What we all need to learn from the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife story

Recently, Ariel Sabar wrote an article for the Atlantic that traced the origins of the brief papyrus fragment the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife (hereafter GosJesWife) which all but proved it was a forgery (we allow the “all but” only because in good academic discourse, you always allow at least a slim possibility that everything we think we know could be mistaken). Since this release of this article in the July/August issue of the Atlantic (found here: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/07/the-unbelievable-tale-of-jesus-wife/485573/), the popular world took notice of something that it had forgotten about since 2012 when the manuscript fragment was first made public. The popular outcry among lay Christians has ranged from a triumphant attitude about the ivory tower academics who accepted something too quickly without questions asked, to calls for all academics – particularly Karen King who originally published the fragment and since has suggested it is probably inaccurate (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/06/21/a-harvard-professor-made-the-gospel-of-jesuss-wife-famous-now-she-thinks-its-likely-a-fake/) – to completely disavow it. There was even a recent move to try and get the Harvard Theological Review – who published the first article on the topic to “pull” the article from its 2014 issue (how that would be done is difficult to fathom) (http://retractionwatch.com/2016/06/21/coptic-cop-out-religion-journal-wont-pull-paper-based-on-bogus-gospel/).

The importance of this strange chapter in academics is not actually whether or not scholars have egg on their face. Instead, the far more important discussion has to do with the way manuscripts come to us, and how manuscripts are discussed and distributed. The dark world of black market antiquities dealings makes the reception history of this manuscript – while it seems ridiculous to those unfamiliar with manuscript production – unfortunately is far too common.

This is a problem that spans the gap between “liberal” and conservative evangelical scholarship – everyone wants manuscripts so long as they can control them and make money or prestige off of them. To do that, one needs to obtain manuscripts which, if they were found after 1970, is officially illegal without going through the proper channels in their country of origin, based upon the UNESCO agreement for the trafficking of cultural artifacts. Where then are these manuscripts arising? Some are from finds from before 1970 when travelers could simply put whatever they found in their own suitcases and have kept them in private or public collections without ever having been published, others have been properly excavated and many of those documents are in the museum of antiquities in Cairo, and then the most common “new” manuscripts that  arise are illegally trafficked out of the country through very dark circumstances and then the owners simply claim that they have been in private collections since before 1970.

Usually on the way to scholars, a manuscript will change hands at least 4-5 times under rather questionable circumstances. Then some antiquities dealer will hold out for a lot of money that the scholarly community struggles to come up with. Codex Tchacos for example (which among its contents is the Gospel of Judas) was held by an antiquities dealer for nearly 30 years because he demanded 10 million dollars for his manuscript. Further, the dealer (who we only know by a pseudonym) would not answer questions about the provenance of the text – it was a simple caveat emptor to its fullest extent. The scholars – when they finally did get someone with enough money to buy the manuscript could either buy it “as is” or have nothing at all.

Further complicating matters, good antiquities dealers know what they are actually selling. They won’t allow scholars to read through and look carefully at the manuscripts that they are selling. They know that the most valuable thing they have is the unique information in the manuscript itself. If scholars know what it contains and are able to write a transcription of the text (or even a summary), the value of the manuscript itself declines. Usually, scholars are allowed brief periods to look at a manuscript and make a very fast recommendation to their sources of funding as to whether this should be bought or not. For example, the 4 scholar team who looked at the Gospel of Judas had only 2 hours and they were not allowed to take any notes. Not surprisingly, they struggled to identify all the texts (particularly those which they had never seen before). Therefore, when scholars are buying these manuscripts, they are buying something on no questions asked as to where it came from and even no real questions asked as to what the manuscripts contain.

The final element of these antiquities deals which is often not appreciated is the patience of antiquities dealers. The owner of the gospel of Judas waited nearly 30 years for someone to come up with his price. Currently, the British Museum has shoeboxes full of fragments of the Oxyrhynchus papyri which remain unpublished and that they demand steep prices to publish. The popular idea that there are armies of graduate students scouring libraries and publishing everything that they see is simply inaccurate. It is a business that requires a lot of money and a lot of trust – or possibly not actually “trust” but often a strong stomach that allows one to take something without asking any questions.

This is what happened to Karen King when she was presented with this GosJesWife fragment. The owner said that it was a fragment of a larger whole and he was willing to allow her to borrow the manuscript for 5 years and publish on it in order to advertise the “larger whole” which the owner would then demand a very high sum for. Karen King then had to make a decision – do you go forward with this or not? Given the “no questions asked policy” – she did what a good scholar would do – she presented the piece to two experts (Roger Bagnall and AnneMarie Luijendijk) who felt the manuscript was plausible enough to move forward with the publication. Before we judge any of them too harshly (even though there were some elements they missed), we should note that this is not very different from most manuscript purchases. What did the Tchacos group really know about the provenance of the Gospel of Judas? Truly, very little until after they purchased it. Further, the CEOs of Hobby Lobby who are currently buying up any and every manuscript they can get their hands on to create an evangelical museum are asking few questions – according to Candida Moss, so few that they are actually under investigation for breaking the UNESCO agreement (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/01/can-hobby-lobby-buy-the-bible/419088/).

So, while we can critique Karen King on a lot of things, her taking this manuscript without knowing “all the details” is really not a very fair one. If scholars were to wait for that, things would never get published. One of the things that this recent Atlantic article has shown is that it is certainly possible to learn more about manuscript origins than we have probably done so in the past, but if one looks carefully at Sabar’s article, you will quickly see why it is that it is more a theoretical possibility than an actual one. Look at how many trips Sabar took to Europe and how many people he ran into and he wore down over the course of four years of investigating. How much did that cost? Are scholars able to come up with that? We happen to know the provenance well now of two documents: The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife and Codex Tchacos – which of course includes the Gospel of Judas. Both of these manuscripts were bestsellers and created a media frenzy. National Geographic and the Atlantic took notice. There was money to be made in learning about this. Can the same be said of Zostrianos? Or worse yet any small fragment from later than the 4^th century of a New Testament text? It won’t be a “foundational” fragment for our present New Testaments, so why bother the expense? Further, notice who it was that did this investigation. In both cases, experienced and trained investigative journalists (Herbert Krosney and Ariel Sabar). With all of that, though, if you read carefully Sabar’s narrative, the entire story falls apart if Walter Fritz doesn’t start giving information. Could scholars really be expected to do this? They tried with the Nag Hammadi library – a team of scholars, most notably James Robinson worked hard to try to find the origins of the Nag Hammadi library and came up with the now infamous story of a certain Mohammed Ali who was digging for fertilizer in the Fayum of Egypt and hit something hard. This then went through a series of misfortunes (in which some of the manuscripts were destroyed) before they findall found their way to scholars’ hands. This investigation, though, was not as thorough as Krosney’s and has been questions. Nicola Denzey with her graduate student Justine Blount recently challenged nearly the entire narrative.[1]  Is it really fair to ask Karen King to do something that very few scholars have the time, resources, or skill to do?

The second great cry recently has been the “serves you right, you liberal scholars” trope. This is the more disturbing of the discourses. The call for shame and even for asking the article to be removed from scholarly discourse is simply not how manuscripts are distributed. All manuscripts are not distributed before they are published. Some try to do this to make money (like the National Geographic with the Gospel of Judas) and others really want to make very little money, but they do want the academic credit to be attached to their name – this is most notorious with John Strugnell who had a stranglehold on the Dead Sea Scrolls for many years. In order for something to be distributed, it has to be published. Further, scholars of course want credit for their publications. Scholars are required to publish original work, the gift of a “new” manuscript is that it is automatically original. Scholars therefore do want to publish it. Further, publishing a manuscript like this is a lot of work. Usually manuscripts are in pieces and deciphering them is far easier said than done (handwriting alone makes it difficult).

However, we should not confuse publication with a “ringing endorsement.” When King published the article in 2012 through Harvard Theological Review, there were immediately questions. The handwriting seemed wrong. It seemed to have been made with a brush or a stick. We had no examples of this being done in antiquity. There were real questions as to the contents – it was discover very quickly that it was dependent upon the Gospel of Thomas. How did it get access? Relatively shortly thereafter, it was discovered that a different manuscript in the same collection seemed forged – it was a fragment from the Gospel of John which seemed to be organized precisely the same way as the columns of a critical edition – which of course was not created until modernity. Then the scribal mistake was noted in the transcription of the Gospel of Thomas which was identical to a scribal mistake in an online version of the Gospel of Thomas. All of this made scholars nearly completely positive that the manuscript was a modern forgery on ancient papyrus.

What is important to recognize was that all of these discussions took place in published documents. This was done initially in blogs, but also in academic articles. New Testament Studies dedicated an entire volume to the GosJesWife papyrus. It was all printed and discussed. Karen King was part of that discussion. While she still held out some hope that the document could be original – until the investigation of Sabar – it wasn’t as if there was some kind of “cover up” conspiracy, or that without asking those “tough questions” from the author that scholars were so unanimously supporting this as authentic. Instead, they were coming to some of the same conclusions that Sabar did, just from the academic angle.

Scholars have discussed and debated documents for some time that are probably forgeries. The most infamous is the Secret Gospel of Mark, that a majority of scholars think is a modern forgery (possibly forged by Morton Smith its “discoverer” himself). However, that does not stop scholars from discussing it. However, it should be noted that I am unaware of any discussion of either the GosJesWife or The Secret Gospel of Mark that does not make authenticity one of the primary points of conversation. In King’s original article, before she suggests where this document could fit within Christian history and what the main themes might mean, she spends time discussing authenticity. The volume of the New Testament Studies was almost entirely dedicated to the question of authority. Therefore, the “serves you right” chastisement really is misplaced – what Sabar has done is provided scholars with an excellent data source that will inform any further conversation about this text (and yes, I do believe there will be further conversation). But Sabar did not open and close the book on this topic – it was up for discussion since 2012 when it was first revealed.

The lesson to all of this is that first, while the reception of history that Sabar uncovered for the Gospel of Jesus Wife seems unbelievable, one should compare it with the gospel of Judas – are they really all that different? If one compares the stories, really the only difference is that the one ended up being authentic and the other a forgery. The antiquities markets are awful places and very shady deals are made. Is it really better for scholars not to participate at all and the documents get destroyed due to lack of care (as happened with the Gospel of Judas)? The second lesson is that Sabar has given us a gift – he has done the hard work and spent the money to find the history of this manuscript. All we can do is wish and hope that it might be possible to do this with other manuscripts whose histories we know far less poorly. Being an outsider looking in (as I am not a manuscript expert), it is easy for me to demand more transparency – but is that really fair? Yes, we are all upset with the John Strugnells who wouldn’t allow anyone but his students to see the Dead Sea Scrolls and delayed their publication. However, the flip side is those manuscripts that remain in museums and libraries that no one has published at all.

The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife was a modern forgery, but it did the scholarly world a kind of service, it helped people care about manuscripts and has the potential to teach us all about the world of how manuscripts which are authentic have arisen for us.

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[1] Nicola Denzey Lewis and Justine Ariel Blount, “Rethinking the Origins of Nag Hammadi Codices” JBL, 133(2), 2014, 399-419.

Pauline Chronology: A study that gets in the way of meaning

There is an odd situation in academic circles at the moment concerning Pauline Chronology. The discussion centers around the use of Acts to construct Paul’s life as opposed to the data found in his letters. The reality is that the vast majority of that data is found in Galatians 1-2, but there are a few other moments found in other letters which are tangentially relevant (2 Cor. 11:32-33; 1 Cor. 15:8; 1 Thess. 2:16; 2 Cor. 12:2; Phil. 4:15; 1 Cor. 16:6). Further, these points are not just in tension between Acts and Paul, also, they are then triangulated with Roman history. The challenges with this is well known and there is no reason to go into depth on the topic here. What is interesting is where these discussions are happening. 3 decades ago, this was a widely discussed topic in academic circles.[1] Now, very few studies are being presented that seriously discuss Pauline Chronology.[2]  What is interesting is not that this topic has largely fallen off the discussion in academic settings, but that it persists so aggressively in educational settings. While very few are discussing Pauline chronology in an academic context, there is very rarely an introduction to Paul or the New Testament that does not have this as one of its anchors to the class. I, myself, was asked to do a thorough study in a doctoral class which was an overview of New Testament interpretative techniques. Why this disconnect? It is not as if the topic has come to scholarly consensus – indeed, if one places Bo Reicke against John Knox, then one will find next to no scholarly agreement.[3] Further, it is not as if topics which have no clear solution – which this does not – are forgotten in scholarship. Consider, for example, how many books are still being written on the synoptic problem or the historical Jesus – simply because there is no clear solution does not stop this from being discussed. Further, why, if this is so frequently cited in educational settings, is it so rare in academic publications? I argue that the reason is the goal of studies. Work son Paul are primarily interested in meaning and social setting. Unfortunately, chronology, being a modern reconstruction putting Acts and Paul together and then mapping it onto Roman history is not primarily about that. Instead, this is used for two possible reasons – apologetics about the inspiration of scripture (in the quest to try and show that there are no historical impossibilities in scripture) or as a case study for why books should be studied on their own – why it is that it is so frequently used in educational settings. The one thing that it is not used for, is to show the meaning of the text. If that is the case, then should we not be more proactive in ceasing from making this as crucial an educational piece? Should we not always focus on meaning rather than apologetics?

First, a few notes should be mentioned about the challenges of any Pauline chronology. Doing this is an incredibly difficult task. Further, the problem of Acts looms large – there is no way to get around it. The modern discussion of the chronology of Paul attempts to reconstruct the historical Paul in order to shed light on both the meaning of his letters and the book of Acts. This study of the modern reconstruction of the chronology of Paul is beset by challenges. First, the relationship between Acts and the biographical details of Paul’s letters need to be addressed. The two resources need to be collated and harmonized or prioritized in some systematic way. Second, a modern reader must use the details of Roman history that are known and apply those to the harmony earlier constructed. Third, one must measure and evaluate the sources of information presented in the study on historical grounds. To do that, one must recognize the rhetorical nature of the texts considered, as well as the modern challenges to authorship. While there are very different reconstructions of the life of Paul, one aspect cannot be avoided even by the most traditional scholars who value the historical approach of both Acts and Paul as well as the more reductive scholars who reject Acts and only build the chronology on Paul’s “firm” letters – any chronology of Paul is a modern reconstruction. Those who want to use all sources and value them unavoidably judge and deemphasize some over against others, and those who try to avoid Acts unavoidably continue to use it given its importance as the only narrative of Paul’s life from the first century. The reason for this is that any chronology is a harmonization in some sense based upon the dictum of John Knox: “The conventional chronology of Paul’s life is arrived at by harmonizing Paul’s intervals with Luke’s incidents.”[4]

The relationship between Paul and Acts can be characterized in basically three options:

1.     The book of Acts and Paul have no tensions which can be explained simply by proper interpretation.[5]

2.     Acts is valuable and should be used at all points where it does not contradict a specific piece of evidence from Paul.[6]

3.     Acts can be used, but only when Paul deliberately agrees with it – at all other times it is suspect and needs to be carefully analyzed.[7]

All of these positions have one major feature in common. They all prioritize Paul’s letters as historically accurate. They argue that while cultural memory can shift over time, Paul writing about himself must be accurate.[8] This makes the conversation less about the dichotomy between Paul and Acts and instead far more about the way in which Acts can helpfully or harmfully supplement Paul. One should note that an odd element of this study is that next to no one questions Paul’s versions of events – apparently Paul is always accurate and therefore any question needs to challenge Acts rather than Paul. This is a very strange position given how occasional Paul’s letters are – especially Paul’s letter to the Galatians.  

The largest critique of the current study is the major gap that lies on one side of the data. It is universally held that Acts is a rhetorical narrative that at the very least emphasizes and includes certain data rather than other pieces of data to further its goals. Therefore, the data presented in Acts is looked at and interpreted rather skeptically. It is surprising, therefore, that the same is not true for Paul’s account of what happened. While it is certainly true that Luke-Acts has theological interests for a particular situation, it is hard to believe that Acts is as specific of a rhetorical situation as Galatians is. Why is Galatians – and particularly the trips to Jerusalem not looked at from the same rhetorical critical angle? It seems that the interest of many scholars to try and avoid some of Luke’s theological interests upon Paul’s work have caused them to uncritically read Paul’s letters. If both Paul and Acts were seen as interpretative challenges which could have some flexibility, perhaps there could be a far more productive study than simply prioritizing one over against the other.

The second critique is less how the chronologies are reconstructed as to how they are used. The goal of the study of the New Testament should be the enlightenment of the meaning of the text. As it stands, too much of the conversation is simply about the historical reconstruction of Paul’s life. The problem is that this is not a study of the New Testament – it is a study behind the New Testament. It is certain that Paul led an interesting life and the more we can know about it, the better we can understand his work. However, it is striking how infrequently such is done in this study. With the exception of the Pauline collection, very little of the analyses overviewed here focus on interpreting Paul’s letters very carefully. They are very quick to show how this study enlightens us to the redactional themes that Luke-Acts is presenting, so why not Paul as well? How would this help us understand passages such as 2 Cor. 11 (is Paul really a poor speaker as he suggests, or is a tremendous speaker as Acts suggests and he is being sarcastic)? Is there much more that can be said? Does Paul’s personal narrative really help us understand his letters?

The answer, of course, to this is that the study of Pauline Chronology – as Knox points out – is not about either Acts or Paul. It is in trying to combine them. People have all kinds of issues where they do this, even if they claim they are not. For example, the “conflict-resolution” between Paul and the Jerusalem Apostles is often described. It should be noted that neither Acts nor Paul ever discuss this. Paul discusses conflict with no suggestion it is ever resolved whereas Acts does not present any substantive conflict in any measure. However, most all scholars will look to some kind of way that the two made peace (usually with the Jerusalem council – particularly for those who think that Paul has presented the Antioch incident out of order in Galatians 2 and that the Jerusalem council occurred after the fact). What should be noted, however, is that in an attempt to try and explain a phenomenon, we are not studying either text. We are reconstructing a social situation we aren’t sure even happened.

This leads us to the question as to why we use this study in our classes. I, myself, have for several years in my Introduction to the New Testament used Paul’s “conversion/call” experience as a case study for discussion – comparing Acts 9 and Galatians 1-2. Why is it that this is done so frequently in class, but not in our scholarship? If it is heuristically valuable for our students, then why not for ourselves? I argue that the solution should be twofold. The reason we use it for our students is because we want them to watch out lest they start conflating the two accounts without thinking about it. A comparative study of Paul shows us we should be careful to do that. The same could be said about the Gospels or any other book of the New Testament. We want them to see the theology of any particular book before doing any comparing and contrasting with other books. We fear that students will naturally harmonize passages and we want to illustrate why this is such a bad idea. Acts 9/Gal 1 is a fun way to do this. However, are we so different now? We should be honest that very few scholars of Paul avoid psychoanalyzing him. The New Perspective is sure that he was a pious Jew who simply received a call to go to the Gentiles. The neo-Lutheran perspective is sure that he saw a failure in the system of the law that most Jews could not see and therefore found a radically new solution. Both of these are trying to present something of Paul’s psyche. Neither of these positions are about the text – they are about the historical Paul. If we are going to play this game, we need to be honest about what we are doing. We are all conflating the two accounts and are trying to reconstruct a historical Paul. Second, we need to focus far less on Paul’s psyche and far more on his letters (or, for that matter Acts’s themes). We should focus on meaning as expressed in the text. Worrying about the psyche of someone we have never met is always going to be very speculative and will simply get in the way of meaning. The more we can focus on texts, the better. The more we do focus on psychologies of authors and, what’s more, chronologies based on precious few data points, the more we confuse our students and ourselves from our primary task of learning how to critical readers of the New Testament.

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[1] The best studies on the topic are: Jewett, Robert A Chronology of Paul’s Life, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979; Knox, John Chapters in a Life of Paul revised edition, edited by Douglas R.A. Hare, Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1987; and Luedemann, Gerd Paul Apostle to the Gentiles: Studies in Chronology trans. F. Stanley Jones, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984.

[2] The one recent exception which I am aware of is the following study: Tatum, Gregory New Chapters in the Life of Paul: The Relative Chronology of His Career, Washington, D.C.: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 2006.

[3] Reicke, Bo Re-examining Paul’s Letters: The History of the Pauline Correspondence edited by David P. Moessner and Ingalisa Reicke, Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2001.

[4] John Knox, Chapters in a Life of Paul revised edition, edited by Douglas R.A. Hare (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1987), 32.

[5] In this camp stands Reicke. Consider his view that the two accounts of the Apostolic council “basically agree” with no further conversation on the topic, Reicke, Re-examining, 17.

[6] This might be the “traditional” view as might be found in George Ogg The Chronology of the Life of Paul (London: Epworth Press, 1968).

[7] For this view see Jewett, Knox, and Luedemann.

[8] The only author closest to suggesting that Paul may not have presented something historically is Luedemann who does not actually argue that Paul has made a mistake, but that we have made a mistake in assuming that Paul’s account of the Antioch incident necessarily chronologically followed his second visit to Jerusalem – Luedemann, Paul the Apostle, 23.

When should we rewrite stories: what modern media can learn from Rabbinic literature

People love retelling stories. When they do so, they frequently add and adapt them. Some find this charming and enjoy the fact that another has added to the original narrative. Others are bothered and accuse the performer they are “telling it wrong.” This is particularly the case when it comes to jokes. One could note the way in which Jerry Seinfeld told one of Louis C.K.’s jokes during HBO’s Talking Funny[1] to see the way in which the way a joke, using the same words, can have an entirely different meaning. This retelling of stories is, of course, inevitable. Where it seems to cause particularly challenge is in media. When something is produced/published, it is troubling to many to “remake” it. One notes this in popular films. Films continue to be remade – probably with the expectation that a film that sold well once will probably do the same again (sometimes with disastrous financial results) – such as with Bad News Bears, Mad Max, 12 Angry Men, Conan the Barbarian, The Longest Yard, Father of the Bride, or 3:10 to Yuma. What is noteworthy is the way that these films change and adapt the original story. Some find this charming and worth watching. Others, however, are outraged. How dare they change such a quality story? This is even worse when there is an original book that presents a story and then is depicted later in film. The absolute horror that was the ending of the film Watchmen as opposed to Alan Moore’s original comic caused an uproar among fans. However, despite the protestations, this is constantly done and will continue to be done. While many hold to the loyalties of the original objects of their adoration and therefore are bothered when the new item “changes” the story, it might be helpful to consider a very different attitude toward media and stories. The Rabbinic sages from the second to sixth century CE (and later on, but later the history becomes a different phase that is out of my area of study) held a very different attitude about the value of narratives that can aid us in understanding how and why such stories can be changed without necessarily challenging the original narrative. What the rabbis offer, though, is a measured response. While they can respect an elaboration and adaptation, they also allow that we do not have to like all of it – it is acceptable if we also do not like it. But we value it not for “if it was the same or not,” but rather, what this new interpretation and narrative can provide or not.  

First, it should be noted that changing a narrative in its retelling is inevitable and valuable. Every narrative that is retold, should be told in a new manner. In fact, there is no way to avoid it. Every time one reads or one tells a story, it is always interpreted in a new way. However, rather than simply begrudgingly accepting this, it should go farther – it should be embraced. Those who try their hardest to stay “true” to the original by simply repeating the same thing as what had been done previously, their work is not valued. Take, for example, the remake of the film Psycho directed by Gus Van Sant starring Vince Vaughan. In this film, they chose to produce a shot for shot retake of Hitchcock’s original masterpiece in 1960. The result was, as one would expect, amazingly underwhelming. The question on everyone’s mind watching it was “why bother doing this? We already have that – but better!” Those who say they want the original story simply presented are wrong – they think they want that so long as they don’t actually get it. What they actually want is a retelling of the story that is not the original picture they say, but the attitude and feel of the original picture in their minds. This is necessarily subjective and it is not surprising that therefore the new interpretation does not satisfy many people. Rather than pretending we will tell the story “as it were,” it is worth it to add something – to show why this story matters to our lives.

This is precisely what the Rabbis did better than anyone. Rather than simply reading the biblical text and going home, they “rewrote” the Bible – they expanded upon it and filled in gaps that were missing. For example, rather than simply reading Genesis 1-3, they wove within this what we now call the Apocalypse of Moses. This includes many direct passages from the text and further elaborations. Indeed, the few pages of Hebrew Text becomes a full narrative that shows the motivations of all parties – the serpent included. This “rewritten Bible” form, of course, drops out eventually for the far more common (later) pesher interpretation first found at Qumran. This interpretation would be something far closer to what would be called “commentary” – to view a text as separate and then to have the conversation about it set off rather than simply intermixing the stories deliberately. How, though, is this really that different? The great rabbinics scholar, James Kugel, argues precisely that it is not.[2] Both kinds of exegesis (interpretation) are set to retell the story and apply in to one’s own day. Neither is trying in invalidate in any way the original story – in fact, we see both are trying to honor that original story by retelling it and reframing it to say something new and different.

It should be noted that Kugel has his detractors. Stephen Fraade has argued well that there is a fundamental different view of the original text in a commentary rather than the “rewritten bible” suggesting that it comes far closer to the way in which a text can be “closed” and that any midrash is fundamentally separate from the story. This would suggest something far closer to an idea such as an inspired text. I do not disagree with Fraade at all that the commentary form does allow for this. However, I would point out that while a commentary form does express this; there is no reason to suppose that a rewritten Bible form does not also hold this same position about the text. In fact, both forms are showing why the text matters to a modern world. To do this, they are happy to change it. The rewritten Bible form seems to be changing the text more deliberately – it is actually inserting things in the text. However, a careful study of any commentary on a text has the same effect. Where is the focus of reading? What is the “correct” meaning therein? All of this depends upon the commentator pointing out one thing rather than another. We must abandon the idea that any reader is not “changing” the text – of course they are changing it. If the goal is to understand what it meant to the original hearers or original author, then certainly we are changing it. We can guess and hope we have that correct, but we never know.

Readers are not changing the text beyond repair, though. The way a modern retelling presents the story – if the story is worth its being retold, does not eclipse the original message. The original narrative still exists. The original film exists even if there is a remake. The text is written and stands even if there is a retelling. There is not a danger that we will lose the original. It is possible that a modern remake will eclipse the original’s popularity – that often does happen, for example, most people are very familiar with Martin Scorsese’s the Departed without any idea that it is a remake of Wai Keung Lau and Siu Fai Mak’s Internal Affairs. However, just because The Departed exists does not challenge the existence of the original film. In fact, Scorsese made the film because he liked the original so much. Of course, he changed things. That, however, does not challenge the fact that the original exists.

Some stories, are updated to mean something to a modern audience. For example, the brief 15 issue run of “Six Gun Gorilla” as a British serial in 1939 in Wizard magazine (author unknown), presents a story of a gorilla who has learned to shoot a gun and is seeking the murderers of his master. It is an absurdist story which tries to depict the “old west” from a different angle by making the protagonist someone who cannot talk nor able to figure very much out (after all, he is a gorilla). This went out of copyright in 2013, and Boom! comics rewrote the story into a very different tale.[3] This new story is a science fiction comic that is about the pervasive power of stories and how they shape the world around us. They use the gorilla as a highly intelligent being who is able to break with the laws of nature (granted, it is a science fiction world where they exist “between worlds” so by “laws of nature” I mean the gorilla is able to break the laws of this in between land that all the other characters must follow). What Boom! has done is to completely rewrite the story into something entirely different, while at the same time retaining the very large themes of the original story. The amazing thing in the Wizard in the original run is that what makes the story interesting is the way that the gorilla is something that breaks all the laws of nature – a gorilla residing in Colorado, being able to shoot a gun, hunting down and killing armed men, and having a hide hard enough to withstand bullets. This is not a real gorilla and clearly not meant to be one. Instead, the story is about something that does not fit but wants to make things right. The comic has changed basically everything about the story, except for its reference to it (there is even a picture of the original newspaper in the comic). However, they do it in such a way as it shows the flexibility and value to the original story. It is not an affront to the original to tell this story – it simply is presenting a new story with a theme that is different, but still in connection with it.

All of this is far more changes to a narrative than the rabbis probably would have been to a Biblical text, however, one should not underestimate them. One should look carefully at the “rewritten bible” form in the so called “Old Testament pseudepigrapha.” These are narratives that have been discovered which are frequently alternate narratives about the Hebrew Bible. Formally, these were mostly written before the codification of the Mishna, so they are not formally “rabbis” in the same way (given the traditional dichotomy of those being called “rabbi” after the Mishna rather than before), but they are clearly from a similar tradition. These are Jewish authors who are speculating and imagining new tales as inspired by the original Biblical texts. These were never meant to be read instead of or in isolation with the Biblical texts – they were seen to be supplemental. That is precisely the attitude that one should take when seeing a remake. It is a supplement – there is no loyalty one needs to hold to the original.

All of this does not suggest that one has to like all remakes. Remakes can be bad. Original stories can be bad too. The Rabbis allowed for this. Just because it is possible to rewrite and present new ideas in alternate forms doesn’t mean they are all equally valuable. Of course not. However, they are either valuable or not valuable not because they are “too far” from the original story – they were seen as valuable or not valuable based on how useful the new story was. The new story was judged the same way any story was judged – as a practical guide or reflection for human life. This is precisely the way all stories should be viewed. The fact that this new narrative has a different perspective than the original does not make it automatically “better” or “worse” – it is just different.

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[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3CW35YPvSo

[2] See James Kugel, The Bible As It Was.

[3] Simon Spurrier and Jeff Stokely, Six Gun Gorilla (Los Angeles: Boom! Studios, 2014).

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.

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[1] RSG, 686-687.

[2] RSG, 720.

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

[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.]

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.  

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[1] RSG, 681.

[2] RSG, 680.

[3] RSG, 679.

[4] RSG, 588-589.

[5] RSG, 606.

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

[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. Due to time constraints, I can no longer do a “chapter by chapter” analysis and instead can only do a “section by section” analysis. This section, for example, covers 4 chapters.]

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.  

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[1] RSG, 448.

[2] RSG, 403.

[3] RSG, 450.

[4] RSG, 476.

[5] RSG, 550-551.