It bears repeating...

Some of the comments relating to the resurrection posts have introduced a very unnecessary and troubling ad hominem element to the discussion.

Because I maintain an uncompromising historical approach to my work and find theological apology troubling when it is trotted forth as "history," I have been accused of saying that evangelicals cannot be scholars. I have been labeled a secular humanist and dismissed as anti-religious.

I have never said that evangelicals (or anyone of a faith) cannot be scholars. I have never said that one must be a secular humanist to be a scholar. As for the labels secular humanist and anti-religious, these are not terms I would use to describe my own religious heritage or leanings.

What I have said and maintain is that to approach the materials as a historian requires that the scholar leave behind the apology and the theology. If a scholar is worried about the outcome of his or her investigation - that it maintain, preserve, match, or explain his or her faith - then the investigation has been or will be compromised. I, in fact, have many close colleagues from a diversity of faith traditions (Baptist; Southern Baptist; Catholic; Methodist; Presbyterian; Pentecostal; Episcopalian; Anglican; Russian Orthodox; Greek Orthodox; Coptic Orthodox; Unitarian; Reform Jewish; Buddhist; Hindu; Mormon; Gnostic; etc.) whose scholasticism is historically praiseworthy and uncompromising in my opinion. In fact, my own work is better because of theirs.

I have also said and maintain that the field of biblical studies has been and continues to be controlled by faith concerns, which (among other things) manifests in the dominance of the biblical canon and the marginalization of other early literature. The marks of this are throughout the Academy, as well as the universities, whose classes and textbooks for instance are marketed as Introductions to the Old Testament, Hebrew Bible, or New Testament. Rarely do we find departments willing to post and hire positions in early Judaism or early Christianity without the OT and NT tags and expectations.

This does not mean that I think that the theological pursuit is worthless, as some have wrongly insinuated. I think that the theological pursuit is entirely worthwhile as a pursuit of its own. It is only when theology is marketed as history that I object.

Part 5: Bodily resurrection and sematics

Chad has left an interesting comment on Part 2 of the resurrection posts, which I duplicate here in full. He brings to the discussion what I consider to be a very good and relevant question. What did first century Jews and Christians think that the Greek words for resurrection actually meant? One thing? A range of options? Are we imposing our modern definitions onto the past? Are we narrowing the historical nuances to fold into our own orthodoxy?

Chad says:

At the risk of reheating a now cooled debate and perhaps further riling your confessional Christian interlocutors, who continue to grasp at straws with appeals to philosophy of science, definitions of inductive reasoning, and the like (all, by the way, standard and now tiresome postmodern apologetic tactics) in their defense of bodily resurrection as a "unique" event, I wish to call attention to a more fundamental issue in any discussion of the “resurrection” of Jesus - the arguably problematic modern semantic range of this English word.

As the Greek readers in your audience should know, this word stems (via Latin resuscitāre and resurgere) from two Greek verbs: anistēmi and egeirō (cf. Hebrew qum). From these well-attested verbs in LXX and GNT, we derive the notions of “stand up,” “rise,” “raise up,” “rouse,” “restore,” “set up,” or even “awake” (each usually in the quite mundane sense of things). Of course, such prosaic usages would doubtless have also been imbued with other symbolic meanings. However, I doubt that many Christian commentators - both those with and those without control of ancient Greek - have really pondered these words and their import apart from the KJV-influenced semantic range or even from a non-Christian (modern and/or ancient) perspective. Moreover, I doubt that, in the case of, say, the Corinthians (i.e., “pagans”) and their disdain for a resuscitated corpse, many commentators even consider that folks in antiquity could misunderstand the meanings or semantic range of words (theologically tinged or not) – just as folks do today. This latter point in general is rarely mentioned in studies of Paul or Christian Origins. In fact, the notion of misunderstanding in this sense, it seems to me, must be taken into account in any responsible study (whether confessional or secular) of, say, the so-called “Gentile Mission” or really any first-century dissemination of the Christian “gospel” and its subtleties to those without a “Jewish” or “Christian” mindset. (Anecdotally, I cannot help but think – in a more trivial sense – of "The Life of Brian" with its “Blessed are the Cheesemakers.”) But seriously, it is likely that across the Greco-Roman world the Greek verbs anistēmi and egeirō (and their derivatives) were not wholly refined in the “Christian” sense, but were largely culturally refined. Perhaps, then, some of what we witness in Paul’s Corinthian correspondence, for example, is just as much a rhetorical struggle over the “meaning” of the word egeirō(cf. 1 Cor.15:4, 20) as a presentation and reiteration of Pauline “theology.”

Now I am not arguing that anistēmi and egeirō did not or could not signal bodily “resurrection” in the modern Christian sense in the first century. I simply call attention to an issue that is certainly under-discussed, and an issue that would fit well with your suggestion about rethinking the problem of “ante-eschaton” resurrection in first-century Judaism.

Finally I submit that, as much as it may pain some Christians and Christian scholars to do so, the polysemy of “resurrection” in ancient usage must be factored into any modern reconstruction of Jesus’ supposed postmortem appearances.

The Thirteenth Apostle available for pre-orders on Amazon Canada

The Thirteenth Apostle is now available for pre-ordering from Amazon Canada.

For those of you who have written to me in the past (and there have been many) upset because my books are so expensive, I heard you. My previous books have all been written for academic audiences with academic presses with very small runs. If a book only prints 600 or 1000 copies in hardback, the price is going to be high, and this has nothing to do with anyone making any money. We joke around the department here about the time one of my colleagues received a check for five cents from his publisher. The joke is that it is more than the rest of us have received. In fact, to subsidize the costs to publish my first book Seek to Seek Him, I actually had to pay $1000 to the publisher!

So when I turned to write this new book on the Gospel of Judas, I did so with a more general audience in mind. I contracted with a publisher that would run enough copies in the initial print run that the cost for the hardcover would be kept down. So the Canadian price on Amazon is only $15.42 CND.

I don't understand why some Amazon locations have the book while others, like the US, don't have it up for pre-ordering. It seems strange to me that a book will trickle into each location at separate dates. But I will keep you posted as soon as it becomes available in the US.

Part 4: Have we decided anything about the resurrection?

I want to thank every person who took the time to comment in the resurrection posts (Steven Carr, John Noyce, Bryan, Geoff, J.D. Walters, Jim Deardorff, James Crossley, Doug Chaplin [who wrote his own excellent post on the subject], Danny Zacharias, John, Tim Henderson, Deane [who also posted on the resurrection], Leon, and Loren). I have thoroughly enjoyed reading them and I have learned from your generosity of knowledge.

1. I am reaffirmed (thanks to an anonymous blogger named "John") that I should stick with SBL (smile!). I think he is right when he says:

I think you would grow tired, eventually, of the relative monotony of the AAR crowd, careful as that crowd is to rule out of consideration the possibility that God in the classical Jewish or Christian sense exists, while ruling in every imaginable modern ideology as a platform from which to interpret religious texts. I can't imagine you disagreeing that many AAR papers (I've heard or read many myself) are little more than sermons which preach to a choir of choice...

2. Mr. Walters has written many fiery comments in all the resurrection posts, and says that my position is nonsense and that I have misunderstood his. Certainly I do not consider my position that "dead bodies stay dead" nonsense. We can argue many things are possible, and that there are no absolute conditions for laws of nature. Tomorrow I might wake up to find myself green, or the floor no longer solid, or dead bodies rising out of the tombs. But I doubt that that will be the case tomorrow or the next day or any day of my life. Mr. Walters is correct that an inductive argument does not lead to a logically necessary conclusion. But the point of making arguments from history is that they are very strong inductive arguments. The argument that Jesus wasn't physically resurrected from the grave is a very strong inductive argument, much stronger in my opinion than the opposite - If anything is possible, Jesus could have risen from the grave, because we can't say based on inductive reasoning that on one can rise from the grave. On this point, I would like to quote from one of Wade's books by Simon Altmann (Is Nature Supernatural? p. 55-56):

I must remark for the moment that the question of the use of induction in scientific practice remains one of our major problems. I shall later propose a solution based on the principle that propositions in science never stand or fall on their own; that they must be closely knitted within what I shall call the scientific mesh of facts and theories, and that the use of induction for a proposition can only be legitimized when the proposition is integrated (or, as I shall call it, entrenched) as part of this scientific mesh.

It is my opinion that Altmann's "solution" is the one that historians should (even must) own as their own. Without it, we cannot "do" history, as we cannot "do" science.

3. Deane has a wonderful response to my thoughts that just maybe there were some Jews around the time of Jesus who toyed with the idea that some of the righteous dead had already been resurrected. Yes, this would have quite the implications for christology, if it is so (which I'm still pondering). I had always assumed that the righteous dead were "spirits" living with God before the end-of-the-world - Loren is correct that there is a difference between immortality of the soul and a resurrected body (Alan Segal has made this very clear in his wonderful book, Life After Death) - but the teaching attributed to Jesus is not making this argument. He is arguing that the resurrection of the dead is proven because Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob live with God already.

4. Leon has pointed to a couple of OT stories that he thinks could be understood in terms of resurrected bodies. First to note - the stories probably did not refer to resurrection "originally." But what they may have come to mean to Jews in the first century is another story altogether. My question is this: Are bodies brought back from death the same as resurrected bodies in first century Judaism? Maybe. On this point I think of the story of Jesus bringing Lazarus back from the grave and John's understanding of this in terms of resurrection: "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live..." (11:25). If Lazarus is the beloved disciple in John (and I think he is the only good choice narratologically), then the Johannine Christians thought that Lazarus had been resurrected from the dead and thus would never die. So they were surprised and traumatized when he died (John 21). I guess what I'm saying is that whoever wrote John believed that the raising of Lazarus was his resurrection.

5. I think that naturalistic explanations can explain the story about Jesus' physical resurrection. I have thought for a long time as James Crossley has indicated, that we should be investigating these sorts of explanations. James writes in the comments:

I find myself more and more coming to the same kinds of conclusions on the issue of historical practice. There are *always* plenty of alternatives to supernatural explanations. Consequently, it becomes futile to try and explain things with reference to supernatural which can hardly be measured or analysed in a meaningful (in terms of historical reconstruction) way.

For me this would be emphasizing religious experience, psychology, dream states, construction of memories within an eschatological Jewish community, transmission of stories in oral-literate environment, and so forth.

New Sidebar Blogroll

Thanks to my husband Wade for fiddling with the Google Reader. He has figured out how to set up a dynamic blogroll for my blog. The secret was to create a folder and then make the whole folder public. This took most of the afternoon to figure out and create. So thanks to Wade for this, which will help me keep up with what is going on on other biblioblogs. If you don't see your blog or a blog that you frequent on my roll and would like to have it added, just send me your weblog site address (adeconick@rice.edu) and I'll see what I can do (and hopefully not mess up something in the Google Reader!).

Part 3: A lack of precedent for Jesus' resurrection?

If you haven't seen it, Loren Rossen has posted a lengthy discussion about the resurrection issues that have been circulating in the blogsphere. You can read his full account here on his blog. He emphasizes that the important matter for the study of early Christianity is that the early Christians believed that Jesus was resurrected.

He writes:

What the disciples believed to have happened should be the crucial question for historians. What actually happened (or did not happen, as the case may be) may be of more burning interest to theologians and scientists.

But Wright is a theologian as much as a historian, as we all know. It's always amazed me how he thinks the lack of precedent for Jesus' resurrection historically validates it. I.e. That since Jewish tradition didn't provide for an individual's resurrection before the end -- especially for a messiah who had gone down in shame -- the Christians wouldn't have made such a far-fetched claim, unless it were actually true. (emphasis mine)

On this point I would like to raise a very interesting passage from the Synoptics. It so happens that this is one of the passages I am writing for the commentary that members of the NT Mysticism Project are collaboratively putting together. It is Matthew 22:23-32. I had volunteered for the passage because of my past work on encratic behavior and the rejection of marriage by many early Christians, and I never expected to come face-to-face with an odd passage about the resurrection. This is a passage I've read a thousand times, but for some reason, when I began working on the logic of the whole pericope, I found that Jesus appears to be arguing for the feasibility of the resurrection because Abraham, Issac and Jacob were resurrected already. Thus Jesus says in Matthew 22:31-32 that the resurrection is proven because scripture says that God IS (not WAS) the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob, he IS the God of the living, not the dead.

This same thread is picked up in another story attributed to Jesus (Luke 16:19-31). It is that famous story about the poor man Lazarus who, when he died, was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. A rich man also dies but goes to the torments of Hades. He looks up and sees Abraham far away with Lazarus at his side. He begs Abraham to send Lazarus to his family to warn them about the place of torment. Abraham tells him that they already know this - they have Moses and the Prophets and should listen to them. Besides he argues, "If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead." Not only do we have here the belief again that Abraham wasn't dead (whether he was resurrected or a spirit is not clear in this passage), but we have a Jewish man who believes it possible for a dead person to rise and go to talk to his family - and this is NOT the general resurrection of the dead at the end of time.

At any rate, I am wondering now about our common assumption that Jews in this time period thought that the resurrection was only an end-of-time event.

Part 9: Does the Bible's ritual status hinder acceptance of non-canonical texts?

David Hamilton has offered an intriguing response to the question I posed in Part 8: Non-canonical uneasiness on Ionic Books - where I raised the following question citing Professor Watts' contribution to this question of non-canonical unease.

I wrote: "Does the fact that the canonical materials are ritualized, are "iconic," make it nigh impossible for the study of non-canonical materials to shift the tide (not only in popular sentiment, but also for many in the Academy)?"

Mr. Hamilton doesn't think so:

I encounter many people in my area who are quite comfortable revising their beliefs and commitments. There are many people who seem to be extremely suspicious of the religious establishment, in all its varieties: reformed Catholics, deprogrammed fundamentalists, etc. These (not so) few are more than willing to entertain revisions of Christian history and theology, almost too willing.

As for the Academy, when the Nag Hammadi and Dead Sea Scroll texts first came out, I would have said "Yes". But it takes 1-2 generations of scholars to get enough experience and distance to appreciate such collections adequately. I believe this is starting to happen now. In fact, my take on the past 15 years of scholarship is that the direction is strongly in the direction of revising our understanding of early Christianity to the point that it strongly calls into question the validity of the received tradition.

I think one of the issues that is coming up to the top of this discussion is that we are dealing with reactions to the non-canonical texts from many different groups of people. There is a range of uneasiness, both within and without the Academy. So I appreciate Mr. Hamilton's remarks.

The point to note about the Academy, however, is that NH studies (not so much DSS, which is interesting in and of itself) is marginal, is peripheral in the Academy. No one knows this better than those of us who work on these texts, and the constant reactions we get from our canonical colleagues. Astonishment, amazement, and always "why bother?" In all my years as a scholar working on these materials I have never had a canonical colleague come up to me and say, "Wow, you're rewriting the received tradition, good for you!" What I get is something along the lines, "How dare you suggest that this material has anything to do with the origins of Christianity."

The "change" that Mr. Hamilton points to is not a change that the Academy has welcomed with open arms. It is occurring because there is a comparably small number of non-apologetic historians in the Academy who have worked very hard in this direction, but this work has been against the tide and still is not considered "mainstream." Case in point, how many biblical scholars know Coptic? How many think it is essential to teach their graduate students Coptic - as essential as Hebrew and Greek?

Part 2: Can "A" Dead Body be Raised?

Mr. J.D. Walters has left a comment on my previous resurrection post, a comment that I would like to address outside the comment section. I am addressing it here, because the sentiment expressed by Mr. Walters is a sentiment that is not his alone, but a common theological rationalization. It is a ploy from theology used to dress up the argument for the supernatural, to make it look like a plausible scientific argument. I hear this all the time in my classroom from my students. What it boils down to is this: "Jesus' resurrection is unique. God is all-powerful, he can do whatever he likes, including raising up a dead body. Beginning and end of analysis."

Here is Mr. Walters' comment:

I hope that appeal to biology was not meant to be taken seriously. The facts of biology are based on repeatable events and inferences from statistical data. By definition a unique event like a resurrection does not fall under the biological paradigm. Repeated experience with 'dead bodies staying dead' might produce a strong mental aversion to the idea of a resurrection (as Wright points out, this held for the ancients as much as modern people; ancients knew that when people died, their bodies were just corpses), but it means nothing one way or the other about whether such a thing is possible, which will depend on what one thinks is the ultimate explanation for the existence of the universe.

By definition? The irreversibility of death means nothing? The historicity of the physical resurrection of Jesus simply depends on one's view of the universe?

The more I think about these types of "arguments" (if we can even use such a word for them), the more concerned I become. If the field of biblical studies has been reduced to this, then it is not worthy to be part of the Academy.

For a long time I have resisted the separation of AAR and SBL on grounds that the biblical field is a historical field of study. I have worked for years in the Society, creating and chairing both the section on Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism and the seminar called the NT Mysticism Project. Year in and year out I have given papers in many venues, published with SBL press, been a spokesperson for the Society whenever in conversation with AAR scholars. But comments and nonsense like this are making me reevaluate that stance. Perhaps the AAR folks are right in separating from the SBL, in their insistence that all we will ever be are caretakers of the church rather than critics of religion.

Part 8: Non-Canonical Unease on Iconic Books

Professor Jim Watts has posted his own discussion of this topic on his very interesting blog Iconic Books. He addresses the issue of the marginalization of Nag Hammadi books in the Academy.

He writes very perceptively that the discovery of documents like those from Nag Hammadi has not made much of a dent in the cultural standing of Jewish and Christian scriptures. Professor Watts says:

I suggest that resilience is due to the fact that the Bible’s reputation depends as much on the inspiration it produces through performance in sermon, song and dramatization (now frequently on film) and on the legitimacy conveyed by its iconic representation in ritual, art, and mass media as it does to the textual authority conveyed by interpretations of its message by scholars.

If anything, the main effect of biblical scholarship on public perceptions of the Bible is to emphasize the scripture’s importance precisely because so much attention and effort is devoted to controversies over its meaning and origins. Here may lie one source of anxiety about non-canonical texts: the intuitive suspicion that more attention to these other materials raises their status and dilutes claims to the unique importance of the scriptures.

The history of the actual religious influence of such scholarship suggests that Christians and Jews have little reason to worry. The net effect of comparative scholarship is probably to draw even more popular attention to scriptures whose status is, at any rate, well protected by the ways in which Jews and Christians ritualize their iconic and performative dimensions.

Professor Watts has raised a very subtle but important aspect to our discussion. Does the fact that the canonical materials are ritualized, are "iconic," make it nigh impossible for the study of non-canonical materials to shift the tide (not only in popular sentiment, but also for many in the Academy)?

Part 1: Did the Resurrection Happen?

James Crossley has a wonderful post taking on N.T. Wright's polemic against him. It is too long to quote, as it N.T. Wright, so take a look here at the banter.

For what my two cents might be worth on this topic, I insist that whether or not the resurrection actually happened, is not a question that needs to concern historians for several reasons.

1. Because of biology. Dead bodies remain dead. They are not physically brought back from the dead after three days, two days, one day, or otherwise. It is a theological argument to say otherwise, and it can never be made into anything other than a theological argument.

2. If a historian studying any other person than Jesus made the claim that such-and-such person came back from the dead, what would we think of that historian? Especially if the reason to believe such a claim was because many people say they witnessed it and were willing to die for it? How many people are willing to die for things they think have happened, are happening, or will happen? This doesn't mean they have happened, are happening, or will happen. It means that human beings believe all kinds of things that didn't or can't happen, even to the point of dying for that belief. This is a psychological issue, not a historical one. By the way, in case we should forget, there were a lot of Christians who were not willing to die for their beliefs and opposed those who did.

3. I think we are asking the wrong question, and getting bogged down (yet again) in theology. What matters for the historical study of early Christianity is that the early Christians thought/believed/promoted/remembered/taught that Jesus had risen, not whether it "really" happened. It is the belief that is foundational to understand the early Christian movement. It tells us that it was an apocalyptic movement with strong eschatological factors, including the belief that Jesus' resurrection had begun the events of the last days - he had inaugurated the general resurrection (i.e. Matthew's wonderful story of the holy men and women in Jerusalem, and Paul's comment that he was the "first" to rise).

In other words, if we grant that "something" happened, that some of the early Christians experienced something, they went on to interpret it according to their Jewish expectations and traditions at hand. If we don't grant this, then we have to say they made it up, which I am less likely to think given what I have studied about religious experiences and the hermeneutical processes that follow such experiences. I continue to make detailed studies of human memory - both individual and collective - as well as the processes by which stories are created and spread within an environment dominated by an oral consciousness. All of this scientific data - if studied without theological blinders - supports the fact that stories and memories about things does not mean that the thing as it is told or interpreted actually happened the way it was told or interpreted (or happened at all)!

4. If some early Christians experienced something (after-death dream? visions? or some other naturalistic possibility?), what it meant was NOT immediately the same for all of them. Not all of them thought it was a physical-material body that they encountered. Luke tells us that some thought it was a ghost, but not him - Luke has Jesus eat a piece of fish to prove Luke's own belief in the physicality of Jesus' resurrection and to polemicize against the ghost interpretation. John does not tell us that it was a physical body, at least not the same one Jesus had before his death. It may have had some corporeality (which spiritual bodies were thought to have - see Tertullian on this), but it was also a body that could walk through walls! Paul opts for a spiritual body, not a material one, as the resurrected body, a point that later Christian Gnostics like the Valentinians point out and develop. The fleshly interpretation is one that eventually came to dominate and win the day, but it took almost two centuries for that to happen.

Student Thesis: Shaping Christian Identity (Kevin Vaccarella)

Kevin Vaccarella has just finished his PhD. Congratulations! He sent me this information about his thesis to post.

If you send me your own thesis information when you finish, I will post it and archive it under Student Theses too.

Name: Kevin M. Vaccarella
Title: Shaping Christian Identity: The False Scripture Argument in Early Christian Literature
University: Florida State University
Advisor: Nicole Kelley

Description:
Christian communities in the first four centuries struggled to construct and maintain a sense of social identity in a time when there were no stable descriptions for Christianity or Judaism. Competing social identities emerged among Jewish and Christian groups as various authors worked to construct and maintain communal boundaries regarding acceptable (and, simultaneously, unacceptable) beliefs and practices. While some Christian groups rejected certain traditions, other groups found reasons to adopt them. An author (re)presents the community's values and beliefs, whether real or idealized, not only to establish an identity but also to maintain that identity. An investigation of early Christian texts regarding their attitudes toward the Mosaic law, then, provides a window into the process of identity formation.

This dissertation is an examination of a peculiar scriptural hermeneutic that claims that certain biblical mandates found in the scriptures are false. Any beliefs or regulations contained in the supposed false portions of scripture can be rejected on the grounds that they are not part of God's eternal laws. The distinction between the authentic and the false passages has been revealed by Jesus Christ and passed down to his most faithful followers. The false scripture argument is found, to my knowledge, exclusively within Ptolemy's Letter to Flora, the Didascalia Apostolorum, and the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies.

Although there are overlapping tenets, each text presents a unique explanation of the origin and catalogue of the false sections of scripture. The variation in the false scripture argument reflects each author's distinctive effort to construct communal boundaries in the face of social competition. The false scripture argument functions as a rhetorical tool designed to demarcate the author and his community as the true followers of God since they alone possess knowledge of, as well as the means to distinguish, the false passages of scripture. The false scripture argument shapes the community's religious life by barring members from dangerous practices while at the same time validating the traditions accepted by the author and his community.

Book Note: Ancient Gnosticism (Birger Pearson)

A great book! Finally we have a user-friendly introduction to Gnosticism, written by the preeminent scholar of Gnosticism, Professor Birger Pearson. This book is a gold mine, containing the ideas and ruminations of someone who has been in the forefront of scholarship on the Nag Hammadi texts since the beginning. Professor Pearson has written some of the first (and latest!) articles, translations, and commentaries on many of the Nag Hammadi documents.

Now he gives us a textbook about the subject, written with the student audience in mind. It is broken down into the following chapters: What is Gnosticism?; Heresiological Reports on Early Gnostic Teachers and Systems; Sethian or Classical Gnosticism; Gnostic Biblical Interpretation: The Gnostic Genesis; Basilides and Basilidian Gnosis; Valentinus and Valentinian Gnosis; Three-Principle Systems; Coptic Gnostic Writings of Uncertain Affiliation; Thomas Christianity; Hermes Trismegistus and Hermetic Gnosis; Mani and Manichaeism; The Mandaeans: A Surviving Relic of Ancient Gnosis.

This is the book that I have always wanted to write, and wish I would have written. It completely integrates the gnostic literature with the gnostic testimonies and witnesses from patristic sources. Each section references various primary readings, so students can read that literature in conjunction with the textbook.

I highly recommend this book for anyone who is interested to learn more about Gnosis. I plan to replace my older book choices for my Gnostic Gospels course with Pearson's, Ancient Gnosticism: Traditions and Literature. Because it is new, it is on sale at Amazon for $16.50!

Part 7: Doug Chaplin's further reflections

Doug Chaplin has put up a lengthy response on his blog here. I copy here only a small bit which I want to say something about.

Doug Chaplin says:

It seems to me, however much I value historical scholarship, that it is never divorced from the concerns, reconstructions, arguments and possibilities of the present. Nor unlike some, would I collapse it into those concerns. (See my post here) Being open to the way in which one’s scholarship will be used, is itself an important question. I think it slightly disingenuous in a historically gullible, controversy and novelty seeking, media-led culture to suggest that the question of “alternative interpretations of Christ” is controlled either by church leaders, or their flock.

It is the use, not the study, of these texts, as I have said before, which causes me unease. But I don’t think that those who study them can, or should, do so, without due consideration for how they can be used, and be sure that they are being entirely clear about what they are, and are not saying. It is because of that, that I particularly welcome the clarity and helpfulness of this series of posts.

To say that it is the media and not the church that has responded negatively to "alternative interpretations of Christ" is neither disingenuous nor gullible. If the churches were to take these alternatives seriously rather than treat them as heresy or strange ideas, we would see a very different value placed on these texts. I don't know what church world you live in Doug, but my own experience and the experiences of those Christians I have had contact with have taught me loud and clear that the churches today do not take seriously alternative interpretations based on non-canonical gospels. In fact, they do not even acknowledge them as "alternatives." And this has played out in academic circles - certainly not for every scholar, but for the majority of the Academy.

It may be important to you to worry about how historical studies of the non-canonical texts are used by others, but it is not to me. I have absolutely no control over what people do or don't do with my work, and I would never adjust my work to suit the tastes of those perceived audiences. If I were to do so, my work would lose all historical integrity. What I can control is that my work is as honest and accurate as I can manage given my skills and knowledge. What happens to it after that is out of my hands, and will not be a concern of mine.

Book Note: Jared Calaway's Review of Peter Schaefer's Book, Jesus in the Talmud

If you haven't seen it yet, it is worth reading. On Antiquitopia, Jared Calaway has a very detailed review of Peter Schaefer's newest, Jesus in the Talmud. I haven't read the book myself yet, but it has been on my list (along with a huge stack sitting here in my office - gosh there have been some good books released lately!). Thanks Jared for an insightful review.

As for who the counternarrative might be directed to, maybe it isn't. Perhaps the narrative is not counternarrative or polemic with an opponent, but simply represents a formulation of the Jesus traditions within rabbinism for rabbinism?

Part 6: Judy Redman's Thoughts on Non-canonical Unease

Judy Redman has made on extensive post reflecting on the question: why do non-canonical texts make us uneasy? I copy her main answer to the question below, but there is more on her research blog. So check it out.

I particularly like Judy's discussion of the dependence-independence problem between Thomas and the Synoptics, and how she thinks that this may relate to "non-canonical unease" - gosh is this beginning to sound like an illness :)?

Judy Redman says:

I think, however, that the primary reason that non-canonical texts make us uneasy (or at least those of us who have grown up in a Christian church, no matter what we believe now) is that they have generally been labelled “heresy” by the mainstream church. Heresy, as we all know, is devised by Satan to lead the faithful away from the one true faith and into eternal damnation, so these texts are dangerous.

In fact, this is not how I conceptualise heresy at an intellectual level, but the indoctrination of decades dwells deep within my psyche and looking at “heresy” makes me uneasy (although it clearly doesn’t stop me). Coming to non-canonical texts with an open mind means that you might end up being convinced by what they say and thus end up outside orthodoxy. Which is uncomfortable. You might even end up believing that you should try to convey your new understandings to the orthodox church, which has the potential to be very uncomfortable indeed.

This, I think, is why there was (and still is to a certain extent) such an interest in looking at whether or not Thomas is dependent on the synoptics, and in using dependent/independent language in the first place, rather than talking about whether Thomas might have used one of the synoptics as a source, as we do when talking about the relationship between Mark, Matthew and Luke. If we can show “dependency”, then we feel that we are in a stronger position to argue that it is safe to ignore anything in Thomas that comes into conflict with orthodox Christian doctrine. If it’s not dependent, then we may have “authentic words of Jesus”, which makes us uneasy, because we may have to think about changing long-accepted doctrine/theology.

Part 5: Why non-canonical texts are useful according to Tony Chartrand-Burke

Tony Chartrand-Burke of Apocryphicity has put up a terrific post on the questions we have been discussing the last couple of days. His post is called, Do non-canonical texts make you uneasy? I am in 100% agreement with what he says. If you want to read the entire post (and it is worthwhile to do so) click here. I copy some of his main (and well articulated) points below as an applause and a "second."

Tony Chartand-Burke says:

My approach to the CA in my research and teaching is guided by several principles:

• All Christian literature, canonical and noncanonical, are created equal—i.e., they are all expressions of Christian thought of one flavour or another. Whether the group that values the text is in the majority or the minority at any given time is irrelevant.
• All Christian literature, canonical and noncanonical, and all Christian groups, orthodox or heretical, are similarly equal. As scholars and historians we should not favor one or the other simply because we find their theology, practices, etc. attractive to us.
• All Christian literature, canonical and noncanonical, are the products of authors who felt no hesitation in altering the facts (or better: their sources) to suit their needs (be they theological, christological, social, or political). A text’s canonical status is no guarantee of historical accuracy.
• All that said, Christian texts do not have the same utility. The Synoptic Gospels and the letters of Paul remain our best sources for the Historical Jesus and the emerging Jesus movement. Simply put, they are earlier and closer in perspective to the Palestinian Jewish milieu from which the group emerged. Certain later texts may contain echoes of the interests of first century groups (e.g., Ps.-Clement and the Ebionites) but one must use these with caution when trying to reconstruct the views of their ancestors.

I suspect these principles are not particularly radical. Nevertheless, they might be a useful corrective to the portrayal of CA scholars by Christian apologetic writers. In their view we are all modern Gnostics attempting to replace canonical gospels with noncanonical texts, texts that we all believe to be earlier and better than the “Big Four.” Some even say we are influenced by the “powers of darkness.” The apologists may find such invective useful for warning naïve Christians away from the CA, but it has no place in scholarly debate.

Part 4: Why I think that non-canonical texts make us uneasy

I want to thank those who self-reflected and shared their thoughts about non-canonical unease.

Here are my thoughts as promised. Most of them have grown out of my experience as a professor and lecturer. These fears are fears that have been voiced over and over by people in my classrooms and audiences.

Non-canonical texts make us uneasy because:

1. They are are unfamiliar. Their stories, sayings, and mythologies are not what most people today are used to. In so many ways, they are different from the canonical story that is known and loved so well by Christians around the globe.

2. They made many of the "fathers" of the apostolic church uneasy. These fathers, many of whom are "saints" in various church traditions today, are recognized authorities (like the Pope). If they didn't like these texts or think them valuable, why should we?

3. Many of the non-canonical texts reflect expressions of Christianity that people today do not want to practice. Who wants salvation dependent on giving up marriage and sex? This might have been attractive in the ancient world, but not so much today.

4. They give us pause to ask questions of power - its use and abuse. This is a source of discomfort and guilt for those in power. For the powerless it is a very fearsome and paralyzing reality. Why did only certain forms of Christianity survive? The question has a multifaceted answer, but the use and abuse of power is part of the equation.

5. They force us to face issues of selection and legitimacy, issues which challenge faith doctrines like "biblical inspiration," "biblical inerrancy," and "apostolic succession." Why do we have the stories of Jesus that we have, and not the others?

6. They bring an element of doubt into reconstructions of Jesus. If we have to take into account the non-canonical material, the Jesus we have in the NT gospels begins to have some competition. So it's trying to sort out the question, "Will the real Jesus please stand up?" that brings discomfort.

7. They are written later than most (but not all) of the New Testament texts. So there is less confidence extracting history from them - although most scholars remain confident about extracting history from canonical texts, even though these stories are graced with virgin births, feeding miracles, walking on water, healing miracles, visions of the dead on high mountains, and the pinnacle of all, the physical resurrection of Jesus. How are these stories any different from the young Jesus making clay birds and clapping his hands, bringing them to life?

8. When we study the non-canonical texts (and the patristic witnesses about them), we realize that so-called "heretics" like the Ebionites were far more similar to the very first Christians than Irenaeus was. If one's Christianity is based on understanding oneself as emulating the first Christians, this is a problem.

9. They suggest that the second century of early Christianity is important, as important as the first. Why? Because it is the period in which Christianity was thoroughly engaged in the process of normation. The forms of Christianity known today are indebted to that process.

Part 3: What I don't think about non-canonical texts

I appreciated Doug Chaplin's reflections. I would like to respond to some of his concerns. So this is a list of what I don't think about non-canonical texts.

1. I don't think that a newly discovered text is a reliable testimony to the historical Jesus or the early church. But I also question the use of the canonical texts as a reliable testimony to the historical Jesus and the early church. All early Christian texts have one main concern - theology. They are interested in interpreting Jesus and providing the faithful with the faith. Even Luke. How much history we can extract from any of our texts is a difficult question and a project fraught with methodological problems.

2. I do not think that "lost" texts automatically were suppressed texts, although the Church Fathers provide us with plenty of names of texts that were lost and found, texts that were suppressed by them. The question of their value, of course, is a question based on where you stand. If the text is "yours" then it is valuable. If the text is not yours, then its value may be reduced, even negated through systematic suppression and book burning, something we hear plenty of in the ancient documents. If you are in a powerless position - excommunicated for instance - then your text and ideas are more likely to fall out of fashion and be considered less valuable by others than not.

3. I do not think that the orthodox were the only ones who exercised power. The process of normation was a process that included both sides, and the haggling and name-calling and viciousness went both ways (as for instance the Gospel of Judas and the Testimony of Truth show us). But in the end, only apostolic Christianity emerged on top, and in power. And it used that power to erase the other forms of Christianity (and eventually paganism too, and used its power to distance itself from Judaism and denigrate it).

4. I do not think that orthodoxy was monochrome. In fact, it had several expressions dependent on its geographical location. These forms of orthodoxy themselves competed with each other over time, and resulted in the splintering of Christianity into East and West, and so forth.

5. I do not think that the non-canonical materials tell us the "right" story while the canonical texts and later orthodox tradition got it "wrong." The search for the story needs to take all the voices into consideration, so that we can reconstruct a whole picture of the historical origins of Christianity. Erasing or ignoring some of the voices compromises the integrity of the historical search.

6. As for whether or not the non-canonical materials provide us with alternative ways to interpret Christ - this is a contemporary theological concern, not a historical one of mine. A person's desire to deny the possibility of alternative interpretations seems to me to reflect his or her desire to maintain the status quo of the Christian tradition today. This is an issue of self-preservation, not history. Do the non-canonical texts provide alternative interpretations of Christ? Certainly. But whether or not a person finds those meaningful today, is a theological question controlled as much by church leaders as it is by the flock.

Part 2: Your responses to the question, "Why do non-canonical texts make us uneasy?"

Greg Delassu says in the comments:

Tertullian and Origen are just as heretical as the Gospel of Judas or the Acts of Phillip and yet no one supposes that the self-professed orthodox are "afraid" to read Tertullian or Origen. I agree that the vitriol aimed at non-canonical texts (and at those who study them) is largely irrational, but I think this the-orthodox-are-blinded-by-their-fears-and-prejudices line is a poor explanation for that irrationality with little more to back it up other than a popular mythology built up around the idea of the scholarly-hero/Gallileo-contra-mundum.

See Doug Chaplin's self-reflections on his blog.

David Hamilton has posted this in the comments:

I believe that people who are committed to any degree to orthodoxy will always view material such as the gnostic texts as a threat. People who believe that the received tradition is largely correct and this is why Christianity as we know it won the early battles are bound to think of gnostic texts as if they were weeds, so to speak. "We've already beaten these weeds down, so why do they keep reoccuring? Why do they keep coming back?" Such people fear that the battle is not completely won after all, especially if they subscribe to the notion that evil is active in the world.

Leon Zitzer's self-reflections (he has a blog on the historical Jesus), I have moved here from the comments on the previous post:

I think Dr. DeConick is right that these are important questions. Our emotional responses often control our ability to see the evidence let alone to analyze it correctly. Vocabulary or terminology is just one way that scholars, or any authorities really, have to control a discussion and to control what insights are permitted.

Here is one powerful reason why I think so many people are uneasy with gnostic texts or the "new" Gospel of Judas (and why they invent a vocabulary that puts them down or diminishes them): The canonical New Testament (NT)has been around for almost 2,000 years and the control over how they are to be read is well established. There may be alternative voices in the NT but traditionalists feel they have this well under control, so nobody will hear or notice them. But the gnostic texts and the very new Gospel of Judas do not have a long tradition of study behind them. They are not as well controlled as the canonical texts are. So many religious and scholarly authorities feel uneasy with them because they don't own them the way they own the traditional stuff. They have not yet mastered how to totally dismiss them and that worries them. Other voices make them very nervous because it means loss of control; they have not yet figured out a way to make them completely Other.

Jim Deardoff's reflections moved from the comments of the previous post:

What is most disturbing to me is the implicit suggestion by some that any text that once was lost, but now is found, can without careful study be assumed to be an unreliable testimony to the truth of the man known as Jesus.

Part 1: Why do non-canonical texts make us uneasy?

As I wrote my last blog entry on the BYU journal discussing the Gospel of Judas, I kept asking myself the question, "Why do non-canonical texts make us so uneasy?" It isn't just the LDS scholars, or Christian scholars of other traditions. Except for a few, this is the reaction I have seen across the Academy generally. When referring to these texts, they are always the "other," always the "extra," always the "non." There appears to be a satisfaction in writing that these texts are "late" or "legendary" or "gnostic." If "gnostic" then "gnostic" is explained as some crazy, nonsensible, unintelligible, why-would-anyone-want-to-be tradition in antiquity that the church fathers fought, and thank god they did. There is set up a contrast between them and the "real" or "authentic" writings of the church. This is enough to dismiss the text from our scholarly repertoire. But is this historically justifiable?

Personally, I think it worthwhile to reflect on these questions, to ask ourselves why the study of these texts is so provoking? What is it about them that makes us so uneasy? This is not a rhetorical question, but one that I hope to pose as a self-reflection. What are your own answers? I will post mine later this week.