gregoryjenks

Author: Gregory C. Jenks

  • The Occupation of the Bible

    Wednesday, 20 November, 1100–1230

    Text for an introductory presentation to a panel at the Ninth International Sabeel Conference, Jerusalem on Wednesday, 20  November 2013. [video]

    The conference organisers indicated as follows:

    What are some of the common ways to misinterpret the Bible and how can Christians avoid them? Since we are all ‘prisoners’ of our own epoch, culture, national identity, gender, experiences, etc., how is it possible “to hear the word of the Lord” without bias? Give examples of mistaken hermeneutics and also helpful hermeneutics. Why do biblical hermeneutics matter? Is the Palestinian experience of biblical interpretation unique, and if so, in what sense? And does this mean Palestine must have unique hermeneutics, too? What can non-Palestinians learn from the Palestinian experience for their own interpretation of Scripture? Does the Palestinian Christian experience of scriptural interpretation in its particular socio-political context have something of value to offer to the oppressed Buddhists of Tibet; the Kurds of Iran, Iraq and Turkey; and the Uighurs of China?

    In terms of the place that I come from, one of the things that I have learned to do when speaking in Australia is always to bring greetings from the church—and from the Christian communities—in Palestine. But when I am somewhere else, like other Australians—and especially indigenous Australians—I find myself discovering a deeper sense of our own country, or unique place in the world. I am learning—as someone who has been out of my own ‘country’ for most of my adult life—really to appreciate how the Christian Scriptures, are used (and also misused in may ways) in terms of Palestine, Israel, and the conflict.

    I begin from the assumption, of course, that the Bible has immense authority for this conversation. We have already begun to explore that with the earlier panel this morning.

    Because of the authority that the Scriptures have—however we understand that authority—the Bible will inform and will shape the ways that we address issues of justice, peace, and reconciliation for all the communities that live in this land.

    So far as process is concerned, my working assumption is that this will require an active and open-ended engagement with the sacred texts. It will also require us to be involved with the historical processes that have led to the present situation in this land and, of course, as we have already heard—I think from each of the speakers in the previous panel—we need to be paying attention to our own perspectives, our own locations, and our own point of view.

    I actually think we had a fine example of that in the sermon that Azziz Naim gave yesterday in the Melkite church. However, I want to go out on a limb a little bit and indicate one of the places where I would probably differ significantly from some of the other members of the panel, and particularly the previous panel. I am one of those liberal or progressive scholars who look at the way Scripture functions in terms of the Palestinian/Israel conflict. This is one way of working around the issue of how the Scripture impacts on the claims made for land by both Jewish and Palestinian communities.

    So as the sermon began I made a note to myself: This could be hard. While I love Azziz very much, I could see that he was going to take the story very literally. And that is not what I would do. As the sermon unfolded I was delighted, then more delighted, and more pleased. I found myself drawn along. I loved it and entirely agreed with the way that the text was unfolded. I mention that because saying that I do not begin with the assumption that the Bible is simply a record of something that happened can frighten the camels; it can scare the horses. Choose whichever metaphor works for your culture!  I could be putting myself out on the end of a plank with the pirates about to saw through at the end closer to the ship.

    But even if we start from different positions as we engage with Scripture, my experience has been—and this perhaps goes to the question of the role of the Spirit in this whole process—no matter what position we are starting from, if we are engaging the Scriptures with hearts and minds that are open, then God is able to speak to us.

    So what I saw yesterday was someone taking the Gospel story at face value in a way that I would have difficulty doing, and yet someone who was deftly avoiding some of the traps that I might imagine to be there when people say they are taking the Bible literally, at face value.

    What I saw yesterday, and what I am committed to myself, is a way of engaging with Scripture that offer the Bible the best of our critical engagement. We are called to love God not only with heart and might and strength, but also with our minds. I believe we are called to engage with Scripture in that same diverse way: with the best of our mind, the best of our soul, the best of our heart, and the best of our strength.

    The Bible, I suggest, deserves and requires the best of our critical engagement, rather than naive readings which perhaps are predicated on the assumption that we should defer to Scripture. I think Scripture—like God in the book of Job—is strong enough, powerful enough, and robust enough, to take our questions, to take our confrontation, and then to take us further into the journey that God has for us to make.

    So with all that in mind, I am taking this panel to be an invitation to explore some of the ways that the Bible has been exploited to justify the occupation of Palestine to the benefit of some people and the simultaneous detriment of other people, rather than serving—as I think it could and should—as a prophetic text that might challenge both the occupiers and the dispossessed.

    This gets me thinking about the significance of the location and agenda of the reader when using Scripture in the context of occupation. Clearly a Jewish settler would read the Bible differently than a displaced Palestinian, and neither would read the Bible from the same perspective as me. I am a white, male, Anglican, academic, priest—and a colonialist, or at least a descendant of colonialists and someone one who benefits from the dislocation and displacement of the indigenous peoples of my own country.

    There other variables as well, including those between someone like myself who reads the Bible from a consciously critical and humanistic perspective, and others who may read the same Bible from different perspectives—some of which we have heard this morning. Again, my experience has been that beginning with different perspectives does not prevent us from discovering common ground and hearing common wisdom.

    I would lead into our discussion this morning, by thinking about how the Bible’s three different ‘worlds’ are captured in this occupation of the Bible. The worlds I am thinking of are: the world behind the text (the historical realities that presume to be behind the text, how we imagine the ancient past), the world within the text (the stories, the context of the Bible as it is), and the world in front of the text (those places where we are as we engage with Scripture).

    The World Behind the Text

    I think of the historical dynamics of ancient Palestine that witnessed the emergence of ancient Israel and Judah, and—at some point in that process—the suppression of non-Yahwistic Canaanite communities with their rich human cultural fabric. As an academic, and as a person of Christian faith and a follower of Jesus, I find myself wondering how much of those ghastly stories of ethnic cleansing and religious violence reflect events that actually happened. To what extent, on the other hand, do they represent the imagination of later religious scribes—the Taliban of ancient Jerusalem—who were expressing how they felt about their experience of marginalization and their threatened fragile existence, and found comfort in fantasies about total conquest, excluding the other, ethnic cleansing, and the belief that God gave this land to me and my own kind (and no-one else).

    So there is a whole set of issues about claims that are made and assumptions that are embraced in terms of the historical veracity of the biblical narrative. You might have already picked up, in case I have not made it clear enough, that I am actually a minimalist and I think there is very little historical value to the biblical narratives. (So get the tar and feathers ready!)

    The World Within the Text

    The second world is, of course, the world within the text. This is the story world that Naim and I both find in Luke chapter 4. Whether or not there was a synagogue in Nazareth for Jesus to attend during the first three decades of the first century, and whether Jesus was literate or not, is beside the point. These are narratives by first and second-century Christians, and the sermon created for Jesus by Luke now serves as a sacred text that calls us to faithfulness.

    Real or imagined, the ethnic violence of the Bible—whether we think of the Old Testament or the apocalyptic fantasies of the NT—inscribes and reinforces patterns of fear, suspicion, and violence that are presumed to have divine legitimisation. The Bible drips with blood, whether that be the blood of Jesus (whose death is often understood in Christian tradition as expiating an angry—and potentially violent and dangerous—God), the blood of the little ones who are crushed by empire, or the blood of those whose religion is different from ours and are thus doomed to destruction by our God. The book of Revelation is certainly a classic text in that respect.

    The World Before (in front of) the Text

    Then, of course, there is the world in front of the text. This is the world in which we live, the world in which we attempt to shape lives that are holy and true.

    Looking at the text from where I stand and from among the communities to which I belong, I discover that I am in a very ambiguous space. I belong to a religion that has incarcerated, tortured and killed its opponents, whether they be internal dissidents or external infidels. My religious community has drunk deeply from the well of violence. I am a citizen of a nation that has dispossessed and literally hunted down the indigenous people of my own land. I benefit from an economic system that continues to use violence to sustain itself.

    So neither the text nor this reader of the text is innocent. Yet both are open, all the same, to be used by God, and to serve God’s purposes of justice and peace. The occupation of Bible can come to an end, just as the Bible can encourage us to resist the occupation of Palestine until it also comes to an end.

  • First Sunday after Epiphany (12 January 2014)

    Contents

    Lectionary

    • Isaiah 42:1-9 and Psalm 29
    • Acts 10:34-43
    • Matthew 3:13-17

     

    Introduction

    The first Sunday after the feast of the Epiphany marks the beginning of a series of Sundays in “ordinary time,” with the utilitarian names, Proper 1, Proper 2, etc. This series will take us through to the end of the liturgical year except for the two sets of special “propers” for Lent and Easter. The first of these Sundays in ordinary time is widely observed as the feast of the Baptism of the Lord.

    First Reading: Isaiah 42

    As befits the season of Epiphany, with its theme of revelation/manifestion to the Gentiles, the first reading from Isaiah is a classic text for the idea that God’s chosen one (whether an individual or a collective identity) has a mission to the nations.

    Isaiah 42 is the first of the Servant Songs that have played such a powerful role in the self-imagination of both Jewish and Christian religious communities. Growing out of a strong sense of vocation/blessing, these songs develop the theme that those called and chosen will find themselves drawn into a ministry of sharing their knowledge of God with others, and for the sake of others. Rather than being a badge of personal distinction, vocation comes to be understood as a commissioning to be there for others.

    Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
    my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
    I have put my spirit upon him;
    he will bring forth justice to the nations.
    He will not cry or lift up his voice,
    or make it heard in the street;
    a bruised reed he will not break,
    and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;
    he will faithfully bring forth justice.
    He will not grow faint or be crushed
    until he has established justice in the earth;
    and the coastlands wait for his teaching.   Thus says God, the LORD,
    who created the heavens and stretched them out,
    who spread out the earth and what comes from it,
    who gives breath to the people upon it
    and spirit to those who walk in it:
    I am the LORD, I have called you in righteousness,
    I have taken you by the hand and kept you;
    I have given you as a covenant to the people,
    a light to the nations,” (Isaiah 42:1–6 NRSV)

    These ancient words were easily applied to Jesus, and especially to the tradition of his baptism by John. While often understood in an exclusive and particularistric way, they can also be understood as aligning Jesus with the shared calling of all Jewish people, and the calling shared with all his followers over time. These are essentially words of solidarity. Rather than marking out Jesus as an exception, they can be understood as celebrating Jesus as an exemplar.

    Second reading: Acts 10

    This reading comes from the extended narrative in Acts about the baptism of a Gentile household by Simon Peter. It serves nicely as a bridge between the first reading and the Gospel, as it shares themes with each of them. With Isaiah, this story shares the theme of God’s impartial concern for all humankind, and not exclusively focused on blessings for the Jews. With the Gospel, it shares the theme of Baptism. With both readings it shares the motif of the divine Spirit being poured upon the chosen one(s).

    Indeed, in a poignant rebuttal of the literalists who insisted on ethnic identity or ritual observance as markers of divine acceptance, this story celebrates the idea that what matters is an authentic experience of the Sacred. The ritual can follow, while other criteria for discriminating between persons can be set aside. At the time when Acts was written, a core issue was the boundary between Jews and Gentiles. In our own time, it may be the boundaries we draw based on sexuality or theological orthooxy?

    Gospel: John baptizes Jesus

    The baptism of Jesus by John is a tradition that Matthew shares with the other three NT Gospels, and that fact alone puts this story into a special category. Apart from the death of Jesus by Roman crucifixion, there is few other details of Jesus’ life that enjoys such a high level of historical certainty. It is, of course, most improbable that followers of Jesus would invent a tradition about their leader being a disciple of John, and having been baptized by him, unless that was such a well-known fact that it simply had to be acknowledged—and then managed as best one could. As Crossan (Historical Jesus, 232) observes:

    The first and most important complex is, necessarily, 058 John Baptizes Jesus. It belongs to the primary stratum, has three independent witnesses, and involves nine separate texts. But it also evinces a very large amount of what I term, without any cynicism, theological damage control. The tradition is clearly uneasy with the idea of John baptizing Jesus because that seems to make John superior and Jesus sinful.

    Interestingly, while all the Gospels agree on the tradition that John was baptized by John, they have different stories about the event. The diversity of the stories stands in contrast to the unanimity of the tradition.

    Most likely Matthew has inherited his tradition about the baptism of Jesus from the Gospel of Mark. He seems to have no independent traditions (apart from the discourse between Jesus and John to be discussed next), and he makes only the usual Matthean editorial changes to improve the syntax and shorten the account.

    However, Matthew does make one very significant change to the story he inherited from Mark. This is to be observed in the protest from John when Jesus requests baptism, and the reassuring response from Jesus:

    John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”
    But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.”
    Then he consented. (Matthew 3:14–16 NRSV)

    While hardly Matthew’s point, once again Sacrament is subservient to Experience. The rituals will be observed, but only for the sake of piety. What matters most is the authentic experience of God, not the pedigree of the person nor their certificates of liturgical compliance.

    Matthew’s concerns are for his readers, here and at other points where Mark’s less sophisticated account is modified by Matthew. Jesus has no sins that need to be forgiven, and he had no preparation to undertake before the coming of the Chosen One. The reader should not think that John ranks higher than Jesus in the divine scheme of things.

    After 2,000 years of Christian devotion to Jesus, few modern readers will entertain ideas that Jesus may be subservient to John. To the contrary, our challenge may be that we have exalted Jesus beyond his peers and placed him so securely in a class of his own. Can we reclaim the ancient tradition of Jesus being mentored and ritualized by John, and then imagine ways of telling the story afresh, so that the connections between Jesus and other great spiritual teachers are highlighted rather than minimized? Can the Christ who accepted the devotion of pagan astrologers not also be accorded a place among the sages and prophets and mystics of humanity? And what if the communities of his followers used this Sunday’s celebration to affirm both the distinctive charisma of Jesus and our openness to the wisdom of other spiritual communities?

    Jesus Database

    Liturgies and Prayers

    For liturgies and sermons each week, shaped by a progressive theology, check Rex Hunt’s web site

    Other recommended sites include:

     

    Music Suggestions

    See David MacGregor’s Together to Celebrate site for recommendations from a variety of contemporary genre.

  • Why visit Israel and Palestine?

    Yesterday I was asked by a journalist for a couple of lines about why I visit Israel so often, and what it means to me as a person of faith?

    For me, the most important thing about taking students to work on the dig at Bethsaida is the transformation that happens in their own lives, and in their appreciation of Scripture.

    I teach Biblical Studies, but to take a busload of students with me to Israel is to teach in the best possible classroom. The Bible comes alive for people who have been to Israel, walked by the Sea of Galilee, and stayed overnight in Nazareth. The outer realities of the experience are the study tour requirements, but the heart of the experience is pilgrimage: a risky journey to a new place from which we return but are never quite the same!

    On an even more personal level, I love the Galilee, and simply feel very much at home in Nazareth. Jerusalem is the great holy city for Jews, Christians, and Muslims; but Nazareth is the town of Jesus and very much my alternative home.

    As a Palestinian Jew from the Galilee, Jesus lived in the border lands at the edges of the Land of Israel. My Jewish and Palestinian friends live on the contested borders of their ancient homeland and their contemporary identities. As a boy from Lismore (on the northern rivers of New South Wales) who has now lived most of my life (across the state border) in Brisbane, I resonate with those ancient and contemporary borderland dynamics.

    I wrote about this in an essay for a collection of studies—about the intersection of Bible, borders, and belonging—being published early in 2014. “The sign of Jonah: Reading Jonah on the boundaries and from the boundaries.” in Bible, Borders, Belongings: Engaged Readings from Oceania, edited Jione Havea, David Neville, and Elaine Wainwright, 223–38. Semeia Studies. Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2014. (The front matter, with table of contents and details of the contributors, is already available online.)

    As an Anglican Christian, I live in the religious no man’s land between Catholics and Protestants, and as an Australian Anglican I belong to a church seeking to find a fresh identity far from the ancient privileges of England. I live in some pretty edgy places. So do my Jewish and Palestinian friends, and so did Jesus.

  • 2013 in review

    The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.

    Here’s an excerpt:

    The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 8,900 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

    Click here to see the complete report.

  • Jesus Database Financial Appeal

    The Jesus Database is a collaborative online resource for historical Jesus research and to explore new ways of celebrating the meaning of Jesus for people today. This project was started in March 2006 and draws on earlier work going back to 2001. The site currently consists of more than 1,200 articles.

    The goal of the JESUS DATABASE is to provide a collection of Jesus materials that will be of interest to scholars, to educators, to students, to clergy, to church members, and to the wider public.

    The database includes several components:

    • texts of sayings and events involving Jesus or attributed to him
    • commentary, discussion and related notes
    • liturgies, poems, prayers and sermons that relate to these items
    • graphics and photographs relevant to any of this material

    With the wind-up of the FaithFutures Foundation in December 2013, this project is now financed mostly by my own funds, but gifts to help with the expenses are always welcome.

    You can make a secure once-off or a recurring contribution using PayPal or by check.

    Thank you for any contribution you are able to make. It is deeply appreciated.

  • Closure of FaithFutures Foundation

    A brief note to advise that the papers have recently been filed to wind-up FaithFutures Foundation which has been registered as a not-for-profit organisation in Kansas and also as a 501c3 organisation with IRS.

    I want to thank all those who supported the Foundation since its establishment in mid-2001, just a few weeks before the world changed for many people in the West and and the Middle East with the 9/11 attacks in New York.

    In particular, I want to acknowledge Peter Lawson, whose vision for an inclusive grassroots organisation was the key for much that we sought to achieve, and also Robert McElwain, who has tirelessly managed the financial affairs of the Foundation and attended to our various reporting obligations to state and federal regulators.

    My personal projects relating to progressive re-visioning of Christianity for the present times continue through my own blog here as well as the Jesus Database web site.

    For those who may be interested, I maintain a current list of my own publications on this blog site.

    Best wishes for 2014 and blessings for the journey we all share.

    Gregory C. Jenks

    Founder and Executive Trustee
    FAITHFUTURES FOUNDATION