Religion in Antiquity read in the modern world: July 2015

Friday, July 24, 2015

Part Five: Belief, Event and Meaning – ch. 18: Easter and History, ch. 19: The Risen Jesus as the Son of God

[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 3 – The Resurrection of the Son of God.]

Wright’s final two chapters of his book focus completely on the question of the historical Jesus in regard to his resurrection and the subsequent import such a view holds for later believers. He argues that the resurrection is historical and fits well in good historical Jesus scholarship. He then makes a very reasonable claim for what follows – that it is not nearly as much of a “trump card” as it is often presented and that belief in resurrection itself is not necessarily linked inextricably with belief. Wright cautions this to keep his final two chapters from being too much of an apologetic; however, these chapters are far more an apologetic for a traditional stance than a point that tells us much more than he has already presented about the meaning of the resurrection of Jesus.

First, it is important to look at Wright’s historical logic for why he believes that the resurrection of Jesus is historical (i.e. it should be seen as historically logically probable). He summarizes these in a helpful list form which is easy to follow:

1. To sum up where we have got so far: the world of second-Temple Judaism supplied the concept of resurrection, but the striking and consistent Christian mutations within Jewish resurrection belief rule out any possibility that the belief could have generated spontaneously form within its Jewish context. When we ask the early Christians themselves what had occasioned this belief, their answers home in on two things: stories about Jesus’ tomb being empty, and stories about him appearing to people, alive again.

2. Neither the empty tomb by itself, however, nor the appearances by themselves, could have generated the early Christian belief. The empty tomb alone would b ea puzzle and a tragedy. Sightings of an apparently alive Jesus, by themselves, would have been classified as visions or hallucinations, which were well enough known in the ancient world.

3. However, an empty tomb and appearances of a living Jesus, taken together, would have presented a powerful reason for the emergence of the belief.

4. The meaning of resurrection within second-Temple Judaism makes it impossible to conceive of this reshaped resurrection belief emerging without it being known that a body had disappeared, and that the person had been discovered to be thoroughly alive again.

5. The other explanations offered for the emergence of the belief do not possess the same explanatory power.

6. It is therefore historically highly probable that Jesus’ tomb was indeed empty on the third day after his execution, and that the disciples did indeed encounter him giving every appearance of being well and truly alive.[1]

As can be seen in this list, Wright’s argument is that Jesus was actually raised from the dead and that this actually happening , along with the empty tomb being a historical reality, is the only way to satisfactorily explain the belief of the disciples after the event.

The argument is not new. It is an old argument that is suggesting that the only way for the subsequent movement of Jesus to make sense is if he really did rise from the dead. What Wright offers here to nuance that clichéd aphorism, is his view that the disciples needed both the empty tomb and the risen Jesus. He believes that if it were just one or the other, it would be explained away.

While I don’t disagree with Wright that if one only saw a figure one thought to be dead, that would usually lead to a different conclusion than the person was actually dead and then bodily had risen from the dead. Simultaneously, if all one saw was an empty tomb, the probable consequence would not be that the person must be bodily alive now. In both of these things, Wright is convincing. Where he is less convincing is if one saw both of these things, then the logical conclusion would be that Jesus truly had died and was risen. It could mean that, but it could be explained other ways as well.

The far stronger argument is not so much that the community had these two pieces of data, but that the community itself was so mobilized. Wright has been, throughout this volume and the previous, made his strongest case using the subsequent success of the Jesus movement as a major point of evidence. It is unclear why he did not use that same piece of evidence here.

It still is logically difficult make the resurrection historically “probable.” To make something historically probable, we have to look at something and conclude that an event “probably happened” as the most likely explanation for all the data we have. The problem, of course, with the resurrection (and of course, all miracles) is that, by definition, they are things that usually do not happen. They are things that are remarkable and therefore, are hard to think probably happened. This does not mean that Christians cannot be confident in believing these events happened – indeed, that is what makes it belief. The challenge is Wright’s view that this is the most likely historical probability – a much more ambitious claim than simply that the first Christians firmly believed it.

Where Wright’s apologetic should be lauded, however, is in his view of the significance of the resurrection. He has just completed a thoroughgoing book (nearly 800 pages) that discusses a wide variety of views on resurrection. He, however, does not see this as the single “cure all” of Christian belief in the world. He instead laudably notes that belief in Jesus’ resurrection is not necessarily the only thing one needs to be a Christian:

It has too often been assumed that if Jesus was raised from the dead this automatically ‘proves’ the entire Christian worldview – including the belief that he was and is, in the full Christian sense, not just ‘the son of god,’ but the Son of God.[2]

Here, he argues that belief in the resurrection – particularly to his earliest followers – would not be sufficient evidence that Jesus was fully divine in the same way as the father. Indeed, very few think that Elijah is divine in the way of the father despite his being raised in the heavens. Too often Christian apologists invert Paul’s statement – that if Jesus did not rise from the dead, our faith is void. That statement is surely accurate. Without the belief that Jesus is risen, the rest of the Christian message is at the very least difficult. However, the converse is not necessarily true – belief in the resurrection is not the only aspect of belief that is needed to be a Christian.

Wright’s analysis in these final chapters are a strange way to end the book. The book, on the whole was about the nature and meaning of resurrection (both Jesus’ and all people’s) in the early church. In that sense, this book has been a triumph. While I did not always agree with his reconstructions, there is no sense in which he did not thoroughly argue his case. The historical apology at the end of the book, however, is far less convincing; what’s more, it is not clear how the historical apology helps readers add to the meaning and nature of resurrection. It is as if at the end of the book, he simply thought he would throw in a brief apology for those who liked his book but were skeptical. While that is a nice little aside, it would have been helpful had he stated that this was an aside. Instead, it sticks out as an odd conclusion to a book with a rather different goal.

[1] RSG, 686-687.

[2] RSG, 720.

Thursday, July 23, 2015

Part Four: The Story of Easter – ch. 13: General Issues in the Easter Stories; ch. 14: Fear and Trembling: Mark; ch. 15: Earthquakes and Angels: Matthew; ch. 16: Burning Hearts and Broken Bread: Luke; ch. 16: New Day, New Tasks: John

In this section of Wright’s study, he dialogued directly and carefully with the resurrection (“easter”) narratives in the four gospels. Because of the vast amount of work done on these narratives by critical scholarship, he spends as much time discussing and challenging critical scholars – particularly John Dominic Crossan – as he does dialoguing with the primary resurrection texts. Wright’s argument is generally that the Gospel narratives hold a remarkably similar view as that found in Paul and the rest of the New Testament. He encapsulates his view in a quick summary at the end of the unit:

We have seen that early Christian resurrection-belief has a remarkable consistency despite varieties of expression, and that this consistency includes both the location of Christianity at one point on the spectrum of Jewish belief (bodily resurrection) and four key modification from within that point: (1) resurrection has moved from the circumference to the center; (2) ‘the resurrection’ is no longer a single event, but has split chronologically into two, the first part of which has already happened; (3) resurrection involves transformation, not mere resuscitation; and (4) when ‘resurrection’ language is used metaphorically, it no longer refers to the national restoration of Israel, but to baptism and holiness.[1]

This general narrative he has presented is interesting and worth much consideration. Further, his careful analysis of the four resurrection narratives causes Wright to have a solid foundation and teaches important lessons about building a larger theology from various texts. However, his interest in uniformity become nearly too extreme, and he nearly falls into the trap of thinking that pericopes in the New Testament can only be about one thing rather than many.

Wright’s main argument of the book is for unanimity in tone for the Christian resurrection message. However, in this section, he seems to be boxing a different opponent – the idea that the resurrection narratives were later developments to address problems in the early church rather than historical discussions. He particularly challenges J.D. Crossan in several instances for the suggestion that none of the gospel writers know the historical story, but instead, it is a later development to address later needs. This idea of a non-developed story permeates through these chapters. Consider Wright’s conclusion to this section to see this interest:

In particular, though each evangelist has told the story in such a way as to ground a particular understanding of Christian life and particularly Christian mission to the world, the basic stories themselves, of the empty tomb and the appearances of Jesus, show no signs of having been generated at a later stage. There is no reason to imagine that they were generated either by a newly invented apologetic for the fact that the word ‘resurrection’ was being used of Jesus, or out of a desire to provide legitimation for particular leaders or particular practices. It will of course always remain possible for scholars to think of clever ways in which this might after all have been so, in which the idea of the stories as late apologetic fiction might be rehabilitated; but the main barriers against such a reconstruction are strong and high.[2]

Wright has a very clear interest to disprove the idea that these stories were developed over time to solve later problems. He argues that the texts themselves, primarily due to their diversity, show that they were not developed in a standard tradition. Instead, he argues, the diversity shows their individuality and therefore not an interest in depicting a single “orthodox” anachronistic picture:

There can be no doubt that each evangelist has told the story in his own way. Even where there is good reason to suppose that one used the other as a source – which I assume for at least Luke with Mark, with Matthew’s use of Mark remaining probable and Mark’s use of Matthew and outside chance – there is remarkably little verbal overlap. Instead, we find in each of the stories not so much a sign of steady development from a primitive tradition to a form in which the evangelist simply wrote down what the tradition at that point had grown into, but rather a retelling of primitive stories by the evangelist himself in such a way as to form a fitting climax to a particular book.[3]

Here he argues that the gospel writers, if they were in cahoots with later polemical issues, would have frankly done a better job of addressing them if that was their primary purpose. Instead, the gospels do not show enough of a steady development for this interest.

This stance, while being laudable, creates a slight logical problem for Wright’s argument. He at once argues that our best hermeneutic for the easter stories is the witness of the early church as a unified whole, while at the same time arguing that it is the diversity and lack of unity in message which challenges the idea that these were later developments. It is not easy to hold both positions. If one argues for diversity – and I agree with Wright on this point – then it is not so clear for such clear unity of tradition.

The problem that Wright presents is that he sees “development of ideas” as presented by Crossan as just as unified as his own position – either the resurrection narratives are historically complex narratives about resurrection in similar ways to Paul or they are anti-docetic pieces that are written to address a later development. The problem here is why it is that these points have to be mutually exclusive. Consider Wright’s discussion how he characterizes the way scholars have characterized the “problems” that the resurrection narratives are trying to solve:

As the first century winds towards its close, three problems begin to rear their heads. First, the problem which Ignatius addresses: was Jesus really human, or did he only ‘seem’ (dokeo, hence “docetism”) to be a true, flesh-and-blood being? This, it has been assumed, is the setting for Luke’s and John’s fuller, and more ‘bodily’, stories of the risen Jesus: breaking bread, expounding scripture, inviting Thomas to touch him, cooking breakfast by the shore. Second, the developed ‘Easter legends’, including stories of appearances and the empty tomb, create a problem: how does one relate these stories to the basic belief in Jesus’ exaltation? Thus there are invented, around the same time and in the same texts as the anti-docetic material, stories of an ‘ascension’ which affirms both the initial embodied resurrection and the exaltation, which is now seen as a second stage. Third, some version of the broad consensus recognize a third problem in the early church: that of rival claims for apostolic authority, dealt with by telling stories which pit one apostle against another.[4]

This characterization suggests that the primary issues for the easter narratives are to solve these problems. He then spends some time addressing why it does not make logical sense for these issues to be the primary point of the easter narratives. For example, because I will reply to this issue later, consider what he says about the idea that the easter narratives were written to counter a docetic Christology:

The one thing they can not be trying to do, despite a long tradition of scholarship which I have already mentioned, is to disprove docetism. It seems to me totally incredible that stories like these, especially those in Luke and John, represent a late development of the tradition in which for the first time people thought it appropriate or necessary to speak of the risen Jesus being solidly embodied. The idea that traditions developed in the church from a more Hellenistic early period (in this case, a more ‘non-bodily’ view of post-mortem existence) to a more Jewish later period (in this case, a more embodied ‘resurrection) is in any case extremely peculiar and ,though widely held in the twentieth century, ought now to be abandoned as historically unwarranted and simply against common sense. If there was likely to be development, the model we find in Josephus, for example, suggests that we might expect a Hellenistic-style ‘spiritualizing’ of the tradition, not a re-Judaizing of it. It is far more likely that a very Jewish perception of how things were, in very early Christianity, gave way, under certain circumstances, to a more Hellenistic one by the end of the century – though that itself would need careful investigation before we simply assumed it. In the cases before us, it makes no sense to think of Luke sitting down to compose an anti-docetic narrative about the genuine human body of Jesus and allowing himself so far to forget this important purpose as to have Jesus appear and disappear, not be recognized, and finally ascend into heaven. Similar things must be said of John.[5]

Here, there are multiple points I will address, but the first is his fundamental structure of his argument. He argues that thinking that this narrative was anti-docetic does not make much sense because as a general whole the early Christian movement began as “Jewish” and then became “Hellenized.” If we were to imagine that the gospels wanted to make the movement less “docetic” then the order would be inverted – it would take something that is “generally Hellenized” and try to make it “more Jewish.” The problem with this argument is that it creates a uniformity in history which is rare to find and would be quite amazing given his very argument for the diversity of opinions in the gospels. Why are we suggesting that all Christian documents moved from one direction to another? Further, even if he was right that this movement from “generally Jewish” to “generally Hellenistic” was accurate (and I do not think it is), then he also is expecting that every group progressed at the same time. The only way that his logic is anachronistic is if he believes that every Christian group began as “Jewish” at the same time and then shifted in thinking at the same time, so the idea that any group could have to be reminded of the Jewish nature of Jesus would be out of order. In fact, we know very well that there were a variety of people doing a wide variety of things trying to figure out Jesus’ significance. Paul shows his own differences with the Jerusalem apostles, his frustrations with differences of opinions with other missionaries, and even differences with his own church plants. If there is one thing we do know about the earliest church is that it was not all unified and progressing in the same manner.

Therefore, it seems that Wright wants to have his cake and eat it too. He wants to argue for the integrity of the easter narratives as early messages proven by the fact that they diverge from one another, while at the same time, suggesting that they generally cohere and are providing a single message. What is more, he demands that any idea of a development to address later problems needs a movement that develops as a unified whole to address them. The problem is not Wright’s logic that many of the earliest groups started as fundamentally Jewish and then became later more involved in Greco-Roman culture. I have no doubt that for many groups that is true. The problem is that he expects this to be the case for all groups. If there is one thing I am convinced by in the first-second century Christian movement, it is for diversity. There were all different types of Christian groups acting in rather different ways. There is no reason to suspect they were uniform.

The second critique I have is his general dismissive attitude about the resurrection narratives not being anti-docetic. He argues that this is anachronistic and doesn’t make much sense given some of the things Jesus does. As he says, just because Luke has him eat fish and John has him have physical hands with physical wounds in them, does not account for the fact that Jesus can seemingly appear and reappear and even seem to get through locked doors. If one was going to write a piece that was going to be anti-docetic, then one would not expect someone to have these elements that usually would not be understood as more spiritual than bodily. This would be convincing if the argument was that the resurrection narratives were only about being anti-docetic. Take, for example, the Gospel of John. Many scholars think that John 20 and 21 are actually two different endings to the gospel that have been pressed together to present different ideas. Yes, it is true that John 20 does mention Jesus somehow getting through “locked doors.” However, one should note it never actually says that Jesus transcended the locks – we are told nothing about it. Who is not to say that they didn’t let Jesus in? Their doors were locked “for fear of the Jews” not because they wanted to see if Jesus could appear at random. On that note, the text is completely silent. Further, note Thomas’s declaration only comes after seeing Jesus in the flesh. These two points alone would not be enough – but what of the testimony of 1 John – that there were some, using the Gospel of John, who argued that Jesus never was really in the flesh – some kind of “docetism.” Many scholars are not therefore arguing that the whole of the gospel of John was an anti-docetic tract, rather, they are arguing that these details were added to take what was being taken as a docetic document and changing it to make an argument. Some would even say that the person who did this was the author of 1 John (and also claim it adds several sections, not just the one – the prologue, chapter 6, etc.). Therefore, Wright is not wrong to suggest that the resurrection narrative is not only an anti-docetic tract – of course it is not. However, I do not understand why it can not also be doing that in addition to other things.

All of this is not suggest that this section of his book is a failure. Of course it is not. Instead, this is to argue that there are very interesting ideas and a fascinating general view of the easter stories presented here. The problem is simply in how far he goes in his criticism of some other scholars. He has no problem showing that Crossan has gone too far – I, and most scholars, would agree. The challenge he faces is not going too far in the equal and opposite reaction.

[1] RSG, 681.

[2] RSG, 680.

[3] RSG, 679.

[4] RSG, 588-589.

[5] RSG, 606.

Friday, July 17, 2015

Part III: Resurrection in Early Christianity (Apart from Paul) comprising ch.9: Hope Refocused (1): Gospel Traditions Outside the Easter Narratives; ch. 10: Hope Refocused (2): Other New Testament Writings; ch. 11: Hope Refocused (3): Non-Canonical Early Christian Texts; and ch. 12: Hope in Person: Jesus as Messiah and Lord

N.T. Wright has extended his argument through Paul into the rest of the New Testament. He argues that the interpretation of resurrection that we found in Paul – that there was a view developed from the Pharisaic understanding that was emphasized in a new and different way. His argument is for essential continuity and argues that other traditions that developed in early Christianity were due to communities who rejected the ideas of Christ and were not basing their views on the New Testament. Wright’s greatest merit is his careful discussion of the various passages with an interest in resurrection in the New Testament texts. His problem is the way he has forced a kind of unanimity of thought upon them where it is difficult to see how well this view can be held – outside of some vague Hegelian ideal – namely the concept that different phenomena can be boiled down to a single “ideal” which is what is “most real” about it (which for Hegel then progresses through his famous thesis/antithesis/synthesis). Why this view is so appealing is that it allows him to create a kind of unity when, at least in rhetoric, such is not nearly as clear.

First, Wright argues that the whole of New Testament holds an idea very similar to Jewish expectation of resurrection, particularly in regard to the Pharisees. He argues that this is the line of development that early Christians used, however, they emphasized resurrection in ways, and to an extent that second temple Jews never did:

We have looked at the different emphases and passages in the different writers and traditions, but in summary we can easily put them back together again. When we place the entire gospel tradition on the map of life-after-death beliefs we sketched in chapters 2-4, it is obvious that, as we just said about John they belong with the Jewish view over against the pagan one; and, within the Jewish view, with the Pharisees (and others who agreed with them) over against the various other options. However, we not only find a significantly higher incidence of resurrection as a theme, by comparison even with those second-Temple writers who are enthusiasts for it. We also find a development and redefinition of it, not too different (though usually expressing other ways) from what we found in Paul. ‘Resurrection’ still means, in the last analysis, god’s gift of new bodily life to all his people at the end (and, in the case of John 5, new bodily life even for those who are raised in order to hear their own doom). But it can also be used, in a manner cognate with the development of metaphorical uses in Judaism, to denote the restoration of god’s people in the present time, as for instance in the dramatic double summary of the prodigal son’s being ‘dead and alive again’ in Luke 15. This is then dramatically acted out in the ‘raisings’ of people from death, that of Lazarus being obviously the most striking.[1]

This is very similar to his argument about Paul – that resurrection was something that was both something in the future and now. The argument, one will recall, was predicated upon the idea that the real resurrection was not life “after death” but life during the period after “after death,” meaning, the time after the already expected kind of shadowy existence that was already expected after death. Instead, it was some kind of later reality that would be ushered in as the kingdom of God. Indeed, he argues that discussion of the kingdom of God nearly always entailed language of resurrection:

Having said all that, it is of course important to stress also that the main theme of Jesus’ announcement, in word and deed, was the kingdom of god. Granted that not all kingdom-of-god movements at the time were necessarily resurrection-movements as well (i.e. it is perfectly conceivable that some of those who used kingdom-of-god language about their movements distanced themselves from Pharisaic hope), it is extremely liked that anyone announcing the kingdom of Israel’s god in the first half of the first century would be assumed to include resurrection as part of the overall promise.[2]

He argues that Jesus’ use of kingdom of God language as discussed by the synoptic gospels puts him firmly on the same ground as that of Paul and the Pharisees.

The only real difference was the frequency with which the early Christians discussed resurrection, and the manner of what this future life would hold. Consider what he has to say in the following passage where he helpfully lists out his conclusions in a list:

We have now surveyed roughly two-thirds of the material in the New Testament. We have found, representing several significant strands of early Christianity, (1) a belief in the future resurrection which matches that of the Pharisees (and which, like theirs, implies some kind of intermediate state); (2) a much more frequent reference to this than in the surrounding Jewish material; (3) two variations on the Jewish theme, namely the belief that ‘the resurrection’ had been anticipated in the case of Jesus, and would be completed for all his people, and the belief that this resurrection was not simply a resuscitation into the same kind of life but rather a going though death and out into a new sort of life beyond, into a body that was no longer susceptible to decay and death; (4) a fresh use of ‘resurrection’ as a metaphor for the restoration of God’s people, referring now not to the restoration of Israel after exile, but to the new life, including holiness and worship, which people could enjoy in the present.[3]

Here, he shows his views – that resurrection was used in a new way, but was developed from a Pharisaic view.

Wright’s arguments for the Pharisees as an antecedent in the view of the resurrection makes some sense, particularly for Paul. The problem is the way he views the unity of thought throughout the entire New Testament. Consider his note about this:

But the New Testament itself speaks, if not with one voice, certainly with a cluster of voices singing in close harmony. All the major books and strands, with the single exception of Hebrews, make resurrection a central and important topic, and set it within a framework of Jewish thought about the one god as creator and judge. This resurrection belief stands firmly over against the entire world of paganism on the one hand. Its reshaping, around the resurrection of Jesus himself, locates it as a dramatic modification within Judaism on the other.[4]

He allows that Hebrews is an exception, but nothing else. That is too much of an overstatement. That resurrection in its eventual form in the future could be unified is possible, but difficult. The idea of how this resurrection spills over into the present, however, is far harder. How can one reasonably put together Mark and Paul which discuss a theology of suffering (or in Lutheran terms, a “theology of the cross”) with the Gospel of John which argues for a kind of full participation in the mystical unity of the community with Jesus in the present?

It seems that Wright has an underlying argument – that all early Christians thought that the resurrection would be bodily. This, of course, is accurate for our New Testament documents (though I’m not sure if it is the most interesting question). However, that the New Testament could be interpreted differently is quite obvious. Wright has a chapter on the 2^nd-3^rd century to explore this challenge. He argues for essential continuity, though he does have a lengthy discussion of documents he calls “Gnostic” which suggest a far more spiritual rather than bodily resurrection. He argues that they developed this by abandoning the traditional views of Jesus and that they have no sources in tradition:

What it means is that the bulk of Nag Hammadi and similar documents do not represent a parallel stream, with similarly early sources, to that which we find in the line from Paul to Tertullian. They represent a new movement entirely, which has explicitly cut off the roots of the ‘resurrection’ belief in Judaism, its scriptures, its doctrines of creation and judgment, and its social situation of facing persecution from imperial authority. This is a form of spirituality which, while still claiming the name of Jesus, has left behind the very things that made Jesus who he was, and that made the early Christians what they were.[5]

The problem, of course, is that it is fine for him to come to this conclusion in some sense – particularly if the question was whether all of these views were orthodox or not – of course, they eventually would not be called orthodox. However, if one goes beyond that question to the harder one for what it meant for early Christianity that such views were possible is far harder. What does it tell us about early Christians that many held such views? Just because Wright does not think that the New Testament should be read this way does not mean it is so clear that it should not. In fact, his argument seems predicated upon his idea of a weight of evidence – that the number of texts, which held a bodily resurrection, so outweigh all others, this must be the proclamation of the early church. The way he does this is by addressing this as a unity. The problem, of course, is all these texts that show some communities disagreed.

I am not arguing that Wright is necessarily wrong. I do think that most all of the New Testament texts which discussed the matter, did envision a bodily resurrection. However, I am not sure they have such a unified vision. Nowhere does he allow a kind of Platonic understanding that has been Christianized to allow for a physicality in the world of the ideals which is of course, unknown to Plato – rather than what he calls a “Jewish” view. He allows this for Hebrews but for nothing else. It is not clear why precisely this would not be the case for at least major sections of the Gospel of John, for example. Therefore, if Wright simply drew back his conclusions one step and made more qualified claims, he would have a stronger argument.

[1] RSG, 448.

[2] RSG, 403.

[3] RSG, 450.

[4] RSG, 476.

[5] RSG, 550-551.

Thursday, July 9, 2015

Review of Scott Korb, Life in Year One: What the World Was Like in First-Century Palestine New York: Riverhead Books, 2010. 240 pages. Paperback, $17.00.

[In the interest of full disclosure, I first became aware of this book because Scott Korb was my fiancé’s graduate adviser for her Master of Fine Arts in non-fiction writing. I therefore have not worked directly with Prof. Korb, but have seen his supportive guidance second hand. I have tried to analyze this book as I would any other, but being honest with myself and with my readers, there is always some sense of one’s attitude about the author that colors one’s interpretation. I hope here that any respect I have for the book is mostly due to the book and not the author, but such things are hard to divide.]

This book is an engaging analysis about the cultural life of ordinary life in first century Palestine. This book is not about Jesus (a point Korb brings up no less than 5 times, so much so that he even makes a joke about the repetition), instead it is a book about the general tenor of what any occupant of first century Palestine would experience. This is the book’s greatest strength and weakness. What Korb does to discuss the first century context is one of the most readable and most interesting depictions I have read. He combines wit and study to present a very engaging discussion. However, because he is not discussing Jesus directly, he was not pushed to go fully into the absolute mass of Jesus research that has been done in the past 100 years and as such, there are some points where he does not reveal the dialogue that has gone on behind his conclusions.

Korb himself is not an expert in the first century, he has a master’s degree in Theology from Union, but his focus was not Roman antiquity. He in fact admits this in the introduction to the book (page 6). What problem that causes is that he has two primary sources with which he is clearly comfortable (Josephus and the New Testament). The problem, of course, is that if one is not going to talk much about Jesus, the New Testament becomes far less valuable. However, on the other hand, he has used many secondary sources and interviewed scholars in the field. Korb is primarily a writing teacher who focuses on journalistic and memoir writing and this comes through very clearly in his book. He is able to make a book about the “cultural context” of the New Testament engaging for a wide audience. This is no small feat. What is more, he has made this engaging without making wild historical claims about Jesus. That is even more remarkable. The Jesus seminar, for instance, can make waves in the headlines when it challenges the historicity of miracles, or teases apart pieces of the gospels. However, when they try to discuss simply the “state of the first century” very few outside of scholarly circles pay attention (and in the case of the Jesus seminar, the scholars snarl at them – creating a kind of lose/lose for the Jesus Seminar to discuss anything aside from the historical Jesus). Korb has done this. He has found a way to write a book about the culture of Palestine that is interesting and engaging without resorting to polemics about the historical Jesus. This is something we should be thankful for and we should hope John Dominic Crossan, Bart Ehrman, Luke Timothy Johnson, and N.T. Wright will pay attention.

First, it should be noted how smoothly this book reads. Korb’s training in writing comes very clearly across and his style uses jokes, personal anecdotes, and very helpful comparisons to engage the reader in understanding what is often dry data (e.g. first century economy). In fact, Korb has used his footnotes as kind of fun asides which are nearly sarcastic as well as very informative. What makes his writing so good is that it is not only jokes. Instead, these are used to present very clearly good data that is often lost.

In content, where Korb is best is when he is discussing the daily life of average Palestinian Jews in the first century.[1] For example, he has a chapter on cleanliness where he presents one of the best descriptions of the challenge of both how amazingly dirty this world was, and what is more, how to understand a world where such was not a problem. The first move is not surprising – everyone knows that soap was hard to come by and baths were rarely taken. The second is far less understood – a society where such things weren’t expected. It is noteworthy that we don’t hear complaints about the smell of feces and sewage in our early sources. We do hear complaints about the smell of the dead, but not so much the standard living practices of excrement and dirt being caked any/everywhere. To the modern reader, this sounds disgusting and unthinkable, but to understand the first century, we have to try and understand a different mindset than our own – they were not 21^st century humans living in a situation without electricity and plumbing, they had their own worldviews. A corrolary example Korb did not use, but I like to use in my classes is the world of a 5% literacy rate (and perhaps less in some areas). Everyone knows that very few people in the ancient world could read, but very few can get beyond that piece of data and try to fathom a society that did not require reading. It truly was a thing of leisure that one learned at a place of leisure (Gk. Scholia). These are the pieces Korb presents brilliantly covering topics such as sanitation, economy, housing, marriage/divorce, politics (particularly Herod the Great), and medicine.

The other very good thing Korb does is explain very well the distinction and point of Jewish ritual purity. He is able to dispel many common views of purity rituals. He wants to point out very carefully what the point of purity is and its subsequent effect on daily life. For example, he notes that the ritual purity “washings” should never be understood as somehow motivated by sanitation (just as one should not think of food laws in regard to nutrition). Instead, he shows clearly that the purpose was entirely different, and instead was a true preparation for true worship. Any of these modern Christian apologetic interests in trying to show what it is that these purity laws did beyond that really make little sense. For example, his discussion of leprosy shows the way this would not function. For the leper to have to be excluded from the community was hardly for the sake of the poor leper. Further, it was not even really for the sake of the community – given that many of the diseases that were then called “leprosy” were not actually contagious. Instead, it was done of the spiritual purity of the community. It was not about the sick person, or the healthy people medically. It instead was about the purity of the community which expressed itself to its God as being all prepared to worship without ritual blemish. These figures were ritually excluded (as were a whole host of other features). We are reminded that purity is not a moral condition but a ritual one. Morality is based on ethics and is fundamentally separate from purity.

Throughout this study, Korb leans upon John Dominic Crossan’s research (as well as Jonathan Reed). Crossan’s studies make sense that Korb would go there seeing how much Crossan is interested in the social fabric of the world that he believes the historical Jesus overturned in what Crossan calls “ethical eschatology.” Jesus the social reformer, then, demands a world that is asking for social reform. In some eventuality, Crossan (and therefore Korb) can’t be wrong about this. The Jewish war that eventuated 66-70/73 as a revolt against Rome suggests that there was a real desire for social change. The problem is how monothetically Crossan views this. It is definitely true that the inhabitants of Roman Palestine had no love for Rome ever since Pompey came through in 62 BCE. Further, the election of the Idumaean Roman collaborator Herod was no consolation to them. After Herod, of course, there was a Praefect and the dream of an independent Israel was fading away. This surely was leading toward an interest in social change.

The problem with this focus, though, is its narrowness in scope. Crossan and Korb are right that there was an interest in social and political change. However, not seriously enough is it seen how that would occur. Crossan is forced to recognize that the apocalyptic eschatological movement was significant which had the following narrative – 1. There is an evil in the world keeping the people of God from achieving the promises God has promised them (foreign rulers), 2. God is going to once and for all arrive and destroy evil for good, 3. The “kingdom of God” will therefore be established and Israel will live in harmony in the future. Note in this progression that it is God who will make the social change occur, not the revolt of people. Crossan is aware of this and that is why he coins the term “ethical eschatology” – the idea that it is not God who will come back and destroy evil, but it is up to humans as the people of God to destroy evil through social and political reform. The fact that the war occurred shows that there were many who could be sympathetic with this view, but we should be careful to place too many too quickly on the front lines of the battle.

The problem with this approach is not really which kind of eschatology they might have envisioned, but that it is too often presented as a recollection of the “very near past.” Most imagine that the Jews were hearkening back to a former time – in fact they were – the question is which former time. There is too often a narrative of the domination of the Seleucids leading to the Hasmonean (Maccabean) revolt where Israel was an independent country, until the arrival of Pompey and the Roman occupation. That makes the period of the first and second century BCE recent history that were the promised land years that people remembered. First, it is unlikely all that many people “remembered” these years. We ignore the fact that at 66 CE when the revolt against Rome breaks out, it has been over 120 years since the Romans first came – there are longer people “remembering.” What is more, it is a full 6 generations – it is not even traditions passed forward from their parents and grandparents (if indeed anyone lived long enough to be a grandparent), these are traditions that are in the distant past for regular lives. Instead, they looked to the past, but not the past of the Hasmoneans – where, it should be noted that they did have true independence, they were far more a ‘free-state’ of the Seleucid Empire than anything else (despite what 1-2 Maccabees may say). Instead, they looked to the past of David and the actual independent Israel. By 66 CE, that would be almost a millennium in the past. What is more, after the exile in 586, the majority of Jews did not live in the land – they were in diaspora all waiting for the final exile to somehow be completed.

In short, what Korb and Crossan struggle to deal with was the scope of this political conflict. Korb is right that the Romans brought new challenges economically and politically – but these challenges were not the real problem. They had been dealing with the challenges of foreign powers since the seventh century BCE. What is important is not to set up a narrative with a relatively prosperous Palestine before Rome and a put down one after it. It was always a put down area and a put down people. There was a time that people heard of when they prospered in the land, but it was so long ago that it was a mythos – a narrative to provide meaning and identity. It was not a living memory – it was instead, an ideal that they knew they would achieve as the people of God.

All of this is not to dismiss the great value of Korb’s book. Korb presents the world of the first century Palestine in a more engaging way than I’ve seen in a long time. The fact that he can present this without being religiously controversial is amazingly impressive. If I were to teach a “culture of the New Testament” to laypeople rather than in an academic setting, I very well might use this book.

[1] It should be noted that even though the title of the book is Life in Year One, it is not only covering that year, but is actually the entire first century. “Year One” seems to have been selected simply because it is a catchier title. In fact, his book covers the period from the rule of Herod to the great war in 66.