conservative Bible Comment
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/05/conservative-bible-projec_n_310037.html
Final thoughts on the debate Comment
If I recall correctly, class Thursday ended with “Team disorganized” (your words not mine) getting the final word in the debate over whether Jesus is asserting the very same authority Mark seems to despise. The end point seemed to be that there was really no difference between the Romans forcing the Jews under their rule and Jesus giving people the option of following him or being destroyed. While I agree that a guarantee of destruction and death for those who don’t give in to an “authority” is no different than forcing someone to subject to an authority, I think the main point here is the issue of a guarantee.
For Jesus to be likened to the Romans, it must be true that those that don’t follow him and the Lord absolutely will be annihilated. Yet this can only see Jesus’ warning as a guarantee if they truly believe in the power wielded by himself and the Lord. For instance, there undoubtedly numerous cults who can “guarantee” that I will be saved from the apocalypse of 2012 if I submit to their authority and way of life. However, I have absolutely no belief that there will be any such occurence and that I will need any protection from the wrath of [insert cult icon]. In the same way, the people that Jesus preaches to have every right to make the choice of whether or not to believe in the divinity of Jesus and the power of the Lord. Obviously there were many people who dismissed Jesus and his teachings- as there still are today.
Thus for one to “not have a choice” of whether to follow Jesus and his teachings of the Lord, one has to truly believe in their power. And therein lies the most important difference between the Roman Empire and Jesus. Liew fails to acknowledge that Jesus derives his authority from the Lord or the “highest law,” which is not of men. This is a key difference and completely sets the two authority figures apart. And if one still finds it relevant that Jesus doesn’t offer a “true choice”- the agreeable point that “follow me or die” offers little choice- they must recognize that one is only without choice if they have faith that Jesus’ way truly is the path to righteousness and that disobeying would be the wrong (and painful) way to proceed.
Obviously Mark is one who believes in the righteousness of Jesus, so for him there is no comparison between the authority of God and Jesus and the authority of the Jewish government and Roman Empire. So while Liew develops an argument that is certainly worthy of investigation and analysis, it is ultimately off-base and ignorant of the significance of the role of God’s power.
Mercy and Forgiveness 1 Comment
One of the first things I noticed when reading through Jeremiah was the language of rebuke was more merciful and forgiving than in previous parts of the Old Testament that we had read. Isaiah, 2 Kings, and the story of Sodom and Gomorrah (among many others) focus on how wicked the people of Jerusalem have been and that they will be brutally punished. Yet Jeremiah takes a different approach by scolding the children of Israel and then telling them that they can return to God and be forgiven. In Jeremiah 3:12, God tells Jeremiah to spread that message to “… Return, faithless Israel… I will not look on you in anger, for I am merciful…”. Jeremiah is generally a cross between a message of desctruction and anger if Israel fails to repent and live by God’s word, and a message of hope and mercy if they succeed in changing their ways.
My last post I discussed how the story of Josiah was a puzzling instance of the Lord dismissing the goodness of Josiah’s rule in favor of remembering the evil doings of his predecessors. The destruction of Jerusalem was set in stone and Josiah was too little too late- God showed no mercy or chances of forgiveness. Even in Isaiah, God focuses his message of the wrong-doings of past and present without really offering a chance at being forgiven. What has changed such that God is now merciful? Does it have something to do with the growing rejection of the traditions of the priests (sacrifice and celebrations) from previous books?
This stern but forgiving image of God is the one that has been projected to me (and presumably many others) throughout my life. I have been conditioned to understand that while God is insistent that one live by his word, subjecting themselves to him is cause for forgiveness and mercy. The prophets seem to be a turning point in the understanding of the nature of God, something that I had always assumed was something that came more with the New Testament.
Divine Authority Comment
I’m using feminist criticism for my textual analysis paper, and I’ve come across a source or two that refers to God as the so-called “ultimate patriarch.” Liew similarly condemns Jesus, another divine figure, as a mirror of colonial oppression for demanding submission to his will and authority.
I’m not a religious person myself, and so part of me responds to these sorts of criticisms of divine demand for obedience. But, scholarship and deconstruction aside, this is a religious text – is it inherently wrong for people to be subjected to divine authority? In a way, isn’t divine authority sort of the whole point?
Submission to God’s will is a very significant part of the religious life of the Christians I’ve been working with on my thesis. It isn’t problematic – it’s necessary for happiness. So do scholars decontextualize this process when they criticize it? Do they forget the ultimate caveat of God’s divinity and ignore the way this text works in people’s lives? That leads me to another interesting question – what is the relationship between scholarly interpretation and religious practice?
Agents on the outside Comment
While Liew said a lot of things that made sense in this article, I thought that his treatment of women in Mark is problematic. He seems to be doing something similar to what he accuses Mark of doing. He robs them of agency and focusses solely on what is being done to the women, rather than what the women are doing. He begins his discussion of women by saying that his comments “do not arise out of a ‘benevolent’ attempt to include women but rather out of the conviction that women define colonial oppression and postcolonial resistance” (126). It is clear that he is attempting to bring women into the conversation and engage with the text through the lens of feminism, which I appreciate; but rather than demonstrating how women define colonial resistance, in all of his arguments he has women being defined by the colonial power that he so abhors. This might not seem like a problem, but in so doing, he is fashioning women as victims without agency who can either be rescued or oppressed at the will of the menfolk.
All of his examples are examples of women being acted upon and victimized. They are powerless to subvert the structures that are being placed upon them from Roman society and Mark’s Jesus. He asserts that the women who had men in their lives, did live and act through them and that the women who didn’t accepted Jesus as the replacement patriarchal figure. Liew, in adopting the role of the savior of the women in Mark, is really just doing the same things that he claims Mark is doing but in reverse. Rather than suppressing women he is elevating them, but all through his own agency and will. The women he champions remain voiceless in his treatment of them.
It is possible to see, however, that these women, though followers of Jesus, do not fully subscribe to this new sort of hierarchy, if that is indeed what is happening. They are not voiceless subjects of men’s desires, rather, they seem to be able to manipulate and negotiate the difference between Jesus’ authority and Roman authority. They, as women and “others,” do not belong fully to either world and are thus able to find their own place, power and voice in the space between.
The Existence of Jesus
What really stood out to me the other day in class was all of the evidence (historical and literary) that Jesus, in the sense that the Western tradition knows him at least, may not have existed. In fact, it is questionable whether or not there was ever even a man at all that the Jesus we know is based on.
Supporting this notion are the numerous similarities between the stories of Jesus and other stories or sayings in the Old Testament (such as Jesus meeting the women by the well and Jesus’s last words mirroring a lament). Also, we know that the Gospels were not actually first hand accounts of Jesus’s life, as they were written many years later.
What are far more convincing however, are the similarities between Jesus and figures of other myths or religions that existed long before Jesus’s time. For example, the Indian God Krishna, the Egyptian God Horus, and other ancient Gods share numerous characteristics and life events of Jesus. I have read about these similarites in numerous places yet I’m still not sure how accurate they.
More supporting evidence is the fact that each of the Gospels appear to be written with their own purposes in mind related to the authority of the contemporary Jewish officials, and that certain accounts have been not only purposefully omitted, but blatently fabricated in some cases (particularly the Christian editing of Josephus’s historical accounts of Jesus). It appears as if due to the need for a revolutionary figure in that time (for political and other purposes), Jesus was created long after his supposed existence so that it would be more believable. I recognize this is a matter that requires a more in depth investigation. Nevertheless, if it was true, if a compelling argument was presented, we have to wonder what implications or consequences would this have?
Rigidity in the Church
One of the dominant themes throughout the Gospels that we read (and I assume the other two as well) is that Jesus challenged the traditional teachings and authority of the Jewish religious leaders. Jesus performed miracles on the Sabbath, declared all food clean, broke ethnic boundaries by including Gentiles, broke gender boundaries with his interactions with women, and broke traditional rules against touching the unclean, such as lepers.
Jesus preached for inclusion, inclusion that broke traditional Jewish law. Jesus taught that rigid religious law does not matter. It is the message of God’s teachings, often through Jesus, that matter over the particulars of religious law. Gentiles, women, the unclean can all accept this message and be worthy of salvation.
Thus it is interesting that one of the largest Christian churches in the world is the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Church is a highly rigid, structured organization that has been historically exclusionary in many of its teachings. It is interesting that the teachings of Jesus, which challenged rigid and inclusive religious structure, helped create in themselves a rigid and inclusive religious structure.
This can be connected to Warrior’s article on the exodus story. Warrior discusses those who are freed from slavery only to enslave others. To me, it seems that Jesus in a way tried to free people from the rigid nature of the Jewish faith. Yet those who believed in him, and came after him adopted a rigid, structured method of practicing their faith.
Bush and the prologue to John
Here is the link to the Bush speech I mentioned in class, delivered on the first anniversary of 9.11 (2002). The citation from John 1 occurs in the last paragraph. By using this citation, Bush is making a strong claim about the role of the U.S. in the world, to say the least.
NB: There is a weird “scribal error” at the top of the page, where the information about the delivery of the speech is given after the start of the speech.
Biases and Women’s Roles
I really enjoyed reading Sherwood’s critique of the androcentric dominated interpretations of Gomer in Hosea. While reading the article, I could feel the frustration of having to read the other interpretations of Hosea. I think Sherwood did a fantastic job of illuminating the absurdity of the other interpretations. While the actual theories seem legitimate, knowing the pervasiveness of the male-dominated interpretations was what really bothered me.
I liked Sherwood’s critique of the others uses of phrases such as “coping with Gomer” or “We need a Gomer who”. I found it very frustrating that the other interpreters would, whether consciously or unconsciously, manipulate the text to such an extreme degree just to fit their own prejudicial beliefs. If I have learned anything from reading the Bible it is that the reader must receive the text with a mind open to many different interpretations and points of view. If someone is looking for one particular answer in the text, it is very likely that they will find that answer, yet it may not be an accurate one.
I feel that in Biblical interpretation, we need to embrace the complexity and ambiguity in the text. I feel that biblical scholars need to know the “answer” to every “problem” in the text; yet, often times they are not challenging the foundations of this need for an answer. It is this need (and the answer already in mind), that cause interpreters to come up with unsubstantial and biased analyses.
I think that Sherwood’s critique also applies to many other parts of the Bible as well, particularly in regards to women’s roles in the text. It is tempting (to some interpreters) to oversimplify the roles that women play and say that they are generally all dependent upon and limited to the relationship they have with the male and God in order to have children, with a few exceptions here and there. Yet, as the previous post pointed out as well, a large portion of the women in the passages we have read up to this point have been very dynamic and ambiguous characters that play an integral part in the text. Many women have been tricksters that manipulate events for their own advantages, actually becoming the dominant yet forgotten characters in the narrative.
Gomer “vs.” the others
Yvonne Sherwood’s article, Boxing Gomer, resonated with me in a lot of ways. She really forces the reader to look at the systems of domination that are still in place and, in many cases so well hidden that they are unwittingly propagated by those who come out against them. It is easy to see the misogyny in readings of Gomer that exalt in her misbehavior and those that remove her entirely, but it is more difficult (most likely due to the structures still in place in our culture) to see the problematic nature of those readings that admire or seek to redeem Gomer, and Sherwood does a good job of bringing this to light.
Though this aspect of her paper is fantastic, I wish that she had been more willing to re-build after tearing down. Ultimately, the article left me feeling unsatisfied. She created a void by revealing the emptiness of previous interpretations, but she did not move much beyond that, and I really wish that she had. She says briefly towards the end that Gomer is powerful and rebellious from previous biblical women and that, “unlike her barren and assimilated sisters, Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel and Hannah, Gomer represents uncensored, unrestricted woman who is dealt with in the course of the narrative rather than prior to it” (120). This reading is compelling, but remains unproven and ultimately problematic in its oversimplification of other biblical women.
Sherwood says of the previously mentioned women that “they are infertile and dependent on Yahweh’s will. I, however, was struck, in many of the stories where the wives are barren, by the independence of the women, separate from God and their husbands. Ishmael is born and raised through the mechanizations of Sarah and Hagar without any input from Abraham and almost in spite of God. Rachel uses Jacob as a bargaining chip to acquire the fertilizing powers of mandrake from her sister to help her become pregnant. None of these women can be dealt with in the broad and generalizing terms that Sherwood employes. Gomer is clearly very different than these women, and that difference is telling, but I believe that if Sherwood had attempted to prove her assertions beyond a half paragraph, she would have realized the problematic nature of her totalization of earlier biblical women.