We attended the SBL/AAR Annual Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland (November 23- 26, 2013).
We promise a couple of reports from various sessions ranging from
Jewish/Christian identities to Paul's theology in the making in the Corinthian correspondence.
The first report is on the session:
Construction of Christian Identities Section (S23-114)
Theme: How Many Groups of Jesus Followers in the First
Two Centuries?
Edmondo Lupieri, Loyola University of Chicago,
Presiding
Clare Rothschild, Lewis University
“Have I not
Seen Jesus Our Lord?” (1 Cor 9:1c): Failure of the Markan Eyewitnesses as Pauline
Propaganda
Sandra Hübenthal, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen
Basileia,
Jesus-wise or Mark-wise?
Michael A. Daise, College of William and Mary
First-Century
Jewish Identity Under Rome
Monica Selvatici, Londrina State University
Constructing
Christian Identity in Luke-Acts: The Purpose of Pharisees in Lukan Theology
Claire Rothschild’s paper dealt with Mark’s gospel and Pauline letters
in which she challenged the traditional opinion about the author of the gospel
coming from Peter’s circles. Her hypothesis is that the gospel of Mark was
written as Pauline propaganda. This means that the Markan theme of the failure
of the eyewitnesses demonstrates a historical association with Paul. In her
opinion the Markan gospel is the first one to validate Paul’s authority as an
apostle. Despite many significant differences between the undisputed Pauline
letters and the Markan gospel this hypothesis, being highly speculative, seems
interesting and brings some possible openings for future research on the
relationship between Mark and Paul.
Sandra Hübenthal discussed the different views on the kingdom of God
presented by the characters and the narrator of the gospel of Mark. She
observed, that the narrative voice proclaims Jesus as the Son of God and urges
the readers to accept that belief. On the other hand the narrative character
Jesus proclaims the Kingdom of God that is just at one’s fingertips and invites
the followers to make an existential choice in that view. She argues that these
two different views could represent the two views of the groups that were
composing the second gospel. Hübenthal is convinced that there was no one
single author of the second gospel we could refer to, but rather the gospel
emerged as a group effort. In that view he studies the question, if the group
standing behind the Gospel thought about the Kingdom of God Jesus-wisely or
Mark-wisely.
Michael Daise offered a paper in which he argued that the level of
diversity within Judaism of the first century would easily allow another group,
namely the group of Jesus followers, to sustain one of the Jewish identities of
that period. Daise enters into dialogue with Martin Goodman and his “Rome and
Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations.” According to Goodman
Jewish-Roman animosity that eventually resulted in the Jewish-Roman war was
caused by intra-Jewish rather than Jewish-Roman conflicts. Daise expands on
that and claims that the axe of the conflict was the material status of rich
and poor. This argument serves the purpose of highlighting the intra-Jewish
diversities at the time.
The last but not least paper in the session was devoted to the analysis
of the function of the Pharisees in
Luke-Acts. Monica Selvatici argues that the Pharisees in the Lukan
corpus are portrayed more friendly than in the other writings of the New
Testament. She points out that, e.g., in Luke the Pharisees never want to kill
Jesus, but only catch him on words. In Acts the Christians of Pharisaic origin
cause only one relatively little problem regarding circumcision (Acts 15:5).
Selvatici concludes, that since the image of the Pharisees in the gospel was
rather friendly (in comparison to, e.g., Matthew) and that Luke referred to
those who converted from Pharisaic Judaism to Christianity - the Pharisees were
of great theological importance for Luke.
The session dealt with various early Christian identities. I think the
answer to the thematic question would simply be “many.” On the one hand, it is striking
that there was actually no clear distinction between various groups within
Judaism of that time, so Jesus followers were hardly distinguishable for the
external observer (Daise). On the other hand, this indistinguishable group of
Jesus-followers, in its very initial stage, coming from various Jewish groups
(Selvatici), already was so strongly diverse regarding the views on the God’s
kingdom (Hübenthal). Also, the members of the same group clashed among
themselves with regard to anti-Peter and pro-Paul propaganda in Mark
(Rothschild).
