MetaCatholic

Mike Bird posted a list of the 10 worst ideas in c20 NT scholarship over the weekend. By my reckoning just over half of them (listed below with Bird’s numbering) are at least in part about already decided or derived models being imposed on the data.

1. The Gnostic Redeemer Myth
3. The Cynic Jesus
4. The Fourth Gospel as Hellenistic Dogma in a Christian garb
5. Judaism as uniformly legalistic
6. “Early Catholicism”
7. Pre-Christian Gnosticism
8. Palestinian Christianity vs. Hellenistic Christianity

My guess is that 100 years from now, when someone looks back at our century, most of the bad ideas will also come from imposing models on the data, and I suspect that more than a few will be associated with forms of social-scientific criticism. I don’t mean to dismiss it by saying that, just note the temptation to model-imposition of an approach which lacks one of the primary tools of anthropology (participant observation) and two of the primary tools of sociology (survey and interview). In both disciplines such empirical research can query the model. In the use of those disciplines by historians and biblical scholars, it’s decidedly easier to massage the non-resisting data into the contours of the model.

I would also say that three and a half items on Bird’s list owe something to what I see as an undue attention to the sayings tradition in Jesus research.

2. Form Criticism
3. The Cynic Jesus
8. Palestinian Christianity vs. Hellenistic Christianity
11. The postulation of a “Q” or “Johannine” community [the half item]

I wanted in a comment to take it a bit further, by losing the idea of “Judaism as uniformly legalistic” which in my view predates c20, and putting in instead either the idea of Aramaisms or the criterion of double dissimilarity. I was taken to task in the comments by James Crossley (what can you expect from a Man U fan?) who sees Aramaisms as absolutely vital for historical Jesus research. (Update at 21:41 — I may have misunderstood what James was saying, see the comments on Mike Bird’s post.)As I pointed out there:

I am not remotely convinced that Aramaisms have any significant place in historical Jesus research. First, I think that the language of the Septuagint distorts the whole question. Second, I can imagine a Jesus-saying that actually enters the Greek tradition well-translated by a fluently bilingual follower of Jesus showing little trace of the source language. Thirdly I can imagine a saying of Jesus made up by an Aramaic speaking follower.

In short, I think they are virtually useless as a criterion of historicity. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought that this, together with my suggestion about the negative use of the criterion double dissimilarity (to rule sayings out), is really a protest about privileging the sayings as a route to the Jesus of history.

First, privileging sayings gives more weight to the hypothetical and reconstructed Q, and to Thomas, whose dating, and geographical and theological placing are seriously problematic, than it does to the canonical gospels, because “saying collections” are understood to be the more primitive and therefore implicitly reliable sources.

Second, privileging sayings already implies certain answers to the question that are far more likely to emerge with Jesus as sage, prophet and teacher, than as exorcist, healer, wonder-worker, Messiah (whatever that means). The answers begin to be presupposed by the methodology.

Finally, the gospel tradition itself bears some witness to the ways in which some sayings at least were moved around or collected together. Sayings come with less historical context and information that narrative units, either those narrative units that reach their high-point in a saying, or those which report deeds. Consequently sayings naturally carry less implicit historical information, and re-contextualising them can easily shift their meaning.

Doing what Sanders does with some verve, or Meier with little verve but great thoroughness, of moving from contexts to content, seems to me far more appropriate, and far less prone to fanciful reconstruction. What I really want to replace Bird’s item 5 “Judaism as uniformly legalistic” with is this: “Making jigsaws of the sayings of Jesus and calling it history”

It is always risky and possibly arrogant to disagree with almost everyone, but I have become increasingly convinced that our Bible translations are generally wrong about Romans 13:6, here quoted from the NRSV.

For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, busy with this very thing.
(διὰ τοῦτο γὰρ καὶ φόρους τελεῖτε· λειτουργοὶ γὰρ θεοῦ εἰσιν εἰς αὐτὸ τοῦτο προσκαρτεροῦντες.)

First I don’t think it’s helpful to translate διάκονός (diakonos) in 13:4 and λειτουργοὶ (leitourgoi) here both as “servant(s)” when the words are significantly different. Second, this translation implies, as some have suggested¹ that there is some kind of non-payment of taxes going on. On the contrary: “Paul takes it for granted that the Christians of Rome have been paying their taxes”². Much more significantly, I’m not at all sure that λειτουργοὶ can actually refer to someone who takes money from you.

Paul uses the word twice elsewhere. In Romans 15:16, he uses it to describe himself as a “minister (λειτουργὸν ) of Christ Jesus” and ties this to the “offering of the Gentiles” which in context is far less likely to be any reference to Paul’s collection, but the Gentiles themselves as Paul’s ministerial offering to God. In Philippians 2:25 he uses it to describe Epaphroditus as “your messenger and minister (λειτουργὸν ) to my need”. In this case it would seem that Epaphroditus is offering material comfort to Paul. In both these cases Paul’s use of the word fits the more general sense. As Cranfield notes: “it means characteristically a public service of work in the ordinary secular sense (specially a public service carried out by a private citizen at his own expense).”³ In both religious and public service (to use a more modern distinction) liturgists – λειτουργοὶ – are those who make an offering, not those who collect it. A secular liturgy is a public benefaction. Those who make conspicuous benefactions (and that meant virtually any wealthy benefactor) could expect a form of public recognition as the authorities give praise to those who do good. (Romans 13:3).

Our translations, however, persist in using this word to describe the authorities, and by implication the tax-collectors, sometimes to almost exaggerated effect.

for the authorities are God’s servants devoted to governing. (NET)
the authorities are all serving God as his agents, even while they are busily occupied with that particular task. (NJB)
the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing (NIV)

Given that I am about propose an idea that may seem anachronistic, I should note first that these translations are also somewhat anachronistic in their view of tax-revenue as supporting the government’s public service of keeping law and order. But also let’s be clear that there is no explicit reference to the authorities in this verse. The translations read it back in. What happens if we take it out altogether, and divide the sentence differently:

Because this is the real reason you pay your taxes: those who keep on doing this very thing (i.e. paying taxes) are offering service to God.

The second clause then keeps close to the normal range of meaning of “liturgy makers” by referring to those who make the offering, and shell out the cash, rather than those who collect it. By implication (and this is the seeming anachronism) taxes become the benefaction of the poor, who cannot afford the conspicuous benefactions of the wealthy, and so can only receive their praise from God. No state will erect a tablet in their honour.

We then have an argument that is all of a piece in a slightly different way from that which has normally been suggested. Romans 13 flows effortlessly from the preceding injunctions: “Be patient in tribulation (12:12) …. Bless your persecutors (12:14) … Do not repay evil for evil (12:17) … As far as possible for you, live in peace with everyone (12:18) … Do not avenge yourselves (12:19)

Paul makes four arguments in Romans 13 to support these injunctions for a non-violent inter-communal life.

• Those who seek vengeance for themselves go against the appointed role of the state to bear the sword. If you do not live at peace, the state will enforce peace against you (13:1-2, 4).
• Those who have wealth should use it to do works of public good (13:3).
• Those wealthy and prominent people may either act out of fear (of the state’s punishment) or conscience (being rightly thought well of by others) (13:5).
• Those who are poor also make benefactions through taxes (13:6) and by calling them God’s benefactors Paul stresses the way they serve the public good, and God’s purposes.

Joining in some sort of communal violence is not only wrong, because it fails to give the state its due role under God, but it’s a waste of your own money, which has gone to support communal peace, which should be ordered appropriately. I need hardly say that this, of course, is also arguing for some very specific situation at Rome as part of the reason the letter takes the shape and content it does.

1. e.g. Jeremy Moiser ‘Rethinking Romans 12 –15’ in NTS (1990) vol 36 pp 571 – 582, John Ziesler Paul’s Letter to the Romans London: SCM, 1989 ad loc [↩]
2. J A Fitzmyer, Romans London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1993 [↩]
3. A critical and exegetical Commentary on The Epistle to the Romans (Vol 2) Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1979 ad loc [↩]