Readers Reply

004

Fake BR?

I felt that I needed to contact you concerning a problem with my subscription. The last couple of issues someone has been slipping me an enjoyable, balanced magazine with a BR cover on it. This magazine seems to be presenting more articles that reflect traditional approaches to biblical studies while still pointing to weaknesses of the extreme right. I was almost fooled into thinking it was BR by the presence of ridiculous advertising (“Revelation Revisited,” “The Real Cause of AIDS”).

Please keep my inauthentic BR coming and give the people in charge of this mutiny a raise.

Historical Jesus

Bully Pulpit

After reading Luke T. Johnson’s foaming-at-the-mouth attack on the historical Jesus questers (“The Search for (the Wrong) Jesus,” BR 11:06), I wiped the scholarly spittle off my glasses and pieced together Johnson’s portrayal of the co-conspirators. According to Johnson, Borg, Mack and Crossan are self-promoters, camp-meeting goers, noisy media-manipulators, shoddy scholars, absurd reductionists, messianic hucksters, ideological dogmatists, uncritical canonizers, scholarly trumpeters, paper chasers, reformists, frenzied scavengers and rational reductivists with delusions of grandeur.

Besides the obvious defense of orthodoxy suggested by Johnson’s diatribe, he ignores the true value of historical research into the life and times of Jesus. Today, media manipulators have joined up with the televangelists and cynical power brokers to form so-called Christian coalitions to foist their political and economic agenda on the U.S. Jesus is being used to market questionable economic and foreign policies, while the mainline churches offer little or no resistance.

In my experience, people of faith, when confronted with this barrage of Christian political action and their Madison avenue image-makers, find great solace and renewed faith in the research into the historical Jesus.

Sorry, Luke. Nobody likes a bully.

In This Corner, Hamlet…

Bravo BR!

Luke T. Johnson’s article, “The Search for (the Wrong) Jesus,” eloquently reveals what many of us knew but couldn’t say so well. I’d like to see his message town-cried to every teacher of the scriptures. For too long so-called scholars have abused the historical-critical method, demanding that it do what it was never meant to do: keep us from a close reading of the text. “The play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king”—or to speak colloquially, “It’s the text, stupid.”

Many thanks, Luke Johnson, for letting the BR audience know that “the emperor [truly] has no clothes.”

…In That Corner, Hamlet

While Luke T. Johnson’s “The Search for (the Wrong) Jesus” offers Shakespeare no competition, it does remind me of Queen Gertrude’s comment in Hamlet, “The lady protests too much, methinks!”

His use of savage expressions to attack other scholars are legion. He describes (11 times) their self-promotion, especially the Jesus Seminar’s, as “hucksterism,” “media manipulation,” “publicity forays.”

He selects (19 times) the most abrasive words to describe the scholarly efforts of others: “shaky,” “shoddy,” sloppy,” “absurd,” “silly,” “meretricious.”

Finally, he cannot resist making personal attacks with assertions like “delusions of grandeur,” “a paranoid aura” and “an obsessive need.”

This all leads me (and Queen Gertrude) to ask, “Who has the obsessive 005need?” Johnson acts rather like the preacher who wrote in the margin of his sermon, “Weak point. Pound the pulpit!”

I became a fellow of the Jesus Seminar shortly after it began, not from an academic position but from a 45-year-career as a parish pastor. What I have seen has been nothing like “hucksterism.” It has been a genuine effort to bridge the gap between town and gown, as biblical scholarship has too often been kept as a private preserve of the elite.

The issue is simply this: A continued search for the historical Jesus will always produce disparate results. When the Church Fathers settled upon the most useful additions to the Bible, they canonized diversity. No wonder we have a thousand competing images of Christ.

But we still have only one Jesus. As his disciple, I am eager to seek out, as best I can, the words he most likely spoke, and then ask, “Does the Christ in whom I believe bear any resemblance at all to Jesus himself?” Cheap shots aimed at sincere, responsible scholars hardly comport with the importance of this “search,” much less with the image I have of Jesus.

For Brother Luke, Queen Gertrude and I have only one question: “Hey, why are you so nervous?”

Sauce for the Gander

Thank you for publishing all sides of the ongoing debate in historical Jesus studies. This happens all too rarely.

I am surprised by the seriousness with which the scholars take themselves. In a nation where Billy Graham is the most influential Christian, I don’t think any scholar or group of scholars could lead people astray…or lead them anywhere at all. Everything we write eventually ends up on the remainder table.

But what if the demonic Jesus Seminar is trying to undermine orthodoxy under the guise of scholarship? Haven’t the traditionalists always tried to shore up orthodoxy using the same means?

Of course, all this snarling and growling at each other does make good theater, and, since the Enlightenment, free thinkers are no longer burned at the stake. Thank you, Voltaire.

006

The Value of “Intellectual Messiness”

Professor Johnson has missed the entire point! Actually he has overlooked numerous points in his sad diatribe against the scholars who have bravely dared re-examine Christian origins and the history of the man Jesus of Nazareth. (see “The Search for (the Wrong) Jesus,” BR 11:06)

The four canonical Gospels, Acts and the Epistles contain numerous Christologies. And at diverse times, and among diverse denominations, sects and ideological factions, numerous understandings of Jesus have been supposed on the basis of different combinations of selected Christological themes. Good Lord, there are hundreds of denominations and even more factions and ideological camps within the denominations. Jesus has always been “an elastic character.” And guess what this scholarship reveals? He was seen that way from the start!

The story of Jesus in the gospels of Mark and John alone is filled with numerous differences that cannot be overlooked by Johnson’s “etching” principle. Indeed, our forebears chose not “to etch,” but rather to let the Christian Church live with Scriptural resources that invoke and invite numerous constructions of Jesus. This is a great good. To be sure, it makes Christianity intellectually messy—and this obviously really bothers Johnson—but that is his problem. The deep value in this messy situation is that individuals and groups can hear a word, catch a passing glimpse, hook together some set of claims about this mysterious man…and discover something of faith, hope and love.

Minimalist History

Putting the Minimalists in Their Place

I find myself in the very unaccustomed position of agreeing with many of the fundamentalists/literalists in praising Baruch Halpern’s article, “Erasing History—The Minimalist Assault on Ancient Israel,” BR 11:06. It was a breath of fresh, logical air after so much of the twaddle issuing from the “minimalists.”

Why Is Ancient Israel Silent?

Baruch Halpern in BR and William Dever in the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (“‘Will the Real Israel Please Stand Up?’ Archaeology and Israelite Historiography: Part 1, ” BASOR 297) do an excellent job of highlighting how the Bible minimalists ignore archaeology in their literary histories. Dever notes the undeniable presence of a unified physical culture beginning in the time of the monarchy, around the tenth century. However, neither Halpern nor Dever notes one interesting gap: The historical references to Israel and Judah derive not from these kingdoms but from foreigners. Even little Moab provides more information about the existence of an Israelite kingdom by that name than does the dynasty of Omri. Unless there is some statistical explanation related to what has been excavated, one question that needs to be answered is why we have records of other kingdoms mentioning Israel and Judah, but not the equivalent stelae and monuments from the kings of these countries. Apparently, Merneptah could mention Israel, but David and Solomon couldn’t.

Baruch Halpern responds:

It is amazing that we have no royal inscriptions from Israel or Judah even after the ninth century, down to the end of the biblical period. What we should conclude from the lacuna is unsure. But it is not a gap that ends with the beginning of Assyrian records of Israelite or Judahite kingdoms. As the well-known phrase says, “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

Unfair to Van Seters

Baruch Halpern’s “Erasing History—The Minimalist Assault on Ancient Israel,” BR 11:06, makes certain claims that are both unfair and inaccurate. Halpern attacks John Van Seters’s Prologue to History: The Yahwist as Historian in Genesis (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1992) by stating, “John Van Seters is even more vehement…In his view, no earlier sources were used in any Israelite writing about the past.” To the contrary, Van Seters wrote, “Thus, in the Jacob traditions I believe it is possible to show that there is the same basic stratification of sources with pre-J materials 007taken up and expanded by J and further supplemented by P…The fact remains that ancient historians by their own testimony made use of oral tradition and it seems quite reasonable to attribute some of the folkloristic material in Genesis to such sources” (p. 5). Van Seters explained, “The bulk of this book will focus on the activity of the Yahwist as an antiquarian historian, his use of older source materials, and his shaping of these into a vulgate tradition” (p. 6). Further, “The Yahwist’s account of creation and the paradise story is the product of research (historia) that includes both biblical and foreign sources” (p. 128). Finally, “The genealogical sequence of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob already existed in the tradition, but this was combined with the promises to transform the God of the fathers into the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” (p. 331).

Baruch Halpern responds:

My claim that Professor Van Seters denies that our historians had access to sources relates only to Van Seters’s work with the Former Prophets [Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings], and particularly the books of Kings. There, since the publication of In Search of History (1975), his instructive book on historiography in the Near East, his position on this question has been completely consistent.

AIDS Ad

Diverting Attention from the Cause of AIDS

BR is certainly free to publish any reasonable ads for which a client will pay. The recent advertisement for a book dealing with the “real cause of AIDS” (December 1995), however, deserves a response. It is true, Dr. Peter Duesberg disputes HIV as the cause of AIDS; it is equally true that he is the only major scientist to do so. The evidence for HIV as the etiological agent is overwhelming. One need only observe the results of the most recent epidemiological study in Britain, which followed some 1,200 hemophiliacs who became infected with HIV between 1979 and 1986 as a result of exposure to contaminated blood (Nature 377, p. 79). In the absence of any other factor, nearly 1,000 of these persons have since died from AIDS.

It is not clear why so many outside the scientific community refuse to believe HIV is the sole, specific cause of AIDS. Perhaps it is a simple refusal to accept HIV-positive status as a death sentence. Those who publish such works do more than waste the money of consumers. They provide an excuse for individuals who have no desire to alter behaviors that place them at risk.

Deadly Propaganda

For several years, I have enjoyed receiving and reading your publication. I have found it helpful in my ministry and in the preparation of the classes I teach. I have encouraged others with similar interests to subscribe to BR. I was shocked, however, to discover inside the back cover of the December 1995 issue a tabloid-style advertisement for a fraudulent and potentially harmful book on the “AIDS scam,” 008offered by Inside Story Communications. The book advertised is not only insulting to the thousands of men, women and children in this country who suffer from HIV infection and AIDS, it is also an affront to the thousands of health-care professionals and research experts who labor tirelessly in the field of AIDS care and research. The book advertised is, in a word, deadly. I have read it and can testify from the perspective of one who has been involved in this ministry for ten years that the “facts” presented in this book are nothing more than politicized propaganda from the religious right. This kind of misinformation and the outright lies could cost the lives of any number of innocent people. Is this the attitude of Christ? Is this the kind of hateful retribution against innocent victims of a deadly virus that your magazine seems to condone by allowing the book’s publishers to advertise in such a prominent place in your publication? If so, please consider this letter my notice that I no longer am interested in your publication and that I wish to have any additional issues refunded to me so that I can give the money to a worthy cause, such as my local AIDS relief center.

These letters raise a real problem—one for which we know no easy solution. The ad referred to contains nothing that is offensive or fraudulent on the face of it.

Rev. Robinson says that the book is “deadly,” that it contains “outright lies.” Even now, after we have printed the ad, what are we to do, say to the advertiser that Rev. Robinson says this, and we must believe Rev. Robinson, and therefore we will not accept the ad? Obviously the publisher will not agree with Rev. Robinson. Are we then required, in the interest of fairness, to read the book and make our own investigation of the book’s claims and Rev. Robinson’s charges?

On December 3, 1995, the New York Times (and many other newspapers) ran an article about this book. According to the article, the book’s co-author, Peter Duesberg, was once in an “elite group of scientists who competed for Nobel Prizes” and a tenured professor at the University of California at Berkeley. His career effectively ended when he made the claims in this book that HIV is not the cause of AIDS; rather, he says, AIDS usually results from drug abuse.

The article also says that Dr. Duesberg’s theory has been “thoroughly and repeatedly rejected by mainstream AIDS researchers.” But the New York Times makes no judgment of its own. The Times reports that, according to Peter Drotman, an assistant director for public health of the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, the book Dr. Duesberg co-authored could be injurious to health.

Our resolution of the problem facing us is as follows: In addition to publishing the foregoing letters and this response, if the publisher wishes to advertise this book in the future, we will place a suitable box next to the ad advising readers of judgments other than those of the authors regarding the cause of AIDS and the dangers some see in the book and its theories.—Ed.

Potpourri

What Is Inspired?

In his column “What Is—and Is Not—Inspired,” BR 11:05, Helmut Koester argues that the doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture has no support in the Bible. For Koester, Christian believers of all ages, and not the Scriptures, are inspired by the Spirit. While many of Koester’s points are good and accurate, they do not prove what he sets out to prove and he omits much of the relevant evidence. More critical still, Koester fails to see the New Testament view of Scripture in the context of the contemporary Jewish view.

True, “only one passage in the New Testament…speaks of the inspiration of Holy Scripture, 1 Timothy 3:16.” However, 2 Peter 2:21 states that the authors of Scripture were “moved by the Holy Spirit” and “spoke from God.” The manner in which the New Testament authors cite and refer to the Old Testament Scriptures also indicates that they accepted the standard Jewish view that the Scriptures are inspired. Paul, for example, describes the Scriptures as “the oracles of God” (Romans 3:2), a designation also used by Philo and Josephus and in the Letter of Aristeas. He attributes “holiness” to the Scriptures (Romans 1:2, cf. 7:2, “the Law is holy”). The divine character of Scripture is also clear in Galatians 3:8 and 3:22, where it is personified, and in the frequent instances where God is said to be the one speaking through Scripture (for example, 2 Corinthians 6:16, 1 Corinthians 14:21). Paul does appeal to other authorities in his letters, as Koester points out, but these are not on the same level as Scripture and are never introduced with the solemn words “it stands written,” Paul’s favorite way of 010introducing a scriptural quotation.

If New Testament authors do not assert the inspiration of the Old Testament very often, it is not because they did not believe it but because they took it for granted. Jews in the time of Jesus and Paul disagreed about many things, but not about the nature of the Jewish Scriptures. Josephus wrote that it was an instinct with every Jew to regard them as the decrees of God (Against Apion 1:42) and spoke of “the inspiration” that their authors “owed to God” (Antiquities 1:37–38). Philo wrote that the Scriptures are “not monuments of knowledge and vision, but are the divine commands and divine words” (Questions about Genesis 4:140). Rabbinic literature presents no less a view of Scripture: In the Babylonian Talmud (Sanhedrin 99a), despising the word of the Lord (Numbers 1:31) is explained as “maintain[ing] that the Torah is not from heaven,” including every verse, it goes on to say.

I could go on to cite evidence from the Pseudepigrapha, the Dead Sea Scrolls and so on.¹ The point is clear: “The New Testament writers, like all devout Jews in their time, believed that the Old Testament scriptures were inspired writings.” So state R.P.C. and A.T. Hanson, scholars who are not evangelical Christians with any axe to grind.²

Do the New Testament documents claim to be inspired? Koester is right to stress that they do not, although one could argue that in the case of Luke-Acts, at least, the author composed his work in a biblical style and saw it as a continuation of the Septuagint.³ True, only in 2 Peter 3:16 are New Testament documents included with “the other Scriptures,” in that case referring to Paul’s letters. The inspiration of the New Testament is largely a defensible theological deduction based on the finality of the Christ event and on God’s habit of revealing Himself in both deed and word.

The Scriptures were, of course, produced in human cultures and environments, as Koester insists. Does this mean they are not inspired? It certainly does not stop Paul from saying to the church in Corinth that the Old Testament was written “for us” and “for our instruction” (1 Corinthians 9:10, 10:11). Paul treats the Scriptures as if they speak directly to contemporary concerns.

Koester is also correct to observe that some early Christians abbreviated, embellished and paraphrased the Scriptures. But early Jews did the same to their Scriptures without demeaning their inspiration, as the paraphrases of the 011Targums and the midrashic expansions of Genesis and Exodus in Jubilees attest.

Finally, Koester does a great service in highlighting the fact that Christian believers are people of the Spirit. We might even go along with him and call them inspired (although that term is reserved for Scripture). However, it does not follow from this that the Scriptures are not inspired. Running through Koester’s column is the false assumption that the Spirit and the word are unrelated entities. To separate the Spirit from the word is totally foreign to biblical thought. The Spirit inspired the word, testifies to it and illumines it. The two work together in creation, in redemption and in giving believers new life and right conduct.⁴

Modern Christians may wish to question the sense in which the Scriptures are inspired. They certainly need to clarify what is meant and not meant by the term. Nonetheless, Christians who want to follow the teaching of the New Testament must embrace the doctrine of the inspiration of the Scriptures.

Helmut Koester responds:

Dr. Rosner is, of course, right in his insistence that the scriptures of Israel were authoritative writings for the followers of Jesus and that they were repeatedly referred to as the written divine voice. It is still remarkable, however, that there is so little explicit reference to these writings as inspired. On the other hand, the claim is pervasive that those who confess Jesus as Lord (1 Corinthians 12:3) and those who speak and prophecy in the congregation (1 Corinthians 14) are inspired. Acknowledged divine authority for the scriptures of Israel is not necessarily identical with an explicit assertion of their inspiration.

To be sure, word and Spirit should not be separated. It is not, however, the written word of the scriptures through which the Spirit comes to the believer, but the spoken word of the proclamation, the living voice of the gospel—in the New Testament as well as today.

I cannot, therefore, agree with Dr. Rosner’s conclusion that “Christians who want to follow the teaching of the New Testament must embrace the doctrine of the inspiration of the Scriptures.” Such doctrine cannot be derived from the New Testament itself. Rather this doctrine began to be developed by the second-century apologists, especially Justin Martyr, who borrowed from Judaism the concept of the inspiration of the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. The doctrine was then fully developed at the beginning of the third century by the Alexandrian theologian Origen, who asserted that in both Testaments the letters of scripture were inspired symbols for spiritual truths. It is a doctrine that is entirely alien to the concept of inspiration found in the writers of the New Testament.

Fake BR?