The 2011 Scripture Awards, or “The Scriptars”

After a week on the web with my own site it became blazingly apparent it was time to fill a niche no one had noticed before: there were no awards granted for Bible verses. There are still not any awards for Bible verses in the sense that particular verses or passages are voted on and receive honors such as, “Best Pauline Verse Dealing With Justification,” “Best Jesus Parable Concerned With Agricultural Motifs,” “Best Miracle: Multiplication of Food Category” – those are coming – but there are now awards which are granted to people, events or groups in which the award is a Bible verse or verses. These verses are assigned to a category to help explain or make sense of people, events, or achievements which took place in the year 2011 and to place them in biblical context.

These awards are given out according to my memory of events in 2011 – I forget a lot now and so major happenings could indeed be missing – and the crying need for a biblical perspective to explain, make sense of, and understand the human condition. They are also awards which reward good behavior and events and draw attention to bad behavior, one with an award which shouts out “well done my good and faithful servant” and the other which cries out at the top of its biblical lungs “repent!” Because the entertainment industry honors more people more often for more reasons and in more categories than any other field,  I am inevitably drawn to call these awards “Scriptars,” in an homage to the grandest award of all, the Oscars,  and because it incorporates most of the word Scripture.

These are the ten Scriptars to be granted this year:

1.       The No Longer Two But One Flesh Scriptar: Matthew 19:5-6: “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

The first Scriptar is awarded to Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries. I do not watch “reality” television – America’s Next Top Model excepted – and so I do not know if these crazy kids were lusting after each other, attempting to create a ratings bonanza, or hoping (or pretending) to be in love. As Jesus indicates in Matthew, you need to take marriage seriously. If this is not something you are interested in, I encourage you to take Zsa Zsa Gabor’s advice: “Getting divorced just because you don't love a man is almost as silly as getting married just because you do.”  You need to hang in there more than 72 days, right kids?

2.       It is not for you to know the times or periods Scriptar: Acts 1:6-7: “So when they had come together, they asked him, ‘Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?’ He replied, ‘It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.’”

The second Scriptar goes to Harold Camping and I almost feel bad about giving it to him, since he has probably had as much as he can take, but then again, why does he feel the need to predict the end of the world? Predicting the end of the world has riled up Christians for a couple of millennia, so you would think that we might be ready to get over it. Being a frail old man does not give you the right to confuse your followers, having them drop out of school and sell their possessions, and amuse the masses, to the point that Christianity becomes an institution worthy of mockery. I ask Camping and all those who are rousing themselves to predict a new date for the end of the world to read these verses every day.

3.       In return for all the joy that we feel Scriptar: 1 Thessalonians 3:9: “How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy that we feel before our God because of you?”

How do you give a Bible verse to the man who has memorized all of them? The third Scriptar is for Tim Tebow. He annoys, irritates and bugs people because of his faith, and those are just the Christians.  I have to admit that his type of  Christian witnessing grates on me, but it is hard not to acknowledge what a fine young man he is and how hard he is working at being a fine young man. When I stand back from my supposedly mature critical irony, I must accept that he creates a lot of joy, even for me, with his earnestness and pure love of playing football. And since there is more joy in heaven, does he not reveal a little slice of heaven? But just a little slice: how is it that someone with those big, muscular arms cannot throw a ball down the field on a consistent basis? That’s why there is more joy in heaven: I am quite sure all the passes are on target in heaven.

4.       Esteem them very highly in love Scriptar: 1 Thessalonians 5: 12-13: “But we appeal to you, brothers and sisters, to respect those who labor among you, and have charge of you in the Lord and admonish you; esteem them very highly in love because of their work. Be at peace among yourselves.”

I received a Christmas letter a few days ago from Larry and Shannon Hurtado only to find out that Larry was now Professor Emeritus at University of Edinburgh! How could this be!? He is old enough to retire? Larry, author of One God, One Lord and Lord Jesus Christ, amongst many other books, has been one of the outstanding New Testament scholars of the past 30 years, devout, devoted and dedicated, and, as doctoral students and newly minted PhDs knew, he was an outstanding mentor, willing to give his time, knowledge, insight and energy to help young scholars get jobs and get established. I esteem him most highly as a scholar, and because he aided me in putting together grant proposals and applying for jobs, but even more because he admonished me once as a young man to get my life together when it was chaotic. This is always a risk to friendships, but he was willing to take this risk because some things are a lot more important than scholarship. The fourth Scriptar goes to Larry Hurtado, whom I am certain will continue to write excellent books and articles and give lectures the world over.

5.        I have fought the good fight Scriptar: 2 Timothy 4:7: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”

The fifth Scriptar goes to Alan Segal, long time professor at Barnard College and the Ingeborg Rennert Professor of Jewish Studies when he retired, who died on February 13, 2011. Alan Segal was a terrific scholar, funny, incisive and smart, and he was one of a number of Jewish scholars of the late 2oth and early 21^st centuries who were working on the New Testament texts and Judaism, amongst whom I would include Adele Reinhartz and Amy Jill Levine, and bringing them to life in new and fresh ways.  Amongst his excellent books were Rebecca's Children: Judaism and Christianity in the Roman World,  Paul the Convert: The Apostasy and Apostolate of Saul of Tarsus and Life After Death: A History of the Afterlife in Western Religions. I last saw him and heard him speak when we hosted him at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity in St. Paul, MN for the Year of St. Paul lecture series in 2009. I had the honor of introducing him and his talk was challenging, funny and enlightening.  He will be missed by biblical scholars, but much more by his family and friends.

6.       If you do what is wrong, you should be afraid Scriptar: Romans 13:4: “But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority does not bear the sword in vain!”

There were many significant moral questions which arose this year with respect to the continued use of the death penalty in the USA and, in a related way, with the execution of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. I believe it is time to stop using the death penalty and while I have no sympathy for bin Laden and his deeds, I also took no joy in celebrating his death. However we feel about the government’s actions, though, Paul is correct, “if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid.” The sixth Scriptar goes to Osama bin Laden.  And to all of those who would consider following in his steps in 2012: be afraid, be very afraid. Or better yet, Repent!

7.       Be on your guard against all kinds of greed Scriptar: Luke 12: 15: “And he said to them, ‘Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.’”

Occupy Wall Street placed a focus on the moral weaknesses of capitalism, a political system which seemed to have escaped unscathed after the fall of the Iron Curtain, only to begin to stumble if not collapse under the weight of greed. There are worse miscreants than others in the system, bankers, stockbrokers, and institutional investors who care little for jobs and employees and only for the bottom line, and they do receive the seventh Scriptar, but all of us who fight with greed need to know that we could receive this award at any time.

8.       Do not despise one of these little ones Scriptar: Matthew 18:10: “Take care that you do not despise one of these little ones; for, I tell you, in heaven their angels continually see the face of my Father in heaven.”

Caylee Anthony died in 2008, but her mother was put on trial and acquitted of her death in 2011. Caylee’s name became known to most of us in 2011. Caylee is one of too many children who are abused, neglected and harmed every year.  Our great task as adults is to care for those more vulnerable, trusting, weak and in need of protection from abuse and harm. The eighth Scriptar is given to the memory of Caylee Anthony and all those children, known and unknown, who suffered last year from abuse and neglect. May they find solace and comfort in the coming year and all the years and never know abuse again.  

9.       They would search for God Scriptar: Acts 17: 26-27: “From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us.

Christopher Hitchens was a fierce critic of Christianity, even the much beloved Mother Theresa, and a declared atheist. I truly liked Hitchens’ writing, which I found fierce and honest, and though I disagreed with him on the most fundamental of issues, whether God exists, I like to think that he is a worthy recipient of the “they would search for God ” Scriptar. In his writing he kept Christians honest here on earth and showed to me that he was perhaps groping for him and hoping to find him with his unrelenting prose. I think God will make certain his honesty is divine in the afterlife.

10.   We told you beforehand that we were to suffer persecution Scriptar: Philippians 3:4: “In fact, when we were with you, we told you beforehand that we were to suffer persecution; so it turned out, as you know.”

The New Testament especially is full of passages detailing the reality of persecution, but this passage from Philippians was chosen since it seems to accept the inevitability of it for Christians. This final Scriptar goes to all of those Christians persecuted in various places throughout the world,  but also to all those people persecuted for reasons of birth, gender, religion or sexual identity anywhere in the world. The constant reality of persecution and suffering does not mean we should ever lessen our support to aid and comfort those who suffer and to do all we can as individuals and nations to make certain persecution comes to an end.

These are the awards for this year, but I would certainly appreciate other nominees whom I might have overlooked.  There could be new categories added to the awards for next year and those suggestions would also be welcomed.

 John W. Martens

Follow me on Twitter @johnwmartens

Nothing Says Christmas Like a Family Fight

Jesus' Birthday

This much we know: Jesus was born, unlike Peter Frampton who just “comes alive.” We can, that is, cast aside those few scholars and others who would claim Jesus was a figment or creation of ancient imagination. His birth, however, just celebrated raises many questions, some of which might only be settled by faith. I think it would be impossible, for instance, to prove in any reasonable way that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary unless the claims of faith and tradition are given priority. It is here that believers and others who accept the birth of Jesus, but not the miraculous claims surrounding his conception and birth and his Incarnate being, would part ways. Jesus was born, we might all acknowledge, but the manner and means by which that birth came about divide believers from non-believers.

This is a reality when one practices biblical theology. Some of the claims of theology cannot be grounded in history or reason alone.  And yet, even those like me, who accept the theological claims of the Church and Tradition find the push to understand the claims of the Church apart from history and reason troubling. In fact, sometimes we are being asked to accept claims about the Bible and Tradition which the Church does not ask of us, pushing to accept as historical that which is ephemeral, and being asked to engage in a game of sacrificium intellectus to prove that we are genuinely Christians or Catholics. These sorts of claims engage in a biblical fundamentalism because they tacitly propose that the Church is correct about every claim it makes;  that all claims or propositions made by the Church are equally significant and must be believed; and that to be true a claim must be literally and factually true.

Here is an example from this Christmas season about the date of Christmas, that is, Jesus’ birthdate. As far as I am concerned, Jesus might have been born on December 25, but, and here my bias will be stated clearly, I do not care on what day he was born. I am happy to celebrate Jesus’ birth and if the day is off by a week, a month or a season, I do not see what matter it is. The significance is to celebrate the coming of the savior of the world.  Dr. Taylor Marshall cares, though, and dedicates three blog posts  to establishing that Jesus’ birthday must have been on December 25^th. One is on the biblical evidence, another on the evidence of Mary and the apostolic tradition and another on the thoughts of Pope Benedict XVI.  The problem is not just that Dr. Marshall’s evidence is minimal or absent, but that it creates a sense that this is a weighty matter to which everyone must assent. After all, can the Bible, Mary, the Church Fathers and the Pope be wrong? We do not have to consider an answer to this question because, while the Pope and the Church Fathers consider this question, the Bible and Mary do not.

First of all, Dr. Marshall wants to establish that Jesus’ birthday was not created through alignment with the pagan festivals of Saturnalia and Sol Invictus. I think he is correct on this score.  Andrew McGowan writes,

The most loudly touted theory about the origins of the Christmas date(s) is that it was borrowed from pagan celebrations. The Romans had their mid-winter Saturnalia festival in late December; barbarian peoples of northern and western Europe kept holidays at similar times. To top it off, in 274 C.E., the Roman emperor Aurelian established a feast of the birth of Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun), on December 25. Christmas, the argument goes, is really a spin-off from these pagan solar festivals. According to this theory, early Christians deliberately chose these dates to encourage the spread of Christmas and Christianity throughout the Roman world: If Christmas looked like a pagan holiday, more pagans would be open to both the holiday and the God whose birth it celebrated.

Despite its popularity today, this theory of Christmas’s origins has its problems. It is not found in any ancient Christian writings, for one thing. Christian authors of the time do note a connection between the solstice and Jesus’ birth: The church father Ambrose (c. 339–397), for example, described Christ as the true sun, who outshone the fallen gods of the old order. But early Christian writers never hint at any recent calendrical engineering; they clearly don’t think the date was chosen by the church. Rather they see the coincidence as a providential sign, as natural proof that God had selected Jesus over the false pagan gods.

So if the date was not chosen by an attempt to supersede or draft in the wake of pagan festivals, at least not primarily, what was the evidence for December 25^th?

Marshall wants to locate biblical evidence for Jesus’ birthday, which is difficult because none exists, that is, no evidence in the Bible that says, “Jesus was born in the month of December,” or “Jesus was born in the Jewish month of Kislev.” None of the Gospel authors or authors of the Epistles considered it significant enough to mention.  Indeed, only two of the Gospel authors, Matthew and Luke, describe the birth of Jesus and they do so in remarkably different fashion. Their purposes, apart from outlining the miraculous happenings associated with Jesus’ birth, were to place Jesus theologically in the chronology of salvation history, as the new Moses – Matthew – or the new Samuel – Luke, which is not to say this is all that Jesus was, but this was part of locating Jesus as the fulfillment of all the hopes and promises associated with the prophets of old.  Neither of the Infancy narratives is particularly concerned with historical matters and the only way Marshall can create a birthday for Jesus is to speculate on when John the Baptist was conceived and born, a process fraught with difficulties, and then date Jesus’ birth six months later. It is also biblical evidence much dependent upon the Protoevangelium of James,  a terrific 2^nd century source, but not biblical or a source I would place much dependence upon historically.  This does not give us much solid, historical ground on which to stand.

In his second post, Marshall turns to Mary and asks,

Now ask yourself this: Would the Blessed Virgin Mary ever forget the birth of her Son Jesus Christ who was conceived without human seed, proclaimed by angels, born in a miraculous way, and visited by Magi? She knew from the moment of His divine Incarnation in her womb that He was the Son of God and Messiah. Would she ever forget that day?*

I suspect she would not forget that day, but clearly she did not note the calendar day on which it occurred or the biblical authors of the Infancy Narratives did not find it important enough to mention, since they do not mention it. Marshall then says,

Next, ask yourself this: Would the Apostles be interested in hearing Mary tell the story? Of course! Do you think the holy Apostle who wrote, "And the Word was made flesh" was not interested in the minute details of His birth? 

The final question is an intriguing one since the Apostle John, to whom the Gospel is attributed, might have been interested in the minute details of Jesus’ birth, as were the other apostles, which makes it all the more remarkable that he does not note them in any way, since his Gospel lacks an Infancy Narrative of any kind. From this lack of evidence, literally, there is no evidence from the apostles regarding Mary's claims of Jesus' date of birth, Marshall concludes:

So the exact birthday (Dec 25) and the time (midnight) would have been known in the first century. Moreover, the Apostles would have asked about it and would have, no doubt, commemorated the blessed event that both Matthew and Luke chronicle for us.

But, if it was known, why did they not mention the date? We have, it cannot be stressed enough, no 1^st century evidence for this date, or for any other date. As Andrew McGowan says, tracing the development of the date of Jesus’ birthday:

Finally, in about 200 C.E., a Christian teacher in Egypt makes reference to the date Jesus was born. According to Clement of Alexandria, several different days had been proposed by various Christian groups. Surprising as it may seem, Clement doesn’t mention December 25 at all. Clement writes: “There are those who have determined not only the year of our Lord’s birth, but also the day; and they say that it took place in the 28th year of Augustus, and in the 25th day of [the Egyptian month] Pachon [May 20 in our calendar]...And treating of His Passion, with very great accuracy, some say that it took place in the 16th year of Tiberius, on the 25th of Phamenoth [March 21]; and others on the 25th of Pharmuthi [April 21] and others say that on the 19th of Pharmuthi [April 15] the Savior suffered. Further, others say that He was born on the 24th or 25th of Pharmuthi [April 20 or 21].

McGowan then writes,

The earliest mention of December 25 as Jesus’ birthday comes from a mid-fourth-century Roman almanac that lists the death dates of various Christian bishops and martyrs. The first date listed, December 25, is marked: natus Christus in Betleem Judeae: “Christ was born in Bethlehem of Judea.”

It is possible that Hippolytus in the early 3^rd century and Clement of Alexandria, in the late 2^nd or early 3^rd century, earlier claimed that Jesus’ birthday fell on December 25^th, but we still are not dealing with historical records, and neither of these calculations point to biblical, Marian or apostolic evidence for the date. In addition, though, in the 3^rd and 4^th centuries there was no agreed upon date for Jesus' birthday.

Marshall is getting close to the truth when he acknowledges that the date for Jesus’ birthday was dependent upon some other significant dates:

Also note in the quote above the special significance of March 25, which marks the death of Christ (March 25 was seen to correspond to the Hebrew month Nisan 14 - the traditional date of crucifixion).

Christ, as the perfect man, was believed to have been conceived and died on the same day (March 25). In his Chronicon, Saint Hippolytus states that the earth was created on March 25, 5500 B.C.  Thus, March 25 was identified by the Church Fathers as:

• the Creation date of the World
• the date of the Annunciation and Incarnation of Christ
• the date of the Death of Christ our Savior

What do these dates mean? Pope Benedict XVI unpacks these same dates to draw significant theological connections:

In 2000, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger wrote in his book The Spirit of the Liturgy that a Jewish tradition holds that Abraham almost sacrificed Isaac on Mount Moriah on March 25. Mount Moriah is Jerusalem (see 2 Chron 34:1), and March 25 is the date on which Christ was crucified on the solar calendar (Easter like the Mosaic Passover is calculated by a lunar phenomenon). I think that you can see that there is a geographical and temporal parallel here. We see that the Father willingly offers His only-begotten Son.

Cardinal Ratzinger also noted that March 25 was thought to be the first day of creation. Hence, March 25 has a cosmic significance. His Eminence also describes how the zodiac and Aries relates to this cosmic significance in the Spring, but that is a bit too much for our purposes. The important thing is that March 25 was the traditional date for the creation of the world, for the sacrifice of Abraham, and for the sacrifice of God the Son.

On pages 107-108, Cardinal Ratzinger makes the observation that the day of Christ's death was also reckoned as the day he was conceived by the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary. March 25, then was the annunciation of Gabriel. Add nine months to that and you arrive at December 25 as His birthday.

None of these dates, though, need be historically reliable, but the proper calendrical date is not the point; the point is to establish theologically significant dates and dates upon which to celebrate these events. Putting too much historical or calendrical weight on any of these celebrations crashes the whole edifice to the ground.

McGowan, in line with Marshall and Pope Benedict XVI, sees these same factors at work, but these are spiritual and theological factors, not historical claims:

Thus, we have Christians in two parts of the world calculating Jesus’ birth on the basis that his death and conception took place on the same day (March 25 or April 6) and coming up with two close but different results (December 25 and January 6).

Connecting Jesus’ conception and death in this way will certainly seem odd to modern readers, but it reflects ancient and medieval understandings of the whole of salvation being bound up together. One of the most poignant expressions of this belief is found in Christian art. In numerous paintings of the angel’s Annunciation to Mary—the moment of Jesus’ conception—the baby Jesus is shown gliding down from heaven on or with a small cross (see photo of detail from Master Bertram’s Annunciation scene); a visual reminder that the conception brings the promise of salvation through Jesus’ death.

The notion that creation and redemption should occur at the same time of year is also reflected in ancient Jewish tradition, recorded in the Talmud. The Babylonian Talmud preserves a dispute between two early-second-century C.E. rabbis who share this view, but disagree on the date: Rabbi Eliezer states: “In Nisan the world was created; in Nisan the Patriarchs were born; on Passover Isaac was born...and in Nisan they [our ancestors] will be redeemed in time to come.” (The other rabbi, Joshua, dates these same events to the following month, Tishri.) Thus, the dates of Christmas and Epiphany may well have resulted from Christian theological reflection on such chronologies: Jesus would have been conceived on the same date he died, and born nine months later.

In the end we are left with a question: How did December 25 become Christmas? We cannot be entirely sure. Elements of the festival that developed from the fourth century until modern times may well derive from pagan traditions. Yet the actual date might really derive more from Judaism—from Jesus’ death at Passover, and from the rabbinic notion that great things might be expected, again and again, at the same time of the year—than from paganism. Then again, in this notion of cycles and the return of God’s redemption, we may perhaps also be touching upon something that the pagan Romans who celebrated Sol Invictus, and many other peoples since, would have understood and claimed for their own too.

Why is it necessary to create historical evidence where none exists? It is not necessary, unless one places too much credence in spiritual truth as equitable with historical veracity. This much I know: Jesus was born on some day and whether it was December 25^th or some other day, I am happy to celebrate it.

John W. Martens

Follow me on Twitter @johnwmartens

Biblical Studies: Under Attack or Just Misunderstood?

Some of what you will read here in this post is shared at America Magazine’s “The Good Word,” where I have blogged since 2007.  I have enjoyed the practice and habit of blogging immensely at “The Good Word,” which gave me the freedom to write on the topics and passages that I saw fit and, significantly, gave me a built in audience, since America Magazine has built up a reputation and readership in the century and more it has been in print. It is this readership which I will miss the most, since I enjoyed the comments, ideas, and good will which was generated at the site by readers. It made “The Good Word” a civilized site, which it remains, and which is sometimes too rare on the web, but which mirrors the purposes of the Bible, to transcend ephemeral differences amongst people and get to the true heart of matters. I hope that this new blog, www.biblejunkies.com, will be able to mimic the goodwill and kindness found at “The Good Word.”

“The Good Word” gave me the occasion to interpret the Bible in connection with the daily and weekly Lectionary readings and in the context of popular culture, music and movies especially, and current Church news and events. I am immensely grateful to Tim Reidy, the online editor, for offering me an opportunity to write for the magazine and I hope that, in some form or another, I will continue to contribute to America Magazine in the future, as Tim and I have discussed. So why leave “The Good Word” and start my own website when a perfectly good one exists at which I do nothing but post blog entries?

The move to my own website is connected with my desire to write more directly about my scholarly interests and my personal interests, which intersect in a number of ways. I began to feel that the things on my mind, biblically at least, were less connected to the cycle of the Lectionary readings and more to my academic study of the Bible. I did not feel that my overarching interest of exploring the intersection of Judaism, Christianity and the Greco-Roman world could be examined at “The Good Word” without imposing my interests on a blog dedicated to “Scripture and Preaching.” Since I began to study the Bible as an undergraduate student, I have been curious about the way in which Christianity “emerged” from Judaism and the cultural, religious and political factors which influenced Christianity as it developed. These influences leave their marks all over the New Testament and other early Christian literature, which developed in a culturally and religiously diverse world.

The whole conception of “development” in early Christianity, though, has come under attack in the Church and this has had a negative impact not only on the reception of early Christianity and its texts today, but on understanding the tension between tradition and change in every age of Christianity. This has also lead to increased attacks on biblical studies itself, which is seen as a culprit for delving into the historical origins of texts and doctrines, and some of which I fended off while writing for America Magazine. These attacks, though, have become a part of the way in which biblical studies has been sidelined in the Church.

Biblical studies has been marginalized as “atheological,” concerned only with historical minutiae, and interested in destroying the faith of the faithful. This attitude has been taken in a couple of ways. Some biblical scholarship, of a popular sort, has become overly pious and resolutely and systematically uninterested in scholarly, historical research. On the other hand, even in quarters sympathetic to  biblical studies, there has been a turn to spiritual reflection on biblical texts, with which I am sympathetic since this is much of what I did at America Magazine, for instance, but historical and scholarly study of the Bible has been sidelined as antithetical to such reflection or beyond the powers and interests of ordinary readers. This is nonsense, on both counts. We cannot and should not turn back from the gains made by the scholarly study of the Bible, even if we acknowledge that some biblical studies do not interest average readers. In what scholarly or research field is there not cutting edge research which will never gain a wide audience until it is disseminated in a broader form at some later time? Readers are capable, though, of understanding the field of biblical studies and we should not be creating pious fairytales to distract them or  get lost in soft, gauzy stained glass streams of light because ordinary Christians will have their faith shaken or could not understand the nuances of scholarship.

The Bible as a source of history has been misused and will continue to be misused, since every field has practitioners who are good and bad, but the results of historical critical scholarship have often been stunning: the relocation of Jesus as a 1^st century Jew, not alien to his culture and religion; the renewed appreciation for Judaism as a living religion; the Easter experience as the location of the origin of the Church; Jesus’ scenario of the future as that of an imminent end; and the Gentile mission as the means by which the Church would bring the whole world into the covenant as imagined by the prophets in undisclosed terms centuries before them.

The study of the Bible, though, has come to be treated as an apologetic sourcebook and technique in Catholic circles, in which texts are mined for doctrines which are proudly held aloft, until they will be used as cudgels, either against Catholics with whom they disagree or other Christians, whom increasingly in some circles are known as “heretics”. It is to our great shame that in a time when ecumenical scholarship ought to be increasing, and still is in many ways and in many places, there are those who wish to take a great, giant step backward for understanding and interpretation. The rise of fundamentalism in biblical studies in both Catholicism and Evangelical circles must be countered on a consistent and regular basis. Christians of all kinds must be working together to interpret and understand the biblical text for the sake of the truth not to score cheap, apologetic points.

What I have just outlined is part of my goal at this website, shelved under “scholarly interests,” a goal to explore the scholarly study of the Bible for ordinary, that is, not professional, readers, in every way possible, through blog posts dissecting current stories on the Bible, new books, and new research and findings. The other part of my goal is what I meant earlier by “personal” interests. There are any number of sources about which one can find out the background and life story of athletes and actors, politicians and authors. I, personally, love to listen to biographies even about people who ultimately, I find, are shallow and boring. But who is tracking the biographies of the practitioners and professors of biblical studies, who are definitely not boring or shallow? I want to comprehend why people were and are attracted to the countercultural pursuit of biblical studies and to preserve their stories. At what age did people become attracted to the study of the Bible? What attracted them? The money? The power? The glory? The truth?

You can find podcasts on athletes and comedians and cultural movers and shakers – most of which I love – but I will be starting a series of podcasts on biblical scholars. The series will begin in 2012 and I will start with friends and teachers of mine and then begin to cast my net wide, like the early Church moving from Galilee to Jerusalem to Rome. It has been a great regret of mine that there is no audio record of so many of the great biblical scholars of the 20^th century, including teachers of mine who are no longer with us. I want to make sure that a record is made for the 21^st century. People tell me that a good podcast is about 20-30 minutes, but you can be assured that as professors like to talk and that as professors like nothing so much as to talk about their own field, my podcasts will be much longer. You can quake in fear, or have a little faith, but check back here soon for the first podcast and more blog posts.

John W. Martens

Follow me on Twitter @johnwmartens