There is, in the Matt/Mark account, no return to the relationship with the Father which was marked, through Jesus’ entire ministry, with the address, “Abba.” I argued, in considering that tradition, that it marked the complete absence of that sense of God’s presence in Jesus. Jesus does not lose that sense in Luke’s account. Mark and Matthew draw Jesus’ last quotation from Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have your forsaken me?” Luke draws on Psalm 31: “Father, into your hands, I commit my spirit.”
There is no real way to account for this difference. The difference itself is stark; the reasons for the difference obscure. I have been so impressed, however, by the effects of “the strengthening angel” in Gethsemane, that I am inclined to speculate that Jesus’ continuing sense of attachment to his Father was one of the effects. Jesus prayed to be spared the brutal testing. Then, after the angel strengthened him, he prayed to withstand the brutal testing. I argue here that he “withstood it” so successfully that in his last moments, he retained the notion of God as his Father and himself as the agent of the Father’s will.
A second difference that may be related has to do with the “bandits” who were crucified with Jesus. They don’t appear in Mark’s account; they are mentioned as reviling the dying Jesus in Matthew. It makes me wonder what the Jesus who was so brutalized in the Mark/Matthew narrative would have said to the penitent bandit had there been one. What Jesus had left in that account was, “My God, for what cause have you abandoned me?” What would he have had for the penitent bandit?
In Luke, Jesus has been strengthened by a direct divine intervention. He still has access to that understanding of himself that makes “Abba” the true way for him to address God. And to the penitent bandit, he says, in my paraphrase, “I will be in paradise today (after my death) and you will be with me.” In Luke, those are his last words to humans.
Addendum
I have followed Brown’s account of Jesus in Gethsemane and on Golgotha, in Luke this year, to complement my consideration of Mark/Matthew last year. I don’t really have any more to say about Brown’s account, although I have benefitted from it immensely. I have been brought to think much more deeply this year about receiving the strength to endure the test.
I have thought, often, of Paul’s account of “testing” or of “being tempted” (same verb) in 1 Corinthians 10:13. In my account, the New Jerusalem Bible, it reads, “You can trust that God will not let you be put to the test beyond your strength, but with any trial will also provide a way out by enabling you to put up with it.” I have always thought of this in terms of “temptation,” a plausible translation, and in terms of “escaping from” the temptation.
But although the word is the same, it doesn’t make the same sense to me to think of Jesus being “tempted” rather than “tested.” And as I read it, it seemed to me that Jesus could either “escape from” the test or “endure” the test. In the one phrasing, it seems that the test (temptation) goes away; in the other phrasing, it seems that you continue to endure the test, that you do not break under it.
Now, quite against my inclination, I see that Paul says that God will provide me “a way out” by “enabling me to put up with it.” In this phrasing, “putting up with it” is the means and “escaping it” is the end. I find that jarring. Attractive, too. If it makes sense to you, you might note it as a comment because at least 19 other people are likely to need an answer as much as I do.
Showing posts with label Biblical Studies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Biblical Studies. Show all posts
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Monday, April 25, 2011
The PN in Luke, Part II
The previous post on the Passion Narrative (PN) in Luke brought us up to the effects of the angel who ministered to Jesus in Gethsemane. Here, I want to begin with what the angel did for Jesus and then go on to a much bigger question. Why?
In Matthew, the beginning of Jesus' ordeal in the garden is described like this: “…and he began to feel sadness and anguish. Then he said to them, ‘My soul is sorrowful to the point of death.’” Mark is similar, “And he began to feel terror and anguish. And he said to them, ‘My soul is sorrowful to the point of death.’” That’s not the way Luke does it.
Jesus is here portrayed “in agony.” Brown translates this passage, “And being in agony, he was praying more earnestly.” What does tbe Greek agōnia bring to us? Brown here follows Paton [W. R. Paton, “Agōnia,” Classical Review 27 (1913), 194] who argues that agōnia often meant the kind of agony that a runner in an athletic contest experienced just before the start. Hebrews uses this word in describing Jesus as the “forerunner” (Heb. 6:20) and in 12:1 compares the Christian struggle to “running the race agōn that is before us.” Another scholar compares agōnia to “a supreme concentration of one’s power in the face of the impending battle.”
It is hard, in considering this new perspective, to find language that does not trivialize the experience, but if agōn is the context and agōnia the preparation for the context, it does not seem too much to say that the angel serves as a trainer—someone to help Jesus prepare for the race before him. It is through the God’s intervention, in the appearance of the angel, that Jesus is able to concentrate his power in the face of the impending contest. The fierce trial does not “pass away,” but Jesus is sustained in his preparation for it.
That brings us to the role of sorrow (lypē) which is so prominent in Mark and Matthew, both of whom use perilypos to refer to Jesus. Philo argues that lypē destroys strength and power. The good person, like an athlete in agōnia, combats it because it weakens him in the face of the contest. So agōnia and lypē , which we are apt to see as two expressions of Jesus’ tribulation are, by this understanding, opposed to each other. Jesus' agōnia is crucial to surviving until the cross; his lypē weakens him so that he may not make it to the cross.
It seems to me that is what we have in Luke. This is a new idea about Jesus, but it is a very familiar idea about preparation. Any of you who have competed know that as you prepare, there are some feelings that move you toward readiness and others that move you away. Some modern athletes say they cultivate anger because it helps them. Simultaneously, they suppress the feelings of friendship they may have for their antagonists (agōn, again) because it will weaken them. I am not attributing such feelings to Jesus, but I am saying that the opposition of one feeling to another will be familiar to anyone who has prepared for a competition.
The remaining question is just why Luke presents this portrait of Jesus. A part of the answer can be seen in Luke’s portrayal of Christian martyrs. In Acts 7:55—60, Luke highlights parallels between the death of Stephen, the first Christian martyr, and the death of Jesus. Accounts of the behavior of Christian martyrs during the Roman persecutions also echo the behavior of the Lucan Jesus. If Luke is facing the issue of martyrdom on behalf of his readers, he will want to give them the example of Jesus to strengthen them.
Luke is, by this account, making Jesus the prototypical martyr. Jesus prayed to be spared the trial, but submitted himself to God’s plan. And so should you. Jesus received strength to endure by God’s direct provision (it was an angel in the case of Jesus) and so will you. Jesus shunned lypē in preparation for the awful contest and so should you. Luke may also have been sensitive to the Stoic tradition of suffering, in which any display of instability was viewed as a sign of weakness, or to have believed his hearers would have been affected by that tradition.
If Jesus is to be the prototypical martyr, some attention will also need to be paid to his own instructions. In Luke 12:11 Jesus said that his followers should not be anxious when the rulers haul them before the authorities because of their faith. Luke’s Jesus needs, for that reason, to be less anxious that the Matthean or Marcan Jesus or he will not set a good example.
In Matthew, the beginning of Jesus' ordeal in the garden is described like this: “…and he began to feel sadness and anguish. Then he said to them, ‘My soul is sorrowful to the point of death.’” Mark is similar, “And he began to feel terror and anguish. And he said to them, ‘My soul is sorrowful to the point of death.’” That’s not the way Luke does it.
Jesus is here portrayed “in agony.” Brown translates this passage, “And being in agony, he was praying more earnestly.” What does tbe Greek agōnia bring to us? Brown here follows Paton [W. R. Paton, “Agōnia,” Classical Review 27 (1913), 194] who argues that agōnia often meant the kind of agony that a runner in an athletic contest experienced just before the start. Hebrews uses this word in describing Jesus as the “forerunner” (Heb. 6:20) and in 12:1 compares the Christian struggle to “running the race agōn that is before us.” Another scholar compares agōnia to “a supreme concentration of one’s power in the face of the impending battle.”
It is hard, in considering this new perspective, to find language that does not trivialize the experience, but if agōn is the context and agōnia the preparation for the context, it does not seem too much to say that the angel serves as a trainer—someone to help Jesus prepare for the race before him. It is through the God’s intervention, in the appearance of the angel, that Jesus is able to concentrate his power in the face of the impending contest. The fierce trial does not “pass away,” but Jesus is sustained in his preparation for it.
That brings us to the role of sorrow (lypē) which is so prominent in Mark and Matthew, both of whom use perilypos to refer to Jesus. Philo argues that lypē destroys strength and power. The good person, like an athlete in agōnia, combats it because it weakens him in the face of the contest. So agōnia and lypē , which we are apt to see as two expressions of Jesus’ tribulation are, by this understanding, opposed to each other. Jesus' agōnia is crucial to surviving until the cross; his lypē weakens him so that he may not make it to the cross.
It seems to me that is what we have in Luke. This is a new idea about Jesus, but it is a very familiar idea about preparation. Any of you who have competed know that as you prepare, there are some feelings that move you toward readiness and others that move you away. Some modern athletes say they cultivate anger because it helps them. Simultaneously, they suppress the feelings of friendship they may have for their antagonists (agōn, again) because it will weaken them. I am not attributing such feelings to Jesus, but I am saying that the opposition of one feeling to another will be familiar to anyone who has prepared for a competition.
The remaining question is just why Luke presents this portrait of Jesus. A part of the answer can be seen in Luke’s portrayal of Christian martyrs. In Acts 7:55—60, Luke highlights parallels between the death of Stephen, the first Christian martyr, and the death of Jesus. Accounts of the behavior of Christian martyrs during the Roman persecutions also echo the behavior of the Lucan Jesus. If Luke is facing the issue of martyrdom on behalf of his readers, he will want to give them the example of Jesus to strengthen them.
Luke is, by this account, making Jesus the prototypical martyr. Jesus prayed to be spared the trial, but submitted himself to God’s plan. And so should you. Jesus received strength to endure by God’s direct provision (it was an angel in the case of Jesus) and so will you. Jesus shunned lypē in preparation for the awful contest and so should you. Luke may also have been sensitive to the Stoic tradition of suffering, in which any display of instability was viewed as a sign of weakness, or to have believed his hearers would have been affected by that tradition.
If Jesus is to be the prototypical martyr, some attention will also need to be paid to his own instructions. In Luke 12:11 Jesus said that his followers should not be anxious when the rulers haul them before the authorities because of their faith. Luke’s Jesus needs, for that reason, to be less anxious that the Matthean or Marcan Jesus or he will not set a good example.
Friday, April 22, 2011
The PN in Luke, Part I
For reasons of space in the title and because of Brown's use of the abbreviation, PN will be used to refer to "the passion narratives."
There are three gospel traditions of Jesus’s suffering and death in what Christians have long called “passion week.” [Footnote 1] I say three because the accounts of Matthew and Mark are so closely aligned that it makes more sense to call them a single tradition. Luke follows the pattern of Matthew and Mark, but makes substantial changes. It is those changes that will be the focus of this series of posts. John has an entirely different perspective, as he often does.
These reflections will be based on the work of Raymond E. Brown, The Death of the Messiah, Volumes 1 and II. All the exegesis and the suppositions are Brown’s. Where I am taking off on my own, I will say so.
I did my best to capture two moments of the passion narrative in the Matthean and Marcan tradition last year. I have attached it here, but it is long and difficult and it is as grim as Mark’s story is. I was hit very hard by the suffering of Jesus in that tradition. It is extreme and violent. The best translation Brown offers for the last sound Jesus makes on the cross is a “death scream.” Jesus is so distant from God in that tradition that he does not, at the end, address Him as “Father,” his normal address, but as “My God."
Luke follows the same sequence, but tells a different story. Let me start with a small detail from Jesus’ prayer. In Mark, Jesus “was falling on the earth” [Footnote 2] in the intensity of his grief. In Matthew, nearly the same, Jesus falls “on his face.” Same position, but less violently. In Luke, Jesus is not prostrate at all, but is kneeling in prayer.
Why this difference? The approach I am taking does not ask “What really happened?” I take it for granted that we cannot know that. I am asking, rather, “What is the story Luke is trying to tell us?” Most exegetes imagine that Luke had a copy of Mark before him (as Matthew did) and made the changes he needed to make to tell his story. That means that the most pointed inquiry can be put in the form of “Why did Luke change Mark’s account in this way particularly?”
Let’s look at another detail. How does Jesus pray that the cup pass from him? Brown summarizes the changes in the synoptic gospels like this. Matthew and Luke soften, in the preface to the prayer, just what the request is. Mark (14:36) has Jesus pray, “Abba, Father, all things are possible to you.” Matthew (26:39) has “My Father, if it is possible...” Luke has (22:42) “Father, if you desire…” It is the introduction of God’s desire (boulesthai) that marks Luke. It carries the tone of a preordained divine decision, somewhat more deliberate than thelein in Mark and Matthew. Thus, the Lucan Jesus is first of all concerned with the direction of the divine planning before he asks whether in the execution of that plan, the cup can be taken from him.”
For me, it is hard to feel the movement from thelein to boulesthai as significant. I can see it, but I can’t feel it. On the other hand, this is the second difference between the traditions we have noted and the difference between “falling prostrate” and “kneeling” moves in the same direction.
We see that same pattern in the response to Jesus’ impassioned prayers. In Mark, there is no response at all. Jesus begins his path to the cross without any notion of the “being in touch with the Father” that has marked his ministry. In Matthew, there is no response either, but Jesus as he leaves Gethsemane says, “Do you think that I am not able to call upon my Father, and He will at once supply me with more than twelve legions of angels?" Clearly, Jesus still feels “in touch;” he has not been abandoned. But in Luke, an angel comes to Jesus to strengthen him. Why?
We see that same pattern in the response to Jesus’ impassioned prayers. In Mark, there is no response at all. Jesus begins his path to the cross without any notion of the “being in touch with the Father” that has marked his ministry. In Matthew, there is no response either, but Jesus as he leaves Gethsemane says, “Do you think that I am not able to call upon my Father, and He will at once supply me with more than twelve legions of angels?" Clearly, Jesus still feels “in touch;” he has not been abandoned. But in Luke, an angel comes to Jesus to strengthen him. Why?
It is hard for me to say this exactly. Jesus didn’t feel any relief as a result of the angel’s support. The next line, which I will look at in the next post, is “And being in agony, he was praying more earnestly. And his sweat became as if drops of blood falling down to the earth.” This is after the angel appears. There is not the slightest scent of “Thank God, the cavalry is here” about Jesus’ response.
There are two things of interest, nevertheless. The first is the sense of direction, as we saw in the previous examples. The movement from Mark to Matthew to Luke is, again, a straight line movement. The Lucan Jesus does not despair as does the Marcan Jesus. He is not abandoned. He gets help. [Footnote 3] The second is that, in Brown’s phrasing, “an angel from heaven appeared to him.” It made me wonder how to understand “appeared.” Does that mean that the angel was always there and that Jesus’ prayer allowed him to see the angel and receive strength? Does it mean that the angel was not there and then, as a result of Jesus’ prayer, he was there?
I don’t think that mattered to Luke, but it makes me wonder whether God responded to the prayer by allowing Jesus to see the provision He had made for him, where before, he could not see it.
In the next post, I would like to continue by looking at what the angel did for Jesus and how it fits into Luke’s story of what happened.
[Footnote 1] [Footnote 1] You can read a lot of modern English prose without discovering that the verb we use as the root of passion, the Latin pati means “to suffer.”
Footnote 2] That is an awkward translation, to be sure. Brown keeps his translation a little closer to the Greek because he will be relying on very small differences in his analysis.
[Footnote 3] It is worth noticing, however, that it is “help getting through the ordeal” that is offered. It is Jesus’ prayer, “Nevertheless, not my will but yours be done,” that allows him to receive the angel’s ministry as “help.” If Jesus had fixed himself, as I have done in some crucial times, on defining “help” as “getting me out of this mess,” we would have to say that Jesus received no help at all. That is not Luke’s story and if we prayed the way Jesus prayed, it would not be our story either.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
This Land is Your Land; This Land is My Land
[Prefatory note: My blog has stopped accepting paragraph breaks, so each post I write is just one long paragraph. The long flat pictures I have stuck in here have nothing at all to do with the subject. They are as close to spaces as I could get. Sorry.]
A substantial number of the things I have written in my life have got me in trouble in one way or another. I don't see myself as someone who courts trouble--through it is true that we are the ones who know the least about ourselves, sometimes--but as a good person who is "misunderstood." It took me a long time to understand why I was being misunderstood because I said at the beginning what I was going to do and then I did it and the people who encouraged me at the beginning, assailed me at the end. Eventually, I came to an understanding of sorts. It isn't a solution. It doesn't seem to cut down much on the negative response, but it cuts down on my surprise about the negative response and at this stage of my life, even little victories are victories. 
The biblical project I am working on (playing with) at the moment is an attempt to put myself imaginatively in the place of the hearers of some well-known stories. The idea is that if you can hear the story the way the intended hearers heard it, you will learn something about the story. My first attempt was an attempt to hear the story of Lot and the angry mob that surrounded his house as he was giving hospitality to the messengers who came to warn him to leave. By my entirely speculative reconstruction, Lot did the honorable thing, as the story is told, by offering his daughters to the mob, rather than his guests. A reconstruction like that requires a certain effort to detach yourself from your own way of looking at things, particularly your own way of judging things, so as to be free to hear the story the way someone else might have heard it. I thought I might try just one more. I thought I would try the story of the Israelite people and their "taking possession of" the Promised Land. I chose that story because to my nose, it stinks of "ethnic cleansing." Obviously, that is not the way the story sounded to the Jews who heard it and who have celebrated it for all these centuries.
In my re-reading the story, three things stood out. The first is holiness. The God of the Israelites was not a "mixing together" God. It's not just cheeseburgers. This is the God who didn't want garments to be worn that were made of more than one kind of cloth. From that standpoint, a robe made of wool and cotton would have been just as reprehensible as mixing meat and dairy. The life of the people of God in the Land of Promise was to be a life of separation, a life of "not mixing things together." That is why the land needed to be "cleansed" so that the Israelites could live there without mixing.
The third is trust, particularly in situations of conflict. The people of Israel were not asked to conquer Canaan. They were asked to present themselves at each new border and watch while Yahweh conquered Canaan and gave it to them free of enemies, as a gift. God does the work of "genocide" and gives the resultantly open land to His people. Those are the three elements I find when I try to read the story as I imagine it was heard. God is active; Israel is passive. God achieves; Israel receives. God commands; Israel obeys. Notice that from this perspective, this is a story of heroism. Not heroism in battle; heroism in trust. How would you like to be carrying the Ark of the Covenant into the Jordan River running full and fast and not have the river stop for you until you had already put your feet in it? How would you like to go up against a huge alliance of your enemies on the grounds that God would deliver you from them. It is also a story of God's actions against evil. This is the God who ended the world by a flood and who burned Sodom to a crisp. God will not tolerate evil and that is what we learn from God's actions against the evil people of Canaan.
A substantial number of the things I have written in my life have got me in trouble in one way or another. I don't see myself as someone who courts trouble--through it is true that we are the ones who know the least about ourselves, sometimes--but as a good person who is "misunderstood." It took me a long time to understand why I was being misunderstood because I said at the beginning what I was going to do and then I did it and the people who encouraged me at the beginning, assailed me at the end. Eventually, I came to an understanding of sorts. It isn't a solution. It doesn't seem to cut down much on the negative response, but it cuts down on my surprise about the negative response and at this stage of my life, even little victories are victories. The biblical project I am working on (playing with) at the moment is an attempt to put myself imaginatively in the place of the hearers of some well-known stories. The idea is that if you can hear the story the way the intended hearers heard it, you will learn something about the story. My first attempt was an attempt to hear the story of Lot and the angry mob that surrounded his house as he was giving hospitality to the messengers who came to warn him to leave. By my entirely speculative reconstruction, Lot did the honorable thing, as the story is told, by offering his daughters to the mob, rather than his guests. A reconstruction like that requires a certain effort to detach yourself from your own way of looking at things, particularly your own way of judging things, so as to be free to hear the story the way someone else might have heard it. I thought I might try just one more. I thought I would try the story of the Israelite people and their "taking possession of" the Promised Land. I chose that story because to my nose, it stinks of "ethnic cleansing." Obviously, that is not the way the story sounded to the Jews who heard it and who have celebrated it for all these centuries. In my re-reading the story, three things stood out. The first is holiness. The God of the Israelites was not a "mixing together" God. It's not just cheeseburgers. This is the God who didn't want garments to be worn that were made of more than one kind of cloth. From that standpoint, a robe made of wool and cotton would have been just as reprehensible as mixing meat and dairy. The life of the people of God in the Land of Promise was to be a life of separation, a life of "not mixing things together." That is why the land needed to be "cleansed" so that the Israelites could live there without mixing. The second is obedience. God made a covenant with Abraham, true; and he engineered the escape from Egypt, true; and he preserved even the faint-hearted in the wilderness. But all the promises are contingent on obedience. The idea is that the place they had left, Egypt, was a sinful place and the place they were going, Canaan, was a sinful place and if, when they got there, they fell away from God's way, "the land will vomit you up" (Lev. 18:28 in the New Jerusalem Bible) as it did the Canaanites.
The third is trust, particularly in situations of conflict. The people of Israel were not asked to conquer Canaan. They were asked to present themselves at each new border and watch while Yahweh conquered Canaan and gave it to them free of enemies, as a gift. God does the work of "genocide" and gives the resultantly open land to His people. Those are the three elements I find when I try to read the story as I imagine it was heard. God is active; Israel is passive. God achieves; Israel receives. God commands; Israel obeys. Notice that from this perspective, this is a story of heroism. Not heroism in battle; heroism in trust. How would you like to be carrying the Ark of the Covenant into the Jordan River running full and fast and not have the river stop for you until you had already put your feet in it? How would you like to go up against a huge alliance of your enemies on the grounds that God would deliver you from them. It is also a story of God's actions against evil. This is the God who ended the world by a flood and who burned Sodom to a crisp. God will not tolerate evil and that is what we learn from God's actions against the evil people of Canaan. I think that if you start from those premises and really invest yourself emotionally in them, you can read the account of God's conquest of Canaan and his gift of "the Promised Land" to his people in a receptive and even in a celebratory way. I confess that I have never read it like that until this week. I have taken the position of an onlooker, watching these guys kill those guys--men, women, children, and animals. Mostly it seemed brutal and unnecessary to me and when I come out of the story and go back to my daily reading of The New York Times, it still seems brutal and unnecessary. But The New York Times does not start, as this story does, with God's demand for holiness in the sense of "not mixed together;" nor does it start with God's demand for the obedience of his people; nor does it start with the heroic trust of a passive people receiving the gifts from an active God. The Times begins, as it should, with the view that the Palestinians have a right to their land as do the Israelis and isn't it a shame that they don't seem to be able to compose themselves and resolve their differences? That is what The Times does and what it should do and if we read only The Times, that is what we will do as well.
That is not the story the Bible tells, however, and even the best of Times are the worst of Times.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Yes, but put yourself in my place
I’m going to say this little ramble is about “biblical studies” because that is the context in which it keeps coming up in my mind. This one is just a little bit scary—it scares me, at any rate—and I think it will scare you if you take it seriously. Here’s the idea. Every utterance and every written message is framed so as to be well received and it will be well received by anyone who has placed himself at “the right place.” By “the right place,” I will mean only “that place where the message will be well received.” And by “place,” I mean wherever that combination of issue salience and moral values are most deeply held and most highly prized.” Where that is the case is a “place.” A high school pep rally is a “place.” A bunch of dropouts hanging out in front of the bar smoking stolen cigarettes is a “place.”
When I was at Westminster College, there was a defensive back much beloved by his fraternity brothers. The player’s name was Dave Gooch. He was a walk-on and over time became a very good player. The frat friends used to give this cheer: “Hoochie, hoochie, hoochie! Goochie, Goochie, Goochie! Kill!”
Iambic trimeter, just as you would expect.
I want to think of where—at what “place”—you would have to be to really get and to really like that cheer. You’d have to have the context of the football game in mind, for sure, so you would know how to take the instruction, “Kill!” It would probably help if you liked Dave Gooch, which nearly everybody did. I did, certainly. He was in my very first Westminster Political Behavior Class and married a cute blonde cheerleader, who was also in that class. What's not to like.
Next, let’s move to bunkum; originially Buncombe and today, only bunk. Felix Walker, who served in Congress from1817—1823, is supposed to have given a long speech of which his colleagues disapproved because it took a lot of time and wasn’t about anything. Rep. Walker asked their indulgence. His constituents expected him to make speeches in Congress and this one was for them, back home in Buncombe County, North Carolina. I haven’t heard the speech, but I’ll bet it was full of whatever rants would have been taken as common sense or as “speaking the truth to power” according to local sensibilities. There may have been praises for North Carolina tobacco (unquestionably the best), for the graceful rise of the Piedmont, and for the resolutely clement weather. Rep. Walker said he understood that his remarks didn’t make any sense in the context of the Congress, but that he was “speaking to Buncombe.” His colleagues were not in the “place” where his remarks would make sense but there was a place where they would. If you were “there,” you would understand and approve.
The premise I want to raise is this: if you want to know what this speech means, you have to be in Buncombe. Or at least, you have to want to be in Buncombe and you have to know something about what it is like in Buncombe. I’m not arguing, yet, that anyone ought to want to do that. I am saying only that that is what you would have to do to understand the speech. Whatever claim this post has to its label, “biblical studies,” rests with this choice of an example.
According to the account in Genesis 19, Lot moved to the vicinity of Sodom when he and Abraham separated. One day two angels showed up, the two who were being sent to Sodom to see if things were really as bad as God had been hearing they were.
Lot was sitting at the gate of the city. In all fairness, an “angel” is any messenger from God. We have no idea what these messengers looked like, but I'm sure that tired and dusty from the trip were part of the situation. In any case, Lot invited them to stay at his house and, after a little celestial hemming and hawing, they did. And before it was even dark that night, a crowd of villagers surrounded Lot’s house demanding that his guests be sent out to be raped for the enjoyment of the crowd. “Sodom-ized” is a word we could safely use here.
We don’t know who Lot thought these messengers were, but we do know they were his guests and the duties of hospitality were taken very seriously in that culture and in that time. Lot must safeguard his guests. It is his duty. His counteroffer is that he will send out his two daughters, both virgins, for the crowd to treat as they pleased. Virginity is a value as well, of course, but daughters are property.
We find this horrible, of course. Lot shouldn’t have done that and if he did, it should at least have been kept out of the Bible. I’m not saying it isn’t horrible. It is especially horrible from our “place,” which is in a different kind of society and at a different time, which features different values. What I’m saying is that this is a really good chance to try to put ourselves in the “place” where the listeners to that story are.
Remember that the daughters are Lot’s property. If he had thought that the crowd could be bought off with the farm animals, he would certainly have sent them. He would have sent money if that would have worked. He would have sent any property he owned. Lot was ready to part with anything he could honorably part with—anything that belonged to him—to honor his pledge of safety to his guests. This makes him an honorable man, according to the values of that place and that time.
That paragraph is my description—speculation, really—of the place the hearers of this story occupied. From that place it is easy to celebrate the power of the messengers, the villainy of the villagers, and the honorableness of Lot, who put the duties of hospitality (to his guests) above protecting his property.(his daughters). He was also obedient to the messengers in getting out of town while the getting was good and he was caring in taking with him all of his family who would go.
I propose that we consider the virtues of learning what the place of the hearers was and that we consider the advantages of trying to hear the story the way we imagine they must have heard it. There is a risk, of course. In taking on their perspectives, we take on—only temporarily—their values. We imagine daughters as “property.” We imagine protecting our guests at all personal costs whatsoever. We remind ourselves that when Jesus told us to love our neighbors, these are not the neighbors he had in mind.
If you are not yet wary of the vulnerabilities to which this proposal will lead you, I ask only that you join me on the next foray, in which I try to see how the account of “taking possession of”—we would call it “ethnic cleansing” today—the Promised Land would be seen by the succession of Israelite Boosters’ Clubs to whom it was first told.
Friday, January 7, 2011
Who gets the price of redemption?
Well...it's complicated. Eventually, I think I am going to have to admit that the notion of "redemption" evolved to a point where "payment" is ambiguous and a receiver of the payment is absent entirely. That will make it hard to understand, but I'm not worried. This is theology. When the clarity of my vision fails or I fall prey to any of several contradictions in my thinking, I can just say that it's a paradox. Or a mystery. Or a conundrum. In any of those, the fault is not ME, so they all sound pretty good.
I started down this path some time ago with a consideration of a Greek verb collection with the root lytr- and meaning "to redeem." I looked at a lot of the ealy uses of the noun (ranson) and the verb (to ranson) and built, to help me understand the transaction, a five-step template. This template assumes we are considering an Israelite who has become a slave. It falls, then, to a kinsman to "redeem" him from slavery. The kinsman pays the current owner and frees the slave. This is a pretty simple transaction.
There is (1) a condition: slavery. There is (2) an agent (the kinsman). There is (3) a medium of exchange (a money payment). There is (4) a receiver of the payment (the slave owner). And there is (5) a final condition (freedom). That counts out as my children used to count when they were small. One, two, FREE, four, five.
The next step is going to have to be a look at the Israelite sacrificial system. The high priest makes a sacrifice which recognizes the sins of the people and follows the ritual prescribed for the forgiveness of those sins and restoring a ritual purity. This is a much more complicated process than redeeming the kinsman. We have a prior condition: sin and guilt. We have an agent: the high priest. We have a medium of exchange: the animal which is sacrificed. We have the receiver of the payment--I know it is not a "payment," but I am following the terms of the model as closely as I can because it is the only handle I have on this dilemma--i.e., God. And we have a final condition: purity, holiness.
For me, the way forward is going to run me into the account in Hebrews (Chapters 6--9) where Jesus himself in "the great high priest" as well as "the sacrifice." I'm not eager to go there, because I am sure it is going to tear up my model and I am still attached to the model, having just built it. So I'm going to take a step backward, instead, and look at a possible precursor to the "redemption" idea.
I came to this quite by accident as I was looking up the source of the English word scapegoat. Here's what I found. This is the account I gave in a series of papers I did for some years, called Words of Interest.
Scapegoat was coined by William Tyndale in the middle of the 16th Century, probably from the Late Latin, caper emissaries, literally an “emissary goat.” The Latin expression came from the Greek tragos aperchomenos, a “departing goat,” which came from the Hebrew sair laazazel. The Hebrew is probably built from three pieces. The first is sair, “a he-goat.” The second is l-, or “to,” and the third, azazel, which was probably the name of a desert demon. So, more properly, Azazel. I found the picture by googling it and I'm using it because it is exactly the sort of image I imagined when "desert demon" first came to mind.
This derivation—Hebrew to Greek to Latin to English—casts the scapegoat in an entirely new light. According to the account in Leviticus 16, the goat “absorbed” in some way the sins of the Hebrew people, after which it was sent out into the wilderness; sent “away from the settlement.” But as ecologists were the first to point out, there is no destination that can be considered “away.” This word has its point of reference at the Hebrew settlement and sees the goat as “sent to Azazel.” If this were the acknowledged transaction, rather than just an etymological recreation, it would be idolatry.
A folk etymology developed as well. When people had looked at the word for awhile, they imagined that it had been constructed by combining ez (a female goat) and the verb azal, “has left.” No more demon—just a goat with a bad sense of direction and a very heavy cargo.
That is where I left it in 1997 and I don't remember thinking of it since then. Until I started messing with "redemption." What caught my eye as I remembered this account is the presence of all five of the nodes. There is an initial condition, some collective guilt. There is an agent, the priests. There is a medium of exchange, the goat. There is a recipient (the God of Israel, for the winning goat, and the desert demon Azazel, for the losing goat). There is a final condition, collective purity.
It is the maintenance of a place that is "away" that caught my eye. It may well be, just speculating here, that the process which is now directed toward the God of Israel received its Off Broadway run with Azazel, the Desert Demon. The five steps all work. The ingenuity of the people of Israel in taking stories and characters from the accounts of other peoples and reworking them into the story of Yahweh, works as well. Maybe not as clearly as the Off Broadway, On Broadway model implies, but I do find it intriguing.
So at the end of this step backward, I find myself still interested in the fourth node. Who, in the First Century Christian understanding of redemption, plays the part that was played by Azazel in the sacrificial account and by the kinsman in the redemption from slavery account?
I started down this path some time ago with a consideration of a Greek verb collection with the root lytr- and meaning "to redeem." I looked at a lot of the ealy uses of the noun (ranson) and the verb (to ranson) and built, to help me understand the transaction, a five-step template. This template assumes we are considering an Israelite who has become a slave. It falls, then, to a kinsman to "redeem" him from slavery. The kinsman pays the current owner and frees the slave. This is a pretty simple transaction.
There is (1) a condition: slavery. There is (2) an agent (the kinsman). There is (3) a medium of exchange (a money payment). There is (4) a receiver of the payment (the slave owner). And there is (5) a final condition (freedom). That counts out as my children used to count when they were small. One, two, FREE, four, five.
The next step is going to have to be a look at the Israelite sacrificial system. The high priest makes a sacrifice which recognizes the sins of the people and follows the ritual prescribed for the forgiveness of those sins and restoring a ritual purity. This is a much more complicated process than redeeming the kinsman. We have a prior condition: sin and guilt. We have an agent: the high priest. We have a medium of exchange: the animal which is sacrificed. We have the receiver of the payment--I know it is not a "payment," but I am following the terms of the model as closely as I can because it is the only handle I have on this dilemma--i.e., God. And we have a final condition: purity, holiness.
For me, the way forward is going to run me into the account in Hebrews (Chapters 6--9) where Jesus himself in "the great high priest" as well as "the sacrifice." I'm not eager to go there, because I am sure it is going to tear up my model and I am still attached to the model, having just built it. So I'm going to take a step backward, instead, and look at a possible precursor to the "redemption" idea.
I came to this quite by accident as I was looking up the source of the English word scapegoat. Here's what I found. This is the account I gave in a series of papers I did for some years, called Words of Interest.
Scapegoat was coined by William Tyndale in the middle of the 16th Century, probably from the Late Latin, caper emissaries, literally an “emissary goat.” The Latin expression came from the Greek tragos aperchomenos, a “departing goat,” which came from the Hebrew sair laazazel. The Hebrew is probably built from three pieces. The first is sair, “a he-goat.” The second is l-, or “to,” and the third, azazel, which was probably the name of a desert demon. So, more properly, Azazel. I found the picture by googling it and I'm using it because it is exactly the sort of image I imagined when "desert demon" first came to mind.
This derivation—Hebrew to Greek to Latin to English—casts the scapegoat in an entirely new light. According to the account in Leviticus 16, the goat “absorbed” in some way the sins of the Hebrew people, after which it was sent out into the wilderness; sent “away from the settlement.” But as ecologists were the first to point out, there is no destination that can be considered “away.” This word has its point of reference at the Hebrew settlement and sees the goat as “sent to Azazel.” If this were the acknowledged transaction, rather than just an etymological recreation, it would be idolatry.
A folk etymology developed as well. When people had looked at the word for awhile, they imagined that it had been constructed by combining ez (a female goat) and the verb azal, “has left.” No more demon—just a goat with a bad sense of direction and a very heavy cargo.
That is where I left it in 1997 and I don't remember thinking of it since then. Until I started messing with "redemption." What caught my eye as I remembered this account is the presence of all five of the nodes. There is an initial condition, some collective guilt. There is an agent, the priests. There is a medium of exchange, the goat. There is a recipient (the God of Israel, for the winning goat, and the desert demon Azazel, for the losing goat). There is a final condition, collective purity.
It is the maintenance of a place that is "away" that caught my eye. It may well be, just speculating here, that the process which is now directed toward the God of Israel received its Off Broadway run with Azazel, the Desert Demon. The five steps all work. The ingenuity of the people of Israel in taking stories and characters from the accounts of other peoples and reworking them into the story of Yahweh, works as well. Maybe not as clearly as the Off Broadway, On Broadway model implies, but I do find it intriguing.
So at the end of this step backward, I find myself still interested in the fourth node. Who, in the First Century Christian understanding of redemption, plays the part that was played by Azazel in the sacrificial account and by the kinsman in the redemption from slavery account?
Friday, December 31, 2010
Redemption: It Isn't About You
Well, it’s not mostly about you. That’s a hard thought in an aggressively individualistic society, but I want to hold it for as long as I can.
I want to look at the long slow historical development of the concept. And having followed the history of this notion, I want to see what happens when what we mean, today, by “redemption” is put into the context where it was developed.
It can be done. I have done it. And so have you—although not, perhaps, about the notion of redemption. Here’s what I mean. It is like watching/listening to a TV program when suddenly a magnificent sound system with good mid-range speakers, a world class woofer, and surround-sound, kicks in. It isn’t that you are now listening to a different program. It is, rather, you’re your experience of the program is now entirely different and you might think, about the experience you were having before all that world class acoustic boosting happened, “What was I even taking the trouble to listen to THAT?”
I want to come back to that experience at the end, but let’s spend some time with the texts that will provide all that boosting. We’ll start early. I will be looking at the Greek noun lytron, “a ransom, a redemption” and at the verb lytrousthai, “to ransom, to redeem.”[1] I want to get a sense of the earliest situations to which those words were applied. You will find that they are amazingly clear. The noun, lytron, is “the means or money for a ransom.” (C. Brown). The ransom has to be paid for those, like the first-born of man or animal, which by sacred law” belongs to God. One “buys back” the first-born son or first-born animal by means of a sacrifice or a money payment. It is the payment itself that is designated by lytron.[2]
The same word is used for the redemption of a relative. I will pause briefly here for you to clear your minds of all the relatives you may have who are, for one reason or another, in need of redemption or who are by common acclaim, beyond redemption. OK. Done with that? Let’s go on. The redeemer—the Hebrew word is gō’ēl—was originally the closest relative who, as Colin Brown says, “as the avenger of blood, had to redeem the blood of the murdered victim.” He would be, in this case, the clan’s designated executioner and he would be “redeeming” the blood of his relative by finding and killing his murderer. Follow me here: the dead relative’s blood (his death) would be redeemed by this action. You may look at Numbers 35:16—19 if you are feeling a little woozy.
The gō’ēl was also the designated man to redeem the family possession that had been sold and even the relative who, under economic duress, had sold himself into slavery. That’s a lot of redeeming. What is going on here?
This makes sense only against the background of the covenant. Under the terms of the covenant, Israel is God’s unique possession and the people among whom He dwelt. The land, Israel, belonged to God, which was why it was never to be sold in perpetuity, but rather, had to be redeemed. If you can picture “land” being purchased by a modern developer and thereby removing it from the natural conditions and interactions of nature—rain no longer falls there, the food chain is broken as swings back and forth in the breeze, or would if the breeze still blew there—you will get a sense of what a big deal this is. Israel is unalienable. One could no more remove the land from Israel (because being Israel, the land belongs still to the Giver) than the land from Nature.
This redemption was both social, by the way, and systemic. The nearest relative had the obligation to redeem a fellow Israelite from slavery, but if for any reason that didn’t happen, the year of jubilee, the mechanics of which are laid out with painstaking detail in Leviticus 25. But if all else fails, a slave will be set free during the jubilee year, because that honors God who set all Israel free in Egypt.
We move now to the verb lytrousthai and get ready for the next leg of the journey. As early as Deuteronomy 7, this verb is used to refer to the redeeming activity of God. We begin to edge toward metaphor here and as a result, lose some of the concreteness. So long as there is someone or something in hock and someone obligated to pay for his or its return and some concrete means of exchange, everything was pretty clear. But early (see Deuteronomy 7:8 for an example), the verb refers to no material price at all, but rather to the redeeming activity of God in “buying Israel back” from slavery in Egypt. Isaiah uses the same metaphor (Isaiah 41:14) for God’s redemption of Israel from Babylon and return to Judah.
These early uses are difficult because not all the pieces of the simple model are there and because some of the pieces that are “there” are there metaphorically. Ideally, we would a condition before (e.g. slavery) a redeemer (likely a kinsman) a ransom (for slavery, however much money the market demanded for that particular slave) and a condition after (e.g., freedom from slavery). So Samuel was enslaved and Jonathan, his kinsman, paid $100 to his owner, after which Samuel was a free man. Concrete, clear, and simple.
In the redemptions above (Egypt, Babylon) there is a condition before( slavery) and a condition after (freedom), but no concrete actor and no payment of a ransom. It is notoriously hard to say what God is doing at the time He is doing it. Every religious community which conceives of one God who acts, does so mostly in retrospect. An easy way to see this is to compare the very dark prophesies of Isaiah and Jeremiah with the relatively mild prophesies of President Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright. The prophets of the Captivity are much more horrifying, but Pastor Wright’s was seeing God’s hand in his own time and so provoked a firestorm of protest.
Things get a good deal more complicated in the New Testament and I think I ought to take a fresh run at that one. There, the abstract notion of “what we are to be redeemed of” is taken for granted. It is sin. And the means of redemption are clear. It takes a sacrificial death. And the conditions before and after are conceptually clear, but practically contentious, as Paul discovered when he used them. In short, they require a fresh start.
We have looked at this closely enough, however, to come to a conclusion I want to share with you. All my life as a Christian, I have heard words of the ransom/redeem/redeemer group.[3] They have been abstract; often they have been used casually. And even when they weren’t casual, they were worn down by much use; they were trite.
Now I see that there is nothing casual about the relationship between God and Israel, nor between the people we call Israel and the land we call Israel. They are seen, all through the Old Testament, as fundamental relationships. I mean by “fundamental” what Thomas Jefferson meant by “inalienable.” You can like them or hate them, but they are there and nothing you can do can make them not there.
Similarly, I got a real jolt from realizing that it would be someone’s responsibility to redeem me, even from a slavery into which I had sold myself, because IT IS NOT RIGHT that I should not be free—being one of God’s people. It is not, in other words, about me. Nothing here speaks of market transactions. Nothing has to do with economic causes or effects. God and the people and the land are, being held together within God’s intention, a single entity and land and persons must be bought back to maintain the integrity of that entity.
Frankly, I find it overwhelming. You can see, now, why I used a metaphor as powerful as a new sound system in the introduction. I’m reading along, reading about “redemption,” and all of a sudden, the term falls into its full context and MEANS SOMETHING! The bass and the midrange speakers and the surround sound all kick on and I wonder why I thought I was listening to music before.
It isn’t an entirely comfortable feeling, but as I close out 2010, I wish it for you and I claim it for myself.
[1] It would be wholly misleading to so much as imply that I know any of the information I am about to retail to you. I am completely in debt to Colin Brown, of Fuller Theological Seminary, who wrote the article “Redemption” for the New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology and who serves as general editor of the English version of this masterpiece.
[2] I first stumbled on this when I noticed that Jesus’ parents had to “redeem” him because otherwise, he would have “belonged to God.” I had a very good time with that.
[3] In fact, like many others raised by Christian parents in Christian settings, I was puzzled when I first saw the word used in a secular context. I probably heard “ransom” in a story about kidnappers. I probably heard “redeem” in a story about pawnshops. This is considerably complicated by the expression about doing something “to redeem yourself,” which is also common. So I projected the religious meanings I already had on these new uses and was puzzled for a time.
I want to look at the long slow historical development of the concept. And having followed the history of this notion, I want to see what happens when what we mean, today, by “redemption” is put into the context where it was developed.
It can be done. I have done it. And so have you—although not, perhaps, about the notion of redemption. Here’s what I mean. It is like watching/listening to a TV program when suddenly a magnificent sound system with good mid-range speakers, a world class woofer, and surround-sound, kicks in. It isn’t that you are now listening to a different program. It is, rather, you’re your experience of the program is now entirely different and you might think, about the experience you were having before all that world class acoustic boosting happened, “What was I even taking the trouble to listen to THAT?”
I want to come back to that experience at the end, but let’s spend some time with the texts that will provide all that boosting. We’ll start early. I will be looking at the Greek noun lytron, “a ransom, a redemption” and at the verb lytrousthai, “to ransom, to redeem.”[1] I want to get a sense of the earliest situations to which those words were applied. You will find that they are amazingly clear. The noun, lytron, is “the means or money for a ransom.” (C. Brown). The ransom has to be paid for those, like the first-born of man or animal, which by sacred law” belongs to God. One “buys back” the first-born son or first-born animal by means of a sacrifice or a money payment. It is the payment itself that is designated by lytron.[2]
The same word is used for the redemption of a relative. I will pause briefly here for you to clear your minds of all the relatives you may have who are, for one reason or another, in need of redemption or who are by common acclaim, beyond redemption. OK. Done with that? Let’s go on. The redeemer—the Hebrew word is gō’ēl—was originally the closest relative who, as Colin Brown says, “as the avenger of blood, had to redeem the blood of the murdered victim.” He would be, in this case, the clan’s designated executioner and he would be “redeeming” the blood of his relative by finding and killing his murderer. Follow me here: the dead relative’s blood (his death) would be redeemed by this action. You may look at Numbers 35:16—19 if you are feeling a little woozy.
The gō’ēl was also the designated man to redeem the family possession that had been sold and even the relative who, under economic duress, had sold himself into slavery. That’s a lot of redeeming. What is going on here?
This makes sense only against the background of the covenant. Under the terms of the covenant, Israel is God’s unique possession and the people among whom He dwelt. The land, Israel, belonged to God, which was why it was never to be sold in perpetuity, but rather, had to be redeemed. If you can picture “land” being purchased by a modern developer and thereby removing it from the natural conditions and interactions of nature—rain no longer falls there, the food chain is broken as swings back and forth in the breeze, or would if the breeze still blew there—you will get a sense of what a big deal this is. Israel is unalienable. One could no more remove the land from Israel (because being Israel, the land belongs still to the Giver) than the land from Nature.
This redemption was both social, by the way, and systemic. The nearest relative had the obligation to redeem a fellow Israelite from slavery, but if for any reason that didn’t happen, the year of jubilee, the mechanics of which are laid out with painstaking detail in Leviticus 25. But if all else fails, a slave will be set free during the jubilee year, because that honors God who set all Israel free in Egypt.
We move now to the verb lytrousthai and get ready for the next leg of the journey. As early as Deuteronomy 7, this verb is used to refer to the redeeming activity of God. We begin to edge toward metaphor here and as a result, lose some of the concreteness. So long as there is someone or something in hock and someone obligated to pay for his or its return and some concrete means of exchange, everything was pretty clear. But early (see Deuteronomy 7:8 for an example), the verb refers to no material price at all, but rather to the redeeming activity of God in “buying Israel back” from slavery in Egypt. Isaiah uses the same metaphor (Isaiah 41:14) for God’s redemption of Israel from Babylon and return to Judah.
These early uses are difficult because not all the pieces of the simple model are there and because some of the pieces that are “there” are there metaphorically. Ideally, we would a condition before (e.g. slavery) a redeemer (likely a kinsman) a ransom (for slavery, however much money the market demanded for that particular slave) and a condition after (e.g., freedom from slavery). So Samuel was enslaved and Jonathan, his kinsman, paid $100 to his owner, after which Samuel was a free man. Concrete, clear, and simple.
In the redemptions above (Egypt, Babylon) there is a condition before( slavery) and a condition after (freedom), but no concrete actor and no payment of a ransom. It is notoriously hard to say what God is doing at the time He is doing it. Every religious community which conceives of one God who acts, does so mostly in retrospect. An easy way to see this is to compare the very dark prophesies of Isaiah and Jeremiah with the relatively mild prophesies of President Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright. The prophets of the Captivity are much more horrifying, but Pastor Wright’s was seeing God’s hand in his own time and so provoked a firestorm of protest.
Things get a good deal more complicated in the New Testament and I think I ought to take a fresh run at that one. There, the abstract notion of “what we are to be redeemed of” is taken for granted. It is sin. And the means of redemption are clear. It takes a sacrificial death. And the conditions before and after are conceptually clear, but practically contentious, as Paul discovered when he used them. In short, they require a fresh start.
We have looked at this closely enough, however, to come to a conclusion I want to share with you. All my life as a Christian, I have heard words of the ransom/redeem/redeemer group.[3] They have been abstract; often they have been used casually. And even when they weren’t casual, they were worn down by much use; they were trite.
Now I see that there is nothing casual about the relationship between God and Israel, nor between the people we call Israel and the land we call Israel. They are seen, all through the Old Testament, as fundamental relationships. I mean by “fundamental” what Thomas Jefferson meant by “inalienable.” You can like them or hate them, but they are there and nothing you can do can make them not there.
Similarly, I got a real jolt from realizing that it would be someone’s responsibility to redeem me, even from a slavery into which I had sold myself, because IT IS NOT RIGHT that I should not be free—being one of God’s people. It is not, in other words, about me. Nothing here speaks of market transactions. Nothing has to do with economic causes or effects. God and the people and the land are, being held together within God’s intention, a single entity and land and persons must be bought back to maintain the integrity of that entity.
Frankly, I find it overwhelming. You can see, now, why I used a metaphor as powerful as a new sound system in the introduction. I’m reading along, reading about “redemption,” and all of a sudden, the term falls into its full context and MEANS SOMETHING! The bass and the midrange speakers and the surround sound all kick on and I wonder why I thought I was listening to music before.
It isn’t an entirely comfortable feeling, but as I close out 2010, I wish it for you and I claim it for myself.
[1] It would be wholly misleading to so much as imply that I know any of the information I am about to retail to you. I am completely in debt to Colin Brown, of Fuller Theological Seminary, who wrote the article “Redemption” for the New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology and who serves as general editor of the English version of this masterpiece.
[2] I first stumbled on this when I noticed that Jesus’ parents had to “redeem” him because otherwise, he would have “belonged to God.” I had a very good time with that.
[3] In fact, like many others raised by Christian parents in Christian settings, I was puzzled when I first saw the word used in a secular context. I probably heard “ransom” in a story about kidnappers. I probably heard “redeem” in a story about pawnshops. This is considerably complicated by the expression about doing something “to redeem yourself,” which is also common. So I projected the religious meanings I already had on these new uses and was puzzled for a time.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
The Redeemer, "redeemed"
I want to see if I can get the tone just right for this question. Why did Jesus' parents take him to Jerusalem when he was about a month and a half old? I'm trying for the tone of "Why did the chicken cross the road?"
I want to be careful about the tone because for this question the way is strait and few there be that find it. Some diverge, for instance, to consider how very little Luke knew about Jewish customs. OK so he got some of the customs wrong. Is that really a big deal? Or that he got into a cut and paste action from the birth of Samuel, the judge, and didn't quit in time. Or maybe there was a story about John the Baptist that was modeled on Samuel and Luke ran across it and appropriated it for the story of Jesus. Those aren't big deals either, unless you are treating these stories as if they were biography, rather than the myths that have collected about the founder of our faith and which are important to us only because the founder is important. These stories, in other words, would be exactly like the stories about Zeus--if we were Zeus worshippers.
OK, why did Jesus' parents take him to Jerusalem? Let's start at another place--just one more time--and then I'll answer the question. I love this question. It's new to me and I'm just enjoying the hell out of it. The other place is Luke 24:21. Jesus is walking along with Cleopas and a friend to Emmaus. They didn't recognize him and he didn't declare himself. Cleopas and the friend are in despair because Jesus had been crucified by the Romans, but it isn't Jesus' fate they are lamenting at the moment, but the death of their hopes. They were among Jesus' disciples and they had had hopes about what "the Jesus movement" would mean. Those hopes died when Jesus died. "We had hoped," says Cleopas, "that he was the one to redeem Israel."
It had looked to Cleopas and many others as if Jesus would be "the redeemer" of Israel. Which takes us back, for the last time, to the question of what Jesus was doing in Jerusalem as an infant. The answer is that his parents were redeeming him. And why did he need to be redeemed? Because he was a first-born male (see Exodus 13:1 and 13:11ff) and they took him to the temple to "consecrate him" to God's service.
The original idea was that God earned the services of all first-born males by passing over them when he was slaying all other first-born males in Egypt. In return, these little boys would spend their lives serving God in some special way, perhaps as a priesthood. But the tribe of Levi eventually took over the priesthood (Jesus dealt with the Levites through all of his ministry, you will recall). This change was reflected in a provision that the child could be "bought back," i.e., "redeemed" for five shekels. As near as I can make it, that's about $170 U. S. dollars. (see Numbers 18:15--16 for the original provision.). That would be a lot for parents who couldn't afford a lamb (Luke 2:24) and gave, instead, the poor person's offering of two pigeons.
There would be a glorious symmetry if Jesus would have had to be redeemed so that he could be the Redeemer. I think it is that thought that first tickled my imagination. In fact, the ministry of Jesus would not have been different in the smallest degree had his parents' not consecrated and then redeemed him. It tells us a lot about the parents and it lodges Jesus firmly within the tradition of the Law, but he lived a life of complete consecration to God in any case so from a theological standpoint, it really doesn't matter.
It was fun, though, wasn't it?
I want to be careful about the tone because for this question the way is strait and few there be that find it. Some diverge, for instance, to consider how very little Luke knew about Jewish customs. OK so he got some of the customs wrong. Is that really a big deal? Or that he got into a cut and paste action from the birth of Samuel, the judge, and didn't quit in time. Or maybe there was a story about John the Baptist that was modeled on Samuel and Luke ran across it and appropriated it for the story of Jesus. Those aren't big deals either, unless you are treating these stories as if they were biography, rather than the myths that have collected about the founder of our faith and which are important to us only because the founder is important. These stories, in other words, would be exactly like the stories about Zeus--if we were Zeus worshippers.
OK, why did Jesus' parents take him to Jerusalem? Let's start at another place--just one more time--and then I'll answer the question. I love this question. It's new to me and I'm just enjoying the hell out of it. The other place is Luke 24:21. Jesus is walking along with Cleopas and a friend to Emmaus. They didn't recognize him and he didn't declare himself. Cleopas and the friend are in despair because Jesus had been crucified by the Romans, but it isn't Jesus' fate they are lamenting at the moment, but the death of their hopes. They were among Jesus' disciples and they had had hopes about what "the Jesus movement" would mean. Those hopes died when Jesus died. "We had hoped," says Cleopas, "that he was the one to redeem Israel."
It had looked to Cleopas and many others as if Jesus would be "the redeemer" of Israel. Which takes us back, for the last time, to the question of what Jesus was doing in Jerusalem as an infant. The answer is that his parents were redeeming him. And why did he need to be redeemed? Because he was a first-born male (see Exodus 13:1 and 13:11ff) and they took him to the temple to "consecrate him" to God's service.
The original idea was that God earned the services of all first-born males by passing over them when he was slaying all other first-born males in Egypt. In return, these little boys would spend their lives serving God in some special way, perhaps as a priesthood. But the tribe of Levi eventually took over the priesthood (Jesus dealt with the Levites through all of his ministry, you will recall). This change was reflected in a provision that the child could be "bought back," i.e., "redeemed" for five shekels. As near as I can make it, that's about $170 U. S. dollars. (see Numbers 18:15--16 for the original provision.). That would be a lot for parents who couldn't afford a lamb (Luke 2:24) and gave, instead, the poor person's offering of two pigeons.
There would be a glorious symmetry if Jesus would have had to be redeemed so that he could be the Redeemer. I think it is that thought that first tickled my imagination. In fact, the ministry of Jesus would not have been different in the smallest degree had his parents' not consecrated and then redeemed him. It tells us a lot about the parents and it lodges Jesus firmly within the tradition of the Law, but he lived a life of complete consecration to God in any case so from a theological standpoint, it really doesn't matter.
It was fun, though, wasn't it?
Monday, November 22, 2010
The Angel Gabriel and Gender Equity
Every year, Christmas means less to me and Advent means more. It’s not as bad as it seems. I have been unable to hold onto my preferred definition of Christmas. The commercial interests have taken it away the same way the creationists took away the Christian symbol of the fish. Christmas is now Santa Claus, “a right jolly old elf,” and his entourage. Advent, on the other hand, is still a religious holiday to me.
You can tell this is a year for studying Luke because Gabriel does not appear in Matthew. He does appear in Luke and he makes me nervous. Let’s consider the question of gender equity. Gabriel appears before Zechariah, the priest, and future father of John the Baptist. Raymond E. Brown, my source for all this,[1] calls him JBap and over the years I have come to like that. Gabriel said to Zechariah, “Your wife, Elizabeth, will bear you a son.” Zechariah replied, “How can I know this? I am old and my wife is getting on in years.”
We see immediately that Zechariah has been a successfully married man for a long time. If we knew no more than that he says he is “old,” but Elizabeth is only “getting on in years,” we would know that he has been married for a long time. What a classy guy! But Gabriel is not amused. “Since you did not believe my words…you will be silenced…until this has happened.” Gabriel is deeply offended, apparently. No reason, I suppose why an old man can’t impregnate the elderly and nulliparous old woman he has disappointed all these years. Still, this is God’s messenger and Zechariah really ought to have kept his incredulity to himself. And so, we would think, should Mary.
Gabriel continues on his rounds and stops next at the home of Mary’s parents, in Nazareth, which is where they live in the Lucan account. Gabriel says, “You are to conceive in your womb and bear a son.” Mary says, “How can this come about since I have no knowledge of man?”[2] Now to the casual observer, Zechariah’s response and Mary’s response are substantially similar. But Gabriel’s response to the two is not similar at all. Zechariah gets to be deaf and mute. Mary gets a son who “will rule over the House of Jacob forever.”
Being a little playful in the title, I raised the question of gender equity. But even without being playful, there is the question is what Zechariah did wrong that Mary did not do wrong. And if they did the same thing wrong, why was only one punished?
This post is not an attempt to answer that question. It is, rather, an attempt to say why it is not a very good question. It is based on a naïve view of how the scripture is to be read and understood. I will also suggest another way to understand it—following Brown—which gives a great deal of clarity about Luke, as a writer but not much at all about Gabriel, Zechariah, and Mary. I find it very satisfying intellectually but at the end, I remain just a little wistful that the question I began asking of this passage when I was a boy, is not really going to get answered.
The new question, a question much better adapted to the text and the Luke’s choices as the teller of this story, is this: Why did Luke handle the Zechariah story one way and the Mary story another way? The short answer is that these episodes are set in different backgrounds stories—Zechariah in Daniel and Mary in I Samuel. Luke tweaked each of them so he could both tell his story and evoke the echoes of other more familiar stories.
Luke is using the appearance of Gabriel to Daniel as the template for the appearance to Zechariah. The list of commonalities between the two is formidable. Both are called “visions;” Gabriel appears in both at the time of liturgical prayer; the visionary in both has offered a prayer in distress; both react to Gabriel with fear; and the visionary, in both cases, is struck mute. “By these echoes,” says Brown, “Luke is giving a new application to a common Christian reflection in which such Gospel motifs as the Son of Man and the Kingdom of God were related to Daniel 7:12—14.”
If we begin with Luke as the artist, this explanation accounts for why Zechariah was made mute. It is because Daniel was made mute and Luke wants his hearers to notice the background and feel some of the weight it gives to the gospel.
And the explanation for Gabriel’s response to Mary? The same, in a way. Luke builds the annunciation to Mary on Hannah’s canticle in I Samuel 2. Hannah prayed to God “in the bitterness of her soul.” Thereafter, she bore a son to her husband, Elkanah, and dedicated the son to temple service, as she had promised she would. Hannah’s prayer of thanksgiving is a long one (see verses 1—10.), but even the beginning strikes students of Jesus’ life as familiar.
And there are six more stanzas like that, all of which serve as a canvas on which Luke can paint the Magnificat. So Mary was not rebuked because Hannah was not rebuked and Luke wants the hearers of the Magnificat to hear it as an echo of Hannah’s song.
I think that is a very satisfying solution to the reason Zechariah put himself in harm’s way by asking the same question Mary asked safely. It begins with a much better question than the one that troubled me as a boy and to this new question, there is a good answer. Luke is placing his new material within old and meaningful traditions.
[1] Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in Matthew and Luke. New York: Doubleday, 1977.
[2] This is a shame, because men aren’t really that complicated. Patrick Jayne, on an episode of The Mentalist, compared men (in their relative complexity) to toasters. It’s almost easier to see Mary with Zechariah than with Joseph, particularly since Joseph doesn’t have a single line of dialogue in Luke’s account.
You can tell this is a year for studying Luke because Gabriel does not appear in Matthew. He does appear in Luke and he makes me nervous. Let’s consider the question of gender equity. Gabriel appears before Zechariah, the priest, and future father of John the Baptist. Raymond E. Brown, my source for all this,[1] calls him JBap and over the years I have come to like that. Gabriel said to Zechariah, “Your wife, Elizabeth, will bear you a son.” Zechariah replied, “How can I know this? I am old and my wife is getting on in years.”
We see immediately that Zechariah has been a successfully married man for a long time. If we knew no more than that he says he is “old,” but Elizabeth is only “getting on in years,” we would know that he has been married for a long time. What a classy guy! But Gabriel is not amused. “Since you did not believe my words…you will be silenced…until this has happened.” Gabriel is deeply offended, apparently. No reason, I suppose why an old man can’t impregnate the elderly and nulliparous old woman he has disappointed all these years. Still, this is God’s messenger and Zechariah really ought to have kept his incredulity to himself. And so, we would think, should Mary.
Gabriel continues on his rounds and stops next at the home of Mary’s parents, in Nazareth, which is where they live in the Lucan account. Gabriel says, “You are to conceive in your womb and bear a son.” Mary says, “How can this come about since I have no knowledge of man?”[2] Now to the casual observer, Zechariah’s response and Mary’s response are substantially similar. But Gabriel’s response to the two is not similar at all. Zechariah gets to be deaf and mute. Mary gets a son who “will rule over the House of Jacob forever.”
Being a little playful in the title, I raised the question of gender equity. But even without being playful, there is the question is what Zechariah did wrong that Mary did not do wrong. And if they did the same thing wrong, why was only one punished?
This post is not an attempt to answer that question. It is, rather, an attempt to say why it is not a very good question. It is based on a naïve view of how the scripture is to be read and understood. I will also suggest another way to understand it—following Brown—which gives a great deal of clarity about Luke, as a writer but not much at all about Gabriel, Zechariah, and Mary. I find it very satisfying intellectually but at the end, I remain just a little wistful that the question I began asking of this passage when I was a boy, is not really going to get answered.
The new question, a question much better adapted to the text and the Luke’s choices as the teller of this story, is this: Why did Luke handle the Zechariah story one way and the Mary story another way? The short answer is that these episodes are set in different backgrounds stories—Zechariah in Daniel and Mary in I Samuel. Luke tweaked each of them so he could both tell his story and evoke the echoes of other more familiar stories.
Luke is using the appearance of Gabriel to Daniel as the template for the appearance to Zechariah. The list of commonalities between the two is formidable. Both are called “visions;” Gabriel appears in both at the time of liturgical prayer; the visionary in both has offered a prayer in distress; both react to Gabriel with fear; and the visionary, in both cases, is struck mute. “By these echoes,” says Brown, “Luke is giving a new application to a common Christian reflection in which such Gospel motifs as the Son of Man and the Kingdom of God were related to Daniel 7:12—14.”
If we begin with Luke as the artist, this explanation accounts for why Zechariah was made mute. It is because Daniel was made mute and Luke wants his hearers to notice the background and feel some of the weight it gives to the gospel.
And the explanation for Gabriel’s response to Mary? The same, in a way. Luke builds the annunciation to Mary on Hannah’s canticle in I Samuel 2. Hannah prayed to God “in the bitterness of her soul.” Thereafter, she bore a son to her husband, Elkanah, and dedicated the son to temple service, as she had promised she would. Hannah’s prayer of thanksgiving is a long one (see verses 1—10.), but even the beginning strikes students of Jesus’ life as familiar.
My heart exults in Yahweh
In my God is my strength
lifted up
My mouth derides my foes
For I rejoice in your deliverance
And there are six more stanzas like that, all of which serve as a canvas on which Luke can paint the Magnificat. So Mary was not rebuked because Hannah was not rebuked and Luke wants the hearers of the Magnificat to hear it as an echo of Hannah’s song.
I think that is a very satisfying solution to the reason Zechariah put himself in harm’s way by asking the same question Mary asked safely. It begins with a much better question than the one that troubled me as a boy and to this new question, there is a good answer. Luke is placing his new material within old and meaningful traditions.
[1] Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in Matthew and Luke. New York: Doubleday, 1977.
[2] This is a shame, because men aren’t really that complicated. Patrick Jayne, on an episode of The Mentalist, compared men (in their relative complexity) to toasters. It’s almost easier to see Mary with Zechariah than with Joseph, particularly since Joseph doesn’t have a single line of dialogue in Luke’s account.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Tea Party Exegesis
I was disappointed to learn in the New York Times that Jimmy Carter, certainly our best ex-president, thinks that the story of Onan is about masturbation. I don't care all that much about Onan. It has been many years since I lived anywhere masturbation was thought to be a hot topic for Christian ethics, let alone for biblical exegesis. But I actually do care about the story of Tamar. She is one of my favorite women in the world and Onan plays a bit part in the story of Tamar, so I guess I'm going to have to get into it after all. For anyone who wonders why I might be such a fan of Tamar, I have put my reasons in this telling of her story. She is, in any case, a good deal more interesting than Christine O'Donnell.
Oh yes. Christine O'Donnell is the Tea Party candidate for the office of U. S. Senator from Delaware. Maureen Dowd, a regular New York Times columnist, reported in her column this morning that Ms. O'Donnell once said, "The Bible says that lust in our heart is committing adultery, so you can't masturbate without lust." Well, OK, there's some biblical work to be done there, but that's Christine O'Donnell and I don't think I've got that kind of time. But Jimmy Carter told Maureen Dowd, she says, that the Old Testament story of Onan "warns against wasting thy seed on the ground."
It doesn't, actually, and Jimmy Carter has taught a Sunday School class in Plains, Georgia for many years and he ought to know that. If you care about exegesis at all, the first question you need to ask of a story is, "What is it about?" If you are going to draw any lessons from it, you need at least to know what it is about. The story of Tamar is about being obedient to God's laws. And what law is involved here? Levirate marriage.
We will have to pause momentarily to consider levirate marriage. That may have been the part of the story that stopped Robert Redford from seriously considering my proposal that Tamar was the kind of story he should make a movie of. Something stopped him, at any rate. The best I got back was a snotty letter from one of his henchpersons. Levirate marriage shows how important it was for Israelites to have male descendants in every clan line. And how do we do that? If a son does not have a male heir (and Tamar's husband, Er, did not have one), his next younger brother is to impregnate her and the resulting son would be considered "the son of Er" for clan purposes.
Onan was the next younger brother and producing an heir for Er was his job. He didn't want to do that job. We don't know why. Maybe he hated Er. Maybe he didn't like having his father, Judah, send him to Tamar as a favor to Er. In any case, Onan did whatever he did for the purpose of seeing to it that he did not produce an heir for his brother, E, as God had commanded. God was not happy and killed Onan for that.
It was Judah's job, as head of the clan, to move the responsibility down to the next son. He didn't. The reasons are a little complicated. He may have reasoned that he had already lost two sons to Tamar and was not willing to risk a third. Also the third son was not yet old enough. In any case, Judah failed God by refusing to send the third son in the same way that Onan failed in refusing to impregnate Tamar. And it is entirely possible that God's vengeance would have fallen next on Judah.
Actually, following that line of speculation, Tamar might have saved Judah's life by seducing him, getting herself pregnant, and producing heirs, finally, for her dead husband, Er. Two heirs,in fact, since she gave birth to twins, Perez and Zerah. And that's how Tamar winds up in Matthew's account of the genealogy of the Messiah. She was the one who was faithful to God, although it took the seduction of her father-in-law to get the job done.
Jimmy. Christine. That's what the story is about. Whatever lessons we might learn from it probably ought to feature "being obedient to God" as the first Powerpoint slide. Of course, I wouldn't argue that levirate marriage is required in the 21st Century. Ms. O'Donnell might. Mr. Carter might. But I don't. I do argue that "obedience to God" is still a crucial concept and anyone who thinks of himself or herself as a follower of this God might want to give some thought to just what "obedience" might mean right now. At least it's worth asking.
Oh yes. Christine O'Donnell is the Tea Party candidate for the office of U. S. Senator from Delaware. Maureen Dowd, a regular New York Times columnist, reported in her column this morning that Ms. O'Donnell once said, "The Bible says that lust in our heart is committing adultery, so you can't masturbate without lust." Well, OK, there's some biblical work to be done there, but that's Christine O'Donnell and I don't think I've got that kind of time. But Jimmy Carter told Maureen Dowd, she says, that the Old Testament story of Onan "warns against wasting thy seed on the ground."
It doesn't, actually, and Jimmy Carter has taught a Sunday School class in Plains, Georgia for many years and he ought to know that. If you care about exegesis at all, the first question you need to ask of a story is, "What is it about?" If you are going to draw any lessons from it, you need at least to know what it is about. The story of Tamar is about being obedient to God's laws. And what law is involved here? Levirate marriage.
We will have to pause momentarily to consider levirate marriage. That may have been the part of the story that stopped Robert Redford from seriously considering my proposal that Tamar was the kind of story he should make a movie of. Something stopped him, at any rate. The best I got back was a snotty letter from one of his henchpersons. Levirate marriage shows how important it was for Israelites to have male descendants in every clan line. And how do we do that? If a son does not have a male heir (and Tamar's husband, Er, did not have one), his next younger brother is to impregnate her and the resulting son would be considered "the son of Er" for clan purposes.
Onan was the next younger brother and producing an heir for Er was his job. He didn't want to do that job. We don't know why. Maybe he hated Er. Maybe he didn't like having his father, Judah, send him to Tamar as a favor to Er. In any case, Onan did whatever he did for the purpose of seeing to it that he did not produce an heir for his brother, E, as God had commanded. God was not happy and killed Onan for that.
It was Judah's job, as head of the clan, to move the responsibility down to the next son. He didn't. The reasons are a little complicated. He may have reasoned that he had already lost two sons to Tamar and was not willing to risk a third. Also the third son was not yet old enough. In any case, Judah failed God by refusing to send the third son in the same way that Onan failed in refusing to impregnate Tamar. And it is entirely possible that God's vengeance would have fallen next on Judah.
Actually, following that line of speculation, Tamar might have saved Judah's life by seducing him, getting herself pregnant, and producing heirs, finally, for her dead husband, Er. Two heirs,in fact, since she gave birth to twins, Perez and Zerah. And that's how Tamar winds up in Matthew's account of the genealogy of the Messiah. She was the one who was faithful to God, although it took the seduction of her father-in-law to get the job done.
Jimmy. Christine. That's what the story is about. Whatever lessons we might learn from it probably ought to feature "being obedient to God" as the first Powerpoint slide. Of course, I wouldn't argue that levirate marriage is required in the 21st Century. Ms. O'Donnell might. Mr. Carter might. But I don't. I do argue that "obedience to God" is still a crucial concept and anyone who thinks of himself or herself as a follower of this God might want to give some thought to just what "obedience" might mean right now. At least it's worth asking.
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