Thursday, February 17, 2022

Westar/Jesus Seminar goes in the tanks

 At one time, what seems eons ago, the Jesus Seminar did great stuff. The work of John Kloppenborg et al on Q, including its reconstruction, likely early forms, etc., was fantastic.

After that, even though a bit of the derision was earned, the four-color vote on alleged saying of Jesus was pretty good overall.

The gospels based on that weren't bad, though already then, the Seminar was starting to enter the world of clunky/wonky/idiosyncratic in its choices on translation.

Between moving away from the Metroplex more than a decade ago and shifts in focus in my non-fiction reading life, I hadn't read anything from the Seminar, now the Westar Institute. Until recently, and with this book, I shan't be reading anything else in the future for another decade.

Adapted from my Goodreads review:


After Jesus, Before Christianity: A Historical Exploration of the First Two Centuries of Jesus Movements

After Jesus, Before Christianity: A Historical Exploration of the First Two Centuries of Jesus Movements by Erin Vearncombe
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I have enough familiarity with Westar/Jesus Seminar etc. that I wasn’t holding my breath over this book, BUT?

It’s as bad as Bart Ehrman’s recent stuff. No, ultimately it’s worse. And, much of the second half of it is basically a channeling of Karen L. King, without disclosing her own willfulness in setting herself up as a mark for a forgery.

Add in tendentious theological, exegetical and hermeneutic claims, the lack of an index and more, and this is one-star dreck.  

First, claiming that because  σοφία is feminine in Greek this opens “new ways of looking at Jesus” is laughable. (Ditto for חָכְמָה being feminine in Hebrew, of course.) I immediately thought of Mark Twain saying that a maiden is sexless in German but a turnip is not.

Claims that Rome has a focus on making conquered nations feel like semi-barbarians by violence? The Republic had a long period of forbearance with Greece, and even elsewhere, worked to co-opt the leadership class, not crush them. Slaves “transported” to Rome? Sure, because that’s where the most rich people were. Rome did NOT have an Assyria-like policy of deliberately moving whole groups of people.

People moving for work? Sure. Happens today! Uncoerced today as it was then.

The “Roman soldiers” Jesus and John the Baptizer talked to? Syrian auxiliaries, actually.

Gets Markan version of “clean and unclean foods” parable wrong! Humor isn’t the point; equality of Gentiles is.

Gets the “betrayed” vs “arrested” of Paul on the Last Supper wrong, or just ignores the “arrested” to try to offer more cosmic meaning.

Pharisees weren’t “relatively new” at time of Josephus., not with a pedigree of more than 200 years.

Insinuates pre-69 Vespasian already had an eye for the throne. Really? NEVER heard that before. Also claims Vespasian was a “plebian.” WRONG! He was a knight, the equestrian class.

Also a lie re Vespasian, and Titus? The claims that Romans never destroyed temples of other religions. It wasn't "temples," but in 54 CE Suetonius Paulinus (not the historian) is reported as destroying many Druid sacred sites in Britain, on Anglesey, as part of a brutal suppression. Druid groves were destroyed elsewhere.

Weirder yet is the talk about some Christian subgroups, like claiming that Hebrews 13:9-16 is about a subgroup that called itself “the altar.” No, really.

Claiming I Peter 1:1 and James 1:1 is about Christians who were “aliens,” rather than, as is the common interpretation, that it refers to the Jewish diaspora, or perhaps what was already considered a Christian diaspora, is ... interesting. But, if you’re going to date I Peter at 150CE, you’ll make such statements! (Personally, I can see I Peter as being as late as 125, and the persecution it references being what Pliny the Younger discusses with Trajan. It’s possible it refers to earlier bits of persecution under Diocletian.)

Of course, if you’d like to date 1 Peter as late as 150 to put it later than Gnostic writings, you’ll do that!

That said, there are somewhat refreshing ideas, such as calling groups of Christians in different cities “clubs,” like dyers or weavers. Or like followers of pagan gods. That said, it seems to go too far to even take the Pauline passage about “one God and Father of us all” as “the father of the club.” And, that was the only halfway good thing here.

Translating “Christians” as “followers of the Anointed” when they note that Roman religious and political tradition didn’t have anointing, although Greek did. (Herms in the ancient Greek world, for example, were anointed.) Then claiming that Christiani/-oi as used in Latin (or imperial Greek?) was an official imperial term? Again, a claim I've never heard before, and comes off as theologically and hermeneutically tendentious.

Yes, “βαπτίζω” can mean to wash or to bathe. Qumran shows this. BUT, these were still ceremonial washings, even if we don’t use the word “baptize” as a transliteration. (Interestingly, Christian “baptisms” are compared to those of Isis etc., but Qumran isn’t referenced.)

“Gnostic” may not be exactly right, but a Nag Hammadi work such as Testimony of Truth shows that there were differences between so-called Gnostiicism and early pre-orthodox Christianity. Note how it refers to the Lord threatening Adam and Eve with death for seeking gnosis. Strawmans Gnostic vs proto-orthodox division without noting schools within Gnosticism and how most scholars talk about these sehools, or “heresies!”

Also cites Karen King without noting the big kerfuffle over Gospel of Jesus’ Wife, namely, her being a sucker for a forgery. Beyond the link above, someone as far left politically as Chris Hedges also ripped it to shreds. And, the authors about “Secret Revelation of John” rather than normal academic title “Apocryphon of John” was puzzling.

Then, near the end, getting into what we’ll call traditional biblical scholarship, the authors accept the traditional authorship of I Clement and Ignatius, even though good traditional scholarship of the last 50 years rejects it more and more. (I think that if you date I Clement much after 100, you have to call it a forgery even if a real Clement existed. I've recently talked about Ignatius, and Marcion, per three paragraphs down.)

And, OTHER problems. I’ve NEVER seen Hegesippus spelled with a double-s before.

And, in discussing early martyrdom, the authors never wrestle with Candida Moss. (That’s probably because it would undercut their take on traditional Xianity not being in opposition to Gnosticism.)

Dates the Pastorals post-Marcion, also on tendentious grounds.

Finally, there’s no index to this book. That normally costs a star by itself and sealed the one-star rating.

View all my reviews

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