Jesus is Big Business!!

Jesus is big business. Peruse the shelves of any ‘religion’ section in your local Coles or Chapters and you’ll see what I mean. North America is knee deep in ‘pop’ hysteria around the historical Jesus, and your section of tabloid-style scholarship testifies to the money there is to be made. The good news, however, is that there is a standard pattern to poor Jesus-scholarship. So, if you are thinking there's something wrong with the book you are reading, and want to discern if your impression is correct... from the pages of Luke Timothy Johnson’s The Real Jesus, here are the 5 top clues to discern if you are reading a book of junk-Jesus-scholarship…

Your first clue, the author uses the standard marketing ploy to gain respectability, contrasting him or herself overtly against the traditional church. By setting themselves against the institution, many authors have made up for their complete lack of education or substance. Those without credible degrees offer themselves as a breath of fresh air from the stuffy and suppressed work of church-washed scholars. Those defrocked as priests or let go by a credible Universities market themselves as 'classic examples' of the church’s inability to handle real truth. By far, the most popular posture is that if the whistle-blowing insider. That is, the heroic insider, bishop or otherwise, who is letting us see behind the curtain at what is really going on. Unfortunately for serious readers, in today’s media these are real qualifications.

Your second clue, the author exploits a small, popularly unknown tidbit or angle on the study of Jesus abandoned by serious scholars. Most argue that the ‘truth’ about Jesus can only be found in a historical reading of the gospels using their tidbit. A simple reading of any scholarly work from the last 100 years can supply anyone with enough obscure points, long since abandoned by real scholars, for a lifetime of popular books. My favourite is various treatments of ‘midrash’, a style of reading that can’t be proved ever existed. Other examples are hidden biblical codes or mythical imagery linked to other ancient religions.

Your third clue; the author employs ancient outside sources hand picked to best fit their argument. Cast off texts and teachings waiting for exploitation as outside sources abound. The materials of Nag Hammundi and the Dead Sea Scrolls are the most popularly exploited writings, and are implicitly accepted thanks to years of conspiracy weaving by the media. Does the book you are reading have its own conspiracy around Nag Hammundi or the Dead Sea Scrolls? What other obscure ancient texts are used?

Your fourth clue, the book is as provocative as possible. For a book to become a best seller, the new ‘true’ reading of the gospels must deny all surface meanings. Making a splash in the media is very important in marketing to our culture. The headline “New scholar asserts traditional reading of the gospels” hardly inspires a popular frenzy. Barbara Thiering became a best-selling author by asserting that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene. Even though she gave no evidence to support this, and asserted that is wasn’t the crux of her argument, it sure made for great press and higher sales.

Your fifth clue, the book implies heavily, and as much as possible, how disastrous this new finding is for the church. The final point in uncovering poor scholarship is when a book asserts how Christianity to completely abandon its traditional teaching for authors own new religious belief. The most popular trend is for authors to supplant the teaching of Jesus with a Unitarian gospel created from some handpicked teachings from Eastern spirituality.

If your book fits this pattern, keep in mind that what you are reading is, in fact, another form of literalism based on the author’s best guess. Think on the fact that most conclusions in these books are at obvious odds with other books of the same type, although it is funny that the only thing they all agree on is that the church is wrong. The historical-critical method, as it is called, does give us new insight into the person of Jesus. However, it does not give us license to create new pictures of Jesus that are, in fact, a reflection of our own socio-political preconceptions. This is the worst aspect of any literalism. To keep via media we all cherish, it is important for Anglican’s to balance the low-level scholarship offered by Coles and Chapters, with faith-building authors like Johnson or N.T. Wright. If you are interested on more information with regards to the misguided quest for the historical Jesus and the truth of the Gospels, see Luke Timothy Johnson’s renowned work The Real Jesus or his follow-up Living Jesus, both from Harper Collins.