Introducing the Epistle of Barnabas

A major part of my MA thesis focuses on the Epistle of Barnabas, so I want to begin a new series summarizing what scholars have been saying about this fascinating and controversial early Christian work.  I will cover issues such as authorship, date, provenance, audience and theological worldview.  I also want to look at what light the Epistle of Barnabas sheds on Christian/Jewish relations in the end of the first/early second century and on the so-called “Parting of the Ways” model (see my posts here and here).  Here is a bibliography of sources for those interested in Barnabas (let me know if there are any more that should be added to the list):

• Ehrman, Bart D., ed. Apostolic Fathers: Volume II.  LOEB Classical Library.  Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2003.
• Hegedus, Tim.  ”Midrash and the Letter of Barnabas.”  Biblical Theology Bulletin 37 (2007): 20-26
• Horbury, William.  Jews and Christians in Contact and Controversy.  Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998.
• Hvalvik, Reidar.  The Struggle for Scripture and Covenant: The Purpose of the Epistle of Barnabas and Jewish-Christian Competition in the Second Century.  WUNT 2.82.  Tübingen: Mohr/Siebek, 1996.
• Jefford, Clayton N.  The Apostolic Fathers and the New Testament.  Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson, 2006.
• Kraft, Robert A.  The Epistle of Barnabas, its Quotations and their Sources.  Dissertation. Cambridge: Harvard, 1961.Lowy, S.  “The Confutation of Judaism in the Epistle of Barnabas.” Journal of Jewish Studies 11 (1960): 1-33.
• Murray, Michelle. Playing a Jewish Game: Gentile Christian Judaizing in the First and Second Centuries CE. Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2004 (see “Christian Judaizing in Syria: Barnabas, the Didache, and Pseudo-Clementine Literature).
• Paget, James Carleton.  The Epistle of Barnabas: Outlook and Background.  WUNT 2.82.  Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 1994.
• Paget, James Carleton.  “The Epistle of Barnabas.”  Expository Times 117 (2006): 441-446.
• Rhodes, J.N.  The Epistle of Barnabas and the Deuteronomic Tradition.  WUNT 2.188; Tubingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 2004.
• Wilson, Stephen G. Related Strangers: Jews and Christians 70-170 CE. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995 (see “Supersession: Hebrews and Barnabas”).
• Windisch, H.  Die Apostolischen Väter III: Der Barnabasbrief Handbuch zum Neuen Testamentum.  Ergänzungsband.  Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 1920.

Does Q Represent an Alternative Jesus Movement?

I know many people do not accept the existence of the hypothetical sayings source Q (see discussion here):  some think it more plausible that Luke knew Matthew, others find the view that the common non-Markan material in Matthew/Luke derives from a single Greek document to be too simplistic, and still others reject outright the idea of an early “Christian” text centered around Jesus’ sayings/some biographical anecdotes but without a Passion narrative.  But I want to propose a thought-experiment:  if we allow even a possibility of the existence of a sayings collection like Q (or multiple sayings collections used by the evangelists), does it dramatically alter our picture of Christian origins?

Some scholars would answer yes.  The classic and influential work by Helmut Koester and James Robinson, Trajectories through Early Christianity is a case in point.  In the introduction, Robinson argues that the basic categories used by scholars (e.g., “Judaism”, “Christianity”, “Gnosticism”, etc.), which have been used to suggest these entities are monolithic and have fixed essences, need to be dismantled in favour of speaking about different trajectories or streams within a larger movement (see “Introduction: The Dismantling and Reassembling of the Categories of New Testament Scholarship”, 1-19).   In a later chapter on “LOGOI SOPHON: On the Gattung of Q”, Robinson puts Q within ”the trajectory of this genre of ’sayings of the sages’ [which] is traced from Jewish wisdom literature through Gnosticism, where the esoteric nature of such collections can lead to the supplementary designation of them as ’secret sayings’” (71).  In Q, Jesus is Wisdom’s Envoy (Luke 7:35/Matt 11:19; Luke 11:49/Matt 23:34 - in both cases Matthew seems to go further by identifying Jesus as Wisdom) who advocates a social program.   Sayings collections like Q or earlier traditions in Thomas were discontinued by the proto-orthodox church in favour of the narrative canonical Gospels (Q survived as embedded in Matthew and Luke along with Mark’s narrative structure) while various Gnostic groups developed the sayings tradition into esoteric dialogues between the Risen Christ and the disciples (102-103).

Others scholars answer no.  Edward Meadors’ article, “The ‘Messianic’ Implications of the Q Material” defends an implicit christology in Q.  While the term Χριστός or Messiah is absent in Q, he examines related titles such as “son of God”, “son of man” or“coming one” (267-72).  The conflation of Isa 61:1-3 with other Isianic oracles in Luke 7:22-23/Matt 11:4-6, in light of parallels with the Qumran fragment 4Q521, views Jesus as the spirit anointed one performing eschatological miracles (258-261).  Jesus speaks of the messianic banquet in the parable of the great supper (Luke 14:15-24/Matt 22:1-10) or of many in the east/west reclining at the table in the kingdom (Luke 13:28-29/Matt 8:11-12) (367).   The “Johannine thunderbolt” (Matt 11:25–30/Luke 10:21–22) uses remarkably similar language to John about Jesus as the Son who alone reveals the Father.   Jesus’ messianic authority is displayed in 14 uses of the λέγω ὑμῖν (“I say to you”) formula in Q (in 22 more examples only Matt or Luke use the formula in a Q saying) (264-265).  Finally, Q’s omission of a passion narrative or focus on the cross may be due to the limitations of genre (primarily a sayings collection) and not all of the beliefs of a “Q community” are reflected in a single document.  Hurtado contends that scholars who argue that Q represents a Passion-free Jesus group due to the absence of a Passion narrative is an argument from silence  (Lord Jesus Christ, 240-244).  Since salvific construals of cross-resurrection were early and widely circulated (1 Cor 15:3-7;  1 Thess 1:9-10), Hurtado finds it unlikely that a “Q community” was isolated from such developments and notes the lack of polemic in Q against such views (226-33).  

What do you think?  Does the acceptance of the hypothetical Q source mean one must concede much more diversity in early Christian origins and the existence of an early Jesus group that did not hold to the centrality of the death and resurrection of Jesus?  Where do you place yourself on the spectrum between seeing early Christianity as fairly uniform (e.g., Acts of the Apostles) versus seeing a wide diversity of Jesus movements before the accession of proto-orthodox Christianity?

• Hurtado, Larry.  Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity.  Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003.
• Koester, Helmut and Robinson, James.  Trajectories Through Early Christianity.  Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971.
• Meadors, Edward P.  “The ‘Messianic’ Implications of the Q Material.”  Journal of Biblical Literature 118 (1999): 253-277.

Scholars Galore

John Anderson and Michael Whitenton point out a really excellent resource of online lectures from Baylor Truett Seminary.  I just listened to one really informative lecture by Loveday Alexander on social memory and oral tradition and a comparison of how anecdotes about famous teachers were transmitted in Hellenistic education (παιδεία) with the Gospel tradition.  There are several well-known scholars including Dale Allison, Ben Witherington III, Francis Watson, John Barclay, Stephen Westerholm, Marcus Brockmuehl, Bruce Longenecker, Walter Brueggemann, Richard Hays, Gustavo Guiterrez, NT Wright, Stan Grenz, Greg Boyd and Jürgen Moltmann.  Definitely check it out.

An Evolutionary Creation

Michael Halcomb and James McGrath both note a new  blog, Evolutionary Creation, which seems like a very timely subject to address.  After all, Steve Wiggins’  podcast notes that young earth creationism is relatively modern and the always entertaining Dr. Jim has been taking on creationism on his blog for some time.   I have not really entered the debate because I blog more on the New Testament and Christian origins, but here are a few of my thoughts on this.

First, I appreciate the sincerity of some of my young earth creationist Christian friends who feel they are only defending the Bible.  If that describes where you are at, I would encourage you to listen to a lecture by Dr. Denis Lameroux entitled Beyond the Evolution and Creation Debate and take a look at his handout.  There are two distinct creation accounts in the early chapters of Genesis.  In the Priestly account of creation (Gen 1:1-2:3),  Elohim is completely sovereign over the primordial waters of chaos (Gen 1:2) and just speaks an order cosmos out of chaos.  The order is reflected in the parallelism between Days 1-3 and Days 4-6 (see “Creation Account Panels”) and culminating in the Sabbath.  Genesis 2:4-25 is the Yahwist creation narrative and pictures Yahweh as intimately involved in creation in a Garden, fashioning man (‘adam) out of the ground (‘adamah) and breathing life into his nostrils and then forming the woman from his side (an image of equality).  The presentation of God as both transcendent and immanent in creation in these two chapters is for Christians theologically true (calling them “creation myths” does NOT imply they are not true but is just a question of genre).  But taken as literal history or science, not only is there many inconsistent details (were animals created before or after humans [1:20-26; 2:18-19]?; were men and women created simultaneously or separately [1:27; 2:21-23]?, etc.) but it continues to perpetuate the false dichotomy between Religion and Science that, ironically, both Richard Dawkins and young earth creationists share.

It is Carnival Time

The latest biblical studies carnival has been posted by Kevin Scull.  Kevin gives a very straight-forward and excellent summary of some of the academic posts of October, so definitely take a look and catch up on anything you might have missed last month.  I am happy that my post on postcolonial biblical criticism made the cut.

Borg and Crossan Coming to Town

For those in the Edmonton area, Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan are going to be speaking at the University of Alberta on Friday, October 30 at 12:00 pm in the Humanities Centre L-3 (ground floor).  They are both internationally recognized experts on the historical Jesus and their lecture is entitled, “Perspectives on Jesus.”  I am pretty excited to meet them over coffee; it will be my last happy moment before I have to take the dreaded GRE   If you are unfamiliar with their work, see the video below.  Let me know what you think of their scholarship; what questions would you ask them if you were at their lecture?

 

Choosing the Metaphors We Live By

This weekend I volunteered on our youth retreat.  But I felt a bit concerned with some of the messages presented by the organization that ran the retreat.  The theme centered on counting the cost of discipleship (taking up the cross, losing your life to save it, ”in the world but not of it”, persecution, etc).  But an over-emphasis on the world as a hostile place combined with spiritual warfare imagery can lead to a warfare or an ”us” versus “them” mentality.  This rhetoric, when simply appropriated from the NT without understanding its historical context or role in early Christian identity formation, can lead modern Christians to regard those outside the group as the “Other” or even an “enemy” and develop a false persecution complex.   At its most extreme is the movie Jesus Camp, which is a provocative look at how this imagery is manipulated to make children into “Christian soldiers.”   Now, dualism and the spiritual warfare motif is undoubtedly present in the NT (e.g., Eph 6:10-18) and in Christian tradition (e.g., songs like “Onward Christian Soldiers”), but it is only one image of the Christian life.  An over-emphasis on this particular set of metaphors is a distortion, for there are other equally prominent images.  Emphasis can be placed on the image of family (brothers/sisters in Christ) or on the call to servanthood that rings throughout Jesus’ teaching and is central to the Christ hymn in Phil 2:6-11.  So what set of metaphors do you choose to live your life?

Bibliobloggers and Postcolonial Criticism?

I enjoyed the discussion that developed when I asked how many bibliobloggers accepted the existence of Q or the New Perspective on Paul, so this time I want to ask how many bibliobloggers consider themselves to be significantly influenced by postcolonial readings of the biblical text?  For those less familiar with postcolonial criticism, I have found R. S. Sugirtharajah, Postcolonial Criticism and Biblical Interpretation (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2002) to be a very helpful guide.  Rob Reid also has a helpful post on applying an imperial critical methodology to the Bible.  Sugirtharajah defines the role of the postcolonial critic: 

“First, to analyze the diverse strategies by which the colonizers constructed images of the colonized; and second, to study how the colonized themselves made use of and went beyond many of those strategies in order to articulate their identity, self-worth, and empowerment” (11).   

Postcolonial criticism is not monolithic, but generally involves  some form of reactive resistance against the systematic misrepresentations of colonized peoples put forward by the colonizer (12-13).  Its origins lie in the creative resistance literature of colonized peoples under imperial regimes and Sugirtharajah also has an overview of three major forerunners of postcolonial theory:  Edward Said (critiquing how Western Orientalist scholars constructed images of the East), Guyatri Spivak (on the difficulty of recovering the authentic Subaltern voice in texts) and Homi Bhabha (mimicry and hybridity as strategies of the colonized to oppose Colonial binaries of “us” and ”the Other”) (14-23).  He notes some kinship to postmodern criticism (e.g., deconstructing metanarratives), but he rejects the free-play and nihilism characteristic of some deconstructionist projects (117).  He also notes the kinship to other ideological perspectives (e.g., Feminist, Marxist, Liberation, etc.), but makes a clear distinction between Liberation Theology and Postcolonial theory:  the former has tended to view the Bible as a source for liberation (e.g., the Exodus event) while the latter has a much more ambivalent attitude towards the text (e.g., the Exodus leads to the dispossession of the Canaanites).  Postcolonial critics consider the Bible to be both part of the problem and part of the solution; the biblical message of liberation is far more complex and indeterminate (117).   So what do you think of postcolonial criticism, given that the Bible is the product of people living under different imperial regimes (Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek or Roman)?  Has Christendom, often alligned with imperialism and colonial expansion, missed the critique of Empire found in the Bible in the Exodus, the call to justice in the prophets, the message of the kingdom of God or the confession that Jesus (not Caesar) is Lord and Savior?

Some other must-read works on this issue:

• Bhabha, Homi.  The Location of Culture.  London ; New York : Routledge, 2004. 
• Boer, Roland.  Last Stop Before Antarctica: The Bible and Postcolonialism in Australia.  Second Edition; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008.
• Fanon, Frantz.  The Wretched of the Earth.  New York : Grove Press, 1968.  See Rod’s post here. 
• Horsley, Richard, ed.  In the Shadow of Empire: Reclaiming the Bible as a History of Faithful Resistance.  Louisville : Westminster John Knox Press, 2008.  (This book gathers together and summarizes some of the major Hebrew Bible/New Testament Scholars who have used Postcolonial criticism including Norman K. Gottwald, Walter Brueggeman, John Dominic Crossan, Richard Horsley, Neil Elliot, etc.).
• Moore, Stephen D. and Segovia, Fernando F.  Postcolonial Biblical Criticism: Interdisciplinary Sections.  London; New York: T&T Clark, 2005.
• Said, Edward.  Orientalism.  New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. 
• Spivak, Guyatri Chakravorty.  “Can the Subaltern Speak?”  Pages 66-111 in Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory.  Edited by P. Williams and L. Chrisman; New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993.  See Rod’s post here.

I’ve been tagged

Daniel McClellan tagged me in the new meme to name something about yourself that people might not guess.  I thought I exhausted all my embarrassing personal anecdotes in the last honest scrap meme but here you go.  I love broadway musicals and seen Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera, Chicago, Joseph & the Technicolor Dreamcoat, etc., live.  Two of my top Bible movies, Jesus Christ Superstar and The Prince of Egypt, involve singing and I think Glee is one of the best new tv-shows.  I even was in a highschool musical when I took Drama, though mostly against my will because of my lack of singing ability.  The drama teacher really wanted to do the musical Little Women, so I played the part of Professor Baer (but I didn’t even try to fake a German accent).  I just hope I am better at Biblical Studies than at singing! 

Podcasts on Paul

Deirdre Good has linked to short, provocative interview with Marcus Borg about Paul as a radical and with Pamela Eisenbaum about Paul as a Jew, NOT the founder of ”Christianity” (see here and here for a few of her articles on Paul online).  Since both emphasize getting back to the authentic letters of Paul, I just found it interesting that the monthly Review of Biblical Literature just came out with one review of the late Brevard Child’s, The Church’s Guide for Reading Paul: The Canonical Shaping of the Pauline Corpus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008) to compare and contrast.  Enjoy.