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)

new term

Fall 2011 semester classes at Johnson Bible College University started this morning. The summer was great (busy, but great), and it always seems the autumn comes too quickly. And even though it's hard for me to put down the various projects I get to work on from May til August, it really is good to see returning students and to meet the brand-new freshman.

Speaking of brand-new freshman, new students moved onto campus last weekend. In all the hustle and bustle of meeting new roommates, unpacking milk crates, and trying to get to Walmart to buy more stuff we really needed, I snuck down and filmed a group of incoming freshman. Unfortunately, I had to edit out some language; I guess that's bound to happen when you drop "Bible" from your name. Here's what I got:

Bennema on Pontius Pilate

In his analysis of Pontius Pilate in the Fourth Gospel (Encountering Jesus: Character Studies in the Gospel of John [Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2009], 183–89), Cornelis Bennema makes an interesting argument. Scholars sometimes describe the Johannine Pilate as weak, lily-livered, indecisive, easily manipulated, etc. This, of course, conflicts with the portrait of Pilate in Josephus and Philo, where he appears strong, cruel, and ultimately too harsh to remain in charge of Judea (Rome removed Pilate from power in 36 CE).

Bennema, however, recognizes (I think rightly) that Pilate in the Fourth Gospel isn't the push-over some have read him to be. Bennema refers to Pilate's "politically motivated game of mocking and manipulating 'the Jews,'" by which Pilate gets "the Jews" "to admit their allegiance to Rome" (187). I think this is exactly right. On the next page Bennema explains,

In our reading of the Johannine Pilate we differ from the majority of scholars who portray Pilate as weak and indecisive. While we generally agree with scholars who view Pilate as a strong character, they seem to overrate Pilate's control over the situation by downplaying the force of 19:12 where "the Jews" finally get a grip on Pilate. Pilate is a competent, calculating politician who wants to show "the Jews" he is in charge while also trying to be professional in handling Jesus' case. But he is unable to achieve either aim because he underestimates the determination and shrewdness of "the Jews." (188)

I imagine Bennema would include me among those who "seem to overrate Pilate's control over the situation," since I'm not persuaded by his reading of John 19.12. I don't think Pilate genuinely sought to release Jesus out of any appreciation for Jesus' innocence; I do think that Pilate simply wanted to reinforce for "the Jews" that he doesn't do their bidding, even if he does ultimately put to death the man they handed over to him.

And I'm not sure what Bennema means when he refers to Pilate's efforts to be "professional." Nothing I've seen about the expression of Roman power and its domination over subjugated populations suggests professionalism was ever a concern for those in charge. Even so, I am reminded of a description of Pontius Pilate I wrote for my freshman Gospel Narratives course:

[According to the gospels,] The Jewish authorities only wanted to get rid of Jesus. Pilate probably wanted to get rid of Jesus as well, but he also needed to avoid the impression that he did what the Jewish authorities told him to. When we recognize that Pilate most likely did not want to release Jesus but rather wanted to affirm and strengthen the Jews’ subjection to his authority, the significance of his actions changes considerably. . . . When we re-read the accounts of Jesus’ trial before Pilate with an eye out for [the story's] political dynamics, it becomes clear that the evangelists portray the Jewish leaders on trial as much as Jesus is on trial. The difference, of course, is that Jesus refuses to acknowledge Rome’s power and is handed over to be crucified, while the Jewish leaders proclaim their loyalty to Caesar and deny the reign of Israel’s God.

Just my two cents.

Christopher Tuckett on Form Criticism

Christopher Tuckett provides an eighteen-page essay that surveys Birger Gerhardsson's nearly five-decade critique of form criticism as well as some of Gerhardsson's counterproposals regarding the development and transmission of the Jesus tradition in Jesus in Memory: Traditions in Oral and Scribal Perspectives (W. H. Kelber and S. Byrskog, eds.; Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2009). Tuckett focuses some attention on the German term Formgeschichte, for which "form criticism" has become the standard English equivalent.

The German compound noun Formgeschichte (combining Form and Geschichte) might be more literally translated as "form history"; certainly the aspect of tracing out the possible history of the development of traditions in the New Testament has always been an integral part of Formgeschichte, at least for many (German) form critics. (27)

In other words, what in German scholarship is a single discipline—Formgeschichte—has been divided into two subdisciplines in English scholarship: form criticism on the one hand and the reconstruction of a tradition's history on the other. Tuckett, however, suggests a different bifurcation:

[P]erhaps we should distinguish carefully between two issues: the use of Jesus traditions in the early church and the origin of Jesus traditions. Both are important issues, but they need to be distinguished and should not be confused. (27–28)

This is certainly a helpful proposal; we cannot suggest that just because Jesus' early followers found a particular tradition useful for their purposes (instruction, apologetics, preaching, worship, etc.) that tradition must have been created by them for those purposes. If we discount every account of Jesus' polemical victory over his opponents (Pharisees, scribes, etc.) as Christian propaganda, we are left with the hypothesis that in the first century some people found Jesus' teaching persuasive even though Jesus never bested his contemporaries in debate, and that these people later created stories of Jesus' persuasive abilities in order to cover up that fact. Immediately after the quote on pp. 27–28, Tuckett refers to the well-known British scholar, T. W. Manson:

We can list these stories in the Gospels. We can label them . . . But a paragraph of Mark is not a penny the better or the worse as historical evidence for being labelled, "Apophthegm" or "Pronouncement Story" or "Paradigm."¹

---

¹ T. W. Manson, "The Quest of the Historical Jesus—Continued," in Studies in the Gospels and Epistles (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1962), 5; quoted in Tuckett, "Form Criticism," 212n. 34.

suddenly I'm in the mood for fries

This week in my first-year introduction to Jesus and the gospels we're flying through source criticism and the Synoptic Problem. This video does an . . . um, interesting job of presenting some arguments (though not really the most compelling ones) for Markan priority. It does a more admirable job illustrating (i) stop motion animation and (ii) the possibilities for using Mr. Potatohead for NT instruction.



[HT: Mark Goodacre]

today's show was brought to you by the letter א

Here's a brief presentation of two prominent NT scholars' views of Jesus. I've heard John Dominic Crossan speak in person and E. P. Sanders online; I don't remember either of them sounding so . . . midwestern. Still, this is nicely creative and worth sharing here.



[HT: Mark Goodacre]

John, Jesus, and History

This is a little late. In my news reader I've kept unread Paul Anderson's essay, "A Forth Quest for Jesus . . . So What, and How So?", which appeared on The Bible and Interpretation last month. Anderson has been a significant figure in the SBL's John, Jesus, and History group, which began (if memory serves) at the Toronto Annual Meeting back in 2002. His essay is well worth reading (if you haven't already) in part because of his discussion of the use and function of criteria of historical authenticity (on which see my article, "Authenticating Criteria" (JSHJ 7/2 [2009]: 152–67). [Chris Keith has is also doing some interesting work on the criteria of authenticity; look for his upcoming book on Jesus that will be published by Baker Academic.]

In the teaser I include below, Anderson raises the question of our reaction to the Fourth Gospel if it had disappeared from history until the twentieth or twenty-first century. If the late Gospel of Judas incited considerable hubbub, how much more would the re-discovery of the Gospel of John?! Even posing the question immediately reveals how shocking it should be that historical Jesus scholarship has become so sanguine vis-à-vis John. Essays like this give me some confidence that, after floundering for a number of decades, historical Jesus scholarship is finally beginning to head in some interesting (and potentially fruitful) directions.

Think of it! What would happen if the National Geographic Channel ran a special on a recently discovered gospel text from the late first century, which was different from the Synoptics but also developed an alternative rendering of Jesus and his ministry? If the third-century Gospel of Judas created a stir, with virtually no historical-Jesus tradition within it, imagine what sort of a ruckus would emerge if John were taken seriously as an independent Jesus tradition, differing from the Markan gospels with at least some knowing intentionality. That’s what I believe will happen if the Fourth Gospel’s historical features come out from being eclipsed by its theological ones.

Jesus and the Twelve

In my freshman-level Gospel Narratives course I have a lesson on "Jesus' Disciples" that tries to explore the significance and function of the Twelve within the context of Israelite tradition. I begin that lesson by rejecting the popular idea that interprets Jesus' choice of twelve disciples in terms of small group leadership theory and practice. I begin that lesson the with the following:

Like Jesus’ healings and exorcisms (see Lesson 9), Jesus’ calling and equipping of twelve disciples to participate in the gospel program is largely misunderstood. Contemporary preaching, heavily influenced by the last couple decades’ emphasis on leadership, portrays Jesus as a leader of a small group of men facing an impossible challenge: to change the world. As a brief experiment, I googled the words Jesus leadership disciples, which returned over 200,000 hits. The very first search result [!] returned an essay by Barry McWilliams, “Jesus’ Leadership Principles and Method of Training His Disciples.” McWilliams frames Jesus’ choice of twelve disciples in terms of small-group leadership. “Jesus could have made a play for the masses and sought to usher in the kingdom by popular acclaim.” But large numbers of followers, apparently, would not have served Jesus’ purposes. “The Lord knew that quality of discipleship and not quantity of disciples was more important” (my emphases). McWilliams emphasizes the point a little further on: “[Jesus] did not try to reach all the masses with the Gospel. Even if He had wanted to, the task would be too big. Rather He concentrated on a few selected ordinary men, who were ‘with Him’ and to whom he gave both verbal instruction and a constant example—preparing through their time with Him to do the same. A similar method of discipleship was practiced by the early churches in Acts.”

I don’t want to single McWilliams out as a “bad” Bible teacher. Quite the contrary. Precisely because of his (apparent) lack of formal biblical education McWilliams provides an excellent glimpse into how Jesus’ relationship with and purpose for the Twelve is understood in popular Christianity. I also don’t disagree with McWilliams’s larger point, that leaders are more effective when discipling a manageable number of close relationships rather than broadcasting themselves to massive crowds. Rather, I am concerned that views such as McWilliams’s miss what’s actually going on with Jesus’ selection of twelve disciples and the references to them as “the Twelve.” For this reason, I want in this lesson to put Jesus’ calling of his disciples, and his commissioning of them to continue his mission, back into historical and biblical perspective.

It's one thing to take aim at popular-level Christian thinking and aim at greater precision. But this morning, as I was preparing for my senior-level Gospel of Mark class, I was going over David Rhoads's book, Reading Mark, Engaging the Gospel (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004), which my students have reviewed. In his fifth chapter, "Network for Mission: The Social System of the Jesus Movement in Mark," Rhoads analyzes Jesus' program and relation with his disciples and larger circle of followers in terms of sociological analyses of networks. I'm struck that there's an awful lot to disagree with if I read Rhoads in terms of Jesus' intentional decision to employ networking principles and practices (a reading Rhoads's writing readily encourages). But Rhoads's essay is more helpful if we read it as an analysis in terms of networking principles and practices without ascribing any these to Jesus' intentions (which, I think, is how Rhoads intends us to read his analysis).

Even so, I think there are some larger connections and similarities between McWilliams' popular analysis and Rhoads's technical one. Given my own affinity for sociological perspectives and the questions they open up for biblical scholarship, I'm especially concerned that such perspectives don't facilitate our reading the texts in contemporary rather than ancient contexts. Of course, all readings of the text are contemporary readings. But I can't help but think that there's a real difference between analyses that help us register and begin to account for the differences between our worlds and the worlds in which the NT texts were written, performed, and read, on the one hand, and those that help us smooth over those differences and appropriate the texts more easily, on the other. I suspect that "Network for Mission" may be more of the latter than the former.

recognizing Jesus

Despite all the rancor that accompanies NT scholarship, we do all agree (for the most part) on a few things. Two of those things, I think, regard the earliest Christians' perception and interpretation of Jesus:

• First, the dominant perspective among Jesus' earliest followers insisted on identifying and contextualizing Jesus within the traditions preserved in the texts of the Hebrew Bible (loosely understood). Some may have tried to distance Jesus from Israel's sacred traditions, but these were decidedly in the minority.


• Second, identifying Jesus in light of Israel's sacred traditions experienced a pivotal moment at Easter. The gospels are explicit here: The resurrected Jesus "opens the eyes" of his followers and shows them that everything that happened to him had to happen in order to fulfill what was written in the Law and the Prophets. This theme is widespread (see, for example, both Luke and John).

With respect to this second point, scholars generally suspect that the activities involved in connecting Jesus and Hebrew biblical traditions was more robust than the gospels let on. But this point goes beyond the consensus of the second point, so I list it separately.

I'm currently reading Craig Koester's The Word of Life: A Theology of John's Gospel (Grand Rapids and Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2008). As I read the following, I didn't really disagree with these comments so much as I thought they were a bit too imprecise. Let me know what you think.

The post-resurrection perspective also enables the evangelist to make connections with the Old Testament that were not evident during his ministry." (11)

John, of course, is explicit here; Jesus said and did things (and had things done to him) that his followers only later remembered in light of prophetic utterances (see the use of μιμνῄσκομαι [mimnēskomai; "I remember"] at John 2.17, 22; 12.16). Again, it would be too strong to say I disagree with Koester's point here.

But I can't help but think that we need to balance this point with a rigorous understanding that Jesus ministry itself (not simply the memory of his ministry) was perceived within a symbolic universe whose features were largely determined and set in place by Israelite sacred tradition. Indeed, at this time one of the major projects still underway (and about to get worse, given the war of 66–79 CE) was how that symbolic universe could account for and make sense of the Hellenization of the whole world and then Rome's domination over it. That Jesus and his followers (as well as John and his followers) were defined by Torah and engaged in navigating the Roman empire while maintaining faith in Torah does not mean that they would have been indistinguishable from other Jews. How Jesus, John, and their followers answered questions raised by Torah and Rome often differed significantly, but the questions with which the early Christians wrestled were largely the same questions that Jews across the Mediterranean world had to address.

In this light, Jesus' resurrection certainly resulted in a shift in the connections between Israel's sacred traditions and Jesus' life and ministry. What didn't change, of course, was the role of Hebrew biblical traditions in defining the world in which Jesus had to make sense.

reading Matthew's mission discourse (well, almost)

It is well known among those of us who read the gospels that Matthew structures Jesus' teaching into five large discourses. The second of these, the "Mission Discourse," is found in Matthew 10. In this post I'm not reading Matthew's Mission Discourse as much as I am reading Pheme Perkins's discussion of the Mission Discourse, in Introduction to the Synoptic Gospels (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 169–70.

Perkins begins by making the standard observation that Jesus' disciples, in Matthew 10, do not seem to go on mission despite their being sent on mission. (I describe this as a "standard observation" not to imply anything negative about Perkins's discussion but rather to signal that she stands firmly within the mainstream of NT scholarship here.)

Although Matthew's second discourse opens with calling and naming the Twelve as apostles to be sent on mission (10:1–5a), the Twelve do not leave Jesus' side. Instead, at the conclusion of this teaching Jesus gets up to go and preach in the towns (11:1). From a narrative point of view, that change makes the mission discourse instruction for later use, not for immediate action. (169)

But I'm not sure that this "narrative point of view" actually sheds any light on Matthew's text. First of all, in Mark's gospel the disciples do leave to go on mission (Mark 6.7, 30); should we, then, suppose that Jesus' instructions for his disciples lacked any significance or applicability for Mark's readers? Perkins does suggest this interpretation when she contrasts Matthew's Mission Discourse with "a one-time expedition while Jesus is alive" (169). Not that she says Mark 10.10–11 refers to a "one-time expedition," but she does contrast (a) Matthew's Mission Discourse with Mark's instructions for the disciples, and (b) Matthew's Mission Discourse with a one-time expedition. But I'm not at all convinced that we could read the Markan Jesus' sending the disciples out two-by-two this way, and the suggestion, even if only by implication, really isn't very helpful at all.

Second, if Mark's actual description of the disciples going out on mission does not strip Jesus' mission instructions of its significance for Mark's readers, then I'm not sure that Matthew's failure to explicitly send the disciples on mission "makes the mission discourse instruction for later use, not for immediate action." Clearly Perkins has identified a "gap" in the text, a space that the author has left unfilled and which requires the reader to supply some information in order for the story to go on. Perkins, in her reading, has filled in this gap by looking outside the text—the Matthean Jesus' Mission Discourse is directed at Matthew's readers and not at the Twelve.

John Miles Foley, however, has been arguing for nearly twenty years for the concept of "traditional referentiality," in which items explicitly within the text of an oral performance or an oral-derived text (a written text with roots in oral performance)—here Matthew's Mission Discourse—evoke items not explicitly within the text. In 1997 Werner Kelber suggested the image of a biosphere as an aid for understanding this dimension of tradition. Jesus' tradents lived within a world circumscribed by the Jesus tradition; they did not rely solely on written texts in order to access that tradition. If the gospels worked this way, rather than according to the narrowly textual dynamics according to which we gospel scholars have learned to read them, then perhaps the Mission Discourse itself signaled the disciples' missionary activity, even if the latter isn't explicitly narrated. In other words, without stripping Matthew 10 of its significance for Matthew's readers, we need not read the Mission Discourse as Matthew using Jesus' sending the disciples out "to the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (10.6) as a pretext for instructing his own readers about mission.

I must admit, however, that I'm uncomfortable with the open-ended, rather loose method of reading I'm proposing. If narrative elements outside the text governed the earliest receptions of the text, then how do we "recover" an authentic reading that is sensitive to these gaps and does not impose our own readings on the text? If I can point to something not in the text and say that Matthew wanted us to understand that it was there by means of implication, how do we determine which implications are historically appropriate and which distort the narrative? I have no answer to this except to insist on continued, close reading of the text we have. But I would notice that this problem does not escape readings such as Perkins's, either; she, too, has to "fill a gap" with extratextual phenomena. In her case, she posits a primary significance for Matthew's readers rather than for events internal to the narrative.

But the reference to "the lost sheep of the house of Israel," above, is significant, because I think Matt 10.5–6 actually supports the reading I'm proposing (namely, that the Mission Discourse itself signals the disciples going out on mission, even if Matthew doesn't explicitly narrate that mission). Perkins, because she is such a careful reader, wrestles with these verses and how they fit her reading of the discourse:

[I]f Matt 10:5b–6 articulates mission rules for later Christians, the two most vital areas of early missionary activity, Gentiles and Samaritans, are excluded. On the other hand, the Evangelist does have the risen Jesus commission his followers to go out to "all the nations" (28:16–20). . . . Exegetes are divided over how to understand that final command. (170)

This problem, I suggest, arises only because we have read the text too narrowly and without "ears to hear" the larger traditional evocations signaled by the Mission Discourse. Jesus' restrictions in 10.5–6 work within the narrative and are not Matthew's restrictions for his own readers' missionary practice. The Twelve go out on mission among "the lost sheep of the house of Israel" and not among the Samaritans and the gentiles. The text does not explicitly mention that mission because it doesn't have to; the mission already constituted part of the "traditional biosphere" in which the early Christians lived and according to which they read/heard Matthew's narrative and filled in gaps such as this.

how we make our points (or not) in NT discourse

I've picked up again an article I began writing last July and will hopefully have its first draft finished this week or next. More on that later, perhaps. But in the process of gathering some research, I returned to Charles H. Talbert's 1978 essay, "Oral and Independent or Literary and Interdependent? A Response to Albert B. Lord" (in William O. Walker, Jr., ed. The Relationships among the Gospels: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue [San Antonio: Trinity University Press], 93–102), which responds to Lord's argument that the synoptic gospels are examples of oral traditional literature.

Lord was a world-class, first-rate scholar whose breadth of knowledge was vast and whose ability to raise and address unexpected questions was enviable. His landmark book, The Singer of Tales (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960) gave birth to an entire field of study (Oral-Formulaic research). And although some of his proposals now seem narrowly restricted in light of the variegated expressions and experiences of oral performances throughout history and around the world, we can ask the questions we ask in part because Albert Lord taught us how.

I emphasize Lord's stature because it provides the frame of reference from which I re-read Talbert's response this afternoon. Talbert—himself an impressive scholar and, perhaps more importantly, a gentle and kind person—picks up on Lord's conclusion:

The texts of the Gospels "vary from one another to such an extent as to rule out the possibility that, as a whole, one could have been copied from another" (p. 90). From my point of view, however, the divergent wording is no obstacle to our viewing the Synoptic Problem as a literary one. Given the practices of the Hellenistic Age, it is exactly what one should expect. (Talbert 1978: 95; my emphasis)

Does Talbert suppose that Lord is unaware of the relevant "practices of the Hellenistic Age"? If so, it would have been nice of him to state them briefly and explain why these mitigate the force of the comparative arguments Lord adduced for his conclusion. Instead, Talbert turns to to Josephus's use of sources for his Antiquities of the Jews, although the utility of Josephus and his Antiquities of the Jews for understanding either the evangelists or their writings is highly questionable. Should we assume that Josephus was a "normal" or unremarkable example of "practices of the Hellenistic Age"? Even if so, which practices, precisely, does Talbert have in mind?

Even five years ago, when I first encountered Walker's book, I was struck by the non-answer Talbert provides to Lord's arguments. Granted, Lord's Oral-Formulaic paradigm isn't as applicable to the gospels as we might have thought in 1978. But Talbert's response is, in essence, to suggest that Lord's explications of oral-traditional dynamics also apply to literary products. Talbert seems to assume this settles the question of whether or not the synoptic problem is properly addressed as a literary problem, but instead I think it raises the question of the oral (or better, traditional) dynamics of written texts in the ancient world.

But I come back to the dismissive gesture I italicized in the quote from Talbert's response, above. The appeal to the ill-defined, unspecified "practices of the Hellenistic Age" ducks and dodges Lord's argument rather than responds to it. And while I'm interested in the questions Lord's legacy has left behind for gospels scholars, I would also like to encourage myself, my students, and my colleagues to avoid the very sorts of appeals to "the way it would have been" that allow us to shy away from actually very interesting and challenging questions.

Jesus' Roman cross and the art of crucifixion

The historical significance of Jesus' mode of execution is a complicated matter. On the one hand, scholars (e.g., John Dominic Crossan) have emphasized the Roman-ness of crucifixion to distance the Jews/Jewish authorities from responsibility for Jesus' death. Luke's portrayal of Stephen's execution in Acts 7 stands in some contrast to the crucifixion narratives: Death by Jewish hands is administered by stoning. For that matter, John's gospel also makes references to stoning, whether of the adulterous woman (8.5, 7; admittedly questionable texts) or of Jesus himself (8.59; 10.31–33; 11.8). If Jews had been responsible for putting Jesus to death, they would not have nailed him to a cross. Since Jesus was crucified, he must have been executed by Roman authorities for Roman reasons. The gospels, then, set out to minimize Christianity's offense to Rome, so they paint the Jews as the real Christ-killers.

On the other hand, the ethnic affiliations of crucifixion as a means of execution don't seem as secure as this. For one thing, in the famous discussion of Jewish methods of capital punishment in the Talmud (b. Sanh. 43a), "Jesus the Nazarene" (the translation is Peter Schäfer's [Jesus in the Talmud; Princeton University Press, 2007]), the text says a herald went out forty days prior to Jesus' execution to announce that Jesus was to be stoned and to seek out witnesses for his defense. When none were found, Jesus "was hanged" (tela’uhu), which Schäfer interprets as the post-mortem demonstration of Jesus' body after he had been stoned. But Joseph Fitzmyer argues that the root תלה [tlh], at least in the DSS, refers to crucifixion ("Crucifixion in Ancient Palestine, Qumran Literature, and the New Testament" [CBQ 40 (1978): 502–7]). I don't think b. Sanh. 43a provides any historical information about Jesus' death; rather, it reflects ongoing debate (between Jesus' followers and other Jews) about Jesus' significance. The world(s) in which Talmudic traditions were formed was/were also inhabited by Christians proclaiming a crucified Christ, and I'm impressed that, in the midst of this proclamation, b. Sanh. 43a accepts Jesus' execution at Jewish hands (regardless of the precise referent of תלה).

An additional complication comes from a very well-known story from Josephus, who describes the Hasmonean king/high priest Alexander Jannaeus as crucifying 800 Jews while he enjoyed a meal with his concubines, and as the men hung on their crosses he slaughtered their wives and children in front of them (Ant. 13.380). Josephus describes this as "the cruelest act of all" [πάντων ὠμότατον ἔργον; pantōn ōmotaton ergon), a phrase which may suggest the scandal of a Jew administering crucifixion as a means of executing people of his own nation. But the story remains as evidence that crucifixion could function as a Jewish means of execution. And, again, Fitzmyer finds similar phenomena in 4QpNah and in the Temple Scroll.

In all of this, I would suggest that we cannot read the gospels' Passion Narratives as mitigating Roman responsibility for Jesus' crucifixion and foisting blame on the Jews and/or the Jewish leaders. Rather, the gospels rather clearly portray Pilate's role in Jesus' trial and execution (whether or not we accept the historicity of their portrayal), and I would suggest the gospels even portray Jesus' fate as the result of the political posturing of Pilate and the Jewish authorities. The Jewish leaders wanted Jesus executed while Pilate made it clear that he wasn't simply their instrument to achieve their goals. Jesus' crucifixion served both the Jewish leadership's and the Romans' interests, but Pilate also made sure reinforce the political order over which he had been appointed by the emperor. After all, even the titulus Pilate had hung over Jesus' head announced not only the charge against Jesus but also, by why of parody, Judea's subjection to Rome.

Jesus and purity

I was sent home by the campus nurse late this morning with symptoms that might be early signs of swine flu. Though I have been washing my hands more frequently and taking advantage of the myriad hand sanitizer dispensers that have suddenly and magically appeared all over campus (and throughout the rest of the city!) like acne on a twelve-year-old, I do not truly believe, apparently, that nothing outside the body that goes into my body can defile me.

During my self-inflicted semi-quarantine this afternoon, I began reading from Mark's gospel. Perhaps in the throes of my current state purity is especially on my mind. Perhaps I haven't been drinking enough fluids. But the end of Mark 9, which bears some thematic resemblance to Matt 5.29–30 (remember that Matt 5–7 is typically attributed to Matthew's reworking of Q material), suddenly struck me as a passage on purity:

43 If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off! It is better for you to enter into life maimed than to be sent away into hell—into unquenchable fire—with two hands. 45 And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off! It is better for you to enter into life lame than to be cast into hell with two feet. 47 And if your eye causes you to sin, cast it away from you! It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to be cast into hell with two eyes, 48 where their worm never dies and their fire is never put out. (Mark 9.43–48; vv 44, 46 were likely later additions on the influence of v 48)

I have always read this passage (and its Matthean parallel) in terms of the radical undesirability of sin. Of course, only an idiot would lop off his hand or foot or pluck out his eye, as if the impulse to sin weren't more closely rooted in the major organs. But Jesus, I've always thought, is speaking hyperbolically. "Avoid sin so radically, so passionately, so consequentially," Jesus is saying, "that you would remove your own self rather than lust after that woman or steal that loaf of bread or do harm against your neighbor." This reading will preach, but is it the best reading of this passage?

Everyone recognizes that purity issues appear from time to time in various NT texts; Acts 3.1–10 and 8.26–40 are the first two that come to my mind. Both texts center on a man (a crippled Jew in Acts 3; a [probably] gentile eunuch in Acts 8) prevented from worshiping YHWH because of a physical deformity. Both texts emphasize the power of Jesus' name to bring these types of men directly into God's presence. And both texts, I think, implicitly contrast their disabled protagonists with the able-bodied Jewish hierocratic leadership that has unrestricted access to the Temple but nevertheless fails to come into God's presence as mediated through Jesus.

Perhaps because I've just finished reading Richard Horsley's recent book, Jesus in Context, I wonder if the Markan passage (and even the Lukan passages referred to, above) provides a glimpse into the distinctive forms that Hebrew biblical traditions could take among the non- or (sometimes) semi-literate, non-elite populace outside the Temple, especially in Galilee and beyond the immediate reach of Judean power structures. In other words, if the "great tradition" embodying the Hebrew Bible among the urban elite, especially in Jerusalem, emphasized physical unblemished-ness as requisite for coming into God's presence, how significant is it that Jesus espouses intentionally (if symbolically) becoming physically blemished precisely in order to enter into God's presence? The priestly expressions of Judaism went to great lengths to protect the people from the dangerous holiness of God, and there were highly stylized, ritualized, and scripted procedures for coming into God's presence. Jesus, if I'm reading Mark 9 rightly, isn't suggesting that Israel's God is actually much safer than the Temple system, with all its buffers against defilement, portrays. Rather, Jesus is suggesting that rather different purity prescriptions grant a person access to God. Not physical wholeness but child-like innocence (see Mark 9.42). Not ritual precision but care for the poor, the powerless, the widow, orphaned, and sojourner.

I'm not sure where this type of reading would lead me. I have a few hunches, though. Rather than simply christocentric (or, following Richard B. Hays, ecclesiocentric), Mark and people with whom he was associated experienced Hebrew biblical traditions as little tradition (rather than great tradition). And they preserved the memory that Jesus did likewise. Torah, the prophets, and the writings weren't simply "about" Jesus; Jesus established [at least some of] the principles according to which the Tanakh functioned in the community. Christocentric/Ecclesiocentric, yes. But not merely so. I also suspect that a number of other pericopae receive brighter illumination by being read in terms of purity and other peculiarly Jewish theologoumena. Here Serge Ruzer's book, Mapping the New Testament, is helpful (even if some of his interpretations are unconvincing).

You Markan scholars out there, Am I way off base? Or has this been the standard interpretation of 9.43–48 for some time now?

ringing in the Fall 2009 term

Today is the first day of Fall 2009 classes for undergraduate students at Johnson Bible College. It should be a great semester; last night we had a successful Convocation ceremony and dedicated the new Russell Preaching Center (which houses my new office and into which the entire Distance Learning department moved over the summer). Very sheik, or sheek, or sheak . . . they're nice.

Today is also the first of three days of orientation for new students in the MA New Testament program. Though their semester began 10 July, students come onto campus now to . . . well, be oriented to the program. Since this is a distance learning program, we won't see many of you until you're finishing up your degree. But we hope this is the beginning of a vibrant and inquisitive relationship.

As we start this new term I can't help but be humbled by the realization that a number of institutions of higher education that kicked off the Spring 2009 semester last January closed their doors over the summer and aren't gearing up for 2009-2010. Some of you have made that difficult transition; others are still in the thick of it. My prayers are with you.

Best of luck to all of JBC's students, whether new, returning, or transfer. For my part, I'm teaching Elementary Greek, a first-year Gospel Narratives course, two courses in the graduate program, and I'm taking Intermediate Hebrew I. Structuring Early Christian Memory should be published by the SBL Annual meeting, and I have a number of book reviews in various states of progress. A number of projects were on hold this summer as I revised most of my course materials for this semester, and I hope to pick them up again in the coming weeks. But there's much to do for the Spring 2010 term, so I'm only marginally hopeful. Here's to work completed, work in progress, and work we hope to one day get to.

the miraculous in Q

I'd like to solicit your help, because I'm quite sure I must not understand what I've just read.

I'm preparing some reading questions from Pheme Perkins's discussion on "The Quest for Sources" (Introduction to the Synoptic Gospels [Grand Rapids and Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2007], 54–125), particularly pp. 54–96. Her discussion is pretty standard (as you would expect from an introduction) in that it is characteristically careful and yet glosses over a number of issues I'm not wanting to gloss over. Following the critical edition of Q, Perkins provides a comprehensive list of sayings (pp. 74–80). Then, in a move reminiscent of Richard Horsley and Jonathan Draper's analysis in Whoever Hears You Hears Me (London and New York: Trinity Press International, 1999), she provides a rudimentary structure of discursive blocks into which many (but not all) the Q material fits.

When I'm open to the Q hypothesis, I'm open to this larger "Collection of Discourses" model of Q rather than the atomistic model of a sayings source. But then Perkins makes a comment I really don't understand. She says,

The only anomalous pericope [among the Q material] is the lone miracle story [i.e., Jesus' healing the centurion's child (Luke 7.1–10)]. Most descriptions of Q skirt the difficulty by describing it as a statement about faith. For example, the editors of the critical edition entitle the section, "The Centurion's Faith in Jesus' Word." Jesus' miracle working does not figure in any of the other sayings of Q or in the later Gos. Thom. Rather than to make the healing of the centurion's son fit by stripping it of that element, one should consider alternate possibilities. (Perkins 2007: 81; my emphasis)

I've italicized the passage that's giving me problems. Is Perkins really saying that, other than Q 7.1–10, Jesus' miracle working (especially his healings and exorcisms) don't appear in Q? What about Q 7.18–23? or Q 11.14–23? Perkins has already listed Luke 7.18–35 as "Jesus on the Baptist, against 'this generation'," but we should remember that Jesus' response to John's disciples referred explicitly and programmatically to his healing of the blind, lame, deaf, and leprous, and his raising of the dead. Similarly, she listed Luke 11.14–51 as "Jesus against his opponents," but that story kicks off by Jesus' exorcising a demon and climaxes with Jesus' statement, "But if I cast out demons by the finger [Matt 12.28 = Spirit] of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you." Other references could also be given.

Perkins's discussion is, as I've already said, very careful, so I must be missing her point. I'd appreciate it if someone out there can clue me in to what I'm missing.

[UPDATE: A comment taken out of context but, in light of the previous discussion, nevertheless intriguing: "Q2 knows of, but has no place for, Jesus as healer and exorcist" (Perkins 2007: 96). Is Perkins's but has no place for justifiable?]

a [nearly] new article

I fell a bit behind in my reading and so have only just now picked up the second-most-recent issue of Bulletin for Biblical Research (19.1). I have just finished Gary N. Knoppers's very interesting article, "The Synoptic Problem? An Old Testament Perspective" (19.1 [2009]: 11–34). Admittedly I misunderstood the article's title. I expected the piece to present an argument regarding the synoptic problem within gospels scholarship from the perspective of Old Testament criticism. Instead, Knoppers focuses on biblical synopticism in general, but especially in the Hebrew Bible, from the perspective of mimēsis (or imitatio) in the ancient world (Classical, Egyptian, Hellenistic, Roman) in general. Knoppers brings a breathtakingly broad sample of ancient evidence to bear on the question of mimēsis. Given the related discussions among source critics of the gospels' interdependence and the relatively disconnected nature of those discussions from the practices of reproduction and adaptation in ancient milieux, Knoppers's article is probably the place to begin source critical analyses in the future.

To provide one sample, among many possibilities, Knoppers addresses the problem of distinguishing mimēsis from plagiarism in the ancient world (2009: 27–33). It is fairly common practice for gospels scholars to claim, in their introductory source-critical comments, that plagiarism is a modern cultural construction that does not apply to the evangelists. When we claim that Matthew and Luke, for example, reproduced significant portions of their sources (Mark and Q), we are not making the same claim as when we accuse one of our students of reproducing significant portions of their sources in a research assignment. As one example,

Some view [the theory of the gospels as interdependent] as portraying two of the Gospel authors as copyists who relied on others for a large portion of their work. Ancient authors had no scruples about plagiarism; so the theory does not suggest the writers did anything unethical, but it does reduce the originality of the later writers. (Richard Niswonger, New Testament History [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992], 102; my emphasis)

Knoppers's article, pace Niswonger, documents the rather heterogenous and contentious ideas surrounding ideas of imitation and plagiarism. Slavish reproduction of one's sources was not merely considered "unoriginal" by many ancient writers, but it was even referred to as "thievery" (klopē). While the legal concept of copyright did not exist in the ancient world, there was often fierce, sometimes contentious arguments over authors' rights and the obligations of later writers vis-à-vis their sources. Knoppers, who cites Michael Silk's entry, "Plagiarism," (Oxford Classical Dictionary [ed. S. Hornblower and A. Spawforth; 3rd ed.; Oxford: Oxford University Press 1996, 1188]), deserves citing at some length:

As Silk comments, "The preoccupation with plagiarism over many centuries serves as a reminder that, contrary to some modern misstatements, ancient literature, especially poetry, was expected to be 'new.' Certainly many writers, Greek and Roman, are anxious to assert the originality of their own claim to it." Much of the modern discussion about imitation and plagiarism assumes clearly available and agreed-on rules across the spectrum of ancient scholarship during a variety of times, but no central, universally recognized arbiter of definitions and standards existed in antiquity. There was, of course, no such thing as copyright, and, there was no widespread notion of the sanctity of intellectual property. Working within diverse traditions, diverse times, and diverse settings, ancient critics were sure to disagree. (2009: 32)

The gospels, of course, were produced in vastly different cultural milieux than those discussed by Knoppers; the values and norms of ancient elite cultures were certainly not operative in the production and reception of the gospel traditions and texts, certainly not during the first century. But elite standards were massively influential, and their values and norms would have "trickled down" into more popular writings. Those values and norms, also, would have been distorted in the process. But we cannot simply wave aside our students' discomfiture (or our own) at the implied accusation that the evangelists were plagiarists by denying such a concept to the ancient world. Mark himself, if our source-critical theories are accurate, may have picked up a copy of Matthew and exclaimed to himself, "Now just wait one gosh-darn minute!"

a slight variation on a common theme

I'm currently developing a lecture entitled, "Jesus and Torah," for my first-year Gospel Narratives course. Few things, for me, are as difficult to introduce in a two-hour discussion with beginning students. I'm beginning my discussion, after a brief definition of Torah, by looking at Matt 5.17–48. I understand vv 17–20 as introducing the six Antitheses of vv 21–48, and I retain the label Antitheses because I think it aptly describes the rhetorical structure of these sayings (but not Jesus' relation to/view of Torah!). Finally, I should say that I understand the entire Sermon on the Mount in strongly covenantal terms (rather than, say, ethical terms). Matthew, I think, is clearly presenting Jesus in ways that evoke the Sinai narrative, though (I think) in some surprising ways.

But in my lesson preparation I'm reading Luz's massively detailed Hermeneia commentary, and I can't help but notice that some anachronistic concepts seem to sustain his (and many others') interpretation. What's worse, the assumption I have in mind is never explicitly discussed, which makes it all the more problematic! A commentary might not be the place to engage such things, but given their effect on our exegetical work I think they deserve some attention.

Specifically, I have in mind the assumption that Christianity and Judaism were, already in the first century CE, separate and distinguishable entities. The very opening of Luz's interpretative comments on Matt 5.17–20 he employs this assumption and allows it to drive his reading of this very important passage:

By placing these verses at the beginning of the main part of the Sermon on the Mount before the antitheses, Matthew makes clear that they are fundamentally important for him. At issue here is his relationship to the Mosaic Law and thus to Judaism. (Luz, Matthew 1-7, 213; my emphasis)

I'm not at all convinced that the issue here is "his relationship to the Mosaic Law"; rather, I think the point is rather clearly the interpretation of Torah and, as emphasized in v 20, the proper observance of Torah. Of course, if Jesus ever did say anything like 5.17–20, we would struggle to explain why Jesus would have to explain to his fellow Jews that he recognized the authority of the Mosaic covenant. Certainly at the front-end of Jesus' ministry, as Matthew has placed the Sermon, we have yet to see anything that would make us think Jesus set out to live free of Torah's strictures and ordinances (Moses might have preferred "blessings and curses"). So why should Jesus have to explain his "relationship to Judaism"?

But Luz doubts the authenticity of this passage; at the very least he reads 5.17–20 as speaking "directly to the church" (213). And if Jesus, in Matthew's gospel, has yet to fall foul of Torah, the church, by the time Matthew was written, certainly had. And given the debates attested earlier in Paul's letters and later in Luke-Acts, Matthew writes to a church whose relationship to Judaism was open to question and required some explanation.

The problem with all of this, I think, is that we cannot invoke the neat distinctions between Judaism and Christianity to structure our interpretation of the NT texts. Daniel Boyarin (Dying for God [1999], Border Lines [2004]), among others, has demonstrated the messy interactions between the expressions of Judaism that became Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity. We cannot helpfully think of these as two distinct phenomena at any point in the first century CE; even thinking in terms of two phenomena sends us off on the wrong path.

I haven't yet read Luz's interpretation of Matt 5.17–20; I stopped to get these ideas out of my head. But I'm suspicious that he began with what I think is a very problematic assumption: that Matthew had to clarify "his relationship to the Mosaic Law and thus to Judaism." The text offers significantly more potential, I think, if we begin instead by understanding Matthew competing with other Jews (who may or may not have identified Jesus of Nazareth as a prophet or even Israel's messiah) over how to properly understand and practice Torah.

gospels scholarship at odds with source and redaction criticism?

Okay, so this post's title is a bit of a non sequitur. Source and redaction criticism ARE gospels scholarship, so they can't be at odds, I guess. Even so, I'm very interested in the ways that our über-textual approaches to source criticism fail us when we set about reading the gospels. But first, the usual disclaimer. I am not denying that one or more of the gospel writers may have known one or more of the other gospels. Neither am I denying that earlier gospels were/may have been influential in the development and composition of later gospels. But I am questioning the assumption that the similarities between the gospels are evidence for copying, and that differences between them evidence for redacting. Source critics quite rightly insist that modern objections to copying (or, worse, plagiarism) shouldn't affect our judgments of what the gospels are or how the evangelists produced them. But my point is that the gospels themselves show that copying and editing aren't very helpful ways for thinking about their patterns of similarities and differences.

I'm currently writing a lesson on the twelve disciples that focuses on the significance of Jesus calling twelve disciples and the evidence preserved in the gospels (and Acts, Paul, and even Revelation). Of course, quite a bit of time deals with the different lists of disciples preserved in Matt 10.2–4||Mark 3.16–19||Luke 6.14–16||Acts 1.13. E. P. Sanders (Jesus and Judaism, 98ff.), of course, emphasizes the differences between the lists, while Bauckham (Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 96ff.) minimizes these. Both accept that Jesus was remembered as surrounding himself with disciples, to whom he referred as the Twelve, but Bauckham's thesis requires that the Twelve refers to twelve specific, named individuals who could take (or be assigned) responsibility for the Jesus tradition.

The problem, unless I've missed something, is that the lists aren't identical. This is especially a problem for Bauckham. The differences aren't simply a matter of order; Matthew and Mark both name someone called Thaddaeus, while in both of his lists Luke mentions another Judas, this one the son of James. Critics have gone back and forth asking whether Thaddaeus was also known as Judas; I'm happy to notice that none of our texts suggest this. But there doesn't seem to be any redaction-critical motivations for changing (on the assumption of Markan [or Matthean] priority) Thaddaeus to Judas. In fact, I would be more willing to accept the opposite: That sometime after the first Easter, any remaining disciples of Jesus named Judas would have looked around for another moniker. For that matter, there doesn't seem to be any redaction-critical motivations that could explain the variations in order evident among the four lists.

For that reason, I think, both Sanders and Bauckham invoke oral tradition (or memory) to explain the variations for which we need to account. Sanders says, "In the earliest period (evidenced by 1 Cor. 15.5) noses were not counted. That it was some time before they started being counted is clear from the lists of names" (Jesus and Judaism, 101). Of course, there really is only one name from the Twelve about which there are any questions, so the extent to which the delay between an awareness of the Twelve and a list of who those twelve were is actually not very "clear" at all. Bauckham provides a more helpful theory:

It is quite intelligible that a list of this kind should be remembered as consisting of three groups, with the first name in each group a fixed point in the memory, but with the order of the other three names in each group variable. (Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 98)

Admittedly, I'm not sure which source-critical assumptions, if any, Bauckham brings to his analyses. Sanders, if I'm not mistaken, is probably a neo-Griesbachian, but again I could be wrong. Regardless of which solution to the synoptic problem (a peculiarly literary problem, after all) we prefer, Matthew, Mark, and Luke (in some combination or another) should be copying from another, and the list of disciples would be a place that we would expect the most careful copying (if the names of the disciples weren't already indelibly stamped on the tradition). In other words, on the basis of some strikingly similar passages (e.g., Mark 2.1–12 parr.), we postulate that some evangelists copy from other gospels. But if, for example, Luke had Mark's list of disciples available and in front of him, why should he vary either the order of the disciples or, most significantly, substitute Judas the son of James for Thaddaeus?

So the list of disciples in the gospels, and their counterpart in Acts 1.13, suggest that the historical processes source critics have envisaged as descriptive for our gospels' composition are unlikely at least and anachronistic at worst. Even if Luke could read/had read Mark's gospel, and even if the latter was very influential over the former's composition, how do we explain the differences between their lists of apostles? Sanders can't be convincing here, because even if the precise names comprising the Twelve wasn't fixed in early Christian tradition, Luke (who replaces Thaddaeus with Judas son of James) should have known Mark's list!

So on standard source-critical readings, Luke knew his lists differed from Mark's and either didn't care or thought he was correcting Mark. And if he thought "Judas son of James" was another name for Thaddaeus, we would have expected him to tell us that this was his other name (see, for example, Acts 1.23; 13.9). We can't plausibly explain Lukan redaction of Mark here. And we can't assume (as do Sanders and Bauckham) that Luke wasn't familiar with Mark (unless we're willing to jettison source-critical assumptions completely, a move which I increasingly favor). The lists of disciples demonstrate rather trenchantly, I think, that our conception of the Jesus tradition as a textual phenomenon has misled us. Instead, we should appreciate that the Jesus tradition was a narrative world (or, in more sociological terms, a symbolic universe) enveloping, contextualizing, and giving meaning to the written texts. In this perspective, even if Luke had read Mark, Luke was more richly and dynamically rooted in the tradition itself rather than the textual expression of the tradition found in Mark's gospel.

[Update: I should have read further. Bauckham (Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 98) does try to explain the variation in order, at least for the first four names, in redaction-critical terms. Notice how utterly lacking in explanatory power is Bauckham's argument. Why should Matthew and Luke, who keep both sets of brothers together, be more original? Why should Mark have any interest in binding together the three nicknamed disciples? And, most problematically, why should Luke rearrange the first four names in Acts 1.13 simply because Peter and John are prominent characters (3.1–4.31; 8.14-25) and James's death is narrated (12.2)? All of this suggests that we have misconceived what the Jesus tradition is and so missed the dynamics by which it was entextualized in the written gospels.]

what do the disciples do on their twelve thrones?

I'm writing a lesson on Jesus' selection of and relationship to the Twelve (disciples, that is), and I'm having to make a decision about the phrase, καθήσεσθε καὶ ὑμεῖς ἐπὶ δώδεκα θρόνους κρίνοντες τὰς δώδεκα φυλὰς τοῦ Ἰσραήλ (Matt 19.28; see Luke 22.30). If your Greek isn't where you'd like it to be, the traditional understanding of this phrase is "You, also, will sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel" (my italics). The question concerns the italicized participle, judging, which translates the participial κρίνοντες [krinontes].

The BDAG lexicon offers a lengthy discussion of κρίνω, with usages ranging from "to make a selection" (with glosses select, prefer) and on to "to pass judgment upon," whether in cognitive senses (with glosses such as decide, think, consider, etc.) or in judicial senses (with glosses such as judge, decide, condemn, etc.). The very last usage, "to ensure justice for someone" (gloss see to it that justice is done), lists only 1 Clem 8.4 and Isa 1.17 [LXX] as examples. Louw and Nida don't offer an equivalent for this last usage; they give the glosses decide, prefer, evaluate, hold a view, make legal decision, condemn, and rule. But they list Luke 22.30 under this last domain, rendering the passage, "and you will be seated upon thrones, ruling over the twelve tribes of Israel" (§37.49, my emphasis). In their view, then, κρίνω here involves far more than simply "judging." BDAG discusses this verse under the usage "to engage in a judicial process" (with the glosses judge, decide, hale before a court, condemn, and hand over for judicial punishment [see §5.b.β]), saying "occupied by those who have been divinely commissioned to judge: the 12 apostles judge the 12 tribes." They do add the caveat, "But here κ[ρίνω] could have the broader sense rule" (s.v.), but their preference is clear.

I find myself siding, with some fear and trepidation, against BDAG and with Louw and Nida. I am largely convinced by Richard Horsley's argument, in Jesus and the Spiral of Violence (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1987, 199–207), that this passage should be translated, "You yourselves will also sit on twelve thrones saving (or effecting justice for) the twelve tries of Israel." Horsley doesn't discussion Matt 12.18, 20 in this regard, but he could have. In that passage the evangelist cites a lengthy passage from Isaiah 42 (in a text-form closer to our MT readings than to the LXX), which twice uses the cognate noun κρίσις [krisis] clearly in the sense of "justice":

καὶ κρίσιν τοῖς ἔθνεσιν ἀπαγγελεῖ. . . . ἕως ἂν ἐκβάλῃ εἰς νῖκος τὴν κρίσιν.

kai krisin tois ethnesin apangelei. . . . heōs an ekbalē eis nikos tēn krisin.

And he will proclaim justice to the nations. . . . until he shall bring justice into victory. (Matt 12.18, 20)

I don't think Matthew 12 makes the case for Matt 19.28 (and certainly it doesn't for Luke 22.28–30), but I think it at least gives us a solid basis for understanding the κριν- root in terms of justice or restoration.

Of course, the difference between judging and effecting justice for is fairly dramatic. And of course we want to translate the passage in a way that communicates accurately the text's meaning. But here we can't deny that the act of translating the Greek is part of determining this verse's meaning (rather than simply communicating its meaning). This, of course, is always the case, but in this instance at least the stakes seem to be that much higher.

So what do you think? How should we render κρίνω [krinō] in Matt 19.28||Luke 22.28–30? What does Jesus tell his disciples they will do sitting upon the twelve thrones of Israel?

[Update: In my lecture notes I've rendered Matt 19.28, "Then Jesus said to them, 'Truly I tell you that, in the age of renewal, when the Son of Man sits upon his throne of glory, you who have followed me will also sit upon twelve thrones and mete out justice for the twelve tribes of Israel.'"]

Sitz im Leben: an exposé

Brandon Wason has as good an introductory discussion on Sitz im Leben as one could ask for here, including a reference to a recent article by Samuel Byrskog. I'm intrigued by the short quote Wason provides from Byrskog's article. If I read him rightly (which is hard to tell in any case, but especially without the context of the rest of his article), Byrskog advocates a fairly significant shift in the concept Sitz im Leben from its original form-critical function. That is, for the form critics a pericope's Sitz was conceptualized as a generative context which added not just shape but also substance to the Jesus tradition. But I think Byrskog is proposing a less dramatic conceptualization of a pericope's Sitz as a formative context in which social context influences the tradition's expression. Again, if I read Byrskog rightly, this would be a more responsible use of Sitz im Leben in gospels research, though we would still need to remember that factors other than social context—including the tradition's performative history—were also formatively influential in the expression of traditions from and about Jesus.

[In differentiating the formative and generative dynamics of early Christian traditioning processes, I gratefully acknowledge the influence of the discussion in Alan Kirk and Tom Thatcher, "Jesus Tradition as Social Memory," in Memory, Tradition, and Text: Uses of the Past in Early Christianity (Semeia Studies 52; ed. A. Kirk and T. Thatcher; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005), 25–42.]