Chaitanya Jyothi Museum Opening, 2000
RAMANAM
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.
Countrymen,
ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT
Regarding any phenomenon, there are five questions: Who?, Why?, What?, Where? and When?.
As scientists, we ask, What?, Where? and When?. As philosophers we ask, Why? and What?. As theologians or sages, we ask, Who?. There are three types of inquiry: as scientists, as philosophers and as theologians or sages. All five questions are important, and all three types of inquiry. Conclusions that humanity will approve have the quality of harmoniously correlating the results of all five questions and all three types of inquiry.
We have been aware for centuries that NT texts have undergone redaction. Early in the process we asked Why? and Who? as well as What?, Where? and When?. Since the early years of this century, especially in the United States, we have tended to restrict ourselves to the scientific questions, What?, Where? and When?. Gradually, we came to ignore the philosophical and especially the theological type of inquiry. We did this under the sneering eye of a President and Faculty of Madrassa Harvard, who said that Science would replace religion before this century was out. We allowed our work to be governed by the narrowest possible methodology and an infructuous tendention, what Madrassa Harvard calls Science.
The NT texts are redacted texts. They are not autograph texts. There is autograph in them, but the way we have them they are redacted and there is no way or even need to discover what is autograph and what is redaction. Redaction itself is the controlling quality of the NT texts. This was meant to be, both by the redactors and the Church and, what is more important, by the Holy Spirit, Whose providential Presence brought the NT as well as all else into existence.
Redaction of texts, including sacred literature, is done by human beings. The redaction of the NT was done by human beings. We should be aware of phenomena which accompany the redaction of sacred literature and which accompanied the redaction of the NT in particular.
First, humanity permits to redact its sacred literature only persons of the highest authority and that means persons of the highest spiritual excellence. Authority is directly proportional to and even synonymous with spiritual excellence. Spiritual excellence of the kind required by humanity of those it allows to redact sacred literature is the product of one thing only: monastic piety. Therefore, humanity entrusts the redaction of sacred literature to monastic scholars only. Monastics can be impartial, the thing most needed both for piety and for scholarship. Humanity’s primordial common sense tells them this about monastics, and rightly so, that they are trustworthy because they are bereft of self-interest. Only monastics can have the authority required for the redaction of sacred literature.
Second, redactors of sacred literature have a goal. Their work has an aim. It is important for subsequent generations to be aware of that aim, be it singular or plural. There is more to the exegetical/theological task than this awareness, of course, but unless however else we conduct that task includes an accurate grasp of the redactors’ aim, we are spilling seed outside the furrow.
Someone might object that if redactors have an aim, they are not impartial. The aim of redactors of spiritual literature is the welfare of all creatures everywhere. They are impartial with respect to the creatures helped. Just as Divine Love is equal for all, the aim of redactors of spiritual literature is universal regeneration. They are impartial regarding whose welfare they foster. They are partial about fostering welfare and not something other than that. And about this partiality only those object whose aim is not the welfare of all creatures everywhere … and their objection is undeserving sustenance.
Third, with respect to NT texts, two levels of redaction are important to us: the first and the last. Really speaking, all levels of NT redaction except the last are mostly hidden from us and unrecoverable. We can be certain of one thing, however: that we are dealing with redactions, which means, we are dealing with the aims of redactors, human beings, who were monastic scholars of high spiritual discipline and therefore excellence and therefore authority.
(Even the great Synoptic Hypotheses could as easily refer to source patching done by the final or near-final redactors as to anything done by the imputed writers of the texts. There isn’t evidence of the What?, Where? and When? variety to unarguably identify the origin or authorship of any NT text. The tracks were deliberately erased …. We really need to keep this unarguable fact in mind.)
The first level of NT redaction is out of sight to us. It is a peduncle of Christian sacred literature which is below the horizon of ordinary inquiry. I am going to make some suggestions about what it is.
The last level of NT redaction is, roughly, the thing we have as the Bible. As we are aware, the match is not exact, but for local convenience and because it is not too far off the truth, I will take it that our Bible is the work of the final NT redactors.
The first level of NT redaction is important to us because it gives the the system kernel of Christian religion. It gives, also, the fragrance and intent of an exalted personality, probably one close to Jesus in a physical or family sense. It comprises, again, the fundamental answer for the problems of piety and soteriology during the Second Century and, typologically, for all time fields.
The last level of NT redaction is important to us because it gives the final estimate by the seminal leaders of the Church, the monastic scholars, of the requirements of the Church, its leaders and the world for salvation into the future. The Bible we have is the final redactors’ best estimate of what all subsequent generations would need for beatification. Humanity approved their work, which means, it approved their aim, their methods and their spiritual excellence, which is their authority.
The scientific questions have monopolized our attention for the past 70 years. Progress was made with the scientific questions. We are aware of the major blocks of text and their rough dating and we have a sense of the literary genres the blocks of text imitate or generate. And we have a record of their transmission and interpretation stretching over 1500 or so years of Church culture.
The philosophical questions — Why?, What? — have been harder to answer and even to approach than were the scientific ones. The What? has been difficult but is effectively settled. The Why? is still under dispute. At this point, the dispute appears unresolvable except through arbitrary closures imposed by agendas to which disputants are attached. Schweitzer, for example, could not account for the genesis of the NT in Christ-ian terms and so he reverted in his personal spirituality to the NT’s Stoical ground. He was saddened by this course but found it unavoidable. He was too honest to submit a peremptory closure but neither could he answer the philosophical questions, especially the Why?. What he did not catch was the link between the NT’s inspiration, Jesus, and its presentation, Stoicism. I don’t find fault with him for this.
The theological question — Who? — remains unanswered. Since the early years of this century, it has hardly been asked. The reason for this omission is obvious: on the one hand, the fear of scientists induces biblical scholars to neglect their duty, which is theology; and on the other hand, pursuit of the Who? question leads to views of Jesus and Christian life during the first two centuries CE regarding which ecclesiastical hierarchies are known to be something less than sympathetic, for a collection of reasons, and to which they are known to respond in manners unimproved by patience and tolerance.
The result of the combination of these factors has been to restrict professional biblical scholarship to scientific questions only or to attenuate it with a peremptory closure at some point within the circle of views permitted by some one or more ecclesiastical hierarchies. This procedure works so long as there isn’t a Church and culture depending on biblical scholars to enlighten them. It works so long as one doesn’t have to do moral and spiritual exegesis. It works so long as one doesn’t have to preach and teach outside the ivory tower or the denominational refried potatoes circuit. It gives scholars career hooks but it gives the society which supports them absolutely nothing, and that’s a bum deal for the world no matter how you parse it. Seeing the alternatives, Schweitzer was honest enough to get a medical degree so he could do something useful with his life and repay humanity for his education.
A metaphor for the types of biblical study may be drawn from the realm of photography. The scientific questions — What?, Where?, When? — are a telephoto lens, 180mm and higher. They yield a very small view in relatively large relief and detail. In itself, this view is not very practical, although it is necessary. By itself, this view is sterile, “dry as dust” a “mere load of lumber.” The philosophical questions — Why?, What? — are a standard lens, 50mm and sometimes 40mm. They yield a natural view, practical and satisfying to a considerable extent. The theological question — Who? — is a wide-angle lens, 20mm or even 15mm. It yields a panoramic view, easily distorted, but the only one fully satisfying because it is the only view that is expansive. Spirituality is expansion.
Unaccountable redaction of what became NT texts was occurring before Marcion proposed a Christian Canon, a set of distinctly Christian sacred literature. Christians did not feel the need for a Canon until Marcion said that they did. This does not mean Christians lacked “canonical” literature. It means they did not feel a need to regularize their various canons until Marcion proposed a regularization that many did not like.
The bible we have came from Christians who objected to Marcion’s canon but used it as the base of their own. Their objection took the form of a canon they liked. But strangely, these objectors did not produce a canon they liked de novo. They started with Marcion’s canon and developed that. This means that Marcion’s canon and the objectors’ canon were kin. They were not that different. This fact is well-known. The Docetic phraseology — “He appeared …,” — of especially the Marcan part of the Gospel are trails of Marcion.
(Indeed, one can speculate — in the absence of Marcion’s actual text — whether the real objection to Marcion was not so much that he was wrong as that he was “spilling the beans.” Maybe Marcion was presenting as fact what was actually code, traducing a didactic requirement of the Magisterium (and used by Jesus, Pythagoreans, Cabalists, Franciscans, Lamas, Yogis, Prophets, Gurus and Masons) which was to appear to speak straightforwardly while actually speaking in riddles [codes]. If in fact this was the objection to Marcion’s work, then the objectors were informed by very sophisticated philosophers who grasped the phenomenology of epistemological activity.)
To answer Marcion, the objectors to his work needed an alternative redaction of the Christian texts. In general but not strictly, the redaction they produced is what we have as “the Bible.” Certainly, the intent of their redaction is what governs the construction of our Bible. That intent is the important thing. We have to discover that intent. It is the first thing that governs the exegetical task we have been handed. Not the last or the only, but definitely and unavoidably the first. If we cannot know the intent of the final redactors of our sacred literature, we cannot honestly use that literature didactically, we cannot call it canonical and we cannot work with it in any capacity which presumes that our intention is religious or even churchly.
(This is why Schweitzer reverted to the NT’s philosophical ground, Stoicism. He couldn’t work with it as Christian literature because he couldn’t see the intent of its final redactors. As photos of him show, especially from the later years, his intellectual honesty compelled him to undergo enormous spiritual pain. But he didn’t flinch from the path, and that was his genuine greatness.)
Since intent is a component only of personality, the intent of the final redactors means, for us, the question of Who?. We have to answer this question? Who were the final redactors? This question many scholars have walled off for nearly a century — as the Church sunk ever deeper into malaise, the culture lost its bearings and went adrift in an orgy of merchandising, and our congregants wandered off in search of watering holes. Now our scholars have to do their job.
What was the intent of the redactors? The overall intent of both the first and the final redactors was to protect the family of Jesus. The first redactor had another intent as well. It was to support the developing religion on a structure of Trinitarian monotheism. There were reasons for choosing this structure, reasons I will not here detail. Let it be remembered, however, that Trinitarian monotheism was a departure from the original Christian and Christ-ian theological structure of Unitarian monotheism.
What can we say, then, about the final redaction of the NT as, roughly, our Bible has it? The Church has always referred to the first four parts of it as “the Gospel of our Lord.” The word Gospel is in the singular, not the plural. We do not have four Gospels. We have one Gospel redacted to that form in four parts. The fourth part is the key to the other three. Since the fourth part of the Gospel, the key, is the most historically specific, we should take it as also the most historically accurate in our scientific sense of that term and the most spiritually instructive in our philosophical and theological senses of that term.
The fourth part of the Gospel is in fact the key to the code of the entire NT. It was made to be that. The redaction process was an encryption process with that procedure. The overall purpose of the redaction/encryption process was to protect the family of Jesus. Protect them from whom? From ecclesiastical hierarchies then and now. I assume one should understand why the redactors would have that end in view for their work.
Who was the first or seminal redactor? My guess is that it was an educated eremite who came to Jerusalem and possibly Antioch from Sinai around the middle of the Second Century and communicated two things: (1) a first cut for an orthodox canon, and (2) the rudiments of a Trinitarian theological structure. This would have been a personality of extraordinary splendor. There are reports of just such an individual in Jerusalem at just this time. I suspect this was the purpose of their visit.
Who were the final redactors of the NT? They were scions of Stoical/Pythagorean monasticism. The opening cantos of the fourth part of the Gospel demonstrate that. However, they also were aware of much more than they included in their product, and what they excluded from it they did for specific and clearly defined reasons. The great lacuna in the chronology of Jesus’ life — the major portion of it, in fact ! — is visible from the cauterization of text on the near and nether sides of it. It is just this expanse of detail in the life of Jesus which the final redactors considered a threat to his family and which they therefore removed. I am sure that in context they were right to do this. But today a condition they did not anticipate stands present and this condition makes a reemergence of the excluded details of Jesus’ life desirable for the welfare of humanity while also being not a danger to his family. And so those details are gradually emerging.
The company of final redactors of the NT included members of Jesus’ family. Also included were descendants of Saivite religion who supported Greco-Egyptian-African culture. And finally, this company included Buddhist monastics from the South of France and the environs of Alexandria.
AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA