Blue Cord

It’s going to be a rough two weeks. We just found out that the mother of the other biblical studies teacher here is close to death. He is heading to the US, which means I will be finishing out the semester for him. This means an additional three sections of Intro to Bible (and he follows a different syllabus than I do) plus a Catholic Epistles class.

Please pray for Barrett, his mother, and his family for God’s grace in this difficult time.

Spring is in the air and Easter is fast approaching. And just as the forsythia that bloomed every year in our front yard in America, so is the regular crop of nutty ideas about Jesus, popularized each spring by Time and Newsweek. For the past few years, many of these ideas have centered around The Da Vinci Code. This year’s favorite child, however, is the Gospel of Judas, a new gnostic text that was discovered in 1970 but just published in translation last week.

If you have not been following the Gospel of Judas saga, here it is in a nutshell. The Gospel of Judas is a text from c.300 CE that reports to be a secret gospel that was passed on to Judas by Jesus before his death. Of course, it was not written by Judas, since he immediately killed himself, but is instead a pseudepigraphal text. Iranaeus mentions a Gospel of Judas text around 180 CE, and this is probably (though not definitely) the same text. The text we possess is in Coptic and was written in Egypt. It comes from a group within early Christianity that was known as the gnostic, a group that is later declared to be heretical.

The publication of the Gospel of Judas has come with all kinds of overblown statements. Elaine Pagels, a scholar of gnosticism, claims that this document explodes the myth of a monolithic Christianity in the first century. Of course, no one has claimed that first century Christianity was monolithic in quite some time. Other have said that this would lead to a reassessment of Judas. Why this is so is hard to imagine, since a document from the second or even third century is unlikely to contain better information about Judas than the canonical Gospels, which were written in the first century. Those Gospels do not completely vilify Judas, but instead suggest that Judas betrayed Jesus in order to force Jesus to confront the Romans and begin a rebellion.

On the other side, of course, some scholars have been downplaying the importance of the Gospel of Judas. An interview with James Robinson was run under the headline “Gospel of Judas a Dud.” This overlooks the fact that this text will increase our knowledge of gnosticism in the second and third century. Just because a text does not tell us about Jesus does not mean it is unimportant. But, of course, the news media want sensationalism, so they tend to depict the issue in simplistic terms.

It is not as if we do not have other gnostic texts from this period. The Nag Hammadi library, discovered in the middle of the 20th century, contains numerous text, some which are older than the Gospel of Judas. These have not only increased our knowledge of gnosticism but has also led to a better understanding of the background of the New Testament writings, since some of the authors were writing against gnosticism. And it is not like any of these documents are a secret. They are widely available in translation.

From a theological perspective, however, it is important to pay attention to the role of the canon. When the early church sought to clarify its beliefs, it did so in part by deciding that certain books accurately expressed who Jesus was while others did not. Even if the Gospel of Judas did contain new information about Jesus, that information would only be important to the extent that it helped us to understand the canonical gospels better. Other books may contain accurate historical information about Jesus, but only the canonical gospels present us with an accurate theological interpretation of who he was. These books, which are a living part of the church’s heritage, are more important than those that were so unconvincing that people ceased using them and allowed them to be buried in the ground, only to be discovered hundreds of years later.

More than likely, churches will soon be offering study sessions on the Gospel of Judas. I have no problem with this, as long as it is done correctly. I am always amazed, however, that people in the church are often fascinated with the study of the latest and greatest discoveries when they have not yet taken the time to become familiar with the gospels we have known in the Bible for 2000 years. I guess familiarity breeds contempt.

Charles Halton over at Awilum has a post on an article in Hebrew Studies that discusses linguistic data for distinguishing between Standard and Late Biblical Hebrew. The problem is one that is on-going in the field, with some scholars doubting whether linguistic evidence can be used for dating texts.

I posted a response to his entry, which I reproduce here:

I think the exile is the earliest point at which the change would be made, but it didn’t necessarily happen at that point. It certainly happened by 400, but it didn’t necessarily happen that late. That leaves us almost two centuries during which the change could happen. Not only is 200 years a long time, but these happen to be a rather important 200 years.

Many of the texts that we have trouble dating fall within that time period. This is especially important for me, since I am working on the last layers of the Pentateuch. If we could determine the time of the change from SBH to LBH, that might help me date H and the H redactor.

To tip my hand somewhat, I am currently leaning towards a pre-exilic date for the Priestly source (P), perhaps in the 8th century BCE, and an exilic dating for the Holiness layer (H). The H redactor is post-exilic, as it clearly shows signs of Aramaic influence. The problem is that if P and H are pre-exilic and exilic, then both of them should be written in SBH, since the date for the switch to LBH is probably later than the exile. That means linguistic data cannot help me distinguish P and H, but might help me distinguish H from the H redactor.

The monthly biblical studies blog carnival is up and running at The Busybody.  There you will find the best entries from biblical blogs from the month of March.  Of particular interest is the continuing discussion started by Michael Fox’s article on faith-based scholarship.  Several bloggers have responded to his ideas, and the opening paragraph of the carnival lists some of these responses.

The next biblical studies carnival will be hosted here on Karamat.  Although I will not post the official call for submissions until mid-month, you are able to submit them at any time.  Submissions for blog entries posted in the month of April should be emailed to biblical_studies_carnival AT hotmail DOT com, or entered via the submission form at BlogCarnival.com. For more information, consult the Biblical Studies Carnival Homepage.

Yitzhak Sapir has a post on his blog about Hebrew bullae that have been found in Jerusalem recently. Although other scholars are probably aware of this already, I wanted to point it out to my students.

Hebrew bullae are clay impressions left by seals. Bullae were used to seal documents and other important items. Very few of them have been recovered in excavations, although a number of them show up on the antiquities market. Because some of the bullae in Sapir’s post refer to people mentioned in the Bible (in particular the book of Jeremiah), I thought my students would be interested in seeing this.