The Top 40 Films of 2000-2009

Every year I do a top-10 film list, but the end of a decade cries out for something more. So here's looking back at the 40 very best. Some years had more to offer than others. I chose 1 from 2000, 7 from 2001, 2 from 2002, 4 from 2003, 3 from 2004, 5 from 2005, 7 from 2006, 6 from 2007, 4 from 2008, and 4 from 2009. Technically that adds up to 43, because I count all three Lord of the Rings films are as one (#1), and ditto for Batman Begins & The Dark Knight (#8). We'll take them in groups of ten, rated, of course, in descending order.

1. The Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson (2001, 2002, 2003). 5 stars.
2. Pan's Labyrinth, Guillermo Del Toro (2006). 5 stars.
3. Let the Right One In, Tomas Alfredson (2008). 5 stars.
4. Martyrs, Pascal Laugier (2009). 5 stars.
5. Juno, Jason Reitman (2007). 5 stars.
6. Palindromes, Todd Solondz (2005). 5 stars.
7. United 93, Paul Greengrass (2006). 5 stars.
8. Batman Begins & The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan (2005, 2008). 5 stars.
9. Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino (2009). 5 stars.
10. Mulholland Drive, David Lynch (2001). 5 stars.

The Lord of the Rings towered over the decade like Mount Olympus, a miracle brought to life out of an impossibly difficult text, not just in terms of cinematography and score, but soul; despite the blockbuster pacing, it's a work of art, emotionally heavy, about the passing of an age. Pan's Labyrinth was a another fantasy landmark, even darker, with an ending that rivals the Grey Havens. Let the Right One In touched deeper than any romance; it was the vampire film we'd been waiting for, and everything Twilight wasn't. Martyrs, on the other hand, was a brutal terror, one of the nastiest films I've ever seen, yet surprisingly transcendent. On a lighter note, Juno and Palindromes were brilliant comedies about teen pregnancy: one a post-feminist piece with memorably endearing characters, the other a vicious satire on pro-choice and pro-life advocates (equally deserved, I might add). United 93 used gut-punching artistry to make us relive 9/11 for the right reasons, surely the most harrowing film of the decade. Christopher Nolan redeemed a genre with Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, teaching us the destruction of hope, and proving that superheroes don't have to be about hollow thrills for adolescent males. Quentin Tarantino delivered his absurdist World War II masterpiece, Inglourious Basterds, which, yes, supersedes even Pulp Fiction. And let's not forget Mulholland Drive from the genius of David Lynch: a dream-fable of Hollywood upturned by cruel reality. These ten films, for my money, are the crown jewels of the past ten years. I've seen them many times and they don't get old.

11. Doubt, John Patrick Shanley (2008). 5 stars.
12. Bug, William Friedkin (2007). 5 stars.
13. City of God, Fernando Meirelles (2003). 4 ½ stars.
14. The Road, John Hillcoat (2009). 4 ½ stars.
15. Hard Candy, David Slade (2006). 4 ½ stars.
16. The Departed, Martin Scorsese (2006). 4 ½ stars.
17. Little Children, Todd Field (2006). 4 ½ stars.
18. Requiem for a Dream, Darren Aronofsky (2000). 4 ½ stars.
19. Eden Lake, James Watkins (2008). 4 ½ stars.
20. There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson (2007). 4 ½ stars.

Still going strong on this next tier. I was blown away by Doubt, an ambiguous morality puzzle, and also by Bug, which proved that William Friedkin hasn't lost his touch; both films are based on (off-)Broadway plays driven by well-crafted dialogue and searing psychological tension. City of God was cinephilic storytelling at its purest, about the drug wars in Rio de Janeiro, and a kid who survives the chaos by becoming a newspaper photographer. The Road was the best post-apocalyptic film I've seen, and Hard Candy the best revenge film (I usually hate revenge flicks) for its indie artistry and having the balls (pun) to unleash the castrating fury of a 14-year old on a pedophile. Martin Scorsese scored a slam dunk with The Departed, easily his best film since Goodfellas, and that same year Todd Field delivered Little Children, a satire on upper-middle class suburbia in which every adult is seen to be juvenile in the extreme. Requiem for a Dream took us down the rabbit hole of drug addiction, and to the most agonizing performance of Ellen Burstyn's career. Eden Lake left me floored by its brutal honesty, portraying a group of kids who harass and torture a man and woman to a miserably unhappy ending. There Will Be Blood loomed as an epic indictment on religio-capitalism; the moral scope of this film is astounding.

21. The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow (2009). 4 ½ stars.
22. Running Scared, Wayne Kramer (2006). 4 ½ stars.
23. Memento, Christopher Nolan (2000). 4 ½ stars.
24. Inside, Alexandre Bustillo (2007). 4 ½ stars.
25. Babel, Alejandro González Iñárritu (2006). 4 stars.
26. Crash, Paul Haggis (2005). 4 stars.
27. Storytelling, Todd Solondz (2001). 4 stars.
28. The Wrestler, Darren Aronofsky (2008). 4 stars.
29. The Descent, Neil Marshall (2006). 4 stars.
30. Moonlight, Paula van der Oest (2007). 4 stars.

Hard to believe we've hit the bottom half; these are still really good. The Hurt Locker was Kathryn Bigelow's best work yet, the best film about the Iraqi war, with some of the best suspense scenes ever shot. Running Scared didn't let us up for air -- an insanely violent film involving dirty cops, murderous pimps, and monstrous pedophiles; the story is peppered with Grimm's fairy tale references like Pinnochio (the abused boy Oleg), the Mad Hatter (the pimp), and the Blue Fairy (the whore who rescues the boy). Memento got Christopher Nolan on the radar, portraying a man with short-term memory loss, the scenes played backwards so that viewers are just as clueless as to what went before. Inside was the goriest film I've seen (after Gibson's passion film), and like Martyrs (#4) showed the French to be way ahead of the curve in making intelligent horror films. Babel was a brilliant allegory of failed communication across cultures, and Crash an equally effective parable of inner city racism. Storytelling was two films in one, each story told as only Solondz knows how, with equal-opportunity offense. The Wrestler was Aronofsky's most mature film to date, and The Descent was terrifying for its suffocating claustrophobia as much as the nightmarish creatures. Moonlight was an unexpected treat out of nowhere (the Netherlands actually), a fairy tale for adults, about a Dutch girl and Afghan boy on the run from killers and must rely on non-verbal communication.

31. The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson (2004). 4 stars.
32. The Believer, Henry Bean (2001). 4 stars.
33. Mouth to Mouth, Alison Murray (2005). 4 stars.
34. The Devil's Backbone, Guillermo Del Toro (2001). 3 ½ stars.
35. The Dreamers, Bernardo Bertolucci (2003). 3 ½ stars.
36. Whip It!, Drew Barrymore (2009). 3 ½ stars.
37. Frailty, Bill Paxton (2002). 3 ½ stars.
38. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Michel Gondry (2004). 3 ½ stars.
39. In the Bedroom, Todd Field (2001). 3 ½ stars.
40. Eastern Promises, David Cronenberg (2007). 3 ½ stars.

This last bunch are effectively my "honorable mentions". The Passion of the Christ thrived in a storm of controversy: critics were evenly split, and it's too bad so many of them got caught up in the person of Mel Gibson more than his film. The Believer gave us the paradox of a Jewish neo-Nazi consumed by self-loathing, and Mouth to Mouth showed us the allure and charisma of gang leaders, with parents susceptible to brainwashing as much as their kids. The Devil's Backbone showcased Guillermo Del Toro's talents years before Pan's Labyrinth (#2), and like his fantasy masterpiece, this ghost story is set in fascist Spain. Moving one country over and three decades ahead, The Dreamers tackled the milieu of 1968 France (the student rebellions), as three young cinephiles withdraw from the world and express social revolt in the form of sexual pursuits. Whip It! proved that coming-of-age sports dramas can actually work for a change. Frailty was an astounding achievement for Bill Paxton, about a man convinced that God has commanded him to kill "demons", and enlists the help of his two young boys to kidnap people and axe them to death; the ending was a brilliant twist and completely caught me off guard. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind argued that some things can never be forgotten, while In the Bedroom insisted some things can never be forgiven. David Cronenberg finally hit a home run with Eastern Promises, a thoughtful crime drama about the Russian mafia in London.

It was a smashing good decade for film, if you knew where to look. I don't think I could come up with a top-40 list for every decade -- certainly not for the 80s, though probably for the 70s and perhaps for the 90s. Here's hoping the next ten years will see cinema taken to higher (and deeper) levels. Happy New Year and Decade!

UPDATE: Rick Sumner retaliates with his own list.

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Inception

Christopher Nolan is keeping a tight lid on his Inception film slated for theatrical release this July. Ellen Page has already advised, "Don't try to find out about the movie," and the teaser trailer released last summer is pretty cryptic. The new trailer has a lot more but doesn't lift many veils... the only thing clear is that it looks good.

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Special Guest: Jeremy Hultin

I am pleased to announce that Jeremy F. Hultin of Yale Divinity will be discussing his recent book, The Ethics of Obscene Speech in Early Christianity and its Environment, in a video that will be uploaded as a link to this blog. Dr. Hultin is now welcoming questions for this video. If you have read his book, or even my review of it (the book is temporarily out of stock at amazon), please feel free to ask questions or raise concerns in the comments section of this post. Questions should focus on the use of, and perception of, obscene language in the ancient Mediterranean, whether in a pagan or Judeo-Christian context. I will keep this post towards the top of the blog for the next couple of weeks until sending the questions to Jeremy for his video. This should be fun.

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Michael Bird & Myers-Briggs

Look out everyone, Michael Bird has come out of the closet with his true personality. Jason Staples defends himself too. It's funny, I've never had to be ashamed of my introversion. (Or perhaps occasionally, but didn't care enough about what others thought to work up the shame.) While the INTJs are rallying under Michael's banner, INTPs like me are bound to take this business more lightly.

For instance: I much enjoy alternate interpretations of the 16 personality types. According to this one, INTPs like me and Stephen Carlson are Eggheads, while the zillions of INTJs flocking under Michael's post are Outside Contractors. See the complete listing below. Do we have any Crackpots (ISFPs) in the biblioblogosphere? Surely some Conspiracy Theorists (INFJs)? Jim West would be our National Enquirer Headline (ESFP) in terms of blog persona (though certainly not real life, if his envious diatribes against all sorts of natural sex are an indication). Cult Leaders (ENFJs)? Watch for these folks the next time you scroll through your feed reader.

ENTJ: The Evil Overlord
ENTP: The Mad Scientist
ENFJ: The Cult Leader
ESFJ: The Control Freak
ESTJ: The Bureaucrat
INFJ: The Conspiracy Theorist
INFP: The Idealist
ENFP: The Scientologist
ISTJ: The Thought Police
ESFP: The National Enquirer Headline
INTP: The Egghead
INTJ: The Outside Contractor
ISTP: The Psycho Vigilante
ISFP: The Crackpot
ISFJ: The Martyr
ESTP: The Conman

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The American Negro and King Kong

Yes that sounds offensive, but it's supposed to, coming from Quentin Tarantino. Inglourious Basterds has been released on DVD, and readers will recall from my review that it's a masterpiece of absurdist revisionism in which Jewish American soldiers and a Jewish French woman bring down Hitler in a cinematic hell of lead and fire.

I want to talk about my favorite scene: the identity-guessing card game in the basement tavern, La Louisiane. The menacing Major Hellstrom explains the rules. He has joined a table of "German officers" (in reality a group of Ally spies, the "Basterds") because one of them speaks with a suspiciously sounding accent. Hellstrom feigns camaraderie and suggests they play a game so he can smoke out what's really going on. It's the most suspenseful scene of the film (even more, I think, than the opening scene praised by countless critics), but there's a lot of Tarantino-stuff going on under the surface. When Hellstrom emphasizes that the names people write on their cards can be "real or fictitious, it doesn't matter", it's a sly commentary on the director's approach to filmmaking. Inglourious Basterds, like all Tarantino films, is preposterous fiction, but it doesn't matter. Its talons rake into you, affecting as any historical reality.

Back to the game: Each person at the table writes the name of someone famous on his or her card -- again, real or fictitious, like Confucius or Fu Manchu. The cards are then placed face down on the table and moved to the person on the right. Each person picks up the new card without looking at it, licks the back, and sticks it on his or her forehead so that everyone at the table can see the name on it. Everyone then takes turns trying to guess the name stuck on their foreheads by asking up to 10 yes/no questions.

Major Hellstrom goes first, and his name is King Kong. He asks the following questions:

1. Am I German? (No)
2. Am I American? (No... you weren't born in America)
3. Ah... but I visited America? (Yes)
4. Was the visit fortuitous? (No, not for you)
5. My native land, is it what one would call exotic? (Yes)
6. Hmm, that could mean the jungle or the Orient... Am I from the jungle? (Yes)
7. When I went to America, did I go by boat? (Yes)
8. Did I go against my will? (Yes)
9. On this boat ride, was I in chains? (Yes)
10. When I arrived in America, was I displayed in chains? (Yes)

So: Am I the story of the American Negro? (No!)
Well, then I must be King Kong. (Yes!)

The fact that both answers are equally correct based on the questions posed suggests more inside commentary: fiction being on equal footing with fact. Hellstrom's first guess is something real, but the "right" answer isn't, a clever apologia for Tarantino's directing style. The parallel between Afro-Americans and a mythical beast feared, hunted, and slain -- coming from the mouth of a Nazi officer -- is also ingenious. And the fact that Hellstrom seems to cheat by guessing twice after using up his ten questions, while no one protests or seems bothered by it, is probably another signature: this is a film director who cheerfully breaks rules in telling his stories, but does it so well that we don't notice until we stop to think about it.

Enjoy, if you wish, the following youtube clips: the card game discussed above, followed by the intense outcome where everyone goes to hell.

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Obscene Speech in Early Christianity

If there's one thing I learned from reading Jeremy Hultin's book, it's that I would have been a poor recipient of the letter to the Ephesians. I may not be as vulgar as N.T. Wrong in an academic context, but I do enjoy healthy doses of profanity and obscenity in the right company, and the author of Ephesians is austere enough to shun humor in its lightest shade on top of foul language. Clement of Alexandria was pretty cheerless too. But that's enough by way of editorial preface.

Hultin's book, The Ethics of Obscene Speech in Early Christianity and its Environment, is an in-depth study of a fascinating subject which I'm surprised hasn't received more treatment up to this point. There are five chapters, the first surveying foul language in the ancient world: laws against slander in the Greco-Roman world, the use of foul language in religious rites (to engender fertility and ward off malevolent forces), in poetry and comic drama (to entertain and provoke thought), and literary obscenities. Philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, however, believed that foul speech was lowly and slavish. The second chapter focuses on the Cynics and Stoics, the former of course priding themselves on vulgarity, shitting in public, and other forms of active assault on convention. Stoics took a more abstract approach, initially indifferent to foul language on grounds that getting upset over words was philosophically hollow, but later breaking away from Zeno on this point and teaching that nature demanded a certain modesty in one's choice of words.

The other chapters take us through the Judeo-Christian tradition, and we'll look at these more closely. Chapter three covers the Torah, the prophets, wisdom literature, the historical Jesus, the epistle of James, the Didache, and Paul. Chapter four -- the book's argumentative high point -- takes on Colossians and Ephesians, the only New Testament authors who directly address foul language. Chapter five concludes with Clement of Alexandria.

Starting with the Torah, Hultin notes that biblical law nowhere addresses the decency of language per se. There are prohibitions against false witnesses (Exod 20:13), false oaths (Lev 6:3), blasphemy (Exod 22:27; Lev 24:10-16), using the Lord's name in vain (Exod 20:7), and cursing parents (Lev 20:19; cf. Prov 19:20), leaders (Exod 22:27), or the deaf (Lev 19:14) -- and that's pretty much it (p 113). The prophets occasionally criticized how people spoke but focused on sins rather than speaking obscenely. Thus Isaiah declared that God was mad at Israel when every mouth spoke folly (Isa 9:16). While rabbis later explained Isaiah's "speaking folly" as indecent language, the term originally referred not to obscene speech, but leading people astray with senseless and irreligious language (i.e. "religious errors") (p 113).

Indeed, the prophets sometimes enjoyed using foul language to lambaste Israelites for idolatry. Isaiah said that the Lord would leave the daughters of Zion with scabs on their heads and their vaginas laid bare (Isa 3:17; 7:20). Ezekiel depicted unfaithful Israel as a loose woman, not merely stating that she was interested in men (as the RSV puts it, "you offered yourself to every passer-by"), but more explicitly, "you spread your legs" (Ezek 23:20). There is the curious question of how to translate a passage like Ezek 8:17. Is Ezekiel saying that Israelites are "putting the branch to their nose" -- or, more deliciously, a "phallus" or "fart" to their nose?

Moving to the wisdom literature, Hultin outlines an increased concern for inappropriate speech. Proverbs commends silence, good words, discretion, and then warns against scoffing, babble, deceit, gossip, rashness, and slander. Bad consequences are seen to be in store for those who offend the powerful by speaking in these ways. But as Hultin points out, "given the concern to guard against every slip of the tongue, it is striking that Proverbs nowhere addresses 'foul language', which, as we have seen from Greek and Latin sources, clearly had the potential to offend." (p 121)

Only in the book of Sirach do we finally get a warning against foul language, the first comment on this type of speech from a Jewish author (p 122). After warning against habitual swearing (oath-taking) (Sir 23:7-11), the author condemns "lewd stupidity" and "words of reproach" (Sir 23:12-15), which Hultin sees as referring to vulgar or indecent speech at a banquet (p 126). Sirach says elsewhere that the way fools talk, laugh, and abuse is offensive, sinful, and grievous to the ear (Sir 27:13-15; cf. 20:19), and at a banquet one must be careful of what one says when "the great" are present (Sir 32:9). It is in this area of concern -- modesty, propriety, decorum in feasting -- that Sirach warns against "lewd abuse".

Hultin turns then to Jesus, based primarily on texts in Matthew, and it's not always clear to me that he distinguishes the historical figure from the Matthean one. This Jesus condemns abusive speech in the form of insults: to call someone ῥακά ("empty-headed fool") is as serious as murder (Mt 5:22) and will send one to Hell (Gehenna). "But although such a teaching would effectively exclude the angry use of the obscene vocabulary, it is obviously not a comment about the offensiveness of foul language per se." (p 133) Curiously, Hultin has nothing to say about the way Jesus broke his own rule with a vengeance. If the fourfold gospel testimony is remotely reliable, Jesus thrived on foul language in the form of invective. γεννήματα ἐχιδνῶν ("brood of vipers", literally, "snake bastards") was one of his favorites learned from John the Baptist -- to call someone the illegitimate heir of a snake was about as low as you could sink in antiquity, and it further implied that one was a parent-killer (since vipers killed their mother during birth). That doesn't necessarily make the Matthean dictum of Mt 5:22 unhistorical, I think, because the text speaks of insulting one's brothers (insiders). In good honor-shame fashion, Jesus heaped vile insults on his rivals and foes, but not his friends and followers.

Jesus' general lack of concern for defiling speech can be seen in his sweeping prohibition of oaths (Mt 5:33-37), assuming again that the Matthean Jesus can be trusted. (A case for authenticity has been made by John Meier.) Sirach and Philo -- who are also appalled at habitual swearing though don't go so far as to prohibit oath-taking entirely -- speak about the impurity of filling one's speech with swearing (p 131), but Jesus (or at least the Matthean Jesus) isn't concerned with the potential impurity of swearing.

Hultin points out that nothing in the gospels directly addresses the decency of language (p 128). The infamous passage of Mk 7:15,20/Mt 15:11,18 claims that "what comes out of the mouth defiles", but the catalogs of "out-of-the-mouth" vices (Mk 7:21-22/Mt 15:19) include sins which have little or nothing to do with what is spoken. As Hultin says, it would have made sense if the gospel writers said something like, "It is not what goes into the mouth, but what comes out of the mouth that defiles a person -- lies, gossip, cursing, slander, perjury, lewd humor" (p 129). The lists of sins speak more to the heart (which Mark and Matthew, of course, try connecting to the mouth, but not too convincingly) and in effect have more to do with what one does than what one says as being defiling.

Turning to the epistle of James, we find an author who had plenty to say about sins of the tongue. Like the Matthean Jesus, he prohibits oaths entirely. But he goes leagues further, claiming that "the tongue is itself a fire, set on fire by Hell itself, a restless evil and deadly poison" (Jas 3:6-8). It's the one thing on earth remaining untamed by man, unlike the wild animals of God's creation (?!). "Unlike the rest of creation, the tongue is immune to domestication... Hell uses peoples' tongues to set creation on fire, and their bodies are defiled as the flame passes through their mouths." (p 135) While James never mentions obscene language or foul speech, he undoubtedly would have found it offensive in view of the fact that he was appalled by any sort of cursing (Jas 3:9) and laughter (Jas 4:9). As Hultin emphasizes, he is rather unique for making speech a cosmic issue (involving Hell and creation), "placing the tongue at the center of the struggle for religious purity" (p 136) -- different from Proverbs, Sirach, or the Didache which emphasize the ethical consequences of inappropriate speech.

Speaking of the Didache... The document addresses perjury, false witnesses, evil speaking, dishonesty, how to speak to slaves, cursing, and foul language. In Hultin's view, the warning about foul language in Did 3:3 first functioned in the context of Jewish instruction, was later incorporated into the Two Ways, and was then brought into the Didache and other Christian documents (pp 138-139). In Did 3:1-6 we see that anger leads to murder, lust to fornication, obscene language to adultery, omens and astrology to idolatry, lying to theft, and grumbling to slander. So adultery is the inevitable outcome of being foul-mouthed and a "lifter of the eyes" -- meaning those who leer or give ogling or seductive winks -- which ties speaking lewdly with sending non-verbally lewd cues. The Didache thus represents the first Jewish or Christian warning that foul language actually leads to sexual sins.

What about Paul? The apostle from the seven or eight authentic letters never addresses foul language, and in fact some scholars think he enjoyed using foul speech like the Cynics. (1) Most infamously, he claims that his Jewish heritage is σκύβαλα when compared to the revelation found in Christ (Philip 3:8). Most English bibles translate σκύβαλα as "rubbish", but it properly means "excrement" (the King James gets it pretty good with "dung"), and some experts believe it had the register of "shit" more than "feces". Hultin argues this isn't the case. The word σκύβαλα was frequently used in medical texts and wasn't perceived as indecent. For Paul to compare his Jewish heritage to excrement was obviously offensive in the extreme, but the word σκύβαλα itself wasn't offensive. It wasn't the ancient equivalent of our modern "shit" or "crap" (see pp 150-154). (2) He also hopes fervently that advocates of circumcision would castrate themselves (Gal 5:12) -- in the context of North Galatia an allusion to the cult of Cybele, whose priests were castrated. This isn't foul language per se, though it's certainly crude and coarse (see pp 148-150). Hultin's conclusion is that there is little evidence to suppose that Paul had a "foul mouth", and thus Colossians and Ephesians are doubtfully reacting to Paul in the way later Stoics reacted to their founders Zeno and Chrysippus. "However unpleasant he could be, by the standards of his time, Paul was not lexically indecent" (p 154).

Turning finally to Colossians and Ephesians (written by different Deutero-Paulinists), Hultin addresses the only texts in the New Testament which deal directly with foul language. Here's the first:

"But now you must get rid of all such things -- anger, wrath, malice, slander, and αἰσχρολογίαν from your mouth... Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer everyone." (Col 3:8, 4:6)

Hultin points out that αἰσχρολογίαν is often translated misleadingly -- "filthy language" (NIV), "filthy communication" (KJV), or "obscene talk" (ESV). While it's true the term could refer to lewd speech, it could also mean "abusive speech" (NAS) or "abusive language" (NRSV), and the context of Colossians favors this. There is no sexual reference in the above passage. The salt reference, moreover, was a synonym for humor or wit. The author of Colossians is thus advocating the use of humor to win people to the gospel, and only condemning abusive speech -- aligned perfectly with anger, wrath, malice, and slander, the other vices condemned -- not sexually obscene speech.

Hultin's contrast between Colossians and James helps illuminate the point of view here. In Colossians speech is a thing of the earth (Col 3:2,5), not Hell, with nothing to suggest that the tongue is an unconquerable adversary. Colossians allows for a broad range of positive uses for the tongue, including humor, where James demands silence (Jas 1:19). "Blessing God was the tongue's proper function, but even reference to that activity just reminds James of the horrible fact that the same tongue also curses (Jas 3:9-12). Where James expresses reservations about teaching (Jas 3:1-2), Colossians commends it without qualification (Col 3:16)." (p 167) So while the deutero-Paulinist condemns foul language, it's only a particular kind -- angry outbursts of slander -- and he has far more faith in the tongue than James does, even encouraging wit and humor.

Here's the passage of Ephesians:

"But fornication and impurity of any kind, or greed, must not even be mentioned among you, as is proper among holy people. Entirely out of place is αἰσχρότης, μωρολογία, and εὐτραπελία; but instead, let there be thanksgiving." (Eph 5:3-4)

Hultin argues that the best translation of αἰσχρότης is "ugliness". In and of itself, the term doesn't necessarily refer to speech, though in a context followed by μωρολογία and εὐτραπελία it probably does refer to "ugly speech". For μωρολογία is "stupid talk" and εὐτραπελία is "wit". The author of Ephesians is thus condemning ugly/obscene talk, stupid/drunken talk, and (shockingly) clever wit. On this last, a thorough survey of contemporary writings (Philo, Jospehus, Aristotle, Chrysippus, Plutarch, Plato, Isocrates, Polybius, Cicero, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, others) shows that εὐτραπελία was universally understood as an admirable and endearing talent (pp 190-194). Why is Ephesians so hostile to it? To appreciate the way this blanket condemnation would have sounded to the ancients, Hultin draws on the antonyms of εὐτραπελία: "austere", "inhumane", "humorless". Are these really what characterize good Christian living for the deutero-Paulinist?

Hultin tries to play fair ball with Ephesians in translating εὐτραπελία as "facetiousness". Taken together, αἰσχρότης, μωρολογία, and εὐτραπελία might then be a judgment on "obscene, stupid, and facetious wit" (p 195). But as he himself acknowledges, it would have been just as easy (and far more clear) to condemn "obscene and stupid buffonery", or even to contrast "ugly wit" with "charming wit". Hultin's other suggestion is more plausible: Ephesians is "trying to encourage the creation of serious personae, to outdo the Catos and the Pythagorases of the world", indeed, "aspiring for a community so serious that it will not tolerate any form of drollery at all" (pp 195-196). The deutero-Paulinist doesn't offer an avenue of positive humor which should take the place of ugly jokes. He presents thanksgiving as an alternative to all joking.

In this sense -- and now Hultin is on the right track -- Ephesians shares a lot in common with the Essenes. The Rule of the Community also contrasts foul language with thanksgiving (I QS X, 21-23), and also prohibits silly or light talk. Both I QS and Ephesians (2:19-22) imagine God to be present in the community on analogy with the way the Hebrew Bible presents God as present in the temple (see pp 198-206):

"For the author of Ephesians there is no need to explain what foul language might lead to. It is simply out of place. It is not fitting for holy ones. He and his readers might have agreed with Didache 3:3 that lewd talk could result in illicit sex. He and his readers probably knew, along with Sirach 23:12-15 and a host of pagan and Greek moralists, that such talk might lower them in the eyes of others. But Ephesians does not give these reasons any more than Leviticus explains why a priest with a physical defect cannot enter the sanctuary... Foul language [αἰσχρότης, μωρολογία] and even light language [εὐτραπελία] were inconsistent with the believers' holiness, and were inappropriate in God's holy presence." (p 205)

So completely unlike Colossians, we have in Ephesians the vision for a rigidly austere community, devoid of humor.

Hultin's book ends not with Colossians & Ephesians, however, but Clement of Alexandria, who of course wrote more about foul language than any Christian before him. I could almost blame this guy for our Puritanical heritage in the western world; he makes the bible look pretty moderate (which I suppose most of it in fact is), and this despite his enthusiastic citations of texts which barely support his extreme views. With Hultin I'm astonished that Clement never quotes Didache 3:3, since it is this text which makes the precise point he's so hell-bent on proving -- that foul language leads to sexual immorality. (He cites plenty of other texts from the Didache.) It's also amusing to see Clement's fervent opposition to foul language matched by his insistence that there is nothing inherently wrong with it. "Be it from educated pagans or from a free-speaking group of Christians," opines Hultin, "it is likely that Clement had heard the charge that concern over mere words was irrational. With his philosophical aspirations, Clement was sensitive to this charge and wanted to respond, but had to do so without abandoning his own moral intuition." (p 229) So Clement was able to have his cake and eat it by aligning himself with the Stoics as much as the biblical authors. Though unlike the author of Ephesians who eschewed foul language (and even light humor) for purposes of sanctity, Clement shunned it for purposes of philosophical dignity, chastity, and self-mastery (p 234).

It's delightful to read a highly esoteric work on a subject so lowly like vulgarity, and I can't recommend this book enough. I do wish Hultin had more to say about nasty biblical epithets like "snake bastards" and "dogs who eat their vomit", but otherwise he's pretty thorough. I should finish with the funny anecdote in the preface, where the author mentions starting research on foul language after being asked by a friend why he insisted on "so regularly dropping the F-bomb". Hultin then asked his pastor what he made of Col 3:8 and Eph 5:4, to which Pastor X replied something about the biblical authors' cultural situation being different than ours -- but not before wryly quipping, "Come on, man, don't be a fucking fundamentalist" (p xvii). Obscene language may be hard for even the religious to get worked up over... but then again, maybe not. At least we know David Ker is on the same page with the author of Ephesians.

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"Killer Carlson"?

I actually do fancy Stephen as a serial killer, a scholarly Dexter, of literary forgeries. Roger Pearse notes the slaying of Archaic Mark, which takes us back three years ago.

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Watch Your Mouth

I've started reading Jeremy Hultin's The Ethics of Obscene Speech in Early Christianity and Its Environment, really enjoying it, and plan to review it before Christmas. But speaking of offensive speech...

Check out Deane Galbraith's scatalogical posts, Shitting Christ and Shitlessness in Paradise. The first concerns John Milton's caricature of the Catholic eucharist: "When Christ's body has been driven through all the stomach's filthy channels it shoots it out –- one shudders even to mention it –- into the latrine." (On Christian Doctrine, 6.560; tr. in Maggie Kilgour, From Communion to Cannibalism). The second is about Artaxerxes II brandishing his enemy's feces as evidence of the demonic: "Mithridates' vermin-laden excrement bore graphic witness to the corruption (moral and physical) of his body and the demons resident therein." (Bruce Lincoln, Religion, Empire & Torture: The Case of Achaemenian Persia, with a Postscript on Abu Ghraib. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 2007: 93.)

Galbraith uses the word "shit" in his blogpost titles, no doubt to ensure readership, which resonated perfectly with something I read just hours before in the first chapter of Hultin's book. Why are certain words so culturally offensive? Why is "shit" a swear but "feces" not? Linguists like Rom Harre have suggested that offensive language involves displacements so that "the social force of the expressive word is greater the further apart the contexts are from which it was taken and into which it has been inserted", and thus "the power of bad language comes from the distance of its displacement from the original contexts of use, and in that respect, obscenity and blasphemy are typical metaphors" (Hultin, p 8).

But Hultin points out that (1) only some displaced words have this power. "Poop and shit are both 'displaced' when used as expletives; but poop has almost no function as an expletive, and this despite the fact that it begins and ends with a plosive, which might have made it ideal for this purpose" (ibid). Also that (2) the offensiveness of some words is actually diluted when displaced. Words like "cunt" and "fuck" are not only just as offensive when used in the doctor's office, they can be "even more offensive when used of sex ('he fucked her') than when displaced ('he fucked up')." (ibid) And why is "Christ!" more blasphemous than "God!" when angrily shouted out in frustration?

Despite the attempts of our best linguists, there's probably no tidy way of accounting for the evolution of obscene/vulgar/blasphemous speech. Some words are offensive because, well, they just are. It's fascinating that some languages are completely devoid of obscene vocabulary (like Native American Hopi) and that people like the Amerindians, Polynesians, and Japanese don't swear much at all, while Ukrainians, on the other hand, have a mighty offensive repertoire at their disposal. We'll see what the early Christians thought about bad language when I finish Hultin's book.

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The Top 10 Religiously Themed Films of the Decade

Taking a cue from Eric Repphun's pick list of religiously themed movies for 2000-2009, I offer my own. Though I like many of Eric's choices, only three of them make my cut, and I'm afraid his baddy (Gibson's passion film) also finds a home on it. Unlike Eric, I rate them in order, descending, with the best at the top.

1. The Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson (2001, 2002, 2003). The best story ever told was stunningly realized on screen at the dawn of a new century, its pre-Christian landscape delivered intact. As a Roman Catholic, Tolkien viewed the history of Middle-Earth as a "long defeat", containing glimpses of final victory but never more, which is why a pagan hero like Frodo Baggins has to be a foreordained failure. He's ultimately unable to resist and destroy the Ring (claiming it for his own), and his quest to Mount Doom was hopeless from the start. The cause, not the hero, is triumphant only because of what Tolkien called the "euchatastrophe", or the unexpected intervention of fate made possible by the mercy shown Gollum. Jackson and his co-writers did a fairly good job (though not entirely) of representing themes of hopeless courage and pagan doom from Tolkien's classic. It's lost on many people that hopeless heroes suggest a nobility of character unparalleled in the Judeo-Christian tradition, precisely because they believe evil can be resisted but not overcome, and that it should be resisted for no other reason than because it's the right thing to do.

2. Palindromes, Todd Solondz (2005). Loved or despised among critics, this satire on abortion sets out to offend everyone. A thirteen-year old girl is forced to have an abortion by her mother, then runs away to join a fundamentalist family whose patriarch kills abortion doctors. It's open season on the pro-life and pro-choice crowds equally, suggesting both sides wind up at square one, mired in hypocrisy and contradictions. (A palindrome is a word reading the same backward as forward; hence the title, and hence the name of the girl, Aviva.) The film ingeniously draws on the book of Ecclesiastes (my favorite book of the bible along with Romans), as I discussed in my review. I'm as pro-choice as Solondz, and appreciate his willingness to portray the liberal mother in a slightly more negative light than Jesus-freak Mama Sunshine, so as not to let us off the hook easily.

3. The Road, John Hillcoat (2009). In theaters right now, this is the best post-apocalyptic film ever -- bleak in the way that only Cormac McCarthy novel adaptations are -- in which marauding cannibals overshadow lone protagonists and nothing promises to get better. Viggo Mortenson plays a father who will do anything to save his son, even shoot him as a last resort to spare the kid rape at the hands of the baddies. Ironically, it is this child who has been construed by some critics as an implied messianic figure who, unlike his father willing to sink to any depths necessary, "carries the fire" of goodness to the end. Even if the ending panders too much to those preferring tidy resolutions, it plays authentic, after the death of the father and so much despair.

4. Martyrs, Pascal Laugier (2008). A thoroughly demented horror film about a woman who takes vengeance on people who tortured her when she was a child, while her best friend gets abducted by the same atheist cult. This woman is then also tortured in preparation for her "transfiguration", a visit to the great beyond by becoming one with pain. Inevitably, some critics have panned this movie as torture porn, but unwisely. Torture porn (like Eli Roth's Hostel) encourages viewers to want more and to act as voyeurs without feeling much empathy for the victims. The torture in Martyrs isn't remotely titillating, and Laugier's purpose is to put us through a horrendously emotional ordeal and share in the victims' hopes (however futile) for mental and physical liberty. The premise behind what drives the cult is terribly fascinating, as is the idea that only women are receptive to transfiguration.

5. Doubt, John Patrick Shanley (2008). Based on the Broadway play by the same name, about a liberal priest in the '60s who is accused of having an erotic interest in one of his altar boys. The film tells its parable of doubt with flawless craft and intelligence, as two nuns suspect the priest, one becoming convinced of his innocence, the other remaining obsessively certain otherwise. Viewers aren't sure what to believe or how to feel, because the evidence is murky and the priest is a sympathetic character. The theme of doubt works on multiple levels, not least because the drama takes place during Vatican II, when doubt was one of the few common denominators between new- and old-school Catholics. Reviewed here.

6. The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan (2008). I really can't put it better than Repphun for this one: "When the butler Alfred tells Bruce Wayne, Batman's playboy alter-ego, that some men –- the Joker in this case –- just want to watch the world burn, he nails the character of religiously-motivated violence in the contemporary world, which is more performative and symbolic than strategic or tactical. In the final analysis, this is a startling depiction of the deep irrationalities and the dark magics that underlie the surface of the rationalised modern world. It is also a striking visualisation of the things that modern societies must do to combat these forces." As when Lucius Fox reluctantly agrees to invade every citizen's privacy to locate the Joker (shades of the Patriot Act), and then resign from serving Batman out of disgust. Reviewed here.

7. Babel, Alejandro González Iñárritu (2006). This underrated film uses the Tower of Babel narrative in Gen 11:1-9 as an allegory of failed communication. In three stories obliquely interconnected, people become isolated on account of misunderstandings and prejudice. No one is a hero or villain, because everyone behaves understandably, yet no one understands. We see cultures collide in the contexts of America, Mexico, Morocco, and Japan, and the plots become admittedly a bit contrived to make the big picture work. But it's inevitable in a film like this, and it doesn't feel manipulative. The film gets better with subsequent viewings and represents the most creative working of the Tower of Babel account into a piece of literature or film, aside perhaps from the well-known scene in C.S. Lewis' That Hideous Strength.

8. There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson (2007). About a ruthless oil man at the turn of the 20th century, who gets tangled up in the town-politics of a fundamentalist church. The narrative and moral scope of this film is amazing, dealing with the power of charisma, hypocrisy, exploitation (of land and children), and inevitable alienation from society. Repphun describes it as an "intertwining of the religious and the economic that can be read as a condemnation of the Prosperity Gospel movement or as a critique of violence perpetrated in the name of profit that is given a slickly religious gloss." That's about right. So is this Scarface religionized?

9. The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson (2004). Unlike Repphun, I say Gibson's film is an important achievement which doesn't depend on endorsing a medieval mindset or even a Christian one. It takes us into the eye of a paradox where retributive justice and mercy become one, which isn't so different from Homer's Iliad when you get down to it. It's no more anti-Semitic than most passion dramas (and in some ways less so than the gospels of Matthew and John) and it can't be classified as torture-porn any more than Martyrs (#4) for the same reason (though for a hilarious argument to the contrary, don't miss this review). It's more mythological than historical, naturally, because it's Catherine Emmerich's vision. (The fact that Gibson can't distinguish myth from history is his problem, not the film's.) For better or worse, this myth is a heavy part of our Western heritage, and it's powerfully realized here. I'm probably even less religious than a critic like Roger Ebert, but like him, I can respond positively to orthodox beliefs.

10. Children of Men, Alfonso Cuaron (2006). Another post-apocalyptic film like The Road, portraying a bleak future in which humanity has lost the ability to reproduce, immigration is criminal, terrorism runs rampant, and law officials treat people like beasts. A pregnant woman suddenly offers hope for humanity, but it's not terribly clear why, anymore than how women lost their fertility to begin with. Cuaron's dislike for back-story and clear exposition seems to have led him to use the concept of infertility as a vague metaphor for the fading of human hope; yet the film ends on a note that plays into one's predispositions, so that optimists will sense at least some hope for humanity, others not so much. Whether this means the film is unsure of its vision or profoundly polysemous, I'm not sure, but there's no denying its mythic power.

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From Dunedin: The Top 11 Religiously Themed Films of the Decade

Eric Repphun of the Dunedin School offers his pick list of The Top 11 Religiously Themed Films of the Decade, in no particular order, as follows:

1. Sunshine (Danny Boyle, 2007)
2. Children of Men (Afonso Cuaron, 2006)
3. There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007)
4. Heaven (Tom Tykwer, 2002)
5. The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008)
6. The New World (Terrence Malick, 2005)
7. Jesus Camp (Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, 2006)
8. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring (Kim Ki-Duk, 2003)
9. The Proposition (John Hillcoat, 2005)
10. Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki, 2001)
11. The Bothersome Man (Jens Lien, 2006)

I've seen seven of these (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 10) and appreciate the reason for The Dark Knight's inclusion: "When the butler Alfred tells Bruce Wayne, Batman’s playboy alter-ego, that some men – the Joker in this case – just want to watch the world burn, he nails the character of religiously-motivated violence in the contemporary world, which is more performative and symbolic than strategic or tactical." I'm also very pleased to see There Will Be Blood making the cut. The narrative and moral scope of this film is amazing, involving the power of charisma, hypocrisy, exploitation (of land and children), and alienation from society. I didn't much care for Spirited Away, but then animation seldom impresses me.

Repphun then singles out what he considers the worst religious movie of the decade:

The Passion of the Christ (Mel Gibson, 2004)

Readers know I admire this film, even if I'm light-years away from Gibson's world-view, and in fact it's one of my favorite three Jesus-films of all time -- the others being Pasolini's Gospel According to St. Matthew (praised in passing by Repphun) and Arcand's Jesus of Montreal.

On whole it's a nice list, and I'll have to add the four I haven't seen to my Netflix queue.

UPDATE: Mark Goodacre also has things to say about Repphun's aversion to The Passion of the Christ.

UPDATE (II): Repphun inspired me to do my own pick list, on which three of his choices appear.

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The Biblical Studies Carnivals

Doug Chaplin asks us to reconsider our approach to the Biblical Studies Carnivals. He suggests two alternatives to what we've been doing for the last four years: have the host rely entirely on (mainly self-)nominations that are sent in, or have the host do a general theme post with others commenting (Doug seems fond of the latter idea).

I agree with Tyler Williams that anything close to the latter option means we're not talking carnivals anymore, so in my view it should be discarded. But I don't necessarily agree with Tyler that relying on submissions alone "is the only real option", though one could follow this procedure (and I'd be surprised if some carnival hosts haven't already). For myself, I enjoy combing through blogs and feeds as much as (if not more than) relying on what's simply handed to me as a host. Relying on submissions means that quality posts could easily be missed simply because no one takes the trouble to nominate them. Yes, it's more work for the host, but if that's a concern, you shouldn't be signing up to do a carnival more than once a year (maybe even every two years). I suppose that's easy for me to say, since I've only done one carnival so far...

Nor do I like the idea of increasing the frequency of the carnivals. If anything, I would have suggested going in the opposite direction (bi-monthly or quarterly), though I think monthly carnivals are just fine.

In other words, I like the carnivals as they now stand, as both a (monthly) reader and (one-time) host.

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The Biblioblog Top-50: Semi-annual ratings

This has been an interesting day on the Biblioblog Top-50. Now apparently the top 50 blogs will be rated on a semi-annual basis. For the period of the last six months, The Busybody comes in at #45.

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Wrong Gone Again

As Jim West feigns boredom with the Biblioblog Top-50, others know the real story. I too have giant expectations that our Kiwi will soon resurface with new surprises.

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The Historical and Resurrected Wrong

In a recent post, The Biblioblog Top-50 vs. N.T. Wrong, Mark Goodacre notes the resurrected Wrong's (The Bibliloblog Top-50's) "failure to maintain the kind of subversive, counter-cultural, liberal persona" of his first incarnation. He's "less fun" too. Is there something similar here to the historical vs. the resurrected Jesus? Perhaps even intended on the Kiwi's part?

I'm glad to know Crossley's SBL paper was well received. The nine-month phenomenon of N.T. Wrong merits the attention given by James. I find myself missing Wrong more and more each month, and oddly enough, having increased difficulty making the connection between the Biblloblog Top-50 and the first incarnation. But I suppose that's as it should be.

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"Obscene" Speech in the Deutero-Pauline Letters

I'm looking forward to reading The Ethics of Obscene Speech in Early Christianity and Its Environment, by Jeremy Hultin, which I just reserved through interlibrary loan. In the meantime I see that Peter Orr has done a trio of blogposts, Obscene Speech in Paul (I), (II), (III), on the prohibitions against foul language in Colossians and Ephesians. According to Orr's presentation of Hultin, our English translations fuel misleading perceptions of what the deutero-Paulinists condemn. Here's how the ESV and NRSV, for instance, translate Col 3:8, 4:6:

"But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk [aischrologia] from your mouth... Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person." (ESV)

"But now you must get rid of all such things -- anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language [aischrologia] from your mouth...Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer everyone." (NRSV)

Here's how they translate Eph 5:3-4:

"But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking [eutrapelia], which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving." (ESV)

"But fornication and impurity of any kind, or greed, must not even be mentioned among you, as is proper among saints. Entirely out of place is obscene, silly, and vulgar talk [eutrapelia]; but instead, let there be thanksgiving." (NRSV)

In the case of Colossians, the NRSV gets it better, because, according to Hultin, aischrologia does not have any sexual reference as in our English cussing. It means abusive and unkind speech. The salt reference, moreover, is lost on many of us, because it was often a synonym for humor or wit in antiquity. The author of Colossians is thus advocating the use of humor to win people to the gospel, and only condemning abusive speech (which is on par with anger, wrath, malice, and slander, the other vices condemned) -- not necessarily sexually obscene speech -- in such a context.

In the case of Ephesians, neither translation is impressive, because each renders eutrapelia negatively ("crude joking", or "vulgar talk"). According to Hultin, eutrapelia was understood positively in antiquity. It was a witty form of speech that doctors often used to put patients at ease, as did lawyers with clients, and commanders with their soldiers. The question then becomes why the author of Ephesians condemns something so valuable.

Orr puts the question this way: Why is humor and wit commanded in Colossians but condemned in Ephesians? An obvious answer (for me) is that we're dealing with two different authors and there's no reason to expect consistency between the deutero-Paulinists. But we still have to wonder why the author of Ephesians comes down hard on something esteemed so highly. Orr thinks the way to make sense of it is by connecting verses 3 and 4, meaning that "evil things" shouldn't appear in speech, "even through the otherwise good speech-form of wit". If that's true, our English translations of eutrapelia may not be too far off the mark.

I'll ponder this more when I get to read Hultin's book.

UPDATE: I have read and reviewed the book. Orr is on the wrong track in trying to reconcile the texts the way he does. The author of Ephesians condemns not only obscene language, but even innocent humor in view of a sanctified community.

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Biblical Studies Carnival XLVIII

The forty-eighth Biblical Studies Carnival is up on Doug Chaplin's Clayboy.

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Paul and Co-Workers

There's a new blog in town. Check out Richard Fellows' Paul and Co-Workers, which focuses on various issues like Pauline chronology, the letters and Acts, and the apostle's fellow missionaries. Richard used to be an active participant on the Corpus Paulinum list, back in the days when e-lists were all the rage.

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"Liberal" and "Conservative" Labels

It looks like The Biblioblog Top-50 might reinstate the practice of labeling us by our liberal/conservative leanings. I can't say I'm upset by this idea in the way Jason Staples is, and wonder if strenuous objections owe to a certain insecurity about the way one is perceived. We shouldn't take this stuff too seriously. I'm amazed at how I've been pegged over the past five years: flaming liberal, moderate liberal, secular liberal, Christian liberal, moderate conservative -- one reader even thought I was an evangelical if you can believe it -- but it's been more curious than troubling.

For the sake of fun experimenting, however, I do like Jason's proposal (in the second of his six reasons for objecting) about expanding our platform for assessing what it means to be liberal/conservative. It puts me in mind of The Political Compass which rates one's politics on two scales -- a social axis and an economical one. For example, I'm a strong social liberal (way down on the vertical axis) but a fiscal moderate (only slightly to the left of center on the horizontal one).

In like manner, Jason proposes three axes to assess liberal/conservative leanings in biblical studies: a theological axis (one's reputation based on personal beliefs), a scholarly axis (one's openness or resistance to new scholarly ideas), and a critical axis (one's willingness or not to engage and interact with those outside one's camp). This isn't a bad start, and based on the way Jason describes them I suppose I'd be liberal across the board. I'm obviously a secular liberal in terms of personal religious beliefs (or lack thereof); I continually endorse thinking outside the box; and I've always warmed to the philosophy of John Meier which is mirrored on the biblioblogosphere -- interacting with and taking the best from all camps of scholarship, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, evangelical, agnostic, and atheist alike.

Why is it, then, that I've been pegged as conservative on some occasions? The only thing I can think is that certain conclusions I reach are rather traditional -- and perhaps boringly so. But as Mark Goodacre often says in his podcast, being scholarly sometimes requires being a spoilsport. (I.e. Biblical scholarship can't always do for us what we want it to do, and sometimes the traditional, trite and mundane is exactly what was originally meant.) So maybe we need a fourth axis for Jason's model, based on conclusions one reaches after testing ideas however wild and radical. On this axis I suppose I could be properly construed as a "moderate" or even "moderate conservative", which would account for the way I've been pegged in certain quarters.

So here's a homework assignment for someone: come up with a test analogous to the Political Compass, but with four axes instead of two, and we'll have a decent way of assessing ourselves. But smile and have fun about it, if we really must. Getting down to it, I don't care too much how I'm labeled -- whether by the Biblioblog Top-50 or others -- even if it's interesting to see the variety of perception.

UPDATE: Stephen Carlson makes crystal clear how he feels about the issue.

UPDATE (II): Rick Sumner weighs in, and it's been nice to see him blogging again.

UPDATE (III): The Biblioblog Top-50 has decided not to proceed with the idea. They will introduce "periodic surveys of bibliobloggers on various topics" instead.

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Looking Back: The Most Thought-Provoking Books of the Past Five Years

I started this blog five years ago and thought it was a good time to revisit the most thought provoking biblical studies books I've read since then. Note that I don't necessarily endorse the arguments of the following titles (though I happen to agree largely with many of them). I like them for the way they grab our attention and challenge us to see things we may not be inclined to see, for better or worse. So here they are, the most stimulating books of 2005-2009 -- a baker's dozen of them, so there's no chance of being shortchanged. I've reviewed all of them (see hyperlinks).

1. Resurrecting Jesus, Dale Allison (2005). For the best study of the resurrection, and brilliant essays about the relationship between the historical Jesus and modern needs.

2. Gospel Hoax, Stephen Carlson (2005) & The Secret Gospel of Mark Unveiled, Peter Jeffrey (2006). For putting Morton Smith's defenders in an embarrassing spotlight, and forcing unavoidable questions about academic integrity.

3. The Deliverance of God, Douglas Campbell (2009). For a massive appraisal of the New Perspective and opposing theories of salvation in Paul's writings.

4. New Testament Theology, Philip Esler (2005). For a powerful explanation as to why theology should be more about dialogue/communion (and disagreement) with the biblical authors than about liking what they have to say.

5. The Symbolic Jesus, William Arnal (2005). For underlining how agenda-driven the question of Jesus' Jewishness is, no matter what side of the fence we're on.

6. The Ethics of Obscene Speech in Early Christianity and its Environment, Jeremy Hultin (2008). For an incredibly fascinating survey of something I love to use: foul language.

7. The Background and Content of Paul's Cultic Atonement Metaphors, Stephen Finlan (2005). For a sharp assessment of Paul's different and contradictory death metaphors, which blend together and work despite themselves.

8. The End of Biblical Studies, Hector Avalos (2007). For arguing that the discipline of biblical studies is a waste of time. (But it's fun, Hector!)

9. Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas, April DeConick (2006). For an oral approach to the layering of Thomas –- a breath of fresh air, and much needed alternative to Patterson, Koester, and Arnal.

10. A Marginal Jew (Vol IV): Law and Love, John Meier (2009). For putting the classic criteria into action big time, while showing they can only do so much for us, despite the author's confidence.

11. Jesus in an Age of Terror, James Crossley (2009). For showing how liberal scholars can unwittingly play into the hands of conservative pundits and culture critics when analyzing the Middle-East.

12. Paul, Judaism, and the Gentiles: Beyond the New Perspective, Francis Watson (2007). For taking the best of the New Perspective and pointing to a beacon that promises more and better.

13. Jesus and His Death, Scot McKnight (2005). For an amazing analysis of the historical Jesus' understanding of the way his death would atone –- you might be surprised this book was written by an evangelical for the way it banishes plenty of gospel testimony (ransom redemption, covenant ideas, etc.) to post-Easter developments.

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Biblical Studies Carnival XLVII

The forty-seventh Biblical Studies Carnival is up on Kevin Scull's Paul of Tarsus.

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Goodacre's Podcast on Paul's Conversion

I'm enjoying Mark Goodacre's NT Pod series. In the latest about Paul's conversion, he follows those who think it's more appropriate to speak of Paul's calling rather than conversion. He says:

"If we think that conversion means that Paul is somehow converting from one religion to another religion, say from Judaism to Christianity, then that's clearly wrong, isn't it? I mean, Paul doesn't stop being a Jew when he has his experience with Jesus on the Damascus Road... When he's really pressed, he is absolutely insistent on the importance to his identity of his Judaism. He talks about being a Hebrew of Hebrews, an Israelite, from the tribe of Benjamin, he really wants to underline that his Jewish heritage is absolutely solid. It's certainly not something that he feels he's turned away from in any sense at all."

I think yes and no to the above. Paul does want to underline that his Jewish heritage is solid, but he also wants to underline -- as he goes on to do in Philip 3:7-11 -- that he's more than comfortable putting it aside. Philip 3:7-11 is the language of a hardcore convert, owning up to the fact that his heritage is "rubbish" (politely speaking) in view of what's new. To say that this heritage is "not something Paul feels he's turned away from in any sense at all" is, to me, a very surprising statement. We should say rather that Paul presents his heritage as solid on its own right, but worse than worthless in view of the Christ event. I doubt it's accurate to even speak of "salvation history" in Paul's thought; that's how conversionist he was. His experience of the risen Christ resulted in far more than a "new vocation".

While making some allowances for the word "conversion", Mark insists we recognize that the word is "our terminology and our way of describing what's going on in the text. We have to look at the way the text itself describes things." That's true, but a text like Philip 3:7-11 is as important as Gal 1:15-17, and Paul's testimony is only half the picture in any case. He can describe his dramatic turn around in terms of a prophetic calling all he wants. Assertion isn't proof. The perception of others is what really counts (especially in a world like the ancient Mediterranean), and those who opposed Paul's gospel could readily deny his claims and call him apostate. As I read Romans, Paul is trying to come to terms with his apostacy as best he can.

UPDATE: Jason Staples agrees with Goodacre in substance -- that Paul saw his Christian life as the natural outgrowth of his pre-Christian heritage -- but quibbles over terminology: Paul was a convert from Judaism to a different form of Israelite religion. On his blog I noted that while I appreciate the distinction between "Jew/Judean" and "Israelite" (and have blogged about this ad nauseum), that doesn't really get at the issue here. In Philip 3:7-11 it is precisely his Israelite identity that Paul is comfortable putting aside and even disdaining as "excrement". Unlike Jesus, he was capable of using the term Ioudaios but didn't here; its more restrictive meaning isn't in view. (The difference between Israelite and Ioudaios is slippery. The latter could be a subset of the former, as Staples says, but it could just as easily be a synonymous designation typically employed by outsiders.)

Much as I'd like to believe otherwise, Paul wasn't representing his life in Christ as the "natural outgrowth" of his Israelite heritage. There's no sense -- certainly not on any substantive level -- in Galatians or Romans that for him Christ was the "goal" or "natural result" of anything to do with the Torah. Christ didn't come at the end of a process represented by the law in earlier stages; he liberated Israel from the law's chaos. While the "fulfillment" of Paul's heritage points to what God intended with it (the consummation of the deity's will and plan), it doesn't follow that Christianity is thus effectively its natural outgrowth. The figure of Abraham is a shocking one -- a lonely hero in a faithless era, anticipating better things to come.

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Rereading Dunn

In the last post we looked at Douglas Campbell's critique of Sanders' strategy of reframing Paul in the New Perspective. Now we'll look at his critique of Dunn's rereading strategy.

After acknowledging a certain gain from Dunn's approach -- the focus on social issues in Paul's conflict with the law -- Campbell sees four major problems with it:

1. Some textual evidence contradicts Dunn's proposal that Paul was targeting ethnic customs by the term "works of the law". Rom 4:4 describes a worker who receives wages in accordance with obligation, in other words, desert, or appropriately earned reward. (DOG, pp 450-451)

True. But to be fair, Paul often had ethnic customs in mind.

2. Dunn tends to confuse rationale and effect in his analysis, and doesn't understand the dynamic of ethnic distinctions. (DOG, pp 448, 453)

You bet he does, and you bet he doesn't. On the first point, as Campbell notes, ancient groups rarely argued for religious practices explicitly on the basis of sociology. Practices with social consequences were justified on scriptural and theological grounds, even if "social arguments" peek through on occasion (as in Gal 3:14 and Rom 3:29-30). On the second (and more important) point, Jews wouldn't have understood themselves primarily in terms of "boundary markers" (nor would pagans have obligingly characterized them this way if that were true). As Campbell points out, they delineated themselves from pagans on issues of homosexuality and idolatry as much as (if not more than) circumcision, food laws, and holy days. But on top of that -- and Philip Esler has made this especially clear -- Jews thought of themselves in terms of value orientations as much as overt signals, even if outsiders played on the latter in terms of hostile stereotypes. What this all adds up to is a hyper-focus on ethnic issues on Dunn's part, and in a wrong way which leads to inaccurate and ugly implications (on which see #4 below).

3. Paul seems to be flexible on the issue of boundary markers. In I Cor 8 & 10 and Rom 14-15, he addresses two key ethnic issues, dietary practices and temporal observance, and actually tells believers to abide by these "works". (DOG, p 453)

A good point, though I would underline the reason for these accommodations. Paul urged believers to abstain from idol food (in Corinth) and meat (in Rome) so as either not to give the wrong idea (that Christianity might encourage idolatry) or offense (to Jewish sensibilities), and in each case it was primarily unbelievers who were to be accommodated in order to make their conversion easier. Paul was an instrumental missionary, believing that outsiders should be massaged -- even deceived for their own good (I Cor 9:19-23) -- and insiders held to unbending standards. He was flexible with non-Christians in order to win them to the gospel effectively.

4. Like scholars of the old perspective, Dunn seems committed to a progression in Paul from plight to solution, the plight being redefined in racist rather than legalist terms. (DOG, p 452-455)

Objection sustained! Dunn has played the "boundary issues" card to the extent that Paul emerges -- like the Paul of the old perspective -- as one who found Judaism intrinsically defective. The defect is now nationalism instead of legalism, and the result is an apostle who preaches a suitably anti-racist gospel for the late 20th century. We should take heed of the further irony noted by Campbell: that this effectively accuses Judaism of something worse than ever before. Legalism is at least an ethical system (one gets what one deserves by working for it) -- though that's hard to get through our heads, brainwashed as we've been to think that legalism is about the worst theological crime imaginable. So there's a serious problem with scholars like Dunn and Wright who on the one hand champion Sanders' model of covenantal nomism as reflecting a great and noble religion, yet turn around and imply that the very same model was monolithically intolerant to non-Jews.

So Campbell's critique of Dunn is pretty solid on all counts, though we could be more generous about the first, and should be clear about the reason for the third.

Rereading strategies would seem to be the ones which have gotten the New Perspective into trouble, and Campbell's own rereading, I believe, has as many problems. Reframing strategies may leave room for improvement, but they at least have the right idea.

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PZ Myers and Desert Nomads

It's been a long time since I referenced anything on PZ Myers' blog (which I generally enjoy), but the recent foolishness about desert nomads can't go unmentioned. Enjoy Chris Heard's railroading comment/essay, which set in motion quite a discussion -- even Hector Avalos made an appearance.

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Reframing Sanders

In my review of Douglas Campbell's The Deliverance of God I mentioned his critique of four revisionist strategies used in the New Perspective:

(1) Generative Reframing (e.g. Francis Watson, Philip Esler)
(2) Editorial Reframing (e.g. Ed Sanders, Heiki Raisanen)
(3) Motif Rereading (e.g. James Dunn, Tom Wright)
(4) Comprehensive Rereading (e.g. Stanley Stowers, Mark Nanos)

As we saw in the review, the first and second groups of advocates concede a measure of validity to the "Lutheran" reading of Paul and focus on reinterpreting the circumstantial frame for that reading. The third and fourth groups challenge the "Lutheran" reading itself, whether by focusing on key semantic units (motifs) or by giving the Pauline texts a complete overhaul.

I want to focus on Campbell's critique of two lead scholars from each group: Ed Sanders (reframing) and James Dunn (rereading). I believe his critique of reframing strategies to be weak, and of rereading strategies to be very strong. (This puts him on the spot, since he endorses a rereading strategy himself.) In this post we'll look at Sanders.

After acknowledging certain gains from Sanders' approach -- that Paul thought from solution to plight (and so Paul's negative judgments on the law are relative, not absolute or universally accessible) and in participationist categories -- Campbell sees four major problems with it.

1. Sanders' claim that the criterion of faith makes salvation universal -- allowing Gentiles to be saved without going trough Judaism -- is groundless and arbitrary, especially when viewed against Jewish tradition (e.g. Jas 2:14-26). The obvious response to any lack of universality on the part of law-observant Judaism would be to encourage openness to converts, not to change the criterion into something else. (DOG, pp 436-437)

This is true, but it's not really a fair objection since for Sanders the Gentile issue is only half of the picture. He's careful to emphasize that both the Gentile question and the exclusivism of Paul's Christology dethrone the law, and that the two issues can't be separated (Paul and Palestinian Judaism, pp 497, 490). He gives the latter priority, moreover. In the same chapter criticized above ("The Law Is Not an Entrance Requirement [for Gentiles]"), Sanders insists that "Paul's view of the law depends more on the exclusivism of his Christology than on anything else" (Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, p 57), on the basis of texts like Philip 3:4b-11 and II Cor 3:7-11. The biggest challenge is nailing down the precise relationship between sociology and Christology (which came first? is one subordinate to the other? did one lead to the other?), and no scholar has done this yet to my complete satisfaction (not even Esler and Watson). I hope I can rise to the challenge in my own book.

2. Sanders' editorial marginalization of Romans 2, although understandable, is not plausible. Sanders assumes a careless and even stupid integration, with arguments failing to match up with one another. (DOG, pp 437-438)

A fair objection. Even if Paul didn't care about being coherent in a way that would please Campbell, he wasn't this clumsy. The puzzle of Rom 1:18-3:20 (especially chapter 2) needs a satisfactory solution, and what Sanders offers is only slightly better than an interpolation theory. Having said this, I do prefer an honest Sanders who just "doesn't know what to do" over the harmonizers who also clearly have no idea what to do, but won't own up to it.

3. Sanders is able to provide a coherent explanation of Paul's material only in conceptual and psychological terms (i.e. essentially in terms of "reframing"); he can only offer localized coherences. He still leaves Paul incoherent at the more substantive level. (DOG, pp 438-439)

Yes, but that's as it should be. (My book will be all about this.) Basically this objection begs the question, assuming in advance that Paul must be coherent in a way that satisfies expectations for a clean theology. When Campbell starts his project by advising that "Paul must be given the benefit of the doubt" (DOG, p 13), I could as easily retort that we give him the benefit of the doubt in the other direction!

4. In Paul and Palestinian Judaism, Sanders rightly argued that Paul thinks backward -- from solution to plight. But the later explanation in Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People depends on Paul supplying different answers to different questions so that the thrust of this conceptuality is in the opposite direction -- from plight to solution. (DOG, pp 439-440)

Well, of course. That's the whole point of trying to account for theological conundrums which result from retrospective thinking. Just because Paul arrived at conclusions retrospectively (i.e. Philip 3:4b-11; II Cor 3:7-11) doesn't mean he was incapable of presenting prospective arguments (Rom 1:18-3:26; Rom 7:7-25) when they suited his purposes. Campbell cites Sanders in a footnote, which really answers the objection: "Paul came to the view that all men are under sin as a reflex of his soteriology. Having come to this conclusion, he could then argue from the common observation that everybody transgresses to prove that everyone is under the lordship of sin. But this is only an argument to prove a point, not the way he actually reached his assessment of the plight of man." (Paul and Palestinian Judaism, p 499) We often have to distinguish between the reasons for which people hold their views and the arguments they produce in favor of them. Don't we?

So the only objection against Sanders that really carries weight is the second. The first calls for more precision, and the third and fourth are almost non-objections.

In the next post we'll look at Dunn and find Campbell on much stronger critical ground.

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Sheffield

The Sheffield news is upsetting, and I applaud the campaigning efforts to save the program. Doug Chaplin notes that we've been hearing all about this decision via those who oppose it, and I too wonder about the whole story.

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The Deliverance of God

Let me start by saying that I'm in awe of The Deliverance of God. There hasn't been a book of its kind since Sanders, pressing us to take a long look behind ourselves and then ahead again with new lenses. Parts of it need to be read at least twice for proper digestion, so don't expect to breeze through it curled up on the couch with a brandy snifter. In addition to the required mental exercise is the physical, which you'll get from lugging the damn thing around: it comes in at 936 pages, 1218 including endnotes. Is it worth all the effort? Unquestionably.

Douglas Campbell, the author of this massive tome, wants Paul to be unconditionally clear. But two opposing theories of salvation frustrate clarity -- "justification" and "transformation", the former derived especially from Rom 1-4, the latter from Rom 5-8. Deliverance declares war on the former and seeks to uphold the latter as the only scheme truly present in Paul's letters. This entails a complete rereading of Rom 1-4 (the "citadel" of justification theory, as Campbell calls it) which in turn prompts rereadings of other texts like Rom 9:30-10:21, Gal 2:15-21, and Philip 3 (the "heartland"). The result is a uniform transformation theory emerging from all the texts.

Justification theory is usually associated with the "Lutheran" reading of Paul, but Campbell insists this is misleading since Luther's theology makes use of transformation theory too. Ditto for Augustine. We should give these guys a break, he says, and just call it the justification reading. But what exactly is justification theory, and where does it come from? It turns out to be "an amalgam of a particular reading of various Pauline texts and a theory of salvation that, given certain key elements, simply must develop in certain directions a a matter of sheer rationality" (p 12). I won't present Campbell's entire outline of the theory, as he perceives it, but we need a good summary to understand what he's up against.

The justification theory implied by Rom 1-4 (but which Campbell will refute), and embraced in varying degrees by later theologians (like Augustine and Luther), goes as follows (see pp 15-29):

Humans are rational and capable of accurate theological reflection, and thus ethical. God is just and is known to everyone, and his ethical demands are revealed to Jews through written legislation, but are known to everyone else innately. Reward and punishment will be appropriated by God on the basis of righteous actions -- "on the basis of desert" -- with any earthly injustices rectified by a final judgment. Since humans are inherently sinful -- that is, they violate God's ethical demands, and probably often -- honest self-reflection concludes that God's final judgment will be largely negative. Fear of the final judgment causes people to either renew their attempts at righteousness (falling into a "loop of despair") or retreat into self-righteous denial, boasting, and hypocritically judging others (the "loop of foolishness"). God generously redirects the punishment due sinners onto Christ, who being sinless and divine offers limitless satisfaction through dying. He stipulates a manageable criterion, faith, so that humans who choose it will receive a positive evaluation on the day of judgment and so inherit eternal life. Ethical guidance is still necessary, but it doesn't provide the basis for salvation. The relationship between humanity and God thus remains conditional and contractual, but much more manageable with the single criterion of faith in place.

The transformation theory implied by Rom 5-8 opposes justification theory in every way (see pp 63-73). And Campbell loves it:

Humans are ignorant and incapable of accurate reflection -- a disorderly mess. They inherit Adam's being, or "flesh", and are oppressed by evil forces that were released in the garden of Eden. They need to be rescued before they can even begin to think and behave properly. God initiates an elective saving action by sending his son to be martyred in the flesh and raised to an existence which provides a new template for humanity. Christ entered the human condition, assumed it, terminated it, and is now reconstituted in heaven where he continues to intercede -- through the spirit -- for people still mired in the flesh. Through no choice of their own, humans are rescued from slavery (in Adam) into a new form of slavery (in Christ), which leads to eternal life. Only in hindsight does it become clear how desperate the prior condition was in Adam. Only now is it seen that humanity is trapped and enslaved under all sorts of forces -- including the law. But with the spirit no further ethical guidance is necessary, for that would only provide more opportunity for sin and the flesh to exploit. The relationship between God and those in Christ is unconditional and apocalyptic, liberating the believer who participates in death to await resurrection.

Campbell thus needs to launch an assault on Rom 1-4, the "Citadel of Justification", and prove that Paul's theology is not what it seems to be in these chapters. He argues that Paul does not in fact portray a prospective scheme of sin (Rom 1:18-3:20) which leads to faith (Rom 3:21-26), because the former section doesn't represent his thought. Rom 1:18-3:20 is another gospel, that of Paul's opponents in Rome. These opponents share the same allegiances as the previous ones in Galatia and are identified with the troublemakers in Rom 16:17-18. The teacher of Rom 2:17-24 represents these Jewish Christian opponents, and the entirety of Rom 1:18-3:20 represents the views of this teacher whose commitments are being manipulated by Paul in order to extract important concessions from him under threat of self-contradiction. "What a bitter irony," says Campbell, "it is to have construed Paul's brilliant attack on foundationalism as a foundationalist discourse for so long" (p 760). But how does Paul go about this?

First he uses a speech-in-character (Rom 1:18-32), mimicking the teacher's "fiery rhetorical entrance which is lit -- like that of so many preachers -- by the flickering backdrop of hell" (p 529). Following this he finds his own voice (Rom 2:1-3:20) but still reproduces the teacher's own program (not his own) so as to fling the teacher's beliefs back in his face. In effect, it's a reduction to absurdity of his opponents' gospel which eliminates a set of supposed Jewish advantages. The result places Jews under as much sin as pagans (Rom 3:19-20), which gives the illusion that "sinning" segues into (or necessarily leads to) "faith" (Rom 3:21-26). That, says Campbell, was never Paul's intent. He wasn't setting the stage for his gospel but undermining a rival gospel.

By this ingenious inversion of Rom 1:18-3:20, Campbell is able to save Paul from notorious inconsistencies. The most notable one is the statement that pagan non-Christians can be righteoused by the law (Rom 2:13-14). That's not Paul's view, but a projection of the teacher's opening assumptions, intended to embarrass his demand for circumcision and his definition of "true Judaism", and then to mock sinful Jews at the judgment. Honest critics like Sanders have separated this section from the rest of Paul's thought because it's so "not Paul", while most critics attempt some kind of harmonizing gymnastics. Campbell has given us an out that works. It's unfortunately wrong.

Let me stress that Campbell deserves credit for owning up to the serious problems of this section in Romans -- problems usually ignored or "solved" with the wave of a harmonizing hand. And he's surely correct that Rom 1:18-3:20 does not reflect Paul's gospel. He notes the passing allusion to Christ and "my gospel" in Rom 2:16 (p 558), which would indeed be redundant if the surrounding content were the same. In spite of this I do believe Rom 1:18-3:20 sets the stage for Paul's gospel in a prospective way that Campbell cannot abide. Paul seems to be drawing on standard Jewish soteriology and cheerfully speaks of non-Christian salvation by the law in Rom 2:13, because it's a chimera and will be exposed as such by the point of Rom 3:20.

As for why Paul is representing material that doesn't represent him, Philip Esler has a good answer. Ethnic strife in the Roman church demanded that Paul level the playing field between Jews and pagans in different ways, which inevitably entailed focusing on the status of the two groups before they embraced the common denominator of Christ. Only when rival groups are equal in status but share different backgrounds or expertise are they usually able to respect the other's contribution to the group. (When they're equal in the same way, they tend to compete with each other destructively -- a lesson Paul learned the hard way from preaching the earlier formula of I Cor 12:13/Gal 3:28.) In illustrating how Jews and pagans can be (hypothetically) righteoused by the law, and both (in fact) liable to judgment, but in different ways, Paul accomplished an extremely urgent objective in Romans. There's no need to complicate the picture with speeches-in-character, oblique counterpoints, and rival gospels. There were doubtfully Jewish Christian missionaries in the Roman church anyway (Campbell is reading a lot into Rom 16:17-20); the situation was quite different from Galatia.

Justification's citadel remains standing, I'm afraid. But the value of Campbell's project is that it forces us to come to terms with justification and transformation when their full implications are teased out. On a philosophical level I find this fascinating. But we shouldn't do violence to Paul by eliminating the scheme we hate. Just because the solution of faith preceded the problem of works doesn't mean he couldn't present a prospective scheme when it suited his purposes. We know he was at home with difficult ideas. Take his death metaphors. Sacrifice, scapegoats, redemption, and martrydom are radically different concepts -- scapegoats actually the complete opposite of sacrifices -- and yet Paul embraced them without embarrassment. He wasn't terribly troubled by his theoretical inconsistencies. If anything he was bothered by the question of God's consistency, and was fully capable of making himself inconsistent in order to exonerate God. (Thus Rom 7 corrects the perverse claim of Gal 3:19-24, as does Rom 9-11 for Gal 6:16.) He was concerned about his reputation more than a pristine theology, and by Romans especially the need to play fair ball -- "to the Jew as much the Greek" -- so as to promote harmony within diversity.

And really, is it such a hard idea that Rom 1:18-3:26 is prospective, as long as we understand that Paul arrived at it retrospectively? Campbell has no problems treating Rom 7:7-25 this way, so why not Rom 1:18-3:26? (The answer, of course, is that he loathes justification in all forms, but adores transformation). Retrospectively, Paul sees a hopeless and frustrated humanity in need of rescue from bondage and sin, and thus portrays a prospective scenario in which the law leads one to cry out for deliverance (Rom 7:7-25). Likewise retrospectively, he sees a humanity incapable of pleasing God much as they think they can, and so depicts a prospective scenario in which the law leads one to faith (Rom 1:18-3:26). Neither reflect Paul's psychological state before his conversion, and yet both depict a non-Christian's plight (including his own) as seen in hindsight, no matter how befuddled we are when reflecting on all of this philosophically.

Let's tease this out further, because the two schemes aren't as adversarial as Campbell makes them out to be. They complement as much as contradict. Rom 1:18-3:26 shows that Jews anger God by sinning as much as Gentiles do, despite having the law, while Rom 7:7-25 shows that Jews are as much under the power of sin as Gentiles are, precisely through the law. The former emphasizes one's incapability of pleasing God, the latter one's incapability of resisting sin. The former underscores human choice in accepting Christ's expiatory/propitiary sacrifice (in place of doing the works of the law), the latter God's elective choice in transforming the believer (who dies with Christ in baptism). The former claims that believers still uphold part of the law (even if Paul can never demonstrate this lame assertion), while the latter declares that believers obtain the best the law promised but never delivered, by a new route -- the spirit. To say that these schemes are completely contradictory is an exaggeration. They are contradictory in places, and exist in tension with each other, but that's theology for you.

The question of Paul's coherency is a huge one that I'll be addressing in my own book, and it cuts to the heart of my problem with revisionist projects like this. We'll never solve the Romans puzzle by holding Paul to an unreasonable standard. His theology is realistic precisely because it's so interactively complex and fraught with dualisms. The spectre of Raisanen will always haunt us to an extent, and it should.

But Deliverance is more than a new reading of Paul's justification texts in view of opposing salvation schemes. It's a sharp assessment of the New Perspective's deficiencies, and in my view where it truly delivers. (It's also timely in this matter, since I've just embarked on a similar project.) The nature of Judaism is reappraised, Paul's conversion remeasured, the Protestant Reformers consulted afresh. Axioms we've been fed since Sanders unfold as half truths and non sequiturs. It's time for a new era of Pauline studies to take wing, and the first half of this book is a road to liftoff.

On the question of covenantal nomism, Campbell refines Sanders' corrective, and even manages to rehabilitate legalism within its frame. It's become taboo to even think of ancient Jews "earning salvation", but ideas of obligation, desert, merit, and self-interest are, in and of themselves, appropriate ways of representing aspects of a conditional arrangement -- which the Jewish covenant certainly was. It was given unconditionally (the grace behind election) but had to be fulfilled conditionally (by the law, atonement, etc), and would likewise at some future point be evaluated (at the judgment) (see p 103). If there's a difference between the legalistic aspects of ancient Judaism and other religious systems, it's only at a high level of abstraction.

There's nothing inherently bad about legalism -- perhaps this point is too obvious to appreciate in a post-Holocaust age -- since it just refers to an ethical system based on desert (one gets what one deserves by working for it). The problem is that the term has been associated with negative psychological states -- "hypocritical", "cold", "selfish", and "calculating" (p 106) -- especially when associated with perfectionist legalism. As long as we realize that ancient Judaism wasn't perfectionist (as Sanders rightly demonstrated), and as long as we keep psychological baggage away from the term, it's perfectly accurate to see legalism as a component to covenantal nomism. It was married to grace from the get-go.

But does rehabilitating legalism make the old perspective right? "Nothing could be further from the truth," says Campbell. The Jewish covenant made thoroughly reasonable demands, and in fact "there is little reason for a Jew to abandon legalism and the law" (p 121). What the old perspective needs is a perfectionist legalism (like that of medieval Catholicism), and again that doesn't apply to the first century.

In that case, what is gained by acknowledging a legalistic dimension to Jewish soteriology? Simple. When Paul employs mercantile metaphors (as in the notorious passage of Rom 4:4), he's not necessarily playing dirty pool, far less speaking an alien language that needs to be worked over by modern revisionists. It's common for people everywhere to characterize ethical systems in terms of currency, and for obvious reasons. Again, this needn't imply either a perfectionist or psychologically debilitating system of religion.

That's just the opening sally of Campbell's critique; there's plenty more. Where things really get interesting is by the end of the book's first half he categorizes four types of revisionist strategies going on in the New Perspective (acknowledging there can be overlap between them) (pp 412-413):

(1) Generative Reframing (e.g. Francis Watson, Philip Esler)
(2) Editorial Reframing (e.g. Ed Sanders, Heiki Raisanen)
(3) Motif Rereading (e.g. James Dunn, Tom Wright)
(4) Comprehensive Rereading (e.g. Stanley Stowers, Mark Nanos)

Reframers concede the basic correctness of the conventional ("Lutheran") reading of Paul and focus on reinterpreting the circumstantial frame for that reading (see pp 414-440). They tend to construe Paul's reasons for arguing badly (or "Lutheranly") in a sympathetic light -- he was in a heated polemical situation and not at his best; he was struggling with theological dilemmas as a consequence of central convictions; he was making up his arguments as he went along to get converts; he was trying to establish leadership over certain social groups. Reframers acknowledge the Gentile issue as accounting for the origins of Paul's conflict with the law, but don't necessarily see that issue present in his arguments at every turn.

Rereaders challenge the conventional ("Lutheran") reading itself, whether by focusing on particular semantic units (motifs), or by giving the Pauline texts a complete overhaul (see pp 440-466). Thus "works of the law" are boundary markers distinguishing Jews from pagans rather than legalistic requirements; Christ is "the end of the law" only in the sense that the role of the Torah as a badge of national election is over; God's saving action in Christ is an act of covenant faithfulness to include Gentiles in the scope of salvation; Paul may have even had a two-track plan of salvation, with Jews still saved by the law. Rereaders see the Gentile issue present in key texts, if not just about everywhere.

(I should point out the considerable overlap between Campbell's four categorizations and the three I'm planning to use in my book. Both groups of reframers fall into my category (A), motif rereaders into my category (B), and comprehensive rereaders into my category (C).)

Campbell objects to reframing strategies primarily because "they seek to marginalize the difficulties historically and biographically (or editorially) rather than actually removing them -- the hermeneutical equivalent of taking painkiller while a fatal disease continues its deadly progress" (p 415). This naturally begs the question. What if those difficulties simply cannot be removed? What if the conventional reading is (at least partly) inherent to Paul's meaning? What if we're stuck with the disease?

Rereaders are almost apriori committed to a program of coherency, and as I'll be arguing in my book, that damns their project in advance. It's ironic that Campbell endorses the most revisionist strategy of all (comprehensive rereading), since it's associated with "hyper" New Perspective advocates like Stowers (see p 459). We've seen how he rereads Rom 1-4 (1:18-3:20 isn't Paul, and 3:21-4:25, isolated from that previous block of material, squares with the transformation theory presented in Rom 5-8). I'm a reframer (a cross between editorial and generative, I suppose, since I find Sanders, Raisanen, Watson, and Esler equally compelling about different things), and say that Campbell's rereading not only strains credulity as much as those he tries distancing himself from, but is governed by an underlying agenda shared by all rereaders, namely, the desire to make Paul push a "single" attractive gospel. For New Perspective rereaders, it's an ecumenical or anti-apartheid gospel. For Campbell it's a neo-Protestant one. Oddly enough, he's able to reclaim a Protestant Paul completely on his own terms, and candidly admits to it:

"The solution that I am aiming toward is deeply Protestant if not Lutheran. [!] To put things at their simplest, only if my rereading is true is it possible to affirm coherently Paul's slogan that 'God justifies the ungodly', since he means by this that God delivers the wicked from their enslavement to Sin, when they cannot deliver themselves, and thereby demonstrates his unconditional grace and love. Alternative construals of this slogan are caught by irreconcilable contradictions and theological conundrums -- issues of theodicy, capacity, and so on. But in affirming the slogan in this sense we of course being loyal to some of the central insights of Protestantism and of Luther. Furthermore, only now is it possible to affirm coherently Paul's construal of 'sanctification', which he seems to discuss with such profundity in Romans 5-8, elevating this material now to its rightful status. Paul's account of sanctification is his gospel... It requires no supplementation by other systems." (p 934)

I'm not sure which is worse: the old Lutheran Paul or this new one. But I think Campbell's apostle is more Calvin than Luther. He champions the subjective genitive reading of pistis Christou (see pp 641-647), which is a house of cards and an attempt by some to smuggle Calvinism in through the back door. With Campbell I think that's exactly what's going on.

What do I think of The Deliverance of God? My head is still spinning. It's a milestone in appraising three decades of a new approach to Paul which has blinded as much as illuminated. It demands that we think outside the box, get outside the box, and seize new possibilities. It makes a brilliant stab at meeting its own demands, but ends up snared -- caught in the same kind of vise choking Dunn, Wright, Stowers, and Nanos. Paul has been reduced, his theology lacerated. Wrede and Schweitzer did him more justice with less tools. Justification theory is present in Paul, even if only as a weapon to claim ground in a Jewish-pagan context. It's subordinate to transformation theory, but not a mirage.

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