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Re: Radio Satan
This whole soul/body distinction and debate is pretty fascinating and
obviously important to think about. I think that Jesus was a Hellenized Jew
via the mere fact that all of Palestine had been under Greek cultural
influence for hundreds of years by that time. It's virtually impossible
that he wasn't. Also consider his oposition to the religious leaders of his
time. My feeling is that part of this rebellion, if you will, came from
humanistic Greek influences. After all, Jesus was fully man as well as God
and my personal reading of the gospels sees him ascerting his full humanity
at times (especially when he was really pissed off). I think Hellenism is a
combination of Platonic and Aristotelian ideas, the latter of which is
probably more dominant since it came later. My personal belief is that most
theologians in general and modern Christians in particular have
misunderstood who Jesus really was because they haven't really grasped and
accepted the fully human (and perhaps even slightly humanistic- uh oh, I
think I here another guy building a new gallows for me) side of him. The
high minded Platonists emphasized the developement of the mind/soul. The
actual Greek people emphasized the developement of the body and mastery of
the physical world around them. Jesus, I think, was healthily in between
the two as he was probably a master craftsman and builder but also as we
know spent great deals of time in isolation and contemplation. Likewise,
the more orthodox Jews are more Platonic in their thinking (although they
are very connected to the physical land of Israel, no doubt) then the
everyday Israelis whose way of life has everything to do with the both
beautiful as well as harsh realities of life. It seems to me that Greek and
Jewish culture were able to mesh quite nicely in the person of Jesus,
clearly producing the world's most human human being.
Debate pending...
>From: "Peter T. Chattaway" <petert at interchange_ubc.ca>
>Reply-To: "Peter T. Chattaway" <petert at interchange_ubc.ca>
>CC: Over the Rhine listserv <Over-the-Rhine at actwin_com>
>Subject: Re: Radio Satan
>Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2002 17:05:30 -0700 (PDT)
>
>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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