Bloch on Job's Piety

Job...would never have been so ready [as Abraham] to sacrifice his son. For him, piety was not to be confused with conformity to law and order. (Ernst Bloch, Atheism in Christianity, 19; trans. Swann)

Indeed, Job is (or can be) a very radical book, questioning traditional forms of piety, wisdom, and prophetic revelation all as insufficient.

Quote of the Day: Ernst Bloch

I'm reading Ernst Bloch' Atheism in Christianity: The Religion of the Exodus and the Kingdom, probably something I should have read years ago, but, alas, am getting to only now. It is a fascinating read so far, and is a nice counterbalance to the usual scholarly rubbish I have to wade through.

There is only this point, that Church and Bible are not one and the same. The Bible has always been the Church's bad conscience. Tolstoy, speaking against her, called not on Haeckel but on the words of Jesus. The Enlightenment, therefore, will be all the more radical when it does not pour equal scorn on the Bible's all-pervading, healthy insight into man. It is for this very reason (one not remote from the Enlightenment) that the Bible can speak to all men, and be understood across so many lands and right on through the ages. (Ernst Block, Atheism in Christianity, 9-10; trans. J.T. Swann)

Asclepius on Stage

The NYTimes reports on a new play about Asclepius, the Greek God of Medicine, with lackluster review:

June 10, 2009
THEATER REVIEW | 'ASCLEPIUS'
Dramatizing a Greek Tale Seldom Told

By CLAUDIA LA ROCCO
Before her new play, “Asclepius,” opened a few weeks ago, Ellen Stewart said a few words to the adoring audience at La MaMa, which she founded in 1961 and of which she is still the artistic director. Ms. Stewart, who is in fragile health, requiring a wheelchair and an oxygen tank, announced that next year, for the first time, the National Endowment for the Arts would not be supporting La MaMa’s resident troupe, the Great Jones Repertory Company. The reason, she said, was, “I couldn’t explain why I do the Greek plays.”

Ms. Stewart, whose adaptations of the Greeks include “Herakles via Phaedra” and “Antigone,” has now written what she says is the first play ever about Asclepius, the son of Apollo and the god of medicine. There is rich material to be mined, particularly in these advanced medical times, in the narrative of a half-mortal with the controversial power to bring the dead back to life. Ms. Stewart was shrewd to choose it.

....

“Asclepius” runs through Sunday at the Annex at La MaMa, 66 East Fourth Street, East Village; (212) 475-7710, lamama.org.

The evaluation of the play (represented by the ellipses) is less than enthusiastic, claiming it was more like community than professional theater. But maybe the first go at Asclepius will inspire other scripts to develop the material.

Jews in Egypt

For my exams a couple years ago now, I developed a syllabus for a course that I would have loved to take but have never seen offered: "Jews in Ancient Egypt." If anyone is interested in this subject, I would highly recommend Joseph Mélèze Modrzejewski, The Jews of Egypt: From Rameses II to Emperor Hadrian (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1995) [Les Juifs d’Egypte, de Ramsès II à Hadrien (Paris: Editions Armand Colin, 1992)]. This is perhaps the most comprehensive and readable guide. Modrzejewski bases his observations in papyrological and evidence, but uses other types of documents to fill in the overall picture. He covers everything from biblical stories, the military colony of Elephantine, and Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt to reminiscences of Egyptian Judaism in late antique Egyptian papyrological documents, Rabbinic Judaism, and Christianity. Perhaps his most interesting chapter is on the LXX. One of my interests in the subject was, especially in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, how Egyptian Jews, who by that point revered the Torah (in LXX form), combined their life in Egypt and the problem of the sacred text that claimed they should leave and move into the promised land. I fascinating and productive tension, I think.

Today, an Op-Ed contributor to the NYTimes, André Aciman, has noted in recent discussions of the Middle East (such as Barack Obama's speech in Cairo) the complete absence of any reference to Jews (outside of Israel) who have, until the 20th century, inhabited prominently Muslim lands, such as Egypt, despite the criticism of the Egyptian government's treatment of Coptic Christians.

And yet, for all the president’s [Barack Obama's] talk of “a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world” and shared “principles of justice and progress,” neither he nor anyone around him, and certainly no one in the audience, bothered to notice one small detail missing from the speech: he forgot me.

The president never said a word about me. Or, for that matter, about any of the other 800,000 or so Jews born in the Middle East who fled the Arab and Muslim world or who were summarily expelled for being Jewish in the 20th century. With all his references to the history of Islam and to its (questionable) “proud tradition of tolerance” of other faiths, Mr. Obama never said anything about those Jews whose ancestors had been living in Arab lands long before the advent of Islam but were its first victims once rampant nationalism swept over the Arab world.

....

Mr. Obama had harsh things to say to the Arab world about its treatment of women. And he said much about America’s debt to Islam. But he failed to remind the Egyptians in his audience that until 50 years ago a strong and vibrant Jewish community thrived in their midst. Or that many of Egypt’s finest hospitals and other institutions were founded and financed by Jews. It is a shame that he did not remind the Egyptians in the audience of this, because, in most cases — and especially among those younger than 50 — their memory banks have been conveniently expunged of deadweight and guilt. They have no recollections of Jews.

In Alexandria, my birthplace and my home, all streets bearing Jewish names have been renamed. A few years ago, the Library of Alexandria put on display an Arabic translation of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” perhaps the most anti-Semitic piece of prose ever written. Today, for the record, there are perhaps four Jews left in Alexandria.

When the last Jew dies, the temples and religious artifacts and books that were the property of what was once probably the wealthiest Jewish community on the Mediterranean will go to the Egyptian government — not to me, or to my children, or to any of the numberless descendants of Egyptian Jews.

It is strange that our president, a man so versed in history and so committed to the truth, should have omitted mentioning the Jews of Egypt. He either forgot, or just didn’t know, or just thought it wasn’t expedient or appropriate for this venue. But for him to speak in Cairo of a shared effort “to find common ground ... and to respect the dignity of all human beings” without mentioning people in my position would be like his speaking to the residents of Berlin about the future of Germany and forgetting to mention a small detail called World War II.

As the book mentioned above will inform, Jews (or perhaps more accurately Judeans) have been in Egypt since at least the sixth century BCE, with the military colony at Elephantine. They remained and grew in numbers and significance in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Their numbers dwindled quite a bit in the early second century CE, after Egyptian and North African Jews revolted against the Roman government (the revolt failed), but they held a tentative presence (as papyrological evidence shows). The community boomed again in the middle ages and onward. The rest is recent history. We should note, moreover, that the rise of nationalization in the twentieth century also created the nation of Israel; one cannot extricate the rise of the state of Israel and the rise of Islamic nationalism (as well as Euro-American involvement in this process).

College Admissions Based upon Economics and Not Aptitude

The NYTimes reports that Reed College, a rigorous small liberal arts university, has had to weed out many of its students who would otherwise have been admitted but needed too much financial assistance and have replaced those students with those who can pay. Reed College, of course, is not alone in this, but is an example of a larger trend in response to the dwindling endowments of universities. This, in fact, has most affected smaller private universities, although no institution has been completely untouched.

June 10, 2009
A Small College Struggles With Economics

By JONATHAN D. GLATER
PORTLAND, Ore. — The admissions team at Reed College, known for its free-spirited students, learned in March that the prospective freshman class it had so carefully composed after weeks of reviewing essays, scores and recommendations was unworkable.

Money was the problem. Too many of the students needed financial aid, and the school did not have enough. So the director of financial aid gave the team another task: drop more than 100 needy students before sending out acceptances, and substitute those who could pay full freight.

The whole idea of excluding a student simply because of money clashed with the college’s ideals, Leslie Limper, the aid director, acknowledged. “None of us are very happy,” she said, adding that Reed did not strike anyone from its list last year and that never before had it needed to weed out so many worthy students. “Sometimes I wonder why I’m still doing this.”

....

With their endowments ravaged by the financial markets and more students clamoring for assistance, private colleges like Reed are making numerous changes this year in staff, students, tuition and classes that they hope will tide them over without harming their reputations or their educational goals. Reed and others have admitted more students to bolster revenue with larger classes. Many are cutting costs by freezing or reducing salaries, suspending hiring and postponing building maintenance and construction. And the cost of attendance is rising; in Reed’s case, by 3.8 percent, to nearly $50,000 a year for its 1,300 students.

But Reed has put off drastic measures like spending more of its endowment, closing some departments or selling some real estate near campus.

....

Reed has cast aside its hopes of soon accepting students based purely on merit, without regard to wealth. What’s more, when it turned to its waiting list this year, it tapped only students who could pay their way. This year, the financial aid office put together its own, separate wait list for students whose circumstances had changed or whose financial requests were incomplete. Though Reed had pruned its admissions list for financial reasons before, it had always found a way to help those few students with unexpected setbacks. This year, dozens of requests came in. Only a few got any more help.

Some very stellar students will be found scattered in lesser-known colleges next year. Not that they previously haven't for various reasons, but the trickle will become a torrent.

Bauckham's "Jesus and the God of Israel," Chapter 1C (God Crucified)

This is the third part of my reading of Bauckham's first chapter of Jesus and the God of Israel. I have one more part on Bauckham's assessment of continuities and novelties between the NT and Second Temple literature.

You can see my earlier posts as following:
Introduction
Chapter 1A (monotheism)
Chapter 1B (christological monotheism)

For this week, however, we will discuss the theme of “God Crucified and Divine Identity Revealed in Jesus"

I must say at the outset that this has been the most interesting part of Bauckham's analysis thus far--perhaps because this is where he finally gets into the textual nitty gritty and generally avoids the over-generalizing that is so prevalent throughout the rest of the chapter.

The next move in Bauckham’s argument is the shift from thinking of a preexistent Christ to the earthly Jesus and the repercussions of a suffering Jesus who shares in the unique divine identity. In this section he asserts that all NT Christology is high Christology and the NT lays out this Christology “carefully, deliberately, consistently, and comprehensively” (32). But, I would note from my previous objections that it was not consistently comprehensive, that he skates over or ignores a great deal of texts that do not presuppose preexistence, for example.

Bauckham claims the NT turns divine identity on its head:

“For the early Christians, the inclusion of the exalted Jesus in the divine identity meant that Jesus who lived a truly and fully human life from conception to death, also belonged to the unique divine identity” (33).

Indeed this is a radical move for early Christians and transforms our conception of the divine. Bauckham calls this, “Jesus as revelation of God”: not what the relationship of Jesus to God says about Jesus, but what it says about God.

A major portion of his argument is given to early Christians’ readings of Second Isaiah, which was used to incorporate earthly life and death of Jesus into God’s identity. He calls this process “theologically creative exegesis,” a phrase I am beginning to like, to eschew exegesis vs. eisegesis discussions (33). He argues that behind many NT texts lies an integrated early Christian reading of Second Isaiah as a whole; so, when one portion of the text is invoked, such as Isaiah 53, the whole of 40-55 is implied as a prophecy of a new Exodus leading to the salvation of the nations. Second Isaiah is also particularly important because it includes the classic statement of monotheism (“I am God, and there is no other,” etc.) and adds an eschatological (or at least future-oriented) touch. It is in the context of God’s uniqueness and his eschatological acts of salvation in Second Isaiah that the early Christians read the enigmatic Servant of the LORD who suffers humiliation and death and subsequently is exalted (Isaiah 52-3). The witness, humiliation, and exaltation of the servant becomes the way God recasts his glory and his deity to the world in an eschatological salvation event.

Key in this theologically creative reading is Is. 52:13 (no surprises here) combined with the intertexts of Is. 6:1 and 57:15. The combination of רום and נשא found in these passages are rather rare in the Hebrew Bible as a whole, so its triple occurrence here is noteworthy. He writes that these three passages were brought together, invoking gezera shawa throughout NT texts. For example, John 12:38-41 brings Is. 52:13 and Isaiah 6 together in an image of the servant and the throne. Once these are connected, it is a short step to that other passage so often cited in the NT: Ps. 110:1. So, Is. 52:13 and Ps. 110:1 are brought together in Acts 2:33 and 5:31. Similarly, Is. 57:15 and Ps. 110:1 are brought together in Heb. 1:3. So, we have three texts so far with overlapping exegetical combinations.

This is all leading to a discussion of Philippians, Revelation, and John, which will be the key texts for the remaining discussion. He notes that his points about each text has been promoted before by different scholars, but it is the convergence that matters.

Phil. 2:6-11 bring the issue of sovereignty and the divine name (Lord) together. He aligns Phil. 2:10-11 with Is. 45:22-23: the “I am God and there is no other” passage. His conclusion of these correspondences is that “precisely Duetero-Isaianic monotheism is fulfilled in the revelation of Jesus’ participation in the divine entity.”

The Revelation discussion is a bit more dispersed throughout the text. He notes that both God (1:8; 21:6) and Christ (1:17; 22:13) are the beginning and end (cf. 2:8), mentioned, interestingly enough, at the beginning and end of the text itself. This, he claims, is modeled off of Is. 44:6 and 48:12 (again, monotheism passages), with the implication that the allusion includes Christ protologically and eschatologically in the divine identity of Deutero-Isaianic monotheism.

I think Deutero-Isaiah is stricter in its “monotheism” than most of ancient Jewish texts from the exile to the destruction of the temple in 70 CE (which is counter Bauckham, who sees greater consistency in strictness throughout this period). I tend to think it is important, but unrepresentative. Having said that, it is significant that the earliest Christian authors (though not all of them) selected the strictest theological statements in the Hebrew Bible and were able to include Jesus in the theological framework of these texts.

For John, Bauckham unites the “I am” statements to the אני הוא expressions, which are translated as “I am” in the LXX. In this case, this expression occurs seven times: once in Deuteronomy and six times in Second Isaiah. It is passé to invoke Exod. 3:14 among Johannine scholars these days? Nonetheless, אני הוא becomes a succinct way to invoke divine identity. The Deut. 32:39 passage in fact reads, “There is no God besides me.”

In short, Bauckham has brought out the importance of Deutero-Isaiah for three NT texts, but in quite different ways (that do not necessarily converge—does this really constitute an integrated reading?).

Next Bauckham turns to the task of humiliation and exaltation, again using Philippians, Revelation, and John.

Here Bauckham lays out a fuller exposition of Philippians, drawing out information that probably should have been introduced when he first discussed the text. Firstly, he assumes that Paul composed it—it is not a pre-Pauline hymn. Although his position at this point does not ultimately matter for his final observations. Secondly, he thinks the passage speaks of a preexistent Christ and then incarnation against the view that it is a human and subsequently exalted Christ (which, I think, is clearly the case in the synoptics, for example). Thirdly, he thinks it has absolutely nothing to do with Adam speculation, and that this is a red herring in scholarship. Fourthly, he translates verse 6b as “he did not think equality with God something to be used for his own advantage.” So, it is not a matter of attaining or retaining equality; the point is Jesus’ attitude towards his position of equality. Finally, “form of God” and “form of a servant” refer to appearance: splendor of divine glory in heaven versus human form on earth. He gives a helpful summation of his positions on p. 42 (but it is really too lengthy to quote).

He presents, for several pages, how the passage closely exegetes Is. 53:12 + 45:22-3 + 52:13-14: “Paul is reading Deutero-Isaiah to mean that the career of the Servant of the Lord, his suffering, humiliation, death and exaltation, is the way in which the sovereignty of the one true God comes to be acknowledged by all the nations” (43). It is because he is humiliated and suffers that he becomes exalted. Indeed, he is exalted to the highest place (v. 9); that is, the divine throne. In his exegesis of Deutero-Isaiah, Paul in Philippians is not concerned with ontology, about how the infinite makes itself finite, but with status: the glory of heaven of the divine court to human servitude to the point of death on a cross, the ultimate humiliation. In Bauckham’s formulation of Paul, “only the Servant can also be the Lord” (45).

Turning again to Revelation, he discusses chapters 4 (on the throne) and 5 (worship). Chapter 5 presents the worship of the slaughtered lamb. He suggests that the latent Passover imagery also invokes Is. 53:7. When this occurs, sacrificial death becomes as much a part of the divine identity as much as enthronement does—the bloody lamb on the throne vividly depicts this!

Finally, John once again. He argues that John reads Is. 52:13 as a summary statement of everything that follows in Isaiah: servant is exalted and glorified through humiliation and suffering. Terminology of “lift up” and “glorify” both simultaneously to the cross and exaltation. So, while Paul, for example, sees exaltation as subsequent to humiliation, John sees them as simultaneous: humiliation of cross is exaltation.

The language of lifting up occurs in 3:14-15, 8:28, and 12:32-4. It is doubled imagery: literally as crucifixion and figuratively as Jesus’ divine status as sovereign over the cosmos. The cross is already an exaltation, a lifting up. I, for one, particularly enjoyed reading this section of Bauckham’s analysis.

The combination of lifting up and “I am he” statements in 8:28 brings the two sets of sayings together into a subtle theological relationship:

“When Jesus is lifted up, exalted in his humiliation on the cross, then the unique divine identity (‘I am he’) will be revealed for all who can see” (47).

“…the cross reveals the divine identity of Jesus (8:28), such that all people are drawn to him (12:32) for salvation (3:14-5)” (47).

The language of glorification occurs in 12:23 and 15:31-2. Just as humiliation of the cross is an exaltation, so is the shame of it an “honor” or “glorification.” He also notes that the glory is the visible representation of God in Is. 40:3. This Isaianic passage gives an eschatological and universalizing association with the glory. One should note, however, that “glory” as the visible representation of God is quite common in the Bible, particularly in the Pentateuch (Moses asks to see God’s Glory, the Glory fills the Tabernacle, etc.) and in Ezekiel (particularly Ezekiel 1, but also in the Temple Tour in 40-48). Glory, therefore, is an important aspect of divinity, but it does not specifically recall Isaiah, and, in fact, is more prevalent in these other sources.

Between the language of lifting up and glorifying, there is an intensification of the Philippians perspective: Philippians is successive (glorification because of humiliation) and John is simultaneous (humiliation is glorification).

Jesus’ humiliation and exaltation are not a mere illustration of divine identity, but, in NT exegesis, become intrinsic to divine identity.

Art, Gender, and Muslim American Identity

Two artists, one from Pakistan living in Queens and the other the child of Iranian immigrants living in New Jersey, in a conjoined show grapple with what it means to be Muslim, American, and women through their art. See the somewhat lengthy, but very interesting NYTimes article:

In Pakistan Ms. Ahmed Shikoh’s work had been sociopolitical, addressing what she saw as the country’s colonization by American fast-food chains, for instance, with paintings like “The Invasion,” in which swarms of Ronald McDonalds, wearing screaming-red clown wigs, surround a central monument in Karachi.

Here, however, her art turned deeply personal as she grappled with her new identity as an immigrant and, having rarely set foot in a mosque back home, as a gradually more observant Muslim. In her first American paintings Ms. Ahmed Shikoh reimagined the Statue of Liberty in her own image: in a Pakistani wedding dress, as a pregnant immigrant and as a regal mother, baby on hip. Next she transformed the subway map with paint and calligraphic script into an Urdu manuscript that made the city feel more like hers.

Finally, in 2006, after she made the difficult decision to cover her hair, inspired by Muslim-American women who managed to combine faith and a career, Ms. Ahmed Shikoh began using the head scarf as a recurring image.

....

In contrast Ms. [Negar] Ahkami’s piece is playful, acerbic and polished. It consists of eight nesting dolls sumptuously repainted as “Persian Dolls,” in brilliant colors with gold faces. The outer doll is stern, with a thick unibrow, in full black chador. The ever smaller dolls within wear Chanel head scarves or cocktail dresses or, as with the tiniest, nothing at all but curves.

“I have always struggled with the images of humorless, somber Iranian women in full-on black chador,” Ms. Ahkami said. “For me these images do not reflect the real Iranian women any more than the images of the harem girls of the 19th century did.”

....

Although “Persian Dolls” is a sculpture, Ms. Ahkami is primarily a painter, of elaborate narrative tableaus in which she combines a Persian aesthetic with the psychological rawness of Western art.

....

Eventually, as Ms. Ahkami spent time at artist residencies, earned a master’s degree in fine arts, married and had a child, she forged a signature style by combining these impulses toward “the visceral and the refined,” in her words. Formally Ms. Ahkami borrows from Persian art but turns up the heat, making the colors more electric and the juxtaposition of swirls and patterns more “cacophonous,” as she put it. She also adds textures with glitter, primer and layers of paint.

Over time Ms. Ahkami has developed a vocabulary of icons: turbaned despots, melting mosques and exotic women with what she calls “Western fetishes” like feathery “Farrah Fawcett hair.” In her large canvases she sets miniature stories within the central narrative, as in “The Fall,” the whimsical centerpiece of her first solo Manhattan show, held in March at the Leila Taghinia-Milani Heller Gallery.

At 5 by 4 feet “The Fall” depicts streams of Iranians in exodus from a paradisiacal homeland in meltdown, traveling past Persianate horsemen over hills patterned like Persian rugs on the way to an uncertain — but consumerist — future.

Their work and the work of 13 other artists, can be seen in their exhibition, “The Seen and the Hidden: [Dis]Covering the Veil,” at the Austrian Cultural Forum in Manhattan.

Augustine's Fart Musician

For the most part, reading Augustine's City of God can be a bore, but at times a passage just jumps out at you, like this one on rare and incredible bodily manipulations:

We do in fact find among human beings some individuals with natural abilities very different from the rest of mankind and remarkable by their very rarity. Such people can do some things with their body which are for others utterly impossible and well-nigh incredible when they are reported. Some people can even move their ears, either one at a time or both together. Others without moving the head can bring the whole scalp-all the part covered with hair-down towards the forehead and bring it back again at will. Some can swallow an incredible number of various articles and then with a slight contraction of the diaphragm, can produce, as if out of a bag, any article they please, in perfect condition. There are others who imitate the cries of birds and beasts and the voices of any other men, reproducing them so accurately as to be quite indistinguishable from the originals, unless they are seen. A number of people produce at will such musical sounds from their behind (without any stink) that they seem to be singing from the region. I know from my own experience of a man who used to sweat whenever he chose; and it is a well-known fact that some people can weep at will and shed floods of tears.
(Augustine, City of God, xiv.24)

This comes in the section on punishment by loss of self-control--basically men's loss of self-control of erection. He is admitting, at this point, that there are rare cases of amazing self-control of the body. He uses this as "proof," so to speak, that before the sin in Eden, that Adam could have had full control over his member.

Personally, I can wiggle my ears, either one at a time or both together. But I lack these other abilities. I definitely do not know anyone who can fart-sing, but it is an amusing idea. I am perhaps most impressed that they can do so without any foul smell.

The Koran and Sex Ed

From the NYTimes:

June 6, 2009
THE SATURDAY PROFILE
Challenging Sex Taboos, With Help From the Koran

By ROBERT F. WORTH
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates

WEDAD LOOTAH does not look like a sexual activist. A Muslim and a native Emirati, she wears a full-length black niqab — with only her brown eyes showing through narrow slits — and sprinkles her conversation with quotes from the Koran.

Yet she is also the author of what for the Middle East is an amazingly frank new book of erotic advice in which she celebrates the female orgasm, confronts taboo topics like homosexuality and urges Arabs to transcend the backward traditions that limit their sexual happiness.

The book, “Top Secret: Sexual Guidance for Married Couples,” is packed with vivid anecdotes from Ms. Lootah’s eight years as a marital counselor in Dubai’s main courthouse. It became an instant scandal after it was published in Arabic in the Emirates in January, drawing praise from some liberals and death threats from conservatives, who say she is guilty of blasphemy or worse.

Ms. Lootah, a strong-willed and talkative 45-year-old, is one of a small but growing number of Arabs pushing for more openness and education about sex. Unlike earlier generations of women who often couched their criticism in a Western language of female emancipation, Ms. Lootah and her peers are hard to dismiss as outsiders because they tend to be religious Muslims who root their message in the Koran.

Ms. Lootah, for instance, studied Islamic jurisprudence in college, not Western psychology, and her book is studded with religious references. She submitted the text to the Mufti of Dubai before publishing it, and he gave his approval (though he warned her that Arab audiences might not be ready for such a book, especially by a woman).

....

She is not a liberal by Western standards. One of the themes of her book is the danger of anal sex and homosexuality generally, not because of AIDS but because they are banned by the Koran. But her openness about the issue was itself a shock to many here.

In Saudi Arabia and other countries where the genders are rigorously separated, many men have their first sexual experiences with other men, which affects their attitudes toward sex in marriage, Ms. Lootah said.

“Many men who had anal sex with men before marriage want the same thing with their wives, because they don’t know anything else,” Ms. Lootah said. “This is one reason we need sex education in our schools.”

She is also emphatic about the importance of female sexual pleasure, and the inequity of many Arab marriages in that respect. One of the cases that impelled her to write the book, she said, was a 52-year-old client who had grandchildren but had never known sexual pleasure with her husband.

“Finally, she discovered orgasm!” Ms. Lootah said. “Imagine, all that time she did not know.”

....

She reels off stories from her practice in rapid fire: the Emirati military officer whose wife had an affair because he was away from home too much; the woman who thought fellatio was against Islam (not true at all, Ms. Lootah notes); the wife who discovered her husband dressing up as a woman and going out to gay bars. She seems bent on showing that there is a whole world of sexual confusion that would benefit from open discussion.

Publishing the book, she notes, was a difficult choice. Her father supported her, but other family members sometimes wondered why she had to be so public about it all. After it was published a man called her office phone and threatened to kill her. Other threats appeared on the Internet.

She brushes them off, saying she has declined an offer of protection from the government. Besides, she adds, educating the public is worth the risk.

“A few days ago a woman came in and asked me if it is O.K. to kiss the man all over his body,” she said. “I told her, ‘Read my book!’ ”

I would be interested to know the passages she cites from the Koran.

"A suggestion to students"

I just started reading Judah Goldin's Song at the Sea, and he gives some advice to student readers of his text regarding his tendencies of biblical quotations:

A suggestion to students. Whenever a biblical verse is quoted, and all the more when only part of the verse is quoted, the biblical text should be consulted, for the context (verses before and after) will prove more revealing than any commentator's paraphrase. (Goldin, Song at the Sea, xii)

I think this is true for ancient and modern commentators and interpreters alike.

Bakhtin on Specialist vs. Generalist

In an earlier post, I commented on the recent SBL Forum paper on Specialist vs. Generalist.

Here are some snippets from Bakhtin speaking in a similar vein:

In our enthusiasm for specification we have ignored the questions of the interconnection and interdependence of various areas of culture; we have frequently forgotten that the boundaries drawn of these areas are not absolute, that in various epochs they have been drawn in various ways; and we have not taken into account that the most intense and productive life of culture takes place on the boundaries of its individual areas and not in places where these areas have become enclosed in their own specificity.

....

If it is impossible to study literature apart from an epoch's entire culture, it is even more fatal to encapsulate a literary phenomenon in the single epoch of its creation, in its own contemporaneity, so to speak. We usually strive to explain a writer and his work precisely through his own time and the most recent past (usually within the epoch, as we understand it). We are afraid to remove ourselves in time from the phenomenon under investigation. Yet the artwork extends its roots into the distant past. Great literary works are prepared for by centuries, and in the epoch of their creation it is merely a matter of picking the fruit after a lengthy and complex process of maturation.... Works break through the boundaries of their own time, they live in centuries, that is, in great time and frequently (with great works, always) their lives there are more intense and fuller than are their lives within their own time.... But a work cannot live in future centuries without having somehow absorbed past centuries as well.... Everything that belongs to the present dies along with the present.

(M.M. Bakhtin, "Response to a Question from the Novy Mir Editorial Staff," in Speech Genres and Other Late Essays; trans. Vern W. McGee; ed. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist)

Bauckham's "Jesus and the God of Israel," Chapter 1B (Monotheistic Christology)

I am still in chapter 1 of Bauckham's Jesus and the God of Israel. See my previous remarks on the Introduction and Chapter 1A (monotheism).

The second third of chapter 1 is about Christological Monotheism in the NT or Monotheistic Christology.

In this section, Bauckham reiterates his (problematic) position that worship (monolatry) is the recognition of unique divine identity, and that there is no blurring of the boundaries with exalted angels or patriarchs, who do not participate in terms of creation or sovereignty—except for the exceptions which prove the rule (Enoch, and all the figures I listed last time like Melchizedek, Adam, Moses (although Bauckham directly denies this) and the anonymous self-enthroned figure from 4Q491c). There is no blurring with wisdom and word because they are already intrinsic in God’s own identity.

From here, he moves into the Christology of the New Testament. He forewarns that it is not an exhaustive investigation of NT texts regarding Christology, but illustrates a “way to read” the texts with monotheism as the hermeneutical key (Why do people always insist on such keys? Do hermeneutical keys exist?). We will find, in fact, that this key does not unlock every door in the NT.

Back to his use of adverbs, he claims that NT texts place Jesus within the unique divine identity “deliberately and comprehensively” (19). The marks of Jesus’ inclusion in the unique divine identity are his roles as sovereign (his enthronement), creator (we’ll discuss this a bit), taking on the divine name (“Lord”), and receiving worship. I admit up front that all these things are present in various texts in the NT, but I would disagree that just because they are found in certain texts that they present the perspective of all texts. Meaning, while all these things are in the NT, not all texts in the NT contain all of these elements. This will become an issue mostly with the role of “creator.”

With these criteria, he states this thesis: “the highest possible Christology—the inclusion of Jesus in the unique divine identity—was central to the faith of the early church even before any of the New Testament writings were written, since it occurs in all of them” (19). He is probably right that all of the writings has a conception of one or a few of these terms (excepting perhaps Mark), but that does not mean that all or any of these terms occurs or is even implied in all of the writings: so which writings exactly invoke “Lord,” which sovereign, which creator, and which suggest worship? Are they separate? Is there convergence? He writes on that this highest of the high Christologies would be later fleshed out and developed in various ways, but it was high from the beginning. To be high from the beginning, moreover, it had to be possible in Judaism. Semi-divine figures have no place, since there were really no such things, and the most exalted angels were not enthroned, did not participate in creation, and were not worshipped (you might notice something missing—the divine name—but we’ll talk about that in a bit).

First, Jesus participates in God’s sovereignty, because he was exalted after death to the throne of God. Bauckham claims this is completely unprecedented (20-21). He has already forgotten about Enoch! Even if we exclude Moses (which is debatable whether we should or not), what about Melchizedek (11Q13) and potentially the dude in 4Q491c? I wonder, does this mean Jesus, like Enoch, is merely another insignificant exception that proves the rule? Exaltation and enthronement is quite common in the NT. It is all over Luke-Acts; a primary theme in Hebrews; and of course Revelation. Part of the evidence is the extensive quotation and allusion to Ps. 110:1 (20, maybe 21 times in the NT) maybe not in every book of the NT, but every author, except, interestingly enough, the Johannine corpus (which already generally are known to hold a pretty high Christology; 21-3). And, I fully agree that the “creative exegesis” of Ps. 110:1 allowed such a Christological moment, giving Jesus the designation “Lord” (see n. 39). The further occasional conflation with Ps. 8:6 emphasizes sovereignty “over all.” This actually points to a discontinuity with Second Temple Judaism, since Ps. 110:1 is very rarely cited (except in T.Job 33:3, and there for different purposes): “the difference simply reflects the fact that early Christians used the text to say something about Jesus which Second Temple Jewish literature is not interested in saying about anyone: that he participates in the unique divine sovereignty over all things” (22). Only God rules over all things before hand, and now Jesus joins ranks. It is clear, moreover, that this exaltation is greater than the angels spatially and qualitatively (see Eph. 1:21-26; cf. Heb. 1).

Again, this overlooks all the other enthroned figures. Even so, however, why did not ancient Jews want to say this about anyone? While the NT writers presumably used the unique divine identity to discuss Jesus and presumably understood this as remaining within bounds of “monotheism,” would those Second Temple writers have agreed? Perhaps the reason that you find such ideas so rarely is that they did think it could threaten the “unique divine identity.” As such, regardless of the NT writers intentions, by including Jesus in the “unique divine identity,” do they blur the distinctions between human and divine, distinctions that had been so well-guarded according to Bauckham? He is still a human exalted and appointed to a divine position, and only has half the divine qualities so far—sovereignty—still not a creator. Would this designate a “semi-divine” category? While from one perspective this is inclusion into the divine identity, from another perspective, it is muddying the waters of divinity.

There is something unsaid here as well. There remains a distinction between the Father and the Son, so to speak, since Jesus must be exalted by the Father and must be appointed, given the throne. God must give it to him. So, while there is identification, there is still some differentiation within that identification. I would note that, for most of these texts (not all though), Jesus is still a creature exalted to godhood; he is not yet a creator. In that sense, there is no real difference or incompatibility (excepting in John, Hebrews, and maybe Revelation) of an adoptionist Christology.

Jesus also attains the divine name—Lord—as seen from the extensive application of Ps. 110:1. It is the name “exclusive” to God in a way that the “ambiguous word ‘god’ is not” (25). “God/s” is a famously ambiguous term. The singular is also the plural form, and it is applied to a vast variety of beings from God to those often falsely called “angels”—they too are called “gods.” PBut there is usually a distinction for the highest God, YHWH, as the “God of Gods” in those cases. erhaps, since "god" is ambiguous, we should do away with "monotheism"? Perhaps we should be speaking of "monokurism" or something of the sort. I further agree that title of “Lord” is the divine name and not just “Mr. Jesus,” but I must disagree that Jesus is the only exalted figure to receive it. There is the “angel of YHWH” throughout the Hebrew Bible, especially in Genesis, and YHWH seems to be very closely associated with this angel, to the point that “YHWH” and “angel of YHWH” is used interchangeably at points (see Gen. 22, for example). There is also the angel Iaoel in the Hellenistic period, being the transliteration into Greek of Yahweh + El. Many highly exalted angels are theophoric in this way: they “carry” the divine name. So, Jesus holds a mark of divinity, but this particular one is not without precedent.

Next, worship is the recognition of divine sovereignty (25), using Phil. 2:9-11 and Rev. 5 as the primary examples. I would note, however, that Adam receives worship in the Testament of Adam, and is exalted above the angels, because he is the image of God. One angel refuses, however, and is cast down, making Satan the only true monotheist (ha!). We should recall all of those "negligible" cases of angel veneration (just because something is "negligible" does not mean the early Christians do not pick up on it--the use of Ps. 110:1 is a perfect example!).

Finally, Jesus is creator. Bauckham relates this to his sovereignty, which he calls “eschatological monotheism”: “Jesus is seen as the one who exercises God’s eschatological sovereignty over all things, with a view to the coming of God’s kingdom and the universal acknowledgement of God’s unique deity” (26). Christians are primarily concerned, in this regard, with Jesus’ future participation in divine sovereignty—does this suggest Jesus does not participate in it in the writers’ present? Mirroring this is the “protological” aspect because being sovereign and creator are indivisible: “The participation of Christ in the creative work of God’s is necessary, in Jewish monotheistic terms, to complete the otherwise incomplete inclusion of him in the divine identity” (26). Oh, but they are divisible, and, if not, then the divine identity Christology must remain incomplete, half-baked, for many early Christians! Firstly, as we saw in the last post, the texts that discuss God’s sovereignty and those that discuss God as creator rarely converge. Moreover, very few early Christian texts portray Jesus as creator. Bauckham may claim that it is implied, but I hardly think this is the case in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, for example, when Jesus’ origins are so clearly human and earthly and as a creature, being possessed by the Spirit of God at baptism, abandoned at the cross, and then, for a job well-done, exalted and enthroned. Perhaps Bauckham has caught some logic at hand for some authors—they saw the parallelism of protology and eschatology and emended their views accordingly—but it seems that at least the synoptics, for example, can only present half of the divine qualities excluding the possibility of preexistence and creator. This is a shift away from merely being appointed sovereign.

The evidence here is John 1:1-5 (fairly expected); 1 Cor. 8:6 (really?); Col 1:15-16 (perhaps); Heb 1:2-3, 10-12 (definitely true here); and Rev.3:14 (fairly obscure, but we’ll check it out). John and Hebrews are, I think, clearly supportive of Jesus as creator: God creates the world through the word or the son respectively. No problems here. The surprise, I think, is 1 Cor. 8:6, and this is the only text at this point that Bauckham looks at in any detail (perhaps because it is sort of a surprise?). The text, in fact, relies upon the Shema (that’s why Bauckham emphasized it disproportionately before!). It speaks of:

“One God, the Father,
From whom are all things
And for whom we exist,
And one Lord, Jesus Christ,
Through whom are all things
And through whom we exist.
(1 Cor. 8:4-6)

This is a fairly well-balanced verse, with two basic parts broken into three phrases each, with each phrase mirroring the other. It rings of a creedal statement in my ears. So, one God (the father) mirrors one Lord (Jesus Christ), and so on. As Bauckham notes, it identifies Jesus as the Lord from the Shema. Paul does so, it seems, with great skill. The parallelism does what parallelism does: it draws two things into a relationship, perhaps an identity, but it also draws attention to variation. God is the one “from whom” and Jesus is the one “through whom.” Other texts also present Jesus “through whom” (Col. 1:15), but that “unambiguously” gives Jesus the role of creator. Bauckham likewise notes that this text gives Jesus a creative role. Is this passage so clear? And what is that creative role exactly? In general, Bauckham notes that God is the one from, for, to, and by creation exists; and now Jesus gets the instrumental case, the “by,” and perhaps is identified with the Wisdom and/or Word in that way? If that is the case, it does differ, since the Wisdom and Word were never human figures exalted to the status of creator. It seems to me that the parallelism draws a distinction between the father and the son in that all things come from the father and all things exist through the son. In other words, the father is the creator, the son is the sustainer. I would suggest that the Pauline phrase, in which Jesus, at best, is the restorer and sustainer of creation, and, in that way, belatedly relates to creation, has later become in Colossians, John, and Hebrews reinterpreted to mean the original creator. But I agree with Bauckham that it marks Jesus as somehow divine, because the gist of the larger context is to distinguish true from false gods. It uses the patterns of monotheism of the Shema, brings in the creative function as divine, and gives Jesus one aspect of the creative function (the by), but does not necessarily mean that Jesus is the originator; he is the sustainer of creation—and that is in itself significant. Bauckham is clear that this is not just adding or tacking on Jesus, but “including” Jesus.

Rev. 3:14 refers to Jesus as the “origin of God’s creation” (ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς κτήσεως τοῦ θεοῦ). What does that mean? It too is ambiguous. If it does mean “origin” or “beginning” as its use in John suggests, for example, then it can mean two possible things: it could mean something like Bauckham’s idea of Jesus as creator, or it could mean that Jesus is the first created being—preexistence, yes; creator, it is not so clear.

Bauckham explains away the paucity of evidence for Jesus as creator as merely being not a concern of most NT writers. But, I think it is because for most he is sovereign without being creator: he shares in half the divine attributes. In fact, the perspective of the synoptics precludes such a possibility of preexistence and creator, since Jesus is sort of “adopted.” Bauckham seems to think that this can’t be so because this would be incomplete in terms of including Jesus in the divine identity, but such a case is only true within Bauckham's rhetoric and not in the sources themselves. My response is that some NT writers must have included Jesus incompletely. Just because the earliest writer may have some inkling of Jesus as a restorer of the cosmic order (Paul), does not mean all the other writers shared his perspective. Thus, we must just accept that many NT writers had not fully developed this Christology (and this does not imply their Christology is in any way "incomplete" but was not so concerned with divinity)—even if they did post-date those who did. Only a few authors, therefore, included Jesus fully in terms of being Creator (Colossians, Hebrews, and John; maybe Revelation; possibly, but not really likely, Paul).

Bauckham makes a dangerous move next: he claims that the high Christology of Paul in 1 Cor. 8:6 summarizes the NT position as a whole (30). The NT, though, does not have a single position. Each author has his own conceptualization, and even if the highest Christology already appears in Paul, it does not mean that Mark, Matthew, and Luke fully agreed with it; in fact, they clearly differ in protology. This is the same methodological problem I raised last time: he normalizes texts that don't fit into his view by reading them through texts that do and does not read them on their own terms.

Despite my numerous objections, I do think Bauckham’s divine identity Christology effectively moves things beyond “ontic” and “functional” categories. I think the evidence is just a whole lot messier, more ambiguous, and less comprehensive than he does, but what evidence that exists is still significant. Bauckham has shown that there is widespread attestation to Jesus as the enthroned sovereign and has the name of God, there is good evidence of worship, and then there are a handful of texts that speak of Jesus as creator. This is high Christology, indeed, but the application of the various divine aspects to Jesus was neither always complete, comprehensive, nor, at times, without precedent (particularly with enthronement and the investiture with the divine name). There is a great deal of variety and, even with similar concepts, shades of meaning as one moves from text to text. NO TEXT IS REPRESENTATIVE.

"Next Fall": A New Play about Faith and Sexuality

A new play, "Next Fall," takes on the intersection of faith and sexuality in an interesting way. Perhaps the usual discussion is a family with a homosexual child, and that child growing up and coming out in the context of a conflict of a more conservative faith and their own sexuality. This play, however, shifts the focus: what happens when there is a conflict of faith between two men in a relationship?

It’s easy to mistake Geoffrey Naufft’s “Next Fall” for being slighter than it is. Much of this artful, thoughtful and very moving story of a gay couple agonizing over differences in their religious faiths proceeds with the stinging breeziness of a cosmopolitan comedy. You can imagine its concept being pitched to a television producer as a sort of “Will & Grace” with an ontological conscience: He’s a committed Christian, while he’s a committed atheist, and it’s driving their crazy friends even crazier!

But the appealingly acted Naked Angels production that opened Wednesday night at Playwrights Horizons, directed by Sheryl Kaller, is an intellectual stealth bomb. Even as you’re being entertained by the witty talk of ingratiatingly imperfect people, feeling as comfortable as if you were watching your favorite long-running sitcom, big and uneasy questions — really big ones, without answers — are forming in the back of your mind. Don’t expect them to go away when the play is over.

....

The characters in “Next Fall” — including Adam (Patrick Breen) and Luke (Patrick Heusinger), the odd couple at the play’s center — carry plenty of weight, all right, but it’s the kind generated from inside. Well, mostly. Mr. Nauffts uses the time-honored device of a potentially fatal accident to drag a group of disparate people into confrontations they have been putting off for years.

But Mr. Nauffts leaves these folks the freedom to deal with their shared crisis with all the awkwardness, evasion and denial that allow people to live with themselves, even if such things poison them inside. Life is big, people are small. And Mr. Nauffts takes no shortcuts in working out the intersection of these two données.

The play alternates between scenes set in the waiting room of a New York City hospital, where Luke is in a coma after being hit by a taxi, and vignettes that trace in flashbacks the evolving and sometimes tenuous relationship of Luke, a young actor, and the 40-ish Adam. They meet cute at a dinner party where Luke, working as a waiter, administers the Heimlich maneuver to a choking Adam and move on to a one-night stand that develops into what looks like a permanent thing.

Their big problem isn’t the age difference or the good-looks gap. (Luke is a hottie; Adam, a bit of a nebbish, with more than a touch of the hypochondriacal, fatalistic Woody Allen of “Annie Hall” and “Manhattan.”) It’s that Luke, a hard-core Christian from Florida, believes that the man he loves is going to hell. Not for having sex with men, mind you (that’s just sinning and can be forgiven on Judgment Day), but for not believing in Jesus. Questioned by Adam, Luke admits uncomfortably that the killers of Matthew Shepard — the victim of a much-publicized hate crime in 1998 — would go to heaven were they to accept Jesus, while Mr. Shepard would not, unless he too had chosen to believe.

....

Religions, with their creeds and rules for behavior, may make life simpler, as Luke insists to Adam. But people are messy, and no one believes in the same way.

Looks like an interesting play.

Bauckham's "Jesus and the God of Israel": Chapter 1A (Monotheism)

I am continuing my review of Richard Bauckham's Jesus and the God of Israel. I am dividing the rather lengthy first chapter into three posts (and they themselves are a bit long). You can see my introductory remarks here.

Chapter 1 consists of a barely revised version of his booklet from ten years ago, also from Eerdmans (and even with the same cover design), entitled, God Crucified.

In the first third of this chapter, he discusses ancient Jewish "monotheism," something that will be elaborated in chapters 2 and 3.

He argues that the key issue for understanding New Testament Christology is Second Temple monotheism. He gives two views of monotheism among modern scholars: “strict” and “revisionist.” In the former, Jesus cannot be divine in a Jewish context—Jesus’ divinity threatens monotheism. In the latter, there is a denial of any strictness to monotheism: categories of being between human, angelic, and divine are all blurry (blurred by principle angels, exalted humans, divine attributes as emanations, etc.). This latter group sees Jesus as a highly exalted angel, divine, and entirely within the blurry Jewish context. This is a fairly “flexible” view of divinity.

Bauckham admits that this characterization is somewhat a caricature, but then casts himself as providing the golden mean. This is a rather typical rhetorical trope in scholarship: caricature two positions and present oneself as wisely in the middle.

This middle position is that Second Temple Jewish monotheism was strict: “most Jews in this period were highly self-consciously monotheistic” (3). As such, they drew a clear line between God and all other reality with “clearly articulated criteria.” I continue to tire of his adverbs. This criteria differentiates the creator from all creation (being a “creature” disqualifies one for divinity—except Jesus in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, I guess). Even highly exalted creatures in the heavenly sanctuary that are close to God are differentiated from God in this way; therefore, Bauckham claims, they are of limited use in New Testament Christology—again, assuming that Jesus could never be a mere exalted angel in any Christology. Rather than exalted semi-divine intermediaries (whom Bauckham claims never existed), New Testament Christology only makes sense by identifying Jesus directly with the one God of Israel. By the way, he seems to “prove” “monotheism” more by repeating “one God” or “one unique God” or “one true God” ad nauseum. God, therefore, is divided from all other reality, but did not prevent early Christians from including Jesus within this “unique divine identity” (3-4). I do think, however, that Melchizedek/Michael from 11Q13 (11QMelch) seems to fit in this definition.

At this point, he raises an issue of methodology: those scholars who invoke “blurred boundaries” between divine and all other reality with semi-divine intermediaries can only cull a “very small amount” of evidence, whereas, he claims, he will use broad evidence (4-5). I wonder how much is small? How much is broad? Moreover, if this evidence exists, then we have to account for its existence, no matter how small. How do we account for its smallness? Is it that few had this opinion, or was their opinion not copied out by later generations (who may have had a more “monotheistic” position and therefore did not wish to keep older documents that compromised such a view)?

He writes, “There is every reason to suppose that observant Jews of the late Second Temple period were highly self-conscious monotheists…” (5). What counts as “observant” in such a period in which there were such highly variegated form of Jewish practice and interpretation? Who defines what is observant and what is not? Perhaps there were Jews who thought “strict monotheism” was an utter heresy! Observance/non-observance is perspectival.

This is important for the key evidence he begins with: the shema. It turns out that the “broad evidence” is the recitation of the shema and the first two commandments (Deut. 6:4-6; Exod 20:2-6; Deut. 5:6-10). The key verses here are Deut. 6:4: שמע ישראל יהוה אלהינו יהוה אחד, and Deut. 5:7/Exod. 20:3: “You shall have no other Gods before me.” But this evidence is ambiguous (not the “unambiguous” and “clear” that he constantly claims). Firstly, it is not proof of monotheism, but monolatry: it is not the idea that God is differentiated from all other reality; it is the worship of only one God. I quote the first passage in Hebrew to make a point. Sometimes it is understood as “Hear, Israel, the LORD is our God, the LORD is one.” But it can also mean, “Hear, Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD alone.” In this sense, it is the command only to listen to/obey this God, YHWH, rather than the other gods. The two passages from the two version of the ten commandments have the same gist: do not put any other gods before me recognizes the existence of other gods, but demands worship of one alone.

Nonetheless, without any evidence, Bauckham writes of the Decalogue, “Both passages were clearly understood in this period as asserting the absolute uniqueness of YHWH as the one and only God” (5). This just seems hardly to be the case—or there just is not evidence for this interpretation in this period for these rather ambiguous passages. While the two Decalogues and the Shema assert allegiance to YHWH alone, they do not assert that YHWH was alone. It is a mistake to assume that exclusive worship indicates monotheism. Monolatry (worship of one god) does not necessarily lead to monotheism (the existence of one god), although monotheism would lead to monolatry. So far, there is no evidence for monotheism, only exclusive worship.

Moreover, we need to address when the recitation of the Shema became used, by whom, how widespread it was, and how the practice became disseminated. Such information is also not cited. What is the evidence? Again, since were are dealing with a great deal of variety in ancient Jewish social groupings, especially in the latter part of the second temple period, this information becomes crucial. I am still looking for that “broader evidence.”

At this point, he inserts an interesting phrase, “practical monotheism”: “a whole pattern of daily life and cultic worship formed by exclusive allegiance to one God” (6). Again, this is just monolatry in new language that begins to edge itself into monotheism. But, he claims, it “presupposes a god who is in some way significantly identifiable,” meaning, not some abstract concept in Greek thought, but a personality, or an identity defined in terms of an identity of self-continuity (see 6 n. 5). God acts much like a character in a story (like, I might add, all stories of gods in world literature). I think this much is fair. Bauckham does recognize “identity” as an etic term, but still finds it useful (“monotheism” is also an etic term, but he never notes that).

Because God is a character in a story, so to speak, you cannot define the “uniqueness of one god” in terms of nature, but in terms of how God acts and who he is (as a character) rather than what God is. Bauckham isolates two ways of characterizing God: (1) God’s relationship to Israel—Exodus events; God as the one who acts generously towards his people; all the covenantal language; (2) God’s relationship to all reality (as Creator and Ruler of all things). As his argument progresses, it will be clear that he is more concerned with (2) rather than (1). While, however, I think that for ancient Jews, the covenantal aspect was probably the most important (as perhaps illustrated by the Shema, if it was so widespread), for the arguments of monotheism, the Creator/Ruler with its universalizing tendencies will become more important.

It is with this distinction, in fact, that Bauckham finally is able to adduce a wide range of evidence (for Creator: 2nd Isaiah (with 8 references alone), Neh., Hos. (LXX), 2 Macc, Sir., Bel, Jub., SibOr., 2 Enoch, ApocAbr, Ps-Sophocles, JosAsen, T.Job; for Ruler: Dan., Bel, Add.Esth, 3 Macc., Wis., Sir., Sib.Or., 1 Enoch, 2 Enoch, 2 Bar., Josephus Antiquities). Note, however, that the only overlap between creator and ruler are Bel and the Dragon and 2 Enoch. While these are two ways to express God’s “uniqueness,” it appears that some texts prefer to talk about creator God and others ruler God. It, therefore, isn’t that all Jews refer to God as unique creator and unique sovereign. It is that a lot refer to God as Creator of all, a lot refer to God as Sovereign of all, but very few do both. It would be interesting to evaluate the significance of this divergence of interest, a divergence Bauckham never acknowledges. Perhaps we have separate traditions.

He also notes the claim that there is “no god besides me” is common in Second Temple Jewish literature. I think we ought to take care with this phrase—it is one of those instances where “lumping” can overshadow a great deal of variation of meaning and how those meanings change. This can mean “no God beside me,” meaning next to me (worship only me) or it can mean “there is no other God” (Deut. 4:35, 39; 32:39; 1 Sam. 2:2; 2 Sam. 7:22; Isa. 43:11; 44:6; 45:5, 6, 14, 18, 21, 22; 46:9; Hos. 13:4; Joel 2:27; Wis. 12:13; Jdt. 8:20; 9:14; Bel 41; Sir. 24:24; 36:5; 4Q504 5:9; 1Q35 1:6; Bar. 3:36; 2 En. 33:8; 36:1; 47:3; Sib.Or. 3:629, 760; 8:377; T.Ab. A8:7; Orphica 16; Philo, Leg., 3:4, 82). Some texts, particularly Second Isaiah probably do mean what Bauckham claims, but others may not. But the evidence has finally become impressive, in my view. Bauckham now has a sure measuring rod for the portrayal of God as Creator and Sovereign of all—aspects God shares with no created being, or, so it seems. God as Creator and Ruler of all denotes God’s unique status—and it is, for the most part, exclusive. So, now Bauckham has established a substantive differentiation between God and all other reality. Whether this is “monotheism” or not, at this point, becomes irrelevant: whether other exalted beings are gods, angels, or whatever, they are still differentiated in this respect from the “God of gods” (a surprisingly common phrase in ancient Jewish literature, and, interestingly, a designation given to Jupiter in the Aeneid).

“However diverse Judaism may have been in many other respects, this was common: only the God of Israel is worthy of worship because he is the sole Creator of all things and the sole Ruler of all things. Other beings who might otherwise be thought divine are by this criteria God’s creatures and subjects” (9).

This differentiation as Creator and Ruler of all, and not the Shema, is the key. So, for example, in my earlier posts on “monotheism” (here and here), I have objected to the idea based upon the pervasive language of “gods” and I would add “sons of God” (which designates exalted figures as divine—perhaps even “begotten and not made”) in ancient Jewish literature, particularly the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, as undercutting any idea of monotheism. At the same time, however, in those same texts, particularly the Songs, these “gods” praise and worship the “god of gods”; thus, the “sovereignty” point of Bauckham holds no matter what I decide to term these celestial beings. I will still call them “gods” because the ancient sources do—and if they had no problem doing so, why should I?

Bauckham claims God has no help in creation (does anyone know any texts to the contrary off-hand?). Moreover, the “angels” or “gods” or whatever you want to call them are servants; they do not have their own will (except maybe in Job!). Sometimes God delegates limited responsibility to some sphere of activity, but God never delegates ultimate sovereignty.

Now, is this formulation of creator and sovereign unique to Judaism? Bauckham primarily searches Greek “philosophical monotheism” to compare and contrast (but mostly to prove how the Jewish form is different). He points out, for example, that in contrast to the spectrum of divine being, in which there is an all powerful God at the top in Hellenistic philosophy, God in Israelite literature is explicitly unique: if there is a chain or spectrum of divinity, there is a huge line between God and the others marked out in Jewish literature that is not so clearly demarcated in Greek literature. God is at the summit, but not merely at the summit, but completely unique. Indeed, in texts he does not invoke (from the Dead Sea Scrolls) other “gods” like the “gods of knowledge” still worship God. Even when the highest god in Greek philosophy is creator and ruler, the exclusive worship in Judaism still makes the Jewish conception unique.

Nonetheless, I wonder if he is looking in the wrong place. It may seem counterintuitive, but “mythic” stories might be the best place to go. How does this distinction make YHWH any different than, say, Marduk? Marduk is the creator of the world, and, because of it, he is the sovereign of the world and all the other gods must pay obeisance to him (Enuma Elish); they are his servants. So many Egyptian texts do the same thing, setting up Re, Amun, or whomever as the ultimate god, from whom all things derive and ruler over all things (we tend to call this “henotheism”—one god at a time). “Monotheism” versus “polytheism” is really, I think, a red herring in scholarship. The terms should be thrown out. There are so many more interesting interconnections between ancient mythologies (Canaanite, Israelite, Babylonian, Greek, Roman, Egyptian, etc.) that are opened up when we stop trying to defend Israelite uniqueness—of course it is unique, but so is Egypt, Rome, Babylonia, Canaan, etc.

While all other reality is differentiated because they have no role in creation (again, texts to the contrary?), I am not so sure about the point that God never delegates sovereignty in a broad sense. The counterpoint is 11Q13, where Melchizedek acts as God in the divine council and appears to have full sovereignty. Melchizedek in this text shows that Bauckham’s claims are a trend, a tendency, perhaps the dominant trend/tendency in ancient Jewish literature, but it is not completely comprehensive or without exception. While citing this, one might note a general lack of engagement with Dead Sea sectarian literature, although he does cite it in those huge blocks of sources for “no god besides me.”

This overall monotheistic distinction (as creator and ruler of all without help) lines up with the monolatrous distinction, of singling out this god as the only one worthy of worship. He does allow for marginal cases of veneration of angels (perhaps a concession to Loren Stuckenbruck), but claims that these cases are insignificant in degree compared to the worship of God (11 n. 17). Even if monolatry is the broad trend, such cases need to be explained and cannot be simply brushed away. Again, it shows that not all of these things are ubiquitous and comprehensive.

I agree that monolatry is most distinctive—it is the most distinctive aspect of ancient Judaism (and not their theology). They worshiped exclusively because of the unique relationship to the most powerful God (which comes under the “covenant” issues), but as evidence of monotheism, it falls short. Many groups have a high god, an all sovereign god distinct from other gods, but still worshiped other gods—it is the worship that made Jews distinctive. By contrast, Bauckham writes that this is a confusion, but rather “the exclusive worship of the God of Israel is precisely a recognition of and response to his unique identity” (12). Exclusive worship, then, recognizes the absolute distinction between God and all other beings. I hate to break the news to Bauckham, but those of us who think this way are not confused; we simply disagree. I completely understand his position and do not think it necessarily works. I think it is confusion to equate monolatry with monotheism. Unfortunately, there are NO SOURCES cited to substantiate the claim that ancient Jews worshiped God because of his unique aspect as creator and ruler; but there is evidence that they worshiped God because he brought them out of Egypt. I agree that worship designates divinity, but I disagree that lack of worship designates “not divine”; thus, monolatry does not equal monotheism. It merely designates a special relationship between this god and this people (called a covenant). An analogy to kingship might be instructive (especially since ancient theologies were modeled off of kingship): I may pay allegiance to only one king (Lord), but that is not a denial of the existence of other kings. In the case of ancient Judaism, they claim their "king" (YHWH) is the emperor (who rules over the other kings). Nonetheless, he is right that they worshiped this god and not others (as noted in some sources—the Shema and the first two commandments) and that some sources saw God as supreme ruler and others as supreme creator—but what sources put these things together? I am still looking for the convergence of these concepts somewhere in the sources and not in his rhetorical positions.

When discussing the “so-called” intermediary figures, he makes another point of method when analyzing the “general consensus” versus “a small amount” of evidence (13):

“it is imperative to proceed from the clear consensus of Second Temple monotheism to the more ambiguous evidence about so-called intermediary figures to which we now turn. The question that needs to be addressed in the case of such figures is: By the criteria which Second Temple Jewish texts themselves consistently use to distinguish the one God from all other reality, do these figures belong to the unique identity of God or doe they fall outside it? Are they, so to speak, intrinsic to God’s own unique identity as the one God, or are they creatures and servants of God, however exalted?” (13)

This raises a number of interesting points. Firstly, he notes he is making an ancient distinction. The criteria come from the ancient texts themselves and are not imposed using later categories. This, I think, is an important issue! Secondly, however, this method could lead to confuse rather than clarify the sources by normalizing the exceptions to conform to the rule. Why not apply the first point to the ancient documents themselves—we should not impose one set of texts’ criteria onto another set of texts, but interpret them by their own criteria. Their ambiguity is important—why are they ambiguous? Why do they lack the clarity of distinction that so many other texts have? Does this ambiguity suggest a different view of the divine? Maybe these texts do not see the ruler/creator distinction as significant. Then again, maybe they do. In point of method, I would suggest something that is the very opposite of Bauckham (and something he directly opposes): take the evidence on a text-by-text basis and then build up the broader patterns from there. The result might end up being a bit more complex (and it may not), but, then again, that would be an important discovery. So, it would be important to note whether the texts that are used to bring evidence of intermediary figures are the same texts that speak of creator or the same texts that speak of ruler (since, as already noted, ruler and creator rarely appear together).

As he proceeds, he notes some figures are intrinsic to divine identity, while others are not. High-ranking patriarchs and angels are excluded; personifications of aspects of god (Spirit, Word, Wisdom—I might add Glory) are included. The criteria, once again, is whether a being participates in creation and/or sovereignty of the universe. On the issue of sovereignty, he claims that the “vice regent” idea is rare and negligible (again, merely dismissing evidence to the contrary and not engaging with it). He lists Michael in Joseph and Aseneth, Michael in 1QS, and Logos for Philo. We might note, however, that Philo’s Logos is a “second god.” Again, I would reiterate that even though something is rare or a minority position does not mean it is not significant or important for ancient Jewish thought or even for early Christian Christology (Christians could very easily pick up on minority positions), especially since Christology itself was a minor, anomalous development in Jewish thought. The point made, however, is that the highest ranking angel in Jewish thought is never portrayed as being in charge of everything. The most exalted angels, in fact, mostly just serve and worship God and do not participate in his rule. They never share his throne; they stand; and angels do not receive worship, actually refuse worship (although is this a polemic against Jews worshiping angels, proving that Jews did worship angels and it was significant?), but themselves worship, distinguishing servants of God from God. What about good ole Enoch? He notes that the Parables of Enoch (or Similitudes of Enoch), in which Enoch is enthroned and receives worship (1 Enoch 61:8; 62:2; 69:27, 29; cf. 51:3)! What is his response? It is the exception that proves the rule. I would as additional exceptions that prove the rule Adam (Testament of Adam), in which Adam is to be worshiped by the angels, and it was that one who refused worship, Satan, who was thrown down; and as one enthroned and passes judgment, but not necessarily worshiped, Melchizedek (11Q13). He claims that Ezekiel the Tragedian is NOT an exception due to the interpretation of the dream which shows that what God is in relationship to the universe, Moses will be in relationship to Israel. Maybe, maybe not. The willingness to portray Moses as enthroned and ruler of the universe, even in a dream in a drama, is striking nonetheless. I would add perhaps the most striking example: the “self-glorification hymn” (4Q491c 1 6-8) in which a seemingly recent human figure not only claims to be counted among the “gods,” but also to sit (אני ישבתי) among the gods! (“I sit in […] in the heavens, and there is no […]… I am counted among the gods, and my dwelling is in the holy congregation”). It is possible that the phrase can be rendered, “I reside,” but to even come close to using “sitting” language in a heavenly setting is quite an extraordinary claim for an originally human figure to make! It suggests not just transformation into angelic status, but perhaps even apotheosis. How many exceptions that prove the rule do you need to complicate the rule?

Finally, both Word and Wisdom partake in creation, because the Word and Wisdom are parts of himself. Wisdom is also enthroned (sovereignty) and different categorically from other figures—exalted humans and angels. I think he is right on this point.

I apologize for the length of this post. There are just simply so many ideas to engage, and I am hoping that most of the issues with later chapters will already be covered here (although perhaps dealing with slightly different material). Next we will turn to the significance of this view of ancient Jewish "monotheism" on New Testament Christology (still in chapter 1).

On the Eclecticism of the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice

So, I am currently working on my Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice chapter, and anyone who has read the Songs might be struck by how the Songs take aspects of theophanies and descriptions of the temple and the throne/chariot from a wide variety of sources and bring them together. Ezekiel has long been recognized as a formidable influence, but I have been arguing that Exodus 25-30, while often recognized as an influence, is just as formidable if not more so than Ezekiel in terms of imagery, precise language, and partially for the structure of the latter half of the Songs--and even responsible for the idea of seeing the heavenly sanctuary on the Sabbath. Nonetheless, this organization, imagery, and language is enriched from a large variety of sources. The question then becomes: what does this synthesis mean? I came to my own conclusion long ago, but in my current reading I found my sentiments echoed by Philip Alexander:

The author(s) of the Sabbath Songs assumed that Moses, Ezekiel, Daniel, Isaiah and Elijah and all the other ancient prophets saw the same transcendent, divine reality, and so their various accounts of it could and should be harmonized together" (Mystical Texts, 59).

I wholeheartedly agree.

Stolen Pompeii Fresco Recovered

My earliest posts on this blog were about my trip to Italy a couple years ago, and included a post on the ghostly Pompeii. I still like that post, although few of my current readers have read it to be sure. One memorable aspect of Pompeii, other than the preserved shadows of humans with hands raised against the oncoming Volcanic blast, is the remarkably preserved frescoes. One fresco, stolen twelve years ago, was just recovered here in NYC!

NEW YORK, NY.- U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) today seized a Pompeii wall panel fresco from a Manhattan auction house that was reported stolen in Italy 12 years ago.

The fresco panel, which was the subject of an international search by INTERPOL, was located by the Art Loss Register of New York and brought to the attention of ICE and Italian Authorities. Italian authorities provided ICE agents via the ICE attaché in Rome with information and documents identifying the fresco panel as stolen and part of the cultural property of Italy.

The panel, rectangular with a white background depicting a female minister, white wash on plaster with a modern wooden frame, was previously located at the excavation office in Pompeii and was reported stolen with five other fresco panels on June 26, 1997.

The investigation revealed that, between 1903 and 1904, the Italian government authorized a farmer, Giuseppe De Martino, to restore his farmhouse, which was located on an archeological site in Boscoreale, province of Naples. During the restoration, six important frescos, originating from Pompeii were found.

On July 12, 1957, the Government of Italy purchased the frescos. On June 26, 1997, after the completion of work to the excavation site, the Italian government observed that the six frescos were missing and subsequently reported the theft.

The Carabinieri cultural patrimony unit previously recovered the other five of the six frescos.

"We are pleased to assist in the recovery of this fresco panel. It completes the collection of the six panels reported stolen from the Italian government close to 12 years ago." said Peter J. Smith, special agent in charge of the ICE Office of Investigations in New York. "ICE applauds the ALR for coming forward with information on the whereabouts of this precious cultural artifact, which will soon be returned to the Italian government.

Here's a pic of the fresco:

Samaritans in the News

You really don't hear about Samaritans in the News these days, probably because there are so few of them remaining, but Reuters has an article discussing how they are currently surviving:

By Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor

KIRYAT LUZA, West Bank (Reuters) - Guardians of an ancient faith with a cameo role in the Bible, the 750 surviving followers of the Samaritan religion are using surprisingly modern methods to keep their tiny community alive.

Internet acquaintances, mail-order brides and pre-nuptial genetic tests have all become familiar to Samaritans trying to plan future generations despite a shortage of young women within their own tight-knit community.

Such openness to the outside world seems baffling in a group that considers itself the original Israelites and upholds rigid traditions about diet, sex and the Sabbath.

Half of the community lives in the tidy modern village of Kiryat Luza on Mount Gerizim, the faith's holy mountain in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and the other half lives in the Israeli town of Holon near Tel Aviv.

Husney Kohen, 65, one of the faith's 12 hereditary priests, saw no contradiction in the lifestyle of a community that numbered more than a million in the late Roman Empire but is now, as he puts it, "the smallest sect in the world."

The Samaritans trace their ancestry to the northern Israelite kingdom that was destroyed by the Assyrians in around 720 BCE. Their faith shares many similarities with Judaism.

"Samaritans are very religious, but we are also modern," Kohen, 65, explained in the community's small museum here lined with scriptures written in the ancient Samaritan language and lists of high priests going back to Aaron, the brother of Moses.

....

Marriage within the tight-knit community was so common by the mid-20th century that about seven percent of Samaritans suffered from some genetic defect.

Genetic testing before marriage has helped cut that rate in half. With rising living standards, the community has slowly restocked its ranks in recent decades. But a surplus of males meant some men had to seek wives outside the Samaritan world.

"We don't have enough girls, but we can't tell the boys they can't get married," Kohen said. "We've taken in about 25 Jews, five Christians and three Muslims. The boys get to know them through the internet."

What may sound easy is quite difficult. The Samaritans insist the women convert before marriage and commit fully to a religious discipline hardly imaginable elsewhere.

The Samaritans believe Mount Gerizim near the West Bank city of Nablus was the holy place chosen by God, not Jerusalem. They have their own version of the Torah and holy days similar to Jewish ones.

They say the Judaism in the south, especially after the sixth century BC Babylonian exile, diverted from the original faith. Their differences figure in John's Gospel, where Jesus surprises a Samaritan woman at a well by asking her for water even though Jews and Samaritans did not associate.

Samaritans observe the dietary, Sabbath and circumcision laws in their Torah to the letter. "The word Samaritan means keeper of the law, that's why we are so strict," Kohen said.

In addition, women must live separately from their husbands and children during menstruation and isolate themselves after giving birth -- 40 days after having a boy, 80 after a girl.

It should be noted, however, that the high priests do not want their children to marry outside the community--no converts for them.

Bauckham's "Jesus and the God of Israel": Introduction

I have been asked by a certain journal to review Richard Bauckham's, Jesus and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Studies on the New Testament's Christology of Divine Identity (Eerdmans 2008). I am finding my notes to be disproportionately longer than they should be, and so I thought I would work out my initial impressions on this blog, while reserving my secondary reflections for the far more succinct official review to come.

This book consists of a collection of essays on Jewish monotheism and its importance for what Bauckham has called a “divine identity” Christology, which eschews “ontic” and “functional” christologies as anachronistic. My regular readers will realize that I think all language of "monotheism" is anachronistic in an ancient context (see here, here, and here). Nonetheless, we'll see how he conceptualizes this divine identity (and see if the issue of "monotheism" is a matter of semantics or substance).

He also, in the process, denies any relevance to or importance to “semi-divine” intermediary figures in Second Temple Jewish literature for the development of early Christian Christology. This, at first blush, seems to counter everything April DeConick has been writing lately (see especially here and here). We will find, in chapter 1, that he basically ignores the traditions of the Angel of YHWH or an angel invested with the divine name.

The first chapter lays out the foundations of these ideas rather generally (in a lumper's fashion), while the latter chapters explore specific aspects of his proposals. This is not the comprehensive treatment that he promised in his earlier booklet from ten years ago, God Crucified. If you read that little booklet, which provides the material for Chapter 1, you often find him relegating the actual detailed arguments for his claim to future work. It sounds to me that he has methodologically put the cart before the horse: he is giving his conclusions before he has presented the nitty gritty detailed exegetical work. I personally like to work from the ground-up, so to speak, and then postulate broader patterns to account for the details.

As such, I have noticed when working through the first chapter that in the lumper/splitter differentiation, he is a lumper to lumpers. He lumps a great deal of material together without reference to specific and idiosyncratic aspects or variations of his ideas. I think there is a place for both lumpers and splitters in the world of scholarship, but it means that we have to check all of his references to see if there are some patterns in the citations or qualifications that need to be made, which he is not in the habit of making.

It seems, however, that future chapters do engage in much more detailed readings of sources to discuss monotheism in the Hebrew Bible (Ch. 2) and Second Temple Judaism (Ch. 3); then general discussion of worship (Ch. 4) and enthronement (Ch. 5) of Jesus as marks of divinity; Pauline Christology of identity (Ch. 6); Hebrews (Ch. 7); and God’s identification with the lowest of the low in Mark (Ch. 8).

I rarely pay attention to such an issue, but I find the tone of the book grating; it is making it difficult for me to read. He uses adjectives and adverbs such as “clear/ly,” “consistent/ly,” “unequivocal/ly,” “unambiguous/ly,” etc., that demonstrate only that he has convinced himself of his own interpretation. If things were so clear, consistent, and unequivocal, there would be no debate on ancient Jewish “monotheism” and, thus, its relationship to Christology, and, therefore, no need for his book.

Laying out his concept of a theology and Christology of “identity,” the question will be “who” god is rather than “what” divinity is. This identity of god is unique (hence his “monotheism”) and “clearly” differentiates God from all other reality (no matter what you call that other reality: angels, gods, etc.). The second step is that Jesus will be included in this divine identity, but this inclusion does not consist of a break with monotheism as he will define it, because Second Temple Jewish Monotheism was “structurally open” to the developments found in the New Testament, while recognizing the novelty of such developments. At this point, I wonder, if Second Temple Jewish conceptions of the divine are also “structurally open” to other figures: Adam (Test. Adam), Moses (Ezekiel the Tragedian’s Exagoge), Melchizedek in 11Q13, Enoch in the Similitudes of Enoch, etc. I bring this up because I think (in fact, I am pretty sure) that Bauckham does not want to go there and will try to refute that such figures in any way participate in divinity. It will be explaining away, and not explanation, if so. Nonetheless, I find this “structurally open” a provocative phrase, making one wonder what other “identity” inclusions are possible—to fast-forward, the only ones he claims are possible before Jesus are the Word and Wisdom of God as aspects of God, but I do not think we can hide these other exalted figures under the rug too quickly.

One of the claims he makes that he will work through is that the earliest Christology is the highest possible—again not in terms of being or function, those being later Hellenistic philosophical concerns being imposed on the New Testament evidence, but in terms of “identity” culled from the New Testament texts themselves. He attributes this later move to the Church Fathers—in fact, in what seems to be a strangely accusatory tone.

The identification of Jesus’ with God’s identity has implications not only of who Jesus is, but who God is: that, through Jesus, the divine is humiliated, suffers, is crucified, but then exalted and enthroned. I find this move, thinking about God as crucified, as his earlier book title (and the title of his first chapter) indicate, an interesting move on his part.

This is where the accusatory tone comes in:

“While the Fathers successfully appropriated, in their own way, in Nicene theology, the New Testament’s inclusion of Jesus in the identity of God, they were less successful in appropriating this corollary: the revelation of the divine identity in Jesus’ human life and passion. To see justice done to this aspect of New Testament Christology, we have to turn to the king of theology of the cross which Martin Luther adumbrated and which has come into its own in the twentieth century” (x).

I find such a broad-blanket statement quite shocking from the pen of a historian. He is saying that for 1500 years there is nothing that appreciates the suffering of the divine in Jesus in all of Christianity—Catholic, Orthodox, etc.—in all of its regional and local variations. That is a LOT of literature to dismiss so easily. I highly doubt Luther (and presumably Reformed theology as well) are the ones to save the day. It bespeaks too much of a Protestant metanarrative. I am not qualified, actually, to evaluate such a statement, but it appears careless to me. I am sure my friends in Church History will most likely object to it, and, if you are reading this and have sources to the contrary, be sure to post them below.

Let's see how he argues these issues more specifically in chapter 1: "God Crucified."