8/23/13



In several essays over several months I have discussed the progress of my analysis of the 20 or so 1st- and 2nd-century documents known as "gospels" as well as other related material. All of it is part of the oral and literary traditions that grew up around the 1st-century CE figure known as "Jesus" -- Yeshua in the Aramaic of the time.

 

The hypothesis I have been testing for some years is that the various Jesuses a reader encounters in those documents may have been in some cases different persons, and that the figure of Jesus presented in the historic teachings of the Church may be in actuality a composite character. What may or may not help that hypothesis along is the understanding that gospels as such were not historical accounts but, quite frankly, propaganda -- meaning "ideas to help further a cause or an institution," as the Merriam-Webster defines the positive aspect of the word.

 

Keep in mind that the term "hypothesis" is different than the term "theory." A hypothesis is a proposition treated by a scholar as contingent upon further inquiry. At some point along the way, it may appear to her or to him that the hypothesis in question may be somewhere in the neighborhood of being found correct. That's the point at which the honest researcher doubles down on the effort to find evidence that might disprove it.

 

I have printed most of the email responses to the essays on this subject, many of which were positive or at least not in virulent opposition. I could not print the unsigned ones, which revealed only email addresses and which often included personal attacks -- a few using down right offensive language.

 

What offended me was neither the fact that the latter disagreed with the tentative results of the research nor the vehement language of their dissent, but that not one of them seemed to have anything other than an opinion about the matters in question.

 

If one of them lectured me to the effect that "it says in the Bible that," there were two or more dozen who did so. I tried in vain to explain that attempting to validate the Bible by the Bible is a classic case of circular logic that only turns back upon itself and gets the inquiry nowhere.

 

More than one writer told me in no uncertain terms that I was "entitled to my opinion," but that it was wrong. I supposed they thought their opinions were right, on what basis I cannot imagine. I responded by saying that I was not dealing with opinions -- either theirs or mine -- but with the evidence research was digging up, adding that none of it sparks a Eureka! moment because it is far from conclusive.

 

Scholars -- even those at the aspirant level at which I work -- do not traffic in opinion. The dictionary at my desk defines "opinion" as "belief stronger than impression, but less strong than positive knowledge." Of course, America is the land of the entitled opinion. The careful work of scholars, which often serves to discredit opinions, is the very thing upon which in unwarranted self-regard opinionators are wont to look down.

 

This is not to say that research in religious texts much of the time yields positive knowledge. That pearl of great price is hard to come by. I cannot speak for others who labor in these same vineyards -- most of them with credentials far superior to my own -- but I did not start out at the place I now find myself. I was raised in a middle-class white American family with modestly religious parents. I was sent to Sunday school and sent myself to catechism early in my college years and believed accordingly.

 

My reading in philosophy for later undergraduate classes led me away from the certainties with which I was raised into a less confessional state of mind. I had become an inquirer prior to enrolling in a graduate school of theology. There I learned, among other things, the languages and the history of the Bible and its times taught by some of the best in their fields.

 

I emerged from that experience a different person than when I entered. Yet, I was not minded 50 years ago to set the world on fire with heretical pronouncements. What I was minded to do was to bring an intellectual honesty to the homiletic and teaching tasks of being a parish minister. That I did, not always with spectacularly wonderful results. As a friend who otherwise supported my work said on one occasion, "If you are under the impression that a congregation is a venue for intellectual inquiry, you are much mistaken."

 

He turned out to be right to an extent. Almost always, though, even in the most conventional congregations, there are those eager to venture out upon uncharted depths. Regrettably, they tend to be outnumbered by those who insist upon paddling to and fro in the placid and familiar harbor of orthodoxy.

 

I did not set out half a century ago to abandon what I had been taught as a child. But having absorbed St. Paul's idea of putting away childish things/1, I began to think for myself. The rest followed.

 

All of this is to say that the point to which at this writing I have come is that -- as I wrote in a recent essay -- I think the evidence points to a likelihood that the Jesus upon which so much of Christian theology hinges was not the singular person the Church's creeds make him out to have been.

 

Notwithstanding, I will follow the example of Robert Frost who, after 412 lines of verse extolling the excellence of New Hampshire, wrote as the last and 413th: "At present I am living in Vermont."/2 With that in mind, I shall say that although reams of twice- or thrice-annotated notes -- some yellowing with the years -- are persuading me more and more that my hypothesis is sufficiently valid as to merit further inquiry, I am trying to demonstrate that it is not.

 

 

1/ I Corinthians 13:11

2/ "New Hampshire," Complete Poems of Robert Frost. New York, NY. 1948. Henry Holt and Company, pp. 199-212

 

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What reviewers said:

 

"Important and heart-warming ... Cook's keen insights into the most familiar of old-time gospel hymns ... help you do theology like a grownup."
--Robin Meyers, author of Saving Jesus from the Church

 

"A compelling look at centuries of Christian theology and practice, at how particular hymns have shaped American faith and religious thought."
--Richard Webster, Director of Music and Organist at Trinity Church, Boston

 

"A call to integrity in worship ... This exciting, penetrating and provocative study explores the theology we sing, which re-enforces the dated and pre-modern theology from which the Christian faith seeks to escape."
--John Shelby Spong, author of Re-Claiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World