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| The Bible: Coming Out of the Closet First Reading In the aftermath of the controversy over Darwin's The Origin of Species (published in 1859) and the ensuing Scopes "monkey" trial in 1925, American biblical scholarship retreated into the closet. The fundamentalist mentality generated a climate of inquisition that made honest scholarly judgements dangerous. Numerous biblical scholars were subjected to heresy trials and suffered the loss of academic posts. Academics learned it was safer to keep a critical judgement private. The intellectual ferment of the century reasserted itself first in colleges, universities, and seminaries. By the end of World War II, critical scholars again, but quietly, dominated the academic scene from one end of the continent to the other. Critical biblical scholarship was supported by other university disciplines which wanted to ensure that dogmatic considerations not be permitted to intrude into scientific and historical research. The fundamentalists were forced to propagate their point of view. They launched new institutions, which refused accommodation with the older, established church-related schools that dotted the land. The contemporary religious controversy turns on whether the world view reflected in the Bible can be carried forward into this scientific age and retained as an article of faith. Jesus figures prominently in this debate. The Christ of the Middle Ages can no longer command the assent of those who have seen the heavens through Galileo's telescope. The old deities and demons were swept from the skies by that remarkable glass. The rise of science sought to put all knowledge to the test of close and repeated observation. At the same time and as part of the same impulse, the advent of historical reason meant distinguishing the factual from the fictional in accounts of the past. For biblical interpretation that distinction required scholars to probe the relation between faith and history. In this boiling cauldron the quest of the historical Jesus was conceived in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. To know the truth about Jesus, the real Jesus, one had to find the Jesus of history. Ah such bias - for the Christian of the mythological Jesus would say the real Jesus was elsewhere - but the refuge offered by the cloistered precincts of faith gradually became a battered and beleaguered position. [Funk, Robert, et al, The Five Gospels(New York: MacMillan {Polebridge Press}, 1993, p. 1-2, edited.)] Second Reading The story of being born in a stable at Bethlehem because there was no room for him at the inn is one of the most powerful myths ever given to the human race. A myth, however, is what it is. Even if we insist on taking every word of the Bible as literally true, we shall still not be able to find there the myth of Jesus being born in a stable. None of the gospels state that he was born in a stable and nearly all of the details of the nativity scenes which have inspired great artists, and delighted generations of churchgoers on Christmas Eve, stem from neither history nor scripture, but from folk-lore. Once we go into the matter, we discover that the real Jesus, the Jesus of history, is extremely unlikely to have been born in Bethlehem. It is much more probable that he was born in Galilee, where he grew up. Yet which is the more powerful figure in the imaginations of the world - the 'real', historical Jesus of Nazareth, or the mythical divine being, who in his great humility came down to be born as a poverty-stricken outcast? [Wilson, A.N., Jesus: A Life(New York: W. W. Norton, 1992, p. ix.)] SERMON Much of the material for this and next week's sermon is drawn from the work of the Jesus Seminar, a group of 73 biblical scholars from all over the world who met twice a year for over five years 1985-1990) in an attempt to reconstruct the original words of Jesus from the texts available to them. Their work continues today as they attempt to learn what Jesus actually did. They were funded by a scholarly think tank, Westar Institute, in Sonoma, California, and supported by MacMillan Publishing through Polebridge Press. Polebridge provided the moderator for their meetings, their vice-president, Marlene Matejovsky. My guess is that Ms. Matejovsky had her hands full! She and other publishing editors, according to Robert Funk of Westar, originator of the idea of the Jesus Seminar, were able to help the scholars clarify their knowledge in such a way as to put to rest the aphorism found in The Gospel of Thomas (39:1) "The scholars have taken the keys of knowledge and hidden them." Today's talk is the first of four sessions on the findings of the Jesus Seminar I am doing this spring. Two parts are sermons, this and next week, and two are Wednesday evening sessions which start next week. Today we will look at the Bible, how it came to be, the development of methods of biblical criticism, a look at how the Lord's Prayer fares under the glass of the Jesus Seminar's biblical criticism, and then make a guess about the effect all this material may have on Christendom. Up until a few short years ago we might have been familiar with one of four or five versions of the Bible. The King James Version is probably the most well known, even today. Its preparation was ordered by King James I in 1604. He assembled a group of 54 revisers at Westminster, Oxford, and Cambridge. After seven years of work the King James Version was published in 1611. It was a marvellous work, highly influenced by the Hebrew of the Old Testament, even following the cadence in poetry. Its language was more accurate than the Greek originals available in those days. There was politics behind King James order for the new Bible. Apparently Elizabeth I had succeeded in bringing uniformity to the Church of England, but she had not been able to focus on a particular Bible version. There were many in use at that time. The first English Bibles had not appeared until Miles Cloverdale printed one in 1535. Printed in Zurich or Cologne, the three printings sold as fast as they came off the press. Three years later an authorized version called the Matthew Bible appeared in England. Henry VIII wanted the same version of the Bible to appear in every church so he ordered an oversized version to be printed based on a revised Matthew Bible. Printed in 1639, became known as the Great Bible because of its large page format. If we jump back in time, before Elizabeth, to the middle of the Protestant reformation, we would find many Bibles printed, but not in England. During the reign of Mary Queen of England, a Catholic, the use of Bibles in the church was prohibited and printing of Bibles in England ceased. Protestant persecutions caused biblical scholars to flee England. John Calvin published his Bible in 1557. In 1558, Elizabeth assumed power in England and brought protestantism with her. The Geneva Bible was printed in 1560 and soon became the most popular Bible in England, supplanting the Great Bible. Many versions of the Bible had pet names following some of their strange translations. The Geneva Bible was called the "Breeches Bible" because of its rendering of the clothing first worn by Adam and Eve. A 1631 version was termed the "Wicked Bible" because it omitted the word "not" from one of the commandments, which read "Thou shalt commit adultery." In 1717 the "Vinegar Bible" appeared - it had a misprint for the word "vineyard" in a passage in Luke (20:). Earlier in 1611, the "he" and "she" Bibles were found, as a typo appeared in the last verses of Ruth 3:15, "he/she went into the city." Before the King James Version came into being the Catholics had produced a vernacular Bible, the Reims-Douai Bible. That text and the Geneva Bible were the primary influences on the King James Version. The King James version ruled supreme for nearly 250 years. But in 1870 a call was issued for a new Bible which would redress the errors which became apparent in the King James Version following the discovery of Greek codices and Hellenistic papyri. The King James Version was also cited for very poor translation of verb tenses from the Hebrew originals. A committee was struck, which included Americans, who would edit the English findings. By 1895 the Standard Version was published in England and a different version, the American Standard Version, was published in America in 1900. The Standard Version was revised over a period of 29 years starting in 1928 and ending with the publication of the Apocrypha in 1957. The 1952 Revised Standard Version was revolutionary because it had the benefit of the Dead Sea Scrolls. An updated New English Bible, first printed in 1961, became a best seller with over 33,000 copies a week being sold in 1970. It completely modernized the speech of the Bible. With so many translations, so many errors, both in translation and interpretation of older texts, and so many typos, it is a wonder that any religious body could ever refer to the Bible as the word of God. In this brief history, I have only selected highlights of the printing of English Bibles. I have not spoken of the many Bibles in other languages, the texts which came before the English versions, the Jewish printings of the Old Testament, the Catholic versions, etc. By 1970 there were many different versions of the Bible used in both India and Africa, over 100 dialect translations in the former and over 300 languages and dialects in the latter! This speaks more than anything to the popularity of the myths and ethics, the worldview of Christendom. The Christian church has also developed successful tools for evangelism; the Bible is an integral part. The idea of the Bible as the word of God seems strange next to all the versions we have heard about. That attitude is part of a faith tradition having little to do with the history of the text. A parallel might be found in the Catholic Church which looks to the Pope as the person whose word is infallible. The Pope was given infallibility in 1867 by a vote of the College of Cardinals. One must ask about the infallibility of the votes of the College, and the selection process for Cardinals, etc. The only thing that makes sense about infallibility of the Pope or the Bible is that such an extreme view is an article of faith. There is no hard core evidence that I accept for either. Ah . . . but for faith . . . The author of the letter to the Hebrews tells us about faith . . . (11:1) ". . . faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen." The unknown author of the Letter to the Hebrews was writing to a group of Christians who were about to give up and return to Judaism . . . he was attempting to restore their faith through one of the best developed defenses of the superiority of Christianity in the New Testament. When faith becomes its own proof, circular thinking allows us no room to manoeuvre, no room to entertain doubts, no reason to verify. I suppose faith is good enough reason for some to assume the Bible is the word of God as it appears on the written page. Nevertheless, one Christian leader has lamented, "A phrase I wouldn't mind expunging from any theological debate between Christians: 'My Bible says that . . ' As if those on the other side of the issue are committed to the New Erroneous Version. Why can't we admit we read the same Bible, but interpret it differently?" When I involve myself in such thinking, however, I critique the faith stance from a rational/critical stance which has its own assumptions based on faith - about its own superiority as a way of thinking. I can say for sure that my approach, though satisfying for me, certainly does not lend itself to the richness of myth, ritual, and security that a more authoritarian approach brings. My approach is drawn directly out of the Enlightenment, John Ralston Saul's arguments in Voltaire's Bastards(Toronto: Penguin, 1993) aside. While it makes little difference for this morning's topic, I must add that the reason is blended with Emerson's nineteenth century transcendentalism where we all have the ability to feel and a right to interpret whatever powers are at loose in creation. The Enlightenment and the Age of Reason brought the Scientific revolution upon us with its demand for proofs and facts. Everything became fodder for curiosity, a source of further study. It did not matter how outlandish the questioning might seem. It is no wonder that Hermann Samuel Reimarus, a professor of Oriental languages in Hamburg, Germany, working in the mid 18th century, began to wonder about the differences between the Jesus the "man" and the Christ of "creeds". This concept was the first of seven pillars which would undergird modern biblical scholarship. With those thoughts the quest of the historical Jesus began. Thomas Jefferson, a Unitarian, furthered the study when he attempted to remove the sayings of Jesus from the encrustations of Christian Doctrine. By 1835 the science of biblical criticism was being born in a new age. David Fredrich Strauss published his 1,400 page detailed examination of the "mythical" and the "historical". He was fired from his teaching post and hounded by critics till he died nearly forty years later (d. 1874). His greatest gift to the growing study was to compare the Gospel of John with Mark, Luke, and Matthew - showing how utterly different John was. John was closer to a "spiritual Jesus" while the other three held clues to the "historical Jesus". The second pillar of modern biblical scholarship was in place. By 1900 scholarship had established that Mark was a prior document to Matthew and Luke. Both seemed to have relied on Mark for some of their material. The third pillar was in place. At the same time Matthew and Luke relied on some other document, now called "Q" which scholars did not have access to. They had common material not found in Mark. The fourth pillar stood firm. At the turn of the century, Albert Schweitzer and Johannes Weiss independently came to the same decision. They had wondered about the intent of Jesus regarding the ethics he espoused. Were the ethics to be applied over the short term because the end of time was at hand . . . or would these ethics become the building blocks of a new republic, a new empire, a new kingdom that would continue over a long period of time? After much work they agreed that Jesus was talking about the short term - he was an eschatological preacher - one who spoke about the coming end of the world - the final judgement. The idea of the eschatological Jesus was preeminent until after the second world war. Two other theological giants of this century, Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann dismissed the quest for the historical Jesus as foolish attempts to gain proof for faith. Bultmann said to his students, "Do not try to make the Bible relevant. Its relevance is axiomatic . . . Do not defend God's word, but testify to it . . . Trust to the Word. It is a ship loaded to the very limits of her capacity." Not only were theological giants saying that Jesus' ethic was based on the short term and thus problematic for us, added to other giants belittling attempts to further the quest for the historical Jesus, coupled with all the hysteria around the Scopes trial in the 1920's, and which caused scholars accepting a conservative road for the sake of safety and security, put an end to the quest for this historical Jesus for decades. The fifth pillar of modern biblical scholarship was the undoing of this mistaken path. Perhaps it was the finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls, perhaps the growing liberalism flowing out of the fifties and sixties, but by the 1970's and 1980's there had been a clear shift away from Schweitzer and Weiss, Barth and Bultmann. John the Baptist, not Jesus, was the chief advocate of impending cataclysm, a view that Jesus' first disciples had acquired from the Baptist movement. Jesus himself rejected that mentality in its crass form, quit the ascetic desert, and returned to urban Galilee. The liberation of the non-eschatological Jesus is the fifth pillar of modern Biblical scholarship. The sixth pillar was the recognition of the differences between the oral and the written cultures and how they affected each other. Jesus came from the oral culture and will only be known by its marks in the written culture: short, provocative, memorable, oft-repeated phrases, sentences, and stories. The final pillar of modern biblical scholarship has to do with another reversal. It used to be that scholars had to prove that the Bible was false in some way. It is no wonder - to be wrong in an attack on the Bible could have brought death in the Middle Ages and the Protestant Revolution. Today, it is assumed that the Bible is a collection of narratives in which the memory of Jesus is embellished by mythic elements that express the church's faith in him, and by believable fictions which enhanced the story telling for first century listeners. Because there is no inherent claim to truth in the text, the scholars must now verify truth as it relates to the historical Jesus. The Jesus Seminar continues a long tradition of Biblical critique, a tradition whose development could be traced to the very first Bible. All along the way, new ideas have been put in place so that the work has led to new versions of the gospels - not a revision and a rewriting this time - but a version which emphasizes segments for the sake of the historical while leaving the entire context for the sake of the creedal and mythical. What has been done? Let me give you a simple example - I will use the Lord's Prayer because most of us are familiar with it. The prayer is found in both Luke and Matthew. Since we already know that Luke and Matthew relied on two external sources, Mark and the "Q" document, we have to wonder if there is sufficient similarity in Matthew's and Luke's versions of the two prayers to assume that they borrowed from either source. The two read like this: Matt 6:9-13 9"Instead, you should pray like this: 'Our Father in the heavens, your name be revered. 10Impose your imperial rule, enact your will on earth as you have in heaven. 11Provide us with the bread we need for the day. 12Forgive our debts to the extent that we have forgiven those in debt to us. 13And please don't subject us to test after test, but rescue us from the evil one'" Luke 11:2-4 2He said to them, "When you pray, you should say: 'Father, your name be revered. Impose your imperial rule. 3Provide us with the bread we need day by day. 4Forgive our sins, since we too forgive everyone in debt to us. And please don't subject us to test after test.'" Since there is no Lord's Prayer in Mark, we assume any similarities would come from the "Q" source. It is likely, then, that "Q" read: Father, your name be revered. Impose your imperial rule. Provide us with the bread we need for the day. Forgive our debts to the extent that we have forgiven those in debt to us. The Matthew form of giving bread is for this day only, while Luke seeks it day by day. The Jesus Seminar believes the shorter petition is more accurate for their vision of Jesus. Again, Matthew, using the word debts seems more akin to what Jesus might have said rather than the more theological formulation of sins. After all, Jesus was not a theologian, he was surrounded by people in debt, crushing debt. I am purposely saying only a little about who Jesus was according to the Jesus Seminar, because that is the topic of next week's sermon. We might ask if Jesus taught the "Q" version of this prayer to his disciples. We are told, "probably not". It is likely that Jesus said all of these things but at different times. A later author strung them together. Crossan gives two reasons for this belief. First, if Jesus had taught this prayer there would certainly be wider support for it - beyond just Matthew, Luke and "Q". Second, such a prayer said by a group of people would indicate the development of a group consciousness around Jesus well beyond what could have happened in his lifetime. While I can only say to you that this is the work of the Jesus Seminar, I can also say it is what I was taught over twenty years ago at Harvard Divinity School. I went back to my notes and they are the same as what I have told you. What a shame that scholars did not feel free enough to share their work more publicly so long ago! The history of biblical scholarship is complicated and rife with false trails and blind alleys. While the work of the Jesus Seminar uses a process I applaud, it is reasoned, critical, and democratic, I can not say with certainty that their work will not follow the same path as some of the assumptions of Schweitzer and Weiss, or Bultmann and Barth. For now, I am attuned to them and encouraged that a figure such as Jesus may now become a topic of discussion for humanists and atheists, agnostics and secularists without anyone getting turned off immediately. Clearly there is a distinction between the historical Jesus, in so far as we can get to him, and the Jesus of creeds and mythology. What will happen to the churches which base their theology on the Jesus of creeds and mythology? I suspect that their belief and history is rather imbedded. Many of them will stick with their theology - after all - to change would so upset their constituency that the institutions themselves might be threatened financially. History has shown us that church institutions will bend considerably to retain power. Will humanists begin to quote Jesus? If they know the material and believe in social justice, they now have a new source to quote with added force. The only problem there is, at face value it increases the power of the idea of Jesus in this world - something which has traditionally made humanists uneasy (to say the least!). I do not know what will happen to groups. I have wondered what the effect is on myself -I have increased my reading about Jesus. I have spent more time thinking about his concern for bread and debt. Certainly food and crushing debt were the two most immediate problems facing the Galilean peasant, day labourer, and non-elite urbanite (Crossan, 294). Both of these robbed the Galilean of dignity, making them chattel, living in unwitting if not also unwilling service to others. I will wonder about the people in this age who are caught in the same web, unwitting and /or unwilling in service to others' gain. It is likely that I will do more thinking about how WE SUPPORT THE USE OF OTHERS to protect our way of life, here in this church, on the job, in our homes, in our towns and cities, in our nation, our trade blocks and military alliances. The other thing I am likely to do is to take more seriously the equation: "Forgive our debts, to the extent that we have forgiven those in debt to us." Liberation theology has long said that the oppressors are the most oppressed. The words of Jesus and the words of Liberation theologians encourage me to wonder about the meanings of debt in this age and how I can forgive them. I feel many of my own beliefs and ethical standards confirmed by what Jesus said - no doubt that should be so as they were formed in large measure in a Christian Unitarian setting years ago. What is important to me is not that Jesus confirms these ethics, but that the concerns for the oppressed, for the dignity and worth of each person, have been felt and acted on for thousands of years . . . Moses leads the enslaved Israelites from Egypt, Isaiah calls for justice and righteousness to flow like a mighty river, Jesus demands that each of us forgive debts, the Jews of Masada chose death over slavery, Francis David chose jail and death over a loss of dignity, the religious forbearers of Unitarianism and Universalism often chose to be free refugees rather than live under oppression, James Reeb marched for freedom of Afro-Americans in Selma and gave his life for the cause of dignity. It makes me wonder, how far would I go? For what would I give my life? Thomas Carlyle said that the best effect of any book is that it excites the reader to self-activity. The reason for reading a book is not for the information I can get out of it. It is for the reactions it provokes in me. If I were to read the work of the Jesus Seminar and take it only as an intellectual endeavour, it would be dead material and I might as well count myself amongst the corpses. This material is making me think. It is provoking me. I do not know where I am going with it, but I am on my way . . . Next week we will seek to know more about the historical Jesus himself . . . Let us take this time in silence for reflection . . . |
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