You are Confused!

I am increasingly amused, as I read scholarship, how often people portray opposing scholars as "confused." I'm sure the so-called "confused" scholar would say the same thing right back. Calling someone else "confused" does not seem very professional to me. Why can't we just disagree in our interpretations without calling someone else confused?

Rowan Williams's Eyebrows

While reading an article on the archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams's statement on "two ways of being Anglican" I became less and less interested in the internal discussion of gay clergy and more and more fascinated by his eyebrows.



He must have the most spectacular looking eyebrows among Christian clergy. I think he would be a great addition to a Harry Potter film. If Michael Gambdon is willing to give it up, I think he has the look of an Albus Dumbledore.

Hebrews 11:27: Moses' Vision of the Invisible

As I continue to work through my chapter on Hebrews, I am always struck by a certain productive ambiguity the homilist often exploits. One ambiguity is in a passage that I often just pass over in chapter 11. Indeed, the style of hall of faith of Hebrews 11 often makes my eyes glaze over, although I recognize the rhetorical effectiveness of its genre.

Nonetheless, this time I was struck by the following line (11:27):

πίστει κατέλιπεν Αἴγυπτον μὴ φοβηθεὶς τὸν θυμὸν τοῦ βασιλέως, τὸν γὰρ ἀόρατον ὡς ὁρῶν ἐκαρτέρησεν.

By faith he left Egypt not fearing the anger of the king, for as seeing the invisible he endured.

Immediately, I read this in two ways. Because of Moses' paradoxical vision of the invisible (i.e., God), he endured Pharaoh's anger. The vision gave him the strength or ability to endure. The other reading is that he endured the rare and frightening vision of God, the very sight of whom kills (since one cannot see God and live). Indeed, in Hebrews, as far as I have seen, only Moses is granted a vision of the invisible God. Moses also sees the "type" of the heavenly things, from which he builds the "copy," "shadow," or "antitype" of the earthly tent. Moses sees much in Hebrews, and vision language applies exclusively to him. Is it that of all humanity, only he could bear the sight of God or God's glory (at least pre-Christ)? On the other hand, what is the role of the "as"? Does that somehow qualify the vision? Did Moses, "in a way" see the invisible? Perhaps by seeing God's glory or the reflection of God's Glory, the Son, from afar (see 1:3)? Indeed, the previous verse makes Moses a proto-Christian, since he suffers abuse for (or of?) Christ. Nonetheless, it is difficult to endure even a refracted vision of the invisible, if, indeed, that is the gist (or one of the gists) of this line.

Judas in the New Yorker

August 3's edition of the New Yorker has an article by Joan Acocella discussing Judas traditions with special focus on the Gospel of Judas.

Did Judas deserve this fate? If Jesus informs you that you will betray him, and tells you to hurry up and do it, are you really responsible for your act? Furthermore, if your act sets in motion the process—Christ’s Passion—whereby humankind is saved, shouldn’t somebody thank you? No, the Church says. If you betray your friend, you are a sinner, no matter how foreordained or collaterally beneficial your sin. And, if the friend should happen to be the Son of God, so much the worse for you.

For two thousand years, Judas has therefore been Christianity’s primary image of human evil. Now, however, there is an effort to rehabilitate him, the result, partly, of an archeological find. In 1978 or thereabouts, some peasants digging for treasure in a burial cave in Middle Egypt came upon an old codex—that is, not a scroll but what we would call a book, with pages—written in Coptic, the last form of ancient Egyptian. The book has been dated to the third or fourth century, but scholars believe that the four texts it contains are translations of writings, in Greek, from around the second century. When the codex was found, it was reportedly in good condition, but it then underwent a twenty-three-year journey through the notoriously venal antiquities market, where it suffered fantastic abuses, including a prolonged stay in a prospective buyer’s home freezer. (This caused the ink to run when the manuscript thawed.) The book was cracked in half, horizontally; pages were shuffled, torn out. By the time the codex reached the hands of restorers, in 2001, much of it was just a pile of crumbs. The repair job took five years, after which some of the book was still a pile of crumbs. Many passages couldn’t be read.

....

The Codex Tchacos, like the Nag Hammadi library, was the work of an ancient religious party, mostly Christian, that we call Gnostic. In the second century, Christianity was not an institution but a collection of warring factions, each with its own gospels, each claiming direct descent from Jesus, each accusing the others of heresy, homosexuality, and the like. In the fourth century, one group, or group of groups, won out: the people now known as the proto-orthodox, because, once they won, their doctrines became orthodoxy. The proto-orthodox were centrist. They embraced both the Hebrew Bible and the new law proclaimed by Jesus; they said that Jesus was both God and man; they believed that the world was both full of blessings and full of sin. Of the many gospels circulating, they chose four, called Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, which, by reason of their realism and emotional directness—their lilies of the field and prodigal sons—were most likely to appeal to regular people.

....

That supposed exoneration of Judas was the most exclaimed-over aspect of the Gospel of Judas. Far more shocking, however, was the book’s portrait of Jesus. We know Jesus from the New Testament as an earnest and charitable man. Here, by contrast, he is a joker, and not a nice one. Three times in this brief text, he bursts into laughter over his disciples’ foolishness. The first time, he comes upon them as they are celebrating the Eucharist. What’s so funny? they ask him—this is what we’re supposed to do. Maybe according to your god, Jesus says. But you represent our God, they say. You’re his son. Jesus now turns on them. What makes you think you know me? he asks them. “Truly I say to you, no generation of the people that are among you will know me.” In other words, Jesus tells them that they are strangers to him. The next day, they ask him about Heaven, and he laughs at them again. Forget about Heaven, he says. No mortal will go there. In response, the disciples “did not find a word to say.”

....

What use could this bizarre document be to modern Christians? Plenty. Many American religious thinkers are more liberal than their churches. They wish that Christianity were more open—not a stone wall of doctrine. To these people, the Gospel of Judas was a gift. As with the other Gnostic gospels, its mere existence showed that there was no such thing as fixed doctrine, or that there wasn’t at the beginning.

That implicit endorsement of tolerance was probably what American scholars valued most in the Judas gospel, but the discovery gave them something else as well: righteous glee. What a joy to have an ancient document in which the man singled out in the Bible as Christianity’s foremost enemy turns out, arguably, to be Christ’s best friend. Hooray! The higher-ups don’t know everything! This was also the appeal of the new gospel to the political left. For people who claimed that the world was ruled by groups that controlled by marginalizing other groups, the Gospel of Judas was like a keystone being hammered into place. Men had silenced women, colonialists had silenced the colonized, and now we saw the Christian Church establishing itself by silencing other Christian voices.

....

The trumpet calls were not confined to the mass media. Even the gospel’s translators may have felt the need to augment its revisionist credentials. When Jesus, in the gospel, tells the disciples that no mortal, or almost none, will be saved, one assumes that Judas will be an exception, and that’s what National Geographic’s translators said in the first English edition. But then a number of other scholars took a look at the Coptic text and objected that this was a misreading. The translators must have seen their point, because in the second edition of their version, published last year, the line has been changed—to mean the opposite. Jesus now says to Judas, “You will not ascend on high” to join those in Heaven. In other passages, too, the second edition tells a widely different story from the first.

As you might be expecting, April DeConick gets mentioned at this point:

In fairness, no expert can tell us exactly what the Coptic said. That is not just because of the terrible condition of the codex; even when the words are there, they are often enigmatic. But, as April DeConick, a professor of Biblical studies at Rice University, pointed out in the Times in 2007, there was a troubling consistency to a number of the mistranslations in the first edition: they improved Judas’s image. If the gospel was truly the earth-shaking document that the National Geographic Society claimed it was—if it promoted Judas from villain to hero—then to have him denied admission to Heaven would be decidedly awkward.

She then discusses Karen King and Elaine Pagels's book as well as Bart Ehrman's. I thought the following summary of this literature review was quite appropriate:

Cumulatively, the commentaries on the Judas gospel are amazing in their insistence on its upbeat character. Jesus ridicules his disciples, denounces the world, and says that most of us will pass away into nothingness. Hearing this, Judas asks why he and his like were born—a good question. Jesus evades it. The fact that liberal theologians have managed to find hope in all this is an indication of how desperately, in the face of the evangelical movement, they are looking for some crack in the wall of doctrinaire Christianity—some area of surprise, uncertainty, that might then lead to thought.

Indeed, it does seem a bit desperate to see this as propounding anything that we might consider a progressive theology. It is different, to be sure, but just as doctrinaire. She then gives a history of Judas and anti-Semitism into the rehabilitation of Judas in postwar literature:

By the same token, postwar recoil from anti-Semitism (and, no doubt, the widespread abandonment of faith in the twentieth century) was good for Judas’s reputation. Several distinguished writers—Kazantzakis, Jorge Luis Borges, José Saramago—present him, or seem to, either as a hero, of the resistance-fighter sort, or as a suffering witness. In Mikhail Bulgakov’s “The Master & Margarita” (1966-67), written before the Second World War, Judas is just a young man, who, after receiving his pay from the Temple, goes off, in sandals so new that they squeak, to rendezvous with a woman. Meanwhile, Pontius Pilate, pained that he washed his hands of Jesus and wanting to punish someone for this, mobilizes his secret police, who get Judas’s lady to lead them to him. They butcher him. Significantly, this happens in the Garden of Gethsemane, where Judas turned Jesus over to the authorities. As the episode ends, Judas’s body lies forsaken in the dirt, but a ray of moonlight shines on one of the dearly bought sandals “so that each thong. . . was clearly visible. The garden thundered with nightingale song”—a scene both poignant and dry.

I have discussed Judas in Borges's work on this blog before (click on the tag, "Three Versions of Judas," and the Master and Margarita remains one of my favorite novels. Her final assessment of scholarly rehabilitations and the attempt to find alternative theologies (or even "rewrite" the Bible) is as follows:

All this, I believe, is a reaction to the rise of fundamentalism—the idea, Christian and otherwise, that every word of a religion’s founding document should be taken literally. This is a childish notion, and so is the belief that we can combat it by correcting our holy books. Those books, to begin with, are so old that we barely understand what their authors meant. Furthermore, because of their multiple authorship, they are always internally inconsistent. Finally, even the fundamentalists don’t really take them literally. People interpret, and cheat. The answer is not to fix the Bible but to fix ourselves.

It seems the response to fundamentalism is as naive as fundamentalism itself. If only we could figure out how to fix ourselves!

Philosophy, Science, and Religion

I'm reading some Bertrand Russell--his History of Western Philosophy. In his introduction he places Philosophy, interestingly, somewhere between theology and science:

The conceptions of life and the world which we call "philosophical" are a product of two factors: one, inherited religious and ethical conceptions; the other, the sort of investigation which may be called "scientific," using this word in its broadest sense. Individual philosophers have differed widely in regard to the proportions in which these two factors entered into their systems, but it is the presence of both, in some degree, that characterizes philosophy.

....

Like theology, it consists of speculations on matters as to which definite knowledge has, so far, been unascertainable; but like science, it appeals to human reason rather than to authority, whether that of tradition or that of revelation. All definite knowledge--so I should contend--belongs to science; all dogma as to what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology. But between theology and science there is a No Man's Land, exposed to attack from both sides; this No Man's Land is philosophy.

....

Science tells us what we can know, but what we can know is little, and if we forget how much we cannot know we become insensitive to many things of very great importance. Theology, on the other hand, induces a dogmatic belief that we have knowledge where in fact we have ignorance, and by doing so generates a kind of impertinent insolence towards the universe. Uncertainty, in the presence of vivid hopes and fears, is painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales.... To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it.

(xiii-xiv)

While Russell dismisses the fairy-tale tellers a bit too quickly (who doesn't like a good story here and there and many stories have important lessons to impart) just as Plato dismisses the poets too rashly from his totalitarian Republic, I am interested in two aspects of his statements: that (1) philosophy is something of a space between--it asks questions about unknowable things, but proceeds "rationally"--and, as such, (2) teaches to live with uncertainty--that, in fact, the most important questions about life have no sure answers. It is a life without knowledge, but also without ignorance. The space between is a nebulous mass of ambiguity. To be a lover of wisdom is to face this unknowable but all-important ambiguity with courage, hope, and awe.

Quote of the Day: The Joker

From the first Batman movie with Jack Nicholson as the Joker:

You ever dance with the devil in the pale moonlight?

Shall we dance?

(The song in the clip is by Breaking Benjamin from their album Phobia)

Beer and the Origins of Civilization

Roland Boer has posted on Beer as the origins of civilization--on why hunters and gatherers left the forests for the backbreaking work of agriculture. I think he might be right. Beer is as old as any agricultural product we know of (including bread), and so that it might have been one aspect of community formation, greasing the wheels of social cohesion, is likely. Perhaps the next step of civilization was the one who controlled beer production became king.

Prophecy and Common Sense

Euripides, the playwright who was critical of traditional conceptions of the gods and much traditional religious practice--if you read many of his plays in a row, this aspect becomes very clear--says this in his play Helen. In a passage accusing prophets of merely spouting lies in order to make money, he writes in line 757:

γνώμη δ᾽ ἀρίστη μάντις ἥ τ᾽ εὐβουλία.

The best prophet is common sense, our native wit.

(Trans. Lattimore)

John Collins on the Vision of Gabriel

John Collins discusses and explains the Vision of Gabriel and its controversy with his typical clarity in the Yale Alumni Magazine. Click on the link for the full article, discussing the handwriting analysis, Israel Knohl's (unaccepted) conclusions. Here, however, is Collins's conclusion:

At a conference in Jerusalem in early July, Knohl was met by skepticism from both Jewish and Christian scholars. The skepticism had nothing to do with theology. The text simply does not say what Knohl claims. It is too fragmentary. It is not clear that the Ephraim mentioned is a messiah. Even if the word after "three days" is "live," it does not follow that it means "rise from the dead." A chariot does not necessarily imply ascent to heaven. This is not to say that Knohl's interpretation is impossible. But there is not much reason to think it is right.

But even if Knohl's interpretation were right, it would hardly warrant the ensuing fuss. Everyone who has taken an introductory New Testament course knows that the early Christians understood Jesus in light of Jewish prophecies and expectations. The motif of resurrection after three days is based on a passage from the prophet Hosea about restoration of the people: "on the third day he will raise us up that we may live before him." If Knohl's interpretation should prove to be right, it would be an interesting contribution to the history of religion. But its supposed threat to Christian theology is no more than a marketing strategy. In that respect, the Vision of Gabriel is only the latest of many discoveries that have been sensationalized for the sake of publicity.

The Bible: Open, Interactive, Defaced

From the London Times:

A publicly funded exhibition is encouraging people to deface the Bible in the name of art — and visitors have responded with abuse and obscenity.

The show includes a video of a woman ripping pages from the Bible and stuffing them into her bra, knickers and mouth.

The open Bible is a central part of Made in God’s Image, an exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art (Goma) in Glasgow. By the book is a container of pens and a notice saying: “If you feel you have been excluded from the Bible, please write your way back into it.”

The exhibit, Untitled 2009, was proposed by the Metropolitan Community Church, which said that the idea was to reclaim the Bible as a sacred text. But to the horror of many Christians, including the community church, visitors have daubed its pages with comments such as “This is all sexist pish, so disregard it all.” A contributor wrote on the first page of Genesis: “I am Bi, Female & Proud. I want no god who is disappointed in this."

....

The exhibition has been created by the artists Anthony Schrag and David Malone, in association with organisations representing gay Christians and Muslims. Mr Schrag, the gallery’s artist in residence, said that he did not believe in God, but that his research for the £7,000 show had underlined his respect for people of faith.

The community church, which celebrates “racial, cultural, linguistic, sexual, gender and theological diversity”, had suggested the “interactive” Bible and pens and Mr Schrag, 34, said he had been intrigued.

“Any offensive things that have been written are not the point of the work,” he said. “It was an open gesture. Are those who say they are upset offended by the things that people write, or just by the very notion that someone should write on a Bible?”

The artist, a Canadian who took a master’s degree at Glasgow School of Art, said that human rights were at the centre of the show. “If we are to open up the Bible for discussion, surely we have to invite people to speak out,” he said. “Art allows us to discuss difficult things, and Goma allows difficult discussions to take place — that is why Glasgow is at the cutting edge of contemporary art.”

Jane Clarke, a minister of the community church, said she regretted the insults that had appeared. “The Bible should never be used like that. It was our intention to reclaim it as a sacred text,” she said. While the exhibition’s supporters insist that the exhibit promotes “inclusivity” and should break down barriers between orthodox religion and gay and transgendered people, most contributors have paid scant regard to matters of sexuality.

One writer has altered the first line of the Old Testament from “In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth” to “In the beginning, God (me) I created religion.” Another has written “The Gospel According to Luke Skywalker”. The main sentiment, however, is rage at Christianity. “F*** the Bible”, one message says.

....

A video by Roxanne Claxton forms a second element in the exhibition. It shows a young woman ripping pages out of the Bible and stuffing them in her knickers and bra, and in her mouth. The film showed “the word as power”, Mr Schrag said. “Roxanne gave a performance where she ate a Bible and it became part of her.”

Made in God’s Image is part of a series of exhibitions focusing on human rights organised by Culture and Sport Glasgow, part of the city council. The division’s chief executive is Dr Bridget McConnell, wife of the former Labour First Minister Jack McConnell.

Church officials (from different groups--the Kirk, Catholic Church, etc.) have, of course, condemned the exhibit.

Quote of the Day: Genesis Rabbah 1.5

I'm reading some Genesis Rabbah, a Palestinian midrashic collection, this evening, and the following line stuck out for me:

דא"ר יוסי בר חנינא כל המתכבד בקלון חבירו אין לו חלק לעולם הבא

Rabbi Yose son of Hanina said, "Whoever elevates himself by his fellow's degradation has no part in the world to come." (Genesis Rabbah 1.5)

Bauckham's "Jesus and the God of Israel" 4C (Worship, Monotheism, and Christology)

This post completes my discussion of chapter 4 of Bauckham's Jesus and the God of Israel on worship. In it, B relates the discussion of worship of Jesus in terms of obeisance, doxologies, and hymns to ongoing fidelity to monotheism among Christians and christological developments through Chalcedon, as compared to the Alexandrian Christianity of Origen.

B argues that the worship of Jesus is not a departure from, but an adherence to, monotheism. He contrasts the exclusive worship of YHWH of Jews to the interreligious tolerance of the Roman world. Even monotheistic-leaning philosophers never denied the legitimacy of existing forms of “popular religion.”

“The difference between Jewish and pagan monotheism did not turn on the existence of supernatural beings inferior to the supreme God, but on whether they might be worshipped” (140).

Jewish and Christian refusal of other cults made them oddities, especially when Christians worshipped a crucified criminal! Nonetheless, Christians balanced exclusive monotheism with Jesus worship from NT onwards. For evidence, B again turns to Paul’s Christianization of the Shema (1 Cor. 8:6) in context of rejecting food offered to idols, and the worship of the Lamb as divine worship in Rev. 5:8-12 with the doxology of God and the Lamb together (5:13). The whole of Revelation is concerned with true and false worship between God and the beast. John of Patmos also twice prostrates before the angel who interprets the revelation, but the angel directs him to worship only God (19:10; 22:8-9), protecting against angelolatry. Angels are instruments of revelation, but God and Jesus are the source. Jesus shares in glory due to God. There is a tendency to apply similar language to Jesus and God, and often present them together with the same verb (in the singular!) (11:15)—I would add that they sit on the same throne.

Next B looks to the apocryphal acts, which demonstrate how conversion was demonstrated to outsiders as being from idolatry to the worship of Jesus as God. He claims these texts are not completely guilty of “modalism” as they often are described, because they distinguish the Father and Son as readily as they identify them, but they exhibit an “unreflective combination” of monotheistic worship, worship of Jesus as God, and Trinitarian distinctions reflecting more popular thought characterized by the more sophisticated Trinitarian thinkers as modalistic.

The broader importance of these texts is that traditional monotheistic formulas against paganism are used with reference to Jesus, intending “there is no other” to apply to Jesus.

B hypothesizes on how this might be appealing in a missionary context—this section is highly speculative. But it did get me thinking that we should consider the function, the use, of missionary documents such as the apocryphal acts. Are missionary accounts of conversion also tools of conversion themselves—this seems to be where B is going, although not explicitly stated. Or are they meant to be encouragement for those already in the fold? B overemphasizes the intellectual side of missionary appeal a bit. How many were attracted to Christianity because it preached a monotheistic God who was transcendent but who through Jesus is approachable versus the philosophical speculation who still needed many gods to satisfy everyday needs? Was it really this that made Christianity appealing? I doubt the majority of converts were focusing on Middle/NeoPlatonic debates about God and seeing how they conformed to worship of lesser deities, except maybe an elite few who were drawn to philosophy like Augustine. But as a mass movement? These texts are probably meant to encourage the already faithful through the conversion narratives, as many conversion narratives told in churches (usually of an evangelical bent) today.

B discusses the persecution and martyrdom from refusal of engaging in the sacrifices that were part of the daily social life of a city, but which would constitute idolatry from Christians. Martyr accounts (whether they are historical or not) cite proper worship as the prevailing unbending issue in terms of worship of God, and in the same breath, Christ, setting the kingdom of Christ against Caesar’s presumed divinity. This gives monotheistic worship political implications: radical, subversive, aspect of worshipping a crucified criminal and it undermined divine sanction of rule by Rome.

After considering the monotheistic fidelity in worship of Christ in the NT (in Revelation), in missionary documents (apocryphal acts), and martyr accounts, B turns to the patristic Christological development in light of Christ worship. He sees a shift here from a general popular understanding of worshiping Jesus without abandoning monotheism to the doctrinal understanding of this that would preoccupy Christian thinkers throughout the entire patristic period.

He identifies two trends in ante-Nicene reflection on Jesus’ relationship with God: (1) kept close to worshiping life of church and monotheism, reflects evidence already adduced faithfully, but could slip into modalism, which was originally appealing and tolerated; (2) another trend “independent” of worship and witness of “ordinary Christianity,” particularly the Alexandrians and Origenists who fell into the “danger” of Hellenizing (or Paganizing) Christianity. We should note, however, that Alexandrian Christians were responsible for the formulation of the councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon (with a representative in Nicaea). (My quotations imply that I think while some of the observations are fine, the evaluation is tendentious—each form of Christianity should be considered on its own terms—so there is no “danger”).

In this second trend, Platonic monotheism is the model, which is also found in apologetic literature, in which Christians use the Platonic model to show its consistency (and to redeem their weirdness). Origen represents a growing gap between intellectual theology and popular faith (sort of—I bet a lot of people included Jesus in the divine identity in a subordinationist manner). Origen is self-conscious of their divergence (Or. 16.1) and claims that proper worship is to God alone—not even to Chirst—although it diverges from norm of Christian worship (Or. 14-15). The problem with this formulation is that the earliest evidence B adduced is directed primarily to God and mostly only “through” Jesus and not “to” Jesus, but, indeed, by the third century, perhaps popular worship was to Jesus. On the other hand, Platonizing language was a preexisting tendency in early Christianity. Recall that Philo was a Jewish figure who already combined Platonism and Judaism, and he was highly relied upon by Clement of Alexandria.

B presents Arianism as a reassertion of Judeo-Christian monotheism, but Arius made an absolute distinction between Creator and all other reality (something B claims is true of second temple Judaism too) and places Christ as the foremost of all creations (which the language of Jesus as firstborn of creation in the NT might already indicate!)—worship of a creature, though, threatened monotheistic worship due to Creator. Well…it threatened it from an emergent orthodox perspective.

Nicene orthodoxy did justice to the church’s practice of worshipping Jesus with worship due only to God without being modalistic (of course, modalist is only bad according to non-modalists). Large-scale acceptance of Nicene orthodoxy is due to it doing justice to popular practice as well as Chalcedon and Ephesus.

This perspective leaves out a great deal. Ephesus and Chalcedon actually did a great injustice to Egyptian and especially Syrian popular practice, which B dismisses as “extreme Antiochene Christology.” The Syrians may, in fact, think of those “extreme Greek and Roman Christology of Chalcedon.” It is a matter of perspective, and this account of patristic Christology smacks of orthodox apologetics rather than historical accounting of the evidence. Instead, we must allow that Christian practice could vary from place to place and Nicaea, which I agree puts an intellectual stamp on preexisting popular practice, represents the popular practice of a particular group against the practice of another group or groups. This theological apologetics is part of why the Christian texts from Nag Hammadi remain neglected, even though they form an important trend in Christianity in terms of theology and practice (on practice, see Three Steles of Seth, for example).

Finally, B ends with a theological reflection connecting to current Christian worship.

Overall, B adduces the strongest evidence of worship TO Jesus as God in the second and third centuries, although with some roots in the NT. I am not wholly convinced that Jesus is not the first-born of creation in some documents in the NT—all of which actually makes a lot of later theological developments that subordinate Christ (Arianism) or Origen’s thought that proper worship is only to God, also have theological roots in the NT. Nicene Christianity may, to a large degree, be faithful to popular worship and have some roots in the NT, but so did their opponents.

Bauckham's "Jesus and the God of Israel" 4B (Doxologies and Hymns)

In my previous post, I began discussing chapter 4 of Richard Bauckham's Jesus and the God of Israel on the worship of Jesus in early Christianity. That section focused on calling on the name of the Lord, the eschatological impulse of early Christian worship, and proskunesis and what that means. In this section, we turn to doxologies and hymns as evidence of early Christian worship.

B turns to doxologies and hymns because they are the most pervasive types of evidence. He claims that doxologies constitute unambiguously divine worship appropriate only for God in an unbroken tradition from NT to Nicaea. Is it broken thereafter?

He does a form analysis of doxologies, differentiating “strict” and “acclamatory” doxologies. Strict has four parts: (1) person praised in dative; (2) word of praise (doxa); (3) time (“forever”); (4) Amen. They usually form the conclusion to a prayer, sermon, letter, but are occasionally within. While benedictions are more common in Judaism, doxologies are still derived form Jewish forms of worship of God (to whom all glory belonged). Christians took the same basic formula and added “through Jesus Christ” to it. The commonest forms to Christ alone are later and fewer in number (2 Tim 4:18; 2 Pet 3:19; Rev 1:5-6), but given the distribution in three traditions in three geographical areas, it presupposes an earlier practice. Nonetheless, it becomes more pervasive in second and third century documents. Origen, for example, tended to end his homilies in doxologies to Christ as did the Acts of the Christian martyrs. As time goes on, these earlier doxological formulas are expanded into a Trinitarian formula, but these are all post-Nicene. Often doxologies are connected to the reign of Christ in martyr accounts to contrast with the idolatrous prelates of Caesar: “The doxology thus expresses precisely the issue of worship for which the martyrs died” (134).

I should note something—this may be an “unbroken” tradition, but it definitely does not appear to be a static one. It seems that doxologies to God through Jesus are most common earlier, then doxologies to Christ show up out of these, but, as he notes, this really does not catch on until the second and third centuries, and, finally, this is expanded into Trinitarian doxologies.

Next he turns to the “acclamatory” doxologies. They are basically “Glory to” plus an object in the second or third person with an optional closing giving the reason for the acclamation. Unlike the “strict” form, it is not necessarily concluding, but seems independent, and is often introductory. There are few examples of this extant. The NT uses it for God (Luke and Revelation), but tended to be used for Christ in the apocryphal acts. The NT does use it for God and Christ together (Rev. 5:13; cf. 7:10). I do find it interesting that B turns to second and third century documents for the majority of his evidence of Jesus worship.

While doxologies directly addressed to Jesus tend toward the second century, hymns, B claims, are as old as the Christian community itself (citing Martin Hengel, RIP), which also continue into the ante-Nicene period. Hymns “to the Lord,” for example show up in Ephesians, Pliny’s letter, Ignatius, and the Coptic Acts of Paul. Most endure into the third century Christological debate.

Hymns, however, in the NT, e.g, Phil. 2:9-11, are mostly not addressed to Christ, but are narratives about Christ, like the narrative psalms of the Hebrew Bible. He also discusses Melito of Sardis. I find this problematic in discussions of worship given to Christ. There are hymns about the Exodus, for example, but that does not mean these hymns are addressed to Moses!

Yet there are examples of hymns addressed to Christ (Did. 10:6; Rev. 5:9-10—is not for human use, but probably reflects hymns in churches; Heb. 1:8-12 interprets Ps. 45:6-7 and Ps. 102:25-7 as addressed to Christ (cf. Justin Martyr)). B suggests that a study of the Psalms probably inspired new songs—it is possible, but there is no evidence to adduce. The Phos Hilaron probably from the second to the third centuries vary from the texts that survive the earliest period; earliest hymns celebrate the death, resurrection, exaltation, and enthronement of Christ and have an eschatological edge.

In speaking of hymns, he concludes:

“The one who functions as God shows the divine identity with God and, naturally, receives divine worship, not of course as a competitor or supplanter of God in the community’s worship but as God’s plenipotentiary whose praise redounds to God’s glory” (138).

B also suggests that this type of worship led to more explicit formulations or statements of Christ’s divine identity. But again, B cannot escape “functional” Christology, since Jesus “functions as God” and acts as “God’s plenipotentiary.” Perhaps it is ultimately inescapable and cannot be fully replaced with a “divine identity” inclusion Christology as B had hoped.


B then briefly touches upon pagan perceptions, which indicates that worship of Jesus was the central distinguishing characteristic of early Christianity. Most second and third century pagan writers who talk about Christianity emphasize it (Pliny, Lucian, Celsus, and Porphyry). Pagans saw Christianity as a cult to Jesus like so many other cults to teachers and heroes of semi-divine status. But they thought Jesus was unworthy of such a cult and were appalled at its exclusivity, and they (mainly Celsus) saw it as inconsistent with Jewish monotheism (which was exotic at best, objectionable often).

In sum, it seems that B's best evidence for early Christian worship of Jesus comes after the NT documents in second and third century texts with occasional evidence from earlier sources. Doxologies TO rather than THROUGH Jesus appear mostly later (in both "strict" and "acclamatory" form) and hymns TO rather than ABOUT Jesus tend to be later. The developments are connected to what is found in the NT documents, but the "worship" of Jesus seems to be a dynamic rather than a static thing, making the equation of what is found in later documents with the scant earlier evidence difficult to maintain. Likewise, outsider observations begin in the later period.

Next in this chapter, B turns to how this worship is consistent with monotheism in first through third century documents and ongoing christological development.

Bauckham's "Jesus and the God of Israel" 4A (Worship)

It has been a while since I have posted on Bauckham's Jesus and the God of Israel. I have been busy with my own research lately, but thought I should get something up before too long.

To see earlier posts, follow the tags back.

Chapter 4 is on the worship of Jesus in Early Christianity. In this chapter, Bauckham discusses the significance of Jesus worship, which he sees as continuous from the New Testament to the great ecumenical councils, particularly Nicaea and Chalcedon. He does not, however, as clearly delineate what constitutes worship as McGrath does. In short, he does not compare and contrast worship of God in second temple Judaism with worship of Jesus in the New Testament in terms of the range from simple honor and reverence to full sacrificial cult.

B note that the origins of Jesus worship are shrouded in mystery, but evidence points toward the earliest Palestinian Jewish Christianity. Jesus is already considered risen, exalted, and continuously active in the community through the Spirit, and coming in the future as ruler and judge.

What points to this early worship is (1) Jesus as God’s eschatological agent is the focus of the “experience of eschatological salvation and the enthusiasm of the Spirit which characterized Christian gatherings for worship, and he was the focus of all Christian relationship, through him, to God” (128). McGrath might appreciate the language of agency and the idea that people worship God through Jesus, through the agent. But might this imply that the ultimate recipient of worship is God rather than Jesus? Or not? (2) B also sees psalms and hymns celebrating Jesus’ exaltation “from earliest of times” (128), as well as (3) acclamations and prayers—e.g., Maranatha (1 Cor. 16:22; Did. 10:6; cf. Rev. 22:20), Aramaic preservations in early documents indicating it’s early origin. (4) Personal prayer, which he thinks is underestimated, citing Paul and Acts (2 Cor. 12:8; 1 Thess. 3:11-13; 2 Thess. 2:16-7; 3:5, 16; cf. Rom 16:20b; 1 Cor. 16:23; Gal. 6:18; Phil. 4:23; 1 Thess 5:28; 2 Thess 3:18; Philemon 25; Acts 1:24; 7:59-60; 13:2; cf. further 1 Tim. 1:12; 2 Tim 1:16-18; 4:22). Bauckham admits that the dominant practice of the early Christians was prayer to God, but because Jesus was the mediator of grace, prayer was addressed to him. This is worth further reflecting upon: when thinking of praying “in the name of Jesus,” it does have this sense of mediator, but is it addressed “to” Jesus or “to” God “by means of” Jesus? Are both being addressed in the same way and, if not, how does that affect our ideas of worship? There is a nice structural inversion here as well: like Jesus is an agent of creation (by means of), he is also an agent of prayer (by means of), just moving in the other direction.

Indeed, B admits that petitionary prayer is not necessarily constitutive of worship, but he cites two phrases to show Jesus as an object of devotion. One means is Acts 13:2, in which the Antiochene church “worships” the Lord, using the verb λειτουργούντων, which is a typical cultic term (it is where we get the word “liturgy”). On the one hand, this might be an ambiguous example to adumbrate, but, on the other, Jesus is called Lord throughout the New Testament writings, including Acts. Worshiping the Lord could be a reference to worship of Jesus beyond simple reverence.

More prevalently is “calling on the name of the Lord,” a phrase drawn from Joel 2:32 and used in the Hebrew Bible to refer to worship of God (e.g., Gen. 4:26; 12:8; 13:4; Ps. 105:1), but in the NT applied to Jesus. It is the cultic confession of Jesus as Lord that defined the early Christians, and Hurtado connects it to practices of baptism, healings, and exorcisms. By applying the divine name to Jesus (LORD), or, using B’s terms, by “including” Jesus “in” the divine name (it is really the opposite, the divine name would be “in” him), Jesus also receives worship proper to YHWH.

B suggests that Jesus could have been accorded worship from the beginning or perhaps just reverence at first, but there is no evidence of resistance in a smooth transition to worship.

Therefore, the old view that transition to worship coincided with transition to pagan Hellenistic environment (basically, Bousset’s view) cannot be maintained. Matthew and Revelation, which show Jewish formulations and perspectives most clearly, also show worship of Jesus most clearly:

“That the worship of Jesus did not result from Gentile neglect of Jewish monotheism, but originated within, and had to be accommodated within, a Jewish monotheistic faith, which passed into Gentile Christianity along with it, is of the greatest importance for the course of later Christological development” (130).

In Matthew, B discusses προσκύνησις, which he recognizes has a wide range of meaning from obeisance, prostration in an expression of reverence, and/or worship. Matthew uses the term ten times with Jesus as object (Mark twice; Luke once). He concludes that Matthew uses it as a semi-technical term for obeisance due to Jesus. But is this worship? Or reverence? Indeed, Matt. 18:26, itself, uses it toward human beings without any sense of idolatry. LXX usage is primarily for God (or falsely for idols). He argues that it is a context-sensitive term, in which it is a gesture avoided in contexts where worship of a human being or exalted angel might be construed by it, but in contexts where such false construals do not occur, it is used:

“whereas in Mark and Luke the gesture of obeisance to Jesus is probably no more than a mark of respect for an honoured teacher, Matthew’s consistent use of the word proskunein and his emphasis on the point, show that he intends a kind of reverence which, paid to any other human being, he would have regarded as idolatrous” (131).

The term also tends to occur in epiphanic contexts (2:2, 8, 11; 14:33; 28:9, 17)

But what about Matt 18:26? This passage’s usage is not yet explained.

He concludes with Hurtado that this was a significantly new but internal development within Jewish monotheistic tradition.

The next post will explore further Bauckham's discussion of Jesus worship in terms of doxologies and hymns.

Blog Citation Question

I just thought of something. What if one of my readers on my blog (perhaps you!) made an excellent point on a post that is pertinent to my research (I actually rarely discuss my research on my blog, but it is still a possibility)--how would I cite that in an article, book, etc.? Is it different if it appears in the comments to my blog or to someone else's? If it specifically addressed to me or not? If you know, please respond, because I am curious. This might be a new realm for style guides to consider! Pay attention, Kate Turabian!

New Book on the Tabernacle

A new book on the tabernacle is coming out and looks interesting: Israel's Tabernacle as Social Space by Mark George. I am interested, at least, because I have a lot of work on the Tabernacle in Exodus 25-31, 35-40 and its later understandings in later texts in my dissertation. I am also interested in constructions/conceptions of space (and time) vis-a-vis the sanctuary, so this looks very relevant for me.

Here's the blurb:

The narratives about Israel’s tabernacle are neither a building blueprint nor simply a Priestly conceit securing priestly prominence in Israel. Using a spatial poetics to reexamine these narratives, George argues that the Priestly writers encode a particular understanding of Israel’s identity and self-understanding in tabernacle space. His examination of Israel’s tabernacle narratives makes space itself the focus of analysis and in so doing reveals the social values, concerns, and ideas that inform these narratives. Through a process of negotiation and exchange with the broader social and cultural world, the Priestly writers portray Israel as having an important role in the divine economy, one that is singularly expressed by this portable structure.

Mark K. George is Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado. The author of various articles and essays, he also is organizer and chair of the SBL’s Space, Place, and Lived Experience in Antiquity Section.

Hardback edition available from Brill Academic Publishers (www.brill.nl)

Spatial poetics...I will be looking forward to it.

Sappho to the Moon

I'm reading Sappho's lyrics, attempting the Greek, but being held up by translation. I am simply not used to her 7th century BCE Aeolic dialect. Even so, I can still work it out, and poetry is always best in its original language. I am reading it and the translation given by Willis Barnstone's Sweetbitter Love: Poems of Sappho, who tries to create poetic English cadences. Although her complete poems (there are only two surviving!) are well-known, her fragmentary poems are quite haunting. I was caught by two different fragments about the moon--what is more haunting than the moon?

πλήρης μὲν ἐφαίνετ' ἀ σελάννα
αἰ δ'ὠς περὶ βῶμον ἐστάθησαν

Full the moon appeared
when the women stood about the altar.

(frag. 154; translation mine)

ἄστερες μὲν ἀμφὶ κάλαν σελάνναν
ἂψ άπθκρύπτοισι φάεννον εἶδος,
ὄπποτα πλήθοισα μάλιστα λάμπηι

γᾶν

ἀργυρία

Stars around the beautiful moon

conceal their luminous form

when in her fullness she greatly shines

on the earth

in silver

(frag. 34; adapted from Barnstone's translation)

The first fragment elusively depicts some sort of night ritual by women illumined only by the full moon; in its fragmentary state, only the shadows of this moonliight ritual activity remain. The second depicts a moon's bright silvery light that, in its fullness, outshines all the stars. This silvery moon may refer to one of her lovers who outshone all others in beauty. Remember these lines when staring at the next full moon.

Gospels MSS

I was previously unaware of the collection of online images of surviving fragments and manuscripts of the "other gospels" online collected by Andrew Bernhard. He also has available English translations and background material.

His collection contains:
Gospel of Judas (and all of Codex Tchacos)
Gospel of Mary
Gospel of Peter (which is the newest addition)
Egerton Papyrus 2
Oxyrhynchus P840
Infancy Gospel of Thomas
Infancy Gospel of James

Without MSS:
Gospel of the Ebionites, Nazareans, Hebrews
Secret Mark

Not all of these sources have links to their papyri, but many do--a most useful webpage.