Interlude: Points of Interest

Welcome to the debut of another new series on the blog, the first of course being "Jesus Theories." As you may have guessed from the title, this series is called "Interludes." What purpose will it serve? Keep your shirt on, I was just getting to that!

When George Carlin, who was (for my money) the greatest comedian ever, wrote books of his material, he included sections called "Short Takes" which consisted of quick, snappy jokes and one-liners, not married to bigger routines, that served as a palate cleanser, a break from the long-form stuff. 

By the same token, I'm not always going to have a veritable wealth of information to share about a specific topic. So, with that (and my readers' attention spans) in mind, I will occasionally post "Interludes" about things I have the itch to talk about but which don't need many words written about them.

Today, I will share a few resources that I think are essential to approaching this topic from my -- or at least a similar -- perspective. If you want to understand where I'm coming from, and why, these will help. Don't worry, not all of it is online; those of you who stubbornly insist on reading printed copies of things (and I am one of you) will find something useful here, too. I'll break everything down by category, be it web link or physical book. In locating purchase links (where I could), I tried to avoid a particular monolithic organization whose name starts with A, but if I could find a given item at the links I did and you don't have any "eat the rich" level qualms about utilizing their services, you can typically find what I list there as well.

BOOKS

Bible Translations

A BRIEF NOTE ABOUT THIS CATEGORY: There are two things to consider when selecting a Bible translation: overall readability and arriving at the closest approximation of the original meaning. At last count, not including manuscripts in the original language(s), there are 531 translations of the Bible on the market today. And translation is a delicate art, such that there are two schools of thought on how closely one reflects the source text in the target text -- formal equivalence (which emphasizes faithfulness to the details and grammatical structure of the language of the original text, word-for-word, even if that makes it harder to read) and dynamic equivalence (which is less concerned with literal accuracy and more with a natural rendering). On the one hand, translating the meanings of words and phrases in a literal way maintains fidelity to the text; on the other, translating sense-for-sense, taking into account the meanings of phrases or whole sentences, can improve readability. Your mileage may vary. I err on the side of dynamic equivalence, and this list reflects that for the most part, but some of the translations I refer to are better for those who care deeply about formal equivalence.

• New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition, with Apocrypha -- For starters, it's one of the best-selling Bibles among various Reformed denominations, the United Methodist Church, the United Church of Christ, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and more. Secondly, it was intended to serve the devotional, liturgical, and scholarly needs of the broadest possible range of Christian religious adherents, and it shows. I can think of very few, if any, translations that are more accurate, readable, up-to-date, or inclusive. (I picked the copy including the Old Testament Apocrypha -- from what I'll broadly term "the Catholic Bible" -- because a little familiarity with something outside your wheelhouse, assuming you're one of the basically Protestant readers I expect to form a large part of my audience, is never a bad idea.)
• The Good News Translation, a/k/a Today's English Version -- This one (accurately, in my estimation) bills itself as the world's first truly "easy-to-read" Bible translation. It does not follow the traditional vocabulary and style found in historic English Bible versions; instead, it attempts to present the content and message in standard, everyday, natural English, and it's regularly updated to make sure it reflects contemporary English usage. The Good News Bible is apparently especially popular (for its simplicity, of course) with readers for whom English is a second language, and as I don't feel qualified to remark on the quality of translations in languages I don't speak, I can at least make a recommendation for ESL readers in a language I do speak -- namely, mid-20th century American English.
• The Message, by Eugene Peterson -- If, on the other hand, you are a fluent English speaker who just wants to read a version of the Bible in contemporary language without a lot of "churchy" vocabulary, then this paraphrase is for you. I use the word "paraphrase" for a reason, though; it's a highly idiomatic translation that uses a lot of contemporary U.S. slang as opposed to a more neutral form of English, and there has been some debate over Peterson's readings of certain passages, which are -- at times -- unconventional. However, its publisher had the translation thoroughly reviewed by a team of recognized Old and New Testament scholars to ensure its accuracy and fidelity, and it passed enough muster to hit the market, so make of that what you will.
• The Hebrew Bible, by Robert Alter -- This is incredibly pricy as a collected set no matter where you look, so you might be better off buying individual installments that were published before the complete version as an appetizer (just search his name, and you'll find them), but this version is unique not only for being a one-man translation of the entire Hebrew Bible but also for considering the text from a literary standpoint, trying to recreate as much as possible its poetic rhythms and metaphors, rather than aiming to preserve theological accuracy. Some have criticized aspects that they perceive to be mistaken, but the short commentary that accompanies the text explains Alter's decision-making pretty well, and his elegant prose style makes me wish literature professors were consulted on the subject more often.
• The New Testament: A Translation, by David Bentley Hart -- Mr. Hart is a justly celebrated writer on religion, and he undertakes this fresh translation, which makes many bold and unsettling (for your average Christian, anyway) choices, in the spirit of "etsi doctrina non daretur" ("as if doctrine is not given"). In other words, what if this was some other classic literature like the Homeric epics, Sappho's poems, or one of the surviving Greek plays, and had no preconceptions or doctrine attached whatsoever? What if we just wrote what it says, and dealt with what it may mean from that POV? It feels very raw and rough-hewn, much like the Christian faith must have seemed in its earliest days, and it's amazing what one finds when doctrinal layers are peeled away.

Biblical Harmonizations and Theoretical Reconstructions

• The Super Gospel: A Harmony of Ancient Gospels, by Robert C. Ferrell -- People have been harmonizing the four Gospels into a single document going back to the Diatessaron by Tatian (the link is a Wikipedia entry because I can't do all your homework for you), but Mr. Ferrell doesn't stop there. His thesis is that the apocryphal material belongs in a harmonization as well, and all I can say to that -- after reading all 457 pages, the first fourteen of which are merely an introduction -- is "great googly moogly." I sincerely suggest reading the introduction no matter what else of the book you cover (or don't cover); he goes into his compilation process, and it's truthfully fairly common sense from a literary perspective. Wading through the actual harmonized text is a whole other bag of cats, but worth the effort and great to reference for how bat-shit some of the Apocrypha could be. (I also recommend his "Guidebook for the Elect," in which he hypothesizes -- and illustrates -- how the Second Epistle of Peter and the Epistle of Jude might have begun life as a single text. Hey, I wrote my first serious post on this blog about dropping the Book of Revelation from the canon. I can't justly condemn this exercise.)
• The Chronological Gospels of Jesus, by Dennis F. McCorkle -- Initially published online and in print [see the link] as "The Book of Jesus," the simplest way to describe this is its original subtitle: a chronological harmonization of the Gospels (in this case, just the canonical ones) in easy-to-read narrative format. The content is laid out like a "readers' theater" script, which is good for us show-biz types out there who have learned to process most books the same way in our heads. Ecclesiastics and scholars alike may quibble with some of its editorial decisions, but that takes nothing away from the enormity of the task and the worth of the effort.

Scholarly Texts

• Reading the Book: A Popular Essay on Christian Biblical Hermeneutics, by Joseph Frankovic -- A breezy tome (just 54 pages) that interrogates the Bible from a Jesus-centric but nevertheless Jewish viewpoint, with a specific emphasis on Midrashic insights. It's written from a religious enough angle that true believers in particular might find this a good starting point for shaking off old interpretations and reading with fresh eyes.
• The Jesus Report: The Rabbi J. Revealed by the Dead Sea Scrolls, by Johannes Lehmann (English translation by Michael Heron) -- This one strongly suggests a more-than-casual link between early Christianity and the Essenes, the Jewish sect which authored the Dead Sea Scrolls. The theory is far from unpopular, and the book itself is incredibly useful as a tool to encourage outside-the-box thinking. I particularly like Lehmann's conceit of referring to Jesus by a neutral designation (in his case, "Rabbi J.") to get people thinking about the brass tacks of the story -- and the possible story behind the story -- in terms of a person and not a god, and his examples in numerous chapters of how translators and scholars alike misunderstand the meaning or the context of details in a Bible passage because they fail to interrogate the text with a Jewish perspective in mind. (The most amusing such instance is his first-chapter exegesis of the date on which the wedding in Cana occurred in the Gospel of John, covering first how translators struggled with -- and even deleted -- it, then scholars waxed profound about its possible symbolic significance, and finally, a Jewish researcher revealed the banal truth of the matter.) It's out of print, but the Internet comes to the rescue, thanks to PDFDrive.
• The Ghost in the Gospels: The True Story of How Jesus Died and How We All Missed It for 2,000 Years and True Jew: How Jesus Really Ended Up on a Roman Cross, How We Still Cover It Up, both by Leon Zitzer -- Full disclosure: Leon is a friend, and his particular "bag," as they once said in the Sixties and Seventies, is historical erasure, particularly where racism is involved. (Read his two books on Darwin for more of the same.) Having said that, I think these books are an important key in future studies of the historical Jesus, and they should be required reading for every forward-thinking minister, priest, rabbi, or theologian, everyone pursuing ministry or scholarly exploration, hands down. Material like Leon's can only improve dialogue leading to better Jewish-Christian relations. In brief, he makes a compelling case that there is absolutely no information in the historical context that would justify the allegations that Jewish leaders worked with Rome to get rid of Jesus, that Judas betrayed Jesus, or that Pilate was in any way reluctant to sentence Jesus to death. Further, he argues (successfully, in my estimation) that, at least as far as anti-Semitism goes, most generally accepted New Testament scholarship, whether consciously or unconsciously, appears to be about promoting ideological or theological beliefs and not about paying careful attention to the evidence, helping tradition to amplify a single reading of what the Gospels say. (I'll expand on this subject a few entries from now.)

Pseudo-historical Speculation

• The Jesus Scroll, by Donovan Joyce -- If the title looks familiar, it's because I referred to this one in my most recent installment of "Jesus Theories." Frankly, the vast majority of the book falls into the kind of stuff, often with a quasi-James Bond backstory, that spawned a cottage industry in the Holy Blood, Holy Grail era which has never quite died out; they all stand on the shoulders of work like Joyce's. But a stopped clock is right twice a day, and while most of the book is devoted to doing so in the service of a theory that holds about as much weight as a feather, he connects a few dots that have since been adopted as plausible possibilities by reputable scholars, for good or for ill. The book itself is out of print but in the early days of Web 2.0 (circa the late Nineties), programmer David Kurtz threw the text online [see hyperlink].
• Behold the Man: The Real Life of the Historical Jesus, by Kirk Kimball -- Largely an exercise in "how it could have happened" creative writing (see the book's subtitle), which may upset my more skeptical readers leery of using imagination where simply calling a story fictional or metaphorical will do the job just as easily, Kimball nevertheless offers a lot of important historical context to support his version of events, clearly rooted in a ton of research. Intriguingly, he sets one rule upfront: he denies divine intervention from the start, attempting to explain the events reported in the Gospels from a natural rather than supernatural standpoint. He may rely on scripture for most details, but unlike others who do so, he assumes some of the Gospel writers' reports are exaggerated as a matter of course, which is refreshing. I especially recommend Chapter 15, "Reconstructing the Miracles," where Kimball offers a hypothetical case study that convincingly raises the possibility that some of Jesus' cures involved "conversion hysteria." This is also technically out of print in hard copy, but fairly recently published (about 10 years old at the time of writing), thus linking to an e-version in the Google Play store. 

LINKS

• Religion for Breakfast -- Before you go anywhere else in terms of online resources, you've got to go here. RFB is an educational YouTube channel dedicated to the academic, nonsectarian study of religion. It doesn't endorse any particular religious tradition or non-religious perspective, and it promotes improving the public's religious literacy by exploring humanity's beliefs and rituals through an anthropological, sociological, and archaeological lens. The host, Dr. Andrew M. Henry (whom you can follow on Twitter @andrewmarkhenry -- until its new CEO runs the platform into the ground, that is), is a scholar of religious studies. His research focus is early Christianity and late Roman religion. He earned his Ph.D. at Boston University. There will be a few topics I discuss here where I try to give a quick-and-dirty description of something that theologians know that the general public typically doesn't; Dr. Henry is way better, and usually more accurate, at it than I am. I cannot recommend his work enough.
• History for Atheists -- As described on its website, HFA is a blog for articles, book reviews, and critiques relating to the misuse of history and the use of biased, erroneous, or distorted pseudo-history by anti-theistic atheists. I agree strongly with its author, Tim O'Neill, that rationalists should not base their arguments on errors and distortions, and HFA is great at calling out and correcting many of them. Besides that, I can personally relate to both his amused exasperation and mild scorn in responding to many of these points.
• Jerusalem Perspective -- In short, JP is an online magazine dedicated to placing the life and teachings of Jesus in their historical, cultural, religious, and linguistic contexts to better understand Jesus' message and his place in first-century Jewish society.
• The Historical Jesus and The Historical, Jewish Jesus: The Ghost in the Gospels -- A blog and a collection of essays, respectively, by the aforementioned Leon Zitzer, both of which expand and elaborate -- rather eloquently, in my opinion -- upon the theories propounded in his books.