I begin a course on the Historical Jesus at Duke tomorrow and I am putting together the teaching materials at the moment. As I introduce the topic, my mind turned to why it is that we have to spend such a lot of time trying to get our heads round this topic. Here are my summary reasons as to why the Historical Jesus Quest is such a massive task:
(1) So much data is missing, e.g. there is so little on Jesus’ life before 30.
(2) The data we do have is highly prejudiced, mainly pro-Christian propaganda.
(3) The sources we have are disputed -- different scholars value the sources differently
(4) The sources are sometimes contradictory and difficult to interpret.
(5) Our distance from the data is so great – we read our own prejudices into the texts.
(6) And now there is so much secondary literature available that it is difficult to navigate our way through it all.
(7) Jesus is a figure in whom so many have a stake, and the quest is often controversial.
I will go on to tell the students, though, that the news is not all bad. We are actually surprisingly well informed about Jesus compared to many other figures from the ancient world.
Tuesday, 9 January 2007
Monday, 8 January 2007
The Verhoeven Jesus film
Over on FilmChat, Peter Chattaway mentions this New York Times piece:
Paul Verhoeven Goes to War One More Time
By DENNIS LIM
the second half of which turns to Verhoeven's oft talked-about desire to make a Jesus film (remember his involvement with the Jesus seminar, for example):
By DENNIS LIM
the second half of which turns to Verhoeven's oft talked-about desire to make a Jesus film (remember his involvement with the Jesus seminar, for example):
It is a firm belief of Mr. Verhoeven’s that nothing is sacred, and his next project will probably serve as ample demonstration. He is finishing a book on Jesus, to be published later this year. A self-described “non-Christian,” he has been involved since the mid-’80s with the Jesus Seminar, an association of Bible scholars devoted to investigating the historical authenticity of the words and deeds of Jesus.Well, if the film ever comes off, it should be fascinating.
Summarizing the contents of his monograph, Mr. Verhoeven said: “Thesis No. 1 is that Jesus was a man. That’s already a big thing, as opposed to what Christianity says, that he was the son of God.” The book will be based on a close reading of ancient texts, he said, “eliminating everything that’s not possible, in my opinion.” He added: “It’s impossible that Jesus would have multiplied all this bread, isn’t it? And the resurrection. All these things that are not possible are not possible.” . . .
. . . . Mr. Verhoeven said he hopes his Jesus book is the first step toward his dream project, a Jesus movie, one that he said would be like no other: “My hubris tells me it would be more normal and more real.” Dismissing “The Passion of the Christ” (“It’s just about torture”) and “The Last Temptation of Christ” (“Basically fictional”), he said the only such film he admired was Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “Gospel According to St. Matthew”: “He gives it a Marxist spin, which made the Jesus more belligerent, much stronger, more like he really was, I think.”
He hastened to add that despite this confrontational stance, his Bible studies were motivated by an intellectual ardor. “I’m a big fan of Jesus,” he said. “I think Jesus was an extremely interesting, innovative, talented person, a theological genius, and as a poet, his parables are absolutely magnificent. He’s like Mozart.”
Mr. Verhoeven knows his approach is risky. “To do this movie in the U.S. might not be without personal danger,” he said. “The power of the screen is so enormous. That’s why I’m writing the book first. It gives me time to think if I want to get into hotter water than that.”
Should we blog our pre-publication ideas?
In James Crossley's interesting recent blogger of the month interview, he makes the following comment:
So what are the disadvantages of airing one's research at the pre-publication stage in one's academic blog? John's take is as follows:
In short, I don't think that blogging pre-publication ideas is at all a bar to full publication. Indeed in my experience, it works the opposite way. For me, blogging sometimes encourages publication. A simple example is the one mentioned by John, my underdeveloped musings on The Nativity Story, which subsequently evolved into a fuller, more polished review for the SBL Forum. I wouldn't have written the SBL Forum piece if I had not begun reflecting out loud on the film in the blog. I can illustrate a more complex version of the same kind of thing. Back in 2004, about one in every three entries in this blog focused on the latest news on The Passion of the Christ. When I finally got to see the film, I offered My Thoughts in a rolling post, with no intention of developing for publication. But Bible and Interpretation picked up the post and asked if I would develop it for their site and the result was a new piece called The Passion, Pornography an Polemic. In turn, Robert Webb saw my interest in the film and asked me to contribute to the book he was co-editing with Kathleen Corley called Jesus and Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. The article I wrote for that book, on "The Power of The Passion: Reacting and Overreacting to Gibson's Artistic Vision", bore only a distant relationship to that original blog post, but it was from that that it was ultimately derived. And without it, I might never have been encouraged to write the fuller piece.
I suppose that is my justification for airing pre-publication ideas, but it is also an encouragement to others to do the same. There is an element of risk or adventure about trying out ideas on one's blog, but the risks sometimes pay off and lead one in unexpected directions. I might add, though, that in spite of all that I have said, I only occasionally engage in this kind of thing. The majority of my research ideas don't get developed here in the blog but rather through reading, teaching, thinking, reflection, sharing with friends and so on. I am currently working on the Gospel of Thomas but how often have I blogged on that here? Next year I am hoping to begin writing my book provisionally entitled ________, _________ and _____ but I don't feel comfortable even mentioning that here yet. It seems, then, that there are some research ideas that one feels more comfortable about sharing than others, and I am not sure that I can articulate why that is the case, or what the criteria are. Like John, I want to give this some more thought.
Update (17 January, 08:52): On Reception of the Bible, John Lyons gathers together all the links on the biblioblogs to subsequent discussion of this issue, and weighs in again himself on this interesting topic.
I think it is pretty clear to anyone who might read the blog that I am reluctant to put anything particularly new on the blog unless it is published or being published. I didn’t consciously make this decision but I just can’t bring myself to put too many pre-publication ideas.On Reception of the Bible, John Lyons echoes this "reluctance to put pre-publication work on a blog" and contrasts this with people like me who are more willing to discuss ideas pre-publication. I suppose my way of thinking about this would be to ask why not discuss your research on your blog? To me the advantages are fairly obvious -- one is experimenting, thinking out loud, attempting to articulate one's views, getting feedback, getting pointers to useful bibliography and so on. All of these things help one to hone one's writing and to come up with a stronger final product at the full publication stage. I'd be more worried about going to final publication without having aired the ideas and a good deal of the writing in a public setting beforehand.
So what are the disadvantages of airing one's research at the pre-publication stage in one's academic blog? John's take is as follows:
Without a great deal of thought, I am beginning to wonder if this has something to do with how you approach blogging as an outlet for your work. You might, of course, not care about publishing your work in academic outlets, but I doubt that is the case with Mark and Jim (or with the others mentioned above). I am sure they are confident that their work is still publishable despite their blog offerings (after all, Mark has now published a 'substantially revised version' of his previously offered review of The Nativity Story in the--admittedly not very prestigious-- SBL forum). From his comments Mark appears to value the feedback he has received, apparently seeing it as akin to that which he might receive at a conference. Yet to me there is something public about the internet that makes me doubt anyone will want to take it for a journal. I have no evidence for this, but it seems very real to me.I am highly sceptical of the latter, and I would be surprised if a serious journal were to reject something because the ideas were worked out in part in an academic's blog. After all, it has long been the case that journal articles take over material previously circulated in conference proceedings or collections of seminar papers, and likewise papers temporarily posted in full on the net. I doubt that piecemeal, incomplete research that is under development on a blog would fair worse. And if the journal were to question the academic's pre-publication blog musings, the more fool them. Who would reject a paper for a journal because it had previously been read in academic settings like a conference? If one were very nervous about such things, one could always remove an offending post at a later date. To be honest, I have been tempted to do the latter for other reasons, that I would prefer to direct people to the more fully formed and mature expressions of my ideas, but on balance I quite like the idea of the raw, under-development piecemeal blog research ideas to be there for future consultation too.
In short, I don't think that blogging pre-publication ideas is at all a bar to full publication. Indeed in my experience, it works the opposite way. For me, blogging sometimes encourages publication. A simple example is the one mentioned by John, my underdeveloped musings on The Nativity Story, which subsequently evolved into a fuller, more polished review for the SBL Forum. I wouldn't have written the SBL Forum piece if I had not begun reflecting out loud on the film in the blog. I can illustrate a more complex version of the same kind of thing. Back in 2004, about one in every three entries in this blog focused on the latest news on The Passion of the Christ. When I finally got to see the film, I offered My Thoughts in a rolling post, with no intention of developing for publication. But Bible and Interpretation picked up the post and asked if I would develop it for their site and the result was a new piece called The Passion, Pornography an Polemic. In turn, Robert Webb saw my interest in the film and asked me to contribute to the book he was co-editing with Kathleen Corley called Jesus and Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. The article I wrote for that book, on "The Power of The Passion: Reacting and Overreacting to Gibson's Artistic Vision", bore only a distant relationship to that original blog post, but it was from that that it was ultimately derived. And without it, I might never have been encouraged to write the fuller piece.
I suppose that is my justification for airing pre-publication ideas, but it is also an encouragement to others to do the same. There is an element of risk or adventure about trying out ideas on one's blog, but the risks sometimes pay off and lead one in unexpected directions. I might add, though, that in spite of all that I have said, I only occasionally engage in this kind of thing. The majority of my research ideas don't get developed here in the blog but rather through reading, teaching, thinking, reflection, sharing with friends and so on. I am currently working on the Gospel of Thomas but how often have I blogged on that here? Next year I am hoping to begin writing my book provisionally entitled ________, _________ and _____ but I don't feel comfortable even mentioning that here yet. It seems, then, that there are some research ideas that one feels more comfortable about sharing than others, and I am not sure that I can articulate why that is the case, or what the criteria are. Like John, I want to give this some more thought.
Update (17 January, 08:52): On Reception of the Bible, John Lyons gathers together all the links on the biblioblogs to subsequent discussion of this issue, and weighs in again himself on this interesting topic.
Gospel of Judas books galore
In On Not Being a Sausage Deirdre Good has a useful round-up on the New Books on the Gospel of Judas and it is a surprising number. She mentions the extraodinary news that broke at the weekend in The Sunday Times that Jeffrey Archer has a book due out on Judas, co-written with Frank Moloney, this March (Archer writes Gospel of Judas), already mentioned by Jim Davila on Paleojudaica. I first heard of the story on Andrew Marr's Sunday AM on BBC1. What interested me was the general surprise with which Marr and Ann Leslie greeted the idea of rehabilitating Judas, a useful reminder that however much we might think that the media has been saturated with stories about Judas over the last year or so, that is a pretty jaundiced, religion students' perspective. It had clearly completely passed by educated and intelligent readers like Marr, and required a recognisable tag like "Jeffrey Archer" to deem it noticeable.
Friday, 5 January 2007
Biblical Studies Carnival XIII and January's biblioblogger
Tyler Williams has published the latest Biblical Studies Carnival and it's another fantastic round-up. One of these days someone will come up with a dud in this genre, but it's not happened yet:
Biblical Studies Carnival XIII
And another regular feature on the biblioblogging scene is up too:
Biblioblogs: Blogger of the Month: James Crossley
It's an interesting read and there is a lot of good sense spoken.
Biblical Studies Carnival XIII
And another regular feature on the biblioblogging scene is up too:
Biblioblogs: Blogger of the Month: James Crossley
It's an interesting read and there is a lot of good sense spoken.
Christmas Bible TV
Before going away, I blogged briefly on upcoming Christmas TV of interest to the topic of this blog (Christmas TV on Bible Films and The Secret Family of Jesus). The real highlights of Christmas TV viewing were largely non-biblical, Doctor Who, Vicar of Dibley and Torchwood, though the latter came in with some great Biblical language and themes in its superb conclusion the other night, mentioned already by Jim Davila on Paleojudaica and discussed by Pete Phillips on postmodernbible (Torchwood . . . and Torchwood's Abaddon). I didn't catch much of The Secret Family of Jesus, though some who did have commented on my blog post. I saw enough of it, though, to catch both James Tabor and Richard Bauckham. I was particularly pleased to see that Bauckham was involved since he has been somewhat media-shy in the past and the programme can't have been all bad if scholars like Bauckham and Tabor were involved. On New Year's day I caught some of The Secret Life of Brian and was pleased to see a little more of the famous Muggeridge / Bishop / Cleese / Palin exchange. Speaking as both a Christian and a Pythonist myself, I am almost as baffled now as I was when I sneaked in to see it aged 13 that many Christians found it so objectionable. Michael Palin made the excellent point in the previously mentioned exchange that Jesus is represented reverentially in the film on the one occasion we see him, played by Ken Colley (whom Palin mentions by name). Perhaps this would be a suitable occasion for me to mention something I sometimes say when teaching Jesus films, that Ken Colley must have been cast because of his resemblance to Robert Powell, whose Jesus in Jesus of Nazareth (1977) was still very fresh in viewers' minds in 1979. (The picture above shows Colley as Jesus in the dim distance, from the opening scene of the film).
Happy new year
Happy new year to everyone. I am just back from a great Christmas and new year and look forward to getting back to blogging soon. (The link is to Viola's blog on our break, from which the picture to the left is taken, at about 00.05 on New Year's Day).