Archive for December, 2007

The current special issue of USNews & World Report, titled “Secrets of Christianity,” now on newsstands, has profiled both my work and my book, The Jesus Dynasty in such an embarrassingly extravagant manner that it has left me, well, a bit stunned–but happily so of course. I guess I have begun to get used to a bit of media attention, but hardly anything like this. The lead article, written by Religion editor, Jay Tolson, is devoted almost exclusively to my work (eight full pages), and then there is a separate six page section of well selected excerpts taken directly from the book. I have interviewed with Tolson on a number of stories over the years and find him to be exceptionally perceptive, probing, and well prepared. This lavish 86 page issue is well crafted including a full bibliography at the end. It covers a variety of issues clustered around the following topics of interest:

Who was the real Jesus?

Why do scholars still debate the Resurrection?

What happened during the Crusades and Inquisition?

Are miracles real, or a figment of our imagination?

Why are scientists making the case for a Creator?

What do the Vatican’s Secret Archives reveal?

Will there be an Apocalypse, and when will it happen?
I invite readers to pick up a copy at their favorite bookstore or newsstand.

Prof. Aren Maeir, chair of the Dept. of Archaeology/Land of Israel Studies at Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv, Israel has recently expressed his views on “Biblical Archaeology,” in a widely circulated news story “Caution Replaces Rash Claims to Prove Bible.” He argues that there is no reason to shy away from comparing scientific findings to the biblical text, but urges that caution be exercised, particularly when it comes to going “public” with claims about this or that data “proving” the biblical record. He notes the trend today among some scholars to “dump the whole premise of biblical archaeology and just look at sites from a clearly archaeological perspective, rather than enmesh it with an ideological, religious or nationalistic perspective,” but warns that this attempt, that certainly has academic justification, is espoused “by those who have a very strong ideology in the other direction and don’t believe there is any historical accuracy in the Bible.”

I find his comments in this regard to be balanced and on target, however, Maeir then goes on to offer four examples of sensational claims that have received wide public attention but have turned out to be either a gross misunderstanding of the facts or outright frauds with the following characterizations:

• Mt. Ararat as the site where Noah’s Ark was found. “This one happens every five or 10 years,” yet nothing has been found to verify the claim.

• The Shroud of Turin. “We know clearly now it was made in the Middle Ages. It has been scientifically tested and dated clearly to the 14th Century.”

• The tomb of Jesus’ family. Among the most recent “discoveries,” the tomb has been the subject of several documentary films and books, but Maeir said what isn’t discussed is the commonality of the names found in the tomb. “There’s nothing exceptional about having a Jesus and a
Miriam and a Jacob” in the same tomb, he said.

• The ossuary of Jesus’ brother, James. “It turns out the box was found only with the ‘James’ part on it. Someone else added the words, ‘brother of Jesus.”‘

I don’t think Maier would get much argument on Noah’s Ark and the Shroud of Turin, but I am frankly surprised at his inclusion of the Talpiot Jesus tomb and the James ossuary as well as his inaccurate characterizations of both. To assert that the “commonality of the names” in the Talpiot tomb has not been discussed, or that the cluster of names is “nothing exceptional” ignores an extensive and serious scholarly debate, much of which is now appearing in peer reviewed scholarly publications. The latest issue of Near Eastern Archaeology has six essays dealing with most of the essential issues related to the Talpiot tomb, including the commonality of the names. There are peer reviewed statistical studies now available, with more to come (e.g. Prof. Feuerverger’s article forthcoming in Annals of Applied Statistics), that indicate that this easy dismissal of Maier and others on the basis of the names being “common” is misguided both in terms of the facts and the statistics. I have archived an extensive discussion of this very subject on this Blog. It is also far from established that the phrase “brother of Jesus” was added by someone to the James ossuary, indeed, the latest testimony in the trial of Oded Golan indicates that the letters containing original patina are precisely those with the words “brother of Jesus.” It is far from clear that the inscription has been shown to be a forgery, and there is credible evidence to the contrary that has emerged from a variety of highly responsible academic sources.

There seems to be a bit of a “bandwagon” or “pile-on” effect here, inspired perhaps by Eric Cline’s widely quoted essay in the Boston Globe titled “Raiders on of the Faux Ark,” based on his new book, From Eden to Exile: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Bible. Eric’s thesis, that “biblical archaeology is too important to leave to crackpots and ideologues; it’s time to fight back” has received deserved praise, but I fear a casualty might well be the same kind of easy dismissal and misstatement of facts regarding both the Talpiot tomb and the James ossuary that Maier reflects in his interview. Believe it or not, these are not my two pet issues, but they are subjects to which I have devoted considerable time and research and I have to insist, despite any aspersions, that they deserve a fair and full hearing with the facts laid out. That Professor James Charlesworth of Princeton has put together a large academic conference that will discuss both the Talpiot tomb and the James ossuary, in a proper scholarly context, this January in Jerusalem, is all to the good and says much for his own courage and integrity. He too has taken his share of “lumps” for maintaining that neither the tomb nor the ossuary has yet had a proper hearing. So let’s hear it for responsible academic standards when it comes to “biblical archaeology,” but let’s not dismiss or ignore the body of responsible discussion on both the Talpiot tomb and the James ossuary.

Scholars are aware of the rich and diverse ways in which the term “Son of God” is used in the Hebrew Bible, in subsequent Jewish literature, and in the New Testament writings themselves, not to mention various non-Jewish texts (including inscriptions and coins) of the Greco-Roman period. Most of us who teach in the field of Christian Origins get asked from time to time by students or in public lectures, “Professor, do you believe Jesus was X.” Sometimes X is “Messiah,” other times it is “Divine,” but in my experience, most often, the question is “Do you believe that Jesus was the Son of God.” In good Socratic fashion one is tempted to reply, “Well what do you mean by the term ‘Son of God,’ and such a counter question is certainly more than subterfuge.

1) In the Hebrew Bible the precise phrase “son of God” does not occur, although the plural phrase “sons of God” (b’nai ‘elohim) occurs five times in the Masoretic text (Genesis 6:2,4; Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:7), likely referring to a group of “angelic” beings who comprise God’s heavenly court and are charged with the responsibility of overseeing, ruling, and reporting on human affairs. In Psalm 82:6 this group is directly addressed: “You are Gods, sons of the Most High all of you.” In the Dead Sea Scroll copies of Deuteronomy, the phrase “sons of God,” occurs two more times in the “Song of Moses,” also likely referring to these heavenly custodians of human affairs (Deut 32:8; 43), and these two additional references are also found in the Greek Septuagint, a translation of the Hebrew from the 2nd century BCE. There is also an Aramaic reference (bar ‘elahin) to such a heavenly being who is said to be like “a son of the Gods” in Daniel 3:25.

2) The anointed kings of ancient Israel were referred to as “son of God.” Samuel tells David that God has promised to make a covenant with him and his royal descendants will rule as kings forever. Yahweh declares, according to Samuel, “I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me” (2 Samuel 7:14). According to a later Psalm, the Davidic ruler will cry “You are my Father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation” and God will make him “the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth” (Psalm 89:26-27). This is the background of Psalm 2, where Yahweh says to the king, “You are my son; today I have begotten you.” Some scholars are convinced that this language was used in some kind of coronation ceremony, and various Psalms are classified as “royal Psalms,” in that they celebrate the reign of Israel’s King as Yahweh’s direct human agent (Psalm 45, 72, 110).

3) The people of Israel are called “God’s son.” Moses tells Pharaoh of Egypt “Thus says Yahweh, Israel is my firstborn son” (Exodus 4:22), and the prophet Hosea, looking back to that time, has God declare, “when Israel was a child I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son” (11:1).

4) In late 2nd Temple Jewish writings one who devoutly follows God is said to be his “son” (Wisdom of Solomon 2:16-18; 5:5; Sirach 4:10). For example, the various patriarchs such as Noah, Lamech, and Shem are addressed as “my son” regularly in 1 Enoch.

5) Julius Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, and subsequent Roman emperors were regularly referred to as “son of God” (divi filius), on coins and inscriptions, as were a host of Greco-Roman “heroes” whom were called “divine men.” Some of these were said to have been “fathered” by a God, while others were honored for their extraordinary deeds. However, the terms “Lord,” “Son of God” and “Savior,” in the time of Jesus, was used rather widely in Greco-Roman materials to refer to such legendary, political, philosophical, or religious figures.

6) Adam, and by extension, all humankind, is called the “son of God” on the basis of being created in God’s image and likeness (Luke 3:38; Acts 17:26-29). This is akin to the general notion of God as Creator being “Father” of humankind.

7) Jesus at his baptism hears a voice from heaven that declares “You are my Son, the beloved, with you I am well pleased” (Mark 1:11). Mark records no birth narratives of Jesus at all. Matthew follows Mark here but there were versions his gospel in Hebrew that added the phrase “Today I have begotten you,” based on Psalm 2:7. This interpretation was referred to as “adoptionism,” meaning that Jesus was made and declared to be God’s son at his baptism when the Holy Spirit came upon him. Apparently such a view was held by some early Jewish followers of Jesus, associated with James the Just, the brother of Jesus, who came to be labeled in later years as “Ebionites.” We are told that they used the gospel of Matthew in Hebrew, but in a version that lacked the virgin birth story of chapters 1-2, that they believed Jesus had a human mother and father, and that he was designated (“adopted”) as God’s son at his baptism as an indication of being chosen and favored as Messiah.

8) Jesus is said to be the “son of God” based on his mother Mary becoming pregnant through the Holy Spirit, with no human father, as explicitly stated in Luke 1:35. This idea of no human father is found in both Luke and Matthew. Even though the gospel of John has no explicit account of the “virgin birth,” his statement about the “Word (Logos) becoming flesh and dwelling among us” likely reflects this same idea of incarnation–the Son of God born in the flesh (John 1:14).

9) Jesus declared to be the “Son of God” by his resurrection from the dead. This idea is most explicitly stated by Paul in Romans 1:3-4, where he says Jesus is a descendant (“seed”) of David in the flesh, but a “Son of God” in the Spirit. The same idea, including the quotation from Psalm 2:6, “You are my son, this day have I begotten you,” is applied to Jesus through his resurrection from the dead in Acts 13:33. We have no indication that Paul thought Jesus was born without a human father, indeed, he says that he was of the “seed” or lineage of king David, but his status as “Son of God” was, according to Paul, based on his resurrection from the dead.

10) According to Paul those followers of Jesus who have received the Holy Spirit are made “sons of God,” and indeed, Paul says that Jesus is “firstborn of many brothers” (Rom 8:14-17; 29-30). Paul uses the term “adoption” to describe this idea that one becomes a “son of God” and calls God Father upon receiving the Holy Spirit. The writer of Hebrew speaks explicitly of these “many sons of God” who are to come (Hebrews 2:10). John expresses a similar idea of an extended family of “sons of God” based on a new spiritual “birth” for those who united with Jesus (1:12-13).

Given this complexity and diversity what one might mean by calling Jesus the “Son of God” could range from an affirmation of Jesus as God’s favored choice as Israel’s anointed king, to ideas of a preexistent Divine being who is born of a woman with no human father, and thus “becomes flesh” (Incarnation), with ranges of views in between.

Congratulations to my friend and colleague, Dr. April DeConick, whose work on the Gospel of Judas I have profiled on this Blog. Yesterday the New York Times published her Op-Ed contribution on the same topic. It offers a succinct overview of the issues involved:

December 1, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
Gospel Truth
By APRIL D. DECONICK
Houston

AMID much publicity last year, the National Geographic Society announced that a lost 3rd-century religious text had been found, the Gospel of Judas Iscariot. The shocker: Judas didn’t betray Jesus. Instead, Jesus asked Judas, his most trusted and beloved disciple, to hand him over to be killed. Judas’s reward? Ascent to heaven and exaltation above the other disciples.

It was a great story. Unfortunately, after re-translating the society’s transcription of the Coptic text, I have found that the actual meaning is vastly different. While National Geographic’s translation supported the provocative interpretation of Judas as a hero, a more careful reading makes clear that Judas is not only no hero, he is a demon.

Several of the translation choices made by the society’s scholars fall well outside the commonly accepted practices in the field. For example, in one instance the National Geographic transcription refers to Judas as a “daimon,” which the society’s experts have translated as “spirit.” Actually, the universally accepted word for “spirit” is “pneuma ” – in Gnostic literature “daimon” is always taken to mean “demon.”

Likewise, Judas is not set apart “for” the holy generation, as the National Geographic translation says, he is separated “from” it. He does not receive the mysteries of the kingdom because “it is possible for him to go there.” He receives them because Jesus tells him that he can’t go there, and Jesus doesn’t want Judas to betray him out of ignorance. Jesus wants him informed, so that the demonic Judas can suffer all that he deserves.

Perhaps the most egregious mistake I found was a single alteration made to the original Coptic. According to the National Geographic translation, Judas’s ascent to the holy generation would be cursed. But it’s clear from the transcription that the scholars altered the Coptic original, which eliminated a negative from the original sentence. In fact, the original states that Judas will “not ascend to the holy generation.” To its credit, National Geographic has acknowledged this mistake, albeit far too late to change the public misconception.

So what does the Gospel of Judas really say? It says that Judas is a specific demon called the “Thirteenth.” In certain Gnostic traditions, this is the given name of the king of demons – an entity known as Ialdabaoth who lives in the 13th realm above the earth. Judas is his human alter ego, his undercover agent in the world. These Gnostics equated Ialdabaoth with the Hebrew Yahweh, whom they saw as a jealous and wrathful deity and an opponent of the supreme God whom Jesus came to earth to reveal.

Whoever wrote the Gospel of Judas was a harsh critic of mainstream Christianity and its rituals. Because Judas is a demon working for Ialdabaoth, the author believed, when Judas sacrifices Jesus he does so to the demons, not to the supreme God. This mocks mainstream Christians’ belief in the atoning value of Jesus’ death and in the effectiveness of the Eucharist.

How could these serious mistakes have been made? Were they genuine errors or was something more deliberate going on? This is the question of the hour, and I do not have a satisfactory answer.

Admittedly, the society had a tough task: restoring an old gospel that was lying in a box of its own crumbs. It had been looted from an Egyptian tomb in the 1970s and languished on the underground antiquities market for decades, even spending time in someone’s freezer. So it is truly incredible that the society could resurrect any part of it, let alone piece together about 85 percent of it.

That said, I think the big problem is that National Geographic wanted an exclusive. So it required its scholars to sign nondisclosure statements, to not discuss the text with other experts before publication. The best scholarship is done when life-sized photos of each page of a new manuscript are published before a translation, allowing experts worldwide to share information as they independently work through the text.

Another difficulty is that when National Geographic published its transcription, the facsimiles of the original manuscript it made public were reduced by 56 percent, making them fairly useless for academic work. Without life-size copies, we are the blind leading the blind. The situation reminds me of the deadlock that held scholarship back on the Dead Sea Scrolls decades ago. When manuscripts are hoarded by a few, it results in errors and monopoly interpretations that are very hard to overturn even after they are proved wrong.

To avoid this, the Society of Biblical Literature passed a resolution in 1991 holding that, if the condition of the written manuscript requires that access be restricted, a facsimile reproduction should be the first order of business. It’s a shame that National Geographic, and its group of scholars, did not follow this sensible injunction.

I have wondered why so many scholars and writers have been inspired by the National Geographic version of the Gospel of Judas. I think it may stem from an understandable desire to reform the relationship between Jews and Christians. Judas is a frightening character. For Christians, he is the one who had it all and yet betrayed God to his death for a few coins. For Jews, he is the man whose story was used by Christians to persecute them for centuries. Although we should continue to work toward a reconciliation of this ancient schism, manufacturing a hero Judas is not the answer.

April D. DeConick, a professor of Biblical studies at Rice University, is the author of “The Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really Says.”

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company