Category: Biblical Studies

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The Origins of Satan

Satan has received a lot of attention on this blog:

So, unsurprisingly, I’ve got to share Andrew Mark Henry’s new “Religion for Breakfast” video, “The Origins of Satan”:

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Recently read: Junior and Schipper’s “Black Samson”

Nyasha Junior and Jeremy Schipper, Black Samson: The Untold Story of an American Icon (Oxford: OUP, 2020). (Amazon; Bookshop)

As I’ve aged, reception history/reception studies of the Bible have become more and more interesting to me. As much as I can enjoy a good socio-historical study of the Apostle Paul and his epistles (e.g. Barclay’s “Paul and the Gift” or Barber, et al., “Paul, A New Covenant Jew”), one has to wonder how much more can really be said about Paul from a historicist perspective (or Jesus, or, closer to home, John the Baptist). People are interested in the Bible primarily because of what it means to us now and what it has meant to people in the recent past, not because of what it meant to the earliest audiences (even studies about the Bible and its meaning to earliest audiences are attempting to answer contemporary questions about the Bible by connecting them to ancient ones). Judaism, Christianity, and Islam aren’t inherently more interesting than Zoroastrianism or Mandaeanism but there are more scholars of the former than the latter because of the influence of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam upon the majority of the modern world in contrast to the (direct) influence of Zoroastrianism or Mandaeanism.

A recent example of an excellent study of the Bible’s reception is Nyasha Junior and Jeremy Schipper’s Black Samson: The Untold Story of an American Icon. This book traces the depiction of Samson as a Black man throughout the history of the United States. As you read it becomes apparent that this theme of “Black Samson” is everywhere. I had no idea.

Junior and Schipper begin with early American commentary on how this nation is a “Temple of Liberty”. From a variety of angles, people began to connect how Samson was placed in the Philistine temple of Dagon only to bring it down upon the Philistines with how slavery (as represented by Black Samson) could be what pulls down the Temple of Liberty if not addressed. This imagery was used by abolitionists and defenders of slavery alike, though with very different intentions (see Chapter 1, “Black Samson in the Temple of Liberty”).

Chapter 2, “Black Samson of Brandywine,” traces the mythology around a enslaved man named Samson who is depicted as having fought against the British in the Battle of Brandywine. Chapter 3, “Samson and the Making of American Martyrs” shows how people who died, often having fought for the abolitionist cause, were remembered as a type of Samson: this ranges from John Brown (who is now the focus of Showtimes’ limited series “The Good Lord Bird”), to Frederick Douglass, to Nate Turner, and others. Chapter 4, “Black Sampson and Labor Movements” traces the theme’s relation to labor movements, popular song, and discusses the tension between African Americans and labor movements that often sought to exclude African Americans or saw them as undermining their cause.

Chapter 5, “The Samson Complex,” may have been the most fascinating to me. It focuses upon how “African American intellectuals and activists” who sometimes “claimed that the younger activists had a ‘Samson complex’ that would ultimately result in nothing but self-destruction” (p. 68). In this chapter we encounter Malcom X, Elijah Muhammad, Dr. King, and others who were involved in the Civil Rights Movement and debated the best way to go about fighting for their rights.

Chapter 6, “But Some of Us are Strong Believers in the Samson Myth,” examines how Samson-imagery finds its way into discussions around “the intersection of race and gender” (p. 93). Chapter 7, “Visual Representations of Black Samson” is self-explanatory and discussed the one example of Black Samson that might be familiar to many: Samson as depicted in The Bible television miniseries produced by The History Channel. I show this series to my students and they have noticed that Samson is depicted as a Black man while most of the other figures are white.

This book is exemplary. It shows the power of the Bible as part of culture making. Also, it shows how diverse interpretation of the Bible can be. For those interested in reception history or the intersection of the Bible and American culture, the Bible and race, the Bible and gender, the Bible and art and film, etc., this is a must read.

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Recently read: Stokes’ ‘Satan’

Ryan E. Stokes, Satan: How God’s Executioner Became the Enemy (Eerdmans, 2019).

I began reading Ryan E. Stokes’ Satan this summer. I was teaching a class on the Hebrew Bible at the time. It made me have to revisit my lesson on the Book of Job in order to update how I presented Ha-Satan. And I felt like each chapter had that effect on me. It introduced new ways of looking at the figure of Satan and his evolution that I hadn’t considered.

Chapter 1, The Origin of Satan focuses on his this character is presented in Numbers 22, Zechariah 3, and 1 Chronicles 21. My key takeaway is that Stokes argues that this figure is an “Attacker” more than say as “Adversary”. I always thought of him as being a prosecuting attorney-type but his role seems to be more sinister.

Chapter 2, The Satan and the Innocent Job stood out to me because it showed how the Attacker, usually of sinners, is presented as attacking an innocent, righteous man. This is a major development, especially in the Hebrew Bible’s approach to theodicy.

The development of this figure (often by different names, though Stokes makes many observations that indicate that the same figure is in view) is traced from the Hebrew Scriptures through other works of Second Temple literature, most importantly in Chapters 3-8: Chapter 3, Demons, Evil Spirits, Fallen Angels, and Human Sin; Chapter 4, The Prince of Mastema and His Deceptive Spirits; Chapter 5, The Prince of Mastema, Enemy of God’s People; Chapter 6, Demons, Evil Spirits, The Satan, and Human Responsibility for Sin; Chapter 7, Belial, Sin, and Sectarianism; Chapter 8, Belial and the Power of Darkness). In these chapters there were several topics of importance in my view. First, as mentioned, the presentation of these different figures as being different expressions of a single figure (the one called “Satan” in the New Testament) was helpful. The role of determination and human will factors into most of these chapters. And ancient approaches to what we can theodicy runs throughout.

The final chapter, Chapter 8, The Satan in the New Testament was briefer than I anticipated but felt more like a capstone. For some reason I imagined it would be the main focus of the book but the emphasis is evenly spread across the various collections of literature.

If you are interested in the figure of Satan and his development, this is a great book.

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The philosophy and motivation behind my comparative religion and biblical studies curricula (and where I hope to take it)

Last year I began revamping my comparative religion curriculum. I wanted to move away from the “World Religion” model that focuses on knowing a lot about the most well-known religions. I wanted to move toward a philosophy of religion model where I push my students to think critically about the concept of “religion” itself (we titled it “Religion in Global Context”). I chose to spend a lot of time on the various ways scholars have defined religion. Then I sampled Hinduism as a religion from India, Judaism as a religion from the Middle East (or west Asia), and Confucianism as a religion from east Asia. The goal was to highlight three -isms categorized by many as “religions” while helping my students see (1) that these -isms are hardly unified and coherent (i.e. we might be better off speaking of Hinduisms, Judaisms, and Confucianisms) and (2) that what counts as “religion” is hardly a monolith. Additional readings and activities gave brief introductions to Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, Daoism, and even Pastafarianism and Dudeism.

My goal with this class is to problematize the category of religion so that they can see how use of the word has socio-political consequences (like denouncing a group as a “cult”) while also introducing them to the diversity of our global community. While our student body is majority Christian, we have Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Nones, etc., who attend. As Simran Jeet Singh has written recently, “Teaching about religion is not just about understanding politics. It’s also about creating cultural literacy, ensuring that our young people are familiar with the diverse people they meet on the street.” As my current institution (affiliated with the Episcopal Church) is having discussions about the place of religion studies in our curriculum (don’t worry, it’s not being threatened as far as I know), I emailed one of our administrators this morning saying “I’m convinced that the health of” our community “is directly related to boldly leading in providing of religious literacy, not merely responding and following perceived market trends.”

The spring semester class that pairs directly with “Religion in Global Context” is “Religion in the United States”. If the goal of “Religion in Global Context” is (as mentioned) complicate the word “religion” so that students recognize its complexity and also how people try to wield the word for their own socio-political purposes, and if it’s aim is to introduce students to the diversity of our world through the lens of what we call “religion”, then “Religion in the United States” does something similar in the context of the United States, specifically. This means I talk to students about the First Amendment, about how “religious freedom” cases have been decided in the Supreme Court (a topic that only promises to become more and more important to a good education), how Native American religion/spirituality has been practiced and understood, how “imported” religions (like the ones they studied in “Religion in Global Context”) have faired in this country, and finally, what the American experience has contributed to uniquely American religious expressions ranging from the Latter-day Saints, Pentecostals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Adventists, and Satanists to how “religious freedom” questions become increasingly complex when we revisit how the government responded to groups like The Peoples Temple and the Branch Davidians of Waco.

I’m extremely pleased with how those two classes have developed. This is my fifth year teaching religious studies to high schoolers. Even if a job was offered at a higher-level, I don’t know that I’d be able to transition easily. I’ve thrown myself into it. And being that my employer is affiliated with the Episcopal Church, I’ve had the academic freedom I wouldn’t have had at pretty much any other private school in San Antonio. And since public schools tend to avoid hiring a teacher just for religion, I haven’t really seriously considered leaving the private school realm.

That said, my wheel-house, my cup-of-tea, my area of professional training, is not comparative religion (I’ve had to self-educate) but biblical studies. Of course, this means five years into teaching courses on the Bible from an academic, non-confessional perspective (contrary other local options like Cornerstone Christian Academy, San Antonio Christian School, or the many Catholic high schools that do teach religion [though maybe not religious/religion studies this they’re highly confessional/dogmatic]), I remain unsatisfied. I’ve tried to weave together all that biblical studies tries to weave together: historical, literary, theological, philosophical, etc., approaches to the text. This means I’ve tried to do everything in my biblical studies classes from helping students see how the formation of the Bible was shaped by the Babylonian Exile, to how characters are developed in the Patriarchal Narratives, to how the Book of Job addresses theodicy, to how a juxtaposition of the Books of Daniel and Esther can help us think through the difference between deontological and consequentialist ethics. In my view, it’s all good stuff but the reason I’m happy with “Religion in Global Context” and “Religion in the United States” is because every lesson is ultimately tethered to the one or two big things I’ve mentioned: how we use the word “religion” and how “religions” diversely manifest. My biblical studies classes lack that center of gravity.

This is why I’ve been talking with colleagues, and Facebook friends, and even administrators about a potential shift I want to make to our biblical studies curriculum. So, since I know only one of the hundreds of students I’ve taught is going to college for anything like a biblical studies focus, and I know that having a center of gravity has made my pedagogy more effective while also making teaching more fun, I need to decide what it is that I think can be the center of gravity for teaching biblical studies to (1) an adolescent audience that (2) usually lacks much biblical literacy or an understanding of why the Bible is influential and (3) is unlikely to pursue biblical studies at the college or graduate school-level (while also laying enough of a foundation for the one or two who might go further after high school). It’s with this in mind that I think a parallel to my comparative religion classes can be found:

  1. introduce students to basic concepts of religion and to diverse examples of religion >>> introduce students to the basic content of the Bible and the diverse content (e.g. genres) of the Bible
  2. highlight the diversity of religion (and why this is relevant) >>> highlight the diversity of interpretations (and why this is relevant)
  3. complicate “religion” so students can be aware of how people are trying to use that word >>> complicate simplistic appeals to “the Bible says” by making students aware of the Bible’s multivalence

Currently, in the fall semester I offer a class titled “The Hebrew Scriptures” that serves as an introduction to the Hebrew Bible/Tanakh/Old Testament. In the spring I offer a class titled “The Christian Scriptures” that serves as an introduction to the Christian New Testament with a few sides of non-canonical literature (like a student favorite: The Infancy Gospel of Thomas). But what I’m considering and proposing now is this: “Bible and Interpretation” and “Bible and Culture”. (I’m grateful for the help of my colleague Nate Bostian in helping think up these titles.) I’ve put together a draft outline of the basics of both classes. Since “Bible and Interpretation” would be a slimmed down version of much of what I teach in “The Hebrew Scriptures” and “The Christian Scriptures”, it was easier to put together. In essence, I would want to continue focusing on the core narratives of these collections (e.g. Creation Narratives; The Exodus Narrative; Jesus and the Gospels) though from less of a historicist perspective. The history of the Bible won’t be forsaken as I’d have a shorter discussion on the Israelites/Judahites, Jews, and Christians who created the Bible allowing for a brief introduction to groups like the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans, but the “background” who become less central to the class. Instead, so-called “Bible literacy” would become central along with an exploration of how we got the Bible and why these things are relevant. Here’s the draft outline of “Bible and Interpretation”:

  1. The Origins of the Bible
    1. Ancient Writing and Ancient Writers
      1. Who Could Write?
      2. How Did They Write?
    2. Ancient Manuscripts and Their Preservation

Activity: Constructing the Bible

  1. Canonical and Non-Canonical Texts
    1. The Bible or Bibles?
    2. Different Communities; Different Canons
  2. Gutenberg and Modern Bibles
    1. The Bible before Gutenberg
    2. The Bible after Gutenberg
  3. Translating the Bible into English
    1. How Translation Works
    2. Juxtaposing English Translations
  4. The People Who Created the Bible
    1. The Israelites/Judahites 
    2. The Jews
    3. The Christians
  5. How to Read and Interpret the Bible
    1. How to Read Narratives
      1. Sampling the Book of Judges
      2. Sampling the Infancy Gospel of Thomas
    2. How to Read Poetry and Discourse
      1. Sampling the Psalter
      2. Sampling the Epistle of James
  6. The Tanakh/Old Testament
    1. The Creation Narratives
      1. Creation as a Temple
      2. Creation as a Garden
      3. The Bible on TV: The Bible, Ep. 1
    2. The Patriarchal Narratives
      1. The Patriarch Abraham
      2. The Patriarch Isaac
      3. The Patriarch Jacob
      4. The Bible as Film: Joseph: King of Dreams
    3. The Exodus Narrative
      1. The Prophet Moses
      2. The Bible as Film: Exodus: Gods and Kings
      3. The Bible on TV: The Bible, Ep. 2
    4. The Royal Narratives 
      1. King David and His Dynasty
      2. The Bible on TV: The Bible, Ep. 3
      3. King David and His Downfall
      4. The Bible on TV: The Bible, Ep.4
  7. The New Testament
    1. Jesus and the Gospels
      1. Mark’s Secretive Messiah
      2. The Bible on TV: The Bible, Ep. 5
      3. Matthew’s Sagacious Messiah
      4. The Bible on TV: The Bible, Ep. 6
      5. Luke’s Subversive Messiah
      6. The Bible on TV: The Bible, Ep.7
      7. John’s Heavenly Messiah
      8. The Bible on TV: The Bible, Ep. 8
      9. The Crucified and Resurrected Messiah
      10. The Bible on TV: The Bible, Ep. 9
    2. Paul and His Letters
      1. How to Read an Epistle
      2. The Bible on TV: The Bible, Ep. 10
      3. Reading an Epistle in a House Church

The spring semester’s “Bible and Culture” would do for “Bible and Interpretation” what “Religion in the United States” does for “Religion in Global Culture”. It takes the global and makes it more local. Post-Covid-19, “Religion in the United States” will reintroduce a project where students must visit a local religious community (canceled last spring and preemptively this one). Similarly, “Bible and Culture” will highlight the influence of the Bible in an American context but also include a (to-be thought out) project where students examine the intersection of biblical interpretation and Texas culture. Here is the (shorter) draft outline for that class:

  1. The Bible as a Cultural Authority
    1. “The Bible Says”: Why People Quote the Bible
    2. The Meanings of the Bible
    3. The Bible and American Identity
  2. The Bible in Modern Society
    1. An Old Book for Modern Times
    2. Case Study #1: Reading the Bible/Reading Teen Study Bibles
    3. Case Study #2: TBD yearly
    4. Case Study #3: TBD yearly
    5. Case Study #4: TBD yearly
  3. The Bible in Film and Art
    1. A Survey of the Bible in Film
    2. Film #1: Noah (2014): The Bible and Environmental Catastrophe
    3. Film #2: TBD
    4. A Survey of the Bible in Modern Art
    5. Case Study #1: TBD yearly
    6. Case Study #2: TBD yearly
  4. The Bible in Political Discourse
    1. Why Do Politicians Quote the Bible?
    2. Is the Bible a Political Book?
    3. Case Study #1: TBD yearly
    4. Case Study #2: TBD yearly
    5. Case Study #3: TBD yearly
  5. Project: Interpreting the Bible in Texas

Ok, I needed to write out all this material in order to organize my thoughts. If someone has read this far, feel free to comment with insights.

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Muddy Paper in Plastic Bags: my SBL presentation recording

On Thursday, I presented a paper titled “Muddy Paper in Plastic Bags: Practicing Textual Criticism” at the Society of Biblical Literature’s Annual Meeting 2020 (online this year). The recording is available for those who registered for the conference. (Hopefully, someday, for the sake of public scholarship, most of these recordings will be made available on YouTube!) To find it, just search by my name. Here are PDFs of the handout and slides I used:

Handout: Muddy Paper in Plastic BagsDownload
Slides: Muddy Paper in Plastic BagsDownload
Here I am presenting on the ol’ Zoom machine!
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#SBLAAR2020: Days 3-4

Yesterday, I attended the joint session “The Intersection of Bible and the United States 2020 Politics” of SBL’s Bible and Practical Theology and AAR’s Evangelical Studies Units where I heard Anna Hutchinson’s “The Role of Theological Education in Evangelical Bible Reading and Interpretation” and Marie Purcell’s “A Battle between Good and Evil: Ethnographic Reflections on the Election from First Baptist Dallas”. Both were fascinating. Then I got to hear some of the presentations from the Ecological Hermeneutics/Paul and Politics SBL session.

Today, I’m presenting at 5 pm EST (4 pm CST) on the topic “Muddy Paper in Plastic Bags: Practicing Textual Criticism”. It’s a “teaching tactic” style presentation on an activity I had my students do in order to teach them a little bit about how the Bible is formed. If you’re interested, here are PDFs of the handout and the Slides:

Handout: Muddy Paper in Plastic BagsDownload
Slides: Muddy Paper in Plastic BagsDownload

Here are a couple of posts I wrote after I offered the activity to my students: