ISSN 0142-064X the Charge of Blasphemy in Mark 14.64

[JSNT 26.4 (2004) 379-401] ISSN 0142-064X

The Charge of Blasphemy in Mark 14.64

Adela Yarbro Collins

Yale University Divinity School 409 Prospect Street, New Haven, CT 06511, USA [email protected]

Abstract

The teaching of m. Sanh. 7.5, that the ‘blasphemer’ is not culpable unless he pronounces the Name itself, is attested by Josephus and the Community Rule from Qumran. The Markan Jesus, however, does not pronounce the divine name. Philo provides evidence for a broader understanding of blasphemy, namely, claims to be divine or to possess divine power. The relevant passages are analogous to the Markan Jesus’ claims that he would be enthroned at the right hand of God and that he would ‘come with the clouds of heaven’. Both claims imply divine status, authority and power. The chief priests, as Sadducees, probably subscribed to a deﬁnition of blasphemy like that of Philo. Like other Jews of the time, they advocated the death penalty for blasphemy, but were more likely to carry it out. Mark did not wish to deny that Jesus blasphemed from the point of view of the chief priests. The narrative is ironic in the sense that what is blasphemy from the point of view of the council is true from the perspective of the implied audience.

A great deal of the scholarship on the trial of Jesus before the high priest and the council of Judea in Mark has focused on the question of the historical reliability of the account.1 One of the issues involved in such studies is the question of responsibility for the death of Jesus, a sensitive issue for Jewish–Christian relations, especially since the Nazis’ attempt to exterminate the Jews and the subsequent examination by Christians of their tradition, in which the Christian roots of anti-Semitism have been

1. See the review of scholarship in Darrell L. Bock, Blasphemy and Exaltation in Judaism and the Final Examination of Jesus: A Philological-Historical Study of the Key Jewish Themes Impacting Mark 14:61-64 (WUNT, 2.106; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998), pp. 5-29; the concerns of Bock’s study are also primarily historical.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004, The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX and 15 East 26th Street, Suite 1703, New York, NY 10010, USA. 380 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) analyzed. A major problem in the study of the trial of Mk 14 is the dis- crepancy between the procedures followed there and the procedures man- dated by the tractate Sanhedrin in the Mishnah for capital cases (m. Sanh. 4.1–5.5). If the regulations described in the Mishnah were in force during the time of Jesus, then the trial before the council was illegal, even a gross miscarriage of justice. Herbert Danby has argued persuasively that those regulations were not in force in Jesus’ time.2 Israel Abrahams has noted that the relevant portion of the Mishnah reads like a polemic against the Gospels.3 Although a detailed analysis is beyond the scope of this article, I am attracted to the hypothesis that Abrahams hinted at only to reject, namely, that the Mishnah passage was composed, at least in part, in order to demonstrate that the high priest and council would not have conducted a trial in such a manner. The rabbis wanted to make the case that the accounts of Mark and Matthew are libelous fabrications. In any case, the regulations regarding trials involving capital punishment in the Mishnah should not be used in historical studies of the trial of Jesus. The point about the relevance of the Mishnaic tractate Sanhedrin is the only aspect of the question of what actually happened to be addressed by this article. I will focus rather on the cultural presuppositions and rhetorical force of the text of Mk 14.53-64. With regard to the presentation of the event, even when one puts the Mishnah aside, it is clear that the text of Mark portrays the high priest and the other members of the council as proceeding in an unjust manner. Such is implied by the statement that ‘the chief priests and the whole council were seeking testimony against Jesus in order to put him to death, and yet they could not ﬁnd any’.4 This statement strongly implies a lack of impartiality on the part of the members of the council who were functioning at the time as judges. The next part of the narrator’s report, which concerns the false witnesses, implies that the members of the council had sought and found persons willing to appear and bring false testimony against Jesus.5 The problem was that their

2. Herbert Danby, ‘The Bearing of the Rabbinical Criminal Code on the Jewish Trial Narratives in the Gospels’, JTS 21 (1919–20), pp. 51-76. 3. Israel Abrahams, ‘The Tannaitic Tradition and the Trial Narratives’, in Studies in Pharisaism and the Gospels (New York: Ktav, 1917–24), II, pp. 129-37; the reference is to p. 137. 4. Mk 14.55; all translations of Mark are my own. 5. Mk 14.56-59. The ga&r of v. 56 links the false testimony with the activity of the members of the council reported in v. 55. Compare Acts 6.13 where the procurance of false witnesses is explicit.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. COLLINS The Charge of Blasphemy in Mark 14.64 381 testimony did not agree. There was bias against Jesus, but the conspiracy was not sufficiently well planned. Whatever actually happened, it is clear that Mark wishes to make the point that the leaders of the people were trying to frame Jesus and thus condemn him unjustly. The narrative flow of the passage implies that the purpose of the false testimony was to convict Jesus of blasphemy against the temple and thus against God. This reading is supported by the remarks of the high priest, ‘Why do we need witnesses any longer? You heard the blasphemy’ (Mk 14.63-64). Witnesses are no longer needed to convict Jesus of blasphemy because he himself has blasphemed in the hearing of the judges. These remarks make clear that the high priest is interpreting the statement of Jesus in 14.62 as blasphemous. Here again there is tension between Mark and the Mishnah. According to m. Sanh. 7.5, the blasphemer is not culpable unless he pronounces the Name itself. Such is clearly not the case in Mark, since Jesus uses the circumlocution ‘the Power’ rather than the divine name (Mk 14.62). As will be demonstrated below, this limited understanding of blasphemy is attested in the period roughly contemporary with Mark. But this does not mean that this understanding was the official one that the council of Judea would have applied in the case of Jesus. The understanding of blasphemy likely to have been characteristic of the Sadducees, chief priests and perhaps other leaders as well was a broader one, as will be shown below. Although Mark portrays the members of the council as biased and unjust, the charge of blasphemy in the trial of Jesus has verisimilitude in the cultural context of the Gospel. Mark did not wish to deny that Jesus blasphemed from the perspective of the high priest and the council. The problem lay, in his view, with their perspective, which failed to acknowledge Jesus as the authoritative agent of God. The narrative of the trial is ironic in the sense that what is blasphemy for the members of the council is true from the perspective of those who accept Jesus as the agent of God. Indeed, in the view of the audiences of Mark, Jesus had already been enthroned as the heavenly Messiah. This conviction intensifies the ironic effect.

Blasphemy in the Cultural Context of Mark

The whole question about blasphemy in the Jewish scriptures and Second Temple Jewish texts needs to be clariﬁed ﬁrst of all linguistically.6 Many

6. For brief introductions to the topic of blasphemy, see Hermann Wolfgang

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. 382 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) texts are quite inappropriately interpreted as ‘blasphemy’. The first step toward greater clarity is to recognize a significant linguistic difference between Mark, Jews of the Second Temple period, and ordinary Greek speakers of the same period, on the one hand, and modern exegetes on the other. That difference may be illustrated by the fact that contemporary speakers of English use the word-group related to the term ‘blasphemy’ only with God as the object. We never speak about ‘blaspheming’ another human being. In ordinary ancient Greek, however, the verb blasfhmei=n is used with either gods or human beings as the object. This ordinary usage is reflected in the New Testament. In Col. 3.8, blasfhmi/a refers to slander against other human beings; in Eph. 4.31, the same noun is equivalent to loidori/a, which means abusive speech.7

‘Blasphemy’ in the Hebrew Bible The situation is quite the same in the Hebrew Bible. There is no speciﬁc term in that collection of texts that means ‘to blaspheme’.8 Those who claim that the concept of blasphemy appears in the Hebrew Bible connect it with one or more of the following terms: Prx (‘reproach, taunt, despise, scorn’), C)n (‘contemn, spurn, scorn, despise’), Pdg (‘revile, affront’) and the piel of llq (‘curse’). All of these words are used in the Hebrew Bible with both human and divine objects, just as blasfhmei=n is used in ordinary Greek. Not counting doublets, the term Prx is used 18 times with a human object, 10 times with God as the object and 3 times with a human object closely associated with God. An example with a human object is Ps. 119.42, ‘Then shall I have an answer for those who taunt (Prx) me, for I trust in thy word.’9 An often cited set of examples with a divine object is the story of the Rabshakeh, the envoy of King Sennacherib of Assyria, and Hezekiah in 2 Kgs 18–19 and the parallel in Isa. 36–37. In 2 Kgs 19.4, the speech of the Rabshakeh is described as taunting (Prx) the living God. It seems clear that the issue is not ‘blasphemy’ in the later sense. The Rabshakeh

Beyer, ‘blasfhme/w, blasfhmi/a, bla&sfhmoj’, TDNT 1 (1964), pp. 622-23; Otfried Hoﬁus, ‘blasfhmi/a, blasfhme/w, bla&sfhmoj’, in H. Baltz and G. Schneider (eds.), Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), pp. 219- 21; Herbert Chanan Brichto et al., ‘Blasphemy’, Encyclopaedia Judaica [computer ﬁle] (CD-ROM edition; Version 1.0; Shaker Heights, OH: Judaica Multimedia, 1997). 7. Jeremy Foreman Hultin, ‘Watch your Mouth: The Ethics of Obscene Speech in Early Christianity and its Environment’ (PhD dissertation, Yale University, 2003). 8. Bock, Blasphemy and Exaltation, p. 30. 9. All translations of the MT are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. COLLINS The Charge of Blasphemy in Mark 14.64 383 states, ‘Has any of the gods of the nations ever delivered its land out of the hand of the king of Assyria?’ (2 Kgs 18.33). The envoy taunts the God of Israel just as he would a human opponent, attributing weakness to him. In this text, God is not portrayed as an utterly transcendent being to be treated with awe-filled respect, but a character who engages in conflict and who can be insulted by enemies and defended by adherents. The term Pdg (‘revile, affront’) is used with a human object in association with Prx (‘reproach, taunt, despise, scorn’) in Ps. 44.16-17 (44.15-16 in the English versions): ‘All day long my disgrace is before me, and shame has covered my face at the words of the taunters (Prx) and revilers (Pdg), at the sight of the enemy and the avenger.’ The latter term also occurs in the story of 2 Kgs 18–19 and Isa. 36–37. In 2 Kgs 19.6 = Isa. 37.6, the Lord says to Hezekiah through Isaiah, ‘Do not be afraid because of the words that you have heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have reviled (Pdg) me.’ Both terms occur in 2 Kgs 19.22 = Isa. 37.23: ‘Whom have you taunted (Prx) and reviled (Pdg)? Against whom have you raised your voice and haughtily lifted your eyes? Against the Holy One of Israel!’ In both of these passages, the God of Israel asserts his dig- nity and power over against the threats and taunts issued by the king of Assyria. The term C)n (‘contemn, spurn, scorn, despise’) is used four times with an abstract object, such as ‘reproof’ or ‘counsel’. It is used five times with a human object, eight times with a divine object, and six times with an object closely associated with God, such as God’s word or name. An example with a human object is Isa. 60.14, ‘and all who despised (C)n) you [Jerusalem] shall bow down at your feet’. Two examples will give an impression of the usage of the term with a divine object. In Isa. 1.4 the people are accused of having despised (C)n) the Holy One of Israel. The context makes clear that it is their unjust deeds that constitute this act of despising God, their failure to ‘rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow’ (1.17). In Deut. 31.20, the Lord predicts that, when the people ‘have eaten their fill and grown fat, they will turn to other gods and serve them, despising (C)n)’ God and breaking the covenant. Here the issue is clearly idolatry. In all these cases, the term has connotations of disrespect. In some cases, it has the connotation of rebellion as well. It is not primarily a verbal offense. The piel of llq (‘curse’) is used with a human object 27 times in the Hebrew Bible. In a further case, the human receiver of the curse is closely associated with God: ‘Abishai...answered, “Shall not Shimei be put to death

10 for this, because he cursed (llq) the Lord’s anointed?”’ The term is used with an inanimate object three times. God is the object in Exod. 22.27 (22.28 in the English versions), ‘You shall not curse (llq) God, nor curse 11 (rr)) a ruler of your people.’ Here cursing God or God’s anointed is a serious offense, worthy of death. But it is an activity that can apply to ordinary human beings as well. It is not an act that is uniquely related to God’s status as God. The term llq also occurs in a passage that became a classic text for the later understanding of a transgression or crime roughly equivalent to ‘blasphemy’. In Lev. 24.10-23, a man who was the son of an Israelite woman, but whose father was an Egyptian, got into a fight with an Israelite man. In the context of this fight, ‘the son of the Israelite woman expressly mentioned 12 (bqn) the Name and he cursed (llq) and they brought him to Moses’. The interpretation of this text is difficult, but the context suggests that the son of the Israelite woman cursed the other man in the name of Yahweh. In other words, he called upon Yahweh to bring some evil upon the other man. The judgment of the Lord through Moses is that the man should be stoned. Then two legal principles are given in vv. 15-16: ‘Whoever curses (llq) his God shall bear his sin, and the one who expressly mentions the name of Yahweh shall be put to death...’13 Here we have something distinctive. Cursing God is wicked, but speaking the name of Yahweh is worse. This text seems to be the basis for the later idea of ‘blasphemy’. This story and its legal principles stand in strong tension with a story about Elisha:

[Elisha] went up from there to Bethel; and while he was going up on the way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying ‘Go away, baldhead! Go away, baldhead!’ When he turned around and saw them, he cursed them in the name of the Lord (hwhy M#b Mllqyw). Then two she-bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys (2 Kgs 2.23-24).

Here Elisha, a man of God, is portrayed, not only as cursing, but also as expressly mentioning the name of Yahweh. This story is a folk-tale and represents the kind of thing people would say. Leviticus 24.10-23 repre-

10. 2 Sam. 19.22 (NRSV 19.21). 11. My translation. 12. Lev. 24.11; my translation. The root bqn usually means ‘to curse’ in the qal and ‘to name, mention, or designate’ in the niphal. The qal form, however, in Isa. 62.2 clearly means ‘to designate’, and a similar meaning is likely here also. See Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 23–27 (AB, 3B; New York: Doubleday, 2001), pp. 2107-108. 13. My translation.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. COLLINS The Charge of Blasphemy in Mark 14.64 385 sents a later, or different, perspective: the view that such cursing is morally reprehensible, indeed worthy of death. The latter perspective seems also to reﬂect a growing reverence for the divine name.

‘Blasphemy’ in the Septuagint The usage of the Septuagint (LXX) is analogous to that of the Hebrew Bible and similar to that of ordinary Greek. The verb blasfhmei=n, for example, is used, but not as a technical term. This verb is used to translate both Pdg 14 and C)n, but not consistently. The former verb is also translated with 15 o)neidi/zein (‘mock’) and parorgi/zein (‘to provoke to anger’). C)n is also translated with parorgi/zein (‘to provoke to anger’),16 mukthri/zein (‘to sneer at’),17 and parocu&nein (‘to provoke’).18 In Dan. 3.96 OG (3.29 MT), blasfhmei=n translates the Aramaic hl# rm). The word hl# is related to the Akkadian V?LOODWX, which means ‘insolence’. The Aramaic phrase and the corresponding term blasfhmh/sh are thus best translated ‘speaks inso- lently’.19 In Isa. 66.3 LXX, the adjective bla&sfhmoj replaces ‘one who blesses an idol’ in the Hebrew. Here, the worship of other gods is interpreted as equivalent to speaking abusively or slanderously to or about God. In all these cases, the word-group blasfhmei=n is used non-technically, in a sense that could apply equally well to human beings or to God. In texts composed in Greek, or surviving only in Greek, the usage of the word-group blasfhmei=n is similar to that of ordinary Greek. In 2 Macca- bees, for example, there is a scene in which Judas Maccabaeus and his men are besieging a fort where Timothy and some of his men had taken refuge after a victory of Maccabaeus’s army. In this context, the narrator makes the following remark: ‘Now the men within, conﬁdent in the security of the place, were speaking in an exceedingly insolent manner and sending forth improper words.’20 The NRSV translates e0blasfh&moun here with ‘kept blaspheming’, but the usual taunting of the foe in a battle is the

14. 4 Kgdms 19.6 and Isa. 52.5, respectively. 15. Isa. 37.6 and Ezek. 20.27, respectively. 16. Ps. 107.11 (106.11 LXX). 17. Prov. 1.30; 15.5. 18. Deut. 32.19; Lam. 2.6; 2 Kgdms 12.14. 19. On the Aramaic phrase and its relation to Akkadian, see Shalom M. Paul, ‘A Case Study of “Neglected” Blasphemy’, JNES 42 (1985), pp. 291-94. Paul himself concludes that ‘Such improper speech when directed against God is blasphemy and when uttered against a human being is slander, insolence, impudence, effrontery’ (p. 292), but such a distinction is not required by the evidence he cites. 20. 2 Macc. 10.34; my translation.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. 386 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) more likely interpretation. Similarly, ai 9 blasfhmi/ai in v. 35 should be translated ‘the insults’, rather than ‘the blasphemies’, and oi9 bla&sfhmoi in v. 36 ‘the slanderers’ rather than ‘the blasphemers’.21 1 Maccabees 2.6 is an interesting passage in which the noun blasfhmi/a probably refers to deeds as well as to words: ‘And [Mattathias] saw the outrages (blasfhmi/ai) that were taking place in Judah and Jerusalem.’22 This statement follows an account describing the forbidding of burnt offerings in the sanctuary; the command to profane sabbaths and festivals, to deﬁle the sanctuary and the priests, and to build altars and sacred precincts and shrines for idols. It also describes the command to the towns of Judah to offer sacriﬁce (to other gods) town by town. Finally, it describes the desola- ting sacrilege, the building of altars in the surrounding towns and so forth.23 In Wis. 1.6, it is said that wisdom will not hold a bla&sfhmoj guiltless [of the words] from his lips. The context suggests that the Greek term should be translated ‘one who speaks evil’ rather than ‘blasphemer’. Further comment on this ‘evil speaking’ comes in v. 8, where there is mention of uttering unrighteous things (a!dika); in v. 10, which mentions grumbling (goggus- moi/); and in v. 11, where grumbling, slander (katalalia&) and a lying mouth (sto&ma katayeudo&menon) are advised against. In the cases discussed so far, the usage of the word-group blasfhmei=n is not technical. For the cases in which a technical sense seems to be emerging, see the discussions of Philo and Josephus below.

The Evidence of Philo Philo and Josephus are important witnesses to the understandings of blasphemy in the cultural context of Mark. In one passage of the Legatio ad Gaium, Philo uses the verb blasfhmei=n in one of its classic Greek usages. He describes Helicon, an Egyptian slave, who was educated by his master so that he would be a worthy gift to the emperor Tiberius. Tiberius paid him no attention because he hated Helicon’s ‘juvenile pleasantries’. But Helicon gained Gaius’s attention when he succeeded to the sovereignty because the slave could mock (skw&ptein) and be witty or jest (xarien- ti/zesqai) more than other people. Helicon says to himself (in Philo’s

21. Similarly, in 2 Macc. 12.14, blasfhmou&ntej should be translated ‘speaking profanely’ rather than ‘blaspheming’. 22. My translation. 23. 1 Macc. 1.41-61. The noun blasfhmi/ai is used in a similar way in 2 Macc. 8.4 and should be translated ‘outrages’ or ‘insults’ rather than ‘blasphemies’.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. COLLINS The Charge of Blasphemy in Mark 14.64 387 literary construction) that Gaius’s ears ‘are wide open and pricked up to listen to those who have studied to combine abuse (to_ blasfhmei=n) with sycophancy (to_ sukofantei=n)’. Helicon also tells himself that he need not look far for material, since he has been reared on the slanders (diabolai/) against the Jews.24 In another passage of the same work, the term is used in a more distinc- tively Jewish way. Beginning in Leg. Gai. 44 (§349), Philo describes the audience that the embassy from the Jews of Alexandria had with Gaius. Philo begins by making the point that the emperor proceeded unjustly, more as an accuser than an impartial judge. The first direct speech of Gaius reported is ‘Are you the god-haters who do not believe me to be a god, a god acknowledged among all the other nations but not to be named by you?’25 When the Alexandrian opponents of the Jewish delegation accuse them of refusing to offer sacrifices of thanksgiving for the preservation of the emperor, the Jews reply that, on the contrary, they have offered sacrifice three times already: at the accession of Gaius to the sovereignty, at his recovery from severe sickness and as a prayer for his victory in Germany. ‘“All right”, he replied, “that is true, you have sacrificed, but to another, even if it was for me; what good is it then? For you have not sacrificed to me”.’26 His concluding remark was ‘They seem to me to be people unfortu- nate rather than wicked and to be foolish in refusing to believe that I have got the nature of a god.’27 In his reflection on the experience, Philo portrays it as ‘torture, the racking of the whole soul through the blasphemies (blasfhmi/ai) against God and the menaces launched upon us by this mighty despot’.28 Philo portrays Gaius as insulting the God of Israel more or less directly by asking what benefit it was if the Jews sacrifice to another on his behalf. This statement ignores the power of God to confer blessings and to control events. The apparently more serious insult was the claim of Gaius to be a god himself and the expectation that the Jews worship him as such. This claim is indirectly but powerfully insulting because it compromises

24. Philo, Leg. Gai. 26 §§166-70; text and translation from F.H. Colson (ed.), Philo (10 vols.; LCL; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: Heinemann, 1962), X, pp. 84-87. Other passages in which Philo uses the word-group related to blasfhmei=n for the verbal abuse of other human beings include Migr. Abr. 20 §§115, 117; Spec. Leg. 4.38 §197; Jos. 14 §74; Flacc. 5 §33. 25. Philo, Leg. Gai. 44 §353; Colson, Philo, X, pp. 176-77. 26. Philo, Leg. Gai. 45 §357; Colson, Philo, X, pp. 178-79. 27. Philo, Leg. Gai. 45 §367; Colson, Philo, X, pp. 182-83. 28. Philo, Leg. Gai. 46 §368; Colson, Philo, X, pp. 182-83.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. 388 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) the Jewish affirmation that only the God of Israel is divine, or at least that the people of Israel must avoid worshipping any deity other than their own. An analogous passage to the one about Gaius concerns an unknown governor of the Roman province of Egypt. Philo tells how this official attempted to do away with the observance of the Sabbath by the Jews so that they could serve him on that day as well. He tried to persuade the Jews by saying that they would surely break the Sabbath if there were a sudden attack by an enemy, a flood, a major fire, a thunderbolt, famine, ‘plague or earthquake, or any other trouble either of human or divine agency’.29 Then he went on,

I who stand before you am all the things I have named. I am the whirlwind, the war, the deluge, the lightning, the plague of famine or disease, the earthquake which shakes and confounds what was ﬁrm and stable; I am constraining destiny, not its name but its power, visible to your eyes and standing at your side.30

Philo’s reaction to this remembered or constructed statement by the governor is:

What shall we say of one who says or even merely thinks these things? Shall we not call him an evil thing hitherto unknown: a creature of a strange land or rather one from beyond the ocean and the universe—he who dared to liken to the All-blessed his all-miserable self? Would he delay to utter blasphemies (blasfhmei=n) against the sun, moon and the other stars, if what he hoped for at each season of the year did not happen at all or only grudgingly, if the summer visited him with scorching heat or the winter with a terrible frost, if the spring failed in its fruit-bearing or the autumn shewed fertility in breeding diseases? Nay, he will loose every reef of his unbridled mouth and scurrilous (kakh&goroj) tongue and accuse (ai0tia&omai) the stars of not paying their regular tribute, and scarce refrain from demanding that honour and homage be paid by the things of heaven to the things of earth, and to himself more abundantly inasmuch as being a man he conceives himself to have been made superior to other living creatures.31

29. Philo, Somn. 2.18 §125; translation from F.H. Colson and G.H. Whitaker (eds.), Philo (10 vols.; LCL; London: Heinemann; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1934), V, p. 499. 30. Philo, Somn. 2.18 §129; Colson and Whitaker, Philo, V, pp. 499, 501. 31. Philo, Somn. 2.18 §§130-32; Colson and Whitaker, Philo, V, pp. 500-501. Bock interprets Dec. 13 §§61-69 also as dealing with rulers who claim or receive divine honors (Blasphemy and Exaltation, p. 65). This reading is dubious, however, since the ‘satraps’ (§61) may be the four elements or the sun, moon and stars mentioned earlier in the text; cf. also §66.

Here the term blasfhmei=n is used for a human being who claims a greater degree of authority and power than he has a right to do. Philo’s treatment of the texts that later became normative for ‘blasphemy’ should also be noted. The LXX version of Exod. 22.27 (Exod. 22.28) reads:

qeou_j ou) kakologh&seij kai\ a!rxontaj tou~ laou~ sou ou) kakw~j e0rei=j (‘You shall not speak ill of gods, and you shall not revile rulers of your people’).32

The translator apparently took Myhl) as a plural and made the ‘ruler’ plural also for consistency of style. In Philo’s discussion of proselytes in De specialibus legibus, he says that Moses counsels them not to presume on the equal privilege and rank that God grants them ‘because they have denounced the vain imaginings of their fathers and ancestors’ and thus be inclined to ‘deal in idle talk or revile (blasfhmei=n) with an unbridled tongue the gods whom others acknowledge, lest they on their part be moved to utter profane words (a$ mh_ qe/mij) against Him Who truly is’.33 Philo most likely alludes here to the passage from the LXX cited above. Philo treats Lev. 24.10-23 in the De vita Mosis in the context of a discussion of Moses as prophet. He begins with the kind of prophecy in which the prophet asks questions of God and receives responses and gives this passage as his ﬁrst example. The LXX version of Lev. 24.11 reads:

kai\ e)ponoma&saj o( ui9o_j th~j gunaiko_j th~j Israhli/tidoj to_ o!noma kathra&sato, kai\ h!gagon au)to_n pro_j Mwush~n (‘And the son of the Israelite woman uttered the Name and cursed, and they took him to Moses’).34

Philo interprets this text to mean that the man cursed (katara&omai) God (Vit. Mos. 2.37 §196). This reading is probably based on the word order, in which the object to_ o!noma (‘the Name’) is placed immediately before the verb kathra&sato (‘cursed’) and is separated from the participle e0pono- ma&saj (‘uttered’) by the subject of the sentence. He also emphasizes the man’s Egyptian origin on his father’s side, assuming that he followed Egyptian religious practices rather than those of his mother. Philo also speaks of the man’s offense as kakhgorei=n (‘speaking ill’ or ‘abusing’ or ‘slandering’ God), but notes that cursing is worse than such speech (Vit. Mos. 2.37 §198). In reﬂecting upon the case, Philo says:

32. My translation. 33. Philo, Spec. Leg. 1.9 §53; text and translation from F.H. Colson (ed.), Philo (10 vols.; LCL; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London, Heinemann, 1937), VII, pp. 128-29. 34. My translation.

O man! Does anyone curse God? What other god can he invoke to ratify and conﬁrm the curse? Is it not plain that he must invoke God to give effect to his curses against himself? Away with such profane and impious ideas!35

Philo concludes that this incident made the promulgation of a law necessary, alluding to Lev. 24.15-16. The LXX text reads:

kai\ toi=j ui9oi=j Israhl la&lhson kai\ e0rei=j pro_j au)tou&j 1Anqrwpoj, o4j e0a_n katara&shtai qeo&n, a(marti/an lh&myetai: o)noma&zwn de\ to_ o!noma kuri/ou qana&tw| qanatou&sqw (‘And speak to the sons of Israel and you shall say to them, “If a man curses God, he will take hold of his sin; but if he utters the name of the Lord [in his curse], let him die”’).36

Philo interprets the cursing to refer not to the God of Israel, but to the gods of other peoples. Presumably Israelites, unlike the son of the Egyptian father, would not need a law forbidding the cursing of God. He may also have been inﬂuenced by the LXX version of Exod. 22.27 (22.28), which reads ‘gods’ instead of ‘God’. In any case, he goes on to say:

For the world as we know it is full of idols of wood and stone, and suchlike images. We must refrain from speaking insultingly of these (blasfhmi/a), lest any of Moses’ disciples get into the habit of treating lightly the name ‘god’ in general, for it is a title worthy of the highest respect and love. But if anyone, I will not say insults (blasfhmei=n) the Lord of gods and men, but even ventures to utter His Name unseasonably, let him suffer the penalty of death... After this, can we still think worthy of pardon those, who, with a reckless tongue, make unseasonable use of the most holy name of the Deity and treat it as a mere expletive (a)naplh&rwma)?37

The evidence suggests that Philo did not have a concept of blasphemy in the sense that he used the word-group related to blasfhmei=n exclusively for offenses against God. But, perhaps because of his transcendent understanding of the deity and his high conception of the respect and honor due to that Being, he did use the word-group in a special way when discussing such offenses. The two passages regarding Gaius and the unknown gover- nor of Egypt show that an important part of that new usage involved human beings arrogating to themselves a degree of power and authority that was not ﬁtting to them as ﬁnite creatures.

35. Philo, Vit. Mos. 2.37 §199; translation from Bock, Blasphemy and Exaltation, p. 63. 36. My translation. 37. Philo, Vit. Mos. 2.38 §§205-206, 208. Text and translation (modiﬁed) from Colson, Philo, VI, pp. 550-53.

The Evidence of Josephus Like Philo, Josephus also used the word-group related to blasfhmei=n with regard to ordinary abusive speech among human beings. For example, in describing the dejection and revolt of the Hebrews after hearing the report of those who scouted out the land of Canaan, he states:

Once more they blamed (ai0tia&omai) Moses and loaded him with abuse (kataboa&w), him and his brother Aaron, the high-priest. In this sorry condition, then, amid vituperations (blasfhmi/ai) upon the two of them, did they pass the night.38

Josephus also uses the word-group with God as the object in the sense of ordinary abusive speech. Thus, in the account of David and Goliath, he has David say:

Let this enemy then be reckoned even as one of those wild beasts [the lion and the bear that David had killed], so long has he mocked (o0neidi/zein) our army and insulted (blasfhmei=n) our God, who will deliver him into my hands.39

In the context, Goliath had challenged and taunted the Hebrews because not one of them was brave enough to engage in single combat with him; David had heard ‘the Philistine reviling (blasfhmei=n) and abusing’ the Hebrew army.40 In several passages, Josephus uses the word-group to express the attitude of some outsiders to the Jewish people. For example, in the Contra Apionem, he refutes the argument that the Jewish constitution has a late origin because it is not mentioned by the Greek historians. In the course of his refutation, he states:

I shall then proceed to cite testimonies to our antiquity from external literature, and ﬁnally to show the utter absurdity of the calumnies of the traducers of our race (...kai\ tou_j beblasfhmhko&taj h(mw~n to_ ge/noj a)podei/cw li/an a)lo&gwj blasfhmou~ntaj).41

38. Josephus, Ant. 3.14.3 §307; text and translation from H.St.J. Thackeray (ed.), Josephus (9 vols.; LCL; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: Heinemann, 1930), IV, pp. 466-67. 39. Josephus, Ant. 6.9.3 §183; text and translation (modiﬁed) from H.St.J. Thackeray and Ralph Marcus (eds.), Josephus (9 vols.; LCL; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: Heinemann, 1934), V, pp. 256-57. 40. Josephus, Ant. 6.9.2 §§176, 177; Thackeray and Marcus, Josephus, V, pp. 254- 55. 41. Apion 1.11 §59; Thackeray, Josephus, I, pp. 186-87. See also Apion 1.25 §223;

In several places, Josephus alludes to the biblical passages that later became classical for ‘blasphemy’. For example, in the second book of the Contra Apionem, he states:

Gladly would I have avoided an investigation of the institutions of other nations; for it is our traditional custom to observe our own laws and to refrain from criticism (ou)...kathgorei=n) of those of aliens. Our legislator has expressly forbidden us to deride (xleua&zein) or insult (blasfhmei=n) the gods recognized by others, out of respect for the very word ‘God’. But since our accusers expect to confute us by a comparison of the rival religions, it is impossible to remain silent.42

Here Josephus alludes to Exod. 22.27 LXX (22.38), which uses the plural 43 qeoi/ to translate the Hebrew’s Myhl), as noted above. In the Antiquities, Josephus describes an assembly at Abile near the Jordan at which Moses exhorts the people before his death and presents them with ‘these laws and this constitution recorded in a book’.44 In listing some of these laws, Josephus cites a combination of Lev. 24.16 and Deut. 21.22-23. The former passage, as noted above, reads as follows in the LXX:

o)noma&zwn de\ to_ o!noma kuri/ou qana&tw| qanatou&sqw (but if he utters the name of the Lord [in his curse], let him die).

Josephus cites it as follows:

Let him that blasphemeth God (blasfhmh&saj qeo&n) be stoned, then hung for a day, and buried ignominiously and in obscurity.45

Here Josephus substitutes the phrase blasfhmh&saj qeo&n for the o)noma&zwn de\ to_ o!noma kuri/ou in the LXX. If the verb blasfhmei=n here is becoming a technical term, Josephus deﬁnes ‘blasphemy’ as uttering or pronouncing the divine name.

1.31 §279. In Apion 2.13 §143, he uses the term blasfhmi/a for Apion’s attitude to his own (Egyptian) laws. 42. Apion 2.33 §§237-38; text and translation (modiﬁed) from Thackeray, Josephus, I, pp. 388-89. 43. He cites the same passage in Ant. 4.8.10 §207. 44. Ant. 4.8.3 §194; Thackeray, Josephus, IV, pp. 568-69. 45. Ant. 4.8.6 §202; Thackeray, Josephus, IV, pp. 572-73. See Moshe Bernstein, ‘Ki Qelalat Elohim Taluy (Deut. 21:23): A Study in Early Jewish Exegesis’, JQR 74.1 (1983), pp. 21-45, who discusses 11QTemple 64.6-13’s interpretation of Deut. 21.22- 23 (hanging as the penalty for a blasphemer) in relation to early Jewish exegesis of that passage.

In the Jewish War, Josephus makes a noteworthy comment about the penalty for blasphemy among the Essenes:

They are just and scrupulously careful in their trial of cases, never passing sentence in a court of less than a hundred members; the decision thus reached is irrevocable. After God they hold most in awe the name of the lawgiver, any blasphemer of whom (ka@n blasfhmh&sh| tij ei0j tou~ton) is punished with death.46

The Damascus Rule prohibited swearing by the ‘Torah of Moses’, because it contained the Tetragrammaton and other divine names (CD 15.1-3). Josephus’s remark may reﬂect this prohibition. The Community Rule stipu- lates that one who pronounces the name of the deity is to be expelled from the Community (1QS 6.27–7.2). According to the beliefs of the Commu- nity, expulsion was equivalent to the death penalty.47 Another interesting and relevant passage is the discussion of the slander (blasfhmi/a) uttered against Hyrcanus by a certain Eleazar.48 A Sadducee by the name of Jonathan, who was a friend of Hyrcanus, persuaded him that the Pharisees approved of what Eleazar had said. In order to test this assertion, Hyrcanus asked the Pharisees what penalty they thought Eleazar deserved. They replied that he deserved a whipping and imprisonment. In this regard, Josephus comments:

for they did not think it right to sentence a man to death for calumny (loidori/a), and anyway the Pharisees are naturally lenient in the matter of punishments.49

This passage is especially interesting in light of Josephus’s discussion of the death of James, the brother of Jesus, if the charge in that case was blasphemy, as Richard Bauckham has conjectured.50 The younger Ananus, newly appointed to the high priesthood, took advantage of the interim

46. War 2.8.9 §145; text and translation (modiﬁed) from Thackeray, Josephus, II, pp. 378-79. 47. Yonder Gillihan, ‘The Community of Qumran in the Context of Greco-Roman Associations’ (PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, in progress). 48. Ant. 13.10.5-6 §§288-98. 49. Ant. 13.10.6 §294; text and translation from Ralph Marcus (ed.), Josephus (9 vols.; LCL; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: Heinemann, 1933), VII, pp. 374-75. 50. Richard Bauckham, ‘For What Offense Was James Put to Death?’, in Bruce Chilton and Craig A. Evans (eds.), James the Just and Christian Origins (NovTSup, 98; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1999), pp. 199-232. Bauckham concludes that James was exe- cuted either for blasphemy or for leading the people astray.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. 394 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) between the procuratorships of Festus and Albinus to convene the judges of the council of Judea and to bring James (and others) before it to be judged. In Josephus’s words:

He accused them of having transgressed the law and delivered them up to be stoned. Those of the inhabitants of the city who were considered the most fair-minded and who were exact (a)kribh&j) in observance of the law were offended at this.51

Josephus implicitly contrasts these ‘fair-minded people’ (probably Phari- sees) with the Sadducees, who, he says, ‘are indeed more cruel than any of the other Jews, as I have already explained, when they sit in judgment’.52 As noted above, Josephus rewrote Lev. 24.16 to stipulate that the one who ‘blasphemes’ God shall be stoned to death and so forth. Bauckham has suggested that both Pharisees and Sadducees agreed that the blasphemer should be put to death, but may have disagreed on the definition of blasphemy, the Sadducees defining it more broadly and the Pharisees more narrowly. The leniency of the Pharisees in this case would be expressed in their limiting the range of activities that counted as blasphemy.53 According to m. Sanh. 7.5, ‘“The blasphemer” is not culpable unless he pronounces the Name itself.’54 It may be that the rabbis of the Mishnah are the successors of the Pharisees in this regard. If the Sadducees advocated stoning for blasphemy in a broader sense, then the account of Mk 14 would reflect accurately the kind of decision the chief priests were likely to make. The penalty is portrayed as crucifixion, rather than stoning, because only the Roman governor had the authority to execute. Finally, Josephus’s interpretation of Lev. 24.16, in which blasphemy is defined as pronouncing the divine name, may be influenced by the teaching of the Pharisees.

Summary The foregoing analysis of the usage of terms related to the notion of ‘blasphemy’ in the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint and the writings of Philo

51. Ant. 20.9.1 §§200-201; translation (modiﬁed) from Louis Feldman (ed.), Josephus (9 vols.; LCL; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: Heinemann, 1965), IX, pp. 496-97. 52. Ant. 20.9.1 §199; translation (modiﬁed) from Feldman, Josephus, IX, p. 495. Josephus here apparently alludes to his discussion of the Pharisees as relatively lenient in Ant. 13.10.6 §294, quoted above. 53. Bauckham, ‘For What Offense?’, p. 223. 54. Translation from Herbert Danby (ed.), The Mishnah (London: Oxford University Press, 1933), p. 392.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. COLLINS The Charge of Blasphemy in Mark 14.64 395 and Josephus leads to the following main conclusions: 1. In all these bodies of literature, a variety of terms, including the word- group blasfhmei=n, is used to mean ‘taunt’, ‘revile’, ‘insult’ or the equivalent. The activities designated may have human beings, gods or God as the object. The only difference between using such terms with God as the object and other usages is that the former usage is considered to be worse by those who are loyal to God. In some cases the activities are not verbal. 2. The piel of llq (‘curse’) is used in the Hebrew Bible with both human beings and God as the object. When God is the object, it is the same kind of activity as cursing human beings, only worse because of the loyalty and respect that the texts assume are owed to God. According to the LXX (Lev. 24.15-16), cursing God is a crime worthy of death. 3. In the Hebrew version of Lev. 24.10-23, cursing another human being by calling upon God (and expressly mentioning the name Yahweh) is defined as an offense worthy of death. 4. In the Legatio ad Gaium and the De somniis, Philo uses the word- group blasfhmei=n to mean a specific kind of insult to God, namely, speech that compromises the Jewish affirmation that only the God of Israel is divine. Specifically, this insult involves a human being claiming a greater degree of authority and power than he has a right to do and, directly or indirectly, claiming divine status for himself. 5. The LXX, Philo and Josephus forbid insulting (blasfhmei=n) the gods of other peoples. Philo explains this as a means of assuring the avoidance of insulting the God of Israel. 6. In his interpretation of Lev. 24.16 and Deut. 21.22-23, Josephus defines ‘blasphemy’ as uttering or pronouncing the divine name. This crime is to be punished with death. The Community Rule (1QS 6.27–7.2) calls for the expulsion of any member who pronounces the name of the deity; such expulsion was, in principle, equivalent to death. 7. According to Josephus, the Essenes considered the offense of ‘reviling’ or ‘blaspheming’ (blasfhmei=n) Moses a crime punishable by death. 8. The Pharisees and the Sadducees seem to have agreed that ‘blasphemy’ was punishable by death, but differed on what constituted ‘blasphemy’. The Pharisees may have narrowed the definition to pronouncing the divine name, whereas the Sadducees may have defined the offense more broadly.

‘Blasphemy’ in the Gospel According to Mark

The word-group blasfhmei=n is used in Mark in a range of ways analogous to the usages attested in the works of Philo and Josephus. The clearest example of the usage of the term for ordinary abusive speech directed against human beings is Mk 15.29. I quote vv. 29-32 to give the context:

And those who were passing by reviled (blasfhmei=n) him, shaking their heads and saying, ‘Hah! You who are about to throw down the sanctuary and build (another) in three days, save yourself by coming down from the cross!’ Similarly, the chief priests also mocked (e0mpai/zein) him among themselves along with the experts in the law, saying ‘He saved others; himself he cannot save; let the Messiah, the king of Israel, come down now from the cross, in order that we may see and believe’. And those who were cruciﬁed with him also insulted (o)neidi/zein) him.

The word blasfhmei=n in v. 29 should not be translated ‘blaspheme’ because, in the context, it is used synonymously with e0mpai/zein (‘mock’) and o)neidi/zein (‘insult’). These are among the synonyms of blasfhmei=n in its usual sense in ordinary Greek usage, the LXX, Philo, and Josephus.55 A second passage in which the relevant term most likely has its ordinary sense is Mk 7.22. I quote vv. 21-23 to indicate the context:

For from within, from the hearts of human beings, come evil intentions; acts of unlawful intercourse, stealing, murder, adultery, greediness, and wicked- ness; deceit, licentiousness, an evil eye, abusive speech (blasfhmi/a), arro- gance, foolishness; all this evil goes out from inside and profanes the human being.

The list of vices here seems consistently to concern the relations among human beings. It is analogous to the passages in Colossians and Ephesians mentioned in the opening part of this article. Thus, the translation ‘abusive speech’ for blasfhmi/a is better than the translation ‘blasphemy’.56

55. Donald Juel argued that ‘the evangelist wishes the term to mean more than “slander” or “deride”’ in 15.29 and that the allusion to the testimony of the false witnesses is ‘an ironic signal’ to the audience that these passers-by are the ones guilty of blasphemy, not Jesus; Messiah and Temple: The Trial of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark (SBLDS, 31; Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1977), p. 103. This reading may represent a subtle connotation or second level of meaning, made possible by the range of usages of the word blasfhmei=n. 56. Juel came to a similar conclusion, arguing that the term be translated here ‘slander’ or ‘defamation’ (Messiah and Temple, p. 102).

In Mk 3.28-29, the word-group is used ﬁrst for abusive speech in general and then with the Holy Spirit as object:

‘The sons of men will be forgiven for all the abusive speech (blasfhmi/ai) that they utter (blasfhmei=n); but whoever insults (blasfhmei=n) the Holy Spirit does not obtain forgiveness for all eternity, but will be guilty of an eternal sin.’ For they said, ‘He has an unclean spirit.’

The translations ‘blasphemies’ and ‘blaspheme’ for the noun and the verb in v. 28 would inappropriately limit the speech in question to language that offends God directly. If one translated these terms as above, but then translated the verb in v. 29 (with the Holy Spirit as object) with ‘blaspheme’, the parallelism would be lost. It seems best to conclude that this passage does not concern ‘blasphemy’ as such.57 There are two passages in Mark that concern ‘blasphemy’ as such: the one that is the subject of this article and 2.7. In the latter context, when Jesus says to the paralytic, ‘Child, your sins are forgiven’, some of the scribes in the house say to themselves, ‘Why does this man speak in such a way? He blasphemes (blasfhmei=n). Who is able to forgive sins except the one God?’ Jesus’ use of the passive voice implies that it is God who forgives the man’s sins. Underlying the scribes’ response, however, may be a concern about how God forgives sins. According to the Torah (especially Leviticus), the priest was supposed to make atonement for the sins of the people in the temple. More important is the clue given in the last part of the scribes’ statement, ei[j o( qeo&j (‘the one God’). The implication is that Jesus is inappropriately acting as God’s agent or even arrogating divine power to himself. If such activity were unauthorized, as the scribes assume, it would be highly offensive to God. The scribes’ response is analogous to Philo’s reactions to Gaius’s claims to divinity and to the unnamed governor’s equation of his own power with that of destiny.58 For those Jews who did not accept Jesus as the Messiah, and thus as God’s fully authorized agent, his declaration of forgiveness of sins would appear arrogant: an encroachment upon divine prerogatives and a usurpation of a role not appropriate to his status.59

57. Contra Juel, who argues that 3.28-29 implies that remarks like ‘He has an unclean spirit’ constitute blasphemy because of Jesus’ relationship to God through the Spirit (Messiah and Temple, pp. 102-103). 58. See point 4 in the summary above and the preceding section ‘The Evidence of Philo’. 59. As Juel has pointed out, this passage is important as the only other place in Mark besides 14.63-64 where Jesus is accused of blasphemy; Juel concluded that the

As noted in the introduction to this article, the narrative flow of Mark 14.55-64 implies that the purpose of the false witnesses was to convict Jesus of blasphemy. Verse 58 summarizes their testimony: ‘We heard him saying “I will destroy this sanctuary, which is made with hands, and after three days I will build another, which is not made with hands”.’ The intention of destroying the current sanctuary would no doubt have appeared blasphemous to some, especially to the chief priests who administered it. Since it was God’s house, the intention of destroying it would be viewed as an attack on Godself. The second part of the saying was also open to the charge of blasphemy. In the Dead Sea Scrolls, the expectation is expressed of an eschatological temple to be created by God that would last forever.60 According to Jub. 1.29, ‘the temple of the Lord will be created in Jerusalem on Mt Zion’ in the new creation.61 The saying attributed to Jesus seems to reflect such expectations. If, as seems likely, this temple was envisioned as a divine creation, the alleged claim of Jesus to build it himself would sound blasphemous. Jesus would not only be encroaching on divine prerogatives, but also claiming to be able to do something no human being could reasonably be expected to accomplish. The false testimony, however, came to nothing since the witnesses did not agree. As noted in the same section above, the context suggests that it is the statement of Jesus in 14.62 that leads to his conviction for blasphemy and the judgment that he deserved the death penalty. Jesus’ affirmative response alone to the question of whether he is the Messiah would have been insuf- ficient to convict him of ‘blasphemy’. It may well have been sufficient grounds for a conviction of the offense of rebelling against Rome. Simi- larly, this affirmative response, e0gw& ei/mi, alone was unlikely to be interpreted as a claim to divinity. It is an ambiguous formulation that can signify a simple positive response, ‘Yes, I am he’, or be an allusion to Scripture that implies divinity.62 The charge of blasphemy is related primarily to the

use of the term in 2.7 implies that Jesus’ words constitute ‘an infringement on the prerogatives of God’ (Messiah and Temple, p. 102). 60. 11QT 29.6-10; 4QFlorilegium 1.1-13. The Description of the New Jerusalem probably also describes the eschatological temple. 61. Translation from James C. VanderKam, The Book of Jubilees (2 vols.; CSCO, 510-11; Scriptores Aethiopici, 87-88; Leuven: Peeters, 1989), II, p. 7. 62. Raymond E. Brown, ‘Appendix IV: Egǀ Eimi—“I am”’, in idem, The Gospel according to John i–xii (AB, 29; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966), pp. 533-38.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. COLLINS The Charge of Blasphemy in Mark 14.64 399 saying based on a combination of Ps. 110.1 and Dan. 7.13.63 With regard to the part of the saying based on Ps. 110.1, it is clear that at least some Jewish circles in the late Second Temple period had no problem with the idea of a heavenly Messiah, an exalted patriarch or a principal angel sitting or standing at the right hand of God or even sitting on God’s throne itself.64 To envisage Enoch, Moses, an angel or a heavenly Messiah sitting on God’s throne, however, is a very different thing from confronting a living human being who predicts that he himself will be so enthroned.65 Such a prediction might seem close to Gaius’s claim to be a god or the governor of Egypt’s claim to be ‘constraining destiny’, claims that so offended Philo. The rabbis, perhaps in response to claims about Jesus, but plausibly in response to claims about Enoch, Moses or the Messiah, rejected the idea of ‘two powers in heaven’.66 With regard to the part of the saying based on Dan. 7.13, it is clear that the Markan Jesus identifies himself with the ‘one like a son of man’ of Dan. 7. This identification is equivalent to a messianic claim.67 It has been argued that the ‘coming on the clouds’ refers to Jesus’ return to vindicate the elect and to judge those who have judged Jesus.68 At least the second part of this argument, regarding judgment, is dubious. It is not well founded in the text of Dan. 7, for one thing. The ancient of days exercises judgment, and then the human-like figure is given dominion. For another, in Mk 13, divine judgment is expected to descend upon Jerusalem before the appearance of the Son of Man. When the Son of Man comes, the only activity mentioned is his sending out the angels to gather the elect. Although it is too much to say that, according to Mark, the allusion to Dan. 7.13 in Mk 14.62 implies judgment, it is appropriate to infer that it implies the vindication of Jesus. When he appears on the clouds ‘with great power and

63. With Bock, Blasphemy and Exaltation, pp. 28-29, and contra Juel, Messiah and Temple, pp. 104-106. 64. Bock, Blasphemy and Exaltation, pp. 113-83; Larry W. Hurtado, One God, One Lord (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), pp. 17-92. 65. Cf. Bock, Blasphemy and Exaltation, p. 236. 66. Alan F. Segal, Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports about Christi- anity and Gnosticism (SJLA, 25; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1977). 67. Compare the messianic ﬁgure in the Similitudes of Enoch (1 En. 37–71) and the messiah in 2 Esd. 13, both of which ﬁgures are based on the one like a son of man of Dan. 7.13; cf. also the interpretation attributed to Rabbi Akiba of Dan. 7.9 (b.+ag. 14a). 68. Bock, Blasphemy and Exaltation, pp. 202-203, 206-207.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. 400 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) glory’ (13.26), then his messianic claim will be verified before the eyes of his accusers. The judgment that Jesus had committed ‘blasphemy’ is based on the saying that alludes both to Ps. 110.1 and Dan. 7.13 because in that saying Jesus predicts that he will be enthroned beside God and will return or be manifest with divine glory. This prediction is analogous to Gaius’s claim to divinity and the governor of Egypt’s claim to be ‘constraining destiny’. Philo defined these claims as ‘blasphemy’. Josephus and the Pharisees defined the kind of ‘blasphemy’ punishable by death as pronouncing the divine name. It is likely that the Sadducees, a group to which the chief priests probably belonged, defined ‘blasphemy’ more broadly, like Philo, and would have considered Jesus’ saying to be blasphemous. Since the Sadducees had a reputation for being harsh with regard to punishments, the portrayal of the chief priests condemning Jesus to death for this broader kind of ‘blasphemy’ would make sense to first-century audiences.69

Conclusion

In the Markan trial of Jesus, the high priest and council do not follow the regulations described in the Mishnaic tractate Sanhedrin because those regulations were most likely not in effect in the first century.70 According to m. Sanh. 7.5, culpable ‘blasphemy’ consists in pronouncing the divine name. Josephus and the Community Rule take similar positions.71 In Mk 14.62 Jesus is condemned to death for blasphemy, even though he uses the circumlocution ‘Power’ (du&namij) and does not pronounce the divine name. But this definition of blasphemy was probably neither universal nor official in the first century. The chief priests, as Sadducees, apparently defined ‘blasphemy’ in a broader manner and probably had no compunction about executing offenders. As argued in the opening part of this article, the Gospel according to Mark portrays the judges of Jesus in the trial of ch. 14 as biased and unjust. It does not, however, imply that the charge of blasphemy was entirely without foundation. Philo’s Legatio ad Gaium and De somniis show that he at least, and probably other Jews, considered it ‘blasphemy’

69. See the section ‘The Evidence of Josephus’ above. 70. See the introduction to this article above. 71. See point 6 in the summary above and the preceding section ‘The Evidence of Josephus’.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. COLLINS The Charge of Blasphemy in Mark 14.64 401 to claim to be a god or to have divine power. Jesus’ saying in 14.62 fits this definition. In that saying, the Markan Jesus claims to be a messiah of the heavenly type, who will be exalted to the right hand of God (Ps. 110.1). Being seated at the right hand of God implies being equal to God, at least in terms of authority and power. The allusion to Dan. 7.13 reinforces the heavenly messianic claim. The ‘coming on the clouds’ has a dual role. On the one hand, this motif, typical of divine beings, signifies the universal power that Jesus as Messiah will have. On the other, the statement that the members of the council ‘will see’ him applies especially to his ‘coming on the clouds’ in a public manifestation of his messianic power and glory. The condemnation of Jesus for blasphemy has a powerful ironic effect on the implied audience of Mark. For them, the first part of 14.62 has already been fulfilled in the resurrection and exaltation of Jesus to the right hand of God. The Gospel advocates the acceptance of the second part as soon to be fulfilled (Mk 9.1; 13.30). For the high priest and the members of the council as characters in the narrative, however, these claims of Jesus were audacious impositions upon the majesty and power of God. By making them, Jesus ignored the limits that applied to all who feared the Lord.

Ephesians 2 as a Narrative of Divine Warfare

Timothy G. Gombis

University of St Andrews St Andrews, Fife, Scotland KY16 9JU [email protected]

Abstract

The current consensus in Ephesians scholarship regards the letter’s second chapter as an expansion or continuation of the blessing and thanksgiving section from ch. 1, maintaining that it does not contain any cogent theological argument or even a clear and consistent line of thought. This article challenges the consensus by reading the chapter through the lens of the ideology of divine warfare, which is found in texts throughout the ANE and utilized in both the Old Testament and New Testament. It is argued that reading the text through this paradigm brings to light the contours of the author’s argument, which is a listing of the triumphs of God in Christ that vindicate the claim that Christ has been exalted as Lord over all things (Eph. 1.20-23).

Introduction

Among the many difficulties in Ephesians is the question of how to read ch. 2. One expects a standard epistolary structure with an introduction, a discernible body with theological argumentation, a section with ethical instruction and a letter closing with several notes of greeting. While Eph. 2 appears at first glance to contain the theological argumentation of the letter body, just how it does so is difficult to capture, since it betrays no polemical edge or theological direction. There is also no clear grammatical transition to the letter body, so that, as John Muddiman points out, one is

Previous drafts of this article were read at the Postgraduate Biblical Studies Seminar, St Mary’s College, University of St Andrews and at the British New Testament Conference at Cambridge University. I am grateful for the interaction and suggestions received on those occasions.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004, The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX and 15 East 26th Street, Suite 1703, New York, NY 10010, USA. 404 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) left with a letter that is all head and tail but no body.1 Most commentators solve this problem by regarding Eph. 2 as a continuation of the blessing and thanksgiving section from ch. 1, so that, instead of laying out a clear line of theological argumentation, the writer aims at elevating his readers’ thoughts by pondering the various blessings of salvation in lofty prose.2 Muddiman offers a more radical proposal, arguing that Ephesians is the product of the heavy editing of Paul’s original Laodicean epistle by one of his disciples, which explains why ch. 2 is so confusing and its form and structure nearly impossible to identify.3 I will argue that Eph. 2 does indeed have a coherent and well-crafted argument. Reading the chapter in light of the narrative pattern of divine warfare found in the ANE, developed in the Old Testament, widespread in the ﬁrst century and reﬂected in several other places in the New Testament, illumines the writer’s argument.4 He claims that God has exalted Christ to

1. J. Muddiman, The Epistle to the Ephesians (BNTC; London: Continuum, 2001), pp. 97-98. 2. R.R. Jeal, Integrating Theology and Ethics in Ephesians: The Ethos of Com- munication (Studies in Bible and Early Christianity, 43; Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 2000), p. 131; A.T. Lincoln, Ephesians (WBC, 42; Dallas: Word Books, 1990), p. 91. Cf. also E. Best, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Ephesians (ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), p. 198; M. Kitchen, Ephesians (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 55. 3. Muddiman, Ephesians, pp. 98-99. 4. According to D.E. Aune, the ‘mythic narrative pattern of a primordial cosmic struggle between two divine beings and their allies for sovereignty was widespread throughout the ancient world’. He further notes that, while ‘the names of the combatants, as well as their roles, change from culture to culture, many of the constituent folklore motifs of the combat myth or legend either remain constant or are subject to a limited range of variation’ (Revelation 6–16 [WBC, 52B; Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1998], p. 667). On this mythic pattern in Greek literature, see J. Fontenrose, Python: A Study of the Delphic Myth and its Origins (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959); N. Forsyth, The Old Enemy: Satan and the Combat Myth (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987). On the development of this mythic pattern and its relationship to such texts as Exod. 15, Isa. 24–27, Zech. 9 and several places in the book of Revela- tion, see F.M. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), pp. 112-44; P.D. Hanson, The Dawn of Apocalyptic: The Historical and Sociological Roots of Jewish Apocalyptic Eschatology (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, rev. edn, 1979), pp. 292-334; idem, ‘Zechariah 9 and the Recapitulation of an Ancient Ritual Pattern’, JBL 92 (1973), pp. 37-59; W.R. Millar, Isaiah 24–27 and the Origin of Apocalyptic (HSS, 11; Cam- bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), pp. 65-102; A. Yarbro Collins, The Com- bat Myth in the Book of Revelation (HDR, 9; Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1976);

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. GOMBIS Ephesians 2 as a Narrative of Divine Warfare 405 his right hand and has subjected his enemies to him (1.20-23). This bold claim must be vindicated by a demonstration that the enemies of Christ are indeed subject to him in some way. This is the purpose of ch. 2: the vindication of the exalted Christ—the enumeration of the triumphs of God in Christ demonstrating that the powers ruling the present evil age are indeed subject to the Lord Christ.

The Ideology of Divine Warfare

In ANE mythology, warfare between deities typically followed a certain pattern. Simply put, deities engaged in combat with the eventual victor proclaimed supreme among the gods. After a temple or palace is erected in honor of the triumphant deity, those who are loyal to the victor then celebrate at her or his temple. Thus the pattern: conﬂict, victory, kingship, house-building, celebration.5 This pattern provided an ideological framework for nations throughout the ancient world to explain how their god came to have supremacy over all creation and all other gods.6

The Ugaritic Baal Cycles The two cycles in the Baal kingship mythology tell the story of Baal earning and maintaining his kingship over the two main threats against the main- tenance of order in the universe: chaos, represented by the god Yamm, and death, represented by the god Mot. Yamm wins the favor of the supreme god El who appoints him as chief over the pantheon of gods and orders a temple to be built in his honor. Yamm demands that Baal—who is seen as a threat to his rule—be handed over to him (threat). Baal refuses to be handed over and ﬁghts Yamm, defeating him (conﬂict-victory), and establishing his supremacy (kingship). He then demands that El build a temple in his own honor, since it is only right that the victorious god have a

T. Longman III and D.G. Reid, God is a Warrior (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1995). 5. Longman and Reid, God is a Warrior, pp. 83-88. While a number of other elements are common in divine warfare contexts, these basic features are quite consistent across a broad range of occurrences. And while the elements do not always appear in the same order, the underlying logic remains the same. Other features include the development of the threatening situation, salvation, restoration of fertility, pro- cession (in cultic contexts) and victory shout. 6. A. Yarbro Collins, ‘Pergamon in Early Christian Literature’, in H. Koester (ed.), Pergamon: Citadel of the Gods: Archaeological Record, Literary Description, and Religious Development (HTS, 46; Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1998), pp. 163-84 (176).

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. 406 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) house built for him (house-building). After its completion, Baal hosts a celebration for the gods. In the second cycle, the supremacy of Baal is challenged by Mot, who appears to defeat Baal in an initial encounter (threat). After his sister Anath restores him, Baal returns to ﬁght Mot and, with the help of El, is triumphant (conﬂict-victory), and returns to his throne (kingship).

Enuma Elish This Babylonian creation epic narrates Marduk’s rise to cosmic supremacy. The pantheon of gods in this work contains two groups, the older and the younger. Marduk is born to Ea, among the younger gods, and is endowed with great power, becoming the loftiest among them. The commotion over Marduk disturbs Tiamat, the leader of the older gods, and she is urged by those in her company to wipe out the younger gods (threat). Marduk agrees to meet Tiamat in battle, but only if the pantheon of the younger gods will grant him absolute supremacy upon his victory. They agree and Marduk meets Tiamat in battle, slays her, and from her carcass creates the heavens (conﬂict-victory). The gods then proclaim Marduk king (kingship), erect for him the temple ‘Esagila’ (house-building) and hold a celebratory feast there (celebration), proclaiming his ﬁfty names (victory shout).

Biblical Examples This mythic pattern is implicit in the structure of ‘The Song of the Sea’ in Exod. 15, which celebrates Yahweh’s victory over the Egyptian army. He is described as a ‘man of wars’ because he cast Pharaoh’s chariots into the sea (v. 3) and shattered the enemy by his powerful right hand (v. 6) (conflict- victory). Because of his triumph, it is only fitting that Yahweh is declared the universal sovereign (vv. 1, 18) (kingship). The song then anticipates the building of Yahweh’s temple (house-building), where his people will celebrate his supremacy (v. 17) (celebration). A number of the psalms reflect this same basic mythic ideology, such as Ps. 24, an entrance liturgy celebrating the kingship of Yahweh at his temple (celebration). The psalm claims that all of creation belongs to Yahweh and proclaims him the ‘King of glory’. His kingship is based on his mighty deeds, for in the act of creation he triumphed over the forces of chaos and he presently holds them in submission, preserving the stability of his created order (conflict-victory). This mythic structure is especially prominent in the so-called Zion psalms. In the first of these, Ps. 46, the nations are called upon to consider the deeds of Yahweh (v. 9), and to acknowledge

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. GOMBIS Ephesians 2 as a Narrative of Divine Warfare 407 his sovereignty over the nations (v. 11) (kingship). His unique status is based upon his power to provide stability for Zion in the face of cosmic upheaval and to protect the city in which he dwells despite the roaring of the nations (conflict-victory). Because of his mighty deeds, Yahweh dwells as king over all the earth in his temple on Zion (v. 5) (house-building). This mythological pattern of divine warfare was current and ‘in the air’ in the first century.7 For example, it occurs in a number of places in the book of Revelation, most clearly in ch. 12.8 John portrays Israel as a woman about to give birth, while the ‘great red dragon’ waits to devour the child (threat). After his birth, the child—Christ—is caught up to heaven, while the woman flees to the wilderness for protection. Verses 7-9 depict the great war in heaven which is won decisively by God, who grants victory to Michael and his angels (conflict-victory). God’s sovereign kingship is then proclaimed from heaven (victory shout), and all those who dwell there join in celebration.

Ephesians 1.20–2.22

This narrative pattern of divine warfare informs the structure and argument of Eph. 1.20–2.22. The author announces in 1.20-23 that Christ has been exalted to the seat of cosmic lordship at the right hand of God and that all powers and authorities in the heavenly realm have been subjected to him. Such a bold claim cannot pass without defense. The assertion that Christ has been installed as Cosmic Lord must be vindicated by a display of his credentials as universal sovereign, his triumphs over all competing powers. Such vindication is found in 2.1-16, which elaborates the triumphs of God in Christ over the powers that rule the present evil age. Verses 17- 18 depict the victory shout and celebration of the people of God, and vv. 20-22 detail the construction of Christ’s temple, which stands as a lasting

7. On the utilization of the combat myth on the outer frieze of the Great Altar in Pergamon, which was a free-standing building in the ancient city, constructed during the first half of the second century BCE, see Yarbro Collins, ‘Pergamon’, pp. 176-84. On the use of the myth in Jn 5, see Mary R. Huie-Jolly, ‘Threats Answered by Enthrone- ment: Death/Resurrection and the Divine Warrior Myth in John 5.17-29, Psalm 2 and Daniel 7’, in C.A. Evans and J.A. Sanders (eds.), Early Christian Interpretation of the Scriptures of Israel: Investigations and Proposals (JSNTSup, 148; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), pp. 191-217. For a discussion of its appearance in other passages in the Gospels, see Longman and Reid, God is a Warrior, pp. 91-135. 8. Yarbro Collins, The Combat Myth, pp. 231-34.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. 408 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) monument to his triumph. The pattern in this passage, then, is as follows: Lordship (1.20-23), conﬂict-victory (2.1-16), victory shout (2.17), celebration (2.18) and house-building (2.20-22).9

Lordship (1.20-23) The writer claims in 1.20-23 that God has raised Christ from the dead and seated him ‘at his right hand’ (e0n decia|~ au)tou~) where he has been appointed as Cosmic Lord over ‘all things’ (pa&nta, v. 22). This exaltation has direct reference to all conceivable angelic powers in the heavenlies, as the writer states in v. 21 that Christ is seated ‘far above all rule and authority and power and lordship and every name that is named not only in this age but also in the one to come’. While the emphatically comprehensive language encompasses both good and evil cosmic powers, it appears that the exaltation of Christ over the evil powers is especially in view. That this is so will be vindicated by the thrust of ch. 2, which is discussed below, but also by the writer’s usage of Ps. 110. The exaltation formula is based on Ps. 110, an enthronement psalm, and the most common Old Testament text in early Christian proclamation. While most citations of the psalm in the New Testament focus only on v. 1—in the case of Hebrews, v. 4—the development of vv. 20-23 in ch. 2 echoes the movement of the entire psalm, especially the manner in which the conquering activity of God and Christ in Eph. 2 reﬂects the subjecting activity of Yahweh and his appointed king in Ps. 110.10 That is, in the psalm, Yahweh appoints the Davidic king to his exalted post as lord over his enemies and then Yahweh himself subjects his enemies to the king. The task of subjecting the enemies then shifts in the latter half of the psalm, as the earthly king goes forth to subdue kings and judge among nations.11

9. The pattern as it appears here is quite similar to that in a number of psalms that begin with the announcement of the kingship or exalted status of Yahweh and then move to defend this claim. This is perhaps most clearly reﬂected in the familiar yk @i constructions in Old Testament poetry, which elaborate on claims of Yahweh’s superiority. E.g., Ps. 24.1, 2: ‘The earth is Yahweh’s…for (yk)%i he founded it…’ (cf. also Exod. 15.1, 19, 21; Pss. 47.8; 48.5; 98.1, 9). 10. T. Moritz, A Profound Mystery: The Use of the Old Testament in Ephesians (NovTSup, 85; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996), p. 20; cf. also M. Gese, Das Vermächtnis des Apostels: Die Rezeption der paulinischen Theologie im Epheserbrief (WUNT, 99; Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1997), pp. 190-93. 11. There is a shift within vv. 5-7 from second to third person, raising the issue of who is being addressed. Some see Yahweh as addressee here, so that he carries out the destruction of the king’s enemies for him (L.C. Allen, Psalms 101–150 [WBC, 21;

The relationship between the activity of God and his exalted Christ is much the same in Eph. 1 and 2 as God ﬁrst subjects enemies to Christ before Christ goes forth to conquer in the latter half of ch. 2. The seating of Christ at the right hand of God in heaven has in view his exaltation over the powers enumerated in v. 21, ‘all rule and authority and power and lordship’ (pa&shj a)rxh~j kai\ e0cousi/aj kai\ duna&mewj kai\ kurio&- thtoj). The major role that these ﬁgures play in Ephesians raises the question of their identity. The appropriate background for understanding the powers in Ephesians is the Old Testament and early Jewish belief in the gods of the nations.12 According to this line of thought, God had del- egated authority over the nations to angelic beings, who have rebelled against God and now lead humanity astray into idolatry, among a variety of other sins (Deut. 32.8-9, 17; Dan. 10.13, 20-21; Jub. 5.26-27; 15.31). In Ephesians, the powers are portrayed as leading humanity astray from the path of obedience to God. They rule the present evil age, ordering it in such a way that humanity is enticed to continue in transgressions and sins, remaining spiritually dead.13 As will be shown in the second half of Eph. 2,

Waco, TX: Word Books, 1983], p. 87; H.-J. Kraus, Psalms: A Commentary [ET; 2 vols.; Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1989], II, pp. 351-52). It makes better sense, however, for the Davidic king to be in view throughout vv. 5-7. In v. 5a, the prophet addresses himself to the king as he is about to undertake the conquest spoken of in vv. 1-2, and assures him of the assistance of Yahweh (K1n:ymiy:-l(a ynFdo),j ‘the Lord is at your right hand’). Then, in vv. 5b-7, the prophet turns to a vision of the future as the king carries out the battle. He is still referring to the Davidic king, but now in the third person (M. Gilbert and S. Pisano, ‘Psalm 110 [109], 5-7’, Bib 61 [1980], pp. 343-56 [349]). 12. Lincoln, Ephesians, pp. 63-64; R. Leivestad, Christ the Conqueror: Ideas of Conﬂict and Victory in the New Testament (London: SPCK, 1954), pp. 160-61; P.T. O’Brien, ‘Principalities and Powers: Opponents of the Church’, in D.A. Carson (ed.), Biblical Interpretation and the Church: Text and Context (Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1984), pp. 110-50 (137). 13. This understanding of the role of the powers stands in contrast to the reconstruction of C.E. Arnold, who argues that the readers of Ephesians were being tempted to live in fear of the powers that had dominated their lives prior to their conversion (cf. C.E. Arnold, Ephesians: Power and Magic: The Concept of Power in Ephesians in Light of its Historical Setting [SNTSMS, 63; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989], p. 41). On the view argued for here, the powers are those that rule the present evil age, ordering it in such a way that people would be led astray into sin and rebellion against God, so that the conﬂict with the powers involves living according to the new humanity instead of the old humanity (cf. Leivestad, Christ the Conqueror, p. 162; T.R. Yoder Neufeld, ‘Put on the Armour of God’: The Divine Warrior from Isaiah to

Conflict-Victory (2.1-16) The claim that Jesus Christ has been exalted as cosmic Lord and that the evil powers that presently rule the fallen creation have been subjected to him must be substantiated. That is, the writer must answer the question: If Christ has been so exalted, what are his triumphs, or in what way has he demonstrated his superiority over these supposedly vanquished powers? Two parallel passages (vv. 1-10, 11-16) vindicate this claim. In the first of these (vv. 1-10), the writer details the triumph of God in Christ over the powers that rule the present evil age, operating under the ultimate direction of the ‘prince of the authority of the air’. The former state of the readers is pictured as an existence in death through trespasses and sins (vv. 1-3).14 It is a desperate situation, from which there is no hope of escape. Such a description matches that of several other divine warrior scenarios, which portray the threatening situation as one of utter despera- tion, thus highlighting the great power of the rescuer and the dramatic nature of the rescue. The readers were held captive in death through their engagement in transgressions and sins, conducting their lives under the power of two dominating influences (v. 2).15 First, they walked ‘according to the age of this world’ (kata_ to_n ai0w~na tou~ ko&smou tou&tou) in that their behavior and attitudes had been determined by and oriented according to the powerful influences of ‘a spatio-temporal complex wholly hostile to God’.16 Second, they were under the control of the ‘ruler of the authority of the air’ (kata_ to&n a!rxonta th~j e0cousi/aj tou~ a)e/roj), a reference to Satan, the ruler of the forces leading humanity in disobedience to God. Under these influences, their lives were characterized by sinfulness in both thought and deed (v. 3).

Ephesians [JSNTSup, 140; Shefﬁeld: Shefﬁeld Academic Press, 1997], pp. 104, 108). 14. Leivestad, Christ the Conqueror, pp. 159-60. 15. Both kata& constructions indicate compulsion and control (Best, Ephesians, p. 202). 16. Lincoln, Ephesians, p. 94. The phrase to_n ai0w~na tou~ ko&smou tou&tou is understood here as a reference to the present age and not to a personal deity (Lincoln, Ephesians, p. 94; contra J. Gnilka, Der Epheserbrief [HTKNT, 10.2; Freiburg: Herder, 1971], p. 114; H. Schlier, Der Brief an die Epheser: Ein Kommentar [Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1971], p. 101; A. Lindemann, Die Aufhebung der Zeit: Geschichtsverständnis und Eschatologie im Epheserbrief [SNT, 12; Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1975], pp. 56-59).

Against this dark backdrop, the writer describes in vv. 4-6 the dramatic rescue whereby God triumphed over the powers of evil, setting people free from their grip. In vv. 5-6 three verbs are employed to describe this salvation. They refer back to 1.20-23 and the activity of God in raising Jesus Christ from the dead and seating him in the heavenlies at his right hand.17 Whereas the readers were formerly dead and held in bondage to evil forces, God has given them life, raised and seated them together with Christ in the heavenlies. In doing all of this, God was motivated only by his mercy and love (vv. 4, 5b). The purpose of this dramatic rescue is given in v. 7. Beyond merely saving people, God intends to demonstrate his great saving power and the riches of his kindness throughout the coming ages.18 Two statements follow in vv. 8-10 that substantiate and support the design of God to magnify his saving power through his work of salvation and rescue.19 Both statements are introduced by ga&r and betray a polemical edge. First, in vv. 8-9, the author contends that the initiative for God’s gracious and powerful rescue resides in God alone, ruling out any thought of this move of God originating elsewhere. He contends that this salvation is ‘not from you, of God it is a gift’ (ou0k e0c u(mw~n, qeou~ to_ dw~ron) (v. 8). In v. 9, it is ‘not from works, so that no one may boast’ (ou)k e0c e1rgwn, i3na mh/ tij kauxh/shtai). These statements recall passages in the Old Testament where human boasting is strictly forbidden in light of God’s saving acts. God alone has done it, and human boasting diminishes the clarity of the display of God’s power (1 Sam. 2.3; Pss. 20.7; 34.2; 75.4; 97.7; Isa. 10.15; 20.5). This notion grows in force when taken together with the thrust of v. 10. The second ga&r (v. 10) introduces another statement in support of v. 7. Many have rightly noted the ‘new creation’ imagery present here, with the noun poi/hma and the participle ktisqe/ntej. But with the noun poi/hma the polemic against human boasting continues, in that the term does not refer directly to the fact of the new creation, but that this work is God’s creation

17. Gese, Das Vermächtnis, pp. 226-28. 18. The phrase toi=j ai0w~sin toi=j e0perxome/noij is temporal and not a reference to the evil powers (R. Schnackenburg, Ephesians: A Commentary [ET; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1991], p. 97; M.Y. MacDonald, Colossians and Ephesians [SPS, 17; College- ville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000], p. 233. Contra Lindemann, Die Aufhebung, pp. 129- 30; Schlier, Epheser, pp. 112-14; Kitchen, Ephesians, p. 61). 19. Both instances of ga&r substantiate the claim made in v. 7.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. 412 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) and not a human product. It is the work of God alone, and this excludes any grounds for boasting.20 With the participle ktisqe/ntej, the new creation is brought to the fore. Believers were created in Christ Jesus for good works, which have been prepared in advance by God, further highlighting God’s power and initiative in saving and rescuing his people. With the ﬁnal clause of this ﬁrst section, God’s transformative power is highlighted: whereas formerly the readers ‘walked’ (v. 2) in transgressions and sins, remaining in death, they now ‘walk’ in good works. The suggestion that vv. 8-10 contain a polemic directed against human boasting in the face of God’s mighty act of salvation is strengthened by the fact that a number of divine warrior narratives in the Old Testament employ similar devices in order to highlight the saving activity of Yahweh.21 In the second, and parallel,22 section (vv. 11-19) the author dwells on the triumph of Christ over the Law and the deep division within humanity

20. The language in v. 8, along with its basic thrust, is similar to that in Ps. 100.3 (LXX 99.3). In the call to worship in Ps. 100.3 (99.3), the confession au0to_j e0poi/hsen h9ma~j kai\ ou)x h9mei=j (‘he has made us and not we ourselves’) is similar to ou)k e0c u(mw~n (‘not from you’) and au)tou~ ga&r e0smen poi/hma (‘for we are his creation’) of Eph. 2.10. Both of these appear in a context that calls the people of God to recognize that their status as such depends exclusively on the initiative and creative power of God, ruling out human boasting. 21. A number of Old Testament narratives, in which Yahweh appears as the Divine Warrior, stress the inadequacy of the human protagonist in the conﬂict in an effort to highlight the saving power of Yahweh. E.g., in 1 Sam. 17, the word ‘man’ appears con- stantly in reference to Goliath (vv. 24, 25, who is also referred to as a ‘champion’, vv. 4, 23), the ‘men’ of Israel (vv. 12, 19, 24, 26, 28) and the ‘man’ who is needed to volunteer to meet Goliath in close combat (vv. 26, 27). David, however, is not once called a ‘man’, but is instead referred to as a ‘youth’ (v. 33), the ‘son of Jesse’ (v. 12, 58), ‘the youngest’ of the brothers (v. 14) and a ‘young man’ (v. 58). Further, the narrative stresses the nearly ridiculous disparity between the seasoned warrior Goliath with his impressive armor and the ill-equipped, young and inexperienced David. Finally, in order to put the spotlight on the activity of Yahweh as the Divine Warrior, when David runs over to Goliath after the giant had fallen, the narrator breaks in with the reminder that ‘there was no sword in David’s hand’ (v. 50). 22. The passage follows the same ‘then-now’ pattern as the ﬁrst, and again is framed by an inclusio, with the repetition of similar words and phrases in vv. 12 and 19 (P. Tachau, ‘Einst’ und ‘Jetzt’ im Neuen Testament: Beobachtungen zu einem urchrist- lichen Predigtschema in der neutestamentliche Briefliteratur und zu seiner Vor- geschichte [FRLANT, 105; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1972], pp. 134-43).

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. GOMBIS Ephesians 2 as a Narrative of Divine Warfare 413 that it created.23 He portrays the threatening situation—the deep alienation between Jews and Gentiles—in dramatic terms so that the triumph of Christ stands out boldly. The writer’s aim in vv. 11-12 is not so much to focus on the privileges of Israel that the Gentile readers formerly lacked, and of which they now partake.24 Nor is his purpose to highlight the alienation between the Gen- tiles and God—or all of humanity and God.25 The primary focus is on the profound and fundamental division within humanity created by the Mosaic Law—the deep social alienation which formerly existed between Jews and Gentiles—and whatever ‘privileges’ the writer mentions are brought into view for this purpose. These privileges are not depicted in the same way as the advantages belonging to Israel in Rom. 9.1-5, a context that emphasizes the glories the people of God enjoy as God’s people. Here, the focus is on the division and alienation of the Gentiles from the sphere of God’s blessing, and the writer’s tone approaches sarcasm, even derogation. In v. 11, the author refers to his Gentile readers as the ‘so-called uncircumcision’ (oi9 lego&menoi a)krobusti/a), a term used by the ‘so-called circumcision’ (th~j legome/nhj peritomh~j). Far from being glorified as a mark of election by Israel’s God, this circumcision is that done ‘in the flesh, by hands’ (e0n sarki\ xeiro- poih/tou), phrases deliberately chosen to emphasize the action of man vis- à-vis the action of God.26 The ‘outsider’ status of the Gentile readers is filled out by the writer: they were ‘strangers’ (ce/noi) to the covenants of Israel, outside the ‘commonwealth’ (politei/aj), and not a part of the community which hoped in the coming of the Messiah (v. 12). Against the dark backdrop of this desperate situation, the author announces the triumph of Christ over the Law and its divisive effects. By

23. Leivestad, Christ the Conqueror, p. 152. 24. Contra M. Rese, ‘Church and Israel in the DeuteroPauline Letters’, SJT 43 (1990), pp. 19-32 (26-27); H.W. Hoehner, Ephesians: An Exegetical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002), pp. 353-57. 25. Contra P. Stuhlmacher, Reconciliation, Law and Righteousness: Essays in Biblical Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), p. 190. 26. The term xeiropoi/htoj is used in the LXX to refer to idols (Lev. 26.1; Isa. 2.18), an idol’s sanctuary (Isa. 16.12), false gods (Isa. 11.9) and images (Lev. 26.30), indicating that gods other than the true God were made with human hands vis-à-vis the living God. It is also used throughout the New Testament to refer to anything that is the result of human action over against divine action, and that which is of the old, natural order over against the new creation of God (Mk 14.58; Heb. 9.11; Acts 7.48; 2 Cor. 5.1; Col. 2.11) (MacDonald, Colossians and Ephesians, p. 241; Best, Ephesians, p. 51).

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. 414 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) his death, Jesus Christ has united into one new humanity the two formerly divided peoples. Whereas the Gentile readers were formerly outsiders in reference to the people of God, they now have been made a vital part of that community. In vv. 14-16, the author elaborates on how this triumph was accomplished. Christ has made peace by destroying the division between Jews and Gentiles and by creating a new humanity in which those from any and every background may peacefully co-exist. According to v. 14, Christ himself is ‘our peace’, since he has made the two groups into one new humanity. In v. 15 Christ has made peace (poiw~n ei0rh/nhn), having done so by destroying ‘the middle wall of partition’ (to _ meso&toixon tou ~ fragmou ~ lu&saj, v. 14), a metaphorical reference to the division between Jews and Gentiles.27 He has also ‘abolished’ the Law, which the writer identiﬁes with ‘the enmity’ that existed between Jews and Gentiles. Though a number of commentators have sought to soften the reference to the Mosaic Law in v. 15, there is nothing in the text to allow such a limitation.28 Finally, much like Yahweh waging war against the weapons of war in the Zion psalms (e.g., Pss. 46.8-9; 76.3), the writer claims in v. 16 that in his death Christ killed the enmity. Along with destroying the divisive work of the Law within humanity, the work of Christ includes the creation of a ‘new humanity’ (kaino_n a!nqrwpon), reconciling (v. 16) these two divided elements and making them one (v. 14).29 ‘Creation’ language is again utilized to describe this work of Christ, where poie/w occurs in v. 14 and kti/zw in v. 15. In Divine Warrior contexts, the assertion of a deity’s supremacy over all competing powers is followed by a listing of the triumphs of the exalted one. Ephesians 2.1-16 plays this role, vindicating the claim that Christ is exalted over all cosmic powers.

27. Best, Ephesians, pp. 256-57; Hoehner, Ephesians, p. 371. 28. Gese, Das Vermächtnis, pp. 128-29; contra Schlier, Epheser, pp. 125-26; M. Barth, Ephesians (AB, 34; 2 vols.; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1974), I, pp. 287- 91. 29. Best maintains that the kaino_n a!nqrwpon is not a corporate entity, but is rather the ideal type of the new individual believer (Best, Ephesians, pp. 262-63; cf. also F. Mußner, Christus, das All und die Kirche: Studien zur Theologie des Epheserbriefes [TThSt, 5; Trier: Paulinus-Verlag, 1955], p. 87). It is quite clear, however, that the kaino_n a!nqrwpon is a corporate concept, referring to the joining together of Jewish and Gentile Christians to form one new people of God (Gese, Das Vermächtnis, pp. 134- 37; O’Brien, Ephesians, p. 200).

Victory Shout (2.17) Verse 17 contains an enigmatic reference to the ‘preaching’ of Christ, noting that, ‘coming, [Christ] preached peace to you, the far off, and peace to the near’ (e0lqw_n eu)hggeli/sato ei0rh/nhn u(mi=n toi=j makra_n kai\ ei0rh/nhn toi=j e0ggu&j). Scholars debate the time reference for the preaching ministry of Christ, but Roy Jeal is right to call off the search.30 The proclamation of peace by Christ is best understood within the ideology of divine warfare as a ‘victory shout’, wherein Christ proclaims his triumph and announces the blessing of peace to his people. Similar devices are found in other divine warfare contexts, such as Rev. 12.1-12. After God has defeated the dragon, throwing him to the earth (vv. 8-9), a loud voice in heaven acclaims the sovereign kingship of God: ‘the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have now come because the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down’ (v. 10). Such shouts of acclamation or declarations of the supreme sovereignty of the divine warrior are typically found during the processional of God into his temple (e.g., Pss. 24.7-10; 29.9b; 98.4-9). The participle e0lqw&n (‘coming’) in Eph. 2.17, then, depicts the ascension of Christ, the victorious divine warrior taking his throne. This proclamation does not take place during the earthly ministry of Jesus or in the apostolic proclamation, but during the enthronement of Christ as cosmic lord at the right hand of God in 1.20-23.

Celebration (2.18) Peace may be proclaimed to both groups because (o3ti) through Christ both groups now have access by one spirit to the father (di 0 au)tou~ e1xomen th\n prosagwgh\n oi9 a)mfo&teroi e0n e9ni\ pneu&mati pro_j to_n pate/ra). While the horizontal dimension—the relationship between Jewish and Gentile

30. Jeal, Integrating Theology and Ethics, p. 157. The various proposals for the identiﬁcation of Christ’s preaching ministry are as follows: a reference to the earthly ministry of Jesus (Stuhlmacher, Reconciliation, p. 191; Muddiman, Ephesians, p. 137; Mußner, Christus, p. 101); the post-ascension proclamation by Jesus announcing his victory to the hostile powers (Schlier, Epheser, pp. 137-39); the preaching of the apostles after the ascension of Jesus (Schnackenburg, Ephesians, p. 118; Hoehner, Ephesians, p. 385; G.B. Caird, Paul’s Letters from Prison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), p. 60; Gnilka, Epheserbrief, p. 146; O’Brien, Ephesians, p. 207; K.O. Sandnes, Paul—One of the Prophets? A Contribution to the Apostle’s Self-Under- standing [WUNT, 2.43; Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1991], p. 229); the cross and resurrection of Christ as the proclamation of the good news of peace (Lincoln, Ephesians, pp. 148-49; Gese, Das Vermächtnis, pp. 120-23).

Christians—has been in view to this point, the vertical dimension now comes to the fore. It is access to God that is enjoyed by both groups ‘through him’.31 In divine warfare compositions, the people who are loyal to the supreme deity celebrate his victory at his temple (e.g., Pss. 24.3-6; 47.5-9; 48.8-14; Rev. 7.13-15). This is the role that v. 18 ﬁlls in the present context. Those who have been brought together in one body now enjoy access to the father by one spirit in a scene depicting the two groups that had previously been divided now united in worship. The imagery suggested by the term prosagwgh/n is that of the Old Testament cult. It is used in the LXX of bringing the required offerings for approach to God (e.g., LXX Lev. 1.3; 3.3; 4.14), and the temple imagery of the present context (vv. 19-22) further indicates that the worship of God by the new humanity is in view.32 This section closes by again noting the reversal of the situation that formerly plagued the readers (v. 19). The ‘once-now’ schema is brought to completion: whereas ‘at that time’ (tw~| kairw~| e0kei/nw|, v. 12a) they were outside the politei/aj of Israel and ce/noi to the covenants, they are ‘no

31. The force of the dative expression e0n e9ni\ pneu&mati is highly disputed. Most scholars regard it as a dative of sphere so that ‘in one spirit’ is the ‘place’ of access to God for both groups (G.D. Fee, God’s Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul [Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994], p. 683; Lincoln, Ephesians, pp. 149-50; Jeal, Integrating Theology and Ethics, p. 162; G.W. Dawes, The Body in Question: Metaphor and Meaning in the Interpretation of Ephesians 5.21-33 [Biblical Interpretation Series, 30; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1998], p. 174; Hoehner, Ephesians, p. 389; Barth, Ephesians, I, pp. 267-68; Mußner, Christus, p. 104). This is seen as best explain- ing the use of the modifier ‘one’ in the clause, and makes good sense as standing in direct contrast with ‘in the flesh’ of v. 11. It is inappropriate, however, to view ‘in one spirit’ as parallel to ‘in the flesh’ from v. 11. The point is not that Gentiles who were formerly so ‘in the flesh’ are now something different ‘in one spirit’. ‘In the flesh’ in v. 11 does not describe the sphere in which Gentiles formerly were ‘being’, and ‘in one spirit’ involves both groups, not just the Gentile readers. Further, it appears that the notion of sphere is covered by other expressions in the immediate context, and the writer seems to go to great lengths to stress that the sphere in which Jewish and Gentile believers are now united is ‘in Christ’. It is preferable to read this dative expression as instrumental, so that the Spirit is seen as the one who makes effective the relationship between Jewish and Gentile Christians in the body of Christ (cf. Schnackenburg, Ephesians, p. 119; O’Brien, Ephesians, p. 209). 32. Gese, Das Vermächtnis, p. 198; Lincoln, Ephesians, p. 149; O’Brien, Ephesians, p. 209.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. GOMBIS Ephesians 2 as a Narrative of Divine Warfare 417 longer’ (ou)ke/ti, v. 19a) ce/noi, but are now sumpoli=tai (‘fellow citizens’), along with ‘the saints’ (tw~n a(gi/wn).33 Another device that highlights the reversal of the situation and serves as a transition to the following section is the elaborate paronomasia based on the word oi]koj. In vv. 19-22, words with the oi0k- root are used six times, two of which appear in v. 19. The letter’s Gentile readers are no longer pa&roikoi (‘strangers’), but are rather oi0kei=oi (‘household members’).

House-building (2.20-22) Having listed the triumphs that establish and vindicate the exaltation of Christ over the powers ruling the present evil age, in vv. 20-22 the writer explains that this new creation that God has inaugurated, this new humanity, is also the place where God now dwells by his Spirit.34 The church is God’s new temple, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Jesus Christ as the foundation stone. As such it stands as a lasting monument to the exalted lordship of Christ. The existence of the temple in Jerusalem reminded Israel that their God was superior to all others and was indeed sovereign ruler of the universe. Similarly, in the ANE texts mentioned above, deities who triumphed in combat with other deities earned the right to have a temple built in their honor.35 In the same way the construction by God of this new temple made up of the one new humanity points to the triumph of Christ and the subjection of the powers to him. The section stretching from 2.19b to 2.22 is ﬁlled with ‘household’ terms and temple imagery. In v. 19b, both Jewish and Gentile Christians

33. The term tw~n a(gi/wn is a reference to all believers (Jeal, Integrating Theology and Ethics, p. 159; MacDonald, Colossians and Ephesians, p. 248). The burden of this section is to demonstrate that Christ has dramatically overcome the negative effects of the Law upon humanity by uniting Jewish and Gentile believers in Christ, so that a reference to all believers, even those gloriﬁed in heaven, makes best sense in the present context. The letter’s Gentile readers have been made a uniﬁed part of the cosmic fellowship of the followers of Jesus. 34. The dative expression e0n pneu&mati most likely indicates the means by which God’s people are his dwelling place, his new temple (Fee, God’s Empowering Presence, p. 688; cf. also T.G. Gombis, ‘Being the Fullness of God in Christ by the Spirit: Ephesians 5.18 in its Epistolary Setting’, TynBul 53 [2002], pp. 259-72. Contra M. Bouttier, L’épître de Saint Paul aux Ephésiens [CNT, 9B; Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1991], p. 131). 35. A.S. Kapelrud, ‘Temple Building, A Task for Gods and Kings’, Or 32 (1963), pp. 56-62.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. 418 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) are now citizens ‘with the saints and members of the house of God’ (oi0kei=oi tou~ qeou).~ This depicts the church as a heavenly communion that is ‘being built’ (e0poikodomhqe/ntej) upon a foundation consisting of the apostles and prophets (v. 20).36 In v. 21, the whole ‘building’ (oi0kodomh&) is now growing into a ‘holy temple’ (nao&n a3gion) in the Lord, in whom they are also ‘being built up (sunoikodomei=sqe) into a dwelling (katoikhth/rion) of God by the Spirit’ (v. 22). Just as triumphant deities in the ANE had temples or palaces built in their honor, so here in Eph. 2 the triumphs of the exalted cosmic Lord Christ are memorialized with the building of his temple, the people of God made up of both Jewish and Gentile believers.

Conclusion

Ephesians 2 is not a sort of rambling expansion to the thanksgiving and blessing section of ch. 1. Nor is it the incoherent result of a clumsy editing process. When read against the background of the structure of ANE divine warfare mythology, it emerges that there is indeed a clear progression of thought and a tightly woven argument in 1.20–2.22, wherein the writer announces the exaltation of Christ to cosmic lordship and then delineates his triumphs over the powers that rule the present fallen age. Chapter 2 then follows the logic of divine warfare ideology: the triumphs of Christ over the evil powers vindicate the exalted status of the Lord Christ, who announces his victory by proclaiming peace. His people gather to him in uniﬁed worship as his temple, which he has founded and is building as a lasting monument to his universal sovereign lordship.

36. Caird, Paul’s Letters from Prison, p. 61; Schlier, Epheser, p. 142.

The Politics of Identity in Ephesians

Margaret Y. MacDonald

Department of Religious Studies, St Francis Xavier University P.O. Box 5000, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada, B2G 2W5 [email protected]

Abstract

Drawing upon recent work on the political framework of the Pauline epistles, the goal of this article is to shed light upon the problem of historical reconstruction of the context of Ephesians. In response to some commentators who have contended that the author of Ephesians failed to show interest in contemporary Jews, it is argued that Eph. 2.11-22 is best understood as reflecting significant engagement with the life and fate of the Jewish people. Both the conceptions of society and the presentation of the identity of the ekklesia are examined in light of the situation of the Jews in the empire under Domitian. It is argued that the use of ambiguous categories to refer to the relations between the ekklesia and Israel reflect concrete experiences in the ekklesia of shifting identity, in part dependent on the changing circumstances of the Jews. The existence of these social dynamics is confirmed by examining the points of contact between Ephesians and imperial ideology as revealed especially in the interplay of religious, civic, and domestic themes in the epistle. Comparison of Ephesians to Josephus’s Against Apion proves to be especially useful in bringing this interplay into full relief.

Introduction

Ephesians has been aptly described by the great Ephesians scholar Nils Alstrup Dahl as a ‘sublime, yet elusive document’—a work containing ‘almost no references to speciﬁc times, places, or persons, or to events after the baptism of the addressees’.1 From a historical perspective, Ephesians

1. Nils Alstrup Dahl, Studies in Ephesians: Introductory Questions, Text- and Edition-Critical Issues, Interpretation of Texts and Themes (ed. David Hellholm, Vemund Blomkvist and Tord Fornberg; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), p. 446.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004, The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX and 15 East 26th Street, Suite 1703, New York, NY 10010, USA. 420 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) is certainly one of the most elusive documents in the New Testament. The uncertainty about setting extends far beyond the usual questions (such as how to deal with significant reliance on traditional material) that arise when the majority of scholars believe a work to be pseudonymous. That the words ‘in Ephesus’ are missing from several important witnesses makes it impossible to draw any firm conclusions about the identity of the addressees—though it is often thought that the gap in the address is best explained by the theory that the document was actually intended for more than one congregation. About the only fact that can be recovered with a fair degree of certainty about the specific context of Ephesians is that the recipients were (predominantly?) Gentile (Eph. 2.11-22; cf. 2.1-3; 4.17- 19; 5.3-13).2 The document simply resists being pinned down to particular historical problems or even to a church conceived in local terms (all references are to the universal ekklesia); instead the work bids its readers to focus on heavenly places and idealizations of the relationship between the human and the divine. To complicate the problems of historical reconstruction still further, there is uncertainty about the nature of the document itself, with some commentators questioning whether Ephesians is truly an epistle and suggesting that it might more closely resemble some other type of discourse such as a sermon, liturgical tract or even an honorific decree.3 All of this means that Ephesians has been somewhat neglected in recent years, especially by English-speaking scholars intent on exploring historical questions. Despite the frustratingly opaque nature of the language and style of Ephesians, however, there are features of the text that make it irresistible subject matter for the social history of early Christianity. The document is deeply concerned with the identity of the ekklesia and, although it is often on an ideological rather than a social plane, one senses an attempt throughout to articulate this identity in relation to Jews and Gentiles in the Roman world. Among its most intriguing features, discussed at length below, is

2. The notion of a predominantly Gentile audience is also supported by the tendency to distinguish ‘we’ (Jewish Christians associated with the author) from ‘you’ (the Gentile addressees) as in Eph. 1.12-14. But this distinction is also subject to other possible interpretations. See Margaret Y. MacDonald, Colossians and Ephesians (SP, 17; Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2000), pp. 203-204. 3. Calling Ephesians ‘the Gordian knot of epistolary criticism’ (p. 3), one of the most interesting recent discussions of the genre of Ephesians is that by Holland Hendrix; he compares the genre of Ephesians to that of the honoriﬁc decree (‘On the Form and Ethos of Ephesians’, USQR 42 [1988], pp. 3-15.)

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. MACDONALD The Politics of Identity in Ephesians 421 an extremely negative view of the Gentile world. Similarly, the manner in which Israel is presented as central to the identity of believers (cf. Eph. 2.11-22; Eph. 3.1-6) invites much speculation. For example, given the almost ethereal symbolism, which simply seems to appropriate the identity of Israel for church groups, one can easily understand Dahl’s bold remark:

I see no way to avoid the conclusion that the author of Ephesians had a keen interest in the Jewish roots and origins of the church but failed to show any concern for the relationship of his audience to contemporary Jews in or outside of the church.4

In order to deﬁne communal identity, Ephesians cuts across boundaries in almost contradictory ways, challenging assumptions about church life in the latter decades of the ﬁrst century, leaving investigators with many puzzles about the self-understanding of the community(ies) where it was composed and to which it was addressed. Yet recent work on the political framework of the Pauline epistles and the tendency for commentators increasingly to view imperial ideology as an important interpretive grid for Ephesians may point to the way beyond the analytical dead ends that characterize so much historical work on Ephesians.5 With a special focus on Eph. 2.11-22 (the text that has probably received most attention as a possible indicator of the social circumstances underlying Ephesians), I will begin with an examination of the manner in which boundaries are articulated in Ephesians.6 Informed by recent work on

4. Dahl, Studies in Ephesians, p. 446. For a similar analysis of the theological position of the author of Ephesians, see J.T. Sanders, Schismatics, Sectarians, Dissi- dents, Deviants: The First One Hundred Years of Jewish Christian Relations (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1993), pp. 200-201. 5. On Pauline literature in general, see the two collections of essays edited by Richard Horsley: Paul and Empire: Religion and Power in Roman Imperial Society (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1997); Paul and Politics: Ekklesia, Israel, Imperium, Interpretation (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2000). On imperial ideology and Ephesians, see especially Eberhard Faust, Pax Christi et Pax Caesaris: Religionsgeschichtliche, traditionsgeschichtliche und sozialgeschichtliche Studien zum Epheserbrief (NTOA, 24; Fribourg: Universitätsverlag; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993). Faust’s work has influenced commentators such as John Muddiman (but with reservations; see The Epistle to the Ephesians [London: Continuum, 2001], p. 121). See also Carmen Bernabé Ubieta, ‘“Neither Xenoi nor paroikoi, sympolitai and oikeioi tou theou” (Eph. 2:19) Pauline Christian Communities: Defining a New Territoriality’, in John J Pilch (ed.), Social-Scientific Models for Interpreting the Bible (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2001), pp. 260-80. 6. Faust, Pax Christi et Pax Caesaris, offers an especially good recent example of

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. 422 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) circumstances of Jews and Gentiles living in the Roman world, including the impact of Roman imperial ideology and propaganda, I will then set out to explore the plausible correlations between this articulation of boundaries and actual cultural negotiations at the historical level. The ultimate goal of the article is to illustrate that the persistent interest in the identity of the ekklesia in Ephesians can only be understood in light of the ‘political’ perspective of the author of Ephesians and the points of contact of the text (in the form of both appropriation and rejection) with imperial ideology. The picture that emerges is one of ﬂexible and dynamic shifts in social posture in relation to a variety of forces, including the changing fate of Jewish communities in the empire.

Conceptions of Society in Ephesians

The description of the Gentile recipients of Ephesians as having once been alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and having no hope without God in the world in Eph. 2.11-12 has been compared to texts from Second Temple Judaism that display the most negative characterizations of the Gentiles.7 An examination of the similarities between Ephesians and the Qumran Literature (QL) renders this strong sentiment especially apparent.8 For example, both Ephesians and the QL make extensive use of predestinarian concepts (e.g. Eph. 1.3-14; 1QS 1.10-11; 11.5-9). Ephesians 1.5 speaks of believers being adopted as ‘sons’ (cf. Eph. 5.1) and Eph. 5.8 calls believers ‘children of light’ in keeping with Qumran references to the ‘sons of light’ (e.g. 1QS 1.9-10; 4Q548). Ephesians 2.2-3 expresses the same sentiment in reverse using expressions such as ‘sons of disobedience’ and ‘children of wrath’ to speak of the past life of believers that recall the language of Qumran (cf. 1QS 1.9-10; 4Q548 [sons of darkness]; 1QS 3.20- 21 [sons of deceit]). In Eph. 5.6 the dire state of unbelievers is expressed this special focus on Eph. 2.11-22 for the reconstruction of social circumstances. On the importance of Eph. 2.11-22 for the analysis of Ephesians in the history of interpretation of the work, see Ernest Best, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Ephesians (ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), pp. 235-36. 7. Terrence Donaldson, Paul and the Gentiles: Remapping the Apostle’s Convic- tional World (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997), 52-54. In addition to the Qumran Literature, Donaldson draws special attention to Jubilees, Fourth Ezra, the Testament of Moses and Pseudo-Philo among others. 8. Recent work on Ephesians has drawn attention to the extensive parallels between Ephesians and the QL. See Dahl, Studies in Ephesians, pp. 115-44; Pheme Perkins, Ephesians (ANTC; Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1997).

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. MACDONALD The Politics of Identity in Ephesians 423 in the strongest possible terms with the statement that the wrath of God is coming upon the ‘sons of disobedience’ (Eph. 5.6; cf. Eph. 2.2).9 Despite the frequent and clear expressions of universal salvation in Ephesians (in keeping with Colossians), notions of predestination, adoption/election, and condemnation of the wicked call believers apart from all others. Unlike the Qumran sectarians who physically withdrew from mainstream society, however, there is every reason to suspect that Ephesians was addressed to a community that remained integrated within the urban fabric of society. The use of the household code indicates that flight from urban neighbourhoods and abandonment of conventional existence is not intended. We do not find the clearly articulated, visible and physical measures to encourage segregation in Ephesians that we find in the QL. Thus Ephesians was not recommending isolation in the same sense.10 To state that Ephesians represents an ‘introversionist’ response to the world in the sense of withdrawal from the world with little or no engagement with the world would be to overstate the case. But when Ephesians is compared to earlier Pauline works, and especially to Colossians, it becomes apparent that the pendulum has swung in the direction of a call for greater separation in a movement that continues to subscribe to a universalistic view of salvation (e.g. Eph. 3.8-13; 6.19-20).11

9. Similar dualistic language occurs in the undisputed letters of Paul such as in 1 Thess. 5.1-11, but in that case the focus is less explicitly on the fate of non-believers and more directly on the status of Christ-followers as sons of the day and sons of light (1 Thess. 5.5). The others are in darkness by implication. 10. This difference has been noted by Pheme Perkins in Ephesians, p. 118. But in limiting the dissociation in Ephesians to the ‘activities that characterized the lifestyle of non-Christians’, Perkins may be downplaying the extent of the withdrawal too much. Although it took on a different shape from that revealed by the QL, the desire to with- draw from non-believers in Ephesians may have been of similar intensity. 11. Philip F. Esler (The First Christians in their Social World [London: Routledge, 1994], p. 84) has employed the notion of ‘introversionist’ sect to describe the perspective of the QL, drawing upon Bryan Wilson’s seven-part typology of sects (Magic and the Millenium: A Sociological Study of Religious Movements of Protest among Tribal and Third-World Peoples [London: Heinemann; New York: Harper & Row, 1973]). Tension between introversion and engagement with the world is typical of ‘conversionist’ sects as described by Bryan Wilson, and one senses aspects of this tension in Ephesians (but with stronger leanings in the direction of introversion than earlier Pauline works). Ephesians is not a perfect reﬂection of any one type, but using the typology as a heuristic device can assist in attempts to measure the degree of withdrawal from the world manifested by any one Pauline document. See Margaret Y. MacDonald, The Pauline Churches: A Socio-Historical Study of Institutionalization in

The then/now contrast that is so plainly evident in Eph. 2.11-22 reminding believers of their identity, and ultimately demarcating the boundary between the believing and non-believing worlds (cf. Eph. 2.1- 22; 5.8-14), is also prominent in Colossians (e.g. Col. 1.21-22; 2.13; 3.7- 8) and can be detected in the undisputed letters of Paul (e.g. Rom. 5.8-11; Gal. 1.23; 3.23-25; 4.3-9). In comparison to Colossians, and perhaps even to the undisputed letters of Paul, however, Ephesians displays a greater consciousness of evil and a stronger encouragement to separate from the non-believing world. The length and intensity of the exhortations devoted to encouraging separation from the non-believing world in Eph. 4.17–5.20 is especially striking (Eph. 4.17-24; cf. Col. 3.5-10; Eph. 5.3-8; cf. Col. 3.5-8; Eph. 5.15-20; cf. Col. 3.16-17; 4.5-6). By means of an introductory formula that gives the statement the weight of a solemn pronouncement, believers are told without reservation that daily life (which would have included negotiating business, trade and contacts with patrons among non-believers) must involve no compromise of one’s commitment to God: ‘Be sure of this, that no immoral, impure, or greedy person (that is to say, an idolater) has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God’ (Eph. 5.5; cf. Col. 3.5). In Eph. 5.7 believers are told not to be ‘partakers’ (summe/toxoj; a term that occurs only here and in Eph. 3.6 [to refer to par- taking in salvation with the Gentiles]) with the ‘sons of disobedience’. The call is for complete dissociation and seems very far removed from Paul’s attitude to accepting dinner invitations to the homes of unbelievers in 1 Cor. 10.23-33! Perhaps the only text in the undisputed letters of Paul that matches the intensity of the call to separate from the Gentile world in Eph. 5.7 (cf. 5.11) is 2 Cor. 6.14–7.1, which is often regarded as an inter- polation of non-Pauline material (more closely resembling the QL).12 The call for separation also surfaces in texts describing the relationship between believers and the ‘powers’. Ephesians 1.21 presents Christ as triumphing over ‘every rule and authority and power and dominion’ (cf. Eph. 2.2; 3.10; 6.12; cf. Col. 2.10, 15). These powers were probably under-

the Pauline and Deutero-Pauline Writings (SNTSMS, 60; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 32-42. 12. Note that J. Paul Sampley has drawn attention to the points of contact between Eph. 5.21-33 and 2 Cor. 7.1 (‘And the Two Shall Become One Flesh’: A Study of the Traditions in Eph 5:21-33 [SNTSMS, 16; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971], pp. 120-21). Both texts refer to the fear of God or Christ (cf. Eph. 5.21) and both texts place considerable emphasis on holiness and cleansing.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. MACDONALD The Politics of Identity in Ephesians 425 stood as hostile spiritual beings (cf. Eph. 6.12; 1 Cor. 15.24-26).13 In essence, Eph. 1.21 sets the stage for the call for believers to engage in spiritual warfare in Eph. 6.10-20—a text that has the rhetorical form of a ‘call to battle’, reminiscent of the speeches of generals before battle, reminding soldiers of their superior strength and bracing them for a successful outcome.14 This strong combat language requires careful attention. These enemies are clearly on the outside of the community and threaten it with siege. The enemies are ultimately not earthly, but they are certainly presented as capable of corrupting the society where believers live. The past life of believers is described as one where they ‘once walked according to the age of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, of the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience’. Believers all once lived among them, ruled by passion, lust and ‘were children of wrath by nature, like the rest’ (Eph. 2.2-3; cf. 1QS 3.20-21). But there has been an escape—it would be no exaggeration to call it a rescue—for God has made them alive with Christ and raised them up and seated them with him in the ‘heavenly places’ (ta _ e0pourani/a), the realm of divine transcendence where Christ sits at God’s right hand (Eph. 2.5-6; cf. 1.3, 20; 2.6; 3.10; 6.12).15 ‘The rest’—those who remain outside the church—remain condemned as children of wrath. Ephesians was proclaimed in a society saturated with symbols of

13. Note, however, that whether these powers should really be viewed as hostile remains a subject of debate in New Testament scholarship. For example, Perkins believes that Eph. 1.21 displays a positive understanding of angelic powers (Ephesians, p. 51). In contrast, C. Arnold has highlighted the association of the terminology with angels in Jewish literature and has argued that the powers are both angelic and evil (Ephesians, Power and Magic: The Concept of Power in Ephesians in the Light of its Historical Setting [SNTSMS, 63; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989], pp. 52-54). Moreover, he argues that the recipients of Ephesians most likely employed magical practices in the past to control such forces and were perhaps inclined to return to them (p. 56). 14. Andrew T. Lincoln, Ephesians (WBC, 42; Dallas: Word Books, 1990), pp. 432- 34. With the help of rhetorical analysis Lincoln has in fact argued that the text constitutes Ephesians’ peroratio (the concluding section of persuasive communication), which in this case takes the form of a ‘call to battle’. He compares Ephesians especially to Quintilian 6.1.1 and Aristotle, Rhet. 3.19. 15. It is clear from Eph. 3.10 and 6.12 that ‘the heavenly places’ should be understood as part of the universe (in contrast to the view of heaven that later became accepted in Christianity). The heavenly places remain subject to hostile forces that continue to inhabit the universe, but will eventually be conquered once and for all.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. 426 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) imperial power. Even when calls for active military service showed signs of waning, the ‘militarisation of visual imagery’ ﬂourished with symbolic monuments such as military towers at city gates or statues of captured barbarians instilling the correct mentality and expressing military prepared- ness.16 Ephesians 6.10-20 must have made a powerful impression when read aloud in the midst of the assembly, inspiring strength but also warning of dangers. From the perspective of Ephesians, to say that association with unbelievers involves perils would be an understatement. There is no encouragement of dialogue (cf. Col. 4.5), but only warnings to walk wisely because the days are evil (Eph. 5.15-16)! Although they will ultimately be defeated, spiritual forces still threaten the universe and shape the non- believing world (cf. Eph. 2.2; 6.12), and believers must stand guard against them. The weaponry is one of ethical and spiritual virtues (Eph. 6.14-17). While the various terms for ‘powers’ in Eph. 1.21 sometimes do refer to political powers in the undisputed letters of Paul (e.g. Rom. 13.1-7), there is no direct evidence in Ephesians that believers were being persecuted by political authorities.17 Neither does the text contain direct references to accusations levelled against believers, as is the case in 1 Peter (cf. 1 Pet. 2.15; 3.15-16; 4.16). But the defensive—at times almost aggressive— language of Ephesians suggests that it comes from a context where believers need to deal with some type of hostility and require further resolve to do so. Moreover, Eph. 6.15-16 may in fact contain indirect references to verbal accusations and criticisms against believers. Taken together with v. 15, which refers to the gospel of peace, v. 16 may envision a situation where the message of Christ is being proclaimed by believers and this has provoked the assaults of the wicked (cf. Eph. 5.6). In Eph. 6.16 believers are presented as ‘having taken up the shield of faith, with which [they]

16. Paul Zanker, ‘The Power of Images’, in Horsley (ed.), Paul and Empire, pp. 85- 86. 17. Neil Elliott has argued that Paul has in mind concrete political rulers and authorities in 1 Corinthians (cf. 1 Cor. 2.8; 15.24) in contrast to the situation in Colossians and Ephesians (‘The Anti-Imperial Message of the Cross’, in Horsley [ed.], Paul and Empire, p. 180). It is important to note, however, that many scholars have dated Ephesians to about 90 CE (e.g. Lincoln, Ephesians, pp. lxxii-lxxiii; Muddiman, The Epistle to the Ephesians, pp. 34-35), and therefore it might well have been composed during Domitian’s reign. Domitian’s treatment of Christians and Jews is difﬁcult to assess, but references in 1 Clement, 1 Peter and Revelation have sometimes been associated with persecution of Christians under Domitian. See Stephen G. Wilson, Related Strangers: Jews and Christians 70–170 CE (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), pp. 11-16, esp. p. 15. See further discussion below.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. MACDONALD The Politics of Identity in Ephesians 427 will be able to put out the flaming arrows of the evil one’. In the QL the image of ‘arrows’ is used to describe the fiery words that the wicked use to speak against God. The righteous person’s testimony to the truth about God leads to a barrage of attacks from fiery darts (1QH 10.23-26; cf. Prov. 26.18). The arrows of the evil one are clearly the arrows of the devil in Eph. 6.16, but it is also evident that the work of the devil is made manifest by means of the concrete acts of the ‘sons of disobedience’ (Eph. 2.2).18 Despite the ever-present dangers of flaming arrows, it is nevertheless striking that the author of Ephesians does not recommend concealment in any way (cf. Eph. 5.12). In fact the author of Ephesians focuses directly on the meeting of the assembly when setting out the guidelines to ‘no longer walk as the Gentiles do’ in Eph. 4.17–5.20. Like Col. 3.15-16, Eph. 5.18-20 presents the worship of the community as involving ‘psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs’, but the role of the Spirit is emphasized to a greater extent in Ephesians than in the parallel text of Colossians, and Ephesians contains an explicit warning against inappropriate behaviour: ‘And do not get drunk with wine, in which is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit’ (Eph. 5.18; cf. 1.17; 3.16; 4.3; 6.18). This warning has significant points of contact with Jewish ethical teaching, and Paul himself associates drunkenness with debauchery in Rom. 13.12-13 (cf. 1 Thess. 5.6-8; Prov. 23.31).19 But the text has sometimes been read as an attempt to distinguish Spirit-induced ecstasy from the frenzies of such groups as the Dionysius cult.20 It may be that such strong language of dissociation from wicked habits represents a counter-move against non-believers who accused Christians of holding immoral assemblies. It is interesting here to recall the impression of onlookers in Acts that the Sprit-filled disciples were drunk (cf. Acts 2.4, 13, 15). Moreover, anti-Jewish pagan authors accused Jews of drunkenness and lechery and, as discussed further below, it is quite likely that church members of this period sometimes succumbed to hostility on account of perceptions of Jewish associations.21 But with

18. See Perkins, Ephesians, p. 147. 19. Drunkenness and debauchery are linked in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (cf. T. Iss. 7.2, 3; T. Jud. 11.2; 12.3; 13.6; 16.1; cited in Lincoln, Ephesians, p. 340). 20. Cleon L. Rogers, Jr, ‘The Dionysian Background of Ephesians 5.18’, BSac 136 (1979), pp. 249-57. 21. On Jews being accused of drunkenness and debauchery, see Josephus, Apion 2.195-99. See discussion in Martin Goodman, ‘Josephus’ Treatise Against Apion’, in Mark Edwards, Martin Goodman and Simon Price (eds.), Apologetics in the Roman

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. 428 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) respect to legitimate worship, the author of Ephesians recommends no temperance—there is nothing here to contain spontaneous outbursts of the Spirit. That worship was a visible point of contact between believers and unbelievers is suggested by the description of worship by Pliny at the beginning of the second century, which speaks of Christians meeting together before dawn to sing a hymn ‘to Christ as to God’.22 With its bold encouragement to engage in spiritual ‘singing’ in Eph. 5.18-20, and its exhortations to avoid secrecy and cultivate the light in Eph. 5.11-14, Ephesians reinforces a situation of potential vulnerability of believers.23 About the same time as the composition of Ephesians, Josephus composed an apologetic work, Against Apion, which has interesting points in common with Ephesians and which may shed light on the attitude to society reﬂected in the work.24 Although the setting for the actual anti- Jewish polemic by Apion was Alexandria, Martin Goodman has recently argued that the situation in Rome in the nineties CE offers the most likely background for the shape, tone and structure of Josephus’s apologetic response.25 According to Goodman, Josephus wrote Against Apion in order to respond to anti-Jewish propaganda produced by and for the Flavian dynasty after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE:

Empire: Pagans, Jews, and Christians (in association with Christopher Rowland; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 52. 22. See Pliny, Ep. 10.96.7. Lincoln has drawn attention to the similarity between Pliny’s language and the text from Ephesians (Ephesians, p. 346). 23. See the graphic and condemning description of Christian worship in the speech of Marcus Cornelius Fronto (100–166 CE) recorded by the third-century Christian Apologist Minucius Felix (Oct. 8). 24. The dependence of Ephesians upon Colossians and the tendency for Ephesians to look back to the origins of a movement (e.g. Eph. 2.19-20) extending Pauline tradition into a new generation have frequently led to the opinion among scholars who view the work as Deutero-Pauline (the position being adopted in this article) of a composition date in the latter decades of the ﬁrst century, about 90 CE. 25. According to Goodman, Against Apion contrasts the ‘wisdom of Moses and the actions of lawless despots’ (e.g. Apion 2.158-59) in a manner that is in keeping with the rhetoric concerning the reign of Domitian that followed his death. Moreover, he argues that the presentation by Josephus of the Temple as the central element in Judaism (2.193; cf. Eph. 2.11-22) makes most sense in the context of the demise of the Flavian dynasty when the rebuilding of the Temple was considered a real possibility. The only thing that can be determined with any certainty with respect to the dating of the work, however, is that it was composed after the publication of the Antiquities in 93 CE (‘Josephus’ Treatise Against Apion’, pp. 50-51).

Vespasian and Titus used their victory over the Jews as the main element in the claim of their new dynasty to legitimacy as rulers of the Empire, adver- tising widely their achievement, on coins, arches, and inscriptions…the destruction was celebrated in Titus’ triumph, in which the utensils looted from the sanctuary were paraded (Josephus, War, 7.148-9), and the quasi- illegitimacy of Judaism was symbolised by the imposition of a new tax on the Jews, the ﬁscus Judaicus.26

For Goodman the presentation of Judaism in Against Apion strongly suggests that Josephus wrote the work mainly with a Gentile audience in mind; he hoped to illustrate that Judaism was compatible with Roman society and shaped his treatise to appeal to popular opinion among the literate classes of the city of Rome. Of particular interest for this article is the fact that Josephus’s response to anti-Jewish polemic includes an emphasis on marriage and the submission of women (Apion 2.199-203; cf. Eph. 5.21-33), the sobriety of Jewish worship (Apion 2.195; cf. Eph. 5.18-20), and the claim that stories about Jewish ass worship are ludicrous (Apion 2.79-120). Rare in extant Jewish literature, the polemic against Greek culture (Apion 2.238-54) calls to mind the strong language of dissociation from society that permeates Ephesians.27 The accusation that Jews are unsociable, coupled with the defence that others go much farther than the Jews in their segregation (Apion 2.121-24, 147-49, 255-75), raises interesting questions about the strong interest in the boundaries of community in Ephesians and the attempt to articulate the nature of a heavenly citizenship. Behind Josephus’s account lie the kinds of rumours and insidious backlash that the members of early church groups probably also experienced, sometimes because of their association with Judaism and at other times because of their emergence as a new religious movement.28 As is increasingly being recognized, the situation of the Jews and Christians vis-à-vis their pagan neighbours of this period cannot be treated in isolation of each

26. Goodman, ‘Josephus’ Treatise Against Apion’, p. 55. 27. Goodman, ‘Josephus’ Treatise Against Apion’, pp. 51-58, esp. p. 57. Goodman believes that it is signiﬁcant that Josephus attacks Greek and not Roman culture, noting that such language would have resonated with a Roman audience familiar with polemic against the Greeks. 28. See Wilson, Related Strangers, pp. 9, 12-13, 16. It is also possible that some of the critique of believers came from Jews who may have played a role in encouraging Gentile opposition to church groups. But evidence for this from this period comes mostly from Christian sources (such as Acts) that tend to exaggerate Jewish hostility, making evaluation difﬁcult (Related Strangers, pp. 169-94).

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. 430 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) other, with the merging of Jewish and Christian identity in Eph. 2.11-22 (which also contains a likely reference to the Jerusalem Temple [Eph. 2.14; cf. 2.21]) being an important case in point. The great uncertainty about the context of Ephesians makes it difficult to draw direct correlations between the work and Josephus’s Against Apion. However, the fact that the documents probably come from the same period and display significant thematic similarities means that comparison can be suggestive in seeking to understand the struggle for survival of religious groups in the Roman empire. Although there has been some attention to the matter in recent years, the political dimensions of Ephesians have been much less obvious to commentators and stand out quite markedly when read in relation to Against Apion, where civic and religious interests are inseparably linked. One might, for example, consider the description of the past Gentile life of believers as one ‘without God’ in the world (Eph. 2.12). The Greek term often translated as ‘without God’ is a!qeoi: atheists. While it clearly reflects the well-attested sentiment that the Gentiles are ignorant of God (cf. LXX Jer. 10.25; 1 Thess. 1.9; 4.5; Gal. 4.8), the specific Greek word occurs nowhere else in the New Testament.29 The term generally refers to the godless or impious, both those who have never heard of the gods and those who reject the gods (BAGD, p. 20). The term was employed in the Roman world in the context of references to the neglect of religious rites understood as fundamental to the welfare of the state. Admittedly, in Ephesians the term is used in the midst of a description of the pre-conversion life of believers, as opposed to being a label applied to believers for neglect of legitimate forms of worship. But such descrip- tions of pre-conversion life in the New Testament are ultimately also manifestos on what is wrong with the current social order; in the case of Ephesians, the reference to being a!qeoi represents the pinnacle of despera- tion of a life estranged and outside of the body (Eph. 2.16-17). Given that the word also surfaces in the triangle of polemical exchanges between Jew, pagan and Christian in the ancient world, we should remain open to the very real possibility that for recipients this expression had great political significance, encoding past experiences of alienation and present consequences of communal loyalty. Josephus offers evidence of the use of the label a!qeoj to refer to Jews in the empire. Assuming the voice of legal defence, he sets out to argue that the Jews are the most law-abiding of the nations:

29. See Perkins, Ephesians, p. 69.

My object is not to compose a panegyric upon our nation; but I consider that, in reply to the numerous false accusations which are brought against us, the fairest defence which we can offer is to be found in the laws which govern our daily life. I adopt this line the more readily because Apollonius, unlike Apion, has not grouped his accusations together, but scattered them here and there all over his work, reviling us in one place as atheists (a)qe/ouj) and misanthropes, in another reproaching us as cowards, whereas elsewhere, on the contrary, he accuses us of temerity and reckless madness. He adds that we are the most witless of all barbarians, and are consequently the only people who have contributed no useful invention to civilisation. All this tirade will, I think, be clearly refuted, if it be shown that the precepts of our laws, punctiliously practised in our lives, are in direct conﬂict with the above description. (Josephus, Apion 2.146-49 [Thackeray, LCL])30

The association of the term a!qeoj with civic loyalty in Josephus’s text is unmistakable. It is signiﬁcant that the term (Eph. 2.12) occurs within Eph. 2.11-22, which, as discussed further below, contains many civic concepts. In the second century CE, perceptions concerning a lack of loyalty to the state and behaviour counter to the good of the broader social order were at the heart of the pagan accusations that Christians were ‘atheists’ (e.g. Mart. Pol. 3; 9.2; Justin Martyr, 1 Apol. 6, 13; Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 7.1). We should by no means rule out the use of the label for church members as early as the ﬁrst century. Because Josephus offers

30. Note that Josephus here refers to the remarks of Apollonius Molon who was a native of Alabanda (a city of northern Caria) and taught rhetoric in Rhodes early in the first century BCE. John M.G. Barclay understands the remarks as reflecting the typical criticisms against the Jews circulating in elite circles in the cities of Asia Minor. Barclay views the hostility as in keeping especially with the political circumstances of the first century BCE, when there was considerable resentment of Jewish resources in the context of debt-ridden Greek cities (Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora: From Alexander to Trajan [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996], pp. 272-73). But if we follow the line of argument presented by Martin Goodman with respect to Apion cited above, it seems highly likely that Josephus’s comments also reflect the ideas of his own time. There was clearly also propaganda in Rome at the end of the first century associating Judaism with ‘atheism’. Dio refers to prominent Roman citizens under Domitian, notably Flavius Clemens (cousin of the emperor) and his wife Flavia Domitilla (niece of the emperor; both parents of his heirs), who were charged with atheism on account of adoption of Jewish practices, and generally refers to many others who were charged for drifting into Jewish ways (Dio 67.14.1-2). See discussion of these cases by Barclay, who also refers to evidence from Quintilian and Martial as reflecting a spirit of anti-Judaism in the capital at the end of the first century (pp. 311-12). On the relationship between the situation in Rome and Asia Minor at the end of the first century, see also n. 40 below.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. 432 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) evidence of the label being applied to Jews in this period, the label may have been rooted in the perception of outsiders that the movement was closely associated if not coterminous with Judaism. As is typical of the counter-moves of polemical exchange, second-century Christians employed the term a!qeoj to describe pagans (e.g. Mart. Pol. 9.2; Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 7.1).31 The use of the term—so unusual in the New Testament—to refer to the past life of believers (and by implication, the non-believing world) may likewise reﬂect a response to non-believers who had previously applied the label to church members.

Conceptions of the Ekklesia in Ephesians

The negative characterizations of the Gentile world in Ephesians, coupled with the lofty presentations of a heavenly and universal ekklesia, suggests that Ephesians was composed with great confidence in the identity of the community. These strong assertions, however, may actually be an attempt to bolster an identity that is far from certain. When one reads Ephesians intent on discovering the relationship between the ekklesia and Judaism, one gets the sense of fairly substantial ambiguity and flexibility with respect to community boundaries. Some of the most puzzling questions about the social setting of Ephesians in fact arise from its use of Jewish tradition and its presentation of the relations between Israel, Gentiles and the ekklesia. Although the author presents the audience as (predominantly?) Gentile (Eph. 2.11), the allusions to Jewish Scripture, the many parallels with the QL (especially in the presentation of the Gentile non-believing world) and the interest in clarifying the relationship between the Gentile audience and the church have led to the virtually universal conviction among commentators of Jewish-Christian authorship. While it may simply reflect epistolary style or liturgical influences, this impression is bolstered by a

31. While it certainly cannot be taken at face value as a factual description of ﬁrst- century events involving the widespread denunciation of Christians by Jews as ‘atheists’, it is also interesting to note Justin Martyr’s description of the history of early Christianity involving certain ‘chosen men’ being ‘sent out from Jerusalem to all the earth saying that an atheist party (hairesis atheos) of Christians had appeared’. (Justin Martyr, Dial. 17; this is how J.T. Sanders understands the phrase, but he suggests that it more likely refers to occasional unofﬁcial acts of Jews during the reign of Domitian than to any widespread or synagogue-approved practices [see Schismatics, Sectarians, Dissidents, Deviants, pp. 183-84].)

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. MACDONALD The Politics of Identity in Ephesians 433 tendency to distinguish between ‘we’ (Jewish Christians associated with the author) and ‘you’ (Gentile recipients of the work; e.g. Eph. 1.2). In fact recent commentators have stressed the importance of Jewish material as offering the most important intellectual background for the ideas in Ephesians and have warned against a tendency to dismiss the presence of Jewish Christians among the members of the audience.32 Yet the text also contains many surprising elements from a Jewish perspective. To echo the sentiments of Dahl cited at the beginning of this article, Eph. 2.12 simply equates the church with Israel without acknowledging a split within Israel itself, and the existence of Jews outside of the church (or even explicitly acknowledging their presence within the audience). Ephesians 2.15 contains a remarkably strong statement concerning Christ’s abolishment of the law. With metaphors throughout Eph. 2.11-22 that switch back and forth between announcing continuity with Israel and yet projecting the church as a distinct entity (Eph. 2.15), Ephesians just stops short of presenting the church as a ‘third race’ (Christians).33 For all of the interest in the boundaries of the ekklesia, Ephesians displays an ambiguity, or perhaps even uncertainty, about the labels it may use to define identity. I would suggest that this ambiguous use of labels is tied to ambiguity in the boundaries of the community itself and points to a period of fluctuation between Jewish and distinctly ‘Christian’ identity, with the situation of the ekklesia changing depending on which side of the equation it would emphasize and depending on the fate of the Jews at any given time. If, following most commentators, we look towards the cities of Asia Minor as providing the work’s setting, we can be confident that the almost ethereal symbolism appropriating Israel’s identity for the church (Eph. 2.11-22) is informed by the experience of life in a city with a vibrant Jewish community.34 Although the author presents the audience as (predomi-

32. See, e.g., Perkins, Ephesians, pp. 29-30, who stresses the importance of the QL for understanding Ephesians or Muddiman, The Epistle to the Ephesians, pp. 16-17, who stresses the real possibility of a Jewish Christian readership. 33. See full discussion in MacDonald, Colossians and Ephesians, pp. 251-59. 34. The fact that the document has been traditionally associated with Ephesus, the connection with Colossians, and the general ethos of the work have led many to believe that the cities of Asia Minor offer the most plausible setting for the work’s composition. On Jews in Asia Minor, see Wilson, Related Strangers, pp. 21-22. See also Louis H. Feldman, Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993); P. Trebilco, Jewish Communities in Asia Minor (SNTSMS, 69; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Barclay, Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora, pp. 259-81.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. 434 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) nantly?) Gentile (Eph. 2.11), there is good reason to suppose that these Gentiles had past and current associations with the Jewish community, shared their own community with ‘Jewish Christians’ (reﬂected in the author’s perspectives) and were sometimes labelled as ‘Jews’ (and consequently perhaps negatively as ‘atheists’) by fellow Gentiles outside the church. Given the importance of ‘honour’ in the ancient world and the fact that the external Jewish community would have been a related but much larger community than the ekklesia, it would probably have been quite natural for church members to appeal to the prestige of the Jewish community on a symbolic level (Eph. 2.12, 19) to establish their own identity.35 The Temple is part of the legacy and prestige of Israel, and possible reference to its destruction may have been an attempt to articulate new boundaries in relation to issues of Jewish nationhood. Christ becomes the one who has made both Jew and Gentile one and has broken down the dividing wall (Eph. 2.14-15). The imagery of past alienation from Israel gives way to the dominant image of the ekklesia as a united totality of believers (Gentiles and Jews)—the one new person (Eph. 2.14), the one body (Eph. 2.15), the members of the household of God (Eph. 2.19) in opposition to the unbelieving world.36 What, then, are we to make of this combination of a strong sense of opposition between church and society, which draws extensively on Jewish concepts and celebrates the unity of Jew and Gentile in a totality (Israel), and textual indicators of ﬂuctuation between Jewish and distinctly ‘Chris- tian’ identity? Is it possible to draw social correlations between this articulation of boundaries and actual cultural negotiations at the historical level? Here it is useful to consider the state of affairs in the empire at the time of the composition of Ephesians.37 If scholars are correct in their frequent

35. See Perkins, Ephesians, p. 73. 36. Although it has sometimes been seen to be the central issue in Ephesians, to read the emphasis on the unity of Jews and Gentiles in Eph. 2.11-22 as a reﬂection of serious problems in relations between Jews and Gentiles in the church is to go beyond the evidence. This is not to suggest that the text could not have spoken to issues concerning Gentiles (perhaps in the majority) living with Jews in the church as is suggested especially by comparison of Ephesians to Acts and 1 Peter—works that have signiﬁcant points of contact with it and come from the same period. See MacDonald, Colossians and Ephesians, pp. 19, 240-59. 37. As in the present article, Faust (Pax Christi et Pax Caesaris) has attempted to draw social correlations between Eph. 2.11-22 and the situation of Jews in the empire (particularly in Asia Minor), drawing special attention to the language of Roman imperial rule. Faust’s position differs from the thesis proposed here, however, especially

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. MACDONALD The Politics of Identity in Ephesians 435 dating of the work to about 90 CE, this would fall within Domitian’s reign (81–96 CE). Direct proof for Christians being singled out by Domitian for special persecution is lacking.38 It is quite possible, however, that the political climate under Domitian was contributing to increasing hostility between the church and society as reﬂected in Ephesians. Stephen G. Wilson has made some intriguing suggestions about how the treatment of Jews may have affected the life of church members during Domitian’s reign. Domitian is reported to have rigorously imposed the Jewish tax on those who ‘followed the Jewish way of life without professing Judaism’ and on those who ‘denied their Jewish origin and thereby avoided paying the taxes levied on their race’ (Suetonius, Dom. 12.2).39 Wilson sees here a likely reference to tax-evaders among proselytes and apostate Jews (who may have included Christians) and argues:

Among the tax evaders mentioned by Suetonius, those who denied their Jewish origins could have included Jewish Christians who no longer wished to be identified as Jews. And, among those who lived like Jews without professing Judaism, Christians of various sorts might officially have been included. If not, however, they could have been unofficially swept up in Domitian’s measure like many others (Judaizers, vegetarians, and so forth) where he argues that the overall purpose of Eph. 2.11-22 is an attempt to promote the status of Jewish Christians within the universal peace established by Christ between Jews and Gentiles. Faust’s reconstruction is dependent on the view that ‘saints’ in Eph. 2.19 refers to Jewish Christians (i.e., the Gentile believers would be sharing their lot), and he links the text to Eph. 3.5 where he takes ‘holy apostles and prophets’ to mean Jewish Christians (pp. 184-88). But because the reference to the ‘household of God’ in Eph 2.19 is a broad concept referring to the totality of believers (Gentiles and Jews), it is best to understand ‘saints’ as a reference to all believers (cf. Eph. 1.1-2). As argued further below, in my opinion the position of the author of Ephesians in 2.11-22 with respect to the boundaries between such entities as Jewish Christians, Gentile Christians, Jews and the ekklesia is much more ambiguous than Faust acknowledges and probably reflects an experience of shifting identities and loyalties. Faust is correct in identifying the political circumstances of the Jews as central to understanding Eph. 2.11-22, but the author of Ephesians’ position in relation to these circumstances is more complex than his analysis allows. 38. See Gerhard Krodel, ‘Persecution and Toleration of Christianity until Hadrian’, in Stephen Benko and John J. O’Rourke (eds.), Early Church History: The Roman Empire as the Setting of Primitive Christianity (London: Oliphants, 1972), p. 260. For detailed discussion of Domitian’s treatment of Christians and Jews, see also Wilson, who notes that the evidence is very difficult to assess (Related Strangers, pp. 11-16, esp. pp. 14-15). 39. Wilson, Related Strangers, p. 12.

whose lifestyle associated them with the Jews… It is quite possible, therefore, that some Christians were forcibly associated with Judaism during Domitian’s reign for the purposes of the tax. This could have bred resentment, but a resentment that may have been stiﬂed if Christians were periodi- cally subjected to harassment as Christians. Association with Judaism would then have had advantages, since Christians could move under the protective umbrella of Judaism—precisely the situation that some think lies behind the reference to ‘those who call themselves Jews but are not’ in Revelation 2.9; 3.9.40

The ambiguity and ﬂexible boundaries in relations between Jews and

40. Wilson, Related Strangers, p. 13. It should be noted that the impact of Domitian’s measures specifically within Asia Minor is unclear, and scholars are divided on the matter. Compare, e.g., the theories of J.T. Sanders, who explores the relationship between Revelation (in an Asian context) and Domitian’s attempt to clampdown on ‘Judaizers’ who sought to avoid paying the tax (Schismatics, Sectarians, Dissidents, Deviants, pp. 166-80), and those of Barclay, who feels that decisive evidence for such measures exists only for Rome in this period (Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora, pp. 279 n. 50, 312 n. 73 [citing Margaret H. Williams, ‘Domitian, the Jews and the “Judaizers”—a Simple Matter of Cupiditas and Maiestas?’, Historia 39 (1990), pp. 196-211, esp. p. 201 n. 29]). In considering evidence especially from Josephus, Barclay points to considerable conflict between Jews and Greeks in Asian cities in the first century BCE that arose in an atmosphere of socio-economic difficulties. These tensions involved resentment of Jewish wealth, exclusivity, ‘atheism’ and customs such as Sabbath observances (pp. 259-78). Admitting that the evidence is meagre for the first century, he nevertheless argues that the evidence points to generally positive relations between Jews and Greeks in the context of the Pax Romana, which brought new pros- perity to the Greek cities (pp. 279-81). It is difficult to imagine, however, that the type of local tensions between Jews and Greeks involving such sentiments as ‘anti-social’ behaviour would have dissipated completely even if conditions were considerably improved (see also discussion of Goodman’s reading of Josephus above). Moreover, given extensive migration and travel in the empire at this period, it is difficult to imagine that Jews in Asia would be completely unaffected by measures in Rome under Domitian, even if they escaped their direct impact. Jewish members of church groups in Asia might easily have migrated from elsewhere (see also n. 43). For example, Prisc(ill)a and Aquila were Jewish members of Paul’s entourage who are presented in the New Testament as travelling between, and taking up residence in, three major cities of the empire: Rome, Corinth and Ephesus (Acts 18.2-3; 18.18–19.1; 1 Cor.16.19; Rom. 16.3- 5). Acts in fact presents the couple as having been exiled from Rome under Claudius, and eventually making their way to Ephesus via Corinth. How one understands the circumstances of the Jews in Asia Minor of the first century in part depends on the weight one assigns to the New Testament evidence. In addition to Rev. 2.9 and 3.9 cited by Wilson, the treatment of Alexander in Ephesus (Acts 19.33-34) is sometimes taken as an indication of anti-Jewish sentiment among Gentiles.

Christians as described by Wilson is highly suggestive for seeking to draw correlations between the content of Ephesians and its social setting. Were the ambiguous boundaries of the ekklesia leading to questions about nationhood and civic loyalty?41 Scholars have frequently cautioned that, from an outsider’s perspective, early Christianity would not have appeared as an entity distinct from Judaism until at least the early second century (with the correspondence between Pliny and Trajan often viewed as a significant turning point), but more thought needs to be given as to how the period of flexible boundaries may have affected church life, in particular relations with neighbours. For believers, life in a city among Jews and Gentiles included challenges of identification (including self-labelling) and loyalty at the local level long before Christians were subject to direct imperial actions or decrees. When Eph. 2.11-22 is considered in light of the circumstances of Jews under Domitian’s reign, I would argue that the author’s perspective emerges as one not of a lack of concern for the relationship of the audience to contemporary Jews, but one of full engagement with the life and fate of Jewish people. As a member of an emerging group closely associated with Judaism, it was impossible to ignore the shifting fate of Jews. Church members would face difficult questions from both Jews and Gentiles outside the church about their civic loyalties and association with Judaism. They would be badly in need of justification for a way of life that could see them swept along in oppressive imperial measures against the Jews or perhaps, even worse, harassed as Christian with no legitimate status in the empire at all; but there would also have been times when it would be advantageous to be seen as falling under the umbrella of a strong and well-established Jewish community. For all of its ambiguity with respect to the lines between ekklesia and Israel, Eph. 2.11-22 offers this type of justification. Moreover, when one becomes aware of the close association between civic and religious interests in the text, the strong political perspective of the author of Ephesians emerges boldly.

Imperial Ideology and Ephesians

Although the politically charged language of Ephesians is being noted with increasing frequency, the extent to which this ‘political’ perspective

41. Wilson also points to evidence that, particularly in the eastern provinces, local enthusiasm for the imperial cult increased in this period and this might have made things awkward for Christians (Related Strangers, p. 15).

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. 438 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) permeates Ephesians generally requires further recognition. For example, Eph. 2.11-22 draws rigid boundaries between those who are inside and those who are outside of the church, labelling all those who are outside as alienated from the commonwealth (or citizenship [politei/a]; cf. 2.19) of Israel.42 Gentile recipients (Eph. 2.12) may have associated such language with the marginalization that would occur with exclusion from the protection offered by Rome’s political and military might. The notion of being strangers (ce/noi; Eph. 2.12, 19) or aliens (pa&roikoi; Eph. 2.19; cf. 1 Pet. 2.11) calls to mind the lot of the countless ‘foreigners’ who lived in Rome (many of whom were not Roman citizens), or on account of population movement and the meeting of diverse cultures throughout the Empire, even the circumstances in such cities of Asia Minor as Ephesus.43 Such language could also speak to the situation of Diaspora Jews who may have experienced alienation in the Roman world in a variety of ways, including being subject to the label ‘atheist’—a term that, as noted previously, is employed in 2.12 to describe the sense of isolation that comes from being ‘without God in the world’, but which may resonate strongly among recipients because of its polemical usage in exchanges between Gentiles and Jews (including members of the ekklesia).44 There is no doubt that the metaphor of exclusion from Israel (here a metaphor for the church) is

42. politei/a is usually translated here as ‘commonwealth’ or ‘body politic’ to refer to the nation of Israel, but it can also refer more specifically to the rights of citizenship (BAGD, p. 686; cf. Acts 22.28). Similarly, Eph. 2.19 calls believers ‘fellow-citizens’ (sumpoli/thj). A cognate of this term (poli/teuma) occurs in Phil. 3.20 to refer along similar lines to the heavenly citizenship of believers. 43. Elliott has argued that the circumstances of being a ‘resident alien’ in Asia Minor is particularly relevant for understanding 1 Peter—a work that has much in common with Ephesians (A Home for the Homeless, pp. 59-73, 83-84). Most recently Carmen Bernabé Ubieta has examined the political dimensions of Eph. 2.11-22 and related the texts specifically to the situation of foreigners in the Greco-Roman city (‘Neither Xenoi, nor paroikoi’). See also David Noy, Foreigners at Rome: Citizens and Strangers (London: Duckworth, 2000). 44. But the situation under Roman rule for Diaspora Jews after the war of 70 is sometimes difficult to assess, with evidence for hostility needing to be balanced with evidence for the protection offered by Rome to Jews sometimes continuing relatively unhindered. See detailed discussion of the situation of Diaspora Jews after 70 CE in Wilson, Related Strangers. It is interesting here to consider Josephus’s discussion of the Jews of Antioch and Ephesus being granted the rights of citizenship in Apion 2.4.39. On the relationship between Eph. 2.12 and the situation of Diaspora Jews, see also Muddiman, The Epistle to the Ephesians, pp. 120-21. Muddiman stresses the possibility that Jewish Christians were among the addressees of Ephesians (pp. 16-17).

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. MACDONALD The Politics of Identity in Ephesians 439 articulated in highly political terms, replete with the associations that accompany military triumph, the building of nations and the exclusion that can result from conquest, enslavement and expulsion. Such political overtones are even in evidence as the text moves on to describe the glorious realm of inclusion—salvation in Christ (Eph. 2.13-22). Christ is described as ‘our peace’ in Eph. 2.14, the first of four occurrences of the term ‘peace’ in Eph. 2.14-18. This is a concept that plays a key role in Jewish tradition (Eph. 2.17 contains an allusion to LXX Isa. 57.19, which itself includes a twofold reference to peace), but that also figures in early imperial propaganda for Roman rule, the Pax Romana.45 The concept of preaching (eu)hggeli/sato) peace to those who were once both far off and near has especially strong political overtones (2.17). Calling the term gospel (euangelion) the most striking example of Paul’s ‘politically loaded’ language, Richard Horsley has argued that in Greek cities ‘euangelion was the “gospel” of the “salvation” and “peace and security” established by the imperial saviour Augustus and his successors’.46 In contrast to this gospel, however, the preaching of peace in Ephesians does not involve terror, intimidation and military action for those who resist Roman rule; it is the peace that belongs to the ekklesia—the peace of Christ (cf. Eph. 6.15-16). Ephesians 2.11-22 displays fascinating points of contact with imperial ideology, both appropriating concepts that were part of this ideological framework and subverting them in various ways. This can be seen especially in the manner in which Eph. 2.11-22 extends its reach to embrace the household code (Eph. 5.21–6.9) by anticipating its teaching in specific ways. With slight differences in terminology, both Eph. 2.14 and 2.15 refer to Christ’s actions ‘making two (Gentiles and Jews) into one’, reflecting traditional baptismal notions (cf. Col. 3.10-11; Gal. 3.27-28) that celebrate the new creation in terms of unification (or re-unification) of opposites. Sometimes these traditional formulations include the male- female pair (Gal. 3.27-28) and therefore call to mind the union of the

45. Muddiman, The Epistle to the Ephesians, p. 125. The relationship between Eph. 2.11-22 and the Pax Romana has been extensively discussed by Faust in Pax Christi et Pax Caesaris. On how the ‘peace ideology’ of the Roman empire may have inﬂuenced Pauline theology in general, see Dieter Georgi, ‘God Turned Upside Down’, in Horsley (ed.), Paul and Empire, p. 150. See also Elliott, ‘The Anti-Imperial Message of the Cross’, p. 169. 46. Richard A. Horsley, ‘Paul and Empire—I Corinthians’, in Horsley (ed.), Paul and Politics, p. 92.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. 440 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) bride and bridegroom in Eph. 5.21-33.47 Moreover, Eph. 2.14-16 refers to Christ’s actions incorporating believers into his own body. This corporeal symbolism anticipates the celestial union (presented in graphically physical terms) of Christ and church and the use of body concepts and imagery in Eph. 5.21-33. It is in the reference to the ‘household of God’ in Eph. 2.19, however, that the household code teaching is anticipated most directly (cf. Eph. 3.15). In this verse civic language is juxtaposed with familial language to articulate identity: believers are described in 2.19 as ‘fellow-citizens with the saints and members of the household of God’—preparing the way for the even more triumphal proclamation in Eph. 3.15 of God as the great path&r from whom every family (patria&) in heaven and on earth is named. It is now generally recognized by scholars that the New Testament household codes reflect the topos ‘concerning household management’ found in various Hellenistic discussions, including Josephus’s apologetic discourse (Apion 2.199-216) and which draws its origins from the description of the household as a microcosm of the state in Aristotle’s Politics (1.1253b.1-14).48 With its apparently internal focus on the ‘Chris- tian’ family unit narrowly defined, the household code of Eph. 5.21–6.9 may at first glance appear to lack this interest in the household as a reflection of the broader political order. Yet in depicting the submission of wife to husband as a reflection of the relationship of the church to Christ, the household code clearly embraces the concept of household relations reflecting the wider realities of the relationship between the human community and the divine. Moreover, recent work by Roman historians on the family has highlighted the widespread interest in demonstrating the ideals of the Roman family through various media including art (especially funerary art), inscriptions and literature from the late republic onward; the presence of such ideals in the speeches of emperors and various political rhetoricians and moralists is a testimony to their importance for purposes

47. In Gnostic circles in particular such language could be associated with sexual asceticism and a return to a perfect androgynous state (e.g. Gos. Thom. 22). See full discussion in MacDonald, Colossians and Ephesians, p. 246. 48. The seminal work on the topic is David L. Balch, Let Wives be Submissive: The Domestic Code in 1 Peter (SBLMS, 26; Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1981). On the consensus among scholars, see James D. G. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon: A Commentary on the Greek Text (NIGTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), p. 243.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. MACDONALD The Politics of Identity in Ephesians 441 of social comment and political propaganda.49 Such work invites us to recognize the emphasis on the concord of the married couple as encoding the political stance of the community—the ekklesia who stands puriﬁed and united with/to her one true husband Christ and manifestly distinct from a corrupt society (Eph. 5.26-27). In Eph. 2.11-22 this earthly-celestial union is expressed in the broader civic concepts of heavenly citizenship, but links with the micro-vision of household holiness and loyalty are made explicit in the reference to the household of God (2.19). There is a sense in which the relationship between ‘macro’ and ‘micro’ runs through each of the textual units of Eph. 2.11-22 and 5.21-6.9, even though one side of the equation is emphasized more than the other. Though lacking an explicitly apologetic interest, the approach adopted by the author of Ephesians nevertheless has much in common with that of Josephus who, in setting the identity of the Jews as a law-abiding people, moved from the worship of one God, to the One Temple, to the laws governing marriage (Apion 2.199-201). Civic, religious and domestic themes are intertwined within a broader political stance.50 In addition to its metaphorical value as a conveyer of the identity of the ekklesia in relation to societal values and ideologies, the ‘household of God’ (Eph. 2.19) must have had a powerful impact among believers, for it linked the experience of salvation to the actual physical gathering place of church groups (cf. Gal. 6.10; 1 Pet. 2.5; 4.17; 1 Tim. 3.15). But the metaphorical language touches neighbourhood ground only brieﬂy for, through a series of architectural metaphors, the author shifts the attention of the reader away from the concrete and physical to conceive of the community as in the process of being built up as a heavenly and spiritual temple, a dwelling place for God (Eph. 2.20-21). The shift from house to temple

49. See Suzanne Dixon, ‘The Sentimental Ideal of the Roman Family’, in Beryl Rawson (ed.), Marriage, Divorce, and Children in Ancient Rome (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 99-113, esp. pp. 99, 105-107. Dixon (pp. 107-108) notes the association of the concept of concordia with relations within the imperial family, drawing special attention to Livia’s dedication of a shrine to Concord in gratitude for marriage to Augustus (Ovid, Fast. 6.637-40). She also points to second-century coin issues celebrating the harmony of imperial couples and families more generally, the use of concordia and its cognates in legal writings (e.g. Paulus, Sent. 5.15) and the tendency for tombstones and literature to describe marriages as ‘without discord’ (e.g. Pliny, Ep. 3.16.10). 50. On the post-Enlightenment category of ‘religion’ (which excludes politics) being too restrictive for the analysis of Paul’s letters, see N.T. Wright, ‘Paul’s Gospel and Caesar’s Empire’, in Horsley (ed.), Paul and Politics, p. 182.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. 442 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) should be conceived as a shift from the domestic sphere to the realm of city and state not only because of the signiﬁcance of the Jerusalem Temple (cf. Eph. 2.14), but also because of the importance of the construction of temples for prestige and the securing of imperial favour in the Roman world.51 Although they draw upon the ideological underpinnings of imperial society, ultimately these architectural images constitute a critique of conventional notions of sacred space, including buildings and temples and the politically approved arrangements for meeting; in household cells believers live in a sacred community whose boundaries transcend the horizontal and earthly realm.

Conclusions

Although the presentation of the relationship between the ekklesia and Israel has sometimes been taken to be a sign of the author of Ephesians’ ‘detached’ attitude towards contemporary Jews inside and outside the church, I have argued that precisely the opposite is the case. When read against the circumstances of Jews and Christians in the empire under Domitian, Eph. 2.11-22 offers justification for a way of life in a community whose members had past and present contact with Jewish neighbours and institutions and whose emerging ideologies required defence in relation to the larger and more established Jewish communities in Asia Minor. The permeable boundaries and ambiguous categories probably reflect concrete experiences in the ekklesia of shifting identity. As explained above, under Domitian’s reign the fate of members of the ekklesia may have changed depending on whether they were being viewed as Jews, apostate Jews or as distinctly ‘Christian’ and at times there may have been advantages to being viewed as one, but not the other. Although we cannot be certain under what label it occurred, there are subtle indications that Ephesians reflects a context where community members were being harassed. They may have been subject to verbal criticism (Eph. 6.15-16) including the accusations that believers were engaged in immoral and drunken assemblies (Eph. 5.12, 18-20) and were ‘atheists’ (Eph. 2.12). In seeking to understand the social tensions underlying Ephesians, it is best to think in terms of

51. Perkins (citing Faust) has noted that the cities of Asia Minor sought to secure imperial favour by competing with one another to build a temple to Augustus (Ephesians, p. 75). On the importance of temples to civic identity in Asia Minor, Barclay has drawn attention to the proclamation in Acts 19.28: ‘Great is Artemis of the Ephesians’ (Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora, p. 274).

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. MACDONALD The Politics of Identity in Ephesians 443 neighbourhood squabbles, rumours, suspicion and sporadic abuse.52 All of this is in keeping with the perception of the community as having Jewish associations. Moreover, the use of the household code (and its points of contact with Eph. 2.11-22; 3.15) calls to mind Josephus’s apologetic arguments in Against Apion that come from approximately the same period and where domestic harmony is linked to national harmony and model citizenship. There are many puzzles concerning the social setting of Ephesians that are bound to remain unsolved mysteries. But an awareness of the political perspective adopted by the author in Eph. 2.11-22 strengthens the case for seeking to understand the text in relation to the circumstances of Jews (and, by association, emerging Christian communities) at the end of the ﬁrst century CE. Once this political perspective is recognized, the lofty and frustratingly opaque proclamations of a universal ekklesia take on new socio-historical signiﬁcance. The term ekklesia is itself a political term. As is often recognized, Paul’s use of the term is rooted in the Septuagint, where it is strongly associated with the idea of the whole assembly of Israel, but as Horsley notes, ‘its primary meaning in the Greek-speaking eastern Roman empire was the citizen “assembly” of the Greek polis’.53 In presenting a vision of the universal ekklesia as a distinct society, the author of Ephesians draws on the history of Israel and Jewish concepts of resistance to the Pax Romana.54 In order to guarantee their survival, members of the ekklesia were involved in the same type of cultural negotiations as Jews with the added complication that they were themselves in the

52. It is interesting to compare Ephesians both to 1 Peter and to Revelation, which reﬂect similar social tensions. The association of both 1 Peter and Revelation with Asia (1 Pet. 1.1; Rev. 1.4; 2.1-7) and important similarities between these two documents and Ephesians (e.g. the ‘sacred marriage’ imagery to communicate the essence of church identity in Rev. 19.7-9; the household code of 1 Pet. 2.18–3.7) calls for more comparative work in an effort to shed light on the circumstances underlying Ephesians. Note that Muddiman has recently argued that links between the Johannine circle (including Revelation) and Ephesians require far more attention than they have received to date (The Epistle to the Ephesians, pp. 36-39). He also argues that 1 Peter is of great relevance for understanding Ephesians, but states that 1 Peter is likely dependent on Ephesians (pp. 39-41). 53. Richard A. Horsley, ‘Building an Alternative Society: Introduction’, in Horsley (ed.), Paul and Empire, p. 208. 54. On Jewish reaction to the Pax Romana, see Horsley, ‘Building an Alternative Society’, pp. 207-209.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. 444 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) process of creating an entity as a political-religious movement distinct from Israel. Perhaps more than any other New Testament work, Ephesians displays self-conscious awareness of the creation of this new international movement—the universal ekklesia. Moreover, Ephesians displays the strong sense of building an alternative society that is frequently associated with the undisputed letters (but arguably with an even more pronounced sense of opposition to the Gentile world). On the basis of the presence of the household code and tendencies to encourage ‘spiritual transcendence’, scholars may have been too quick to associate Ephesians and other deutero- Pauline works with accommodation to the imperial order.55 Rather, as I have argued in this article, the situation is complex. When the political perspective of the author of Ephesians is analysed in depth, points of contact with imperial ideology emerge, which include both elements of accommodation and of resistance. In fact, I would argue that elements of resistance outweigh the tendencies towards accommodation. With architectural, military and familial concepts the author of Ephesians ultimately appeals to central, visible institutions of the imperial order. But the author’s metaphorical language also subverts these institutions in important ways with references to Christ and to the heavenly realm. In short, the conven- tionality of Ephesians is deceiving. The very emphasis on ‘spiritual transcendence’ in Ephesians may represent less of an adjustment to the imperial order than a particular pattern of resistance (albeit one that may well often manifest itself outwardly in conventional terms).56

55. For example, Horsley (‘Rhetoric and Empire’, pp. 101-102) sees a contrast between 1 Corinthians and the deutero-Pauline works in this regard. 56. These dynamics are made explicit in the second-century apologetic work The Epistle to Diognetus, which employs many of the same civic terms to describe identity as Ephesians. The author describes the conventional appearance of the early Christians and their many qualities of good citizenship, noting at the same time that the true identity of Christians lies in the ‘confessedly strange character of the constitution of their own citizenship’ (Diogn. 5.4 [Lake, LCL]). Behind such sentiments lies the hope that Christians will cease to be perceived as a threat to the imperial order, but it is difﬁcult indeed to imagine that any imperial ofﬁcial would have found this explanation of ‘dual citizenship’ convincing.

Questions of Method in James Dunn’s Jesus Remembered

Bengt Holmberg

Faculty of Theology, University of Lund Allhelgona Kyrkog 8, SE-223 62 Lund, Sweden [email protected]

James Dunn has managed to encapsulate a fundamental methodological perspective in the very title of his impressive and important book on the historical Jesus—Jesus Remembered.1 In the book Dunn states forcefully that we have to reimagine what type of material the Gospels are. The Gospels should not be seen as equivalents of an archaeological tell, where each textual layer builds upon and changes the preceding one. The many oral and later written retellings then function as so many ﬁlters between us and the original event, leaving the historical Jesus almost unrecoverable. This twentieth-century piece of scholarly orthodoxy is a misunderstanding of how oral tradition works, and how the Gospels use it. Oral tradition has a direct relation to memory, being shaped by it from the very start. Each version, or ‘performance’, of the oral tradition may be different from others, but retains the core elements given in the start. This means that we are at roughly the same, fairly close distance from the original memory in all the variant performances—Mark, Q, special Luke and so on. Compared to other views in this discipline, the distance between us Gospel readers and the original memory about Jesus has lessened considerably in Dunn’s view. The other and resulting part of this methodological perspective is formulated by Dunn as the following principle: ‘The only realistic objective for any “quest of the historical Jesus” is Jesus remembered’ (pp. 335 and 882). This means that a historian cannot aim at getting hold of anything like ‘wie es eigentlich gewesen ist’ in regard to the historical Jesus. The

1. James D.G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered (Christianity in the Making, 1; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003).

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004, The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX and 15 East 26th Street, Suite 1703, New York, NY 10010, USA. 446 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) nearest we can get to this object is the memories of him, and in Jesus research too we have to say farewell to the old dream of reaching an objective, historically secure level of event as opposed to interpretation. This goes for all historical work, of course, which always operates with data resulting from events but not the events themselves. The typical form of historical data is memories, usually arranged in narrative sequence. So, a natural starting point for discussing questions of method in Dunn’s book is what is meant by memory and remembering, and what is meant by ‘Jesus remembered’.

The Role and Meaning of Memory

I will leave aside any discussion regarding to what degree memory is an interpretation of things seen and heard, and suggest straight away that the term ‘memory’ includes a statement or claim concerning a notable correspondence or ‘fit’ between the event and memory’s mental image of it. A person who was not present at a specific event may subsequently acquire knowledge—even good, accurate knowledge—about it from others, but he or she does not in normal parlance have any memory of it. In a transferred meaning we can talk about children sharing their parents’ childhood memories, or about the church’s memory of Jesus, but this ‘sharing’ is really shorthand for being told about other people’s memories. We do not become naive realists or positivists by thinking about ‘memory’ as corresponding in some degree to experienced reality, acknowledging, of course, that there is no such thing as a complete, neutral and objective fit between the event and what is remembered of it. But the term ‘memory’ is not synonymous with simply any mental content, and even less with ‘fond imagination’, but conveys the idea of more or less accurate memory of something witnessed by the one who remembers. Memories are carried around by human beings, whose perception and knowledge and interpretation even of matters they have experienced is inevitably partial and subjectively coloured. But what they remember is a reality that exists outside their own minds, even if their memory is a distorted picture of that reality. What is remembered is articulated, retold to others and thereby to oneself, most often by being given a narrative form. The narrativization of what is remembered is a natural, almost inevitable process of the human mind. When the role of memory building in historiography is considered, we realize, says Jens Schröter, that the distinction between res fictae and res

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. HOLMBERG Questions of Method in Jesus Remembered 447 factae is not as clear-cut as in Aristotle’s thinking about the difference between poets and historians. When we are doing historiography, we are really ‘fictionalizing’ historical facts,2 that is, giving historical facts a narrative form, which is the standard, ‘natural’ form of doing history, or in other words, knowing about the past. There is no other way to grasp historical reality than ‘the meaningful narrative of events and intentions’.3 We are ‘refiguring’ (Schröter) a memory, but what we are fictionalizing about is the events themselves, and our work is bound to the data provided by our sources. Refiguring memory is not the same as disfiguring it. This is a point made by Dunn too—memory is not simply what people choose to remember. In his important chapter 10, where he summarizes his previous three hundred pages of methodological discussion, Dunn writes:

If the Synoptic tradition does not give us direct access to Jesus himself, neither does it leave us simply in the faith of the ﬁrst-century Christian churches stopped well short of that goal. What it gives us rather is the remembered Jesus—Jesus not simply as they chose to remember him, but also as the impact of his words and deeds shaped their memories and still reverberated in their gatherings (p. 328).

Dunn differs from other questers in (1) his ‘claim that we can get back to the earliest impact made by Jesus’, because (2) ‘the impact translated itself into community tradition from the ﬁrst’, which comes close to meaning— if I get Dunn right—that Jesus himself is the creative impact and the tradition-originating impulse (p. 329). The event itself impacts the memory and constrains or creates the core and the limits of what is remembered. In other words, the memory that shaped the Jesus tradition is a fairly ‘accurate’ or realistic memory that corresponds well with what actually took place. Generally speaking, the impression given in Dunn’s book as a whole is that historians researching Jesus do not have to grope for their object in a pea soup fog—something real is visible. This is not to deny that the tradition has been elaborated, only that this later elaboration has not obliterated the originating impulse. We almost touch Jesus himself in the Jesus tradition.

2. Jens Schröter, ‘Die Frage nach dem historischen Jesus und der Charakter historischer Erkenntnis’, in Andreas Lindemann (ed.), The Sayings Source Q and the Historical Jesus (BETL, 158; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2001), pp. 207-54, here pp. 228-33. 3. N.T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God, 1; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), p. 82.

What is the Object of Historiography—Events or Early Fictionalizations of the Events (Memories)?

But we have to go on. What is meant when Dunn writes: ‘The only realistic objective for any “quest of the historical Jesus” is Jesus remembered’? I understand the word ‘objective’ here as synonymous with ‘aim, intention, goal’, rather than with ‘object, thing, entity, matter treated’. The fact that ‘objective’ could mean both necessitates some further discussion. Perhaps it is helpful to make a distinction here between (a) the stuff or material available for historical study, ‘what we are looking at in the Jesus tradition’ (p. 332), which one has to agree with Dunn in characterizing as the memories of Jesus, the remembered Jesus, and (b) ‘what we are looking for through the Jesus tradition’ (p. 332), the object of historical study, the thing we want to know and say something true about, which is Jesus himself. Do we—and Dunn—when doing historical work on Jesus focus only on (a), or is (b) included also? In the beginning of chapter 12 on the Kingdom of God in the Jesus tradition, Dunn shows that this motif is frequent in the Synoptic Gospels, while it is not very prominent in contemporary Judaism or in early Christian texts. He concludes:

The prominence of the kingdom motif in the Jesus tradition cannot be explained as a reﬂection of a similar prominence of the motif within either the Judaism of Jesus’ day or the teaching of the early churches. Once again, we have little choice but to attribute the prominence of the motif in the Jesus tradition to a memory of [my italics] its prominence in Jesus’ own teaching and preaching (p. 386).

The insertion of the phrase ‘a memory of’ actually seems superﬂuous. Is not Dunn really stating that the kingdom motif is so prominent in the Jesus tradition because Jesus used it frequently? That is, he seems actually to make a statement, not only about how people remembered Jesus, but about Jesus himself as he was, which makes me wonder if ‘the remembered Jesus’ only refers to (a) the tradition about Jesus, or also to (b) Jesus himself? If Dunn had used the term ‘the imagined Jesus’ or ‘the ﬁctionalized Jesus’, one would have concluded that he was referring to (a) only. But the terms ‘memory’ and ‘remember’ seem inevitably to pull (b) into the scope of the designation ‘the remembered Jesus’, as is evidenced in many places in this book (e.g. the whole of chapter 16 on how Jesus viewed his own role). I am not sure whether this is intended by Dunn or the result of a methodological decision that has not held up against the pressure of

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. HOLMBERG Questions of Method in Jesus Remembered 449 research tradition and the natural historical curiosity of wanting to know about and state things about Jesus himself. A further question concerning memory as a historiographical key concept is: Does the recognition that we are treating memories obliterate or impede the historiographical task of forming probability judgments concerning the subject investigated? According to critical realism in the Lonergan– Meyer–Wright tradition of historiography (which Dunn tentatively aligns himself with on p. 111), one should not be satisﬁed as historian until one has reached a judgment on historical fact. Dunn seems sometimes to be content too early in that historical process. He settles for reaching the earliest accessible, oral ‘layer’ (a term he repu- diates, to be sure) of tradition that is caused by the impact of the event. When summarizing his discussion on the miracles of Jesus he writes:

[T]here are no objective events of people being healed, no non-miracles to be uncovered by clearing away layers of interpretation. All we have in at least many cases is the shared memory of a miracle which was recounted as such more or less from the first day. What the witnesses saw was a miracle, not an ‘ordinary’ event which they interpreted subsequently as a miracle. There must have been many who experienced Jesus’ ministrations to them as miracles, individuals who were genuinely healed and delivered, and these successes were attributed there and then to the power of God flowing through Jesus. Only so could Jesus’ reputation as exorcist and healer have become so firm and so widespread so quickly. In such cases, we may say, the first ‘historical fact’ was a miracle, because that was how the event was experienced…by the followers of Jesus who witnessed it (pp. 672-73).

What has Dunn said here? That, say, a formerly lame person now can walk freely and attributes this change to Jesus having worked a miracle on him. We have reached the remembered Jesus and formed a judgement on the character of the evidence, namely that the report articulating this memory was always a miracle story. This earliest level, Dunn contends energetic- ally and in many places in his book, is not overlaid by many subsequent layers of editing, that is, of written versions, each one an interpreting edition of the preceding one. The impact that created the tradition lives on in an oral form, which varies naturally between different performances of it, but all of which are in their core equally close to the originating impact. But the question of any critical realist historian is: Have we by stating this actually moved from a characterization of the material as impacted by Jesus (I think Dunn has a good case there: miracle stories were stories about miracles from day one) to the desired end result of historical study on Jesus, namely Jesus himself? Can we, or can we not, conclude anything

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. 450 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) about the event itself, for example, that the reported healing really occurred and that Jesus really had what people believed him to have: the power to heal? Dunn starts with a negative answer at the beginning of the quotation above, but then talks of individuals genuinely healed. This is not an unreasonable conclusion, but is it concordant with Dunn’s stated method and object of historical research? I contend that we have not completed our work as historians working on Jesus unless we push forward from the statement that a certain motif, say, the kingdom motif, appears frequently in the Jesus tradition because that was how Jesus was remembered to have spoken, to a judgment about whether he actually spoke like that or not. The historiographical task is not ﬁnished until we have reached beyond a judgment about reported history (people’s memory of Jesus is that he worked miracles) to a judgment on the report’s degree of correspondence with reality, or in other words, its historical facticity (Jesus did not work miracles, and what people remembered was mistaken from day one. Or he did). At other times Dunn is not averse to attempting the second step in historical work, to push on from the Jesus tradition in its earliest reachable form to the person this tradition is about, Jesus himself. We ﬁnd this several times, for example in chapters 9, 13, 16 and 17. On p. 489 Dunn takes up Reimarus’s question ‘What was Jesus’ intention?’, and in the opening of chapter 16 (on how Jesus saw his own role) he can write:

It remains important to bear in mind my primary focus on the impact made by Jesus. But in this case it is necessary to hazard the next step, the difﬁcult task of attempting to trace out, by reference to the ‘shape’ of the impact made by Jesus, the ‘shape’ of what made that impact4—that is, what Jesus may have said or indicated about his own perception regarding his own role which has resulted in such features of the Jesus tradition (p. 705).

If it is possible to investigate the ‘shape’ of Jesus (who impacted other people) in this area of his life and work, why not in every area? Why not aim at pushing consistently forward from level (a) (reaching judgments on the memories) to level (b) (making probability judgments about historical facticity)? Should it not be part of Dunn’s consistent methodology to ‘hazard the next step’?

4. Dunn himself refers here to a previous statement on p. 616: ‘My own emphasis on the impact made by Jesus also does not necessarily close off the road to Jesus’ self- understanding. For the clearer the impression made, the clearer the object making the impression.’

What are Historical Facts?

Dunn, following Collingwood, Ben Meyer and Tom Wright, would answer: Historical facts are interpretations of data. Leaning on Collingwood, Dunn states succinctly (pp. 102-103) that the historical event belongs to the irretrievable past, the data (personal memories, reports from eyewitnesses etc.) are what remains, from which the historian attempts to reconstruct the facts. Facts are always interpretations of data and can only approximate the event itself, never become identical with it. Abundant and consistent data permit close approximation between event and historical facts, while few and contradictory data leave us with very little material for interpretation and consequently very few facts, stranding us far from the event. The degree of proximity between event and historical fact is expressed in degrees of probability, and it is considered a great step forward in historical research to say about anything that it is probable. So, we begin with data and arrive at facts, through a process of interpretation. Data have to be interpreted, that is, selected, construed, put together in a pattern that makes them meaningful, and so become historical facts. This is not a random process, however. There are scores of theoretically thinkable or possible patterns, which when screened through filters of historical verification are narrowed down to a few plausible or reasonable hypotheses about how these data are to be related to each other. The historian’s task is to falsify all hypotheses, one by one, until one of them cannot be refuted, that is to say, is verified as a probable answer to the historical question. (This is Ben Meyer’s way of describing the historical interpretation process in the first part of his The Aims of Jesus).5 So, the historian starts with data, works with questions and answers in the form of hypotheses that cover all the data, moving in a rigorous sifting process from the many thinkable hypotheses, over the few plausible ones, and arriving, in the best cases, at historical fact, that is, the most probable hypothesis. But there are different kinds of facts, as can be exemplified from Dunn’s chapter on the resurrection (chapter 18). Dunn emphasizes many times that the historian’s task cannot be to get hold of some objective, ‘factual’ history behind the remembered and interpreted one. Data are always interpreted, that is, selected, construed, put together in a pattern that makes them meaningful, and so become historical facts.

5. Ben F. Meyer, The Aims of Jesus (London: SCM Press, 1979).

If historical facts are interpretations of the data, then the historical facts in this case [the resurrection of Jesus], properly speaking, are at best the fact of the empty tomb, and the fact that the disciples saw Jesus. The conclusion, ‘Jesus has been raised from the dead’, is further interpretation, an interpretation of interpreted data, an interpretation of the facts. The resurrection of Jesus, in other words, is at best a second order of ‘fact’, not a ﬁrst order ‘fact’—an interpretation of an interpretation (p. 877).

Interpretation of data can mean different things, though, as can historical facts. In this short citation we encounter three kinds of fact: the fact of the empty tomb, the fact of the disciples seeing Jesus, the fact that Jesus is risen from the dead and somehow alive again. Sometimes to ‘interpret’ data is very close to ‘conclude’ from them, leaving very little to subjectivity. If a person entered the tomb of Jesus on the fourth day after the entombment and then interpreted the lack of a corpse as the historical fact of an empty tomb, this cannot be described as a highly subjective and purely personal interpretation. In other cases, however, ‘interpreting data’ means something much more personal, rich in emotion and reminiscence that can hardly be formulated in words or communicated in understandable form to others. Historical interpretation as a scholarly discipline is much closer to the former than to the latter kind of interpretation, and its distinguishing mark is its high degree of intersubjectivity, that is, its character of being available and even equally compelling to other people. The three different kinds of fact mentioned above have very different degrees of intersubjectivity. The terminology used here of ‘data’, ‘interpretation’ and ‘facts’ hides an important distinction between historical facts that can be contested and facts that cannot. Of course the fact of the empty tomb is built up—like any historical fact—of sense perception data, from which it is concluded that the tomb is empty. But that conclusion, once formed, could not be disconfirmed or put into doubt by the interpretations of others—if the tomb was empty, it was empty for everyone to see, not just for the disciples who saw it first. The empty tomb is a fact that once established does not allow of further disconfirmation. This is not the case with the next kind of ‘fact’, of the disciples seeing Jesus. While undeniable to the disciples, it is simply inaccessible to bystanders and cannot be called forth by simple observation. This is not to say that it is unreasonable for a historian to conclude that the disciples really ‘saw’ something that they in good faith believed strongly to be Jesus alive. But the nature of the case does not allow any confirmation or disconfirmation of the truth of that belief itself.

And what about the third kind of fact? Is it even possible to state clearly what it means that Jesus was raised from the dead, if some ﬁnd that statement consonant with the idea that Jesus’ corpse is still lying somewhere under the Old City of Jerusalem, while others claim that it must mean that Jesus, body and soul, entered another and higher type of reality, inaccessible to any human observation and therefore altogether outside the grasp of historical research and the category of historical fact? One can also think of intermediate cases, where (part of) the data are accessible to anyone present, but the interpretations differ, and consequently also the historical fact(s). Are we therefore to conclude that all historical interpretations of an event are of equal value, and enjoy equal probability and equal facticity? Are we not rather obliged as historians to argue about which of the offered historical facts/interpretations has the claim of highest probability? How are we then helped by Dunn’s distinction between ‘historical fact’ (which the resurrection is not) and ‘foundational fact or meta-fact’ (which the resurrection must be characterized as) on p. 878?

The Methodological Role of Grand Narratives

Grand narratives are also called ‘meta-narratives’, ‘master narratives’ or ‘controlling stories’. The term refers to large-scale interpretative paradigms underlying historical reconstruction, such as the master narrative of development and progress as the self-evident way in which to understand history.6 A ‘self-evident’ master narrative in older Jesus research was that Jesus wanted to break with Judaism and establish a law-free religion, open for everyone, or at the very least that he was very different from the surrounding Judaism. Today one might say that the master narrative characterizing the Third Quest is more or less the opposite: Jesus must belong within the Judaism of his own time if he is to be historical at all. Dunn criticizes Crossan’s and Wright’s attempts at interpreting the Jesus data from an overarching ‘grand narrative’ (pp. 470-77), but the rightness of his criticism concerns more the speciﬁc models proposed by them than the method itself of using a master narrative as a frame of interpretation. Certainly a grand narrative should have a good ﬁt with every- thing known about the historical context of the object and be worked out

6. See the work of J. Appleby, L. Hunt and M. Jacob, Telling the Truth about History (New York: Norton, 1994), as discussed by Halvor Moxnes, ‘The Historical Jesus: From Master Narrative to Cultural Context’, BTB 28 (1998), pp. 135-49.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. 454 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) in a responsible, that is, testable manner. That is where Crossan and Wright can be criticized. Crossan’s ‘peasant’ Jesus does sit rather loose to what is known about first-century Jewish village life in Galilee, and so does Wright’s ‘return from the exile’-paradigm in relation to extant sources and the Gospels themselves. Even if Dunn’s criticism of Crossan’s and Wright’s grand narratives is effective, it does not warrant his conclusion that one should not use grand narratives at all in historical reconstruction. This seems to me to amount to throwing out the baby with the bathwater. This mistrust against grand narratives does not seem to square with Dunn’s methodological decision to ‘look first at the broad picture’ (p. 332), and use what Telford called the ‘holistic’ method. So, one feels here the need of a discussion why Dunn bans the grand narrative as method when his method otherwise is to ‘focus attention on characteristic features/themes in the Jesus tradition and not linger long over particular sayings or episodes or make an emerging portrayal of an aspect of Jesus’ mission overly dependent on one or two pericopes [an error Dunn finds in many other scholars’ work]’ (p. 335). Dunn normally sides with the many scholars today who find it more historically adequate and methodologically fruitful when reconstructing the Jesus of history to start with the ‘Gestalt’, the whole figure of Jesus, a vast and complex but coherent image of what Jesus wanted or aimed at, than—as did the Second Quest—starting in the details (individual sayings and episodes) and trying to establish a critically sifted and secured minimum of authentic material on which to build the rest of their historical reconstructions. The very scope of Dunn’s work indicates that he wants to settle for nothing less than completeness in his picture of Jesus, answering all questions that should be asked. Tom Wright has made the claim that there are a number of questions, or rather, a set of questions, all of which a knowledgeable and responsible historian has to ask about Jesus:

[I]n fact, no work on Jesus can get off the ground without a position being taken, at least by implication, in relation to them all… The five questions are all subdivisions of the larger question which, I submit, all historians of the first century, no matter what their background, are bound to ask, namely: how do we account for the fact that, by AD 110, there was a large and vigorous international movement, already showing considerable diversity, whose founding myth (in a quite ‘neutral’ sense) was a story about one Jesus of Nazareth, a figure of the recent past?7

7. N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God, 2; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), p. 90.

Wright then formulates the questions that all historians have to answer:

(1) How does Jesus ﬁt into the Judaism of his day? (2) What were his aims? (3) Why did he die? (4) How did the early church come into being, and why did it take the shape it did? (5) Why are the gospels what they are?8

Any serious historian must attempt to answer all of these questions, in order to avoid too narrow and one-sided hypotheses and the skewed results inevitably following from them. These questions are fairly similar to the ones formulated recently by Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz, but actually going back to Reimarus (†1768). They are:

1. How dependable are the sources about Jesus? 2. How Jewish is the historical Jesus? 3. How political is the historical Jesus? 4. How eschatological is the historical Jesus? 5. How christological is the historical Jesus?

A sixth question that Reimarus did not ask is added:

6. How alien is the historical Jesus? which could also be phrased: How much have we modernized the historical Jesus?9

It is not hard to see that Wright’s questions 1-3 have the same content as Theissen and Merz’s questions 2-5. And Dunn’s book treats the same questions, although he too defers the treatment of questions concerning the early church to coming volumes of his work, just like Wright. Question 1, the way that Jesus ﬁts into the Judaism of his day, is taken up in chapters 9 and 11 of Dunn’s book, in which he focuses on outward realities (Jesus’ profession, education, homestead, relation to John the Baptist, etc.). The aim(s) of Jesus (Wright’s question 2, Theissen and Merz’s 3-5) are then investigated in the following chapters, almost to the end of Dunn’s book. Chapter 12 on the Kingdom of God serves as a kind of portal for all other questions concerning Jesus’ aims: for whom Jesus intended his message,

8. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, p. 90. 9. Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz, ‘Der umstrittene historische Jesus. Oder: Wie historisch ist der historische Jesus?’, in Gerd Theissen, Jesus als historische Gestalt: Beiträge zur Jesusforschung. Zum 60. Geburtstag von Gerd Theissen (ed. Annette Merz; FRLANT, 202; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003), pp. 3-32, here pp. 3-7.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. 456 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) and what reception of it would mean, how others understood Jesus and how he understood himself in relation to the kingdom, a question that can only be answered if one knows what Jesus thought of his death (chapters 13-17, pp. 489-824). So, Dunn has made a very thorough job of answering the complete set of questions, making the different answers build up a large and coherent picture of the historical Jesus. A grand narrative, as it were, that includes even the death of Jesus and what he meant by it, and that follows the Gospels even by ending in his resurrection. Dunn concludes his discussion of this in chapter 18:

Despite the inconsistencies and tensions which the diversity of traditions evidences only too clearly, it is in the end of the day the tradition itself which pushes us to the conclusion that it was something perceived as having happened to Jesus (resurrection evidenced in empty tomb and resurrection appearances) and not just something which happened to the disciples (Easter faith) which provides the more plausible explanation for the origin and core content of the tradition itself (p. 876).

John P. Meier clearly thinks that it is impossible for a historian to discuss the resurrection (and to reach such a conclusion as Dunn above), and this difference of opinion about what questions can be asked in historiography is methodologically important.10 In the beginning of his recent book on the resurrection of Jesus, Tom Wright distinguishes between ﬁve different senses of ‘history’:

1. History as event. What is ‘historical’ is what existed and really happened, whether we can prove it or not (such as the death of the last pterodactyl, never witnessed or reported by any human, but concluded to from fossil remains, which do not admit of any other interpretation than that pterodactyls once lived and died on this earth). 2. History as signiﬁcant event. ‘Geschichtlich’, not only ‘historisch’ (Bultmann). 3. History as provable event. ‘X may have happened, but we cannot prove it, so it is not a historical fact’. (This is a much narrower deﬁnition than 1 or 2).

10. John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Reconsidering the Historical Jesus, I (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1991).

4. History as historiography, written or oral; reported or reportable history. 5. History as that which can be stated by a historian within the modern, post-Enlightenment, non-theistic worldview.11

It seems that while Meier, constrained by his idea that history is what all competent scholars regardless of their religious belief can agree on, understands history as scholarly work of type 5 in Wright’s list, Dunn does not. It makes one wonder if this difference in methodology and understanding of history could after all be formulated as a difference in relation to the use of grand narrative. Might not Dunn’s large and coherent picture of Jesus be understood as something of a theistic, even Christian, grand narrative guiding all of his historical reconstruction of Jesus? It is certainly undertaken with great historical care, and is open to testing by others. But it looks for a history that makes sense of all the Gospel data, which other scholars may characterize as an underlying conviction that functions as a ‘grand narrative’: the story of Jesus as told by the Gospels is a meaningful whole.

11. See N.T Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God, 3; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), pp. 11-12 (not quoted verbatim).

A New Perspective on the Jesus Tradition Reﬂections on James D.G. Dunn’s Jesus Remembered

Samuel Byrskog

Department of Religion, Göteborg University Box 200, SE 405 30 Göteborg, Sweden [email protected]

A Remarkable Achievement

Professor James D.G. Dunn’s new book on Jesus is a remarkable achievement. His theology of Paul includes a preface dated to January 1997;1 the preface to Jesus Remembered is dated to January 2002. It must have been ﬁve years of intensive labour, indeed. No matter how one might evaluate the various arguments of the book, it is impressive from the sheer amount of work put into it. Dunn covers a vast range of literature and ancient texts and defends his position in a complex ﬁeld of discussion with stunning scholarly acumen and yet in a way that is accessible to a wide range of readers. I will make no attempt at summarizing the book in this essay, even less at evaluating it comprehensively. Rather, I wish to focus on the most distinctive aspect of the book, namely, its call for a new approach to the Jesus tradition. As Dunn concludes his book, he sums up its ‘main thrust’ in four propositions (p. 882; cf. also p. 335):

(1) The only realistic objective for any ‘quest of the historical Jesus’ is Jesus remembered. (2) The Jesus tradition of the Gospels conﬁrms that there was a concern within earliest Christianity to remember Jesus. (3) The Jesus tradition shows us how Jesus was remembered; its character strongly suggests again and again a tradition given its essential shape by regular use and reuse in oral mode. (4) This suggests in turn that that essential shape was given by the original and immediate impact made by Jesus as that was

This article is an elaborated version of my introduction to the panel discussion with Dunn at the SNTS conference in Bonn, 29 July–2 August 2003. 1. J.D.G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), p. xviii.

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ﬁrst put into words by and among those involved as eyewitnesses of what Jesus said and did. In that key sense, the Jesus tradition is Jesus remembered [Dunn’s emphases].

Generally speaking, two items stand out as especially important in Dunn’s study: his insistence that the Jesus tradition was communicated largely orally, liberating scholars from an anachronistic, literary way of deﬁning and working with hypothetical sources, and his attempt to avoid the naïveté of historical positivism without losing himself in postmodern relativism. Dunn combines these two emphases and, it seems, senses that the oral mode of communication—the celebration of tradition, as he prefers—is the forum of a complex synthesis between Jesus as past and present. At the moment of oral performance, past and present merge while at the same time being distinct. Most of the issues that, in my view, are in need of further discussion relate to this tricky synthesis between the past and the present in the oral Jesus tradition.

New and Old

Before reflecting critically on various aspects of these issues, I wish to draw attention to Dunn’s general claim of presenting a new perspective on the Jesus tradition. In order to set the stage for his approach, Dunn refers to D.S. Du Toit’s judgment concerning the urgent need to develop a comprehensive theory of the process of transmission of tradition in early Christianity (p. 173). Dunn realizes that there exists a perspective on the Jesus tradition that has hardly begun to be fully tapped and hopes to take the first step towards establishing a theory that would meet the need indicated by Du Toit. In order to clarify the essential points of debate, it is necessary to be more precise. Dunn has been one of the leading scholars in the development of a new perspective on Paul. While the Pauline debate clearly defines what is new in relation to previous studies, recently beginning to move towards a more balanced combination of new and old, it is less evident, at least to Swedish scholars, which aspects precisely represent a new perspective on the Jesus tradition. There is, in the use of the label ‘new perspective’, the implicit claim that previous scholarship has not seen what is now to be seen, or that there are new data or new ways to evaluate the data. But what precisely is new in the new perspective? That Jesus made an impact before Easter? That the impact was remembered? That the tradition was oral? That the tradition was performed and celebrated collectively? It

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. BYRSKOG A New Perspective on the Jesus Tradition 461 seems that most of the basic items of this perspective, which are indeed important, have already been noticed by biblical scholars. For Dunn, the new perspective is an attempt to ‘break out from the centuries-old cultural conditioning of a literary, print-dominated mindset which has determined how the early transmission of the Jesus tradition has been conceived by New Testament scholarship generally’ (p. 883). The old masters, several Scandinavians (e.g. Harald Birkeland, Ivan Engnell, Birger Gerhardsson, Sigmund Mowinckel, Eduard Nielsen, H.S. Nyberg, Helmer Ringgren), who struggled relentlessly to bring the implication of this vital insight to the international audience, will be, or would have been, extremely curious to see if it ﬁnally catches on.2 Dunn’s contribution carries, in fact, the same kind of dialogical character that is deliberately distinctive of most of his previous work. One could question whether there is really the urgent need to develop a new comprehensive theory of the process of transmission. Such theories already exist, older ones as well as more recent ones, and there might certainly be a need to discuss and reﬁne them, but hardly to create entirely new ones. Dunn rehearses previous theories and is more or less critical of them (pp. 192-205). What emerges, at the end, is not a new perspective, however, but a way of posi- tioning himself within an existing debate. The newness of this perspective appears to be the combination of ideas and the overall cumulative impression from a variety of viewpoints with a long history in biblical scholarship.

Intention and Impact

One of the intriguing features that calls attention to the interplay between past and present in the oral Jesus tradition is Dunn’s insistence that Jesus made a profound impact on the disciples, and that this impact was remembered and celebrated as oral tradition. It is essential for Dunn that we can reach back to the Jesus of history by describing how his historical impact was remembered by the disciples and in the early churches. In a sense, the memory of Jesus is Jesus. As Dunn points out himself, ‘I emphasize again that I do not envisage “getting back to Jesus himself”’ (p. 329); or, after stating the four propositions of the main thrust of the book quoted above, ‘And the Jesus thus remembered is Jesus, or as close as we will ever be able to reach back to him’ (p. 335).

2. Gerhardsson will present his reaction to Dunn’s book in forthcoming articles in NTS and SEÅ.

Dunn appears to work with an implicit notion of a close relationship between the intention and the remembered impact of Jesus, speaking of ‘the original and immediate impact’, but the two are certainly to be distinguished analytically. This distinction is, however, blurred and not carried through consistently. Dunn reconstructs not only the impact of Jesus, but his intention. He spends chapter 9 describing the primary historical context of Jesus the Jew, as is commonly done in recent books trying to get back to the historical Jesus. Such a context is essential for any attempt to reconstruct historical intentionality, but the reception of the impact and the traditioning process included settings with various cultural modes of remembering and performance entering the picture. Dunn does not depict this context—or better, historical and cultural intertexture—of traditioning. Large parts of the rest of the book elaborate the old search for Jesus’ intention. The questions addressed in chapter 13, ‘For Whom Did Jesus Intend his Message?’, are in fact subsets of the one overarching question ‘What was Jesus’ intention?’ (pp. 489-90). ‘Human curiosity’, Dunn claims, ‘will demand an answer’ (p. 490). As we all know, human effort has repeatedly failed to provide the historical answer, and human curiosity is today as much focused on how Jesus was remembered and contextualized through history. Other sections in the book seek to ﬁnd out why Jesus went up to Jerusalem, what meaning he gave to his anticipated death, his hope for vindication and so on (pp. 790-824). Here Dunn investigates what was going on in the mind of Jesus, what he thought of himself and his destiny. As Dunn puts it, he is trying to do the impossible, ‘to “get inside” the head of a historical ﬁgure’ (p. 818). What about the ambition not to get back to Jesus himself? Dunn agrees with Werner H. Kelber in considering any talk of ‘sources’ as inappropriate in the context of oral tradition and adds that the label ‘oral transmission’ can mislead the discussion, since it envisages oral performance as intended primarily to transmit rather than to celebrate tradition (p. 203). This is an important point, but it is not entirely clear how his own enquiry as presented in the main bulk of the book differs from all the previous attempts to use the tradition as a source for reconstructing the history behind the way Jesus was remembered and interpreted. Dunn’s intriguing focus on the oral tradition and its traditioning as well as on the impact of Jesus as it was remembered fades into the background and is, it seems, transformed into an implicit claim that Jesus’ own intention was remembered by the impact he made on the eyewitnesses. This might have been the case, in a certain sense, but Dunn’s theoretical agenda and concep-

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. BYRSKOG A New Perspective on the Jesus Tradition 463 tion of oral tradition do not articulate the sophisticated kind of interplay justifying his curiosity about the Jesus of history. He denies the importance of the insights of the oral history approach (pp. 198-99 n. 138, p. 244 n. 284) and seems to work with a rather one-dimensional correlation between intention–impact–memory. The oral history approach might have added signiﬁcant theoretical discernment and examples as to how the intention differs from or variously resembles the impact and how the impact from the very moment of observation is remembered as part of selective interpretative processes.3

Remembering and Interpreting

Dunn calls his book Jesus Remembered and puts much emphasis, as we have seen, on the fact that Jesus was remembered and how he was remembered. It is essential, for Dunn, that this process of remembering and celebration of tradition—‘traditioning’—includes an actual act of recall, otherwise it would be entirely impossible to use it as an avenue back to the Jesus of history. It is therefore all the more surprising that Dunn nowhere deﬁnes memory and the act of remembrance more precisely. One of the basic marks of an oral culture, even when writing and reading have been introduced and are practiced, is the cultivation of the faculty of memory. It is worthwhile repeating that Mnemosyne was a goddess to the Greeks, being the mother of the muses, divinely sanctioned. Furthermore, Aristotle wrote an essay on memory, de Memoria, distinguishing between mnh/mh as memory of the

3. Dunn objects that the oral history approach ignores the role of oral transmission. This critique is valid, because oral history focuses on the kind of dynamics that cause Dunn himself to be sceptical of the label ‘oral transmission’ and tries to account for history as personally and collectively remembered and performed story. There is a widespread misunderstanding that the oral history approach as applied to the Jesus/ Gospel tradition involves a naive (re)turn to the innocent mind of eyewitnesses. It is, in fact, a way of deconstructing the innocence of historical positivism and acknowledging history as orally communicated story. See further, e.g., S. Byrskog, Story as History— History as Story: The Gospel Tradition in the Context of Ancient Oral History (WUNT, 123; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000, 2001; Boston: Brill, 2002); idem, ‘Talet, minnet och skriften. Evangelietraditionen och den antika informationsteknologin’, SEÅ 67 (2001), pp. 139-50; idem, ‘History or Story in Acts—A Middle Way? The “We” Passages, Historical Intertexture, and Oral History’, in T. Penner and C. Vander Stichele (eds.), Contextualizing Acts: Lukan Narrative and Greco-Roman Discourse (SBL Symposium Series, 20; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003), pp. 257-83.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. 464 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) past and a)na&mnhsij as present recollection. There was also the widespread notion of the memory as a wax tablet, as something on which an impression was made. More could be said. There are anecdotes of various people’s exceptional memory. Children at school competed for memorization prizes. The rhetoricians used sophisticated visual techniques traced back to Simonides of Ceos, Hippias and Theodectes the Tragedian to strengthen the memory as they delivered speeches, distinguishing between memoria rerum and memoria verborum. The rabbis are well known for their extreme attention to memory. And so forth.4 The ancient people were well aware of the faculty of memory. They admired a good memory, no matter how we today might estimate in each case their actual ability to remember. Dunn mentions none of it. He prefers instead to think of remembering in terms of collective or corporate memory and thus empties it of a distinctive meaning. Dunn’s way of using the label ‘remembered’ is, in fact, hard to distinguish from ‘interpreted’. Interpretation too relates to something that already exists. Dunn points out, as he separates ‘tradition’ from individual memory, that corporate memory gives identity to the group ‘which thus remembers’ (p. 173 n. 1); elsewhere he speaks of ‘shared memory’ (p. 241). However, identity is, as far as groups are concerned, a sociological concept. Sociologically one might indeed argue that it is not memory that gives identity, but memory as interpretation of the past within the frame of a shared symbolic universe. I agree with Dunn’s statement that ‘tradition- forming is a communal process’ (p. 240), but it is precisely in this process that individual memories become shared memory, that is, shared interpretations of the past. It is thus not, strictly speaking, shared memory that gives identity to the group, but the group that fosters shared memory in the form of shared interpretations on the basis of existing tradition.

The Collective and the Individual Memory

The notion of the collective memory thus needs to be clariﬁed. It was the Durkheimian sociologist Maurice Halbwachs, in his inﬂuential work Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire from 1925, who taught us to speak of the collective memory of a group or culture.5 It was also Halbwachs who real-

4. Texts and literature in Byrskog, Story as History, pp. 110-13, 160-65. See also J. Penny Small, Wax Tablet of the Mind: Cognitive Studies of Memory and Literacy in Classical Antiquity (London: Routledge, 1997). 5. M. Halbwachs, Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire (Bibliothèque de sociologie contemporaine; Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, new edn, 1952).

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. BYRSKOG A New Perspective on the Jesus Tradition 465 ized, and discussed with much insight, the interplay between the collective and the individual memory.6 The popular stress on ‘collectivistic’ and ‘dyadic’ selves should not cause us to neglect the individualistic traits of the ancient Mediterranean world, but to appreciate individual consciousness within collectivistically conditioned contexts. I have elsewhere com- plained about the one-sidedness of the old form-critical emphasis on the community;7 and I am similarly puzzled by Dunn’s consistent stress on the Christian community as a group that remembers corporately and thus estab- lishes its identity. Dunn has been decisively inspired by Kenneth E. Bailey’s long experience of Middle East village life and the community’s role of remembering and exercising control over the recitation of tradition at the co-called haﬂat samar.8 He puts this ‘explanatory model for the Jesus tradition’ (p. 210) at the heart of his new perspective, even raising it to the level of conﬁrming ‘that the previous paradigms offered by Bultmann and Gerhardsson were inadequate’ (p. 209). Bailey himself had no such intention but acknowledged that Bultmann’s and Gerhardsson’s views of oral tradition are both still very much alive in the Middle East and wished merely to present a third phenomenon that was unknown in New Testament circles.9 His model is an illustration of a possible phenomenon, but it does not really exclude the existence of other settings of traditioning. In order to work as an ‘explanatory model’ for the Jesus tradition, it needs to have some kind of comparative link to evident practices in the ancient socio-cultural setting and account not only for the contextualized performance of a village gathering, but also for the urban setting of early Christian house meetings. It does not. Oral history, with its attention to the individual self as part of a group

6. Cf. the chapter entitled ‘Mémoire collective et mémoire individuelle’, in J. Alexandre (ed.), La mémoire collective (Bibliothèque de sociologie contemporaine; Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1950), pp. 1-34 (published posthumously). 7. Review essay of R. Bultmann, The History of the Synoptic Tradition (1963), JBL 122 (2002), pp. 549-55, esp. pp. 551-52. 8. K.E. Bailey, ‘Informal Controlled Oral Tradition and the Synoptic Gospels’, Asia Journal of Theology 5 (1991), pp. 34-54; ‘Middle Eastern Oral Tradition and the Synoptic Gospels’, ExpTim 106 (1995), pp. 363-67. 9. ‘So informal uncontrolled oral tradition and formal controlled oral tradition are both still very much alive in the Middle East. The ﬁrst results from natural human failings; the second is a carefully nurtured methodology of great antiquity that is still practiced and held in high regard by both Christians and Muslims in the Middle East today’, Bailey, ‘Informal Controlled Oral Tradition’, p. 39.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. 466 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) or society, gives a more helpful framework for how Jesus was remembered than the vague notion of corporate memory. Dunn, as I indicated above, dismisses oral history and fails to realize, first, that oral tradition overlaps with oral history and, secondly, that his own discussion of disciple-response actually locates the first traditioning in the oral histories of Jesus’ followers. Paul’s two weeks with Peter (Gal. 1.18), for instance, is typical of the situation of oral history, assuming that Paul did interview Peter in regard to his memories of Jesus (cf. p. 181). The fact that we do not have many texts from antiquity that clearly portray such a corporate activity, while we do have numerous texts picturing named individuals who seek out and try to remember and communicate persuasively information from other individuals, calls for a more nuanced and carefully balanced view of the role of collective memory in early Christian traditioning. The ancient historians, being most eager to find out things about the past, valued eyewitness testimony higher than any other kind of ‘sources’. Heraclitus’s saying, ‘Eyes are surer witnesses than ears’, presents the ideal.10 This is also the picture that Papias gives in the famous quota- tions from Eusebius. It was, in his view, not the community but Mark that remembered ([a)po]mnhmoneu&ein is used twice) things from the chreiai of a specifically named eyewitness, Peter (Hist. Eccl. 3.39.15). Papias himself might have collected oral reports from named eyewitnesses as early as 80– 90 CE (Hist. Eccl. 3.39.3-4). Dunn mentions these texts only in passing (p. 179). One could also visualize the remembering process by looking at Eusebius’s quotation of how Irenaeus, in a letter to Florinus, relates that he carries in his memory traditions from Polycarp. Irenaeus remembers not what he learned about the Jesus tradition through the corporate celebration of it in a village gathering or the like, but what he learned about it by meticulously observing Polycarp—the place where he taught, how he came in and out, his way of life, what he looked like, and so on—as well as by listening to and copying in his heart that which Polycarp retold from what he, in turn, had heard from eyewitnesses (Hist. Eccl. 5.20.5-7). Dunn does not mention this text at all. Should we dismiss Papias and even Irenaeus as unreliable, trusting instead a modern analogy with little evident correspondence in the ancient world? Considering the widespread appreciation of individual memory and eyewitness testimony in Greek and Roman antiquity, it is likely that these two items were of considerable significance also at a time when the churches existed and celebrated the tradition collect-

10. References in Byrskog, Story as History, pp. 48-65.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. BYRSKOG A New Perspective on the Jesus Tradition 467 ively.11 Dunn asserts, to be sure, that we ‘should not forget the continuing role of eyewitness tradents’ (p. 242), but this assertion is of no importance as he summarizes his view (pp. 253-54). It remains unclear how their ‘continuing role’ becomes manifest in Dunn’s picture of how the group identi- ﬁes itself by the corporate remembering of tradition.

The Role of Individuals

Individual memory has to do with the role of individuals in early Christi- anity. At certain points, Dunn moves in the direction of attributing importance to individuals, but, as with eyewitnesses, it is difficult to estimate how he conceives concretely their relation to the community. Quite surprisingly in view of the emphasis on the corporate remembering and the celebration of tradition, he stresses the importance of the early Christian teachers; he even thinks they were paid (p. 176). They served as ‘the congregation’s repository of oral tradition’ (p. 176), as a kind of walking reference library for the community. I find it difficult to integrate this emphasis into Dunn’s general notion of traditioning. He does not address the old question as to whether their activity to care for the Jesus tradition was entirely integrated into the larger group and its corporate activity or whether they cared for its preservation and proper elaboration in a specific setting to be distinguished from the larger group. As it seems, Dunn prefers the former alternative, which would be more in line with his general perspective. What they did, ultimately, was to reinforce ‘their church’s corporate memory of Jesus tradition’ (p. 186). In that case, what was the point of having specifically assigned and paid teachers to care for the Jesus tradition? If one admits that teachers were assigned to do this task, one has to be more precise concerning the setting and function of their activity. It seems reasonable that they cared for the tradition in settings that were separate from the collective performance of the larger group and its worship. In that case, we can, after all, speak not only of celebration and performance of tradition, but of deliberate transmission of tradition by specific didactic functionaries. Another point where Dunn fails to clarify the role of individuals within the Christian community concerns the authors of the Gospels. Somewhat

11. So R. Bauckham, ‘The Eyewitnesses and the Gospel Traditions’, Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 1 (2003), pp. 28-60. Bauckham informs me that he is working on a book on the same topic. Cf. previously R. Bauckham, Gospel Women: Studies of the Named Women in the Gospels (London: T&T Clark, 2002), pp. 257-310.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. 468 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) surprisingly he criticizes Richard Bauckham and his colleagues by claiming that ‘particular communities were the Evangelist’s source for the Jesus tradition’ (p. 252). How can a community that, in Dunn’s own view, celebrates the oral tradition be a ‘source’? That very term, as Dunn himself indicates elsewhere (p. 203), suggests that we think of the Jesus tradition in terms of sources that are being employed in a rather literary fashion. This terminological issue reveals a more fundamental problem. What was the precise relationship between the authors of the Gospels and the communities? In what sense were the communities ‘sources’? Were not the authors themselves, in Dunn’s view, part of the communities and did they not share in the celebration of tradition, being in fact their own point of reference within the community? Are the Gospels, in that case, a written outflow of the ongoing oral traditioning or do they, after all, reflect the memories and theological profile of single individuals who employ the performances in order to communicate their own viewpoints, respectively? I understand Dunn to come closer to the former alternative. The Gospels are performances with oral features encoded into the text, eventually to become ‘frozen performances’ (p. 884); ‘hearings of the Gospel being read would be part of the oral/aural transmission…the written text was still fluid’ (p. 250). I share a similar view with regard to the text of the Gospels—they are ‘oral texts’—but such a perspective needs to reflect more on the insights that point to literary and theologically skilled authors. How should we define this subtle relationship between the authors as part of an oral traditioning process and as prolific individuals using the oral tradition as some kind of resource for their own literary and theological achievement?

Homeostasis and the Pastness of Tradition

A ﬁnal point concerning the role of the community according to Bailey’s and Dunn’s vision of the traditioning process concerns its censoring function. Several decades ago Jack Goody and Ian Watt presented the inﬂuential theory of homeostasis.12 It is a functionalistic way of looking at oral tradition, today endorsed by several scholars of orality. The nucleus of the theory is that societies and groups performing oral tradition censor the past and celebrate only those items of the tradition that are relevant to the

12. J. Goody and I. Watt, ‘The Consequences of Literacy’, in J. Goody (ed.), Liter- acy in Traditional Societies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), pp. 27-68.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. BYRSKOG A New Perspective on the Jesus Tradition 469 present situation. It is thus a theory that takes very seriously how groups function as they relate to and reconfigure the past. The present takes over; the present is the past; fact and fiction merge in an oral symbiosis. There surfaces a real sense of pastness only when writing and records of the past are introduced. According to Wolfgang Rösler, it was writing that enabled people in antiquity to have a concept of fiction as distinguished from fact.13 Dunn does not engage critically with this influential theory at all, although it is implicit in Bailey’s observation that the group at the haflat samar controls and censors the tradition. This neglect is all the more surprising, as it appears to be essential for Dunn that the oral Jesus tradition has an intrinsic diachronic dimension. On what basis is it possible to argue for a genuinely diachronic dimension of oral tradition and at the same time hold on to Dunn’s perspective? He stresses the corporate memory and endorses the act of performance and celebration in distinction to the act of transmission. Even written documents were performed orally. These are typical functional and homeostatic aspects of the oral tradition, enhanc- ing the importance of the present perspective of the community. Scholars such as Jan Vansina and Paul Thompson, who have both studied various oralities closely, are critical of the theory.14 As will be evident from what has been said above, Dunn does not really address the challenge of the theory of homeostasis by showing (1) that oral groups might have a real notion of the past, (2) that the individual memory of the self is not entirely censored by the corporate memory of the group, and (3) that the transmission and the performance of the oral tradition are intrinsically related. A discussion of these points would not only have clarified the pastness of the oral tradition but also—possibly—modified Dunn’s perspective in a way that distances the oral tradition from the overarching importance of the celebrating community. A fourth point is the presence of writing. One may use different labels to describe its interaction with orality. Dunn prefers the most common one, secondary orality. Perhaps there is the need for a more sophisticated classification. Orality comes in different shapes and sounds. Also the manner in which oral messages reflect historical events differs. One must take seriously that in the first century oral conventions were deeply influ-

13. W. Rösler, ‘Die Entdeckung der Fiktionalität in der Antike’, Poetica 12 (1980), pp. 283-319. 14. J. Vansina, Oral Tradition as History (London: James Currey; Nairobi: Heinemann Kenya, 1985), pp. 120-23; P. Thompson, The Voice of the Past: Oral History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 3rd edn, 2000), p. 170.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. 470 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) enced by the written word, which created an element of abstract thinking and reflection about the past. There is no such thing as pure orality in early Christianity, but various oralities. Dunn must clarify, it seems, the persist- ing question: If individual memory played a subordinate role, and if there was no such thing as—or only a minimum of —actual transmission of the Jesus tradition, what kind of corporate and performed orality related in such a significant and profound way to the past? What kind of orality are we envisioning when we speak of the oral Jesus tradition? Future research will have to put more work into differentiating between various kinds of oralities and homeostatic fictionalities in antiquity generally and in early Christianity specifically.

Performance and Rhetoric

A possible avenue of further reﬂection is perhaps for scholars of orality to join hands with scholars of ancient rhetoric. It has been suggested that early Christianity represented a rhetorical rather than an oral culture.15 The two are certainly not to be set over against each other. In a rhetorical culture the spoken word imitates speech and writing, and writing imitates the spoken and the written word. Just as scholars pursuing rhetorical criticism need to remember that rhetoric is an outgrowth of a culture dominated by oral communication and avoid structuring their analyses in strictly literary fashion, it is also vital that scholars with an interest in orality and the performance of oral tradition take seriously that performance is rhetorical actio aimed to persuade. Dunn writes frequently of performance but never of rhetorical actio, cutting short the traditioning process by not taking into account the actual delivery and reception of tradition. Performance involves much more than the audible hearing of tradition. It includes many subtle ways to persuade, by voice, by gestures, with the eyes, and so on, creating for the audience an embodied vision of the tradition. The performer visualizes that which he delivers orally. ‘Granted the things you read make a point, what is afﬁxed by delivery, expression, appearance and gestures of a speaker resides deeper in the soul’, Pliny the Younger asserts (2.3.9), knowing that Nepos must hear the famous Isaios by seeing him perform his speeches.

15. V.K. Robbins, ‘Writing as a Rhetorical Act in Plutarch and the Gospels’, in D.F. Watson (ed.), Persuasive Artistry: Studies in New Testament Rhetoric in Honor of George A. Kennedy (JSNTSup, 50; Shefﬁeld: JSOT Press, 1991), pp. 142-68; idem, ‘Oral, Rhetorical, and Literary Cultures: A Response’, Semeia 65 (1994), pp. 75-91.

If oral traditions were performed rhetorically, it is likely that they had deliberately been worked over in order to persuade by argumentation.16 A successful performance depended on the proper invention of arguments. Christian teachers probably had considerable training in how to elaborate a chreia argumentatively. Again, the performance is not ad hoc, in that case, despite all the inﬂuences of the present situation at the collective moment of performance, but prepared in a transmission that preserves and elaborates in order to convince the audience about the Jesus of the past. This rhetorical view of transmission and performance is, it seems, somewhat different from Dunn’s use of the concept of performance as the corporate celebration of oral tradition.

Points of Debate

Dunn’s remarkable achievement hopefully triggers a fruitful debate not only about the Jesus of history, but also concerning the role and character- istics of oral tradition in early Christianity. My own reading of it raises, in brief, six basic points for further discussion:

1. How should the relationship between intention and impact be conceived in an environment dominated by oral/aural modes of communication? 2. What conceptual framework is to be elaborated in order to distinguish between and/or integrate the remembering and the interpretative processes in the oral Jesus tradition? 3. How should the interplay between collective and individual memory and, more generally, the role of individuals within collectivistic settings be accounted for in early Christianity? 4. What kind of texts and literature do the Gospels represent in view of the authors’ close reliance on the oral traditioning process, on the one hand, and their literary and theological proﬁles, on the other hand? 5. What degrees of homeostatic ﬁctionality are we to identify within the different oralities of the various strands of the oral Jesus tradition? 6. What is the rhetorical implication of the orally performed and aurally received Jesus tradition?

16. Cf. B.L. Mack and V.K. Robbins, Patterns of Persuasion in the Gospels (Foundation & Facets; Literary Facets; Sonoma, CA: Polebridge Press, 1989).

On History, Memory and Eyewitnesses: In Response to Bengt Holmberg and Samuel Byrskog

James D.G. Dunn

Department of Theology, University of Durham, Abbey House, Palace Green, Durham, DH1 3RS [email protected]

I am most grateful to Bengt Holmberg (BH) and Samuel Byrskog (SB) for the care they have taken in offering their critiques of my Jesus Remembered (JR). The initial drafts of their critiques were prepared for the ‘Historical Jesus’ Seminar at the Bonn meeting of Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas in July/August 2003, although delay in the publication of JR meant that they had little enough time to read through the nearly 900 pages prior to that meeting. The Seminar was a challenging time for the author of JR, though I found it more enjoyable than I had anticipated: the testing and reﬁning of one’s insights and suggestions is one way to prove and improve such worth as they have. But the ﬁnished form of the BH/SB critiques, in the preceding two articles,1 has given me further stimulus and opportunity to craft a more considered response. So I am happy to acknowledge once again my debt to them and appreciation for their remarks, both the positive commendations and the constructive criticisms. Hopefully they have helped me to clarify and to sharpen up some key features of the theses of JR, and so the dialogue may be of value to others interested in the quest of the historical Jesus. It is a particular pleasure to have critiques from two Scandinavians, since, as SB reminds us (p. 461), interest in oral tradition has been a particularly Scandinavian preoccupation in biblical scholarship. Some of the two critiques overlap, and certainly they are quite comple-

1. B. Holmberg, ‘Questions of Method in James Dunn’s Jesus Remembered’, pp. 445-57 above; S. Byrskog, ‘A New Perspective on the Jesus Tradition: Reﬂections on James D.G. Dunn’s Jesus Remembered’, pp. 459-71 above. I will include page references to these articles in the body of my text.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004, The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX and 15 East 26th Street, Suite 1703, New York, NY 10010, USA. 474 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) mentary, but BH has focused his critique more on a discussion of history, and SB more on memory, and it makes best sense to deal with them in sequence.

BH focuses on the tension in historiography between events and the remembering of them. He rightly recognizes that historiography inevitably involves at least some degree of ‘fictionalizing’ events recorded. By ‘fictionalizing’ I understand that events are witnessed and retold within frameworks of conceptualization and language (of both witness and historian), and that in recording or retelling the events it is natural to see and relate them as part of some narrative (p. 447). But BH also wants to insist that such recalling or reporting is not totally fiction; there is an event to be remembered, even if the remembering involves some degree of trans- mutation into the perspective and categories of both witness and historian. ‘Refiguring memory is not the same as disfiguring it’ (p. 447). I accept all this and tried to make space for it in JR by my repeated emphasis that ‘Jesus Remembered’ is the impression Jesus made and left on his various disciples. My recognition that the impression would be different as different disciples witnessed events and heard teaching slightly differently2 is a way of saying that the ‘fictionalizing’ process would begin ‘from day one’. I recognize in particular that the language and the life- stories of the individual witnesses would have been different from one another. Consequently, both the remembering and the ways in which and the narrative framework within which the remembering was expressed and the tradition retold would have been always at least subtly different and sometimes quite significantly different from one another. But I already knew that, simply by looking at the differing wording, details, forms and sequencing of the Synoptic tradition. My point here in JR is threefold. (1) That the impressions left by Jesus, still evident in the Jesus tradition, despite their fictionalizing diversity, overall demonstrate a consistency that strongly suggests that the impression was left by one and the same historical figure, Jesus.3 (2) That from the contours of the impressions left we can gain a fairly clear idea of the

2. Jesus Remembered (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), pp. 133-34, 241-42. 3. C.H. Dodd, The Founder of Christianity (London: Collins, 1971): ‘The first three gospels offer a body of sayings on the whole so consistent, so coherent, and withal so distinctive in manner, style and content, that no reasonable critic should doubt, whatever reservations he may have about individual sayings, that we find here reflected the thought of a single, unique teacher’ (pp. 21-22).

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. DUNN History, Memory and Eyewitnesses 475 character of the mission and person who left that impression. That is, from the impact left in the Jesus tradition we are able to discern what and who made that impact. But I still find it necessary to add (3) that we have to be content with these differing and somewhat fictionalized portrayals of Jesus. We cannot press through the tradition to some objective Jesus whom we can discern and evaluate independently of the diverse witness to him, that is, a Jesus disentangled from the differing perspectives of the tradition, with their differing ‘fictions’ stripped away.4 As Bultmann reminded us in the case of ‘myth’, ‘myth’ is not an element within thought that can be extracted, but a way of thinking. So here, the problem for us is that the personalized impacts pervade the whole of an individual disciple’s witness, because ex hypothesi it was the witness of one who had been transformed by that impact. Of course we can deduce a good deal about the Jesus who made these impacts (point 1). But our discerning of this Jesus will always be at least a little out of focus, as when two or three negatives of the same person are superimposed on one another. BH is not happy with my pressing this point, even though it seems to me to follow directly from the observation that memory and historiography inevitably ‘fictionalize’ what is remembered to at least some extent. He wants to press behind the impact to the hard facts. Jesus was remembered as preaching about the kingdom because he preached about the kingdom (p. 448). Yes of course. But it is still important to emphasize that we only have access to that preaching through the memory of it, that is, through the particular memories that have been formed into Jesus tradition. We do not have record of Jesus’ preaching the kingdom of God from any other sources, so we do not know how selective that tradition has been—that is, whether some kingdom teaching was not so impact-ful, or not so impressive, and so has not been retained in the tradition. Had we only John’s Gospel we would have had to conclude that the kingdom was not a major feature of Jesus’ preaching. Even if we insist on the faithfulness of the first witnesses and of the Synoptic tradition, which I would want to do on my own account, as historians we still do not have a rounded, 360-degree picture of Jesus, only Jesus as he was remembered by his disciples. Or in the case of miracles (p. 449), it is quite important to continue insist- ing that we today are not in a position to assert ‘miracle’ as though we had been able to investigate the event itself. What we can say is that something happened to a particular person ministered to by Jesus and witnessed by

4. Jesus Remembered, pp. 125-32.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. 476 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) others, which was experienced and witnessed as a miracle (a lame man walking again, a blind man seeing). As historians we can say no more, but that much the historian has to say. If we hesitate to say ‘miracle’ of a healing claimed today at Lourdes or in a rally of some healing evangelist, because the claim has not been fully investigated by reputable and profes- sional authorities, then we should certainly be that much more discreet in our evaluation of reports of miracles two millennia ago. And BH’s distinction of three different kinds of ‘facts’ in the case of the resurrection (pp. 451-53) still falls into the trap of yearning for some objec- tivity in a fact that dispenses with all interpretation. Of course if there was an empty tomb then there was an empty tomb. But an empty tomb in Jerusalem 30 CE would be a ‘datum’, not a ‘fact’ in the definition I use. And the problem for the twenty-first-century historian or biblical scholar is that he is in the twenty-first century and not the first century. For him the empty tomb is not itself a datum. For him the only real data are the reports of an empty tomb. It is for him to interpret those data. And if he concludes that the tomb wherein Jesus was laid was in fact empty, then that is an interpretation of the data, a ‘fact’ as I use the term.5 In other words, I think BH is wrong in asserting that I was dealing with three different kinds of ‘facts’. I was dealing only with two. For both the first two ‘facts’ (empty tomb, disciples seeing Jesus) are equally interpretations of the only important data available to us, that is, the reports of the first disciples and earliest Christians to that effect. My second kind of ‘fact’ runs the danger of straining the category ‘fact’; I acknowledge that. For it is a way of saying that the interpretations of these facts (empty tomb, disciples seeing Jesus) can be regarded as a kind of fact too—a meta-fact that makes sense of all the data, including the interpretations put on the basic data of empty tomb and encounters with Jesus.6 Part of that argument is that the very choice of ‘resurrection’ as the key category to describe what had happened to Jesus is so unexpected that the unexpectedness of the interpretation becomes an important key to our own interpretation of all the data. Tom Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God7 picks up the same point to good effect. BH finally tackles me on the question of a ‘grand narrative’, arguing that ‘grand narratives’ are not ‘a bad thing’, and are indeed unavoidable in

5. For the distinction between ‘event’, ‘data’ and ‘fact’, see my Jesus Remembered, pp. 102-103, but also pp. 107-109. 6. Jesus Remembered, pp. 876-79. 7. London: SPCK, 2003.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. DUNN History, Memory and Eyewitnesses 477 historical reconstruction (pp. 453-57). This, I take it, is simply BH pressing home his initial observation that memory and historiography fictionalize and narrativize the past. I can readily accept the basic thrust of this contention. To be sure, one could conclude that Jesus characteristically spoke of ‘the kingdom of God’ and used the phrase ‘the son of man’, and these elements of his message do not in themselves constitute a grand narrative. But I agree that they imply some kind of narrative and that for us to spell out their significance in the Jesus tradition inevitably involves us attempting to discern the narrative connecting the various references implied in the different ways Jesus used these phrases. However, we should not so quickly downsize the postmodern critique of the grand narrative. For that constitutes a protest against the imposition of a single story seen with the eye of the beholder upon a much more diverse and fragmented spread of historical data—as, for example, the idea of scientific ‘progress’ which has dominated so much modernist thinking.8 The problem being that the single grand narrative effectively brackets out a good deal of the data, privileges some of the data as more conducive to the story the historian wants to tell, and orders the selected data into a narrative sequence which validates the view put forward by the modern historian. I find that critique applicable to the ‘lives of Jesus’ of both Dominic Crossan and Tom Wright.9 They have both bracketed out too much of the data due for consideration (the particularities of Jewish including Galilean culture; the variety of eschatological expectation in Second Temple Judaism). They have privileged some of the data (sapiential and non-apocalyptic Jesus tradition; any echoes of ‘return from exile’). And they have imposed a grid on the whole (Mediterranean peasantry; ‘return from exile’), which fails to do adequate justice to the full range of data. So I wholly accept that we cannot do history or study the historical Jesus without working with and within various narratives—of God and creation, of God and Israel, and so on. But I find it necessary to continue protesting against the imposition of a particular form of these grand narratives on the much richer and fuller picture of Jesus and his mission

8. Jesus Remembered, pp. 27-28, 93; I also appreciated the contribution of another Scandinavian on this subject: H. Moxnes, ‘The Historical Jesus: From Master Narrative to Cultural Context’, BTB 28 (1998), pp. 135-49. 9. Jesus Remembered, pp. 269, 396-98, 402, 470-77; in reference to J. D. Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (San Francisco: Harper, 1991); N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (London: SPCK, 1996).

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. 478 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) which emerges from the more diverse material of the Jesus tradition, the more diverse rememberings of Jesus.

SB queries whether the ‘new perspective’ I offer on Jesus is very new and then poses six ‘points of debate’. It will be simplest to work through them one by one. But first a comment on the ‘new perspective’ on Jesus. This was a phrase I introduced in the final chapter of JR, not intending to imply that I was attempting such a major shift in Jesus studies as E.P. Sanders brought about in Pauline studies.10 But I still would like to claim that the combination of emphases of JR do amount to a ‘new perspective’. In answer to SB’s questions (p. 460): (1) It is important to assert that Jesus made an impact before Easter. So much twentieth-century discussion on the historical Jesus/Christ of faith issue has assumed that the faith impact evident in the Gospels is all and only Easter faith. My claim is precisely that the pre-Easter impact of Jesus is still evident in the content and forms of the Synoptic tradition. The degree to which Heinz Schürmann’s famous article11 has been margin- alized reinforces the importance of the point to be made. (2) It is also crucially important to my thesis that the impact was remembered. The point I have already made to BH bears repeating: the impact was a transformative impact.12 What Jesus said (and did) changed the lives of these first disciples; it shaped them; it was truly bread of life for them; it became an integral part of their life-perspective. So of course they remembered it, as we today remember words and events that have helped make us what we are, the transformative moments (weddings, births, deaths, conversion, experiences of the holy, flashes of life-illuminating insights),

10. Jesus Remembered, p. 881. In fact, however, my attempt to articulate more clearly what I regard as the three major methodological emphases and contributions of JR will be published under the title, A New Perspective on Jesus (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004). 11. H. Schürmann, ‘Die vorösterlichen Anfänge der Logientradition: Versuch eines formgeschichtlichen Zugangs zum Leben Jesu’, in H. Ristow and K. Matthiae (eds.), Der historische Jesus und der kerygmatische Christus (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1961), pp. 342-70. 12. I could perhaps call in the supportive testimony of the younger Pliny, cited by SB (p. 470): ‘what is afﬁxed by delivery, expression, appearance and gesture of a speaker resides deeper in the soul’. Cf. the observation of David Tracy, that there is never an authentic disclosure of truth that is not also potentially transformative (The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism [New York: Crossroad, 1991], pp. 77-78).

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. DUNN History, Memory and Eyewitnesses 479 the mantras and proverbs and principles by which we live. It is not ‘ordinary’ remembering that I have in mind, but the remembering of the transformative impact. (3) Of course the claim that the earliest Jesus tradition was oral is not new. But as E.P. Sanders noted, ‘The problem is that we do not know how to imagine the oral period’.13 My criticism in JR is that previous attempts to envisage the oral period of the Jesus tradition have been inadequate or have been too quickly sidetracked. I have attempted what seems to me, in the light of the actual shape of the Synoptic tradition as it has come down to us, a more realistic envisaging of that period. The key point of my hypothesis is the connection of the first three points: that the transformative impact drew those thus impacted together (drawn together by the shared response they had made and were continuing to make to Jesus), and that the mutual sharing of these shared experiences/rememberings was strictly speaking the origin of the Jesus tradition as such. (4) Likewise the insistence that the oral Jesus tradition was performed and celebrated collectively is hardly new. The insight lay at the heart of the initial emergence of form criticism. But again that insight was too quickly lost to view as the focus turned to the communities/churches and the assumption was too readily granted that oral forms reflected more the faith and Sitz im Leben of these churches than the (pre-Easter) impact of Jesus’ own mission.14 The new element is the possibility given us by Kenneth Bailey of envisaging a realistic Sitz im Leben for the performance of the earliest tradition—a middle way between Bultmann’s model of ‘informal, uncontrolled tradition’ and Gerhardsson’s model of ‘formal, controlled tradition’.15 In my view all that amounts to what can be justifiably called ‘a new perspective on Jesus’. And there is after all an analogy with ‘the new perspective on Paul’. For the latter emerged as a result of Sanders’ advocacy of views on Palestinian Judaism which were not new but had hitherto fallen largely on deaf ears.16 So too I am attempting to bring together and

13. In E.P. Sanders and M. Davies, Studying the Synoptic Gospels (London: SCM Press, 1989), p. 141. 14. Jesus Remembered, pp. 127-28. 15. Jesus Remembered, p. 206, referring to K.E. Bailey, ‘Informal Controlled Oral Tradition and the Synoptic Gospels’, Asia Journal of Theology 5 (1991), pp. 34-54 (here pp. 35-40). 16. E.P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (London: SCM Press, 1997), pp. 1- 12, 33-59.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. 480 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) to sharpen insights that have not been sufficiently integrated before or that have been too much neglected. But now to SB’s six main ‘points of debate’ which I very much welcome; my hope is that such a debate will greatly clarify the whole situation, both the considerable hermeneutical issues at stake and what my contribution amounts to (if anything!). My response to BH already covers much of what needs to be said on the first two points (‘Intention and Impact’, ‘Remembering and Interpreting’). On the former, I accept that to the extent that I attempt to inquire into Jesus’ own intention, the attempt seems to be at some odds with my insistence that we cannot get back to Jesus himself, only the remembered Jesus (p. 462). My point, once again, is simply that it is after all possible to discern the thrust and character of Jesus’ message from the impact that it made. As the mark left by a seal on a parchment allows us to deduce the shape of the seal and what it was made of; as crime scene investigation officers can deduce the trajectory of a bullet from its points of entry and exit in the dead body; so the impression left by Jesus tells us quite a lot about Jesus—that is, about the Jesus-who-made-that-impact. Again I want to insist that it is the transformative impact made by the teaching of Jesus that in large part determined the modulation from impact to the tradition of that teaching and its resultant shape. It was evidently not an impact that made only a transient or minor effect, but an impact that transformed. Of course it is possible to imagine disciples not much ‘switched on’ to or by Jesus prior to Easter, or only later trying to recall teaching that became important to them in a subsequent stage of discipleship but only half remembered. What I see in the bulk of the Synoptic tradition, however, is the impact of the teaching, which was experienced as transformative, photo- synthesized (as it were) into oral tradition. So to speak of an impact remembered could be misleading, as though they were two quite distinct processes. What I have in mind, rather, is an impact that transformed and continued to exercise its effect as the teaching became part of them, their raison d’être, fundamentally constitutive of their new way of life. That is what I mean by ‘remembering’.17

17. In private correspondence with Birger Gerhardsson I have illustrated the difference I perceive between my ‘remembering’ and his ‘memorization’ (see below n. 21) from a personal anecdote. As a primary school child, aged between 5 and 9, I learned my ‘times table’ by memorization. I owe the fact that I today instantly know 7 u 8 = 56 because of the memorization exercises in which I participated more than 55 years ago. In the school’s cloakroom there was a mirror, which bore the slogan, ‘You

As for ‘Remembering and Interpreting’ (pp. 463-64), I readily admit that in JR I do not provide any theory of memory or of remembering or engage in discussion with those who have. This is principally because my concern has always been to understand better why and how the Synoptic tradition came to take the shape it still has, with all its commonalities and differences, its verbal agreements and disagreements, and so on. So my focus has been on traditioning processes, trying to understand better the transition from Jesus to written Gospel. And particularly in JR on the beginnings of that process: Jesus ĺ disciples ĺ oral tradition. To that extent the title I chose for the analysis, ‘Jesus Remembered’, left a hostage to fortune, which I partly regret, but overall am glad about since it has resulted in this further, I hope clariﬁcatory but also developing, debate. As already indicated in my response to BH, I have no wish to deny an interpretative element in such remembering, or that any description of an event or recollection of a teaching involves something of interpretation. I deliberately try to avoid the trap of thinking we can easily distinguish a transformative experience from the conceptuality and language we use to describe it; on the contrary, I fully acknowledge an unavoidable element of interpretation in the conceptuality and language used. But again the key element for me is the transformative character of the impact made by Jesus. For if the transformative impact involved words (the words of Jesus himself), then in most cases the wording itself is part of the impact—the wording which made the greatest impact probably being the most stable element in the transformed remembering. Here again I have in mind, as part of my overall historical hypothesis: that it was the realization that the impact made on individuals was shared by others which drew disciple groups and then churches together; and that what gave them their continuing identity as disciples was that shared memory and the continuing sharing of these memories, that is, the oral traditions that bound them together as one. SB’s second point merges into his third, on the collective and the individual. On this point I recognize the importance of the case made by Maurice Halbwachs and others on the creative character of ‘social memory’.18 I will get back what you give, so smile’. I remember that not because I memorized it. Rather, the slogan made such an impact on me that it became part of my philosophy of life ever since I ﬁrst read it. 18. M. Halbwachs, On Collective Memory (ed. L. A. Coser; Chicago: University of Chicago, 1992), incorporating ‘The Social Frameworks of Memory’ (1952); see also particularly J. Fentress and C. Wickham, Social Memory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992).

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. 482 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) want to follow this up in the second volume of my Christianity in the Making, where the formation of Christian communities will inevitably be a major concern including the continuing impact of the Jesus tradition. In JR, however, my principal focus was on the beginning of the process, where it may be more historically realistic to speak of disciple groups than of churches. SB’s main point of critique on this subject (pp. 464-67), however, is that I have not given enough weight to the role of the individual and that to speak of collective or corporate memory ‘empties it of a distinctive meaning’ (p. 464). I find this critique somewhat puzzling. For on the one hand, I have no desire to play down the role of individuals in the process. I may not have given them the emphasis and attention that SB thinks necessary, but I do emphasize the role of teachers, of ‘apostolic custodians’ and church-founding apostles, I stress not least the function of Jesus’ disciples generating tradition by sharing their personal (eyewitness) experiences, and I envisage assemblies dependent on such individuals and ‘senior disciples’ telling again particular elements of the Jesus tradition.19 But on the other hand, it is not really possible to speak of tradition except as community tradition.20 Of course it is true that talk of a community remembering something from a past that no single member of the community experienced personally is an extended use of ‘remembering’. But Christians, accus- tomed to celebrating the Lord’s Supper ‘in remembrance’ of Jesus should have no problem with this extended usage. As a Jewish family celebrating the Passover ‘remembers’ the first Passover in first person (‘we’) terms, so a celebration of the living character of the tradition that bound the first churches together can quite adequately be spoken of as a ‘remembering’, without misleading or falsifying. Again, I have no wish to deny the importance of eyewitnesses for Papias and Irenaeus (p. 466). But again I insist that my focus in JR is on the beginnings of the traditioning process, where shared memory and the sharing of these memories (retelling of the shared tradition) must have been fundamental to the process. Of course, I say again, such an emphasis in no way denies or downplays the initiating and continuing input of significant individuals from their personal experience of and with Jesus: the shared

19. Jesus Remembered, pp. 176-81, 186, 239-40. 20. See further my ‘Altering the Default Setting: Re-envisaging the Early Trans- mission of the Jesus Tradition’, NTS 49 (2003), pp. 139-75 (here pp. 151-53). As Fentress and Wickham observe, an individual’s memory becomes ‘social’ when he/she talks about it, shares it with others (Social Memory, pp. ix-x).

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. DUNN History, Memory and Eyewitnesses 483 memories were those of eyewitnesses! But the initial growth of Christianity would quickly have outpaced the capacity of the original disciples (not just the twelve) to maintain a presence at each new church. We can hardly envisage early churches wholly unable to draw upon the teaching and stories of Jesus unless and until an eyewitness was actually present. To hypothesize that communication of and reﬂection on the Jesus tradition was the sole preserve of those who had accompanied Jesus from the baptism of John onwards (Acts 1.21-22) is simply unrealistic, in terms both of Christianity’s growth and of the enduring character of the Jesus tradition.21 As I indicated in my critique of SB in JR,22 it is precisely his lack of attention to the fact of a common shared oral tradition known and rehearsed in the early Christian communities that I see as a major weakness of his own treatment.23 I simply do not believe that Peter, Mary of Magdala and the like stored up many memories of Jesus’ mission, which were only jerked into remembrance by ‘oral history’ inquiries of a Luke or a Matthew.

21. This was also where my questionings begin of the important alternative to Bultmann offered by Birger Gerhardsson, Memory and Manuscript: Oral Tradition and Written Transmission in Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity (Lund: Gleerup, 1961, 1998). His suggestion of ‘a fixed, distinct tradition from, and about, Jesus’ (p. 335) taught by Jesus through memorization (p. 328), and thus passed on to the earliest churches, did not seem to me to take full enough account of the flexibility of the tradition as it still appears in the Gospels, which I judge to reflect in part at least the many retellings of many different tradents; though I am happy to acknowledge at once that the flexibility which Gerhardsson insists is true also of his hypothesis (see his further contributions on the subject listed in Jesus Remembered, p. 197 n.129) means that the two hypotheses (Bailey’s ‘informal, controlled tradition’ and Gerhardsson’s ‘formal, controlled tradition’) draw much closer than initially seemed to be the case. 22. SB charges me with denying the importance of the insights of the oral history approach (p. 463). I dispute that reading: in fact I draw on SB’s insights at several points later in JR; my strictures at Jesus Remembered, pp. 198-99 n. 138, 244 n. 284 were focused entirely on SB’s failure to take any account of the oral tradition behind the Gospels—all of it, of course, derived more or less from eye-witness disciples (that is integral to my own thesis!), but all of it reflecting in greater or less degree an oral- traditioning process. 23. S. Byrskog, Story as History—History as Story: The Gospel Tradition in the Context of Ancient Oral History (WUNT, 123; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000). Fentress and Wickham also observe that oral historians prefer ‘to treat memory as a set of documents that happen to be in people’s heads rather than in the Public Records Office’, and warn against ‘a danger of reification’ (Social Memory, pp. 1-8 [here p. 2]). The concern is similar to mine on the dangers of objectifying historical ‘facts’ and of treating oral tradition as equivalent to sequential edition(s) of a literary text.

They had already fed these memories into the living tradition of the churches, as major contributory elements in the forming and shaping of that tradition. No doubt other memories were brought to the surface by inquiries of a Luke or a Matthew, but these would be supplementary to what was already known and performed in the various assemblies week by week. I guess the same was true of Papias and Irenaeus. Their high evaluation of the ‘living voice’ can hardly be taken as a denial that they knew the Gospel traditions or as suggesting that they in any way denigrated the information provided by the Gospels. After all, it is precisely Papias who tells us about the origins of both Mark’s and Matthew’s Gospels (Eusebius, HE 3.39.15- 16),24 and Irenaeus whose defence of the fourfold Gospel was decisive in determining the boundaries of the canonical Gospels (Irenaeus, Haer. 3.11.11).25 I see no difﬁculty, then, in merging the insights of oral tradition as community tradition and recognition of the importance of individual eyewitnesses in providing, contributing and in at least some measure helping to control the interpretation given to that tradition. Church-founding apostles would have provided a foundational layer of tradition for the churches they founded; Paul no doubt was following an already established practice in this (e.g. 1 Cor. 11.2, 23; Col. 2.6-7; 1 Thess. 4.1). Original disciples of Jesus would of course have contributed crucial recollection and witness in local assemblies to which they belonged. Visits of apostles and highly respected disciples would have been major events in the lives of further-

24. Mark wrote his Gospel as an account/reminder (hupomnƝma) of the teaching Peter had given verbally (HE 2.15.1-2). 25. R. Bauckham, ‘The Eyewitnesses and the Gospel Tradition’, Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 1 (2003), pp. 28-60 (also cited by SB, p. 467 n.11), deduces quite fairly from Papias that ‘oral traditions of the words and deeds of Jesus were attached to speciﬁc named eyewitnesses’; but then he draws the further inference that ‘this speaks decisively against the old form-critical assumption’ that eyewitness origins of the Gospel traditions would have been ‘lost in the anonymity of collective transmission’ (p. 35; see the whole section, pp. 31-44). He has apparently forgotten that the Synoptic tradition is not attributed to named individuals, and that sayings of Jesus echoed or alluded to in Paul, James, 1 Peter, Didache etc. are not attributed even to Jesus (Jesus Remembered, pp. 182-83). Papias presumably regarded ‘the living voice’ as supplementary to the known Gospel tradition, and of course preferable (a living voice), especially by the time of Papias, to a now written tradition. It is not entirely helpful to thus play off the still ‘living voice’ of individual eyewitnesses against oral tradition becoming written Gospel; not an either-or but a both-and.

flung Palestinian congregations.26 Nor need the group settings for the celebration, transmission, reflection on and elaboration of the oral tradition be always envisaged in liturgical or worship terms. Small catechetical groups, what we today would call study groups, friends meeting over a meal, strategy or planning groups and so on—the occasions on which teachers rehearsed elements of the oral tradition would have been many and diverse. C.F.D. Moule, in a too much neglected work, provided a good survey of such factors.27 The interplay of individual and community must have had all the complexity of group dynamics. I press the argument perhaps more than necessary, since the issues are so important—and since it spills over into SB’s fourth point of debate. The second part of SB’s fourth point is his criticism of my failure to clarify the role of the Evangelists (pp. 467-68). Here again I find somewhat surprising SB’s apparent inability to envisage how the Evangelists presumably interacted with the communities whose tradition must have made up the bulk of their Gospels. What is the problem? Is it so hard to envisage an author/Evangelist familiar with tradition because he was part of a congregation that knew and celebrated that tradition—including the input from original disciples, local teachers and visiting apostles? We should hardly envisage Evangelists starting with a tabula rasa and having to gather material for their Gospels ‘from scratch’, by discovering it all for the first time through personal encounters/interviews with participants in events fifty years earlier, should we? That each did so to some extent at least is entirely feasible; one thinks particularly of some of the so-called M and L material in Matthew and Luke. But to suggest that this was the chief means of gathering Jesus tradition, or the way in which the bulk of the Jesus tradition was gathered by Matthew and Luke, is unrealistic in my view.

26. Acts 9.32-43 presumably gives us some inkling of the sort of thing I have in mind. Worth noting is that Luke can represent Peter’s sermon to the God-fearing Cornelius beginning, ‘You know the message he [God] sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ...’ (10.36). 27. C.F.D. Moule, The Birth of the New Testament (London: Black, 3rd edn, 1981). This was why I hesitated to deﬁne oral tradition simply in terms of ‘transmission’ (SB, p. 462; Jesus Remembered, p. 203). I certainly do not want to imply (nor did I do so) that ‘there was no such thing as—or only a minimum of—actual transmission of the Jesus tradition’ (SB, p. 470). I ﬁnd the inference almost ludicrous! Of course the traditioning process included transmission; transmission was certainly a major part of the task of apostles and teachers. But we should not ignore the implication given us in the Synoptic tradition itself, that this was material much mulled over and rehearsed in the very early Christian assemblies.

Above all it ignores the larger amount of shared material common to the three Synoptics, which, if I am correct, is much more readily explained in terms of oral tradition shared across churches, rather than as, say, Matthew working in solitary authorial isolation drawing his material exclusively from written documents (Mark and Q).28 I have already dealt with the main thrust of SB’s fifth point (pp. 468-70) in my response to BH. To reiterate briefly: I have no wish to deny at least a degree of selectivity and creativity in the process of remembering Jesus. But that does not affect my two main arguments, regarding (a) the transformative impact of Jesus on his first disciples, (b) as evidenced in the character of the Jesus tradition in its enduring forms. For example, in JR I note that the Galilean and non-passion character of so much of the Q material is best explained as a reflection of the Galilean and pre-passion mission of Jesus.29 Again, the parable of the two houses (Mt. 7.24-27/Lk. 6.47-49) makes much better sense as a memory of the emphasis Jesus put on his teaching; it is less likely that a post-Easter formulation would envisage the ‘sure foundation’ only in terms of Jesus’ pre-Easter teaching. Or again, the Q cluster of discipleship sayings (Mt. 8.19-22/Lk. 9.57-62) is best explained as drawn from a pre-Easter tradition, in contrast to the Markan group (Mk 8.34-38 pars.), heavily marked as they are (in contrast) by the lead saying on ‘taking up the cross’ (8.34 pars.). Finally, I readily accept that in JR I have not given sufficient attention to the rhetoric of oral performance. This again is principally due to the tightness of my focus on the beginning of the process of oral traditioning and on the crucial character of the transformative impact of Jesus’ mission—crucial as enabling us both to discern the clear outlines of the one who made the impact (my main concern), but also to appreciate better the way in which the transformative impact translated or mapped into the stabilities of the oral tradition. I will have to devote further attention to the latter aspect in volume 2 of Christianity in the Making, at which time it will be essential to pay closer attention to the rhetoric of the traditioning process, particularly as Christianity and its tradition began to spread more widely through the Hellenistic world. But I was never in doubt that performance of oral tradition must have involved rhetorical technique, and took it more for granted than was probably wise. For me it was subsumed within the

28. See further my ‘Altering the Default Setting’, particularly pp. 170-72. 29. Jesus Remembered, p. 159 n. 95.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. DUNN History, Memory and Eyewitnesses 487 recognition of the flexibility and variability of the tradition-in-performance, which I hope I have emphasized sufficiently. At the same time, however, I would not want that acknowledgment to detract from my other main emphasis as I envisage the traditioning process: that is, the emphasis also on the stabilities of what were probably judged key elements within individual traditions. Here I repeat: my central concern has always been to make best sense of the character of the Jesus tradition as we still have it in the Synoptic Gospels. Central to my attempt to offer a ‘new perspective’ on Jesus is the conviction that the best explanation is to be found in the transformative impact of Jesus’ mission as from the beginning verbalized by the first disciples in the oral tradition, rehearsed by them and others in and through the early disciple groups and earliest churches, and subsequently taken up in fresh (now) literary performance by the Evangelists.

Compleat History of the Resurrection: A Dialogue with N.T. Wright

Markus Bockmuehl

Faculty of Divinity, Cambridge CB3 9BS [email protected]

Tom Wright is not one to do things by halves. His is the high-octane, Grand Unified Theory approach to New Testament studies. Where lesser mortals may acquiesce in losing the wood for the exegetical trees, N.T. Wright deals in inter-galactic ecosystems—without neglecting in the process to footnote a surprising number of trees. His history-cum-theology of Chris- tian origins is now proposed to run to at least five volumes, of which The Resurrection of the Son of God (RSG) is the third and most recent.1 The project’s ambitions are expanding at a breathtaking rate: this latest instal- ment of 800 pages and half a million words had been planned as a 70-page conclusion to Jesus and the Victory of God (henceforth JVG)2 until the closing stages of that previous volume. The resulting tome, ironically, is 10 percent longer than its predecessor, which in turn dwarfed the first, most comprehensively titled volume of the series (The New Testament and the People of God = NTPG3). Readers with doctorates may remember toss- ing on their beds in sleepless dread of an oral examination to be conducted in the spirit of Mt. 12.36-37. But half a dozen Cambridge dissertations, bound end to end, still could not fill a volume of this size without exceeding their combined word limit. Tom Wright is not one to do things by halves. As an embarrassingly slow and distracted reader (and not for that reason alone a disciple of Callimachus’s maxim me/ga bibli/on me/ga kako&n), this reviewer tends to reach swiftly for the smelling salts whenever faced with

1. N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God, 3; London: SPCK, 2003). 2. London: SPCK, 1996. 3. London: SPCK, 1992.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004, The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX and 15 East 26th Street, Suite 1703, New York, NY 10010, USA. 490 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) grands projets of this sort. Yet after trudging through these 800 pages with the help of double espressos and other liquids suitably fit to raise the dead, I must acknowledge that I found this a remarkably engaging work of scholarship, which communicates in consistently winsome and persuasive terms not only most of what I knew already, but a good deal more besides. An inescapably morbid part of the reviewer’s brief is to find fault; and I shall get round to some of that in due course. But in the face of a work of this magnitude we do well to be reminded of Brendan Behan’s famous quip about the critic being like the eunuch in a harem… The present work is fresh and intellectually captivating. Whether because of its subject matter or because of extensive pre-publication road testing (pp. xv-xvi), Wright’s case here does not depend, in precariously domino- like contingency, on a few high-profile theories that have over the years been widely questioned and prone to caricature. Among these have been a Palestinian Judaism oppressed by its general sense of continuing exile, a gospel eschatology overwhelmingly focused on the year 70, or Jesus of Nazareth’s grand self-assertion as the definitive replacement of Jerusalem, Temple and all that stood for Israel. These familiar theories do indeed surface, as does the somewhat idiosyncratic non-capitalization of ‘god’ and ‘lord’. But rather less of the argument seems to rest on them; and RSG is on the whole much less vulnerable to flippant dismissal by critics for a single favourite methodological bête noire (such as that it fails to render an account of the synoptic problem or of authenticity in the sayings tradition, as was occasionally said about JVG). Knee-jerk criticisms of Wright’s earlier theories will find surprisingly little leverage in this clear and vigorous case, conceived, in deliberate contrast to its predecessors, as ‘essen- tially a simple monograph with a single line of thought’ (p. xvii). To be sure, we still have here the self-professed ‘historian’—a term that is used emphatically throughout and relies largely on the ‘critical realism’ outlined in volume 1 of the series (cf. pp. 12-23). We shall return to the question of historical method a little later; those prepared to hold methodological prissiness in abeyance and press on with the argument will find that swashbuckling critical adventure soon ensues. One need not follow Tom Wright very far into the scholarly woods to find the customary rhetorical arsenal of shooting, cutting and thrusting imple- ments once again deployed to entertaining effect in a relentlessly didactic range of bons mots and finger-wagging reprimands. An ancient writer’s sense that he need not provide additional illustrations of his view merits an approving nod (‘quite so’, p. 54 n. 126); a modern author fondly imagin-

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. BOCKMUEHL Compleat History of the Resurrection 491 ing a lacuna in scholarship is brought down to earth with a bump (‘I think it is he who has missed the point’, cf. p. 41 n. 53); another prominent writer is found to ‘agree with the wicked in making an alliance with death’ (p. 168). Whether deserved or not, such put-downs reassuringly conﬁrm that all this is vintage ‘Wright Stuff’.

The Argument: Bodily Life after Life after Death

Wright divides his task logically into five parts. These begin with (1) ancient pagan, Old Testament and post-biblical Jewish views of life after death, before turning to the resurrection (2) in Paul and (3) in other early Christian writings of the New Testament and the second century. Only then does the argument turn to (4) the interpretation of the actual Easter narratives in the Gospels—as a way of ensuring that they are understood in the context of Jewish and Christian resurrection belief as a whole. The concluding part (5) then devotes the last 50 pages to ‘Belief, Event and Meaning’. Chapter 1 (pp. 1-31) deftly and robustly dispels the widely held notion that the resurrection is not an appropriate object of historical inquiry— whether it be deemed inaccessible in principle or merely in the absence of evidence, and whether such comprehensively sceptical views are themselves held for theological or for historical reasons. This is a necessary and in my view wholly justified tour de force, even if I would differ in points of detail or emphasis: to declare the historical dimensions of the resurrection a priori inaccessible or irrelevant can only be seen as obscu- rantism, whether its motivations be of the liberal, sceptical or fideistic sort. Chapter 2 is a well-researched, wide-ranging and interesting survey of diverse ancient Greek and Roman views about life after death. The possible options, from murky subsistence in Hades through a variety of disembodied states to transmigrations and apotheoses, clearly (and in my view adequately) support Wright’s conclusion: whatever gloomy or sanguine view ancient pagans may have had of the soul’s state after death, resurrection—in the sense of genuine bodily life after genuine bodily death—was simply ‘not an option’ (pp. 60, 76, 83). Not least by comparison with Orpheus and Eurydice, Alcestis’s return from the underworld is a rare exception. The Graeco-Roman ‘background’ in this case is no background to the early Christian view at all. Wright is particularly insightful on the theme of merely apparent death (Scheintod, pp. 68-76), illustrated in texts like Chariton’s novella Callirhoë, whose eponymous heroine emerges from the tomb to

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. 492 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) resume her earthly life. We learn that Scheintod accounts appear for some reason to have proliferated from the mid-first century onwards. (In the absence of modern medicine they were surprisingly common well into the nineteenth century.) By contrast, the chapter seems a good deal vaguer and less focused on the viewpoint of Socrates (pp. 51-53). Given the book’s stated historical ambitions, this survey surprisingly lacks a chronological frame of reference or development. Two similarly topical chapters on the Jewish background follow under the title ‘Time to Wake Up’. In the Old Testament (pp. 85-128), the most important constant factor is seen to be YHWH himself, both as Creator and in his covenant with Israel. It is against this background that Dan. 12 follows logically on the prophetic tradition of Hosea, Isaiah and Ezekiel in its hope of new life for Israel’s dead. The chapter’s implied development is well understood and largely uncontroversial. There is therefore a natural sequence into the chapter on post-biblical Judaism (pp. 129-206). Wright wisely allows for a wide spectrum of Second Temple Jewish opinion, all the way from ‘aristocratic’ Sadducean denials via immortality of the souls of the blessed (Philo, 4 Maccabees) to definite bodily resurrection. Some texts combine both of the latter two viewpoints, but the bulk of the chapter is devoted to what he argues is the clear majority position, viz. texts that favour resurrection. Among these, somewhat controversially, is the book of Wisdom, which is squeezed a good deal harder than by most commentators—including M. Gilbert or E. Puech, who are cited in support. (A few pages earlier, by contrast, another author was praised for his realization that Pseudo-Phocylides ‘se peut contenter d’allusions’, p. 157 n. 108.) Along with assurances about sth/setai in Wis. 5.1 as ‘safely’ denoting resurrection (p. 171) or the ‘definite possibility’ that Josephus’s Essenes believed in bodily resurrection (p. 186), such moves from modern critical imaginings to ancient authorial intentions (so explicitly p. 174) are at times close to a sleight of hand. But even if (like the reviewer) one is inclined in a number of these cases to agree with Wright, his argument that ‘most Jews of this period hoped for resurrection’ (p. 205) could be strengthened by engaging a little more seriously with mixed or discordant evidence, for example in funerary inscriptions. Wright then includes a brief treatment of Qumran that largely follows E. Puech (but without distinguishing sufficiently between sectarian and non-sectarian views). There is also a somewhat perfunctory survey of rabbinic and Targumic sources that remains vague on dates (p. 195 n. 283) and cites none of the specialist literature of the last two decades. Without

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. BOCKMUEHL Compleat History of the Resurrection 493 detriment to the argument, it might have been possible to cede a little more ground to the view that some early rabbinic authorities balanced two logically incompatible views: no later than the third century, belief in bodily resurrection could co-exist with entry at death into the Garden of Eden, a place where ‘the righteous sit in glory with crowns on their heads and feast upon the splendour of the Shekhinah’.4 Another suggestion is one to which we shall return below: the laudable range of cited sources might have been complemented by some more explicit discussion of how the key Old Testament passages were in fact read in the first century. Never- theless, Wright’s conclusion is unquestionably sound and vitally important: resurrection was ‘life after “life after death”’ rather than a mere redescrip- tion of death; it was a metaphor that had ‘become literal’ (p. 202) and affirmed concrete embodied life after embodied death. If part 1 may have seemed to some tastes a little rushed, part 2 on Paul makes up for this impression by an exhaustive treatment of the entire canonical Pauline corpus, including an extended section on 1–2 Corinthians in general and in particular (pp. 277-311; pp. 312-74 on 1 Cor. 15 and 2 Cor. 4.7–5.10) and followed by a separate chapter on Paul’s encounter with the risen Jesus in the letters (Gal. 1.11-17; 1 Cor. 9.1; 15.8-11; 2 Cor. 4.6; 2 Cor. 12.1-4) and in Acts. As Wright notes (pp. 209-10), the diversity of opinion attested in Judaism surprisingly did not carry over into early Christian beliefs; nor did such a spectrum develop subsequently (except of course in ‘gnostic’ circles, which are not discussed until pp. 534-51). What was affirmed about Jesus was not ‘perceived presence’ or even ‘exalted status’, but bodily resurrection. It is true that one finds here the familiar profile of Wright’s reading of Paul, which in this volume is (perhaps understandably) not defended in detail: metaphorical reading of parousia texts like 1 Thess. 4.16-17 and 1 Cor. 15.51-52; pi/stij Xristou~ as a subjective genitive; the ubiquity of ‘story’ and the end of exile, and so on. Even allowing for disagreement on some of these and other matters, the exposition struck me as mostly sound and unobjectionable. Despite Paul’s relative silence about the actual course and nature of the events on Easter Sunday, Wright correctly interprets the apostle’s understanding of their significance in a framework of bodily resurrection. A few nagging questions remain insufficiently addressed, such as why Galatians says so little on the resurrection—the near silence of the

4. ARN A 1 (on Exod. 24.11, ed. Schechter, p. 5); also attributed famously to Rab (third century) in b. Ber. 17a, and later developed by Maimonides; cf. similarly Tanh. Exod. Pequdey 3.

Pastorals, by contrast, is cited (though not adopted) as a possible argument against authenticity. Absent resurrection language in Phil. 2.9-11 is a similar old chestnut that could have benefited from a slightly less oblique engagement (and without necessarily requiring much additional space). Here, as elsewhere, I wondered if in the interests of historicity one might usefully tone down, or at least render more precise, the recurring idea that belief in the resurrection constituted a frontal threat to the imperial cult. As Seneca, among others, humorously illustrates, during Paul’s lifetime both the public face of that cult and its supporting ideology were perhaps less ubiquitous and totalitarian than much recent New Testament scholarship has tended to suppose. Even the early church’s cultured despisers, from Acts 17.18, 32 to Celsus and beyond, treated the resurrection claim as religiously silly and gullible rather than as politically serious or men- acing. In the uncharacteristically cluttered conclusion to this first Pauline chapter I tripped over the assertion that for Paul the story of Israel ‘comes to a shocking but satisfying completion in Jesus as the crucified and risen Messiah’ (p. 274, my italics): without a measure of qualification or precision, that conclusion is bound to strike some readers as reminiscent of replacement theologies in which the New Covenant has no further need for a covenant with the Jews.5 Rightly or wrongly, Wright is widely believed to subscribe to a version of this view, which of course has ample patristic precedent in writers like Origen, Cyril and Eusebius. It is undoubt- edly the case that even a mega biblion must leave some things unsaid and refer readers to things said elsewhere. While allowing for that, even warmly sympathetic readers may wonder if there is not in Romans and elsewhere scope for a Pauline interpretation of the resurrection as Israel’s story proleptically (and indeed ‘shockingly’) re-affirmed and fulfilled, rather than satisfactorily completed. Future discussion of this topic might profitably expose this position more explicitly in relation to mainstream, orthodox interpreters who take a different view.6

5. E.g. on Rom. 11.25-32 in The Climax of the Covenant (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1991), pp. 250-51 and passim; cf. also Wright’s commentary in The New Interpreter’s Bible, X (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2002). 6. One thinks of seminal expositions like that of Karl Barth (e.g. CD II/2, pp. 286- 87), or for that matter of Pope John Paul II’s celebrated remarks about the permanence of the covenant with Israel during his historic visit to Rome’s synagogue in 1986 (reproduced, e.g., in the 2002 Vatican document The Jewish People and their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible, pp. 196-97).

Wright’s handling of the Corinthian correspondence is particularly clear and well argued, even if it sides somewhat summarily with R.B. Hays against A.C. Thiselton’s renewed case for a Corinthian problem of ‘over- realized’ eschatology (p. 279). The core of the argument takes shape in the 62 pages on 1 Cor. 15 and 2 Cor. 4–5. Here Wright carefully demonstrates that Paul sticks uncompromisingly with his Pharisaic background in affirming bodily resurrection in general—and the bodily resurrection of Jesus in particular. The body that is raised differs in some significant ways from that which dies, but even as pneumatiko&n it remains emphatically a body. The apostle can indeed use the language metaphorically, but only in relation to events of the Christian life and ‘return from exile’—which is in keeping with the Old Testament and in no way amounts to a ‘spiritual- ization’ of the resurrection. Wright shows that Paul does change his mind between 1 and 2 Corinthians, but only on the perspectival question of whether he himself would remain alive until the new age was fully realized. There is certainly no hint of creeping Platonism. Even the passages about his own encounter with the risen Jesus in the letters and Acts are found to be compatible with this view of resurrection: unlike in 2 Cor. 12, Paul’s ‘seeing’ there is not a vision. Next we find 180 pages on the non-Pauline texts, beginning with the Gospels but at this stage excluding their resurrection narratives (for the reason given earlier). As might be expected from JVG, attention to ‘Q’ or any other hypothesis of Gospel origins remains fairly marginal—p. 434 points out that even though ‘Q’ (if it existed) had no resurrection narrative, Matthew evidently had no trouble incorporating it in a theology to which resurrection is vital. Nor indeed is there much discussion (beyond that offered in JVG, cf. p. 409 n. 30) about the authenticity and meaning of Jesus’ predictions of both suffering and vindication—though these are rightly seen as central to the pre-Easter ministry. Within the chosen param- eters, Wright offers a competent survey of all the standard texts. Given Wright’s subsequent emphatic conviction that no Jew could have expected an individual rather than a general resurrection (e.g. pp. 695, 700 and passim), his relatively thin treatment of Herod’s reaction to Jesus as the Baptist redivivus seems the more surprising. The discussion of John’s Gospel is an improvement on JVG, whose relative silence in this department reviewers repeatedly faulted. Wright offers a bracing and rapid tour of the major passages, which are found to offer strong confirmation of the centrality of resurrection belief along Pharisaic lines. While bracketing out questions of historicity (p. 447),

Wright offers some unusual interpretations en route to this conclusion. Two examples may suffice. First, Jesus’ anticipatory thanksgiving at the tomb of Lazarus (11.41) is offered because, despite Martha’s assurances to the contrary, even by the fourth day ‘there was no smell’: Jesus’ apparent prayer ‘for Lazarus to remain uncorrupt’ (?) has been answered, and all that remains is to summon him out and send him on his way (p. 443). I came away wondering about the implications for the Fourth Evangelist: should we believe him to be hedging his bets about how dead Lazarus was in the first place, and (despite 11.23-26) about how relevant this story is for his understanding of resurrection? Secondly, Wright’s familiar reluctance to find a ‘second coming’ in the Gospel texts resurfaces in relation to Jn 14.2-3: the monh/ which Jesus goes to prepare for the disciples is here not an enduring abode in his Father’s heavenly home (as the Fathers since the second century consistently thought), but merely a temporary repose in which souls are kept until their eventual resurrection. Although intriguing, Wright’s interpretation here seems difficult to square either with the ancient reception of this passage or with the explicit statement in 14.3 that the purpose of Jesus’ ‘coming again’ is to take the disciples with him to be where he is—that is, with the Father (14.2, 12). The New Testament survey ends with treatments of Acts, Hebrews, the Catholic Epistles and Revelation, and summarizes the overall biblical view of the resurrection body as consistently ‘transphysical’ (p. 477) rather than non-bodily or spiritual. Part 3 then concludes with a rapid tour of key second- and third-century Christian texts:7 the Apostolic Fathers, some Christian Apocrypha and apologists; theologians like Tertullian, Irenaeus, Hippolytus and Origen; early Syrian Christianity; and finally, by way of contrast, the Gospel of Thomas and the Nag Hammadi literature with its deconcretization of resurrection. Gnosticism interpreted resurrection outside the mainstream framework of creation and new creation, future judgment, and relativization of secular authorities (‘which Roman Emperor

7. Not perhaps ‘the entire corpus’, pace p. 681: absent and arguably relevant second-century resurrection texts include the writings of Clement of Alexandria, Aristides’ Apology, the Diatessaron, the Acts of Peter and Sib. Or. 6–8 (except p. 580 n. 95, which concerns the cross). Although more difﬁcult to date, some martyrs’ Acts other than Polycarp’s (p. 487) might have been of interest. Second and third-century epitaphs and catacomb art followed not far behind, some of them placed deliberately near the venerated tombs of the apostles and martyrs. Arguably T. Levi 18.3-4 and T. Benj. 10.6-9 also belong more clearly in this section than in that on Judaism (p. 159).

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. BOCKMUEHL Compleat History of the Resurrection 497 would persecute anyone for reading the Gospel of Thomas?’ pp. 549-50). The possibility that such ‘spiritualizing’ eschatology could predate Thomas might be worth exploring further.8 After highlighting the extent to which the Lordship and Messiahship of Jesus are in the New Testament dependent on an articulate belief in his resurrection, Wright turns to the New Testament’s resurrection narratives themselves (part 4). Drawing out indications of historical verisimilitude (including the role of women), while allowing for the difficulties raised by stories like that of the risen saints in Mt. 27.51-53, he shows the evangelists’ convictions about both continuity and discontinuity of Jesus before and after the resurrection to be, contra many New Questers and the Jesus Seminar, entirely congruous with the Pauline texts examined earlier. The impression given in these accounts is that the disciples were neither religiously nor psychologically prepared for the events of Easter Sunday. Unlike the passion narratives, these texts evince no homiletical application to specific Old Testament typology (or for that matter to Christian eschatology). Once again the question of substantial continuity and subtle difference between the pre-Easter and the post-Easter Jesus is one of the key themes of the Gospels—as typified in stories like that of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Not just Matthew and Luke are adduced in support of this view, but Mark too (with 16.1-8 as well as a lost ending possibly reflected in Mt. 28.9-20) and even John. In their different ways, all four evangelists wrote what they wrote because they believed the events actually took place (p. 680). Part 5, finally, attempts to make some hermeneutical and historical sense out of the mass of evidence presented. This is in some sense where the rubber hits the road. Granted Wright’s exegetical conclusion that the early Christians were unanimous in affirming Jesus’ bodily resurrection, what can we say from a historical point of view about the factors that gave rise to this belief? Put together, Wright argues, the empty tomb and appearances form a necessary and sufficient condition for early Christian belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus (pp. 692-96). Neither cognitive dissonance theory nor metaphorical theories of divine presence (à la Bultmann, Schillebeeckx et al.) provide historically workable alternatives. No Chris- tian belief of this sort could have arisen if Jesus’ body had remained in the tomb. To speak of resurrection per se requires a self-involving judgment

8. E.g. in relation to Corinth, as mentioned above—and as raised again most recently by Todd E. Klutz, ‘Re-Reading 1 Corinthians after Rethinking “Gnosticism”’, JSNT 26.2 (2003), pp. 193-216.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. 498 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) of a kind not ordinarily expected of historians; but Wright presses on to suggest that an actual bodily resurrection provides not only a sufficient but in fact a necessary condition for the empty tomb and appearances—in the simple sense that ‘no other explanation could or would do’ (p. 717). This in turn, if true, raises the question of the ‘so what?’—to which, at the end of this maximum opus, Wright devotes just 19 pages. To the early Christians the reality of the resurrection confirmed that Jesus was indeed Lord and Son of God—hence the second part of the book’s title. Wright cites plausible ancient pagan and modern Jewish perspectives in allowing that the resurrection might well have been thought to carry a significantly different meaning from that which the apostolic church in fact attached to it. However, in terms of the questions it necessarily raises about the sub- version of Caesar’s Empire and the nature of Israel’s God, the resurrection does point in the direction of the kind of exalted Christology that did in fact develop. In this vein, the arrow has hit the sun. Or at any rate the sun’s reflection in the pool. The book closes with a list of abbreviations, a wide-ranging 34-page bibliography of primary and secondary sources, and three indexes. The preface indicated Wright’s desire to let the argument emerge from primary rather than secondary sources (p. xvii); and on a topic of this magnitude that seems well advised. At the same time, text and bibliography suggest that relatively little of the primary work in Jewish and patristic sources may have been based on standard critical editions in the original languages (though classical texts appear to fare better). Selective engagement with secondary literature seems inevitable in view of the subject, let alone the stated aims. Examples of this include a fair number of even major works referenced once or twice en passant, or not at all. Most of the extensive exegetical discussions rarely and inconsistently engage with commentaries. For the international influence of this book it could be of consequence that the majority of foreign-language titles are drawn from three or four multi- author volumes on the resurrection published within the last five years. But perhaps, before trotting out a pedantic list of omissions, we will do well once again to invoke Behan’s rule.

Three Questions

Leaving aside my earlier Eeyorish quibbles about length versus exhaustive- ness, what remains here is a volume of unmatched distinction on the subject. Regardless of one’s agreement or disagreement with the author,

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. BOCKMUEHL Compleat History of the Resurrection 499 this is a hugely accomplished and persuasive achievement. Indeed, it is in the nature of the case that comprehensiveness was needed in order effectively to ‘answer Epicurus’, as the Mishnah puts it (m. Abot 2.19). Multum in parvo it is not; but the book’s size does in fact permit a very clear line of argument, which is pursued with Wright’s trademark mix of competence, clarity and gusto. In the process we are presented with an almost encyclo- paedic reference work that covers the vast majority of pertinent primary sources in antiquity and demonstrates belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus to have been fundamental to every strand of New Testament and mainstream second-century Christianity (pace certain fondly held views of the importance of Thomas and Gnostic texts). There is quite simply no other book of this size and scope on the resurrection. That alone makes this new maximum opus well worth heaving home from Borders or the library. This is now the standard point of reference on the resurrection. As may have been gleaned from the summary I have given, my own response to Wright’s overall argument is one of agreement and appreciation, from which my few passing quibbles do not detract. Within that context of consent, I wish in the remaining space to highlight three queries for further discussion. They are more substantive in the sense that they do (or may well) raise signiﬁcant areas of interpretative divergence, but I cite them here in the genuine belief that to attend to them would strengthen Wright’s overall case. In ascending order of importance, they concern issues of exegesis, of history and of theology.

1. In the exegetical department there appears at times a curiously anti- quarian hermeneutical approach to the Old Testament, which is quite extensively read in historical vein to attest ancient Israelite belief. This is done from a conservative stance (assuming a real David, a second-century Daniel drawing on pre-Persian tradition including a ‘ﬁrmly’ eighth-century Hosea, and so on), but it takes for granted that a diachronic scholarly construct is the appropriate way to read the Old Testament. Appropriate, to be sure, for an ‘archaeological’ documentation of ancient Israelite religion; and I have no quibble here. But also appropriate, it seems to be implied here, for a reading of the Old Testament as the Bible of the New, and of all ﬁrst-century Jews and Christians. True, Wright’s Jewish chapter offers an important discussion of the Septuagint as vital witness to the increasingly resurrection-centred reception history of the biblical text; and Theodotion’s ‘recension’ brings this right up to the beginning of the Christian era. But in general there seems to be only an intermittent sense

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. 500 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) that the hermeneutical footprint of these Old Testament texts in the first century BCE may for purposes of this topic be far more definitive than what they might have meant in the eighth. In seeking to understand the contextual meaning of the resurrection of Jesus, it seems worth asking if the interpretative balance between the historical genesis of the Old Testament texts and their historical meaning in the late Second Temple period ought not to be roughly the opposite of that which Wright assumes. If this is correct, one might wish to assign rather more weight to the ways in which these texts in fact function in the LXX, in other ancient versions, in Philo, the Dead Sea Scrolls and other Jewish interpretations. Such hermeneutical accounting for the biblical resurrection hope’s Wirkungsgeschichte might make a difference, for example, to one of the most consistent props of Wright’s argument, viz. that nobody expected a messiah to be raised, or indeed any individual at all (pp. 205, 695, 700 and passim). This claim appears to fall down on a number of fronts. Most obviously, perhaps, Herod Antipas is said to have believed that Jesus represented a risen John the Baptist (Mk 6.16 parr.). While recognizing here ‘an exception to the general rule’ (p. 413), Wright is not at his strongest in discussing this passage. Of course we may believe that Antipas, like his father, was an insecure, power-mad and paranoid crank whose religion was no more than a convenient hotch-potch of syncretism and superstition. And yet it was evidently possible, however unusual, for a first-century Jew to think in terms of an individual being raised from the dead—raised ambiguously, perhaps, to a life that may or may not be understood as im- mortal, but ‘raised’ nonetheless. Isaiah promised that the dead would be raised (a)nasth/sontai oi9 nekroi/, kai\ e0gerqh/sontai, 26.19)—yet a proleptic h0ge/rqh is happily stipulated of John as of other dead people including Jairus’s daughter (Mt. 9.25) and the puzzling Matthaean saints (Mt. 27.52). Whatever one might think about the idiom and genre of these assertions (and that of Antipas is obviously reported as a delusion), the Gospel writers do not seem to single out any one of them as intrinsically ridiculous.9 In the claim of its surpassing eschatological finality, the resurrection of Jesus is

9. Even today, a tour of the internet or a visit to any Lubavitcher neighbourhood from Brooklyn via the world’s original Ghetto in Venice to the mystical city of Safed will easily illustrate how, ten years after his death, many of the followers of Rabbi Menahem Schneerson continue to regard him as Israel’s ‘King Messiah’ whose (individual) resurrection to continue his work is imminent. This analogy is dismissed rather too easily on pp. 25, 31 n. 75.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. BOCKMUEHL Compleat History of the Resurrection 501 not of course like any of these cases—and yet even here it might prove worthwhile to correlate and fine-tune the actual first-century meaning of biblical texts. Another, perhaps more powerfully influential illustration concerns the first-century hermeneutical weight of passages like Isa. 53 or Zech. 12 in Jewish sources and more generally in the context of a variety of traditions that envisage a suffering or dying Messiah. Indeed a whole chapter of the ancient Christian dialogue with Judaism depends on an argument that Scrip- ture itself foresaw two comings of the Messiah, first humble and then glorious—a point that would not be patently obvious from a diachronic reading of the Old Testament. And yet, as even Trypho’s response to Justin’s use of it may suggest, that argument could not have survived as long as it did if in the shared interpretative tradition there had been nothing to talk about. Might it be worth taking the exceptions to Wright’s Rule (no raised messiah) a little more forthrightly? The exceptions and their interpretative co-texts may ironically strengthen his case by serving to illustrate that, far from a freakish innovation, the apostolic church’s unique confession was entirely within the intelligible range of how Jews would read Scripture and messianic expectation in light of the facts (empty tomb, appearances) that had transpired. ‘He is risen indeed’: what if the first Christians believed this about the meaning of Easter Sunday because it really was what ‘Moses and all the prophets’ had said about the Messiah’s suffering and glory?

2. My second point for discussion concerns the remarkable epistemological optimism of Wright’s historical stance. This is perhaps of interest in two respects, one more general and the other concerned with the resurrection in particular. In the ﬁrst instance, whether rightly or wrongly, some of us come away wondering about the epistemology underlying the apparent implication of this and previous volumes: that Wright’s work, more than others before or besides, comes closest to telling it like it really was. For the sake of the argument, let us accept assurances of ‘irony’ in the author’s claims to be working sine ira et studio (p. 37 n. 31), or to be shooting arrows either at the sun or at least at its ‘true image’ in the pond (pp. 11, 23, 736-38). But this reviewer, at least, would still ﬁnd it helpful to know in which cheek he should envisage Wright’s tongue to be planted at this stage. Quite how, for example, do his historiographical aims and results differ in practical terms from those of, say, a Ranke or a Tacitus?10 While

10. Both of whom were, to be sure, far from the picture of the useful idiot in which

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. 502 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) classicists tend to recognize the latter’s notorious remark in Ann. 1.1.3 as ideologically motivated and self-serving (along with its complement quorum causas procul habeo), it is by no means universally recognized as ironic. As it stands, more than one reader may come away with the impression that Wright’s familiar theoretical crosshairs of standardized ‘worldview questions’, story-worlds and so forth seem here still to be poised in the robust confidence that this particular exercise will guide the critical- realist arrow reliably to its target, or at least nearer than it can get by any other means. (As and when his future writing permits, I would also still be interested in seeing Wright’s ‘critical realism’ articulated in more red- blooded engagement with contemporary writers on history and historiography; one thinks of John Lukacs, Saul Friedlander, Richard Evans, Jan Assmann and others.) A more immediately pertinent approach to this question is via the relationship between historiography and the resurrection. Wright is in my view entirely correct to reprimand the chorus of cultured despisers who either snidely or piously deny the very possibility, even the desirability, of saying anything of historical consequence about the resurrection. The well-aimed blow dealt here to fatuous and pseudo-intellectual scepticism about the meaning of Easter is more than welcome. Anyone still caught in the stifling rigor mortis of modernist critical assumptions will find here a breath of fresh air. And yet… For all the critical realist qualifications, is it finally true either to history or to theology that if only the historian’s tools are honed with sufficient care they will point unerringly to the Resurrection of the Son of God as the only possible conclusion, the only one that is both ‘necessary’ and ‘sufficient’ (as the Conclusion suggests)? For what is it that fundamentally sets apart the historical fruits of Wright’s ‘critical realism’ from that which is claimed with equal self-assurance by, say, John Hick? Can it really be a matter of sheer investigative brawn and persis- tence, of digging the archaeological dirt deeply enough and deploying our video cameras at sufficiently powerful zoom? Is there not a danger that to proceed in deliberate analogies of arrows hitting the target, or in Holmes-and-Watsonesque repartee with one’s readers (pp. 710-12), is to imply a sleuthing exercise that belies the epistemological stance that Scripture itself affirms as the only appropriate one? We may (indeed I think any honest reader must) grant the historicity of the empty tomb and the subsequent experiences of ‘visions, signs and

some postmodern scholarship likes to portray them as its methodological straw men.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. BOCKMUEHL Compleat History of the Resurrection 503 wonders’ befitting a messianic Passover (Deut. 26.8). And yet it remains the case, as Wright himself appears at one point to concede (p. 723), that the Christian interpretation of the historical phenomena is only one of a number of possible conclusions that an ancient or modern observer might draw—even one open to ‘self-involving’ or ‘self-committing’ judgments. As both the evangelists and their subsequent detractors readily knowledge, tombs might be empty for a number of reasons; so also transforming visions and religious experiences were known as the stock-in-trade of true prophets and superstitious charlatans alike. For the early Christians, to speak about the resurrection of Jesus was indeed in part to speak truthfully about history, as Wright so admirably demonstrates. But the New Testament writers at the same time repeatedly insist that the only access we have to that truth is through the apostolic testimony (a word not in Wright’s index): while the crucifixion was a matter of public record, the resurrection, qua resurrection, quite clearly was not. The events of both days were equally ‘factual’. But it is the apostles, and only they, who attest the resurrection (Acts 10.41-42; cf. Acts 1.22, 25; 1 Cor. 9.1; Jn 19.35; 21.24; 1 Jn 1.1-3). Even the Thomas episode is primarily concerned not with the nature of ‘the evidence’ (even though it confirms its trustworthiness), but really about his emphatic refusal to trust the apostolic testimony (‘unless [I see and touch him], I will not believe’, Jn 20.25, 27, 29).11 Rudolf Bultmann’s notorious misap- propriation of 2 Cor. 5.16 to support the notion of history’s irrelevance to faith has over the years encouraged much eisegetical mischief. But for all their insistence on the facticity of the resurrection, the early Christians never claimed that accessible empirical ‘events’ were intrinsically ‘necessary’ and ‘sufficient’ to establish that truth. Even accepting the legitimacy of his plea for historical inquiry over against history’s detractors (at Yale and elsewhere), in this respect Wright doth protest too much against the caution voiced by the likes of Hans Frei (pp. 21-23). Does it matter for an epistemology of history that the biblical story itself deliberately introduces the conclusion ‘He is not here, but has been raised’ not as deduction from ‘sufficient evidence’, but as angelic proclamation—which in turn leads to Eucharistic fellowship with the living Christ?

11. Cf. the reviewer’s ‘Resurrection’, in idem (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Jesus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 102-18.

3. Finally, a briefer and more tentative point, which is less a criticism than a question, and a request for ongoing discussion of a topic too long neglected. Wright here offers a refreshing tour de force against the idea of resurrection as ‘pie in the sky when you die’. And yet I wondered if this priority is not at times in danger of tipping out the eschatological baby with the spiritualizing bathwater. The belief that a believer will ‘go to heaven’ is certainly misguided when it abstracts from the hope for bodily resurrection; we are agreed on that. But in the absence of such foreshortening it has arguably an excellent pedigree not only in Jn 14.2-3, but in the effective history of passages like Lk. 23.43, Phil. 1.21, Rev. 7.9-10 and so on as read by Christians since antiquity (and none of which Wright discusses in any depth). Side by side with afﬁrmations that the body is ‘asleep’ until its resurrection are texts that speak of the departed saints as present with Christ in paradise or heaven; indeed passages like Col. 3.3, Eph. 2.6 or Heb. 12.22- 23 claim this proleptically for all believers even now. Granted that these texts do not subvert belief in a bodily resurrection, is there not a danger that the richness of the biblical hope will be equally short-changed by denying the image of a permanent abode before the throne of God and the Lamb (p. 471), or with Jesus in the ‘mansions’ he has prepared in his Father’s house (pp. 445-46)? What, if anything, should be the role of heaven and of participation in its divine fellowship within the Christian hope? The biblical and early Christian vision of a new heaven and a new earth foresees for the World to Come an end to the ancient chasm between transcendent heaven and fallen earth. This point is exempliﬁed in the important doctrine of the ascended Christ (rather too hastily discussed on pp. 654- 56): in the resurrection, embodied human existence is no longer incompatible with eternal life in the presence of God’s heavenly throne. That too is the vision of Rev. 21–22, as understood by Bernard of Cluny and countless others: Jerusalem the Golden, the heavenly city in which God himself dwells and wipes away every tear, embraces and subsumes the new earth. Here is the ‘sweet and blessed country, the home of God’s elect’.

I reiterate in closing that all three of these queries are raised in anticipation for further constructive discussion, within the context of warm gratitude and genuine admiration for a twenty-ﬁrst-century classic in scholarship on the Resurrection.

An Incompleat (but Grateful) Response to the Review by Markus Bockmuehl of The Resurrection of the Son of God

N.T. Wright

Auckland Castle, Co. Durham DL14 7NR [email protected]

I am grateful to Dr Bockmuehl for his generous and lively response, and to the Editor for the invitation to reply. Most of Dr Bockmuehl’s criticisms I cheerfully acknowledge. However, as he sees, if I had been able to do what he asks (more attention to some key texts, and so on) I would have incurred even greater grumbles about length. I remain impenitent about that, for the reason he alludes to as ‘answering Epicurus’. In the course of reading the current literature (all right, not as much in German as I might have done, but see above) I found a seemingly endless supply of bad arguments, mistaken exegesis, begging of questions, and so on. I realized that if I simply set out my own argument without dealing with it all I would inevitably seem, in turn, to be begging key questions. This applies particularly to Paul. Writers on the resurrection often go straight to 1 Cor. 15 (sometimes to 2 Cor. 4 and 5, too) and offer, as a quick reading of those texts, something that a reading of the whole correspondence, let alone the whole Pauline corpus, undermines. This battle had to be won, not by a quick frontal attack (it does not work; you meet bland reassertion), but by large-scale outﬂanking, so that when you get to the head-on engagement with key texts it takes place on the proper ground. No, I did not treat Plato and Socrates fully enough. Once I got into Platonism I realized that chapter 2 could explode into a whole further book, and…well, perhaps I do not need to explain why that was not a good idea. However, there is no serious doubt about the contours of Plato’s position. All I needed was to demonstrate that resurrection does not feature, and indeed (granted his worldview) could not have featured, among all the life-after-death options Plato considers.

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004, The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX and 15 East 26th Street, Suite 1703, New York, NY 10010, USA. 506 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004)

I am not so sure about Dr Bockmuehl’s puzzle over my exposition of the Old Testament. I thought it important at least to attempt a diachronic reading, not in order to suggest that that was how the early Christians read it but in order to lay out fairly and clearly the apparently quite different positions in different texts. (Synchronic treatments, in my experience, invite the charge of over-systematization.) In doing so I became particularly interested in a point that I am still waiting for someone to take up, namely that the idea of resurrection, when it occurs, is not so much a further development, beyond a general life-after-death hope such as may be found in some of the Psalms, and hence even further away from the (early?) belief in Sheol, but in a sense a reversion to the earlier view that the only sort of life that really counts is full, bodily life, with the (admittedly explosive) addition of the promise that this sort of life will be renewed. I do indeed think, and I am sorry if this was not clear, that what matters for the study of early Christianity is how the ancient scriptures were being read in the first century. That was why I gave space to the Septuagint, which (in whatever recension) was the scripture most early Christians knew; to apocalyptic books like 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra, which involve reinterpreta- tions of scripture (not least Daniel) under particular first-century conditions; to Josephus; and perhaps above all to the Wisdom of Solomon. Here again I was concerned by critical scholarship’s endless and apparently effortless repetition of what is demonstrably the wrong reading of Wisdom, and I am not sure that Dr Bockmuehl has quite represented what I was saying. I did not suggest that a single word in 5.1 ‘safely denotes resurrection’, but that the entire narrative of the first six chapters, read as a whole, runs like this: (a) the wicked kill the righteous and declare that death will be the end of them; (b) God, however, is looking after the currently dead righteous; (c) there will come a time when the wicked will be astonished because the righteous have not only come back again but are set in authority over nations and kingdoms; (d) the kings of the earth must therefore learn true wisdom, so that they do not behave as the wicked have done. This is then backed up, in the second half of the book, by a retelling of the Exodus, to demonstrate how God rescues his people and judges their persecutors. It is within this large-scale reading that the particular passages make the sense they do. Writer after writer makes the standard claim that Wisdom teaches immortality and therefore not resurrection, and then (a) ignores the larger argument and (b) wrongly assumes that these two (immortality and resurrection) are an either/or choice. As Jewish and Christian sources testify, belief in ultimate resurrection entails belief in

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. WRIGHT An Incompleat (but Grateful) Response 507 some kind of continuing disembodied life after death. Nobody until the Gnostics used ‘resurrection’ (as many do today) to denote the immediately post-mortem state. Wisdom thereby offers, too, an example of resurrection as a counter- imperial theme. (What matters here, by the way, is not simply cult, but ideology and rhetoric.) It is the story of the righteous martyrs coming back from the dead that confronts the rulers of the world with the need to find true wisdom. Likewise, the book of Daniel, for instance as re-read by 4 Ezra, announces the coming kingdom that will overthrow the pagan kingdoms. The dilettantes and greybeards of Athens may have scoffed at Paul’s idea of resurrection, but earlier in the same chapter (Acts 17.7) we find Paul charged with teaching disobedience to the imperial dogmas and saying that there is ‘another king, namely Jesus’. Once we read Phil. 2 and 3, 1 Thess. 4 and 5, and indeed Rom. 1.3-4 and 15.12 with imperial ideology and rhetoric in mind, it does indeed look as though, for Paul, the resurrection constitutes Jesus as the world’s true lord, before whom Caesar should tremble. It is perhaps significant that Dr Bockmuehl, in company with all other reviewers so far, has passed over in silence my quite full treatment of Jesus’ debate with the Sadducees—who, as is well known, denied the resurrection not because they were liberals, but because they were conservatives. I do think that Lazarus, like Jairus’s daughter and the widow’s son at Nain, was genuinely dead. However, the question of what we mean by ‘genuinely dead’ is harder to tie down than one might think. Many people in our own day have been pronounced dead, with neither breath nor pulse, for minutes or even hours, sometimes even to the point of a funeral service, and have then astonishingly revived, often with remarkable tales (whose interpretation is of course contested) of their ‘post-mortem’ experiences. We now call such events ‘near-death experiences’, as much for linguistic as for physiological reasons (since, when we say ‘death’, we usually think of finality). If we were to press medical opinion on the point, I suspect that many would say, ‘Yes, they really were dead’, while others might say ‘They only seemed to be dead’. Coming to Jn 11, Lazarus’s body had not begun to decay; I am convinced that is why John has emphasized Martha’s fear of the smell (v. 39). Truly dead but somehow kept from corruption: that, I reckon, is what John is inviting us to imagine. And that, I take it, is what he wants us to think about Jesus himself between Calvary and Easter. The little word monh/ѽ in Jn 14.2 has of course done sterling service, from

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. 508 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) early on in the tradition, as a reference to an ultimate heaven—though it is interesting that the passages cited in Lampe’s Patristic Lexicon begin with Clement of Alexandria. It is interesting, too, that the other patristic and classical meanings of the word include ‘hostel’ or ‘stopping place, marking the end of a day’s journey’, and, frequently, ‘distance between two stops, stage of a journey’. Usage alone cannot determine the question, and I take seriously Jesus’ promise to take his followers to the place where he is. But I also take seriously the larger context in John where (unless we adopt unwarranted redactional theses) a classic final resurrection is envisaged (not only 5.28-29 but also 6.39-40, 44 and 11.23-27). While we are on little but significant words, I suppose I was asking for trouble by using ‘completion’ in relation to the story of Israel—though, as Dr Bockmuehl realizes, this really belongs in a different discussion. I know the problem with ‘replacement’ or ‘supercessionist’ theologies; indeed, Rom. 9–11 can be read as the first polemic precisely against such a thing. Yet that is where we find the great story of Israel as told in the first century described as reaching its appointed te/loj with the Messiah. I am happy with ‘proleptically reaffirmed and fulfilled’ as a gloss on what I said, though that leaves open for another time what might be implied by ‘proleptically’. So to the final three questions. I wish I had taken more trouble with the point that Dr Bockmuehl probes so tellingly (the apparent exceptions to the rule that first-century Jews were not expecting a single individual to rise again in advance of the general resurrection). He agrees with me that Antipas’s reported comment can hardly be the basis of a whole theory. However, he pushes further than these apparent exceptions, and asks whether, after all, people at the time were expecting the Messiah himself to suffer and rise from the dead. I have argued elsewhere (against, e.g., John O’Neill) that they were not, and I think Mk 9.9-10 points in this direction, as do the resurrection narratives themselves, with the recurring (and, to the early church, embarrassing) motif of dismay, incredulity, wrong interpretations (‘It’s a ghost!’) and so on. If I can boldly summarize the argument in chapter 12 of Jesus and the Victory of God, first-century interpretations of Isa. 53 might either involve a Messiah (but not a suffering one) or a suffering and vindicated figure (but not a Messiah). Not before Jesus himself do we find these two fused into one. I do wonder (though this would need more teasing out) whether we need to distinguish, as perhaps only with hindsight we can, different kinds of coming back from the dead. Lazarus, Jairus’s daughter and the widow’s son would all have to die again, which the early Christians were quite

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. WRIGHT An Incompleat (but Grateful) Response 509 clear Jesus would not have to do. Even if Antipas really did think Jesus was John redivivus, and if we add the mention of Jesus as an ancient prophet ‘raised up’ (Lk. 9.19), we must I think assume that this (a) would be a way of speaking loosely about the spirit of the person in question coming to life again in a new body, more like a reincarnation than what later is seen as resurrection, (b) would not imply that this person (Jesus, in this case) would now never die again, and (c) would not at all imply that ‘the resurrection’, the final great reawakening, had thereby begun. I appreciate that this seems to introduce some grey areas into what may have seemed a fairly black-and-white issue, but I do not think my overall argument will thereby suffer. So to the question of historiography. I am not an ‘optimistic’ historian except when viewed against the scepticism of some postmodernists who have difficulty with any extra-linguistic world at all. I have little to add at the moment to the relevant parts of The New Testament and the People of God, though I want to develop the case further in the future. When I quoted Tacitus, it was to indicate that I am aware of my own context, history, affili- ations, predilections and so on, but that I still intend to tell the story as fairly and squarely as I can. I do not pretend to be objective but I do intend to engage in public discourse, open to question and challenge. I do not start out on a historical investigation convinced that I can solve it, even with sophisticated tools; it all depends on the state of the evidence. The point about ‘shooting arrows at the sun’, which those who have not read the book may not understand from Dr Bockmuehl’s allusions, was not about historiography per se, but about the attempt to use historiography to get at questions about God (which is what many have declared one would be doing if one were to write historically about the resurrection). In denying that, in an introductory chapter about which Dr Bockmuehl is enthusiastic, I was concerned rather to propose that, though historiography might not shoot an arrow at the sun itself (i.e. God), it might be able to shoot at a key place where many have seen (though not all have seen, and not all would be obliged to see) a remarkable reflection of God (Col. 1.15; Heb. 1.3; etc.). History can take us to the point where non-historical questions can be seen in a new light, and perhaps with a new urgency. The Thomas incident is not simply about his refusal to believe the apostolic testimony; it is also about different types of evidence. He wants to touch, and is invited to do so; he then sees and believes, and is told that it would have been better to believe without seeing. I take this both as affirming that believing the testimony is the best thing and as saying that

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. 510 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) nevertheless (as with the Word becoming flesh in the first place) Jesus condescends to offer evidence that goes more than half way to meet the sceptical challenges of the first, and perhaps the twenty-first, century. I see my whole book, in fact, as an address to those who in our own day have stood stubbornly with Thomas and have declined to believe the church’s witness. It is no doubt a very fine thing to say (not that Dr Bockmuehl does, but he will see the point) that you are above all this messy and inconse- quential historical argument, and prefer to shut your eyes and simply believe. But if Jesus himself invites Thomas to touch and see, the Christian historian may perhaps invite people, in the same spirit, to examine the historical evidence. What, finally, about ‘going to heaven when you die’? The New Testament is singularly uninterested in this question, and that should give pause to the many Christian traditions in which it is central. To put it crudely: of course God’s people go to heaven when they die, but that is not the end of the world. According to Rev. 21–22, there will be discontinuity as well as continuity, not only between the present and the future earth, but between the present heaven (Rev. 4–5 etc.) and the future one which will itself be fully integrated with the new earth. Jerusalem the Golden does indeed exist (as Paul knows in Gal. 4), but only when it comes down to earth will all things be made new. At that time, according to Rev. 22, the new Jerusalem does not ‘embrace and subsume the new earth’. It is the point from which the river of the water of life flows out to irrigate the new earth; and the leaves of the tree of life, growing on either bank of the river, will be for the healing of the nations. John the Seer is rightly concerned about the souls currently under the altar (6.9-11). But his ultimate concern, like Paul’s, is for the creator God, the one who wipes away all tears, to be all in all.

Book Reviews

Anthony C. THISELTON, The First Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text (NIGTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 2000). 1446 pp. ISBN 0802824498. $80.00.

This commentary is impressive, thorough and comprehensive. Through its 1446 pages (including indexes of subject and of modern and ancient authors) it discusses what the verses of 1 Corinthians might mean in their historical context, and also, more than any other commentary on 1 Corinthians in English, what they have meant for earlier interpreters from second-century Ignatius of Antioch to modern Pentecostals. The text of the commentary is divided into sections: each unit is introduced by a translation, a bibliography and often a more general remark on the ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ on the unit, its social-historical background, and what it might mean against this background; then a verse-for-verse discussion follows. Finally Thiselton sometimes gives an excursus on a theological topic implied in the passage (such as ‘Vice Lists, Catechesis, and the Homosexuality Debate’), or more generally on the ‘posthistory’ of the passage. Thiselton has thus structured the material in a user-friendly and ‘trans- parent’ way, but from the editorial side the layout and formatting could have been more accommodating. In the preface, Thiselton makes a disclaimer concerning the length of the commentary: he hopes that it is seen as a result of thoroughness rather than of obsessiveness with detail and lack of proportion and perspective. His hopes are confirmed with this reader at least, although there are also problems with Thiselton’s disclaimer: with reference to the disappointment often experienced when readers consult a scholarly commentary without finding what they are looking for, Thiselton aims to reflect ‘on every [sic] detail of the Greek text’ and on the ‘varied range of serious and responsible questions which readers of today will bring to the text’ (p. xvi). In my view this is an impossible aim, which does not work as a justification for the length of any book, because what are seen as ‘serious and responsible’ questions will necessarily vary with both interest and with the geographical and historical location of the reader. In the case of this book, it is easy to point out, for example, the relative lack of ‘serious and responsible questions’ from Latin America and modern Africa. The introductory com- parisons of the Corinthians with the ‘postmodern’ and Paul with the ‘rational’ explain Thiselton’s own understanding of what are ‘serious and responsible questions’ on 1 Corinthians. But as stated initially, the commentary carries its own weight and does not need any such further justifications. It is warmly welcomed as a thesaurus of interpretations of 1 Corinthians, and will be a very helpful source for anyone wishing to explore the

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004, The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX and 15 East 26th Street, Suite 1703, New York, NY 10010, USA. 512 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) history of its scholarly interpretation. From the modern period the commentary covers Euro-American historical-critical, theological, rhetorical and to a great extent also socio-historical interpretations of 1 Corinthians. From earlier periods the coverage is more sporadic, but Luther and Calvin are relatively frequently referred to, and Thiselton seems to have ‘vacuumed’ Early Christian writings for references to 1 Corinthians. The inclusion of pre-modern authors not only in the excursuses but also in the verse-for- verse exegesis is very refreshing: This way Thiselton gets across what seems to be one of his main concerns, namely that many of the ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ to 1 Corinthians have actually been around for a very, very long time, and can thus be assumed to be produced by ‘the text itself’. The weakness of the commentary has to do with the frequent mistakes in the references and bibliographical details, particularly in the references to books in other languages than English. The inaccuracies are so numerous that it is at times rather challenging to trace Thiselton’s sources and his readings of them. A few examples: in an introductory, select bibliography, Richard Horsley’s publications also include the New Documents series (in reality edited by Greg Horsley and others in Australia); there is a quote from Erasmus’s Church History (p. 427), and as if by a Freudian slip of the pen Bernadette Brooten’s ‘Zur Debatte über das Scheidungsrecht der jüdischen Frau’ has turned into ‘Zur Debutte über das Schneidungsrecht…’ (p. 522). Unfortunately, there are far too many such flaws to avoid mentioning, for they mean that the commentary must be used with caution in undergraduate courses. On the other hand, this reader reads these flaws as a reflection of the commentary’s long maturation process, which also is reflected on other levels and which makes it a great, and increasingly rare, pleasure to read. Its detailed, complex, multi-layered argument already makes this a ‘vintage’ commentary.

Jorunn Økland

Philip F. ESLER, Conﬂict and Identity in Romans: The Social Setting of Paul’s Letter (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003). 384 pp. ISBN 0800634357. $29.00.

Some recent attempts to provide fresh readings of Romans have relied on very specific (and disputable) reconstructions of the situation of the letter. The great strength of Esler’s reading is that it takes widely accepted starting-points—the presence of Greeks and Judeans (see below) in the Roman house-churches and the likelihood of tension between them—and uses theories about social identity to make these starting-points explain Paul’s rhetorical strategies across the whole of the letter. In his book on Galatians (Galatians [London: Routledge, 1998]), Esler used social identity theory to present Paul as defending in-group identity against the threat of members joining an out-group (‘Israelites’). For Romans, Esler moves to considering the dynamics of conflict within a group. He uses the concept of multiple identities. He argues that Paul’s strategy in the letter is to act as a group leader who resolves conflict by stressing the value of an identity that the group shares, over against identities (in this case, Greek and Judean) that divide the group. However, in Romans (in contrast to Galatians) Paul is far from denigrating these other identities: a conclusion of the study

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. Book Reviews 513 of groups is that a new, unifying group identity is most effectively presented in the context of affirming the identities of the sub-groups who have been in conflict. The identities of the sub-groups in question are ethnic: Greek and Judean. Esler has a helpful extended discussion of ethnicity, using Fredrik Barth’s idea that it was a group ascription (primarily a group self-ascription) in terms of ‘basic, most general identity, presumptively determined by his origin and background’ (pp. 42-43, citing F. Barth, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries [Allen & Unwin, 1969], p. 13). This definition leads Esler to characterize the groups in the Roman church in terms of territory to which they relate, hence ‘Greeks’ and, especially, ‘Judeans’. Another reason why ‘Judeans’ is preferred to ‘Jews’ is the association of the latter term with later history. I can see the strength of Esler’s argument for ‘Judean’. However, I am sceptical about the prospective stability of neologisms, especially quasi-neologisms such as this one, which would always need glossing with the explanation that it did not mean ‘resident of Judea’. There is a substantial recent scholarly tradition of careful use of the term ‘Jewish’ in reference to the first century and without any taint of Nazism. There is also a moral argument in favour of its retention since ‘Jewish’ is a current ethnic category and the Jewish account of their ethnic origins gives an important place to first-century figures. Jewish scholars are happy to call first-century people ‘Jews’. A further difficulty with Esler’s position on this is shown in his effective argument against Shaye Cohen’s view that ‘Jewish’ is appropriate from 100 BCE. In reality there is no cut-off point. The orientation towards Judea persists to today. Esler takes the opening of Romans as not excluding Judean hearers since they, as well as non-Judeans, live ‘among the foreigners’ (1.6 cf. 1.5). Chapter 16 is taken as part of the letter and confirms the ethnically mixed nature of the ‘Christ-movement’ in Rome. Esler reads 16.17-20 as relating to 14.1–15.13, especially linking koilia in 16.18 to food in 14.20. Esler sees 1.18–3.20 as clearing the ground for Paul’s promotion of a new in-group identity. Paul does so by showing that their ethnic groups face a common plight and hence need the new in-group identity. However, he also emphasizes the differences between Greeks and Judeans (without and with the Law, respectively) rather than erasing the differences. Romans 3.21-31 begins to set out the new identity, based on righteousness for all who have faith in Christ. The oneness of God guarantees that this is offered impartially. Chapter 4 then presents Abraham, a key figure in Judean collective memory, as a prototype of the new identity. Paul carefully makes this work for both non-Judeans and Judeans (in contrast to his strategy in Galatians). Chapters 5– 8 expound the new identity, drawing Paul into it (esp. 5.1-11) and answering potential problems. In chapter 7, Paul’s approach fosters a bid for leadership in Rome by becoming in-group exemplar for Judean Christ-followers. He does this by taking on the persona of Israel and demonstrating its problems, leading to the alternative of the ‘Spirit-charged identity in Christ’ (p. 242), the ‘emotional and evaluative dimensions’ of which (p. 243) he hymns in chapter 8. Esler plays down eschatology, preferring to see statements about the future as part of the time dimension of identity: presenting an identity involves giving it both a future and a past. Romans 9–11 involves Paul affirming Judean identity over against Greek ethnocentric criticism. Chapters 12–13 are seen as setting out group ‘norms’ or ‘identity

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. 514 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004) descriptors’, particularly love, which is then exemplified by Paul’s instructions on the ‘strong’ and ‘weak’, divided over the use of Mosaic Law. Paul puts the onus on the ‘strong’ to accommodate the Mosaic practice of the ‘weak’. All over Esler’s book there are thought-provoking perspectives on issues. The book needs reading quickly, to grasp the main argument. Then it will form a commentary- like reference book, with discussions of most main scholarly issues in the letter. This hybrid form is, of course, rather unwieldy, but the sequential arrangement and thorough index make it workable. Ironically, it is 14.1–15.13, the passage that sets up Esler’s scenario, that seems to me to raise the sharpest questions for his thesis. Does Paul’s rhetoric here fit the expected strategy of both advocating a common group identity and also affirming the Greek and Judean ethnicities of the subgroups? The language of ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ seems particularly problematic. More broadly, I agree that ethnic differences are not erased but I find it hard to see affirmation of ethnic identity, especially of Greek identity. Having said this, Esler succeeds in firmly bringing social identity theory into the study of Romans. Esler’s book should form an important basis for discussion of the letter for a considerable time to come.

Peter Oakes

David E. AUNE, The Westminster Dictionary of New Testament and Early Christian Literature and Rhetoric (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2003). 595 + xii pp. ISBN 0644219179. $49.95.

This new dictionary succeeds brilliantly both in identifying a niche and in ﬁlling it. We have general dictionaries and handbooks of biblical interpretation (Hayes, ed.; Coggins and Houlden, eds.; Soulen and Soulen); handbooks and glossaries for classical rhetoric (Lausberg; Lanham; Anderson); and guides and handbooks to postmodern literary approaches (The Postmodern Bible; Adam, ed.). This volume naturally overlaps with the ﬁrst two types of reference work, but provides much more in terms of its own particular focus; and its orientation is ancient (300 BCE to 200 CE) and modern, rather than postmodern, so that the third type takes up where Aune leaves off, as it were. Rather than offer a substantive critique, it is more to the point of a review such as this to alert readers to the character and usefulness of this reference work. Toward that end, I offer a very selective list of the types of entry and the particular articles found in the dictionary: articles on literary and rhetorical terms of art (e.g. allegory, antithesis, chiasmus, diatribe, encomium, enthymeme, epideictic, exordium, inclusio, irony, metaphor, metonymy, midrash, pathos, peroration, progymnasmata, prosopopoiia, stasis, synecdoche, targum, typology); ancient literary forms and genres (e.g. acts, aphorism, apocalypse, beatitude, biography, call narratives, catalogues of vices and virtues, chreia, farewell address, gospels, historiography, household rules, letters, parable, paraenesis, preface, rewritten Bible, thanksgiving); literary and rhetorical methods, approaches and types of analysis, in many cases distributed across a number of articles (e.g. epistolography, form criticism, intertextuality, narrative criticism, prose and poetic analysis, rhetorical criticism, style/stylistics); articles on each of the New

Testament writings, and on early Jewish, Christian and contemporary Greco-Roman literature (e.g. Aristotle’s Rhetorica, Ascension of Isaiah, Barnabas, 2 Baruch, Cicero, 1 Clement, Dead Sea Scrolls, Didache, Diognetus, 1 Enoch, 4 Ezra, Ignatius, Irenaeus, Josephus, Justin Martyr, Mishnah, Nag Hammadi literature, Philo, Philostratus, Plutarch, Polycarp, Q, Quintilian, Rhetorica ad Herennium, Life of Secundus, Septuagint, Shepherd of Hermas, Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, Gospel of Thomas). The articles are heavily cross-referenced, and most include an author-date bibliographical list, referring one to the massive main bibliography at the back (which makes up about one-fifth of the dictionary). Useful tables of information abound (see, e.g., under ‘Epistolography’ and ‘Prescriptions, epistolary’). With so much cross-referencing of articles and bibliography, there are many oppor- tunities for errors to creep in. This is no place to draw up a list, but since very selective use of the dictionary turned up several examples, it is reasonable to think there may be a number of others the publisher will want to attend to. Articles on ‘Epistolography’ and on ‘Rhetorical situation’ cross-reference an article on ‘Rhetorical theory’ that does not appear, though one of the other rhetoric-related articles must be meant. An article on ‘Poetry’ cross-references ‘Rhythmic Prose’ which turns out to be a dummy-entry sending one in turn to ‘Prose Rhythm’; the latter cross-references a non-existent article on ‘Metrical analysis’, though there is a dummy-entry for ‘Meter’ that sends one back to ‘Poetry’. In these cases, the information sought appears to be there, just in a form different to that reflected in the cross-references. Elsewhere, though, articles on ‘Redac- tion criticism’, ‘Rhetorical criticism’ and ‘Source criticism’ all point one to an apparently non-existent article on ‘Criticism, biblical’. The bibliographical list under ‘Septuagint’ includes a ‘Jones and Silva 2000’ which should be Jobes and Silva, and which in any case does not appear in the main bibliography at the back. These infelicities do not detract from the usefulness of the work. Still, the publisher could have rewarded Aune’s years of labor with better editorial support. If I were to note one slight disappointment with the substance of the work, it is that the rhetorical analyses in the several articles on the Pauline epistles are oriented more around a survey of the analyses of others, rather than allowing us to benefit from Aune’s own analysis, drawing on the vast knowledge displayed in this dictionary. But even as I register this minor complaint, I realize that Aune has quite reasonably left us with some work to do for ourselves, and I should rather be grateful for what he has provided to facilitate that task. Aune notes that ‘no one person can command the enormous bibliography of works related to the entries found in this dictionary’ (p. xii); but there must be few indeed who could surpass him in bringing to bear both the expertise and the energy required for this project (with the help of a few others in a handful of articles, as listed on p. xii). With the succinct, and often quite detailed, substantive information that this dictionary provides, plus the extensive bibliographical information, it will be an indispensable resource for literary and rhetorical analysis of the New Testament. One can only admire the achievement—and put it immediately to use!

R. Barry Matlock

A. Andrew DAS, Paul and the Jews (Library of Pauline Studies; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2003). 238 pp. ISBN 1565636767. $24.95.

Only two years before the appearance of the present volume, Andrew Das had produced the excellent Paul, the Law, and the Covenant (Hendrickson, 2001), in which he proposed a ‘newer perspective’ on Paul. Das sought to offer a challenge to E.P. Sanders’ view that Jewish texts did not require perfect obedience to Torah, and then provided a series of studies on central Pauline themes. The result was an extremely learned and cogent picture of Paul, which made a very significant contribution to scholarship. This second work follows in the same vein. It is more narrowly focused than its predecessor, while following again the format of pursuing discrete studies that contribute to an overall argument. The central contention can be summed up in the facts that (a) Paul considers that there is still a place in God’s plan of salvation for ethnic Israel, and that (b) the salvation of the final generation of Israel will take place not apart from, but through faith in Christ. Throughout the work, Das shows sensitivity to issues of Jewish–Christian relations, while affirming that ‘the benefits of Jewish election must be realized by the same faith in Christ as that of the Gentiles’ (pp. 192- 93). After an introduction surveying previous discussions of the theme, chapters 2–6 each focus on a particular issue: ‘The Crisis in Galatia’ (2), ‘The Situation at Rome: The Law-Observant and the Non-Law-Observant’ (3), ‘The Messiah and Israel’s Election in Romans’ (4), ‘Israel’s Priority among the Nations’ (5), ‘The Curse of the Mosaic Law’ (6) and ‘The Mosaic Law in the Life of the Christian’ (7). In the first two chapters, Mark Nanos is a particular target, in his contentions that both the ‘weak’ at Rome and the false-teachers in Galatians are non-Christian Jews, and Das does a good job of providing clear counter-arguments. In the discussion of Romans, it emerges that Das sees the church there as ‘almost exclusively Gentile’ (p. 66). I wonder whether this does justice to the reference in Rom. 7.1 to ‘those who know the Law’ (probably not merely a reference to Gentiles who are acquainted with Torah). In particular, it could be questioned whether the ‘weak’ in Rom. 14–15 are really Gentile Christians. (Would Paul be so relaxed about Gentiles observing the Law in the light of what comes out in Gal. 4.8-11?) In general, however, the first two chapters provide a useful foundation in clarifying that one can both define the Law in Jewish terms, but also emphasize the need, within a Jewish framework, for perfect obedience (p. 39). This is one important component of Das’s ‘newer perspective’, and is central to his exegesis of Gal. 3.10-14. The subsequent chapters are also replete with strong, thorough argument and keen observations. Das, acutely, sets up chapter 4 (and the relationship between Rom. 8 and 9–11) with the question: ‘If the Israelites, as an elect people, are separated from their God because of a failure to believe in Christ, how could Christians place any confidence in their election?’ (p. 86). He also counters there the ‘two-covenant’ approach, resurrected in J. Gager’s Reinventing Paul (Oxford University Press, 2000). On this, he elaborates Paul’s wish to be cursed for his brothers (which implies that Israel is in that condition) and that they are, as far as the Gospel is concerned, ‘enemies

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004. Book Reviews 517 of God’ (Rom. 11.28). Discussions of Gal. 3.10-14 and 1 Thess. 2.14-16 dominate a good deal of chapters 5–6. On the question of ‘doing’ and ‘fulfilling’ the Law, Das offers here strong reasons to support the growing consensus in favour of Westerholm’s view that one in fact fulfils the Law ‘by charting an independent course from the Law’ (p. 156) and living in imitation of Christ, by the Spirit. And on Rom. 7, his discussion of the Law is particularly perceptive. He argues that nomos refers to the Mosaic Law throughout, concluding with the excellent observation that, ‘The “I” does not see the Law manifested as truly the Law of God; rather, the “I” sees the Law clothed in an unrecognizable shape because of Sin’ (p. 165). As was Paul, the Law, and the Covenant, the present book is replete with references to an enormous amount of current Pauline scholarship, though without being by any means over-technical. The problematic issues in Das’s argument are usually part-and- parcel of the difficulties in any treatment of Paul; impressively, many of Das’s solutions often have the advantage of not immediately generating new problems. To raise one final objection, however, it could be queried whether Paul thinks that ‘the Spirit has grabbed hold of the Law, once powerless and enslaving, and rendered it useful’ (p. 186). On Das’s account, the Law plays a very minimal role—it has a testifying function, but most of his discussion argues (quite correctly) that the Law plays a very minimal role in shaping the Christian life. In conclusion, this is an important contribution to the ongoing debate, in that it has moved beyond the old polarities that characterized the debate both before and immediately after the work of Sanders. It is impressively short (under 200 pages of text) for such a comprehensive treatment of the subject, and is an excellent resource both for postgraduate students as well as scholars.

Simon Gathercole