August 29: Early Gospels, our projects

David Vishanoff

Tuesday, July 21st, 2015

Assignment

Note: we will begin this class with a presentation on the job and grad school application process by Adrienne Jablonski, the College’s wonderful corporate relations person.

Please prepare by doing these four five things:

• Take a quick look at the notes I posted after last week’s class.
• Read all the way through the syllabus. If you have any questions, please ask them in class today. I don’t want anything to catch you by surprise later!
• Read the following passages in the Bible (any translation):
  • The whole Gospel of Mark
  • Matthew chapters 1-7
  • Luke chapters 22-24
  • John chapters 1-3

(We are starting with these New Testament passages not because they are some kind of objective baseline against which all other portraits of Jesus should be measured, but because they are the main reference point of most of the gospels we will be reading, and I don’t want to take knowledge of them for granted. Furthermore, they are interesting constructions of Jesus in their own right, and we should think about how and why each of these gospel writers constructed his own portrait of Jesus.)

• Read the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (handed out in class). How does this construction of Jesus differ from the New Testament gospels, and how does it resemble them?
• Think about this (and be prepared to present your answer in class): If you were to write a gospel, what would it be like? For instance, think about:
  • Would your gospel focus on Jesus’ teachings?
  • Would it include miracles?
  • Would it be historical-critical?
  • Would it explain the significance of Jesus’ death?
  • What kind of person would Jesus come across as–kind, powerful, wise, radical…?
  • What would Jesus stand for?
  • What significance would you want Jesus to have for your your audience?
  • Who is your audience, anyway–modern skeptical people, “spiritual but not religious” people, Bible Belt Christians, Muslims, or atheists?
  • What is the cultural context in which you are writing, and how should that cultural context shape your writing?
  • Will your Jesus fit into your culture, or will you depict a counter-cultural Jesus?
  • What purpose would you like to your gospel to fulfill?

Notes from class

I hope the time we took to help you get thinking more about and acting on your post-college plans will prove beneficial. We’ll come back to that periodically and briefly. Three resources to remember:

• Your Handshake account (via hiresooner.com, or directly at http://www.ou.edu/career/students/our-services/online-resources/handshake.html) which helps you find relevant job listings.
• “Going global” for job openings abroad, at http://www.ou.edu/career/students/our-services/online-resources/going-global.html.
• Adrienne Jablonski, who offers individual appointments (ajablonski@ou.edu).

Our discussion of the “Infancy Gospel of Thomas” (IGT) and the canonical Gospels yielded:

• Contrary to what Ehrman said, the IGT does attempt to resolve the problem of Jesus’ violence and bratty attitude by showing him heal those he hurt and by showing his character developing over time.
• And the IGT does fit with the rather oppositional character Jesus has in Mark.
• The alternate beginning of IGT (text C) also echoes the Moses motif from Matthew.
• And IGT clearly was written by people who kn\ew the canonical Gospels quite well, and echoes them in many ways.
• But we think IGT’s Jesus violates some essential elements of the Gospel’s portrait of Jesus, like his kindliness emphasized by Luke, and like the orthodox doctrine of his sinlessness.
• We will continue to think about orthodoxies: do they define the essences of religions, and of figures like Jesus, or are they just the perspectives of the powerful who imposed their ideas on others?