[RC] Another example of the functionalist approach to the study of religion

[BILROJ via Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community]

The Christian Century
 
 
Post-traumatic texts
Aug  28, 2015 by _Walter  Brueggemann_ 
(http://www.christiancentury.org/contributor/walter-brueggemann)  
 
Since the 19th century, biblical study has accepted history as its defining 
 cognate discipline. History has dictated the questions asked of the text,  
whether by fundamentalists who find the whole Bible to be historical, or by 
 minimalists who want little of it to be historical, or by the Jesus 
Seminar with  its circular arguments, or by historical criticism in general. 
At the turn of the last century, however, the unquestioned mastery of 
history  as the defining cognate discipline for biblical study was being 
challenged by  the rise of social scientific methods that ask other kinds of 
questions of the  text, not eliminating historical questions but breaking the 
monopoly of such  investigation. Among the great variety of newer cognate 
disciplines has been  trauma studies, which arose in the 20th century in 
re­sponse to the deep and  multiple traumas leading to posttraumatic stress 
disorder, with its “story of a  wound that cries out.” Given that compelling 
body 
of research into the searing  experiences of disaster in the 20th century, 
it is inevitable that trauma  studies should become a fresh cognate 
discipline for scripture, as evidenced in  the work of Daniel Smith-Christopher 
and 
Kathleen O’Connor. 
David Carr, professor of Old Tes­tament at Union Theological  
Sem­inary in New York, rereads the familiar materials of the Bible in light 
 of 
trauma theory and opens the way for a fresh and suggestive interpretation. He 
 brings to the work his personal experience of a biking accident followed 
by  months of healing and rehabilitation during which, he writes, “I barely 
lived.”  His simple thesis, worked in many layers, is that scripture was 
formed over and  over as a response of faith to deep historical trauma. The 
term 
 resilience in his title refers to the capacity of communities of faith  to 
continue in the face of disaster. 
Carr judges that the founding of the monarchies of Judah and northern 
Israel  brought a political system of writing that became “the pretraumatic 
core 
of the  Old Testament” in the assertion of the first scripture. The monarchy’
s  introduction of writing, a “thing for enemy city-state monarchies,” and 
thus the  first scripture, was an intrusion into the oral tradition of the 
tribes of  Israel. 
But then came the generative force of trauma. In the first wave of such  
generativity, the process is clear enough: 
    *   The destruction of the Northern Kingdom evoked Hosea’s prophecy of 
hope  and judgment as scripture. The image of divine-human marriage was an 
attempt  to process imperial trauma. 
    *   The Assyrian crisis in the times of Hezekiah and Josiah produced 
the  Deuteronomic corpus as a response to destructive loss. 
    *   The destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Babylonians 
produced the  trauma literature of Lamenta­tions, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and 
eventually the  exilic “comfort” of 2 Isaiah.
After that the argument becomes more complex as Carr ponders other textual  
responses to the trauma of exile. He proposes that the Penta­teuchal  
materials concerning Abraham and Moses were taken up as fresh resources for  
resistance. 
Historian that he is, Carr is careful not to claim that these traditions 
were  invented in the sixth century, as some have proposed: 
Of course one cannot rule out that the historical  Abraham, the one who 
lived, actually underwent challenges like those described  in Genesis. Perhaps 
it is just lucky happenstance that these stories about him  turned out to 
comfort later traumatized generations. Whatever its origin, the  Genesis story 
of Abraham was revised in light of trauma for people in  trauma. 
The biblical narrative became an antidote to the crisis of exile. While 
parts  of the Moses story “long predate the Babylonian exile,” that story, 
culminating  in Passover, became a great source of assurance and hope for 
traumatized Israel.  The crisis of the exile eventuated in the deeply 
Torah-oriented movement led by  Ezra that made possible the survival of a 
remnant that 
understood itself as  chosen, not in triumph but in diligent obedience. 
Carr provides a brief but crucial segue to the New Testament by considering 
 the crisis of Hellenization and the aggressive initiatives of Antiochus IV 
that  evoked the Hasmonaean standardization of the Hebrew scriptures. 
Indeed, the form  of the text, fixed in this period as a resource for 
resistance 
against  Helle­niza­tion, yields a textual tradition that came to be 
normative  for times to come. Canon is a response of resistance to the 
threat of Antiochus  IV! 
In the remainder of the book, Carr extends his thesis into the New 
Testament.  He judges that the development of Christian scripture was a 
response to 
Rome’s  attempt to obliterate the Jesus movement, an attempt that pivoted on 
the  execution of Jesus. But the scandal of execution became the hallmark 
of  Christian faith: 
Jesus’ crucifixion became the founding event of  the movement and not its 
end. . . . The cross is no sign of humiliating defeat  for Christians. 
Instead, it is a proud symbol of movement membership. Jesus’  followers did not 
end up fleeing from the reality of his crucifixion, but “took  up the cross” 
themselves. Such a thing would have been incomprehensible to  Romans. It is 
an excellent example of the adaptability of symbols, especially in  cases 
like imperial domination, where a dominated group confronts symbolic  actions 
imposed on it by the oppressor. The Roman symbol of ultimate defeat  became 
the Christian symbol of ultimate victory. 
Carr proposes that Jesus died sacrificially not to assuage an angry God, 
but  to walk to the threshold of salvation where his followers could follow. 
This  opening made possible by Jesus is like that of Moses, who led to the 
edge of the  land of promise. Carr’s suggestive movement between the Moses 
narrative and the  Servant Song of Isaiah 53 reflects the imaginative 
interpretation that permitted  the early Jesus movement to persist in the face 
of 
Rome: “The cross that Romans  intended to bring despair instead became a beacon 
of hope.” 
The discussion is carried further by a consideration of Paul, “the  
traumatized apostle.” Paul faced the trauma of his own conversion as he  
struggled 
between a persecuting past and an apostolic future. Beyond that, Paul  took 
his own trauma as a paradigm for Christian living. The Christian movement  
was summoned to a new life that was wrought out of the trauma of the  
crucifixion. The direct linkage of the trauma of crucifixion to the Christian  
movement permits Carr to comment on the resurrection. His words sound like my  
seminary teacher who taught us that “the reality of the church is the  
verification of the resurrection”: 
The church’s survival, its ongoing life and  flourishing, became a 
testimony to the healing and making righteous that Jesus’  death accomplished. 
Not 
only Jesus but the whole community, the whole Jesus  movement, stands as 
proof of the failure of Roman imperial terrorism. 
Carr carefully reflects on the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple by 
the  Romans, which became the matrix for both Rabbinic Judaism and the 
Christian  movement. Both were responses of faith to the threat of Rome, 
embraces 
of  meaning and assurance that refused imperial containment and opened to 
larger,  deeper possibility. 
Particular attention is given to the Gospel of Mark with its abrupt ending  
without any report of resurrection appearances. Carr judges that this 
earliest  response to the trauma of crucifixion was then augmented in other 
Gospels with  resurrection scenes. The church was doing the hard work of 
continuing to make  sense out of its narrative of trauma. Carr doesn’t say much 
about the  resurrection, but he acknowledges its force in the Christian 
movement: 
The gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John remedied  this ending by adding 
stories about disciples actually seeing the resurrected  Jesus. . . . 
References 
to the resurrection in Paul and other early writings  indicate that Jesus 
Jews talked from an early point about encounters with Jesus  on the other 
side of crucifixion. . . . These additions reflect the ongoing  struggle of 
Jesus followers to place the trauma of Jesus’ crucifixion into a  broader 
framework. 
This rich alternative reading of the Bible is “saturated with trauma and  
survival of it.” Carr does not avoid questions of the historicity of the  
tradition, but it is clear that his interest is elsewhere. 
Ours is a time of profound trauma about race, the economy, violence, and 
the  environment. Just as the biblical text emerged in response to trauma, 
this may  be an important time to let the text touch the power and pain of 
trauma yet  again. Carr has provided an accessible guide for further work, and 
this new  cognitive discipline for scripture study is sure to be of immense 
importance for  some time to come.

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