Jesus on the biblical catwalk

When I was in school, I got into trouble from time to time. Sometimes it was truly bizarre. One summer morning in those lazy last days of the school year I was stopped while walking from one class to another and ushered directly to the headmaster’s office. I could not figure it out. I was completely oblivious of anything I did or did not do in the recent past, and I was not even faking it! I received yet another reprimand and spent the rest of the day in the school suspension. It turned out that I committed a serious ideological offense by wearing a T-shirt. On it was an artistic representation of a Canadian Mapleleaf! Our good family friend lived in Calgary and sent us this innocent gift. But for the petty communist apparatchicks and ideology-minders, those Canadians were clearly like cousins of a devil and part of imperialistic archenemy camp.
    Then I heard from Prof. Charles Jones (In one of the lectures from The Teaching Company) about how in his college years in the late 1970's (roughly at the same time) he and his friends also got into fashion trouble. They wanted to advertise their school radio station with a T-shirt. On it was a station frequency, beneath the head of Karl Marx wearing headphones (!) and the slogan “the opium of the people”. The vigilant college administration banned it straightaway. Well..., no antireligious Marxist hints in good old Kentucky! Not even from a future professor of religion and culture.
    What we wear and how we wear it can indicate conformity, or register a protest; dress can display national, religious, cultural, political, or generational affiliation. Our dress is an important part of the semiotic codes - our clothes contain and are often used to send important contextual messages. This Sunday’s lectionary reading will place Jesus on the biblical fashion catwalk. One, often overlooked, verse (Mark 6:56) will offer us a rare opportunity to “read”, analyze and interpret biblical fashion, its historical contextuality, its deep religious meanings, and its import for our physical and spiritual well being and healing.

Let us rescue the princess

       A naive king, a night-dark queen and one playful princess; 
       a banquet hall with a royal ball in a castle with a dungeon; 
       a royal wedding, a wrongful beheading, divorces and courtiers; 
       noblemen and haunting ghouls and border wars of honor. 
This is an outline of the Gospel lectionary reading for this Sunday (Mark 6:14-29). It has many trappings of a classic European fairytale.
       If you come to worship this Sunday, I would like to invite you to step inside this story and help transform it from within. 
       We will have the privilege of rescuing a royal princess from vicious and false accusations of wanton murder. 
       In our quest we will cross the chasm of time and traverse a bubbling swamp of literalism. 
       We will poke some holes in the dark armor of immoral morality of preachers and confront their pet beasts of Misogyny and Prejudice with their seductive grins, corrosive spittle and mighty bites. 
       I am convinced that if we succeed in our quest, we will vindicate the princess, transform the story, change our self-understanding and gain new insight and joyful liberty.


A few supportive theses for this new interpretation of Mark 6:14-29
1) John the Baptist was not executed because of the whim and vindictiveness of Herodias.
Antipas married Herodias and divorced Phasaelis(Shaudat?), daughter of king Aretas IV of Nabatea. Aretas was offended, tension grew, and hostilities eventually led to a regular war. The situation was even more complicated because Antipas was a client prince of Rome while Aretas started as a vassal king but grew ever more independent of Rome. This was an unpleasant conflict along the edge of the Roman domain. In such a situation John’s criticism of Antipas marriage was certainly viewed as subversive and undermining the morale of the army in the run up to the war. John was executed, later Antipas lost the war (Josephus Flavius also reported that people also made this connection between John's execution and lost war - Ant.18.5.2.§116ff) and eventually Antipas lost the support of Rome and was sent to exile in Gaul. Herodias (because of her Hasmonean descent) was given permission to stay in Galilee, but she chose to accompany Antipas to exile. (She did love him!)


2) Biblical families (royal as well as ordinary) cannot be used to model modern style families.

 
This is an elemental genealogy chart of the broader Herodian family as printed in The Anchor Bible Dictionary III.179. It clearly shows the complex nature of the endogamous family. Peasant families from Judea or Galilee would look very similar, perhaps even more intertwined and complex, but there is virtually no reliable data to create such a chart. The Herodian family was unique because we have data, not because of its form. More on the endogamous model of families and societal impact is presented here: Sociology of family values.

3) In traditional religious/folk tales, misogyny is quite a common and popular form of prejudice.
The story of Herodias and Salome casts the main female characters according to the standard model of manipulative seductress (power-possessed women abusing their sexual attraction, in this case divided into two personae). Another biblical example would be Jezebel and Ahab. This traditional misogyny was considered so potent that it was used to denigrate the associated male characters. Ergo: Antipas and Ahab are presented as weak and controlled by vicious women. (But that is exactly the prejudiced misogynistic scheme!)

4) Implicit as well as explicit religious criticism of immorality of the rich is generally shallow and inconsequential.
From a systemic perspective lasciviousness, absence of good taste, arrogance and excesses of the powerful are mere symptoms and not root causes of societal discord and disconnect. Criticism of blatant symptoms is popular but is not going to change the rules of the game. The implicit criticism of the sexual immorality of the Herod Antipas family is missing true immorality: Quisling (slavish) attitude towards foreign occupation, cutthroat exploitation of the poor and powerless and forced modernization of society without appropriate social nets  (Hellenistic urbanization and latifundialisation/land-grab of the country.)

Enlightenment Music Therapy

What do you do, when you are exposed to toxic levels of political and religious prejudice, intolerance, narrow-mindedness, lies and hatred? I intuitively and subconsciously seek medicine.
    Most of the last week I spent with our clerk of session in Pittsburgh at the General Assembly of our denomination. We were there, together with many others, to advocate for our denomination’s unequivocal support for the same gender marriages. We tried our best and only time will tell... But at the same time I felt almost suffocated by the poisonous gasses of fundamentalistic ignorance, hateful obscurantism and pious hypocrisy of would-be friends. If this is a mainline denomination, one of the more progressive in our nation, what does it say about the rest of our society???
    I came home from Pittsburgh and I listened to full two and half hours of Die Zauberflöte. After a week of evangelical darkness I needed an antidote of enlightenment. The Magic Flute can provide just that. On the surface it might look like a simple fairytale, but under the surface there are deeper meanings. For me it is a complex parable of Theressian and Josephine reforms of the Austrian enlightenment.
    These enlightenment reforms had some serious pitfalls, yet the list of their achievements as well as their goals are nonetheless impressive for the 18th and early 19th centuries: 1) the social reforms of liberation of serfs and the taxation of nobility and the rich; 2) the institution of civil rights, the judicial and prison reform and abolition of torture as well as capital punishment; 3) the education reform with compulsory public schools; 4) the medical reforms with the beginning of public healthcare and hospitals; 5) religious reforms of tolerance, pluralism and curtailing the most conservative and totalitarian segments of the religious spectrum...
    The problem is, that although American society was born under the same star of enlightenment and although many founding fathers were strongly influenced by this movement, American society has never truly embraced and internalized this important stage of civilization. As a result, our society is perhaps technologically advanced, but at its core it remains essentially pre-enlightenment or seriously divided on many or all of these matters.
    I think that it is not a mere coincidence that one of the most progressive movements in our denomination is called “More Light Presbyterians.” I know that they are predominantly a GLBT advocacy group, but the symbolism and meaning are significant and deeper. After the week at our General Assembly I know that our denomination as well as our whole society deeply needs liberation from the darkness of religious prejudice and narrowmindedness and the presence and witness of progressive, loving, caring and enlightened communities of faith like our Rutgers Church. I hope you will join us this Sunday in our worthy endeavor of being more light alternatives of life and faith in this world.

Biblical Poetry of Same-Gender Loving Relationships

The Hebrew Bible contains some exquisitely beautiful poetry in celebration of same-gender loving relationships. It has been known to theologians and biblical scholars for centuries but the minds of people were blinded by all our modern rancor about “homosexuality.” The biblical authors were more nuanced than is often recognized. They could condemn abusive behaviour and at the same time celebrate deep loving and devoted relationships in the most beautiful ways. Take for instance the famous Davidic dirge over Jonathan killed in battle.
    I grieve for you, 
    My brother Jonathan,
    You were most dear to me.
    Your love was wonderful to me
    More than the love of women. (2Sam 1:26)
This is a JPS Tanakh translation, the nicest English translation of this verse I could find. But there could hardly be a translation which would do justice to the beauty and gentleness of the original Hebrew poetry. It is a marvelous expression of the grief and deep love of a gay man. How could it be? Was David not a well-known biblical womanizer? Do not forget that the biblical David is a literary figure! As such, the biblical David is composed of many and divergent, often contradictory, strands of oral tradition. The Bible is like a broad mosaic which depicts human experiences in all their complex diversity. This particular part of the biblical mosaic is a beautiful celebration of deep and committed same-gender relationships.
    David’s poem is not the only example of same-gender biblical poetry. There is also a well-known description of the relationship of Naomi and Ruth (1:16+17). And this Sunday I would like to take us to the book of Ecclesiastes (4:9-12) for yet another special poetic celebration of the same-gender committed relationships.

Sociology of "Family Values"

Rutgers Church sent an overture to 220th General Assembly requesting some changes in the Book of Order which would unequivocally allow Presbyterian Churches to celebrate same gender weddings and thus fully embrace and support same gender families. This is a second short article from the perspective of biblical hermeneutics(interpretation of ancient religious texts). Earlier articles with the similar themes are  Biblical argument for same gender marriage,  Biblical hermeneutics and homosexuality, Family in the Bible and Family now and Reformers and Family Laws.

French anthropologist Emmanuel Todd developed an interesting sociological theory based on family structures. He found persuasive correlations between different forms of families and the social and political shapes of societies. For instance, he claims that there is a clear correlation between the number of endogamous marriages (marriages between close cousins) and a conservative totalitarian form of a tribal society ungovernable by modern means.
Marriages between first cousins in any given society in the late 20th century:
Sudan 57%; Pakistan 50%; Mauritania 40%; Jordan 36%; Saudi Arabia 36%; Yemen 31%; Egypt 25%; Iran 25%; Turkey 15%; West  below 5%.

Also, predominant family models correspond to modes and strategies in which societies as a whole deal with periods of crisis or transition. Societies with a long tradition of authoritarian family models have a tendency to find authoritarian solutions to periods of instability. Societies with egalitarian models of family (for instance egalitarian inheritance) tend to find more equitable solutions in times of crisis. These characteristics persist for a considerable period of time long after the original family models have weakened and almost disappeared.

Our American societal discourse has been shaped most recently by advocates of the so-called “traditional family values.” When these values are analyzed they present only marginally different forms of patriarchal, autocratic, and inequitable/meritocratic models. 
On the other hand, it has to be mentioned that although these advocates might be vociferous and well organized, thankfully they form only a minority. American families represent a wide kaleidoscope of different models based on the different cultural backgrounds of immigrants. This in itself creates a unique atmosphere of diversity and consequently tolerance (different models coexist side by side along one street and in NYC even on one floor of an apartment building). Our society in general does not allow abusive behavior even within families. Thus these “traditional family values” are in, perhaps prolonged, but inevitable retreat. The emergence and growing acceptance of nontraditional same gender families is just a logical continuation of the same unstoppable trend. 
 
The defenders of the “traditional family values” got one thing right - the shape of families does influence the future of our society. And for that very reason we oppose them and strive for a tolerant, benevolent and egalitarian society.

Biblical Asymmetric Warfare

Did you ever own a slingshot? In my childhood I had several small ones. But when hostilities with boys from the next street escalated as they did in La Guerre des boutons (War of Buttons) I secretly developed a weapon-grade slingshot in my father’s garage (one-month’s lunch money went into powerful rubber tubing). I proudly owned it for just two days. Before I could smash any windows or hurt anyone, our neighbor (Rat! I muttered to myself then.) spotted me and told my father. Regardless of my clear argument that it was purely and solely for self defense, my brand new slingshot got confiscated and was returned only when I went to college. Without my shiny slingshot I lost the leadership in our band, and my political career was cut short before it even started. Eventually I became a boyhood diplomat, a pacifist, and later a church minister.
    This Sunday we will hear how a sling (ancient predecessor of the slingshot) can lead even to a kinghood. Yes, on this Fathers’ Day we will talk about David and Goliath. But a sling in Bible times was not as homespun and boyhoodish as it might seem to us today. Even our most powerful slingshots could hardly match the reputation and use of ancient slings. Many do not know that during the Persian Empire a sling was a real weapon of war. For instance, Xenophon in his Anabasis (Book III part III) learned to respect Persian military slingers and their lead projectiles. Units armed with slings are depicted on Neoassyrian reliefs and remain a regular part of armies until medieval times. Ancient history and archeology help us to date more precisely our Biblical stories (For instance dating David’s saga to late Persian or Hellenistic period, 400 and 300 B.C.E.). Thus we can better understand the meaning of these stories and appreciate their message about strategy of asymmetric warfare, about bullying, about propaganda, and even about their long-forgotten wit and jokes.

And for those who read this far:
Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman (David and Solomon; In Search of the Bible's Sacret Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition) recognize Goliath’s armor as that of a Greek hoplite (originally Greek soldier in heavy armor). Based on this fact and some other textual circumstances they date Goliath with earliest presence of Greek mercenaries in the late VII. century B.C.E. John Van Seters (The Biblical Saga of King David) approaches this story from the literary perspective. He convincingly argues for David’s saga being written in the late Persian period (IV. century B.C.E.). Both positions are factually reconcilable. Finkelstein and Silberman set the earliest possible date for the presence of Greek hoplites, but their presence certainly became better pronounced and more dominant later, most especially during and towards the end of the Persian period. And because these stories usually reflect the past realities, we can even hypothesize that at the time of composition, the Persian Empire as well as the period of hoplites were already part of history - that would mean the early Hellenistic period. 

Ancient Greek military slinger

 

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.