Martin Marty Center for the Advanced Study of Religion
The University of Chicago Divinity School 

Sightings  10/25/2012

The Swift Rise and Apparent Demise of “Jesus’ Wife”

— Trevor W. Thompson and David C. Kneip

On September 18, 2012, Prof. Karen L. King of Harvard Divinity School made public the so-called “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” at a conference in Rome. The text, written in Coptic (the form of Egyptian spoken in the early Christian period), is preserved on a codex papyrus fragment (4 x 8 centimeters) with eight visible lines on one side (the other side is heavily faded). The fragment seems to come from the middle of a page, with lost text on either side of what is visible, as well as above and below. King argues that the fragment is from the fourth century CE and is likely a translation of a second-century CE Greek original.

Most likely, readers will have heard of this papyrus due to the content of the fourth and fifth lines: the fourth line reads, in part, “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife…’”; the fifth line includes “she will be able to become my disciple….” The texts of the New Testament make no mention of Jesus being married. The canonical Gospels do mention some women as being part of Jesus’ “circle” (cf. Luke 8:1-3).  The papyrus raises questions both concerning Jesus’ marital status and about whether women might have been included alongside men in the group called “the disciples.”

As part of her publishing the fragment, King gave an interview to reporters, provided high-resolution images and a transcription of the Coptic text (with adjoining English translation) on the HDS website, and posted a draft of her article on the papyrus scheduled to be published in Harvard Theological Review in January 2013. Not surprisingly, news of the fragment spread quickly as major news outlets around the globe carried the story. Bloggers both academic and popular debated various issues surrounding the papyrus; scholars posted academic papers directly to the Web; NPR covered the story on “All Things Considered”; and even YouTube videos appeared discussing various aspects of the problem.

One special difficulty has concerned the papyrus’s provenance; the antiquities market in the Middle East is notoriously complex, and very little is known with certainty about this fragment’s origin. But the doubts about the papyrus extend beyond this matter even to its authenticity as a whole. As part of its standard protocol for vetting potential publications, HTR consulted three anonymous reviewers regarding King’s essay. As she notes, one reviewer accepted the fragment as genuine, a second raised queries, and a third asked serious questions about the grammar and handwriting. This mixed response has continued: while at least one papyrologist and an expert in Coptic grammar have affirmed aspects of the fragment as genuine, others have not been so sure.

Francis Watson, from the UK’s Durham University, was one of the early detractors of the fragment’s authenticity; he argued that significant material in the text derives from the Gospel of Thomas, and specifically from a modern print edition of that text. Leo Depuydt of Brown University has come to similar conclusions, with his views scheduled to be published in HTR alongside King’s publication. Finally, Andrew Bernhard, connected with Oxford University, has discovered what seems to be a “typo” in the “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” that is also present in a widely-distributed electronic interlinear transcription and translation of the Gospel of Thomas.  For these reasons, at the time of this writing, the tide of scholarly opinion seems to be turning decidedly against the authenticity of the fragment.

On the chance that the papyrus fragment turns out to be legitimate, we should say that Jesus’ reference to “my wife” can be understood in a number of different ways. It is possible that some second- to fourth-century Christian(s) thought that Jesus was married in the way that we understand it today, but we must also remember that Gnostic groups with Christian affiliations used language of marriage and family (including the concept of “spiritual marriage”) with great fluidity during those centuries. Regardless, the papyrus and its reception again demonstrate an insatiable appetite in the media for controversial “discoveries” concerning the origins of Christianity; this appetite will surely continue to manifest itself in the future.

References

The HDS page devoted to the papyrus is available here.

The full text of the Gospel of Thomas is available here.

Trevor W. Thompson is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Chicago in the Department of New Testament and Early Christian Literature.

David C. Kneip is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Notre Dame in the Department of Theology.

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Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center for the Advanced Study of Religion at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

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Columns may be quoted or republished in full, with attribution to the author of the column, Sightings, and the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

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And to whet your appetite for more serious theological study, here are some of the reponses to this on my Facebook site (names of contributors omitted):

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2012/oct/16/gospel-jesus-wife-modern-fake-typo

The small fragment commonly referred to as the “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” is most likely a modern fake, the phrases having been copied from one online edition of the Gospel of Thomas (among other reasons) rather than a 4th Century Gnostic document.

Now why is this exciting?

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Heck people should read the Gospel of Thomas….if they are interested in all the scripts regarding Jesus.

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There are some recorded statements in Jesus words without parallel eg putting ‘amen’ at the beginning of a statement. And the emphasis on monotheism (monolatry) in the OT. This gets tricky. Just about anything has some similarities to other things. There needs to be some perceptual process of figure recognition. Eg the Mona Lisa is unique but there are many thousands of similar pictures.

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It’s not about not reading the gospel of Thomas, but about recognising it for what it is. It is later than the gospels in the Bible and of questionable origins.

Everything is lawful, but not everything is beneficial… As a theological student in an evangelical college, I read a lot of non-evangelical literature, and no one objected to my quoting then as appropriate. But I still came out with an evangelical bent.

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When I was a young bloke, a couple of the preachers frequently quoted things out of William Barclay. A few years later I found out how much of Wm Barclay the preachers didn’t quote. Like the best bits! Off topic? Arrrrrrrrr I don’t think it matters if Jesus was single or married.

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From the conclusion of Karen King’s paper on the “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife”:

“Does this fragment constitute evidence that Jesus was married? In our opinion, the late date of the Coptic papyrus (c. fourth century), and even of the possible date of composition in the second half of the second century, argues against its value as evidence for the life of the historical Jesus. The earliest and most historically reliable Christian literature is utterly silent on the issue, making the question impossible to answer one way or the other.”

King’s interest is mainly to show that there was a debate in the early church on the question –presumably it fascinated them as much as it does us, with just as little real information to go on.

Oh, and a link to that paper:

Click to access King_JesusSaidToThem_draft_0920.pdf

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It doesn’t change any Christian doctrines if Jesus had a wife. There just isn’t good evidence that he did.

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Well, it doesn’t change anything for _some_ Christians, but to say it has no doctrinal implications is not quite correct. As Karen King points out in her paper:

“Positions about Jesus’s marital status (both for and against his being married) were intimately caught up in the wider sets of assumptions and broad controversies among Christians over sexual ethics and practices in the early centuries of the formation of Christianity.”

In particular, it was connected with debate over monasticism and celibacy. It also has implications for which groups are to be deemed orthodox or not. Not only in this paper, but in much of her other work, Karen King can be seen as contributing of a broader move to show that theological debate was rampant in the early church and that what we call “orthodoxy” just happens to be the group that won that debate.

Part of the point of the “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife,” then, is to show that there were other, legitimate voices in the early church which rejected “orthodoxy.” And that has implications for every doctrine which Christians have traditionally regarded as orthodox.

In particular, it undermines Roman Catholic arguments for priestly celibacy and, as such arguments are official church teaching, it by extension undermines the church’s authority.

So either directly or indirectly the claim that Jesus was married creates some pretty significant waves in some people’s theological duck pond.

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I stand corrected, it does impact on the Catholic view of a celibate priesthood… doesn’t change anything in the Christian creeds, and I cannot see any way in which it significantly impacts Protestant theology.

I for one am very glad the gospel of Thomas was left out of the canon… not just because of its later date than the other gospels, but for gems like this in the gospel of Thomas: ‘Simon Peter said to them, “Mary should leave us, for females are not worthy of life.” Jesus said, “See, I am going to attract her to make her male so that she too might become a living spirit that resembles you males. For every female (element) that makes itself male will enter the kingdom of heaven.”‘. Imagine if the early church had embraced females had to become male to become a “living spirit”. Oh dear.

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Well, not “corrected” –hopefully just enlightened a little in respect of the sort of debates which fascinate academic theologians and the implications thereof! 🙂

Just to push the issue a little, there is the surprising possibility (and I emphasize *possibility*) that the Gospel of Jesus Wife helps support those who would wish the creeds abandoned. Although one has to carefully follow the logic.

Basically, the argument is all about theological credibility and, very crudely, runs: “If orthodox Christianity was wrong about x, y, and z, then might they not be wrong about a, b, and c?”

One then starts getting into all sorts of tricky discussions about whether “orthodox” Christianity has the right to claim to be the authentic witness to the Jesus tradition –and then one gets into discussions about whether one actually has to accept the creeds in order to be faithful to that tradition.

I don’t quite buy into the idea that the early Christians were so diverse that it’s impossible to identify the major beliefs which lay at the center of Christianity. My only point is to try to show why some people might respond to the Gospel of Jesus Wife with what seems like undue enthusiasm or undue hostility. At the risk of distortion, one group wants to play up the diversity in early Christianity so they can escape orthodoxy, the other want to play it down in order to enforce it.

Personally, I’m kind of in the middle. I think there are some central beliefs which are non-negotiable if one wants to wear the name “Christian” but there is also a huge “fuzzy” area where there are a lot of “so what?” issues. For me, Jesus being married is pretty much “so what?” The point of posting on this thread is just to try and show why a supposedly “so what?” issue has been given such prominence. It is, in a nutshell, all about how far we can stretch the boundaries and still claim to be followers of Jesus. Documents such as the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Jesus Wife (amongst others) are taken by some as evidence that we can stretch those boundaries a very, very long way and, perhaps, abandon them altogether.

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I see the argument… it’s worth noting an exclusively celibate priesthood was decreed at a later period than Constantine’s councils that declared the canon and settled the creeds, and which for the most part just affirmed what was normative across the churches. The church didn’t have the capacity to persecute heretics in its early centuries, but the early church fathers DID articulate a lot of theology and quote extensively from the apostolic writings. ie the Dan Brown styled conspiracies are hard to sustain under the sheer weight of early church writings. Or so I think!

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History would have been radically different if Jesus were married, or if the church believed that he had been.

It might have been a whole lot better, and Tertullian would never have made a remark that “a woman is a temple built on a sewer”. Though, who knows?

And, if one were a traducian, the implications for any of Jesus’ children would have been quite interesting. . .

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True, history would have been VERY different if the church had believed all along Jesus was married, as it’s hard to imagine the idea of a celibate priesthood would have developed in the Roman Catholic church. I was more meaning I can’t see anything in (Protestant) doctrine that would change dramatically if Jesus had been married. I don’t think it’s particularly likely though… you’d imagine the gospel writers would have said something about it, as they included plenty of accounts of Jesus’ interactions with women.

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Well, maybe Jesus had a wife and kids in his 20s, but divorced her because “she committed adultery”. She got custody of the kids and moved to Alexandria, and only Mary, Jesus’ mother, the odd card for Christmas was all the contact she kept with the family, along with probably sending flowers to Joseph’s funeral.

Then when John the Baptist heralds the “one who must increase”, all talk of “the ex” dies down.

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This is laughable when you consider that at the Qld Uni some guy (I think he was Gay) got his doctorate by using the stars/constellations to verify that Jesus was Gay! NOW, this “woman” says he was married! I think people try to fit Jesus into their own niche to suit/justify their own lives/lifestyles. You can’t win a case without ‘true’ evidence, and the The Holy Bible warns about changing the word of God.

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No: the woman doesn’t say he was married. She says that a document which might say that has come to light. The article Rowland posted is pretty clear…

It’s interesting that the role of women in the church began to change after around the middle of the second century and (talking of Tertullian) was influenced among other things by the rise of Montanism due to the importance of the prophetesses in that movement. However, by the time Tertullian was becoming increasingly interested in the Montanists (around 50 years later), clearly an anti-women view was already entrenched.

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Of all major religious texts — and that includes the Old Testament and the Qur’an — the New Testament is the most well-documented.

While the earliest complete New Testament copies are dated around 350AD, there are various fragments going back to around 120-130AD (roughly a century later than the crucifixion) and quotations and allusions in both Christian and heretical writers from around 100-120AD.

F.F Bruce’s short book, “The New Testament Documents: Are they Reliable?” is now on line at http://www.bible.ca/b-new-testament-documents-f-f-bruce.htm if you want to read a useful outline.

If you want to know more about Professor Bruce, there is an article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._F._Bruce.

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I would have said “entrenched” is an exaggeration… there was a wrestle I think between the patriarchal world the church “grew” in, and the equality suggested by Jesus and Paul… I think this was more “entrenched” after Christianity became the preferred religion of the Empire and church governance came to parallel Roman governance more closely… there were plenty of female missionaries and martyrs in the early period. Rodney Stark suggests the rise of Christianity had a lot to do with the value placed upon women… it was a majority female religion, and its practice of rescuing female infants grew the Christian church. Sketchy overview here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Church_history

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And here… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_Christianity_(book)

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Actually, the idea that the councils merely affirmed what was commonly held is a popular view amongst most Christians, but couldn’t really be further from the truth. The entire idea of the councils was to resolve significant theological controversies.

At which point it might be worth pointing out that the church never felt the need to call a council to resolve the question of Jesus’ marital status. That probably puts the matter in perspective, really. Some early Christians may have had doubts about Jesus celibacy, but it hardly threatened to rise to the level of a major theological debate back in the day. I fail to see why it should be an issue in the present except for those with a particular ideological axe to grind.

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Perhaps. The patriarchy of the late classical world certainly impacted Christian thinking, as demonstrated by some of Tertullian’s comments, and he seems to have been far from alone. I had in mind something I had read from, I think, Harnack; however, my speciality in Church History is Reformation through to the French Revolution.

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The council of Nicea was largely responding to Arianism, rather than massive diversity across the Christian churches, which used local but not disimilar credal statements at baptism Murray. (I’ll admit it’s a few years since I’ve studied this).

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Yes, I see your point now. It would be wrong to say the councils were dealing with massive diversity across the churches regardless of how significant the theological point at issue happened to be. I’d agree that scholars who appeal to documents like the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife as evidence that early Christianity was a widely diverse movement are barking up the wrong tree.

Of course, their claim would be that because the voices of dissent were silenced by later orthodoxy, we have no way of knowing just how massive the diversity was. Now, how one is supposed to evaluate a claim which entails an absence of evidence is beyond me but that very absence tells us why some folk are keen to give a document like the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife such weight. It’s only human to be excited when one finds something like evidence for a pet theory –a simple case of confirmation bias. But with all that’s been said I think it should be clear that whatever major issues troubled the early church, the possibility of Jesus being married was not among them.

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I’m not saying Tertullian was a lone voice at all… no question it was a matter of tension, right from the time the disciples asked Jesus to send a noisy woman away, or when Martha asked Jesus to make Mary help with the food preparation. And the tension still goes on…

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The fact is, we know a lot about the big doctrinal issues of the early church (Gnosticism, Docetism, Arianism etc.) because the apologists wrote so much to oppose such views and present what they believed aligned to the teaching of the apostles. By the standards of antiquity, the volume of such writing we have is rich… the hypothetical “purgers” of false teaching would also have had to purge the writing of the church fathers for any references to what they (one would imagine) would regard as a serious heresy (ie the Dan Brown ideas about Jesus wife and child etc.) As noted before, anything is possible, but on the face of it this would seem extremely unlikely, as none of the apologists mentions it.

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I agree. If there was any serious debate in the early church on this matter we would expect it to show up if only in the form of arguments against.

Off hand, I can think of two places where it would have been to the advantage of early Christian writers to mention a wife of Jesus if they had any idea he had been married:

1) Paul in 1 Cor. 9:5 (“Do we have no right to take along a believing wife, as do also the other apostles, the brothers of the Lord, and Cephas?”). It would have been advantageous for Paul to mention a wife of Jesus at this point, that he doesn’t shows he had no good reason to believe Jesus was married.

2) Clement of Alexandria in book 6 the Miscellanies where he argues against those who claim celibacy ought to be obligatory for Christians. These folk had appealed to Jesus’ example in support of their position, and the fact that Clement does not contest this claim shows he, like Paul, had no good reason to believe Jesus was married.

As a trivial aside, Clement here appeals to 1 Cor. 9:5 to argue that Paul was married (yes, _Paul_, contra the usual claim he was single).

Anyway, there’s two places where I would _expect_ some mention of a wife of Jesus but we find instead silence (in Paul) and a tacit admission that Jesus was single (in Clement). And, again, the fact that the issue is so rarely broached is, as you suggest, evidence that it was no big deal in any case.

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Ah but conspiracy theories are so much fun, they sell books, and a skerrick of anything unorthodox practically guarantees a media circus. Remember the Barbara Theiring show? I actually read her book, load of absurdities as it was.

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Oh, my goodness, Barbara Thiering, there’s a blast from the past. I remember that she advanced the idea that Jesus was married –but then she was never one to let the evidence get in the way of a marketable theory. It was off the back of this sort of “scholarship” that she was appointed a fellow of the Jesus Seminar –which I mention only because it shows that there is always a market for “scholarship” that tickles the ears. What’s perhaps most disconcerting is that although pseudo-scholars like Thiering come and go, they still have a remarkable impact on people’s perceptions. I shudder to think of the number of people who will conclude that the Gospels are unreliable on the basis of the media reports about the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife. It might be a storm in a tea-cup, but this sort of business has an ongoing impact out of all proportion to its real significance.

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The Jesus Seminar weren’t quite as cringe-worthy as Thiering, but took seriously an absurd endeavour all the same imo. N.T. Wright did a beautiful hatchet job on this (for anyone who doesn’t mind a long read on something that got a bit of air play a few years ago): http://ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Five_Gospels.pdf

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Oh, I wasn’t having a shot at the Seminar, just making the point that Thiering’s appointment there was surely on the basis of the popularity of her work rather than on any academic merit. That said, I’m well and truly on record as being less than impressed with the Seminar’s work. Wright also critiques the Seminar in _Jesus and the Victory of God_ where I think he gives a very even handed account of their strengths and flaws.

Actually, Wright’s critique here is germane in as much as he points out that the Seminar’s practice of referencing non-canonical material is commendable. In that spirit, one has to say that putting the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife on the table for consideration is quite proper and that document ought to be given due weight. It looks, of course, like “due weight” in this particular case is going to mean “not much weight at all.” I suspect that, as is usually the case, the tradition will prove itself robust and will out last the contemporary fads.

Thanks for the NT Wright link, by the way, I haven’t come across this before and I’ll certainly read it with interest.

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Well, Dead Sea Scrolls scholar John M. Allegro published Sacred Mushrooms and the Cross, to suggest the disciples were all tripping on psychedelics, and boy did he fall hard after that (despite no doubt making a killing on book sales for a bit).

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There’s money to be made in wacky unorthodox theories, that’s for sure.

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I would suggest negative attitudes re women arose earlier than mid second century. Clement of Rome writing turn of the First Century CE into Second Century has some very negative comments to make. On the other hand Andrew Lincoln in his great book on John’s Gospel really emphasizes how the two human witnesses to Jesus other than himself were women in a time when women could not be legal witnesses. His argument for John’s Gospel echoing Isaiah’s trial scene is most persuasive.

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Hmmm, I’d forgotten about Allegro. The Dead Sea Scrolls, though, tend to attract people desperate for an alternative to the mainstream story about Jesus –Thiering was actually a DSS scholar before her unfortunate foray into NT studies, and there have been more than a few others who’ve seen the DSS as the key to understanding the “real” Jesus. I think this is what a great many people fail to grasp about documents such as the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife –there have been so many hyped-up claims about “earth shattering” manuscript discoveries which “shake Christianity to its core” by “retelling the story of Jesus” that people don’t stop to think what the evidence actually is, or what it’s proper implications actually are. Nor do they give much thought to the fact that theories such as those of Allegro and Thiering simply can’t bear critical scrutiny.

But, of course, the real “value” of such pseudo-scholarship is that it provides emotional security to those who want to re-invent Jesus as something other than the Gospels portray him. Such folk can merrily dismiss the orthodox portrayal as “fundamentalism” because, of course, “scholars” have “shown” that the “real” Jesus was ______ (fill in the blank with whatever, it doesn’t much matter). So it’s not just that there’s money to be made, there’s also a real existential itch to be scratched. As long as “scholars” keep throwing it down, people will keep lapping it up.

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What’s the reference for that? I’m curious in as much as I’m familiar with Lincoln’s commentary, but I don’t recall him discussing Isaiah’s trial scene. Not that I was looking for this, so perhaps it just sailed me by, but it interests me in as much as I once wrote a paper arguing against the idea that “paraclete” should be regarded as a forensic term, but I didn’t at that time engage with anything written by Lincoln.

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Truth on Trial: The Lawsuit Motif in the Fourth Gospel…Andrew Lincoln.

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Oh, and incidentally, I find a narrative approach to John’s Gospel really interesting in as much as it sets up a real contrast between Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman. Few contrasts, I think, could demonstrate just how positive John is prepared to be regarding the status of women.

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It is a whole book on the topic not a commentary as such

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Elaine Pagels and Bart Ehrmann both come to mind in considering those who are influencing by bringing “the other Christianities” into the Frey. I confess I wish that folk were required to do more work on tradition and epistemology such as Alasdair MacIntyre…they may approach alternate texts quite differently.

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Ah, I’m safe. This was published the year after I wrote my piece on the paraclete –so although I probably have to revisit the issue, I at least didn’t miss an obviously important resource in the debate! My guess is the title rings a bell by way of confusion with some of the other references I consulted.

Either that or I dreamed it…

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I actually think that Lincoln’s approach in that book should be key to considering John’s narrative … He opened my eyes to rhetorical development I never would have seen.

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Personally, I’m interested in doing a bit of work on reception theory. I think it might help explain why people such as those we’ve mentioned tend to buy into the entire alternative theory approach. Basically, scholars too can be influenced by the prevailing winds. However, when one actually stops to look at it, some of these scholarly trends –and historical Jesus scholarship is a notorious example– really do prove to be a case of the emperor having no clothes.

Well, if he takes a narrative approach, I’m reading it! 🙂

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I think that the illusion of neutral/objective interpretation really has to be challenged and Biblical studies is way behind the rest of the Academy in this area…particularly evangelicals who want to often support supposed objectivity in Apologetics.

I think that Elaine Pagel’s own explanation of why she moved out of orthodox faith is very interesting. She lost a child and went through a series of horrific personal crises. I saw her interviewed on this once and her own explanation was very sad and I thought insightful. Bart Ehrmann’s I find interesting but do not understand why he gets so much publishing done.

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Ahh, hence the reference to MacIntyre?

Yes, much of my own reflection on the question of epistemology (Here enter plug for post-grad thesis on epistemology in John’s Gospel <http://postgrad.mst.edu.au/sites/postgrad.mst.edu.au/files/Murray%20Hogg%20The%20Knowledge%20of%20God.pdf>) has tried to make sense of the FACT (emphasise *FACT*) that those sort of neutral/objective interpretations are simply impossible. This is true of all fields, so Christians ought not be afraid of acknowledging that our views are largely “best guess approximations.” I agree that biblical studies doesn’t get this and it plagued by the idea that unless one can “objectively prove” then one has no basis for belief. That’s not only philosophically suspect, it’s certainly not good theology (did I just mention “theology” in a discussion of biblical studies? Oh, dear, oh dear!)

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“I think that the illusion of neutral/objective interpretation really has to be challenged… particularly evangelicals” I think biblical studies in general Mary… many of those at the liberal end of the spectrum tend to be modernists to the core, rationalists who are just as unreflective about their own biases as fundamentalists. They just have a different set of biases they are looking to support.

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I think MacIntyre’s Gifford lectures of ’89 really show where we are…should be required reading for every theological/ministry student and faculty person. And his book “Whose Justice, Which Rationality” also has some important chapters on tradition and narrative.

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Quite frankly part of the dilemma we face is the division between biblical studies and theology which leads to most evangelicals proof texting their theological position….crass, crass, crass… It produces such arrogance…

I am glad that Joel Green is now Dean of Theological Interpretation at Fuller as well as Professor of New Testament…I do wish he and Francis Watson would write together.

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“I think that Elaine Pagel’s own explanation…<snip>”

Yes, it’s almost invariably existential at rock bottom –thereafter followed by much effort to make sense of experience.

Ehrmann gets lots of publishing just because he scratches an itch. I find amusing the number of people tho think his work is ground-breaking, but it’s not all that much. His methodology, I think, certainly betrays his conservative evangelical roots. Actually, that’s probably why he’s so popular with disenchanted “bible believing” Christians –he provides the opportunity to question the proclamations of fundamentalism without really moving away from it. Basically most of Ehrmann’s readers buy into the fundamentalist “either/or” paradigm. Not being able to accept the “either” they lump for the “or” and that’s the only discussion they want to have. In my experience, it’s utterly impossible to convince them that the entire paradigm is wrong. Worse, they simply can’t conceive that I don’t share their methodology. It’s very frustrating.

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I assume liberals tend to modernity…what frustrates me is when evangelicals are… I think Meir Sternberg and Craig Bartholomew and Brueggemann and Joel Greene and Watson etcetera as well as the rise in theological hermeneutics is bringing new thinking – thanks Gadamer and Ricoeur – but the arrogance of modernity still dominates…

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Yes, “Whose Justice, Which Rationality” came immediately to mind.