Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
The biggie. Much work needs to be done on the children of this category. These need to be greatly reduced in number.
Should this category include the ancient history of Palestine-Judea, including second temple era and Bar Kochba rebellion and rise of rabbinic culture? If so, should Biblical Studies itself be renamed in some way?
This relates to my previous post on Bauckham’s chapter 16. I addressed the issue of “naive readings” of texts, explaining what I mean by that term. I won’t repeat the details here. (Any text can claim to be written by so and so and at a certain time. Scholars know that when it comes to the bulk of apocryphal “new testament” writings.)
So what external evidence do we have for the time when the Papias text was written? Continue reading “Subjecting Papias to external controls. A first step”
16. Papias on John
A second (hitherto unknown) inner circle
In this chapter Bauckham argues that the author of the Gospel of John was John the Elder, and that it was this John who was the Beloved Disciple (BD). He begins by comparing the Synoptic “sources” with John’s. He reminds us that it was Peter, James and John (the Sons of Zebedee) who were the inner circle in the Synoptic Gospels, and that it was the Twelve who were the eyewitness authorities behind Mark’s gospel, first of the Synoptics. In the Gospel of John, on the other hand, we find that the synoptic trio of Peter, James and John, no longer occupy such a privileged place. They have been replaced, argues B, by the BD. But the BD is not alone. He is part of another circle, Continue reading “Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 16”
Someone asked me what I found “daring and original” about “The Existential Jesus” by John Carroll. My replies, based on a reading of only 3/4 of the book, follow: Continue reading “A few of the intriguing thoughts provoked by The Existential Jesus”
The question of the authenticity of the Last Supper passage (1 Cor. 11:23-26) in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians came up in a discussion recently, and having not long ago read Winsome Munro’s Authority in Paul and Peter (1983) I found myself presenting a case that not only that passage, but a good slice of its surrounding material, is also a later (“nonpauline”) addition to the original letter.
So here is my take on Munro’s argument for this section of 1 Corinthians: Continue reading “Pastoral interpolation in 1 Corinthians 10-11”
This review that was published in the Brisbane Anglican newspaper, in John Carroll’s words, “quite brilliantly catches the flavour of what I have attempted to do” (email correspondence: 13/03/07)
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Picked up John Carroll’s “The Existential Jesus” today. It is written more for those with a philosophical or religious mind. This book is John Carroll’s philosophical journey through Mark’s Jesus. An existential interpretation of Mark’s Jesus. It is not a verse by verse study analyzing the historical literary or religious background evidenced in the text. Will write more later.
(forgive tardy responses to some comments on earlier entries — will get there soon)
A Comparison with Luke-Acts
Bauckham continues to search for ways to treat the Gospel of John’s witness motif as something other than a metaphor:
Disappointed in the Australian review of Carroll’s Existential Jesus. Have tried to track down a little on the reviewer, Andrew Rutherford, and closest I can find is that he’s “a Melbourne based reviewer”. His review does not demonstrate deep awareness of the issues involved. He says, for example, that Crossan has “shown” how a Galilean peasant like Jesus might become the focus of a religion. Well, Crossan has certainly attempted to show as much (that his Jesus is a fellow Irish freedom-advocate), but only from the basis of so many questionable assumptions and being content to leave so many inevitable questions unaddressed — check out Doherty’s review for starters. Rutherford’s review seems to be saying little more than Carroll is up the creek because he does not conform to respectable scholarly questions and established scholarly conclusions.
I have still to read the book, but pending its arrival I have to confess to some parting of ways at John Carroll’s own commentary. It goes further than the impressions I was left with over his Religion Report interview. I can handle Mark as an historical and literary document, but I feel less comfortable with seekers of “truths” behind human existence. I find nothing fearful at all, and everything richly meaningful, in base biological and physical explanations for everything. That, to me, is the only foundation of human cooperation that I can see holding when all else has failed, as fearful dreaming and searching for other “Truths Out There” always will.
For a little more on where John Carroll is coming from as the author of the Existential Jesus;
and for a link to a review (not a deep one — one of those by a regular newspaper reviewer) of Carroll’s Existential Jesus by Andrew Rutherford —
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21275645-25132,00.html (Link is preserved on Internet Archive’s WayBack Machine)
Anyone who is a fan of Mark’s gospel will be absolutely mad if they don’t catch up with the podcast or transcript of interview with author of a new book (The Existential Jesus) on Mark’s gospel, John Carroll (yep, he’s a sociologist, “out of his field” and all that) at the Religion Report program site.
He argues that “Mark is one of the pinnacles of Western literature” (Vork, we’re not alone!), “I don’t think there’s anything like it in Western culture”, he’s a fan of Frank Kermode’s “Genesis of Secrecy” (I’ve already referred again to my notes on that, and how its a story that works on its sub text.)
Carroll says Matthew and Luke are boring by comparison — they want to tie Christianity in with the OT (missing Mark’s point entirely, or rejecting it), but that John was the only one who came close to understanding what Mark was saying.
Mark’s Jesus is not a teacher of morals and ethics, he gives up on trying to teach his disciples anything, Simon was named Peter to caricature him as the rocky ground (always jumping in with enthusiasm then withering at the first problem) — nice to find someone else who agrees with Tolbert on that, too! — Peter wants to build a church but Mark is anti-church, a fascinating interpretation of the transfiguration! He’s solitary, alone, angry, those closest to understanding him are Pilate and Judas. He’s not anti-Jewish and takes Jewish religion as a “prototype” for all religion, but is anti the whole Jewish culture that had to end. And his end is alone, without God, on a stake prefigured by the withered fig tree.
I’m sure I’m not going to agree with everything but I won’t be reading it to “agree” or “disagree” but to explore another perspective and think afresh!
Just heard snippets of the broadcast I mentioned in previous post. Loved bits I heard. So John Carroll is also another Frank Kermode fan! That’s surely one of the best reads on the gospel of Mark — check out Interpreting Mark like any other work of literature.
One reason I want to read Carroll’s book, The Existential Jesus, is to follow up his intriguing idea that the Gospel of John understood the Gospel of Mark and was an exposition of the mysteries coded in Mark. I can’t imagine more two totally opposite gospels so this is surely (hopefully) going to be an interesting read. (About the only thing in common that immediately hits me is their apparently less than “orthodox” provenance.)
I just know our public broadcaster the ABC is a secret front for book publishers.
This morning there’s a radio program (web accessible) on Mark’s Gospel — John Carroll sees Mark’s gospel as “up with Homer as the great Western storyteller; the other gospels are inferior. . . .”
This can be heard live from http://www.abc.net.au/rn/
but podcast will be available for 4 weeks at http://www.abc.net.au/rn/religionreport/default.htm (Transcript will be there forever)
The announcement from last week:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/religionreport/stories/2007/1859260.htm#transcript
Stephen Crittenden: Welcome to the program.
Before we get under way, a reminder that next week on the program we’ll be reading the strangest and most troubling of the four gospels, St Mark’s gospel. It’s the one with the angry Jesus who frowns at the fig tree because it’s not in season, and turns it into a black stump; who gives up trying to teach his disciples because they don’t get it, and who dies alone and in despair.
Sociologist John Carroll has written a new book about Mark, ‘The Existential Jesus’. He says that Mark is up with Homer as the great Western storyteller; the other gospels are inferior, just footnotes, although at least John’s footnotes are better than Luke’s and Matthew’s. So, it’s time to refresh your memory of a great Western storyteller, the man who invented Jesus. That’s next week.
15. The Witness of the Beloved Disciple
Bauckham opens this chapter with:
In the last chapter we demonstrated that, according to John 21:24, the Beloved Disciple was both the primary witness on whose testimony the Gospel is based and also himself the author of the Gospel. (p.384) Continue reading “Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 15a”
Richard Bauckham places critical importance on the way Papias expresses his preference for a “living voice” over “books”, and argues that here Papias is informing readers that he follows “best historical practice” according to standards of antiquity.
Thanks to my life-long habit of frequenting second hand bookstores I have just come across my old 1965 Penguin paperback of G. A. Williamson translation of Eusebius and notice a small print footnote on these words of Papias: Continue reading “Papias: theologian or historian?”