Controversial Studies and the Question of Motive: Morton Smith

(Prologue to this series here. Part I here. Part II here.)

Secret Mark is one of the most successful literary forgeries in history, and I awarded it the #2 slot on my top-20 list back in October '05. Morton Smith should feel so proud. But why did he do it?

Smith forged Secret Mark for the sake of--

(1) Hoaxing. He wanted to test the competency of his colleagues with a prank and "flip off" the establishment.

(2) A Gay Gospel. He wanted to discredit Christianity with evidence that Jesus was gay and approved homosexuality.

(3) A Controlled Experiment. He wanted to study how scholars responded to a controversial document.

(4) Fame. He wanted the fame and prestige that came with discovering an ancient document.

The most penetrating analyses of Smith's motives, of course, have come in the works of Stephen Carlson and Peter Jeffery. Carlson insists on motive (1), demonstrating beyond a reasonable doubt that Smith was pulling off an elaborate prank. In a passage sure to be often quoted by those who study fakes, he distinguishes hoaxes from "typical" forgeries:

"Although hoaxes share with forgeries the element of creating a document with the intention to deceive, hoaxes are done with a different motive -- to test the establishment, whether to expose flaws in the gatekeepers of authenticity, to exhibit one's skill and cunning, or to take pleasure in the failure of self-appointed experts to pass the test. Secret Mark functions as a hoax designed to test, not a forgery designed to cheat." (Gospel Hoax, pp 78-79)

Carlson thinks the fame motive (4) is "the next best alternative" (see here), but I disagree, consigning it to the bottom. With Peter Jeffery I think (2) is the close contender and indeed inseparable from (1). Smith's "gay gospel" is the hoax. Carlson actually seems to agree with that partly (or in essence):

"Secret Mark supports not only Smith's love of controversy but also his favorite target. It was written during the 1950s, during an especially oppressive moment in American history when mainline ministers were urging the police to crack down on gay men gathered in public parks. What could be more upsetting to the Establishment in this historical moment than the intimation, revealed in an ancient text by the author of the oldest gospel, that they are crucifying Jesus all over again?" (ibid, p 85)

Carlson claims that the controlled experiment hypothesis (3) "is unlikely", even if Smith "could have well have been a little curious at the process in which his hoax was accepted" (see here). I agree: this probably became a subsidiary motive for maintaining the hoax, but it was doubtfully present at the start. I'd say the same for motive (4). Smith thrived on controversy and reveled in the resulting outrage over his "discovery", but that's not what propelled him to fabricate Secret Mark to begin with.

Peter Jeffrey accepts the hoaxing motive ascribed by Carlson but thinks there were additional "more compelling" motives (The Secret Gospel of Mark Unveiled, p 271, n. 117), all of which blur and -- curiously enough -- undermine each other:

"One of the slippery things about the whole Mar Saba venture -- both the 'original' document and Smith's various publications on it -- is that there seem to be three messages, which shift in and out of focus depending on how one looks at it, and which tend to undermine each other. First of all, Smith clearly wanted us to believe he had discovered major new evidence that Jesus approved of homosexuality [motive (2)] -- even engaged in it, even imbued it with religious significance... But how could we take Smith's proposal seriously when, on closer scrutiny, it keeps dissolving into dirty jokes?... But then, just as we are about to dismiss the whole thing as a prank [motive (1)] -- lewd, crude, and facetious -- the humor fades into hostility. All the experts and eminences whose endorsements Smith claimed to have obtained, and all the other scholars who became convinced that he had discovered a genuine ancient writing, will have good reason to feel abused, more than amused, by the whole sordid mess -- arguably the most grandiose and reticulated 'Fuck You' ever perpetuated in the long and vituperative history of scholarship. Were all three messages equally intended? Did Smith fully realize what he was doing?" (ibid, p 242)

So we could add a fifth motive to the list -- anger/rage -- though I think it's actually encompassed by the hoaxing motive. One can hoax out of amusement or anger, and Smith seems to have had endless supplies of both. Jeffery concludes:

"I conjecture that the letter of 'Clement' may have begun as a purposeful, even a wistful, attempt to set the historical record 'straight' (or rather 'gay') -- but that it quickly fell afoul of Smith's nasty sense of humor, which in turn became the transparent mask of his considerable rage -- I suspect without his fully realizing or understanding what was happening... I don't think Smith could perceive clearly what he was actually communicating." (p 243)

Perhaps, but I think Smith understood well enough what he was doing if not precisely "communicating". He wanted people to be incited by the idea that Jesus was gay and approved homosexuality, and his humor and anger propelled him accordingly.

Summary: Priest, Pope, Apostle

Smith's true motives are located in (1) and (2) almost equally. If not for his sexual identity crisis, his anger at the homophobia of the 1950s, his need to have fun at the expense of others -- and, above all, his penchant for underscoring how gullible and stupid people are -- he would have never forged Secret Mark. A hoaxer is just the kind of person he was, and a gay Jesus was just the hoax he needed to gratify himself personally.

Like Paul and Urban, Smith was a Christian pastor; souls were in his keeping. But his solution to the problem of homophobia differed from Paul's to Gentile-phobia, or Urban's to the stigmatization of warriors. Denying precisely what he was, he consigned gays to hell as stridently as a medievalist(1), then afterwards renounced God and the priesthood, retreating into a private world where he could show people up on his own terms.

In the next and final post we'll wrap up the series.


Endnotes

(1) "Psychiatric Practice and Christian Dogma", Journal of Pastoral Care 3 (1949): 12-20. This article is cited at length by Peter Jeffery.

Integrity vs. Innocence

The scholars of The Context Group have done much to explain the culture of the bible, particularly by contrasting its honor-shame values with the innocence-guilt code we cherish in the west. People in shame cultures are driven by a concern for honor, vengeance, and saving face -- all based on what others think of them. People in guilt cultures care mostly about truth, justice, and the preservation of individual rights -- based on what they think of themselves (i.e. conscience).

Historian Richard Landes has also written about honor-shame (more in relation to modern Islam than ancient Judaism and Christianity), but he calls the opposite culture one of integrity-guilt instead of innocence-guilt. (Hat-tip to Stephen Carlson for the reference.) Is "integrity" preferable to "innocence" in the guilt model?

Admittedly it makes more sense to speak of someone of integrity as we would speak of a someone of honor. ("Someone of innocence" sounds awkward and perhaps childish.) But I see a problem here. "Integrity" is defined as a "firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values" (Merriam-Webster), and as far as I can tell, that code could be based on either guilt or shame. Some dictionaries and thesauri even point to integrity as the quality of being honest and/or honorable -- the condition of being free of defects and flaws in either of those areas. Similarly, "dishonesty" and "dishonor" can both be considered antonyms to "integrity". So I'm not sure that integrity runs parallel to honor, as Landes tries to make it. It includes honor, just as it includes honesty. Maybe "honesty" is the word Landes is really after?

But the question of honesty is only a part of the whole issue. It's true that lies and deceptions are more socially acceptable in honor-shame societies (as I've written about here), but this points back to more over-arching sets of values. The idea of innocence gets at our value systems more expansively than honesty ("integrity") does. James Atherton explains helpfully:

"In a guilt-culture I will defend my innocence even if everyone else is blaming me. My internal and individualistic judgment is what counts. But by the same token, I may be wracked with secret guilt even if the world believes me innocent.

"In a shame-culture, what other people believe is much more powerful. Indeed, my principles may be derived from the desire to preserve my honor or avoid shame to the exclusion of all else. The down-side is the license it appears to give to engage in secret wrong-doing.

"The positive aspect of guilt-culture at its best is its concern for truth and justice and the preservation of individual rights. The sense of guilt might also preserve us from engaging in wrong-doing which no-one would ever discover: but it can also be misplaced and potentially neurotic.

"[The positive aspect of shame-culture at its best is that] it may motivate me to ensure that I am not only innocent but am seen to be innocent: that I not only do not engage directly in criminal or antisocial behavior, but that I stay far enough away from it not to be tainted by association in any way... On the other hand, suspicion becomes sufficient to convict in judicial terms."

In this light, innocence seems more all-encompassing than integrity. But I confess to liking the way integrity sounds. "A person of honor" vs. "a person of integrity" makes intuitive sense. But "a person of innocence"?

Anyone care to comment?

April DeConick Joins the Blogosphere

Check out April DeConick's The Forbidden Gospels Blog and give her a warm welcome. April is the author of Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas, which I reviewed almost a year ago.

Controversial Studies and the Question of Motive: Urban II

(Prologue to this series here. Part I here.)

No one, least of all the pope, had any idea the First Crusade would start a five-century movement. At the time Urban's battle-cry was seen as providing "a narrow and once-only escape from the burden of sin" (John France, "Patrongage and the Appeal of the First Crusade", in The Crusades: The Essential Readings, edited by Thomas Madden, p 199). But his motives for the summoning the crusade have been controversial. Three arguments were presented in his sermon at Clermont; a fourth was provided by critics who knew better. Which (if any) were his actual reasons?

Urban summoned the first holy war--

(1) To consolidate papal power. The crusade represented a practical expression of papal ideology, leadership, and power.

(2) To reform violent warriors. The crusade emerged out of ecclesiastical reform, as an alternative to the Peace of God program which had failed to curb civil violence.

(3) To liberate Jerusalem and the holy lands. The crusade's purpose was to take back the holy lands from Muslim control.

(4) To aid the eastern churches. The crusade was a defensive war, to help the Byzantines against invading Muslims.

The reasoning becomes increasingly apologetic as you go down the list. Thus someone like Robert Spencer sees (3) and (4) at work, but especially (4): the crusade was a defensive war. On the scholarly side of things, things become more complex. Carl Erdmann saw everything except (3) in Urban's motives. In his view, the crusade was a means to harness Europe's military energy for church purposes, and to convince the Byzantines to accept papal primacy; popular reactions expanded the mission to include Jerusalem, but that wasn't part of Urban's original goal.

Thomas Asbridge and Christopher Tyerman rightly emphasize (1) and (2). The crusade allowed Urban to channel knightly aggression outwards, against Islam, and even more broadly, secure his leadership independent of secular authorities. That he exploited the Byzantine call for military aid and capitalized on an opportunity to take back the holy lands doesn't mean they were his primary objectives. Asbridge explains it better than anyone:

"The problems addressed by the First Crusade -- Muslim occupation of Jerusalem and the potential threat of Islamic aggression in the East -- had loomed for decades, even centuries, provoking little or no reaction in Rome. Urban II's decision to take up this cause at Clermont was, therefore, primarily proactive rather than reactive, and the crusade was designed, first and foremost, to meet the needs of the papacy. Launched as it was just as Urban began to stabilize his power-base in central Italy, the campaign must be seen as an attempt to consolidate papal empowerment and expand Rome's sphere of influence." (The First Crusade, p 19)

That's motive (1). Asbridge continues:

"Having grown up among the Frankish aristocracy, the pope was only too aware of the spiritual dilemma facing the knightly class. Bombarded by a stream of warnings about the dreadful danger of sin, but forced to resort to soul-contaminating violence in order to fulfill their duty and their rights, most nobles were trapped in a circle of guilt, obligation, and necessity. Urban was personally responsible for the soul of every single Christian living in the West. It was incumbent upon him to lift as many of his flock as possible towards salvation. The campaign launched at Clermont was, therefore, in one sense, designed to answer the prayers of a polluted class in Urban's care... Knights would now be able to prosecute violence in the name of God." (ibid, pp 20-21)

That's motive (2) -- the desire to export violence -- which we glean from Urban's sermon: "If you must have blood, bathe in the blood of the infidels. Soldiers of hell, become soldiers of the living God!" The crusade accomplished what the Peace of God movement never could, saving knightly souls -- and Europe from civil chaos.

But if (1) and (2) were Urban's reasons, (3) and (4) were his arguments. In his sermon he thundered about repossession and defense more than anything, stressing the need to recover holy territory, and help eastern Christians against Islamic invaders. This was propaganda. The holy lands had been in Muslim control for more than 400 years, and Christian pilgrims had been coexisting in relative peace ever since. As for "invading Muslims", there was little to distinguish the recent Seljuk victory in Asia Minor from any other military struggle. Islam and Byzantium had "developed a tense, sometimes quarrelsome respect for one another, but their relationship was no more fraught with conflict than that between the Greeks and their Slavic or Latin neighbors to the west" (ibid, p 17). Most obviously, there was no pan-Islamic threat to Christendom at this time. In the 11th century Islam was more fragmented than it had ever been, which is exactly why the First Crusade was able to succeed.

Summary: Pope and Apostle

Urban's overriding agenda was to establish his position in Italy. He needed the popularity and power that would turn the tide against his secular enemies, and the crusade gave him both. Knights now had an unprecedented opportunity to use their profession for salvific purposes, and kill Muslim infidels in the name of Christ. Safeguarding holy places and aiding eastern Christians were the means to this end.

Urban was like Paul in that his arguments obscured his reasons. He worried about Muslims invading Europe as much as the apostle did about sin invading the law. These men were really concerned about stigmatized people in their pastoral care -- knights and Gentiles -- and their visions of crusading and faith-righteousness were propelled accordingly. The irony is that in both cases, rhetoric evolved into la raison d'etre. Paul's arguments against the law were seized on by later theologians in a world where the Gentile issue was obsolete and legalism a growing dilemma. Urban's quest for Jerusalem became a popular goal as knights were reformed and papal leadership secured. Reasons call new ideas into existence; arguments linger, popularize, and sanitize those ideas.

In the next post we will examine Morton Smith's motives for forging an ancient document.

In Christ There Is Jew and Greek

Steven Carr asks a good question: "Did Paul think Gentiles were not as good as Jews?". This was my reply:

"In some ways Paul portrays Gentiles as better than Jews in Galatians: Jews are under a curse (Gal 3:10-12), while law-free Gentiles are the real descendants of Abraham (Gal 3:6-9,13-14). But at the same time he's calling for an abolition of distinction (in view of the apocalypse): 'in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek' (Gal 3:27-28).

"He portrays Jews as the better group in Romans (Rom 3:2, 9:4-5, 11:1-32). But for the most part we should say he thought Gentiles were as bad as Jews, though in different ways which preserve ethnic distinctions between the two groups. Gentiles are under the domain of sin without the Torah (1:18-2:5), Jews under its power with the Torah (2:17-3:20). In Christ there is Jew and Greek: through baptism Gentiles are liberated from the power of sin which ruled them as immoral pagans (6:15-23), while Jews are liberated from the power of sin which ruled them through the law (7:1-6). Paul respects ethnic identity in Romans and keeps distinctions intact, contrary to Galatians.

"The fact that Paul treats Gentiles as the better race (even while trying to abolish distinctions between the two) in Galatians, then Jews as the better race (even while insisting that both are in messy situations without Christ) in Romans, tells against him thinking like an egalitarian. In his ancient mind, someone always had to be better than the other."

Paul was no more an egalitarian than Jesus, and by the time of Romans he had even given up on the apocalyptic formula of Gal 3:27-28 (cf. I Cor 12:13). The reason is simple: Gal 3:27-28 was offensive, impractical, and doomed to fail in the ancient Mediterranean, where different ethnic groups, genders, and social classes could get along only by preserving their identities. Attempts to eliminate distinctions in honor-shame societies only encouraged groups to re-assert their identities in aggressive ways. That's why there is Jew and Greek in Christ, after all.

Rom 6:1-7:6 was the winning formula, not Gal 3:27-28. Likewise, it was better for Paul to insist that his own race was superior to the Gentiles, rather than imply the opposite in trying to eliminate distinctions.

UPDATE: See Mark Goodacre's comments, with which I agree, as he notes that "for 'egalitarian' in scholarship on the New Testament, we should substitute 'eschatological'."

Craig vs. Crossley on the Resurrection

Now this is something I wish I could attend: a debate between James Crossley and William Lane Craig on the resurrection.

"Was Jesus Bodily Raised from the Dead?"

7.30pm, Tuesday 6th March, Sheffield
University Student Union Auditorium, Western Bank
S10 2TN

Crossan and the Context Group

Chris Petersen says:

"In the past I have been reluctant to read anything by the aptly named 'context-group' of scholars. I think this has been partly due to my bad experience with Crossan's The Historical Jesus in which he utilizes the cultural anthropological features of the 1st century Mediterranean environment as his controlling paradigm for his reconstruction of the historical Jesus. Admittedly, Crossan's abuse of sociological and anthropological models for his historical Jesus investigation left a bitter taste in my mouth for such 'context' approaches."

Chris isn't alone in being put off by the Context Group in advance on account of Crossan's crimes. Crossan, of course, was sharply criticized by Context Group scholars for not assimilating their work properly back in the early 90s. His book may deal a lot with honor/shame and patronage/clientage, but you'd never guess his Jesus ever lived in such a culture. He could have never functioned in it.

The subject of table-fellowship is a glaring for-instance where Crossan misunderstands/misuses the models of the Context Group. William Herzog critiques him and the Jesus Seminar as follows:

"Jesus is labelled a 'glutton and a drunkard'. Some members of the Jesus Seminar have taken this to mean that Jesus was a bon vivant and a party animal. He did it for the hell of it, to show that living in the present is all that mattered, but it hardly needs to be said that this view trivializes the social significance and theological import of Jesus' actions. Crossan thinks that this 'open commensality' modeled the egalitarian tendencies of Jesus... The difficulty with the way Crossan interprets open commensality is that egalitarianism is a modern notion unlikely to be found in the ancient world, nor would it have been valued if it had been found. The issue is not equality, but reciprocity and mutuality. In return for brokering God's forgiveness, toll collectors and sinners offer Jesus table companionship. Their hospitality is their expression of gratitude, their reciprocity." (Jesus, Justice, and the Reign of God, p 222)

Also see Jack Elliot's railroading critique of the egalitarian nonsense.

Controversial Studies and the Question of Motive: The Apostle Paul

(Prologue to this series here. )

Scholars have been trying to distinguish between "the reason for which Paul held his view of the law and the arguments which he adduces in favor of it" for a long time (as E.P. Sanders puts it, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, p 4). Paul makes four arguments against the law. Which (if any) are his real reasons?

Paul said "not by law" because he thought--

(1) Faith in Christ was salvifically exclusive. Since the death and resurrection of Christ provided salvation, and the spirit was the guarantee of that salvation, the law (as good as it had been in the past) was automatically disqualified (Philip 3:4b-11; II Cor 3:7-11).

(2) Gentiles were saved as Gentiles. Pagans should inherit the messianic promises without becoming Jews in the process. (Gal 3:3-9,13-14; Rom 3:21-23,28-30, 4:9-12,16-17a, 10:4,12-13).

(3) The law was impossible to obey adequately. No one could fulfill the law; it was a dead-end project (Gal 3:10-12; Rom 9:30-10:3,5-8; cf. Gal 5:2-3).

(4) The law increased sin, or was powerless against it. The law was an active agent confining people to sin (Gal 3:19-24, Rom 11:32; (cf. Rom 3:20, 4:15, 5:20), or at least was ineffectual against the power of sin (Rom 7:7-25) -- in either case, leading people away from salvation instead of toward it.

Lutherans salivate the more they go down the list, while the New Perspective emphasizes (2). Some NP advocates, like Sanders and Esler, favor (1) and (2) -- perhaps (1) slightly more than (2) -- and I think they're right. Sanders says, "it is the Gentile question and the exclusivism of Paul's soteriology which dethrone the law" (Paul and Palestinian Judaism, p 497), but the latter (1) dominates his argument:

"Paul's view of the law depends more on the exclusivism of his Christology than on anything else... Since salvation is in Christ, therefore all other ways toward salvation are wrong... Paul could then argue from the common observation that everybody transgresses to prove that everyone is under the lordship of sin. But this is only an argument to prove a point." (Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, p 57; Paul and Palestinian Judaism, p 482, 499)

Esler too:

"I agree with E.P. Sanders that Paul moved from solution to plight, discovering first in the death and resurrection of Christ the reality of salvation, especially from the pervasive sinfulness of the 'present evil age' (Gal 1:4), even though he himself had not been sinful (Philip 3:6), and then developing the implications of this for his Gentiles..." (Galatians, p 176; italics mine)

Yes, and the way I see it is that the Gentile mission forced Paul's hand, demanding he address the law openly. He began working out the full implications of his Christology as he battled on behalf of his converts.

The background here is important. In the earliest days of the movement, the apostles -- James, Peter, and Paul alike -- thought Christ's return was imminent, and presumably took for granted that any Gentile converts were exempt from the law in light of this (as Paula Fredriksen has argued). At this point there was little reason for Paul to argue against the Torah per se. With the end on the horizon, he and the other apostles would have adhered to as much of the law as Jesus did (or didn't) -- regardless of what Paul thought about that salvifically -- and let the few Gentile newcomers do as they please.

But the kingdom didn't come, and Christianity began attracting more and more Gentiles, prompting reactions from wider Judaism. The apostles seriously had to rethink the issue. At this point (around 49 CE), Paul's exclusivist outlook would have merged quickly with his ideas about Gentile freedom -- over against James, who was starting to see things differently. I doubt Paul could have kept Christological reasons distinct from social ones. Both point to genuine motives. Christology was the real reason, but the Gentiles brought the issue into the open.

"Lutheran" arguments about the law's inherent problems -- (3) and (4) -- were exactly that, subsidiary arguments made to prove a point, and not always convincingly. We should all know that Paul had no trouble meeting the law's demands as a practicing Pharisee (Philip 3:6). He's the last person we'd expect to claim that the law makes sin a bigger problem. But that claim answers his homemade dilemma resulting from (1), namely, "Why did God give the law in the first place, if it doesn't save?" Answer: to consign people to sin so that they can be saved (Gal 3:19-24; Rom 11:32). That's perverse, of course, and Paul had to dig himself out of the hole -- which he did by exonerating God at the expense of his sovereignty: the deity actually intended good with the law, but sin foiled his intent, resulting in disobedience and despair (Rom 7:7-25). The fact that this theology is so problematic and inconsistently expressed -- not to mention contradicting actual experience (Philip 3:6) -- tells against it having anything to do with Paul's real reasons for attacking the law.

He did away with the law because he found something so better, that it made something so good seem like "excrement" (Philip 3:4b-11). Scholars have been nonplussed by this Paul. Thus Dunn:

"There remains something very odd in Paul's attitude to his ancestral faith. The Lutheran Paul has been replaced by an idiosyncratic Paul who in arbitrary and irrational manner turns his face against the glory and greatness of Judaism's covenant theology and abandons Judaism simply because it is not Christianity... I must confess that I find Sanders' Paul little more convincing (and much less attractive) than the Lutheran Paul." (Jesus, Paul, and the Law, pp 186f)

The critique speaks volumes. Dunn doesn't like Sander's Paul (he's not "attractive"), and he can't comprehend him (he's "idiosyncratic"), and so sticks to motive (2). My response to Dunn is that religious converts are often unattractive and idiosyncratic, and we should not be trying to mainstream their mindset.

Summary

Paul's motives are located in (1) and (2), but especially the former. We should respect the New Perspective's emphasis on the latter: if not for the Gentile mission in a long-delayed parousia, Paul wouldn't have had much to say about the law. But that's only half the story. If Gentiles were Paul's only reason for attacking the law, he would have simply loosened the Torah's parameters and dispensed with "Jewish" requirements like circumcision, food laws, and sabbath observance (as in Rom 2-4). But he went well beyond this, insisting that Christians die to the law in its entirety (Rom 5-8), as much as they die to the reign of Adam, sin and the flesh.(1)

As a convert(2) Paul looked back on the era of the Jewish covenant as a dark age -- even though he had found it personally rewarding -- and at Abraham as a lone faith-figure who anticipated far better things to come. "What once had glory has glory no more, because of a greater glory." Therein lies his true motive for attacking the law, however radical, question-begging, or simplistic it seems.

In the next post we will examine Pope Urban II's motives for summoning the crusade.


Endnotes

(1) That Christians fulfill the law (Gal 5:14, Gal 6:2, Rom 3:31, Rom 8:2, Rom 8:4, Rom 13:8-10) does not mean the law is still in force. It means that Christians have access to the best which the law promised but never delivered, by an entirely different route -- the spirit. See Esler, Conflict and Identity in Romans, pp 334-335.

(2) Bruce Malina and John Pilch say that "conversion" is an inappropriate term used to describe Paul's Christ-calling. Per Stendahl, he was "called" in the same way the prophets of the Hebrew Bible were called (Social Science Commentary on the Letters of Paul, p 13); and he wasn't converting people, rather announcing "a new stage of Israel's corporate history, a new development in Israel launched by the God of Israel" (p 23). Philip Esler, on the other hand, thinks "it is reasonable to speak of Paul's conversion" (Galatians, p 126): "the way in which Paul seeks to characterize his new orientation, by describing himself as called like Isaiah and Jeremiah, cannot be the end of the issue, since his contemporaries who opposed his activity were easily able to deny such claims...he [actually] taught apostacy" (ibid, pp 121-122). Zeba Crook further points out that by the time of Hellenistic Judaism, it was possible to speak of someone being called and thus converted: Paul was invoking the call of the divine patron-benefactor (which involved conversion by definition) and the call of the prophets at the same time (Reconceptualizing Conversion, p 176). I believe that Esler and Crook are correct. And again: Paul thought the law was obsolete, and the best it ever had to offer could be obtained by another route -- the spirit. He did not believe that an ethical kernel of the law remained in force.

Controversial Studies and the Question of Motive: Paul, Urban II, and Morton Smith

What do the apostle Paul, Pope Urban II, and Morton Smith share in common? Besides colorful personalities, they engaged in offensive controversy: the first attacked the foundation of his faith, the second made violence sacred, and the last forged an ancient document. Their true motives were complex, and at odds with the "understandable" motives scholars often ascribe to them.

In this five-part series we will examine "reasons vs. arguments" -- Paul's for doing away with the Jewish law, Urban's for summoning the First Crusade, and Smith's for forging Secret Mark. By whatever odd coincidence, there are four potentials to be considered in each case. Here's a preview of them:

Paul said "not by law" because he thought--

(1) Faith in Christ was salvifically exclusive
(2) Gentiles were saved as Gentiles
(3) The law was impossible to obey adequately
(4) The law increased sin, or was powerless against it

Urban II summoned the first holy war--

(1) To consolidate papal power
(2) To reform violent warriors
(3) To liberate Jerusalem and the holy lands
(4) To aid the eastern churches

Morton Smith forged Secret Mark for the sake of--

(1) Hoaxing
(2) A Gay Gospel
(3) A Controlled Experiment
(4) Fame

In each case, we will see that the (1)'s are the overriding and most important motives, but also the most general, oblique or hard to understand. Why would Christology, in and of itself, dethrone the law? How could a crusade empower the papacy? Since when do professionals jeapordize their careers for a laugh?

The (2)'s, at first glance unrelated to the (1)'s (though in fact closey related), merge with the overriding motive, and in each case, intriguingly, on behalf of a "problematic other": Gentiles, violent warriors, and gay men. Paul was converting pagans, Urban reforming knights, and Smith reacting to the oppression of homosexuals. These may be regarded as the triggers of the event in question, as they became quickly subsumed within the overriding motive (1). If not for the (2)'s, the events in question would probably have not happened -- no law-free gospel, no crusade, no Secret Mark. Does that make the (2)'s as important, or more so, than the (1)'s?

The (4)'s seem to be the intuitively likely motives -- perhaps because they're appealing -- but in fact turn out to be subsidiary to the (1)'s and (2)'s, or arguments supporting them, if they can even be considered motives at all. Theologians love the Paul who rails against a law for crushing the human spirit, because it's hot theology. Apologists like the idea of defensive wars, because that's something people can relate to, justify, or at least excuse. Skeptics of Secret Mark can credit that Smith was committing fraud for the sake of his theories and scholarly prestige, because that would explain the risk.

But reality infrequently coincides with what makes sense or what's palatable. In the next post we'll begin by dealing with Paul and the possible reasons he had for setting faith against the law. But we'll do more than just rehash how scholars have beat a dead horse (that horse being the Lutheran one). Our eye will be on Paul's motives, reasons, and arguments; how they interact with and inform one another.

Problems with the Jesus-Quest

Mark Goodacre sees the following difficulties with the quest for the historical Jesus:

(1) So much data is missing, e.g. there is so little on Jesus’ life before 30.

(2) The data we do have is highly prejudiced, mainly pro-Christian propaganda.

(3) The sources we have are disputed -- different scholars value the sources differently.

(4) The sources are sometimes contradictory and difficult to interpret.

(5) Our distance from the data is so great -- we read our own prejudices into the texts.

(6) And now there is so much secondary literature available that it is difficult to navigate our way through it all.

(7) Jesus is a figure in whom so many have a stake, and the quest is often controversial.

A good list. I think the seventh is the most problematic, and if I were teaching a course on the subject I'd be inclined to make Bill Arnal's The Symbolic Jesus a required text. Arnal argues that people have a stake in Jesus for rather complex reasons, and that agendas have become more "subterranean" (as he puts it) than ever before. Back in the good old days, scholars just made Jesus in their self-images, but now they use certain aspects of Jesus -- particularly his "Jewishness" -- to validate more oblique agendas relating to academic politics, religious sensibilities, and the distinctiveness of one's creed.

Mark's sixth point about the flood of secondary literature seems closely related to the seventh, in some ways even the result of the seventh. Incidentally, I hope to see the literature evolve out of certain trends, such as: (1) No more books with title, Jesus the 'X'! If there is any 'X', it is "apocalyptic healer", and probably best left at that. (2) Fewer reconstructions of Jesus relying on Q, Secret Mark, and/or Thomas. (3) Less Crossan/Craig and Borg/Wright debating (which is intra-Christian, liberal vs. conservative) and more of the Bird/Crossley kind of debating (Christian vs. secular).

Biblical Studies Carnival: The Best of 2006

Tyler Williams has put up a special edition of the Biblical Studies Carnival. Don't miss the Best of 2006.

Bombing Our Illusions

As far as I'm concerned, Sam Harris and his critics have the same problem. He's saying that Islam is inherently violent; they're saying it's a peaceful religion which has been hijacked. Neither is true. Islam can't be characterized as monolithically intolerant or benign, anymore than Christianity or Buddhism can.

The reason why Muslims haven't been able to shed the jihad isn't because their scriptures won't allow them to -- people can and do blatantly ignore and distort their traditions to justify whatever they want -- but because real-world dynamics haven't facilitated such a move. With the right impetus, the Islamic nations can do exactly what Europe did after 500 years of crusading -- regardless of what the Qur'an says in this and that passage.

It's true that the ratio of intolerance to benevolence in the Qur'an is rather high. But the ratio of pacifism to militancy in the New Testament is also high -- and that didn't stop a five-century crusading movement. It just doesn't matter what one's scriptures say. It's getting the jihadists to want better things that's the problem. I'll have more to say about this in an upcoming review of Robert Spencer's Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and the Crusades, which makes arguments similar to those of Harris.

Biblical Studies Carnival XIII

The thirteenth Biblical Studies Carnival is up on Tyler Williams' Codex Blogspot, and there will be a special sequel, the best of 2006, following shortly.

Interview with James Crossley

Catch the interview with James Crossley on biblioblogs.com. He's the Blogger of the Month.

Happy New Year

I want to wish everyone a Happy New Year, and say thanks for reading and commenting on The Busybody. Time to kick off another busy year!