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