When Jesus nearly said “stuff happens”

Sadly the phrase γίνεται σκύβαλα is not found in the New Testament. However, today’s gospel is as close as it comes outside the books of Ecclesiastes and Job, and Jesus is the one making the point.

I confess that in reflecting at mass today on the opening verses of Luke 13, I had to work quite hard to remember to say “stuff happens” and not “shit happens”, which has always struck me as a better and more eloquent expression of the sentiment. Sometimes swearing is an enrichment of our vocabulary, not the sign of a limited one.

More often than I would like, I find people asking “But what’s she done to deserve that?” as if cancer or bereavement and so on were part of some kind of moral calculus. It seems ingrained, as if Job had never been written. 

In today’s reading Jesus is quite clear that accidents do not only happen to the deserving, they can happen to anyone. In his response to his questioners he challenges people to examine their own lives instead of speculating on other people’s fate. (Cranmer would have agreed: the whole point of his funeral service is to say to the mourners: “You’re ALL going to DIE! “)

Elsewhere in the gospel tradition Jesus remarks: “God makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous (Matt 5:45).” Oddly, most people regularly misquote it, but only when the sun is shining (“God makes his sun shine on the righteous”), except for one piece of variously attributed doggerel:

The rain it raineth on the just
And also on the unjust fella,
But chiefly on the just, because
The unjust steals the just’s umbrella.

We can’t control what happens to us, and in human terms it will often look like “the righteous were punished, even though their hope is of immortality” (Wis 3:4). Shit happens. There is no moral arithmetic which results in being either the victim of random disaster (the tower of Siloam) or someone else’s violent oppression (Pilate’s mingling the blood of the Galileans with their sacrifices).

What we can do is look at how we can make meaning out of meaningless circumstances, how we can try to bring love into loveless situations, or how we can bring or receive the light of hope in the darkness of despair. Faith is finding the ability to do that in the face of a seemingly silent heaven, not a glib assurance that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

When a word for word translation has merit

Translation is a tricky thing, and some words (or phrases) are more difficult than others to translate. I’ve been reflecting on one word since I was caught unawares in a class the other day by someone telling me what their BIble (the first version of the NIV) said for Galatians 3:3.

After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?

More recent editions of the NIV have reverted to the traditional (and more ambiguous) translation of σάρξ (sarx – here translated human effort) as “flesh”. However the early NIV is not alone. CEV goes for “Do you think that by yourself you can complete what God’s Spirit started in you?”. GNB has “You began by God’s Spirit; do you now want to finish by your own power?”. NET has “Although you began with the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by human effort?”.

What all these have in common is their attachment to a Protestant theology which has broadened the specificity of “works of the Law” to a rather vague “works”, and then, having identified faith with the work of the Spirit, has made “flesh” the equivalent of “effort”. It’s all very ingenious and a clear example of just how interpretative a task translation is. It’s also, I would argue, some way away from what the first-century Pharisee who became Paul the apostle believed about Law and faith, flesh and Spirit.

(Ironically the so-called Complete Jewish Bible does exactly the same thing as these translations, providing yet more evidence that many forms of modern “Messianic Judaism” owe their shape to Zionist American evangelicalism.)

Now I’m not arguing as a general rule for any kind of word-to-word correspondence, but in this case I think it’s justified for rather more occurrences of σάρξ (sarx) than not. Mainly that’s because Paul usually uses the word in combination with (or opposition to) other anthropological terms, and in those contexts maintaining English words which correspond to Greek words has some justification, leaving more of the interpretation to the reader and allowing more possible ambiguities in. The flesh – Spirit binary opposition is common enough for it to be so rendered whenever it occurs.

In this specific case it also seems to me that whatever else Paul intends by πνεῦμα (pneuma) and σάρξ (sarx), there is also a reference to the initiation of the Spirit (indicated by experience of “works of power” v5), and the initiation by circumcision which is quite literally in the flesh. Sometimes something of the multivalent meaning of a word in the source language can be carried over to the target language, and this, I think, is a case in point.

Paul was not a Protestant

I wonder how much common pictures of Paul, academic and popular, really stop us reading the kind of evidence he provides for the earliest churches.

It is true that significant revisionist strides have been made by the majority who accept the larger part of Sanders’ reconstruction of Second Temple Judaism as “covenantal nomism”: at least in terms of Law and Gospel the academic Paul looks far less Lutheran, individualist and anti-semitic than he once did. However, I regularly feel that other parts of the picture – especially a Paul who is primarily charismatic, and dependent on private revelation rather than tradition, church and authority, have yet to be rethought in the light of more general shifts in scholarship.

In particular, I wonder whether the evidence of 1 Corinthians, despite the huge amount of scholarship devoted to its sociological and anthropological study, is really being taken seriously.

In that letter we have not only two explicit examples of handing on received tradition (11:23-26, 15:3-7), and an early appeal to the sensus fidelium (11:16, cf 7:17), but we have two explicit and significant references to the Jesus tradition (7:10 especially contrasted with 7:12, and 9:14). The first of those references – a rare factual example of how the earliest churches used Jesus tradition – seems to have been cheerily ignored by most theories of how they used, adapted or invented it. The second shows how the relevance and significance of it can be open to interpretation then as now.

The picture that we get in 1 Corinthians, of a Paul concerned with tradition and catholicity is set aside by all those who prioritise the clearly polemical and angry arguments of Galatians. Yet privileging Galatians as a template for understanding Paul is clearly a theological decision that owes much to the matrix which reads him as the first Reformer. Given how much the picture of Protestant Paul has been dismantled in the 35 years since Sanders published Paul and Palestinian Judaism, how tenable is it still to sideline the more complex evidence of 1 Corinthians?

Bond and Jesus

Not James, but Helen. Introductions to biblical and theological topics are ten a penny, but good introductory books are much harder to find. I’ll be commending Helen Bond’s The Historical Jesus: A Guide for the Perplexed both to my students and to interested others as a really good introduction.

Bond covers the ground in an orderly and effective way, beginning with an helpful sketch of how Jesus studies developed, and an outline of the available sources for study. Like most historians, she concludes that the synoptic gospels provide the main sources for any reconstruction.

In the second part of the book she develops what she calls snapshots of Jesus, although each chapter actually offers a reflection on a different aspect of reconstructing the historical Jesus in broadly chronological order, after first having set out a summary of the historical context. She looks at birth narratives (which she finds to be largely theological creations), then at the current state of knowledge of the Galilean context, before beginning her reconstruction proper with John the Baptist.

She goes on to explore in successive chapters the message of Jesus, the healings and exorcisms, the friends and then the enemies of Jesus. An interlude chapter looks at the place and significance of Jerusalem before concluding chapters on the cross and finally the resurrection.

Throughout this journey, she shows herself a thoughtful and informative guide, always insisting on returning to the sources and the most probable facts that a contemporary historian can read out of them. She is sceptical of scholars who either indulge in too doctrinaire a methodology (such as an over-investment on criteria) or who try to select facts to fit a sociological model (eg peasant unrest). Crossan’s reconstruction is the one most often in her cross-hairs, and rightly so. 

She acknowledges the problem of clashing world views in trying to ascertain exactly what healings, exorcisms and powerful deeds Jesus carries out, although is clear that the historian needs to say Jesus was widely believed to be an effective and extraordinarily powerful wonderworker. As she notes, some people will draw the line in different places between the actual deeds Jesus did and the way in which they were magnified in the telling. I would, however, have liked to see more stress for the reader new to these questions on the nature of “miracle” as a post-Enlightenment category alien to the texts.

Unusually for a book on the historical Jesus, she finishes with the resurrection, insisting (I would say quite rightly) that the belief of the early Christians, that is the effects of whatever happened to Jesus after the crucifixion in vision, conviction or actuality need to be treated as historical phenomena in their own right. Without fully stating her own answer to that question, she points out how exceptional the category of resurrection applied to one man in the middle of history actually is.

Inevitably, there are quibbles. No two people’s reconstructions of the historical Jesus are the same. For example, I think the continuing career of the Baptist in the early part of Jesus ministry is one of the few instances when the historian should prefer John to the synoptics. Conversely, when the fourth gospel portrays a split between Jesus and his brothers, I am more inclined to see a later division between the Johannine and Jerusalem churches than a split between Jesus and his blood family. I have a larger disagreement about the Pharisees, but she ably represents a medium position between many conflicting views which is certainly plausible.

There are also two typos I noted which are unfortunate in a beginner’s text. The US  critic who gave far too much credence to the criterion of double dissimilarity was Norman Perrin, not the more recent and contemporary Nicholas. (p17). And Herod the Great’s dates as king are not 37-34 BCE, but 37-4 BCE. (p59).

However, quibbles and typos aside, I have to say this is a very readable and very reliable guide which will indeed help the perplexed and the beginner alike arrive at a fairly sure starting point for further exploration. It is as good a grounding in a controversial subject as I have come across, delivered in a remarkably succinct and lucid package.

The invisible women bishops of Philippi

I’ve been pondering yesterday’s reading for St Clement. (For me it’s also tomorrow’s reading as I’m preaching at a transferred patronal festival.) It includes these verses from Philippians:

I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. Yes, and I ask you also, my loyal companion, help these women, for they have struggled beside me in the work of the gospel, together with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are in the book of life. (4:2-3 NRSV)

Here, even more than in many places in Paul, it’s hard to reconstruct the details of the  situation that is being taken for granted by Paul and his addressees. However, it seems to me that we can say the following.

• This touches on the main reasons for the letter. Paul’s appeal to Euodia and Syntyche echoes the language of his appeal in chapter 2 “to be of the same mind” which leads into the famous Christ-hymn.
• A personal disagreement between these two women seems to mirror, perhaps cause, a disagreement in the life of the church.
• Their position and their relationship is important enough for Paul to direct much of his argument towards healing it.
• There is no appeal to any other leader to solve the problem, knock heads together, etc, and there is noticeably no appeal to any man to exercise any authority over these women. Even Paul does not try to make his appeal one to authority, but one to friendship and  mutual loyalty.
• The identity of the loyal companion Paul addresses is unknown. He is, however, a man asked to assist them. There is no male superiority assumed as a right.
• The women are equated with Clement (traditionally identified as the later bishop of Rome) and all Paul’s fellow-workers who have struggled with him in proclaiming the good news.

The most likely explanation of these observations and deductions from the text is that the women belong to, and are even among the leading figures in, the leadership group of the church. Only a prior ideological commitment by the reader to male leadership alone  would make this an “impossibility”. For every other reader, it seems a very plausible – I suggest the most plausible –explanation.

In this week when the Church of England’s General Synod revealed itself to be out of step with its electors, citing “biblical” and “traditional” grounds, that may be worth noting. After all, Philippians is the only undisputed letter of Paul in which he addresses the leadership of the church as “bishops”.

So, I give you Euodia and Syntyche, perhaps the first people to be addressed as bishops in the church of God by anyone, and, indeed, if tradition is accurate, mentioned in the same breath as a later bishop of Rome! It may not be an entirely happy precedent, but it certainly seems a plausible one.

Isn’t it ironic?

Saint Jesus

In a talk I heard yesterday, the speaker said “In the Bible the word ‘saint’ never occurs in the singular, only in the plural.” To some extent this sounded (unfortunately, and I think unintentionally) a little like one of those clichés beloved of Protestant polemics.

It is, of course, true in the senses that a) the Bible isn’t written in English, so neither the singular nor plural of the word ‘saint’ is found therein; and b) no English translation uses the word ‘saint’ in the singular. However, it is not true that the Greek  word whose plural is often translated “saints”  never occurs in the singular.

The word, an adjective used as a noun, is regularly used as an appellation of God in the Greek Old Testament. Daniel uses it to refer to an angel (Dan 8:13), but the main singular use for someone other than YHWH  seems to be as some kind of title ascribed to Jesus. He is the “holy one of God” (Mk 1:24 = Lk 4:34; Jn 6:69), “your [God’s] holy one” (Ac 2:27, 13:35)  or simply “the holy one” (Rev 3:7).

The translating tradition has made a decision here. That decision is to treat the singular title ho hagios (ὁ ἅγιος) used of Jesus as having more in common with the title used of God in the OT than with the plural title hoi hagioi (οἱ ἅγιοι) used by Paul (following some other OT precedents) of the members of his churches.

The statement I started with, “In the Bible the word ‘saint’ never occurs in the singular, only in the plural.” is truly a matter of interpretation. Saint Jesus, anyone?

Bible translation: paws for thought

Eddie Arthur picks up and criticises a ridiculous misstatement about Bible translation. The idea that word-for-word translation is in any sense more accurate than any other (indeed that in any pure form it actually exists!) is a linguistic fallacy.

Indeed, I could make a case that for any theologian who believes in mission participating in  the pattern of God’s mission revealed in the incarnation, it also represents a theological fallacy.

But by coincidence, I was on the receiving end of a bible-study this morning which included this verse:

David said, "The LORD, who saved me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear, will save me from the hand of this Philistine." So Saul said to David, "Go, and may the LORD be with you!" (1Sa 17:37 NRSV)

Now, I’ve checked a number of translations, including those word-for-word ones “conservatives” seem to prefer like Holman Christian Standard, English Standard and of course King James versions. All of those also speak of the “paws” of bear and lion and the “hand” of the Philistine.

However, a word-for-word translation would speak of either the hand of bear and lion as well as Philistine, or the paw of Philistine as well as bear and lion. It is the same word “yad”.

A word-for-word translation simply doesn’t work in English, which has no word for “bottom part of the forelimb” which is common to both human and animal. Sadly for Wayne Grudem and his linguistically deluded fellows / followers, there are numerous other examples which prove word-for-word is not merely inaccurate, but dysfunctional.

The multiple embarrassments of Jesus research

Over at the Jesus Blog, Anthony Le Donne (author of a very accessible introductory book on historical Jesus research) is posting some excerpts of an interview with Mark Goodacre. In the second part, Mark says of the traditional criteria for determining authenticity (which are steadily falling out of scholarly favour):

[Sanders] used what he called various "tests" as a means of cross-examining the source material, and it is an excellent way to train new students. … When I teach the "criteria", I introduce them and then illustrate them, discuss them, and point out the problems. I think it’s a great way of learning historical method.

Now I think that’s about right. Each criterion is, if you like, a crystallisation of a particular historical method. The point is to be sensitive to the historian’s methodology and not to have a sure-fire recipe for a chimerical historical objectivity. The methodological concept is what matters.

However, in the first part Mark takes aim at a particular combination of criteria:

I am baffled by the fact that scholars can argue simultaneously that a given tradition is both "embarrassing" and "multiply attested". This appears self-contradictory and frankly ludicrous to me and it suggests that something is wrong somewhere.

We might quibble over the word embarrassing, but I think that this points to a very interesting combination, and I suggest it does have some value, which can be illustrated from the traditions concerning John the Baptist.

Mark’s narrative of Jesus’ baptism, which I think all the other gospel writers know, is brief, and his references to the Baptist’s disciples concerning John’s burial are almost told in passing. Matthew presents John hesitating about the appropriateness of baptising Jesus, Luke minimises the event by preceding it with a note of John’s imprisonment, noting the baptism briefly, and transferring the vision of the Spirit to Jesus’ active post-baptismal praying, John glides over the event entirely. John also (as does Luke in Acts) shows some evidence of the continuing existence of disciples of John who have failed to become disciples of Jesus as a practical and theological problem for the early church.

What I suggest those traditions show is that the gospel writers all feel that there is a core tradition too important to omit, and that the three later evangelists all demonstrate different (and probably independent) responses to the difficulty it causes them.

Essentially, I suggest, that is how “multiple attestation” and “embarrassment” might work together, by showing a multiplicity of un-coordinated responses to a piece of tradition which suggests it is a) important to them and b) causes them theological or narratological problems.

The Bible we don’t read

This morning (and tomorrow morning) the daily Mass lectionary dips its toe very briefly into Ecclesiastes, and then scuttles away again. It isn’t among the more popular books of the Bible, whether with lectionary compilers or ordinary readers.

There are large swathes of the Bible largely ignored by readers, less for being too boring (although some certainly is) than for being too awkward.

Once, as a curate, I did a talk on bits of the Bible we didn’t read very often, and preached on even less. I selected a passage from Ecclesiastes for cynicism and world-weariness, some verses from Job where God turns seriously sarcastic, and a selection of erotic poetry from the Song of Songs.

Afterwards, the vicar commented that he wasn’t sure I should have read those verses from the Song of Solomon in a church service. I protested; after all, the implicit censorship of scripture was my theme. Rather grudgingly he accepted my argument for reading them, but then added “But you didn’t have to sound as though you were enjoying it.”

There is rather more life, and a rather more rounded view of life, in the Scriptures than is usually admitted by those who read them, especially those who read them in church.

Did Paul know the Gethsemane story?

It’s widely agreed that Paul very rarely quotes directly from the Jesus tradition, but this almost certainly leads to underestimating how much of it he knew. Here I want to suggest that Romans 8 provides some reason to think he knew something like the Gethsemane story narrated as part of Mark’s passion narrative.

Since Jeremias, at least, it has become commonplace to assert that Jesus regularly addressed God as “Abba”. There are problems with both claims for uniqueness (we know too little) and intimacy (it does not mean “Daddy”) associated with that word, especially in its more popular forms. However, it is clearly the case that the Jesus tradition as we have it remembers that word specifically as the anguished prayer of Gethsemane, and nowhere else.

In Gethsemane according to Mark (14:32-42), Jesus is shown praying in anguish and distress, and the “Abba” prayer is specifically related to seeking obedience. Something similar seems to underpin the theology articulated by the writer to the Hebrews:

In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered; and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him (Heb 5:7-9)

in Romans 8, we find a similar range of themes being brought together.

• For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption (14)
• When we cry, “Abba! Father!”  it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, (15-16)
• If, in fact, we suffer with Christ so that we may also be glorified with him. (17)
• the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. (26)

The themes of suffering with Christ, groaning wordless prayer, calling God “Abba”, and being obedient as a son to God, are all interwoven. It seems to me that points towards the possibility that Paul is drawing on the same Jesus tradition Mark narrates and which is also developed by the writer to the Hebrews

If so that would also, of course, suggest a widespread inclusion of the Gethsemane story in primitive Christian passion narratives.