These are not obscure topics. But they are usually dealt with piecemeal in essays or commentaries on individual books. There needs to be an overall addressing the subject. (If such a text already exists by all means let me know. But I’ve looked and I’ve asked.)
- How the delay of the Parousia affected the development of early Christianity and the formation of the canon.
I take the ‘apocalyptic prophet’ interpretation of Jesus, like Markan priority, as one of the very short list of ‘done deals’ in NT interpretation. If this view of Jesus is not correct we can say nothing about him. But there are very many reasons to think it is correct. Early Christianity was drenched with apocalyptic expectation. And hovering behind much of the NT, starting with what is probably the earliest text, 1 Thessalonians , is a response to the delay of the expected establishment of the Kingdom. We can detect the development of a realized eschatology and see the ways the community attempted to reach an accommodation with the surrounding culture.
- How the core doctrines of the church, both Biblical and post-Biblical, are unimaginable without the influence of Greek philosophy.
Many of the folks in the pews are flabbergasted to be told that the doctrine of the Christian Trinity is nowhere to be found in the text of the New Testament. (What is present are passages that were later used to create the doctrine of the Trinity.) What they also don’t understand is how thoroughly Hellenized Second Temple Judaism was, and how important Greek philosophy was in the development of doctrines like the Trinity.
- How the breath of Yahweh shaping primordial chaos became the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Trinity.
The Holy Spirit has always gotten short shrift, right from the beginning. The relationship between Jesus and God ate up all the bandwidth at Nicaea and as a concept the mysterious Third Person was kind of tacked on. Yet there He/She/It was at decisive moments of Christian history such as Jesus’ baptism and Pentecost. Many contemporary Christians claim a level of intimacy with the HS. Now I say He/She/It not out of disrespect or snark but as an acknowledgement of the Mystery. One needed goal of such a book would be to point out how translators view references to the Holy Spirit in the New Testament though a Nicaean lens. The pneuma of God is not the same as the Third Person of the Trinity and it is a distortion to pretend otherwise.
Of all these works the only one I regret not being able to accomplish myself is that last one. I could do the research well enough but I don’t have the gifts that would be required to produce a readable book. This makes me sad.
How do the Trinitarians deal with 1 Corinthians 15:20-28, specifically the ideas that after Jesus “destroys every nation and every authority and power” he will hand over the kingdom to God the Father (v. 24) and, even more importantly, that the Son will, in the end, be subjected to the Father so that “God will be all in all”? (v. 28).
TTHorne56 said
How do the Trinitarians deal with 1 Corinthians 15:20-28, specifically the ideas that after Jesus “destroys every nation and every authority and power” he will hand over the kingdom to God the Father (v. 24) and, even more importantly, that the Son will, in the end, be subjected to the Father so that “God will be all in all”? (v. 28).
Pfft. Theology is the art of threshing out scripture for what one wants to believe from all else.
Personally, I chucked everything in the canon but the Pericope Adulterae.
It gives me a sense of license.
We just don’t have the sources to say much of anything about the first except the texts on which there are more than enough commentaries. That’s all the evidence we have. But we could take all of what we think we know piecemeal about this topic from all of these texts and focus on this very specific question. I have only a few thoughts about such a synthesis. You can also see how the Talmuds still contain material that was once apocalyptic in nature and became softened and reinterpreted over time. I would like to focus on this question but combine Christian and Jewish texts as sources to be sifted.
Yes the goal would be to make necessary connections. In one of the responses to Prof Ehrman’s recent post about the authorship of Ephesians the poster made the comment that he remembered many more sermons in church coming from Ephesians (and the other Pauline forgeries) than from what are considered the authentic Pauline letters. This was my experience as well. Some reflection will reveal why. What are these letters largely about? The good order of the church and how it should relate to society. Perennial pastoral concerns even today. And this is a function of apocalyptic speculation having been damped down or excised.
I’ve been reading a lot in the Hekhalot/Merkabah literature which is thoroughly apocalyptic. I suppose I assumed that Jewish apocalypticism declined because of the excesses and disasters of the revolts.
On the third issue, what did you think of Bart’s rather long series of posts on the Holy Spirit a couple of years back? I doubt he went deep enough to satisfy you, but maybe you could pick his brain for more detail on some of his posts. Maybe you did already. It’s interesting that Bart himself was once one of those charismatic types, speaking in tongues and all.
Yeah I asked some questions but that was just not the forum. Everyone is too quick to jump to Nicaea. Thanks to the discoveries at Ugarit our knowledge of Ancient Near Eastern concepts like Ruach/Pneuma have been pushed back millennia. They get to the heart of ancient concepts of divinity. They make arguments over Christology look hasty and recent.
The funny part is I never really got interested in the Trinity until I became a non-believer. When I was a Christian I just accepted it and never thought about it. The Trinity was an utterly brilliant solution to a problem created by Christianity itself. The concept is undefined enough to be useful. Like a Zen koan it is the place where the rational slips into the transcendent. But another book about Nicaea is really overkill. A good book about the Holy Spirit is needed badly. There are all these loose threads fluttering in the divine wind but the connections aren’t being made because they reach across specialties. Sure there are a lot of blank spaces on our maps but in what arena of Biblical studies is that not true?
Stephen said
These are not obscure topics. But they are usually dealt with piecemeal in essays or commentaries on individual books. There needs to be an overall addressing the subject. (If such a text already exists by all means let me know. But I’ve looked and I’ve asked.)
- How the delay of the Parousia affected the development of early Christianity and the formation of the canon.
I take the ‘apocalyptic prophet’ interpretation of Jesus, like Markan priority, as one of the very short list of ‘done deals’ in NT interpretation. If this view of Jesus is not correct we can say nothing about him. But there are very many reasons to think it is correct. Early Christianity was drenched with apocalyptic expectation. And hovering behind much of the NT, starting with what is probably the earliest text, 1 Thessalonians , is a response to the delay of the expected establishment of the Kingdom. We can detect the development of a realized eschatology and see the ways the community attempted to reach an accommodation with the surrounding culture.
Of all these works the only one I regret not being able to accomplish myself is that last one. I could do the research well enough but I don’t have the gifts that would be required to produce a readable book. This makes me sad.
Write this one then. BDE has alluded to this in many of his books, but AFAIK has never fully explored it.
TTHorne56 said
How do the Trinitarians deal with 1 Corinthians 15:20-28, specifically the ideas that after Jesus “destroys every nation and every authority and power” he will hand over the kingdom to God the Father (v. 24) and, even more importantly, that the Son will, in the end, be subjected to the Father so that “God will be all in all”? (v. 28).
Like they do everything that doesn’t fit – they ignore it.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert