Resurrection: Myth or Reality?

Wednesday, September 28, 2011 in Book Reviews | 0 comments

by John Shelby Spong

★★★★★

“Death cannot contain him, we have seen the Lord!”

What really happened two thousand years ago? Bishop Spong takes us on a journey through the scriptures as he uncovers clues leading to the truth about the resurrection.

[1] Beginning with Paul and then traversing the four gospels one at the time, Spong covers what the Bible tells about the historical event.

[2] Leading into “interpretive images,” he next discusses several ways the Bible adds meaning to the story: the atoning sacrifice of Hebrews, the suffering servant, and the Son of Man.

[3] Then come five “clues,” Biblical stories that lend insight into how the resurrection of Jesus was perceived.

[4] Finally, Spong provides his own “speculative reconstruction” about what he believes truly happened.

Spong is, of course, a liberal Christian. Don’t expect a conservative explanation. He concludes, however, that “Behind the legends that grew up around this moment, there is a reality I can never deny. Jesus lives. I have seen the Lord.”

2 Chronicles 2:1-2, Solomon Builds the Temple

Tuesday, September 27, 2011 in Bible Commentary | 0 comments

Solomon gave orders to build a temple for the Name of the LORD and a royal palace for himself. He conscripted seventy thousand men as carriers and eighty thousand as stonecutters in the hills and thirty-six hundred as foremen over them.

//“Conscripted.” It means to draft, or compel, someone into service.

Where did Solomon find all these workers? 153,600 of them? I never wondered, because I had always read the story of the construction of God’s Holy Temple in the book of Kings, rather than the book of Chronicles. Reading the same story in Chronicles, though, we uncover an interesting tidbit. Want to know how many foreigners were living in Israel? That’s recorded in the book of Chronicles, too:

Solomon took a census of all the aliens who were in Israel, after the census his father David had taken; and they were found to be 153,600.

Can’t be coincidence. Here we find what sounds like the greatest slave-labor project ever, the construction of the Holy Temple, using about six times as many workers as were required to build the pyramids of Giza.*

(* Note: Most scholars now believe the pyramid construction employed little or no slaves.)

Book review: The First Paul

Monday, September 26, 2011 in Book Reviews | 0 comments

by Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan

★★★★★

This book is my favorite among the works produced by the alliance of Borg and Crossan. What happens when you separate the original works of Paul from the later pseudonymous works? What kind of Paul emerges as the “real” Paul, the one who really walked the earth, the one who witnessed the post-resurrection Jesus as a light from heaven and whose visionary experience instilled a radical, superhuman drive to spread the message of Christ?

Of the thirteen Pauline letters in the New Testament, only seven are universally accepted as genuine. The pastoral letters to Timothy and Titus are generally accepted as not written by Paul. Scholarship waffles on the third group: Ephesians, Colossions, and 2 Thessalonians. Borg and Crossan are among those who see these three letters as post-Pauline. They break the Pauline letters into three categories: The radical Paul behind the authentic letters; the conservative Paul behind the questionable letters; and the reactionary Paul behind the pastoral letters.

Slavery: What does the radical Paul have to say? The pseudo (conservative) Paul? The anti (reactionary) Paul? Patriarchy: What do the three Pauls have to say? How about suppression of women? The meaning of the cross? The return of Jesus? Lordship and Christology?

We watch, within the New Testament’s pages, the historical Paul evolve into pseudo-Paul, and finally into the anti-Paul–in many cases, a 180-degree turnaround from what Paul actually taught. The subtitle of this book is Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church’s Conservative Icon, and anyone interested in first-century Christianity will be delighted by this portrayal. This is an eye-opening, controversial book you don’t want to miss.

Mark 11:13-14, Cursing the Fig Tree

Sunday, September 25, 2011 in Bible Commentary | 0 comments

And seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, he came, if haply he might find any thing thereon: and when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves; for the time of figs was not yet. And Jesus answered and said unto it, No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever. And his disciples heard it.

//Ever wonder why Jesus cursed the tree for not producing fruit, when it wasn’t the season for figs anyway? This seems to puzzle a lot of people, but it wouldn’t puzzle Palestinians. Because the fig tree does produce fruit before its fig season. This fruit is called phage (fah-gay) in Hebrew, and begins to appear as soon as the first leaves appear in the spring. While Mark’s story takes place before the season for sukon (Greek, meaning, ripe figs) and the fact that the tree had leaves at all indicates that it should have also had the edible preseason phage.

After Jesus visits Jerusalem, he and his entourage pass back by the fig tree, and find it withered. This is a literary technique Mark uses multiple times; he sandwiches one story inside another. In this case, his visit to Jerusalem is the time when he overturned the tables of the moneychangers in the Temple. He says the merchants are making the House of God into a den of thieves … “and the scribes and chief priests heard it,” echoing the language at the end of verse 14. Clearly, Jesus ties the withering of the fruit tree to the upcoming destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple forty years later, when it literally became a “den of thieves.”

Book review: Beyond Belief, The Secret Gospel of Thomas

Saturday, September 24, 2011 in Book Reviews | 0 comments

by Elaine Pagels

Mark 13:2, Not One Stone Left Upon Another

Friday, September 23, 2011 in Bible Commentary | 0 comments

And Jesus answered and said to him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone shall be left upon another, that shall not be thrown down.”

//As the story goes, one of Jesus’ disciples pointed out to him the grandeur of the Temple, and Jesus responded that the day was coming when the Temple would be so thoroughly destroyed that not one stone would be left upon another. All three Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) agree on this wording.

A bit later, four disciples approach Jesus and ask about when these times will be. Jesus launches into a discussion of how there will be earthquakes and wars, famine and affliction. False prophets will arise, the Abomination of Desolation will be set up. The sun and moon will be darkened, the stars will fall, heaven will be shaken. Then the Son of Man will come.

Forty years after Jesus died, in 70 A.D., the Temple fell. The Romans so leveled the Temple that not one stone stood upon another. So dramatic was this time of tribulation for the Jews, and so closely did it match the Christian prophecies, that Full Preterist Christians today believe Jesus must have returned back in the first century as promised.

But here’s the fascinating story behind the story. As the legionnaires of Rome set fire to the Temple, they suddenly discovered untold wealth within its walls. But the fire raged and the gold of the treasury began to melt. So intense was the heat that the molten gold seeped between the huge stones of the Temple. As the story goes—and I’m not entirely convinced, but many are—it was the greed of the soldiers and not their desire for revenge that caused them to dismantle the Temple. They toppled all the stones in search of gold.

Book review: The Scholar’s Bible: Mark

Thursday, September 22, 2011 in Book Reviews | 0 comments

by Daryl D. Schmidt

Ecclesiastes 12:13, The Duty of Man

Wednesday, September 21, 2011 in Bible Commentary | 0 comments

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.

//As a child, I managed to memorize two verses in Ecclesiastes. Today’s verse is one of the two, from the very end of the book. The second one I memorized is at the very beginning of the book:

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.

I knew nothing in between. Which is a very good thing. Have you ever read the book? It’s twelve chapters about how meaningless life is, and how every moment should therefore be cherished and enjoyed, for it’s all we have. A live dog is better than a dead lion. You only live once. Ecclesiastes is about as secular as the book of Esther.

However many years a man may live, let him enjoy them all. But let him remember the days of darkness, for they will be many. Everything to come is meaningless. Be happy, young man, while you are young, and let your heart give you joy in the days of your youth. Follow the ways of your heart and whatever your eyes see. So then, banish anxiety from your heart and cast off the troubles of your body, for youth and vigor are meaningless.

Oddly, however, a little phrase has been inserted into the middle of this passage to give us pause: “But know that for all these things God will bring you to judgment.” Now, where did that come from? It hardly belongs, so I pulled it out. And who added the verse at the end of the book, telling us the purpose of life? Isn’t that exactly what Ecclesiastes is not about?

Someone, it appears, has taken a secular book of advice about a life well-lived and tried to add religious meaning where none was intended. I guess that’s how Ecclesiastes made it into the Bible.

Book review: The Misunderstood Jew

Tuesday, September 20, 2011 in Book Reviews | 0 comments

by Amy-Jill Levine

★★★★

What started out as a light-hearted look at the Jewish Jesus quickly turned somber. This is a serious look at the pain that anti-Semitic interpretations of the Bible have caused and continue to cause. Levine, a Jew, has an excellent grasp of New Testament studies, so this is more than a rant against Christian prejudice. It’s a serious look at the real Jesus, his Jewishness, and Christianity’s emergence within first-century Judaism. A provocative quote from the book: “I find Jesus reflects back to me my own tradition, but in a new key. I also have to admit to a bit of pride in thinking about him–he’s one of ours.”

Because I’ve never keenly felt the sting of anti-Semitism, or felt myself anti-Semitic in any way, much of the book was an eye opener. I felt myself often teetering on the edge between thinking Levine oversensitive and thinking her insightful. Example: Paul writes in Galatians 3:28, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave and free, there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” In this verse, Levine admits, “I hear a desire that my people, the Jews, cease to exist.”

While a scholar myself of first-century Christianity, I confess it’s sometimes hard for me to relate to current day Jewish-Christian tensions. On the other hand, your shrink will tell you that feelings are the ultimate truth; Christians must validate the feelings that their teachings evoke among Jews, and seek to correct the source. Levine’s final chapter provides several helpful suggestions to facilitate interfaith understanding.

Luke 24:51, The Ascension

Monday, September 19, 2011 in Bible Commentary | 0 comments

And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and
carried up into heaven.

//What’s up with this floating up to heaven bit? Luke is the only Gospel
writer to tell of Jesus ascending. Matthew imagines no such thing,
promising instead that Jesus will remain with his followers always, “even
to the end of the age.” In John’s Gospel, Jesus appears offering peace and
encouragement after the resurrection; there’s nothing there about going
away again. Mark’s Gospel originally ended with no Jesus-sighting at all,
though sometime later, an ending was added matching Luke’s teaching.

Most Bible scholars agree that Matthew and Luke built upon the Gospel
originally written by Mark. Thus, Luke’s Gospel went one direction in its
continuation of the Markan story, Matthew’s Gospel went another direction,
and John’s Gospels can be considered largely independent of the other
three.

Today, the theology of Jesus ascending to heaven and awaiting the proper
moment to return is ingrained to the very core of Christianity. We all
look forward to the day Jesus comes back. But I want you to imagine for a
moment what direction Christianity would have taken if one of the four
Gospel writers hadn’t followed Paul’s theology and steered the Christ
story toward the idea of Jesus leaving. Imagine, as Matthew wants us to
understand, Jesus appearing after the resurrection and never again going
away.

How different would our theology be today? Would it suddenly make more
sense how the risen Jesus could be “seen” only by his disciples? How would
we imagine the resurrected Jesus, if we believed he lives with us today in
the same manner as he appeared to the twelve after his resurrection? And,
most importantly, how different would we act as Christians if we believed
Jesus already inaugurated the final age 2,000 years ago?