NT Blog

Geza Vermes in Times Higher and BAS

2013-05-23T11:23:00.002-04:00

Jim Davila mentions an obituary for Geza Vermes in today's Times Higher Education Supplement:

Geza Vermes, 1924-2013
Matthew Reisz

The Biblical Archaeology Society has also published a tribute:

Geza Vermes (1924-2013)
Hershel Shanks

The latter links to a fascinating interview with Geza Vermes, dealing with his autobiography, the Dead Sea Scrolls scandal, the revision of Schürer and Jesus the Jew, among other things:

Escape and Rescue—An Interview with Geza Vermes
An Oxford Don’s peregrinations

It is from June 1994. Here's an excerpt:

HS: One of your specialties has been the historical Jesus and the background of early Christianity. Do you feel this peregrination of yours has given you a unique perspective?

GV: I would like to think that as far as scholarly studies are concerned, this is irrelevant. But it is pretty obvious that what I’ve been through must have helped considerably, first and foremost to acquire the technical knowledge and to understand the viewpoint of an insider. As an insider, you know how the other fellow thinks. At the same time, you come to realize that there is an enormous amount of misunderstanding and blindness and confusion in both camps regarding one another that really prevents them from perceiving historic reality accurately. Perhaps I kid myself by thinking that I’ve performed something useful in producing a historically valid portrait of Jesus without preaching either to one or the other. I trust I am an objective and a detached historian. I don’t want to convert Christians to Judaism. I simply want to learn and to provide knowledge to others who seek to understand things better.

It's all worth reading.

One further thing. Stephen Goranson (see his comments here) pointed out an error in the New York Times obituary of Vermes and they have today published a correction:

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 23, 2013

An obituary on Friday about the religious scholar Geza Vermes erroneously attributed a distinction to him. He was one of the first to write a doctoral dissertation about the Dead Sea Scrolls — not the first.

Well done to Stephen for setting the record straight and well done to William Yardley and the New York Times for making the correction. I am very impressed. The Telegraph could learn from this -- its error-laden plagiarized obituary of Marvin Meyer is still available online with no corrections or apologies (see The Telegraph's Plagiarized Obituary for the story).

John Marsh, George Caird and Oxford in 1970

2013-05-22T11:44:00.002-04:00

This fascinating video from 1970 celebrates John Marsh (1904-1994), who was principal of Mansfield College, Oxford from 1953 to 1970. New Testament scholars know him from his Pelican New Testament Commentary Saint John, which was I think the first book I ever read on John's Gospel. They also know him as the translator of Rudolf Bultmann's The History of the Synoptic Tradition, still one of my favourite books on the New Testament (of course).

The video was produced by Peter Armstrong, who went on to become a producer at the BBC, where he used John Marsh as a religious consultant. Armstrong produced the BBC documentary Who Was Jesus? with Don Cupitt in 1977.

There are many features of interest. New Testament scholars will also be fascinated with the footage of George Caird lecturing on the Epistle to the Hebrews (around the ten minute mark). He is lecturing in his gown, a tradition that has continued across the years, and the audience, almost entirely made up of male students (with one nun) are seen thinking hard and making intense notes. There are some great hairstyles and glasses on show among the students that anchor the piece nicely in the 60s.

The film also shows footage of a typical Oxford-style one to one tutorial with a student reading his essay on Little Dorrit to his rather young looking tutor. We see a marquee being erected throughout the film, and then at the end a bit of great late 60s style music and dancing, nicely illustrating the contrast with the more sedate academic life. You see Mansfield College's high table, and get to eavesdrop on a conversation between Marsh and Caird. Caird was the incoming principal of the college (1970-77). I ate at that high table myself some years later, on several occasions, as a guest of John Muddiman, who was my doctoral supervisor.

The film begins with some wonderful footage of Oxford in 1970. It's remarkable how little traffic there is around. One vehicle is an old-fashioned milk float with the three-wheel drive. And this makes the interview with Nathaniel Micklem (the previous principal of Mansfield) all the more striking -- Micklem comments on how quiet it was in the Oxford of 1911 with "no motors, no aeroplanes and no automatic music, machine music. No tractors in the field. England was quiet. You could hear the lark".

Also, don't miss the footage of a "sermon class" at which ordinands sit round and discuss a sermon.

A thoroughly enjoyable film for all sorts of reasons. Thanks to Peter Armstrong for making it and uploading it to Youtube, and to Matthew Montonini for drawing it to our attention.

John, Jesus and History Conference

2013-05-21T12:29:00.003-04:00

Thanks to Tom Thatcher for letting me know about this conference, and to Jim West for announcing it in his blog too, and for this Scribd version of the notice, which I am borrowing here:

John, Jesus and History Conference (November 20-22 2013)

Geza Vermes -- Economist obituary

2013-05-16T21:04:00.000-04:00

The Economist has a superbly written obituary of Geza Vermes. It is from the print edition but has just been published on the net:

Geza Vermes
Geza Vermes, a Jew, ex-priest and translator of the Dead Sea Scrolls, died on May 8th aged 88

And subscribers to the Church Times will be able to read the following:

Tributes to Vermes
Ed Thornton

Geza Vermes - New York Times Obituary

2013-05-16T11:32:00.000-04:00

The New York Times has just published its obituary of Geza Vermes, and it is well done.

Geza Vermes, Scholar of Dead Sea Scrolls and ‘Historical Jesus,’ Dies at 88
William Yardley

Geza Vermes -- LA Times and Forward

2013-05-15T19:57:00.000-04:00

The LA Times has published its obituary of Geza Vermes:

Geza Vermes dies; wrote about Dead Sea Scrolls and life of Jesus

Geza Vermes, who died at 88, was one of the first scholars to translate the scrolls into English. He later wrote engaging works about the Jewish origins of Jesus

Rebecca Trounson

There are comments from Lawrence Schiffmann, David Ariel and me.

Also today, the Jewish Daily Forward has published its obituary:

Geza Vermes, Hungarian Bible Scholar Who Returned to Jewish Roots, Dies at 88

Convert to Catholicism Never Shied Away From Judaism

Benjamin Ivry

Joshua Jipp wins 2013 Achtemeier Scholarship

2013-05-15T15:05:00.003-04:00

Many congratulations to Joshua Jipp who has been awarded the 2013 Achtemeier Award for New Testament Scholarship Richly deserved! I was lucky to have Joshua in my graduate class on the Gospel of Thomas in 2007. He left us to take a doctorate at Emory and is now Assistant Professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Press release is available here.

Multiple Tributes to Geza Vermes in the Marginalia Review

2013-05-15T09:52:00.000-04:00

The Marginalia Review has this morning published multiple tributes to Geza Vermes, all from top brass scholars of early Judaism and early Christianity like Paula Fredriksen, Jimmy Dunn and Fergus Miller. Many thanks to T. Michael Law:

Tributes to Geza Vermes, June 22, 1924-May 8, 2013

The full roll call is: T. Michael Law, Sir Fergus Millar, Emanuel Tov, Paula Fredriksen, Tessa Rajak, Joan Taylor, Philip Alexander, Sidnie White Crawford, Timothy Lim, Charlotte Hempel, James D. G. Dunn, C. T. R. Hayward and Jim Davila.

"How reliable is the Story of the Nag Hammadi Discovery?" New article in JSNT

2013-05-14T11:33:00.003-04:00

I have an article in the latest Journal for the Study of the New Testament:

How Reliable is the Story of the Nag Hammadi Discovery?
Mark Goodacre

James Robinson’s narrative of how the Nag Hammadi codices were discovered is popular and compelling, a piece of ﬁne investigative journalism that includes intrigue and blood vengeance. But there are several different, conflicting versions of the story, including two-person (1977), seven-person (1979) and eight-person (1981) versions. Disagreements include the name of the person who ﬁrst found the jar. Martin Krause and Rodolphe Kasser both questioned these stories in 1984, and their scepticism is corroborated by the Channel 4 (UK) series, The Gnostics (1987), which features Muhammad ‘Ali himself, in his only known appearance in front of camera, offering his account of the discovery. Several major points of divergence from the earlier reports raise questions about the reliability of ‘Ali’s testimony. It may be safest to conclude that the earlier account of the discovery offered by Jean Doresse in 1958 is more reliable than the later, more detailed, more vivid versions that are so frequently retold.

Full citation: Mark Goodacre, "How reliable is the story of the Nag Hammadi discovery?", JSNT 35/4 (2013): 303-22

Geza Vermes: The Guardian Obituary

2013-05-14T10:54:00.002-04:00

The Guardian this morning published its obituary of Geza Vermes. Unlike The Times, The Guardian's obits are not anonymous, and Philip Alexander does a predictably fine job:

Geza Vermes Obituary
Expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls, the historical Jesus and the origins of Christianity
Philip Alexander

It's a superb piece, and features Alexander's own reminiscences as a student of Vermes. There is one rather debatable line, that Vermes "helped launch the new quest for the historical Jesus". The term "new quest" is normally given to the quest that began in 1950s Germany among Bultmann's students, and especially Ernst Käsemann, crystallized in the title of James Robinson's 1959 book, A New Quest of the Historical Jesus. Vermes is more usually associated with the end of the new quest and not the beginning of it. Some link him with the so-called "third quest", though Vermes himself shied away from such labels. But that aside, a fine obit.

Geza Vermes: Obituaries, tributes and more

2013-05-13T20:27:00.001-04:00

Martin Goodman has a fine obituary of Geza Vermes published today on the Wolfson College website:

Professor Geza Vermes - Obituary

Today's Telegraph has its obituary of Geza Vermes (HT: Jim Davila and David Meadows):

Professor Geza Vermes

It's a well-written piece, though it has an error -- The Religion of Jesus the Jew was published in 1993, not 1996.

There is also an AP story (HT: Jim West) that has been widely disseminated, e.g. in The Guardian. There are one or two oddities in the piece, e.g. the note that Vermes wrote several books on the historical Jesus, "The first, 'Jesus the Jew,' was published in 1973, followed by 'The Authentic Gospel of Jesus' (2003)". This leaps thirty years, over Jesus and the World of Judaism and The Religion of Jesus the Jew, both of which are mentioned later in the article.

Among the bloggers, in addition to those mentioned the other day, James McGrath, T & T Clark, James Tabor and others have tributes.

Two more items I had not previously spotted: John McCarthy interviews Geza Vermes in this radio programme from BBC World Service (26 minutes):

Heart and Soul: Geza Vermes

And the Standpoint magazine has a tribute here:

Professor Geza Vermes, 1924-2013
Daniel Johnson

The article links to a remarkable cache of online articles by Geza Vermes written over the last five years:

Standpoint Articles by Geza Vermes

They include pieces on Crucifixion, Writing and Rewriting the Bible, Hagiography, Jews, Christians and Judeo-Christians, Herod the Great, Josephus on Jesus, Isaac, the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Historical Jesus.

Geza Vermes on video

2013-05-13T16:15:00.002-04:00

I mentioned Geza Vermes's appearance on Jesus: The Evidence (Channel 4, 1984) the other day. There are several other appearances by Geza Vermes on video online. The following are both "official" clips. The first is this whole lecture from 2009:

It is a lecture on "The Story of the Dead Sea Scrolls" (Louisiana State University's Hill Memorial Library, September 29, 2009), in which Prof. Vermes is wearing a Dead Sea Scrolls tie (of the Community Rule)!

This one I have mentioned before, A Jewish view of Jesus, from Sydneyanglicans.net:

It is in a series entitled The Christ Files and is filmed at Yarnton Manor, Oxford, and dates from 2011. And there is now a slightly longer version of the same piece (4 minutes) here:

The Christ Files: Geza Vermes interview from CPX on Vimeo.

And in case you missed it, here is the link again to Vermes's appearance on Desert Island Discs in 2000.

Geza Vermes's legacy

2013-05-10T14:41:00.002-04:00

Following on from the sad news of the death of Geza Vermes earlier this week, The Times today has its obituary:

Geza Vermes

Unfortunately, most of the obit is behind a subscription wall, as regular readers will know. Meanwhile, in The Guardian, Hugh Muir's diary today mentions his passing:

Great sadness, finally, at the death at 88 of the great British biblical scholar Geza Vermes. He was a sweet-natured, scholarly man of Hungarian Jewish origins, who survived the Holocaust, became a Catholic and later reconverted to Jewry. In 2004, on the release of Mel Gibson's bloodthirsty film The Passion of the Christ, with all its claims of authenticity, the Guardian took him to a press preview. As the audience recoiled from the scenes of bloody violence, we could hear him chortling. Why so? "It's quite obvious that none of the actors could speak Aramaic," he told us afterwards. He knew hokum when he saw it.

Prof. Vermes's passing has been widely reported among the blogs. In particular, I'd recommend James Crossley's interesting comments over on the Sheffield Biblical Studies blog, including the following:

Yet at the same time, Vermes’ work is still problematic for scholarship whether or not this is acknowledged (often it is not). His version of Jesus’ Jewishness did not have a strong emphasis on Jesus ‘transcending’, ‘overriding’, ‘making redundant’, or even ‘intensifying’ aspects of Judaism (Judaism, that is, as assumed or constructed by a given scholar or scholarship more generally) that is still found in scholarship and is not so different from the pre-Vermes era. In other words, this makes Vermes stand out from the constant rhetoric of Jesus the Jew that has come after Vermes. I think it is worth being blunt by stating that scholars continue to use Vermes as a Jewish scholar and his influential work on ‘Jewishness’ to justify supercessionist positions (implicit or explicit) that Vermes would not have accepted nor recognised and, unlike Vermes, often without reading sources from the Judaism supposedly ‘transcended’. Apart from some notable exceptions, Vermes’ challenge has still not been met on a widespread scale in historical Jesus scholarship.

I have a lot of sympathy for what James says here. I sometimes wonder whether scholars have learned the wrong lessons from Vermes, looking to take "Jesus the Jew" and find a role for him in reconstructions that are every bit as thickly mired in Christian theological agendas as were the German, Lutheran historical Jesuses of the "new quest" that they so criticize. It's why the subtitle of Vermes's seminal book, A Historian's Reading of the Gospels, is in many respects more important than its main title.

John Barclay, "Paul and the Gift: Gift-Theory, Grace and Critical Issues in the Interpretation of Paul"

2013-05-10T06:21:00.000-04:00

St Mary's University College at Twickenham, London, last week opened its new Centre for the Social-Scientific Study of the Bible and launched the centre with a guest lecture from Prof. John Barclay on "Paul and the Gift: Gift-Theory, Grace and Critical Issues in the Interpretation of Paul", now available for our enjoyment on Youtube:

Thanks to Chris Keith, who also introduces the talk in this video. News item here.

Geza Vermes, 1924-2013

2013-05-08T14:04:00.003-04:00

Jim Davila and Michael Law have let us know the sad news of the death this morning of Geza Vermes.

Geza Vermes was a legend. It is rare for a scholar to make so massive an impact in the guild in different areas, the study of early Judaism and the study of Christian origins. His Penguin paperback, The Dead Sea Scrolls in English, was for many of us our first encounter with the scrolls, and the book has remained in print for decades. His scholarly contributions on the scrolls as well as on other areas in early Judaism have been seminal, yet he will perhaps be best remembered for his work on Christian origins, and especially the Historical Jesus.

It has almost become a cliché to point out that his Jesus the Jew (1973) was revolutionary, but its impact was indeed massive. I remember seeing the book for the first time in our home when I was a teenager in the 1980s and being somewhat taken aback by its title and its appearance, with lots of Stars of David all over it. In the early 1970s, with the new quest for the historical Jesus still in full swing, it was still de rigueur for Jesus to be depicted as some kind of Lutheran figure championing his gospel in contrast to a law championed by petty legalists. The exciting thing about reading Vermes's book was that he had actually read the rabbinic texts that many a New Testament scholar only pretended to know.

In many other books in the four decades afterwards, Vermes continued to draw attention to reading early Christian texts in conversation with a proper knowledge of early Jewish texts. He never saw these texts as "background". This was not "the World of the New Testament". Instead, these texts were themselves evidence in the quest, themselves part of the conversation. His enduring legacy was in the subtitle of Jesus the Jew -- "A Historian's Reading of the Gospels". Again it might sound hackneyed now, but that itself is largely the result of Vermes's work -- he stressed the importance of reading the Gospels as a historian would read them. He was effectively democratizing the quest of the historical Jesus. Like all good history, it should not matter who is asking the questions. Like all good history, the study is open to all, no longer thickly mired in the theological agendas of those engaging in the enquiry.

I became fascinated with Geza Vermes's work when I saw him on the Channel 4 documentary Jesus: The Evidence in 1984. This was something of an iconoclastic piece and I have written about it on the blog before. Here's a clip that nicely gives you a feeling for the curiously compelling way that Vermes attacks a topic:

When I arrived in Oxford as an undergraduate a year later, I was eager to hear Dr Vermes (then a Reader at the Oriental Institute) in person. For me, it was like seeing a celebrity. I went along to a talk that he gave about Jesus: The Evidence (later published -- see note here) and loved it. And later, when I took a special paper on Varieties of Judaism, I went along to his classes on the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. It was a privilege not many Oxford students took up. While E. P. Sanders and Tom Wright were lecturing to hundreds in the Examination Schools, Geza Vermes was talking to just a handful of us in the Oriental Institute.

As a graduate student and later also as a scholar, I occasionally got to meet Geza Vermes. I remember how on one occasion at lunch at Wolfson College, where Vermes would mix with the students, and chat away to his colleagues, he explained to me why he thought that most approaches to the Synoptic Problem were wrong. He noted that his article on forty years of the Dead Sea Scrolls had gone through so many different versions that he himself did not know which one was prior and which one was later. He imagined that something quite similar might have happened among the evangelists.

The last time I saw him was sadly now a decade ago, when we were both part of a controversial BBC documentary filmed at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew Studies, focusing on the Virgin Mary. He was witty and charming, and I remember that he was very happy to have his simple sandwich lunch provided at the BBC's expense.

In spite of his erudition, Geza Vermes was a gifted communicator and understood well how to appeal to a broader public. His little books were hugely popular, and he often wrote short op-ed style pieces for British newspapers. To my amazement, he was also a consumer of the blogs, and sometimes popped along to this blog to comment.

And what's more, he's the only scholar in our area that I can think of who has been on Desert Island Discs. And that really is matter of distinction. (You can download or stream the episode, which was broadcast in 2000, here).

He will be greatly missed.

Some horrid typos in Sanders's Paul: A Very Short Introduction

2013-04-30T10:39:00.001-04:00

I love E. P. Sanders, Paul: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: OUP, 2001) and always assign this little book as essential reading for my class on Life and Letters of Paul (itself formerly taught by Ed Sanders here at Duke). In re-reading sections of it this term, I noticed some horrendous typos on one page.

In the table headed "Terminology for righteousness and faith" on p. 54, we see the following list of Greek transliterated words:

dikaistyne (righteousness, justification
diksios (righteous, just)
dikaisun (to justify)
pistis (belief, faith)
pistos (believing, faithful)
pistetein (to believe)

Only pistis and pistos are ok; the others should of course be dikaiosunē, dikaios, dikaioun and pisteuein.

I checked the older version of the book, Paul (Past Masters; Oxford: OUP, 1991) and there, in what is also a much nicer printing that is much more readable, the transliterations are accurate. So it looks like the problem occurred in the typesetting of the new Very Short version. I hope that they can correct this before the next printing -- it looks so horrible.

The Jesus Discovery? A Sceptic's Perspective

2013-04-26T18:56:00.004-04:00

The third in the series of papers on the claims made by James Tabor and Simcha Jacobovici on the Talpiot Tomb is now up on the Bible and Interpretation website. All three papers are revised versions of presentations given at the SECSOR meeting in Greenville, SC, on March 16 this year:

The Jesus Discovery? A Sceptic's Perspective

Mark Goodacre

My paper gathers together my thinking about Talpiot Tombs A and B as they have emerged here on the NT Blog over the last five years. The primary focus is the more recent claims about Talpiot Tomb B (Is it is fish? Is it a vase? Is it a stick man with seaweed wrapped around his head? Are those scales of a fish or patterns on a vessel? Are those fins or handles?) but there is some discussion also of Talpiot Tomb A, and I am afraid that I could not resist the temptation to bring out John, Paul, George, Alan, Martin and Ziggy for a reunion concert.

Renewed thanks to Ralph Hawkins for the invitation to speak last month at SECSOR, to Mark Elliott for inviting us to publish our papers on Bible and Interpretation, and to James Tabor and Christopher Rollston for stimulating exchanges.

Christopher Rollston Revisits the Talpiot Tomb

2013-04-25T23:55:00.000-04:00

The second of the three papers relating to the claims of Simcha Jacobovici and James Tabor on the Talpiot Tomb is now available on the Bible and Interpretation website is now available. (See earlier post, Revisiting the Talpiot Tomb):

The Talpiyot (Jerusalem) Tombs: Some Sober Methodological Reflections on the Epigraphic Materials
Christopher Rollston

2013 York Christian Apocrypha Symposium

2013-04-25T08:58:00.000-04:00

Details are now available for this exciting event:

2013 York Christian Apocrypha Symposium

The 2013 York Christian Apocrypha Symposium, “Forbidden Texts on the Western Frontier: The Christian Apocrypha in North American Perspectives,” will take place at York University September 26–28, 2013.

The event is organized by Tony Burke (York University) in consultation with Brent Landau (University of Oklahoma). It brings together 22 Canadian and U.S. scholars to share their work and discuss present and future collaborative projects.

There are more details at the link above. There are some great speakers at the symposium, including Tony Burke, Brent Landau, Jean-Michel Roessli, Pierluigi Piovanelli, Charles Hedrick, Stephen Patterson, Cornelia Horn, Nicola Denzey Lewis, Lee Martin McDonald, Annette Yoshiko Reed, F. Stanley Jones, Stephen Shoemaker, Mark Bilby, David Eastman, Kristian Heal, Mary Dzon, Janet Spittler and Lilly Vuong.

I'll be there too as a respondent to the paper by Stephen Patterson. Many thanks to Tony Burke for his hard work in organizing this fascinating symposium.

Revisiting the Talpiot Tomb

2013-04-25T08:43:00.004-04:00

Back in March, James Tabor, Christopher Rollston and I spoke at the SECSOR (Southeastern Commission for the Study of Religion) meeting in Greenville, SC, on the topic of The Jesus Discovery: The New Archaeological Find that Reveals the Birth of Christianity by Simcha Jacobovici and James Tabor. Bible and Interpretation is now publishing, over the next several days, our papers from that session, beginning today with the following:

The Tombs at Talpiot: Overview of "The Jesus Discovery"

James Tabor

Christopher Rollston's and my papers are to follow over the next couple of days.

Citing "years of research" in sensationalist writing

2013-04-16T10:08:00.002-04:00

Back in 2005, I noted that citing "years of research" on a given topic can be a worrying sign, as for example in the statement that "In more than fifteen years of investigation Carotta has found the traces which lead to the Julian origin of Christianity".

The same claim about the number of years spent researching a topic occurs in some recent sensationalist writing. This time, Jesus is not Caesar but King of Edessa:

Following 25 years of research, Ralph Ellis has discovered that Jesus was a prince of Edessa in northern Syria . . . .

It's a rule of thumb that if an author is appealing to the number of years spent researching a topic, the claim may well be suspect.

Peer-reviewed article responding to a blog post: what is the etiquette?

2013-04-10T22:38:00.003-04:00

In a blog post back in 2010, I sketched out an idea that had occurred to me in class one day, that a conjectural emendation might explain one of the bizarre and famous features of our one major textual witness to the Gospel of Peter, A Walking, Talking Cross or the Walking, Talking Crucified One? I suggested that the scribe may have misinterpreted a nomen sacrum for σταυρωθεντα ("crucified one"), instead imagining that σταυρον ("cross") was meant.

In a forthcoming article in the Journal of Theological Studies, Paul Foster provides a detailed critique of the blog post, "Do Crosses Walk and Talk? A Reconsideration of Gospel of Peter 10.39–42", JTS 64 (2013): 89-104. The article is now available to view for subscribers. At a future point, perhaps when I have worked up the idea fully for publication, I would like to comment on the content of the article, but in this post I'd like to reflect a little on the phenomenon of a peer-reviewed article in a major journal providing a full critique of a blog post.

I will confess to mixed feelings. On one level, I am really flattered that Foster, and the editors of JTS, regarded my blog post of sufficient merit to warrant an extended response, and I am grateful to them, I think, for noticing my blog and regarding it so highly. On another level, I have to admit that it makes me slightly uneasy to see my random jottings here subjected to the same kind of detailed critique that one would normally reserve for scholarly books and peer-reviewed articles.

The difficulty in part may be that there is not really any established etiquette for this kind of thing. Blogs and the blogging phenomenon are still pretty young, and we don't really know yet how they should fit into the scholarly landscape. Should we treat them like casual academic gossip, a kind of online senior common room, or is every post fair game for a full, formal response in a peer-reviewed journal?

One thing that focuses the discussion for me is to compare the status of the blog post with the status of the academic conference paper. Many scholars add a kind of rider to their conference papers, "Work in progress; not to be cited" and so on. The point there is that conference papers are for discussion at conferences but not (yet) in formal publications. I think I see something similar for blog sketches like mine -- it will, I hope, eventually make its way to publication, but it does not yet have that kind of status. Indeed, in the case in question, I did subsequently present the idea in a conference paper (International SBL, London, 2011), which will form the basis of a future formal publication.

For me, the blog is something more informal, more chatty than the published paper. I write differently here from the way that I write in peer-reviewed articles. My tone is much more colloquial. I speak differently in the classroom, differently again in the NT Pod. So now that I look back at the blog post in question, I notice that I talk casually about the cross "bouncing out of the tomb"; I use a little cartoon illustration; I speak in the first person a good deal and I speculate openly. It is all round much more informal and colloquial.

This not to say that the discussion of blog posts in formal publications ought to be out of bounds. I have myself published an article discussing the role played by blogs in the discussion of the Talpiot Tomb (The Talpiot Tomb and the Bloggers). Others like James Crossley have written extensively on the blogging phenomenon and what it may reveal about the guild. Nevertheless, I think there is a difference between those sorts of broader discussions about the phenomenon and writing at length about a blog report of work in progress, a post that is explicitly a kind of work-in-progress sketch.

But perhaps I am wrong about this. I have had some discussion with Paul Foster via email, and I have corresponded also with one of the editors of JTS who expressed some surprise at my reaction to the publication. I'd be interested to hear what others think about the etiquette here. For one thing, I can't remember another example of this, and if Paul Foster and JTS are trend-setting, it may be worth our while thinking through the implications this has for the topics and the tone of our blogs. I suspect that it will make an impact on how far and in what manner I sketch out new research ideas on this blog but this too may require some additional thought.

B. H. Streeter and Lewis Carroll

2013-04-10T21:46:00.002-04:00

I am grateful to a friend who drew to my attention to a connection between B. H. Streeter (1876-1937), famed for his contributions to Gospels scholarship, and Charles Dodgson, better known under his pen name Lewis Carroll.

After a little searching, I found this interesting tidbit in the Oxford Magazine for February 13, 1901, under "Queen's":

ADDISON SOCIETY: The Rev. B. H. Streeter (hon. member) read a paper on "Alice and Her Wonderland," on Thursday.

I wonder if the paper survives? My friend tells me that Streeter also read the paper to the Addison Society in 1925, and that he had composed it as an undergraduate, while Dodgson was still alive.

A Celebration of Mary Magdalene in The Bible series

2013-03-29T14:29:00.000-04:00

Amber Rose Revah as Mary Magdalene

I have been blogging for some time about The Bible series currently airing on History Channel. We are now eight hours into the series, with the final two hours to come next Sunday (Easter Day). In this post I would like to turn to a feature of the series that has so far gone without comment in other reviews, the depiction of Mary Magdalene. I will not hide from the reader just how thrilled I am with the way that Mary Magdalene (Amber Rose Revah, left) is played. In order to explain why, I will need to reflect first on the depiction of Mary in other Jesus films.

Throughout the history of Jesus films, the depiction of Mary Magdalene has been disappointing. And that's an understatement. Some would say that it has been scandalous. It has been absolutely standard to depict her as the repentant prostitute, harmonizing Luke 7.36-50 (anonymous "sinner") and John 8.1-11 (anonymous woman taken in adultery) with references to Mary Magdalene (Luke 8.1-3, Mark 15.40-41 etc.).

In Jesus Christ Superstar (dir. Norman Jewison, 1973), Mary (Yvonne Elliman) is the repentant prostitute, who now does not know how to engage with Jesus ("I don't know how to love him"). The character combines elements from all of those stories. Jesus castigates Judas for being judgemental, "If your slate is clean, then you can throw stones; if it is not, then leave her alone". Without her sinful past, there is no story.

So too in The Last Temptation of Christ (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1988), Barbara Hershey's Mary Magdalene is depicted in the brothel, and her repentance is part of the action of the film. As in so many Jesus films, she becomes the woman taken in adultery found in many of our textual witnesses in John 8. She is dragged before Jesus and presented to him in a scene that is absolutely standard in Jesus films.

Even Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ (2004), which focuses the action solely on the Passion Narrative, manages to insert a flashback to the story of the woman taken in adultery. Monica Bellucci's Mary is humbled by her experience, at the feet of Jesus, now beginning a new life with him:

Monica Bellucci as Mary Magdalene in Passion of the Christ

When one is so used to this cliché, one almost comes to expect it in a new Jesus film. Surely, once again, we will see Mary Magdalene, the repentant prostitute, the "sinner" who comes to Jesus to anoint his feet, the adulterous woman who was nearly stoned but for Jesus' intervention. It is so standard a part of the grammar of Jesus films that it would be surprising not to include it.

But of course New Testament scholars have been at pains for years in trying to rescue Mary's reputation. Books by Karen King, Jane Schaberg, Esther deBoer, Robin Griffith-Jones and others have underlined that the evidence for Mary the prostitute is nil. There is nothing in the New Testament to suggest that Mary was a prostitute. Moreover, the discovery and publication of the Gospel of Mary, alongside a critical appraisal of other early Christian texts in which Mary features, has served to rescue her reputation over the last generation or so.

It is therefore a matter of great joy to see The Bible series reflecting the best scholarship on Christian origins and depicting Mary as one who follows Jesus and ministers to him from Galilee (Mark 15.40-41; Luke 8.1-3) all the way to Jerusalem, following him to the cross (Mark 15.40-1, John 19.25), his burial (Mark 15.47) and his resurrection (Mark 16.1-8; John 20.1-18).

Amber Rose Revah as Mary Magdalene in The Bible

There is no part in the story where Mary is made to appear like a repentant prostitute. When we get to the famous scene found in some witnesses of John 8.1-11, the pericope adulterae, far from being the woman at the centre of the action, she is depicted comforting the woman's son; that's her just behind Jesus and the woman in this production still:

The Woman taken in Adultery, The Bible

Mary is depicted throughout among the band of Jesus' disciples, a key part of the action, in the boat at the Walking on the Water pericope, at Jesus' side as he rides into Jerusalem on a donkey, and so on, and always there in the group shots like this (also a production still):

Jesus and disciples, including Mary Magdalene, The Bible

Of course the Gospels depict Mary as one of several women who travelled with Jesus -- Joanna, Susanna, Mary of James and Joses, Salome among them (Luke 8.1-3; Mark 15.40-41 etc.) -- but the narrative benefits from homing in on one key character, just as The Bible series singles out Peter from the inner group of Peter, James and John.

In a recent talk ("Myths of Mary and the Married Jesus"), I suggested that while popular culture often provides the context for the reception of scholarly claims about Mary Magdalene, there are important ways in which the scholarship has begun to change popular culture. This has happened on at least one other occasion in recent history, when Paloma Baeza played Mary Magdalene as a disciple of Jesus in BBC / HBO's The Passion (2008), and again not as a prostitute:

Paloma Baeza as Mary Magdalene, The Passion (BBC / HBO)

I remember the late Esther de Boer writing to me back then to express her delight that finally there was a Jesus film that did not depict Mary Magdalene as a prostitute. I only wish she were still alive, and Jane Schaberg too, to see Amber Rose Revah's wonderful portrayal of the character in The Bible series, and I dedicate this post to their memory, with great affection and gratitude for their scholarship.

NT Pod 65: The Women at the Cross

2013-03-28T22:37:00.001-04:00

It's about time we had a new episode of the NT Pod. I've just released NT Pod 65: The Women at the Cross. Details over on the NT Pod page.