I’ve been trying to get more into photography this year. Today I spent a good few hours with a friend at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens. The lesson for the day was learning to control the exposure manually and give up the security blanket of the cameras semi-automatic modes.
I’ve still got a fair bit of editing work today, but here are a few of the ones I particularly enjoyed taking.
I’ve been reading Craig Evans’ Jesus and his World: the archaeological evidence. I shall confess up front that I wanted to like this more than I did.
On the positive side, this provides a very useful treatment of a good range of archaeological evidence touching on the world of Second Temple Judaism within which Jesus moved, and out of which the gospel tradition was shaped. Evans clearly knows the evidence, material and literary, and is able to summarise and correlate it informatively within a concise and accessible format. If he states something as a fact, you can be sure it is well sourced.
Chapters of the book cover Sepphoris (my photo shows an old Roman road there with cart tracks visible) and the religious milieu of Galilee; evidence for early synagogues; literacy in the first century; the priestly establishment and Temple practice; and finally burial traditions (along with a look at some of the controversial ossuaries). All these are useful subjects, and it’s good to have a compendium of the material relating to all of them between the covers of such a concise introduction,
I find myself, however, with more reservations than I expected. In stating facts, for example, he relays the consensus that literacy rates were “somewhere between 5 and 10 percent (and that most of the literate were male) with perhaps somewhat higher rates among the Jewish people.” He goes on to say “I do not dispute this conclusion.” (p66) However, he embeds this statement in a maximising discussion of the evidence for literacy which leaves the reader with a clear impression that really he thinks this is a terribly conservative estimate, even if he cannot prove it, especially as regards Jesus and his closest followers. He may be right to argue that case, but should be more overt about what he is doing. His argument is weakened by failing to emphasise any distinction between reading literacy and writing literacy.
Going back a step, I note the introduction dwells on how the strongest forms of OT minimalism were refuted by mention of the house of David in the Tel Dan inscription, and how the Qumran Scrolls demonstrated Jewish antecedents for using “Son of God” messianically against those who had claimed it a Greek concept. By selecting some cases where archaeology has successfully challenged dogmatic theories, and not those where it questions biblical narrative (Jericho, anyone?) it tends to set the book up as belonging to an “archaeology confirms the Bible” genre. That is not actually fair to all of what Evans writes later, nor to the complexity of the material.
The book does, further, maintain something of an apologetic feel. The chapter on the Jewishness of Galilee, for example, against earlier ideas of “Galilee of he Gentiles” presents a clear summary of the evidence, well marshalled to demonstrate the case. However, Evans spends far too much time deploying his case in refutation of Crossan’s preference for a Cynic peasant Jesus, implausible to any scholar who has never paid their dues to the Jesus Seminar. I suggest the case for Galilean Torah observance (at least on some key issues of diet and ritual washing) revealed by the archaeological evidence would be much better used to ask questions about Jesus’ own Torah observance.
Despite those reservations or cautions, I shall still be placing this on introductory reading lists. Evans is a good communicator who knows his subject, and I know of nothing else which summarise so much useful information so accessibly. I wish, however, he had been less concerned with apologetic questions, and more willing to open up something of the complexity of bringing the material and literary evidence into a creative relationship.
I’ve been pondering whether to write anything after last night’s Newsnight “debate” on marriage for same-sex couples infringed the Trades Description Act and placed a greater burden on the word “debate” than it could reasonable be expected to bear. You can watch it on iPlayer for a while if you have masochistic tendencies. Here are some of the things I’ve been thinking.
(While I think there is also a theological argument to be had – and you will find theologians arguing both sides of the debate too – I have deliberately here prescinded from those to focus on what I feel are more general issues.)
It is demonstrably the case that, historically, marriage has been quite a variable institution, not least in the number and age of wives permitted to one husband, the ease and motivations for divorce, and the concomitant understandings of marriage. There have been significant economic and community interests shaping it as a means of social alliance and peace, and a continuing regulation of procreation within those constraints for family inheritance and species survival.
Yet within that wide ranging diversity a continuing emphasis on the good of the procreation of children and their proper upbringing (and therefore the survival of the community) is perhaps the most constant theme of what marriage was about. The household was where the next generation was conceived, and learnt to live in a community as well as being part of a unit of economic survival. Marriage, administered variously by church and state in Western society, was a single institution felt to have significant enough social ramifications beyond the relationship of two people to need regulating.
It is a pertinent question whether so many centuries of traditioned practice of a single institution of marriage recognised across society should be changed without a significant period of reflection and conversation on why it should be changed, rather than simply how to change it.
I think it further relevant that the government has seriously muddied its own equality argument by saying it will continue to provide civil partnerships for same-sex couples. It is in danger of creating new inequalities: straight couples will be able to choose between new civil marriage and new religious marriage, but not civil partnerships; gay couples can choose between civil partnerships and civil marriages, but not religious ones (even for religions that permit or encourage it).
At the heart of the debate (as I see it) is one question: is a committed romantic relationship between people of the same sex sufficiently like one between those of the opposite sex that it should be served by the same social institution. If the answer is “yes” then equal rights in the same institution is indeed the vital issue. If the answer is “no”, the question is not equality or equal rights in the same institution, but the provision of a equal but different institution with the same equal rights before the law.
That is a genuine question. There are those who will say the relationships are the same, taking romantic love as the sole or primary defining qualification for them. There are those who will say they are not, insisting on the place of procreation as fundamental. I have not yet been overwhelmed by a conviction of the rightness of either answer.
And, lest we forget, there are those who will continue to argue for a queer critique of all marriage (much of it shared with womanist approaches) as hopelessly tainted by patriarchy and heterosexist history, and celebrate a different kind of model for relationships. In this argument the queering of marriage is not only a positive virtue, but a testimony to same-sex relationships being different from marriage, and perhaps even better by being freed from the taint of historic patriarchy and property rights.
There is a sense (to adapt Marx on religion) in which the criticism of marriage is the premise of all social criticism. Does the new gay desire for marriage represent the death of queer criticism and the triumph of hetero-normativity? Will only a celibate Catholic clergy, sworn to preach the virtues of marriage, be the last bastion of a lived out critique queering domesticity and romantic love? That would be irony indeed.
There are, in short, new queer as well as old straight voices insisting that the two relationships are not the same kind of thing. Whether these relationships should be given equality in the same institution, or be given two equal but different institutions is a serious and genuine question. And that is the debate I think we should be having first, before we are “consulted” on how to do it.
When it comes to Israel and Palestine (even to using those names together), most people are either biased or confused, or in some measure both. Most sites which discuss the topic tend to be partisan on one side or another. Looking especially at the comments on such sites, it is easy to accuse them of either anti-semitism or Islamophobia (or simply anti-Arab sentiment).
One prominent Christian activist who regularly gets accused of anti-Semitism is Stephen Sizer, an evangelical priest in Guildford Diocese. Certainly he is outspokenly pro-Palestinian, and to say the least, he has a record of keeping very dubious company. Nonetheless many of the attacks on him come from Zionist sympathisers and sites whose commenters are rabidly anti-Palestinian. That makes it easier for Sizer’s supporters to dismiss them, whatever the strength or weakness of their case.
However yesterday, the moderate and mainstream Council of Christians and Jews issued an unusual press statement, following criticism in the Jewish Chronicle and elsewhere, which effectively called for Stephen Sizer to be disciplined for posting a Facebook link to an unquestionably anti-semitic site.
What makes it so unusual is that the Bishop of Manchester (the Chair of CCJ) implicitly criticises the inaction of his fellow Bishop of Guildford. Nigel McCulloch of Manchester calls Sizer’s behaviour conduct “unbecoming a clergyman”, and the CCJ’s press release finishes by saying they have referred the incident to Surrey police as a hate crime.
Until recently I would have said Sizer was not anti-Semitic, and it is important to point out that he repudiates the accusation. I further note that only last autumn, I heard the CEO of the Board of Deputies of British Jews saying that he didn’t think Sizer was anti-Semitic, although he certainly kept anti-Semitic company because of his pro-Palestinian campaigning. (He is obviously not a Sizer supporter!)
Sizer does have some theological questions to put to the Christian Zionism more common in his conservative evangelical circles that ought to be considered – as Christian theology. It is an inescapable part of recognising that the New Testament and the Mishnah largely grew out of a contest between two visions for the future of Judaism, and that both Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity were the squabbling children of Second Temple Judaism. I don’t agree with many of the ways Sizer answers those questions, but they need to be faced.
In my view, however, his voice has moved so far to an uncritical support for Palestinians that it has also become an unthinking criticism of Israel. An awful lot of criticism of (as well as an awful lot of support for) Israel is uncritical. However, Sizer has seemed to align himself more and more not only with the unthinking, but with the racist and prejudiced rhetoric of some of Israel’s most vociferous enemies.
He may not have used it himself, but he links to it without criticism. He may not say it himself, but he seems willing to appear on platforms where other speakers indulge in it, and he does not seem to distance himself from it or them. I think that passes the point where it looks like guilt by association and looks more like guilt by complicity.
There may or may not be a case against him. If Surrey police think there is, his bishop can act. If they don’t then, given the labyrinthine law of the Church of England, and its protections for political and theological dissent, his bishop probably has no action available to him. It is not irrelevant also that Sizer’s church is at best semi-detached from the Church of England and wealthy enough to show the bishop two fingers.
Nonetheless, this will remain a story worth watching, for a very particular exploration of when anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian support is held to tip over into anti-Semitism. The CCJ thinks Sizer has crossed that line. I fear they may be right.
(Note: in the interests of transparency I should state that I am a member of CCJ, and that I also once (some 25 years ago) occasionally attended the church where Sizer was curate. His theology was too conservatively evangelical for me.)
I have been reading Ben Myers‘ exploration of Rowan Williams’ theology, Christ the Stranger. It is a book that repays slower reading, and I’ve been taking a chapter a day for Lent so far. As Ben points out, Rowan Williams’ thought “resembles nothing so much as the forty days of Lent, a theology of slowness and discipline, abstinence and privation” (p117). That makes this book particularly fitting for the time of year, although Myers is such a sympathetic interpreter that reading his book is a spiritual exercise — reading +Rowan as attentively and patiently as the archbishop writes.
Myers’ interweaves Williams’ biography and poetry throughout this exploration of his theology in ways which are helpful and illuminating, and remind the reader repeatedly that for Williams theology is a spiritual discipline above all else. If Williams is difficult to read (and he often is), it is because God is difficult to speak of, and our words (as T S Eliot says) “slip, slide, decay with imprecision … will not stay still”. Williams stretches language to try to encompass that, probably more successfully as a poet than a prose stylist. Myers is sympathetic but critical, and manages to help the archbishop speak more clearly than he sometimes writes.
One of the few missing features – perhaps weaknesses – of the book is a lack of notice that +Rowan usually speaks far more clearly than he writes. Williams’ writing can often seem a difficult, dry, protracted and sometimes depressing exercise in spiritual renunciation of the fantasies of the heart and mind. By contrast his presence in person is attentive, humorous and kind. There is a self-forgetfulness (literally a forgetfulness of self) to the archbishop that is very attractive, and it presents as a joyful counterpoint to the willed self-renunciation of his theology. The book, by its concentration on the theology, gives Williams a dourness that belies the man in person.
That is a minor cavil. This book opens up for the reader what is often difficult theology, and puts it in its context with verve, clarity and intellectual and spiritual depth. Along the way, although this is not Myers’ overt intention, it helps explain why +Rowan is the kind of archbishop he is, and how what looks to some like an inability to give a lead is a principled theological commitment to a very particular but costly understanding of the Trinity and how we come through the crucified and risen Christ to share in God’s truth and love.
The archbishop has found himself a very able and illuminating interpreter here, who presents his theology as a profound encounter with God, an ever deepening exploration of truth, and an ongoing attempt to renounce the temptations of the heart’s’ self deceiving fantasies. This is a book worth reading, and slowly.
Brevity, according to Shakespeare’s prolix Polonius (never one to listen to his own advice) is the soul of wit.
If that’s true, then some of my posts have been witless, soulless or both. I confess, dear Reader, I have rambled.
I have decided, therefore, before this site grows to too many posts, to carry out a pruning of the past, and exercise greater self-disciple in the future. I wish to keep my posts short, and so perhaps, be able to post more often.
I have accompanied this pruning by selecting a new theme. Should you be interested, the header image was taken last autumn at High Leigh.
While dealing in clichés, I may as well use another: “a picture is worth a thousand words.” I hope, in this brief new world, to use more pictures and this spare you if not a thousand words, then at least some significant number.
Who knows, perhaps in being brief, I may occasionally manage to combine soul and wit.
This is brilliant, and catches it exactly.
This is not quite a post about a few current difficulties, although I shall begin with someone who was rather obsessed by present Anglican divisions and divisiveness. Combative and confrontational, this priest challenged his bishop (whom he suspected of dangerously liberal tendencies) to say whether he really believed in the authority of scripture.
The bishop, rather than engage in confrontation, mildly remarked “Well, it’s the only book I read twice a day”. That was, I think, a very Anglican answer. It located authority in actual practice, rather than dealing with it as an abstract theological position; and it placed the answer firmly in both liturgical tradition, and a framework of the legal canons of the church.
Although the canons are observed by many clergy with (shall we say) creative flexibility, they enjoin the clergy to say morning and evening prayer daily. Those offices (if the traditional provision is being followed) revolve around the praying of the psalms and the reading of the rest of the scriptures.
From Cranmer’s day until relatively recent decades that meant praying the whole psalter once a month, reading the Old Testament and Apocrypha / Deuterocanonical books ion their entirety once a year, and the New Testament twice a year. While that was legally enjoined on the clergy, Cranmer’s expectation (shared with his successors) was that some laity at least would join in what was meant to be public worship. Today’s lectionaries are less comprehensive, but still extensive. (I for one regret, for example, the way they have pandered to some evangelicals’ pan-Protestantism by providing “safe” alternatives to the deuterocanonical readings.)
The expectation of liturgical practice needs to be set alongside the sixth of the 39 articles, which is on scripture. There, in relation to the Apocrypha, it says that “the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine”.
In saying that, it seems to make a distinction between two types of authority. There is the sort of authority attributed with certainty to the books of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament, which the official Church acknowledges in establishing doctrine. No-one should imagine that Henry VIII, or Cranmer himself, or their respective successors, would have tolerated the idea that anyone could use scripture to establish doctrine. In the words of the monarch’s declaration “if any publick Reader in either of Our Universities [there can be only two!!] shall affix any new sense to any Article … he … shall be liable to Our displeasure, and the Church’s censure … and We shall see there shall be due Execution upon them.”
That kind of application or use of the authority of scripture was even less open to the ordinary priest or lay person. The Church under the Monarch-in-Parliament taught you what doctrine was authorised by Holy Scripture, and to venture your own opinion was divisive, contumacious, spiritually arrogant, theologically wrong and quite possibly treasonous.
But the other kind of authority, which included not only the undisputed canon but the fuzzy edges of the deutero-canon, was exercised by priest and people praying the words of scripture in psalm and canticle, and reading, hearing and pondering the whole sweep of the Bible’s story year by year as a story directed to shaping Christian living and drawing the Christian and the church into the worship of God, so that (as the regular use of penitence and exhortation reminded them) they might learn the way of repentance, conversion of life, and holiness.
The key thought of “the authority of scripture” was the power the story had to inform prayer and shape imagination, to provide exemplar and encouragement, and to help put their lives’ journey into the context of the journey of God’s people from creation to final fulfilment by way of the cross.
The authority of a story (and most of scripture is story) is often subtle, frequently a long-term project, and nurtured by repetition and slow digestion. It is about the reshaping of how we see ourselves and our lives by forming our mental world, and populating it with the images, examples and friends who open new possibilities to us, as well as warning us away from bad ideas and foolish practices (of which there are more than a few in the Bible). Our interplay with those stories is rarely unequivocal, but often complex, and we may well reshape and reconfigure the stories as we go.
First and foremost, though, it is precisely by reading scripture, regularly more than occasionally, sequentially rather than selectively, and when directed to worship – penitence and prayer, lament and praise – rather than information gathering and study, that we really come to give it authority over our lives. For then it works beneath the surface of the psyche as well, with id as much as ego, and with heart as well as mind.
