Spirit Possession and the Origins of Christianity by Stevan L. Davies

Abstract

Reviewed by: Spirit Possession and the Origins of Christianity by Stevan L. Davies Henry Ansgar Kelly stevan l. davies, Spirit Possession and the Origins of Christianity (Dublin: Bardic Press, 2014). Pp. 328. Paper $25. The heart of this volume is an unacknowledged reprinting of Davies's 1995 book Jesus the Healer: Possession, Trance, and the Origins of Christianity (New York: Continuum), taking up pp. 39-244. (See the review by Eugene V. Gallagher, CBQ 58 [1996] 743-44). It is preceded by a long essay labeled "Introduction" and titled "On the Pentecostal Origins of the Christian Movement" (pp. 3-38) and followed by another long essay, "On the Odes of Solomon as Evidence for a Pre-Christianity" (pp. 245-83), a translation of the Odes of Solomon, and a brief Afterword: "The Two Most Important Events in Western History." The book concludes with a bibliography (mainly from the 1995 book, with a few additions); there is no index. The "spirit possession" of the title refers to shamanism (though D. does not use this term), supremely exemplified, as the subtitle indicates, by the event of Pentecost. In Jesus the Healer, D. started with Jesus as a sinful Nazarene possessed by the Spirit at his baptism, operating as an itinerant healer and preacher. After Jesus' death, his significance was transformed by the Pentecostal experience. The thesis is summarized and expanded in the new introduction: "Jesus was an exorcist presumed to be possessed by the Spirit who thereby attracted a group of associates who experienced, after Jesus' death, what they believed that he had experienced previously," and "they believed he was sending God's Spirit down to them such that they could now spread the experience to others" (p. 36). He makes a comparison with the beginning of the Pentecostal movement in Los Angeles in 1906, adding the odd idea that Jesus' temptation in the desert consisted of his fear that he was possessed by Satan (p. 7). D.'s notion that Jesus' followers were mainly cured demoniacs is not justified, apart from Mary Magdalene (Luke 8:2; cf. Mark 16:9). Furthermore, this idea has little bearing on D.'s main argument and unnecessarily confuses mere spirit-parasites with "the Spirit." In the essay on the Odes of Solomon, which, like Jack Sanders, B. considers to be pre-Christian, he advances a new theory. There was a pre-Jesus Spirit movement invoking a Messiah or Christ, which established numerous congregations in Palestine and Syria. Jesus himself was influenced by the movement. But it was the non-Jesus communities that Paul persecuted (it was too early for Jesus-centers to have been established), and likewise it was to the non-Jesus movement that Paul was first converted. But Paul eventually identified Jesus as the Christ (without, however, taking any interest in the life or deeds and teachings of Jesus). More simply, the Odes "represent the Jewish religious movement out of which Christianity arose" (p. 283). One need not accept all of D.'s surmises and arguments to find his discussion stimulating. In light of D.'s main thesis, it is not surprising that one of the two most important events treated in his Afterword is Pentecost, with a possible date of May 27, 33 c.e. The other event is the occasion of the discovery of "the book of the law of Yahweh by the hand of Moses" (2 Chr 34:14), ca. 627 b.c.e., which led King Josiah to clear the temple of all cults except that of Yhwh (see 2 Kings 22–23). D. concludes from the Kings account that the worship of all manner of gods had been tolerated, if not from time immemorial, at least [End Page 336] for three centuries, from Solomon down to Josiah. "Now," D. says, "Judea was to have but one cult, one priesthood, one God only" (p. 314). If so, an important event indeed! Henry Ansgar Kelly University of California—Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095 Copyright © 2017 The Catholic Biblical Association of America