is Mark a pre-war document?

In yesterday's mail I received an examination copy of David A. deSilva's new book, The Jewish Teachers of Jesus, James, and Jude (Oxford University Press, 2012), which I am considering adopting for my graduate course, World of the New Testament. I started looking through the book, and so far I'm enjoying it. Much to disagree with, of course, but much more to learn from. This is what we enjoy about NT scholarship, right?

At any rate, in the light of yesterday's post about Mark Goodacre's suspicion of an potentially emerging consensus that Mark is a post-war document, I thought it interesting to read the following from deSilva, who affirms (along with nearly every other NT scholar) that Luke-Acts was written after the Roman-Jewish War:

. . . Occasionally the "apocalyptic discourse" has been used to argue that the Gospels of Mark and Matthew also postdate these events, but there is nothing in either account that could not have been uttered by a Jewish prophet in the first half of the first century—quite aside from the question of whether or not such prophetic utterance is "really" predictive. (2012:263, ftn. 5)

Goodacre, in the course of his discussion, will refer to three very recent monographs focused on the question of the date of Mark's Gospel (and an article by John Kloppenborg). deSilva, on the other hand,  is simply making a point about Luke's Gospel and contrasting that point, briefly and in a footnote, against the Gospels of Mark and Matthew. My point here is certainly not that deSilva has the better or more convincing argument. Rather, I just want to point out how easily one can encounter—even accidentally!!—exceptions to the potentially emerging consensus to which Goodacre made reference. Without question detailed and sophisticated arguments for a post-war date are current within the scholarly discussion, and clearly Goodacre has found them persuasive. But if anything, I suspect the consensus—if there be one—pushes Mark back into the immediately pre-war years. deSilva even pushes Matthew back before the destruction of Jerusalem and her Temple!

New JSP imminent

According to their website, the current issue of The Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha is still the December 2010 issue. However, I have it on good authority that the next issue (20/3 [March 2011]) will be issued very soon. When it's released I'll put up a link and a list of its contents. But for now, as a teaser, let me suggest that this issue will feature a very helpful discussion of the literal vs. metaphorical intentions of the therapeutic language in 4Q521. That text, famously found among the cache of texts from Cave 4 near the Dead Sea and originally published in 1992, contains striking thematic and traditional similarities to Jesus' response to John the Baptist's disciples, recorded in Matt. 11.2–6||Luke 7.18–23.

James Tabor, who published an essay with Michael Wise on this fragmentary text in the early 1990s, has posted a translation and discussion on his website. All of this is very interesting!!

a fortuitous find

I have assigned a selection of readings from Plutarch's Moralia (the Quaestiones romanae et graecae) and from Seneca's Epistles (the Epistulae morales) in my graduate course, World of the New Testament. I'm interested in both Plutarch and Seneca as presentations of features of the Greco-Roman world from elite, pagan perspectives. Plutarch explicitly is trying to explain features of Latin culture to his Greek readers; Seneca, on the other hand, is exploring and commending certain behaviors or ways of thinking to his friend, Lucilius.

I'm certainly no Latin scholar; still less do I know anything about Seneca. So I was pleasantly surprised when I came across the following:

I shall therefore send to you the actual books; and in order that you may not waste time in searching here and there for profitable topics, I shall mark certain passages, so that you can turn at once to those which I approve and admire. Of course, however, the living voice and the intimacy of a common life will help you more than the written word. You must go to the scene of the action, first, because men put more faith in their eyes than in their ears, and second, because the way is long if one follows precepts, but short and helpful, if one follows patterns. Cleanthes could not have been the express image of Zeno, if he had merely heard his lectures; he shared in his life, saw into his hidden purposes, and watched him to see whether he lived according to his own rules. Plato, Aristotle, and the whole throng of sages who were destined to go each his different way, derived more benefit from the character than from the words of Socrates. It was not the class-room of Epicurus, but living together under the same roof, that made great men of Metrodorus, Hermarchus, and Polyaenus. Therefore I summon you, not merely that you may derive benefit, but that you may confer benefit; for we can assist each other greatly. (Seneca, Ep. 6.5–6)

Seneca's view of texts—what they are, what they're good for, and how to use them properly—is particularly interesting to me, given my own interests in media criticism and Christian origins. Seneca is a member of the Roman elite social class (he was Nero's tutor!), highly educated, familiar with the range of philosophical texts produced by and for the Greek and Roman upperclasses, able to live a life of relative leisure even in comparatively difficult times (see Ep. 1.4), and sufficiently resourced to send a barrage of letters to a friend who is physically distant from him. Even so, Seneca is no raw bibliophile; he isn't interested in amassing and reading texts for their own sake (see Ep. 2). Instead, although he exhibits familiarity with texts from outside his favored Stoic tradition (Epicurean, Platonic, etc.), he exhorts Lucilius to confine himself to familiar and more profitable texts. Reading too many texts is akin to knowing too many people, and being a friend to none (Ep. 2.2).

So how does Seneca suppose texts function (or ought to function) in order to maximize their benefit? Texts only work properly, according to the excerpt quoted above, within the context of social relationship. The value to Lucilius of Seneca's Moral Epistles isn't in the reading but in the relationship between the two men established prior to the epistles and evoked, strengthened, and furthered by means of the texts. Similarly, Cleanthes embodied and furthered Stoic philosophy via his relationship with Zeno rather than by reading his texts. The same applies, mutatis mutandis, of Socrates' followers; indeed, famously Socrates didn't even leave behind any textual remains!

And so Seneca says (and this really is quite amazing), "Of course, however, the living voice and the intimacy of a common life will help you more than the written word. You must go to the scene of the action, first, because men put more faith in their eyes than in their ears, and second, because the way is long if one follows precepts, but short and helpful, if one follows patterns." The written text enables Seneca to face and overcome the problem of geographical distance (he is physically removed from his friend, Lucilius). But the text is no substitute for the interpersonal relationship and interaction that is given concrete expression in face-to-face conversation; indeed, the text—when it behaves properly—mimics social interaction. Seneca becomes present to Lucilius via the written text. For this reason, Lucilius read a different text than the one before me; when I read Seneca, there is no extratextual relationship invoked (and evoked) in my act of reading.

Notice that this is a far cry from the standard opposition between "orality" and written texts we find in much biblical scholarship. We're not juxtaposing oral tradition over and against written text. Rather, we're on the lookout for how written texts functioned in a world conditioned by and geared toward the actual social engagement of human beings with one another. Thus the significance of Seneca's allusion to social script of autopsy (eyewitness testimony) when he says men prefer their eyes to their ears. On the surface this may seem to elevate written texts—accessed with the eyes—over spoken words—perceived with the hear. But in fact this is exactly the opposite of Seneca's point! Seneca privileges the concrete experience of knowledge shared through interpersonal relationships (including words spoken between people) over that gained second hand, through the reports of someone else or mediated by means of written reports.

Masonic reading of Luke-Acts

I am finishing up Steve Mason's book, Josephus and the New Testament (second edition; Peabody, MA: 2003). This may be one of the best books I've read recently; it's easy-to-read, original in its reading of Josephus and his texts, and well-structured around its central purpose (to explore how to capitalize on Josephus' value for New Testament and Christian origins scholarship). I recommend this book to anyone interested in the New Testament, first-century Christianity, or Josephus.

Without diminishing the praise I have for this book, however, I think Mason's thesis in chapter six, "Josephus and Luke-Acts" (251–95) suffers serious flaws. His overall point in265– this chapter lies squarely in the mainstream: that Luke-Acts and Josephus rely on common written and/or oral traditional sources. But Mason opens the door to the idea that Luke-Acts "builds its case with knowledge of Josephus's advocacy of Judaism" (252), an idea of which I am not yet convinced. But some key features of his analysis of the generic similarities between Josephus and Luke-Acts—"they are both histories, written in Greek according to the conventions of their period, which we may loosely call Hellenistic" (252)—strike me as oddly lacking in nuance.

For example, Mason says more than once that both the author of Luke-Acts and Josephus "write from the margins of society, using their accounts to convey essential features of their communities' values" (252; see also 265–67). While this is generally true, Mason does not clarify the very important differences between Josephus' and Luke-Acts's location "at the margins" and their relation with Roman centers of political, cultural, and social power. Anyone familiar with the Greek of both authors—and Mason is intimately familiar with their Greek—knows that these texts come from very different worlds and, despite Luke's nod toward his literary patron (κράτιστε Θεόφιλε [Luke 1.3]), are written for very different audiences.

As a result of his blurring the differences between Josephus and Luke-Acts, Mason distorts a number of Lukan features. As an example, he spends some time aligning Luke-Acts more closely with Josephus than with the other canonical gospels, despite real problems raised by this realignment.

Mark (3:6) and John (5:18) place Jesus in dire conflict with the Jewish authorities almost from the beginning and, in their different ways, make Jesus' own Jewish identity ore or less irrelevant to his role as savior. In Luke-Acts, however, Jesus operates comfortably within the Jewish world throughout the entire gospel, attending temple and synagogue (2:21, 41, 49: 4:16), consorting in a friendly manner with popular Jewish teachers (7:36; 11:37; 14:1), and debating with other teachers the correct interpretation of Sabbath law. (256)

This is a terrible reading of Luke. Luke's Jesus is indeed thoroughly Jewish, but even here, as a Jewish teacher in a Galilean synagogue, Jesus is nearly shoved off a cliff at the very beginning of the narrative (4.28–29). Indeed, Luke's Jesus is barely a week old when the old man Symeon sounds an ominous note of opposition over the baby's future (2.34–35). Notice that I agree with Mason that Luke's Jesus "operates comfortably within the Jewish world," but I fervently disagree with him that this is different than in the other gospels, especially Mark and John.

Additionally, in his effort to demonstrate affinities between Luke-Acts and Josephus, Mason turns to the preface of Luke's second volume. (I should disclose here that my doctoral supervisor, Loveday Alexander, has published multiple researches on the prefaces of Luke-Acts. Obviously this doesn't make me an expert on these prefaces, as if by association. But I do clearly have alliances in this discussion.) As Mason reads Acts,

Like Josephus, Luke glides easily from a summary of his earlier work to his present book. Whereas the former history had dealt with Jesus' actions and teachings, this one will recount the actions and teachings of his apostles. (257)

Again, this isn't the most helpful reading of Luke-Acts. Yes, "Luke glides easily from a summary of his earlier work to his present book." In fact, unlike the gospel (the preface of which clearly ends after 1.4, with a new section beginning at 1.5), Acts's preface doesn't so much end as fade into the scene of the risen Jesus eating with "the apostles." But Luke describes his "former book" [πρῶτον λόγον] as an account "of those things which Jesus began both to do and to teach" [ὧν ἤρξατο ὁ Ἰησοῦς ποιεῖν τε καὶ διδάσκειν (1.1; my emphasis)]. Thus Mason's distinction between Luke and Acts—the former an account of Jesus' teachings and life, the latter an account of Jesus' followers' teachings and lives—is blurred in the preface, which frames the Acts as the account of what Jesus continued to do and to teach through those he sent out to the ends of the earth (1.8).

Problems also attend Mason's reading of the Lukan Paul vis-à-vis the Paul of the epistles. This is certainly a complicated and controversial subject, but Mason's position here needs some refinement.

[A]ccording to Acts, out of all the possible Scriptures that one could cite as proof texts, Peter and Paul choose the same ones and use them in the same way. . . . In his letters [however], because he writes as the apostle to the Gentiles, Paul spends no time at all proving that Jesus is the Messiah or recounting Israel's history in any connected way. Indeed, the absence of Jewish content in his gospel is what provoked a response from his Jewish-Christian opponents. (263)

Mason offers Romans as "only a partial exception" to this observation. A lot depends on how we read his qualifier, "in any connected way." Certainly the epistolary Paul does not offer an exegetical presentation of the gospel akin to that found in Acts 13. But Paul's own thinking relies so firmly on categories, images, and narratives drawn from Hebrew biblical traditions that the discordance between the epistolary and the Lukan Pauls is less pronounced than Mason suggests. Romans certainly argues about as well as through Jewish texts and traditions (esp. Rom. 2–5; 9–11); we find similar arguments in 1 Cor. 1–2; 10; 15; 2 Cor. 6; Gal. 3, 4; Phil. 2 (and others besides). This may not represent a "connected" presentation of the gospel or argument that Jesus is Israel's Messiah, but the generic differences between Paul's letters and Acts's narrative account for these differences. Indeed, the same Lukan Paul who gave a strikingly "Petrine" sermon in Acts 13 gives a non-biblical sermon in Acts 17. I'm not arguing that there aren't any differences between Luke's Paul and the Paul of the letters. But these differences are not solely the result of Luke's literary and rhetorical interests having their effect upon his presentation of Paul. Portraying a historical figure in literature, no less than presenting a self-portrait, is complicated business.

I have other issues with Mason's reading of Luke-Acts, but my discussion thus far suffices to demonstrate the kind of thing I don't like about this chapter. Even so, these criticisms should not detract from my endorsement of Josephus and the New Testament as an excellent book. Mason offers us an impeccably responsible demonstration of how to take Josephus on his own terms and allow him to shed his own light upon the history and literature of earliest Christianity. The danger of proof-texting Josephus in order to bolster or question this or that NT text plagues scholarship at least as doggedly as the danger of proof-texting the NT itself to bolster or question this or that doctrine plagues popular Christianity (of whatever theological position). Mason provides vital context for understanding Josephus first and then bringing his writings to bear upon early Christian texts.

Paul, Agrippa II, and Josephus

I enjoyed this paragraph on Paul's hearing before Festus and Herod Agrippa II, narrated in Acts 25–26. Mason's book overall is very good and well worth reading, especially if you're taking my World of the New Testament course (since it's one of your assigned texts!!).

But the story of Paul's hearing before Agrippa II matches Josephus's account in its repeated reference to his companion Berenice (Acts 25:13, 23; 26:30). Acts does not explain that she is Agrippa's sister, nor does it divulge why she is there, since she does not figure int he exchanges with Paul. The modern reader might easily suppose that she is his wife. But once we know Josephus's account, the episode takes on a sharply sarcastic tone. Here is the great king in all his pomp (25:23), brought in by the Roman governor Festus because of his purported expertise in things Jewish (25:26), which the governor lacked. INdeed, Paul repeatedly appeals to the king's familiarity with Jewish teaching: "With all that I am being accused of by the Jews, King Agrippa, I consider myself fortunate that I am to defend myself before you today, about all because you are expert in Jewish customs and issues" (26:2–3, 26–27). But if the reader knows that this august Jewish leader, who presumes to try Paul, is all the while sitting next to the sister with whom he is reportedly having an incestuous affair, in violation of the most basic Jewish laws, then the whole trial becomes a comedy. Paul's appeals to Agrippa's Jewish knowledge are, in that case, devastating barbs.¹

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¹ Steve Mason, Josephus and the New Testament (second edition; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2003), 164.

when in Rome . . .

I've been reading through Plutarch's whirl-wind explication of Roman culture in Roman Questions (Moralia IV; LCL 305). One of Plutarch's questions reminded me of the time we spent in Sheffield, UK. First, Plutarch (according to F. C. Babbitt's translation).

Why did they not allow the table to be taken away empty, but insisted that something should be upon it?

Was it that they were symbolizing the necessity of ever allowing some part of the present provision to remain over for the future, and to-day to be mindful of to-morrow, or did they think it polite to repress and restrain the appetite while the means of enjoyment was still at hand? For persons who have accustomed themselves to refrain from what they have are less likely to crave for what they have not.

Or does the custom also show a kindly feeling towards the servants? For they are not so well satisfied with taking as with partaking, since they believe that they thus in some manner share the table with their masters.

Or should no sacred thing be suffered to be empty, and the table is a sacred thing? (QR 64)

As I was reading, I imagined a hapless Greek traveller, enjoying the lavish hospitality of a Roman patron and graciously eating every bit of food his host sets on the table before him, only to find that his host then feels obliged to replenish the table. Reminds me of this advertisement, for HSBC.

on proper types of documentation

As part of the orientation program to our in-coming MA New Testament students, I give a presentation entitled, "The Nature and Expectations of Graduate Education." In one section of that presentation I explain the difference between primary and secondary literature and the importance of becoming expert in both as part of pursuing graduate-level research. Part of the perennial problem I encounter when I grade my students' papers concerns knowing just what kind of documentation is necessary for what kind of claims. As luck would have it, I've just encountered a similar problem in an otherwise excellent published article, and I'd like to take this opportunity to clarify how we ought to engage in historical discussions of the ancient world.

In his article, "The Fourteen Triads of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:21–7:12)," Glen Stassen makes a fairly standard claim about alms-giving, prayer, and fasting in late-Second Temple era Judaism.¹ He writes,

Almsgiving, prayer, and fasting went together as the three traditional Jewish practices of righteousness in the first century. "The three disciplines were almost certainly traditionally associated with one another. . . ." Clearly these are "traditional righteousness, as expected. (284; citing Davies and Allison, Matthew, 1:575; Weder, "Rede der Reden," 158; Davies, Setting, 305–15)

To be clear: I don't have any issue with Stassen's claim; he, like the scholars he cites, are almost certainly right. But notice what Stassen has done (rather that what he has claimed). Stassen has made a claim about how Jews in the ancient world perceived the practices of alms-giving, prayer, and fasting, and then he has cited modern historians in support of that claim. This, I suggest, is the problem.

How could Stassen have been more precise and helpful in his use of documentation? I think either of two options would have been preferable. First, Stassen could have made the claim that his documentation supported. That is, he could have said something along the lines of, "Scholars typically understand Jesus' teaching on these three practices together, which suggests that they see them as largely overlapping expressions of piety." If Stassen had cited Davies and Allison, Weder, and Davies in support of this claim, his citation would have provided examples of the very thing he was discussing.

Alternatively, Stassen could have provided documentation for the ancient phenomenon in question (viz., the association of alms-giving, prayer, and fasting together). That is, if these three practices did go hand-in-hand in Second Temple Judaic piety, then presumably we have texts that exhibit the connection between them. Certainly Matt. 6.1–18 might be one of these texts. But I would want to see other texts, whether from pseudepigraphical and/or apocryphal texts, the DSS, Josephus, Philo, etc., that make this connection and make it more explicitly than Matt. 6.1–18. These texts—and not claims made by Davies and Allison, Weder, and Davies—support the claim Stassen is making. Now, I assume that the secondary literature Stassen does cite provide references to the primary sources, but that actually exacerbates the problem rather than eases it. If other scholars have already gathered the primary evidence, then it should have been very easy for Stassen to provide references to that evidence.

Instead—and this is the point I want to make—the pattern of (a) making a claim about the ancient world and (b) supporting that claim with a reference or references to secondary sources enables us to root our historical claims in scholarly consensus rather than concrete historical data. Even when we're making fairly straightforward claims that probably are rather indicative of the ancient world (as is Stassen in this example), we need to get in the habit of more rigorously distinguishing the historical world(s) we have reconstructed in the critical mass of historical scholarship, on the one hand, from the actually historical data upon which that scholarship depends (and beyond which it extends).

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¹ Glen H. Stassen, "The Fourteen Triads of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:21–7:12)," JBL 122/2 (2003): 267–308.

how little things have changed

I've assigned Steve Mason's helpful book, Josephus and the New Testament (Second edition; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2003), for my World of the New Testament course. Mason offers a fascinating précis of the interpretation of Josephus in early Christian writers as part of his explanation of the preservation of Josephus's writings (9–19). That interpretation exhibits a special fascination with Josephus's account of a mother who ate her infant son due to starvation during the final stages of the siege of Jerusalem (War 6.201–13). Mason briefly chronicles how early Christians writers read Josephus's description of Jerusalem's destruction apologetically, and how this reading distorted Josephus' actual account. For these writers, "Josephus's account of the war could be used as apparent proof of the Christian belief that the Jews had become God's enemies by rejecting Jesus and the claims of his followers" (19; original emphasis).

In light of how early Christians removed Josephus from his Jewish milieu and "domesticated [him] to Christian use" (16), and given the distortions that resulted from this domestication, I wonder what effects our reading of NT texts outside their Jewish milieux (and subsequent domestications?) have had on our interpretations of those texts. From our perspective, which takes Josephus's Jewishness at face value, the early Christians' ways of reading Josephus appears strange, even falsified. Might our ways of reading of NT texts eventually seem strange, even falsified?