New College Biblical Studies Seminar

I will be giving a paper titled "A New/Old Look at John 21: Towards A Literary-Historical Reading of John 21" on 1 Dec. 2007 at the University of Edinburgh.

It really is a general overview of my thesis, and I hope at that time to recieve a great deal of criticism on the general flow of my argument as well as a few preliminary conclusions I have reached concerning the function of the Beloved Disciple, high frequency of literary self-awareness, and the provocative shift in narrative time in John 21.

Below is a small section of the paper that has direct relevance to this blog:

The initially obscure, hyperbolic reference made to “books” in John 21:25 has a clear set of parallels that would have triggered a network of rhetorical echoes in early readings of the text. The use of βιβλία would have conjured up an image of vast libraries of scrolls, such as the one referenced in a story contemporary to John in which Ptolemy asked Demetrius of Phalerum to collect all of the books of the world (which came to around 500,000). Here the narrative of Jesus overwhelms all the official literature of his day, that is, anything that was worthy of being written on a scroll.

This sets the stage for reflecting on how this rich seam of rhetoric in John 21 relates to the Gospel as a whole... The rhetoric of John 21:25 attempts to class the Gospel of John with the set of literatures related to the word βιβλία. This certainly comports well with Burridge’s estimation of the genre of John as bios literature, as relevant literatures would have also been published in the format related to the term. And this is contra Hengel’s take the hyperbole: “As all earlier Christian biblical texts were circulated as codexes[sic], i.e. in book form and using nomina sacra, in my view we may presuppose that this would already be the case with the first edition. This is one of the fixed Christian writing practices which goes back to the first century.” Though he arrives at this conclusion based on the papyrological record, there is no lexicographical merit to Hengel’s argument. In fact, I argue that it is the widespread Christian use of the codex in this period that would have pointed the rhetoric, having been specifically crafted by means of βιβλία at this pre-transitional stage in the lexicography of book technology. Hengel is right to characterize the use of the codex as a “fixed Christian practice,” but there is no evidence to suggest that βιβλία would have referred to one this early, and in this context.

Due to its position in the composition history of the Gospel, this raises an interesting question regarding the relevance of the rhetoric itself. If this rhetoric comes from the hand of the author, then it is simple to read the verse as a self-conscious attestation of genre. However, if it comes from the hand of a later author, whether of the entire chapter or simply vv. 24-25, it is possible to understand the hyperbole as a misreading of 20:30-31 that results in a series of literary and generic implications not considered by the initial author of the Gospel. This would mean that 21:24-25 sets up a retrospective generic expectation for the Gospel not explicitly intended by its author.

Either way, John 21:25 leads one to read the Gospel somewhat differently than the first conclusion of John 20:30-31. [Though I tend towards the former.] And either way, reading this text in light of its rhetorical connections to book culture in antiquity grants us a clear point of access into the self-perception of Gospel writers at the end of the first century... I am sure the writer of John 21 was pleased with stumbling across such an efficient, double-edged rhetoric.

SBL 2006 Papers

I'll go ahead in joining the biblioblogging trend of posting what seminar I will be participating in this year in DC. Mark Goodacre posted a few other announcements. There are four or five of us coming over from New College to deliver papers on our work this year at SBL, but I am not sure if they would be comfortable in having their topics broadcast at this point.

The Bible in Ancient and Modern Media section asked for papers on the use of the Bible in films that really don't have much to do with the Bible. (I suppose the frogs at the end of Magnolia are a good example of what they are looking for.) So I tossed together this:

"Jesus Beyond His Genre: The Non-Canonical Jesus Films."

Abstract

There is an interesting sub-genre of "Jesus films" that relates well to the "treatment of biblical themes in films that are not expressly biblical." This genre is distinct both from films that attempt to directly adapt the canonical gospels to the screen, and from films that simply feature a discernable Christ figure as a central theme. The films that populate this sub-genre rest somewhere in between, being filmed narratives that have nothing else to do with Jesus other than the suggestion of a title, a set of visual themes, or an abstract yet fully intentional nod to the nature of Jesus. This paper will outline the contours of this interesting genre by looking at three of its most effective examples, and attempt to identify the hermeneutics at play in such profoundly inter-textual works of art. At first glimpse, Bruno Dumont's controversial realist masterpiece "La vie de Jesus" is only related to Jesus by title. But beneath the surface of the film lies commentary about mortality and materiality that expands to fill the Christological brackets set by Dumont in the title. Gus van Sant's recent film “Last Days” narrates the last few days of Kurt Cobain’s life in the context of a loosely fictional stand-in that becomes increasingly cloaked in Jesus imagery until a final resurrection scene. And finally, Bresson’s “Au hazard Balthazar” quite boldly turns a dilapidated donkey into a provocative metaphor for the odd presence of Christ in contemporary culture. All three of these films are intentional and provocative allusions to Jesus in decidedly non-biblical narrative worlds. This paper will track the reflective strategies of this "non-canonical" genre through these three close readings in their appropriate film theoretical context, and articulate the rich potential for re-narrating Jesus by means of the startling generic conflict embodied by these films.

I should have added in the abstract that Dumont's film reportedly takes its title from Ernst Renan's famous volume of the life of Jesus. But I look forward to (briefly) covering this overlooked section of Jesus films. I don't think I will exhaust the range of explanations for this anomaly in the above paper, but ever since being exposed to these films I have always wondered how they manage to catch aspects of Jesus' life as narrated in the Gospels and tradition far more incisively than their more "faithful" counterparts produced by Christians seeking to tell the story of Jesus visually.

We may be able to add The Last Temptation of Christ and Jesus of Montreal to this list, but the key feature of the above films is that while not providing a metanarrative of Jesus' life and purpose, they do focus in on specific elements that add an intertextual dimension to the primary narrative. I would want to argue that, as Kazantzakis poses it, The Last Temptation of Christ is less about Jesus than it is about the human experience of spirituality. But that is a different paper for a different time, each context deserves closer scrutiny. And to be honest, I have a hard time with Jesus of Montreal as it is my least favorite of Arcand's films and its mimicry of the Gospel narratives seems to lack grounding in a broader sense of redemption or social justice. I am more than open to correction on this point.