Lots of these presentations sound great. There is one, however, that I've actually read, and it's fantastic: Hans Arneson's "Vocabulary and Date in the Study of Wisdom: A Critical Review of the Arguments”. If you're at all interested in the question of when Wisdom of Solomon was written, you do not want to miss this paper. I don't want to spoil the surprise, so I'll just say that it appears Arneson has demolished the widely accepted argument for determining Wisdom's date.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Wish I were going to SBL 2009
I'm staying home this year. I feel a little left out, so this is my attempt to involve myself.
Saturday, November 21, 2009 at 4:00 PM Kathy Barrett Dawson, “Intertextuality and Mimetic Reversal in Galatians 1-2: Pauline Autobiography and the Inclusion of the Gentiles” in 21-308 Biblical Criticism and Literary Criticism
Jill Hicks-Keeton, “Remember and Believe: Psalm 69:9 in the Johannine Temple Logion” in 21-322 Intertextuality in the New Testament Consultation
Richard B. Hays, “Spirit, Church, Eschatology: The Third Article of the Creed as Hermeneutical Lens for Reading Romans” in 21-336 Theological Hermeneutics of Christian Scripture
Lauren K. McCormick, “Ba'al's Guiding Light: Shapsh and Magic in the Ba'al Cycle and Other Texts” in 21-337 Ugaritic Studies and Northwest Semitic Epigraphy Sunday, November 22, 2009 at 9:00 AM Matthew Thiessen, “Abolishers of the Law and the Early Jesus Movement” in 22-129 Matthew
George Thomas Givens, “From the Lost Sheep of the House of Israel to All the Nations: A Challenge to Supersessionist Readings of Matthew” in 22-129 Matthew
Anathea Portier-Young, “Toward a Theory of Early Jewish Apocalypses as Resistance Literature” in 22-145 Social Sciences and the Interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures
Jill Hicks-Keeton, “Diasporic Space in Tobit” in 22-146 Space, Place, and Lived Experience in Antiquity
Bradley R. Trick, “Misinterpretation as Interpretive Key: Jesus’ Use of Ambiguous Parables to Harden Hearts” in 22-147 Synoptic Gospels Sunday, November 22, 2009 at 1:00 PM Eric Meyers, “From the Upper Galilee to the Lower Galilee: Reflections on the Rural-Urban Divide” in 22-203 Archaeological Excavations and Discoveries: Illuminating the Biblical World Joint Session With: Archaeology of Religion in the Roman World, Archaeological Excavations and Discoveries: Illuminating the Biblical World Sunday, November 22, 2009 at 4:00 PM Elizabeth A. Clark, “Christian Literary Culture in Late Antiquity: A Response” in 22-317 Eusebius and the Construction of a Christian Culture Consultation
Erin Darby, “Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Ghost?: The ‘Apotropaic’ Clay Images of Iron II Judah in Neo-Assyrian Context” in 22-327 Israelite Religion in its West Asian Environment Monday, November 23, 2009 at 9:00 AM Bradley R. Trick, “‘Lest Their Hearts Understand’: Hardening Hearts through Misunderstanding in Isaiah 6:1-9:6” in 23-119 Formation of Isaiah
David M. Moffitt, “New Papyrological Evidence Regarding the Meaning of the Term Proselyte” in 23-136 Papyrology and Early Christian Backgrounds
Hans Arneson, “Vocabulary and Date in the Study of Wisdom: A Critical Review of the Arguments” in 23-141 Pseudepigrapha Monday, November 23, 2009 at 4:00 PM Albert McClure, “Solar Functions of Messengers in Zechariah 1:7-6:15” in 23-305 Book of the Twelve Prophets
Mark Goodacre, “How and Why the NT Gateway was Rebooted, Revitalized and Relaunched” in 23-308 Computer Assisted Research
Ken Olson, “A Eusebian Reading of the Testimonium Flavianum” in 23-319 Historical Jesus Tuesday, November 24, 2009 at 9:00 AM Lori Baron, “Interpreting the Shema: Liturgy and Identity in the Fourth Gospel” in 24-109 Construction of Christian Identities
Stephen C. Carlson, “Origen's Use of the Gospel of Thomas” in 24-112 Function of Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal Writings in Early Judaism and Early Christianity
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Tendencies of the Pre-Synoptic Tradition
Anyone interested in the Historical Jesus of course needs to have some theory of the pre-synoptic tradition, that is, the sources (oral and/or literary) that lie behind Matthew, Mark, and Luke. For several decades, the dominant paradigm has been that originating with the form critics, with Rudolf Bultmann's History of the Synoptic Tradition being perhaps the classic statement of this approach. This paradigm, however, has recently been challenged by several scholars, notably James Dunn and (even more so) Richard Bauckham.
Dunn and Bauckham argue that the understanding of the pre-synoptic tradition derived from the form critics is defective (and one consequence of this is that it hinders our study of the Historical Jesus). Their main bone of contention is that the form critics have failed to appreciate the importance of distinctively oral modes of tradition transmission, by examining the pre-synoptic tradition through the lenses of a 'literary' paradigm. Dunn argues, instead, that the community as a whole would keep a close guard on the original tradition, whilst allowing limited variety within original pattern; Bauckham, of course, argues that this regulation comes from eyewitnesses.
The strengths and weaknesses of their positive proposals have been much debated, and I do not intend to engage them here. The question that I do want to engage is whether a broadly 'form critical' approach is really so unhelpful in understanding the pre-synoptic tradition.
The basic proposal which I would like to advocate is that the tendencies we see operating between the synoptic gospels provide us with evidence of the kinds of tendencies that would have been operative in the pre-synoptic period. This is what I take to be at the heart of the 'form critical' approach. Consider an example: in the synoptic gospels, it is widely agreed that there is a tendency to make more explicit and/or pronounced the subordination of John the Baptist to Jesus (seen, for instance, in the accounts of Jesus's baptism). From this, it is suggested, we can infer that in the pre-synoptic tradition, there may have been a similar tendency to increase subordination of John the Baptist to Jesus. One practical outcome of this approach might be that where, in the Markan tradition, we see subordination of the Baptist to Jesus (e.g. Mark 1:7), we might suspect (though not necessarily affirm) that this subordination is itself the result of a tendency that was also found in the pre-synoptic tradition. (I probably should emphasize that this is only a possible example of the kind of thing I am talking about; I am not especially interested here in making a strong claim about this particular tradition!)
As I see it, there are two possible objections to this line of reasoning. The first is that it is inappropriate to speak of 'tendencies' of the synoptic tradition at all. This criticism, if made, would probably be justified with reference to E.P. Sanders' Tendencies of the Synoptic Tradition (which of course was the inspiration for the title of this post!). However, the kinds of 'tendencies' of which Sanders is rightly critical are not those I am suggesting we should detect in the synoptic and (hence) pre-synoptic tradition. Sanders criticizes detection of 'mechanical' tendencies such as length of pericope, addition of names, and so on. It is not clear, however, that his criticism would apply to a tendency such as 'subordination of the Baptist to Jesus', which does not require a dubious regularization of the development of the tradition.
The second objection is this: that we cannot move from characterization of the synoptic tradition to characterization of the pre-synoptic tradition, because the pre-synoptic tradition was in some way 'fundamentally different'.
I would like to argue, however, that this objection does not go through. Firstly, this objection is often made from the perspective of 'oral vs. literary': the synoptic tradition (as we have it in our gospels) is of course written, and therefore it is illegitimate to infer from it the tendencies of the pre-synoptic tradition, which was oral. Even if this were true of oral traditions (see below), this objection would not apply to any of the written sources that Mark and the other evangelists used. So wherever we postulate a written source, it does not seem unreasonable to see some similarity between the tendencies of the synoptic tradition and the tendencies of the pre-synoptic tradition.
What, then, of 'oral' sources (to which Mark especially presumably had some access)? If we are to make any claims about developments of the tradition in cases where that tradition was orally transmitted, we need a theory of oral tradition, which in turn needs to be based on evidence, and I would suggest that the best evidence we have for how oral traditions were treated and developed is in fact the synoptic gospels themselves (rather than theories drawn from totally different geographical and/or temporal contexts). I am not saying, as does, for instance, Dunn, that the variant synoptic traditions themselves directly attest to oral traditioning (though this may be true in some cases). All I am suggesting is that the closest evidence we have to the treatment of Jesus traditions in the pre-synoptic period are the synoptic gospels themselves, and therefore, despite being written documents, the synoptic gospels should be given pride-of-place as evidence in our discussion of pre-synoptic tradition.
In conclusion, then, if the synoptic gospels are our most temporally and geographically proximate evidence for the pre-synoptic tradition, then in our discussion of the pre-synoptic tradition (whether oral or literary) the best place to start is with an examination of the tendencies that can be detected between these documents. From there, we can move on to tentatively identify possible tendencies in the pre-synoptic tradition. This is not an illegitimate construction of non-existent 'tendencies', nor is it a failure to understand 'oral tradition': it is simply an employment of the best evidence we have for the pre-synoptic tradition, namely, the synoptic gospels themselves. Therefore, recent criticisms of this sort of approach (e.g. from Dunn and Bauckham) are arguably misguided.
Dunn and Bauckham argue that the understanding of the pre-synoptic tradition derived from the form critics is defective (and one consequence of this is that it hinders our study of the Historical Jesus). Their main bone of contention is that the form critics have failed to appreciate the importance of distinctively oral modes of tradition transmission, by examining the pre-synoptic tradition through the lenses of a 'literary' paradigm. Dunn argues, instead, that the community as a whole would keep a close guard on the original tradition, whilst allowing limited variety within original pattern; Bauckham, of course, argues that this regulation comes from eyewitnesses.
The strengths and weaknesses of their positive proposals have been much debated, and I do not intend to engage them here. The question that I do want to engage is whether a broadly 'form critical' approach is really so unhelpful in understanding the pre-synoptic tradition.
The basic proposal which I would like to advocate is that the tendencies we see operating between the synoptic gospels provide us with evidence of the kinds of tendencies that would have been operative in the pre-synoptic period. This is what I take to be at the heart of the 'form critical' approach. Consider an example: in the synoptic gospels, it is widely agreed that there is a tendency to make more explicit and/or pronounced the subordination of John the Baptist to Jesus (seen, for instance, in the accounts of Jesus's baptism). From this, it is suggested, we can infer that in the pre-synoptic tradition, there may have been a similar tendency to increase subordination of John the Baptist to Jesus. One practical outcome of this approach might be that where, in the Markan tradition, we see subordination of the Baptist to Jesus (e.g. Mark 1:7), we might suspect (though not necessarily affirm) that this subordination is itself the result of a tendency that was also found in the pre-synoptic tradition. (I probably should emphasize that this is only a possible example of the kind of thing I am talking about; I am not especially interested here in making a strong claim about this particular tradition!)
As I see it, there are two possible objections to this line of reasoning. The first is that it is inappropriate to speak of 'tendencies' of the synoptic tradition at all. This criticism, if made, would probably be justified with reference to E.P. Sanders' Tendencies of the Synoptic Tradition (which of course was the inspiration for the title of this post!). However, the kinds of 'tendencies' of which Sanders is rightly critical are not those I am suggesting we should detect in the synoptic and (hence) pre-synoptic tradition. Sanders criticizes detection of 'mechanical' tendencies such as length of pericope, addition of names, and so on. It is not clear, however, that his criticism would apply to a tendency such as 'subordination of the Baptist to Jesus', which does not require a dubious regularization of the development of the tradition.
The second objection is this: that we cannot move from characterization of the synoptic tradition to characterization of the pre-synoptic tradition, because the pre-synoptic tradition was in some way 'fundamentally different'.
I would like to argue, however, that this objection does not go through. Firstly, this objection is often made from the perspective of 'oral vs. literary': the synoptic tradition (as we have it in our gospels) is of course written, and therefore it is illegitimate to infer from it the tendencies of the pre-synoptic tradition, which was oral. Even if this were true of oral traditions (see below), this objection would not apply to any of the written sources that Mark and the other evangelists used. So wherever we postulate a written source, it does not seem unreasonable to see some similarity between the tendencies of the synoptic tradition and the tendencies of the pre-synoptic tradition.
What, then, of 'oral' sources (to which Mark especially presumably had some access)? If we are to make any claims about developments of the tradition in cases where that tradition was orally transmitted, we need a theory of oral tradition, which in turn needs to be based on evidence, and I would suggest that the best evidence we have for how oral traditions were treated and developed is in fact the synoptic gospels themselves (rather than theories drawn from totally different geographical and/or temporal contexts). I am not saying, as does, for instance, Dunn, that the variant synoptic traditions themselves directly attest to oral traditioning (though this may be true in some cases). All I am suggesting is that the closest evidence we have to the treatment of Jesus traditions in the pre-synoptic period are the synoptic gospels themselves, and therefore, despite being written documents, the synoptic gospels should be given pride-of-place as evidence in our discussion of pre-synoptic tradition.
In conclusion, then, if the synoptic gospels are our most temporally and geographically proximate evidence for the pre-synoptic tradition, then in our discussion of the pre-synoptic tradition (whether oral or literary) the best place to start is with an examination of the tendencies that can be detected between these documents. From there, we can move on to tentatively identify possible tendencies in the pre-synoptic tradition. This is not an illegitimate construction of non-existent 'tendencies', nor is it a failure to understand 'oral tradition': it is simply an employment of the best evidence we have for the pre-synoptic tradition, namely, the synoptic gospels themselves. Therefore, recent criticisms of this sort of approach (e.g. from Dunn and Bauckham) are arguably misguided.
Monday, November 9, 2009
More on Douglas Campbell's DOG
Andy Rowell has organized all (or nearly all) the online reactions to The Deliverance of God to date.
Thanks for doing this Andy!
Friday, November 6, 2009
AAR Montreal
Today I arrived in Montreal for the Annual Conference of the American Academy of Religion. I forgot how fantastic Montreal is! To those who are currently in Montreal, here are a few things you must hit:
- Schwartz’s Montreal Hebrew Deli. This restaurant, just up the road from the Palais de Congrès (at 3895 St Laurent Boulevard), will blow you away. It is a Montreal institution that has been around for 80 years.
- Mont Royal. This is just west of Schwartz’s. There is a nice park at the base of the hill and an invigorating but brief climb to the top of the mountain that affords you a beautiful view of the city. Those who have watched the movie “Jesus of Montreal” will find this place rather familiar. Those of you who haven’t watched the movie should.
- The Old City (Vieux-Montreal). This is just south of the Palais de Congrès. Apart from some beautiful buildings such as the Basilique Notre-Dame, there are numerous great restaurants and bars on the picturesque cobblestone streets.
- Don’t be afraid of poutine. Yes, it consists of three forms of fat (French fries, beef gravy, and melted cheese curds), but life is short.
I wish I had more time here to enjoy the sights, not to mention Tim Hortons (which is on the ground floor of Palais de Congrès), but after some conference-related activities, I have to make my way back to Durham tomorrow afternoon. My only solace is that the weather in Durham is supposed to be in the 70s, while here it is in the 30s.
In two weeks, I hit New Orleans for the annual conference of SBL. So the French connection continues, but the weather will improve.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
J. Z. Smith on Pedagogical Lying
Jonathan Z. Smith has a provocative piece at the Chicago website for the Center for Teaching & Learning, called "The Necessary Lie: Duplicity in the Disciplines". Here are two excerpts:
We lie, it seems to me, in a number of ways. We sometimes cheerfully call the lie words like 'generalization' or 'simplification,' but that's not really what we're doing. We're really lying, and lying in a relatively deep fashion, when we consistently disguise, in our introductory courses, what is problematic about our work.
I think there is very little to justify introductory lying. In the case of the introductory courses, we produce incredibly mysterious objects because the students have not seen the legerdemain by which the object has appeared. The students sense that they are not in on the joke, that there is something that they don't get, so they reduce the experience to "Well, it's his or her opinion."
I realize that Smith's "lying" is a harsh term and he's doing it to be provocative. But maybe that's how we should regard our temptation to over-generalize and over-simplify in our teaching. Sometimes we're torn because sometimes the easiest examples we can use to make a profound point with our students aren't quite right and explaining them correctly loses the point we're trying to get across. What are we to do?
Let me give an example. It would really be pedagogically useful if Q (the hypothetical saying source that Matthew and Luke independently used) actually existed. Then we can start to get our students thinking about historical sources for Jesus that lay outside the canon. Q was never canonized but its contents are in the canonical Matthew and Luke. Thus, Q lies halfway between our canonical sources and non-canonical sources. Q's contents are not strange to our students but its structure and organization are. Indeed, Q promises a different way about early Christian thinking about Jesus, a way that was not relentlessly focused on the cross. But to make this point with intellectual integrity, we have to point out that the extent of Q isn't really known with much clarity (it could have had a passion for all we know) and even that are serious problems with its very existence. What are we to do?
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
The deus ex machina of context
One way Christians all over the theological spectrum attempt to deal with troubling passages in the Bible is by emphasizing the difference between the writer's historical context and our own. For instance, I recently heard a theologian who wished to avoid making exclusive claims on behalf of Christianity explain away the exclusive claims of 1 John by arguing that 1 John is about the conflict within the Johannine community. 1 John does not, therefore, address contemporary inter-religious dialogue.
My intent here is not to say anything about 1 John or inter-religious dialogue, but to address this method of dealing with problem passages.
Every word in the Bible was originally addressed to someone else, to some situation other than our own. This point is probably a truism. But, if this is correct, then one of the tasks of those who accept these texts as normative or relevant for today is to ask how those words from the past can "leap the gap" - to use Richard Hays's phrase - and address very different situations. This leap is necessary not only when the Bible seems foreign and obsolete, but also when it sounds familiar and comforting. This leap is an unavoidable consequence of reading words addressed to someone else as addressed to us. That is, this leap is an unavoidable consequence of having Scripture.
If I'm on the right track, then the otherness of the biblical writer's context cannot, of itself, render a text irrelevant for contemporary questions. The question for those who read the Bible as Scripture is not whether a given biblical author speaks immediately to our situation - they never do. For this reason, I don't see how arguments such as the one mentioned above can avoid special pleading.
I am not saying that historical context is irrelevant for reading the Bible as Scripture. Quite the opposite. I am saying that any attempt to limit the significance of a particular passage to its Sitz im Leben implies that there are some other passages which speak immediately and simply to contemporary situations.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
The Deliverance of God
As many of you know, Duke's very own Douglas Campbell has a new book out--The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Reading of Justification in Paul. Many of us at Duke have been involved in some fashion with the production of this gargantuan volume.
The good news is that so far DOG (as it is known among initiates) is receiving quite the praise in the blogosphere.
Loren Rosson (The Busybody) writes: "Let me start by saying that I'm in awe of The Deliverance of God. There hasn't been a book of its kind since Sanders, pressing us to take a long look behind ourselves and then ahead again with new lenses. Parts of it need to be read at least twice for proper digestion, so don't expect to breeze through it curled up on the couch with a brandy snifter. In addition to the required mental exercise is the physical, which you'll get from lugging the damn thing around: it comes in at 936 pages, 1218 including endnotes. Is it worth all the effort? Unquestionably."
http://lorenrosson.blogspot.com/2009/09/deliverance-of-god.html
Chris Tilling (Chrisendom) has even gone so far as to call it "the most important book to have been published since Sanders' Paul and Palestinian Judaism."
http://www.christilling.de/blog/2009/10/seven-things-to-do-to-cheer-yourself-up.html
http://www.christilling.de/blog/2009/09/deliverance-of-god-doug-campbells-new.html
I’m sure there will be many more reviews to come; I just thought it worthwhile to report the good news so far.
And here's a link to go and buy the book:
http://www.amazon.com/Deliverance-God-Apocalyptic-Rereading-Justification/dp/0802831265
The good news is that so far DOG (as it is known among initiates) is receiving quite the praise in the blogosphere.
Loren Rosson (The Busybody) writes: "Let me start by saying that I'm in awe of The Deliverance of God. There hasn't been a book of its kind since Sanders, pressing us to take a long look behind ourselves and then ahead again with new lenses. Parts of it need to be read at least twice for proper digestion, so don't expect to breeze through it curled up on the couch with a brandy snifter. In addition to the required mental exercise is the physical, which you'll get from lugging the damn thing around: it comes in at 936 pages, 1218 including endnotes. Is it worth all the effort? Unquestionably."
http://lorenrosson.blogspot.com/2009/09/deliverance-of-god.html
Chris Tilling (Chrisendom) has even gone so far as to call it "the most important book to have been published since Sanders' Paul and Palestinian Judaism."
http://www.christilling.de/blog/2009/10/seven-things-to-do-to-cheer-yourself-up.html
http://www.christilling.de/blog/2009/09/deliverance-of-god-doug-campbells-new.html
I’m sure there will be many more reviews to come; I just thought it worthwhile to report the good news so far.
And here's a link to go and buy the book:
http://www.amazon.com/Deliverance-God-Apocalyptic-Rereading-Justification/dp/0802831265
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