[Dialogue] Spong on the first of March

[KroegerD@aol.com]

March 01, 2006
Jesus for the Non-Religious, Part II
 
In the first column in this series (published on February 15, 2006), I  
sought to establish the fact that the memory of Jesus, including his words,  
parables and actions were recalled orally and passed on only in the Synagogues.  
This means that before the written gospel tradition began, the synagogues were  
the context in which Jesus was remembered. I base that conclusion on the fact  
that the gospels reveal a deep intertwining between the memory of Jesus and 
the  content of the Jewish Bible. This interweaving could only have occurred in 
the  Synagogue because that was the only place where the Hebrew Scriptures 
were read  and discussed. Few people could read in the first century and books 
were in the  form of very expensive hand-written scrolls belonging, normally, 
not to  individuals but to the whole community. Only the Synagogue, for example, 
had  copies of the sacred scriptures, which were read when the people 
gathered for  worship. In the first of this series, I described the Sabbath liturgy 
of the  first century that called for the reading of the entire Torah  
(Genesis-Deuteronomy) in order at public worship on the Sabbaths of a single  year. 
After that long reading each Sabbath came shorter lessons from both the  early 
prophets (Joshua through II Kings) and the later prophets (Isaiah,  Jeremiah, 
Ezekiel and the Book of the Twelve, i.e. Hosea through Malachi). Then  members 
of the congregation were invited to comment on these scriptures. That  was 
when Jesus’ disciples recalled his words and deeds. Inevitably, this meant  that 
they interpreted Jesus through the lens of these texts. So stories of those  
larger than life heroes of the Jewish past became interpretive vehicles through 
 which Jesus began to be thought of as the “New Moses “ or the “New Elijah.”
  Stories from both heroes were retold as if the events in their lives had 
been  repeated in Jesus’ life. 
Jewish worship was also filled with a yearning for  Messiah to come. 
Messianic ideas thus also became channels through which Jesus  was portrayed as the 
one in whom these various hopes were fulfilled. Phrases  like ‘Son of Man’ and ‘
Son of David’ and symbols drawn from the anticipation of  a coming ‘New 
Israel’ began to show up in their descriptions of things Jesus  said and did. 
Classical images of Messiah, like the Suffering Servant from  Isaiah (40-55), or 
the Shepherd King of Israel, from Zechariah (9-14), also  shaped the Jesus 
memory. With the passing years, these stories were told and  retold in Sabbath 
gatherings, until memory blended with interpretation and  history was confused 
with mythology. People today still do not embrace the fact  that everything we 
read in the gospels was written 40 to 70 years after the  earthly life of Jesus 
had come to an end and thus well after this inevitable  blending had 
occurred. 
Later Christians, not knowing this, incorporated  these interpretative 
symbols into their creeds in the 4th and 5th centuries as  if they were history. For 
example, the story of Jesus’ ascension into heaven was  a retelling of the 
Elijah story appropriately magnified. The Virgin Birth was an  attempt to adapt 
the story of Jesus to words found in Isaiah 7:14. Judas  Iscariot was a 
composite of all the traitor stories of the Hebrew tradition.  Many miracle stories 
were adaptations from the Elijah/Elisha cycle. It would not  be until the 
early 19th century that biblical scholarship began to unravel the  facts of 
history from this primitive interpretative process. 
By that time,  these teachings of the church had been set inside liturgies, 
which reinforced a  literal reading of the gospel texts. This meant that when 
biblical scholars  began the inevitable task of unraveling the Jesus of history 
from the Jesus of  interpretation, the fundamentalists saw this biblical 
scholarship as a direct  attack on the veracity of the gospels themselves and even 
non-fundamentalists  began to reel under the impact of new revelations and 
insights that destroyed  their religious confidence. In time this unraveling was 
so thorough that some  people began to suggest that perhaps Jesus never 
really lived at all, that he  was but a fantasy figure composed out of the pagan 
god stories of Egypt and the  Mediterranean. When one claims too much for 
something about which one actually  knows very little, that is almost inevitable. 
There is no doubt in my mind  that Jesus lived. There is also no doubt that 
many of the familiar details of  the traditional Jesus story never happened at 
all. To separate these two things  has been the purpose of my academic 
concentration over the past two years, as I  have sought to probe those formative 
years from 30 to 70 C.E., that we still  call ‘the oral period.’ 
The first insight I developed in this series was to  document the way in 
which the Hebrew Scriptures had become intertwined with the  memory of Jesus long 
before the gospels were written. The insight I seek to  develop this week is 
to show how the liturgical year of the Synagogue,  especially its celebration 
of the great events in the life of the Jewish people,  actually shaped the form 
in which the first gospel, Mark, was constructed.  Because Matthew and Luke 
both represented expansions of Mark, Matthew in a  specifically Jewish 
direction and Luke in a more open, cosmopolitan and gentile  direction, the cumulative 
weight of these three, called ‘the synoptic gospels,’  set the story of 
Jesus into the liturgy of the Synagogue far more deeply than  Western Christians 
have ever imagined. 
Christians have a church year  anchored in three great events in Jesus’ life: 
his birth, his death and his gift  of the Holy Spirit. Yet, Christians still 
are not generally aware of the holy  days of the Jewish year or of their 
presence in the background of various  Christian observances. 
The Jewish liturgical year also began at different  places in the calendar 
among various Jewish groups, making the understanding of  these connections even 
more confusing to follow. For some it began at Rosh  Hashanah in the early 
fall, for others at the harvest celebration called Sukkoth  in the late fall, 
and for still others at the time of the Passover in the early  spring, which 
celebrated the birth of the Jewish nation. Christians first tied  the Jesus story 
into the Jewish year by paralleling the crucifixion of Jesus  with the 
slaying of the Paschal Lamb at Passover. With that connection made, the  rest of 
Jesus’ life fell quickly into a parallel framework with Jewish  observances. 
Using Mark’s order, and working backwards from the crucifixion to  the baptism, 
let me lay the Jesus story out against the Jewish liturgical  practices and see 
what insights follow. 
PASSOVER: Mark wrote chapters 14 and  15 of his gospel to juxtapose the 
crucifixion with the Passover observance. He  even divided his passion story into 
the eight segments of a 24-hour vigil. Jesus  became the New Paschal Lamb whose 
death broke the power of death. This meant  that Chapter 16, Mark’s Easter 
account, would be read on the Sabbath after  Passover. 
DEDICATION (Hanukkah): Moving backward from Passover into the dead  of 
winter, one reaches the next Jewish observance, a festival called Dedication  by the 
Jews. This day celebrated the return of the light of God to the Temple at  
the time of the Maccabees. Stretching Mark back, the story that would be read at 
 this festival was the account of the Transfiguration of Jesus on the 
mountaintop  (9:2-8). Here the light of God was said to have transformed not the 
Temple but  Jesus, presenting him as the new Temple where the light of God now 
resided. I  suspect that by the time Mark wrote this story, the Temple had been 
destroyed by  the Romans, which would have made Mark’s claim for Jesus as the 
new Temple even  more poignant. SUKKOTH: In the fall of the year the Jews 
observed a harvest  festival of eight days that would come in our calendars in mid 
to late October.  As we continue to roll Mark’s gospel backwards across the 
Sabbaths of December,  November and into October, we come to a series of harvest 
and nature stories  (Mark 4:1-41) that have a remarkable affinity with 
Sukkoth. The parable of the  sower was actually divided into four kinds of soil that 
produced four kinds of  harvest that fit an eight-day celebration quite well. 
YOM KIPPUR: Five days  before Sukkoth, in early to mid October the Jews 
celebrated Yom Kippur, the Day  of Atonement. Still rolling Mark’s gospel backward 
we discover that right on  cue, Mark filled his narrative with cleansing, 
healing stories appropriate to  Yom Kippur, including the story where Jesus 
entered that which was unclean, the  Gentile tax collecting office, and called Levi 
to follow him. Levi was thus  cleansed by association with Jesus (2:13-17). 
ROSH HASHANAH: The final day  in the Jewish year that Mark covered was Rosh 
Hashanah, Jewish New Year, which  comes near the first of October. Rosh 
Hashanah was observed by blowing the ram’s  horn to gather the people to announce the 
coming of God’s kingdom and to urge  upon them preparation. Against that 
theme Mark opens his gospel with the story  of John the Baptist, who utters the 
Rosh Hashanah liturgical words and proclaims  that Jesus is the one for whom 
Rosh Hashanah yearns (1:1-11). 
When you put  it together, Mark’s gospel appears to be organized with stories 
about Jesus that  carry worshipers from Rosh Hashanah in the early fall to 
Passover in the early  spring. Mark’s gospel is shorter than the other Synoptics 
because Rosh Hashanah  to Passover only covers 6 ½ months of the year. 
Matthew and Luke then stretched  Mark to provide readings for the others 5 ½ months 
of the year. However, the  structure of these gospels is now clearly revealed. 
The organizing principle in  each is not Jesus’ life as we have long thought, 
but the liturgical year of the  Synagogue inside which the story of Jesus was 
originally interpreted. A whole  new doorway into understanding the life of 
Jesus begins to emerge from the  shadows. I will pursue this study in future 
columns for through this doorway the  gospels open to new possibilities and a 
means is developed to escape today’s  killing literalism. 
John Shelby Spong 
 
Question and Answer
With John Shelby Spong
Dr. Gerald Neuberg via the  Internet writes: 
I think you could be a tremendous bridge builder, bringing  a diverse people 
together under your “call to become more fully human.” Your  critique of 
Christianity, however, begs the question, where are you headed with  this? Your 
views seem almost secular, more rational than even the Unitarians but  more 
spiritual than Ethical Culture (which from my experience seems a bit  lifeless). 
Your ministry is so inclusive that I’m sure you could build a global  following 
of people who want a spiritual home free from the divisive myths of  the 
past, who might agree that Jesus was a great, if not the greatest,  philosopher 
and example, but not the only one worth building a way of life  around. So it 
seems you’re pointing to a global movement or alliance distinct  from 
Christianity that is too exclusive. Will it have a name? 
Dear Dr.  Neuberg 
What you suggest I am doing sounds very impressive. So much so that  I have a 
hard time embracing it. However, I have no ambitions to begin a new  movement 
that needs a name, though I appreciate your attribution to me of that  and 
other noble goals. 
I simply try to combine two things. First, my  identity as a Christian who 
finds Jesus a doorway into the transcendence and  wonder of God and second, my 
citizenship in the 21st century which means that I  cannot think as a 1st 
century Christian, the time in which the Bible was  written; a 4th century 
Christian, the time in which the creeds were formed;  a13th century Christian, the 
time in which current liturgies took shape or a  16th century Christian, the time 
in which the Reformation occurred. I must be a  21st century Christian. That 
means I have to force my Christian faith into the  thought forms dictated by 
the 21st century. In the process much of the  traditional understanding of 
Christianity, shaped as it was by the mindset of  the 1st Century must inevitably 
be sacrificed as no longer either relevant or  possible. 
I draw a distinction between the experience of God and the  explanation of 
that experience. The experience of God is, I believe, both real  and timeless. 
The explanation of that experience, however, is always time bound  and time 
warped. Explanations, because they are always wedded to their time will  also and 
inevitably die. That should be expected. 
I see nothing in history  that causes me to believe that anyone can start a 
new religion. I see much that  indicates that new religious forms always emerge 
out of old concepts. The  tendency of religious institutions is to suppress 
all change. This will be the  death knell of the Christian faith. 
The Christianity I profess is radically  inclusive. There are no barriers, no 
boundaries. It is a journey into the  mystery of God without a road map. 
I’m glad to have you as a fellow  traveler. John Shelby Spong 
 
 
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