Jesus on the Road to Nicaea 3: Anti-Semitism

If we are going to talk about turn-of-the-century Christian literature and the development of a Christian self-identity, then we are going to have to be ready to face anti-Semitism. It infuses this literature. It is explicit as well as implicit.

This is a topic that is difficult to broach because we are talking about hatred that, when mobilized by those in power, leads to terror, violence, and death. It is very tough to look at this literature and not feel shame and guilt.

What I think has been happening in scholarship as a way to dampen this shame and guilt in post WWII modernity is a reenvisioning of the conflict between the Jews and the Christians in this period as an intra-Jewish conflict. In my opinion, this revision of history (whether intentional or unintentional) serves to soften the shame and guilt by suggesting, however subtly, that Christianity is not guilty of originating anti-Semitism because 1) Christianity didn't really exist yet and 2) the conflict was a conflict that arose among Jewish brothers and sisters. The desire to revise the history of Judas is part of this scholarly trajectory (whether intentional or unintentional), either wishing Judas away or wanting him to be a hero that later traditions demonized. All of this effectively works toward exonerating the earliest Christians, so that the Christian tradition is not inherently at fault for anti-Semitism (and therefore we don't need to change anything essential to Christianity today), and so we can return to being brothers and sisters as we were before the conflict arose.

There are many things about this revision of history that I am uncomfortable with, especially the argument that anti-Semitism arose as an intra-Jewish conflict, which effectively ends up shifting the blame for the origin of anti-Semitism on Judaism rather than Christianity (although I don't think that this was the intention of the academic argument).

So in my posts when I discuss the separation of Christianity and Judaism, I will be addressing this issue openly. It is correct that Christianity is a Jewish movement during this period, BUT it also is a movement that is taking on a self-identity that is beginning to define itself against Judaism or superior to Judaism. So when the Christian tradition was forming as its own unique religion (when it was identifying itself as something other than Jewish), it generally did so by defining itself over and/or against Judaism rather than in continuity with it. Even its attempt to keep the Jewish scriptures was done in terms of superiority, the Jewish scriptures become the "old" covenant superseded by the "new." The Jewish ways of interpreting their scriptures were discarded as foolish and ignorant, while the Christian way was understood to be God-inspired.

This process of self-identification occurred gradually and at different times for different Christian populations and some groups chose to keep closer ties to Jewish traditions than others did. Anti-Semitism originated within this environment. It is at the core of the original process of Christian self-definition. What this means for Christianity today and in the future is something that I think the churches still need to address, especially since the anti-Semitism that was the consequence of early Christian self-definition became part of the Christian scripture when texts like the Gospel of John were canonized.

Jesus on the Road to Nicaea 2: the lay of the land

Christianity on the threshold of the second-century was very much involved in self-definition. And depending on where you might have lived, the Christianity you would have known, and the Jesus you would have known, would be very different.

Keep in mind that at this time there was no New Testament. Scripture was the Jewish scriptures, which themselves were still in the process of canonization. The Christians were reading the Torah and the prophets and the wisdom literature.

And the Christians were producing their own writings and these were circulating. Someone had collected Paul's letters into a little book, and that was traveling around. Books that contained stories and sayings of Jesus were also circulating and this was known as the memoirs of the apostles and also the "gospel."

The eyewitness generation was dead. The second generation was old and beginning to die. So they were busy trying to set down their memories and interpretations and practices.

The end of the world hadn't arrived, even with the destruction of the Temple. This delay continued to be a major problem, and two things resulted. First there was an intensification of apocalyptic expectations, dreams, visions, and hopes. It is in this period that Revelation is written, the visions of Hermas are recorded, and millenarian hopes emerge. Second there is a feeling of settling down and waiting, of postponement and the continued need to set into place a church as a permanent institution. So this is the period when different communities put into place hierarchies of power, and women begin to struggle to stay in power. The easy charismatism of the early movement is vanishing (or perhaps better, going under ground).

The Temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed. The Jews were trying to redefine their traditions so that they would survive in synagogues without the Temple and the cult. The Christians were part of this redefinition. The first generation had been Jewish. The second generation was beginning to experience turmoil and conflict in regard to this relationship. In the 80s, we hear about a serious conflict between Christian Jews and other Jews over how the traditions should be interpreted. Thus the author of the Gospel of Matthew reveals a Christian self-definition that is trying to win the Jewish debate and emerge as the new Judaism. This is probably taking place in western Syria, around Antioch. But then we begin hearing references in texts like John (I think from Alexandria) that they were no longer welcome in the local synagogues in the 90s CE. And the language in this text shows a community that has begun to define itself as something other than Jewish. There are the Jews and there are us, the gospel says.

I realize there has been the desire in recent scholarship to downplay the separation between Judaism and Christianity in this period, even pushing it to Nicaea. But this position just cannot be supported from the literature unless we turn a blind eye on half of what this literature says. The separation is something well underway by the beginning of the second century, and, depending on the community you were involved with, may already have been achieved by mid-second century (as we will see for certain with Marcionite Christian churches and the Sethian Christian churches and, I would argue, for some Apostolic Christian churches).

It is my opinion that during this struggle emerged a radical monotheism in the Jewish tradition which shut out the possibility of divine mediators, while Christianity developed further the earlier monaltrous Jewish tradition which reserved worship for the 'big guy' but recognized particular angels as intermediaries who could be called upon for aid. The Angel of YHWH is particularly important in this regard, as is the KAVOD figure and the NAME itself. All of these represent the hypostasizing of the hidden YHWH who was beyond direct contact. I'm not sure what to label this form of worship, but it is not the radical monotheism that the Jewish rabbis decided upon and enforced.

Apocryphote of the Day: 8-26-09

Beware of lust, my son, for lust leads to fornication. Likewise refrain from unclean talk and the roving eye, for these too can breed adultery.

Didache 3

Can you tell what I'm writing about today? Early Christians and their attitudes about sex. I'm working on chapter 3, "Is Sex a Sin?"

The fallacious 'paradidomi'

Today I want to speak about the verb 'paradidomi' since there have been a number of discussions about this verb left in the comments of previous posts. What can and can't it tell us about Judas?

I want to say up front that my reading of Judas and this verb has nothing whatsoever to do with the angst between so-called liberal and conservative scholars. In fact, I resent this sort of labeling because it is nothing more than theology rearing its head in the academy. Scholars aren't "liberal" or "conservative". In our field, whether a scholar is "liberal" or "conservative" is not an academic designation, but a theological designation (is the person in favor of progressive, evangelical, fundamentalist, etc. Christianity).

When I read internet perspectives on my work, particularly my views on the Gospel of Judas, I am stunned how often I am labeled a conservative, when all I am is a historian doing her job recovering the best history possible given the sources with no apology for Christianity. My views on the Gospel of Judas are actually "liberal" by strict definition, since they go completely against the status quo and the established tradition that scholars have held for hundreds of years - that Judas in the Gospel of Judas should be a Gnostic and a hero. He is not.

Nor can the arguments about the term 'paradidomi' exonerate him from the biblical sources. What is the argument? That 'paradidomi' means only "hand over" and not (necessarily) "betray."

How is this argument made? By turning to NT references to the word such as Paul's use of it in 1 Cor 11:23-24 (where Paul says: "For I received from the Lord that which I also handed over to you"); Rom 8:32 (God "handed over" Jesus for us all); etc. Once it is established that 'paradidomi' means 'to give or hand someone or something over to someone else' the coast is clear to make the argument that Judas may not have been such a bad guy historically, especially since the NT gospel writers each portray the reason for Judas' 'handing over' of Jesus quite differently. Guess no one really knew and they were just scapegoating a good guy (or a guy that didn't exist at all).

Now here is the problem. 'Paradidomi', like most words, has a range of acceptable meanings and uses. You have to know the context of most words to know which meaning is intended. In fact its several definitions across Greek literature include: 1. to transmit or impart as a teacher, or hand down legends or information; 2. to give a city or a person into another's hands, such as surrender and treachery; 3. to allow or permit someone to do something.

So how do the NT gospel writers use the verb contextually in their telling of Judas' story? Mark 14 has Jesus say to the twelve at the table, "one of you will hand me over." The disciples begin to grieve ('lupeô') when they hear this statement. Then Jesus damns the man who will hand over the Son of Man: "Damn that man by whom the Son of Man is handed over! It would have been better for that man if he had not been born." Mark's story clearly uses the word in its treacherous sense. Judas is doing a terrible thing by turning Judas in. He is a disciple who is a turncoat.

Matthew's version (c. 26) isn't any better. Relying on Mark's story, he transmits the same use of 'paradidomi': The disciples grieve when they hear that one of them will hand Jesus over; this man is damned, better not to have been born. And - here is the difference - verbally identified as Judas!

Luke's version (c. 22) is equally scathing. He begins by telling us that Satan entered Judas who then went to talk to the high priests about how he would 'hand over' Jesus. So the word is now connected to the action of the chief demon and ruler of this world. Jesus later says at the table that one among them will hand him over. He damns the man who will turn him in.

John's version doesn't rely on the synoptics. He tells us as early as c. 6 that Jesus knew when he choose the twelve that one of them was a devil. This one is identified by John as Judas who would hand him over. Thus in c. 13 we learn that the devil had already put into Judas' heart the plan to hand over Jesus. Jesus predicts Judas' plan to hand him over as fulfilment of scripture that "He who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me." Once Judas eats the morsel served by Jesus, Satan himself enters Judas and he goes out to do the deed. Judas' connection with Satan the ruler of the world is even more pronounced during the Farewell Discourse when Jesus says that he has run out of time to talk to them because "the ruler of this world is coming" in reference to Judas' plan to come to the garden and hand over Jesus to the authorities. This is all portrayed by John as part of God's plan to overthrow the ruler of this world.

My point is that in every one of these Judas cases, 'paradidomi' means treachery and betrayal. The contexts could not be more explicit.

The fact that each author gives a different motivation for Judas' betrayal says nothing more to us than all our authors knew that Judas had done something so bad that they felt the need to explain why he would have done such a terrible thing. So they suggest money, demon possession, and "it was part of God's plan" as answers.

As far as the Sethian Gnostics who wrote the Gospel of Judas - they were very faithful to scripture. Judas Iscariot was identified by them with Satan, the ruler of this world, whom they also called Saklas and Ialdabaoth.

So the next time you read about how 'paradidomi' exonerates Judas, think again, because it is a fallacious argument.

Jesus on the Road to Nicaea 1: the controversies

This is the beginning of a new series of posts following the previous series called Creating Jesus. In that series, we looked at the foundational stories and three major emergent christological paradigms in the earliest literature.

The Jerusalem paradigm was the earliest, viewing Jesus as a human being born of human parents who was possessed by the spirit at his baptism. He died the death of a Jewish martyr and received the reward of the martyr: resurrection from the dead and exaltation as an angelic being, in his case, the Angel of YHWH. Baptism cleansed of previous sins, anointing gave the spirit, and eucharist was an apocalyptic party anticipating the Messianic banquet in heaven and the coming of Jesus as the YHWH angel of Judgment. Pious living in imitation of Jesus the Righteous One is the heart of salvation. This paradigm became very popular in the east, particularly moving through Mesopotamia and eastern Syria, although it appears to be the ground for the other two paradigms and was not unknown in the west.

The Antiochean paradigm developed quickly. Although I am not certain if it first fermented in Jerusalem and then was taken to Antioch, or if it originated in Antioch, it became the dominant paradigm in Asia Minor and western Syria. It also traveled west to Rome and became exceedingly popular there. In this paradigm, the possession is moved back to the womb. The Angel YHWH possesses the fetus from the time of conception or the quickening. Mary becomes a virgin who bears a child who already is divine. Jesus is a full human being with an additional aspect to his soul, a special angelic augment. This is an embodiment christology. Baptism and anointing deliver the spirit of Jesus to the believer, so that the person has already been resurrected as Jesus was. Jesus' death functions as a universal atonement. Eucharist is a sacrificial renactment of Jesus' death and is a serious ceremony of mourning rather than a celebratory party.

The Alexandrian paradigm is the final one. In it, we move back further to a pretemporal "moment" when the Logos existed as God. The Logos was the mind of God and this is what descends into flesh and becomes Jesus. This is an ensoulment christology where the mind of God functions as the "human" soul of Jesus. Jesus is YHWH walking on earth as a human being. Baptism is rebirth, a transmutative process that recreates the believer in God's image. Eucharist involves consuming a divine body which acts as the medicine of immortality. The person who eats the sacred body finds that his or her own body-soul is slowing transformed into that same sacred body. It is a process of glorification or theosis: becoming god.

Now these are the three foundational christological and ritual paradigms which fuel the controversies of the second century and eventually lead to Nicaea. Keep in mind that the second century authors do not necessarily know of these as separate paradigms. Each author will have a tradition that he learned which usually corresponds to his geographical location and the paradigm of the school he attended. But he will also know the paradigms embedded in the things he had available to read and consider "scriptural." Sometimes these authors will mix elements together from the different paradigms, or they will impose upon other paradigms the dominant paradigm they have learned, or they will develop one and not discuss the others at all. It is necessary for us to be flexible and read our sources carefully to determine what is actually going on.

The three controversies that become bound up with christology are the Jewish-Christian controversy (How Jewish are we as Christians?); the Gnostic controversy (Should we as Christians worship YHWH or another god who lives beyond this universe?); the Monarchian controversy (How monotheistic are we as Christians?).

Next time we will begin to look at the Jewish-Christian controversy (although I hope you notice that all three of the controversies I have outlined are REALLY Jewish-Christian controversies).

Last day of summer

Celebrate the last day of summer! Tomorrow will be here soon, and with it another semester of research and learning. I'm on a grant this semester - so no teaching. I'm going to be writing about star gates and ascent for an SBL presentation, but the big project is finishing my book, Sex and the Serpent: Why the Sexual Conflicts of the Early Church Still Matter. I will be returning to finishing up chapter three on Jesus and Paul. But that can wait until tomorrow. The rest of the day is to enjoy the last moments of summer. Alexander starts kindergarten at 7:35 am (!) tomorrow.

Apocryphote of the Day: 8-20-09

My heart was pruned and its flower appeared,
Then grace sprang up from in it,
And it produced fruits for the Lord.
For the Most High circumcised me by his Holy Spirit,
Then he uncovered my inward being towards him,
And filled me with his love.
And his circumcising became my salvation,
And I ran in the way, in his peace,
In the way of truth.

Odes of Solomon 11.1-3 (Syrian, end of second and beginning of third century CE)

Apocryphote of the Day: 8-18-09

I promise to return to more substantial posts next week. I have given myself the first three-week "vacation" I have had, well, since I can remember. Once I am back in the office, regular "hearty" postings should resume. But for now, an apocryphote for the day.

"If you desire to devote yourselves entirely to God...lend to those who do not repay you."

Ahmad ibn Hanbal, al-Zuhd, The Muslim Jesus, pp. 144-145

Apocryphote of the Day: 8-17-09

"Do not seek the world by destroying yourselves. Seek salvation by abandoning what is in the world. Naked you came into the world and naked you shall depart."

Ahmad ibn Hanbal, al Zuhd, The Muslim Jesus, p. 146

Apocryphote of the Day: 8-13-09

"Whoever has learned, acted, and acquired knowledge, he is the one who is called great in the kingdom of heaven."

Ahmad ibn Hanbal, al-Zuhd, The Muslim Jesus, pp. 98-99.

Apocryphote of the Day: 8-12-09

"Beware the world and do not make it your abode."

Ahmad ibn Hanbal, al-Zuhd, The Muslim Jesus, p. 98.

Working on the blog today

Designed a new banner for the blog today. What do you think?

Book Report: The Historiographical Jesus (Le Donne)

Today a package arrived in my mailbox. What's this? I thought as I opened it. As I tore the package open and the name of the book emerged "The Historiographical Jesus" by Anthony Le Donne, I thought, "My gosh, a perfect title!" Simultaneously I thought (in regards to historical Jesus research) - "it is about time!"

Of course I haven't had time to read and digest all that Le Donne has to say yet. But I can see already that this book is a "must" read. It is pioneering, taking seriously the study of social memory and applying it to what Le Donne thinks we can and can't say the Jesus traditions.

Refreshingly he establishes himself as an historian who is not trying to get back to "unrefracted memory" (that is, what actually happened), but to account for the earliest memory refractions in Jesus' story. So "authenticity" and "historicity" are redefined to point to earliest memories of Jesus and Le Donne maps out the criteria that he uses to pick up this information.

Le Donne works with the concept of memory refraction in the Jesus tradition and analyzes how the stories and saying of Jesus were distorted as they were handed down and consciously and unconsciously reframed. Anthony argues that the analysis of memory refraction allows historians to escape the problems between memory and typology and recover the earliest memories of Jesus.

Creating Jesus 24: Transmutative Soteriology

As I finish up the final paradigm, the one in which God's Logos or Reason functions at Jesus' soul, so that God is literally a human being walking around on earth, I want to address how this alters the pattern of salvation. Because we have here a christology in which God and the flesh meet, forming an extraordinary human being, the goal of this paradigm is for all humans to experience this same transmutation, a perfecting that alters their humanity in the same way that it had altered Jesus'. This is a process called theosis and it is captured in the words of many of the church fathers from the east, "God became man so that man can become God."

How was this achieved? Largely it happens through the sacraments. It begins through baptism when one is "reborn of water and spirit" (John 3:5). It is a REBIRTH. The person's soul is literally born anew. It was believed that the waters purified the person while the spirit infused the soul, altering it so that the soul and person was created anew reflecting God's image.

This transmutation was maintained through the person's participation in the eucharist. In John 6, the author is not speaking about cannibalism, eating the flesh and blood of the historical Jesus. Rather the person is supposed to consume a sacred or divinized flesh, the extraordinary body of God. This body the person's eats is "the bread of life" which has "come down from heaven." This heavenly bread is Jesus' divinized flesh, and when consumes, yields life eternal to the one eating it. This incorporation of the sacred body worked like divine medicine, immortalizing the person over time. It is familiar to us in our adage: "You are what you eat."

So here, in John's gospel, we have our third and final paradigm, one that understands the eucharist as an experience of at-one-ment in contrast to the sacrifical model familiar to the Pauline tradition of "atonement." The devotee incorporates the sacred elements to imitate the ensoulment of Jesus, since at the moment of consumption a unification between God and the human is experienced. When this happens regularly, a process of transmutation is undergone, and eventually theosis will be achieved.

Since I got a very positive response to continuing this series beyond the foundational paradigms, I have decided to move forward into the second-century and trace with you what happened to these paradigms in the theology and practices of the Christians up to Nicaea. So my posts will begin a "new" series called Jesus on the Road to Nicaea.

Apocryphote of the Day: 8-6-09

I'm still "away" on "vacation" for the couple of weeks before school starts, but I thought I'd drop in with an apocryphote, and to let you know I'm still around. Once I return to my office at the end of August, I'll begin posting more regularly again.

"But I say to you, what you seek and ask about, look, it is in you!"

Dialogue of the Savior 16

2,000 year old ritual cup uncovered in Jerusalem

This news has now made the LA Times. Congratulations James, to you and your crew. Very exciting!

2009 SBL Program Book

Here is the LINK for the 2009 SBL Program Book. More on specific sessions I want to highlight later.

The Gospel of Judas in The New Yorker

This morning Jared on Antiquitopia brought our attention to and posted his thoughts on the August 3rd THE NEW YORKER article written by Joan Acocella, in which she argues that the push to heroify Judas by the National Geographic team of scholars and their supporters is part of a trend to counter fundamentalism by academics. She writes in support of Susan Guber's new book, Judas: A Biography (in which Guber takes a "cold view of the Gospel of Judas" according to Acocella):

(Final paragraph of THE NEW YORKER article): All this, I believe, is a reaction to the rise of fundamentalism—the idea, Christian and otherwise, that every word of a religion’s founding document should be taken literally. This is a childish notion, and so is the belief that we can combat it by correcting our holy books. Those books, to begin with, are so old that we barely understand what their authors meant. Furthermore, because of their multiple authorship, they are always internally inconsistent. Finally, even the fundamentalists don’t really take them literally. People interpret, and cheat. The answer is not to fix the Bible but to fix ourselves.

Acocella mentions the second edition of National Geographic's translation of the Gospel of Judas and how it differs from the first, wondering how much our need to revise history may have affected their first publication of the Gospel of Judas (I have written about this extensively in the NEW PREFACE to the revised edition of THE THIRTEENTH APOSTLE: WHAT THE GOSPEL OF JUDAS REALLY SAYS):

(Center of THE NEW YORKER article): Even the gospel’s translators may have felt the need to augment its revisionist credentials. When Jesus, in the gospel, tells the disciples that no mortal, or almost none, will be saved, one assumes that Judas will be an exception, and that’s what National Geographic’s translators said in the first English edition. But then a number of other scholars took a look at the Coptic text and objected that this was a misreading. The translators must have seen their point, because in the second edition of their version, published last year, the line has been changed—to mean the opposite. Jesus now says to Judas, “You will not ascend on high” to join those in Heaven. In other passages, too, the second edition tells a widely different story from the first.

In fairness, no expert can tell us exactly what the Coptic said. That is not just because of the terrible condition of the codex; even when the words are there, they are often enigmatic. But, as April DeConick, a professor of Biblical studies at Rice University, pointed out in the Times in 2007, there was a troubling consistency to a number of the mistranslations in the first edition: they improved Judas’s image. If the gospel was truly the earth-shaking document that the National Geographic Society claimed it was—if it promoted Judas from villain to hero—then to have him denied admission to Heaven would be decidedly awkward.

So there you have it. The information that my blog and book readers have known for two years running is finally making its way into the public arena. I wonder if it will matter.

New blog menu bar

I have been working the last two days trying to figure out how to put "static" information pages on Blogger which doesn't have such a widget or capability. It has meant study of html code and reading a series of posts on techno blogs and hours of tearing my hair out (okay, I'm not bald yet). But it has been achieved at least in a useable format although I am sorry to say that it is not pretty. Creating pretty picture tabs was just too much for me.

I promise to get back to posting real content, although it will continue to be slow over the rest of the summer. My little boy Alexander is starting Kindergarten, and so I want to give him some real home summer time during the month of August before he starts into the public school system. I will post sporadically, and will be tweaking the look of my blog in the meantime.

I am still considering whether to continue the Creating Jesus series, so if this is something you want me to do, please leave a comment.

Creating Jesus: To Chalcedon?

Pastor Bob has asked me to take us to Chalcedon in terms of christology. I can certainly do this...but I don't want to bore my readers with the same subject for an extended period of time. I can cover all the controversies to Nicaea, Nicaea, and its fallout, but only if this is something that will interest you.

As for James McGrath's post today, arguing for a possession christology in John. I do not find these arguments convincing. There is no prophetic tradition from Judaism in which the prophet is ever God. No prophet would ever claim "I AM" for himself or "I and the Father are one." Now the Kavod and Angel of the Lord traditions do help to explain this, as they also help to explain the distinction that Jesus is the son and a mediator figure (which I have explained in earlier posts in this series). But prophet traditions do not. The spirit in prophetic tradition is always a temporary possession of a full human being and never makes the possessed God himself.

This is not to say that prophetic traditions have not influenced early strata of Johannine traditions. They have, particularly Samaritan understandings of the Prophet-like-Moses. But these traditions have been reconfigured within a Hellenistic model of anthropology in which the Logos descends into flesh. The language is not language of descent into a full human being, into a "man", but of the descent of God's Reason into flesh. This is ensoulment language not possession language.

Perhaps it would be helpful to know that in Hellenistic philosophy, particularly that influenced by Plato, God was conceived as The Good and The One. When he thinks (which is all he can do) he is Mind-Logos within which exists all thoughts and patterns for the universe. Plato perceived these to be "forms." Some of the first Christians thought of them as little logoi. Origen, in fact, says that these little logoi became our souls when their love for God began to cool off and they fell down into matter and became psyches. Only one little logos remained completely attached to God and this is what Origen thought became Jesus' soul.