Baker Academic

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Did Jesus Live an Alternative Lifestyle?

Further to this conversation and because I got a phone call from the Big Nasty (more on this mystery man in a later post), I have concluded that "sexual deviant" is too distracting in discussions about Jesus' nonconformist approach to marriage and family. Yet I still need a phrase that is a bit jarring. In all of my research, it seems that marriage in Jesus' context established a man as a civic entity. Social and fiscal well being flowed from this institution. Jesus, on the other hand, suggests that his followers live in ways that would have been seen as contrary to social and fiscal security.  In short, not only was it abnormal to choose not to marry, but it would have been seen as counter-cultural.  Choosing not to marry in Jesus' culture would have been as aberrant as choosing not to have a bank account in modern western society. Of course, this assumes that Jesus was never married - and I'm not quite willing to go there - but if he chose not to marry, this is the conversation that we're forced to have.

Given these parameters, would it be responsible to say that Jesus lead an alternative lifestyle? I of course will explain exactly what I mean by this, but I would like to gauge reactions here before I put this in print.

Please see here and here before commenting.

-anthony

15 comments:

  1. Could not the focus of this inquiry be expanded to include John the Baptist, Elijah, Elisha, and other dedicated servants in this manner? While I know your focus is Christ, I wonder if his depth of service -- like the others -- demanded total self-denial?

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  2. Thank you Steven,

    Why do you assume that the Baptist, Elijah and Elisha were not married at some point? - I'm not arguing that they were, but I'm interested in your reasoning?

    As far as "dedicated servants" who speak directly about their celibacy in the Bible we have Jeremiah (who is temporarily celibate to illustrate a particularly sinful state) and Paul (who paints himself in contrast to the other early church leaders).

    -anthony

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    1. Looking at Matthew 19: 9-12, certainly alternative to the view expressed by the disciples, but also traditional for apocalyptic prophets and communities.

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    2. They very well may have been married, but there's no mention of their wives and any children. I realize that this is an inference, but when I think about a pattern of those who were married, they were either mentioned as having offspring or barren wives. I may be wrong in this assumption, but with as much attention paid to these characters, I'd have thought that this might have been mentioned somewhere along the way.

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  3. No, I don't think so. A "lifestyle" suggests a community of people living in a like "style". How about "eccentric"?

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    1. what is the minimum number of people required for a community? Would twelve be enough?

      Peter said, “Behold, we have left our own and followed You.” And Jesus said to them, “Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not receive many times as much at this time and in the age to come, eternal life.” Luke 18:28-30

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    2. Yes, 12 would be enough. I thought about Jesus' travelling ministry as an alternative "lifestyle", and I could probably embrace that term for Jesus’ travelling band, assuming that I can get past my suspicion that the term is anachronistic when applied to the 1st century.

      However, it’s not clear to me that Jesus’ community all adopted Jesus’ attitudes towards sex and marriage. Some members of the group were married, and the women followers were probably widows. Is it impossible to imagine that some members of the group were sexually active during the course of the ministry? Do we know for certain that none of the disciples returned to their homes or reunited with their families after the crucifixion? So, even if you conclude that Jesus and his band lived a “lifestyle”, can we say that Jesus’ attitudes towards sex and marriage were adopted by the group as part of this “lifestyle”?

      If you’re looking to shake up your readers, why not say that Jesus was anti-family, or that he opposed what we’d today call “family values”? Call him a homewrecker.

      Back in the day, we had a word for someone that was determined to flaunt all social conventions: we called them “freaks”. If you thought of yourself back in the day as counter-cultural, being called a “freak” was a compliment. But the fact that there are Jesus freaks complicates the use of this term.

      I get what you're trying to do. I'll sleep on it.

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    3. I know lots of men who leave their wives repeatedly. Soldiers, truckers, pilots, traveling conference speakers...

      It's not by any means certain that Peter's comment reflects divorce for the kingdom of God. More likely, I suggest, ancient folks were also familiar with those who traveled for income. And, less commonly, for mission.

      Peter's persistent concern for obtaining food, across the Gospels, rather suggests that he did maintain a responsibility as provider to those he'd "left" behind. This is also why Jesus' miraculous provision of fish pushed Peter's confession, in the literature. Luke had already drawn the family connection. Without needing to work, Peter was out of excuses.

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    4. Bill, I do truly hope that you're right about this. Otherwise, this is a very troubling statement. Of course, we shouldn't just choose the interpretation that is least troubling, but your point is well taken.

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    5. Larry, I think that it is highly probable that at least some of Jesus' disciples returned to their wives after the crucifixion. Otherwise, Paul would have no recourse to claim that he was unique (as compared to Cephas and the others) in his choice not to "take a believing wife".

      It does seem, however, that shunning civic status (of which marriage was a key component) was an early Xn virtue... we have dozens of indications that the earliest Xns acted as a social, fiscal, and religious community.

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    6. "Shunning civic status"? I see your point with respect to early Christians. Again putting aside my problems with "lifestyle" to describe anything in the ancient world, I would agree that early Christians adopted a distinct lifestyle, and I'd also argue that the appeal of this lifestyle was an important reason for the early growth of this community. We can go further, and look at early non-canonical Christian literature (I'm thinking in particular of the Acts of Paul and Thecla) and see that the community (or at least, elements in the community) held attitudes about sex and marriage that were unusual in their day, or any day.

      It's more difficult for me to see Jesus in this same way. Except for Jesus' last days, the Gospels portray Jesus as a popular figure among ordinary Jews. He was not seen as a "bum" (another word you might consider to describe someone today who cares nothing for social respectability). Your argument might be, if the early Christians shunned civic status, this attitude must have been born somewhere, and Jesus is the most likely source. That's a good argument. But I'd want to drag apocalypticism into the discussion. I'd argue that in the last days, with the last about to become first, status of any kind was a liability. As apocalypticism receded in importance for the early Christians, the negative attitude towards status morphed into something else.

      Anthony, again I'm reaching to A.J. Levine's piece in your other little buch. She makes an important point: not all difference is marginalizing. Instead of the word "marginal", she suggests the word "outstanding". I think this is John's point below. If Jesus was unusual in his choice not to marry, or have sex, or pursue conventional civic status or civic virtue (all big "ifs", in my view), that does not mean we should choose a word for this choice with negative connotations. Instead of "deviant", why not "exceptional"?

      I think it's key to consider what Jesus intended with these choices. It would be one thing if Jesus intended all of his followers to eschew marriage and sex. In that case, Jesus would have been attacking the family, which was seen as the fundamental unit of social virtue, then and now. It's quite something else to imagine Jesus in the way Dale Allison describes, as someone who thought of himself as playing a unique individual role in the end times. If Jesus thought of himself as the Messiah, the Son of Man, what have you, then it becomes problematic to assign much significance to his interest in social status.

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    7. It's hard to argue with anything you've said here, Larry. I would only add that categorization is in the eye of the categorizer. Perhaps "insiders" or even Jesus himself would have seen him as playing a unique role in the end times. This is an important element of the discussion which needs to be brought out. I wonder what "outsiders", say Sadducees, would have thought. What would have Jesus and his followers looked like to them?

      -anthony

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    8. Hmm. Jesus sees himself as Son of Man, someone outside of Jesus' camp sees Jesus as an unmarried guy who doesn't want to have sex, Jesus' Mom sees him as a shanda. Quite possible. Possibly, this argues against pulling any word from the dictionary and using it to describe Jesus' status as an unmarried celibate in 1st century Palestine. But thinking about it, I wonder if the better approach is to use the collection of ALL the words we've come up with, as the collection serves to describe both Jesus and his categorizers.

      In answer to your question, I think that the Sadducees would have seen Jesus as a Pharisee. But, what can you expect from proto-Karaites?

      Fascinating discussion.

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  4. S. Safrai mentions that there were cases where some who, because of some dedication to a goal or project, e.g., "Torah study" did not marry (Jewish People, 748). From what we know of Jesus in relation to Torah (Sermon on the Mount, Sabbath Controversies, Temple disputes, etc.), it is quite possible he fell within this category, and so he was understood by his peers neither as deviant nor as counter-cultural, for choosing not to marry. So although the ideal may have been marriage, Jesus' interest in Torah, should have he expressly mentioned this to his family as his life's devotion, could have excluded him from being seen as counter-cultural, deviant, or what have you. Whatever the case, if he had chosen not to marry, he would have had to have provided adequate reason for not doing so, in order not to be seen as "counter-cultural" or "deviant." I suspect he could have done this with little dispute or controversy, whether from his family or his community. The other issue worth pointing out is that he wasn't actually out of a marriageable range (if we accept Luke's proposed age) (also see T. Issachar 3:5). That he hadn't married doesn't mean from an outsider's perspective that he wasn't going to marry ever, or that his years for marriage were up and that he was now doing something "deviant" or "counter-cultural." We might imagine him replying to his badgering family, prompting him to get married, "Yeah, Yeah, I'll do that later," without his actually intending to do that, or without them thinking that it was too late.

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  5. The synoptics show Jesus demanding his disciples abandon possessions, jobs, and family. (There are also non-disciples in the synoptics who clearly aren't called to do that.) I think that abandonment qualifies as an "alternative lifestyle." Since the Christians we see in Acts & the epistles aren't practicing that radical level of abandonment, that means the synoptic writers didn't make up this theme in order to make Jesus match the early church. Slap my hand for appealing to dissimilarity.
    Peter Milloy

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