disgusting thoughts

I mentioned earlier that I've started reading Richard Beck's, book, Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality (Wipf & Stock, 2011). Chapter 2 focuses on purity and continues Beck's fascinating discussion of the psychology of disgust. I heartily recommend the book, if only because it puts a new perspective on so many things that many of us (myself included) regularly say about Jesus and the gospels. However, I have to admit I really struggled with this chapter. Let me explain.

Beck draws—or rather, Beck uncovers the fact that we draw—a connection between the way we think of physical revulsion (a drop of urine in a bottle of wine, food coming into contact with fecal matter, etc.) and the way we think of social and/or moral revulsion. He mentions four principles of disgust at work in all three dimensions (pp. 26–27; all italics in the original):

1. A Boundary Psychology: Disgust is a system that monitors boundaries. Disgust regulates the act of incorporation and inclusion.
2. Expulsive: Disgust is a violently expulsive mechanism. In mild forms disgust simply prompts withdrawal and avoidance. In stronger forms disgust involves violent rejection, expulsion, or elimination.
3. Promiscuous: Due to disgust's developmental peculiarities (i.e., its sensitive period [Beck is referring to the way disgust reactions are learned rather than innate; babies will put anything into their mouths and only later learn that some things should never come into contact with the mouth or tongue; -RR]), culture can link disgust to a variety of stimuli, many unrelated to food. Consequently, disgust is often found regulating moral, social, and religious experiences.
4. Magical Thinking: The contamination appraisals involved in disgust are characterized by magical thinking, which over-rides reason and logic. Consequently, when disgust regulates moral, social, or religious experience magical thinking is unwittingly imported into the life of the church.

These are all helpful principles to identify and think about. Beck accepts certain triggers of a disgust reaction as appropriate or useful for maintaining good health and/or survival: "Many of these stimuli are legitimate vectors for disease (e.g., feces) while others are the product of our learning histories (e.g., food aversions due to food poisoning)" (22). But when disgust reactions are transferred from the physical realm to the social or moral realm, Beck leaves little if any room for ever accepting this transferral: "However, many sources of contamination are driven by culture and have little or nothing to do with food. . . . although contamination monitoring is at root healthy and adaptive, we should worry when judgments of contamination are extended into the religious, moral, and social domains" (22; my emphasis).

Here's my question: Is it n/ever appropriate to protect the boundaries and/or the internal well-being of the religious, moral, or social organism? I don't have an answer, although I admit that I'm uncomfortable saying that disgust reactions are always inappropriate in the moral and social domains. Rather, given how powerful these reactions are—how viscerally we feel them, down deep in our bowels—Christians have to take special care to be self-critical and self-reflective to ensure that we deploy the evaluative and expulsive functions of disgust in ways that work with rather than against the redemptive and transformative core of the gospel. Paul did, at least once, enjoin a church to expel an immoral member, and Jesus himself excoriated those whom he judged harmful for the people and kingdom of God.

I have so much more to say about the book thus far, but this post is long enough. If you're curious, I recommend you get the book!

Disgusting Communion

At the recommendation of a colleague, I've started reading Richard Beck's book, Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality (Cascade Books, 2011). Beck, an experimental psychologist (= social scientist, not a theologian or biblical scholar), brings the psychology of disgust to bear on questions of purity (food, sex), hospitality (social acceptability), and mortality (death).

My interest in the topic is primarily sexual. A few years ago I read Donna Freitas's book, Sex and the Soul (Oxford University Press, 2008), which aroused in me a deep concern that we are raising a/nother generation without providing any guidance or wisdom regarding the connection between one of our most basic physical urges (sex) and one of our most basic spiritual urges (communion with God/the divine). In a profession such as mine (equipping, training, educating people for ministry), that lack of guidance and wisdom is scandalous, or it would be if we weren't so used to it.

Chapter 1 presents some basic thoughts on the psychology of disgust. Beck reproduces a three-fold typology of disgust (p. 19):

1. core disgust: revulsion centered on eating and oral incorporation;
2. sociomoral disgust: revulsion centered on moral and social judgments;
3. animal-reminder disgust: revulsion centered on stimuli that function as death/mortality reminders.

Beck also suggestively maps this typology onto the Eucharist, an intriguing move that he will return to in his final chapter.

I'm enjoying the book already, but I'm not quite sure what to think. On the one hand, I want to defend "disgust" as a physical and even social concept. The expulsive impulse triggered by disgust is healthy, even life-preserving, as when we eat rancid meat or encounter a pedophile on a school yard. On the other hand, there are things that are not, intrinsically, disgusting that still curl my stomach. I eat the flesh of dead cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, etc., but never no never of dogs, pigs, cats, rats, or horses. I accept that every person in church on Sunday is a sinner, but if I find out about their sin (especially if it's sexual in nature) I am driven to passages such as 1 Corinthians 5 ("Remove the evil person from among you").

If I accept that disgust, as an emotion, is culturally determined in a way not true of other emotions (Beck, pp. 16–18), how do we distinguish between healthy and proper manifestations of disgust and those that block and run counter to the redemptive work of Christ? I do not have an answer. But I do have a suspicion. Some things, people, and ideas genuinely and urgently need expulsion from the body physical, political, ecclesial. Those things represent real and present dangers to life and health. But this is the scandal of the gospel, of a Jesus who not only heals the leper but touches him, of a God who not only redeems humanity but becomes her. That which is disgusting, which needs expulsion, is not expelled but redeemed. This is the shocking story of Ezekiel 16 (warning: this chapter is NOT.FOR.CHILDREN, but you absolutely must read all the way to the end of this long chapter). This is the good news (= gospel) of God: I was disgusting and revolting, but God called me to his table, offered me his own flesh ("Disgusting!"), and invited me, saying, "Take, eat. This is my body, broken for you."

Disgust is real. Revulsion is appropriate. If we truly believe in the gospel, disgust leads not to ejection (vomiting, shunning, excommunication) but to gratitude and humility. I once was filthy but now am cleansed. Who am I, then, to push you away in your noxious, grungy, stained rags. I know the One who clothes others like kings and queens, and he has asked me to bring you to him. He offers you the Cup that sates, but be careful. This is His Blood, poured out for you, too. Please don't be disgusted.

Goodacre, the Synoptics, and the Gospel of Thomas

I just finished Thomas and the Gospels: The Case for Thomas's Familiarity with the Synoptics (Eerdmans, 2012), Mark Goodacre's initial foray into Thomasine scholarship and an eloquently argued and cogent case for the Gospel of Thomas's literary redaction of the synoptic Gospels (especially Matthew and Luke). In the last three or four years I have only read a handful of academic books that were as clear (and clear-headed) as Thomas and the Gospels; the only two that come immediately to mind are Steve Mason's Josephus and the New Testament (Baker Academic, 2002 [2nd ed.]) and Chris Keith's The Pericope Adulterae, the Gospel of John, and the Literacy of Jesus (Brill, 2009).

This slim volume (less than two hundred pages of text) offers ten chapters that move progressively from "first impressions" (chapter 1) to a catalog of verbatim agreement between the synoptics and Gos. Thom. (first in the Greek Oxyrhynchus fragments of Gos. Thom., then in Greek retroverted from the Coptic manuscript from Nag Hammadi) and a recalibration of what we should expect if Gos. Thom. is in fact familiar with the synoptics (viz., we should expect "diagnostic shards"; chapters 2 and 3). The next three chapters identify Matthean (chapter 4) and Lukan redaction (chapters 5 and 6) in Gos. Thom., followed by a general summary of Thomas's most salient redactional feature (which Goodacre calls "the missing middle"; chapter 7).  The next two chapters explore important issues in Thomasine scholarship: orality and literacy (chapter 8) and the date of Gos. Thom. (chapter 9). The last chapter raises the questions of how and why GThom used the synoptics (chapter 10), and a brief conclusion appreciates Thomas for what it is (a mid-second century CE text) rather than attempts to force Thomas into the mold of the first-century CE synoptic Gospels.

Goodacre provides a formidable argument that takes account of the primary texts involved (the Greek texts of the synoptic Gospels, the Greek fragments of Gos. Thom. from Oxynrhynchus, and the Coptic text of Gos. Thom. from Nag Hammadi). But if you're original language skills are rusty, you will still be able to grasp the finer points of Goodacre's case. I want to stress this point: Goodacre does not avoid the complicated and technical issues; instead, he provides accessible and clear discussions of these issues. This is a rare skill, but those familiar with Goodacre's work will recognize it as characteristic of him.

A couple other points, in potpourri fashion:

• Goodacre expends a relatively lengthy discussion (twenty-six pages) on orality and literacy; he even references [*cough *cough] my 2009 JSNT article, "Reading and Hearing in Ancient Contexts." And his intentional use of "familiarity" instead of "dependence" to describe GThom's relationship to the synoptics moves in a helpful direction to help us appreciate how texts might function in antiquity and how they might influence other texts. And he is rightly skeptical, in my view, of many of the current discussions of "orality," "oral cultures," and "oral mentalities." However, the function of both orally and textually expressed tradition in early Christianity and the relationship between these expressions of tradition and Gos. Thom. still requires some attention.
• If any of the chapters of Thomas and the Gospels is disappointing, it would be chapter 10 ("How and Why Thomas Used the Synoptics"). Goodacre's main point is that Gos. Thom. weaves in redacted sayings from the synoptics among his new, non-synoptic sayings in order authenticate the new by means of association with the (almost) traditional voice of Jesus. "The Synoptic material legitimizes the strange new material, interweaving the familiar with the unique, so providing a new and quite different voice for Jesus that at the same time is plausible enough to sound authentic to Thomas's earliest audiences" (2012:180). I have three problems with this line of argument:
• First, Goodacre began chapter 10 by noting that "it is by no means a given that early Christian sayings collections should feature extensive parallels to the Synoptic Gospels. Thomas's multiple cases of Synoptic sayings contrasts with works like the Gospel of Mary and the Dialogue of the Savior, which are relatively poor in such material" (2012:172). In other words, later Gospels did not feel the need to echo the canonical Gospels in order to legitimize their portrayal of Jesus' life and/or teaching. Therefore, even if the result of Gos. Thom.'s redaction of synoptic material is to legitimize its image of Jesus, we still need to explain why Gos. Thom. chose this (apparently unnecessary) route to enhance its presentation of Jesus.
• Second, I do not think Goodacre grants sufficient attention to the very different reception Gos. Thom. received vis-à-vis the synoptic Gospels. While the Thomasine author must have hoped his Jesus struck his readers as "plausible enough to sound authentic," he (if I may) either conceived of his audience in rather narrow terms (not Christianity more generally) or he failed to be persuasive. As far as I am aware, we lack any direct evidence that Gos. Thom. enjoyed any broad-based popular reception. If I am right, then Goodacre needs to take more seriously that Thomas's view of Jesus was sufficiently idiosyncratic (= odd) that we cannot assume he would have perceived the synoptic Jesus as an appropriate source of authority. In other words, given the implication of Gos. Thom. 13, in which both  Peter (= Mark?) and Matthew put forward inadequate views of Jesus (see Goodacre 2012:178–79), it is by no means obvious that our author should then appeal to these texts in order to persuade his audience of the veracity of his Gospel.
• Third, Goodacre's explanation of Gos. Thom.'s use of the synoptics avoids the question of why the Thomasine author should choose and redact the specific synoptic texts that Goodacre has so persuasively demonstrated bore influence over their parallels in Gos. Thom. At points throughout the volume Goodacre raises precisely this question (e.g., see 2012:94–95, on Gos. Thom. 72 and Luke 12.13–14). However, in chapter 10, it would have been helpful for Goodacre to draw these strings together and to explore not just why Gos. Thom. redacted the synoptics but why specific parallels from the synoptics appear in Thomas (and not others). In other words, rather than casting the synoptic parallels as augments to the legitimacy and plausibility of the non-synoptic sayings, this chapter ought to have spent more energy explaining the synoptic parallels' own contribution to the peculiarly Thomasine vision of Jesus.
• Unlike a number of other scholars in recent days (including David deSilva [mentioned here], Samuel Byrskog, Tom Thatcher, and perhaps Christopher Tuckett, among others), Goodacre rightly eschews the influence of NT scholarship's form-critical heritage over our understanding of the development of tradition (oral as well as written). Some of the best moments of this book are when Goodacre attempts to break the discussion free of a form-critical paradigm and into a redaction-critical paradigm.
• However, there are problems with a redaction-critical paradigm, and the most salient one (for me) was the attempt to construct evolutionary (or simply redactional) trajectories between texts. Goodacre does well to demonstrate the inadequacies of the influential Koester-Robinson model of trajectories, which assumes a form-critical view of tradition. However, his own literary trajectory (e.g., 2012:195, but in other places besides) suffers similar problems as any construction of linear developmental models. For example, the increasing authorial self-representation in Mark and Matthew to Luke to John to Thomas might look nice, but its correspondence with the relative dating of these texts should not lure us into supposing that earlier Christian texts (Gospels and otherwise) always avoided authorial self-representation and later texts increasingly featured the authorial voice. Our earliest Christian writer, Paul, overtly emphasized his identity in his texts, and that emphasis was not merely a function of the genre of his texts (viz. letters). In light of Paul's references to "my gospel" [εὐαγγέλιόν μου; euangelion mou (Rom. 2.16; 16.25; see also Gal. 1.11)], it is not much of a stretch to suppose that Paul's preaching of the gospel would have included a measure of self-disclosure, and if he had written a Gospel we might have even expected him to engage in authorial self-representation.

I could provide a few more critical comments. More importantly, I could go on and on (and on) in praise of this book. If you have any interest in Christian origins, Jesus, and the Gospels (even if not in the Gospel of Thomas), and especially if you are interested in the Gospel of Thomas, you should pick up this book.

One last thing. At first blush there's nothing audacious or provocative about Goodacre's title: Thomas and the Gospels: The Case for Thomas's Familiarity with the Synoptics. However, we might take seriously the definite article: "the case." I found Goodacre's case compelling, and I am now even more emboldened to describe Thomas as late and familiar with (I might not say "dependent on," but then again I might) the synoptics when I discuss this text with my students. Those who disagree and consider Thomas an independent text now have a formidable challenge in the face of this, the case for Thomas's familiarity with the synoptics.

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!

is Mark a post-war document?

I'm reading Mark Goodacre's Thomas and the Gospels: The Case for Thomas's Familiarity with the Synoptics (Eerdmans, 2012). I'll comment on the book as a whole later, though let me say I cannot praise Goodacre enough for his meticulous attention to detail and his clear (and clear-headed) writing.

In his discussion of the date of the Gospel of Thomas, he makes the (obvious) point that, if Thomas knew and depended upon the synoptic Gospels, then Thomas must have been written after them. A first step in dating Thomas, then, is to attempt to date the synoptics. So far so good.

But then we find the following paragraph, which I will reproduce in its entirety. Note that there are no footnotes in this paragraph, which is part of why I'm raising a question mark against it. But first, Goodacre:

Second, the case for a post-70 dating for Mark is strong, and gaining in momentum in recent scholarship. Although it might be overstating the case to speak about a post-70 Mark as an emerging consensus, several recent works place the onus on those wishing to argue the opposite. The importance of this is obvious. Since Mark is the first in the sequence of literary works, dating Mark is a very helpful way of moving forward. If Mark post-dates 70, so do Matthew, Luke, and Thomas. (Goodacre 2012:161)

I was surprised by the strength of Goodacre's statement. I can't say that the date of the synoptics is my area of expertise, but I'm familiar enough with the field that I think Goodacre has, indeed, overstated the case even that the onus is on those who argue a pre-70 date for Mark. Here I'd make two points.

• First, there are some fringe arguments that date Mark considerably earlier than 70 CE. For example, James Crossley argued in his doctoral dissertation that Mark is nearer the Caligula crisis (41 CE). As far as I know, James has not found an impressive following (though his doctoral supervisor, Maurice Casey, accepts his argument in the latter's Jesus of Nazareth). R. T. France, a Matthean scholar, also dates Mark early, though for completely different reasons. As I have already conceded, these are fringe arguments. Because they are fringe, however, they are more easily disregarded than disproven. At the very least, these arguments force us to temper our confidence in the consensus.
• Second, my own impression is that the developing consensus fixes the date of Mark's Gospel in the vicinity of the war with Rome, either in the buildup to hostilities or in the war's immediate aftermath (viz. 65–75 CE). Especially significant here are the details of Mark 13, details which (i) echo biblical themes pertaining to the destruction of the First Temple and (ii) do not correlate precisely to Titus' destruction of the Second Temple.

Scene from Titus' Arch depicting the triumphal procession and the spoils from the Jerusalem Temple.

Perhaps I'm wrong here, and Goodacre is right. In fact, my first instinct is to trust Goodacre. But I was under the impression that the case was just as strong that Mark dates to immediately before the war as it was that Mark was written after the war. You Markan specialists out there, let me ask: What are your impressions regarding any potential "emerging consensus" among Markan (and historical Jesus?) scholars? Is there broad agreement that Mark is a post-war document?

UPDATE: Goodacre does consider specific arguments for dating Mark (including Crossley's; see Goodacre 2012:162–64). In rereading this post after it was published, I realized I might give the impression that Goodacre simply ignores Markan scholarship. That impression would be false.

reading Key Events

I have begun reviewing the massive volume, Key Events in the Life of the Historical Jesus: A Collaborative Exploration of Context and Coherence (WUNT 247; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), edited by Darrell Bock and Robert Webb. This book presents the result of the decade-long collaboration of the Institute for Biblical Research Jesus Group, evaluating and interpreting twelve "key events." Each essay, written by a total of eleven scholars, pursues three goals. First, an author will assess and defend the probable authenticity of a given "key event" in the life of Jesus. Second, an author will place their "key event" into a reconstruction of Jesus' late-Second Temple/early Roman Jewish context in order to explain and/or interpret the event. Finally, an author will explain what each "key event," once they have been authenticated and interpreted, means for our understanding of Jesus of Nazareth.

At this point, I have only read the (very) brief Introduction, written by Bock and Webb, and the opening chapter, on history, historiography, and historical Jesus research, written by Bob Webb. This essay, "The Historical Enterprise and Historical Jesus Research," establishes some historiographical "ground rules," even though it was written after the historical analyses comprising the remainder of the book. In what follows, I give you my very brief review of Webb's historiographical essay.

---

In the first essay, Bob Webb provides a wide-ranging and nuanced discussion of history, historiography, and how scholars can ask historical questions about the figure, Jesus of Nazareth. Webb offers a chastened (or soft) postmodernist view of how we can know about past figures and events on two bases (23–30). First, the historian’s goal is to provide a representation (≠ description! [see pp. 24–26]) of past events on the basis of publicly available evidence and modes of argumentation. Second, the most helpful form of postmodern historiography is the critical-realist form, which “combine[s] and reconcile[s] ontological realism, epistemological relativism and judgmental rationality” (29). Webb then offers a historical method with two main phases as well as a preliminary and a subsequent concluding phase and which resembles a Gadamerian hermeneutical spiral (32–38). After a preliminary phase of critical self-reflection, Webb’s first phase “involves gathering, interpreting, and evaluating the surviving traces (ST) to determine their function as evidence within a particular context” (33). In this phase, the historian evaluates data from both a “bottom-up” perspective, determining of what a datum is evidence, as well as from a “top-down” perspective, identifying multiple contexts and evaluating the “fit” between a given datum and various contexts. In the second phase, the historian “interpret[s] and explain[s] the relevant data with hypotheses” in an attempt to identify a “preferable hypothesis . . . that (a)provides a better explanation of the evidence, and (b) allows for extrapolation that provides a more plausible explanation of the complete historical picture” (35). In the concluding phase, the historian writes up a historical narrative that “describes” relevant data and provides a representation of the past as the historian has come to understand it. Webb then offers “methodological naturalistic history” as a way to engage historical questions without (i) depending on divine causation to provide explanatory statements as well as without (ii) denying the possibility of divine causation in history. If/when/where God acts apart from mundane, natural laws of cause and effect, such actions are, by definition, beyond the scope of historical inquiry (despite having occurred, at least theoretically, in the past; see pp. 40–43). Finally, Webb briefly explains the specific methodological principles and tools (especially the criteria of authenticity) for historical Jesus research (54–82). One easily and perhaps inevitably gets the impression that the historiographical and methodological discussion in this chapter serves as a programmatic statement governing the rest of the book. However, Webb repeatedly acknowledges that this essay was the last to be written and summarizes—more or less—rather than establishes the view(s) of history, historiography, and method operative during the decade-long collaboration that resulted in this book. I think it regrettable that the group, either collectively or via a representative (such as Webb), did not produce and discuss at least a version of this essay prior to the historical analyses comprising the remaining chapters.

Jesus, Criteria, and the Demise of Authenticity

As Mark Goodacre has already noted, the Jesus, Criteria, and the Demise of Authenticity Conference, scheduled for 4–5 October 2012, has been moved to Dayton, Ohio. I recently received the following announcement:

The 2012 Jesus Conference will be held Oct. 4 and 5, 2012 in Dayton, OH. The co-hosts are United Theological Seminary and the University of Dayton's Center for Scriptural Exegesis, Philosophy, and Doctrine. We're very excited to partner with these institutions and their fine faculty. More information concerning registration, schedule, etc., will be forthcoming.

(Please see the United Theological Seminary and the University of Dayton's Center for Scriptural Exegesis, Philosophy, and Doctrine websites.)

The conference will feature discussion and elaboration on the book, Jesus, Criteria and the Demise of Authenticity (T&T Clark International; forthcoming). If you follow the link you can find a preview of the book. The publisher's description reads:

Criteria of authenticity, whose roots go back to before the pioneering work of Albert Schweitzer, have become a unifying feature of the so-called Third Quest for the Historical Jesus, finding a prominent and common place in the research of otherwise differing scholars. More recently, however, scholars from different methodological frameworks have expressed discontent with this approach to the historical Jesus. In the past five years, these expressions of discontent have reached a fever pitch.

The internationally renowned authors of this book examine the nature of this new debate and present the findings in a cohesive way aimed directly at making the coalface of Historical Jesus research accessible to undergraduates and seminary students. The book’s larger ramifications as a thorough end to the Third Quest will provide a pressure valve for thousands of scholars who view historical Jesus studies as outmoded and misguided. This book has the potential to guide Jesus studies beyond the Third Quest and demand to be consulted by any scholar who discards, adopts, or adapts historical criteria.

When I hear more (registration procedures, housing, costs, etc.), I'll let you know.

(See also T&T Clark International's blogpost about the book.)

the original Jesus?

With the Spring 2012 semester behind me, I've turned my attention back to research and writing, and my first task is to review Alexander J. M. Wedderburn's recent book, Jesus and the Historians (WUNT 269; Mohr Siebeck, 2010). Wedderburn is unhappy with how historians of Jesus (and Christian origins more generally) have pursued historiographical questions—that is, questions about how we can know anything about the past. He surveys the work of a half-dozen prominent (more or less) historians of Jesus in order to explore his unhappiness and suggest appropriate corrective measures.

One of the historians Wedderburn surveys is Jens Schröter, and in this post I want to ask a question about Wedderburn's objections to Schröter. First, the quote from Wedderburn:

In the same vein is perhaps his [viz. Schröter's] endorsement of the view that neither in textual nor in tradition criticism is it appropriate to talk of an 'original form' of the text or the tradition;⁵⁷ this may be true although it is surely still legitimate to raise the question of earlier and later forms and to try to explain, often very plausibly, how later forms arose from earlier ones. (16–17)

In footnote 57, Wedderburn cites Schröter's essay, "Jesus and the Canon: The Early Jesus Traditions in the Context of the Origins of the New Testament Canon" (in Performing the Gospel: Orality, Memory, and Mark [Fortress Press, 2006]) and goes on to quote Schröter directly:

"The effort to uncover the one text or the one Jesus behind the multitude of traditions appears therefore more and more clearly as an inappropriate attempt to discover a unified starting point for the tradition" ([Schröter's] italics). And yet there was surely only one Jesus, however many the traditional images of him may have been that once circulated. (17n. 57)

I am interested in Wedderburn's last sentence: "And yet there was surely only one Jesus, however many the traditional images of him may have been that once circulated." Wedderburn's point is self-evidently true, of course, but it is also historically unhelpful (I'm tempted to say useless). The problem here is the two senses of "historical Jesus," a problem of which Wedderburn knowns full well (see pp. 3–7). On one level, the historical Jesus refers to the real person, Jesus of Nazareth, whose feet wandered the Galilean and surrounding countryside and whose voice echoed across its valleys. On another level, the historical Jesus refers to historians' reconstructions of the real Jesus—the representations of him produced by means of historical-critical and other research. Both Schröter and Wedderburn are engaged in discussing this second level—the reconstructed/represented Jesus, and Schröter is objecting to much historical-critical work that insists that, of two parallel traditions (e.g., Matt. 5.3||Luke 6.20 [this is my example, not Schröter's or Wedderburn's]), one must be earlier and (more) original and the other later and derivative. But notice that, in discussing how we generate the historical Jesus (= the reconstructed Jesus), Wedderburn changes the subject back to the historical Jesus (= the man himself).

Let's explore the question of the first beatitude (Matt. 5.3||Luke 6.20) a bit further. Granted that there was only one historical Jesus (= the man himself), historians have to pose the question, Did Jesus say, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of the heavens"? Or did he say, "Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God"? Historians of Jesus have generally (but not universally) concluded that Jesus said something more like the latter—Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God—and that Matthew has altered this saying in order to spiritualize it ("poor in spirit") or to avoid referring directly to God. This is certainly plausible. But why should we assume that Jesus himself could not have said the beatitude as Matthew records it and that Luke has altered it to accord to his demonstrable emphasis on the poor? Or, moreover, why couldn't Jesus have employed this same principle (the poor are blessed) in multiple contexts, some more material and literal (per Luke 6.20) and some more spiritual and metaphorical (per Matt. 5.3)? Why does the singularity of the historical Jesus (= the man himself) justify our insistence on the singularity of the historical Jesus (= the reconstructed/represented Jesus)? The only answers I can think of assume either (i) that Jesus was perfectly consistent in various circumstances, or (ii) that Jesus was completely and totally present in every situation. On the contrary, historians assume that Jesus developed in his thinking, his teaching, and in his relationships (like every other person). We likewise assume that Jesus responded to his social context(s) in ways he deemed appropriate; he was no detached from his society and culture but was fully a part of it.

I have elsewhere posted on the problems of assuming a singular original starting point in Gospels or historical Jesus research (for example here, here, and here, among others). And given the problems with Wedderburn's objections to Schröter's particular ways of accounting for the multiformity of the Jesus tradition from the very beginning, I remain unconvinced that historians of Jesus should continue to search for the ever-valued "original tradition."

a review of Dale Allison's CONSTRUCTING JESUS

I've recently returned to Dale Allison's Constructing Jesus: Memory, Imagination, and History (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010). I'm writing a longer review essay for an upcoming issue of The Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus, and I need to get this off my list of things to do. But in the process, I've dusted off my original review, the shorter version of which will appear in The Stone-Campbell Journal soon. I've put the longer, rough draft of that review on Scribd, and I thought I'd share it with any of you who might be interested.
Review of Dale C. Allison, Jr. CONSTRUCTING JESUS: MEMORY, IMAGINATION, AND HISTORY. Grand Rapids: Baker Ac...

what social memory isn't

I'm currently reviewing Maurice Casey's book (perhaps even magnum opus), Jesus of Nazareth: An Independent Historian's Account of his Life and Teaching (London: T&T Clark International, 2010). I met Maurice in 2005 at the British New Testament Conference, where we both presented papers in the BNTC's Jesus Seminar (not to be confused with the Westar Institute's Jesus Seminar). I found him to be a friendly, encouraging, and collegial figure, which matters since he is a very senior NT scholar and I was (am) just getting my feet wet. Also, I consider one of his protégés, James Crossley, a personal friend; Crossley was also the internal examiner for my PhD thesis defense. This book is certainly the results of decades of detailed scholarship, both in the details and in the larger theoretical and methodological issues.

Moreover, the adjective found in the subtitle, independent, should be taken at face value; Maurice affirms a number of traditional conclusions among NT scholars (Markan priority, Jesus spoke Aramaic, etc.), but he also advances numerous arguments that challenge directly some of the most taken-for-granted ideas in our field. For example, Casey affirms Markan priority and the existence of "Q," though he argues that "Q" refers to a number of disparate written sources, in both Aramaic and Greek instead of a single document written in Greek. However, he also affirms that Luke knew and was influenced by Matthew. Anyone familiar with the Synoptic Problem and the discussion in that field will know how controversial it is for one person to hold to all these ideas at the same time.

And it is to be expected that I have some bones to pick with Casey's approach to the historical Jesus. If nothing else, the fact that Casey isn't a confessional scholar (he is forthright about this but not [always] antagonistic) and I am will necessitate areas of disagreement. But I don't think this difference explains all my complaints. Certainly this one has little if anything to do with my faith or his un- (or non-) faith.

In a section of his chapter on historical method, Casey addresses "social memory," a field in which I am heavily invested professionally. He writes, "In recently scholarly work, both rewriting history and telling stories about traditional figures have been drawn together into discussions of 'social memory'" (133). Already this is wrong. Social memory doesn't refer to either "rewriting history" or "telling stories about traditional figures," though both can be aspects of social memory. Barry Scwartz recently wrote,

"Social memory" refers to the distribution throughout society of individual knowledge, belief, feeling and moral judgement of the past as well as identification with past actors and events. Only individuals . . . possess the capacity to contemplate the past, but this does not mean that such capacity originates in the individual alone or can be explained solely on the basis of his or her experience. Individuals do not know the past singly; they know it with and against others situated in different groups, and through the knowledge and traditions that predecessors and contemporaries transmit to them. (Barry Schwartz, "What Difference Does the Medium Make?" in The Fourth Gospel in First-Century Media Culture [ESCO; LNTS 426; London: T&T Clark International, 2010], 225–38 [p. 231 quoted])

I know this sounds complicated, but the gist is that all of us are affected by social forces larger than our individual, personal identities as we remember the past, whether the past of our social groups (e.g., American history, Christian tradition, Western culture, etc.) or our own autobiographical pasts (e.g., my relationship with my wife and/or children, my personal experience of American citizenship, my religious testimony, etc.). The gap between Casey's rather myopic definition of social memory and the field of study that usually goes by the name is hard to overestimate. I once stood on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon; this seems roughly similar.

As a result, Casey very briefly summarizes the famous story in Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, in which Josephus is waxing eloquently about Solomon's divine wisdom and the exorcistic and therapeutic prowess he exhibited. As an example, Josephus tells the story of a first-century CE exorcist named Eleazar who followed one of Solomon's recipes for removing a demon. At the conclusion of the story, Casey writes,

This is an overt declaration that Josephus had made this non-biblical report about Solomon because of its importance in the world in which he himself lived. His whole account is a perfect example of 'social memory'. (134; my emphasis)

No, this isn't. Josephus's whole account is certainly an appropriate field in which to bring questions of social memory to bear; I suspect this story, and a number of others, would help bring to light "the distribution throughout society of individual knowledge, belief, feeling and moral judgement of the past as well as identification with past actors and events" (Schwartz, cited above). But Casey hasn't brought these questions to bear on the text, and I'm surprised that he seems to think that he has.

on the Golden Rule

I have about an hour or so before I need to run some errands, so I returned to Dale Allison's book, Constructing Jesus: Memory, Imagination, and History (Baker Academic, 2010). In the midst of some comments on the Golden Rule, Allison has this very nice formulation, which I thought worth reproducing here:

To do unto others as one wishes to be done to oneself means not reacting but initiating action; it means to imagine, on analogy with what one wants, what others might want, and then acting accordingly. (319)

review of Structuring Early Christian Memory

I don't know how other scholars keep track of who has reviewed their works, in which journal, and what they've said. It seems to me that you just kind of accidentally encounter a review that you didn't know was being written.

That happened to me last week. I accidentally discovered that Kelly Iverson, of St Andrews University (Scotland) reviewed my published thesis in the Journal for the Study of the New Testament. His brief review is positive and exactly the kind of thing an author hopes for (accurate, fair, critical, etc.). Here's an excerpt, if you're interested:

This study is a welcome addition to historical Jesus studies and provides a fresh perspective that deserves careful attention. For those who may be relatively new to the fields of performance and social memory, this volume offers an informative summary and helpful bibliography. In addition, there is detailed interaction with several textual examples (exorcisms and healings) that illustrates the potential usefulness of the approach. Given the broad objective of this monograph, some will not be convinced that the thesis sufficiently undermines the traditional criteria of authenticity or develops an unobstructed path forward. This volume does, however, make a reasoned argument for appreciating the variability in the Jesus tradition within the contours of an oral culture.

These, I think, are all fair comments. For lengthier and more substantive critiques of the traditional criteria of authenticity, see my "Authenticating Criteria: The Use and Misuse of a Critical Method" (Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 7/2 [2009]: 152–67), as well as the forthcoming volume, Jesus, History, and the Demise of Authenticity (Chris Keith and Anthony Le Donne, eds.; T&T Clark International), for which I contributed an essay on the failings of the criterion of embarrassment.

For Kelly Iverson's full review of Structuring Early Christian Memory, you can follow this link (you'll need to search for "Structuring Early Christian Memory," or you can scroll down to p. 44).

beginning at the beginning

Now that I'm done adding my part to the education of James McGrath, I've returned to reading the very lengthy but engaging book, Constructing Jesus: Memory, Imagination, and History (Baker Academic, 2010). I'm currently toward the beginning of the third chapter ("More Than a Prophet: The Christology of Jesus" [221–304]), specifically in the section where Allison takes up the common idea that, whereas the historical Jesus proclaimed the kingdom of God, Jesus' followers proclaimed Jesus (i.e., "The proclaimer became the proclaimed"). I especially appreciated the following:

Too often, however, at least from the point of view of this chapter, the literature has failed to begin at the beginning. It is one thing, for instance, to explicate the angelic terms in which some thought about Jesus, quite another to explain why anybody found those terms appropriate in the first place. And so it is with other christological conceptions and titles. Why did Jesus draw them all to himself? (pp. 241–42)

My inclination is that this question (viz., Why did anyone consider Jesus worthy of exalted christological titles in the first place?) is too often begged and too seldom asked. It makes sense to me, for instance, that some Jews thought of the messiah in terms of Davidic descent, and so Jesus' followers created/expanded the Son of David motif in the Jesus tradition. But scholars who push this perspective to its ultimate end—that the historical Jesus never thought of himself in terms of Davidic descent—have traditionally been content to demonstrate how the attribution of Davidic descent developed in the tradition and to never ask the ultimate question. Why did anyone think that Jesus, without any precedent of Davidic-ness in his teachings or actions, ought to have been framed in terms of "Son of David" christology?

I asked a similar question in chapter 5 of Structuring Early Christian Memory: Jesus in Tradition, Performance, and Text (T&T Clark International, 2010).

Given the ubiquity of research that traces how Jesus' followers reconfigured him to address their later concerns, we ask a question otherwise unasked in 'historical Jesus' research: why Jesus? Why did Jesus' followers choose him as a vehicle to address and conquer their concerns? (120; see also p. 136)

Jews in antiquity demonstrably turned to exalted figures from the past—whether real or mythic—and exalted them even further. Moses not only died on Mt. Nebo across the Jordan River (so Deuteronomy) but also received burial from the LORD or one of his angels. Enoch didn't just walk with God (so Genesis) but received a grand tour of heaven and God's plans for the future. The Patriarchs not only multiplied the blessing of Abraham from a single heir among multiple offspring (Isaac but not Ishmael; Jacob but not Esau) but then left behind their own blessings (in the form of Testaments) that pulled back the veil of the future ever so slightly.

And so on. But what stands out is that the early Christians did not reach back into the ancient and/or mythic past to pick out their hero whom they would idealize. Instead, they picked a not-unproblematic figure from recent times, whose earthly associates were still available (at least to anyone in Galilee and/or Judea), and whose fate did not exactly commend him to exaltation. This isn't an air-tight argument for the historical reliability of the Jesus tradition as preserved in the New Testament. But it does present problems for anyone who thinks that the NT traditions about Jesus have very tenuous—if any—connections with the historical man from Nazareth. Something about that man made it possible to apply exalted titles to him and to convince others to accept those titles on his behalf.

reading outside the NT

I don't usually read non-NT studies material. It isn't that I want to be parochial or anything like that. I just enjoy NT scholarship so much that I'm not usually drawn to read other things. I do, however, worry about the parochializing effect of my comparatively narrow reading.

Last week, however, my dad bought me a little book called The Go-Giver: A Little Story about a Powerful Business Idea (New York: Portfolio, 2007), by Bob Burg and John David Mann. I read most of it on a plane from Denver to Knoxville (with two kids to distract me), and I finished it yesterday. If I had sat at a quiet place (say, the Starbucks in which I'm currently sitting) and focused on reading it, I think it would have taken me an hour.

This is a fantastic little book, and I highly recommend it to everyone with an hour and a hunger to employ their gifts in deeper service to more people. At the heart of this business parable are five principles, styled "The Five Laws of Stratospheric Success" (please don't judge the whole book by this cheesy line):

• The Law of Value: Your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment.
• The Law of Compensation: Your income is determined by how many people you serve and how well you serve them.
• The Law of Influence: Your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people's interests first.
• The Law of Authenticity: The most valuable gift you have to offer is yourself.
• The Law of Receptivity: The key to effective giving is to stay open to receiving.

Reading this little book has energized me and challenged me to consider new ways I can serve my students and invest themselves in their success. It has also re-awakened in me the conviction that this service and investment will augment (rather than distract from) my own success as an educator, an academic, and a Christian.

the new historiography of Jesus: step 1—memory

Yesterday I moved past Dale Allison's preface and began reading the first chapter, "The General and Particular: Memories of Jesus" (1–30), of Constructing Jesus: Memory, Imagination, and History (Baker Academic, 2010). As the title suggests, Allison begins his historical discussion of Jesus by providing an excellently researched and documented discussion of memory and, especially, all its vagaries.

I'll have much to say about this shortly, but I want to start by noting that historical Jesus scholarship seems to be moving beyond the so-called "Third Quest" and entering a new phase of its own history. In the Third Quest, the first step of scholarship was to apprehend something of Jesus' "Jewishness"; in this new phase, the first step is to explore the processes of memory and the recovery/reconstruction of the past. Whereas earlier Jesus scholarship neglected memory completely (because the Gospels weren't thought to be memory but were primarily expositions on the interests and conflicts of the early church projected back onto the figure of Jesus), the new historiography of Jesus recognizes that memory refers to so much more than simply "recall of the past." Memory is the retrieval and reconstruction of the past from which we perceive we have come within the circumstances and concerns of the present with which we must contend. Memory is about both the past and the present. And this is precisely what we have in the Gospels.

No, this isn't a "Fourth Quest" (how quaint that would be!). If anything, it's a post-Quest. How ironic, then, that the language of "questing" comes from Albert Schweitzer, that early-twentieth century champion of the failed apocalyptic prophet, and that Allison, an important heir of Schweitzer's legacy, is an important voice in historical Jesus scholarship after the Quests! Other voices would include Anthony Le Donne, Jens Schröter, Chris Keith, Samuel Byrskog, Richard Bauckham, and others. (And, of course, I would include myself here.) While some of us (e.g., Bauckham) turn to memory out of a conviction that the Gospels are or include eyewitness testimony about the life of Jesus, most if not all of us recognize that discussions of memory provide us with an apropos critical perspective from which to approach the Gospels even if the Evangelists themselves never saw or heard the prophet from Nazareth. We all remember a past much deeper and broader than simply our own limited fields of experience.

So Allison begins his discussion of memory by painting the canvas black. He appropriately sets the stage in the first sentence: "The frailty of human memory should distress all who quest for the so-called historical Jesus" (1). He immediately sets out a series of nine of memory's "sins," consequences of the "leaks and dissociat[ions]" of the human capacity to recall the past (2–8). Not surprisingly, Allison (who cites a broad range of memory studies) often references the work of Elizabeth F. Loftus, who perhaps more than any other researcher and experimenter has demonstrated how capable of being "messed with" is human memory. The conclusion vis-à-vis memory is stark:

Given what we now know about human recollection, given that "the past is produced in the present and is thus malleable," one researcher, Elizabeth Loftus, has opined, half seriously, that our lawcourts should administer this oath to witnesses on the stand: "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, or whatever it is you think you remember?" (8; citing Olick and Robbins, "Social Memory Studies," 128, and Loftus, "Memory Faults and Fixes," 127, respectively)

I am unable and unwilling to oppose anything Allison says about memory (at least up to this point); in all this he is exactly right. And yet I do object that the malleability and demonstrably fluid nature of our recall of the past are not weaknesses that the historian must overcome but rather resources that enable the past to persist across the ever-shifting present and make historiography possible in the first place. Or, to pick up a metaphor I dropped above, my canvas isn't as black as is Allison's. For example, in another sentence with which I generally agree, he writes, "As our recollections because increasingly tattered and faded, they are disposed to retain, if anything, only the substance or 'gist' of an event" (11; my emphasis). True. And yet I balk at the narrative underlying this sentence, viz. that memory, like a photograph left out in the wind and sun, tatters and fades at the onslaught of time. Certainly memories can fade. Just as certainly memories can change and even be retrojected. But memories can also persist, become more vivid and stark, take on clearer significances, teach more important lessons, and so on. In fact, memory does not either become clearer or more obscure; often memory's clarity or obscurity depends just as much on what or why we are trying to recall some thing.

Let me illustrate. If I'm trying to remember the squint of my wife's eyes as she smiled on our first date, or the color of her sweater on the night I proposed, the vagaries of the last ten years will certainly have tattered and faded my memory of the events. (To be honest, I'm only guessing that she was, in fact, wearing a sweater, since I proposed in early January and I certainly do remember that it was a very cold day.) If, however, I'm recalling the woman herself who once laughed at my jokes or accepted my proposal, my knowledge and memory of her is clearer now as we approach our tenth anniversary than it was even the day after the events in question. I know more about my wife now than I did then, and my understanding of her in 2011 is better than it was in 2001. So in 2011 I'm positioned to remember 2001 in ways that I wouldn't have been able to in 2001. In some ways my memory today is indeed tattered and faded. But in other ways it's clearer and crisper.

Despite the differences, I think Allison has exactly the right end of the stick (if the stick = how to engage historical Jesus research). As a beginning point, Allison offers the following conclusion about how to appropriate the data provided by the Gospels, a conclusion which differs categorically and fundamentally from work such as that proposed by the Jesus Seminar:

Given that memory is "fuzzy," that we remember the outlines of an event or the general import of a conversation better than the details, that we extract patterns and meaning from informational input, it would be peculiar to imagine that, although their general impressions of Jesus were hopelessly skewed, Christian tradents somehow managed to recall with some accuracy, let us say, two or three of his similitudes or parables and a handful of one-liners. . . . If general impressions are typically more trustworthy than details, then it makes little sense to reconstruct Jesus by starting with a few of the latter—perhaps some incidents and sayings that survive the gauntlet of our authenticating criteria—while setting aside the general impressions that our primary sources instill in us. The larger the generalization and the more data upon which it is based, the greater our confidence. The more specific the detail and the fewer the supporting data, the greater our uncertainty. (13, 14)

So Allison begins by looking not for isolated facts from which the historical Jesus will slowly but surely emerge, like a newer-model Terminator, out of the morass of the Gospels. Instead, he's looking for general impressions (16). Now, anyone familiar with Allison's work will expect him to find that most general of impressions at work in the Gospels: that Jesus was a prophet of the apocalypse. We'll see. But for now Allison's insights rightfully and helpfully set the program for historical Jesus scholarship of the second decade of the twenty-first century. The new historiography of Jesus begins with the Gospels as memorial artifacts, as plausible and coherent presentations of Jesus of Nazareth in the context of the challenges and concerns of his followers in the mid- to late-first century CE. Much critical work remains. But that work expressly is not filtering the Gospels through a battery of criteria and then trying to fit together the remaining textual shards into a critical reconstruction.

Constructing Jesus

I just started Dale C. Allison, Jr.'s most recent (and, apparently, final) contribution to historical Jesus scholarship, Constructing Jesus: Memory, Imagination, and History (Baker Academic, 2010). I have the privilege of writing a review essay for an upcoming issue of The Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus; the standard format of these kinds of things is that two or three people will offer reviews of a significant recent publication, and the author will respond to each of the reviewers. I've never done anything like this before, so I'm looking forward to this. (Allison and I are also co-participants in an upcoming conference on "the demise of the criteria of authenticity," to be held on Lincoln Christian University's campus in 2012 and for which a volume will be published by T&T Clark International.)

At any rate, I really have only just started reading this book; to date I've only read the preface. But already I like what I'm reading, especially as I compare it to Allison's previous work on Jesus (especially his volume, Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian Prophet [Fortress Press, 1998]):

This volume as a whole is testimony to my conviction that the means that most scholars have employed and continue to employ for constructing the historical Jesus are too flimsy to endure [yes!!], or at least too flimsy for me to countenance any longer. I learned the discipline during the era when everyone was taught to employ the so-called criteria of authenticity. We were to find Jesus by, first, isolating individual units and then, second, running them through a gauntlet consisting of multiple attestation, dissimilarity, embarrassment, and so on. After many years of playing by the rules, however, I have gradually come to abandon them. I have decided that knowing the old directives has been of much less help than promised. I am trying something else. This book is the result. (x; my emphasis)

This is, perhaps, the best beginning to a book on Jesus I've read in a very long time. And that would include my own book on Jesus.

I'll comment further as I work through this weighty book (pp. xxix + 588).

identifying Paul (again)

I'm currently reading through Tim Gombis's introductory volume, Paul: A Guide for the Perplexed (T&T Clark International, 2010). Of course, as I mentioned in a previous post, I read Rodrigo Morales's published doctoral dissertation, The Spirit and the Restoration of Israel: New Exodus and New Creation Motifs in Galatians (Mohr Siebeck, 2010), last week. So all things Paul have been on my mind these last few days.

Gombis's discussion of Paul is introductory and pitched at beginning ("perplexed") students, so of course there is lots of room to nitpick and complain about lack of nuance or precision. But the goal of the book isn't to provide nuance or precision; it's to speak in broad strokes and get people into the discussion. Details can come later.

So I hope it's clear that I'm not nitpicking here (or at least I don't think I am). And I should also disclose that I know Gombis personally, and I've found him to be one of the nicer, more congenial younger biblical scholars. I think he and I think a lot alike. But as Gombis briefly introduces Paul's letter to the Galatian communities, he attributes the problem Paul confronts to a "very conservative Jewish Christian faction . . . seeking to make certain that the Christian communities that sprang up in Asia Minor were thoroughly Jewish" (25). A little later, Gombis explains that Paul bristles against the claim that gentile converts "must adopt a Jewish way of life." I'm not sure what to make of Gombis's use of the term Jewish; even (or perhaps especially!) in an introductory volume such as this I think a little more nuance is necessary.

The problem comes down to this: If Paul sets out to correct the claims of the "agitators" (see Gal. 5.10) that gentiles "must adopt a Jewish way of life" (25), what should we think Paul set up as an alternative to that Jewish lifestyle? Should the converts remain gentiles? If so, we need to explain the continued negative references to gentiles in Paul's letters (e.g., Eph. 2.11–12; Gombis accepts Pauline authorship of all thirteen letters attributed to Paul). Should the converts become Christians? If so, we need to explain how Paul never uses the word Christian in any of his letters.

Since neither of these terms—gentile or Christian—will work for Paul, the question remains: What should we think Paul set up as an alternative to the Jewish lifestyle the "agitators" were advocating to Paul's gentile converts in Galatia? I think the only answer that will work, historically or theologically, is, Paul proposes a differently Jewish lifestyle to the universal Torah-obedience advocated by his opponents. If I learned anything from Morales (which I wouldn't expect Gombis to cite even if they weren't both published in 2010), Paul understands his vocation as "apostle to the nations/gentiles" in terms of bringing the blessing of Abraham to bear upon the nations of the Roman Empire, and this precisely because God has poured out his Spirit upon his people Israel and brought an end to their experiences of the covenantal curses (exile and, especially, death).

In other words, and to sum up Morales's point and wrap up this post, the problem Paul has with Torah in Galatians isn't that it's Jewish. The problem is that Israel has failed to keep the terms of the covenant and has brought upon itself the covenantal curses—exile and death (see Deut. 27–30)—rather than the covenantal blessings. But God has not abandoned his people or his promises to them; instead, Israel's messiah, Jesus, overcame the covenantal curses brought on by Israel's failure to observe Torah. (Notice the problem isn't Torah itself but the people's failure to keep Torah.) Now the gentile Galatian believers have a choice to make. Do they take on a Jewish lifestyle defined by Torah? Or do they take on a Jewish lifestyle defined by the blessing of Abraham, now unleashed on God's people in the aftermath of God's Spirit poured out on Israel and a new heart given them? This latter might be what we mean when we refer to a "Christian lifestyle," but we need to recognize (and teach others to recognize) that in all likelihood, for Paul, this was simply a better way to be Jewish.

a Pauline transformation of Jewish eschatology?

I have been reading the published version of Rodrigo Morales's PhD dissertation (Duke, 2007), The Spirit and the Restoration of Israel: New Exodus and New Creation Motifs in Galatians (WUNT 2/282; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), which I'm reviewing for IBR. This is an excellent little book (only two hundred pages) that is very clearly and logically structured, cogently and carefully argued, and concisely written. As a brief introduction, Morales proceeds in three basic steps:

• First, he briefly establishes the Status Quaestionis of the role of the Spirit of God in Paul and, especially, his letter to the Galatians. At a pivotal point in the letter Paul asks, "Was it by works of the Law that you received the Spirit? Or was it by hearing of faith?" While the answer is clear (Paul simply could not be proposing that the Galatians received the Spirit via Torah-observance!), the significance of the Spirit for Pauline thought and rhetoric is not. Morales argues that the connection between the outpouring of God's Spirit and the restoration of Israel provides the key to understanding Paul's argument in Galatians.
• Second, he surveys the intersection of God's gift of his Spirit and the promise of Israel's restoration among the prophetic Hebrew biblical writings (specifically, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Joel) in Chapter 2 and among Second Temple Jewish texts in Chapter 3. His aim is not to identify how Paul reads either biblical or extracanonical texts but rather to assess how Paul takes up and employs themes and concepts current among (roughly) contemporaneous expressions of Jewish thought. Key among these themes are, among others, new creation and new exodus imagery, the heart and its need for renewal, and the sonship of God's people.
• Third, Morales turns to Galatians 3–4 (Chapter 4) and Galatians 5–6 (Chapter 5) to bring the material from previous chapters to bear on the exegetical discussion. I am currently at the beginning of Chapter 4, so I cannot say very much at all about Morales's hermeneutic or exegetical work. But his handling of the texts in Chapters 2–3 has been responsible and cautious, and so I don't anticipate problems here.

Except . . .

Morales makes a comment almost in passing (it's even in a footnote) regarding the shift in late-Second Temple Judaism from metaphorical understandings of "resurrection" (and of "death," too) toward literal interpretations. He says, "The key transformation that Paul brought about was the idea that one figure would be raised in the middle of history, and that others would somehow participate both anticipatorily and ultimately in that eschatological life" (79, n. 5; my emphasis). I have some problems with the phrase "middle of history," because I'm not sure that helpfully frames Paul's rhetoric. Would Paul affirm the present as "the middle of history"? Or would he see in Christ's resurrection the dawning of the new age and the fading of the old? But given the complexities of the dynamics of what are commonly referred to in Christian theology as the "now-and-not-yet" (complexities which Morales recognizes), we likely won't solve that problem here.

But I have bigger problems with the idea that this was, somehow, a "key transformation" for which Paul was responsible. I'm not at all opposed to the idea that individuals affect, sometimes dramatically, how and what their cultures think. And clearly Paul is one of those individuals. But after reading Jerry Sumney's essay, "'Christ died for us': Interpretation of Jesus' Death as a Central Element of the Identity of the Earliest Church," pp. 147–72 in Reading Paul in Context: Explorations in Identify Formation (FS William Campbell; Edited by K. Ehrensperger and J. B. Tucker; LNTS 428; London: T&T Clark International, 2010), I'm a bit more suspicious of the image of Paul-the-theological-revolutionary than I previously was.

Certainly Paul takes this idea—viz., that the future resurrection was inaugurated and even is proleptically exprienced in Christ's resurrection—and advances it considerably. But here's the question Sumney has taught me to ask: Is it really likely that the pre-Pauline church had not already developed some idea of the inaugurating/proleptic/"middle of history" resurrection of Jesus? How would the earliest Christians, whom Paul the Pharisee (who almost certainly accepted the notion of bodily resurrection in the age to come even before his experience on the Damascus road) saw fit to persecute, have connected their eschatological ideas of resurrection with the experiences of Jesus as raised "according to the Scriptures" (see 1 Cor. 15.3–5)? Is it not more likely that this was one of the ideas Paul found incomprehensible, and so he sought to stamp them out from Israel? Can't we understand the failure of the disciples to understand Jesus' so-called "Passion predictions" in Mark's Gospel (almost certainly later than Paul's letters) as suggesting that this very point caused problems for Jesus' followers prior to their experiences of Easter?

Of course, I'm only raising questions; I have very little to offer by way of answers. In many areas Paul was almost certainly theologically avant-garde. But in some areas—perhaps in many areas—Paul inherited ideas from those around him, whether Jewish, Greek, or even early (or proto-)Christian influences. In the balance of things, do we really want to think that Jesus' earliest followers had to wait for Paul to come around before they began wrestling with the connection between pre-Christ[ian] eschatological ideas about resurrection and the Easter Event? I find this very unlikely.

Still, to end on a positive note, Morales's book is very easy to read. Even if you find it difficult, the thesis he's pursuing (and the evidence he considers) is well worth the effort it takes to access his argument.

making sense of Paul

As I continue reading Kathy Ehrensperger and J. Brian Tucker's edited volume, Reading Paul in Context: Explorations in Identity Formation (LNTS 428; London: T&T Clark International, 2010), I find myself scratching my head sometimes. I've raved about Ekkhard Stegemann's essay (here and here), and I enjoyed Robert Jewett's analysis of the relationship between the gospel and the revelation of God's wrath in Romans (even if, in the end, I was unconvinced by his universalist interpretation). Neil Elliott's political reading of Romans was significantly less convincing than Stegemann's, perhaps because he trades in the same distinction between theology and politics that he criticizes in others. Mark Nanos's interpretation of Rom. 11.25–26 is suggestive if still, in my opinion, unsatisfying.

But Ian Rock's essay, "Another Reason for Romans—A Pastoral Response to Augustan Imperial Theology: Paul's Use of the Song of Moses in Romans 9–11 and 14–15" (74–89), strikes me as odd. I'll raise two issues here. First, I simply have no idea what Rock means when he refers to "the substantial evidence that the addresses of this letter are not Christians but rather the saints in Rome (Rom. 1.7)" (74; my emphases). Does anyone have any idea what distinction Rock might have in mind here? Is this the complaint that the term Christian is anachronistic for the mid-first century CE? Or does Rock have two distinct (and distinguishable) groups in mind here?

Second, Rock locates Paul primarily within the sphere of Roman imperial political rhetoric (rather than within Israelite/Hebrew biblical tradition), a move reminiscent of Elliott's essay, mentioned above. In fact, Rock asks,

Could Paul's references to the kingship of David, the universal covenant with Abraham, the cosmic character of the Law of Moses, the historicity of the people and Israel as the true people of God, his articulation of the messiahship of Jesus the Son of God and Lord, have all stemmed from a subcultural reading the Aenid? (78; my emphasis)

In general, we biblical scholars don't usually ask questions that can be satisfactorily answered, "yes" or "no." But this one is easy: No. The emphatically Jewish topoi Rock names certainly and without doubt did not "stem from" Paul's reading of the Aenid or any other Roman literature. Are we really to imagine Paul developing the ideas we find in his letters about "the kingship of David, . . ." in response to the imperial claims coming out of Rome? What, then, did Paul think before he encountered these claims (or rather, before he needed to formulate responses to them)?

It may well be that Rock didn't mean to ask whether Paul's Jewish ideas "stemmed from" his encounter with Roman propaganda. Perhaps he's merely after how Paul employed Jewish theological resources to answer things that were being advocated about Caesar, for example in the Aenid. But this isn't what he said. And NT scholarship needs to carefully explore the way NT texts employ Jewish theologoumena to counter Roman political and theological ideology without obscuring the fact that, among the NT authors, Jewish ideas and concepts precede Roman ideas. Our authors were Jews navigating Jewish identity in Roman contexts, not Romans engaging Jewish ideas.

Ekkhard Stegemann on Romans 13.1–7

In a post last week I mentioned Ekkhard Stegemann's essay, "Coexistence and Transformation: Reading the Politics of Identity in Romans in an Imperial Context," which opens the volume, Reading Paul in Context: Explorations in Identity Formation. Essays in Honour of William S. Campbell (LNTS 428; London: T&T Clark International, 2010). I cannot recommend highly enough this essay, which, in my view, treads the narrow path between ignoring the political, Roman imperial context that defined every moment of early Christianity in its opening centuries, on the one hand, and focusing on that context so thoroughly that early Christianity becomes, in effect, an anti-Roman response to imperial dynamics, on the other. In some discussions the reader could be forgiven for thinking that Caesar, not Christ, provided the driving impetus for the theologizing processes we see at work in the NT texts; Jesus becomes, almost, merely the vehicle for opposing Rome.

Not so with Stegemann's analysis. I have already said enough to introduce Stegemann's primary thesis (see the post I mentioned above). In his own words, he builds upon William Campbell's work "to show that for Paul the insistence on obedience to the (Roman) rulers and the obedience of faith in Jesus Christ as Son of God in power and Lord, which implies the expectation of the coming of God's kingdom, coexist as well—and that without contradiction" (22). But my introduction does not do justice to Stegemann's masterful portrayal of this coexistence, for example, in the essay's closing paragraph:

Virgil's prophecy for Augustus, which he put in the mouth of Anchises, the father of Aeneas, promised Augustus Caesar, the descendant of the divine (divi genus), that he will extend his empire beyond the stars, and bring a golden age to the Latin land. He will eventually ascend with all th Julian offspring to the exalted firmament (omnis Iuli progenies magnum caeli ventura sub axem; Aen. 6.790–92). For Paul it is Jesus Christ and his followers who will ascend to their Father, God, and his kingdom in heaven, Jesus Christ as the firstborn of the resurrection of the dead and his brothers and sisters after him. But up to now they still coexist with this aeon and its frailties. (23)

I'm not so certain Paul trades on the idea of "ascent" as much as Christian reading of Paul has supposed it has (largely on the basis, I think, of 1 Thess. 4.13–18). And Stegemann, as you can see, includes that idea here. Even so, this is an excellent essay, nearly poetic. And it points the way, I think, for responsible explorations of and appreciations for the political dynamics underlying every word the early Christians said and wrote.