Hellenist Luke

According to an early Christian legend the Evangelist Luke was a physician friend of Apostle Paul. It is difficult to make any judgement about Luke’s medical training. Similarly his relationship to apostle Paul is difficult to judge. He certainly did not know Paul well enough to capture his theology and thought process.
            On the other hand judging from Luke’s writing we know that he was a well educated Hellenistic intellectual. The Gospel of Luke is edited from earlier sources in a pleasant language, most sophisticated of all the other gospels and one of the best styles of the New Testament. And Luke’s second volume, the Acts of Apostles, is a real Hellenistic Masterpiece.  Modern scholars cannot decide about Acts’ precise inspiration or its exact literary category. Is it more a Hellenistic historiography, a Hellenistic Biography or a Hellenistic Novella? Difficult to decide.
       It is certain it shares some characteristic features of Hellenistic literature.
      It contains periodoi, travelogues - journeys of the main character. Hellenistic people were eager to read and learn about new distant lands, cities, cultures, customs, religions.
       It contains elements of teras or thauma - fascination with supra natural, miraculous or bizarre. Because Hellenistic audiences loved to be teased with religious or supra-natural mystery.
       Acts definitely contains aretology - lifting up virtues of the main character/s and setting him or them as examples for the audience.
       It also contains homiliai - made up speeches of the main characters - just like Hellenistic historiographer would insert in pivotal points believable but invented speeches.
       All of it is part of a highly entertaining even thrilling storytelling full of danger, suspension, jeopardy.
       It is really difficult to say what was the main source of inspiration, Hellenistic historiography, biography or novella. I would say that Luke like a proper creative intellectual was familiar and inspired by all the current literary styles. He used them to fit his own unique purpose, in fact he created his own and new style of THE ACTS OF APOSTLES.
       And that exactly what followed - after Luke and his Acts of Apostles - the early Christian literature from the mid 2^nd Century is aflush with different acts of apostles- Acts of Andrew, Acts of Andrew and Mathias, Acts of John, Acts of Paul, Acts of Peter, Acts of Peter and Paul, Acts of Peter and the Twelve, Acts of Philip, Acts of Pilate, Acts of Tekla, and Acts of Thomas. And these are just those writings which survived till now and which we know.
       The Evangelist Luke is the first author and the father of this thrilling Hellenistic style, highly entertaining and at the same time educating. And that is something you might not know about the bible.

Harrowing the Hell

The Anastasis Fresco - Harrowing the Hell
in the parekklesion of Chora Church in Istambul

Harrowing the Hell - that is a part of the Easter message about which you would hardly ever hear from the Protestants. Yet it is present in the oldest Christian creed and also in the Bible.
            After Jesus died on the cross and was buried, he descended into hell. That is an undisputable part of the Apostolic Confession, the oldest baptismal affirmation of faith.  And it is also well founded in the biblical testimony. The Gospel of Matthew speaks about Jesus being three days in the heart of the earth. And in 1^st Peter we read about Jesus preaching, after his death, to the souls in the prison. Other biblical and early Christian stories point in the same direction. And there is also an impressive ancient iconographic tradition.
            Harrowing the Hell might have been disregarded among the Protestants but this Holy Friday we want to correct it and listen to and contemplate this enigmatic Easter message and rediscover its radical, transformative and even hopeful message.

Join us on the Holy Friday at 7pm 

 

Secret gospel and homophobia

Now imagine this -- a brilliant and eccentric American scholar researching an old library in a tower of an ancient Middle East monastery paging through medieval manuscripts reading ancient writings and finding by a chance a quotation from a thus far unknown secret gospel. That quotation was part of a letter from the second century which mentions an ancient esoteric sect. Mystical interpretations are involved, secret initiation and magical rituals. There is even a perceived sexual innuendo. All is wrapped in cutting edge linguistics and theology and also involves accusations of ancient, medieval or modern forgery. And then this unique manuscript mysteriously vanishes from the Orthodox patriarchate in Jerusalem. To the best of my knowledge the only thing missing in this plot is a murder, otherwise it could easily compete with bestsellers like Umberto Eco’s “The Name of the Rose” or Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code.”
    But it is not fiction, this is a real part of recent biblical and apocryphal theology. Biblical theology can indeed be thrilling like best-selling mystery novels! And that perceived sexual innuendo played an unfortunate and important role as there were concerns about homo-erotic undertones. Thus Christian homophobia of the sixties, seventies and eighties and to some degree and in some circles even until now was likely behind the disappearance of precious manuscript. Without the physical manuscripts those accusations of modern forgery cannot be conclusively resolved in which ever way. This is how modern homophobia impacted biblical scholarship. That mysterious text is in almost every critical edition of early Christian Apocryphal Writings but with a note about its questionable authenticity.
    As we remember 50 years from the Stonewall uprising, and 50 years of struggle for LGBTQ rights this is something very few people might know about the dark legacy of homophobia in the realm of biblical scholarship.
    If you are intrigued, join us this Sunday to learn more about The Secret Gospel of Mark and its uneasy modern history tainted by homophobia.

Church's Treasure

The second Sunday of Easter brings to us the story of doubting Thomas. Last year I wrote and recorded a short study about this apostle and truly ancient Thomasian tradition. 
      [Here you can read about Thomas among early Christians or here you can watch video clip about it.] 
      This Sunday I want to pick one story from this Thomasian tradition, the second chapter from the Acts of Thomas. But I do not want to completely give out that story, so instead here is a similar, yet later story from the early church.
      In the early III. Century Lawrence was a church deacon. He was responsible for the distribution of alms to the poor and thus he controlled substantial financial resources. Then a prefect of Rome demanded that Lawrence surrenders to the state all the church’s wealth. Lawrence promised to do that, but asked for three days to gather all that wealth. When those three days were over, he reported to the prefect. He was asked, “Where is that promised treasure?” Lawrence pointed to the poor, crippled, blind, and many other sufferers which he brought with him with the words: "Behold, these poor persons are the true treasures of the church.” 
And thus Lawrence became a saint, being executed for his devotion to the social justice.
      Our story from the Acts of Thomas this Sunday will have a better ending, but it is of a similar nature. It is also a biblical metaphor expanded into a legendary story and also has a powerful social justice message.
Join us this Sunday to hear about Thomas ministry in the legendary lands of king Gundaphorus.

Video version of this blog is on YouTube here. 

"Building castles in the sky" is an idiom which dictionaries define as "To create dreams, hopes, or plans that are impossible, unrealistic, or have very little chance of succeeding."
The second act of Apostle Thomas is very likely the beginning of this idiom and instead of duplicity its primary focus was on social justice.

Jesus' twin?

Dragon Blood Tree (Dracaena cinnabari) from Socotra

Three things you might not know about Early Christianity.

1) Gospels (Matthew 13:55f and Mark 6:3) mention matter-of-factly and in an adversarial context (therefore credibly) Jesus’ brothers and sisters. Only some fundamentalists and conservative Roman Catholics usually have a problem with it artificially explaining it as Jesus’ half-siblings or cousins. But then there was a disciple called Thomas. His Aramaic name (nickname) literally meant “a twin”. And if there were any doubts about the meaning of his name, Evangelist John (11:16; 20:24 and 21:2) translated it into Greek as Didymos so that everyone would know that it indeed meant a Twin. If Thomas was a twin, where was the other twin? Some early Christian writings provided the answer. Thomas was supposed to be the twin of Jesus. The oldest recorded legend dates to the brink of the 2nd and 3rd century. And rumors of this kind must clearly be even older, dating back to the late biblical times.
     At least some early Christians thought that Thomas was Jesus’ twin brother. And that is something you might not know about Early Christianity.

2) According to the early Christian legends, Thomas was a missionary to India, especially its western shore around the Arabian Sea. But well documented legends connect Thomas’ missionary work with one other surprising place - an island of Socotra. Now this island belongs to Yemen, but it is just off the easternmost tip of the Horn of Africa. It is an interesting place with many endemic plants such as Dragon Blood Trees and Bottle trees. In ancient times the island was famous for its frankincense and other aromatic resin. Thomas was supposedly shipwrecked there on his way to India and converted the island to Christianity and it stayed Christian until medieval times when it converted to Islam.
     This Thomassian mission might be legendary, but there is little doubt about a far reaching early mission to India and around the Arabian Sea. And that is something you might not know about early Christianity.

3) Earlier I mentioned legends and writings associated with Thomas. In fact there is an entire library of early Christian literature written under Thomas’ name. The Gospel of Thomas, Infancy Gospel of Thomas, Acts of Thomas, Book of Thomas Athlete/Contender, Apocalypse of Thomas and even Psalms of Thomas. All these writings are very different, they survived in different languages, and were influenced by different theologies. At the same time they have something in common - not a single of these writings made it to the Bible. Writings associated with Thomas were mistrusted by the official church and many of them were actively suppressed. Censorship was so successful that some were discovered only recently and by pure chance. That begs a question: Is it possible that the famous biblical story of “unbelieving Thomas” (John 20:19-29) was an attempt by early orthodox Christians to label, brand, dismiss and suppress these heterodox writings and groups which produced them? Or did different unorthodox Christians pick the “unbelieving Thomas” as their patron in protest? We might never know, and both approaches are not mutually exclusive.
     This extensive and diverse literature associated with Thomas shows us the great theological broadness of early Christians. And that is also something you might not know about the early Christianity.

Born of Divine Breath

In the Gospel of Philip Jesus is said to tell his audience:
    Glass carafes and earthenware jugs are both made by means of fire.
    But if glass carafes break they are done over,
        for they came into being through a breath.
    If earthenware jugs break, however, they are destroyed,
        for they came into being without breath.
This is clearly not an authentic Jesus’ saying, he could not be familiar with blown glass. At his time blown glass was the most recent technological advancement and luxury items reserved for very few aristocrats. But within a few generations, in the second, third century such glass items became more common and the author of the Gospel of Philip could use this image to modernize old biblical metaphor.
    In Jeremiah (chapter 18) we hear about God as a master potter shaping humans; apostle Paul (2Cor 4:7) describes himself as a clay pot shaped by God to carry and deliver a treasure of good news to nations. Here we have a similar image updated with the new technology of blowing glass.
    This saying, in its final version, was quite likely aimed against Paul and was a part of heated arguments among early Christians going along the line “we are those glass jugs while you are just those clay pots!”
      Yet I am convinced that we can still take this captivating image seriously and in a positive manner. We can seek in this enigmatic saying new insights into the beauty, diversity and perpetuity of life. Pentecost Sunday is indeed a celebration of the creative and creating power in the breath of God. Come this Pentecost Sunday to rejoice in being born of divine breath.

 

Glassblowing God

Do you remember your first, or some other powerful childhood wonder? I was born and grew up in the glass-making part of the Czech Republic. My maternal grandfather worked in a glass factory making hardwood molds for glassmakers. I remember watching master craftsmen draw red-glowing blobs of molten glass from infernal ovens and blow them into the most sublime shapes. People call it hand-made glass, but from my youngest age I have known that the finest glass is in fact breath-made.
    It reminds me of a beautiful saying from the Gospel of Philip: “Glass carafe and earthenware jug are both made by means of fire. But if glass carafes break they are done over, for they came into being through a breath. If earthenware jugs break, however, they are destroyed, for they came into being without breath.” I know it is very unlikely to be Jesus’ own saying as blown glass was just appearing at this time and familiarity with glass belonged to a different social class. I also know that this saying from the Gospel of Philip is loaded with self-centered and self promoting sentiments. It was to illustrate the superiority of a glass blowing Christian(Gnostic) God over the Jewish God of the Hebrew Bible who was churning up just pottery... (Jeremiah 18)
    But this lovely metaphor does not need to be an antagonistic replacement, it can also be a genius update of the potter’s parable. The spiritual egotism of this gnostic saying can be eliminated as soon as we recognize The Master Glass-Maker at work not only in the elite group of the elect few, but in the forming and reshaping of the wide open world. After all, don’t volcanoes, with their infrared radiance and subsonic deep rumbling, look like some gigantic ovens? Doesn’t flowing lava look, move and behave much like molten glass? And just like a grain of gold melted in glass makes it ruby-red, or cobalt makes it unmistakably blue, or uranium teal green, so do different gasses, minerals and circumstances change colours and shapes of lava rocks. I guess my fascination with volcanos must have grown from my early childhood wonder.
    Different people have different early encounters with wonder. But the wonder itself is the same. And if we allow this wide-eyed child-like wonder enchantment to stay with us to adulthood, it has spectacular powers to keep our minds nimble, to inspire us, to ground us, and to keep us in harmony inside and outside. Come this Sunday to celebrate this mysterious power of our early wonders.

Glassblowing in Corning, NY and lava flowing near Kalapana, HI

Thomas and Margarita

Any time we read about Doubting Thomas, we celebrate the diversity of our faith which reaches as far as we can see - certainly as far as the oldest Christian writings. 

     The Bible itself represents some of that diversity, as it includes four different gospels together with the writings of the apostle Paul and his disciples, as well as writings associated with the name of John and some other apostles. But the diversity of the early church was even broader; many alternative streams of Christianity were never represented in the official Bible. 

     One such distinct alternative stream of the early Christianity was associated with the name of the apostle Thomas. It was possible, some biblical scholars hypothesized, that the story of Doubting Thomas was actually a narrative theological explanation and polemic against this alternative early Christian tradition. This story acknowledged and yet it undermined the Thomasine tradition by maligning its legendary spiritual founder. 

     But the religious writings of this early group survived (sometimes almost miraculously) and today we can read the Gospel of Thomas, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, the Acts of Thomas, the Apocalypse of Thomas and the Book of Thomas the Contender. The oldest writing of these, the Gospel of Thomas, is as old as other biblical writings.

    These Thomas writings are different from what would become the orthodox tradition. But that is their real value. They show us the original broadness and diversity among early Christians. 

     In the Gospel of Matthew (13:45f) we hear a parable in which the Kingdom of Heaven (God) is compared to a precious pearl. The Gospel of Thomas (logion 76) contains a seemingly identical parable, but the meaning of the pearl has slightly shifted - it is said to be an image of the Kingdom, but becomes ever more an image for the human soul. And in the Acts of Thomas the author quotes the ancient Hymn of the Pearl - a fully developed allegory of the pearl as a human soul which is to be liberated and rescued from the ugly material world.

    It is most likely that the pearl as an image of the soul is the oldest form of this metaphor. But the early orthodox Christians did not like the dualistic theology which it implied (ugly material world, beautiful spiritual world) and even less did they like the concept of salvation as a deserved escape from the material world. 

     Orthodox Christians suppressed the Thomasine version of the parable. But times are changing as is also our understanding of the world. Almost two thousand years later, and with our modern biology (conchology - study of shelled molluscs) we can perhaps re-coin this ancient allegory. Now we know that pearls do not grow on their own. Molluscs grow pearls in self defense. Pearls grow around irritating grains of sand, some other particles and foreign objects or parasites.

    Beautiful pearls, just like beautiful souls often grow in response to adversity or pain. One can spend an entire lifetime as happy as a clam (as the saying goes) and remain just a slimy blob of a mollusc, or encounter adversity and start forming character like a beautiful precious pearl. This image is in harmony with the Christian understanding of sacrificial (understand - meaningful) suffering. I also find this allegory deeply meaningful to true life and my personal experience. The nicest souls I have met all overcame some major adversities.

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A Gothic painting of the apostle Thomas by  Master Theodoric of Prague overlaid with the first page of the Coptic Gospel of Thomas (NH II.2).

And for those who are still looking for the Margarita of our title - margarita is the Latin name for a pearl. It is a lone word from Greek language - ο μαργαριτης (HO MARGARITES) and most likely further adopted from ancient Sanskrit's majari. This brings us full circle back to India to the original home of the narrator of The Hymn of the Pearl. And the legendary mission field of the apostle Thomas. 

Incarnation in Ultra-Deep Field

In September, 2003 astronomers made a courageous decision.
They aimed the current most powerful telescope at what was believed to be absolutely nothing. It was a minuscule piece of sky of a size of a poppy seed held at full arm’s length. This small square was just south of the constellation Orion and in this miniscule field were no known stars or other astronomical objects, only empty nothingness. So they aimed the telescope, opened the shutter and waited. They waited through January, 2004 collecting individual photons. When they processed the image they received this picture - it is called the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field (HUDF). In it are a few small stars distinguishable by their diffraction spikes, and then ten thousand galaxies! Some of these galaxies are currently the oldest and most distant known objects in the universe, more than 13 billions years old. In addition to those few individual stars every single bright puff or dot is a unique galaxy, each composed from millions to billions of stars. What was originally considered to be an empty piece of the sky the size of a poppy seed actually contains in those galaxies about ten trillion stars. Now extrapolate this finding all around the sky in all directions.
    It is virtually impossible not to be in awe of this enormous and beautiful spectacle of deep space. The Universe is an unimaginably and humblingly LARGE place. We live in one minuscule, tiny littlest corner on even a smaller speck of dust. Now what does it mean for us and for our religion? Suddenly we realize that old religious and dogmatic answers are not satisfactory any longer. We need to search anew for an answer to the ancient incarnation question Cur Deus Homo? - Why God (became) human. We are forced to re-ask the question, to re-formulate it, Why should God become human? Why should God become human, here and now (and two thousand years is “a now” in scales of billions of light-years). Perhaps we need to abandon logic, even theo-logic, and venture beyond mytho-logic into the realms of mytho-poetry. Come this Sunday to seek insight into the simple, almost childish, yet still inspired mytho-poetry of the Gospel of James.

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It was the scholastic theologian Anselm of Canterbury who asked Cur Deus Homo - Why God (became) human. And he even though he found the answer in his deeply feudal and troublesome soteriology (the satisfaction view of atonement). But his asking and his answering were utterly anthropocentric (like so much of theology throughout history anyway). Anselm asked and answered as if there was nothing else but the Earth, and as if God was some kind of a medieval brutal feudal lord.
As we look into the true depth of space and time the mystery or incarnation looms exponentially larger and requires us to ask different and more uncertain questions Cur Deus Homo - Why (should) God (become) human?

Jesus - the pesky child prodigy!

(Renewal - Newsletter article) 
When this boy Jesus, was five years old, and there came a storm, so he was playing at the wade of a brook collecting the streams of water into small ponds. And then he made that the water was instantly pristine. And understand that he did this with a single word!
He also made himself soft clay out of mud and shaped it into twelve sparrows. And it was on the Sabbath day, when he did this. And many other boys were there who were playing with him. But then a Jew saw what Jesus was doing on the Sabbath day, as he was playing. So he immediately ran off and tells Joseph, his father, “See here, that your boy is at the wade and has taken mud and fashioned twelve birds with it, and so has violated the Sabbath.”
    So Joseph went there, and as soon as he spotted him he shouted, “Why are you doing this what’s not permitted on the Sabbath?”
    But Jesus simply clapped his hands and shouted to the sparrows, “Be off!” And those sparrows really took off and flew away chirping.
    And those Jews seeing it they were amazed, they ran and reported to their elders, what they had seen what Jesus did.  

(Text collated from several ancient and modern translations and attempts to capture rather peculiar and folksy Greek original.)

          This legendary story about little Jesus is obviously not from the Bible! It is a famous quotation from The Infancy Gospel of Thomas. This non-biblical gospel is rife with primitive anti-judaism and wild interest in sensational miracles. Throughout it Jesus is portrayed as a “wonder-child” a miraculous prodigy with a petulant and subversive streak. These are all signs of late composition and the influences of the popular piety of the late Hellenistic centuries. Infancy stories hardly tell us anything substantial about the historical Jesus and his childhood. On the other hand, they are loaded with important theological themes and they tackle them in their own particular, legendary, fashion.     
          Their most formative feature is an awe of incarnation, utter amazement at the fact that God became human. How could it be? How would it work? What would it look like? In the gospel of Luke we have an account of a 12-year old divine child in the Temple. Infancy gospels take it even further back. How would this divine child look and behave at his school age, and even before? Their answer is highly entertaining and full of self-serving miracles. But their true answer is hidden in plain sight of their legendary narratives; the fact of incarnation, the theme of Advent and Christmas, that God became human, is beyond means of our intellect, beyond the limited powers of our imagination. The story which we celebrate on Christmas has always been and remains an utter approximation and true miracle of divine love. 
          And while those early Christians wondered at a divine child, they unknowingly started something very new. For the first time in human history a little child became a main character in a work of literature (Perhaps with the only exemption of the opening section of Xenophon's Cyropaedia). In these infancy gospels the childhood was lifted up from oblivion. Childhood, its playfulness, its mischievousness, its struggles, its creativity, its bursts of energy were given a central stage. Our culture is what it is, our education and our respect and concern and care for children are taken for granted, because people realized that divine incarnation (God becoming human) included 5-year-old Jesus!
          Particularly in our highly commercialized times the legendary little Jesus of our story can teach us even something more. Children as well as grownups do not need expensive gadgets and toys to trigger their playfulness. Making ponds on a brook, forming birds from clay. Those are almost proverbial simple joys of childhood which verge on true miracles of sheer imagination and unbounded playfulness. These legends invite us to the simple yet blessed joys of Advent and Christmas time.
This Advent and Christmas we will be following different non-canonical infancy gospel, the one ascribed to James. It is perhaps a little less entertaining than Infancy gospel of Thomas, but no less Mysterious, Miraculous, Mythical and and certainly no less Meaningful.

Medieval Faith Comics

On the bulletin cover this Sunday we will have this beautiful renaissance painting. But besides being such a gorgeous piece of art it simultaneously provided religious education for illiterate medieval people in a form we could easily describe as Faith Comics (a story and a dialogue in a picture). Only instead of modern text-bubbles we have here inscribed scrolls (also called banderoles or phylacteries). 

The angels on the roof are setting the scene. They sing Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to people, good will!
Then we come to two female figures on the right side - they are two midwives. The kneeling midwife was named as Azel (or more commonly known as Zebel) and she says in utter  amazement, A virgin bore a son!
The standing midwife was named Salome and in the picture she says, I will not believe unless I probe. And as a consequence of her disbelief, Salome’s hand withered and she suffered a terrible fiery pain in it. She publicly repented and was advised by the white angel, Touch the boy and be healed!
 

Of course you cannot find this story of two midwives at the nativity scene in any of the gospels from the New Testament. The oldest version of this story is preserved in the noncanonical Gospel of James. This ancient Gospel, as old as some parts of the Bible, is miraculous, mysterious, and mythical in the most exaggerated manner. And exactly as such it can help us fully understand and appreciate the true nature, origins and meaning of the Biblical Christmas stories. These old Biblical as well as extrabiblical stories bring up important spiritual, theological and philosophical themes in the form of thrilling and entertaining, almost slapstick narratives.
 

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And by the way, the hem of Mary’s cloak is also inscribed with a Latin text: SALVE REGIN[A MATER MISERICOR]DIE V[I]TA DVLCEDO ET SPES NOSTRA SALVE AD TE CL[AMAMV]S EXVLES FILII EVE AD TE SVSPIRAMUS GEMENTES ET FLENTES IN HAC LACR[IMARVM VALLE]. It is a famous Mariological hymn and prayer: Hail, (holy) Queen, Mother of Mercy, Hail Sweetness, Life, and our Hope! To thee we cry, banished children of Eve, to thee we sigh, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.
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And for those who are interested in the legendary story of two midwives, here it is from the Protoevangelium of James. This link leads to the Greek text and below are chapters 19+20 in a dynamic equivalent translation. The first person of this narrative is Joseph:

    And at that time a woman was coming down from the mountains and she says, "Man, where are you going?" And I said, "I am seeking a Hebrew midwife." And she said, "Are you from Israel?" And I said, "Yes." Then, she said, "In that cave, who is giving birth?" And I said, "My fiancé." "So she is not your wife?" She asked. And I said, "She is Mary, she was raised in the temple and given to me by lot to be my wife. But she is not my wife, and the child she expects she got from the Holy Spirit." And she is like, “Sure!” And Joseph said, "Come and check it up yourself."
    So the midwife went with him. And they stood near the cave and a dark cloud of bright light hovered over the cave. And the midwife said, "My soul glorifies this day. With my own eyes I have seen today something unbelievable: Salvation was born to Israel." And immediately, the cloud lifted up from the cave and it was filled with so bright a light that their eyes could not bear it. But after a moment, as that light subsided they could make out an infant and walking all on his own, and he took the breast of his mother, Mary. And the midwife exclaimed, "This is my great day, for I have seen what no one has seen before!"
    And the midwife came out from the cave and met Salome and said to her, "Salome, let me tell you about this new miracle. A virgin gave birth, as incredible as it sounds!" And Salome said, "As the Lord my God lives, unless I use my finger and probe it, I will not believe that a virgin has given birth."
    And the midwife went in and said, "Mary, now lie down, for you are the source of not a small controversy." Then Salome inserted her finger in her lap. And exclaimed in panic, "Woe to me, Why did I commit such a wrong? Why didn’t I believe? I tested the living God. And now my hand is consumed by a flame and is being torn away from my body." And she dropped to her knees before the Lord, crying, "God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, do not made me into an warning example to the children of Israel, but let me serve again the poor. For you know, Lord, that I have served in your name and received my wage only from you."
    And suddenly, an angel of the Lord appeared in front of her, saying, "Salome, the Lord of all has heard your prayer. Raise your hand, touch the child, lift him up and he will be your salvation and joy." And Salome went to the child and lifted him up, saying, "I worship him because he has been born a great king of Israel." And at that very moment Salome was healed and left the cave guiltless. But a voice came saying, "Salome, Salome, do not speak about miracles you have witnessed until the child comes to Jerusalem."

Was Jesus censored?

Did the biblical evangelist or early followers censor Jesus or misrepresent him? It certainly might look like it, when you consider the great number of gospels and their fragments which never made it into the Bible. Some of them are as old as the Biblical writings and many of them containing almost certainly authentic stories about Jesus or his pronouncements and his teaching.
    For instance one of the oldest surviving Biblical manuscripts which is now kept (and treasured) in the Cambridge University Library (Codex Bezae) mentions a story unrecorded by any other biblical version or manuscript: Jesus noticed someone who was working on the Sabbath day, and he said to him: Man! If you know what you are doing, you are blessed. But if you don’t know, you are damned and a transgressor of the Law. In our Bibles this story belongs between Luke 6:4 and 6:5. There are a great number of similar and even more enigmatic and surprising sayings which never made it into the official Bible and we will be talking about them this Sunday.
    So, was Jesus censored or misrepresented by his early followers and evangelists? This question itself is an example of anachronistic misunderstanding. Such a notion would come only later with the appetite for control from the power-obsessed Church, an attitude which has been perfected by the bible thumping American fundamentalists. 
    Evangelists were writing what they thought important for spiritual orientation, but it never crossed their minds that it was the ultimate spiritual authoritative text. In the evangelist John’s own words (The original closing colophon: Of course, I didn’t record in this book all remarkable things which Jesus did. But what I have recorded I recorded so that you may be convinced that Jesus is the Chosen One/Messiah, the Son of God, and if you put your trust in him, you will have fulness of life. John 20:30ff) he did not attempt to give an exhaustive account of Jesus’ life and teaching. Gospels were meant to be invitations, open doors to Christian faith and Christian life. Like so many important aspects of life, Christian faith does not have any ultimate textbook or manual; it cannot be learned and fully understood from any books. Thankfully faith is to be lived in a community and all (including YOU) are invited and welcomed into this shared quest for the fullness of life.

Facsimile from the Codex Bezae of the insertion of the Sabbath Work Agraphon, first in Greek and below in Latin. Context places this insertion clearly after Luke 6:4 and not after 6:5 as many sources indicate. 

Mytho-Logic of Empty Tomb

This is my opening thesis which I would like to defend, illustrate and expand in this lecture.

The Mosaic in the St. Mark Basilica in Venice is a clear illustration of that powerful  mytho-poetic imagery of the story of the empty tomb. The resurrected Christ (still with crucifixion wounds!) tramples on the personified Hades (who is bound), the gate of netherworld is broken, its lock and keys useless. Jesus is pulling/resurrecting  Adam (and Eve) surrounded by other OT figures such as David and Solomon (two figures with crowns at the right side).

This is how the ancient tomb looked. Newer development allowed for a more efficient use of space. 
Tombs were expensive to make and were often shared by large families of clans. Ossuaries were boxes for bones after the body decomposed.

This is the historically oldest known preserved story (and first ever mention!) about the empty tomb of Jesus as translated by NRSV. It dates to the early 8th decade of the Common Era.

The diagonal red line in this slide represent the time axis of the early Common Era. Upper left side contains some events from the history of the texts which later became part of the NT canon. Lower right side represent some events important for early church and their relation to the passage of time.

After the Easter Event, the first disciples struggled to find words to describe or even think about their experience. For them it was a completely new experience without the precedence and without adequate vocabulary. The first attempt to express their experience consisted in simple acclamations such as “Jesus is Lord” KURIOS IESUS! And the like. Later, the disciples developed simple statements or formulas such as “Son of God Formula” stating that the crucified Jesus was the Son of God. “Self Giving Formula” Jesus died for us, and the “Pistis formula” which is quoted on this slide.
     The Easter Event had several parallel and simultaneous ways in which it was being described as:
1) Inspiration (the disciples felt a gift of spirit and they lost fear) the Pentecost tradition was originally closely associated with the Easter event.
2) Exaltation (The Crucified was lifted up to the divine presence, became Son of God etc.) Ascension was also originally closely associated with the Easter event.
3) Resurrection (The presence of the crucified was felt and experienced - the inter-testamental Jewish political justice concept of resurrection was used to explain this aspect)
4) Only quite late in the process it was it also described in an archetypal/mythical way (this would be the story of an Empty Tomb)

The traditional Orthodox depiction of the Ressurection (H ANASTASIS). Venetian mosaic actually took inspiration from the broadly established orthodox mode of depicting the resurrection.

These three slides represent outlines of the resurrection story as narrated in biblical and extrabiblical gospels. We can observe uncertainty about the number and identity of women. Gradual addition of male characters to compensate for legal untrustworthiness of women in patriarchal society. Development in the presence and moving of the stone. Changes in numbers and roles of angelic figures, introduction of the guards and attempt to explain their silence. Similarly we can observe slowly creeping in antijudaism of the early church which is absent from the earliest accounts.

The text critical (more precisely tradition criticism) approach is further supported by the historical context and archeology of crucifixion as we discussed in the previous lecture. Minor inconsistencies in this explanation only strengthen it.
     As we stated in our opening thesis: The story of an opened and empty tomb is ahistorical, (unconcern about matters of history). On the other hand the historical-critical method can help us describe and interpret its emergence and gradual development.
     The story’s original function was kerygmatic (sharing the message). Its popularity grew from powerful symbolism and its veracity is that of mythical metaphors and deep spiritual archetypes.

Divine embroidery

Would you ever think about threading a sewing needle “with a camel? What a silly idea? What a strange image? Why even bother thinking about it?
    Well, because Jesus said: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God!” (Mark 10:25; Matthew 19:24; Luke 18:25) I count this pronouncement among few other “Ipsisisma verba Iesu” (The very words of Jesus). The Early church tradition would hardly created such an outlandish statement and assign it to Jesus. This saying originated with Jesus and became a proverbial expression of impossibility. And from the earliest times people were perplexed and challenged by this idea and were coming with different and diverse theories and solutions about how to explain and rationalize and normalize this statement (often with inferior motives to justify and exonerate the rich). But this statement is not rational; it is a marvelous poetic hyperbole. And similar to any other poetry it is loaded with deep meaning. It follows different, non-rational, poetic, intuitive logic. This Sunday we will be challenged and encouraged by this outlandish poetical message. 

    Now, a tangential thought. This hyperbolic saying is interesting for its other feature which is hardly ever noticed. It is about sewing. In traditional pre-industrial societies sewing was a domestic activity of women. For the world which was highly structured and divided by gender roles, this is truly surprising. Jesus paid curious and empathic attention to the world of women. For instance the Talmud does it also, but here, with Jesus, it is different! A female domestic world is lifted up or the Kingdom of God is lowered down to match each other. Our saying couples closely the Kingdom of God with sewing needles. And an other parable does it with housewife making bread, another time the Kingdom of God is being compared to sweeping and housecleaning, just imagine! This is not just a coincidence, this is an interesting repeating pattern.
    Jesus compares the great theme of the rule of God with household chores. Firstly it questions and undermines stiff gender roles and divisions in the society. Secondly it brings forward revolutionary new theology. It presents new ways of talking and thinking about God. It introduces a new and different kind of divinity, not with a sword but with a needle, not with a spear but a broom, not destroying and torching the disobedient, but kneading and baking bread for the hungry. Indeed, with God everything is possible, if only people paid attention!

Bronze sewing needle from Hellenistic period.

The Social justice theme of care for the less fortunate comes out clearly when we consider other, non-biblical, parallel of this story as quoted by Early Christian Theologian Origen (185-254 C.E.) from the Gospel of Nazoreans (Origen calls it the Gospel of the Hebrews)

It is written in a certain gospel called the Gospel of the Hebrews - if anyone will accept it, not as authoritative, but to shed light on the question at hand:
“The second rich man said to him, ‘Teacher, what good do I have to do to live?’
He said to him, ‘Sir, follow the Law and the Prophets.’
He answered, ‘I’ve done that.’
He said to him, ‘Then go sell everything you own and give it away to the poor and then come follow me.’
But the rich man didn’t want to hear this and began to scratch his head. And the Lord said to him, ‘How can you say that you follow the Law and the Prophets? In the Law it says: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ Now, look around: many of your brothers and sisters, sons and daughters of Abraham, are living in filth and dying of hunger. Your house is full of good things and not a thing of yours manages to get out to them.” Turning to his disciple Simon, who was sitting with him, he said, ‘Simon, son of Jonah, it is easier for a camel to squeeze through a needle’s eye than for a wealthy person to get into heaven’s domain.’

Tall Tales of the Early Church

Did you know that bedbugs can be kept at bay with prayer? To read how, refer to Early Christian Acts of John.
Do you want to read a vivid description of the afterlife and hear from Isaiah about Jesus’ visit to hell? Read what is now called The Pilate Cycle.
Have you heard about the apostles preaching sex-strikes all the way from Rome through Asia Minor to India? Read The Acts of Peter, The Acts of Paul and Thecla, and The Acts of Thomas.

The early church produced a true flood of these and similar tall tales. They are superstitious, we can laugh at their naivete. But they are also captivating and greatly amusing, and they represent one of the extremes of a long continuous spectrum of religious (biblical) storytelling and thus they help us better understand the ancient mentality. Take for instance the early church’s  preoccupation with virginity, chastity and celibacy. It was in fact an important element of true sexual revolution. In the first few centuries it was not a tool to suppress people; it was an instrument of liberation. Today we would call it a sex-strike, and it was originally a very effective way to claim individual dignity and personal intimate rights under the abusive circumstances of an oppressive patriarchal system.

This Sunday we will open another such book - The Infancy Gospel of Jesus, and will hear about school-age Jesus and what he did when he was supposed to go to school. These stories clearly are tall tales, but besides being odd and somehow farcical, these stories had deep meaning. Not the stories themselves, but their meaning and their ethos could be traced all the way back to Jesus, and thus these stories profoundly changed the way we see children and childhood.

Traditional Mytho-Poetical Christmas.

       What could the Traditional Children’s Pageant, Händel’s Messiah, and the Service of Lessons and Carols have in common?

       They come to us from different time periods, they certainly represent different refinement in style and form, and they reflect different past theologies. Yet, regardless of their differences, in all of them, magi intermingle with shepherds, angelic revelations coincide with prophetic dreams, gospels and prophets are combined in surprising ways, and any and every Hebrew prophet is made (nolens volens - willing or not) to speak about the Christmas babe. In one sentence, they all represent and brightly radiate that same contagious enthusiastic naive faith.

       This same faith has been with us for quite a while, at least from the end of the second century - "The Protoevangelium of James" would be a marvelous and highly entertaining example. In "The Gospel of James" (as it is also known) the miraculous births of John and Jesus are predated by the similarly special birth of Mary. And this is how the very moment of Jesus’ birth is described by James:  

       Joseph and the midwife stopped at the entrance to the cave, and behold, a bright cloud overshadowed the cave and the midwife said, ‘My soul is lifted high today, with my own eyes I have seen wonderful things; for salvation is born to Israel.’ And immediately the cloud lifted up from the cave and the great light appeared, so bright, that we could not see anything. A short moment later that light somehow dimmed, and we could see the baby, and he went and took the breast of his mother Mary. And the midwife exclaimed again, ‘This is my great day, because I have seen this miracle, never seen before!’ (Protoevangelium of James, chapter XIX, paragraph 2).

       All the rest of “The Protoevangelium of James” as well as the similar “Infancy Gospel of Thomas” are highly entertaining, captivating and evocative, just like our Traditional Pageants, Händel’s Messiahs, and Services of Lessons and Carols.

       Come to enjoy them with us this Christmas Season. Take them seriously but not literally. Be inspired, affected with this contagious, naive, mytho-poetical faith of Christmas. It possesses the power to transform lives! 

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A friend commented that Händel did not combine shepherds and magi. That is correct, but his libretto sets almost side by side "Emanuel" from Matthew and "Glory to God" from Luke in a very similar manner. And his treatment of Hebrew prophets is truly stellar example of mytho-poetic approach (Many OT authors would be truly amazed which of their words became understood as messianic prophecies).

Friday Message from Rutgers Church 2011-09-09

     This Sunday (2011-09-11) we will worship in the shadow of the tenth anniversary of a great national tragedy. This original tragedy has been subsequently dwarfed by even grater and still ongoing suffering which our political and military leaders chose to inflict on countless and diverse groups of people around the world.
     Our Worship Committee, with our new interim music team, prepared a deeply meaningful service of worship and reflection with the creative and beautiful use of music.
     As a basis for my meditation this Sunday I selected an unusual reading - a little known (unfortunately) agraphon from Fatehpur Sikri. “Agraphon” is a name for a word (a saying) of Jesus not recorded in the four biblical gospels. I chose this particular saying because this agraphon itself, its form, its existence, its multi-religious and multi-cultural background, powerfully embodies the hope for our world. Its message has the power to deepen our spiritual lives and understanding, uplifting what is truly and ultimately important.

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And if you have read this far, here is some theological teasing provoked by my most recent readings (John Caputo: The Weakness of God) 
     Almost all human religious thinking and religious expectations presume and sometime postulate God as omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent. So how come, how is it possible, that the world is so full of unjust suffering and tragedies?
     Now what if this theodicy quandary is all wrong? What if these divine attributes are just delusions of our natural human religiosity, even worse, idolatry, the production of idols? What if God is personal but not a person at all? What if biblical testimony has been true all along? I mean that famous self-revelation EHYE ASHER EHYE - "I am who I am." What if Martin Buber had good inkling by presuming God to be embodied in a grammatical category of the essential pronoun? What if we need to take it even further?
What if God is not “embodied in a noun or pronoun” but is “an un-embodied active verb”? What if the best way of speaking and thinking about God is not in characteristics and descriptive adjectives, but in aspects, tenses and adverbs? What if Jesus spoke in parables (stories) to capture exactly this active, dynamic, verbal, happening, becoming and encountering the nature of God?
     What if God is not embodied in top-down power structures of rulers, priests, armies, and institutions? What if God is present and active in a much more elemental and essential manner? By the very virtue of being a verb, the grammatical principle of change, what if God is undermining all the powers of the status quo in the most essential manner? What if God is the persistent presence of this unembodied, weak, yet persistent potential for encounter, change and love?
     What if God is a verb opposing fanaticism, militarism, nationalism and narrow-mindedness in any form? What if God is a verb of longing for peace and forgiveness? What if God is a verb of companionship and sympathy of the downtrodden and suffering? What if God is an event of journeying with the lonely and the abandoned? What if God is a verb of sublime pro-existence (who exists for others)? How is this divine verb changing the verbs of our world and of our own living?