Lectio Sacra

I briefly introduced the new Lectio Sacra series that I’m a part of. Jim Prothro has provided an even more engaging summary of the intent and purposes of the series over at The Sacred Page, so check that out.

 

Lectio Sacra – Monograph Series

As part of the start of this new semester and new year, I thought I would notify the world of a new monograph series. John Kincaid, Jim Prothro, and I are co-editing the Lectio Sacra monograph series with Cascade books. Let me offer a bit of detail and encourage you to contact one of us if you have a book that would fit:

Lectio Sacra is to be a series of monographs where close readings of biblical texts engage theological questions with interpreters both ancient and modern. The goal is to recover for the church readings that reflect the way the early Jews, Christians, and early theologians read their scriptures as sacred texts and to utilize them for the ongoing tasks of exegesis and theology. Interpreters in antiquity, as today, came with varied presuppositions and approaches to exegesis, but they were united in their approach to Scripture as a sacred text, and they were unafraid to ask explicitly theological and transcendent questions of it. Lectio Sacra aims to follow them in this spirit of exegesis and to utilize their insights and approaches for contemporary dialogue.

Each volume will, in various ways, engage the range of interpretative history, paying particular attention to the exegetical, philosophical and theological judgments of interpreters within this tradition. Some volumes will be anchored in exegesis of the biblical text and, from that basis, engage issues of their ancient interpretation or their bearing on contemporary questions of theology, ethics, etc. Other volumes may be grounded in ancient reception of Scripture, unpacking its relevance for the ongoing task of exegesis and theology. A number of the volumes will incorporate both emphases, the exegesis and the text’s reception into a biblical-theological synthesis of a core theological question. All of the volumes will facilitate conversation about and with Scripture as a sacred text, listening closely to other readers who have done the same. The series will thus contribute to the continued conversation about the task of explicitly theological exegesis. By engaging relevant questions through text and reception, the series will also make ancient interpreters intelligible and relevant for today’s readers.

In sum, this series will not simply contribute to ongoing debates but offer an integration of exegesis and the theological task that will make a real contribution to the world of contemporary biblical and theological scholarship. In short, this series will attempt to model what it entails to be a “master of the sacred page” in the 21^st century.

Managing Editors:
John Kincaid (University of Mary)
Ben Blackwell (Houston Theological Seminary)
Jim Prothro (Augustine Institute)

Editorial Board:
Jason Byassee (Vancouver School of Theology)
Michael Gorman (St. Mary’s Seminary and University)
Jennie Grillo (Notre Dame)
Matthew Levering (University of Saint Mary of the Lake)
Isaac Morales (Providence College)
Lucy Peppiatt (Westminster Theological Centre)

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An Apology for Historical Study of the New Testament

We got a few responses from our Reading Romans in Context: Paul and Second Temple Judaism volume that we were just beholden to the New Perspective and its fundamental problem—letting Jewish texts determine the meaning of inspired revelation. (That said, if they had actually read the volume or understood the New Perspective, they would have not so easily made that claim about our volume.) The challenge seems a little less pressing when you consider Jesus in his Jewish environment like we have with Reading Mark in Context: Jesus and Second Temple Judaism, but even then I (Ben) have received a comments from some quite hesitant to allow any uninspired text to shape our understanding of the Bible. That sounds spiritual, but the historical study of the Bible is foundational for all serious interpretations. Whether one follows the historical-critical method or its evangelical cousin the historical-grammatical method, the key idea is history.

We don’t have any problem studying the practices of the cult of Artemis in Ephesus to help us understand Luke’s portrayal of Paul’s experience there in Acts 19. We don’t have any problem looking at archeological dig sites to help understand the daily life of Jews and their Decapolis neighbors to understand Jesus’ early ministry in Galilee. In fact, my evangelical compatriots often rightly appeal to the distinctly historical nature of the narrative accounts in the Gospels and Acts to argue for their reliability. In these cases, allowing for a historical boundedness to meaning does not entail that we are letting uninspired knowledge determine the meaning of the Bible. Rather than a hindrance, we think of these as aids. In the same way, we have a treasure trove of Jewish texts that give us a window into historical perspectives of Jews contemporaneous with the New Testament. Why would ignore this rich variety that we find in the Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, Dead Sea Scrolls, Philo, Josephus, etc.? These help us gain invaluable historical information about the first century Jewish experience.

When you read Reading Mark in Context, you will see that Jesus and Mark disagree with or modify Jewish categories as much as they accept them. As a result, we are not allowing these other texts to control our understanding of the Bible. They do, however, enlighten our understanding. If we are concerned with bad interpretation, I am much more worried about those who ignore historical information and therefore import their own very modern conceptions back onto Jesus and the New Testament. As they try to avoid letting actual historical documents determine the meaning, they end up committing a worse error by allowing their own opinion to determine the meaning (i.e., eisegesis). God chose to reveal himself in Jesus in a Second Temple Jewish setting for a reason, and it behooves the serious interpreter to understand the historical context in which God’s revelation occurred so we can understand it better. Reading Mark in Context won’t uncover all the historical issues, but it can at least tangibly introduce you and your students to Jesus’ world.

 

Some reasons for Reading Mark in Context

Why read Mark in dialogue with ancient Jewish sources? One reason: Jesus was a Jew. This point seems simplistic and every scholar and, in fact, lay person knows this. But knowing it and trying to make sense of it are two different things. Jesus lived and Mark wrote in a world different from our own, and the best way we have today to inhabit their world with them is to study them alongside other literature from that time period.

There are several benefits that come from studying Mark and Jesus alongside their contemporaries. First, scripture opens up to us. Figures like Herod, the Pharisees and Sadducees come alive. Jesus’ words about the kingdom of God or the strange figure of the “Son of Man” begin to make more sense. We can better understand the distinctiveness of Jesus, as well as see how he was a typical Jew in so many ways.

A second benefit is the converse of the first: scripture becomes mysterious. Many of us contain or constrain the mystery of scripture. We bypass the awkwardness, ignoring it or forcing it into paradigms we are more comfortable with. Yet, when we read Mark or study Jesus alongside their contemporaries, it flags for us that Scripture is not a 21^st century text. We realize that Mark tells a strange story about a crucified messiah, a figure who belonged to his ancient context and yet exploded beyond it. Reading Mark alongside other Jewish literature helps us see that Mark—and Jesus—are redefining reality both in their ancient contexts and in ours. Jesus becomes a mystery again, a figure we can’t contain.

Why read Mark in dialogue with ancient Jewish sources? Because we discover the wonder of Jesus in new, refreshing and life changing ways.

Get Reading Mark in Context (Zondervan) at Amazon.

 

Not Enough Info for Reading in Context?

Just the other day a new student asked me (Ben) about studying the New Testament and early Christianity. They were wondering how you study early Christianity because we have relatively few sources for knowing what they thought and practiced. However, when I noted exponential growth in the variety of material we have from the second, third, and forth centuries, the problem is not too little material from these early Christians to process but too much material. Of course, it’s not really too much, but there is so much that putting all the data together can be quite complex.

Since that is the nature of later Christian material, they offered that it’s too bad that we don’t have that same diversity with Jewish material for understanding the New Testament. While again we don’t have “too much,” we have quite a bit of theological, liturgical, historical, philosophical, mystical, narrative, etc. texts from Jews that lived within a similar time frame as the New Testament. The problem isn’t so much the limited amount of material that we have, the problem for students interpreting the New Testament is that they are almost completely unaware of the existence of the material, much less its breadth and depth.

I was so much on board when the idea was initially brought up for Reading Romans in Context and now Reading Mark in Context because after seminary I was partially aware that this world existed, but I didn’t know anything about specific texts or much about particular ideas. Our goal with these is to introduce students to this world by making this material accessible to graduate and undergraduate level students. We provide glimpses into that world to help people know it exists and to get a sense of some of its flavor. With just glimpses this means that each chapter is selective, just covering one central topic. Of course, the depth and variety of each biblical passage means there’s much more that could be explored, but we hope this will whet the appetite to study these issues further.

 

Reading Mark in Context (Zondervan Academic, 2018)

This summer my family and I were glued to our television for nearly a month, as we are every four years, during the FIFA World Cup. Even though the USA didn’t qualify, we were pulling for one particular team—England, where my wife and I lived during my doctoral studies. Sadly, the Three Lions were eliminated in the semi-final round, bringing an all-too-early end to our World Cup dreams. But it was an exciting tournament nonetheless and we were sorely disappointed when the final whistle blew.

Despite our World Cup thrills, most viewers probably appreciated the tournament far more than we did. While my family and I are avid fans of football, the truth is we normally follow the other kind—American football, which is, as they say, a completely different ballgame. In fact, our familiarity with the players, rules, strategies, and team histories of international soccer are embarrassingly limited. We know enough of the basics to follow along, even enough to get caught up in some of the drama, but there is no question we would have understood and appreciated more of what we were watching had we possessed a deeper well of knowledge about the sport, even about international politics and pop culture.

Believe it or not, reading the Gospel of Mark is not unlike watching the World Cup. Many readers can easily pick up their New Testament, read the Second Gospel, and walk away better informed about the life, ministry, and passion of Jesus Christ. They can even, as a result, grow in their love for our Lord and live more faithful lives as his disciples. But what Jesus said and did resonates at an altogether deeper level when one brings to the Bible greater awareness of the “game” Jesus was playing—that is, the game of Second Temple Judaism.

Mark’s Gospel was written for readers with at least some familiarity with intertestamental Jewish history, politics, culture, and religion. In fact, there are numerous pericopae that are in implicit dialogue with the Jewish theological traditions extant in the first century. Sometimes the evangelist himself tells us exactly what those traditions and beliefs consisted of. For example, when introducing the Sadducees for the first and only time in the narrative, Mark tells us they were a sect of Judaism that denied the resurrection of the dead (12:18). But at other times, Mark assumes his readers themselves possess the requisite knowledge to fill in the blanks about the who, what, and where of the narrative.

Our recently released collection of essays, Reading Mark in Context: Jesus and Second Temple Judaism (Zondervan Academic), seeks to show how familiarizing oneself with Second Temple Jewish literature can help fill those blanks. With a foreword by N. T. Wright and 30 essays by some of today’s most respected Markan scholars (Michael Bird, Darrell Bock, Helen Bond, Elizabeth Shively, Mark Strauss, Rikk Watts, and more), this book will help the reader study the text in new and enriching ways. The volume was designed to cover the entire Second Gospel, but not to be exhaustive. Much more could be said both about Judaism as well as about Jesus. But hopefully this book will whet one’s appetite for reading Mark’s Gospel in context and for digging deeply into the world of the New Testament. If this book interests you, I encourage you to check it out!

 

Call for Papers for SWCRS

If you are able to be in Dallas, TX next March, you should consider attending the annual SWCRS meeting. It meets on March 11-12 near DFW airport. SWCRS consists of several professional societies, including SBL and AAR. It is a good size meeting, but not overwhelming. If you have never attended a professional meeting, this would be a good one to start with.

You can find information about the call for papers at the SWCRS page. I (Jason) chair the New Testament section for SBL, and I’m always looking for good papers. I’m happy to consider papers from faculty and PhD candidates. If you have never presented, this is a good place to do it.

 

Further Thoughts on Douglas Campbell’s Framing Paul (pt. 2)

In a previous post I (Jason) noted what I think is the most important claim made by Campbell in his book Framing Paul: An Epistolary Biography. It is the role he assigns to Ephesians/Laodiceans as the summary of Paul’s theology. In this post I want to raise a potential methodological problem with Campbell’s project.

As the subtitle indicates this book uses exclusively Paul’s epistles to establish Paul’s biography. Campbell is following John Knox when he identifies Paul’s letters as “primary” evidence. This primacy is set over against the book of Acts, which is treated as “secondary” evidence.

I want to note two problems with this approach. First, while I appreciate the need to ensure that one understands what each letter itself is saying about Paul’s travels, it strikes me as problematic to exclude evidence when one is trying to reconstruct a person’s life from 2000 years ago. My impression is that this is not the way historians typically operate. Historians draw on all the available material to construct an account of what happened. When we have so little material to work with, it seems mistaken to disregard from the outset a potential source.

Second, and more problematic to me, is Campbell’s willingness to use other sources besides Paul’s letters to collaborate or explain potential historical connections, which Campbell does at key points in his account, while maintaining a complete disregard for Acts. It is unclear to me why he is willing to use this material but not Acts. Campbell’s argument is not exclusively using Paul’s letters for the reconstruction. For example, the Thessalonian correspondences do not clearly identify when they were written or why. Yet, Campbell confidently claims that they were written against the backdrop of the Gaian crisis in 40-42 CE. This may be the case, but the only way Campbell can make this claim is to draw on non-Pauline material to establish a potential historical referent. The Thessalonian correspondences do not explicitly identify this issue. But here is precisely the problem: as soon as one allows any source beyond the letters into play, one must be willing to allow all the evidence into play–including Acts.

Campbell indicates at several points that a follow up study of Acts is in the works (or at least a study of Paul that incorporates Acts). I wonder when Acts is evaluated will the evidence of Acts at points be allowed to modify the reconstruction Campbell offers in Framing Paul? Or, will the conclusions drawn here be given priority and allowed to overrun Luke’s account? Is the framing presented in this volume actually as tentative as Campbell indicates at times? Or, is the frame now a fixed structure and any material that does not build on this pattern going to be rejected outright? Is Framing Paul the blue prints that are still subject to adjustment, even moving a whole wall if necessary, or is it a steel structure and Acts can only add some decorative features?

 

Some Thoughts on Douglas Campbell’s Framing Paul (pt. 1)

I’m (Jason) presently working on a short piece that outlines Paul’s biography so I finally got a round to reading Douglas Campbell’s Framing Paul: An Epistolary Biography. In the run-up to the book’s publication, I had heard that it would challenge much of the status quo in Pauline scholarship. And this it certainly does. The book is methodical in its assessment of the Pauline material and the standard arguments put forward by others. It is bold in its conclusions. Campbell was not bound by normal answers, and he was willing to rethink almost everything about Paul’s biography (including positions that he himself had advocated for previously). Campbell provides the reader much to think about. The conclusion is a fascinating re-ordering of Paul’s life and letter writing.

While I have many questions about the details of the argument, I want to focus briefly on two issues in this post and the next. First, while reading the book, it was often unclear to me what the payout was going to be. Campbell insists that having Paul’s biography, specifically his chronology, right is absolutely necessary for a correct reconstruction of his theology. While modifying the dates of when some of the books were written (Romans earlier than most would place it), through the first four chapters I wasn’t sure what the significance of getting Paul’s biography right was going to be. However, it is in chapter 5 on Colossians, Philemon and Ephesians where I think the payout comes. Particularly it is Campbell’s claims about Ephesians (which he claims is the letter to the Laodiceans). He argues for the authenticity of Ephesians/Laodiceans–not itself a novel position but certainly contrary to much of scholarship. But the real shift comes in his claim that Ephesians/Laodiceans is the third letter Paul wrote (after 1 and 2 Thess). Moreover, it is written to a community that did not know Paul or his theological views. From this reconstruction, Campbell claims, Ephesians/Laodiceans “is a unique introduction to the Pauline way for those who knew next to nothing about it” (p.407). As he puts it elsewhere, “Ultimately, this position will result in a more ‘Ephesiocentric’ account of Paul’s thought than might otherwise be the case” (p.326).

Of course, many scholars hold that Ephesians is in essential agreement with Paul’s other letters. But, I think, Campbell means something more by this. Rather than interpretative priority being assigned to Romans, it must now be given to Ephesians. How exactly this will impact reconstructions of Paul’s theology remains to be seen. Will prioritizing Ephesians/Laodiceans produce a completely different reading of Paul than, say, Dunn’s The Theology of Paul, which is structured on Romans? Campbell has a book on Paul’s theology in the works, and it will be interesting to see how this refocusing on Ephesians/Laodiceans will play out.

 

Jesus, the Sadducees and the Resurrection

In Mark 11.27-12.34 Jesus engages with other Jewish groups as they pepper him with various questions. In one of the rare engagements between Jesus and the Sadducees, they present him with a problem regarding marriage and resurrection (12:18-27). They tell a story about a woman who marries, but the husband dies. Of course, in Jewish law the solution is simple: the woman marries the man’s brother. Yet, in this story, the next brother dies, as does the next and the next and so on. Their question then is whose wife will she be at the resurrection. (The account is probably based on the story of Tobit.)

The story told by the Sadducees is tragic, but their real concern is with the legal code of the levirate marriage law (Deut 25.5-10). According to the logic of the Sadducees, one cannot maintain a belief in resurrection and uphold the authority of the Torah. They make two assumptions here: 1) marital practices of the “supposed” resurrection age will mirror those of the present age; and 2) the ultimate authority of the Mosaic Torah in both the present age and the next. If the Torah commandment of levirate marriage remains applicable in the resurrection age, which it must, then this creates a bizarre situation that violates other laws about adultery. Their question to Jesus is fundamentally about the Torah.

In his response Jesus challenges the Sadducees understanding of Scripture. He claims that if the Sadducees were reading Scripture properly they would realize that God is the God of the living. This is the point of his quotation of Exod 3.6, whatever exactly is the best interpretation of Jesus’ quotation.

But stopping here is to grasp only the surface meaning of Jesus’ response. Underneath the surface Jesus is leveling a more marked charge: the issue as Jesus frames it is not merely whether there will be a resurrection nor even how best to interpret Moses, but rather the very nature of God. Is Israel’s God one who gives life only in the present or also in the future? The conjunction of the double declarations of God’s identity is crucial: Scripture reveals that God is “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” and it is accepted truth that he is “the God of the living,” therefore, Jesus infers, the patriarchs must live again.[1] Jesus cuts through the legal questions to the core issue: what is the nature Israel’s God?

By turning to Exod 3:6, Jesus’ tactic is not only cleaver, but it thoroughly undercuts the Sadducees’ rejection of the resurrection. Jesus exposes them as hermeneutically deficient, for they had failed to grasp the full import of this text as it relates to one of their core beliefs. But, even more sharply, Jesus charges that their denial of resurrection is actually a denial of Israel’s God.

[1] Craig A. Evans, Mark 8:27-16:20, WBC (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2015), 256–57.