[Oe List ...] 3/18/10, Spong: R.I.P. Michael Douglas Goulder, 1927-2010

Thu Mar 18 12:37:56 CDT 2010

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Thursday March 18, 2010 

R.I.P.
Michael Douglas Goulder
1927-2010

I recently learned of the death of Michael Douglas Goulder, one of the world's most provocative biblical scholars. He was, however, even more than that to me. The three great spiritual and intellectual mentors in my life were John E. Hines, John A. T. Robinson and Michael Douglas Goulder. Michael was the last of this wonderful trio to die. Though I had been aware that Michael was in declining health, the news of his death left me with an overwhelming sense of sadness. It also opened a floodgate of memories that I entered into gladly and willingly.
In 1991 I spent some time as a scholar-in-residence at Magdalen College of Oxford University while I was working on a book on the birth narratives of Jesus in the New Testament. That book would later be published (1992) under the rather provocative title Born of a Woman: A Bishop Rethinks the Virgin Birth and the Role of Women in a Male-Dominated Church. At that time the Dean of Magdalen College was the Rev. Dr. Jeffrey John, an able New Testament scholar, who later was appointed Bishop of Reading in the Diocese of Oxford. He was subsequently forced by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, to decline the appointment when evangelicals went into apoplexy about the fact that Jeffrey was a gay man. He was later appointed Dean of St. Alban's Cathedral in what surely looked like a guilt offering. The Chaplain at Magdalen College assisting Dr. John was the Reverend Peter Eaton, who is today the Dean of St. John's Episcopal Cathedral in Denver, Colorado. It is a s mall world and a deeply interdependent church.
In my studies on Matthew 1 and 2 and Luke 1 and 2, which are the only places in the New Testament where the virgin birth of Jesus is ever mentioned, I began to probe the incompatible conflicts in the two stories. Matthew has Jesus born in a house in Bethlehem, where Mary and Joseph presumably lived, and then he had to develop a story to get Jesus back to Galilee to grow up, since Matthew knew that Jesus was called a Galilean and that he hailed from the village of Nazareth. Luke, however, appears to be quite sure that Mary and Joseph lived in Nazareth, so he had to develop a story to explain just how it happened in a day when travel was very rare that Jesus was actually born ninety-four miles away in Bethlehem, the city of David, where Jewish tradition assumed that the messiah had to be born. The taxation ordered when Quirinius was governor of Syria, which according to Luke required people to return to their ancestral home, was thus Luke's literary gimmick. The fact that Q uirinius did not become Governor of Syria until 6 or 7 CE, by which time Jesus would have been eleven years old, did not appear to pose a problem for Luke, who was not a careful historian.
There were other strange differences. Matthew gives us a guiding star and wise men; Luke gives us angels in a heavenly host and the shepherds. The stories do not fit, though we force a unified narrative form on them in our Christmas pageants and it is primarily from that source that most people get their rather confusing impressions of Jesus' nativity.
In that study process I met with Jeffrey John early in my stay to ask him to direct me to some resources to further my work. He startled me with his rather matter of fact statement that the birth stories were nothing but "haggadic midrash." I wondered why this subject should be so settled for him when it was not for me. He then said, "Have you never read Michael Goulder?" I had not only not read him, I had never heard of him, but got the sense that I should have done both. That day I went to the Bodleian Library in Oxford and began to read Midrash and Lection in Matthew and The Evangelists' Calendar, both by Michael Goulder. There I learned that "haggadic midrash" meant that these were Jewish stories once told about other people in the Hebrew Scriptures now being retold about Jesus of Nazareth. The story of the wise men, for example, was a play on Isaiah 60. The manger in Luke comes out of Isaiah 1. The swaddling clothes were borrowed from the Wisdom of Solomon. The story of Zechariah and Elizabeth having John the Baptist in their old age was the Abraham and Sarah story being recycled. On and on the insights exploded in my brain like 200-watt light bulbs popping. Michael led me to see that the Jesus of history had been so thoroughly wrapped inside the Jewish scriptures that one could never really understand the gospels until one began to read them through Jewish eyes. He suggested that these gospels had been preached before they had been written and they reflected the presence of synagogue life at the center of the Christian movement during the first forty or so years of Christian history. The startling realization finally emerged that Mark, the first gospel to be written, and both Matthew and Luke, which were based on Mark, were all basically liturgical documents designed to portray Jesus as the fulfillment of Jewish Scripture and expectations. It was the liturgical life of the synagogue, not remembered history, which organized the Christian gospel writing tradition, which means that we misread the Jesus story completely when we pretend that these stores are literal. That was my first learning from this man. Michael Goulder's amazing insight had literally given me a new doorway into the gospels. I began to follow this lead into a deeper and deeper understanding of the origins of the Christian story. In time I read everything that Michael had written and still believe that his two-volume, heavily footnoted and academic commentary on Luke, entitled Luke: A New Paradigm, is the best work on Luke that I have ever read. In my study of the New Testament and its origins in this present series on the origins of the Bible my readers will be introduced to things I learned first from Michael Goulder. I am deep in his debt. 
Michael Goulder started me down a path that I have walked now for almost twenty years. His great teacher was Austin Farrer and Michael in turn became my great teacher. No, I did not agree with him on everything. No student ever does that, no matter how great the teacher is. The fact remains, however, that three of my books, Born of a Woman, Resurrection: Myth or Reality? and Liberating the Gospels: Reading the Bible with Jewish Eyes, were all written directly under the influence of Michael Goulder's scholarship. In the preface to Liberating the Gospels I acknowledged his influence on my life with a public tribute.
After I was introduced to his work by Jeffrey John, my wife and I contacted Michael and went to visit him at the University of Birmingham, where he was a Professor of New Testament. Over the course of years, we saw him many times. His story was an unusual one. He was both a priest and a scholar in the early years of his career. So distinguished was he as a priest that he was actually given serious consideration for appointment as the Anglican Bishop of Hong Kong. His life, however, turned more and more away from the parish church and into the world of academia, where he was invited to do significant lectureships in a number of the world's most prestigious universities. In 1981, to the surprise of many who knew him, Michael renounced his ordination vows and declared himself to be "a non-aggressive atheist." Yet he continued to teach New Testament, becoming the only atheist New Testament professor that I know of in the world. He also continued to publish his work. The church hierarchy, not knowing what to do with his newly minted atheism, simply marginalized him and then ignored him. I, however, found him a doorway into the gospels more profound than I had known then or have discovered since.
The last time I saw him was when he came to America to lead a seminar on his work in the late 1990's conducted at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. The event was moderated by Krister Stendahl of Harvard. Some of his severest critics had been invited to challenge him at that seminar, including John Kloppenburg of Canada, probably the premier "Q" document scholar in the world. The "Q" document, for those not familiar with that term, is made up of the parts of Matthew and Luke that are identical or nearly identical and that thus appear to have a common source, but which do not come from Mark. Supporters of the "Q" hypothesis postulate that this source was an early collection of Jesus sayings that not only antedated Matthew and Luke, since they both appear to have used it, but some even suggest that it may have even antedated Mark. The "Q" hypothesis holds the allegiance of the majority of American New Testament scholars and it has played a significant role in the work o f the Jesus Seminar. Michael, whose work challenges the "Q" hypothesis deeply by suggesting that Matthew had expanded Mark in what people think are the "Q" passages and that Luke had access to both Mark and Matthew, thus accounting for the non-Marcan similarities without postulating another lost document. The debate was vigorous, but Michael handled his critics with grace and ease. He presented his theories cogently and well. That seminar had another positive effect, namely it introduced Michael's work to another generation of American New Testament scholars and thus reinvigorated the current debate. When we parted from that gathering I had a chance to thank him for what his work has meant to me. I am not sure that Michael was ever comfortable with praise. He certainly did not want disciples, but I did learn from him and I have tried to take his insights and see if they can help me go to places that Michael never imagined.
I salute Michael Goulder today as one who taught me much about how to study the scriptures. In the integrity of his own personal value system his scholarship led him to proclaim himself an atheist and yet I, as a Christian, can honestly attest to the fact that his work illumined the gospels for me and called me ever deeper into my Christian commitment.
Rest in Peace Michael Douglas Goulder. I am glad I knew you. 

– John Shelby Spong

Question and Answer 
With John Shelby Spong

Andrew Corish from New South Wales, Australia, writes: 
I have read everything I have come across from you since the late 80's and am grateful for your insights. I remain a faithful member of the Uniting Church in Sydney. I was speaking with a friend the other day who has left the Uniting Church to join a church that specializes in communicating with dead people. I know his wife lost a son (from a previous marriage) to a drug overdose and it seems to give her comfort. But really so sad. Others seem to base their faith on convincing themselves that they are speaking a special language. I remember a visiting evangelist when I was living in Finland saying that his "tongue" had been translated as being an Ethiopian priestly dialect. Strange that God would choose that rather than, say, French — or, if God really wanted a challenge, Finnish. Am I being too cynical? I have not read anything I can recall by you about such "holy gifts" as communing with the dead and speaking in tongues. Do you have a comment?

Dear Andrew,
No doctor should diagnose without seeing the patient and no columnist should pontificate on a personal situation about which he or she has no firsthand knowledge. So let me speak not to your example, but to the issues you raise in general.
First, there is a fine line sometimes between religious expressions and mental illness. Sometimes religion provides the setting that makes symptoms of mental illness seem acceptable.
Second, religion does not escape the activity that we call manipulation. The claim that one is actually speaking in an "Ethiopian priestly dialect" sounds really screwy to me. Is there a source to which anyone could go to check out that claim? I doubt it. So I think you call it what it is — a manipulative lie.
Third, there is a deep human need, experienced acutely in severe grief situations, that comfort is found in convincing yourself that the object of your grief is not really deceased, but available for you for continual conversations. Psychiatrists deal with this frequently.
As a pastor one seeks to walk with a bereaved person, but when the grief turns into a severe mental psychosis, it is time to seek professional help.
I am not saying that this is true in the case of your friend. I am saying that the symptoms you describe are filled with psycho-pathology.
– John Shelby Spong

Send your questions to support at johnshelbyspong.com 

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