The Existence of Jesus

After tackling the criterion of embarrassment and its limited value in historical-Jesus research, it's worth asking the question many of us won't deign to consider. Did Jesus even exist? Once again, Mark Goodacre's NT Pod (mp3 here) can get us jump-started. One of his crucial points is the early genesis of high Christology: "We should side with the mythicists to the extent that they're pointing out something important, which is just how early and how striking some of the exalted language about Jesus is." No one speaking about Jesus could do so without speaking of his resurrection and Lordship, says Mark, and some scholars even refer to the Big Bang of high Christology to correct those who see more of a gradual evolution. I'm a "Big Bang" proponent myself. But that exalted language wasn't about a pagan-godlike reanimation, as mythicists often claim; it was about God making Jesus his son when he resurrected him; and there wouldn't be a strict equation between Jesus and God until decades later, with gospel writer John.

In his recent book, Did Jesus Exist?, Bart Ehrman identifies what he considers to be two key data for Jesus' existence: (1) Paul's associations with Peter and James, particularly with the latter whom he refers to as "the brother of the Lord" (Gal 1:19), which point to reasonably secure eye-witness testimony; (2) a crucified messiah, which the early Christians would not have invented. The first point I take as self-evident (even Rick Sumner, who has moved from the historicist to the mythicist camp, admits that Gal 1:19 gives him moment's pause), but the second brings us to the issue of what people are likely to invent, and under what circumstances. Permit me a short detour, if you will.

The field of biblical studies is full of NT-Wright clones who claim the biblical authors would never have invented things for lack of precedent. The fact is that human beings are perfectly capable of inventing wild and crazy ideas, and they do so all the time. Especially religionists. So for example, Wright's repeated claim that the early Christians would never have claimed their messiah was resurrected before the end, unless in fact he was, is bogus. The disciples could have easily invented an empty tomb and/or resurrection legend, because apocalyptic movements always find imaginative ways of coping with dashed hopes in order to survive. Rude reality reinterprets expectations, and Jesus' original prediction about the destruction of the temple was spiritualized in the gospel of John (Jn 2) for precisely this reason -- in order to cope with failed hopes and broken dreams.

But here's the problem, and why Wright, despite himself, is actually right in this case: the disciples' dreams hadn't been broken. In their minds, Jesus' death wasn't a mark of failure. The crucifixion demoralized them, to be sure, but was ultimately taken as part of the apocalyptic drama. The shame and scandal of the cross (on which see more below), became the whole point of their faith, an inverted badge of honor. And Jesus had braced them for tragedy: they were living in the end times, on the brink of the tribulation, and suffering/death had to precede the apocalypse. The crucifixion would have put them, as Dale Allison has said, "emotionally down but not theologically out". They would have gone on expecting the apocalypse and the resurrection of the dead, at which point they would have been vindicated and raised with their savior. It's not likely they would have resorted to a loony revisionist resurrection belief in this context. Since things were still going as expected, it would have taken an actual historical event (the empty tomb in conjunction with visions) to prompt the bizarre claim that Jesus had been resurrected before the end.

The point of my detour is to show that apologists like Wright can sometimes be right for the wrong reasons, just as others can be wrong for better reasons. Which returns us to Ehrman's claim: that the early Christians would not have invented a crucified messiah. Is he playing fast and loose with logic (like an N.T. Wright) or fair ball (like a Dale Allison)? I think he's pretty solid here. Granted that messianic expectations were fluid at this time -- Jews expected messiahs to be kings or priests or prophets or even heavenly arch-angels -- the anointed one was always mighty and honorable. Jesus was a low-life, and executed as a criminal, the shame and scandal of which was a lethal obstacle to Christianity's success. In my view, it is exceedingly unlikely that anyone would have invented a messiah like this. He became, to be sure, an inverted badge of honor. Virtually the entire NT -- especially Paul, James, I Peter, and the synoptics -- reshapes the way honor is conventionally assigned, reversing values, the last being first, etc. The early Christians not only celebrated their scandal (as Mark Goodacre phrases it), they reveled in it. But this only underscores the point, as a human response to embracing the unembraceable. You don't invent a shameful failure that so thoroughly damns your cause in advance; you take a real-life shameful failure and discard it -- or glorify it the only way you can, through paradox and irony, and with enough zeal to match the animosity of your detractors and persecutors.

A similar point is made in yet another hot-off-the-press book by John Dominic Crossan. Readers of this blog know that I enjoy making fun of Crossan, and truthfully, a lot of what he writes in The Power of Parable is dross. But like Ehrman, he identifies two points in support of Jesus as an historical figure. The first is a different one: (1) the agreement between non-Christian writers Josephus and Tacitus that Jesus existed, even allowing for some Christian interpolation in the Josephus passage. The second is like Ehrman's second point, though applied more generally: (2) that the early Christians would have not so repeatedly shot themselves in the ass, or as Crossan puts it, "if you are inventing a non-historical figure, why invent one you cannot live with, but must steadily and terminally change into its opposite?" (p 251). Crossan uses some bad examples in support of the second point, not least his silly insistence that Jesus was non-apocalyptic who had to be changed into an apocalyptic.

But he is on to something, and this relates to the controversial criterion of embarrassment discussed recently on my and Mark Goodacre's blogs. I don't want this to deteriorate into semantic debates. Whether traditions about Jesus were (on rare occasion) embarrassing, or (more often) just "against the grain", or whatever, the point is that the cumulative effect of these traditions weighs heavily against the idea of wholesale invention. People invent wild ideas, yes, but not so that they're so repeatedly self-defeating. When your sinless savior is being baptized, when he's wrong about the apocalypse, when he heals using magician-like techniques, when his filthy brown ass (Mk 11) calls for a corrective white battle horse (Rev 19), or when his mustard shrub demands alignment with the cedar of Lebanon -- and the list goes on and on -- it's being unreasonably skeptical to think the original figure behind all this sanitization was invented. The early Christians could have been theological masochists, I suppose, but I rather doubt it.

I agree with Mark Goodacre that mythicists are more worthy of attention than normally granted. They keep the rest of us honest. And I have gone on record plenty of times as lending more sympathy to the mythicist position than the minimalist one based on the underlying assumptions of each (see Millenialism or Myth?). Mythicists recognize an early explosion of fantasy that cannot be reasonably denied. But to conclude that such fantasy didn't enmesh an historical figure is also unreasonable, given everything covered above -- Paul's off-hand allusions to Jesus' family, non-Christian reports of Jesus, and above all else the internal tensions within the NT traditions themselves.

The Value of This Blog

Deane Galbraith has called attention to a website-value calculator called Worth of Web. It turns out The Busybody has earnings of $1.95 daily, $59 monthly, and a market value of $957. Not bad, I suppose, considering how rarely I blog these days. Here are the figures:

Daily Visits: 283
Daily Pageviews: 1,302
Daily Revenue: $ 1.95

Monthly Visits: 8,493
Monthly Pageviews: 39,070
Monthly Revenue: $ 59

Yearly Visits: 101,921
Yearly Pageviews: 468,838
Annual Earnings: $ 708

Estimated website worth: $ 957

The Top 10 Post-Apocalyptic Films

Ever since The Road Warrior I've been a fan of post-apocalyptic movies but wished for more and better. The 21st century has been granting my wish big time, and after being pulverized by The Divide last week I figure it's time for a pick list. By post-apocalyptic, I mean a film set after the end of civilization or its dramatic upheaval due to catastrophe. The catastrophe could be anything, and represented on this list are nuclear warfare (The Divide, The Book of Eli, A Boy and His Dog), pandemic (Stake Land), technological takeover (The Matrix), dysgenics (Children of Men), resource depletion (The Road Warrior), the breakdown of law and order (Escape from New York), climate change (The Snow Piercer), and unknown (The Road). Most are fresh tomatoes, I'm pleased to note.

1. The Road, John Hillcoat. 2009. Critical approval: 75%. Dispiriting in the way only Cormac McCarthy novel adaptations are, this is the best post-apocalyptic film to date, and the only one on this list where the cause of humanity's devastation isn't explained. In a dead wasteland of marauding cannibals I would probably do as the lead character's wife and just kill myself. Nothing promises to get better, and it's impossible to survive in any way that makes life meaningful. Even the goodness inside the best of people isn't always so resilient: the father played by Viggo Mortenson sinks to some ugly depths to protect his son. Precisely because of this, The Road is so uplifting, especially when the two lone protagonists reach their destination at the eastern sea, and the father dies. There are even eschatological overtones, as the boy could be an implied messianic figure who, unlike his father, is able to "carry the fire" of goodness to the end. I watched this film a second time after the death of my own father in 2010, and it was helpful in the grieving process. It's a powerful and noble work.

2. The Divide, Xavier Gens. 2011. Critical approval: 25%. Ignore the critics, this film is fantastic if you have the right expectations. It's a hard-hitting horror show set in the basement of a New York high rise apartment, where nine strangers gather to survive a nuclear holocaust. Despite uneasiness and distrust, they try working together at first, and do pretty well until cabin fever, radiation sickness, and their own base humanity take over. There's torture, rape, sex slavery, and full-blown lunacy on display, but unlike The Road, there's no light at the end of the tunnel -- which in this case happens to be, literally, a tunnel of shit. The Divide holds humanity completely captive to misanthropy and is the best Lord of the Flies-themed film I've ever seen. The performances are brilliant; even I was deeply chilled by what Gens believes people are really like under our societal conditioning.

3. The Road Warrior, George Miller. 1981. Critical approval: 100%. A #1 favorite on many post-apocalyptic lists, and the best movie sequel in any genre. Along with Conan the Barbarian, it was among the first R-rated films I saw as a young teen, and it left a brutal impression. The '80s were a horrible decade for film, but a few gems like this from '80-'82 felt like layovers from the '70s. Like Conan (and Snake Plissken, see #7 below), Mad Max is an amoral anti-hero straight out of pulp escapism, something Edgar Rice Burroughs could have created, and his solitary wanderings across a wasteland remain an incredibly inspiring archetype. There's so much about this film impossible to forget: the feral kid with the boomerang who narrates the story as an adult, the amazing road stunts for pre-CGI days, and the idea of gasoline being the most precious commodity -- which resonates rather loudly in the 21st century. The Road Warrior has a high rewatch value, and I've seen it well over a dozen times by now.

4. Children of Men, Alfonso Cuarón. 2006. Critical approval: 93%. As polished as The Road Warrior is pulp, this is an adaptation of the P.D. James' novel, except that women are infertile instead of the men. It's a future where people can't reproduce, immigration is criminal, terrorism runs rampant, religious nut-cases flagellate themselves, and law officials treat people like beasts. A pregnant woman suddenly offers hope for humanity, but it's not terribly clear why, anymore than how women lost their fertility to begin with. Cuaron's dislike for back-story and clear exposition seems to have led him to use the concept of infertility as a vague metaphor for the fading of human hope; yet the film ends on a note that plays into one's predispositions, so that optimists will sense at least some hope for humanity, others not so much. Whether this means Children of Men is unsure of its vision or profoundly polysemous, I'm not sure, but there's no denying its mythic power.

5. Stake Land, Jim Mickle. 2010. Critical approval: 75%. Not only is this a great post-apocalyptic drama, it's one of the best vampire films ever made, giving the middle finger to both the aristocratic version (Dracula) and juvenile pop model (Blade, Underworld, Buffy, Twilight). These are vamps as they should be, mindless savages who go for the jugular without fanfare -- as per From Dusk Till Dawn and 30 Days of Night. The story centers around a young man whose family is slaughtered; he's taken under the wing of a hunter who now slays vampires as they can only be killed, by pounding stakes through the bastards' hearts. The two embark on a Road-like odyssey to find a mythical refuge up in Canada, and run afoul a nasty religious cult along the way. This is the proper way to do an undead pandemic, and blows away the overrated 28 Days Later (which isn't even the undead film it pretends, since the "zombies" aren't reanimated from death, just living people infected by mindless rage).

6. The Matrix, Andy & Lana Wachowski. 1999. Critical approval: 87%. What hasn't been said about The Matrix? I will say this: it got me hooked on going to the theater to see movies instead of relying almost exclusively on the VCR. (Chucking the VCR and embracing DVDs would soon follow.) The Wachowski brothers managed to work in everything just for me: martial arts (I'm embarrassed to say I loved those god-awful '80s ninja films), realities inside the mind (Doctor Who's Deadly Assassin from the '70s was actually the first to use the matrix), with as much philosophy as action, even neo-gnosticism, and all in the context of a horrifying future where machines rule and people are nothing more than chemical batteries. And never mind that Keanu Reeves can't act to save himself. Here he doesn't need to. But skip the lousy sequels.

7. Escape from New York, John Carpenter. 1981. Critical approval: 83%. Some deny this qualifies as post-apocalyptic, since it's just New York City turned into a prison. But as this reviewer points out, the background in the untruncated script involves global chemical warfare, and gas released on a massive scale causing people to go crazy and criminal everywhere. Just last week I watched this classic for the first time in ages and am amazed how well it holds up, and what the production team accomplished on such a low budget. The criminal world of Manhattan is compelling, and the terrorist plane crash near the World Trade Center is downright chilling to watch after 9/11, not to mention Snake Blissken's risky landing on top of WTC itself. It's no accident this film debuted months after The Road Warrior (see #3); Blissken is a lot like Mad Max, a perfect amoral anti-hero.

8. The Book of Eli, Albert & Allen Hughes. 2010. Critical approval: 48%. Yes, there's a lot about Eli that panders to the lowest common idiot, but it's atmospheric as hell, and I love the idea of a last surviving copy of the bible which people are willing to kill for. Gary Oldman's villain wants it for all the bad reasons, to sway and control the masses, while Denzel Washington's hero just wants to deliver it into scholarly hands out on the west coast. And while Denzel, true to form, pretty much plays Denzel, Eli's spiritual guardianship and preservationist sensibilities make him appealing beyond a martial arts superman. Ultimately, this is what spaghetti-western action looks like in a post-apocalyptic setting, and if there are glaring logistical problems (why has it taken Eli thirty years to wander across America to reach the west coast? how did he become such an over-the-top karate killing machine like The Matrix's Neo? he's blind, is he?), it's at least unpredictable and well crafted.

9. A Boy and His Dog, L.Q. Jones. 1975. Critical approval: 77%. I adore this cult classic, not least for its outrageous political incorrectness. And who better to play such an ignorant misogynist than Don Johnson? In an age after nuclear holocaust, women have become a rare commodity, but Vic has a telepathic dog (Blood) who can hunt and sniff them out for him to rape. The rewatch value comes in the relentless bickering sessions between him and Blood, which are strangely reminiscent of those between Tom Baker and his robotic dog K9 from Doctor Who. Both dogs are smug know-it-alls who treat their masters with borderline contempt, the huge difference of course being that while the Doctor and K9 are pretty much evenly matched in intelligence and wit, Vic is a truly ignorant piece of trailer trash. Blood gets in a lot of nice shots, one of my favorites being, "The next time you play with yourself, I hope you go blind." The twist ending is real shocker, where Vic kills the girl he just rescued, and cooks her to feed Blood, who remarks on the closing credits, "Well, I'd certainly say she had marvelous judgment, if not particularly good taste."

10. Snow Piercer, Bong Joon-Ho. 2013. Critical approval: ? I'm going to finish with a reckless prediction, that Snow Piercer, slated for release next year, will be a knifing success and earn a place on this top-10 list. It's set in an ice-age future, where the only survivors are inhabitants of a train that travels perpetually around the globe. There's a brutally unfair class system on the train, and, naturally, revolution breaks out. I'm excited in particular by the cracking team behind this project: the director of Oldboy is involved, as is the writer of Before the Devil Knows Your Dead. The story is based on a French graphic novel (see left), and promises to be a thrilling roller coaster, yet with thoughful purpose. If my expectations are met, I'll edit and rank the film accordingly; otherwise I guess I'll have to choose something else.

Honorable mentions. Or not-so-honorable, but the following make enough pick lists on the web to warrant comment: Planet of the Apes (1968) was always too cheesy (even by '60s standards) for me to take seriously, Logan's Run (1976) too flawed in premise, and The Quiet Earth (1985) too stale and hopelessly '80s in style. Dawn of the Dead (1978) almost made my cut, but lumbering zombies are hopelessly cliche and frankly not scary. Then there are the sci-fic crowd pleasers Terminator and 12 Monkeys, which I don't think really count as post-apocalyptic because they don't feel like it; their dramas involve time travel and are grounded in the pre-apocalyptic "present".

Scholarly Homophobia

In response to a post on Paul and homosexuality from Mike Bird, and a waste-of-time video clip from Ben Witherington, James Crossley fairly asks why bigoted scholarly views are so mainstream. Like James, I don't normally get involved in these kind of debates, but will make a few observations.

The comment from Deane Galbraith under James' post lights on the real problem: the inability to treat Paul as a neutral or hostile witness. It's a mark of double-standard scholarship so often seen in evangelical writings, not to mention the apriori weight given to Judeo-Christian traditions over Greco-Roman. Says Deane:

"If I follow Bird's train of thought, the idea of 'nature' which Greek, Roman, and ('uninspired') Jewish literature describes would be 'very much constructed on the basis of a particular cultural framework'. Which is right. But when Paul makes very much the same appeal to 'nature', Bird's critical ability to discern a cultural construct apparently deserts him. Bird does not ask any critical questions about Paul's pronouncements on nature. For Bird, once Paul has spoken, he must be defended, not criticised. Paul's words about the topic of 'nature' – no matter how many parallels with contemporary Greek and Roman writers Bird adduces – cannot ever be treated as a social construct. At this point, criticism is abandoned, 'nature' is absolutized into 'the created order of things designed and put into effect by God and which showcases God's very own glory', and the question of the how Paul's words were socially constructed is ruled out of court.

"Bird's reluctance to penetrate beyond the surface or rim of the question of the social construction of Paul's categories – in stark contrast to his willingness to plunge hands and feet into the social constructedness of Greek and Roman writers – marks the very failure of any critical project he purports to be undertaking. But it is worse than that: it is criticism used tendentiously, and self-consciously so, and so the abuse of scholarship for certain pre-established claims. Yeah, yeah, we all do it to some extent, I know we all have presuppositions, but it's one thing to be aware that you have some dirt on your person that you can't see, another thing entirely to wallow in the mud like a pig in shit."

That pretty much sums up the problem with folks like Bird, Wright, and Witherington, and Crossley is not being unfair in implying that a certain level of homophobia is mainstreamed in the academy.

Mike Bird retorted to this business by implying that James Crossley represents self-righteous secularism, mostly by fudging over what really constitutes homophobia, but many people (myself included) tend to use the term synonymously with sexual predjudice. To be precise, predjudice is simply an attitude or judgment directed against a social group which involves hostility, dislike, or feelings of moral superiority. It's a descriptive term and doesn't account for any of the dynamics or motivations of the predjudice. If those like Bird are using Paul to endorse the idea that homosexual behavior is wrong, unacceptable, or inferior (regardless of what precisely Paul thought about homosexual behavior, which, in partial agreement with Bird I take to be largely negative), then this is indeed a predjudice, and it's not self-righteous for people like James Crossley to point this out.

With regards to homophobia, Bird says, rather amazingly:

"Now I had always thought that homophobic (= gay-hating) behaviour would be something like setting up a website called 'Godhatesfags.com' or else standing outside a gay bar with a cricket bat ready to bludgeon the first man in leather jeans who walks out of it. For Crossley, however, homophobia is exceedingly broad."

Now I have friends who are Christian (liberal and moderately conservative), Unitarian, Jewish, atheists -- and each and every one of them has an understanding of homophobia that is as "broad" as James Crossley's. It's simply not true that homophobia necessarily involves inflammatory predjudice. This site is as good a guide as any to the term, and outlines the four basic manifestations of homophobia (personal, interpersonal, institutional, cultural), and it wouldn't be the wildest guess that one or more of these would apply to Bird. But I don't know Michael well enough, or his church, to opine beyond this.

If we took a cue from Deane and really explored the social constructs of Paul's view of the matter, then an argument that Paul, as an honor-shame macho man, hated male homosexuality, but didn't have much to say about female homosexuality (if Rom 1:26 points to alternative heterosexual behavior instead of lesbianism) has a lot going for it; he was also galled in particular, as a Jew, by the pagan practice of temple prostitution. Perhaps this will serve as the subject for a later post.

The Criterion of Embarrassment

In a recent episode of the NT Pod (mp3 here), Mark Goodacre takes a swipe at the criterion of embarrassment, suggesting that it makes little sense that the gospel writers were embarrassed by anything they reported, especially by accounts like Jesus' baptism by John which are found in all four gospels. "If I'm embarrassed by something," says Mark in an earlier episode, "I prefer not to talk about it, quite frankly."

But I don't think it's necessarily true that avoidance is always the answer to embarrassment, especially if the gospel writers represent communities to which they are hostage. Within those communities, surely some believers were more embarrassed than others. The baptism tradition may have also had an important catechismal function for the early Christians. The evangelists had creative license, to be sure, but they didn't write in a vacuum; they were kept in check by deeply entrenched traditions. I don't see a problem with the idea that beliefs can remain cherished despite a nervousness owing to other evolving beliefs. Human beings are bundles of contradictions in any case, especially in the religious realm. In my view, Jesus' baptism by John remains a classic case where the apologetic process, and nervous trajectory across the gospels, is so obvious to be a given.

Having said this, I nevertheless agree with many of Goodacre's cautionary flags, in particular his discussion of Jesus' cry of dereliction on the cross. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" is thought by many to be embarrassing, but which actually squares cleanly with (gospel writer) Mark's agenda of consoling and vindicating those who suffer as Jesus did. Goodacre also rightly notes how scholars often use the criterion uncritically, or suspiciously seem to apply it after the fact, as if going in with the intention to prove something they like in the gospels. It's as if criteria like embarrassment are used as conveniences from a grab-bag, instead of really testing them critically. Mark says, scoldingly:

"You don't take texts at face value; you don't just look at the propaganda of the texts and accept them. What you do is you cross-examine them; you treat them as a hostile witness. And then you try and work out from looking at those texts the information they don't particularly want to yield up, but which we can tease out of them."

In fact, I have to confess that having defended what I take to be an obvious case of embarrassment (John's baptism of Jesus), there aren't many other instances where the criterion really works.

But furthermore, even in the rare cases where the gospel writers are embarrassed by something, it doesn't necessarily mean that it stands a strong chance of going back to Jesus. It just means that it goes back -- to a time when the idea wasn't embarrassing. My favorite case in point is Jesus' foolish prediction that the end would come in his lifetime ("I say to you that there are some of those standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God come in power", Mk 9:1). That's truly embarrassing, for it makes Jesus wrong, and the gospel writers of course tried making lemonade out of it with the transfiguration. But does this imply so strongly that it's historical? Not really, in my view; it only slightly increases the likelihood. For a saying like this could just have easily been created in a first-generation church that was getting impatient for Jesus' return as its members were dying off. Mk 9:1 would have then served as an "assurance" text, somewhat like I Thess 4:13-18 or I Cor 15:51-53, where in each case instruction, assurance, and consolation are given in response to particular concerns. In this case, the answer is, "Don't worry, Jesus is indeed coming again, and some of you will still be alive when it happens." Only at the point when all disciples and first followers died off would the saying become scandalous.

The case of Jesus' baptism by John is embarrassing like the failed prophecy: Mark decorates the baptism, Matthew gets defensive over it, Luke evades it (by removing John as the baptizer), and John outright censors it. That's embarrassment -- with all due respect to Mark G. -- or I don't know the meaning of the word. But does that mean it's historical? In this case, probably. Unlike the mistaken prophecy of Mk 9:1, I can't think of a compelling reason why early Christians would have wanted to invent the idea of their "sinless savior" undergoing a ritual that served the purpose of washing away sin. There may have been a good reason, of course; those early years are murky, and we simply don't know when Jesus became viewed as so pure. But as likelihoods go, I think this one stands the test of time.

Disagreeing with Mark Goodacre (in part, at least) is a bit fun, since I rarely get a chance to do it. Too often I share his skepticism of things taken for granted in NT studies. But do listen to his podcasts and make up your own mind.

A Playlist for Napping and Driving

I've updated my favorite playlist from last year, which I use for napping and driving to far off places. Here you'll find rock lullabies and indie performances, some edgier than others, many of which come from a playlist made by Drew Barrymore and Ellen Page. Their musical tastes intersect mine in curious ways, and so this list spins off theirs but definitely adds new things. I've provided youtube links to all the songs. I hope others may enjoy this playlist, and remember that music is good for your health.

1. "Skeletons", It's Blitz. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs. 2009. This album is a serious fan divider, claimed by many to betray the band's earlier sound, by others like myself as their best work to date. Edgy, post-punk songs like "Zero", "Dragon Queen", and "Faces" complement pristinely beautiful pieces like "Hysteric" and "Skeletons", the latter of which is one of my favorite songs of all time. It's transcendental in the way few songs attain, and Karen O's voice has an ethereal glide without sounding faddish or new-age. The regular version starts this playlist, and the acoustic version ends it, the perfect backbone.

2. "Par Avion", Mike & the Mechanics. Mike & the Mechanics. 1985. Easily identifiable as an '80s album, but better than most of what passed for good music in a faddish decade. Popular songs like "All I Need is a Miracle" and "Silent Running" don't hold up well, but the almost unheard of "Par Avion" is a song I never tire of hearing. I doubt I could point to a simpler, more straightforward song that's so effective. The live version from Dusseldorf is a treat too, if you can locate a youtube clip of it. Mike Rutherford, of course, is the guitarist for Genesis, who by this point (with Invisible Touch in '86) had sacrificed all originality for top-40 tripe.

3. "Dandelions in Bullet Holes,", All of Our Names. Sarah Harmer. 2004. This is an Ellen Page pick, and if not for her recommendation I would have never even heard of Sarah Harmer. She is apparently a Canadian folk artist and environmental activist. Says Ellen: "She's the person I've seen the most live out of any musician. I've loved her for a really long time. She is this absolutely gorgeous singer; her voice is unbelievable; live, she tears me to pieces. 'Dandelions in Bullet Holes' is a song specifically that came out when I moved to Toronto, and my best friend (my soulmate) and I would dance to this song in my living room." It's indeed a soothing song that eats its way into you, and essentially about the potential for peace despite ourselves.

4. "Sawdust & Diamonds", Ys. Joanna Newsom. 2006. Another one of Ellen's picks, and again her commentary will serve: "The one and f-ing only Joanna Newsom. Talk about someone with such a unique voice, and to be a harpist, and lyrically so ingenious, and so brilliant. I could choose any song by her, but 'Sawdust and Diamonds' is one I find staggeringly beautiful." And the Ys album has been on too many "best of the decade" lists to name, not to mention the well known 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. After Dolores O'Riordan (next up), Joanna Newsom's voice is so uniquely gifted, it was like she was put on earth to spellbind with the power of song.

5. "Ode to My Family", No Need to Argue. The Cranberries. 1994. If you put a gun to my head and asked for my favorite song of all time, I would probably choose this one. Dolores O'Riordan owns the best singing voice in any rock band, and the Cranberries' first two albums would be among the top 40 I'd take to the moon if I had to choose. Though somedays I'd go with "Linger" as my favorite song, "Ode to My Family" is the one I can literally listen to anytime. The lyrics are simple and pure, crying out for childlike innocence from the perspective of an adult who has succeeded in the world.

6. "Mountain Lions", Restless Ghosts. Old Abram Brown. 2010. This indie album shows a group of college kids on the road to greatness. It's their second album and they're currently working on a third. I haven't been mesmerized by a slow-paced album opener like "Your House on the Hill" since Depeche Mode's "Never Let Me Down". But for purposes of this playlist, it boils down to a choice between "Little Feet" and "Mountain Lions". And I go with the latter: it's probably my favorite, and might even be the band's, since they actually recycled it from their first album, Alive in Winter, but with sharper keyboard notes and percussion.

7. "Trouble", Mona Bone Jakon. Cat Stevens. 1970. Yet another Ellen pick, and I'm surprised to like it since I'm generally not fond of Cat Stevens. But I have to agree about the power of this song on account of its ties to the Harold and Maude film, a classic that could only have been conceived in the '70s. It's about a love affair between a teen boy obsessed with death and who enacts fake suicides, and an old woman. The youtube clip shows Maude's death sequence from the film, and if it doesn't choke you up, you don't have your priorities straight.

8. "Walking on a Dream", Walking on a Dream. Empire of the Sun. 2008. This is one of Drew Barrymore's picks, chosen on grounds of its universal appeal: "It's one of those right-out-of-the-gate songs you can't help moving and grooving to. If you're twenty or your forty, you dig it. It's a song that transcends age, and diverse enough to reach a huge group of people." That's saying something extra considering I'm hard to please when it comes to electronica music. But Drew is right, this is an instantly compelling song.

9. "No More I Love You's", Medusa. Annie Lennox. 1995. She's a legend, of course, and it seems unjust to represent her with a cover album, but the spin she puts on well-known hits takes them to incredible levels. Her performance of Lover Speak's "No More I Love You's" is pure art. Some days I think the Grey Havens piece she did for Lord of the Rings is her best, but her voice is a bit brassy and grating on the high notes of the chorus. The Lover Speaks cover is beyond censure, and one of those songs you feel comes along once in a decade if that. Oh, and this also happens to be an Ellen Page pick.

10. "Smile and Beware", The Future Isn't What It Used to Be. Girl Nobody. 2004. When you google this band, you get zip. And the album isn't even available through iTunes, though used CDs can still be found on Canadian amazon. Rush to purchase before it's too late; it's tragic that such a talented band broke up as soon as they made a mark. Songs like "Cages", "Why Am I Alone?", and "Carlucci" are pure magic. But "Smile and Beware" is on par with the best of The Cranberries, used brilliantly in the gritty Canadian TV series Regenesis for a dying boy. The youtube clip actually plays the song over that scene, with a young Ellen Page shacked up in a motel with the boy -- incidentally, the best character she's ever played.

11. "Xavia", Honeysuckle Weeks. The Submarines. 2008. This indie duo has a curious history of romantic break ups and reunions, and their music chronicles this business on various levels. People who know me may be shocked that I'm choosing a song from their second album, which shakes off the sedate melancholy of the first in favor of bouncy and sunny songs like "You, Me, and the Bourgeoise". But it's really this one song which allows me to overlook the dominating glibness. "Xavia" captures perfection in a rare way, and though the word apparently means "bright" or "splendid", there's something subterranean going on in this piece too.

12. "Rosyln", For Emma, Forever Ago. Bon Iver. 2009. No, I most certainly have not seen the Twilight films and never will. And here's another reason to shun those obnoxious teen vamps: I don't want this gorgeous song ruined. Every now and then comes along a stunning score for embarrassing cinema, but such a contrast hasn't stuck out to me like this since Peter Gabriel's Passion for The Last Temptation of Christ. Bon Iver is one of the best artists of the past decade, and I could just have easily chosen "Blood Bank" (Drew Barrymore's pick) or "Flume" (recently covered by Peter Gabriel). But "Rosyln" is their best, whatever cinematic baggage it carries.

13. "Bring on the Dancing Horses", Songs to Learn and Sing. Echo and the Bunnymen. 1985. By rights I should be using a song from the band's Ocean Rain masterpiece, which was marketed -- only partly tongue-in-cheek -- as "the greatest album ever made". This song was the only new one on their greatest hits album following a year later, but in my view turned out even better than their best. The lyrics fascinate me; they seem to mean that when everything is going to hell, you need to bring out that last little trick that will upend everything against the odds. And I love the apocalyptic imagery, especially with the headless horsemen of Revelation. The singer almost takes on the role of the anti-Christ, taunting at the end, "Bring on the new messiah, wherever he may roam".

14. "Safety Dance", Rhythm of Youth. Men Without Hats. 1982. This is the absurdly crazy smash from my formative years that the lead singer wrote after he'd been kicked out of a club for dancing the wrong way. It's a bit silly, but so catchy and compulsive it still makes me want to bounce around when I hear it. I've also been obsessed with The Manic Safety Dancer, the mysterious woman from the video who only appears for fleeting moments, dancing deliriously, almost like an embodiment of wild free spirit. To this day, her identity remains elusive, and I'm a member of her cult-following on Facebook; so I have some weird connections to this song. Be sure to watch the video in the youtube link.

15. "Don't Let it Bring You Down", Medusa. Annie Lennox. 1995. Yet again Annie is able to one-up her source material, this time Neil Young. The song is about the decline of a society, and emotional isolation, with an urge not to despair. The world goes on, even if it doesn't have the right to, or even if we've given up on it; that's my interpretation of this controversial '70s song, and Lennox does wonders with it. And the line about "it's only castles burning" is one of my favorite blase refrains of all time.

16. "No Surprises", OK Computer. Radiohead. 1997. Though there's a special place in my heart for the cryptic Bends album before the coming of fame and glory, OK Computer is clearly the band's best, and "No Surprises" is the foreordained song for this playlist. It's about being asleep, and plays like a lullaby, with xylophone chimes and slight foreshadowing of later inferior songs from Counting Crows and Coldplay. It's oddly reminiscent of the chord progressions heard on the previous Bends album, and hints at a paradise where nothing changes, the news being equally good and bad.

17. "Your Arms Around Me", Night Falls over Kortedala. Jens Lekman. 2007. I don't know of a song so shamelessly sentimental and yet so good as this one. This Swedish singer serves up guitar-based pop with a heavy use of strings and horns, and romantic lyrics that draw me in even as I want to despise him. Then again, it doesn't hurt that this song was used effectively in Drew Barrymore's film Whip It!, playing over Ellen Page and a lanky-looking dude diving into a swimming pool and having fun with each other, as they hold their breath for amazingly long periods, somersault, kiss and grope each other... you get the idea.

18. "Skeletons" (Acoustic Version), It's Blitz. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs. 2009. Many people think this version tops the original (#1), and some days I agree with that assessment, but the original is flawless in its own way. I also once heard it said that the original version is for nightmaring, the acoustic for day-dreaming, which is an interesting way of putting it to say the least. In any case, it's extremely rare for derivative versions to come close to outing a good original, let alone one a favorite, and so both versions of "Skeletons" proudly frame this playlist.

The Context Group Essentials

I'm often asked for the best work of the Context Group. It's one thing to read the theory presented in Malina's New Testament World, Hanson & Oakman's Palestine in the Time of Jesus, and Pilch's Cultural Dictionary of the Bible, but where do we see all of this business in action? Where's the real payoff in applying honor-shame models to the bible? This list is my answer. If you read everything on it, then you're well empowered to understand the bible on its own terms.

1. Sex, Wives, and Warriors, Philip Esler. As the only Old Testament work featured on this list, it's fitting that it hold pride of place. It was Jesus' bible, after all, and offers an even sharper lens onto the honor-shame world than the New Testament, by the sheer abundance of stories with rural settings. The beauty to Esler's approach is that he writes for all readers of the bible -- scholars, laypeople, believers, infidels, filmmakers -- with an eye towards artistic instinct as much as scholarly debate. And the book is a friend to both maximalists and minimalists, since its doesn't address what really happened or who really existed, only how the ancients would have understood the bible in its final form. While Esler underscores the alien culture of the Israelites to the extent that their world seems unbridgable with ours, he is able to link the Old Testament stories to archetypal patterns found in myths and folktales across the world. They storm with new life as the cultural cues are filled in: vicious relationships between co-wives (Hannah and Peninnah), madness stemming from anxiety disorders (Saul), social vs. mafia-type banditry (David), the devastating power of rape (Amnon and Tamar), honorable lies and deceptions (Judith), and the way God vindicates those who are lowly and despised (David and Judith). More than any book I know, Sex, Wives, and Warriors is able to lay bare the disturbing world of the bible without apology, and yet make us feel deeply connected to it whether we're religious or not.

2. Galatians and Conflict and Identity in Romans, Philip Esler. The apostle's two famous letters never got a decent context until Sanders, and even after him, the revving up of the New Perspective made new monsters. The introspective Lutheran Paul was supplanted by an anti-apartheidist Paul, and nationalism became as intrusive as legalism. Esler pretty much keeps Paul where Sanders had him before scholars like Dunn and Wright tried "improving" on him in misguided ways. Against Dunn, Paul wasn't opposed merely to works as boundary markers or covenant badges; he believed that the very best the law could provide, love of one's neighbor, was now available by an entirely different route (the spirit), and as such the fulfilment of the law meant that its moral demands were completely obsolete. Against Wright, there was no sense for Paul that Christ was the "goal" or "climax" of anything to do with the law and covenant; he was its replacement and termination. The figure of Abraham is radically reinterpreted to prove this: since Abraham's seed are those who are righteous by the faith he had prior to circumcision, and since no one (except Abraham himself) fit this category until the possibility arose of faith in Christ, the centuries between Moses and Christ were a period of unrelieved gloom, where the "promise" was de futuro only. The Gentile issue, to be sure, is what triggered Paul's attack on the law (not introspective despair: Saul the Pharisee had lived by the law with no difficulty), but that attack had demolition in mind, not just knocking down a few walls to accommodate both parties. The Paul of Galatians is an outright supersessionist favoring Gentiles and denying value to Jewish identity, while the apostle of Romans revises his strategy, insisting that in Christ there is Jew and Greek after all, and putting both ethnic groups on the same salvific playing field in unique ways -- and even allowing that Israel is superior in an important way. A formula like Gal 3:27-28 was doomed to fail in the ancient Mediterranean; attempts to eliminate distinctions in honor-shame societies only encouraged groups to re-assert their identities in aggressive ways. That's why, in the end, there is Jew and Greek in Christ, and Romans the winning letter.

3. "A Dysfunctional Family and its Neighbors", Richard Rohrbaugh. This article is from a group of otherwise mediocre essays, but worth a book itself, and overturns everything we think we know about Jesus' famous parable. It isn't about a prodigal son, but a beleaguered father with two equally lousy sons. Nor is it a repentance story: the younger son comes home because he has no choice, is starving, and a classic case of naive peasants who migrate to cities and blow all their money. The older son is no help at all, cooking up false accusations against his brother (that he spent money on harlots) and heaping insults on his father. And the father acts as one feebleminded from start to finish, not only by allowing his younger son to declare him dead and take his share of the inheritance (which is village as much as family property), but by actually accepting him back into the community. Embracing and kissing him isn't an exemplary sign of compassion, but a public sign of protection against village hostility, as is the follow-up party to appease the entire village. Jesus thus affirms reponsibility to both kin and village, but in a bizarre way, with a father who counters shamelessness (disloyalty from both sons) with shamelessness (foolishness) of his own. By rights, he should have beat the daylights out of the younger son and given the elder a tongue-lashing. Every paragraph of Rohrbaugh's article is packed with amazing cultural insight, and it's as exciting to read as a modern short story.

4. Jesus was not a Jew or an Egalitarian, Jack Elliott. The two separate essays are actually called, "Jesus the Israelite Was Neither a 'Jew' Nor a 'Christian'" and "Jesus Was Not an Egalitarian", and they tie at fourth place as wonderful examples of negative scholarship. It's a lot easier to say what Jesus wasn't than what he was, and Elliott is at his best demolishing what people think he was. That the messiah wasn't Jewish might seem an outrageous claim, but Jesus is never in fact called Ἰουδαῖος in the New Testament, save on three occasions, and only by outsiders. He identifies himself as an Israelite, just as he and his associates are identified by insiders as Israelites (or Galileans, or Nazarenes). The term Ἰουδαῖος should in any case be translated as "Judean", not "Jew", and was understood in either a narrow regional (southern) sense or broader ethnic sense (to include Galileans and Pereans), the broader use particularly by outsiders. As for egalitarian fantasies, the idea of social equality between human beings originated with the 18th-century Enlightenment and was first put into (very rough) practice with the American and French revolutions. Jesus wasn't Enlightened. He was a messianic boss who chose twelve male disciples as his closest confidants. That he provided for the weak and vulnerable, and promised a reversal of fortune in the kingdom of God, doesn't make him egalitarian; nor did his reciprocity in common table-fellowship promote a message of equality. The wisdom of the first essay has yet to catch on: even though I fully agree with Elliott that "Jew" is a mistranslation in the bible, I still use it to speak the common academic language.

5. Social Science Commentaries on the Gospels, Bruce Malina & Richard Rohrbaugh. These commentaries cover all the subtleties of biblical culture which tend to go over our heads when we read the bible. Perhaps the most important lesson is that in Jesus' world, honorable men didn't defend themselves or answer questions directly when challenged, because that would only concede ground to their opponents. They counterattacked with insults, counterquestions, or clever evasions. So when temple authorities confront Jesus and demand to know by what authority he makes prophetic demonstrations in the temple, Jesus responds with a counterquestion and then ends up insulting them by refusing to reveal anything at all. Or when Herodians and Pharisees try snaring him by getting him to admit having revolutionary sentiments about paying taxes, Jesus deflects their question by having them produce a coin for him, and then, holding it up for all to see, he shames them with a nasty counterquestion and tricks them into identifying themselves as idolaters before concluding with a cryptic remark (which could just as well mean, "Give Caesar nothing and God everything"). Another important lesson concerns identity, which was provided by one's peers, not by oneself. So when Jesus asks Peter, "Who do you say I am?", and Peter replies, "You are the messiah", most of us think that Jesus knows who he is and is simply testing his disciples to see if they know. But Jesus is genuinely trying to find out his public status, and his followers are literally giving him his messianic identity. Only when public support has grown substantially will he finally be comfortable identifying himself as the messiah (at the end, in Mk. 14:61-62). To begin with, he is terrified of the title, and thus "sternly orders Peter not to tell anyone about it" (Mk. 8:30). The commentary on John follows the same approach as the synoptics, and shows that the Christian community of this gospel was an alternative society consisting of exiles, rebels, or ostracized deviants. As such, it had developed its own "anti-language", or resistance language used to maintain its sectarian religious reality opposed to "this world", the members of which, of course (especially the Judeans) lay outside the scope of redemption and were beyond the pale. Basically, Malina and Rohrbaugh have described all the important behavioral cues and cultural scripts behind the four gospels -- how ancient gossip networks functioned, why all rich people were considered thieves, the nature of patron-client relationships, and a lot more.

6. Parables as Subversive Speech, William Herzog. Like Esler's Old Testament book, this one is a blazing march through some tough stories. Herzog is famous for quipping that Jesus' parables weren't "earthly stories with heavenly meanings", but "earthy stories with heavy meanings", which is to say they only hinted about the coming kingdom of God by spotlighting the gory details of the here and now. The key is to resist equating masters and landowners with God (as the gospel writers sometimes do), since these figures are often the villains. When a servant buries money as commended by Jewish law, instead of participating in rapacious investment schemes, he's the hero of the story. When a messianic king forgives an astonomical debt but then turns ruthless, he's not a divine cipher of limitless forgiveness (for he plainly doesn't believe in that); he's a grim example of messianic pretenders who promise sabbaticals and jubilees: this is what they'll become if they win the crown. When a steward, caught between an elitist rock and a peasant hard place, cuts into his master's wealth for the debtors' benefit, the master eats crow and commends his strategy, since his short-term loss will be offset by a long-term gain on account of his new reputation as a peasant benefactor; the steward hasn't really cheated the master, only put new cards in his hands. While I have reservations about Herzog's minimizing the apocalyptic edge to at least some of Jesus' parables, and while I would maintain that some parables talked directly about the kingdom of God, for the most part this book is right on track about the way honorable peasants would have identified with these tales.

7. Honor Among Christians, David Watson. "Secrecy is nothing more than our own bewilderment projected into the Markan text," once wrote a scholar, and Watson finally puts the specter of Wrede to rest. With an acumen that makes the rest of academia look almost incompetent, Watson shows that the "secrecy" passages in Mark wouldn't have been understood as such by the ancients. In silencing those he healed, Jesus wasn't trying to keep his identity or healing ability secret (as if that would be possible in a world of rampant gossip networks), but rather to resist achieved honor. In patron-client cultures, recipients of benefaction are expected to repay their benefactor through public praise, and it's this kind of honor which Jesus resists. In silencing demons, likewise, Jesus is resisting ascribed honor, since a demon calling him "the Holy One of God" would be issuing a positive challenge and staking a claim on him; Jesus refuses to become indebted to demons and drawn into the laws of reciprocation. While the Markan Jesus doesn't do away with the honor-shame system altogether (no one in antiquity could do that an survive), he does offer a new vision in its place, by claiming that the persecuted and suffering will be honored, and the great and powerful will be shamed. Watson also puts to bed the so-called inconsistency between the "secrecy" and "publicity" passages in Mark -- properly speaking, the passages where Jesus resists honor, and those where he allows it or is indifferent to it -- which are no more inconsistent than passages from The Life of Aesop, which upend the conventions of ancient slavery while upholding them too. Basically, Mark portrays Jesus as authoritative and deserving of honor even as he reshapes the way that honor was coventionally assigned. So the secret's out: there never was a messianic secret, whether from Jesus' life or pre-Markan traditions.

8. Reconceptualizing Conversion, Zeba Crook. If the messianic secret was the gospel puzzle of the 20th century, conversion has been the hard concept in Paul, and the key to it is benefaction ("what's in it for me?") as opposed to introspective soul-searching. People in antiquity converted or chose gods for the same reason they chose patrons, based on the benefits they stood to gain. Crook delves into this "balance-sheet" psychology, which features an unexpected gracious call, at which point the client was expected to proseltyze and publicize his patron's generosity in order to increase his honor. As Paul puts it, "Woe to me if I do not proclaim the gospel!" He wasn't trying to save souls as much as gain converts to increase Christ's honor. Of particular interest is the way converts felt compelled to compare their inferior past to the superior present, to the credit of their patron; but in cases like Paul where the patron didn't change (God = Christ), the client raised the stakes dramatically, by improving upon an already excellent past (Philip 3:4b-6) which in comparison to the present is actually worse than worthless (Philip 3:7-11). That's why Paul says that his Jewish heritage is so awesome, but in comparison to Christ is shit. While some scholars prefer that Paul was "called" rather than "converted", Crook points out the false dichotomy: by the time of Hellenistic Judaism it was possible to be called and thus converted. Paul was invoking the Greco-Roman example of the call of the divine patron-benefactor ("conversion") and the call of the Hebrew prophets at the same time.

9. "Paul Did Not Teach 'Stay in Slavery,'" S. Scott Bartchy. This recent essay reinforces arguments from the author's older book which refutes the common mistranslation of κλῆσις in 1 Corinthians 7. That word means "calling" (or "invitation", or "summons"), and was translated correctly for centuries until Martin Luther. The Latin Vulgate rightly supplied "vocatione", and the King James and American Standard versions have "calling". But most English bibles follow Luther's crime, with "condition" (NRSV, New American Standard), "state" (RSV, New American), "station" (Goodspeed), or "situation" (NIV). Luther, of course, wanted to keep peasants in their place, and also assure the laity that they didn't need to become monks or priests to please God. Bartchy returns us to Paul. He doesn't argue that Paul was condemning slavery per se -- there are no egalitarian fantasies here -- for no one in antiquity could have imagined a functional world without slaves; nor was the apostle calling for social revolution. But he did encourage believers to remain in their newfound calling (not their present social condition), where being "in Christ" trumped other definers: women thus didn't have to get married and have children, and slaves could and should pursue manumission oportunities. It's amusing that while Jesus is fancied an egalitarian hero (see #4 on this list), Paul apparently needs to be seen as a demon who shut the door on all possible changes in the status quo. Both are equally wrong.

10. The Life of a Galilean Shaman, Pieter Craffert. Here's the Context-Group take on the historical Jesus: a shaman who became spirit-possessed and ascended to heaven in order to heal and prophesy. Craffert shows that across cultures, shamans have assumed the multiple roles of prophets, healers, and sages, and their exalted roles owed to personal intimacy and encounters (as they understood them) with their deities, and were not a mark of egocentrism. He follows the Dale Allison trend of gleaning Jesus from recurring themes and patterns in the gospels rather than specific sayings and deeds hammered out by the classic criteria -- as he puts it, Jesus is found not so much "underneath" the gospel traditions as "in" them. Rumor, gossip, and oral legends left us with an overall faithfulness if not actual accuracy. Also as from Allison, we get a terrific solution to the Son of Man puzzle: the title was a modest way of referring to the self in Jewish culture, but also a modest way of relaying a heavenly journey or encounter, and in some cases (like in the Book of Similitudes) a heavenly son of man figure seen in a vision turned out to be the visionary himself. This sits so close to Allison's proposal that Jesus' earthly and angelic identities were twin components which couldn't be neatly separated, and that Jesus in fact thought he had a heavenly twin or doppelganger.