What percentage ‘Jewishness’ did Jesus possess and was it like the alcoholic content of wine?

Subversive ideological terrorism, yesterday

Given that he is so vocal of late in his political theory of marriage and sexuality, let’s try and cross swords again with Mike Bird – who identifies with ‘subversive ideological terrorists’ and enjoys family picnics – in the ongoing promotion of Jesus in an Age of Neoliberalism. Which is now published, incidentally.

And really just to shoehorn this in, I’m going to turn to what is now an old ‘problem’ of Jesus being as Jewish as the Judaism constructed by scholarship, and how this is compensated in scholarship by the dominant ‘Jewish…but not that Jewish’ Jesus. To repeat yet again, many historical Jesus scholars will now emphasize how Jewish their Jesus is, tell us what constituted Jewish identity in the first century, before having their Jesus transcend this Jewish identity, or at least do something new and unparalleled either generally or on some specific (and often crucial) issue, typically involving the Torah and/or Temple. Subtly or otherwise, this pattern is relentlessly found from the more obscure Jesus scholarship through to the major works on the historical Jesus…whilst claiming how ‘very Jewish’ their Jesus is.

As mentioned before, this dominant ‘Jewish…but not that Jewish’ Jesus is, in part, a product of a post-1967 cultural shift, including the first widespread interest in the Holocaust and a favourable attitude towards Israel in Anglo-American political, educational and popular culture, which nevertheless includes attitudes of cultural and religious superiority in relation to Jews, Judaism and Israel, and all as part of the general shift of the centre of biblical scholarship from Germany to North America. This postmodern Jesus eases into an age of neoliberalism through a notable feature of contemporary multiculturalism, the liberal acceptance of the Other without the difficult Otherness (see Žižek).

‘Very Jewish’ (and the opposite ‘not very Jewish’) and ‘Jewishness’ are common phrases in contemporary historical Jesus studies. They are phrases that often go unexplained, at least in terms of identity, as if their meaning were obvious. An attempt at unpacking the meaning has come from Mike Bird (‘The Peril of Modernizing Jesus and the Crisis of Not Contemporizing the Christ’, EQ 78 [2006], pp. 291–312) which, I think, highlights broader assumptions of Jewishness in historical Jesus studies. Bird sees a Cynic or Hellenized Jesus as an exercise in ‘de-judaizing’ Jesus. Such an exercise possesses:

…some similarity [!!] with Walter Grundmann’s Jesus der Galiläer which, written in Nazi Germany, advocated that Jesus was an ethnic Galilean and not a Jew. I am not accusing Mack and Crossan of anti-semitism [!!], but it seems apparent that their works are analogous to older monographs that endeavoured to deny the Jewishness of Jesus. I have read a lot of kafuffle as to how Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ is blatantly anti-semitic and yet the de-judaizing of Jesus by the Jesus Seminar and others has met with little resistance from academia [really?]. Yet history shows that Christianity has done the most unforgiving violence to the Jewish people on those occasions when Jesus’ Jewishness was denied or minimized.

This might raise the question, as it does for Bird, what is ‘de-j[/J]udaizing’? For Bird this does not mean ‘anti-Jewish’ or completely ‘un-Jewish’. Instead, he adds the following ominous analogy: ‘De-alcoholized wine still retains a small measure of alcohol, but not enough to impact the drinker. Thus by ‘de-Judaizing’ I mean the act of moving Jesus’ Jewishness to the periphery or else negating its effects by blanketing it with a Hellenistic overlay’. Bird sees the Jewishness of Jesus as ‘the fail safe’ to stop modernizing Jesus yet then finds himself in difficulty when confronted with the problems of precisely what this might mean, concluding,

…a Jewish Jesus constrains modernization by seeing Jesus in conversation and confrontation with his times rather than ours. That means that intra-Jewish disputes about halakha, the status of Samaritans, paying imperial taxes, and maintenance of purity stipulations are more likely to feature as topics of Jesus’ interest than feminism, globalization, or church growth strategies.

Leaving aside the chronological (/theological) implication of when Jewishness ends, Bird does spell out key underlying assumptions concerning ‘very Jewish’ and so on, namely that if we talk about something or someone being ‘very Jewish’ we are talking about measurements of identity: by this logic Jesus could be more or less Jewish than other people of his day, could he not? A few teasing questions and suggestions might help point out some of the problems with Bird’s arguments and arguments assuming a measurement of identity more broadly (this critique is easily modified to incorporate most scholarly rhetoric about the Jewishness of Jesus). What if someone was identified as Jewish but could not care less about intra-Jewish disputes concerning halakhah, the status of Samaritans, paying imperial taxes and maintenance of purity stipulations? To state what should be the obvious, Bird’s wine/alcohol analogy makes identity more fixed than fluid or, to use the criticism of our times, essentialist. This can be highlighted better if we have some fun with his model.

So if we were to accept points of continuity what might this mean? That Jesus was 10% vol. Jew? Or are the points of continuity just general coincidence or ideas around in the Eastern Mediterranean? If so, does not the mixing up of ideas from different cultures say something problematic about Bird’s model of identity? What if someone could be in a synagogue one moment, in a guild or trade association the next – do the alcohol levels of such individuals rise and fall according to context? Or again, if, say, someone claimed that they had a serious interest in Samaritans and maybe taxes but were utterly indifferent to issues of purity and halakhah, are they ‘half-Jewish’, or, rather, a 7% vol. Jew? What if a Jew thought Cynic or Hellenistic philosophy wonderful, even more wonderful than the Torah or apocalyptic thought, do they shift from being (say) a hearty 12% vol. to a mere 2% vol.? Ultimately, does someone become more or less an ancient Jew depending on what a scholar says?

Let us test out Bird’s alcoholic analogy further by applying it to Jesus scholarship. N.T. Wright, a major influence on Bird, has his historical Jesus not simply involved with intra-Jewish halakhic issues but on issues involving Sabbath, food, purity family and so on; he has Jesus making them redundant and opening up the promises to Jews beyond Samaritans. Could we not make the case that Wright’s Jesus is, by developing Bird’s methodology, a thoroughly non-alcoholic Jew, or at best a white-wine spritzer Jesus? Is Wright’s Jesus only of use for underage drinkers in the park who have not yet acquired the taste for the strong stuff? Does not Wright’s Jesus remove or de-alcoholize most of the symbols Wright constructs as central to Judaism, thereby making his Jesus effectively a Christian or proto-Christian?

Or, by engaging in questions about halakhah, purity and so on, is Wright’s Jesus a good 14% vol.? Given that Bird cites Wright in favour of his argument that the Jesus Seminar has supposedly de-Judaized Jesus in a way not dissimilar to the Nazis (yes, the Nazis!) we would probably have to infer, yes. If this is the case, Wright’s Jesus can transcend Judaism as much as he likes and yet Wright’s Jesus remains patronizingly Jewish through and through and this is the trump card against any sufficiently threatening scholarly Jesus.

If we assume that Wright (the Gentile former Bishop of Durham) and Bird (the Gentile evangelical) believe in what most of Wright’s historical Jesus had to say, does that make Wright and Bird…Jewish?

Bird’s analogy gets weirder still: it decides that the Jesus he does not like (the Cynic-like Jesus) cannot be ‘very’ Jewish, a non-alcoholic Jewish at best. But every contemporary advocate of a Cynic-like Jesus claims that…Jesus was Jewish!

Bird, however, tries to give evidence suggesting otherwise. He even goes as far as claiming that Mack ‘purposely dislodge[s] Jesus from being Jewish’ (my italics). I am, however, unaware of Mack ever making such a claim, yet Bird implies the following is an example of how the ‘works of Mack… minimize the Jewishness of Jesus in favor of a Hellenistic framework’: ‘The Cynic analogy repositions the historical Jesus away from a specifically Jewish sectarian milieu and toward the Hellenistic ethos known to have prevailed in Galilee’ (Mack, Myth of Innocence, p. 73). All this tells us is that Mack’s Jesus is removed from a certain kind of Jewish debate. Mack explicitly removes Jesus from a sectarian Jewish context and by Bird’s logic sectarian Judaism would have to equal Judaism as a whole which, given the different types of people identifying as Jews in the ancient world, is problematic to say the least (and makes the term ‘sectarian’ redundant). Bird effectively does what Mack in fact did not do, that is, assume that being Jewish and endorsing or playing around with Hellenistic views must necessarily be two distinct entities.

And what if the majority of people who identified as Jewish in the ancient world did not care about sectarian disputes, would their ‘Jewishness’ not be eradicated by Bird’s use of Mack? Mack may have been wrong to make such historical judgments about sectarian Judaism and a Hellenistic Galilee and there may be a range of modernizing factors which led him to make such judgments. But to claim that Mack was purposely dislodging Jesus from being Jewish is just wrong.

Bird’s association of the work of Mack and the Jesus Seminar with Nazi scholarship and potential violence against Jewish people is disturbing. Nazi scholars tried to disprove Jesus’ Jewish ethnic/racial identity in relation to Galilee with the obvious cultural ramifications this had in Nazi Germany. No member of the Jesus Seminar (including Mack) did/does this, at least as far as I am aware. Indeed, if we took self-identity as one way of establishing how someone thinks about themselves, then would not all contemporary historical Jesus scholars claim that their Jesus would have claimed to have been Jewish, and in notable contrast to Nazi historical Jesus scholars who would have claimed that their Jesus would not? Certainly, a case can be made for members of the Jesus Seminar producing a Jesus who stood over against aspects of certain Jewish ‘religious’ practices in many ways, but this is no different from countless works on the historical Jesus, including Wright’s work. To tie the Jesus Seminar in with some aspect of liberal America is one thing and probably accurate; to tie them in with the Nazis really is most unfortunate.

There may well be good historical reasons for not believing Jesus was a Cynic philosopher. But to refute such claims on the basis of imposing Jewish identity so that the only way Jewishness works is through the imposition of ideas of a Gentile Christian (irrespective, it would seem, of how people identified themselves) seems as anachronistic as the modernized Jesuses Bird wishes to refute. And to do this by way of making some alarming and wholly inaccurate remarks about opponents’ liberal Jesuses being like those produced by the Nazis no less would suggest something else is going on here. Ultimately, Bird’s model of Jewishness is no safeguard against modernizing Jesus; on the contrary, it provides access to the ‘postmodern’ multicultural Jesus Bird requires, or at least a barrier to the very Jesus Bird does not require.

Marketplace of, and for, Jesus Scholars

…and specific manifestations of capitalist individualism and neoliberal influences are not difficult to find…

The marketable images of Jesus are tied in with the imaging of scholars with whom they are associated, each perhaps an unintentional witness to the hunger of a free-market system yearning for more and more markets. Here is a recognisable summary of Jesus scholars by Mark Allen Powell which could also function as a summary of some of the main players in the scholarly marketplace:

John Meier wins the prize for length… Quantitatively, at least, he has exceeded all other Jesus scholars, ancient and modern… A Catholic priest educated and ordained in Rome, Meier is now professor of New Testament at the University of Notre Dame… When U.S. News and World Report sought a catchy caption to distinguish Meier from other Jesus scholars they settled on the phrase ‘dogged digger’…

Marcus Borg prefers not to talk about ‘the historical Jesus’ as a figure of the past who can be studied apart from religious or spiritual concerns… A prominent member of the Jesus Seminar… Although a confessing Christian, he admits that his own faith has been enhanced by studying Buddhism, the writings of Carlos Castenada, and the latter’s Indian seer, Don Juan…he had a number of mystical and ecstatic experiences that fundamentally changed his understanding of God, Jesus religion, and Christianity…

It [a degree of celebrity] agrees with him [Crossan]. As comfortable chatting on Larry King Live as he is engaging in academic debates at meetings of the Society for [sic] Biblical Literature… Unlike many scholars, he doesn’t mind ‘being a personality’…he eschews objectivity as unobtainable and spurious, and offers in its place a more realistic credential for scholarship: honesty.

Even those who have never read any of Wright’s volumes may know him as the scholar who spells god with a lowercase g…

And what better manifestation of image and an American form of the acceptable, or idealized face of (neo-) liberalism, than the North American Jesus Seminar? In its heyday, the Jesus Seminar was certainly media savvy, famous for voting, and its entrepreneurial side was illuminated by Robert Funk. Funk is notably remembered in what effectively amounts to a myth of the anti-bureaucratic, entrepreneurial, all-American, individual success story for a neoliberal age (see e.g. the obituary by Lane McGaughy).

Beyond the Jesus Seminar, Jesus books continue to sell (most notably Crossan’s massive and technical book, The Historical Jesus) and a number of Jesus books by major scholars have come from mainstream publishers whilst SPCK could probably stop publishing all books except those by Wright and still make a profit. The most widely famous Jesus scholar today is Bart Ehrman who is, of course, something of a media star and a New York Times bestselling author.

Such traits have been reflected in what became the geographical heart of the discipline since around 1970: America. Today, the major biblical studies conference, at least in terms of size, is, by a wide margin, the annual SBL meeting held in various locations in North America (though typically the USA) and drawing in scholars from across the planet on a scale seen nowhere else in contemporary biblical studies. And since the 1970s, as Hector Avalos has documented, there has been a significant growth in publisher interest. An aside: anyone who has seen the bookstalls at SBL might note that there is a some resemblance to a supermarket.

And one way for contemporary marketplaces to succeed is getting the image right…

Jesus, the Great Man

A long-standing and dominant feature of the quest for the historical Jesus is the idea of Jesus as Great Man. This form of individualism works in harmony with a dominant capitalist understanding of causality, particularly the importance of a freely acting autonomous individual who functions as a historical mover not only avoids a more totalized view of history and explanations of historical change, but implicitly justifies the normality of capitalism as part of the mysterious or eternal laws of nature. One of the more remarkable examples of this sentiment has to be Margaret Thatcher’s infamous claim (or at least the reception of the claim) that ‘there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.’ The view of the individual or the Great Individual is very common.

Jesus and Che are Great Men

Thinking of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq particularly, the importance of great leaders and figures being required, from endless references to Churchill and the need to avoid changing a Commander-in-Chief during a time of war to the negatives such as the sentiments that it is nothing more than a few bad apples responsible for rotten corporations or torture in Abu Ghraib. We might also make dishonourable mention of the increasing obsession with celebrity and rich lists (‘the top 50- most powerful women’, ‘the top ten most influential…’)

Jesus the Great Man has a long history in the discipline and in many ways characterises much about the discipline from its origins to the present. Yet while individualism and the cult of the individual have faced some resistance in the historical reconstructions by historians in history departments, such resistance has not had a major impact on contemporary mainstream historical Jesus studies. In terms of biography, lives of Jesus are, obviously, about one man and so emphasis is on the words and deeds of this man. In terms of faith, Jesus is the central figure in the Christian faith and in theology and the overwhelming majority of New Testament scholars are practising, or at least lapsed, Christians. Unsurprisingly, the words and deeds of the individual Jesus are analysed heavily. And what marks out contemporary scholarship? Perhaps countless stereotypical figures: the Cynic-like figure, the revolutionary, the charismatic, the eschatological prophet, the sage, the rabbi, the social critic and so on.

The ‘facts’ become very important. E. P. Sanders’ work on Jesus is remembered in part for establishing basic facts about Jesus (baptized by John the Baptist, preached the kingdom of God, executed under Pilate etc.). Despite trying to move away from theological concerns and interpret as a conventional historian, Sanders locates himself in the tradition of historical biography in order to analyse what the subjects thought. This is typical enough of the agendas of many reconstructions of Jesus’ life. Often characterised differently to Sanders, the American Jesus Seminar are still with the facts about Jesus and what Jesus thought or believed (as the famous colour coding suggests). Or again we might choose Meier who is interested in the more sober, hard facts. Perhaps less concerned with establishing facts in Meier’s sense is Chilton’s Rabbi Jesus. But in many ways Chilton’s book actually reads more like traditional narrative biography than any other recent scholarly work on Jesus and with an intense focus on a portrait of his life.

Typical of such works is that there is little concern for questions such as why the Jesus movement emerged when and where it did and why this movement subsequently led to a new ‘religion’, aside from Jesus having great ideas which made a new ‘religion’ come to pass. In terms of historical explanation, such detail in itself must at least imply that the individual Jesus of Nazareth is thought to be the most significant figure (and factor?) in the emergence of subsequent Christianity. Indeed, several historical Jesus scholars are keen to show the connections between Jesus and the Christian movement that followed, even as a methodological necessity (cf. Sanders and Wright). But here again we remain in the realm of description, without any serious discussion of social and economic trends that are invariably present in historical change and developments and that may have aided and abetted the shift from Jesus to early Christianity. And when Wright does look beyond the surface level events and stories he bypasses the route of social and historical causes by going for an intensified individualism or supernatural individualism to explain the ‘blind forces’ of historical change, i.e. by ‘proving’ that Jesus was really resurrected from the dead. We might say that where a classic individualist history can give the impression of free-floating actors, certain histories of Christian origins have the invisible supernatural or theological hand guiding the apparent chaos of activity. It is perhaps no surprise that apocalypticism and eschatology have been dominant contexts in which Jesus has been analysed.

But what about the popular use of social sciences? Much use of the social sciences has been either descriptive or feeds into the idea of individual influence. The idea of Jesus as charismatic leader – the social scientific model of the individual par excellence – highlights Jesus as notably different from his social context, not to mention the model’s descriptive importance by placing Jesus as a ‘type’.

There have been historical Jesus studies grounded in social and economic histories that have the potential for wide-ranging, causally based explanations for the emergence of the Jesus movement but ultimately the reception of such works tends to involve discussions of theology and description. Much of the high profile discussion about Horsely or Crossan tends to be about the scholarly Jesus produced (including the sources used).

As it happens modern biography does not have to be the way of the typical historical Jesus book either.  There is a long tradition of biographers looking at how the individual illuminates broader historical trends, how successfully the individual reacted to historical conditions in the broader sweep of historical change, and how ideas are intermingled with socio-economic context.

Yet the fairly recent re-emergence of narrative histories and micro-histories have meant that the history of the good and the great remain, but these kinds of history have also welcomed histories from below and sought out forgotten and marginalized individuals. So this might mean that NT studies can now bypass an era of history writing and embrace another! While Jesus and Paul can be, and sometimes are, seen as figures from traditionally marginalized backgrounds, at the same time they will still play a structurally similar role to the good and the great in history, even if in a potentially romanticized form. This may mean that history grounded in the role of the individual has a long shelf-life in the historical study of Christian origins. Jesus as Great Man, genius, or even enlightened Beckett-like sage, is not only deeply embedded in the discipline but he may also be here to stay for some time, perhaps with the God of the gaps sometimes on hand to guide the path of history.

And as the idea of individualism has, of course, been widely highlighted as typical of capitalist thought, not least because it has the positive (and convenient) connotations of ‘freedom’, though it can also (just as conveniently) blame the individual for their plight rather than any deeper rooted societal issues (see now Robert Myles’ work on homelessness and the Gospel tradition). But this merely establishes a general context of individualism as dominant in Jesus studies; it is to specific manifestations of capitalist individualism that now needs to be established…

Academic Freedom, Christian ‘Universities’ and ‘Secular’ Universities

Like others (e.g. Bird, West, and by implication Hurtado), it is difficult not to feel that there is something deeply wrong about what happened to Anthony Le Donne at Lincoln Christian University. I’m probably not the best person to defend his case (I suspect it would get him more sacked, so to speak) but I think he has obviously been hard done by, though I also suspect he will have a very good chance of getting a job elsewhere.

Some related comments can be made.

One thing is striking: the label ‘university’. Why don’t such institutions just stick with the clear label ‘seminary’ or go for ‘seminary plus’ if they teach other things? They can do as they please, of course, but it seems that there is a potentially duplicitous game being played here which might explain some of this: wanting the credibility of the label ‘university’ whilst not buying into the ideal of independence associated with universities. That may be beside the point because I suppose we all know that places which impose theological and historical demands on scholars are seminaries in another name, and at least ‘Christian’ flags up what might be expected, but still.

[One point to avoid misunderstanding: work done at a number of seminaries or theological colleges isn't necessarily better or worse than that at universities. I don't know how to measure what's better and leave that to one side]

One phrase which has come up repeatedly over the years in discussions of seminaries, theological colleges and universities, and in distinction from theological colleges and seminaries, is ‘secular university’, recently turning up on Ben Witherington’s blog. I’m going to make a plea for this term to be dropped, at least as things stand. A better term might be ‘independent’ because, ideally, universities are, at least in certain imaginations (like mine), supposed to provide a context for all sorts of ideas. Moreover, and speaking from the UK, it is hardly the case that confessional and theological views are excluded, as the term ‘secular’ might imply. In addition to a number of departments of theology containing theologians who believe in their theological positions and teach and research on such theological positions, look at a number of the major biblical studies posts in the UK held by scholars who are quite open about their theological interests. There are historic reasons for this (including connections with the church) but also because universities generally hold to an ideal of independence and allow a range of positions.

Here’s an interesting example. In 2008 I was at a conference on the Pope’s terrible book on the historical Jesus. It was funded by the British Academy and hosted by the Centre for Philosophy and Theology, which is linked with the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, at the University of Nottingham. The University of Nottingham Dean’s Fund also provided money which, according to the main organisers and editors of the following book, was ‘a demonstration of the University’s commitment to rigorous theological debate open to a wide audience’ (Pabst and Paddison’s acknowledgments in The Pope and Jesus of Nazareth). The conference featured people such as John Milbank, the Archbishop of Granada, and a number of priests, and the Pope’s theology was praised to the moon and back. Yet despite this a couple of us were taken aback somewhat by the relentless use of the term ‘secular university’ throughout the conference. The situation is not clear cut and this example shows just how problematic labels like ‘secular’ are.

The key point here is an ideal of independence. At least there are a number of issues which can be discussed at a university without fear of the sack, whether you are a liberal theologian, a dedicated evangelical, an exegete producing non-violent (in this life) views expressing dislike at practising homosexuals which are believed to be eternally true but apparently shouldn’t be labelled ‘homophobic’ because the negativity is out of love, a New Atheist, someone who thinks the resurrection is a product of grief visions (not including a certain German institution, obviously) or whatever. This brings me to a comment by Ben Witherington:

Honestly it’s not very different than when a major secular university puts restraints on what a faculty person can say or do in the name of political correctness. For example, some kinds of comments or views have been classified as forbidden in such institutions if you want promotion. That’s hardly what I would call academic freedom.

Leaving the point about gaining promotion (note: rather than being sacked) to one side, this ‘for example’ is a non-example (i.e. no evidence is cited) and it doesn’t seem comparable with cases such as Le Donne’s (and there are, of course, more) or the ideal of allowing theologians, non-believers, evangelicals etc. Besides, what can be said about ‘when a major secular university puts restraints on what a faculty person can say or do in the name of political correctness’? I don’t know what BW3 has in mind but there are certain instances where I think certain restraints would be fairly explicit. For instance, speaking/writing/researching about Israel and Palestine is liable to land you in hot water (see e.g. Norman Finkelstein, Douglas Giles and Nadia Abu el-Haj, though the latter was eventually promoted, albeit at a cost). I could imagine someone holding far-right or racist views would struggle gaining promotion in a university. These are also issues for seminaries or evangelical ‘universities’. But…holding conservative or evangelical theological views, or holding one sort of theological view, has not been a problem for promotion in universities, certainly not in the UK. I would make an educated guess that BW3, for instance, would not struggle to get promoted in the UK if he held what he assumes to be ‘politically incorrect’ views and wrote about them. Again, a number of major biblical scholars at major universities with major posts might reasonably be called conservative or evangelical. Some even hold theological views which Oscar Goldman calls ‘soft homophobia’.

Of course, universities are not places immune from ideological controls. There are a number of issues which won’t be touched properly (see above) and the manufacturing of ‘common sense’, consensus and consent is evident at universities, just as it is in evangelical seminaries and wider culture. Enough work has now been done, including work in biblical studies, to show how more subtle forms of ideology are at work in academia whether this concerns the nation state, Middle East, neoliberalism, individualism, liberalism, nationalism, ethnicity, identity etc etc etc… Universities are still tied in with state and private power and even though radical views can be espoused they tend to be ignored, buried, misunderstood, obscured, or obscure (see Jesus in an Age of Terror e.g. ch. 1). But at least there are limited privileges at independent universities which clearly aren’t present at certain seminaries and evangelical ‘universities’. At least people aren’t losing jobs for saying things – not even particularly radical things – about the historical Jesus. At least you actually can be a radical, conservative or mainstream historical Jesus scholar. And that’s something.

And finally, Adam Shields makes arguably the weirdest (though honourable) commitment to academic freedom I’ve read since Mike Bird claimed an approach to academia of permitting any view equals Maoism:

I would like to think that one of the ways to solve this problem is for schools (or some foundation) to set aside some money to cover a year’s salary for professors that honestly feel they can’t continue to work at the school because of the direction of their research.

This would allow more harmonious separation and be a better witness to the non-Christian academic world. As Christ said, we should be known for how well we treat one another and not how cut throat we are. Even when we disagree, we should be able to still treat one another lovingly.

And for a few hundred thousand a year or less, that would do a lot in my mind to help show the non-Christian academic world that we really are committed to both harmony and love and academic freedom. I know of no equivalent in the secular university world.

And that’s because people at ‘secular universities’ don’t usually get sacked for apparently thinking slightly beyond perceived confessional norms.

Helen Ingram and Jesus the Magician

Helen Ingram’s work on Jesus the Magician (more precisely: Extracts from Dragging Down Heaven: Jesus as Magician and Manipulator of Spirits in the Gospels) is available here…with added videos! Everything is very nicely done and I wonder if this is going to be a taste of future approaches to academic publishing…

 

Dept of Biblical Studies at 65: John Rogerson and FF Bruce

John Rogerson recently opened the 65^th anniversary of the Dept of Biblical Studies at Sheffield with an excellent lecture on ‘New Horizons in Biblical Studies: How Sheffield Helped to Change Things in the 1970s and 1980s’ (brief report here). Apart from lots of historical details about biblical studies in the 50s, 60s and 70s, one of the striking things about the lecture was just how radical things like the use of social sciences and literary approaches were, even to the extent that they were not been deemed legitimate areas of study for biblical studies or areas of study in similar departments in British universties. I write ‘striking’ because these approaches have been absorbed into the mainstream and were so relatively quickly (by the 80s) in no small part to now major scholars in the field.

The next lecture on Wednesday 9 May, 2012 takes us back chronologically to the foundations of the Dept with Tim Grass’ lecture: ‘F. F. Bruce: Lay Believer in a Secular University’. The lecture will take place Jessop West Exhibition Space (University of Sheffield), 6.30pm. The lecture is open to all. No booking required. More details here.

Biblioblogging in an Age of Neoliberalism 2

And now for a brisk jog down memory lane from Jesus in Age of Neoliberalism…

The second case concerns the greatest period in biblioblogging history: the advent of N.T. ‘Tom’ Wrong. Wrong is significant because this blogger explicitly brought forward a number of views challenging the dominant political and ideological tendencies on the biblioblogs. The reactions among some of the other bibliobloggers are crucial because not only is further masking of political tendencies apparent, but the emphasis is clearly shifted to those most postmodern of concerns: the body, personal surveillance and an avoiding of the radical to the challenging or embracing the cheekily subversive.

It is helpful to think of the subtle ways in which propaganda and surveillance infuse democratic states particularly with the rise of social media. Surveillance is central to modern societies and democratic systems for categorizing, group shaping, boundary guarding, social control, social predicting, and an ever-increasing observation of the individual or the group in an array of cultural contexts. One of the most important instances (at least in terms of success) of unintentional conformity to a general system of surveillance has to be the emergence of blogging, micro-blogging sites, and social networking. It is very easy to find out what certain scholars are doing and if we are very lucky we can learn precisely when a given scholar is in bed, praying, writing, travelling and so on. Who needs a totalitarian bludgeon!

Wrong is an interesting character in all this, partly because he doesn’t conform to the dominant trends in biblioblogging (on the Middle East he clearly didn’t slavishly conform to the party line) and partly because this mystery person had some fun escaping identification (which might explain some of the frustration when people tried to make a positive identification). One doesn’t like to engage in overstatement but he very clearly was a modern day Eleazar, with his whereabouts presumably hidden whilst on the run by the downtrodden online peasants who loved their bandit-hero (War 2.253), and eventually killed (Ant. 20.160-161; War 2.253) in 2010, though there are rumours of resurrection appearances.

Wrong was the exception that proves the ‘rule’, and only partly because the blog was pseudonymous and that this meant an alleviation of the pressures to conform and an ability to poke fun at attempts at surveillance. This is because Wrong’s political output was more-or-less ignored and so effectively dealt with by other bloggers largely refusing to engage with them.  This is especially highlighted by the ways in which Wrong has caused controversy and where he has made a number of bibliobloggers take note: remember the heated discussion caused by the scientific and highly accurate (or as John Lyons put it, inspired, nerdish and pedantic – that’s the price of science John) ideological scale of ‘very liberal’ through to ‘very conservative’? Of course you do! There was also a sexual topic which came up in an interview and which really riled people. This whole episode also gave us the memorable image of Jim West ‘positively slobber[ing] all over a flaming pervert’.

But put bluntly: why does the sexual issue provoke all the debate and the big political one not?

For those interested in source criticism, an early form of this second case study is to be found here.