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The Marginal Christian's Reading List
The Jesus Papers, The Jesus Dynasty, The Gnostic Gospels, and what I learned from them.
I am not a stupid or a credulous person. I hold certain beliefs that those (like my husband and my friend Rumcove) who are invested in their own skepticism would reject as improbable on the ground that there is no evidence for them and that they contradict experience (meaning the experience of my husband and Rumcove).
1. Growing Up Christianish.
I studied physics in college as well as philosophy. I understand the history of science, which had its roots in alchemy and magic. Because I had good teachers, I know that sensory perception is an exceedingly poor test for its own reality. I have willfully made certain choices about what to believe about reality (meaning the real reality, that underlies what I perceive).
One way in which I have deparated from my Bible Belt upbringing is in rejecting received wisdom. When I was first told the Jesus story, I believed it. I also believed in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy. Later, when I had more information about the world, I let go of these beliefs one by one, based on my assessment of their probability (which was based on my observation of the world). Jesus was the last to go. In one sense, this was because I didn't feel quite so directly affected by Jesus. The gifts he would presumably provide weren't things I understood or particularly wished to procure.
Fortunately, I was brought up Episcopalian. In the early 1970's it was a relatively liberal church----relative to, say, Southern Baptists, Methodists, Roman Catholics, AME, the Church of God, and Presbyterians, which were the only churches I knew of as a child. We were taught about the Bible, but we weren't indoctrinated, and later on, we had a course in world religions. I remember a Sunday school teacher I still remember fondly saying to me, "God takes you where he finds you." In other words, if you're born in India, God----WE were taught that it was the same God----would be happy for you to be a Hindu. The priest who confirmed me seemed to agree with this proposition; or at least he never contradicted it.
In other words, I was brought up to look at Jesus differently. He wasn't the ONLY path to God (and I was very startled when I found out that most of the people I was in school with thought differently); he was A path; and it was the path most deeply embedded in my own culture. My priest said: "If you've never had doubts about your faith, then you haven't thought about it." I never forgot either of these lessons.
In the place where I lived, the various Protestant churches were tolerant (though sometimes grudgingly) of one another, though not of agnosticism. We had regular morning prayers in school, with a reading from the Bible. No one objected; I don't think it would have occurred to any of us to object. To me, it didn't matter what they said, since none of it had much to do with my personal beliefs about the church.
My Southern Baptist cousins worried that I was going to Hell (or perhaps they were gloating; it was usually pretty hard to tell the difference). Several of my classmates told me to my face: "You are going to Hell." When I refused to sit through an Easter assembly, the principal at first threatened to put me in detention, but I am pretty sure my father (something of a force in that little town) talked him out of it. The reason I refused to sit through Easter assembly was that the horrible evangelical type on the stage started mocking Catholics, which I believed to be unfair.
All along, I sang every week in the church choir. I particularly liked the musical component of the service; I loved all of the canticles; I loved plainsong and ancient songs such as "O Come O Come Emmanuel" and "Lo now he comes with clouds descending."
When Jesus Christ Superstar appeared on my personal horizon, I was wildly excited. That musical presented a view of Christ and the apostles that made sense to me.
2. The Superstar Epiphany.
I used to worry a lot about Judas. If he was so bad, how had Jesus chosen him to be one of his followers? If Jesus was God---if; I wasn't sure what I thought of that----how had he made such an egregious error? If it wasn't an error and he had chosen Judas intentionally because he was a bad man, how had the other apostles failed to notice it? In Superstar (and I'm no Lloyd Weber fan, but I still love JCS), Judas is frightened by the attention Jesus is receiving; the movements become too large and the Romans are bound to notice. In the meantime, Simon the Zealot is pushing Jesus to throw down the gauntlet and the Sanhedrin, like Judas, are worrying that the Romans will punish all of the Jews if they become aware of Christ's following.
I liked the story because it humanized these storybook characters whose actions otherwise made no sense to me. Though I had a not-too-bad church school education, I hadn't been taught much about the political and historic context in which Jesus operated. I had only the vaguest understanding that Judea was occupied territory, that Galilee was a hotbed of anti-Roman activisim, and that the Romans regularly arrested and crucified those who actively challenged Roman authority. In my mind, the Jesus story happened in a world apart from history. The sudden brutal intrusion of the Romans into the soft green hills of my imagined Judea had never made much sense to me; and I believed, because that's what John says, that 'the Jews' had suddenly-- for no apparent reason----turned on Jesus and persuaded the Romans to crucify him.
I'm pretty sure that many contemporary Christians haven't got much further than this in their imagination of the events of Christ's life. They can quote tags from the gospels and what their ministers have told them the tags mean. They can tell you the events from the New Testaments, but they garble them altogether. They don't notice or if they do they don't care that the details of the Christmas story are not the same (or are ignored altogether) and that the relationship of Christ with John the Baptist is completely different depending on which gospel you believe.
I loved Superstar because it purported to set Christ in a historical context and portrayed him as someone in the process of making some very hard choices. I also liked the portrayal of Judas as a frightened and angry man. A lot of the Christians I knew---most of them---proclaimed it blasphemous.
I no longer believe the JCS gospel, but it helped me to realize how absolutely fascinated I was at some level with the man Jesus. I maintained this interest through most of my life, even during the long period when I lost interest in Christianity.
Much later in life, I began to read everything I could find about the life of Jesus and the Crucifixion. I was fascinated even though I didn't believe anymore that he was God or that he rose from the dead on the third day. I read The Passover Plot, The Essene Odyssey, The Foreigner, Jesus the Man, Holy Blood Holy Grail, and some very thick volumes that bored me to tears but which I had the merit of qualifying as actual 'history.'
3. Questions, Questions, Questions.
I learned from my reading that history books concerning Jesus---by which I mean History, in the academic and scholarly sense----couldn't tell me what I wanted to know: What was he like? What was it like for him? What did the people really believe about him? Why did they turn against him after hailing him in his triumphal entry into the city on the back of a donkey? What suddenly changed? Why did Judas betray him?
Also: WHAT WAS HE DOING IN BETWEEN THE FEW INCIDENTS THAT THE GOSPELS COLLECTIVELY RECORD? What did he say to the Apostles the rest of the time? I never bought the whole 'divinely inspired by God' crap about the gospels, if 'divinely inspired' meant I had to believe every word, because (unlike a lot of my friends) I actually READ the Gospels and knew they were riddled with inconsistencies. I was also extremely confused by the Gospel of John, which seemed to be talking about principles and beliefs the other gospels barely touched upon.
Later when I found out the history of the Gospels and the Q manuscript, how and when the synoptics and John were selected for inclusion in the "New Testament," how many others were rejected at the time (and why), I finally understood why the story had never jelled for me. That's when I started looking for books by people who had the same questions and concerns I had. I wanted to see what other people thought might have happened.
Most of the books that have interested me aren't history. They are imaginative speculation, think pieces, arguments, educated guesses. Which is exactly why---like the 'story' in Jesus Christ Superstar, based on John's Gospel----they were useful to me. They offered various frameworks in which I could set the disconnected and inconsistent fragments I knew about the life of Jesus. Each book reframed him differently.
Was he a Nasorean, an Essene, a member of the Therapeutae, a Zealot, the inventor of a new brand of Judaism, a follower of the Baptist, or the founder of an entirely new school of religious thought? Had he grown up in the Jewish communities of Alexandria, as Professor Morton Smith and The Jesus Papers speculate? Did his brand of Jewishness incorporate elements of Egyptian mystery religions?
Was he the actual king of the Jews (the legitimate claimant to the throne) or simply one of many who claimed to have the requisite lineage to become the Messiah? Did he intend to be crucified in order to carry out the prophecy or was his arrest the product of a betrayal by his inner circle? When he rode into Jerusalem on the donkey---an in-your-face gesture from the Roman standpoint if ever there was one--what was he expecting?
Why was he so unkind to the scribes and pharisees? Why were the---and the high priest---so nasty to him?
Who were these people: Lazarus, Mary and Martha of Bethany, Mary Magdalene, Joseph of Arimathea, Simon the Cyrene, and the young man dressed in linen who was in the garden with him when he was arrested and who high-tailed it over the horizon?
Who were the people who were always following him around? Were they the same ones who demanded that Pilate crucified him or where there rival factions?
Why was he always hanging out at the house in Bethany? If he was so fond of the Bethany family, why didn't he rush back when his disciples told him Lazarus was dead? Didn't he care about Mary and Martha?
Why was he 'without honor in his own country,' Galilee? ("Um, isn't that the carpenter?") How did he escape from the synagogue after the people started to stone him?
If he wasn't married, why wasn't he? Where was Joseph at the time Jesus was crucified? Had he died? Was he perhaps divorced from Mary (this was an idea I came up with when I read Jesus's exhortation about divorce).
Was Jesus crucified on Calgary or somewhere more private? Who were the two 'lestai' crucified with him?
Why did he die (or pass out?) after they gave him the sponge? (I always thought that was a bit dodgy; it's my understanding that Crucifixion usually took at least a couple of days).
And ON and ON AND ON. Believe me, the miracles, including the Resurrection from the Dead, were the LEAST of my concerns.
I wanted more details. Why did people criticize him for being a wine-bibber and a glutton? Who was married at Cana (I don't necessarily buy the 'married-to-the-magdalene' story, but even if I did, the Cana wedding could have been a relative?
This is why I read whatever books I can find on this non-historical, non-binding, purely speculative 'alternative Christianity'. I KNOW they are not the truth, but I also know that I am never in this lifetime going to know the truth (in the sense of "a true picture of Jesus's life.')
The storybook Jesus of my childhood, the Jesus who couldn't be questioned, the entranced and transported Jesus of da Vinci's last supper----that Jesus has never interested me. In my part of the world there is a dreadful/very beautiful (depending on your taste) old song called "And He Walks with Me and He Talks with Me." I was never in the least interested in walking with or talking with the Jesus introduced to me as a child. He was boring, cryptic, unfathomable, UNREAL.
But at some point (after 40) I became ever more fascinated with the elusive real Jesus who is always just disappearing round a corner at the moment I think I will finally catch a glimpse of the real authentic man. Is that wrong? I'll answer myself. No. It is not wrong.
4. Laura Miller's review at Salon.com.
Which as far as I'm concerned is exactly where Laura Miller's review of The Jesus Papers at Salon.com misses the point.
[quote from Miller's review, Jesus: The Cover Up, begins]
Nevertheless, the most intriguing discovery to be found in "The Jesus Papers" will probably only interest those of us who pursue the odd and somewhat pitiful hobby of crank-watching; it's finally clear from reading this book that it was Baigent -- rather than co-authors Leigh and Henry Lincoln -- who actually wrote "Holy Blood, Holy Grail." The voice, which grows more and more authoritative in tone as the foundations of its arguments dissolve into piffle, is unmistakable. Baigent's co-authors may have supplied the research and quite possibly the underlying structure of "Grail"; this book offers little fresh information and is badly muddled. But the style of "The Jesus Papers," a masterly counterpoint of bluster, false humility and self-righteousness, matches that of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" like a fingerprint.
And what a style it is; Baigent helped make "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" one of the masterworks of paranoid pseudohistory, along with, say, "Chariots of the Gods." In ambition and organization, "The Jesus Papers" can't hold a candle to "Grail," but because it's a less seamlessly constructed edifice of bunkum, it gives you a clearer picture of how Baigent et al. managed to hoodwink millions of readers. Since writing "Grail," Baigent has borrowed a few crowd-pleasing, thriller-style tricks from Brown, but he's not as gifted a panderer, and he never seems as comfortable when he's trying to entertain you as when he's doing what he does best: pretending -- magnificently -- that he actually knows what he's talking about. ...
The New Testament gospels are based on oral traditions. Anyone who's ever played the child's game Telephone knows how easily words can be distorted as they're passed along from one person to another -- even when the people are all sitting in the same room on the same day, let alone when they're handed down over decades or more by individuals who are advocating religious agendas. Even in a thoroughly documented, highly literate era like our own, information gets distorted and distortions become conventional wisdom.
[quote from Miller review ends]
For what it's worth, the theory that Baigeant propounds in The Jesus Papers certainly evidences a few glaring flaws. There are many absurd logical jumps, fallacies, holes. As Miller notes, he says very little that is new. I agree that it would have been better if he had made the point, as he and his co-authors frequently do in Holy Blood Holy Grail, that his work is mainly speculative. His book is not history and his arguments often do seem to jump over big gaps. It's next door to fiction. I don't care.
I won't get into the question of whether books of this sort are detrimental to those too stupid or credulous to separate truth from speculation. Miller seems to assume that this category includes most people, including me.
The author Umberto Eco makes much more effective fun of books such as Holy Blood Holy Grail in the amazing and endlessly entertaining Foucault's Pendulum. Indeed, the entire story concerns the evolution of just such a constructed view of history and reality (and the seductive and dangerous power of such constructs.)
I found Baigent's book interesting and entertaining because it suggests that there might be other ways of looking at the life and mission of Jesus and the scriptures. Christian 0rthodoxy says that Christians are not permitted to look at either in other ways. The Jesus Papers, whatever its absurdities, is an alternative view. It can't answer my questions but it can broaden and enhance my view of the possibilities.
I found the review incredibly patronizing. Furthermore, it's dangerous work to call someone else illogical and inconsistent and to point out the gaps in their reasoning. Unless you're Thomas Aquinas (who, however, reasonable turned out to be wrong in many respects) your reasoning on matters of history and religion is likely to have gaps. Here's one in the article:
[quote from Miller's review, Jesus: The Cover Up, begins]
Likewise, Baigent finds the passage in Mark in which Joseph of Arimathea asks Pilate for Jesus' body to be very suggestive. In "the original Greek text," he reports, Joseph uses the term "soma" for the body, while Pilate refers to it as the "ptoma." Baigent claims that while "ptoma" always refers to a corpse, the word "soma" "denotes a living body," and thus, "Jesus' survival is revealed right there in the actual Gospel account." But this just isn't true. While "ptoma" does refer to a corpse, "soma," like the English word "body," can describe a person either living or dead. Why this difference is an issue is even more baffling, since according to passages elsewhere in his maddeningly inconsistent book, Baigent thinks that Pilate was in on the conspiracy to save Jesus!
[quote from Miller's review ends]
Actually, Baigent raises the question of whether Pilate might have been 'in on the conspiracy'. From what I've read of the Procurator of Judea, he was quite corrupt and might have been open to a bribe, and I think on the whole it was unlikely: scourging someone was no joke and might have been enough on its own to kill someone through blood poisoning, shock, etc.
But he definitely does state that 'soma' means 'denotes a living body'. The thing is, Miller's explanation simply raises further interesting questions. Why did the writer of the gospel have Joseph asking for 'the dead or living body' and Pilate replying "You can have his dead body"? I don't think the text proves anything one way or another but the discrepancy in the Greek is interesting. Somewhere along the way, someone chose to make a distinction, meaning that someone along the way thought that the distinction was significant in some way. In what way? We'll never know, because we will never know who wrote that particular text in that particular way and if we did, we couldn't ask. It raises some interesting questions and answers none of them.
But the discrepancy is interesting, just as the theory that Christ might have been brought up in Egypt is interesting. Did his teachings, and particularly the teachings reported in the rejected and disputed so-called "gnostic gospels", derive from Egyptian mystery religions? Baigent proves nothing, but his discussion of the Egyptians and the practice of 'incubation' might---just possibly---shed some light on the story of Lazarus (including Christ's blitheness when first informed of the young man's death).
As for the possibility that we may yet live to see the discovery of further evidence of Christ's life, is that really so far-fetched? Consider the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gnostic gospels. I don't buy into the notion of the Vatican as suppresser-of-inconvenient evidence at this point in history---it would be rude to too many of my Catholic friends----but certainly I believe that there have been times in the past (I won't say which times) when the Church would have been fully prepared to quash or destroy inconvenient evidence of this, that, and the other concerning Christ's life. I don't think you have to be a conspiracy theorist to concede this possibility so much as slightly versed in history.
5. The Church of Tabor vs. the Church of Baigent: Away with the heretic!
Miller's decrying of Baigent seems intended to support her subsequent elevation of James Tabor, author of The Jesus Dynasty: The Hidden History of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity. And I agree that it is well-argued and fascinating.
I was amused that Miller proceeded to argue the 'facts' about Jesus, after her diatribe against The Jesus Papers. Tabor may have argued more effectively, but surely his views are based mainly on the same sources? His view is less speculative, but doesn't rule out the notion that Jesus may have been married (why in the world is that so hard for people to believe) or that he might have been taken down from the cross before he had finished dying.
I agree, I fully agree, that Tabor makes a fairly plausible argument. Amusingly, Miller then launches into a rather dogmatic assertion of the facts according to The Gospel According to Tabor. I'm quoting a substantial portion because my objective is to illustrate how even discussion of books about Jesus take a sectarian tone. Furthermore, it shows how it's impossible to take a position without engaging in a fair amount of speculation.
[quote from Miller's review, Jesus: the Cover Up, begins]
Tabor is primarily interested in recovering the history of Jesus' immediate family -- his mother, four brothers and two sisters -- who, he maintains, played a far more important role in the young religious movement than is generally known. The exact configuration of Jesus' extended family is pretty hazy; Tabor suspects that an elderly Joseph married the teenage Mary when she was already pregnant by another man and then died a few years later, leaving Jesus at the head of a large family.
Jesus' brothers -- sons of Joseph or perhaps of Joseph's brother, who according to tradition was likely to have married Mary after Joseph's death -- took over the church in succession after Jesus' death. The eldest, James, stood for the continuation of the original identity of Jesus' movement. It was a profoundly Jewish, messianic sect that believed Jesus to be divinely inspired but not divine, that foresaw a coming "Kingdom of God" that was earthly rather than heavenly, that sought the restoration of Jewish self-rule in the form of a king descended from David, that did not view the celebration of the Eucharist as the symbolic consumption of Jesus' flesh and blood and that considered Jesus himself to be well and truly dead.
"There are two completely separate and distinct 'Christianities' embedded in the New Testament," Tabor writes. The version that triumphed -- Jesus as God in human form, born of the eternally virgin Mary, whose death mystically atoned for the sins of humankind, who rose from the dead and inaugurated a new covenant with God that superceded the necessity of following Jewish law -- is largely the creation of Paul. Tabor's mission with "The Jesus Dynasty" is to recover what he can of the vein of Christianity led by James, the one that "lost" and that eventually withered away.....
Eventually, Jesus and John became "full partners" in a movement that anticipated the overthrow of the corrupt civil and religious authorities in Israel and eventually the entire world. They heralded the establishment of a new age, in which the people would be ruled by two messiahs, a king descended from David (Jesus) and a high priest descended from Aaron (John), who would preside over the temple in Jerusalem. But John and Jesus didn't advocate armed revolution -- they believed, on the basis of their interpretation of passages in the Old Testament, that God would intervene and effect the change when the right moment arrived. Although Tabor describes their movement as "apocalyptic," he doesn't mean that they expected the end of the world, only its utter transformation.
Given this view, it's not surprising that Tabor considers John's execution by King Herod to be "the most disappointing and shocking event in Jesus' entire life." The loss seems to have inaugurated a new, darker vision of his own destiny in Jesus' mind. In the best section of "The Jesus Dynasty," Tabor imagines the last few days of Jesus' life. Although the story is familiar, as Tabor retells it, minus the supernatural elements and taking the very Jewish nature of Jesus himself into account, it becomes new and in its own way just as powerful.
Tabor's Jesus is a man who considers himself chosen by God and who reconciles himself to enduring terrible suffering before God's kingdom can be established. He deliberately provokes a Jewish religious establishment glutted on temple tributes, and the Roman authorities, known for their creatively sadistic execution methods. "He firmly believed that if he and his followers offered themselves up, placing their fate in God's hands," they could bring about the beginning of the new age, Tabor writes. Although, as Tabor admits, we can never know Jesus' inner thoughts, it's possible that even on the cross, "up until the last minutes, perhaps, Jesus believed that God would intervene and save his life, and openly manifest his Kingdom."
[quote from Miller's review ends (EMPHASIS ADDED)]
Note that she says, quite correctly, that Tabor's Jesus is Tabor's Jesus, just as Morton Smith's is Morton Smith's, Baigent's is Baigent's, Crossan's is Crossan's, Barbara Thiering's is Barbara Thiering's, Bultman's is Bultman's, and Pere Teilhard is Pere Teilhard's. The scholarship behind these versions varies substantially, but they are all working with the same scraps, rumors, allegations, hints, and references. Each portrait of Jesus varies according to which particular scraps the author found most persuasive, intriguing, affirming, curious.
Don't get me wrong; I like this book very much, but is Tabor really doing anything different from Baigent? Miller objects to the "Egyptian folderol," but is apparently prepared to buy into the Tabor version. Why? We know so little. And the 'history' we have is very unclear about the connection between Jesus and John and about the role of his family in his church. At any rate, the authors of Holy Blood Holy Grail (of which Miller is scathingly critical) certainly raised exactly these same points about Christ's mission and the divide between the Christianity of Paul and the Christianity of James.
Furthermore, I think there have been some very plausible arguments that Jesus's teachings represented a departure from contemporary Jewish orthodoxy. For further information, see the two volume treatise (four glorious inches of reading), A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus by John P. Meier. And by the way, if you want a detailed and scholarly discussion, this is the [2 volume] book you need.
My favorite book of this sort is Elaine Pagels' The Gnostic Gospels. The Jesus she presents there is the one I personally prefer to imagine. I've devoured her other books as well, but that is the one that I think delivers the biggest jolt. A lot of other works rely on it heavily.
What amuses me about this article is that Miller is basically setting up a couple of factions and then allying herself with the faction that fits in best with her own views. There is a sectarian tone to her advocacy of Tabor's view that just amuses the hell out of me.
What I want from those who have thought about such matters is more different colors of light, more speculation, more thought. I don't feel compelled to believe anyone's account, not excluding the unknown authors of the gospels. My goal is to come up with my own private version of Jesus and I will take all the input I can get.
LATER THE SAME DAY!
After reading this, Nick pulled out a tape he'd borrowed of The Unknown Jesus. The tape deals with recent archeaology, the New Jesus Seminar, and many (quote) "exciting new developments." Who opened the discussion? That's right, Michael Baigent. He said---if I understood him aright--- that the Jesus of faith/theology and the real Jesus were absolutely disconnected and that if you try to connect them, you get either bad faith or bad theology. Um....?
Anyway, it's a fascinating documentary; don't know how I missed it the first time around.
RELATED POSTS:
Umberto Eco: Foucault’s Pendulum---It’s Always About the Templars
First, Take that Plank Out of Your Own Eye: A Marginal Christian looks at Leviticus on Sexual Sin, Matthew on Adultery specifically, and what we can learn from Christ’s encounters with two adulteresses.
A Marginal Christian Looks at Corporal Punishment, Sexual Assault, Transvestitism, Divorce, and Crushed Testicles in the Old Testament.
Was Jesus Married to Mary Magdalene (Or Anyone)? Why this Heretic Thinks Not.
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