April DeConick (Isla Carroll and Percy E. Turner Professor of Biblical Studies at Rice University) now has a new blog–called The Forbidden Gospels–which deals with apocryphal gospels, including the Gospel of Judas. Mmmm, “forbidden” — sounds delicious.

Commenting on a recent academic conference at the Sorbonne, DeConick notes the following about independent scholars’ common critiques of the National Geographic translation and interpretation of the Gospel of Judas:

The release of these popular materials was the public debut of the Gospel of Judas, but the Sorbonne conference was its academic debut, the moment that can be marked as the beginning of its academic assessment. Although the twenty-five presentations were varied on topic and method, what was surprising to many present was the fact that three scholars in attendance (myself, Louis Painchaud, and John Turner) presented papers with very similar interpretations and criticisms of the team’s transcription, translation, and representation of the Gospel. Each of us had worked independently at different universities (April DeConick, Rice University; Louis Painchaud, University of Laval; and John Turner, University of Nebraska-Lincoln) and were unaware of the opinions of each other until the presentations were made.

I also have a number of posts on the early Christian Apocrypha and Gnosticism, as well as the Gospel of Judas (including some of Painchaud’s opinions) here on this blog. And, of course, you already know about Tony’s excellent blog Apocryphicity.

Thanks to Stephen Carlson for noting this new blog by DeConick.

In a recent post I have emphasized the importance of the Mesopotamian “combat myth” as a piece in the apocalyptic puzzle.  Tyler has the first of a series on Origins and Creation in Ancient Mesopotamia.   He does a great job of outlining the nature of our sources and of mythology in part 1.  He promises part 2 on Babylonian notions of creation which will, no doubt, deal with the writing known as the Enuma elish (“When on high…”).  In that document, Marduk’s combat with, and slaying of, Tiamat (chaotic Sea-Water personified) and her allies is central to creation.  This has parallels in some Psalms’ notion of Yahweh creating through the defeat of Leviathan or Rahab.  So Tyler’s forthcoming post is likely to deal with the combat myth in some way.  Keep an eye on that.

There are a variety of approaches one can take in studying the gospels from an historical or academic perspective. Among them is an approach that looks at the gospels as ancient biographies, with each sketching out a particular portrait of the main protagonist, Jesus. This is a particularly fitting method in studying documents that are explicitly advocating a particular understanding of Jesus (namely the gospels are more interested in what scholars sometimes call the “Christ of faith” rather than the “historical Jesus”, that peasant). One can ask literary questions like what is the main plot of this story, who are the main characters, and how is the main protagonist, Jesus, portrayed?

Previously I have discussed the portrait of Jesus in the gospel of Mark, particularly the centrality of the secrecy of Jesus’ identity and the way in which this identity unfolds at key points in the narrative, when characters in the story, including Jesus himself, identify who he is (suffering Son of Man, Son of God, and Christ): Who is this guy? The Gospel of Mark and the Identity of Jesus. While Mark’s gospel can’t help but have a Jewish Jesus (because Jesus was a Jew in a Judean context), Mark is usually considered a Gentile author writing to a Gentile audience (the author has to explain basic Judean culture).

On the other hand, I have discussed the very Jewish portrait of Jesus in Matthew’s gospel: A very Jewish Jesus: Matthew’s portrait. There Jesus is cast as the new messianic David (anointed king) and the new Moses (prophet promised by Moses in Deuteronomy 18:15), and Jesus repeatedly fulfills scripture and advocates following the Torah (law) to the “t”.

Luke’s portrait of Jesus is likewise heavily indebted to Jewish models, but Luke is also concerned to present Jesus in a way that would make some sense to Greeks and Romans, at least to some degree.

On the Jewish side, Jesus is most emphatically a prophet, and at times the author seems to have in mind the promised prophet like Elijah specifically (see Malachi 4:5-6). The author of Luke chooses to begin Jesus’ adult teaching and healing activity with Jesus reading a passage from Isaiah (61:1-2; Luke 4:14-21). Jesus then goes on to explicitly identify himself with the prophet mentioned in Isaiah, an anointed prophet who will preach good news to the poor, bring freedom to captives, and give sight to the blind. This emphasis on Jesus as a prophet to the socially downtrodden or marginalized continues throughout the gospel, beginning with Jesus healing the blind, casting out demons and hanging out with social outcasts, “sinners” and tax-collectors. Luke preserves or presents many teachings of Jesus focussed on supporting the poor and condemning the rich, and this reversal theme is explicitly linked to his role as the prophet.

Almost immediately after identifying himself as the prophet (of Isaiah), Jesus then goes on to compare his rejection in his hometown as a sign of his affinity with Elijah and Elisha (4:24-30). Not only that, but there are further signs that Luke wants his readers to think of Jesus as the promised Elijah prophet (of Malachi). Jesus, like Elijah (in 1 Kings 17:17-24) raises from the dead the widow’s son, and those who witness this call him a “great prophet” (Luke 7:11-17). Almost immediately after this, as if to underline-and-bold-with-all-caps his point, Luke presents John the Baptist asking Jesus who Jesus is. Jesus’ answer once again echoes the Isaiah passage: “Go tell John what you have seen and heard; the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them” (7:22).

Alongside this emphasis on Jesus as the ultimate Jewish prophet like Elijah who has come to help the poor is the portrayal of Jesus as “Saviour” (John’s gospel does momentarily apply this title to Jesus). No other gospel identifies Jesus in quite this way. In Luke’s gospel to be a saviour is to quite literally save people here and now by giving sight to the blind and healing the lepers. The identification as Saviour comes early, in the birth story, and continues to bubble up at various points in Jesus’ down-to-earth salvation for the sick and the outcasts. The title “Saviour” (soter in Greek) was a very common one to use in the Greco-Roman world for benefactors, especially gods but also emperors and others, who brought safety and security–salvation in down-to-earth terms–on an ongoing basis. Emperors from Augustus on, for instance, could be praised for their good works in the form of the title “saviour and benefactor”.

Here, then, in Luke is a portrait of Jesus that might ring bells for both Jewish and Greek or Roman hearers.

The most recent Carnivalesque, this one covering ancient and medieval history blog-postings, is now up on Tony Keen’s blog, Memorabilia Antonina.

Phil S. has posted his most recent Patristics roundup.

The 46th History Carnival has also been uploaded over on the interestingly titled blog: “Investigations of a dog: Failing better at understanding the past”.

As usual, Mary Beard’s blog on The Times Online is witty and interesting. Her latest entry on “Paganism without Blood” discusses some modern neo-pagan revivals involving worship of the Greek gods (about which I have also commented in my post: The worship of Zeus lives on). She concludes with the following:

“As almost everyone who studies ancient Greek religion insists, the key centre of the whole religious system was sacrifice: it was the ritual of killing and sharing the animal that was, if anything, the “article of faith” that defined the ancient community of worshippers. And it was through sacrifice (rather than ecology) that ancient Greeks conceptualized their own place in the world – distinct from animals on the one hand and the superhuman gods on the other.

Until these eager neo-pagans get real and slaughter a bull or two in central Athens, I shan’t worry that they have much to do with ancient religion at all. At the moment, this is paganism lite” (Mary Beard).

Paganism without blood (sacrifice) is no paganism at all. You can also read more about the importance of sacrifice and the accompanying meal for ancient “paganism” on the Meals in the Greco-Roman World site.

Mary Beard also has another post of great interest to me on Racism in Greece and Rome.

If you need convincing that the apocalyptic worldview is still alive and well, then read a recent article on Alternet concerning American fundamentalist John Hagee’s attempts at garnering support for a war with Iran: War on Iraq: As Bush’s War Strategy Shifts to Iran, Christian Zionists Gear Up for the Apocalypse. I am far more comfortable reading about visions of the end by an apocalyptic writer from 2000 or so years ago, or even from the middle ages, than I am in finding apocalypticism used among contemporaries to inspire war in the present, I must admit.

Paul Boyer’s When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1992) traces the historical development of apocalypticism in the United States. Before Haggee suggested that Iran was to be the main evil force in the final Armageddon, other American fundamentalists suggested Iraq (which is now not a popular candidate without an evil leader). And, of course, during the Cold War many saw communist Russia and its allies as the forces of Gog, the evil army from the north.

Bush certainly does not hold back from using suggestive rhetoric (take the “axis of evil” for instance). Back in the 1970s and 1980s it was Hal Lindsey’s best-selling Late Great Planet Earth (predecessor to the Left Behind series) that inspired the likes of Ronald Reagan:

That [a coup in Libya] is a sign that the day of Armageddon isn’t far off . . . Everything is falling into place. It can’t be long now. Ezekiel says that fire and brimstone will be rained upon the enemies of God’s people. That must mean that they’ll be destroyed by nuclear weapons (Ronald Reagan in 1971 as cited by Boyer, p. 142).

Speaking to a lobbyist for Israel in 1983, Reagan says:

You know, I turn back to your ancient prophets in the Old Testament and the signs foretelling Armageddon, and I find myself wondering if we’re the generation that’s going to see that come about. I don’t know if you’ve noted any of those prophecies lately, but believe me, they certainly describe the times we’re going through (as cited in Boyer, p. 142).

For an apocalyptic thinker in any time period, the “prophecies” always “describe the times we’re going through“, whether it’s Judea in the second century BCE (see Daniel 7-12), Münster in the 1500s (also described here), or America in the 1980s or 2007. There are, of course, fundamentalist, apocalyptic websites devoted solely to explaining current events as signs of the end, such as Tribulation Watch. But I suppose that — leaving aside the likes of Hagee — one does not want the one in charge of pushing the button or sending out troups thinking along these lines or looking forward to the ultimate battle.

For more on Hal Lindsey, the Left Behind phenomenon, and the origins of the notion of a “rapture”, see my posts: “Left Below” / Left Behind: “Ha, ha, life goes on”, and Satanic conspiracies of the 1970s and 1980s.

(I came across a link to the article about Hagee on the blog of Jodi Dean, a political theorist).

Jonathan Scott Perry has made important contributions to the study of associations (collegia), particularly in the western part of the Roman empire, and there is a recent book review offered by Torrey Seland on BMCR:

Jonathan S. Perry, The Roman Collegia. The Modern Evolution of an Ancient Concept. Mnemosyne Supplement 277. Leiden: Brill, 2006

(I am fortunate enough to have Scott as a colleague at York at the moment.)

This reminded me of several other association-related book reviews on BMCR which I meant to draw attention to before:

Yulia Ustinova, The Supreme Gods of the Bosporan Kingdom: Celestial Aphrodite and the Most High God. Leiden: Brill, 1999.

Brigitte Le Guen, Les Associations de Technites dionysiaques à l’époque hellénistique. Vol. 1, Corpus documentaire; vol. 2, Synthèse (= Études d’Archéologie Classique XI-XII). Nancy: Association pour la Diffusion de la Recherche sur l’Antiquité (Distribution: De Boccard, Paris), 2001.

Anne-Françoise Jaccottet, Choisir Dionysos. Les associations dionysiaques ou la face cachée du dionysisme. Vol. I: Text; II: Documents. Zürich: Akanthus, 2003.

John Bert Lott, The Neighborhoods of Augustan Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Quite a while ago my own book was reviewed there:

Philip A. Harland, Associations, Synagogues, and Congregations: Claiming a Place in Ancient Mediterranean Society. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003.

Another recent work on the meeting places of associations which I should have already read, but haven’t, is:
B. Bollmann, Römische Vereinhauser. Untersuchungen zu den Scholae der römischen Berufs-, Kult-, und Augustalen – Kollegien in Italien, Rome 1998.

This term I am teaching a course on early Jewish and Christian apocalypticism, including legacies for the medieval and modern eras. You can get a glimpse into this course on Visions of the End on my courses page. One of the key questions to start with in such a course is where did apocalypticism come from? By “apocalypticism” I mean, in part, the worldview that I have outlined in skeletal form in the post: It’s the end of the world as we know it: Paul’s apocalyptic worldview. I have also dealt with such issues in many previous posts collected together in my blog category apocalypticism, as well as my category on the history of Satan.

Like most questions of origin, the issue of the origins of the apocalyptic worldview is a slippery one to handle and there are no simple answers, despite my attempt at a sketchy but partial answer here. The first time that we witness what scholars often identify as the Jewish apocalyptic worldview in its “full-blown” sense is in writings such as 1 Enoch and Daniel around the turn of the second century BCE. Yet there are important pieces of the puzzle from various cultural spheres that preceded the Jewish apocalyptic worldview and that help us to make better sense of the full picture.

First of all, there is the importance of the Mesopotamian “combat myth” (on which see my earlier post here). Central to the later Jewish apocalyptic worldview is the combat between God and Satan which will come to a complete end in the certain defeat of Satan, who is sometimes identified with that age-old monster or dragon Leviathan (as in Revelation 12-13). As far back as the earliest written evidence of civilization we find a recurrent theme in the mythology of Mesopotamia and the Near East generally. This particular recurrent theme or plot which scholars have labeled “the combat myth” involves the following:

One among the many gods engages in activity that seriously threatens the very order of the society of the gods, and it seems that all may revert to chaos (i.e. almost literally all hell is breaking loose). None among the older generation of gods seems willing or able to stand up against this chaotic threat which may undo the cosmos. A young or up-and-coming god (e.g. Ninurta or Marduk) steps up after being offered kingship over all the gods if he succeeds in restoring order among the gods. That young god succeeds in slaying the chaotic god or monster and reigns supreme (at least until the next threat of chaos).

This pattern can be seen in the story of Ninurta vs. Anzu and in others such as Ba’al’s defeat of Yamm (personified Sea) and Marduk’s defeat of the chaotic sea-monster Tiamat, from whose body Marduk fashions the world as we know it (in the Babylonian Enuma elish).

This pattern is also reflected in the basic assumptions of some authors of the Hebrew Bible, who speak of Yahweh slaying Leviathan, Rahab, or Yam, sometimes in connection with his creation of the world (see Psalm 74:12-17; Psalm 89:5-18; Isaiah 51:9-11). There is some truth in the claim that the apocalyptic worldview is the combat myth writ large: instead of simply being a recurrent theme in mythology, the ongoing combat between God and Satan (the ultimate adversary) is central to the overall apocalyptic worldview and now there is a vision of a future, final battle in which Satan will be put out of business permanently.

Second, there is the Persian case of Zoroastrian apocalypticism, about which I have posted in connection with Plutarch’s ethnographic summary (and, no, the actual Ahura Mazda was not interviewed on The Daily Show — yes, I had an email asking if he had been). The Zoroastrian material speaks of an ongoing battle between Ahura Mazda (Lord Wisdom) and Angra Mainyu (Evil Spirit) that will come to a complete end in the defeat of the power of darkness and all of its allies. An end-time figure (Saoshyant = “future benefactor”) will play some role in bringing about Lord Wisdom’s plans. There will be a resurrection of the dead and judgment will follow. The power of light will punish or destroy all evil and will “make things wonderful” by establishing a blissful existence for all humans who chose to live in accordance with Truth rather than the Lie.

Clearly there are many parallels between this Persian (Iranian) worldview and Jewish apocalypticism. Yet there are difficulties in assessing what is the relation between the two: We don’t know precisely when Zoroaster lived (either the sixth century BCE or the 12th century BCE!); it is difficult to know what aspects of later Zoroastrianism go back to Zoroaster himself; and all of our writings from Zoroastrians themselves (Avesta and Pahlavi) were only put into the written form we have from the fifth century CE on (i.e. either around seventeen or eleven centuries after Zoroaster lived). So there will always be debate on how the two influenced one another.

Third, there are other important traditions within Israelite religion (before the building of the second temple around 500 BCE) that provide a framework for the development of apocalypticism.

On the one hand there is the wisdom tradition, reflected in writings such as Proverbs. An assumption behind this tradition is that God has wisdom, and that he imparts this wisdom to very special human beings, to wise men. The apocalyptic worldview makes this same assumption and, in this case, the content of the wisdom relates to God’s plan for the coming final intervention to destroy evil and save the righteous (as well as how God runs the universe as a whole). The figure of Daniel, for instance, is presented as the ultimate wise man of Yahweh whose wisdom surpasses that of the Babylonian “wise men”, such that he (someone writing in his name) is the natural candidate to produce one of our earliest apocalyptic writings.

On the other hand, and closely related, is what we can call the prophetic tradition. The writings of the prophets preserved in the Hebrew Bible struggle to explain why God has allowed terrible things to happen to the people he chose (namely, to explain the fall of the Northern kingdom to Assyria in 721 BCE and then the fall of the Southern temple to Babylonia in 586 BCE). An assumption held by these prophets is that God has future plans for his people (namely to save them) and he reveals important aspects of this plan to the people through the prophet.

In the process of communicating what Yahweh tells them to tell the people (as they see it), many prophets look forward to “that day”, namely, the day when Israel would be freed from foreign domination and restored to its united glory. Quite often Yahweh’s communications take the form of visions, like Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones or the two sticks (Ezekiel 37). “That day” also often includes the “judgment” and/or subjugation of foreign nations. As we approach the (most likely) post-exilic era, a prophecy such as that in Isaiah 24-27 (the so-called “Isaiah Apocalypse”) can say that on “that day” (which is imminent) Yahweh will “lay waste the earth and make it desolate” (24:1), that he “will punish the host of heaven in heaven [heavenly beings], and on earth the kings of the earth ” (24:21), and that this can be compared to Yahweh repeating in some more final manner the slaying of “Leviathan the twisting serpent” (27:1 [RSV]).

Although I would hesitate to call the material in Isaiah 24-27 the “full-blown apocalyptic worldview”, we are certainly well on our way towards its development. Many of the pieces of the puzzle were quite quickly coming together in the wake of exile and return, in the fifth century BCE. Soon “that day” would be the day on which Yahweh, God of Israel, did battle with Satan (or some other ultimate adversary) and all of Satan’s earthly allies (kings of other nations) in order to wipe out evil forever and establish an eternal kingdom for the righteous. By soon, I mean sometime before 1 Enoch and the book of Daniel were written (c. 225-160s BCE). By then, the apocalypse had arrived in various senses, although Satan was yet to develop fully as his completely evil self.

Much more could be said, but this will have to do for now (the post is too long!!). You can read more about such things in books by the likes of John J. Collins and Norman Cohn as listed in the outline for my course.

As you may know, I always seek to gain permission from journals and others to reproduce my scholarly articles online, and you can read these articles on my publications page. I have now uploaded two of the most recent ones:

“Acculturation and Identity in the Diaspora: A Jewish Family and ‘Pagan’ Guilds at Hierapolis,” Journal of Jewish Studies 57 (2006) 222-244. (This article looks at the grave-inscriptions of Judeans at Hierapolis in Asia Minor).

“The Declining Polis? Religious Rivalries in Ancient Civic Context,” in Leif E. Vaage, ed., Religious Rivalries in the Early Roman Empire and the Rise of Christianity. Studies in Christianity and Judaism, vol. 18. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2006, pp. 21-49. (This article discusses scholarly ideas regarding the decline of the ancient city and uses evidence for associations in Asia Minor to refute some common theories).

Mark Goodacre’s outline of the difficulties in getting at the Jewish peasant of Galilee (known as Jesus) is timely in light of the fact that we are now beginning to look at the gospels (and the historical Jesus) in our course.  Check out his list of Why is the Historical Jesus Quest so difficult?

There is a sense in which we are on far more solid historical ground in asking what did some early Christian author (e.g. the author of Mark, Matthew, Thomas) think was significant about Jesus than we are in asking what did the peasant Jesus actually do and say.  A narrative approach to the gospels that considers how a particular author portrays Jesus and how the story of Jesus unfolds in a particular writing is less plagued with problems in certain respects.  It is still difficult nonetheless.

Tyler Williams has posted the thirteenth biblical studies carnival.

Tyler has now also uploaded his Best of 2006 in Biblical Studies  related blogs.  He has done a great job (and I don’t just say that because I’m mentioned).