Archive for the ‘Christian Origins’ Category

The subject heading is the title of a most famous book by Jim Bishop, The Day Christ Died, published in 1957 by Harper Collins with an official Imprimatur by the famous Archbishop of New York Francis Cardinal Spellman–guaranteeing it “free of doctrinal or moral error.” The book is still available in reprint editions. I highly recommend it for a kind of retrospective history reading. I remember devouring this book when it came out. I was eleven years old. It captivated me utterly, I could not put it down.

Fifty years later I write this post on a Thursday night, on the eve of “Good Friday,” that happens this year to also be the night of Purim as well as the Vernal Equinox–a kind of triple package of markers and observances. Today is Thursday. I have been absolutely convinced for several years now, as I explain in my book, The Jesus Dynasty, that Jesus died on Nisan 14th, which in the year A.D. 30, fell on a Thursday not a Friday. So this is indeed, the “day Christ died.” He was put in the temporary rock hewn tomb just before sunset, and Friday, the following day, was the first day of Passover. This means the Passover meal or Seder was eaten that Thursday night, just as the Gospel of John records (John 13:1; 18:28). The next day, Friday, was indeed a “Sabbath,” but not Saturday, the weekly Sabbath, but rather one of the seven “annual” Sabbaths of the Jewish festival cycle (see Leviticus 23:7). This means there were two Sabbaths, back to back, Friday and Saturday, that year. Sunday morning, when Mary Magdalene went early to the tomb and found it empty, it was indeed “three days and three nights” that Jesus had laid in that tomb (Thurs, Friday, Saturday nights), which comports with the tradition that Matthew has received (Matthew 12:40). Surely a million Sunday school kids over the years have asked, not to mention adults, how can you get three nights, from Friday to Sunday morning. It simply will not work.

Modern astronomical programs completely confirm this chronology of the Spring of A.D. 30. I have had quite a few dozens of readers write me to point out that the Jewish calendar never allows the 14th of Nisan to fall on a Thursday. But this adjustment in the calendar, based on what are called “postponements,” was not instituted until well into the 2nd century. In the time of Jesus the month of Nisan was set by the new moon, and that particular year, A.D. 30, the 14th day of the first month (14 days after the new moon) fell on a Thursday. The “last supper,” that Jesus ate with his disciples the night before, a Wednesday evening, was not the Passover Seder, but a messianic banquet or Eucharist of “bread and wine,” such as mentioned in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Didache. One way of putting it is that Jesus did not eat the Passover, he was the Passover, at least as understood by the Gospel of John and by Paul (1 Corinthians 5:7). According to Josephus it was between 3pm and sundown the Passover sacrifices were made, just as the 14th of Nisan ended and the 15th, an annual Sabbath, began. Christians subsequently saw great symbolism in this chronology.

This is an informal post sent to me by e-mail from Wendy Pond. I asked her for her permission to pass it on. This matter of sorting out the Marys in the three anointing scenes in our gospels (Mark/Matt; Luke, and John) is a complex one. I have shied away from identifying Mary “called Magdalene” with “Mary of Bethany” in John, and also leaned toward the idea of two pair of sisters named “Mary and Martha,” one in the Galilee and another in Jerusalem/Bethany (Luke 10 & John 11 being a different family) but I remain open and consider this matter unresolved. Here is Wendy’s take on things:
Luke seems purposefully to juxtapose the introduction of Mary Magdalene (as exorcised of 7 demons in 8:1-3) with the woman of the city identified as a sinner in 7:37-38 who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears, wipes them with her hair and anoints his feet – perhaps to cause intentional blurring/association of MM with the sinful woman of the city, i.e., to obscure/demote/sully any close relationship MM might have had with Jesus and thus her important status as part of Jesus’ inner circle of disciples.

Further to this, the act of washing and anointing the feet so intimately as done in Luke would be expected to be performed only by a man’s wife or servant/slave. It would have been considered sinful for any non-attached woman to do this to a man (especially in front of witnesses!). If the author of Luke was intentionally distancing MM from Jesus, he would have known this (whether he was Jewish or Gentile, I think!), so if, from Luke’s original knowledge or source, MM actually had performed this act and was close to Jesus such as wife/companion, but Luke did not wish to present her as such, Luke would have had to paint her as a sinner – even if he didn’t name her – therefore he made the association by juxtaposing 7:37-50 with 8:1-3. (“Woman from the city” could also be a true remnant from an early source descriptive of MM – from Magdala or another large, possibly Hellenized/pagan – “sinful” – city.)

I will add that within that Jewish-Mediterranean culture, when women were traveling with men, it would have been assumed they were either wives, sisters, daughters or servants/slaves, i.e., attached to the men as family/household/property, and a man meeting a mixed group of travelers on the road would likely never even bother to ask another man about the relationships of women traveling with him. The fact that Jesus’ group had independent women traveling with them was probably highly unusual, and why Luke mentions it 8:3 – maybe he couldn’t avoid/omit it. Once again, Luke associates MM with these important, independent women (wealthy? and/or had left their families/husbands?) who provided for Jesus/the group from their means. But was MM truly independent – as in, unattached, no relation to Jesus at all other than spiritually/part of the movement? Luke has sandwiched MM between these two vignettes, and has painted her as a woman who was (at least formerly) ill/mentally unstable, on top of it all.

While Mark does not identify the woman, John identifies her as Mary, sister of Lazarus and Martha, and both annointing accounts take place in Bethany. In both accounts, “some” present (disciples? other guests?) or Judas Iscariot complain/s about the waste of the costly spikenard, but no-one complains about how sinful or shocking it would have been for a woman not related to Jesus to perform such an intimate act (any form of touching!), especially the case in John where, again, the act involves Mary wiping Jesus’ feet with her hair! Clearly the authors of both gospels wished to emphasize the act of anointing the Messiah, but I believe any close relation the woman/Mary had to Jesus was quietly omitted from the story – the fact that there is no shocked reaction from the men in attendance to this intimate act is the loud, red flag, and it seems to indicate that those in attendance either knew or just assumed the woman/Mary (especially Mary in John) was closely related to Jesus. (That, or Jesus’ disciples and friends just accepted the fact that Jesus had an unusually open, egalitarian and casual attitude/approach toward all women – which I do believe at any rate.) I think I pointed this out in an earlier email to you, but in contrast, in the account of the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well (John 4:27), the disciples are rather surprised to find Jesus talking to a strange woman; a man would never bother – a woman was unimportant or it wasn’t even proper. But in the annointing account with Mary, no surprise at all – why? Because Jesus’ and Mary’s relationship may have been omitted.

I believe Mary of Bethany in John is the same as the woman in Bethany in Mark 14:3-9 (clearly in that she wipes his feet with her hair – a memorable scene in deed!), and same as the woman in Luke 7:37-50, and she is Mary Magdalene. And she would have to have been Jesus’ wife or close/intimate companion. Luke unwittingly connects the dots with Mark and John, ID’ing her as MM, even though he tries to paint her in the worst light. Matthew doesn’t even mention her until the crucifixion! It’s why MM is at the tomb (with Jesus’ mother – the 2 most important women in his life, in that order!) to anoint Jesus’ body – she was his wife/companion, the first person to whom he appeared, and why none of the gospel authors could omit her completely from the story. Thus we have:

(A) Woman in Bethany – Mark
(B) Sinful woman of the City; wipes J’s feet with hair – Luke
(C) Mary of Bethany; wipes J’s feet with hair – John

Because A and C are the same (it’s doubtful 2 anointings took place in Bethany), and because B and C are also likely the very same, highly memorable story (intimate/sensual wiping of Jesus’ feet with the hair – again, it’s not likely to have happened twice with different women!), then A and B must also be the same woman. Luke connects the dots to Mary Magdalene. Luke also put the anointing story much earlier in Jesus’ mission and turns it into a moving story about forgiveness of sins rather than the anointing of the Messiah before his death – a way of downplaying Messianism vs. Son of God or the Jewishness of Jesus? What’s also amazingly odd is that Mark omits the woman’s name even tho’ he cannot erase/omit Jesus’ words about her – his proclamation that “what she has done will be told in memory of her.” A woman to be remembered the world over with no name….

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

I just returned from the thickly packed cluster of academic conferences held in San Diego, November 16th-20th–this included the annual meetings of the American Academy of Religion, the Society of Biblical Literature, the American Schools of Oriental Research (ancient Near Eastern/Mediterranean archaeology), and the Biblical Archeology Society. Besides seeing many friends, hearing some interesting papers, and browsing the massive displays of new books by hundreds of publishers, I read a paper on Mary Magdalene in a joint meeting of the Early Jewish & Christian Mysticism section with the Religious Experience in Early Judaism & Christianity consultation. My assigned task was to offer a reflective review of Jane Schaberg’s important and provocative book, The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene: Legends, Apocrypha, and the Christian Testament (Continuum, 2004). As my readers know, I have quite a positive evaluation of this book and its importance and I had posted a blurb at this site back in March. I thought some might be interested in what I said, so I will paste in my remarks here:

My brief review is organized around three main points: The Women, the Problem, and the Ending. By “the Women,” I mean not only Mary Magdalene, but the author, Jane Schaberg as well, and a third, Virginia Woolf, who is brought along by Jane as a kind of meditative conversation partner throughout the book. Although this book is a thoroughly academic and scholarly historical investigation of Mary Magdalene, it is at the same time a sharply challenging and engaging personal narrative of Jane’s own journey in her search for the historical Mary Magdalene. She departs from the formal and structured categories common among us and bares her soul along the way. The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene is a thickly multifaceted work that resists easy characterization. It is at once carefully documented historical scholarship, meditative personal memoir, and cutting feminist critique. As such, one is hard pressed to review it with any sort of standard academic detachment. I was deeply drawn into the book at each of its many levels. I have to confess, my “heart burned within me” as I worked my way though the structured stages of her presentation. Jane has devoted a good bit of her career to the exposure of the multiple strategies of suppression of the memory of the two most important Marys in Jesus’ life—that of his mother and his companion Mary Magdalene. If you have read her courageous and important work, The Illegitimacy of Jesus: A Feminist Theological Interpretation of the Infancy Narratives, published twenty years ago, I recommend a revisiting. It is now out (Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2006) in an expanded paperback version that includes her personal reflections on the hostile reactions that work elicited from the small and the great in our field. As an illustration of this personal side of this book on Mary Magdalene I offer here two extended quotations, one on Woolf, the other about Schaberg herself:

“Woolf’s influence has been felt in many disciplines; but to my knowledge not yet much in Religious studies. In my own case, she functions something like the mentor I never had. ‘Consulting’ her, reading her avidly in the course of writing this book, is part of the feminist methodology I use here, infusing and refreshing the conventional methodologies of my discipline, oxygenating the masculinist atmosphere. Woolf puts me in the mood to think and write; she somehow keeps me going. She teaches the writer’s life of concentration and commitment, and makes it happier by repudiating the sacrifice of friendship, love, and simple social pleasures, for the needs of others. Scorning ‘adultery of the brain’ or ‘intellectual harlotry’ (writing what one does not want to write, for the sake of money rather than in the interests of culture and intellectual liberation), she urges connected thinking, and political savvy” (p. 32).

In this second quotation Jane reflects on the hostile reaction she received from the publication of her book, The Illegitimacy of Jesus and how her teaching in Detroit, and her surviving cancer have all had their part in the way her writing on Mary Magdalene unfolded:

“Yes I was ‘victimized’ a bit, and yes it set me back. But backlash also had the unintended effect of making me more personally and intensely interested in the process of censorship and silencing. It gave me reserves of anger and energy to draw on. I know in my bones how serious the opposition is to women’s insight, women’s revisioning. I know a little more about strategies of suppression . . . Reading from Detroit in this time is reading embedded in experiences of the deep and tangled structures of racism, sexism, poverty, classism, colonialism, and of the despair and courage displayed by those whom these structures have enmeshed. Despite my early efforts to get a ‘better’ job, I am lucky to teach in a non-elite, richly diverse classroom Virginia Woolf would approve of, where some—many—of our students are the poor (or the nearly poor, the recently poor) with whom I try to be a co-learner in the effort to demystify strategies of oppression like ‘whiteness,’ and to recognize powers of resistance . . . I belong to a group of survivors ‘privileged’ to experience my mortality: first as a young child with a heart valve problem, then in my forties with Stage 3 breast cancer. But all I remember about the latter experience is the terror of death, the striving to beat death, the will to live, the love of life. Having had to face the fear brought me no closer to an articulated faith, but only sometimes to the grasping of mantra-like phrases (‘now and at the hour of our death’ and ‘Shema’ Yisrael’) and to the presence and support of good friends. Nothing more. Nothing less” (pp. 14-16).

The essential historical problem the book addresses is captured in the subtitle: “Legends, Apocrypha, and the Christian Testament.” How does one move from, or otherwise account for or connect, the sparse accounts of Mary Magdalene in our canonical gospels with the plethora of later Mary Magdalene traditions and materials? Let’s begin with the beginning.

“And they all forsook him and fled.” This shortest line in the gospel of Mark (14:50) is as poignant as it is tragic. In five Greek words Mark dismisses the male apostles, the Twelve. Judas hands Jesus over to his enemies with a kiss, while the remaining “Eleven,” as Matthew later labels them; flee in fear, forsaking all, not to loose but to save their lives. In Mark Jesus is left utterly alone, abandoned and forsaken by all, and at the end, even by God—but not quite.

And there were also women, looking from afar; among whom were both Maria the Magdalene, and Maria, the mother of Jacob the less and Joses, and Salome; who when he was in Galilee, followed him, and served (dihko/noun) him; and many other women that came up with him to Jerusalem (Mk 15:40-41)

And so Mary Magdalene enters our history, in this earliest and most significant reference to her and the many other women who stood by the cross. These two Marys witness the burial of Jesus, according to Mark, and they, along with Salome, show up at the tomb very early Sunday morning to anoint the body with spices, only to find it missing. They are commissioned by a mysterious young man wearing a white robe to tell the male disciples and Peter that Jesus has been raised up and will meet them in Galilee. “And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had come upon them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid” (Mk 16:8). Thus Mark closes his account, with the exit of these three women as mysterious as their entrance. In Mark these women fail to fulfill their mission of proclamation, presumably that will be left to Peter and the other male disciples, who will see him in Galilee.

Nonetheless, this Markan tradition that Mary Magdalene and her Galilean women companions stood at the cross and were first witnesses that Jesus was raised is incorporated in modified ways in both Matthew and Luke. This sparse Markan tradition regarding Mary Magdalene is as limited as it is mysterious. Was it another Mary, or perhaps the same, who had anointed the head of Jesus with an expensive oil of nard two days earlier at Bethany—her deed celebrated as her perpetual memorial but her name lost or left out? Luke has an earlier scene of an unnamed woman, “a sinner,” anointing Jesus in Galilee (Luke 7:36-50). Immediately following that story he inserts Mark’s reference to the women followers of Jesus in Galilee, but he adds these women had been healed of evil spirits and disabilities, naming Mary Magdalene as one of them “from whom seven demons had gone out.” Such juxtaposition can hardly be without intention. Luke also includes these women; though he seems reluctant to even name them, as first witnesses to Jesus being raised. He makes it clear, however, that their testimony, delivered to the male Eleven, is judged as the idle talk of hysterical females. Even Celsus, a hundred and fifty years later, knows that a deluded “hysterical female,” aka Mary Magdalene, first delivered the story of Jesus’ resurrection. Mark insists on muting the first witness status of Mary Magdalene and her female companions, but that he includes it at all is quite telling. Luke lays the foundation for portraying Mary Magdalene as a sinner, hysterical and sexually threatening, the madwoman in Christianity’s attic.

Finally, I turn to the Ending. Schaberg’s final chapter, “Mary Magdalene as Successor to Jesus” is in my judgment one of the most impressive pieces of textual reading I have ever encountered. What she attempts to show is that the singular account in John 20:1-18, where Mary Magdalene encounters and speaks to Jesus in the garden tomb, preserves fragments of a tradition of Mary Magdalene as successor to Jesus—and thus, “first founder” of Christianity, in the sense of authoritative witness to resurrection faith. Whether this early tradition can be connected or not to later Christian texts that present Mary as a leading intellectual and spiritual guide, a beloved companion of Jesus and transmitter of his teachings, is a separate issue. What Schaberg shows, successfully in my view, is that the narrative structure of John 20 reflects an imaginative reuse of 2 Kings 2:1-18 where Elijah the prophet ascends to heaven, leaving his disciple Elisha as his designated witness and successor. This intimate personal appearance to Mary Magdalene, which focuses on ascent to heaven rather than resurrection of the dead per se, is parallel to, but sharply distinguished from, the more generic Synoptic accounts of angelic proclamations to the group of women.

Upon this foundation Schaberg offers a preliminary sketch of what she rather boldly labels “Magdalene Christianity,” both suppressed and lost in the Synoptic tradition, and particularly in Acts, much like the history of James and the Jerusalem community from 30-50 CE, Crossan’s “dark ages.” For some , such as Crossan, Schaberg’s reconstruction of John 20, as well as that of Schüssler Fiorenza and others, is “too optimistic” in terms of reconstructing what happened after Jesus’ death. His own reconstruction erases not only the empty tomb, but the memory of the women as first witnesses, and Mary Magdalene as his possible successor. Crossan once told Schaberg, as she recounts in her book, “Jane, if I could give you the empty tomb I would” (p. 252). Her response captures a characteristic of her wonderfully self-reflective style throughout her work: “I was stunned into silence by Crossan’s wish to ‘give’ me the narrative of the tomb; by the fact that it even occurred to him that he might. I wondered if I had to ‘take’ it. No, I knew I did.” And by that she meant she was obligated to offer her own reconstruction, attempting to be as clear about method as Crossan demands, and in particular to examine the assumptions behind his own reconstruction.

Schaberg’s academic contribution is much more than this ending. She applies her considerable analytical skills in taking the reader through the thick mass of archaeological and textual evidence related to Mary Magdalene. Her extended “profile” of Mary Magdalene in chapter four, drawn from a careful combing through all the apocryphal Magdalene materials (Nag Hammadi texts as well as the Gospel of Mary, Pistis Sophia, Gospel of Philip, Gospel of Peter, and fragmented sources), is one of the most sustained and thorough treatments available.

My main suggestion is that Schaberg, in considering the notion of Mary Magdalene as “companion” of Jesus, might find less dichotomy between the “intimate/erotic” and the “sexual/romantic.” Despite the desire to make Mary Magdalene the “wife” of Jesus in popular circles, as witnessed by the extraordinarily positive reception of Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code among the masses, I do not think the possibility should be precluded or dismissed. Indeed, I think there are some compelling arguments that Jesus may well have been married, and if such were the case, then Mary Magdalene does indeed seem to be our best candidate. I think the recent discussion of the Talpiot “Jesus Family tomb” has opened a new set of issues in this regard, at least for me.

Schaberg has caused me to seriously rethink and supplement my own reconstruction of Jesus and his earliest followers, but most particularly, the place of the empty tomb and Mary Magdalene’s role as visionary successor of Jesus. I have begun to explore how this might relate to my reconstruction of the prominence of James and the brothers of Jesus in the early movement, and what role such a mystical/visionary understanding of Jesus earlier and separate from that of Paul and his communities, might have played in the whole.

In my book, The Jesus Dynasty, the center and focus of my understanding of the historical Jesus is that he thought himself to be heir to the royal throne of David, the Messiah, and from a Roman viewpoint the “King of the Jews.” The latter was a title Herod and his son Antipas coveted, valued, and feared, since the family had married into “royal” Hashmonean connections but could make no claim for Davidic ancestry. Josephus and Eusebius (following his source Hegisippus), tell us that the emperors Vespasian, Domitian, and Trajan, following the Revolt in Judea, were on the hunt for descendants of David. They were considered threats to Roman stability, given their potential for Messianic claims.

Ironically, Paul is our earliest literary source to Jesus’ Davidic bloodline. He epitomizes his message about Jesus in his letter to followers at Rome with the formula:

“. . . the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and designated Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead” (Rom 1:3-4).

For Paul, there was indeed, a “Jesus Dynasty,” but its significance ended with the death of Jesus. It was never passed on to James or other members of the royal family, and Jesus himself, as a “flesh and blood” human being, was transformed into a life-giving spirit as glorified Son of God by his resurrection from the dead (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:45). The physical or “earthly” line of David was made completely obsolete and irrelevant, and the kingdom of God no longer had to do with realizing the “will of God, on earth as in heaven” in this present political and social world. Indeed, the “form of this world” was passing away, and even marriage and sexual identity was fast becoming obsolete, and all dealings with this world, whether social or economic, were fading away (1 Corinthians 7:31)

Paul was, however, quite interested in another Dynasty, and a different kind of “kingdom of God,” one totally outside the realm of “flesh and blood.” He believed that followers of Jesus were infused or “begotten” as “sons of God” through the Holy Spirit, and thus became brothers of Jesus, part of the heavenly “royal family,” and destined to reign as kings, sit on thrones, and wear crowns, in the future Kingdom of God. In fact, Paul even tells his socially disenfranchised followers at Corinth that they were destined to “judge the world” and rule over angels” (1 Corinthians 6:2-3, cf. 4:8).

In Paul’s view the union between the Lord and the group, i.e., the “many children of God,” was one as definitive as the sexual union of a man and a woman, resulting in a child. He quotes the book of Genesis to illustrate how one joined to the Lord becomes one Spirit with him, just as the case of a male and female: “as it is written, the two become one flesh” (1 Corinthians 6:16-17).

For Paul none of this is metaphorical or symbolic. It is absolutely real and literal. According to Paul, being “saved,” is becoming part of a new genus within a new creation–siblings of the glorified Christ and part of God’s heavenly family. When Jesus appears in the clouds the children of this new family, and them alone, including those who might have died, will raise up into the air, through the clouds, and into the heavens. They will experience an instantaneous transformation and enthronement mirroring the heavenly glory that Jesus himself received. They will no longer be “flesh and blood,” or “dust of the earth,” but glorified spirit beings, exalted above all creation, ruling over the entire cosmos under God and their “older brother” Christ, the “firstborn” of many brothers/children.

I call this the Paul Dynasty, not because it literally has to do with Paul’s lineage–though he does metaphorically tell his followers that he has “become their father” through inducting them into this cosmic process. Rather, it is Paul’s idea of an alternative “Jesus Dynasty” in which everything “physical,” “earthly,” and historical is transferred to the heavenly realms above and beyond. The same language originally used in a Jewish Messianic context, such as “king” “son of God,” “throne” “rule” or “kingdom,” is appropriated and transformed. It is removed from its historical, social, political, and economic contexts and implications. There is no “fixing of the world,” but a resignation that the “Creation,” is hopelessly flawed and doomed, happily to soon pass away. It is a view almost wholly dependent on an imminent apocalyptic “end” to history, since people are asked to buy out of, or otherwise postpone, their stake in life itself on planet earth. Slaves can stay slaves, single folk need not marry or reproduce, evil doers can be tolerated for the short time they have left, and creative production of all kind is a vain effort (1 Corinthians 7:29-31).

The “Paul Dynasty” casts off the original messianic vision of the Hebrew prophets, that God’s will would be realized “on earth as it is in heaven,” and that peace, justice, and righteousness would spread to all nations through the example of a Servant people. But in leaving that biblical Project behind it only offers “faith” in a sudden heavenly rescue from the clouds as an alternative.

NB: There is a somewhat technical but fairly thorough review of Paul’s views on the subject, set in the wider contexts of his understanding of his apostolic mission on my University Web site: The Message and Mission of Paul.

President Franklin Roosevelt’s moving and historic “Day of Infamy” speech on Monday, December 8th, 1941, the morning after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, is still remembered by those born before 1935, and to millions of us of the Baby Boomer generation (born 1946 and thereafter) was recounted firsthand by our parents as we came of age after the horrors of World War II. My father, like so many, joined the military that Monday morning. It was the most decisive geopolitical event of the 20th century and changed everything for all of us even after nearly 66 years. It is wonderfully preserved on the Web, in sound, film, and even the typed transcript from which the President read.

I have devoted my academic career to the study of Jesus and early Christianity. The 1st century AD also witnessed such a Day of Infamy. It was commemorated just last week, on Tuesday, July 24th, known by Jews as Tisha b’Av, the 9th day of the fifth month of Av on the Jewish/Hebrew calendar. It is a day of complete fasting and abject mourning, remembering the destruction of Jerusalem, including both Temples, the First and the Second, in 586 BCE and 70 CE respectively, as well as countless other sad and tragic days in Jewish history.

Over the years I have come to realize that when it comes to understanding the 1st century Jesus movement, which developed into the new religion called “Christianity,” there is no greater factor or event than the horrific destruction of Jerusalem in August of 70 CE by the Roman emperor Vespasian. Indeed, the Romans called this period caniculares dies, the “dog days of summer,” a name that has stuck until our time, falling between July 15 and August 15, and characterized by oppressively hot and sultry temperatures when all creatures become languid and forlorn. I would urge all my readers to carefully read through the account of the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in Josephus’ Jewish War, in a translation other than that of William Whiston, which is just too outdated (1793). The Penguin edition, though abridged, by Williamson, is one easily available alternative.

I think it would be hard to overemphasize the critical and vital importance of this watershed event in 1st century Jewish Palestine. After that date everything changed, for Jews living in the Roman empire, but most decidedly for the followers of Jesus, certainly in the Homeland, but also those scattered through the Mediterranean world. To put it succinctly–nothing was ever the same again. Jesus had died in 30 CE but his influential brother James (Jacob/Yaaqov) had taken over and offered new hope and direction for the movement. When he too was brutally murdered in 62 CE by the same family of High Priests connected to the “Godfather” Annas, the Jesus movement was absolutely devastated.

Ironically, none of our New Testament documents record the horrors of August, 70 CE, and everything we have was written either a decade before or a decade after that decisive Day of Infamy. Before that date we have the authentic letters of Paul and the Q source, dating to the 50s CE. These writings anticipate an apocalyptic climax of all things directly on the horizon. After 70 CE we get our four Gospels and other materials (later Pauline letters, Peter, John, Revelation, etc.), which are basically sketching out a vision of “post-War” existence with the “End of the Age” much delayed and postponed.

The New Testament scholar, John Dominic Crossan has called the period from 30-50 CE, before Paul’s letters, the “dark age” of Christianity, due to the lack of historical sources. In terms of the first followers of Jesus, that is, those Jewish messianists led by James the Just, brother of Jesus, the “black out” hardly ends with Paul, who had begun to propose a wholly alternative vision of the “faith” of Jesus. The double blow of the death of James and the destruction of Jerusalem, with the death and scattering of those Jerusalem witnesses who had known Jesus, effectively ended any possibility of our direct access to a non-Pauline version of things. When the “curtain” comes up after 70 CE, a modified version of Paul was clearly the “only game in town,” and hope of the “kingdom of God on earth,” with a restoration of the nation of Israel under its Davidic Messiah, was thoroughly dashed.

Jews find many historic reasons to fast on Tisha b’Av, but I am thinking it might not be such a bad idea for Christians as well, at least for those who are interested in recovering the original faith of Jesus. In some ironic way I think one can say that the “end of the age” did indeed come during those dog days of the summer of 70 CE, and whether the new age that dawned was a loss or a gain is something with which all of us have to grapple. Christian pilgrims in the time of the emperor Constantine began to travel to Jerusalem to see the holy places that had become associated with the life of Jesus. One high point of the typical pilgrimage was to stand on the Mount of Olives, gazing over the plaza where the Temple once stood. We have accounts where they joyfully celebrate the confirmation of faith they received in thinking of how the Jews who had rejected “Christ” had been justly punished by the destruction of Jerusalem and their subsequent Exile. Luke offers us such a triumphant version of things as he rewrites Mark’s “little Apocalypse,” and Matthew as he reworks Mark’s narrative of the trial of Jesus:

“For great distress will be upon the earth and upon this people; they will fall by the edge of the sword, and be led captive among all nations; and Jerusalem will be trodden down by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled” (Luke 21:23-24)

“And all the people answered, ‘His blood be on us and on our children!’” (Matthew 27:25)

Such post-War language echoes the brutally triumphant words of Paul, written decades earlier, when he speaks of “the Jews” who killed the Lord Jesus and “displease God and oppose all men,” but “God’s wrath has come upon them at last!” (1 Thessalonians 2:15-16).

Remembering Tisha b’Av…

I have received a few really angry letters or e-mail messages from readers of The Jesus Dynasty, not very many out of thousands, but maybe a dozen or so. Most often these people have condemned me with a good degree of passion for besmirching the holiness and chastity of Mary, the mother of Jesus, in my presentation of her as a Jewish woman, married and the mother of seven children. In our Western cultural tradition there is a deeply ingrained aversion to the so-called “material” world of nature, in contrast to a “higher” spiritual world beyond. This “dualistic” view of reality is transmitted to us in a thousand ways, carried historically by a dominant Christian culture heavily influenced by Platonic thinking.

In this view reality, or the “creation,” is sharply divided into two separate opposing realms. These can be characterized by a series of contrasting and non-intersecting opposites:

Material-/-Spiritual
Earthly-/-Heavenly
Visible-/-Invisible
Human-/-Divine
Mortal Body-/-Immortal Soul
Death-/-Eternal Life
Decay-/-Incorruption

In such a scheme of things there is a real problem with explaining the origin of the lower material world into which we as humans are born, as well as proposing a lifestyle that would set one on the proper course of disengagement and devaluation of the physical world, in favor of the higher and better world above. After all, humans, with their decidedly “animal” bodies, are born into a world of death, so that the divine nature within them is seen as “trapped” “imprisoned” or “fallen” into such a lower realm. In the more extreme dualistic systems, often characterized as gnostic, the creation itself is seen as the work of a lower inferior god or angelic power, not the work of the supreme God who could have no part in creating such an inferior realm, and much less in placing humans in such a hopeless state. Asceticism, or the denial of the material world and the desires of the physical body, was seen as the highest form of spirituality in that humans could shun sexuality and the pleasures of the body, detaching themselves from all that is below, in preparation for their eternal life in heaven. Birth and life in this world could be seen, ironically, as “death,” while death could be labeled as “birth,” into the higher spiritual world, a transit and escape from the lower realm. Thus the philosopher Empedecles, wrote of his own birth, metaphorically imagining his soul’s entrance into this world, “I wept, I wept, when I saw this dreadful place!” And the apostle Paul, a dedicated sexual ascetic himself, exhorts his followers: “For we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” He speaks of our “bodies of humiliation” and imagines life in a transformed heavenly body, free of decay, and of course, of sensuality and especially sexuality.

This ascetic dualistic perspective is so ingrained in our cultural baggage that it is equated by most with religion and spirituality itself. Accordingly, Jesus understood as “God in the flesh,” and Mary his mother, as the “holy mother of God” are immediately put in tension with the clear teaching of the church that both Jesus and Mary were fully human. If “incarnation” is taken seriously, in its full implications, Jesus and Mary, as subject and vehicle of this merger of the divine and the human, have to remain “human”–or almost so. But therein lies the problem. To what degree can “the divine” truly participate in the human? An ascetic lifestyle is a given, and was widely admired through the Hellenistic-Roman culture. But what about sex and death? Those were the sticklers. Christians had a tremendous problem with imagining Jesus or his mother as sexual beings, so the idea of the perpetual virginity of Mary and the celibate Jesus go hand in hand. And for Jesus, and later his mother, to die and be buried, their bodies rotting and decaying, and going back to the dust, as with every other human being, became a problem as well. Heavenly life, for them at least, was finally seen to involve an “assumption” of their physical bodies, made incorruptible, directly into heaven, so that there could be no earthly remains.

Assumption by Venuti, Malta, 1896

That is why the Talpiot Jesus tomb is such a potential scandal to millions of Christians. If it could indeed be shown that the bones of Jesus were found in an ossuary, that he had a wife and a child, and that Mary, his mother, bore other children, and her bones were also buried with her son, then for many the whole structure of Christianity is threatened. Notions of perpetual virginity, lifelong celibacy, and bodily resurrection and/or assumption into heaven would each be called into question. Of course Protestants and Roman Catholics do not agree on all these matters. Although Luther and the Reformers did argue for the perpetual virginity of Mary, it is common to hear Evangelical Christians say they have no problem with Mary living a normal sexual life and having other children. And Protestants have never had a problem with finding the bones of Mary, who is assumed to have died and returned to the dust. But Jesus of course is another matter. I believe there is a deep seated aversion to thinking of Jesus as living a normal sexual life. What one might hear is that we have no “historical record” of Jesus having a wife or children, but it is clear to me, having grown up in conservative Christian circles, that much more is at stake on the “gut” level. As “fully human” as Jesus might have been, one does not get far imagining the Son of God being aroused sexually and having intercourse. Even to write of such things, as I am doing here, is just considered inappropriate and in bad taste. And how much more so for his mother? If we don’t like to think of our own parents having sex, then all the more so for the Holy Family, one and all. Perhaps that is why the wives and children of none of the apostles or brothers of Jesus are ever named in our Gospel records. It is not only a profoundly “male” story, as told by the Synoptics and John, but it is also a profoundly asexual one. But what was the reality?

Historians are left to deal with the social, cultural, and religious world of 1st century Roman occupied Jewish Palestine when they deal with any historical figure of the period, and Jesus all the more so, since understanding him in his own time and place has such an impact on our lives today. In that world of historical reality humans have fathers, and only in mythological stories, not to be taken literally, are they fathered by gods; men and women marry and have children, it is the cultural norm; and humans die and are buried together in tombs, with their bones being collected in various ways by the living in memory of the dead. Theology is one thing, history is another, and on these matters of sex, birth, and death there can clearly be a conflict but little contest. If we are after the historical Jesus, as Schweitzer saw so clearly a hundred years ago, we have to pursue the “purely historical,” and leave the mythological and the metaphorical in their proper places. And in the case of Jesus that means recovering a 1st century Jew and his family, living and dying as others Jews of the time.

The emphasis of the Torah on God’s creation declared as “very good,” with the first commandment or blessing upon humans being “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth,” created a real tension with Hellenistic forms of dualism and gnosticism, that devalued the world and sexuality. The world is light and life and death is realistically seen as the loss we all experience, a return to the dust. There is little if any asceticism of this type in the Hebrew Bible and celibacy of this type unknown in Jewish sources of this period.* Although Josephus says an elite group among the Essenes practiced celibacy there is no such emphasis in any of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and we have to consider that Josephus is casting his portrait of this group in image of a Pythagorian philosophical school to gain currency with his Roman audience. The only Jewish celibate we know about is Paul, and in his halting defense of his position he appeals to neither Scripture nor tradition, and he fails to use Jesus as his model. The silence is pretty indicative that he is pushing something that is unconventional among the original followers of Jesus. His influences here have been shown to lie in Stoic-Cynic debates regarding the advisability of marriage and having children. Theophrastus and Epicurus, long before Paul, had already argued that married life and the pursuit of philosophy were incompatible because of the cares and responsibilities imposed upon a married man by his wife.

Jesus’ only allusion to the single life, found in Matthew 19:10-12, is really about the prohibition against divorce and taking a second wife while the first was alive, forbidden by him, echoed by Paul, and also part of the teachings of the Dead Sea Scrolls sect. The disciples are so taken with his strict teaching in this regard that they say to him, “If such be the case, then if would be better never to marry,” and Jesus’ reply makes it clear that once married the only choice is to live together or live separately, but single. He is not discussing any kind of ascetic life here but rather offering stern warning about the inviolate and permanent nature of marriage, “til death do we part.”

From the point of view of the Torah and the Hebrew Prophets, and indeed most forms of ancient Judaism, any aversion toward the idea of Jesus and his mother Miriam living sexual lives represents a misplaced sense of “holiness.” In the Hebrew Bible the notion of ritual purity or “holiness,” that is separating the “sacred” from the “profane,” had first and foremost to do with the sanctity of the Temple. The prohibitions regarding menstruation, childbirth, seminal emissions, and contact with corpses, had nothing to do with asceticism, but with separation of these signs of “mortality” from the Temple precincts. The English translations of “clean” and “unclean” carry unfortunate and misleading connotations. The concept of “holiness,” was extended to ethical and moral “separation” from the defilements of sinful behavior, but never, in any texts, are the natural functions of the body, or sex, or the enjoyment of physical pleasures, seen as morally tainted or somehow connected to anything evil.

Theologically speaking, “incarnation” is embedded in the monistic view of the cosmos represented in the Creation Hymn of Genesis 1:1-2:3. There humans are made, male and female, “in the likeness and image of God,” with no dualistic sense of alienation from either the “physical” world or the Creator. Notions of a lost and fallen physical world, alienated from the True God Above, and in need of a “rescue mission” from Divine Son of God sent into the world below, were a long time coming. Unfortunately, in terms of Christian theology, these “entrance and exit” points for the Son of God (virgin birth, bodily resurrection & assumption to heaven), have become watch marks of orthodox dogma for many, so that being a Christian is defined in terms of whether one literally assents to such propositions rather than whether one is aligned with the message of the “Kingdom of God” that Jesus preached.

_____________________________

*The evidence cited by van der Horst, “Celibacy in Early Judaism,” Revue Biblique 109 (2002) 390-402 and S.D. Fraade, “Ascetical Aspects of Ancient Judaism,” in A. Green (ed.), Jewish Spirituality From the Bible Through the Middle Ages, London: SCM Press, 1985, 253-288, notwithstanding.

One of the highlights of my time in Jerusalem last week was spending time with John Dominic Crossan and his wife Sarah. They were in the country filming for a upcoming Discovery television special on Jesus that is to air this Christmas. We had wanted to get together to discuss the Talpiot tomb face to face, but I had also invited him to come and spend an evening with me, Shimon Gibson, and my students to talk about his views of the “last days of Jesus,” and particularly how he reads the narratives in the Synoptics and John regarding the empty tomb of Jesus. We gathered last Saturday evening in the lovely courtyard of Beit Schmuel, the Guesthouse that is part of the “Progressive Judaism” center (known as “Reform” in the US) and spend a couple of stimulating and delightful hours together. Most of my students had read Crossan’s major books on Jesus, as we used them in a course I taught last Fall on the “historical Jesus,” so he was addressing a highly motivated and prepared group.

If there is any one thing that Crossan’s work on the historical Jesus and Christian Origins has made clear it is that everything turns on the question of method. In working with our New Testament Gospels, as well as other materials such as the reconstructed Q source, the Gospel of Peter, and the Gospel of Thomas, one has to formulate a clear understanding of how such materials will be weighed and evaluated and the methods one will use to try and get at what is historical and what is theological, mythological, or parabolic.

To those outside the field of critical biblical studies who read the Bible “literally,” it means what it says and it says what it means. But the historian must properly ask, given Mark’s core narrative of Jesus last week in Jerusalem, which sections most likely reflect actual history, and which were created by Mark or his community for theological purposes? Did Jesus ride down the Mt. of Olives on a donkey, was he examined by Pontius Pilate, did Joseph of Arimathea take him corpse and bury it in a nearby tomb, and did women visit that tomb Sunday morning and find it empty? And when Jesus speaks or teaches to what degree do we have what he actually said and to what degree are we hearing the theological memory of his followers four or five decades after his death who are passing on traditions from Jesus relevant to their own concerns and times? In other words, to what extent is Mark, our core story, reflecting the situation related to the devastation of 70 CE and the first Jewish Revolt (see Mark 13 sandwiched within the narrative), and interpreting Jesus as the Christ he came to be? Or alternatively, to what extent is Mark’s story related to the historical Jesus and his own situation 40 years earlier–and how would one know? Further, since Matthew and Luke basically follow Mark’s passion narrative, what about John? Is John an independent source from Mark, or is his heavily theologized narrative of the last days of Jesus essentially Mark written over with his own vision of things? Crossan is convinced John has no independent story but represents further theological embellishment rather than “history.” It is the “how would one know” that has to do with method. The choices scholars such as Crossan make might seem arbitrary to the casual reader, but as much as anyone in the field Crossan has sought to set forth his method and the assumptions he employs therein, and has challenged colleagues to offer critique and evaluation. And they have surely done that.

In terms of the arrest, trial, crucifixion, and burial of Jesus as related by Mark, Crossan is very skeptical. He does not think that Jesus knew beforehand that he was to die in Jerusalem and that he purposely offered himself as a sacrifice for sins to fulfill Isaiah “Suffering Servant” image, or that he asked followers to sacramentally “eat his flesh” and “drink his blood” at a Last Supper.He has no doubt that Jesus was crucified, but he thinks the accounts of the trial before the “whole Sanhedrin,” and the scene before a somewhat sympathetic Pilate are constructed by Mark. He also is doubtful of the Joseph of Arimathea burial story. He would see each of these elements as constructed by Mark and the post-70 CE community to fit their developing view of Jesus as Christ, Lord, and Savior, much in keeping with Paul’s theology. Crossan does not think we can ever know what happened to the body of Jesus, since he understands the entire “empty tomb” narrative to be a late apologetic contruction in an effort to push a more “literal” view of the resurrection of Jesus. Here he would go to Paul, where we find the earliest traditions on faith in Jesus as resurrected, but in a “spiritual body” with appearances akin to that Paul claims he had years after Jesus’ death–not a resusitated corpse walking about but a heavenly vision of power and glory.

My own approach, method, and conclusions are quite different from that of Crossan as readers of The Jesus Dynasty know. I do consider John an independent source from Mark, though I think the author of John knows Mark’s gospel and writes his own account aware thereof. But by and large I accept the basic narrative framework of Mark as historical, i.e., Jesus rode into the city and allowed himself to be proclaimed king, he taught in the Temple all week and confronted the religious authorities, he ate a last supper in the lower city, was arrested in Gethsemane, betrayed by Judas, tried at the house of Caiaphus, taken before Pilate, crucified, and buried by Joseph of Arimathea. None of these events themselves do I have reason to doubt, though I do accept fully that Mark’s theological thread of interpretation runs through them all, and when we encounter Christological interpretation closer to Paul than to what we know of the teachings of Jesus, I agree with Crossan that we are dealing with theology not history.

One element I try to include in my book is the question of how these narrative frames fit within what we can reconstruct of Herodian Jerusalem today. In other words, how do the texts read “on the ground”? Shimon Gibson has devoted years to this subject and though we disagree on some of the “locations” or settings for a few of the events (he thinks the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is likely the place of crucifixion, I put it on the Mt of Olives), I have learned much from him. The morning after our gathering at Beit Schmuel, Gibson and I took Crossan and his wife Sarah around the Old City to highlight this “on the ground” side of the Markan story. We looked at the rock hewn tombs (now empty!) in Akeldama, the site of Pilate’s judgment seat along the Western Wall of the Old City, outside Herod’s Palace area, and of course, the Talpiot tomb, as a potential place of “secondary burial” for Jesus and his family.

Crossan in Front of “an” Empty 1st Century Rock Hewn Tomb

My impression was that being “at the scene” in these ways, including passing by the newly discovered Pool of Siloam mentioned only in John, did give Prof. Crossan some new perspectives to think about as he continues to read his texts and refine his methods. It seems to me that the “realistic” narratives that Mark and John offer, that conform so closely to what we can see today, go a long way toward supporting an approach of “eyewitness” testimony along the lines that Richard Bauckham has been developing. In other words, Mark and John have received much of their narrative framework and teaching materials from traditions and communities who lived in the place where it all happened. This would be particularly true for the “last days of Jesus,” when we get to Jerusalem, and perhaps less true for the Galilean materials. My own approach is a strange mixture in that I doubt the theological overlay but tend to trust the essential narrative framework, and ironically, I find time and time again the narrative framework helps one to peel back the later theology.

Gibson showing Dom and Sarah the original 1st century steps that led up to Pilate’s Judgment Seat at the Western Wall of the Old City

As for the Talpiot tomb, I think Dom Crossan remains curious and open, wanting to know more. He does not find the idea that Jesus would have been given such an honorable burial by devoted followers to be farfetched, and I think I was able to convince him that it is more in Matthew, who makes the tomb “belong” to Joseph the “rich man,” where one finds the theological overlay regarding Jesus’ burial, not in the burial itself, which would be expected. Sarah, Dom’s wife, seems to be quite convinced on her own that Talpiot has a high liklihood of being the “real thing.” I look forward to discussing with her some of her reasoning in this regard and how she and her husband might differ on the subject, though Crossan did issue a formal quote back in March on the subject of the Talpiot tomb in which he said it was “The final nail in the coffin of biblical literalism?” His main concern, as I understand it, is that if the tomb was disturbed in antiquity, which appears to be the case, how might that effect what we see and interpret today?

At the “garden tomb” in east Talpiot with Gibson,Dom, and Sarah Crossan

I have always found Dom Crossan to be one of the most gracious scholars in our field, despite his heatedly controversial stands. He treats his opponents with respect and it becomes obvious in any conversation with him that his views of Jesus, his teachings, his death, and his “parabolic” resurrection, are life and breath to him, not detached academic excercises. How and why Jesus lived and died deeply matters to him. His parting word to my students, when we showed him a 1st century Roman crucifixion nail, was that he would not care a whit if the bones of Jesus were found, in the Talpiot tomb or otherwise, but he would care very much if there was evidence Jesus was never really crucified and died comfortable and happy in old age–with Mark’s entire story being fiction. This reminded me of a story Norman Perrin told us at the University of Chicago back in 1972. He was pressed by conservative students who objected to the way he insisted, much like Crossan, that much of the Markan narrative was constructed and not historical. They asked him, given his minimal view of the historical Jesus, what was the bottom line with him. In other words, if so much of the passion narrative is constructed, what is the historical core, without which we would have nothing. He replied, “If it could be shown that rather than forgiving his enemies, Jesus was dragged to the cross, kicking and screaming and cursing his enemies, then everything would change.”

I have been reading with the greatest learning and pleasure April DeConick’s book, Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas. The price is a bit higher than one is used to paying for a paperback book ($40) but this is a serious academic book, yet it is written in a style and on a level that the interested non-specialist can surely follow.

I mention this because it seems to me the controversy between so-called “conservative” scholars such as Craig Evans or Ben Witherington, and more “critical” scholars such as Crossan or DeConick, on the historical value of works such as The Gospel of Thomas has really been miscast. There is no point in batting back and forth the old conundrum of which text is more “legendary” or “mythological,” Mark or Thomas, or even Q or Thomas, since all of these texts reflect the heavily theologized viewpoints of their authors/communities and no ancient texts on either the events or teachings in the life of Jesus are in any way or form “history as it actually happened” (a naive concept at best). In other words, Thomas is neither “early” nor “late,” it is both!

What I think DeConick’s work has done is provide us with a way of looking at the complex traditions that come to us in this collection of 114 saying of Jesus preserved for us in this 2nd-3rd century Copic collection we know as the Gospel of Thomas. This material as we now have it is indeed “secondary” and “embellished” and “developed” and “theological.” Even the scholars who have greatly valued this text and given it priviledge, recognize our need to read it critically. It neither dropped from heaven nor was it taken down stenographically from the mouth of Jesus.

What DeConick does is attempt to trace the developing history of this text, with its various expansions and and interpretive glosses. Not only does this allow us to see how a given saying attributed to Jesus in an earlier period was developed and recast, and what sort of community perceptions the various stages reflect, but through her groundbreaking work we are offered a glimpse back to the “original” and earliest layers of this work. DeConick identifies what she calls “kernel” sayings, and lo and behold, those materials seem to give us a rare glimpse into the Jerusalem community of James the Just, the brother of Jesus.

When I have my students read the Gospel of Thomas (take a look, it’s on the Web in various translations) in my basic course in Christian Origins they are either attracted or repelled, depending on their own presuppositions. Some find it so different and strange in contrast to what they have become used to in hearing and reading materials from Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John, while others find it “exotic” and appealing in that they think it offers them some mystical/secret alternative version of things that the Church has repressed and kept back from us.

Anyone who is interested in Christian Origins needs to become thoroughly familiar with the sayings traditions in the stage they are available to us through the Nag Hammadi Copic Gospel of Thomas. However, it takes some hard work, just as with the Synoptic tradition and John, to sort through the various layers and read with sensitivity and critical skills “beyond” the surface meaning of the text in its present form.

For this reason I posted DeConick’s essay about the accuracy and reliability of the New Testament gospels on this Blog last week. I think many might think her statements are too extreme, and that surely the material in the N.T. is of infinitely more value historically than a slightly “whacko” book like Thomas (a description of one of my students on an exam last semester). But this would be to miss her very valuable point. A critical reading and historical examination of the kinds of non-canonical texts she mentions, and others as well, in fact offer us the chance to construct a much fuller portrait of the movement that John, Jesus, and James inaugurated. If Acts and Eusebius are not “the story,” as I have recently written, then we have a lot of hard work before us. The good news is that much survives and I can not think of any field of historical investigation that is more exciting than Christian Origins at the beginning of this 3rd. millennium. If I may misquote/misapply the prophet Hosea: After two days he cause us to live, and on the third day he will raise us up. What an amazing time in which to live.