If you haven’t already seen the news on Mark Goodacre’s blog or somewhere else, R. Joseph Hoffmann of the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion has released (via Robert Price’s website) a statement that seems to clarify a good bit of the confusion about the list of Project fellows on the Project’s web site. Read the whole statement for yourself to get the full scoop, but the short version is that the website’s list of fellows and their biographies was posted quite prematurely, as some of us had previously speculated. You may remember that I wrote in an earlier post:

So what we have here is something in the range of:

• a rush to put up a web site before all the ducks (er, fellows) were in a row; or

• a strange definition of “fellow” as “anyone who has been invited to speak at one of our conferences, or whom we would like to have participating in this venture”; or
• a case of para-academic fraud.

It’s hard not to feel the strong pull of the third item in the list, though I’m holding out for one of the other two, or some combination thereof.

Though he doesn’t quite put it in these terms, Hoffmann describes a combination of my first two bullet points above, mostly the first. Here’s the bottom line:

Anticipating a formal launch of its academic work in 2008, the Project floated (I have to stress this word) a website. It is here that an element of confusion enters the picture. While the website was only a model of things to come, a compilation of biographies of the entire list—UCD, listserv, and “under consideration”–was posted to the site together with some sample texts as active information. What was meant as a test has lingered on the site as a done deal. This was done largely because we were being hammered for information and were late in conceptualizing the site itself. The posting was premature; the website was not flagged as under construction. Results ran ahead of planning. Indeed, the website was (is) a work in progress: Even at the time of this writing, only a fraction of the 50 scholars comprising the Project have been chosen and perhaps they will not finally be chosen until January 2008. A fair number of those whose biographies were floated had already been deselected. My own work schedule has kept me—and there is real guilt in this—from surveilling the progress of the site, which I regarded as internet clay and not the pot. The very tentative nature of the site was not made clear on the site itself, and should have been.

Hoffmann seems unable to just leave it at that, however, and there’s a lot more to his diatribe. Click the “continue reading” link below if you want to read my more detailed reactions to Hoffmann’s statement.

Continue Reading »

Since my initial post about the Jesus Project, the discussion has continued among bloggers and members of e-mail discussion lists. Mark Goodacre reportedly posted to the Crosstalk e-mail list (to which I don’t subscribe, hence the word “reportedly”) a comment to the effect that Richard Bauckham, listed on the Project web site as a Project fellow, has no knowledge of or ties to the project. Similarly, Jeffrey Gibson reported to the Biblical Studies Discussion List that John Dominic Crossan, also listed as a Project fellow, has no interest in the Project and doesn’t want his name associated with it.

I have not yet received a reply from my e-mail to CSER regarding the Project and the list of fellows, but it is becoming increasingly clear that the list of fellows is, at best, wishful thinking on the part of the Project organizers. But that’s being overly generous. The Project organizers have listed a number of scholars as Project fellows for the purposes of securing some degree of recognition and confidence in the Project—even though a number of these scholars have no knowledge of the Project and/or no desire to be involved in the Project. If the Fellows page had said “We hope these people will join in” or “These are the kind of people we want,” that would be a case of overweening optimism. But the CSER seems to be feeding information like the following to reporters (well, specifically, one reporter, Jennifer Green of Can[ada]West News Service and/or the Ottawa Citizen—sorry, the bylines aren’t terribly clear):

In January, the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion (CSER), a secularly minded organization in Amherst, N. Y., launched a five-year initiative called the Jesus Project in which 50 scholars across many disciplines will try to determine the hard facts behind the human figure of Jesus, including whether He really existed. …

So far, about 70 scholars have expressed an interest in joining the project. About 39 have been vetted and added to the team. The remainder are expected to be in place by early May.

Some of these “fellows” did speak at a “Scripture and Skepticism” conference, but I don’t think they realized they were being added as “fellows” of this Jesus Project. We now know for certain that Bauckham and Kloppenborg—whose names have now disappeared from the list of fellows—and Tabor, and Crossan—whose names are still on the list of fellows—did not know themselves to be “fellows” of the Jesus Project until the web site went up a few days ago (there’s also a blog, but no posts—only a pitch for donations in the sidebar), and Crossan isn’t interested.

So what we have here is something in the range of:

• a rush to put up a web site before all the ducks (er, fellows) were in a row; or

• a strange definition of “fellow” as “anyone who has been invited to speak at one of our conferences, or whom we would like to have participating in this venture”; or
• a case of para-academic fraud.

It’s hard not to feel the strong pull of the third item in the list, though I’m holding out for one of the other two, or some combination thereof.

April DeConick is August’s featured biblioblogger on Bibloblogs.com. April’s Forbidden Gospels blog focuses on early Christian history and literature.

I don’t blog much about “historical Jesus” issues, because my scholarly interests lie a bit earlier, chronologically, than the life of Jesus. However, the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion has been getting some press (possibly “orchestrated”) for its new Jesus Project. This Jesus Project (there are other organizations with the same name) bills itself as the successor to the Jesus Seminar, and in brief, its plan is as follows:

The Jesus Project will run for five years, with its first session scheduled for December 2007. It will meet twice a year, and, like its predecessor, the Jesus Seminar, it will hold open meetings. Unlike the Seminar, the Project members will not vote with marbles, and we will not expand membership indefinitely: the Project will be limited to fifty scholars with credentials in biblical studies as well as in the crucial cognate disciplines of ancient history, mythography, archaeology, classical studies, anthropology, and social history.

The web site has a list of Project “fellows” that includes some heavy-hitters in the field and some names that I’m surprised to see there (what do Walter Brueggemann and David Noel Freedman have to do with historical Jesus studies?). The page even has sub-pages for each of the “fellows.” Curiously, however, at least one of the Project “fellows” has never heard of the project. James Tabor writes on his Jesus Dynasty blog:

Although I am quite happy to be ranked among my superiors as “some of the biggest names in biblical studies today,” I think there is a bit of confusion between the upcoming conference, Scripture and Skepticism, at the University of California at Davis, and the formation of a group called The Jesus Project. Although I and lots of others will be reading papers or giving responses at the conference, this is the first I have heard of any Project of this description.

It’s not just a confused reporter, James; the organization is touting your involvement as a fellow, and that of many others—in a Project you know nothing about! (I would have left a comment on James’s blog, but he doesn’t seem to have enabled that feature, or else I could not find the appropriate link.)

A few minutes ago I dug up an e-mail address on the CSER web site and sent the following inquiry:

I wonder if you could clear up some confusion for me about the recently-publicized Jesus Project (http://www.jesus-project.com). The Project’s web site lists a number of Project “fellows” (http://www.jesus-project.com/fellows.htm), but at least one of these scholars, James Tabor, says he’s never heard of The Jesus Project (http://jesusdynasty.com/blog/2007/01/12/the-jesus-project/). What exactly is the status of these “fellows” in relationship to the Project? Is this a list of people who have agreed to be part of the Project, or a list of people the Project management is planning into invite to the December 2007 conference? Many people in the “bibloblog” circle are very interested in this question.

I’ll let you know what I learn.

Update: See now April DeConick’s post on this topic; according to the Jesus Project web site, she’s a fellow.

From Jim West I just learned of Hershel Shanks’s new op-ed piece on Simcha Jacobovici’s claims put forward in his “Lost Tomb of Jesus” television special and, more recently, the book version.

Shanks’s basic “take” on the whole scenario is basically correct:

I don’t buy all the contortions that Simcha goes through to find other names in Jesus’ family, including his alleged wife and son, inscribed on ossuaries found inside this tomb. That part of his argument simply builds very slim possibility upon very slim possibility until likelihood dissolves into evanescence.

The larger part of Shanks’s article, though, asks why the show “raised such a storm.” Obviously, it rankles Christian believers, says Shanks, but why does it so rankle scholars? Shanks offers three possibilities, of which he develops the third in most detail:

1. “First, academics often don’t like non-academics poking around in their flower garden.”
2. “One other possibility is simply that scholars are angry that Simcha poses as having grounded his arguments academically while, in fact, almost all academics would reject them. In this sense, he is poisoning the academic pond. His method takes one slim possibility and adds more very slim possibilities on top of it (Jesus’ wife and son) until the conclusion reaches absurdity.”
3. “But there is something else—something more personal. Simcha misuses scholars. One might even say that he abuses them. He makes them appear to be saying things they don’t agree with.”

I don’t think the idea of a “turf issue”has all that much merit (well, it might if the “scholar” you are talking about is Jim West, though Jim is spot-on with regard to the strange manure). In fact, I think many scholars would be delighted to have a filmmaker with a big bankroll come along and make a multi-million dollar special that popularized good scholarship.

I think Shanks has scored bullseyes with items 2 and 3, though (if you can score two bullseyes; I participate regularly in neither archery nor darts, so I’m not sure about that). With regard to item 2, in both The Exodus Decoded and The Lost Tomb of Jesus, Simcha mixes in just a little bit of accurate data with hyperboles, inaccuracies, and wild speculations, and the result is a pastiche of misinformation. Item 3 also applies to both The Exodus Decoded and The Lost Tomb of Jesus. Jacobovici quote-mines his sources, especially when he can get them on film. As long as he can get a quotation that he can spin toward his scenario, he uses it, whether it accurately represents the individual’s thinking or not. As Shanks notes in his op-ed:

Even The New York Times, whose reviewer prescreened the film, got the impression that “almost all the scholars interviewed [in the film] support the filmmakers’ case.” Well, that’s simply not true.

Shanks forgot to mention one other big reason why the tomb show got so much attention: the Discovery Channel’s—and/or James Cameron’s—big-budget marketing campaign. This wasn’t just some obscure film on late-night Discovery Channel programming. It was hyped to the moon before it premiered, not least in a press conference at the New York Public Library. We couldn’t let this nonsense pass without strong comment, lest the public eat it all up without hearing the real story.

In today’s Review of Biblical Literature, Jonathan Reed skewers Simcha Jacobovici’s and Charles Pellegrino’s The Jesus Family Tomb: The Discovery, the Investigation, and the Evidence That Could Change History (HarperSanFrancisco, 2007):

Can we prove that this is not the family tomb of Jesus? No. A historian or archaeologist has little chance of absolutely disproving that possibility. Can we prove that it is? No. It is possible that the tomb of Jesus has been found, but this book’s attempt to make the case is an absolute failure.

James Tabor doesn’t fare any better in Bert Jan Lietaert Peerbolte’s review of The Jesus Dynasty: The Hidden History of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity (Simon & Schuster, 2006):

Doing history should be something else than picking historical “facts” at random from all kinds of literary traditions and archeological digs. A scholarly publication should not contain the level of speculation that characterizes this book. It is a pity that plotting theories such as Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code are now even entering into the academic arena. Read as an entertaining thriller, The Jesus Dynasty deserves a certain degree of popularity, but preferably not on the nonfiction list.

To understand why each reviewer reaches the conclusions cited, please read both reviews in their entirety.

I’ve just finished another item on my to-do list: a review of Eric Christianson, Ecclesiastes through the Centuries (Blackwell Bible Commentaries; Oxford: Blackwell, 2007). Look for the finished review to be published in an upcoming volume of The Bible and Critical Theory. The short version is that if you are interested in the reception history of Ecclesiastes, this book is indispensable for you. If you are interested in Ecclesiastes but have thought mainly about direct exegesis of the text and not about its reception in Western culture, you should broaden your horizons by reading this book.

In response to John Hobbins’s “Thinking About Canon (Part One),” in which John wrote that “A writing is canonical if and only if passages from it can be appealed to for the purpose of establishing a point of doctrine,” Duane Smith wrote:

Not only is this a good working definition, it reflects the reality of the process of canonization. But why would anyone or any group want to do that? I don’t have answers, just questions. If there is an answer, I think it lies in the general neighborhood of the psychological basis for the persuasiveness of arguments from authority. A written authority, often, but not always, of obscure origin replaces a human authority. And it does it precisely in those areas of human thought where no human can be authoritative: religious doctrine.

I think that before this canonical roundtable is all over, I would like to come back to John’s “functional definition” and argue that a canon of religious writings can be meaningful in a different, or at least more nuanced way.
We’ll get back to that later. For the moment, I want to take a stab at answering Duane’s question, “[W]hy would anyone or any group want to do that?” Duane’s own answer, quoted above, relates to the establishment of a “superhuman” authority—but in order to achieve this, the canonical process must somehow obscure the very human origins of the scriptures, hence doctrines of inspiration. (That last part is mine, not Duane’s, though I think I know Duane well enough to know that he will agree.)

I do not wish to discount Duane’s explanation, but I would like to extend it by asking why a written authority of the type Duane describes is so appealing. In my opinion, some religious folk desire an authoritative written canon because affirming such a thing creates an “objective” touchstone for the religion. At least, that is why the leaders of the early Churches of Christ opted for biblicism: “Christians have many different creeds and customs,” they reasoned, “but all Christians receive the Bible as scripture.” Thus, canon can provide a touchstone of religious authority that transcends any “organization” or “institution” within that particular religion’s broadest frame of reference. Moreover, the degree of unity provided by the canon in this way—whether large or small—works both in any given “present” but also across time, linking past and future.

Please note that I am not claiming that only canon can do this. Ecclesiastical tradition can do it too; in the Roman Catholic church, much the same thing is achieved by the Papacy and the whole church hierarchy. However, prioritization of canon over ecclesiastical authority, as you find in groups such as my own Churches of Christ, “democratizes” ecclesiastical authority by giving each individual believer direct access to the source of authoritative doctrine, with no official intermediaries (cf. the Baptist concept of “soul competency”).

Well, more to come later. Nicholas is awake now, and we’re going to take him outside to play in the jungle before the jaguars come out to play after sundown. En la selva, la fuerte selva, el tigre duerme hoy …

In his second update to “Thinking About Canon (Part One),” John Hobbins makes this provocative statement:

Generally speaking, biblicism boomerangs on traditions that move heavily in that direction.

I am not quite sure what John means by that, but it does hit close to home for me, as a member of the almost ultra-biblicistic (at least in our rhetoric) Churches of Christ. In the early days (the mid-19th century), Churches of Christ married two impulses common in American Christianity at that time, ecumenism and primitivism. Some readers might be shocked to hear the Churches of Christ described as “ecumenical,” and it’s true that such a label no longer applies very well. However, one of the “founding documents” of our tradition, “The Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery,” expresses the wish that the Springfield Presbytery should “die” and then “sink into the body of Christ at large.” Our early leaders regarded the movement as a fellowship for “Christians only, but not the only Christians.” They hoped that Christians in all the various sects and denominations would come together, united around the basics of the faith. This is what I mean by “ecumenism” in the mid-19th century Disciples movement. However, some of the early leaders chose primitivism as a method for achieving that unity. They wanted to “restore the New Testament church” by doing away with creeds, hierarchies, and traditions that could not be anchored in the scriptures (specifically, the New Testament). Thus the goal of Christian unity (ecumenism) was to be reached by “restoring the New Testament church” (primitivism), which in turn was to be reached by abandoning all creeds and human traditions, and using the Bible as the only standard for faith and practice (biblicism). Around the turn of the 20th century, the movement fractured, with the Disciples moniker being kept by those who emphasized ecumenism more, and the name Churches of Christ being more common among those who emphasized primitivist biblicism more.

Now here is the irony, though I don’t know if it’s what John was thinking when he wrote of biblicism “boomeranging” on traditions that embrace it: biblicism itself cannot be established biblicistically. In other words, although many of my co-Church-of-Christ-ers seem to think differently, one cannot demonstrate the validity of biblicism through exegetical argument. At least, I have never seen it done in any exegetically responsible way that escapes a vicious circularity. For example, folk in my tradition love to quote 2 Timothy 3:16–17 on “inspiration,” never giving a second thought to the probability that what (psuedo-)Paul meant by “scripture” was probably quite different from what we mean by scripture, and, in fact, the former surely did not embrace a canon that included 2 Timothy itself (if [pseudo-]Paul had a concept of “canon” at all). Something similar could be said, given appropriate tweaks, for any mention of “scripture” within the scriptures. It’s a simple historical point: none of the biblical writers refer to the Bible as a completed canon, nor could they have done so, given the historical development of the canonical process.

In a related post, also reacting to John’s posts on canon (John wanted to start a conversation, and he succeeded!), Jim Getz wrote:

As will be evident to those who read this blog, I tend to find a disconnect between tradition and text. When there starts to be a distinction between text and tradition with the former being given more weight, I balk. Tradition gave rise to canon. It is from tradition that various communities affirmed their canons. More so, tradition gave rise to the texts at the outset. All along the process from text to canon, tradition is in control. Granted, faith communities view this tradition in different ways, from those who would sing with Tevye to those in evangelical circles who would prefer to couch the language in terms of sovereignty; but the fact remains that tradition is the key.

This is another of biblicism’s boomerangs. We biblicists want to hold up the Bible as the “only standard of faith and practice,” but we fail to realize that, historically speaking, “faith and practice” were the standards by which would-be scriptures were judged! I know that is a simplistic way to say it, and I don’t want to make it sound like an episode of Canonical Idol. But, in fact, by confusing the created (the biblical canon—strictly speaking, the list of biblical books) with the creator (early church tradition, in the case of Christians), we do “idolatrize” the text, in a way.

I’ll have more to write about canon later. John’s posts and the various reactions are stimulating and thought provoking. Right now, I’ve got a date with the rain forest (Iguazú National Park in Argentina)—see, Kevin, I am enjoying my thirties before they’re gone!

Dr. Andrey Feuerverger, the statistician whose calculations underly the claim made in The Lost Tomb of Jesus that the odds of the Talpiot tomb being any family other than that of Jesus of Nazareth are 600-to-1, has posted an open letter to his “statistical colleagues” regarding his methodology and data. Since I am not a statistician, perhaps I am guilty of reading other people’s mail. Nevertheless, I want to comment on some very important non-statistical information in Feuerverger’s post.

In a telling comment, Feuerverger writes:

It is not in the purview of statistics to conclude whether or not this tombsite is that of the New Testament family. Any such conclusion much more rightfully belongs to the purview of biblical historical scholars who are in a much better position to assess the assumptions entering into the computations.

In particular, Feuerverger explains that he worked with a series of specific assumptions that probably were fed to him by filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici or his colleagues. Let’s review those assumptions one by one.

We assume that the physical facts of the case are as stated. (Note that the inscriptions on these ossuaries and the fact that they were provenanced properly do not appear to be under dispute.)

This is a fair assumption, unless it be applied to Jacobovici’s implications that the famous Ya’aqob (James) ossuary was originally part of the Talpiot tomb assemblage.

We assume that the available onomasticon data is adequately relevant to the study at hand and that, on a time-cross-sectional basis, the assignment of names is, for practical purposes, adequately modelled by assuming independence.

This also seems to be a fair assumption.

We assume that ‘Marianemou e Mara’ is a singularly highly appropriate appellation for Mary Magdalene. Note that this assumption is contentious and furthermore that this assumption drives the outcome of the computations substantially.

The entire case may come close to falling apart with this one assumption. There is absolutely no good reason to think that the Talpiot Mariamenou Mara is Mary Magdalene, and a number of good reasons to think that she is not Mary Magdalene. I will not rehearse all those reasons here; please see Richard Bauckham’s guest post on Chris Tilling’s Chrisendom blog for the nitty-gritty details.

Be sure to notice that Feuerverger states that “this assumption drives the outcome of the computations substantially.” I have already mentioned that I am not a statistician, but I do not understand how the assumption that Mariamenou Mara is Mary Magdalene could “substantially” figure into statistical calculations of the probability of two or more identical assemblages of names occurring in a first-century CE tomb. Why does the specific identity of the individual matter for this calculation? I hope someone will take time to explain that to me and other interested parties. Regardless of that answer, though, if the identification of Mariamenou Mara with Mary Magdalene is flawed—and it surely is (Bauckham and others have explained why)—then by Feuerverger’s statement above, the whole set of calculations begins to look like a house of cards.

We assume that Yose/Yosa is a highly appropriate appellation for the brother of Jesus who is referred to as Joses in Mark 6:3 of the NT.

It seems to me a fair assumption that a person called Ἰωσῆτος in the Greek NT might be called יוסה in Aramaic. However, Yose would be a highly appropriate appellation for anyone named Yehosef, on which see more below.

We assume that the Latinized version Marya is an appropriate appellation for Mary of the NT.

By “Mary of the NT,” Feuerverger presumably means Mary, the mother of Jesus; his statement betrays a basic misunderstanding of or sloppiness with the data, since there are several Marys in the NT. I am not competent to judge whether מריה is in fact a “rare Latinized form,” as claimed in the film, but Mark Goodacre thinks not, and Amos Kloner (”A Tomb with Inscribed Ossuaries in East Talpiyot, Jerusalem,” ‘Atiqot 29 [1996], p. 17—downloaded from the Discovery Channel web site), says that “מרים and מריה are the most common feminine names of the Second Temple period” (citing additional secondary literature). More importantly, just because it would be an “appropriate appellation” for someone the NT calls Μαρία (Matthew) or Μαριάμ (Luke), doesn’t mean it would be inappropriate for one of the hundreds of other “Marys” during the relevant period. In short, there is nothing at all special about the name itself.

It is assumed that Yose/Yosa is not the same person as the father Yosef who is referred to on the ossuary of Yeshua.

I’m not sure why this should be assumed. I suppose that it seems common-sensical to think that the same person wouldn’t be named in two different ways on ossuaries in the same tomb, but then again, it’s hardly a slam-dunk case. The filmmakers argue that יוסה is a diminutive form of יהוסף, but that the Talpiot יוסה is not the Talpiot יהוסף, but at the very same time, they want you to believe that the Talpiot Μαριαμήνου Μἀρα is Mary Magdalene, even though no early Christian source—not even the apocryphal Acts of Philip, on which the filmmakers apparently rely—calls Mary Magdalene by this name. This double-standard—the same man couldn’t possibly be known by his full name on one ossuary and a nickname on the other, but a woman could be known on her ossuary by an otherwise completely unattested name—undermines the entire case.

We assume that the presence of Matya does not invalidate the find but we assign no evidentiary value to it (other than factoring in its combinatorial role). We also assume that the Yehuda son of Yeshua ossuary does not invalidate the find but we ignore it in the computations. This last assumption is contentious.

The assumption is not just contentious, but deeply flawed—see Mark Goodacre’s explanation of why. But only is the assumption flawed, it contradicts a statement made in the first segment of the documentary (which I am watching right now). In the film, a voiceover says that if this is Jesus’s family tomb, we should only find the names of Jesus’s family members. Yet Matthew/Matiah and Judah/Yehudah are nowhere attested as members of Jesus’s family in any ancient source. Therefore, by the film’s own standards, Matiah and Yehudah should be a slam-dunk case against this being the Jesus family tomb.

The filmmakers seem to realize that Matiah is a problem, so they go through hoops of special pleading to try to establish the possibility that Matiah might be related to Mary, mother of Jesus. Well, sure it’s possible that she had a relative named Matia, but there’s no evidence to that effect. In order to try to make the case sound plausible, the filmmakers appeal to the Lukan genealogy (Luke 3:23–38), in which two Matthats, a Mattatha, and a Mattathias appear. The filmmakers claim—and they even get James Tabor to say this on film—that the Lukan genealogy is the genealogy of Jesus’s mother Mary. They need to learn to read. Luke explicitly says that Jesus “was the son (as was thought) of Joseph son of Heli, son of Matthat …” There is no reasonable way to get this to be the genealogy of Mary, yet the filmmaker’s entire justification for not throwing out the tomb on the basis of Matiah’s ossuary depends on this impossible link.

I can’t comment much on Feuerverger’s final assumption:

We assume that this tombsite observation represents the `best’ of many `trials’. It is estimated that there are approximately 4000 inscribed male ossuaries and somewhat fewer than half as many inscribed female ossuaries in existence. The number of `trials’ is then taken as being approximately 1000. The computations do not take into account families who could not afford ossuary burials or who did not have sufficient literacy to have their ossuaries inscribed, and does not take into account families living outside of the Jerusalem area.

Several bibliobloggers whose expertise is more in NT studies and 1st-century Judaism have argued that Jesus’s family would be precisely one of those “who could not afford ossuary burials” and would be “living outside of the Jerusalem area.” See, for example, Craig Evans’s post on Deinde.

Feuerverger’s mathematics may or may not be unassailable—I don’t know about that. But the assumptions that underlie Feuerverger’s analysis are deeply, deeply flawed, and the statistical analysis is at best only as good as its assumptions.