MetaCatholic

First, my thanks to April DeConick for referencing my previous post. I agree with her that it is an important question to reflect on, and look forward to her own answers to the question “Why do non-canonical texts make us uneasy?” In a second post she notes some of the comments (some of which interacted with what I said, as well as with her post, so I’m glad I made a point of checking them).

I note that the theme of power comes up explicitly and implicitly in the various comments.

First, this is Leon Zitzer:

The canonical New Testament (NT)has been around for almost 2,000 years and the control over how they are to be read is well established. There may be alternative voices in the NT but traditionalists feel they have this well under control, so nobody will hear or notice them. But the gnostic texts and the very new Gospel of Judas do not have a long tradition of study behind them. They are not as well controlled as the canonical texts are. So many religious and scholarly authorities feel uneasy with them because they don’t own them the way they own the traditional stuff. They have not yet mastered how to totally dismiss them and that worries them.

His blog and website reveal that he is someone who believes that the church and traditional interpretations have obscured if not perverted the real story of Jesus. He seems to suggest that he has uncovered the truth, which everyone else has missed, and he seems unaware of the wide range of scholarship on the Jewishness of Jesus.  So he offers us a narrative of both the (well-documented) anti-Semitism of the Church in history, and the racism (a term he prefers to anti-Semitsm) of scholarship, conspiring to hide the truth about Jesus.  But this effectively reduces orthodoxy to power, and assumes that all exercise of power is always an exercise in hiding the truth. It begins to look rather like a very mild form of conspiracy theory, and so contemporary unease (if there is such unease) over the non-canonical texts is fitted into a story of power and control.

Second, there is Jim Deardoff:

What is most disturbing to me is the implicit suggestion by some that any text that once was lost, but now is found, can without careful study be assumed to be an unreliable testimony to the truth of the man known as Jesus. This most certainly would include an archaeological find whose text was so disturbing to authorities that it was destroyed before it could be fully translated.

April DeConick wisely omits the last sentence from her quotation of this comment, and so makes the point respectable. I don’t believe either I, a humble reader, or the world of reputable scholarship, assume either reliability or unreliability in unstudied texts. That’s the point of historical study: to see what sort of text and evidence they are. Deardoff’s website, however, suggests that he is more concerned with those texts that have been destroyed by “authorities” before they could be examined. It is again a question of power, and power is assumed to suppress the truth (which it often does attempt to do) and only suppress the truth. Fortunately Deardoff has one of those destroyed texts, The Talmud of Jmmanuel, which was rediscovered by the help of a passing UFO, and so he can with the help of the little green men, unravel the ghastly conspiracy of Western scholarship.  At this point, one has to wonder whether he is entirely in a position from which he can honestly critique such historical scholarship.

It seems to me that this underlines the distinction I made previously. It is not the study of the texts, by reputable scholars that causes me unease. Rather I welcome it.  But the use to which the texts are put, and those who want to use them, cause me considerable unease. How, after all, do you argue with someone who thinks the key to the truth of Jesus is discovered by contact with UFOs? And what is about the critical study of non-canonical texts that attracts such people?

April DeConick asks “Why do non-canonical texts make us so uneasy?” I’m not entirely sure that they do, at least as a generalization. But let me offer a few comments on the way to an answer. First, what does not make me uneasy:

• The existence of non-canonical texts does not make me uneasy. Their existence is a simple historical fact.
• The existence of diverse forms of tradition that call themselves Christian, and generate scriptures, and compete with one another, does not make me uneasy.
• That groups later judged, or were judging themselves and others “orthodox” and “unorthodox” does not make me uneasy. The process begins among those identifying as “Christian” at least as early, I think, as the Johannine letters, and continues from them on. (I don’t think Paul is quite doing this)
• The idea that the exercise of power, as well as reasoning and theological argument, is involved in the marginalizing of certain texts and groups does not make me uneasy.

Then, what does make me uneasy:

• The implicit suggestion by some that any text that once was lost, but now is found is a reliable testimony to the truth of Jesus, rather than to some later aspects of the movement(s) that grew up as a consequence of Jesus.
• The implicit suggestion by some that being “lost” automatically means being suppressed, rather than falling out of fashion, or becoming less valued.
• The implicit suggestion by some that “power” was only exercised by the so-called orthodox, the winners of history, and not by other groups.
• The implicit suggestion by some that “orthodoxy” was somehow monochrome, whereas alternative Christian groups were diverse, and that orthodoxy represents a narrowing of vision, but not a deepening.
• The implicit suggestion by some that every interpretation of the Christ event is equally valid, equally true to its historical roots, and equally authentic as a vision of human flourishing.
• The implicit suggestion by some (and in some places – step forward Mr Dan Brown – the outright argument) that catholic Christianity represents a departure from the real historical truth which is really contained in these non-canonical gospels and other literature from the second and third century..

I don’t think any of that is unreasonable, unscholarly, or obscurantist. Nor do I think that any of that amounts to study of the texts making me uneasy. It is the use of the texts by some, though by no means all (nor even a majority). that makes me – well, not so much uneasy, as just plain irritated.