Bible Books

010

Straining Gnats Swallowing Camels

Who Was Jesus?

N. T. Wright
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1993) 107 pp., $8.99 (paper)

“Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel. Woe unto you, scribes …” (Matthew 23:24–25).

In Who Was Jesus our guide, N. T. Wright, strains gnats in reviewing recent popular books about Jesus, and swallows the camel, summarizing in the first chapter the last 300 years of research on the historical Jesus and in the last chapter summarizing his own views.

The heart of the book consists of Wright’s analysis of the work of three authors—Barbara Thiering, A. N. Wilson and John Spong. First to be considered is Thiering’s, originally published as Jesus the Man: An Interpretation from the Dead Sea Scrolls (1992), and titled in this country Jesus & the Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Unlocking the Secrets of His Life Story (1992),^a a popularization of the Australian scholar’s earlier studies.^b Wright describes Thiering’s work as “one of the strangest” books about Jesus and he is probably correct. Its form is odd—35 chapters in the first 176 pages and four appendixes in the last 300 pages—and its content odder still.

Thiering’s book begins correctly enough, showing how the Jewish sectarian Essenes, whose Dead Sea Scrolls were first discovered in 1947, reread the Bible’s ancient prophecies and applied them to their own recent history. After quoting each verse from a text they immediately appended “Interpreted [this means] …” using the Hebrew term “pesher.” But Thiering claims that those Essenes not only reread the distant past as a coded description of their own recent history, they also rewrote their own recent history as a coded description for the future to interpret. For example, Thiering claims that the Essenes at Qumran wrote the Gospels and that John the Baptist is actually the Teacher of Righteousness, with Jesus being the Evil Priest whom he opposes. Jesus, Thiering further claims, was crucified at Qumran but survived to travel the Mediterranean with Peter and Paul, to wed Mary Magdalene and to have three children, to divorce her and remarry, and then to die sometime in the 60s. Not only is the basis for all this an invalid transformation of pesher from decoded past to encoded present, Thiering’s decoding of the Gospels and Acts as Essene history is nothing more than an “elaborate and fantastic theory” (p. 23), in Wright’s words.

Wright next turns to another 1992 book, Jesus, by the British journalist, novelist and biographer, A. N. Wilson. For Wilson, Jesus was a “simple Galilean holy man who would have been horrified at what is now done in his name.” He was conceived in normal human fashion, was born in Nazareth not Bethlehem, did not think he was the Messiah or Son of God, and, when deserted by his followers, was crucified by the Romans because of the messianic expectations the crowds had invested in him. His body was probably taken back to Galilee and his brother James reassembled his followers, assuring them that all had happened according to the Scriptures. Thereafter, Paul invented Christianity and influenced the authors of the first three Gospels to write not unbiased accounts but “thoroughly prejudiced 011Christian propaganda.”

Wright argues that “Wilson is running on a line parallel to the actual truth, and not very far away,” but then criticizes him on minor details of geography and history, as well as on major issues of theology and interpretation. Wright’s judgments are often fair and accurate, but Wilson wrong does not make Wright right. One example suffices: Resurrection in first-century Judaism, Wright correctly claims, was not about the resuscitation of individual corpses but about the corporate restoration of God’s whole people at some magnificent future moment. “Claiming that the original leader was alive again was simply not an option. Unless, of course he was,” Wright says. Not quite. For instance, Paul, as a Pharisee, had believed in the general resurrection at the end of time and, accepting Jesus as its present “first fruits,” concluded that the end of the world had already begun and would soon conclude. That is certainly one early Christian way of understanding the continued experience of Jesus’ empowering presence among his followers, but it has never been the only one. Paul did not invent Christianity but only that small and possibly overrated part known as Pauline Christianity.

Wright then discusses Born of a Woman: A Bishop Rethinks the Birth of Jesus, by John Selby Spong, the Episcopal bishop of Newark, New Jersey. Spong writes that Jesus’ birth stories were not meant literally and that his conception was most likely due to rape. Spong goes on to write that taking the Bible literally, especially the virginal conception, has led to male domination over women, and that Jesus probably wed Mary Magdalene.

Spong claims that the stories about Jesus should be understood as midrash, from the Hebrew root “DRS,” meaning to search, inquire or investigate, especially in the sense of searching the Scriptures. One feature within the various subtypes of midrash is the expansion of a canonical text by the creation of new incidents intended to address questions, objections or difficulties in the text. As Wright argues, the Gospels as a whole are not midrash, even in the widest possible use of that term, but, contrary to Wright’s suggestions, contained within the Gospels’ present biographical format are very many midrashic details, units and even whole chapters—incidents in the life of Jesus that owe much more to scriptural fulfillment than to historical remembrance. For example, whether itself midrash or not, the infancy narrative in Matthew 1–2 was created on the model of contemporary midrashic expansions of the Moses birth story from Exodus 1–2. To cite another example, the virginal conception of Jesus, found in the independent birth stories of Matthew and Luke and based on Isaiah 7:14, derives from a desire to see the Bible fulfilled, not from medical examination.

The debate over a literal (Wright) or mythical (Spong) understanding of the virginal conception distracts us from the real question. Followers of Augustus Caesar and of Jesus both claimed that their leaders had descended from divine and human conjunction. If one is “skeptical about skepticism” (to use Wright’s phrase), take both literally or else take both mythically and then choose: Are you with Augustus (literally or mythically) or Jesus (literally or mythically)? Is the divine manifest for you in imperial grandeur or in peasant protest? Nowhere, to offer more fundamental criticism, does Wright ever face the lethal deceit that corrupts the soul of Christianity, hardens its heart and poisons its vision: the claim that our faith rests on fact, not on interpretation, and that our myth is history while yours is a lie.

In his preface, Wright mentions his “conviction that serious study of the gospels is best done within the context of a worshiping community.” That may be nothing but the standard overstatement of dedicatory prose, because it immediately mentions the “Christian community that meets in Worcester College Chapel, Oxford.” If it is not, I flatly reject it. The only thing sillier and sadder than the dogmatic search for the historical Jesus is the anti-dogmatic one. Historical—as distinct from apologetic—research on any subject can be adequately done by anyone interested enough to train and work carefully on the data. If we must now “attempt to set Jesus firmly into his Jewish context,” as Wright says, are not Jewish scholars (Geza Vermes for example) at least equally competent for such serious study?

Wright’s summary of historical Jesus research to date falls somewhere between the tendentious and the hilarious. The first, or “old,” quest, from the 18th century to the 20th century, is correctly described as ranging from Reimarus to Schweitzer. Next comes the second, or “new,” quest starting with Ernst Käseman in the early 1950s. But, in a somewhat startling move, Wright places work in the 1980s—the Jesus Seminar, Burton Mack and myself—as part of the second quest’s “new lease on life.” I hereby challenge Wright to show in print where my book, for example, is “stuck in the post-Bultmannian^c anguish about whether we could really find out anything about Jesus, and even about whether we ought to try.” That taxonomy’s logic becomes clear, however, when Wright announces a third quest (S.G.F. Brandon, Geza Vermes, Ben Meyer, A. E. Harvey, Marcus J. Borg, E. P. Sanders), centered with cultural impertinence on British or British-trained scholars and heading for consummation with Wright himself. Ah yes, of course: for harried England and St. George!

Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible

Emanuel Tov
(Minneapolis, MN: Fortress; Assen, Neth.: Van Gorcum, 1992) 496 pp. (including 30 plates), $39.95

Others could have written small sections of this work better, but no one other than Emanuel Tov could have better written the entire book. This comprehensive analysis of the text of the Hebrew Bible opens with a discussion of the need for textual criticism. Because every copy of the Bible contains errors, any serious biblical study must include textual criticism. But it is about as popular as taxes. Like taxes, however, there is likely to be wider willing participation once the need is rationally considered.

Tov describes the many biblical sources—what scholars call “textual witnesses”—in various languages (including the Dead Sea Scrolls), the history of the biblical text and the way scribes copied and passed on the text over millennia. In this elaborate context, Tov considers the aim and procedures of textual criticism, the criteria for evaluating readings, the interrelationship between textual criticism and literary criticism and the important art of conjectural emendation.

The volume is richly illustrated with frequent textual examples, 41 tables and 30 photographs. A revised and enlarged edition of a 1989 Hebrew original, the translation reads smoothly and easily. The date of the original (together with 012numerous other Bible translations and commentaries) attests to the routine availability of the biblical Dead Sea Scrolls to scholars—contrary to the charges of the popular press.

Tov has established a broad base for the dialogue he conducts here. From his work on the Hebrew University Bible Project, he knows intimately the wide range of textual resources. He is conversant with the Dead Sea Scrolls, the rabbis, Origen and Jerome, the medieval Masoretes and the history of textual research from its beginnings in the 17th century with Morinus, Cappellus and Simon up to the present. And he is in touch with the latest textual research around the globe.

The work is suffused with wisdom as well as learning. Tov objectively presents a fair exposition of alternate views, though he clearly and moderately argues for the positions he considers most appropriate.

Tov writes:

“One of the objectives of this book is to drive home the realization that [the Masoretic text (MT), the traditional Hebrew text] and the biblical text are not identical concepts. [The MT] is only one representative of the greater complex of sources which reflect the biblical text.”

Curiously, one of the book’s limitations centers on Tov’s treatment of the MT. Because it is so recent that the Dead Sea Scrolls have increased our understanding of the biblical texts, Tov has not yet achieved a consistent focus or firm terminology regarding the MT. He uses the term “MT” in various senses, ranging from one ancient form (among others) of the consonantal text that generally agrees with the medieval MT, through the text used by the rabbis, the vocalized and accented text of the medieval Masoretes, and the Hebrew text of modern printed Bibles. In future editions, this could easily be remedied, as could the occasional lack of gender-inclusive language.

But these minor limitations do not affect the volume’s status as the best resource on this topic to put in the hands of an aspiring young student—or of a veteran biblical scholar. In fact, every reader of BR, even if unable to read Hebrew, could spend a very rewarding hour browsing through this book, thanks to its many illuminating illustrations.

The Tablet And The Scroll, Near Eastern Studies in Honor of William W. Hallo

M. E. Cohen, D. C. Snell and D. B. Weisberg, editors
(Bethesda, MD: CDL Press, 1993) 333 pp., $58

This is a beautifully, even lovingly, produced festschrift to mark the 65th birthday of William W. Hallo, a leading American biblical scholar and Assyriologist.^d Long a member of the Yale faculty and of BR’s Editorial Advisory Board, Hallo lives by grace: At the age of 11, in March 1939, he was one of the last Jews to escape from Nazi Germany. He is now the curator of the Babylonian Collection and William M. Laffan Professor of Assyriology and Babylonian Literature at Yale.

This large, folio-size book includes contributions by some of the world’s leading biblical scholars and Assyriologists. To mention only a few of the more than 50 contributors would do injustice to the rest. Most of the articles are technical 013expositions, but a few will interest and enlighten the layperson as well.

One that caught my eye discusses criteria for determining whether a biblical text has been borrowed, at least in part, from earlier Mesopotamian or, less frequently, Egyptian literature. The best-known example is the biblical Flood story, said to be borrowed in part from an earlier Mesopotamian tale, but there are a number of others.

How do we decide whether a literary relationship exists between two texts that have some similarities, but also some differences, asks Jeffrey H. Tigay of the University of Pennsylvania in an article entitled “On Evaluating Claims of Literary Borrowing.” The study of these literary relationships often unlocks the processes by which the biblical texts were composed and transmitted. This is sometimes referred to as the comparative method in biblical studies.

In determining whether there is a literary relationship or borrowing, you rather obviously look first at the similarities and the differences. But “how similar must two literary phenomena be?” And “how much dissimilarity can we tolerate between parallels before dismissing the claims of parallelism or relationship?”

Tigay notes that different scholars have come to differing conclusions on most of the alleged borrowings in the Bible. Thus Theodor Gaster concluded that the Hebrew compiler of Genesis had “a cuneiform original before him.” On the other hand, the English scholar Alan Millard, who has often written for this magazine, rejects even the most outstanding case of biblical borrowing—on which most other scholars agree; that is, the literary dependence of the biblical Flood story on an earlier Babylonian flood story. According to Millard, even in this case “it has yet to be shown that there was borrowing, even indirectly.”

Is there a way out of this impasse, asks Tigay.

According to William F. Albright, the dean of biblical archaeologists of an earlier generation, we can conclude that there has been literary borrowing only “where the [shared] motif is complex, forming a pattern.”

Although this demand for complexity of pattern seems so reasonable that few would challenge it, Tigay feels that it can be applied “too rigidly” and therefore “cause us to overlook some real parallels.”

Other factors must also be considered:

• Were channels of transmission between the donor culture and the recipient culture easily available?

• What is the likelihood that a specific author was familiar with the motifs or literature stemming from a particular foreign provenience?

• Are there other parallels from the same source either in the same text or in other texts from the same period?

Tigay also advocates what he calls an empirical approach. Instead of trying to formulate principles and theories, Tigay proposes to look for guidance to some Mesopotamian texts that are indisputably related to later texts found outside of Mesopotamia. These later texts are copies or translations of the originals. Thus, Tigay examines an Akkadian version of the Mesopotamian myth of Nergal and Ereshkigal. The Akkadian version of the myth was found at Tell el-Amarna in Egypt (dating from the 14th century B.C.) and at Sultantepe in modern Turkey (from the eighth or seventh century B.C.). He also looks at a Hittite version of the Gilgamesh epic and compares that with the Old Babylonian version and the Standard Babylonian version.

In each case, if we apply too strictly the criterion of similarity of complex patterns, we might conclude that there was no borrowing. Yet, in these cases, we know otherwise. Moreover, the differences in these related versions are just the kind of differences we find between the biblical texts and the texts they are allegedly borrowed from: In the non-biblical texts Tigay examines, the texts that borrow differ in details and both abbreviate and modify the borrowed text; the texts that borrow change the source text to reflect the borrower’s ideology and the local interests, “precisely as the Bible appears to have done.”

True, the borrowings made by the biblical authors have sometimes been used in an effort to undermine the Bible. As early as the first century, Greek detractors of the Torah responded to Jews who derided the Greek myths by charging that such biblical stories as the Tower of Babel were no less myths than those composed for Greek religious purposes.

More recently, in the 19th century, the so-called Babel-Bible controversy descended to anti-Semitic polemics when some “Babelist” scholars argued that the contents of the Bible were essentially derived from Babylonia and were hardly better, showing little difference or originality.

On the other hand, more recent considerations of the parallels between biblical texts and Mesopotamian literature enrich our understanding of the Bible. In the words of E. A. Speiser, Tigay’s predecessor at the University of Pennsylvania:

“It is only by isolating first the inherited and borrowed elements that we can gain a true appreciation of the final contribution of the Bible; the independent achievement is thus brought out in clearer relief.”¹

Thus, the first creation story (Genesis 1:1–2:3) is seen as dependent on the Babylonian Enuma Elish myth; the Flood story on Gilgamesh. The creation story in Genesis 1 may also have been inspired by a cosmogonic passage in the Egyptian text known as “The Instruction for King Meri-ka-Re.” The eat-drink-and-enjoy-for-your-days-are-fleeting passage from Ecclesiastes 9:7–9 (also known as the carpe diem [seize the day] passage) was also borrowed from Gilgamesh (see the sidebar to this section).

Tigay recognizes that his

“conclusion will be more welcome to ‘parallelomaniacs’ than to their opponents, and in incautious hands it can be misused. But to ignore it would shackle us in recognizing real parallels that are valuable in illustrating both the rootedness of the Bible in its Near Eastern environment and its own creativity.”

Straining Gnats Swallowing Camels

Who Was Jesus?