Readers Reply

002

Banned in the Big House

I am writing this letter to inform you of recent changes in the Massachusetts Department of Correction Inmate Mail Policy (103 CMR 481). Our current policy prohibits publications that contain sexually explicit pictorial material or material that features nudity from entering our facilities.

Attached to this letter is a form [not reprinted—Ed.] that indicates your publication was recently rejected from entering a state correctional facility or facilities in Massachusetts due to its containing material that fits the aforementioned description.

Drivel

Your authors appear to be intent on discrediting the Bible as the Word of God and destroying its credibility for your readers. They appear to be examples of what God said through Paul in the Book of Romans 1:22: “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.” And also in Psalm 14:1: “The fool has said in his heart, there is no God.”

Since I no longer wish to waste my time reading their drivel, I hereby direct you to cancel my subscription.

Jezebel

Whew!

I don’t even know where to begin in explaining my shock and utter disbelief at Mary Joan Winn Leith’s (whew!) column “First Lady Jezebel” (August 2004). She writes, “Despite her bad reputation, her marriage to King Ahab was actually a model partnership.” What trash! Is this writer even a believer? Maybe Mrs. Leith can only understand a marriage arrangement in which she, the female, has power and control. I bet she is a feminist liberal who eagerly yearns for a female president.

The Real Problem

It is difficult to defend Mary Joan Winn Leith’s comparison of Jezebel with Eleanor Roosevelt or Nancy Reagan. Describing Jezebel’s behavior toward Ahab as “solicitous” in the murderous Naboth affair and comparing her relationship with Ahab to “Mrs. Roosevelt with her polio stricken husband” is almost humorous. Further, I’m not sure what Jezebel did that is comparable to Mrs. Roosevelt’s work on civil rights. And can we really liken the establishment of pagan altars and the presence of 400 Baal priests at nightly dinners to Mrs. Reagan’s consultations with an astrologer?

The problem with Jezebel is not her personal behavior, but her evil influence on a nation, her willingness to murder dissenters and her immoral leadership. Leith’s column only encourages us to use our hedonistic culture as the standard 004rather than the Bible. The phrase “historical revisionism” comes to mind.

Please cancel my subscription. This was my first issue as a subscriber, but I have already lost confidence. I was looking for quality scholarship not politically correct media hype.

Spin Leith

Mary Joan Winn Leith ought to be writing biographies for current politicians. What spin she put on the life and behavior of Jezebel. Seldom have I seen such outrageous conclusions.

Granted, there are some good bad guys and bad good guys in the biblical text. That, of course, is the message of hope for most of us—that God can work through anyone, even someone unsavory like Rahab, Jacob, David or Jezebel, or any one of us—to accomplish the Divine purpose.

Offended

I am very distressed by Mary Joan Winn Leith’s column “First Lady Jezebel.”

The comparison of God to an abusive husband is repulsive. These comments seem to have been written by an individual trying to fit God into human standards.

The article’s implication that the Bible, the unerring word of God and the framework of Christianity, was “edited” by man at his whim for “political” reasons is simply unacceptable in any truly Christian circle. This opinion has no place in a magazine that claims to provide “the popular reader” with “first-rate, reader-friendly biblical scholarship” (as stated on your Web site).

If the magazine continues in this tone, I cannot continue to support its publication by my subscription.

Supportive Wife

Professor Leith has a point, a narrow one: Jezebel was a supportive wife. As Sapphira supported Ananias (Acts 5:1ff.), and Bonnie, Clyde. A statesman’s wife, however, would have encouraged Ahab to take the long view. “Get a grip. You’re the king of (Northern) Israel. Why do you need Naboth’s vineyard?” Instead, “solicitous, encouraging” Jezebel launched Ahab on a course that shattered Israel’s shalom (peace) and formed a link in the chain of events that led to Assyrian captivity.

Too Bad She’s Right

Mary Joan Leith might actually be right. Ahab and Jezebel’s relationship—which was characterized by his weakness and her manipulation and cruelty and which had devastating consequences for those under their watch—might well be the “model” for “modern marriage.” This is perhaps tragically true.

Wiesel

Magical Midrash

Charles Fenyvesi’s review of Elie Wiesel’s Wise Men and Their Tales (August 2004), says much more about the reviewer’s lack of expertise in reading Jewish texts than about Wiesel’s volume. Fenyvesi describes midrash, Jewish biblical interpretation, as “little known, fascinating, sometimes bizarre, and frequently contradictory.” He goes on to disparage midrashic literature, suggesting that midrash was not included in the biblical canon “for good reason,” and that “many midrashim read like first drafts—confusing and rough.”

Although Fenyvesi describes midrash as “little known,” almost all of the midrashic corpus has been translated into English, and much of it has been “digested” for the nonspecialist (the best collections being Louis Ginzberg’s Legends of the Jews and Hayim Bialik and Yehoshuah Ravnitsky’s The Book of Legends).

That midrash is “fascinating, sometimes bizarre, and frequently contradictory” is of course true. For those trained in its ways, however, this is the magic of midrashic literature, and not a reason for disparagement. The same material that Fenyvesi finds “confusing and rough,” those in the know (Jews and non-Jews) find exhilarating and edifying.

Finally, the roots of midrash are woven into the warp and woof of Scripture. The canonical midrashic texts, however, were 044composed long after the biblical canon was closed.

I invite Mr. Fenyvesi, and all who are truly interested in the lore of ancient Judaism, to explore the many faceted world of the midrash—and ask that Mr. Fenyvesi (and by extension, BR) avoid unwarranted judgments (which in the not too distant past were offered as “proofs” for the superiority of Christianity over Judaism).

Holy Grail

They Knew

A counterpoint to footnote 2 in Dr. Ben Witherington’s interesting history of the quest for the Holy Grail (“Let This Cup Pass!” August 2004): Witherington writes, “Had an early Jewish audience such as Jesus’ thought he was talking about his actual physical body and blood they would have run out of the room screaming about cannibalism.”

Admittedly the Gospel of John was first committed to writing fifty or more years after the Passion and Resurrection, and it is filtered through the prism of the Apostle John’s understanding of the Resurrection. Even so, the text includes a discussion (John 6:51–58) of Jesus’ words that seems clear. In John 6:51, Jesus describes himself as the “living bread which has come down from heaven” and promises that “anyone who eats this bread will live forever.” Startled, his audience asks, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” (John 6:52). Jesus reassures them, “For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink” (John 6:55).

That the crowd thinks they are being asked to eat real flesh and blood is clear from their reaction in John 6:60: “After hearing it, many of his followers said: ‘This is intolerable language. How could anyone accept it?’” and in John 6:66: “After this, many of his disciples left him and stopped going with him” (Jerusalem Bible).

The words of Jesus in John’s gospel, in Greek, may not translate literally phrase for phrase what Jesus said in Aramaic; but surely they reflect what John believed Jesus meant.

Protestant Bias

A caption to Ben Witherington’s article reads: “The bread and wine Jesus gave his followers, which he figuratively called his ‘body’ and ‘blood,’ are a symbolic token of the redemption he offers mankind” (p. 15, August 2004). This surely belies a Protestant bias. This interpretation doesn’t do justice to the obvious Catholic faith of the Flemish artist, nor to two thousand years of Orthodox and Catholic belief about what Jesus intended at the Last Supper, which is surely more than “symbolic” and “figurative.”

Celtic Sources

I read Eric Wargo’s “From Symbol to Relic” (August 2004) with some interest but was surprised to find no reference to Celtic fertility myths or to Roger Sherman Loomis’s The Grail: From Celtic Myth to Christian Symbol, which is still in print. When I was a graduate student in the 1960s, this was the authoritative work on the grail legend. Given that so much of medieval Christian culture was nourished by pre-Christian Germanic myths, I found that absence both strange and disappointing. Loomis made, as I remember, a very persuasive and scholarly case for a Celtic fertility myth as the source of the Christian symbol.

Real Presence

Eric Wargo made a common mistake when he wrote “Protestant reformers … [did not] accept the real presence of Christ—that is, transubstantiation—in the Eucharistic rite.” Belief in the former does not depend on the latter. Lutherans emphatically believe in the real presence: The term they use is consubstantiation. Anglican Christians, and many others, believe in the real presence but employ no official explanation for a change in the elements: The epiphany of God is left a mystery. As for the term “real presence,” to quote St. Thomas Aquinas, “In the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist the presence of Christ is not to be understood materially or locally,” that is, the presence is real, but it is not physical nor confined. The Sacrament is an Instrument of Divine Grace: It conveys the guarantee of salvation.

045

Dining

The Last Supper

Thanks to Dennis E. Smith for his eye-opening article about Greco-Roman meals (“Dining with Jesus and Paul,” August 2004).

Perhaps Mr. Smith can shed light on another meal-related question raised elsewhere in the August issue: Was Jesus’ Last Supper a Passover meal? Were Passover meals in Jesus’ day eaten while reclining? Conversely, did reclining banqueters ever pass a cup around?

If Greco-Roman dinner parties were intimate affairs, with nine to twelve diners, then the Last Supper was bursting the upper limit. Perhaps that is why the Gospels record several mishearings and misunderstandings. As the ancient etiquettians warned, thirteen is too many to maintain a single conversation. Judas, by leaving to do his business, brought the total down to a more intimate twelve.

Dennis E. Smith III responds:

Thanks to Tom Kane for his insightful comments and inquiries. Scholars debate whether the Last Supper was a Passover meal. My own opinion is that it was not. The earliest form of the Last Supper tradition we have is that of Paul in 1 Corinthians 11:17–34. It exhibits no characteristics specific to Passover tradition. Furthermore, the meal of the Corinthian Christians, for which Paul proposed the Last Supper tradition as a model, was not a once-a-year festival meal held in Jerusalem, as was the Passover, but instead took place regularly whenever the Corinthian Christian community gathered together. The Gospel of Mark was the first to place the Last Supper tradition within the context of a narrative about the life of Jesus. Since the events of Jesus’ death were connected with the Passover season, Mark identified the Last Supper as a Passover meal (Mark 14:12–16). However, the Last Supper tradition that he placed in this context, like the Last Supper tradition found in Paul, contains features common to meals in general but no specific features of a Passover meal (Mark 14:22–25). Furthermore, the Gospel of John specifically identified Jesus’ last meal not as a Passover meal but as a meal taken on Passover eve (John 18:28, 19:31).

Did Jews recline at Passover meals in Jesus’ day? Probably. Reclining was practiced virtually universally throughout the Greco-Roman world at any meal of significance, including Jewish meals of this period that we know about. Also the Mishnah, though it dates from a later period, specifically mentions reclining as the posture at the Passover meal: “And even the poorest Israelite should not eat until he reclines at his table” (m. Pesah. 10.1 [trans. Jacob Neusner]). As for the number of guests at the Last Supper, the earliest story we have, that of Mark, certainly implies that Judas was present for the meal (“one who is eating with me … who is dipping bread into the bowl with me,” Mark 14:18, 20). In any case, the difference between twelve or thirteen people (or perhaps a few more, if, in fact, women disciples were present at meals of Jesus; see, for example, Luke 10:38–42) would have been minimal. Finally, passing a shared cup around at a meal, as Jesus is said to do in Mark 14:23, was a common feature of the wine ceremony at a Greek banquet.

Banned in the Big House