The Pneuma Review » J. P. O’Connor

Michael Bird: Jesus among the Gods

J. P. O’Connor — Tue, 16 Jan 2024 23:00:21 +0000

Michael F. Bird, Jesus among the Gods: Early Christology in the Greco-Roman World (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2022), xi+480 pages, ISBN 9781481316750.

To whom or to what might we compare Jesus, the “son of God” (Mark 1:1)? In the hunt to discern the meaning and range of early Christian identifications of Jesus as divine, scholars have long compared Jesus with other ancient figures or deities. If, as Deuteronomy 6:4 memorably declares, God is “one,” then how, in a Jewish theological framework, can Jesus also be God? In mathematical terms, one plus one cannot also equal one. Certainly, Jesus is divine in the New Testament (see Phil 2:6; Col 2:9; 1 John 5:20), but in the Jewish and Greco-Roman environs does Jesus’ divinity put him on the same, ontological level as the God of Israel? These are a few of the weighty questions Michael F. Bird sets out to answer in Jesus among the Gods: Early Christology in the Greco-Roman World. In its simplest formulation, Bird argues that “Jesus is a Jewish deity of the Greco-Roman world” (p. 407). While there are sundry ancient comparanda to which one might compare Jesus, the Christian formulation of Jesus’ divinity remains “distinctive and characteristic” (p. 411). Quite impressively, Bird has catalogued and commented upon the principal intermediary figures with whom Jesus is often compared—from the Gnostic demiurge, to angel Christology, to Roman imperial cults.

Bird’s project is built on a careful distinction between functional and ontological divinity. If Jesus is God, then what kind or quality of God is he? “In what sense is Jesus divine and how closely is his divinity related to the divinity of God the Father” (p. 407)? Scholars have repeatedly noted that other intermediary figures in Second Temple Judaism display divine characteristics. In Exodus 7:1, Moses is made “like God to Pharoah.” From an array of evidence, it is plausible to argue that Moses is “a figure possessing divine power and exercising divine agency” (p. 35). The reception history of Moses as an exalted figure confirms such a claim (T. Mos. 1:14; 4Q374 II, 2.6; Philo, Mos. 1.27; Ezek. Trag. 68–82). In some comparative readings, Jesus is like God—just as Moses is like God—in a functional or tiered sense. Jesus is “among the gods” to borrow from the book’s title. Bird, instead, wants to recalibrate the claim that Jesus is God in an ontological sense. While early Christian articulations of Jesus’ divinity are quite varied and diverse (Bird is careful to note this on p. 83), “Christian authors in some instances begin to identify Jesus with the characteristics of absolute deity” (p. 82). According to Bird, Jesus and the God of Israel possess “ontic sameness” in important ways, such as the eternal, unbegotten, or immortal descriptions of absolute divinity one finds in early Christian writings (pp. 82–83).

In what sense is Jesus divine and how closely is his divinity related to the divinity of God the Father?

—Michael Bird

The bulk of Bird’s project, which he calls the “mega-chapter,” is housed in his third chapter, “Putting Jesus in His Place: Scholarship on Early Christology and Intermediary Figures” (pp. 115–380). Bird’s treatment of other intermediary figures is comprehensive. To offer one example, his section on exalted patriarchs introduces Adam, Enoch, Moses, and Elijah, which he then compares to the figure of Christ in both nascent and apostolic Christian Christologies. Bird carefully evaluates the data documenting similarities and differences. For instance, the Enochic Son of Man possesses nine similarities and twelve differences to the exalted Jesus in the book of Revelation (pp. 290–91). Bird concludes that while “Jesus was portrayed in apostolic, proto-orthodox, heterodox, and other writings with a likeness to a variety of intermediary figures,” these comparisons remain insufficient in explaining “the totality of Christology discourses and their attribution of divine roles, titles, and nature to Jesus” (p. 380). When compared to the figure of Jesus, these historical analogues contain fascinating similarities and differences.

Jesus among the Gods provides a valuable lesson for how one ought to conduct historical investigations. In biblical studies, two perennial temptations have long enticed readers to swing in one of two directions.

In the end, Bird’s Jesus among the Gods provides a valuable lesson for how one ought to conduct historical investigations. In biblical studies, two perennial temptations have long enticed readers to swing in one of two directions. Some may assert that Jesus is so distinct that early Christian claims to divinity appear nothing like the systems of divination one finds in Roman imperial cults, for instance. This group tends to maximalize differences between Jesus and Roman cultic life. Bird, however, has no problem concluding that “ruler cults had a formative impact upon early Christianity” (p. 365)—so long as one also admits that “Jesus receives more than ruler veneration, but worship appropriate for Israel’s God” (p. 379). The second group is guilty of the opposite impulse. They assert that Jesus possesses no distinctness whatsoever within the broad landscape of Greco-Roman and Jewish ideas about the divine. Early Christian claims to divinity are no different than, say, the veneration of Moses one finds in Ezekiel the Tragedian. Again, Bird sees no problem with identifying such obvious similarities given that one also admits that “no single intermediary figure can be considered the hermeneutic key explaining the development of early Christology” (p. 383). Bird here maintains similarities alongside of important “innovations.” Both polarities have something to learn from Bird’s volume. Jesus can and does resemble “a Mediterranean deity, a Greek hero, or Roman divus” and also retains “close analogue[s] to the God of Israel” (p. 5). Early Christian accounts of Jesus’ identity can also exist on a varied spectrum: one need not assume that every biblical author or apostolic writer says the same thing in the same way about Jesus. And yet, neither should it be a taboo anachronism to find similarities between “pro-Nicene Christology” and the Christological formulations one finds in Paul. Whether or not one agrees with Bird’s finer points about how Christ is or is not like specific Jewish and Greco-Roman intermediary figures, his larger point is worth pondering. One ought to avoid (and, perhaps, interrogate [p. 408]) the impulse to minimize key differences between Jesus and other figures like him and the impulse to maximize those differences. To quote Bird once more: “Early Christology should be located—much like the church at Dura-Europos—between a synagogue and a Mithraeum, even if the church is several yards closer to the synagogue” (p. 402).

Reviewed by J. P. O’Connor

Publisher’s page: https://www.baylorpress.com/9781481316750/jesus-among-the-gods/

Katherine Shaner: Enslaved Leadership in Early Christianity

J. P. O’Connor — Mon, 10 Oct 2022 22:00:26 +0000

Katherine Shaner, Enslaved Leadership in Early Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018) xxix + 207 pages, ISBN 9780190275068.

Dr. Katherine Shaner, in a revised form of her Harvard Divinity School dissertation, asks a provocative question. What role, if any, did enslaved persons embody in the congregation of the early church? Shaner’s response to this enticing question offers readers not only a cogent account of the life of enslaved people in early antiquity, but also an incisive lesson for how one ought to conduct historical investigations altogether. For the lay person or pastor, Shaner provides a new vantage point through which to understand the complex roles of figures like Onesimus or the roles of women and enslaved persons in the Pastoral Epistles. One also gleans invaluable tools for exploring ancient history beyond well-trodden literary avenues, which can exaggerate details or worse, deliberately neglect traces of lower-class populations, through archaeological and material avenues as well. The upshot is a commendable lesson in “ambiguity” (the term appears 30 times in the 109-page manuscript body): laying aside one’s assumptions about what a biblical passage should say to discover what the biblical text does (and, in some cases, does not) say.

One constant theme of Shaner’s project is her via media approach to slavery in the ancient world vis-à-vis Christianity. In chapter three, for instance, Shaner turns to the apostle Paul to discuss his endlessly debated position on slavery. Shaner presents a refreshingly nuanced situation in which Paul, as a creature of his time, is caught up in analogous debates present within his Jewish and Greco-Roman setting. In this scheme, Paul neither fully “advocated systemic abolition, since his social milieu accepted slavery” (p. 47) nor did he fully reinforce slave/free dynamics. Instead of giving into the urge to lump Paul into one camp or the other, Shaner presses her readers “to keep in tension the exclusionary logic of slavery and the multiple subject positions that enslaved persons held in early Christian communities” (p. 61). In another example, Shaner considers the artifact of the Southern Market Gate on the Triodos in Ephesos. On the one hand, a stone pillar adjacent to the Market Gate contains an inscription of the Persicus decree—a decree that functioned to subordinate public slaves’ participation in the Artemis cult. The net result is a public attempt to ensure “only the right sort of people will hold leadership positions in the cult” (p. 23). On the other hand, at this same location, we have evidence of the “two freedpersons, Mithridates and Mazaeus, [who] built and dedicated the gate to Livia and Augustus, their former owners” (p. 29). In this remarkable example, overlording imperial tactics coexist with a case of civic benefaction by two formerly enslaved persons in the public marketplace. In this way, the politics of reading require the historian to consider not simply what a text states but what a text does. Just as the Persicus decree aims to silence and subjugate, the adjacent dedication by Mithridates and Mazaeus testify to freedom and participation. In Paul’s case, the history of interpretation tends to focus on what Paul states rather than on the more hidden or performative dimensions of his letters. Destabilizing this “Paul-centered framework” (p. 59) draws attention to the polyvalent features of Onesimus, for example, who is described as a “minister” (diakonē) with Paul (Phlm 13)—a terminus technicus for cultic workers in Ephesos as well as early Christian groups (p. 59). Shaner’s project exposes how the same ambiguous tensions within the biblical text are operative in the surrounding Roman cultural.

What role did enslaved persons embody in the congregation of the early church?

One of the lasting contributions of Shaner’s project is confronting how “we” (historians and pastors alike) use our imaginations when constructing the lives of real people in the ancient world. Because an enslaved person is not mentioned in the literary record that does not necessarily mean enslaved persons were altogether absent (quite the opposite in fact). More so, the data available to us is often biased—intentionally rendering lower status figures invisible. In chapter four’s analysis of Parthian reliefs, Shaner carefully documents how Roman reliefs center strong male figures in sacrificial scenes (one common form of imperial propaganda), and simultaneously obscure figures in the background. This type of “visual rhetoric” forces the viewer to ignore “those doing the most work in the scene” (p. 84). These background figures and their respective social positions are purposely nudged out of the viewer’s mind. Shaner points out the recurrent problem: “this inability to distinguish status often stops scholars from asking what reliefs can tell us about enslaved persons” (p. 85). Our sources are constructed in ways to erase enslaved participants. While determining the status of these figures with certainty remains elusive (and purposely so), Shaner rightly encourages historians to resist the temptation to ignore them. Redirecting one’s attention to those “invisible” participants in cultic/religious rituals (see pp. xxv, 21) requires an act of cognizant resistance.

There is a lesson here about laying aside one’s assumptions about what we think a biblical passage should say to instead discover what the biblical text really does or does not say.

In the end, Shaner’s work offers a delightful lesson in the limitations of our sources. The book opens with the agonizingly short quotation from Pliny the Younger: “I believed it necessary to procure from two slave women, whom they call ministers/deacons, something of the truth by torture” (Ep. Tra. 10.96.8; Shaner’s trans.). Who are these women? What are their names? Are they ministers or deacons? One discovers that by the turn of the second century, early Christian communities appear to have enslaved women who held the title of “deacon.” The work of telling the story of these women, despite its brevity, is up to us. Likewise, Shaner presents a host of other comparanda, both positive and negative, that demonstrate how early Christians interacted with enslaved members of their congregation (see, e.g., the fascinating example from Ignatius that “some early Christian groups used common funds to purchase the freedom of enslaved members” [Pol. 4.3; pp. 107–8]). The lesson here is an important one: our sources for early Christian history are often terse. Paying attention to enslaved participation in early Christian communities fosters a communal resistance to “enslaved logics” and “masters’ perspectives” (p. 114) that seeks to silence and erase them. When we apply Shaner’s method of reading the New Testament we can give voice to the ambivalent, sometimes obscure stories within our own communities of faith.

Review by JP O’Connor

Publisher’s page: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/enslaved-leadership-in-early-christianity-9780190275068

Jack Levison: Fresh Air

J. P. O’Connor — Thu, 13 Aug 2015 19:36:07 +0000

Jack Levison, Fresh Air: the Holy Spirit for an Inspired Life (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press: 2012), 217 pages, 9781612610689.

Jack Levison, in his work Fresh Air: the Holy Spirit for an Inspired Life, aims to clear a foggy, often caricatured view of the Holy Spirit in today’s church. Does one feel a move of the Spirit only through mountain-top, ecstatic experiences? Or may one also drudge forth in the mundane of the daily with full-confidence of the Spirit’s presence? Levison’s honest piece, filled with top-notch exegetical work, answers a resounding “yes” to the question of the Spirit’s presence in our daily work. In fact, as Levison defines it, the spirit functions not only as the third person of the Trinity, but also as “the breath that animates and motivates all people” (17). For this reason, he keeps the title Holy Spirit in lower case throughout his work. Levison presents a convincing case for the spirit as “the breath within” every person, offering a Fresh perspective on how one understands the spirit’s role in a person’s life (36).

Does one feel a move of the Spirit only through mountain-top, ecstatic experiences?

The form of Levison’s work is loveably pragmatic. He sprinkles personal stories, study-guide tools, and practical advice on how one may experience the spirit in daily life. Levison’s warm stories draw the reader in and his gift to teach leaves the reader with plenty to consider. At the outset, he advises in a devotional tone, for the reader to “keep a Bible handy,” “take time to breathe,” and to “write” (18). Following, Levison investigates the full range of the spirit’s role in Scripture. He explores the role of the spirit in individuals such as the depth of Job’s agony “where grief stomps on our chest,” (25) in Daniel’s “dogged faithfulness” toward good discipline (59), and even “violently” in Jesus’ journey into the wilderness (173). Levison also explores how the spirit functions in communities, such as in the outpouring at Pentecost in the early church as well as in present day Christian communities. For the Pentecostal pastor, Levison provides a helpful reminder of the diversity of the spirit in individuals and communities. As he puts it, the spirit is present in the programmatic “Salsa and Chips Crowd” as well as the charismatic “Cane Ridge, Kentucky” crowd (198).

Levison’s hope for unity among churches, centered in our understanding of Jesus and our study of the Scriptures, should be heeded by all.

Occasionally rough around the edges, Levinson’s strategy appears at times corrective. This is apparent from the outset when he decides to render Spirit as spirit (which may cause eye-brow-raising for some). Levison’s view of the spirit (as life-breath) is also quite universal. As on the day of Pentecost, the spirit’s work is present in every person, indiscriminate of age, gender, socio-economic class, or even religious affiliation. Levison’s sensitivity arises from misappropriations of the spirit and he seems to have specific works and movements on his mind as he writes. In one example, he refers to the misleading of “popular books” which articulate the spirit’s power for one “to do with ease things that would otherwise be difficult or impossible” (88). In another place, Levison insists that the promise of the spirit is “not an excuse for failing to study, think, consider, plan, ponder, muse, read, and contemplate” (181). For this reason, Levison’s own academic posture (of which he is keenly aware!) appears to flavor how he views the spirit to function, namely in a more studious, programmatic sense. Thus, my lingering question for Levison is if he understands the spirit to also function positively in one’s ecstatic experience. Certainly, education and reason provide coherency to (at times) irrational experiences of the spirit. However, might also the spirit move in ways that surprise or even contradict one’s rational expectations?

Finally, Levison concludes with hope for the “uncommon unity” of the spirit (212). Regardless of background or experience, Levison believes that the spirit should bring us together and not tear us apart. Levison’s hope for unity among churches, centered in our understanding of Jesus and our study of the Scriptures, should be heeded by all. For if there is division in the household of God, it is unlikely to remain standing (cf. Mark 3:20-30). Overall, Levison’s work embodies the spirit’s own ability to inspire freshness. After reading, every Pentecostal pastor should experience a renewed excitement to return to the biblical text and to re-examine how the spirit works both in the individual and the community, in the mountain-top and the valley.

Reviewed by JP O’Connor

Publisher’s page: http://www.paracletepress.com/fresh-air-the-holy-spirit-for-an-inspired-life.html