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    Gospel Essays: Frontier of Sacred and Secular
    Gospel Essays: Frontier of Sacred and Secular
    Gospel Essays: Frontier of Sacred and Secular
    Ebook139 pages1 hour

    Gospel Essays: Frontier of Sacred and Secular

    By Mark C. Kiley

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    Is meticulous Matthew also mathematically so? Why does Matthew alone in the canon discuss guards at Jesus' tomb? For popular storytellers in the early church, is the serpent of the Garden the unseen catalyst in the murder of John the Baptist? Why do almost three dozen words beginning with the Hebrew letter ayin have analogues in Luke's infancy narratives? Why do Mary's meditations there cohere with Psalm 19? John's Jesus describes himself as Way, Truth and Life. Does this bear any relation to the single Latin term veritas? St. Ignatius of Antioch, in his letter to the Ephesians, talks about the song of the Body of Christ and people as stringed instruments. Does John know that idea? What does the Roman legend of the emergence of bees from the carcass of a slain ox have to do with the early church?

    In these close readings of the Gospels, the reader will rediscover the fascination of listening to some of the original resonance of the New Testament text with Hebrew, Greek, and Latin culture. Attentive to detail and persistent in asking questions about the larger picture, this scholarship fulfills the promise inherent in research.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWipf and Stock
    Release dateJun 28, 2012
    ISBN9781630879129
    Gospel Essays: Frontier of Sacred and Secular
    Author

    Mark C. Kiley

    Mark C. Kiley has a PhD from Harvard (1983), taught at the University of St. Jerome College, Waterloo, Ontario, and is now associate professor at St. John’s University, New York. He has written on Colossians (1986) and on Hellenistic prayer for Routledge (1997) and The Encyclopedia of Ancient History (2021). Journal articles appear in Biblica, Biblical Theology Bulletin, The Bible Today, Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Continuum, and Journal of Biblical Literature.

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      Book preview

      Gospel Essays - Mark C. Kiley

      9781610979832.kindle.jpg

      Gospel Essays

      Frontier of Sacred and Secular

      Mark C. Kiley

      6298.png

      Gospel Essays

      Frontier of Sacred and Secular

      Copyright © 2012 Mark C. Kiley. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

      Wipf & Stock

      An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

      199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

      Eugene, OR 97401

      www.wipfandstock.com

      ISBN 13: 978-1-61097-983-2

      EISBN 13: 978-1-63087-912-9

      Manufactured in the U.S.A.

      All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

      Table of Contents

      Title Page

      Foreword

      Preface

      Introduction

      Chapter 1: Matthew’s Pi

      Chapter 2: Find the Phylacteries and Fringes (Matt 28)

      Chapter 3: Extending Hisspitality to the Word in Mark 6:14–29

      Chapter 4: ‘Ayin and Entrance in Luke 1 and 2

      Chapter 5: The Latinity of Johannine Witness

      Chapter 6: John 20: Jesus Christ in Johannine Concert

      Chapter 7: Acts 4–8 and Virgil’s Georgics

      Subject Index

      Index of Modern Authors

      Index of Ancient Sources

      Bibliography

      To tomorrow’s researchers

      in New Testament and Christian Origins

      He who translates a verse with strict literalness is a falsifier.

      He who makes additions to it is a blasphemer.

      —Tosefta Megillah 3:21

      Foreword

      The set of essays collected here is no ordinary introduction to gospel study. Each chapter presents not an overall view but a carefully selected perspective from which to approach the text.

      Mathematicians, agriculturists, musicians, poets, and many others lend their expertise in these pages to new and creatively imaginative interpretations that will enrich the reader’s understanding of the multiple layers of associations and possibilities available in biblical narratives.

      These are exercises in playful intuitive imagination that provide layer upon layer of rich associations. Plays on words and numbers from Hebrew, Greek, and Latin sources, more often seen in rabbinic than in Western biblical exegesis, enliven the expositions and reveal the author’s wide knowledge of biblical and classical sources.

      It is to be hoped that the reader of these essays will come away with a wider and deeper sense of interpretive traditions and of the possibilities for contemporary interpretation of these foundational texts.

      Carolyn Osiek, R.S.C.J.

      Charles Fischer Catholic Professor, Emerita

      Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University

      January 30, 2012

      Preface

      This is a little pocket book, a vade mecum. In a general sense, I intend it to be read by anyone looking for something substantive to read in transit, to complement the larger journeys in which he or she is engaged. But it is also appropriate for use in communal settings that engage in advanced Biblical studies. These Gospel essays reflect my distilled dialogue with the sacred texts as well as with some relevant scholarship, where it exists. As a group, the articles bring the reader to what I hope is a more satisfying understanding of the texts in their primary settings, whose linguistic and cultural parameters were set by Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. In so doing they redress some of the imbalance in current theological work in the American Catholic academy in particular: Matthew Lamb has suggested that during the latter two decades of the twentieth century, approximately 90 percent of doctoral dissertations at Catholic universities dealt with issues arising from within the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. After reading the essays at hand, the reader will have tasted some of the exhilaration of watching inspired Evangelists contribute their Hellenistic word to the received mystery of God in Christ. I find it a taste that is never cloying. I hope that you will too.

      Of the many to whom this applies, I am grateful to three colleagues in Biblical Studies who read and commented on these essays at earlier stages of their development: Tom Stegman SJ of Boston College, Vincent Pizzuto of the University of San Francisco, and John Clabeaux of Blessed Pope John XXIII Seminary in Massachusetts. John saved me from some factual errors and any that remain are my fault alone. I wish also to recognize the invaluable contribution of people in the local scene who have made possible the production of this booklet: the librarians of St. John’s University on both of its New York campuses, but especially Joan Daly and Ginny Salvione in Staten Island, as well as the competent and generous graduate assistants provided by the University. My thanks go as well to the librarians of Wagner College, Staten Island, to the staffs of the St. Mark’s Library of General Theological Seminary in Manhattan, the librarians of Bobst Library at New York University, the New York Public Library, and Columbia University’s Burke and Butler libraries. They fulfill some of the promise inherent in the designation Humanities.

      Perhaps most intriguing are the suggestions I have pursued that have been made with pictorial and audial subtlety and wit by some of my fellow New Yorkers. This group is the hardest to thank since they have chosen to remain anonymous. The Apple is full of dedicated readers who remain committed to the proposition that New York is less a city than a gigantic stage.

      Mark Kiley

      St. John’s University

      Staten Island campus

      Jan. 18, 2012

      Introduction

      The first essay, on Matthew, suggests that the opening genealogy, presented in 3 groups of 14, helps set the agenda for the Gospel as a whole. I make a case that 3.14…, or pi, is an organizing principle for much of the text. This thesis respects the notion that, at one level of abstraction, a circle has neither beginning nor end, and that its determinate dimensions, reflected in pi, served Matthew as a useful symbol of the life of God who is with us in Christ. Inasmuch as this aspect of Matthew displays a dialogue with the world of secular learning in its articulation of the gospel, it serves as a model for the kind of learned engagement with Hebrew and Latin culture evidenced by the other Gospels.

      The second essay, on Matthew 28’s phylacteries and fringes, sees the imagery of those Jewish artifacts as a guiding principle in the Evangelist’s final articulation of Jesus as embodied Torah.

      The article on Mark suggests that this Gospel’s relatively long rendition of the execution of John the Baptist offers an aural portrait of the lethal dynamics present in Genesis 3. I propose that the Evangelist offers a hint, no more, that John is near the heel of the new humanity, and bitten by a serpent whose persistent hissing fills the air of Herod’s banquet.

      The essay on Luke’s infancy narratives explores some of the Hebrew dynamics whereby the infancy narrative is textured. Pss. 15–24, containing an entrance liturgy at the Jerusalem Temple, as well as words beginning with Hebrew ‘ayin, stand behind a significant portion of the Greek. Luke’s variation of this entrance liturgy prepares the hearers for a gospel account that juxtaposes seeking the face of God with seeking Jesus. The Lukan essay finds echo in the article on John 20, where that group of Psalms called the Songs of Ascent plays a discernible role in John’s presentation of Jesus glorified.

      The article on John’s Latinity attends to some of the literary parallels, grammatical structures, and vocabulary that help shape

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