This was worked on for a while back in the fall. It is a bit unfinsihed and may need to be updated but it follows a controversy about academic honesty within NT Studies.
Dr. Tony Chartrand-Burke (see also
Tony Chartrand-Burke.com and his
Curriculum Vitae), who teaches Biblical Studies at the
Atkinson School of Arts and Letters (a part of
York University in Toronto, Canada) and also maintains a blog called
Apocryphicity, presented a paper titled,
"Heresy Hunting in the New Millennium" at the 2007 Annual Meeting of
The Society of Biblical Literature and is now posted on
SBL Forum.
From what I can tell, the basic purpose of his paper is to ask modern scholars on both sides of the debate to be fair in their argumentation and support for or against the
New Testament Apocrypha (what he calls Christian Apocrypha or CA for short). However, he only calls out Evangelical mistreatments of modern support of NT Apocryphal studies. Burke's
modus operandi to defend modern research efforts to uphold the value of the study of the NT Apocrypha is by comparing modern defenders of Evangelicalism to the herersiologists of old, namely,
Irenaeus,
Hippolytus, and
Epiphanius. He argues they both have used the same inferior arguments, namely, refutation by exposure (quoting absurd statements), straw-man arguments, name calling, character assissination, contrasting the opposition's views with their own which is inheritantly correct, and dismisses modern scholarship as subpar. So without further ado, Burke, in his own words (my own links added in {} or in blue), lest I misrepresent him:
Heresy Hunting in the New MillenniumTony Burke
A cottage industry of books has emerged in the past few years responding to apparent "attacks" on the Christian faith by such perceived enemies as the Jesus Seminar, Bart Ehrman {Curriculum Vitae; Faculaty page}, Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code, and the discoverers of the so-called Jesus Tomb.[1] Targeted also in these books are the texts of the Christian Apocrypha Christian Apocrypha (CA). The books are transparently apologetic with the aim of disparaging the CA and the Gnostics who (they say) wrote them so that their readers will cease being troubled by thei texts' claims. The problem with such books, at least from the perspective of those who value the CA, is that they often misrepresent the texts, their authors, and the scholars who study them. Proper research and sober argument take a back seat to the apologists' goal of buttressing the faith.
In many ways these books read much like the works of apologetic writers from antiquity, such as Irenaeus and Hippolytus {or here}.They too were concerned about the impact of non-canonical texts and heretical ideas on their readers and sought to reinforce the faith by denigrating and ridiculing their enemies. Then and now accuracy was sacrificed to the needs of apologetics. Yet, perhaps there is something that scholars of the CA can learn from the modern apologists, something not only about ourselves but also about those who were attacked by the heresy hunters of the past.
In a 1981 study, Gérard Vallée {A Study in Anti-Gnostic Polemics} outlined the rhetorical strategies used by the earliest and most influential heresiologists: Irenaeus, Hippolytus, and Epiphanius.[2] Their chief strategy is to refute by exposure, a strategy reflected in the full title of Irenaeus' work: "the exposure and overthrow of the falsely so-called Gnostics." This refutation is done with little or no argumentation; the views are presented in such a disparaging way that detailed argument is unnecessary. The heresiologists do, however, claim the heretics borrowed from pagan ideas, they juxtapose the heretics' views with the "truth" of the creeds, and they disparage their opponents for disagreeing among themselves. Another common strategy is to place their opponents in a chain of known heretics. Also, the leaders of the various groups are demonized—Irenaeus does so by associating the heresiarch with the false prophets of the end times; by the time of Epiphanius the heretics' efforts are said to be directed by the devil. On the whole, the heresy hunters spare no invective in their description of the heresies and tend to place emphasis on the most repugnant aspects (real or imagined) of their beliefs and practices.
The modern CA critics, like the heresy hunters, situate themselves within the "orthodox" church. The writers are primarily American evangelicals, including Ben Witherington III {or Witherington's own site}, Darrell Bock, Timothy Paul Jones , J. Ed Komoszewski, and Philip Jenkins {see also Philip Jenkins }; prominent also are Canadians Stanley Porter, Gordon L. Heath, and Craig Evans, and the English bishop N.T. Wright.[3] The authors contribute testimonials to one another's covers and introductory pages, and many of the books are published by conservative presses (IVP, Eerdmans, Baker). Also like the heresy hunters, the writers address their concerns to insiders, a closed group of believers who likely need little convincing that the Browns and Ehrmans of the world must be ignored. Outsiders to the group, those open to the content of non-canonical gospels, are criticized for their receptivity; for example, Wright says they suffer from a "free-for-all, do-it-yourself spirituality" or "flexodoxy."[4] The battle between these two groups is given apocalyptic urgency by Witherington, who sees Dan Brown's novel as the fulfillment of 2 Tim 4:34 ("For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine. . ."). His own anti-Da Vinci Code book "is intended as a wake-up call to those who have not been noticing the signs of the times."[5]
The first of the techniques of the heresiologists used by modern apologists is refutation by exposure. Quotations from the CA are necessary if constructing an argument about or against their contents. However, often the apologists excerpt the texts simply to highlight their differences from the canonical texts. Of course, only those sections of the CA texts that are particularly odd are provided and commented upon. The favorite targets appear to be the resurrection account from the Gospel of Peter {New Testament Apocrypha Edited by Wilhelm Schneemelcher, Robert McLachlan Wilson Translated by Robert McLachlan Wilson},[6] the "absurd tales" of the various infancy gospels,[7] and certain logia from the Gospel of Thomas (Witherington, for example, considers 31 "pantheistic," 114 "misogynist," and 18 "is just being obscure for obscurity's sake!").[8] Such focus on the "bizarre" elements of the texts misrepresents their contents. There is plenty of material in the canonical texts that is bizarre or objectionable but it would be unfair to characterize Acts simply on the basis of the cursing stories, or Luke on Jesus' disappearing act (4:30) or the sweating of blood (22:43-44), or John on its anti-Semitism. Large parts of the CA are quite "orthodox" but these sections are not discussed.
But the apologists make no effort to understand these texts sympathetically; their goal is to show their readers that the CA are not compatible with the canonical texts. Indeed, again and again Bock points out that, in antiquity and today, canonical and non-canonical portrayals of Jesus are not reconcilable: "Either the Gnostic texts reflect what Jesus was and is, or the four Gospels are the best witnesses to the movement that Jesus generated. One cannot have it both ways."[9] And Wright, taking issue with Elaine Pagels' view that one could read the canonical and gnostic gospels side-by-side, states "it could only be sustained by a systematic and sustained rereading and in fact radical misreading, of the canonical gospels themselves."[10] That may be so, but the fact remains that throughout history Christians have combined both accepted and censured texts in a variety of ways, including art and iconography, popular literature, and manuscript transmission. So, reading the canonical and non-canonical gospels side-by-side was not only possible, it actually happened.
The refutation by exposure is assisted, as with the ancient heresiologists, by explicit ridicule of the texts' contents. The principal targets of the anti-CA apologetic are the texts from Nag Hammadi that have been used to great effect in scholarship and in the popular media. The refutation of these texts necessitates a description of Gnosticism. For the most part, the apologists describe the system in a fairly neutral fashion (perhaps, again, assuming it will refute itself). Wright is the exception here, belittling the cosmogony of the Gospel of Judas{pdf} by likening it to letters he receives from mentally ill people.[11] Several of the apologists go on to associate all non-canonical texts with Gnosticism—even the Gospel of Peter[12] and the infancy gospels[13]—either because of a lack of awareness of the complexities of defining Gnosticism, or because of a reliance on outdated scholarship on the texts, or simply because it suits their purposes to associate all non-orthodox forms of Christianity with oft-demonized Gnosticism. The connection with Gnosticism allows them also to date the texts late—it is simply assumed that a Gnostic text must have been composed in the late-second century, even if there is evidence that might suggest otherwise.[14] CA authors also are disparagingly labeled "forgers" because they have composed pseudonymous texts[15]; it seems to matter little that some of the apostolic attributions in these texts are late developments and that some of these texts are named for their contents (e.g., the Gospel of Judas) not for their authorship. And being conservative scholars, the apologists do not acknowledge the possibility of pseudonymity in canonical texts.[16]
The modern apologists' inadequate knowledge of the CA is due to the fact that they are not experts on the CA nor on Gnosticism. The apologists show their shortcomings in CA studies also in their reliance on collections of apocryphal texts or commentaries rather than recent and comprehensive scholarship on the texts. There is also an overall tendency to cite only those authors or studies that are useful for making their arguments—for example, Stephen Carlson's work on Secret Mark is said to have proven that the gospel is a forgery,[17] and Nichola Perrin's work {or this book} on the Gospel of Thomas is taken as proof that the text postdates Tatian's Diatessaron.[18] There are numerous scholars who argue the contrary in both cases, but to a reader of the apologists, such scholarship appears not to exist.
Another strategy the apologists have in common with the ancient heresy hunters is the demonization of the heresiarchs, or in the modern context, the demonization of CA scholars. Bock's straw man is the "new school" of Harvard, also called Neo-Gnostics, led by James Robinson{pdf} and Helmut Koester. Elaine Pagels is also associated with the new school. She is often singled out by the apologists and, it seems, misrepresented. According to Jenkins, "There were two rival streams within Christianity, and for Pagels, as for many other writers, the wrong side won."[19] But Pagels has never made such a claim; indeed, in her magnum opus, The Gnostic Gospels, she is quite conciliatory, stating, "I believe that we owe the survival of Christian tradition to the organizational and theological structure that the emerging church developed."[20] Not only Pagels, but the entire "new school" is said to be attempting to "dethrone the canonical authority of the New Testament, yet in a way that substitutes an alternative range of scriptural authorities,"[21] and they are accused of not treating the non-canonical texts with the same scholarly rigor as the canonical.[22] But the "new school" is not as monolithic as the apologists suggest. Bart Ehrman, for example, considers Secret Mark a forgery and Thomas and Peter early-second century developments of the canonical gospels,[23] positions that the apologists would find attractive. The new school is further maligned by associating them with fringe scholarship, including scholars like Michael Baigent, Barbara Thiering, Carsten Thiede, and John Allegro.[24]
The worst of the invective directed at the "new school" is leveled by Ben Witherington. Speculating about their Christian upbringing, he says, "Perhaps these scholars have been burned in one way or another by orthodox Christianity,"[25] and he impugns their motives: "It's almost as if they said to themselves, 'If the first-century documents don't suit my belief system, I'll find some other early materials and rewrite the history of the first century.'"[26] Witherington even thinks the "new school's" sensationalist theories are created because they tire of fundamentalist scholars getting all the attention and to "prove (to themselves and/or others) that they are good critical scholars by showing how much of the Jesus tradition or the New Testament in general they can discount, explain away, or discredit."[27] Confusing scholarly interest in a body of literature with religious belief, he is perplexed at why the "new school" scholars wish to study Gnostic texts at all. "None of them are actually ascetics like the original Gnostics," he writes, "nor have they withdrawn from the world and anathematized the goodness of things material. Frankly, the Old Gnostics would have repudiated the new ones."[28] And finally, Witherington may rival Epiphanius—the heresy hunter who "has no equal in the history of heresiology for the art of insulting"[29]—in his demonization of the new school when he writes, "these scholars, though bright and sincere, are not merely wrong; they are misled. They are oblivious to the fact that they are being led down this path by the powers of darkness."[30]
The apologists use another technique of the heresy hunters in concluding their works with statements of orthodoxy. Typically these are presented as portraits of the "real Jesus" to counter the, presumably, false Jesus of the CA and those who study it.[31] Some of the apologists instead simply assert the superiority of the canonical texts over the non-canonical. Such declarations seem to be a necessary component of apologetics. It is not enough to defend the faith from its enemies; one also has to affirm one's own orthodoxy. The readers thus are reminded of the strengths of the orthodox perspective and any fleeting interest they may have in the vagaries of the popular media's current fascination with the apocryphal Jesus is checked, at least for a time.
Conclusion
The ancient heresy hunters were instrumental in the suppression of the Christian groups they found objectionable. It is not likely that the modern anti-CA apologists will have as dramatic an effect on their targets. But perhaps there are some lessons to be learned from the correlation between these two groups.
First, the modern apologists are motivated to write by a fear that orthodox Christians will be led astray by the ideas presented in the CA and popular treatments of these texts. Their works are aimed at those curious about the literature and/or those concerned about others who are curious about the literature. In either case, the books mainly appeal to those within a rather closed community of believers who, ultimately, are unlikely to leave the group over the claims of "radical, liberal" scholarship. The audiences of the heresy hunters were also the writers' fellow orthodox Christians; perhaps their fears of losing members of their group to heresy were also unwarranted. Perhaps we assume too readily, based on the passion of the refutations, that the heretics were a grave threat to ancient orthodoxy.
Second, the modern apologists and their rivals seem never to interact with one another. The apologists read and seek to refute the CA scholars' works, but otherwise have little substantial knowledge of the literature and ignore scholarship that does not support their interpretation of the evidence. Likewise, the CA scholars targeted by the apologists seem completely oblivious to the attacks and also appeal only to scholarship that is congenial to their approach to the material. Were the ancient heretics also unconcerned or unaware of the heresy hunters' efforts? Did this ignorance contribute to their downfall? Or did the heresy hunters actually have little impact on them?
Third, the modern apologists make no effort to understand or sympathize with the CA and their ancient supporters. Such antipathy is observable also in the works of the heresy hunters. Both groups simply want their respective "heresies" to disappear.
But perhaps we are not doomed to repeat the errors of the past. There is no good reason for either the apologists or the CA scholars not to pay closer attention to each others' works and their implications. Some CA scholars are indeed "radical" in the esteem they grant this literature and their idyllic portrayals of the groups that valued them. It would be wise of them to consider the responses of their critics. Likewise, the apologists would be served well to consult a broader range of scholarship in their assessment of the CA and in other aspects of their scholarship; such openness might lead them to reconsider their beliefs that the CA are all late, derivative, and ultimately deserving of censure. If the two groups can set aside their guiding assumptions, they may find they have more to discuss than they expect.
Tony Burke, York University
Notes
[1] This paper began as a presentation at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in San Diego, California. My thanks to Pierluigi Piovanelli (University of Ottawa) for his response, suggestions, and encouragement.
[2] For other discussions of rhetorical strategies in the heresiologists see D. B. Reynders, "Le Polémique de Saint Irénée: Méthode et Principes," Recherches de théologie ancienne et mediévale 7 (1935): 5-27; Robert M. Grant, "Irenaeus and Hellenistic Culture," HTR 42 (1949): 41-51; William R. Schoedel, "Philosophy and Rhetoric in the Adversus Haereses of Irenaeus," Vigiliae Christianae 13 (1959): 23-32; Pheme Perkins, "Irenaeus and the Gnostics: Rhetoric and Composition in Adversus Haereses Book One," Vigiliae Christianae 30 (1976): 193-200; and Joseph C. Capodanno, A Rhetorical Examination of 'Adversus haereses' by Irenaeus of Lyons (Ph. D. diss, University of Louisville, 1993).
[3] Darrell L. Bock, Breaking the Da Vinci Code: Answers to the Questions Everyone's Asking (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2004); idem, The Missing Gospels: Unearthing the Truth Behind Alternative Christianities (Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson, 2006); Darrell L. Bock and Daniel B. Wallace, Dethroning Jesus: Exposing Popular Culture's Quest to Unseat the Biblical Christ (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007); Craig A. Evans, Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2006); Philip Jenkins, Hidden Gospels: How the Search for Jesus Lost Its Way (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); Timothy Paul Jones, Misquoting Truth: A Guide to the Fallacies of Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2007); J. Ed Komoszewski, M. James Sawyer, and Daniel B. Wallace, Reinventing Jesus: How Contemporary Skeptics Miss the Real Jesus and Mislead Popular Culture (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Kregel Publications, 2006); Stanley E. Porter and Gordon L. Heath, The Lost Gospel of Judas: Separating Fact from Fiction (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2007); Ben Witherington, The Gospel Code: Novel Claims About Jesus, Mary Magdalene and Da Vinci (Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press, 2004); id., What Have They Done With Jesus? Beyond Strange Theories and Bad History—Why We Can Trust the Bible (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2006); N. T. Wright, Judas and the Gospel of Judas: Have We Missed the Truth about Christianity? (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books, 2006).
[4] Jenkins, Hidden Gospels, 17 quoting N. T. Wright, "A Return to Christian Origins (Again)," Bible Review, Dec 1999, 10.
[5] The Gospel Code, 12.
[6] Komoszewski et al., Reinventing Jesus, 163; Jones, Misquoting Truth, 127; Wright, Judas and the Gospel of Judas, 69-70.
[7] Komoszewski et al., Reinventing Jesus, 154-157.
[8] Witherington, What Have They Done With Jesus?, 30; Komoszewski et al. (Reinventing Jesus, 162) looks also at sayings 74, 105, and 108. A few other texts are "exposed" in Jenkins, Hidden Gospels, 209-212; and Bock, Missing Gospels (throughout).
[9] Breaking the Da Vinci Code, 89 and 123.
[10] Wright, Judas and the Gospel of Judas, 81.
[11] Ibid., 59-60.
[12] Ibid., 69-70.
[13] Komoszewski et al., Reinventing Jesus, 154.
[14] For example, Witherington (The Gospel Code, 89-90) dates the Gospel of Mary to the second century because he considers it Gnostic, and Wright (Judas and the Gospel of Judas, 78) and Jenkins (Hidden Gospels, 70) do the same with the Gospel of Thomas.
[15] See particularly Komoszewski et al., Reinventing Jesus, who names one of his chapters "What did the ancient forgers think of Christ?"
[16] See, for example, Bock, Missing Gospels, 83.
[17] Witherington, What Have They Done With Jesus?, 1; Evans, Fabricating Jesus, 95.
[18] Bock and Wallace, Dethroning Jesus, 112; Bock, Missing Gospels, 6; Evans, Fabricating Jesus, 73.
[19] Jenkins, Hidden Gospels, 110; see also Bock, Breaking the Da Vinci Code, 88.
[20] Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (1979; New York: Random House, 1989), 142.
[21] Jenkins, Hidden Gospels, 20; see also Wright, Judas and the Gospel of Judas, 60; Porter and Heath, Lost Gospel, 108.
[22] Bock, Breaking the Da Vinci Code, 36; Witherington, What Have They Done With Jesus?, 5.
[23] See the chart in Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), xi-xii.
[24] Jenkins, Hidden Gospels, 178-204 and Witherington, What Have They Done With Jesus?, 7.
[25] The Gospel Code, 94; Wright (Judas and the Gospel of Judas, 122) makes a similar statement.
[26] The Gospel Code, 94-95, see also 172.
[27] What Have They Done With Jesus?, 4-5.
[28] Ibid., 47.
[29] Vallée, Anti-Gnostic Polemic, 73
[30] The Gospel Code, 174.
[31] Bock, Breaking the Da Vinci Code, ch. 8; Evans, Fabricating Jesus, 222-235; Komoszewski et al., Reinventing Jesus, 259-262; Wright, What Have They Done With Jesus?, 146.
Citation: Tony Burke, " Heresy Hunting in the New Millennium," SBL Forum , n.p. [cited Aug 2008]. Online:http://sbl-site.org/Article.aspx?ArticleID=787
The responses to Burke's paper has drwan both support and criticism on the internet over the past month. Here they are in their own words in chronological order.
On Oct 10 John Shuck at
Shuck and Jive reviewed Burke's argument and offered his own experience of illumination:
Here is an interesting paper by Tony Burke delivered to SBL (Society of Biblical Literature). It is entitled Heresy Hunting in the New Millennium.
A cottage industry of books has emerged in the past few years
responding to apparent "attacks" on the Christian faith by such perceived
enemies as the Jesus Seminar, Bart Ehrman, Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code,
and the discoverers of the so-called Jesus Tomb.[1] Targeted also in these books
are the texts of the Christian Apocrypha (CA). The books are transparently
apologetic with the aim of disparaging the CA and the Gnostics who (they say)
wrote them so that their readers will cease being troubled by their texts'
claims. The problem with such books, at least from the perspective of those who
value the CA, is that they often misrepresent the texts, their authors, and the
scholars who study them.
Burke points out that many of the same rhetorical strategies of the ancient heresy hunters are used by contemporary critics of the Christian Apocrypha. These strategies include:
1) Refutation by exposure. This includes selecting unfamiliar passages from the Christian Apocrypha (CA) in an attempt to dismiss them because they sound weird. Burke writes:
Such focus on the "bizarre" elements of the texts misrepresents
their contents. There is plenty of material in the canonical texts that is
bizarre or objectionable but it would be unfair to characterize Acts simply on
the basis of the cursing stories, or Luke on Jesus' disappearing act (4:30) or
the sweating of blood (22:43-44), or John on its anti-Semitism. Large parts of
the CA are quite "orthodox" but these sections are not discussed.
2) Explicit ridicule of the texts' contents. Apologists define "gnosticism" in a simplistic way and equate non-canonical texts with this definition.
Several of the apologists go on to associate all non-canonical
texts with Gnosticism—even the Gospel of Peter[12] and the infancy
gospels[13]—either because of a lack of awareness of the complexities of
defining Gnosticism, or because of a reliance on outdated scholarship on the
texts, or simply because it suits their purposes to associate all non-orthodox
forms of Christianity with oft-demonized Gnosticism
3) Demonizing their opponents. Ben Witherington says this of scholars like Helmut Koester, Elaine Pagels, and James Robinson:
"these scholars, though bright and sincere, are not merely wrong;
they are misled. They are oblivious to the fact that they are being led down
this path by the powers of darkness.
4) Concluding their works with statements of orthodoxy. They claim to have the "real Jesus" of orthodoxy as opposed to the fake Jesus of the apocrypha and of those who study the apocrypha.
Some of the apologists instead simply assert the superiority of the canonical
texts over the non-canonical. Such declarations seem to be a necessary component
of apologetics. It is not enough to defend the faith from its enemies; one also
has to affirm one's own orthodoxy. The readers thus are reminded of the
strengths of the orthodox perspective and any fleeting interest they may have in
the vagaries of the popular media's current fascination with the apocryphal
Jesus is checked, at least for a time.
This article helped explain a few things to me. I really couldn't understand why the Jesus Seminar has been so demonized by the apologists. They have become a focal point for the modern heresy hunters. It can't be their scholarship. It isn't that radical. Form and redaction criticism isn't new. Nor is it because they are anti-church. Many are within the church (ie. Marcus Borg).
I think it is because they have spilled the beans and have made critical scholarship available and accessible. When other scholars such as Bart Ehrman (who is not with the Seminar) write books for the general public, they too join the ranks of the heretics, who in Witherington's words: "are being led down this path by the powers of darkness."
Hardly a statement of scholarship.
Shuck obviously thinks the Jesus Seminar's work in form and redaction criticism is within the bounds of Christianity. To some extent this is correct, in the sense that Christian scholarship does utilize form and redaction criticism, but I am not sure that is all the Jesus Seminar is accomplishing. However, I do disagree with his assessment that the Jesus Seminar has "spilled the beans and ... made critical scholarship available and accessible" to the public as if Evangelicals had something to hide or keep themselves employed. I have never seen an Evangelical upset that academics has entered the public square or church pew.This is obviously not a majority underlying current from those seeking to hide information from the public.
The Evangelicals who have countered the claims of the Jesus Seminar and others like Ehrman (who Shuck also points out) do have legitimate reasons for questioning the conclusions of their publications. I agree, some have made more absurd statements and arguments than what they should have made. However, all of what someone argues should not be written off either by the likes of Shuck or Burke because Evangelicals disagree with them. They too need to be rigorously honest and careful in their language lest they be hypocritical. Didn't Burke and Shuck just use the refutation by exposure argument to single out Witherington? Asking for an intellectually honest dialog/scholarship is acceptable and it goes along with paying "attention to the man behind the green curtain." Hypocrisy on both sides of a debate like this should not be tolerated.
On Oct 13 N. T. Wrong posted a quick synopsis of Burke's article. He agrees with Burke's exposure of "a number of specious and misleading techniques which are shared not only by ancient heresiologists, but also by apologists such as Ben Witherington III, Darrell Bock, Timothy Paul Jones, J. Ed Komoszewski, Philip Jenkins, Stanley Porter, Gordon L. Heath, Craig Evans, and N.T. Wright."
N. T. Wrong concludes by saying, "Mind you, the folk that Tony Burke exposes are perhaps just the most blatant offenders in a ‘discipline’ which is riddled with the type of apologetic reasoning which would just be laughed at in other branches of the Humanities" (Heresy Hunting in the New Millennium). N. T. Wrong's use of quotation marks demonstrates his dislike of labels. Don't get me wrong, I too abhor imposing nomenclature/labels upon data. But, within dialog it is helpful to at least label sides that disagree with each other for efficiency ("Position A argues thus against positin B") even if we do not like the label ascribed to a position. Of course no one wants or even tries to be wrong, misrepresented, or mislabled. It happened in the second century CE and it happens today. What I don't think is appropriate is to assume that all the work or "apologetic reasoning" of the Evangelical scholars that are pointed out by Burke are entirely "laughed at in other branches of the Humanities." In fact, modern Evangelicals are not the Fundamentalists of old thanks to George Ladd and others' efforts to increase the quality of scholarship within Evangelicalism. From my experience modern Evangelicals are quite rigorous in their approach to history's voices. They know their original languages and use the same primary resources and are privy to the most stringent methods of interpretation of the primary sources in their quest to understand the past and are even allowed to make their own judgments on a probability scale. Somehow, people still disagree. I doubt most are laughed at for their overall efforts even if a few statements were unbridled. People on both sides of arguments get emotive enough that it creeps into their vocabulary. We're all human in our quests on both sides.
Peter Head, New Testament Research Fellow at Tyndale House, responded in the SBL Forum with a polite exchange with Burke:
Peter Head Says:
October 14th, 2008 at 11:57 am
Thanks
Tony, Very interesting stuff. I have a question about the manuscript
transmission which shows that Christians have combined both accepted and
censured texts - what are you thinking of here?(you said: “the fact remains that
throughout history Christians have combined both accepted and censured texts in
a variety of ways, including art and iconography, popular literature, and
manuscript transmission.”)
Tony Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
The best examples are Codex Siniaticus and Codex Alexandrinus (though the extra texts in these Mss may not have been considered “censured” in their time and place). Also, consider the biblical manuscripts that contain the Letter of Lentulus. And there are numerous examples of Mss which combine apocryphal texts, excerpts from biblical texts, and other materials. It is also possible that are early fragmentary texts are from Mss that contain both what are later called “canonical” and “non-canonical” (there’s no way to know, of course, but we should also not assume that it was not possible).
Peter Head Says:
October 17th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
You will have to help me on ‘the biblical manuscripts that contain the Letter of Lentulus’. Which ones are these?
Tony Says:
October 23rd, 2008 at 9:40 am
Sorry Peter, I accidentally wrote Lentulus instead of the Laodiceans, which is found in some Biblical Mss including (from Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament): Fuldensis, Cavensis, and
Ardmachanus.
On Oct 14 Jared Calaway, a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Religion at Columbia University, posted a blog at Antiquitopia. Therein, Calaway makes a few
excellent points, except one... one big one in my estimate. He writes
thus:
I've never really understood why people confuse scholarly interest with the scholars' own religious beliefs. It is often the case that the two coincide, as it seems to with Witherington, but need not. Not everyone who studies the New Testament is a Christian. Not everyone who studies Judaism is Jewish, and so on and so forth. Are Classicists all ancient Greeks? In addition, I would probably say that modern Christians who study the New Testament are hardly like the people they study. How many modern Christians live in a communistic fashion with all property held in common as in Acts? Only first-century Christians acted and thought like first-century Christians if the term "Christian" is really fully applicable. And by the time we get to second-century Christianity, there is such a proliferation of groups, beliefs, and practices that no single one is dominant just yet, and they all think they are right--just as Herodotus said of all groups (everyone thinks their own customs are best). I guess the modern Heresy Hunters have not learned the lesson of Herodotus--that is, if everyone thinks they are right, everyone is actually on the same plane in their rightness, but, at the same time, different groups' beliefs, practices, and customs are actually interrelated to one another in highly complex ways. Before evaluation must come understanding. Finally, none of us are really the people we study even if we place ourselves in that overall traditional trajectory (as if it were a linear one, instead of the convoluted, labyrinthine path that it really is). "Powers of darkness" is pretty strong language for research interests (SBL Forum: Tony Burke's Study on Modern Heresiolgy).
The big area of concern is that "if everyone is actually on the same plane in their rightness" then multiple things that contradict one another can be "right" at the same time. I understand the statement limits "actually" right to "their [own] rightness," namely, their own perception. However, when people disagree between each other their "planes" have a measure of discontinuity and therefore are incompatible. No one human has everything right (unless you believe in a personal God with perfect qualities incarnate and exercising those abilities), nor does anyone have everything wrong. If so then incompatibility will exist when two people have something wrong or when a person has something right and the other has something wrong about the same exact issue. Although I guess two people can be compatible with the same wrong! Nevertheless, while all may have equal authority to make a statement, in all likelihood a truth does exist and nothing can be done against it (2 Cor 13:8) despite the attempts and false perceptions. However, people should frame their perceptions of the truth on a probability scale.
In the discussion by Burke, I accept the need to be honest in historical treatments and to give ancient voices an equal say and affirmation of what they think for themselves but perhaps the ancient's perception was wrong? It does appear that there was discontinuity with the likes of Irenaus, Hyppolytus, and Epiphanius and we need to allow them that perception of discord.
This starts to get down to the more basic question: who has the authority to not only define what is or is not correct but what side of the second century positions was in actuality right, despite improper rhetorical strategies and some errors in logic? The next question would then be can we agree on a method to solve this question? The method would have to allow for there to have existed two sides to the ancient debate because the ancients themselves considered themselves against other positions. In fact, people had the choice to follow one of the positions they thought in their judgment was the side that is correct. And people gave authority to the position they thought was correct. If these things can be agreed upon then the discussion can turn to the question of who actually did follow the logical extension of Judaism in the Christian branch? This is where the possibility arises that religious belief does sometimes get impacted by historical research. Historical research will either support religious belief or it may modify religious beliefs, one person at a time. Hence, the reason current Evangelicals are willing to respond to recent attempts at rewriting history real or percieved.
I am not going to impose motivations upon scholars' efforts like Witherington has, but those sympathetic with Burke, like Calaway's response above ("people confuse scholarly interest with the scholars' own religious beliefs") does implicitly impose religious motives for Evangelical's scholarship. While it maay be true, it is also proof that what they accuse of Evangelicals they themselves do and are thus inconsistent. No one on either side should impose motives onto the other side of a debate. It must cut both ways lest one side be hypocritical. However, there is no reason why one side of the debate can't ask the other side their motives for taking a certain position, as long as the side asked explicitly answers can one determine the why of the debate. Nevertheless, it is a persuasive strategy rhetorically, even if not always acceptable. Merely couching a motive question's answer in terms that demonstrate that the one being asked is attempting honest intellectual pursuits does not mean it is so! However, I do commend the truly academic attempt at recovering the history of a matter and how to evaluate different sides of a debate.
"Defending Heresey in the New Millennium" on Oct 14 by
Rob Bowman Jr. the Executive Director of
The Institute for Religious Research (IRR). Some excerpts:
Unfortunately, Burke is not above some rhetorical gamesmanship himself, though it follows a different style than that of the conservative Christians whom he critiques. Burke refers to them as “apologists” twenty-five times in his brief article and as “scholars” only twice (but as “conservative scholars” and “fundamentalist scholars”). “Apologists” in the land of SBL, one should note, is a term of disapprobation. He refers consistently to writers whose research is sympathetic to the CA, however, as “scholars” (nine times) and never refers to them using the term “apologists” or any other label that would imply some agenda. Even advocates of what Burke admits is “fringe scholarship,” such as Michael Baigent and John Allegro, are called simply “scholars.” Like innumerable partisans of a secularized approach to biblical studies, Burke has difficulty describing evangelical and conservative Catholic scholars as “scholars” without qualification.
Some of Burke’s comments offer veiled criticisms (by way of subtext) that would never hold up if stated forthrightly. For example, he writes: “The authors contribute testimonials to one another’s covers and introductory pages, and many of the books are published by conservative presses (IVP, Eerdmans, Baker). Also like the heresy hunters, the writers address their concerns to insiders, a closed group of believers who likely need little convincing that the Browns and Ehrmans of the world must be ignored.” The implication is that the authors are unable to market their work outside a narrow circle of those who share their religiously partisan point of view. Yet similar statements could be made about the scholars whose works Burke defends. Liberal and skeptical authors often contribute testimonials to one another’s covers and write forewords to each other’s books; this is as one would expect. But it may be pointed out that books by conservative scholars sometimes enjoy a wider breadth of endorsement than secular works. ... Secular and revisionist authors also typically write primarily for readers sympathetic to their perspectives, what might in some cases be described as “a closed group of unbelievers.” And it is certainly true that secular scholars tend to ignore conservative Christian scholarship to a far greater extent than the other way around.
...the main problem with most of the apocryphal gospels was actually that they did not view Jesus as truly human:
Bowman then quotes from Reinventing Jesus:
"Thus, these gospels were unorthodox in that they greatly diminished the humanity of Jesus while elevating his deity.… [T]hey emphasized the deity of Christ while sacrificing his humanity…. The vast majority of apocryphal works were not rejected because they had too low a view of Jesus—a too human and earthly Jesus—but because the Jesus they envisioned could hardly be called human in any sense.”
...In this context Wright acknowledges that the Gospel of Peter is a partial exception to this generalization, because it does offer a narrative about Jesus’ death and resurrection, but “has no explanation of why the events of Jesus’ death and resurrection actually accomplish anything.”[8] That’s the point Wright is making about the Gospel of Peter. Burke has entirely missed this point, as well as misconstruing Wright as if he were claiming to offer an assessment of the Gospel of Peter.
...Acknowledging these more fully-orbed treatments of the apocryphal gospels, however, would have undermined the force of Burke’s caricatured characterization of the work of these scholars.
Bowman does a good job of critiquing Burke initially. His basic method is to demonstrate that Burke has misused the "apologists" just as Burke claims the "apologists" mistreat the CA. The hypocrisy is rampant on Burke's part. The selective quotations, while true sometimes, are just that: selective. The full context is needed and more approriate. Bowman does a good job of pointing out to Burke that Burke himself needs to be less rhetorical (just as he argues the "apologists" need to tone down the rhetoric) and deal more with the content of the arguments Bock et al. have proposed in the discussion. I agree with Bowman but I think he was quite blunt with his initial response to Burke. That is only natural. Let us see if the tone on both parts calms and progress actually made in the dialogue.
Defending Burke's assement "Scholars as heresiologists" by April D. DeConick is the Isla Carroll and Percy E. Turner Professor of Biblical Studies in the Religious Studies Department of Rice University on Oct 14 at at The Forbidden Gospels BlogTuesday, October 14, 2008
Scholars
as heresiologists
I want to draw attention to Tony Burke's new
contribution to the SBL Forum. He has taken his analyses of modern scholars'
presentations of extra-canonical texts and written a fabulous critique. He has
called it HERESY
HUNTING IN THE NEW MILLENIUM. I recommend reading the entire piece. Here is
the beginning:
A cottage industry of books has emerged in the past few years
responding to apparent "attacks" on the Christian faith by such perceived
enemies as the Jesus Seminar, Bart Ehrman, Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code,
and the discoverers of the so-called Jesus Tomb.[1] Targeted also in these books
are the texts of the Christian Apocrypha (CA). The books are transparently
apologetic with the aim of disparaging the CA and the Gnostics who (they say)
wrote them so that their readers will cease being troubled by thei texts'
claims. The problem with such books, at least from the perspective of those who
value the CA, is that they often misrepresent the texts, their authors, and the
scholars who study them. Proper research and sober argument take a back seat to
the apologists' goal of buttressing the faith.
In many ways these books read
much like the works of apologetic writers from antiquity, such as Irenaeus and
Hippolytus. They too were concerned about the impact of non-canonical texts and
heretical ideas on their readers and sought to reinforce the faith by
denigrating and ridiculing their enemies. Then and now accuracy was sacrificed
to the needs of apologetics. Yet, perhaps there is something that scholars of
the CA can learn from the modern apologists, something not only about ourselves
but also about those who were attacked by the heresy hunters of the past.
Tony has very good insights in this piece, and I hope he considers writing a
book on this subject. It would be a real service to the field. Tony shows how
there is a group of scholars writing for the popular audience today who use the
same techniques as the ancient heresy hunters in order to discredit the
apocryphal materials, techniques like name-calling, ignoring scholarship to the
contrary, misrepresenting scholarship to the contrary, etc.This is one of the
major reasons, in fact, that I started this blog, have begun to write books on
Gnosticism and the other gospels for general audiences, and have increased the
number of general lectures that I am giving. I am very concerned that the
general public has been misled and misinformed by scholars who are writing with
apology as their main goal. These authors appear to be ill-informed about the
apocrypha and scholarship on it, especially Gnosticism, and this information is
being passed on as credible by editors and publishing houses that do not care to
promote good scholarship, but only are concerned about the dollar. So send me
your questions. What do you want to learn about? And I will write some posts in
response. Let's get your questions answered.
Oct 14 http://www.philipharland.com/Blog/2008/10/14/tony-burkes-excellent-piece-on-heresy-hunting-in-the-new-millenium/Defending Heresy in the New Millennium by Rob Bowman on Oct 14 at The Religious Researcher
????"Heresy Hunting or Hunting for History?" on October 15th by Daniel B. Wallace Professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary at PrimeTimeJesus
See also his entry on Oct 18 at Parhment and Pen http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/blog/2008/10/heresy-hunting-or-hunting-for-history/#comment-10020In a recent SBL Forum, Tony Burke charges conservative scholars with doing bad
historical research, biased in the extreme against the apocryphal gospels in
particular. The provocative title of his essay is "Heresy Hunting in the New
Millennium" (Tony Burke, " Heresy Hunting in the New Millennium," SBL
Forum , n.p. [cited Aug 2008]. Online:http://sbl-site.org/Article.aspx?ArticleID=787He
picks on several known scholars who have brought their scholarship to the
marketplace. Burke especially charges them with being apologetically driven in
such a way that they are prejudiced against reading the ancient apocryphal
gospels fairly: "Proper research and sober argument take a back seat to the
apologists' goal of buttressing the faith."
Those who
are singled out for criticism are Darrell Bock, Craig Evans, Gordon L.
Heath, Philip Jenkins, Timothy Paul Jones, J. Ed Komoszewski, Stanley
Porter, Ben Witherington III, and N. T.
Wright.
The arguments that Burke uses often reflect his
own strong biases, of which he seems to be unaware, for virtually everything
that he criticizes among these authors can also be said about modern-day
defenders of early heterodox Christianity. The response by Rob Bowman
(http://www.religiousresearcher.org/blog/?p=54#more-54) displays this point for
point.
I would hope that we could dialogue on the real issues of
substance about the historical Jesus rather than allege that a person can't
possibly be telling the truth because he or she has an opinion about a
particular ancient source. Why is it that evangelicals are frequently alone in
their recognition that all of us come with biases when it comes to Jesus, but
that we all have something to contribute and that we can all learn from one
another? I guess historical positivism isn't dead yet.
Apologist vs. Apologists — the latest SBL forum by Danny Zacharias on Oct 16 at deinde.org A Response to “Heresy Hunting” by Burke on Oct 16 at APOCRYPHICITY My recent article in SBL Forum, “Heresy Hunting in the New Millennium,” has elicited some
responses in the blogging community—some positive, some negative. Rob Bowman of
Religious Researcher has offered the first part of a lengthy response (HERE). I
appreciate the time and effort he has put into the response—indeed, the real
goal of the article was to get so-called liberals and conservatives talking
about the issue. I’d like now to offer my own response to Rob’s comments.
1.
Rob calls his response “Defending Heresy” and accuses me of being an apologist
for the Christian Apocrypha (CA). A similar charge is made by Danny Zacharias at Deinde; April
DeConick, on the other hand, has come to my defense, stating, “Objectivity
is not neutrality. Tony's piece in my opinion is objective. He writes as a
historian who points out the Christian apologetic agenda of some popular writers
who are misrepresenting other scholars' work as well as the ancient documents
they are writing about. This is not neutral. Who says that neutrality is what we
are after?” I am not defending heresy. If anything I am defending CA
scholarship, but only because it is misrepresented, not because it is superior
in any way.
2. Rob accuses me of “rhetorical gamesmanship” in the terms I
use for the various writers I discuss. He takes issue with me calling them
“apologists,” which he says is a “term of disapprobation.” That is not how I
intended the term, however, and I’m not sure the writers would see it as
offensive; indeed, one of the reviewers quoted in the opening pages of Craig
Evans’ Fabricating Jesus calls it “contemporary Gospel apologetics at its very
best” (Gerald O’Collins). While I’m no fan of apologetics, my use of the term
“apologists” was meant to be value neutral. Are the CA scholars equally
apologists? I’m not so sure. It depends on the quality of their scholarship—are
they letting their assumptions guide how they evaluate the literature? For
example, are they advocating, as is often charged, replacing the canonical
gospels with the non-canonical? This is absurd. All that CA scholars like myself
(though there may be some who are a bit radical) ask for is a neutral discussion
of the texts—that is, to examine them as artifacts of early Christian thought
without assessing them as aberrant, as “forgeries,” or “false.” I will concede
that Rob is right in noting that my terminology is somewhat inconsistent, even
incorrect in the case of calling Baigent et al “scholars” (a little bit of a
slip there).
3. Rob takes issue with some of my generalizations about the
marketing of the apologists’ works. For example, he points out that
Witherington’s What have They Done with Jesus? does not fit in with the other
books because it was published by Harper, not a conservative press. He is right,
though my argument was phrased more cautiously: “many [emphasis added] of the
books are published by conservative presses.” Witherington’s book is an
exception, and I’m not sure what Harper was thinking. Jenkins’ Hidden Gospels is
another (by OUP). He also states, “But it may be pointed out that books by
conservative scholars sometimes enjoy a wider breadth of endorsement than
secular works. Bock’s book The Missing Gospels, for example, was endorsed by
Martin Hengel (University of Tübingen) and Larry Hurtado (University of
Edinburgh) as well as various conservative scholars.” But Hengel is hardly a
“liberal,” and I’m not sure where to situate Hurtado. Rob is right that the two
sides, liberal and conservative, are firmly entrenched in their own scholarly
worlds—i.e., they tend to cite only scholarship produced by their ideological
peers. But my final paragraph calls for an end to such entrenchment.
4. Rob
takes issue with me drawing upon brief comments on specific texts out of context
of a writer’s larger argument—e.g., I criticize Komoszewski’s and Wright’s
assessments of the Gospel of Peter even though, as Rob says, the writers’ aims
were not to offer thorough reviews of the text. He is correct, but I think it is
one thing to note the existence of an apocryphal text which has particular
features (e.g., that it presents Jesus as less, not more, human) and another to
describe its unique features as “bizarre embellishment” (Komoszewski p. 163) or
“strange, somewhat surreal” (Wright, p. 69) (and worse things are said of other
texts, particularly the Infancy Gospel of Thomas). That seems to be the crucial
difference between liberal “scholarship” and conservative “apologetics”—liberals
tend to view the texts with neutrality, without needless value judgements or
disparaging comments.
5. Rob also says I misrepresent Witherington’s views on
the Gospel of Thomas. But again, my aim was not to agree or disagree with his
assessment of the value of this text as a tool for establishing the teachings of
the Historical Jesus, but how he unnecessarily disparages the text. One can
discuss the historical credibility of the Jesus in the text without labeling
some of its sayings as “pantheistic,” “misogynist,” and “obscure for obscurity’s
sake!’” Worse still, these assessments are incredibly shortsighted and deserve
deeper analysis (if Witherington is not willing to do so, then he should not
simply offhandedly dismiss them with comments that will incite his readers to
view the text negatively). I haven’t “missed” Witherington’s point, it’s
just not relevant to what I aim to prove.
6. The same charge is made of my
use of Jenkins. Rob states, “If Burke wishes to disagree with Jenkins, let him
do so, but his failure to engage Jenkins’s argument when it is so directly
relevant to Burke’s claim and when it appears in the very pages that Burke cites
from Jenkins’s book is inexcusable.” Jenkins’ point in this section of his book
is that the heresiologists were essentially correct in their assessment of
Gnostic literature. The larger version of my article does mention some of the
comments the modern apologists offer about the ancient heresy hunters, but most
of the time they agree that the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library has shown
how wrong Irenaeus and his ilk often were. I also mention how the modern writers
seem unaware they are guilty of the same offense. Regardless, I do not agree
that it was necessary to engage Jenkins on this point.
7. Rob criticizes me
for mischaracterizing the works of Bock and Evans. He says they provide thorough
overviews and discussions of at least some of the texts. He is right that these
two works have particular depth but that does not excuse their intentions, which
are to discourage their readers from appealing to the texts for studying Jesus.
Even Evans, who sees some historical value to a few of the sayings from the
Gospel of Thomas, ignores a vast amount of scholarship on the text and focuses
only on the authors that enable him to date the text late and conclude that it
is dependent on the NT gospels. I’m not sure that we can call such a discussion,
in Rob’s words, “very nuanced.” And Bock presents excerpts from the texts only
to show their differences from the NT texts; can we call this “even-handed”?
"Bizarre" elements in Luke-Acts? Reply to Tony Burke (II) by Rob Bowman on Oct 16 at The Religious Researcher This is the second installment of my response to Tony Burke’s article, “Heresy Hunting in the New Millennium.”[1] Regarding the citation
by conservative scholars of “bizarre” elements of the apocryphal writings, Burke
offers the following objection:
“Such focus on the ‘bizarre’ elements of the
texts misrepresents their contents. There is plenty of material in the canonical
texts that is bizarre or objectionable but it would be unfair to characterize
Acts simply on the basis of the cursing stories, or Luke on Jesus’ disappearing
act (4:30) or the sweating of blood (22:43-44), or John on its
anti-Semitism.”
Before commenting on the conservative scholars’ “focus on the
‘bizarre’ elements’ of the apocryphal writings, I think it would be worth
responding to Burke’s description of these elements in the canonical narratives
as “bizarre or objectionable.” Now, granted, Burke’s point is that “it would be
unfair to characterize” these works by referring only to these elements.
However, he makes this point as the premise for claiming an equivalency between
the canonical and apocryphal writings in this regard. In order to assess this
claim, we must first look at the alleged examples of the bizarre and
objectionable in the canonical writings. The only way I know how to do this is
to consider each example in turn. For the sake of coherence and focus in this
post I will address only the examples from Luke and Acts, all of which Burke
cites as examples of the bizarre in canonical writings.[2]
Burke’s reference
to “the cursing stories” in Acts is not specific, but presumably he is referring
to the accounts of the death of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1-11) and the
blinding of the Jewish magician Elymas Bar-Jesus (Acts 13:6-12). He may also
have in mind the death of Herod Agrippa I that resulted when “an angel of the
Lord struck him because he did not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms
and died” (Acts 12:23). We have no independent information to support the story
of Ananias and Sapphira, and there is no doubt that the occurrence is shocking
(as it no doubt was meant to be). The credibility of the story will depend
largely on our view of the credibility of the supernatural in general and of the
claim (basic to the entire book of Acts) that the apostles were divinely
authorized agents of the risen Christ in particular. The same is true for the
story of the blinding of Elymas, although here we do have some indirect factual
support for some elements of the account. Sergius Paulus is most likely Quintus
Sergius Paullus, known to us from inscriptional evidence as a Roman official in
Cyprus during the time in question. The idea of a court magician like Elymas is
also quite consistent with what we know of the culture.[3] For an allegedly
bizarre story, it seems to have at minimum a considerable degree of
verisimilitude. As for Luke’s account of the death of Herod Agrippa I, we
actually have an independent, parallel account in Josephus (Antiquities
19.343-50) that agrees with Acts on the basic facts. One may question Luke’s
statement that an angel of the Lord was involved, but evidently Agrippa died in
just the way that Luke describes.
Burke’s reference to “Jesus’ disappearing
act” would seem to be reading something into the text that is not there. Luke
4:30 states, “But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way”
(NRSV). Luke uses the verb “passed” (dielthôn, participle of dierchomai) 13
times in his two writings, and it occurs in 5 other places in the NT and in 36
places in the LXX, and in no other text does it seem to have anything to do with
“disappearing.” Luke’s use of the word here may allude to Isaiah 43:2 LXX, “when
you walk through fire you shall not be burned,” which like Luke 4:30 has the
unusual wording dielthês dia (cf. dielthôn dia in Luke 4:30). With or without
this allusion, Luke’s statement indicates that Jesus slipped through the crowd’s
fingers, as we might put it, perhaps implying divine protection, not that he
literally disappeared.
Similarly, Burke seems to be reading something more
into Luke’s description of Jesus’ agony than is actually there—though in
fairness Burke would be far from the first to do so. Luke writes, “In his
anguish he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat became like great drops of blood
falling down on the ground” (Luke 22:44 NRSV). Luke’s precise wording here does
not describe “sweating of blood.” His use of the adverb hôsei, which means
“like, as if, as though” (see any of the standard lexicons), fairly rules out
such an interpretation. The point is almost certainly that the beads of
perspiration became so large that they fell from his face with a size and
visibility similar to large drops of blood. Luke may intend the comparison to
anticipate the literal shedding of blood for human redemption that Jesus was
about to undergo, but there is no indication here that Jesus was literally
sweating blood from his pores.[4]
Ironically, this passage in Luke (22:41-44)
presents Jesus emphatically as fully and authentically human. Jesus kneels in
the garden and prays, expressing frankly to the Father his wish to be spared the
ordeal that is coming. He is in a heightened state of emotional anxiety, of
agony, breaking out in a sweat even as he prays ever more fervently. Jesus never
seems more human than in this pericope. There is an earthiness to Jesus, a
humanness, with feet (and in this case knees) firmly planted on the ground, in
this and other passages in the canonical Gospels, that stands in stark contrast
to what one finds in almost all of the apocryphal gospels. This is one of the
points that conservative scholars writing on the subject of the apocryphal
gospels emphasize most strongly, and it pertains directly to the overriding
issue that dominates their concern, which is the comparative value of the
canonical and apocryphal writings as sources of information about the historical
Jesus.
NOTES
[1] Burke has already responded graciously and thoughtfully to my first installment. I
appreciate his interest in engaging the issues in constructive discussion and
intend to respond as time permits.
[2] Presumably the allegation of
anti-Semitism in John’s writings is meant as an example of something
“objectionable” rather than “bizarre.” These are such different criticisms that
it is worth treating them separately.
[3] On the historical background to
Luke’s account in Acts 13:6-12, see, e.g., F. F. Bruce, The Book of the Acts,
rev. ed., NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), 248-50.
[4] Some commentators
have suggested that there is a medical phenomenon that Luke may have intended to
describe in which a person under intense stress might have capillaries burst
under the skin and small amounts of blood exude and mix with sweat. If these
commentators are correct, there would be nothing bizarre about Luke’s account
even on Burke’s popular reading, but again, this is probably not what Luke
meant.
OCT 16
http://euangelizomai.blogspot.com/2008/10/tony-burke-on-heresy-hunting.htmlAnti-Semitism in the Gospel of John? Reply to Tony Burke (III) by Rob Bowman on Oct 18 at The Religious Researcher I mentioned in my previous post Tony Burke’s reference to “anti-Semitism” in the
Gospel of John as one of the “objectionable” elements in the canonical Gospels.
(In context, he was arguing that we should not characterize the Christian
Apocrypha on the basis of such objectionable elements any more than we should
characterize the canonical writings on such a selective basis.) A thorough
treatment of this question in a blog entry is out of the question, so I will
offer some brief comments and then recommend some further reading on the
subject.
Although many people have charged the Gospel of John (and much of
the rest of the New Testament) with anti-Semitism, the charge simply will not
stick. No doubt anti-Semites have often appealed to various statements from John
or other canonical texts as warrant for their hostility toward Jewish people. I
would argue, however, that such appeals are abuses of the texts, not faithful
adherence to the teachings or perspective of the texts.
As is well known, the
Gospel of John often speaks in an unqualified way of “the Jews” in contexts
where they, whoever they are precisely, are being criticized. What does not seem
to be as well known is the fact that John also speaks of “the Jews” in a
positive light. Perhaps the most telling of these occurrences is Jesus’
statement to the Samaritan woman, “Salvation is from the Jews” (John 4:22 NRSV).
Even when scholars who view the Gospel as anti-Semitic comment on this verse
(which some do not), they sometimes trip over it. A good example is Robert
Kysar, who claims that in this text “an older tradition in which Jesus clearly
identifies himself as a Jew and affirms Judaism as the source of salvation
(4:22) slips past the watchful eye of the evangelist-redactor to confuse the
reader.”[1] The bumbling redactor is as much a stock character in biblical
scholarship as the hypocritical preacher is in American television and movies.
Whenever a scholar resorts to this plot device, it is a dead giveaway that his
insightful theory has run into an inconvenient fact. The only way Kysar could
see to avoid trying to force the square peg of John 4:22 into his round hole of
Johannine anti-Semitism was to speculate that it just didn’t belong.
The
notion that John is anti-Semitic has been aided and abetted by scholars eager to
recast the Gospel as a Hellenistic interpretation of Christianity that recast
the Jewish Messiah Jesus of earliest Christian belief into a Gentile god. Of
course, even if that were true, it would not mean that the Gospel was
anti-Semitic. Various scholars, sensitive to what they describe as the
“anti-Judaic” qualities or perspective of the Fourth Gospel, carefully
distinguish anti-Judaism from anti-Semitism. The Gospel may well be described as
expressing opposition to Judaism as a religion, specifically the establishment
Judaism that rejected Jesus as Messiah and eventually ejected Jesus’ followers
from their ranks. But religious opposition is a flimsy pretext for ethnic
oppression, and anyone who has cited the former as expressed in the Gospel of
John as justification for the latter has misread the book on a massive scale. In
any case, the claim that the Gospel abandoned a Jewish way of understanding the
significance of Jesus for a Gentile, Hellenistic understanding is absolutely
false. In recent decades a mountain of academic research into the Gospel of John
has demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt its pervasive Jewishness (Old Testament
and Second-Temple), including the thoroughly Jewish background and context of
its Christology.[2] Some scholars—including some who were themselves Jewish—knew
this long ago. Israel Abrahams, an orthodox Jewish scholar at Cambridge, stated
in 1924, “To us Jews, the Fourth Gospel is the most Jewish of the
four!”[3]
Ironically, some of the apocryphal gospels make the canonical
Gospels look positively pro-Jewish by comparison. Bart Ehrman, himself inclined
to find some anti-Semitic sentiments in the New Testament writings, states
candidly that the Gospel of Peter “is far more virulently anti-Jewish than any
of those [Gospels] that made it into the New Testament.”[4] Theologically, the
writings commonly labeled Gnostic are far more distant from the Jewish
monotheistic worldview and theological traditions of first-century Judea and
Galilee than any of the New Testament writings. This is another substantive
point that conservative Christian scholars routinely make about the majority of
the apocryphal Christian writings. N. T. Wright, for example, says that a key
feature of the Gnostic writings was a “relentless hostility to the main lines of
ancient Judaism,” that is, the Judaism of the Old Testament and the Second
Temple Jewish traditions. The Gnostics were not all necessarily anti-Semitic,
either, but the textual evidence for antipathy toward Judaism is at most quite
mild in the Gospel of John compared to what we find later in the Gnostic
literature.
Much more could be said on this subject, but let me close with
recommending some good reading on the subject. Let me first cite three books
that offer careful and thorough examinations of the issue:
Bauckham, Richard,
and Carl Mosser, eds. The Gospel of John and Christian Theology. Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 2007. Includes a section of four essays on “John and ‘the
Jews.’”
Kierspel, Lars. The Jews and the World in the Fourth Gospel. WUNT
2/220. Mohr Siebeck, 2006. Revision of Ph.D. diss., Southern Baptist Theological
Seminary. Thorough academic study of John’s view of “the Jews,” arguing that it
is not anti-Jewish.
Motyer, Stephen. Your Father the Devil? A New Approach to
John and “the Jews.” Paternoster Biblical Monographs. Carlisle, UK: Paternoster,
1997. Argues that the Gospel is anti-Judaism but not anti-Semitic, and that its
purpose was to present Jesus as “good news” for Jews toward the end of the first
century.
For those who would like to read some shorter treatments online that
go beyond what I have said in this brief post, the following should be
helpful:
Bruce, F. F. “Are the Gospels Anti-Semitic?” Eternity 24 (November
1973): 16-18. Brief article by renowned conservative New Testament scholar,
arguing against the claim of anti-Semitism in the Gospels (and focusing on
John).www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/eternity/anti-semitic_bruce.pdf
Smith,
D. Moody. “Anti-Semitism and the Gospel of John.” In The Theology of the Gospel
of John, 169-73. Cambridge University Press. Mediating position that John’s
Gospel is anti-Jewish but not, fairly read, anti-Semitic.http://www.fathom.com/feature/122099/index.html
NOTES
[1]
Robert Kysar, “Anti-Semitism and the Gospel of John,” in Voyages with John:
Charting the Fourth Gospel (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2005), 147-59
(155).
[2] The literature on this subject is legion. See, in addition to
recent exegetical commentaries and standard introductions, such works as Aileen
Guilding, The Fourth Gospel and Jewish Worship: A Study of the Relation of St.
John’s Gospel to the Ancient Jewish Lectionary System (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1960); James H. Charlesworth, ed., John and the Dead Sea Scrolls (New York:
Crossroad, 1990); Anthony Tyrrell Hanson, The Prophetic Gospel: A Study of John
and the Old Testament (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1991); Craig A. Evans, Word
and Glory: On the Exegetical and Theological Background of John’s Prologue,
JSNTSup 89 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993); David Mark Ball, “I Am” in John’s
Gospel: Literary Function, Background and Theological Implications, JSNTSup 124
(Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996). Each of these is merely one of many
works exploring the same themes.
[3] Quoted in Gary M. Burge, Interpreting
the Fourth Gospel, Guides to New Testament Exegesis 5 (Grand Rapids: Baker,
1992), 20.
[4] Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture
and the Faiths We Never Knew (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press,
2003), 18.
More Responses to "Heresy Hunting" by Burke on Oct 22 at Apocryphicity Rob Bowman has posted two new responses to my Heresy
Hunting in the New Millennium article from the latest issue of SBL Forum.
The first addresses
my point that the modern apologists tend to disparage the apocryphal texts as
bizarre by seizing upon one or two aspects of the texts despite the fact that
much of the texts are otherwise benign (thinking specifically here of Gospel of
Thomas and Gospel of Peter). I stated in the article: “Such focus on the
‘bizarre’ elements of the texts misrepresents their contents. There is plenty of
material in the canonical texts that is bizarre or objectionable but it would be
unfair to characterize Acts simply on the basis of the cursing stories, or Luke
on Jesus’ disappearing act (4:30) or the sweating of blood (22:43-44), or John
on its anti-Semitism.” Rob’s second post deals
specifically with Anti-Semitism in John.
Rob’s posts argue that the examples
I cite of “bizarre elements” in the canonical texts are not so bizarre and the
charge of Anti-Semitism in John is unsubstantiated. He concedes, however, that
many readers and commentators have struggled with these issues; and I think that
is sufficient for my argument. These are troubling aspects of the texts, whether
or not they can be tamed by exegetical athletics. Similarly, some of the
“bizarre elements” in Gos. Thom. and Gos. Pet. can also be tamed or explained if
one takes the time to do so. It is unfair, I think, to label Gos. Thom. 114
“misogynistic.” For one thing, such an assessment is anachronistic; for another,
it is far too simplistic a way to interpret the saying. I won’t attempt to do so
here as there are far too many other experts on the text who could do so, and
have done so. Unfortunately, the apologists (like Witherington) do not consult
these works; they simply draw attention to these sections of the texts that will
alarm their readers.
Dan Wallace, co-author with Darrell Bock of Dethroning
Jesus (one of the books I mention in the article), has also posted a response to
the “Heresy Hunting” on the Parchment
and Pen blog. His concern is, again, that I am just as biased in my defense
of CA scholarship as the apologists are in their assessment of the CA. One
respondent to Wallace’s post commented: “Come on Dan, they’re lost -
methodologically, psychologically, and eternally.” Sigh.
Timothy Paul Jones,
author of Misquoting Truth, added his voice to the debate in another comment. He
states, “What is being exposed is the lack of historically-defensible continuity
between the Christian Apocrypha and the historical Jesus…The problem with the
Christian Apocrypha was and is that the origins of the claims found therein do
not represent testimony from eyewitnesses of the life and ministry of Jesus.” I
do not object to the authors’ arguments that the CA say nothing about the
historical Jesus; I object to how they make their arguments (e.g., Gospel of
Thomas says little about the historical Jesus because it is a second-century
Gnostic text dependent upon the Synoptic gospels and other NT texts; okay, but
what about the scholarship that is not cited that argues otherwise? Should this
not at least be acknowledged?). Jones goes on to say that, my statement on this
blog that “Liberals tend to view the texts with neutrality, without needless
value judgements or disparaging comments” is the “pinnacle of hubris.” I do not
think that liberal scholars are without fault; I think some of them, like all
scholars in all disciplines, can be found guilty of bias, particularly in
pushing too far in their attempts to establish an early origin to some of the
texts. But they begin from the position that the CA (and my point was about the
CA not the NT texts) are valid expressions of early Christian thought that
should be examined sympathetically.
Jones also objects that I have
misunderstood his assessment of the Gospel of Peter. He writes, “I’m also not
certain how closely Burke read the books that he critiques—he cites me as
disparaging the resurrection account found in Gospel of Peter in a section of
Misquoting Truth where I, in fact, contend that Gospel of Peter could represent
an authentic strand of testimony to the resurrection of Jesus, albeit one that
cannot be clearly traced to eyewitnesses of the risen Lord.” But in the article,
my comment was: “However, often the apologists excerpt the texts simply to
highlight their differences from the canonical texts. Of course, only those
sections of the CA texts that are particularly odd are provided and commented
upon. The favorite targets appear to be the resurrection account from the Gospel
of Peter…” And that is precisely what Jones does: he discusses only what is
different about Gos. Pet. (specifically, the painlessness of Christ’s death, and
the talking cross).
"Bizarre" Aspects of the Apocryphal GOspels: Reply to Tony Burke (IV) by ROB BOWMAN on Oct 22 at THE RELIGIOUS RESEARCHER According to Tony Burke, conservative scholars writing about the “Christian
Apocrypha” (CA) unfairly focus on their allegedly “absurd” and “bizarre”
elements and in doing so misrepresent them:
Of course, only those sections of
the CA texts that are particularly odd are provided and commented upon. The
favorite targets appear to be the resurrection account from the Gospel of Peter,
the “absurd tales” of the various infancy gospels, and certain logia from the
Gospel of Thomas (Witherington, for example, considers 31 “pantheistic,” 114
“misogynist,” and 18 “is just being obscure for obscurity’s sake!”). Such focus
on the “bizarre” elements of the texts misrepresents their contents…. Large
parts of the CA are quite “orthodox” but these sections are not discussed…. The
refutation by exposure is assisted, as with the ancient heresiologists, by
explicit ridicule of the texts’ contents.
Let us stipulate that the
conservative scholars whose works Burke is criticizing do have a specific agenda
or polemical purpose that involves, at least in part, discrediting the
noncanonical gospels in some way. If that is these authors’ intent, drawing
attention to absurd, bizarre, or repugnant elements in these apocryphal works is
a perfectly legitimate strategy. Why not point out such elements? Why not focus
attention on those aspects of the writings that most easily serve to discredit
them? Burke complains that such critiques ignore those parts of the CA that are
compatible with orthodox Christianity and that are not obviously objectionable.
This complaint would have some relevance only if the conservative critics of the
CA were alleging that all of the contents of all of the CA were objectionable
from start to finish. This is not what these conservative scholars are
saying.
Let me put the issue in a broader context here by drawing attention
to the way some writers sympathetic to the CA have spoken about them. Elaine
Pagels is outspoken in her admiration for some of these writings:
I had come
to respect the work of “church fathers” such as Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons (c.
180), who had denounced such secret writings as “an abyss of madness, and
blasphemy against Christ.” Therefore I expected these recently discovered texts
to be garbled, pretentious, and trivial. Instead I was surprised to find in some
of them unexpected spiritual power—in sayings such as this from the Gospel of
Thomas, translated by Professor MacRae: “Jesus said, ‘If you bring forth what is
in you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is in
you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.’” The strength of this saying
is that it does not tell us what to believe but challenges us to discover what
lies hidden within ourselves; and with a shock of recognition, I realized that
this perspective seemed to me self-evidently true.[1]
If it is legitimate for
Pagels to claim that the Gospel of Thomas, far from being “garbled, pretentious,
and trivial,” is a book of “unexpected spiritual power,” and to illustrate that
claim with a specific saying from the book that she considers “self-evidently
true,” it is certainly legitimate for other scholars to dissent from this
assessment by pointing out elements that seem garbled, pretentious, trivial,
self-evidently false, or otherwise consistent with Irenaeus’s
assessment.
Consider the statement of another noted scholar in this field,
Marvin Meyer:
The presentation in the Gospel of Thomas of the good news of
wisdom, I am convinced, contributes a great deal to our understanding of the
history and significance of Jesus, and this understanding provides another
viable way of articulating the gospel of Jesus.[2]
One common argumentative
strategy that conservative scholars use to debunk this sort of sentiment about
the Gospel of Thomas is to show that the “sympathetic” interpretations of this
and other apocryphal works put forth by scholars like Pagels and Meyer is
inconsistent with the books’ contents. What better way to do this than by citing
those statements in the CA that would normally be embarrassing to a Pagels or a
Meyer—or even offensive to them, were they to be found in the writings of John
or Paul?
Religious studies professor Stevan Davies, who has written several
books on the Gospel of Thomas, is only more frank in expressing his admiration
for the book:
I remember my first impression [of the Gospel of Thomas] to
this day, which was that the sayings of Jesus in Thomas’s Gospel seemed
altogether more pleasant than the sayings in the canonical texts…. I, and many
more people, would prefer to think that Jesus spoke in the manner of the Gospel
of Thomas rather than in the manner of the church’s gospels, but we must all
bear in mind that our preferences are irrelevant to the determination of
historical fact.[3]
Two pages later, Davies cautiously entertains “the
possibility” that the canonical Gospels’ orthodox Christianity that was later
chosen to represent Jesus’ views was not his own perspective but that of the one
victorious group among all of the first-century groups that taught in his
name.”[4]
The author of his Foreword, Andrew Harvey, is not so
circumspect:
The Gospel of Thomas really is, I believe, the clearest guide we
have to the vision of the world’s supreme mystical revolutionary, the teacher
known as Jesus.[5]
Pointing out absurd, bizarre, or offensive elements in the
CA is a legitimate, reasonable response to such statements. Now, to be fair,
each of the apocryphal writings ought to be evaluated on its own merits; what is
true of one (say, the Gospel of Judas) may not be true of another (say, the
Gospel of Thomas). But this caution works both ways: what a scholar says that is
critical of the Gospel of Judas should not be assumed to be intended as
applicable to the Gospel of Thomas.
Now, are these aspects of the CA as bad
as the conservative scholars say they are? Burke offers very little in the way
of a direct rebuttal to these specific criticisms. In a new post commenting on my second and third posts in this series,
Burke does offer a brief, general rebuttal to one of these
criticisms:
Similarly, some of the “bizarre elements” in Gos. Thom. and Gos.
Pet. can also be tamed or explained if one takes the time to do so. It is
unfair, I think, to label Gos. Thom. 114 “misogynistic.” For one thing, such an
assessment is anachronistic; for another, it is far too simplistic a way to
interpret the saying. I won’t attempt to do so here as there are far too many
other experts on the text who could do so, and have done so. Unfortunately, the
apologists (like Witherington) do not consult these works; they simply draw
attention to these sections of the texts that will alarm their readers.
The
interpretation of Gospel of Thomas 114 is indeed a point of some controversy
among scholars, and I agree that it would be good for conservatives to give more
attention to the differing interpretations. But this doesn’t mean the criticism
is unjustified. As I said in a previous post in this series, had such a
statement appeared in any of the canonical writings, we would (rightly) never
hear the end of it. I am bemused by Burke’s suggestion that referring to the
saying as misogynistic is “anachronistic.” Really? Misogyny didn’t exist in the
first or second centuries? I hope Burke will share this revelation with the
numerous scholars who have pilloried the apostle Paul, or the author of the
so-called deutero-Pauline epistles, for his supposed misogyny. David D. Gilmore
speaks for many scholars (and non-scholars, too) when he asserts, “Paul (or the
writer of some of the material attributed to him) can be legitimately cast in
the role of the first official Christian misogynist.”[6] Karen Armstrong can
allege that the Pastoral Epistles contain “misogynist passages,” with reference
to statements that do not come close to the offensiveness of the idea that a
woman must become male in order to be worthy of the kingdom of God.[7] Cannot N.
T. Wright and other scholars (including some feminist scholars, as I illustrated
previously), then, argue a fortiori that Gospel of Thomas 114 should be judged
misogynist, or at least far more so than anything in the New Testament?
In a
separate post I will discuss more directly the controversy over the
interpretation of Gospel of Thomas 114. Suffice it to say that conservative
scholars have every right to bring up such texts when arguing that the Gospel of
Thomas and other apocryphal writings should not be treated as viable alternative
visions of Jesus for a more enlightened age.
NOTES
[1]
Elaine Pagels, Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas (New York: Random
House, 2005), 32.
[2] Marvin Meyer, The Gnostic Discoveries: The Impact of
the Nag Hammadi Library (New York: HarperOne, 2006), 82.
[3] Stevan L.
Davies, The Gospel of Thomas: Annotated and Explained (Woodstock, VT: SkyLight
Paths Publishing, 2002), xxi.
[4] Ibid., xxiii.
[5] Andrew Harvey,
“Foreword,” in Davies, Gospel of Thomas, x.
[6] David D. Gilmore, Misogyny:
The Male Malady (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001),
86.
[7] Karen Armstrong, “The Eve of
Destruction,” in The Guardian, Feb. 15, 2004.
Oct 23 http://earliestchristianhistory.blogspot.com/2008/10/hunting-heresy-hunters.html
Oct 23
http://www.shuckandjive.org/2008/10/jesus-in-age-of-terror.htmlWomen and Gospel of Thomas 114: Reply to TOny Burke (V) on Oct 30 by ROB BOWMAN at THE RELIGIOUS RESEARCHER This is the fifth installment of my response to Tony Burke’s article on the SBL
Forum, “Heresy Hunting in the New Millennium.” In that article Burke had
mentioned Ben Witherington’s description of saying 114 in the Gospel of Thomas
as “misogynist” as an example of a conservative scholar misrepresenting the
“Christian Apocrypha” (CA) by focusing on the supposed odd, absurd, or bizarre
elements of those works taken out of context. In a follow-up post, Burke elaborates on his criticism of Witherington:
It
is unfair, I think, to label Gos. Thom. 114 “misogynistic.” For one thing, such
an assessment is anachronistic; for another, it is far too simplistic a way to
interpret the saying. I won’t attempt to do so here as there are far too many
other experts on the text who could do so, and have done so. Unfortunately, the
apologists (like Witherington) do not consult these works; they simply draw
attention to these sections of the texts that will alarm their readers.
In my
previous response to Burke, I expressed surprise at his claim that the
description of Thomas 114 as misogynistic was “anachronistic.” I really think
this claim is indefensible, and I wonder on what basis Burke makes
it.
Burke’s complaint that describing the saying as misogynistic is “far too
simplistic” seems to expect more of a one-word description than is reasonable.
Granted that more could be said about the saying, this doesn’t mean the
description is inaccurate or misleading. In any case, what Burke has done here
is to seize on one isolated word used by a particular conservative scholar with
regard to this saying in support of his generalization that conservative
scholars critical of the CA misrepresent them. In order to assess the accuracy
and fairness of Burke’s generalization, we should take a look at what these
scholars—including Witherington—actually say about the matter. Before we do so,
though, let’s quote the controversial saying in full:
Simon Peter said to
them, “Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life.” Jesus said, “I
myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a
living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male
will enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Thomas 114)[1]
Now let’s look at what
some conservative scholars say about this text. According to Witherington, “The
Gospel of Thomas lends no credence to the notion that the Gnostics were
feminists before their time.” He cites Thomas 114 to back up his assertion.[2]
Darrell Bock and Daniel Wallace comment, “If this saying is part of the original
Thomas, it offers no comfort to modern sensibilities about gender roles and
certainly makes no advance over the New Testament’s view of women.”[3] Elsewhere
Bock comments, “This saying is hardly politically correct. It shows that women
were not elevated in these texts as some claim.”[4] The authors of Reinventing
Jesus comment, “Here we see plainly the asceticism that found a home in Gnostic
circles and an attitude toward women that is hardly compatible with the biblical
portrait.”[5] All of these statements make the same point in the same context.
Their comments are directed against those contemporary writers who make
overenthusiastic claims for the Gnostic or other apocryphal writings as more
egalitarian in their view of women than traditional Christianity or its canon.
Such a claim, these scholars argue, is belied by such texts as Thomas
114.
Whether or not one agrees with Burke’s criticism of Witherington’s
description “misogynistic” as “far too simplistic,” this criticism will much
harder to sustain against the consistent point that Witherington and other
conservative scholars make about Thomas 114. According to Burke, these
“apologists” have not consulted the works of the “experts” who have commented on
the meaning of this saying, and hence have failed to engage the best scholarship
on the matter. Burke’s criticism here can have merit only if these “experts”
fail to sustain the point that Bock, Witherington, and other scholars have made
about Thomas 114 being far from egalitarian in its view of women. Well, then,
let us see what the leading non-conservative scholars working on the Gospel of
Thomas have said about saying 114.
Probably no scholar is more closely
associated with the Gospel of Thomas than Elaine Pagels. In her book The Gnostic
Gospels, Pagels comments on Thomas 114, “Strange as it sounds, this simply
states what religious rhetoric assumes: that the men form the legitimate body of
the community, while women are allowed to participate only when they assimilate
themselves to men.”[6] Later in the same chapter, Pagels elaborates:
Other
gnostic sources reflect the assumption that the status of a man is superior to
that of a woman…. Some gnostics, reasoning that as man surpasses woman in
ordinary existence, so the divine surpasses the human, transform the terms into
metaphor. The puzzling saying attributed to Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas…may be
taken symbolically: what is merely human (therefore female) must be transformed
into what is divine (the “living spirit” the male).[7]
This symbolic
interpretation of the saying does not negate the assumed disparity between males
and females, but only pushes it into the background of cultural values that the
saying uncritically assumed. And Pagels’s comments are among the mildest among
the leading Thomas scholars. Virtually all of the scholars who comment on the
saying make a similar point but in stronger language.
Stephen Patterson,
describing the saying as “notorious,” comments:
To be sure, the saying itself
makes its point [about the acceptance of women in the group] in a way that
assumes the androcentric bias of its day. Women may be part of this group only
if they negate what is female and “unworthy” and “make themselves
male.”[8]
Antti Marjanen makes the same point in an even stronger way:
…it
must be emphasized that in logion 114 the goal is not achieved by the removal of
gender differentiation but by the transformation of female into male. Thus, in
logion 114 salvation is defined by employing the patriarchal language patterns
of the contemporary culture. It is important to realize that it is not only
Peter’s statement which displays this attitude but also Jesus’ response.
Although advocating Mary’s and all women’s right to attain salvation in terms
equal to their male colleagues within the circle of disciples and the kingdom,
Jesus does so by using language which devalues women.[9]
Perhaps no one has
written more extensively on Thomas 114 than Marvin Meyer, who observes:
Some
scholars have recognized a similar sort of misogyny in other ancient and late
antique sources, such as the Gospel of Mary and Pistis Sophia, while others have
been more optimistic in sensing that the saying in Thomas advocates androgyny or
even the elevation of Mary.[10]
Meyer goes on to put this saying in its
religious and cultural context:
Further, within gnostic texts this theme of
gender transformation, with the female becoming male, occurs quite frequently….
In these texts the female is typically depreciated—a better word may be
demonized—and comes to symbolize perishability, corporeality, and all that
characterizes this mortal world, while the male typically is glorified and comes
to symbolize imperishability, incorporeality, and all that characterizes God and
God’s world.[11]
Like Pagels, Meyer prefers a symbolic interpretation, but he
also admits that the saying nevertheless assumes the inferiority of female to
male:
Mary becomes male, the female becomes male, we all become male
symbolically when what is physical and earthly is transformed into what is
spiritual and heavenly. This use of gender categories may be offensive to our
modern sensibilities, but what is intended in the Gospel of Thomas, in my
interpretation, is a message of liberation.[12]
Thus, Meyer himself—one of
the leading scholars writing on the Gospel of Thomas and on this specific
saying—can describe it as misogynist:
This statement of transformation, put
in strikingly misogynist terms, most likely uses common sexist symbolism from
antiquity to depict what is heavenly and imperishable as male and what is
earthly and perishable as female.[13]
According to Meyer, then, Thomas 114
reflects a cultural perspective that can be described as depreciating, even
demonizing women, and acknowledges that the saying expresses its message in
“strikingly misogynist terms.”
It would seem that it is Burke who needs to
consult these “experts,” as a number of them validate—sometimes in the same
supposedly objectionable words—the comments of Bock, Witherington, and other
conservative scholars as to the dim view of women assumed in Thomas
114.
NOTES
[1] “The Gospel of Thomas,” trans. Thomas O. Lambdin,
in The Nag Hammadi Library in English, ed. James M. Robinson, 3d rev. ed. (San
Francisco: Harper Collins, 1990), 138. A slightly different version of this
translation is available online.
[2] Ben Witherington III, The Gospel Code: Novel
Claims about Jesus, Mary Magdalene and Da Vinci (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity
Press, 2004), 104.
[3] Darrell L. Bock and Daniel B. Wallace, Dethroning
Jesus: Exposing Popular Culture’s Quest to Unseat the Biblical Christ
(Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007), 125.
[4] Darrell L. Bock, The Missing
Gospels: Unearthing the Truth Behind Alternative Christianities (Nashville:
Thomas Nelson, 2006), 133; see also Bock, Breaking the Da Vinci Code: Answers to
the Questions Everyone’s Asking (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2004), 75-76.
[5]
J. Ed Komoszewski, M. James Sawyer, and Daniel B. Wallace, Reinventing Jesus:
How Contemporary Skeptics Miss the Real Jesus and Mislead Popular Culture (Grand
Rapids: Kregel, 2006), 163.
[6] Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York:
Random House, 1979), 49.
[7] Ibid., 67.
[8] Stephen J. Patterson, The
Gospel of Thomas and Jesus, Foundations and Facets (Sonoma, CA: Polebridge
Press, 1993), 153, 154.
[9] Antti Marjanen, “Women Disciples in the Gospel of
Thomas,” in Thomas at the Crossroads: Essays on the Gospel of Thomas, ed. Risto
Uro, Studies of the New Testament and Its World (New York: Continuum
International, 1998), 102 (89-106). This statement is repeated almost verbatim
from The Woman Jesus Loved: Mary Magdalene in the Nag Hammadi Library and
Related Documents, Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 40 (Leiden: Brill, 1996),
50-51.
[10] Marvin Meyer, “Gospel of Thomas Saying 114 Revisited,” in Secret
Gospels: Essays on Thomas and the Secret Gospel of Mark (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity
Press International, 2003), 97.
[11] Ibid., 101.
[12] Ibid.,
103-4.
[13] Marvin Meyer, “Albert Schweitzer and the Image of Jesus in the
Gospel of Thomas,” in Jesus Then and Now: Images of Jesus in History and
Christology, ed. Marvin Meyers and Charles Hughes (New York: Continuum
International, 2001), 82 (72-90).
"Women in the Gospel of Thomas (a response to Rob Bowman" on Nov 7 by BURKE at APOCRYPHICITY
NOV 8Rob Bowman has posted another response to my Heresy
Hunting in the New Millennium article, this time focusing on the apparent
“misogyny” of Gos. Thom. 114. Just to recap the discussion, I stated previously
that assessments of the logion as “misogynist” were anachronistic and showed a
lack of awareness of scholarship on the text. In response, Bowman excerpted a
number of non-conservative scholars (including Pagels, Patterson, and Meyer) who
agree that the saying is indeed misogynist. These may not be the best scholars
to appeal to in this debate, however, as they write often for popular audiences
and their comments on the texts may suffer from the same lack of depth as the
apologists I criticize. Mind you, I’m no expert on this text, so I hesitate to
say too much about it. But I will limit myself to a few points in my
defense.
1. I don’t
think Rob can argue that the apologists say little about the logion besides
labeling it misogynist. Rob simply supports their conclusion with the views of
other scholars. My concern was with the neglect of other scholarship which would
more rightly put the saying in its context. Put simply, it looks misogynist to
us, but to the author and audience, it may not. That’s what I mean by
anachronistic. Far too often these texts are evaluated through modern eyes. The
same care that we see being employed with Paul’s “misogyny” in 1 Cor. (i.e.,
evaluating his comments in the context of life in Corinth, or being careful to
consider them in the context of his letter or letters as a whole, or considering
the possibility of interpolations, etc.) should be applied also to CA
texts.
2. The logion should not be taken too literally. Making a female male
can have a range of possible interpretations, including encratism (celibacy and
a refusal to bear children). Therefore, Jesus’ statement that he will “make her
male” is not hatred of women. Also, keep in mind that the text is arguing
against the statement of Peter here that “women do not deserve life,” not
supporting it. If we are to see the various apostles in Christian literature as
representing different forms of Christianity, then Thomas is portraying Peter as
a spokesperson (likely) for orthodoxy. So, who is “misogynist” now?
3. Again,
it is important to read a given section of a text in the context of the whole.
When discussing log. 114 in my classes I direct the students also to log. 22 in
which it states: “And when you make the male and the female into a single being,
with the result that the male is not male nor the female female.” This appears
to reflect the text’s theology of returning to a state of the primordial,
androgynous, undivided human. Perhaps this is the key to understanding log.
114.
4. Also to be considered is the possibility that Gos. Thom. is a
document that has gone through multiple stages of composition (much like some of
our canonical materials). Log. 114, which to some extent stands out in contrast
with other sayings in the text (such as 22), may be a late addition to the
gospel and therefore not a good reflection of the author/community’s theology. I
realize that we must avoid eliminating sections of texts we find unattractive
with such theories, but it should be considered given that we have evidence of
the text (and other CA texts) changing considerably over time.
I am not trying to rescue the text
for the view that Gos. Thom. reflects an early Christian feminism. I have
nothing invested in such an idea. All I am suggesting is that an offhanded
comment taking one saying out of 114 and using it to label a text
“misogynist” is not being fair to the text. It is also a disservice to the
reader to ignore scholarship that looks at the text in more depth and/or
presents a different interpretation.
"Vetting the Claims about Heresy Hunting" on Nov 8 by Darrell L. Bock (Research Professor of New Testament Studies, Professor of Spiritual Development and Culture (CCL)) at Dallas Theological Seminary (see also On Heresy Hunting at Bible.org and More on Heresy Hunting at PrimeTimeJesus)
Darrell L. Bock, " Vetting the Claims about Heresy Hunting," SBL Forum , n.p. [cited Aug 2008]. Online:http://sbl-site.org/Article.aspx?ArticleID=791 Vetting the Claims about Heresy Hunting
Darrell L. Bock
I want to thank
the SBL Forum and Tony Burke for allowing me to respond to his essay. I evaluate
his claims, cited verbatim, in a counter point mode. Then I respond. I will
focus on my own work because I can speak to my own motives. I hope to show that
the issues raised operate on more responsible, historically rooted ground than
his piece suggests. The list of texts he treats are listed at the end of this
article.
Claim 1: The problem with such books, at least from the perspective
of those who value the CA [= Christian Apocrypha], is that they often
misrepresent the texts, their authors, and the scholars who study them. Proper
research and sober argument take a back seat to the apologists’ goal of
buttressing the faith.
Wrong. Is the point to disparage these books, buttress
the faith or to challenge the historical claim by some that these texts reflect
the earliest era of Christianity? I was explicit in my conclusion that I was
interested in the historical question (Bock, Missing Gospels, p. 206, first
paragraph under Problem 2). If the more traditional story is buttressed in the
process of doing the history, then so be it. However, the argumentation was
grounded in direct engagement with these texts and their sources. These were
treated using strictly historical considerations, like standard, accepted dates
of the works, issues of origin, and citation using the best translations
currently available.
Claim 2: Their chief strategy is to refute by exposure,
a strategy reflected in the full title of Irenaeus’ work: “the exposure and
overthrow of the falsely so-called Gnostics.” This refutation is done with
little or no argumentation; the views are presented in such a disparaging way
that detailed argument is unnecessary.
Is it disparaging simply to name a
theme, cite the texts next to each other so one can see what they say on that
topic? Is that not how historical investigation should proceed, namely, citing
the texts in question and citing up to date discussions of their date and
provenance in the standard sources? Ad fontes is central to any historical
work.
Claim 3: Another common strategy is to place their opponents in a chain
of known heretics…. On the whole, the heresy hunters spare no invective in their
description of the heresies and tend to place emphasis on the most repugnant
aspects (real or imagined) of their beliefs and practices.
Is that really the
case here? Are CA sympathizers immune from such a claim? How do we explain the
fact that all the discussion in The Gospel of Judas release focused on the role
of Judas and next to nothing about the cosmology that actually represents the
core of the work? More than that, maybe it is not “the most repugnant” points
that are being cited, but the most central parts of these texts. In addition,
maybe certain texts are brought forward because of claims made by those
presenting CA works. Why does Thomas 114 come up? It was raised because many
trumpet that CA material exalts women. But is that the case when females are
removed from creation by becoming male in the final era as in 114? Or is it the
case there is a respect for women when the flaws in creation are laid at the
feet of Sophia in the key text of the Apocryphon of John, which all regard as a
key text in this collection? These CA texts show that respect for women is not
what should be claimed without some serious qualification.
Claim 4: The
modern CA critics, like the heresy hunters, situate themselves within the
“orthodox” church.
This is true, but why and how? The argument is that one
can show a historical chain going back quite early in the “orthodox” material
that is lacking in the alternative materials. Such advocacy can be part of
making historical judgments about the material in question.
Claim 5: Also
like the heresy hunters, the writers address their concerns to insiders, a
closed group of believers who likely need little convincing that the Browns and
Ehrmans of the world must be ignored.
Flatly false. My goal was to write for
anyone with interest in the area and to use the standard sources for this
material (Bock, Missing Gospels, p. xiii; “a popular audience,” “those who were
hearing about it”). That was the case for many of the other writers Burke cites
as well. The point of these books is hardly a claim to ignore these writers, but
to engage them on the historical ground of all of these texts (thus the
“exposure” to the texts).
Claim 6: Quotations from the CA are necessary if
constructing an argument about or against their contents. However, often the
apologists excerpt the texts simply to highlight their differences from the
canonical texts. Of course, only those sections of the CA texts that are
particularly odd are provided and commented upon.
Not true. Texts are
provided that show what is characteristic of this material. In my book, long
citations were provided so that context was not lost. Ancient CA concerns do
include what the views of creation were and what constituted knowledge and
salvation in contrast to canonical texts. After all they were written in many
cases to challenge other Christian expressions. Such comparison allows one to
see the differences and evaluate them. Neither is it true that only odd
non-orthodox texts are discussed with all the passages linked together in a
guilt by association by saying they are Gnostic. I describe The Gospel of Thomas
as a hybrid text that mixes orthodox themes and fresh themes that contain some
Gnostic elements in its final version (Bock, Missing Gospels, pp. 59-63; “mix of
old and young material,” “not clearly Gnostic,” “Gnostic-like thought” in some
sayings 2-3, 37, 50-51, 60, 77, 84, 86-87, 90; saying 75 mentions the Gnostic
Christian rite of the bridal chamber). Of course, it is the distinctive features
of these texts that created the reaction to them when they were created, so
those elements have to be a point of focus.
Claim 7: But the apologists make
no effort to understand these texts sympathetically; their goal is to show their
readers that the CA are not compatible with the canonical texts. Indeed, again
and again Bock points out that, in antiquity and today, canonical and
non-canonical portrayals of Jesus are not reconcilable: “Either the Gnostic
texts reflect what Jesus was and is, or the four Gospels are the best witnesses
to the movement that Jesus generated. One cannot have it both ways.”
This
assessment reflects a defended historical evaluation of the material, after
working through the material in detail. An important historical question is
which set of texts better connect us or take us back to Jesus and his followers.
When the two sets of texts disagree on key themes, claim the same set of
origins, and one can detail the disagreements, then such a judgment is
permissible.
Claim 8: And Wright, taking issue with Elaine Pagels’ view that
one could read the canonical and Gnostic gospels side-by-side, states “it could
only be sustained by a systematic and sustained rereading and in fact radical
misreading, of the canonical gospels themselves.” That may be so, but the fact
remains that throughout history Christians have combined both accepted and
censured texts in a variety of ways, including art and iconography, popular
literature, and manuscript transmission. So, reading the canonical and
non-canonical gospels side-by-side was not only possible, it actually
happened.
This observation about the mix of usage in the ancient period,
though true, misses the historical point again. Wright is not saying that such
side-by-side readings did not happen in the second century, but that such
observations ignore or understate the polemic the two groups had against each
other at the time (E.g. Judas is an anti-orthodox text. That is why it was
written). Also relevant to the historical discussion is the nature of those
readings (in polemic or side-by-side), as well as how far back one can trace
them. In my work, I was clear about cases where side by side things were taking
place, making this point about certain Valentinian texts and Thomas (Bock,
Missing Gospels, p. 211).
Claim 9: Several of the apologists go on to
associate all non-canonical texts with Gnosticism—even the Gospel of Peter and
the infancy gospels—either because of a lack of awareness of the complexities of
defining Gnosticism, or because of a reliance on outdated scholarship on the
texts, or simply because it suits their purposes to associate all non-orthodox
forms of Christianity with oft-demonized Gnosticism. The connection with
Gnosticism allows them also to date the texts late—it is simply assumed that a
Gnostic text must have been composed in the late second-century, even if there
is evidence that might suggest otherwise.
This claim complains about Peter
and Thomas being placed in the late second century. These are not my dates (so
perhaps why we see several in this claim). I reject Perrin’s take on Thomas even
though I am cited because I mention it. The dates I used came right out of the
multi-volume Brill edition of the Coptic Nag Hammadi texts (Bock, Missing
Gospels, p. 56, discusses which sources I use and why, namely, to use the best
resources we have). I also had a chapter discussing the current debates about
the date and the use of the term Gnosticism. I discussed and used works that
reached well into this decade (My books were written in 2004, 2006, out of some
94s book in the closing bibliography, 26 are from this decade).
Claim 10: CA
authors also are disparagingly labeled “forgers” because they have composed
pseudonymous texts; it seems to matter little that some of the apostolic
attributions in these texts are late developments and that some of these texts
are named for their contents (e.g., the Gospel of Judas) not for their
authorship. And being conservative scholars, the apologists do not acknowledge
the possibility of pseudonymity in canonical texts.
Actually in my discussion
of Matthew and John, I did note that many hold to a “school” authorship for some
of the gospels which is the same position (Bock, Missing Gospels, p. 204). So
this possibility was entertained.
Claim 11: The modern apologists’ inadequate
knowledge of the CA is due to the fact that they are not experts on the CA nor
on Gnosticism. The apologists show their shortcomings in CA studies also in
their reliance on collections of apocryphal texts or commentaries rather than
recent and comprehensive scholarship on the texts.
False. What better source
to cite for English speaking audiences than the Brill English Nag Hammadi
translations in the Coptic library volumes or to have looked at translations by
experts such as Marvin Meyer and Karen King?
Claim 12: There is also an
overall tendency to cite only those authors or studies that are useful for
making their arguments—for example, Stephen Carlson’s work on Secret Mark is
said to have proven that the gospel is a forgery, and Nicholas Perrin’s work on
the Gospel of Thomas is taken as proof that the text postdates Tatian’s
Diatessaron.
Not true. In my work, there is interaction with and presentation
of arguments by Elaine Pagels, Bart Ehrman, Karen King, Michael Williams, not to
mention Kurt Rudolph, Marvin Meyer, and Birger Pearson. These discussions exist
alongside beyond my dating of these works which worked with the Brill Library
edited by James Robinson, as well as with individual volumes by those who are
sympathetic with CA materials. In almost all cases I accepted standard CA dates.
I only doubt an early date for the Gospel of Peter (as do most) and noted the
debate over the issue of the date of Thomas, including the debate over its
gradual formation. Who else and what else should be cited? I already noted I do
not date Thomas with Perrin and even noted how some of the sayings come from the
same early strand of tradition the four gospels use. I do mention the view of
Perrin in Missing Gospels (p. 6), but do not refer to him or his date when
actually dating Thomas (on pp. 59-63 and 219, where I place it in the late-first
or early-second century). I also explained that Thomas was rejected only down
the road once it was linked to Gnosticism (Missing Gospels, p. 211).
Claim
13: Another strategy the apologists have in common with the ancient heresy
hunters is the demonization of the heresiarchs, or in the modern context, the
demonization of CA scholars. Bock’s straw man is the “new school” of Harvard,
also called Neo-Gnostics, led by James Robinson and Helmut Koester. Elaine
Pagels is also associated with the new school. She is often singled out by the
apologists and, it seems, misrepresented.
How is it demonization to present
the development of a school, trace its history and its claims? And where is
Pagels misrepresented? Is it inaccurate really to claim that this approach is
arguing that the canonical materials need to be deprivileged, which is a key
point in the debate that these writers make in common? Such a line of views
occurs in CA works themselves as the work of Walter Bauer, James Robinson, and
Helmut Koester are cited by them as getting the new emphasis on the scholarly
radar screen (just read Karen King’s discussions related to the scholarly
discussion of Gnosticism in What is Gnosticism? [esp. pp. 110-48 on Gnosticism
reconsidered, and 150-53 on the current state of research]). Treating all
documents on the same level has been their argument from the start, since Walter
Bauer made it in his groundbreaking opening in Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest
Christianity (a work I did say was “the base for current material,” “epic-making
with regard to method,” “significant”; no demonizing here; Missing Gospels, pp.
46, 48, 49). The key claim this pro-CA group shares is that there was no such
thing as early orthodoxy. Our work attempted to show otherwise by working only
with texts before Irenaeus, the figure that many argue began the real move to
orthodoxy.
Claim 14: But the “new school” is not as monolithic as the
apologists suggest. Bart Ehrman, for example, considers Secret Mark a forgery
and Thomas and Peter early second-century developments of the canonical gospels,
positions that the apologists would find attractive. The new school is further
maligned by associating them with fringe scholarship, such as Michael Baigent,
Barbara Thiering, Carsten Thiede, and John Allegro.
Where is there the claim
the school is a monolith? It is suggested there are certain core themes numerous
writers of this approach hold that are substantiated with citations. These
include multiple citations about their affirmation of the work of Walter Bauer
as revolutionary and the idea that the alternative roots go back to the earliest
Christianity. The works responding to these claims sought to challenge the
second claim in particular. As for the “fringe” associations, the point was not
to say these are all members of the school but that these works are how the
approach has been popularized at points, even by some who do have some scholarly
credentials (Allegro). The teachings of these more academic tomes have
influenced these popular works since they are cited as sources for the roots of
their more popularizing claims.
Claim 15: The worst of the invective
directed at the “new school” is leveled by Ben Witherington. Speculating about
their Christian upbringing, he says, “Perhaps these scholars have been burned in
one way or another by orthodox Christianity,” and he impugns their motives:
“It’s almost as if they said to themselves, ‘If the first-century documents
don’t suit my belief system, I’ll find some other early materials and rewrite
the history of the first century.’” Witherington even thinks the “new school’s”
sensationalist theories are created because they tire of fundamentalist scholars
getting all the attention and to “prove (to themselves and/or others) that they
are good critical scholars by showing how much of the Jesus tradition or the New
Testament in general they can discount, explain away, or discredit.”
I
generally do not like the motive kind of argument Witherington makes. It comes
across as condescending and judgmental. So Burke is correct to sense this is
“over the line.” However, a read of the introductory chapter to Craig Evans’
Fabricating Jesus traces the biography of several of the major players. The
reader of that chapter will see a reaction to their conservative religious
background in their life stories, often in their own words!
Claim 16: The
apologists use another technique of the heresy hunters in concluding their works
with statements of orthodoxy. Typically these are presented as portraits of the
“real Jesus” to counter the, presumably, false Jesus of the CA and those who
study it.
Now, again, what is one to do? The claim of others is that
orthodoxy did not exist in this period nor can one get back to Jesus in these
materials. So I spend over 125 pages working through both sets of texts. I show
how in one set of texts certain key themes are actually presented in every text
cited, across two centuries (i.e., not just using canonical materials, but also
other second century texts that line up with this “proto-orthodoxy”). This
detailed presentation argued that there was a consistent core seen or mentioned
in all of these works, including presenting a summary of what this orthodox core
was. I also made it clear in doing so that these texts do not appear in Nicean
language, so one can see the development as well as the core narrative. In my
book, the point is made not to declare superiority but to substantiate a
historical claim about origins. I even addressed this point specifically in my
conclusion by saying I am not making a theological claim, but a historical one
on the basis of what the citation of the texts show about the content and roots
of this material. So what else should one do when making a historical case based
on two centuries of texts but cite all sides of the ancient debate?
Claim 17
(We are now in Burke’s conclusion): First, the modern apologists are motivated
to write by a fear that orthodox Christians will be led astray by the ideas
presented in the CA and popular treatments of these texts. Their works are aimed
at those curious about the literature and/or those concerned about others who
are curious about the literature. In either case, the books mainly appeal to
those within a rather closed community of believers who, ultimately, are
unlikely to leave the group over the claims of “radical, liberal”
scholarship.
I was motivated by a historical concern that CA enthusiasts
often misrepresent the ancient record (often while making their own polemical
points from this caricature). I also said that the reading of that history is
important because it is related to a key influence on Western culture being
misrepresented. (Note how in Burke’s claim he makes the admission that the CA
critical books are not just for insiders but also the curious.) As for the claim
about who reads and responds to these books, my email included many people who
thanked me for giving another take on the material, with many of them noting
they had not heard the other case before (i.e., those outside the closed
community he sees as the audience).
Claim 18: Second, the modern apologists
and their rivals seem never to interact with one another. The apologists read
and seek to refute the CA scholars’ works, but otherwise have little substantial
knowledge of the literature and ignore scholarship that does not support their
interpretation of the evidence.
In my case, this is simply false. I used the
standard sources and key works of people from all sides of this debate. I do
disagree with the alternative approach, so refutation comes with that
territory.
Claim 19: Third, the modern apologists make no effort to
understand or sympathize with the CA and their ancient supporters. Such
antipathy is observable also in the works of the heresy hunters.
There was a
careful explanation in a set of chapters of the roots of Gnosticism in my work
(Bock, Missing Gospels, pp. 15-31), as well as noting the debate and case made
by some that the term should not be used at all. I rooted Gnosticism in
neo-Platonism, as a key source of the dualism (which is very widely accepted as
a key influence). I also took and acknowledged as more debatable the view that
Gnosticism emerged in reaction to the crushing of the Jews in Egypt in the
second century. I made it clear this was debated, but tried to argue the case. I
used and interacted with the standard sources for these discussions in multiple
languages (since I did my research at the University of Tübingen, Germany).
There was no lack of sympathy for the historical value of the material, only a
historically rooted presentation about how far back its origins go. (In fact, I
made a point about how valuable this work was for the study of second century
Christianity (Bock, Missing Gospels, pp. 201-2). My key claim was that the Jesus
movement that came out of Judaism, as Jesus and his disciples did, would not
have embraced the cosmology in many of the key CA texts. I argued that these
texts’ view of creation was directly opposite the teaching on creation of the
Hebrew Scriptures, texts all Jesus movement scholars accept as at work in the
earliest years of the movement. That material could never have reflected what
the earliest generation of Christians taught. That is simply a historical claim.
Are there any indications that this argument is wrong?
Claim 20: Likewise,
the apologists would be served well to consult a broader range of scholarship in
their assessment of the CA and in other aspects of their scholarship; such
openness might lead them to reconsider their beliefs that the CA are all late,
derivative, and ultimately deserving of censure. If the two groups can set aside
their guiding assumptions, they may find they have more to discuss than they
expect.
This is a conversation I would love to continue, as I am sure others
who hold my view also would. And, in fact, I have had direct discussions with
some on the other side, even fascinating ones. I have learned much from these
interactions, although it has not significantly impacted my views on the
relationships of these materials for reasons I argued a text and a theme at a
time. I think my bibliography did reflect the state of current discussion on
multiple continents. So I reject the suggestion that the field was not
adequately surveyed. However, in a similar spirit to his closing, I thank Tony
for raising the topic and for the opportunity to continue the discussion. I
close with a summary point. There was no heresy hunting in my book (or in that
of many others he has surveyed). I do not recall ever using that word as a
charge. There was only a historical quest to trace the contentious relationship
between these two important sets of texts. I argued there were good historical
reasons for this contention, reasons that are obscured by the current
presentation of some. This debate and the recent finds that have legitimately
invigorated the recent discussion continue to fascinate scholars. The texts and
the issues they raise about the history of religious ideas have been the subject
of much lively discussion over about the last sixty years. I suspect that
discussion will continue, but let us not confuse historical work with heresy
hunting, just because someone comes to a different conclusion about the origins
of and relationships between these materials.
Darrell L. Bock, Dallas
Theological Seminary
Works Treated
Darrell L. Bock, Breaking the Da Vinci
Code: Answers to the Questions Everyone’s Asking (Nashville: Thomas Nelson,
2004); idem, The Missing Gospels: Unearthing the Truth Behind Alternative
Christianities (Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson, 2006); Darrell L. Bock and
Daniel B. Wallace, Dethroning Jesus: Exposing Popular Culture’s Quest to Unseat
the Biblical Christ (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007); Craig A. Evans,
Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels (Downers Grove, Ill.:
InterVarsity Press, 2006); Philip Jenkins, Hidden Gospels: How the Search for
Jesus Lost Its Way (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); Timothy Paul Jones,
Misquoting Truth: A Guide to the Fallacies of Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus
(Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2007); J. Ed Komoszewski, M. James
Sawyer, and Daniel B. Wallace, Reinventing Jesus: How Contemporary Skeptics Miss
the Real Jesus and Mislead Popular Culture (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Kregel
Publications, 2006); Stanley E. Porter and Gordon L. Heath, The Lost Gospel of
Judas: Separating Fact from Fiction (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2007); Ben
Witherington, The Gospel Code: Novel Claims About Jesus, Mary Magdalene and Da
Vinci (Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press, 2004); idem, What Have They Done
With Jesus? Beyond Strange Theories and Bad History—Why We Can Trust the Bible
(San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2006); N. T. Wright, Judas and the Gospel of
Judas: Have We Missed the Truth about Christianity? (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker
Books, 2006).
http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=burke+heresey&scoring=dNOV 8
http://ntwrong.wordpress.com/2008/11/08/nobody-expects-the-bockian-inquisition/In the November 2008 SBL Forum, Darrell L. Bock of Dallas Theological Seminary has written what on the face of it appears to be a point-by-point rejoinder to Burke. Yes, I said “on the face of it”, because — while Darrell Bock was only one of the modern ‘heresy hunters’ discussed by Tony Burke (along with Ben Witherington, Timothy Paul Jones, J. Ed Komoszewski, Philip Jenkins, Stanley Porter, Gordon L. Heath, Craig Evans, and Bishop N.T. Wright) — Bock replies to every point made only in respect of himself. That is, even when Burke’s point was about completely different scholars, Bock only adduces evidence from his own books in reply. Bock goes so far as to pronounce that Tony Burke’s point is simply “wrong” (which is the entire content of Burke’s first sentence of rejoinder) based only on his own books — even when the point concerned completely different scholars. So, what at first glance appears to be a point-by-point rejoinder is in fact a rather strange claim of “not me!”
Yet where Darrell Bock does actually recognize that Tony Burke’s points concern quite different writings by quite different scholars, he tends to agree with Tony Burke! As the only example where Bock discusses one of the other alleged ‘heresy hunters’ (Ben Witherington), Burke agrees that Ben Witherington does in fact go “over the line” in impugning the motives of Christian Apocrypha scholars, and that Witherington is “condescending” and “judgmental”. This doesn’t stop Darrell Bock from going on, in the very next sentence, to make the same insinuation about their motives, however. After all, why waste a chance to make an apologetic point against Christian Apocrypha scholars?
So, it’s a disappointing (non-)response — failing to address the specific charges levelled by Tony Burke, missing the point by limiting himself to a defence of his own books. It doesn’t matter that this is what Darrell Bock announces he will do, because in pursuing such an inappropriate method, his attempted response simply fails to address the specific points made in Tony Burke’s original article.
NOV 8 http://euangelizomai.blogspot.com/2008/11/darrell-bock-responds-to-tony-burke-on.html
Nov 8 http://rdtwot.wordpress.com/2008/11/09/burke-vs-bowman-christian-apocrypha-apologetics/
http://rdtwot.wordpress.com/2008/11/09/a-word-from-our-sponsers/
Nov 8: http://euangelizomai.blogspot.com/2008/11/darrell-bock-responds-to-tony-burke-on.html
http://www.deinde.org/2008/10/16/apologist-vs-apologists-%e2%80%94-the-latest-sbl-forum/
Nov 11: http://paleojudaica.blogspot.com/2008_11_09_archive.html#6239591309820549174
Nov 22: http://www.tonychartrand-burke.com/apocryphicity/2008/11/22/yet-another-heresy-hunting-response/
Nov 26: http://rdtwot.wordpress.com/2008/11/26/burke-vs-bowman-christian-apocrypha-apologetics/
One problem with 'scientific analysis' (which I accept) is
that researchers can talk their way into many things that
do not work that way in reality. sometimes they need the shock of
a parable, of cold water, or a stubbed toe, to realize what they are
doing.
Explorations that need to be implemented into this discussion on the anti-Apocryphal Gospels side is the continuity of the covenants and whether or not Apocryphal documents support those canonical covenants or are dissimilar. Along these lines the Lord's Supper as covenant renewal and Baptism as signs of the New Covenant should appear within canonical Christianity and not appear within proto-Gnostic and Gnostic sects. Another aspect that needs to be explored is the development of the canon. Other subsidiary arguments can be made with the likes of Arland Hultgren's The Rise of Normative Christianity and his book The Earliest Christian Heretics: Readings from their Opponents.
Daniel interpreted the handwriting on the wall for Belshazzar (Dan 5) and when he came to the word TEQEL he interpreted it thus: "you are weighed on the balances and found to be lacking."
