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The Carnival Is Up November 30, 2009

Posted by Mike Koke in Blogging.
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The 48th Biblical Studies Carnival is posted at Doug Chaplin’s Clayboy.  Although he describes it as “very much a plain vanilla listing of posts – sprinkled with the occasional wry observation”, there is a wealth of resources on all the relevant subjects and alot of work has been put into it so check it out.

Review of SBL Papers – A Religious Experience November 29, 2009

Posted by Mike Koke in Religious Studies, SBL Meeting.
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One of my most interesting courses I took last semester was on Theory and Method where we explored the famous Sociologist Emile Durkheim’s theory of Religion in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life and other social-scientific approaches to Religious Studies.  Basically, Durkheim argued that society is the source of religious beliefs - the collective effervescence experienced in social gatherings and the overwhelming moral authority that society has over the individual (which is internalized in consciense) is personified by the totemic god, the flag of the clan.   Thus, I was familiar with some of the issues in the session chaired by Bill Arnal on the category of Religious Experience and whether it has any explanatory scope in understanding Christian origins.  The papers challenge a prevailing view in Religious Studies that continues to exercise its influence over biblical scholars that an experience with the ”Holy Other” or numinous or a hierophany is the basis of religion.  Three classic scholars that defended the category of religious experience:

First, my friend Janet who is not a biblical scholar per se but studies modern individuals who claim to be “spiritual but not religious” provided a genealogy for the idea that “experience” is the foundation of Religion.  There were many modern factors behind this view:  the separation of church and state, the Protestant contrast of faith vrs. ritual, the confinement of religion from the public to the private sphere (with religious movements such as pietism stressing internalized religiosity), the move from collectivism to individualism and the individual constituted as a subject, etc.  The next presenter looked more at the biblical data and argued that Paul gives little description of his resurrection experiences (1 Cor 15) or enigmatic trip to the third heaven (2 Cor 12:1-5) but uses these “experiences” to legitimate his apostolic authority and put himself on par with Peter (but I would ask why Paul changed from being a respectable Pharisee to join some beleagured Christ cult, if his “experiences” boil down to some power-play).  James Crossley, who I had a great time getting to meet and talk with at SBL, presented next with a critique of Hurtado.  His major criticism was that Hurtado uses Judaism to shelter the early Christians from “pagan” influence, but then argues that visionary “experiences” of the earliest Christ followers ultimately led them to transcend Jewish monotheism (in Crossley’s words, “Jewish but not that Jewish”).  I like Hurtado’s Lord Jesus Christ but I think Hurtado is vulnerable at this point, and I wonder if Boyarin’s Border Lines (see Part II, The Crucifixion of the Logos:  How Logos Theology became Christian) improves on the argument about how Christian “binitarianism” could be at home in a Jewish social context. 

All around, the papers provided much food for thought.   I appreciate social-scientific approaches and that Religious Studies in a public University is  primarily to study why humans engage in religious activity using sociological/anthropological descriptions and explanations (see an earlier post here).  Yet maybe it is my Christian bias, but I am not ready to jettison the category of religious experience altogether, but I accept that people really do have experiences that are then mediated to them through their own social and cultural context (e.g. we still interpret experiences through language).  So John Wesley starts a religious revival after having his ”heart strangely warmed” while another person interprets it as heartburn.   I realize that Religious Studies is a secular discipline, but one thing I like about the phenomenological approach is the call to bracket one’s pressupositions for or against the “truth claims” of a religious group and simply describe and explain the experiences as related by the participants.  So I am interested in what other bibliobloggers, especially those with a background in Religious Studies, think about whether the category of Religious Experience is a useful one for studying the Bible.

Update:  See a related discussion on Missives From Marx, which looks at  the category of “Religion” as a social construction (see here and here)

Review of SBL Papers: Paul and “Judaism” November 27, 2009

Posted by Mike Koke in Apostle Paul, SBL Meeting.
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One of the first papers I was excited to go see was by Mark Nanos on “Broken Branches: A Pauline Metaphor Gone Awry.”  Nanos is definitely one of my favourite Pauline scholars.  While I thought there was too much emphasis placed on the fact that ἐκκλάω could possibly just mean “broken” rather than “broken off” (i.e. the Israelite branches were merely “wounded” but not cut off [ἐκκόπτω => which Paul uses later in 11:22]), I think Nanos is right that the thrust of Paul’s allegory is to confront the arrogance of some Christ-believing non-Israelites as if they have supplanted or superseded Israel.  Unfortunately, the allegory has been misread in a supersessionist light.  However, I found the second paper (I can’t remember the name of the presenter) in the early Jewish-Christian relations section to represent a return to older Pauline scholarship.  He argued that Paul divided the Israel made up of Christ-believing Jews and Gentiles from Israel and that Paul had left behind Ἰουδαϊσμός (“Judaism”; he defines it similarly to Shaye Cohen in The Beginnings of Jewishness: boundaries, varieties, uncertainties), that Paul no longer identified himself as a Ἰουδαῖος (Jew/Judaean) but as an “Israelite” and that only the “spiritual” aspects of the Law remained in effect.  But Steve Mason has shown that Ἰουδαϊσμός was used rarely before the third century (2 Macc 2:21, 8:1, 14:38; 4 Macc 4:25, Gal 1:13-14; Ignatius Phld. 6, 8; Magn. 10) and originally referred to a Judaizing program coined in opposition to hellenismos (see “Jews, Judaeans, Judaizing, Judaism: Problems of Categorization in Ancient History,” JSJ 38 [2007], 460-468).  Paul did not leave behind “Judaism” for something else; he left behind one way of zealously defending his ancestral traditions for another based on his prophetic call to proclaim Christ to the nations (Gal 1:13-16).  Moreover, the term “Israelite” was the preferred insider designation for most first-century Judaeans, but the ”apostle to the Gentiles” still understands himself as a Ἰουδαῖος by birth and not “sinners from the nations” (Gal 2:15).   If anyone caught this session or any other interesting sessions on Paul, let me know what you thought of them?  I tried to catch the session on the review of Neil Elliot’s The Arrogance of Nations: Reading Romans in the Shadow of Empire (see reviews here) but had a session at the same time, so I was only able to catch the final discussion on the book.

Update:  Andy Rowell has made the audio of the SBL session on Douglas’ Campbell’s book The Deliverance of God available here.  This seems like a must-listen for anyone interested in the Pauline debate on justification.

Review of SBL Papers: Mark’s Christology November 26, 2009

Posted by Mike Koke in Gospel of Mark, SBL Meeting.
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I will not review every session I attended, but over the next few posts I will highlight some papers that stood out to me.  One presentation by Adam Winn, the author of The Purpose of Mark’s Gospel: an Early Christian Response to Roman Imperial Propaganda, argued that Mark infuses his Gospel with a christology of power all the way through and that there is no transition to a christology of suffering after the confession at Caesarea Philippi.  This is one way to resolve the tension between Mark’s presentation of a powerful Christ who teaches authoritatively and has power over nature and the demonic with the emphasis on suffering and death in the Passion narrative.  Winn is correct that there is no critique of a christology of power (the overwhelming impression is of Jesus’ power) and Jesus is powerful in the latter half of Mark, which includes foreknowledge of passion/denials/betrayal, the transfiguration, the eschatological discourse with the triumphant return of the Son of Man and the cross accompanied by cosmic upheaval (darkness, torn temple curtain).  But I was a bit surprised that his view was treated like it was bucking the dominant trend – already in 1977 Howard Clark Kee had challenged the view that Mark critiques a “divine man” christology (θεῖος ἀνήρ) with a “suffering christology” (Community of the New Age: Studies in Mark’s Gospel [Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1977]; see also critiques in Mack; Horsley, etc.) and Robert Gundry argues for this major emphasis on a christology of power in his A Commentary on His Apology for the Cross (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993).  However, I think some of the panel members were right to question if the paradoxes in Mark’s christology can be written off so quickly and, if Mark is possibly a Pauline Gospel, it is possible that power is precisely displayed in weakness on the cross (cf. 1 Cor 1:19-25; 2 Cor 12:9; 13:4).  Mark could be countering Roman imperial power, which is displayed through military conquest and lording it over others (Mark 10:42), with the power of non-violent resistance in taking up the cross and dying to live.

SBL Recap November 25, 2009

Posted by Mike Koke in SBL Meeting.
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It was my first time going to the SBL conference, but it definitely lived up to expectations.  I have to admit that I found meeting people and enjoying myself in New Orleans to be more memorable than listening to the conference papers themselves.  It was alot of fun to meet up with all all the bibliobloggers who attended the dinner and put faces to different blogs, so my thanks to Jim West for organizing it.   I sat at a table with Ken Brown of C.Orthodoxy and Daniel & Tonya of Hebrew and Greek Reader so I enjoyed getting to know them better.  I also had a few good meetings about potential PhD programs and got to interact with different people at the Duke and Sheffield Receptions.

About the sessions, I listened to Mark Nanos on the allegory of the Olive tree in Romans 11 and another speaker who argued the complete opposite on the relation of the Pauline congregations to “Judaism” (I found this second paper problematic but that is for a later post).  This was followed by a session dealing with the category of “Religious experience” and whether this category is a valid explanatory device for understanding Christian origins.  I caught a session on Mark’s christological presentation/paradoxes and afterwards went to the session involving Israel Knohl because I wanted to learn more about all the fuss surrounding the “Gabriel Revelation.”   One of the most fascinating sessions was with Adela Collins who tried to explain the origins of and reconstruct a Passion narrative before the Gospel of Mark and trace its development from Mark to the Gospel of Peter (with a response from Joel Marcus).  I went to the session about Secret Mark which reviewed Peter Jeffery’s contribution to the debate, but since I have not formed a position yet on the matter I was a bit disappointed that both sides were not represented on the panel (the panel was unanimous that it is a forgery, with no defenders of Morton Smith on it such as Scott Brown or Helmut Koester).  Finally, I tried to catch some  sessions on anti-imperialism, from a review of Neil Elliot’s The Arrogance of Nations: Reading Romans in Light of Empire to papers on anti-imperialism in Mark, and ended my SBL fun on Tuesday morning with a session on ideological criticism which involved Raymond Brown’s evolving views on οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι (the Jews/Judaeans) in his commentaries on John and James Crossley’s paper on NT Wrong and the (largely conservative) politics of the bibliobloggers.  All in all, this was a great experience and I will treat some papers in more depth in the next posts.

Leaving on a Jet Plane… November 19, 2009

Posted by Mike Koke in miscellaneous.
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Now that the song is stuck in your head, I just wanted readers to know that all will be quiet on the blog front as tomorrow morning I am flying out to New Orleans for the SBL conference.  So after a long semester it is time to party in New Orleans… and catch some papers and schedule some meetings and do all the other stuff that scholars do.  When I get back, I hope to blog about my experience at SBL (Doug Chaplin is even adding a theme on SBL for the upcoming carnival) and then finish the last installment of my series on Barnabas.

The Golden Calf: Barnabas Part III November 17, 2009

Posted by Mike Koke in Apostolic Fathers.
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I know many a Hebrew Bible scholar shudders when they hear the mistranslation “Jehovah”, but I thought it was a funny way to introduce a main theme in Barnabas.  Barnabas argues that Israel completely forfeited the covenant when Moses shattered the Law tablets after the worship of the golden calf (Barn. 4:7-8; 14:1-4).  Other Christ followers could use the language of a “new covenant” (2 Cor 3:6-18; Heb 8; Justin Martyr Dial 11:2-4) or could use the Golden Calf story for polemical purposes (Acts 7:40-43; Dial. 19:5-6; 20:4), but Barnabas’ view was far more radical.  There is only one single covenant, which the Israelites immediately lost at Sinai and which the Lord delivered to the church as the ”people of the inheritance” (laon klēronomias) (4:8; 14:4).   Barnabas conveniently forgets that Moses inscribed the Law on a second set of stone tablets, but the author may have understod this “second law” to be the covenant intended for Jesus followers (Horbury, 144).

This reading has recently been challenged by Rhodes innovative work The Epistle of Barnabas and the Deuteronomic Tradition.  He writes off Barnabas two statements that Israel lost the covenant at Sinai as rhetorical hyperbole and the Golden Calf is only a paradigmatic event in Israel’s whole history of rebellion and sin that reaches its full measure in the death of Jesus (e.g., Barn. 5:11; 14:5)  (Rhodes, 17-18).  Rhodes views Barnabas as advocating a radicalized Deuteronomistic theology where Israel’s history is one of repeatedly rejecting divine messengers that culminates in the rejection of God’s Son, the destruction of the second temple and the end of the covenant with Israel (with a side warning to his own congregation to not feel overconfident should they prove equally faithless) (Rhodes, 88-112).  However, in my reading, Barnabas seems to go beyond a Deuteronomistic theology and stresses that ”those people” (ekeinoi) never understood the covenant. Instead of a historical continuity, accepting the literal observance of Torah for a limited duration before Christ, Barnabas uses allegory to stress the timeless unity of the Testaments (Horbury, 143).  The dietary restrictions really signified the need to avoid certain types of people (Barn. 10:3-8).  The Sabbath cannot be hallowed in the present evil age (15:6-7) but there will be an eschatological Sabbath (15:4-5).   The  scapegoat and heifer on the Day of Atonement are read typologically as types of Christ (7:6-8:7).  The temple is truly the community of Christ (16:6-10).  Barnabas is ruthless on circumcision:  while using traditional imagery of circumcision of the ears and heart (9:1-3), he scorns the idea that circumcision is a seal of the covenant when it is the custom of Syrians, Arabs and Egyptians (9:1-6).  As explained in the last post, his view of Abraham’s circumcision was an elaborate parable pointing to Jesus, but no one got the hint because those who take circumcision literally have been deceived  by an evil angel (9:4)!   What could have led Barnabas to take such a radically negative stance towards Israel’s history and Law?  This will be the subject of the final post on Barnabas and the parting of the ways…

  • Horbury, William.  Jews and Christians in Contact and Controversy.  Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998.
  • Rhodes, J.N.  The Epistle of Barnabas and the Deuteronomic Tradition.  WUNT 2.188; Tubingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 2004.

Barnabas Part II: Questions About Identity November 16, 2009

Posted by Mike Koke in Apostolic Fathers, Parting of the Ways.
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Trying to determine the identity of the community to whom Barnabas is written is pretty tricky.  What is so curious about the epistle is that on the one hand it is thorougly indebted to Jewish methods of interpretation while on the other hand it exhibits one of the most radical stances of all early Christian literature towards Jewish tradition and praxis.  For Jefford, Barnabas is a Jewish Christian work because it is too steeped in Jewish tradition and exegesis to be someone who is outside of the tradition and that his radicalism is the stance of a “true believer” who has completely shifted ideological allegiances (Jefford, 34, 41).  Here are some examples: 

  1. The Presence of midrashic techniques (Barn. 6:8-19):  for instance, see the free word play and the identification of the Promise Land flowing with milk and honey with Jesus’ body in Barn. 6:8-19.  See further Tim Hegedus, ”Midrash and the Letter of Barnabas.” 
  2. Apocalyptic eschatology infuses the letter and Barnabas believes that they are living near the end of the evil age (2:1-2; 4:1-5, 9-14; cf. 12:9 for the eschatological defeat of “Amalek”).
  3. Familiarity with extra-biblical traditions (7-8):  He quotes the same passage, Isaiah 58:3-10, that is read on the Day of Atonement (Meg. 31a), only Barnabas uses it to completely dismiss the importance of literal fasting.  He is familiar with tradition about the Day of Atonement not found in Lev 16 but later codified in the Mishnah, such as the two goats must be alike (Barn. 7:6; m. Yoma 6:1) and the binding of the scarlet wool on the head of the scapegoat (Barn. 7:8; m. Yoma 4:2).
  4. Practice of gematria (words equivalent to numbers) (9:8):  Abraham’s circumcision of 18 and 300 men was an elaborate parable foreshadowing Christ – the number 10 equals the letter “ι” and 8 an “η” for  Ἰησοῦς (Jesus) and 300 equals “τ” for the Cross. 
  5. Two Ways material (Barn. 18-20): there is a way of light and a way of darkness (see Deut 30:15-20 for background), a motif that is found in a variety of Jewish and Christian literature (e.g., 1QS 3:13-4:26; Didache 1-6, etc.).

However, two pericopes make a Gentile authorship more likely.  Speaking in the first person plural, 3:6 warns of being shipwrecked by becoming proselytes to the law and 16:7 speaks of a former life full of idolatry.  Moreover, while the word  Ἰουδαῖος (“Judaean” or “Jew”) is not found in Barnabas and references about Israel are mostly to the ancient past (5:2; 6:7; 8:1; 9:2; 12:2, 5) or to Jesus’ ministry (5:8; 8:3), the language of “us” (autoi) versus “them” (ekeinoi) along with other contrasting pronouns are sprinkled throughout the epistle (2:9-10; 3:1-3, 6; 4:6-8, 14; 5:2; 7:1-2, 5; 8:7; 9:1-4; 10:12; 13:1-6; 14:1, 4-5) (Hvalvik, 137-40,helpfully lays out the contrasting pronouns in a chart).  As we shall see next, Barnabas makes it clear that his community does not share the covenant with the Jews and that the Jews have completely misunderstood the Law since Moses shattered the tablets.  So here we have is a Gentile Jesus community with close interactions with the local Jewish community, but with Barnabas adamantly insisting on the differences.

Passed My Thesis Defense November 14, 2009

Posted by Mike Koke in miscellaneous.
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I just passed my thesis defense yesterday and it feels great to be done.  I just have to format it and email it off and then I have completed the MA degree at the University of Alberta (I’m also taking a German class but it is not technically a part of the degree).  I really liked my time at the University and working with all the faculty.  I especially thank the two advisors who worked the closest with my project and supported me throughout my degree, Dr. Willi Braun and Dr. Francis Landy, who are both excellent scholars and great friends.  So after having the burden of having to defend my work to four brilliant scholars lifted, I decided I wanted to give this blog a new look and update all my pages.  Ok, back to the series on Barnabas, where the next posts will cover the identity of Barnabas community, Barnabas radical take on Scripture and the Law and Christian-Jewish relations in light of Barnabas.

Barnabas Part I: Who, When and Where November 11, 2009

Posted by Mike Koke in Apostolic Fathers.
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One thing that drives me crazy about apologetics is the double standard between canonical and non-canonical texts:  canonical texts are dated as early as possible and traditions about authorship assumed authentic, while non-canonical texts are treated much more critically.  In trying to determine authorship, date or provenance of any work, what matters is evidence and argument.  So what can we say about Barnabas?

The external evidence as early as Clement of Alexandria (Strom.  2.6.31; 2.7.35; 2.20.116; 5.10.63) assigns the epistle to Barnabas, which is followed by Vaticanus 859 (part of G), Origen (c. Cels. 1.63), Jerome (Vir. ill. 6), Didymus the Blind (Zech. 259.21-24) and Eusebius (Hist. Eccl. 3.25.4; 6.13.6; 6.14.1 – but now among disputed writings).   However, the academic consensus is that the author is not the Barnabas we meet in Galatians 2 and Acts 4-15.  The post-70 CE date and extreme radicalism on the Law which far exceeds even Paul (odd for the conservative Levite Barnabas) rules out Barnabas, but it is not pseudonymous because the epistle does not exploit “apostolic authorship” and the ascription is likely secondary (Paget, 3-5).

The epistle can be dated roughly between the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE (Barn. 16:1-3) and the Bar Kochba revolt in 132-135 CE which it fails to exploit.  But debate centers around two texts:  4:4-5 has a succession of 10 kings followed by a “little excrescent horn” (mikron keras paraphuadion) who subdues 3 kings (Galba, Otho, Vitellius->Vespasian; Vespasian, Titus, Domitian ->Nerva; small horn -> future antichrist) and 16:3-4 speaks of the rebuilding of the temple by “servants of the enemy.”  On the one hand, 4:4-5 may be irrelevant because it is taken from scriptural (Dan 7:24; 7:7-8) & other source material and 16:3-4 may refer to Hadrian’s attempt to build a pagan Temple  on the site of the old Jerusalem one (Cassius Dio, Hist. 69.12 and Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 4.6.4 disagree whether his plans for the temple took place before or after the Bar Kochba Revolt) (e.g., Hvalvik, 17-26).  This is supported by the use of ginetai (it is happening) and nun (now), for the only temple actually built was by Hadrian for Jupiter in his new city Aelia Capitolina (Hvalvik, 20-23).    But  “rebuild”  (anoikodomēsousin) implies the old Jerusalem Temple and there is little evidence for this during Hadrian’s reign.  Peter Richardson and Martin Shukster attempt to date the epistle to the time of emperor Nerva (96-98 CE) in “Barnabas, Nerva and the Yavnean Rabbis” and a number of scholars follow them (Paget, 27-29; Murray, 44-47; Wilson, 133-136).  This is supported by the identification of Nerva’s short-lived reign with the “little excrescent horn” and Nerva may have excited dreams of a rebuilt temple when he suppressed the Jewish tax (fiscus Iudaicus).   Unfortunately the evidence is circumstantial and it may be impossible to be too specific about a date.

The same could be applied to questions of provenance.  Some propose Alexandria based on the prominence of the allegorical approach in Barnabas, the reference to the circumcision of the priests of the idols and contempt for other Egyptians (shared by Greeks in Alexandria) (Barn. 9:6) and early attestation by Clement of Alexandria (Kraft, 12; Paget, 36-42; Horbury, 142, 150; Jefford, 31-34).  Others argue for Syro-Palestine based on familiarity with Jewish and especially rabbinic traditions (see Barn. 7-8), lack of Logos theology and the emphasis on the circumcision of the Syrians and Arabs in contrast  to Egyptians ( “Egyptians” may be an interpolation) (Barn 9:6) (Shukster and Richardson, “Temple and Bet Ha-midrash,” 17-20; Murray, 48).  Finally, Wengst proposed Asia Minor in part on the similarities between Barnabas and Ignatius’ opponents in Philedelphia who would not believe his Gospel unless it could be verified in the scriptural “archives (Phil. 8.2) (Wengst, 114-118).  Note Hvalvik’s general skepticism on the matter and that the safest conclusion is that “the epistle originated in the Greek-speaking Eastern part of the Mediterranean” (Hvalvik, 35-42, 41).  The next post will touch on the tricky questions of identity in Barnabas and discuss whether the epistle can be put in a Jewish milieu.