Josephus Coined the Term "Theocracy"
Many people may know this already, but I didn’t. I came across Josephus’ use of “theocracy” (θεοκρατία) and the footnote read that Josephus apparently coined this term. I turned to my trusty Logos Bible Software to check for any other reference in any of my Greek sources with a Word Study. Sure enough, only one occurrence in Josephus and nothing in the Septuagint, OT Pseudepigrapha, Philo, NT, or Apostolic Fathers. I went online and checked TLG to find only one other reference elsewhere (not counting Eusebius’ quotation of Josephus). The only other use I found was in Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos’ (905-959) On Virtue and Vice . Interesting.
Of course, when Josephus uses “theocracy” (Apion 2.165), it has a positive connotation–unlike how many use it today as a critique of those Christians who would like the United States to be (even) more intimately tied to Christianity. Josephus uses the term to contrast the other forms of government in the world. This is linked to his discussion on the Jewish legal system. The Greeks change their laws because they have human laws. The Jews get their law from God. For Josephus, Jewish society is founded upon the rule of God and God’s law (and has been for a very long time!). Here is the “theocracy” passage:
To give but a summary enumeration: some peopls have entrusted the supreme political power to monarchies, others to oligarchies, yet others to the masses. Our lawgiver, however, was attracted by none of these forms of polity, but gave to his constitution the form of what–if a forced expression be permitted–may be termed a “theocracy,” placing all sovereignty and authority in the hands of God. To Him he persuaded all to look, as the author of all blessings, both those which are common to all mankind, and those which they had won for themselves by prayer in the crises of their history. He convinced them that no single action, no secret thought, could be hid from Him. He represented Him as One, uncreated and immutable to all eternity; in beauty surpassing all mortal thought, made known to us by His power, although the nature of His real being passes knowledge. [Apion 2.164-167, Thackeray trans.]
We need more umph in scholarly rhetoric…
I’m just reading through Josephus’ Against Apion and read this line:
There is the evidence which Apion should have considered, had he not himself been gifted with the mind of an ass and the impudence of the dog, which his countrymen are wont to worship. [2.85]
Beautiful, especially the last clause there. This statement comes after Josephus’ comment that Apion has not considered the appropriate sources and is ridiculous in his suggestion that the Jews’ have the head of an ass in their temple. Though I have seen some scholarly rhetoric get close to this, it sure would be fun to have people called out as having the “mind of an ass and the impudence of the dog.” Maybe it wouldn’t be very productive, but fun. Perhaps I will work it into my dissertation when I get there.
Those Brits just don't get it (says John Collins)
In reading on apocalyptic things, I came across this fun bit by John J. Collins in Knowing the End from the Beginning: The Prophetic, The Apocalyptic, and their Relationships (note the use of “Apocalyptic” in the title), edited by Lester L. Grabbe and Robert Haak (T & T Clark):
Categories and definitions were the subject of sustained discussion in the 1970s and early ’80s, beginning with the work of Klaus Koch and Paul Hanson, and continuing through the SBL genres project and the Uppsala colloquium. One of the most widely shared points of agreement in that discussion was the use of ‘apocalyptic’ as a noun was a source of confusion, and that distinctions should be made between apocalypse as a literary genre, apocalypticism, whether as a social movement or as a worldview, and apocalyptic eschatology. It is true that these distinctions have not been embraced by British scholarship. In fact, there was very little British participation in those debates, and the objections to the use of ‘apocalyptic’ do not appear to have been grasped in that part of the world. [45]
He also clarifies that the objection to the use of “apocalyptic” as a noun is not grammatical, but because of the “intrinsic vagueness of the term.” Collins later adds, “To revert to this usage, in my view, is to set the discussion back to the state of confusion that prevailed before Koch wrote his monograph” (46). Oh ye British in “that part of the world”! Trying to confound us again, eh? There is a relevant discussion about this in the comments of a blog post on Ben Myers’ blog from awhile back, kicked off by Mike Bird’s comment (reflecting the trend that Collins has noted here) and reacted against by others.
I tend to side with Collins (and Mike Bird) here. It does provoke interesting questions related to transatlantic scholarly discussions, though. We already have a big enough problem crossing language barriers. And I must say that I find it amusing that Collins makes the point within a book using “apocalyptic” as a noun in its subtitle (which is what provoked Mike Bird’s comment in the aforementioned conversation).
I should note that I received this book courtesy of Abigail Cox at T & T Clark and it is on the docket to be reviewed! Thank you Abby!
Blog Action Day: (Ancient) Poverty
Today is blog action day and the theme is poverty. I would like to abbreviate it BAD: Poverty. I thought it might be interesting to look at an excerpt from the book I am currently reading, The Jesus Movement by Stegemann and Stegemann, that addresses poverty in the ancient world. Here is their reflection on the “relatively poor” (penētes) in Greco-Roman society:
Martial (12.32) states that the poor are thin from hunger and cold. And for the satirist Lucian of Samosata, the living conditions of these poor were defined by high levies and debts, freezing in winter, and illness, as well as the experience of being beaten by the powerful (Cat. 15). It is this very aspect of violence–even the violent appropriation of property–that shows the poor’s lack of power and rights. Assaults of powerful, rich people against their poor neighbors appear as stereotypical complaints in ancient texts, whether it is the rich occupying the property of an orphan (Philostratus Heroikos 285) or a rich man acquiring the cottage of a poor man (Apuleius Metamorphoses 9:35ff.). The poverty of fishermen was proverbial, and Lucian of Samosata (Fug. 13, 17) says that out of hard work artisans, “bent over their work from early morning to evening, cannot earn a living from such endeavors, in spite of their effort and exertion.” The Bible confirms this perception, for the itinerent “tent maker” Paul worked longer than usual–from sunrise to sunset–but he still needed the support of others in order to maintain a minimal existence. The situation of artisan families became dramatic when the husband and father died. Here again, Lucian describes the sad conditions for us rather precisely (Hetaera Dialogues 6). After the death of a coppersmith in Piraeus, his family experienced a drastic social decline. First, the widow had to sell the work tools and then try to secure a living for the family through spinning, weaving, and sewing: finally, however, the only course left was for the daughter to contribute to the family income as a hetaera [a sophisticated sort of prostitute]. [p. 91]
That gives us a little bit of an “on the ground” picture of poverty in the Greco-Roman world. The poor struggled to make ends meet and the rich took advantage of them. Not unfamiliar.
Interestingly, I never thought much of Paul as “poor” before. He seems to stand out. Though Paul is not a philosopher and his letters are situational, he certainly engages in the sort of thought and writing that is normally reserved for the wealthy. Most poor people struggled to merely provide for themselves and would have no time or resources to engage in theological discourse. Paul worked in his trade but was also supported by churches so that he could pursue his theological mission. With that in mind, Paul seems even more extraordinary.
Oh, how times have changed . . .
I was just reading a book review from 1973 for a republication of an important work scholarship on the life of Jesus. The following quote gave me a chuckle.
. . . its usefulness is somewhat limited by its exorbitant price ($5.95 for a 166 page paperback!)
Exorbitant! Wow.
"Hearing" the Bible and presuppositions
Brueggemann makes an interesting comment in his preface to The Message of the Psalms. He opens the book itself with two quotes, one from John Updike and another from Jose Miranda, Communism in the Bible, which goes like this:
It can surely be said that the Psalter presents a struggle of the just against the unjust.
Brueggemann identifies Miranda at the “extreme” but wants to point to the helpfulness of Miranda’s thought. For example, he says, “With force and regularity the questions of justice, righteousness, and equity are regularly [sic] brought to the throne, often to our surprise” (13). But what really caught my eye as I was reading was actually Brueggemann’s qualification in using Miranda’s quote:
I have not set out to do liberation theology, as Miranda might urge, for I have been committed to no goal but to hear the Psalms. [12-3]
This strikes me as a powerfully healthy perspective for a Bible scholar. As for myself, I am continually drawn to the ideas of liberation theology in its struggle for justice. So, when I read the Bible, I will certainly be informed by that perspective and be attentive to themes of justice, power, etc. On the other hand, as I am developing my scholarly tools at this stage of my career, I must find ways to “hear” the biblical texts without molding them to fit my ideological perspective (I realize I’m departing a bit from Brueggemann’s intention here).
Many folks are, of course, announcing the death of historical methods in studying the Bible. We live in postmodernism now (or “pomo” for the cool kids among us) . . . how can one presume that we can find the meaning to anything? Is it not arrogant to say that we might be able to reach the “intention” of a text? Is not our assumption of the meaning we find in any text a product of our social and cultural location as well as our ideological presuppositions?
Perhaps. Perhaps not. Perhaps we need a balance here. I am going to go out on a limb and say that there are some things that history can tell us. I think most people would agree (Bruno Bauer excepted) that Jesus actually existed as a real human being. We can discover certain things about the social, political, and cultural world that Jesus and his followers may have inhabited. Sure, we can debate about the meaning of our findings (this is the work of scholarship), but should we just throw our hands up in the air and say that our debates get us nowhere, let’s all just read the texts from our own perspectives? I don’t think so.
On the other hand, postmodernism and ideological criticism gives us a helpful corrective: we can’t know everything. Like my friend, Matt, I’m inclined to say it is helpful to recognize our presuppositions in our research. I think that if we are honest with ourselves and know what we would like to see in the texts, we can become more productive scholars. So, I am an Anabaptist with affections for liberationist and feminist readings of the biblical texts. I then seek out texts that challenge those perspectives and try to, as Brueggemann states, “hear” them.
I suppose what I now have to be careful of is that I don’t go so far to the extreme of looking for texts that challenge my perspective that I am more predisposed to see challenges than otherwise.
Page 123: About Adolf von Harnack
Jim Getz tagged me in a meme the other day. The idea is . . .
- Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more (no cheating!)
- Find page 123
- Find the first five sentences
- Post the next three sentences
- Tag five people
My nearest book is History of New Testament Research (vol. 2) by William Baird, which certainly does have 123 pages in it. Page 123 is in the middle of a section on “The Zenith of Liberalism: Adolf von Harnack (1851-1930),” in a chapter entitled, “The Triumph of Liberalism on the Continent.” Here are sentences 6-8 on the page:
The appointment had been contested by officials of the Prussian church who were shocked by Harnack’s skepticism concerning the miracles and the virgin birth. The appointment was supported by Bismarck and finally confirmed by Kaiser Wilhelm II. During his tenure at Berlin, Harnack taught a host of students, including Adolf Jülicher and Karl Barth, and Americans such as S. J. Case and E. J. Goodspeed.
An interesting set of sentences, I have to admit. It could have been much more boring: a list of titles, for example.
Like my friend, Chris, I am wary of the last bit of this meme: to tag five people. But I will nevertheless tag Matt and I don’t know who else hasn’t been tagged. If you haven’t been tagged and you’d like to be: have at it.
Huckabee and his "Theology Degree"
Like Michael Westmoreland-White and Jim West, I am skeptical of thinking a “theology degree” could qualify a person for presidency of the United States. I do see some potential benefits, depending on one’s training in that degree. For example, if a person focused on the relationship between theology and culture in American society or perhaps comparative religion, I think that they would be well-trained with some helpful intellectual tools to assess the religious landscape of the United States and how it affects public policy. I think a theology degree could possibly help an elected leader critically evaluate the use and abuse of religious language to make public policy decisions. Huckabee’s rhetoric is something else. It seems that Huckabee is posturing himself as the most Christian candidate out of all the Republicans. Note this NPR piece highlighting one of his ads in Iowa playing “Silent Night” in the background and talking about the “celebration of the birth of Christ.” I especially liked the comment from NPR’s Martin Kaste afterwards: “Now there’s a wily trick: you get ahead in the polls and then you declare Christmas!”
Check out how he’s talked about his “theology degree”:
I’m as strong on terror as anybody. In fact I think I’m stronger than most people because I truly understand the nature of the war that we are in with Islamofascism. These are people that want to kill us. It’s a theocratic war. And I don’t know if anybody fully understands that. I’m the only guy on that stage with a theology degree. I think I understand it really well. [Interview with Christian Broadcasting Network on 11/8/2007]
Or in answering the creepy questioner who asked “Do you believe this book?” [holding up a King James Version of the Bible] on the CNN YouTube Debate on 11/28/2007 (See James McGrath’s post):
And as the only person here (probably) on the stage with a theology degree, there are parts of it I don’t fully comprehend and understand, but I’m not supposed to, because the Bible is the revelation of an infinite God and no finite person is ever going to fully understand it. If they do, their God is too small.
He made a few mistakes while answering the YouTube question, like calling the bit about “plucking out your eye” “allegorical” (perhaps it is hyperbole, but not allegory) and his mention of Matthew 25 is a particular interpretation of the text, an exegetically questionable one. But the second quote here is clearly a better use of his alleged “theology degree” than the former.
As it turns out, however, Mike Huckabee does not have a “theology degree.” He spent a year at Southwestern Theological Seminary and dropped out to go work for televangelist James Robison. Check out this bit in a NY Times interview Zev Chafets had with Huckabee:
If young Mike Huckabee was ever rebellious or difficult, there’s no record of it. He preached his first sermon as a teenager, married his high-school sweetheart and went off to Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia. There he majored in speech and communications, worked at a radio station and earned his B.A. in a little more than two years. He spent a year at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Tex., before dropping out to work for the televangelist James Robison, who bought him his first decent wardrobe and showed him how to use television.
During this interview, Huckabee also made the faux pas of wondering aloud about Mormonism:
I asked Huckabee, who describes himself as the only Republican candidate with a degree in theology, if he considered Mormonism a cult or a religion. ‘‘I think it’s a religion,’’ he said. ‘‘I really don’t know much about it.’’
I was about to jot down this piece of boilerplate when Huckabee surprised me with a question of his own: ‘‘Don’t Mormons,’’ he asked in an innocent voice, ‘‘believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?’’
A theology degree doesn’t have to make you an expert in comparative religion. There are a lot of foci to a theology degree. I’m focusing on New Testament studies and by the time I finish my Master of Divinity this summer, I will not have had a single course on Mormonism. On the other hand . . . neither does it make you an expert on “Islamofascism” (a scary term in the mouth of someone running as the most Christian candidate for president), which Huckabee claims to “understand really well” because he is the only one with a “theology degree.” Even if he had a degree in theology, he would not necessarily be qualified to “understand really well” Islamofascism. Huckabee claimed both a degree that he didn’t have and expertise that such a degree would not have given him.
Mike Huckabee responds to the ensuing fuss:
I have a bachelor of arts in religion and a minor in communications in my undergraduate work. And then I have 46 hours on a master’s degree at Southwestern Theology Seminary. So, my degree as a theological degree is at the college level and then 46 hours toward a masters — three years of study of New Testament Greek, and then the rest of it, all in Seminary was theological studies, but my degree was actually in religion.
Did he really major in religion? Or communication like the NY Times article says? Is Mike Huckabee making his “theology degree” claims sound better by telling the world he was a religion major instead of a communications major? Ouachita Baptist University (who named its school of education after him) says that Huckabee graduated in 1976 with a degree in “pastoral ministry”:
Governor Huckabee and his wife, Janet, entered Ouachita as freshmen in the fall of 1973. The couple married following their freshman year. The Governor graduated from Ouachita in 1976 with a degree in pastoral ministry.
“Religion” sounds better than “pastoral ministry” when you’re in politics, I guess. Well, this mess clearly shows that Huckabee has some problems showing himself in an accurate light. But further, I’m just a little perturbed with how he used a “theology degree” to gain him some traction with voters. People already make assumptions about what my theology degree means. This just makes it worse.
Update (1/08/08): See also Dwight’s reflections on the issue at Versus Populum.
April DeConick: Conservative or Liberal Scholar?
That title sounds almost polemical. No, it’s meant rather to point to her own interesting post of a similar title (a couple weeks old, I have to admit… I’m still catching up on my blog reading after the quarter has ended). She talks about her experiences with interviewers from the press about her new book The Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really Says. She reflects on how she gets asked what religion she is, which is most likely not a question received by, say, classicists or other types of historians. Naturally, the idea behind the question is to see how the person’s faith has affected their scholarship and perhaps even the conclusions they have come to. Here’s an excerpt:
That said, when I answer the reporter’s question, “What religion are you?”, with “A liberal Christian” or “A progressive Christian”, there is usually a pause as the reporter responds, “but your book is conservative.”
How delightful. How fascinating. How paradoxical.
I am not a liberal or conservative scholar. I am a historian of religion whose main goal is to reconstruct the history and theology of the ancient Christians as accurately as I can. If the text had said that he was a hero, I would have supported that position. But it doesn’t. So I have to follow through, maintaining academic integrity even if this means that I have to take a position opposite many scholars whom I consider to be friends. Judas is still a demon, even in the gnostic tradition. Epiphanius was wrong, as are the scholars who wish it to be otherwise.
I am in complete agreement here. I often say that it may be my deep commitment to Anabaptism that leads me to study social issues in the New Testament and early Christianity, but that I’m not out to prove anything in particular. I don’t have an Anabaptist ax to grind (a funny image, come to think of it). I simply hope to explore and discover the evidence of what may have been the social situation of the early Christians. I want to be completely honest about what I find.
One of the things I find humorous about April’s interviewers’ reactions is: I’m not sure I’d say her conclusions about the Gospel of Judas are conservative. She goes against what the “liberal scholars” (emphasis on the quotation marks here) are saying, but does that make her “conservative”?
It seems to me that a “conservative” would literally want to “conserve” tradition. The traditional understanding of the Gospel of Judas is that Judas is understood to be a “hero.” See Irenaeus and Pseudo-Tertullian, for example (April refers, I think, to the 38th chapter of Panarion by Epiphanius of Salamis, for which I can’t seem to find a good online resource). The “conservative” understanding of the Gospel of Judas, it seems to me, would be that it portrays Judas as a hero. It was considered heresy, after all. So, if anything, the so-called “liberal scholars” on the Gospel of Judas are really “conserving” the traditional understanding of the Gospel of Judas to some extent, whether or not they do so intentionally (they may, however, disagree with the value judgment of the traditional understanding–i.e., that it is heresy). April offers a “liberal” understanding in that it suggests a nontraditional view of the Gospel of Judas: that Judas is not the hero for the gnostics.
But the point is: April is not driven to find a nontraditional view and thus be a “liberal” scholar in this way, but rather that she is simply investigating and reporting what she finds. Just goes to show again the (non)usefulness of “conservative” and “liberal” as identifiers for scholarship.
Update (12/20/2007): See this post from April today regarding Robert Eisenman’s misreading of her work (he calls her a “theologically-minded scholar”).
Is unbelief the biggest threat in the world?
That is what my seminary’s esteemed president, Richard Mouw, wrote yesterday on his blog. He was reflecting on the words of Paul Ramsey, who once said in a presentation he gave that nuclear proliferation was the “second biggest threat” in the world:
In the question and answer period that followed, a bishop who was known for his liberal theological views posed the obvious question to Professor Ramsey: “You kept referring to the arms race as the second biggest threat to the human race, but I don’t think I heard you tell us what the first biggest threat is.” “Oh, yes,” Professor Ramsey replied. “The first biggest threat. Well, it is something that you probably don’t know anything about. It is the problem of unbelief!”I regularly remind myself of the lesson contained in that remark. I follow closely the declarations of mainline Protestant leaders, especially those of my own Presbyterian denomination. There are many of those declarations with which I agree. Indeed, I doubt that anyone can fault me for failing to take at least some of the issues they care about quite seriously. On many occasions I have joined others in speaking out about peace in the Middle East, global warming, torture, the war in Iraq, and racism–to name some of more obvious topics.
These are important issues to address. Working to promote justice and peace is a high priority for followers of Christ. But as urgent as these issues are for the health of the societies in which we live, we need to be clear about the fact that they are symptoms of a deeper problem–the unbelief that is in turn an expression of a rebellious spirit that permeates all of our lives, including the systemic dimensions of human interaction.
My comment in reply:
Hi Dr. Mouw! I appreciate your post, but I do have to make one qualification. The word “unbelief” has, I think, been hijacked by a certain brand of Christianity that has emphasized belief and belief only. That is, it emphasizes a mental and/or emotional state of trust. But my understanding of the New Testament’s conception of belief is more holistic. Biblical “belief” is tied in with discipleship and living a transformed life according to the Spirit.I think this is an important distinction because you state that important problems like violence are “symptoms” of unbelief. Well, there are plenty of folks who supposedly “believe” but are, in fact, the cause of violence (I could point to many in American politics, but I won’t). The root problem, I think, is not necessarily “unbelief” in and of itself, as most people might understand it, but lives that are not transformed by true and holistic belief.
Of course, another important question that Christians must face is the fact that many who do not believe in Jesus are not causing these “symptoms” of violence, poverty, racism, but are instead working hard to transform the world for the better.
To say that “unbelief” is the deeper problem and that these other issues are merely the symptoms implies a direct relationship, so that when one “cures” the “unbelief,” one will rid the world of the secondary symptoms. Since many Christians do not make a positive difference with these symptoms, and many who are not Christians do make a difference, we can see that the equation is perhaps too simple.
-
Elsewhere . . .- Blog titles beginning with "A" to "Z" on your reader Mark Goodacre
- Of making many books there is no end Chris Brady
- Free Online: The Liddell-Scott Jones Lexicon S and C
- Does Higher Criticism Attempt to “Destroy the Bible”? II agathos
- Steven J. Friesen and the Identity of Satan’s Throne in Pergamum alan
- Does Higher Criticism Attempt to “Destroy the Bible”? agathos
- Bloomsbury buys Continuum Mark Goodacre
- Imperial America Peter J. Leithart
- C.F.D. Moule on the Birth of the New Testament d. miller
- Responding to Kostenberger (with comparisons to Marshall) Jeremiah
-
As a member of RevGalBlogPals, I am committed to building a supportive online community for women clergy, women church professionals, and women in religious life.
Research assisted by: