Miles Dewey Davis is, of course, a jazz legend. Without question he is the most influential trumpet player of his entire era, even including figures like Satcho (louis Armstrong) or Dizzy Gillespie.   And when he joined forces with such premiere talents as Bill Evans and John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley and Herbie Hancock and John Scofield (and we could go on and on), his circle of influence only widened and still today is being continually felt and demonstrated in the works of artists as diverse as Christian Scott or Roy Hargrove or even Chris Botti.   Miles Davis was and is a game changer, and we need to take his measure.

Born in 1926 in Alton Illinois, but raised in East St. Louis in a more affluent African American family (his father was a dentist, his mother a capable pianist), Miles was taking trumpet lessons (an instrument picked by his father) by the time he was 13.   Unlike many jazz musicians of his era,  Miles actually received not only musical lessons but was admitted to Julliard in N.Y. and received some classical training which was to serve him in good stead in his collaborations with Gil Evans.  Like many young and talented jazz musicians, Miles chaffed at the formal training, and desired to spend most of his time playing in clubs in New York. His complaint about Julliard was it only taught ‘white European’ music, and in that era, that was a pretty valid complaint.  Nevertheless, he later admitted his training their gave him a good handle on music theory, something he would need, for Miles was a prolific composer, not merely a performer and his training both in St. Louis and in New York allowed him to experiment with a wider range of music, including classical or semi-classical compositions, than any other jazz artist of his entire era.  As a jazz composer, to a lesser degree as a player, Miles had few peers, and no superiors.  It is thus not entirely astonishing to survey the huge scope of the musical styles and trends that he not merely sampled, but in various cases started. Miles’ recording career began at the end of WWII in 1945 and continued until nevar the very end of his life in 1991.

By training, Miles was taught not to use much, if any vibrato in his playing, something which was clearly against the trend in jazz trumpet playing in the 20th century.  He came to like the ’rounded’ sound as he called it, without any quaver, and you could recognize in an instant his ‘plain’ style on a record when compared to other trumpet players.  In addition that, his fondness for using the mute in many different and varied recordings also gave him a distinctive sound, often imitated, but never to this day equaled.

We could talk about Miles’ struggles with drugs, something which plagued many jazz musicians of that era, including Coltrane and Evans,  but somehow, unlike figures like Evans, it did not seem to diminish his art very much, or truncate his career.  Though Miles grew up in the be bop and hard bop eras, he was noted for his ‘cool’ playing, and the label stuck in part because his first real landmark album was called ‘Birth of the Cool’.   In some ways this style was jazz minimalism, compared to the ‘blowing sessions’ in which it seemed a musician would try to squeeze as many notes as humanly possible into a four bar phrase.  As such, Miles’ music is more accessible to some who are not jazz aficionados.  Without really intending to be, Miles was also a cross-over musician as well,  exploring classical music in a jazz way, and later, pop music in a jazz way.  This too gave him a broader audience than most any other jazz artist one could name, with the possible exception of Coltrane.   And it certainly didn’t hurt that when he was really emerging in a large way to public eye,  his collaboration with Coltrane and Evans, entitled ‘Kind of Blue’  became an instant jazz classic. On October 7, 2008, his 1959 album Kind of Blue received its fourth platinum certification from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), for shipments of at least four million copies in the United States. Miles Davis was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006. Davis was noted as “one of the key figures in the history of jazz.”  ‘Kind of Blue’ is the best selling jazz album of all time and still today is a continual seller and rightly so.

It is difficult to select a fair sampling of Mile’s diverse body of work to give the listener an idea of what he accomplished and all the different styles he put his finger prints on, including his ongoing more classical forays with Gil Evans, someone he worked with from about 1947 on, but here is a short list to give one a starter kit for his remarkable body of work.

Really it is necessary to start with ‘Birth of the Cool’ which is actually not a very daring album but has some interesting collaborations with Gerry Mulligan the saxaphonist who wrote various of the tunes on the album. There is in fact only one Miles original on the album— Deception, and it is very brief (2:45). In fact this album was not recorded all at once, but was a series of ‘singles’ which were then collected together under the now famous title, and released in February of 1957.   A new era in jazz was dawning, and without entirely realizing it, Miles Davis was himself spearheading it.   In fact, even before the release of ‘Birth of the Cool’  Miles had formed his first major quintet, had signed with Columbia Records, and in 1955 had begun a period of collaboration with John Coltrane that literally was to change the face of modern music.  Miles first Columbia album ‘Round Midnight’ (named after the famous signature tune of  North Carolinian Theolonius Monk who definitely had an impact on Miles), this album already shows great diversity— be bop, and hard bop are in evidence, but so is Miles penchant for ballads, something that would be true throughout his career, and we see as well his nodding in the classical direction too.  Miles was one of those musicians who did a good deal to nurture along the gifts of others, and Coltrane and young players like Paul Chambers came into their own while working with Miles.   1958 saw the Stella by Starlight album and Cannonball Adderley was added to the mix, giving Miles two top drawer saxaphonists to work with.   One of the things about Miles was that he was not a stage hog, and he was happy to have others solo at various junctures.  Not threatened by other strong talented musicians, he actually seemed to attract and acquire them for his own projects and ensembles.

One of the staples of all jazz repertoires is of course show tunes, music for Broadway plays, or later for movies.  Miles’ collaborations with Gil Evans (not to be confused with pianist Bill Evans) tends in that direction.  A good cross-section can be found on the sampler ‘The Best of Miles Davis and Gil Evans’ (Columbia  CK 67425) which will introduce to you Miles doing Gershwin,  and one could go on to his whole album of Porgy and Bess tunes.   “Sketches of Spain’ is an instant classic in this general sort of genre.

I cannot stress enough the synergy and influence of the Davis-Coltrane collaborations, often with Evans, and my suggestion would be to buy the remastered box set— Miles Davis and John Coltrane (The Complete Columbia Recordings 1955-61).  It repays one listening after another, and Columbia has done a fine job of remasters and repackaging things with helpful liner notes.  You get remasterings of some of the classic tunes on ‘Kind of Blue’ and even some comments from Miles.

The next major ‘Milestone’ is of course ‘Bitches Brew’ perhaps the second most influential of all of Miles CDs.  This work comes some twenty plus years into Mile’s career, in 1969, and is a true game changer.  Here we are dealing with jazz fusion and a host of other things, and all sorts of experimental sounds and sonic textures.  It is a fascinating listen, but like much of jazz, it takes repeated listenings with concentration to really begin to understand what is going on and to sense the importance of the music.  The musicians on this album read like a who’s who of rising jazz stars–Wayne Shorter on sax, Chick Corea on piano, Jack deJonnette on drums, Dave Holland on bass, John McLaughlin on electric guitar.   Miles was pulling out all the stops on this one,  but one should also compare ‘In a Silent Way’ from this era as well.  Thankfully, we now have a beautifully remastered ‘Bitches Brew’ so we can hear all the facets of this truly original composition.

There has been a tendency to disparage late  Miles, but you will not hear that from me.  Miles had always done ballads and his move to do some pop standards (see his ‘Love Songs’ CD) is not very different from the previous trend.  Unlike some jazz musicians, Miles did not feel he had to prove his jazz credentials by ignoring pop and rock music.  Instead he drew on it and used it.   I can especially recommend some of the late classics like ‘Tutu’ or ‘Amandla’ both of which I love.

You could spend some years exploring the ouevre of Miles Davis, but perhaps the above will be a useful point of entry into his diverse work.  One thing is for sure– if you are an American and ignore the work of Miles Davis, you have ignored a huge part of the musical legacy of the twentieth century, in an art form that is distinctively American— jazz.

The UK PhD: Structure and Pressures larryhurtado | September 10, 2011 at 1:46 pm | Categories: Uncategorized | URL: http://wp.me/pYZXr-c9

Several days ago I promised to engage questions about how it is that examiners of PhD theses in NT/Christian Origins can report the sort of incidents mentioned to me (which I hope are exceptional) where a student is obviously lacking in basic language tools.  Those considering PhD studies and fellow academics as well may find the following of interest.  Otherwise, you may find the following a bit tedious.

In part, the sort of incidents mentioned to me seem to me to arise from two major factors:  (1) the structure and nature of the UK PhD, and (2) pressures on the university sector in the UK, especially from government and government-appointed bodies.  I’ll elaborate.

The UK PhD has a different structure from the North American PhD.  In the latter, students typically can be admitted on the basis of a very good first degree, or in Theology/Religion often a very good MDiv.  Those admitted to PhD study first take a year or more of courses and extensive reading, which is designed to prepare them for the “comps” (written field exams).  My own experience is probably still representative.  I had a 6-hr written exam in NT/Christian Origins, and 3-hr exams in each of two other (for me “minor”) fields (which were post-biblical Judaism and 19th-20th century Christian thought).  These comps can be broad in the area from which (unseen) questions are drawn up.  E.g., when I asked my supervisor what to expect on the NT exam, he said I should acquaint myself with persons, texts, beliefs, political and religious developments in the Roman world ca. 200 BCE – 200 CE!  After these written comps, there followed a 2-hr oral exam by the whole Department of Religion on any/all the fields in the written comps.

And before students can sit the comps, they’ll have to show that they can read/translate the relevant languages, which often involves timed, written translation tests in each.

Then, after this, students are allowed to propose and commence their thesis research.

The UK PhD doesn’t typically involve coursework or exams, but solely researching and submitting a PhD thesis.  It’s referred to, thus, as a “research” degree, because there is no “taught” component.  Students arrive and are expected to start framing an researching a thesis project from their first weeks.  Moreover, sector-pressures (from research councils and the government-appointed research assessment exercises) make it necessary to get PhD students to submit optimally within 36 months, maximally within 48 months.

In considering admission to PhD work in NT/Christian Origins in Edinburgh, we’ve taken this to mean that students should be further along in preparation than in the American-type programme.  This means, e.g., that we often judge applicants with solely a MDiv to need further, masters-level work before commencing PhD studies.  To finish a good thesis within 36 months or even 48 months, there isn’t much time to acquire from scratch languages or to acquire a basic knowledge of the field.

So, in addition to excellent marks in relevant prior studies, and strong references, we require applicants to show aptitude and experience in doing research in the field, as shown in a masters dissertation or some major research essay.  We also emphasize that students should work up languages to adequate levels before they commence PhD work, and we require demonstration of reading abilities by the end of their first year of PhD study.

What follows here is a review I did for JAOS (the Journal of the American Oriental Society) which was recently published.    Enjoy.

The following is Rob Gagnon’s CNN response to Jennifer Knust on what the Bible’s witness is about homosexuality and same sex relationships.  Reprinted here by kind permission of the author.

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The Bible’s Surprisingly Consistent Message on a Male-Female Requirement for Marriage

by Robert A. J. Gagnon, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of New Testament, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, www.robgagnon.net

July 27, 2011

This article is a merging of my op-ed piece for the CNN Belief Blog (“My Take: The Bible really does condemn homosexuality” [Religion Editor’s title, not mine], Mar. 3, 2011) with my Addendum (“More on Knust’s Blunders…” also Mar. 3), with some minor editing.

In her Feb. 9, 2011 CNN Belief Blog post “The Bible’s surprisingly mixed messages on sexuality,” Jennifer Wright Knust claims that Christians can’t appeal to the Bible to justify opposition to homosexual practice because the Bible provides no clear witness on the subject and is too flawed to serve as a moral guide.

As a scholar who has written books and articles on the Bible and homosexual practice, I can say that the reality is the opposite of her claim. It’s shocking that in her editorial and even her book, “Unprotected Texts,” Knust ignores a mountain of evidence against her positions.

It raises a serious question: Does the Religious Left (i.e. persons generally dismissive of Scripture) read significant works that disagree with pro-gay interpretations of Scripture and choose to simply ignore them? I’m sure Prof. Knust is a nice person in other contexts but it is inexcusable to be so uninformed (and even condescendingly abrasive) about a subject on which she claims to be an expert.

Knust’s misuse of the gender-neutral human in Genesis

Knust’s lead argument is that sexual differentiation in Genesis, Jesus and Paul is nothing more than an “afterthought” because “God’s original intention for humanity was androgyny.”

It’s true that Genesis presents the first human (Hebrew adam, from adamah, ground: “earthling”) as originally sexually undifferentiated. (I have made this point myself, long before Knust.) But what Knust misses is that once something is “taken from” the human to form a woman, the human, now differentiated as a man, finds his sexual other half in that missing element, a woman.

That’s why Genesis speaks of the woman as a “counterpart” or “complement,” using a Hebrew expression neged, which means both “corresponding to” and “opposite.” She is similar as regards humanity but different in terms of gender. If sexual relations are to be had, they are to be had with a sexual counterpart or complement.

Knust cites the apostle Paul’s remark about “no ‘male and female’” in Galatians. Yet Paul applies this dictum to establishing the equal worth of men and women before God, not to eliminating a male-female prerequisite for sex. Applied to sexual relations, the phrase means “no sex,” not “acceptance of homosexual practice,” as is evident both from the consensus of the earliest interpreters of this phrase and from Jesus’ own sayings about marriage in this age and the next.

All the earliest interpreters agreed that “no ‘male and female,’” applied to sexual relations, meant “no sex.” That included Paul and the ascetic believers at Corinth in the mid-first century; and the church fathers and gnostics of the second to fourth centuries. Where they disagreed is over whether to postpone mandatory celibacy until the resurrection (the orthodox view) or to begin insisting on it now (the heretical view). Paul, as we shall see below, agreed with Jesus.

Jesus’ belief in a male-female dynamic as essential for sexual relations

According to Jesus, “when (people) rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like the angels” (Mark 12:25). Sexual relations and differentiation had only penultimate significance. The unmediated access to God that resurrection bodies bring would make sex look dull by comparison.

At the same time Jesus regarded the male-female paradigm as essential if sexual relations were to be had in this present age. In rejecting a revolving door of divorce-and-remarriage and, implicitly, polygamy Jesus cited Genesis: “From the beginning of creation, ‘male and female he made them.’ ‘For this reason a man …will be joined to his woman and the two shall become one flesh’” (Mark 10:2-12; Matthew 19:3-12).

Jesus’ point was that God’s limiting of persons in a sexual union to two is evident in his creation of two (and only two) primary sexes: male and female, man and woman. The union of male and female completes the sexual spectrum, rendering a third partner both unnecessary and undesirable. The sectarian Jewish group known as the Essenes similarly rejected polygamy on the grounds that God made us “male and female,” two sexual complements designed for a union consisting only of two.

Knust insinuates that Jesus wouldn’t have opposed homosexual relationships. Yet Jesus’ interpretation of Genesis demonstrates that he regarded a male-female prerequisite for marriage as the foundation on which other sexual standards could be predicated, including monogamy. Obviously the foundation is more important than anything predicated on it.

Jesus developed a principle of interpretation that Knust ignores: God’s “from the beginning” creation of “male and female” trumps some sexual behaviors permitted in the Old Testament. So there’s nothing unorthodox about recognizing change in Scripture’s sexual ethics. But note the direction of the change: toward less sexual license and greater conformity to the logic of the male-female requirement in Genesis. Knust is traveling in the opposite direction.

It is not accurate to say, as Knust does, that Jesus “discouraged” marriage. He merely created the option for those like himself who “made themselves eunuchs because of the kingdom of heaven” on pragmatic missionary grounds (Matthew 19:9-12). Foregoing marriage and thus all sexual relations was an option for those who wanted to proclaim the message about God’s kingdom with greater freedom of movement and risk than would otherwise be the case with a spouse and children.

A sidebar on the “intersexed”

In response to my rebuttal Knust might argue that the existence of hermaphroditic or “intersexed” persons in our society undermines Jesus’ argument that the creation of two primary sexes, “male and female,” is an indicator that God limits sexual unions to two persons. It doesn’t.

First, the phenomenon of the intersexed involves an amalgam of the two primary sexes, not distinct features of a third sex. Second, extreme sexual ambiguity is very rare, encompassing only a tiny fraction of one percent of the general population. Usually an allegedly intersexed person has a genital abnormality that does not significantly straddle the sexes; for example, females with a large clitoris or small vagina, or males with a small penis or one that does not allow a direct urinary stream. The extreme exception merely underscores the prevailing rule of foundational twoness.

Third, the category of the “intersexed” no more justifies an elimination of a two-sexes prerequisite than does the equally rare phenomenon of conjoined (‘Siamese’) twins justify the elimination of a monogamy principle; or than does some fuzziness around the edges of defining “close blood relations” and “children” justifies the elimination of standards against incest and pedophilia. Fourth, homosexual persons who seek to discard a binary model for sexual relations do not claim, for the most part, to be other than male or female. Thus they, at least, remain logically and naturally bound to a binary model for mate selection.

Knust’s slavery analogy and avoidance of closer analogies

Knust argues that an appeal to the Bible for opposing homosexual practice is as morally unjustifiable as pre-Civil War appeals to the Bible for supporting slavery. The analogy is a bad one.

The best analogy will be the comparison that shares the most points of substantive correspondence with the item being compared. How much does the Bible’s treatment of slavery resemble its treatment of homosexual practice? Very little.

Scripture shows no vested interest in preserving the institution of slavery but it does show a strong vested interest from Genesis to Revelation in preserving a male-female prerequisite. Unlike its treatment of the institution of slavery, Scripture treats a male-female prerequisite for sex as a pre-Fall structure.

The Bible accommodates to social systems where sometimes the only alternative to starvation is enslavement. But it clearly shows a critical edge by specifying mandatory release dates and the right of kinship buyback; requiring that Israelites not be treated as slaves; and reminding Israelites that God had redeemed them from slavery in Egypt.

Paul urged enslaved believers to use an opportunity for freedom to maximize service to God and encouraged a Christian master (Philemon) to free his slave (Onesimus). Knust’s insinuation that Paul wouldn’t have cared if masters sexually abused their slaves is absurd, inasmuch as Paul rejected all sexual relations outside of marriage, to say nothing of coerced relations.

Relative to the slave economies of the ancient Near East and the Greco-Roman Mediterranean basin the countercultural dynamic of ancient Israel and the early church appears quite liberating. The countercultural dynamic of Scripture with respect to homosexual practice moves decisively in the direction of equating liberation with freedom from enslavement to homoerotic impulses.  No culture in the ancient Near East or in the Greco-Roman world was more strongly opposed to homosexual practice than ancient Israel, early Judaism, and early Christianity.

How can changing up on the Bible’s male-female prerequisite for sex be analogous to the church’s revision of the slavery issue if the Bible encourages critique of slavery but discourages critique of a male-female paradigm for sex?

Much closer analogies to the Bible’s rejection of homosexual practice are the Bible’s rejection of incest and the New Testament’s rejection of polyamory (polygamy). Homosexual practice, incest, and polyamory are all (1) forms of sexual behavior (2) able to be conducted as adult-committed relationships but (3) strongly proscribed because (4) they violate creation structures or natural law. Like same-sex intercourse, incest is sex between persons too much structurally alike, here as regards kinship rather than gender. Polyamory is a violation of the foundational “twoness” of the sexes.

The fact that Knust chooses a distant analogue (slavery) over more proximate analogues (incest, polyamory) shows that her analogical reasoning is driven more by ideological biases than by fair use of analogies.

David and Jonathan

Knust makes a mistake common to persons unfamiliar with ancient Near Eastern conventions when she discusses David’s relationship to Jonathan. She confuses non-erotic, covenant-kinship language with erotic love language.

All of the expressions that she takes as erotic in the David and Jonathan narrative have stronger Old Testament and ancient Near Eastern parallels with non-sexual relationships between close kin of the same sex. The narrator of the Succession Narrative (1 Samuel 16:14 to 2 Sam 5:10) legitimizes David’s succession of King Saul by showing that David was accepted by Jonathan into his father’s household as an older brother, not as Jonathan’s lover (see my book The Bible and Homosexual Practice, 146-54). For example:

• Compare “the soul of Jonathan was bound to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul” (1 Sam 18:1; cf. 20:17) with “[Jacob’s] soul is bound up with [his son Benjamin’s] soul” (Gen 44:31) and “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev 19:18); compare it too with the language of covenant treaties, such as “You must love [him] as yourselves” (addressed to vassals of Assyrian king Ashurbanipal) and the reference in 1 Kings 5:1 to King Hiram of Tyre as David’s “lover.”
• Compare Jonathan “delighted very much” in David (1 Sam 19:1) with (1) “The king [Saul] is delighted with you [David], and all his servants love you; now then, become the king’s son-in-law” (1 Sam 18:22); with (2) “Whoever delights in Joab, and whoever is for David, [let him follow] after Joab” (2 Sam 20:11); and with (3) the reference to God “delighting in” David (2 Sam 15:26; 22:20).

When David had to flee from Saul, David and Jonathan had a farewell meeting, in which David “bowed three times [to Jonathan], and they kissed each other, and wept with each other” (1 Samuel 20:41-42). Is this an erotic scene? Not likely. Only three out of twenty-seven occurrences of the Hebrew verb “to kiss” have an erotic dimension. Most refer to kissing between a father and a son or between brothers.

At one point in the narrative Saul lashes out at his son Jonathan: “You son of a perverse, rebellious woman! Do I not know that you have chosen the son of Jesse [David] to your own shame and to the shame of your mother’s nakedness?” (1 Samuel 20:30-34). Does this remark imply that David and Jonathan were in an erotic relationship? No, Saul here simply charges Jonathan with bringing shame on the mother who bore him by acquiescing to David’s claim on Saul’s throne (cf. 2 Samuel 19:5-6).

When David learns of the deaths of Saul and Jonathan he states of Jonathan: “You were very dear to me; your love to me was more wonderful to me than the love of women” (2 Samuel 1:26). The Hebrew verb for “were very dear to” is used in a sexual sense in the OT only two out of twenty-six occurrences. A related form is used just three verses earlier when David refers to Saul as “lovely”—hardly in an erotic sense. Jonathan’s giving up his place as royal heir and risking his life for David surpassed anything David had known from a committed erotic relationship with a woman. David is not referring to erotic lovemaking on the part of Jonathan. As Proverbs 18:24 states in a non-erotic context, “There is a lover/friend who sticks closer than a brother.”

The narrators’ willingness to speak of David’s vigorous heterosexual life (e.g., his lust for Bathsheba) puts in stark relief their complete silence about any sexual activity between David and Jonathan. Homosexual interpretations misunderstand the political overtones of the Succession Narrative in 1 Sam 16:14 – 2 Sam 5:10. Jonathan’s handing over his robe, armor, sword, bow, and belt to David was an act of political investiture (1 Sam 18:4) that transferred the office of heir apparent.

The point of emphasizing the close relationship between David and Jonathan was to establish the fact that David was not a rogue usurper to Saul’s throne. He was rather adopted by Jonathan into his father’s “house” (family, dynasty). He has become Jonathan’s beloved older brother. Neither the narrators of the Succession Narrative nor the author(s) of the Deuteronomistic History show concern about homosexual scandal. The reason for this is that in the context of ancient Near Eastern conventions, nothing in the narrative raised suspicions about a homosexual relationship.

The New Testament view of the Sodom story

Citing Jude 7 Knust alleges that “from the perspective of the New Testament” the Sodom story was about “the near rape of angels, not sex between men.” She misinterprets Jude 7. Understood in relation to leading first-century Jewish commentators (Philo and Josephus), Jude 7 should be read as a rhetorical figure known as hendiadys (literally, “one by two”): By attempting to commit sexual immorality (men with males), the men of Sodom got more than they bargained for: nearly having sex with angels (compare the parallel in 2 Peter 2:7, 10). For further discussion of Jude 7 see pp. 9-13 of an online article here.

There is no tradition in early Judaism that the men of Sodom were even aware that the visitors were angels (on the contrary, compare Hebrews 13:2: “… entertained angels unawares”). Furthermore, Paul’s indictment of homosexual practice in Romans 1:24-27 has multiple echoes in its context to the Sodom story, with no hint of an offense toward angels. The New Testament witness does indeed understand a key element in the judgment of Sodom to be attempted man-male intercourse.

The canard that only a few Bible texts reject homosexual practice

Knust dismisses the texts that reject homosexual practice as “few.” But limited explicit mention can be an indication of an irreducible minimum in sexual ethics that doesn’t need to be talked about extensively. Bestiality, an offense worse than homosexual practice, is mentioned even less in the Bible; and sex with one’s parent receives a comparable amount of attention to homosexual practice.

The Bible’s attention to homosexual practice is also not as limited as Knust pretends it to be. Knust leaves out some texts that have to do with homosexual practice. A case in point are the repeated references in Deuteronomy through 2 Kings to the “abomination” of the qedeshim (so-called “sacred ones”), cult figures who engage in consensual sex with other males, also echoed in the Book of Revelation (22:15; 21:8).

Even more importantly, every biblical narrative, law, proverb, exhortation, metaphor, and poetry in the Bible that has anything to do with sexual relationships presumes a male-female prerequisite – no exceptions. A more consistent ethical position in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation could hardly be found. This is not, as Knust claims, “a very particular and narrow interpretation of a few biblical passages.”

Knust’s claim that the Bible doesn’t reject homosexual practice absolutely

Knust claims that texts like Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 and Paul’s indictment of homosexual practice in Romans 1:24-27, 1 Corinthians 6:9, and 1 Timothy 1:10 are not absolute indictments of all homosexual acts for all time. She makes a number of sloppy allegations.

She states that the Levitical prohibitions applied only to Jews living in Palestine. However, the laws in Leviticus 17-18 apply also to non-Jews living in Israel. By the period of the New Testament they make up the “Noahide laws” that Jews thought were binding on Gentiles (see, for example, the Apostolic Decree in Acts 15:20, 29; 21:25). Both Jews living outside Palestine and “God-fearing” Gentiles attracted to the Jewish religion understood the prohibitions of incest, adultery, man-male intercourse, and bestiality in Leviticus 18 and 20 as morally binding on them.

Knust states that the prohibitions address only male homosexual practice but this is true only in a pedantic sense. Lesbianism isn’t mentioned in Leviticus because such behavior was largely unknown to men in the ancient Near East where society tightly regulated women’s sexual lives (it goes virtually unmentioned elsewhere). The first-century Greco-Roman world did know about lesbianism so it is not surprising that Paul explicitly rejected it in Romans 1:26, in keeping with the normative Jewish view of his time.

Knust states that “biblical patriarchs and kings violate nearly every one of these commandments.” It is true that some of the close kin marriages forbidden by Levitical incest law are practiced by the patriarchs. Nevertheless, this exemption is withdrawn for later generations by biblical narrators – and the worst forms of consensual incest are never accepted in the Bible. As with Jesus’ rejection of concurrent and serial polygamy, an earlier permission in sexual ethics is retracted.

Knust says: “Paul’s letters urge followers of Christ to remain celibate.” Like Jesus, Paul commends to converts a celibate life, but on pragmatic missionary grounds, not because sexual relations in the context of marriage are a bad thing. Like Jesus, he insists that marriage is no sin and a necessary institution for those who would otherwise drift into immorality. Not that this was the only value of marriage for Jesus and Paul. Neither person was known to be an ascetic. Jesus was accused of being “a glutton and drunkard” (Matthew 11:19) and Paul boasted that he knew how to be content both in lack and in abundance (Philippians 4:12).

Knust adds to her indictment of Paul that he “blames all Gentiles in general for their poor sexual standards.” I’m not sure what her point is here. Relative to the sexual morality of Jews, Gentile sexual morality on the whole was indeed in very bad shape. Read the graffiti found in the ruins of first-century Pompeii to get a sense of how bad things were. Homosexual practice was a case in point but so too the widespread sex with prostitutes, adultery, and fornication.

Paul’s indictment of homosexual practice in Romans 1:24-27 is clearly absolute. This is indicated by multiple layers of evidence, including: the strong echoes to Genesis 1:26-27 in Romans 1:23-27; the nature argument based on the material structures of creation (compare Romans 1:26-27 with 1:20); the indictment of lesbianism, not known for exploitative practices; the emphasis on mutuality (“inflamed with their desire on one another,” 1:27); Jewish and Christian texts from the second and third centuries rejecting same-sex marriage; and the broader Greco-Roman context where some moralists and physicians condemn as “against nature” even loving forms of homosexual practice by persons congenitally predisposed to same-sex attractions.

After her skewed assessment of what Scripture has to say about homosexual practice, Knust asks: “So why are we pretending that the Bible is dictating our sexual morals?” There is no pretending. The Bible’s witness against homosexual practice is consistent, strong, absolute, and countercultural, as any informed stance will recognize.

The contribution of philosophical reasoning and science

The notion that Scripture provides firm and clear moral guidelines against homosexual practice is all too obvious. Although Knust intimates that the only arguments that could be used against societal endorsement of homosexual unions are (invalid) scriptural ones, there are other reasons drawn from reason and science. These include good philosophical arguments, where it is reasonable to view as inherently self-dishonoring and self-degrading sexual arousal for what one already is and has as a sexual being – males for essential maleness, females for essential femaleness – and the attendant effort at reuniting with a sexual same as though one’s sexual other half.

In effect participants in homosexual practice treat their individual sex as only half intact, not in relation to the other sex but in relation to their own sex. If the logic of a heterosexual union is that the two halves of the sexual spectrum, male and female, unite to re-form a single sexual whole, the logic of a homosexual union is that two half-males unite to form a whole male, two half-females unite to form a whole female.

Finally, there are good scientific arguments against affirming homosexual practice, including the disproportionately high rate of measurable harms associated with it. These harms correspond to gender differences between males and females: for homosexually active males, higher numbers of sex partners lifetime and STIs; for homosexually active females, shorter-term unions and mental health issues (even relative to homosexually active males). These gender-type harms are not surprising since in a homosexual union the extremes of a given sex are not being moderated, nor the gaps filled, by a true sexual counterpart.

Condemnation, love, and grace

Knust caricatures the moderate view of the Bible on homosexual intercourse as “the Bible forces me to condemn them” (i.e. “gay people”). Augustine put it better in explaining his dictum “Love and do what you want”: “Let love be fervent to correct, to amend. . . . Love not in the person his error, but the person; for the person God made, the error the person himself made.”

Ironically, it is Knust who brings condemnation on persons who engage in homosexual practice in a serial-unrepentant manner. She acts as judge and jury, substituting God’s judgment for her own by acquitting persons of behavior that the Bible’s authors view as endangering their inheritance of eternal life.

Which set of parents is loving? Parents who are negligent in preventing their young children from touching a hot stove (or, worse, give assurance that no harm will come) or parents who strenuously warn their children to avoid such behavior? Much more is at stake in affirming homosexual behavior than any burn that comes from touching a hot stove.

Judgment and grace are the opposite of what Knust portrays them to be. In Romans 1:18-32, which includes Paul’s searing indictment of homosexual practice (1:24-27), Paul depicts God’s wrath as God stepping away from moral intervention, thereby allowing people to gratify themselves in impure, degrading, and indecent behavior. As a consequence, offenders heap up their sins and bring upon themselves cataclysmic judgment at the End. By contrast, Paul presents God’s grace in Romans 6:14-23 as God through Christ actively stepping back into the lives of believers in order to destroy the rule of sin and put a stop to impure and shameful practices.

I welcome further dialogue or debate with Prof. Knust in print, radio, or television. It is disturbing to read what passes nowadays for expert “liberal” reflections on what the Bible says about homosexual practice.

Don’t you just hate it when you get lied to by advertisers?  Shouldn’t there be a law that says that if statements are demonstrably false, they should not be able to be put in a TV commercial.   If only it were the way things worked.

I live in a coal state, a state which depends on the coal industry for a lot of its blue collar jobs.   And yet the coal industry knows perfectly well that it has a major PR problem.  The pay for coal workers in eastern Kentucky is generally speaking pathetic, especially when you discover the level of profit taking of the owners of the coal mines.   And the job is enormously difficult and dangerous.   Besides that, its a hazard to one’s health—- if you have ever run into someone with black lung disease or emphysema caused by working in a coal mine, you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Then there is the untold ripping off of the employees of the coal industry. When I was working in the mountains of N.C. one time as a VISTA aide, I ran into a man who worked in a strip mine.  He had to borrow the tools he used to have a paying job, borrow them from his employer.  And one day when he left the tools on a coal cart during lunch break and they were stolen, it was he who had to pay for this,  with his meager pay check being garnished.   This was a disaster because the man had more than a few children.

And what about the level of safety in coal mines these days— is it much better than in the past?   I’ll let you look up the number and scope of coal mining disasters in this country in the last ten years and you can draw your own conclusions.  Such are the trials and tribulations of those who mine coal in the South and elsewhere.  Cue Sting’s song ‘They Mine the Black Seam’.

But what has really frosted my cake lately about this dirty business, is that the coal industry continues to advertise ‘clean coal’  indeed they even have a propaganda site to promote how they are doing things cleaner and neater these days.   WORD UP.  This is a straight up deception.  There is no such thing as clean coal. If you bother to do the research you will discover that while hypothetically there is technology that could produce ‘cleaner coal’,  in fact there is not a single plant or coal company in the country producing real clean coal today.  Not a single one. We have been snookered, so that the coal industry can continue to do what it has always done,  make a profit out of one the dirtiest forms of energy in the world.   My wife the environmental scientist and biologist regularly has Mallox moments whenever she sees coal ads on TV.

If this were not enough, there is the powerful coal lobby in Washington  (check out the many ads and politicians who have been paid off so they will merrily claim they are ‘friends of coal’ and urge us to be ‘friends of coal’ as well).   This past week,  while we were in debt ceiling  and debt reduction gridlock and somebody figured we would not notice,  “coal’s friends’ in the House of Representatives were busily trying to gut the environmental laws so that they could go back to mountain top removal, as a means of getting at that coal!

Have you ever been in an airplane and seen the ecological devastation from mountain top removal?  I have.  It”s really unbelievable this could be legal, and the worst part of all this is that is that it is totally unnecessary. There are much more efficient and better ways to get at the coal without devastating the forests and tops of mountains.    And frankly it is also not true that such a practice ‘creates many jobs’.   Wrong,  mountain top removal is basically done by dynamite and machines, not by manual labor.   I doubt it creates many new jobs at all.  One of my new favorite bumper stickers reads—- “Naked Mountain Tops are Obscene”.   Right on brother.

If all the millions that have been spent on lobbying and advertising for the coal industry had actually been spent on developing alternative energy sources, we would all be better off.    And our air would be cleaner as well.  But there are some people determined to make sure that we do not develop alternative energy sources until we have burned every bit of fossil fuel we could possibly dig up or pump out of the ground.  How short sighted.   It is also a strategy which will prevent us from leading the world forward when it comes to energy.

The coup d’ grace for me however was when the University of Kentucky here in Lexington quite happily took millions from the coal industry to build a new dwelling place for our pampered athletes known as the Wildcats on the condition that the building have a name that advertised it was a building built by the coal industry!  Sad and pathetic.

Why do I care about all this?    Simply because I am a Christian who believes that we have a responsibility to care for this beautiful world that God has bequeathed us.   Human beings are about the only creatures who foul their own nests, and coal helps us keep doing it.    Creation care is part of the task of being ‘tenders of the earth’, part of the originally mandate, the original creation order plan  of God.     So, the bottom line is—- no more lies,  no more deceptions about the fossil fuel known as coal.     The next ad I want to see from the coal industry in Kentucky, doing more than lip service to the necessity of truth in advertising would go like this—-

” Coal– its bad for the air, bad for your lungs, bad for our employees, bad for our forests, bad for the climate, and its black as Hades, but heck, it burns doesn’t it and we need it to make money.  Sure it’s a dirty job but we believe someone has to do it.   Remember, if you get lumps of coal in your Christmas stocking, its a punishment for bad behavior,  not a reward.  This has been a public service announcement.”

Ethos, Behavior, and Credibility:

What Made the Words of Early Christ-Followers Persuasive?

A Response to Ben Witherington’s NEW TESTAMENT RHETORIC: An Introductory Guide to the Art of Persuasion in and of the New Testament (Wipf & Stock, 2009)

S.  Scott  Bartchy

Professor of Christian Origins & the History of Religion

Department of History UCLA.

Abstract

Witherington wrote this book to persuade its readers “to do proper rhetorical analysis of the NT, and to stop disregarding, or belittling such a form of NT studies.” I agree that such work is absolutely essential for avoiding anachronistic and contextless reading and interpretation. The key concept here is context which, however, must be extended to a rich awareness of the dominant cultural values and social codes that profoundly informed all communication in the world of the early Christ-followers. The behavior of the NT writers in their Holy Spirit-formed communities – their characteristic ethos – was the foundation of their persuasiveness, not their right words as such.

Introduction:

0.1.      Ben Witherington draws on his own extensive application of rhetorical analysis in his many well-known socio-rhetorical commentaries^[1] in this accessible and persuasive invitation to all readers who aspire to become considerate and competent readers of the New Testament documents, an invitation to join him in drinking deeply at the well of ancient rhetorical practices. For such knowledge provides the essential context for understanding their writers’ original persuasiveness. Only then will such readers be able to appreciate how much the intended meaning and persuasiveness of the words and sentences in the New Testament documents depended on the effectiveness of rhetorical conventions for communication, conventions that were well known and universally practiced in the world of Jesus and Paul.

0.2.      While I basically agree with Witherington as far as he takes us in this book, here at the beginning of this paper let the macro-perspective that informs my response be clear. While it takes only the ability to read to acquaint oneself with the biblical writers’ words and sentences, it takes much more knowledge than that to ascertain what they meant by what they wrote. The study of ancient rhetorical patterns, intentions, and tropes certainly can help us overcome our natural ethnocentric and anachronistic lenses and take us a significant way toward understanding the words of the biblical writers. Beyond rhetorical conventions, however, the intended meanings of words and sentences in any cultural-social system are essentially dependent on hundreds of shared values, social codes of behavior, and life experiences as well as on a wide variety of potentially culturally-specific ranges of metaphorical associations triggered by the words they choose to use.^[2]

0.3       Thus my increasingly firm conviction is that a secure grasp of the complex interrelationships among the dominant cultural values and social codes that prevailed across all cultures in the ancient Mediterranean world is the absolutely necessary macro-context for understanding why any early Christian speaker or writer was persuasive. An increased awareness of the how of their rhetorical practices, important as it is, is not sufficient to explain why these speakers and writers became regarded as credible and trustworthy. This is especially the case because so much of what they said and wrote challenged and often rejected traditional and unquestioned patterns of interpersonal conduct as well as the hallowed values that justified such actions.

0.4.  I divide my response to Witherington’s winsome invitation into three sections: 1) my points of strong agreement and appreciation; 2) why I am not persuaded that Witherington’s rhetorical analysis as such explains why the content of the early Christian documents was so persuasive; and 3) how a serious consideration of the “ethos” aspect of rhetorical analysis can help us grasp a more complex and convincing relationship between the behavior of the speakers and writers in the New Testament and their creation of innovative and controversial associations among familiar concepts such as honor, shame, kinship, purity and patronage. Their credibility, their trustworthiness, and thus their persuasiveness was at stake.

PART ONE: My points of strong agreement with Ben Witherington’s emphases in this engaging book.

1.1.  I applaud Witherington’s strong emphasis on the critical importance of understanding clearly that the first hearers of the documents in the New Testament were raised in an oral culture. We should begin our attempts to understand and interpret any New Testament document by sternly reminding ourselves that the New Testament writers must have assumed that the vast majority of those for whom and to whom they wrote heard their words, not read them. As Philip Esler stresses early on in his socially-contexted commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Romans, “it requires a great leap of imagination for us to comprehend what it was for a group living in an oral culture to receive a communication like Romans. Yet it is an effort we must make.”^[3] To be sure, the same should be said about every writing in the New Testament. [As Esler further observes, these first hearers were assisted by their memories, trained to be extremely retentive – at a level that is exceedingly rare in a literate culture like our own (17).]

1.2. I completely agree with Witherington’s observation that all the New Testament texts “reflect a considerable knowledge of Greek, of rhetoric, and indeed of general Greco-Roman culture” (3a), and it is this “considerable knowledge of general Greco-Roman culture” to which I will return in part two of this response.^[4]

1.3. I strongly commend Witherington’s reframing of the letters in the New Testament as discourses, homilies, and rhetorical speeches (3b). In his words: “The dominant paradigm when it came to words . . . was rhetoric, not epistolary conventions” (5b).

1.4. I also strongly agree with his insistence that, in contrast to the modern hermeneutical method pioneered by Vernon Robbins and others, our “primary and first task is to ask the appropriate historical questions about the New Testament text and what the ancient authors had in mind” (6d). While we may assume that the writers of the documents in the New Testament are like us in terms of human nature, they are significantly not like us “in terms of the cultural interpretation of human nature.”^[5] They were raised (enculturated) in a foreign cultural matrix, with a cultural script much different from our own.

1.5. For example, Witherington asks what Paul, as one of these ancient authors, hoped to accomplish when writing his masterful letter to Philemon, the legal owner of the man Onesimus. What action was Paul so eager to persuade Philemon to take? Witherington’s approach leads him to begin his answer by illuminating appropriately the first-century cultural context of that brief communication. Witherington rightly warns the considerate reader that “what might well appear manipulative in one cultural setting might appear quite normal and appropriate in another” (222). Indeed, Witherington concludes: “What I would stress is that everything Paul does in this letter is completely normal and accepted practice in his age” (223) – and I would add, especially normal in communication between two strong males.

1.6. Those commentators who accuse Paul of displaying high-handedness and emotional arm-twisting in dealing with Philemon simply reveal their ignorance of the pertinent rhetorical conventions. On the other hand, those readers who gain a solid knowledge of ancient Mediterranean rhetoric should find it easy and illuminating to agree with Witherington in this regard. Indeed, in my judgment, this one example by itself should lead the competent reader to conclude that such culturally-sensitive analysis is absolutely essential for avoiding anachronistic and contextless reading and interpretation of all the New Testament documents.

1.7.      Furthermore, if you have developed a rich awareness of the social and legal context of these few, potent sentences, as Witherington has done, as well as become sensitive to the rhetorical conventions he describes, I will be surprised if you then do not agree with him (and with me) that “Philemon is a short piece of rhetoric meant to put pressure on Philemon to set Onesimus, the slave, free,” (223), that is, to manumit Onesimus and make him both Philemon’s freedman in legal terms and his new “brother in Christ” in God’s eyes. In part two, when discussing the overwhelming significance of honor and shame values, I’ll return briefly to this letter to propose a further insight into how Paul sought to persuade Philemon to deal with the Onesimus-situation.

PART TWO: Why I am not persuaded that rhetorical analysis as presented in this book explains why the content of the early Christian documents was so powerfully persuasive.

2.1. When I came to the section in this book titled “Beyond the Basics–Cultural Scripts and Ancient Persuasion” (16-19), my heart lifted in anticipation of Witherington’s elaborating in some detail on the third component in persuasive communication beyond logos and pathos, namely ethos. But my hopes were frustrated. To be sure, Witherington rightly emphasizes the importance of grasping the profoundly collectivist character of ancient Mediterranean culture, in which the individualism that we so highly prize in our own culture is suppressed for the sake of family honor and group loyalty (17).

2.2. Yet, I could not agree that Paul is uncritically embracing this perspective when he regularly refers to “you” in the plural form (“y’all”) and stresses the priority of the participation in “one body in Christ.” Rather, the controversial and “unnatural” unity Paul has in mind is created by God’s Spirit as community-forming power. And it is the fruit of his Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control – that make possible living in reconciled human relationships characterized by agape-love (Gal. 5:22-23).

2.3. Witherington continues by pointing out the critical importance of our understanding how patron-client relations worked (in what I inelegantly call the “suck up” system, all the way up to the emperor) in an economy far different from our own so-called free market and meritocracy. And Witherington rightly calls our attention to how radically different and strange Paul’s message of God’s free gift of salvation had to sound to his hearers in such a context. Paul’s hearers had been raised to think of their divinities in terms of quid pro quo. Witherington then writes: “It surely must have been a hard sell in many quarters, requiring considerable rhetoric to persuade” (18).

2.4. Perhaps Witherington assumes here that his own readers would automatically focus on the ethos-aspect of rhetoric, but I do not think that such an insight would ever spontaneously occur to persons raised in Euro-American culture. Three pages earlier, Witherington observed that “ethos was all about establishing the speaker’s character and making clear he was trustworthy and believable” (15). So it is precisely here when Witherington calls attention to the tough rhetorical situation^[6] Paul faced that I hoped to find an emphasis on the decisive importance of Paul’s own engaging behavior for his ability to speak and write persuasively against the grain of powerfully resistant traditional values (15).

2.5. Witherington notes that “lots of things could affect one’s ethos,” a speaker’s or writer’s believability. I had hoped, then, that he would emphasize the fact that the counter-cultural content of so much of early Christian teaching put special pressure on its evangelists and teachers to behave in ways that appealingly demonstrated and convincingly clarified the meaning of their message. In short, in Witherington’s introduction to New Testament rhetoric, he pays insufficient attention to the “rhetorical situation,” as one in which a primary barrier to effective communication was the Christ-followers’ major criticism of the dominant cultural values and social codes in the early Roman Empire.

2.6.  For example, why did anyone pay attention to Paul’s sentences, especially when he used words such as “honor,” “brothers and sisters,” “spiritual power” and even the word for “God” in ways that pushed so provocatively against the grain of the dominant Greco-Roman cultural values and social codes that had shaped the lives, thinking, and behavior of his converts until they met Paul? Did not Paul put his own credibility on the line with every word he spoke, with every sentence he wrote, not least when he then exhorted the Christ-followers in Corinth: “imitate me, as I imitate Christ” (1 Cor. 11:1; see 4:15-16)?

2.7. Did Paul not frequently refer to his own behavior as the persuasive motivator of the actions his exhortations intended to effect? Remember, for example, that Paul included himself in his overturning of conventional wisdom and social practice, when he wrote: “We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves” (Rom. 15:1), basing his reversal of values on the fact that “Christ did not please himself” (15:3). Paul points out to the Corinthians that he “did not come [to them] with eloquence or human wisdom” as behavior to illustrate his claim that “God chose the foolish things of the world” (1 Cor. 2:1, 1:25). Then seeking to encourage imitation of his actions, Paul writes “when we are cursed, we bless, when we are persecuted, we endure it; when we are slandered we answer kindly” (1 Cor. 4:12-13).

2.8. Later Paul calls attention to his credentials in Christ – “Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord” (1 Cor. 9:1) –  precisely in order to emphasize his amazingly humble statements that follow: “Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible” (9:19) and “I try to please everyone in every way. For I am not seeking my own good but the good of many, so that they may be saved. Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ” (10:33-11:1). He continues to persuade by his own example: “I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you. But in the assembly I would rather speak five intelligible words to instruct others than ten thousand words in a tongue. [So] “brothers and sisters, stop thinking like children!” (1 Cor. 14:18-20).

2.9. With such passages as these in mind, Brian Dodd, the author of Paul’s Paradigmatic “I”: Personal Example as Literary Strategy (1999) finally comes to the following firm conclusion: Paul’s personal example was “intrinsic to Paul’s leadership and literary style.”^[7] Dodd then notes what would seem to be a truism: “all who follow expect those who lead to embody the values they represent and proclaim” (238). To this obvious observation I add that the pressure on such leaders, then as now, to “embody the values they represent” increases directly with the intensity of their challenging and undermining the currently dominant cultural values and the related social codes.

2.10.  Lastly in this section on cultural scripts, Witherington reminds us about the overwhelming importance of our understanding that for everyone born into the world of Jesus and Paul achieving honor and avoiding shame at all costs was the chief goal of life (18). For this reason, it is impossible to overestimate the power of these dominant cultural values in shaping human behavior. Males especially sought to dominate every human encounter outside one’s family and close friends, and retaliation and revenge were the only honorable responses to insults and humiliation. Since generally in our culture we think that money is far more important than honor and the concept of shame seems to have disappeared from our consciousness if not also from our vocabulary, Witherington could have (and in my judgment, should have) spent far more than half a page in discussing these values and the consequent social codes. In light of the fact that he rarely incorporates honor concerns into any of his chapters dealing with the biblical documents, I am puzzled by his decision to bring up the topic in this book.

2.11. In any case, I add to the good contexting that Witherington has done of Paul’s Letter to Philemon by suggesting that when Paul writes that if Onesimus owes Philemon anything (which he clearly does), he, Paul, will cover the amount, Paul is not making a straightforward promise but rather intends to shame Philemon into forgiving Onesimus. In effect, Paul states, “if  you, Philemon, are so small, after I’ve praised you so highly for your generosity, that you will not absorb this loss, then I will do so.” And to this challenge to Philemon’s honor  Paul adds “And don’t forget that you owe your new life in Christ to me.”

2.12. In all this, the key concept here is context, as Witherington rightly emphasizes. What I am proposing, however, is what could be called deep contexting, by which I mean extending one’s historical knowledge and exegetical practice to include a rich awareness of the dominant cultural values and social codes that profoundly informed all communication in the world of the early Christ-followers. The appealing behavior of the New Testament writers in their Holy Spirit-formed communities – their characteristic ethos – was the foundation of their persuasiveness, not their right words as such.

PART THREE:  how a serious and expanded consideration of the “ethos” aspect of rhetorical analysis can help us grasp a more complex and convincing relationship between the behavior, that is the ethos, of the speakers and writers in the New Testament and their persuasive creation of innovative and controversial associations among familiar concepts such as honor, shame, kinship, purity and patronage.

3.1. As I have sought to understand the ethos-aspect of early Christian communication that so strongly challenged and pushed against the grain of the dominant culture, the work of the socio-linguist, Alan Millar, in the department of philosophy of Stirling University in Scotland, has been quite helpful. John Riches introduced his work to me in his very stimulating book, Jesus and the Transformation of Judaism (Seabury Press, 1982). Following Millar, Riches asks the questions: “How is it possible to say new things in a particular given language? How does language change and grow? How do we take account of this in interpreting the utterances of figures in the past?” (viii).

3.2. Then Riches carefully distinguishes between knowledge of a person’s utterances (an act of speech or writing) and our understanding of what the person intended to say. Riches then asserts that “the central task of interpretation is to make the transition from knowledge of what is uttered to knowledge of what is said” (29). A speaker’s or writer’s utterances express both the sense of the words and an indication of the effects on the hearers and readers which the speaker intends. Examples of such intended effects include the audience’s coming to believe something, or to feel something, or to do something (30).

3.3. To make the move from what was uttered to understanding what was said or written requires first that we understand not only the conventional meanings of individual words and their relationship to each other in the broad cultural context of the speaker/writer but also the conventional associations these words have outside a specific sentence as they are used in other sentences within a given language. Genuinely new ideas can be expressed and new actions generated thereby as the speaker/writer brings together two factors: 1) the cancelling of conventional associations of words and then linking them with unfamiliar, perhaps puzzling and offensive associations; 2) the physical circumstances and actions/behavior of the speaker.

3.4.  In short, the words and sentences help define the new unconventional behavior, and the striking and perhaps strangely appealing behavior clarifies what may be ambiguous in the unfamiliar associations of words in these new sentences. The behavior, that is the ethos, demonstrates and verifies the meaning of these sentences. This means, as I see it, that in-depth consideration of the ethos and behavior of the speakers and writers whom we meet in the New Testament is absolutely essential to understanding the cutting-edge of their message.^[8] This emphasis on behavior is supported by the classical scholar E.R. Dodds who concluded his 1963 Wiles Lectures in Belfast with these words: “Christians were in a more than formal sense ‘members one of another’: I think that was a major cause, perhaps the strongest single cause, of the spread of Christianity.”

3.5. Here is one example of what can be gained by taking such an approach. In Romans 12:10 Paul begins his exhortation by urging the brothers and sisters to outdo each other (a competitive attitude hammered into them since childhood) but not in seeking honor (as they had been taught to do) but rather in “taking the lead in giving honor to each other.”^[9] Paul had made such a striking reversal of cultural values thinkable and doable by his own treatment of his converts.

3.6. Consider one more example of how my emphasis on ethos can help us read with greater understanding, namely, Luke’s well-known summary passage in Acts 4:32-35 that begins with “all the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own.” In vs. 33 we read: “with great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and [God’s] great favor was upon then all.”

3.6.1. Before I quote vs. 34, note carefully that by ignoring a critically important word at the beginning of vs. 34 most English translations of these four sentences give the reader the impression that this is a list of important, yet only loosely related, activities in the life of the early Christ-followers in Jerusalem. The reader of the Greek original, however, immediately sees the causal link between vs. 33 and vs. 34, because the second word in vs. 34 is “γαρ” = a causal conjunction that introduces the reason or cause of the immediately prior statement. So a correct translation of vs. 34 should read: “For there was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them, and brought the proceeds of what was sold . (35) They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.” The credibility, the ethos, of the apostles’ preaching that God had raised Jesus from the dead was based on their living with each other as a resurrection-community, that is as people who were convinced that Jesus’ teaching about sharing was God’s will, which God had confirmed by raising Jesus from the dead.[10]

3.6.2. In the English translations of other New Testament passages, “γαρ” is regularly translated “for,” as indeed it is when this word appears a second time later in vs. 34 itself! It is the first “for” that is absent from almost all English translations of vs. 34.[11]

3.6. 3. There are two English translations known to me that render the verse correctly: the NASB: “For there was not a needy person among them, for all who were owners . . . ,” and the NEB: “For they had never a needy person among them, because all who had property . . .”[12] The reader of these translations sees a faithful presentation of the meaning of the Greek text which states an intrinsic connection between the ethos, that is, the character and behavior, of the Christ-followers in Jerusalem, and their powerful and persuasive testifying to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus (vs. 33).  These translations rightly stress the essential connection between the appealing behavior that both made believable these Christ-followers’ claim that God had raised Jesus from the dead and demonstrated the “great favor” granted them by God.^[13] That is, the “one-heart-and-mind” manner of these believers in sharing with each other made plausible and persuasive in Jerusalem their claim to be God’s Spirit-filled people.^[14] In short, if these Christ-followers had not been treating each other in ways that met their economic and social needs, as Jesus had taught, their claim that they were following the person whom God had raised from the dead would have lacked the necessary credibility and persuasiveness, the requisite rhetorical ethos .

CONCLUSION

As all historians are aware, the reading of any sentence, paragraph, and document outside of its original context is prone to anachronistic and ethnocentric distortions. This problem becomes especially acute with far reaching results when the text in question is regarded as a sacred text, when–as in the case of the writings of the New Testament– the words of a human being become regarded as the Word of God. For as revelation from God, the words are assumed to be eternally true, severed from the limitations of time and space — and thus of culture. As divine words, their vulnerability to being read in accord with the changing cultural values and social scripts of various readers through the centuries has had enormously wide-ranging social and psychological effects – and too often for the worse.

Thus an irony: The more that words are believed to have an unchangeable meaning, the more vulnerable they are to distortion of their original intent. Ben Witherington calls us to a deeper appreciation of how early Christian speakers and writers employed and modified the forms of ancient rhetoric to communicate their life-giving message. I am truly grateful for his persuasive invitation. Now I await his next book in which he emphasizes the critical importance of the ethos of these Christ-followers for making their words and sentences appealing, believable, and persuasive. Or perhaps he has already. According to the blurb for his recent book, The Indelible Image: the Theological and Ethical Thought World of the New Testament, Vol. 1 (IVP, 2009), Ben Witherington stresses that “behavior affects and reinforces or undoes belief.”

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^[1] See, e.g., his Conflict and Community in Corinth (Eerdmans, 1995), The Acts of the Apostles (Eerdmans, 1998), The Gospel of Mark (Eerdmans, 2001), Paul’s Letter to the Romans (Eerdmans, 2004), Letters and Homilies for Hellenized Christians: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on Titus, 1-2Timothy and 1-3 John, Vol. 1 (Intervarsity Press, 2006), Philemon, Colossians and Ephesians (Eerdmans 2007), and Paul’s Letter to the Philippians (Eerdmans, forthcoming Sept. 2011). Also note his What’s in the Word: Rethinking the Socio-Rhetorical Character of the New Testament (Baylor University Press, 2009).

^[2] As Bruce J. Malina observes: “The words we use do in fact embody meaning, but the meaning does not come from the words. Meaning inevitably derives from the general social system of the speakers of a language. What one says and what one means to say can thus often be quite different, especially for persons not sharing the same social system.” See Malina’s New Testament World: Insights for Cultural Anthropology, 3^rd edition (Westminster John Knox Press, 2001) 1-2. It is the general symbol system of any society that conveys the dominant cultural values and social codes that authority figures so profoundly ingrain in children that when they grow up they take these values and the related codes entirely for granted as normal.

^[3] Conflict and Identity: The Social Setting of Paul’s Letter (Fortress, 2003) 17.

^[4] For a useful definition of “culture,” see Clyde Kluckhohn and A. L. Kroeber: “Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievement of human groups, including their embodiments in artifacts: the essential core of culture consists of traditional (i.e., historically derived and selected) ideas and especially their attached values.” Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions (Harvard Peabody Museum, 1952) 181.

^[5] Malina, NT World, 9.

^[6] For an illuminating discussion of this concept, see Lloyd F. Bitzer, “The Rhetorical Situation,” in Philosophy and Rhetoric 1 (1968) 1-14.

^[7] JSNT Supplement 177 (Sheffield Academic Press, 1999) 238.

^[8] E.R Dodds, Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety (Cambridge University Press, 1965) 138.

^[9] For the exegesis in support of this translation, with the emphasis on “going first in giving honor,” see Robert Jewett, Romans: A Commentary (Hermeneia Series) (Fortress, 2007) 761.

[10] See the mandate regarding those in need stated in Deut. 15:7: “If there is among you anyone in need, a member of your community in any of your towns within the land that the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor. You should rather open your hand . . .”

[11] See, e.g., NRSV: “There was not a needy person among them, for as many . . .” RSV: “There was not a needy person among them, for as many . . .” NIV: “There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time . . .” NAB: “There was no needy person among them, for those who owned property . . .” Contemporary English Version: “And no one went in need of anything. Everyone who owned land . . .” KJV: “Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors . . .” The TNIV offers an innovative rendering that also obscures the direct causal connection between behavior and credibility, beginning the sentence in vs. 33: “And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all (34) that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time . . .”

[12] The Latin Vulgate is also correct: “Neque enim quisquam egens erat inter illos. Quotquot enim possessors  . . .”

^[13] Note that Witherington overlooks these causal connections and the a-b-a structure of this passage. Instead, in his socio-rhetorical commentary on The Acts of the Apostles (Eerdmans, 1998) 207, Witherington comments that vs. 33 has been seen as something of an insertion into a summary about property, citing approvingly Luke Timothy Johnson’s conclusion that Luke’s intent is to place the apostles in the middle of the community’s life to begin to indicate the relation of authority to property (cf. Acts 6:1-6) and that vs. 33 “prepares us for the remark in vv. 35-36 about laying funds at the apostles feet.”

^[14] Acts 4:32 and 34-35 which surround vs. 33 in an inclusio-form display Luke’s repeated emphasis (see also 2:42-47) on the integral connection between the behavior of the early Christians, whose lives had been transformed to share possessions with each other, and the persuasiveness of the Christian message of Jesus’ resurrection, which created the basis for such a striking behavioral change. See my “Divine Power, Community Formation, and Leadership in the Acts of the Apostles,” in Community Formation in the Early Church and Today, ed. Richard N. Longenecker (Hendrickson Publishers, 2002) 89-104.

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Here is my response to his response.  Basically, I think he is correct, except that I was not trying to write a handbook on socio-rhetorical criticism in general.  This book just focuses on the rhetorical side of the equation.

In his helpful critique,  Scot Bartchy quite rightly says that I did not give enough attention to the ethos issue in this little book.  I entirely agree with him.  One of the things I struggled with in writing this book is how much of the socio- side of socio-rhetorical should I bring into this discussion, since I deal with both in all my commentaries.   It was a judgment call, and with hindsight I think Scot is right— I should have said more.  Thus far, this textbook has been used in classes where my commentaries are also used,  so  I had trusted that the socio- side of things would be more adequately treated when they got to the commentary proper.    Honestly, my own students have found that dealing with all the new but basic info about  Greco-Roman rhetoric including issues of invention and arrangement and not just micro-rhetoric,  overwhelming enough, especially when they learn that Paul’s letters are actually more like speeches,  that perhaps my judgment to leave the social context issues more to other books was not a bad idea.     Still,  Scot is right that understanding the tight social networks in early Christianity, and the tendencies to close bonding in that whole culture are keys to understanding why Christianity persuaded so many people.    Call it peer pressure if you like,  but in the first century if people who were your patrons, or parents or close friends  became Christians, there was already considerable social pressure to go and do likewise in that collectivist culture.   Besides all this, who doesn’t want to be loved and appreciated, and as Gerd Theissen pointed out years ago,  the love ethic of Christians and their familial approach to one another likely drew many to Christ and his church.

Some of the more colorful and interesting artifacts in the Getty museum fall under the category of grave art.  First of all we have here three sarcophagus top paintings of the persons interred, of course looking much better than they did under the lid.   This type of art was found in Egypt during the Roman period, and the bearded man’s portrait was found on a sarcophagus in Er-Rubyat  (A.D. 140-60). The second portrait is of a youth with a Horus lock (note the two tufts on the otherwise shaved front of his head, with the Horus lock at the back of the portrait). Children named after the god Horus got this sort of haircut, and notice the amulet around his neck, meant to ward off harm.   These paintings were done using the encaustic technique and after death they would be placed over the face of the departed and then bound into the line body wrappings.

The finest and most elaborate of these grave portraits is the third one is of a woman named Isadora from about 100 A.D. or so. What is notable about these portraits is they represent the cross fertilization of Roman and Egyptian cultures and ideals.  Egypt had long since become a Roman province thanks to Julius Caesar and his successors.   The province was a crucial one for it was the breadbasket of the whole Mediterranean, and so there was a very significant Roman presence in Egypt from Caesar’s time onwards, in order to protect this asset.  Of course the story of Caesar and Cleopatra and Marc Antony and Cleopatra is familiar.

Egyptians of course had a much more elaborate and positive set of afterlife beliefs than the Romans, and these portraits were not just memorials, for it was believed that mummy portrait helped the person survive death in physical form by providing a sort of substitute body for the spirit of the departed to inhabit should the corpse itself be destroyed or crumble into dust.   The third picture is of a socially elite and refined woman.  Her name is painted on the left side of the image.   This is what a Roman matron was supposed to look like, and you will notice all her gold jewelry. This is a wealthy family.  The Egyptians, it will be remembered, believed you could ‘take it with you’ and so they were buried with their bling, and other things.

Marble sarcophagi could also be elaborately decorated as the example below demonstrates.   Normally mythological images and cupids abound in such grave art, sometimes even masks for tragedy and comedy from the theatre if the person had been an actor or playwright.

The two marble images at the bottom of this post are noteworthy as grave art.  My personal favorite is the one at the very bottom which depicts  Publius  Curtilius the freedman of  Publius the silversmith  (A.D. 1-25).  This man is depicted as an older man holding the tools of his trade, a chaser tool in one hand and what’s left of a mallet in the other, and perhaps a silver object beneath his right hand.  He proudly wears his formal toga.  These funerary tributes often lined the Via Appia and other major roads where there were graveyards.   It tells us a lot about Roman values that a person would wanted to be represented on his grave stele by indicating the profession he proudly undertook. ‘You are what you do’ seems to be the message,  one Americans would readily recognize.

There is an interesting article in a recent issue of the NY Times about the International House of Prayer in Kansas City.

For the record, I also have some reservations about the teaching of Mike Bickle.  My observation is that he himself needs more theological education than he has had.  His eschatology is not fully Biblical,  and he is given to making pronouncements about the return of Christ and its timing when in fact no one knows when Christ will return, and as Jesus says in Acts 1, it is not for us to know the times and seasons of such things.

I have no problems with the affirmation of the gift of speaking in tongues, but there seems to be some misunderstandings about how Biblical prophecy actually works and should be interpreted.   While I certainly agree that God can powerfully use our prayers to accomplish various things,  sometimes an almost magical view of prayer seems to be suggested, as if it were some kind of genie’s lamp one can rub and produce result, if we only have enough faith.

My own students who have spent time at IHOP have often given positive testimonials about their time there, but at the same time, some of the things they told me about the teachings about demons, among other things, gave me pause.  Of even more concern was the over-emphasis on emotions and emotionalism as if that were the essence of our relationship with God.   Some of this of course is common enough in Pentecostal religion in general,  and despite what the article seems to suggest, I do not see evidence of cultic practices or mind control at IHOP, so far as what has been reported to me by my students.   What I would however like to see is the leadership at IHOP getting some better and more in depth training in the Bible in the original languages, especially perhaps the prophetic and eschatological material in the Bible.  But perhaps that will yet happen.

Nope, that is not the original manuscript of the King James Bible.  It’s in fact an early Greek manuscript of part of the NT.  The Bible of course was written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, and the Bible in any other language is frankly just a translation, some better, some worse, but still just a translation.   You know the old saying— ‘something gets lost in translation’. That is especially true when we are dealing with a language as different from Biblical languages as English is.   Every translation is already an interpretation because scholars had to decide which of a variety of English words and phrases most nearly and accurately represents what the original text meant as well as said.  And of course in many cases there are no exact equivalent terms.  For example,  there are five or so Greek words for different kinds of love.  In English we just have the word love.   Or take the word kingdom.  In English it always seems to connote a place or at least it is a noun.   But the Aramaic term malkuta  like the Greek Basileia can have either a verbal or a noun sense,  which is why I prefer the translation ‘dominion’   since in English we can talk about having dominion over someone (a verbal sense)  or visiting a dominion ( a noun sense).

With this prolegomena,  it is appropriate since there are all sorts of celebrations large and little of the 400 anniversary of the publishing of the King James Bible in 1611, to ask what we should think of this landmark work, this many years later.   Mark Noll in a lead article in the last issue of CT tells some of the historical tale about the King James Version.   First of all, it is not a translation done by good King James.   It was done by a translation team of scholars from Oxford and Cambridge, and based on the best original language manuscripts they could muster.  And sometimes they were so poor, that the Latin manuscripts were in fact closer to the original than the Greek and Hebrew manuscripts they had to go on.   A translation is only as good as the Biblical manuscripts one has to use as a basis for translation.   And frankly today we are much closer to the original language texts of the Bible than we were in 1611.  We have earlier and better manuscripts to go on, and lots more of them.  For example,  we have about 5,000 whole or partial manuscripts of the Greek NT some going back to the second century A.D.  Lancelot Andrewes and his team of translators in 1611 had no such luxury.   And further they lived in an age before modern textual analysis and reassembling of original readings of a text done in a scholar way.

The history of the English Bible is of course a story in itself, but what we need to know about the KJV is it was not even the most popular translation in its own day, and for about 50 years there after. The Protestant Geneva Bible was more popular and with Catholics  the Douay Rheims Bible was the translation of choice.   Even so, as Alistair McGrath demonstrates at length in his wonderful review of the history of the KJV entitled In the Beginning…. the KJV was not intended to be an entirely original new or fresh translation. To the contrary, the King had said they needed to follow closer prior well known translations, such as the Tyndale Bible and even Wycliffe’s translation, as well as the Geneva Bible.  BTW, it was not the KJV that the Pilgrims tended to bring to America and first use— that was the Geneva Bible for the most part.   Many of them were ‘Geneva Bible only’  kind of folk.   One of the more startling things I discovered when studying Tyndale’s wonderful translation is that many of the famous memorable translation turns of phrase like ‘by the skin of one’s teeth’  or ‘apple of his eye’  or ‘the quick and the dead’ and the like were in Tyndale’s translation and were simply taken over by the KJV translators, which again, were not tasked with creating a completely new translation into English.   Indeed, King James had a political motivation for having the new translation done.  The Geneva Bible, especially in its notes,  seemed to question the notion of the ‘divine right of kings’  to rule.   King James was having none of that.  Politics and religion were all intertwined when the KJV was produced.  We need to understand that some 140 editions (not reprints, editions) of the Geneva Bible had been undertaken between 1544 and 1610.   It was hard to stem the tide of this popular Bible with Protestants.   As Noll chronicles, it was at least 150 years after 1611 when people began to really extol the literary merits of the KJV and even longer before it became the go to translation of Protestants in America.    Indeed one can say that it is really part of the religious history of America in the 19th and 20th centuries that made the KJV as enormously popular as it has become.   King James might well be gratified, but he would be equally surprised.

The KJV of course became the Bible of Presidents in the 19th and 2oth centuries.  Lincoln quoted it liberally during the Civil War, and it was no accident that President Obama chose Lincoln’s own KJV Bible to be sworn in on when he became President.   The New KJV is of course an updating of the KJV eliminating a good deal of the archaic verbage,  but not eliminating many of the questionable textual decisions that with the benefit of many more manuscripts and much more knowledge we shouldn’t be following any more.  For example, the case for maintaining Mark 16.9ff. as an original part of the Gospel of Mark as Mark originally wrote it is not merely weak,  it is frankly  fatally flawed in many ways  (sorry Kentucky snake handlers and poison drinkers).   The so-called long ending of Mark is at best a second century A.D. addendum meant to round out that Gospel properly.   And there is the even bigger problem that when the overarching guiding principle of a translation is not doing a fresh new translation, but being faithful to a now outdated old one,  we already have a problem.   Translators are of course notably conservative by nature.  They tend to follow the examples of translations that have come before.   But when you do that, how will anyone ever know that Hebrews 12. 2 does not say Jesus is the author and finisher  of ‘our’ faith. The word ‘our’ is in no Greek manuscript.  Or how will one learn that the earliest text of Phil. 2.4 does not say ‘look not only to your own interests but also to that of others’  but rather ‘look not to your own interests but rather to the interests of others’.    The answer is no one dependent on English translations that are that tradition bound is likely to ever know the original wording of such verses.  They are stuck in the King James spin cycle and can’t get out.

One might conclude, ye verily,  that I have some ax to grind against the KJV and the NKJV  (which still tends to follow the Western Text and Majority text in ways that don’t amount to sound text criticism) but in fact, I am thankful for any translation that has done as much good for lives Christian and otherwise as the KJV has done.   It has not only shaped English diction in ways that have enriched the language,  it has formed many generations of Christians with memorable and memorizable forms of verses that one keeps in one’s heart forever.     Still to this day,  whenever I am called upon the recite John 3.16  there is a ‘whosoever believeth’ that tends to come out of my mouth.   If you like Shakespearean and 17th and 18th century English from an aesthetic point of view,  it is not surprising you like the KJV.

Lancelot Andrewes and his team were not infallible translators, and no English translation should be baptized and called perfect,  but it was a very good translation for its day considering the state of Biblical scholarship and knowledge of available original language manuscripts in 1611.    If the measure of the worth of something is the impact it has had for good on human lives,  there has hardly been a book that has had more impact on the world since 1611 than the KJV Bible.

So here is where we tip our hats to old King James.  He could never have realized what an impact he would have on the world in a Christian and Biblical way when he tried to have an antidote to the Geneva Bible produced.   He was neither the author nor the authorizer of this translation in the broader sense,  but he was certainly the instigator.   We still have much to appreciate about what his translation team accomplished.