Chapters 3, 4, & 5 so far, and an announcement

John Calvin, A Harmony of the Gospels

Faculty meetings for the fall semester started yesterday, so my pace of research and writing the book will slow significantly. I will be teaching two classes this fall (Introduction to Biblical Literature and Introduction to the New Testament), will continue serving as Director of the Pierce Institute for Leadership and Community Service, and will be doing the other things that all faculty members do (advising students, committee work, etc.). I will also continue to serve as co-editor of Emory Studies in Early Christianity (ESEC) and have been named as associate editor of the Rhetoric of Religious Antiquity (RRA) series, which includes forthcoming Sociorhetorical Exploration Commentaries (SREC). All of these volumes will now be published by the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) Press in Atlanta (the other main editors are Professor Vernon K. Robbins of Emory University and Professor Duane F. Watson of Malone University in Ohio).

Now on to my progress on the rest of the parables book:

I wrote the first two chapters of the book following the chronological order of the people/items I was covering. Since May, however, I have been jumping between sections of chapters 3, 4, and 5. This change in approach first started because I needed to write two sections of chapter 5 (the Blues; Thomas Hart Benton) for my June lecture in England. Then I returned to chapter three and wrote about John Bunyan--a long and difficult section to write. So then I decided to write about the images on the parables by John Everett Millais, which was a refreshing change of pace. 

Now I am primarily focusing on Chapter 3 but am still moving back and forth every once in a while to chapters 4 and 5 (I have written sections on William Blake and Elsa Tamez). That process is helping me to balance out the chapters more, and it is also giving me more time to select the final choices for chapter 3.

Here are the people/interpretations about whom/which I have written so far in these last three chapters:

Update on Chapter 1:

I decided to add a section on a kontakion about the Prodigal Son by Romanos the Melodist. I have just finished writing about the kontakion and a brief biography of Romanos to set the context. Chapter 1 is now over 30,000 words (it needs to be ~20,000).

Chapter 3:

• Rembrandt
• Martin Luther (focusing more on his sermons)
• John Calvin (focusing more on his commentary, A Harmony of the Gospels)
• John Bunyan
• William Shakespeare

Next up: Anna Janz (and the Ausbund), George Herbert, and probably Bloemaert. I am also trying to decide between covering Maldonatus or Bartolomé de las Casas (I haven't found much material on the latter with connections to the parables).

Chapter 4:

• William Blake
• John Everett Millais 

Next up: Tolstoy, Kierkegaard, Fanny Crosby. Then probably Sojourner Truth, Emily Dickinson, and Washington Irving.

Chapter 5:

• Thomas Hart Benton
• Parables and the Blues (Blind Willie Johnson, Blind Joe Taggart, Robert Wilkins)
• Elsa Tamez

Next up: Flannery O'Connor, Olivia Butler, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (Howard Thurman is an option instead).

I also have several other people/works to include in these three final chapters, and I have many ideas/options. I also will need to include a very small number of parables scholars, like the ones I wrote about in my What Are They Saying About the Parables? People such as Trench, Jülicher, Jeremias, et al. 

The Blog so Far, and Honors Seminar on the Reception History of the Parables

I am nearing 100 posts on this blog, so perhaps a bit of assessment about what has been accomplished so far would be in order.

Reception History occupies a small niche in the study of the New Testament. Reception History of the parables, then, is a small niche within that small niche, so I realized starting out that the audience for this blog would be a relatively small one. All in all, though, I have been surprised by the number of hits on the blog and the variety of countries around the world represented in those hits (over 70 countries Blogger tells me). 

The total number of hits since I began the blog is less than the most popular biblioblog receives in one week (Jim West's blog), but I knew going in that the audience would be very small even after the blog became established, as it were. I decided, also before starting the blog, that it would be worth it even with that very small audience for the following reasons:

1. It would help me write the book. That sounds odd, since writing a blog obviously takes time away that I could be spending in researching and writing the book, but it has helped. Most of all, it has helped me keep the audience for the book in mind. I need to write the book so that college-level students could understand and appreciate the Reception History of the parables. So I have tried to explain the complex in simple but not simplistic ways.
2. When I have posted material that eventually will become sections of the book, I have revised those sections a fair amount before I posted them to the blog to make them clearer to a public audience. The process made me realize better how I need to revise sections of what I had written. After doing so for the blog, I then went back and revised sections of the book draft accordingly. So the book will become more readable and more clear, I hope, because of what I have done on the blog. The same thing happened with my lecture at Oxford University: Although preparing and giving the lecture took time away from the book, in the long run it will make the book better, because I have revised those sections of the book significantly in the process.
3. I also have been able to include things on the blog that I won't be able to include in the book, such as a number of examples from visual art (e.g., several examples from Millais instead of just one or two). I also will include things that probably won't make the "cut" for the book. For example, I will write soon about some sculptures I saw at St. James Church in London a few weeks ago. Truly amazing. Only about 60 items can make the "cut" for the book, so the blog allows me to share publicly additional interesting interpretations of the parables.

So the blog has taken a little bit of extra time, but that has been helpful for me in thinking through what I wanted to write in the book, and I hope it has been helpful for the relatively small audience that reads all, some, or just one of the posts.

I am wondering whether, after the book comes out, I should continue this blog and expand it to the Reception History of the Gospels. We'll see.

Also, I received word a few weeks ago that I have been chosen to teach one of the three Honors Seminars at Oxford College of Emory in the spring semester (2015). My proposal was a course on the reception history of the parables, so I am hopeful that I can give parts of the book a “trial run” during that course. It should be fun. Once again, I hope that this course, like the blog, can help both the book and the students who read it.

So those are a few observations about what the blog has accomplished so far. In the next post, I will write about the people/interpretations that I have covered so far in chapters 3, 4, and 5.

Chapter 2 so far

John Gower's tomb, Southwark Cathedral, London

The same comments that I made for Chapter 1 apply for Chapter 2. The difference in Chapter 2, though, is that I have already gone through the draft once with a view to trim significant sections. The chapter draft initially was ~29,000 words, and I cut it to ~25,000. It reads much better, but the draft has a long way to go before I am happy with it.

One mistake that I probably made in this chapter is to write both on John Gower and Geoffrey Chaucer. They are too similar in many ways to both be included when I can only choose about a dozen examples for this chapter. Both Gower and Chaucer are English, from the same era, were friends, and are important early poets ("moral Gower" came to be overshadowed by Chaucer's works). Of course a similar criticism could be made of the choices of Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas (Italian colleagues at the University of Paris). But Bonaventure and Thomas give interesting and different perspectives (and Bonaventure's Commentary on Luke is incredibly important, often overlooked, and different form Thomas Aquinas's approach). So both Thomas and Bonaventure will stay.  

I initially chose Gower because he is so important and not as well-known as Chaucer, but then I realized that Chaucer should not be omitted. I may make Gower's section a introductory subset of Chaucer's to try to give students a flavor of his work and some idea of his importance. I can't tell you, by the way, how many time I typed "Gowler" when I meant to type "Gower."

For this chapter, I got to read a lot of materials from and about people that I had never read before: Hildegaard of Bingen, Wazo of Liège, Bonaventure, John Gower (I had seen his tomb in Southwark Cathedral but had never read his stuff), and Antonia Pulci. It was a lot of fun, and I learned a lot as well.

Here 'tis:

Chapter 2: 550-1500 CE (trimmed from 29,000 words to ~25,000)

• Gregory the Great
• Bede the Venerable
• Wazo of Liège
• Golden Gospels of Echternach (four parables)
• Theophylact
• Hildegaard of Bingen
• Chartres Cathedral
• Bonaventure
• Thomas Aquinas
• John Gower (may be deleted)
• Geoffrey Chaucer
• Antonia Pulci
• Albrecht Dürer (pre-1500 etching)

Chapter 1 so far

Currently included in Chapter 1

The Good Shepherd; Catacomb of Callixtus/Callisto

See the posts from January 20 and 23

Below is the list of the what I have included in Chapter 1 so far.  The chapter needs to be approximately 20,000 words, but the first draft is ~29,000. I needed to "write long," however, so that I could work and think through the material in some depth. When I wrote the section on Irenaeus, for example, I did not yet know (a) exactly what interpretations of the parables the chapter needed to have so that I could build upon that particular interpretation with material from other people later in the book (such as Origen), (b) exactly what interpretations of the parables were so distinctive that they needed to be included (some are immediately discernible, such as Origen's discussion of the Pearl of Great Price), and (c) what needed to be covered to make sure that the book treated most of the NT parables. 

My next task will be to go back over the chapter draft many, many times, to cut, trim, edit, and craft a "coherent" narrative/story. I hope that I can get the chapter near to 20,000 words through that process; if that fails, I will have to consider cutting an entire section (which I would prefer not to do) and use that material elsewhere, such as in an article. The Gospel of Philip might be an option to cut, although that seems helpful to include in light of Irenaeus's writings. The Good Shepherd is another possibility to cut completely, since that technically is not a parable. This work on the chapter draft involves not only separating the wheat from the chaff, but also constructing a chapter (and book) that really is comprehensive and, as much as possible in such a work, coherent.

So I need to cut about one-third of the draft of Chapter 1. Unfortunately, I recently came across an interpretation of the Prodigal Son that I also should include in this chapter. It is from the Kontakia: On the Life of Christ by Romanos the Melodist. A kontakion (my automatic spell check changed that to contagion!) is a chanted sermon, and the one on the Prodigal Son is the earliest material that I have found so far that gives the answer to whether the elder brother joins in the celebration of his brother's return (he does). Since I have found that positive answer given elsewhere (Chartres Cathedral stained-glass windows, Antonia Pulci's Prodigal Son play, Robert Wilkins's blues song, etc.), it would be good to add a brief section on that kontakion. That will be one connection upon which the work can build. So the chapter will break 30,000 words before I start cutting/editing it.

The longest section in this chapter currently is on Origen: 4324 words (Chrysostom is 3961 words). The shortest is on the Ravenna mosaics: 534 words.

I always write long, and cutting material is always the most difficult part in the writing process. With so much material from which to choose and with so much that one could say about particular interpretations, the choices are very difficult to make.

Chapter 1: The Early Church until ~550 CE (currently ~29,000 words):

• Irenaeus
• Clement
• Tertullian
• Origen
• Gospel of Philip
• John Chrysostom
• Augustine
• Macrina the Younger
• Ephrem the Syrian
• Byzantine mosaics (S. Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, Italy)
• Roman Catacombs (the Good Shepherd)
• Dura Europos (the Good Shepherd in the house church)
• Rossano Gospels

Update: Parables "covered" in the book so far

Will This Image make the Cut for Chapter 3?

Some of my former students who (claim to) read this blog have often indicated their interest in hearing more about the process of writing a book, so I have included details from time to time about my thought processes, deliberations, and decisions while researching and writing this particular book.

Faculty meetings start this week. The beginning of the semester at Emory is just around the corner, and Pierce Institute activities will ramp up in earnest (all of which obviously will give me much less time to work on the book). So I thought it would be a good time to review and explain what I have written so far.

The book is due on or before December 1, 2015, and I have made good progress. I have completed almost half of the book in draft form (it actually might be a bit more than half, since I have written about 30 people/subjects). As I will explain in a later post, I will also need several months to rework the draft. I have intentionally written "long," and I will need to cut about 1/3 to 1/4 of what I have written. That's the painful but necessary part!

For each section/person in the book, I have been keeping a list of the parables I cover. For example, in my section on Irenaeus, I discuss his interpretations of the parables of the Workers in the Vineyard, Good Samaritan, Wise and Foolish Builders, Barren Fig Tree, and Wedding Feast. 

I also am keeping other lists. Another example would be the list of parables I cover, including the interpreters who discuss that parable. For example, in the first two chapters, here are the people I have discussing the Rich Man and Lazarus parable: Tertullian, Macrina the Younger, Ephrem the Syrian, Gregory the Great, Echternach Gospels, Bonaventure, John Gower, and Geoffrey Chaucer (with Martin Luther, William Shakespeare, and John Bunyan so far in Chapter 3, which is half-written). I want to be sure that I cover as many parables as possible in the book and also to show a diversity of receptions/interpretations. 

Here are the parables I have treated so far in this Reception History text: 

• The Unforgiving Slave (Matt 18:23-35)
• Workers in the Vineyard (Matt 20:1-16)
• The Lost Sheep (Matt 18:12-14/Luke 15:4-7/Thom 107 / Gospel of Truth 31-32)
• The Lost Coin (Luke 15:8-10)
• The Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32)
• The Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37)
• The Rich Fool (Luke 12:16-21/Thomas 63)
• The Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31)
• The Pharisee and the Tax Collector (Luke 18:10-14)
• The Wise and Foolish Builders (Matt 7:24-27/Luke 6:47-49)
• Building a Tower (Luke 14:28-30) (barely mentioned so far)
• The Unjust Manager (Luke 16:1-8)
• The Ten Maidens/Wise and Foolish Virgins (Matt 25:1-13)
• The Sower (Mark 4:3-8, 13-20; Matt 13:3-8, 18-23; Luke 8:5-8, 11-15; Thomas 9)
• The Two Debtors (Luke 7:41-43) (barely)
• The Barren Fig Tree (Luke 13:6-9)
• The Unjust Judge (Luke 18:2-8)
• The Talents (Matt 25:14-30)
• Wheat and the Weeds/Tares (Matt 13:24-30 / Thomas 57)
• The Dragnet (Matt 13:47-50)
• The Final Judgment—Sheep/Goats (Matt 25:31-46)
• The Great Banquet (Luke 14:16-24; Thomas 64)
• The Wedding Feast (Matt 22:1-14)
• The Wicked Tenants (Mark 12:1-12 / Matt 21:33-46 / Luke 20:9-19 / Thomas 65-66)
• The Mustard Seed (Mark 4:30-32 / Matt 13:31-32 / Luke 13:18-19 / Thomas 20)
• The Leaven (Matt 13:33 / Luke 13:20-21 / Thomas 96)
• The Treasure in the Field (Matt 13:44 / Thomas 109)
• The Pearl of Great Price (Matt 13:45-46 / Thomas 76) 
• The King going to War (Luke 14:31-33)
• *The Good Shepherd (not really a parable)

New Testament scholars have varying opinions on what exactly to include in a list of Jesus parables, but the above thirty parables includes most of the ones on all the lists. 

What is still missing? Well, for example, I still don't have anything on:

• The Seed Growing Secretly (Mark 4:26-29; Thomas 57)
• The Two Sons (Matt 21:28-32)
• The Friend at Midnight (Luke 11:5-8)

Of course some parables are treated more often and more extensively in the book than other parables, simply because they are more prevalent in Reception History (e.g., the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son are almost everywhere during most of these eras). And the above list may change, because I have a lot of trimming/editing to do before this manuscript is ready to head to +James Ernest at Baker Academic. James has already given me valuable feedback on my lists of interpreters in Chapters 1 and 2--as well as other elements of the book--so I look forward to continuing that collaboration.

The lists of interpreters in each chapter--the parts I have written so far, at least--will be the subjects of my next posts. I also will give additional thoughts about what I have done and will need to do in those chapters.

And, yes, it is likely that Abraham Bloemaert's The Wheat and the Tares (above) will indeed be included in the book. I will discuss that painting after I have researched further and written about it for the book.

Millais and the Parables (conclusion)

John Everett Millais, The Tares

As I mentioned in my last post, Millais’s representations of the parables were not universally acclaimed. One primary critique was that most of Millais’s backgrounds and contexts were taken from Scotland, unlike his former PRB (Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood) colleague, William Holman Hunt, who travelled to the Holy Land and painstakingly recorded the sites and people of the area, Millais did not venture beyond Scotland and London for his models, landscapes, and other contexts (Rosenfeld and Smith 2007: 127). The women also usually appear in contemporary clothing (e.g., The Lost Piece of Silver, The Wise and Foolish Virgins, The Foolish Virgins). Still, the images are usually extremely well-crafted, as is the woman searching for the lost coin. As of yet, the coin has not been found:

John Everett Millais, The Lost Piece of Silver

Even images that are expertly crafted with intricate detail, such as The Wicked Husbandmen, contain anachronistic elements. Note the outstanding craftsmanship of the vines—their leaves and tendrils—as well as the detail of the rope around the heir’s neck. A slimy toad and a dove "bring a sense of evil to the scene." Yet the wall of the vineyard is a representation of the wall of Balhousie Castle in Perth, which Millais had used for an earlier image, The Love of James I in Scotland (Millais 1975: xxviii). 

John Everett Millais, The Wicked Husbandmen

The building in the background of The Unmerciful Servant also looks suspiciously like St. Paul’s Cathedral in London (ibid.).

John Everett Millais, The Unmerciful Servant

A contemporary review in the Athenaeum (December 1863) noted that the images suffered from a lack of consistency. Millais could have, it argued, either attempted to represent the parables in their original settings (and it suggested that a trip to the Holy Land would have been helpful in this regard) or to (re)interpret the parables consistently in contemporary contexts. As Mary Lutyens notes, for the most part, Millais was content to give these parables a contemporary context in “authentic Scottish backgrounds,” but even though he read the parables closely and followed the stories carefully, he “never attempted to penetrate their mysteries.” Only in three works—The Pharisee and the Publican, The Unjust Judge, and The Pearl of Great Price—did Millais attempt a realistic first-century context (for which he may have been indebted to some of Hunt’s sketches; Millais 1975: xxxiii). Much could be said about these two images (and others), so perhaps I will return in the future to explore them in detail.

John Everett Millais, The Pharisee and the Publican

John Everett Millais, The Pearl of Great Price

One wonders whether the extensive number of illustrations took its toll on Millais, however, and started to diminish the quality of some of the engravings (the task was also reduced from 30 images of parables to 20). The details in some prints are not as extensive. Note, for example, that, although the detail of the field itself is impressive, Millais does not add any distinguishing features to the sky in The Hidden Treasure (see July 16 post). On the other hand, the print for The Sower includes even more elements:

John Everett Millais, The Sower

The sky gains some delineation in this image, and other aspects of the parable (e.g., the rocks, birds, plants with thorns, etc.) are intricately detailed (although one reviewer called the birds "clumsy").

There were some errors in the original work. The text of the book included the parable of The Great Dinner (Luke 14:15-24), but Millais illustrated an aspect of the parable of The Marriage Feast (Matthew 22:1-14) that is only found in Matthew: the "king" (it's also not a king in Luke but a [wealthy] man) expelling (throwing "into the outer darkness") the man who was not wearing a "wedding robe" (Matthew 22:11-14). Millais depicts the unfortunate moment (which complicates the interpretation of Matthew's parable) when the attendants start to grab the man.

John Everett Millais, The Marriage Feast

That problem was corrected in later editions of The Parables of our Lord by including the Matthean version of the parable instead of the Lukan one.

In her book, English Pre-Raphaelitism, Susan Casteras lists some other contemporary criticisms of Millais's parable etchings (pages 89-93). Some of those critiques seem overdrawn, however. For example, yes, the symbols in The Tares are rudimentary, such as the snakes and the jackal(?), but the malevolence in the sower's face as he looks back is impressive, as are other elements of the image.

Casteras notes that one reviewer in the New Path (March 1864) argues that Millais's etchings do not make the parables any clearer, that Millais did not "tell" the stories (i.e., one has to know the parables in advance to see the point), and that the parables were not even really "illustrated": Millais should have "interpreted" the parables for the English people (1990: 89). One example to which the reviewer pointed was print, The Leaven. This image, he argued, is just a "first-rate drawing of a woman kneading bread." We don't even see the woman's face (89):

John Everett Millais, The Leaven

This critique seems to me to miss the mark. How would Millais have "interpreted" this parable any better with just one image? We see the wheat in the left, and the three loaves being prepared. Does not the hiding of the woman's face add to the drama of the image, which makes the young woman's gaze at the other woman even more powerful? Yes, the clothing is anachronistic, but, for me in this instance, that does not diminish the pathos of the scene; the positioning of the two women highlights it.

Other interpreters have found Millais's images of the parables to be haunting, full of power, and meaningful. Eugene Benson argued that the images were “positive, singular, full of interest,” as well as profound in their interpretations (Casteras 1990: 92). Even a cursory look at the images (see them all here) demonstrate their beauty, power, and insight, beyond questions of appropriate context.

These blog posts have only scratched the surface, but I encourage you to look at the prints yourself. I have decided that in the book, I will focus on the print of the Importunate Widow and the Unjust Judge.

I will leave you with one final image: The Laborers in the Vineyard:

John Everett Millais, The Laborers in the Vineyard

The next two or three posts will give an update on the progress of writing the book and some thoughts about that process. 

Emory University Hospital, Ebola, and the Parable of the Good Samaritan

William Hogarth, The Good Samaritan

I have the conclusion written about the etchings of John Everett Millais on the parables, and I will post it later tonight or tomorrow. A lot of great images to share.

First, though, I want to make a couple of comments about the two patients with the Ebola virus coming to Emory University Hospital.

I work at Emory University, and I am very proud to be associated with an institution so dedicated to ethics, compassion, and healing. I also am a Senior Faculty Fellow at Emory's Center for Ethics, and I want to recommend this article by Paul Root Wolpe, the Director of the Center for Ethics, which, in part, decries the dangerous epidemic.

No, not (just) the ebola epidemic. He actually decries the (even more) dangerous epidemic of "the spreading lack of compassion." 

It is not an accident that the parable of the Good Samaritan was connected to many hospitals. I was born, in fact, at Good Samaritan Hospital in Mt. Vernon, Illinois. It is also not an accident that both Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol serve with Samaritan's Purse (H/T +Joel Willitts ).

The parable's connection to compassion and healing also led to images of the parable being created specifically for hospitals, such as the painting by William Hogarth (see above). Others include the images by Richard Dadd (Bethlem Royal Hospital, London) and Jean Restout (Hôpital de la Charité, Paris).

I understand the concern about bringing people with the Ebola virus to the United States. There are often dangers involved in extending compassion to others--this one more serious than most--but the parable of the Good Samaritan does not seem to me to limit the compassion we are to extend to other human beings. The Samaritan in the parable, in its first-century contexts, did a number of what would have been considered by most people to be very foolish things.

This act of compassion of bringing Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol here to Atlanta is a wise choice. Emory University Hospital is excellent, and the CDC is just down the street.

The Good Samaritan parable ends with the Lukan Jesus saying "Go and do likewise" (Luke 10:37).