"And the Marriage of Jesus and…Never Mind"

Well, that was quick.  It was just two years ago that The Latest Thing was the news that Jesus was married.  Now it turns out—not so much.  In the tradition of Mark Twain’s wry comment, “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated”, it would now seem that reports of Jesus’ matrimonial bliss have also been greatly exaggerated.

            It all began in Harvard, where feminist theologian Karen King (pictured above) announced that an ancient fragment of papyrus contained the words in Coptic, “Jesus said to them, my wife…”  Wow.  So Jesus was married!  Way to go—and to get attention.  For it certainly did get attention.  The papyrus was promptly dubbed the “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife”, and those dubious of its authenticity (such as the Vatican) were written off as partisans in the church’s continued struggle against women priests.  Harvard scholars with long lists of initials after their names solemnly released a series of articles defending Ms. King’s position.  Time magazine solemnly announced that several “teams of scientists” had therefore “proved its authenticity”.  With all the gravitas they could muster, journalists intoned “the ink and papyrus are very likely ancient, and not a modern forgery”.   The pieces appeared, of course, just before Easter as modern journalism’s contribution to religious dialogue in the West.   The hubbub over the “Gospel of Judas” in about 2006 had died down, so it was time for something else.  What better news for a journalist could there be than the explosive discovery that Jesus was married, and that the Church had been wrong all along about yet something else?  Stop the presses!

            Then it quickly began to unravel.  A Coptic specialist at Indiana Wesleyan University, Christian Askeland, said that a few factors immediately indicated that they were dealing with a forgery, one of which was the fact that the Coptic dialect used in the papyrus fell out of use before the date that radiometric tests indicated that the papyrus was made.   Mark Goodacre, New Testament prof and Coptic scholar at Duke University came to the same conclusion:  “It is beyond reasonable doubt that this is a fake”.  So did Alin Suciu, researcher at the University of Hamburg and Coptic manuscript specialist:  “Given that the evidence of the forgery is now overwhelming, I consider the polemic surrounding the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife papyrus over.”  Okay then.  Nothing to see here.  Move along everyone.  Let’s just forget the whole thing.  Sorry, Ms. King.

            I think though that it would be a mistake to just forget the whole thing, however much Ms. King and her Harvard colleagues might like us to do so.  For the episode reveals something important about how our culture, and some in academic circles, look upon the traditional views of the historical Church—namely, that our culture is predisposed to accept any story, view, or discovery which casts doubt on the Church’s traditional faith.  Any news release or theory which could embarrass the Church or portray it in an unfavourable light as a collection of hide-bound obscurantists, will find an eager and ready audience, what sales people call “a motivated buyer”.  Certain sections of the academic world and the totality of the mass media will jump on any band-wagon or story deemed to be destructive of the Church’s traditional beliefs.  No sense sitting on the story until real scholars have pondered it, tested it, and subjected it to rigorous proof.  Easter is coming, and there is nothing that sells better than the latest revelation that the Church has been proven wrong once again.

            This means that we should sit lightly on The Latest Thing that comes down the journalistic pike when it announces in its customary solemn tones that the Church’s faith has been again proven to be bogus.  Whether it’s an ossuary or a papyrus presented for our excited consideration, it is likely that when the dust settles the debate between believers and unbelievers will be pretty much where it was before.  It is a mistake to let journalists or academics get us worked up.  It has all been done before.  Easter comes around every year and the media will be hard at their work of coming up with something new.  Two years ago, a feminist scholar from Harvard helped them out.  Who will help next time?  Stay tuned.

The Paralytic and the Pool

          One wonders sometimes about why the gospel story of the healing of the paralytic was chosen for the paschal season.  One understands why the stories of Thomas and the Myrrh-bearers were chosen, but the paralytic?  Perhaps our incomprehension is rooted in our modern separation of Pascha from baptism.  In the early Church from at least the time of Tertullian (d. 220), Pascha was considered as the time for baptism, and the spectacle of many catechumens lining up to be baptized in the baptistery (a separate building in those days) and then processing with solemn joy into the church to be anointed with laying on of hands by the bishop forged an indelible link in people’s minds between Pascha and baptism.  Even now in our Pascha-night Liturgy, in place of the Trisagion hymn we sing “As many as have been baptized into Christ”.  In early tradition, Pascha meant baptism and baptism always had a paschal feel to it.  The two were inextricably linked.

            That might explain why all the Sunday gospels in the Paschal season after the Sunday of the Myrrh-bearers focus upon water:  the Samaritan woman finds Christ by the well, and the blind man finds salvation as he washes in the pool of Siloam.  Similarly, the paralytic encounters Christ as he sat by the waters of Bethesda.  In all these gospels, we find water, a clear echo of baptism for those to whom baptism was linked with Pascha.  As early as Tertullian (in his book On Baptism, chapter 5), the presumed descent of the angel into the Bethesda pool foreshadowed the spiritual and transformative power of Christian baptism.

            As we examine the story of the paralytic in greater depth, it is important to see that in its original context the Bethesda pool was not a source of salvation for the paralytic, but a rival alternative to it, if not its positive impediment.  Remember the details of the story:  the paralytic sat languishing by the pool, thirty-eight years in his wretched condition, hoping for healing.  When the pool’s waters were stirred (by an angel, as everyone thought), he hoped to be the first one into the pool to soak up the angel’s divine power and be cured, but being paralyzed, he was too slow, and someone always beat him to the pool.  So, he waited and waited, hoping to find salvation one day in the pool.

            It was there that Jesus found him.  When Jesus asked him, “Do you want to be healed?” (John 5:6), he didn’t say, “Yes Lord, please heal me!”  He was still hoping to get into the pool, and he answered, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is troubled, and while I am going another steps down before me.”  But salvation wasn’t in the pool.  It was in Jesus.  Jesus simply said, “Rise, take your pallet, and walk”, and the man did.  He didn’t need the pool after all.  All he needed was Jesus.

            In John’s subtext, the pool functions as an image of the Law and the man as an image of Israel hoping to find salvation in the Law.  The paralytic had been long in his condition, even as Israel had long been waiting for divine salvation.  The Bethesda pool was thought to have been stirred by an angel, even as the Law had been given by angels (Acts 7:53).  The pool even had five porticoes (John 5:4), even as the Mosaic Law had five books—a detail noticed by St. Augustine.  Like the paralytic who had to stop relying on the pool for salvation and turn instead to Christ, so Israel had to stop relying upon the Law to save them, and also turn to Christ.  The old was giving place to the new.

            We see this contrast between the old and the new throughout John’s Gospel:  not Jewish water, but Christ’s wine, not the old Temple, but Christ’s body, not the manna in the wilderness, but Christ’s flesh.  Christian faith involved turning from the old ways to the new, as sacred Jewish history veered upward into the Kingdom and the eschaton.  It was as Isaiah foretold long ago:  “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old.  Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you know perceive it?” (Isaiah 43:18-19)  This is the newness of Pascha, and the new life given to us in baptism.  The paralytic found this life not in the old pool, but in the living Christ.  Our Paschal season reminds us that this is where we find new life and constant renewal as well.

             

The Western War against Men and the Sinking of the Titanic

         

One of the current social realities is the war against men—or in you prefer, the war against masculinity as traditionally defined.  Confirmation of this comes from an unusual source—from Camille Paglia.  In an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, associate editorial features editor Ms. Weiss writes about Paglia in an article entitled, “Camille Paglia:  A Feminist Defense of Masculine Virtues”.   She relates that Paglia has noted with alarm certain features of western society, such as “society’s attempts to paper over the biological distinction between men and women” which she connects with “the collapse of Western civilization”.  For Paglia, the cultural attempt to refashion society and eliminate traditional masculinity begins early.  In the educational system, for example, “They’re making a toxic environment for boys. Primary education does everything in its power to turn boys into neuters.”  Paglia sees the concentration on “female values”—such as sensitivity, socialization and cooperation—as the main aim of teachers and of society.  
          For those not familiar with Paglia’s work, she is no mere mouthpiece for the Christian right.  She is a lesbian, and a self-described “notorious Amazon feminist”.  Her criticisms of the feminist movement come from her long involvement in that movement.  But she wants feminism to be “open to stay-at-home moms and not just the career woman” and suggests that to be taken seriously feminism must take on matters like rape in India and honour killings in the Muslim world, which she describes as “more of an outrage than some woman going on a date on the Brown University campus.”

            I’m with Camille.  I agree that western society is bent on turning men into neuters.  All mysticism has been stripped from gender, which is now reduced to simple anatomical differences, and even these are no longer definitive.  No roles are more suited to men than to women, as no roles are more suited to women than to men—at least that’s the party line.  Anciently (i.e. before the late 1960s) all gender had a mystical aspect.  Men had a life and secrets of their own that they would not share with the women, and women had lives and secrets not for sharing with the men.  Certain mystical (and therefore culturally arbitrary) rituals ruled interactions between the genders:  a man, for example, would hold a door open for a woman, and would remove his hat in her presence, or stand up when she approached (as he would remove his hat and rise for his sovereign).  Any man worth his masculine salt would instantly come to the aid of any woman in distress, even at the possible cost of his own life.  It was not a matter of bravery, but of simple masculinity.  That’s what it meant to be a man.

            Such mystical behaviour can become very practical, as it did one day in 1912.  

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