New Painting: Fairy Discovery

Here is my newest painting, "Discovery."  I just put on the last touches tonight.  It is a gift for my niece, who loves fairies and who turns four very soon.

Origen's Sensuous Songs: God and the Senses (5)

It has been a while since I have written a bit on God and the Senses; that is, a turning from the typical focus on divine vision and audition to a fuller expression through all five senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch.  I have discussed the multiple sensations in an inset hymn in the Acts of Thomas, Hekhalot Rabbati, a fascinating occurrence of "synesthesia" or seeing speech in Philo's writings, and the coming to the (spiritual senses) or overcoming spiritual anesthesia in Augustine's prose poem from the Confessions.  This, then, is the fifth installment. 

Much like our previous authors, Origen in his Homilies on the Song of Songs, uses the sensual language allegorically (in fact, Origen strictly forbids the literal senses).  Nonetheless, especially his first homily engages all five senses, overwhelms them with inviting, exciting, embracing language.  When I teach this work, I call this section the "parade of the senses." 

Firstly, the entire sensual indulging begins with hearing.  Following the Lawson translation, Origen sets up the dramatis personae of this great drama of love:

"We have thus four groups:  the two individuals, the Bridegroom and the Bride; two choirs answering each other--the Bride singing with her maidens, and the Bridegroom with His companions" (268). 

The Bridegroom in the allegory is Christ; the Bride is the Church (or the soul).  The Bride's companions are prophets and other Christians; the Bridegroom's companions are the angels and those who have been made perfect.  They are in perpetual song, antiphonally singing to one another an endless song of love. 

Nonetheless, the senses become increasingly engaged and more intimately stimulated when Origen turns to interpreting the line "Let Him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth."  Origen, in fact, has already enjoined the audience to identify with the Bride (and, if still immature in the faith, then at least the Bride's companions).  These are the words that one is to take upon one's own lips, calling upon Christ to kiss.  Origen writes:

"How long is my Bridegroom going to send me kisses by Moses and kisses by the prophets?  It is His own mouth that I desire now to touch" (269). 

One seeks to touch, lip on lip, the Lord's mouth.  Touch, indeed, is one of the most intimate of the senses (second, perhaps, to taste).  The kisses of the prophets and Moses refer to their revelations, their words; yet now one seeks kissing without mediation--directly from the revealer.  Later, Origen speaks of these kisses in terms of the Lord's Prayer (p. 271).

Origen moves quickly to smell, interpreting the line, "They breasts are better than wine, and the odour of thy perfumes better than all spices."  Firstly, Origen is nearly obsessed with this concept of Christ's breasts, to which we will return with the discussion of taste.  Before getting to tasting the divine breastmilk, Origen dwells on smell.  Mostly, noting that Christ's perfume, when one gains proximity, transfers to the Bride, the Christian seeker.  One tries to overcome the "stink" of vices and sins, and take on Christ's smell of stacte, onyx, galbanum, etc.--the special combination of incense used inside the sanctuary (Exod 30:34).

Origen, having kissed, having gotten close enough to smell, returns to the most intimate of tactile events:  the embrace.  Interpreting "Love her, and she will keep thee safe; enfold her, and she will exalt thee; render her honour, that she may embrace thee," Origen writes, "For there is a certain spiritual embrace, and O that the Bridegroom's more perfect embrace may enfold my Bride!  Then I too shall be able to say what is written in this same book:  'His left hand is under my head, and His right hand will embrace me'" (270-271).  Think of the posture this creates: it is a full embrace, but not just a hug, but the embrace between sexual lovers.  Though, of course, for Origen all sexual elements are redirected toward spiritual energies. 

We have moved from touch to smell back to a full embrace, yet the smell wafts back into the Origen's perfumed discourse as he returns to Christ's sweet smelling breasts:  "Fragrant with sweet oils He comes; and He could not otherwise approach the Bride....  He has anointed Him with divers perfumes, He has made Him the Christ, who comes breathing sweet odours and hears the Bride declare:  'Thy breasts are better than wine'" (271).  Origen takes the basic element of Christ--that he is the Christ because he has been anointed--and shifts its political connotation to the sensual one:  the perfumed oils used to excite one's lover's senses. 

So, touch, smell, embrace, smell, and finally we move to taste (itself a combination of touching and smelling).  Trying to understand the phrase--"For they breasts are better than wine"--Origen moves to the most obvious place in the Christian tradition where one "tastes" Christ as wine:  the Eucharist.  He writes, "Be you of one mind with the Bridegroom, like the Bride, and you will know that thoughts of this kind do inebriate and make the spirit glad.  Wherefore, as 'the inebriating chalice of the Lord, how surpassing good it is!'--so are the breasts of the Bridegroom better than any wine" (271).  In the Lawson edition, on p. 275, Origen even speaks of Christ's breastmilk.  By contrast, in the second homily, Origen stops this gender bending and speaks of the Bride's (that is our) breasts as we embrace him between our "paps," as the imagery of breasts and embracing gets reversed (see p. 287; cf. 297).

Origen does speak of sight, but not seeing Christ, but for the Bride (us) to become fair "to draw Him down from heaven to herself, to cause Him to come down to earth, that He may visit His beloved one!  With what beauty must she be adorned, with what love must she burn that He may say to her the things which He said to the perfect Bride, about 'thy neck, thine eyes, thy cheeks, thy hands, thy body,' thy shoulders, thy feet!'"  One must make oneself--one's soul--attractive to Christ, so he will condescend and THEN one can (reiterated in the next section) smell, taste, and embrace Him.

Origen weaves the various senses throughout the homilies, especially smell, taste, and embrace.  Nonetheless, this passage contains all of them in quick succession.  Interestingly, he focuses more on the senses in the homilies than in his commentary (though they are there in more limited senses).  As he preached, he engaged his audiences senses, seeking to redirect them to eroticized spiritual realities to beautify one's soul so one could kiss Christ's lips, inhale his sweet perfumes, embrace him intimately, and taste his "wine"/breastmilk. 

The Demise of the Criteria of Authenticity

Let me state this baldly:  the portion of New Testament scholarship that I hate reading the most is historical Jesus scholarship.  I like most of the scholars themselves, but I came to the conclusion early on (as an undergraduate when I took a class on Jesus and the Gospels at Illinois Wesleyan University--a class I will teach next semester at the same institution) that much of the criteria used pulled themselves apart, cancelled each other out, and most scholars chose criteria based upon what Jesus they wanted to reconstruct (something noted more recently by Dale Allison that our methods bend to our predisposed wills).  I generally have operated with the view that historical Jesus research had run its course and we could focus on other things.  That's probably one reason why I like to stick to Hebrews.  Typically, I pick up a book on the historical Jesus with trepidation; I usually find that I put it down every few pages.  It is just an area of scholarship that does not hold my attention.

Yet I could barely put down the collection of essays edited by Chris Keith and Anthony LeDonne, Jesus, Criteria, and the Demise of Authenticity (T&T Clark, 2012).  I would finish one essay and then move immediately to the next (and I have a bit of intellectual attention deficit--I tend to read approximately ten to fifteen books at once, so it is rare for a book to sustain my attention like this)!  Partly, the volume confirms what I suspected but with sustained argument that the methods used by the New Quest and the Third Quest have run their course and should be dismantled to varying degrees (perhaps my reading is bending to my predisposed will?).  Some articles set about deconstructing the criteria of authenticity in general (contributions by Keith and Jens Schröter) and others critiqued, complicated, or outright dismantled individual criteria (Loren Stuckenbruck for "Semitic Influence"; LeDonne for "Coherence"; Dagmar Winter for "Dissimilarity"; Rafael Rodríguez on "Embarrassment"; and Mark Goodacre on "Multiple Attestation").  There are also retrospectives on the significance (or lack thereof) of these methods and the "demise" for the Church (Scot McKnight) and the academy (Dale Allison).  On the other hand, there were elements I did not expect:  with such a dismantling, with such a "demise" there may be room for a bit more study yet, whether LeDonne's own studies of memory refraction (The Historiographical Jesus) or something we haven't quite thought of yet.  It is a book that his vivified a further interest to read more from the contributors:  catch up on Allison's latest book, take a look at Goodacre's Case Against Q and other works.  I have already read LeDonne's books, but it is time to take up Chris Keith's two monographs on Jesus and literacy.  In short, the historical Jesus is dead; long live the historical Jesus.

It is therefore with great pleasure that I note that Chris Keith and Anthony Le Donne are organizing a fall conference seemingly based upon this book with a fine selection of panels and speakers.  See the schedule of speakers and the information here.

That Other Late Antique Egyptian Language: Demotic

There is currently the major stirring around a Coptic fragment of an ancient Gospel (see my posts here, here, and here).  But most have overlooked another report that came out this week on a major undertaking of compiling a 2000-page dictionary of the other late-antique Egyptian language:  Demotic (from the Greek "Demos" meaning "of the people" or the "common speech").  I only saw it because my spouse pointed it out (in the Science Section of the New York Times).  The New York Times reports here:

Demotic was one of the three scripts inscribed on the Rosetta stone, along with Greek and hieroglyphs, enabling European scholars to decipher the royal language in the early 19th century and thus read the top-down version of a great civilization’s long history. 

Now, scholars at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago have completed almost 40 years of research and published online the final entries of a 2,000-page dictionary that more than doubles the thousands of known Demotic words. Egyptologists expect that the dictionary’s definitions and examples of how words were used in ancient texts will expedite translations of Demotic documents, more of which are unpublished than any other stage of early Egyptian writing. 

A workshop for specialists in Demotic research was held at the university last month as the dictionary section for the letter S, the last of 25 chapters to be finished, is being posted on the Oriental Institute’s Web site, where the dictionary is available free. Eventually a printed edition will be produced, mainly for research libraries, the university said.

Demotic is more difficult to read than, say, Coptic; nonetheless, if one seeks to have a grasp on the daily dealings and realities of people in Egyptian antiquity and late antiquity (for the Persian, Greek, and Roman periods), it is a must.  This is quite an accomplishment!

Huge Mosaic Found in Turkey

It is quite a week of discoveries!  First, the papyrus that has Jesus referring to a wife (should it prove to be authentic--see here) and now this very large geometric design Mosaic from an ancient bath in Turkey (discovered when a farmer started plowing his field). 

New Gospel Fragment: Preliminary Notes and Hypothesis

I want to proceed with some preliminary notes.  They are basic, foundational, but lead to a working hypothesis of this fragment that, I hope, will help lead to a particular social context.   First, here is a reiteration of my translation from my previous post:

Line 1:  ...my mother gave me li[fe]...
Line 2:  ...the disciples said to Jesus...
Line 3:  ...deny.  Mary is worthy of it....
Line 4:  ..........Jesus said to them, "My wife....
Line 5:  ....... she will be my disciple and....
Line 6:  ...Let wicked people....
Line 7:  ...I dwell with her because...
Line 8:  .....................an image................

The first note is literary genre (or at least micro-genre).  This is a dialogue form.  In line 2, we have the introductory formula for speech--here, the disciples' speech to Jesus.  The fourth line, then, shows Jesus' response.  This fragment, therefore, presents us with a glimpse of a dialogue between Jesus and his disciples.  With the back-and-forth style, I think we can take an intuitive step and consider that before the disciples' speak in line 2, Jesus would likely be speaking beforehand; therefore, we can attribute line 1 to Jesus' speech.  I also think, though on slightly less firm grounds, that lines 5-8 are also all Jesus.  Is this a dialogue Gospel?  Or is it perhaps a sayings Gospel, like the Gospel of Thomas, with only occasional dialogue?  Or is it a narrative Gospel in which we happened to discover a dialogue portion?  I don't think we can know for sure. 

With Lines 1, 4-8 attributed to Jesus, and lines 2-3 attributed to the disciples, we can begin to unravel a few more things.  Firstly, something the disciples say prompt Jesus to affirm that "she" will be his disciple and he will dwell with her.  Such an affirmation may suggest a less-than-positive valuation in the disciples' statement.  This could, then, confirm the potential reconstruction of the negation at the end of line 3:  "Mary is not worthy of it."  What is she not worthy of?  Something Jesus was talking about beforehand.  Interestingly, the disciples' disapproval of Mary (if I am right), "not being worthy" (line 3), "Mary" (line 3), "life" (line 1), and Jesus' defense of her also shows up in Gospel of Thomas 114.  I think that having so many key terms and the dialogic structure being so close is not accidental. Indeed, it may be after Jesus is discussing "life" in line 1, that the disciples claim that Mary is not worthy of it (life, or eternal life, or aeonic life, etc.), and Jesus responds to the contrary.  On the other hand, "life" is masculine singular in line 1 and "it" in line 3 is feminine singular.  It appears to have a different antecedent that has been lost. 

This leads to another intuitive step:  Mary is to be identified with the "she" in Jesus' speech, and, likely, his "wife."  Since Thomas is more geared for celibacy, this appears to be a reuse or a re-channeling of Thomas 114 to non-celibate ends.  (I guess the opposite could be true; Thomas took a marriage saying in which Mary achieved life through divine marriage with Jesus and reworked it to fit its celibate perspective).

What about line 6?  It seems to interrupt the affirmations of Mary (if Mary is "she") in lines 5 and 7.  Let wicked people do what?  This is more of an intuitive leap, but I think it might have to do with the disciples' concerns.  Perhaps something about outsider perception.  What will other, evil, people say, do, or think?  Perhaps they are doing some of the "denying" at the beginning of line 3, which, recall, should still be part of the disciples' speech?  Jesus' response is an affirmation of Mary's inclusion in the face of outsider pressure, perceptions, etc.  Other people may think what he is doing with her is unseemly (more celibate-oriented early Christians), but he has good reasons.  (Indeed, typically linguistic signatures and narrative structures are adapted more closely by opponents to be reworked polemically to make the polemic clear:  as such, this would support that this writer is contesting the perspective of Thomas.)  Indeed, he begins to explain why he is with her, which supposedly would rebut the disciples' concerns and whatever evil people are doing--but it drops off.  Nonetheless, being with her is something done in spite of them.

Marriage, life, and image has led April DeConick to the Valentian concept of marriage, where human pneumatic marriage presages one's future marriage with one's angelic counterpart and mirrors the pleromic bridal chamber (about which she has written a few articles).  See also her follow-up post here.

Of course, we cannot know how directly it would refer to this.  It could be referring directly to an "image" of the bridal chamber, or it could be more proximately back to Genesis 1:26-27, where God made humans in his image and likeness (male and female).  Being with her, then, could be recapturing the original human image (male and female), which, then, slightly more indirectly would lead to a Valentinian concept of marriage. 

Finally, who is "my mother"? (And how lucky are we that it survives on the verso as well as the recto, though likely in a different part of the writing!)  It could be Mary, the mother of Jesus.  DeConick points to Gospel of Thomas 101, where his true mother gave him life.  If, indeed, the fragment is aware of the saying that appears in 114, perhaps it is aware of this one?  She notes that in Thomas the mother is likely a spiritual being.  One could also point to "the mother of life":  Eve, who receives quite a bit of attention in Gnostic sources, though mostly in Sethian ones.  Whoever it is, it is one who gives Jesus life:  it is likely the spiritual life that he passes along or awakens in his followers.

My preliminary hypothesis, therefore, partially agrees with DeConick's initial findings that this fragment demonstrates awareness either with Thomas 114 or at least the saying as it existed and got incorporated into Thomas (that is, may or may not know Thomas, but knows the saying).  I would push this a bit further, however.  I think the correspondences are conspicuous and likely meant to be so.  There are too many matching keywords and the literary progression is close.  It is a reference to an alternative tradition that the original audience / insiders ("disciples") and opponents ("evil people") would both be aware of, something both would be able to catch--and perhaps the opponents are the holders of the tradition referred to.  The fragment, therefore, adopts, adapts, and contests the saying we now find embedded in Thomas 114 to defend a marriage (perhaps envisioned as the Valentinian bridal chamber) against celibate, encratic Christians who would oppose it (such as the Thomas Christians).  If so, this should help us begin to locate the fragment not just within its theology and ecclesiology, but a particular social context where early Christian practices were contested and defended, particularly when focusing on issues of sex and marriage--quite hotly debated especially in the second century CE.

Again, this is a preliminary hypothesis.  As new information comes to light, as high resolution photos are released, as the debates begin to unfold, arguments will begin to sharpen and clarify, new hypotheses will arise, some will be modified, and others will be discarded.

Of course, this all also depends upon whether or not this fragment is truly ancient and not a modern forgery; see Jim Davila for all the reasons to maintain a skeptical attitude until more testing is complete.

See also Mark Goodacre's discussion; he notes, for example, that it is vaguely reminiscent of the "Three Mary's" logion in the Gospel of Philip 59 (something I had thought of when I saw it but forgot to note in my post).  

New Gospel Fragment: Photo, Transcription, Translation

Image of Papyrus:

(Photo:  Papyrus Fragment; Recto; Karen King 2012)

Coptic Transcription: (Key:  {reconstruction from corrupt letter}; [reconstruction from missing letters]); Additional Note:  I have been notified that not everyone can read the transcription--that the letters appear as boxes instead of letters.  I am not sure why this is happening since I used a unicode based font, but I'll see what I can do.

Line 1:  ⲛⲁ]ⲉⲓⲁⲛⲧⲁⲙⲁⲁⲩⲁⲥϯⲛⲁⲉⲓⲡ{ⲱ}[ⲛϩ

Line 2:  ]{ⲥ}ⲡⲉϫⲉ︦ⲙⲙⲁⲑⲏⲧⲏⲥ︦ⲛ︦ⲓⲥϫⲉ{ⲥ}[

Line 3:  ] ̣ ⲁⲣⲛⲁⲙⲁⲣⲓⲁⲙ︦ⲙⲡϣⲁ︦ⲙⲙⲟⲥⲁ[

Line 4:  ] ̣  ̣  ̣  ̣  ̣ ⲡⲉϫⲉ︦ⲓⲥⲛⲁⲩⲧⲁϩⲓⲙⲉⲙ{︦ⲛ}

Line 5:  ] ̣  ̣  ̣  ⲥⲛⲁϣ︦ⲣⲙⲁⲑⲏⲧⲏⲥⲛⲁⲉⲓⲁⲩⲱ[

Line 6:  ]{ⲓ}ⲙⲁⲣⲉⲣⲱⲙⲉⲉⲑⲟⲟⲩϣⲁϥⲉⲛⲉ[

Line 7:  ] ̣ ⲁⲛⲟⲕϯϣⲟⲟⲡⲛⲙⲙⲁⲥⲉⲧⲃⲉ{ⲃ}[

Line 8:                 ]ⲟⲩϩⲓⲕⲟⲛ[

The verso has far less that is legible, but notably has the word ⲧⲁⲙⲁⲁⲩ in the first line.

Translation:  Major Note:  Because this is the first look the scholarly community outside of a select few have to glimpse this fragment, I will not place too much emphasis on reconstructed letters unless there is good reason.  One should compare this translation with the pdf download of the paper given by Karen King and note April DeConick's translation.  I should note that until more testing is done and high resolution photographs are released, all textual transcriptions (above) and therefore translations (below) are tentative.

Line 1:  ...my mother gave me li[fe]...
Line 2:  ...the disciples said to Jesus...
Line 3:  ...deny.  Mary is worthy of it....
Line 4:  ..........Jesus said to them, "My wife....
Line 5:  ....... she will be my disciple and....
Line 6:  ...Let wicked people....
Line 7:  ...I dwell with her because...
Line 8:  .....................an image................

It is possible that line 3 ends with a negation (ⲁⲛ).  If so, it may have a translation of "Mary is (not) worthy of it," which would mirror Gospel of Thomas 114.

We do not know much about this fragment, and since it does not quite match any known writing, then we cannot know its literary context.  Indeed, missing letters and words could make a lot of difference in the reading (such as if there is a missing negation in line 4, etc.).

I am going to withhold any interpretations (or further interpretations since there is a certain amount of interpretation in translation and even transcription) after further consideration.

Did Jesus Have a Wife?

Breaking News:  At the 10th International Congress of Coptic Studies (meets every four years), Karen King has revealed the possible existence of a new gospel, of which only a fragment (in Coptic) survives, that says, "...Jesus said to them, My wife..."  Initial testing has suggested it is, indeed, ancient.  See discussion here, which contains a further link to King's paper.

April DeConick has a short comment on it here.  See more here and here, leading to other sites.

DeConick has a fuller translation of the fragment with discussion here.

Modern Gospels

As I envision it, my spring course on Jesus and the Gospels will have two (rather traditional) components and a third contemporary component.  The first part will be on methods, using the historical Jesus as sort of a coda.  (I've noticed the suggested readings for my previous post tend to be more on issues surrounding the historical Jesus.  These are important, but I would like to hear other types of gospel approaches that people have found successful in a classroom setting).  Then I want to go through different gospels, whether canonical or extra-canonical, to discuss differing portrayals of Jesus (varying Christologies) as a means to discuss the diversity of emergent Christianity.  Finally, I wanted to apply this idea (basically, Jesus as the ultimate Rorschach test) and apply it to modern portrayals of Jesus:  that is, the rewriting of the Gospels or the portrayal of Jesus in modern culture.  This could be in any medium, really:  literature, film, material culture, etc.

Some ideas I have had have been the following:

Jesus and the Modern Novel:
José Saramago's The Gospel according to Jesus Christ, though that might be a little over the top.
Kazantzakis's Last Temptation of Christ, though I personally find the novel to be a bit tedious.
Norman Mailer's The Gospel according to the Son, which I have not read but has the benefit of being short.
Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, which is one of my favorite novels of all time (if not my absolute favorite).  There the Christology is a bit more subtle, but the novel alternates between the devil making havoc in 20th century Moscow and Jesus before Pilate in 1st century Judea.

Jesus in Film:
Here there are so many possibilities and so many films: King of Kings, The Greatest Story Ever Told, The Gospel of Matthew (Italian), Last Temptation of Christ, Godspell, Jesus Christ Superstar, Life of Brian, etc.

Jesus in Pop Culture:
I was thinking of Stephen Prothero's book, American Jesus.

For more general discussions, there is also the collection of essays in Burns, Jesus in Twentieth Century Literature, Art, and Movies.

Of course, I will only have time to touch on one or two of these things, but for my own background reading it is only a start.

In what ways do you see Jesus portrayed in the modern period--in what genres, media, etc., and specific titles or sources in those respective media?  What Christologies do we see coming out of these portrayals?  How have these portrayals reflected the interests of those doing the portraying? 

Call for Books: Jesus and the Gospels

I am preparing to teach a course on "Jesus and the Gospels" next Spring.  It is a course that, in the Illinois Wesleyan Curriculum, focuses on scholarly methods.  I was hoping to take a survey on the best recent books, whether for an undergraduate audience or for my own reading to make sure I am representing the latest research, on the following topics: (1) Methods and the Gospels (whether focusing on "classical" methods such as textual, form, source, etc., or contemporary methods of post-colonial, social scientific, etc.); (2) issues relating to the "historical Jesus"--recent treatments, problems, etc., including the recent spate of works on Jesus mythicism; (3) canon and extra-canonical gospels; (4) works on the perspective of particular gospels, whether canonical or extra-canonical; (5) and anything else I am missing.

What recent works are the best or most representative, in your opinion, in these categories?

If you are a reader, have a suggestion, please send it along either in the comments or to my institutional email address.

Chris Keith and Anthony LeDonne Blog

I just noticed that Chris Keith and Anthony LeDonne--both formerly of Lincoln Christian University--have started a blog dedicated to historical Jesus research, called "The Jesus Blog."  Both are smart and engaging scholars--in person and in writing--and so their posts should make for interesting, thoughtful reading.

Congratulations David Freidenreich

I just saw that a friend of mine, David Freidenreich at Colby College, received the American Academy of Religion Book Award for Textual Studies. 

Award for Excellence in Religion: Textual Studies
David M. Freidenreich, Colby College
Foreigners and Their Food: Constructing Otherness in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Law.
University of California Press, 2011.

Check out the book here.  It looks like it is available in hardback and kindle.  Congrats David!

Author of Hebrews as Mystagogue?

I just saw the following is coming out from Mohr Siebeck sometime this month via Brian Small at polumeros kai polutropos, who seems to be becoming a full-time Hebrews bibliographer.  

Jody A. Barnard

The Mysticism of Hebrews

Exploring the Role of Jewish Apocalyptic Mysticism in the Epistle to the Hebrews

Jody A. Barnard examines the role of Jewish apocalyptic mysticism in the epistle to the Hebrews. Jewish apocalyptic mysticism is defined as a phenomenon occurring in late Second Temple Judaism (including early Christianity), which finds literary expression in the apocalypses and related literature, and exhibits a preoccupation with the realities of the heavenly realm, and the human experience of this realm and its occupants. The author demonstrates that there are numerous apocalyptic and mystical themes appropriated in Hebrews, and that there is evidence to suggest that this is not merely a conceptual and literary phenomenon, but is born out of, and informed by, mystical experience. The cosmology, Christology, and soteriology of Hebrews all belong to the world of Jewish apocalyptic mysticism and are significantly elucidated with reference to this context.

I will be very much looking forward to reading this one.  Having tried to keep up with literature (primary and secondary) on ancient Jewish and Christian mystical thought and practice, I would like to see how she makes her argument.  Many of the elements of Hebrews are consistent with earlier apocalpytic (as many many scholars have pointed out--most significantly and influentially, perhaps, being Barrett) and show similarities to later mystical works, particularly the sustained interest in the heavenly realm--depicted as rest, the heavenly homeland, the heavenly temple, and God's heavenly throne.  Both apocalyptic and mystical Jewish traditions have a sustained interest in angels as well.  There is this in Hebrews briefly at the beginning, but I have never been as impressed as some researchers that this is a major issue for the author.  My own dissertation and forthcoming monograph discuss Hebrews in light of earlier and contemporary priestly traditions of sacred space and sacred time, including the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice at Qumran, which are discussed in terms of the origins or forerunners of Jewish mysticism.  While I am more interested in priestly patterns of spatiotemporality as reflected in Hebrews, its predecessors, and its contemporaries, I have a feeling that Barnard and I would overlap in some areas.

One thing, however, that I tend to avoid is the rather vague discussion of experience in or behind texts.  It is very slippery and very difficult to demonstrate.  I wonder how she will do it.

My first inclination would be to consider the depictions of the throne--God or Jesus enthroned--that permeate the text.  Indeed, Jewish mysticism is often called "throne" mysticism (the interest in a vision of the divine throne-chariot in the heavenly sanctuary).  Most occurrences of the throne in the NT occur within visionary settings (think of Stephen's stoning or, of course, Revelation).  Does the discussion of enthronement suggest a similar visionary context?  Or does it refer to the traditions passed down by earlier visionaries?  In that context, the exhortation to "approach the throne of grace" (4:14-16) might be read as a mystagogue seeking to help initiates into the same experience. On the one hand, Hebrews is a rare place in that it does NOT depict Jesus' enthronement as a visionary experience of some sort (as other NT texts do); on the other hand, it is also rare that it exhorts you to approach the throne (which other NT texts do not).

This leads to the second place I would look--all of the exhortations to approach, draw near, and enter (entering the Sabbath rest, the sanctuary, and approaching or drawing near to the throne, God, and the heavenly Jerusalem) as well as going forth outside the camp, etc.:  do these suggest a mystagogue trying to initiate followers into a mystical experience?  Or an artful pedagogue mobilizing imagery known from apocalyptic works and actions (approaching and entering) associated with mystical works for other ends?

The third place I would look (but the first if this were any other work) is any indication of practices.  While mystical experiences are slippery, especially in a highly rhetorical ancient text, references to mystical or other practices would provide a more concrete basis of how an experience may be induced.  Unfortunately, Hebrews is pretty light in any ritual references.  There are some vague references to ablutions/washings (ch. 10), but frankly nothing much. 

I have to admit I am attracted to this thesis.  I do think Hebrews shows a great many similarities with other works that are associated with mysticism or the forerunners of Jewish mysticism and likely grew out of or at least was aware of or engaged similar social networks.  But I am not sure how much we can say about  "experience."  While Hebrews employs a great deal of important images from mystical traditions and likely has familiarity with those traditions, I have tended to read these and the exhortations to enter and engage them as mobilizations for other (non-mystical) ends:  to stay faithful even in the face of persecution and potentially martyrdom (ch. 12).  Then again, visionary abilities are also associated with martyrs.

Is the author of Hebrews a mystagogue?  Or a pedagogue who rhetorically reshapes imagery associated with mysticism for other ends (remaining faithful, enduring hardship, etc.)?  Or is such a pedagogue just another type of mystagogue?

And, Brian, keep up the good bibliographical work--it is an important service in my opinion.

R.I.P. Marvin Meyer

I have just heard of the passing of Marvin Meyer from a melanoma.  He was an influential scholar on those religious movements that so often fall through the cracks of history (most notably "Gnosticism" and "magic"), popularizing and publicizing them to make them more widely known in several scholarly and trade publications.  Several people more intimate with Marvin Meyer have noted his passing.  Please see their comments here, here, and, here. 

Jodi Eichler-Levine on Terror in Holy Spaces

A friend of mine from graduate school, Jodi Eichler-Levine, now assistant professor of religion at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh has an op-ed piece for Religion Dispatches concerning the events of the past twenty-four hours on the shooting at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin, the landing of the Martian Rover, and how we use aliens and monsters to define ourselves and others.  The following lines caught my attention in particular:

Religionists can quickly rattle off myriad global, historical sites of contested holy space. But there is still something deeply nauseating, unhomed, un-everything, about attacks on vulnerable human beings at prayer, or about to pray. We want to believe in religious spaces as safe dwellings, as sanctuaries in the most literal sense of the word—but they have also long been targets for Americans who fear change.

See the entire piece here.  John Hobbins has some further discussion here. 

I also just saw a case of violence (this time arson) on a Joplin, Missouri, mosque here.

Wonder and Pedagogy

I just finished reading Caroline Walker Bynum's Metamorphosis and Identity.  It is a good read--I finished it in a day.  It is a smart collection of essays. Although somewhat disparate (as is typical of collections of essays), she has some especially interesting historiographical reflections when delineating the problems surrounding the endurance of the self through different forms of change from quotidian aging and social changes to Ovidian metamorphosis, given primarily through the prism of werewolves.  Yes, werewolves!  Whatever one thinks of each individual essay, it is worth taking a look to see one of the better historians of the medieval period talk about werewolves to open up important insights into the 12th and 13th centuries.  Why werewolves?  The strange, the weird, and the awe-inducing are, in fact, important historiographical and, what is more, pedagogical tools that reveal and engage us and our students:

...we write the best history when the specificity, the novelty, the awe-fulness, of what our sources render up bowls us over with its complexity and its significance.  Our research is better when we move only cautiously to understanding, when fear that we may appropriate the "other" leads us not so much to writing about ourselves and our fears as to crafting our stories with attentive, wondering care.  At our best, we strive for the "strange view of things"--not least because, as Thomas Aquinas understood, admiratio has to with teaching....  But surely our job as teachings it to puzzle, confuse, and amaze.  We must rear a new generation of students who will gaze in wonder at texts and artifacts, quick to puzzle over a translation, slow to project or to appropriate, quick to assume there is a significance, slow to generalize about it.  Not only as scholars, then, but also as teachers, we must astonish and be astonished.  For the flat, generalizing, presentist view of the past encapsulates it and makes it boring, whereas amazement yearns toward an understanding, a significance, that is always just a little beyond both our theories and our fears.  (pp. 74-75)

How much more urgent is this message for those teaching a text that is as familiar and as strange and as complex as the Bible!  It is, in fact, a very weird collection.  If we forget, ignore, paper over, smooth out its weirdness, we lose it, flatten it, make it boring.  If we embrace its strangeness, then we can delve into its complexity.

Metamorphosis and Historiography

I just picked up the now-decade-old volume by the eminent medieval historian Caroline Walker Bynum called Metamorphosis and Identity.  It is a collection of somewhat disparate essays spun together by the Ovidian thread of metamorphosis in 12th and 13th century Europe.  She uses the resurgent medieval fascination with concepts of the perduring individual identity among changes and transformations (including the quotidian aging, social changes, etc., but also the Ovidian radical changes in werewolf stories, the Eucharist, and so forth).  She uses these stories that challenge social structures and established boundaries, these stories that suggest fluidity and chaos, as a means to discuss the historian's task.  In an interesting historiographical reflection, she writes:

The history we attempt to write is always metamorphosis--a flux to which we have access only through texts and objects that bear vestiges of past lives to us from across time.  To historians as to poets, shapes carry stories.  Potsherds, tympana, illuminated manuscripts, field patterns from long ago revealed by aerial photography, and the texts themselves--texts of romances, saints' lives, chronicles, land transfers, laws--bring stories to us, changing because they have traveled through time but conveying also important vestiges of what was there.  Yet we, if we succeed in writing that past, are hybrids, monstrous combinations of past and present, paradoxically asserting through common, ordinary words such as "change" or "identity" a then and a now that may be incompatible, unknowable, inexpressible in those common, ordinary terms....  the history we write is less a synthesis and reconciliation than an assertion of opposites.  The most profound evocations and analyses of the past tend, I think, to put us in contact with the contradictory aspirations of the past and to keep us ever aware of the contradiction inherent in the arrogant effort to understand something radically other than ourselves.  In this sense, all history writing is not only comparative history but even paradoxical history.  Perhaps, then, the best we can hope for as historians is to achieve what Bernard of Clairvaux called in another context a "marvelous mixture":  a simultaneous assertion of past and present, self and other.  (Carolyn Walker Bynum, Metamorphosis and Identity, 36)

 I miss teaching Ovid's Metamorphoses.

The Bible and Zombies

Well...sort of...at least according to this Huffington Post article by Michael Gilmour.  Zombie imagery and resurrection imagery often do have quite an uncanny resemblance.  Here are three of my favorites from Gilmour's list:

2. The Book of Revelation: "the sea gave up the dead that were in it" (Revelation 20:13). John the Seer's creepy statement reminds me of a scene in George A. Romero's "Land of the Dead" (2005) that features slow-moving corpses walking out of the surf, and Max Brooks' "World War Z" with its account of the boy returning from a swim with a bite mark on his foot. He also describes the zombie hoards roaming the world's oceans: "They say there are still somewhere between twenty and thirty million of them, still washing up on beaches, or getting snagged in fisherman's nets."

.....

5. The Gospel of Matthew: "The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. After [Jesus'] resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many" (Matthew 27:52-53). Unwanted persistent life is a recurring image in biblical literature and so too is language referring to the impermanence of bodily death. The dead do not stay dead. The psalmist is confident he will not "see decay" (Psalm 16:10 New International Version; cf. Acts 2:27; 13:35). We read of the physical resurrections of specific individuals (e.g., 1 Kings 17:17-24; Luke 8:49-56; maybe Acts 20:7-12) and expected mass revivals (e.g., 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17). Some of these accounts of un-dying involve reference to un-burying. Mary and Martha's brother Lazarus walks out of his tomb when "they took away the stone" (John 11:41). On Easter morning, mourners find "the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back" (Mark 16:4). A second century writer describes further the events preceding Jesus' emergence from the tomb: "That stone which had been laid against the entrance to the sepulchre started of itself to roll and gave way to the side, and the sepulchre was opened" (Gospel of Peter 9.35).

......

7. Zechariah: "their flesh shall rot while they are still on their feet; their eyes shall rot in their sockets, and their tongues shall rot in their mouths" (Zechariah 14:12). They seem to resemble extras in a George A. Romero film.

Is there anything to the resemblance?  Such as that modern zombie films perhaps present an inversion or subversion of the old resurrection ideas--much like modern vampire films and stories invert Christian myths?  Maybe, maybe not.  The super ancient (and pre-biblical) Mesopotamian Descent of Ishtar and the better-known Epic of Gilgamesh are credited with the most ancient zombie recounting.  Zombies are as old as civilization itself.  Perhaps the Valley of Dry Bones (Ezekiel 37), etc., and later resurrection imagery (especially people coming out of their graves, from below the ground, returning form the netherworld) has origins in the much more ancient zombie lore!