WWJBB? (Where would Jesus be born?)

Today I visited New Askar Refugee Camp on the outskirts of Nablus. There are three such camps in the Nablus area. New Askar is “new” because it was built in1964 as an expansion of the original (or “Old”) Askar, built in 1950. But since New Askar is not an official camp, there are no UNRWA facilities there and its challenges and hardships are accordingly greater.

Here is the UN definition of a Palestinian refugee:

Palestine refugees are persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948, who lost both their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict. . . . UNRWA's definition of a refugee also covers the descendants of persons who became refugees in 1948. The number of registered Palestine refugees has subsequently grown from 914,000 in 1950 to more than 4.4 million in 2005, and continues to rise due to natural population growth.

I went to Askar camp observe an English class for young children. The teacher, another volunteer with Project Hope, was nothing short of brilliant. For each new topic (days of the week, adjectives, greetings, etc.) she had a song, an activity, a puppet, a funny sound effect or a picture. Sometimes all of the above. The kids were delightful, as well as squirmy, shy, exuberant, and mostly eager to learn. I’m guessing the teacher would stand out in any high-end suburban school in the U.S., but there she was teaching at her own expense in an unofficial refugee camp in Palestine, offering hope and opportunity to kids trapped in a cycle of poverty and despair.

The camps surrounding Nablus are three of twenty in the West Bank. Thirty-nine more dot the map across Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. I visited Jerash camp in Jordan back in 2004 and have stayed several times in Deheisheh on the edge of Bethlehem. Each camp has its stories to tell. Older residents are glad to reminisce over the cherished farms and villages from which they had to flee some 60 years ago. Many yearn to return.

There are certainly darker places on earth to raise a family There is clearly more deprivation in parts of Africa, Latin America, the Indian sub-continent, the Philippines and elsewhere. I wonder, however, whether you’d find anything similar in countries as developed and sophisticated as Israel, with its world ranking as 22^nd-highest in gross domestic product per capita (at US$33,299). I have my doubts.

What if Christians on holy pilgrimage to the site of Jesus’ birth were to include a side trip to nearby Deheisheh or Aida camps? What if they paused to listen to a few of these displaced Palestinians tell their stories? It is there, I suspect, rather than in the gilded shrine of the Nativity Church in Manger Square, that they would see most clearly what it must have been like for Jesus to embrace humility and to identify, from the very beginning, with “the least of these” (Mt 25:40). And perhaps it is there as well that we would find there is much to be done in the causes of both mercy and justice.

What about the bond?

Sporting our spiffy volunteer’s vests yesterday, my daughter and I ducked into the Old City to buy fresh vegetables. On our way we paused to chat with a young man whose English was better than average. Immediately his uncle offered coffee. Arabic coffee. The good stuff. Moments later we were balancing on sketchy plastic chairs, surrounded by a dozen young men who wanted to practice their rudimentary English. We learned several new Arabic words, laughed a lot and gave them our vitals: where we were from, why we were here and, of course, how old we were.

One young man had a deep scar in the crook of his arm. Two wore necklaces displaying small pictures of dead family members. A brother. A cousin. An older man pulled at his shirt to reveal what looked like a pair of bullet holes in his neck. Neither our Arabic nor their English was good enough to solve the Middle East crisis but it was obvious to us that these young men—or many of them—were active resisters to the Occupation. “Fighters,” as they say. With us, they were polite, hospitable, gracious, even jovial. Yet when Israeli soldiers come to call—soldiers equally youthful, equally volatile, equally in over their heads—they are deadly serious.

What strikes me in retrospect is the strength of their fraternal bond. Some young men seek brotherhood on a sports team or fraternity or in the ranks of the military. This band of brothers is united by blood—blood of both the inherited and spilled varieties. They fight and sometimes die beside cousins, nephews and brothers. It’s a bond nothing will break. The more Palestinian arrests, injuries and deaths that occur in places like Nablus, the stronger will be the communal resolve to resist.

If Israel’s strategists think they will break the resistance by stepping up incursions, closing more checkpoints, imposing more closures and knocking down more buildings, someone needs to explain to them about the bond.

The difference between night and day

This is the first of (hopefully) several posts from Palestine during May and June, 2008.

Daytime in Nablus hides its nightly war games fairly well. Markets bustle, children play, horns honk, trucks belch. The signs of conflict are easy enough to spot—buildings destroyed or damaged (by Israeli shelling, bulldozers and tanks), ubiquitous martyr posters, stone shrines to the fallen—but people here, like other peoples in crisis, have an uncanny capacity to project a sense of normalcy. Maybe they do it for the kids. Maybe for their own sanity.

This evening, our walk in the Old City spanned that perfect time of day when the waning sun paints the world in amber hues. Everything, even rubble and garbage, takes on an exquisite glow. In that light we threaded through Ottoman alleyways, toured an aging soap factory, greeted friends in the street and stopped for kanafeh at a small shop. Children giggled “how are you?” or wanted their picture taken. For a brief, sun-drenched moment all was right with the world.

But, of course, it isn’t. Earlier today I sat on the small balcony of our 2^nd floor apartment. Just minutes from the Old City, it’s a flat for Project Hope volunteers like us. From our lookout I watched the city’s white stone buildings cascade down the valley and climb the other side—the southern slope of Mount Ebal, one of the highest peaks in Palestine/Israel (3,084 feet). Clearly visible at Ebal’s summit is the silhouette of an Israeli military outpost—reportedly the largest in the West Bank. Military incursions into the city are a nightly routine; last night’s action apparently included an assault on a restaurant with percussion grenades and bullets. Don’t know what the troops were after. Tracking a “fighter,” perhaps, or delivering payback. A restaurant burned to the ground. Here in our apartment we heard nothing. Saw nothing. Felt no threat. My only source is a somewhat confusing report from the Maan News Agency. Whatever happened, you can bet it won’t get picked up by the NYT or BBC. But that too is part of normal over here. “The trouble with normal” is, as Bruce Cockburn says, that “it always gets worse.”

New Paul and Scripture Seminar page

I'm developing a blog site for the Society of Biblical Literature Paul and Scripture seminar. You'll find it here:

Paul and Scripture

It is under construction but should be more useful and interactive than the old site. So far it just has seminar paper abstracts (2006, 2007) and papers (2006).

Two Perspectives on Paul

I'm presenting this table to my students in New Testament Theology and Ethics this fall. Old news to Paul scholars, of course, but radical stuff for the uninitiated. I'm painfully aware of my over-simplification on almost every level. Corrections and suggestions for improvement welcome.

Lutheran / Traditional Perspective
versus
The “New Perspective”

Central Concern

Justification: how can sinners be made right before God?

Gentile inclusion: on what terms may Gentiles join God’s people?

State of 1^st c. Judaism

Burdened by the Law; dead in sin; marked by hypocrisy and legalism; bound up with sin, death & law (in contrast to grace, life & faith).

Vibrant, dynamic, diverse; a religion of grace; pattern of religion: “covenantal nomism*” (Sanders); in (spiritual) exile (Wright)

*"Covenantal Nomism” (according to Sanders): the notion that the Israelite’s place in God’s plan is determined by the covenant which God established with Israel, and that obedience to the law is Israel’s proper response to God’s initial act of grace.

The Law in Judaism

Onerous burden for those who broke it; cause of boasting for those who kept it.

A gracious, delightful gift from God, “holy and righteous and good” (Rom 7:12; Ps 119:97)

Paul’s problem with Judaism

Legalism: it promotes legalistic works righteousness; merit theology; pride in accomplishments; faulty view of grace and works

Nationalism / racism / exclusivism / particularism: the role of the Law in establishing boundary markers, Jewish privilege (Dunn); “It is not Christianity” (Sanders)

Paul’s condition prior to conversion

A frustrated, guilt-ridden sinner who valued works over faith, and who struggled unsuccessfully to measure up to the Law’s demands (Rom 7:14-24).

A Law-keeping (blameless) Pharisee who denied Jesus was God’s Messiah (Gal 1:14; Phil 3:4-8). Images of a distressed Paul are projections of the West’s “introspective conscience.”

Paul’s conversion

Paul leaves his now-dead ancestral religion and its Law to trust and follow Christ. Paul rejects Law-keeping as impossible and/or pride-producing.

Paul is not “converted” from Judaism but “called” within it to be the apostle to the Gentiles (Stendahl). Paul didn’t so much convert from Judaism but to Christianity (Sanders). See 2 Cor 3:4-18; Phil 3:3-11.

Justification by faith

The center / organizing principle of Paul’s Gospel: God’s gracious declaration that a sinner is right before God through his faith in Christ’s work. God’s response to human failure / pride.

A “subsidiary crater” in Paul’s thought (Schweitzer); a polemical / apologetic doctrine developed to defend the full status of Gentile converts and to refute Jewish-Christian efforts to impose circumcision, etc. on them.

Paul’s Gospel

Repent of dead works and trust in Christ’s atoning work to be justified / saved (Rom. 3:21-24). Key antithesis: Law versus Gospel.

Jesus is the anointed, risen and exalted Lord over all nations (Wright; Rom 1:1-5). Salvation comes by transfer to the realm of his lordship, by union with / participation in Christ (Sanders; 2 Cor 5:17; Rom 6:3-7).

Paul’s reasoning

Forward: from plight to solution: Law-sin-guilt à faith in Christ à justification apart from Law

Backward: from solution to plight (Sanders): Christ à various (unsystematic, inconsistent, incompatible) assessments of sin & Law (Gal 2:21; 3:19, 24-25; Rom 3:20; 4:15; 10:4)

Or: From plight to solution to plight (Wright): exile à Christ à sin / law

Theme of Romans

A “compendium of Christian doctrine” (Melancthon).
A theological treatise on justification by grace through faith.
Romans 9-11 are a parenthesis.

An occasional document defending the faithfulness of God (to the nations, to Israel) and the co-equal status of Jews and Gentiles.
Romans 9-11 are the climax of the letter.

Works of the Law (erga nomou, e.g. Rom.3:28)

Striving to do good; good works performed for salvation

Observing Torah; what pious Jews do; only bad when imposed on Gentiles; passé because it excludes Gentiles.

Pistis Christou (e.g., Ga.2:16)

Faith in Christ (objective genitive; anthropological reading) (Dunn)

Faith(fulness) of Christ = subjective genitive; Christological reading (Hays)

Israel as Rome

I recently spent a month traveling with 19 students through five Middle Eastern countries including Israel/Palestine. (This explains in part my prolonged absence from blogdom.) As we walked the streets of old Jerusalem, passed through checkpoints, visited holy sites, dialogued with religious figures and activists—as we experienced the modern Israel/Palestine conflict, we could not help but notice parallels between 1^st and 21^st century Israel. Much like Jerusalem in the days of Herod and Jesus, today’s Old City pulses with the cries of merchants and the prayers of holy men. Pilgrims flush with foreign currency banter and barter in the streets. Armed soldiers patrol near the Temple Mount. Rumors of foreign incursion or homegrown uprising circulate.

The irony, of course, is that Israel today plays the imperial role once filled by Rome while the Palestinians mirror the part played by the Jews of ancient Galilee and Judea. Yesterday’s Jewish Zealots are today’s Palestinian insurgents. Well, sort of. And Rome’s Legions foreshadow the modern IDF. The-state-of-Israel-qua-Rome justifies its incursions and human rights abuses in the name of security and economics, while perpetuating a caste system that extends full privileges to Jews and only a minority of Israeli Arabs. Palestinian-militants-qua-Zealots justify targeting civilians in the name of honor, clan loyalty and divine mandate, while shamelessly recruiting “peasants” whose harsh living conditions engender only rage, despair and shame. Tragically, eyes on both sides of the conflict seem blind to “the things that make for peace.”

I do not excuse the suicide attacks and summary executions perpetrated by militant Palestinians any more than I endorse the atrocities of the dagger-wielding Sicarii during the Jewish War. But the Palestinians, like the Jews of Roman Judea, are a people under occupation. There is no debate on the streets of Jerusalem about who has the power. I have witnessed a Daewoo bulldozer flatten the home of a Palestinian family who simply lacked a building permit—a permit Jerusalem’s bureaucracy makes it all but impossible for Palestinians to acquire. I have watched armed Israelis compelling middle-aged Palestinian men to drop their pants on a public street to show they wore no explosives. I have seen border police climb out of jeeps to fire live rounds at young children whose only arsenal was the rubble at their feet. I have walked the “sterilized” streets of old Hebron where Palestinians can no longer go and listened to a former Israeli soldier describe how he used to torment civilians there. I have stayed in homes whose rooftop tanks must be refilled by hand when the Israeli authorities cut off electricity and ration water to insure that settlers on nearby hilltops can water their lawns and fill their swimming pools. I have comforted a Palestinian forbidden to enter Jerusalem to visit his hospitalized daughter. I have smelled teargas, felt percussion grenades and looked on as soldiers battered non-violent protesters whose crime was their stubborn presence on Israeli-confiscated Palestinian farmland. I have walked the course of the Wall that knifes through Jerusalem, separating kin from kin, worker from job, farmer from olive grove and people from sunset. And I have read the rage splashed across the Wall’s cold concrete canvas. My favorite graffiti is a hastily sprayed message in green paint: Jesus wept for Jerusalem – we weep for Palestine.

Is anyone else struck by similarities between the two occupations? Is this a useful thought experiment or is it simply stating the obvious?

Blogger of the month!

I'm honored (and a tad embarrassed) to have been selected by Jim West and Brandon Wason of Biblioblogs as May's blogger of the month! The full (penetrating, incisive, ground-breaking) interview is available here.