The Passover Ploy

The Easter season puts the central historical claims of Christianity into the secular spotlight for a few fleeting moments each year. Opposition arguments haven’t changed much over the centuries, but this year they have an engaging new spokesman.

Hugh J. Schonfield, a Jewish historian from Britain, last month wrapped up a four-week, $10,000 tour to promote his version of the historical Jesus, found in his book The Passover Plot. His 275-page theory rated little attention from scholars in the field, but Schonfield has doubtless had an effect on people who have little technical knowledge of their own.

Aided by controversy, some bright advertisements (“Don’t give this book to anyone for Christmas”), and two month-long tours, Plot sales are nearing 100,000 during Lent, and the book will go into a paperback edition this spring. Schonfield proved an articulate proponent of his views on network TV; many thought he outflanked Christian opponents in broadcast debates.

Schonfield’s dozens of appearances in major cities were not without incident. His publisher, Bernard Geis Associates, reports Boston’s WBZ canceled an interview the day after Ash Wednesday as being inappropriate. Pressure from the Roman Catholic archdiocese led to a cancellation on New York’s WCBS. But publicist Letty Pogrebin, who considers Schonfield to be “like a little modern prophet,” reports one Catholic priest found himself in “95 per cent agreement” with the Briton. The Rev. Harold Blake Walker, a Presbyterian, wrote a friendly review for the Chicago Tribune.

Historians are not so enthused. One who has expressed his opinion is Edwin M. Yamauchi, a young history professor at Rutgers who earned a Ph.D. in Mediterranean studies from Brandeis University. Some of Yamauchi’s reasons for skepticism are summarized as follows:

The wildest, most publicized aspect of Plot is the theory that Jesus manipulated people and events to fulfill Old Testament prophecies of a messiah. Schonfield contends that Jesus confided in Joseph of Arimathea, Lazarus, a Judaean priest, and an anonymous “young man.” (For some reason, he excluded his closest disciples—Peter, James, and John.)

The conspirators were to give Jesus a drug so he could feign death on the cross, then recover and reveal himself as “resurrected” after three days. The drug was in the “vinegar” (cheap wine) given Jesus on the cross, Schonfield explains, while omitting that Jesus earlier had refused another pain-killer: wine mixed with gall or myrrh.

To prove that Joseph of Arimathea was in on the plot, Schonfield points out that he asked for the body (soma) of Jesus instead of the corpse (ptoma). But soma often means “corpse” in Greek, as in John 19:31; this meaning is universal in Homer’s writings.

Schonfield explains that the plot failed because Jesus received a spear wound on the cross and couldn’t be revived. The plotters then got rid of the body somewhere—thus the empty tomb—and Christians later added the story about guards at the tomb to make things plausible.

The major reason for belief in the resurrection, however, wasn’t the empty tomb but Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances to his disciples. Of the ten appearances generally listed by biblical scholars, Schonfield makes no mention at all of three and cites a fourth without comment. He dismisses the two appearances in Jerusalem as a Judean tradition picked up by Luke and John but neglects to mention the allusion to them in Mark.

The other four are explained away as mistaken identity, although he says each involved “a real living person.” Mary Magdalene saw a gardener. The “angel” at the empty tomb was just a “young man.” The disciples on the road to Emmaus also made a mistake, possibly involving the “young man.” This ubiquitous youth was also the person the disciples saw on the mountain in Galilee.

Schonfield neglects Saint Paul’s report that more than 500 persons saw the risen Jesus at once. Schonfield’s own Authentic New Testament translation includes this passage but, without support from any existing Greek manuscript, leaves out the statement that “the greater part” of those 500 were still alive when Paul wrote.

Yet Schonfield tries to maintain that neither Jesus nor his apostles were guilty of fraud. The apostles, he says, were confused by that mysterious “young man,” were transformed by the delusion, and then turned Jerusalem upside down with their preaching.

Aside from the “Passover plot” section, Schonfield makes standard arguments against such doctrines as the resurrection and Christ’s deity. His contention that pagan ideas seeped into the writings is aided by the late dates at which he says they were written. He puts John’s Gospel at A. D. 110–115, which does not consider the revised estimate that recent scholarship has impressed even on Bishop John Robinson. In a book last year, eminent scholar W. F. Albright said he prefers a date in the late seventies or early eighties for John.

Schonfield’s date for the Book of Acts is A. D. 98–117, on the disputable grounds that Luke depended on Josephus’ Antiquities; there are cogent reasons to date Acts earlier. One argument Schonfield uses for a late date of Luke’s Gospel is a resemblance between the Emmaus Road incident and a story in Apuleius’s The Golden Ass. But Schonfield dates Luke at about A. D. 100; Apuleius was not born until 124!

Assuming late writings and pagan corruptions of the stories about Jesus, Schonfield says the belief in the resurrection was patterned after worship of a dying-and-rising fertility god, such as Adonis or Attis. After thorough study, such scholars as Pierre Lambrechts question whether these legends even existed in pre-Christian times. In any event, if the legends existed, they typified the death and rebirth of vegetation, not of a historical person.

Belief in Jesus’ deity is linked to the deification of the Roman emperors. Technically, it was Augustus’ genius or double who was deified, and he himself was named a god only after he died. It was a madman—Gaius Caligula (A. D. 37–41)—who demanded worship of himself while he was still living. Many scholars believe the ruler cult was more an expression of political loyalty than of genuine piety.

Jesus, of course, was not a conqueror or emperor with vast powers. And those who first worshiped him were not Gentiles from this polytheistic Greek-Roman culture in which heroes readily became anthropomorphic gods. They were Jews from a monotheistic tradition.

The early apostles’ Old Testament background included foreshadowings of deity in prophecies about the Messiah, even though the Jews were not looking for a divine Messiah. Schonfield does not deal with such passages as Psalms 2:7; 45:6, and 110:1. He also eliminates troublesome material when he compares a Qumran hymn with Isaiah 9:6, 7, by omitting the key phrase “Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

Schonfield similarly evades Paul’s statements on the deity of Jesus. He argues that Paul never spoke of Jesus as God and that followers “unacquainted” with Paul’s “esoteric Jewish background” made misinterpretations. Yet Philippians 2:6, for instance, is meaningless unless Paul assumed that Jesus was divine.

Then there are Jesus’ own statements. At the trial scene in Mark 14, the high priest asked Jesus whether he was the Messiah, and he replied ego eimi (“I am”). The Jewish scholar H. J. Schoeps writes that Jesus, in his use of the phrase, “implied that He predicated of Himself divine nature.” Schonfield figures that the priest then ripped his garments because Jesus had blasphemed Tiberius. But the rending of garments was a Jewish protest against a gidduf—blasphemy against God himself, an act worthy of death. If Jesus had merely claimed to be the Messiah, it is unlikely the Sanhedrin would have condemmed him to death. In the Jewish view, history would be the judge of messianic claims. In the next century, Rabbi Akiba proclaimed Bar Kokhba to be the Messiah, but rabbis who disagreed did not persecute either man.

Finally, Schonfield argues that the Jews would have stoned Jesus if he had blasphemed God by a claim to divinity. But he recognizes the historical fact that the Jews were prohibited from practicing capital punishment. On two occasions when the Jews stoned Stephen and James for blasphemy, they took advantage of the temporary absence of a Roman governor to take the law into their own hands.

The Quest For Verification

John W. Montgomery, in a debate with Thomas J. J. Altizer (see adjoining story), predicted that “the Delphic Oracle phase in modern theology is almost over.” Montgomery said that in Altizer “you may well be seeing its last, soon-to-be extinct representative.”

Altizer is the best-known spokesman for death-of-God theology.

Modern man, Montgomery said, “is sick to death of verbal panaceas—of autobiography masking as theology—of the naïve confusion of cultural trends with religious truth—of the theologian who hypnotizes himself by his own terminology and leaves no possible means of confirming what he says.”

A Debate On God

Produce God, dead or alive, said a writ of habeas corpus served on a poet and a theological lawyer. It was an audacious demand, but because both believe they know God’s whereabouts, they attempted last month to obey.

The poet was Dr. Thomas J. J. Altizer, associate professor of Bible and religion at Emory University. The lawyer was Dr. John Warwick Montgomery, professor and chairman of the division of church history and history of Christian thought at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois.

The hearing was held in Rockefeller Memorial Chapel of the University of Chicago. It was one of numerous events being held to mark the Baptist-founded university’s seventy-fifth anniversary. More than 2,000 persons, a minority of them from the university’s quadrangles, heard the evidence.

As though to put things straight at last, and with a respectful tinge of melancholy, the young Southerner confessed firmly that God is dead. Moreover, he continued, the angel’s proclamation was false. Christ was crucified, but there was no resurrection.

God did incarnate himself in Christ, said Altizer more cheerfully, but when Jesus died God did not return to heaven. He remained in the world and is in it now. No longer transcendent, God has become totally immanent, totally flesh, totally world.

Replying, possibly, to those who have said that he is alone in most of his beliefs, Altizer spoke of the God-is-dead “movement” and said frequently, “We believe.…”

It is “our” belief, said Altizer, that “God died as a means of embodying himself redemptively in Christ.” Speaking in terms of a flux, he contended that Christ continually moves in the fullness of history and the present. Christ is a forward moving force, and redemption is a gradual process, Altizer declared.

Though he did not intend it to be, for he was speaking on behalf of a movement, his argument was intensely personal. And when questioned about it, Altizer admitted that among its elements were much that was “autobiographical.”

Montgomery, speaking at breakneck speed in an effort to get a fifty-minute argument into the half hour allotted to it, sharply attacked the personal aspects of Altizer’s theology as subjective factors completely beyond proof. “What modern man insists on above all is a verifiable base for his faith, so that he can bring some order out of the welter of religious claims,” he said.

In contrast to Altizer, who made virtually no references to the works of others, Montgomery nearly submerged his own words in citations from a startling variety of sources.

Yet, finally, after speaking of the awesome authority of the Bible and of its support of his contentions, after stating that the Bible was the ultimate, all-persuasive source, Montgomery said that it does not supply complete, unquestionable verification.

It was one of the rare moments of the hearing when poet and lawyer, each in his own fashion, agreed.

The program was conducted in cooperation with the university’s student government and was sponsored by the University of Chicago unit of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship.

RICHARD PHILBRICK

Cloak, Dagger, And Cross

Controversy over the Central Intelligence Agency’s secret funding of private organizations has expanded with the disclosure of possible links with at least eight religious groups, three of which are Protestant and four Roman Catholic.

The groups reported that they received funds from foundations that allegedly are CIA-connected after Ramparts, quasi-Catholic monthly published by laymen, disclosed the CIA’s indirect funding of such student groups as the National Student Association.

Foundation grants have become common income sources for non-profit organizations, and all eight groups admit the financial support. But they all deny that the money originally came from the CIA.

The National Council of Churches reported “minor” contributions from the Foundation for Youth and Student Affairs toward expenses for a conference of the NCC-related National Student Christian Federation and from the Baird Foundation for “direct relief” programs. National Council officials declared emphatically that the money was not used for CIA purposes, but they immediately dispatched letters of inquiry to the contributing foundations.

The Baird Foundation was also the source for funds supplied to the American Friends Service Committee over the past twenty years. The committee characterized the total as “far exceeding” a reported $50,000.

The Synod of Russian Orthodox Church Bishops Outside Russia said it received $38,000 from the same foundation.

The Young Women’s Christian Association, emphasizing it sought out the money, said it was given $3,500 by the Foundation for Youth and Student Affairs during the past ten years.

The same foundation said it supplied money to four Catholic groups, the Young Christian Movement and Pax Romana, both lay organizations, and the National Federation of Catholic College Students and the National Newman Student Federation, both Pax Romana student affiliates.

A $6 Million Mosque

Fund-raisers are touring twenty Islamic nations to raise $6 million for a mosque in New York City that will be far grander than most Christian churches in the United States. The city’s overcrowded Islamic Center currently serves an estimated 70,000 people—largest Muslim community in America.

The proposed complex of buildings will include a dome, tall minarets, a school and library, and an Oriental market to sell products from Muslim lands. Architect’s plans and a site should be ready by year’s end, and construction is to be completed in three years.

India Vote: Extremists Gain

India’s week-long election that ended February 21 brought shocking results: the rise of the Hindu Right in the North, return of the Communist Left in the South, and near-disaster for the ruling Congress Party in the middle.

In the nation’s fourth vote since independence, the Congress Party of Mahatma Gandhi, Jawharlal Nehru, and Mrs. Indira Gandhi faced strong opposition parties as never before. Not only was its two-thirds majority in the 521-seat Lok Sabha (lower house) cut to a fifteen-seat margin, but it failed to win a working majority in half the sixteen states.

The spectacular rise of Jan Sangh, especially in the North, presents a major challenge. This seventeen-year-old movement wants to make India a Hindu kingdom (Ram Raj) where people could then live in peace and prosperity. Jan Sangh does not hesitate to use violence to achieve its ends, as in the recent anti-cow slaughter riot that raked the capital city of New Delhi and surrounding areas.

This first election since the death of Nehru—idol of India’s masses—was marked by unprecedented violence, riots, even murders.

The problems of this nation of nearly half a billion persons are capsulized in the southwestern state of Kerala, where a united front led by pro-Chinese Communists won 119 seats in the 133-member assembly. Congress won just nine seats.

Ironically, Kerala is India’s most “Christian” state; tradition holds that the Apostle Thomas founded seven churches there in A. D. 48–52. Culturally, socially, educationally, even politically, this most densely populated state is well ahead of any other in India. It is widely believed that Kerala owes much of its advancement to early introduction of Christianity.

Robert G. Cochrane, British missionary who formerly directed the Christian Medical College in Vellore, said of Kerala in 1965, “If we give people only Christian ethics without Christ, the result will be Communism.”

Communism did not take root in Kerala overnight. After a 1949 landslide victory, Congress leaders were quick to better their own financial security but slow to do anything substantial to raise living standards. And corruption was too great for Kerala’s educated electorate to ignore. The religious establishment, meanwhile, lost the confidence of the people through its continued support of the unpopular Congress as it went in and out of power.

Communists, quick to capitalize on the situation, worked hard in the hot climate, buttonholing peasants in mud huts and college graduates in polished homes. Many educated voters turned to Communism to find needed solutions to Kerala’s political and economic problems.

The Reds eventually won power in 1957 with a wild promise to bring stable government. They not only failed at this but also created opposition across religious and caste lines by trying to nationalize schools—most of them run by Christians and other religious groups.

When the Communists fell, Kerala was put under “President’s rule” from New Delhi. In the 1960 campaign, Roman Catholics in particular opposed the Communists on the religious-freedom issue. A Congress coalition won, then failed and gave way to President’s rule. This continued until last month, when the Communists won again with the stability issue.

In the 1967 campaign, Roman Catholic and other religious leaders again warned against Communism. Some openly sided with the Congress, and Bishop Peter B. Pereira of Trivandrum (Kerala’s capital) even spoke at two Congress rallies. He was quoted as saying Congress is “the lesser of two evils.” The Muslim League, a Congress ally in 1960, joined the Communist coalition.

In contrast, some Christian conservatives isolated themselves from politics, even refusing to vote under the argument that “our citizenship is in heaven.”

The Kerala vote shows to what extent Christianity has lost its positive influence upon the masses. Nationally, the rise of strong opposition can be interpreted as a step toward democratic give-and-take, but there is also room for real concern.

First, fifteen political parties could produce turmoil similar to that of France before De Gaulle. And India’s survival as a unified democratic nation is threatened by the growth of such bitter regional opponents as Jan Sangh, which wants Hindi as the national language, and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in southern Madras, which opposes imposition of Hindi.

Worst of all is the rapid growth of Communism in Kerala, Bengal, and other parts of India. At any standard of measurement, the growth of Commuism is not a good sign to the peace-loving Indians, or for the general climate of religious freedom the nation has enjoyed.

T. E. KOSHY

Confession Wins Okay

The United Presbyterian Church has approved the “Confession of 1967.” Stated Clerk William Phelps Thompson reported March 1 that a necessary two-thirds (126) of the church’s presbyteries had voted in favor of the new creed with only fourteen opposed at that point. The document will be placed in a Book of Confessions to be ratified at the May General Assembly in Portland, Oregon.

Seminaries Down Under

Australians, stunned by a report showing low standards in theological education, appear ready to form a national organization to accredit seminaries and upgrade things generally.

This project dominated the first national conference of the new Australian Society for Theological Studies in Sydney last month. The official 1964 study by the Australian Universities Commission showed the nation’s average Protestant seminary had only thirty-four students, with three full-time and four part-time teachers. Among Anglicans, the largest denomination, only 10 per cent of the ministerial trainees were university graduates. Many fill in academic background through correspondence courses.

Seminaries give diplomas, while public universities monopolize the right to grant recognized degrees. Only two of the universities have courses in theology. At one of these, the University of Sydney, a meager total of thirty-three students have earned the B.D. over the past twenty-five years.

The theological conference drew 120 participants from every major denomination, including the Roman Catholic Church. Most of the thirty lectures on the program stressed broad historical-philosophical matters rather than biblical or theological fields. The surprise of the week in this broadly ecumenical setting was a paper of near-evangelical impact on First Peter 3:21, presented by W. J Alton, a Jesuit of Sydney’s Canisius College. Another Roman Catholic was elected interim chairman.

The conference had no distinct relation to the ecumenical thrust of the Australian Council of Churches, but this provided the momentum for the meeting. The ACC’s annual meeting followed, featuring the commissioning of a layman as new full-time secretary and the discussion of relations with Roman Catholicism and missionary efforts in Australia. The theology conference had a broader representation than the fourteen groups included in the ACC meeting.

CRAIG SKINNER

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