If last Sunday, on Chatham Island, was brilliant weather wise, this Sunday, back in Christchurch is, well, miserable: wet and cold.
But yesterday there was some cheering news: our Synod, meeting in a special one day session, agreed to some changes re thye Cathedral Reinstatement Project - an injection of funds (subject to satisfactory sale of the Transitional Cathedral) and a reduction in scope of the Project (particularly to reduce our commitment to the building being 100% of New Building Standard, now down to 67% NBS). An RNZ report is here. We still have a mountain to climb for the Project to succeed but yesterday was an important step up the steep slope.
This morning my eye was caught on X/Twitter by an article about a famous NT scholar, Geza Vermes, published in Church Times. Well worth a read for those interested in the question of what "the Jewish Jesus" means - a question which Vermes refined with acute insight, out of a fascinating personal spiritual journey.
Reading this short article links to some reading of my own through the past couple of weeks: Beyond Justification: Liberating Paul's Gospel by Douglas A. Campbell and Jon DePue. I haven't finished this book yet and hope to review it on here in due course. But a strong motivation through this book is that Christianity (especially Protestant Christianity influenced by what they call "Justification Theory") might review and revise its attitude to Jews and Judaism.
For what it is worth my hunch is that my review will be along the lines of "love the conclusion, disagree with the pathway to it"!
22 comments:
That's an amazing story re Geza Vermes: from Catholic priest to rabbi to Jesus scholar, being saved from the holocaust in the process.
I appreciate his emphasis on Jesus as a Galilean Jew, and how different that makes him from other Jews. Helps us to be much more fine grained.
More than once, I've wanted to upturn tables in churches: Vermes's reading of the consequences of this for Jesus is striking and chilling.
Mark
Vermes wasn't a rabbi.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
I thought ‘rabbi’ meant ‘teacher’? Jesus was called rabbi but wasn’t ordained as one obviously, he taught on his own authority. I guess Vermes teaching Hebrew and being a Professor in Judaism makes him a rabbi in action even if not licensed?
Oh, I might have got that wrong - I accept your correction, William.
I was thinking that too this Sunday, Moya. I think our gospel reading of Jesus asleep in the storm had the disciples call out to him as "rabbi". And I thought: but he didn't train as a rabbi, right? Does one train as a rabbi, or is it used honorifically and spontaneously like Maori would use "matua"? Geza Vermes would know!
No, rabbis are authorised and ordained religious teachers, congregational leaders and celebrants in synagogues. I don't think Vermes ever served in such a capacity. Judaism makes a clear distinction between teachers or professors and rabbis.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
This has become more interesting than my mistake: you're right, William, the article never mentions Vermes was a rabbi.
From what I've read, modern rabbis follow a more formal process of training (in the law) and ordination, including study under another rabbi. In Jesus' time and before, you became a rabbi (teacher of the law) through study and *transmission* from another rabbi (all the way back to the first teacher of the law, Moses).
I've read that rabbi is also occasionally used as an honorific/title of respect, but presumably that's for older men, not thirty years olds.
So Jesus' followers using rabbi is interesting.
There's no history of him studying under another rabbi, right? Maybe rabbi was used by followers of other charismatic teachers? To call a thirty years old carpenter's son, who hasn't been trained by another teacher of the law, a rabbi seems quite out of step, scandalous even?
This is what Moya was highlighting: As others said at the time, on whose authority does Jesus teach? Is this the beginning of the tension between second temple Judaism and the Jesus movement?
I'm sure Vermes would have a more fine grained answer.
'Rabbi' means 'my great one', an honorific title that later becomes a technical one, especially after the destruction of the Temple when the priesthood was out of a job and the Jewish community looked to the learned Pharisees to give religious leadership. And yet the Jewishness of Jesus was being recognised in the 19th century. Alfred Edersheim's book was popular for a long time, and Franz Delitzsch translated the NT into biblical Hebrew (I'm reading it now and it's a remarkable achievement).
Vermes's portrayal of Jesus as an eschatological hasid was certainly more positive than the long hostility reflected in the Talmud's portrayal of Jesus as a false teacher and magician - one that centuries of Jewish-Christian conflict over legitimacy in the Roman Empire and terrible persecution and humiliation must have cemented in the Jewish imagination.
But in the end Vermes really comes up with a 19th century liberal 'Protestant' picture of Jesus not very far from Renan and other Questers: no incarnation, no virgin birth, no unique Son of God, no pre-existence, no divinity, no atoning death, no resurrection. A secular, non-miraculous history.
Once again Saul/Paul is the villain of the piece, taking a Jewish movement and repackaging it for Gentiles in Gentile pagan terms. It's a familiar story in 19th and 20th century liberal biblical studies: Paul 'the Second Founder of Christianity'. Hyam Maccoby has done the same.
The only problem with this theory is that Paul's message was affirmed only three years after his conversion in his visit to Peter and James in Jerusalem (Galatians 1.18-19) - and as I heard Gary Habermas once say, "I don't think they spent those two weeks talking about the weather." And Paul's summary of the gospel in 1 Corinthians 15.3-8 agrees with this as well.
I wonder if Vermes ever grappled with the historical work of Tom Wright and Richard Bauckham on the Kingdom of god and the communication of Jesus's message. I also wonder if Vermes underestimated the degree to which Galilee was Hellenised, with Jews and Gentiles living near each other and more bilingualism than was previously suspected. Martin Hengel has been a great corrective to Bultmann here.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh.
Great, William, on Vermes the historical scholarship. Thank you. Can you also take a punt at why Jesus' followers called him rabbi?
As I noted, the Hebrew/Aramaic term 'rabbi' means 'my great one' and it basically means 'Teacher'('didaskalos'), as Matthew 23.8 explains, as does John 1.38 (cf. Latin 'magister', from 'magnus'). In the first century 'rabbi' was not yet a fixed title for academically schooled scribes (sopherim) as it became in the Mishnaic period. 'Rabbi', the Aram. 'rabbuni', 'epistates' and 'didaskalos' are all used of Jesus in the Gospels and they essentially mean the same thing, that his teaching authority in religion was (at least) the equal of the formally trained sopherim.
In Matt 23.8 Jesus forbids his followers from being called 'Rabbi', 'because you have one teacher (didaskalos).'
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
Cheers William. More fine grained. The Matthew 23.8 also has Jesus forbidding the use of the title 'father' (yikes, catholic tradition) and 'instructor' (not such a problem). Jesus, Gospel writers, make such trouble for exegetes!
From my reading William (not as extensive as yours), even though in Jesus' time rabbi wasn't fixed around a certain academic training, it tended to be fixed around study of the law and transmission *from another rabbi*. And therefore given that Jesus didn't seem to have undergone that, that he doesn't seem to be identified or identify himself in a clear teaching lineage other than God, his disciples were using the title in a way that may have attracted considerable institutional suspicion, scrutiny, and persecution (amongst the other weird things Jesus was doing). And certainly there's evidence of that scrutiny throughout the gospels.
Most commentators agree that the dominical utterance 'But I say to you" is a rejection of quoting precedents and a claim of direct knowledge. I think by the first century the belief had become widespread that along with the written Torah, Moses had communicated the Oral Torah to the seventy elders who went up Mount Sinai with him. But things were not as cut and dried as they became after the destruction of the temple and the disasters of the Jewish War and the Bar Kochba revolt, which led to massive death, destruction and displacement for most of the Judean population. Jesus evidently did not accept the Oral Torah theory and did not care much about ceremonial purity. The interiority of Torah and its spiritual meaning were uppermost to him.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
"The interiority of Torah and its spiritual meaning were uppermost to him." (W.G.)
I was so relieved when, some years ago, I discovered the long Christian tradition of "the senses of scripture" (preserved in the Catechism of the Catholic Church...I'm still searching for it's presence in the Anglican tradition).
For those new to this: that scripture needs to be explored, read, interpreted through four main "senses" (literal/historical, allegorical, moral, and anagogical/eschatological...some authors call this final sense the contemplative, which makes good sense to me). As one medieval rhyme went (Latin included for William's pleasure):
Lettera gesta docet,
quid credas allegoria,
Moralia quid agas,
quo tendas, anagogia.
The literal teaches history,
the allegorical, what you should believe,
the moral, what you should do,
the anagogical, where you are going.
These four are reducible, according to authors like Aquinas, to two main senses: the literal and the spiritual (which includes the other three). The literal is the bedrock, the basis for the spiritual. It properly limits the range of allegorical, moral, and contemplative meanings we may discover and unfold. You could argue that modern historical scripture has greatly increased our sense of the bedrock, of our possibility for further spiritual readings of scripture. Yet sometimes we get too mired in the literal perhaps?
Novum in Vetere Latet.
Vetus in Novo Patet.
(That's for my own pleasure). From its earliest days (e.g., the Letter to the Hebrews) Christian biblical theology has worked with the ideas of typology, fulfilment and re-application of OT figures and themes. The NT sees the great constituents of the OT - Torah, priesthood and prophecy, of course, but also Israel, kingship, son of David, Son of God and Son of man - finding their 'telos' in Christ (cf. Romans 10.4). Jesus is seen as fulfilling but also expanding and universalising these themes. And naturally this led to controversy with Judaism.
The 'Jewish reclamation of Jesus', of which Vermes was a part, meant seeing Jesus not as the Talmud depicted him (a sorcerer and false teacher) but as one of their own: 'He's not the Messiah, he's just a good Jewish boy' - but (if Vermes is to be believed) one who went seriously off message when he imagined the eschaton was about to break on the world. Modern Jewish scholars who engage with Christians will now say that Jesus was mistaken about the eschaton and his part in this, and the following generation of Jewish Christians covered up his and their disappointment by repackaging the message and injecting false Hellenistic ideas. Rabbi Dan Cohn-Sherbock argues this way, for example. I think the line of argument goes back to Heinrich Graetz and is clearly influenced by 19th century German liberal Protestantism (including David Strauss's radicalism). Fascinating to see the cross-fertilisation of idea from that stream of liberal Protestantism and modern liberal Judaism.
So Paul is blamed as the one who picks up the ball and invents rugby when Jesus had been playing football. Vermes was trapped into the old similarity/dissimilarity game that Bultmann played before him because Vermes could not entertain the idea that Jesus could take the old language of the Hebrew Bible and invest it with a larger significance. This applies to 'son of God' language and of course, any idea of atonement by the cross. This applies most especially to the meaning of Isaiah 52.13-53.12. The originality of Jesus (for those who trust the historicity of the Gospels) is that he combined the suffering servant of Isa. 52-53 with the Son of Man of Dan. 7 and applied them to himself.
But I should end this note positively by noting that Vermes's lasting contribution was to produce 'The Dead Sea Scrolls in English', a key reminder that first century Judaism was a diverse phenomenon.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
It has been Google's pleasure to translate William's Latin quote (from Augustine I think) which is very interesting...
"The New (Testament) is hidden in the Old, the Old is made clear by the New."
There is a rhyming couplet that I remember for that:
The New is in the Old concealed
The Old is in the New revealed
PS I once heard a Bible teacher give a brilliant commentary on the book of Ruth in terms of the development of a believer’s coming into a full and loving relationship with the Lord.
Anagogical I guess?
The above mainly covers the "allegorical" or "typological" sense of scripture, which in the Church's tradition often drew out the resonance between OT events, themes, and prophecy and the life of Christ. The "moral sense" commits us, with the help of the Spirit, to more present day, contextual, and personal discernment, as does, arguably, the anagogical/eschatological or contemplative dimension.
An anagogical interpretation, for example, would see entering the Promised Land under Joshua as prefiguring entering heaven through the second Joshua; or going up to Jerusalem anticipating the Jerusalem which is from above. This wasn't just a medieval Catholic quirk: you see this kind of reading all the time in that doughty Puritan Matthew Henry, or the 19th century Baptist preacher C. H. Spurgeon. And still today we use the metaphor of crossing the Jordan for dying. That fine Christian poet from Cornwall, Charles Causley, used it in his great poem 'Eden Rock' which I once had the privilege of teaching:
They are waiting for me somewhere beyond Eden Rock:
My father, twenty-five, in the same suit
Of Genuine Irish Tweed, his terrier Jack
Still two years old and trembling at his feet.
My mother, twenty-three, in a sprigged dress
Drawn at the waist, ribbon in her straw hat,
Has spread the stiff white cloth over the grass.
Her hair, the colour of wheat, takes on the light.
She pours tea from a Thermos, the milk straight
From an old H.P. sauce-bottle, a screw
Of paper for a cork; slowly sets out
The same three plates, the tin cups painted blue.
The sky whitens as if lit by three suns.
My mother shades her eyes and looks my way
Over the drifted stream. My father spins
A stone along the water. Leisurely,
They beckon to me from the other bank.
I hear them call, ‘See where the stream-path is!
Crossing is not as hard as you might think.’
I had not thought that it would be like this.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
Beautiful!
I think so!
Like Eden Rock, and all beautiful rich poetry, there is also a way of reading scripture that is somewhere between pleasure and holiness. Perhaps this fits best with the "anagogical sense", though it seeks first not interpretation or understanding but encounter, relationship, and praise. It fits well with Lectio Divina (and some interpret the anagogical as contemplative), though you surely don't need to be a contemplative to experience this. Evangelicals have a very alive, immediate sense of reading scripture of course.
Origen taught that scripture itself was a sacrament. When I had 'time out' with the Quakers for a year or so it was the sacrament I missed the most.
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