Christian community fighting for its future in a somewhat desperate situation (now). If you understand the canonical gospels differently, you will have to say so, because my second claim depends completely on the validity of that first one.
SECOND, then, I proposed that those canonical gospels so constructed are normative for all later Catholic Christianity not only in their contents, matter, or product ("love your enemies," for example) but in that very structure, form, or process (then-as-now, for example). Catholic Christians, like them, go back again and again to the Jesus of the 20s to formulate in faith and theology our communal Jesus for other places and other times. In summary, therefore, "the real Jesus" is not for me the historical Jesus alone. I agree with Luke on that. But neither is it the theological Jesus alone (whose theological Jesus, by the way?). I think Luke's correct denial that real = historical has pushed him into the opposite position that real = theological. The "real Jesus" is, for me, the perpetually renewed interaction of the historical and theological Jesus within communities of Christian faith.
2. REPLY TO LUKE'S WEEK 1, RESPONSE MESSAGE.
FIRST, the point of your message where we come most closely together and where, therefore, our basic difference is most clear to me is when you say this (I presume the fuller text available to all):
"To dwell only in the present experience IS to be Gnostic (or something). To dwell only in a historical reconstruction reduces Jesus, ultimately, to Socrates or Apollonius .... Here is why continuing conversation with JESUS IN THE GOSPELS is essential ...." I rephrase that to mean that the historical Jesus is important for you but that the historical Jesus is the Jesus in the (canonical) gospels. Am I correct? The historical Jesus is not for me the "JESUS IN THE GOSPELS" but is for me, as you rightly state, the Jesus of "HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTION." That is not done, by me, against the canonical gospels and it certainly cannot be done without them, or without Paul, for that matter. But it also involves much more as well. My books on Jesus are neither "midrash" on the gospels nor "deconstruction" of the gospels but an attempt to use all methods and materials available to reconstruct, within the normal ifs and buts of scholarship, the LIFE of the historical Jesus. You ask: "Is what Crossan means by "historical" simply what I mean by the Jesus of the Gospels?" No, Luke, it is not, as you very well know. You had already recognized the heart of our debate, namely, is the historical Jesus the Jesus of the gospels (how read: simplistically? selectively? synthetically?) or the Jesus of scholarly reconstruction (read selfconsciously and selfcritically)?
SECOND, I understand "history" to be an abbreviated expression for historical reconstruction, that is, for our best reconstruction of the actual facts given within public discourse and communal debate. The "actual facts" (data, interpretation, motivations, etc.) are always there as an ideal, impossible, or even utopian horizon but even when they sometimes totally or always partially defy our reconstructions, we have no choice but to create ourselves in and by such searches and decisions.
3. REPLY TO LUKE'S WEEK 2, PRIMARY MESSAGE.
I am taking three major points from your Primary Message, Luke, but will give the last two more space than the first one. FIRST, when you distinguish "reality" (or the "real") from "history" (or the "historical") and then say that the former is a far wider category than the latter, one can hardly disagree. But then you explain that distinction by saying this: "Much of what is most interesting about human existence, in fact, escapes the cognitive net of the historical, without in the least ceasing to be real; leave aside religion: think only of music, art, dance, and all the shades of being in love." Once again, of course. But that does not free us from trying to see what and how much we can understand before our explanatory nets necessarily fail us. Do you think, for example, that history (precise and exact American history) might have something to do with the number of blackwhite marriages in this country? Even "being in love" is historically conditioned. I will always concede that reality is grander far than history but I will never use that statement to free myself from the responsibility of making decisions, judgments, and commitments.
SECOND, you state that, "If the resurrection is understood as the continuing powerful personal presence in the world among believers, history can neither confirm nor deny the reality of that claim. It can only confess its inability to verify it." I agree completely but, once again, how does that relate to our debate? Short of proving insincerity or duplicity, history can only record that a Jones or a Koresh, for example, believed they experienced the powerful presence of Jesus in their lives. But their experienced Jesus (presuming its absolute validity as experience) needs to be played out in interaction with the historical Jesus in public discourse. To invoke the risen Jesus means, for me, both to confess the resurrection and to describe a Jesus. I want to know BOTH elements and how they relate to one another.
THIRD, and this is my longer point. I begin with your Mother Theresa example. You give two possible historical reconstructions of her life:
(1)"Mother Theresa has lived a life of service to the poor in India during my lifetime in a way that has made her a symbol of selfless devotion"; or
(2) "While posing as a lowly nun, Mother Theresa worked to overthrow the Indian government by establishing cells of local resistance." You opt for the former one, and I think you are right. But, leaving aside the presumption of deceit in your "posing as" phrase, I could also envisage this option:
(3) "Mother Theresa lived a life of service to the poor in India in a way that has made her a symbol of selfless devotion and worked to overthrow the Indian government by establishing cells of local resistance." Need I remind you that, if Mother Theresa is a Roman Catholic saint in India, Gandhi was a Hindu Jain saint in India who in obedience to God gave his life in service to others AND quite deliberately overthrew the British Raj in the process." My question to you, Luke, is this. How do you know which is the proper understanding of Mother Theresa apart from historical reconstruction in public discourse? (I, of course, grant her most fully the presumption of your first interpretation pending very, very serious evidence of your second one omitting that "posing as" phrase. With that phrase in there, I would need almost a personal confession, to accept that second reading). With that example held in mind, I turn to the LIFE (that word was very, very deliberate in my book's subtitle) of Jesus.
You make the following three statements and I take their repetition as determining their fundamental importance for you:
(1) "Jesus' character in the canonical Gospels is as a man who in obedience to God gives his life in service to other humans."
(2) "Paul .... also shares the understanding of Jesus as a Jew who in obedience to God gave his life in service to others."
(3) "I argue that the evidence of Paul, Hebrews, and the four canonical Gospels point to the earliest formative memory of Jesus being that of his character as a human person giving his life in service to others."
Let me, for purpose of debate, accept that as an historical reconstruction (is that how you take it?). I ask you two questions. On the one hand, how did you get that summary as distinct from some other one? What is, even in briefest synthesis, your method and discipline for making that assertion? On the other, my problem is that your repetition is acceptable to me on the THAT but says nothing about the HOW. I must complete the description by adding: " ... life in service to others BY DOING (WHAT?)..." For myself, summarizing my own historical reconstruction, I would complete your sentence like this: " ... life of service to others BY living out the radical justice of Israel's God and inviting others to do likewise in a situation of increasing imperial oppression, colonial collaboration, and peasant dispossession."
In summary: Christians believe in the risen Jesus. Of course. And I agree, Luke, with your understanding of resurrection as Jesus' "continuing powerful presence in the world among believers." But who is the JESUS in that RISEN JESUS? For you it is the one who in obedience to God gave his life for others. I agree but ask:
(1) how did you determine that historical reconstruction rather than some other one?
(2) how can something that general explain a specific human life and, especially, its end by imperial execution for lowerclass insurrection? Incarnation, like politics, is always local. (sorry, Marcus, another terminal aphorism!)Borg Response
Subj: Jesus at 2000 -Reply
Date: 96-02-27 13:06:54 EST
From: MarcusBorg@info.harpercollins.com (Marcus J. Borg)
Sender: owner-jesus2000@info.harpercollins.com
To: Jesus2000@info.harpercollins.com
Dear Luke (with Dom listening in),
Luke, let me begin by acknowledging that it is difficult to know how to respond. On the one hand, I find myself agreeing with much of what you say. On the other hand, we are perceived as opponents in a scholarly brawl marked by heated rhetoric. According to your book and articles, Crossan and I are among those seeking to destroy Christianity, as well as being naive and incompetent historians. And, to raise the issue of style and substance which you mentioned in passing, is the character and tone of you r accusations simply a matter of style? It does make for an interesting exchange. We might not be doing this otherwise, though I'm not sure I want to invoke providence at this point.
Let me begin by responding to two particulars before I move to what seems most central.
1. I agree with your frequent references to the importance of the resurrection. And I like the ways you speak about it: Jesus "as a living presence to the world even to this day;" it is "the experience of the risen Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit, through the continuing religious experiences of people in the world;" and "Jesus' presence continues in a way more powerful than mere memory or reconstruction." I look forward to further conversation about Good Friday and Easter as this interchange o f messages moves toward the end of Lent.
For now, I will ask only about your statement (in the context of refuting Crossan's argument) that your "strong" understanding of the resurrection affirms "the value of the body and the world."
Question: for that "valuing" to occur (and for this affirmation to count against the suggestion that you are gnostic), must the PHYSICAL body of Jesus have been raised? Put differently: does "valuation of the body" depend upon something happening to the corpse of Jesus?
I agree with you that the biblical tradition as a whole values the body and the world - but does it make sense to ground this in the resurrection of Jesus (rather than, e.g., in the doctrine of creation)? And does grounding this in the resurrection REQUIRE a particular understanding of the resurrection (namely, as involving the raising or transformation of the PHYSICAL body?) Note that the question is not so much about whether you think the physical body of Jesus was raised/transformed, but whether such physicality is required in order for you to say that the resurrection of Jesus affirms "the value of the body and the world"?
2. Your five-step description of how we historical Jesus scholars proceed strikes me as accurate (as long as it is also understood that we study historical context as much as we do the Jesus traditions themselves). And you grant that steps four and five make sense once steps one and two are done. So steps one and two are central.
The first of these is that I (we) should have begun our study of Jesus with Paul. If Paul reported any significant number of sayings of Jesus, or any particular deeds, we would have. But Paul doesn't (with few exceptions), as you grant. Nevertheless, you might suggest (as you do) that we should have begun with the pattern we see in Paul: Jesus as one who gave his life in loving service. I find that in the gospels, as you do. I also find it in Paul (and I am not among those who see Paul as a radical distortion of Jesus).
But why is it a mistake to find it in the gospels apart from Paul? It seems to me that seeing it in both the gospels and Paul, considered independently, underlines its centrality, rather than suggesting a flaw in method.
Step two I won't say much about, except to note that IF one is going to do historical reconstruction, then the narrative structure of the gospels must itself be an object of critical study. I think you would agree that no mainline scholar thinks the sequence of pericopes in the gospels corresponds to sequence in the life of Jesus (with major exceptions, such as the relationship with John the Baptizer belonging near the beginning, and death/Easter stories at the end). Thus I see objection two as a sub-set of the larger question, "Is historical reconstruction of Jesus possible, useful, desirable?"
One last point before I leave this. In your current E-mail piece and in your book, you say that in order to put the pieces back together, we Jesus scholars import models from elsewhere, and then describe my "model" of Jesus as "a charismatic." But that' s only one of four or five strokes in my sketch or "gestalt" (even though I see it as foundational). My others are healer, wisdom teacher (unconventional), social prophet, and movement initiator. It is thus a quite comprehensive sketch of Jesus; to reduce it to one stroke is misleading.
3. I now turn to what seems to me to be the heart of the matter. Throughout your book and your E-mail contribution, I hear a sharp either/or. EITHER the historical Jesus (as reconstructed by historians) is normative, OR the canonical/narratival Jesus is normative. You say, "history ought not be equated with reality," and that "history is not the only way of knowing nor the supreme adjudicator of reality." (I agree). You find it odd that "historical reconstruction of Jesus" should not only be taken as his `reality' but also be determinative/normative for Christian belief" (which of us says that? All of us? Some of us?).
I don't understand the need for the either/or, nor do I subscribe to it. In my work, I speak of BOTH the pre-Easter Jesus AND the post-Easter Jesus (the Jesus of Christian experience and tradition) as being of significance for Christians and Christian theology.
Nor do I subscribe to the assumption that history can be normative for faith (again, I have that odd feeling of agreeing with you, even as I also feel attacked). I have argued against the kind of "historical reductionism" that says that something must be historically true to be true. To use an example, I regularly say, "I don't think the virgin birth happened, but I think the stories of the virgin birth are powerfully true."
So, I don't agree with the either/or of your approach. Beyond that, I want to say something about the helpfulness of historical reconstruction: there may be something about the modern period (which I am not distinguishing right now from "post-modern" or "beyond post-modern") which makes "good" history extremely helpful to Christians seeking to understand/affirm their tradition. We live in a time when doctrinal claims divorced from experience are suspect by people - when the canonical Jesus, presented as "the REAL Jesus" (I know what you mean by that, but it seems odd to define the narratival Jesus as "the real Jesus"), seems a barrier to seeing rather than a window or icon. Though there are many Christians who don't want or need to hear about the historical Jesus, I have also found that many Christians need to know (minimally) that they don't need to take all the details of the canonical Jesus historically. And they are curious about what lies behind the canonical Jesus.
One final gambit to suggest why historical knowledge (reconstruction) is helpful. I use as my take-off point your statement that the history of a person is not the total (or selected) account of what s/he has done, but the pattern of their lives, their CHARACTER. In a general way, I agree. Then you say, "Jesus' character in the canonical gospels is as a man who in obedience to God gives his life in service to other humans." (The same notion is repeated two more times in your own contribution, as well as once in your response to the first week's entries, suggesting its centrality for you). I agree.
And then I would add: but it's a considerable abstraction and generalization. It fits many people besides Jesus (and that's good); not only Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King, but also parents who in a time of famine give their food to their children, even though it means starving to death themselves. All of this is noble and greatly to be praised.
But is the rest of what Jesus did and said - a more detailed account - irrelevant? Would his life have been just as significant if he had, e.g., like the parents mentioned above, starved to death because of giving all of his food to famished people? Or is it significant that he didn't just die in service to others, but was killed because of his passion for the "least of these"? Does not your characterization of the real Jesus, unless you expand it with historical claims, domesticate Jesus by depriving his words and deeds of their world-challenging edge?
There is the historical Jesus and there is "the mythic Jesus" (a phrase which you come close to using). By "the mythic Jesus," I mean something very positive (as I assume you do). Myths are stories about the relationship between "this world" and "the sacred"; and they can be true. The "mythic Jesus" is the narratival portrait of one who was the incarnation of God becoming the light in our darkness, becoming our liberator from the powers, becoming the manifestation of God's love for us; it includes the credal Jesus (whom you mention in the context of "myth"). For me, this is a "true myth." And my claim is that both "the mythic Jesus" and the pre-Easter Jesus (Jesus as we can glimpse him through historical reconstruction) matter. But I wonder if only the mythic Jesus matters for you? And if so, are we back to the issue which Crossan raised: what is the connection to history?
Date: 96-02-29 07:48:16 EST
From: Dakaylor@Davidson.edu (David Kaylor)
Sender: owner-crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com
To: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com
Some reflections on miracles and the quest for the historical Jesus:
1. Some postings reflect a notion that many of my students have: If the miracles are "true" then the Jesus of the gospel tradition IS the historical Jesus, and that includes his having a divine status. That reasoning ignores the fact that biblical miracles do not imply a "divine man" but rather imply a person upon whom the Spirit has descended and empowered.
2. The miracles are not indications of Jesus' uniqueness -- the disciples are expected to do alll the things Jesus' does, including raising the dead.
3. At least in the synoptic gospels, Jesus does not make Christological claims for himself on the basis of the miracles.
4. Incarnational Christology MIGHT attribute Jesus' miracles to divinity, but not necessarily (note the kenosis theory).
5. Spirit-exaltation Christology (the dominant Christology of the synoptic gospels) would not attribute Jesus' miracles to his divinity but to his being a person of the Spirit.
6. Thus, one should be wary of the popular notion that miracles are in some sense necessarily tied to Jesus' divine nature.
7. In the gospels, miralces are signs of the kingdom which brings healing to God's people (Israel) and release from powers captivating and oppressing the people.
8. The Bible is not "full of miracles," but miracles tend to occur in clusters, particularly in times of political and social crisis (Moses, Elijah and Elisha are the main miracle workers in the Hebrew Bible, and all did their work in the context of and in relation to oppressive political power).
9. As Crossan has argued, Jesus' miracles have a social and political context as well. Jesus brings a healing that is independent of and in some sense in opposition to religious and political authority. His miracles demonstrate a kingdom that is good news to the poor, food to the hungry, renewal of covenant, the presence of shalom.
10. To argue in general terms about whether "they happened" usually leads to ignoring the main point: the message that God's kingdom brings change to the social, political and economic as well as to the "religious" spheres.
R. David Kaylor
Religion Department
Davidson College
704-892-2259
E-MAIL: Dakaylor@davidson.edu
Subj: The Historical Jesus and the Spirit
Date: 96-02-29 12:54:57 EST
From: miser17@epix.net (Stevan Davies)
Sender: owner-crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com
Reply-to: miser17@epix.net
To: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com
David Kaylor wrote:
> Some reflections on miracles and the quest for the historical Jesus:
5. Spirit-exaltation Christology (the dominant Christology of the synoptic gospels) would not attribute Jesus' miracles to his divinity but to his being a person of the Spirit.
I think this is an important, even crucial, point. I have recently published a book on the historical Jesus that principally makes an argument that what Kaylor calls "Spirit-exaltation Christology" is a secular historical category and not simply a theological category.
I intend that that book:
*Jesus the Healer: Possession, Trance, and the Origins of Christianity*
[Continuum Press, New York, 1995] be a contribution to the secular study of the historical Jesus. It is one that has profound implications for "the Christ of Faith" for those who are interested in that matter.
In Brief:
1. There are hundreds of anthropological studies of cultures featuring the phenomenon of spirit-possession (which is NOT the same thing as demon-possession, although they are both forms of dissociative psychological occurances). In spirit-possession a person receives [from his own internal psychological makeup, I'd say, from outside, they'd say] another personality, or ego, or what I'd call a "persona." That alternate persona is culturally defined/explained to be that of a god, (or ancestor, or spirit).
2. It is quite common for spirit-possessed people to function as sources of divine knowledge, as healers, as exorcists, it being understood intraculturally that the god possessing the person provides the knowledge, does the healing, casts out the devils. We have considerable evidence that Jesus was regarded, perhaps principally regarded, as a healer and an exorcist.
3. The prophetic paradigm (wherein a human voice speaks, but it is the persona of God who is heard to speak) is spirit-possession based. Prophecy is spirit-possession according to Philo (at some length) and Josephus (occasionally), and we have ample evidence that Jesus was considered (by his supporters) to be a prophet. We know from the NT that the possession paradigm for demon-possession was widespread in Palestine at the time of Jesus. Accordingly, the possession paradigm was available in his culture at his time.
4. The gospels begin with Jesus' initial unanticipated experience of possession by the spirit, presume that his "mission" began at that point and henceforth give us accounts of the career of a spirit-possessed healer and prophet. After Jesus' death the spirit-possession paradigm (unique to Jesus within his group during his life) became generalized to the entire group of followers (probably on Pentecost, why not?) and for the first generation of Christians spirit-possession and concommitent experiences of speaking in tongues, prophecying, healing were *sine qua non* requirements for membership in the group.
Our earliest evidence testifies to this (Paul) as do the earlier parts of Acts. Thus, it is easy to understand the shift from the spirit-possessed Jesus to a spirit-possession cult. It is virtually impossible to understand how, let us say, a cynic philosopher gave rise to such a cult. It is also very easy to understand how a spirit-possessed person who would have been regarded as the embodiment of God (or the spirit of God) during his lifetime might be regarded as the incarnation of God after his death. [It may also be that he predicted the coming of a future Kingdom and that people associated with him believed they saw him after his death.]
5. I could go on and on, of course, for the implications of the spirit-possession thesis are manifold, including, for example, lines of thought leading to the probability that many of the sayings in the Gospel of John were spoken by the historical Jesus (or, more precisely, were spoken by the persona "spirit of God" through the historical Jesus) following the possession paradigm "it is not you who speak but the Spirit" (Mark 13:11).
6. Let me EMPHASIZE THIS: The model of Jesus as a spirit-possessed person who was considered a prophet and was in fact an effective healer and exorcist is a completely secular historical model. It leads very easily to Christological theory, of course, but it does not derive from Christological theory. The likelihood is that Jesus was considered to be, by his followers, and by his own self, sometimes the 'incarnation of God' as are many, many other people throughout the world within cultures that utilize spirit-possession. We need only separate a kind of dissociative experience from the explanations given for it; that is to say,while the experience is real and widely attested in many cultures, the explanation for the experience may be supernaturalistic (God's spirit did in fact come into Jesus) or secular (the experience is psychologically comprehensible as dissociative). The quest for the historical Jesus has thus far assumed that the supernaturalistic explanation is normative, then dismissed the supernatural as anhistorical category (as anyone reading my letters to this discussion knows I do too) and then stopped there. But if we look at the same phenomenon and it give a psychological/anthropological explanation, we find a secular historical Jesus who fits nicely, in general, with the reports we have in the gospels.
The secular historical Jesus and the Christ of Faith are not so far apart as they've been made out to be.
Stevan Davies
Professor of Religious Studies
College Misericordia
Subj: Spirit Christology
Date: 96-02-29 14:59:11 EST
From: Dakaylor@Davidson.edu (David Kaylor)
Sender: owner-crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com
To: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com
Stevan Davies writes "The model of Jesus as a spirit-possessed person who was considered a prophet and was in fact an effective healer and exorcist is a completely secular historical model. It leads very easily to Christological theory, of course, but it does not derive from Christological theory."
If Stevan Daves means that this model was widespread in the ancient world (and in the modern world for that matter) and that makes it a secular model, I might agree. But the model is so deeply embedded in Hebrew Scriptures that I think it may also be regarded as a theological model. It was not the model that survived the Hellenization of the early church or the impact of Greek philosophy on theological developments of the first few centuries. In fact, in Mark it may already be giving way to a divine man model (debatable).
In the sense that the Messiah would be expected to be endowed by YHWH when the latter adopted him (Psalm 2, used in the baptismal accounts), the Messiah would be a charismatic type. Whether that means also an ecstatic type is a different matter, I think. Charismatic messianism would have provided the earliest model for Christology. Luke's Spirit Christology is reflected in his having Jesus quote Isaiah 61 in Nazareth: Spirit and anointing are joined in that passage.
I will look forward to reading Stevan Davies book. At the least his position enables a more rational understanding of Christology than does an incarnational model.
R. David Kaylor
Religion Department
Davidson College
704-892-2259
E-MAIL: Dakaylor@davidson.edu
Subj: divinity
Date: 96-02-29 15:29:37 EST
From: Dakaylor@Davidson.edu (David Kaylor)
Sender: owner-crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com
To: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com
Bob Schacht asks what if not miracles can serve as evidence for Jesus' divinity: "So what would it take to demonstrate the divinity of Jesus? What kind of methodology could be used to evaluate the claims of his divinity? Is there any "objective" way to do it?"
In response, I do not think such evidence exists, nor do I think that question concerns NT writers. Assigning divinity to Jesus originates in a personal response to his words and deeds if it comes at all. I do not think Jesus claimed it for himself (whatever the Gospel of John may suggest to the contrary), but the Christian community assigned divine status to Jesus as part their resurrection faith. To say that Jesus is a divine being or "God" is to make a confession of faith, not a historical statement.
In any event, the miracles don't work well for evidence, unless one wants to argue that many other human characters in the Bible are divine as well.
R. David Kaylor
Religion Department
Davidson College
704-892-2259
E-MAIL: Dakaylor@davidson.eduCriteria
Jesus Seminar Premises and Rules of Evidence
From: "Carl W. Conrad"
Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 16:55:51 -0600
Subject: Jesus Sem Methodology
Since the question is being raised about what presuppositions andmethodology are employed by the Jesus Seminar, and since more than a few posts seemed to be predicated upon an assumption that there is no methodology--that the JS has gone its merry way altogether arbitrarily, I thought it might be worth while to post this list that I extracted from the introduction (written by Robert Funk) to one of the Red-Letter editions, this one The Gospel of Mark (pub. Polebridge, 1991). I hope this doesn't get me into copyright trouble, but it seems to me that this information really ought to be available to participants in
Crosstalk.
Jesus Seminar Premises and Rules of Evidence
Premises:The Problem of the Historical Jesus
1. The historical Jesus is to be distinguished from the gospel portraits of him.Jesus as itinerant
2. Jesus taught his disciples orally; Jesus wrote nothing.
3. Traditions about Jesus were circulated by word of mouth for many years after Jesus' death.
4. Oral tradition is fluid.
5. The oral mentality remembers, not the precise words, but the core of what was said.
6. Jesus' mother tongue was Aramaic; the gospels were written in Greek.
7. Jesus possibly spoke Greek as a second language.
8. Jesus was itinerant: he moved around and adapted his sayings and parables to the occasion.
9. Jesus' disciples were oral and itinerant: they moved around and revised his sayings and parables as the situation demanded.
10. The oral tradition exhibits little interest in biographical data about Jesus.Chronology
11. At least two decades separate the death of Jesus from the first written records.
12. Forty years elapsed after the death of Jesus before the first canonical gospel was composed.
13. Mark was the first of the canonical gospels to be written.
14. Mark was not an eyewitness of the events he reports.
15. The synoptic gospels-Mark, Matthew, Luke-share a common view of Jesus in contrast to the gospel of John.
16. Between them Matthew and Luke incorporate nearly all of Mark into their gospels, often almost word for word.
17. Matthew and Luke make use of a sayings gospel, known as Q, often almost word-for-word.
18. Matthew and Luke each make use of additional material unknown to Mark, Q, and each other.
19. Mark has arbitrarily arranged the order of events in his story of Jesus.
20. Matthew and Luke have no independent knowledge of the order of events in the story of Jesus.
21. Q is a collection of sayings without a narrative framework.Gospel of Thomas
22. The Gospel of Thomas has provided a new and important source for the Jesus tradition.
23. The Gospel of Thomas consists of 114 sayings without a narrative framework.
24. Thomas represents an earlier stage of the tradition than do the canonical gospels.
25. Thomas represents an independent witness to the Jesus tradition.Gospel of John
26. The portrait of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel differs markedly from that drawn by the synoptics.
27. In the Gospel of John Jesus speaks in long monologues, in which only an occasional aphorism and no parables appear.
28. In the Gospel of John Jesus reflects extensively on his own mission and purpose and has little to say about the poor and oppressed.
29. John is a less reliable source than the other gospels for the sayings of Jesus.Stratification of the gospels
30. The gospels are made up of layers or strata of tradition.
31. Close verbal and structural parallels permit scholars to identify the minimal texts of common sources.
32. The synoptic saying gospel, Q, appears to consist of three layers: Q1, Q2, and Q3.
33. The Gospel of Mark probably went through two or more editions, one of which is known as Secret Mark.
34. The Gospel of Thomas has been divided provisionally by scholars into two strata: Thomas1 and Thomas2.
35. Matthew has three strata: Q, Mark, and special Matthew (M). Luke likewise has three strata: Q, Mark and special Luke (L).
36. The fourth evangelist made use of a book of signs in creating the first edition of his gospel (John1). John was subsequently enlarged by additions in chapters 13-17 and 21 (John2).Age of the written gospels
37. Q and Thomas were composed during the period 50-60 C.E.
38. Mark was written about 70 C.E.
39. Matthew was composed about 85 C.E.
40. Luke-Acts was created around 90 C.E.
41. The signs gospel embedded in the Gospel of John was composed during the period 60-80 C.E.
42. The first edition of John appeared between 80 and 100 C.E.Independent and derivative gospels
43. The major independent sources of information about Jesus are Q (all three stages), Thomas (first edition), Mark, and the signs gospel embedded in the Gospel of John.
44. The earliest sources are Q1 and Thomas1. The second and third editions of Q follow closely.Assessment of written sources
45. Only a small portion of the sayings attributed to Jesus in the gospels was actually spoken by him.
46. A larger portion of the parables goes back to Jesus because the parables were harder to imitate.
47. The greater part of the sayings tradition was created or borrowed from common lore by the transmitters of the oral tradition and the authors of the gospels.Surviving copies of the gospels
48. The original manuscripts of the gospels have disappeared.
49. The earliest small surviving fragments of any gospels date from about 125 C.E.
50. The earliest major surviving fragments of the gospels date from about 200 C.E.
51. The earliest complete copy of the gospels dates from about 300 C.E.
52. Prior to 1454 C.E. no two surviving copies of the same gospel are exactly alike.
53. In the copying process, copies of the gospels were "improved" and "corrupted."
54. Scholars cannot assume that the Greek text they have in modern critical editions is exactly the same text that was penned by the evangelists.Research Methods: Revolt against dogma
55. The same methods of study should be applied to the Bible that are used in the study of other ancient texts.
56. The Bible should be studied without being bound to theological claims made by the church.
57. Copies of books of the Bible suffered from textual corruption, loss of leaves, devastation by insects and moisture.
58. Jesus should be studied like other historical persons.
59. Jesus was not a Christian; he was a Jew.The new historiography
60. Historians can approach but never achieve certainty in historical judgments on the probability principle.
61. Historians measure the unknown by the known on the principle of analogy.
62. Historians assume that biblical events occur within a continuum of historical happenings but that each event or person is historically unique.Specialization
63. Modern critical scholarship is based on cooperation among specialists.New sources
64. The study of the Bible in the twentieth century has been transformed by the discovery of new sources and materials.Rules of EvidenceKinds of Evidence:
The wit and wisdom of Jesus (J)
Rules of oral evidence (O)
Rules of written evidence (W)
Rules of attestation (A)
Rules of narration (N)
General rules of evidence (G)
The Wit and Wisdom of Jesus
J1. Jesus said things that were short, provocative, memorable. (The oral test)
J2. Jesus' best remembered forms of speech were aphorisms and parables. (The form test)
J3. Jesus' talk was distinctive. (Distinctive talk)
J4. Jesus' sayings and parables cut against the social and religious grain. (Against the grain)
J5. Jesus' sayings and parables surprise and shock: they characteristically call for a reversal of roles or frustrate ordinary, everyday expectations. (Reversal and frustration)
J6. Jesus' sayings and parables are often characterized by exaggeration, humor, and paradox. (Extravagance, humor, and paradox)
J7. Jesus' images are concrete and vivid, his sayings and parables customarily metaphorical and without explicit application. (Vivid images, unspecified application)
J8. A. Jesus does not as a rule initiate dialogue or debate, nor does he offer to cure people. B. Jesus rarely makes pronouncements or speaks about himself in the first person. (The serene, self-effacing sage)Oral Evidence
O1. In the oral transmission of Jesus' words, his disciples remembered only the core or gist of his sayings and parables, not his precise words. (One core, different performances)
O2. The bedrock of the sayings tradition is made up of single aphorisms and parables that once circulated independently. (Single aphorisms and parables)
O3. A. The simpler forms of saying and parables are more likely to be original with Jesus. B. More complicated forms may mask earlier and simpler forms. (The simpler, the earlier)
O4. Hard sayings are frequently softened in the process of transmission to adapt them to the conditions of daily living. (Hard is softened)
O5. Words are frequently borrowed from the fund of common lore or from the Old Testament and put on the lips of Jesus. (Words on the lips of Jesus)Written Evidence
W1. The evangelists frequently group sayings and parables in clusters and complexes that did not originate with Jesus. (Clusters and complexes)
W2. The evangelists frequently invent narrative contexts for sayings and parables. (Narrative contexts)
W3. The evangelists often expand sayings of parables, or provide them with an interpretive overlay or comment, which may take the form of allegory. (Expansion and interpretive overlay)
W4. The evangelists frequently compose or revise and edit both sayings and narrative contexts to make them conform to their own individual language, style or viewpoint, or to make saying and context conform to each other. (Editorial style and viewpoint)
W5. A criticism of, or attack on, Jesus often becomes a criticism of, or attack on, Jesus' disciples in the later tradition. (Brunt of criticism)
W6. Variations in difficult sayings often betray the struggle of the early Christian community to interpret or adapt sayings to its own situation. (Difficult sayings)
W7. The evangelists frequently attribute their own statements to Jesus. (Jesus as spokesman)
W8. A. Sayings and parables expressed in "Christian" language are the creation of the evangelists or the oral tradition before them.
B. Sayings or parables that contrast with the language or viewpoint of the gospel in which they are embedded reflect older tradition. (Christian language)
W9. A. Sayings and narrative that reflect the social practice of the emerging Christian community were formulated or edited by the evangelists or the oral tradition before them. (Christian social practice)
W10. Sayings and narratives that reflect knowledge of events that took place after Jesus' death are the creation of the evangelists or the oral tradition before them. (Post-mortem events)
W11. Neither the evangelists nor the oral tradition before them would have invented statements that cast aspersions on Jesus' character or contradicted their own viewpoint. (Defamatory statements).Rules of Attestation
A1. Sayings or parables that are attested in two or more independent sources are likely to be old. (Independent sources)
A2. Sayings or parables that are attested in two different contexts probably circulated independently at an earlier time. (Different contexts)
A3. The same or similar content attested in two or more different forms has a life of its own and therefore may stem from old tradition. (Different forms)
A4. Unwritten tradition that was captured by the written gospels relatively late may preserve very old memories. (Unwritten tradition)Rules of Narration
N1. Only words reported as directly quoted speech are eligible to be considered words of Jesus. (Quoted words)
N2. Quoted speech that is entirely context-bound is probably the product of the storyteller. (Context-bound speech)
N3. Statements made by Jesus when a second party was not present are not historically verifiable. (Absence of auditors)
N4. Statements attributed to the risen Jesus are not admissible as evidence for the historical Jesus. (The post-historical Jesus)General Rules of Evidence
G1. A. The convergence of two or more rules on a single piece of evidence greatly strengthens the case for or against that piece of evidence.
B. A major conclusion cannot rest on a single piece of evidence. (Base of evidence)
G2. A plausible reading or interpretation for a historical context in Jesus' public life is required for sayings and parables that are to be correctly attributed to Jesus. (The plausibility test)
G3. A. The saying or parable which is the more difficult-which least suits the tendencies of the unfolding tradition-is likely to be the earlier.
B. The saying or parable that best accounts for any confusion or variation that arose in the development of the tradition is probably the more original. (The more difficult reading)
G4. Canonical boundaries are irrelevant in critical assessments of the various sources of information about Jesus. (Canonical and extracanonical)
G5. The emerging body of primary date (items voted red or pink) should be reasonably coherent. (Coherence)
G6. Beware of the profile of Jesus that accounts for all the data. (Loose ends)
G7. Beware of a congenial Jesus. (A lovable Jesus)
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130
(314) 935-4018
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwc@oui.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/Carter West
Ah, my friends, you serve only to massage this boomer's incipient narcissism. I'll do my best to contain it....
I don't have stats or surveys, haven't read Wade Clark Roof'sAGeneration ofSeekers, don't know if Cox has. But I'd start with thegulf separating mainline Protestantism from boomers' historical experience, rather than with the churches' conflicting or incredible pictures of Jesus.
The latter, I find, prove fairly consistent: sentimental, addressing individuals almost exclusively (hardly ever historical or cosmic structures), and then in their needs, not their capacities; emphasizing moral over doctrinal considerations; and a faint aura of mystery, especially in the more sacramental traditions, and sometimes (rarely) a revolutionary spark. Precisely these pictorial elements have rendered this Galilean enigma a flaccid non sequitur for most of my generation, even though no one denies the tremendous energy beneath the surface.
Case in point: Luke Timothy Johnson's Week 2 primary message. You'll recall:
>when it comes to an individual human beings, history involves not so much
>what they said and did as it does the pattern of their lives, their
>CHARACTER. A quick analogy. If I were quizzed about Mother Theresa's
>birthplace, age, language, career moves, I may well be wrong on every
>count. I am certain that I know none of her sayings, and have only a
>vague grasp of her specific deeds. Yet, if I say that "Mother Theresa has
>lived a life of service to the poor in India during my lifetime in a way
>that has made her a symbol of selfless devotion," I would come close to
>capturing her historical character and significance. In contrast, if I
>knew every one of her words and deeds, and had all the facts perfectly,
>yet said, "While posing as a lowly nun, Mother Theresa worked to
>overthrow the Indian government by establishing cells of local
>resistence," I would miss the most important thing about her, the meaning
>of her life, both for herself and those who knew her.
Actually, what such a scholar would most likely miss would be his or her personal liberty, having been committed to the nearest mental hospital with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, paranoid subtype. I respect Johnson's NT work, and so am chafed by what happens when he tries to bring Scripture into the public square. He is adept at finding Jesus' distinguishing character "in the narrative pattern of the compositions themselves." But his exegetical harmonizing quickly falls out of tune when he takes it to the apologetical streets. What I'm reading here is a set of parallel themes: pericopes/narrative pattern (in the NT), words and deeds/character (in moral psychology), history/gospel (in his implicit doctrine of revelation). In all these pairs, the parts are simply adrift in the whole, the concrete in the universal, the immanent in the transcendent: the Christian genius for the coincidentia oppositorum is purged, and undifferentiated oneness is all.
Johnson wants to set forth and reassert the Christian spirit (a believer's faculties of perceiving, knowing, choosing) as a substantial, substantiated truth, as solid as in the days when atomizing historicists did not trouble the churches' self-assurance. But it seems he can do so only by darkening and dampening the human senses, not by transfiguring them. He claims to be able to know character apart from words and deeds, to be able to pluck it out of some suggested ether of repute. What's involved here--the World Wide Web? the New York Times? telepathy? I do not exaggerate: to live by separating character from behavior is one defining characteristic of a sociopath. (Johnson, of course, speaks conjecturally, and I want to leave ample room for the probability that he just didn't think things through very carefully.) Contemporary evangelists attempt to reach their rationalistic, experience-oriented audiences by drawing their sight upward from what they have already seen: "the whole is more than the sum of its parts." Johnson in effect would overwhelm sight altogether with an occult intuition: "What you see is trivial. The whole defines and encompasses everything: turn your eyes away and believe."
This train of thought could only depart from the kind of mainline volkskirche that prevailed in our country up until the consummation of the civil rights movement of the '50s and '60s. It hearkens back nostalgically in its refusal to allow real, sentient beings and their experiences any standing from which to rework the churches' teachings. (Johnson reflects this in a move that Borg queries: proclaiming the power of the resurrection to affirm the worth of bodies and the world, without any reference to the intrinsic, self-affirming worth of creation.) It has everything to do with the kind of bland politesse and abhorrence of conflict that enabled white Christians to substitute "fortuna" for God when faced with segregation--"what can we do?"--or when challenged to distinguish God from country over Vietnam. In my own sojourn through a university culture and alongside people involved in movements for alternative spiritualities, I find it's not some particular substance of Christianity giving offense so much as the lack of substance itself. Why I cheer the Jesus Seminar, for all their flaws: R. Funk & Co. are some of the few teachers around willing to take the risk of making their theological sausage out where we can see it.
What are the causes? I think it has some roots in mainliners' avoidance of the slow bucket-work of bringing together the seminary ethos of their clergy and the conventional mores of a typical parish. It also stems from the demographic surge in college graduates: Christian youth are spending their formative years in an Enlightenment mold, and the churches still haven't decided whether to accomodate, resist, or surrender. But mostly I believe it has to do with Christianity's historic insecurity regarding any claim for authority that comes from within the soul, rather than one officially sanctioned and externally introduced. When the simple, unprogrammed, before-morality "practice of the presence of God" (to me, it fits very well with the "don't-know mind" of Zen) becomes accepted as parallel with Scripture and tradition, the mainline may find its prodigals returning. I confess! To me, "the kingdom of God is within you" is a simple article of faith.
Thanks for investing your time & energy, all those who got this far.
Carter West / Somerville MA
Subj: Primary Message Week 2 (Johnson) -Reply
Date: 96-03-04 18:56:16 EST
From: MarcusBorg@info.harpercollins.com (Marcus J. Borg)
Sender: owner-jesus2000@info.harpercollins.com
To: Jesus2000@info.harpercollins.com, LukeJohnson@info.harpercollins.com
Dear Luke and Dom:
This is my "primary message" for week three. I apologize for it being several hours late. I was at a professional meeting from Wednesday through Sunday, and so I am playing "ctach up" today. By the way, Tom Wright phoned me last night. He has been watching our interchanges, and he sends his greetings to both of you.
Thus far our conversation has been primarily about one of the two main points in Luke's book, namely, whether the historical Jesus (understood as the historian's Jesus) matters for Christian theology and life. I have already briefly stated my own position. Namely, I reject the "either-or" which says that EITHER the historical Jesus is of primary and normative significance, OR "the canonical Jesus" is of primary and normative significance. Instead, I affirm a both/and, a point I shall return to at the end of this message. For now, I simply want to add that I am both a Jesus scholar and a Christian, both a historian and one who is interested in the theological implications of my work as a historical scholar. And I am convinced that how we think of Jesus matters, because images of Jesus are correlated with images of the Christian life. What we think Jesus was about will affect what we think the Christian life is most centrally about.
In my message this week, I want to make some comments more directly related to the other focal point, namely the task of historical reconstruction of Jesus and what might be at stake in that. And rather than write a unified essay on a single topic, I will make a series of numbered observations, some of them statements, some of them questions.
1. A question to Dom. Do you think God was important to Jesus? Do you see him as "a God-intoxicated Jew"? I know that you see the religious/economic/political/social as closely intertwined, so that it is not really possible to separate them out from each other. Nevertheless, how much did the religion component of that mix matter to Jesus? And let me change that question to the form in which it interests me most: Do you think God mattered to Jesus?
2. A second question to Dom. In your treatment of Jesus as healer, you emphasize the distinction made by some medical anthropologists between "curing disease" and "healing illness." To explain for others, "disease" refers to the physical condition, "illness" to the social meaning of the physical condition. Thus a person could "heal an illness" (remove the social stigma attached to the condition), without curing the disease). I know that your emphasis is on Jesus as one who healed illness; but do you think he also sometimes cured disease? And to what extent does what Van Harvey (and others) calls "the principle of analogy" inform your judgment? (Principle of analogy = a historian can seriously entertain the "happenedness" of an event reported in the past only to the extent that something analogous is thought to be possible in the present). And what shapes or gives content to your understanding of what is possible in the present?
3. A question to Luke. Granted that you think the quest for the historical Jesus is a mistake - - that it is theologically irrelevant, and therefore not only a waste of time but potentially misleading, for it wrongly suggests that Christian understandings of Jesus should be affected what historians can say - - granted all of that, I nevertheless want to ask you if you have formed any perceptions or hunches about the historical figure of Jesus in your decades of working with the New Testament? Granted that they don't matter, and that they're tentative and subjective, have you formed any that you would be willing to share? I would find that very interesting.
4. My fourth observation concerns one of the stages or steps involved in the historical reconstruction of Jesus. I believe it is the third step mentioned by Luke in his earlier entery, namely, the use of "models" derived from elsewhere as a way of illuminating the traditions about Jesus. As readers will recall, Luke objected to this. I want to suggest the opposite - that the use of "models" derived from outside of the texts is not only appropriate, but can be very illuminating.
As one example, I mention the use of the model of "peasant society" as a way of seeing the social world of Jesus. Both Crossan and Richard Horsley have used this with great effect, it seem to me. To explain to others, "peasant society" is shorthand for Gerhard 's model of "the pre-industrial agrarian society," a form of social organization widespread across cultures and throughout human history from the development of "advanced" agriculture (use of the plow instead of the planting stick and hoe) until the dawn of the industrial revolution. For this message, details do not matter greatly, but a generalization will do: these are societies sharply divided between "wealthy urban ruling elites" and "impoverished rural peasants." The wealthiest 1 to 2 per cent of the population get their wealth from agricultural production (there is no other major source of wealth in such societies), and they do so by acquiring one-half to two-thirds of peasant production through taxation and various forms of land rent. The latter (typically around 90% of the population) are left with perhaps 1/3 of their own production, which is barely subsistence. Such societies are social worlds with remarakbly sharp social boundaries. Now, SEEING this, it ssems to me, greatly illuminates the message and activity of Jesus: his teachings about poverty and wealth, his critcisms of Jerusalem and the temple (not as the center of Judaism, but as the center of the urban ruling elites), as well as the reasons for his arrest and excecution. My point: it does not seem to me a mistake to import models from elsewhere, but powerfully illuminating.
Or, in my own case, I use "models" derived from the cross-cultural study of religious personality types. They include "Spirit person" (roughly corresponding to Rudolf Otto's "holy man"), "healer", "wisdom teacher," "social prophet," and "movement initiator." Not only are these types known cross-culturally, they are also known within Jesus' onw Jewish tradition. Using them enables one to "gestalt" the traditions about Jesus into meaningful patterns.
Now, I am wondering what is wrong with this. These models seem illuminating. It does not seem enough to say that it's illegitimate because they come from elsewhere. The reason, for example, that I do not find Burton Mack's model of hellenistic-type Cynic sage persuasive is not because "it comes from elsewhere," but because it seems to me to be inadequate to account for what we find in very early layers of the Jesus tradition.
So this point ends up being a question addressed to Luke: what's wrong with using models as a way of gestalting the Jesus traditions?
5. My fifth observation brings me back to the both/and issue. Let me explain my point this way. I see all the "titles" of Jesus as post-Easter developments - that it is in the post-Easter situation that Jesus is called or named "Son of God," Wisdom of God," "Word of God," "light of the world," etc. All of these are part of "the narratival Jesus" or "canonical Jesus." Moreover, for me, as language about the post-Easter Jesus, I see all of these titles as true - that is, they express what Jesus became in the experience and tradition of his followers in the decades after Easter (I also see them all as metaphorical, of course; their multiplicity points to metaphoricity; and meatphorical language can, of course, be true).
Now, to say something about the pre-Easter Jesus. Suppose that Dom and I are basically correct when we say that Jesus had an alternative social vision, one that was significantly egalitarian and challenging to the hierarchical world of his day? (Dom says this with the languge of "free healing" and "open commensality," I with the language of subversive wisdom teacher, social prophet, and movement initiator). (Message continues in next message).
Suppose that Dom and I are right that Jesus was (among other things) a God-intoxicated voice of peasant social protest. Now, is it significant that it is precisely one such as this who is named "Son of God, "Wisdom of God," "Word of God," etc,? It seems to me that it is. For this language is saying, "We find in THIS person, who was this-and-this way, a mnifestation of the sacred, the Word made flesh."
In short, I find meaningful and truthful the movement's canonical language about the narratival Jesus, even as I think what we can know historically about Jesus helps to give content to the person who is being named in all of these ways. And that is one of the things I mean by affirming "both/and."
Best wishes to you both. And I hope this segmented message gets through all right. I am still learning the mysteries of E-Mail.
Subj: Response Week two (Johnson)
Date: 96-03-07 08:41:52 EST
From: LukeJohnson@info.harpercollins.com (Luke Johnson)
Sender: owner-jesus2000@info.harpercollins.com
To: Jesus2000@info.harpercollins.com
Greetings from Atlanta on a very wet day. I am divided in mind as I sit at this keyboard, uncertain how to view the process in which we find ourselves. On the positive side, it continues a good tradition of public disputation both within Christianity and American politics. On the negative side, I sometimes feel as though I am trapped within an endless Republican Part Primary Debate, with lots of assertions and charges, but little real response, with everyone trying hard ---in the present cant phrase--- to stay "on message."
In that mood, I will try to respond in this week's final turn to some of the questions that have been put to me. The first concerns my use of rhetoric. Professor Borg asked whether I considered my language to be merely a matter of style. I want to revisit the question because I just received a copy of Professor Crossan's response to me in the forthcoming BIBLE REVIEW. Much of the article consists in his first message in the present exchange. But it opens with a deprecation of my rhetoric in THE REAL JESUS, declaring that he wishes to eschew my "low discourse." By no means do I want our exchanges to become a matter of "I said, you said," enlightening to no one and having all the entertainment value of listening to two third graders arguing in the back of the school bus. But I do think an important issue is involved. First, a clarification. In my book, my strongest (I thought funniest) language was used for the Jesus
Seminar. I am completely unapologetic, for I regard it as a charade and an unworthy respresentation of the scholarship it claims to represent. Indeed, I am puzzled why you, Marcus and Dom, have not long ago distanced yourself from it, knowing how much its goals and procedures differ from your own as you have clarified them here. With regard to works that I considered serious scholarship, my language was correspondingly more measured. I have re-read the sections dealing with each of your works, and find nothing more than some fairly pointed questions.
At issue here, among other things, is the integrity of discourse. I, for one, think that scholarship in this country has declined in direct proportion to the unwillingness of book reviewers in the field of religion to rigorously examine and sharply challenge less than adequate offerings. The field is literally flooded with second-rate stuff. Short of censorship, peer response is the only quality control mechanism we have. A vague ethic of niceness is not sufficient and does not compensate for responsible research and rigorous analysis. I have every reason to question the "sincerity" of Robert Funk, for his public statements give grounds for that questioning. I have no reason to question the sincerity of either of you. But that is scarcely the point, is it? That you are sincere seekers after truth is all to your credit. But it is the responsibility of each of us to hold each other responsible to a standard of demonstration. When such a standard of demonstration is not met, and when matters of great moment are at stake, then, in my view, plain language is called for. So, Marcus, the sharpness of questioning was out of intellectual responsibility. The sarcastic edge of language was a function of the public rather than professional character of conversation.
In response to Borg's question whether I have any sense of the historical Jesus at all. Readers of my book will find a chapter entitled "What's Historical about Jesus?" In it, I sketch the problems facing any attempt at a historical reconstruction of Jesus, AS WELL AS a brief sketch of what I think a historian can responsibly affirm about Jesus, based on extra-christian sources, other christian writings, and the gospels. The reader will discover a not insignificant set of affirmations, carefully qualified as to the degree of probability I consider appropriate to attach to each. I see no need to repeat here what I spent considerable time developing there.
Since I have no doubt that you, Marcus, read that chapter, I can assume that you already know the answer to the question you put to me. I am confident as well that you have observed that my set of observations fall considerably short of proposing an overall historical construal based simply on those historically verifiable elements. I am sure as well that you know why, since I state clearly that such contruals derive not from specific facts or events, but from a narrative frame; meaning is found in pattern, in story. In my reading of the Gospels, as you surely know from your knowledge of my next chapter, I find just such a construal, in the portrayal of Jesus as a Jewish man who in radical obedience to God gives his life in service to others, giving thereby an example to those whom he calls as followers in the same path of obedience and love.
And this leads at last to a direct response to your question concerning the use of models in historiography, or in your memorable phrase, "gestalting the Jesus traditions?'
1. Before turning to the theoretical issue, I would like to make a plea for a response to my question over the past two weeks: what about the "gestalt" I have been proposing as the one found in the canonical Gospels? I have not heard any suggestion that it was erroneous, or historically implausible, or not based on our best sources...only that it was lacking in specificity. But I remain in a state of eager anticipation for an affirmation or rejection of my strong reading of the resurrection as defining Christian identity, on the one side, and of my strong reading of the Gospel narratives as providing a specific and concrete image of the human Jesus on the other. If you disgree with these two things, why? If you do not, why are they so conspicuously lacking from your published work?
2. Models are useful as heuristic devices. Too often, however, they become rigid grids dictating or even distorting the shape of the data. As you know quite well, Marcus, the legitimacy of using diverse anthropological models cross-culturally is by no means universally agreed upon by historians. Even for those who recognize (as I do) the theoretical usefulness of such models heuristically there is the expectation that the models remain responsive to the specific historical evidence "on the ground." You bring up Leski. There is the first the issue as to the adequacy of his analysis as such. There is second the degree to which that analysis can apply to ancient situations as complex as that of the first century imperium. There is third the degree to which the USE of the model is responsible. I struggled this past year with William Herzog's PARABLES AS SUBVERSIVE SPEECH; JESUS AS PEDAGOGUE OF THE OPPRESSED, which runs a number of Jesus' parables through the Leski grid from the perspective of Paulo Friere's "pedagogy of the oppressed." Time after time, the model trumped the specific evidence...not only of the parabolic text, but also of the extant HISTORICAL data concerning economic conditions THAT HERZOG HIMSELF QUOTED. In the case of Borg's own "Gestalt" (or one of them, as he reminds me in an earlier exchange) of the "Galilean Charismatic," all three observations apply. The first is the adequacy of the model itself; second, the evidence from antiquity for its applicability, and third, the ways in which the use of model illuminates or distorts or suppresses the evidence in the text. As I have already suggested in my review of your book, Marcus, I think you are vulnerable on all three counts.
At stake here, I now conclude, is not simply whether the historical analysis of Jesus and early Christianity can legitimately be undertaken. Nothing in my book suggests that I think they cannot. Indeed, I make a fairly substantial number of historical observations and assertions that I consider well grounded in the evidence. What is more at stake is, first, the connection of that research for Christian faith in the risen Christ...we have talked that one enough. But second, there is the issue of HOW WELL historical reconstruction is carried out. And it was in response to what I regarded as completely irresponsible versions (that of the Jesus Seminar) that I exercised cutting language; it was in response to your efforts, which I consider as sincere but inadequate, that I have posed, and will continue to pose, hard questions.
Subj: Reply Message (Crossan) to Week 3 Primary Message (Borg)
Date: 96-03-07 16:00:12 EST
From:JohnDominicCrossan@info.harpercollins.com (John Dominic Crossan)
Sender: owner-jesus2000@info.harpercollins.com
To: JESUS2000@info.harpercollins.com
Dear Marcus and Luke:
FIRST QUESTION. You asked me, Marcus, "Do you think God was important to Jesus?" Yes: totally, fully, completely, and absolutely. But Jesus, whether we like it or not, talked not just about God but about the Kingdom of God, that is, in Matthew's gloss on the Lord's Prayer, about the will of God for this earth. It was never a question of Kingdom without God (social activism) or of God without Kingdom (abstract theodicy). Call it, to emphasize that necessary interaction: The Kingdom Of God (HarperCollins likes that type of writing). The Kingdom of God meant for Jesus, in my best historical reconstruction, that the standard political normalcies of power and privilege, hierarchy and oppression, debt foreclosure and land appropriation, imperial exploitation and colonial collaboration were in profound conflict with the radical justice of Israel's God. I am thinking of how the land (food) appears, for example, in Deuteronomy 15, with the Sabbath Year's remission of incurred debts, or in Leviticus 25, with the Jubilee Year's return of dispossessed property. I am thinking of Amos' repeated threats of doom for how the poor were handled or Micah's assertion that Israel's God wanted social justice rather than cultic worship. Before I rush to interpret that as meaning that God wanted both justice and liturgy (which is true), I note that while there are several places where God rejects liturgy for want of justice, I know of no biblical location where God rejects justice for want of liturgy. Liturgy is the symbolic celebration of divine justice so that in the latter's absence the former is empty. That focuses, as I understand it, a claim for eternal truth (God's radical justice) on a terribly precise and local situation: the peasant slippage from poverty (the subsistence-level but freehold family farm or even the tenant farm) to destitution (landless day-laboring or beggary) in Antipas' urbanization of Lower Galilee within the boom economy of the Roman Peace in the first quarter of the first common-era century. Without that empowering vision in which divine justice absolutely opposes human violence, I cannot understand Jesus' program of peasant resistance. I consider the preceding statement to be an historical one, that is, an historical reconstruction open to public debate. I also think that Jesus' understanding of God was profoundly correct but that is a statement of faith. I make it as a Christian or, more accurately, it makes me as a Christian.
You use the expression "God-intoxicated," Marcus. That expression may well be quite appropriate (as is "Spirit-person") but I will always want to ask, of Jesus and of anyone else, this question. When the divine hangover or spiritual inebriation is past, what vision and/or what program do you derive from your experience? If you, Marcus, say that Jesus was "God-intoxicated" or "Spirit-empowered," and you, Luke, say that Jesus gave his life for others in obedience to God, I will not accept either of those descriptions until you tell me whether it is important to distinguish the non-violent Jesus from the programmatically Christian terrorist in a suicide car-bomb. The latter may also be "God-intoxicated," martyrdom-bound, totally sincere, and absolutely inhuman. Jesus stood firmly within Israel's most ancient tradition of covenantal justice and, no matter how important ecstatic experience or altered consciousness was for his private experience, it is that tradition of radical divine justice standing flatly against normal human violence that is of importance for his public discourse then or our public discourse now.
SECOND QUESTION. You asked me, Marcus, about healings, cures, and, although you did not use the word, about miracles (I think). I visited both Fatima in Portugal and Lourdes in France, healing shrines of the Virgin Mary, in the summer of 1960, and also Epidaurus in Greece and Pergamum in Turkey, healing shrines of the god Asklepios, in the summer of 1965. Testimonials from all those places spoke of very similar types of cures: of the deaf, dumb, lame, blind, etc. I conclude: faith heals. Certain people with certain diseases are healed by their faith in that very possibility in certain places under certain circumstances. I know the outside limits of such cures only by what HAS happened (that's history). I leave relatively open what COULD happen (that's theology). I noticed, for example, that the grotto at Lourdes held innumerable crutches but no prosthetic arms or legs.
There were also no empty coffins in those Christian sites nor monuments to empty graves among the pagan testimonials. Those ancient and modern absences served me as warning where limits may lie. My conclusion is historical: faith heals and faith cures. But not anything or everything and not for anyone or everyone. It does so for (some) Christians at Lourdes, for (some) pagans at Epidaurus, for (some) Hindus at Benares, and, I presume, for (some) others at any sites with similar traditions. That is exactly what Jesus tells people in the gospels: your faith has healed/cured you. His healings, moreover, fit very closely with those from Lourdes and Fatima to Epidaurus and Pergamum. But, leaving aside fraud, deceit, and connivance, we must surely allow for competition, propaganda, and public relations. Once a person or site is effective, it is to be expected that its effectiveness will be steadily upgraded by devotees over against other persons or sites. Jesus in the gospels, for example, raises a dead person first from bed (Mark), then from bier (Luke), and finally from tomb (John). Of course: our Jesus can even or especially bring the dead back to life, bring life out of death, and that is the supreme healing/curing. Take that, Asklepios! But, once again apart from sheer fraud, some reality always lies behind such claims no matter how overdone or overblown they may be. But why did their faith bring them to Jesus? What convinced people that HE could heal/cure? Jesus' first healing was ideological, without which no further healing would have worked. Peasant poverty and destitution led through overwork and malnutrition to disease and illness. But here was one who claimed that Israel's God was absolutely against such a situation. It was not they who were at fault but the systemic evil of human injustice (I'm back there again!). Bluntly: God says Caesar sucks. It is that initial ideological healing that makes further healing of illness possible and even, thereby and indirectly in some cases, the curing of disease. If the Kingdom of God was actually on THEIR side, then who could tell what might happen to them. But, first, Jesus had to persuade them that it was on their side, by word and deed, by life and, eventually, by death.
Subj: Week 4, Primary Message (Crossan)
Date: 96-03-10 15:08:22 EST
From: JohnDominicCrossan@info.harpercollins.com (John Dominic Crossan)
Sender: owner-jesus2000@info.harpercollins.com
To: JESUS2000@info.harpercollins.com
Dear Luke and Marcus:
AGREEMENTS (AND A QUESTION).
As I understand the present state of our debate, Luke, you have agreed to these positions (upper case added). First, from Week 1, the historical Jesus is necessary for Christian faith: "To dwell only in the present experience IS to be Gnostic (or something)." Second, from Week 2, "the evidence of Paul, Hebrews, and the four canonical Gospels point to the EARLIEST formative memory of Jesus being that of his character as a human person giving his life in service to others. Unless and until EARLIER AND MORE RELIABLE evidence suggests that this was not Jesus' character, then I think this gets us --- far more than the sorting through of sayings and specific actions --- as close as we can to 'the historical Jesus.'" Third, from Week 3, in your book you gave, as you said, "a brief sketch of what I think a historian can responsibly affirm about Jesus, BASED ON EXTRA-CHRISTIAN SOURCES, OTHER CHRISTIAN WRITINGS, and the gospels." I had noticed Josephus and Tacitus when I read your book but thought they were intended to be peripheral rather than programmatic. I thought your actual position was that the historical Jesus must be reconstructed from Gospel or at least New Testament texts exclusively. I now see your position as being, at least in theory, exactly the same as mine and Marcus'. The historical Jesus must be reconstructed from all the available evidence, Christian and non-Christian texts, intracanonical and extracanonical materials. You even agree with me (and I think Marcus) that EARLIER and EARLIEST are important criteria for that reconstruction. You also use words like RELIABLE and RESPONSIBLE., to which I return in a few minutes.
One other small point, Luke, which I only bring up because you used such dismissive epithets for the scholarship of others in your book. I think you had not read for yourself before you talked about him in your last posting. My reasons for that judgment are that your criticism was vague enough to apply to any theory or hypothesis and also because you misspelt his name both times you used it. If I am wrong in that judgment, I apologise. But, since you dislike "sloppy" work and call for firm criticism and hard questions, that is a small query to you. I assure you that, if you ever invoked somebody crucial to your presentation to me, I would read that person before dismissing him to you.
PROBLEMS (AND THREE QUESTIONS).
I have absolutely no objection to your general description of Jesus' character (your word) or life (my word) as one who, in obedience to God, gave his life in service to others. But I ask three direct and specific questions. First, how did you decide on that character-summary rather than on any other one? Second, what about the why and how of that character-summary, what about the means and ends, what about the specifics of time and place? Third, how does your description distinguish Jesus, on the one hand, from a programmatically Christian terrorist in a suicide car-bomb or, on the other, from Gandhi? There is, after all, another Jesus in the book of Revelation (the killer Son of a killer Father?) where revenge rather than justice is awaited through divine ethnic cleansing.Those questions still stand, as far as I am concerned. But, for this posting, I return to that preceding paragraph and to your words which I put in upper case. After what you have now said, there is only one question left: how does the historian determine responsibly the "EARLIER AND MORE RELIABLE EVIDENCE?" What, in other words, is one's method? It now comes down to that. I speak of method and not just of criteria because method is criteria developed through some theoretical basis, organized through some interactive structure, and guided through some operational focus. You search certain New Testament texts for "NARRATIVE PATTERNS" (your emphasis) but, unfortunately, the result, even if correct, is so vague and general that it does not distinguish between situations and actions or intentions and motivations even in so far as those can be and must be discussed in historical reconstruction. In response to that, I now summarize my own method. It will be necessarily terse but it will also represent continued work in progress since 1990 on the method used in The Historical Jesus.
METHODOLOGY.
My method is interdisciplinary and interactive. It builds upwards from the more general to the more precise through cross-cultural anthropology, Jewish and Roman history (textual remains), Lower Galilean archeology (material remains), and finally the Jesus tradition itself. I imagine those successive data-bases like overlays but done in that sequence.
ANTHROPOLOGY.
The macrosociological basis is the Lenski-Kautsky model. In 1990 I used Lenski to establish the class structure of agrarian empire and peasant society with its abysmal gulf between haves and have-nots but would now insist also on Kautsky whose distinction between relatively stable traditional agrarian empires and highly volatile commercializing ones like the early Roman Empire is equally necessary. But while that model is the best I know (do you have a better one, Luke?) for the variable of class, it is utterly silent on the equally important variable of gender. For that I have been doing remedial reading in feminist anthropology, especially in those asking questions about the comparative power relations not just vertically between classes but laterally between, say, women and men within peasant society. I still have a lot more to read but already the work of Susan Carol Rogers, for example, has been very helpful. First, if men have political power and women have domestic power, what happens precisely in peasant society where peasant political power is non-existent and peasant domestic power is fundamental? Is there actually a balance of power-as-deference for men but power-as-control for women? Second, in situations of commercialization and/or colonization is peasant female power at least initially and even if only temporarily extended while that peasant male power is correspondingly diminished? The final anthropological model I hope to obtain will be as good on gender as it is on class, especially with regard to peasant society.
HISTORY.
I include here everything in Jewish tradition about the land as divine gift rather than entrepreneurial commodity and everything in the prophets about divine justice and God's specific concern for the poor, oppressed, and marginalized. And everything, especially, in the northern traditions where God could destroy chariots through Deborah and Barak and topple dynasties through Elijah and Elisha. I also include the situation of colonial exploitation and indigenous collaboration in that first century where Herodians had replaced Hasmoneans and Romans appointed and dismissed high-priests at will. How did royal and priestly elites of doubtful legitimacy and recent establishment react to the boom economy of the Roman peace? There is for me a hard lock between the peasant unrest that Kautsky expects as commercialization hits a traditional peasantry and everything one can discern about the northern peasantry of ancient Israelite tradition under Antipas' regime.
ARCHEOLOGY.
What we can see most clearly under Antipas is Roman commercialization operating as it always did through urbanization. Antipas built two cities of 25,000 people in Lower Galilee within twenty miles of one another in the first twenty years of the first century. Sepphoris was rebuilt after its destruction in 4 BCE (Josephus; archeology?) and Tiberias built from scratch by around 19 CE. That is another hard lock from Kautsky's commercialization to Antipas' urbanization. It is true that Galilean archeologists have not produced the "archeology of imperialism" that Susan Alcock speaks of in Roman Greece but maybe that will come. Marble and mosaic are fine but what about peasant farms and peasant families? What about city AND countryside? In the meanwhile, however, there is enough cross-cultural anthropology and comparative Roman archeology to render secure an expectation of some peasant unrest in Antipas' booming Galilee (the Kingdom movement of Jesus?) and Perea (the Baptism movement of John?).
GOSPELS.
All of that is situation and cannot be used to determine from the vast mound of the Jesus tradition what goes back to the historical Jesus. That would be circular. My methodological question at this point was and is: what is the earliest material in the Jesus tradition and does it lock hard into that situation just as those three preceding layers have done into one another? I do not at all presume that later material is not a valid interpretation of Jesus but, like you, Luke, I begin with the "EARLIER AND MORE RELIABLE EVIDENCE" as a methodological discipline. We both also seem to invoke what I term multiple independent attestation but where you use it to discern "narrative patterns," I use it, as you state correctly, for "the sorting through of sayings and specific actions." As this posting is already getting too long, let me give but one example.
There are 38 units common to the Q Gospel (whose existence I accept) and the Gospel of Thomas (whose independence I accept). It is such materials as those that I juxtapose most immediately to the situation of Antipas' Galilee and ask whether and how do they fit. That is why the dyad of eating and healing, itinerant and householder, found in that common material is so important for me in understanding Jesus' program. That also comes up, of course, in Mark, and in Paul who had to decline its mandated householder-dependence when patronal Corinthians sought to control him and he was forced to insist on working for his keep even against a saying of Jesus. You may not like my method but it is, to be blunt Luke, at least as reliable and responsible as yours and, moreover, it produces an historical Jesus (and in theological terms, an Incarnation) that specifies very clearly the dangerous vagueness of your own narrative-pattern summary.
JESUS AND PAUL.
Finally, a word about Paul, leaving aside my own method which only uses him (but does use him) within that constraint of multiple independent attestation. In Gal 3:28 Paul said that "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus." I cannot imagine a simpler summary of what Jesus meant by the Kingdom of God as the radical justice of Israel's God in this world. The denial of distinction let alone hierarchy on grounds of religion, gender, or class is what I call radical egalitarianism (to fairly universal laughter, I must admit). If all of that was wishful thinking or utopian dreaming without any immediate social consequence, we could all ignore it. But Paul takes that first negation with utter and total seriousness and follows it down the line through pain and suffering to the end of his life. Why not, then, those other two negations as well, just as literally and just as totally? Either all three are dreamy fantasies or all three are social challenges. What Paul had there, however, was an exact and precise summary of Jesus' vision and program for the Kingdom of God. Had he followed its three components with equal fervor, his ministry would probably have been as short as that of Jesus himself.
Subj: Week Four (Johnson Response)
Date: 96-03-11 16:19:53 EST
From: LukeJohnson@info.harpercollins.com (Luke Johnson)
Sender: owner-jesus2000@info.harpercollins.com
To: Jesus2000@info.harpercollins.com
My main emotion as I begin this note is one of pity for the folks who have signed up to "overhear" this exchange between Crossan, Borg, and myself. A three-participant "debate" in which two parties are in fundamental agreement on the legitimacy of a discussion and much of its contents and the third is in agreement on neither is a bit like a three-person see-saw experience: two people go up and down vigorously, and the third must either get off or jump lightly from one side to other other, even as he protests that maybe going down the slide might be more fun. Not a pretty sight.
OK, to Crossan's main statement, which in several ways in mainly addressed to me:
1. The opening characterization of my position is misleading on two counts. First, I have never equated a theological position concerning the incarnation with the "historical Jesus." Dom's suggestion that I agreed that one must choose between being gnostic and holding to "the historical Jesus" is not based on my of the statements I have made, nor is it my position. The second way in which it is misleading is in its suggestion that I have actually been engaged in a historical reconstruction of Jesus. In my book, my sketch of what the historian can responsibly say about Jesus falls well short of any such attempt, as my conversation partners well know. My use of Tacitus and Josephus was in service of a search for controls from "converging lines of evidence" that could provide a basis for reliable historical determinations. I insisted there that these lines of convergence, while valuable, do not get us to a "historical Jesus." And I proposed that attempts to go beyond this line of the suggestive led to a distortion both of the methods of history and of the subject being sought. My use of Paul was consistent with this. I thought it important, if we are looking for some controls outside the gospel narratives themselves, to use the other earliest Christian writings. I was puzzled that Paul figured so little, even at the "factual" level, for this purpose. Finally, I suggested that the narrative image of Jesus that dominates the canonical Gospels is also one found in Paul. And because it is found in Paul in an oblique and non-thematized fashion, its presence is all the more interesting as a very early "memory" of Jesus' character (in distinction from his specific sayings or deeds) that can legitimately be dated within twenty years of Jesus' death.
2. I am grateful that my mistake in spelling Lenski's name was noted. I cannot promise I won't do it again (in the last sentence, I had to go back and correct three words). But I also cheerfully confess that I have not read Lenski. I have relied on the faithful reporting of the people I am reading to accurately report his theory; and because of my confidence in their reportage, I think I have a fair grasp of what Lenski says. But I would like to clarify a point that Dom's proof-reading of my submission may have obscured. My reference to Lenski was made, not with regard to Borg's book (which I was addressing) nor to Crossan's book, but with regard to still a third book. Nor did I "dismiss" Lenski or his theory, either in my review of that third book, or in my review of Crossan's book. My only point was that not everyone agrees about the validity of the use of cross-cultural models, and even people, like myself, who agree with their usse in general, sometimes find problems with the specific application, especially when the model seems to conflict with specific data. I think, Dom, if you re-read my last posting, I did not "dismiss" Lenski. On the other hand, I stand by my general statement that in the case of the books written by you and Marcus, the three points I said Marcus was vulnerable on apply also to your work:
a) the validity of using/choosing cross-cultural models;
b) the use of evidence from antiquity within that model;
c) whether the model distorts or suppresses evidence in the texts under consideration.
3. Concerning the complaint that my "narrative image" of Jesus as derived from Paul and the Gospels is, let's see, "dangerously vague" because it could be applied to (according to Borg) mothers saving their children from fires, or (according to Crossan) a "christian terrorist in a suicide car bomb." Heavens. And you worry, Dom, that such a vague "historical Jesus" could be turned and twisted in just such horrific ways, whereas your presentation of Jesus as a preacher of an egalitarian ideal would offer assured protection against any distortion by deranged readers. We both know that it wouldn't, and that egalitarian dreams ---based on Jesus or not--- have often led to sad and even murderous consequences for their adherents. But more to the point, you again insist on reading what I am saying through the lens of your own project. By no means do I restrict my understanding of the human person Jesus to the sketch of "obedient unto death, loving others in service." I can fill out my portrait of Jesus with all of the material that you and Marcus also find in the precious pages of the Gospel: Jesus' opposition to religious oppression, call to the marginalized, table-fellowship with the sinners and tax-collectors. But I can also add: Jesus' devotion to God as his father, Jesus' prayer in the wilderness, Jesus' preaching in parables, Jesus' healing of the sick, Jesus' forgiveness of sins, Jesus' judgment on those who refuse God's visitation. All these images of Jesus are found in the canonical Gospels, as well as the image of the one who comes from God and returns to God, who reveals what he has heard from the father, who works in the father's name. I find these images, this Jesus, this incredibly rich and evocative human character, in the pages of the canonical Gospels. BUT I DO NOT CALL IT HISTORY. These are images shaped by memories of Jesus in the believing church. Do I think that they are true? You bet. But I cannot verify them historically.
So I find the framework that I can determine with strict historical method NOT DISCONFIRMED by the portrait in the Gospels and Paul (and other NT writings). But I do not call the portrait historical.
Contrast this to the method sketched in your essay, Dom. You are, of course, concerned to provide a historical portrait that is as complete as possible. in contrast to my reluctance to move, in historical terms, beyond much more than a formal sketch, you seek a full portrait by historical terms alone. I am, by the way, pleased that you find my summary of your procedure not unfair. You establish the grid by the use of models drawn from anthropology, fill it out with lots and lots of historical and archeological data ---you will recall that in my first review, I praised highly the effectiveness of all this. Then, you test Jesus traditions to see which ones are earliest. Now, here is where I and other critics have trouble. As I said in the book, your procedure appears even-handed:all materials are equally in competition. But in practice, I find considerable circularity involved. Many scholars agree with me, as you know, in doubting whether we can determine stages of redaction as precisely as you claim, especially across such a range of material. So this is a major difficulty. But next, as you say, "it is such materiasl as those that I juxtapose most immediately to ther situation of Antipas' Galilee and ask whether and how do they fit." Your reconstruction of Jesus, as you say, uses what from the Gospels fits the model you have chosen. This seems to be what I have been trying to point out all along. The question needs to be asked whether the model can accomodate all the historical materials in the Gospels --- how, for example, did you get, in last week's comment, from Jesus' conflicts with Jewish authorities to the programmatic "God says Caesar sucks"??? Your model deals with putative class issues, and reads the data within that frame. But is the intra-Jewish conflict between Jesus and some Jews also a "class conflict?"
Allow me to put the methdological question plainly. I think your model has had more influence than you realize in picking the traditions you consider earliest and more reliable. These are not, in other words, two separate procedures that happen to coincide/converge, but are mutually influencing procedures.
Finally, my greatest problem with the model exercising such influence is that it acts as a defining framework for what an individual person of the past could or could not have done. I reject the proposition that humans are totally defined by their cultural conditioning or by their social location. That is a curiously contemporary conviction that needs the severest questioning. Precisely the tendency of anthropological models to exercise such preemptive control over the fragmentary materials of the past is what makes some historians leery of them, and extremely cautious in their employment. We cannot legitimately move ---either now or then--- from a determination of a person's "class" to what they were capable of feeling or thinking or doing, much less their attitudes toward the world in which they lived. The vfascination of history resides at least in part on the surprising ways in which persons transcend their conditioning and create newness in the world. Can Epictetus be reduced to the category of "slave," or his profound reflections on freedom be considered typical of his "class?" To restrict Jesus and his proclamation to the possibilities that class analysis determines were avail;able to the average Galilean peasant is not to diminish his divinity but to simply diminish what we know of the human potential for transcending circumstance. Otherwise, we should have to insist that Mozart be measured by Salieri.
Subj: Re: Evidence & JD Crossan (longish)
Date: 96-03-10 19:53:06 EST
From: warnal@epas.utoronto.ca (William Arnal)
Sender: owner-crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com
To: miser17@epix.net (Stevan Davies)
CC: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com
Prof. Davies:
I think that if the following post of yours sounded "cross", as you worry, it's mostly because it was a point by point rejoinder to what I had said, and the format made it look rather sharper than it really was. No sweat. The objections raised are incisive enough, though, that they make my earlier assertions look more facile than they really are, and so
I feel rather compelled to make a point-by-point response. If *I* sound cranky, I hope in advance you'll forgive me.
On Sun, 10 Mar 1996, Stevan Davies wrote (some stuff deleted):
> This is an unfair parody of Sander's article. It probably is -- I'm given to unfairly parodying Sanders, 'cause on the whole I don't like his work. If there was a fair "kernel" behind this though, it's the point that there is NOT a hell of a lot of evidence to indicate that economic dislocations were NOT a major factor in the sociology of first-century Palestine. It's one thing to call into question the sources which appear to present things this way; it's quite another to argue that things were NOT this way, and I have yet to see any evidence whatsoever that would suggest such a thing.
> Who do you have in mind that is doing this? [presenting NT as merely religious]The post that I was responding to -- the one that got the ball rollingon this question implied, as I read it, that the conflicts recorded in our sources are of a "religious" character. Perhaps I misread, but that was the sense I got.
> We have one parable, a fictitious account of an idiotic landlord who > is evidently without legal recourse to assert his rights, who has tenants who are violently rebellious. From this one cannot reconstruct a facitious social milieu.
Well, the version in the synoptics suggests that he DID have legal recourse; the version in Thomas implies that it is more or less self-evident that one might act thus in their interests: the point of a parable, in spite of its fictitiousness, is the self-evidence of its example -- that's how it makes its point. We can surmise, e.g., from the Good Samaritan, that a Levite just might pass a body on the road because of the danger of contact with a corpse; that a musturd seed is small and yields considerable growth, and so on. There's also the parable in Matthew 20 in which day labourers complain about their wages; Thomas 99 (?) in which an assassin trains to kill a magnate; and in general the evidence from the entire Mediterranean for this entire period suggests a measure of brutality in the collection of both rents and taxes, and a corresponding distrust and hostility to urbanites on the part of rural-dwellers, to the point that the countryside was considered unsafe. This attitude can be seen even in Apuleius' account of the poor donkey's tribulations with the bandits. Ramsay MacMullen devotes two chapters to this phenomenon in his Roman Social Relations and here adduces all kinds of evidence.
> Staggering? Where? Debts, yes. Debts then, debts today. So? One Jesus scholar wrote that Jesus urged people not to repay their debts and those who loaned to forgive debts. Fine. Then what happens when money is needed to finance next years' planting? I could imagine the farmers of Iowa being forgiven all their debts and Hallelulia! And the next year zero loans will be available in Iowa and the system will crash. You borrow to plant and pay back after harvesting, that's how it works in Palestine, China, Iowa, Uzbekistan etc.
> Maybe Jesus didn't like this idea, but I doubt that peasants were very taken by a carpenter's theories of agrarian finance.
Right -- I doubt they were much taken with it too. Who said Jesus' programme had to be a practical one. In fact his crucifixion, the involution of his movement, and its general unpopularity all suggest to me that was an impractical programme. Consider the lilies -- that's great, but I can't do photosynthesis. I doubt Jesus was a theorist of political economy. "Staggering" is my own rhetoric, admittedly. But we're talking here about a greater degree of debt than the usual running of an agricultural deficit; foreclosures and increasing size of holdings suggest that debt levels were INCREASING beyond what was typical and supportable.
> the tenancy of entire villages where do you find this and what are we to make of it?
Inter alia, Thomas -- "I have bought a village." But there're also inscriptions dating back to the Ptolemaic period which attest to this practice. What that suggests to me is the incorporation of entire villages in large-scale cash-cropping as tenant labour. What to make of it is a rather differt question, and I'm not sure I know the answer. It does suggest a concentration of holdings among the VERY wealthy and conseuqnt loss of small-holdings, which is why I mentioned it in thefirst place. But how it was perceived and what its ramifications were, I simply can't say. Something to think about.
> I suppose you are reading Mark's idea of what the Caesar discussion
> was about as authoritative for the actual setting of the discussion.
> But even so, Mark says nothing about "he would have lost his
> following had he counselled payment." That's your idea of Mark's idea
> of Jesus' saying. (And the saying did circulate sans setting, cf.
> Thomas). He DID counsel payment and he DIDN'T lose
> his following thereby. I imagine his pals the tax collectors smiled
> and nodded.
According to the synoptic version he did not counsel payment, he replied ambiguously -- the answer is the sort that means what you want it to mean depending on your presuppositions. If you do not think that what is Ceasar's is anything, then you can accept his answer as "no, don't pay the tax," and vice versa. As Thomas 100 suggests (only: "they showed him a coin"), the explicit invocation of Caesar's portrait is probably secondary, intended to offer a more acceptable solution than that originally tendered. I do not, by the way, regard the synoptic version (i.e., context) as original: the narrative frame fits way too nicely with Mark's overall depiction of the Pharisees, and as you note, is missing in Thomas. But it does tell us something about general attitudes that such a question could be regarded as a "trap" rather self-evidently. Even Thomas' version, BTW, is suggestive. The structural difference between the last part of the saying ("give me what is mine") is striking and suggests to me a deliberate distinction between Jesus, on the one hand, and God and Caesar, on the other. GOD is not, aside form this saying, called "God" in Thomas, and my suspicion is that here the demiurge, the ruler of this world, is being associated with Ceasar, in contrast to Jesus. That, of course, though, would lead us back into the "is Thomas gnostic" discussion -- anyone interested in this might check Prof. Davies web page.
> we have the burning of the debt archives in the Temple at the start of the War
> So? What conclusion does this lead to? That in most cultures it would be the
> case that revolters would take great care with debt records?
Well, we also have Josephus' statement that they did so in an effort to "win over the rabble." And no, I do not find this unusual behaviour in revolts, but it would be unusual if the Jewish revolt were not motivated by economic factors and only nationalistic or religious ones. Josephus' account of this is an indication that debt affected the lower classes (the rabble) and that the Jewish upper classes (to whom the debt was owed) were not completely at the helm, at least initially.
> And, parenthetically, I was impressed by a recent posting that argued
> that "overtaxation" is a completely subjective concept. If so then we
> not only know practically nothing about the objective situation re:
> tax rates, but we know nothing at all about the *relative*
> subjective level of discontent. That there is evidence that people
> didn't want to pay taxes is true then, now, always, everywhere.
> They didn't want to die either. Death and taxes are sure, so
> is displeasure therewith.
As I stated originally, there is no solid evidence at all that rates of taxation had increased in this period. The two accounts we have of tax rates are from Seleucid period period, and from the time of Pompey. They appear roughly commensurate. But we can and do have evidence for subjective attitudes, as I stated, in Tacitus, who records that both Syria and Judea in the early part of the first century made petitions for tax relief.
> The cities were built by djinn?! If the cities weren't centres of
> production, then the surrounding areas were, and would prosper.
The cities might as well have been built by djinn, they would have been more comfortable than most Jews working overtop of a graveyard. The fact that the CHORA of these new cities would have served as the site of production does not mean they would have prospered unless they were working with an economic system much like our own. When there was a war in the middle ages, and soldiers came marching through creating a greater demand for food, did this benefit the peasantry? The cities would have derived their needed surplus by taking it -- in the form of taxes and interest on loans, or simply in the form of appropriating the land.
> countryside is CHORA (dependent rural hinterland of the city) as a direct
> result of Rome's political machinations.
> Rome wasn't administering Galilee at the time.
I said political machinations, not administration. And what I had in mind was the division of Palestine -- approved by Augustus -- into three separately-administered regions, with the result that control of Galilee had to develop locally, and therefore, as I see it, more effectively. Augustus was a man with a plan, and his partition of this area worked fairly well, at least for a while.
> Is the idea here that incomes rise, therefore tax collection is more
> desirable, therefore the rise in incomes results in a net decrease in
> incomes? Is there an iota of evidence for this? (No, I don't want
> to hear from you Republicans out there.)
No that's not the idea. The idea is that proximity makes consistent tax collection more economically viable. I don't imagine for a minute that we're dealing with graduated income taxes here, or that the Romans sought general prosperity to jack up revenues; they took what they could. And it's damn hard to collect revenues of any sort from a hinterland. How do you fix that? You make it not-a-hinterland-any-longer.
> The middle east had had a money economy for centuries. .
No, the middle east had had money for centuries (and not very many, at that), not a money economy. Local social relations don't require any more than barter most of the time. Again, take the middle ages -- money had been around for even longer at that time, but the basis of the economy -- argiculture on the manor, did not require the use of what money was available. That doesn't mean that no one ever used money, or even that most people didn't use from time to time, but it does mean that the mass of transactions were not undertaken with money.
In the end, I agree with the main thrust of all you've said, if you are urging caution re. drawing conclusions about something we don't have good evidence for; but what evidence there is, if it's given careful consideration, does yield some plausible -- if not certain -- conclusions. We need not -- oh physician -- take the scholarly mass of footnotes as God's revealed truth when there's little substance behind them. But that doesn't mean that an effort to come up with some fresh conclusions is necessarily an example of the same illness.
Bill
William E. Arnal Centre for the Study of Religion
University of Toronto 123 St. George Street
warnal@epas.utoronto.ca Toronto, Ont. M5S 2E8
(416) 761-9151
Date: 96-03-12 10:09:00 EST
From: Dakaylor@Davidson.edu (David Kaylor)
Sender: owner-crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com
To: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com
Having been away for a few Spring holidays to visit my granddaughter, I am way behind in the crosstalk!
The discussion about evidence for the economic conditions in Jesus' time points out the importance and frustration that attend this issue. Bill Arnal has, in my opinion, well stated much of the case for asserting that economic stress was more severe than Sanders and others believe. Evidence is scarce, no doubt. But what counts as evidence?
Steve Davies thinks Josephus is unreliable in portraying the first centuryas a time of great political disturbance. I do not share Steve's view.Josephus no doubt has his biases, one of which is that those who were stirring things up were doing so because of their bad character; Josephus did not want to suggest to his Roman audience that Rome had caused deterioration in the economic situation.
We have to take with utter seriousness Josephus description of the various uprising, culminating in the disastrous war of 66-70. One might argue that the issues underlying the rebels were "religious" and not political or economic, but as Bill Arnal rightly says, such dichotomizing would not have been done in that context. Besides, there is no real evidence that Rome was engaging in "religious" oppression. Such an agitated state of affairs is ordinarily associated with economic stress, though we may not know many of the particulars of that condition.
I would argue further, that the gospels provide evidence for economic stress, even though the gospel writers may not be primarily interested in it. Jesus' associations with the poor, and his promise to them and condemnation of the wealthy argue that Jesus saw economic conditions to be bad, and he (as Crossan argues) attributed those conditions to lack of covenant justice. Further, one should notice how frequently Jesus' parables deal with economic subjects, particularly the management of money and property and with agricultural patterns and practices. I argue in Jesus the Prophet that one can detect in these economic parables a critique of the current situation. (I wrote that before reading Herzog's PARABLES AS SUBVERSIVE SPEECH [which Luke Johnson slammed, but which I appreciate]).
Admittedly, that seldom is the purpose for which the gospel writers use the parables, but I argue that changed circumstances within the church have altered the application of Jesus' parabolic teaching, and that Jesus' hearers would have understood his criticism quite plainly.
Further, I would cite as evidence of economic stress the growth of apocalyptic literature. What gives rise to apocalyptic? It does not come from good times, but from bad. Perhaps religious persecution may lead to apocalyptic, but generally it arises when the social/political situation seems out of control and oppressive.
All of this, it seems to me, puts the burden of proof on those who would claim that economic conditions had not deteriorated. In spite of -- or because of -- the building projects of the Herods, in spite of -- or because of -- the growth of cities, the economic situation of the poorer population had deteriorated.
Over against Sanders, I would place S. Safrai and M. Stern, THE JEWISH PEOPLE IN THE FIRST CENTURY: HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY, POLITICAL HISTORY, SOCIAL, CULTURAL AND RELIGIOUS LIFE AND INSTITUTIONS (Fortress Press, 1974)especially Stern's chapter on "Aspects of Jewish Society: The Priesthood and Other Classes," Applebaum's chapter on "Economic Life in Palestine", Stern's chapter on "The Reign of Herod and the Herodian Dynasty." See also Magen Broshi, "The Role of the Temple in the Herodian Economy," Journal of Jewish Studies, 38 (1987), Martin Goodman, "The First Jewish Revolt: Social Conflict and the Problem of Debt," Journal of Jewish Studies 33 (1987) and Douglas E. Oakman, JESUS AND THE ECONOMIC QUESTIONS OF HIS DAY (Ed. Mellen Press, 1986).
Whether anthropological studies of peasant revolts are applicable to first century Palestine, as Horsley, Crossan and other think may well be debated, but they should not be dismissed out of hand as some do.
In answer to Maureen's question, Yes, I do largely agree with Crossan's presentation of Jesus challenge to the current social and political structures.
David
R. David Kaylor
Religion Department
Davidson College
704-892-2259
E-MAIL: Dakaylor@davidson.edu
Subj: Borg response (week four)
Date: 96-03-14 19:41:37 EST
From: MarcusBorg@info.harpercollins.com (Marcus J. Borg)
Sender: owner-jesus2000@info.harpercollins.com
To: Jesus2000@info.harpercollins.com
Dear Luke and Dom,
First, thanks to both of you for your responses of last week. Dom, you said some things I haven't heard you say before, and I am pleased to have elicited them.
Second, I am aware that my response this week is more to Luke than to Dom. Perhaps that is inevitable, given that Dom and I are more alike than different (though we do have differences), and given that Luke's book is a critique of both of us (as well as of others).
1. I want to raise the question of how Johnson knows what he claims to know about the Jesus Seminar (including the claim that it is so bad that he is surprised that Dom and I didn't withdraw a long time ago). As somebody who has been part of the Jesus Seminar for ten years, I simply do not recognize the group he describes. This is an important sentence: the Seminar is not as he portrays it.
Moreover, though I have not done a survey of all the Fellows, I do not know personally of anybody in the Seminar to whom Johnson spoke. Given that we are all easy to reach, would it not have been natural for Johnson to call one or two of us and ask us about how we see the Seminar? I wouldn't expect him simply to accept our opinion, of course - but before mounting such an attack, it might have been good to say to one of us, "I've been hearing terrible things about the Seminar - how do you see it? Help me to understand whether it has any positive value."
And regarding his attack on Bob Funk. How does he know that Bob Funk is "insincere"? As one who knows Funk, I have no doubt that he sincerely sees things the way he does - even though I disagree with him on some important matters. But what is the basis for questioning his sincerity? Because he can be flamboyant? Because he can be "in your face"? Because he's caustic toward many forms of Christianity? He is all of these things, in my experience of him. But what does any of this have to do with sincerity or integrity? If Bob Funk were to begin to present himself as a devout practicing Christian concerned to reform the church, then we might have reasons to wonder about sincerity. But he does not so present himself.
And let me conclude this point by saying that I am not an uncritical defender of the Jesus Seminar. I disagree with a number of our votes. I don't care very much for the commentary in The Five Gospels - I think in some respects it does not accurately reflect what we did or how many of us would describe the significance of our work (and I want to add that the Seminar did not vote on the commentary - we did not review it before it went to press; thus the "spin" in the commentary is the product primarily of its two editors, Funk and Roy Hoover). One of the most serious misunderstandings of our work is a particular way of interpreting the fact that only 18% of the sayings of Jesus appear in red and pink. There are two ways of interpreting the fact:
1) in the judgment of this group of scholars, ONLY 18% of the words attributed to Jesus go back to him; or
2) in the judgment of this group of scholars, AT LEAST this 18% goes back to Jesus; these are the sayings about which the positive consensus is the strongest.
Given the meaning of our votes, the second way is the right way of interpreting the 18% red and pink. The press has most commonly interpreted it the first way (and there is at least one sentence in The Five Gospels which interprets it this way). The point: I (and Fellows of the Seminar generally) can be critical of our work. But the sinister spin put on our work by Johnson seems unwarranted. It seems to be part of an attempt to marginalize the work of the Seminar (and perhaps part of a more comprehensive attempt, represented especially in Time magazine, to marginalize the historical study of Jesus and Christian origins).
2. I want to raise a question about Johnson's rhetoric. In his response to me last week, he justified his rhetoric with two statements: its SHARPNESS is justified by intellectual responsibility (O.K.); its "sarcastic edge" is a function of the PUBLIC rather than professional character of the conversation. What does this second justification mean? That the public can only understand sarcasm, or wouldn't get the point if it weren't made sarcastically? (Sounds a bit condescending to me). Or that sarcasm creates more public interest and more public market? (And Johnson accuses the Jesus Seminar of being publicity-seeking and market-driven). And what do you think of the implicit claim that it's O.K. to be sarcastic about your colleagues because the conversation is a public one? Many of us write for a public conversation without sarcasm. Or am I missing something here?
3, You ask why I haven't said more about the canonical Jesus (or "the post-Easter Jesus," to use the phrase I typically use.) Two responses:
1) I am a historical Jesus scholar, and so it only makes sense that most of my published work has been about the historical Jesus ("the pre-Easter Jesus"). That's my special topic area. To ask why I haven't written more about the post-Easter Jesus is a bit like asking a scholar who specializes in John's gospel why he doesn't write more about Paul.
2) More importantly, I have said some things in print about the post-Easter Jesus, esp. in Meeting Jesus
Again and in a couple of the essays in Jesus in Contemporary Scholarship. I have stressed that BOTH the historical Jesus AND the post-Easter Jesus matter for Christians; that it's not an either/or; that the Johannine "I am" sayings (though not coming from the historical Jesus) are nevertheless profoundly true statements about what the risen living Christ had become in the experience of the community. Given my emphasis on BOTH the historical Jesus AND the canonical Jesus, you can imagine my surprise when I found myself castigated in your publications as among those who think that ONLY the historical Jesus matters, and that Christian beliefs must be based ONLY in that which can be historically verified.
4. Reading through all of our entries of the past week, I am struck by how we all emphasize that which we fear would otherwise be overlooked or subordinated. Crossan fears that kingdom will be lost if God/Spirit is emphasized too much. I fear that God/Spirit will be lost if Kingdom is emphasized too much. Johnson fears that the canonical/narratival Jesus will be lost if the historical Jesus receives much attention.
In all of these cases, I think it is a BOTH/AND, and I do not understand the need to deny one half for the sake of affirming the other half. I think Crossan and I are in agreement here, so again, I find myself addressing myself primarily to you, Luke (switching now to second person). Tell me again why you see the question of the historical Jesus and the canonical Jesus as a radical either/or. And this isn't a request for you to repeat what you say in your book - I think I understand that. But I still don't get it. So can you say anything else to help me to understand why, in order to affirm the importance of the canonical Jesus (which I do), you must deny any significant significance to the historical attempt to glimpse the figure behind the texts?
With best wishes to you both.
Date: 96-03-20 21:08:55 EST
From: MarcusBorg @info.harpercollins.com (Marcus J. Borg)
Sender: owner-jesus2000@info.harpercollins.com
To: JESUS2000@info.harpercollins.com
In my response this week, I decided to comment on several themes from the last two weeks. To some extent, they seek to discover or refine the differences among us, but I choose them primarily because I think they are matters of general interest.
A brief prologue before I turn to them, namely two (possibly) final comments about the "rhetoric issue." So, to you, Luke. In your last message, you said, "Borg continued to dwell on my rhetoric and on my attack on the Jesus Seminar." Let me simply point out that you made some very deprecating remarks about the Jesus seminar in your previous entry. It should not be surprising that I replied to them, but only to be expected. And to address the question which you repeated (why have Dom and I continued to be associated with the Jesus Seminar?), the obvious answer is: because we experience the Jesus Seminar very differently from how you describe it. If it were as you describe it, of course we wouldn't be part of it. The fact that we are suggests that there may be something skewed about your description, culled from your pile of newspaper clippings.
A second comment about rhetoric, taken from your statement about me in your message this week: your description of me as having "written some popular works on Jesus AS THOUGH they were serious scholarship." I trust the negative spin in the statement is not heard by only me. What am I (what is a reader?) to make of the statement? That I pretend (implying deceit) that this is seriously scholarship? That it is bad scholarship? That I may genuinely believe this is scholarship, but of course it isn't? I'm not asking you to choose - I'm simply indicating the range of possibilities your rehtoricimplies. Can you hear the discrediting tone (perhaps even a sneer) in your language? It seems to me that it is possible to have a rigorous sharp-edged debate (the kind of "peer review" you rightly ask for) without introducing the red herring of tone-laden rhetoric.
Or is the real issue (the real crime) that I (and Crossan, et al) sometimes write at a popular/accessible level? Are we not supposed to do that? Are we to keep this stuff in the classroom, as you have written? And if so, why? And for how long? Are we all to wait until the scholarly community has "decided" or reached a consensus? And how long will that be? We both know: never. And who is being protected? Does the public need protecting? Can the public not be trusted to do its own "peer review"?
Well, I have perhaps written too much to now say, "I'm willing to drop the rhetorical and Jesus Seminar issues if you are." I am.
Now to some issues evoked by the last two weeks of messages. First, some comments directed to Dom.
1. About Jesus as a "God-intoxicated Jew" or "Spirit person." I agree with you completely that we need to be able to discern among different types of God-intoxication - religiously-motivated car bombers may both claim and feel "God-intoxicated." In my own work, the basis of discernment is compassion. I have consistently emphasized that the two focal points of Jesus' own life were Spirit and compassion, and that the twin focal points of a life that takes Jesus seriously should be Spirit and compassion (which sounds in the same ballpark with your affirmation, Luke, with which I would agree). Importantly, compassion, in my understanding of Jesus, is both a personal virtute AND a political value/paradigm. Indeed, Dom, my insistent emphasis on both Spirit and compassion may be the equivalent of your emphasis on The Kingdom Of God, which I might therefore put as "Spirit And Compassion" (though I have not thought of this before).
Thus, about an allegedly "God-intoxicated" car-bomber or Jim Jones or David Koresh, I would say, "This is not the Spirit of Jesus," whatever Spirit it might be. In short, an image of Jesus (as the compassionate one who also taught compassion - though I am not reducing Jesus to this single phrase) provides the basis for saying about a car-bomber, "This intoxication is not from God."
The above point is related to the larger question of the role of the historical study of Jesus and Christian origins. It seems to me that such study is an important source of content for our image of Jesus and for that discernment. The reason we can say, "This is not the Spirit of Jesus," is on the basis of such an image. I am not sure, however, that we NEED the historical Jesus in order to make such discerning judgments. It perhaps can be done completely on the basis of the canonical Jesus. But even at the level of the canonical Jesus, historical judgments and value judgments are required. Why, for example, not make Revelation's image of the warrior Christ who destroys the wicked the model for Christian discipleship? Of course, I don't think we should. My point, rather, is to suggest that locating the model simply in the canonical Jesus (and not also in the historical Jesus) does not eliminate the need for historical and value judgments (it's not only historical Jesus scholars who are involved in this kind of process). (And I realize that the last three or four sentences are more addressed to a point raised by Luke's position.)
One more comment about Dom's comments on God-intoxication. Why the implicit "either/or" (or at least almost an "either/or") near the end of your response, in which you say that however important ecstatic or altered states of consciousness were for Jesus' PRIVATE experience, what matters FOR US is his PUBLIC discourse about "radical divine justice standing flatly against normal human violence"? Several; points:
1. I agree with what you put in your affirmation.
2. Why does one need to subordinate the first to affirm the second?
And, as a question of history, is it reasonable to think that the private religious experience of Jesus that disconnected from his public discourse? Do not the central prophetic figures of the Jewish tradition (Moses, Elijah, most of the classical prophets) provide models for exactly the connection between experience of the sacred and social passion? 3. Is your emphasis based on your perception of what people in general, Christians, and the church in our time most need to hear, including perhaps an apprehension that people will focus on the spiritual rather than the political if thje foermer is affirmed? My own perception is that people in our time need to hear BOTH emphases - the emphasis on Spirit, and the emphasis on politics. Now to some observations about healings/cures, elicited by Dom's comments.
1. I was not asking about miracles, if by miracles we mean either special divine interventions of potentially unlimited power/efficacy, or miracles as supernatural interventions into a universe understood as a closed system of cause and effect operating in accord with natural laws. Rather that speak of "miracles" (a term which typically implies a supernatural interventionist notion), I prefer to speak of "the paranormal" (meaning experiences/events for which we don't have a very good explanatioon within our world-view). It is obvious to me that paranormal events/cures happen. The question for me thus concerns the "limits of the paranormal," and not "miracles." Your examples of things you see as impossible suggest that you and I see the limits of the paranormal similarly. I agree with your putting certain things beyond the limits of the paranormal. Like you, I do not imagine that MISSING limbs are replaced, or that genuinely dead people are resuscitated. So, simply a clarification that I wasn't asking about "miracles" in any of the sense I've specified.
2. I appreciated your clear affirmation that cures, and not simply healings, happen; and I appreciated your comparisons to Lourdes, Fatima, and Epidaurus. Thus, Jesus not only healed; he cured.
3. I want to press you on whether you push the socio-political understanding/explanation too far when you write, "Jesus' first healing was ideological, without which no further healing would have worked" and "It is that initial ideological healing that makes further healing of illness possible and even, thereby and indirectly in some cases, the curing of disease." (The context suggests that you see such "ideological healing" as primarily re-orientation of political consciousness - if I'm wrong about this, let me know.)
First, I don't think your comparative material supports the claim that ideological healing precedes phsical healing/cures. There's no reason to think that all or most of the healings/cures at Lourdes, Fatima, and Epidaurus involved an "ideological healing" (unless you simply mean by "ideological healing" the eliciting/arousing of faith - but I hear you meaning something more socio-political). That is, "cures" in a sacred place/shrine don't seem to depend upon political consciousness raising.
To make the point only slightly differently, I think there are paranormal healers who aren't political/ideological. I don't see that the first typically goes with the seconbd (though it can, and though I agree that some illnesses/diseases are related to social and political oppression - that isn't the point).
To relate this to the historical Jesus. I think Jesus was a healer/curer; and I think he was a radical peasant social prophet (as you see him; I have no significant disagreement with you about that). But I don't ground the former in the latter. I don't separate them; they're both there. But I don't derive the one from the other.
Instead, I would locate Jesus' healing/curing powers in people's experience of him as a "manifestation of the sacred" (just as a place experienced as a manifestation of the sacred can heal, so can a person thus experienced). Now he was also, as I've mentioned, everything you say about him as a religious voice of social protest and alternative social vision. But I think he was also a healer, and that we need not (and plausibly should not) make his healings/cures derivative from his social passion.
Now to Luke, a couple of briefer questions/comments.
1. Both Dom and I have agreed with what is included in your one sentence description of Jesus' character. Our disagreement with you is about whether it should say more. So let me ask you if you would be willing to ADD to your sentence something like this, "and he was executed because of his social passion for `the least of these.'"
The addition takes seriously that Jesus was executed (and didn't simply die). Without it, my apprehension is that we domesticate Jesus too much - we remove from him the passion and political vision/edge that cost him his life. And if your're not willing to add a clause like that, why not? Because it's historically inaccurate (and if so, would you identify a different cause for his execution?)? Or because the fact that he was crucified is insignificant? I recall that you have suggested that we talk about your "strong reading" of the resurrection (a subject I plan to bring up next week); what I am suggesting here is a "strong reading" of the crucifixion. So, what do you think about adding something like that? Can we hammer out a statement we can agree on?
2. When you write about the importance of the canonical Jesus in the second half of your book, I find myself basically agreeing with everything you say (and you say it well). But my question remains: in order to affirm the canonical Jesus as strongly as you do, does one have to give up the historical Jesus (the figure standing behind the texts, as glimpsed by our relative and changing efforts at historical reconstruction)? To repeat last week's question: granted that the canonical Jesus is centrally important/crucial, why do you think it MUST be an either/or choice between the canonical Jesus and the historical Jesus?
A final word to both of you. Next week in my primary message, I plan to talk mostly about how I see the death and resurrection of Jesus. I thought we might want to get started before Holy Week.
Best wishes to you both.
Subj: Week Five: Primary Message (Johnson)
Date: 96-03-18 08:30:34 EST
From: LukeJohnson @info.harpercollins.com (Luke Johnson)
Sender: owner-jesus2000@info.harpercollins.com
To: Jesus2000@info.harpercollins.com
Professor Borg's response last week continued to dwell on my rhetoric and on my attack on the Jesus Seminar (or perhaps better, the "Not-Jesus Seminar" since that seemed to be its main message). Concerning the rhetoric, enough has been said: readers of my book know that my tone was calibrated to what I considered the intellectual seriousness of my subjects: I was most dismissive of the seminar and silly Jesus books.
Concerning Borg and Crossan, I was moderate. In response to Meier, I was just as tough in my questioning ---indeed, in some senses, more rigorous, since the excellence of his own practice made the intellectual issue of his procedures more clearly the matter for debate. Concerning the Seminar, I made it clear in the book that I was deriving my portrait of the seminar through the medium it had deliberately chosen as its own: the print media. No one has questioned the accuracy of my quotations. In fact, I used my method to rhetorical effect on page 13, which I will repeat here, not for Professor Borg, but for those who may not have read my book as carefully as he has:
"As I page through the file of clippings from which I am working, I know some of my readers might object to my procedure. Why such a focvus on Funk? And why draw on statements from press reports, especially when they are obviously quoted out of context? It is appropriate to assert in response to such objections that I have no personal knowledge of Funk at all, nor any reason to consider him as anything but a worthy person. He is known to me only as he has made himself known through this media machine that I am analyzing. My analysis is of Funk [add here: and the seminar] as he appears in these discrete statements. I focus on him because he is the voice most quoted, from beginning to end, and because he appears in these stories as the magister ludi, the coordinator of the game. If my reader objects that a selection of random comments taken out of narrative context does not lead to an understanding of the "real Funk," I shall be delighted. For I would then ask my reader if the application of the same procedure with the Gospels is any more likely to yield the "real Jesus."
I also in the first chapter provided a dose of the seminar's own rhetoric, which was scarcely delicate when it came to traditions and texts held sacred by millions of people. It depends, Professor Borg, on whose ox is being gored, I guess. Your sense of personal injury at being criticized for having written some popular works on Jesus as though they were serious scholarship, and for having continued an association with the Jesus Seminar long past the time when its public rhetoric against creedal Christianity was widely disseminated is ill-timed. The more pertinent question is why you have continued that association ---and the same question applies as well to Dom. You say you have disagreed with many of its votes. Yet in none of your publications do those disagreements surface, at least that I have seen. You say that THE FIVE GOSPELS was not voted on by the members, and you regard as unfortunate the "spin" put on the seminar's work by the editors. But FIVE GOSPELS appeared in 1993. You have given countless lectures and participated in many meetings since then. Have you distanced yourself from that "spin?" Perhaps you have, and I have not seen this public disclaimer.
And do you, finally, really think of all this as a matter of "spin?" Are the intellectual and spiritual issues identified in this debate really reducible to that level? Does the suggestion in FIVE GOSPELS that the christian creed is a form of theological tyranny bother you so little? You say that you want a "both/and", but not every "both/and" is possible. At some point, one must say: this is not acceptable either as historical scholarship or as theology. Sometimes saying that even requires language that transgresses the ethics of niceness.
Professor Crossan: In my response last week, I asked how you got from the narrative portrayal of Jesus' conflicts with Jewish authorities to your programmatic statements: "God says, Caesar sucks." I raised this question because I think it illustrates how a model ends up dominating the data it is invoked to interpret. Some clarification of how you got from the only words of Jesus concerning Caesar, "Give Caesar what belongs to Caesar, give God what belongs to God" (translation from p.xvi of your "The Historical Jesus"), to your epitome of his first and most important "ideological healing," would help me see whether I am fair in my assessment. It seems at first to confirm precisely my objection to the role played by such models when they are employed without sufficient responsiveness to the textual evidence itself.
I should also like to engage him on this question: is it not the case that a process of historical reconstruction that begins by eliminating the narrative framework of the canonical gospels as well as most of their contents as "unhistorical," and then continues by reassembling the "authentic bits" within an alternative framework, suggests that the canonical gospels are not only "inadequate" for the historical reconstruction of Jesus (which I readily grant, and on which point I am closer to you than to others), but are also "wrong" in the meaning they give to Jesus? I ask this as a way of returning to my question of some time ago: if you can agree with me concerning the "character of Jesus" as I sketched it, why did that not emerge thematically in your publications? I understand that in your response to Professor Borg on healings you wanted to emphasize the ideological. Let me grant you the point of emphasis. But satisfy me on the point of inclusion, please: is the character of Jesus as portrayed in the canonical framework, a Jewish man who gives his life in service out of radical obedience to God, essential or peripheral? To be included or excluded?
Subj: Week 5, Response Message (Crossan)
Date: 96-03-19 16:14:52 EST
From: JohnDominicCrossan @info.harpercollins.com (John Dominic Crossan)
Sender: owner-jesus2000@info.harpercollins.com
To: JESUS2000@info.harpercollins.com
Dear Luke and Marcus:
You asked me two direct questions, Luke, so I begin by answering them in the order asked. First, about Caesar. I argued that, for Jesus, the Kingdom of God involved a profound criticism of the systemic and structural (not just personal and individual) evil of peasant exploitation, colonial collaboration, and imperial dominion as contrary to the radical, covenantal justice of Israel's God. You asked how I could say that in the light of the Render to Caesar text. We tend today to hear that as an isolated saying of Jesus and often interpret it as establishing twin spheres of influence, one for God and another for Caesar, one religious and other-worldly, one secular and this-worldly, something like separation of church and state. No first-century Jew or Christian (no any-century Jew or Christian?) wouldever have agreed to that understanding of the statement. We know that not only from, say, Paul in Romans 13:1-7 but even from Josephus who, I suppose, is as pro-Roman a Jew as we know about. But he is pro-Roman because "without God's aid, so vast an empire could never have been built up" (see whole list of such statements in The Historical Jesus, pp. 97-99).With that as preliminary, back to the texts in question. There are, for me, three independent versions of this incident (it is not just a saying) in the Gospel of Thomas, the Egerton Gospel (but broken off before the coin appears), and Mark (excuse brevity, but full details are in Chapter 5 of my 1985 book Four Other Gospels). That makes the incident, for me, as original as you can get. What is striking for me is that, whether in the very long version in Mark or the very short one in Gos. Thom. 100, Jesus himself does not possess a copy of Caesar's coin with Caesar's image on it. It is the questioners who must produce it for him. Even Thomas, for whom sayings predominate over dialogues but especially over incidents, does not reduce this incident to its terminal saying. I emphasize: setting and saying must stay in tandem. Jesus' answer to their catch-you-either-way question is to catch them either way. If you carry Caesar's coin, pay Caesar's taxes, for you are in the system or Kingdom of Caesar. But if you get rid of that coin, as I have, then welcome to the system or Kingdom of God.
Your reason for asking that specific question was to test whether my method (present) must always trump the data (past). For me historical reconstruction is neither a subjective nor objective but an interactive process. It seeks a creative dialectic between past and present in which each changes the other. The only way I know to avoid the false claim of objectivity or the dominating fact of subjectivity is by establishing a method to make interactivity as disciplined as possible. What I did was build an interdisciplinary model that can be criticized, changed, adapted or filled out on any of its three levels (if somebody showed anthropologically that the high productivity characteristic of agrarian empire's iron plow meant a better peasant life; if somebody showed historically that Israel's God was not concerned with covenantal justice but only with cultic fidelity; if somebody showed archeologically that lower Galilee experienced no basic changes --commercialization by urbanization -- in the first decades of the first common-era century). That interdisciplinary process has self-correction built into it: you should be able to see if I have twisted my levels or whether they actually do fit. Compare, for example, Lenski's emphasis on a religion's view of social justice for determining resistance to exploitation with even a cursory reading of Amos or Micah. Compare, for another example, Kautsky's emphasis on the role of incipient commercialization in creating peasant resistance with Antipas' urbanization program. All of that, however, is only one half of the problem. The other part was to organize the data and see if the earliest materials locked onto that situation and how and where they did.
For all practical purposes, that earliest data is those 38 common units in the Q Gospel and the Gospel of Thomas. I know that you have described that judgment as "fixing" the evidence but we all must make such judgments and our work stands or falls on their validity. If Mark's priority, Q's existence, or Thomas' independence is wrong, for example, then my reconstruction of Jesus must be totally redone. The same, of course, applies to the opposite judgments. Since my data preferences are controlled by multiple independent attestations in the earliest chronological levels, I have never used Gal 3:28 before but I did ask you, Luke, about it in a recent reply. I repeat: why did Paul take only the first of its three dichotomies as immediately and literally normative and what would have happened to him if he had taken all three with equally forceful commitment?
The second question you asked, Luke, was about Jesus' character. Sorry, if I had not been clear in my response to you on that point. You asked: "is the character of Jesus as portrayed in the canonical framework, a Jewish man who gives his life in service out of radical obedience to God, essential or peripheral? To be included or excluded?" Yes: totally, fully, completely and absolutely (to use the same words I did in replying to Marcus' question on the importance of God for Jesus). I repeat my problems with that summary and I repeat them as questions:
(1) how did you decide that the "the canonical framework" gave you that summary as distinct from any other?
(2) how do you distinguish that "Jewish man" Jesus from other Jewish men such as John the Baptist, on the one hand, or Peter and Paul, on the other, or many, many others who died in divine obedience and human service in that terrible century?
Those are not rhetorical questions but attempts to move this debate forward. I have no problem with your summary in itself. My problems are with its lack of methodological grounding and its lack of detailed specificity. You ask: "if you can agree with me concerning the 'character of Jesus' as I sketched it, why did that not emerge thematically in your publications?" The historical Jesus did not speak about the CHARACTER OF JESUS but about the KINGDOM OF GOD, which involved both radical obedience to God and radical service to others. That is why "my publications" are not about the character of Jesus but about the Kingdom of God. Jesus' character is in there, of course, but never as a refuge from facing the rather terrifying challenge of the Kingdom. He talked about the Kingdom, we prefer to talk about Him.
In my opening message I said that Mark and John made up two radically divergent accounts of Jesus' passion, one intended to help persecuted Christians die and the other intended to help marginalized Christians live. I said both were true as gospel but neither was true as history (that is, I do not think either writer knew the exact details of Jesus' arrest or death). True as gospel, of course, means symbolically true for the Christians who wrote those stories and for us Christians who still read them as statements from faith, for faith, to faith. Please, Luke, why would you even ask after such an opening statement, whether "the canonical gospels ... are also 'wrong' in the meaning they give to Jesus'"?
You insist, again and again, in creating a rejection where no rejection has been stated. I have spent over twenty five years publishing on the historical Jesus. I have not written except in Prologue or Epilogue about the theological implications of that research but I have always been absolutely aware of them and always willing, when asked, to discuss them. Hence, this debate.
I conclude with a feeling of acute frustration, a feeling that everything in this reply has been said before during our debate. I still do not know exactly where you stand, Luke, on any of those three questions you have ignored (Gal 3:28? whence your summary of Jesus' character? why so vague?). But above all, and in a last effort to focus our disagreement, let me try this. Imagine three positions:
(1) The historical Jesus is unimportant for Christian faith;
(2) The historical Jesus is important for Christian faith but must be found within the New Testament;
(3) The historical Jesus is important for Christian faith but must be found within contemporary standards for such research. (I emphatically do not equate history and faith but presume that Christian faith is in the meaning of certain historical events).
Are those positions adequate, or do you envisage others I don't see? I myself, and Marcus, if I speak correctly for him, are in position 3 and I presume that you yourself are not there. But I am no longer certain whether you are in position 1 or 2? Please, Luke, do not consider this as sarcasm. I began the debate (and, as you know, my article in the Bible Review for April) thinking you were in position 1. Then I thought you were in position 2 when you drew Marcus' attention to non-Christian sources used to reconstruct your own Jesus. I have no intention of drawing you into my project, Luke, but since you criticized it so trenchantly, I need to know where you are to reply to those criticisms.
Date: 96-03-20 20:51:59 EST
From: miser17@epix.net (Stevan Davies)
Sender: owner-crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com
Reply-to: miser17@epix.net
To: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Dom Crossan wrote most recently:
Compare, for another example, Kautsky's emphasis on the role of incipient commercialization in creating peasant resistance with Antipas' urbanization program. All of that, however, is only one half of the problem. The other part was to organize the data and see if the earliest materials locked onto that situation and how and where they did. For all practical purposes, that earliest data is those 38 common units in the Q Gospel and the Gospel of Thomas. I know that you have described that judgment as "fixing" the evidence but we all must make such judgments and OUR WORK STANDS OR FALLS ON THEIR VALIDITY. (emphasis added).
I am disappointed at Crosstalkers for ignoring the times I posted the Q/Thomas common units. Here is Crossan declaring that it is on that evidence that he bases his case, and I ask if y'all would care to analyze the evidence, and. . . . No. Folks would rather talk about theories of history and rationality and leave the analysis of evidence aside. But if you are interested in matters pertaining to the historical Jesus, you can't just be concerned with theories about theories of the historical Jesus. You've got to look at the evidence.
Borg and Johnson do not seem to me to have any interest in evidence at all. They declare their perspectives and then sit back and wait. I'd say that having no evidence, their perspectives are trivial and so, people of a New Age frame of mind are expected to agree with Borg and people of a Conservative frame of mind are expected to agree with Johnson. So Borg sells books to one audience and Johnson to another on the false grounds that purchasers can find solace in the fact that "a scholar" agrees with them, but sadly "a scholar" who does not give the evidence needed to support his case.
If you look to the quality of the scholarship involved, only Crossan even tries! He argues. They state. They're safe, he can't attack their arguments, the quality of their evidence, the link between evidence and conclusions because there isn't any.
But Crossan puts forward his position, and puts forward the evidence he thinks supports it. Good for him.
Nevertheless, I don't see anything in the following Q/Thomas parallels that supports his case at all. I see no intellectually interesting dyads between householders and itinerants, between eating and healing, except maybe in one or two instances.
If you agree, then there's not much left of his case, or to his *Historical Jesus*. As he says! If this material doesn't support him, he has no support.
His work stands or falls on their validity as supporting evidence for his case! This is not a small thing.
Yet, he tries, he gives his evidence, he makes a public claim that he thinks is verifiable and he allows you to judge whether it's been verified, although you can refuse to be bothered.
But Borg and Johnson don't even do that. All they're doing is writing phrases that will sound congential to certain kinds of people.
Is there significant material in the following to give support to the idea of Jesus as a peasant Jewish cynic, as one who taught a revolutionary ideology, as one who challenged authority by an ideology of free healing and open commensality so as to support Crossan's case?
The Q/Thomas parallels in the Thomas version are:
4a Jesus said, "The person old in days won't hesitate to ask a little child seven days old about the place of life, and that person will live
14b. "When you go into any region and walk about in the countryside, when people take you in, eat what they serve you and heal the sick among them."
16 Jesus said, "Perhaps people think that I have come to cast peace upon the world. They do not know that I have come to cast conflicts upon the earth: fire, sword, war. For there will be five in a house: there'll be three against two and two against three, father against son and son against father, and they will stand alone."
21b "If the owners of a house know that a thief is coming, they will be on guard before the thief arrives and will not let the thief break into their house (their domain) and steal their possessions."
26 Jesus said, "You see the sliver in your friend's eye, but you don't see the timber in your own eye. When you take the timber out of your own eye, then you will see well enough to remove the sliver from your friend's eye."
33a Jesus said, "What you will hear in your ear, in the other ear proclaim from your rooftops."
34 Jesus said, "If a blind person leads a bind person, both of them will fall into a hole."
36 Jesus said, "Do not fret, from morning to evening and from evening to morning, [about your food--what you're going to eat, or about your clothing--] what you are going to wear. [You're much better than the lilies, which neither card nor spin. As for you, when you have no garment, what will you put on? Who might add to your stature? That very one will give you your garment.]" (inclusions from Oxy. Pap. in Gk, lacking in Coptic)
39a Jesus said, "The Pharisees and the scholars have taken the keys of knowledge and have hidden them. They have not entered nor have they allowed those who want to enter to do so."
45 Jesus said, "Grapes are not harvested from thorn trees, nor are figs gathered from thistles, for they yield no fruit. Good persons produce good from what they've stored up; bad persons produce evil from the wickedness they've stored up in their hearts, and say evil things. For from the overflow of the heart they produce evil."
46a Jesus said, "From Adam to John the Baptist, among those born of women, no one is so much greater than John the Baptist that his eyes should not be averted."
47b Jesus said, " A slave cannot serve two masters, otherwise that slave will honor the one and offend the other."
54 Jesus said, "Congratulations to the poor, for to you belongs Heaven's kingdom."
55a Jesus said, "Whoever does not hate father and mother cannot be my disciple, and whoever does not hate brothers and sisters, and carry the cross as I do, will not be worthy of me."
61a Jesus said, "Two will recline on a couch; one will die, one will live."
64a Jesus said, "A person was receiving guests. When he had prepared thedinner, he sent his slave to invite the guests. The slave went to the first and said to that one, "My master invites you." That one said, "Some merchants owe me money; they are coming to me tonight. I have to go and give them instructions. Please excuse me from dinner." The slave went to another and said to that one, "My master has invited you." That one said to the slave, "I have bought a house, and I have been called away for a day. I shall have no time." The slave went to another and said to that one, "My master invites you." That one said to the slave, "My friend is to be married, and I am to arrange the banquet. I shall not be able to come. Please excuse me from dinner." The slave went to another and said to that one, "My master invites you." That one said to the slave, "I have bought an estate, and I am going to collect the rent. I shall not be able to come. Please excuse me." The slave returned and said to his master, "Those whom you invited to dinner have asked to be excused." The master said to his slave, "Go out on the streets and bring back whomever you find to have dinner."
68a Jesus said, "Congratulations to you when you are hated and persecuted"
69b "Congratulations to those who go hungry, so the stomach of the one in want may be filled."
73 Jesus said, "The crop is huge but the workers are few, so beg the harvest boss to dispatch workers to the fields."
76b Jesus said, "Seek his treasure that is unfailing, that is enduring, where no moth comes to eat and no worm destroys."
78 Jesus said, "Why have you come out to the countryside? To see a reed shaken by the wind? And to see a person dressed in soft clothes, [like your] rulers and your powerful ones? They are dressed in soft clothes, and they cannot understand truth."
86 Jesus said, "[Foxes have] their dens and birds have their nests, but human beings have no place to lay down and rest."
89 Jesus said, "Why do you wash the outside of the cup? Don't you understand that the one who made the inside is also the one who made the outside?"
91 They said to him, "Tell us who you are so that we may believe in you." He said to them, "You examine the face of heaven and earth, but you have not come to know the one who is in your presence, and you do not know how to examine the present moment."
94 Jesus [said], "One who seeks will find, and for [one who knocks] it will be opened."
95 Jesus [said], "If you have money, don't lend it at interest. Rather, give [it] to someone from whom you won't get it back."
96 Jesus [said], "The Father's kingdom is like [a] woman. She took a little leaven, [hid] it in dough, and made it into large loaves of bread. Anyone here with two ears had better listen!"
102 Jesus said, "Damn the Pharisees! They are like a dog sleeping in the cattle manger: the dog neither eats nor [lets] the cattleeat."
103 Jesus said, "Congratulations to those who know where the rebels are going to attack. [They] can get going, collect their imperial resources, and be prepared before the rebels arrive."
107 Jesus said, "The Kingdom is like a shepherd who had a hundred sheep. One of them, the largest, went astray. He left the ninety-nine and looked for the one until he found it. After he had toiled, he said to the sheep, 'I love you more than the ninety-nine.'"
Translation: "The Scholars' Version," by Marvin Meyer and Stephen Patterson (Polebridge Press).
Steve
Subj: Primary Message: Week Six
Date: 96-03-25 15:32:49 EST
From: MarcusBorg @info.harpercollins.com (Marcus J. Borg)
Sender: owner-jesus2000@info.harpercollins.com
To: JESUS2000@info.harpercollins.com
Item Type: Appointment
Start Date: 03/25/1996 11:40 am (Monday)
Duration: 1 Hour
Dear Luke and Dom,
Before I begin my primary message this week, a brief remark/question to Dom which occurred to me after I sent my last response.
To Dom: In my last response, I suggested that the two focal points of Jesus' life and public activity were Spirit and compassion (with compassion understood to be a political value as well as a personal virtue). Afterwards, I realized that I could also speak of "Spirit and Kingdom" (or Spirit And Kingdom), as long as Kingdom and compassion are understood to be tightly linked (that is, "compassion" specifies what kind of kingdom). Thus, where you emphasize "Kingdom of God," I would emphasize "Spirit and Kingdom." The point of my suggestion is not so much which is better language (and K of God has, of course, the advantage of being a phrase in the texts), but whether you think we are talkling about the same thing (about equivalent notions).
In this week's primary message, I want to speak about how I see the death and resurrection of Jesus. I will treat each with a series of numbered statements. In most cases, I will simply state my conclusion without presenting the supporting arguments. Though it is not up to me to suggest how you might respond, I would find it interesting if each of you described how you see the death and resurrection of Jesus, rather than simply responding to my points.
The Execution/Death of Jesus.
1. I see much of the passion story as non-historical at the level of details. Many of the details seem to be "prophecy historicized" rather than "history remembered" (Dom's phrases, though the notion is widely-held by mainline scholars, including Raymond Brown; the differences seem to be of degree), and/or the use of symbolism drawn from the Jewish tradition (e.g., the temple curtain tearing).
2. I do not think Jesus' death was his own purpose or intention. To clarify: I think Jesus was aware that if he kept doing what he was doing, he could get in serious trouble. I consider it possible that Jesus went to Jerusalem knowing that the likely outcome would be his arrest and execution. But I don't think his death was his purpose or intention. I see the statements in the gospels and the rest of the NT which say that it was as post-Easter interpretations of his death: this was how his death was seen in Christian retrospect.
This doesn't make such statements uninterersting, wrong, or irrelevant. I can affirm the metaphorical truth in all of the canonical interpretations of his death and resurrection: as defeat of the powers, as embodiment/incarnation of the way of return, as the once-for-all sacrifice for sin. But I do not see any of these asreflective of Jesus' own intentionality.
3. Jesus was killed. He didn't just die. The significant HISTORICAL question about his death is not, "Why did he die?", but "Why was he killed?" I do not think it was random or accidental (as has occasionally been suggested), but was because he challenged what Walter Wink calls "the domination system" of his day. To put that differently and to use the strokes from my sketch: if Jesus had been "just" a Spirit person and teacher of unconventional wisdom, I don't think he would have been executed. Rather, it was because he was a social prophet, with an alternative social vision, who had attracted a following, that accounts for his execuition. He was perceived as a threat by the ruling elites at the top of the dominatioon system.
4. I do not think the trial scene before the Sanhedrin and the high priest is historical. I don't think an "official trial" like this happened (though there may have been a more informal meeting of a small circle of advisors or "cronies" around the high priest). And I don't think the issue was "blasphemy" or any sort of self-claim on the part of Jesus. I see the picture of him as condemned to death by Jewish authorities on a religious charge (blasphemy) as the creation of the early Christian movement.
5. I see the execution of Jesus happening because of collaboration between a narrow circle of the Jewish aristocracy (the Jewish ruling elite) and Roman authority. I have no idea whether Jesus appeared personally before either the high priest or Pilate. The decision to execute him could have been made without an appearance, and in the case of most peasant victims of crucifixion, undoubtedly was.
6. I consider it possible (perhaps even more likely than not) that Jesus was not buried in a tomb, and that his body may have been devoyureed by scavengers or buried in a common/mass grave. I am an agnostic in the technical sense of the word on this: I don't know, and can't see any way the hsitorical judgment could be shifted one way or the other on this question. For reasons mentioned below, burial or lack of burial need not affect one's verdict on the resurrection of Jesus.
7. For obvious reasons, it is crucial that Christian preaching and teaching not continuie to create the impression that it was "the Jews" who crucified, or that it was "the Jewish people" who rejected him. Our gospel texts, to varying degrees, create this impression. Jewish involvement in the death of Jesus included at most a narrow circle of the ruling elites who, rather than representing the Jewish people, are more accurately understood as the oppressors of the great majority of Jews living in the Jewish homeland at the time of Jesus.
To put this in a statement which echoes but differs from Luke's shorthand summary of Jesus, "Out of obedience to God, Jesus challenged the powers that be because of his social passion for `the least of these,' even to the point of death."
The Resurrection of Jesus
Before beginning my numbered statements, I wish to put my position in a sentence: "I affirm that the resurrection of Jesus really happened, and that need not involve anything happening to his corpse." Strongly affirming the resurrection of Jesus does/need not involve saying that his physical body came out of the tomb.
One other preliminary. When I use the word "Easter," I am most often not referring to a particular day. When I use the word "resurrection," I am not saying anything about physical bodies or empty tombs. Unless context clearly indicates otherwise, I use both terms as "large umbrellas" to mean the experience of Jesus after his death.
1. When I say, "I affirm that the resurrection of Jesus really happened," I mean: The followers of Jesus continued to experience him as a living reality after his death (though in a radically new way). Jesus is a figure of the present, and not of the past. After his death, they experienced him as a spiritual(non-material, but actual) reality. These experiences were not confined to a few weeks or years or decades after Easter, but have continued through the centuries to this day. Thus the truth of Easter is not grounded in what did or did not happen on a particular Sunday, but in the on-going experience of Christians throughout the centuries.
2. I think there were a variety of resurrection experiences in the early movement(s): visions, mystical experiences, experiences of a presence, experience of power/ empowerment.
3. I do not think that resurrection experiences were confined to one or only a few persons.
4. The resurrection of Jesus did/does not mean simply, "Jesus lives," but also "Jesus is Lord." That is, there was something about these experiences that led his followers to speak of him as "one with God" or as having been raied to "the right hand of God." Thus resurrection experiences did not mean simply that people had post-death experiences of Jesus (as, for example, often happens in intense grief reactions when a bereaved person has a vivid sense of "seeing" the deceased). Such an experience might feel radically uncanny, but it would not lead to the exclamation that the deceased had become "Lord" or was "divine."
5. Because of the distinction between resuscitation and resurrection, and because the earliest accounts speak of visions, there is no need to think that Easter necessarily involved an empty tomb, or that anything happened to the corpse of Jesus.
6. My own strong hunch: Nothing happened to the corpse of Jesus (except what happens to all corpses); and this in no way undermines the truth of Easter.
7. When I say, "Easter means that the followers of Jesus continued to experience him, even though nothing happened to his body," I do NOT mean any of the following: The spirit of Jesus lived on (as the spirit of Martin Luther King may be said to live on); or that his memory lived on; or that Jesus lived on in the birth of Easter faith among his followers. All of the above are true, but they are not, in my judgment, the meaning of easter. They are too weak, pallid, and reductionistic.
Some comments on my understanding in relation to Luke and Dom.
Luke, I re-read your section on the resurrection of Jesus in The Real Jesus. It sounds to me like you and I see this very similarly; we even use a number of similar phrases (which I also used in Jesus: A New Vision, and Meeting Jesus Again). Does it sound that way to you?
Dom, a question. As I understand your position, you see all of the GOSPEL stories of Easter as essentially "authority-establishing narratives" (with the exception of the Emmaus story). Is that correct? Or do you see them as having another intention/function/purpose in addition to establishing (or discrediting) authority?
Well, the time has come to bring this to a close. Best wishes to you both from Oregon.
Subj: Week Six Response (Johnson)
Date: 96-03-28 09:14:14 EST
From: LukeJohnson @info.harpercollins.com (Luke Johnson)
Sender: owner-jesus2000@info.harpercollins.com
To: Jesus2000@info.harpercollins.com
Dear Dom and Marcus:
The sense of frustration expressed by Dom has been mine from the beginning. I joined this "debate" reluctantly, since I doubted that much precision would result from quasi-public notes written under deadline by three authors already deeply committed to positions carefully worked out in published form, particularly when two of the participants basically agreed on principles and procedures and the third wrote his book in the first place to call those principles and procedures into question.
I will respond first to Dom's long response to my question concerning the "Give to Caesar" logion, and then the questions he put to me, before turning to Professor Borg's opening statement for this week. The generous length of your response, Dom, is appreciated. You are, I am more than willing to agree, consistent in your approach. The effect of your response is to confirm my sense that your reconstruction of Jesus as a historical figure is fundamentally governed by the framework derived in the manner you have described. And you are correct: any challenge to your reconstruction must put that framework and your way of assessing "authentic" materials, into question. That is what I tried to do in my book.
You wanted me to respond concerning Gal 3:28: you ask, "what would have happened to him if he had taken all three ["dichotomies"] with equally forceful commitment?" It is a good question, but much more complex than it appears. I presume you take Gal 3:28 as enunciating a radical egalitarianism within the church, and are suggesting that Paul only carried this through with regard to Jew and Gentile, not male/female or slave/free. Before addressing your hypothetical, it would be necessary to agree, a) that Paul's statement was intended to issue in a social levelling (so that there would literally be no slaves or free) "in Christ" rather than a relativization of status markers within the community, b) that Paul saw such levelling as the essential expression of the church's mission to the world, so that this utopian arrangement would eventually also be that of the wider world, c) that Paul himself eradicated differences between Jew and Gentile in the community. I could not agree to these three premises as I have stated them. Indeed, I find the interpretation of Gal 3:28 to be problematic in current scholarship, precisely because it seems to be granted a certain "obviousness" that it does not possess. The fundamental issue, I think, is whether Paul intends "difference" to remain within the assembly or not: are maleness and femaleness to be eliminated altogether, or are they to be transformed from markers of power and status to the basis for reciprocal gift-giving? I would suggest, Dom, that your commitment to an understanding of "the good news" (to use a neutral term) in terms of a commitment to a change in the social order (an "unbrokered kingdom") dominates, indeed shapes, your reading both of Paul and of Jesus. And I think you are straightforward enough, and sincerely convinced of the rightness of that commitment, to agree that this is the case.
To turn more briefly to the two other questions you put to me. The first concerns my summary of Jesus'character: how did I derive it, and why is it so vague? It may be helpful here to back up for a moment. First, for my own uses and for the theology of the church, the image of Jesus in the four canonical gospels is extraordinarily rich and complex, and not to be reduced to a single summary. Second, I offered my character sketch as an important element of "the historical Jesus" that was oddly missing from other reconstructions, yet which had as m,uch claim to being "multiply attested and early" as any others. In fact I remain puzzled why, if you agree with the summary of Jesus as obedient to God and in service to humans, so little of this found its way into your framework or into the pieces you used. I am not the only one to remark on the way in which Jesus' special way of talking about God and responding to God finds so little emphasis in your reconstruction. Third, I determined this character sketch by means similar to your own, using the criterion of multiple attestation; the difference is that I used the narrative fragments in early epistolary literature, and the narrative emphasis of the canonical gospels. This differs from your approach, which does not use Paul except as his letters might confirm a specific saying, and which begins by deconstructing the nearrative rendering of Jesus in the canonical gospels. Fourth, in the chapter of my book called "What's Historical about Jesus,"I provided a range of statements concerning the activity of Jesus that, in my view, could be verified historically. My sketch of Jesus' character was not ever intended to be read apart from all these other observations. Nevertheless, I think it important to repeat what I have already stated many times, not least in response to Professor John Meier: since the selection of materials concerning Jesus in the early church was already determined by interpretation of Jesus, we cannot simply take that selection and move it about to fit other interpretations! To put it another way: those parts of the tradition that we can historically verify are neither complete nor self-interpreting.
Finally, Dom, you ask me to locate myself within the three options you present:
a) the historical Jesus is unimportant for Christian faith;
b) the historical Jesus is important for Christian faith but must be found within the New Testament;
c) the historical Jesus is important for Christian faith but must be found within contemporary standards for such research. A fair question. I must, however, answer it within the framework of my own understanding of the terms. Since by "historical Jesus" I have consistently meant "the Jesus capable of being reconstructed by means of critical historical inquiry," and since by "christian faith" I have consistently meant "the faith of the church in the real Jesus who is raised from the dead and lives with the life of God as Lord, and who through the Holy Spirit continues to encounter humans," I can answer your question straightforwardly, no to all three options. But if the question is put: "Was Jesus truly and fully human, and did he, as the Gospels attest, preach the Kingdom of God and heal and give his life in obedience, and is this human Jesus continuous with the one Christians proclaim as risen Lord, and are the canonical Gospels true and reliable witnesses to the meaning of his earthly life and its significance for other humans," then my answer is emphatically, yes.
I have already expended too much of my time and your patience, but I want to respond briefly to your formal statement, Marcus. It contains many interesting observations, and I could easily go down the list of them saying "I agree with this one," or "I disagree with that one," or "I'm nor sure about that." But I resist so doing, just as I resist putting my own list on the board. My reason is simple. In my understanding of history, it means more than scholars having and expressing opinions; it involves the making of arguments, the examination and weighing of evidence, the debate over the better reading of texts. My objection to your own books from the beginning has been that they contain far more assertion than argument. Thus, although you are correct in observing that you and I tend to agree on more points, I actually take stronger exception to your historical practices than I do to Dom's, for although he reaches positions that I find historically problematic, he does so in a consistent and well-argued fashion (even though I criticize some of those arguments). As a historian, I do not think it responsible to continue simply identifying "positions" as though there was any particular point to "what Johnson thinks." There is not, any more than there is any particular weight to be attached to "what Borg thinks." What matters is good historical method.
In similar fashion, theology is based on the faith of the church, not my own idiosyncratic rendering of it. As a theologian, I place myself squarely within the creed that is recited by my community at every Sunday Eucharist. Only within that framework do I assume the liberty to begin to define, not "what I think" but what the texts are saying concerning such issues as the relationship between Jesus' human body and the resurrection body, between the present power of the spirit of Jesus and the "body of Christ" that is the church. Once more, not "what Johnson thinks" but what understanding of these matters best builds up the church in an appropriate understanding of the gift it has been given, is the point.
In all of this, I resist the reduction of the mystery within which we live and for the sake of which we live, to a problem that can be solved like a borken carburator.
Subj: Week 6: Response Message (Crossan)
Date: 96-03-28 12:10:58 EST
From: JohnDominicCrossan @info.harpercollins.com (John Dominic Crossan)
Sender: owner-jesus2000@info.harpercollins.com
To: JESUS2000@info.harpercollins.com
Dear Marcus and Luke:
You asked me two direct questions, Marcus, and I reply in the order asked Your first question concerned the twin foci of Jesus' life as "Spirit and compassion" or "Spirit and Kingdom." Clearly, you or anyone else, may select whatever terms you deem appropriate as long as they are defined for others to understand, and I do not want to get into discussions about terms rather than concepts. But I reply first about "Spirit" and then about "compassion."
About "Spirit." I use "Kingdom of God" because that is the term most deeply associated with Jesus in the tradition. The evidence for that conclusion is in Appendix 5 of The Historical Jesus and can be compared, for example, with the usage for "Son of Man" in Appendix 4. (As usual, of course, that presumes valid source criticism, for me, for you, for anyone. Different conclusions about sources will generate different conclusions about the historical Jesus but nobody evades that inevitability.) If Jesus spoke about the Spirit of God, that would be my central term and concern. But he did not. Or look, for example at the Baptism of Jesus. That Jesus was baptized by John is as sure as anything about him can ever be but that the Spirit's advent happened at that exact moment even as an ecstatic experience for Jesus alone is a very, very different question. If one judged that to be securely historical and if Jesus thereafter talked primarily about the Spirit of God (not the Kingdom of God), I would follow you in preferring an emphasis not on the Kingdom but on the Spirit. Are we simply playing word-games here? What is at stake for me is that Kingdom of God is 100% socio-economic and 100% religio-theological. It evokes the obvious correlative, the Kingdom of Caesar, and it asks whether they are exactly the same or radically different. My analogy is some German Christians insisting in the early 30s of this century that Jesus is "Der Fuehrer," meaning, of course, that Hitler ain't. Kingdom, in other words, is a political term. Spirit is not, even though it COULD be so explained. That is what you have to do by always speaking of "Spirit AND ..." or of Jesus as "Spirit-person" AND "social prophet." I do not know, in terms of the ancient traditions of Northern Israel, how to distinguish politics from religion or economics from theology in the cases say of Deborah and Barak or Elijah and Elisha. Neither can I distinguish them in Jesus' Kingdom of God. So that is my preferred term, Marcus, in honor of Jesus' own choice. And if the tradition transposes Kingdom into Spirit, I will always want to know why it did that, and what is lost or gained in the exchange. As I understand Jesus, the Kingdom of God is about radical justice for earth and that means something fearfully simple: radical egalitarianism here below.
About compassion. Your use of that term has always worried me, Marcus. An analogy. As a Roman Catholic, I disagree profoundly with, among many other things, the present Pope's insistence that women cannot be ordained. I hesitate, however, to call that a lack of compassion. I see it rather as an abuse of power. He is, I presume, every bit as compassionate as I am and may even be more so. That is a waste of argument. The question is whether he is abusing his power, whether we are up against spiritual fascism or religious totalitarianism. I do not know how to argue whether Pilate was or was not "compassionate" but I can understand Jesus' insistence that the human normalcies of oppression and discrimination, exploitation and violence were radically opposed by the Kingdom of God (in Matthew's gloss: the will of God for earth). What is at stake, once again? Frightening visions and terrifying programs like Kingdom of God or divine justice as radical egalitarianism seem to get softer and vaguer as they transmute into Spirit of God or human compassion. Thereafter, one has to try and get some or all of that original content back into those new expressions. I see you having to struggle to do that, Marcus, that is, having to solve a problem you created for yourself. For myself, I hold to Jesus' expression, Kingdom of God, and use my understanding of it to judge all other terms taken as equivalents for it: Kingdom judges Spirit, radical egalitarianism judges human compassion.
Your second question, Marcus, involved the gospel stories of Easter as essentially about apostolic authority rather than ecstatic vision. This, in baldest summary, is my basic evidence. First, Paul mentions three types of people to whom the Risen Lord "was revealed": a large community (the 500), leadership groups (the Twelve or the Apostles), and specific named leaders (Peter, James, Paul himself). I think of Paul's own experience as an ecstatic vision (absolutely typical within comparative religion). But when I turn to the last chapters of the gospels, I do not find anything characteristic of ecstatic vision. I find: appearances/revelations of Jesus
(a) to the community (e.g., Luke 24 as against Acts 1);
(b) to leadership groups (e.g., Acts 1 as against Luke 24, etc.); and especially
(c) to specific leaders (the Beloved Disciple over Peter, Mary, and Thomas in John 20 or Peter over everyone else in John 21, etc.).
I am absolutely sure there were all sorts of ecstatic experiences within earliest Christianity (more correctly: within the earliest companionship of the Kingdom), but that is not what is recorded in the last gospel chapters. Apparition or revelation is there about eventual authority and not about inaugural vision. Second, I find it very striking that the miracles of Jesus fall into two clear types of actions and recipients. On the one hand, there are healings and exorcisms primarily for "non-disciples." On the other, there are "nature miracles" primarily for "disciples." A good example of hybrid type is the multiplication of loaves and fishes for "non-disciples" but through "disciples" (compare Mark & John). It is, however, precisely "nature miracles" that turn up before and after "Easter": the miraculous fish-catch in Luke 5 and John 21 and that multiplication miracles in John 6 and 21. My working hypothesis, therefore, is that "nature miracles" and "risen appearances" arose as certifications of authority (for leadership group and/or specific leader) at an early stage before anyone was thinking of before Easter or after Easter, before anyone was thinking about a consecutive narrative when anything or everything had to happen in a before and an after. Hence they could end up ultimately on either side of the great Easter divide, once, that is, it had been constituted as such.
Subj: Week 7: Final Message (Crossan)
Date: 96-03-31 16:25:40 EST
From: JohnDominicCrossan@info.harpercollins.com (John Dominic Crossan)
Sender: owner-jesus2000@info.harpercollins.com
To: JESUS2000@info.harpercollins.com
Dear Luke and Marcus:
This final message is primarily in reply to your last communication, Luke. I begin with an analogy that helps me locate the distinctions and connections between statements of fact and statements of faith, between history and theology, between "Jesus is human," which can be said by anyone, and "Jesus is divine," which can be said only by Christians.
For Christians the New Testament is the Word of God made text just as Jesus is the Word of God made flesh. Text and flesh partake alike, but each after its own manner, in the vagaries and vicissitudes of human existence. Our inspired texts, for example, come to us through tattered papyri and torn parchments, through the dryness of Egyptian sands below the delta, and through the work of historians who create from all the evidence their most plausible reconstruction of the original documents. Those textual historians even grade their decisions with four degrees of certainty (A,B,C,D) just like the Jesus Seminar does (Red, Pink, Gray, Black). But those textual decisions must be made on pure historical grounds without any prior intrusion from faith or theology. It is, of course, faith and theology that make those texts of interest to all Christians. But, if the greatest papyrologists were non-Christian, their views would be just as important as those of any Christian scholars. And if, tomorrow, we find a full scroll of Mark's gospel somewhere in Egypt, it is the papyrological historians who will have to speak first of all. We might, in fact, have to call in the scientists whose current carbon-dating techniques are good to ±25 years. In that case, Luke, we would have to depend on "carburetor" experts to help us. But my point is that faith and theology cannot cheat in that situation and declare, for example, that we already have our Mark and that, no matter what papyrological consensus says, this new Mark can be but a later copy of the canonical one. I see, in other words, a distinction between historical decision and theological conclusion, between what, first, the textual experts can tell us about the manuscript and what, next, the theological experts can tell us about its meaning. I think, above all, that it is an ethical necessity not to confuse those two modes of discourse. It is necessary not to let history masquerade as faith nor faith masquerade as history. (Here come the Magdalen fragments!). I find that interaction of history and faith in the case of a Christian New Testament papyrus helpful in understanding the interaction I have been proposing between historical Jesus research and Christian faith.
I mentioned my frustration with our debate in my last message. It was not, however, because you and I disagree, Luke. Disagreement never frustrates me. What frustrates me is my inability to see what exactly you are saying. You say sentence after sentence that I agree with and you must know by now that I do agree with you. In terms of history, you say: "What matters is good historical method." Or, you say: "by 'historical Jesus' I have consistently meant 'the Jesus capable of being reconstructed by means of critical historical inquiry.'" In terms of faith, you define "christian faith" as "the faith of the church in the real Jesus who is raised from the dead and lives with the life of God as Lord, and who through the Holy Spirit continues to encounter humans." I agree with you on all those summary statements, with the former ones as a historian and with the latter one as a Christian. How, then, do I agree with you and yet you disagree with me? I think your last message points me towards a possible answer. You said (I have added numbers) : "if the question is put: (1) 'Was Jesus truly and fully human, (2) and did he, as the Gospels attest, preach the Kingdom of God (3) and heal (4) and give his life in obedience, (5) and is this human Jesus continuous with the one Christians proclaim as risen Lord, (6) and are the canonical Gospels true and reliable witnesses to the meaning of his earthly life and its significance for other humans,' then my answer is emphatically, yes." First, I agree with all six affirmations. Second, I consider that the first four are statements of fact, the last two are statements of faith.
Obviously, of course, people might argue about any of those first four but at least they are subject to open debate and public discourse in a way that the last ones can never be. Third, it is certainly possible for a Christian to state that full six-fold declaration and not bother about such distinctions but it is, in my view, ethically imperative to emphasize them as Christianity faces other religions (especially Judaism) externally and religiously imperative to emphasize them as Christians face sectarian proliferation internally. As I see it, Luke, the difference between us is that I insist on the necessity of making those distinctions and you insist on the necessity of not making them. That is why I regularly end up agreeing with your summary statements but you will never agree with mine because I insist on distinguishing between history (public reconstruction) and faith (communal belief).
One other point. Your last message's closing remark was: "In all of this, I resist the reduction of the mystery within which we live and for the sake of which we live, to a problem that can be solved like a broken carburetor." You had said earlier: "As a theologian, I place myself squarely within the creed that is recited by my community at every Sunday Eucharist." I believe with you that the mystery which surrounds and supports us, which births and buries us, must not be REDUCED TO anything less than itself. It should not be reduced to a carburetor. Neither should it be reduced to a community. It should not be reduced to the Christian Creed, to the Christian Eucharist, to the Christian religion, or even to the Christian God. But, for Christians, the mystery of the Holy can be fully and totally DISCOVERED IN any of those realities and not be thereby reduced to them. Particularity is not relativity. Incarnation is not reduction. (More aphorisms, just to keep Marcus unhappy).
In conclusion and farewell, a blessed Easter, Luke and Marcus, to you both. Let me finish with a question that came to me as I was writing this response. Easter Sunday proclaims the Risen Jesus. Those celebrations are from faith. But that Risen Jesus carries forever the wounds of imperial crucifixion. Those scars are from history. What would we think if somebody had a vision of Jesus and there were no wounds?
Jesus Seminar Liberal AssumptionsThere are at least 10 important areas in which the JS adopts assumptions and perspectives that are widely held in nonevangelical scholarship but which need to be challenged. Those assumptions include:(1) The authors of the four canonical Gospels are not Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, as traditionally believed. (2) None of these four Gospels were written before the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. (3) The oral tradition of Jesus' sayings was quite fluid. Simple teachings were often greatly expanded, embellished, and distorted in the process. (4) Various people in the early church, including the Gospel writers themselves, felt free to invent sayings of Jesus that had little or no basis in what He actually taught. (5) If a saying can be demonstrated to promote later Christian causes, it could not have originated with Jesus. (6) The historicity of John's gospel is extremely suspect. (7) Historical analysis cannot admit the supernatural as an explanation for an event. Therefore, Jesus' words after His resurrection -- like His earlier predictions about His death, resurrection, and return --cannot be authentic. (8) Jesus never explained His parables and aphorisms. All concluding words of explanation, especially allegorical interpretations of parables and metaphors, are thus inauthentic. (9) Jesus never directly declared who He was. All such "self-referential" material (in which Jesus says, "I am..." or, "I have come to...") is therefore also inauthentic. (10) The burden of proof rests on any particular scholar who would claim authenticity for a particular saying of Jesus and not on the skeptic. # 10 is the weakest criticism because the burden of proof is on both believer and sceptic!Crossan's JesusA PEASANT PROTESTERIn broad strokes, who is the Jesus of this contemporary quest? This quest is primarily, if not exclusively, concerned with the social world of Jesus, and the social forces at work in it. The resultant picture is Jesus as a peasant Jew who, like Buddha or one of the Cynic philosophers, espoused a subversive view of traditional wisdom, and who both preached and practiced radical egalitarianism. He also gathered a group of followers and formed them into a movement (which was free from messianic or eschatological expectations). This Jesus had no messianic or divine self-concept, although most of these radical scholars grant that he performed at least some healings by inducing trancelike states because of the powers inherent in him as "a spirit-person."This profile obviously omits a large body of the New Testament testimony to Jesus. Supernatural miracles are out, although Jesus is often granted certain psychic powers. Conspicuously absent is any sense of Jesus' self-consciousness as Messiah or Son of God, as One standing in a unique relationship to the Father endowed with authority to speak and act for God. Equally absent is any saving significance of his death. To be sure, Jesus was crucified as a suspected political subversive, but his death has no atoning significance. Nor is there a resurrection. The accounts of his resurrection and exaltation to the right hand of God are said to be all the result of wishful thinking by the early church.Crossan insists that Jesus' body was eaten by dogs--a conclusion for which there is not a letter of evidence in the New Testament or ancient Christian literature! Once again, ideological presuppositions hardened into dogmatism succeed in overriding historical evidence, fulfilling Shakespeare's dictum that "thinking doth make it so."A STRIPPED-DOWN JESUSThe social conditions of first-century Palestine are clearly an important source of knowledge for the life of Jesus. Several results of this sociological approach to Jesus either augment or reinforce our picture of the historical Jesus. The most important is that it anchors Jesus solidly to his Jewish context. Jesus was a first-century Jew--not a post-Enlightenment Aryan Gentile--and that cannot be forgotten or denied. He also was indebted to the Jewish Wisdom tradition and, as his parables reveal, was a chief exponent of it in Israel. Sociological investigation into the significance of synagogue life in Galilee, the role of women, Jewish family structures, rituals of purity and impurity, the taxation system, and the temple cult in Jerusalem provide new insights into the world in which Jesus lived. The sociological approach can yield important results in understanding why first-century Palestine reacted to Jesus and his message the way it did.All these are positive gains of the new Jesus studies. Still, a social context is only a stage setting; it is not the plot of the play or the actors in it. To assume that a social context--even a correctly perceived one--captures the meaning of a person is like supposing that a resume divulges the essence of an applicant. The chief problem of lives of Jesus exclusively "from below" is their inadequacy. C. S. Lewis observed that "a naturalist Christianity leaves out all that is specifically Christian," and this is a telling critique of this new quest. Each of the elements in its profile of Jesus--peasant Jew, movement founder, overcomer of social barriers, healer, ecstatic, and sage--is arguably a fair description of some aspect of Jesus. What is false is the attempt to package the list as the sum of the historical Jesus.The chief flaw in this new quest is its lack of openness to, or even interest in, the possibility that Jesus was God incarnate, as the New Testament clearly indicates. The social world of Jesus, important as it is for raw data, cannot account for who he was. That Jesus was a peasant or teacher or movement founder is secondary to the core claims of the New Testament that he was the unique incarnation of God by whose life and death salvation is freely offered to the world. Every page of the New Testament clamors for this deeper understanding. Every reconstruction of Jesus that denies this is a shadow, at best, of something more essential. The question the New Testament puts inescapably to readers is "Who do you say I am?" (Mark 8:29), not "What do you make of my social context?"Finally, a purely social reconstruction of Jesus cannot account for the effect that Jesus has had on history. To assume that the earnest though bewildered Jesus of the Jesus Seminar and Company could have affected the course of human history as Jesus Christ really has is like stumbling upon a crater and supposing it the result of a cherry bomb.
Subj: Jesus Debate Week Seven: Final Message (Johnson)
Date: 96-04-01 08:35:46 EST
From: decenso@ix.netcom.com
Sender: owner-crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com
To: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com
Dear Colleagues:
In this final message, I will offer only some summary comments. The exchange of messages that we have dignified with the designation "debate" has served to sharpen some of my original perceptions.
1. Although the NT (and other early Christian literature) provides a not insignificant amount of real historical information concerning Jesus and Christian origins, our sources are insufficient for the sort of full reconstructions historians most desire.
2. Attempts to move past the limitations imposed by the sources leads ---both for Jesus and for Christian origins--- to distortion of historical method, of the subjects under analysis, and to the literature itself, which, by being reduced to the level of historical source material, cannot be heard in its literary and religious integrity. Finally, the proposal that Christian faith ought to be grounded in and normed by such historical reconstructions is a distortion of the religious claims of the Christian tradition.
3. Recent efforts at historical reconstruction have been driven less by the demands of historiography (the discovery of new sources, the use of new methods) than by a reformist program directed at Christian faith. Given the eroded state of discourse within Christian churches and theology, such efforts can actually pass as a form of Christian reflection, even though their starting points --- the bracketing [to use a neutral term] of the resurrection, and the deconstruction of the canonical Gospels in their literary integrity --- would not have been recognized as orthodox in any age before our own.
To return to Dom's opening contrast between orthodox and gnostic forms of christianity, we remember that Irenaeus objected precisely to the gnostic practice of moving pieces and sayings about at will, and redefining the resurrection according to the gnostic understanding.
4. I remain unsatisfied on the following questions:
a) If the reconstruction of Jesus begins with the dismantling of the canonical Gospels, how can this be read except as implying that the Gospels are not only inadequate but also wrong?
b) If the reconstructed Jesus is proposed as the norm for christian identity and practice, how can this be understood except as the suppression of the richer set of images of Jesus in the Gospels, and its replacement by the reconstruction?
c) If the historical reconstruction of Jesus is to function for Christian faith as the new norm, what distinguishes such efforts from that of the evangelists? d) If the authority for such substitution of norms does not derive from the church or from the Holy Spirit, from where does it come?
Finally, I summarize my own position:
1. Since Christianity is a historical religion, it is appropriate and necessary to study it historically. The earliest stages of the movement, and the figure of Jesus, are also legitimate subjects of historical inquiry.
2. With respect to such historiography, however, two important limitations must be observed. The first I have already mentioned: the inability of our sources to provide anything like a full historical reconstruction. The second is even more important, namely the realization that history is intrinsically a limited mode of human cognition, and cannot simply be equated with "reality." From the bottom of human existence to the top, much of what is most interesting escapes the net of historical investigation.
3. The Christian claim concerning the resurrection of Jesus is the supreme example of a reality that can be asserted as "real" or "true" without being capable of historical verification. But since this claim is absolutely pivotal to the Christian understanding of Jesus---even in his earthly life--- this means that what is most critical to apprehending the "real Jesus" (in the view of Christians) cannot be fitted within "the historical Jesus."
4. Finally, I have argued that Christian scholarship must begin with loyalty to the church and its canon and creed. Irenaeus already recognized that the diversity of sources concerning Jesus could yield any number of portraits. It was precisely for that reason that Irenaeus proposed the tripod of self-definition that has structured Christian discourse from his day until very recently: the rule of faith, the canon of scripture, and the apostolic succession. The Jesus of the Gospels is read --- has been read---- by Christians within that framework. I remain unconvinced that specifically Christian discourse has any compelling reason to abandon its tradition of reading, particularly when the versions of Jesus offered are so silent on the truths so deeply etched in the hearts of believers by their own experience of the risen Lord, and are so redolent of contemporary cultural preoccupations.
Best wishes to you both.
To: Harper Collins and All Interested
I want to thank Harper Collins for making the "Discussions" between Crossan, Johnson, and Borg available to us. I personally found them sometimes enlightening but often disappointing.
The two tiered form of the Cross Talk part of this experiment was a mistake because it gave the impression that there were first class citizens: Crossan Borg Johnson, the published Titans, and the rest were the unwashed masses. This made some of the masses try to distinguish themselves as above the uneducated and/or unpublished and/or un-degreed slobs causing many to remain silent or just drop out.
If you wanted to keep the "gods" free of human contamination, you should have had them go at it with one another first and then allow the free for all that ensued post factum. Crossan, at least, would not have found himself in the hypocritical position of proclaiming a gospel of egalitarianism and then practicing this form of exclusion in his intellectual discussions. I will not belabor the point. It was noted by others earlier on. This is not to say that I agree with any of the various anti-intellectualist views of those who wanted every argument addressed to the lowest common denominator, the neophyte, the beginner, the person who knows next to nothing of the scholarship. I agree that a lot of things called scholarship are nonsense, but they have to be exposed as such before we can dismiss them. The process of discussion took care of most of those problems, I think.
The clash of the Titans, Crossan and Johnson, is really over the meaning and application of the principles of faith and understanding. Crossan defends his view of what he thinks is required by critical intelligence in the context of historical critical knowledge and Johnson defends his view of what he thinks is required by an authentic and critical faith in the context of a faithful community of religious worship.
I am not convinced either of them has reconciled in their own minds or in their methods the principles of understanding and faith. [Some people cannot enter into the discussion because they do not recognize the need for the reconciliation of faith and understanding either because they are not believers or because they believe that their faith is so superior to understanding that they can, if necessary, abdicate their intelligence in behalf of their faith. For the latter faith becomes a blind leap in the dark instead of a leap into the light. For the former faith can only be a form of superstition not a recognition of mystery in life.]
I return to a point I made earlier: what is needed and is sorely missing from their discussion is a religious, critical philosophy from which the methodological issues can be clarified and advanced. As a starting point I recommended B. Lonergan's Insight and Method In Theology.
Let me take one example from the latest comments of Johnson and Crossan.
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Crossan:
"Your last message's closing remark was: "In all of this, I resist the reduction of the mystery within which we live and for the sake of which we live, to a problem that can be solved like a broken carburetor." You had said earlier: "As a theologian, I place myself squarely within the creed that is recited by my community at every Sunday Eucharist." I believe with you that the mystery which surrounds and supports us, which births and buries us, must not be REDUCED TO anything less than itself. It should not be reduced to a carburetor. Neither should it be reduced to a community. It should not be reduced to the Christian Creed, to the Christian Eucharist, to the Christian religion, or even to the Christian God. But, for Christians, the mystery of the Holy can be fully and totally DISCOVERED IN any of those realities and not be thereby reduced to them. Particularity is not relativity. Incarnation is not reduction."
Johnson:
"The Christian claim concerning the resurrection of Jesus is the supreme example of a reality that can be asserted as "real" or "true" without being capable of historical verification. But since this claim is absolutely pivotal to the Christian understanding of Jesus---even in his earthly life--- this means that what is most critical to apprehending the "real Jesus" (in the view of Christians) cannot be fitted within "the historical Jesus." "
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How seriously can a believing Christian take Crossan's claim that the "Mystery is not to be reduced to anything less that itself" if that means that the mystery is not expressed in the creed, alive in the Eucharist, shared in the Christian community, and identified in the one whom the Christian believes Jesus called His Father and the Spirit he sent into the world and among his followers. Crossan is right to reject an exclusivist idea of Incarnation or of a belief in God that relegates all other religious beliefs to superstition. But he does more than that: He is claiming that Christians do not have to identify the mystery of Love and Awe with the Father, Son, and Spirit of New Testament faith. Crossan ends up with an abstract faith: one with no particular God, no particular Christ, no particular sacraments, no particular community. How do you believe and live in no particular God, Jesus, etc. . For faithful Christians incarnation might not be reduction --whatever that means -- but it is uniquely predicated of Jesus as the Word made flesh, the only begotten son -- the unique word born in the mind of God.
Now what does all that mean to someone who thinks but does not think the existence of God is a reasonable conclusion and therefore intrinsically connected with any defensible notion of human intelligence and reasonableness? Answer: nothing much. What does all this mean to someone who does not think thinking is all that important. Answer: Pure speculation like asking about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
Consider Johnson's reply:
". . .the resurrection of Jesus is the supreme example of a reality that can be asserted as "real" or "true" without being capable of historical verification."
On one reading of his assertion what is being said is obvious. Understanding and knowing are not our only or exclusive access to reality. We believe many things that we cannot fully understand or know for ourselves. That is why we go to a doctor when we are sick or seek out an expert to solve problems we cannot solve ourselves. Belief is necessary in human life and it gives us access to reality and truths about reality. However as we know, some beliefs we entertain are reasonable while others turn out to be unreasonable. The reasonable beliefs are coherent with what we understand and know because we have sufficient evidence for them and because they fit in with other beliefs we have shown to be reasonable. If a belief can be shown to be incoherent or unreasonable, we have to reject it. This is true of religious beliefs as well as any others. But showing certain beliefs to be incoherent or unreasonable is not as easy as it sounds because we cannot always rely on the contemporary climate of opinion to represent what is intelligent and reasonable. [Of course what counts as reasonable is by definition subject to the process of argument.]
Johnson's fuss about the REAL Jesus as OPPOSED TO THE HISTORICAL Jesus is behind his assertion.
The REAL Jesus is the reality intended by historical critical method as the aspect of that reality of Jesus that can be KNOWN by the application of those methods. Crossan is right that historical realities cannot be known without INTELLIGENT RECONSTRUCTIONS but such reconstructions are like bright ideas: Some are more probably true than others and some are improbable and downright false as historical assertions. Which are which comes out in the arguments for and against the proposals.
The REAL Jesus is also the reality intended by a religious faith in Him as God's own ambassador in human flesh. That reality of Jesus cannot be KNOWN but can be accessed by religious belief. The question will remain: Is the belief coherent and reasonable? If Jesus was an historical figure and if the Christian faith is connected with historical facts like historical teachings, life events and a crucifixion, there will be historical restraints placed upon assertions based on faith and belief. So Crossan is right: historical knowledge when it is verified knowledge, highly probable judgments of fact, are important for Christian faith if it is to remain within the orbit of the circle of understanding and faith [ i.e. not become blind belief. or abstract understanding]. I agree with Crossan: A vision of an uncrucified Jesus is not a Christian vision. But Johnson is also right the believer has a fuller access to the divine reality through faith than through historical judgments however probable. We need both. I suspect that Johnson is also right about how much more modest the Titans of Jesus Publications should be about their claims to historical KNOWLEDGE.
Finally I must admit that I am fascinated with Crossan's proposals and arguments. They are controversial, but they show a boldness of insight and his arguments are difficult to ignore. What many dislike about Crossan I find extremely attractive: his poetic wit, his sometimes elegant turn of phrase, his willingness to become prophetic in his challenge to spiritual authorities. If done with love for the community, his work might well be a gracious beginning of a new understanding of the Christian reality in a secularized world.
To all Farewell!
E. J. P.
Date: 96-04-02 12:41:19 EST
From: MarcusBorg@info.harpercollins.com (Marcus J. Borg)
Sender: owner-jesus2000@info.harpercollins.com
To: jesus2000@info.harpercollins.com
Before I move to my concluding statement, two comments about Luke's response of last week.
1. First, your charge that my books "contain far more assertion than argument." That is a serious charge, and it will not surprise anybody that I disagree. My most popular level book, Meeting Jesus Again, contains less scholarly argument than my other books; but even that book is well footnoted, and the lines of my argument are clear. I do not understand why you make a dismissive charge like this. It also makes me wonder how much of my writing you have actually read.
2. Your reason for not putting your own list of conclusions about Jesus' death and resurrection "on the board" also strikes me as puzzling: you say there is no particular point in talking about "what Johnson thinks" or "what Borg thinks" (or what Dom thinks, or Jerry Falwell thinks, or Pat Robertson thinks). What other vantage point do you have in mind?
You say that you place yourself "squarely within the creed that is recited by my community at every Sunday Eucharist" (so do I), and that "only within that framework do I (you) assume the liberty to begin to define not `what I think' but what the texts are saying . . . ." But as soon as you say anything about "what the texts are saying," we are back to "what Luke thinks." Unless I am missing something here, none of us has a vantage point outside of "This is how I presently understand these texts, given my training, experience, and commitments." And, of course, all of this is subject to review - -by scholars, the reading public, and our communities of faith. But to imply that any of us ever gets to a vantage point beyond "how I see this" makes no sense to me.
With regard to this week's messages, I agree with Dom's remarks about the distinction between statements of historical fact and statements of faith, and his remarks about mystery and broken carburetors.
I turn now to my own concluding statement.
1. I am a Christian (a member of a sacramental and credal church), and a historian of Jesus and Christian origins. I therefore also think about the relationship between historical scholarship and Christian life/faith/theology.
2. The name "Jesus" has two referents. My customary terminology for speaking about these two referents of the name "Jesus" are "the pre-Easter Jesus" and "the post-Easter Jesus." The pre-Easter Jesus is the historical Jesus. The post-Easter Jesus is the Jesus of Christian tradition and experience. Both nouns - tradition and experience - are important.
As the Jesus of Christian tradition, the post-Easter Jesus includes the Jesus of the NT (the canonical Jesus) and the Jesus of the creeds. As the Jesus of Christian experience, the post-Easter Jesus is a figure of the present who continues to be known. This, as I mentioned last week, is the central truth and ground of Easter: Jesus continued to be experienced after his death, both then and now.
3. I affirm a "both-and": both the pre-Easter Jesus and post-Easter Jesus are important for Christian life/faith/theology. I do not subscribe to what Luke attributes to the rest of us collectively, namely a historical reductionism which says that all that we may say about Jesus is what the historian can affirm about the pre-Easter Jesus.
This "both-and" affirmation is messy. It would be "cleaner" to affirm that EITHER the historical Jesus is the definitive norm, OR that the canonical/credal Jesus is the definitive norm. But the first overlooks the significance of the community's experience in the post-Easter situation; the second overlooks the significance of the life which Jesus lived.
4. A construction of the pre-Easter Jesus which overlooks Jesus as "Spirit person" has, in my judgment, missed the foundation. The point is not whether a scholar uses that particular phrase, but whether the notion is there. On the basis of our exchanges over the last several weeks, I think that the affirmation is made by Dom. I assume Luke would do so, too. I do not know why he would deny it, unless it were part of a generalized unwillingness to speak of the historical Jesus. And, of course, I think the pre-Easter Jesus was more than a "Spirit person." He was also a healer, teacher of an alternative wisdom, and a social prophet with an alternative social vision (like the great social prophets of the Hebrew Bible). And I think all of this is significant for Christians.
5. I affirm the tradition's central affirmations about the post-Easter Jesus: that he is the light of the world, the bread of life, the true vine, very God of very God, of one substance with God, etc.
6. Finally, to relate all of this to our contemporary situation, let me share a perception. Sometime in the last several decades, an older image of Jesus, the Bible, and Christianity ceased to be persuasive and compelling to large numbers of Christians .By an older image of Jesus, I am not referring to the scholarship of a previous generation, but to a widespread image of Jesus in our churches and culture. This older image (in addition to being grounded in biblical literalism and an understanding of Christianity as the only true religion), took it for granted that the canonical Jesus and the historical Jesus were identical.
But the canonical Jesus, when taken as a description of the historical Jesus, has ceased to be persuasive to millions of Christians in North America. What are we to say to such people?
Simply "Be loyal to the church, its canon, and its creed"? But that's precisely what ceased to work for them, at least as they cameto understand it through their life in the church. (Let me add immediately: I am also aware that for millions of other Christians, the canonical Jesus is not a problem, and remains the object of devotion and faith).
For many people in the first category, the distinction between the historical Jesus and the canonical Jesus has made it possible for them to take Jesus seriously once again. They needed to hear that they don't need to believe that the canonical Jesus is literally and historically what Jesus was like (for such a figure had become unreal and incredible to them). In my mail and in my life "on the road," I hear again and again (as does Dom), in words spoken and written with great earnestness, "You've made it possible for me to be a Christian again."
In short, rather than being destructive of Christainity and Christian commitment, historical Jesus scholarship of the kind that we practice has enabled many people to return to the church.
Thus I freely admit that I do have "a reformist program directed at Christian faith" (and not "against"), a reform necessary for many people because of radical changes in cultural consciousness in our century. I embrace that program because I do not divorce my historical work from my commitment as a Christian. I love this tradition, and I know it can make all the difference in a person's life. And it grieves me when artificial (unnecessary) stumbling blocks get in the way. One such stumbling block is the notion that Christians must see the canonical Jesus as a literal description of the historical Jesus. (By the way, I do not attribute this view to you, Luke; I know that you know that the canonical and historical Jesus are not identical, even though you refer to the former as "the real Jesus").
Thus, for me, and for many Christians I know, the distinction between the historical Jsus and the canonical Jesus (and the ability to appreciate and affirm both) has been central to our Christian journey.
Best wishes to you both as we move through this holy week of remembrance and celebration.TIME Magazine
April 8, 1996 Volume 147, No. 15THE GOSPEL TRUTH?
The iconoclastic and provocative Jesus Seminar argues that not much of the New Testament can be trusted. If so, what are Christians to believe?
DAVID VAN BIEMA
Judas didn't do it. Or at least the charges wouldn't stick. That was the decision of the judges (admittedly a little after the fact) in the Flamingo Resort Hotel Ballroom in Santa Rosa, California, late last year. Of course, there was testimony against him, primarily from Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. But that foursome is notoriously unreliable: the judges at the Flamingo already had to throw out the Evangelists' testimony on the Nativity, the Resurrection, the Sermon on the Mount and any number of other cases. So, as regards the matter of Judas, although there was a good deal of debate--some people felt the evidence showed he did do it, some people felt he did it with help from other Apostles, some people felt he was simply a literary device--the 50 panelists assembled at the Flamingo agreed that it was highly unlikely that for 30 pieces of silver, Judas Iscariot kissed his master, Jesus Christ, and thus betrayed him to the authorities to be crucified.
Sacrilege? Well, the Jesus Seminar is at it again. It is Holy Week, and some 1.5 billion Christians around the globe are celebrating the Passion and the Resurrection of their Lord, who died on the Cross for their sins and rose on the third day. Simultaneously, however, a book called The Acts of Jesus is in the editing process. It will repeat the assertion, published by the 75-person, self-appointed Seminar three years ago, that close historical analysis of the Gospels exposes most of them as inauthentic; that, by inference, most Christians' picture of Christ may be radically misguided. That their Jesus, in fact, "is an imaginative theological construct, into which have been woven traces of that enigmatic sage from Nazareth--traces that cry out for recognition and liberation from the firm grip of those whose faith overpowered their memories."
The issue of the so-called historical Jesus is not exactly new: it roiled the consciences of European academics for 150 years and contributed to American Protestant schisms in the 1920s. But until recently, much of the current generation of churchgoers remained blissfully unaware of its tangles. No longer. In the past decade, iconoclastic and liberal biblical scholars have actively sought to publicize their views, breaking them out of the rarefied academic atmospheres where they have incubated. These radical exegetes have now stirred spirited rebuttals from conservatives and traditionalists who want to make sure the faithful hear their side of the argument. For example, the Seminar's 1993 book The Five Gospels has already provoked a savage counterattack by Luke Timothy Johnson, a New Testament scholar at Emory University and the author of the recently published The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels. "Things of fundamental importance," Johnson thunders, "are being distorted."
But Johnson's book, specifically written on the same popular level as the Seminar's publications, has inevitably contributed to the issue's achieving a sort of pop-culture critical mass. Christological chatter pervades even the Internet, and dozens of other volumes on the search for Jesus are either just published or in the works. This week the cable channel Cinemax 2 will be running a program called The Gospel According to Jesus, which features celebrities and ordinary people reciting from a custom-tailored Bible. It is based on Scripture assembled by author Stephen Mitchell, who deleted many of Jesus' sayings and most of the events in his life, noting, "We can't be sure of anything that Jesus actually said." Experts on all sides of the question are crisscrossing the country, debating before schools and congregations whose growing taste for the topic has surprised them. "You could be out there every week," marvels a circuit-riding scholar. Notes another: "There's an enormous appetite among ordinary churchgoers," who, he adds, "are very puzzled about what's going on."
Maureen Smith is puzzled. In February, HarperCollins, which publishes many of the competing visions, set up an Internet mailing list called Crosstalk. Although primarily for scholars wishing to continue the debate in cyberspace, it is turning more and more into a clearinghouse for the thoughts of troubled onlookers. "Clearly Jesus had to say more than we have on record," Smith, a seminary student, posted plaintively two weeks ago. "The very fact that there is a Sunday Jesus almost 2,000 years later ... argues that what he said and did must have been pretty impressive." (Actually, it is exactly 2,000 years later. One of the few aspects about the historical Jesus on which everyone agrees is that he was probably born around 4 B.C.) But Smith's concern is understandable. If the Seminar's claims are valid--that little can be known of the most basic elements of his life, let alone of the miracles--then on what is Christian belief based? And if believers insist on believing anyway, then whose example should they follow? Every new book, every new theory seems to wear away some long-cherished relic in this battle between faith and knowledge. Those who would come to Jesus' rescue must ask, Is it too late? Can that which has been rejected be restored?
For hundreds of years, most Christians would have found the idea of distinguishing between the Jesus one prays to and the Jesus of history a ludicrous one. Well into our half of the millennium, it was assumed (as it still is in America's expanding Fundamentalist and Evangelical congregations) that the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles and Paul's Epistles were the best history of all: a Christian would no more consider asking whether Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead than question his status as the risen Messiah. But Martin Luther, in pioneering Protestantism, stressed that every Christian could and should establish his own relationship with Christ by the reading of Scripture. And from the 17th century on, Western civilization, which had previously understood itself according to faith, found a new way to apprehend the world: the precise calibration and cool skepticism of scientific rationalism. In time, scholars began to subject Jesus to the tools of historical and literary analysis.
There are, after all, four Gospels, whose actual writing, most scholars have come to acknowledge, was done not by the Apostles but by their anonymous followers (or their followers' followers). Each presented a somewhat different picture of Jesus' life. The earliest appeared to have been written some 40 years after his Crucifixion. Which was most accurate? Even Luther had a favorite Gospel (John) and appeared to regard the rest as less essential. And starting with the 1835 critique The Life of Jesus by David Friedrich Strauss, apostles of the new scientific method raised additional questions with increasing urgency: Might faith have caused the writers of all four Gospels to embellish on actual fact? Did the politics of the early church cause them to edit or add to Jesus' story? Which parts of the New Testament were likely to be straight reportage rather than pious mythmaking?
Depressingly few, the so-called higher critics found. There are only two or three references to Jesus in six pagan or Jewish sources, providing precious little corroborating data. Even if the standard for authenticity were agreement between the Gospels, there is less of that than one might imagine: the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan are just two of several parables that appear in only one version. By 1926, Rudolf Bultmann of Germany's University of Marburg, the foremost Protestant scholar in the field, threw up his hands: he called for a halt to inquiries regarding the Jesus of history. So unreliable were the Gospel accounts that "we can now know almost nothing concerning the life and personality of Jesus." He advised good Christian scholars to concentrate on the Jesus of faith. But, as it turns out, they didn't.
The Jesus Seminar "was nothing new," says John Dominic Crossan, its co-chair, recalling the invitation he received from University of Montana professor Robert Funk to start the group. "I'd been working on the historical Jesus since 1969. What was new to me was his argument that there was an ethical necessity to let the public in on what [we] were doing." Crossan's voice still betrays the 62-year-old's origins in Tipperary, Ireland. He moved to America, joined the Servite order and was ordained in 1957. He left the priesthood to marry in 1968, but he admits his departure was probably inevitable owing to "constant trouble" over his biblical views.
Crossan was deep into what might be called the postmodern state of Bible studies. Experts had long considered sources for the Gospels undreamed of by Luther: passages from Luke and Matthew, for instance, that did not reflect the earlier written Mark but corresponded to one another were ascribed to a document known as Q, a bare-bones collection of sayings. In the 1980s, radicals took a large step farther. They suggested that only Q and similarly minimalist early documents, real and notional, might constitute authentic reporting; the rest of the Gospels was mostly tacked-on religious revisionism.
The new scholars sought to give voice to the Jesus they detected suppressed beneath the dogma. They did not, however, all detect the same Jesus. Harvard's Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, for example, has located a feminist paragon who saw God as Sophia (Wisdom) and himself as her spokesperson; Fiorenza contends the later church cloaked Jesus in the Christological garb as the Son of God. Crossan, relying heavily on the apocryphal Gospels of Thomas and Peter and the secret Gospel of Mark, has posited a "Mediterranean Jewish peasant."
As envisioned by Crossan in The Historical Jesus (and backed by his formidable scholarship), Jesus was concerned less with his Father's kingdom, as traditionally understood, than with bucking what the ex-priest has called "the standard political normalcies of power and privilege, hierarchy and oppression, debt foreclosure and land appropriation, imperial exploitation and colonial collaboration." This Tom Joad-ish Christ did not so much heal illnesses as cure false consciousness; his body was eaten by dogs at the foot of the Cross. Crossan has summarized his message as "God says, 'Caesar sucks.'"
The skeptical scholars had well-developed views on the four traditional Gospels hardly in need of corroboration by committee. Yet Funk made what many found to be a compelling argument. At a time when the airwaves were full of televangelists touting the New Testament as God-inspired, inerrant (correct in all ways) and supportive of right-wing views, here was a channel for another viewpoint. "Bob Funk's Jesus is quite different from my Jesus," Crossan says. But both longed to get beyond what they saw as the prevailing attitude toward historical questioning: "Don't say it out in public, don't bring it into the churches."
The Five Gospels said it loud and proud. An introduction announced that "the Christ of creed and dogma, who had been firmly in place in the Middle Ages, can no longer command the assent of those who have seen the heavens through Galileo's telescope." The Seminarians circulated papers among themselves and met twice a year to vote on more than 2,000 separate pieces of scripture. They conceived a mediagenic means of voting: for each Gospel verse, each voter dropped a plastic bead in a bucket. The bead's color signified the scholar's opinion. The book quoted one participant's description: "Red: That's Jesus! Pink: Sure sounds like Jesus. Gray: Well, maybe. Black: There's been some mistake." The Five Gospels (the fifth one was Thomas') consisted of the holy text, likewise color-coded to indicate the Seminar's collated opinion of its authenticity.
The book listed positive and negative criteria employed before taking up the colored beads. The voters favored passages attested to by two or more sources. Since Jesus' culture was oral, not written, they assumed that shorter, punchier passages were more likely to be accurate. They also felt safer confirming idiosyncratic thoughts that ran against the social or religious grain of Jesus' day, involved role reversals or, in keeping with the style of the wandering wise men of the time, employed exaggeration, humor and concrete and vivid images. They preferred parables without explicit applications.
By contrast, they shunned passages that they felt represented post-Jesus rationalizing by his disciples. That eliminated most language used to contextualize or connect; borrowings from the Old Testament (including most of what Jesus said on the Cross); and sayings expressed in explicitly Christian terms. Also taboo were monologues by Jesus to which there could have been no witness, verses expressing foreknowledge of events after his death and any claims on his part to be the Messiah. And one final admonition: "When in sufficient doubt, leave it out."
And leave it out they did. According to the The Five Gospels, only 18% of the words ascribed to Jesus in the Gospels may have actually been spoken by him. John was eliminated completely; only one sentence in Mark met muster. Of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, the only words in red were "Our Father" and "Love your enemies," and four other brief sayings.
Last year the Seminar moved on from verses attributed by the Gospels to Jesus to descriptions of events. The as yet unpublished results were made available to participants this month in a thick spiral notebook. The Seminar found all the Nativity descriptions to be inauthentic except for the name of Jesus' mother (Mary). No miracle working made the cut, although Jesus is generally credited with having healed some of the sick. He had a disciple named Mary Magdalene, entered a synagogue at least once and met some Pharisees. As regards the Passion and Easter: all descriptions of Jesus' trial are deemed inauthentic, along with his Palm Sunday statement that he is the Messiah. On the authority of the Jewish historian Josephus, the Seminar records as historical the high priest Caiaphas' denunciation of Jesus to Pilate. When the next book comes out, the Resurrection, predictably enough, will appear in black print ("There's been some mistake").
Crossan's wish that the message reach the public was granted. It would be hard to find a newspaper in America that hasn't done a story on the Seminar over the past decade. That's obvious upon reading Luke Timothy Johnson, who seems to quote most of them in his book-length, outraged response to the Seminar, The Real Jesus.
"People have no idea how fraudulent people who claim to be scholars can be," says Johnson. Stocky, graying, slightly owl-like, he teaches New Testament at Atlanta's Emory. Like Crossan, Johnson took priestly orders as a young man but gave up the collar in order to marry. But Johnson never broke with the church, and as time went on, he became progressively more alarmed at the work of his fellow scholars.
Crossan and other liberal Jesus scholars, he believed, were exploring avenues "subtly contemptuous of the convictions of faith." As long as the debate had been quarantined in the corridors of the academy, he had held his peace. The advent of the Jesus Seminar, however, marked a major outbreak of what Johnson considered a dangerous contagion. "Americans generally have an abysmal level of knowledge of the Bible," he says. "In this world of mass ignorance, to have headlines proclaim that this or that fact about [Jesus] has been declared untrue by supposedly scientific inquiry has the effect of gospel. There is no basis on which most people can counter these authoritative-sounding statements."
So he provided one. With gusto. Over his book's 177 pages, he calls the Seminar "a 10-year exercise in academic self-promotion" and a "self-indulgent charade" and accuses Funk of "grandiosity and hucksterism." More substantively, not only does he find the Seminar wildly unrepresentative of scholarly consensus on the New Testament today; he thinks it "extraordinarily difficult" to avoid the impression that it is not hostile "to any traditional understanding of Jesus as defined by the historic creeds of Christianity."
The book's first part is devoted to a savage critique of the Seminar and its methodology. The group, writes Johnson, was "self-selected" not on grounds of quality of scholarship (he notes pointedly that one of its members is Paul Verhoeven, whose credit as director of the movie Showgirls is far more recent than his Ph.D.), but on prior agreement on a goal. The goal, he maintains, is to discover a Jesus devoid of anything "mythical" or concerned with the actual possibility of a world to come, but reflective instead of the countercultural attitude favored by liberal academics. Although Johnson approves of some of the criteria the group applies to Scripture, he is derisive of its elimination of most long passages (members of oral cultures, after all, are renowned for memorizing epics) and fails to find a historical basis for its preference for quotes that flout the established order. Most important, he is dismayed by what he calls the Seminar's refusal to consider the Gospels' general "pattern" in favor of isolated passages. "What is left," he writes, "is a small pile of pieces."
Pieces which the unscrupulous can then reassemble as they see fit. Although it is impossible to prove any of the Gospels false, so little of them can be historically proved to be true, Johnson suggests, that by emphasizing that fact, scholars like Crossan and Funk have put themselves in the position of "jigsaw-puzzle solvers who are presented with 27 pieces of a thousand-piece puzzle and find that only six or seven of the pieces even fit together." A reasonable person, he maintains, would "put those pieces together, make some guess about what that part of the puzzle might be about and then modestly decline overspeculation about the pieces that don't fit." Instead, "these solvers ... throw away the central piece ... and then bring in pieces from other puzzles [i.e., apocryphal manuscripts]. Finally, they take this jumble of pieces, sketch an outline of what the [whole thing] ought to look like on the basis of some universal puzzle pattern, and proceed to reshape the pieces until they fit the pattern." Inevitably, he writes, that pre-determined pattern is dictated by the puzzlers' sociological or political prejudices.
So disgusted is Johnson, in fact, that he, like Bultmann before him, counsels believers to ignore the search for the historical Jesus altogether. Does the Seminar condemn the Resurrection as unprovable? Rather than trying to assert the authenticity of the story of the empty crypt or backing up John's tale of Doubting Thomas, Johnson maintains that the Resurrection that has always mattered to Christians is the ongoing miracle, the "transforming, transcendent personal power" that marks the moving of the Holy Spirit in the hearts and among the communities of believers. "Christianity," he writes, "has never been able to 'prove' its claims except by appeal to the experiences and convictions of those already convinced. The only real validation for the claim that Christ is what the creed claims him to be, light from light, true God from true God, is to be found in the quality of life demonstrated by those who make this confession."
To which N.T. Wright replies: poppycock. "He kicks the ball back into his own net by mistake," Wright booms. "He's putting the clocks back to the 1890s, when the Germans said that all this historical Jesus nonsense shows we shouldn't be trying to find the Jesus behind the Gospels at all!"
Wright, who until recently taught New Testament at Oxford University, talks at his office in Lichfield, England, where he is dean of the 700-year-old Anglican cathedral. His is an influential voice in the debate; not only is his 600-page Jesus and the Victory of God eagerly anticipated by participants on both sides of the Atlantic, but he did an 18-city American lecture tour in 1995, and has similar plans this year.
On the face of it, he is Johnson's staunchest ally. Wright knows and likes Crossan--the two go drinking after their debates--but he calls his friend's latest book "radically wrong in almost every second thing it says." His own 40-page critique of the Jesus Seminar's work echoes Johnson's point regarding oral cultures and similarly questions the Seminar's snub of Jesus' apocalyptic, eschatological side. Most important, he concurs that it is a mistake to "carve up" the New Testament and analyze the pieces separately. Wright believes the Gospels are more supportive than subversive of one another: "If I read about the Prime Minister in the Telegraph, the Times, the Mail and the Guardian, there are four different views, but that doesn't mean I don't have [a pretty good idea] of what the Prime Minister did.
"Jesus cannot be reduced to a wordsmith in the marketplace, spinning little aphorisms and telling funny stories," he announces. Building on previous work by the historian E.P. Sanders stressing Jesus' place within 1st century Judaism, Wright concludes that the Gospels provide sufficient evidence to deduce not just a wandering sage who was crucified for reasons unclear, but a prophet who announced a coming Kingdom of God and died for it; and that this framework in turn clarifies "dozens of examples where the details fall into place." Specifically, his book will state that Jesus' trial, the fact that he claimed to be the Messiah and his bodily Resurrection have sound historical basis.
This, Wright points out, is in contrast not only to the findings of the Seminar but also to Johnson's conclusion, which he finds defeatist. "'The street level of what Johnson is saying is, 'We can just believe the Bible and don't need to worry about it.' But it plays right into the hands of the Seminar, and there's a huge price to be paid for that. The challenge of the Enlightenment has always been, 'Oh, we know what Jesus was, and it shows Christianity was a mistake.' I'm trying to say, It's hard work, but if you stick with the historical enterprise to the bitter end, not only can you preach from it, but it's more powerful than what the Fundamentalists or the liberal reductionists offer."
"Take the Sermon on the Mount," says Craig Blomberg, a Baptist clergyman who considers himself a conservative Evangelical. "We know it's not a straight, stenographic account. When you look up those passages in Matthew, they can be read in a matter of minutes. Whereas a teacher who spoke to a large crowd like that might have held forth much of a day."
Most combatants in the historical Jesus wars assume that at least one major American religious group is sitting them out. Traditionally, the Evangelical position on the New Testament was: It happened, and that's that. But the anthology Jesus Under Fire, for which Blomberg wrote a chapter, represents academic Evangelicalism's commitment to greater theological engagement and subtlety. He sketches out a position that, at least by its wording, may be easier for many Americans to accept than the statements by some of the topic's higher-profile jousters.
"The Christian view," he says, "has always been one that God's spirit was involved and created a degree of accuracy that would not have been there otherwise." Blomberg explains biblical inerrancy, long a defining tenet of conservative American religion, as follows: "When the texts are interpreted in accordance with their historical and literary context, what they say is true." That allows him to concede that the Sermon on the Mount might have gone on longer than the Gospels suggest, and also to credit the differences among Matthew, Mark, Luke and John to "omissions and paraphrases" that were a natural part of an oral culture. Once that is settled, he believes the picture of Jesus that they present is fundamentally accurate.
Does he believe it on the basis of science or faith? Perhaps a combination. "I cannot demonstrate that every single word is true. No historian can do that with any ancient document. So a faith commitment comes into play with what's left over after historical study has proceeded as far as it can. You could say my belief builds on the direction the evidence is already pointing."
Blomberg says he is delighted that many "grass-roots" Christians are willing to take the Gospels' picture of Jesus totally on faith, but points out, "The problem is that other world views and religions make the same claims as we do. To defend your view in the marketplace of religious ideas, you have to be able to give reasons for why you believe the Bible's claims about itself."
It is in this context that Blomberg, given his position on the religious/political spectrum, makes a remarkably friendly assessment of the Jesus Seminar. "People like Crossan," he ventures, "see themselves, though we might disagree, as holding out one way of salvaging something of Christianity lest the whole thing deteriorate into pure unbelief."
Perhaps so. Certainly, without ceding to it the banner of Defender of the Faith, some close observers of the Seminar claim that its members have moderated somewhat their tone of radical skepticism. The Rev. Bruce Chilton, a religion professor at Bard College in upstate New York and one of the group's more conservative members, says the Seminar has become progressively less "programmatic." Ten years ago, Chilton testifies, "for many members, there appeared to be an assumption that we needed to read the Gospels as if they were popular novels produced in the 2nd century." After a decade of work, they feel the texts have more to offer. "There is more of Jesus showing through than there was at the beginning."
Just how much may be evident four or five years from now, when the Seminar puts out its book after next. At its last meeting, its members decided to take the words and experiences of Jesus that have survived its fearsome winnowing and attempt to construct from them a picture of the man. This will not be easy. They don't have much material to work with. Moreover, their areas of agreement, thus far, have largely been on the negative, and their respective rescued Jesuses vary considerably. "There could be hopeless disagreement," notes Crossan. But if they really do undertake the project, they may come out the other end with considerably more empathy for the four (16? 32? 64?) men who attempted the same trick two millenniums ago. And there is a certain satisfaction inherent in building something up.
Gene Janssen's life has been largely defined by the Christian church. He is a devout member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and worked 18 years full time as a church organist. Now he's employed as a reference librarian and archivist for the elca publishing house in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Janssen has not heard much about the Jesus Seminar, but what he did hear, a year or so ago, was a little shocking: that they said the Resurrection of Jesus Christ was not essential to the faith; and that, in fact, the Resurrection may not have occurred at all.
To which Janssen responded with equanimity. "When I heard those statements," he says, "I thought, 'O-o-o-k-k-k-a-y. Well, that's interesting.' I'm not in that academic, seminary-trained world, and I think my faith is strong enough that the debate going on in that world doesn't frighten me. In fact, I think it's good. Perhaps we will all learn something we haven't known.
"I trust in the staying power of Christianity. Some really goofy things have happened in the past 2,000 years, but somehow, the core, the essence, of the Christian religion has survived.
"God always surprises us."
--Reported by Richard N. Ostling/New York and Lisa H.Towle/ Raleigh Gnosticism
"Gnosticism And The Gnostic Jesus" (an article from the Christian Research Journal, Fall 1990, page 8) by Douglas Groothuis. The Editor-in-Chief of the Christian Research Journal is Elliot Miller.
Popular opinion often comes from obscure sources. Many conceptions about Jesus now current and credible in New Age circles are rooted in a movement of spiritual protest which, until recently, was the concern only of the specialized scholar or the occultist. This ancient movement -- Gnosticism -- provides much of the form and color for the New Age portrait of Jesus as the illumined Illuminator: one who serves as a cosmic catalyst for others' awakening.
Many essentially Gnostic notions received wide attention through the sagacious persona of the recently deceased Joseph Campbell in the television series and best-selling book, The Power of Myth. For example, in discussing the idea that "God was in Christ," Campbell affirmed that "the basic Gnostic and Buddhist idea is that that is true of you and me as well." Jesus is an enlightened example who "realized in himself that he and what he called the Father were one, and he lived out of that knowledge of the Christhood of his nature." According to Campbell, anyone can likewise live out his or her Christ nature.[1]
Gnosticism has come to mean just about anything. Calling someone a Gnostic can make the person either blush, beam, or fume. Whether used as an epithet for heresy or spiritual snobbery, or as a compliment for spiritual knowledge and esotericism, Gnosticism remains a cornucopia of controversy.
This is doubly so when Gnosticism is brought into a discussion of Jesus of Nazareth. Begin to speak of "Christian Gnostics" and some will exclaim, "No way! That is a contradiction in terms. Heresy is not orthodoxy." Others will affirm, "No contradiction. Orthodoxy is the heresy. The Gnostics were edged out of mainstream Christianity for political purposes by the end of the third century." Speak of the Gnostic Christ or the Gnostic gospels, and an ancient debate is moved to the theological front burner.
Gnosticism as a philosophy refers to a related body of teachings that stress the acquisition of "gnosis," or inner knowledge. The knowledge sought is not strictly intellectual, but mystical; not merely a detached knowledge of or about something, but a knowing by acquaintance or participation. This gnosis is the inner and esoteric mystical knowledge of ultimate reality. It discloses the spark of divinity within, thought to be obscured by ignorance, convention, and mere exoteric religiosity.
This knowledge is not considered to be the possession of the masses but of the Gnostics, the Knowers, who are privy to its benefits. While the orthodox "many" exult in the exoteric religious trappings which stress dogmatic belief and prescribed behavior, the Gnostic "few" pierce through the surface to the esoteric spiritual knowledge of God. The Gnostics claim the Orthodox mistake the shell for the core; the Orthodox claim the Gnostics dive past the true core into a nonexistent one of their own esoteric invention.
To adjudicate this ancient acrimony requires that we examine Gnosticism's perennial allure, expose its philosophical foundations, size up its historical claims, and square off the Gnostic Jesus with the figure who sustains the New Testament.
*MODERN GNOSTICISM*
Gnosticism is experiencing something of a revival, despite its status within church history as a vanquished Christian heresy. The magazine Gnosis, which bills itself as a "journal of western inner traditions," began publication in 1985 with a circulation of 2,500. As of September 1990, it sported a circulation of 11,000. Gnosis regularly runs articles on Gnosticism and Gnostic themes such as "Valentinus: A Gnostic for All Seasons."
Some have created institutional forms of this ancient religion. In Palo Alto, California, priestess Bishop Rosamonde Miller officiates the weekly gatherings of Ecclesia Gnostica Myteriorum (Church of Gnostic Mysteries), as she has done for the last eleven years. The chapel holds forty to sixty participants each Sunday and includes Gnostic readings in its liturgy. Miller says she knows of twelve organizationally unrelated Gnostic churches throughout the world.[2] Stephan Hoeller, a frequent contributor to Gnosis, who since 1967 has been a bishop of Ecclesia Gnostica in Los Angeles, notes that "Gnostic churches...have sprung up in recent years in increasing numbers."[3] He refers to an established tradition of "wandering bishops" who retain allegiance to the symbolic and ritual form of orthodox Christianity while reinterpreting its essential content.[4]
Of course, these exotic-sounding enclaves of the esoteric are minuscule when compared to historic Christian denominations. But the real challenge of Gnosticism is not so much organizational as intellectual. Gnosticism in its various forms has often appealed to the alienated intellectuals who yearn for spiritual experience outside the bounds of the ordinary.
The Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, a constant source of inspiration for the New Age, did much to introduce Gnosticism to the modern world by viewing it as a kind of proto-depth psychology, a key to psychological interpretation. According to Stephan Hoeller, author of The Gnostic Jung, "it was Jung's contention that Christianity and Western culture have suffered grievously because of the repression of the Gnostic approach to religion, and it was his hope that in time this approach would be reincorporated in our culture, our Western spirituality."[5]
In his Psychological Types, Jung praised "the intellectual content of Gnosis" as "vastly superior" to the orthodox church. He also affirmed that, "in light of our present mental development [Gnosticism] has not lost but considerably gained in value."[6]
A variety of esoteric groups have roots in Gnostic soil. Madame Helena P. Blavatsky, who founded Theosophy in 1875, viewed the Gnostics as precursors of modern occult movements and hailed them for preserving an inner teaching lost to orthodoxy. Theosophy and its various spin-offs -- such as Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy, Alice Bailey's Arcane School, Guy and Edna Ballard's I Am movement, and Elizabeth Clare Prophet's Church Universal and Triumphant -- all draw water from this same well; so do various other esoteric groups, such as the Rosicrucians.These groups share an emphasis on esoteric teaching, the hidden divinity of humanity, and contact with nonmaterial higher beings called masters or adepts.
A four-part documentary called "The Gnostics" was released in mid-1989 and shown in one-day screenings across the country along with a lecture by the producer. This ambitious series charted the history of Gnosticism through dramatizations and interviews with world-renowned scholars on Gnosticism such as Gilles Quispel, Hans Jonas, and Elaine Pagels.
A review of the series in a New Age-oriented journal noted: "The series takes us to the Nag Hammadi find where we learn the beginnings of the discovery of texts called the Gnostic Gospels that were written around the same time as the gospels of the New Testament but which were purposely left out."[7] The review refers to one of the most sensational and significant archaeological finds of the twentieth century; a discovery seen by some as overthrowing the orthodox view of Jesus and Christianity forever.
*GOLD IN THE JAR*
In December 1945, while digging for soil to fertilize crops, an Arab peasant named Muhammad 'Ali found a red earthenware jar near Nag Hammadi, a city in upper Egypt. His fear of uncorking an evil spirit or jin was shortly overcome by the hope of finding gold within. What was found has been for hundreds of scholars far more precious than gold. Inside the jar were thirteen leather-bound papyrus books (codices), dating from approximately A.D. 350. Although several of the texts were burned or thrown out, fifty-two texts were eventually recovered through many years of intrigue involving illegal sales, violence, smuggling, and academic rivalry.
Some of the texts were first published singly or in small collections, but the complete collection was not made available in a popular format in English until 1977. It was released as The Nag Hammadi Library and was reissued in revised form in 1988.
Although many of these documents had been referred to and denounced in the writings of early church theologians such as Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, most of the texts themselves had been thought to be extinct. Now many of them have come to light. As Elaine Pagels put it in her best-selling book, The GnosticGospels, "Now for the first time, we have the opportunity to find out about the earliest Christian heresy; for the first time, the heretics can speak for themselves."[8]
Pagels's book, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, arguably did more than any other effort to ingratiate the Gnostics to modern Americans. She made them accessible and even likeable. Her scholarly expertise coupled with her ability to relate an ancient religion to contemporary concerns made for a compelling combination in the minds of many. Her central thesis was simple: Gnosticism should be considered at least as legitimate as orthodox Christianity because the "heresy" was simply a competing strain of early Christianity. Yet, we find that the Nag Hammadi texts present a Jesus at extreme odds with the one found in the Gospels. Before contrasting the Gnostic and biblical renditions of Jesus, however, we need a short briefing on gnosis.
*THE GNOSTIC MESSAGE*
Gnosticism in general and the Nag Hammadi texts in particular present a spectrum of beliefs, although a central philosophical core is roughly discernible, which Gnosticism scholar Kurt Rudolph calls "the central myth."[9] Gnosticism teaches that something is desperately wrong with the universe and then delineates the means to explain and rectify the situation.
The universe, as presently constituted, is not good, nor was it created by an all-good God. Rather, a lesser god, or demiurge (as he is sometimes called), fashioned the world in ignorance.The Gospel of Philip says that "the world came about through a mistake. For he who created it wanted to create it imperishable and immortal. He fell short of attaining his desire."[10] The origin of the demiurge or offending creator is variously explained, but the upshot is that some precosmic disruption in the chain of beings emanating from the unknowable Father-God resulted in the "fall out" of a substandard deity with less than impeccable credentials. The result was a material cosmos soaked with ignorance, pain, decay, and death -- a botched job, to be sure. This deity, nevertheless, despotically demands worship and even pretentiously proclaims his supremacy as the one true God.
This creator-god is not the ultimate reality, but rather a degeneration of the unknown and unknowable fullness of Being (or pleroma). Yet, human beings -- or at least some of them -- are in the position potentially to transcend their imposed limitations, even if the cosmic deck is stacked against them. Locked within the material shell of the human race is the spark of this highest spiritual reality which (as one Gnostic theory held) the inept creator accidently infused into humanity at the creation -- on the order of a drunken jeweler who accidently mixes gold dust into junk metal. Simply put, spirit is good and desirable; matter is evil and detestable.
If this spark is fanned into a flame, it can liberate humans from the maddening matrix of matter and the demands of its obtuse originator. What has devolved from perfection can ultimately evolve back into perfection through a process of self-discovery.
Into this basic structure enters the idea of Jesus as a Redeemer of those ensconced in materiality. He comes as one descended from the spiritual realm with a message of self-redemption. The body of Gnostic literature, which is wider than the Nag Hammadi texts, presents various views of this Redeemer figure. There are, in fact, differing schools of Gnosticism with differing Christologies. Nevertheless, a basic image emerges.
The Christ comes from the higher levels of intermediary beings (called aeons) not as a sacrifice for sin but as a Revealer, an emissary from error-free environs. He is not the personal agent of the creator-god revealed in the Old Testament. (That metaphysically disheveled deity is what got the universe into such a royal mess in the first place.) Rather, Jesus has descended from a more exalted level to be a catalyst for igniting the gnosis latent within the ignorant. He gives a metaphysical assist to underachieving deities (i.e., humans) rather than granting ethical restoration to God's erring creatures through the Crucifixion and Resurrection.
*NAG HAMMADI UNVEILED*
By inspecting a few of the Nag Hammadi texts, we encounter Gnosticism in Christian guise: Jesus dispenses gnosis to awaken those trapped in ignorance; the body is a prison, and the spirit alone is good; and salvation comes by discovering the "kingdom of God" within the self.
One of the first Nag Hammadi texts to be extricated out of Egypt and translated into Western tongues was the Gospel of Thomas, comprised of one hundred and fourteen alleged sayings of Jesus. Although scholars do not believe it was actually written by the apostle Thomas, it has received the lion's share of scholarly attention. The sayings of Jesus are given minimal narrative setting, are not thematically arranged, and have a cryptic, epigrammatic bite to them. Although Thomas does not articulate every aspect of a full-blown Gnostic system, some of the teachings attributed to Jesus fit the Gnostic pattern. (Other sayings closely parallel or duplicate material found in the synoptic Gospels.)
The text begins: "These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke and which Didymos Judas Thomas wrote down. And he said, 'Whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings will not experience death.'"[11] Already we find the emphasis on secret knowledge (gnosis) as redemptive.
*JESUS AND GNOSIS*
Unlike the canonical gospels, Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection are not narrated and neither do any of the hundred and fourteen sayings in the Gospel of Thomas directly refer to these events. Thomas's Jesus is a dispenser of wisdom, not the crucified and resurrected Lord.
Jesus speaks of the kingdom: "The kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty."[12]
Other Gnostic documents center on the same theme. In the Book of Thomas the Contender, Jesus speaks "secret words" concerning self-knowledge: "For he who has not known himself has known nothing, but he who has known himself has at the same time already achieved knowledge of the depth of the all."[13]
Pagels observes that many of the Gnostics "shared certain affinities with contemporary methods of exploring the self through psychotherapeutic techniques."[14] This includes the premises that, first, many people are unconscious of their true condition and, second, "that the psyche bears within itself the potential for liberation or destruction."[15]
Gilles Quispel notes that for Valentinus, a Gnostic teacher of the second century, Christ is "the Paraclete from the Unknown who reveals...the discovery of the Self -- the divine spark within you."[16]
The heart of the human problem for the Gnostic is ignorance, sometimes called "sleep," "intoxication," or "blindness." But Jesus redeems man from such ignorance. Stephan Hoeller says that in the Valentinian system "there is no need whatsoever for guilt, for repentance from so-called sin, neither is there a need for a blind belief in vicarious salvation by way of the death of Jesus."[17] Rather, Jesus is savior in the sense of being a "spiritual maker of wholeness" who cures us of our sickness ofignorance.[18]
*Gnosticism on Crucifixion and Resurrection*
Those Gnostic texts that discuss Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection display a variety of views that, nevertheless, reveal some common themes.
James is consoled by Jesus in the First Apocalypse of James: "Never have I suffered in any way, nor have I been distressed. And this people has done me no harm."[19]
In the Second Treatise of the Great Seth, Jesus says, "I did not die in reality, but in appearance." Those "in error and blindness....saw me; they punished me. It was another, their father, who drank the gall and vinegar; it was not I. They struck me with the reed; it was another, Simon, who bore the cross on his shoulder. I was rejoicing in the height over all....And I was laughing at their ignorance."[20]
John Dart has discerned that the Gnostic stories of Jesus mocking his executors reverse the accounts in Matthew, Mark, and Luke where the soldiers and chief priests (Mark 15:20) mock Jesus.[21] In the biblical Gospels, Jesus does not deride or mock His tormentors; on the contrary, while suffering from the cross, He asks the Father to forgive those who nailed Him there.
In the teaching of Valentinus and followers, the death of Jesus is movingly recounted, yet without the New Testament significance. Although the Gospel of Truth says that "his death is life for many," it views this life-giving in terms of imparting the gnosis, not removing sin.[22] Pagels says that rather than viewing Christ's death as a sacrificial offering to atone for guilt and sin, the Gospel of Truth "sees the crucifixion as the occasion for discovering the divine self within."[23]
A resurrection is enthusiastically affirmed in the Treatise on the Resurrection: "Do not think the resurrection is an illusion. It is no illusion, but it is truth! Indeed, it is more fitting to say that the world is an illusion rather than the resurrection."[24] Yet, the nature of the post-resurrection appearances differs from the biblical accounts. Jesus is disclosed through spiritual visions rather than physical circumstances.
The resurrected Jesus for the Gnostics is the spiritual Revealer who imparts secret wisdom to the selected few. The tone and content of Luke's account of Jesus' resurrection appearances is a great distance from Gnostic accounts: "After his suffering, he showed himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God" (Acts 1:3).
By now it should be apparent that the biblical Jesus has little in common with the Gnostic Jesus. He is viewed as a Redeemer in both cases, yet his nature as a Redeemer and the way of redemption diverge at crucial points. We shall now examine some of these points.
*DID CHRIST REALLY SUFFER AND DIE?*
As in much modern New Age teaching, the Gnostics tended to divide Jesus from the Christ. For Valentinus, Christ descended on Jesus at his baptism and left before his death on the cross. Much of the burden of the treatise Against Heresies, written by the early Christian theologian Irenaeus, was to affirm that Jesus was, is, and always will be, the Christ. He says: "The Gospel...knew no other son of man but Him who was of Mary, who also suffered; and no Christ who flew away from Jesus before the passion; but Him who was born it knew as Jesus Christ the Son of God, and that this same suffered and rose again."[25]
Irenaeus goes on to quote John's affirmation that "Jesus is the Christ" (John 20:31) against the notion that Jesus and Christ were "formed of two different substances," as the Gnostics taught.[26]
In dealing with the idea that Christ did not suffer on the cross for sin, Irenaeus argues that Christ never would have exhorted His disciples to take up the cross if He in fact was not to suffer on it Himself, but fly away from it.[27]
For Irenaeus (a disciple of Polycarp, who himself was a disciple of the apostle John), the suffering of Jesus the Christ was paramount. It was indispensable to the apostolic "rule of faith" that Jesus Christ suffered on the cross to bring salvation to His people. In Irenaeus's mind, there was no divine spark in the human heart to rekindle; self-knowledge was not equal to God-knowledge. Rather, humans were stuck in sin and required a radical rescue operation. Because "it was not possible that the man...who had been destroyed through disobedience, could reform himself," the Son brought salvation by "descending from the Father, becoming incarnate, stooping low, even to death, and consummating the arranged plan of our salvation."[28]
This harmonizes with the words of Polycarp: "Let us then continually persevere in our hope and the earnest of our righteousness, which Jesus Christ, "who bore our sins in His own body on the tree" [1 Pet. 2:24], "who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth" [1 Pet. 2:22], but endured all things for us, that we might live in Him."[29]
Polycarp's mentor, the apostle John, said: "This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us" (1John 3:16); and "This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins" (4:10).
The Gnostic Jesus is predominantly a dispenser of cosmic wisdom who discourses on abstruse themes like the spirit's fall into matter. Jesus Christ certainly taught theology, but he dealt with the problem of pain and suffering in a far different way. He suffered for us, rather than escaping the cross or lecturing on the vanity of the body.
*THE MATTER OF THE RESURRECTION*
For Gnosticism, the inherent problem of humanity derives from the misuse of power by the ignorant creator and the resulting entrapment of souls in matter. The Gnostic Jesus alerts us to this and helps rekindle the divine spark within. In the biblical teaching, the problem is ethical; humans have sinned against a good Creator and are guilty before the throne of the universe.
For Gnosticism, the world is bad, but the soul -- when freed from its entrapments -- is good. For Christianity, the world was created good (Gen. 1), but humans have fallen from innocence and purity through disobedience (Gen. 3; Rom. 3). Yet, the message of the gospel is that the One who can rightly prosecute His creatures as guilty and worthy of punishment has deigned to visit them in the person of His only Son -- not just to write up a firsthand damage report, but to rectify the situation through the Cross and the Resurrection.
In light of these differences, the significance of Jesus' literal and physical resurrection should be clear. For the Gnostic who abhors matter and seeks release from its grim grip, the physical resurrection of Jesus would be anticlimactic, if not absurd. A material resurrection would be counterproductive and only recapitulate the original problem.
Jesus displays a positive attitude toward the Creation throughout the Gospels. In telling His followers not to worry He says, "Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them" (Matt. 2:26). And, "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father" (Matt. 10:29). These and many other examples presuppose the goodness of the material world and declare care by a benevolent Creator. Gnostic dualism is precluded.
If Jesus recommends fasting and physical self-denial on occasion, it is not because matter is unworthy of attention or an incorrigible roadblock to spiritual growth, but because moral and spiritual resolve may be strengthened through periodic abstinence (Matt. 6:16-18; 9:14-15). Jesus fasts in the desert and feasts with His disciples. The created world is good, but the human heart is corrupt and inclines to selfishly misuse a good creation. Therefore, it is sometimes wise to deny what is good without in order to inspect and mortify what is bad within.
If Jesus is the Christ who comes to restore God's creation, He must come as one of its own, a bona fide man. Although Gnostic teachings show some diversity on this subject, they tend toward docetism -- the doctrine that the descent of the Christ was spiritual and not material, despite any appearance of materiality. It was even claimed that Jesus left no footprints behind him when he walked on the sand.
From a biblical view, materiality is not the problem, but disharmony with the Maker. Adam and Eve were both material and in harmony with their good Maker before they succumbed to the Serpent's temptation. Yet, in biblical reasoning, if Jesus is to conquer sin and death for humanity, He must rise from the dead in a physical body, albeit a transformed one. A mere spiritual apparition would mean an abdication of material responsibility.
As Norman Geisler has noted, "Humans sin and die in material bodies and they must be redeemed in the same physical bodies. Any other kind of deliverance would be an admission of defeat....If redemption does not restore God's physical creation, including our material bodies, then God's original purpose in creating a material world would be frustrated."[30]
For this reason, at Pentecost the apostle Peter preached Jesus of Nazareth as "a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs" (Acts 2:22) who, though put to death by being nailed to the cross, "God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him" (v. 24). Peter then quotes Psalm 16:10 which speaks of God not letting His "Holy One see decay" (v. 27).
Peter says of David, the psalm's author, "Seeing what was ahead, he spoke of the resurrection of Christ, that he was not abandoned to the grave nor did his body see decay. God raised Jesus to life" (vv. 31, 32).
The apostle Paul confesses that if the resurrection of Jesus is not a historical fact, Christianity is a vanity of vanities (1 Cor. 15:14-19). And, while he speaks of Jesus' (and the believers') resurrected condition as a "spiritual body," this does not mean nonphysical or ethereal; rather, it refers to a body totally free from the results of sin and the Fall. It is a spirit-driven body, untouched by any of the entropies of evil.
Because Jesus was resurrected bodily, those who know Him as Lord can anticipate their own resurrected bodies.
*JESUS, JUDAISM, AND GNOSIS*
The Gnostic Jesus is also divided from the Jesus of the
Gospels over his relationship to Judaism. For Gnostics, the God of the Old Testament is somewhat of a cosmic clown, neither ultimate nor good. In fact, many Gnostic documents invert the meaning of Old Testament stories in order to ridicule him. For instance, the serpent and Eve are heroic figures who oppose the dull deity in the Hypostasis of the Archons (the Reality of the Rulers) and in On the Origin of the World.[31]
In the Apocryphon of John, Jesus says he encouraged Adam and Eve to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,[32] thus putting Jesus diametrically at odds with the meaning of the Genesis account where this action is seen as the essence of sin (Gen. 3). The same anti-Jewish element is found in the Jesus of the Gospel of Thomas where the disciples say to Jesus, "Twenty-four prophets spoke in Israel, and all of them spoke in you." To which Jesus replies, "You have omitted the one living in your presence and have spoken (only) of the dead."[33] Jesus thus dismisses all the prophets as merely "dead." For the Gnostics, the Creator must be separated from the Redeemer.
The Jesus found in the New Testament quotes the prophets, claims to fulfill their prophecies, and consistently argues according to the Old Testament revelation, despite the fact that He exudes an authority equal to it. Jesus says, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them" (Matt. 5:17). He corrects the Sadducees' misunderstanding of the afterlife by saying, "Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures..." (Mark 12:24). To other critics He again appeals to the Old Testament: "You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me" (John 5:39).
When Jesus appeared after His death and burial to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, He commented on their slowness of heart "to believe all that the prophets have spoken." He asked, "Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter into glory?" Luke then records, "And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself" (Luke 24:25-27).
For both Jesus and the Old Testament, the supreme Creator is the Father of all living. They are one and the same.
*GOD: UNKNOWABLE OR KNOWABLE?*
Many Gnostic treatises speak of the ultimate reality or godhead as beyond conceptual apprehension. Any hope of contacting this reality -- a spark of which is lodged within the Gnostic --must be filtered through numerous intermediary beings of a lesser stature than the godhead itself.
In the Gospel of the Egyptians, the ultimate reality is said to be the "unrevealable, unmarked, ageless, unproclaimable Father." Three powers are said to emanate from Him: "They are the Father, the Mother, (and) the Son, from the living silence."[34]
The text speaks of giving praise to "the great invisible Spirit" who is "the silence of silent silence."[35] In the Sophia of Jesus Christ, Jesus is asked by Matthew, "Lord...teach us the truth," to which Jesus says, "He Who Is is ineffable." Although Jesus seems to indicate that he reveals the ineffable, he says concerning the ultimate, "He is unnameable....he is ever incomprehensible."[36]
At this point the divide between the New Testament and the Gnostic documents couldn't be deeper or wider. Although the biblical Jesus had the pedagogical tact not to proclaim indiscriminately, "I am God! I am God!" the entire contour of His ministry points to Him as God in the flesh. He says, "He who has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9). The prologue to John's gospel says that "in the beginning was the Word (Logos)" and that "the Word was with God and was God" (John 1:1). John did not say, "In the beginning was the silence of the silent silence" or "the ineffable."
Incarnation means tangible and intelligible revelation from God to humanity. The Creator's truth and life are communicated spiritually through the medium of matter. "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling place among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only who came from the Father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14). The Word that became flesh "has made Him [the Father] known" (v. 19). John's first epistle tells us: "The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard..." (1 John 1:2-3).
Irenaeus encountered these Gnostic invocations of the ineffable. He quotes a Valentinian Gnostic teacher who explained the "primary Tetrad" (fourfold emanation from ultimate reality): "There is a certain Proarch who existed before all things, surpassing all thought, speech, and nomenclature" whom he called "Monotes" (unity). Along with this power there is another power called Hentotes (oneness) who, along with Monotes produced "an intelligent, unbegotten, and undivided being, which beginning language terms 'Monad.'" Another entity called Hen (One) rounds out the primal union.[37] Irenaeus satirically responds with his own suggested Tetrad which also proceeds from "a certain Proarch":
But along with it there exists a power which I term Gourd; and along with this Gourd there exists a power which again I term Utter-Emptiness. This Gourd and Emptiness, since they are one, produced...a fruit, everywhere visible, eatable, and delicious, which fruit-language calls a Cucumber. Along with this Cucumber exists a power of the same essence, which again I call a Melon.[38]
Irenaeus's point is well taken. If spiritual realities surpass our ability to name or even think about them, then any name under the sun (or within the Tetrad) is just as appropriate -- or inappropriate -- as any other, and we are free to affirm with Irenaeus that "these powers of the Gourd, Utter Emptiness, the Cucumber, and the Melon, brought forth the remaining multitude of the delirious melons of Valentinus."[39]
Whenever a Gnostic writer -- ancient or modern -- simultaneously asserts that a spiritual entity or principle is utterly unknown and unnameable and begins to give it names and ascribe to it characteristics, we should hark back to Irenaeus. If something is ineffable, it is necessarily unthinkable, unreportable, and unapproachable.
*ANCIENT GNOSTICISM AND MODERN THOUGHT*
Modern day Gnostics, Neo-Gnostics, or Gnostic sympathizers should be aware of some Gnostic elements which decidedly clash with modern tastes. First, although Pagels, like Jung, has shown the Gnostics in a positive psychological light, the Gnostic outlook is just as much theological and cosmological as it ispsychological. The Gnostic message is all of a piece, and the psychology should not be artificially divorced from the overall world view. In other words, Gnosticism should not be reduced to psychology -- as if we know better what a Basilides or a Valentinus really meant than they did.
The Gnostic documents do not present their system as a crypto-psychology (with various cosmic forces representing psychic functions), but as a religious and theological explanation of the origin and operation of the universe. Those who want to adopt consistently Gnostic attitudes and assumptions should keep in mind what the Gnostic texts -- to which they appeal for authority and credibility -- actually say.
Second, the Gnostic rejection of matter as illusory, evil, or, at most, second-best, is at odds with many New Age sentiments regarding the value of nature and the need for an ecologicalawareness and ethic. Trying to find an ecological concern in the Gnostic corpus is on the order of harvesting wheat in Antarctica. For the Gnostics, as Gnostic scholar Pheme Perkins puts it, "most of the cosmos that we know is a carefully constructed plot to keep humanity from returning to its true divine home."[40]
Third, Pagels and others to the contrary, the Gnostic attitude toward women was not proto-feminist. Gnostic groups did sometimes allow for women's participation in religious activities and several of the emanational beings were seen as feminine.
Nevertheless, even though Ms. Magazine gave The Gnostic Gospels a glowing review[41], women fare far worse in Gnosticism than many think. The concluding saying from the Gospel of Thomas, for example, has less than a feminist ring:
Simon Peter said to them, "Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life." Jesus said, "I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven."[42]
The issue of the role of women in Gnostic theology and community cannot be adequately addressed here, but it should be noted that the Jesus of the Gospels never spoke of making the female into the male -- no doubt because Jesus did not perceive the female to be inferior to the male. Going against social customs, He gathered women followers, and revealed to an outcast Samaritan woman that He was the Messiah -- which scandalized His own disciples (John 4:1-39). The Gospels also record women as the first witnesses to Jesus' resurrection (Matt. 28:1-10) -- and this in a society where women were not considered qualified to be legal witnesses.
Fourth, despite an emphasis on reincarnation, several Gnostic documents speak of the damnation of those who are incorrigibly non-Gnostic[43], particularly apostates from Gnostic groups.[44]If one chafes at the Jesus of the Gospels warning of "eternal destruction," chafings are likewise readily available from Gnostic doomsayers.
Concerning the Gnostic-Orthodox controversy, biblical scholar F. F. Bruce is so bold as to say that "there is no reason why the student of the conflict should shrink from making a value judgment: the Gnostic schools lost because they deserved to lose."[45] The Gnostics lost once, but do they deserve to lose again? We will seek to answer this in Part Two as we consider the historic reliability of the Gnostic (Nag Hammadi) texts versus that of the New Testament.
*Glossary*
*aeons:* Emanations of Being from the unknowable, ultimate metaphysical principle or pleroma (see *pleroma*).
*Apostolic rule of faith:* The essential teachings of the apostles that served as the authoritative standard for orthodox doctrine before the canonization of the New Testament.
*Demiurge:* According to the Gnostics (as opposed to Plato and others who had a more positive assessment), an inferior deity who ignorantly and incompetently fashioned the debased physical world.
*esotericism:* The teaching that spiritual liberation is found in a secret or hidden knowledge (sometimes called gnosis) not available in traditional orthodoxy or exotericism.
*exotericism:* A pejorative term used by esotericists to describe the mere outer or popular understanding of spiritual truth which is supposedly inferior to the esoteric essence.
*gnosis:* The Greek word for "knowledge" used by the Gnostics to mean knowledge gained not through intellectual discovery but through personal experience or acquaintance which initiates one into esoteric mysteries. The experience of gnosis reveals to the initiated the divine spark within. "Gnosis" has a very different meaning in the New Testament which excludes esotericism and self-deification.
*Pleroma:* The Greek word for "fulness" used by the Gnostics to mean the highest principle of Being where dwells the unknown and unknowable God. Used in the New Testament to refer to "fulness in Christ" (Col. 2:10) who is the known revelation of God in the flesh.
*NOTES*
1 Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth, ed. Betty Sue Flowers (New York: Doubleday, 1988), 210.
2 Don Lattin, "Rediscovery of Gnostic Christianity," San Francisco Chronicle, 1 April 1989, A-4-5.
3 Stephan A. Hoeller, "Wandering Bishops," Gnosis, Summer 1989, 24.
4 Ibid.
5 "The Gnostic Jung: An Interview with Stephan Hoeller," The Quest, Summer 1989, 85.
6 C. G. Jung, Psychological Types (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), 11.
7 "Gnosticism," Critique, June-Sept. 1989, 66.
8 Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Random House,1979), xxxv.
9 Kurt Rudolph, Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnosticism (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1987), 57f.10 James M. Robinson, ed., The Nag Hammadi Library (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1988), 154.
11 Robinson, 126.
12 F. F. Bruce, Jesus and Christian Origins Outside the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), 112-13.
13 Bentley Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., Inc., 1987), 403.
14 Pagels, 124.
15 Ibid., 126.
16 Christopher Farmer, "An Interview with Gilles Quispel,"Gnosis, Summer 1989, 28.
17 Stephan A. Hoeller, "Valentinus: A Gnostic for All Seasons,"Gnosis, Fall/Winter 1985, 24.
18 Ibid., 25.
19 Robinson, 265.
20 Ibid., 365.
21 John Dart, The Jesus of History and Heresy (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1988), 97.
22 Robinson, 41.
23 Pagels, 95.
24 Robinson, 56.
25 Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 3.16.5.
26 Ibid.
27 Ibid., 3.18.5.
28 Ibid., 3.18.2.
29 "The Epistle of Polycarp," ch. 8, in The Apostolic Fathers, ed. A. Cleveland Coxe (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 35.
30 Norman L. Geisler, "I Believe...In the Resurrection of the Flesh,"Christian Research Journal, Summer 1989, 21-22.
31 See Dart, 60-74.
32 Robinson, 117.
33 Ibid., 132.
34 Ibid., 209.
35 Ibid., 210.
36 Ibid., 224-25.
37 Irenaeus, 1.11.3.
38 Ibid., 1.11.4.
39 Ibid.
40 Pheme Perkins, "Popularizing the Past," Commonweal, November1979, 634.
41 Kenneth Pitchford, "The Good News About God,"Ms. Magazine April 1980, 32-35.
42 Robinson, 138.
43 See The Book of Thomas the Contender, in Robinson, 205.
44 See Layton, 17.
45 F. F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture (Downers Grove, IL:InterVarsity Press, 1988), 277.
Copyright 1994 by the Christian Research Institute.
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"The Gnostic Gospels: Are They Authentic?" Part Two in a Two-Part Series on Ancient and Modern Gnosticism (an article from the Christian Research Journal, Winter 1991, page 15) by Douglas Groothuis.
The Editor-in-Chief of the Christian Research Journal is Elliot Miller.
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In the first installment of this two-part series, I outlined the stark contrasts between the gnostic Jesus and "the Word become flesh." These respective views of Jesus are lodged within mutually exclusive world views concerning claims about God, the universe, humanity, and salvation. But our next line of inquiry is to be historical. Do we have a clue as to what Jesus, the Man from Nazareth, actually did and said as a player in space-time history?
Should such gnostic documents as the Gospel of Thomascapture our attention as a reliable report of the mind of Jesus, or does the Son of Man of the biblical Gospels speak with the authentic voice? Or must we remain in utter agnosticism about the historical Jesus?
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*GLOSSARY*
*aeons:* Emanations of Being from the unknowable, ultimate metaphysical principle or pleroma (see pleroma).
*Nag Hammadi collection:* A group of ancient documents dating from approximately A.D. 350, predominantly Gnostic in character, which were discovered near Nag Hammadi, Egypt in 1945.
*pleroma:* The Greek word for "fulness" used by the Gnostics to mean the highest principle of Being where dwells the unknown and unknowable God. Used in the New Testament to refer to "fullness in Christ" (Col. 2:10) who is the known revelation of God in the flesh.
*pseudepigrapha:* Ancient documents which falsely claim authorship by noteworthy individuals for the sake of credibility; for instance, the Gospel of Thomas.
*syncretism:* The teaching that various religious truth-claims can be synthesized into one basic, underlying unity.
*Valentinus:* Influential early Gnostic of the Second Century A.D. who may have authorized the Nag Hammadi document, the Gospel of Truth.
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Unless we are content to chronicle a cacophony of conflicting views of Jesus based on pure speculation or passionate whimsy, historical investigation is non-negotiable. Christianity has always been a historical religion and any serious challenge to its legitimacy must attend to that fact. Its central claims are rooted in events, not just ideas; in people, not just principles; in revelation, not speculation; in incarnation, not abstraction.
Renowned historian Herbert Butterfield speaks of Christianity as a religion in which "certain historical events are held to be part of the religion itself" and are "considered to...represent the divine breaking into history."[1]
Historical accuracy was certainly no incidental item to Luke in the writing of his Gospel: "Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught" (Luke 1:1-4, NIV). The text affirms that Luke was after nothing less than historical certainty, presented in orderly fashion and based on firsthand testimony.
If Christianity centers on Jesus, the Christ, the promised Messiah who inaugurates the kingdom of God with power, the objective facticity of this Jesus is preeminent. Likewise, if purportedly historical documents, like the gospels of Nag Hammadi, challenge the biblical understanding of Jesus, they too must be brought before historical scrutiny. Part Two of this series will therefore inspect the historical standing of the Gnostic writings in terms of their historical integrity, authenticity, and veracity.
*LOST BOOKS OF THE BIBLE?*
Although much excitement has been generated by the Nag Hammadi discoveries, not a little misunderstanding has been mixed with the enthusiasm. The overriding assumption of many is that the treatises unearthed in upper Egypt contained "lost books of the Bible" -- of historical stature equal to or greater than the New Testament books. Much of this has been fueled by the titles of some of the documents themselves, particularly the so-called "Gnostic gospels":the Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Philip, Gospel of Mary, Gospel of the Egyptians, and the Gospel of Truth. The connotation of a "gospel" is that it presents the life of Jesus as a teacher,preacher, and healer -- similar in style, if not content, to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Yet, a reading of these "gospels" reveals an entirely different genre of material. For example, the introduction to the Gospel of Truth in The Nag Hammadi Library reads, "Despite its title, this work is not the sort found in the New Testament, since it does not offer a continuous narration of the deeds, teachings, passion, and resurrection of Jesus."[2] The introduction to the Gospel of Philip in the same volume says that although it has some similarities to a New Testament Gospel, it "is not a gospel like one of the New Testament gospels. . . . [The] few sayings and stories about Jesus...are not set in any kind of narrative framework like one of the New Testament gospels."[3] Biblical scholar Joseph A. Fitzmyer criticized the title of Pagels's The Gnostic Gospels because it insinuates that the heart of the book concerns lost gospels that have come to light when in fact the majority of Pagels's references are from early church fathers' sources or nongospel material.[4]
In terms of scholarly and popular attention, the "superstar" of the Nag Hammadi collection is the Gospel of Thomas. Yet, Thomas also falls outside the genre of the New Testament Gospels despite the fact that many of its 114 sayings are directly or indirectly related to Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Thomas has almost no narration and its structure consists of discrete sayings. Unlike the canonical Gospels, which provide a social context and narrative for Jesus' words, Thomas is more like various beads almost haphazardly strung on a necklace. This in itself makes proper interpretation difficult. F. F. Bruce observes that "the sayings of Jesus are best to be understood in the light of the historical circumstances in which they were spoken. Only when we have understood them thus can we safely endeavor to recognize the permanent truth which they convey. When they are detached from their original historical setting and arranged in an anthology, their interpretation is more precarious."[5]
Without undue appeal to the subjective, it can be safely said that the Gnostic material on Jesus has a decidedly different "feel" than the biblical Gospels. There, Jesus' teaching emerges naturally from the overall contour of His life. In the Gnostic materials Jesus seems, in many cases, more of a lecturer on metaphysics than a Jewish prophet. In the Letter of Peter to Philip, the apostles ask the resurrected Jesus, "Lord, we would like to know the deficiency of the aeons and of their pleroma."[6] Such philosophical abstractions were never on the lips of the disciples -- the fishermen, tax collectors, and zealots -- of the biblical accounts. Jesus then discourses on the precosmic fall of "the mother" who acted in opposition to "the Father" and so produced ailing aeons.[7]
Whatever is made of the historical "feel" of these documents, their actual status as historical records should be brought into closer scrutiny to assess their factual reliability.
*THE RELIABILITY OF THE GNOSTIC DOCUMENTS*
Historicity is related to trustworthiness. If a document is historically reliable, it is trustworthy as objectively true; there is good reason to believe that what it affirms essentially fits what is the case. It is faithful to fact. Historical reliability can be divided into three basic categories: integrity, authenticity, and veracity.
Integrity concerns the preservation of the writing through history. Do we have reason to believe the text as it now reads is essentially the same as when it was first written? Or has substantial corruption taken place through distortion, additions, or subtractions? The New Testament has been preserved in thousands of diverse and ancient manuscripts which enable us to reconstruct the original documents with a high degree of certainty. But what of Nag Hammadi?
Before the discovery at Nag Hammadi, Gnostic documents not inferred from references in the church fathers were few and far between. Since 1945, however, there are many primary documents. Scholars date the extant manuscripts from A.D. 350-400. The original writing of the various documents, of course, took place sometime before A.D. 350-400, but not, according to most scholars, before the second century.
The actual condition of the Nag Hammadi manuscripts varies considerably. James Robinson, editor of The Nag Hammadi Library, notes that "there is the physical deterioration of the books themselves, which began no doubt before they were buried around 400 C.E. [then] advanced steadily while they remained buried, and unfortunately was not completely halted in the period between their discovery in 1945 and their final conservation thirty years later."[8]
Reading through The Nag Hammadi Library, one often finds notations such as ellipses, parentheses, and brackets, indicating spotty marks in the texts. Often the translator has to venture tentative reconstructions of the writings because of textual damage. The situation may be likened to putting together a jigsaw puzzle with numerous pieces missing; one is forced to recreate the pieces by using whatever context is available. Robinson adds that "when only a few letters are missing, they can be often filled in adequately, but larger holes must simply remain a blank."[9]
Concerning translation, Robinson relates that "the texts were translated one by one from Greek to Coptic, and not always by translators capable of grasping the profundity or sublimity of what they sought to translate."[10] Robinson notes, however, that most of the texts are adequately translated, and that when there is more than one version of a particular text, the better translation is clearly discernible. Nevertheless, he is "led to wonder about the bulk of the texts that exist only in a single version,"[11] because these texts cannot be compared with other translations for accuracy.
Robinson comments further on the integrity of the texts: "There is the same kind of hazard in the transmission of the texts by a series of scribes who copied them, generation after generation, from increasingly corrupt copies, first in Greek and then in Coptic. The number of unintentional errors is hard to estimate, since such a thing as a clean control copy does not exist; nor does one have, as in the case of the Bible, a quantity of manuscripts of the same text that tend to correct each other when compared (emphasis added)."[12]
Authenticity concerns the authorship of a given writing. Do we know who the author was? Or must we deal with an anonymous one? A writing is considered authentic if it can be shown to have been written by its stated or implied author. There is solid evidence that the New Testament Gospels were written by their namesakes: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. But what of Nag Hammadi?
The Letter of Peter to Philip is dated at the end of the second century or even into the third. This rules out a literal letter from the apostle to Philip. The genre of this text is known as pseudepigrapha -- writings falsely ascribed to noteworthy individuals to lend credibility to the material. Although interesting in explaining the development of Gnostic thought and its relationship to biblical writings, this letter shouldn't be overtaxed as delivering reliable history of the events it purports to record.
There are few if any cases of known authorship with the Nag Hammadi and other Gnostic texts. Scholars speculate as to authorship, but do not take pseudepigraphic literature as authentically apostolic. Even the Gospel of Thomas, probably the document closest in time to the New Testament events, is virtually never considered to be written by the apostle Thomas himself.[13] The marks of authenticity in this material are, then, spotty at best.
Veracity concerns the truthfulness of the author of the text. Was the author adequately in a position to relate what is reported, in terms of both chronological closeness to the events and observational savvy? Did he or she have sufficient credentials to relay historical truth?
Some, in their enthusiasm over Nag Hammadi, have lassoed texts into the historical corral that date several hundred years after the life of Jesus. For instance, in a review of the movie The Last Temptation of Christ, Michael Grosso speaks of hints of Jesus' sexual life "right at the start of the Christian tradition." He then quotes from the Gospel of Philip to the effect that Jesus often kissed Mary Magdalene on the mouth.[14] The problem is that the text is quite far from "the start of the Christian tradition," being written, according to one scholar, "perhaps as late as the second half of the third century."[15]
Craig Blomberg states that "most of the Nag Hammadi documents, predominantly Gnostic in nature, make no pretense of overlapping with the gospel traditions of Jesus' earthly life."[16] He observes that "a number claim to record conversations of the resurrected Jesus with various disciples, but this setting is usually little more than an artificial framework for imparting Gnostic doctrine."[17]
What, then, of the veracity of the documents? We do not know who wrote most of them and their historical veracity concerning Jesus seems slim. Yet some scholars advance a few candidates as providing historically reliable facts concerning Jesus.
In the case of the Gospel of Truth, some scholars see Valentinus as the author, or at least as authoring an earlier version.[18] Yet Valentinus dates into the second century (d. A.D. 175) and was thus not a contemporary of Jesus. Attridge and MacRae date the document between A.D. 140 and 180.[19] Layton recognizes that "the work is a sermon and has nothing to do with the Christian genre properly called 'gospel.'"[20]
The text differs from many in Nag Hammadi because of its recurring references to New Testament passages. Beatley Layton notes that "it paraphrases, and so interprets, some thirty to sixty scriptural passages almost all from the New Testament books."[21]
He goes on to note that Valentinus shaped these allusions to fit his own Gnostic theology.[22] In discussing the use of the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) in the Gospel of Truth, C. M. Tuckett concludes that "there is no evidence for the use of sources other than the canonical gospels for synoptic material."[23] This would mean that the Gospel of Truth gives no independent historical insight about Jesus, but rather reinterprets previous material.
The Gospel of Philip is thick with Gnostic theology and contains several references to Jesus. However, it does not claim to be a revelation from Jesus: it is more of a Gnostic manual of theology.[24] According to Tuckett's analysis, all the references to Gospel material seem to stem from Matthew and not from any other canonical Gospel or other source independent of Matthew. Andrew Hembold has also pointed out that both the Gospel of Truth and the Gospel of Philip show signs of "mimicking" the New Testament; they both "know and recognize the greater part of the New Testament as authoritative."[25] This would make them derivative, not original, documents.
Tuckett has also argued that the Gospel of Mary and the Book of Thomas the Contender are dependent on synoptic materials, and that "there is virtually no evidence for the use of pre-synoptic sources by these writers. These texts are all 'post-synoptic,' not only with regard to their dates, but also with regard to the form of the synoptic tradition they presuppose."[26] In other words, these writings are simply drawing on preexistent Gospel material and rearranging it to conform to their Gnostic world view. They do not contribute historically authentic, new material.
The Apocryphon of James claims to be a secret revelation of the risen Jesus to James His brother. It is less obviously Gnostic than some Nag Hammadi texts and contains some more orthodox-sounding phrases such as, "Verily I say unto you none will be saved unless they believe in my cross."[27] It also affirms the unorthodox, such as when Jesus says, "Become better than I; make yourselves like the son of the Holy Spirit."[28] While one scholar dates this text sometime before A.D. 150,[29] Blomberg believes it gives indications of being "at least in part later than and dependent upon the canonical gospels."[30] Its esotericism certainly puts it at odds with the canonical Gospels, which are better attested historically.
*THOMAS ON TRIAL*
The Nag Hammadi text that has provoked the most historical scrutiny is the Gospel of Thomas. Because of its reputation as the lost "fifth Gospel" and its frequently esoteric and mystical cast, it is frequently quoted in New Age circles. A recent book by Robert Winterhalter is entitled, The Fifth Gospel: A Verse-by-Verse New Age Commentary on the Gospel of Thomas. He claims Thomas knows "the Christ both as the Self, and the foundation of individual life."[31] Some sayings in Thomas do seem to teach this. But is this what the historical Jesus taught?
The scholarly literature on Thomas is vast and controversial. Nevertheless, a few important considerations arise in assessing its veracity as history. Because it is more of an anthology of mostly unrelated sayings than an ongoing story about Jesus' words and deeds, Thomas is outside the genre of "Gospel" in the New Testament. Yet, some of the 114 sayings closely parallel or roughly resemble statements in the Synoptics, either by adding to them, deleting from them, combining several references into one, or by changing the sense of a saying entirely.
This explanation uses the Synoptics as a reference point for comparison. But is it likely that Thomas is independent of these sources and gives authentic although "unorthodox" material about Jesus? To answer this, we must consider a diverse range of factors.
There certainly are sayings that harmonize with biblical material, and direct or indirect relationships can be found to all four canonical Gospels. In this sense, Thomas contains both orthodox and unorthodox material, if we use orthodox to mean the material in the extant New Testament. For instance, the Trinity and unforgivable sin are referred to in the context of blasphemy: "Jesus said, 'Whoever blasphemes against the father will be forgiven, and whoever blasphemes against the son will be forgiven, but whoever blasphemes against the holy spirit will not be forgiven either on earth or in heaven.'"[32]
In another saying Jesus speaks of the "evil man" who "brings forth evil things from his evil storehouse, which is in his heart, and says evil things"[33] (see Luke 6:43-46). This can be read to harmonize with the New Testament Gospels' emphasis on human sin, not just ignorance of the divine spark within.
Although it is not directly related to a canonical Gospel text, the following statement seems to state the biblical theme of the urgency of finding Jesus while one can: "Jesus said, 'Take heed of the living one while you are alive, lest you die and seek to see him and be unable to do so'" (compare John 7:34; 13:33).[34] At the same time we find texts of a clearly Gnostic slant, as noted earlier. How can we account for this?
The original writing of Thomas has been dated variously between A.D. 50 and 150 or even later, with most scholars opting for a second century date.[35] Of course, an earlier date would lend more credibility to it, although its lack of narrative framework still makes it more difficult to understand than the canonical Gospels. While some argue that Thomas uses historical sources independent of those used by the New Testament, this is not a uniformly held view, and arguments are easily found which marshall evidence for Thomas's dependence (either partial or total) on the canonical Gospels.[36]
Blomberg claims that "where Thomas parallels the four gospels it is unlikely that any of the distinctive elements in Thomas predate the canonical versions."[37] When Thomas gives a parable found in the four Gospels and adds details not found there, "they can almost always be explained as conscious, Gnostic redaction [editorial adaptation]."[38]
James Dunn elaborates on this theme by comparing Thomas with what is believed to be an earlier and partial version of the document found in Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, near the turn of the century.[39] He notes that the Oxyrhynchus "papyri date from the end of the second or the first half of the third century, while the Gospel of Thomas...was probably written no earlier than the fourth century."[40]
Dunn then compares similar statements from Matthew, the Oxyrhynchus papyri, and the Nag Hammadi text version of Thomas: Matthew 7:7-8 and 11:28 -- "...Seek and you will find;...he who seeks finds...Come to me...and I will give you rest." Pap. Ox. 654.5-9 -- (Jesus says:) 'Let him who see(ks) not cease (seeking until) he finds; and when he find (he will) be astonished, and having (astoun)ded, he will reign; an(d reigning), he will (re)st' (Clement of Alexandria also knows the saying in this form.)
Gospel of Thomas 2 -- 'Jesus said: He who seeks should not stop seeking until he finds; and when he finds, he will be bewildered (beside himself); and when he is bewildered he will marvel, and will reign over the All.'[41]
Dunn notes that the term "the All" (which the Gospel of Thomas adds to the earlier document) is "a regular Gnostic concept," and that "as the above comparisons suggest, the most obvious explanation is that it was one of the last elements to be added to the saying."[42] Dunn further comments that the Nag Hammadi version of Thomas shows a definite "gnostic colouring" and gives no evidence of "the thesis of a form of Gnostic Christianity already existing in the first century." He continues: "Rather it confirms the counter thesis that the Gnostic element in Gnostic Christianity is a second century syncretistic outgrowth on the stock of the earlier Christianity. What we can see clearly in the case of this one saying is probably representative of the lengthy process of development and elaboration which resulted in the form of the Gospel of Thomas found at Nag Hammadi."[43]
Other authorities substantiate the notion that whatever authentic material Thomas may convey concerning Jesus, the text shows signs of Gnostic tampering. Marvin W. Meyer judges that Thomas "shows the hand of a gnosticizing editor."[44]
Winterhalter, who reveres Thomas enough to write a devotional guide on it, nevertheless says of it that "some sayings are spurious or greatly altered, but this is the work of a later Egyptian editor."[45] He thinks, though, that the wheat can be successfully separated from the chaff.
Robert M. Grant has noted that "the religious realities which the Church proclaimed were ultimately perverted by the Gospel of Thomas. For this reason Thomas, along with other documents which purported to contain secret sayings of Jesus, was rejected by the Church."[46]
Here we find ourselves agreeing with the early Christian defenders of the faith who maintained that Gnosticism in the church was a corruption of original truth and not an independently legitimate source of information on Jesus or the rest of reality.
Fitzmyer drives this home in criticizing Pagels's view that the Gnostics have an equal claim on Christian authenticity: "Throughout the book [Pagels] gives the unwary reader the impression that the difference between 'orthodox Christians' and 'gnostic Christians' was one related to the 'origins of Christianity'. Time and time again, she is blind to the fact that she is ignoring a good century of Christian existence in which those 'gnostic Christians' were simply not around."[47]
In this connection it is also telling that outside of the Gospel of Thomas, which doesn't overtly mention the Resurrection, other Gnostic documents claiming to impart new information about Jesus do so through spiritual, post-resurrection dialogues -- often in the form of visions -- which are not subject to the same historical rigor as claims made about the earthly life of Jesus.This leads Dunn to comment that "Christian Gnosticism usually attributed its secret [and unorthodox] teaching of Jesus to discourses delivered by him, so they maintained, in a lengthy ministry after his resurrection (as in Thomas the Contender and Pistis Sophia). The Gospel of Thomas is unusual therefore in attempting to use the Jesus-tradition as the vehicle for its teaching. . . . Perhaps Gnosticism abandoned the Gospel of Thomas format because it was to some extent subject to check and rebuttal from Jesus-tradition preserved elsewhere."[48]
Dunn thinks that the more thoroughly the Gnostics challenged the already established orthodox accounts of Jesus' earthly life, the less credible they became; but with post-resurrection accounts, no checks were forthcoming. They were claiming additional information vouchsafed only to the elite. He concludes that Gnosticism "was able to present its message in a sustained way as the teaching of Jesus only by separating the risen Christ from the earthly Jesus and by abandoning the attempts to show a continuity between the Jesus of the Jesus-tradition and the heavenly Christ of their faith."[49]
What is seen by some as a Gnostic challenge to historic, orthodox views of the life, teaching, and work of Jesus was actually in many cases a retreat from historical considerations entirely. Only so could the Gnostic documents attempt to establish their credibility.
*GNOSTIC UNDERDOGS?*
Although Pagels and others have provoked sympathy, if not enthusiasm, for the Gnostics as the underdogs who just happened to lose out to orthodoxy, the Gnostics' historical credentials concerning Jesus are less than compelling. It may be romantic to "root for the underdog," but the Gnostic underdogs show every sign of being heretical hangers-on who tried to harness Christian language for conceptions antithetical to early Christian teaching.
Many sympathetic with Gnosticism make much of the notion that the Gnostic writings were suppressed by the early Christian church. But this assertion does not, in itself, provide support one way or the other for the truth or falsity of Gnostic doctrine. If truth is not a matter of majority vote, neither is it a matter of minority dissent. It may be true, as Pagels says, that "the winners write history," but that doesn't necessarily make them bad or dishonest historians. If so, we should hunt down Nazi historians to give us the real picture of Hitler's Germany and relegate all opposing views to that of dogmatic apologists who just happened to be on the winning side.
In Against Heresies, Irenaeus went to great lengths to present the theologies of the various Gnostic schools in order to refute them biblically and logically. If suppression had been his concern, the book never would have been written as it was. Further, to argue cogently against the Gnostics, Irenaeus and the other anti-Gnostic apologists would presumably have had to be diligent to correctly represent their foes in order to avoid ridicule for misunderstanding them. Patrick Henry highlights this in reference to Nag Hammadi: "While the Nag Hammadi materials have made some corrections to the portrayal of Gnosticism in the anti-Gnostic writings of the church fathers, it is increasingly evident that the fathers did not fabricate their opponents' views; what distortion there is comes from selection, not from invention. It is still legitimate to use materials from the writings of the fathers to characterize Gnosticism."[50]
It is highly improbable that all of the Gnostic materials could have been systematically confiscated or destroyed by the early church. Dunn finds it unlikely that the reason we have no unambiguously first century documents from Christian Gnostics is because the early church eradicated them. He believes it more likely that we have none because there were none.[51] But by archaeological virtue of Nag Hammadi, we now do have many primary source Gnostic documents available for detailed inspection. Yet they do not receive superior marks as historical documents about Jesus. In a review of The Gnostic Gospels, noted biblical scholar Raymond Brown affirmed that from the Nag Hammadi "works we learn not a single verifiable new fact about the historical Jesus'ministry, and only a few new sayings that might possibly have been his."[52]
Another factor foreign to the interests of Gnostic apologists is the proposition that Gnosticism expired largely because it lacked life from the beginning. F. F. Bruce notes that "Gnosticism was too much bound up with a popular but passing phase of thought to have the survival power of apostolic Christianity."[53]
Exactly why did apostolic Christianity survive and thrive? Robert Speer pulls no theological punches when he proclaims that "Christianity lived because it was true to the truth. Through all the centuries it has never been able to live otherwise. It can not live otherwise today."[54]
*NOTES*
1 Herbert Butterfield, Christianity and History (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1950), 119.
2 Harold W. Attridge and George W. MacRae, "Introduction: The Gospel of Truth," in James M. Robinson, ed., The Nag Hammadi Library (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1988), 38.
3 Wesley W. Isenberg, "Introduction: The Gospel of Philip," Ibid., 139.
4 Joseph Fitzmyer, "The Gnostic Gospels According to Pagels," America, 16 Feb. 1980, 123.
5 F. F. Bruce, Jesus and Christian Origins Outside the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), 154.
6 Robinson, 434.
7 Ibid., 435.
8 Robinson, "Introduction," 2.
9 Ibid., 3.
10 Ibid., 2.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid.
13 See Ray Summers, The Secret Sayings of the Living Jesus (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1968), 14.
14 Michael Grosso, "Testing the Images of God," Gnosis, Winter 1989, 43.
15 Wesley W. Isenberg, "Introduction: The Gospel of Philip," in Robinson, 141.
16 Craig Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1987), 208.
17 Ibid.
18 See Stephan Hoeller, "Valentinus: A Gnostic for All Seasons,"Gnosis, Fall/Winter 1985, 25.
19 Ibid., 38.
20 Bentley Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1987), 251.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid.
23 C. M. Tuckett, "Synoptic Tradition in the Gospel of Truth and the Testimony of Truth," Journal of Theological Studies 35 (1984):145.
24 Blomberg, 213-14.
25 Andrew K. Hembold, The Nag Hammadi Texts and the Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1967), 88-89.
26 Christopher Tuckett, "Synoptic Tradition in Some Nag Hammadi and Related Texts," Vigiliae Christiane 36 (July 1982):184.
27 Robinson, 32.
28 Ibid.
29 Francis E. Williams, "Introduction: The Apocryphon of James," in Robinson, 30.
30 Blomberg, 213.
31 Robert Winterhalter, The Fifth Gospel (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1988), 13.
32 Robinson, 131; See Bruce, Jesus and Christian Origins, 130-31.
33 Robinson, 131.
34 Ibid., 132.
35 Layton, 377.
36 See Craig L. Blomberg, "Tradition and Redaction in the Parables of the Gospel of Thomas," Gospel Perspectives 5: 177-205.
37 Blomberg, Historical Reliability, 211.
38 Ibid., 212.
39 See Joseph A. Fitzmyer, "The Oxyrhynchus Logoie of Jesus and the Coptic Gospel According to Thomas," in Joseph Fitzmyer, Essays on the Semitic Background of the New Testament (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1974), 355-433.
40 James D. G. Dunn, The Evidence for Jesus (Philadelphia, PA:Westminster Press, 1985), 101.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid., 102.
43 Ibid.
44 Marvin W. Meyer, "Jesus in the Nag Hammadi Library," Reformed Journal (June 1979):15.
45 Winterhalter, 4.
46 Robert M. Grant with David Noel Freedman, The Secret Sayings of Jesus (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1960), 115.
47 Fitzmyer, "The Gnostic Gospels According to Pagels," 123.
48 James Dunn, Unity and Diversity in the New Testament (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1977), 287-88.
49 Ibid., 288; see also Blomberg, Historical Reliability, 219.
50 Patrick Henry, New Directions (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1977), 282.
51 Dunn, The Evidence, 97-98.
52 Raymond E. Brown, "The Gnostic Gospels," The New York Times Book Review, 20 Jan. 1980, 3.
53 F. F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 278.
54 Robert E. Speer, The Finality of Jesus Christ (Westwood, NJ:Fleming H. Revell Company, 1933), 108.
We see the First Century Christian Church expansion in Europe as the beginning of a new era in history. Those who shared in it then saw an end rather than a beginning. They believed "The end of the ages" had come upon them.
The writers of the literature of the apostolic age worked under this conviction. They did not intend their work for the permanent authority of a Church militant here on earth." A generation expecting to survive to see the end of history and the inauguration of God's kingdom needed no such literature. So the ew Testament, as a collection of Scriptures, was an undesigned and unforeseen roduct of the apostolic age.
The fervor of the first age cooled. The fulfilment of its early hope did not happen. A large and widespread body of believers found themselves in a changed world. Moreover, they had changed emphasis. They cherished the faith and the ideals they had learned from the first evangelists. The making of the New Testament shows how Christian Society protected itself from breaking up.
Christian Society looked to a recognized collection of apostolic writings. We are going to try to show how people of those times collected these books. We'll try to show how Christians and others compacted them into a single body of Christian Scripture. A New Testament took its place beside the Scriptures of the Old Testament inherited from the Jewish Church. We'll see that by the end of the Second Century people had already completed in idea the New Testament. Not until the Fourth Century did they draw the exact limits of the Canon finally and firmly.
But first we must turn to the Apostolic Church itself. The Christians of the first age had no idea of adding to Scriptures. Many of them were Jews. All of them, like the Jews, recognized the authority of the Old Testament. They differed from unconverted Jews Ä and sometimes also between themselves Ä only as to its interpretation and application. Jesus was the Messiah whom the prophets had foretold. Christians found in the Old Testament the justification for their faith. In addition to the Old Testament, the Church had authorities of its own from early days in written form. These writings provided the materials for the New Testament of the Second Century.
1. Sayings of Jesus Ä A natural authority attached itself to the sayings and instructions of Jesus. Collections of His sayings buried themselves in later forms of Gospel. The collections must date back to early times. Paul quotes a "word of the Lord" as a certain source. The Second and Third Century Nag Hammadi Scrolls give examples of these sayings in fragmented fashion.
2. Apostolic Letters Ä Authority attached to the Twelve and also to other Apostles. "God has set the Apostles first in the Church" (I Cor. xii, 28). By word when present, and by epistle when absent, Paul claimed to direct the Churches he had founded. He met sometimes with opposition. He intended his Epistles for the people to read in public to the assembled congregation. In some cases, at any rate, the Churches to which he addressed them preserved and treasured those letters.
3. Prophecies Ä Perhaps the nearest approach to a Christian Scripture in the apostolic age was the prophecy. One example finally entered the Canon. The author of the Apocalypse claimed direct inspiration for his work. He pronounced a curse on any who should diminish or add to the words he has written. The form of the curse is as old as Amen Hetep Son of Hapu, the grand factotum of King Tut's father Amen Hetep III. This same man likely held the same position with the son Akhu En Aten and with Tut himself. He is also the best candidate for the Historical Joseph. The curse has deep roots.
4. Church Order Ä Lastly, we may note a work claiming to give the teaching of the Lord through the 12 Apostles, the Didache. This work contains a summary guide to Christian morals and instructions about the chief institutions of the Church. Its exact date and its exact place of origin are uncertain. It may date from the later years of the First Century.
At that time the leadership of the Church was passing. Enthusiastic missionaries of the first age were becoming local ministers. These leaderships composed the Didache either in Syria or Palestine. The document is the forerunner of the later Church Orders. The Canon of Scripture does not contain this class of writing.
We have no certain knowledge as to how or where the Church formed the fourfold Gospel Canon. Clement of Rome (c. A.D. 97) and Polycarp (c.112) both quote "Sayings of the Lord". They did so in forms independent of any later canonical Gospels. Adopted by one or other of the Churches, each canonical Gospel gained currency and prestige. The Nag Hammadi Scrolls, mentioned above, were the property of the Coptic Church. They had scant prestige compared to the documents of other Churches. The Coptic Church centred in Egypt. By this time Egypt was out of the main stream of the life of the Roman Empire.
Mark wrote his Gospel in Egypt after a short stay in Rome. The crucifixion of Peter had cut short the visit. Mark's return to Italy and martyrdom assured associating Mark with Rome. From there, his Gospel gained currency in other Churches. However, the prestige of Italy was such that only in this century did Venice return Mark's bones to Egypt.
Matthew was a revised and expanded Mark. Christians used Matthew at Antioch at the beginning of the 2nd Century. John had a strong connection with Ephesus. Some think that the fourfold Gospel began in Asia Minor. There, we see some study of the merits of the Gospels early in the 2nd Century. Others think it more likely that the fourfold Gospel came from Rome.
In any case it represents concerted action to standardize the Gospel committed to the Church. Perhaps the apocryphal Gospel of Peter provides our earliest testimony of the fourfold Gospel. The writer appears to depend upon all four.
Somewhat later (c.170), Tatian at Rome undertakes in his Diatessaron to combine the four into a single harmony. To Irenaeus (c.185) four Gospels were as natural as four winds and four quarters of the earth. The fourfold Gospel had by then come into existence.
A collection of Pauline Epistles, including the Pastoral Epistles, dates from the beginning of the 2nd Century at latest. Ignatius (c.112) shows acquaintance with six Pauline Epistles, including I Timothy and Titus. The Epistle of Polycarp shortly afterwards refers to nine Epistles. These included I and II Timothy. The gnostic heresy merchants also held the Pauline Epistles in high esteem.
Marcion (c.140) was a wealthy businessman converted from paganism. He would accept only a shortened version of Luke's Gospel and a collection of ten Pauline Epistles. He did not acknowledge Paul's Pastoral Epistles. His reason is not clear. Nonetheless, he also rejected the authority of the Old Testament. Perhaps his unusual thinking about the nature of God showed the reasons. His thinking clearly upset the Church.
After much controversy, most Christians rejected his views. He took a modern view of the nature of God and of Jesus. Some would see his views rooted in pagan philosophy. He saw them as rooted in religion. His heresy soon died out in the West. However, it lasted in the East until the Seventh Century when it suddenly disappeared. With the reformation, Marcion's thinking surfaced among many anti-clerical groups.
By the middle of the 2nd Century, the two chief parts of the New Testament had taken shape. Churches read apostolic writings in public worship. They combined these readings with lections from Old Testament Scriptures. This action prepared the way for the idea of a Canon of Scriptures of the New Testament. The New Testament was not yet.
Justin (c.150) was familiar with the four Gospels. When he speaks of Scriptures, he meant the Old Testament. Justin's chief apologetic argument is that Christ fulfilled the prophecies of the Old Testament. The Gospels and Epistles told of those realizations. Heretical movements challenged these records. The conflicts hastened the full recognition of the Gospels and Epistles as Scripture.
Marcion was the first to conceive of a collection of Christian Scriptures. This followed from his rejection of the Old Testament. He used for doctrinal authority a mutilated edition of Luke's Gospel and of ten Pauline Epistles, not including the Pastorals. At that time, the Church wanted to rely on the Old Testament. Yet a heretic could not exceed it in giving more authority to apostolic writings. The Church replied to Marcion with the construction of a fuller and more authentic collection of apostolic writings. The Church could set these alongside the Old Testament Scriptures.
The Montanist revival of primitive Christian prophecy also fostered the idea of a fixed Canon of apostolic scripture. Montanism was a movement acting against Churches and Church orders with unregulated and enthusiastic claims to inspiration. Montanism appealed directly to the traditions of the earliest apostles.To counter this movement, the Church encouraged a higher conception of the apostolic writings.
Scholars suspect that the Roman Church acted deliberately to compile the New Testament Canon. Pressure from Churches in Syria and east of Syria to offer contrary views hastened that action.
The end of the Second Century arrived and the Third Century began. Christian literature then shows widespread agreement about the nucleus of the Canon. Many knew the four Gospels, Acts, 13 Pauline Epistles, and usually Jude, I John or I Peter. The last named was perhaps not in the earliest Canon of the African Church.
The Western Church accepted the Apocalypse of John. They usually held the Epistle of James to be apostolic and canonical. Clement of Alexandria allowed apostolic status to the Epistle of Barnabas, the Apocalypse of Peter, and the Epistle of Clement of Rome. Clement also quotes the Didache as Scripture. On the other hand, he did not receive the Epistles of James, II Peter and III John.
The Syriac-speaking Church of Edessa and Mesopotamia showed an important exception to this practice. This Church accepted as its Canon the Diatessaron of Tatian with the Acts and the Pauline Epistles. Soon they added a version of the four separated Gospels to the Diatessaron. The Diatessaron retained its place in public worship.
During the 3rd Century, the influence of Origen encouraged a wider Canon. He knew all the Epistles that were later recognized. But he expressed hesitation about James, II Peter and II and III John.
The Canon assumed its final form during the 4th Century. It first appears in the 39th Festal Letter of Athanasius, A.D. 367. Egypt was lax and uncertain about the exact contents of the New Testament. Athanasius set out to restore order. His influence both in East and West secured the victory for his Canon along with the victory of Nicene Christianity.
Other traditions held their own for a time. Thus, the School of Antioch in general accepted only three Epistles Ä James, I Peter, I John. One of Antioch's most illustrious representatives was Theodore of Mopsuestia. He rejected all of this section of the Canon. Cyril of Jerusalem and Gregory of Naziansum represented the Eusebian or Western tradition. Their canon was already in virtual accord with Athanasius. However, they hesitated recognizing the Apocalypse.
The West followed the lead of Athanasius. In 382, a synod took place at Rome under Pope Damascus. Jerome secured the adoption of a list of books answering to that of Athanasius. Pope Gelasius ratified this list at the end of the 5th Century. The province of Africa confirmed the same list independently. This happened in a series of synods at Hippo Regius in 393. Augustine managed likewise at Carthage in 397 and 419. Though Augustine accepted the canonicity of Hebrews, he still felt doubt as to Paul's authorship.
The second Trullan Council took place in 692. Its second Canon, the Quinisextum, formally closed the Canon for East and West. The Syriac-speaking Churches had a different tradition from that of the rest of the Church. The Canon of the New Testament connected the Church firmly to its beginnings.
The process yielded mixed results. Appealing to the authority of the apostolic age went along with lessening the sense of inspiration. The change from apostolic literature to apostolic scripture required an artificial explanation. This was similar to the one Jews had already learned to apply to the Old Testament.
The process ignored historical content and context. Doing so often obscured the original meaning of the text. The Canon only received systematic criticism in the 18th Century. Then a scientific historical explanation could arise. For the ancient Church, Old and New Testaments together came to form "one book." The ancient method preserved the Church from some of the most serious evils of a religion of a book. The retention of the Old Testament as authoritative Scripture introduced "a wholesome element of complication" into the idea of the Canon. Because of that, single views derived from scripture were hard to achieve. Dogmatism required more than scripture.
Once formed, the New Testament took precedence of the Old Testament. Yet the Old Testament retained its place and its prestige. But the New Testament Canon had became the authority over the Christian Church. The personality of Jesus Christ appealed through the teaching of His most influential apostle. This view became the authority. The bias persists.
Tom Simms
---Part 1: Introductory Statements---
Linda:
Well, I don't know about you, but everywhere I turn these days, it seems that Jesus is there--that is the debate about the historic Jesus. As you've seen from the opening graphics of tonight's program, the quest for the historical Jesus has permeated nearly all forms of media. What's going on? Is all this attention just a calculated public relations campaign by the Jesus Seminar to draw attention to itself? That's the opinion of one of our more outspoken panelists here tonight. Or, is there a deep seated interest in knowing who Jesus really was and how that impacts or doesn't impact on our faith today? I'm Linda Hanick, Good Evening and welcome to ETCN's follow-up program to Jesus At 2000.
I have here with me tonight in New York, where what going to be a very lively panel discussion--welcome everyone--and we're going to continue the conversation that began in Corvallis Oregon. But, before we meet everyone here, we have a special guest who is coming to us live from Texas and that is Tom Wright. Good Evening Tom!
N.T. (Tom) Wright:
Good Evening, Hello.
Linda:
It's good to see you and hear you. Tom is the Dean of Litchfield Cathedral in England. He's also a New Testament scholar. And, presently Tom, I understand, you are on a tour of the United States giving a seminar on "Jesus Then and Now". How's it going?
Tom:
It's going very well. We had a wonderful seminar in Orlando, Florida a couple of days ago, and we're looking forward to being with the seminar here in Dallas tomorrow, then Oaklahoma City the next day, and Chicago the day after, so it's going very well.
Linda:
You're probably getting a better tour of the U.S. than most of us sitting here tonight. Well, we're going to be coming back to you shortly with our opening questions, but before we do let's meet our other panelists. Sitting on my far right is John Dominic Crossan, who we're going to be calling "Dom" for short. Dom is a retired professor of Biblical studies at DePaul University in Chicago. You are now presently living in Florida where you are writing. I know you are here in New York not just for this but you're up at Alburn Institute. What are you teaching up there in the next couple of days?
John Dominic Crossan (Dom) Well, Tom went to Orlando, so I left Orlando and came to New York. (chuckles) I'm doing a continuing education course in Alburn yesterday, today and tomorrow on the Historical Jesus.
Linda:
I suspect we're going to get a lot of interesting comments because you'll be bringing them in from both places. Sitting opposite from Dom Crossan is Deirdre Good. And Deirdre comes to us this evening from the faculty of General Theological Seminary where she is a New Testament professor with a special interest in the Gnostic Gospels. Deirdre, we're so glad to have you. And I know, Deirdre was the downlink panel discussion coordinator here in New York during the Jesus at 2000, so you really have heard a lot of what people have been thinking and reacting.
Deirdre:
Yes, I think there's a great deal of interest in the subject. My parish is here and some of the seminary students are here so it's very exciting.
Linda:
On my left is Marcus Borg who we got to know well out in Corvallis Oregon in the floods. Marcus has just returned from a two week trip to Israel where you've been with your wife Marianne, and a church group. He is the Professor of Religion and Culture at Oregon State University and the author of "Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time". Any new insights in Israel while you were there?
Marcus:
Yes as a matter of fact, primarily from seeing Bethsaida a brand new site that's just on the verge of being open to the public and also the magnificent excavation south of the Temple Wall in Jerusalem. Very impressive historically.
Linda: On my right so I can keep my eye on him tonight is Luke Timothy Johnson. Luke comes to us from Atlanta where is the Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at Candler Theological Seminary and Evory University. He is the author of "The Real Jesus". Everything I read in the last couple weeks says that you're a former Benedictine monk and the father of seven children.
Luke: I'm pleased to report that this did not happen simultaneously. It did happen in sequence and in fact the youngest of our children will be graduating from Indiana University day after tomorrow so I'm flying out there to take part in that.
Linda: So the tuition payments will end.
Luke: Luckily.
Linda: What will you spend your time and money on? (chuckles) Ok, let me say right up front that two of our panelists here Marcus and Dom as many of you know are members of the Jesus Seminar. But our program tonight is not about the Seminar itself. What we want to do this evening is look at some of the questions and issues that have been raised by the work of the Seminar on the historical Jesus and to see if together we can explore this territory on a new level. So, why don't we begin. What I'd like to do is, I'm going to ask an opening question. Tom, I'm going to start with you in Dallas. If each of you can take a minute and a half, no longer, so that our viewers can get a sense of you all stand on the landscape of you image and model of Jesus. The question, Tom, is the question that Jesus posed to Peter, "Who do you say that I am?"
Tom: Well, I think the critical thing to say is that Jesus believed he was living at the climactic moment of history. He wasn't just a teacher of general timeless truths or even of a general political agenda that might be applied any time any place. He believed he was standing at the corner of history - the corner of Israel's history and hence because of Israel's calling, the corner of world history. And he believed that it was his vocation to announce God's Sovereign Rule - God's Kingdom if you like - not just in the ordinary Jewish sense of God is going to be "King or the Romans are going to get their come-uppance" but in the much more specific sense that now at last God was going to be King of the whole world, everything was going to be different. And he believed that it was his calling to take Israel and hence the world around that corner once and for all time. And one of the words that got attached to that in various senses was this word "Messiah" or "Christ" but Jesus redefined that around himself. He drew upon himself the whole picture of Messiahship that different Jews in that period might have been sketching in different ways. And within that again Jesus believed that he had the vocation to deal with the radical evil that had infected the world once and for all. And that is why he not only announced the Kingdom of God, he lived it, he enacted it symbolically, and ultimately he died for it. And that is at the heart of what it meant for Jesus to be the one who would bring the world to its great climatic moment.
Linda: OK, Tom let's hold that thought. Dom, "Who do you say that I am?"
Dom: What's most important for me about Jesus, is that he didn't ask that question. Jesus didn't talk about himself. He talked about the Kingdom of God. The "Our Father" is not a prayer to Jesus. It's Jesus' prayer about the Kingdom of God. So if I were to try and summarize it, Jesus is located in the situation which is terribly specific. It's in Lower Galilee, under Antipas in a time of Roman urbanization. And what Jesus said is this system as here represented is not the will of God. The Kingdom of God stands opposed to it. So if I were to put it in a sort of a sound bite in honor of the medium in which we are in, as a historian I reconstruct Jesus as "a peasant with and attitude". (chuckles) But as a Christian I consider and believe that that attitude is the attitude of God.
Linda: OK. Can I still say "Who do I say that I am?" even though it's not historically true?
Dom: I come very close to saying the exact same thing that Tom says. I am the one - if you ask Jesus - who asks you to live the Kingdom, to enact the Kingdom, and to live out of the Kingdom as I do. I am the one who invites you to take the Kingdom, to enter the Kingdom.
Linda: We're going go across the table here to Deirdre Good. Deirdre, who do you say that Jesus is? What is your image?
Deirdre: Well, for me first of all, Jesus is a Jew in the first century. I think you'll find some common ground amongst all of us there. But the Judaisms of the Second Temple period are quite diverse and so we need to say more about what it meant for Jesus to be a Jew - certainly one who practiced Judaism. He, I think advocated paying the Temple tax, I think advocated adhering to purity laws. So, I think as a religious man primarily that's a major part of Jesus' identity. I think also the proclamation of the proximity of God' s Kingdom is terribly important not so much as the guaranteed surety but rather as the invitation. I think for me the important thing is that Jesus doesn't proclaim the message of God's Kingdom once but in many and various ways the parables of which we have many in and outside the canon are examples of the constant challenge of God's Kingdom. I think the message that the Gospels present us with - and they too are affecting who all Jesus is - is that in course of Jesus' life the meaning of who he is is to be worked out. In other words it's not a sound bite here and now, That's not the answer once and for all, it's rather who do you say Jesus is and the totality of his life also being that question.
Linda: OK. We'll get back to some of the issues that raises, but Marcus, who do you say that Jesus is?
Marcus: My image of Jesus actually combines two images of Jesus in a dialectical relationship - an image of the Pre-Easter Jesus and and image of the Post-Easter Jesus. By the Pre-Easter Jesus I mean of course, Jesus as a figure of history before his death. And I see my image of the Pre-Easter Jesus that he has a spirit dimension to him, a wisdom dimension to him, a political dimension to him. And of those three the one that I highlight most in my own work is that he was a spirit person, that is one of those people with an experiential awareness of the sacred. A Jewish mystic if you will.
But to return to the three, he was a God-intoxicated Jew who was a wisdom teacher and a social prophet. And then by the Post-Easter Jesus I mean what Jesus became after his death. It's the Jesus of both Christian tradition and experience.
Both nouns are important. By the Jesus of Christian tradition I mean the Jesus who emerges in the New Testament in the Gospels and ultimately also in the Creeds. And of Christian experience I mean the Post-Easter Jesus is actually experienced as a living reality both then and now. And then in a nutshell my image of the Post-Easter Jesus would be that the Post-Easter Jesus is the Son of God, the Wisdom of God, the Word of God, and ultimately One with God.
Linda: Luke, who do you say that Jesus is?
Luke: I begin with the belief that Jesus is a living person. So the response to that question is that Jesus is risen Lord, Jesus is Lord. And as a living person, I think the images that we have for Jesus are multiple, as multiple as the experience of Jesus that continues in the world. The sacramental experience of Jesus. The experience of Jesus in prayer. The reading of Jesus out of the pages of the Gospels. So, thinking about Jesus as a living person, I find it impossible to attach a single image. Jesus is as richly diverse and multifaceted as my wife Joy is - actually more than my wife Joy is. No offence to Joy but an honor to Jesus. When I first met my wife, I felt fairly confident about being able to say who she was. After 20 years of marriage I find that it's less and less possible to reduce her to a simple image or to a single story. She constantly reveals herself in new ways.
And when I read the pages of the Gospels, I find the same multi-faceted rendering of Jesus. Each of the Gospels renders Jesus in different ways - Jesus as Prophet, Jesus as Revealer. If I were to say that there's some central governing image of Jesus in the Gospels, that for me the most telling, the most normative, I find it in the narrative rendering of Jesus as the suffering obedient Son of God who in radical obedience to God gave his life in loving service to others. That image of Jesus I find pervades the Gospels and the other early Christian writings and gives some kind of normative shape to the continuing experience of Jesus in the Church.
Linda: OK. Now listening to all of you, I could say I've just heard five Gospels portraits of Jesus. Why do I have to choose? Do I have to choose? Can we bring all of these together? Where do any of you see really strong differences that really matters to the Christian faith?
Tom: Can I jump in here? What we have around the table is Deirdre, Marc, Luke, Dom and Thomas. And since I'm Thomas here, I get the Vaudeville seat. I think the biggest difference between what certainly I'm saying and Dom and Marc are saying (I'm not sure yet about Deirdre and Luke on this occasion) is that I believe Jesus understood himself to be living at a unique moment - the unique moment - in Israel's history and the world history. This is what I mean by the technical term Eschatology. I don't think that's about simply a new experience of God or a new idea about organizing one's life which might apply at anytime. I think it's the critical difference between those who see Jesus standing at the turning point of all history and those who think he was simply a teacher of some sort who might in principle have been looking at any time. That's the main difference I think.
Luke: I think another difference is the degree of confidence that one has in our ability to say as Tom just did, Jesus thought of himself in this way or that. And to some extent, my approach I think, is distinctive by being on the one hand affirming very very strongly the experience of Jesus as resurrected Lord, which is a religious affirmation and a certain degree of caution about the ability of history to adequately comprehend Jesus. And I resist for example, Tom's confidence in saying "Jesus saw himself". As a critical reader of the Gospel, I find it difficult to get inside Jesus' head historically. And I think it raises a real issue of appropriate historical standards.
Linda: Dom, your eyebrows are knitted, so...
Dom: I would never consider I'm getting inside of Jesus' head, because I don't think I could get inside my own head very securely or anyone else's head. I can see what they're doing in terms of their vision and their program. And that's what I'm talking...
Linda: Who do you mean "they"?
Dom: Jesus. Sorry. I can see what Jesus is talking about if he says, as I think he does, blessed are the destitute. I can figure out what he might mean by that. To get inside his head, I can not do with Jesus, because I can not do with anyone in that sense. So it's not that I'm protecting Jesus with a sort of cocoon of unknowability. That really has to do with all of us. But we can see the program and I do not want to protect Jesus from history.
Linda: How... Deirdre go ahead.
Deirdre: I just want to say in regard to your first question whether we must choose between what Tom has mentioned as five alternatives one answer might be that in fact we shouldn't choose between any of them, but we should include as many other voices as possible in the conversation we knew other than the colleagues who have written and are writing on the historical Jesus and we know those in our faith traditions and outside of our faith traditions. In other words, from the point of view of the knowledge question, the totality of the interpretations is the beginning of the answer to the meaning of Jesus, rather than saying can we or can we not get inside his head.
Tom: That may be so, (if I may jump in). I think the critical difference is between trying to do psychoanalysis of a figure of the past -- and I know that does happen in some pseudohistorical attempts -- but I agree with Dom, if that's what you mean by "getting inside of Jesus' head", then none of us should be trying to do that. What we can do in principle with any figure of the past about whom we have reasonable information, is to talk about their motivations, what so to speak "made them tick", not at the level of Freud would understand or whatever but at the level of "what was he driving at - what was he getting at". So I think if we can keep that distinction, then I agree to this extent with Dom Crossan over against Luke Johnson, we can ask those questions about Jesus and indeed I want to say as a Christian, we have an obligation to ask them.
Marcus: I would simply say that I think that we can know quite a bit about the intentionality of Jesus as I understand Tom to be using that notion. But I'm skeptical that we can know very much about what kind of role Jesus himself felt himself to be playing in all of that. Because it's precisely there that the community is most reflecting on what is the real significance of what has happened here. And so as a historian I have to systematically suspect those Post-Easter explanations of Jesus' role at the center of history and so forth.
Luke: I agree and I think that apart from the question here is the degree to which history can get at certain things. And I think that a large part of the conversation has revolved not about whether Jesus should be protected from history, Dom, which I don't think I think is perfectly legitimate, to engage the figure of Jesus historically. And I think as simply as an intellectual task this is legitimate to historical questions about Jesus. I think where I differ from certainly from Tom and I think from both of you -- Deirdre has not published her own version of this yet so I can't respond to her's as such, but I think where I differ is in the way in which we can feel confident about that reconstruction. It's not that we're protecting Jesus from historical examination. The question the way I pose it is: When history tries to do what history can not do, does not the subject itself become distorted and does not historical method become distorted?
Tom: Well the question of whether history can do this or not is precisely the question that is open, and that's what the whole discussion is about and that's why I agree with Deirdre that we need to listen to one another as colleagues within the discipline and so which bit of evidence are you using and how does that fit together. And we do this with all sorts of other figures of ancient history about whom we know actually far less than we know about Jesus, whether it's Alexander the Great or Claudius Caesar or whatever, we are doing critical readings of texts. That doesn't stop historians saying 'here is the general picture - this is how it makes sense'. There is a certain knowing which is proper to historical knowing. And that includes -- I think if I might address Marc just for a second -- includes the possibility that we can study people's awareness of their own vocation. We know for example that St. Paul (whatever you might think of him), we know that he really did believe that he had vocation to be the apostle to the Gentiles. We likewise know that John the Baptist believed presumably that he had a vocation to go and splash water over people in the Jordan. Now, if we could say that of figures about whom we really don't have nearly as much information as Jesus, I don't see why we shouldn't in principle say Jesus believed he had likewise a unique vocation to do these certain things at the climax of God's Plan for Israel and the world.
Marcus: The enormous difference of course is that we have Paul's own self statement about that but we don't have anything like that from Jesus.
Tom: Well I think we do actually, I mean that parable after parable we have all sorts of things where Jesus is saying things obliquely but which continually reflect back on himself so that I think it's a great oversimplification, if I may say so to Dom, something he said earlier to say, 'well, Jesus talked about the Kingdom of God, only then it was the Church or whoever came and talked about Jesus. Again and again Jesus says all sorts of oblique things which when you cash them out point back at himself. That's why he constantly says 'if you have ears then you'd better listen'. It's a way of saying 'figure it out - work it out'. The interesting thing historically about that is that the early Church had no such reticence - they came right out 'He is the Lord, He is the Messiah, He is the Savior'. And when we find those very reticent statements, I think as a historian 'where do they belong historically'. I think they belong much better in the ministry of Jesus himself than later in the early Church.
Dom: That is a fundamental question of evidence. The evidence as I read it is that the Kingdom of God is the most securely early statement that Jesus talks about. I mentioned the "Our Father". That's not a prayer to Jesus. That's a prayer about the Kingdom of God. Now I take that very seriously. Jesus could talk about himself. I don't think he did and my lead challenge is: is talking about Jesus the safest way of avoiding talking about the Kingdom of God.
Tom: Absolutely not. That's not at all my agenda, as I think you know Dom. I am very keen that we talk about the Kingdom of God and that we see that not simply as a one level one dimensional idea. If somebody in first century Judaism says 'the Kingdom of God is happening here and now' that inevitably carries a self-reference which says 'join this movement'. There's no question Jesus was at the head of a movement. I know from Marc's work that he thinks Jesus intended that should be so, that he was a movement founder or catalyzer. And it seems to me there is therefore precisely because he is saying 'here is the Kingdom of God here and now' there is an implicit self-reference.
Linda: Luke, you want to jump in?
Luke: I would like to jump in, always ready to jump in. Tom, I'd like to return to your point that we base historical judgements on figures about whom we have much less information than Jesus. That's certainly true, but your statement could be turned the other way, in some sense that's the problem with Jesus. Very often our judgements on historical figures are based on the thinnest of evidence. And because we have only a tiny bit of evidence, we go ahead and make those judgements. The really critical issue with Jesus is that we have at one level very fine evidence written within 30 or 40 years of his death, but the critical problem is that these versions can not be made absolutely to cohere - absolutely to agree. And the sorting out of these versions, the sorting out of the images of Jesus, what might be called the historical task is one which seems inevitably in the whole history of the quest for the historical Jesus to end up with reconstructions which represent selections out of that data which more often than not reflect the proclivities of the investigator. And that's where the debate comes in.
Tom: I agree of course that's what's happened again and again within the whole debate. There's no question about that. What matters then is that within our scholarly discourse we say "well, you managed to get these bits of the data into this picture" and "I managed to get those bits of the data into some other picture". Let's see if we can't actually expand our categories a bit more so that there are different categories that might stretch all our minds and all our perspectives where we might actually be able to get more of the stuff in. That's what good history does. It doesn't leave the data scattered around all over the floor labeled with different colors. It says our task is to get the data in, and to do so in a coherent way. And I still believe that is actually in principle a possible task, not least because
Luke, I hear what you say about the narrative shape of Jesus and what we know about him from that point of view and I say 'yes, but there's a lot more that will actually fit into that when we really understand it'.
Linda: Now as someone who has been reading a lot of the magazine articles that have been coming out the way the debate is shaping up in the public media is that one has to make a choice between history and faith. Are you saying that, Luke? That we either go with the narrative or one goes with the history. Is there a possibility of bringing the two together?
Luke: Well, I think the question is, as the title of my book put it, "Who is the Real Jesus?" If Jesus is in fact risen Lord, Jesus is a living presence, then the experience of Jesus, the personhood of Jesus, who Jesus is is an ongoing process, an ongoing revelation in the light of which his entire identity must be evaluated. If that is true, as I claim that it is, then the Gospels that read Jesus from the same perspective, that is to say from the perspective of his resurrection are truth, in other words they capture his true identity. Now the difficulty is of course that getting at what is historical in the earthly Jesus - if I could make that distinction - or coming up with a historical reconstruction of the earthly Jesus, runs into the same problem that we've been talking about, namely, the disagreements between the sources and this faith perspective. Where I disagree with some of my colleagues here, is I sense that what they are doing is making that historical reconstruction normative for faith. As Dom put it, Jesus vision should be our vision. And Marcus has said something very similar, we should see things the way Jesus saw them. And I find that makes a very fragile historical reconstruction trump the images of Jesus in the Gospel which are images shaped by faith. And I find that very difficult.
Marcus: If I may come in here. I think that's an inaccurate representation of what I am in fact am saying and have said that for me as a Christian both the Pre-Easter Jesus and the Post-Easter Jesus are relevant for faith and I don't see the Pre-Easter Jesus as normative over against the Post-Easter Jesus. I think there are points at which some of the post Easter developments can be questioned in light of what we can know with some level of probability about the Pre-Easter Jesus. But my own position has been "both and" and not making the historian the arbiter of what Christians may believe.
Tom: If I may jump in here and ask Marc: To what extent is this different from the old split between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith? I have wondered in reading your recent stuff, Marc, to what extent you can actually claim anything other than a private personal experience for your Post-Easter Jesus that you worship and that you are devoted to. I want to know, how do we plot the continuity -- this is a question to Luke as well actually, because I think that Luke and Marc here are actually quite similar in having a Jesus over there and a Jesus over there who are significantly different and yet you want to have some sort of continuity -- how do you know, in other words, that the Post-Easter person or that the canonical person or whoever that you are talking about really is Jesus. Why call him Jesus if he isn't exactly the same as the one who was doing what he did before he was crucified?
Marcus: For me in part it's because the Post-Easter Jesus is the Jesus of Christian tradition and not just the Jesus of private religious experience, so the images of the New Testament itself provide a form of control. And secondly I used the phrase without explanation in my initial statement.
I see these two images of Jesus as being in a dialectical relationship with each other - a back and forth conversation if you will - so that there's a sense in which I'm willing to say the Pre-Easter Jesus was the incarnation of the Word of God, the Wisdom of God, the Spirit of God and so forth, so there's continuity at that level.
Tom: But you would also say he didn't know any of that, he didn't believe any of that, he didn't think any of that at the level of even vocation.
Marcus: Probably I would say that, yes.
Tom: But isn't what you are then saying about the Church tradition as being the larger thing, than you as just an individual which I hear. Isn't that still in essence a private game which the church is playing and which somebody else from outside -- and this is where of course the question of the historical Jesus comes around...
Linda: We have everyone here shaking their head on that one.
Dom: That comes dangerously close to caricaturing people's position. No, I don't think that's true at all. When you talk about the fact that we very often see our own image, that's a bad habit we've picked up from Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. We have four Gospels. Each of them understands the historical Jesus. Each of them goes back to the Twenties as it were. They tell of Jesus that makes sense to the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties. Four different Jesus's.
That's where I learned to do it. That's what happens in a Gospel. So as I understand it, the destiny of the Christian Church, always over and over and over again, to try and understand the historical Jesus as their Christ of faith. It's a dialectic -- I accept Marc's term completely. Both parts of it are eternally valid because our models are in the New Testament. We've got four of them.
Linda: I'm going to jump in here to tell our viewers that we're going to be putting our 800 number up on the screen. We welcome you to call in. There's also a fax number for those of you who don't the telephone there. So you can call in if you have questions. (Numbers onscreen) -------------------------------
Linda: What is it about the historical Jesus which convinced people in the First Century that he was an incarnation of God? It seems like that happened very early on - historical and the faith.
Dom: 33 If I for example was a peasant in lower Galilee, had been dispossessed by the urbanization of Herod Antipas and this was part of the whole Roman system and everyone was telling me this is part of life and then somebody stands up and in the name of the radical justice of Israel's God, says "no way, this is not God, this is not the Kingdom of God -- the Kingdom of God is against this". Then I have to make a choice, where do I find God? And if I like, and start finding it with Jesus, I am beginning what I'm going to call somewhat anachronistically the beginnings of Christian faith. Now of course, not Christian over against Jewish, but this is the beginning of faith for me. Faith of course for me before Easter.
Tom: 34 Can I just say...
Linda: Do you want to let him go? Shall we let him go?(chuckles) Very quick and then your comment.
Tom: 34 I just what to say that I don't disagree at one level with what Dom is saying, but it seems to me he's screening out systematically the great chunk of evidence which says that not only is this just a social protest such as might happen any time any place, but this is the unique climatic moment where God is becoming King. And when we study in detail and historically for all it's worth what Jesus actually means by that it's not just a protest against the Roman system, Antipas' system -- it's a way of saying that there is a different way even of being revolutionary. Jesus is a double revolutionary. He is revolutionary both against "the system" and against the normal way of being revolutionary.
Dom: But you surely know I agree with that.
Tom: Yeah, but we have different ways of hashing it out.
Linda: OK, Luke
Luke: 35 I'd like to pick up on Tom's statement on continuity because I think it does represent kind of a dividing line between approaches here. You asked the question "what would make somebody consider the historical Jesus to be incarnate God?" And I think that's a splendid way of posing the question. First it raises the conceptual issue of: should we talk about the earthly Jesus or the human Jesus as opposed to the historical Jesus? And that's a distinction I have been trying to make, namely, too...
Linda: Wait a minute. You're distinguishing the earthly from the historical?
Luke: 35 That's correct. Because when I use the term historical it's a very ambiguous term and it can mean several things. It can mean this person who lived and acted and so forth - all of whom we agree we can know something about. But there is also a historical Jesus who is the historian's reconstruction of Jesus. We have to be very careful not simply to equate those those two things. And that's part of the difficulty here, that very often, we make, I make statements about who Jesus is in the Gospels with considerable confidence because it's the Jesus of this Gospel. If you were to ask me, can I verify that as a historian, I quiver, because I think, no. That historical task is more daunting. Do I as a reader...
Tom jumps in: But that's what other historians do all the time.
Luke: I know that Tom. I'm talking about me as a historian. I have a higher, ah, lower quiver tolerance than others. (chuckles)
Tom: Let me encourage you to be bold and actually try it out.
Luke: 36 The second point however is this, that certainly all of us around this table or sitting in these chairs, even in Dallas are going to affirm that there is some kind of continuity between the human person Jesus and the person confessed by the faith to be risen Lord. What I think that Tom downplays and I think my colleagues here tend to downplay is the discontinuity that is the resurrection experience. And the way in which the death of Jesus as Paul says was "a scandal and a stumbling block" and in a sense the contradiction of his Messianic claims, and that it was the resurrection experience, the experience of the empowerment of Jesus in the community that led them to re-read his life in the light of that resurrection and in the light of the symbols of Scripture and render him as he is rendered in the Gospels. And it's not a simple continuity between Jesus said and they did. Something enormous. There's an enormous chasm, experiential chasm, between those two things.
(Tom starts to speak)
Linda: OK, Tom. I want to draw out Marc and Deirdre. You two are kind of quiet over here and I suspect you have a lot to say. Go ahead.
Deirdre: 37 I'd like to speak to Luke's observations only. I think for me, the fact that we have the canon, Luke, that is to say we have the four Gospels and we have Paul, means that at least for the fourth century people were concerned to present a totality namely of the Pauline confessions about Jesus, the post-Pauline, and those other confessions in Hebrews and Revelations, alongside the four Gospels. So, if I were to sit as I do and ask myself about the discontinuity between the experience of the resurrected Jesus in Paul and the evidence of the four Gospels, I would sit in that tension between the 27 books of the New Testament. I think the canon attests that we must work beyond that impasse between the two things. And I think if I might hesitate one small observation, really to do with my interest in the meekness of Jesus, one can move from Paul into meekness without the historical Jesus. You know this from II Corinthians 10, "shall I come to you with a rod or shall I come to you in meekness". But Matthew moves into meekness through Christology, through the totality of the person of Jesus. So, isn't it interesting that here really from opposite sides we have some combination of attestation about one little piece of evidence.
Luke: 39a And I agree with you totally. If one asks how could one historically verify or validate meekness, one realizes that one is dealing with something which is very difficult to talk about historically.
Marcus: 39b To respond to your question, Linda, about "what is it about the historical Jesus that would have led people to say this is an incarnation of God?" It's important to realize that he was an ambiguous figure to experience. You could conclude he was insane and so forth. But why some people might conclude he was an incarnation of God, I think could be summed up in his healings, the presence that people sometimes felt around him, and his social passion as a voice of religious peasant protest. I think those things together could account for people following him as a manifestation of the sacred.
Tom: 40a Presumably that could simply be reduced Marc, to Jesus as a prophet. I mean, all that you said about healing and people following him, etc, could have been said of Elijah or some of the other great prophets. I don't see that that actually gets you through to something which is that in continuity with the Church's post-Easter confession. And if while I'm talking I can just say to Luke, I'm astonished if you think I don't recognize the huge cleavage between Good Friday andEaster, if you like. Yes, all the Messianic dreams were shattered on Good Friday and yes, they had to rethink the whole darn thing after Easter. I think we're coming to that in the second half, so I better not say more about it right now.
Linda: Let's hold off on that.
Marcus: 40b I was just going to say I think the resurrection or Easter is the decisive event as well that accounts for the community speaking of him as being the Incarnation of God.
But I think there were aspects of him as a historical figure that could lead to a sense that the sacred is present here.
---Part 4: Research and Faith---
Linda: 40c I'd like to just ask questions which will take us a little bit outside but it's about the historical method. I find it very disconcerting when I read that a historian says that an event didn't happen and I realize I was basing my faith on that. What do you all think of that as you're doing the historical research and you say "we don't think this actually happened" and "this actually happened". Are you giving us the theological implications? Are you concerned about the theological implications? Or, are you just doing the work of history and letting us worry about that? When I say "us" I'm speaking for someone in the pew.
Dom: 41 I would see history and faith, within at least catholic Christianity (I am leaving aside Gnostic Christianity --Deirdre might want to talk about that -- I'm going to leave that aside). Within catholic Christianity history and faith for me are in the dialectic. That means that you can't cheat on either of them. You can not let on that history replaces faith and you can not let on that faith can make off history either. So that if you say for example, Jesus walked on the water, then I want to know, "Is that an historical statement?" reconstructed by historians or is that a statement of the power of Jesus say within the Church to save the disciples and the Church from floundering in the waters. I want to know what that is because if we're making an historical statement, we have to say it is that. If it's a symbolic religious statement we have to say that. We have I think let those slide into one another too often.
Luke: 42 Part of what I have tried to bring to this conversation is to begin to make those distinctions a little bit more clearly. We have become so historicised in our consciousness in the West that we tend to equate what can be known historically with all knowledge. We tend to equate the historical with all reality and I think that it is very pertinent to say that something can be true without being historical. To give an example: I think of any statement in the Gospel, that in Matthew 18:20, where Jesus says "where two or three are gathered...there am I in the midst." Most critical historians would find that very difficult to say, Jesus, that can be historically verified. It's found in only one Gospel. It suits Matthew's theology. It has a parallel in rabbinic sayings, where two or three are gathered to study Torah, there the Shekinah is in their midst. And yet I submit that for Christians it is perhaps the truest statement in the Gospel. Where two or three are gathered, Jesus is in their midst. That is to say, this is what Christians affirm. When they gather in Jesus' Name, Jesus is present.
So there is the possibility that something can be true (existentially true - religiously true) but not historically verifiable. On the other hand, if Jesus said it and we could verify that he said it historically and then he died and nothing happened it would be historically correct but existentially false. That's an important distinction.
Marcus: 44b I think we would all agree with that and my shorthand way of putting that is that truth must not reduced to historical truth.
Dom: 44c But if you are saying historical truth you must be able to do it accurately.
Linda: 44d We're going to take a phone call and we can keep this going. We have a caller from San Diego. Her name is Harriet. Good Evening Harriet?
Harriet at University of San Diego: My question is this: Given the distinction between Pre-Easter and Post-Easter Jesus, what do you take to be the ontological status of Post-Easter Jesus? Does he have objective reality, that is if the tradition and theological reflection surrounding him had not developed, would he exist, be the Second Person of the Trinity and have the properties ascribed to him in the Creeds of the Church?
Note: I am not asking whether he is a physical being in time and space. I'm asking whether in your view, he exists objectively independent of human thought and human stories.
Linda: Marcus, since she used your terminology and I don't have an immediate answer, I'll let you take it.
Marcus: 45b Let me just say it is an exceptionally well-phrased question and does not leave much wiggle room. What I can say with some certainty is that the Post-Easter Jesus is part of the phenomenology of religious experience. And I can also say that the post Easter Jesus as ultimately one with God is real. What I have no idea about at all is if the Post-Easter Jesus would exist if nobody had ever talked about the Post-Easter Jesus, if nobody had ever experienced Jesus after his death as the Face of God, and so forth. I don't know how to get a handle on that at all. But the Post-Easter Jesus as the Face of God or ultimately One with God, I see as ontologically real.
Tom: 46b There's a basic problem about theory of knowledge at this point, isn't there. The theory of knowledge question is "How do we know that the fridge light goes off when the door is shut?" We're in exactly the same sort of bind there and until we actually address those theory of knowledge questions, I don't think we'll get much further with some of those Jesus questions. And the question is, you have to be able say, it seems to me, "yes, Jesus is real. Jesus does exist. Jesus is there as the human face of God". And it happens also to be the case that because he is that, all sorts of people believe in him. The fact of Jesus' existence is not simply the construct out of everyone else's faith. I don't think that's what Marcus is saying, but until we've teased out that theory of knowledge theory a bit more I don't know that we'll be able to nail it down.
Linda: 47a OK, well let's get back to that. Do you want to answer?
Luke: I love it when Tom talks epistomology. (chuckles) (several talking at once)
Linda: We're just going to warm up, the second half will get us there.
Luke: 47b I believe that we can in response to the question. I think that we can say that Jesus is real even if nobody had thought about him. And that is a statement that can not be verified except in the kind of experiences that Marcus is talking about. But the point of those experiences is that they are not simply interpsychically generated. That they are an encounter with "other". That in fact often people find themselves encountered when they would not want to be encountered by the One who is "other". And so in answer to our caller, I feel very confident in simply saying "yes" to the answer.
Linda: Deirdre, Dom, do you want to jump in at any point?
Dom: 48a I would say yes. What I would say is that the risen Jesus is the historical Jesus available to anyone at any time and place who has faith. But I will not separate even by talking Pre or Post Easter the historical Jesus from the Risen Jesus. The question I will ask is "Does your Risen Jesus have wounds?" The body may come from Heaven, but I want to know where the wounds come from. They come from history. I want to know "Is the Risen Jesus wounded?"
Luke: 48b The ontological question is the reality of spirit. And if...
Dom: 48c Which one? A wounded spirit.
Luke: 48d? And this gets us into the next half. If following Paul, the body of the Risen Lord is the Soma Christu, the body of the Messiah is the community of believers, then it is surely wounded and it surely has wounds. But the ontological question is the reality of the Spirit. Can we say that that which we do not see, but which shapes our minds and hearts, which transforms human freedom is real or is it simply fantasy, then I come down on the side of saying it's real.
Dom: 49a I would insist again. You could have spirit and it could be real, but if it's not wounded it's not Jesus. I really mean wounded in the sense that if somebody doesn't know what this is...
Linda: 49b What do you mean by that when you say wounded?
Dom: 49c I mean on the cover of Newsweek, for Easter they showed a picture of the Transfiguration, which means there are no wounds in the Transfiguration. Jesus when he appears in Christian art in Christian mysticism is always wounded. It's the historical Jesus who is the Risen Jesus - not two different Jesus'. It is the historical Jesus as Spirit.
Linda: 49d Are you saying it's not the glorified Jesus but it's the Jesus who suffered?
Dom: 50a It is the glorified Jesus who carries the wounds. I will not divide those two things.
Tom: 50b But what I find lovely in your statement Dom, is that in some sense I hear you saying exactly what I've been trying to emphasize about that fundamental character of Jesus inscribed in the Gospels as the one who gives his life in service to others -- namely is the wounded one - the crucified one -- and it is that character of the human Jesus rather than the accumulation of his specific deeds and words which is the Jesus born by the spirit and replicated in other human lives.
Dom: 50c? But let me back up now. Once you have the wounds there, somebody might ask, "I had this revelation of this person with holes in his hands" and I might have to say, "that's Jesus", and you say, "well, what's this stuff?" Well, he was crucified. Well, why was he crucified? It must be very evil people who crucified him. Well, no, he did some stuff that really got people very annoyed. And we thought he'd do the very same thing. So, I find once the wounds are there, the life's going to come in and that means the word, and that means the deeds, and that means enough to really provoke people to crucify him. So that all comes in with the wounds for me. That comes in with the risen Jesus.
Linda: 51a Tom you look antsy. Do you want to jump in?
Tom: 51b Well, I'm interested by the different views of Resurrection which are coming up here and I'm trying to be restrained and keep them for the second half of the program. I very much agree with Dom about the continuity between the wounded Jesus and the reasons why he got wounded, which I think is one of the fundamental questions which we have to address, the continuity between that Jesus and the Risen Jesus. But from reading Dom's work I suspect that he and I mean something very different then by the Risen Jesus as also I think Luke does in his statement - which there's a long history to this of course that the Risen Jesus is the Soma Christu, the body of Christ which is the Church. I think the idea that Jesus died on the Cross and rose into the Church as though that is the meaning of the resurrection - I find that actually very very puzzling in terms of how we analyse this Jewish world of the First Century using that sort of word.
Linda: 52 Well, we're going to take a brief break and we'll be right back. This is only a couple minute break where you can stand up in your chairs and stretch.
Actually I'm just hearing that we have a caller, so would we like to take that caller before we take a break? OK. Where are you from and what is your question?
Beverly: My name is Beverly. I'm calling from Episcopal Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas. And my question is: I can see how the work our scholars are doing has furthered the academic debate about who Jesus is, but I fail to see how that work serves me as Beverly Christian sitting in the pew who has an image of Jesus that seems to serve my faith very well. What are you doing for me? How does that help me?
Linda: OK, well I think that's - you know we were going to get to that later, but let's take that now.
Marcus: 53a To respond compactly, there are millions of Christians for whom our work has no real significance, because their image of Jesus still works for them.
And maybe it might be an interesting argument to make that their image of Jesus should be affected by our work, but if your image of Jesus works for you and generates compassion in your life, you don't need us, but there are millions of Christians in my experience for whom an older image of Jesus has ceased to be functional.
And these people tell me that they have found the historical study of Jesus and Christian origins to provide a bridge back into wholehearted participation in the Christian life.
Tom: 53b Could I come in with that? Because part of what Marc said I agree with and part of it I think I radically disagree with. I think it would be very comfortable to say, "if it works for you just carry on with that".
What the historical study of Jesus does is to challenge ideological and idolatrous visions of Jesus which can often just split off a little way from the historical reality, but then when you take those lines further up you get into all sorts of stuff and in our own century we have seen in the 1930s in Germany, people manufacturing a Jesus who was suitable and convenient for them, and it was precisely because of that in 1953 one of the great German scholars Ernst Caseman said, "we have to do historical Jesus research to protect the Church from idolatry and to enable us to announce the truth about God and about Jesus".
And in my experience that's something that needs to be done for each generation, not just to help people back into faith - I agree with Marc that can happen - but to challenge potential idolatry.
Linda: 54 Well, I was going to say, is -- you were probably going to say something more profound -- but I... (chuckles) Isn't any reconstruction of Jesus really a projection of your own mental landscape, or the culture of the times, or the sign of the times?
I mean I'm wondering if a lot of the people who are finding the bridge back are people who have been wounded by the institution or are skeptics who have been raised in an enlightenment way of knowing which is "it's true if you can verify it"?
Luke: 55 I think that I have not doubt that the popularity of some of the Jesus books and Marcus and Dom have written too, that are extraordinarily powerful have had an influence on drawing people back to an interest in Jesus and perhaps an interest in Christianity. Part of my question is similar to Tom's point and that is, I'm quite sure it's the Christian Jesus they're being drawn back to - that's the genuinely scandalous Jesus of the Gospels.
The Jesus who... I don't think that Jesus the charismatic challenges our age or Jesus the prophet of the egalitarian society is nearly so counter cultural as you all suppose. I think in fact it's beautifully crafted to our late Twentieth Century desires and proclivities. It is a Jesus indeed I think Dom in some sense your Jesus is almost a most comfortable Jesus to get with, especially for late Twentieth Century academic who doesn't want an egalitarian world. I don't think...
Linda: 56 I actually find your Jesus very uncomfortable.
Dom: 56b I have not the slightest intention of living like my Jesus.
Tom: 56c OK, good.
Dom: 57 My grandparents in Ireland lived as peasants and it took me two generations to get away from that and I've not the slightest intention of going back to it. (various panelists speak at once)
Tom: 58 Could I just jump in and challenge Dom on that, because I remember Dom you said a couple of years ago in a conference. I remember because I scribbled it down at the time.
You said, "I decided to describe what I saw about Jesus.
Whether I have the courage to live up to it, I don't yet know." Are you saying that now you're saying, "well, I tried that and it doesn't work and I'm not going to try anymore".
Dom: 58 No, I'm saying exactly what I said then. The Jesus that I describe, scares the living daylights out of me because he says "the Kingdom of God is against the normalcy of human life" and I live by the normalcies of human life and rather like them. And if Jesus is right, we're all in trouble. But not the Roman Empire.
Linda: 58 Well, that's what I find uncomfortable about his image. You're... Do you want to jump in there?
Marcus: 59a Hmmm. I was going to come at it from a slightly different point of view. The charge that we recreate Jesus in our own image. Often times of course we do that and it's not just scholars who do that. But then I would immediately add, we can only see as much as we've seen.
And thus there's an inevitable kind of connection between the subjectivity and experience of the historian and what the historian is able to see and hear in text. We can only see as much as we've seen.
Luke: I would like to go back to Deirdre's point that is that I think Tom is quite correct that the Jesus of the Gospels must always be a check against the tendencies to create Jesus in our own image. If I understand Deirdre correctly, I hope that you're saying something similar to something I am saying and that is that we don't have to call history the images of Jesus that we find in the four Gospels. That Jesus, the Jesus of Matthew and Mark and Luke and John does everything that you want your historical Jesus to do.
(Luke is speaking directly to Dom at this point, then towards Marcus and now to all in general.)
I mean that's where you got this stuff - from the pages of the Gospels - and does much more. And that Jesus in the Four Gospels does not only challenge the structures of human society, but challenges the structure of human existence -- the reality of sin, the reality of forgiveness, the reality of transformation. And it seems to me that by trying to eek out a rather thin stable historical Jesus, we loose the rich resonances of the literary Jesus of the Four Gospels who is truly the most shocking and challenging and scandalous Jesus.
Marcus: 59a Apparently, you want to go for an either or at both ends.
Dom: Exactly.
Linda: 59b OK, we're going to take a caller before break, Tom from Santa Rosa, California. Good Evening Tom.
Tom: (caller) Good Evening. My question concerns the Gnostic Gospels. I would like to know if the Kingdom of God is significantly different in the Gnostic tradition and in that tradition does the fact of the Crucifixion become less important. Or to put it another way, is there more continuity between the Pre and Post Crucifixion Jesus. Thank you.
Linda: Ok, caller, I'm going to throw that question to Deirdre to start us off.
Deirdre: 1:00 Well, two things I suppose. The Kingdom of God first of all and then the question about the crucifixion. The Kingdom of God traditions do appear in the Nag Hammadi texts. If you take the Gospel of Thomas as Gnostic, which of course is open to debate - the Gospel of Thomas opens with a statement about the Kingdom is not in the sea because the fish will get there first and not in the sky because the birds will get there first, the Kingdom of God is within you - among you - something like that. So, in answer to the questioner, yes, of course there are Kingdom of God traditions outside the Four Gospels.
The second question, the question about the Crucifixion. The Nag Hammadi texts have a lot to say about the crucified Jesus and I think perhaps I'll take this opportunity to clarify that not all of the Nag Hammadi texts are docetic. That is not all of them present a view that Jesus only seems to be human. And the Laughing Jesus was an early book on this particular topic - Jesus divorced himself from the Jesus on the cross and just simply stood by watching in great amusement as a crucified Jesus seemed to die - and didn't really. In fact the material reality of the crucified Jesus is very much a part of some of the Christian Gnostic textslike the treatises on the Resurrection for example. The reality of the Resurrection is very much a part of that branch of Valentinian Gnosticism. So, I think you've got as much variety of speculation about the Crucifixion in the Nag Hammadi texts as you have outside the canon as you have within the canon on the question of Crucifixion. Now you've worked also Dom on these texts, you might want to say some things there.
Dom: 1:01 If you look at the Gospel of Thomas for example, you can see the difference. The Kingdom is very much the kingdom of ascetic celibates - those who have withdrawn from the world. The Kingdom is within you in that sense. It's anti-apocalyptic--it goes back to the Garden of Eden as it were to reinstate the predivided state of the first androgenous being as it were and it comes up in celibate asceticism. That is also a reply to Jesus and Jesus is the Living One and I think if we had Thomas here we'd say "you mean the Resurrected One", he'd probably say, "Hmmm, you would say the Living One - yesterday, today and tomorrow always there - what do you mean resurrected? I am talking about the Living Jesus."
Linda: 1:02 OK, we're going to take a very quick break now for those of you in your audiences just to basically stand up and stretch break. When we return, we'll look at the Resurrection. How important is it to you that the tomb was empty? And we'll have a concluding session "What do I tell my congregation or students about what I've heard tonight?"
How do I bring this back home? We'll be back in three minutes.
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Linda: OK, we're back. We hope you had a few minutes to stretch and we're going to move on. The conversation keeps going and the topic that keeps coming up is that of the Resurrection.
So we're going to move right to that topic. And what I'd like to do is what we did when we opened. I'd like to do a round robin.
Actually I threw out two questions during the break and I got vetoed on both of them. One was: "How important is it to you the tomb was empty?" and "Is the Resurrection a mystery of faith or a tangible verifiable experience?"
The panel would like to know "what about the Resurrection?" so we're going to start there. Tom, we're going to go to you first in Dallas.
Tom: 1:03 Right. I think the important thing about the Resurrection is to start off with the big picture and say, it's a puzzle why Christianity got going.
We know of lots of other movements in the First Century that had a prophetic or a messianic or some sort of leader and one after the other after the other they all ended with the death of the founder.
Why didn't Christianity end there granted that it was from the very beginning a messianic movement? Earliest Christianity was messianic to the core. All the actual evidence we've got - as opposed to some of the concocted evidence that some people discover - said it's messianic.
But at no point anywhere else do we have a movement that has a messiah who was actually somebody who was executed by the occupying forces. If you backed a messiah in the First Century and he got killed, it shows you backed the wrong horse. You either therefore give up the movement or you find yourself another messiah.
One of the most interesting things about early Christianity is nobody ever said that James the brother of Jesus was the messiah even though he was the one who survived and was the leader of the movement for the next generation.
So we have to say, why did it become a messianic movement? Second thing is, why did it stay as a Kingdom of God movement granted that it hadn't overthrown the Romans? This is a
Linda: I'd like to make a little transition and we can continue the conversation of the Resurrection, but let's put it in the context of: How does this information translate out of the circles of academic and out of the circles of those who are doing historical research to the people who are in the pew? What does the rector of a church or a pastor do with this kind of reading, how does he or she bring that into the pulpit, into adult Christian education? What's the impact?
I think that a lot of the media has taken taken that and sort of Time or Newsweek was ... Jesus Seminar voted that the Resurrection didn't happen and the effect is how am I supposed to respond to that?
Luke: Well, I think that it's really important and since I'm the person in my book who so outspokenly attacked the Jesus Seminar...
Linda: (in jest) So you weren't ghostwritten?
Luke: No, I was not ghostwritten.
Linda: You are the writer, ok.
Luke: 1:28 And I do want to emphasize that I don't regard the work of Marcus and Dom as being -- although they are associated with the Jesus Seminar and I have criticized them for that -- I don't think that their books or their work has emphasized what didn't happen and what didn't happen and so forth.
And it seems to me that fundamentally that's a major issue. Whether or not academics themselves -- just to take one part of this question -- Whether or not academics themselves who are working in the Gospel traditions and working with the figure of Jesus are fundamentally taking a stance that we are trying to show what in fact didn't happen or end up with the "non-Jesus Seminar" or whether or not we are trying to come up with a responsible, historical analysis which may or may not be cashed out in terms of use for people in the Church.
But I think in my view there's a fundamental difference between what seems to be the agenda of one group and the kind of conversation we're having this evening.
Dom: 1:29 It actually is not quite true. I've been giving an awful lot of interviews for at least four years now. I know what I've said in those interviews. I know what I've said in my books.
But the headlines are: "Ex-priest Denies Resurrection". I didn't say that. I really didn't. And my tendency has been not to whine, keep sending letters to the editor and say "I really didn't say that!" In fact if you read what I said the headline doesn't say that. So, I find that the media has handled me exactly the same way as it's handled the Jesus Seminar. Maybe the Jesus Seminar is a masterpiece of programming and say Bob Funk or myself as it's chairs should get jobs at Madison Avenue, if we're as good as your book says we are by the way. (chuckles)
I think we should really open an office because we have pulled off something. I think really...
Tom: Might be a very good thing for you all to do. (chuckles around the table)
Dom: 1:30 Well, the issue is, I think, that something happened which we didn't expect. That is that there was a tremendous interest among people about the historical Jesus. They weren't just hearing it as negative -- this didn't happen, this didn't happen -- something was happening that was not programmed, not by anyone that I know of at least, and that I don't think can be dismissed as simply media hype. I think that is failing to face the issue.
Tom: Can I address the question that we were asked to address which is to do with what the relevance is for the preaching and teaching of the Church? I mean, I actually do this week by week, that's part of my job to be a preacher and to be a teacher to quote, ordinary folk, whatever that means, and I find again and again two things particularly, one that there is an enormous interest in actually getting away from anachronisms from false readings of the Gospels and saying, "look at what these words meant then" as opposed to how people may have gradually slipped into reading them subsequently.
And so there's an awful lot of work to be done there, and I find a lot of intelligent ordinary lay folk are very keen to do that. But then particularly, Christianity is not about offering people good advice, it's about offering them good news. The Jesus Seminar's Jesus, the Jesus you get from these reconstructions of early Thomas and early Q, is a Jesus who gives you good advice.
That is not what you find either in the Gospels, the canonical Gospels, the narrative that Luke talks about -- which I'm perfectly happy with -- nor is it what you find I think when you do the real reconstruction of Jesus himself. You find good news of an achievement and the Church's task and the Church's possibility is to implement that achievement for the world. As soon as you stop talking that language, you start talking about "here's a new religious experience, you might want to try it on for size".
I see a great gulf between those who are simply offering people or communities a new religious experience and those who are saying Jesus achieved something which we must now implement for the world. That was Albert Schweitzer's vision as a result of his work on Jesus, by putting him into his Jewish eschatological context, which by the way Luke, isn't a funny "a priori" that you drag in from somewhere, it's just called serious history.
When you do that serious history, you result in an agenda and that agenda is what needs, I think to be preached today.
Linda: 1:32 Marcus do you want to address, 'cause what I've been hearing you say is that you find something very different in the letters that you receive, in the responses as opposed to what you've described?
Marcus: And Dom and I've talked about this too. Namely, our mail as well as the responses we get when we're on the road, and Tom I'm sure you've had this experience too, is that the historical study of Jesus and Christian origins as we practice it, though it's not our works in particular, but this whole approach is done by all scholars involved in it or most scholars involved in it, has made it possible for these people to be Christians again.
And as I said during the first hour, I think in the last forty years or so for many main line Christians an older image of Jesus has ceased to be persuasive.
It's that composite image of Jesus that many of us received as children where the Post-Easter Jesus and the Pre-Easter Jesus are uncritically mixed together and people have a sense that they're supposed to believe that that image is historically true.
Those people for evangelical reasons need to hear the kinds of differences that we're talking about tonight -- the differences between the Pre-Easter Jesus and the Post-Easter Jesus. I think that's not only theologically extremely helpful, but I think it's evangelically necessary in our time for millions of mainline Christians.
Linda: 1:33 I'm going to let Luke go and then I have a question for Deirdre. Luke?
Luke: Two points. One of which is that I really do think that in response to what you were saying, that this talk about Jesus is responding to a deep sense of need. I'm not sure that the way we're coming at it really gets at what that need really is. I suggest this in two ways.
Number one, I do think there's been a disastrous lack of preaching the Gospels. That is to say, of really preaching and teaching in churches about the figure of Jesus as rendered in the Gospels. I make a distinction however between that analysis of the Jesus of the Gospels and a reconstruction of the historical Jesus. So that is my first point.
And so I'm not quite sure that the historical Jesus issue is really functional to what the need is which is to encounter the Jesus of the Gospels.
Secondly, although I am certainly being hoist by my own petard in being in the media and being part of this conversation, nevertheless, I do feel that the needs of the population are best served by attending to our primary cultural institutions of the Church and the academy and what we really need to do is to have people in seminaries learn how to interpret these texts not simply as information about history but as text that can be religiously transforming. That's extremely important.
And secondly, we need to have these Gospels taught and preached in churches. So this media jump start, I think, may serve that function, but I don't think ultimately it is the answer.
Linda: 1:35 Deirdre, how is this debate playing out in the seminary, because you're very in touch with seminary students? And also, how is it playing with feminist theologians?
Deirdre: I think...the debate by which you mean the Jesus Seminar debate? Is that what you mean?
Linda: Well, the emphasis on the historical Jesus and whether things need to be verified in order to be true.
Deirdre: 1:36 Well, I think it's of eternal interest to seminarians to have something to say about Jesus that is convincing and that speaks from their own faith perspective.
I think there is a little degree of skepticism about the promotion of what seems to be a somewhat one sided debate. Shall we say, certain presses publishing material to do with the historical Jesus. And I might just cite HarperCollins.
And Luke I'm just following along you suggestions here since you mentioned them. There are many people working as we know around the world on these historical questions about Jesus and so why do we have a particular press involved in this?
But now to the question that you -- the second question was something to do with feminists -- the reaction amongst feminists scholars. I think we're all members of Society of Biblical Literature which is an organization of scholars that meets annually. And the historical Jesus section of which at least Dom and Marc are a part is one section of a very large gathering of scholars, maybe ten to twelve thousand people that meet.
I don't know if both of you would care to comment on the women who were members of the Jesus Seminar, but looking at the roster of the women who have published in the Five Gospels, at least who are mentioned in the Five Gospels, there are not a vast amount of them. So my initial reaction Linda, to your question would be there is some interest but there is not considerable interest in this whole debate.
I think the interest of feminist scholars would be elsewhere when it comes to the questions of Christian origins. I don't know if this is of concern to members of the Jesus Seminar at all.
Dom: 1:38 To me as a member the chair of one, and the chair of the other, the historical Jesus section, yes. Because first of all it's very difficult to get male people who have spent their career working on the historical Jesus. It's almost a dangerous subject. To say that they're working on Paul or Mark, that's so, but on the historical Jesus there's very few in the whole world who are really doing it programmatically their entire life.
I don't know of a single feminist scholar who has written a book on the historical Jesus. I do not mean a book on Christology, I do not mean a book on something else that mentions the historical Jesus. And I think it's possibly, if I may guess -- my point of view -- I think it's a suspicion about this great big transcendental male hero that we have been given -- and who needs another male hero. And I think that's the way I read it myself. I may be totally wrong but I keep wondering "how can I get people on my steering committee who are experts on the historical Jesus?"
Deirdre:
What do women in the Jesus Seminar say?
Dom: We can get Karen King in there. Kathleen Corely. Sarah Lang. Maybe three that I can think of who are there fairly regularly.
Linda: 1:39 OK, one more comment then we have some telephone calls.
Luke: I think that's part of the -- as I understand from some women scholars -- part of the difficulty for some feminist scholars is basically the sort of positivistic view of history involved in much of this research. And a great deal of feminist theory and feminist thought has moved away from the sort of understanding of history which dominates historical Jesus research. I think that's a pretty straightforward reason...
Dom: 1:40 I would have to correct you on that. As far as I'm concerned, historical reconstruction is something that you do over and over again. The best you can do at any given time is your best at any given time. So when I talk about historical reconstruction, when I talk about what history is, it means historical reconstruction and public debate.
My book on the historical Jesus is tuned and dated to a certain period of time, but that's our job to do our best for that moment. It's not historical positivism. It really isn't.
Luke: 1:40 I don't think your work. I meant Jesus Seminar.
Tom: Surely the point that Luke is making is the point that Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza made last November in the SPL conference in Philadelphia, that we none of us come to this history as flies on the wall without any agendas of our own. What we are doing is continually bringing together who we are theologically, personally, etc. together with the historical task. Now I agreed with her then, I agree with her still. And I'd regard that as one of the contributions that sometimes feminist theologians have been able to make to what has often been a rather arrogant and male dominated positivism.
Linda: OK, we're back. We hope you had a few minutes to stretch and we're going to move on. The conversation keeps going and the topic that keeps coming up is that of the Resurrection.
So we're going to move right to that topic. And what I'd like to do is what we did when we opened. I'd like to do a round robin.
Actually I threw out two questions during the break and I got vetoed on both of them. One was: "How important is it to you the tomb was empty?" and "Is the Resurrection a mystery of faith or a tangible verifiable experience?"
The panel would like to know "what about the Resurrection?" so we're going to start there. Tom, we're going to go to you first in Dallas.
Tom: 1:03 Right. I think the important thing about the Resurrection is to start off with the big picture and say, it's a puzzle why Christianity got going.
We know of lots of other movements in the First Century that had a prophetic or a messianic or some sort of leader and one after the other after the other they all ended with the death of the founder.
Why didn't Christianity end there granted that it was from the very beginning a messianic movement? Earliest Christianity was messianic to the core. All the actual evidence we've got - as opposed to some of the concocted evidence that some people discover - said it's messianic.
But at no point anywhere else do we have a movement that has a messiah who was actually somebody who was executed by the occupying forces. If you backed a messiah in the First Century and he got killed, it shows you backed the wrong horse. You either therefore give up the movement or you find yourself another messiah.
One of the most interesting things about early Christianity is nobody ever said that James the brother of Jesus was the messiah even though he was the one who survived and was the leader of the movement for the next generation.
So we have to say, why did it become a messianic movement? Second thing is, why