On Civility and James the Brother
(I sincerely apologize for the lack of hyperlinks: time. Most of these blogs are in my margin).
As BK sees this week at CADRE, one never knows who is reading one's blog. It's a good lesson for me to remember as I flail my way along. Civility counts. As does doing one's homework. I will say that I find Layman's tone towards Tabor (and the writing of Chris the Layman is what brought me to the CADRE site) professional and fair; of course, BK's apology is honest and more than sufficient and Tabor himself accepts it.
Still, this is one of the things that breaks my heart when I read some Christian bloggage. I think of J.P. Holding at Tekton and his occasional resort to polemic or opponent-caricature, which can weaken an otherwise interesting argument. Even N.T. Wright, who, if anyone in this world should be allowed, deserves the right to mock a weaker opponent in print, goes too far in What St. Paul Really Said when he argues Wilson is riding a broken hobby horse across open country, or some such thing, in his biography of Paul. Polemic is not the standard for modern discourse. Neither is Christian cheerleading. As I said, I hope I'm not referring back to this post some day to chastise myself, at least not too often. The beam in my own eye. If I do, I'll be among much better company, the names above attest.
That said, I have't read Tabor's book and don't have time until school is out (heck, I can't even get through BW3's four very thorough posts this week: could someone help him expand the margin width code to display those longer posts--then again, my blog has the same problem). I did read an excerpt, a chapter or so of TJD, that is posted online (I'm not even sure if legally?). And Tabor has select passages at his website.
One thing I see there, that James, the brother of Jesus, is the beloved disciple of John, I find quite astounding. Mostly because John's gospel, which claims to rely on the eyewitness tradition of the beloved disciple, who certainly must have been an influential part of the Johannine community, is so radically different from what we know of James from his letter (whether he wrote it, a disciple wrote it, or it's a collection of James' sermons and sayings compiled by a follower) and from Acts/Paul, where James, risen to power in the Jerusalem church because of his relationship to Jesus and his post-resurrection meeting with Jesus (and none of the gospels portray James as a believer before the resurrection to my knowledge; I think Tabor might disagree here). In Galatians, Peter (never depicted as all that constant in the gospels) 'used to eat with the Gentiles before certain men came from James; but when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group.' Where do we see such concerns in John?
The tone of James' epistle is synoptic, it uses hyperbole and polemic, it's very Jewish-Christian, concerned with behavior, probably in response to Paul himself (who wasn't not concerned about it; Paul simply is willing to leave behind the rituals of the cultus to incorporate Gentiles). The completely different tone of John's gospel seems problematic if James is the beloved disciple.
But then, again, I haven't done my homework!
All I've been thinking is this: any attempt to reconstruct the historical Jesus needs to embody archaelogical, historical, and textual expertise. Crossan attempts this in his book on Paul. Perhaps Tabor does address this issue in his book. I'll have to read it and see!
Ironically, James' emaphasis on the tongue in his epistle is a solid reminder to all of us, myself foremost, who blog online. Perhaps now James would say 'the keyboard' as well as the tongue. Blog, for most, comes so close to an anonymous journal; it's easy to assume who my audience is...truthfully I don't know. With search engines available to find any keyword in any blog, any author I discuss here could conceivably end up here (God help me if Wright ever gets insomnia). This is one thing I admire about BW3's rapidly-becoming-famous series of posts on Tabor: he read the book, he did his homework, he presents himself civilly, professionally. May I imitate in the future.
Well, I doubt I'll never do that much homework!
Peace and God's love to all. I really do have to run.
Doing better on the personal level, also.
As BK sees this week at CADRE, one never knows who is reading one's blog. It's a good lesson for me to remember as I flail my way along. Civility counts. As does doing one's homework. I will say that I find Layman's tone towards Tabor (and the writing of Chris the Layman is what brought me to the CADRE site) professional and fair; of course, BK's apology is honest and more than sufficient and Tabor himself accepts it.
Still, this is one of the things that breaks my heart when I read some Christian bloggage. I think of J.P. Holding at Tekton and his occasional resort to polemic or opponent-caricature, which can weaken an otherwise interesting argument. Even N.T. Wright, who, if anyone in this world should be allowed, deserves the right to mock a weaker opponent in print, goes too far in What St. Paul Really Said when he argues Wilson is riding a broken hobby horse across open country, or some such thing, in his biography of Paul. Polemic is not the standard for modern discourse. Neither is Christian cheerleading. As I said, I hope I'm not referring back to this post some day to chastise myself, at least not too often. The beam in my own eye. If I do, I'll be among much better company, the names above attest.
That said, I have't read Tabor's book and don't have time until school is out (heck, I can't even get through BW3's four very thorough posts this week: could someone help him expand the margin width code to display those longer posts--then again, my blog has the same problem). I did read an excerpt, a chapter or so of TJD, that is posted online (I'm not even sure if legally?). And Tabor has select passages at his website.
One thing I see there, that James, the brother of Jesus, is the beloved disciple of John, I find quite astounding. Mostly because John's gospel, which claims to rely on the eyewitness tradition of the beloved disciple, who certainly must have been an influential part of the Johannine community, is so radically different from what we know of James from his letter (whether he wrote it, a disciple wrote it, or it's a collection of James' sermons and sayings compiled by a follower) and from Acts/Paul, where James, risen to power in the Jerusalem church because of his relationship to Jesus and his post-resurrection meeting with Jesus (and none of the gospels portray James as a believer before the resurrection to my knowledge; I think Tabor might disagree here). In Galatians, Peter (never depicted as all that constant in the gospels) 'used to eat with the Gentiles before certain men came from James; but when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group.' Where do we see such concerns in John?
The tone of James' epistle is synoptic, it uses hyperbole and polemic, it's very Jewish-Christian, concerned with behavior, probably in response to Paul himself (who wasn't not concerned about it; Paul simply is willing to leave behind the rituals of the cultus to incorporate Gentiles). The completely different tone of John's gospel seems problematic if James is the beloved disciple.
But then, again, I haven't done my homework!
All I've been thinking is this: any attempt to reconstruct the historical Jesus needs to embody archaelogical, historical, and textual expertise. Crossan attempts this in his book on Paul. Perhaps Tabor does address this issue in his book. I'll have to read it and see!
Ironically, James' emaphasis on the tongue in his epistle is a solid reminder to all of us, myself foremost, who blog online. Perhaps now James would say 'the keyboard' as well as the tongue. Blog, for most, comes so close to an anonymous journal; it's easy to assume who my audience is...truthfully I don't know. With search engines available to find any keyword in any blog, any author I discuss here could conceivably end up here (God help me if Wright ever gets insomnia). This is one thing I admire about BW3's rapidly-becoming-famous series of posts on Tabor: he read the book, he did his homework, he presents himself civilly, professionally. May I imitate in the future.
Well, I doubt I'll never do that much homework!
Peace and God's love to all. I really do have to run.
Doing better on the personal level, also.
Comments
I just want to add that while my apology was sincere, it was limited only to the point of acknowledging that I was wrong about him riding the Da Vinci Code gravy train. I do think that his book is erroneous based simply on what I see in the newspapers. For example, here is a portion of yet another account of what Tabor says in his book from the South Bend Tribune (author: Richard Ostling) found here: http://www.southbendtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2006604200530
=========
Tabor reworks an old liberal Protestant scenario, that Paul overturned Jesus' original movement and message. He deals with actual New Testament texts but regards them with considerable suspicion, and his theories dispute what they report.
His assumptions are clear: "Women do not get pregnant without a male -- ever. So Jesus had a human father, whether we can identify him or not. Dead bodies don't rise -- not if one is clinically dead -- as Jesus surely was."
He figures people stole Jesus' corpse from the tomb, most likely Jesus' mother Mary and sister Salome. Tabor assumed there's a "family tomb" containing Jesus' bones somewhere around Jerusalem but -- like Baigent and his secrets -- tried to track down evidence without success.
Since Tabor deems the virgin birth impossible, he thinks Mary was engaged to Joseph but became "a teenager pregnant out of wedlock with an illegitimate child" by some unknown other man.
From that unpromising start, Tabor contends, Jesus' nuclear family and disciples followed him as a messiah and the "legitimate King of Israel" who unfortunately was executed as a political threat. The alleged "Jesus dynasty" was perpetuated by Jesus' half brothers, who he thinks were actually four of the 12 apostles.
(Here Tabor follows the Protestant view that Jesus had real brothers and sisters; Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy believe Mary remained a lifelong virgin.)
The New Testament identifies Jesus' brother James as a "pillar" of early Christianity who led the Holy Land churches while Peter and Paul took the message elsewhere. Tabor thinks James and the "royal
family" didn't worship Jesus as God but that Christians who did eventually took command.
========
This is hardly in the vein of orthodox Christianity, and I think that it is clear that Professor Tabor is taking extreme liberties in his approach. But I will read the book and I look forward to commenting on it more fully when I get my hands on it.
P.S. It's okay that you read the blog for Layman's work more than mine . . . but you'll come around. :)
oh, BK, I knew I should have taken more time with my post here. I'm new to CADRE and this post on Tabor was actually the only thing I've read of yours! So I can't even compare you to Layman, though Layman does rock...even for a Layman.
The chapter that I read from Tabor's book wasn't impressive. In that one chapter he spends lots of time scene setting...oh, we found a tomb, and there were the names, Mary, Joseph, Jesus, James...while retelling this story he quotes an authority who in the past noted that the discovery of Jesus' tomb would undermind Christianity, etc. The fact that so many Biblical experts have noted the common nature of those names makes it highly unlikely this family had anything to do with Jesus doesn't get mentioned until later. In short, the one chapter I read journalistic, sensastionalistic, a waste of my time.
Agreed.
What I was really trying to get at here was ad hominem or caricature in any piece of Christian apologetics. But then, I'm such a newbie to the whole thing I don't have much right to speak.
I'll try and email this to you also.
Best,
Troy
Now, I accept his word that he didn't plan to publish based upon the Da Vinci Code, but you will also notice that when I pointed out to him in the original post that he could have tried to stop the publication when he found out the coincidence of the date, he remained silent about any such effort.
Pure and simply, while he may not have planned to take advantage of the Da Vinci Code, he is recieving the benefit of the Da Vinci Code for his book that claims the same type of thing (generally) as the Da Vinci Code. I withdrew my claim that he intentionally gravy trained, but isn't it really the same thing regardless?
If that's an ad hominem, then I'm guilty. But I attack the actual writing on other grounds so I am not making an attack against the book based solely on this observation.
An ad hominem is, as I'm sure you know, an argument against the person instead of against the person's argument. It is fallacious when the personal attack is irrelevant to the argument in question.
In this case you have committed an ad hominem, and not just because the substance of your personal attack was mistaken. It is an ad hominem because the authors motives for writing the book do not directly correspond to the validity of the arguments contained in the book.
I haven't read your work, but I'm sure that your argument against Tabor doesn't rest entirely upon the ad hominem in question, and I'm glad to see that, noting that, you have withdrawn it. That shows a great deal of intergrity.
I notice even in my own comment above, written so quickly, that the chapter was a 'waste of my time.' I did feel that purely on the basis of what the chapter says about itself (though it opened my mind to other archaelogical questions regarding Christianity). But still, such a comment alienates the reader who is sympathetic to the other position. It could even by read by Dr. Tabor who is an actual archaelogist while I am an academic janitor paper-grader not engaged in original research.
I can and do want to do better.
If I some day take on any skeptic's argument seriously I want to do it professionally, quietly, humanely, but decisively and rigorously.
The fact is some Christians don't read past the cheerleading. They say, 'oh, Blomberg or Wright or Witherington or whoever believes the Jesus Seminar is hokey, so I can rest in my faith and not worry about it.' They don't actually read Crossan or Funk. Nor the books by the above men which deal with issues the JS raises.
The same happens when a skeptic is ridiculed or summarily dismissed simply because she presents a heterodoxical idea. Some won't read past the non-intellectual dismissal. This is bad for Christian thinking; it's also bad for skeptics, who, after all, were a class many of us once belonged to. There but for the grace of God....
Again, BK didn't go this far, I was just prompted, by the event on his blog, to think of things I've seen other places. Probably, I would guess, somewhere back in my own blog.
I think both of you guys are doing great work and I read both your blogs. Keep it up.
Okay, I accept your judgment that it was an ad hominem. I think that it was a mild one at best, but I didn't want to make it the issue which is why I withdrew it when he finally produced some semblence of a justification for publishing it around the time of the Da Vinci Code movie that wasn't related to riding the gravy train. I still view it as more of an observation that turned out to be wrong on that specific point, but I can see where others would disagree.
Troy, I just want to add that I personally have never read any Crossan, but I have read Borg (I have one of his books on my bookshelf behind me) which is why I am confident that I know what they are saying and why they are so hideously wrong. I can sleep comfortably at night with a firm conviction that they are not part of the mainstream and don't even make sense at the most basic level.
fair enough. Certainly, every Christian doesn't have to read every book by every gospel skeptic, let alone every other kind of skeptic. In fact, I guess many, if not most, choose faith in Christ without sorting through the writers critical of the religion. Fine.
But the fact is these ideas have crept into the mainstream. Crossan's work, probably because he writes well, has especially gathered steam. The JS gets press every time they meet it seems. And the internet is one place the skeptical community has flourished, often using scholars with much less depth than Crossan.
I actually do think the JS make sense, or seem to, unless their methodology and criteria are looked at through a critical lense. Witherington does this briefly but effectively in his Quest book; I've read an essay by Wright also which helped me. Many Christians, myself included, do feel the need to read critics of the faith, sometimes to respond apologetically to them. All I've argued for at any place in this post is quality refutations which avoid polemic. That's it. Those are tough to produce, I know.
Peace to all. My blog hasn't seen this much flurry in a while.