<<
This example of Charles Watts is illustrative of one of the problems
christians, as well as anyone else who tries to use the bible to support
an
argument, run into. The book is inconsistent, and for every quotation
Watts is going
to use, someone else is going to have a counterquotation that proves
beyond a shadow of a doubt that jesus was a socialist feminist. There are
alot of lucid thinkers who do close readings of the bible and come up with
compelling arguments. There are alot of radically different close readings
of the bible, and Watts is
certainly not the last word, or even a well-known voice. Gloria Naylor's
novel *Bailey's Cafe* has a wonderful scene with two characters having a
ferocious argument--solely through throwing conflicting bible quotations
at one another.
Alot of theologians are moving away from just reading the bible, and doing
more stuff around the "historical jesus." when looked at historically, one
sees better how radical the jesus movement was. Just from Watts title, you
can see there's a problem. He uses "christ," (meaning messiah) rather than
"jesus"--his name. So there's already alot of theological baggage attached
to his work. If yu're interested, I'd look at some recent work on jesus
and then decide if you still think Watts' argument is so compelling.
Take a look at Gustavo Gutierrez *The Truth Shall Make you Free,* Mev
Puleo, *The Struggle is One*, an edited volume, *The faith That Does
Justice*, Karen LeBacqz, *Justice in an Unjust World: Foundations for a
Christian Approach to Justice*, Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza,*In Memory of
Her: A Feminist theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins*,and
gayraud Wilmore*Black Religion and Black Radicalism* The latter has good
account of the different ways in which the bible was read by slave owners
and slaves, and how each group took from the jesus stories the theology
they needed.
I can't stress enough the fact that bible interpretations are
ideologically driven and there is absolutely no reason to believe that
Watts presents an objective read.
Yours,
Frances
>> Also check out Christopher Hill's "The English Bible and the Seventeenth- Century Revolution." Hill describes the Bible as "a huge bran-tub" from which anything and everything can be taken. During the most radical period of the English revolution, all kinds of crack-pot visionaries used it to announce that the new Eden had arrived. One fellow, if I recall correctly, road naked into town of Bath on the back of a donkey while woman scattered palm fronds in his path -- his way of announcing that the the Kingdom of Christ had arrived. Yet, as Hill tells it, by the latter 1650s, it was becoming evident that if the Bible could be used to justify anything and everything, then it really justified nothing at all. By the end of the decade, MP's actually broke out in laughter when one member quoted the Good Book at excessive length, something that would have been unthinkable a few years earlier. The Restoration ushered in a wave of skepticism, as well as revulsion against religious enthusiasm. Only fools and fanatics, it was now believed, took the Bible literally.
Dan Lazare