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Re: Radio Satan
On Mon, 3 Jun 2002, ryan richards wrote:
> As were Jesus and Paul no doubt, being Hellenized Jews and all.
Paul certainly was -- he grew up in the Diaspora and he quoted pagan poets
and all -- but Jesus? Many would dispute that. Consider this excerpt
from John Dominic Crossan's _The Birth of Christianity_ (which, following
one of my crazier impulses, I recently typed out on another listserv):
- - -
http://www.topica.com/lists/dadl-ot/read/message.html?mid=802877096
[ snip ]
Dualism and Inconsistency
There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free,
there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ
Jesus. ... In the one Spirit we are all baptized into one body -- Jews
or Greeks, slaves or free -- and we were all made to drink of one
Spirit. Paul, Galatians 3:28 and I Corinthians 12:13
Some Christians (whether Jewish or Gentile) could declare that there is
no Greek or Jew, no male or female. No rabbinic Jew could do so,
because people are bodies, not spirits, and precisely bodies marked as
male or female, and also marked, through bodily practices and
techniques such as circumcision and food taboos, as Jew or Greek as
well. Daniel Boyarin, CARNAL ISRAEL, p. 10
I begin this book, then, with a problem or, if you prefer, a
presupposition. It is not a religious or a theological presupposition but
an anthropological and an historical one. It is not enough to say that the
vision of a dead man birthed Christianity, because that, at least in the
first century and probably in every century since, is not special of
itself to explain anything. Neither is it enough to say that the vision of
a dead man was interpreted as the start of the general resurrection and
that interpretation birthed Christianity. That only rephrases the problem:
Why was this man's resurrection, as distinct from any and all other ones,
understood as such a beginning? From that problem as presupposition I draw
this hypothesis: the birth of Christianity is the interaction between the
historical Jesus and his first companions and the continuation of that
relationship despite his execution. This book, therefore, attempts an
historical reconstruction of that interaction, that continuation, and the
reasons that one led to the other. Its focus is on birth not growth, on
those years before and especially after Jesus' crucifixion, on those who
were with him beforehand and continued within him afterward. It is about
the years before Paul; in other words, it concerns what was there for Paul
to persecute. And that last point requires some careful consideration.
I include Paul not in the birth of Christianity but rather in its growth
and development. That is neither a deliberate insult nor a calculated
disparagement. My decision is based on four factors, of which the last is
the crucial one. First, I do not think Paul was as important theologically
or historically in the first Christian century as he was in the sixteenth
Christian century, and that later importance often blocks our ability to
assess his original significance. Second, we tend to move much too swiftly
from the historical Jesus in the 20s (where we have no contemporary texts)
to the historical Paul in the 50s (where we DO have contemporary texts).
What happened in the 30s? What do we IMAGINE happened in the 30s? Third, I
sense profoundly different results between those who start with Paul and
then go back (or refuse to go back) to the historical Jesus, and those who
start with Jesus and then go on (or refuse to go on) to Paul. I put it as
a challenge: IF YOU BEGIN WITH PAUL, YOU WILL INTERPRET JESUS INCORRECTLY;
IF YOU BEGIN WITH JESUS, YOU WILL INTERPRET PAUL DIFFERENTLY. The reason
for that belief lies in my fourth (and most basic) point, which I write in
dialogue with the fascinating and provocative work of Daniel Boyarin, as
summarized in the above epigraph to this section.
When a traditional society is confronted with imperial modernization, it
can choose rejection or assimilation. But it can never take either option
absolutely. It is always a case of where, when, what, and why to renounce
or accept that alien intransigence. It is always a case of what is
superficial and what is basic, of what is negotiable and what is
intolerable. It is always a case of WHO decides that difference and HOW
that difference is decided. By the first common-era century, ancient
traditional Judaism was under increasing pressures not just from Roman
commercial exploitation in the age of Augustus but from Greek cultural
domination since the age of Alexander the Great. Modernization for many
THEN was Hellenization -- Greek internationalism -- just as modernization
for many NOW is Americanization. Is that a matter of jets, computers,
communications? Is it a matter of sex, drugs, violence? Is it a matter of
freedom, democracy, justice? Is it a matter of materialism, individualism,
secularism, capitalism? How exactly can a venerable traditional society
negotiate acceptance AND rejection when faced with social, economic, and
military domination? But, especially, how can it withstand overwhelming
CULTURAL imperialism: Paul speaks, in Galatians 3:28, of "Jew and Greek,"
not of "Jew and Roman."
In a 1994 book Daniel Boyarin labeled Paul "a radical Jew" and summarized
his purpose like this: "[1] Paul was motivated by a Hellenistic desire for
the One, which among other things produced an ideal of a universal human
essence, beyond difference and hierarchy. [2] This universal humanity,
however, was predicated (and still is) on the dualism of the flesh and the
spirit, such that while the body is particular, marked through practice as
Jew or Greek, and through anatomy as male or female, the spirit is
universal. [3] Paul did not, however, reject the body -- as did, for
instance, the gnostics -- but rather promoted a system whereby the body
had its place, albeit subordinated to the spirit" (7, my numbers). Later,
the first two points of that thesis are repeated verbatim, but there is a
different final point: "[4] The strongest expression of this Pauline
cultural criticism is Galatians and especially 3:28-29" (181). Those are,
in other words, the four major and sequential points of his powerful
thesis. Watch, now, as Judaism and Hellenism clash deep in Paul's
sensibility, and -- without condescension at this safe distance -- judge
which you think is winning on the issue in question.
That dualism of flesh and spirit derived from a pervasive Platonism in
Paul's contemporary culture. "Various branches of Judaism (along with most
of the surrounding culture) became increasingly platonized in late
antiquity. By platonization I mean here the adoption of a dualist
philosophy in which the phenomenal world was understood to be the
representation in matter of a spiritual or ideal entity which corresponded
to it. This has the further consequence that a hierarchical opposition is
set up in which the invisible, inner reality is taken as more valuable or
higher than the visible outer form of reality. In the anthropology of such
a culture, the human person is constituted by an outer physical shell
which is non-essential and by an inner spiritual soul, which represents
his [SIC] true and higher essence" (59, SIC original). That hierarchical
dualism of spirit over flesh formed a spectrum from bodily neglect through
bodily denigration to bodily rejection. The flesh could be to the spirit
as its distracting mansion, its nomadic tent, its decrepit abode, or its
filthy prison cell. Those were all points, however, along the same
dualistic scale. Paul was not as radically dualistic as were the Gnostics,
but he had "as thoroughgoing a dualism as that of Philo," the contemporary
Jewish philosopher from Alexandria -- that is, "the body, while
necessarily and positively valued by Paul is, as in Philo, not the human
being but only his or her house or garment" (59). Boyarin insists that
Paul's dualism "DOES NOT IMPLY A REJECTION OF THE BODY" (59) and "does not
abhor the body" (64); it "makes room for the body, however much the spirit
is more highly valued" (185). Paul stands, however, on a very slippery
Hellenistic slope.
That dichotomy between a monism of necessarily enfleshed spirit and a
dualism of accidentally enfleshed spirit needs some precise descriptive
terminology. If we are talking only about Christ, it underlies the
distinction between incarnational and docetic Christology. The former
gives Jesus a full, normal, human body; the latter gives him only an
apparent body (DOKEIN, means "to seem" in Greek). It is, as it were, a
body for the job, like those assumed by the Greco-Roman gods and goddesses
for business purposes on earth. If we are talking only about Christianity,
it underlies the distinction of Gnosis against Church cited from Rudolf in
this Prologue's epigraph. It also underlies the more accurate distinction
of Gnostic Christianity against Catholic Christianity, which emphasizes at
least that both are options WITHIN Christianity. But that latter
formulation has become so contaminated by apologetics and polemics, by
accusations of heresy and claims of orthodoxy, that it is no longer
helpful except for name-calling. That underlying dichotomy is, in any
case, far older and wider than Christianity. It was there between
traditional and Hellenistic Judaism before Christianity ever existed. And
it is here today wherever flesh is separated from spirit, flesh is then
sensationalized, spirit is then sentimentalized, and both are thereby
dehumanized. I call that monism of enfleshed spirit SARCOPHILIA and that
dualism of flesh against spirit SARCOPHOBIA, from the Greek roots for
flesh (SARX), love (PHILIA), and fear (PHOBOS). The terms are created on
the analogy of SARCOPHAGUS, the marble coffin of antiquity, from flesh
(SARX) and eat (PHAGEIN). We are dealing, therefore, with a profound
fault-line in Western consciousness, with the great divide between a
sarcophilic and a sarcophobic sensibility.
Boyarin understands correctly that none of this has to do with "a
Hellenistic Judaism which is somehow less pure than a putative
'Palestinian' Judaism" (6). It is not as if all of Palestinian Judaism was
sarcophilic and all of Hellenistic Judaism was sarcophobic. It was a
difference not in geography but in ideology. It depended, wherever you
lived, on whether you accepted or rejected that Platonic dualism and in
what form or to what degree you did so. Boyarin parallels Paul with Philo,
but in case you think that dualistic ideology is only for Diaspora Jews, I
insert an example from Josephus, a Palestinian contemporary.
It is a rather stunning example of Platonic dualism, of the spirit's
transcendence over the body, and of the flesh's irrelevance to the soul.
It is a speech placed by Josephus on the lips of Eleazar, leader of the
besieged rebels atop Masada at the end of the First Roman-Jewish War in 74
C.E. The Romans under Flavius Silva had built up a huge ramp against the
isolated mesa-like rock fortress, and the end was now in sight. The
defenders decided to kill their families and then themselves. Eleazar
encouraged them to prefer death to slavery:
For it is death which gives liberty to the soul and permits it to
depart to its own pure abode, there to be free from all calamity; but
so long as it is imprisoned in a mortal body and tainted with all its
miseries, it is, in sober truth, dead, for association with what is
mortal ill befits that which is divine. ... But it is not until, freed
from the weight that drags it down to earth and clings about it, the
soul is restored to its proper sphere, that it enjoys a blessed energy
and a power untrammelled on every side, remaining, like God Himself,
invisible to human eyes. (JEWISH WAR 7.344, 346)
That speech is not Eleazar speaking to his fellow rebels, of course, but
Josephus speaking to his fellow Romans. But it is hard to find a more
precise formulation of the superiority of the soul over body and of spirit
over flesh. The question, for first-century Jews, was not whether you
lived in Palestine or the Diaspora or whether you spoke Greek or Aramaic,
but whether you had absorbed ideologically that Hellenistic dualism, as
had Philo, Paul, and Josephus.
How does that apply, for Boyarin, to Paul's three distinctions of
ethnicity, class, and gender, negated for Christians in Galatians 3:28
("There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there
is no longer male and female")? Against such a dualistic background those
three negated distinctions could apply to the person-as-soul rather than
to the nonperson-as-flesh. They could apply to ritual present or heavenly
future but not to contemporary society or social reality. You could easily
imagine a Platonizing or Hellenizing Paul asserting that such physical or
material disjunctions had nothing whatsoever to do with the soul, the
spirit, the true human being. They were as irrelevant before God or in
Christ as the color of one's hair or the shape of one's toes. That is the
way Boyarin explains Paul. "What drove Paul was a passionate desire for
human unification, for the erasure of differences and hierarchies between
human beings, and ... he saw the Christian event, as he had experienced
it, as the vehicle for this transformation of humanity" (106). But if that
was all Paul had done, if he had been consistently Hellenistic, we would
still be yawning. His Jewish and Hellenistic genes fought not to a
compromise but to an inconsistency. A compromise might have said that the
flesh is to be kept in its inferior place but is never to be totally
rejected. An inconsistency is something else, and that is what happens to
Paul.
This is it. HE TAKES THAT FIRST DISTINCTION OF JEW AND GENTILE OUT OF THE
SOUL AND PUTS IT ONTO THE BODY, OUT OF THE SPIRIT AND ONTO THE FLESH. He
takes ethnicity-negation out into the streets of the Roman cities, but he
does not take class-negation or gender-negation outside in the same way.
He does not say for ethnicity, as he does for class and gender, that it is
irrelevant before God religiously and spiritually but should be maintained
physically and socially. THE CONTRADICTION IS NOT THAT HE TOOK ALL THREE
SPIRITUALLY BUT THAT HE TOOK ONE PHYSICALLY AS WELL AS SPIRITUALLY. If the
Jew/Greek distinction were taken spiritually, it would mean that inside
both were equal and that outside neither was significant. It would make no
difference, then, to be circumcised Jew or uncircumcised Greek. It would
make no difference, ONE WAY OR THE OTHER. To be not circumcised would be
no better or worse than to be circumcised. But, to put it bluntly and
practically, if Paul had had a son, he would not have circumcised him.
Even though Galatians 5:6 and 6:15 insist that "neither circumcision nor
uncircumcision" is important, not to circumcise WAS important for Paul.
Circumcision is caustically termed mutilation in 5:12. Paul had earlier
broken with James, Peter, Barnabas, and everyone else over minimal kosher
observance so that Jewish Christians and pagan Christians could eat
together at Antioch in Galatians 2:11-14. Boyarin is quite right that Paul
has compromised between his Judaism and his Hellenism by adopting not a
radical (rejection of flesh for spirit) but a moderate Platonic dualism
(subordination of flesh to spirit). It is not that COMPROMISE I emphasize
but the INCONSISTENCY with which he applies it to Galatians 3:28.
What is needed, from Paul then or Boyarin now, is to meditate on the
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THOSE THREE DIFFERENCES. And in that meditation, the
presence of the class distinction is crucial. You could, for example,
preserve difference without hierarchy in the case of ethnicity and gender.
But not in the case of class. For class, difference IS hierarchy and
hierarchy IS difference. The rich are DIFFERENT from the poor: they have
more money. The free are DIFFERENT from the slaves: they have more power.
Had Paul negated ALL THREE distinctions physically and materially in the
urban streets of Roman cities, his life would have been as short as that
of Jesus. Boyarin does not see that inconsistency in Paul. It is an
inconsistency that allows Paul to negate Jew/Greek to the fullest PHYSICAL
extent concerning circumcision and kosher practice while negating
slave/free and male/female in a far more SPIRITUAL manner. The
inconsistency on those three distinctions in Paul is matched by a similar
one in Boyarin himself.
In my above epigraph from his 1993 book, CARNAL ISRAEL, Boyarin mentions
only the first and last of Paul's three distinctions from Galatians 3:28.
He cites ETHNICITY and GENDER but omits CLASS. That could have been just a
passing emphasis and omission were it not for what happens in his 1994
sequel, A RADICAL JEW, which is a total interpretation of Paul based on
Galatians 3:28, which he calls "my key for unlocking Paul" (23). In that
second book he repeatedly, consistently, and without excuse or explanation
omits the middle term CLASS to concentrate exclusively on ETHNICITY and
GENDER. The distinction of CLASS is singled out for emphasis once --
"there is no slave or free in Christ" (5) -- with specific regard to
Paul's letter to Philemon about his runaway slave Onesimus. All three
distinctions are mentioned together a few times -- for example, "in
baptism, all the differences that mark off one body from another as Jew or
Greek, ... male or female, slave or free, are effaced" (23), or again,
"Behind Paul's ministry was a profound vision of a humanity undivided by
ethnos, class, and sex" (181), and again, "In Galatians Paul seems indeed
to be wiping out social differences and hierarchies between the genders in
addition to those that obtain between ethnic groups and socioeconomic
classes" (183). But that is about all there is on the class distinction in
a book that discusses brilliantly those of ethnicity and gender. I
emphasize that point, for both Paul and Boyarin, because if you think
about THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THOSE THREE DIFFERENCES, and you think about
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DIFFERENCE AND HIERARCHY, you will have to face
these questions: If you can have difference of ethnicity and gender
without hierarchy, can you do the same for class? How is class different
from ethnicity and gender?
Despite that reservation, however, Boyarin's Pauline thesis has one other
very telling critique, one other very impressive proposal. Because that
"common dualist ideology ... has characterized western thought practically
since its inception," there "is ... nothing striking in claiming that Paul
was such a dualist; if anything the bold step that I am making is to claim
that the Rabbis (as opposed to both earlier Hellenistic Jews and later
ones) RESISTED this form of dualism" (85). Boyarin uses the term RABBIS or
RABBINIC JUDAISM "only with regard to the second century and onward" (2),
and the resistance of these rabbis to Platonic dualism is what he means by
a "rejectionist" rather than an "assimilationist" reaction to
Hellenization (7). "Of course," he says, "the Rabbis also believed in a
soul that animates the body. The point is, rather, that they identified
the human being not as a soul dwelling in a body but as a body animated by
soul, and that makes all the difference in the world" (278 note 8).
I agree with those statements and admit that my own personal sensibility
also rejects human dualism in any shape or form. On this point I stand
with Judaism and against Hellenism. I do not find compromise feasible in
this case because, while radical and moderate Platonism may differ in
theory, they usually result in the same effects in practice. We are, for
me, self-conscious flesh that can, paradoxically, negate not only the
legitimacy of its flesh but even the validity of self-consciousness. But
we nonetheless remain self-conscious flesh. I find Platonic dualism, be it
radical or moderate, to be ultimately dehumanizing. I admit this openly,
because both author AND READER have to answer for their own sensibility
before continuing this discussion. Where are YOU on this point?
That is why I want to be very careful about Jesus and Paul. Boyarin knows
that "Paul's entire gospel is a stirring call to human freedom and
autonomy" (199). And Stephen Patterson has recently written about "the
continuity between Paul and the sayings tradition [in the gospels]
precisely in terms of the tradition of social radicalism they both share"
(1991:35). I agree with both of those statements. That is not my criticism
of Paul. And my objection is not just to Paul's blazing inconsistency in
taking the first of his distinctions, ethnicity, but not the other two,
class and gender, all the way down to the depths and all the way out to
the streets. It is this: the Platonic dualism that had influenced Philo,
Paul, and Josephus had not so influenced John the Baptist, Jesus, and
James, nor, I imagine, the Essenes and the Pharisees before the rabbis.
Start with Paul and you will see Jesus incorrectly; start with Jesus and
you will see Paul differently. In this book, therefore, I bracket Paul to
concentrate on a Christianity that had to be born before he could notice
its existence and persecute its presence.
[ snip ]
--- Peter T. Chattaway --------------------------- peter at chattaway_com ---
"I detected one misprint, but to torture you I will not tell you where."
Winston Churchill to T.E. Lawrence, re Seven Pillars of Wisdom
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