Christ in the Early Christian Tradition: Christ Against the Jews

[Music] good morning my name is Dale Martin I'm professor of religious studies in the Department of Religious Studies downtown and chair of that department but my real claim to fame is that I've been good friends with Bart Ehrman for a long long long long time Bart I'm gonna introduce him today a little bit unless you've already heard you know that he's written a gazillion books and is very famous and goes around lecturing all over the places on TV in in Time magazine and CNN all yada yada yada yada so I'm not gonna rehearse his many great accomplishments in that sense but I thought maybe I could talk about him in some other ways a Bart was the Bowman and Gordon gray professor of Religious Studies at UNC Chapel Hill but he's now the James a gray distinguished professor at UNC Chapel Hill and I know that was a bump up and I hope we got more money out of it bargain with and he's been chair of the department there since 2000 but I've known him since 1982 when we were students together at Princeton Theological Seminary actually he was the teaching assistant in my first Greek class at Princeton seminary and so I can always blame him for teaching me Greek for whatever that means but I mainly remember us pretty early on in our friendship at Princeton having arguments about things like the authorship of the pastoral epistles and I would say they're not by Paul and Bart would argue that no they probably are by Paul and I would like to point out that I had the better side of that argument as I have on all of our arguments since then [Applause] see at that time Bart you might not know it from the lectures that he's been giving here but at that time Bart hadn't moved very far from his education at Wheaton College and before that at Moody Bible Institute which a lot of people don't know about so I'm what I was going to point that out that that's where he started his scholarly career in Chicago then we we usually did these arguments at the Kings Inn in Kingston New Jersey little town right outside Princeton over a very very cheap beer I think you could get like a pitcher of kind of watery beer for for something like a dollar or something like that it was like 25 cents a beer or something like that and we'd eat the the chili that the old man at the Kings Inn made which kind of ruined the rest of your weekend and tried to wash it down with cheap beer and then of course we did this just all the time and while I was writing my thesis I remember I would be alone in my dorm room at Princeton seminary trying desperately get my master's thesis finished because I wanted to apply to graduate schools and I wanted to come to Yale and I wanted to get in some decent credit schools and I knew I had to get that master's thesis finished and I was trying to take the GRE exams and I knew I was terrible on those kinds of exams so I was studying for those all the time trying to make it get my grades up for exams and Bart would be calling me all the time trying to get me to go out for beer and would complain all the time so my hope the fall of my senior year Princeton I remember as this haze where I was in my dorm room working all the time and he was complaining and drinking beer with anfor Meister at the Kings Inn you do remember that yeah now you know I'm not going to you know about all the books he's published he's Bart has really done an amazing thing of being able to put combined in-depth insightful new scholarship cutting-edge scholarship with a knack for making scholarship available to a wide audience that's why he's called upon so much to sort of make these tapes and to give lectures and that's why his books sell a ton he his Orthodox corruption of Scripture for example totally changed the way people thought about textual critics before that you just are going for the original text and once you get the original text whatever that is supposed to mean and all of us postmodernist love to deconstruct that category but once you get this original takes you kind of put your pink pencils and paper down and you've done it you get that published in the next edition of the Nestle hollande what Bart did with that book was said well we can use textual criticism to actually do the history of doctrine and the history of debates in early Christianity because when you see you can see how scribes changed the text of New Testament as part of the debate about Christology for example which is what some of the scholarships he's been showing through this time so that book really changed though the way of thinking about textual criticism and he's consequently taught generations now of new young textual critics at UNC Chapel Hill who has some of the best academic positions around the country and they are very adept at doing this combination of doing the textual critical work very carefully but it doesn't in their hands it doesn't come across just looking like math it actually then moves on into looking like social history in the history of doctrine he also has done very fundamental scholarly work in editing the new edition of the Apostolic fathers which is out in the Loeb classical library edition on top of that though he does these sorts of books that I use as textbooks and people use his texts all over the country his introduction to the New Testament which is probably in its you know 15th edition by now because every time he puts out a new edition see he gets more money for it you know it's called the New Testament a historical introduction to the early Christian writings I used as a textbook in my classes his book on Jesus called Jesus profit of a new millennium I use in my historical Jesus class and in this new book Lost Christianity's which you've already seen and talked about now is the da vinci code book coming out today he decided about you know last spring that he hadn't cranked out enough books lately so in the space of a few weeks he wrote a book responding to the DaVinci Code and I know you'll look for that where is it going to be today so super truth and fiction in The Da Vinci Code of course you didn't hear that anyway part and I I was at Duke for many many years while he was at UNC so we kept up our friendship over the years working very close quarters and I have to say he's come a long way but you know the rest and no I'm not jealous the thing that Bart has kept all of the years that I appreciate so much and what makes him such a great friend and a dialog partner is that he's constantly questioning he's constantly probing and he's constantly changing his mind and of course that's why I've been able to win all the arguments his lecture this morning is Christ in the early Christian tradition texts disputed and apocryphal Christ against the Jews well thank you Dale I think Dale's one of one of Dale's own many accomplishments the one that I'm most grateful for is he actually introduced me to my current wife Sarah Beckwith who is one of the people on the planet who can compete with both Harry and Dale for Smart's at the time Dale said he introduced us because he thought it would lead to an interesting weekend having no idea what lead to marriage so Dale's against that in principle well I've enjoyed very much being here with you with last couple of days in my two previous lectures I looked at a variety of ways that the Gospel of Luke could be read christological e DOS ethically and anti-de steadily adoption istic lee and aunt Ida opted optimistically my overarching theses have been first that texts do not compel their own interpretations but enable the interpretations that readers bring to them and second that nonetheless early Christians did try to constrain the meanings of the their text by three means by changing what the text actually said by joining it with other texts in a Canon of Scripture and by propounding alternative narratives that could provide hermeneutical lenses through which to read the text there's far more to an understanding of Jesus though than the traditional categories of Christology that is than the question of whether he was divine or human or somehow both in some ways this set of questions itself comes to us not from a text such as Luke itself but from outside the text by later interpreters who are interested in finding their own christological views already embedded in the text of Scripture Luke itself on the other hand has no passages that directly address these traditional christological questions presumably because they were not central to the author's purpose in writing his gospel other matters were far more pressing for him and the full study of Luke's Gospel would naturally want to uncover what those were and to see what what he had to say about them to do this adequately would require a set of about 50 lectures but unfortunately I have just one left and so I'll have to make do with what I have in this lecture I want to address an issue that does seem to be to have been important to the author of Luke himself and to have continued in its importance in the years decades and centuries after his writing this is the question of Jesus relationship with Jews and the religion they embraced as you may not be surprised to learn my thesis here is comparable to the one I've been developing up to this point Luke's Gospel can be read as both Pro Jewish and anti Jewish and later Christians who wanted to promote one reading over the other occasionally took steps to secure that reading by sometimes changing Luke's text adding it to a Canon of Scripture and telling alternative narratives that help inform the reading of Luke's account in both ancient and recent times Luke has been read as an anti Jewish gospel a reading that's all too understandable when one considers the full range of its narrative if you recall in antiquity the first serious interpreter of Luke that we know about was Marcin and Marcin was vehemently opposed to the Jewish God the Jewish law the Jewish Scriptures and presumably the less demonstrably the Jewish people for Marcion the gospel of Christ was a gospel that brought liberation from the harsh and vengeful God of the Jews whose law and scriptures played no role in the faith or life of the true follower of Jesus and this gospel of Marcion had found literary expression in what we call Luke even modern exegetes have been none too slow to point out that our text of Luke can easily be read as standing opposed to Jews and the Jewish religion just consider the question that has driven masses of anti-jewish sentiment over the centuries who was responsible for Jesus death modern historians have been struck by the circumstance that Jesus was crucified and that crucifixion was a Roman not a Jewish mode of execution and so most modern treatments of the historical circumstances surrounding Jesus death have pointed the finger at the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate as the guilty party the one who ordered Jesus death and had it carried out Luke doesn't disagree with this view of course as it's Pontius Pilate who tries Jesus and arranges for his execution in Luke but Luke is striking and probably strikingly unhistorical when he puts the actual blame for Jesus execution not on Pilate but on the leaders and the people of the Jews who vociferously demand it in fact in Luke's Gospel unlike in his source mark Pilate on three separate occasions actually declares Jesus innocent of the charges that the Jewish leadership brings against him moreover in the midst of the trial Pilate learns that the Jewish king of Galilee Herod who happens to be in town this is a rather puzzling passage that found is found only in Luke he finds out that Herod's in town and he sends Jesus off to be tried by the Jewish King Herod even Herod can't find any grounds for executing Jesus and after somewhat inexplicably mocking him he sends him back to Pilate Pilate wants to release Jesus but the crowds demand a criminal Barabbas instead crying out that Jesus be crucified finally Pilate gives up on the defense and as Luke puts it he delivered Jesus up to their will the next sentence is striking when read carefully it begins and as they led him away who is taking Jesus off to be crucified in the Greek the antecedent is the chief priests rulers and the people it looks as if it's not the Roman soldiers who lead Jesus off to be crucified but the Jewish leaders in people in any event the scene makes it quite clear that the blame for Jesus death does not lie with wrong it lies with the Jews no surprise that a careful reading of this tax could well lead to the hateful charge found in later centuries that Jews were christ-killers here they are actually responsible for the deed as suggested by this quick perusal of just one passage it should be clear that Luke and short is open to an anti Jewish reading at the same time there are other indications in the text that Luke and the Jesus he portrays are not opposed to the Jewish people or the Jewish religion staying just for a moment with the passion narrative it's quite clear that not all Jewish people were protect are portrayed in a negative light the chief priests and the rulers don't come off well but there are others who do on his way to be crucified Jesus sees a group of women wailing and lamenting him he turns to them with the words daughters of Jerusalem do not weep for me but weep free yourselves and your children while being crucified Jesus prays that God forgive those responsible for his death Father forgive them for they don't know what they're doing while on the cross one of the two criminals presumably also a Jew has a conversation with Jesus asking him to remember him when he comes into his kingdom Jesus then utters his famous reply truly I tell you today you will be with me in paradise moreover it's a Jew Joseph of Arimathea who arranges for Jesus burial and we should never forget who it was who discovered his empty tomb the Jewish women and to whom he appeared after his death the Jewish disciples and what he told them once he was raised that all the things that happened to him were a fulfillment of the Jewish Scriptures as God had for ordained Jesus here is hardly opposed to or opposed by Jews as Jews and he's hardly opposed to the Jewish law which he claims to have fulfilled in his own resurrection Jews and the religion they present they represent him seen in a positive light here and throughout the Gospel of Luke which portrays Jesus as a fulfillment of Jewish prophecies uttered by jewish prophets inspired by the Jewish God who sent Jesus as a Jewish Messiah to the Jewish people in short it's possible to read to read Luke in a positive Jewish light as well as in a negative one one could make the same point in any range of passages throughout the gospel narrative with the passage of time and for a number of important historical social cultural and political reasons Christianity as a whole became increasingly opposed to Judaism as a whole I don't mean to say that all early Christians were necessarily anti Jewish but anti-jewish sentiment among Christians is easily documented in our surviving sources after the time of Luke probably the root of the opposition to Jews and Judaism was the failure of the Christian mission to convert Jews to believe in Jesus as the Messiah this was an ancient failure of course the first missionaries probably did win some Jewish converts but already by the time of Paul most Jews simply rejected the Christian message out of hand and it's not difficult to see why the very heart of the Christian Proclamation that Jesus is the Messiah struck most Jews as completely ludicrous there were of course a range of expectations of what a messiah would have been like in the first in first century Judaism many Jews may not have been looking for a messiah at all any more than most Jews are looking for one today but those who did have messianic expectations expressed them in a variety of ways among Jews the Messiah would be a future political king like King David a ruler or a great priest who would interpret the law and rule over the people or a cosmic judge over the earth who would destroy God's enemies but however the Messiah was understood he was understood to be a figure of grandeur and power who would lead God's people against their enemies and who is Jesus far from being a figure of grandeur and power Jesus was a relatively unknown itinerant preacher who got on the wrong side of the law and was unceremoniously executed as a criminal against the state squashed like a mosquito by the mighty hand of Rome a Rome that the Messiah was to overcome it may be difficult for modern Christians to understand the scandal as Paul calls it of the claim that Jesus was the Messiah I tell my students that the emotional response of ancient Jews to this claim would be comparable to a claim today that David Koresh is the son of God who rules the world David Koresh the guy who was killed at Waco yes he's the Lord of all I get in trouble every year I say this am i teaching evaluations I always get some student who says I can't believe that Erman thinks that David Koresh is the Messiah [Laughter] my point is the gut reaction and the gut reaction we would have heard that is the gut reaction the most-used felt about the Christian claims about Jesus Christian's insisted though that Jesus really was the Messiah and that his ignominious death had been both foreordained and vindicated by God who raised him from the dead and allowed him to ascend to heaven where he currently sits as Lord of all waiting to return to Earth in a cataclysmic act of judgment but frankly it was a hard sell when Jews rejected this message as they generally did how were Christians to react they believed their message about Jesus was from God if that message was rejected than it was God who is being rejected the Jews who refused to believe in Jesus have rejected their own Messiah they have in fact turned their backs on their own God Jews are portrayed then as recalcitrant people who have never listened or obeyed God but now they've gone too far and executing their own Messiah that for God was the last straw God has now turned on those who were his people and chosen a new people the followers of Jesus mainly Gentiles who are the true heirs of the promise that God gave to the Jewish forefathers what about the Jews descended from Abraham Isaac and Jacob they have abandoned their heritage and so God has now abandoned them this message gets played out time and again in our early Christian sources let me cite just two examples one from about 50 years after Luke was written another about 50 years after that the Epistle of Barnabas was a very important text to many early Christian groups of early Christians it was a tradition described by tradition ascribed to Paul's companion Barnabas even though it was in fact written long after Barnabas had died probably around the Year 130 it was an extremely popular document however as some Christians argued that the Epistle of Barnabus belonged among the books of the New Testament it's actually included in the New Testament in one of our oldest surviving Greek manuscripts the famous codex Sinaiticus of the 4th century barnabas is written directly to deal with the relationship of Christianity and Judaism it's thesis is actually rather simple according to Barnabas Judaism is and has always been a false religion the Jews never had a covenant with God because as soon as God gave Moses the Covenant in the tablets of the law on Mount Sinai the people of Israel sinned against him and Moses smashed the tablets thereby shattering for all time the Covenant which was not then renewed because the Jews were not members of the Covenant and were in fact misled in their religion by an evil angel they misunderstood the very laws that God had given them through Moses what they failed to realize according to Barnabas was that the laws of Moses were not meant to be followed literally but figuratively being a hard-headed and stubborn people the Jews thought that by following the literal prescriptions of the law they would maintain a right standing before God when all along they were constantly in violation of the law Barnabas gives numerous and curious interpretations of the mosaic laws by way of illustration of his overarching point just with respect to the kosher food laws for example barnabas argues that the law not to eat pork was not meant literally the command was figurative it meant not to live like swine who grunt loudly to their masters when they're hungry but are silent when full humans are not to act like that praying to God their master only when in need but not heeding him when things are going well the command not to eat scavenging Birds meant not to live off the work of others but to work for your own food the command not to eat the weasel which by the way is not a command the command not to eat the weasel means not to behave like that animal I get in trouble for this one - which conceives its young through its mouth do not Barnabas instructs his readers engage in oral sex the Jews just never understood that Jews according to Barnabas have failed to understand their own laws and have never been members of God's covenant immunity the Covenant belongs to those who believe in God's Messiah Jesus it is Christians not Jews who are the people of God and the Old Testament is a Christian not a Jewish book some 50 years later the polemic is ratcheted up a nod or even more in the writings of the proto Orthodox Bishop Melito of Sardis molinos works were by and large not known through the ages until the 20th century discovery of a manuscript of a sermon that he preached on the occasion of the Jewish Passover it's a highly eloquent sermon and highly inflammatory in its discussion of Jews and their religion according to Milito Christ himself was prefigured in the Passover lamb that was eaten by followers followers of Moses at the Exodus and Jews who today continue to celebrate Passover have seriously erred in rejecting precisely the Lamb whose death brings salvation for Milito Christ is the reality that the Old Testament Scriptures look forward to Malita likens the situation to an architectural model of a building once the building itself is built there's no longer any need for the model it can be destroyed so - now that Christ has come there's no need for the Jewish religion that was looking forward to his appearance quite the contrary the old ways have been passed away by now by by now that the fulfillment has come more than that and powerful but fearsome language Milito lambaste s' Jews for rejecting this one whom they should have been expecting for Jesus was not simply the Jewish Messiah he was himself God by rejecting him Jews have rejected their own religion and worse they have rejected God worst still by killing Jesus the Jews are guilty of killing God this is the first recorded instance of the charge of deicide in a Christian source so far I've made two major points in this lecture that the Gospel of Luke could be read read is either favorable or unfavorable to Jews and that anti Judaism became increasingly pronounced in Christian circles after his book was written how could Christians try to constrain the meaning of Luke's text so that readers took away from it an anti-jewish rather than a pro Jewish message once again I'll considered three approaches the textual the canonical and the narrow title first it's possible to alter the text of Luke itself to eliminate passages that may be taken as favorable to Jews or Judaism and to interpolate passages that can be read as unfavourable to them both kinds of textual change are in evidence in our manuscript tradition I've already mentioned one of the passages that creates some uncertainty among modern exegetes over the question of Luke's view of the culpability of Jews in the death of Jesus this is Luke 23:34 we're being crucified Jesus praise Father forgive them for they don't know what they're doing modern readers may think that Jesus is praying for the Romans who are responsible for crucifying him but it should be remembered that in Luke Pilate delivered Jesus up to their will that is the will of the Jews and that they led him off to be crucified moreover in the book of Acts all written by Luke it becomes quite clear that it was the Jewish people who were responsible for Jesus death even though they acted out of ignorance in any event we know from comments made by the Christian fathers that this is how the passage was read in the early church as a prayer that God forgive the Jews for their involvement in the death of Jesus but what were early Christians to make of this prayer of forgiveness for as I've already intimated in my comments on Barnabas and Milito there was a decided movement away from thinking that God would or should forgive Jews for what they did as Christians became increasingly inclined to think of Jews as christ-killers we know from other sources of the 2nd and 3rd centuries that Christians began blaming the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman armies in 70 CE II on the Jews themselves not for a foolish uprising against the power of Rome but for killing Christ whose death was avenged by the destruction of the city and the slaughter of its inhabitants what were such Christians to make of the fact that Jesus had prayed for the forgiveness of the Jews clearly they had not been forgiven was Jesus Prayer not heard or maybe he had never uttered the prayer in the first place it's interesting to consider the manuscript tradition of Luke 23 in light of these issues for as it turns out there's a textual problem with verse 34 the prayer of forgiveness starting with our earliest surviving manuscript the 3rd century papyrus called p75 and continuing with some of our best-known and most important witnesses the prayer Father forgive them for they don't know what they're doing is in fact completely omitted by some manuscripts in these witnesses Jesus never asks God to forgive the Jews for what they're doing when confronted with a textual situation like this scholars of course need to decide what Luke's Gospel originally said in some manuscripts Jesus prays for the Jews to be forgiven and in other manuscripts he does not which is the original reading and which is the altered reading in this case some scholars have argued that it is the shorter text the one without the prayer forgiveness that is actually original to Luke and that scribes have added the prayer to Luke's account why would they do so the most popular explanation is a bit complicated so I want you to try and follow along with me here this I promised Harry to put some scholarship in this one the the most popular training is a bit complicated but it goes something like this okay so this is an explanation these people think that the shorter text is original and ascribes have added the prayer well why would scribes add the paddle prayer forgiveness this is the popular explanation in the book of Acts the first Christian martyr is Stephen who stoned to death for his proclamation of his faith in Jesus immediately before he dies Stephen praise Lord do not hold this sin against them Stephen Jesus follower was forgiving towards his executioner's would Jesus himself be any less so according to this theory scribes who wanted to heighten the parallel between Jesus death and Stephens added the prayer to Luke 23 that's why it's found in some manuscripts but not in others according to this theory this is a clever argument but there are compelling reasons to reject it for one thing as interpreters of Luke and acts have have long observed the many parallels between Jesus in the gospel and his followers in Acts were put there by Luke himself Jesus receives the spirit at his baptism in Luke and so do his followers in Acts Jesus is empowered by the Spirit to proclaim God's Word and so are his followers Jesus heals the sick cast out demons and raises the dead and so do his followers Jesus is largely rejected by the Jewish people and so are his followers Jesus is opposed by the Jewish leaders and eventually executed at their instigation and so are his followers it's Luke himself who has created the many broad and specific parallels between Jesus the gospel and his followers and acts and so it seems likely that it is he who has adduced a prayer on behalf of the executioner's both by Jesus in Luke 23 and by Stephen in acts 7 moreover it's worth noting that when Luke creates such parallels he typically does so not by repeating the words of his gospel in the book of Acts but by expressing the parallels in other words this matters because Stephen does not utter the same prayer as Jesus but a differently worded one with a similar meaning what about scribes we know that early Christian scribes often harmonized different accounts of the New Testament with one another that is to say when they ran across the same story in different places they would make them word-for-word the same for example the Lord's Prayer and Luke which scribes change so that reads exactly like the Lord's Prayer in Matthew in other words scribes created harmonizations that were verbatim alike the prayer of Luke 23 however is not the same as the prayer of Acts 7 it appears then that it was not created by scribes wanting to harmonize the two accounts it was put there by Luke himself the conclusion appears to be fairly secure then that Luke's Gospel originally portrayed Jesus is praying for forgiveness for those responsible for his death why then was the prayer omitted in some manuscripts it appears that scribes were uncomfortable with the idea that Jesus himself would forgive the Jews for what they were doing and even more that he would ask God to forgive them for according to early Christian interpretations of the events of the year 70 God never did forgive the Jews and how could he they had killed the Christ what was one to do with the fact that Jesus had asked God to forgive them the easiest solution was to remove the prayer from Jesus lips and this is what scribes who copied Luke did starting with our earliest surviving manuscript P 75 other passages were similarly altered in Luke's Gospel in order to make it less open to a friendly understanding of Jews and the Jewish religion an example occurs much earlier in Luke's account of Jesus parable of the new wine and new wineskins as in mark's account which was the source for Luke Jesus points out that no one puts new wine into old wineskins because the new wine as it ferments will burst the already stretched old wineskins spilling the wine and destroying the skins but Luke's account adds a saying to what is founded mark according to Luke Jesus continued by indicating quote no one after drinking old wine desires the new for he says the old is better end quote and I think most of us would agree I myself would take a vintage chateauneuf-du-pape over the stuff you can buy at Kroger as any day the old wine is better scribes however were not so sure if Jesus himself brings what is new in his proclamation of the good news of the kingdom how can that not be better than what is old the Old Testament with its old laws for the old religion of the Jews surely in fact the new replaces the old and is far superior in to it in every way what then were scribes to make of Jesus declaration found in this passage of Luke and found only here in the New Testament that the old is superior to the new their befuddlement over the passage led to a natural result as can be seen in our manuscript tradition as early as the mid-second century scribes began to deal with the passage by excising it as a final example of an anti-jewish textual change we might consider one of the more peculiar variant readings found only in the 5th century manuscript called codex B's a just five verses later in the loop from the one I just gave in Luke chapter 6 there are two stories in which Jesus has a car diversity with Pharisees over Sabbath observance both stories are designed to show that human needs are more important than observing Pharisaic rules about the Sabbath and to show at the same time that the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath between these two stories in Luke 6 codex B's a has inserted an additional account that's both striking and puzzling you may not be familiar with this one this is the story in codex Bea's a very short and on the same day when Jesus saw a man working on the Sabbath he said to him o man if you know what you're doing you are blessed but if you do not know you are cursed and a transgressor of the law that's the story many commentators are stumped by this reading and so do what interpreters normally do when they can't make heads or tails of something they ignore it altogether it may make sense for them to do so since it's clearly not a passage that was original to Luke but was added later but what does this passage mean that someone who violates the Sabbath is blessed if he knows what he's doing but he's cursed if he doesn't know what he's doing Jesus words may not make much sense in the context of his own ministry but maybe they make sense from a later Christian perspective for later Christians who would know what they were doing while consciously violating the Sabbath laws the one who is blessed one who believed that in Christ the law had come to an end who would not know what he's doing ie who would be the one who is cursed one who had not yet experienced the liberation in Christ that is one still bound to follow the Mosaic law by breaking the law without the freedom located in Christ one stands under the curse of the law the passage appears to teach that the conscious violation of the law is in fact a blessed activity for those who are in Christ there could be hardly a more pronounced condemnation of the law and all it stands for this appears to be another anti Jewish alteration of the text and so one way to constrain a reading of Luke's Gospel to help assure that interpreters will not come away with a positive view of Jews or the religion they practice is to modify what the text says another way to secure the same end is what I've called the canonical approach what happens when you put Luke in a Canon of Scripture with other writings that also on your reading betray an anti-jewish bent recall that our earliest complete manuscript of the New Testament Codex Sinaiticus includes as part of the New Testament the Epistle of Barnabas if Barnabas helps provide the key to the interpretation of Luke what kind of reading results according to Luke the Jews acted out of ignorance when they urged Jesus execution but according to Barnabas the reason they were ignorant is that they were a stiff-necked sinful people who always stood opposed to God and His purposes who embraced the false religion in part because they followed after the teachings of an evil angel if Barnabas provides scriptural warrant for your views of Jews and Judaism then naturally you'll read Luke in the most negative light possible when it comes to understanding the reasons for Jesus death but even if you don't have Barnabas as part of your Canon a similar reading reading results by including Luke's Gospel along with those of say Matthew and John for these two heights and Jewish culpability for the death of Jesus Matthews is the only gospel of the New Testament that includes the infamous scene of Pilate washing his hands to declare his own innocence of the decision to have Jesus executed in Matthew 27 the chief priests and the elders of the Jews persuade the Jewish crowds to call out for Jewish for Jesus execution realizing that his attempt to release Jesus is leading nowhere and seeing that a riot is ready to start Pilate calls for water and washes his hands declaring I am innocent of this man's blood see to it yourselves and then all the people that is all the Jewish crowd cry out his blood be upon us and our children a cry of course that led to massive hateful results down through the ages as it was taken to be evidence that Jews knowingly and willingly accepted the responsibility for killing Christ and passed on this responsibility to their descendants when Matthews account is placed in the same canon as Luke's and their read off against one another naturally the anti-jewish character of both is heightened and it's heightened even further when the Gospel of John is thrown into the mix in some ways John's account is the most explicit of the three that it was the Jews who bear the responsibility for Jesus death John as is well known actually speaks of Jesus enemies as the Jews as if Jesus himself were not a Jew when Pilate declares on three occasions that he has found Jesus guilty of no crime it is the Jews who cry out that they want him to be crucified and strikingly we're told that Pilate responded by handing Jesus over to them in order to be crucified it is the Jews who actually do the deed in John's gospel this negative portrayal of Jews is not limited to the trial and crucifixion narrative of course throughout John's Gospel the Jews are Jesus sworn enemies and he theirs it is when talking to the Jews that Jesus declares that God is not their father for if he were they would love him argues Jesus in Chapter eight instead he says you are from your father the devil and you long to do the desires of your father rather than being the children of God the Jews are the children of Satan when Luke is placed next to John within a sacred Canon of Scripture how will its own more ambivalent view of Jews and the relationship to Christ be read a second way to constrain a reading of Luke is to make it a part of a larger collection the third way to try and control a reading of the text is to propagate alternative narrative that can serve as hermeneutical lenses through which to observe the canonical account in my two earlier lectures I discussed apocryphal accounts that were clearly proto Orthodox that is they were written by second and third century Christians who embraced the theological views that were eventually to become dominant and declared Orthodox and so we looked at third Corinthians the Epistle of the Apostles the infancy Gospel of Thomas protocol of James etc here I'd like to discuss a narrative that came to be condemned as heretical by Orthodox Christians but that at one time I would argue was actually a proto Orthodox production this is the important and intriguing text known as the gospel of Peter for centuries our only knowledge of this gospel was from references to it in the writings of the 4th century Church Father Eusebius the so-called father of church history in his 10 volume account of the history of Christianity from the time of Jesus up to his own days Eusebius mentions discusses and sometimes quotes numerous 2nd and 3rd century Christian writings that have no longer survived in book six of his ecclesiastical history you see B's mentions a gospel that was believed by some Christians to have been written by Peter but which came to be condemned because it was thought to contain ad ascetic understanding of Christ the gospel Peter came to be condemned eventually before its condemnation however the book was used and revered by at least one group of proto Orthodox Christians who considered it a text of Scripture unfortunately the book itself did not survive the ravages of time for us to examine until a partial copy of it was unearthed by a team of French archaeologists in Egypt in 1868 who found it buried with a Christian monk in the of the eighth century regrettably this copy that we have is fragmentary it begins in the middle of a sentence and it ends in the middle of a sentence making it hard to know how much gospel material it originally contained the part that survives is a narrative of Jesus trial death and resurrection which is similar in many ways to the account we find in the New Testament especially the Gospel of Matthew the most interesting part of this gospel for most people is that it actually narrates the resurrection of Jesus in the New Testament Gospels you don't have an account of Jesus coming out of the tomb but in the gospel of Peter you have an account of him coming out of the tomb he's led by these two angels who were as tall whose head go up to the skies and his head goes up above the skies and then behind them there emerges a cross from the tomb and a voice comes from heaven says have you preached to those who are asleep and the cross replies yes it's a very entry is an intriguing account of the resurrection but that's not relevant to this lecture it probably isn't relevant to an earlier election because it shows Jesus himself as being personally divine I think against adoption istic views what is relevant to this present lecture is the way Jews are portrayed in this gospel of Peter for here they are shown to be completely culpable in the death of Jesus and to be responsible for their own punishment destined to come upon them from God the narrative as I indicated begins in the middle of a sentence but it's a telling beginning because it shows what happens immediately before the account the fragmentary account we have and it sets the tone for the rest of the surviving narrative the way it begins is with the sentient half sentence that says but none of the Jews washed his hands nor did Herod or any of his judges since they did not wish to wash Pilate stood up that's how it begins obviously prior to this fragmentary beginning the gospel narrated the incident of Pilate washing his hands but unlike in Matthew here there's an explicit statement about the Jews on the scene unlike the Roman governor they refused to wash in other words the blood of Jesus is on their hands and their hands alone in order to drive the point home the next verse indicates that it's herod the the jewish king who then orders jesus to be taken away and executed as the account continues there are additional comments to show that to show the author's view of the Jewish culpability in the death of Jesus we're told that Herod turned Jesus over to the people to mocked and beaten and crucified we're told that they the Jews brought all things to fulfillment and completed all their sins on their heads we're told that the Jews were glad when Jesus died but when they realized what they had done and began to mourn not what when they realized what they had done they began to mourn not because they recognized that what they had done was evil but because they realized that in view of their actions the judgment and end of Jerusalem are near it is Jews who condemned Jesus who killed Jesus and who bear the guilt for their death of Jesus for this gospel Jews have brought their own condemnation upon themselves and their destruction is a direct result of their willful act and killing Christ if this is one of the narratives that was accepted as a sacred Authority it's clear how it's unambiguous message will affect the reading of other narratives such as the Gospel of Luke one of the ways to direct the reading of a narrative is to propound another which can provide the interpretive keys alternative narratives continued to be propounded even after the writing of the gospel of Peter one of the most fascinating aspects of Christian retellings of the stories of Jesus death is the way in which as time went on Christians began to insist with increasing vehemence that the Romans and Pontius Pilate in particular were completely innocent some years later around the Year 200 the proto Orthodox Tertullian mentions a report that Pontius Pilate had sent in a in a letter to the Roman emperor Tiberius Pilate indicating that this one who had been crucified was in fact shown by his miraculous deeds to have been divine according to turtleman's report Tiberius Tyrolean claims was completely convinced and brought a motion to the Roman Senate to have Jesus declared a god the Senate reproved recalcitrant however so that even though the Emperor acknowledged the divinity of Jesus he was not allowed a place in the Roman pantheon Pilate in any event was said to have converted after Jesus resurrection and thus himself to have become a Christian this of course is all the stuff of legend born out by no non-christian source about as plausible as george w bush becoming a card-carrying member of al-qaeda following his stint as president but the point is that if pilot is completely innocent and in fact on Jesus side then the guilt of his death falls on the Jews I'm now at a point where I can bring this set of lectures to a conclusion by taking a step back from them and briefly stressing my overarching point Christians have always have always worked to constrain the meanings of their sacred texts this is not a new insight that I've just come up with but possibly it's one of those old insights that we need constantly to reassert for ourselves it's relatively easy to see how Christians of earlier periods worked to make their texts speak to their own situations sometimes using interpretive strategies that today strike us as alien or bizarre or wrongheaded one can't help but see the biases at work in such interpreters as the heresy arc Marcion and in his proto Orthodox opponent Tertullian not to mention others that I've not discussed but who are familiar figures to anyone with a theological education such exegetes as Origen in the third century or Agustin at the end of the fourth and beginning of the fifth we're and Alesi the hermeneutical power and limitations in such Reformation principles as allowing scripture to interpret Scripture it's precisely this canonical notion the scripture is its own best interpreter that has been called into question by modern historical critical methods which insists that mark is not saying the same thing as Luke or Luke as Matthew or Matthew as Paul or Paul as John and so we have our own interpretive methods I'm not denying the validity or the importance of these methods as they are the methods that I myself continue to work with in my understanding of these ancient texts but it's important for us to realize that we are all children of our own age the methods we learn in exegesis classes and apply to these texts are so logical and persuasive to us that they appear natural and obvious so did the methods that earlier Christians used in earlier ages these Christians were not less intelligent than us yet their approaches and the resultant interpretations were quite different if nothing else this should teach us that despite our claims as historical critics interpretation as I emphasized in the first lecture is not a matter of letting text speak for themselves interpretation and I'm sorry interpreters necessarily view texts in a certain light whether they want to acknowledge it or not and constraints are placed on our reading on us by our methods and approaches to texts this is neither a good thing nor a bad it's simply the reality of our and everyone's situation there's a reason that this matters the texts of the Christian scriptures in particular are used and always have been used to promote certain aspects of Christian faith and practice how these texts are read affects people's lives the texts of Scripture have been used to promote justice fight poverty oppose oppression and work for peace they've also been used to promote slavery and religious supremacy they continue to be used to silence women to restrict the rights of homosexuals and to advance certain views on abortion Western hegemony and religious imperialism I've used the examples drawn out in my lectures precisely because they are not issues that most of us wrestle with today although at one time they were salient issues in the thinking of Christians who is Christ is he human is he divine is he Jewish is the anti-jewish for most of us the answers have been given to us in our traditions and we have clear views about them even if they are not the most pressing of our concerns but we do have other concerns other salient issues that disturb us and drive us to consider the options provided us by our traditions the texts of Scripture continue to speak to those issues for that reason if for no other it's important for us to recognize the nature of these texts and to take care in how we approach them in our own attempts to constrain the ways they are read thank you [Applause]

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Length: 56min 48sec (3408 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 07 2013