Greek Religion in the Iliad

In working on course content and lecture material for my upcoming graduate seminar "Worship in the New Testament," I have been focusing on the cultural matrix of early Christian worship practices. After cataloguing important aspects of Greek and Roman religious practices (with due acknowledgment of the problems inherent in the differences between contemporary meanings of the term "religion" as opposed to ancient conceptions), I have been looking for primary texts that illustrate the phenomena I am discussing.

At the same time (but for unrelated reasons) I have begun reading the Iliad. Reading it with eyes and ears attuned to the people, practices, prayers, and perspectives of Greek religion, I was quite pleased to find displayed before my eyes a fine sampling of the staples of Greek and (later) Roman religion. Within just the first three hundred lines of the Iliad, are references to prayers, sacrifices, vows, and offerings to the gods. We meet a priest (Chryses) as well as an augur (Calchas), with references to the flights of birds, knowledge of the past, present, future, and other tools of divination. In addition, there is the narration of the gods answering prayers, the belief that honoring the will of the gods may lead to their responding favorably to human wishes, the recognition that Zeus grants authority to rulers, and the understanding that the gods assign humans their place in life (they gifted Achilles and made a spearman of him). There is the clear belief that calamity comes from the gods for a variety of reasons including human negligence in fulfilling vows to the gods. In addition, there is the confidence that a diviner can discern the reason for the gods’ wrath and identify the appropriate way to appease them. There is direct communication to humans by the gods who come to humans directly (e.g. the visit of Athena to Achilles) or by means of dreams (which are understood to come from Zeus). The human-like personalities of the gods is in full play as Apollo becomes furious at Agamemnon’s disregard of Chryses the priest. The affairs of humans and gods are thus fully intertwined through a network of connections and relationships.

In these first few pages alone I found quick confirmation of N. T. Wright's claim in Paul and the Faithfulness of God that the people of Greco-Roman antiquity lived in a "myth-soaked culture" (255) in which "the gods were everywhere" (274). Like Wright, I'm convinced that a richer understanding of the practices by which the ancients interacted with their gods can lead to a fuller appreciation of the cultural matrix in which early Christian worship took its shape. And this can lead to a better grasp of the significance of the earliest Christian worship practices. Looking forward to exploring these ancient texts with my students next spring.

Resistance Literature and Biblical Studies

Thanks to several recent studies that succeed in examining early Jewish writings through the lens of resistance (Hugh Page’s Israel’s Poetry of Resistance; Anathea Portier-Young’s Apocalypse against Empire; Richard Horsley’s Revolt of the Scribes), I have begun working through some of the major works on the theory and history of resistance literature.

Barbara Harlow’s 1987 study, Resistance Literature (New York; London: Methuen), focused on the literature of 20^th century resistance movements that included the element of armed resistance. Looking at movements from Central and South America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, Harlow provided a rich picture of the ways in which literature contributes to resistance movements. While on the face of it, these movements in themselves do not appear immediately relevant to biblical studies, there are a number of elements of her analysis which can readily be seen to illumine the study of ancient texts. I enumerate six of these below.

First, Harlow is concerned with literature that is produced within a context of foreign domination, whether under occupation or in exile. Both of these notions, occupation and exile, figure prominently in the Hebrew Bible, early Jewish writings, and the New Testament.

Second, she focusses on literature that reflects an arena of struggle in which the culture and cultural heritage of the oppressed engages with the cultural, social, and political intervention of the oppressor. The writings of the ancient Israelites as well as those of Second Temple Jews show an awareness of and an engagement with cultural forces both within and without Israelite society or the author’s particular Jewish community.

Third, one important dimension of the struggle which she notes is that of the struggle to control the historical record. Early Jewish and Christian literature is heavily focused on the past, and particularly in remembering the events of the past in a way in which highlights the significance of these events for the present community. Complementary and even competing portraits of the past are preserved within the pages of scripture.

Fourth, in addition to the historical record, resistance movements seek to control the means of cultural production, even against the challenges of censorship or oppression by the dominant culture. In one instance, an author’s book was banned in Arabic and so he published it in Paris in French. Utilizing the language of the colonizing power allows an indigenous writer to adapt, invert, and even create new forms in the language of the oppressor. While not responding to precisely the same challenges, the translation of Hebrew scriptures into Greek, and the production of new writings either in Greek, Aramaic, or Hebrew, can be viewed, in a context of cultural struggle, as practices of resistance or accommodation or both.

Fifth, Harlow draws attention to the potential within resistance movements of utilizing a “rhetoric of nostalgia” which seeks to return to a previous ideal age, a stance which can create a tension even within resistance movements between the need to deal with the pragmatic needs of the moment and the need to hold out a vision of a utopian future. Such dynamic tensions are observable within the biblical texts and traditions as well.

Finally, Harlow points out that Western readers can inadvertently fail to engage with non-Western literary products on their own terms by using reading strategies that are culturally conditioned. In particular she mentions the notion of looking for the universal element and ignoring the historical particularity in a given text. Such a recognition provides a valuable reminder to readers of ancient texts as well to beware of uncritical reading strategies which seek to domesticate ancient texts so that they fall within the framework of what is culturally acceptable in contemporary culture, whether Jewish, Christian, or secular.

Such considerations suggest the value of further studies which seek to appreciate the ways in which some biblical texts themselves may have been written, or at least utilized, to inspire resistance within their readers to hegemonic social forces and cultural ideals.

Hugh Page on Israel's Poetry of Resistance

I just finished reading through Hugh Page’s Israel’s Poetry of Resistance: Africana Perspectives on Early Hebrew Verse (Fortress Press, 2013). In this stimulating volume, Page (associate professor, associate provost and dean at the University of Notre Dame) offers fresh readings of the earliest poems within the Hebrew Bible examining the ways in which these poems facilitated the promotion of communal identity for early Israelite society. With careful attention to the historical context of these poems as well as their placement within the larger narratives and collections of the Old Testament, Page is able to read these poems as offering a kind of resistance to cultural, social, and historical forces that threatened the Israelite community. Page writes, “One assertion that can be made with confidence is that the curating of the poems, and of the Hebrew Bible as a whole, was a means of dealing with at least some of the uncertainties associated with living in dispersion and under foreign domination” (15). And further, “One can see manifest in them [early Hebrew poems] some of the realities that typify diasporan life, such as pressure to adapt and assimilate. One also finds in places a concomitant impulse to resist, or at least to challenge the privilege of, established orthodoxies” (17). Central to his approach here is the conscious reading of these poems in conversation with similar kinds of cultural factors at work within the world of the African diaspora.

By taking this approach Page offers readers a fruitful juxtaposition of the ancient and the contemporary. He thoughtfully identifies contemporary elements from within the Africana community that involve dynamics similar to those at play in each early Hebrew poem. Then he allows the two distinct cultural worlds to inform and interrogate each other. The result is a series of chapters that illumine both the dynamics of the biblical text as well as some facets of contemporary Africana culture. The interplay is provocative. For example, Moses in Deut 31:30 “began woofin' in the presence of the entire Israelite assembly,” and David “sang the blues concerning Saul and his son Jonathan” in 2 Sam 1:17. The real heart of Page's treatments, however, is not in his translations (as compelling as those are). The real impact is felt as he brings the Song of Deborah (Judges 5) into contact with figures like Harriet Tubman and Benjamin Banneker, or Balaam into contact with practices of indigenous African spirituality, or the Song of Hannah into contact with “Black women who have relied on mother wit and common sense” (79) and are now at the end of their lives. Such readings highlight issues of justice, cultural adaptation and assimilation, and the struggle for freedom, among others.

For my part, what first attracted me to the volume was the notion of reading these biblical poems as “poetry of resistance” since that is an angle I have been pursuing particularly with regard to the Colossian hymn (Col. 1:15-20) and with regard to the Psalms of Solomon (more on that in a future entry). By placing ancient Hebrew poetry in conversation with poets and figures from within the African diaspora, Page is able to draw attention to dynamics within the Hebrew text that are typically overlooked in more traditional scholarly treatments. By attending to the dynamics of diaspora, Page reads these poems with an ear that is attuned to some of the muted overtones, and can thereby make connections with the contemporary world as well. Among the features he identifies are:

·         “Disparate social groups forging a collective identity while struggling to maintain their uniqueness” (Gen 49; Dt 33)

·         “Ancestral traditions, particularly those relating to communal origins, being codified and curated” (Ex 15; Dt 32; 2 Sam 22; Ps 18)

·         “The adaptation and inversion of indigenous and externally appropriated legend and lore” (Pss 29, 68)

·         “Resistance strategies being negotiated and tested” (Judges 5)

·         “The costs and benefits of cultural exchange and assimilation being contemplated” (Num 23-24)

·         “The fate of women, the poor, and others on the social margins being pondered” (1 Sam 2)

·         “The tragic dimensions of intergroup strife being debated” (2 Sam 1)

·         “The relationship between centralized forms of governance and the social welfare of communities in transition being considered” (Ps 72)

·         While some of the poems are “unapologetic in their opposition to political hegemonies that foment diasporas” (Ex 15; Judges 5) others “deftly engage and subtly transmute motifs well known from the mythological lore of Canaan and the cultural milieu of Israel’s socially diverse mélange” (Ex 12:38) (taken from pp. 17-18)

Part of what makes Page’s investigation so meaningful is his taking into account of the dynamics associated with living in diaspora—a dynamic he sees at work in ancient Israelite as well as contemporary Africana culture. He explains, “Whether they are physical, emotional, spiritual, imagined, eschatological, or of some other type, diasporas require complex negotiations between locations and social groups. Removal from an actual or illusory homeland, through either coercion or voluntary relocation, is often an occasion for rethinking identity. It can also lead to a reassessment of the relationship between those living remotely and the kin they have left behind. Feelings of grief, loss, and disorientation are not uncommon by-products of such an experience” (15). When these dynamics are kept in the foreground, the early Hebrew poems that Page examines show that they are compositions designed to speak into just those kinds of situations.

While Page’s focus is on the earliest biblical poetry and peoples, one can readily notice that some of these kinds of pressures and dynamics, or ones very similar to these, were also faced by Jews living in the period of the Second Temple, as well as by the early Christians. Thus, Page’s study provides many suggestive connections between the kind of reading of these early Hebrew poems that he offers and the kinds of readings of Second Temple Jewish and early Christian psalms and hymns that still need to be contemplated. For my part, I intend to utilize some of Page’s work in the coming months in my current research on Psalms of Solomon and on early Christian hymns.

While I came to the volume for its analysis of the ancient Hebrew poetry, I found that Page’s exegesis of the cultural dynamics facing people of color, and particularly those of African descent, to be even more significant. Page’s candor and honest reflections of his own experiences growing up in Baltimore add a richness and depth to the volume that is not normally found in scholarly writing. Page’s book is also very challenging as he rightly encourages contemporary readers to emulate the boldness of the biblical poets in embracing their cultural-rootedness and engaging the dynamics of their own cultures, both positively and critically. This is a very rich volume and one that offers a promising model for scholars wishing to read the poetry of the Bible in a way that honors both the biblical text as well as the context of the reader and his or her community.

In the final paragraph of the book, Page summarizes: 

Early Hebrew poetry gives us ready access to the spiritual musings of some of our ancient Jewish spiritual forebears. It takes us to the fountainhead of the Judeo-Christian tradition, the root from which the branches of Second Temple Judaism, Christianity, and Islam would later grow. It brings us face-to-face with the intractable mysteries surrounding the formation of community. It shows us the role that poets and poetic language played in shaping our conceptions of the divine and our understanding of how God’s self-disclosure to humanity unfolds. It forces us to deal with the symbolic nature of theological and poetic language and asks that we stretch ourselves intellectually as people of faith. (129-130)

By bringing these biblical texts into conversation with the experiences of contemporary Africana peoples, Page models a fruitful and provocative way of doing just those things.

Forthcoming Article on Paul and Rhetoric

I just received word that an article of mine will appear in the Journal for the Study of Paul and His Letters this fall or early winter. My article "Galatians and the Progymnasmata on Refuting a Law: A Neglected Aspect of Pauline Rhetoric" examines the ancient classroom exercise on how to introduce a law or refute one, and then considers the extent to which Paul utilized the kinds of arguments that this exercise promoted. This is a topic that was originally suggested to me by professor Jerry Neyrey in a doctoral seminar at the University of Notre Dame in 2003 and that I finally began working on a few years ago.  I am grateful to Jerry for the suggestion, and also to David Aune for taking the time to read and comment on a draft of this article. The abstract is below, and when the issue is published I'll post the link.

The structure, flow, and logic of Paul’s argumentation in Galatians continues to be a subject of debate as scholars seek to read Paul’s statements about the law, works of the law, and other aspects of Judaism within a framework which appreciates both the diverse nature of first-century Judaism as well as Paul’s appropriation of his own Jewish heritage. Scholars have also sought to read Paul’s letter to the Galatians in light of first-century Greco-Roman rhetorical strategies and conventions. This essay contributes to these discussions by looking at Galatians from an angle that has not yet been considered: the first-century CE progymnasmata exercise on the introduction and refutation of a law (νόμου εἰσφορά). This specific compositional exercise drew on the skills mastered in earlier exercises as students utilized compositional and rhetorical skills to persuade the reader (an imaginary audience) to enact or abandon a particular law based on the topics of legality, possibility, advantage, and appropriateness. By reading Galatians through the lens of this particular exercise, it is possible to appreciate the extent to which Paul utilized conventional forms of argumentation about the application of existing laws. Such a reading contributes to a thicker description of Paul’s utilization of elements of ancient rhetoric.

Herod the Great: not really that great

I've recently begun revisiting some earlier work on Herod the Great and the historical context of Judaism in the first century BCE as part of the backdrop for the Psalms of Solomon. With the arrival of June and the celebration of Father's Day this month, I was struck by the famous quote about Herod: "It is better to be Herod's pig than his son" (recorded by Macrobius in Saturnalia 2.4.11, and attributed to Augustus). The remark is meaningful on a number of levels, but most obviously refers to Herod's observance of Jewish dietary laws (or at least his association with Judaism to some degree) and, more pointedly, to his family dysfunction which resulted in the murders of two of his sons. So this is not necessarily a Hallmark moment kind of quote but rather points to the ambiguity with which Herod the Great is remembered. Among his many glorious architectural projects he renovated the Second Temple (technically, tore down the second and built the third) and in some significant ways made a claim for himself as a Jewish king in the tradition of Solomon, the original builder of the Temple. He also maintained his rule for over 30 years and passed on the rule successfully to his sons (those fortunate enough to have survived him). In these respects, Herod the Great's legacy is almost without equal among the rulers of antiquity. Nevertheless, he is more readily remembered for his paranoia and the atrocities which he committed against friend, foe, and family.

Paper Presentation at the Annual Meeting of the SBL

I am pleased to announce that I will be presenting a paper entitled "Psalms of Solomon and Pauline Studies" at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in November of this year. The paper will be presented in a joint session sponsored by six different Paul-related program units including the Pauline Epistles section and the Paul and Judaism section. In addition to the presentation, my paper will benefit from a formal response by N. T. Wright, Pamela Eisenbaum, and Ward Blanton.

In this paper I provide a brief overview of how the Psalms of Solomon have been used (or marginalized) in recent scholarship that attempts to situate Paul within his historical and cultural contexts. In this overview I will highlight the treatments of Psalms of Solomon in the two largest monographs on Paul ever written (N. T. Wright's Paul and the Faithfulness of God and Douglas Campbell's The Deliverance of God). I then explore one avenue in which further research on the Psalms of Solomon might allow for a more nuanced understanding of Paul and his engagement with Roman imperial ideology.

New Report: The Bible in American Life

Last month the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture at Indiana University published a report entitled “The Bible in American Life.” It provides the results of a national study that examined how Americans use the Bible in their personal daily lives (outside of worship services or Christian education settings) and how other influences, including religious communities and the Internet, shape individuals’ use of scripture.

The study contains some really interesting findings. For example, nearly half of all Americans have read the Bible or the Torah or the Koran within the past year outside of religious services. Among those who have read the Bible in the past year, 17% of those people indicated that they actually read it every day. Within the population as a whole, then, 9% of Americans read the Bible every day. 

Regarding people's views of the Bible, even among those who have not read the Bible in the past year, 50% indicated that they believed it to be the "inspired Word of God." The report thus pointed out that there is not a strong correlation to holding a particular view of the Bible (a high view of scripture) and actually reading it. Nevertheless, if you are sitting on a bus, more than 75% of your fellow riders hold a high view of scripture as inspired or inerrant. And 1 out of 10 of your fellow riders will have read the Bible that day. (If you want to take an educated guess at who that person was, read the study's sections on gender, race, age, region of the country, and other demographic factors as these correspond to Bible reading.)

As a professor of biblical studies I was most surprised by the finding related to where people go to get answers when they have questions about the Bible. In our technology infused world, I would have expected the internet to be the main source. But, in fact, among those readers who actively seek answers to their questions, the top source was clergy, even over commentaries, television/radio programs, and the internet. (Regrettably the questionnaire apparently did not give respondents the option of selecting "their favorite Bible professor" as an answer--so we'll never know...). This finding suggests, though, the ongoing and real impact of seminary and divinity school education within society, as graduates not only preach the Bible in their worship services but serve as resources to their congregants who have questions about the Bible they are reading.