Which Commandments?

As I reflect on this class, I am faced with the hypothetical question: Will people ever get tired of reinventing the Bible? Is there a limit to be reached? Looking at all the topics we have covered this semester, it seems that there is no limit to how the Bible can be reinterpreted and reworked. The Bible undoubtedly will continue to be influential in one way or another, whether it be content, themes, style, or something else. Until this week we have covered topics that have mostly stayed within the realm of Christianity and Judaism. I had not really considered how New Religious Movements (NRMs) also use the Bible, though it seems somewhat obvious after reading about them. Eugene V. Gallagher’s book Reading and Writing Scripture in New Religious Movements provided me with some insight into how NRMs draw from the Bible in many different ways. One way that stuck out to me was how the ten commandments found in the Bible inspired NRMs to adopt similar commandment style lists.

Gallagher goes into details about two different texts that utilize the style of the ten commandments: The Holy Piby and The White Man’s Bible. The Holy Piby was produced in 1924 and aimed to “reconnect Africans in the diaspora with their true heritage and their own God” (113). The White Man’s Bible was created in 1984 and also speaks to a specific racial group. Both saw merit in a biblical ten commandments style list for telling their community members what was required of them based on their ideology. Rogers, the author of The Holy Piby, even claims the same God as the Bible and is meant to be seen as a prophet like Moses. Interestingly, Klassen, the author of The White Man’s Bible, rejects the Bible and its God, though still borrows the style of authoritative commandments. This borrowing of the ten commandments does not seem to be uncommon. This Wikipedia article gives us a glance at other lists of commandments that people have come up with on their own.

Looking at these various lists of commandments from the wikipedia article, it is clear that the biblical ten commandments have an incredible cultural impact. People see them and desire to define their own personal codes of conduct and belief. Even Richard Dawkins lays out his ten commandments in his book The God Delusion. Ten commandment style lists are not just unique to religion, but are also utilized by individuals. As long as the Bible remains culturally relevant, it is clear that people will continue to reinvent.

What Does Separation of Church and State Mean?

Recently, the American Library Assn. released their list of the top ten banned and challenged books of 2015. Many books were expected, with people complaining of sexually explicit content and offensive language. However, one book stood out as being different from the others. Yes, coming in at number six on the list is the Bible. The arguments used to oppose the Bible did not center on its content being inappropriate, rather that its presence in public schools violated separation of church and state.

This argument against the Bible’s mere presence in a public school shows that our understanding of separation of church and state is flawed. There is a difference between having a religious text in a library and promoting belief in a religion. It is important to see this distinction when we think about separation of church and state. Mark Chancey’s “Reading, Writing & Religion II” further calls for understanding of this distinction as he shows how Texas public schools struggle to teach appropriate Bible courses. A significant stumbling block for Texas public schools in teaching Bible courses is the lack of guidelines and training available to teachers. Many teachers just do not know how to teach a Bible course without a Christian bias.

Whether it is a Bible class or a Bible in the library, a bias promoting religion is not inherently present. A boundary has to be crossed for there to be a violation of separation between church and state. Many classes taught in Texas public schools cross this boundary, and it is a problem that needs to be addressed. However, I find it more unlikely that libraries are crossing this boundary. Unless a library only has books that promote a certain religion, I see no problem with there being a Bible or a Qur’an or any religious text in a public library. James LaRue, director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom refers to this list of challenged books, saying “As a society, considering an “index of complaints” helps us to understand who we are and where we’re going. Cultures change over time, and the things we fear, or celebrate, change with them.” The Bible’s appearance on this list for the first time as well as other books being challenged based on a “religious viewpoint” shows that a concern with religion is on the rise.

Sources:

Ban the Bible? The top 10 banned or challenged books of 2015

‘The Holy Bible’ Makes Library Association’s List Of Most ‘Challenged’ Books

Defining Diversity

Reading, Writing & Religion II

Cruz's Christian Campaign

How do we as scholars of religion respond when the Bible is used by politicians? Jacques Berlinerblau spends some time pondering this question in his article “The Bible in Presidential Elections”. He notes that it is difficult due to how the Bible is used in a scholarly setting is so much different from how the Bible is used in the public square. To sum up this disconnect, he says “When a professional biblical scholar reads a verse, she sees a question. When a politician reads a verse, she sees an answer”(15).

In the current presidential race, Ted Cruz is relying heavily on the Bible and his Christian faith for answers to contemporary questions. On his campaign website you can sign up to be a part of his National Prayer Team, where you’ll receive a weekly email with prayer requests and a short devotional. One of the nine issues emphasized on Cruz’s website is religious liberty, which interestingly seems to focus on the liberties of just one religion - evangelical Christianity.

Berlinerblau warned of sermonizing candidates like Rick Perry in his article, saying “either biblical knowledge ventures forth from the cloistered sanctuary of specialization or its obsolescence in these matters of concern will continue to be the norm”(36). It seems that Berlinerblau’s conclusion was correct. Ted Cruz is a serious candidate and according to one survey, nearly half of Americans believe the Bible has too little influence in society. Apparently not enough scholars of religion have been questioning Cruz’s persistent use of Christianity and the Bible. A significant point made by Berlinerblau demands a distinction between a “candidate leaning on the Bible and leaning on the interpretative tradition spawned by the Bible” (23). I believe Cruz greatly leans on evangelical interpretation. He isn’t examining the Bible and considering different meanings and ambiguities. He grew up in an evangelical household, learning conservative theology and interpretation from a young age. This theology is more relevant to his Christian worldview than the Bible. It is important that people see this, and realize the Bible is not a text that gives answers.

A Place in Pop Culture

Because the texts of the Bible are ancient, Christians take it upon themselves to read meaning into them that is relevant to today’s cultural context. Revolve does just that, providing extra-biblical content that provides clear “biblical” answers to modern day issues relevant to a teenager’s life. These advice columns and quizzes are side by side with biblical texts, giving them a strange feeling of legitimacy. Revolve begins by defining itself:"This Bible is about radical devotion and revolutionary people … (it's about) rising to the challenge of faith in the extreme." This simplified summary of what the Bible is allows for a reader to see themselves within the story of the Bible. From this a reader can interpret that they themselves need to have extreme faith and radical devotion. In “Christian Teens and Biblezines”, Hillary Kaell puts forth the idea that the Biblezine Revolve is a socialization tool used to provide evangelical teens with guidelines for how to reconcile scripture and pop culture. Some of these guidelines are explicitly stated, while others, like the statement regarding what the Bible is “about”, are less direct. Instead of teaching girls how to interpret scripture for themselves, Revolve teaches girls how to interpret pop culture based on evangelical theology.  

Revolve reinvents the Bible as a book with answers and advice for how to live a Christian lifestyle as a teen girl. Kaell sees Revolve as“...part of the way that world-affirming evangelicals carve a space for themselves in the midst of American culture.” The evangelical theology in Revolve teaches girls what the Bible “says” about contemporary problems, and gives girls the tools to filter pop culture through the evangelical lens of Revolve. Similar to how evangelicals teach young girls to value purity and traditional gender roles through the appeal of princesses (Enticed by Eden, ch. 1), Revolve takes something that is secularly popular and forms it as a mode for promoting evangelical values. Overall, Revolve readers are taught less about the Bible, and more about how to live a modern life based on “biblical” values. 

Stretching the Story

In Enticed by Eden: How Western Culture Uses, Confuses, (and Sometimes Abuses) Adam and Eve, Linda S. Schearing and Valarie H. Ziegler discuss both how conservative Christians recreate the story of Adam and Eve and how the secular world reuses the story in a range of different ways. Both of these groups take the Adam and Eve narrative and interpret it in a way that serves their own purposes.

From the beginning of the book, Schearing and Ziegler show how conservative Christians are influenced by the reality of living in our modern culture. I found it very interesting how ideals based in non-biblical narratives were transferred into their glorified concept of Adam and Eve. In their conclusion, Schearing and Ziegler assess that “In their zeal to recreate Eden, conservative evangelicals have explicated Scripture through cultural constructs that have nothing to do with the Bible and in doing so have become captives to those constructs”(153). “Prince Charming” is nowhere to be found in the Bible, yet themes from this extra-biblical narrative is integrated into the Adam and Eve narrative.

After reading this book, I had to go back and read Genesis 1-3. Reading so many interpretations, I needed to return to the text that these different ideas were drawing from. Having reread it, I think that there is enough vagueness in the Adam and Eve narrative that ultimately you can read your own ideas into it. Though these conservative Christian views of Adam and Eve definitely stretch the story, I can see how they find these stretches to not be stretches at all.  Inserting other cultural narratives into the Adam and Eve story seems to come naturally because of how sparse the account is. You don’t know about Adam and Eve’s relationship, which created a need for conservative Christians to fill in this blank. Because the Bible states Adam and Eve were created for each other, conservative Christians make a leap to what this creation means in Adam and Eve’s relationship and consequently, what it means for relationships between husbands and wives today. These stretches are without a doubt influential, and the idea that conservative Christians have of Adam and Eve seems in many ways disconnected from the original text. As Schearing and Ziegler aptly described, they are captives to extra-biblical cultural constructs.

Influential Bible

In Shira Wolosky’s article “Women’s Bibles: Biblical Interpretation in Nineteenth-Century American Women’s Poetry”, she examines the complex way in which biblical interpretation can both reassert conservative tradition and simultaneously protest it. Instead of just throwing the bible out, people try to rework the bible in a way that aligns with their social and political agenda. This practice speaks to the undeniably influential place the bible holds in American culture. By continuing the conversation surrounding the bible, its importance is reaffirmed.

At this point, there isn’t a question about whether the bible is influential or important in our society. We’ve seen the bible invoked in politics and reimagined in many different mediums. The wide variety of interpretations people put forth and how these interpretations are used in furthering different ideologies is very interesting. People with significantly different beliefs use the same text as a source for their convictions. It seems to me that this discrepancy points to the complexities and contradictions within the text itself. The bible does not have one unified message, so it makes sense that those who read it will draw different conclusions from the text.

Because the bible lacks a singular message, it is natural for people to try and simplify things to support an overarching theme of their choice. I am reminded of a post from earlier this semester on reinventingthebible.com that displayed a graphic titled “Bible Emergency Numbers”. In this graphic a scenario is presented and solved with a bible verse. For example, “when you feel down and out” you should read Romans 8:31-39. To whoever created this graphic, the bible serves as a source for advice. This simplistic approach to the bible diminishes what the bible is in its entirety to what an individual wants it to be.

Translation Troubles

The main point that I took away from Beal’s sixth chapter of The Rise and Fall of The Bible is that there has never been one bible. Even before the Bible was translated in many different ways for the common person, there was not one agreed upon collection of books or translation. Beal underscores this point as he discusses Jerome’s Vulgate Bible, noting that there were Vulgates, not one singular Vulgate. Conflicting collections of books to be included in the Bible and various translations have always been a part of Christianity, but this issue was intensified when the Bible was translated into common languages. With widespread availability of the Bible, individuals were able to form their own opinions and in turn support a translation that reflected their own beliefs.

Today, different Christian denominations favor different translations of the Bible based on their varied beliefs. Just by looking at the translation choices on biblegateway.com makes it apparent how many translation options are out there. Are some translations better than others? Eugene Nida offers two categories of translations: formal and functional. Formal implies word-for-word, and functional aims to translate thought-for-thought. In my opinion, a Bible translation should have a balance of staying true to the original words of the Bible, yet also convey the meaning behind the words. By translating the Bible, the original text is compromised. There is no way around it, yet translating too functionally dilutes the text even further. Let’s look at these two translations of Galatians 3:2-4.

NRSV:

2 The only thing I want to learn from you is this: Did you receive the Spirit by doing the works of the law or by believing what you heard? 3 Are you so foolish? Having started with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh? 4 Did you experience so much for nothing?—if it really was for nothing.

The Message:

2-4 Let me put this question to you: How did your new life begin? Was it by working your heads off to please God? Or was it by responding to God’s Message to you? Are you going to continue this craziness? For only crazy people would think they could complete by their own efforts what was begun by God. If you weren’t smart enough or strong enough to begin it, how do you suppose you could perfect it? Did you go through this whole painful learning process for nothing? It is not yet a total loss, but it certainly will be if you keep this up!

The Message translation takes functional translation to another level, as it tries too hard to speak plainly. I think it is problematic to translate the Bible in a way that disregards the complexities present in the text in favor of boiling passages down to what their “point” is. I feel that it is the individual’s role to decide what the text means to them in the present if they so choose, not the translator’s. These two very different translations further highlight Beal's point that there are many different Bibles. Even though these two translations come from the same source, they do not seem interchangeable.

Today's Apocrypha

Frans van Liere’s “The Medieval Canon” chapter discusses the treatment of apocryphal books in the Middle Ages, especially in relation to canonical scripture. Reading this chapter has caused me to reflect on modern day apocrypha. Last week Annette Yoshiko Reed spoke to us about apocryphal books, and particularly how some are being reimagined in different ways. Some anime series borrow characters and themes from apocryphal books, placing them in a completely different context. This is an instance of ideas being borrowed from apocrypha to create something new, yet it is just as interesting when people today take ideas from canonical texts to create something new. This seems to be similar to what apocrypha like the Infancy Gospel of Thomas was trying to do - fill in the gaps and expound on the narrative of Christ.

We can see this through many different mediums, but film is always a compelling one to explore. A new movie came out last Friday titled Risen (dramatic trailer here), that approaches the resurrection narrative from a different perspective. This film is from the perspective of a non-believing soldier, who (spoiler alert) discovers Jesus resurrected and converts. I have not seen the movie, but it seems to uphold the basic idea of Jesus being crucified and rising after three days. It maintains the integrity of how Christians understand Jesus, while telling a different and new story.

This faith-based story that Risen tells reminds me of how Jerome seemed to view the apocrypha books during the medieval time period. He referred to apocrypha saying, “And if she wants to read them not for the truth of doctrines but out of reverence for its signs...it requires great prudence to find some gold in the mud” (73). I find that Christians today hold a similar view toward biblical films. From a quick google search, I found an article titled “3 Ways Risen Can Make You Spiritually Aware”. Similar to Jerome’s opinion on apocryphal literature in medieval times, Christians today can view interpretations of canonical literature as beneficial to one’s understanding of religion, but not equal to the canonical books of the Bible. 

Considering Apocryphal Writings

Who was Jesus really? The drive to answer this question was present in medieval times and is still present today. It’s a loaded question. Some seek to validate their Christian faith, while others seek to find flaws in the figure so many hold in high esteem. Either way, it is a challenging question that relates to the treatment of apocryphal writings such as the Gospel of Thomas.

In the Gospel of Thomas, full attention is given to Jesus’ childhood. In canonical scripture, the only insight given regarding Jesus’ early life is his interaction with teachers in the temple at age twelve (Luke 2:41-52). The Gospel of Thomas includes this anecdote, but also tells of his younger more immature years. This text portrays Jesus as a child prone to tantrums and petulance, yet having godly powers and superiority. Apocryphal writings like the Gospel of Thomas are often seen as being in contention with the canonical books of the Bible. Focusing in on this issue, people want to know what apocryphal writings can tell us about Jesus.

Annette Yoshiko Reed looks beyond this traditional conversation surrounding the New Testament apocrypha, and instead turns to how apocryphal writings influence people and their perspectives. I find this take on apocrypha refreshing, as it focuses more on the impact of apocrypha instead of strictly engaging and evaluating the content. Browsing Reed’s tumblr, it is fascinating to see how apocrypha has captured the imagination of animé artists. This re-purposing of apocryphal writings shows how texts are continuously being re-imagined and used in different ways today in different cultures and communities. It is important to consider not only how biblical stories are “reinvented”, but also how apocryphal texts experience this reinvention too.

Canon complexities

The Greek polis culture’s demand for accuracy is something that I think we can identify with in our modern time period. It is easy to want every aspect of life to be clear cut and precise, yet not everything can be viewed mathematically. In the article “Canon: Process, Not Product?”, Brennan Beed begins by challenging this black and white idea of things being either inside or outside a canon. She compares it to the political border between Canada and the United States. It’s a pretty arbitrary border that was decided upon a while ago for reasons that were important at the time. A border wasn’t decided upon based on any real differences between the people living there.

As we’ve learned from reading Constantine’s Bible, Constantine used his power to impose the type of Christianity he viewed as correct - Catholicism - and influence what texts would be part of the bible. Being in such a position of power, he was able to shape early Christianity in a significant way. Going back to the comparison of the biblical canon to the border between Canada and the US,   it seems that both came about basically because someone said so. Of course we know it is not that painfully simple, but that is essentially what it comes down to.

Even though a biblical canon was imposed, Beed states that “Every community, it is clear, has a canon-within-the-canon, a part-of-the-canon-that-is-ok-to-ignore, and an extra-canonical-canon”. We have discussed this idea in class, and I feel that it definitely holds true. While some books are in our bibles and some aren’t, communities and individuals still make decisions about what they find personally authoritative and what they do not. Therefore, the idea of canon is not so black and white.

Context Matters

Context matters. After our assigned readings each week, I receive this message in some form or another. In our reading this week from The Rise and Fall of the Bible, Timothy Beal emphasizes the importance of understanding what kind of world Jesus lived in. He uses Luke 4 as a starting point, discussing the story of Jesus reading from Isaiah in the synagogue. Beal reminds us that Jesus would have read from a scroll, sung the verse, and the synagogue could have been a gathering place in a house. Furthermore, Beal notes that early Christians had no canon and a very different relationship with scripture than we have today.

Many people today claim Christianity without having much familiarity with scripture or the Jewish tradition that it came out of. I find the scripture culture we have today in the political sphere particularly interesting. For example, Donald Trump has tried to appeal to evangelical voters by referring to the bible, saying “"My mother gave me this Bible, this very Bible, many years ago. In fact, it's her writing, right here. She wrote the name, and my address, and it's just very special to me."” (source). In this political context, it is not about the message of scripture, rather the idea of the bible itself that has meaning for people.

What if Christianity today did not have such a closed canon? Politicians would not be able to rely on invoking the bible. Instead they would be forced to know what scripture they considered authoritative and why. This is obviously not our reality, but it is interesting to think about. The context in which Christians interact with biblical texts today is very different from the context of early Christianity. Again, context matters.

How Authoritative?

Last week, my dad posted on Facebook a link to a blog post titled “10 Things This Christian Doesn’t Believe About the Bible”. I was interested, yet a little bit wary of it as the title seemed meant to attract attention. The author of the blog is John Pavlovitz, a pastor and author who seems to have a fairly large online following. His article came from a place of progressive Christianity, as the gist of the article was that he believes the Bible was created by humans (not God) and is not a very good guide for dealing with contemporary issues. Reading this blog post along with our assigned class reading (Rewriting Scripture in Second Temple Times by Sidnie White Crawford), I began to think about how different communities have different standards and ideas about the authority of texts.

When studying rewritten texts like Jubilees and the Genesis Apocryphon, Sidnie White Crawford places them on a spectrum of authority. At one end of the spectrum we have texts that are recognizably authoritative, and at the other end is where a base text is recognizable, but authority is not derived from it. The texts in between the extremes that create new texts based off of older scripture, like Jubilees, are not easy to definitively categorize. Based on the findings at Qumran, one can assume that the community there saw Jubilees as authoritative. This authoritative status could have also been carried on into the early church based on references to it by early Christian leaders, yet it does not appear in our current bibles.

Today, Jubilees is considered canonical by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and pseudepigrapha by other Christian denominations. Another example of differing ideas surrounding authority is how the Catholic bible includes texts that the Protestant bible leaves out. Within the Christian tradition as a whole there is not a consensus regarding what texts are authoritative. Which brings me back to Pavlovitz’s blog post. What kind of authority does the Bible have in his mind? In explaining one of his points he says this: “Rather than a Sola Scriptura perspective, which makes the Bible the ultimate, singular resource for encountering and understanding God, I believe as the ancestors of the faith believed: that all areas of life speak the language of the Divine; nature, prayer, community, reason, and the Holy Spirit’s direct voice to each of us”. In his personal belief system he minimizes the authority of the bible in favor of what he experiences around him.

I find the varying degrees of authority that is given to the bible by different communities and individuals fascinating. From the rewritten scriptures of the second temple time period to the opinions of individuals today, different communities and individuals within the same tradition can disagree on what is considered authoritative. 

Scribes in Antiquity and Today

Reading Part I of Satlow’s How the Bible Became Holy has caused me to reflect on what the Bible means to people today in light of how individuals in antiquity interacted with biblical texts. More specifically, the practice of rewriting and ultimately revising biblical texts was very present in antiquity and is arguably still carried out today.

In his book, Satlow refers to the documentary hypothesis, a hypothesis stating that the Pentateuch was created from earlier sources. He also acknowledges that it is a hypothesis and other theories exist which “understand the Pentateuch as the result of a continual process of growth, accretion, and modification” (75). Either way, biblical texts were not written once and preserved as they were until the present day. When I hear the term “scribe”, I immediately think of someone who copies things down word for word. This simply was not true in antiquity. Satlow explains scribes as “scholarly and creative, not human photocopy machines” (39). In reality, scribes “‘corrected’ and revised them according to their tastes” (39).

Last class period we looked at various “Bibles” that most of us did not consider to be actual Bibles. However, these non-conventional Bibles that are published are doing something similar to what the scribes of antiquity did. Individuals are picking up the Bible, and finding it troublesome. Bible publishers understand this, and revise the Bible in a way that appeals to the taste of a targeted demographic. Like the scribes of antiquity, modern day publishers are asserting their own viewpoints into how biblical texts are presented and translated.

Are present day individuals who modify the Bible no different than the scribes of antiquity? Perhaps, though I think the main thing to keep in mind is the context in which they operated in. In today’s context the average person will assume any version of the Bible is authoritative because it is supposed to be ancient text that informs religion. Scribes of antiquity did not function in a society that had high rates of literacy and the ease of disseminating information that we have today. What they wrote wasn’t automatically authoritative in the way a Bible is today. Overall, individuals have been trying to make sense of biblical texts through modification for as long as they have been in circulation. The main difference is the context in which these changes occur, which in turn affects the potential impact these revisions can have.