2017-10-04T21:39:23-05:00

Ishtar Gate 2Jeremiah was a prophet in Jerusalem at the time leading up to the Babylonian captivity. He was freed from confinement by King Nebuchadnezzar and recorded the troubling reactions of the people of Judah during this cataclysmic event. Jeremiah 18:1-12 is a troublesome passage for many interpreters. Walter Moberly in Old Testament Theology: Reading the Hebrew Bible as Christian Scripture refers to this passage as “the passage whereby all other depictions of divine repentance elsewhere should be understood, when one is reading the Old Testament as canonical scripture.” (p. 116)

First the text (NIV):

This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: “Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.” So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him. (v. 1-4)

Then the word of the Lord came to me. He said, “Can I not do with you, Israel, as this potter does?” declares the Lord. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, Israel. (v. 5-6)

Perhaps this passage is also the one by which we should judge other references to God as potter as well. After noting that the passage refers to Israel, i.e. God’s chosen people as a whole, not simply to Judah and Jerusalem where Jeremiah spoke, Moberly continues:

The imagery is also striking. For if a potter’s ability to do with the clay as he wishes (v. 4) illustrates the power of the maker over that which is made, then such imagery applied to God (v. 6) intrinsically symbolizes divine power. The imagery is not that of interpersonal relationships, which is the predominant biblical idiom for depicting God and Israel; king and subjects, master and slave, husband and wife, father and son are perhaps the most common images. … But with a limp of clay a potter has no relationship or responsibilities – it is an object to be used and shaped at will. When applied to God, therefore, the imagery of potter (yōtsēr) does not evoke mutuality, but rather unilateral power. (p. 116-117)

This imagery makes the sequel surprising. The next several verses do not depict divine power, “but rather divine contingency and responsiveness.”

If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. And if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it. (v. 7-10)

Lions along the way into the Ishtar GateThe incongruity has led some to suggest that distinct passages have been placed together by some (careless) editor. But this isn’t adequate, certainly not if we read the Old Testament as scripture. The text as received is intended to convey meaning, whether edited from sources or a unified original composition. In fact, the reference to God as potter and God’s relationship with his people are not contradictory ideas.

A fundamental presupposition within 18:7-10, therefore, is that God’s relationship with people is a genuine relationship because it is responsive. The relationship between God and people is characterized by a dynamic similar to that of relationships between people: they are necessarily mutual, and they can both grow and wither. How people respond to God matters to God, and affects how God responds to people. (p. 120-121)

Moberly notes that this isn’t an equal relationship, and the way in which God repents or changes is not the same as the way in which people are called to change. This is reflected in the words used. Humans turn/repent (shūv) while God “repents” (niḥam). The NIV reflects this using relent and reconsider for the action of God. The NRSV favored by Moberly uses “change mind” but none of these really seem to capture the meaning completely. Moberly suggests that rescind, revoke, repeal, or retract may capture the meaning more closely.

This leads to three points:

First, In this passage God, the potter, commits Himself to responsive action. “Divine power is exercised not arbitrarily, but responsibly and responsively, interacting with the moral, or immoral, actions of human beings.” (p. 123)

Auroch on the Ishtar GateSecond, a skilled potter, like any artist, is responsive to the material, in this case clay, which is worked.

This enables one readily to read, or perhaps rather reread, verses 7-10 as depicting an interaction between potter and clay; the initial imagery of the potter’s power can be complemented by thoughts of his responsiveness. Correspondingly, those identified as clay should think of themselves not as helpless objects dependent solely upon the decisions of the potter, but rather as able to make some difference to him. Since the potter’s decisions about what to do depends on the quality of the clay, the point becomes clear: “Let the vessel therefore make sure it is worth keeping.” (p. 123)

Third, verses 7-10 are not specific to Israel. “God’s dealings with Israel and with others, the elect and the non-elect, do not differ. The dynamics of responsiveness and contingency apply alike to all.” (p. 123)

I rather suspect that Paul has this imagery in mind when he uses the example of God as potter in Romans 9. The image of God as potter is coupled with the image of a God in relationship. The passage in Jeremiah continues:

“Now therefore say to the people of Judah and those living in Jerusalem, ‘This is what the Lord says: Look! I am preparing a disaster for you and devising a plan against you. So turn from your evil ways, each one of you, and reform your ways and your actions.’

But they will reply, ‘It’s no use. We will continue with our own plans; we will all follow the stubbornness of our evil hearts.’” (v. 11-12)

Dragon on the Ishtar GateThe NRSV makes the connection between v. 11-12 and v. 1-6 more explicit.

Now, therefore, say to the people of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: Thus says the Lord: Look, I am a potter shaping evil against you and devising a plan against you. Turn now, all of you from your evil way, and amend your ways and your doings.

The people are warned to repent, YHWH is fashioning disaster against them and will use the might of Nebuchadnezzar and Babylon to bring this about. Yet the people will refuse. They are refusing as Jeremiah speaks, time and time again.

In the next section of this chapter Moberly turns to passages where God’s repentance (niḥam) is denied as a matter of theological principle. But this discussion of Jeremiah is worth our focus today.

Does this reading of the responsive potter change your view?

Is the imagery of God as potter consistent with the image of God as responsive to human action?

The images in this post are of Nebuchadnezzar’s Ishtar Gate, built around 575 BC, a smaller but impressive portion of which has been reconstructed in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. They are but marginally related to the post – but God used Nebuchadnezzar, and he held the king of Babylon and his people responsible for their actions.

If you wish to contact me directly, you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net

If interested you can subscribe to a full text feed of my posts at Musings on Science and Theology.

A lightly edited repost.

2017-10-06T09:20:18-05:00

Screen Shot 2017-04-18 at 5.35.23 PMThe question about divine genocide arises when one reads specific Old Testament texts about the wiping out of the Canaanites in the conquest of the Land after the exodus and wanderings. Here are some examples:

Josh. 11:12 And all the towns of those kings, and all their kings, Joshua took, and struck them with the edge of the sword, utterly destroying them, as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded.

Josh. 11:15 As the Lord had commanded his servant Moses, so Moses commanded Joshua, and so Joshua did; he left nothing undone of all that the Lord had commanded Moses.

Josh. 11:20 For it was the LORD’s doing to harden their hearts so that they would come against Israel in battle, in order that they might be utterly destroyed, and might receive no mercy, but be exterminated, just as the Lord had commanded Moses.

Josh. 11:23 So Joshua took the whole land, according to all that the Lord had spoken to Moses; and Joshua gave it for an inheritance to Israel according to their tribal allotments. And the land had rest from war.

One who has explained and ultimately justified divine genocide is Paul Copan and a decisive, sustained refutation of Copan has been made by Greg Boyd in The Crucifixion of the Warrior God.

Genocide and ethnic cleansing, at accusations against the Bible and the God of the Bible, is considered by some to be too strong. Here is Boyd:

I fully empathize with Copan and other fellow Evangelicals who undoubtedly believe that attaching this label to a biblical portrait of God is irreverent. Given their conviction that these narratives accurately report what God actually told the Israelites to do, it is completely understandable that they would be averse to attaching this label to him. I stood in their shoes up until ten years ago. Yet, it now seems to me that to refrain from applying this label to a portrait of God in the Bible, when we would immediately do so for any similar portrait of a deity found outside the Bible, is disingenuous. Even worse, if we refrain from calling the Israelites’ slaughtering of entire populations “genocide,” we are implicitly admitting that wiping out entire populations in the name of God is sometimes, at least in principle, justified. And, as history clearly demonstrates, this opens the door for others to follow this horrific precedent if and when they feel “called by God” to annihilate a particular people-group. Hence, though I fully agree with Copan and other Evangelicals that this narrative is completely “Godbreathed,” I am nevertheless persuaded that we have a moral obligation to be consistent by admitting that the portrait of God giving the herem command is genocidal.

. Copan first notes that God is the author of life and thus has the right to determine how long any person is going to live.

Inasmuch as I agree with Copan that life is a gift from our Creator, I cannot dispute his claim that God is under no moral obligation to grant anyone another breath. But I submit that the important question is not over whether or not God has the right to take the lives of innocent children and infants; it is rather over whether or not God has the kind of character that would command his people to mercilessly take the lives of innocent children and infants.

we have to seriously ask ourselves if we can imagine Jesus, under any circumstances, commanding devotees to bludgeon untold numbers of infants and children. I, for one, cannot.

Hence, since I started this series on Boyd’s book, I contend that the problem is that some don’t think there’s a problem of dissonance or contradiction between what is ascribed to God in texts like those above and what we learn about God in the cruciform God of Jesus. That’s the problem.

Copan seems to get close to this cruciform solution at times, but Boyd contends this: “Copan simply has not adequately grasped the absolute nature of God’s self-revelation on the cross.” Diminishing the breadth and depth of herem destruction or the racism of some of these texts or the need to protect from idolatry or protect the people of God, in the end, are not convincing to Boyd. Nor does calling these texts “war bravado” or hyperbole or exaggeration; yes, not all were killed but innocents, apparently lots of them, were killed because of a line of authority from Moses to Joshua to the armies.

The war bravado rhetorical theory won’t work for too many texts. Boyd:

I will again state that I fully empathize with Copan as he attempts to tackle the challenge he faces, and I believe he does as good a job as can be done, given his conviction that we must accept the surface meaning of the portraits of Yahweh in the conquest narrative. Yet, on the basis of the objections I have raised in this chapter, I find both lines of defense that he employs to justify the genocidal commands and practices found throughout the conquest narrative to be implausible. Yet, whether we interpret the violent portraits of God in the conquest narrative as depicting God commanding the literal slaughter of entire populations or as merely using “war bravado,” we still have not disclosed how these portraits bear witness to the nonviolent, self-sacrificial, enemy-embracing love of God revealed on Calvary, which is, for followers of Jesus, the most important hermeneutical task.

To rise to this challenge, what is required is not an ethical story but, as I have said, a cross-centered story of “what else is going on” when God is depicted as giving the herem command.

That, I am saying, is precisely the problem: Copan and those like him don’t sense the need to work these herem and conquest and destruction texts out with a cross-shaped hermeneutic.

2017-10-02T06:34:12-05:00

One of the most arresting challenges to Christian atonement theory — namely, that on a cross, which was a hideous instrument of violence, torture, and suffering — was that it was violent. If violent, if God is connected to it, if this, if that, then the cross is violent. If God is not violent, then God is not to be connected to the cross.

Screen Shot 2017-09-17 at 12.42.26 PMA number of scholars have taken direct aim at this theme, including Rene Girard, Hans Boersma, and Peter Laughlin. Once again, some don’t find violence even to be a problem while others do. For those who do, these three names will prove to be food for thought. So, too, Thomas Andrew Bennett’s new The Labor of God: The Agony of the Cross as the Birth of the Church.

[I put my hand to the atonement discussion in A Community called Atonement.]

In short, violence is converted into non-violent birth, suffering into joy, and his image is the mother’s pain in childbirth giving way to the utter joy of the mother over the birth of the child. We are dealing not with redemptive violence but the transformation of violence.

This approach is the freshest I’ve seen when it comes to the charge of violence.

“Cynthia Crysdale begins her theology of suffering by relating her experience of childbirth.” So Bennett begins his third chapter.

If labor is connected to birth, and if we are children of God, then divine labor is an image worth exploring. That the Bible does, too, unmasks us in our missing this theme in atonement theories. But childbirth, suffering and violence are tied into this.

This should seem jarring to us from a theological perspective because Crysdale has just argued not only that suffering can sometimes be a good—for we suppose that the Christian tradition could hardly dispute that notion—but that it is a necessary component of some kinds of good—one of which, if the cross is the labor of God, is atonement. Pain and injury to a woman’s body in childbirth are both essential to childbirth and, mysteriously, constitutive of the joy it engenders. In the face of much current atonement theology, then, Crysdale asserts that, yes, the violence of the cross is quite necessary, that God could not have “resurrection joy” without “crucifixion pain’ because the two are, in some strange way, “the same thing.”

But violence is undone, not justified;

Jesus is neither murdered child nor passive victim; instead, Jesus is the divine mother who willingly and capably bears the cost of spiritual birth.

It is not uncommon for academic theology to excoriate any notion that the violence of the cross is either necessary or good.

Many today are not convinced; the cross is violent and that connects God and violence. Not good, it is argued over and over and over.

Whatever we make of the historicity of this telling, as an anthropological critique of the logic of sacrifice it has been powerfully influential, and, given the New Testament’s proclivity to associate Jesus’ death with the sacrificial cult, it has opened the door to a number of theological critiques of the role of the cross in atonement.

Bennett, however, goes in another direction:

In the labor of the cross, God does not perpetrate or merely endure violence but instead transforms it into a generative act.

What is violence?

Violence properly defined, that is, understood in light of Christian ends, is something like harm that normally hinders or is intended to hinder Godward transformation. One s autonomy or one’s rational evaluation of goods—these have little to do with “bodily integrity.” Bodily integrity is something more like the ability of an individual or a community to mirror its eschatological self. Where this is hindered, violence; where it is respected, nonviolence. Abstracted from a theological context, “bodily integrity” self-deconstructs. If there is no ultimate end, no communion with the divine, no imago Dei to recover, then, and this is critical, violence is all in all. Absenting the theological telos renders every interaction necessarily coercive. The question is not whether coercion is present; the question is only whether it succeeds.

Again, God converts violence into non-violence.

We are presented with an interesting tension. Crucifixion is an unambiguously violent practice. It humiliates, denigrates, and reduces the crucified to nothing, robbing the victim first of dignity, then of life itself. Yet it would be hard to characterize the pain of labor and violence done to a woman’s body during the birth experience as “violent” according to our present scheme. Giving birth does not normally “hinder Godward transformation.” At least in Crysdale’s theological report, childbirth is a sacred experience, not unlike baptism or marriage. And this is why the labor metaphor has such power: despite what is happening at a historical level, at the theological level God is transforming human violence into nonviolence. Crucifixion (an inherently violent, damaging, degrading practice) becomes childbirth—a sacred, generative, and transforming kind of suffering. God takes human violence and overcomes it by enduring it.

At the cross, God turns violence into its opposite. God does not (or does not only) defang violence, expose it, or exhaust it. By enduring violence and producing new life from it, God-in-Christ converts it.

One of his important texts is Isaiah 42:13-17:

The Lord goes forth like a soldier,
like a warrior he stirs up his fury;
he cries out, he shouts aloud,
he shows himself mighty against his foes.
For a long time I have held my peace,
I have kept still and restrained myself;
now I will cry out like a woman in labor,
I will gasp and pant.
I will lay waste mountains and hills,
and dry up all their herbage;
I will turn the rivers into islands,
and dry up the pools.
I will lead the blind
by a road they do not know,
by paths they have not known
I will guide them.
I will turn the darkness before them into light,
the rough places into level ground.
These are the things I will do,
and I will not forsake them.
They shall be turned back and utterly put to shame—
those who trust in carved images,
who say to cast images,
“You are our gods.”

So, the themes of Girard and others and concern with violence are all brought into Bennett’s labor of God atonement theology and they are shifted into something they were not:

God’s labor is itself a transforming act: not unmasking scapegoating practices and naming victims, but instead simply converting a brutal human practice, crucifixion, into something that it is not and was never intended to be. The demonic powers sought murder, God allowed them to do it, and then God turned a murder into birth from above. Notice that God’s labor preserves the Girardian—and really we should include most species of Christus Victor—insistence that the fathers were right: the crucifixion was a trap laid for the forces of evil. The devil and the devil’s minions sow violence and reap nonviolence in a spectacular display of God’s generative and implacable power. This because they have put the wrong person on a cross. Rather than eliminating just another prophet, the powers have tried to execute the incarnate Word. If God chooses to make crucifixion childbirth, that is God’s prerogative; and if God’s prerogative thwarts the best laid plans of the enemy and bears a new, spiritual family, it is our place to marvel and to give thanks.

Suffering then is vital:

… in a world like the one God created, suffering is the cost of creating newness, and God does not excuse Godself from this experience. More plainly, if God is to give birth, then God will undergo labor just as women do. We have shown that this suffering is nonviolent—that in the present case it actually transforms violence into nonviolence—but it is nevertheless suffering.

Back to Crysdale and childbirth:

In a strange and wonderful way, we are able to claim that despite the best efforts of a demonic regime, the cross was no more “violent” than the hospital bed of a laboring woman. Bloody, long, and painful? Yes. But also saturated by the joy of new life. In this message the church can once again speak, and speak radically and therefore truly. Once again, from within and against neopagan cultures, the church offers the hope of a new way of being and of believing, once again offering a genuine invitation to respond, to be born again.

Reading through this chp I kept saying to myself, “Where sin and forgiveness?” The next chp takes them on.

2017-09-29T15:42:24-05:00

Screen Shot 2017-09-29 at 3.35.34 PMBy Ruth Tucker, based on her Katie Luther: The First Lady of the Reformation.

“A mighty fortress is my wife”

Last week I had a scheduled interview on Katie Luther with Época, Brazil’s most widely circulated news magazine. The questions Ruan Sousa asked were insightful, and as we were concluding he remarked that Luther might have used the title of his famous hymn, “A Mighty Fortress,” for Katie. I laughed with delight, and said, “Now why didn’t I think of that”? Of course, Mr. Sousa is a skilled professional journalist with an eye for catchy lines to summarize a topic.

Truly Katharina von Bora, wife of the great Reformer, was a mighty fortress. She was the fierce protector that Martin so desperately needed. When she married him, he was a mentally (and physically) unstable man; her strength of character was critical to his continued reform. As such, she was the most important individual of the German Reformation, second only to Luther himself.

At the time of their marriage in the mid 1520s the Reformation was being battered and challenged on every side. Without Katie it might have faltered as had other reform efforts in previous generations. It is true that many critical events in Luther’s life had already occurred—events that church historians would certainly acknowledge today. But would we be celebrating 500 years of Protestantism with its focus on the family were it not for the twenty years that followed their marriage? Would we be marking this anniversary were it not for his two decades of critical accomplishments made while he was propped up mentally, physically and fiscally by that bulwark Katie von Bora? I don’t think so.

There had been no romance between Katie and Martin. Indeed, the only romance she had known had been her short love affair with Jerome Baumgärtner. He was one of Martin’s students, who, rather than standing up to his parents’ objections to the proposed union, unceremoniously jilted her. As for Martin, his condescension for his bride was not disguised: “I never loved Katie then for I suspected her of being proud (as she is), but God willed me to take pity on the poor abandoned girl.”

At age five when she was dropped off at a Benedictine convent, Katie would be correctly described as a “poor abandoned girl.” Not at twenty-five. True, she was the last of the escaped nuns to either return to her family or find a husband, but she was, as Luther well knew, fully his equal in maturity. And he likewise knew before he married her that she could not be tamed. She was strong-minded, determined, energetic—and proud. She was the woman he would come to adore.

Theirs was an egalitarian marriage. Quote Luther all you want in support of wifely submission, you still have a union of true equality. God, he argued, ordained headship and submission with Adam and Eve, and God never rescinded the order. Luther was, however, far more vocal on the topic in his earlier writing than his later. But in the practical realities of life the marriage from beginning to end was egalitarian. Or, it could be argued I suppose, that Katie was the head of the home. When certain friends hinted that she was ruling the roost, Martin insisted that she did not tell him how to interpret Scripture or write sermons. Case closed.

There were of course many other strong Reformation women , but the wife of the great Reformer, many believed, should have been a proper role model. She should have been sweet, subdued and submissive—everything Katie was not. As such she was not well liked in Wittenberg. Colleagues of Luther judged her haughty and domineering. Students and other visitors at table—as well as Luther himself—thought she should remain silent rather than interjecting her opinions.

Dr. Bill Taylor, a missionary, missions executive and professor, years ago told a story about his father who headed a mission agency in Latin America. Missionaries sometimes took his father aside and voiced their objections to his strong-minded and vocal wife (Bill’s mother). His father didn’t defend or agree. He simply shook his head and shrugged, “that’s Stella.” What more could he say: “That’s Stella.” We would like to think that Martin responded to detractors with the same kind of shrug, “that’s Katie.”

Whatever colleagues, neighbors and students deemed objectionable about Katie’s character and personality, no one could have denied her competency and energy. She was the Proverbs 31 woman on steroids. In fact, in all my historical studies on women, I have never encountered a woman who had so many irons in the fire as she did. Besides her large household comprised of six biological children and many orphans and hangers-on, she ran a boarding house the size of a Holiday Inn.

Up at dawn, her day was consumed with managerial decision-making as well as menial tasks. Along with servants, she planted and harvested large gardens that provided meals for her extended family and paying guests. She raised cattle, sheep, goats and poultry. She drove horse wagons in the fields and on the rough roads. She purchased farms, some a long distance away where she often remained for days on end hard at work—while her husband changed dirty diapers at home. She sewed clothing, preserved food for winter, nursed the sick in her own household and in the neighborhood, and on top of that was known as one of Wittenberg’s best brewers, providing beer for the household—a most valuable commodity considering the contaminated water supply.

Prior to their marriage, the Elector of Saxony had deeded the run-down Black Cloister to Martin who had lived in that monastery since 1507 and wanted to be rid of it. But Katie thought otherwise. She saw its potential as a money-making venture. Katie hardly knew what she was getting into when she married Martin. He was boorish and in many respects his manners and personal hygiene had not progressed beyond the barbarian backwoods of medieval Europe. She was determined to change him. “I must train the Doctor differently,” she commented, “so that he does what I want.”

Soren Kiekegaard reflected harshly of Katharina, snorting that she amounted to nothing, commenting that “Luther might just as well have married a plank.” How clueless was this un-married philosopher who is regarded by many modern scholars as a first-class misogynist.

As for Katie, she went about her work simply assuming she was fully the equal of her husband—and any man for that matter. Word on the street was that she was bossy, domineering, given to henpecking her husband. She wore the trousers, they said, and she made the final family decisions. They might even have called her a daughter of Eve or a Jezebel as men had always called assertive women.

Luther himself used demeaning language for women, particularly in his younger years. But his words for Katie were flattering. Indeed, his endearing expressions of devotion are colorful though sometimes qualified: “I would not give my Katie for France and Venice together.” He should have stopped there, but he added, “because God has given her to me and other women have worse faults.” France and Venice, yes. But he went further than that. His profound regard for Paul’s letter to the Galatians was expressed by his reference to it as “my Katharina von Bora.” That comment was exceeded only by his confession: “I give more credit to Katherine than to Christ, who has done so much more for me.”

Luther had at one time demeaned Eve in her interaction with the serpent as “talkative and superstitious” as well as “simple” and “weak.” But in his later years, no doubt influenced by his relationship with Katie, he regarded her as a “heroic woman” who was a “partner in the rule” with Adam, and “in no part . . . inferior to her husband Adam.” Other Old Testament figures were brought to the fore as well. Of Katie, he remarked: “I am an inferior lord, she the superior; I am Aaron, she is my Moses.” An egalitarian marriage.

Martin’s deep love and respect for Katie, however, did not signal that theirs was necessarily a tranquil union. “I must have patience with . . . [my] Katie von Bora,” which means “my whole life is nothing else but mere patience.” On another occasion, he remarked, “If I ever have to find myself a wife again, I will hew myself an obedient wife out of stone.”

Yet mutuality shined though. When Katie was away on one occasion, Martin wrote her about land they owned, proposing that she sell and purchase certain parcels, and he adds that she should send him instructions on how to proceed with decisions he was making at home. He certainly was not averse to giving her assignments when he was away, on one occasion to carry out a truly manly task. He wrote in a letter that he wanted her, “a wise woman and doctora,” to be part of a committee for a pastoral appointment. He had remarkable confidence in her on every level, and as he explained, she was not only “prudent” but also one who would “make a better choice” than others he could call upon. In other ways Martin demonstrated his egalitarian mindset. Although contrary to Saxon legal code, he named Katie his sole heir.

Katharina von Bora is a fascinating woman in many ways that other biographers have failed to note. One particular episode is sometimes glossed over. Her escape from the convent with eleven other nuns is sometimes viewed as little more than a midnight caper—nuns disguised as herring barrels in a wagon underneath a tarp bumping along on a joyride. It was, in fact, one of the great conspiracies in history: twelve nuns who had taken a vow of silence connecting with each other and Luther and others in order to flee the convent. It was a scheme fraught with danger and a capital crime in Saxony to “kidnap” nuns.

Another issue relates to Katie’s religious life. As a nun, she was a religious. After her escape there is no evidence that she was religious at all—that she held to her Catholic beliefs or that she converted to Reformed beliefs. She was, as John Stott used the term, a “nominal Christian.” It is a stunning reality that no other biographer has really dealt with. Perhaps there will be another time to touch on those topics. Here the focus is on Katie’s and Martin’s equal partnership.

Just because the Luthers had an egalitarian marriage, however, does not settle today’s debate between those who call for equality in marriage and those who insist on male headship and wifely submission. After all, Luther was anti-Semitic and we surely don’t see him as a role model in that realm. But for the Great Reformer who placed more emphasis on the family than any reformer before or after, it is noteworthy that his marriage was egalitarian, and as such an incredible model for today.

2017-09-29T06:19:45-05:00

This interview of me comes from The Overthinking Christian website, and I thank Paul Moldovan for the freedom to repost it here. [SMcK: My favorite book on the New Perspective.]

1) You have noted elsewhere that you were there during the formation of the NPP. How was this experience? Do you remember your initial reaction to the ideas proposed, and have you grown since then?

The singular moment, which crystallized the NPP, was the publication in 1977 of E.P. Sanders’ Paul and Palestinian Judaism. While he had predecessors advocating some of his central ideas – GF Moore, K Stendahl, in some ways WD Davies – what Sanders argued was that Judaism was not a works righteousness religion, was not a religion that had fallen into corruption at the time of Jesus, was not a religion in need of retrieving the prophetic tradition since the legal and halakhic tradition had eclipsed the relational elements of the Bible’s or Judaism’s relational core with God.

When Sanders argued this some major planks in what came to be called the “old” perspective snapped. This is where it all began, and I was there when James D.G. (Jimmy) Dunn took Sanders’ work on Judaism as a covenant-based and grace-based religion and reworked how Paul was to be understood. If Paul was not opposing works righteousness, what was he opposing?

Dunn argued in our New Testament Seminar that Paul opposed not Judaism per se but Christian Jews who wanted to impose “works of the law” on gentile converts. Hence, works of the law for Dunn (and Wright followed him on this score) was not the law in general or works righteousness in particular, but works of the law that symbolized adherence to specific halakhic requirements to be fully included among Jews.

The days were heady; we knew we were in on a major breakthrough and grateful to be connected to Jimmy Dunn. I regret only that I was doing Matthew and not Paul studies.

When I read Sanders front to back as part of my investigation of Jewish missionary activity I was compelled to agree not only by Sanders’ or Dunn’s arguments but because, at the same time, I read the OT apocryphal and pseudepigraphical writings, all the published Dead Sea Scrolls, and huge chunks of the rabbinical writings. What I saw there made me a true NPP believer.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      2) A lot of ink has been spilled over the “faith in Christ” vs “faithfulness of Christ” debate. What are your own thoughts on this conversation? For orthopraxy, does it matter at all if Paul meant “faith” or “faithfulness,” or do you find the implications to be minute?

First, I’ve never made this a special academic study though I have touched upon all the pertinent Pauline texts and have read some of the scholarship. Second, the issue is simply unimportant when it comes to orthodoxy or orthopraxy. The irony for me is that those who are most convinced of the “active obedience” of Christ to the law’s requirements, a singularly reformed theme so far as I know, seem most opposed to the faithfulness of Christ. The irony is that their theology ought to like this view.

Second at times in Pauline texts I sense that interpretation is most compelling while I don’t think it is wise to get too certain on this one: one can’t, after all, reduce a genitive case (“of Christ”) to certainty. (One can, of course, but those who do know too much.) E.g., Galatians 2:15–21 can be, so I now think, explained slightly better with the subjective (faithfulness of Christ) than the objective.

Third, at times I sense some want a subjective view simply because the objective view is what evangelicals or the conservatively Reformed believe. In other words, it’s tribal at times. It shouldn’t be, and the best example of this is Dunn himself.

3) Many Christian leaders are publicly and loudly denouncing the New Perspective as heretical. Why do you think the backlash has been so strong? At the same time, why do you think aspects of the New Perspective are gaining so much traction in some circles?

To those Christian leaders I ask, “Have you read Sanders cover to cover?” and the chaser is this: “Have you read the Jewish sources?” Then I want to press the case farther, but my experience is that almost none of the strident (other than DA Carson) have read Sanders and the Jewish sources.

I don’t know who is calling this a heresy but it is tragic. When the NPP folks are the enemy we’ve missed the evils of this world entirely.

Now here’s the biggest problem: most of these critics are relentlessly unforgiving of Jewish sources when it comes to the themes of works and rewards and the final judgment but are entirely forgiving of Jesus – who speaks of rewards quite often, and one cannot speak of rewards without their being some sort of merit at work in the logic – and of Paul – who himself often enough speaks of judgment on the basis of (not faith) but works. My point is this: these scholars immediately have a more grace-based theology that explains the non-saving theme of works and reward but make no attempt to understand Judaism’s texts on the basis of grace and covenant.

Now enter John Barclay, Paul and the Gift, or Gary Anderson’s Sin: A History, and – as my high school basketball coach often said – “the jig is up.” Game over. Sanders made the point, Anderson made the point, and Barclay made the point: Judaism deserves to be explained as a covenant-based and grace-based religion. Yes, of course, and many times of course, grace in Judaism and in Christianity is not identical.

Now add Jesus’ demand of obedience and discipleship and factor in Matthew Bates’ theme of allegiance as at the heart of what “faith” means and one is very close finally to admitting that Judaism and Christianity do differ dramatically, but the core of that disagreement is over the status of Jesus as Messiah not soteriological elements. By that I mean both are rooted in divine election and grace and covenant and faith and obedience.

As to why some elements are gaining traction: #1, #2, and #3 is NT Wright’s compelling writings. I’ve heard some people say they are “new perspective” after reading Wright and have no idea what it even means. Wright is an example of a NT scholar who writes compelling prose with lilt and tilt in his prose. I can think of no old perspective scholar with that kind of prose and that kind of capacity to compel.

But having said that it may well be just what happened to make it appear on the scene: a deeper appreciation for Judaism, a sensitivity to the impact of the holocaust, and the awareness of the sources in a way that shows compelling continuity between the world of Judaism and the world of Jesus and Paul. The most disappointing element I encounter when I read both old perspective scholars and apocalyptic scholars is how little of Judaism they bring into the discussion. I can think of some examples, but there’s very little to compare with Dunn’s 3 volumes or Wright’s 2 big volumes on Paul. This gives the NPP a kind of historical credibility because it is anchored in the actual world in which Jesus and Paul flourished. (Not to discount the Greco-Roman world.)

4) One of the complaints against the New Perspective is that it doesn’t take personal sin seriously. How would you respond? Do you feel that the NT stresses “personal” sin and the need of a “personal” savior as much as modern evangelicalism seems to?

This can be countered with this: the “old” perspective does not take corporate sin and systemic evil and ecclesiology seriously enough. In some sense the difference is not one of either-or but of emphasis.

Having made that point, and I’m not being snarky, it is simply not true that NPP scholars don’t expect personal sin and personal faith and personal salvation. Read Dunn’s big pumpkin-colored book on Paul or Wright’s many writings on Paul, and you can find the need for personal faith.

But remember this: the obsession with “Do you have personal faith?” is not a theme of the Reformers (they, after all, catechized into the faith rather than demanding personal decision), it was not even a theme of the Protestants until it got a kick start with Whitefield and then came into fuller bloom in the Great Awakening and then we find it in spades with Finney and Moody and Sunday and then Graham. It is, in other words, a distinctively Western, evangelical, revivalist obsession.

Yes, I believe in personal faith; and I have led dozens of students into personal faith in my years of teaching college students. I’m NPP. Therefore, there’s an empty box in this accusation. Of course, some NPP folks may well not emphasize this enough just as there are some old perspective folks and some apocalyptic folks who don’t emphasize it enough.

How about if we call a halt on this accusation until we produce evidence? And how about if we call people to personal and corporate faith and see sin as both personal and systemic? (Which is biblical to the core.)

2017-09-20T11:12:17-05:00

Screen Shot 2016-10-15 at 9.10.12 AMBy John Frye

Santiago: A Christ Figure

“‘Ay,’ he said aloud. There is no translation for this word and perhaps it is just a noise as a man might make, involuntarily, feeling the nail go through his hands into the wood” (Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea, 107).

Patrons of the “One T Saloon” (aka, Scot with one “t” McKnight’s Jesus Creed blog) know that I write almost annually about Hemingway’s TOMS. I hear that Scot reads The Old Man and the Sea (aka TOMS) occasionally, too (search Hemingway on the site).

I am one of those readers who believe, contrary to Hemingway’s own denial, that the old man, Santiago, is a Christ-figure (see opening quote above). There are too many allusions to the Jesus story in TOMS to not be deliberate in my opinion. I find it hard to believe Hemingway was not aware of this. Consider: The old man is at sea for three days and nights. The old man faces a tremendous challenge with tenacity, endurance and severe suffering. The old, wearied man, finally ashore after the sharks gnawed his magnificent 18 foot marlin to its skeletal remains, hoists the mast on his aching shoulders with his bloodied hands and attempts to walk and stumbles under the weight. How can this not be an allusion to Jesus stumbling under the weight of the cross? With all of this, there are the undeniable Roman Catholic themes peppered throughout this magisterial story. God, prayer, The ‘Our Father’ and ‘Hail Mary,’ sin, saints. Hemingway is describing the marlin’s violet stripes: “They were wider than a man’s hand with his fingers spread and the fish’s eye looked as detached as mirrors in a periscope or as a saint in a procession” (96). The old man wondered if it was a sin to kill the fish. He thinks, “Do not think about sin. It is too late for that and there are people who are paid to do it” (105). I love this.

On this last reading, I was mesmerized by the theme of suffering. (That’s what is intriguing about great literature—you see or sense new dimensions in each reading.) The old man suffers loneliness. Time and again, he misses “the boy.” He makes friends with a small bird. He speaks of the marlin as “his friend.” He addresses his left hand as a traitorous friend. He talks to himself for company. The old man suffers physically. He experiences searing pain and fights through it to accomplish his mission to catch and kill the majestic marlin. He keeps wondering what a bone spur feels like. His eyes ache, he has benign skin cancer, his hands get cut and mushy from the fishing line ripping into them. His shoulders and back ache. At one point he coughs up blood—“The old man could hardly breathe now and he felt a strange taste in his mouth. It was coppery and sweet and he was afraid of it for a moment” (119).

Santiago gets to his shack and collapses into bed. When the boy, Manolin, sees the old man stretched out and asleep the bed of newspapers and sees the mangled palms of his hands, he cries. Mandolin enters into the old man’s suffering. Later the boy asks, “How much did you suffer?” Santiago answers simply. “‘Plenty,’ the old man said.”

The human need for community surfaces as Santiago speaks with Manolin. “He noticed how pleasant it was to have someone to talk to instead of speaking only to himself and the sea. ‘I missed you,’ he said” (124). The old man loves the boy and the boy loves him. Is it because the old man, wise, humble, and undefeated, teaches the boy how to live in and through suffering? Is it because they make plans together to fish again, only better prepared? Master and disciple, bonded by love, facing life’s challenges together. What a story!

2017-09-21T20:18:55-05:00

Creation of AdamI am at a conference in DC all week – deep into science and thus little time for writing. Instead I would like to point to two recent thought-provoking posts at BioLogos.

The first is a response to a recent video posted by The Gospel Coalition: Keller, Moore, and Duncan on the Non-Negotiable Beliefs About Creation.

Deb Haarsma provides a response (Essentials of Creation: A Response to The Gospel Coalition). The video makes many good points, and these should be appreciated. However, the claim is also made that the de novo creation of Adam is a non-negotiable. It is connected both to the gospel message and to racial justice and equality. Having read David Livingstone’s work in Adam’s Ancestors and Dealing With Darwin. Christians have found it possible to rationalize almost any racist position with or without Adam. Bottom line: belief in the de novo creation of Adam is not a immunization against racism. Making this connection simply draws attention away from the more important issues. Non-negotiable issues are centered on biblical teachings about human identity and vocation as the image of God and the need for salvation. Deb has more to say and both the video and her response are worth a look.

 If you wish to contact me directly, you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net

If interested you can subscribe to a full text feed of my posts at Musings on Science and Theology.

2017-09-17T15:13:24-05:00

pexels-photo-192555Sarah Lindsay, author of this article at Arise, is an assistant professor of English at Milligan College in eastern Tennessee. She is a graduate of Wheaton College and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and she balances teaching medieval literature with raising three energetic daughters who inspire her to advocate for gender equality.

Recently on AriseJeff Miller wrote about the long history of women in the church, dispelling the idea that egalitarians are merely adopting current cultural ideas about women. He rightfully points out that women have served and led in the church for centuries.

As a corollary to this, we should also acknowledge that patriarchy and the oppression of women have also played large roles in both culture and the church for centuries. In fact, far from being countercultural, many complementarian claims about men and women are echoed outside the church.

Today, I’m looking in particular at the claim that women are biologically disposed towards emotion and relationships and thus not as well suited for fields based in logic (like science and technology) or for leadership positions. We can find these claims in complementarian theology but also in numerous non-religious sources.

For a few examples: In 1992, John Gray published Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, a best-selling book that reinforces the idea that women are emotional and relational, unlike men. In 2005, Lawrence Summers, then president of Harvard University, suggested that biology rather than discrimination kept women out of scientific fields. Just this summer, a now-former Google employer wrote a memo in which he raised questions about the ability of women to excel as programmers and hold upper-level management positions.

Most non-complementarians who assert innate differences between men and women root their arguments in science, often in their understanding of evolutionary psychology. The similarities between complementarian views and gender and evolutionary psychology are clear: both begin by granting primacy to biology (nature)—whether created directly by God or arising through evolution — over sociology (nurture), erasing the multitude of social pressures that keep women out of tech fields and leadership positions.

Both positions simplify much research that has been done on the differences between men and women. Much research shows that, while differences certainly exist, just as much or greater variation exists within genders as between them, undercutting the idea that our biology determines our skillsets.

Both also ignore much of the evidence we have from thousands of years of human civilization. Men’s greater muscle mass certainly makes them, on average, better hunters and warriors; women, of course, are often kept closer to home by the demands of pregnancy and breastfeeding. However, the division of labor in ancient agricultural societies, and even in more developed medieval and early modern societies, is hardly clear-cut along gender lines nor does every society fall into the same gender patterns.

Complementarians, of course, rely on their interpretation of Scripture rather than science to make their point. However, the similarity between these two arguments is worth teasing out a little bit further. Is there a root ideology behind these two modern arguments about the differences between men and women?

I believe there is: Greek philosophy. We all know that the ancient Greek thinkers, including men like Plato, Aristotle, and Hippocrates the physician, had (and still have) lasting influence on the development of Western society. We shouldn’t be surprised, then, that their views on women also continue to inform modern views.[1]

For many of the ancient Greeks (not all; the Spartans are a notable exception), women were inferior to men both psychologically and physically. Greek doctors, like Hippocrates, saw women physically as mis-formed or underdeveloped men—and it’s no accident that ancient Greek sculpture focused on youthful male bodies as the height of physical perfection.

Psychologically, women in ancient Greece were viewed as less capable than men; significantly, Aristotle sees women as incapable of fully developing moral virtue. Women were associated with emotion and with the body (sound familiar?), men with rationality and abstract thought — and rationality was much more highly valued.

To be fair, most modern people — including most complementarians — would reject the notion that women are physically mis-formed men or that women are incapable of developing moral virtue. But the persistent association of women with emotion and the recurring assumption that women are simply less capable of logical, scientific thinking show that Greek ideas about men and women have not disappeared from our society.

So why does this history matter? It’s hardly a secret that Western society has been patriarchal for the entirety of its existence, or that this patriarchy still informs modern society. But I think it does matter that these persistent ideas about men and women, and particularly the idea that women are somehow less capable leaders and thinkers than men, have roots in the ancient philosophies that shaped Western thought.

Some may argue that the Greeks were simply recognizing created realities — but if their biology was so far off the mark,[2] is it that surprising that their ideas about the moral and psychological nature of women might be as well? And especially as Christians, we need to carefully assess whether our readings of Scripture are influenced in problematic ways by these deeply-rooted cultural ideas about men and women.

In the third century AD, the theologian Tertullian famously asked what Athens has to do with Jerusalem, arguing that Christianity needed to separate itself from Greek philosophy. This is, of course, a complicated question — many theologians have grappled with whether it is possible, or desirable, to disentangle Christianity from Greco-Roman culture — but one with particular relevance to this issue of gender roles.

The primacy of rational thought in Greek culture, and the association of men with rational thought, is still deeply engrained in modern Western culture as evidenced by both complementarianism and the Google memo, among a multitude of other examples. And reading Scripture through the lens of Western ideas about women, deeply influenced by Greek philosophy, is bound to distort God’s view of men and women.

We should allow Tertullian’s question to challenge our notions of manhood and womanhood, even as egalitarians. It’s impossible to fully remove ourselves from our cultural assumptions. But the more aware we are of them, the more aware we will become of the ways they may blur our understanding about men and women and the ways in which God intends us to work and relate together.

Notes

[1] I should note that I am simplifying here—Plato and Aristotle, for example, seem to have had different opinions on the roles women could play, especially in Plato’s ideal society as described in the Republic. While Plato does assume that women have a weaker nature, he also argues for their education and even their involvement in governing his ideal society.
[2] The Greeks also believed that women were mere incubators of children, providing the inferior material portion of babies—male sperm, like a seed planted in the soil, carried the life and the soul of the infant.

2017-09-17T13:12:03-05:00

Screen Shot 2017-04-18 at 5.35.23 PMWhen it comes to evaluations of Greg Boyd’s massive The Crucifixion of the Warrior Godthe central topic of discussion ought to be method: Boyd’s method is theological interpretation of Scripture with a Cruciformity Hermeneutic at the center.

A central question, then, is this: How Christocentric, or how Cruciform or Christoform, is your hermeneutic?

When it comes to the wrath of God, how does a cruciform hermeneutic conclude? He turns in chapter sixteen to Jesus’ pattern of withdrawal (wrath is withdrawal of divine presence):

Rather than responding to rejection with violence, Jesus simply set out toward a different village (Luke 9:56). Since every aspect of Jesus’s life and ministry reveals exactly what God has always been like, we must conclude that we are seeing the Father’s way of responding to rejection, which is the essence of all sin, when we see Jesus’s way of responding to rejection (cf. John 14:7-9). And it is no coincidence that this is precisely how the Father responded when Jesus bore the sin of all who have ever rejected God on Calvary, as we saw in the previous chapter. … And, as we should by now expect, the cross is the paradigmatic illustration of this.

Something similar occurs in Jesus’ prediction of Jerusalem’s downfall:

Note that, while the fulfillment of this prophesied divine judgment in 70 CE involved horrific violence, it was violence carried out by Israel’s ‘enemies,” not God. In this prophecy, Stephen Travis notes, “God allows Roman armies to destroy Jerusalem rather than that God inflicts destruction by means of Romans.” Hence, he concludes, in Jesus’s lament, “judgment takes the form of God’s abandonment of his people to their enemies.” For centuries, God’s covenant people had been pushing him away, and they were now about to push him away in a definitive way by participating in Jesus’s crucifixion. By 70 CE, the time had come when God had to, in essence, grant them their wish. And in doing so, God was leaving them vulnerable to the Roman military, who would inflict on them the death-consequences of their sin.

What about hell? I have myself often said hell is experiencing total absence in the presence of God, but Boyd pushes harder:

The general conception of the final judgment as reflected in the NT is consistent with this. As Travis and others have aptly demonstrated, the ultimate “reward” disciples receive is simply being ushered into God’s presence while the ultimate “punishment” the unrepentant receive is being banished from God’s presence.

He sees church discipline in the same category: the principle of redemptive withdrawal.

Just as God punishes by granting people their wish to push him away, so God’s community is to discipline people by simply granting them their wish to live the way they want while making it clear that this way involves pushing God away.

Jesus’ prototypical non violent resistance or non resistance behaviors and teachings are the same principle: this is how God responds to violence. How? by removing himself from the system of violence.

God’s wrath in the OT is divine abandonment of humans who have turned from God, and that abandonment permits humans to go there way. Redemption is proximity to God — to God’s presence. Judgment then is distance or God’s withdrawal. E.g.,

My anger will be kindled against them in that day. I will forsake them and hide my face from them; they will become easy prey, and many terrible troubles will come upon them. In that day they will say, ‘Have not these troubles come upon us because our God is not in our midst?’  On that day I will surely hide my face on account of all the evil they have done by turning to other gods (Deuteronomy 31:17-18).

Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them out of his sight; none was left but the tribe of Judah alone (2 Kings 17:18).

And I will cast you out of my sight, just as I cast out all your kinsfolk, all the offspring of Ephraim (Jeremiah 7:15).

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse…. and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies among themselves (Romans 1:19-20, 23-24).

Judgment in the Bible then is essentially intrinsic, rather extrinsic: judicial imposition. Instead, it is permitting sin to have its way, the way of death and destruction and desolation. One reaps what one sows; one dies for sin; evil destroys shalom.

Thus, the punishment fits the crime.

God judges by simply withdrawing his protective presence while also making it clear why this is all God needs to do. It is “hard wired’ into creation that living in accordance with God’s design brings about shalom while living in revolt against this design leads to destruction.

He ends here:

Indeed, what is arguably the most compelling supporting evidence from Scripture that confirms our cross-centered understanding is the fact that many narratives containing violent depictions of God make it clear that the violence they ascribed to God was actually carried by other agents who were already “intent on violence” (Hab 1:9; cf. Ps 37:32; Ezek 22:9; Dan 11:27).

2017-09-17T15:13:32-05:00

Screen Shot 2017-09-17 at 1.27.08 PMSeriously, her book on Paul — Paul Among the People — was a gem, she has become well known among classicists for her translations, and now she has a splendid new, beautifully written (her prose is always splendid) book called The Face of Water: A Translator on Beauty and Meaning in the Bible.

Why should we listen to this Quaker who is a classicist and not a Bible scholar?

But how do I dare try to expound the book? I’m the opposite of a cleric or theologian or philosopher: I’mm a Quaker, which means I’m admonished to speak my own mind plainly and briefly if I feel an undeniable need, but otherwise to search quietly for the Light—in whatever form It happens to take—in other people. Many Quakers
(though not myself) stop short of calling themselves “religious.” How can I have the gall to pronounce on the character of Scripture, in the original languages or not?

What’s more, I have no formal qualifications whatsoever as a Biblical scholar—not one degree, not even a single course credit, let alone peer-reviewed publications in scholarly journals, or a teaching post. I can only read the Bible in Hebrew and Greek and give my impressions—all the while remembering that old stricture: “Using a language doesn’t make you an expert on it, any more than spending money makes you an economist.’

But here’s the thing. A few years ago, I stumbled onto Paul of Tarsus s letters as the subject of a book and began to research Biblical Greek. I experienced then—the biggest surprise of my life—that I could really be of use. The experience grew more convincing at Yale Divinity School, where I received generous instruction in Hebrew. The Bible, I recognized, was a book that profoundly mattered, more even than ancient pagan literature (in which I do have qualifications). For all of us, it is near at hand in modern culture, though wildly far off in its origins, and we all to some degree define ourselves in relation to it, whether we mean to or not. I developed an ambition that found steady encouragement among clergy, studious laypeople, and people with no extensive background in the Bible but a desire to learn more. I would read in the original languages some of the best-known passages of the Bible and describe what I saw and heard there.

She has one of the more interesting fast-paced introductions to the Bible, beginning with this question:

How, then, did the Jews come to establish the greatest, most enduring book on earth?

Its parts and subjects and overlaps and repetitions and all tied to Hebrews and then Israelites and to Jews — the terms morph along:

The Hebrew Bible is therefore a highly unusual outgrowth of nationalism, if the word “nationalism” even applies. The typical emblematic literature of a nation, from Homer to Vergil’s Aeneid to ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and beyond, says, “We conquer and rule because of special divine favor.” The Hebrew Bible says, “God’s favor punishes and teaches us; it is only through his mercy and justice that we survive, and we survive to testify to this.”

Here’s a brief on the New Testament era:

On the evidence, the most influential disciples and apostles would have been glad to remain within the Jewish sphere, but they would not give up their conviction that Jesus, a shamefully crucified troublemaker, had risen from the dead and so must be the Messiah (“Anointed One”), the savior sanctified by God. The doctrine, of which the first evidence lies in the Jewish Paul of Tarsus’s letters, that this miracle vouchsafed eternal life for all believers, both Jews and non-Jews, made enemies of the Jewish hierarchy, particularly because all the immemorial ritual and moral identifiers of Jews—most important, circumcision and the dietary and sexual laws—were now supposed to be of no essential value, or even inimical if they got in the way of pagans’ converting to the worship of Christ (the Greek translation of “Messiah”).

The whole process of gathering all these books into one Bible, truth be told, is not miraculous but rather mundane, and there’s some truth here but not all of it:

On the whole, the development of the Bible seems to have been more about popular favor than institutional authority: people knew what they liked and discarded what they didn’t, on criteria not too hard to project backward from our own tastes.

Ruden doesn’t bow to political pressure about the gnostic stuff:

It therefore doesn’t surprise me that Gnostic writings didn’t survive a ban; in my (admittedly not universal) opinion, they wouldn’t have survived the most extravagant publicity, simply because then everybody would have known what they said. I’m supposed to ooh and aah over the Gnostic Gospels and deplore their “censorship.” I don’t.

Or to quaint reverential language about the Bible:

The Old Testament Book of Ecclesiastes or Kohelet (something like “Preacher”) is pretty nihilistic, the Song of Songs quite erotic, and in Job, God has all the benevolence of a psychologist experimenting on animals. But these are really ravishing works, and I would have fast-talked them into acceptance as vigorously as their advocates apparently did. … The more you look at what’s known and logically inferred about the process, the less solid appear the old (and new) stories of canonical inquisition for the sake of official self-interest.

On the bias of translators, let her have the last word:

That societies pulled the translation along with them, so to speak, making sure it reflected their own current concerns more and the concerns of the texts’ long-gone originators less, should be surprising to nobody and is blameworthy only in the eyes of perfectionist prigs. Nor, being a translator myself, am I inclined to join the pretentious whining about the aesthetic inferiority of translations to original texts. Yes, newer versions in alien languages aren’t as lovely. And humanity is fallen, and the U.S. Congress is self-serving.

If you don’t read Sarah Ruden, you should. Begin with this book. You’ll rise up and call me blessed.

Have the best Thursday of your life!

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