F. Gerald Downing

Pliny's Prosecutions of Christians: Revelation and 1 Peter:

those parts of Asia Minor addressed in Revelation and 1 Peter before the cases heard by Pliny and referred to in his letter, X xcvi, and in his copy of Trajan’s reply, X xcvii. If Revelation and/or 1 Peter were occasioned by the commencement of official judicial action, their ’publication’ dates from this time; and this is most likely. Their respective attitudes to the human world around, however, are in all probability much less ’occasional’, and are based on mature though divergent analyses of human society in the light of early Christian life and faith.

Ambiguity, Ancient Semantics, and Faith *

While allowing for polysemy, scholars seem mostly averse to ambiguity, as in the πίστις Χριστοῦ debate; but, it would seem, without engaging with ancient semantic theory. There the model of ‘naming’ and so of evoking an otherwise unspecified mental impression, predominates. Meaning is taken to lie in the mind, not in the word or words that are hoped to evoke it, as is also shown in ancient discussions of metaphor, allegory, and paraphrase. Connotations of individual words are rarely distinguished, rarely if ever purged. We are not justified in expecting verbal precision where our ancient authors will neither have attempted it nor will their hearers have expected it; nor, indeed, do modern psycholinguists appear to find space for it.

Dissolving the Synoptic Problem Through Film

Film makers have taken liberties with the Gospels, for discernible narrative reasons. May not Luke have so treated Matthew, freeing us from Q? A comparison with Luke’s (near-) contemporaries such as Josephus, and their improvements on others’ narratives, suggests more apposite questions and a different answer.

Mary Between Minimal History and Maximal Myth

Our historical minimum might be: ‘born of a woman, born under the law’ (Gal. 4.4), noting the unnamed mother of a first-century Jewish male called Jesus (about whom much else was claimed), in our earliest recorded reference to his birth. A maximal myth is outlined in the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission’s recent report, Mary: Grace and Hope in Christ.1 Paragraph 7 of the report (pp. 8–9) lists some ‘rich and varied’ methods of reading the Scriptures that have been deployed in the past or more recently. These include typological, Reformed theological, historical-critical, narratalogical, rhetorical and sociological procedures. In the event we are then treated in the Statement only to reviews of scriptural narratives mentioning Mary, with inter-textual supplements. No historicalor sociologicalor rhetorical-critical questions are even raised, let alone discussed. The nearest we get to any such is the suggestion that ‘after these birth stories’ in Matthew and Luke, Jesus’ distancing of himself from his uncomprehending family (Mark 3.31) comes to the reader as ‘something of a surprise’ (p. 19). The effect, it would seem, is to reduce (or, if one wishes, ‘elevate’) all four Gospels, and Acts, and with them the rest of the New Testament collection, to the level of canonical story-spinning. We appear to be invited to enjoy uncritically the several imaginings by various ancient authors and subsequent commentators. We are not encouraged to ask in what proportions the portrayals might arguably be shown to be factual or fictional. Only when we leave the Scriptures behind do we then by contrast seem to become involved in real history, if only the history of ideas, for these latter are now ascribed to dated authors, and critical editions of their texts are available (pp. 29–48). Some may be content to have it so, and leave the New Testament record as ‘true fiction’.2 Many readers, Christian or other, would, I guess, not be happy to. I very much doubt whether the Commission members intend it. But the only honest alternative is to grapple with the many historical difficulties involved.3 Only so may we find a way to appreciate Mary that in some effective measure still engages with elements of popular Catholic and Orthodox and Anglican and other devotion, but one that does not render her a purely mythical figure, and her son with her. The intention in what follows is to sketch (only sketch) such an

Psalms and the Baptist

Psalms 1 and 2, combined in some witnesses, afford a significant inter-text for the accounts in Matthew and Luke, and so, in Q, for the Baptist, the baptism of Jesus, and the temptations. As does the combined psalm, the Baptist distinguishes the wicked as chaff from the fruitful righteous, and this constitutes, so Justin, a call to repentance. The combined psalm goes on to threaten kings and earthly judges, as does the Baptist, and proclaims instead the begetting of an (implied) Davidic figure, a proclamation repeated ‘from heaven’ in some texts of Luke. This divine adoption is then challenged by the diabolos, who attempts to usurp not only God’s placing of his vice-regent on his holy hill of Zion, but also the divine gift of the uttermost parts of the earth. This reading of Ps. 1/2 is thus arguably significant for our reconstruction and reading of Q, for our reading of Luke, and, possibly, of the historical Baptist and of the historical Jesus.

Aesthetic Behaviour in the Jewish Scriptures: A Preliminary Sketch

Although some biblical commentators nowadays do refuse an aesthetic disjunction between ‘art’ and ‘craft’, so allowing that ancient Israel’s ‘crafts’ might have aesthetic value, there seems to be little attention accorded the aesthetics—the aesthetic behaviour—presupposed in the canonical literature. In part this is due to the obsessions of our now questionable, socially restrictive ‘Enlightenment’ inheritance. But there is discernible in the canonical writings an aesthetics of abundance, intensification, plenitude, especially in much of the Psalter, and in concentration in Song of Songs. And this aesthetic celebration which we may discern here tallies well with much of the everyday aesthetic behaviour in which we ourselves engage.

The Social Contexts of Jesus the Teacher: Construction or Reconstruction

The importance of an awareness of the wider social context of any movement or individual is widely acknowledged, and does not need arguing. It constitutes a necessary criterion of the adequacy of any historical account. Yet there does not seem to have been any significant development in our critical appraisal of it among other criteria, and we still fail to produce agreed results. As a check on how things stand with other historians we may take, as a typical current survey, C. Behan McCullagh, Justifying Historical Descriptions . McCullagh makes a distinction that I have myself made before, but he makes it rather more elegantly. It lies in a contrast between the explanatory ‘scope’ and the ‘power’ of an historical account. An historical reconstruction may have a very wide scope, appearing to include all the data that is conventionally allowed to be relevant, and thus seem very persuasive. But the question remains to be asked, what power has it to exclude competing explanations?

Feasible Researches in Historical Jesus Tradition: A Critical Response to Chris Keith

In his programmatic article, ‘The Narratives of the Gospels and the Historical Jesus: Current Debates, Prior Debates, and the Goal of Historical Jesus Research’, Chris Keith argues for a very clear distinction between two styles or types of historiography (Keith 2016). One searches ‘behind’ the gospel texts for ‘authentic’ matter; the other, according to Keith, the only ‘feasible’ method, allowing for ‘memory theory’ in particular, is to discern how ‘the tradition’ developed, and only thence generate theoretical reconstructions of a Jesus who may have originally prompted it. It is argued here that this presents an unsustainable dichotomy, for the historical tradition(s) of the first Christians also themselves ‘lie behind’ our texts, and imaginative searches for both Jesus and Jesus traditions have to proceed hand in hand.

On doubting dichotomies: A response to Don Cupitt

This article is a response to Don Cupitt’s article ‘After the end of the world’, published in Theology (July 2014). It argues that doubts are always worth doubting, critical questions warrant critical questioning, that imagination is more prevalent than sceptics acknowledge, and that there are spaces that dichotomies arbitrarily banish.This article is a response to Don Cupitt’s article ‘After the end of the world’, published in Theology (July 2014). It argues that doubts are always worth doubting, critical questions warrant critical questioning, that imagination is more prevalent than sceptics acknowledge, and that there are spaces that dichotomies arbitrarily banish.

Dale Martin’s Swords for Jesus: Shaky Evidence?:

Although re-examinations of accepted conclusions are to be welcomed, Dale Martin’s recent revisionist article, ‘Jesus in Jerusalem: Armed and Not Dangerous’, is here rebutted. Contra Martin, carrying a sword for self-defence was the default position, not subject to penalty, let alone a token of revolt. ‘Love of Enemies’ is the awkward original teaching of Jesus, read in the light of later interpretations of the fall of Jerusalem and its Temple as divine vengeance. The reduced Passover of the Last Supper accounts betokens later practice, not Jesus’ rejection of his people’s cult.