Week 12 - New Old Perspectives

The Incredible Unlikeliness of Being: Evolution and the Making of Us - Alice Roberts

The Gnostic Gospels - Elaine Pagels

Adam, Eve, and the Serpent - Pagels

Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas - Pagels

   
   I have no idea what to write! These were all good books. Roberts and Pagels are good at including little personal touches, little human vulnerabilities here and there. By the way Roberts' illustrations are amazing! What a talented person.
   I had a lot of trouble focusing through The Gnostic Gospels, but that had more to do with me being preoccupied. Wouldn't it be cool to write a fairy tale or coming of age story by stringing together Jesus parables, interpreted as "tests," like the works of Hercules?
   Also, while reading Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, maybe my favorite of the three Pagel books, I kept wondering, how many discrete interpretations of Gen 2 are on record? Does anybody have a running list? I feel like after about two dozen they would start to become indistinguishable, even to the most discerning exegetes. Could I think of ten or twelve compelling readings and then fictionalize them?
   I definitely want to try writing stories, but I'm so bad at telling stories...I know that's a poor excuse. Mostly I'm just chicken.
   Back to the books - Pagels offers some encouragement to the spiritual seeker seeking with history: "For my own part, I came to realize that using historical means to explore the origins of Christianity most often does not solve religious questions but can offer new perspectives upon these questions." That's a nice pat on the back. Maybe this Jesus read-a-thon will provide some benefit to myself and others, if not in the form of discernment then in the form of possibility. Can I take from the storeroom treasures new and old?


Notes
The Incredible Unlikeliness of Being

• "But once you've come to terms with the undeniable fact that you yourself developed from a single cell during your embryonic development, perhaps it's easier to believe that you, that we as members of a species, have evolved from such humble beginnings."
• Hippocrates - male and female seed
• Aristotle - epigenesis, mixing of fluids, semen the active agent
• scala naturae vs arbor naturae
• "evo-devo" - embryology, genetics, evolution
• chordates - notochord, nerve tube, gill slits, tail
• development of a head linked to development of swimming
• agnathans - first vertebrates, "jawless" fish (lampreys and hagfish currently)
• sclera - white of the eye
• homeobox genes, "Hox genes," control activity of other genes, part of genetic makeup of every animal with a segmented body, including vertebrates
• "Everything that derives from on particular bump, or somite, is supplied by a single spinal nerve. Wherever those tissues end up, they "remember" their segmental origin in their nerve supply. Muscles might end up migrating a long way away from their original segments, but they still maintain their original nerve supply."
• referred pain - signals from different sensory nerves enter spinal cord at same level, sometimes it's as if wires get crossed
• reasons for initial loss of tail somewhat mysterious
• frugivores - most apes
• pelvis and shoulders for walking, running
• why did Neanderthals have huge chests
• lungs from swim bladder type thing 
• two heart chambers adapted for low pressure (air vs water) environment 
• brain consumes approx 20% of our energy, how to account for that vis a vis other apes (more body fat?)
• abductor muscles, keeps opposite hip up while walking, when damaged get "Tendelenburg gait"
• "sculpting a human body involves processes of cell death as well as growth and proliferation...it's a fundamental process in embryonic development in any animal with a complex body. In many cases, it's much simpler to generate too much tissue and trim back to what's required, rather than carefully program a complex pattern..."
• "the definitive muscles of the limbs...most end up containing tissue that originated from two or three (or more) of those original segments, or somites"
• myotome - the part of a somite that will become skeletal muscle, and the group of muscles that, in the adult, share a common ancestry in one embryonic myotome and are therefore innervated by a single spinal nerve (youtube myotome dance)
• epigentics, soft inheritance - gene expression, chemical modifications, shaped and passed down without necessarily changing DNA
• "the sprig of the tree of life that includes us and those ancient species that are our ancestors but not those of any other living ape, as far as we know, sprouted about 6 to 7 million years ago. All the twenty or so species represented on this sprig are hominins..."
• bicondylar angle (at the knee joint)
• grassland major expansion around 3 mill years ago
• bipedalism goes back "way before the first hominins arrived on the scene, back to the ancient Miocene apes who were the ancestors of orangutans, chimpanzees, and gorillas, as well as us
• running and throwing
• "these movements of the forearm - supination and pronation - are, to me, some of the most incredible things we can do with our bodies...We owe this ability to our tree-living primate relatives" (ability to grasp and hang at various angles)
• tool making and tool using shaping hand structure
• "If Chicxulub hadn't happened, it is vanishingly unlikely that humans would ever have evolved."

The Gnostic Gospels

• is "gnostic" a functional descriptor? very diverse group of texts labeled gnostic
• physical appearances of resurrected Jesus to a limited set of people in a limited time frame - also physical appearances more highly valued than visionary or "non-physical" visits by Jesus - used to establish and limit apostolic authority and succession (bishops)
• "all authority derives from certain apostles' experience of the resurrected Christ, an experience now closed forever"
• Irenaeus against Valentinians "what they have published...is totally unlike what has been handed down to us by the apostles"
• Secret Book of John - "if there were no other one [god], of whom would he be jealous?"
• "Irenaeus himself tells us that the creed which effectively screened out Marcionites [dualistic theology] proved useless against the Valentinians [said anthropomorphic doctrine and theology metaphorical, points to "ineffable" root of all being]
• Clement - submission to church authority implies true belief in God and witness of apostles
• Ignatius - "One God, one bishop"
• Irenaeus describes unauthorized meetings of "pnuematics" (followers of Marcus in this case?) - "when they met, all members first participated in drawing lots" to determine who served as priest, bishop, scripture reader, prophet for that particular meeting
• Irenaeus - "secret" tradition is satanic, coming from Simon Magus, as opposed to the openly proclaimed, universal tradition from Simon Peter
• Tertullian - "These heretical women - how audacious they are! They have no modesty; they are bold enough to teach, to engage in argument, to enact exorcisms, to undertake cures, and it may be, even to baptize!"
• "martus," Gk - "witness"
• "the attitude toward martyrdom corresponds to the interpretation of Christ's suffering and death"
• who's in? profession of doctrine (orthodoxy) vs display of spiritual maturity (spiritual gifts or "true" understanding)?
• Ignatius - "it is not legitimate either to baptize or to hold an agape [eucharist] without the bishop..."
• Tertullian after he joined "Montanist" spiritual gifts revival movement - "The church congregates where the Lord plans it - a spiritual church for spiritual people - not the church of a number of bishiops!"
• eastern Valentinians - only those who received spiritual revelations were true church; western Valentinians - all who were baptized were part of church, but only some spiritually mature understand gnosis (many are called, but few are chosen); the chosen few obligated to spread gnosis to all believers
• three legged stool - doctrine, ritual, clerical hierarchy
• "what do the diverse texts discovered at Nag Hammadi have in common? No simple answer could cover all the different groups that the orthodox attack, or all the different texts in the Nag Hammadi collection. but I suggest that the trouble with gnosticism, from the orthodox viewpoint, was not only that gnostics often disagreed with the majority on such specific issues as those we have explored so far - the organization of authority, the participation of women, martyrdom: the orthodox recognized that those they called "gnostics" shared a fundamental religious perspective that remained antithetical to the claims of the institutional church." - knowledge of God as self-knowledge
• "Even the pagan critics noticed that Christians appealed to the destitute by alleviating two of their major anxieties: Christians provided food for the poor, and they buried the dead."

Adam, Eve, and the Serpent

• What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder
• I am afraid that as the serpent deveived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ (2 Cor 11)
• For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor...1 Timothy
• Clement and Irenaeus - first sin was disobedience, but it took sexual form
• Clement - Adam, "desired the fruit of marriage before the proper time, and so fell into sin...they were impelled to do it more quickly than was proper because they were still young, and had been seduced by deceit"
• Justin - demons (giants) born when "sons of God" (angels) laid with "daughters of men" - demons the forces behind Roman gods and power
• gnostic interpreting a "shimmering surface of symbols"
• Adam and Eve as soul/psyche and spirit, or vice versa
• "Yet Justin, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Clement also agreed that Adam's transgression did not encroach upon our own individual freedom; even now, they said, every person is free to choose good or evil, just as Adam was."
• "For Clement of Alexandria, moral freedom is our glory (made in image of God)" autexousia - the power to constitute one's own being, free will
• "paradise of virginity," return to the garden with self-denial, chastity
• Augustine - Adam pursued a perverse freedom, autonomy
• Augustine - identifies self-government with rational control of sexual appetites (he says humans unable to do either)
• Augustine - "the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil is personal control over one's own will"
• Augustine - semen transmits the curse, the original sin
• "Thus it is that all men want peace in their own society, and they all want it on their own terms."
• Augustine - death, deformity and suffering of infants, disease, sexuality, all the result of original sin
• Julian of Eclanum - the curse is experience of the one who sins, rather than the effects of Adam's sin
• "often people would rather feel guilty than helpless" - Augustine's theory meets a deep need
• Augustine - free will is ability "either to consent to wrongdoing, or to refrain from it"
• "For my own part, I came to realize that using historical means to explore the origins of Christianity most often does not solve religious questions but can offer new perspectives upon these questions."

Beyond Belief

• church - "a group joined by spiritual power into an extended family"
• paenitentia - change your mind
• Compare and contrast Gosp of John and Thomas
• John criticizing Gosp of Thomas tradition with his stories about Thomas?
• Luke and Matt - Jesus appears to the "eleven"
• Polycarp knew or met John, "disciple of the Lord," Irenaeus mentored by Polycarp, thats why Irenaeus so confident about apostolic tradition
• Polycarp never mentions or quotes Gosp of John, as far as record goes, neither does Ignatius or Justin; Gaius claims John heretical, written not by John but by John's enemy Cerinthus; but Tatian includes John in his harmony
• Irenaeus - "How can we tell the difference between the word of God and mere human words?"
• Justin vs Trypho - "virgin shall conceive" vs "young woman shall conceive"
• Origen - "John does not always tell the truth literally, he always tells the truth spiritually" ...'Origen even suggests the holy spirit inserted such contradictions into John's gospel in order to startle the reader into asking what they mean...
• Irenaeus, "evil exegesis"
• Gospel of Truth - see Jesus as "fruit on a tree" of knowledge
• second baptism - apolutrosis - "redemption, release"
• Valentinians love John
• Irenaeus - "four formed gospel" from four winds, four corners of world, John is first and foremost
• Irenaeus "canon of truth" - Jesus is God is the interpretive key for all gospels and for all OT
• depositum fidei
• Heracleon - distiguishes b/w two types of conversion - one on basis of miraculous healing or salvation (like ruler who believes after Jesus heals son), the other on basis of understanding/gnosis (like woman at the well)
• Eve, spiritual understanding, completes Adam
• epinoia - creative or inventive consciousness
• Secret Book of John - reads Genesis creator, unaware of Mother-Father blessed One, thinks he is only god, tries to keep knowledge to himself, Adam and Eve seek epinoia, he punishes them
• Constantine - supporting "lawful and most holy catholic religion"
• "heretics and schismatics shall not only be alien from these priviledges but also shall be bound and subjected to various compulsory public services"
• "forbade Jews to enter Jerusalem, except on the one day a year they were to mourn for having lost it; can't seek or accept converts; any attempting to prevent conversions to Christianity should be burned alive
• Nicaea 325
• "begotten, not made"
• Jesus "of one being with" God
• Nag Hammadi books may have been hidden away from Pachomius monastery after Athanasius wrote famous letter with books of New Testament, calling on church to burn non-canonical books
• Athanasius - use "dianoia," not "epinoia"
• "...the problem orthodoxy was invented to solve: How can we tell truth from lies?..."

Week 11: Jury Duty

Enon - Paul Harding

Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time - Marcus Borg

The Meaning of Jesus - Borg and N.T. Wright


   I don't have jury duty tomorrow, yay! Last Tuesday was a doozy civil case, every argument slipping down the slope toward tyranny or autarchy! As nervous as I am, probably any case would have seemed like a doozy...I'm so grateful I wasn't on a criminal case.
   I know first-hand now how amazingly pliable "negligence" can be in a court room - and in a jury deliberation. The trial experience was surreal and disturbing; I felt like we were in a submarine, several miles deep, way out in the pacific, rehearsing a scene from Beckett or Pirandello. I knew it was important to pay attention but it was hard not to make sour faces at the lawyers whenever they turned our way.
   My fellow jurors were great. Everyone was genuinely interested to hear what everyone else had to say. Three favored the defense, a couple favored the plaintiff, and the final two wanted to use "comparative negligence" (who is more at fault and by how much), which is not allowed. In Virginia, if the plaintiff is "contributorily negligent," he or she "cannot recover [any damages]." If you're interested and have a moment - google "contributory negligence vs comparative negligence."
   Nevertheless - we compromised in a comparative way and came up with an award to the plaintiff that everyone could sign.

   One of my take-a-ways: the atmosphere of a courtroom - the dress, the language, the seating arrangement, the debate method - all seemed to demand "fault." Technically we could have decided that neither side was negligent, but somehow that was hard even to consider.


Enon v Tinkers
    In the case of Enon - Paul Harding's second novel, something of a sequel - v Tinkers - his first book, winner of a million awards, we rule in favor Enon and find the defendant, Tinkers, guilty of setting unreasonable standards for any other book Harding ever writes.
   You gotta read Tinkers, the memories and reflections of a dying old man (George Crosby) flowing into and out of the life of his family, especially his father the tinker, flowing into and out of the rural New England landscape, flowing into and out of dovetailed wonder-worlds, natural and mechanical.
   Enon isn't as marvelous, but you gotta read it, too. Harding again magically achieves seamlessness between human and natural, tools and plants, culture and landscape, dreams and weather. Enon is the story of Charlie Crosby (grandson of George), drenched in grief after the death of his young daughter. A couple of drug-insomia-grief induced vision scenes blew me away: one based on his swirling scribble all over a wall in his house with it's hurricane eye hole saw-zawed out - another in the middle of the night, in the graveyard, a garish, theatrical, frightening coronation scene of his daughter, Kate (youtube Danse Macabre).
   So why isn't it as good as Tinkers? The character Mrs. Hale. Well, it's not her fault at all - she's great...just too great. Too convenient. Too necessary to the story.
   A good character actively resists the question, "are you necessary to the plot?" You try to pin Iago down, he just slips away. Of course he's necessary, but he's also gratuitous, and lots of other things. Oliver Twist is necessary. He's great. But that's about it. That's not Oliver Twist's fault, he just never had a chance; he was always primarily a means to an end. 
   I don't mean to use Forster's round character vs flat character distinction, because both round and flat can qualify as "good" here. I guess I'm saying that Harding "showed his [plot] hand" with Mrs. Hale; her personality filled a big hole in the story like new plaster in an old dent. Harding ushered her on stage at obvious moments and held up cue cards with her perfect words.

N.T. Wright v Marcus Borg
   In the case of N.T. Wright v Marcus Borg, we rule in favor of Jesus, since they do as well.
  The Meaning of Jesus contains most of Borg's vision from Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, so if you want a brief intro to Borg, pick up The Meaning of Jesus and you'll get two for one. Tom Wright frequently references his book Jesus and the Victory of God, so I'm assuming what he says in Meaning summarizes his conclusions there.
   This is not so much debate or dialogue as dueling confessions. Borg and Wright speak personally, devotionally, and respectfully of their research and their faith. Scholarship and discipleship are of a piece to them - that comes across as genuine. I was hoping that they might give some specific examples of their New Testament reading methods - and then give and take a little criticism - but mostly they stick to presenting their matured conclusions.

Notes
Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time

• images of Jesus: fideistic, moralistic, transformational
• beginning sayings with "amen" unusual
• compassion plural of womb
• "Be compassionate as God is compassionate" key for Borg's interpretation
• significant that "wisdom" feminine in Hebrew and Greek
• "wisdom of God" asso with banquet also
• "macro-stories:" exodus from Egypt, return from exile, priestly atonement
• Jesus the Spirit person, teacher of wisdom, social prophet, movement founder

The Meaning of Jesus

• Wright - "History and faith need each other at every step, and never more so than here."
• Wright - Jesus the 1st century Jewish eschatological prophet, announcing kingdom of God, kingdom inaugurated in his work, summoning others to join in movement, warning of judgment of nation and destruction of Jerusalem if people don't join, movement a replacement of Temple, cryptically proclaims himself Messiah, takes judgment and punishment upon himself on the cross
• Wright - metaphor into metonymy
• Borg - ideally a creed provides a theological frame to understand Jesus, doesn't exclude but creates platform for historical Jesus
• Messiah, Son of Adam/Man, Word of God, Sophia of God, Son of God
• Wright - worship and mission: spirituality, theology, politics, healing
• Borg - God is near ("at hand"), immediately accessible, compassionate, wants justice
• Borg - tradition as a sacrament

Week 10 - How to Write a Different Story

Mr. Fox - Helen Oyeyemi

Honest to Jesus: Jesus for a New Millennium - Robert Funk

Language, Hermeneutic, and Word of God: The Problem of Language in the New Testament and Contemporary Theology - Funk


   According to my schedule March should be "Christian Jesus" month, but I think I'll have to push that back a few weeks....I'm changing my trajectory a little bit. Maybe I can just switch March and April? This week I picked up a couple Funky books, next week I'll see if I can resist the Borg, then to Elaine Pagels, and for the final week in March I'm gonna dive into my dad's commentary on Luke. And maybe some novels in between? somehow?

   Mr Fox! Charming, confusing, arresting, frightening, filled with hope. Oyeyemi is about my age and this is her fifth or sixth novel; plus she's got some plays and short stories running around the shelves. I was as provoked as I was entertained by this tale of tales.
    It's a series of interconnected stories, grounded in the first-person reflections of the three main characters (and story tellers), Mr. Fox, Mary Foxe, and Daphne Fox. Structurally maybe you could compare it to Canterbury Tales? Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler?
     St. John Fox (Mr Fox) is a fiction writer, a half-wild intellectual Herzog type man, a veteran of the first World War, who for some reason feels compelled to kill, maim, or otherwise harass all his female characters. At some point, before his writing career, he imagined a clever, beautiful female muse to keep him company in the trenches of war and loneliness. This imaginary companion, Mary Foxe, who - like any fictional character, Oyeyemi seems to say - has never been completely under the thumb of her author, now has grown in power to the point where she can write her own stories, tell her own tales.
    In the opening pages Mary magically appears in St. John's study and challenges him, "You kill women. You're a serial killer. Can you grasp that?" She then baits him into a duel of stories within stories - which is the bulk of the book. It's like a fugue, two voices, singing overlapping songs, now this one in the lead, now that one. Mary is determined not to follow the classic formulas that require murdered wives, kidnapped damsels, raped sisters, sacrificial daughters to create heroism and romance. 
   Mary and St. John include each other in their stories, take up many of the same themes, and have many of the same characters...they're even described as having the same handwriting, wink wink. About mid-way through the book, however, another voice, I think the most interesting voice, enters the fugue - that of Daphne Fox, St John's wife. Is my husband having an affair? Is he going crazy? What am I doing with my life? I won't spoil the ending, but it's both happy and unresolved. A great book!


   College is a great place to build castles in the sky...it's also a great place to have them knocked down. After one such break-down-take-down I wasn't sure I wanted to stick with a Christian bicycle. Two books got me some new tires and the Holy Spirit pumped them up, Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman and Jesus as Precursor by Robert Funk. Keep that in mind as you hear me complain about Honest to Jesus.
   What a disappointment Funky Funk! A dozen or so years leading the brash and daring Jesus Seminar, decades of brilliant work in theology, philosophy, and New Testament literary criticism, and this is what he writes? When Funk actually gets around interpreting the teachings of Jesus (as identified by the J.Sem), he's full of insight, hope, and creativity, but that's only a third (or less) of this book. The other two-thirds are 1) complaining like a grumpy old man about stale churches, hollow doctrine, stuffy academics, and an ignorant populace, and 2) summarizing the findings and overstating the ability of "honest" research into the real Jesus.
   Maybe I'm exaggerating my own complaints. If this had been the first book I'd read about historical Jesus research, I bet I would have liked it a lot better. In any case, he should have (and could have) written a different story, the story he kept referring to, the story of the "glimpse," the story that takes place on the frontier of "God's domain," the story that is always leaving and never arriving. 
   He writes in his concluding chapter, "In articulating the vision of Jesus, we should take care to express our interpretations in the same register as he employed in his parables and aphorisms...Our interpretations of parables should be more parables...we are invited by his example to be equally bold and innovative." Sweet! That's the book I want to read. I think he had the skills to do it.
   Language, Hermeneutic, and Word of God confirmed my regrets. If only Funk had left the explanations of history and source criticism to his friends and focused his writing energies on parabolic interpretation...booyah, Honest to Jesus would have been awesome, at least as awesome as Language, Hermeneuic, and Word of God. This book is slow reading, quite dense, and I couldn't follow his arguments in the final two chapters because I don't read Greek, but anybody interested in literary criticism should check this out. The central section, concerning parables, is electric.



Notes
Mr. Fox

• Reynardine, Pizarsky
• "too damn cozy"
• "...I could slip out of my life on a slow wave"
• "The words didn't come easily. She put large spaces between some of them for fear they would attack one another"
• the gathered woman
• "Ordinary life just swerves around him, though, and I run off the sides like an ingredient thrown in too late."
• "I had to stay there, in public, because I didn't know how to get home"
• "I was ten going on eleven. I didn't like what was happening and I didn't know why. He wrote on her back first, kneeling beside her; then he made her turn over and wrote all across her front, pressing hard, and the letters were big and ugly, but she pranced around afterwards,  holding out her arms and saying things like, 'Am I in the poem? Or is the poem in me?' And he just sat in a deck chair as if exhausted by his work and watched her. I thought, Something very mad is going on, she doesn't like this, but she'll never say so..." 

Honest to Jesus

• parables as windows, doors, frontier, set of relationships, deliberately involves the risk of misunderstanding, invites audience participation, normal landscape with weird elements, strange twists, reversals, unresolved endings
• usu only one or two speakers, if at all, often involves an authority figure, hierarchical relationships

Language, Hermeneutic, and Word of God

• Barth: to live with the text until it disappears and one is confronted with divine word
• "whether the language of the proclamation goes together with the reality of faith like new wine and fresh skins
• "Grace remains a mystery: it unveils itself as the ground of faith, but evaporates like a mist before the acquisitive eyes of belief"
• Bultmann "the ground and object of faith are identical"
• Bultmann "God's Word rightly understood is never statement but always address"
• Heidegger - Dasein is already disposed in its thrown-ness...its disposition to the world, which is what it essentially is, involves understanding...understanding the primordial grasp of the totality of involvements which reveals the categorical whole of a possible interconnection of the ready-to-hand...primordial discourse creates language
• Jesus awakening the faith of others in situ, usu crises, "Jesus never calls for faith in general, but faith in relation to a concrete situation, which is so intensified that it serves as a paradigm for the whole of reality"
• "The hermeneuical task, according to Ebeling, is bound by two points: the history of language, and the reality that confronts us
• "The parable, like other works of art, linguistic and visual, can be defined, but only with considerable loss."
• a language event which is the kingdom
• "the parables are the preaching itself" McLuskey?
• Dodd "at its simplest the parable is a metaphor or simile drawn from nature or common life, arresting the hearer by its vividness or strangeness, and leaving the mind in sufficient doubt about its precise application to tease it into active thought"
• parable is argumentative, Dodd
• parable involves "transference of judgment," Bultmann
• Barfield - simile is illustrative of meaning; metaphor is creative of meaning. in metaphor the point is discovered
• CS Lewis - magistral metaphor - invented by master to explain a point for which the pupil's thought is not yet adequate (an optional, helpful image); "pupillary" metaphor - understanding emerges with it, bound up with it, understanding could not be reaching in any other way
• Ramsey - picture model vs disclosure model
• an effective parable/metaphor is translucent - between transparent and opaque
• new meaning must come through old language, but metaphor can "break the grip of tradition on the language" and "discover new meaning"
• language undergoes "deformation" leading to "discovery"
• metaphor is open-ended temporally
• parable: "what it says is minimal; what it intends is maximal 
• "the poet directs attention to B in order to allow A to come into view, for A is not there to be looked at directly (penumbral field)
• parables generally common, secular subject matter
• literal and figurative "concomitant" meanings
• first step "yes that's how it its"
• second step "whats wrong with this picture?"
• third step "transference of judgment"
• parable is a "picture puzzle"
• parables "catch Mr Everyman" in "characteristic" actions
• caught up in the dilemma of the metaphor
• "direct discourse and soliloquy are characteristic of the parable and popular narrative"
• parables "identify [and interpret] their own audiences"
• parable as gesture
• the parable doesn't contain a message, it is a message
• Jungel "the reign of God is as near you as the Samaritan to the one threatened by death."
• "the reign of God is as near as the parable"
• "the parable stands on the frontier of language and mirrors without conceptualizing the kingdom of God
• Ogden on Heidegger, "The world-structure within which the various objects in the world find their places is ontologically prior to the objects themselves"
• Bultmann - theology and anthropology are reciprocal, God-for-human and human-before-God, also christology and soteriology
• epistle - bridging the gap between oral and written speech
• 1 Cor - sophia over against sophia, wisdom of the Cross, hidden in plain view

Week 9 - Crossanwich

The Essential Jesus: Original Sayings and Earliest Images - John Dominic Crossan

Excavating Jesus: Beneath the Stones, Behind the Texts - Crossan and Jonathan Reed

Who Killed Jesus? Exposing the Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Gospel Story of the Death of Jesus - Crossan

    This past week I ate a big, yummy Crossanwich, pilled high with J.D.'s favorite ingredients. Commensality! Reciprocity! Itinerancy! Egalitarianism! In the beginning was eating and healing.
    Crossan is really good at placing Jesus in an arena of, or on a spectrum between, contrasting concepts. To whom does the land belong? God or Humans? Covenantal Kingdom vs Commercial Kingdom. Apocalyptic eschatology vs Sapiential eschatology. Sharing among equals vs Exploiting those below/Resenting those above. Jesus and peasant friends vs Roman Empire and mini-empire (Herod) and mini-mini empire (Herod Antipas). What would the world be like if God was emperor and not Caesar? Would God ever be an emperor?
     
   Essential Jesus combines photos of early Christian images (mostly from 3rd century sarcophagi in Italy) with Crossan's translation-interpretation of what he thinks are the most authentic sayings and parables. I would have guessed that the cross and/or empty tomb would be the most common early Christian image, but apparently those aren't typical until after Constantine. Most prominent on these sarcophagi are images of a common meal (also prominent in pagan tradition), Jesus healing people like the paralytic (a man takes ups his mat/bed and walks), Jesus raising Lazarus, Jonah in and out of the great fish, Jesus the Good Shepherd, Jesus with a scroll teaching men and women, even John baptizing miniature Jesus. 
   Of Crossan's paraphrases the most striking for me are three beatitudes (according to him the three original beatitudes) -- blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom; blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted; blessed are those who hunger [and thirst for righteousness], for they will be filled -- all three of which he interprets to mean basically the same thing.
 - Only the destitute are innocent. [poor]
 - Only the wretched are guiltless. [mourn]
 - Only those who have no bread have no fault. [hungry]
Whoa.
 
  Excavating Jesus is one of my favorite from the Jesus-read-a-thon so far. Amazing archeological info - with pictures! - interpreted alongside Biblical and other ancient writing - makes for a healthy read. If you're like me, and you've ever doubted whether Jesus really cared that much about Roman political-economic influence and all that political mess - read this book! There's almost always room for doubt, of course, but I have less doubt now that I did. There's a difference between saying, "Jesus didn't care about political power," versus, "Jesus didn't care for political power."
    
   Who Killed Jesus? Exposing the Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Gospel Story of the Death of Jesus misled me a little bit. From the title I thought it would specifically link historical instances of anti-Semitism to the writing or interpretation of the Gospels. Crossan does that in a general sense, I guess, but mostly the book is a dialogue with Raymond Brown's The Death of the Messiah. I enjoy that structure to a book - back and forth between texts - books about books. Crossan is mostly fair, I think, in the way he quotes Brown. 
   His ethical criticism of The Death of the Messiah is against Brown's consistent use of phrases like "not implausible" and "not impossible" when commenting on the historicity of passages. Or rather, Crossan criticizes Brown for punting away historicity (did it happen) and focusing on "verisimilitude" (could it have happened). Crossan says that the Passion stories are too potent fuel for anti-Semite fires for Brown and other historically knowledgeable scholars to refrain from commenting on historicity.



Notes:
Essential Jesus

• "[Rome] did not crucify teachers or philosophers; it usually just exiled them permanently or cleared them out of Rome temporarily
• "Apocalyptic eschatology is world-negation stressing imminent divine intervention: we wait for God to act; sapiential eschatology is is world-negation emphasizing immediate divine imitation: God waits for us to act. Imminent vs immanent.
• Eating and healing prominent in earliest images 

• Parable of the sower: "it is far easier to explain what makes bad soil bad than good soil good"
• "Parables provoke audience participation and reaction rather than passive reception and memorization. They are devices of empowerment"
• Greek has two clearly different words for "poor" and "destitute," so it should be "blessed are the destitute."
• honors: "a long robe, as distinct from a short, girt tunic, meant that one did not have to work"
• leave the dead to bury their own dead - did that refer to secondary burial of bones?

• the lost coin: "Jesus is easily seen as the Good Shepherd but seldom seen as the Good Housewife."

Excavating Jesus

• stratigraphy - writing/reading the layers
• Herod built temples to goddess Roma and Emperor Augustus in Caesarea Maritima, Samaritan Sebaste, and Caesarea Philippi.
• Herod Antipas - rebuilding and building more in Galilee - Sepphoris (4bce) and Tiberias (19ce)
• Christian invocations scratched in walls of shrine at house of Peter in Capernaum (Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Syriac)
• why usu. Codex and not Scroll for early Christian docs? may mean more "ordinary scribes" and not official calligraphers
• Form criticism - what is form of story
• Source criticism - who copies whom
• Redaction criticism - what is purpose of copyist's work, esp with slight changes, additions, subtractions
• Tradition criticism - establish successive layers of tradition's development
• life expectancy for average person in Jesus' day - 30's
• upward mobility extremely rare
• Nazareth - primarily Jewish until Heraclitus in 629ce expelled all Jews from holy sites
• no synagogue buildings from 1st c. or earlier found in Galilee. one found in Gamla in Golan, two in Judea
• Nazareth 200-400 inhabitants in Jesus day; destroyed and depopulated way back when by the Assyrians; repopulation of Galilee encouraged by Hasmonean dynasty; 4 miles from "big city" Sepphoris - Herod Antipas' capital until he built Tiberias; near the east-west road running from Sea of Galilee to Ptolemais on the Mediterranean; grain, olive, and grape production, like most of Galilee
• Mary pregnant during engagement - most would have assumed by Joseph, why does Matt record suspected adultery?
• "In a commercial kingdom the land that belongs to humanity must be exploited as fully as possible. In a covenantal kingdom the land that belongs to divinity must be distributed as justly as possible."
• Herod the Great - first build fortress palaces at Jericho, Masada, and Herodion. Then builds a totally new city, Caesarea Maritima, and the largest temple court ever, Temple Mount
• use of Greco-Roman architecture, esp Augustan emphasis on facade, orthogonal grid (cardo N-S and decumanus E-W), and crowd control (vomitoria - exits from public spaces)
• "Is is significant, for example, that Jesus and the Kingdom of God are associated not with either Sepphoris or Tiberias, but with Capernaum?"
• courtyard of typical house - could function as living room, kitchen, dining room, workshop
• octoganal Byzantine church built over Peter's house, 5th c., also beautiful synagogue built nearby in same time period
• triclinium - formal Roman dining room with three couches for reclining and eating, adopted by some wealthy in Judea and Galilee (and all over mediterranean)
• other luxury - frescoes, mosaics, glassware, fine ceramics, private miqweh
• Josephus describes Galilean soldiers as hating inhabitants of Sepphoris and Tiberias and desiring to sack the cities
• Jesus sends out his disciples, carry nothing, eat what they give you, heal, preach the kingdom, shake off the dust if they don't accept; he tells them to do what he is doing, but he doesn't say bring them to me or do it in my name; starting a "kingdom movement" rather than a "Jesus movement"
• land as food and justice as agape (sharing)
• Under Persians, Greeks, Ptolemies, and Seleucids, only one recorded revolt - provoked by Antiochus Epiphanes and his "abomination of desolation" in the Temple. Under the Romans - four recorded revolts (4bce, 66-74ce, 115-117ce, 132-135ce)
• Judas the Galilean - "No Lord but God"
• "Egyptian prophet" - gathered followers at Jordan and walked to Jerusalem, expecting the walls to fall and apocalypse to start
• 26-27ce, locals plead and protest Pilate to take down Roman standards (iconic), offered themselves to be massacred, Pilate backs down; several years later, similar situation, Pilate sends troops to infiltrate crowd and beat protesters
• 40-41ce, locals organize to plead and protest Petronius not to install statue of Caligula in Temple, successful
• stone vessels (cups, bowls, and large jars - like at wedding in Cana) become popular in 1st c bce and ce, impervious to ritual impurity
• "The problem is not whether to pay Caesar's taxes, but whether to carry Caesar's coins."
• the "interacting violence of class warfare within colonial rebellion that characterized the great revolt of 66-74ce in both Galilee and Judea"
• massacres during Passover in 4bce under Herod's son Archelaus and later under procurator Ventidius Cumanus
• Herod Agrippa may have persecuted early Jewish-Christians in 40s (Acts: Agrippa "laid violent hands upon some who belonged to the church. He had James, the brother of John, killed with the sword. After he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also." This may help explain Gospels' sympathy toward Pilate (as a contrast to Jewish leadership of Agrippa)
• "The corpse of Herod the Great, King of the Jews, was carried on a golden bier studded with precious stones and draped in royal purples; it was accompanied by his kinsmen and mercenaries from Thracia, Gaul, and Germany, and it was brought to the Herodion for burial. There were also five hundred servants carrying spices." ("how to bury a king")
• early basilica - lobby or public space next to a theater, bath, or temple, or reception hall, by 4thc. ce more and more a royal, political building with throne or statue in the apse. Constantine chose this type of building for church; Christ the King
• Paul - "the Jesus resurrection and the general resurrection stand or fall together"
• "Essene Jews proclaimed a single coming of a double messiah [one priestly and one royal]...Christian Jews proclaimed a double coming of a single messiah"

Who Killed Jesus

• "Basically the issue is whether the passion accounts are prophecy historicized or history remembered...Ray Brown is 80 percent in the direction of history remembered. I'm 80 percent in the opposite direction."
• "But once that Jewish sect became the Christian Roman Empire, a defensive strategy [originally directed against fellow Jews] would become the longest lie. The passion narratives challenge both the honesty of Christian history and the integrity of Christian conscience."
• Josephus records story of Jesus son of Ananias, 62ce "...a voice against Jerusalem and the sanctuary; a voice against the bridegroom and the bride; a voice against all the people...", prophesied over and over, arrested and handed over to Roman authorities who declare him insane and harmless, prophesied until siege of Jerusalem, during which he was killed
• "Brown judges it most likely that Jesus was crucified on Passover Eve, as explicitly in John [and Peter], rather than on Passover Day, as implicitly in the Synoptics. I agree."
• why is resurrection described, with witnesses, in Peter, but not in the canonical gospels? the gospel writers aren't afraid to describe every other kind of miracle, even the raising of Lazarus
• "Easter faith...started among those first followers of Jesus in lower Galilee long before his death..."
• "trinitarian" structure of religion: ultimate referent + material manifestation + faithful believer
• "...each generation and century must redo that historical work and establish its best reconstruction, a reconstruction that will be and must be in some creative interaction with its own particular needs, visions, and programs..."

Week 8.5 - 20 Loaded Questions for Dad

1. A Christian History prof. of mine said he thought Jesus was most like the Pharisees, which gives some context to Jesus' disagreements with Pharisees (a chemist is most likely to argue with other chemists, right?). Also I really enjoyed Crossan's comparison of Jesus and Cynic philosophers, which helps to highlight Jesus' anti-possesion and anti-wealth statements. If you had to pick an ancient sect or school for Jesus, which would you pick?

    I think Jesus was most like the followers of John the Baptist, who would have been like a sect or school in their own day. Jesus agreed with the Pharisees on the existence of angels, the age to come, and the possibility of extending the reach of Torah through oral interpretation; he disagreed with them on many other things. Jesus’ anti-materialism doesn’t appear to have made him an ascetic during his ministry, for instance. Jesus’ motivation for his anti-materialism also differed from the Cynics’ motives; Jesus believed (IMHO) that the present age was ending soon and that those who oppressed the poor were going to get clobbered on Judgment Day. So far as I know, the Cynics had no eschatology. Furthermore, Jesus’ reputation for eating with all and sundry is unlike both the Pharisees and the Cynics (and John the B, for that matter).


2.Ehrman and the J.Seminar both say that the Pharisees weren't prominent in Galilee in Jesus' day. What sources are they using for that, do you think?

   This is a debatable point. First-hand sources for reconstructing the Pharisees are limited: we have the largely anti-Pharisee stuff in the Gospels, Paul’s self-statement that he was a Pharisee, Josephus’ histories and self-statement that he had been a Pharisee (among other things), and the statements about Pharisees in the Mishnah. All of these sources have their limitations for historical reconstruction. Most of what the Mishnah and Josephus says about the Pharisees locates them in Jerusalem.

3.Cohen says that Logos is often mistranslated as 'word,' and should be 'speech' or 'reason.' The J.Seminar said something like, 'divine word and wisdom.' How do you explain Logos to your students?


    So we’re talking about the Prologue to John? Logos certainly can mean “word,” or “story” or really anything spoken. The Stoics sometimes used it (or pneuma, breath or spirit) to mean the thing that holds all the disparate parts of the universe together and makes sense of them. Crossan is probably thinking that the background to the Prologue is speculation about Wisdom and Wisdom’s role in creation. I tell students that the Prologue deliberately creates connections between Genesis 1, the views of Stoics and neo-Platonists, and what the author of John believed about Jesus: that the aspect of God that was active in creation and that makes all things comprehensible was what John thought Jesus embodied. C. K. Barrett wrote a great book about the multiple backgrounds for most of the important metaphors in John.


4. I think that Paul, reading the Greek OT and seeing 'born of a virgin' in Isaiah, would have said something about Jesus being born of a virgin if he'd known the nativity stories. Do you think Paul knew about Jesus miraculous' birth?


    No—I agree with you that if he had known, the part in Galatians about “born of a woman” would have been different.

5. I think you may have addressed this question in Jesus the Baptist, when you talk about models and the process of creating a hypothesis: why do historical Jesus scholars seem to assume from the start that Jesus was fairly consistent in word and deed?

   Because if you think he was inconsistent, anything could be historical.

6. Have you read any modern arguments that Jesus didn't exist?

   No. I haven’t read Bart’s book on that—maybe he takes up the modern Jesus-deniers?

7. It seems like, if you look hard enough, you can find ancient parallels for all of Jesus' teachings (and parallels seem to be used as arguments both for and against authenticity). Are there any teachings of Jesus that stand out to you as extremely unusual or even unique?

    “Unique” is probably too much to say—if there were no parallels whatsoever, could people have understood what he meant? But the way I understand Jesus—that he was trying to start a movement where everyone did what he did and where status doesn’t matter—that is pretty unusual, and probably too idealistic for humans. I think of the line from Flannery O’Connor’s “Revelation,” where Mrs. Turpin screams that if the last becomes first, there’s still a top and a bottom.

8. From the little I've read, it seems that in Jesus day, most Jews believed in some kind of Messiah figure, associated with future judgment and national salvation. Is that accurate?


    I think it’s likely that most Jews in Jesus’ day believed in the age to come and some sort of future judgment. Josephus says that’s why the Pharisees were the most popular of the Jewish sects. I’m not so sure about the Messiah; many may have believed that God would intervene without a human agent. I think most Jews probably did believe in a national salvation—Israel restored without other nations ruling them.


9. Is it fair to say that the craziest thing about proclaiming Jesus as Messiah in first and second century Jewish communities was not that Jesus is Son of God, or that he died to save others, or even that he miraculously resurrected, but that there had been no clear apocalyptic event? How could Jesus be the Messiah if the world-wide social, political, economic, religious situation is largely the same?


    I think the craziest thing about proclaiming Jesus as Messiah was that he was crucified, and that the second-craziest was the failure of the apocalypse.

10. The NT response to the lack of visible apocalypse seems to be that Jesus started something apocalyptic (spiritual, social, economic, if not officially political) that his disciples are called to participate in, and that Jesus will soon come back to complete. Don't you make a similar case in Jesus the Baptist, based on your historical research? Jesus, whether or not he named himself Messiah, proclaimed an epoch shifting, Messianic type program, he tried to carry it out all the way to the cross, and he called his disciples to follow him to the cross and help start the wave, so to speak. Am I understanding this right? Reading your book made me think of Chesterton's famous quote, "the Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried."

   Yes, that’s right.

11. Which do you think was more important to the Roman Empire, military organization or slavery?

    I don’t know enough to answer. The two were mutually supportive: military victories gave them quantities of new war captives to sell as slaves; slaves did so much of the work that made the empire economically able to raise armies.
12. The Gospels' Jesus frequently makes use of the master-slave dynamic in his teachings; he never directly condemns or condones slavery; but he also clearly preaches the inversion of hierarchy, the blessedness of the poor and disinherited, and/or the egalitarian destruction of hierarchy. Are there any stories or teachings that you think summarize Jesus' attitude toward ancient slavery?

   Hmm. “Blessed are you poor, for the Reign of God is yours.” I think Jesus would have believed that like demon possession, slavery would end in the Age to Come, but that it was an unfortunate aspect of the present age. Luke 13:10-17 makes freedom from bondage a higher value in God’s eyes than the commandment to honor the Sabbath; but whereas Jesus could exorcise demons, he couldn’t exorcise the Romans.


13. Reading about the Qumran community and reading a little of their Rule of Life blew my mind! Do you of any similar ancient monastic type communities?

   Philo writes about a group called the Therapeutai. We don’t have their Rule, just his description.
14. Does the Rabbinic concept of the "people of the land" roughly correspond to the religious class of people Jesus interacted with?

   Yes, I think so.


15. After learning a little about Roman-Jewish relations, what Caiaphas says in John, "it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish," sounds very plausible and logical, even though it may have been written mostly to foreshadow atonement. I guess what I'm getting at is: Caiaphas's explanation for executing Jesus - better get rid of him before things get out of hand and the Romans kill lots of people - fits the historical framework better than other explanations in the Gospel's - that Jesus was convicted of blasphemy, that Jesus was getting too powerful, that the Pharisees and Sadducees were bitter and pressured Pilate to kill Jesus. Based on your research, do you think Caiaphas' statement is historically accurate for the Temple leadership and/or Pilate?

   It is plausible, and E.P. Sanders argues that the Temple leadership probably did seize Jesus following the Temple event and handed him to the Romans in order to prevent any innocent people from getting hurt or killed. But I wouldn’t argue that Caiaphas said that.

16. The notes in the Five Gospels claim that the Mandean religion descends from John the Baptist. Can you recommend anything to read about that?

    No, it’s not my field.


17. What do you think is the future of historical Jesus research? more archeology? uncovering more texts? better understanding of culture or language?

    I’m not a prophet, nor the son of a prophet (maybe the dad of a prophet!)—I expect we will learn more about Jesus’ environment in time as more sites in Israel/Palestine are excavated. Maybe there will be more texts—nobody expected the Dead Sea Scrolls. And yes, I expect people will grow in understanding of culture and language as more scholarship filters into general knowledge.

18. Several years ago I read a little book called God's Presence in History, by Emil Fackenheim, and I really appreciated his concept of "root experiences," historical events that shape a culture or religion and that future generations intentionally re-enact and re-member. Rabban Gamaliel, "In every generation a man must so regard himself as if he came forth himself out of Egypt..." Do you think Jesus' Birth, Baptism, Crucifixion, and/or Resurrection fit this model? Jesus crucifixion and resurrection seem to fit for Paul, "I have been crucified with Christ..." I guess it's a little more individualistic than the Exodus.

    I think those events CAN fit the model—“were you there when they crucified my Lord?”—or the Greek Orthodox practice of creating a tomb for Jesus in the church and having people enter it in the Holy Saturday service. Christmas pageants, or the tableaux that go back to St. Francis, would be a way of helping people experience it as their own history. And we do communion and baptism as rituals that recall acts of Jesus, so yes, I think it’s an apt concept.


19. I think "root experience" might be a good way to describe how many white southerners of various classes and backgrounds can believe a giant statue of a Confederate general somehow represents their "heritage and history," when, from a time-line standpoint, the Confederacy is only about 1.3% of southern white history (5yrs/400yrs), and from an economic and political standpoint, Lee and Stonewall represented the interests of a very small class of white people. The trauma of the war was widespread across class and race, north and south. Are the facts that 1) most of the fighting happened in the southern states and 2) southerners had a higher proportion of their population fighting and killed enough to explain why southern whites are particularly inclined to feel a personal connection to the Civil War? Racism, honor for the dead, poverty, the KKK and other racist, anti-Reconstruction movements, segregation and Jim Crow, all this and more somehow fed into the white southern emphasis on the Civil War as a root experience, passed down from generation to generation. Does "root experience" describe how the Civil War was taught to you growing up in Alabama?


   I think 1) and 2) are not enough to explain it. Certain segments of the South worked really hard to tell the story of the war, its causes, and its meaning in certain ways, and if we call that “the Cause,” that’s what got passed down in lots and lots of ways. When I was a kid in Montgomery in the 1960s, people stood for the Stars and Bars and for the playing of Dixie; schoolkids took field trips to the capital to stand on the star marking the spot where Jefferson Davis took the oath of office; upper-class, well-connected boys were invited to join groups like the “Rebel Lancers” that promoted “Southern Culture”; politicians—all of them, not just George Wallace—used the mythology of the war and its causes for their own purposes. I remember hearing grown men discussing whether the South could win the war if we seceded in modern times—cut off the oil from Texas, all the military bases in the South would come over to our side, etc. Educated people with college degrees who should have known better persisted in teaching children myths and lies that perpetuated that way of life.


20. I think non-gun owners have a hard time understanding the psychological effects of owning a gun. From my limited experience firing guns, and my understanding of what friends and family say about guns, it seems like owning a gun is comparable to owning a car (or maybe a smart phone?). It provides feelings of power, independence, freedom. For many men owning a gun is a part of being an adult. On the other hand, if you asked gun-owners, "would America be safer if every person owned a gun," some would say yes but the majority would say no, I think. How would you describe the psychological connection to guns that your dad and his generation had? Can you argue for gun control in a way that leverages that psychology and sentiment? The anti-gun control lobbyists are so very good at exploiting all that.

   I pass—I didn’t know this one was going to be on the test....I just don't have any wisdom on the last one