Christopher Skinner’s interviews with Davies and Patterson

I am not very good at updating my blogroll, I find. Christopher Skinner’s PEJE IESOUS (transliteration of the Coptic for “Jesus said”) has been around a while now (since September, in fact), and I’ve linked to it, but not managed to add it to the blog roll, despite it’s interest to people who are interested in Gos Thom. Last month, he posted an interview in three parts with Stevan Davies and this month, he has done the same with Stephen J Patterson (although part III is not up at the time of this post). In each case, I’ve linked to the first post and you will need to read up the blog. He also has a range of other interesting material on Thomas and on early Christianity in general. A blog worth visiting.

 

Getting back into Gospel of Thomas – commentaries

As I’ve moved from reading what I’ve already written to working on new material, it has occurred to me that over the last several years, several new commentaries on Thomas have become available. When I first began looking at Thomas, there were only four books that were commentaries on the text.

• Rodolphe Kasser (1961). L’Evangile selon Thomas: présentation et commentaire théologique. Neuchatel, Editions Delachaux & Niestlé.
• Jacques Ménard (1975.). L’Évangile Selon Thomas. Leiden, E.J. Brill.
• Michael Fieger, (1991). Das Thomasevangelium.  Einleitung, Kommentar and Systematik. Münster, Aschendorff.
• Richard Valantasis (1997). The Gospel of Thomas. London and New York, Routledge.

I own a copy of Valantasis and the only other one available in a library in Australia is Fieger.  The comments I’ve heard about the latter are underwhelming, but I guess I need to fill out an ILL request, anyway. I believe that Ménard is good and have heard nothing about Kasser.  Comments from readers are most welcome about whether I should start scouring the second hand sellers for copies of either of them.

In the last several years I have acquired three new books:

• Reinhard Nordsieck (2004). Das Thomas-Evangelium: Einleitung: Zur Frage des historischen Jesus: Kommentierung aller 114 Logien. Neukirchen-Vluyn, Neukirchener Verlag.
• April DeConick (2006). The Original Gospel of Thomas in Translation, With a Commentary and New English Translation of the Complete Gospel. London, T & T Clark.
• Uwe-Karsten Plisch (2008). The Gospel of Thomas: original text with commentary. Stuttgart, Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft.

These three books have made my task signficantly easier and since they are reasonably new, I offer some information about them.

April DeConick’s work is laid out so that it is very easy to follow and it offers a very comprehensive range of information. It provides the Coptic text, her English translation and the Greek P Oxy whenever this is available.  It looks, where appropriate at Text and Translation Issues; Interpretative Comment; Source Discussion, Literature Parallels; Agreement in Syrian Gospels, Western Text and Diatessaron; and Selected Bibliography. She also indicates whether she sees it as a kernel saying or an accretion.  It’s available in paperback – an added bonus – although I bought the hard-cover version as soon as it came out. Combined with its companion volume (DeConick, A. D. (2005). Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas: A History of the Gospel and its Growth. London, T&T Clark.) it provides a huge amount of resource information about the text as well as her insights into interpreting it.

Richard Nordsiek’s book is also available as a paperback. I can’t remember exactly what I paid for it, but it was quite inexpensive and some of the reason for the low cost can been seen in the formatting.   The layout is less user-friendly than DeConick’s – no headings, just the text in German translation followed by his comments. Where he is commenting on Coptic or Greek text, it’s presented using the appropriate alphabet, rather than a transliteration (thank goodness! – I find transliterated Coptic very difficult to read). There is very little white space in the formatting – no spaces between paragraphs – but the size of the text is good. This has kept the size of the book to a reasonably managable 408 pages. There is not much introductory material – 20 pages of introduction, 7 pages on the question of the Historical Jesus – and no indices. Apart from a 9 page bibliography the rest of the book is commentary with comprehensive in text citations. I haven’t used it enough to get a good feel for it, but am finding it interesting.

Uwe-Karsten Plisch’s book is translated from German (although I have not been able to find information about a German edition). There are times when the underlying German is not far below the surface, but it is in general a good read. Like Nordsiek’s book, this has minimal introductory material, but it does include an index of texts cited as well as a bibliography, which is divided into subheadings. For each saying, he provides the Coptic text, the P Oxy text where available, a Greek retroversion wherever there is a New Testament parallel and an English translation as well as comments.  Again, I haven’t used this enough yet to make any comment on the usefulness or otherwise of the Greek retroversion. The commentary is helpful, although there are times when I feel that he makes statements about things that are self-evident to him but for which I would like a bit of justification.

An added advantage of Nordsieck and Plisch’s books is that they sometimes highlight German language material that I had not heard of before. At other times, they provide an overview of particular German language material that I haven’t been able to access. Sometimes they convince me that I need to try harder.

 

No, not nailed to the perch

I was reading through Doug Chaplin’s 48th Biblical Studies Carnival, (which is huge) when I came across the suggestion that my blog is currently nailed to the perch. I followed the link and discovered that I haven’t posted anything since late September! I had not realised that it had been that long, but there is a very good reason for this.  The funding for my current position (the one that keeps food on the table while I indulge my fascination for Coptic text) comes to an end on 31 December so I have been applying for new jobs and sorting my office into things that belong to me, things that should stay in the office (assuming that if the promised fractional time funding actually materialises and they find someone to do anything part time, they might need some resources) and things that should have been thrown away years ago.

I had forgotten how much energy packing takes and when you combine it with writing job applications, there isn’t much energy left for blogging.

My ministry library is currently sitting in 9 book cartons in the office and my doctoral material is now mainly in a new, shared office in the School of Humanities postgrad “waifs and strays” room where I am being a full time postgrad for 3 months (taking annual and long service leave). The room is inhabited by several honours students, a masters’ research student, a full time PhD student who is waiting for a space to free up in one of the full time doctoral offices, an adjunct philosopher who already has his PhD, me (a part time PhD student who doesn’t actually have to be provided with desk space) and several other people who don’t seem to use their desks.

The room is divided into several bays with 2-3 desks in each.  Everyone is pretty quiet and the room is airconditioned because it used to be a computer lab. This is nice because we are in the grip of an extended spell of hot weather. No other member of the School has air conditioning – not even the Head.

I spent a week getting my head back around my research and acquiring necessary equipment.  This included a rubbish bin and a paper recycling bin, which the other occupants didn’t realise they could ask for, even though they are standard equipment in all offices on campus. I then spent a week at a national university chaplains’ conference in Melbourne, during which time I also talked to several people about potential ministry placements.

Today, I re-read chapter 3 of the thesis/dissertation and decided that it needs a significant rework and discovered that I don’t appear to have a version that still has the Endnote tags for the references.  Yay!! On the plus side, this is the chapter my supervisor/advisor and I had planned to submit for publication some time ago and I am so pleased that we didn’t, because I no longer agree with what it says.

So, Doug, thanks for the nudge.  Although I need to concentrate on getting some writing done so that I can claw back the lack of progress over what has been a truly unpleasant year, I do plan to blog somewhat more frequently over the next two months or so.

 

Objectivity and interpretation of texts

I started writing this post several days ago in response to Christopher Skinner’s interesting post on his PEJE IESOUS blog. It’s part of a conversation with April DeConick about perspectives – here and here.  In his post, he talks about the fact that we all bring biases and presuppositions to our interpretation of texts so that it is impossible to be totally objective in our interpretations. Wade Greiner, April’s husband, has a post that suggests that while everyone has biases, not all biases are equal. Since then, April has added two more posts. The first,  entitled “Choosing your method” outlines her operating principles and is particularly helpful.  The second expresses her frustration at the way the medium allows for misinterpretation. Skinner has posted twice more on the general subject.  James McGrath also has a helpful post. I have previously touched on this issue, but want to explore it further, looking at a different way of thinking about it that I find helpful.

The reader response theory of literary criticism tries to take the differing perspectives of different readers/interpreters seriously, although it is open to serious abuse if taken too far. In part, it sees readers of a text as belonging to particular “interpretive communities” (a term which I think was coined by Stanley Fish), which influence the way in which they interpret particular texts. I think that another way of saying this is that the interpretive community to which one belongs influences the questions one asks of the text and the assumptions one makes about the text. Most of us belong to multiple interpretive communities, which sometimes results in interesting approaches to texts.

When I look at texts from early Christianity for the purposes of my doctoral studies, I ask different questions of them to those that I ask when I am preparing to preach or lead Bible study.  For my doctoral work which I do primarily as part of the interpretive community of academic scholars of studies in religion, I ask “what does this tell me about early Christian communities – how they lived, what they believed, etc?” If I were working on something different I might also be asking  “what does this tell me about the historical Jesus?”, but whatever I ask, I am using the historical-critical method as an end in itself and if I don’t use it properly, I’m in big trouble.

When I am preparing to preach or lead Bible study,  which I do primarily as part of the interpretive community of  Christian biblical scholars, I ask “what does this tell me about how early Christians related to/understood God?” and “what does this tell me about how I should live as a faithful Christian in the twenty-first century?” I have to be aware of the historical context in order to answer  the preaching/teaching questions or I could come up with some very weird answers, so I still have to use the historical-critical method properly.  Knowing the historical context is not the purpose of my questioning, though, it’s a stepping stone to developing a credible theology.

As a practising Christian, I am aware that I make different assumptions about GosThom to the ones I make about the Synoptics, even when I am not wearing my “minister” hat. I am getting better and better at catching myself at it, though. Although I don’t actually believe that there are questions one may not ask about those texts that the church calls Scripture,  I know that there are some questions that it just doesn’t occur to me to ask because I “know” the answers so well. Atheist scholars have different blind spots as a result of belonging to that particular interpretive community. For example, I think they are prone to writing off the unusual as superstition more quickly than is always warranted. James Crossley and Mike Bird’s How Did Christianity Begin?, which I have reviewed, provides a good illustration about the differing assumptions that an atheist and Christian scholar might bring to the texts of early Christianity.

Feminist scholars, womanist scholars, people of colour etc all bring different foundational assumptions to the text from their interpretive communities. I don’t see that there is anything preventing people from all these interpretive communities from doing good historical-critical work or good theology as long as they are aware that they are bringing these biases.

I don’t see that belonging to a confessional interpretive community necessarily prevents one from doing good historical-critical work, either. It depends on the particular confessional community. Things become problematic when the interpreters come from confessional interpretive communities that make strong faith claims such as “God dictated every word of Scripture, so it cannot contradict itself” – which requires some incredible gymnastics of the text  or “The Spirit speaks to me and tells me how to interpret Scripture in today’s world” – which may result in interpretations that have no real basis in the text in its context.

I think I need to finish here in the interests of getting this posted before this topic becomes totally passe.

 

My apologies for deleting a comment

Ack!! I just went into comment moderation to delete a spam comment that had been held for my approval.  Just as I was about to click Spam, my husband came in with a cup of coffee for me. I jerked and clicked on the post before it – one that was OK. Because I hadn’t looked at it, I don’t know whose it was, but if it was yours, please rest assured that I have nothing against you and you are very, very welcome to repost it.

 

Sexism and other forms of bias/prejudice

Possibly we are fairly much all over the issue of women in the bibliobloggosphere, but…

April DeConick posted about the insidiousness of sexism. I agree. Men who in general are amazingly supportive of women’s equality with men will occasionally come out with some comment that is based on sexist stereotypes of the roles of men and women in society. This doesn’t make them anti-women – it simply means that there are areas of their thinking that haven’t overcome their social programming. Women can also be sexist – and they can have sexist attitudes that are biased against men but they can also pigeon-hole themselves and other women on the basis of their gender. Men can also limit themselves and other men on the basis of gender. The thing is that we have all been taught to differentiate between people on the basis of gender since we were very small. Some do it more often than others and some think it’s perfectly OK and just the way God ordained it, while others don’t.

Racism is the same.  I used to think that I was pretty much immune to stereotyping based on race until I went to the sixth birthday party of my friend’s son.  He came over to tell me something about what Andrew had done.  I asked which one Andrew was and was told “the one in the red jumper”. As well as wearing a red jumper, Andrew was also the only Chinese-ethnicity child in the room and I would have said “the Chinese boy” – although it turned out that both he and his parents had been born in Australia. I have no particular negative stereotypes of Chinese people, although I do tend to expect them to be more polite in general and more respectful of older people in particular than is the average Australian.

That incident, however, caused me to stop and think about how often I actually do make judgements about a person based on their race, or socio-economic status, or job or even gender. I do it somewhat more often than I’d like, but I try very hard not to and I try very hard to get to know people at least a bit before I make judgements about them.  Doesn’t always work, of course, because I’m not perfect and because sometimes I just don’t have time to get to know people. We all stereotype, all the time.  We would go crazy if we had to stop and assess every chair-like object for ‘chairness’ before we sat on it and every table-like object for ‘table-ness’ before we put things on it. It’s not unreasonable to expect that the person in the department store wearing a shirt with the store’s logo on it is, in fact, an employee of the store and most of them would become quite irate if every customer said “Excuse me, do you work here?” before they asked a question about the store.

When this becomes a problem is when these assumptions are used to limit people or when they are used as a basis for hatred and discrimination. If someone has gifts/skills that enable her/him to do a particular task, her/his gender, race, sexual orientation, socio-economic background etc should not stop her/him from doing it. If we consider a particular gift to be of God and worthwhile in one person, surely it must be of God and worthwhile in all? And even if you don’t think gifts come from God (perhaps on account of being atheist), the worthwhile argument still holds.

As you will recognise if you have been reading this series of posts on this blog, I have been suggesting that a significant part of the reason for the lack of women bibliobloggers is that the church as institution has held onto sexist understandings of the role of women significantly longer than has secular society. One of the things we can all do to combat it is to examine our attitudes and try to avoid any that limit people on the basis of their gender. A bit of positive discrimination can’t do any harm, either, as long as it’s not patronising, grudging or designed to show someone up in a poor light. In other words, I don’t think it’s helpful to say things like “this surprisingly good post by a woman blogger….” or “I guess, in order to get the femi-mafia off my case, I need to add some women…” or to highlight the post of an inexperienced and unqualified woman together with those of some of the giants in the field (unless the woman is holding her own amongst them, of course!)

And now, I plan to resume posting mainly on GosThom and early Christianity. At least for a while.

 

Two Thomas-related links

Andrew Bernhard has posted an interview that he and Mike Grondin conducted with Christopher Skinner about his new book John and Thomas: Gospels in Conflict? (Wipf & Stock, 2009) on his gospels.net site. I’ve read the interview, but not the book – one of the downsides of doing graduate study part time is that you have to choose what you read and none of the texts that I’m looking at for my research appear in John. The interview, not surprisingly, concentrates on the relationship between the two gospels, something on which I have no considered opinion. Skinner’s response to the first question in the interview, however, makes a great deal of sense. The question is:

You point out in your book that questions about the Gospel of Thomas’s date of origin, relationship to the canonical gospels, and theology seem to have been inextricably linked in modern scholarship (either the text is treated as early, literarily independent, and non-gnostic OR late, literarily dependent, and gnostic). However, you clearly indicate your dissatisfaction with this situation by writing, “an awareness of this trend in previous scholarship points to the present need for careful examination of each question on its own terms.” Why do you feel it’s so important to treat each of these questions individually? And do you think that’s realistic?

The answer you can read on Andrew’s site.

In the interview that Skinner interacts reasonably significantly with the work of April DeConick, Elaine Pagels and Gregory Riley. April has posted a clarification of her position on her Forbidden Gospels site.

Two further notes about this book:

• Discussion about the book with Dr. Skinner is ongoing on the Gospel of Thomas e-list, and all are invited to participate. You will need to join the list in order to do so and you will be requested to give a reason for wanting to join. An interest in the discussion would be deemed an appropriate reason.
• Wipf & Stock have agreed to give a 40% discount to on-line purchasers who have visited Andrew’s site, so if this is an area of interest to you and you’re in the market for a copy of the book, head right over and find out what you need to do.

Update

Christopher Skinner has now responded to April’s response on his Peje Iesous blog.

 

How women operate in churches

As I have been thinking about the issue of women bibliobloggers, I remembered that about ten years ago one of my colleagues noticed what seemed to be a discrepancy in who gets most “air time” in church meetings. He decided to do some research during our annual Synod meeting and kept a record of how much speaking time people had. The way that representation works in our church means that Synods have roughly equal numbers of lay and ordained people and they try to ensure that at least one third of the participants are female (which tells you something about representation straight away).

He corrected his statistics for numbers present and found that male clergy took up by far the greatest speaking time in meetings – far more time than would be expected from the proportion of them present. Next came lay men who also took up more than their share.  Female clergy more or less held their own and lay women largely sat and listened. Because only about 20-30% of our clergy are women, my guess is that about half the lay people were women to get the one-third female overall figure right.  And, of course, more than half the members in congregations are female.

In the course of this discussion, it has been noted that the proportion of women studying in seminaries (we call them theological institutions) and doing course in studies in religion in secular universities is significantly higher than the proportion of female bibliobloggers.  Perhaps those who teach in these places can tell us, though, how much the female students participate in class discussions when they are not delivering papers? I suspect that the dearth of women bibliobloggers is a mirror of how women students participate in class discussions and church meetings.

 

Women, men and biblioblogging – the individual and the culture

Mark Goodacre’s comment on my last post combined with Colin Tofflemire’s on the first one made me realise that there is more that I want to say on this.

Mark is right that there are men biblibloggers who consciously and conscientiously link to the work of women. I have also had significant personal encouraging interaction from men bibliobloggers and my feeling is that this is on the basis of what I have to say, rather than on my gender. It is not possible to predict which might do this on the basis of their general theological position. Four that come to mind, with whom I’ve had interaction about my scholarship (as opposed to general friendly interaction -there are heaps more of these) are James McGrath, Tim Bulkeley , Mark himself, of course, and Mike Bird. I think that James is closest to my general theological position and Mike is furthest away. Certainly, if you look at the website of Highland Theological College, where he teaches, you would expect that he might have a bias against women leaders in the church, and he may well do, for all I know, but it doesn’t extend to not respecting the work of female biblical scholars on the basis of their gender.

Update

The other man I meant to mention in the list above is Tyler Williams who actively encouraged me to do a Biblical Studies Carnival. Hard work, it was, but interesting.

So, my experience has not been that nasty, evil, misogynist male bibliobloggers won’t let me into the club. Jim West even let me into the Biblioblogger Big Brother house (although I wasn’t quite certain I wanted to be there).  OTOH, April has certainly become a target and heard stories of this kind of activity since she raised this issue and I know that Suzanne McCarthy has been attacked and marginalized. Perhaps I have been relatively immune because I am working on Gospel of Thomas so the more conservative bibliobloggers would not bother to read me and I haven’t addressed controversial-in-conservative-Christianity areas until now. I don’t know. In general, the guys didn’t target me for their misogynist attacks when I was studying theology, either.

I am saying that the general culture in the church, particularly in those parts of it from which the majority of male bibliobloggers seem to come, is such that women don’t try to enter the club. This culture sees women’s leadership and women’s scholarship as inferior to men’s, and even those people who don’t actually believe this at an intellectual level often have unexamined assumptions that mean that their behaviour isn’t congruent with their beliefs (as Colin said). It’s approach to the Bible reinforces those attitudes, as does its liturgical practices and it sees humour at the expense of women as perfectly acceptable.

So, I think that a number of the contributing factors to the serious underrepresentation of women in the biblioblogosphere come from the church rather than the biblioblogosphere. Linking to women bibliobloggers and increasing awareness of the work of those who are doing it will help, but not a huge amount. Naming personal attacks and inappropriate treatment in the comments sections of their blogs when you see them will also help, although it will make men who do it vulnerable to being considered outsiders themselves. However, I think that there also needs to be some changes in churches.

If you are a man who is actively involved in your church and think of yourself as egalitarian, I would encourage you to look at how you and your congregation act toward and interact with women and what messages your worship gives them about how acceptable they are. If you are a lay man and work outside the church, think about whether it’s different to the way you interact with your female colleagues in the workplace. If you are married, ask if the way you treat your wife in your home is different to the way she and other women are treated in the church. And then see if you can work out ways to change things if necessary.

Over the last century or so, the majority of members of congregations have been women, and a higher proportion of men than women have been relatively inactive, yet the majority of leaders have been men. When this was congruent with secular culture, it wasn’t such a problem.  However, now that the feminist movement has meant that women are treated significantly more equally in secular society, younger women are not going to be convinced that being involved in the church is such a good thing. If you can be CEO or in charge of the flower roster, which are you going to pick?

 

Five women scholars who have most influenced me

OK.  Now onto the meme Mike tagged me with – in no particular order, and lots more than five, edited so that I give a little more info about each:

• Morna Hooker – New Testament – she uses interesting imagery in her writing and does good biblical studies.  Has presented at Greenbelt, so not just an academic.  My favourite work of hers is  “On Using the Wrong Tool.” Theology 75 (1972): 570-81.
• Marjorie Procter-Smith – liturgy – I used her  In her own rite: constructing feminist liturgical tradition. (Nashville: Abingdon Press. 1990.) as the basis for my Masters Qualifying thesis and it changed radically how I think about liturgy
• Elizabeth J Smith – liturgy – we were at the United Faculty of Theology as undergrads at the same time and then she went to the US and got a PhD and I had a baby and became a rural minister. She supervised my first attempt at a Masters, which I had to give up when I changed jobs and got too busy. She had the task of helping me change my writing style from one that worked for articles in the campus student magazine to one that would pass muster in academia.  She assured me that I couldn’t use “gut feeling” in a masters’ thesis, even if I did have it in inverted commas. “Crafting and Singing Hymns in Australia” in Stephen Burns and Anita Monro (eds) Christian Worship in Australia.  Strathfield, St Pauls Publications, 2009. 183-193 is really worth reading.
• Phyllis Trible – theology – God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality. Overtures to biblical theology, [2]. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978 – it’s about language, so what’s  not to like;  Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives. Overtures to Biblical theology, 13. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984. Chilling and thought provoking, but hopeful.
• Rosemary Radford Reuther – theology – Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology. Boston: Beacon Press, 1983. – language again.
• Sallie McFague – theology -  Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987 and Metaphorical Theology: Models of God in Religious Language. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982. I have no idea why I haven’t read anything more recent, because I really like the way she writes and ecofeminism is an area that really interests me.
• Elizabeth Johnson – theology – She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse. New York: Crossroad, 1992.
• April DeConick – early christianity – Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas: A History of the Gospel and its Growth. London: T&T Clark, 2005. and The Original Gospel of Thomas in Translation, With a Commentary and New English Translation of the Complete Gospel. Library of New Testament Studies. Vol. 287. London: T & T Clark, 2006, but also for giving me the courage to speak in my own voice and own my own opinions, rather than staying with the passive voice.
• Majella Franzmann – early christianity – no publications in particular, but for modelling a way of doing academic presentations that is lively and interesting and for encouraging me to take something I could do well and explore it further.  Without Majella, I would not be doing doctoral studies.
• Judith Plaskow – theology – Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990 and the quote I use as my signature file, from the first multifaith global university chaplains’ conference in Vancouver in 2000 “Politics is the work we do to keep the world safe for our spirituality.” She and I share an allergy to tourist traps.
• Carol Christ – theology – Christ, Carol P., and Judith Plaskow. Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979. My introduction to feminist theology.
• Dorothy McRae-McMahon – liturgy – again, no publication in particular, but she writes beautiful liturgical material that really speaks to me.
• Karen Armstrong – The Battle for God. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000.
• Karen King – What is Gnosticism? Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003.
• Luise Schottroff – New Testament – now that spelled her name correctly. The Parables of Jesus. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006. Made me rethink my approach to parables.  Like I really needed that when I thought I had my methodology all sewn up.

and I have actually met six of these women!