Jesus Seminar Research Articles

고통에서의 전인적 연대를 위한 신학의 기여 가능성: 예수의 ‘함께 아파함’에 대한 논의를 통하여

The purpose of this essay is to make a point of contact between christian theology and modern medicine under the discussion of Jesus’ ‘compassion’, and to examine the possibility of theological contribution to holistic solidarity in suffering. For the purpose, we critically consider the discussion of Jesus’ ‘miraculous healing’ by Jesus Seminar. Through this, we conclude that the first thing we should pay attention to is not Jesus’ ‘miracle’, but his ‘healing’ as acts of compassion. In this way, when miracle events are included in the meaning of Jesus’ healing, it is expected to enrich the current theological discussions with naturalistic modern medicine. In addition, we try to reinterpret Jesus’ vision, ‘the Kingdom of God’ from the perspective of kenotic theology. Through this, nature, understood as blind necessity, can be the medium to communicate between theology and medicine, and can remove obstacles between the heterogeneous world views. In other words, nature in medicine becomes a foundation for humans to pursue a subjective understanding and autonomous intervention to suffering, and nature in theology becomes a reality that reveals the love of God who bears the suffering while embracing the other. This suggests that the intrinsic spirit of medicine is not much different from the sprit of Jesus’ compassion under the ultimate reality reinterpreted by kenotic theology, and makes medicine a good partner for theology working to bring holistic solidarity in suffering.

Jésus le Cynique? Un aspect notable du Courage de la vérité de Michel Foucault

The starting point of this study is the article of M. Senellart in which the French scholar speaks about a curious absence of in the late Foucault. How is it possible that the late Foucault who gives an account of the will of truth-telling from Sophocles to Saint Augustine, does not mention at all Jesus? In my paper I try to argue that though Senellart is perfectly right in stating that in his writings and courses dedicated to the problem of Christianity Foucault does not seem to be interested in the life and teaching of Jesus, we find, though, a secret presence of the figure of Christ in the analysis of the movement that we can read in the second half of The Courage of Truth. Actually, it seems that while Foucault analyses the philosophers, he draws, rather implicitly (by some fundamental aspects that remind us ineluctably of the Christian tradition regarding the figure of Christ), the portrait of Jesus. I also draw attention to the Cynic of the American Jesus Seminar founded by F. Gerald Downing which, curiously enough, developed the controversial hypothesis concerning the roots of the gospels in the eighties – nearly at the same time as Foucault held his last lectures concerning the relationship and the similarity between Cynicism and Christianity at the College de France.

The Quest for the Gist of Jesus: The Jesus Seminar, Dale Allison, and Improper Linear Models

Studies have found that while experts can be quite good at identifying criteria related to a particular phenomenon, they are typically outperformed by improper linear models (ilm), which assign equal weights to criteria. In this article, using widely-accepted criteria for assessing the authenticity of the sayings of Jesus, we generate a new ranking of Jesus’ sayings using an ilm. Then, drawing on recent advances in text mining—semantic network analysis—we first compare our ilm ranking to that of the Jesus Seminar’s and then to one based on Dale Allison’s recurrent attestation (RA) approach. We find that our ilm semantic network projects a more traditional understanding of Jesus than does the Jesus Seminar’s, but it is quite similar to the RA network. We conclude by suggesting that biblical scholars could benefit from various forms of computerized text mining in their quest for the historical Jesus.

Cynicism and Christianity in Antiquity by Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé

Reviewed by: Cynicism and Christianity in Antiquity by Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé Carson Bay Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé Cynicism and Christianity in Antiquity Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2019 Pp. xvii + 278. $75.00. Public masturbation and copulation, belligerent shouting, hitting people with sticks—these are a few things for which Cynics were known in antiquity. Such a movement appears prima facie an unlikely correlate to early Christianity. But this same movement was also known for poverty among its disciples, rejection of societal norms, pursuit of ascetic morality, and dismissal of the traditional gods. For this reason, scholars have depicted Jesus and early Christians as Cynic-like, and in late antiquity, the Cynic-Christian nexus did evince some puzzling permutations. All of this makes particularly valuable a book written by one of the foremost authorities on ancient Cynicism which examines all evidence for connections between Cynicism and Christianity (here an English translation of Cynisme et christianisme dans l’antiquité [Paris: Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, 2014]). The first hundred pages of Goulet-Cazé’s book are an up-to-date introduction to Cynicism in the Hellenistic and Roman worlds. This is an excellent introduction to ancient Cynicism. Goulet-Cazé ultimately dismisses the distinction between a “soft” Cynicism (friendly, adaptable, relaxed) and an “austere” Cynicism (rough, rigorous, audacious) propounded by, for example, Abraham Malherbe. Instead, she simply posits different temperaments/personalities between figures like Crates and Diogenes. Goulet-Cazé acknowledges the dichotomy posed by Diogenes Laertius: was Cynicism a school of thought (αἵρεσις) based on δόγματα, or was it rather a “way of life” (ἔνστασις βίου)? Cynicism’s status as a philosophy and the question of who could do Cynicism hinged upon the question. Goulet-Cazé shows that the issue was complex under the Roman Empire. A related question: was ancient Cynicism literate and elite, or popular and “street”? Goulet-Cazé [End Page 473] shows that, by and large, “Cynicism in the imperial period was a Cynicism of the popular classes” (78–79). But she acknowledges elite and non-elite practitioners and sees a literature expressive of “popular Cynicism’s state of mind” (85), namely the pseudepigraphical Letters of Diogenes and Crates and Pseudo-Lucian’s The Cynic. These works embody what Goulet-Cazé terms “genuine Cynicism,” defined “from the moment that a bodily asceticism began . . . with a moral goal that involved rejecting all the δόξαι imposed by society, and human naturalness began to display itself . . . without pretending” (88). The end of Chapter One compares this practice to Stoicism, which Goulet-Cazé casts as more spiritual, less ascetic. Chapter Two explores contacts between Judaism and Cynicism, summarizing the Judaism-and-Hellenism discussion and surveying pertinent sources: the Septuagint, Meleager of Gadara, Philo, Josephus, Oenomaus of Gadara, and the Talmud. There emerges a picture of minor literary engagement between Jews and Cynics, the possibility of interaction in ancient Gadara, and the parallel phenomena of Hellenistic chreia in Jewish/Christian and Cynic literatures. Chapter Three begins by rehashing scholarship on “Q,” the much-theorized yet still hypothetical proto-source of the Synoptic tradition. Goulet-Cazé engages scholars who have discussed relationships between Q and Cynicism. John Kloppenborg and Gerd Theissen appear exemplary, as their research emphasizes parallels between Q/Jesus and the Cynic literature/movement without assuming actual interaction, ideological or literary. F. Gerald Downing, Burton Mack, John Dominic Crossan, the Jesus Seminar, and especially Bernhard Lang receive less hospitable reading. Showing that similarities between Christianity and Cynicism are usually superficial and their perspectives completely different, Goulet-Cazé graciously concedes that the “Cynic Hypothesis” has “brought to light many interesting similarities between” Cynicism and Christianity (183). Still, the final words of the book will be: “. . . I hope I have at least helped . . . by warning against invalid appeals to surface similarities and against ideological bias of any kind” (248). The end of Chapter Three deals with Paul, who engaged “a common sociocultural legacy” of popular philosophy to which Cynicism and Stoicism contributed (196). The upshot of the chapter: Cynicism and earliest Christianity were in ways socially and literarily akin, yet any genetic relationship between them is highly speculative. Chapter Four will be the most interesting to the average JECS reader. It deals with Cynicism and Christianity in late antiquity. First Goulet-Caz...

Matthew and Mark across Perspectives: Essays in Honour of Stephen C. Barton and William R. Telford ed. by Kristian A. Bendoriatis and Nijay K. Gupta

Reviewed by: Matthew and Mark across Perspectives: Essays in Honour of Stephen C. Barton and William R. Telford ed. by Kristian A. Bendoriatis and Nijay K. Gupta Bonnie Thurston kristian a. bendoriatis and nijay k. gupta (eds.), Matthew and Mark across Perspectives: Essays in Honour of Stephen C. Barton and William R. Telford (LNTS 538; London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016). Pp. xxxix + 196. $112. Students of the first two Gospels will recognize those for whom this festschrift was prepared and be grateful these former students and colleagues contributed engaging essays. A collection by different authors presents challenges to a reviewer, and this book is no exception. My task was made easier since all these essays address the relationship between Mark and Matthew, framed by the opening question, Why did the early church retain Mark since Matthew incorporated so much of that Gospel? Nine essays follow appreciations and bibliographies of the honorees (by Walter [End Page 541] Moberly and Peter Francis) and an introduction (by Bendoriatis) that summarize the essays divided between traditional methods of interpretation (Francis Watson, "How Did Mark Survive?"; Helen K. Bond, "Paragon of Discipleship? Simon of Cyrene in the Markan Passion Narrative"; Craig A. Evans, "'He Laid Him in a Tomb' (Mark 15.46): Roman Law and the Burial of Jesus"; Donald A. Hagner, "The Newness of the Gospel in Mark and Matthew: Continuity and Discontinuity"; James D. G. Dunn, "Matthew—A Jewish Gospel for Jews and Gentiles"; Loren T. Stuckenbruck, "The 'Apocalyptic' Jewish Jesus and Contemporary Interpretation"); and more recent approaches (Daniel Frayer-Griggs, "'More than a Prophet': Echoes of Exorcism in Markan and Matthean Baptist Traditions"; Louise J. Lawrence, "Emotions of Protest in Mark 11–13: Responding to an Affective Turn in Social-Scientific Discourse"; Gupta, "The Spirituality of Faith in the Gospel of Matthew"). Essays are situated in the context of studies of the historical Jesus or investigation of the relationship between emerging Christianity and emerging rabbinic Judaism. Six essays are particularly strong. Watson argues that Mark survived because it was "too well established in the church's liturgical and catechetical life to be easily dislodged" (p. 10) and because "gospel plurality was becoming accepted as normal" (p. 17). Bond suggests that Simon of Cyrene is not a Marcan exemplar of discipleship but highlights Jesus' kingship. Evans on Mark 15:46 takes on the Jesus Seminar, proving that the "burial narrative we find in Mark 15 exhibits realism at every point" (p. 66). Discussing continuity and discontinuity between Mark and Matthew, Hagner finds discontinuity "more determinative" (p. 82). His note (70 n. 10) on the difficulty of negativity about Judaism is courageous, but absence of reference to the work of Amy-Jill Levine is surprising (e.g., The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus [San Francisco: HarperOne, 2007]). The social-scientific vocabulary of Lawrence's examination of Mark 11–13 is off-putting, but her reading of the text is enriching and nuanced. Dunn addresses what Matthew hoped to achieve in writing another Gospel, concluding that it was to make clearer the tradition to a "community made up primarily of Jews who believed in the Messiah Jesus" (p. 142). He demonstrates that Matthew's Jesus is not essentially different from Mark's. Stuckenbruck's essay concentrates on apocalyptic eschatology, evinces wide erudition and scholarship, but presumed of this reader more knowledge of Second Temple thought than she has. For Frayer-Griggs's essay on John the Baptist traditions to be convincing, more proof at the outset "of the polemical nature of Jn 10:41" (p. 39) and, at the close, of "the Fourth Evangelist's polemical stance against the Baptist" (p. 51) is required. Repeated use of the conditional "may" weakened the presentation. Gupta's treatment of pistis provided a fruitful approach to Matthew's spirituality, but the author omitted recent scholarship on the Canaanite woman, assumed "disciples" were all male, and neglected Sharyn Dowd's important work on the cursing of the fig tree. Nevertheless, Gupta is correct; in Matthew "pistis is a central way … humans ought to respond to Jesus and God" (p.123; see Sharon Echols Dowd, Prayer, Power, and the Problem of Suffering: Mark...

Kritische Geschichte der Jesusforschung: Von Kelsos und Origenes bis heute by Marius Reiser

Reviewed by: Kritische Geschichte der Jesusforschung: Von Kelsos und Origenes bis heute by Marius Reiser Linda M. Maloney marius reiser, Kritische Geschichte der Jesusforschung: Von Kelsos und Origenes bis heute ( SBS 235; Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 2015). Pp. 204. Paper €28. [Full disclosure: this reviewer and Marius Reiser have been friends and conversation partners since our student days in Tübingen in the 1980s.] In this volume for the Stuttgarter Bibelstudien series, Marius Reiser has reviewed in a scant two hundred pages the history of Jesus research, beginning with Origen's Contra Celsum and ending with our own contemporaries. R. is an acute and widely read scholar in Greek history and literature, and he brings that background, as well as his expertise in NT, to the task. He finds that Origen was in many ways a more accurate assessor of the evidence regarding Jesus than most, if not all, subsequent critics. Among the ancients he also includes a section on Porphyry. In the first chapter, "Kritische Geschichte der Jesusforschung," R. reviews a panoply of scholars whom, in his Vorwort, he divides essentially into skeptics and "orthodox." He numbers himself among the latter and describes these scholars as those who seek to think in accord with the ancient creeds that constitute the universal Christian confession: the conviction, that is, that historical-critical biblical research is done in a context of and is part of theology. The scholars whose work is treated in the first section include (among the non-orthodox) Reimarus, Johann Gottfried Herder, Matthias Claudius, David Friedrich Strauss, and Ernest Renan. A subsection on Marie-Joseph Lagrange locates him within his time period as an "orthodox" outlier. Then comes a chapter called "Der kreisende Berg" (with sardonic reference to the mountain that labored and brought forth a mouse). R. concentrates on the issue of identifying the historical Jesus with the biblical Christ, which he sees as the fundamental question asked (and for the most part answered in the negative) by the several "Quests." The most influential figure here is, of course, Rudolf Bultmann, and he receives the most extended critique. Ernst Käsemann, Günther Bornkamm, John Dominic Crossan, and the Jesus Seminar are sharply criticized; Gerd Theissen fares somewhat better. R. disputes Geza Vermes's thesis that Jesus was a Galilean ḥāsîd, with reference to R.'s own [End Page 346] previous book, Der unbequeme Jesus (Biblisch-theologische Studien 122; NeukirchenVluyn: Neukirchener Verlagsgesellschaft, 2012), in which he sought to show that Jesus was and remains an irritant in his own and subsequent religious communities. Even John Meier comes in for criticism here: though R. deeply respects his profound and diligent scholarship, R.'s response to the attempt to discover a Jesus-image acceptable to agnostics as well as believers is essentially: cui bono? The chapter on the conservative-critical line of thought starts with Martin Dibelius and includes the Jewish scholar Hans-Joachim Schoeps; R. agrees with Schoeps and Joseph Klausner, that Jesus "opened a path that necessarily led away from Judaism" (p. 115, citing Schoeps's 1963 essay, "Jesus und das jüdische Gesetz," in idem, Studien zur unbekannten Religions- und Geistesgeschichte [Göttingen: Musterschmidt, 1963]). Others treated here are C. H. Dodd, Milan Machovec, Ben F. Meyer, and N. T. Wright. R. finds his own point of view especially close to that of Meyer, whose attention to the work of Bernard Lonergan R. respects, and whose scholarship probably comes closest to that of R.'s and my own teacher, Gerhard Lohfink. He also values the late scholars Graham Stanton and Martin Hengel (who was teaching in Tübingen during our studies there). There follows a summary chapter on "the results of scholarship," and then a concluding section on fundamental principles and methods: those in use in the past and those still worth employing for the future. I have my disagreements with R. here and there. It seems to me that his summary dismissal of a "hermeneutic of suspicion" is too blunt an instrument. He means by it a principled skepticism of the veracity of the biblical witness (in essence, regarding the biblical writers as guilty until proven innocent), which is not what it means, for example, to...

A Second Look at Georgia's Revised Intrastate Crowdfunding Rules

At the time of the earlier SSRN article about Georgia, it was not public knowledge of the role of NASAA, or the N. C. Secretary of State, in coordinating the political efforts across state and national boundaries. The N. C. Secretary of State had decided to keep her initiatives at NASAA secret, and hidden from the public, including the members of the North Carolina General Assembly, where she had attempted to pass her version of the bill in 2013, and again in 2015.Subsequent to those articles about Georgia, further examination of the laws adopted in 2014 and 2015, by 16 other state legislatures, revealed a common template, whose genesis was unknown to non-NASAA members. This was just like the research of the Jesus Seminar, whose investigators kept coming across text in the Biblical apocrypha of hundreds of unrelated documents that had the same basic language. All the state laws had exactly the same language and format as the template created by the North Carolina Secretary of State. All the other states relied on the defective North Carolina template, which incorporated into law, administrative rules that should have either been left to various state administrators, or left out entirely, from any rules. Putting the rules into the legislation subjected CEOs of companies to both civil and criminal prosecution for violation of any minor transgression, as interpreted by hundreds of state bureaucrats.

What Are The Odds?

In 1985 a group of New Testament scholars, who came to be known as the Jesus Seminar, gathered to vote on the authenticity of the sayings of Jesus. Although the Seminar argued that it followed objective rules of evidence, critics have claimed that it did not. This paper investigates these claims using statistical models to evaluate the Seminar’s own voting records. It finds that although the Seminar’s Fellows did follow widely accepted criteria, they were also influenced by their own assumptions about who Jesus was. In particular, they appear to have assumed that Jesus was a non-apocalyptic enfant terrible who spoke in aphorisms and parables and occasionally uttered things that later embarrassed the early Church.

Everybody’s Happy Nowadays? A Critical Engagement with Key Events and Contemporary Quests for the Historical Jesus

Key Events is clearly a major contribution to historical Jesus studies from a broadly evangelical perspective. While there is much to commend and a number of strong essays, there are, inevitably criticisms to be made. A number of arguments appear to be repeating debates from the 1980s and 1990s with a familiar cast of good (e.g. N.T. Wright), bad (e.g. Burton Mack, Jesus Seminar) and ambivalent (e.g. E.P. Sanders) characters. This nostalgic feel means that alternative understandings of the historical Jesus and wider issues of history and historical change are not properly discussed, although clearly the opportunities were present among the contributors of Key Events. There is a sustained discussion of historical change in the chapter on resurrection but this repeats problematic arguments in favour of the historicity of the resurrection in what is effectively an attempt to prove what is historically unprovable. Finally, to lesser or greater extent, a number of essays in Key Events continue to perpetuate the idea of a ‘Jewish … but not that Jewish’ Jesus through monolithic constructions of Jews and Judaism and through the discredited criterion of dissimilarity in disguise: double dissimilarity. It is not always clear that the problematic criterion of double dissimilarity is applied consistently, with some evidence of contributors forgetting aspects of dissimilarity from Christianity while never forgetting dissimilarity from Judaism (even when similar Jewish evidence is, in fact, available). These criticisms should not take away from a number of positive contributions made to historical Jesus studies and it may be that Key Events represents a vision of what most historical Jesus scholars see as the future of the sub-field.

Author, the Atheist, and the Academic Study of Religion

Recently, there has been an upsurge in the publication of popular biblical criticisms, as exemplified by the popular works of scholars such as John Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg, Bart Ehrman and the Jesus Seminar, as well as by theological thinkers such as Bishop John Shelby Spong. My paper draws upon two years of formal anthropological fieldwork conducted at five North American mainline liberal churches that feature reading and discussion groups involved in the study of biblical criticism at a lay or popular level. In offering an analysis of progressive Christianity that engages with the scholarly works of Pierre Bourdieu, I propose to do two things. First, I argue that the study of religion and biblical criticism by progressive Christians serves as an ideal venue in which they are able to construct, articulate and proudly assume an alternative, non-normative Christian identity. I suggest that this identity is one that is formed in opposition to an evangelical or fundamentalist representation of Christianity, which I term, following Jonathan Z. Smith, a ‘Protestant proximate other’ (Smith 2004: 253).

Aphorisms of Jesus in John: An Illustrative Look at John 4.35

AbstractThis literary genre, the aphorism, finds full expression in the Gospel of John. Vestiges of the world of orality, these 'gems of illumination' invite intense reflection and response as they illuminate not only the literary landscape of the Gospel but also provide a lens for viewing the Jesus tradition in the Gospel of John. My work is indebted to the research of J.D. Crossan, author of In Fragments who has written the definitive work on the aphorisms of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels. More explorative work, however, is needed for the aphorisms of Jesus with particular focus on John's Gospel. Although the aphorisms of Jesus in John were omitted in the database of authentic sayings of Jesus compiled by the members of the Jesus Seminar, might these lapidary gems be placed on the table once more for exploration? While I am confident that the Johannine aphorisms lead us through the narrative landscape of the Gospel and even reveal distinctive aspects of the community, is it possible that they might also provide at least a brief glimpse of Jesus? Using the agrarian aphorism of Jn 4.35 as a showcase illustration, this article proposes to identify the form and function of the Johannine aphorism; to investigate the authenticity of the saying in Jn 4.34-35 using established criteria of authenticity; and to suggest the often-overlooked criterion of orality is a most useful tool for continued exploration.

Quran Criticism, the Historical-Critical Method, and the Secularization of Biblical Theology

Abstract The emergence of historical criticism of the Bible was partly influenced by medieval Quran criticism. This background was still well known in the 19th century but was later forgotten when emphasis was laid on Greek literature. Scholars such as Riccoldo da Monte di Croce had written critical works against the Quran. This tradition reemerged 200 years later in Germany when Martin Luther translated Riccoldo's Confutatio Alcorani. The special features in Riccoldo's work are the criteria he used hoping to prove that the Quran was not divine revelation. The famous Deist Hermann Reimarus later demanded that the Bible be read in the same way as other literature. His examples in Wolfenbüttel Fragments are mostly taken from the Quran. Reimarus adopted Riccoldo's criteria when interpreting the Bible. The purpose of his rationalistic criticism was to show that contradictions, inconsistencies, and lies prove that, as with the Quran, neither can the Bible be held as divine revelation. Reimarus, in his apology "for the Rational Reverers of God," stated that Christian doctrines are based on a fraud because the apostles created the whole Systema only after Jesus' death. Jesus' original proclamation was political. This dichotomy, confirmed later in David Strauss's biography on Reimarus, became the basis for the criterion of dissimilarity in NT interpretation. Rudolf Bultmann then gave this criterion its present formulation, and it is still used, for instance, by the Jesus Seminar.

Quran Criticism, the Historical-Critical Method, and the Secularization of Biblical Theology

Abstract The emergence of historical criticism of the Bible was partly influenced by medieval Quran criticism. This background was still well known in the 19th century but was later forgotten when emphasis was laid on Greek literature. Scholars such as Riccoldo da Monte di Croce had written critical works against the Quran. This tradition reemerged 200 years later in Germany when Martin Luther translated Riccoldo's Confutatio Alcorani. The special features in Riccoldo's work are the criteria he used hoping to prove that the Quran was not divine revelation. The famous Deist Hermann Reimarus later demanded that the Bible be read in the same way as other literature. His examples in Wolfenbüttel Fragments are mostly taken from the Quran. Reimarus adopted Riccoldo's criteria when interpreting the Bible. The purpose of his rationalistic criticism was to show that contradictions, inconsistencies, and lies prove that, as with the Quran, neither can the Bible be held as divine revelation. Reimarus, in his apology "for the Rational Reverers of God," stated that Christian doctrines are based on a fraud because the apostles created the whole Systema only after Jesus' death. Jesus' original proclamation was political. This dichotomy, confirmed later in David Strauss's biography on Reimarus, became the basis for the criterion of dissimilarity in NT interpretation. Rudolf Bultmann then gave this criterion its present formulation, and it is still used, for instance, by the Jesus Seminar.

The Place of the Money Bag in the Secular-Mendicant Controversy at Paris

The Place of the Money Bag in the Secular-Mendicant Controversy at Paris Robert J. Karris O.F.M. (bio) Money bag, money bag. So many Bible-reading Christians don't know of your existence. In their defense I note that you are only mentioned twice in the entire New Testament: John 12:6 and 13:29. If faithful Bible-reading Christians don't know of your existence, what is your fate among the faithful who are less than faithful?! Is ignorance truly bliss? New Testament Scholars Money bag, money bag. Perhaps, New Testament scholars are the reason why you are almost unknown among Christians.1 Commentators on John's Gospel give you a passing notice, if that.2 Even when they make mention of you, they [End Page 21] generally don't integrate your existence with other features of John's theology or life situation.3 As for the Jesus Seminar, its members sweep you into the dustbin of history along with 99.9% of John's Gospel.4 You see, you are deemed unhistorical. A couple of scholars involved in the quest for the historical Jesus say "Hi!" to you, but then go on with more important matters.5 Other scholars involved in the application [End Page 22] of social science methodology to the study of the New Testament opine that you were kept as a security measure and contained money to pay for the annual temple tax and such like obligations, but then they hold their peace.6 Money bag, money bag. Scholars who have investigated the theme of rich and poor in the New Testament hardly give [End Page 23] you a second glance. You do not play a leading role in their general conclusions.7 So, money bag, we have to take leave of New Testament scholarship if we are going to make your acquaintance on a serious level. The Middle Ages Francis of Assisi As we move into the Middle Ages, we ask: Did St. Francis of Assisi provide us with guidance on how to treat you with the respect that you, O money bag, so richly deserve? You see, some scholars maintain that John's Gospel was most important to Francis's worldview.8 However, Francis doesn't seem to see the problem you created for his all-consuming embrace of Jesus' missionary command of traveling with no money.9 [End Page 24] Surely Francis knows of your existence, for he refers to you in his Fourth Admonition n. 3: And the more they (superiors) are perturbed about their superiorship being taken from them than they would be over the loss of the office of washing feet, so much the more do they collect for themselves a money bag (John 12:6; 13:29) to the peril of their souls.10 Francis is heir to a Benedictine spiritualization of the money bag. See how Roger the Abbot in his Sermo in ultima cena employs the money bag: Woe, how many money bags, woe, how many purses are in the monasteries of St. Benedict! Woe, how many cowls, which cover the ears of the tonsured, enclose private supplies of the mind, the money bag of one's own will, the purse of murmuring, detraction, idleness, pride, envy, jealousy, and bad will! But remember, most beloved brothers, that those who do such things follow Judas the traitor. And therefore, unless you amend your lives, you will not possess the kingdom of God.11 O money bag, so Francis goes his merry way, apparently ignorant of your true meaning and leaves the problems created by your existence to his learned followers such as Bonaventure of Bagnoregio. To Bonaventure we now turn, but do so through his responses to his secular opponents, William of Saint-Amour and Gerard of Abbeville. First let's hear from the secular masters. [End Page 25] William of Saint-Amour and Gerard of Abbeville William of Saint-Amour comments on John 12:6 and argues that it does not permit begging and is the basis for the normative view that the apostles and their successors should have a money bag. He writes: Augustine, 'the Lord had a purse to keep the offerings...

Review of William Arnal,The Symbolic Jesus: Historical Scholarship, Judaism and the Construction of Identity

Arnal challenges the recent accusations that the historical Jesuses of scholars like Mack, Crossan, Horsley, Vaage, and the Jesus Seminar are un-Jewish and, therefore, at least implicitly complicit with anti-Semitism. Arnal readily acknowledges the presence of anti-Semitism today (e.g., in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ) and in the past in New Testament scholarship (e.g., in the work of Walter Grundmann). Arnal also finds tendencies toward anti-Semitism in Christian antiJudaism and in the apologetic scholarship that asserts Jesus’ uniqueness and accordingly distinguishes him from his environment. Despite this ‘bad karma,’ however, he argues that scholarship has improved in the last thirty years, particularly by making Jesus’ Jewishness central to historical reconstruction and by thereby normalizing Jesus as a part of his world, rather than distinguishing him from it. Today, the Jewish Jesus is simply no longer a matter of academic debate. Instead, the debate is now about what kind of Jew the historical Jesus was. In this context, the accusation that some scholars produce un-Jewish Jesuses is a ‘straw man,’ which dismisses the accused scholars’ hypothesis without discussion. Moreover, the accusation ignores debates about the ethnic and religious character of the Galilee, the fluidity of ancient markers of Judaism (see Jonathan Z. Smith, Imagining Religion), and, in particular, the comparative nature of Mack’s Cynic hypothesis. For Arnal, however, the real issue is not these historical debates, but a moral (or political) divide. Despite the accusations against them, scholars like Mack and Crossan are actually demonstrably opposed to anti-Semitism and their work deliberately strives to compensate for Christian anti-Judaism (see Mack’s Myth of Innocence and Crossan’s Who Killed Jesus?). By contrast, those who reject their work peremptorily are guilty of assuming that all kinds of ancient Judaism must be the same and of an anachronistically modern view of religion. This rhetoric BOOK REVIEWS

A Prophet Is Rejected in His Home Town (Mark 6.4 and Parallels): A Study in the Methodological (In)Consistency of the Jesus Seminar

AbstractWhile some might construct their view of the historical Jesus based upon the published findings of the Jesus Seminar, others may re-examine individual pericopae and argue that a change of 'colour' would be appropriate. Here it is suggested that the arguments offered by the Seminar to justify the colouring of one saying of Jesus—that a prophet is rejected in his home town (Gos. Thom. 31.1, Mk 6.4, Matt. 13.57, Lk. 4.24, and Jn 4.44)—as a (deep) pink are flawed. Arguments based upon multiple attestation, plausibility and embarrassment are considered and rejected, leading to the conclusion that black is the most appropriate colour for the saying. Two explanations for its inclusion in the Gospels are offered: that it is a proverb inserted by the writers because it mirrored their own circumstances, and the more speculative view that the saying was viewed as appropriate because of Jesus' own hyperbolic characterization of discipleship (cf. Lk. 14.26).

On the Ethics of Sanctified Sacrifice: John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany

On the Ethics of Sanctified Sacrifice: John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany

PsychoBible

PsychoBible

The Nazi Quest for an Aryan Jesus

AbstractThis paper introduces perhaps the most neglected era in the history of the Quest for the historical Jesus. The era is National Socialist Germany and the particular Quest involves the attempt to prove Jesus was not Jewish but rather Aryan. Despite sev eral recent attempts to associate the contemporary Jesus Seminar with such ap proaches, the whole period is largely ignored in the standard works on the history of New Testament scholarship. This paper introduces and describes the most impor tant of the attempts to prove that Jesus was Aryan, that of Walter Grundmann. Important aspects of the general ideological background, as well as the influence of his teacher, Gerhard Kittel are discussed, with a more detailed treatment of the arguments in his Jesus der Galiläer und das Judentum (1940).

Mapping Current South African Jesus Research: the Schweitzerstrasse, the Wredebahn and Cultural Bundubashing

AbstractWright'.s well-known distinction between the Schweitzerstrasse (the third questers) and the Wredebahn (the Jesus Seminar) in historical Jesus research is supplemented by a third approach, referred to as cultural bundubashing, which describes an interpretive, interdisciplinary and cross-cultural approach to historiography. An analytical distinction is made between these three trends which, like the roads in South Africa: toll roads (the Wredebahn), alternative routes (the Schweltzerstrasse) and off-road travelling (cultural bundubashing), offer divergent driving experiences, alternative perspectives on the same scenery and often unique features and scenes. Current South African contributions to historical Jesus research are mapped according to this grid.