The Rabbi

Surpassing Wonder: The Invention of the Bible and the Talmuds by Donald H. Akenson
Harcourt Brace, 1998

A beautiful read describing the imagined invention of the sacred texts of Judaism and Christianity. Akenson challenges in new ways standard conservative/fundamental understandings (Jewish and Christian alike) of how new texts were crafted to satisfy situations unknown and unencountered by the constitutional founding fathers. A methodology soon evidenced by which authors of newer writings grounded their words on former works while currently inventing, constituting something new.

Those who returned from exile initiated this scheme, later Judahite religious leaders followed the pattern negotiating a truce with previous tradition but meeting the crisis at hand. Akenson focuses these trials around confrontations of temple: what happens when it no longer exists, either post-exile, or post-Titus, 70 AD, all three religions that of Ezra, Paul, and the rabbis “solved” their problem creatively, in ways beyond previous comprehension but yet argued tightly from those same texts.

So here my thoughts run wild; what does one do when canon becomes fixed, denying later writers the freedom to invent new texts for new situations? Akenson offers no help other setting forth the model. Theology quickly comes to mind: new texts, not scripture, but at least as important, in practice if not in claim. A cursory review of current literature, an ear to current practice, yields a crisis of major proportion: empirically based, propositional truth no longer tells. Post modern inquiry searches for answers to questions previous biblical revelation does not address. How does the Christian community then relate with a world with which it has no communicative ties?

The answer lies in Christianity’s willingness to further invent its texts. If “relational” defines the current generation, then to use Akenson’s model a temple must be constructed which relates. So the lead edge of my thinking, which lies years behind current radical church practice, proposes Jesus as solution, not the white, stereo-typical Jesus of RBP sunday school material, not the wearing a WWJD plastic bracelet, but implementing the reality of being Jesus. As Jeremiah led a life as a precursor of Jesus, suffering for the people as he identified with them, so Paul completed the suffering of Jesus in his own body as he spoke and lived Jesus before a church that already had denied him as it persecuted him. Regardless both continued on humbly serving regardless of circumstances. Evangelical Christianity needs to wake up or find itself marginalized, persecuted, but as Peter would say for the wrong reasons. Our world needs Jesus, are you willing to be Jesus to someone?