Chapter Eight: Story, Symbol, Praxis: Elements of Israel’s Worldview

[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 understanding of the symbols and everyday praxis of second temple Judaism at the time of Jesus is a wonderful illustration of how Protestant thinkers (and perhaps non-Protestants as well, but I am only familiar with Protestants) understand enough about Judaism to create a reasonable foil for understanding the New Testament, but not enough to truly gain an appreciation for the nuanced arguments concerning Torah presented in the gospels and works of Paul.

First, Wright does a good job using his concept of worldview as elongated story in Judaism. In a previous blog post I analyzed the assertion that worldview is best expressed in “story” or “mythos;” however, when considering Judaism in the second temple there was such an advanced and prominent mythos that using it as the form of understanding the group is well taken. Wright shows that the mythos is complicated and has at least two forms:

First-century Judaism is an excellent example of a culture which quite obviously thrived on stories, which we may for simplicity divide into two categories: the basic story, told in the Bible, of creation and election, of exodus and monarchy, of exile and return; and small-unit stories, either dealing with a small part of the larger story, or running parallel to some or all of it. In each case, we gain a powerful index of the Jewish worldview, which then opens up to create the context for the symbols and the praxis.[1]

First, he shows the “grand narrative” that was behind most of the worldviews of the adherents. Second, he creates a neo-structuralist langue that will then dominate all the symbols one can possibly create. Many would argue that the former is quite valuable whereas the latter is overly simplistic. Whether it is simplistic or not, for his purposes of understanding how a mythos might unite a people, the idea functions well.

Secondly, he uses this mythos to show that the Jews of their own day were able to understand it very much in their own life. He argues that the mythos itself has no clear conclusion leading readers to expect one for themselves:

The great story of the Hebrew scriptures was therefore inevitably read in the second-temple period as a story in search of a conclusion. This ending would have to incorporate the full liberation and redemption of Israel, an event which had not happened as long as Israel was being oppressed, a prisoner in her own land. And this ending would have to be appropriate: it should correspond to the rest of the story, and grow out of it in obvious continuity and uniformity.[2]

Wright displays here how a mythos functionally is supposed to work – it is supposed to include the readers and be logically consistent.

Wright then shows that the mythos creates and revolves around four key symbols which provided identity and consisted of the religious world of second temple Jews. The symbols were Temple, Torah, land, and ethnic identity.  

The stories which articulate a worldview focus upon the symbols which bring that worldview into visible and tangible reality…Both Temple and Land were regulated by the Torah, which formed the covenant charter for all that Israel was and hoped for, and whose importance increased in proportion to one’s geographical distance from Land and Temple. Closely related to all three was the fact of Jewish ethnicity: the little race, divided by exile and diaspora, knew itself to be a family whose identity had to be maintained at all costs. Temple, Land, Torah and racial identity were the key symbols which anchored the first-century Jewish worldview in everyday life.[3]

These four points of identity might be disputed, but as a heuristic device, they are pragmatic and helpful. Wright rightly points out that they were interrelated and that no one could independently exist.

While each of the four points which Wright presents could be discussed, Torah is the one that is most relevant for this project – showing how frequent characterizations of Judaism provide a foil for studying the New Testament, but do not do a good job of showing what Judaism was doing independently.

First, Wright argues that Torah was connected to all other concepts which made it pragmatically useful for those who were not in the land:

Temple and Torah formed and unbreakable whole: the Torah sanctioned and regulated what happened in the Temple, and the Temple was (in much of this period) the practical focal point for the observance of Torah, both in the sense that much Torah-observance actually consisted of Temple-ritual, and in the sense that the Temple was the major place for study and teaching of Torah. So, too, Torah and Land formed a tight bond. The Torah offered the promises about the Land, the blessings which would be given in and through it, and the detailed instructions as to the behaviour necessary for blessing to be maintained. After all, the reason that YHWH had driven out the previous occupants of the Land was precisely their idolatry and immorality. Israel had to be different if she was not going to suffer the same fate.[4]

Wright points out that Torah was historically bound up with the concept of land, temple, and ethnic identity. The problem is that his characterization is aggressively out of date. He is absolutely right that in the Deuteronomistic History (Joshua-2 Kings governed by the theology of Deuteronomy), it was absolutely the case that if Israel followed Torah, then they would receive blessings manifested as militarily success in keeping the land if they failed to follow Torah, they would receive curses manifested as military failures losing the land. However, this view had long been challenged within the Hebrew Bible itself by the time that the New Testament was written. The book of Job, Ecclesiastes, III Isaiah, II Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Ezra-Nehemiah were written directly to address this and argue that religiosity did not depend upon having the land and prosperity – in fact, it seemed to come full circle arguing that proper religiosity caused enmity with all those around Israel and to expect persecution rather than prosperity. Therefore, this idea that Wright - along with many protestants – hold about Torah is an earlier idea that was never dismissed, but was thoroughly nuanced later on.

Wright does understand well the significance and practicality of Torah for the vast majority of followers. First, for those not near the temple – or those who rejected the way the temple was being run on principle – looked to the Torah as a practical replacement to Temple worship:

The presence of the covenant god was not, after all, confined to the Temple in Jerusalem, which was both a long way off and in the hands of corrupt aristocrats. It had been democratized, made available to all who would study and practice Torah.[5]

The presence of God had formerly been seen as channeled through the Temple and this practice was seen as also being possible to be through Torah. This suggested that Torah had a divine status and a link to God directly. Further, the practical value of this being in every synagogue was quite helpful in contrast to the one temple in Jerusalem one had to travel to access. Here, Wright is completely correct.

Where Wright struggles is in the practice of Torah. He rightly shows that Torah became the identifying mark of Jews in antiquity through proper practice:

And the Torah, especially in the Diaspora, but also anywhere where Jews felt themselves beleaguered, as they mostly did in one way or another, could be seen as focusing on those things which distinguished Jews from their (potentially threatening) pagan neighbors: circumcision, the keeping of the Sabbath, and the purity laws.[6]

While Torah obligation did focus on purity rules, the reason was not only because these were the easiest boundary markers that made Jews Jewish. This certainly was true, but that reduction seems far more like a foil to understand the later dialogues concerning the Jesus movement (e.g. which rules from the Old Testament were simply identifying Jews as Jewish and which rules applied to all people) rather than being a careful discussion of Judaism itself.

Wright, like many Protestants, focuses on Torah in two ways – 1). as the first 5 books of the Bible which are divine and demanded study and 2). as the obligations one had to follow to be in relationship with God. Wright therefore focuses on the Sabbath obligations and purity obligations for properly following Torah. To Wright’s credit he attempts to show that these were not understood in some kind of “works righteousness” sense that many protestants wish they were so that Luther’s idea of a catharsis from guilt of failing to fulfill the law can be released by the forgiveness in Christ. Rather, Wright correctly points out that some kind of idea of trying to “reach God through action” is not one that is found in any kind of Judaism in antiquity (and perhaps in the modern world as well). Instead, Wright directly addresses this point:

The ‘works of the Torah’ were not a legalist’s ladder, up which one climbed to earn the divine favour, but were badges that one wore as the marks of identity, of belonging to the chosen people in the present, and hence the all-important signs, to oneself and one’s neighbours, that one belonged to the company who would be vindicated when the covenant god acted to redeem his people.[7]

Wright does a good job dispelling this myth, but in so doing, reduces the concept of Torah significantly.

Wright has a strange logic that ends up diminutizing the importance of Torah – even though he himself says it is of utmost importance. The logic seems to go something like this:

1.     Torah was the replacement of the Temple to be channel through which God worked

2.     The primary function of Torah was to provide identity markers

3.     The practical use of Torah was in doing several deeds (dietary restriction, Sabbath, etc.)

4.     These deeds did not help one use the channel to reach God

5.     Torah did not really express number 1.

The absurdity shines through – he wants Torah to be simultaneously a replacement for Temple and not actually do the work of Temple.

The reason Wright struggles is that he does not show the full extent of what Torah is. He gets close several times when he argues that Torah can be seen as a type of replacement for Temple. Jon Levenson has cogently shown how Torah was very much a channel by which Israel had a relationship with God. Torah becomes the intermediary through which Israel and God unite. However, the mistake is in Christians assuming that the direction of the channel was only up – namely Israel doing works to call out/reach God. Instead, the main direction was down – the way that God reached Israel. All the works that one would do were merely a response.[8]

The idea that Torah was primarily the channel through which God acted rather than the channel through which humans act significantly complicates the understanding of “works of the Torah” so present in the work of Paul. “Work of the Torah” could be the obligation that humans must do in the system of Torah. However, it is equally (and I think more) likely that it is not the work humans are doing; rather, it is the work that God is doing on earth. Therefore, Paul could be contrasting two very different things in Galatians and Romans – salvation by God through the “work of the Law” compared to the salvation by God through Christ.

While the question of the meaning of works of the Torah in Paul remains an open question, Wright’s characterization of Torah as primarily a human action wherein one attempts to reach God (either explicitly or implicitly) is a common mistake the Protestants make because of how such a view would make reading Paul make sense. While there are plenty who still think Paul holds this view and that he is contrasting this in a significant way, there is no reason to think that Torah as such had that idea at all for the larger world of second-temple Judaism.

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[1] NTPG, 215.

[2] Ibid., 217.

[3] Ibid., 224.

[4] Ibid., 228.

[5] Ibid., 228.

[6] Ibid., 229.

[7] Ibid., 238.

[8] See Jon D. Levenson, Sinai and Zion: An Entry into the Jewish Bible (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1985).

Chapter 7: The Developing Diversity

[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 works hard to avoid many of the standard pitfalls of New Testament scholars discussing the various sectarian groups of second temple Judaism. He rightly points out that making the Pharisees, Essenes, Sadducees, and Zealots into ideological groups is a tendency that New Testament scholars often fall into which are not completely appropriate for the social groups that are represented. He attempts to show their basic commonality in the hope for the kingdom of God in Israel as well as discussing their differences as reactions and views of that same hope. It is this narrowness of focus that causes Wright to be very close to a productive discussion of Judaism, but allows such gaping holes that he keeps from clarifying the groups for the reader. His characterization is helpful because he presents some ideas that are widely held among practitioners of Christianity.

First, Wright attempts to show why it was that sectarian groups developed in the first place. Wright focuses upon the fallout of the Maccabaean revolt and subsequent government that caused many of these groups to develop.

The event which precipitated all the major trends in first-century Judaism was, as we have seen, the Maccabaean crisis…But the Maccabaean crisis was also, second, the cause of some of the divisions within Judaism. Dissatisfactions with its outcome was the reason for the rise and agenda of at least some of Judaism’s different parties.[1]

Wright firmly sets the Maccabaean crisis as a major “turning point” of Jewish history which was a causal element in the nature of second century Judaism.

Using this crisis as the “turning point,” Wright expands upon this idea and argues that the revolutionary attitude of different Jewish groups had their origin in this event. Wright argues that the Maccabaean revolt created a model that later Jewish groups used to organize their own identities:

Once again the story starts with the Maccabees. They set the context, and provided the model, for a tradition of movements which sought to overthrow oppression and bring about the divinely intended kingdom for Israel.[2]

It is certainly true that the Maccabaean revolt did cause some sectarian splits – such as has been hypothesized concerning the Qumran community.[3] Further, it was certainly true that Jews after the Maccabaean period did expect a revolt that would eventually lead to an independent Israel was also true.

While Wright is not wrong that the Maccabaean period was important, he does not put enough emphasis on other reasons that Judaism divided and the general hope of Israel was found in its expectation of Israel. First, just because people expected the rise of Israel as a kingdom after the revolt does not mean that they were not thinking that same thing before the revolt – indeed, this is why the revolt occurred. The Maccabees were certainly more successful than other attempts to create group solidarity, but that does not mean that this was the only model for what such a revolt would look like. Many believed that God would come and fight for the people and destroy evil as depicted in apocalyptic literature. That would be formatively different than the kind of war waged in 1 Maccabees. Therefore, Wright has a good idea focusing on Maccabaean period, but one must be careful not to focus too much on it.

Second, he argues that the Maccabaean period was the cause of division within Judaism. There is no question that the Maccabaean government’s actions caused some sectarian division; however, there were other very significant issues that forced the issue of sectarianism. Far more important than a strange government that might not have been acting completely properly in regard to temple worship was the challenge of identity caused by geography. When the people were allowed to come back from the Babylonian exile in 539 B.C.E., many people did not return. Instead, they continued to live in diaspora around the world. Further, the people who did return found themselves amongst a group of people already living in the land. They wanted to define themselves as separate from that group. The different Jewish groups began to develop with varying rigidity as early as the return – as depicted in the books of Ezra, Nehemiah, Ruth, and Jonah in the Hebrew Bible. All of the different books have different attitudes concerning how open the group would be to others who wanted to be included.

More concerning was that based on the theology of Deuteronomy, it was absolutely set that there was to be only one temple and that temple was to be the worship center of all religious devotees. The problem then developed due to proximity – it was not possible for most people to travel to Jerusalem at any time. Judaism had to try and understand who they were as an international organization. Wright seemingly knows this as he briefly discusses the point:

So it was that the maintenance of traditional Torah-based boundary-markers in Galilee, or in the Diaspora, had little to do with detached theology of post mortem salvation, let alone the earning of such a thing by one’s own religious or moral efforts, and a great deal more to do with the preservation of traditional Jewish identity.[4]

Here Wright is interested in trying to show that the primary interest of the Jewish groups was not salvific per se, rather, the primary interest was that of identity. However, when he discusses the crisis, he considers the geographical problem very locally – he tends to discuss it in regard to the issue of the Galilee:

Surrounded and permeated as it was by paganism, Galilean Jewry naturally looked, more than its southern compatriots needed to, to the symbols of distinctiveness which mattered in the local setting. The Torah assumed new importance in border territory. As we shall see, it acquired some of the functions and attributes of the Temple itself.[5]

He is certainly right that the Torah filled many of the functions of the Temple, but his focus on the Galilee diminutizes the problem. The Galilee was a 3 days walk to Jerusalem making the temple impractical. However, there was a far larger problem of people who were farther away. While the Galilee in the north was remote in regard to Jerusalem, the Galilee was a historic territory of Israel. Those Jews living in complete diaspora were living in areas that were not part of Israel at any time. The challenge of identity was not so much that the temple could not practically be reached (contingencies for such a situation can be found in the book of Deuteronomy), the challenge was that the people of Israel had to find a way to remain a solidified group while not tying that idea to any specific land.

The concept of an Israel that was not bound by land was aggressively difficult to manage and it is from this interest that many different Jewish groups presented new ideas of what it meant to be Jewish. Wright does not spend enough dealing with this issue and instead focuses solely on the land of Israel itself. This focus is understandable given his interest in presenting the world of Jesus, but unfortunate in that he keeps himself from seeing the complete picture.

Most groups addressed the issue of land by focusing on the coming kingdom of God wherein Israel is restored. Wright focuses on this aspect of the restored Israel as his focus for understanding each of the different factions:

Hope focused on the coming of the kingdom of Israel’s god. I shall therefore begin by looking at the movements of revolt that characterize the period, and then assess the place of the different ‘parties’ in the light of the more general aspiration.[6]

This is a fine method for understanding the different groups – and frankly better than many Christian characterizations of them – but the problem is that Wright does not explain why that focus on the coming kingdom was present. He is able to understand the issue of righteousness of Jews within and oppression from Romans without, but he does not address a primary concern – the goal of uniting a very divided people – politically, geographically, and spiritually.

Rather than going through many of the specific points concerning Wright’s characterization of the different rebellious groups and their relationship with the actual revolt, here I will focus only on his characterization of the Pharisees to show what it is that he addresses well and what portions he misses due to his interest in how they were involved/not involved in the coming kingdom of Israel.

First, Wright should be credited with a very good discussion of the challenges of understanding the Pharisees given the data we have left.[7] We simply do not have good data from the group. There are several different sources, all of them extremely biased. However, scholars can reconstruct what we are relatively sure the Pharisees held. The first point that Wright develops is the focus on Torah as way for the group to see themselves as the preservers of tradition:

The Pharisees saw themselves as standing firm for the old ways, the traditions of Israel, against paganism from without and assimilation from within. Their extreme focus on Torah makes perfect sense within this setting; and so does the increasing concentration, in this and the subsequent periods, on issues of purity.[8]

The Pharisees certainly did focus on observation of Torah and daily ritual purity law in order to preserve a kind of Judaism. Wright does not explain the practicality of this dictum – it was not only a way of preservation, it was also a practice that anyone could do at any place.

Wright comes close to presenting the idea that the Pharisees focused on Torah and purity for practical reasons when he pushes them into the political front (given that he wants to analyze each group as they responded to the political force of the reestablishment of Israel):

What matters is the ideology that motivated them to focus so strongly on purity and to relate it in any way to the purity demanded in the Temple. Here the most attractive thesis seems to me the following: faced with social, political and cultural ‘pollution’ at the level of national life as a whole, one natural reaction (with a strong sense of ‘natural’) was to concentrate on personal cleanness, to cleanse and purify an area over which one did have control as a compensation for the impossibility of cleansing or purifying an area – the outward and visible political one – over which one had none. The intensifying of the biblical purity regulations with Pharisaism may well therefore invite the explanation that they are the individual analogue of the national fear of, and/or resistance to, contamination from, or oppression by, Gentiles.[9]

Here Wright shows that purification was a way of “owning” a space that one did not own. It was a way of controlling and managing spiritually what one could not manage politically. Here, he is focusing on Pharisees living within Israel who are decrying the current governmental system. What is more, though, this same process would have been equally true and even more the case for Judaism that was completely outside the confines of Israel itself.[10]

What is more striking is the way that purity is treated. Wright, focusing on the concept of a political movement, does not carefully explain the significance of the focus on Torah and purity rituals. He offhandedly mentions that the purity rituals were rather important and were set as commensurate with the purity rituals found in temple worship:

The Temple functioned as the controlling symbol for Pharisees no less than for other Jews; and the purity codes functioned as a key means of granting to ordinary domestic life, and in particular the private study of Torah, the status that would normally only accrue to those who were serving in the presence of Israel’s god within his Temple.[11]

This passage is key. It shows that the reason that the Pharisees were going through these religious acts was that they were attempting to achieve the same status as those who were serving in the Temple.

What makes this so important – and what is completely missing from Wright’s presentation -  is the religious statement being made by equating personal purity rituals (mostly concerning the dinner table and Sabbath rituals) and study of Torah with Temple worship. Not only was Temple worship usually the restricted “highest kind of worship” but it was also restricted as to who could worship. Not just anyone could worship in the temple – only the priests – and in some cases only certain priests. They followed particular purity rituals that the larger population did not. The Pharisees then were making a bold statement – the priesthood was no longer necessary and the whole population of followers of God could be in nearly direct relationship with God himself – the priests were not “separate” in nearly as many ways as they used to be.[12]

Wright ignores this vital aspect of what the Pharisees held because he is monothetically interested in the focus on the reestablishment of Israel. The reason that this discussion of Wright is helpful is because it is all too common among Christians today – it is easy to discuss the different Jewish groups in regard to the coming kingdom of God – after all, that is what Jesus focused upon and therefore it is easy to contrast the groups. It is much harder, however, to focus on the groups’ actual messages and focuses. For those who study the New Testament, it is imperative that we actually understand the Pharisees before understanding Jesus. Jesus did not know these figures as rhetorical antitheses – he dialogues directly with them and challenges their direct issues. A critical reader of the New Testament must be aware of the context as it truly was (rather than how we would prefer it would be in a logical argument) in order to understand what the New Testament is trying to say.

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[1] NTPG, 167.

[2] Ibid., 170.

[3] For the argument that the Qumran community was fundamentally opposed to the Hasmonean priesthood, see Lawrence H. Schiffman Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls: The History of Judaism, the Background of Christianity, the Lost Library of Qumran (Jewish Publication Society, 1994).

[4] NTPG, 168.

[5] NTPG, 168.

[6] Ibid., 170.

[7] Ibid., 181-184.

[8] Ibid., 187.

[9] Ibid., 187-188.

[10] I should note that there is little evidence to show that there were any Pharisees outside the land itself; however, the Pharisees clearly set up a plan so that those outside the land could be in relationship with them. It was important that those who were abroad could be viewed as “the same” as those at home. The fact that there was little sociological success is merely an accident that they assumed would be solved in time.

[11] Ibid., 195.

[12] Priests remained, of course, still very much religiously taught individuals who had an important role in the community, but the importance of their role in temple worship – which was restricted to only some priests – was called into question.

Chapter 6 - "The Setting of the Story"

[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.]

This chapter is the first of several wherein Wright will discuss the world in which Jesus and the nascent Jesus movement was born. His goal is laudable – in order to understand anything about Jesus in his own day, it is necessary to understand carefully his world in first-century Palestine. To accomplish this, Wright focuses upon Judaism in the first century as a unified worldview and uses that as a filter through which he discusses all other aspects of first century life (Hellenistic culture, Roman imperialism, political change and challenge). This becomes Wright’s most interesting element to his approach, but it also causes many of his biggest mistakes – both those of commission and omission.

Wright rightly argues that our understanding of Judaism in the first century has increased dramatically in the past 60 years. He points out that in the aftermath of World War II, there was an interest among scholars of religion to take Judaism more seriously as its own religion rather than a mere cipher for theological arguments in Christianity. Further, more recent archaeological finds have produced far more sources, making us aware of Judaism far more on its own terms rather than through later sources.

Wright, while valuing the work on Judaism in the past several decades, also is concerned that scholarship has gone too far. He argues that scholars are hypersensitive to the problem of caricaturizing Jews in the first century and are instead attempting to make an alternate argument. Wright makes a bold caricature of these scholars: 

The problem is all the more acute when Western Christian scholarship is in the middle of a long-drawn-out process of repentance for having cherished false views about Judaism. Scholars and preachers tumble over one another to say that they were misguided, that they misjudged the Pharisees, that Jesus and his followers had no quarrel with the Jews, that it was only later that the evangelists, under pressure, produced the caricatures of Jesus’ opponents that we find in the gospels. How long it will be before things settle down again is difficult to say.[1]

His tone is nearly sarcastic. He argues that scholars are allowing their modern sensibilities to get in the way of good historical argument. He says this quite directly calling upon scholars to move beyond their feelings of guilt over the horrors of the holocaust:

The historical task cannot be accomplished by the back-projection of modern guilt-feelings, any more than it was advanced by the back-projection of later theological controversy and prejudice.[2]

Here Wright calls out scholarship and arguing that it is time to do fair historical reconstruction rather than a theologically driven argument (as either apologists for Judaism or opponents of it).

The problem, of course, is that Wright has stacked the deck to make his argument. There certainly are some modern scholars of Christianity who do want to exonerate the collective guilt of Christianity for its treatment of Jews over the past two thousand years; however, this group is not the majority. Most scholars who have presented a new understanding of Judaism are not doing this out of genocidal guilt, they are doing it out of good observation of new pieces of data that are available now that simply were not in previous generations. In short, they are trying to be good historians. The fact that much of the research presents a Judaism that is far more sympathetic with Jesus is not because modern scholars have “softened” the data – it is because many scholars think Judaism frankly was more sympathetic with Jesus than later Christianity was (quite frankly it would be difficult for Jesus to be less sympathetic with Jews than later Christianity was).

With this as his sensibility and major argument, Wright moves forward to his goal of providing the context for Jesus by discussing Judaism at this time period. Wright rightly considers “Judaism” as not limited to particular actions but instead is a true “worldview” in the modern sense:

The main feature of first-century Judaism, within Palestine at least, was neither a static sense of a religion to which one adhered, nor a private sphere of religion into which one escaped, but a total worldview, embracing all aspects of reality, and coming to sharp focus in a sense of longing and expectation, of recognition that the present state of affairs had not yet (to put it mildly) seen the full realization of the purposes of the covenant god for his people.[3]

Here Wright develops a concept of a “worldview” – that he has discussed in earlier chapters and argues that such a worldview was based upon the relationship between the people and their covenant God. Here, Wright does a good job showing some of the basic ideas of Judaism at the time of Jesus.

The concept of “Judaism” as a worldview is Wright’s strength. This idea is one that tries to take seriously the issue of the diversity of differing opinions among Jews while at the same time recognizing some kind of commonality – it seemed that most Jews did not think that the sectarian differences that divided them actually divided them so much that they would not call each other “Jews” any longer (with perhaps a few exceptions). Rather than using anachronistic terms like “religion” or “race,” Wright uses the concept of a worldview to express this idea.

The weakness of this “worldview” approach is that it too is an anachronism – though it should be noted that just because something is new does not necessarily make it wrong. The problem with the “worldview” is that it locks Wright into a few ideas that are less defensible. Most importantly, a worldview is unified. Wright argues that Judaism was a single thing at the time of Jesus:

I shall argue later that Christianity’s link with Judaism is not with one particular sub-group and set of literary remains, but with Judaism as a whole, whether in reaffirmation, confrontation or redefinition. And Judaism as a whole is seen as much if not more in its symbolic world and political movements as in its (possibly idiosyncratic) literary remains.[4] 

Here Wright expresses his clear opinion – Judaism was an essential thing as a whole at the time of Jesus (probably in the way that he considers modern Christianity a single thing despite denominational differences). Here is where Wright makes his largest mistake. I completely agree that a Pharisee did not probably see a Sadducee as someone who was no longer a Jew, but that did not mean they had the same worldview. There certainly were major differences of opinion among them and it is difficult to argue that they even held the same symbolic world.

Wright’s emphasis on “story” seems to be why he feels it is acceptable to consider a single worldview for all of the different Jews at the time of Jesus. Wright’s implicit argument (though he leaves it to the reader to infer) is that because all Jewish groups shared a common history as expressed in the Hebrew Bible, then it is logical that they ought to have the same worldview. He shows that he holds this view by arguing that even the Jesus movement has the same worldview because, after all, it claims the story as well:

In fact (this is the fourth point), first-century Judaism and Christianity have a central worldview-feature in common: the sense of a story now reaching its climax. And, most importantly, it is the same story.[5]

Wright has now gone too far – he has suggested monolithically, that if one shares a common mythos, then one shares the same worldview. In the early to mid (and maybe even late) first century, there is some argument that Jewish Christianity shared a worldview with different Jewish groups. However, in the second century – when Christians continued to share the same “story” and thus should share the same “worldview,” the differences between Jews and Christians were astounding. The idea that these two religions (and by that time they were clearly two different religions) held the same worldview either is laughable or it dilutes the concept of a worldview to a point that there is little reason in using the term.

After presenting this idea of worldview, then he continues into the Roman society of Jews in the first century. Wright does point out many key points that were challenges for Jews in Palestine. He rightly discusses the challenge of the monotheism of the Jews and its struggle to fit in with a polytheistic culture.[6] He further argues that for Jews the challenge was one of self-identity – how is it that Jews would adapt to this changing world around them. Wright presents the point well:

The self-understanding of Jews at this time was determined by the pressing question as to whether they should attempt to be distinct from this alien culture, and if so how. Pressure to assimilate was strong in many quarters, as is suggested by the evidence for Jews attempting to remove the marks of circumcision.[7]

Here, I completely agree with Wright that the challenge for most Jews was the measured response to this culture that was thrust upon them. Some embraced Hellenistic culture, others avoided it, and others found a place in between. Here Wright is correct.

What Wright does not do is explain the main cause of some Jews Hellenizing – the Babylonian Exile. In 586 B.C.E. the vast majority of the citizenry of the country Israel were taken from the land into exile having been conquered by the Babylonian empire. In 539 B.C.E., Cyrus the Great of Persia – for reasons completely separate from anything dealing with Israel – conquered the Babylonians and issued the Edict of Cyrus allowing all conquered people to go back home. Where this becomes difficult for Jews in antiquity is that many Jews did not go home – they continued living in diaspora – away from the land of Israel. These Jews (and it is at this time of 539 that it is appropriate to call them “Jews”), the ones living throughout the empire, still considered themselves fully Jewish and continued practicing standard Torah procedures. However, they also very often accommodated to culture around them – at least to some extent.

Wright is formally only interested in Judaism in Palestine in the first century. However, to consider Jews in Palestine without considering Jews in diaspora is a modern rather than ancient dichotomy. The reason that the management of how much they should accommodate to culture around them was so difficult is that many Jews – still remaining Jews – living throughout the world had accommodated quite a lot and were very frequently prospering. Jews in Palestine were aware of this situation and it caused a variety of different ideas – hardly “one worldview.”

On the whole, Wright’s analysis is an example of many depictions of Judaism in the first century that have been presented in the past 30 years by Christian authors. It attempts to manage the data about Judaism and then simplify it to a key point about what “the Jews” believed. In point of fact, Jews had a widely varied religion in the first century. There certainly were some points of continuity between them, but it is more important to see their differences than their similarities in some ways. It seems that Wright has done this for one particular reason – it is easier to understand Christianity if it is paired with a clear “Judaism” that is one thing for an easy counterpoint. In the coming chapters, Wright will discuss Judaism’s complexities more carefully, but throughout the discussion, it will be constrained by this idea of “worldview.”

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[1] NTPG, 148.

[2] Ibid., 148.

[3] Ibid., 148-149.

[4] Ibid., 150.

[5] Ibid., 150.

[6] Ibid., 155.

[7] Ibid., 158.

Chapter 5 – “Theology, Authority and the New Testament”

[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 final “theoretical” chapter in his series on Christian Origins is one considering New Testament theology. Unlike his previous chapters on the theory, I have far fewer challenges to his theory of what theology is or how it applies to the New Testament. While I certainly have frustrations with Wright on a variety of levels, here he is internally consistent and I will not be attempting to show that he is presenting something insufficient as theory. This is a vast improvement over his first four chapters of his book. That being said, this chapter has a major problem in how he tries to apply that theory of theology to modern readers. His argument for the authority of the text as more universal than a basic matter of faith is important because it provides a case study from common tropes in the study of the New Testament.

As a historian of early Christianity teaching at a Christian college, students are often shocked when I take a historical/sociological approach to the study of the Christianity. Students (and some colleagues) are shocked that I am not taking a “theological” approach to the subject. When pressed for what a “theological approach” means and why that is so different from the historical/sociological, the student has trouble saying anything beyond a vague discussion of “truth.” N.T. Wright’s chapter provides an excellent case study in what people often mean when they discuss a “theological” approach and what it is they are hoping to see in that approach that is different from the historical. This analysis will show the strengths and weaknesses of that approach.

First, the idea that a historical/sociological approach to Christianity will not include theology is ridiculous. Theology is the study of how humans interact with God. As such, any discussion about a religion is a discussion about theology. Wright defines theology in a way that is relatively standard and helpful:

It is possible to suggest a sharply focused definition of theology: theology is the study of gods, or a god. It is also possible, and today quite common, to work with a more wide-ranging definition, interacting with elements of the worldview pattern: theology suggests certain ways of telling the story, explores certain ways of answering the questions, offers particular interpretations of the symbols, and suggests and critiques certain forms of praxis.[1]

Wright’s definition is helpful here – he folds theology within the pattern of worldview. He suggests that theology is a way of understanding and providing ethical norms for how one lives one’s life.

It should be noted that Wright’s initial phrase that theology is the “study of gods” is simply inaccurate. Gods, being defined as “other,” does not allow for simple discussion of who they are on their own. That practice is mere speculation. Instead, theology is how the gods interact with humans. Wright later clarifies this point making this very claim:  

Theology thus tells stories about human beings and the world, stories which involve either a being not reducible to materialist analysis or at least a provocative space within the story-line where such a being might, by implication, be located. In the light of this story-telling activity, theology asks questions, as to whether there is a god, what relation this god has to the world in which we live, and what if anything this god is doing, or will do, about putting it to rights.[2]

Theology (or at least Christian theology) has no interest in discussing aspects about God that is unrelated to humans. Theology is instead a study of interaction between God and humans – both directly and indirectly. Here, Wright and I have no major disagreement except perhaps aesthetically in an argument.

Further, Wright and I agree that one of the most important aspects to understanding theology is not only what are the stated beliefs and interactions with God, but also the consequent beliefs that are usually unintentional. Wright presents this in the following way:

These basic beliefs and aims, which serve to express and perhaps safeguard the worldview, give rise in turn to consequent beliefs and intentions, about the world, oneself, one’s society, one’s god.[3]

The study of theology is important in understanding which beliefs were primary and which secondary – namely which were placed for the intended meaning and which were elements with unintended consequences. For example, no religion wants fewer people to be members of it. However, nearly every religion (at least nearly every branch of Christianity) is exclusive. Religions are exclusive as a consequence – the intended purpose was to establish identity of “who we are.” If we want that identity to mean anything, then boundaries have to be established to make clear who we are not – thereby necessitating exclusivity.

The problem with Wright’s analysis is when he tries to do more than describe the theology of the first century and instead begins to suggest that we should be able to know more about theology now than simply “this is what people held.” He chastises what he sees as the academic majority for not taking theology seriously. Wright pedantically suggests as such:

Many thinkers, politicians and even biblical scholars dismiss ‘theology’ as if it were simply a set of answers that might be given to a pre-packaged set of abstract dogmatic questions, but it cannot possibly be reduced to that level.[4]

He seems to have shifted foci. If he was discussing theology as the things that the writers of the New Testament were thinking of, I do not know of a single Biblical historian who would not consider it seriously and his statement would be nonsense.

Wright has pulled a classic bait and switch – he got everyone agreeing with him on the importance of considering the theological elements of the New Testament to then shift the conversation to a current state that we, the modern readers, need to adopt in order to read the arguments carefully. Wright rightly points out that theology is a normative discourse:

The whole includes a necessarily normative element. It will attempt not just to describe but to commend a way of looking at, speaking about, and engaging with the god in whom Christians believe, and with the world that this god has created. It will carry the implication this is not only what is believed but what ought to be believed.[5]

Again, this is completely accurate for the discussion of the first century – the New Testament was not written by people who were not thinking normatively – of course they were. The problem is that Wright now wants modern readers to adopt this very same approach.

Wright is offended by the idea that scholars avoid such normative discussion and that it is relegated to the matter of opinion:

[The academic study of Christianity] has been helped by the impression which is given, precisely within the post-Enlightenment worldview itself, that matters of religious opinion are simply private options which do not engage with the public world.[6]

Wright sets up a discourse wherein he accuses the academy (if indeed it rightly is one thing) of adopting a post-enlightenment view that considers religion as “private options.”

Quite frankly, Wright is correct that the academy views religion as something very personal. He seems to suggest that this is a new development and that it shows the failure of the academy. It is certainly the case that there were times in the history of Christianity wherein religion was not nearly as individual (meaning that people were far less creative in how they constructed their religious belief), but not really a time when religion was less personal in Christianity. That something is personal is simply to suggest that one has adopted it as a major component of one’s own worldview. The source and content of that (whether one thinks it was revealed by God directly, provided by the community, chosen by the individual) does not change the fact that it is personally held. What Wright seems to want to do is to chastise the academy for recognizing that some things are “matters of faith.”

Wright, of course, would never admit this – he would always suggest that some things are matters of faith – he simply struggles to discuss what makes this approach so different. This brings us back to the common trope that one should consider the text more “theologically.” This seems to mean that the teacher should assume everyone holds the same views as he or she does and then tell everyone what is normative about it. The reason this is so frustrating for a teacher is that the actual content is not tremendously different. If I teach a class telling the students “The Gospel of Mark considers x normative” is that really different in content than saying, “X is normative as expressed by the Gospel of Mark?”

Wright admits that the content is not primarily of major difference and instead it is simply a matter of authority. Wright argues that a major component of the “theological” is that of authority:

Since (a) stories are a key worldview indicator in any case, and (b) a good part of the New Testament consists of stories, of narratives, it might be a good idea to consider how stories might carry, or be vehicles for, authority.[7]

This seems to be Wright’s main purpose in discussing the “theological” approach – he wants to find a way that the text can be seen as authoritative for his readers. He suggests that this is like unto a 5 part play wherein we only have the first four parts and we are set to create the fifth. He argues that in such a system, there can be authority still present even though it is a human development by us (rather than the original play):

Nevertheless, there will be a rightness, a fittingness, about certain actions and speeches, about certain final moves in the drama, which will in one sense be self-authenticating, and in another gain authentication form their coherence with, their makings sense of, the ‘authoritative’ previous text.[8]

Here, Wright’s goals are made clear. If we follow his logic, the original 4 parts of the play are the “known authority” – namely the story of the Biblical text. The thing he wants “authority” over is the fifth part – how we are living our lives right now. When Wright discusses authority concerning theology of the Biblical texts, he doesn’t want to discuss the authority of the texts, he wants to discuss the authority of how we are living right now.

This chapter of Wright’s book is very helpful because this seems to be precisely what is challenged to me regularly when discussing the New Testament. The earlier rhetorical divide between “The Gospel of Mark considers x normative” and “X is normative as expressed in the Gospel of Mark” is not what people mean when they request the “theological” approach. They seem to want to know less about if the texts are authoritative – they want to know what is authoritative for their life right now. Rather than the two comments about the Gospel of Mark, they want a statement more like, “You should follow x and y” with a sidebar that reads “which by the way, happens to be built upon an idea found in the Gospel of Mark.” The discussion is not a discussion of the content of the text, nor even its nature (as inspired or not), but rather, a discussion of how one currently ought to live one’s life.

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[1] NTPG, 126.

[2] Ibid., 127.

[3] Ibid., 126.

[4] Ibid., 130.

[5] Ibid., 131.

[6] Ibid., 137.

[7] Ibid., 140.

[8] Ibid., 141.

Chapter 4 - "History and the First Century"

[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.]

Chapter Four: “History and the First Century”

N.T. Wright’s chapter on his theory of history is dependent upon his theory of “knowledge” but unfortunately has even poorer execution than his theory of knowledge. His historiographic methodology is rife with very vague points and counterpoints that end giving Wright a license to dismiss any scholar with relatively little evidence. Further, Wright does not seem to take seriously the challenges that face the ancient historian.

Wright first makes his claim that those who question how well one can know history. He writes, “We simply can write history. We can know things about what has happened in the past.”[1] He has as his thesis for the chapter that history can be accomplished. He argues this against his straw man “relativists” who deny that we can know anything outside ourselves. This reading, of course, depends upon the idea that “knowledge” according to “relativists” is static. One assumes he is now referencing the post-structuralists he discusses in his chapter on knowledge. However, post-structuralist thinking does not consider “knowledge” all one thing – it is surely the case that Peter Ochs considers true knowledge something that can be known only in the present time for the present person about oneself – it cannot be something that transcends. However, one would not find that so minimalistically – just because we cannot know that water is blue the same way we can know “who I am” does not mean that we cannot know anything about water at all.

Wright uses this straw man of “relativism” to vaguely challenge those he is not interested in struggling with. He minimizes this challenge to the concept that the New Testament is a biased document. He writes the following:

The fear that ‘actual events’ will disappear beneath a welter of particular people’s perceptions is a fear of this sort, and is to be rejected as groundless. As a particular example, it must be asserted most strongly that to discover that a particular writer has a ‘bias’ tells us nothing whatever about the value of the information he or she presents. It merely bids us be aware of the bias (and of our own, for that matter), and to assess the material according to as many sources as we can.[2]

Wright is certainly correct – that a bias is not the same as knowing nothing. However, that is not the challenge that Wright himself develops as coming from the post-structuralists.

Wright seems to make a straw man argument in which he seems to assume that the primary argument against making positive statements about history is that history is interpretation rather than “bare facts:

Our apparently bare historical remark is the product of multi-faceted interpretative decision. Nor is this unusual. It is typical of all history. All history involves selection, and it is always human beings who do the selecting.[3]

Here Wright has simply made a null statement. He argues essentially that history is history. Of course it is something that humans construct – who else would be doing the construction? He makes his obvious point again: “History, I shall argue, is neither ‘bare facts’ nor ‘subjective interpretations,’ but is rather the meaningful narrative of events and intentions.”[4] Once again this is obvious – history is always a narrative that explains why it is certain events occurred.

The problem with Wright playing these games is that he gives himself allowance to do whatever he wants. He seems to suggest that because logical positivism has failed – and as much as we all love A.J. Ayer, it has failed – that then apparently there is simultaneously no objectivity and objectivity at the same time. He knows this would not stand up to any real scrutiny in the historical world and is so bold as to suggest that “new” principles be established for the New Testament.

What we require, I believe, is a set of tools designed for the task at hand, rather than a set borrowed from someone who might be working on something else. Just as the gospels and epistles embody genres somewhat apart form their closest non-Christian analogues, so the study of them, and of their central figures, are stakes which, though they possess of course several analogies with other closely related disciplines, require specialized tools, that is, a theory of knowledge appropriate to the specific tasks.[5]

Wright has essentially argued that the study of the New Testament should not fit within the normal category of the study of history. He wants a special status. That status, of course, can be like other histories, but when push comes to shove, he wants the ability to say that he can finally make the call because he essentially likes it.

To be fair to Wright, he does not suggest it is dependent upon whether he “likes” it or not, rather, he guises this in his theory about “story.” He argues that one considers something and decides whether it “fits” into the general framework of one’s story (which of course is developed from communal worldviews). Wright argues the following:

The task of the historian is not simply to assemble little clumps of ‘facts’ and hope that somebody else will integrate them. The historian’s job is to show their interconnectedness, that is, how one thing follows from another, precisely by examining the ‘inside’ of the events…To display this, the historian needs (it will come as no surprise) to tell a story.[6]

The “story” or “narrative” is a preconditioned idea that is presented and then it is simply a matter of “fitting” data into that story.

I appreciate Wright’s honesty in his approach – many historians do not come out and admit that they do this type of thing. Further, everyone uses a theoretical framework from which they judge their analyses. However, I do not appreciate his conclusion. Take, for instance, something that does not fit his general “story.” Here, he discusses many scholars who emphasize a disconnect between some of the data in the New Testament with the life of Jesus:

It has been assumed that we know, more or less, what Jesus’ life, ministry and self-understanding were like, and they were unlike the picture we find in the gospels. But hypotheses of this sort are always short on simplicity, since they demand an explanation not only of what happened in the ministry of Jesus, but also of why the early church said something different, and actually wrote up stories as founding ‘myths’ which bore little relation to the historical events.[7]

Wright has not completely explained why it is that such a hypothesis is so wrong – he simply says it is not “simple” enough.

The problem with Wright’s analysis is that he does not explain why it is that scholars have discussed disconnect between the Gospels and the figure of Jesus. I agree that not all of this speculation is particularly helpful; however, it is important to recognize that it is not some conspiracy to destroy faith. Scholars have suggested such a thing for a variety of factors. First, ancient history on the whole is very difficult to reconstruct. To simply suggest that a “simpler” explanation should be proffered is not very helpful – there are no simple explanations. We simply do not have enough data for the simplest explanation. All explanation requires a development of stories – one way or the other. Second, he does not tell the reader why it is that scholars came to such a conclusion – a large part of the reason is that the gospels are not consistent with one another. Someone along the line did shift form the historical event so that a theological point could be made. If this is the case, then it led some scholars to question how historical any of the gospels were. I, myself, do not necessarily agree with all of those scholars, but Wright simply dismissing them because he feels that it is a hypothesis that is not “simple” is not a very convincing argument.

Finally, Wright is not a theorist and it becomes blatantly obvious in this book. The remainder of the book is far superior – in that he applies his theory to actual texts. However, his theory is important to consider because of how common it is. I am thankful for Wright for taking the time to spell it out for us, but hopefully most readers will see many of its challenges.

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[1] NTPG, 81.

[2] Ibid., 89.

[3] Ibid., 84.

[4] Ibid., 82.

[5] Ibid., 96.

[6] Ibid., 113.

[7] Ibid., 106.