REL21: Workbook One

Three Bible Scholars compared:

Reflections on David Watt:

David Watt believes in the infallible Church teaching about Mary he uses the Wizard of Oz
as an example of myth rather than say King Arthur making it sound absurd rather than poetic,
he gives his own impression of rhetorical flatness as criteria for assessment. He compares
modern scholars to the Devil, and contradicts himself when he gives example where overliteral reading allows for other gods, but earlier criticizes exactly this use of rhetorical appeal to
mythic parallels with his wizard of Oz example.(Watt 2009)
All this seems to me to be academically unsound, and betrays a bias and agenda that must
make us skeptical of Mr Watts position. This skepticism is reinforced when he appeals to the
Second Vatican councils De Verbum Document, citing section 11 which affirms the inspiration
of the holy spirit, but ignoring section 12 which states that [I]n sacred Scripture, God speaks
through men in human fashion, it follows that the interpreter of sacred Scripture, if he is to
ascertain what God has wished to communicate to us, should carefully search out the meaning
which the sacred writers really had in mind(Flannery 1975, p.757)
Beyond these issues is a broader one that I note also in the other writers we explore in this
workbook, that is that Watt makes claims about the internal mind and motivation of Jesus for
example that he presupposes inn-errancy(Watt 2009) . Given that Jesus never makes
mention of this later development of the Catholic church, I struggle to see how a person can
make an inference about the thoughts of a man who lived thousands of years ago, in a long
dead culture, in revolutionary times within that culture, and for whom we have a scant handful of
apparently contradictory, fragmentary accounts of his life and sayings. This applies also to the
two conservatives below.

Reflections on Sanders and Meier:

Both appear to accept the gospels as being basically historical documents, and then, taking
what we know about the Jewish life in the time of Jesus, they construct portraits of Jesus as a
man and speculate on his motives, also like Watt, they routinely speculate as to the internal
mind and motivation of Jesus based on these sources.
It appears to me that this approach, and its results, are deeply problematic.
Firstly, we see from the 'hidden' solution regarding the feeding stories that it is possible to
interpret the gospels as containing highly symbolic messages shrouded in narratives that
require special knowledge of the tropes and symbolisms of the times to interpret. This raises
several related issues, one, that it may not be possible to recover all the 'hidden' meanings due
to the loss of the knowledge of these tropes and symbols, two that it may not be possible to
determine which stories are meant to be read in this way and which are actually intended to be
read as genuine history, if any, and finally that we cannot know what motives or purposes where
intended by the authors and redactors of these documents at the level of detail that would be
needed to interpret the individual stories contained therein.
Secondly it is apparent from other readings(Carrier 2000) that the gospels where written years
after the death of Jesus, probably by persons who did not know him directly, probably using
sources that we no longer have access to and probably , at least in some cases, informed by an
already developing system of religion characterized by the competing influences of a comples
oral tradition and the emerging influence of Paul.
Thirdly, at least one of the gospels, the one widely recognized as the earliest of the synoptics,
Mark, characterizes the very disciples who directly knew Jesus as being unable to understand
him and even Jesus' frustration at not being understood (Mark 8:17, Mark 8:33).

Lastly, another striking feature of both writers as summarized in Martin(Martin 2000, pp.49-69) is
their rejection of non-canonical religious sources, which, given the long and convoluted, and
obviously ideological and sectarian history(Carrier 2000) of the canonization of the present
catholic bible is surprising to say the least.
The gospel of Thomas serves as a fine example of this bias, Martin(Martin 2000, p.53) quotes
Sanders as saying that very, very little non-canonical scripture could conceivably go back to
the time of Jesus. This despite the fact that there are clear parallels between many of the
sayings in Thomas and many of the sayings in Matthew and Luke, that the sayings in Thomas
are often more archaic in form in Thomas than in either gospel and that it is generally conceded
that Matthew and Luke had other sources from which they drew sayings and other material.
The appeal to the general scholarly view seems hopelessly inadequate as an excuse for
dismissing all this material.
To summarize, Sanders and Meier both attempt a 'reconstruction' of an historical figure using
sources that they themselves concede are later creations, removed form the events by a
generation or more, both in terms of persons and in terms of sources, are filled with allegorical
or secret meanings, have ideological motives of their own and are a tiny fraction of the religious
literature of the time and even only a small part of the religious literature from that time that we
now have at our disposal.
Two conservatives and a fundamentalist compared:
I really feel for David Watt. He wants to defend the Bible as the fundamental source of religious
authority (along, of course, with the Church and the guidance of the Holy Spirit) and he sees
where the slippery slope of naturalism and liberalism can take us too easily to a mishmash of
compromise that seeks to fit Jesus into some definite role in an unavoidably incomplete and
simplistic understanding of Jewish culture at the beginning of the common era. On the other
hand he is certainly wrong to read the gospels as straight forward accounts of historical events,

it seems clear that even his own Church acknowledges the difficulty in that. Watt would have us
believe simply that the actual Moses and the actual Elijah appeared in a blinding light and the
actual voice of the actual God of Israel spoke from the sky. This is simple, but the 'hidden'
solution shows us that it is perfectly possible to read stories like these in a more symbolic way,
and that there may be reason to believe that they where read in this symbolic way even at the
very beginning of their circulation, in fact that they where intended to be read in such a way by
their authors.
My own impression:
It seems to me that there are several major teachings in the Feeding sequence, mainly that
feeding the poor is more important than table manners. By this I mean that I imagine that when
the thousands of poor followers of Jesus needed to eat, many of them would have been salt of
the earth types, who where dirty, sweaty, worked dirty jobs, and where probably not highstatus Jews who regularly observed the complex traditions that the upper classes would.
Jesus and the disciples, itinerant, traveling by boat, living amongst these low-status persons,
probably eschewed these observances out of practicality. When the Pharisees attack Jesus for
it, he responds essentially by saying it is more important to feed the poor and keep good
company than to observe rules and regulations, that is, that goodness is more important than
strictness, and that a persons purity comes from their heart, not what they touch externally.
Honoring with the lips means that you can talk up the forms ands rules, but without a
generous, worshipful heart, you will not be pure.
I have been convinced by the Hidden solution to the Feeding stories that I am not competent to
uncover the meanings of gospel stories, so I will leave the transfiguration well enough alone,
Watt would claim it as simply true, Sanders as an inventive but not dishonest(Martin 2000,
p.52) aligning of Jesus with prophets and leaders form the past, and Meier would, one assumes
remain agnostic on the issue(Martin 2000, p.64). Some features appear relevant to me, such as

the fact that only 3 disciples are privileged to see the transfiguration. That their 'leader', Peter.
Was flummoxed about how to respond, and that Jesus actively draws comparisons with Elijah
and not with Moses, with the prophet of drought and disaster to a fallen people rather than the
leader who brings his people out of slavery.
Falling in to the same speculative trap as Sanders and Meier (and Watt) for a moment, perhaps
then Jesus saw himself as a prophet to a people who had strayed from right religion, just as
Israel had strayed to Baal worship in the time of Elijah. Jesus might also identify in Elijah what
he thinks are the most important teachings of the religion he had inherited; listening to the
small still voice of ones own religious conscience, repudiating hypocrites and being true to
ones faith.
they asked him for a sign from heaven. He sighed deeply and said, "Why does this generation
ask for a miraculous sign? I tell you the truth, no sign will be given to it." (Mark 8:11-12)
Bibliography
Carrier, R., 2000. The Formation of the New Testament Canon. Infidels.org. Available at:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/NTcanon.html [Accessed March 25,
2009].

Flannery, A., 1975. Vatican Council II, Vol. 1: The Conciliar and Postconciliar Documents,
Costello Pub Co.

Martin, R., 2000. The Elusive Messiah: A Philosophical Overview Of The Quest For The

Historical Jesus, Westview Press.

Watt, D., 2009. Was Our Lord A Fundamentalist? Available at:

http://soli.inav.net/~jfischer/apr99/davidwatt.html [Accessed March 25, 2009].