The Golden Rule

Loren tagged me with his updated meme to list ”five biblical studies books or essays you think have made extremely important and necessary contributions to the field, yet heavily disagree with in spite of this.”  So here is my list, and then I am taking a break from 5-things lists:

John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Peasant.  There is much I like about Crossan’s emphasis on Jesus (and Paul) against the Empire and I appreciate his methodological transparency, relying on cross-cultural anthropology and using sayings/deeds in his earliest stratum (30-70 CE) and multiply attested to produce his portrait.  But I think his historical Jesus, with his egalitarian brokerless kingdom and open commensality, is more at home in the modern academia than first-century Palestine.  And he is not fully consistent with his method – the Good Samaritan makes the cut of authentic sayings even if only found in a single late source (Luke 10:30-35) while the Lord’s prayer with the petition “your kingdom come” (Matt 6:9-13; Luke 11:2-4; Did. 8:3-11) gets the boot.  Why can’t Jesus be both a counter-cultural sage and a apocalyptic prophet? 

Marcus Borg, Reading the Bible Again for the First Time.  I find Borg is one of the most compelling representatives of a liberal Christianity and he is often right to oppose biblical literalism and fundamentalism (though I would take a more conservative stance on inspiration).  But I’m just not sure any New Testament author would draw his distinction between the pre-Easter and post-Easter Jesus.  And I think he is not fair to the priestly worldview when he contrasts purity with compassion.  Even in Jesus debates with the priestly establishment or Pharisees I cannot see evidence of the rejection of the purity system itself, Paul regarded the cultic worship as one of God’s gifts to Israel (Rom 9:4) and some NT authors simply substitute a new priestly story with Jesus as sacrifice, church as the temple and (in Hebrews) Jesus as high priest.  I agree with Fredrickson: “compassion is to purity as fish is to bicycle.”

N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God.  This may shock considering it made many people’s top 5 lists.  I consider Wright an important scholar of the Third Quest (a term he coined) and I broadly agree with his outlining the alternatives as “thorough-going skepticism” (Wrede) or “thorough-going eschatology” (Schweitzer), critical-realism approach, or defense of Jesus’ messianic self-understanding and atoning death (see also McKnight’s Jesus and His Death).  But I think Wright overplays the “end of exile” theme and I am just not convinced that Jesus’ eschatological language can be boiled down to a metaphorical description of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 CE (see my post for details).  If Jesus expected the literal restoration of Israel in the imminent future, can Jesus really be described as opposing “nationalism” (could Jesus’ movement have been pacifistic because God would soon intervene to set up the kingdom)?

Daniel Boyarin, A Radical Jew.  Like Border Lines, Boyarin here is brilliant, thoroughly conversant with Pauline scholarship and postmodern theory, and concerned with contemporary application.  I am just not convinced by his thesis.  Was Paul really influenced by middle platonism and akin to Philo and other more extreme Alexandrian allegorizers and desiring to create a universal Hellenistic man?  Did he intend to dissolve all ethnic differences in Christ?  It makes more sense to me to read Paul as believing the new age had begun and that now was the time to gather the nations to worship Israel’s God and that Paul was concerned with how Gentiles could be adopted into the family of Abraham (retaining their ethnic distinctions, just as male/female distinction remains intact). I posted on this question here.

Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.  I like alot of Bauckham’s commentaries and his studies on monotheism and christology are thought-provoking.  Bauckham also scores some points against form criticism in this book and I would agree with him that the Synoptics offer trustworthy “testimony” about Jesus.  I just think his case needs to be supported by stronger evidence and do not find the presence of named characters in the Gospels, the supposed testimonial inclusio (though Peter is not present at the cross or at the empty tomb in the ending of Mark) or the plural-to-singular narative device to be convincing arguments for direct eyewitness testimony and I have my doubts about the reliability of Papias’ testimony (could the Peter-Mark connection be based off 1 Peter 5:13?). 

So if you let me know that this meme would be something you are interested in, just let me know and I will “tag” you.