Legal Guide for Bloggers
The Electronic Frontier Foundation recently updated its Legal Guide for Bloggers. It's worth going through all of this.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation recently updated its Legal Guide for Bloggers. It's worth going through all of this.
It looks like Oliver Stone's World Trade Center may turn out to be a decent film after all. Foxnews reports:
Chris Tilling asks, "Who do you think is the greatest living New Testament scholar, and why?"
Some reviewers of The Da Vinci Code film, including The Associated Press and Jim Davila, claim that it went out of his way to soften some of the book's factual errors. Greg Wright of Hollywood Jesus takes the opposite view:
"These authors [Mack, Funk, Crossan, etc.] do consciously de-Judaize Jesus. By 'de-Judaizing' I do not mean 'anti-Jewish' or completely 'un-Jewish'. De-alcoholized wine still retains a small measure of alcohol, but not enough to impact the drinker. Thus by 'de-Judaizing' I mean the act of moving Jesus' Jewishness to the periphery or else negating its effect by blanketing it with a Hellenistic overlay."On the other hand, this doesn't mean that these scholars are necessarily wrong in their interpretation (though I think they largely are). If it happens to be true that Galileans were more Hellenized than their cousins in the south, it is the historian's duty to say so, rather than insist rabidly on a "Jewish!" Jesus to safeguard contemporary interests. Arnal may not be convincing about the particulars, but his more general point is right: however superficial the "Jewish" label has become, it is theoretically possible that Jesus was more Hellenized than many of us want to believe.
(1) The agenda to save one's scholarship from the legacy of German Lutherans. Sanders, Fredriksen, Vermes, etc. have paved the way to a new and distinctive Anglo-American scholarship, free of Bultmannian influence, free of eisegetical caricatures (pp 41-47)By these agendas scholars aren't so much making Jesus conform to their own beliefs (Sanders' Jesus is anything but a reflection of Sanders), but they are making him conform to an image which legitimates, however obliquely, their academics, politics, religion, and/or culture -- whether intentionally or not (see pp 39-40). We touched on agenda #3 already, and in my view it's the most significant: the mission to keep Jesus free of secular influence. A Jewish Jesus protects religiosity. But on top of that it keeps the messiah "kosher" in a post-Holocaust age (agenda #2), where no one -- not even the most traditional conservative -- wants to be liable for anti-Semitism.
(2) The intent to keep one's soul free from any taint of the Holocaust. The Jewish Jesus approaches a stereotype of modern Jews, thereby reclaiming (or insulating) Christianity from complicity in the Shoah. (pp 47-55)
(3) The need to keep one's religious sensibilities intact. A Jewish Jesus, ironically, helps maintain a distinctive Christian identity and can even reinforce supersessionism (in cases like Wright and Witherington). (pp 56-69)
(4) The goal to preserve one's cultural identity in the face of postmodernism. A Jesus who believed in Torah, the temple, and purity is a formidable weapon against the erosion of social identities, in effect insisting upon cultural stability. (pp 69-72)
"[The subversion of Jewish food laws] does not make Jesus a good Platonist, or for that matter a good liberal Protestant, rejecting everything 'material' or 'outward' as being irrelevant to the 'spiritual' life. It makes him a good Jew, recognizing that Yawheh desires to recreate human beings as wholes."(8)One senses that Wright underscores Jesus' Jewishness as an assurance that his messiah is really okay; he's not an anachronism; he's completely Jewish (despite appearances), continuous with the Hebrew Scriptures, and thus readily compatible with the evangelical creed.
"Paul is a Jew. After all the nonsense spouted in 19th century German theology, modern scholarship has finally come back round to the point that orthodoxy knew all along. The story that Paul tells is the story of Israel and her collision with her destiny and fulfillment. When the Apostle Paul writes, we are not encountering the originator of a new religion. We are encountering a true Jew, whose faith remains truly Jewish."Look at what this accomplishes. The obvious is emphasized -- that Paul was Jewish -- so he's kosher (agenda #2 fulfilled); this "truly Jewish" apostle squares with Christian orthodoxy (agenda #3 creeping in), over against the "nonsense" of liberal scholarship (agendas #1 and #3 now involved). Like Wright's Jesus, Gallant's Paul is shielded in advance from charges of anti-progressivism, anti-Semitism, and anti-orthodoxy. That's potent rhetoric.
"Not because scholars cannot agree on their reconstructions; lack of agreement may only indicate that further -- and more rigorous -- work needs to be done. Not because the investigation has been biased; bias is unavoidable, here as elsewhere... But because, ultimately, the historical Jesus does not matter, either for our understanding of the past, or our understanding of the present." (p 77)(9)Well, no; not exactly. We do need Jesus for history's sake. But Arnal is right that we don't need Jesus, or his Jewishness, to feel secure about ourselves.
"If you put away those who report accurately, you'll keep only those who know what you want to hear. I can think of nothing more poisonous than to rot in the stink of your own reflections." (The Lady Jessica to her daughter Alia, in Frank Herbert's Children of Dune)
It's been a while since I checked on the value of this blog. Back in October it was worthless, and it remained that way for a while. Now it's apparently worth close to thirty grand. If my ideas are really worth that much...well, we won't go there.
My blog is worth $27,097.92.
How much is your blog worth?
Jim Davila gives The Da Vinci Code a fairly good review. He's easier to please than most critics (on which see here), and far easier to please than someone like me. (I know I'll hate this film with a passion when I finally get around to seeing it on DVD.)
I'm currently reading a book which examines The Da Vinci Code not just by exposing its bogus errors (too many have done that already), but by engaging it in the wider context of Christian-faith mysteries depicted in novel and film. It's called The Da Vinci Code Adventure: On the Trail of Fact, Legend, Faith and Film , written mostly by Mike Gunn, but with contributions from Greg and Jenn Wright from Hollywood Jesus. The book breathes an evangelical air, but lightly enough so that anyone can enjoy reading it.
Michael Turton has decided to retire The Sword. I will miss his presence in the blogosphere very much. He was one of three bloggers who inspired me to start The Busybody, and though I rarely agree with him on the subject of Christian origins, I'm wiser about aspects of his mythicist position than I was over a year ago. I wish Michael the best of luck in his endeavors.
"The ancient circum-Mediterraneans had to deal with the stereotypical judgments that were thrown at them. Their strategy was not a doubt about or rejection of stereotypical judgment... They were forced to massage the negative judgments into a positive image that they would want to project." (John Pilch, RBL review of J. Albert Harrill's Slaves in the New Testament)
It started with Michael Turton’s review of Tabor's Jesus Dynasty. Jim West dismissed the review (without linking to it or pointing out who wrote it), which in turn prompted Turton's open letter to Jim West. Then James Crossley jumped into the fray. Read all of these posts, but especially the last two which dig into the politics of New Testament studies. I think Michael makes a fair point that mythicists need to be acknowledged more in the guild (though I take Jesus' existence for granted), but I agree with James that we shouldn't get carried away with the idea that radical views of Christian origins are somehow politically liberating. Radical views often do us nothing but disservice (Baigent is an obvious example).
The Da Vinci Code currently has a whopping 0% approval rating at Rotten Tomatoes. I've never seen a 0% rating before, and it couldn't have happened to a better film. The rating will probably increase (at least some) as more reviews are added, but for now, have a good laugh.
"Why the continued insistence on a point everyone accepts? What is behind the shrill reiteration of Jesus' having been Jewish? What agenda is served by accusing contemporary scholars of an anti-Jewish animus, or of offering sly insinuations to this effect?... Jesus' Jewishness is not currently under attack, and has not been for several decades. And yet it is under discussion more now than ever. To my mind, this suggests that the issue is somehow overdetermined; it is a screen onto which other, more current, and unresolved matters are being projected. It is a manufactured controversy serving to express other problems, theological and secular, in a covert or implicit manner." (William Arnal, The Symbolic Jesus, p 19)
Thanks to Mark Goodacre for critiquing my unpapal conclave experiment. He writes:
Two things should be mentioned about the results of the unpapal conclave. One is that there may be follow-up discussion at Chris Weimer's Ancient Mediterranean Cultures Forum, if the group has time for it.
As mentioned previously, the following people were willing to serve on an "unpapal conclave" like the one envisioned by John Meier in A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus:
Atheist/Non-theist: | Mike Grondin (a) | Jeffrey Gibson (n) |
Jewish: | Mark Nanos | Chris Weimer |
Agnostic: | Zeba Crook | James Crossley |
Protestant: | Stephen Carlson | Robert Schacht |
Catholic: | Brian Trafford | Michael Barber |
Evangelical: | Tim Gallant | |
Unitarian: | Loren Rosson |
In A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, John Meier sketches his interpretation of the historical Jesus using the fantasy of an unpapal conclave "locked in the bowels of Harvard Divinity School, put on a spartan diet, and not allowed to emerge until they had hammered out a consensus document on who Jesus was and what he intended in his own time and place" (p 1, Vol 1). This hypothetical conclave consists of a Catholic, Protestant, Jew, and agnostic, all of whom are knowledgeable about the history of early Christianity. More recently, in an online interview at biblioblogs.com, Stephen Carlson stated that he too shares Meier's dream, "except that I would expand Meier's 'unpapal conclave' to include an evangelical, a Unitarian, and an atheist..."
Atheist/Non-theist: | Mike Grondin (a) | Jeffrey Gibson (n) |
Jewish: | Mark Nanos | Chris Weimer |
Agnostic: | Zeba Crook | James Crossley |
Protestant: | Stephen Carlson | Robert Schacht |
Catholic: | Brian Trafford | Michael Barber |
Evangelical: | Tim Gallant | |
Unitarian: | Loren Rosson |
(Part I here. Part II here.)
(Part I here.)
In a Chud interview, the director of United 93 was asked about the difference between the tragic ending of his film and the happy ending of Oliver Stone's upcoming World Trade Center. Greengrass replied:
Take the World's Smallest Political Quiz. Like Matt Bertrand, I test as a centrist with inclinations toward the left and libertarianism.
Biblical Studies Carnival V is up at Kevin Wilson's Blue Cord, the successor blog to Karamat. Nice job, Kevin.