Thoughts on Antiquity

First, I want to thank James Crossley for my copy of Jesus in an Age of Terror: Scholarly Projects for a New American Century. In an excellent first entry of a handful BibleWorld volumes with his name attached (including, Jesus Beyond Nationalism & Judaism, Jewish Identities and the Gospel Tradition), Crossley sets a series of ambitious goals that are met with surprising proficiency in this book. John Hobbins, Jim West, and Crossley himself have already made a several posts about this monograph, but no real reviews have yet been posted from what I have seen. Bottom line: this book is worth far more than its cover price and I would encourage everyone who found edifying Jonathan Z. Smith’s Drudgery Divine, William Arnal’s The Symbolic Jesus, Shawn Kelley’s Racializing Jesus, or any other work on religious studies in the tradition of Michel Foucault (e.g., The Invention of World Religions, Theorizing Myth) to stop reading this review and purchase the book immediately.

Crossley’s book is based in large part on Noam Chomsky’s dictum that intellectuals serve as “experts in legitimation.” (4) In this, his work follows in the aforementioned tradition of Foucault’s genealogical critique and meta-scholarship more generally. The subjects of his study are all biblical scholars: bibliobloggers, Context Group members, and other influential figures in the field. Thus, the study concerns the political implications and assumptions of such scholars’ work. However, the difficulty in maintaining a “radical” posture as a scholar and in having substantial real-life implications flow from one’s work (“if [rock music] were really such a threat to the establishment ‘they would have banned it years ago.’” 8 ) means that his work delves into the difficult-to-detect subtleties and nuances of these matters. Similarly, he decries the position of biblical studies as a largely-confessional field, with the immediate relevance of the texts studied assumed by most scholars. Crossley, a secularist, laments the intellectual homogeneity and covert-supersessionism in which this results. Comparative efforts focusing on early Christianity still seek to assert the primacy of Christianity over roughly-contemporaneous religions (e.g., first-century and rabbinic Judaism) and assume Christianity’s uniqueness. By encouraging different – non-Christian – voices to enter the field of NT studies, he hopes to begin the process of rectification.

Crossley begins by justifying his discussion of bibliobloggers. They are important because 1) blogs are conducive to political – as well as academic – discourses because of the immediate gratification, 2) blogging bears several affinities to Chomsky’s propaganda model, and 3) the lack of advertising on blogs limits constraints on expression that come from commercialism. The importance of the first point comes forth in his analysis of biblical scholars’ discussions of the Iraq War. With ample quotations from scholars expressing anti-Iraq, anti-Arab, as well as more moderate sentiments, Crossley suggests that there is a latent racism lurking in the background. Such sentiments work with the notion of “unique suffering,” which is a common assumption of many post-9/11 discourses. Above all else, advocates of this view are incapable of engaging in a perspective empathic to Arabs. To be clear, Crossley expresses no sympathy for those who partook in horrendous acts of violence, but he contends that the failure to seriously attempt to understand the actors becomes clear in the propensity to label such individuals as unequivocally “evil.” This personified “evil” quickly translates into a “Muslim other” that becomes highly problematic for scholars who study the ancient Middle and Near East. Familiarity with the most popular bibliobloggers (e.g., Goodacre, West, Bird, Davila, Tilling, Rosson) would no doubt be helpful to understanding this section, but far from necessary.

The next chapter deals with a topic of interest to a wider readership: the social sciences and the problem of Orientalism. Edward Said’s important work on the topic was published around the same time that Bruce Malina began working his anthropology of the ancient Mediterranean world. Though placed under the veil of rejecting the ethnocentrism that had previously plagued NT scholarship, the work of Malina and other Context Group members inadvertently partakes in Orientalism, insofar as they essentialize this part of the world by ascribing to it characteristics that are fundamentally non-rational and undesirable. Because Malina claims that the continuity between the ancient and contemporary Mediterranean world is near-complete (New Testament World, 3rd ed., xii), his offensive characterizations bear immediate relevance for modern political issues. Crossley continues by discussing anti-Muslim, pro-Iraq-War rhetoric ranging from “politically incorrect” neo-rationalists such as Sam Harris to conservative news pundits like Geraldo Rivera. These disparate speakers are unified in their dehumanization of the Muslim “other,” ascription of agonistic values to Islam uniquely, use of “clash of civilizations” rhetoric, and use of polarizing us/them language.

This notion ties into the fact that Arabs are the only ethnic group against which one can openly express racist remarks today. Characterizations of the biblical world in PBS/Discovery/etc. documentaries often make recourse to negative stereotypes that validate the worldview expressed by pro-War advocates at the end of the previous chapter. The basis for these pop-academic depictions, of course, was in NT scholarship; moreover, he argues that the primary source within the field is Malina-influenced scholarship. Devoting considerable attention to Loren Rosson’s blog, Crossley argues that many of the models that Context Group scholars use (honor-shame, in particular) translate easily into degrading explanations of present political actions by Middle-Easterners. Muslims’ intolerance of other religions (a cringe-inducing stereotype, to be sure), for example, becomes explicable via simple reductionism in these terms. This applies equally to social-science-oriented scholars with teaching positions as well, who portray Jesus’ contemporaries as sex-crazed madmen intent on oppressing women. Jesus, within this system of logic, frees Jew and Gentile alike from the cultural-particularism and misogyny that defined his society; in short, supersessionism finds a new partner in cultural anthropology. Crossley’s arguments, however, become weak on occasion here. For example, Jerome Neyrey’s contention that “If Euro-Americans cannot understand the modern inhabitants of the Middle East, all the more should peoples from these same regions in the Fourth Gospel present severe problems for understanding” (116) is an example of reifying American-Middle-Eastern differences for Crossley. However, Neyrey’s intent could be much more benign: if we cannot understand people in our own time, how can we understand those some 2000 years ago? If this were the intended reading, the use of the “Middle East” is simply a heuristic and convenient analogy. Crossley notes that these representations are not exclusive to NT scholarship and he finds parallels in other academic work about the Middle East. Among these, the fetishization of Middle Eastern sexuality is strikingly ubiquitous, notably its portrayal of its men as sexual deviants and women as by-definition submissive. Continuing his attack against the Context Group, Crossley observes the extent to which they are dismissive of counter-arguments, frequently using arguments to the effect of “our opponents simply do not understand the ancient world as well as we do” without elaboration. This is significant, for it recalls and validates the “with us or against us” language that has been prevalent in the War on Terror. Nonetheless, this serves as the central chapter to his book and is among the strongest ideological analyses of NT scholarship I have come across.

The following chapter travels into far different territory and seeks to explain the upsurge of interest in Jesus’ Judaism in post-War NT scholarship. Within this, he sets his gaze towards “the stress on, and debates over, Jesus’ teachings as particularly Jewish, in contrast to the hard similarity with Judaism that dominated much of twentieth-century.” (145) While assuming Arnal’s suggestion of this interest as a knee-jerk reaction to post-Shoah charges of Christian anti-Judaism, Crossley targets the Six Day War of 1967 as the cause the major discursive shift in American and the U.K. about Judaism. Crossley describes the complex history of the Six Day War and its aftermath, which defy a brief explanation in a review like this. Regardless, this resulted in connecting any criticism of the state of Israel to antisemitism, especially by Christian Zionists. While Crossley probably overstates the influence of Christian millennialism in the United States, he cogently observes the ways in which their rhetoric has affected U.S. political leaders such as Rumsfeld and Bush. “Intercession” for the state Israel became the vocation of the U.S.A. for dubious reasons. In order to provide an academic example of the labeling someone critical of Israel as anti-Jewish, Crossley identifies the case of Nadia Abu el-Haj. Scholars of many stripes targeted Abu el-Haj’s suggestion that the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE might possibly have resulted from intra-Jewish conflicts. The accusations are to the extent that her opponents stop just short of calling her a Holocaust-denier. Amazingly, her detractors successfully prevented her from gaining tenure. Her reviewers’ and opponents’ intense focus on one suggestion that could – but does not necessarily – break from the traditional narrative of Jewish history is interpreted as an expression of contempt against Jews across the world. The relevance to the thrust of Crossley’s argument is self-evident.

In his final chapter, Crossley takes on the portrayal of Jesus as “Jewish … but not THAT Jewish” in NT scholarship, especially among the most vehement advocates of the so-called “Jewish Jesus” (e.g., Wright, Theissen & Merz). Modifying his position somewhat from previous publications on the topic, Crossley continues to see absurd charges of antisemitism in NT scholarship, including insinuations against Burton Mack and other Cynic-like Jesus advocates, none of whom deny Jesus’ Israelite ethnicity and do combat negative stereotypes of Judaism that do permeate the field. Crossley makes an intriguing suggestion in that biblical maps are responsible to some extent for the re-structuring of Jewish identity that ought to garner some attention. But the chapter is dominated by his jeremiad against the crypto-supersessionism pervading NT scholarship. Jesus and his teachings are consistently framed as rising above his Jewish culture; Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz, for example characterize Jesus’ teaching in Mark 7 as that of “a radical Jew.” (178) Their (and others’) failure lies in the inability to concede that debates of this sort were not inherently radical and rather commonplace in ancient Israel. Moreover, the essentialism associated with this Theissen and Merz’s characterization recalls the Orientalism discussed earlier. Finally, Crossley points out that “no one in the synoptic tradition is shocked at Jesus supposedly undermining purity laws.” (181) This supersessionism finds analogues in scholarly reconstructions of early christology and in depiction of Jesus as the summation of God’s promises for Israel.

In sum, this book warrants several careful readings not only by bibliobloggers and Context Group members, but by NT scholars of any stripe. I should note that for a book of this sort, Crossley does a surprisingly good job of representing his subjects accurately and generally avoiding straw men. That said, I would be greatly interested in reading a response or review from Malina, Rorbaugh, or Rosson. It is unclear to me why Crossley targeted the Context Group in particular, especially given his social-scientific proclivities in Why Christianity Happened. I would, however, like to proffer a few minor criticisms myself.

Orientalism (or the type of Orientalism that interests Crossley) is never clearly defined and this presents some of the book’s biggest problems. First, the prescriptive element of how one should describe another culture is never clear. That is, the dual problem of fetishizing the weirdness of the “Other” and reduction of their differences to a bland “sameness” finds no clear resolution herein. Second, casting such a wide net for Orientalism will likely be off-putting to some, resulting in a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t scenario on a different level. One can ascribe to the “other” positive valuation on “our” terms, but this remains ethnocentric. Granting them positive values on their own terms, however, assumes a transcendent posturing by the scholar that comes off as rather ridiculous. Again, he does not suggest a middle ground or third way. Third, there is the fact that any explanation must be comprehensible to its readership: it is therefore necessary that the Middle East (or any other culture) is framed in reference to the scholar’s own society. Though Crossley does not do so, one could easily slip into indiscriminate finger-wagging over this unavoidability. Therefore, it seems appropriate to delimit acceptable and unacceptable forms of ethnocentrism, given its inevitability. Each of these, I think, could be assisted by a succinct definition of the term.

At the risk of descending into gossip, I was struck by certain parts of his bibliobloggers discussion. In particular, Jim West is the only blogger to come out in a positive light, even when there are relevant criticisms to be made. I think especially of the idea that certain people are simply “evil” in his discussion of bloggers on terrorists (38–39). No better candidate comes to mind than West’s “total depravity” series, with this post serving as an example applicable to the book’s topic: http://jwest.wordpress.com/2008/07/02/more-mid-east-madness/. That said, Crossley criticizes scholars that I can only assume are his friends, so – in the same way – I do not mean this as a jab against West. Beyond this, Crossley appears to do an admirable job of not going too easy on his comrades.

Finally, it seems that Crossley’s work would have benefited from a discussion of secularization, especially as it relates to Orientalism and as a catalyst for focusing on specifically “religious” aspects of Israel as sites for potential “antisemitism” (e.g., the Temple, kosher lifestyle). The near-equivocation of “Israel” with “Judaism” in the media seems important to this point. Similarly, Richard King has written a very solid book (Orientalism and Religion) that deals with the characterization of “the mystic East” as a response to contemporary anxieties about secularity. The role of the non-rational in Malina’s work seems particularly ripe for analysis in these terms (I think especially of his chapter on envy). But this point might be moot, since Crossley’s work appears to focus more intently on the “what” and “how,” rather than “why,” questions.

But these are entirely minor quibbles that should not prevent one from spending worthwhile time with this outstanding book. I can only give it my highest recommendation.

Update: See comments for links to Loren Rosson’s review and “Leonard Ridge’s” review. Crossley has provided a rejoinder to my review here.