I HAVE REPEATED THAT the mid-1990s book "The Historical Jesus" of John Dominic Crossan had the effect of sparking my interest in and taking seriously the Gospels and, from there, the writings of the rest of the Second Testament. And, inevitably from that, the Jewish Bible. But I've also mentioned that I have become very skeptical about the "historical Jesus" business since then. I freely admit that along the way I have adopted some of that skepticism from such eminent scholars as Walter Brueggemann, Luke Timothy Johnson and Marilynne Robinson.
Recently reading about the theories, modern and quite old, about the various hands that went into the creation of the First Testament, I have found myself far more skeptical about similar claims made about the early Christian texts which have a far shorter history before they became the canon of orthodox Christian Scripture. I think a lot of New Testament Scholars envy the complex richness of First Testament scholarship and they want those kinds of publication generating opportunities for themselves. I have gone from taking the claims of the various, often disagreeing modern pruners and adders to and ideologically interpreting scholars about the Christian scriptures as being no more reliable than those who produced the canonical books of the Second Testament. And, in some ways, for me, quite less so, so removed from the milieu in which Jesus and his earliest followers lived.
As an aside, I have come to ask why the "historical Jesus" industry is allowed to have it both ways, discrediting the canonical Gospels because they were written a few decades after Jesus lived because they were written too late to be credible while allowing the far later ones, even some of them making clearly inauthentic and incredible claims and even some pretty wacky "sayings," more current cred. Such as the devalued thing that current cred is. They should get their industrial standards straightened out, like right now.
I think the reason Luke and the others wrote what they did (and with some details, we have a pretty reliable text of what they did) is because they knew people who knew Jesus or who learned from those who did and those things are what they told them. It's not out of the question that some of them may have known or witnessed his named followers or been eye witness to some of it. And they believed they were saying what was said about him was accurate. That is while it's clear none of them believed they were producing a biography, accurate in every detail chronology or even a comprehensive account of what was taught and what happened. I think the author of Mark probably didn't have time or paper or the educational background nearly as much as the author of Luke-Acts did.
And I think when they said Jesus was talking about life and death, in a time and place when early and often violent death was so common, that's what they were talking about. I think people were probably, day to day, even more anxious about our fate at death than modern people are till they face death full on. When Jesus had Lazarus and the rich man existing in present time versions of what Christianity interpreted as heaven and hell, I think that's what they think he meant. And I think the obscure passages of Jesus prophesying were presented in quite confusing terms because that's the nature of prophesy, as done by Jesus as it was the seers of Isaiah and Jeremiah. Just what he was referring to is open to interpretation.
As to the use of metaphor by Jesus, given his life and violent death, the testimony about the Resurrection, life and death, the two richest sources of metaphorical potential, it wouldn't be anything but expected that he and his followers would use those terms metaphorically to deal with the pre-decease vicissitudes of human experience and to describe things we cannot experience. The very act of using terms metaphorically requires there to be common aspects of what is used metaphorically and what those are used to describe. But sometimes life and death and claims about life after death aren't metaphors but facts and claims about those. If that were not the case the metaphor would be powerless to describe anything. And, unless you see the risen Jesus, unless you see what was described, when it comes to Resurrection, human beings are stuck with relying on the metaphors. And even if you saw Jesus risen from death, if you wanted to talk about it, that's how you'd probably do it.
Try reading some modern theoretical physics and tell me which is more sensible in human terms. Oh, you'll need more math than you probably have. Otherwise, like other than a few thousand people in the world, including me, you have to take that on faith. Though, like me, you aren't required to believe it. Which of the conflicting multiverse legends of physics are you to choose?
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I can say that the commentary of The Jewish Study Bible published by The Jewish Publications Society and, right now, the collection of Essays in the back of the book will probably influence me much more than Crossan or the better of his colleagues will. And the more I look at the scholarship and careers of some of them, I don't hold them to be reliable. In a few cases, even some who got faculty positions at some of the more elite universities out of the fame they got from the "historical Jesus" fad, I don't find them credible.
Among the things I've gotten from reading the JSB has been its account of not only commentary after the present texts of Scripture have been determined but the way that all through the production of the texts the insertion and incorporation of commentary on the earliest kernels of the various books has been going on and what we have is a rich and varied and often conflicting compound based in the interpretations of large numbers of unknown rabbis, editors, theologians, priests, etc. based on their understandings, their preferences and, in the way of every human language document ever produced, influenced by often very different experiences and points of view and, so, commentary on scripture is an extremely hard thing to do but you can't read it without doing that. So it's not any great surprise it's often done badly. For example,
Finally, some later comments on biblical passages occur within those passages themselves, at least in the text of the Bible has been in use for the past two millennia. Like modern readers, ancient readers penned explanations or reactions to the text they were reading in margins or between the lines. Some of these marginal comments were subsequently inserted into the text itself by scribes who copied the scroll containing the marginal comment. (It is also possible that some of these comments were inserted to begin with by scribes who made them as they were copying a scroll.) For example, 1 Kings 15.5 originally limited itself to a comment praising King David, and one important manuscript of the ancient Greek translation of Kings preserves that original text. A later scribe found the fulsome praise of David inconsistent with the story in 2 Sam. ch 11. That story is exceedingly critical of David for committing adultery with the wife of Uriah the Hittite (one of his own soldiers) and for having Uriah murdered to insure that the adultery was not discovered. Therefore, the scribe added a qualification in 1 Kings 15.5: "except in the matter of Uriah the Hittite." These words became part of the Masoretic Text, which thus contains both the original author's evaluation of David and a later reader's reaction to that evaluation.
And, more consequentially, I'd think, that's true of even the most central parts of Scripture, even THE CENTRAL text, Exodus.
Similarly, Exod. 22.24 originally read, "If you lend money to My "am," do not act toward them as a creditor; extract no interest from them." Now, the Hebrew word "am" usually means "people," but it can also mean "the poor" or "common folk, peasantry" (see Isa. 3.15; Ps.72.2; Neh. 5.1). To make clear that in this case the second of these meanings was to be understood, a later scribe added the words "to the poor among you" immediately after "'am." Since the meaning of "am" as "people" was more common, the scribe worried that without clarification the verse would be misread.
When I think of how I could be spending my dwindling days instead, teasing out the so abstract as to have no meaning games of modern philosophers, the thinking of "ethicists" whose primary professional activity is writing up lists of who it's Ok to let die of neglect or to actively murder, following the absolute trash of commercial "culture," cinematic "art,"(I was recently subjected to a Hallmark Christmas crap movie) I'd rather be doing this. Modernism turns out to be the ideological focusing on the equivalent of counting angels dancing on the head of a pin, materialist-atheist-scientism requires the demotion and inconsequence of human minds and modern kulcha follows suit, from the basest to the ritziest.
And as to "angels dancing on" which, contrary to the college-credentialed common received wisdom of my and he immediately preceding generations Aquinas doesn't seem to have proposed doing, it was an anti-Catholic early modern era Brit who seems to have made that polemical myth up. I wish I had a ten for every in-the-know university teacher,student or hanger on I heard make an in-the-know disdainful reference to that. If I had one for every time I got a comment as ignorant as yours, I might not be able to buy a crappy social media company but I could buy a better computer.
Unlike modern philosophy in its most esteemed form, I'll take anything that ends up with it being even slightly more likely the poor will receive the material support they need, enough so that it will contribute to their having a decent life, even if that is some "historical Jesus" text. I'll leave it to the atheist theoretical physicists to argue how many universes are generated when I hit the wrong key or my damned space bar sticks. I'll certainly take the moral conclusions of Crossan over the death lists of modern "ethics."
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