From Luke_Johnson@info.harpercollins.comThu Mar 7 10:05:08 1996 Date: Thu, 7 Mar 1996 08:26:44 -0500 (EST) From: Luke Johnson To: Jesus2000@info.harpercollins.com Subject: Response Week two (Johnson) Greetings from Atlanta on a very wet day. I am divided in mind as I sit at this keyboard, uncertain how to view the process in which we find ourselves. On the positive side, it continues a good tradition of public disputation both within Christianity and American politics. On the negative side, I sometimes feel as though I am trapped within an endless Republican Part Primary Debate, with lots of assertions and charges, but little real response, with everyone trying hard ---in the present cant phrase--- to stay "on message." In that mood, I will try to respond in this week's final turn to some of the questions that have been put to me. The first concerns my use of rhetoric. Professor Borg asked whether I considered my language to be merely a matter of style. I want to revisit the question because I just received a copy of Professor Crossan's response to me in the forthcoming BIBLE REVIEW. Much of the article consists in his first message in the present exchange. But it opens with a deprecation of my rhetoric in THE REAL JESUS, declaring that he wishes to eschew my "low discourse." By no means do I want our exchanges to become a matter of "I said, you said," enlightening to no one and having all the entertainment value of listening to two third graders arguing in the back of the school bus. But I do think an important issue is involved. First, a clarification. In my book, my strongest (I thought funniest) language was used for the Jesus Seminar. I am completely unapologetic, for I regard it as a charade and an unworthy respresentation of the scholarship it claims to represent. Indeed, I am puzzled why you, Marcus and Dom, have not long ago distanced yourself from it, knowing how much its goals and procedures differ from your own as you have clarified them here. With regard to works that I considered serious scholarship, my language was correspondingly more measured. I have re-read the sections dealing with each of your works, and find nothing more than some fairly pointed questions. At issue here, among other things, is the integrity of discourse. I, for one, think that scholarship in this country has declined in direct proportion to the unwillingness of book reviewers in the field of religion to rigorously examine and sharply challenge less than adequate offerings. The field is literally flooded with second-rate stuff. Short of censorship, peer response is the only quality control mechanism we have. A vague ethic of niceness is not sufficient and does not compensate for responsible research and rigorous analysis. I have every reason to question the "sincerity" of Robert Funk, for his public statements give grounds for that questioning. I have no reason to question the sincerity of either of you. But that is scarcely the point, is it? That you are sincere seekers after truth is all to your credit. But it is the responsibility of each of us to hold each other responsible to a standard of demonstration. When such a standard of demonstration is not met, and when matters of great moment are at stake, then, in my view, plain language is called for. So, Marcus, the sharpness of questioning was out of intellectual responsibility. The sarcastic edge of language was a function of the public rather than professional character of conversation. In response to Borg's question whether I have any sense of the historical Jesus at all. Readers of my book will find a chapter entitled "What's Historical about Jesus?" In it, I sketch the problems facing any attempt at a historical reconstruction of Jesus, AS WELL AS a brief sketch of what I think a historian can responsibly affirm about Jesus, based on extra-christian sources, other christian writings, and the gospels. The reader will discover a not insignificant set of affirmations, carefully qualified as to the degree of probability I consider appropriate to attach to each. I see no need to repeat here what I spent considerable time developing there. Since I have no doubt that you, Marcus, read that chapter, I can assume that you already know the answer to the question you put to me. I am confident as well that you have observed that my set of observations fall considerably short of proposing an overall historical construal based simply on those historically verifiable elements. I am sure as well that you know why, since I state clearly that such contruals derive not from specific facts or events, but from a narrative frame; meaning is found in pattern, in story. In my reading of the Gospels, as you surely know from your knowledge of my next chapter, I find just such a construal, in the portrayal of Jesus as a Jewish man who in radical obedience to God gives his life in service to others, giving thereby an example to those whom he calls as followers in the same path of obedience and love. And this leads at last to a direct response to your question concerning the use of models in historiography, or in your memorable phrase, "gestalting the Jesus traditions?' 1. Before turning to the theoretical issue, I would like to make a plea for a response to my question over the past two weeks: what about the "gestalt" I have been proposing as the one found in the canonical Gospels? I have not heard any suggestion that it was erroneous, or historically implausible, or not based on our best sources...only that it was lacking in specificity. But I remain in a state of eager anticipation for an affirmation or rejection of my strong reading of the resurrection as defining Christian identity, on the one side, and of my strong reading of the Gospel narratives as providing a specific and concrete image of the human Jesus on the other. If you disgree with these two things, why? If you do not, why are they so conspicuously lacking from your published work? ` 2. Models are useful as heuristic devices. Too often, however, they become rigid grids dictating or even distorting the shape of the data. As you know quite well, Marcus, the legitimacy of using diverse anthropological models cross-culturally is by no means universally agreed upon by historians. Even for those who recognize (as I do) the theoretical usefulness of such models heuristically there is the expectation that the models remain responsive to the specific historical evidence "on the ground." You bring up Leski. There is the first the issue as to the adequacy of his analysis as such. There is second the degree to which that analysis can apply to ancient situations as complex as that of the first century imperium. There is third the degree to which the USE of the model is responsible. I struggled this past year with William Herzog's PARABLES AS SUBVERSIVE SPEECH; JESUS AS PEDAGOGUE OF THE OPPRESSED, which runs a number of Jesus' parables through the Leski grid from the perspective of Paulo Friere's "pedagogy of the oppressed." Time after time, the model trumped the specific evidence...not only of the parabolic text, but also of the extant HISTORICAL data concerning economic conditions THAT HERZOG HIMSELF QUOTED. In the case of Borg's own "Gestalt" (or one of them, as he reminds me in an earlier exchange) of the "Galilean Charismatic," all three observations apply. The first is the adequacy of the model itself; second, the evidence from antiquity for its applicability, and third, the ways in which the use of model illuminates or distorts or suppresses the evidence in the text. As I have already suggested in my review of your book, Marcus, I think you are vulnerable on all three counts. At stake here, I now conclude, is not simply whether the historical analysis of Jesus and early Christianity can legitimately be undertaken. Nothing in my book suggests that I think they cannot. Indeed, I make a fairly substantial number of historical observations and assertions that I consider well grounded in the evidence. What is more at stake is, first, the connection of that research for Christian faith in the risen Christ...we have talked that one enough. But second, there is the issue of HOW WELL historical reconstruction is carried out. And it was in response to what I regarded as completely irresponsible versions (that of the Jesus Seminar) that I exercised cutting language; it was in response to your efforts, which I consider as sincere but inadequate, that I have posed, and will continue to pose, hard questions.