For years, now, we’ve been inundated with the latest incarnations of re-inventing Jesus from popular and scholarly sources alike. At First Things, Anthony Sacramone offers a handy summary:
• Jesus was a space alien and is buried in Japan.
• Jesus survived the crucifixion and is buried in Kashmir.
• Jesus was the son of Mary and a Roman solider.
• Jesus was married and had children.
• Jesus was a social revolutionary when he was not a mere Mediterranean peasant.
• Jesus was an itinerant visionary whose real teachings exist only in distorted, fragmented form.
Some of this is clearly absurd, of course, but even that which is not absurd, which undergirds our encounters with Scripture and Tradition, is a widespreaed skepticism about the events of the life of Jesus – something I often heard in the midst of DVC fever, when people who self-identified as Catholic told me over and over again that everything that we "know" about Jesus was written down so long ago by essentially undependable guys (undependable either because they were simply recording "word-of-mouth" information (which must be unreliable) or because they were all about imposing their own concerns on the story), so…you know…whatever.
This reached a climax of sorts with DVC, but the impact – this skepticism about the historicity of the New Testament witness to Jesus – is widespread. The subtle fruit is that Jesus becomes just one more historical figure whom we may or may not derive inspiration from, if we wish, and the Chuch is simply a gathering of folks who choose to inspired by this Jesus, about whom we really don’t know much for sure.
Some books directly addressing this issue have begun to appear, first in response to DVC, but then, as various scholars and publishers saw how the river was flowing, in response to best-selling authors like Bart Ehrman, well-known phenomenon like the Jesus Seminar and "new" discoveries like the gnostic writings and the Gospel of Judas.
Darrell Bock has authored one, which I’ve not read. Ben Witherington III has another, called What Have They Done WIth Jesus, which I skimmed – I remember there being some points about it that bugged me, but unfortunately, I can’t find the book right this second, so I can’t point them out. I have also looked at two others, which I’d recommend. First, was N.T. Wright’s Judas and the Gospel of Jesus which is more than it seems. Note the title – it doesn’t draw us to the Gospel of Judas, but to the Gospel of Jesus. Sure, the inspiration for the book (which is short and very useful because of it) is the Gospel of Judas, but Wright throws a lot more in there, as I pointed out in my September review.
A couple of days ago, I read Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels by Craig Evans, which is a good entry into the genre – again, for those who have "heard" about and are bothered by all this talk of what we really don’t know about Jesus. He lays out the basics of the authority of the New Testament witness, looks in detail at the truth about gnostic writings, examines a few modern claims about Jesus at length (for example that he was a Cynic) – now this may seem rather erudite, but what Evans manages to do in the process is to educate the reader about the logical and scholarly flaws of so much of the new scholarship, and introduce the reader to a careful way of looking at evidence, rather than simply saying, "This…so…this must be true!" The Cynic chapter is a good example, in which Evans looks at archaeological evidence from Nazareth (the evidence for the Cynic hypothesis had been the notion that Galilee was heavily Hellenized), which indicates with startling clarity that before 70, life in Galilee, particularly Nazareth, was lived by very observant Jews, and the Hellenization really begins (logically, if you think about it) after the Rebellion.
The text is assisted by a lot of charts and tables, which further clarify matters. Evans also tackles the biographies of four of the more prominent Jesus Reinventors (those who have presented their biographies for public consumption, including, of course, Ehrman), and finds a fairly consistent pattern. Those whose pursuit of Biblical Studies resulted in a loss of traditional Christian faith tended to come from fundamentalist backgrounds in which the claims for the nature of Scripture were unrealistic in the first place.
It’s a good entry to the field, and helpful for those confused and upset by what they think "scholars" have definitely "proven" about the unknowability of Jesus and the Early Christian movement. He deals a bit with textual issues (this is, of course, Ehrman’s focus), but not at all with the development of the Canon, so that’s something to think in mind.
This book also looks like a valuable resource – but I’ve not read it.
Next up, the contributions to this effort from Catholic scholars and publishers.
(Crickets….chirping…)
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