A scholar named Hal Taussig takes the books of the New Testament, adds ten more early Christian writings chosen by an invited "council" of like-minded people, rearranges them all thematically, and adds introductions and prefaces. He bills it as a way to bring to light some otherwise little-known writings that help us understand that the early Christian movement was much broader in scope than he says the Church would have us believe. Personally, this diversity neither surprises nor scares me. But Taussig apparently thinks it's important. Fine.
Of course, there have always been early Christian texts that the church accepted, cherished, used, learned from, and disseminated, that were nevertheless not included in the New Testament. Non-inclusion did not necessarily mean rejection. It did indicate that these texts were secondary and not held to be as authoritative as the canonized texts witnessing to the event of Jesus Christ.
For instance, the Infancy Gospel of James became the source for a lot of traditional background material about Jesus' birth and family. A letter called 1 Clement, a book called The Shepherd, and another called the Didache (The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles) were even included in some early collections of New Testament writings. (Taussig will make a big deal out of this when he claims the canon has always been "fluid." What he doesn't tell you is that none, that is none, of the books he is advocating for were ever among the books accepted and read by any but isolated groups of people claiming to be followers of Jesus.) But eventually the gatherings of Jesus' disciples did not find that they met the criteria for final inclusion in the canonical New Testament itself.
The purpose of the New Testament is to provide as direct a witness as possible to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Therefore, it only includes texts that people at the time thought most credibly did this. Books written later may be valuable, even indispensable. But if they don't witness to the event of Jesus Christ, they are not included in the New Testament. Its purpose is not to give a historical reflection on what people thought about Christ over the ages, as worthwhile as that may be. It is to give us as immediate a view as we can get of Jesus Christ, by recording testimonies of those who knew him, or who knew people who knew him. This means they have to have been composed within a few generations of his death and resurrection.
We now know that this may not be strictly true of all of the books included in the New Testament. Some appear to be several decades removed from Jesus' ministry. But there is scholarly consensus that they were almost all likely completed between the years 50 and around 110, remembering as well that such dating is very difficult. Nevertheless, the standard views on this has remained fairly steady for 40 or so years. (We may find hypotheses about the dating of the New Testament in various introductions and commentaries, like those on Wikipedia, in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, or in good study Bibles. (Conservative ones tend to like early dates; in more academic editions, like The Oxford Annotated Bible, the dates tend to be later.)
A friend and colleague of Taussig, Marcus Borg, wrote a book about this called The Evolution of the Word, where he comments on the writings of the New Testament in chronological order, stretching from 50 to 120. I find his dating of New Testament books to be usually somewhat on the later side, but it is still close to the range accepted by most scholars.
No responsible scholar disputes that the four canonical gospels are the earliest such documents available to us. Some argue that Thomas, or portions of it, are as old. Most scholars believe Mark to be the earliest, with Matthew and Luke drawing on it. But the priority of the four is not really in question, and never has been.
So far I haven't found anyone (not even Ehrman or Borg) claiming, for instance, as Taussig does, that Luke was written after 140. (He must have got that date from somewhere, but since his book has no footnotes I have no idea where.) At best, it seems to me that Taussig is being disingenuous and misleading about dating in an attempt to get his new books onto the same chronological playing field with the New Testament, contending they were all written between 50 and 180 or so. He says that scholars are all over the map, postulating that some New Testament books "could have been" written well into the 2nd century, and some of his additional books might come from the 1st. Well, sure, you can find a professor somewhere who has said anything you want. But mainstream scholarship still says Luke was written about 85. Taussig also (without evidence) insists that 2 Peter was written in 220! a full century later than anyone else I can find. This enables him to imagine an extremely wide chronological spread for the canonicals, thus making the books he wants to add seem contemporary with them. They are not.
Of the writings Taussig wants to add to the New Testament, all ten of them derive from the 2nd, or even the early 3rd, century. (Some people say Thomas is earlier, even the earliest, but this is still a minority of scholars. Even the Jesus Seminar found very little in Thomas that merited the red marble indicating words of the historical Jesus.) This dating is according to the introductions to many of these writings in the seminal collection, The Nag Hammadi Library, which is where Taussig got them. So, in order to include these books in anything close to the same time-frame with the canonicals, one has to argue for the latest possible dates for the books of the New Testament, and the earliest probable dates for his new ten. I frankly do not know how one does that with any intellectual integrity. Rather, it expresses an unstated bias towards a particular outcome: that these books are all from the same time period. But even then, after all this bending of the evidence, the canonicals are still mostly earlier, sometimes by several decades.
In short, what Taussig and his compatriots have essentially done is take a 1st century collection and added to it a bunch of books from the 2nd century. Presenting them mixed and rearranged thematically together in one volume certainly makes it seem like they all come from the same time period ("50 to 180"). But they do not. Some are from the beginning of that range, and others from the end. If these ten writings were included in Borg's book, for instance, nearly all would have to be tacked on the end, after 120.
So it becomes clear that one reason these books were not originally included in the New Testament could have been because the people of the time didn't find them to be a credible witness to Jesus' life. They were simply not old enough. (Aside from the many other reasons they did not meet the Church's criteria.) I suspect that the canon was effectively closed simply because no more writings were emerging for which a case could be made even by ancient standards that they were from the first century.
Another reason Taussig's ten new books were not included in the canonical New Testament is that most of them also do not appear to have been used much by early Christians. Aside perhaps from the Odes of Solomon, we do not find contemporary authors like Clement of Alexandria, Ignatius of Antioch, or Tertullian, referring to them, alluding to them, quoting them, or mentioning them at all... except for St. Irenaeus, who meticulously takes some of them apart, demolishing their arguments as vapid, toxic nonsense. Taussig neglects to inform us of this. In trying to make the point that the number of acceptable gospels was fluid in the early church, he only mentions that Irenaeus offered a somewhat silly (to us) cosmological/numerological argument for why there should only be four gospels. Taussig also doesn't tell us that the only "fluidity" the early church had about the gospels was about which of the now canonical four to include. There were never other gospels under consideration. Thus Irenaeus (in Gaul), and Tatian (in Syria), and other writers, only ever understood there to be four gospels in the running.
Taussig also claims that the canon was open and malleable for hundreds of years, offering as evidence the fact that we have no official list of New Testament documents until the 5th or even the 7th century. But just because no list has appeared doesn't mean that there weren't some books that were regularly and constantly used by the communities of Jesus' followers, and some others that seem to have been almost unknown or even avoided. We can see in the writings of contemporary authors that some books are referred to widely and regularly, and these tend to be the books that finally made it into the New Testament. Indeed, it's better we have no list because it means communities were free to choose the most helpful books on their merits, not because they were somehow on an enforced list.
My guess is that various documents were received, accepted, and considered authoritative by local communities because of their spiritual value. Books were expensive, rare, and took a lot of time and energy to copy. If a community obtained a book a decision would have to be made whether it was worth making copies to keep and pass around. Our current New Testament is the collection of books the people decided were worth retaining, reproducing, sharing, and reflecting on.
This had to be an organic, decentralized, and democratic process. Some books were copied extensively and started showing up everywhere. Other books were not finding wide use. These were probably kept on the shelf for a while, and eventually got boxed up and put in storage... like the collection discovered near the Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945.
It is unfortunately not an uncommon procedure in some circles to pretend that, by the 4th century, Christians had all these various books to choose from, and some crabby and oppressive ecclesiastical hierarchs chose only a few that suited their oppressive political agenda. They drastically edited and then imposed these books on the unsuspecting people, brutally suppressing the rest. I suppose framing it that way satisfies some modern fantasies, fears, and biases, but it is not accurate. For one thing, as much as some modern critics like to assume that the early church devolved into something like the Spanish Inquisition shortly after the time of Jesus, the fact is that in the 2nd century the communities of Jesus' followers were in small, illicit, and persecuted groups. The leadership had no power to oppress anyone beyond excommunication (denial of the Sacrament of the Lord's Body and Blood), and influence over what might get read in worship. But the idea of a Church Gestapo hounding heretical groups at this time and burning their books is idiotic and ludicrous.
To illustrate this, I cite a conversation I had the other day on Facebook. In one of the groups of which I am a member, someone posted a quote by John Spong to the effect that the idea that "Christ died for our sins" was invented by the Church hundreds of years after Christ. I responded that actually the idea is explicitly mentioned several times in the New Testament. This is the reaction I got from another member of the group.
Paul Rack The Canon of the Bible used in the Catholic Church did not come into being until the FIFTH century. During those years the oral accounts were written, edited and then re-written against emerging theology. There were several hundred versions of the Gospels up to then. Also a whole bunch put in the trash of the day. In accounting, we call it "cooking the books".
This perfectly expresses the false views that people like Taussig are willfully breeding in the minds of many. Every sentence is patently false. But it is what many educated people today have been taught to think, especially my friends in progressive circles. It certainly fits many of the myths of Modernity, which is why it has been so powerful. (I simply answered by asking the person to show me who is suggesting that 1 Corinthians 15 is a later addition. No response as yet.)
We see from the current canon that the early Church was not afraid of wide theological diversity. The books of the New Testament are remarkably broad in their perspectives on the events to which they witness. Indeed, some secular scholars have made the point repeatedly to discredit the New Testament that so many of the stories are contradictory and don't jive. I'd think that if this was a conspiracy by the hierarchy to concoct an ideologically consistent text they would have been more rigorous about it. My point is that any text for which a good case could be made that it came from the first century, would certainly have been too valuable not to be preserved, copied, shared, and seriously considered for inclusion in any eventual canon. Maybe people back then were more concerned for getting it right than they were for the ideological consistency that is an obsession for many today.
One question about A New New Testament is: Why? Taussig has taken it upon himself to decide that "the spiritual thirsts of our day need more nourishment," as he says in his Preface. Leaving aside the hubris, arrogance, and presumption of that statement (and his whole project), the New Testament was not compiled to "quench the spiritual thirst" of anyone's day. It was just to tell us about the revelation of God's love in Jesus Christ with as much directness and honesty as they could.
He also worries about what he calls "churches' strangleholds" on what he says they deem to be "unarguable truth about a certain kind of Jesus." Thus, Taussig betrays his disgust with gathered communities of Jesus' followers. As I suggested earlier, the New Testament was formed by people of faith called together for worship and education. A community, especially one that was at the time marginalized and at risk from State persecution, has every right and responsibility to shape its own documents and set the terms of its own membership. The New Testament has always belonged, not to scholars, not to "the people" or the government, but to the Church.
Taussig's mistrust of living faith communities is further revealed in his use of the rather negative term "stranglehold" to describe the way churches cherish the Jesus of the New Testament. Maybe he is referring to stereotypical conservative and evangelical churches, and of course the Catholic Church, who might maintain images of Jesus he doesn't like. I get that. I too am disgusted by the false depiction of Jesus as an armed, white, middle-class American, for instance. The "Jesus" proclaimed by January 6 insurrectionists is not the Jesus of the New Testament.
I find it more fruitful to turn to the Bible and point out how such self-serving, violent, paranoid, nationalist images of Jesus contradict the Jesus we see in the four gospels we already have. I, for one, fully intend to maintain my own "stranglehold" on what I deem to be "unarguable truth" about Jesus. For the Jesus presented in the canonical gospels is all about liberation, forgiveness, inclusion, welcoming, equity, healing, non-violence, economic justice, and walking lightly on the earth. In short, he embodies the shalom and agape of God. He proclaims God's Commonwealth over-against the empires of his day, and establishes alternative communities based on blessing and sharing.
When some start messing with the text of the New Testament, it creates confusion and undermines the image of Jesus. It is like Steve Bannon's approach to the media, which is to "flood the zone with shit" so people are unsure of what to believe, and thus become dupes for vile propaganda and idiotic conspiracy theories. This is the effect that adding books to the New Testament will have, especially these books that so often contradict its basic message and diluting its inherent and essential anti-imperialism. In his account of a Trump rally, journalist Jeff Sharlet even makes explicit a connection between Trumpism and the spirit of Gnosticism. It presents "the divine as a series of contradictions" only understood by selected insiders with the required gnosis, who dismiss their orthodox opponents as "fake news" and see a "deep State" where gnostics rejected the witness and authority of the bishops (Sharlet, Jeff. The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War).
Ironically, it has only been in the last few decades that the anti-imperialist core of the New Testament has been allowed to emerge from the heavy overlay of domesticated interpretations it acquired under centuries of the State-sponsorship of Christendom. Indeed, we already have a new New Testament! (See the work of Richard Horsley, Ched Myers, Maurice Richard, Elizabeth Schuessler-Fiorenz, and many, many others.) We do not have to dig up some obscure writings hauled out of the back room of a 5th century monastery in the desert someplace to find the Jesus we need right now. He is right there in the New Testament we already have. We just have to learn how to look, even if it means digging through centuries of corrupt imperialist interpretation.
Frankly, some of the books added by Taussig's council show a strong bias towards an anti-creation, elitist spiritual escapism that deflates the pointed political character of the actual New Testament, which has an anti-imperialist apocalypticism at its core. His adulterated New Testament is really not radical enough! The additional books talk a lot about knowledge, and about love and justice almost never. They are certainly less radical than the canonical New Testament that Rome, failing to stamp it out, finally had to co-opt, appropriate, domesticate, obscure, buy-off, regulate, and bury under imperialist propaganda.
For instance, Taussig includes The Secret Revelation of John, (more commonly called The Apocryphon of John) a late 2nd century text full of esoteric, metaphysical and, well, bizarre, mythology. Contrast this exercise in obscure symbolism imported from Greek esotericism, with the canonical book of Revelation, a highly symbolic, grounded in the Hebrew Scriptures, and thoroughly political, description of the collapse of Imperial Rome as an indication of the fate of all empires, culminating in Christ's emerging reign of peace.
Then there is a book called The Gospel of Truth, written in the second half of the 2nd century. This is another highly mythologized take on Jesus, in which he comes into the world with true knowledge, but gets crucified by a personified feminine figure called Error. Once again, it is a depoliticized version of the gospel.
And the claim that these books are somehow "feminist" is what we are supposed to glean from the fact that they devalue matter and bodies generally. Thomas even has the remarkably sexist line about how females have to make themselves male to inherit the heavenly kingdom (Thomas 114).
These writings have in common an underplaying the Incarnation and the cross. This is significant because the Incarnation shows a love of and participation in creation. And the cross was the anti-imperialist core of the gospel. Thus Jesus neutralizes Rome's terroristic violence, and the conquered and colonized nations are set free. The cross also embeds Jesus in Jewish traditions about the slaughtered Lamb of the Exodus, the blood of the goat of the Day of Atonement, and the suffering servant in Isaiah.
So, while the much-maligned orthodox were following the Jesus of the New Testament in building communities of peace and serving needy people, and often being harassed (or worse) by Roman authorities for it, there were also these other people claiming to be Christians who had a depoliticized application of the faith that does not appear to have bothered Rome at all. They were focused not on love or justice, but on the personal acquisition of secret spiritual knowledge.
Taussig tries to neutralize the word "Gnostic," which continues to be applied by scholars who specialize in the topic to many of the works he is trying to add to the New Testament. He appears to be bravely appealing for a "no labels" approach which reads these books for their intrinsic value. But "Gnostic" is not a meaningless term. While there were many different schools of gnosticism, the fact remains that they did have some characteristics in common. Scholars continue to use the term, distinguishing Gnostic from non-Gnostic texts. Taussig's proposed additions tend to share many characteristics of Gnosticism.
What confuses me in all this is that Taussig and his friends in the Jesus Seminar have spent decades analyzing the gospels to separate the "authentic" words of the "historical Jesus" from later material that they determined was therefore of less value. They only found the true gospel of Jesus in the verses meriting a red marble, in their historical assessment according to a set of arbitrary criteria. The rest, 80% of Jesus' words, were supposedly written later and put in Jesus' mouth. Therefore, they should be disregarded or at least devalued. (Read the introduction to The Five Gospels if you think I am making this up or misrepresenting them.) But now, having famously made the point that their assessment of earliest is best, some of the very same people are trying to add material from a century later, most of which, according to their own criteria, has almost zero claim to be from their "historical Jesus"! They don't seem to care about this anymore. It makes me wonder if finding the authentic words of Jesus was ever the point, and the real agenda wasn't always undermining the integrity of the New Testament as a whole.
Finally, even if we might be attracted by some of what these books are saying, when we purport to make writings part of an accepted, authorized canon of Scripture it is not just about the books, taken by themselves, but has to include their context, authorship, history, and relationship to the other writings in the larger collection. The writings Taussig presents often have more to do with the intellectual, spiritual, mythological, and intellectual currents in the 2nd century, than with the biblical tradition. These writings simply do not owe very much to the Judaic roots of actual Christianity.
Hence, I fail to understand the value of adding these books to our New Testament. They come from a different historical era, and they contradict, or at least disregard, the most important counter-cultural strands of the New Testament. In an era dominated by our own version of imperialism in the form of globalized commercial Capitalism, how are we helped by watering-down the New Testament with documents that preach a non-political, otherworldly -- perhaps even anti-creation and anti-Creator -- message?
Maybe the reason why these writings did not make the cut in the first place is that they had little to say to ordinary people living under the domination of Empire, but appealed instead to a wealthy, privileged class who were content to feed on Empire's spoils, and who thought of themselves as a spiritual elite keeping special knowledge. One theory concerning why these books eventually fell into disuse is that they appealed mainly to collaborators with the Empire, who eventually dissolved into it. Taussig himself seems aware of this when he subtly implies that including such people is part of his agenda. As if resistance to Empire was a concern of some Christians back then, but not important today. My view is that his new books serve to water-down the anti-imperialism of the New Testament, making it more palatable to people who have bought into globalized commercial Capitalism, which is the manifestation of Empire we have to resist and offer a witness in the midst of now.
A famous quote from Desmond Tutu comes to mind: "If you are neutral in situations of injustice you have chosen the side of the oppressor." What other effect does the paradoxical marriage of opposites in a book like Thunder have than such neutrality? What happened to the "preferential option for the poor" that was the basic insight of Liberation Theology?
Christianity certainly often took very bad paths historically, especially after the 4th century, feeding nationalism, economic injustice, misogyny, and homophobia for centuries. And we have faced ghastly crises, especially recently with the gruesome and disgracefully pervasive child sex-abuse scandals rocking the Catholic Church, and the perverse turning of so many Evangelicals to Trumpism. We have not been very faithful to Jesus. But the Jesus we have failed is the Jesus we see in the New Testament.
And that's the point. Our main job today is to continue the work of removing the calcified layers of imperialist interpretation under which it has been buried for over a thousand years, so that its true liberative nature may emerge and bear fruit in the living communities of Jesus' followers.
In our time, following Jesus, in the sense of actually living according to his example of non-violence, justice, healing, inclusion, compassion, generosity, humility, simplicity, forgiveness, peace, and self-emptying love, is of vital importance. The fate of the planet depends on it. We need to lift up a radically embodied faith that celebrates and cares for people and planet. Attempting to mix in elements of a-political elitist, esoteric, spiritually escapist versions of Jesus doesn't help us resist and offer an alternative to today's version of Empire. Just the opposite. It distracts from discipleship and its cost. It gives us a tempting way to stay "Christian" while in reality cutting off at the knees the best witness we have to the liberating love of God revealed in Jesus Christ: the actual New Testament.
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