[Dialogue] Spong 10/04

[KroegerD at aol.com]

October 4, 2006 
The Study of New Testament  Miracles, Part III  
In the opening column in this series on miracles in the Bible, I noted  two 
things. First, the accounts of miracles in the Bible are generally limited  to 
three cycles of stories within the biblical narrative. They are part of the  
Moses-Joshua cycle of stories, the Elijah-Elisha cycle of stories and the  
Jesus-Disciples of Jesus cycle of stories. There is an occasional supernatural  
tale in other parts of the Bible, but these are the only areas where they are  
concentrated. Second, miracles in the biblical story are not necessarily moral  
acts. The plagues inflicted on the Egyptians at the time of the Exodus, which 
 included the divine killing of the first-born son in every Egyptian 
household,  are hardly moral by any standard we would employ today. The narrative of 
Joshua  asking God to stop the sun in the sky to allow him and his army more 
daylight  hours to complete the slaughtering of his Amorite enemies is also a 
rather  bizarre divine act. In that analysis, we discovered that in the 
Moses-Joshua  stories, the miracles recounted are almost exclusively nature miracles, 
by which  I mean they are stories of the manipulation of natural forces to 
achieve a human  goal. The plagues on Egypt involved turning the Nile River into 
blood,  commanding hailstones and darkness to fall upon the nation, the 
affliction of  the people with boils and the livestock with disease were all, the 
Bible says,  miraculously sent to accomplish specific human purposes. The idea 
that anyone  has the power to command what we regard as the natural forces of 
the universe to  enter into his or her service is very strange indeed.  
The miracles of Elijah and Elisha also tended to occur in the natural order.  
These prophets were said to be able to manipulate the weather patterns to  
achieve their purposes and Elijah was deemed capable of calling down fire from  
heaven to burn up his enemies. However, the content of miracle accounts grow 
in  the Elijah-Elisha cycle, for it is here that miraculous healings and even  
accounts of raising a dead person back to life enter the biblical tradition.  
When we come to the gospels, we discover that Jesus was said to be capable of 
 performing miracles in each of these three areas of life. Associated with 
him  was a series of nature miracles: Jesus stilled the storm, walked on water,  
expanded the food supply and caused a fig tree to die by laying a curse on 
it,  all of which involved manipulating the natural order. Yet the gospels also  
portray Jesus as a healer, enabling the blind to see, the deaf to hear, the 
lame  to walk, the mute to sing and those who were "possessed by demons" to be  
cleansed or exorcised. Jesus was said to have had this healing power even 
though  some of the first century diagnoses, like 'demon possession,' are today  
dismissed as pre-modern ignorance.  
There are also three stories told in the gospels in which Jesus was said to  
have the power to raise the dead. They were the daughter of Jairus, whose 
story  is told in Mark, Matthew and Luke; the raising of a widow's son from death 
in  the village of Nain, told only in Luke, and finally the story of the 
raising of  Lazarus, told only in John's gospel. The point I want to make in this 
brief  analysis is that each type of miracle that is attributed to Jesus in the 
gospels  also occurs in the earlier cycles of Moses-Joshua and Elijah-Elisha. 
So my first  inquiry into understanding the miracle stories in the gospels 
leads me to ask  whether the miracles attributed to past biblical heroes might 
have been used to  help shape the miracle accounts told about Jesus. Pursuing 
this line of inquiry  raises the possibility that these miracles stories might 
have been developed to  serve the interpretative purpose of seeing Jesus as a 
new Moses or a new Elijah  far more than they were the descriptions of actual 
events that literally  happened in history.  
This week I explore this possibility more deeply. Note first that Moses as  
the father of the law and Elijah as the father of the prophetic movement  
represent the twin towers of the Jewish religion. The religion called Judaism  was 
said to "hang on the law and the prophets."  
Moses and Elijah also loom large in the background of the gospels. As I  
mentioned in the second column of this series, Moses' name appears seventy-eight  
times in the New Testament and Elijah's twenty-nine times. In the dramatic 
story  that Christians call the Transfiguration, Moses and Elijah were said to 
appear  on that mountaintop with Jesus and to converse with him. When Peter 
responded to  this vision with the suggestion that three tabernacles be built to 
mark this  event, one for Moses, one for Elijah and one for Jesus, he was 
raising Jesus to  the highest status that a Jew could imagine by making Jesus equal 
to Moses and  Elijah. The fact that in this story Peter was rebuked by a 
heavenly voice that  elevated Jesus above both Moses and Elijah probably reflects 
the early struggle  among the disciples of Jesus about who he was and how his 
life was to be  understood.  
It is clear from a study of the gospels that some stories that had been told  
about Moses and Elijah were retold about Jesus. In the minds of the first  
Christians a mutual dependency binding Moses and Elijah with Jesus is obvious.  
However, these stories are magnified to demonstrate Jesus' superiority, which  
was the conclusion his followers had drawn. One thinks immediately of the 
story  told only in Matthew's gospel about a wicked king named Herod who sent his 
 troops to Bethlehem with orders to kill all the Jewish male babies less than 
two  years of age. His desire was to destroy God's promised deliverer. When 
Moses was  born another wicked king, that time named Pharaoh, also ordered all 
Jewish boy  babies destroyed in a vain effort to remove God's promised 
deliverer. Matthew  had Mary, Joseph and Jesus fleeing to Egypt to escape this purge. 
This also  meant that just as God called Moses to come out of Egypt, so God 
could now call  Jesus, the new Moses, to come out of Egypt.  
Jesus' baptism is filled with Moses images. Moses splits the 'Red Sea' to  
lead people to understand that God is working through him. Jesus, the new Moses, 
 splits the heavens, which contain 'the waters above the firmament' (Gen. 
1:6),  which then flow down on him as the Holy Spirit so people can see that God 
dwells  in him. In the wilderness Moses asks God to send heavenly bread, 
called manna,  to the starving multitude. In the wilderness Jesus expands five 
loaves to feed a  multitude. The stories are related. In the Sermon on the Mount 
(Matt. 5-7) Jesus  is portrayed as the new Moses, on a new mountain, giving a 
new interpretation of  the Torah. Once again the evidence reveals that the 
story of Jesus has been  shaped by the story of Moses.  
Elijah is not as prominent as Moses in the New Testament, but he is still a  
figure in the background of the gospel tradition. In both Mark and Matthew, 
the  Elijah role is delegated to John the Baptist. Luke, however, counters this 
by  saying that John the Baptist is not the new Elijah, but only the one who 
comes  in "the spirit of Elijah." The reason for this becomes obvious when Luke 
reaches  the climax of his story and begins to portray Jesus as the new 
Elijah by  expanding the Elijah story from the Book of Kings. In Luke's unique 
story of  Jesus raising the only son of a widow from the dead, the echoes of 
Elijah  raising a widow's son from the dead are heard. However, the key place where 
this  identification focuses is found in the comparison of the ascension of 
Elijah (II  Kings 2) with the story told only in Luke of Jesus' ascension (Acts 
1,2). Luke  is clearly building the Elijah story into his portrait of Jesus. 
In these two  narratives both Elijah and Jesus ascend into heaven. The text 
about Elijah  indicates that he needs a magical chariot, fiery horses and a 
God-sent whirlwind  to accomplish this feat. Jesus, the new and greater Elijah, is 
portrayed as  ascending on his own power. Elijah pours out on his single 
disciple and  successor, Elisha, a double portion of his enormous, but still 
human, spirit.  Luke, however, portrays Jesus as pouring out the infinite power of 
God's Holy  Spirit on the whole gathered community of disciples in sufficient 
supply to last  through all generations. Under the skill of Luke's quill, the 
fire from Elijah'  horses and chariot becomes the tongues of fire that light 
on the disciples'  heads and Elijah's propelling whirlwind becomes the "mighty 
rushing wind" of the  Holy Spirit filling the whole room on the day of 
Pentecost.  
There are other connections between Jesus and the Moses and Elijah cycles  
that space does not allow me to cover in this brief article. Taken together,  
however, they form the basis for the suggestion that long before the gospels  
were written, both Moses and Elijah had become models through which Jesus'  
followers understood him and by which they processed the Jesus experience. In  
this way, Moses and Elijah stories were in fact wrapped around Jesus, becoming  
the source of at least some of the miracles attributed to Jesus in the gospels. 
 
I conclude this column by examining just one. Moses demonstrated God's power  
over water in the Red Sea narrative. After Moses died, this power was 
celebrated  in the writings of the prophets and in the psalms until it became a 
regular part  of the Jewish understanding of God found in their liturgies. These 
liturgies  proclaimed that God could make a divine path in the 'deep,' that 
God's  footprints could be seen upon the water. When the disciples of Jesus began 
to  say that they had met the presence of the holy God in Jesus, they simply  
attributed those ancient God concepts to Jesus as the only way that human  
language could be stretched sufficiently to capture the meaning of their  
experience. Like God, Jesus could still the storm. Like God, Jesus could walk  upon 
water. These were not observed miracles being described by eyewitnesses;  these 
were interpretative words describing the God presence they believed they  had 
met in Jesus.  
As we begin to see these connections, a new way to look at the miracle  
stories emerges. The nature miracles are not supernatural acts so much as they  are 
interpretative signs. They are Moses and Elijah stories magnified. We thus  
misread the gospels by literalizing them. There is far more data to be  
considered, but this is a start. We destabilize the literal view to capture the  
experience that literalism can never capture. This study will continue.  
John Shelby Spong  
_Note from  the Editor: Bishop Spong's new book is available now at 
bookstores everywhere  and by clicking here!_ 
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060762055/agoramedia-20)   
Question and Answer
With John  Shelby Spong 
Carl Williams from Wichita, Kansas, writes:  
Why are so many of today's Christians so easily drawn away from Jesus'  
message of LOVE and into the hateful, judgmental, xenophobic version of  
Christianity that targets people who are gays/lesbians, Muslims, ACLU supporters  and 
others who want to embrace love as a basis for life? What happened to the  
Golden Rule Christianity given that in the 1930's, Nazi Germany engaged more  than 
400 fundamentalist organizations to fan the flames for nationalism to help  
usher in fascism. What can progressives do to fight the propaganda juggernaut of 
 the Religious Right's adoption of fundamentalist Christianity to move 
America  into a modern fascism?  
The Religious Right's fundamentalists attack on gays today as a "first  
target" is reminiscent of what the Nazis did in the 1930's to desensitize the  
public and prepare the way for other groups to be targeted.  
Dear Carl,  
Your letter makes many assumptions that space does not allow me to unload but 
 let me assume for the sake of argument that your analysis is correct. My 
caution  here is that you use loaded words like "hateful," "xenophobic," and 
"juggernaut  of the Religious Right," none of which may be wrong but I am 
suspicious that  they also reveal a lack of objectivity. For example, I know people 
who are  politically located on the right but who are not hateful, xenophobic 
and would  be quite surprised to be told that they are part of a "juggernaut," 
indeed many  of them feel beleaguered and outnumbered.  
Yet the fact remains as you have pointed out that one of the oldest  
successful political tricks is to identify a "popular" enemy, arouse the latent  
hostility among the people against that enemy and bring about a political  victory. 
You cite the example of Hitler's Nazi party identifying the Jews with  evil, 
enlisting conservative religious Christians by appealing to their  
anti-Semitism and the resulting horror that we call the Holocaust. While that  tactic is 
always evil and divisive and it always results in disaster, we need to  be 
aware of the fact that Hitler never actually won a political majority. The  Nazis 
were the largest minority party in the Reichstag when Hitler was asked to  
form a government with the assumption that it would be a coalition government.  
However, Hitler used his minority power to dismiss the Reichstag and to assume 
 the complete power of a dictator. Secondly, Hitler also had other designated 
 enemies besides the Jews. He condemned communists, Slavs, homosexuals and 
others  he regarded as inferior specimens of humanity. He also had a world wide 
economic  depression to fuel the anger of his voters.  
I mention these things because while I deplore the power of right wing  
politics in the present administration, and its crude victimization of  homosexual 
people as part of their political strategy, I see no reason to think  that 
this will be a successful strategy. I believe that a majority of the  American 
population, while not necessarily pro-gay, are in fact unwilling to see  
homosexual persons victimized or even harassed. I remind you that when the Bush  
administration introduced in the Senate a proposed constitutional amendment to  
ban gay marriage, a measure that requires a two thirds vote, the Senate not only 
 did not give that measure the required two thirds vote, it did not even 
receive  a majority vote in this body that is controlled by the President's party. 
I  think that vote reflected well the place of that issue in America. There 
will be  no national constitutional amendment on gay marriage. The tide of 
homophobia in  America is actually declining with every passing year. This was 
nothing but a  crude political tipping of the hat to the basest element in the 
Religious Right  that cannot win majority vote in any forum of a national 
religious constituency.   
So my confidence is in the unwillingness of the great center of the American  
people to be hoodwinked by the politics of prejudice. That does not mean that 
 those, who like you, see a "targeting of any group in our society" for 
anyone's  political gain, do not have both the duty and the responsibility, to say 
nothing  of the right, to challenge that prejudice in the public arena with 
both your  words and action.  
Another factor in the rise of anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany was that the main 
 line churches from Pope Pius XII and the Roman Catholics to German Lutherans 
 were so consumed with their own needs for that evasive idol called "unity" 
that  they gave up their prophetic voices and retreated into silence. Truth 
must  always trump unity when the Church faces the crucial issues in world 
history.  The heroes of the Church are never the unity seekers. The heroes are the 
people  like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Niemoeller, Desmond Tutu, John E. 
Hines,  William Coffin and Martin Luther King, who put their lives and their 
careers on  the line for the sake of the truth that cannot be compromised.  
People always want to know where they can find and access that truth. They do 
 not understand that ultimate truth is not a proposition but a premise. If 
the  essence of Jesus' message is accurately captured, as I think it is, in the 
words  of the Fourth Gospel where Jesus says, "I have come that they might 
have life  and have it more abundantly," then any policy of any government that 
diminishes  the life of any child of God, based on a person's being, is opposed 
to the  gospel of Jesus and must be confronted. That includes racism, sexism, 
homophobia  and anti-Semitism. A church that waffles and temporizes on any 
one of these  issues has no claim on the Christ they say they serve and must be 
forced to face  the falseness of their own religious convictions. I still 
believe that there are  sufficient parts of the Christian Church who stand ready 
to do that so that we  will not sink as a nation into the debauchery that 
marked the Germany of Adolf  Hitler, though it is clear to me that we are in a new 
"Dark Age."  
Thanks for sharing your concern.  
John Shelby Spong
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: /pipermail/dialogue_wedgeblade.net/attachments/20061005/240c8c3f/attachment-0001.html