Jesus Dynasty / James Tabor

I wanted to call attention to a new Blog recently inaugurated by Dr. April DeConick, who holds a named chair in Biblical Studies at Rice University. I have shared a few seminars and programs with Dr. DeConick over the past few years and we share a passion for Christian Origins and with many common ideas and approaches. Dr. DeConick calls her new effort The Forbidden Gospel Blog.

Dr. DeConick’s early posts are a a fascinating and instant draw. She has some very important new insights into the Gospel of Judas that appear to overturn what the public was told last April in the publicity barrage that accompanied its release. Her remarks titled “Beyond the New Testament,” are a summary of the paper she delivered at the Scripture and Skepticism Conference last week at UC Davis that drew a standing and sustained ovation.

I particularly look foward Dr. DeConick’s discussion of the Gospel of Thomas. This is her specialty and her thesis, that Thomas, at its core, can be traced back to the Jerusalem community of James the Just, is a vital contribution to our attempts to recover the historical “brother of Jesus” and explore this non-Pauline strand of the early Jesus movement.

I offer Dr. DeConick my warmest best wishes and sincere thanks for taking the time to share with us all her knowledge and insights. Be sure and visit her Blog regularly. You will not be disappointed.

I use the term “apocalyptic,” at least as applied to ancient Judaism and early Christianity, to refer to the notion that the hidden realities of the unseen world are being revealed in an imminent and unfolding manner at the “end of the age.” It is not the “end of the world,” but rather a dramatic reversal and transformation of normal life on planet earth. It is good news and bad news, depending on one’s stake in the present and attitude toward the new future, a future to be characterized by the “Kingdom of God,” or God’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven. My own studies have convinced me that the Jesus movement is utterly and thoroughly apocalyptic to the core. I have tried to situate this particular view of the world and of history within late developments of forms of Judaism in the ancient Greco-Roman Mediterranean world. Years ago I published a popular overview and analysis of these developments. Other than the New Testament texts, the Dead Sea Scrolls are probably our best witnesses to this movement, one that generically should more properly be called “the messianic movement” in late 2nd Temple Jewish Palestine.

Of course apocalyptic thinking remains with us through the ages (see my article on Millennialism), but my own interest has been primarily on the ways in which this kind of thinking forms the matrix for the development and emergence of early Christianity.

We have many sources for understanding “apocalyptic” thinking in the period but I think some of our best evidence comes from the three strata of our earliest materials embedded in the New Testament itself. They are, in chronological order, the early letters of Paul, the Saying Source of Jesus’ core teaching called Q, and the gospel of Mark. Here below is a nice selection of particularly “apocalyptic” passages as that truly catch the atmosphere and flavor of the movement in its earliest days before the post-70 AD disappointments set in.

Apocalyptic Texts in our early sources:

Paul
1Thessalonians 4:15-17: For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we that are alive, that are left to the coming of the Lord, shall in no wise precede them that are fallen asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven, with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we that are alive, that are left, shall together with them be caught up in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

1Cor. 6:2-3: Or know you not that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world is judged by you, are you unworthy to judge the smallest matters? Know you not that we shall judge angels? how much more, things that pertain to this life?

1Cor. 7:26, 29-31: I think therefore that this is good by reason of the impending distress that is upon us, namely, that it is good for a man to be as he is. But this I say, brethren, the appointed time is shortened, that henceforth both those that have wives may be as though they had none; and those that weep, as though they wept not; and those that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not; and those that buy, as though they possessed not; and those that use the world, as not using it to the full: for the form of this world is passing away.

Q Sayings of Jesus
3:7-9: He said therefore to the multitudes that went out to be baptized of him, You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruits worthy repentance, and begin not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say to you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children to Abraham. And even now the axe also lies at the root of the trees: every tree therefore that brings not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.

16:16:The Torah and the Prophets were until John: from that time the good news of the kingdom of God is preached, and every man enters forcefully into it.

10:8-12: And into whatsoever city you enter, and they receive you, eat such things as are set before you: and heal the sick that are therein, and say to them, The kingdom of God is come near to you. But into whatsoever city youshall enter, and they receive you not, go out into the streets thereof and say, Even the dust from your city, that cleaves to our feet, we wipe off against you: nevertheless know this, that the kingdom of God is near. I say to you, it shall be more tolerable in that day for Sodom, than for that city.

11:2: And he said to them, When you pray, say, Father, let your name be holy. May your kingdom come!

11:20: But if I by the finger of God cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.

22:28-30: But you are they that have continued with me in my temptations; and I appoint to you a kingdom, even as my Father appointed to me, that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom; and you shall sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

Mark
1:14-15: Now after John was delivered up, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the good news of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe in the good news.

3:14: And he appointed twelve, that they might be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach.

9:1:And he said to them, Truly I say to you, There are some here of them that stand by, who shall in no wise taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God come with power.

11:9-10: And they that went before, and they that followed, cried, Hosanna; Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord: Blessed is the kingdom that comes, the kingdom of our father David: Hosanna in the highest.

13:30 Truly I say to you, This generation shall not pass away, until all these things be accomplished.

14:25 Truly I say to you, I shall no more drink of the fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.

14:58:We heard him say, I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another made without hands.

I wanted to pass along some of the thoughts on Albert Schweitzer and an Apocalyptic Jesus that I presented at the Scripture and Skepticism Conference here at UC Davis this weekend.

I dedicated my book, The Jesus Dynasty to the memory of Albert Schweitzer:

Ad memoriam Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965).
Missionary, philosopher, historian extraordinaire.
In whose shadow we all stand.

Albert Schweitzer’s influential work titled Von Reimarus zu Wrede was published in 1906—just one hundred years earlier. The better-known and brilliantly titled English edition, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, came out in 1910 (translated by W. Montgomery with a preface by F. C. Burkitt).

Schweitzer opens his rather dense 400 page survey of historical Jesus research down to his own time with the sentence: “Before Reimarus, no one had attempted to form a historical conception of the life of Jesus.” He refers of course to Lessing’s anonymous publication of Hermann Samuel Reimarus’s writings in 1778, in particular the fragment “Vom dem Zweke Jesu und seiner Jünger” (“The Aims of Jesus and His Disciples”) of which he says “This essay is not only one of the greatest events in the history of criticism, it is also a masterpiece of general literature.” (p. 15). Schweitzer knows his heroes over the next 128 years and he celebrates them exuberantly.

Schweitzer focuses on what he calls “three great alternatives” that historical research on Jesus had to meet. The first he calls the “purely historical or purely supernatural.” This he considers decisively settled by David Friedrich Strauss’s first “Life of Jesus” published in 1835. The second had to do with determining the priority of Mark and the Synoptic tradition over John’s gospel, which he sees as satisfactorily worked out by the Tübingen school and Holtzmann. And finally, most important, what he calls the eschatological question. Here his hero is Johannes Weiss with the publication of his work on the preaching of Jesus concerning the kingdom of God in 1892.

In Schweitzer’s final and most important chapter he argues that the union of what he calls “thoroughgoing skepticism” and “thoroughgoing eschatology” represents an impassible and enduring obstacle to traditional Christian theology. Jesus, according to Schweitzer, “lays hold of the wheel of the world to set it moving on that last revolution which is to bring all ordinary history to a close. It refuses to turn, and he throws himself on it. Then it does turn; and crushes him” (p. 370-71). And yet, even with this perspective, this “negative theology” as Schweitzer calls it of a “failed messiah,” he leaves the reader with his final chapter that he calls “Results.” He writes that “Jesus means something to our world because a mighty spiritual force streams forth from him and flows through our time also,” and “…it is not Jesus as historically known, but Jesus as spiritually arisen within men, who is significant for our time and can help it. Not the historical Jesus, but the spirit which goes forth from him and in the spirits of men strives for new influence and rule, is that which overcomes the world.” (pp. 399, 401).

Apocalypticism and apocalyptic ways of thinking and living in their late 2nd Temple Jewish manifestations focus on the imminent “end of the age” and the wholesale overthrow of the powers that be, both visible and invisible. From the standpoint of the apocalyptic group it involves nothing less than a “cosmic takeover” through the power and agency of God, followed by a new world order, namely the rule of God and the triumph and vindication of the people of God. It has a clear linear and temporal focus, but the (normally) unseen heavenly world of Satan, the demons, and the corrupt state of the cosmos are an essential and ever present foreground. John the Baptist, Jesus, James, Peter, and Paul all lived and violently died with this imminent hope of cosmic reversal on their lips. What they most expected to happen never came about, and what they could have never imagined, namely the 2nd century AD heyday of Roman glory and power, and the terrible destruction of Jewish life in the land of Israel, became a reality. This is and remains the fundamental historical reality. So what are we to make of this disappointment and failure?

With Schweitzer I see Jesus as a full and willing participant and key agent in these failed apocalyptic hopes and dreams. Without discounting the important ways in which Jesus’ message that the “kingdom of God has come upon you,” reflected a “realized eschatology” with revolutionary social and political implications “here and now,” (as per Crossan, Borg, Wright), I nonetheless want to face squarely the stark implications of all those bodies that did not rise, and those dead messiahs who never returned. When prophecy fails, particularly prophecy grounded on the interpretation of authoritative texts, there are three classic responses: postponement, marginalization, and allegorizing. On one level each of these is an attempt to affirm that failure is actually success and what seems to be defeat and disappointment is victory.

There are of course ways, perhaps commendable ones, in which the ancient language and imagery of apocalyptic thinking might provide powerful symbolic expression to the human struggle against evil and the hope of a transformed world. But I would want to sharply distinguish between the symbolic and the operational, and between projection and agency. It is one thing to imagine and hope, it is quite another for individuals and groups to radically alter and shape their lives and choices based on what they expect to happen (i.e. Paul’s advice to his followers not to get married since the end is near!). All bone fide apocalyptic movements carry with them profound social and political implications and more often than not, as Cathy Wessinger has reminded us, the “millennium” comes violently.

The late Norman Perrin, my New Testament professor at the University of Chicago, used to tell us that there was one thing certain in the study of the long history of Jewish and Christian apocalypticism—a 100-percent failure rate. H.H. Rowley published a collection of essays that he had delivered in 1942, during the darkest days of WWII, titled The Relevance of Apocalyptic. Rowley never discounted the symbolic power and potential theological meaning of apocalyptic symbols. But he offers at one point an astute observation. At the time, Hitler had taken most of Europe and General Rommel had orders to march to Jerusalem, link up with the Arab allies and crush the Zionists once and for all. One could hardly imagine a better candidate for the Beast than Nazi Germany with its Führer. In both the United States and Britain, the Bible prophecy movement was having a heyday. Rowley wrote:

“Yet where for more than two thousand years a hope has proved illusory, we should beware of embracing it afresh. The writers of these books were mistaken in their hopes of imminent deliverance; their interpreters who believed the consummation was imminent in their day proved mistaken; and they who bring the same principles and the same hopes afresh to the prophecies will prove equally mistaken” (p. 173).

Clearly historians who see Jesus as an apocalyptic visionary are not advocating any literal appropriation of the thought world that Rowley here censors. On the other hand, even Schweitzer, in his final chapter, with all his thoroughgoing skepticism and thoroughgoing eschatology, cannot resist a bit of theologizing, or perhaps sentimentalizing, of his own.

Although this paper deals with an apocalyptic Jesus, let me close with some thoughts on Paul, our earliest and most direct source for the kind of apocalyptic thinking that characterized the Jesus movement up through the end of the 1st century CE. Broadly speaking Paul presents a Hellenistic way of salvation—a particular scheme of apotheosis, or “immortalization,” set within the parameters of late 2nd Temple Jewish apocalypticism. The broad contours of his religious experiences—epiphany, the reception of oracles, visions, the journey to heaven, secret revelations—these are all well known to us, especially from the Greek magical papyri, the Hermetic texts and various forms of esoteric Judaisms of the period. Add to that his specific expectations regarding his mission to the Gentiles, the conversion of Israel, and the imminent parousia of Jesus as cosmic Lord, and you have it—his own particular vision and version of that most general Hellenistic (and human) hope—escape from mortality and the cosmic transformation of the world. And yet it is those very apocalyptic “particulars” that make Paul really Paul. His was not a scheme of salvation for any place or for all time. Although he has endured and been appropriated in many different ways over the centuries, from the standpoint of the history of Judaism, he belongs in those crucial years of hope and promise, before the terrible days of August, 70 AD, when many such dreams came to an end as the Romans crushed the Jewish Revolt, destroyed the Temple and the city of Jerusalem, and locked down the Jewish population in Galilee and Judea with an overwhelming military occupation force.

For Paul the “appointed time” of the End had drawn very near (1 Cor. 7:26, 29, 31). How near, it is difficult to say, but he wrote that in the early 50’s AD. If he, like others in the movement before 70 AD, expected the fulfillment of Daniel 11 and 12, with the “desolating sacrilege” set up in the Temple at Jerusalem, then events such as Gaius’s attempt to have his statue placed there (41 AD), and Nero’s persecution of the Christians in Rome, would have fired the apocalyptic speculations of the movement to a white hot temperature (witness Mark 13). Apparently his plans to go to Spain never worked out, due to his arrest under Nero (Rom. 15:28), so his grand hope of bringing the bulk of Israel to accept Jesus as Messiah through his Gentile mission became more and more hopeless. By AD 70 it was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain any immediate hope for the “redemption of Israel.” Others would pick up the pieces in various ways, but Paul was gone and what emerged in his name, even in the short decades after 70, was the beginning of a new and very different story.

I just arrived in California for the Scripture and Skepticism conference this weekend at University of California at Davis. Judging from the program and backgrounds of the participants it looks to be a very thoughtful and interesting group with lots of diverse perspectives. It is open to the public so maybe I will run into some of my Blog readers. Even though the program is weighted toward Jesus and Christian Origins there are significant contributions dealing with the issue of a critical approach to Islam and the Koran. This might indeed prove to be one of the more interesting aspects of the conference.

For me it is a time to see some old friends, hear some whom I have never heard, and contribute some small token of well deserved analytical remembrance to the work of Albert Schweitzer on the historical Jesus. My topic is: “Standing in the Shadow of Schweitzer: What Can We Say About an Apocalyptic Jesus? As readers of The Jesus Dynasty know, my book was published on the 100th anniversary of the publication in German of Schweitzer’s monumental work, titled (in English) The Quest for the Historical Jesus. I have read Schweitzer’s work a half-dozen times over the years but yesterday I took advantage of my five hours in flight from North Carolina to California to read through my MacMillan 1955 edition yet again. As we landed I closed the book with a refreshed awe and respect for the sharp and keen insights Schweitzer expressed in 1906. We have come a long way since Schweitzer in the study of Chistian origins, but there is another sense in which we have been dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s of many of his major insights. He had no Dead Sea Scrolls, no complete editions of the Pseudepigrapha, no Nag Hammadi texts, and shared none of our more sophisticated and nuanced understandings of the diverse forms of Judaism in the wider contexts of the ancient Mediterranean world. Yet instinctively he seems, in my view at least, to be “right on target so direct,” on issue after issue.

I will post some updates and reports on the conference through the weekend including a summary of my own paper on Schweiter. Stay tuned, more to come…

I have it from good sources in Israel that last week in court folowing the cross examination by Oded Golan’s Attorney Mr. Bringer, Prof. Yuval Goren admitted that there is genuine ancient patina in at least two letters in the name “Joshua” (Jesus) on the ossuary inscription, which would indicate that the inscription is genuine. I have not seen this in news reports or other published sources yet but I am told that Hershel Shanks, president of The Biblical Archaeology Society was present, and has also mentioned this at a gathering at the Albright in Jerusalem, so I am sure we will get a detailed report from him soon on the BAS Web site.

While no one disputes the autheticity of the ossuary itself, the full inscription, which reads: “James son of Joseph, brother of Jesus” (Yaaqov bar Josef brother of Yeshua) has been questioned. Oded Golan, the owner of the ossuary is on trial for forgery based on the findings of the Israel Antiquities Authority that the last part, “brother of Jesus” was added to the original inscription “James son of Joseph,” to increase its value. Prof. Yuval Goren has been the most outspoken in maintaining that the inscription was forged and has given detailed lectures at professional meetings suggesting the ways in which the “patina” added to the recently cut letters was “doctored” to appear old. It now appears that in court he has admitted that “original patina” is in fact in those letters making up the phrase “brother of Jesus,” which had actually been reported earlier but largely ignored.

These developments are quite important since the public has been told that the real “experts” have proven that the “James ossuary is a forgery,” and those of us who have maintained that the case for authenticity is a strong one, or at least one that should be given careful consideration in this “rush to judgment,” have been roundly criticised for “sensationalism.” If indeed the weight of evidence ends up supporting authenticity then the next obvious question as to the provenance of the ossuary becomes all the more interesting as I have indicated in my two previous posts on this Blog.

More to come…I hope.

I begin The Jesus Dynasty, with a purposely riveting Introduction titled “A Tale of two Tombs,” I discuss the possible provenance of the controversial ossuary (bone box) that surfaced in 2002 inscribed “James son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.” I remain convinced that the ossuary inscription is authentic and ancient, and that it most likely held the bones of James or Yaaqov, brother of Jesus, and leader of the early Nazarene movement following Jesus’ death. The owner of the James ossuary, Oded Golan, is being tried for forgery in Israel with the charge that he or someone he commissioned added the phrase “brother of Jesus” to an existing “James son of Joseph” ossuary to make it more valuable. He stoutly maintains his innocence and has recently produced a photo of the complete inscription that dates back to 1980 that has been certified as authentic by Kodak. There is other evidence supporting authenticity as well, but the pros and cons are nicely archived at the Biblical Archaeology Society Web site.

The question upon which I focus in that Introduction is whether we can determine which tomb this ossuary came from, and if so, what more can we learn if such a tomb turns out to be the “Jesus Family tomb.” I consider two sites, the Tomb of the Shroud, which Shimon Gibson and I examined in the summer of 2000, and the Talpiot tomb, uncovered in March, 1980 by a bulldozer clearing space for some apartments just south of Jerusalem. As it turns out, there is circumstantial evidence that might link the James ossuary to either tomb, so I discuss both.

I am pleased to report that ABCNews has put my Introduction, “A Tale of Two Tombs,” up on their Web site, so whether you have my book or not you can easily read it. It provides all the essential background on the Talpiot Tomb discovery as well as the Tomb of the Shroud, but purposely stops short in drawing any conclusions. As more evidence is developed the story will change and 2007 looks to be the year when some of these issues might be definitively resolved.

For years I have considered Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) one of the most moving, informative, and influential novelists of my own reading experience. I remember first reading Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure over 30 years ago and the images and power of those tragically realistic portrayals of human life on planet earth still remain with me today.

What I have only learned the past few weeks is that Hardy gave up writing novels after completing Jude the Obscure in 1895, and largely spent the remainder of his literary career writing poetry. Hardy published his first volume of poetry, Wessex Poems, in 1898. In 1909 he published another volume titled Time’s Laughingstocks and Other Verses. Imagine my surprise, just last week, when I was told by poet Michael Burns (see previous January 8th Blog on poet James Whitehead) that this volume contained a long and passionately rendered poem called “Panthera.” Hardy apparently began to think deeply about the Panthera story as related in Celsus and other sources. I am also convinced that he was aware of the revelation, in 1906, by Adolf Deissmann, of the Panthera tombstone in Germany (see my Jesus Dynasty, pp. 65). The entire tale fired his romantic and melancholy heart.

This largely forgotten poem is amazingly executed in perfect iambic pentameter and rhymed mostly in couplets. Literary critics have found in it much to admire and evaluate in terms of its contributions to form and genre (see Renner’s lovely analysis). It chronicles the sexual and romantic love between a teenaged Mary and a Roman soldier Panthera, stationed in Palestine, but narrated from the point of view of the aging Panthera, thinking back on his life and what he has left behind. The lines are memorial and I urge readers to find the entire poem and read it themselves in the closest good library. Among those that jumped out at me:

A son may be a comfort or a curse,

A seer, a doer, a coward, a fool; yea worse…

Pantera recalls how he had first met Mary at a stopover in Nazareth, at the town spring, with touching imagery:

I proffered help to one–a slim girl, coy

Even as a fawn, meek, and as innocent.

Her long blue gown, the string of silver coins

That hung down by her banded beautiful hair,

Symboled in full immaculate modesty.

He was thoroughly taken in by her goodness and her innocence, what he calls “The tremulous tender charm of trustfulness.”

We met, and met, and under the winking stars

That passed which people earth–true union, yea

to the pure eye of her simplicity.

He leaves the country, only to return 30 years later at Jesus’ death, where he sees Mary at the crucifixion and he learns:

Though I betrayed some qualm, she marked me not;

And I was scare of mood to comrade her

And close the silence of so wide a time

To claim a malefactor as my son–

(For so I guess him). And inquiry made

Brought rumour how at Nazareth long before

And old man wedded her for pity’s sake

On finding she had grown pregnant, none knew how,

Cared for her child, and loved her till he died.

He never sees her again but a near the end Pantera offers sage advice to all who might hear:

Now glares my moody meaning on you, friend?-

That when you talk of offspring as sheer joy

So trustingly you blink contingencies,

Fors Fortuna! He who goes fathering

Gives frightful hostages to hazardry!

Hardy’s poem can surely be seen against the backdrop of his general aversion to conventional forms of religious authority and Christian tradition. However, I think it is likely more than that. He finds in the Pantera story a most apt expression of the most touching aspects of a universal humanness. Human love, separation, the uncharted life of a child, and all they might mean to one old and thinking back on it all. And who could better portray the “human all-too-human,” than the enshrined Mary, mother of God and her divine Son Jesus Christ of Nazareth. It is not just that Hardy disbelieved such orthodoxies, but more that he wanted these figures, the chief symbols of all that is heavenly and perfect and removed from our world, to end up serving that very thing–our very human existence on this planet, so fraught with uncertainties, foolishness, hope, and finally death.

Although I do not share all the details of Hardy’s vision, I do indeed find the Panthera poem profoundly moving for its human sentiments. I have to wonder if James Whitehead might have been influenced by Hardy’s work, though he surely forges his own imaginative account of things in his poems on “The Panther.” I anxiously await the time when the Whitehead corpus will be published and available for all to read. It is truly a legacy worth passing on by a great and gifted mind and heart.

I mentioned the news article on “The Jesus Project” in connection with the upcoming “Scripture and Skepticism” conference at the UC Davis next week. I hope to see some of you there. Joseph Hoffmann has provided this very helpful description and clarification. Feel free to circulate this as you wish:

The conference entitled “Scripture and Skepticism” (University of California at Davis, 25-28 January 2007) was called to consider comparative approaches to sacred scripture in the three book religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The conference is also a frank acknowledgement that the historical-critical method, which has enormously enlarged our understanding of the origins and development of biblical and koranic materials, needs to be asserted and defended in every generation.

At the conclusion of the three-day conference, Dr R. Joseph Hoffmann, the current head of CSER (Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion, the sponsoring organization) will announce plans for a new venture called the “Jesus Project.” The emphasis of the new project is to examine the shreds of tradition which bear on the historicity—the historical existence–of Jesus of Nazareth. The Jesus Project is not “a successor” to the Jesus Seminar. The ambitious work of the Westar Institute winds on. The Jesus Project does however acknowledge a certain incompleteness in the work of the JS, since, inevitably, when the sayings of Jesus have been pared down to just under twenty, or some 18%, of those attributed to him in the canonical gospels, questions inevitably arise not just about the fate of the others, but the historicity of the man himself. The Jesus Project is funded entirely by the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion, its affiliates, and private donors.

It should be stressed that the JP, contrary to some advance media speculation, is not an attempt to disprove the historical Jesus. By he same token, its goal is not to create a historically plausible figure from the bits of evidence available, but rather to assess the nature and weight of the evidence itself. Attempts in the 19th and twentieth century to discredit all elements of the gospel record were pronounced a failure, though largely by a theologically driven method of inquiry. The JP will solicit the skills of New Testament scholars, historians, and social scientists in its deliberations. It acknowledges the bias and partiality of previous efforts to address this question, but regards the question as significant and deserving of greater attention than has been given it in previous decades. The proliferation of new theories of the non-historicity of Jesus, whatever their merits, and defenses of the historical Jesus whatever their weaknesses, make this an important area of investigation in the new millennium.

CSER wishes to stress that the members of the seminar will be selected by a vetting process, to be published in the form of announcements to universities, colleges and seminaries in March 2007. The davis conference does not constitute a session of the Project and speakers at this CSER conference have no formal connection to the Project.

The Seminar will meet twice a year—once in Amherst New York, and in Los Angeles California. Other venues may be announced as its work progresses and its conclusions are documented.

For further information, or to be considered as a project associate, please contact the Project administrator, Gwyneth MacRae.

R.. Joseph Hoffmann, PhD
Senior Vice President - Academic
Center for Inquiry International
PO Box 741
Amherst, NY 14226
(716) 636-7571
www.centerforinquiry.net/cser/

I was a little surprised to see the following story circulating in the press this week:

Scholars to debate if Jesus existed, Group to discuss, test truth of Bible

Jennifer Green
The Ottawa Citizen

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Internationally recognized biblical scholars are set to launch The Jesus Project, a new endeavour to examine the historical existence of Christ.

The project is intended to pick up where the controversial Jesus Seminar left off in its research into the veracity of Jesus’s words and deeds in the Bible.

The seminar has lost momentum in recent years, but in its heyday, about 200 scholars met regularly to discuss whether Jesus really behaved as the Bible says he did.

The scholars voted using a system of beads — red for accurate, pink for probable, grey for possible but unreliable, and black for improbable — and found 82 per cent of Jesus’s sayings, and 84 per cent of his deeds were unreliable to improbable.

Conservative Christians and many scholars of all stripes were outraged. Some theologians believed the seminar drove a wedge further between faith and reason, while others in more liberal churches said their faith was, in fact, bolstered by the research.

Now, the Jesus Project “will take off where the Jesus seminar left off,” says Nathan Bupp, spokesman for the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion, the group sponsoring the conference at the University of California this month. “It will breathe new fire into it. We will not close the door on free inquiry.”

The original seminar may have been reluctant to follow where the evidence led, says R. Joseph Hoffman, committee chairman and author of Just War and Jihad: Violence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

He says the goal is not to prove that Jesus never existed, but to acknowledge that it is a legitimate field of inquiry that needs to be examined objectively.

“When you have pared the sayings of Jesus down to fewer than 20, one begins to wonder about the survivors. Moreover, the Jesus Seminar was not successful in papering over fatal disputes about the authenticity of even those.”

Among those attending the conference are some of the biggest names in biblical studies today:

- James D. Tabor, chairman of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, and author of The Jesus Dynasty: A New Historical Investigation of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity.

- Elaine Pagels, a professor of religion at Princeton University, who was awarded the Rockefeller, Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellowships.

- Van Harvey, professor emeritus of religious studies at Stanford University and author of The Historian and the Believer.

- John Dominic Crossan, leading member of the Jesus Seminar

Two Canadians will also be presenting papers: Islamic specialist Andrew Rippin of the University of Victoria, and Philippa Carter of McMaster University.

The conference will also look at the origins of the Koran, biblical and Koranic mythology, modern developments in examining ancient texts and the role of skepticism in examining religious texts.

The committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion is not tied to any school, but is a project of the Centre for Inquiry, in Amherst, New York, a group that defends secularism and reason, science, and freedom of inquiry.

© The Ottawa Citizen 2007

Although I am quite happy to be ranked among my superiors as “some of the biggest names in biblical studies today,” I think there is a bit of confusion between the upcoming conference, Scripture and Skepticism, at the University of California at Davis, and the formation of a group called The Jesus Project. Although I and lots of others will be reading papers or giving responses at the conference, this is the first I have heard of any Project of this description. I do think those involved will need to choose a new name since “The Jesus Project” as well as “The Jesus Film Project” are both efforts of evangelical Christian groups trying to carry out worldwide evangelism.

I want to share an amazing story.

Not too long after the publication of my book The Jesus Dynasty in April, 2006 I heard from an old friend who shared my interest in Pantera. This friend moves in literary circles and told me that she had heard of a professor in Arkansas who had recently died who had done a wealth of research on Pantera, had traveled to Germany to study the Pantera tombstone, and had a treasure of unpublished material. I was interested but since she did not know the professor’s name or anymore details I more or less put the story out of my mind.

Last September I was in Austin, Texas as part of the Biblical Archaeology Seminar on “Lost Christianities,” as I reported at the time in this Blog, giving lectures with Profs. April DeConick of Rice University, and Charles Hedrick at Missouri State University. One of my lectures dealt with the “Pantera” tradition. It was a kind of “state of the question” report on what we can say from an historical perspective on the subject. I could have never imagined what happened next.

When Hedrick returned to Missouri State University he mentioned my book and my Pantera lecture to a colleague of his in the English department–one Michael Burns, a poet. He recalled that Burns had mentioned Pantera a few times. As it turns out, Burns had been a student of another poet, James Whitehead, at the University of Arkansas, who had died in August, 2003. In his later years, Whitehead, an accomplished poet and novelist (author of the 1971 bestseller Joiner), had become fascinated with the Pantera legend. He had come across it in Morton Smith’s 1978 book, Jesus the Magician, in which Smith comments on the Pantera tombstone in Germany, making the passing suggestion, partly tongue-in-cheek, that it is possible, though not likely, that this tombstone might be our only “genuine relic of the Holy Family” (p. 47).

Whitehead’s imagination was fired by the idea that the young Mary might have loved and become pregnant from this young man from Palestine who ended up a Roman soldier dying at age 62 on the German frontier. He traveled to Germany to visit the tombstone and contacted a couple of young German archaeologists, Peter Haupt and Sabine Hornung, who guided him in his research. Whitehead ended up writing an entire series of poems on “The Panther,” as he affectionately called his protagonist. He was also working on a dramatic documentary about his own Quest that had taken him to Germany.

Imagine my surprise when I received an e-mail “out of the blue” from Michael Burns back in late September. Burns told me the story of his late mentor James Whitehead, of Whitehead’s passion for the Mary and Pantera story, and he offered to let me look at both the poems and the drama. When I received copies a few days later I was totally “blown away” and deeply impressed by Whitehead’s work. He had somehow captured in his skillful poetic imagination a version of this ‘greatest love story never told,” that was historically plausible and profoundly moving.

Over the past few months I have learned much more about James Whitehead and the illustrious poetic circles at the University of Arkansas of which he was a part (Miller Williams, who read at Clinton’s 2nd inaugural was part of that scene). I have spoken with Michael Burns at length, talked to Gen Whitehead Broyles, Whitehead’s widow, and corresponded with Thomas Kennedy, a dear friend and colleague of Whitehead’s who had accompanied him on his trips to Germany.

The Whitehead “Pantera” material has never been published. It was given to Burns by Whitehead’s widow and he had explored various possibilities of having it published. As we talked I think we inspired one another and over the past few months we formulated a plan to bring out a special edition of this important work–a “chapbook” of the Pantera poems, with lovely illustrations by the renowned Russian artist Eric Pervuhkin. We are also exploring the possibilities of a more widely published edition. Burns will write the preface of course, and I will provide some historical background on the Pantera story, but the book will mainly contain these beautiful poems of Whitehead with some stunning illustrations by Pervuhkin. The Missouri State University Press will publish the initial collectors edition and subscribers are welcome..

I find the whole development quite fascinating, how it came to me “out of the blue,” and where it appears to be heading. And last night, while talking to Burns, he reported another discovery he had recently made. As it turns out the famous British novelist and poet, Thomas Hardy, had picked up on the Pantera story, probably from Adolf Deissmann’s publication of the tombstone in 1906, and written a long and moving poem called “Panthera” published in 1909.

More on that in my next Blog entry…