New Testament Environment

New Testament Environment

Meeks: 1/13/97

Josephus(a Jewish historian): Jesus was born when Judeans revolted against the property assessment for taxes (the Romans reorganized Judea into the Syria district) in 6 C.E.  But, in Lk, Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great which ended in 4 B.C.E.  A ten-year disparity. 

Meeks: the background stories are depended upon by the stories in the New Testament. For instance, 'men claiming to be prophets'.

Josephus: a man claiming to be a prophet went from Egypt to the Garden of Olives, going into Jerusalem claiming that the walls would fall down.  Was it Jesus?

In 66 C.E., a son of Judas raided the palace of Felix--a real revolt.

Num. 24: a star would rise out of Israel and a king of David born.  A star-prophet was said to be born, as recorded later.

So, calls that the king (of the Jews) was at hand, that the river would be parted and the walls knocked down, that a star would be associated with a prophet, are background stories. 

The followers of Jesus, unlike those of the other crucified prophets, did not stay hidden but claimed that Jesus was alive.  A particular 'dunking' or baptised--not of purifying as before.  The followers became a Greeco-Roman cult meeting in private homes--an orientiary bath and a sharing of a meal to remember Jesus.  A most unusal story.  How did the story get from that of Josephus to that of the Gospels which claim that Jesus was a deity and will return at the end of time? 

Oral stories, histories (pre-Christian), letters (e.g. Paul), narratives (the Gospels), letters of the Apostolic Fathers.  Also some letters, the New Testament Apocrypha, which were not in the canon.  Deliberately excluded and hid.  Christians who were different from the mainstream vis a vis the authorities.  Also, Apologies, or defenses, made by Christians, such as to the emperer. 

Sources of the history of Christianity are the focus for us.  A historical and literary approach.

Why was Jesus executed?  Why did not his movement not fade away?  How did it become a cult in the Greco-Roman cities, primarily of non-Jews when it began as a Judean movement.

1/15/97

Historical Context:

The transformation of the followers of Jesus into a cultic initiatory religion in the cities of the Roman Empire, primarily made up of non-Jews, happened within the first century. 

Impact of the Hellenistic world:

The crisis of Hellenization(the making of things Greek). Hellenization refers to the time after the conquest of Alexander the Great in the fouth century BCE going as far as India and bringing Greek language and culture.  In the second century BCE, a crisis in Palestine.  Antiochus IV of the Epiphanes in Syria (175-164 BCE) thought he was Zeus reincarnated.  He assailed Judaism at Jerusalem.  He sacrificed a pig at the Temple.  Traditionalists resisted not only this but the imposition of general Greek culture on Jerusalem.  Of the traditionalists, the Maccabees revolted.  See the Apocripha of the Bible.  During this time, others responded to the threat nor was it a unanimous reaction among the Jews.  The Book of Daniel, actually written in the fifth century BCE, claims that God would take care of an imposer (later viewed to be Antiocus).  The Maccabees killed Antiocus in the 160's BCE, thus breaking the grip of the Greeks on Jerusalem.  This event provided models on which Jews following could view adversity.

Meanwhile, the Roman Empire is changing from a republic to a dictatorship.  Roman military conquests.  They had been helpful to the Maeccabees.  Pompey arrived in Judaea in 63 BCE.  Two brothers of the Maccabee clan  who were both high priests and kings fought to be the superior.  They asked Pompey to mediate.  Pompey is astonished in finding no statue of a god.  In general, the Romans would establish rapport with the native elites.  Herod the Great (40-4 BCE) married a Jew and protected Judaism there.  He supervised the building of the second Temple.  When Herod died, his son who got Palestine was weak and was replaced by Rome in 6 CE. (when Jesus was born, according to Lk).  A Roman Knight is sent to govern the Roman provence of Syria: Semeria, Gallee, and Judaea in 6 C.E.  Josephus writes on the troubles (uprisings) when various prophets would claim to be king of the Jews.  Revolt in 66-72 CE.  Jerusalem is burned and the second temple destroyed in 70.  Nero and Titus were the Roman Emperers then. 

With the temple destroyed, the instituions which gave Judaism a focal point.  No longer a priesthood conducting sacrifice, a Temple.  Some of the scribes(those who could read books) allied themselves around the Pharacees sect who have undertaken to guarentee the purity of Judaism by taking the purity of the priests in the temple into their own homes.  Interpretation of Scripture and the law was salient in schools.  These experts were 'Rabbi's ('the great one').  Not clear how much they controlled Jerusalem, but this group controlled Judaism.  A life centered in a book, in study.

Bar-Kocba ('the son of the star': a star shall arise out of Judeaa and lead.) revolted in 132-135 CE.  The Roman emperor was Hadnan who put down this revolt against the Romans.

Another response besides the prophets, the Macebees(military),  and the Rabbinate (study) was the Book of Daniel.  Known as an Apocalypse (an uncovering revelation), is like the Book of Revelation.  An apocalypse is a revelation of secrets only in heaven.  So, someone must ascent to heaven or have dreams that God sends to the figures often times trhough anangle.  Such visions involve 'intertextuality' such that it involves reinterpretations of past revelations.  For insance, Daniel reads Jeremiah that 70 years would past before the millenium as meaning 70 time x years.    Apocalyptic eschatology ('the end): of things in the end.  God would intervene in the present world and transform it into one of peace and justice from that of evil. 

In 1947, the Community of the New Covenant at Quaron , a Jewish sect which was older than the Christian sect which also called itself the Community of the New Covenant, was discovered. A tight, pure community waiting for the ent for the end batt.e.  They were the Essenes for whom the Apocalyptic Eschatology was a salient belief.  The Dead Sea Scrolls, containing documents of scripture and others.  One not in scripture is on the final battle at the end of time between those of light and darkness.  There was also a scroll depicting the sons of light and of darkness.  Volunteers for becoming a son of light were of the New Covenant community.  Initiation, using Deuterotomy, was salient.  Josephus, Pliny and Philo had written on such a community having a fortress.  Arrows from the Roman Tenth Legion, active in the 68 revolt, have been found.   

1/20/97

Historical Context:

Greece: Olypian gods and goddesses.  Roman freedmen immagrants.  Roman society was heavily hierarchy.  Baal became the god Posiden (greekinization/nellonisation) of the local cultures.  So, too, the Egyption goddess Isis was brought to Greece as Egyptian immegrants came.  Isis in a Greek temple.  Visibly Greek.  Though began in a private home.  In those days, a deity would come along with immegrants.  The shift from the private home to the shrine shows the influence of Greek culture (a pillered building).  The Jews, too, formed a synagogue (a gathering, or association, of the devotees of the god of Isreal) in Greece.  They made their place in cosmopolitain Greece as did the other groups.  Locally, the Jewish god was called 'the god of the most high'.  Surrounded by shrines of Greek gods such as Dionysis (goddess of wine) whom the Jews did not believe in, the Jews had to draw-back and not simply assimilate into the Greeks.  The line between religion and civic life was not drawn (no word for 'a religion'; rather, a religious life not distinct from the civic.  So the Greeks claimed that the Jews should acknowledge their Gods--here viewed as civic as well as 'religious'.

Iraq:

On the syrian side of the euphrates river was the persion empire.  165 -256: the Romans captured a town on the river. Dura.  The town was then destroyed.  In the 1930's, Yale joined with others to excivate it in the 1930s.  Shrine of the Persian god Mithrosh (god of light), which became popular in Roman camps.  A private house that had been remodeled into a religious shrine.   Also, a synagogue.  Paintings on the wall.  Against 'no graven images'.  Graeco-Roman influence or the Jews there believed in graven images.  In the place where Graeco-Roman gods would be, were the scrolls of the Torah.  Pictures above of Abraham binding Isaac and a Memorah, as well as a temple facade (pillers).  Other wall, a women taking a baby out of a coffin in a river.  Meeks: life after death.  Graeco-Roman idea, applied here to Moses.  A picture of the destruction of pagonism (the Philistines capturing the ark.  Dura was a heavily pagan city, and yet the Jews had a picture depicting the destruction of paganism in their synagogue.    A picture of Aaron and his temple where animal sacrifice was done.  Also, a depiction of the temple of heaven.  Mythological figures--angels worshipping Yahweh.  Of which Aaron's temple on earth was only a reflection.

Sardus.  A town of the legendary king who turned everything to gold.  The god Artimus was salient there.  Josephus: the Jews had written the city govenor on the requirements of Judaism.  In the second century, CE, the Jews got a syagogue and provisions for their kind of food.  The syagogue: inscriptions on the walls showed that many of the Jewish elders were also on the town council.  Not a conflictual condition.  Sardis is in Lydia in Asia Minor.

Alexandria, Egypt:

The Jews were not isolated, unlike the medieval Christian town with a Jewish ghetto.  They were in two areas of Alexandria, having own courts and elders.  Such a city within a city was called a politeuma in Greek.  Many of the Jews were not citizens of Alexandria.  Claudius told the Jews to be content with the privelges they have in a city which is not their own.  Resident aliens.  So, privileges.  Individual Jews could become citizens, such as Tiberius Alexander, who gave up his Judaism to become a citizen, eventually to become prefect of Palestine.  His uncle was Philo.  His family was rich and he was an intellectual.  He retold the stories in the Torah, finding the meaning of them in allegory.  Greeks had been using allegory on Homer to explain away the ungodlike things the Greek gods did.  Philo wrote a life on Moses, claiming that he was close to that of Plato's idea of the philosopher king.  Two stories of creation.  He didn't know that there were two sources; he thought that one story was of the creation of the ideal world and the following of the earth.  So, Philo claimed that the Greek virtues and stories came from the Torah.

Philo maintains the Jewish unique identity and yet assimilation. Some gentiles became Jews.  Philo makes the Bible and the practices of Judaism the center of Judaism.  A balance of assimilation and identity.  The Jesus movement disturbed this balance.

1/22/97

The Birth of Christianity according to Lk-Acts: The Story

Thus far, the back-drop to the movement of the annointed Jesus has been considered.  The oldest systematic account of the movement (not the earliest document on the movement) was written a generation after the movement is Lk-Acts.  A two volume writing, each volume has a Hellonized preface.  The two volumes had not been separated; Acts came to be used to segway from the gospels to the letters. 

Consider the work as a story. Each volume's prelude sets up an expectation in the reader that something is about to happen.  The first prelude includes poems.  Lk. 1-2: prelude--setting the stage: something is to happen.  First, the birth of John the Baptist.  Zaccaria is told in the temple by an angel that he will have a child even though he and his wife were old, and is told to call him John. He is skeptical, so Gabrial keeps his mouth silent until John is born.  Echos: Abraham and Sarah: elderly man and barren woman, too.  Also, Hannah births Samual.  All, miraculus birth.  Mary, Elizabeth's cousin, is told by Gabrial that she shall concieve without a man and call him Jesus.  Supernatural births, signs (not speaking), and the importance of the names, John and Jesus.  Jesus: 'Yahweh will save'.  Prophesy: things are predicted and they come to pass, with echos from the sacred past.

The preface of Acts overlaps with the end of Lk.  Jesus appears to four of his disciples.  He gives an order (to remain in Jerusalem) and a promise (until the Spirit descends to them) and an order (then go out and preach to the nations of the world).  An expected power from above.

Literary fuctions: a sense of high purpose.  Miracles, ancient prophesies being uflfilled, so extraordinary events.  These preludes introduce a special style.  Progidies when great figures are to be born were familiar in the hellonistic style, placing the events in the history of the Roman empire--the birth taking place during the census. But then, biblical style: the word of God came to Zaccaria.  A mixing of typical history literary hellonistic style with the biblical style.  The protagonists are devout Jews.  Jesus' family go to the temple every Sabbath.  A sophisticated style.  So, the writer was well-versed in literature.

Speeches: common in the hellonized literature.  Not limited to what was actually said, but what would have been said to give a theological commentary of the events; telling the reader, through the voices of characters in the story, what the events mean. 

For instance, Jesus in Nazareth (Lk. 4:16-30).  The writer made up the speech (the other Gospels omit the speech).  Jesus' first speech.  He had been out in the wilderness being tested by satan.  Jesus went into the synagogue on the Sabbath.  He is asked to read Is.  He found the place on the prophesy: 'The spirit of the Lord is upon me...he has sent me ...to send away and release those who are broken...'  Actually, this a composite of Is. 61 and Is. 58:6.  What is the writer doing here?  Is his memory bad?  Is he deliberately misleading his reader?  The writer takes scripture seriously.  Thus, the fulfilment of the scripture (an odd way of talking about scripture) was salient to him. 

Jesus tells the others: the scripture is fulfilled this day in your hearing; that he is the annointed one.  The hometown crowd gave him a hostile response.  Elements of the Capurnican story ahead are noted by Jesus.  The writer has an agenda.  No prophet is never acceptable in his hometown.  Jesus then said that Elijah had come to a widow in gentile territory.  The people are insulted.  Roles assigned to Jesus: the spirit of God rests on him because he is the annointed ('messiah') to tend to the weak.  Elijauh had gone to a foreign widow.  This alludes to an issue in Acts: the controversy about going to the gentiles in mission.

Peter at Pentecost (Acts 2): his sermon.  Parellels to the Lk. 4 story?  The Spirit rests on them and they speak in tongues (everyone there hears them in their own languages).  Peter quotes the prophet Joel: the spirit will be poured out on all flesh in the end times.  So, the notion that unusual speaking occurs after possessed by the Spirit, occurs in both instances.  Quotation of scripture and that it has been fulfilled.  Emphasis on the plan of God.  The pre-ordained plan of God is working itself out, the Spirit intervening among humans.  Finally, Peter claims that Jesus is the messiah, as Jesus had claimed in his speech. Both: hostile responses at these bold claims. The writer of Lk.-Acts has as theme: Scripture has been fulfilled. 

Motifs: The Spirit as activator; ancient prophets and the prophet; Jesus as the long-predicted prophet and Messiah of Isael.  Meeks: various Jewish groups expected a Messiah in this time of tension; Jesus' followers condense them into one fulfilment. Also, the fulfillment of scriture, God's irresitible plan, and a tension over the relation to Judaism.

1/27/97

The Birth of Christianity according to Lk-Acts: History as Fiction,

            Fiction as History

The preface of Lk. is an relatively elegant piece of prose.  A story written in order, in sequence.  Why Lk-Acts is written; to inform Theopholus('friend of God'), probably the writer's patron of high standing.  The writer intends his work of interest to those of standing--not just the poor.  The writer wants to enter the happenings on the world stage.  The writer was not an eye-witness, but the narrator claims as  such, as was a customary stance in the literature of the time.  The writer is actually dependent on handed-down Christian self-reflection.  History as interpretation as a vehicle of meaning and legitimacy.  This was a common literary device not only of Greek wirting, but of the Hebrew scripture as well.  Exodus and Kings, for instance--an inseperable mixture of history  as intnterpetation theological. 

Meeks: history in Hellonistic and Hebrew literature at that time was not written as empirical; the point to be made was salient, empirical and 'fictional' elements would be used in the writing of history.

The writer also wrote to show continuity of the Christians with Israel.  Thus the crisis of the incluon of Gnon-Jews is a recurrent theme.  In Acts 15, a crisis is provoked by Pharasees who claim that a Christian must be circumcized and thus become Jewish.  The Christian elders in Jerusalem agreed, but the synagogues outside Jeruselem did not.  The writer uses a 'renewal of Israel' to solve this problem.  The Pharasees are seen as corrupt, against Jesus.  The writer has Jesus instruct his disciples to go to the non-Hebrews, with the Pharasees renouncing him then. 

Acts 4: the disciples and Sanhedran confilict.  The latter are portrayed as disobedient.  A contrast between the attractiveness of the disciples message and the disobedient Jews' jealosy.  But, Acts 5: a Pharasee cautions the Sanhedran to judge against the disciples. 

So, the message of Jesus is presented as a crisis for Israel.  A dialiectic of continuity and crisis with Israel.   The writer identifies a handful of people, the Christian sect, as those continuing the Israel of the prophets. 

The writer also deals with the relation to Greco-Roman society.  The Romans dismiss the charges against the Christian.  Even Pilote is portrayed as innocent, pushe by the sanhedran.  See also the centerion.  Also, Acts18:21-, Paul is foulnd innocent.  I Acts 13:5-12: a Roman official is actually converted.  The court magician challenges Paul.  A conflict between magic and miracle.  Peter and Paul do miracles, seen as of greater power than the magic of others.   How does one disiguish between the magical acts and miracles.  Mees: one person's magic is another persons miracle.  The bad guy does magic. 

The writer shows the attraction of high-status folk.  Christianity is not a low-class phenomenon.  The writer has Paul say he is a Roman citizen-not an insignificant admission to the Jews at that time.

What kind of history is this?  Hellonisti chistory in biblical style.  Hellonsitic: editorial, didactic and entertaining history; history was a thing of rhedoricians.  Touches of romance:  the Greek and Roman novel had a plot of lovers being separated but and gone through challences--the heros are endagered but miraculously saved.  Divine guidance by dreams and signs.  The erotic aspect is missing from Lk-Acts.  Also, not only are the characters in danger, but the the logos (word, reason, or message) of God.  Typical episode: a crisis, followed by a summary 9( and the word of the Lord grew and multipllied).  Why did the writer use theis language?  it is associated with the preaching.  There is tus a themmmmmmmme of the spreadability of the Christian message.  Note how Acts ends: we know Paul is to be condemed (he was killed by Nero in 64 CE).  But the writer does not mention this end.  Instead, the parrhesia: a word dear to the Greeks then.  Cander, free-speech, as applied to a seer or philosopher, or a whole city, over against a tyrant.  Boldness or candor of speech is often used by the writer to signify the speeches of the heros.  Speaking the logos of God with parrhesia.  Paul's unhindered farewell speech.  Nother can stop the spread of the message of God.  Meeks: this is the main point of the wrier. 

History or fiction?  The writer was writing at about 100 CE.  Second generation.  He has the birth of Jesus at two times, ten years aaprt.  Conflicts beween sourse.  The council of Jeruselem, for instance.  The wrier revises Mk. rather freely.  Also, the birth narrative is different than in Mt.  Story of wise men from Babylonia  or of sheapard.  Only Lk: a trial by Herod.  LONly Lk: forty days before ascention.  Only Lk: Paul does not use Jerusalem as a home base.  Also, many of the Jesus speeches.  Did the wrtier make them up.  Meeks: the proportion of fiction is large.  Jesuss' serman at Nazareth, the trial befor Herod, (to fulfil scripture).  But these are guesses.  Does it matter?  Yes, but all history is interpretation.  We reconstruct the past, so to make sense of things.  It is well to distinguish those that are fact from those constructed, but it is hard to draw a clear line.  People's fictions reveal how they understood themselves nd their world, perhaps evven more oinformative than our empiricist accounts.

1/29/97

From Rural Sect to Urban Cult:

Don't think of the scripture of the set of ideas of the early Christians.  Also, don't think of it as of fairy-tale.  A writing of history: finding the mixture of fact and fiction by reason and the use of the imagination, the imagination being controlled by reason. 

Rather, these texts arose in a new social movement.  Try to see what this movement and its participants were like.  Use comparisons. 

Recall the Greek Island of Delos and the city of Dura where Hellonization was forced on other cults.  The Jesus movement began with Hebrews, but grew outside of that ethnic group.  They would meet in private homes.  Often, such immigrant associations were organized as clubs.  But not so with the Jesus movement.  It included non-Hebrews, so it was not a common ethnic origin that held the movement together.  Behaving like immigrants, though.  The ritual process vis a vis the deity at the center.

Dura was on the edge of the Roman Empire, on the Palestine border with Arabia.  A Christian house of worship has been found.  Where one would expect the cult's statue, there is a 'bathtub'.  In the Synagogue, an empty nitche, although no tub (where the scroll of the Torah was placed). 

Paintings in the Christian house: Hermes had been portrayed as a shephard.  The Jesus Movement used this imagry for its founder.  But the shephard in the Jesus house is set above Adam and Eve.  A mixture of Hellonized and Hebrew elements. 

There is also a painting of the three women going to the grave of Jesus.  Above it, a picture of Jesus healing the man on a mat.  Jesus is dressed and has the gesture that Moses has in the parting of the sea shown in the synagogue.

This Jesus house was brought down in 254 CE, so there was already a text. 

On the tub: water poured on one.  Baptism (Gk: 'dunking).  A coffin was found from the third century with a picture of a boy being baptised by having water poured down on him.  A painting in the fourth century showing a connection between death and baptism.  Also, another coffin shows a baptism: naked(taking off the old human and putting on the new one).  The person depicted was typically as a child--because the theme is being a new life.   It does not necessarily mean that kids were baptized.  Even Jesus is shown being baptized as a child!  Water poured because it was said to be in 'living water'.  By the end of the second century (by 250 in Dura) in Rome, water was poured with the saying 'in the name of the Father...'  But there was also dunking, which was tied to the theme of dying of the old self.

Anticendents: Hebrews used a washing for purification.  This was to be immersed in a ritual pool.  John the Baptist used the ritual as a cleasing for the coming of God.  By 250, it had become a rite of initiation in the Jesus house at Dura.  It had become the re-enactment of Jesus' death and resurrection.  A theme of transformed.  Paul: you have been buried with Christ in baptism so you may rise with him.  The new clothing represents Christ, wherein there is no longer male and female, Hebrew and Greek.  A transformation.  This was unique to this emerging cult. 

The other major Christian ritual was the meal.  Came to be called the Lord's Supper and then 'a thanksgiving' (Gk: eucharestia).  Pliny wrote on the punishment of Christians--because they are stubborn, though he does not know what they were claiming.  It was reported that they met early in the day to chant to Jesus, as if a deity.  They make an oath as to the moral Commandments of Moses.  Pliny described it as a new club.  The Emperor feared new private clubs, so he forbid them not meet to share meals.  Pliny desribes the bread being taken in remebrance of Jesus, that it is his body.  Same with the wine.

Justin Martyr's Apology in the second century, wrote on baptism.  'Illumination' associated with baptism.  'Being saved'.  After the rite, mixed bread and wine are brought to the elder who gives thanks.  Break, wine and water were then distributed. 

Greeks ate reclining on their left elbow.   Funiary art from Rome shows this.  By the third century, a fish was also shown.  Holding a memorial meal on occation to remember a dead person was commonly done in Antiquity.  Such meals were often done in cemetaries, coffins even being made to serve as a table.  Few believed in an afterlife. 

There is some indication by Pliny that when the Agape feast was separated from the bread and wine remembrance, that the latter came to have more specifically Jesus Movement features.

2/3/97

Use of the Gospels as Sources:

The synoptic problem of likenesses and differences.  Whom has copied whom?  And why did the copiers make changes?  Until the nineteenth century, Mt was thought of as the source.  It was used in the liturgy.  Augustine: Mt, Mk, and finally Lk.  In 1799, Griesbach: Mt and Lk, followed by Mk.  In the twentieth century, a dominate hypothesis: Mk as the source of Lk. and Mt.  Almost all of the Mk material is in Mt and Lk.  Only Mk.: Jesus' friends thought he was crazy.  Six episodes that only Mk. has.  Of the material shared by Lk and Mt, much is word for word. 

In 1851, Carl Lochmann found that where Lk and Mt diverge from Mk in their plots, Lk and Mt differ.  So, Mk must be their source.  In other words, the material in Lk that differs from Mt is that which is not in Mk. 

The synoptics show different styles.  So, 'style' can illuminate the nuances of each, as well as where one gospel took from another. 

Lockmann argued that Mk was first.  Mk 10:18, for instance.  Suppose the unlikely meaning phrase to have been changed.  Mt. tends to refine, for instance.  Lk. is literary.  Meeks: which to take as the source of a given passage is a matter of judgment.  A working consensus from such judgments.

H.J. Holtsman, in 1853: material in Mt. and Lk. but not in Mk.  He suggested the existence of another source: 'Q'.  The material of 'Q' consists of says of Jesus plus a few stories.  But could not Mt. have followed Lk. or vice versa?  Possible.  But one would have taken apart the topical order of the Jesus sayings. Lk. had literary and theological themes which might have prompted that writer to rearrange the topical order of Jesus says found in Mt. 

Traditional objections to the two-source hypothesis: it doesn't fit tradition.  But Augustine had the same data which we have.  Second, minor agreements--content shared by Mt. and Lk. and something different in Mk.  Stories tend to get more detailed.  Mk is less detailed in some such places. 

No one theory will explain the sources.  The Christians did not stop repeating Jesus' sayings and parables just because they had been written down.  Also, redactors changed material.  Third, the authors of the gospels had their own points to make.  They could change things around if it would get their truth across.  Finally, the manuscripts we have of the gospels are not identical.  They are without punctuation and space between words.  To read and copy it is a task.  Mistakes could be made by scribes.  Further, the scribe may well have tended to Mtize Mk to make them congruent.

2/5/97

Pre-Gospel Oral Tradition:

To see how Jesus might have been seen by his contempories, examine the earliest records.  We assume them to be a collection of the sayings of Jesus and Mk.  Though we are not sure how close these were to the time of Jesus.  Second, we look to the sources upon which Jesus might have used or reacted to or against. 

Why were there gospels?  Only four made it into the canon.  There were gospels written to record the sayings of Jesus.  Also, writings on what Jesus meant--his significance.  Also, of his life.  Christian lore. 

What activities did the early followers of Jesus which evoked their thinking of Jesus?  They would want to repeat stories about Jesus as well as novel, unusual, or provocative things about Jesus, so as to call others to follow him.  That these followers were attacked, they would tell stories that would help his followers persevere.  Stories about Jesus himself being persecuted.  Ritual of a common meal and baptism were done by the early followers, so they would tell of Jesus being baptised and of the Last Supper.  This early movement moved out of the Jewish ethnic associations and met in their own private homes to gather--thus forming a new community which is not based on ethnicity.  Rules of behavior, a moral ethos needed.  That which Jesus said which would be relevant would be cited. 

So the early followers of Jesus would have talked about him not just for fun but for particular purposes.  By examining the written sources, we can infer early christian practices, from which in turn the reason for the gospel material selections can be made.

Form, as a cultural artifact, can be used to understand who the gospel writings were like and dislike the writings of context.  Miracle stories, for instance, were common in antiquity.  Its form:  a crisis, a miracle-worker appears and does of speaks something, followed by a report that the miracle occurred and proof that it was indeed a miracle.  An audience in the narrative then responds.  But, variations of this form in particular cultures.  Rabbinic form stressed prayer. 

Get out of the cultural expectations in our culture by comparing forms within a culture and comparing across cultures of sources as close to the time as possible.

Form follows function.  The Lord's Supper is told in such a way that the ritual is developed.  The stories of Jesus' confrontations will be told with the persecuted followers' persecution in mind. The view of the Pharasees, for instance, may have been coloured by the condition of the followers being persecuted after Jesus died.  Key: aspects of the stories which are made salient is shaped by the purposes with which the stories told are used.  A story can have more than one function. 

Mk 2, for instance.  Forgiving sins and healing the paralytic.  What is the form of the story?  Complicated.  The story is about Jesus' authority--that he is like God, followed by a demonstration.  However, if v. 5-11 is removed, the story has a miracle-story form.  Perhaps it had been an oral miracle story, with the authority of Jesus added on--a pronoucement or controversy story because the religion of the followers was struggling for legitimacy--so he is said to be like God. 

Early in the twentieth century, Christian lore came to be considered in terms of its form vis a vis the oral traditions of the Near East as well.  This happened in Germany.  William Wrede wrote The Messianic Secret in the Gospels, 1901: the demons and those Jesus heals as well as his disciples knew Jesus' identity and Jesus told them to keep it secret.  Was this historical?  Wrede: this messianic secret motif is distinct to the sytle of the writer.  So, it was a theological rather than historical point in Mk.

Larl Ludwig Schmidt, THe Framework of the Story of jesus, 1919: Mk's plot/framework is the work of one writer.  It is distinguishable from the bits of tradition style in it.  Perocape: a unit of tradition which is well-rounded by a beginning and end.  Schmidt: these were linked by the writer of Mk.

Martin Dibelius, From tradition to Gospel, 1919, and Rudolf Bultmann,History of the Synoptic Tradition, 1931.  Bultmann: skeptical on the historicity.  Cartesian-like doubt, so if a parable around the Near East, presume that it was not actually said by Jesus.  Christian prophets, for instance, would have sayings which would be placed back into Jesus.  Meeks: form crit. is ill-suited to consider historical questions; what it could do is place the Jesus Movement within its cultural setting. 

The key terms:  Form.  Describe the precise form of each unit of tradition that enables them to classify them into types.  Says: herolds, proverbs, maxims, rhtorical devises, etc.  This enables them to do comparative work.  Where do you find parable forms elsewhere?  In Rabbinic lit.   Miracle stories in the Hellonistic world chiefly.  What is typical of these forms?  Are there sub-cultural differences.

Aitz im Leben: life situation: the function to which the sayings were used.

Examples:

The Parable and the allegory.  Augustine applied the allegory method to parables.  For instance, The Good Semeritan Parable: Jerico means the moon. The theives signify demons.  Samaritan means guardian.  Jesus is the one beaten.  The donkey is his flesh (incarnation).  The inn is the church.  The inn-keeper is Paul.  Dodd: this can't be so; it assumes that the story was written in code.  To decode it, an external framework is needed.  The later Christian theology is presupposed and supposed to be hidden in the story.  Dodd: a parable as a story graps the attention of the reader and has a twist that gets the reader to think of it as a whole.  One meaning, coming from the story as a whole.  Augustine's reading is clearly something superimposed. 

However, it is too simple to say that the Hebrews do parables and the Greeks do allegory.  So, Dodd's assumption of these cultural boundaries to get at the sequence of the stories is problematic.  In explaining parables to his disciples, Jesus uses allegory.  The seeds on the rocks for instance.  An allegory of the Christian mission.  Dodd: Jesus told a parable, and the hellonistic alleory was later added.  A historical error that presupposed the separation of the cultures.  Bultmann, on this parable, claimed that allegorical interpretation is not foreign to Hebrew parables.  It is the incoherience of the details of the allegory saying and the terms used which show it to be later. 

Both use the cultural-history. 

2/10/97

The Miracle Stories:

'Miracle': latin miraculum, meaning 'wonder'.  Greek: theauma.  N.T. usage: dynamis and semeion.  All of these words include the notion of the miracle-worker having a certain power.  Such power as against demons is as authority in teaching in Mk.  Lk. adds the word power.  Jesus having authority and power.  Even in Mk., power(dynamis) is what is at stake. 

So the stories can be a celebration of power or as representing something else such as teaching authority symbolically.  Some gospels are wholly miracle tales.  Thomas's infancy gospel.  Jesus as a kid does work with clay on the sabbath.  When reproved, he claps and the clay birds fly away.  Later, Jesus strikes down certain people.  He is reproved and so he recusitates them.  The idea of power is salient, even though Jesus lacks therein of moral character.

Such miracles as of a magical power that comes from the person of power is also in Acts.  Peter for instance.  Also in the Acts of Peter, where Peter is pitted against Simon the magician.  They had a contest.  Simon flew, but Peter sent him crashing down.  Power without moral character. 

In the N.T., the miracles lead folks to conclude that Jesus as a sone of God.  God does the miracle sthrough his appointed agent to legitimate that messinger to those to whom he is sent.

What is being said about Jesus in the miracle stories?  In the context of antiquity, gods appear in epiphanies wherein their power is shown.  Asklepios, for instance.  People came to his shrine and slept there.  If they dreamed, the god would come to them and heal them.  'Divine men': miracle workers in the rabbinic sect.  Greater than human power.  Ancient liturature used this term.  An aretalogie: a collection of miracle storys by a divine man.  Such stories were told to legitimate a new sect.  Lucian, for instance, gave an account of the fraud of Alexander.  Lucian told that to get a cult started, one to be regarded as a divine man born of a god is useful. 

So miracles had power in antiquity and could be used to advance a cult.  The power of the miracle showing the divine man--power greater than human, which in turn was used to legitimate a cult.

Ambivalence: one person's prophet is another's magician.  Josephus wrote that there were many false prophets around.  In the third century, Philostratus writes about a scholar, Appollonius.  He includes the miracle stories which had accompanied him, though Philostratus claimed he was not a goes, or false prophet.  Yet, he claimed that a philosopher is a divine man in bringing truth down.

Within Christianity, Paul sensed an antithesis between the Kerigma and the miracle stories.  But Paul reminds Corinthians that he had provided signs through miracles.  But in Mk. 8, Jesus says that no sign will be given to this generation.  Q: except the sign of Jonah.  Mt.: allegories this as the death and resurrection.  Mk 8:9--Jesus allowed others to perform miracles in his name.  Charismatics.  Acts 19: Jesus and Paul can do miracles, but not others.  So people outside the Jesus Movement used the name of Jesus along with other divine names to show a sign via miracle of their own power. 

But the early Christian Church sought to distance Jesus from magic.  An ambivolence. The gospels interpret Jesus himself and his teachings as the sign--the power proclaiming the Kingdom of God.

Reinterpretation: the miracle story placed next to Jesus' teaching.  The response to the miracle is taken to be an affirmation of Jesus' authority to teach.  In John, different language is used.  Miracles as 'signs'.  There is a controversy or long speech of Jesus associated with the sign.  The sign splits the crowds with regard to believing in Jesus.  Jn. 5: a healing on the sabbath.  A controversy: what authority does Jesus have to do so.  Jesus claims that himself, like his Father, works on the Sabbath.  The Jews resent his self-ascription to equality with God.  A new level: not just authority as a divine man, but as being equal to God.

So was Jesus a magician or a prophet? How does one tell the difference?  Without the reinterpretation in Jn. (the miracle power being of God-power and authority), Jesus would not have been distinguished from others who did miracles.  The reinterpretation (from miracle power to authority to teach) gets Jesus beyond the moral pitfall of using miracle power for his own gain.  The apostles wanted it both ways: to use miracle stories to gain attention and to reinterpret them as portants of the theme that Jesus uniquely has authority from God.

2/12/97

Jesus as Prophet and Sage:

Collections of Jesus' sayings were passed around by the earliest followers of Jesus.  For instance, a teaching against divorce.  Paul knew of such an oral collection.  The Gospel of Thomas alludes to it.  'Q' is another collection of sayings.   What sort of person would have his sayings collected?

The Near East context: the wise man.  Second, within Israel, the prophet.

Aspects of the Jesus' sayings that are prophetic.  Between eight and five centuries before Jesus, much prophet activity preserved in writings.  Types of prophetic speach.  First, the messenger formula: 'Thus says the Lord'.  Whereas slaves memorized the sayin of the wise man in the Near East, Jewish prophets serv ed as such slaves of God.  As for the content of the message, judgment pronouncements.  God bringing the charge against the people Isreal.  For instance, Hosea 1.  From discourse of a tribunal court.  It begins with an indictment, followed by a judgment.  Related to this form is 'woe sayings'.  E.g., Amos 6:4-7.  Woe against the rich..., therefore...judgment.  A sort of covenant lawsuit.  Micah 6:1-8.  Hosea 10:13-15.  A treaty or brite which implies an obligation by tIsreal to be just and worship only Yahwey.  Yahweh as the prosecutor and judge in the cosmic courtroom. 

This classical prophesy was written down.  By Jesus' time, it became part of the canon.  The transformations of classical prophesy: prophecy in scripture, new literary prophesies, inspired interpretttion of prophesy of the past.  Also, legends had come to develop around the prophets.  Given the tempor of the times, the eschatological ferment in the first century--the sense of living at the end of an order.  So the Qumran sect looked to the messiahs--of the kingly and the priestly.  From Deut. 18: 15-18.  Most took the messiah to be one person.  Deut. 18:15-8.  That Elijah who had been taken up to heaven on a wind was thought to be the Messiah who would return has warrant from Malachi 3:23.

So, eschatological prophets, reported by Josephus.  There was actually a school for the prophets, reported by Josephus.  Ant. 13.311; 18.85-7, 20.97-8, 168-71; War 6.300-309.  Also, prophets in the Jesus Movement.  1 cor 12:28; 14, Acts 11: 271f; 21:8-11.; Mathew, Revelation.  Such prophets used miracles.

Jesus does not use a messenger formula; he spoke from his own authority.  But he did use judgment oracles.  Mt. 11:2-24; Lk. 6.24-26; 19:41-44. For instance, 'woe to you who are rich...'.  He also had eschatological sayings.  Mk 'the little apocolypse': the temple will be destroyed... 

The Hebrew prophet is often presented as crisis for the people.  The sign of Jonah and Mk. 8:38.  The Son of man will put the unjust into to shame as well as those who do not believe in him.  See Acts. 3.

Thus the followers of Jesus saw him as the prp

Hebrew prophets used miracles.   Others performes.  Aposlte mean 'envoy'.  Agas in Acts 11. 

The Sage in Antiquity:

Royal bureaucracies.  Advisers to kings.  The vocation of the sage.  The Wisdom of Jesus ben Sira (Sirach):  200 BCE.  Only the ones of leisure  can study--discipled to the interpretation of the Torah.  Seeking wisdom of the ancients.  Prophecy in the wisdom of the sages.  Collecting their sayings.  Seeking out the meanings of parables. 

The pre-Socratic Greek philosophers--like the wisdom in the Hebrew proverbs.  A practical side: advise kings and sit on the city council.  Aristotle tutored Alexander the Great.  In Roman times, philosophers thought about the ideal king. 

Another tradition of the sage as alientated.  Socrates was executed for having corrupted the youth.  Also, he cynics.  Diogenese, contemporary of Plato.  A collection of stories (chria) of such figures.  Parrhesia: candor or bold speech, was prized by the pre-Socratic sages.  Autonomy (autakeia) of such figures.  Deliberate affront to the social order and customs.  Diogenes Laertius wrote on him.  Challenges earthly authority.

Third, there was the wisdom that required initiation.  Wisdom requiring more than rational insight.  Reason could get to the threashod of real truth, beyond which mystical experience was necessary.  The Pythagoreans. Sayings: 'Pythagoreous says...' Also, the neo-Platonists, active in the time of Jesus.  Also, the rabbis who sought mystical wisdom in the Hebrew scripture.  Merkaba mysticism, for instance.  Mystical exercises to ascent to see the heavenly throne.  The idea that some kinds of wisdom not public.   In Judaism as well as the outer world.  The idea of a secret wisdom is found in Jewish Apocaypticism.  Ezekial saw the throne of God.  Moses went up alone to get the Ten Commandments.  There was also Gnosticism.

Against this sage background, how would Jesus' wisdom sayings be placed?  First, proverbs and aphorism given as in the older Hebrew literature of Proverbs and Jesus ben Sira.  Admonitions: 'don't store up treasure on earth', for instance.  Also, makarisms: 'blessed are the poor.  They tell how one is to gain happiness.  Jesus' twist: those who seem unhappy on earth are really blessed.  Second, pronoucement stories (Vincent Taylor).  Bultmann: of controversy Stories.  For instance, on eating with sinners.  And school discussions.  A young person asked Jesus how to gain eternal life.  Also, Jesus is asked what is the first and greatest commandment.  Jesus adds a second: love your neighbor as yourself. 

Third, parables.

Fourth, collections of Jesus Sayings.  Evidence from Paul's letters.  'Q'.  Gospel of Thomas, discovered in the twentieth century.  Alfred Reich called the sayings therein 'unwritten' because they were not in the other gospels.  What is the significance of collecting says of Jesus?  Conventions in the surrounding culture shape how Jesus was seen by the people of his own time and culture.

2/17/97

The Crucified Messiah:

The Cricifixion.  In 1968, a graveyard was found at Giv'at Ha-Mivtar.  Thirty-five persons.  From the first century.  One had been crucified.  Leg bones broken.  Nails through forearms.  Block of wood to support the buttocks.  A nail through both ancles.  Difficult to breath in that position.  Cutting through the legs would quicken the process. 

The Romans used crucifixion for slaves and rebels in the lower class.  It was intended to shame the person. Heb. 12:2 Deut. 21:23--Anyone who hangs on a tree is a curse.  Reinterpretation by the followers of Jesus.  The primary corrective to shame: on the third day he was raised by God.  God changed shame into honour.  Not all circles of his followers emphasized the crucificion.  Gospel of Thomas: the sayings of Jesus; no report of his death and/or resurrection.  But those circles which would dominate Christianity made the crucifixion and resurrection crucial.  Meeks:  that crucifixion was considered to be shameful might have led such circles to ignore it.  Or perhaps they were made up.  What is more remarkable is that the reinterpretation became such a powerful symbol.

Types of interpretation.  Rom.8:34.  1 Cor 15:3--Christ died for our sins.  2Cor 5:14--one died ofr many; 1 Thess 4:14; 1Thess 5: 10--that we may live with him.  1 Pet. 3:18.  Motif: the vicarious aspect--Christ died for us.  Also, sacrifical language--atonement; the removement of sin.  Rom 3:25; 1 Jonh 2:2; 4:10; Heb. 2:17.  Jesus as the high priest who conducts his sacrifiec in heaven.  Ransom, or Manumission language--from slavary trade.  You have been bought by a price; you are not your own. Christ came not to be served but to serve.  Rom. 3:24; 8:23; 1Cor 1:30; Gal 3:13;4:5; 1 Cor 6:20; 7:23; Mk 10:24.  Archetypal or inclusive death.  Language of ritual.  With Christ we die and are born again.  Rom 6:4;.  The ritual of initiation is a burying to him unto death so that as Christ was raised, we too may walk in newness of life. Col 2:11-12.  Circumcision as a Jewish rite, made here to be a cutting off of flesh as Jesus did.   The Story.  A tendency to convert to event into a myth.  Greek Gods had myths which tell the basis for the ritual performed.  The ritual is to restore the life of the world.  Mytholization made it universalized.  But the Jesus Movement included historical specificity: Mention of Poncius Pilote.  Even Paul, who does not mention events of Jesus' lifetime, nonetheless mentions 'in the night he was betrayed' when discussing the agape meal.  Also, the earliest Gospel, Mk., focuses on the crucificion.  Paul wrote in the 50's.  The story had been extant prior to then.

Elements in the crucifixion story.  To make sense of current events, the Hebrews went to scripture.  So, after Jesus was crucified (but his followers believed he would be vindicated), they turned to the Hebrew Bible.  Mk 15:23, 36--they gave him wine and mir:: Ps 69:21--they gave me vinegar.  Also, Mk 15:24::Ps 22:18; Mk 15:29:: Ps 22:7; Mk 15:34 'My God..., why has God forsaken me:: Ps 22:1 same language.   Ps 22 contains elements that can be used to describe a cricificion.  Those elements of the story which seem to be eyewitness are in the religious communal memory.  Which way?  Especially in the complaint Psalms, correspondences with scripture are written as such into the telling of the crucificion story.  Symbolic motifs: the curtain in the temple is ripped (Mk.).  The temple is salient in Mk. around the crucificion.  Jesus was accused of destroying the temple and rebuilding it in three days.  A symbolism: the temple is open.  Symbolic motifs point beyond the story and show its significance.  Mt: unusual events attest the unusualness of the story.  Apologetic motifs to demonstrate Jesus' innocence.  Lk: pilote wants to let Jesus go; the centurian says he is innocent.  (Mk--centurian emphasizes Jesus as Son of God). To blame the Jews.  This would appeal to the Romans.  The Jews had rebelled against the Romans.  So, dangerous to emphasize that Jesus was Jewish.  Realize the historical context in which the story emerged.  Jesus died in a few hours, but usually took two days.  So the Romans stabbed him to make sure he was dead: the Jesus followers did not want the possibility that Jesus woke up in the tomb.  Also, that the guards were bribed to say that the body had been stolen.

Why was Jesus crucified?  Claim to be King of the Jews.  Meeks: likely historical.  A messianic pretender--Davidic, so a threat to the Romans.  Historical context: prophets were commonly executed by the Romans.  So, an object lesson.  But the gospels do not stress a military or royal aspect to Jesus' life.  So, a non-Messianic life.  So where did Pilote get the idea that he claimed to be the King of the Jews.  'Messiah', or 'Christos' was a response to what Pilote claimed of him as a joke.  And yet the gospels don't show the royal aspect.  Albert Switzer: Jesus was secretly planning a messianic revelution that was betrayed to the Romans.  Or, that the Romans made up the charge so to be rid of his nuascence.   Thirdly,  the Romans, over-sensitive of rebellion, picked up on the claims of some of his followers that he was the messiah.  His followers believed that he would be vindicated.  The notion of messiah is refitted by the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus.  No longer were the miracles the work of a prophet; they were of a Messiah.  No longer were the teachings those of a sage, but were the word of the Lord.  The identity of Jesus was thus shaped.

2/19/97

History, Midrash, and Myth: The Beginnings of Christology

Adapting recognized roles.  What categories did Jesus' followers use to identify him.  Some common roles such as sage (one who tells parables, proverbs, and wise maxims), miracle worker, and prophet.  Specifically Jewish eschatollogical roles:  midrash, re-reading scripture, was used to come up with a messianic figure coming at the end of time (apocrolyptic).  Christos: (hebrew: meshiach) havig had oil poured over one's head, designated someone as an agent of someone, usually done to kings--as agents of Yahweh.  Samuel poured oil on David.  Priests and prophets were annointed as well.  Close to Chrestos:  good.  So, many Greeks called Jesus: Jesus the Christ (Jesus the good).  See Jn 1:19-25.

David was told by Samuel that his dynasty would rule forever.  But where was the Davidic king in the first century BCE.  Searching scripture by a close reading (even taking words out of context), the Davidic king was the annointed one who whould come at the end of time.  2 Sam 15-17.  This figure, as the messiah, would arise to save Isreal.  Is. 11:1--a shoot will issue from the stump from Jesse (David's father) in the final days.  He will judge.  He will destroy the land. 

A time of crisis and an apparent incongruity with scripture led to midrash  so to set the people at ease and align the context in terms of scripture.

2 Kings 2: Elijah didn't die but was assumed into heaven.  He was believed to come at the end of time.  In the Talmud, debates would be left until Elijah would come.  An extra cup of wine at Passover in case Elijah comes.  Mt: John the Baptist is Elijah.  But not so in Jn. 

The prophet.  In the Qumran sect, volunteers from the new covenent shall be ruled by rules preliminary, until the prophet comes, followed by the two annointed ones (priest and Davidic king). The Arroniac annointed one is more important. 'New Testament' from Jerimaih speaks of a new covenant written on hears rather than stone.  Greek 'coventent': last will and etestament.  The Qumran sect say themselves as fulfilling the new covenent in the wilderness aas a re-making of Isreal in the wilderness.  Reenacting the new covenent in the wilderness in Deut.  Deut. 16-18:  God tells Moses that God would arise a prophet like him.  The Samaritans, not interested in a descendent of David because he would be of Judea, claimed that the prophet would come.  They added this to the commandments.  But Jn.: John the Baptist is not a prophet.

The Son of Man.  Acts 7:6--The S.O.M. standing next to God.  In Gospels, only said by Jesus.  Comes from a semitic phrase, foound in Daniel: bar enash (son of a man: a human being).  Daniel had seen visions of empires that would occupy Isreal.  In animal forms. The he saw a human.  A member of the species: son of man.  How does this become a title: a figure seen by Daniel.  A future eschatological figures, associated with Judgment (Daniel), in Mt.  But also in Mk, Jesus relates the son of man to suffering and rejection.  A Markian use of the title.  It means Jesus as the one in the passion narrative.  Thirdly, son of man used by Jesus in the first person to refer to himself.  Daniel, Ps 8 use it as such too.  Daniel: son of man would come on clouds in the final judgment.  Reinterpreted by the Christians as being the same figure as Jesus in the Passion.  1 Enoch: Enoch being taken up into heaven.  Gen. 4 ending with Enoch.  In 1 Enoch, he goes through several levels of heaven to the righteous one.  The  angel tells him that it is he.  A heavenly archetype was common in antiquity.  Here, an attempt to make sense of Daniel's vision about who he saw in heaven.  In 4 Ezra: Ezra sees a human figure who is the annointe done, the messiah.  Ezra is sad over the destruction of the first temple.  Written after the seccond destruction looking back on the first.  Why is there a human figure in heaven in Daniel's dream.  The followers of Jesus saw him as that figure.  But what of where Jesus referred to the son of man as another?  In Mk.  Later gospels fuse them.  It becomes a title by midrash. 

Making sense of perplexing events also occasioned midrash.  A rival leader in the Qumran sect.  Traitors of the new covenant followed not the Teacher of Righteousness.  Crisis in the sect.  Turn to scripture to explain it.  The wicked priest (of the Temple of Jerusalem) confronted the sect on their day of atonement (different calander).  Eschatological context influenced an interpretation of the crisis.

So too the followers of Jesus, after Jesus' death, were in crisis and explained it in terms of the scriptures in eschatological terms.  Towards a christ-myth.  Death and resurrection myth became central to the Jesus sects which would become powerful among the movement sects.  A pattern of expectation and behavior.  A pattern of language generative of analogy.  How ought authority to be exercised in the Jesus movement?  As in common practice: hierarchy?   Second, enthronement in heaven, Jesus deified.  Leads to questions, first only in poetic litergy chants, the notion that Jesus was in the form of God before his human existence, emptying himself of his divine form.  Finally, the triumphant return.  Parousia: the processions to great the emperor visiting a city.  An eschatological drama.

2/24/97

The Roman mystery religions had a sacrificial atonement motif such as Dionisus (the drinking of wine being drinking  a god; the idea of a son of god being a god), but without the belief in an after-life. Meeks: they are not constituative of Christian writings.  Also, motifs in the romantic novels of the time are in the Christian scripture, but the scripture adds a twist. 

Little independent writings on Jesus.  For instance, Christian copiests added a section on Jesus in Josephus' writings.  The Talmud alludes to Jesus being crucified.  But it is of a negative agenda against Christianity. 

Our guys do miracles; their guys do magic.  Salient in Acts, put within the larger cosmic struggle between satin and the Kingdom of God.  Miracles is motif that goes well with dramatic struggle.  There were Roman laws against magic; there were many miracles claimed.

The Qumran sect looked a lot like the Jesus Movement, and was earlier.  Both believed in the immanent end of time, paradice after death, the founder of the sect as a teacher of righteousness, and a new covenent set down by him.  Look at how the Qumran sect used scripture. 

The canonization of Christian scripture.  The early Christians did not have their own bible.  They used the Hebrew scripture.  By the last quarter of the second century, four gospels were used by many people. Other gospels existed, such as the of Mary, the Twelve, Philip, and Thomas.  Most Christians used the collection of the four gospels along with 'scripture'.  There was also a collection of Paul's letters.  The apocalypse of John was controversial through the fourth century.  By 350, bishops limited the books which their congregations could use.  The Shepard of Hermus and others were gradually left out.  It was a gradual evolutionary process.  The gospel of Philip is of alegorical says.  The gospel of Truth is a metaphorical homily.  The form of the gospels which became canonical followed that of Mark.  'Canon' came to mean a prescribed list.  Justin at Rome had a student, Tacian, who wrote The Diatessaron, which was a compilation of the four gospels.  He took it back to Syria until it was replaced by the separated gospels.  Biographical, passion narrative, says of Jesus: the form of the synoptic gospels.  Other gospels, although possibly as early as them, did not have their form so were left out.  Folks knew that Mt. and Lk. used Mk., and that Lk. used Mk.  This inter-relatedness, as well as their shared form, set them apart from the other gospels. 

On annointing.  As a ceremony, as in Egypt, it was to designate a king's agent.  Israel:  god is the only real king, so the monarchy, prophet and high priest would be annointed. 

Rodney Stark wrote a book using the market forces to explain the rise of Christianity. 

'Raised after three days': a day in antiquity included the night before and the morning after.

Images of Jesus varied, the beard of a sage or a clean-cut Apollo look.  It was not until the nineteenth century that Jesus had long hair, blue eyes, and a beard. 

2/26/97

The Gospel of Mark:

Genre: biography?  It was a rare genre in Judaism.  No biography of the teacher of righteousness at Qumran.  No biography of Yohanan ben Zakkai of the Rabbinic sect of Judaism.  Hillel, a century earlier than Jesus, are known only by a few antidotes.  Biography was a Greek genre.  The Gospels were written in Greek, composed so.  Thus, they reprepresent Christianity after its center had moved from Jerusalem to the Greek cities in Palestine.  Paul had been a pioneer in this movement.  Greek and Greek-Hebrew models of biography.  Philo, for instance, wrote a life of Moses.  Josephus wrote some biography-like writings.  Josephus wrote an autobiography.  To describe the subject as the personification of the virtues or moral principles in the sect's teachings.  But in Mk., the narrative is the message.  This is a significant difference.  'Gospel', or news, had already become a generic term for  Mk. 13:10; 14:9--the oral promouncement of good news.  Paul's narrative is not of Jesus, but wrote on the level of myth about Jesus.   Mark's innovation was to have the narrative historically based rather than mythic.  Mk. takes the Passion to be the climax of the story of Jesus; the book's narrative leads up to it. 

Major elements in Mk. narrative:  Baptism (1:11): Jesus as Son of God told to readers but not to the characters in the story.  Revelations of it to them are associated with significant pivotal moments such as Jesus' baptism.  John the baptist sets the stage for the spirit coming down to Jesus, taking possession of him, driving him to the desert.  Second, the trasfiguration (9:7).  Moses and Elijah as supporting characters.  Mt.: John the baptist as the return of Elijah.  Mk 8:27-9:9--Peter's confession of Jesus as the messiah.  Jesus commands them not to tell anyone.  Peter does not understand the Passion.  The predictions of suffering of the Son of Man (3 times) 9:12, for instance.  Don't tell anyone.  Coming down the mount of transformation, he told them to be silent until the rising from the dead.  The meaning of the story is not to be understood until after the resurrection.  Mk 14--a double revelation.  The high priest asks who he is-Christ.  Centurion (15:39); Son of God. So, Christ, Son of Man, and Son of God go together.

Mk.: rough language.  Mt. and Lk. include corrections on grammer.

The Messiah, God's Son, and the Temple.  The temple cleansing (11:15-18).  Jesus driving out the money-making aspect of the sacrificial system.  'My Father's house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations, but you have made it a cave of bandits'.  Typically, an other story interrupts a larger one.   Here, the fig tree not providing figs is cursed, envoloping the temple story.  What is the significace of the fig tree?  In 13, prediction of destruction (Mk written at around or after 70).  v. 28--another fig tree.  It does not wither, though.  Testimony at trial (14:57): 'I shall destroy this temple and build another not made of hands'.  vv. 29-30: Jesus is mocked for this statement, while on the cross.  What is the connection of these stories?  Key: the moment of death: the curtain in the temple is ripped (like the sky ripped open when Jesus was baptised).  What is the connection between Jesus' death and the destruction of the temple and the fig trees?

Two levels of conflict in Mk.  Jesus and the demons (3: 28).  Demon knows Jesus' identity.  Ch. 5: many legions of demons in a guy know who Jesus is--he knows Jesus' name.  Jesus asks them who they are.  The surrender.  It is so easy for Jesus.  Is it really a conflict.  The second level of conflict is between Jesus and the Hebrew leaders.  Ch. 6, it begins.  Jesus loses, on the surface.  He is killed by them.  But the reader knows better--absurd that humans could defeat Jesus.  The reader knows the way the Son of Man, Messiah, and Son of God is to be in God's providential scheme.

The stupidity of the disciples.  By the writing, the disciples were seen as the foundation figures of the sect.  Yet they are treated as a trope.  Especially vis a vis the outsiders (who do understand).  'The secret of the Kingdom': 4:10-12, cf. 33-4.  A parable of the seeds on different soils and rock told to many.  To everyone on the outside, all is in parables--so they hear and not understand (Is. 6): the reverse mission of the prophet because they are to be punished. The parables are meant to muddle understanding.   He told the outsiders to be silent about the miracles, though his fame spread (1:28, 45; 5:20; 7:24, 36).  But the secret given to the disciples though they did not understand.  Insiders as outsiders.  For instance, Jesus' miracle of the bread and fish, twice.  Followed by a crossing of the sea with disciples.  Run out of bread.  Jesus tells them to beware the leavoning of the pharasees.  They didn't understand this.  The disciples don't look very good.  A dangerous undercurrent--the reader doesn't understand as well.  The reader has been feeling so superior, then we are not so sure we do.  Peter gets it right, then shows he didn't get it--admitting Jesus to be the Christ, ignorance at the transfiguration, and denies him thrice.  Lack faith or courage.  Not a heroic group.  What is the reader's response.  The reader is invited to identify with them, then realize that this is not so comfortable.  Implication: in taking oneself to be superior in spiritual understanding, one actually does not understand.

No ending to Mk. Ends with the mysterious flight of the women at the tomb.  A short or long ending later added by scribes.  Why no real ending?  Unusual narrative ending until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  Was this crude writer of Mk (seemingly to society an outsider) actually an insider--understanding the deeper meanings and at the same time showing by the reading itself that even the reader who thinks he is superior in such knowledge to be faced with the fact that he really does not understand?

3/3/97

The Gospel of Matthew:

Differences from Mk:

A new beginning.  'Book of genesis of Jesus Christ.  See Gen. 5:1; 6:9.  A Genealogy: Abraham, David, Exile, Jesus.  Emphasis on the link between Jesus and the prophets and monarchy.  Joseph must adopt Jesus in order that Jesus would be 'descended' from David.  Jesus as king of the Judeans.  The three kings come from foreign nations.  Like Abraham, when he was about to be born, the various priests of Babylon came to the Persian king, seeing Abraham as a threat, looking at the stars.  They saw that a star would come that would bring one who would threaten their religion.

Second, Mt. has a collection of Jesus says ('Q').  Five discourses, each on a theme and in a formula.  7:28; 11:1; 13:53; 19:1; 26:1--a narrative episode would follow a discourse of the sayings of Jesus.  An orderly writer.  Five discourses--like five books of the Torah.  Jesus as the new Moses?  Jesus as the great teacher. 

Third, the messianic secret in Mk is out in the open in Mt.  Disciples are not stupid; they know who he is from the beginning.  So, Mt. is more didactic than is Mk.

Concerns in Mt.:

The relationship between the Jesus followers and the Hebrew community.  New hostility to Pharisees and scribes.  Mk. claims that the high priests and elders were responsible for Jesus' execution.  Mt.: pharasees and sadducies--the hypocrites.  They sit on the teaching chair of Moses, so do what they say but not what they do.  So, Mt. does not take issue with the Torah's teachings, but on that the Pharisees and scribes(early rabbis) are hypocrites.  The practice of teasing out the laws out of the Torah is not itself being criticised. 

Guilt of Israel for Jesus' execution is shown in 21:33-46; 22:1-14; 27:24-26.  Mt. is writing allegorical history.  22: 1-14 Destruction of the Temple as punishment on Israel.  27: 24-26  The leaders of the Jews, not Poncius Pilote, urge crucificion.  Tensions between the community of Mk. and the Hebrews. Not just bad leadership (Mk.); Mt. wants to put theological, not historical/political blame, on the Pharasees.  The fruit will bear out of the other nations rather than Israel, for instance.  Theological--salvation.

Afirmation of Torah Piety:

5:17-20 and 5:21-48: Hebrew legal theses followed by Jesus' antitheses.  His fulfilment of the law raises it to a higher standard; he radically reforms the Torah.  Also, contradictions: no longer eye-for-eye; turn the other cheek; no longer love your neignbors (of one's tribe) and hate your enemies; rather, love too your enemies.  Lastly, the discipleship is keeping Jesus' commandments.  This is similar to the teacher of righteousness at Qumran.

A mixed Community:

Addition to the banquet parable.  Even among those brought in, some won't make it.  Like the parables of the netting of fish, and separation of wheat from weeks.  Sheep and goats.  Rigor and forgiveness.  Mt. 18: expose your brother's sin in private.  If he does not listen, speak to the assembly.  Otherwise, let him be to you like a gentile or tax collector is he still does not listen.  But forgiveness: leaving the ninety-nine sheep and going after the one lost.  Also, Jesus tells Peter to forgive not seven times, but seven times seventy.   So, a rigour of discipline on rules and a strong forgiveness.

A community with a history:

Don't go to the gentiles (10:5-6), and yet Jesus tells his disciples to go to the other nations--after the resurrection (28:16-20).  So Mt. has reflected on the difference between the Hebrew community and his own.

Mt. describes a leadership of wandering charismatics.  But he also attests to a settled scribal community (13:52).  A tension between charismatics and scribes.  13:52--every scribe of the Kingdom appropriates scripture for the reinstitution for a new movement--author of Mt. sees himself as one.

Hint's of Mtthew's Situation:

Contemporary with early rabbinic academy.  Yavneh.  So between 70-90 CE.  At Yavneh: a system of Judaism that does not depend on the sacrificial system.  The hallakah: rabbinic teachings.  In Antioch (Syria), this movement was salient.  Was Mt. written in Antioch.  Mt.'s community had tensions within as well as with the Jews.  It also had a sense of mission and urgency.

3/5/97

The Gospel of John:

Prologue (1:1-18) and Ending (20:30)--the voice of the narrator.  Rhythmic and onmiscient.  Light, life, grace, and truth are salient for this authoritative narrator.  Indistinguishable from the voice of Jesus.  What of the sect in which this book was written resonates with this style?  What was the purpose of the book?

Unlike the synoptics, Jesus' ministry lasts one year and he travels throughout.  Jesus is not transfigured.  He does not perform exorcisms.  He does not get thrown out of the synagogue.  He does not speak in parables.  His teaching is not apocolyptic.  Jn 12:31--judgment and the driving out of satin.  Jesus is not baptized.  No infancy narrative.  Jesus' mother is not called Mary.  A large miracle in Jn.: Lazerius.  The holy spirit plays a salient role.  Misunderstandings by Jesus' enemies, the Jews.   Difference in Jesus' demenour--he retains his dignity(he is not degraded).  The last supper occurs the night before Passover.  He was crucified when the calves were sacrificed.  Rather than a depiction of the last supper, Jesus is depicted as talking of bread, eternal life, his flesh in the abstraction.

Like the synoptics, there is a genealogy (here, going back to God).  Healing of a paralytic--but here he turns Jesus in. 

Style and structure:  book of signs and book o Glory.  Seen signs: water into wine at Cana, curing officials's son there, cuing paralytic at Betheaida, feeding of the 5000, walking on the sea, curing a blind man, raiing Lazarus from the dead.  Jn. 1:19-12:50). 

Ch. 13-20:31  theme: the crucifixion.  Return to the Father.  Aporia: scenes that are displaced or confused.  11:1-2, for instance, Mary annoints Jesus.  But it is not in the narrative until ch. 12.  Also, 14:31--Jesus continues to talk to his disciples after asking them to leave.   3:31-36  Jesus talking to Nichodemus--is it the narrator's voice or Jesus'.  Redactions?  Different editions?  But, a unity of theme and language in the book across its sections.  A strong hand by the author or an editor.

Myth and metaphor in the style: Ascent/Descent of the Son of Man. 3:13ff.  a 'lifting up'. Mythic.  Greek Myth: descending and ascending redeeming god.  Metaphor: not messianic figures fulfilled in Jesus; rather, language finds its fulfilment in Jesus.  He is the 'I am'; the self-revelation of God to Moses.  Jesus is the temple itself.  He is light, truth. 

Irony and paradox:  Irony in Mk in dividing insiders from outsiders.  In Jn., two levels--the insiders who hear the code-words and the outsiders who have not heard the prologue.  Solidary of the insiders.  Paradox.  What the book lacks in suspense, it makes up in paradox.  Unity and distinction of God and Jesus.  Jesus is a divine person identified with God, in this book.  And yet, Jesus argues with his mother and may have had a homosexual relationship with one disciple.  Also, Jesus weeps.  So, Jesus in this book is depicted as divine and in relatively human terms.  Extremes. 

The parable of the feeding of the five thousand.  In this book, Jesus explains his parables.  And yet Jesus does not answer many questions to him.   Note that Jesus speaks in dense words in this book. The same word used on two levels.  Bread, for instance.  'I am the bread of life': the  bread to eat and the bread of eternal life.  The purpose of this book is BELIEF; that you believe in whom he has sent.   Jesus says that he came down from heaven.  He teaches, using the prophets. 

Location and author:  traditionally identified as the loved disciple, John, written in Asia Minor.  But nothing in the text on this.   But hostility toward the synagogue may suggest that the author had been thrown out of his synagogue.  Could be in a variety of towns.  But the author does not want to present himself or Jesus in historical terms; rather, the book is a theological reflection of the author on Jesus.  The author and his sect was probably stable--of his beliefs, seeing himself and his sect as insiders and the Jews as outsiders.  The author believed in Jesus' name.

3/24/97

 Paul's Career:

Unlike Jesus, Paul left behind a literature. One-fourth of the N.T. is attributed to him, and much of Acts is about him.  He aroused extreme emotions.  Often, folks who like Jesus detest Paul.  Neitzche, as well as Shaw, criticized Paul.  Specifically, Paul's hatred and his self-interest.  Around 1900, the book Second Founder of Christianity, in which Paul is criticized for inventing the hellonistic (pagan) elements such as Jesus being worshipped as Lord, the mystical identification of Jesus as Son of God, the importance of his death, the pre-existance of Jesus, altering the religion of Jesus of the Kingdom of God to center on Jesus himself.  Meeks: But Paul made reference to getting these ideas from tradition.  Moreover, there was quite a diversity in the Jesus following. 

Paul's own contribution was as missionary to the Gentiles.  Acts treats Paul as the proto-typical missionary to the gentiles.  But Christianity had spread without Paul's help. Alexandria, Rome...   Secondly, Paul is significant in Christianity as a literary model. His letters were imitated.  Early Christians became a people of letter-writing.  Ignatius, first bishop of Alexandria, wrote letters.  So too, pamphlets took the form of encyclical letters.  Thirdly, Paul influenced Christian theology, even though he did not have a systematic theology because he was always dealing with brush-fires.  For instance, contradictions in his writing.  Paul is remembered as a theologian in the Western Christian sects.  Eastern sects remember him as a revealer and a mystic.  Theologically, Paul's genius was in teasing out the identity of Jesus and his relationship to God from particular problems dialectically set in relation to Paul's general beliefs. 

Paul's life is known from Acts and his letters fifty years prior.  Though contradictions between them.  Also, Paul's theology in Acts is similar to Peter's.  Also, four letters may not have been Paul's.  Seven letters undoubted, though admittedly edited: Romans 1,2 Cor., Gal. , Phil. 1 Thess, and Philemon.  It was common at that time to write in the name of your founder.  Disputed: the 'Pastorals', on the conduct of proper church life, 2 Thess, Ephesians, and Colossians.  Meeks: Paul could have written 2 Thessallonians.  Thirdly, non-canonical sources (apocryphal, or 'hidden' works): Acts of Paul (Paul converts the bride Thecla to Xnity and celebacy), Letter to Laodiceans(not extant), 3 Corinthians (in the Armenian Bible), and a fourth-century Latin correspondence between Paul and Seneca.  Meeks: these are of Paul's image, rather than telling us about the historical Paul.

Before becoming a Christian, Paul was a Jew.  Gal. 1:14: he had advanced in Judaism out of his zealousness for the traditions.  Phil. 3.5: a Pharisee, blameless under the law, a prosecutor of Christians.  Phil. 3.5; cf. Acts 22.3; 23:16, he was a Pharisee.  But we don't know about Pharisee's of his time.  Later Rabbi's may have been influenced by the movement.  But at Paul's time there were not yet Rabbis.  Guyer: so Jesus as rabbi, or teacher, was redacted.  Also, Paul emphasized apocalyptic eschatology, which was poles apart from Phariseeism.  Paul's emphasis on a Messiah and the impending ending of time.  Further, he was a diaspora, hellonistic Jew.  He wrote in Greek and was a citizen of Tarsis in Mesopontania. He had been educated in Greek, though not a scholar.  He used the Septuigent. He was born a Roman citizen.  Few Jews were born so.  Meeks: difficult to fit Paul into a stratification. 

Paul's conversion. Mentioned three times in Acts.  The road to Demascus.  Form: the ephany story: the discomfort of the persecutor.  Meeks: Paul's own reports are restrained, so don't take the details as historical.  He did not describe his conversion, nor was it set as a model for conversion.  Nineteenth-century fundamentalist conversion model.  Moreover, Paul did not see himself as converted to  a new religion.  Paul regards the risen Christ (1 Cor. 15) as of the traditional appearances.  Same God.  Only, a decision about the claim of Jesus' followers: that Jesus was raised as Messiah.  Paul had thought the figure of a crucified Messiah contradicted obedience to the commandments.  His conversion was to the notion that Jesus was not only for the Jews, but for the world as well.  This allowed him to accept the fact that the Jesus followers were not following the law.

Paul's mission: North Africa, Asia Minor, Greece (e.g. Carthsis), and the Rome, with plans to go to Spain. He founded local household meetings linked together by his letters and visits, as well as Hebrew scripture.  He was martyred in 66-68 under Nero.

3/26/97

 Galations:

This letter, as is Romans, is salient in traditional interpretations of Paul.  What kind of letter is it?  Formal clues.  Conventions.  Not many people were literate; to be able to write had a mystique to it, so writers thought about style.  Society was hierarchical, so style differed according to relative social status.  Scribes were hired to write for people. 

Difficult to identify the style of Galations.  Most of Paul's letters begin with a greeting, followed by a thanksgiving.  Paul put themes of the letter in the thanksgiving.  No thanksgiving in Galations.  Rather, 'I am amazed that you have chosen another gospel that is not an alternative'.  When a relationship had been broken, according to Dahl, the higher statused party sends a rebuking letter.  The purpose of such a letter was to change opinion and behavior.  However, Hans Betz views the letter as a defense (apologetic).  But chapters three onward don't fit this view.  Clearly, a defensive element in chapters one and two.  But consider that there may have been acquisitions against Paul.

Hermeneutic: consider what the letter is designed to do?  What is the shape of the letter which clues the listeners as to what they are being asked to do.

The situation:

Galacia is in North-Central Asia Minor.  Paul referred to the meetings of groups of Christians.  'Meeting' referred to the citizen assemblies of ancient Greece.  Implies a town-meeting.  Extraordinary political claim to make about a small group meeting in someone's house. 

In the letter itself, Paul curses anyone who preaches anything which contradicts his own gospel.  Paul has thus learned that some other missionaries had come in after he left.  They claimed that circumcision was necessary for conversion.  They claimed that Paul had been trying to please them (humans, rather than God) by being easy on them. A parallel case: Hosephus on conversion of King Adiabene to Judaism(Ant. 20:34ff): The first guest told him that he would not have to be circumcized; the second told him that it would be necessary for full conversion.  The king agreed with the latter. 

Why was circumcision important to a monotheistic religion among polytheism religions.  Philo: it is necessary for the cult to endure.  Some Hebrews in Alexandria had interpreted circumcision as having symbolic meaning, so they did not become circumcized.  Philo: such folks act as if they were (isolated) individuals, and thereby threaten Hebrew identity which could lead to assimilation and a loss of identity as separate and different of the cultus.

Paul's answer to this argument that Hebrews had been keeping their identity by following the commandments.  If no clear boundary, Hebrews would slide back into paganism.  Paul claimed that the gospel is a new revelation.  Also, the spirit, a power experienced in emphatic activity and a sign of the end of days (Acts 2), was experienced accordingly, rather than in the law.  Paul connects this experience of Spirit with a revisionist reading of Hebrew scripture.  God had fundamentally re-altered how man is to approach God.  Works of the law had been superceded.  Paul holds onto the tradition (he had been a Pharisee) to radically transform it.  In the model of a crucified Messiah, Paul claimed to be crucified to the law so to live in Christ.  He admits to having misunderstood God's righteous; how else would God's annointed be allowed to be hung on a tree?  The law: such a death is a curse. Christ as Messiah is a blessing.  So, either the law or Christ.  The faith of Jesus Christ which took him through the crucificion is salient in the latter.  Moreover, faith in God's promised fulfilled.  Christ is Abraham's seed (singular referent assumed here, but he uses 'seed' as a collective noun later in the letter).  So only through that seed that the promise of Abraham can come.  What of the promise of the law (the commandments which give the Hebrews distinctiveness)?  They are merely preliminary, according to Paul, until the Messiah came.  Maccabees: temporary ordinances in effect until the Messiah comes.  Paul's radical extension is to the commandments of distinctiveness (separation of the Hebrews).  Through the crucified Messiah, the Hebrews are no longer separate from the world.  God gave his son for the sake of humanity.  Therefore, mission to the gentiles.  Not that the law is against the promises.  Meeks: but how could it not be? But in Romans 9-11, Paul expands on this point.

3/31/97

 Corinthians:

The love of honor was salient.  Social status.  An unusual degree of social mobility.  Paul established a house-church there.  He wrote five or six letters.  The first is not extant.  The second is 1 Cor.  2 Cor. mentions a third letter.  Within 2 Cor., a change of mood after ch. 8.  Irate, then forgiving.  Then, in ch. 10, Paul castigates them for listening to the 'super-apostles'.  Ch.s 8 & 9: each chapter is on the collection for Jerusalem.  So, fragments of two letters?  1 Cor. is a response to:  Rumors about that church, and a delegation from the church.  They provoke the outbreak in ch.s 10-13.  The way in which Paul deals with emerging churches having problems, as well as his own christology in action, is salient here.

On the elitism of the Spirit (1 Cor. 1-4). Clues to the problem: quarrels among the people, factions claiming allegiance to different founders.  A civic letter would read: a city is like a body--everyone should know their proper place.  Paul uses this form as a prototype to stress unity.  Second, there are questions of Paul's leadership.  Doubts that he would be seen again.  Stephanus and his household, whom Paul had baptized, were the householders of the church there.   Typical of syagogues as well, patrons benefacted the meetings.  Stephanus was not the only such patron; Gaius was another.  In this highly stratified society, such ties between benefactors and the poor were important in maintaining social stability; a reciprocity of honor and protection.  This included protection of new cults, including the 'christians'.  So, various patrons of the same cult could lead to problems of leadership.  Adding to this element, the christian belief that the holy spirit could enter anyone.  A different source of leadership.  Anyone in the meeting could emerge as a leader by the power of the holy spirit.  Also, baptism was held by members of the christian cult to have a leadership element, in that whomever is the baptiser is one's leader.  Lastly, a clue to the problem is the curious disavowel of wisdom as foolish, even though it is praised in christian and hebrew writings.  Christ as crucified is as a stumbling block to folly.  'Christ as crucified' was Paul's theme, set against wisdom and works of the spirit (being 'puffed up'--arrogance), because the works of the spirit was so salient to the meeting there.

Paul's rhetoric.  God's power over human wisdom.  But the mature initiated could talk wisdom, in such a way that the wisdom is mysterious and thus secret, revealed through the spirit.  A turn!  Mystery langage.  But in ch. 3, he refers to the members at Corinth as 'babies'; that Paul only told grown-ups of the works of the spirit.  So the Corinthians got milk, not solid food.  Fleshly people.  Jealosy and quarreling.  So they could not be spirituals, and thus able to do works of the spirit.  Their behavior undercuts their claim to such power.  Their behavior of attaching their status to their respective baptisers.  The elementary lesson: arrogance undercuts works of the spirit.  Ch. 4: Paul is sarcastic.  He makes fun of them as is they were already kings.  They were rich and attentive to their high status.  Stoics: only the wise man is king and free.  Paul 'laments' that the suffering apostles were not treated so by God; Paul saw himselve and the other apostles as mere builders of God's house.

Who has the best spirit, apostle..., was the unique operationalization of status to the christian cult members.  Paul: the cross is central.  The logic of a life that would be lived this way.  The power of God in the shameful death.  To be an follower of Christ is to follow in this logic.

Other propblems: Sex and asceticism (5; 6:12-20; 7).  Living with one's stepmother was evil, according to Paul.  Paul favored celibacy, but recognized 'other gifts'.  Second, taking other believers to court.  Third, meat offered to idols.  Paul: don't act to hurt the conscience of other members by eating it.  The good of one's brother over the exercise of one's own freedom (8-10).  Men and women prophets (11: 2-16): Paul emphasizes the difference between men and women.  Division of the Supper: some get drunk and others go hungry.  Rich and poor divinsions.  Lastly, 'spiritual gifts' (12-14): especially, speaking in tongues was problematic.

2 Cor: the superapostles (10-13).  The problem of legitimation of leadership in a new sect.  Conflicting modes of authority.  Crucifixion as a paradigm of power.  Crucifixion as a metaphor touchstone for the christian life and the basis for power (manifested in weakness).  So 'boasting' is undone by the metaphor of the crucifixion: God's power is legitimated in apparent weakness.

4/2/97

Paul's Letter to the Romans:

This letter had a major impact on the formation of Christianity.  Meeks: it has been creatively misread throughout generations of history.  So we will consider the purpose and style of the letter.

Purpose and situation: clues from the opening and closing(1:1-15; 15:14-32; 16). Paul is not responding to specific problems.  Paul did not found the house churches in Rome.  A long greeting, followed by Paul's 'grace and peace', then his thanksgiving which tells of the subject of the letter.  He wanted to visit them so they might be mutually encouraged.  He identifies them as 'gentiles'.  But in ch. 16, he refers to several of the house church's there as being Hebrews.  So, the listeners are to hear the letter as gentiles.  And at ch. 16, he indicates his desire to preach to those who do not know Christ.  He tells of his intent to send a gift to Jerusalem so he would not be bothered by the Jerusalem church, and his desire to have them fund his trip to Spain.  So Paul's agenda is salient. 

Reflections on experience (Galation crisis over circumcision, 1-8, 9-11; and1 Cor. 8-10, cf Rom. 14:1-15; 13).  The relationship between the Torah (Isreal as God's chosen people) and the gentile Christians is a major theme in the letter.  Also, the Corinthian problem over idol-meat, here generalized to the problem of those who are scrupulous about their faith and superstitious.  Don't dissuade them by your actions or speech.

The style.  Bultmann wrote his dissertation on it.  He compared it to a diatribe, the function being to the cynic philosophers who proclaim on the streets.  But the diatribe was used in teaching rather than proclaimations.  However, Bultmann was correct that it was a type of persuation and in this sense like Romans.  Even so, Paul de-emphasizes his role as persuader, stressing instead mutual exchange.  He is introducing the Romans to his gospel.  Of the diatribe style which nonetheless is shared by Paul: rhetorical questions (intended to tease out something which seems implicit in his speech but which he denies--corrective to erronious conclusions one might reach).  This sets up a dialectical structure.  For instance, he uses imaginary interlocutors.  An imaginary character who sets up a false conclusion which Paul provides a corrective. 

Themes.  The righteousness of God.  'not ashamed of the gospel (1:16-7).  A new relationship between God and man Paul makes as his starting-point.  Also in 3:21--though attested to by the law, the righteousness of God is revealed in the faith of Christ, manifested apart from the law.  So, 'from faith' in Jesus, not 'from works of law'.  The failure to acknowledge the oneness of God (ch.s 13-15 in The Wisdom of Soloman) causes God's wrath.  God's punishment is manifest as God turning sinners over to polytheism and immoral sexual practices, according to Paul.  Hints of the golden calf incident.  Paul is bridging the gap between Jew and gentile.  Paul goes on to say that people are without excuse for not being righteous.  2:11--in the final judgment, the one who has done good, whether Jew of Greek, will be proclaimed righteous.  The mercy of God to the Jew is not automatic.  Nor is the Jew not subject to God's wrath. Nor is the Greek outside the reach of God's mercy; one who does good by nature and does not know Christ will be pardoned. Righteousness is as a gracious intervention by God through Christ's atonement (3:21-26), open to all.  So the whole of humanity has gotten itself into a bind of slavery to sin, and the only way out is through God's intervention in the faithfulness of Christ Jesus.  No distinction between Jew and Greek.  God's impartiality (2:11) and God's oneness (so the god of all people, 3:29-30). 

Dying to the flesh and raising in the spirit, out from slavery--of the transformation that Paul highlights.  The story of Media: after she kills her own children, carried away with passion, she says she hates what she does.  Greek story.  Greek teaching: to know the good is enough to do it.  Passions get in the way.  Paul, too, talks of his inability to control his sinful acts. In fact, he claims that knowledge of the law actually gets in the way of being righteous. Dying to the law, living in faith. God is nevertheless faithful (9-11), owing to Christ's atonement.  Living in faith, and the faith of Christ.  Also, he describes faith as the disposition of hope when there is no reason to have hope.  The faith of Jesus being crucified is most salient for Paul.

On God being faithful even as man sins (9-11).  Matthew: that God has chosen a new people; God has rejected the Hebrews.  Paul: no, because God remains faithful.  Ch. 11: a great mystery.  a hardness over Israel until all gentiles are saved, after which Israel will accept that Jesus is the messiah.  So that God chose Israel and loves those people does not change.  God closed up Israel in sin so all may have mercy.  Paul admits that God's way is mysterious; that the reason behind this plan is beyond human reason.  The mercy of God is salient for a sinful humanity through the atoning value of Christ's faith on the cross.

4/7/97

Paul's Disciples:

Paul associates himself in his letters with fellow-workers.  Timothy went back to check on the Thessalonians and Philadocians and he went to Corinth.  Titus affected a reconciliation in Corinth and raised money for Jerusalem.  Apollos, a Hebrew from Alexandria, became a Christian.  Prisca(Priscilla) and Aquila converted him to the Pauline sect.  They are named in Acts as well.  Prisca was especially active in Pauline Christianity.  Acts: they were tent-makers, very mobile.  They had been expelled from Rome by Claudius.  They met Apollos at Ephesus.  Paul mentions that the couple risked their lives for Paul. 

Benefactors/Patrons of the Pauline sect.  Prisca has a meeting (ecclesia) in her house.  Mary, tryphaena and Tryphosa, Persis, Junia(a woman apostle who was 'notable among the apostles).  Euodia and Syntyche, 'fellow atheletes' in their missionary activity.   Apphia the sister.   Phoebe was a deacon (diakonos, or minister--a term Paul uses for himself and other apostles) as well as a prostatis (president, or patron/guardian of a house-meeting). 

Thus, a number of women led the new movement, many acting as patrons.  It was not unusual for Roman (pagan) women to patron synagogues, but Paul's sect had an usual degree of women leaders.  Women who had inherited wealth and were acting independently.  This loosening of women's roles were advantageous to Paul. 

The Pauline 'School' has been described as a scholastic society.  Certainly, Paul and his co-workers did a lot of teaching, but that may be pushing it to say that his sect was like a philosophical school.  Parallels the Epicurians, however.  Also, particular worship and instructions forms in the Pauline sect.  A certain way of believing that is particular to Pauline meetings.  Evidence for this in the later letters written in Paul's name (a practice common in that era).  Letters of Diagones, Plato and Aristotle circulated at the time.  It was an act of piety to write a letter in the name of a founder of a school.  Colossians, for instance, possibly written by a Pauline disciple, had to do with a philosophy associated with an extreme asceticism which Paul opposed.  The letter is parenetic: of moral advice that reminds of a morality the people are already expected to know and practice.  A reminder of baptism--traditional material associated with baptism.  An attempt to eliminate new philosophies seen as contrary to Paul's doctrine.  Some of Paul's autobiography, in a founder figure to be imitated.  Paul's life was becoming part of the sacred past. 

Second, Ephesians is thought to have been written not to the ephesians.  It may have been to the Lidoceans.  Meeks: a round-robin letter that circulated. An encyclical letter.  No allusions to specifics of a particular local problem.  The unity of the church is the letter's theme.  It recognizes the central concern of Paul (e.g. in Romans): the relation of Jews and Gentiles in the sect.  Prototypical of the unity which Paul claims that God wants of mankind; all men are part of the household of God.  Not the Hebrews only. 

Use of tradition for parenetic purposes.  1 Peter, for instance.  Similar to Ephesians and Collosians, shaping of behavior function of baptism.  Attributed to Peter or his followers.  Similar to Pauline concerns. May have been written by Paul or his disciples.

How long did the Pauline sect last?  It was taken into what was to become the mainstream--Acts being its first writing.  Paul is as a hero, like Peter, in Acts.  But Luke sought to portray an optimistic unity in the early church.  A tendency to make Peter and Paul similar.  For instance, only the Jews are opposed to Paul.  The heroization of Paul and Peter: both have features of a martyrs.  The 'domestication' of Paul for the emerging consensus sect.  Many heretics of the second century (expelled from the mainline sect) followed Paul. 

Valentinus of Alexandria, for instance, had a Platonic mystical view of the gospels.  He had adopted the thought of the Gnostics, and was thus declared to be a heretic.  He claimed a secret line of tradition going back to Paul; a line separate from that of the bishops.  Valentinus was an intellectual Christian.  However, his gnosticism thought was contrary to Paul's in some points.  Both for the bishops and Valentinus, authority/struggle assocated with lines of tradition.  Valentinus had a revisionist view of creation, relations to the Jews, the relation of body and spirit, which he related back to Paul. 

Second, Marcion (perhaps a bishop) ended up at Rome, where he gave a lot of money to the churches.  But he published a book called the Antitheses, in which he contrasted what Yahweh taught (the 'Old Testament') and that which Jesus taught.  The Christian god is not smart because of how messed up this world is.  Marcion claimed to get this idea from Paul.  But Paul compared Adam with Christ as being of like kind.  Marcian attributed this to Hebrew christians, as a means of connecting Paul's teaching to Judaism. 

Third, the Pastoral Epistles (Titus and 1 and 2 Timothy).  Titus: on how to run a church.  Timothy: like a will of Paul.  They are similar to the letter of Polycarp and to the Didoche.  Paul is represented as being opposed to women leaders in the church.

Fourth, the Acts of Paul.  The woman Thecla baptized herself and went off as an apostle preaching for herself.

So, a struggle over the authority of Paul as appropriated from him in the second century.

4/9/97

Hebrews:

It may be that 1 Clement used Hebrews as a source.  Hebrews is a second-generation document, so at the time of Luke-Acts.  Hebrews was addressed to Christians rather than Jews. So the letter's title is misleading.  More revealing that its date and authorship is its form and style: a lauratory sermon.  Logos parakieseos. 13:22.  For instance: 3:12--Look out, ...don't become apostate.  6:1--let us leave elementary doctrine and go on.  Chapter 13 has a list of virtues.  It was circulated like a letter.  A pep-talk to warn people something worse may be in the future.  The letter is based on the Septuagent.  Its Greek is good.  Its content is unique.  Christ as a priest of a sanctuary in heaven.  Clues to the situation.  The sect had become established, no longer a new movement.  So the author encourages the people to strive harder.

The author uses several sources.  The Septuagint is quoted at length.  Ps. 110 is the most quoted verse in the New Testament.  Make your enemies your footstool.  The author adds Ps. 109.  Also, 1 Chron 17.13, Pss 2:7; 8:4-6; 45:6-7; 95:7-11, and Jer 31:31(new covenant language).  Second, Jewish traditions of reading (esp. the Greek-speaking Jews of the Diaspora).  So use Philo as a parallel in studying Hebrews.  Third, Hellonistic thought such as middle Platonism.  Fourth, early christian traditions.  Baptism ritual. 

Cultic traditions are revised by the author to point forward to a different kind of high priesthood represented by Jesus.  Also, ch. 11 shows a list of moral exemplars, or heros.  The great figures of the past are to be emulated; here the virtue being faith. 

Structure.  It is not a polemical document against Judaism.  The ancient practices are earthly, not necessarily bad, but warn out.  Rhetorical pattern: synkrisis (compare so to show similarities or superiorities). Hebrews: to show that Christ is superior to those who came before.  A fortiori is used too in this regard. If one thing is good or valid, so much moreso is a greater thing so.  Spoken by angels, so much more is that which is spoken by Christ, for instance.  The teachings of angels are not bad; rather, inferior to that by the Son of God. 

Spatio-temporal framework. One is Jewish, the other middle-Platonic. Old, former is below or earthly, mediated by Christ and the people of God to the new, last which is above, heavenly. Two ages.  This eschatological notion is salient in Hebrews.  The old covenant and priesthood has been replaced by new ones.  The material world, associated with the old, former age, is contrasted to the world of ideas or archetypes which is associated here with the new, last age.  A spatio-temporal framework connected to an eschatological framework.  Philo used it to differentiate Moses from others of his day. Moses was in the world of archetypes, seeing the true tabernacle rather than merely the earthly one which is a shadow of the perfect things/forms existing only in heaven.  The old replaced by the new, the earthly by the heavenly.   So too, the author of Hebrew claims that the old earthly sanctuary had been replaced by Christ and in its place the true heavenly sanctuary is open to the people of God.

The author shows the beginnings of Christian otherworldliness.  The city of God is not to be found in this world.  Rather, in transcendence.  This imagery had not yet been made a part of the Eucharist cultus.  Eucharist: the window through which man can enter God's sanctuary in heaven.

So this is not a polemical letter.  Rather, a theology of supercession: the new testament superceding the old one.

4/14/97

The Apocalypse:

What kind of literature?  Gk: the unveiling.   Said to be given by Jesus to his disciple, John.  It is a revelation.  Of prophesy.  Ch. 22-18-20.  The opening is paired with the conclusion.  Other examples of apocalypse: Daniel became a paradigm for this genre.  Daniel is the prime source of the images used by the writer of The Apocalypse.  Recyles old literature.  1 Enoch, 2 Enoch, 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch.  Also, revelatory literature in Greece (anti-Roman oracles) and Egypt.  Also, Sibyl oracles (some by Jews and Christians) in latin.

Characteristic of the genre:  vision reports (e.g. deep sleep of Abraham--what did he see?).  Unusual that the Apocalypse (of John) had an author's name.  Apocalypes is about the immediate future.  Parasitic on older literature.  Vision of Ezekiel is repeated in ch. 1 of The Apocalypse.  Four creatures, human figure on a throne.  Yet modified.  No two theophanies are alike.  Interpretive--rereading or a transformation of a past prophesy.  Strange imagery used.  It is esoteric--few folks can interpret it.  Intended for a limited group that can understand.  Finally, it is dualistic in terms of time (Ezra: God has made two ages; the book close to the end of the first) and the cosmos (soon a battle between the heaven and earthly kingdoms--so too, a battle on earth between those of light and darkness(insiders and their enemies). 

A letter format.  1:4-5a, 22:21.  Prophesy in the form of visions. 

The context of The Apocalypse.  Seven churches in the Roman province of Asia Minor (southwest).  The author has been exiled.  He identifies himself as a prophet.  He writes with authority to the seven churches.  He sees himself as a mediator of Jesus.  A situation of persecution?  But Antipas is the only one who has been martyred.  Rather, it is the author who is agitated.  Perhaps the author believed that persecution would occur in the near future.  The author hates the Roman empire.  The book's date: a rumor of Nero's return (13:3)--a rumor that circulated in the 60's C.E.  Ireneous claimed that it was written in the nineties.  Meeks: that a future prosecution was believed immanent may be that it was written in the nineties.

Structure of the book.  John is invited to heaven and sees a vision like Ezekiel's.  Seven seals.  He can't open them, so he cries.  He sees a lamb standing as though it had been slaughtered.  The lamb opens the seals, each produces a vision.  Then silence.  Then trumpets and seven more visions.  An on.  Cycles of seven.  Chaos is being portrayed, yet through it is a strange order (sevens).  Chaos on earth is being controlled from heaven.  Systems of opposites: one on throne(ch. 4), throne of beast (16:10; 2:13); dwellers of heaven and earth, heavenoosealed on forehead (7:4), mark of beast if want to sell or by (13:16), witnesses and prophets (11), false prophets (13:11), holy city, marrriage banquet and cup of abomnations (14:8).  Bizzare images.  Bad Greek, but liturgical language.  Sources of this style: biblical and a common Near Eastern myth of a cosmic battle (Apollo). See ch. 12.  Woman pursued by a dragon, but flys away and gives birth to a child.  A symbol of the Hebrews giving birth to a prophet, but also like the Apollo story. Also in the style is court ceremonial language.  Imperial Rome.  Especially that of Gaius and Nero.  In the book, a contrast of the wealth of heaven and the commerical wealth of earth.  Also, paradoxic language.  The oxymoron: the lamb slaughtered conquers.  Powerless conquer; the poor are rich.  Seems not to make sense on the face of it.  Destroy common sense as a guide of life.  Be guided instead by that secret wisdom that comes from God.  The central conflict is between the brides of the lamb and the beast on the chair.  The author demonizes Rome.  No compromise with it.  Like Ezekiel to the five-hundred prophets of Baal.  No compromise with the outside world and within the Christian sect as well.

4/16/97

Christianity and the Roman Order:

The emerging Christian cult and the surrounding society.   The Roman authorities viewed Christianity as being a counter-cultural cult.  Book of Revelation: Rome as the center of the satan dragon.  Emergence of martyrdom being unto death.  A new form of literature emerged with this idea of martyrdom in mind.   Meeks: although there is a strain of early Christian literature depicting it as counter-cultural, this portayal was by no means dominant.

Paul admonished the Christians not to aspire to earthly nobility (1 Cor. 1:26).  Most Christians were in the lower class, according to this verse.  In the second century, Celsus wrote The True Doctrine; the leaders of the Christian cult were commoners.  He objects that such folk could talk about truth and virtue.  Origen replied: that Christianity appeals to the lower class rather than from the elite is a positive.  Meeks: but Paul notes that there were wealthy people such as Gaius(sponsored a house-church), Erastus(the treasurer of the city), Titius Justus(Roman citizen and patron of a Christian house-church), and Crispus(the head of the synagogue before converting), in the Corinthian house-churches.  Stephanus was a patron and protector of the Corinth house-churches. Clement wrote that there are some rich people who get through the eye of the needle, implying that there were wealthy Christians. 

So the new cult was made up of a cross-section of society.  So some Roman officials viewed it as a threat.  Also, that Paul had Roman citizenship as a provincial and Jew suggests that his family had been well-off.  But he was not a typical aristocrat, as he admitted to working with his hands (tent-maker).  But that Paul emphasizes this fact suggests that someone of his status would not ordinarily do manual labour.  Also, that he had rhetorical skills in Greek suggests that he had had a good education and grew up in an aristocratic family.

So what is the significance of folks with high or rising status being the leaders of the house-churches.  Upward mobility was possible in Roman society.  For instance, working hard for one's master.  Sharing in the prophets.  Also, inheritances.  Key: the generosity of one's patron.  In fact, the emperor's slaves and freemen (the civil service) included Christians.  An upwardly mobile group; they often married women of higher social status.  Already by the 60's.  So, people of ambigious or mixed social status were attracted to Christianity.  Possible that the imperial family had been penetrated by Christianity by the end of the first century.  Further, Christian teachers such as Marcian, Valintitus, Clement of Alexandria, and Justin Martyr portrayed themselves as philosophers--thus claiming a higher social status.

Opposition from the Roman Order.  Periods of active persecution, though not empire-wide until 250.  Localities: Pleny asked his Roman superior for a reason to persecute the Christians.  In Lyon, a spat of persecutions.  Also, sporatic persecution in N. Africa.  These indicate some hostility from locals toward their Christian neighbors.  Why were they persecuted?  Religious factors: Christians were called atheists.  Epicurians were called atheists too--because they shirked their public responsibility of making sacrifices to the Roman Gods.  Thus so with the Christians.  They would not perform such sacrifices or attend the related meals.  The Jews had exemptions due to their historical traditions.  Christianity did not have this excuse.  When they established separate meetings, they were distinguished from the Jews.  It was not so much a matter of piety as it was of propriety--to keep the Roman gods pleased with the empire so it could endure.  Christianity was neither ethnic nor keeping Jewish traditions and yet not keeping with Roman propriety.  Christians were also seen as being superstitious.

Social factors:  'hatred of humanity'.  That Christians would eat flesh and drink blood.  Orgies: 'loving your brothers and sisters'.  The apologists had to address these rumours.  That women were interested in secret new cults such as Christianity was viewed as spurious; Christianity fell into this trap.  The appeal which Christianity had to slaves was also a reason for Romans to view Christianity as suprious.  That there were negative attitudes toward Hellonistic culture, such as by Tutillian, did not help the Christian cause to ally Roman authorities.  An ambivalence toward the government was itself a cause of official persecution.  Pleny punished them because of their stubbornness in religious matters.

By 250, the new cult had grown such that the emperor had enough of it.  He mandated official sacrifice.  Many martyrs, but bribes and forged certificates too. 

Organization of the Christian groups.  The household.  Households at the time were the basic unit of society because they were not limited to nuclear families.  Rom 16:5, Col. 4:15--Christian meetings in households.  Pastorals--household used as a metaphor for the entire church.  Such house meetings would have looked like club meetings.  Electing officers and seeking patrons.  In the second century, they represented themselves as philosophical schools.  Small study circles of Marcian, Justin...   Practical welfare was a function of the Christian meeting organization.  The Jerusalem sect: private goods sold.  In the fourth century, when the emperor Julian became apostate, he nonetheless followed the Christian practice of caring for the poor.  That Christians called each other brothers and sisters and had an international network gave it the air of an international conspiracy to the Roman authorities.

4/21/97

Christianity Institutionalized:

Governance.  The bishops' authority was concentrated in regulation of the eucharist.  Ignatius of Antioch: be subject to the bishop as Jesus is subject to the Father.  About 110 C.E.  The single rule.  Unitary authority in the bishop.  The monarchical episcopate.  Ignatius defended himself so much that there was probably opposition to his claim to total authority.  There had been prophets, apostles, as well as bishops earlier (Dideche 11-13, 15).

Controlling deviance. Marcion claimed that there had been a conspiracy in the writing of the New Testament, so he wrote his own.  Valentinus.  Montanius (Montanism): the Holy Spirit had returned and was incarnate in him and two of his women followers.  Reviving the charismatic stage of early Christianity.  The bishops did not like this revival in the early third century.  Tutillian, reacting to the growing secularity and institutionalization, was part of this revival, emphasizing prophesy in the congregations.  The bishops fought this, trying to regain their absolute control, by taking 'possession' of the apostolic tradition.  Recall that Paul appealed to tradition, bring free to manipulate it (as he was with scripture).  Paul's word for tradition, paradosis, or handing over.  The bishops used paratheke such as in the Pastorals: the straight path as against heresy.  A centralized authority.  But the traditions were various from the start of the cult.  One limit may be scripture, but many writings were being written with authority.  Not until the 300's was an official list written (357).  The first christians used Jewish scripture.  There was not a Jewish canon until later.  Hebrew and Septuigent corpus' are not identical, but central writings in both. 

The gospels were first mentioned by Justin (end of the first century).  He called them the memoirs of the disciples.  Ignatius may have used Matthew.  Ireneus insisted that there be only four gospels because there are only four directions.  2 Peter was included in the canon, even though it was written late.  It refers to the earlier writings as being twisted.  Marcion believed that the christian god was different than the jewish god, so he separated the respective writings.  The bishops' move to canonization perhaps as a result. 

Different christian sects favoured different writings.  The apocolyptic writings were not popular in the eastern churches.  So the bishop became the guardian of right belief. The right view of God.  This was not without conflict.  But the bishops went on to use creeds to control prophetic/charismatic claims.  A formal declaration of belonging.  It became a devise for regulating belief, testing.  A creed usually contains contested doctrines only.  The first councils were on the person of christ and then the matter of the trinity.

So, the apostolic tradition, canon, monarchical bishopry, and creed were used against the deviants. 

Theological task of the institutional church.  Variety and diversity came with the movement's expansion and indigenization.  Contraditions then had a broader realm.  At what point does the expansive variety lead to herasy (wrong ideas) and schism (splitting of the movement).  Emergence of theological traditions.  The apologists, defending the faith.  Including a critical reflection and self-definition confronting the the prevailing intellectual schools.  Stocism, Platonism...that had dominated the elites of the empire.  The philosophizing of scripture was not new.  Philo, for instance, found Plato in the Torah. 

4/23/97

New Testament as Scripture:

The cultural importance of the text derives from its use as scripture.  Yet as a university rather than a Sunday school, we study it dispassionately.  Historical criticism, for instance, emerged in the eighteenth century and blossomed in the next two-hundred years.  A child of the Enlightenment.  'Scientific History' emerged too with the Enlightenment.  Recently, a 'post-modern' critique:  that this perspective is distorted. 

Difficulties in using the New Testament as scripture after using Historical Criticism:  contradictions in the text.  Acts and Paul differ on the council in Jerusalem.  Mt. and Lk: on the date of Jesus' birth.  So in what sense can these texts be authoritative?  Also, consider the problem of pseudopigraphy in Paul's letters.  Who are the authors of the gospels?  Narrative differences from one gospel to another.  Was Jesus crucified before or after the Passover sedar? 

And there were other gospels.  A diversity to the early Christians.  Paul was in conflict with other missionaries, but they were Christians too.  On the relations to the Romans: 1 Peter (benign) and Revelations differ on it.  Only later were there herasies arising from power-politics.  In the beginning, disagreement on who Jesus was and what the Christian life was.  So how could this early period serve as normative.

The Western concern for questions of history came from the historical narratives of Judaism and Christianity.  But the Enlightenment view of history(empirical) is not that of preceeding views of what counts for history.  For instance, a shift from attending to political and literary elites to the writing of social histories (oriented to and including content on, ordinary people). 

Most texts and monuments from antiquity have not survived.  History in fact is reconstruction.  Our picture of the N.T. text changes as our understanding of history changes.  History gives us probability.  Also, limits to historiography.  For instance, can history permit the question of whether Jesus is the Son of God?  Was he raised from the dead?  Would finding his bones falsify the faith of the early Christians?  No, it would falsify some interpretations of resurrection.  So a lack of fit between enlightenment historical enquiry and central questions of faith.  History can't solve these problems, but it can make a Christian uncomfortable with certain of his truth-claims.

But are there not different kinds of truth?  The truth of a work of fiction or poetry.  The ancients: literal and allegorical.  Moderns: empirical and metaphorical.  But is one interpretation as good as any other?  The Reformation stressed the plain meaning of scripture as against that of tradition.  Since the Enlightenment, rational evidence has been used as a criterion on doctrine and even what the text really says.  An overarching rationality assumed to give objectivity, a means of ajudication.  The clerical hierachy replaced by academics.  But even their view is historically conditioned.  Western rationalism is a culturally-bound view.  So it is not objective.  So historiography has its limits.  Yet we can distinguish between good and bad history.  It can lay out some limits to interpretations of core truth-claims.  For instance, ancient literary styles can be known so we can know how they would have been read (and the writers' probable intents).  There is a polyvalience of a text and reality itself: a text is open to a variety of meanings, though not infinite.  Important to be aware of the type of interpretation.  Allegorization should not be confused with objectivity.  Each of us has access to more than one cultural-bound hermeneutic.  Scientists could also be believing Hebrews, for instance. 

Taking belief to be salient in scripture in shaping the identity of the religion is culturally-bound.  They came to be placed in a logical system that must be believed.  An alternative: narrative.  I am a Christian because that is my story (the historical narrative of God acting in history).  Metaphorical meanings are allowed in the later.  Moreover, Christianity can be seen as a sucession of paradigms.  Deconstructionism rejects meaning itself.  It is not a necessary course.  Even so, some parts of the text which were once read as literal (eg. slavary) are now skipped over.