How Luke Makes Jesus a Roman: The Custom of Dining in Luke 14

I am forever interested in the ways the Bible appropriates wisdom from the culture around it. And the Roman influence is significant as it concerns the New Testament. One of my favorite pastimes is finding obscure tracts of wisdom in Roman culture that are taken up in the scriptures. For example, Jesus’ admonition against putting new wine in old wineskins can be found in Martial’s Epigrams and so we must assume that it is far from an original wisdom saying with Jesus. So at a conference the other day on drinking and symposia in the ancient world, I ran across this passage by Horace. In ancient Greece, when men came together to recline and drink, they didn’t discriminate between rank and position (most of the time this was because the men were of equal station anyways). But in Rome, the situation is quite different. Rank, station, position are all taken into account when drinking with other men (or women, as became the case among the Romans) and were reflected in the seating arrangement. The passage below from Horace sheds light on a Roman symposium:

Nasidienus’ Dinner Party

I was there at the head, and next to me Viscus

From Thurii, and below him Varius if I

Remember correctly: then Servilius Balatro

And Vibidius, Maecenas’ shadows, whom he brought

With him. Above our host was Nomentanus, below

Porcius, that jester, gulping whole cakes at a time:

Nomentanus was by to point out with his finger

Anything that escaped our attention: since the rest

Of the crew, that’s us I mean, were eating oysters,

Fish and fowl, hiding far different flavors than usual:

Soon obvious for instance when he offered me

Fillets of plaice and turbot cooked in ways new to me.

Then he taught me that sweet apples were red when picked

By the light of a waning moon. What difference that makes

You’d be better asking him. Then Vibidius said

To Balatro: “We’ll die unavenged if we don’t drink him

Bankrupt”, and called for larger glasses. Then the host’s face

Went white, fearing nothing so much as hard drinkers,

Who abuse each other too freely, while fiery wines

Dull the palate’s sensitivity. Vibidius

And Balatro were tipping whole jugs full of wine

Into goblets from Allifae, the rest followed suit,

Only the guests on the lowest couch sparing the drink.

Horace - BkIISatVIII:20-41

So I was thinking of the way this works out in the New Testament and found this passage in Luke 14:8 in which Jesus warns those attending a wedding not to seek the highest place. The word here prōtoklisian can be translated many different ways, and you find it as “seat” in Aramaic versions, although in English versions it is usually translated as “highest room” or “place of honor.” Given the socio-context, the idea of a seat seems to make the best sense in the Galilee of Jesus as imagined by the Greek writing author of Luke.  As Willi Braun points out in his excellent book Feasting and Social Rhetoric in Luke 14, “Luke shows himself to be a master of narrative evocation of the Greco-Roman social dining scene.” That is to say, he uses the image of the Roman Triclinium, the three-sided room situated with couches on those sides and used by the Romans for socializing, drinking, and eating. And so we have example of Luke’s genius for syncretistic borrowing of situation to place on the lips of Jesus wisdom sayings about a cultural practice that relevant only to Luke's Hellenistic audience, and would have been anachronistic to Jesus' real situation.

The question of whether Jesus was acquainted with such customs is only of secondary importance and possibly not important at all. It seems more likely by those like Braun, that it is the Lukean writer, educated in his own right and writing in Greek, who was more than likely interjecting the influence of his own Greco-Roman world into Jesus’ world, and in doing so, appealing to a Gentile audience.

For more information:

Braun, Willi. Feasting and Social Rhetoric in Luke 14: Society for New Testament Studies, Monograph Series 85 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)

Freedom is Not a Biblical Virtue

When we speak of freedom these days in the United States, one would think we are quoting a code of moral ethics that spans the pages of our world religions and is so robust in its conceptual underpinnings that to deny anyone their “human dignity” comes at the price of heresy.

The problem is of course that while every American President talks about freedom, and today, especially within the Republican party which uses it as a battle cry against left-leaning big government politicians, the concept has emerged as a vacuous hole, devoid of any unambiguous meaningful content.  We fight for the cause of freedom, but cannot define it. We call ourselves a nation where freedom reigns, but refuse to talk about its application except where it promotes our politics. The freedom we like is an American form. It is idealistic, but little do the ones who champion it the most know that it derives from the Enlightenment form of humanism than from a supposed divine origin.  

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, talk of freedom in the Bible does not exist. The freedom we speak of in our country is most often regarded as a civil and civic freedom, dare I say, a secular one that has been co-opted by politicians as spiritual rights. Freedom of religion is not the same as a theology of freedom in religion. And therefore, where both Democrats and Republicans remain true to this ideal of freedom they remain true to the ideals that launched in Europe hundreds of years ago in the renaissance of humanism that itself underpinned the founders’ framing of our own country.

The Bible discourages freedom. It does not opine about what a man can be in society (never mind a woman), but rather gives practical advice about minding and remembering one’s place. These references are scattered throughout the scriptures, whether it is the advice to slaves to obey their masters or mitzvot concerning the practical duties of the Levitical order, the subjugation of lepers and women. In fact, just about everywhere you look there is an underlying message of anti-individuality whether it is in rank and file order of custom, ritual, society, even lineages. Paul himself tells us that any man who thinks himself something must remember that he is nothing. Was this simply the call to avoid pride, while a thin thread of positive self-image writhed underneath the surface? Or was this the order of the day. The humble man, the one who denies himself the freedoms of self-expression, but who lives in obedience is the man who is truly free. This was the thinking of many a theologian in Germany in the last century. But it is so counter-intuitive to our American political theology that we would thumb our noses at such theological advice today.

Certainly, there are exceptions. We see David being promoted. Saul is promoted. But where those exceptions exist they are not given for the general advancement and welfare of the individuals making up the culture. Instead, they are often contextualized to fulfill God’s purpose, a purpose that time and again diminishes man to “drop in the bucket status.” Yes, David is in awe that God is mindful of him. But the question we must ask ourselves is why? Is it for our benefit or his glory? If it is for his glory, then we again run into an important theme in the scriptures.

“In a Beginning, God Created…” or Stretching Possible Interpretations of Genesis 1:1

During my first graduate school program, I did a whole paper on the interpretation of Genesis 1:1-2. Indeed, these verses have made for quite a bit of entertainment and controversy. One of my favorite possibilities alluded to in Genesis, comes with this very first phrase from the very first line: in the beginning.

Of course, this is not what the phrase says in Hebrew:

בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית

The root of the word is “head” reš with a bә added for effect. Scholars seem to think it means something like “at the head.” Of course the glaring problem is the absence of the definite article. But without the definite article, which would look like (ba)reishit instead of (bә)reishit, we are left with an awkward construction, namely: “in a head.”

Now perhaps it has been suggested that what is really being said is that creation began in the mind (head) of God. Other than making this a Matrix-type/Bishop Berkeley illusion of creation, the other possibility suggests that if we stay with the colloquial translation of “beginning,” we still are left with something like this: “in a beginning.” This is actually theologically consistent when one considers that the story of the flood and the rebirth was a beginning as well, and so Genesis 1:1 is not the most important beginning but is a beginning. This is also possible, if one considers that this most likely had nothing to do with creatio ex nihilo. And so God, working and fashioning pre-existing matter created “a beginning” by giving it form, the same way he creates a new beginning in the post-diluvian world. That is to say this isn’t a cosmological statement about the universe, but one about humanity’s beginning. The existence of the matter prior to its fashioning is of no interest to the author, but rather that God creates out of it a world for us. It is story thoroughly situated in our world!

There is still another possibility, and unless you are into ancient alien myths, the knights templar, and other Christian conspiracy theories, you’ll most likely not like this one, but I would caution that it is about as cogent a theory from a secular standpoint then it is to claim that Genesis 1:1 points to a scientific theory of Big Bang cosmology from the Niels Bohr particle.  That is to say, there is a modicum of faith that must be administered, in the same way one must tie any faith to his spiritual life.

Let’s propose that beyond the ancient texts, there is a God who is all-powerful and from himself begets reality. “In a beginning” may imply that there are also other beginnings, not important for us, but perhaps on other worlds. This was something I considered as I completed a very interesting independent study course on the Question of the Incarnation and Extra-terrestrial Life. After all, the vastness of the universe makes our own reality a bit absurd, even WITHIN the context of one’s faith. That God would reserve billions upon billions of galaxies for nothingness while we make up the only contingent of life would be an incredible tale. The crowd who considers that all of this is for us still seems not to have gotten past the Christocentricism and Anthropocentricism that despite science’s best attempts with Darwinism and Copernicanism remain hard at work in convincing us that we are prized creatures.

David’s question “What is man that thou art mindful of him?” need not be a statement of our solitary station in the universe or multi-verse for that matter. That God would mind anything other than himself seems an even greater statement than his minding us once you try to wrap your brain around what it means to be eternal and perfect!

The Importance Often Overlooked in the Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkoth) and the Apologetic Motif in the Gospel of John

I had planned on writing a little something on Sukkoth this year, but the week was busy and the festival has since passed. But I still figured this might be of interest for some.

Sukkoth, known as the Feast of Tabernacles, makes an important appearance in the Gospel of John. As we are coming out of this holy time, which was commemorated on October 2, 2012 this year, I was reflecting on the importance of the event and how it ties into its most famous New Testament reference in the Gospel of John.

On the one hand, in John, chapters 7 through 9, we find a Jesus who is being pursued by the Pharisees because, as the gospel writer tells us, they want him dead. Jesus tells his disciples to go ahead of him into Jerusalem to celebrate the holy week (in Jesus’ day it was a seven day celebration), but latter makes his way there as well.

While John is no stranger to harsh depictions of the Jews, it is somewhat surprising to find those same Jews mercilessly hunting down Jesus despite the sanctity of the event, especially since during the passion they at least seem to revere the prohibition against his dead body remaining on the cross over Shabbat. The interesting correlation here is that Sukkoth commemorates the Jews’ wanderings in the wilderness when they carried with them the Ark of the Covenant while they set up a makeshift tabernacle where the ark would come to rest. With the construction of Herod’s temple, and before that Solomon’s, the Shekinah glory of God was provided a place of residence. We cannot be positive how Jews celebrated Sukkoth in the first century and most likely practices varied. At least one criterion, which depending upon whether you lived in a walled city, would determine the length of the celebration. During the years of the temple, the multi-day celebration and festivals, including a pilgrimage to Hakhel, and at least every seventh year, the faithful gathered in the Temple courtyard on the first day of Chol Hamoed Sukkot to hear readings, according to Deuteronomy 31:10-13. Other testimonies to the festival appear in Nehemiah, Leviticus, the Mishnah, Tosefta, and both the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds.

 It is interesting that the practice that comes down from the Rabbinic tradition is most commonly associated with building sukkahs, or makeshift dwellings, in imitation of the dwellings Israel’s ancestors must have inhabited as a nomadic people during the Egyptian exilic period.

Between chapters 7 and 9 in John, Jesus is chased from the Temple and finds his way to the outside where on the day after the seven-day long commemoration, he is said to have cured a blind man. There are some interesting apologetic motifs here, if indeed this was the author’s intention. In John 4, Jesus tells the Samaritan women that the true followers of God will not worship him in the temple or on the mountain (since the Samaritans believed Mount Gerizim to be the site of God’s coming to Moses and so ignored Jerusalem), but in “spirit and truth.” Therefore, Jesus’ being ousted from the temple during the time of a holy day that commemorated being “outside the temple” seems to be a symbolic but also a thematic point in the gospel of John, which of course makes sense when one considers that John, the latest of the canonical gospels was written after the Destruction of the Temple, and so was an attempt to write a narrative that downplayed the importance of the Temple in Israel’s destiny as a people.  Here then, perhaps John was eluding to the true meaning of the Feast of Tabernacles, which involved recovering a time in which those wandering in the wilderness were led by the presence of God. It is not without irony that at the culmination of this story, Jesus’ opens the eyes of a blind man, which the Pharisees who chase him out of the Temple believe he does to indict them of their own spiritual blindness. The Pharisees are indicted for working their form of Judaism from within the confines of the Temple, while John is attempting to show that the true power of God outside the temple. It is a classic Christian re-interpretation of the material.

I saw Satan Fall from Heaven…but not sure if I saw it like Isaiah!

I’m currently pursuing new research into popular depictions of the supernatural in video games and today my theological reflections turn me to one of the more tantalizes verses in the Bible. That reflection is on the person of Lucifer, a treasure chest of creative interpretation in video game storylines.

It had been my understanding growing up that the figure of evil Jesus is referring to was the same one found in the Isaiah 14:12. Here, Lucifer, the morning star was cast from heaven and in Luke 10, Jesus appears to be confirming this when he talks about seeing Satan fall from heaven.

Many scholars have wrote off the comparison, saying that the being falling from heaven in Isaiah is a Canaanite deity known as Helel ben Shahar, which was translated by Saint Jerome as “Lucifer.” It is argued that Helel was a Canaanite deity who is the son of Shahar (the dawn) and appears in the sky as a star (or technically the planet Venus). 

The fact of the matter is that nowhere is there any mention of Satan in this OT verse. There are a couple possibilities than as to what may be happening here. First, the writer of Luke (10:18) might have been trying to make a statement about Jesus’ pre-existence. In finding this verse, he includes a first person account put on the lips of Jesus who is witness to the actual event and reinterprets it as the figure of Satan since Helel ben Shahar was not a popular subject during the Inter-Testamental Period. This may speak to an early tradition in the church in which Christian writers were vigorously attempting to prove Jesus through the Old Testament whether by theophanies or prophecy. We have good evidence from the Post-Apostolic Fathers that this was true, and Jesus himself on the road to Emmaus chastens the two men for not believing what was written about him by the prophets.  On the other hand, Jesus’ testament of seeing Satan fall from the heavens may not at all have been an attempt to rework Isaiah 14 and may have referred to something entirely different. Here then, it would lack the apologetic effect that it could have had if it were a reinterpretation of Isaiah 14. But we have to at least allow for that possibility.

Of course, this may have been a primitive scientific attempt to make sense of a cosmic event. While the “morning star” itself is not a shooting star, the movement described in Luke 10:18 as lightning and Isaiah 14:12 as falling may have simply used the impetus to account for the repeating event of  meteorites entering the earth’s atmosphere, which gave rise to the myth.  

What remains interesting is that those who assert Helel and Shahar are Canaanite deities have trouble showing any myth in which this may have occurred, which has led commentators like James Dunn to suggest that the reenactment was most likely the product of early Israelite imagination and not an actual Babylonian mythology carried over into their own texts. I have to admit that this seems like the best gamble until archaeologists have any information otherwise. This of course does not solve whether Jesus was speaking of the event in Isaiah or speaking of something similar. Given however the re-imaginative working of Christian thinkers and the effect of Christian apologetics, I am more persuaded that this was precisely an attempt to do something like that.

What’s All the Fuss About Jesus’ Wife?

Why the Conservative Reaction to the Newly Discovered Gospel of Jesus’ Wife Doesn’t Make Sense

Everybody and his mother in theology land are commenting on the papyrus fragment find of the year. Considered to be Coptic in origin, this small piece, being called “The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife,” by the scholar who brought it to light, Dr. Carol King, consists of seven lines that given the size and lack of context make it impossible to interpret with any real clarity. The pivotal words causing the stir “my wife…” appear to come from the lips of Jesus in the fragment but cannot be fleshed out any further.

So was Jesus married? Conservatives have dogmatically said no. Liberals say it is possible but not on the basis of this fragment alone. What at best might be said is that because scholars agree that it is representative of Coptic Christianity, and most likely to be in the tradition of Gnostic Christianity, the person of Mary has played an interesting role, lending to the notion that she enjoyed some elevated status among the disciples as a prophetess, enlightened one, oracle, etc.  Dr. James McGrath has made the point that in the Nag Hammadi library, Mary is represented as Jesus’ mother, sister, and sometimes companion.

If you don’t accept the legitimacy of the Gnostic gospels, you will not be convinced by this new find. Still most respected scholars recognize Gnosticism as a legitimate early strain of Christianity that eventually succumbed during the time of the Ecumenical Councils and the politicalization of different

bishoprics that exercised control over the churches in their region.

Strangely, it is worth noting that the overblown reaction by some conservative Christian talking heads seems to suggest the defensive attitude with which they operate.

Conservative religious and political commentator, Eric Metaxas, for example, writes in a Facebook post:

 “According to a document in my possession (it’s in book form and has been thoroughly authenticated by thousands of scholars). Jesus actually DID have a wife, and still has one. It refers to her as his Bride. She’s been far from perfect, but He’s utterly committed to her and has vowed never to leave her nor forsake her…His love for her brings tears to my eyes.”

Reading this post brings tears to my eyes, but for different reasons that should be obvious, and I won’t mentioned Eric’s complete inability to understand where and how this text fits into his Christianity or why it is important.

But I find there is absolutely no reason to fuss over this, but for extremely different reasons than someone like Eric.  We’re not going to prove empirically that Jesus was married from a fourth-century fragment. I agree with conservatives on this one. But on the other hand, we’re also not going to prove empirically that Jesus has ONE story to tell. In fact, we can empirically prove that he had MORE than one story to tell! Or at least, to be told about him! We only need to look at the four accepted gospels to show us this. Of course, another problem remains with regard to how much time is needed to tell anyone’s story before the details start drifting into the interpretative reality of the community or scribe that oversees the text. My ability to record accurately will obviously be affected if I am transcribing rather than counting on my recall. The question of whether the Holy Spirit “inspired” as in a word-for-word mimeograph is not a question that can be assessed by history. What we can see however is that, if this is the case, than the Holy Spirit has no problem giving four different accounts of the action.

So while conservatives are relieved that this small fragment falls flat on the grounds of what they suspect is a significant space of hundreds of years between Christ and the words of the papyri, we have to be careful that we don’t create a separate standard for the Biblical witness, in which the Bible itself is somehow more than a popular interpretation that survived the test of time and gained ascendancy. The question of whether the story that has been canonized and told in our Bible is a question of truth that cannot be deduced on the grounds of historical research. That is a matter of faith.

Paul the Apostle and Maimonides on Seeing Through a Glass Darkly

It’s always interesting to discover how Jewish Paul could be. This often is revealed when one immerses himself headlong in other Jewish thinkers. As I have been reading the “Eight Chapters,” Maimonides’ famous introduction to the tractate Pirqei Avot in his Commentary on the Mishnah, I found his discussion of the veils in Chapter Seven particularly enlightening when recalling Paul. In 1 Corinthians 13:12, Paul talks about seeing through a glass darkly, and it is important to note that not only is this not simply an original metaphor, but it is part of a larger rabbinic tradition.

The controversy here in modern times is that the Greek phrase blepomen gar arti di esoptrou en ainigmati in 1 Co. 13:12 may not be the best translation, for which the KJV translates the word esoptron as “glass.”

The associated term found in Jewish literature  אספקלריה (aspaklaria) actually does not originate in the Hebrew, but is a translation of the Latin specularia. It appears to represent a reflective surface, such as that of a polished stone or a mirror. The problem however is that when one finds this in rabbinic literature, there is often no sense of a mirror in which the person looking into it only sees himself. The specularia is found as early as the second century by Judah ben Ilai who noted, “All the prophets had a vision of God as He appeared through nine specula…Moses saw God through one speculum.” The Babylonian Talmud also notes that all the prophets’ visions were obscured by specula. Only Moses saw through a speculum that shines.”

If one understands the function of a mirror, it is hard to see what the rabbi and the Talmud describes functions similarly.  While I grant Maimonides comes centuries after Paul, it is interested to note that the mirror does not give us a clear sense of what Maimonides sees represented either. For Maimonides at least, the context comes with regard to Moses seeing God in the Torah through a diaphanous veil. In Exodus 33: 18-23, God tells Moses he cannot look on him directly, and therefore he is only given a glimpse of his back. Moses is of course greater than anyone before or after him in Maimonides’ view and the concept of the veil is synonymous with human vices that prevent us from the true ethical perfection necessary to know God (it’s just that Moses veil was “thinner” than anyone else’s).  

Maimonides calls this veil sefaqlaria (from the Arabic translation). For both Paul (see 1 Corinthians 13) and Maimonides (Eight Chapters, Chapter 7 and The Guide to for the Perplexed, Chapter 54), this passage and the surrounding subject matter have to do with how one knows God and what is and is not permissible in that knowing due to one’s epistemological limits. The greatest difference being here is that where both diminish the role of the prophet (who for Maimonides is of greater value than even the pious or holy man), where Maimonides holds up Moses, Paul ignores the rabbinical tradition that elevates Moses’ place in this context in his own letter to focus on the limits that prevent us all.