Jots & Tittles

016

Best of BR

Bible scholars Dieter Georgi and Jonathan Klawans share the prize for having written the best articles to appear in these pages in 2000 and 2001. This year’s judges for the biennial Best of BR award were Howard Clark Kee, William Goodwin Aurelio Professor of Biblical Studies Emeritus at Boston University, and Pamela J. Milne, professor of women”s studies at the University of Windsor, Ontario.

In his article “Was Jesus’ Last Supper a Seder?” BR 17:05, Jonathan Klawans, of Boston University, traces the development of the Passover Seder in Jewish tradition and then describes how New Testament scholars have attempted to identify Jesus’ Last Supper as a Seder. Judge Kee commended Klawans’s skillful use of both Jewish and Christian sources in determining that the identification simply cannot be made. According to Kee, Klawans effectively demonstrates that “the rabbinic traditions drawn on by scholars are just too late to depict how Jews celebrated the Passover in the time of Jesus.”

In “Was the Early Church Jewish?” BR 17:06, Dieter Georgi, of Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University in Frankfurt, Germany, argues that the polemical attacks on Judaism in the New Testament should not be seen as evidence that Jesus and his followers had radically separated from Judaism. Rather, these attacks continue a long Jewish tradition of internal criticism most familiar from the prophecies of Jeremiah and Amos. They reflect the pluralism and diversity within Judaism at the time, not a separation from Judaism. Writes judge Milne, “That Jesus was born a Jew, lived as a Jew and died a Jew, and that his early followers were firmly within Judaism for most of the first century C.E., is not a new idea to scholars. But the concept may not have taken root as deeply as it needs to within contemporary Christianity. According to Milne, Georgi’s article “demonstrates the importance of good biblical scholarship to an ethical and just society. Biblical scholarship is not without contemporary relevance. So long as anti-Semitism continues to plague our world, the question with which Georgi ends his article is one that must continue to be asked: ‘How can…anyone assume…that Jesus, Peter or Paul would want to identify with Christians and not with the Jews?’”

The Best of BR award is made possible by the generous support of the Leopold and Clara M. Fellner Charitable Foundation, through its trustee Frederick L. Simmons.

On Exhibit

The dominant image of Jesus in the West today is that of a slender man with long, wavy hair, an aquiline nose, and large, melancholy eyes. Yet the Bible is silent on the subject of Jesus’ physical appearance (see “The Two Faces of Jesus”). Our idea of how Jesus and his mother Mary looked comes more from famous works of art like Michelangelo’s Pietà or da Vinci’s Last Supper than from scripture.

A new exhibition at the American Bible Society in New York showcases 114 beautiful, and influential, artistic renderings of Jesus and Mary, dating from the early Middle Ages to the 20th century. Icons or Portraits? Images of Jesus and Mary, in New York until November 16, includes works by the Italian masters Donatello and Andrea del Verrocchio, and many other rare pieces: a Chinese enameled flask depicting the Annunciation, for example, and a 01717th-century German memento mori—an ivory statue of the infant Christ reclining on a cross, his head pillowed on a skull. All of the objects on view come from the holdings of Michael Hall, a former Hollywood actor who has spent decades collecting primarily baroque art. For more information, contact the American Bible Society, 1865 Broadway, New York, NY, phone: (212) 408–1500, or visit their Web site: www.americanbible.org.

Three thousand miles away, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles presents Songs of Praise: Illuminated Choir Books. On display through October 13 are 21 illuminated manuscripts and leaves from choir books, all dating from the 12th to the 16th century. Because they stood open on lecterns during services, medieval choir books were often sumptuously illuminated to complement the beauty of the church sanctuary. Contact the Getty Museum, 1200 Getty Center Drive, Los Angeles; phone: (310) 440–7360; Web: www.getty.edu.

017

The Bible in the News

It all started out innocently enough. How, I wondered, have scripture’s less savory females—what my students would call the biblical babes—fared in the daily press?

From my archives, I unearthed a Wall Street Journal feature, dated March 16, 1998—the height of the Bill and Monica scandal. The author had bestowed upon evangelist Billy Graham “The Jezebel Award” in honor of his services “in alerting the nation to the dangers of the temptresses who cause men to lower their moral standards.” There was, I immediately realized, something wrong with this award—not with its recipient (in this case, at least), but with its name.

Was Jezebel a temptress? Clearly this is how popular imagination has captured her. But, biblically speaking, her seductions were more frequently associated with idolatry than adultery. She is regularly condemned as a Baal worshiper, but only rarely does the text speak directly about her sexual attractions—although there may be a hint of such in Jezebel’s final scene. Like an over-the-top Gloria Swanson in “Sunset Boulevard,” the aged Baal-promoter paints her face, adorns her hair and waits at the window, presumably with hopes of flattering her divinely appointed assassin, Jehu (2 Kings 9:30–32).

A New Yorker columnist later that same year (October 5, 1998) was surely on firmer ground, biblically speaking, when she wrote: “The story of Bill Clinton’s downfall, like that of Samson’s, hinges on a moment of weary giving in to a woman’s entreaties.” That woman was, of course, Delilah. Still other pundits saw our president as a present-day David, with Monica playing the role of Bathsheba.

But in politics, as in popular culture, four years are like four millennia—ancient history. In the newspaper of mid-2002, Jezebel is most likely to pop up in music, in the name of not one but two Goth rock bands called Gene Loves Jezebel. The identically named bands are headed by twin brothers. Given her reputation, it is not surprising that this modern-day Jezebel has more than one lover.

Scouring the bands’ homepages (yes, I conduct rigorous and arduous research for these columns!) for traces of the biblical Jezebel, I found a promising reference to Bad Religion. Might this be a reference to Jezebel’s idolatry? Old fogey that I am, I had no idea that this was another group that has apparently been at the center of punk for more than a decade.

Searches for Delilah resulted in a few colorful nuggets as well. The owners of Delilah’s Gentlemen’s Club in Tampa sought to portray their establishment as “classy,” with its well-lighted parking lots and women dressed (?) in “glamorous” bikinis and skirts. And the widely syndicated late-night radio show “Delilah After Dark” features mellow tunes and soothing conversation. It’s hard to know what Samson’s Delilah would have made of these.

It is surprising, given their generally unfavorable press in both antiquity and the modern world, that Delilah still appears, albeit rarely, as a proper name, as does Bathsheba. (I am not aware of anyone named Jezebel, but, as always, I am ready to be corrected.) I am not sure why a leading British sailing prize is called the Bathsheba Trophy, although it does seem fitting that last year’s winner was named Desperado. And I am absolutely fascinated to discover, from a report in the Boston Herald (March 19, 2001), that one of only three Massachusetts women executed in the 18th century was Bathsheba Ruggles Spooner. She was accused of conspiring “with her teenage lover and two soldiers to murder her husband.” His name? Joshua. Well, I suppose you can’t win ‘em all!

Best of BR