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Jesus and the Politics of Interpretation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza
Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza
Affiliation:
Harvard Divinity School
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Extract

I distinctly recall how excited I was to read Trajectories through Early Christianity some twenty-five years ago. In 1970 I had just finished doctoral studies and had begun teaching at the University of Notre Dame. One of the first lessons I received from a senior colleague at that time was: “Elisabeth, remember you are not teaching here as a theologian but as a critical exegete and historian. Consequently, never allow your students to ask what is the religious or theological significance of biblical texts and interpretations for today. If you allow this question your scholarship will flounder on the slippery slope of relevance.” I was puzzled and disturbed by such counsel—to say the least—because as a student in Germany I had not encountered such anti-theological positivism but rather had been reared in the hermeneutical-theological tradition. The exciting part of reading Trajectories, therefore, was the realization that epistemological, hermeneutical, and theological questions were also the cutting edge issues of American biblical scholarship. For Trajectories set out to initiate a critical discussion and revision of the categories and conceptualizations not only of biblical-historical interpretation, but also of the criteria for theological evaluation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 90 , Issue 4: Special Issue Honoring Helmut Koester , October 1997 , pp. 343 - 358
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1997

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References

1 Robinson, James M. and Koester, Helmut, Trajectories Through Early Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971).Google Scholar

2 Ibid., 230.

3 Burnett, Fred W. and Phillips, Gary A (“Palm Re(a)ding and the Big Bang: Origins and Development of Jesus Traditions,” RelSRev 18 [1992] 299)Google Scholar, in their review of Koester's, Ancient Christian Gospels (Philadelphia: Trinity Press, 1990)Google Scholar, observe that this magisterial work does not refer to Trajectories. Hence, they ask: “Koester leaves the impression that his own reading is not colored by theological interests, but what other interests do operate here unacknowledged (Is it the Bultmannian ‘dass?’)?”

4 See my book But She Said: Feminist Practices of Biblical Interpretation (Boston: Beacon, 1994).Google Scholar

5 Koester, Helmut, “Writings and the Spirit: Authority and Politics in Ancient Christianity,” HTR 84 (1991) 353–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 A lively discussion ensued after my presentation of this paper at the symposium in Professor Koester's honor as to the adequacy of the notion of re-construction. Helmut Koester objected that in archeological work the term communicates more the sense of restoration than that of construction. The following suggestions were made to replace the term: refigure, refashion, rewrite, recuperate, revision, rebuild, and remodel. However, I am not convinced that any of these suggestions expresses more adequately the intended meaning of what I mean by re-construction.

7 For some of the discussions of Jesus research see Thompson, William M., The Jesus Debate: A Survey & Synthesis (New York: Paulist, 1985)Google Scholar; Borg, Marcus J., “Portraits of Jesus in Contemporary American Scholarship,” HTR 84 (1991) 1–22Google Scholar; Sanders, E. P., “Jesus: His Religious ‘Type,’” Reflections 87 (1992) 4–12Google Scholar; idem, The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Allen Lane, 1993)Google Scholar; Korsch, Daniel, “Neue Jesusliteratur,” BK 48 (1993) 40–44Google Scholar; Hahn, Ferdinand, “Umstrittenes Jesusbild?” MThZ 44 (1993) 95–107Google Scholar; Pawlikowski, John T., “Reflections on the Brown-Crossan Debate,” Explorations 10/1 (1996) 2–3Google Scholar; Freyne, Sean, “The Historical Jesus and Archeology,” Explorations 10/2 (1996) 6Google Scholar; Vermes, Geza, “Jesus, the Jew and His Religion,” Explorations 10/2 (1996) 7–8Google Scholar; Balz, Horst Robert, Methodische Probleme der neutestamentlichen Christologie (WMANT 25; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1967)Google Scholar; Eckhardt, Roy A., Reclaiming the Jesus of History: Christology Today (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992)Google Scholar; Jonge, Marinus de, Christology in Context: The Earliest Christian Responses to Jesus (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1988)Google Scholar; Fredriksen, Paula, From Jesus to Christ: The Origins of the New Testament Images of Jesus (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Horsley, Richard A., Jesus and the Spiral of Violence (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989)Google Scholar; Meier, John P., A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus (2 vols; New York: Doubleday, 1991)Google Scholar; and Boring, M. Eugene, The Continuing Voice of Jesus: Christian Prophecy and the Gospel Tradition (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1991).Google Scholar

8 See also Koester, Helmut, “The Divine Human Being,” HTR 78 (1985) 243–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Georgi, Dieter, “The Interest in Life of Jesus Theology as a Paradigm for the Social History of Biblical Criticism,” HTR 85 (1992) 51–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Ibid., 76.

11 Ibid., 83.

12 For a review and discussion of this “newest quest” see Borg, Marcus J., Jesus in Contemporary Scholarship (Valley Forge: Trinity, 1994)Google Scholar; Charlesworth, James H., “Annotated Bibliography,” in idem, ed., Jesus' Jewishness: Exploring the Place of Jesus Within Early Judaism (New York: Crossroad/The American Interfaith Institute, 1991)Google Scholar; O'Grady, John F., “The Present State of Christology,” Critical Studies 32/1 (April, 1993) 77–91Google Scholar; Kümmel, Werner G., “Jesusforschung seit 1981,” ThR 53 (1988) 229–49Google Scholar and 54 (1989) 1–53.

13 See Crossan, John Dominic, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (New York: HarperCollins, 1991).Google Scholar

14 The proceedings were published in Carlson, Jeffrey and Ludwig, Robert A., eds., Jesus and Faith: A Conversation on the Work of John Dominic Crossan Author of The Historical Jesus (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1994).Google Scholar

15 Brock, Rita Nakashima, Journeys by Heart: A Christology of Erotic Power (New York: Crossroad, 1988).Google Scholar

16 Catherine Keller, “The Jesus of History and the Feminism of Theology,” in Carlson and Ludwig, Jesus and Faith, 77 (Keller's emphasis).

17 Ibid., 75.

18 To my knowledge, this word was coined by the sociologist Dorothy Smith. I do not use “malestream” in the sense of male-authored but in order to indicate that mainstream scholar-ship is still determined by elite white men.

19 John Dominic Crossan, “Responses and Reflections,” in Carlson and Ludwig, Jesus and Faith, 151.

20 Ibid., 151.

21 Johnson, Luke Timothy, The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1996).Google Scholar

22 For a defense of the Jesus Seminar see Funk, Robert W., Honest to Jesus: Jesus for a New Millennium (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1996).Google Scholar

23 See my discussion of the institute's practices in Jesus: Miriam's Child and Sophia's Prophet (New York: Continuum, 1994) 67–70.Google Scholar

24 Johnson, Real Jesus, 165–66.

25 Ibid., 175.

26 Ibid., 170.

27 Feminist theory and theology has generated serious discussions of language and its function. In order to mark the inadequacy and ambiguity of our language about G*d theologically and to destabilize visibly our way of thinking and speaking about G*d, I have adopted in my own work—to the consternation of the copy editors—the sign G*d, which seeks to interrupt our conventional readings of it. This mode of spelling alludes to but is quite different from the Jewish orthodox way of rendering the name of G-d. How much feminist theological work is liable to be shaped and controlled by malestream conventions comes to the fore in HTR style policy, which, according to the editor, precludes such spelling. Consequently, my rendering of G*d was edited out. However, such a “stylistic” emendation has far-reaching theoretical and theological implications.

28 Schweitzer, Albert, The Quest for the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of Its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede (1906; reprinted New York: MacMillan, 1961).Google Scholar

29 As always I use this term here to include also men. For the problematic use of the term woman/women see Riley, Denise, “Am I That Name”: Feminism and the Category of Women in History (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Butler, Judith, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990).Google Scholar My way of spelling wo/men seeks to underscore not only the incoherent destabilized character of the term “woman/women” but also to retain the expression “women” as a political category. Hence, whenever I speak of wo/men I mean to include not only all women but also to speak of oppressed and marginalized men. The expression wo/men must therefore be understood as inclusive rather than as an exclusive universalized gender term.

30 Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schüssler, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (1983; 10th Anniversary Edition, New York: Crossroad, 1994).Google Scholar

31 Kloppenborg, John S., “The Sayings Gospel Q and the Quest for the Historical Jesus,” HTR 89 (1996) 307–44Google Scholar; Koester, Helmut, “Response to John S. Kloppenborg,” HTR 89 (1996) 345–49.Google Scholar

32 Ibid., 248.

33 See also Hewitt, Marsha, “The Redemptive Power of Memory,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 10 (1994) 73–90.Google Scholar

34 See my articles “Text and Reality—Reality as Text: The Problem of a Feminist Historical and Social Reconstruction Based on Texts.” StTh 40 (1989) 19–34Google Scholar; and “The Rhetoricity of Historical Knowledge: Pauline Discourse and Its Contextualizations,” in Bormann, Lukas, Tredici, Kelly, Standhartinger, Angela, eds., Religious Propaganda & Missionary Competition in the New Testament World: Essays Honoring Dieter Georgi (Leiden: Brill, 1994) 445–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35 See Tolbert, Mary Ann, “Social, Sociological, and Anthropological Methods,” in Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schüssler, ed., Searching the Scriptures (2 vols.; New York: Crossroad, 1993) 1Google Scholar. 255–72.

36 See Wander, Bernd, Trennungsprozesse zwischen frühem Christentum and Judentum (Heidelberg: Francke, 1994)Google Scholar; for the feminist discussion on anti-Judaism see now Schottroff, Luise and Wacker, Marie-Theres, Von der Wurzel getragen: Christlich-feministische Exegese in Auseinandersetzung mit dem Antijudaismus, (Leiden: Brill, 1996).Google Scholar

37 Koester, Helmut (“Jesus the Victim,” JBL 111 [1992] 6 n. 14)Google Scholar objects to the term “movement” because the National Socialists and Hitler used it. In the American context, however, the term reminds one of socialpolitical progressive movements such as the abolitionist, suffrage, workers, civil rights, wo/men's, and indigenous peoples movements.

38 See Patterson, Orlando, Freedom in the Making of Western Culture (New York: Basic Books, 1991).Google Scholar

39 Boring, M. Eugene, “The Historical-Critical Method's Criteria of Authenticity,” Semeia 44 (1988) 9–24.Google Scholar

40 Whether these touchtones that modify the “criteria of authenticity” are accepted depends on the politics of interpretation that governs historical Jesus research.

41 In my view the deuteronomistic prophetic interpretation of Jesus' death in Q is such an instance of “making sense” after the event. It seems to me problematic to separate this inter-pretation too rigidly from the “wisdom story of the persecution and vindication of the righ-teous one” which forms the pattern of the passion narratives. For such an attempt see Kloppenborg, John S., “‘Easter Faith’ and the Sayings Gospel Q,” Semeia 49 (1990) 71–100.Google Scholar

42 For such an emphasis see also Helmut Koester (“Jesus the Victim,” 14–15) although his polemical emphasis on eschatology seems to depoliticize the basileia proclamation. See his note 15 where he seems to reduce my overall proposal to one key element, the understanding of Jesus as prophet and messenger of Sophia.

43 Ricoeur, Paul, “History and Rhetoric,” Diogenes 168 (1994) 22.Google Scholar One overlooks this fact if one constructs a dichotomy between those who construe “a Jesus who is just like one of us” and a Jesus “who does not fit our categories.” Any historical knowledge is attained in and through our socially conditioned categories and lenses. For example, “eschatology” is a modern concept. The question is not whether but which categories one privileges. See also “Eschatology of the New Testament,” JJDBSup, 271–77.

44 Paul Ricœr, “History and Rhetoric,” 23.