Table Of Content

Light Denied A Challenge to Historians By Andrew Parker i Published November 2008 by the author on the Web Dedication My first volume Painfully Clear: The Parables of Jesus was dedicated to a previous generation: to those who had helped me find my path. This one is dedicated to my own generation, to those who have accompanied me on my journey: Pat Parker, Vérène Hedrich, John Miller Mary Miller John Rowe. Thanks My especial thanks to John Rowe for criticising and correcting everything I have written and to Professor Leslie Houlden and Elizabeth Templeton for checking for howlers and making helpful suggestions. ii Parker’s subject is the historical Jesus. He claims the evangelists portray Jesus as Yahweh’s light. As he sees it they describe him as the one who, in demonstrating how a true servant of the god of the marginals should behave, exposed the hypocrisy of civilization folk, including those who considered they were righteous according to the Torah: the god of the marginals’ law code. Continuing his examination of the parables, begun in his first volume, Parker concludes that the presence in the tradition of these reactive speech-forms confirms the historicity of this demonstration/exposure strategy. He then looks for evidence of this same strategy in the rest of the Gospels and finds it strongly present in the so called ‘pronouncement stories’, the stories about the disciples’ desertion, and the stories of Jesus’ silence at his trial. He dates this combined evidence to the earliest level obtainable within the tradition, which leads him to ask why twentieth century historians have been uniformly silent on the subject. He wonders why they have all produced proactive portraits of Jesus which effectively mask his central demonstration/exposure strategy. He suggests the reason could be that as respectable civilisation officials scholars naturally find Yahweh’s light, which exposes the hypocrisy of civilisation’s privilege-seeking, just as disconcerting as the Pharisees did. iii Contents Introduction. A Cuckoo in Scholarships’ nest: Parables the key to the 1-7 Historical Jesus Chapter 1. Parable as Illustration: A theoretical Basis 9-26 Chapter 2. A Speech-Form Analysis of the Gospel Logia 27-73 Chapter 3. Parable: As Illustration in the Gospels 75-101 Chapter 4. The Third Way: Funk’s Metaphor Model 103-131 Chapter 5 The Third Way: Witherington’s Wisdom Model 133-145 Chapter 6 The Third Way: Wright/Bailey Community-Storytelling Model 147-175 Chapter 7 Parable: as Reactive Discourse 177-205 Chapter 8 Parable: as On-the-Level Discipline 207-227 Chapter 9 Parable: ‘Interpretation’ 229-235 Chapter 10 Parables and the Isaianic Light Theme 237-254 Chapter 11 Twentieth Century Historians and the Demonstration/Exposure 257-281 Pattern Chapter 12 A Challenge to Historians 283-304 Chapter 13 The Exposure Pattern and the Death of Jesus 305-311 Appendix A Analysis of Rabbinic Stories 313-323 Appendix B Gospel Parables Delivering Ideological Messages 324-326 Appendix C Wright’s Handling of Gospel Parables 327-331 Appendix D Parables From the Greco-Roman World 332-333 Appendix E The Demonstration/Exposure Pattern in Twentieth Century 334-363 Histories of Jesus. Glosary 364-365 Bibliography 36-369 Author Index 369-371 iv Introduction A Cuckoo in Scholarship’s Nest: Parable the Key to the Historical Jesus This book is not an academic work and the reader should be advised that it will not fit snugly with the others on their biblical study shelves. The front cover itself makes this sufficiently clear. The title indicates my desire for dialogue with biblical historians – a fact that is confirmed by my use within the book itself of their language of academic debate. However, the cartoon lying beneath the title is a pictorial satire which pokes fun at the Jesus seminar – not something one expects in a scholarly work! Let me say at once that this apparently weird combination is no accident. It is designed to highlight two of the book’s salient characteristics for the benefit of anyone proposing to read it. In the first place, though the book uses in the main scholarly language, it is written in the conviction that though modern biblical academics have managed to equip themselves with state-of- the-art, analytical tools they have proved to be quite incapable of identifying the character of the historical Jesus and, as a consequence of isolating the central import of the Bible itself and this conviction holds good regardless of a scholar’s personal political leanings or status as either theologian or secular historian. So the front cover of this book stands as a warning to the reader that he or she should not take my desire for dialogue with historians or my agreement to use their language as in any way indicating that I believe that scientific scholarship on its own is capable of guiding anyone to a proper understanding of the Bible and Jesus’ function in purportedly fulfilling it. Though I am more than happy to accept the proven findings of scientific scholarship and the constraints these impose on my reconstruction of the events which contributed to bringing the Bible about, my own project is not ultimately dependent on theirs. For my project, which is to understand what the Bible is all about, is to do so not as a disinterested observer but as a committed follower of its truth. It is because I seek to be faithful to what I find in the Bible that I feel constrained to be as truthful as I possibly can about how it came about. In other words my aim is primarily ideological and only 1 secondarily historical since my approach involves understanding by doing. For academic scholars the aim is to be scientifically objective which they seem to think implies a display of ideological neutrality (It is only a display, of course, since, in point of fact their work shows itself to be just as much ideologically guided and controlled as 2 everyone else’s. ). My problem with this approach is that when it comes to the business 3 of being faithful to the biblical ideology by accurately describing it, experience shows that scholars consistently hinder the process. In fact, after a lifetime’s waiting for academics to address the issues raised by the biblical ideology I have found it necessary to take pen and paper and argue for a seismic shift in the way in which the historical Jesus, and the biblical subject matter as a whole, are understood by this small yet not un- influential section of society. 1 What liberationist term ‘action-reflection’. 2 Hence the hollowness of the claim that historians are better placed than theologians to ascertain historical truth. 3 A concept modern biblical scholars either ignore or decry. 1 Given the situation I describe it would be the height of folly for me to pretend that I see myself as doing my bit to aid scholarship’s majestic advance towards an objective and scientific understanding of the biblical material. On the contrary I see my job as the 4 somewhat unpleasant business of laying ‘a cuckoo’s egg’ in their comfortable nest. When as a boy I listened to the Bible being read I could never make out why the Israelite establishment and, later, the Pharisees persisted in behaving so badly, thereby rendering the prophets and Jesus incandescent with rage. Of course I hadn’t at that time managed to grasp the reasoning behind the criticisms Jesus and the prophets were making but I was convinced, quite wrongly as it turned out, that adults understood what these villains had been up to. As a consequence I put it all down to an ill-defined wickedness. Had I been told the truth – that these fine upstanding villains were the ancient equivalents of the fine and upstanding villains who even then were in the process of teaching me – I would have been greatly intrigued, though probably even more mystified. What I now see, thanks largely to my decision forty years ago, after the completion of my biblical and theological training, to earn my living as an unskilled manual worker, is that scholars and clerics by the very fact of taking on jobs in which they are expected to review, understand and preserve all important civilisational matters, whether secular or sacred, inevitably blind themselves to the shocking and disagreeable truth which the Bible from its marginal perspective never ceases to propound. This book’s basic thrust is simple to state. It is that all four evangelist (though not Thomas) present a portrait of Jesus as a man with a reactive strategy. As they see it he was the one who fulfilled Israel’s obligation under the Mosaic covenant to act as God’s light. By successfully demonstrating how men should live together in radical solidarity by being prepared at all times to sacrifice privilege so that no one was allowed to fall ‘out of the net’ (loving one’s neighbour as oneself) he exposed Israel’s abject failure to operate as God’s faithful servant. He also, of course, at the same time exposed the community leadership’s hollow pretence that everything was going according to plan. 5 Furthermore, for having the temerity to make a public revelation of their hypocrisy he was put to death by these fine upstanding gentlemen, since this was the only effective way of shutting him up. However, an examination of a broad range of historical studies 6 from the twentieth century shows that scholars have universally ignored this reactive portrait and instead chosen to paint over it various proactive portraits of their own devising, presumably because they believe that proactive behaviour – the prerogative of the strong – is more befitting of ‘their man’. This thoroughly unprofessional and unscientific conduct suggests to me that today’s civilisation clerks dislike the evangelists’ reactive portrait just as much as the Pharisees disliked Jesus himself. They dismiss it from their thoughts just as the first century Jewish authorities dismissed the man. One can only suppose that they are inspired by the same motive: to quench the light which 7 exposes civilised men’s and women’s hypocrisy, their own included. 4 A perfectly hatchable one I hope. 5 The Gospels’ term for this particular disease. 6 See Appendix E. pp. 334-363 7 I have purposefully not written ‘human hypocrisy’ since I am aware that marginals don’t characteristically share this particular type of hypocrisy, though it may well be true that everyone has a tendency to be a hypocrite after this manner, given the ‘fortune’ of a privileged position within society. 2 I call this the book’s subsidiary thrust; however, rightly understood it is just one of the conclusions I was led to in writing it, not something I set out to prove. From a scholarly point of view this in itself marks out my project, which is to discover what the Bible is basically all about, as suspect since it shows both that I am not, as scholars might see it, in proper control of my subject matter and also that I am using methodologies not countenanced by scholarship’s post-enlightenment project. To understand what I mean it is necessary to bear in mind that, leaving aside the question of Khunian ‘paradigm shifts’, scholarship’s project consists in using scientific analysis to probe the Bible in order to gather information about it and then to use this information to build hypotheses which other scholars can then test. As such, this project essentially amounts to a joint and carefully controlled venture by all concerned working in this field, in which everyone agrees to a gradual, step-by-step, narrowing-down, working-on-all-fronts advance towards understanding. This explains why scholars insist that if one wishes to make a contribution to their grand endeavour (which, as I have indicated, is not my particular concern, though I will be glad if anything I say can help) it is necessary to demonstrate first an interaction with all the relevant secondary sources (i.e. every important book and paper in every major language which has recently appeared on the subject) and, second, a strict compliance with scholarly methodology, which includes, of course, a proper control of the subject matter under examination. When I commenced my project by writing my first volume Painfully Clear: The 8 Parables of Jesus the criticism was made that my interaction with other scholars, and in particular with the most recent works on the subject of parables, was somewhat limited. However, instead of pointing out that I never claimed to be a scholar and that a confusion was being made between my project, which had its own quite different exigencies, and theirs, I foolishly gave way. I read a few more books and added a few more references in the work. I say this was foolish not because reading more books was a waste of time. For though, as I already knew quite well, doing so would achieve precisely nothing in terms of an advancement of my project – since the chances of stumbling on a scholar who, without prompting, sees what I see lying at the Bible’s heart is about as great as finding a needle in a hay-stack – every new book that I read certainly provided me with more grist to my mill in the sense of furnishing me with yet further demonstrations of the general rule that because of their social position scholars always find ways of avoiding the issue which the Bible raises. If my failure to stand by my book Painfully Clear as I had first written it was foolish it was simply because it meant that I allowed my editor eventually to publish it while labouring under the impression that it constituted a modest contribution to scholarship’s grand project, which of course it didn’t. This proved to be catastrophic since although the book received a number of favourable reviews, no one bothered to buy it, a fact that is hardly surprising, given it was sold under false pretences, 9 an error for which I take full responsibility. But I have now learned my lesson. This explains why I have begun on the present occasion by making it clear both on the front cover and in this introductory chapter that 8 A H Parker Painfully Clear: The Parables of Jesus (Sheffield: SAP 1996) 9 My book also had the misfortune to be published with a picture of a stained glass window of the good Samaritan on the front cover, giving prospective readers the utterly misleading impression that it was a religious work, and with a monumental error in the blurb on the back (a change of a single letter) giving them the impression that I was a follower of the New Hermeneutic, my pet hate! 3 my project should not be confused with what post-enlightenment scholarship has been up to. This, however, in itself raises the question how my writing connects with academic scholarship, if at all. Well, given the fact that both their project and mine are ultimately concerned to understand how the Bible came to be written, it should not be possible for either side to ignore the others’ findings and certainly I for my part actively seek a dialogue. But that is not all, for I am happy to admit that the fact that my chosen field of study is the whole Bible renders me, in all but the ideological sphere, more than a little dependent on the work of biblical academics. In the nineteenth century a few scholars had the temerity to debate the question of the unity of the Bible. However, no present-day academic would dream of becoming involved in such a wide ranging discussion. And if they, as people who have spent a lifetime in gathering the necessary skills, consider the matter beyond them what is there to be said of my chances of carrying it off successfully? Of course in this particular work I am involved by and large with the Gospels alone. It will only be in the third volume, God of the Marginals: The Biblical Ideology as demonstrated by Jesus, when I plunge headlong into the Old Testament, that I will encounter the full problem. However, even in this volume, in dealing with the question how a precise understanding of the parable mechanism can be used to determine Jesus’ fundamental strategy, I am faced with a multitude of crucial debates, each of which, from a professional point of view would demand not just a lifetime’s study but also skills which I don’t pretend to possess. Because of this I have been obliged to adopt a very particular methodology. This consists in choosing the work of one or two scholars to represent present day findings on any given matter. For example, when dealing with the question whether it is true to say that parables function as creative art, instead of reviewing all the writers in the New Hermeneutic, especially the most recent, I have chosen to confine myself to an in-depth study of the work of Robert Funk and Tom Wright. Likewise, when looking at the question whether parables should be seen as a wisdom form I have chosen to follow doggedly the arguments of Ben Witherington. And when dealing with the Rabbinic parables I have chosen to latch on to the work of McArther and Johnston (who present themselves as a unity) and David Stern. There will, of course, always be academics involved in these fields of study who see it as their business to instruct me that in selecting the work of such and such an author I have made a bad choice or to remind me that so and so’s representations are no longer completely up to date. But that is not fundamentally important since eventually all understandings become dated and in any case, unlike scholarships’ project, mine is in no way advanced by being able to give an up-to-the-minute account of the latest revelations afforded by research. My concern is on the one hand to accept scholars’ findings wherever I find them proven, and on the other hand to demonstrate where the conclusions they draw betray either their subject matter, their own previous findings or their methodology, thereby revealing the hidden agenda I believe they all share; that is, to hide what the Bible is all about. People will say that what I suggest here – that there is a kind of conspiracy amongst scholars to ignore, bypass or actively suffocate the biblical ideology – is utterly ludicrous: an unbelievable slur on a basically honest profession, but in doing so they will simply show just how little they too understand. For the Bible manifestly proclaims both in the words of the prophets and in the discourse of Jesus himself that hiding the message is precisely what this honest and upright profession always seeks to do. They will have to 4 get up very early in the morning if they wish to convince me that something has recently happened to invalidate this ancient and well established observation, especially when every bit of present day experience indicates that it is still holds true. Having said that I am forced to admit that there is one overriding problem facing me in this work. How am I going to be able to identify Jesus’ core strategy if, as I maintain, biblical scholars (on whose work I largely depend when analysing the texts) are intent, one and all, in masking it or denying its existence? How can I find fault with their work and claim that they are being a wilful hindrance if I cannot already show, in some wholly independent manner, what this core strategy is? In fact, does not this ‘catch 22’ situation mean that, whatever I come up with, I will always be vulnerable to the criticism that I am simply looking down a well and seeing my own reflection in the water at the bottom? Naturally my concern has largely been to find a way out of this dilemma. The solution to the problem, the key as it were to the door, came to me, surprisingly enough, in the form of an understanding of how parables work, using speech-form analysis. Though I believe that the considerable efforts of the New Hermeneutic in the domain of parable analysis 10 have turned out to be almost completely fruitless, what they did demonstrate once again is that our understanding of what Jesus was up to is largely determined by what we think he was doing with his parables. This is not, of course, to suggest that the only thing we know with assurance about Jesus is the fact that he told parables. I believe that we can say with equal certainty that he performed what in those days were regarded as miracles and many other things besides. But the sheer amount of illustrative material found in the synoptic gospels – including of course the parables – all but obliges the reader to see here a determining strategy. This connection between what Jesus was doing with his parables and what he was on about generally in terms of his perception of the Biblical ideology would seem to suggest that if we can satisfactorily demonstrate what he was doing in telling parables – by the deceptively simple expedient of using speech-form analysis to show how parables actually work – we may then have the key to his general strategy and to his appreciation of the biblical ideology as a whole. From my point of view the interesting aspect of this scenario is the consideration that it should be perfectly feasible, even for a dunderhead like me, to work out on my own how a speech-form like the parable works, and to do so without giving any reasonable grounds for people to claim 11 that I am simply discovering in the texts what I want to find. It has always seemed commonsense to me that the only possible way of understanding Jesus’ parables is to adopt a speech-form approach since a speech-form is evidently what a parable is. This is the project on which I embarked in my first book Painfully Clear. I attempted there to forge the basic tools for understanding the parable mechanism as it is found not simply in first century Palestine but from time immemorial throughout the ancient Near East. I continue this work in the beginning of this volume. Critics have claimed that I have no justification in insisting on a speech-form approach to the parables. They say that different scholars use different forms of analysis and that they are perfectly entitled to do so. There is, of course, one sense in which this is perfectly true for at the end of the day no one has the right to prevent anyone from doing anything with the 10 Principally because they ignore speech-form analysis and insist on a literary approach to the parables. 11 I am well aware that people will accuse me of this error whatever I do. However, my concern can only be to offer them no legitimate grounds for doing so. 5 biblical material. However, that is not to say that every approach is as appropriate as another. Given that it seems certain that Jesus used parables in live market-place conversations, I happen to think that a literary approach to his parables, which is what 12 most scholars seem to be conducting these days, is considerably worse than a complete waste of time. Indeed it seems to me that in adopting a literary approach a person all but guarantees that he or she will never come to an understanding of how Jesus used parables. What is more, there is next to no chance of coming to an understanding of what the evangelists were up to either, since a literary form implies a systematic approach and an examination of the evangelists’ reconstructions of Jesus’ parables shows a marked randomness (I here exclude the work of the evangelist John who was clearly not concerned to present reconstructions of Jesus’ own story-tellings, which means that the 13 handful of parables found in his Gospel present an interesting special case. ). I believe that the demonstrable fact that a literary approach to the parables, however defensible on libertarian grounds, is bound to get you precisely nowhere in understanding what Jesus was doing, can only lead to the conclusion that those who advocate it are intent upon not understanding what they say they want to understand. I know it sounds fanciful but what alternative explanation is there? Once you have got it into your head that of course Jesus must have used everyday speech- forms like parables and complex similes in basically the same way as everyone else, you begin to realise that the rather messy way in which the synoptic gospels and Thomas record him as using them must be to do with the way in which the speech-forms were preserved in the early Church and not with the way in which Jesus actually spoke. However, this simple deduction has apparently been beyond modern scholarship for reasons which I have yet to fathom – if there is not, as I say, some inner compulsion not to understand. But what was it about these illustrative speech-forms (simile, metaphor, complex simile and parable) which made them, at least in the mouth of Jesus, so threatening that even present day academics have to run away and hide? Quite simply it is the fact that unlike all of his contemporaries Jesus chose to put in question civilisation’s world of privilege (which academics for their part so enjoy) by choosing solidarity with the dustbinned outcasts. One major consequence of this stance was his advocacy, in the name of the Mosaic tradition, of the outcasts’ reactive strategy of demonstration and exposure. In this way he reaffirmed that the fundamental basis of the Hebrew tradition (i.e. the biblical ideology) was Yahweh, god of the marginals. I do not expect the reader immediately to take on board the enormity of what I am here putting forward. It is after all something which has only gradually come to me over the years as I have reflected on the biblical texts and my own experience in trying, rather unsuccessfully, to live faithfully in their light. What is more, it is an understanding which my three-volume project aims to establish and here we are only at the beginning of Volume II. I put it before the reader now simply as a way of explaining my methodology, in case it should be supposed that I hadn’t any. Readers should use it only as a sort of map which they can refer to as we journey on together, in order to remind themselves that we are indeed going somewhere even though sometimes it may occur to them that we might not be! 12 Largely as a result of the misguided work of the New Hermeneutic. 13 See pp. 67-68 and 75-77 below. 6