First Interlude - the Hayward Lectures - October 19 - 21, 2009 -

I had hoped to sign up for one of the intensive courses (several three-hour courses were offered for credit or audit) during the same week that the Hayward Lectures were held on the Acadia campus, sponsored by the Acadia Divinity College. The guest lecturer this year was John Webster, a professor of Systematic Theology at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. Those lectures took place every evening from 7:30 to about 9:00 pm, and there was also a talk-back session at 1:00 pm on Wednesday.

I ended up not signing up for any of the credit courses, and I’m glad I didn’t, because I wouldn’t have been able to do justice to one or the other. Finishing a 3-credit course in just five days requires a lot of effort – and a lot of time on homework just when I would have been attending the lectures. Another factor would have been expense. I was on a budget, and ended up with *just enough* for the three days’ stay and travel to and from Wolfville. I did stay one night at the lovely and gracious Blomidon Inn in Wolfville, which I highly recommend, and I treated my friend Trinda, with whom I stayed for the next two nights, to a yummy gourmet dinner with wine. Although I didn’t take a formal course, I was able to absorb a lot, just by being able to spend some time on the campus, though I sure suffered on Tuesday as the consequence of the unfamiliar slog up and down the hill from the Divinity College to the Library and the main street and back again several times. I have never had such cramps – in my left shin of all things – in my life! But parking is so scarce on the campus that my instinct, once I succeeded in finding a spot, was to stay put and walk as needed. Fortunately, although I walked as much on Wednesday as I had the day before, I wasn’t afflicted by cramps again.

It was great to see Trinda again and renew our friendship. She was a year ahead of me at Dalhousie Law School in the early 1980’s, but there has been a lot of water over the dam for both of us since I saw her last. Her longtime partnership with David broke up (I can still scarcely believe it), and I lost Arthur, my husband, partner and best friend of 30 years in June 2009 after a long struggle with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. It was also great to meet (in rough order) Lorraine Higgins, Deputy Registrar, Shawna Peverill, the Registrar, my prof of New Testament, Danny Zacharias, “virtual classmate” Carolyn Steeves, and several other classmates previously known perhaps only auditorily (Charla and Denise, class auditors, and Libby Amirault, just briefly) who attend classes in person (of all things!). In addition, I obtained an inordinate amount of excitement just by picking up my Acadia Student ID (Axe-cess) card. I love being a student again after all these years! Less exciting but worthwhile experience was being able to obtain an ASIN card to use if I intend to do searches in person at any of the universities in Halifax or the Atlantic School of Theology, and to begin a library search in the Vaughn Library for my exegetical paper, which is going to be on the passages Mt 22:34-40, in which Jesus spoke of the greatest commandment.

On the lighter side, I was able to pick up a case of what I think is a lovely local wine from Gaspereau Vineyards, Lucie Kuhlmann, which we were served last April at the Blomidon Inn when they were out of the usual house wine. Very mellow and mild, much like a Merlot. Mmmmmm!!! And I was also able to buy a super hoodie and matching ball cap from Marion Dorey at ADC, as well as a fuzzy blanket (a thank you gift for Trinda) and T-shirt from the Harriett Irving Botainical Gardens, adjacent to the K.C. Irving Auditorium, where the lectures were held, both embroidered with the lovely HIBG floral logo..

Regarding the lectures themselves, while I am really glad I had the few days’ experience of the campus and the wonderful people who staff it, I was . . . a bit disappointed in the lectures. Prof. Webster is a brilliant academic, I have no doubt, and is a typically British master of the English language. But I was really looking forward to the talks on the themes centering around God the Creator and was a bit let down when what I got seemed to be an academic exercise somewhat akin to the medieval debates about the number of angels who could dance on the head of a pin. The sense I took away from the first lecture was of an entirely self-contained and self-sufficient creator, who has no need of us mere mortals, and who therefore we should be wary of characterizing as just “the biggest thing around.” I detected a lot of references to St. Augustine, author of *City of God,* which I have never read but which makes me suspect that he was a rather rigid and judgemental father of the Church. The second lecture dealt largely with God’s creation ex nihilo (literally, “from nothing”) also apparently an idea pursued by Augustine. The danger we were cautioned of here was in thinking of *something* (besides God in the form of the Trinity) existing before the creation of the world. And the third lecture, which could have been illuminating, dealt with God’s relationship with us, bestowing upon us our “creaturely dignity” and us having the choice to act in accordance with our higher natures or sinning, which he termed descending to the bestial.

I could not be drawn to or love a God who was so detached from his creation. Prof. Webster minimized the importance of the concept (which is itself contained in Scripture, as I recall) that Man (that is all of us, men and women) is created in the image of God. And, being a believer that all of God’s creation was “good” in God’s site, I was disturbed to hear “beasts” characterized as being somehow sinful. By the way, it was rather interesting to me to hear Prof. Webster somehow characterize beasts as being somehow “fallen” as a result of “Man’s fall.” Hmmmm . . . I think a lot of us animal lovers feel that, though we may be fallen, God’s creatures still retain the pure goodness in innocence that He has given them – and that therefore our beloved animals can help us retain or regain our better natures. Of course, my notion is that God put us here “to tend the Garden,” that is, be good stewards of this Earth on his behalf, and that that includes responsibility for our environment and creation, including our fellow creatures.

Some such discussion was what I expected of the theme, God and Creation, but what we got was a lecture of “us” versus “them,” with “us” being wholly unworthy creatures subject to a God who is so much greater than us as to be beyond comprehension. This seems to me to be a rather futile belief system, more designed to drive away ordinary people than to provide them with hope and comfort.

I think God, as Creator of all, would want us to love our fellow creatures as well as our fellow man. Jesus did not say much about animals, but I think it is reasonable to say that it is implied in his preachings and his actions, such as the cleansing of the Temple and the innovative concept that God did not require animal sacrifice in his honour – which of course had been the usual custom in the Temple and was still the norm (several times a day, with more on special occasions and holy days) during Jesus’ lifetime.

Again, in discussing the nature of the Trinity as pre-existing (everything else) and of equally divine nature in all its parts, I think the essentially human nature of Jesus was superseded. Again, for us, it is not most important that Jesus existed before time, but rather that he was God’s Chosen One, and that as God’s Chosen One, he suffered the most ignominious death possible, rather than reigning in glory. The sacrifice of God’s beloved son, to show us that in this world, justice does not always come to those who deserve it in their lifetimes – but that it is more important to build up one’s treasure in Heaven than on this Earth – and that people who have much status, wealth, and education in this world must be prepared to be servants of all.

I can’t help but think of some of our class members who have found it concerning to hear about the layers of composition of the Gospels, with perhaps some parts being more “authentic” (as reflecting things Jesus actually said and did during his lifetime) than other parts, which may have been created a generation or more after Jesus’ death. I am currently reading two books by John Dominic Crossan, a former Roman Catholic priest and teacher, who left the priesthood in pursuit of more academic freedom and because he wanted to marry. One of the books is Jesus: a Revolutionary Biography, San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994, a shorter version of Crossan’s best-selling 1991 book on the historical Jesus. There is a lot of the discussion in Crossan that I am skeptical of – he uses social sciences to prove things about the historical Jesus which may or may not be true – for instance, that Jesus was illiterate, while I think it’s possible that as a precocious youngster he may have been taken out of his “peasant” milieu and better educated than most boys of his era. Jews as a people valued education and literacy, and I think his parents Joseph and Mary would likely have encouraged such an opportunity if it was opened to him. This possibility is not ruled out by the material in the Gospels, since we have little information about Jesus’ life prior to commencement of his ministry, and some of that material may not be historically accurate.

To get to my point, I am currently reading Crossan’s takes on Jesus’ miracles, raising the dead and exorcising demons. He notes that “demoniac possession” may have actually represented involuntary “trance states,” sometimes called “altered states of consciousness,” and that such states can be caused by a people’s being subjected by foreign conquerors, as the first-century Hebrews were. He posits that there is a correlation between an individual’s body and the “body politic,” and that therefore some events were particular to an individual but were symbolic of things occurring in society at large, while other things were systemic to the society but became reflected in the individual. So he refers to a couple instances of Jesus’ exorcisms, one the “Gerasene demoniac” referred to in Mark 5:1-17. He states that this specific event probably never occurred but the specific details of the story may have been originated at the time of the First Jewish War (66-73 A.D.). Crossan is not saying that such exorcisms never took place, but rather that “. . . they may have been too commonplace for oral memory to record in any save the most general descriptions.” (pg. 89)

Crossan notes specifically in the instance of the demon(s) named Legion:

An individual is, of course, being healed but the symbolism is also hard to miss or ignore. The demon is both one and many; is named Legion, that fact and sign of Roman power; is consigned to swine, that most impure of Judaism’s impure animals; and is cast into the sea, that dream of every Jewish resister. (pg. 90)

Here is the crucial point Crossan makes regarding these tales and perhaps much else of the material of the Gospels:

The case of the Galilean leper [in Mark 1:40-44] shows us how an action performed on one single body reaches out to become an action performed on society at large. And it would happen with or without Jesus’ intention, since body/society symbolism is a permanent given. As all the theological apologetics exercised on that story emphasize, Jesus is making claims about who regulates social boundaries, who determines cultural norms, who defines religious authority, and who decides political power. In that case, event becomes process. But the case of the Gerasene demoniac indicates the opposite phenomenon. I do not think there was ever an event such as that. It is, of course, possible that there was such a happening, but the event is just too perfect an embodiment of every Jewish revolutionary’s dream. In that case, most likely, process becomes event. For example, if in front of a hypothetical Lincoln High School in America there stands a statue of that president with upraised ax ready to smash through the chains binding a slave’s feet, is that true or false? Do we not have to respond that it is not true as event but is quite accurate as process? (pg. 94)

Week 6 - Chapter 6 - The Gospel According to Matthew

As everyone knows, Matthew’s Gospel is the first in placement in any New Testament – reflecting the prominence given to the Gospel in antiquity and also perhaps reflecting ancient thoughts on the order of composition (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and then John last of all).

Whereas Mark’s Gospel contains the bare essentials of the story of Jesus, along with parables and sayings, in a rather basic and concise format, Matthew’s Gospel reflects the expanded and mature development of the Gospel. According to de Silva, again, Matthew’s Gospel is directed particularly at early congregations – that is, communities of believers in Jesus – rather than being intended as essentially a vehicle for proselytizing. Authorship of Matthew’s Gospel is not certain, though its ascription to Matthew the disciple of Jesus (the tax collector) was part of early Church tradition. De Silva does a good job of summarizing current scholarly opinion that Matthew authored a compilation of Jesus’ sayings which was retained by communities founded by Matthew, and that somewhat later, that collection of sayings was combined with elements of the Gospel of Mark and other sayings and traditions to create the fully-developed Gospel that we see today. While Mark is generally believed to have been composed by a follower of Peter’s in Rome, de Silva notes that Matthew’s was probably composed in a Jewish-Christian community, in a geographical area where relations with non-Christian Jews were also significant, most likely in Syrian Antioch. The issues dealt with by Matthew would have been important to these communities, and, as de Silva also notes, Matthew refers to Jewish customs without elaboration, assuming the reader is familiar with them.

De Silva notes that Matthew does away with Mark’s careful structure and substitutes his own – in particular, the creation of five lengthy discourses, which it has been suggested by Bacon, were designed to create a “new Pentateuch.” Also, de Silva notes an alternate structural device, in which the Gospel is broken down into three parts, the first dealing with the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, and the last two consisting of Jesus’ teaching on the Kingdom of God, followed by works confirming the coming of the Kingdom and teachings for the conduct of the Church.

The strength of the Jewish heritage in Matthew is noted by all commentators, but as de Silva indicates there is no agreement on whether the community in which and for which the Gospel was created was attempting to retain close relations with the synagogues and non-Christian Jews or not. What is certain is that there is material in Matthew that is severely condemnatory of the “traditional” strain of Judaism. It’s like Matthew is saying, “Look here, we are the true heirs of the Jewish traditions, the Prophets and the Covenant. Our forefathers often strayed into error, failing to heed the warnings of the prophets of former times, and now our fellow Hebrews are again failing to recognize God’s ultimate bringer of salvation, Our Lord and Messiah.” So, Matthew is on the one hand challenging the traditional Judaism which became embodied in Rabbinic Judaism, and which rejected Jesus, and also the non-Christian Gentile community – attempting to give recognition to the unique nature of the Christian-Jewish community which also included Gentile members as followers of Jesus.

Also noteworthy is the fact that whereas the disciples are presented as rather ignorant and lacking in perspicacity in Mark’s Gospel, Matthew portrays them, through some of the same narratives as Mark, as much more understanding and intelligent, comprehending the lessons of Jesus, despite the fact that they do abandon him at the time of the passion, as they also are depicted in Mark. Thinking of the fact that Mark’s Gospel was likely written by a follower of Peter’s, and Matthew’s was likely created in a community founded by Matthew the tax collector, I can imagine Matthew saying something like, “Speak for yourself, Peter.” Given their disparate backgrounds – Matthew was probably rather well educated in comparison to the poor fisherman Peter, it is not too surprising that Matthew’s Gospel, like Luke’s, seems to reflect the thoughts and experiences of a learned man. That is not to rule out the importance of divine inspiration – but it is apparent from the Gospels that the divine was able to make use of men and women from all backgrounds, if they repented and believed. It is this sort of understanding that can make the message of the Gospels alive and vibrant for our own day, in our own lives.

Week 5 - The Gospel of Mark

Augustine dismissed Mark as an abridger or compiler of Matthew, but de Silva’s indicates that Mark (who is believed to have been John Mark, a follower of Peter’s) created the first Gospel, probably in Rome, or at least in the West, around the time of the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 A.D. or shortly before. The clues to its geographical source are that, although written in Greek, he uses a number of “Latinisms,” and he explains Aramaic terms for an audience that may not have been familiar with them. He cites Papias, an early collector of information about the Apostles and the Gospels, that Mark wrote down Peter’s teachings, taking care not to mis-state anything. Mark intended his Gospel to confirm the beliefs of the early Christian community, he writes, those who already believed that Jesus was the Messiah, rather than for the purpose of proselytizing.

We have been hearing a good deal about “Q,” a posited early written source of stories about Jesus and his sayings which was believed to have been used by both Matthew and Luke as a source. It appears that Mark did not use Q, so his Jesus sayings and stories are believed to be independent and early material, and his Gospel is also believed to have been used as a source for Matthew and Luke. I also understand that Mark’s Greek was not terribly erudite but de Silva does indicate that being rather simple and straightforward makes it particularly forceful. He also indicates that Mark traditionally did not get a lot of respect, partly because his was considered to be a later and lesser Gospel.

De Silva indicates that Mark’s structuring fosters his theological purpose. He utilizes what has been referred to as a “Marcan sandwich,” which suggests that this is unique to his Gospel. For example, he frames a narrative with two parallel stories, which serves to indicate the beginning of a thematic narrative and its ending. An example of this (of which there are several in Mark’s Gospel) is Mark 8:22 – 10:52, which de Silva describes as “a very tightly interconnected segment structured by three passion predictions and teachings on discipleship framed by an inclusion of stories of healing blind men.” (pg. 199) “Inclusio” is de Silva’s term for the Marcan sandwich technique, which he says was a common device in the ancient world, particularly in cultures where the oral tradition was strong.

Mark also uses the theme of the “Messianic secret” to further his theological goals. We know that Jesus is Messiah and Son of God, and the demons know (but are forbidden from revealing the secret) but the disciples and followers of Jesus must take the journey with him to gradually learn the truth of his identity and mission here on earth. Thus there are several instances of miracles and miraculous events, such as the transfiguration, in which the disciples know that Jesus is not an ordinary man – but even when Peter recognizes and confesses that Jesus is the Messiah in Mk 8:29, he seems to have a memory lapse of that fact as Jesus’s journey to the cross continues. Jesus also gives them hints but doesn’t fully disclose his Messiahship. For example, he forgives the paralyzed man’s sins at Mk 2:5, eliciting the reaction from the scribes that “He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” (Mk. 2:7 – NIV Study Bible) Jesus responds, inter alia, “Which is easier: to say to the paralytic, Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up take your mat and walk’?” (Mk 2:8 – NIV Study Bible) To signify that the Son of Man has the authority to forgive sins on earth, Jesus then commands the man to take up his mat and walk. The people are amazed by events such as this but do not fully comprehend the truth.

What is the reason for the “Messianic secret”? De Silva suggests that one reason that Jesus didn’t openly declare his messiahship is that it would have been misunderstood during his lifetime. The belief that the Messiah would be a soldier-liberator for the Jewish people would have been so widespread that this hope would have overtaken Jesus’s real message and purpose had it been prematurely disclosed. Another more practical reason in my view is that had he been proclaiming himself the Messiah earlier, his life might have been terminated prematurely. I believe that the drama of Jesus’s life is that during his lifetime he did such miraculous things, he did bring hope, he did bring an ethical message for people, and he did proclaim the Kingdom of God – and then he was subjected to the abuse, the suffering and the death on the cross – and then rose triumphantly. Then the truth of his message of Messiahship could be perceived – but only when the disciples shared his appearances after the Resurrection were they fully able to bring his message to the world.

So – Mark’s Gospel contains a lot of good stuff and needs to be appreciated for what it brings to the life of believers and the church during some of the earliest years of Christianity.

Week 4 - Chapter 4 - The Four Gospels and the One Jesus

de Silva is starting to get into the “meat” of the debate about the composition of the New Testament, including a discussion of the search for the “historical Jesus” which may be recovered from the layers of the New Testament, extra-canonical sources, and even non-Christian sources. In particular, de Silva discusses the Augustinian Hypothesis (Matthew was written first, Mark abridge Matthew, and Luke used both Matthew and Mark), the Griesbach Hypothesis (which also gives Matthew priority, but says that Luke drew from Matthew and Mark used both in writing his gospel), and the Two-source (or Four-source) Hypothesis (Mark was written first, and both Matthew and Luke used Mark and Q as sources, perhaps with Matthew using special material (“M”) and Luke using other special material (“L”), given classic form by B. H. Streeter. De Silva pays scant attention to the “Holy Spirit Theory,” the theory of independent Divine inspiration for each of the Gospels.
De Silva discusses the various techniques, disciplines, theories, which have grown up in various academic communities, including “form criticism,” in which the sayings and stories about Jesus are studied to see which appear to be very early and thus authentic, “source criticism,” which considers what material was used by the Evangelists to compose their Gospels, and “redaction criticism,” which studies the ways each Evangelist edited the material available to him and incorporated it into his own Gospel, serving his particular ends.
Reading all the academic debate about the “historical Jesus” reminds me of the Hindu fable of the blind men and the elephant, an Indian fable. Here is a portion of the Wikipedia entry -
“The blind man who feels a leg says the elephant is like a pillar; the one who feels the tail says the elephant is like a rope; the one who feels the trunk says the elephant is like a tree branch; the one who feels the ear says the elephant is like a hand fan; the one who feels the belly says the elephant is like a wall; and the one who feels the tusk says the elephant is like a solid pipe.”
Yes, I do believe there’s a constructive purpose to be served by the search to uncover the “real” Jesus, but that too often scholars and writers tend to adamantly defend their own positions while refusing to accept the possibility of merit in the views which appear to contradict their own. De Silva quotes John Dominic Crossan, with approbation: “It is impossible to avoid the suspicion that historical Jesus research is a very safe place to do theology and call it history; to do autobiography and call it biography.” (Crossan, The Historical Jesus, San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1991, pg. xxviii, in de Silva pg. 182)
The reason to analyse the Gospels (and other material) to try to know Jesus is at least in part because of what de Silva says Augustine posited: that the Holy Spirit stands behind every word of the Evangelists, even if some parts of the Gospels seem contradictory. (pg. 177) That is, the Gospels reflect a higher, spiritual truth and are a challenge to believers to find the core of that truth. Historical Jesus studies can be seen as the results of the effort to uncover what Jesus actually said and did in First Century A.D. Galilee and Judea.
That is commendable surely, even if the effort is fraught with peril. Consider the above quote from Crossan. I am enjoying reading Crossan’s The Birth of Christianity, San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1998, which reflects many of the issues that de Silva discusses, from Crossan’s own perspective. Crossan was born and raised in Ireland and spent years as a Roman Catholic priest before leaving the priesthood in order to be able to marry and have more academic freedom. For some years he was the leader of the Jesus Seminar, which is referenced extensively in this chapter of de Silva. Crossan is imbued with a passionate interest in worldwide peasantry, and although he himself was not a peasant, he grew up with the tales of the oppression of Irish peasants down through the 19th. century. For example, in The Birth of Christianity he cites the example of a couple thousand of Irish peasants, naked and starving, dumped on the shores of New Brunswick by Lord Palmerston. Perhaps not too surprisingly, Crossan utilizes inter-disciplinary methods, including anthropology, archeology and history, as well as the traditional Gospel critical methods, and comes to the conclusion in his Jesus: a Revolutionary Biography, San Francisco: Harper SanFrancisco, 1995, that Jesus in reality was an illiterate Jewish peasant leading a social revolution.
My point here is that people become too fixated on their own theories. This may be a danger in attempting to place Jesus too much in the context of his era. That minimizes the possibility of Jesus being a messenger of the Divine, perhaps sent, in part at least, to correct excesses or errors in beliefs and practices of the traditional Jewish Temple priesthood, the Pharisees and other sects of traditional Judaism. There is a danger, in my view, not to recognize the possibility that Jesus may have been able to transcend his time and place, bringing the Good News for all time and all places.

Week 3, Chapter 3 – The Cultural and Social World of the Early Church –

De Silva presents an analysis of societies governed by conventions of behaviour – social customs and beliefs that were the glue that held the Greco-Roman and Judaic worlds together and were subsequently reflected in the writings of the early Church.

Firstly, de Silva discusses notions of purity and pollution. I am not an anthropologist, but when I read about purity and pollution, I think of “taboo,” and I think the concepts of purity and pollution in the Jewish religion operated in the same way.

Here is an excerpt from the Wikipedia entry on “Taboo” –
A taboo is a strong social prohibition (or ban) relating to any area of human activity or social custom that is sacred and forbidden. Breaking the taboo is usually considered objectionable or abhorrent by society. The term comes from the Tongan language, and appears in many Polynesian cultures. In those cultures, a tabu (or tapu or kapu) often has specific religious associations. Captain James Cook introduced the word into English in 1777 after returning from the South Seas.
The article mentions a number of examples of taboos, including ones from Judaism, such as the maintenance of a kosher diet and circumcision of males.

These concepts were one way for Jews to maintain social cohesion in a world where they were in a minority and non-Jews held most of the political and economic power. Thus there was a powerful temptation to assimilate with the larger populations in order to “get along,” but the strict belief systems including the notions of purity and pollution – for example, the fact that a person maintaining a strict kosher diet could not even eat with those who did not follow the same regime – encouraged the sense of group solidarity against the hordes of non-believers. And this was reinforced by the belief that these practices were commandments from God.

I recall two sayings of Jesus relating to Jewish tradition of purity and pollution – when his disciples were chided by picking some corn to eat on the Sabbath, Jesus said, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” And regarding the necessity of maintaining of a kosher diet, Jesus said (I am paraphrasing), that defilement occurs not from what a man eats but from every word that proceeds out of his mouth.

In the New Testament, Jesus frequently denounces hypocrites, defined in Wikipedia: “The word hypocrisy comes from the Greek ὑπόκρισις (hypokrisis), which means
"play-acting", "acting out", "coward" or "dissembling.”” Hypocrisy is an almost natural consequence, in my view, of beliefs which emphasize the propriety of external behaviour, rather than the sincerity of one’s internal feelings. Jesus frequently denounced, for example, people who made a great show of fasting or praying or praying in public.

De Silva moves on to a discussion of honour and shame in the ancient Greco-Roman and Jewish societies. At pg. 125 he states, “Honor comes from the affirmation of a person’s worth by peers and society, awarded on the basis of the individual’s ability to embody the virtues and attributes his or her society values.” He makes it clear that one could be in a position of great honour by virtue of one’s family origins, and that one could give honor or dishonor to one’s family through one’s behavior. I believe this is a belief system which is centered on an aristocracy, like the Roman Senatorial class, in which one must keep up appearances.

Although de Silva mentions that the use of appeals to honor were used by the authors of the New Testament as well as Greco-Roman rhetoriticians, this is another area in which Jesus’s teachings bucked the trend. For one thing, I suppose he himself, having originated from humble earthly roots, did not have the automatic aura of great family and position that many of the Pharisees and Sadducees would have had. For another thing, Jesus preached more of the importance of building up treasure in Heaven, rather than on Earth. Many of his preachments would have resulted in the visible externals here on Earth being modest in the extreme. So his exhortations were more on the line of “being right with God” rather than doing the proper thing so as to bring honor to oneself or one’s earthly family.

It should perhaps be noted that many Muslim societies today have a continuing strong belief in honour and the shame that may be brought – for example, if a woman of the family is raped, she may be killed. These are known as “honor killings.”

The next theme of this chapter is the discussion of “patronage and reciprocity.” Like the notions of purity and defilement, the relationship of patrons and their clients was central in the ancient Mediterranean world. This is a fascinating discussion, in which it is obvious that many of the terms which came to describe the mutual relationship between man and God were derived from client-patron relations. God is the “benefactor,” who gives to man by means of “grace,” despite the fact that men are often ungrateful for his gifts. Having been benefitted, man owed God a duty of “gratitude,” including loyalty to the benefactor, which would enhance the prestige of the benefactor. In this system there might also be a “broker” or “mediator,” who was himself a patron but arranged for his own client(s) to be benefitted by a patron greater than himself. In the Christian Church it is clear that Jesus was the mediator between the early Christians and God.

De Silva writes at pg. 135:

We gain access to God only through the Son, and apart from Jesus there is none who can secure for us God’s favor (Lk 9:48; 10:22; Jn 13:20; 14:6). Paul, in his formulation of “salvation by grace,” uses this background to articulate the gospel.

Perhaps most tellingly, de Silva continues at pages 135-136:

Paul reacts so strongly against requiring circumcision and observance of dietary laws for Gentile converts because this displaces the favor of God (Gal 2:21), evidenced in the benefaction of the Holy Spirit (Gal 3:1-5), which Jesus has gained has gained for his faithful clients (Gal 2:21; 5:2-4). It casts doubt on Jesus’ ability to secure God’s favor by his own mediation and thus shows distrust toward Jesus.

He also discusses the fact that among friends and family (who were equals) the relationship was one where all property was held in common. This became the model for relations between individual church members and between churches. Therefore, although the language of client and patron and mediator was used to describe the relationship with God and Jesus, the concept of stewardship came to displace the notion of patronage for the earthly members.

Lastly, de Silva considers the significance of the family in the ancient world. I already alluded to this in considering the concepts of honor and shame. de Silva states that family reputation was “the starting point for an individual’s own reputation.” (pg. 137) This was true throughout the Mediterranean world. Interestingly this is another area where, in a close reading of Jesus’s own words, the “family” of believers seems to be more significant for him than who one happened to be related to by blood. I think it’s fair to say this would have been almost heretical in the context of Judaism, especially as it was manifested in later days with the rise of Rabbinic Judaism. And, as the Church grew, de Silva makes it clear that the Christian community became a new family to the members, providing support and sometimes shaming actions toward those who did not live up to the standards of the community. These often replaced the traditional notions of family in cases where one’s blood relations (especially the father, head of the household) did not share the faith of the more junior family member(s), thus in some cases resulting in the junior member being cast out or disowned from his blood kin.

In summary, the concepts of purity and pollution, patronage, honor and shame, and family were the bedrock concepts on which Greco-Roman and Jewish society were based. These concepts held full sway in the world that Jesus was born into and grew up in, as well as that in which the early Church developed. I believe that Jesus, who preached to his fellows outside the context of a church or priests, seemed to be preaching the importance of the individual’s relationship with God and the individual choices which one makes rather than externals which in many cases are beyond one’s control. The beliefs and behavior which he espouses he says will give one eternal life. Jesus could almost be seen as being a First Century anarchist – just the relationship of the individual with God, going through Jesus, was of ultimate importance. And he even denigrates some of the traditional notions of purity and impurity and honor and shame and family relationships.

Recall the case of the woman taken in adultery. Jesus says to the crowd who are going to stone her, “Let those of you who is without sin cast the first stone.” He’s not saying that the woman’s behavior is proper – he says to her, “Go and sin no more.” But he is rejecting punishment based on traditional notions of honor and shame. Likewise, he says that people pay more attention to the “mote” (a small speck) in their neighbor’s eye than they do to the beam (huge piece of wood) in their own eye. It’s much easier for people to be judgmental about others, and they tend to rationalize their own failings.

The history of the Church, as it developed, to a certain degree, is a history of the development of equivalent institutions in a Christian context – different but analogous to the tradutional pagan and Jewish concepts of purity and pollution, honor and shame, patronage, and family. These things, in other words, enabled the Christian community to become established and to develop traditions which also bound the members to one another in solidarity against non-believers and heretics in the centuries to come..