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VOW
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Simplifying The Complex
This Christmas season of 2003, has seen two major news magazines, Time and Newsweek, each publish a major article that includes such subjects as the Bible, women’s issues, early Christian heresies and gnostic texts. The subject matter was undoubtedly important to the editors because of several new and popular books, including The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown, and The Gospel of Mary of Maqdala, by Karen King as well as the movie trilogy, “The Matrix.” The articles cover a lot of ground and tend to mix together opinions, scholarship and popular culture in such a way that the truth of history, text and scholarship get lost in the mix. Complex and important subjects can be trivialized in an attempt to simplify them for public consumption. The Time article, entitled “The Lost Gospels,” by David Van Biema, is the fairer piece. The author looks at the reasons the gnostic gospels are once again becoming popular, and he looks at both sides of the issues, offering statements by scholars with differing opinions. He not only quotes such radical scholars as Elaine Pagels of Princeton and Karen King, of Harvard Divinity School but also orthodox scholars such as Ben Witherington of Asbury Theological Seminary and Frederica Mathewes-Green author of The Illuminated Heart: The Ancient Christian Path of Transformation. One interesting quote by Catholic scholar Raymond Brown who is respected on both sides of the liberal/conservative divide, allows the reader to understand that there are academics with strong opinions on both side of this debate. Van Biema writes, “The Catholic historian Raymond Brown’s review of one of Pagel’s early books called her topic, [Gnosticism], ‘the rubbish of the second century,’ adding that it was ‘still rubbish.’” The article in Newsweek, “The Bible’s Lost Stories,” by Barbara Kantrowitz and Anne Underwood, is the more biased piece. The article is concerned with “the role of women in the scriptures.” The authors use only radical scholars yet tend to mix views that are acceptable to orthodox Christianity with the more radical revisions of radical feminism. This could be a very misleading article for those who might use a news magazine as a source for theological truth. I offer two examples. The first one: the authors point out the leading roles of such biblical women as Rahab and Deborah, (women whose leadership and courage most orthodox Christians, including men applaud), but nevertheless the authors, in attempting to elevate the position of the biblical Mary Magdalene, reach for such extra biblical and gnostic texts as “The Gospel of Phillip” and “The Gospel of Mary.” They convey the idea that those who applaud the courage and leadership of any biblical woman would also accept extra biblical texts such as the gnostic texts but this is not so. They add to this confusion by suggesting that these gnostic texts were, “written by Christians whose alternative views of Jesus were eventually suppressed as heresy,” failing to mention that most gnostic texts were written later then the biblical gospels and that most orthodox Christians would not consider the gnostic communities Christian. The Gospel of Phillip is of the Valentinian type of Gnosticism. Valentinus was a gnostic teacher around 140 AD.1 Ben Witherington places this text in the early or late third century.2 He places The Gospel of Mary in the second century.3 The second example: Kantrowitz and Underwood write that Bernadette Brooten, professor at Brandeis University, “made the remarkable discovery by reading older versions of the Bible that Junius, one of many Christian “Apostles” mentioned by Saint Paul, [in Romans 16], was in fact a woman, Junia, whose name was masculinized over centuries by translators with their own agenda.” The authors imply, by mentioning her name alone, that only her discovery and research is vindicated by the publication of 1989 edition of the New Standard Revised Version of the Bible. However, the matter is far more complex than that and a lot of very orthodox Christian males are part of the solution, not the problem. New Testament Professor Gunther Juncker, in a communication, mentions commentaries by Moo (NICNT), Cranfield (ICC), Dunn (WBC), and Fitzmyer (AB) as explaining that for the first millennium of Christianity the name was understood to be feminine. Dr. Juncker mentions the work of Peter Lampe, and although Lampe’s “ground breaking” work is in German, “some of his data can be found in English.4 Included in Juncker’s communication was an article by John Thorley, “Junia, A Woman Apostle.”5 Thorley writes: The universal view of the early fathers was that the name was Junia, and that she was a woman, and the English Authorised Version of 1611 followed this in reading “Junia”, clearly a woman’s name; and in fact “Junias” became a man in English translations only in 1881 when the Revised Version was published.Thorley goes on to explain that Luther in his translation “opted for ‘den Juniam’ and continental translations have since then mostly followed this masculine interpretation.” But Thorley goes on to explore the various texts and versions and how the name was translated and why he wants to “reinforce the arguments for ‘Junia’, mainly on linguistic grounds.” He concludes his rather technical paper by referring to John Chrysostom a fourth century church father who at one time was bishop of Constantinople. Chrysostom writes of Junia, ‘Why, what a great love of learning this woman possessed! Great enough indeed to be considered worthy of inclusion amongst the apostles.”6 Ben Witherington sees Romans 16 as naming a woman apostle and in this case sees the two apostles mentioned together [Andronicus and Junia] as “Itinerant” missionaries. Witherington writes: “This is important because Paul says God appointed them first for the Church (1 Cor 12.28; cf. Eph 4.11). He distinguishes them from prophets and elders though no doubt their functions overlap somewhat. At the least it would appear that Paul means Andronicus and Junia were engaged in evangelism and church planting, and that they were itinerants. That Paul says they are notable or outstanding probably implies that their work was noteworthy and had borne much fruit.7One can see from the above that the history of this issue is very complex, and that many scholars who are both male and female as well as orthodox understand that the Junia mentioned in Roman’s 16 is a woman. In the same way Kantrowitz and Underwood misconstrue other biblical texts since they seem to write using a theme of oppressive patriarchy provided by radical feminism. Working with a theme that is contemporary for modern readers but foreign to the text tends to obliterate the meaning of the text. The authors of the article, using this theme focus toward the end of the article on Mary the mother of Jesus. They write about Mary’s visit to Elizabeth: Embedded in the story of Mary and Elizabeth is a theme, finally being openly explored, that speaks directly to the experience of contemporary women. Unlike other Biblical figures, Mary is not bowing to the demands of a patriarchal society by providing her future husband with a male heir. On the contrary, she has scandalized her betrothed, Joseph, by freely accepting God’s will that she bear a child by the power of the Holy Spirit.There are several things wrong with this statement. In the first place Joseph is only scandalized when he thinks Mary is with child by another man, and even then he is kind. (Matt. 1:18, 19) When he finds that the Child is from God by the Holy Spirit he is not scandalized at all but as obedient as Mary. (Matt. 1:20-25) Secondly in Mary’s wonderful Magnificat, (Luke 1: 46-55) in which she does state that God exalts the powerless and brings down the powerful, she does not direct her words to oppressive patriarchy but to all oppression and worldly power which would include the wife of Herod who in a godless fit of rage had the son of Elizabeth, John the Baptist, murdered. This story has nothing to do with “not bowing to patriarchal society” but everything to do with God’s actions on behalf of sinful humanity. Van Biema, author of the Time article, writing about recovered texts, mostly the gnostic ones, writes that, “Darker imaginations, meanwhile, have fixed on grimmer aspects of the recovered texts.” Here he is speaking to the “Matrix trilogy’s catchy yet disturbing message that our waking world is an illusion and that we can somehow break out of it by using esoteric knowledge . . .” The reader should take note, an illusionary world lacks goodness. And salvation by esoteric knowledge knows nothing of grace. In this kind of world the powerful, even the evil may win because they may also have the esoteric knowledge. Such knowledge does not change one it only gives ability and more power. The real Biblical story is about a real world created by a good God. The story is about the fall of humanity and the redemption bought by a real Savior who is fully God and fully human. The story is about His real death on a cross and His real physical resurrection. The story is about the God of the universe inviting sinners, men and women, sinful Peter and sinful Mary Magdalene, to experience fellowship with Him though His Son Jesus Christ. ______________ 1 E.M. Yamauchi, “Gnosticism,” Dictionary of New Testament Background:
A Compendium of Contemporary Biblical Scholarship, eds. Craig A. Evans
& Stanley E. Porter, (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press 2000), 414-418.
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