After the WPPC book club gave good reviews of this book by Marcus Borg & John Crossan, Wes agreed to have this as our Advent class. It helped that the October Presbyterians Today also favorably reviewed this book. As a teaser I wrote in the WPPC press that we'll cover the authors' view on the virgin birth.
Below are some discussion starters for our first class. The questions for Chapter 2 will be available at the 11/30 class and after the class on this blog.
Chapter 1
Would you prefer the Matthew pageant or the Luke pageant?
What do you think of Matthew keeping Jesus “offstage?”
Do you like his focus on Joseph?
Do you think Luke has too many verses are about John the Baptist's parents?
What do you like about the role of women in Luke?
Do you agree that Luke is more musical than Matthew?
Besides Linus, where else have you heard Luke's Augustus' registration decree?
Is it helpful to you to have Luke describe Jesus' infancy & youth?
How do debunkers use the differences?
Do the differences between Matthew & Luke enlarge the meaning for you?
2 comments:
I like Luke's because it is more interesting. It definately makes for a better 'read'. Is it OK to say that about something in the Bible? Think about what our Christmas traditions would be without the Luke version? All those 'live nativities' out there would never have happened (perhpas not a bad).
When I read the Matthew story I am surprised at how much it is about Joseph. Was he writting to a certain group of people that would make that emphasis easier for them to deal with?
Luke sets a good stage. He writes a good story. There are multiple plots lines. Way more interesting.
Growing up the story in Luke is the one I was taught, probably not unlike most people. That story helped me believe that Jesus probably had similar experiences to me. I think the differences between the two is typical of what happens when you have multiple people writting about the same thing from different perspectives at different times and probably to different groups of listeners. Since Mark and John don't have a pagent like Luke and Matthew do, should that somehow make us question weather it ever happended at all? I would say no. They wrote with different emphais to different people.
A song I like about the birth of Christ is 'Cry of A Tiny Babe' by Bruce Cockburn. Check it out.
Below are some of the discussion questions we covered from chapter 2, comments on Todd's entry with thoughts from our 11/30 class.
Chapter 2 – Parables as Overtures
What do you think of the absence of unusual Biblical birth stories outside of these two Gospels?
Do you like the possibility of a third option, besides fact or fable?
How widespread do you see the Enlightenment's definition of epistemology and ontology, how do we know/what is true; what is real/what is possible?
Do you see Biblical fact fundamentalism as a cause of biblical literalism?
Have you seen debunkers use fact fundamentalism, too?
Do you see how the modern worldview creates skeptics of the nativity?
Does it help you understand the conservative “conscious or insistent literalism” in their clinging to the virgin birth and original sin as their basis for Jesus' divinity?
Do you see how we benefit from the surplus of meaning of parables w/o knowing of their factuality?
Do you see the difference between historical = factual versus historical = in ancient context?
Have you heard Jesus characterized a subversive, before?
Which of the 4 nativity subversive messages are familiar to you (King of the Jews, savior of the world, light of the world, fulfillment of God's dream for Israel)
Had you ever thought of the nativity as a parabolic overture?
Does the overture idea help with the “Jesus' missing years?”
Have you thought of Matthew as a “new Moses” story in Jesus?
Do you like the Sermon on the Mount subtitled, new Law from a new Mt. Sinai?
Do you think Matthew repeatedly has five in his structure because of the Pentateuch?
Have you ever noticed the 3 theme in Luke, his emphasis on women, the marginalized, and the Holy Spirit?
Does it seem that Luke has a more current view of women, rather than the contemporary view(property, minor, & forgettable)?
Did you know that shepherds, rather than an outdoor healthy group, were one of the lowest of that society?
Are you taken by the number of times Luke shows the working of the Holy Spirit in the nativity story?
Were you familiar that other contemporary authors use parabolic overtures?
We talked about some of the modern literary techniques that Borg & Crossan used to analyze the nativity story. Whether something is a “good read” falls into that category. One way to get people to pay attention is to have a good story. Mary commented that other religions had their unusual birth stories to set their beliefs apart, so that people would want to follow them. I think one thing that sets Christianity apart from those obsolete competing religions is that we have been reformed and reforming. The Reformation is one large example that such change continues to be challenging. I'm guessing the Holy Spirit is a part of our longevity. However, it is a little disheartening to think that one's religion is not unique. Part of reformed & reforming is to be wise as serpents & gentle as doves.
We did not discuss discernment, but that certainly could have entered when we talked about fact fundamentalism. While Dick mentioned that Borg & Crossan used other aspects, rather than extensively discussing the factuality of the nativity, we learned in the previous class that the Reformed tradition requires us to hold to certain tenets. Discernment plays a major role in when to hold and when to fold. As we continue with this class, we should get more understanding of what in the nativity story is useful to help us on the spiritual path.
We talked about how Matthew, as well as Luke, probably were written for specific communities, who had their respective ways, for which nativity mattered, of looking at this Jesus. By inference, the communities for whom Mark & John wrote, did not place the nativity in as prominent a place.
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