Chapter Twelve: Praxis, Symbol and Questions: Inside Early Christian Worldviews

[This is an ongoing project that is analyzing N.T. Wright’s 5 volume series, Christian Origins and the Question of God. This series is widely read and bridges the gap between the academic and devotional world. It is therefore worthy to be carefully analyzed so that all readers can understand his key points while at the same time gaining a critical eye to some of his rather bold claims. This series of posts are concerning volume 1 – The New Testament and the People of God.]

N.T. Wright, in this chapter on Early Christian worldviews from the aspect of symbol and praxis, attempts to reconstruct the worldview of the early Christians. Wright focuses on these elements because he argues that these are the things that regular members of the movement – not just church leaders – would be aware of and would be part of their life. Wright presents these symbols and praxis as the key things that Christians did that were different from those around them (pagans and Jews). He discusses symbols and praxis in terms of identity discourse (though he often doesn’t use those terms). This has some fundamental value in that many early Christians certainly did see themselves as different from Jews and Pagans, but they did not necessarily hold all things as mutually exclusive. Therefore, while Wright has done a good job highlighting what is different from the world around the early Christians, he downplays what was the same and therefore needs to be amended.

First, Wright takes the time to discuss this topic because he believes that symbols and praxis are what an average early Christian might have known. He rightly argues that many members of the community could not read or have the leisure to hear someone read. Further, even if they could, it is not clear that they had access to the books that we know. Therefore, focusing on symbols and praxis allows one to see what a standard devotee might have considered important. Wright explains in a tongue and cheek way this dichotomy:

As with Judaisms of the first century, we cannot assume that all or even most early Christians knew, or even knew of, the writings that we can casually pull off a shelf today and treat as ‘typical’ of first- or second-century Christianity…With praxis and symbol we are on surer ground. Even those who wrote nothing, and read little, took certain styles of behavior for granted, and gave allegiance to certain central symbols.[1]

Wright here is certainly correct – at least to some extent. Many early Christians were not aware of everything we are, and had to put together their belief system without the use of texts. One very good example of this would be the Pauline communities – they knew Paul (who of course himself never knew Jesus), were in place before any of the Gospels were written (with the possible exception of Q – if it even existed in written form), and were yet vibrant Christian communities.

Wright wants to show the variance of Christians with those around them. He therefore rightly discusses identity issues when considering the early Christians. For instance, he tries to emphasize the importance of creeds as identity markers. He argues that this was their primary role – as a badge of identity – and all other aspects of them were secondary:

The early creeds, and the baptismal confessions which partly underlie them, were not little pieces of abstract theologizing to satisfy the curious intellect, but symbols which functioned as such, badges which marked out this community from others in terms of the god in whom they believed.[2]

Indeed Wright believes that creeds were developed to show identity – who was and who was not a Christian. He argues that this is the thing that could help to encapsulate the symbols and praxis of the early Christians. He argues that this was complex enough that these creeds had to be developed in the form of a story in order to show the truly unique nature of Christianity:

They realized, soon enough, that this transfer of symbolism was forcing them to articulate the meaning of the word ‘god’ itself in a new way. This drove them, in due course, from the early credal formulae such as 1 Corinthians 8.4-6 and 15.1-8 to the fully-blown formulae which speak of the creator and redeemer god in terms of a story, in deed the Jewish story: creation and redemption accomplished in Jesus and applied through the divine spirit. It is in this context that we can readily understand the wholesale transfer to Jesus, and the church, of Jewish Temple-imagery.[3]

Notwithstanding his discussion of credal formulae in 1 Corinthians which some people will agree or disagree with, the point that Wright presents is that identity politics could be seemingly streamed through symbols and praxis but was governed through creeds. He argues that creeds were developed to be complex enough to manage the symbols of what made Christians different from those around them.

Wright is certainly correct to point out this aspect of creeds – they certainly did express things that showed an identity as separate from other formulae. He then applies this same idea to some of the symbols and praxis of the early Christians.

Wright does a good job showing some of the distinctiveness of early Christians from their culture. For instance, he argues that the lack of sacrificial offering was very rare and perhaps unique in the ancient world for religious contexts. Wright makes his case quite strongly:

Among the striking features of early Christian praxis must be reckoned one thing that early Christians did not do. Unlike every other religion known in the world up to that point, the Christians offered no animal sacrifices.[4]

Here Wright is correct – it was very odd for worship centers to have basically no interest in sacrifice. There were some who did not do animal sacrifices for practical reasons (e.g. the Jews only had one site wherein it could be done so many people were excluded; financial reasons for a lack of animal sacrifices; etc), but it was a very rare religion that had no interest. Wright does point out later on that same page that there were some Christians who continued to do sacrifice (based upon the fact that Hebrews and I Corinthians were advising people to stop), but this was never a major part of the religion of Christianity.

Rather than animal sacrifice for worship practice, baptism and eucharist seemed to be major worship components.

For our present purpose the point is that already by the middle of the second century baptism and eucharist, as significantly new forms of religious praxis, had become so much second nature to the Christian church that new questions and theories could be advanced about them. They were not strong actions which some Christians might on odd occasions perform, but ritual acts which were taken for granted, part of that praxis which constituted the early Christian worldview.[5]

These ritual actions were done consistently. It is suggested that this was quite rare (particularly the frequency of the events) and that it provided a space where Christianity was different from those around it. While this is true to an extent, Wright is so interested in what made Christians different that he went too far. While it is true that baptism was not a weekly performance, there were “Baptist sects” of Judaism which did baptize (ritually wash) regularly before doing worship (offering sacrifice). What made Christians unique here was not that they did the baptism but that they didn’t do the sacrifice afterward. Further, the eucharist in its earliest days was a communal meal. That practice of eating ritually was the hallmark of Greco-Roman religion. Again, what was unique was not that they ate a meal ritually, but that it wasn’t from a sacrifice that they had just performed.

Wright might be forgiven for stretching his argument too far in regard to sacraments (and also the missionary zeal of the early Christians[6]), but his claims in regard to ethics are harder to swallow. He claims that Christians had a radically different set of ethics than the culture around it. Wright presents his case in the context of an early Christian apologist:

The church, we may be sure, was never as totally pure and worthy as this, nor were its enemies as totally depraved as the apologists made out. But that there was a striking difference in general praxis as between pagans and Christians there can be no doubt. That there was even a viable expectation of a striking difference is remarkable in itself; even when a Christian teacher is bemoaning the fact that his congregation is not pulling its weight morally, there is a sense of a norm, an accepted praxis, to which the people are disobedient.[7]

He argues that Christian ethics were fundamentally different than Greco-Roman ethics. He further argues that these ethics were a hallmark of the faith. While the latter is certainly true (that ethics mattered for Christians), the former is much harder to prove.

Christian ethics were developed from both Judaic ethics as well as Greco-Roman philosophy. Christian ethics look quite like Stoic ethics (which by this time had merged in some ways with Platonic ontologies of the world). The “table of household” rules found in Colossians 4 and expanded in Ephesians 5, for instance, is a very standard set of ethical principles from which one ought to live. If one were to compare that with, for example, Xenophon’s Oikonomia for instance, there would be remarkable continuity. This is not to say that ethics were not important or that Christians were not being authentic. It is simply presenting the fact that some of the ethics that Christians obtained was in fact not unique. In fact, Wright would be the first to point out that many Roman officials – who were mostly confused about Christianity – lauded the Christian ethical principles. If the Christians’ ethics were so different from the Romans’, then why would they laud them? They must have had a similar framework.

There were other slightly troubling aspects of Wright’s scholarship – but much of that can be attributed to either simple mistakes or its being written in the early 90s. For instance, Wright continues to discuss Christianity as surpassing race, whereas recent scholarship has shown that Christianity in its early years very much saw itself as a kind of race.[8] It is unfair to hold Wright to the standard that was not being discussed when the book was received.

What should be taken from this, though, is Wright’s tendency to want to set the symbols of a movement by what makes them different. He feels this is what creates identity. At some level, this is certainly correct – every group draws boundaries. If one wants to know who one is, then one has to know who one is not. However, those boundaries should not be seen as the completion of one’s identity. Many things can be acculturated into a new group that are in common with older groups. Wright here is much like many Christians who – for obvious reasons of purpose – would like to believe that they are aggressively different from the world around them. In many ways, they are; however, in other ways they need to understand the essential continuity of themselves with the culture around them.

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[1] NTPG, 359.

[2] Ibid., 368.

[3] Ibid., 368.

[4] Ibid., 363.

[5] Ibid., 361.

[6] See Ibid., 359-361, 367.

[7] Ibid., 363.

[8] E.g. Denise Kimber Buell Why This New Race: Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005).

Chapter Eleven: The Quest for the Kerygmatic Church

[This is an ongoing project that is analyzing N.T. Wright’s 5 volume series, Christian Origins and the Question of God. This series is widely read and bridges the gap between the academic and devotional world. It is therefore worthy to be carefully analyzed so that all readers can understand his key points while at the same time gaining a critical eye to some of his rather bold claims. This series of posts are concerning volume 1 – The New Testament and the People of God.]

After N.T. Wright’s long discussion of Judaism, he next attempts to discuss the early Jesus movement. He calls this group the “kerygmatic” church with the idea that this group was driven by a variety of preachers who were often itinerant. To establish this group, he chooses to focus on the relationship the church ahd with the state as “fixed points” in order to build a map of who this group was. His approach does do a fair job discussing the external evidence for the community with the state, but ignores one of the largest sources of information for the communities of Jesus movement – the gospels themselves. One assumes he ignores them because he has an idea that these were “too early” or that there is a straight line from Jesus-scriptures-church rather than thinking of the scriptures and the movement as interdependent. This hypothesis is helpful to analyze because it is very common among Christians today.

First, it is necessary to briefly sketch what Wright sees as the “fixed points” from which he wants to build his history. He argues that there are some things that are historically verifiable and that these elements are the ones around which one can build a history. He lists the following “fixed points:”

30      Jesus’ Crucifixion

49     Claudius’ expulsion of Jews from Rome because of Christian disturbance

49-51 Paul in Corinth, Ephesus

62     Killing so James in Jerusalem

64     Nero’s persecution after the fire in Rome

70     Fall of Jerusalem

c.90   Domitian’s investigation of Jesus’ relatives

c.110-114    Pliny’s persecution in Bithynia

c. 110-117   Ignatius’ letters and martyrdom

155/6    Martyrdom of Polycarp[1]

Wright considers each of these points as points of provable history that he can then build the rest of the church around. There are some concerns as to the historicity of some of these accounts (e.g. the Martyrdom of Polycarp, Ignatius, Claudius, Domitian) but rather than discussing these concerns – which scholars disagree upon (some think they did happen, some think they did not, others think it happened but not the way that they were described) – this paper will focus on what he builds upon from these sources.

First, Wright correctly acknowledges the difficulty in the historicity of this period. We know, in many ways, more about Jesus himself than we do about his earliest followers who bore witness to him (given that Jesus left no writings so far as we know). Wright quips, “This is ironic; as we shall see, it is actually possible to know a good deal more about Jesus than about most of the early church.”[2] He correctly argues that the goal of historicity then is simply to present what is most probable- we will never know for sure exactly what happened, “But, as with all possible historical theses, the crucial question is: is it likely or even probable?”[3]

He further acknowledges the difficulty in what we do know. Wright calls this a “jigsaw” and shows the difficulty of trying to put it together:

The reconstruction of the history of early Christianity must attempt to make sense of certain data within a coherent framework. It must put together the historical jigsaw of Judaism within its Greco-Roman world, of John the Baptist and Jesus as closely related to that complex world, and of the early church as starting within that world and quickly moving in the non-Jewish world of late antiquity.[4]

He is certainly correct that there are a number of key issues that have to be taken into account. What is troubling is that his “fixed points” one will note have next to nothing to do with these topics. For instance, John the Baptizer is not one of his fixed points – though nearly every scholar argues that it is nearly the most historically certain element of Jesus’ life (the only thing possibly more certain is that Jesus was crucified).

Wright’s fixed points seem to be a way of avoiding the problem entirely – he builds his fixed points entirely on the relationship of the church to Rome. It is unclear why he decides to do this except possibly through the thesis that we can have better historical information about that due to Tacitus, Suetonius, and Pliny (Roman authors who were not sympathetic to Christianity).

The “fixed points” he focuses upon are the Roman “persecutions” of Christianity. This essay will only consider his discussion of the Martyrdom of Polycarp and Pliny’s letter to Trajan. He also discusses the Martyrdom of Ignatius, but its historical footing is far less secure so I will not spend time on it. He considers the martyrdom of Polycarp as evidence of an early Jesus movement group that was organized and opposed to following Caesar in some way:

 They do not believe in the normal pagan gods, and so have incurred the charge of atheism that was sometimes leveled at the Jews. In particular, they do not owe allegiance to Caesar, and refuse to swear by his ‘genius.’ Christ is seen as a rival monarch, a king to whom is due an allegiance which allows no room for the dictatorship of the emperor.[5]

Here Wright argues that there was a fundamental idea of mutual exclusion between Caesar and Christ. There could be only one supreme monarch and given that choice, he argues that Christians chose Christ rather than Caesar. He further explains in Pliny’s letter to Trajan that this same view was supported:

Second, the litmus test for conviction as a Christian was, as in Polycarp’s case, ritual actions and declarations which, small in themselves, carried enormous socio-cultural significance. These only make sense on the assumption that Christians of all sorts in the area, who would mostly not have been trained theologians, regarded it as fundamental that their allegiance to Christ cut across any allegiance to Caesar.[6]

He argues that people really did see a fundamental difference between following Christ and following Caesar.

Wright’s analysis here is quite accurate. He does not do as good of job of explaining why this was the case. He mentioned sacrificing to the “genius” of the emperor. The cult of the emperor was akin to a modern pledge of allegiance – it was a token offering to the emperor cult that was simultaneously wishing him well religiously and displaying your obedience to his rule. In the colonies, this was the single way that all citizens expressed their devotion to the Roman state.[7] Given this, it makes far more sense as to why this was such a big deal. Christians, due to their monotheism, would not sacrifice to anyone but Christ. Further, there was one “kingdom” of God which was formally different than the emperor’s current “kingdom” that he was propagating on earth.

Where Wright makes the mistake is to use this as a “fixed point” – he argues that the martyrdom of Polycarp shows that this hostility between Rome and the church goes back very far:

What is more, Polycarp refers, in his most famous phrase, to his eighty-six years of allegiance to Christ. Assuming with most commentators that this is accurate, and that it means he was born into a Christian family and baptized as an infant, this puts the date of his birth, in to an already Christian family in Asia Minor, at AD 69/70. We must therefore hypothesize that there was an established, though probably small, Christian church, holding allegiance to the royal figure of Jesus, and denying the pagan gods, in Smyrna within forty years of the crucifixion.[8]

The problem with Wright’s assertion, of course, is that the martyrdom of Polycarp – if it is even accurate – does not say that Polycarp believed the same things throughout his 86 years. It is quite possible that his views could shift slightly and that this idea that this same faith in 156 was present by 70 is difficult at best.

Further, Wright does not do a good job explaining the antipathy that Rome had for the Jesus movement. He does well showing that the persecutions themselves were sporadic rather than systematic. He rightly notes that Pliny does not know that there is a policy as if it wasn’t done regularly:

First, it is clear that Christianity was already widespread in Asia Minor, beyond the area evangelized by Paul in the early days, and that, although Pliny can assume that serious Christians must be punished, probably with death, there was no established procedure, no civil servants’ rule of thumb, for how to go about it. This indicates that previous persecutions by Roman authorities had probably been sporadic and occasional rather than systematic.[9]

While he presents this well, he does not present as well what the nature of those persecutions are.

Each of the early persecutions of Christians are for perpetrating a crime. Pliny persecuted the church for refusing to sacrifice to the genius of the emperor. Nero persecuted Christians at Rome for causing the fire (whether they actually did or not is a different story – they were at the very least prosecuted for a crime), Claudius drove them out for a disturbance (if the story can even be believed), Polycarp was killed for refusing to sacrifice. There would come a time when simply being a Christian was a crime under the period of Decius (251-254), where if a Christian was found, that person was prosecuted. Here, though, that is not the picture.

Wright argues that Christians embraced this antipathy – they really did see themselves as separate from the emperor in profound ways. He argues that while they nuanced the discussion in ways that should not have caused a problem for Rome, they very much recognized their position:

These events form a chain stretching across a century in which, time after time, the Roman authorities found the Christians (as they found the Jews) a social and political threat or nuisance, and took action against them. The Christians, meanwhile, do not seem to have taken refuge in the defense that they were merely a private club for the advancement of personal piety. They continued to proclaim their allegiance to Christ who was a ‘king’ in a sense which precluded allegiance to Caesar, even if his kingdom was not to be conceived on the model of Caesar’s. This strange belief, so Jewish and yet so non-Jewish (since it led the Christians to defend no city, adhere to no Mosaic code, circumcise no male children) was, as we shall see, a central characteristic of the whole movement, and as such a vital key to its character.[10]

Wright is certainly correct that some Christians very much presented this idea. Where he fails is in seeing these events as cohering all together to make one group a consistent whole.

Wright, for whatever reason, does not dialogue with a major source of information – the gospels themselves. Had he done so, he would have had a hard time discussing the Gospel of Luke/Book of Acts. Luke/Acts has as one of its fundamental tenets the Jesus movement as a politically favorable organization. It argues that there is no necessary contradiction between Rome and the Christians. It is possible that he did not include this discussion because he is going to save this conversation for a later chapter; however, one of the concerns is that by doing so, he has confused the reader. He makes it sound like the Jesus movement never accommodated at all to its surrounding culture. This was certainly true in some cases – for example this is the sentiment expressed in the Apocalypse of John – but not so true in other cases which seems to have had the opposite argument – for instance Justin Martyr’s Apology argues for their careful obedience.

The reason Wright makes these mistakes is because he is loathe to admit that there was not a single “Christianity” at this time. The fact is that there several different groups who were followers of Jesus who had different opinions. Some of them certainly saw their relationship with Jesus as mutually exclusive from their relationship with Rome. Others were far more accommodating. However, if one does not want to address that primary reality, then one is led toward a conclusion like Wright’s – he looks at several Roman sources, largely ignores Jesus movement ones – to create a generally consistent picture. With only 7 “fixed points,” it is not that hard to make a consistent picture out of anything. He has carefully removed anything that would break this coherent pattern so that his picture would not be confused. While this might be heuristically helpful for the religious adherent, it is not the best historiographic method to simply ignore data because it complicates one's thesis.

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[1] NTPG, 355.

[2] Ibid., 342.

[3] Ibid., 343.

[4] Ibid., 345.

[5] Ibid., 347-348.

[6] Ibid., 350.

[7] See Robert L. Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them.

[8] NTPG, 348.

[9] Ibid., 349.

[10] Ibid., 355.

Words Matter: the Semiotic Importance of the Translation of Ioudaioi in Greek Sources

The term Ioudaioi appears in a variety of Greek texts in antiquity. In no single case is it always clear precisely how the term should be translated. Historically, this term has almost always been translated as “Jews.” However, in recent years many scholars have adopted the term “Judeans” rather than “Jews” for a variety of reasons. This development has led to a conversation about what is the “best” translation of the term (or if there is a single “best” choice) and why. This debate was put on the Marginalia Review of Books beginning with an essay by Adele Reinhartz who argued that the adoption of the term “Judean” was a major mistake and had a number of unforeseen consequences.[1] This then caused Marginalia to host a forum with 9 different opinions on the issue.[2] The conversation is very interesting and provides an excellent case study in why terms are so important and how, through the semiotics of language, they do matter.

This particular issue would have been one I would have had very little interest in several years ago. The argument seemed to revolve around how to translate a particular term. The term itself is not at issue. As such, I would have found this very uninteresting. It would seem to be a number of people wanting to change very little with no real consequence. I would have held that it doesn’t matter what you call a particular thing, if you haven’t changed the thing, nothing is affected. Therefore, to replace the translation “Judean” for “Jew” would mean really very little – it is the same group being discussed. However, these terms do matter.

One of the primary reasons for replacing “Jew” with “Judean” is that the translation “Jews” for Ioudaioi says too much – it includes all of those who ethnically, philosophically, or religiously (no matter where they lived) into one category. What’s more, it would include not only those living in the first century but all Jews living in all places and all times. The argument then is that Judean is a term that can be far more local – the “Jews” were those who lived all around the world, whereas the Judaeans were only those who lived in occupied Palestine in the first century. What is more, particularly when the term is used – particularly in the Gospel of John – the term is even more precise in that it seems to only be discussing the Judean leaders in Palestine at one particular time.[3] The argument, then is that translating this text – particularly in early Christian texts (most notably again the Gospel of John) might aid in avoiding some of the pitfalls of anti-Semitism. The term could imply that this was not all Jews at all times; it was merely a small subset.

This perspective, however, has been criticized. Adele Reinhartz, in her original essay, was not convinced that calling these figures “Judeans” would solve this problem. Jonathan Klawans went farther claiming that this goal is foolish. He argues that this will solve nothing and that it doesn’t matter how one translates Ioudaioi, anti-Semites will not likely change their mind:

It’s a clarion call to take one side on an unsolved question (on “Jew” or “Judean”) by appeal to a moral argument that is (or should be) one-sided (anti-Semitism, which is evil). Here’s my view: anti-Semites can translate these terms as they wish. And they should go to hell. The rest of us should have an open conversation about this matter, without misleading ourselves into thinking that Jew-haters will somehow be countered by academics’ semantic adjustments. I fear, not without reason, that some anti-Semites may just as likely find current revisionism on these matters conducive to their own pernicious ends. If that risk does not matter, then neither should any perceived benefit.[4]

Klawans is certainly correct on one point – those who hate the existent group called Jews will continue to hate them no matter what we decide to call their ancestors.

While Klawans point is certainly the case, there still is good reason to stop and be very careful about how we label things. Language is amazingly powerful and the way something is expressed very much does influence how we consider it. If we decide to semantically separate the figures in the Gospel of John from modern Jews, there are consequences. Further, if the goal is essential continuity, there are consequences to that as well. The entire debate began with Reinhartz’s critique that making the “Judean” separate from the modern “Jew” challenged the fundamental continuity in the religious tradition. Here, Reinhartz was not particularly criticized – most agreed that the term does do this. Some lauded that decision and others despised it – but it certainly did present logical consequences.

As Joan Taylor points out, there is no simple solution to this issue – it is and has to be complex. Any term you use in the Gospel of John requires a footnote and explanation.[5] One of the issues is that the Greek term ioudaioi is a single term that is used for a variety of context. Some scholars, such as Taylor herself, prefer to divide this term up – one can discuss “Jews” as a large term based upon a kind of philosophical agreement. One then can use “Judean” as a title for one actually living in the land. Then one can further use the term “Judahite” as one who is genealogically descendent from the people of Abraham. Taylor’s basic idea is helpful but it creates semiotic problems. If one divides a term into three separate categories, it emphasizes the division among the people. Further, it suggests an either/or approach – it makes it sound like one can be either a Judean, Jew, or Judahite. Whereas for the example of Jesus, he would be all three – living in the land, agreeing with the philosophy, and a descendent of Abraham. This would be what Saussure would call the controlling power of a particular langue that governs all its terms paroles – the system of one’s langue governs how one talks and thinks.[6]

Taylor acknowledges this problem and shows why it cannot precisely stand on its own. The problem is that what she has divided into three is one term – ioudaioi.

Taylor explains: 

All the distinctions I make in terms of words like “Jew,” “Judean,” or “Judahite” are actually that one word in Greek: Ioudaios. Much rests on the correct understanding of it. No one English word covers all its meanings. We do not have simple solutions; we have complex ones. Each term does not have hard and fast boundaries: a Diaspora Jew could be also a Judean, in terms of origins, and a Judahite, in terms of tribal background, but a Diaspora Jew could be Helena of the royal house Abiadene, who converted to Judaism (Antiquities 20: 34-53) In each text, the context and subtleties of language need to be carefully understood for the proper translation of the term Ioudaios. One word in Greek is used for variants of identity and belonging that we today will want to distinguish.[7]

The challenge in a Saussurian semiotic system is that it doesn’t allow nuances. Once the system is set, then there no flexibility for new thought. Had Taylor not presented this extra paragraph, the essential continuity between the terms would have been lost.

Taylor’s argument challenged how helpful it is to break the term Ioudaioi up into several smaller ones. That would seem to leave us to the basic question of replacing all translations of “Jew” with “Judean” or not. Several people are happy to do that. Steve Mason, for instance, while not advocating that all people should make this switch (he does not find it necessary that everyone do this or not), seems to do so himself for his own work. He argues that the term Judean is helpful because it fits a first century Greco-Roman mindset. One is a citizen of a particular land, not an adherent to a particular philosophy or religion. The land, of course is called Ioudaia.  Therefore, its citizens would simply be Ioudaioi. He further argues that those not living in the land were persecuted as foreigners – they were displaced citizens.[8] Here Mason has shown a semiotic principle – if one wants to express a particular idea, then it is necessary to set up a symbol that will give that setting. Mason is interested in seeing how the term Ioudaioi functions in the Greek language. In the Greek language, it has particular rules and substances. He therefore is arguing that it is a Greek concept and should be kept in Greek culture. He is not worried about how this term might be translated for Jews nor how it might affect the continuity of Jews today with Jews in antiquity – the seeming break in continuity that Reinhartz objected to.

Semiotics is very much dependent upon one’s goals. If one has as a primary interest the meaning of a term in its own context, then there is no real problem. As Jonathan Klawans pointed out, the distinction between “Jew” and “Judean” is an English language distinction. He shows that in other modern languages – he discusses Russian – the distinction would not exist. Further, as Mason points out, in Greek it certainly would not exist – it is all one term. However, how one sets one’s paramaters for one’s signs semiotically determines meaning. This is what Charles Peirce calls the “interpretant” – the internal dialogue that makes all symbols subject to one’s subjectivity. The Gospel of John can be slightly exonerated of charges of anti-Judaism if we could simply translate Ioudaioi as “Judean leaders in Palestine at that particular time.” However, as Ruth Sheridan points out, this language game (in a Derridean or Heideggerean sense), might not be fair to the Fourth Gospel. The Gospel of John might actually be a little anti-Judaic and it might well be more accurate to translate it as “Jews” for Tertullian to use in anti-Semitic invective.[9] I do not have a particular view on this with the Gospel of John (or at least not one I am ready at this point to make public), but how one translates the term certainly has the ability to exonerate or condemn the Gospel of John. If one semiotically sets up a system wherein the ioudaioi are merely the actual figures in the Gospel, the text is not so caustic. However, if one sets a system where ioudaioi includes Jews still alive two thousand years later, the text would be quite troubling indeed. The point here is that translations of terms matter.

Translating the term Ioudaioi as “Jews” or “Judeans” does matter.  It can indeed affect how one views ancient texts and what their “meaning” is. I want to laud all the articles presented in Marginalia discussing this point. Myself, I find the best solution to leave Ioudaioi untranslated. I find that Taylor’s point was most accurate – no simple solution will suffice. All solutions require explanation. If I leave the term in its transliterated Greek, it forces me to explain it rather than simply move forward (and if there was one critique of the 10 total essays was that I did not see anyone suggesting this as a solution).

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[1] Adele Reinhartz “The Vanishing Jews of Antiquity” found here: http://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/vanishing-jews-antiquity-adele-reinhartz/

[2] http://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/jew-judean-forum/

[3] Daniel R. Schwartz “The Different Tasks of Translators and Historians” http://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/different-tasks-translators-historians-daniel-r-schwartz/

[4] Jonathan Klawans “An Invented Revolution” http://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/invented-revolution-jonathan-klawans/

[5] Joan Taylor “’Judean’ and ‘Jew’, Jesus and Paul” http://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/judean-jew-jesus-paul/

[6] Ferdinand de Saussure Course in General Linguistics trans. Wade Baskin (New York: McGraw Hill, 1966). 

[7] Taylor “Judaean and Jew, Jesus and Paul.”

[8] Steve Mason “Ancient Jews or Judeans? Different Questions, Different Answers” http://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/ancient-jews-judeans-different-questions-different-answers-steve-mason/

[9] Ruth Sheridan “Hiding from the Fourth Gospel’s Tragic Reception History” http://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/hiding-fourth-gospels-tragic-reception-history/

Chapter Ten: The Hope of Israel

[This is an ongoing project that is analyzing N.T. Wright’s 5 volume series, Christian Origins and the Question of God. This series is widely read and bridges the gap between the academic and devotional world. It is therefore worthy to be carefully analyzed so that all readers can understand his key points while at the same time gaining a critical eye to some of his rather bold claims. This series of posts are concerning volume 1 – The New Testament and the People of God.]

N.T. Wright’s last chapter on Judaism is about the hope of Israel – what they expected in the future and how they imagined improvement in their lives. In order to do this, Wright focuses solely on the genre of apocalypses in the second temple period (and its immediate aftermath). While Wright is too atomistic in focusing the hope of Israel solely in the apocalyptic, his goal of explaining apocalypses as a genre to a Christian audience is largely successful. He attempts to convince Christian readers to read apocalypses as a genre and to avoid literalistic readings as he sees in a variety of ways. In that narrow focus, he does well. However, Wright does not explain the primary purpose of apocalypses for the social group as a form of theodicy. Further, Wright does not dialogue with the foremost scholar on Jewish apocalypticism – John Collins – and as such, misses a few major points. Wright’s analysis is once again helpful because he dares to put on paper what many Christians generally hold. The analysis of his work therefore is of much heuristic value for Christians.

First, Wright argues that most all Jews in the first century expected that their life was not ideal and that there was at least a vague hope for some kind of major change.  Wright argues that most all thought something needed to change:

There may have been some Jews, perhaps those wielding obvious power, who were happy to play down the possibility of radical change; but most were hoping, some fervently, for a new turn in Israel’s fortunes. If there is one creator god and, and Israel is his people, then this god must act sooner or later to restore her fortunes. Israel is still in a state of ‘exile’, and this must be put right. The symbols of covenant life will be restored, because the covenant will be renewed: the Temple will be rebuilt, the Land cleansed, the Torah kept perfectly by a new-covenant people with renewed hearts.[1]

Here Wright is absolutely correct – most all Jews were not happy with their situation. They were an occupied nation. Further, they were forced to live alongside a wide variety of ‘foreigners’ (the quote marks are set to note that many of these people had actually lived there as long as they had). Jews therefore hoped for something more closely akin to what they knew to be their role in the world.

Wright focuses on one of the ways that said hope could be expressed – apocalyptic ideas. He discusses apocalyptic in the following way:

When applied to literature, the word [apocalyptic] usually denotes a particular form, that of the reported vision and (sometimes) its interpretation. Claims are made for these visions: they are divine revelations, disclosing (hence ‘apocalyptic’, for the Greek for ‘revelation’ or ‘disclosure’) states of affairs not ordinarily made known to humans. Sometimes these visions concern the progress of history, more specifically, the history of Israel; sometimes they focus on otherworldly journeys; sometimes they combine both.[2]

These apocalyptic ideas, as Wright points out are special revelations given to particular figures. However, Wright’s characterization is too general – apocalypses have more characteristic than simply being revealed directly from God. If this were the case, then all the prophets of the Hebrew Bible would have been ‘apocalyptic’ when in reality usually only the book of Daniel is considered an apocalypse.

Wright does correctly show that what was revealed had to do with understanding current events from a new perspective. He argues that apocalypses tended to give meaning to current events:

The different modes of speech invest the reality referred to with increasing layers of meaning. Statements about events are regularly invested in this way with all kinds of nuances and overtones, designed to bring out the significance and meaning of the events, to help people see them from the inside as well as the outside. In a culture where events concerning Israel were believed to concern the creator god as well, language had to be found which could both refer to events within Israel’s history and invest them with the full significance which, within that worldview, they possessed.[3]

He rightly argues that the primary model of the apocalypse was to reconsider known events – to see them from a different perspective. However, his discussion is confusing. He does not show what seeing “history from the inside” means. It is more than simply a revelation, it is usually seen as “God’s perspective” – showing humans what history “truly” is.

Wright then focuses interestingly on the connection between heaven and earth in apocalyptic thought. He argues that apocalypses try to show the unity of these things and try to avoid a major disjunct between the two:

There is a third sense of ‘representation’, which will cause yet more confusion unless it is unearthed and clarified. In the mainline Jewish worldview, according to which the heavenly and the earthly realms are distinct but closely intertwined (instead of either being held apart, as in Epicureanism, or fused into one, as in pantheism), the belief emerges that heavenly beings, often angels, are the counterparts or ‘representatives’ of earthly beings, often nations or individuals.[4]

Wright sees as the most fundamental element of the apocalyptic this close connection between heaven and earth. He further explains that it is this interconnectivity that allows Jews to think of God as consistent:

This examination of ‘representation’ within apocalyptic literature helps to explain, I think, why the genre is what it is. Because the heavenly and the earthly realm belong closely with one another – which is a way of asserting the presence of the creator god within his creation and in the midst of his heavenly realm and emerging with information that would relate to the earthly realm and emerging with information that would relate to the earthly realm.[5]

Wright argues that what makes apocalypses a helpful genre is the way that they can connect heaven and earth. This allows for a very involved god in history while at the same time showing how god could remain who he is given that the people of Israel do not have the land.

Wright’s view interesting and is very helpful for his seeming audience of people who read apocalypses literalistically – expecting actual beasts rising out of the sea, etc. He wants to try and dispel the Left Behind crowd who have very modern ideas about the book of Revelation in the New Testament. One point he makes, for instance, is that there is no expectation that anyone would be moving to a different place and living in a different world – the world was very much permanent and was not going to be destroyed:

The ‘kingdom of god’ has nothing to do with the world itself coming to an end. That makes no sense either of the basic Jewish worldview or of the texts in which the Jewish hope is expressed. It was after all the Stoics, not the first-century Jews, who characteristically believed that the world would be dissolved in fire. (This has the amusing corollary that scholars have thought of such an expectation as a Jewish oddity which the church grew out of as it left Judaism behind, whereas in fact it seems to be a pagan oddity that the church grew into as it left Judaism behind – and which, perhaps, some Jews moved toward as they despaired of the old national hope and turned towards inner or mystical hope instead.)[6]

He has this kind of fundamentalist audience in mind and he attacks their views directly.

What Wright does not do as well is to address the whole of the “hope of Israel.” He argues completely in the realm of the apocalyptic – which most Christians do. However, he has defined an “apocalypse” so broadly that any mystical thing is an apocalyptic experience. That allows him to make the term universal. However, the standard definition of an apocalypse is presented by John and Adele Collins to be far more specific than that:

A genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework, in which a revelation is mediated by an otherworldly being to a human recipient, disclosing a transcendent reality which is both temporal, insofar as it envisages eschatological salvation, and spatial insofar as it involves another, supernatural world.[7]

To interpret present, the earthly circumstances in light of the supernatural world and of the future, and to influence both the understanding and the behavior of the audience by means of divine authority.[8]

These two definitions which work together well, show both the method – to disclose a transcendent reality by seeing all time and all space as they truly are - and the goal – to understand the present. The idea might be presented in the following way:

The image[9] shows what an apocalypse does – shows to the people on earth right now what life means by disclosing the whole of reality – both the past and the future as well as the whole of the spiritual estate – both above and below. An apocalypse, then, discusses the whole of existence. That element was mostly missing in Wright’s analysis.

Far more troubling is Wright’s lack of discussing the primary goal of an apocalypse: theodicy. The primary group who read apocalypses is a people who are oppressed. Wright implied this throughout the text, but never discussed it. The reason that the suffering are the ones who use apocalypses is because they are the ones who desire a theodicy – an explanation for why things are going so poorly. What an apocalypse does better than many other genres is explains why they are living in such a mean estate. A far more secondary goal would be to expect that such an estate is going to change.

Wright, like most Christians, mistakes the priorities of importance in an apocalypse. Many Jews did not truly expect that things were going to change in their own lifetime. Some certainly did, but many did not – particularly those who lived after the revolt. Further, if these revolutionaries were the only ones who were using apocalypses, one would have expected them to no longer be relevant to the majority of Jewry after the Bar Kochba revolt (much less Christians). The reason is that the actual focus on the radical social and political change was secondary to the explanatory problem of meaning in theodicy. The primary goal of an apocalypse is to define who “we” are and why our life is not fulfilling our expectations. The apocalypse provides a way to show that in the grand scheme of things if we consider things from God’s perspective, then our seeming suffering is not actually a problem – it is only a problem because we can’t see the plan of everything.

Finally, Wright, again like many Christians, does not appreciate one of the largest problems that Judaism faced – not so much a political problem as much as a social one – the problem of identity remaining “one people” when they were living in such diversity geographically. This is one major element that apocalypses tried to address – because they were cosmic, they included all Jews everywhere and considered them as one people.

Wright’s analysis of Judaism on the whole is very typical of Christian characterizations of Judaism. However, it matters that readers of the New Testament take the time to truly understand Judaism – even when it does not seem to apply to the New Testament – because if one wants to truly understand Jesus and Paul, then one needs to consider the elements of Judaism that they address as well as the elements they do not address. Very frequently – particularly with Paul – silence on issues is just as important as what he directly addresses in order to understand the theological point and innovation.

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[1] NTPG, 280.

[2] Ibid., 281.

[3] Ibid., 283.

[4] Ibid., 290.

[5] Ibid., 291.

[6] Ibid., 285.

[7] John Collins, Semeia, 1979.

[8] Adele Yarbro Collins, Semeia, 1986.

[9] Thanks to Dr. David Kluth for digitizing this image for me.

Chapter Nine : The Beliefs of Israel

[This is an ongoing project that is analyzing N.T. Wright’s 5 volume series, Christian Origins and the Question of God. This series is widely read and bridges the gap between the academic and devotional world. It is therefore worthy to be carefully analyzed so that all readers can understand his key points while at the same time gaining a critical eye to some of his rather bold claims. This series of posts are concerning volume 1 – The New Testament and the People of God.]

Wright’s discussion of Judaism is now focused upon one topic – what it was that Jews believed in the first century. This chapter is helpful because it is very typical of modern Christian understandings of Judaism. Because it is very helpful to the study of Christianity to have a set of beliefs that one can contrast, Christians often force themselves to find a single Judaism with a single set of theological beliefs. Wright struggles with this, recognizing that there was not a single Judaism and that a set of beliefs was not the central organizing principle of any group calling themselves Jews. However, his discussion of Christianity is so interested in this because this is what he sees Jesus and Paul refining: “We must focus on the Jewish worldview and belief-system because this was the feature of Judaism that was radically redefined by Jesus and Paul.”[1] Wright shows his interest – he puts a foreign set of constructs onto Judaism because it is heuristically helpful. While there is nothing wrong with presenting heuristic models, the problem is that Wright goes one step farther than that and argues that while they didn’t hold these constructs, he wants to argue that “they did really.”

Wright begins his discussion by setting the concept of belief off rightly recognizing the challenges that come when one asks a question about early Jewish “belief.” He first recognizes that Judaism is not so easily defined as one thing:

We have already seen that the one thing we can safely say about first-century Judaism is that there is no such thing as first-century Judaism, and that it may be best to speak of ‘Judaisms’, plural.[2]

He recognizes this aspect of Judaism at this time, but still feels that there are common elements to create a single Judaism:

I simply wish to follow the many Jewish and other writers who have recognized that behind the great variation there is a broad family resemblance. It is vital that we understand this belief-structure.[3]

Notice what Wright did – he argues that while there are many groups there is really only one basic belief structure. Therefore, the thing that unites all Judaism is the very thing he wants to discuss – beliefs. While this possible, it is far easier to think that Wright has created this unanimity because of his original goal – to show how Jesus and Paul changed Jewish belief. Therefore, he can create a category that will allow Paul and Jesus’ argument to be universal.

This interest is made clear in a following argument where he describes what these said beliefs are:

There is then, across the range of Jewish writing that we possess, solid unanimity on certain major and vital issues; and we have already seen good reason to suppose that this unanimity was equally strong among those who wrote nothing and read little. There is one god, who made the entire universe, and this god is in covenant with Israel…Monotheism and election lead to eschatology, and eschatology means the renewal of the covenant.[4]

These beliefs – monotheism, election, renewal of covenant, and eschatology are all the key issues that both Jesus and Paul addressed. One could go through Paul’s letter to the Romans, for instance, and address each of these elements with sufficiency. What Wright has done is created a category of Judaism that allows Paul’s response in Romans to be completely sufficient.

The second place wherein Wright recognizes that the concept of beliefs is challenging is that organizing Judaism around beliefs is not usually done. He addresses the issue,

Jews do not characteristically describe the nature of Judaism in terms of ‘beliefs’. Indeed, Judaism often contrasts itself with Christianity at this point, to the latter’s supposed disadvantage. Nevertheless, it is not difficult to show, as many writers have done, that within the varieties of Judaism there is a set of basic beliefs which are more or less common to all groups, and that there are various consequent beliefs which, though they bear a family likeness to one another across the groups, exhibit more variety.[5]

Wright explains that most think of Jews in terms far less than beliefs but rather that it was considered far more a pattern of behavior: “Judaism characteristically thinks of itself as a way, a halakah, a life path, a way of being-in-the-world.”[6] Here, Wright shows what the problem is. If there is a commonality, one is hard pressed to push it into being a group of beliefs. It is much more likely a standard way of living.

Wright responds that thinking in terms of belief is difficult, but possible. He argues that a worldview is the same as one’s beliefs and therefore ought to be considered: “As a matter of phenomenological analysis, it is simply the case that underlying worldviews are more fundamental than even the most ingrained habits of life.”[7]  Here Wright argues that one’s worldview determines action, so it is thereby reasonable to consider “beliefs” proper. This is something that seems rather reductive. “Worldview” is a very vague concept that is difficult to define philosophically. Wright seems to be using it in a way that makes it very rational. Most would create a “worldview” to include both lifestyle and one’s rationale. After all, many people do not understand the ethical background to their actions. Again, this seems to be a secondary constraint placed upon Judaism in order to create a platform from which Wright can contrast Christianity.

What Wright presents as central tenets to Judaism is not tremendously surprising – they are the standard viewpoints presented of various groups in the first century. What makes Wright’s perspective difficult is that he is trying to argue a universal category that he feels all Jews held in the first century. The troubling aspect to me is not so much that he misrepresents Judaism – he certainly does – but that he wants to create the same kind of regularity upon early Christianity. To create a “basically unified” Judaism – even though he will simultaneously admit wild differences sets him up to create a “basically unified” Christianity with wild differences of opinion. That a Christian scholar is using a heuristic tool to discuss Judaism enough to get to a conversation about Christianity is not surprising – I admit to doing it myself in New Testament class. What is far more troubling is what that heuristic tool is doing for early Christianity – it is forcing it into a very narrow field that could potentially have difficult consequences for how one sees the development of the Jesus movement.

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[1] NTPG, 246.

[2] Ibid., 244.

[3] Ibid., 244.

[4] Ibid., 247.

[5] Ibid., 245.

[6] Ibid., 245.

[7] Ibid., 246.