Visiting a Church in Old Corinth in 50 A.D.

If it were possible to step into a time machine and travel back to the first-century, you would immediately be disappointed. There were no Christian church buildings in the first century to visit. Such edifices, built to honor God and cater to the religious needs of progressive and affluent congregations, did not begin to emerge until the early third century.¹ One possible reason there were no buildings is because they believed the world was soon going to end—within their lifetime (1 Cor 7:26, 29-31). You would be further disappointed because there were no “Christians” in the first century, at least, not like we today think of someone being Christian.² The creedal statements that shape modern traditional versions of Christianity hearken back to the framers of the creeds of the 4^th and 5^th centuries.³ Who were the predecessors of those who developed the foundational creeds of modern Christian faith? What were their gatherings like?

            They gathered⁴ in homes (1 Cor 16:19; Rom 16:3-5; Philemon 2; Col 4:15), rather than buildings constructed to accommodate their particular worship style. Apparently, there was no distinctly Christian symbolism in statuary and painting. These expressions of faith, like all other physical remains, do not emerge until near the end of the third century.⁵ Corinth in the first century was not a Greek city. The Greek city had been destroyed by the Romans in 146 B.C., and left to lie in ruins for a century. It was rebuilt as a Roman city in 44 B.C. under Julius Caesar. As one of the leading cities of the Roman Province of Achaia by 50 A.D., it had something of a cosmopolitan flavor.⁶ Basically, Roman houses in which the Corinthian Christ group gathered were fronted by a spacious atrium leading onto a courtyard garden open to the sky, which was surrounded by rooms. Romans did not use glass for windows but there were small openings in the rooms that opened into the courtyard.⁷ So, we cannot peek through the window from the street and peer in on their gatherings. Fortunately, they welcomed outsiders to their gatherings (1 Cor 14:23-24).

            It appears, to judge from Paul’s letters, the gatherings of these early Christ groups were charismatic, meaning that those who shared in the gatherings believed themselves to be possessed of divine gifts (charismata). Persons in the gathering were enabled by the spirit of God to special ends. Some were endowed by the spirit to speak wisely and to utter knowledge, others to heal and to perform miracles or to prophesy, and others to distinguish between spirits (1 Cor 12:4-11). Some, they believed, were enabled to speak and sing to God in a kind of spiritual language (1 Cor 14:2, 15), these gestures were left for others to interpret (1 Cor 12:10; 14:27-28). Paul did not deny the presence of this gift (1 Cor 14:5, 18-19), but he was uncomfortable with how it was practiced (1 Cor 14:9, 15, 26) and particularly, with the excessive outward display of spiritual gifts (1 Cor 14:23). Paul thought all the spiritual gifts could be controlled (1 Cor 14:32) and should be (1 Cor 14:26-31, 37). On the other hand, Paul also had some odd ideas about spirit (1 Cor 5:3-5; 2 Cor 12:1-4; 13:5; Gal 4:6; 2:20).⁸

            The Christ group association at Corinth was not governed democratically by Robert’s Rules of Order. No leader in the gathering was elected by majority vote, but the spirit of God decided who filled every function (1 Cor 12:27-31). They had no pastors, deacons, or bishops. These came later (1 Tim 3:1-13). Leaders in the early gatherings were generally male (1 Cor 14:34-36), although there were exceptions (Rom 16:1, 3, 6, 12).

Personally, my time-travel self is a little uncomfortable with what I am finding in the Jesus gathering at Corinth. I am rather certain, as an heir of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, that I am more comfortable in the Sunday service of a modern church, which follows Robert’s Rules of Order, checks the credentials of church leaders, and discourages an excessive spiritualism, than in a middle first-century gathering, which could be interrupted by outbursts of glossolalia, competing prophetic voices drowning out one another, and people standing around the room with both arms lifted heavenward simultaneously audibly praying (1 Tim 2:8).⁹ My world today is not informed by spirits, holy or demonic.

When groups today advertise the organization of a “new ‘Jesus Church,’” they need to be more specific about what it is, and what might be expected by those of us who are becoming increasingly more than wary of some forms of religious expression, where (as Paul put it) such confusion (1 Cor 14:33) makes them seem crazy (1 Cor 14:23). How do you see it?

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_(building).

²The term Christian appears in the New Testament three times (Acts 11:26, 26:28; 1 Pet 4:16).

³Bettenson and Maunder, Documents of the Christian Church (3^rd ed.; Oxford, 1999), 25-27.

⁴Hedrick, “Pondering the Origins of the Church,” Wry Thoughts about Religion, Blog: Feb 16:2017: http://blog.charleshedrick.com/search?q=church+as+gathering.

⁵G. F Snyder, Ante Pacem. Archaeological Evidence of Church Life before Constantine (Mercer University, 1985), 2.

⁶Lamoine Devries, Cities of the Biblical World (Hendrickson, 1997), 362.

⁷Harold Johnston, The Private Life of the Romans (Scott, Foresman and Company, 1903), 117-47.

⁸Hedrick, “Putting Paul in his Place” Unmasking Biblical Faiths (Cascade, 2019), 124-27.

⁹Compare the discussion of the Orante in Snyder, Ante Pacem, 19-20; and also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orans.

Narrative, History, and the Bible

My title is rather broad and lacks in specificity; hence, I begin with a few definitions. “A narrative is a spoken or written account of connected events; a story.”¹ That is to say, a narrative is not a single event but is constituted by multiple events that are connected; it is a series of connected events. An event is “something that happens.” With respect to the definition of history two definitions are offered as the Google definition of history.² History is (1) “The study of past events, particularly in human affairs.” (2) “The whole series of past events connected with someone or something.” Thus, by these two definitions history is either the past connected events themselves or the study of past connected events. Essential to the Google definition of history is that events (something that happened) must be connected to other events; a single event is not history. It is rather a single datum that may potentially be history if it can be connected to other past events. Hence, modern historians consider history a narrative. By this definition the event, “Caesar crossed the Rubicon” is apparently not history, since it is only a single event.

On the other hand, I think of history as what happened in the past, connected or not.³ History as the contemporary study of past events is not history unless the study happened in the past. For example, past studies of New Testament criticism I consider history because the studies happened in the past. Hence, by my definition the event in which Caesar crossed the Rubicon is history because it did in fact happen in the past.

          These two Google definitions of history (are they popular; or are they both critical and popular?) seem to regard history as showing connected events as a movement in time, whether progress or decline, as though history, as the aggregate of these events or selected events, was focused toward some ultimate goal. Hence one can identify history’s plot (its plan or main story) and write a narrative of history or of a selected history. If history is a narrative, then historians must justify their connections between events that move history forward or backward.

Let us assume that history is a narrative for the moment. Narratives may also be fictional; that is to say, the narrative may be invented, which raises the question, how does one distinguish between an invented narrative and one that is not? In some cases, it may not be possible to do so. I would test the narrative in this way. (1) Does the narrative have verisimilitude (that is does it have the appearance of being true or real)? (2) Does the narrative adhere to the reality I know (what I mean by being true or real)? (3) Are there surviving artefacts that suggest that the narrative is grounded in events that actually happened, rather than existing only in an author’s mind?

Here are three narratives that we can test with these three criteria: Gone with the Wind (1940) by the Atlanta, Georgia native Margaret Mitchell; The Civil War, A Narrative (1958, 1963, 1974), a three volume work, by the Greenville, Mississippi native Shelby Foote; and “The Death of John the Baptist” (Mark 6:14-29), a first century narrative by an unknown author.

The first narrative, Gone with the Wind, is a work of historical fiction, whose specific characters were invented and whose events never happened. Although the backdrop against which the narrative took place was historical, there are no artefacts to attest to the specific events in the narrative. The second, The Civil War A Narrative, is considered a military history of the Civil War. Foote’s characters lived during the time the events of the War took place and there are myriads of artefacts to attest that the events occurred. Thus, Mitchell’s work is shelved with other historical fiction novels and Foote’s is shelved under history, although Foote himself is a novelist.

The third narrative appears to be a mixture of historical and fictional elements. The named characters in the narrative are historical figures. That the tetrarch, Herod Antipas, killed John the Baptist is confirmed by Josephus (Antiquities 18.5.2; although Herod was not a king). That Herodias, his wife, nursed a grudge against John for criticizing her second marriage to Herod and that Herod had him (reluctantly) killed because Herodias put him in a situation where he (Herod) had to kill John is less likely than is the reason given by Josephus. The Josephus report has Herod killing John because he feared John’s popularity with the populace and thought John might foment a rebellion. Josephus’ report seems more likely to me in this regard. It is dubious that Herod would have promised half his domain to a dancer in the presence of the leading citizens of Galilee. It is also doubtful that the killing of John and the presentation of John’s head to Herodias’ daughter could have taken place so quickly, since the fortress of Machaerus, where John was imprisoned by Josephus’ account, is located in Jordan across the Dead Sea. The Capitol of Herod Antipas’ kingdom from which he governed was Tiberius in Galilee, The distance from Tiberius to Machaerus was more than a day’s journey, so the killing of John and the presentation of his head to Herodias’ daughter could not have happened with the speed suggested by the narrative in Mark.⁴ No artefacts, as far as I know, attest to this bizarre narrative plot, except the fortress Machaerus. On the whole, the story in Mark is at best historical fiction.⁵

How does it seem to you?

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹Google the following: “google definition of narrative.”

²Google the following: “google definition of history.” There are several other definitions; check a dictionary.

³Hedrick, “History, Historical Narrative, and Mark’s Gospel” pp. 137-40 in Unmasking Biblical Faiths (Cascade, 2019). Or an earlier version: Wry Thoughts about Religion: http://blog.charleshedrick.com/search?q=history

⁴https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiberias#Herodian_period

⁵See the report of the Jesus Seminar for another analysis: R. W. Funk and the Jesus Seminar, The Acts of Jesus. What did Jesus Really do? (HarperSanFrancisco, 1998), 86-87.

Groundhog Day and Historical Progress

Many of us of advanced age and/or who suffer from life-threatening health issues decided in 2020 to withdraw from the world and isolate ourselves because we are at high risk of catching covid19. Since last March we have voluntarily quarantined ourselves from society and live in small bubbles available only to a small number of people. Over the last year our lives have become very much like the 1993 film Groundhog Day. In the film Bill Murray plays a Pittsburg weatherman who covers the Groundhog Day event in Punxsutawney, PA. He becomes trapped in a time loop forcing him to relive February 2 repeatedly. Eventually he recognizes that he is in a time loop, although no one else does.¹

Life in the bubble is repetitive and there is a sameness to the events of a typical day: wake up; dry and put away dishes; check email; prepare breakfast; TV news; morning ablutions; retire to respective offices to do whatever; prepare lunch; short nap; back to the offices; walk for an hour; check the snail mail (bills); evening news and dinner; doze before TV; retire. This pattern is repeated the next morning and ad infinitum. As a result, I find I am beginning to lose a sense of progress and continuity in time and history, since I seem to be living in an eternal present where everything repeats itself.

            History is defined as a “chronological record of significant events, often containing an explanation of their causes.” If truth be told, however, we humans invented the concept of time to explain our obsolescence and demise (aging and death), and we discovered the ellipse of the earth around the sun in a 24-hour period. We invented and named the hours of the day, the days of the week, and the months of the year. We even invent the connectedness of events by explaining their causes (about which historians frequently disagree) and this becomes the basis of our linear concept of time.²

            A competitor to the linear view of time is the “concept that the universe and all existence and energy has been recurring and will continue to recur in a self-similar form and infinite number of times across infinite time and space.” This concept is called the eternal return or the eternal recurrence.³ One biblical writer who seems to reflect such a view of time is Ecclesiastes:

That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been. (Eccl 3:15)

What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun. (Eccl 1:9)

In this biblical writer’s tone lies a deep weariness and monotony (Eccl 1:2-11; 2:11, 17, 22-23; 7:1-8), occasioned by how he has come to view life:

The central theme of the sage’s reflections is that life is disappointing and transitory—like a momentary breath (1:2-11). There is a weary sameness to life (3:15); it passes like a shadow (6:12). Being governed by chance (9:11-12), life is unfair: the righteous perish early and the wicked live out long lives (7:15).⁴

The Apostle Paul, on the other hand, had a theologically based linear view of time.⁵ He believed that he lived between two great events, the time of God’s great victory over sin and death at the crucifixion/resurrection of Jesus, on the one hand, and the Parousia (appearing) of Jesus and the end of the world (1 Cor 15:20-24; I Thess 4:13-18; 1 Cor 6:29-31), on the other. As such he lived between the already and the not yet (Rom 8:15/ 8:23; 1 Cor 1:2/1 Thess 5:23-24). That is to say: he already had received the blessings of salvation, but he still looks forward to the completion of his salvation. Thus, in Paul’s view the follower of Christ was numbered among those “upon whom the ends of the ages have come” (1 Cor 10:11), that is, between the end of the old world/age and the beginning of the new. In other words, Paul saw time moving forward in a linear way from the resurrection to the time of Christ’s coming again and the end of time.

            This brings me back to the present pandemic moment: are we locked into a series of repeating 24-hour elliptical cycles, or does time actually move relentlessly forward in a linear line toward some unknown goal?

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundhog_Day_(film). The film was selected by The Library of Congress for inclusion in the National Film Registry and the term “Groundhog Day” has made its way into the English language to describe a monotonous, unpleasant, and repetitive situation.

²See Hedrick, “History, Historical Narrative, and Mark’s Gospel,” Sunday December 3, 2013: http://blog.charleshedrick.com/search?q=history

³https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_return

⁴Hedrick, The Wisdom of Jesus. Between the Sages of Israel and the Apostles of the Church (Cascade, 2014), 70.

⁵Hedrick, “Time—does it move forward or in Circles,” Saturday, June 1, 2019: http://blog.charleshedrick.com/search?q=Time

Suicide

Suicide is enough of a problem in this country that we have a national suicide prevention call center (1-800-273-8255).¹ Nevertheless, America does not have the highest rates of suicide worldwide.² On a recent TV show a character committed suicide for no reason that was apparent to investigators. The investigators later discovered that the man had inoperable brain cancer, and they concluded that he committed suicide rather than face the suffering he would experience in his last days. The show prompted the question: why do people commit suicide? The leading explanation for suicide seems to be depression, but there are many possible reasons.³ One possibility is that someone decides everything they care about has passed away so they simply make plans for them to go as well. In this regard one might immediately recall the movie Soylent Green and the suicide of the scholar who remembered how to read books (played by Edward G. Robinson).⁴

            There are several examples of suicide in the Bible but they are not condemned by the biblical narrator. On the contrary, some of those people might even be said to have died nobly.⁵ In short, suicide is not condemned either in the Old or New Testaments, as is, for example, murder (1 John 3:15; Exodus 20:13 [usually translated “You shall not kill unjustifiably]). Josephus, on the one hand, calls suicide “an impious act against God our creator” (War III.viii.5), but on the other he writes approvingly of acts of suicide by a large body of Jews (War VII.viii.6-7).⁶

Prior to the Christian period Greeks and Romans had different attitudes about suicide. For example, Socrates committed suicide rather than be exiled from Athens. Some Roman authors (for example, Cicero and Seneca) at times seem to glorify suicide but they grant “the act greater complexity on other occasions.”⁷

In the early Christian period (second century) the solicitation of martyrdom as a positive act on the part of Christians blurs the distinction between suicide and martyrdom so that even martyrdom might be viewed as suicide, as the legendary Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas clearly shows.⁸

In the fifth century, St Augustine wrote the book, The City of God, in it making Christianity's first overall condemnation of suicide. His biblical justification for this was the interpretation of the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," as he sees the omission of ‘thy neighbor,’ which is included in ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor,’ to mean that the killing of oneself is not allowed either…

In the sixth century AD, suicide became a secular crime and began to be viewed as sinful. In 1533, those who died by suicide, while accused of a crime, were denied a Christian burial. In 1562, all suicides were punished in this way. In 1693, even attempted suicide became an ecclesiastical crime, which could be punished by excommunication, with civil consequences following. In the 13th century, Thomas Aquinas denounced suicide as an act against God and as a sin for which one could not repent. Civil and criminal laws were enacted to discourage suicide, and as well as degrading the body rather than permitting a normal burial; property and possessions of the suicides and their families were confiscated.⁹

From this very brief schematic history of attitudes about suicide in Western civilization it does not appear that the prohibition against suicide in modern society is to be tracked to an early Christian consciousness of the sacredness of life, but it grows out of a later ecclesiastical development that condemns suicide as usurping God’s prerogative to give and take life (Job 1:21). Prohibitions against suicide do not rest on concerns for the welfare of the individual as much as they rest on it being an offense against God. Modern attitudes about suicide, however, seem to be motivated by humanitarian concerns for the welfare of the individual. In my view, if suicide involves an offense at all, it is not against God (if God there be), but against Being, since it is an unnecessary diminishment of all existence.

“My personal view of this situation is that being conscious even with pain, is better than being insentient; or put another way, life lived with physical difficulties and pain is better than a death that instantly banishes all pain—for as long as there is life there is hope…But I cannot fault those who might choose a quick death over an inevitable painful lingering death.”¹⁰

How do you see it?

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

¹https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&ei=e4NRXpFLxvS0BYKAm_gM&q=suicide&oq=suicide&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0l3j0i131j0l2j0i131l3j0.5202.7118..11130...0.0..0.85.500.7......0....1..gws-wiz.uBfIwY_C6vY&ved=0ahUKEwjR9O7j9OXnAhVGOq0KHQLABs8Q4dUDCAg&uact=5

²https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/suiciderate.html

³https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-people-kill-themselves/

⁴https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/soylent-green-1973

⁵https://www.bibleodyssey.org/en/people/related-articles/suicide-in-the-bible

⁶Young, “Suicide,” IDB 4.453-54

⁷Cicero and Seneca on suicide: https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2018/06/09/the-course-fortune-gave-me-cicero-and-seneca-on-suicide/

⁸Droge, “Suicide” ABD 6.230-31.

⁹https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_views_on_suicide

¹⁰Hedrick, Wry Thoughts about Religion: “End-of-Life Issues” Tuesday March 15, 2016: http://blog.charleshedrick.com/search?q=End-of-life+Issues

Time-does it move forward or in Circles?

I know; it sounds like a trick question. But in the ancient world time was circular. The earth continually renewed itself through the regular recurring cycles of nature: Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter. Such a cycle is basically “startime” (the sun is a star) produced by the rotation of the earth around the sun in our solar system giving us also, in addition to the recurring seasons of the year, the time of day: dawn, noon, sunset, night. These cycles are described as the theory of the eternal return. “The universe and all existence and energy [have] been recurring, and will continue to recur in a self-similar form an infinite number of times across infinite time or space. The theory is found in Indian [India] philosophy and ancient Egypt and was subsequently taken up by the Pythagoreans and Stoics” in the Greek tradition.¹ In many ways, without modern precision, cyclical time replicates our own system of sidereal time—time as tracked by clocks, watches, and chronometers. In short, except for daylight savings time, your watch is keyed to the circle of the earth around the sun.

The Judeo-Christian view of time, on the other hand, is linear. Everything originated in God’s act of creation (Genesis 1:1-2:4a; 2:4b-3:24) and moves forward toward the inevitable Day of the Lord at which moment “the heavens will pass away with a loud noise and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the works that are upon it will be burned up” (2 Pet 3:10 RSV)—and time will be no more. All events in world history, from creation to end, are believed included in this forward movement, which gives an illusion of progress in history.

Today we experience time from both of these perspectives. Reckoning time from a linear perspective and a cyclical perspective both prove useful for us in order to situate ourselves in time—e.g., hour of the day, season of the year, century provided by our linear calendar. We also experience time in other ways—as passing fast or slow, depending on how occupied we are in a given situation; as either individual and private or epochal and public—for example, one’s personal birthday celebration as opposed to the end of WWII. Life is believed to be a progressive series of such milestones or epochs—at least as we calculate time today.

The idea that time is linear is aided by a decision to distinguish the passage of time between BC (before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini—in the year of the Lord). This theological plot on time, which shifts time from circular to linear is credited to Dionysius Exiguus of Scythia Minor in 525 AD; his system was not widely accepted until after 800AD, however. The BC/AD system of Exiguus was used to number the years in the Gregorian and Julian calendars. Our modern calendar derives from the Gregorian Calendar, which is the most widely used calendar in the world today.² Modern critical scholars change BC/AD designations to BCE (Before the Common Era) and CE (Common Era) in order to secularize the divisions. The segments remain essentially the same, however.

One comes to realize the core problem of time by addressing the following question: how are all personal and public epochs since the beginning of time linked so as to give us a single linear sequence of time with all events taking their place in a relentless progression toward a particular goal?³

Historians also think of the movement of history as a linear movement. History is defined as “a branch of knowledge that records and explains past events as steps in the sequence of human activities.”⁴ Historical narrative is an attempt to reconstruct the past, not in its aggregate totality, but in what the historian considers its more significant aspects. In my view, however, history itself is something other than a historical narrative.⁵ Nevertheless modern historians still see time and human history moving forward in a linear line. Yet here we are making circles around the sun locked into a solar system going no place in particular. How do you see it?

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

¹https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_return

²https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anno_Domini

³This argument is adapted from, and with apologies to, John Dominic Crossan, Raid on the Articulate. Comic Eschatology in Jesus and Borges (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), 133-136.

⁴Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (2002), s. v. “history.”

⁵Hedrick, “History, Historical Narrative, and Mark’s Gospel,” Wry Thoughts about Religion Blog, Dec 22, 2013.

Will the Jesus Tradition remain Relevant?

A good friend suggested that I owe an explanation to people of progressive religious faith as to why I still concern myself with the Jesus traditions in light of my published views that the Jesus tradition is historically unreliable, and traditional Christianity is based on mythology. He was thinking like a progressive pastor, preacher, and prophet of social justice; I, on the other hand, am a retired academic and a historian of Christian origins. Our perspectives are quite different. Critiquing the Jesus tradition is something I do professionally, and my friend is a practitioner of a new form of traditional faith based on social justice.

 

            The explanation he asked of me is nothing less than describing what the Jesus tradition contributes to contemporary human life; that is, what in the Jesus traditions might be embraced by people of progressive religious faith and what should be consigned to the bulging trash bins of dead religions.  Fortunately he asked me to address the entire spectrum of the Jesus traditions; that is, to address not only what originated with the historical Jesus, but also what others have found of value in the Jesus traditions. In his challenge all of the Jesus tradition is given an equal weight.

 

            Here are two reasons for my continuing interest in the Jesus tradition, and why I think it will continue to remain relevant. These two reasons only scratch the surface. Judging from the pervasive influence of Christianity and the iconic status of the Bible in contemporary American culture, it is obvious that the Jesus traditions remain relevant in 21st century America. Hence, the critical study of the Jesus tradition (what I do) will remain a legitimate public service until it happens that traditional Christianity and the Bible lose their influence in modern society.  For the foreseeable future, however, there remains a need for critics of the Jesus tradition to separate beliefs about Jesus from the probable views of Jesus in order to call into question illegitimate uses of the Jesus tradition.

 

            A second reason relates to early Christian ethical values. Early Christian writers have preserved certain ethical concepts, which have inspired much that is beneficial in Western civilization. One such concept is a liberal humanitarianism grounded in the concept of altruistic and unconditional love, which has embedded itself in Western culture. Altruistic love is an unselfish concern for and devotion to the welfare of others, without regard either for personal benefit or personal cost.

 

            The Jesus traditions have brought over from the ancient Israelite tradition the idea of loving one's neighbor (Lev 19:18; Mark 12:31). In the Israelite tradition the neighbor was not one's fellow human being of whatever ethnic background, but rather one's fellow Israelite (Deut 15:1-3); that is to say, their neighbors were of their own tribe.  Love was also extended to those sojourning among the Israelites; that is to say, to the stranger in their midst (Lev 19:33-34). In the Hebrew Bible love for neighbor appears in Torah as a commandment of God—hence it is a religious ethic of the Israelite community, which through Jesus passed into early Christian communities. Paul, for example, writes:

 

Owe no one anything, except to love one another, for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. All the commandments are summed up in this sentence: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. (Rom 13:8-10)

 

In this statement "neighbor" is not a fellow human being of whatever ethnic background, but rather a religious community ethic—love for your fellow Christian (as in Romans 15:1-2; Gal 5:13-15). Nevertheless, James 2:1-13 does seem to shade over into a universal humanitarian code of care and concern for fellow human beings.

 

            One of the clearest expressions of a kind of secular altruistic love is found 1 Corinthians 13:1-13. Love in this passage does not appear to be a Christian attribute, which is motivated by religious belief and empowered by divine sanction; rather it is a nakedly human quality. There is no mention in this chapter of theology or Christology; neither God nor Christ is mentioned as motivating or enabling the act of loving.

 

            One hard saying unique to Jesus in antiquity unquestionably illustrates an altruistic unconditional love; Jesus said "Love your enemies" (Luke 6:27b; Matt 5:44b). The literary context in which this saying is found struggles against the concept of "loving enemies" by offering lesser actions that involve minimum risk, which can be done without actually expressing concrete love for the enemy. In my view the world would be more impoverished without the concept of unconditional love, and it is precisely the Jesus tradition that has imported this concept into Western culture.

 

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

Are There Legends in the Bible?

Every culture has legends.  Readers will recall the legends about Paul Bunyan and his blue ox, Babe, John Henry the railroad pile-driving man, the headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow, and George Washington's cherry tree, among others. A current dictionary definition of a legend is: a story coming down from the past, especially one popularly regarded as historical, although its historicity cannot be verified.

 

            Biblical scholars find that certain narratives in the Bible are also legends—a story popularly regarded as historical but whose historicity cannot be verified. In his magisterial work on the Old Testament Otto Eissfeldt, for example, identifies the story of David's victory over Goliath (1 Samuel 17:40-50) as a legend.* According to Eissfeldt a biblical legend is a poetic narrative "intended to give pleasure and entertain, and not really to adhere to the recalling of what has happened, nor to instruct."** In this legend the force of the story is not really on the man David, but rather on the divine power that controls him (1 Samuel 17:47).

 

            Here is another definition of legend: Legends are stories about holy people and religious heroes that are read for inspiration, religious instruction, and spiritual benefit.*** By this definition the story of Jesus besting the Devil in a debate (Matthew 4:1-11; Luke 4:1-13) is a legend.

 

            Generally people want to know if a historical event actually happened much like its legendary description. The answer is, no. Legends are not history.  In form the legend is thought to be fictional, although there may be a historical element at the base of it.  For example, with regard to the temptation narrative: it is surely plausible that Jesus may have experienced an inner personal struggle at some point in his career, like, for example, the much simpler statement in Mark 1:12-13 suggests—but even this brief statement, as it appears, is legendary in character.  The details of biblical legends, if dependent on oral tradition, are enhanced in the oral transmission of the stories, and appear at the time of their first inscription.  In the case of the temptation narrative the story is enhanced further in Matthew and Luke.

 

            Mark's narrative about Jesus' personal struggle at Gethsemane before the crucifixion (Mark 14:32-42) could be either a pious fiction invented by Mark or possibly a legendary account based on a historical datum that in considering his death Jesus did indeed struggle through his own "dark night of the soul." There is in fact a similar tradition in Hebrews 5:7:

 

In the days of his flesh Jesus offered up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard for his Godly fear.

 

Even this brief report, however, has a legendary character ("and he was heard for his Godly fear").  Scholars are divided on whether the report in Hebrews is to be related to the more developed narrative account in Mark.**** But in light of the fact that Hebrews shows no obvious influence from the synoptic gospels, this brief description of a personal struggle of Jesus in the face of death may possibly have a basis in historical fact.  In the light of the courage of the Johannine Christ in facing his death (John 12:27-33), one is encouraged to see in John a reaction to a tradition about a tortuous personal struggle of Jesus when facing his own death—something less than what is depicted in Hebrews 5:7.

 

            The romanticizing of the traditions about Jesus in the gospels has obscured for the most part the historical details of Jesus' humanity and personal history. The Jesus Seminar in its second report, The Acts of Jesus. The Search for the Authentic Deeds of Jesus found that only 16% of the 176 events they considered in early Christian literature had credibility as an actual historical event (p. 1).

 

How does it seem to you?

 

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

 

*The Old Testament. An Introduction (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), 42.

**The Old Testament, 34-35.

***Keith Nickle The Synoptic Gospels. An Introduction (Atlanta: John Knox, 1980), 40.

****Harold Attridge, The Epistle to the Hebrews (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1989), 148-52, n. 144; W. Robertson Nicholl, The Expositor's Greek Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1956), 4.288-89.

Historical Tradition in the Fourth Gospel

The fourth Gospel (John) is the latest of the four canonical gospels. Its "tone" (i.e., its ideas, style, and manner of expression throughout the text) is remarkably different from the earliest gospel, Mark.  Compared to Mark, John breathes the rarified air of a high Christology and a religious tradition completely different from Mark, Matthew and Luke.  Their narratives rarely overlap in content, and on the rare occasions that they do John's version has little in common with the Markan narrative and its characterization of Jesus. For example, compare the healing of the lame man (Mark 2:1-12 and John 5:2-18), where John tells a very different story, which has few similarities to Mark.  And in the story of Jesus walking on the water (Mark 6:45-52 and John 6:16-21), where John's version is much shorter and only superficially similar.

 

               I have described John 1:1-18 as a confession, and indeed it is, but it is also unabashed mythical (not historical) language (compare Philippians 2:5-11), which sets the tone for the Gospel of John.  In general Myth is a story about gods and heroes in a time and place not recognizable as our own.  Myth is about creation and origins; it is an "attempt to explain creation, divinity, and religion."  History is about what actually happened in the past, and historical description is based on evidence available to a neutral third party.  This event, described at the opening of the gospel, is not historical in the sense that it takes place in common space and time; it occurs for the most part in the primordium—i. e., earliest origins and events taking place before the world and time began.  It describes the event on the basis of the faith of the author.  Plato, however, regarded all the Greek myths told by the Greek poets as "made up" stories; hence they were things that never happened in the past.

 

               The character of John is such that critical historians attempt to rehabilitate its history by appealing to its rare similarities with the synoptic gospels, and in this way arguing that it is possible that "within the material shared by John and the synoptics" the author of John had access to an "independent and primitive tradition" about Jesus (Raymond Brown, The Gospel According to John, 2 vols. Doubleday, 1966, 1: xlviii).  It is virtually impossible to harmonize the linguistic interests of the Judean Jesus of Mark with the language of John's Jesus.  For example, the striking dualisms in John, light/darkness (1:5), truth/falsehood (8:44-45), Spirit/flesh (3:6), above/below (8:23), do not fit the language world of the Judean Jesus of Mark, even though they are, in part, shared with the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were contemporary with Jesus.

 

               Nevertheless John is not without its historical value, even though critical scholars generally recognize that it tells us virtually nothing about Jesus, the Judean man who lived more than a generation earlier than the writing of John.  Its value lies in the fact that the Gospel of John attests a very different type of Christianity at the end of the first century from what we find portrayed in the synoptic gospels a generation, or more, earlier; John represents a type of Christianity, which draws on different traditions some of which are likely as early as the synoptic tradition.  John demonstrates that a wide breadth of responses to the Judean man, and ideas about him continued to proliferate.  The Jesus traditions in the first century were pluralistic, rich, complex, contradictory, and none could claim exclusivity.

 

               There are remarkable differences between John and the synoptic gospels; here are a few of the most notable:

 

Synoptics:	John:
John baptizes Jesus with water.	John observes Jesus baptized by the spirit.
Jesus tells parables.	John has no parables.
Jesus' message announced the kingdom of God.	The kingdom barely mentioned.
Last meal Jesus says my body/blood given for you.	At the last meal Jesus washes disciples' feet.
Jesus performs exorcisms.	There are no exorcisms in John.

 

               In describing who Jesus actually was, one must make an either or decision between Mark and John.  As Albert Schweitzer saw at the beginning of the twentieth century, one must choose either the Jesus of Mark (which he incorrectly regarded as history) or the Jesus of John's gospel.  A middle path of harmonizing the two is not a historical solution.  Hence, since the beginning of the twentieth century the Gospel of John has been discredited as a historical source for Jesus, the Judean man who lived at the end of the first third of the first century.

 

What do you think about giving up the popular Jesus of the Gospel of John for Mark's Judean Jesus?

 

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

 

See: Hedrick, When History and Faith Collide (Wipf & Stock, 1999), 30-47.

Who to Believe? Dissenting Voices in a Text

This essay is not about history—that is, it is not about what actually happened in the past.  It is an essay on how we create the past.  Every text contains the seeds of its own destruction; that is to say, every text contains points at which the integrity of the text breaks down and undermines itself.  In short, these points render the text ambiguous, leaving a perplexed reader to ask, what's going on here?

            Here are several examples; some are well known and others not so well known.  John 4:2 is perhaps the best known since the statements are positioned one within the other.  In John 4:1 the narrator informs the reader that it was common knowledge that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John the Baptizer.  In 4:2 a dissenting voice emerges dividing the sentence that begins in 4:1 (a subordinate clause) and concludes in 4:3 (the main clause).  Clearly the dissenting voice disagrees with the narrator.  The dissenter asserts that Jesus himself did not personally perform any baptisms, but the narrator equally assertively insists that he did perform baptisms, and that it was common knowledge that he did.  Note that translators of the text recognize the disagreement, and place John 4:2 in parentheses.  Who should we believe—the primary narrator of John or the dissenting voice that corrects the narrator?

            By my count there are at least 121 of these "clarifications" in the text of John.  Another example is found in the narrative of the feeding of the five thousand (John 6:5-14).  The reader is told that the healings Jesus performed (the narrator calls them "signs") created a sensation, and as a result a great crowd followed him (John 6:2), which the reader later discovers numbered five thousand (John 6:10).  Jesus takes 5 barley loaves and two fish and feeds this huge crowd and has five baskets of fragments left over from the barley loaves (John 6:13).  The narrator's positive climax to the feeding story is that "when the people saw the sign," they confessed Jesus as "the prophet who is to come into the world" (John 6:14).  Imagine the reader's surprise to learn a little later that the Jesus character in the narrative disagrees with the narrator's judgment: "Jesus answered them…you seek me not because you saw signs, but ate your fill of the loaves" (John 6:26).  Should we believe the narrator or the Jesus character?  Was the crowd persuaded by the sign they had witnessed or because their bellies were full (John 6:12)?

            In John 7:22 again a dissenting voice interrupts a compound sentence by the Jesus character in the narrative:  Jesus asserts to his interlocutors in the temple (the Judahites), "Moses gave you circumcision, and you circumcise a person on the Sabbath."  Translators put the dissenting statement that follows in parentheses to show that it is not part of what Jesus said to the Judahites, but rather is an aside directly addressing the reader.  The dissenting voice corrects the assertion of Jesus by saying, "not that it is from Moses but from the fathers."  Those who prepared the critical Greek text found the dissenting voice so disruptive that they set the dissenting statement off with dashes, as they also did in John 4:2.  Who should a reader of John think has provided the correct response: the Jesus character or the dissenting voice?

            The phenomenon is not limited to the Gospel of John; another interesting disagreement is found in Mark 5:22-24, 35-43.  A synagogue ruler (Jairus) implores Jesus to come heal his twelve year old daughter, who at that moment was at the point of death (5:23).   Jesus goes with him (5:24), but he is delayed by another healing (5:25-34).  At that moment Jairus received word that his daughter in the meanwhile had died (5:35), but Jesus ignored the report urging the synagogue ruler to "only believe" (5:36).  Upon arriving at the home of Jairus loud lamentations are in progress because of the child's death (5:38).  Before he sees the child, Jesus asserts to the mourners that "the child is not dead but sleeping" (5:39), and the mourners laughed at him (5:40).  When they went into the building Jesus took the child by the hand and said "arise" and immediately the girl got up (5:41-42).  Was the Jesus character correct and the girl only sleeping, or were the mourners correct and the girl was dead?  In short the problem is this: is the story about the resuscitation of a dead child (i.e., the mourners were right), or is the story about the healing of a sick child (i.e., the Jesus character was right)?

            The raw data of history are often contradictory forcing historians to choose between the more probable and the less probable.  What eventually becomes history in these judgmental situations is what a preponderance of historians decides to call history.  In the segment from Mark above the historical issue is: what is the nature of the story, a healing narrative or a story about the raising of a dead girl.  In the Gospel of John the issue is which voice is the final authority for reading John: that of the primary narrator or that of the dissenter.

 

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

 

Charles W. Hedrick, "Authorial Presence and Narrator in John. Commentary and Story" in Goehring, Hedrick, Sanders, and Betz, eds., Gospel Origins and Christian Beginnings (Sonoma, CA: Polebridge Press, 1990), 74-93.

 

Hedrick, "Miracle Stories as Literary Compositions: The Case of Jairus's Daughter," Perspectives in Religious Studies 20.3 (Fall 1993), 217-33. 

Romancing the Gospels

Reality, that is to say the way things are "out there all around us," is not directly apprehended by the mind.  Things "out there" are communicated to the mind indirectly through the senses (seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling).  The mind processes what information the senses provide and deduces the situation "out there" from the received data. Thus, the reality that each individual perceives "out there" in society and nature is unique to the individual.

Narratives also reflect "narrative realism," which is the reality effect authors produce for the reader, whether they intend it or not.  At least five kinds of narrative realism have been used in Western literature; they are: fantasy realism, mythical realism, romantic realism, fictional realism, and historical realism.

Romantic realism describes the activities of superhuman beings in a supernatural world.  It portrays characters like us, only much better than we are in every way, in a space similar to ours, in a time of marvels.  [Hedrick, "Realism in Western Narrative," JBL 126.2 (2007): 352-53]

Romantic realism portrays a world in which the ordinary rules of nature are suspended and the extraordinary regularly occurs.  The early Christian gospels portray a narrative realism that is akin to the King Arthur legends and Harry Potter tales, and hence fit better into the category of romantic realism than into the category of historical realism.  Historical realism portrays what has actually happened in common space and time, as it can be reconstructed on the basis of empirical evidence.  The subject of history is real people and actual events portrayed in terms of natural cause and effect.

That the early Christian gospels correspond to a realism best described as romantic implies that their realism is due to how the evangelists perceived reality or chose to portray it, which is the case with any author.  The circumstances of Jesus' career, however, are not necessarily identical with the evangelists' perceptions of it.  For example, Mark, Matthew, and Luke portray Jesus performing exorcisms, but John does not perceive Jesus as an exorcist, and has no exorcisms.  It is true that historical narrative is whatever we say it is, but that statement is actually a caveat, a warning to historians that they should not be overly confident in their reconstruction of history, since it is only a reconstruction, whether others agree with it even it in part.

The early Christian gospels are not "history" in the sense of what was actually lived; they are only particular reconstructions of history.  History itself is the aggregate of the lived past; that is to say, history is comprised of all the billions of things that have ever happened in the past, significant and insignificant, public and private, natural and arranged, remembered and forgotten, personal and impersonal, seemly and unseemly, etc.  Narratives about the lived past (or selected aspects of it), on the other hand, are attempts at reconstructing the lived past—never in its aggregate totality but in what the historian considers the more significant moments of aspects of it.  Hence history is different from historical narrative.  The reality that was the moment as it was actually lived can never be recaptured, but its scattered bones (individual artifacts and memories) can be gathered, catalogued, and analyzed.  From these vestiges of the past the historian aims to revive a given "lived moment" by making connections between the bits of data and imagining how things might have played themselves out given the data at the historian's disposal.  Thus the historian attempts to codify the lived past into a reconstructed historical narrative.  But a reconstructed historical narrative is no more "history" than a corpse is a human being.

            Thinking of history as lived past and historical narrative as later reconstruction may actually free us from the idea that Jesus' "lived past" is what the evangelists said it was.  The widely differing reconstructions of Jesus by modern scholars graphically illustrate the shortcomings of the early Christian gospels as historical sources.  It is not simply a case of one is right and the others wrong; but that the sources themselves are simply flawed and cannot be trusted. [From the epilogue: Hedrick, The Wisdom of Jesus, Cascade Books, forthcoming].

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

John’s Gospel, History, and Fiction

There are three types of literature that are closely related in form and style: fiction, history, and gospel.  They all are narrative—that is they tell a story.  The character of two of these genres is well known: Fiction, by definition, is about things that never happened, but if it is realistic historical fiction one would have to add the following to the definition: although these things never occurred, they could have happened (in the sense that the realistic action approximates conventional reality).  History on the other hand, by definition is about things that did actually occur.

Gospel literature, according to critical scholarship, falls somewhere between the two definitions above—it is neither history nor fiction—or better, it is both history and fiction.  Gospel literature is unapologetically propaganda literature, which is enough to compromise its reliability as unbiased history, if one pauses to think about it.  Of course what we usually think of as history and fiction can also be propagandistic.  In fact they often are, and are thereby rendered unreliable for the same reason.  The historical character of the gospels is more akin to Eusebius' Life of Constantine, which is an encomium or eulogy (4^th century) written in praise of the first Christian emperor extolling his role in establishing fourth-century orthodoxy.  The encomium is not critical history, but pietistic propaganda.

I have argued in several essays that in many ways gospel narratives have more in common with fiction than history, in that gospel and fiction share many of the same techniques and conventions.  For example, ancient Greek novels frequently digress into vivid and fulsome description. In handbooks of rhetoric of the 2^nd century and later this phenomenon is called ekphrasis, "description."  Depending on who is explaining the reason for the feature, ekphrasis either digresses from the story to enhance the enjoyment of the reader (to make the narrative more vivid) or it is used to further the plot in some way.  Historical narrative, on the other hand, should not enhance data with the goal of increasing the reader's reading enjoyment, or aiding the historian's argument in some way.  If it introduces description that is not actually part of the events themselves in order to enrich the reading experience, to that extent the history is compromised as critical historical narrative.

In making a story more vivid a fiction writer often uses sensory words—words that appeal to the five senses: hearing, seeing, touching, tasting, and smelling.

In the Gospel of John there are only a few meager instances of enhancing description appealing to a physical sense:  seeing (4:35 white), (5:35 burning and shining), (20:5-7 purple), (21:7 naked [translations vary considerably]).  In an essay on colors in the Gospel of Mark (see below) I argued such meager description in Mark was likely due to the inadvertence of the author—it was just the way the author conceived what was being written that caused him to compose as he did; the author simply wrote what was in the mind's eye, so to speak.  I argued inadvertence because Mark had simply missed too many chances to enhance the reader's enjoyment with deliberate vivid language for the few color descriptions in Mark to be considered deliberate. With the exception of one other instance in John, inadvertence of the author may explain the few instances noted above.  In John 12:3, however, the author deliberately passes over into description enhancing the vividness of the narrative.  The entire passage is laced with vivid and sensual language: "Mary took a pound of costly ointment of pure nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair; and the house was filled with the fragrance of the ointment" (RSV).  In this instance the author of the gospel has evidentially utilized a technique of the fiction writer and appealed to the reader's physical senses of smell and touch, as well as to an economic sense by emphasizing the quality, high cost, and amount of the ointment.

The more gospel writers can be shown to use the techniques of narrative fiction, the longer will be the shadow of doubt cast over the gospels as historical narrative.

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

Hedrick, "Conceiving the Narrative: Colors in Achilles Tatius and the Gospel of Mark" Pp. 177-97 in R. Hock, B. Chance, J. Perkins, eds., Ancient Fiction and Early Christian Narrative (Atlanta: Scholars Press 1998).

History, Historical Narrative, and Mark’s Gospel

I begin at the beginning: what is the definition of history?
 

The definitions of history in Random House College Dictionary read as follows: history is (1) “The branch of knowledge dealing with past events”; (2) “a continuous systematic narrative of past events as relating to a particular people, country, period, person, etc., usually written in chronological order”; (3) “the aggregate of past events”; and (4) “the record of past events, especially in connection with the human race.”  Basically these break down into three ways of viewing history: it is a branch of scientific inquiry; it is everything that happened in the past; it is a narrative reconstructing what happened in the past.  Webster’s Third International Dictionary (unabridged) agrees with these three ways of defining history but in its listing of options gives precedence to the idea that history is a narrative of events or a systematic written account comprising a chronological record.  The idea that history is principally a narrative of past events can threaten the independent reality of the lived past.

At a recent conference (Society of Biblical Literature) one panel speaker claimed: “History is only available in narrative”—I objected claiming that history was a reality in its own right completely apart from all historical narratives.  Narratives change as new information and insights become available, but the lived reality that was history is what it was, whether we can recover it or not.

History is all the millions and billions of things that have ever happened in the past—significant and insignificant, public and private, natural and arranged, remembered and forgotten, personal and impersonal, seemly and unseemly, etc.  Narratives about that aggregate of the lived past are attempts to reconstruct it—not in its aggregate totality but in what the historian considers its more significant aspects.

Bits and pieces of the aggregate that was our historical past actually survive apart from the historical narrative in the residue, artifacts, residua, and relics of the past.  These odds and ends are the raw data of history, remainders of a lived past before it was codified into the Master Narrative of a given reconstructed history.  For example, remainders of the lived past of the Battle of Gettysburg survive in such things as official lists of the dead and wounded, anecdotal reports of the battle from observers or participants, military dispatches, photos, maps, prisoner lists, scattered equipment from the battlefield, etc.  Historians rely on these bits and pieces of the lived past as well as on their imaginations to fill in gaps in the data.

History itself is something far different than historical narrative.  History consists in billions of events themselves as played out at the time—momentarily present but they then immediately become part of the lived past.  The reality that was the living moment as it was actually lived can never be recaptured, but its scattered bones (artifacts and memories) can be gathered, catalogued, and analyzed.  The historian aims to revive a given living moment by making connections between bits of data and imagining how things might have played themselves out given the data at the historian’s disposal.  Thus the historian codifies the lived past into historical narrative.  But a given historical narrative is no more “history” than a corpse is a human being.

A narrative cannot be historical if it is not informed by the residua of the lived past.  And hence a historical narrative cannot be “history” as such, but it is only an attempt at reconstructing the lived past through its residua.  A narrative about the lived past is historically reliable as a reconstruction only to the extent that it conforms to the residua of the lived past, and only to the extent that the historian’s imagination corresponds to a critical sense of what is actually real.

This way of looking at history and historical narrative has significant implications for the historical character of the Gospel of Mark, our earliest gospel in the view of a majority of modern scholars.  No residua of the lived past informs Mark’s narrative except unconfirmed oral reports, which scholars assume that Mark had at hand when composing the narrative.  Mark’s imaginative composition of the story, however, does not conform to a modern critical sense of what is real, or even to that represented by the finest history writing of the ancient past, such as is represented, for example, by Thucydides in his History of the Peloponnesian War (5^th century BCE).  Mark’s historical narrative turns out to be pious historical fiction written for the purpose of informing the reader about the origins of the gospel (Mark 1:1) preached by the Markan community in the latter half of the first century.

Many contemporary scholars, however, routinely treat Mark as though the narrative and the lived past are as Mark imagined it—in other words what Mark says happened, actually happened that way.  Thinking of history as lived past and historical narrative as an attempt to reconstruct that lived past puts Mark in its place as a questionable reconstruction of the events of the lived past of Galilee and Judea in the first third of the first century.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University