Dialogue Not Dogma : Many Voices in the Gospel of Luke [1 ed.] 9780567273437, 9780567446398

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LIBRARY OF NEW TESTAMENT STUDIES

431 formerly the Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement series

Editor Mark Goodacre

Editorial Board John M. G. Barclay, Craig Blomberg, R. Alan Culpepper, James D. G. Dunn, Craig A. Evans, Stephen Fowl, Robert Fowler, Simon J. Gathercole, John S. Kloppenborg, Michael Labahn, Robert Wall, Steve Walton, Robert L. Webb, Catrin H. Williams

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DIALOGUE NOT DOGMA Many Voices in the Gospel of Luke

Raj Nadella

Copyright © Raj Nadella, 2011 Published by T&T Clark International A Continuum imprint The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX 80 Maiden Lane, Suite 704, New York, NY 10038 www.continuumbooks.com All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Raj Nadella has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identied as the Author of this work. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: HB: 978-0-567-14543-7 Typeset by Pindar NZ, Auckland, New Zealand Printed and bound in Great Britain

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements Abbreviations INTRODUCTION A. Many Voices in the Gospel of Luke B. Fresh Approach to a Familiar Issue C. The Design of this Book 1.

2.

viii x 1 1 4 6

READING LUKE IN LIGHT OF BAKHTIN: THEORY, POSSIBILITIES, LIMITATIONS, SCOPE OF THE STUDY Introduction A. Bakhtin, Biblical Studies, and the Gospel of Luke B. Bakhtin and His Concept of Polyphony C. The Concept of Dialogism D. Luke as a Dialogic Gospel: Possibilities and Limitations Conclusion

8 8 8 11 23 26 31

BLESSED ARE THE OUTSIDERS: VIEWING LUKE’S POLYPHONIC STORY OF JESUS’ IDENTITY FROM A DISTANCE Introduction A. Were the Nazarenes Nay-sayers? B. Mission to the Non-Jews? C. The Meaning of Jesus’ Response in 4:23-27 D. Insiders versus Outsiders E. How Ironic! F. Bakhtin and His Concept of Outsidedness G. Layers of Outsidedness in the Nazareth Episode

33 33 35 39 41 42 44 45 49

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Contents H. The Readers’ Outsidedness and Layers of Dialogue about Jesus’ Identity I. Outsidedness, Otherness, Dialogue Conclusion

3.

4.

5.

TO EACH ITS OWN LOOPHOLE: LOOPHOLE DIALOGUES AND THE TENSION BETWEEN HEARING AND DOING Introduction A. “Loophole” Dened B. Loophole in the Law C. The Samaritan’s Loophole D. The Bakhtinian Concept of Surplus E. The Lawyer’s Loophole F. The Martha–Mary Dialogue G. Jesus’ Loophole and the Dialogue between 10:25-37 and 10:38-42 Conclusion DOWNSIZING THE WEALTHY? A CARNIVALESQUE READING OF LUKE’S PORTRAYAL OF WEALTH Introduction A. The Bakhtinian Concept of Carnival B. Key Aspects of Carnival C. Carnival in the Story of Lazarus and the Rich Man D. Carnivalization of Literature E. Lukan Perspectives on Wealth F. Luke as Carnivalized Literature Conclusion CONTRIBUTIONS OF THIS STUDY TO LUKAN SCHOLARSHIP AND THE E THICAL I MPLICATIONS OF A D IALOGIC R EADING OF L UKE Introduction A. Bringing Bakhtin to Luke: Goals and Results B. Luke is Dialogic Not Dogmatic C. The Signicance of a Dialogic Reading for Lukan Scholarship D. Diversity in Luke’s Community E. From the Author’s Context to the Dialogic (Gospel) Text? F. Dialogism and Its Potential Signicance for Luke’s Community G. Then and Now: Similarities between Luke’s Context and Current Contexts

54 63 64

65 65 66 67 72 74 76 81 83 86

88 88 89 92 95 99 101 108 109

111 111 111 113 118 121 123 125 125

Contents H. Ethical Implications of a Dialogic Reading in the Context of Diversity I. Theological Implications: Dialogue and Truth J. Problems with Bakhtin’s Theories and Their Application to Luke Conclusion Bibliography Index of Authors

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129 133 136 137 139 147

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book was originally written as my doctoral dissertation at Union Theological Seminary in Virginia. I express deep appreciation to the members of my dissertation committee: John Carroll, Frances Taylor Gench and Scott Spencer. I have beneted greatly from their scholarship, able guidance and constructive suggestions. I am grateful to George Aichele, the editor of this series, for encouraging me to publish this work and for helping me rene its focus. He has been available for consultation throughout the various stages of this project. Julie Galambush, a former colleague at the College of William and Mary, has been my mentor and friend for the last several years. She has offered many valuable insights and suggestions for improvement of the manuscript, as well as much needed encouragement throughout the writing process. I am thankful to Frank Yamada, a former colleague and mentor, who has been of great support during the last few years. I am grateful also to friends and colleagues at various places within and outside the academia both in the US and in India for the support they have provided during the writing process. Several of them have also been my dialogue partners by offering feedback on the manuscript in its various earlier incarnations. Specically, I am grateful to Malli Chennupati, Joseph Dayam, Michael O’Donnell, James Taneti and Aubrey Watkins. Needless to say, any shortcomings in the project are entirely mine. My parents and family in India have been very helpful in several ways, especially through their continuous moral support. Finally, two people that are very dear to me merit special mention here. First, I am immensely grateful to Amy Becklenberg, my wife, for her companionship, counsel, wisdom, patience and support during the lengthy process, as well as for the occasional gentle reminders to complete the project. Second, the lengthy and often tiresome process of working on this manuscript was made more manageable by

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the delightful presence of my beautiful infant daughter Divya Becklenberg Nadella. I am indebted to her for keeping me company during the writing and revision process, and for the immense joy she brings to my life. I could not have done it without either of these two special people. I dedicate this work to my wife and daughter.

ABBREVIATIONS

ABD Ant. CBQ ExpT HB JBL JR JSNT JSNTSup JSOT JSOTSup LCL LXX NICNT NIGTC NT NovTSup NRSV OT OTL PRS SAP SBL SBLDS SBLMS

Anchor Bible Dictionary Jewish Antiquities Catholic Biblical Quarterly Expository Times Hebrew Bible Journal of Biblical Literature Journal of Religion Journal for the Study of New Testament Journal for the Study of New Testament: Supplement Series Journal for the Study of Old Testament Journal for the Study of the Old Testament: Supplement Series Loeb Classical Library Septuagint New International Commentary on the New Testament New International Greek Testament Commentary New Testament Novum Testamentum Supplements New Revised Standard Version Old Testament Old Testament Library Perspectives on Religious Studies Shefeld Academic Press Society of Biblical Literature Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series Society of Biblical Literature Monograph Series

Abbreviations

SBLSS SNTS SPCK TDNT WBC

Society of Biblical Literature Supplement Series Society for New Testament Studies Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge Theological Dictionary of the New Testament Word Bible Commentary

xi

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INTRODUCTION

A. Many Voices in the Gospel of Luke Keen readers of the Gospel of Luke will recognize the multiple and disparate voices inhabiting its narrative world. These voices offer divergent and occasionally contradictory perspectives on several themes that appear prominently in the Gospel – wealth and poverty, the role of women, eschatology, the importance of doing vis-à-vis hearing, and the identity of Jesus, which is often described in terms of Luke’s Christology. The questions of how to make sense of the divergent perspectives Luke offers on major themes, whether Luke has a coherent theological project, and how the contradictions affect the unity and nature of the Gospel have gured prominently in the last few decades of Lukan scholarship. A related question – why the evangelist would have accommodated divergent perspectives on themes that were pertinent to the life of the community – has also prompted inquiry. Scholars have responded to these questions in various ways, with several attempting to resolve the Gospel’s seeming incoherence with insights from one or more critical methodologies common to biblical studies. One response to the issue of divergent perspectives has been an acknowledgment of the divergence, followed by an attempt to harmonize the disparate viewpoints or explain (away) the differences between them. Joel Green, for instance, acknowledges that ‘Luke’s presentation on possessions is perplexing’ and seeks to harmonize the various perspectives.1 Elsewhere, Green observes that ‘Luke offers no straightforward answer to the problem of possessions and the life of faith’ but he appears to downplay the extent and signicance of divergence in perspectives.2 Hans Conzelmann’s explication of Luke’s theology

1. Joel B. Green, The Gospel of Luke (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), 229. 2. See Joel B. Green, The Theology of the Gospel of Luke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

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is a classic example of an attempt to portray Luke as a coherent Gospel. Employing insights primarily from redaction criticism, he argues that Luke (re)shaped the traditions he had inherited in order to offer coherent teachings on important issues such as Christology and eschatology.3 An explicit interest in portraying Luke’s theological project as coherent can also be seen in the works of Robert O’Toole and Eduard Schweizer.4 These scholars apparently seek to downplay any obvious contradictions in perspectives so as to depict Luke as a Gospel that offers unitary viewpoints. An assumption – and perhaps even a suggestion – underlying these responses might be that in order for Luke to be credible and qualify as a Gospel, it must be devoid of contradictory viewpoints. The Gospel should offer consistent teachings on important matters, especially on theological themes such as Christology. Since its worldview would have a prescriptive function it would need to be unitary rather than fragmented. Another response has been an acknowledgment of divergence in perspectives followed by an attempt to offer a logical explanation for the presence of contradictions using insights from one or more of the critical methodologies commonly employed in biblical studies. Proponents of this approach have generally relied on insights from diachronic (historical-critical) or synchronic (literary-critical) methods. Some historical critics – especially those attuned to source and redaction criticisms – have suggested that the presence of disparate perspectives has to be attributed either to the fact that Luke likely borrowed material from multiple sources (source criticism) or to the editorial choices Luke made during the construction of the Gospel (redaction criticism).5 With their focus on the sources and redactions of the text, these scholars have placed more emphasis on the processes that have given the text its nal form than on the various aspects of the text in its present form. Along those lines, some have suggested that the contradictions in the Gospel resulted from the Lukan redactor’s struggle with the strong traditions of the Jesus material he had inherited. Highlighting the disparate portrayals of women in Luke, Turid Karlsen Seim 1995), 128. 3. Hans Conzelmann, The Theology of St. Luke, trans. Geoffrey Buswell (New York: Harper and Row, 1961). 4. Robert O’Toole, The Unity of Luke’s Theology: An Analysis of Luke-Acts (Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1984); Eduard Schweizer, Luke: A Challenge to Present Theology (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982). Cf. Francois Bovon, Luke the Theologian: Fifty-ve Years of Research (1950-2005), 2nd rev. ed. (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2006). 5. Barbara Shellard, New Light on Luke: Its Purpose, Sources and Literary Context (New York: T&T Clark, 2004). Shellard argues that Luke was the last canonical Gospel to be written, and that Luke borrowed material from the other three Gospels. Her suggestion that Luke relied on other sources does not really address why he would have retained contradictory perspectives.

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argues that ‘the available traditions about Jesus had a stronger prole in favour of women than Luke himself approved of’.6 She goes on to suggest Luke altered and added to the existing traditions in ways that portray women in a less positive light than the traditions themselves have done but did not completely attenuate them. Seen this way, the contradictions or ‘the double message’ resulted from Luke’s retention of certain traditions that did not necessarily cohere with his own worldview or preferred traditions.7 Seim is not interested solely in the historical questions or the processes that gave Luke’s Gospel its present form. In fact, she highlights how Luke’s narrative form allows ‘several and even contradicting voices to be heard in the course of the narrative’.8 But to the extent she focuses on the tension between traditions and redactions, an implication of her conclusions is that Luke redacted the multiple traditions he brought together but did not necessarily attempt to ensure the unity of the text or succeed in doing so. This approach presents Luke as a compiler and shaper of traditions without offering any constructive suggestions for making sense of the contradictions in the text. Some of the scholars who attempt to explain the issue of disparate viewpoints in light of insights from literary-critical (synchronic) methods portray Luke’s Gospel as an incoherent narrative. They appear to suggest that the divergence in perspectives is the result of a poorly constructed narrative or discourse that makes Luke’s worldview and theology incoherent and therefore difcult for readers to follow. Luke Timothy Johnson, one of the chief proponents of this view, notes that ‘although Luke consistently speaks about possessions, he does not speak about possessions consistently’.9 Johnson considers this a problem and expresses disappointment about Luke’s failure to offer his church or contemporary Christians any ‘concrete directive’ regarding ownership and proper use of wealth.10 Narrative critics like Jack Dean Kingsbury have highlighted the differences between the disparate perspectives in a manner that not only straties those viewpoints but also accords privileged position to one viewpoint at the expense of the rest. Kingsbury argues that, despite the presence of many voices in Luke’s narrative, there is a dominant voice that purveys the truth on various

6. See Turid Karlsen Seim, The Double Message: The Patterns of Gender in Luke-Acts (Edinburgh: T &T Clark, 1994), 4–9. Seim’s primary focus is on the incoherence between Luke’s Gospel and the book of Acts. But she also highlights the inconsistencies within the Gospel itself. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid., 7. 9. See Luke T. Johnson, Sharing Possessions: Mandate and Symbol of Faith (Philadelphia: Augsburg Fortress, 1981), 11–22. 10. Johnson, Sharing Possessions, 24–5.

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issues and themes while the other voices are hostile or indifferent to it.11 This purveyor of truth is usually the voice of Jesus or the narrator. Since the Gospel seemingly privileges a particular voice and its viewpoints, all the other voices in the Gospel are encouraged to accept it as normative. By extension, readers – both ancient and modern – are supposedly expected to embrace it. If one pursues this line of argument the third Gospel would be seen as a missionary document that was written to promote a specic worldview – one to which the author himself (or herself) must have subscribed – on themes central to Luke’s community. This approach can be described as narrative critical in its framework and methodology but theological in its emphasis and goals. In some cases, this brand of literary critical approach seems to be characterized by a proclivity to employ insights from narrative criticism for an explicitly theological agenda.12 In short, some proponents of historical and narrative critical approaches acknowledge that the third Gospel presents contradictory perspectives on several important themes, but some others downplay the divergence in perspectives. Most of them, however, approach the issue of contradictions as a problem that needs to be resolved and proceed to offer various explanations for the same from their methodological standpoints.

B. Fresh Approach to a Familiar Issue This book suggests a new way to approach the issue. My approach is threefold, containing: (a) an acknowledgement of the divergent and contradictory perspectives in Luke; (b) an explication of the manner in which various aspects of Luke’s narrative facilitate dialogues between the contradictory voices; (c) an argument that the presence of contradictions is a literary and ideological phenomenon that has ethical implications. Like others, I call attention to the many contradictory voices in the Gospel. But my approach is different in terms of the explication of those contradictions, their signicance in the text and their impact on its coherence and unity. I do not attempt to explain the differences between various perspectives in the Gospel from a historical critical standpoint. Suggesting that the divergence in viewpoints is a result of the multiple sources or mutually contradictory traditions that have been incorporated into the Gospel engenders, but does not sufciently

11. Jack D. Kingsbury, Conict in Luke: Jesus, Disciples, Authorities (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1991). 12. Kingsbury’s agenda appears to be more theological than literary-critical. See Kingsbury, Conict in Luke.

Introduction

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address, the question of why Luke would have retained perspectives that seemingly undermine the coherence of the text. I am not interested in determining the authorial intent, even if it were possible to do so, mainly because such an exercise entails more speculation than concrete evidence – textual or otherwise. Instead, despite the use of any historical critical terminology in this study, it focuses on the nal form of Luke and on the nature of the text as it is. Rather than seeing Luke as a poorly constructed narrative that lacks coherence and unity, as some narrative critics do, I highlight the sophisticated literary nature of the third Gospel. The book sheds new light on the issue by interpreting selected Lukan pericopae – and in several cases their parallels in Mark and/or Matthew – using insights from Mikhail Bakhtin, a Russian literary theorist. Employing Bakhtin’s concepts of polyphony and dialogism and other related concepts I show that the third Gospel exhibits two specic patterns: (a) it contains many voices that express disparate and contradictory perspectives concerning themes such as wealth and poverty, the role of women, the importance of doing vis-à-vis hearing, and the identity of Jesus, and (b) it facilitates lively, intense and continuous dialogues among those voices. The book calls attention to the various aspects of Luke’s narrative that facilitate and accentuate those patterns in order to show that the Gospel is polyphonic and dialogic, both on its own terms and in relation to the other synoptic Gospels, especially Mark. But it will do so without asking questions that are strictly historical critical in their orientation. I argue that Luke does not privilege any particular voice or perspective at the expense of the rest but enables all of them to participate in the ongoing dialogues as equal partners. Furthermore, I highlight the signicance of a Gospel such as this (with the many, divergent voices) both in its original context but also for contemporary society. In this reading, the presence of contradictory voices and the dialogues among them are seen as testaments to the evangelist’s superior artistic skills rather than to an inability to produce a coherent narrative. A kaleidoscope of voices also signies, although does not necessarily reect, a unique worldview. Luke emerges as a sophisticated literary work and a unique Gospel that is not only engaging but also offers a new, creative and dialogic vision of truth. Accordingly, the divergence in perspectives is not a problem that needs to be resolved but a literary and ideological phenomenon worth celebrating. I will expand on this motif in the nal chapter.

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C. The Design of this Book The book is an initial exploration of the possibilities for elucidating the issue of divergent voices in Luke using Bakhtin’s concepts. Given the literary, historical and theological relations between the Gospel of Luke and Acts of the Apostles, this book would be well served by comparing the polyphonic and dialogic patterns in Luke to those of Acts. However, because such a task is too complex for this book, it will not focus on Acts except for occasional semantic references to it to explicate Luke’s use of specic terms. The book will analyse selected pericopae from Luke’s Gospel and, wherever relevant, their synoptic parallels in light of relevant concepts from Bakhtin. The book is not designed to be comprehensive in its treatment of primary texts or in its engagement with the secondary literature on Luke and/or Bakhtin. The book is divided into ve chapters. Chapter 1 calls attention to some existing works in biblical studies that have employed Bakhtin’s insights and highlights the need for, as well as the potential contributions of, such study. It introduces the relevant Bakhtinian concepts and issues from Luke’s Gospel. Specically, it explicates the two key and interrelated Bakhtinian concepts of polyphony and dialogism that will be employed as the overarching concepts at various points in the book. It also sets the stage for reading Luke in light of the two concepts and claries the scope and method of this study. Chapter 2 explicates the issue of Jesus’ identity in Luke. Employing Bakhtin’s concepts of exotopy (outsidedness) and dialogism it highlights the polyphonic nature of Luke’s story of Jesus’ identity and the intense dialogues among the many voices in Luke that express divergent perceptions of Jesus. It uses the Nazareth episode (Luke 4.16-30) as the point of entry to call attention to the various aspects of the narrative that facilitate continuous dialogues between those voices. Drawing upon the Bakhtinian concepts of loophole and essential surplus, the third chapter elucidates the dialogic tension between two major emphases in the Gospel – the emphasis on doing and the emphasis on hearing. The chapter uses Luke 10.25-42 – the parable of the good Samaritan and the story of Martha and Mary – as the starting point to highlight the manner in which those two emphases are equiponderated. It will also explore how the various aspects of Luke 10.25-42 – Luke’s additions, alterations and juxtaposition – place the two emphases in a dialogic relationship with each other. Chapter 4 calls attention to the polyphony of perspectives the Gospel offers on wealth and possessions. It employs Bakhtin’s concepts of carnival and carnivalization of literature, and uses the story of Lazarus and the rich man as the point of entry, to shed new light on the disparate, conicting and even confusing viewpoints one nds in Luke. The fth and nal chapter brings together

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the explication of the key observations from these chapters and highlights the polyphonic and dialogic patterns in the Gospel as a whole. It foregrounds the diverse nature and contexts of Luke’s original community and discusses how a Gospel such as this would have been pertinent in that setting. Rather than seek to ascertain authorial intent – such as Luke’s motivations for authoring a work of this nature – it explores the signicance of this gospel for its rst-century audience, given the polyvalent backgrounds of that community. Furthermore, the chapter calls attention to the ethical implications of a dialogic reading of the third Gospel for the contemporary context. The question of why such a dialogic reading of Luke (rather than a novel such as The Brothers Karamazov) might have some signicance today and the related question of which aspects of current contexts make such a reading especially relevant will be discussed. Finally, the chapter will highlight the problems with as well as drawbacks in the various Bakhtinian concepts employed in this study.

1 READING LUKE IN LIGHT OF BAKHTIN: THEORY, POSSIBILITIES, LIMITATIONS, SCOPE OF THE STUDY

Introduction Numerous studies have offered helpful insights on the issue of contradictory perspectives in Luke’s Gospel. Several scholars have applied Bakhtin’s theories productively to specic books and individual pericopae in the Bible, including the third Gospel. Few, however, have explicated the issue of divergent perspectives using Bakhtin’s concepts in a book-length project. This chapter sets the stage for such a reading by introducing the specic Bakhtinian concepts that could be useful for shedding new light on the issue and highlighting the potential contributions of this study. It will offer a working denition of two major concepts – polyphony and dialogism – that will be employed throughout the book as overarching notions. It will also clarify the method, scope and limitations of this study.

A. Bakhtin, Biblical Studies and the Gospel of Luke Mikhail Bakhtin can be – and has been – different things to different people: literary critic, theorist, linguist, philosopher, ethicist and social thinker. Bakhtin was largely unknown in the Soviet Union during much of his life but became well known by the time he died in 1975. He was rst introduced to Western academia in the 1960s primarily by Julia Kristeva, in the context of her work on the concept of intertextuality, and also by Roland Barthes. The biography of Bakhtin by Katerina Clark and Michael Holquist introduced him to a wider audience in the English-speaking world.1 Bakhtin has gained popularity in

1. Katerina Clark and Michael Holquist, Mikhail Bakhtin (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984).

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Western academia, mostly posthumously, for his contributions in the elds of literary theory and linguistics. In the eld of literary theory he is best remembered for his new theory of the novel based on his analyses of the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Francois Rabelais, specically for his introduction – or popularization – of concepts such as polyphony, dialogism and carnivalization of literature. His two books that merit special attention are Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics and Rabelais and His World.2 The former highlights the polyphonic and dialogic nature of Dostoevsky’s novels, but the latter is about carnivalization of literature, especially during the time of Rabelais. In these seminal works, Bakhtin has highlighted the ways in which Dostoevsky and Rabelais have inuenced the literary and cultural worlds respectively. The introduction of Bakhtin’s theories to Western academia turned him into a phenomenon within a short period. There was a sudden outburst of interest in his ideas in several quarters, especially among literary critics. But the phenomenon did not have an immediate impact on the eld of biblical studies. However, in the last 20 years, several scholars with a literary bent have applied Bakhtin’s concepts to various texts, including Luke’s Gospel. Walter Reed’s Dialogues of the Word: The Bible as Literature According to Bakhtin foregrounds dialogic patterns in the Bible as a whole, but especially in several New Testament books.3 Reed illuminates the ways in which pericopae from various books, genres and time periods interact with each other dialogically on synchronic and diachronic levels. Synchronically, he calls attention to the dialogues between different various voices within each book. Diachronically, he highlights how different voices and perspectives in a given book converse with their counterparts in books that precede them chronologically. For instance, Reed contends that certain viewpoints in Luke’s Gospel might be responding to each other and to voices in Mark’s Gospel, which is generally believed to predate Luke. Carol Newsom’s inuential study on the book of Job relies extensively on Bakhtin’s insights, ‘particularly his distinction between monologic and dialogic truth and his conception of the polyphonic text’.4 Building upon Bakhtin’s ideas on genre she presents the book as a bildungsroman that juxtaposes disparate genres and contrasting voices without privileging one over another. 2. Mikhail M. Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, ed. and trans. Caryl Emerson, Theory and History of Literature, Vol. 8 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984); Mikhail M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Helene Iswolsky (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984). 3. Walter L. Reed, Dialogues of the Word: The Bible as Literature According to Bakhtin (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). 4. Carol A. Newsom, The Book of Job: A Contest of Moral Imaginations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 11.

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Focusing primarily on synchronic aspects of the book, but without disregarding diachronic issues, she highlights how the juxtaposition of different genres embodying contradictory ideas creates dialogic truth. In her reading, the very features of the book that undermine its coherence facilitate the dialogic truth, which is made up of multiple perspectives. Kenneth Craig’s literary reading of the book of Esther employs Bakhtin’s insights on genre to illuminate the carnivalesque aspects of the story, especially the motif of reversals.5 Barbara Green’s recent work on 1 Samuel draws upon Bakhtin’s concepts of authoring, chronotope and loophole to illuminate the characterization of Saul on a literary level, as well as its signicance within historical context of exile.6 David McCracken’s The Scandal of the Gospels: Jesus, Story, and Offense employs insights from Søren Kierkegaard and Mikhail Bakhtin to analyse the literary and philosophical aspects of ‘scandalous’ and ‘offensive’ pericopae in the Gospels.7 The concepts of ‘scandal’ and ‘offense’, the focus of McCracken’s work on the Gospels, are related primarily to Kierkegaard’s philosophical ideas. Aspects of Bakhtin’s theory of carnival (or carnivalesque) resonate with those concepts, but Bakhtin has not developed them in explicit terms. Seen in this light, McCracken’s work makes indirect use of Bakhtin’s ideas. In Not the Righteous but Sinners: M. M. Bakhtin’s Theory of Aesthetics and the Problem of Reader-Character Interaction in Matthew’s Gospel, John A. Barnet employs the concept of authoring – among other ideas – to explicate the role readers play in authoring the Gospel.8 In a recent article on the parable of Lazarus and the rich man (Lk. 16.19-31), David Gowler uses Bakhtin’s insights on polyglossia and dialogue to analyze the function of the parable in its various contexts and to highlight the ‘dialogues between text, culture and ideology’.9 A Dialogic Reading of ‘The Steward’ Parable (Luke 16:1-9) by C-S Abraham Cheong employs Bakhtin’s theories selectively to shed light on the synchronic aspects of the conversations between the parable and its surrounding pericopae.10

5. Kenneth M. Craig, Reading Esther: A Case for the Literary Carnivalesque (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1995). 6. Barbara Green, How Are the Mighty Fallen? A Dialogical Study of King Saul in 1 Samuel. JSOTSup 365 (London: Shefeld Academic Press, 2003). 7. See David McCracken, The Scandal of the Gospels: Jesus, Story, and Offense (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). 8. John A. Barnet, Not the Righteous but Sinners: M. M. Bakhtin’s Theory of Aesthetics and the Problem of Reader-Character Interaction in Matthew’s Gospel (New York: T&T Clark, 2003). 9. David Gowler, ‘At His Gate Lay a Poor Man: A Dialogic Reading of Luke 16:19-31’, Perspectives in Religious Studies 32.3 (2005): 249–65. 10. C-S Abraham Cheong, A Dialogic Reading of ‘The Steward’ Parable (Luke 16:1-9) (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2000).

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Barbara Green’s introductory book on Bakhtin offers a more comprehensive list of scholars who have applied his ideas to various parts of the Bible.11 These works have highlighted the usefulness of Bakhtin’s theories for illuminating the obscure, obfuscated and unexplored aspects of biblical texts. They have shown that the Russian critic, hitherto prominent only among secular literary critics such as Kristeva and Barthes, can be applied creatively and constructively to biblical texts. However, none of them has employed his concepts in a sustained fashion to explicate the issue of divergent perspectives in Luke's Gospel or to call attention to the dialogic and polyphonic patterns in the Gospel.12 That is precisely the task this book seeks to undertake. It calls attention to the dialogic patterns in the Gospel and demonstrates how interpreting selected Lukan pericopae in light of Bakhtin’s concepts can shed new light on the presence of multiple and contradictory perspectives.

B. Bakhtin and His Concept of Polyphony Bakhtin’s literary contributions are numerous and multifaceted. I will not attempt to enumerate all of them here, let alone discuss them in great detail. Instead, the focus in this chapter is on explicating two key and interrelated Bakhtinian concepts – polyphony and dialogism – whose application to select Lukan pericopae has the potential to illuminate the Gospel in new ways and to offer fresh insights on the issue of divergent perspectives. In the subsequent four chapters, I will introduce and employ other closely connected Bakhtinian concepts such as exotopy (outsidedness), loophole, surplus and carnival that would be helpful in analysing the aforementioned themes. This study will reveal Luke to be a fertile ground for creative application of those concepts.

1. A Working Denition of Polyphony Julia Kristeva, who introduced Bakhtin to Western academia, uses the term polyphony broadly to characterize the novels of Dostoevsky as well the works of several others such as Balzac, Joyce and Kafka.13 Bakhtin also uses the term with reference to the works of several prominent authors such as

11. Barbara Green, Mikhail Bakhtin and Biblical Scholarship: An Introduction. Semeia Studies no. 38. (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2000). 12. Most of the works on the biblical books that have employ Bakhtin’s theories in a book-length project have been in the area of Hebrew Bible. Green’s characterization of King Saul, Craig’s study of genre in the book of Esther and Newsom’s work on the book of Job are three prominent examples. See Green, How Are the Mighty Fallen?; Newsom, The Book of Job; Craig, Reading Esther. 13. See Julia Kristeva, ‘Word, Dialogue, and Novel’, in The Kristeva Reader, ed. Toril Moi (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 50.

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Shakespeare, Rabelais, Cervantes, Balzac and Dostoevsky.14 However, he considers Dostoevsky the champion of polyphony. While introducing the term polyphony in the 1920s he argued that Dostoevsky was ‘the creator of the polyphonic novel’.15 According to this view Dostoevsky invented a radically new genre of novels that were artistically and ideologically different from all existing novels, which he considered monologic. He modied his position a few years later to suggest that, while polyphony as a novelistic genre and principle had always existed in literature, at least since Nikolai Gogol, Dostoevsky had perfected and made extensive use of that principle. Along those lines, he describes The Brothers Karamazov as the zenith, the most polyphonic of Dostoevsky’s novels. Although Bakhtin employs the term polyphony extensively in his writings, especially in the earlier ones, the task of dening it is fraught with difculties. As Gary Saul Morson and Caryl Emerson, two leading Bakhtin scholars point out, a major difculty is that ‘Bakhtin never explicitly denes polyphony . . . he has provided a great deal of information about polyphony, but no explicit denition of it’ in any of his extant works.16 It is unclear whether he offered such denition in any of the works that are no longer available. Several of his ideas on the German novel compiled in a manuscript never saw the light of the day, as the manuscript was destroyed in a German attack on the publishing house Soviet Writer during World War II. Bakhtin is said to have used remaining sections of the book for tobacco paper, which was in short supply around the same time.17 Despite the absence of an explicit denition of polyphony, one can deduce a basic idea of that concept from the various contexts in which Bakhtin employed it in the available works. He discusses the concept extensively, but not always lucidly, in The Problems of Dostoevksy’s Poetics. Morson and Emerson offer helpful clarications about his thoughts on the concept.18 What is presented here is a working denition of Bakhtin’s concept of polyphony based on primary sources, as well as secondary literature such as Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics by Morson and Emerson. Another important book on Bakhtin that elucidates his understanding of the term polyphony is Caryl Emerson’s The

14. Bakhtin, Problems, 33–4. 15. Bakhtin, Problems, 7. 16. Gary Saul Morson and Caryl Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 231. 17. Katerina Clark and Michael Holquist, Mikhail Bakhtin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 272–3. See also Stuart Kelly, The Book of Lost Books: An Incomplete History of All the Great Books You Will Never Read (New York: Random House, 2006), xv. 18. Morson and Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin, 231–68.

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First Hundred Years of Mikhail Bakhtin.19 The related concept of dialogism will be dened at a later point in this chapter. It appears that Bakhtin understood polyphony as a literary and ideological phenomenon that has signicant ethical implications. As a literary phenomenon it signies several interconnected aspects. It refers primarily to the presence of multiple, and often divergent, voices in a literary text. Beyond that it describes other aspects such as the unique manner of their interaction with each other and with the author; their autonomous and independent status vis-à-vis other voices and the author; the absence of hierarchy; and a special method of authoring. The multiple voices, which Bakhtin calls the ‘voice-ideas,’20 belong to, represent, and express the viewpoints of various characters in a given literary text. These voices are ‘fully valid consciousnesses’ that are capable of expressing themselves freely.21 A combination of several such consciousnesses, initiated by the author, is the chief characteristic of polyphonic novels. Equally, if not more, important is an intense and continuous interaction among them. As I will discuss later, Bakhtin uses a different term – dialogism – specically to characterize their interaction. Bakhtin claries that the combination of numerous consciousnesses, a central aspect of polyphonic novels, entails not a direct combination but a meeting of, and encounter between, various elements. Such a process does not attenuate their autonomy from each other. The author maintains a creative tension between combination and autonomy, and facilitates a unity of the event ‘with several autonomous participants’.22 Accordingly, no voice or consciousness is dependent on another for its existence or to realize its full potential in the narrative world. As he describes it, ‘the essence of polyphony lies precisely in the fact that the voices remain independent and, as such, are combined in a unity of higher order than in homophony’.23 Bakhtin rarely made a distinction between autonomy and independence but simply, even somewhat simplistically, used the terms interchangeably to suggest that autonomy and independence are central aspects of polyphonic novels that enable the various voices to disagree with and challenge each other. Related to autonomy is the motif of unmergedness, which is relevant in the

19. Caryl Emerson, The First Hundred Years of Mikhail Bakhtin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 127–49. 20. Bakhtin, Problems, 91. 21. Bakhtin, Problems, 21. 22. Bakhtin, Problems, 21. 23. Bakhtin, Problems, 21.

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context of relations between different characters. In a polyphonic novel, the characters maintain spatial separation from one another. Perhaps more aptly, the author ensures such distance. Similarly, there has to be conceptual and ideological separation between them in order for a meaningful dialogue to occur. The extent of polyphony depends on the spatial and conceptual distance between consciousnesses of different characters. And the intensity of interactions depends on the distinctness of each character’s worldview. One cannot discount the possibility of instances wherein disparate voices in a polyphonic novel agree with each other conceptually and/or ideologically. However, such instances neither indicate the voices’ lack of independence nor do they undermine their autonomy from each other. As Bakhtin has observed, ‘a plurality of independent and unmerged voices and consciousnesses’ is, in fact, the hallmark of polyphonic novels such as Dostoevsky’s works.24 A byproduct of autonomy is hierarchy – or lack thereof – in the context of relations between different voices. Polyphonic novels accommodate divergent voices and enable them to enter into dialogues with each other as equal partners. Given their autonomous status and unmerged worldviews, the consciousnesses of different voices express disparate viewpoints. A polyphonic author is, in theory, not afraid of the presence of multiple consciousnesses that disagree with each other but designs novels in which they meet on an equal footing. Such equality creates situations in which no viewpoint, not even that of the author, is in a position to dominate the conversation. It cannot be true that all voices are indeed equal but, as a principal, polyphony affords equal rights for all voices. In an ideal polyphonic setting, there is no room for hierarchy among the many characters, and no voice is able to monopolize the conversation. But such ideal settings are rare, and polyphony is a sound concept whose full potential may not always be realized. That is, although all the characters in those novels supposedly have equal footing, they don’t always have equal say. Some are quite vocal, but others are noticeably silent for the most part, not necessarily on their own volition.

2. Polyphonic Author and the Many Consciousnesses The motifs of equality and unmergedness are pertinent also in the context of relations between author and characters. Polyphonic authors treat the characters as equals, and the voices of the characters have same rights as the authorial voice. A key insight from Bakhtin is that characters in these novels disagree not just with each other but also with the author. The structure of the novel allows

24. Bakhtin, Problems, 6.

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the readers to be introduced to disparate, contesting viewpoints, some of which are incongruent with the authorial viewpoint. In such a setting the authorial perspective expressed through the narrator or some other character does not occupy a privileged position so as to dominate the dialogue, but becomes one among the many in the narrative. It is considered equal to other voices and consciousnesses participating in the dialogue. As J. M. Coetzee aptly notes, ‘a fully dialogical novel is one in which there is no dominating, central authorial consciousness, and therefore no claim to truth or authority, only competing voices and discourses’.25 Thus, in polyphonic novels, there is a clear difference between authorial and authoritative voices. There is room for the former but not for the latter. And the difference between the two is signicant from both literary and ideological standpoints. Another key aspect of polyphony is the motif of autonomy, which is relevant in the context of relationship between author and characters. As the aforementioned distinction between authorial and authoritative voices suggests, the characters in polyphonic novels are not subjected to authorial oversight of perspectives. On the contrary, the author allows – and enables – them to question his viewpoints.26 The characters’ ability to challenge the author stems from the freedom and independence they enjoy. These two aspects accentuate their ability to refuse to serve the ideological interests of the author or concur with his nalizing denitions. Bakhtin observes that, This astonishing internal independence of Dostoevsky’s characters . . . is above all due to the freedom and independence characters possess, in the very structure of the novel, vis-à-vis the author – or, more accurately, their freedom vis-à-vis the usual externalizing and nalizing authorial denitions [of characters].27

Bakhtin suggests that the two aspects are part of the author’s design, which grants the author a special position that is essential for envisioning and conveying the dialogic sense of truth. The design also enables the author to facilitate conversations between different characters without exercising any control over them. It allows the characters to articulate their own perspectives and to interact with each other and with the author as equal partners. Morson and Emerson observe that Bakhtin’s concept of polyphony consists primarily of these two aspects – the special position of the author and

25. J. M. Coetzee, ‘The Artist at High Tide’ in The New York Review of Books (2 March 1995). 26. I use the pronoun ‘his’ with reference to the author because the reference is usually to Dostoevsky and because Bakhtin uses it that way. 27. Bakhtin, Problems, 13.

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the dialogic sense of truth.28 They seem to suggest that the more important of the two is the dialogic sense of truth, which ‘is absolutely constitutive of polyphony’.29 The two aspects, however, are closely interconnected. Just as the vision of polyphony requires a plurality of consciousnesses, because no single voice can represent the complete truth, the dialogic sense of truth can be conceived and communicated only when an author relinquishes control over his characters. As Bakhtin aptly observes, Dostoevsky’s modus operandi for embracing and incorporating the dialogic sense of truth in his novels was to surrender his authorial control and allow the consciousness of one or more characters to disagree with him.30 Bakhtin’s assertion that Dostoevsky actively accommodated dissenting voices and consciousnesses is at the centre of his theory of polyphonic novels.31 But the challenge for a polyphonic author lies not necessarily in creating and accommodating the many, divergent voices but in (re)presenting them without regulating them. Considering the fact that the author is the sole creator of a literary work, a pertinent question here is: how could contradictory voices coexist in the novel? One response would be that the author creates multiple consciousnesses to represent the different possible viewpoints and makes room even for those that are incompatible with his own stance. Artistic considerations often play a key role in the author’s decision to relinquish control over his characters. But artistic factors are connected to the author’s ideology, worldview and personality that are in turn inuenced by his background, history and various contexts. Bakhtin often insisted that the ‘unheard-of freedom of voices in Dostoevsky’s polyphony’ has to be seen in the context of ‘the exceptionally acute contradictions of early Russian capitalism and the duality of Dostoevsky as a social personality . . .’32 Bakhtin elaborates on the link between the novel, ideology and the author’s contexts in Art and Answerability.33 One can see a similar aspect in Bakhtin’s background that may have inuenced his thinking. As Michael Holquist notes Bakhtin ‘spent his gymnasium years in Vilnius and Odessa, two cities that stood out even in the patch work Russian Empire as unusually heterogeneous in their mix of cultures and languages’.34 His commitment to dialogic worldview and an emphasis on

28. Morson and Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin, 232–4. 29. Morson and Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin, 232. 30. Bakhtin, Problems, 89–90. 31. Morson and Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin, 232–3. 32. Bakhtin, Problems, 35. 33. Mikhail Bakhtin, Art and Answerability: Early Philosophical Essays by M.M. Bakhtin (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990), 1. 34. Michael Holquist, Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World. 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2002), 1.

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the link between author’s contexts and ideology become especially signicant in light of his background. A byproduct of the aforementioned freedom is the motif of unmergedness as it applies to the author’s relationship with his characters. It allows the characters to maintain their space and identity vis-à-vis the author and to ensure that their consciousnesses are not overshadowed by that of the author. Their unmergedness is not a aw but an advantage and a key requirement for dialogic sense of truth. On the one hand, a level of proximity between various voices allows them to interact with each other’s ideas. But any attempt by the author to eliminate the space between characters or between himself and characters undermines the uniqueness of various perspectives and, by extension, the value of the conversations in the novel. Therefore, the unmergedness, or the distance between characters, has to be kept in tension with proximity between characters as well as between the author and characters. The key is to stay ‘in intimate contact with someone else’s discourse, and yet at the same time not fuse with it, not swallow it up, not dissolve in itself the other’s power to mean’.35

3. Polyphonic Versus Monologic Not all novels are polyphonic in nature, as Bakhtin himself was keen to point out. One can see a distinction between polyphonic and monologic novels by juxtaposing the novels of two of his fellow Russians – Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy. Using The Brothers Karamazov and War and Peace as the primary examples, Bakhtin argued that Dostoevsky’s novels are generally polyphonic while those of Tolstoy are monologic. In his view, monologic novels do accommodate divergent viewpoints, as do polyphonic novels, but they almost invariably contain a dominant or privileged viewpoint to which all the others are subordinated. The dominant viewpoint is usually expressed by the narrator or one of the main characters. It belongs to the author and is often presented as the only valid perspective, which the readers are expected to embrace. As Newsom aptly observes, ‘readers may resist or reject it, but that privileged perspective is the one that the book and its implied author encourage the reader to adopt, the voice of “truth” within the narrative world’.36 Monologic novels privilege authorial perspectives to the extent of overshadowing or negating other perspectives while appearing to be inclusive. Such works make little room for divergent worldviews, for characters to differ with the author’s viewpoints or for debate. In monologic works, the author is

35. Bakhtin, Problems, 64. 36. Newsom, The Book of Job, 18.

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the ‘ultimate semantic authority’ that regulates every expression of truth.37 He frequently intervenes in the conversations among characters as an evaluating voice, with the result that the nonconforming voices and views are suppressed, marginalized or presented as partial truths. Occasionally, they are incorporated into the author’s own ideology and worldview in order to promote unity of thought and to give an impression of unied perspectives. There is, in Tolstoy’s novels, a certain level of hostility towards nonconforming characters and intolerance towards divergent viewpoints, and a ‘deliberate (polemical) failure to understand the habitual way of conceiving the world’.38 A monologic author does not generally treat the characters in his novels as his equals or with respect. In Bakhtin’s view, part of what makes Tolstoy’s novels monologic is his propensity to make room for omniscient or intrusive narrators, who seek to reveal to the readers the inner thoughts of the characters and their intense emotions.39 These narrators seek to convey to the readers private information about characters with the result that they often inuence the readers’ perception of the characters as well as their interpretation of events in the novel. James Wood, who is less critical of Tolstoy’s narrators, calls attention to the paradoxical nature of Tolstoy’s role as a narrator. He rightly notes that ‘readers always feel that Tolstoy is both an intrusive narrator – breaking in to explain things, telling us what to think, writing essays and sermons – and a miraculously absent one, who simply lets his world narrate itself’.40 Nevertheless, Tolstoy’s penchant for commenting on the inner thoughts of his characters makes him, more often than not, an omniscient and intrusive narrator. Narrators of this nature are generally not seen in polyphonic novels. Monologic worldview divides thoughts into two distinct categories: certain thoughts and ‘other’ thoughts.41 The former are considered authentic and normative while the latter are pushed to the periphery. Such a worldview posits an unbridgeable gulf between the two categories and operates on the principle of ‘tertium non datur: a thought is afrmed or repudiated’.42 Furthermore, Bakhtin observes that, ‘all conrmed ideas are merged in the unity of the author’s seeing

37. Morson and Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin, 238. 38. Mikhail Bakhtin, ‘Discourse in the Novel,’ in The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 402. 39. In the second chapter of this book, I will call attention to Wayne Booth’s suggestion that the narrator of Mark’s Gospel is often intrusive. 40. James Wood, ‘Movable Types: How “War and Peace” Works’, in The New Yorker (November 26, 2007). 41. Bakhtin, Problems, 79–83. 42. Bakhtin, Problems, 80. ‘Tertium non datur’ literally means ‘a third is not granted’. A thought is either valid or invalid, either afrmed or negated, but there is no middle ground.

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and representing consciousness; the unconrmed ideas are distributed among the heroes, no longer as signifying ideas’.43 As Morson and Emerson note, from a Bakhtinian perspective, the monologic conception of truth is built out of two elements: (a) the separate thoughts, and (b) the system of thoughts.44 Separate thoughts are those that became independent after having been uttered. They observe that ‘the intellectual heroes of monologic thought were great synthesizers, who attempted to frame disparate thoughts into a coherent, all-encompassing system or an ideology’.45 Newsom elucidates this phenomenon further when she says that the ‘system of monologic thought is structured in such a way that, even if it is actually the product of many minds, it is capable of being spoken by a single voice’.46 One can see such systematization and monologic expression in Tolstoy’s War and Peace. It is this proclivity towards systematization that Bakhtin was especially critical of. Bakhtin’s theory of the novel highlights how Dostoevsky authored a different, unique genre of novels, one that does not have a proclivity towards systematization. It highlights the manner in which Dostoevsky’s novels are often characterized by the presence of numerous unmerged voices that represent divergent worldviews. There is a constant interplay between those voices that are engaged in a continuous debate – often acrimoniously – as equal partners. Bakhtin argues that the author himself creates polyphonic settings in a novel by juxtaposing a plurality of voices that advocate divergent worldviews and by allowing them to thrive, free from any authorial hegemony and intervention.47 Although he portrays Dostoevsky as the best polyphonic author and The Brothers Karamazov as an excellent example, he claries that not all the novels of Dostoevsky are polyphonic.

4. Polyphony and the Authorial Viewpoint Dominant authorial viewpoints, a hallmark of monologic novels, are noticeably absent from polyphonic works. The authorial perspective that enjoys a privileged position and exhibits hegemonic tendencies in the works of authors such as Tolstoy would not be conducive to the kind of dialogic activity one nds in Dostoevsky’s novels. However, one cannot suggest that such dialogic activity amounts to, or stems from, the absence of an authorial viewpoint or ideology. Given the absence of hierarchical relationships among various voices

43. Bakhtin, Problems, 82. 44. Morson and Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin, 235. See also Bakhtin, Problems, 93. 45. Morson and Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin, 236. 46. Newsom, Book of Job, 21–2. 47. Bakhtin, Problems, 204.

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in the polyphonic novels it can occasionally be difcult to tease out the author’s viewpoint from those of others, but the author does express his viewpoints that become key participants in the conversations. Morson and Emerson point out that Bakhtin even spoke of (ideological) commitment on the part of the author.48 Aware of the potential for a misconception about the presence and role of authorial viewpoint, they clarify that Polyphony is often criticized as a theory that posits the absence of authorial point of view, but Bakhtin explicitly states the polyphonic author neither lacks nor fails to express his ideas and values. Time and again Bakhtin speaks of commitment and ‘activity’ of the polyphonic author. He also maintains that a work without ‘an authorial position is in general impossible . . .. The issue here is not an absence of, but a radical change in, the author’s position.49

The authorial viewpoint is fully present in polyphonic novels but, unlike its monologic counterparts, it is neither overbearing nor does it express itself in a hegemonic fashion.50 The structure of the polyphonic novel and the freedom granted to all voices allow non-authorial perspectives to articulate their viewpoints and be heard. Other viewpoints enjoy such freedom not because of the absence of the author’s own viewpoint but despite its active presence or perhaps because of it. The perspectives of various characters thrive not at the expense of the author’s own perspectives but alongside, or despite, them. In short, in monologic novels such as War and Peace, the author’s perspective is both distinct and dominant.51 In polyphonic novels, on the other hand, it may be distinct from those of characters but it is not superior or dominant.

5. Polyphony and the Role of the Readers Novels that are broadly polyphonic in nature are not always read along those lines. Regardless of the nature of a novel, its explication will depend, to a great extent, on the interpretive moves made by individual readers, communities and their worldviews. A reader or a community might approach a monologic novel seeking to nd divergent voices and perhaps even succeed in nding them where they do not exist. Conversely, others might explicate a polyphonic novel in ways that portray it as monologic. The result is that a text that is polyphonic

48. See Morson and Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin, 79. I will discuss this aspect further in the last chapter. 49. Morson and Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin, 232–3. 50. Morson and Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin, 232. 51. Bakhtin, Problems, 203–4.

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by nature can appear less so because of the interpretive moves the readers may have made – intentionally or unintentionally. This is not to question the existence of meaning and design within the text itself or to suggest, as those attuned to the theories of Stanley Fish might, that the meaning of a text is produced entirely during the process of reading. Fish’s well-known argument that ‘the reader’s response is not to the meaning; it is the meaning’52 is not directly relevant here. But his suggestion that the text and the reader share joint responsibility for the production of meaning is pertinent. It presents meaning not as a passive object that can be readily extracted but as a uid entity that emerges in the process of interaction between the text and the reader. In the context of a discussion about polyphonic novels, one can build upon Fish’s suggestion to say that, regardless of any possible inherent design or meaning in/of a text, the explication and transmission of meaning will depend on several factors such as the readers’ openness to indeterminacy and the degree to which they bring assumptions to the text that shape their reading. That is, their hermeneutical moves and goodwill play an important role in explicating the meaning. Readers themselves cannot be polyphonic in the same way certain texts are, but their approach to the texts and the reading choices they make can be described as polyphonic or monologic. Whereas Fish is mostly concerned with the existence of meaning – or lack thereof – in a text and the role of the readers in creating meaning, the focus here is on the role the readers play in explication of the meaning. In the nal chapter of this book I will return to the issue of the role the interpretive communities play in explicating a text’s meaning.

6. Polyphony as a Unique Process Bakhtin argued that polyphonic novels ought to be created in a unique way in order to make them distinct from monologic works. As Morson and Emerson have highlighted, he situates polyphony as a (superior) alternative to both Romantic inspirational and formalist models.53 They point out that the inspirational models accord special importance to a sudden burst of inspiration that leaves little room for dialogic activity, which is an essential aspect of polyphony. In the formalistic mode, on the other hand, the author generally

52. Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 3. 53. Morson and Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin, 242. Bakhtin’s 1928 book The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship is to date perhaps the most constructive critique of Russian Formalism. See Mikhail Bakhtin, The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship: A Critical Introduction to Sociological Poetics, trans. Albert J. Wehrle (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978).

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follows a pre-drawn plan that consists primarily of lling in the details of that plan. Morson and Emerson also suggest that such rigidity of formalism can be seen in Edgar Allan Poe’s essay ‘The Philosophy of Composition’.54 Describing his approach to writing, Poe boasts he had ‘the least difculty in recalling to mind the progressive steps of any of my compositions’.55 From a polyphonic perspective these are the signs of an author who dictates every move of his characters. An authentic dialogue requires the author to allow characters to encounter other characters in unexpected ways and to enter into dialogues. To an extent, Dostoevsky initiates those encounters that have the potential to lead to new dialogues but he does not control the process or destiny of those encounters. In his Dostoevsky book Bakhtin quotes an observation from Viktor Shklovsky that sums up this phenomenon. ‘Dostoevsky’s plans contain by their very nature an open-endedness, which in effect refutes them as plans.’56 Shklovksy’s argument sounds somewhat paradoxical but its essence is that Dostoevsky’s focus is on continuously initiating new dialogues and continuing existing dialogues by provoking new responses rather than on bringing a closure or a resolution to the dialogue. From a Bakhtinian perspective, Dostoevsky facilitated dialogues by bringing together voices and personalities that can speak their minds without any constraints. But facilitating dialogues is not merely about having numerous characters of disparate worldviews inhabit the narrative space from one end of the text to the other. Instead, it is also about the author being in dialogue with the characters and having those characters enter into conversations with each other throughout the story world. A polyphonic author ‘seeks words and plot situations that provoke, tease, exhort, dialogize’.57 Monologic novels promote inferior or inadequate forms of dialogue that were nalized beforehand. But in polyphonic works dialogues unfold ‘in the real present of the creative process’, and the author addresses the characters as if they were alive and able to respond.58

54. Morson and Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin, 244. 55. Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Philosophy of Composition’, in The Great Short Works of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. G. R. Thompson (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), 530. 56. Bakhtin, Problems, 39. 57. Bakhtin, Problems, 39. 58. Bakhtin, Problems, 63.

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C. The Concept of Dialogism Closely related to, and yet different from, the concept of polyphony is dialogism, another Bakhtinian leitmotif that has been dened briey – although not explicitly – in the context of a discussion on polyphony. The term polyphony refers to many aspects of the polyphonic novel, but it primarily signies the presence of disparate voices and their mutual interaction as equals. Dialogism has a more specic focus, in that it usually refers to an active interplay and exchange of ideas between two or more divergent voices, including that of the narrator, in a literary space. Whereas polyphony broadly refers to the nature of a text, dialogism specically describes the eventness in a given text.59 The former describes what a text is but the latter signies what occurs in the text. In short, since dialogism refers to the verbal activity in the text, it can be described as verbal polyphony. But the line dividing the two terms is thin and porous, and Bakhtin frequently uses them interchangeably. The converse aspect of dialogism is monologism, and the antonym of polyphony is homophony, which he rarely mentions.60 In addition to accommodating divergent voices, a polyphonic author facilitates scenarios in which characters representing disparate perspectives can come together and participate in continuous dialogues with each other and with the author. Bakhtin observed that Dostoevsky ‘brought together ideas and worldviews, which in real life were absolutely estranged and deaf to one another, and forced them to quarrel . . .’61 Commenting on Dostoevsky’s strategies for facilitating intense dialogues between divergent voices, Morson and Emerson observe that ‘he also tended to conne his heroes to small spaces (thresholds, corridors, and other locales for scandal)’, which allowed him ‘to create the most intense dialogues among people from different ideological camps, professions, backgrounds, even different eras’.62 Polyphonic novels place great emphasis on independent and unmerged status for different voices and characters. At the same time one of their chief characteristics is the constant interaction between the unmerged voices leading to a dialogue – among different characters – on major issues in the text. These two aspects – unmergedness and dialogue – have a symbiotic relationship. The unmergedness of different characters and their independent status allows them to maintain their distinct identity. They provide the characters a level of aesthetical distance from each other – even as they reside in the same literary

59. Carol A. Newsom, ‘Bakhtin, the Bible, and Dialogic Truth’, JR 76/2 (1996): 290–306. 60. He mentions it at the beginning of Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 21. 61. Bakhtin, Problems, 91. 62. Morson and Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin, 418.

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space – that grants them unique viewpoints and perspectives about others. The unique perspectives, in turn, enable them to participate meaningfully in conversations and to contribute from their distinct vantage point. Bakhtin calls this aesthetical distance outsidedness or exotopy, which I will dene in detail in the second chapter of this study. The interconnectedness between unmergedness and dialogues is relevant also in the context of an author’s conversations with his characters. Characters’ unmerged status allows them to voice their own perspectives rather than function as the author’s mouthpieces. Conversely, the distance an author has in relation to characters enables him to bring a unique outsider perspective to the dialogue with characters, even as his proximity to them makes the dialogue possible. The author’s dialogues with his characters are also characterized by mutual respect. As Bakhtin puts it, ‘Dostoevsky realizes a dialogic relationship toward his characters at every moment of the creative process.’63 The author relates to characters as though they can hear him and respond to his words at every step of the way. To describe it slightly differently, ‘the [polyphonic] author speaks not about a character but with him’.64

1. Dialogism, Plot, and Structure Whereas narrative critics are generally interested in highlighting the tension between plot and characters,65 Bakhtin is concerned with the intrinsic and symbiotic relationship between plot and dialogues. He calls attention to the ways in which a plot can facilitate and intensify dialogues. Plot is the mechanism the author employs to set up dialogues between characters. Morson and Emerson point out that the plot often provides a pretext for stimulating further dialogues in The Brothers Karamazov. For instance, as they note, the earliest dramatic dialogue in the novel occurs when the brothers gather in Zosima’s camp to resolve their differences.66 In turn, such dramatic events allow the characters to articulate their inner feelings in ways that affect the plot. Seen this way, although plot might be intended to intensify dialogues, the dialogues also in turn advance the plot. Such interconnectedness results in a mutually enhancing relationship between the two.

63. Bakhtin, Problems, 63. 64. Bakhtin, Problems, 63. 65. Stephen D. Moore, Literary Criticism and the Gospels (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 15. 66. Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Constance Garnett (New York: Random House, 1950), 32. Cited in Morson and Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin, 248.

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2. Diachronic and Synchronic Aspects of Dialogism In Bakhtin’s understanding, dialogic activity in the polyphonic novels occurs on both diachronic and synchronic levels. On a diachronic level, a text or an utterance enters into conversations with a text or an utterance from previous time periods. In this analeptic dimension, each idea or argument is seen as a possible response to ideas that precede it chronologically. As Carol Newsom observes, Bakhtin maintained that an utterance ‘is always a reply. It always takes its shape in part in response to what has already been said’.67 But there is also a proleptic dimension to an utterance. It is generally shaped by an anticipation of what a future listener might say in response. Seen in this way, an utterance is ‘dialogized by its orientation to the already said and the yet to be said’.68 To the extent this diachronic aspect of dialogism refers to a text’s dialogues with other texts (from a previous or later period), it shares certain characteristics with Kristeva’s concept of intertextuality. In fact, Kristeva, the chief proponent of intertextuality, drew extensively from Bakhtin’s concept of dialogism. But her notion of intertextuality does not emphasize the ‘dialogic orientation of discourse’ as much Bakhtin does. He seems to suggest that all the texts are engaged in diachronic dialogues with earlier texts on some basic level. The dialogic orientation of discourse is a phenomenon that is, of course, a property of any discourse. It is the natural orientation of any living discourse. On all its various routes toward the object, in all its directions, the word encounters an alien word and cannot help encountering it in a living, tension-lled interaction. Only the mythical Adam, who approached a virginal and as yet verbally unqualied world with the rst word, could really have escaped from start to nish this dialogic inter-reorientation with the alien word that occurs in the object. Concrete historical human discourse does not have this privilege.69

His suggestion might seem rather sweeping, but his observation that few concepts and conversations emerge out of a vacuum is insightful. It suggests that there is a diachronic dimension to most dialogues. On a synchronic level, dialogism refers to conversations between different voices and perspectives within the same text. The author brings together voices from many backgrounds and facilitates conversations between them on important themes. Most of the dialogues in Dostoevsky’s novels are more

67. Newsom, ‘Bakhtin, the Bible, and Dialogic Truth’, 302. 68. Newsom, ‘Bakhtin, the Bible, and Dialogic Truth’, 302. 69. Bakhtin, ‘Discourse in the Novel’, 279; see also Tzvetan Todorov, Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogical Principle (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 62.

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synchronic than diachronic in their orientation. On some level, the ideas in his novels might be responding to ideas from previous eras but such a diachronic aspect is not always readily explicit in the text of the novels.

D. Luke as a Dialogic Gospel: Possibilities and Limitations One cannot establish that Luke was written as a dialogic Gospel in the Bakhtinian sense of the term. Any assertion that Luke intended to author a work along the lines of Dostoevsky’s novels entails the difcult task of determining the authorial intent. There is little evidence – external or internal – to substantiate such an assertion. One might argue that Luke’s writing may have been inuenced by rst-century rhetorical devices and novels that share certain characteristics with Dostoevsky’s novels. There is some evidence for the suggestion that Luke may have had access to, and was borrowing from, Greco-Roman rhetorical devices. Luke’s prologue (1.1-4), for instance, indicates his attempt to present material in ways similar to ancient biographical novels.70 Mikeal Parsons has called attention to the use of ancient rhetorical devices in Luke’s two volumes . . .71 On a more specific level it has been established that Luke’s Gospel has Hellenistic parallels that resonate with the Bakhtinian concepts of polyphony and dialogism. Peter Scaer has called attention to Luke’s use of Socratic traditions in the passion narratives.72 The similarities between Socratic traditions and the passion stories in Luke go beyond the motif of persecution and death. Both these stories place an emphasis on continuous conversations between disparate worldviews, a key characteristic of dialogic novels. Still, suggesting that Luke intended to write a dialogic novel would signify an attempt to determine the authorial intent – a task I do not intend to undertake, even if it were feasible. Furthermore, there is no evidence that Luke was actually read as a dialogic Gospel by any of the original reading communities. In short, one cannot establish that Luke is dialogic in the sense of an ‘intentional artistic representation’, to use Newsom’s expression.73 Nevertheless, it is possible to argue, as I do in this study, that Luke can be read as a dialogic Gospel and that such a reading offers fresh insights on the familiar issue of many voices and contradictions in the Gospel. I highlight the 70. See, e.g. Richard A. Burridge, What Are the Gospels? A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 71. Mikeal Parsons, Luke: Storyteller, Interpreter, Evangelist. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2007). 72. Peter J. Scaer, The Lukan Passion and the Praiseworthy Death, New Testament Monographs 10 (Shefeld: Shefeld Phoenix, 2005). See also Mark Allan Powell, What Are They Saying About Luke? (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1989), 9–13. 73. Newsom, ‘Bakhtin, the Bible and Dialogic Truth’, 297.

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possibility for such a reading and demonstrate that explicating selected Lukan texts in light of relevant Bakhtinian insights can shed new light on the issue of contradictions, which has engaged Lukan scholarship for the last few decades.74 Additionally, the study also discusses the various accompanying implications – for Lukan studies and in a different sense for the church and society as well. When I read Luke in light of the concepts of dialogism and polyphony, the Gospel emerges as a unique literary text that accommodates divergent voices and worldviews on a range of issues. It facilitates lively, intense and continuous dialogues between those voices on both diachronic and synchronic levels. The dialogic nature of Luke’s Gospel becomes apparent especially in relation to other synoptic Gospels. The design and structure of the Gospel bring together various, disparate characters and enable them to enter into conversations as equals. Luke becomes a textual location where divergent consciousnesses and worldviews meet, challenge and seek to subvert each other in the process of unnalizable dialogues about various issues. Every voice that advances a particular perspective encounters another voice that contests it and is contested by yet another. The authorial viewpoint, represented or articulated by one or more characters, is ever present in the text but rarely suppresses other viewpoints. As a result, the author’s worldview is neither dominant nor normative but is one among the many equally valid voices. In this reading, the presence of contradictory voices and the dialogues among them make Luke a sophisticated literary document that offers a new and dialogic vision of truth.75 Seen this way, the divergence in perspectives is not a cause for concern but a factor that merits celebration. A Bakhtinian interpretation of the Gospel as outlined above has signicant ethical implications, primarily for those who value Luke as scripture, but also for others with a keen interest in various aspects of the text – literary, ideological, and so forth. Bakhtin himself insisted that art (by this he generally meant literary works) by nature must be answerable (by this he meant having ethical responsibilities) to society. By extension, in Bakhtin’s thought, the artist/ author and recipients/readers of the art are also answerable to society. In Art and Answerability, one of his early works, Bakhtin frequently emphasized the interconnectedness between ethics and art/aesthetics: ‘I have to answer with my own life for what I have experienced and understood in art, so that everything

74. Bakhtin himself never applied his theories to the biblical texts. As a devout Christian, he probably considered scriptures to be above any critical analyses. 75. I will expand on the motif of dialogic visions of truth in the nal chapter of this study.

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that I have experienced and understood would not be ineffectual in my life’.76 In part because of his insistence on the link between ethics and aesthetics and in part because of my own background and context, the nal chapter of this book will highlight key ethical implications of this study.77 Furthermore, because Luke is regarded as a Gospel in a theological sense, this study also has theological implications that will be explicated in the last chapter.

1. Synchronic and Diachronic Aspects of Dialogues in Luke This discussion of dialogism in Luke will consider both diachronic and synchronic aspects. The diachronic aspect will explicate the dialogic nature of Luke vis-à-vis other synoptic Gospels, primarily Mark but also Matthew. It will call attention to the differences between specic pericopae in Luke and their parallels in other synoptic Gospels in order to highlight the ways in which the Lukan pericopae lend themselves to a dialogic reading. It will also highlight the ways several Lukan pericopae can be interpreted as engaging in dialogues with other texts. One could explicate these differences in terms of Luke’s inuence by, as well as alterations of, the material he possibly inherited from his synoptic sources.78 As I will show later, this study will adopt a slightly different approach to diachronic dialogues in Luke. But the primary focus of this study will be on the synchronic dialogues (within the third Gospel). These two aspects can also be described in terms of intertextual (diachronic) and intratextual (synchronic) dialogues. 2. Dialogues and Dialogic Strategies in Luke Akin to Dostoevsky’s strategies for facilitating intense dialogues – plot and structures, for instance – Luke appears to have employed specic methods and strategies for ensuring continuous and lively dialogues. The dialogic nature of the third Gospel is facilitated and accentuated by three specic aspects of the text: additions, alterations and arrangements. An explanation is in order. Additions. A basic assumption among historical critics of Luke, especially among those that subscribe to the four-source hypothesis, is that Luke made use of material from Mark and another source (Q) that was also used by Matthew. These scholars suggest Luke added to those sources his own pericopae which are generally called the ‘L’ source. In this study I will highlight how several 76. Bakhtin, Art and Answerability, 1. 77. Bakhtin often used the term ‘aesthetics’ to refer to literature and various forms of art. 78. In recent years at least one scholar has suggested that Luke’s Passion narrative may have resulted from a dialogue with John’s Gospel. See Mark Matson, In Dialogue with Another Gospel? The Inuence of the Fourth Gospel on the Passion Narrative of the Gospel of Luke, SBLDS 178 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature Press, 2001). But the scope of this book does not allow engagement with any pericopae from John.

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of these pericopae that are unique to Luke – or Luke’s ‘additions’ – facilitate dialogues in their specic narrative contexts and contribute to the dialogic nature of the Gospel as a whole. Alterations. Several Lukan scholars, especially those interested in the issues of redaction, suggest that Luke altered several of the pericopae he had inherited from his sources in order to make them suit his theological agenda. A number of Lukan pericopae that have synoptic parallels exhibit certain characteristics missing in the corresponding accounts in Mark, Luke’s supposed source, but also in Matthew. I will call attention to the ways in which Luke’s ‘alterations’ of his sources or differences vis-à-vis Mark and/or Matthew t into the larger dialogic framework in the Gospel and accentuate the tension between various voices and perspectives. Arrangements. The third Gospel frequently juxtaposes divergent voices and pericopae in a manner that facilitates intense conversation between those voices and the viewpoints they represent. Some feminist scholars have highlighted how Luke’s strategy of pairing disparate characters and perspectives leads to a dialogue among, and about, those perspectives. Additionally, Luke places in succession several pericopae that focus on a similar theme. It would be worth exploring how Luke’s arrangement of material – specically juxtapositions, pairings and sequence – contributes to continuous dialogues. The focus on these types of arrangements generally falls into the realm of narrative criticism. But to the extent an examination of Luke’s arrangement highlights the differences between Luke and other synoptic Gospels it also falls into the realm of historical critical analysis. In the next four chapters, I will explicate the Lukan pericopae in which one or more of these three aspects of dialogism – alterations, additions and arrangements – are evident and highlight the various ways these aspects accentuate the dialogues. For instance, as I will show in detail in the third chapter, all three aspects are evident in Luke 10:25-42 and contribute to dialogic tension between two important emphases in the Gospel. The explicit focus on these aspects and my use of expressions such as Luke’s additions and alterations or redactions – both in this chapter and in the subsequent ones – might give readers an impression that this project is historical critical in its orientation. The project often refers to and constructively engages questions raised by historical criticism, but it is not intended to be historical critical. In fact, it is designed to be literary critical, with its focus primarily on the nal form of the third Gospel. Questions asked by historical critics have the potential to shed new light on various aspects of the text, such as the ones highlighted above, but the task of responding to those questions can be challenging. There is no way to nd out

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if Luke ever used Mark, Q or any other text as sources to which he may have added material. Nor is it possible to determine that the differences in the Lukan pericopae vis-à-vis their parallels in Mark resulted from Luke’s alteration of Markan pericopae. And there is little evidence – external or internal – to suggest that the Lukan juxtaposition of pericopae with divergent viewpoints resulted from the author’s intention to arrange the material dialogically. In short, pursuance of aforementioned historical critical questions has certain limitations in the context of a literary reading such as this. Nevertheless, it is possible to gain a better understanding of the polyphonic and dialogic patterns in Luke, especially in relation to Mark and Matthew, by focusing on the three aforementioned aspects. But one can arrive at such an understanding without necessarily attempting a reconstruction of Luke’s composition or determining authorial intent. That is, one can build upon the relevant questions raised by historical critical approaches without necessarily addressing them on their terms. For instance, rather than asking if, where and why Luke may have altered Mark’s material, as a redaction critic might, this study will explore how Luke’s stories (about wealth, the identity of Jesus, etc.) are different from their Markan parallels, and how those differences facilitate dialogues in Luke. Similarly, rather than examining if and where Luke may have added pericopae to his sources, the study will highlight how the uniquely Lukan material accentuates the dialogic nature of the Gospel. Even when terms such as ‘altered’ and ‘added’ are employed – for the sake of emphasis – the focus in this study will be on explicating the ways in which Luke differs from, and is more dialogic than, other Gospels, especially Mark, rather than on Luke’s use of those sources. Finally, instead of attempting to ascertain Luke’s reasons for juxtaposing divergent pericopae, I will call attention to the ways in which the unique arrangement of pericopae (juxtapositions, pairings, sequence, etc.) contributes to dialogues at various places in the Gospel. In short, instead of discussing the strategies or methods Luke the author may have employed in the Gospel, this study will highlight how various aspects of the text facilitate and accentuate dialogues. This shifting of focus from the work of Luke, the author/redactor, to specic patterns in the text is not meant to disregard any historical-critical questions. It is merely aimed at approaching the underlying issues behind those questions from a different angle. To use an insight from Newsom, consideration of those questions is valuable not so much in terms of a historical reconstruction of

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Luke’s composition but in terms of gaining a better understanding of its various dialogic aspects.79

3. Dialogism in Luke and Some Major Themes In the next four chapters I will discuss some of the main Lukan themes that highlight the intense and continuous dialogues in the Gospel. Specically these chapters will call attention to the Lukan pericopae that focus on the portrayal of wealth and the wealthy, the identity of Jesus, and the tension between an emphasis on doing and an emphasis on hearing. I will highlight the various ways in which the Gospel accommodates many, divergent voices and enables them to express disparate, contradictory perspectives on those themes, without privileging any one of them.

Conclusion The issue of divergent, contradictory voices in the third Gospel has received much attention in Lukan scholarship. Perceiving the contradictions as an issue that undermines the unity of the Gospel, some scholars have attempted to resolve it using various methodologies, while others have sought to downplay the presence of disparate perspectives.80 Using the Bakhtinian concepts of polyphony and dialogism, as well as other related insights, I will argue that the presence of divergent perspectives as well as an active interaction among them makes Luke dialogic rather than dogmatic. I will also suggest that these aforementioned aspects of Luke testify to its literary and ideological sophistication rather than to shortcomings. It needs to be explored whether, and to what extent, the Gospel of Luke might be a suitable candidate for such a reading. The answer to the question rests largely on whether it would be possible to marshal sufcient evidence to substantiate the argument that Luke is indeed dialogic. If the argument can be substantiated, in the course of the analyses that follow, my reading of the Gospel would offer a fresh perspective on a familiar issue, although it may not answer all the pertinent questions, let alone resolve all the relevant issues. In addition, this reading would highlight ethical implications for a contemporary society that is, akin to Luke’s Gospel, characterized by competing worldviews. It would also foreground the theological implications of this reading for faith communities, some of who perceive Luke as a text that was written to

79. Newsom, Book of Job, 16 80. For instance, see Joel Green, Theology of the Gospel of Luke, 128.

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promote a particular worldview about the identity of Jesus, wealth, women and other key themes in the heterogeneous context of rst-century Greco-Roman society.

2 BLESSED ARE THE OUTSIDERS: VIEWING LUKE’S POLYPHONIC STORY OF JESUS’ IDENTITY FROM A DISTANCE

Introduction This chapter will explicate the issue of Jesus’ identity in the Gospel of Luke. Employing the Bakhtinian concepts of exotopy (outsidedness) and dialogism it will argue that Luke’s story of Jesus – of his identity in particular – is polyphonic and multidimensional.1 It will call attention to the many voices in the Gospel that express divergent perceptions of Jesus and to the intense and continuous dialogues among those voices. It will highlight the various authorial strategies – or specic aspects of Luke’s narrative – which facilitate and accentuate those dialogues. The chapter will focus on pertinent relevant Lukan pericopae and their synoptic parallels (wherever relevant) to argue that while the issue of Jesus’ identity appears prominently in the other Gospels as well, the specic aspects of the narrative that emphasize the issue and contribute to the intense dialogues are uniquely Lukan. It will use the Nazareth episode (Luke 4.16-30) as the point of entry for an exploration of this issue. Two factors make the Nazareth episode pertinent regarding the issue of Jesus’ identity: (a) the transitional conundrum in the episode and (b) the intratextual (synchronic) and intertextual (diachronic) dialogues the pericope facilitates on the issue. The transitional conundrum, which appears prominently in scholarly discussions of the pericope, refers to the apparent gap (or the inconsistency) between the Nazarenes’ initial enthusiastic reception of Jesus (4.22) and their subsequent attempt on his life (4.28-30) that prompted his abrupt departure from the town. Attempting to bridge this gap, interpreters have offered varied explanations such as: (a) the Nazarenes were hostile to Jesus from the very

1. Exotopy is the technical term of outsidedness. In this book, as in Bakhtin’s discourse, exotopy and ‘aesthetical distance’ will be used synonymously with outsidedness.

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outset;2 (b) Jesus’ announcement that his ministry was meant ‘for the poor and oppressed of all nations and not just for Jews’ led to rejection by the people;3 (c) the Elijah–Elisha stories (4.24-27) constitute an announcement from Jesus that his mission was not intended for the Nazarenes and, by extension, the Jews. Such an announcement turned their initial welcome into hostility;4 and (d) in response to the Nazarenes’ (unspoken) demand for signs, Jesus criticized their failure to perceive his mission, and the criticism turned the initial welcome into hostility.5 A majority of the interpreters suggest that the key to explaining the conundrum may lie in Jesus’ response to the Nazarenes (4.23-27). Most of these interpreters have focused almost exclusively on the mission aspect of that response, but they have not sufciently explicated another aspect of the response – the identity of Jesus – that becomes clearer in the larger narrative context of the Gospel. In what follows, I will demonstrate how an explication of the episode in light of the Bakhtinian concepts of outsidedness and dialogism can clarify the aforementioned conundrum and shed new light on Jesus’ response. Examining the merits of the three explanations mentioned above, I concur with the general premise of the third – that the abrupt shift in the Nazarenes’ attitude was triggered by Jesus’ criticism of them. But I challenge its conclusions regarding the background and signicance of Jesus’ response in the larger context of the Gospel. I argue that his response to the Nazarenes exposes their lack of outsidedness in relation to him and the resultant inability – on their part – to perceive the full scope of his identity and mission. I will highlight how the readers’ outsidedness in relation to Luke’s narrative enables them to see the polyphonic nature of Luke’s story of Jesus’ identity as well as the various intratextual (synchronic) and intertextual (diachronic) dialogues on the issue.6 To begin with, I will discuss the merits of the four explanations about the transitional conundrum.

2. Bruce Malina, The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 119–20. 3. Luke T. Johnson, The Gospel of Luke, Sacra Pagina (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991), 81–2. 4. Jeffrey S. Siker, ‘“First to the Gentiles”: A Literary Analysis of Luke 4:16-30’, JBL 111 (1992): 80; Graham Stanton, The Gospels and Jesus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 93. This explanation implies that Jesus’ response to the Nazarenes was not polemical. 5. Kingsbury, Conict in Luke, 46; Robert C. Tannehill, The Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts: A Literary Interpretation, vol. 1: The Gospel According to Luke (Philadelphia and Minneapolis: Fortress, 1986), 69. 6. I dene ‘intratextual’ as those instances wherein a pericope refers or alludes to another pericope in the same book/text.

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A. Were the Nazarenes Nay-sayers? At their face value, Jesus’ words in 4.23-27 appear to suggest that the Nazarenes had rejected him from the very outset. This certainly seems to be the implication of his statement ‘truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown’ (4.24). John Nolland suggests that when one interprets the pericope in light of Classical and Rabbinic parallels it would become apparent that the Nazarenes were hostile to Jesus from the outset.7 He argues that the phrase ‘physician, heal yourself’ (4.23) is similar to the Classical notion of a sick or incompetent doctor, who was attempting to heal others. The notion was employed to question the right of someone to give advice to others. Seen along those lines, given Jesus’ lowly background, the Nazarenes would appear to perceive Jesus’ statements about himself and his mission as tall claims. In a rather different reading of the pericope, Bruce Malina employs insights from cultural anthropology to suggest that Jesus’ townsfolk were envious of his success from the outset and therefore sought to kill him.8 Furthermore, Jesus’ response – specically the references to Elijah–Elisha stories – may have convinced them that no miracles would be performed in Nazareth. A logical extension of Malina’s suggestion is that Jesus’ criticism of them merely accentuated their hostility towards him and anticipated the attempt on his life. These insights from Nolland and Malina offer some intriguing possibilities for understanding the Nazareth pericope in new ways but their conclusions regarding the attitude of the Nazarenes are far from clear. In light of their explanations – as well as Jesus’ apparent suggestion that he was not accepted in his hometown – it is important to ask whether the narrator, who was watching the scene from his favourable vantage point, arrives at similar conclusions. In order to determine if, from the narrator’s point of view, the Nazarenes were hostile towards Jesus from the beginning, it is important to analyse the two components of 4.22: (a) the narrator’s account of the Nazarenes’ attitude (4.22a); and (b) the Nazarenes’ exclamatory question ‘Isn’t this Joseph’s son?’ (4.22b).

1. The Narrator Narrates (the Scene in) Nazareth The Lukan narrator’s choice of words in 4.22a vis-à-vis the Markan parallel (6.2, 3b) is noteworthy.9 Luke alone has kai pantes emarturoun aut (4.22a),

7. John Nolland, ‘Classical and Rabbinic Parallels to “Physician, Heal Yourself ” (LK. IV. 23)’, NovT 21 (1979): 199. 8. Malina, The New Testament World, 120. 9. Narrative critics like Wayne Booth generally make a distinction between the author of a work and its narrator. See Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction, 2nd ed. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1983). Bakhtin, however, has not made such a distinction.

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which many contemporary versions translate as ‘(And) all spoke well of him’ (see NRSV and NIV). However, the clause literally means ‘(And) all were bearing witness to him’. Much depends on how one translates the term martureo (to witness). In three other instances where Luke employs it (Acts 6.3; 10.22; 14.3) the verb appears to have an explicitly positive connotation. The dative personal pronoun aut (to him) in 4.22a can signify a dative of respect, a dative of advantage, or even a dative of disadvantage. But because aut is used in conjunction with martureo, which has an explicitly positive connotation in Luke, it is logical to take it as a dative of advantage or as a dative of respect with a positive connotation. Accordingly, the clause kai pantes emarturoun aut should be translated as ‘and they were testifying in favor of him’ or as ‘and they were testifying [positively] concerning him’. Such positive testimony about Jesus comes as a direct response to his declaration in 4.21b: ‘Today this scripture has been fullled in your hearing.’ Mark employs exeplssonto, which is derived from ekplss, to characterize the Nazarenes’ instinctive reaction to the words of Jesus (6.2), but Luke employs ethaumazon to describe their reaction (4.22a).10 Mark does occasionally employ ekplss in a positive sense (1.22), but the term often carries a negative connotation in that Gospel. One such example occurs in Mark 10.26 where it is used to convey a sense of shock and dismay. The disciples were dismayed to hear from Jesus how difcult it was to enter the kingdom of God. It appears that, within Mark’s narrative, the term ekplss expresses the reaction of those who dislike what they hear or see. In the context of the Nazareth pericope, Mark’s use of that term indicates that the people were shocked and astounded because they could not fathom how Jesus, with his lowly background, could have been capable of the wisdom he has just demonstrated.11 Thaumaz, which Luke employs in lieu of Mark’s ekplss can have a positive or a negative connotation depending on the context.12 But within the larger context of Luke’s Gospel thaumaz has a predominantly positive connotation. Luke frequently uses it in a positive sense (1.63; 7.9; 9.43; 11.14), sometimes in a neutral sense (1.21; 2.18, 33), but rarely, if ever, in a negative sense. Hence, Luke’s use of that term – rather than ekplss – to convey the people’s response is an indication that, from the narrator’s point of view, the Nazarenes were positively amazed at Jesus’ wisdom. Moreover, coming immediately after Luke’s

10. Matthew employs ekplssesthai, which is also derived from ekplss. But the focus here is on analyzing Luke’s account vis-à-vis Mark’s. 11. They said, ‘Where did this man get all this?’ (Mark 6.2). 12. W. Bauer, W. F. Arndt, and F. W. Gingrich, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 444.

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statement that ‘they were testifying in favor of him’, ethaumazon indicates that the Nazarenes’ attitude toward Jesus was initially favourable. Putting it succinctly, in Mark’s account the people took offense at Jesus (Mk 6.3), but in Luke they marveled at his words. It is apparent that the picture in Luke is of a welcoming audience, which is noticeably different from Mark’s version. From a historical-critical perspective one can describe it in terms of Luke signicantly altering or reworking the Markan narrative.

2. ‘Isn’t This Joseph’s Son?’ The content of the Nazarenes’ exclamatory question in Lk. 4.22b (Is not this Joseph’s son?) merits attention, too. Kingsbury argues that their question was intended to challenge what the people thought were Jesus’ weighty claims.13 An examination of the question vis-à- vis its Markan parallel (6.2b-3a) and in the context of the Nazarenes’ attitude undermines Kingsbury’s argument. In Mark’s account of this episode, the Nazarenes’ question (6.3) refers to Jesus as ‘the carpenter’, an insult within that cultural context where carpenters were near the bottom of the social ladder.14 In Luke, however, the Nazarenes make no reference to his vocation. In Mark, people refer to Jesus as ‘the son of Mary’, a reference which, within Mark’s cultural context, may have insinuated that there were questions as to who his father was. On the contrary, the people in Luke’s account refer to Jesus as ‘the son of Joseph’, which carried no explicitly negative connotation in that cultural context. Jerome Neyrey argues that ‘the son of Joseph’ (4.22b) was meant to be hostile because of its reference to Joseph’s lowly vocation. His argument misses the obvious fact that Luke, unlike Mark, does not include the word ‘carpenter’.15 Even on a synchronic level – within the context of Luke’s Gospel – the term ‘son of Joseph’ has no negative connotations. Joseph is referred to as ‘Jesus’ father’ on more than one occasion in the Gospel, and by more than one character. Talking to Jesus at the temple, Mary refers to Joseph as his father (2.48). The reference to Jesus as ‘the son of Joseph’ in Luke’s genealogy of Jesus, unlike that in any other Gospel, is another indication that within the context of Luke this reference does not denote anything negative. These examples suggest

13. Kingsbury, Conict in Luke, 46–7. 14. Citing Ramsay MacMullen’s Lexicon of Snobbery, John Crossan writes that ‘carpenter’ was a derogatory term that was used to convey prejudice. See John D. Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 29. 15. Jerome H. Neyrey, The Social World of Luke-Acts: Models for Interpretation (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1991), 28.

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that the title ‘son of Joseph’ is part of the identity of Jesus expressed by some characters in the Gospel. Finally, coming in the context of the Nazarenes’ positive testimony about Jesus and amazement at his words (4.22a), the question (‘Isn’t this Joseph’s son?’) should be taken as an expression of admiration for the ‘hometown boy’ made good in the town of Capernaum. Seen this way, 4.22b conrms, rather than contradicts, the narrator’s statement in 4.22a that the people’s attitude toward Jesus was positive. I will return to 4.22b at a later point. Meanwhile, there is another key difference between Mark’s account and Luke’s account. After narrating how the Nazarenes derided Jesus’ roots in a dismissive tone that says in effect, ‘We know him; he is just a carpenter with very questionable origins’, Mark explicitly states that the Nazarenes took offence at Jesus (6.3b). In Mark’s account, the Nazarenes are offended that someone with objectionable credentials presumes to be their teacher. By contrast, in Luke’s version, Jesus’ local roots endear him to the people. As Jeff Siker puts it, In Marcan (6:3) and Matthean (13:55-56) parallels, Jesus’ status as a hometown boy provides the reason for the Nazareth townspeople’s resentment and rejection of Jesus. Luke, however, actually reverses the Marcan scandal that Jesus is a hometown boy and makes this a positive element in the story.16

It is hard to miss the differences between Mark and Luke at this point. Both the people’s attitude towards Jesus and their exclamatory question about him are dramatically different in these two accounts. While Mark’s account suggests that the Nazarenes were unreceptive towards Jesus from the very beginning, Luke’s account depicts them as welcoming him with great enthusiasm, at least initially. As the Lukan narrator puts it, when Jesus went to Nazareth, he was invited to read from scripture and the people listened to his speech with rapt attention (4.20b). When Jesus claimed to be the fullment of Isaianic prophecies (4.21), rather than ridiculing his ‘weighty claims’, to use Kingsbury’s term, the people in the assembly testied in his favour and marvelled at his words. They expressed delight that one of their own – the son of Joseph – made good in Capernaum. Such an enthusiastic initial response from the Nazarenes makes it difcult to explain why the same Nazarenes attempted to kill their famous resident barely a few moments after praising him. Perhaps the seeming disconnect between the initial and later responses of the Nazarenes can be explained by focusing

16. Siker, ‘First to the Gentiles’, 80.

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on the content of Jesus’ own response, which is sandwiched between the two contradictory responses of the people.

B. Mission to the Non-Jews? Several of the scholars who believe that Jesus’ response to the Nazarenes (4.23-27) holds the key to resolving the aforementioned conundrum argue that it heralds Jesus’ Gentile mission. Philip Esler argues that the two aphorisms employed by Jesus, together with a reference to the Elijah and Elisha stories, amount to a declaration of his mission to non-Jews, On the other hand, the reference by Jesus to the actions of Elijah and Elisha among Gentiles (Luke 4:25-7) is undoubtedly meant to foreshadow a mission among non-Jews in the Christian period.17

Esler’s argument emphasizes the Gentile focus of the mission but does not suggest any explicit rejection of Israel. However, James Dawsey goes a step further to suggest that Luke 4.23-27 – specically the references to Elijah and Elisha – is an indication that the Lukan Jesus was announcing God’s eventual rejection of Israel. Although he was well received (Luke 4:22), Jesus suddenly and without cause (were it not supplied by the parable’s explanation that the rst message had already been rejected) turned on his own countrymen and previewed his own rejection by Israel (4:24), and Israel’s rejection by God (Luke 4:25-27).18

If one takes Dawsey’s argument to its logical conclusion, it would suggest that Jesus’ statements about God’s imminent rejection of Israel triggered a hostile reaction from the Nazarenes, who had hitherto welcomed him with great enthusiasm. There is, however, little evidence to suggest that the Elijah and Elisha stories, which constitute the core of Jesus’ response to the Nazarenes, signify God’s rejection of Israel. Nor do they indicate that the mission of Jesus was moving toward the Gentiles. The ministry of Elijah to the Zarephath widow and that of Elisha to Naaman beneted individual Gentiles but did not bring about

17. Philip F. Esler, Community and Gospel in Luke-Acts: The Social and Political Motivations of Lukan Theology (SNTSMS 57; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 34. Robert Tannehill’s views on this issue are similar to Esler’s. See Tannehill, The Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts, 1:69-71. 18. James M. Dawsey, The Lukan Voice: Confusion and Irony in the Gospel of Luke (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1986), 69.

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an end to their mission among the Jews. Furthermore, there is little evidence that either the community of the Zarephath widow or that of Naaman continued to benet from the mission of the prophets on a regular basis. The ministry of Elijah and Elisha may have temporarily shifted the focus towards the Gentiles but neither prophet ended his mission in Israel. Joel Green puts it aptly, It is important to note that neither the scriptures nor the current narrative presents these prophetic gures as programmatically oriented to the Gentiles; nor are they portrayed as having turned their backs on Israel.19

Similarly, the Nazareth episode did not signal an end to the mission of Jesus among the Jews. After leaving Nazareth, he did visit Capernaum, a city with signicant Gentile population (Luke 4.31-43).20 However, the pericope or any subsequent story about visits to a predominantly Gentile area does not indicate a movement towards an exclusively Gentile mission. As Michael Bird observes, ‘Jesus’ journeys into non-Jewish areas did not constitute a mission to Gentiles nor were the excursions an attempt to foreshadow a later Gentile mission’.21 Bird’s observation is supported by the fact that even when he was in Capernaum, Jesus visited a synagogue on the Sabbath, accepted hospitality at the home of Simon, a Jew, and healed Simon’s mother-in-law. Moreover, as Robert Brawley’s substantive argument has highlighted, Jesus did not abandon Jewish areas after his Nazareth encounter.22 After visiting Capernaum, he quickly traveled to some other Jewish cities. Not long after his ministry in Capernaum, he cured a leper in a Judean city (5.13). Later he healed a paralytic (5.20-25) as well as a man with a withered hand (6.6-11) within the same general area. Examples such as these undermine the argument that Jesus’ response to the Nazarenes, specically his references to Elijah and Elisha and to the Gentile beneciaries of their mission, heralds the end of his mission to the Jews. Although the Nazareth episode does not suggest either that the residents there had rejected Jesus or that the mission of Jesus was moving away from Israel, it does suggest something subversive and radical. On one level – the more obvious level – the Elijah and Elisha stories indicate that the mission of

19. Green, The Gospel of Luke, 218. 20. See Michael F. Bird, Jesus and the Origins of the Gentile Mission (New York: T&T Clark, 2007), 215–21. 21. Bird, Jesus and the Origins of the Gentile Mission, 221. 22. Robert L. Brawley, Luke-Acts and the Jews: Conict, Apology, and Conciliation (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987), 11.

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Jesus would be extended to the outsiders, not at the expense of, but in addition to, the insiders. On another level, however, the two pithy sayings indicate that, from the perspective of Jesus, the Nazarenes (the insiders) could not correctly perceive his identity and mission. Specically, they did not perceive and honour him as a prophet in the same way the residents of Capernaum (the outsiders) did. As a result, Nazareth will not receive any miracles that were performed in Capernaum. The Nazarenes’ failure to perceive Jesus as prophet is similar to what is described in the Elijah–Elisha stories. In each of these three stories the insiders – those in close proximity to the prophet – fail to identify and receive the prophet as prophet. Consequently, they did not benet from the prophet’s miracles. Such failure on the part of those who are (spatially) close to the prophet seems to be the essence of Jesus’ response to the Nazarenes’ exclamatory remark ‘Isn’t this Joseph’s son?’

C. The Meaning of Jesus’ Response in 4.23-27 Since Jesus’ response (4.23-27) comes as a direct reply to the Nazarenes’ exclamatory question (4.22b), it is pertinent to examine the relationship between the two. Tannehill’s argument that the question in 4.22b ‘should be understood in connection with verse 23, which refers to what Jesus should do in his hometown’23 makes sense within the cultural and the narrative context. Since Jesus grew up in Nazareth and his family continued to live there, ‘Isn’t this Joseph’s son?’ indicates that the Nazarenes were claiming Jesus as one of them, a local person who made good in Capernaum. Such a claim, coupled with the warm welcome they accorded him, entailed certain obligations on his part. Within that cultural context, the Nazarenes must have believed they had exclusive rights, or at least rights equal to those of persons living in Capernaum, to the miraculous works of Jesus simply because of his roots in the town. Given the fact that Jesus had just announced his mission (4.18-19), it was not unusual for them to assume that they were going to be the primary recipients of that mission. Green argues that the Nazarenes heard Jesus’ declaration at the synagogue as good news for themselves: It is easy to see from an orientation within the synagogue in this narrative, then, that their response is one of admiration. In fact, it may be that Jesus’ auditors recognize in his gracious words good news for themselves. They would thus see themselves

23. Robert Tannehill, Luke (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1996), 93–4.

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Dialogue Not Dogma as the immediate beneciaries of the Lord’s favor, for they claim Jesus as the son of one of our own – indeed, as “one of us.”24

As Tannehill points out, however, ‘To this implied demand Jesus responds in verse 24: A prophet is not governed by in-group loyalties’.25 It appears that through their not so subtle demands based on kinship, Jesus’ hometown folk have exposed their limited understanding of his mission. Beyond that, however, there is the issue of his identity. And it appears that mission and identity are interconnected. No miracles will be performed in Nazareth because Jesus has not been accepted as prophet. It appears that the Nazarenes exposed their inability to perceive him as prophet, which appears to be a prominent title for Jesus in Luke’s Gospel. Readers of the Gospel might nd it surprising that the Nazarenes, who are familiar with the prophetic tradition and should have had inside information about Jesus’ mission and identity on account of having known him from his childhood, have such limited understanding.

D. Insiders versus Outsiders Terms such as ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ are frequently used to distinguish between different groups of people in various cultural and social settings. Several narrative critics make a similar distinction among readers or interpreters of a given literary work. The distinction can also be applied to characters in a novel. According to these critics, the insiders are situated close to the object of interpretation while the outsiders stand at the peripheries, with limited access to the object of interpretation. Accompanying such categorization is the assumption that the insiders’ proximity to the object of interpretation serves as a favourable vantage point that gives them easy access to the chamber of secrets. It makes them part of the elect who can perceive the ‘true’ meaning. Conversely, because of their distance from that object of interpretation, the outsiders are excluded from that elect group that has ‘access to the mystery’.26 As a result, they have little chance of comprehending the true meaning. Frank Kermode suggests that, In all works of interpretation there are insiders and outsiders, the former having, or professing to have, immediate access to the mystery, the latter randomly scattered

24. Green, The Gospel of Luke, 215. 25. Tannehill, Luke, 94. 26. Frank Kermode, The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), xi.

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across space and time, and excluded from the elect who mistrust or despise their unauthorized divinations, which may indeed, for all the delight they give, be without absolute value.27

Kermode is hardly alone in suggesting that an interpreter’s close proximity to the interpreted gives her or him easy access to all the information needed for arriving at ‘proper’ meaning. Employing insights from Kermode and Kafka, among others, Don Juel applies the insider-outsider axis to characters in the Gospel of Mark. In his reading, the disciples are the insiders both because of their close proximity to Jesus and because they have been privy to the various happenings and conversations in Jesus’ life. Along those lines other characters such as the crowd become the outsiders. On the level of interpretation, however, readers of the Gospel are considered the outsiders, primarily because they are in an entirely different plane. Juel analyses selected pericopae from Mark wherein the disciples repeatedly fail to comprehend the meaning of Jesus’ parables. He is struck by the fact that the disciples, the purported insiders with access to all the secrets, cannot understand what the readers, the outsiders watching the events from a different plane, are able to perceive: Some are inside the circle and others, outside. Further, the insiders have been chosen by Jesus . . .. Yet the chapter emphasizes that the disciples do not understand what Jesus means and require explanations. And as the story will make clearer, even explanations do not seem to penetrate the imaginations of the disciples. What seems obvious to us is not obvious to Jesus’ audience – not even to the disciples, who benet from commentary outsiders do not receive.28

Juel does not sufciently explain why the disciples, who have all the privileges of insiders, lack the understanding the outsiders have exhibited. He does, however, undermine the notion that the meaning of Jesus’ parables may have been intended for the readers (outsiders) rather than for the disciples (insiders). He argues that ‘regardless of what the author may have intended, the narrative succeeds only in making it impossible for readers to become insiders . . .’29 Juel implicitly suggests that insideness is still the ideal position. In his interpretation, the disciples failed to understand Jesus’ words, not because they were insiders but despite such advantageous position. Conversely, the readers

27. Kermode, The Genesis of Secrecy, xi. 28. Donald Juel, A Master of Surprise: Mark Interpreted (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1994), 57–8. 29. Juel, A Master of Surprise, 61.

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succeed in understanding despite their status as outsiders. Seen this way, the disciples’ failure becomes an exception. Underlying this argument is the notion that insideness is indeed the preferable vantage point, the treasury of all the knowledge, however unreachable it might be. Accordingly, from this standpoint, outsidedness is what one would, or at least should, sacrice, if it can be traded for insideness.

E. How Ironic! Given the assertions of Juel and Kermode regarding the privileged position of insiders it would seem ironic that the Nazarenes in Luke’s narrative, who have known Jesus from his childhood, could not perceive his identity as prophet while those in Capernaum could. Their inability to perceive is similar to the disciples’ failure in Mark to comprehend the meaning of Jesus’ parables. It is similar also to the situations in some novels wherein the characters are ignorant about certain events occurring around them while readers are fully aware of those events. In their attempt to explain this ironic phenomenon, narrative critics have offered several interesting concepts. Wayne Booth explains the phenomenon in terms of a ‘secret communion between the author and the readers’.30 Mark Allan Powell calls it ‘a situational (or dramatic) irony’, which he denes as a situation in which ‘the reader sees what characters in the story fail to see’.31 Joel Green’s interpretation of the Nazareth episode, which employs insights from Booth and Powell, calls attention to the Nazarenes’ limited understanding. In his view, given the fact that the Nazarenes knew Jesus from his childhood, their limited understanding of his identity and mission is ironic. He argues that the Nazarenes are ‘caught in a case of situational irony, for they respond to Jesus according to their own parochial understanding’.32 But in being thus presented, Jesus’ auditors in Nazareth fall casualty to a subtle joke between narrator and reader. We (Luke’s readers outside the narrative) know that their understanding of Jesus is erroneous, for we know that Jesus is Son of God, not son of Joseph.33

The concept of irony is certainly helpful for capturing and describing the insiders’ failure to comprehend, in this case that of the Nazarenes. However, there is

30. Booth, Rhetoric, 300. 31. Mark Allan Powell, What is Narrative Criticism? (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1991), 30–2. 32. Green, The Gospel of Luke, 215. 33. Green, The Gospel of Luke, 215.

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a major problem with this explanation as it pertains to the Nazareth episode in Luke and to the disciples’ lack of understanding in Mark. Those who criticize the Nazarenes’ limited understanding of Jesus seem to assume that insideness is indeed the ideal position. They assert that, despite occasional exceptions, the insiders have (or should have) inherent advantage over the outsiders. It is this assumption that seems to prompt Green, Juel and Powell to see the insiders’ failure as an irony.

F. Bakhtin and His Concept of Outsidedness Bakhtin takes a somewhat different approach to the conversation regarding the advantages and disadvantages of insiders and outsiders. His concept of outsidedness can be helpful in a fuller explication of Jesus’ response regarding the Nazarenes’ failure to perceive him as a prophet.34 Unlike some narrative critics who insist that insideness is the ideal position that can provide easy access to the chamber of secrets, he presents outsidedness as a location that can offer a fuller view of the object of perception than does insideness. Outsidedness can be dened both spatially and temporally. Chronotope is the term Bakhtin employed to describe outsidedness in terms of time and space. In terms of space, the concept of outsidedness refers to the distance one has in relation to another person, group, object or entity. At the core of this concept is the suggestion that in order to have a complete view of someone or something, the viewer needs to stand at a sufcient distance from that which is being viewed. In Bakhin’s view, ‘One can construct a voice image of the other; but an image always necessitates a distance between the perceiver and what is imaged’.35 Likewise, one cannot view himself or herself fully or even sufciently from within. Someone else, watching from a distance, can see me in ways I cannot see myself. It is another person’s outsidedness (in relation to me) that enables her to see me in ways I cannot see myself. Conversely, my distance from her enables me to view her in ways she cannot herself. Such mutual outsidedness allows the two of us to view each other in ways we cannot view ourselves from within or near. It gives each of us a better understanding of ourselves and each other. Bakhtin frequently emphasized the difculty one encounters in seeing oneself – literally and guratively. He argued that ‘one cannot even really see one’s

34. In some instances in the Bakhtinian oeuvre – primary as well as secondary – ‘outsidedness’ is spelled ‘outsideness’. However, there is little semantic difference between the two. 35. Bakhtin, ‘Discourse in the Novel’, 416.

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own exterior and comprehend it as a whole, and no mirrors or photographs can help; our real exterior can be seen and understood by other people, because they are located outside us in space and because they are others’.36 Furthermore, as Caryl Emerson observes, he insisted that ‘it is precisely our own selves that we cannot know, since the human psyche is set up to work “from the outside in” – that is, to encounter and come to know truths from others’.37 In a similar fashion, an outsider can see things in a group or community that are often missed by members from within. The movie Shakespeare in Love beautifully illustrates how outsidedness, far from being a disadvantageous position, offers a unique view of something as well as insights that are available only to those standing at a sufcient distance. In a dramatic scene in that movie, Lady Viola, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, is eager for a role in a theatre play but is prevented by the cultural norms in Elizabethan England that strictly forbade women to act. Determined to full her dreams by any means, she shows up for the auditions disguised as an young man by the name Thomas Kent, and is selected to play Romeo. Her determination to succeed as an actor and her extraordinary ability to conceal her real identity ensure that few within the theatre (or among the cast) realize that they are practicing alongside a woman disguised as a man. With the exception of Shakespeare, the playwright, her secret is known to no one. But in an apparent irony from a narrative critical point of view, an outsider to the cast – a little boy lurking about the theatre – discovers that Thomas Kent is actually Lady Viola in her real life. The boy’s discovery makes perfect sense in light of Bakhtin’s concept of outsidedness. It was his distance (in relation to the cast and the theatre) that enables him to discover Thomas Kent’s real, fuller identity. In terms of time, one’s knowledge of oneself is limited because her or his story is continually being completed. However, full (or at least fuller) knowledge of that person might be accessible to others, who stand at a distance (in terms of time). Their distance allows them to complete the story in ways the subject of the story cannot. Michael Holquist, a leading Bakhtin scholar, suggests that the ‘self’ does not have a completed biography because within one’s own consciousness the self has neither a beginning nor an end; its own time is constantly open.38 In such a situation, outsidedness in terms of time in relation 36. Mikhail Bakhtin, ‘Response to a Question from the Novy Mir Editorial Staff’, in Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, ed. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, trans. Vern W. McGee (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), 7. 37. Caryl Emerson, The First Hundred Years of Mikhail Bakhtin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 212. 38. Michael Holquist, Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World (London and New York: Routledge, 1990), 37.

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to the perceived – a thing or person – becomes the favourable vantage point that offers greater knowledge. Bakhtin observes that ‘in order to understand, it is immensely important for the person who understands to be located outside the object of his or her creative understanding – in time, in space, in culture’.39 Holquist concurs with Bakhtin’s observation, It is only from a position outside something that it can be perceived in categories that complete it in time and x it in space. In order to be perceived as a whole, as something nished, a person or object must be shaped in the time/space categories of the other, and that is possible only when the person or object is perceived from the position of outsidedness. An event cannot be wholly known, cannot be seen, from inside its own unfolding as an event.40

Seen this way, outsidedness becomes the ideal site for knowledge. However, although outsidedness is frequently dened in terms of time and/or space, it cannot be equated with one or even a combination of those two spheres. It often goes beyond the two spheres. It is more an activity that occurs between two people or groups that have some kind of distance in relation to each other. The distance does not automatically produce knowledge about the other. That is, not everyone who is at a distance from another necessarily has knowledge-producing outsidedness in relation to that other. But, when employed actively, their mutual distance gives each of them a unique perspective about the other. Clark and Holquist, who call the phenomenon extralocality, suggest that ‘extralocality describes a position which can be known only through the most complex triangulation of interpersonal relations. It is a relationship and an activity more than a place, a location that has no existence in physical space’.41 Outsidedness is not a xed point in any context but is a moving target. My outsidedness in relation to someone else is that person’s insideness; conversely, that person’s outsidedness in relation to me is my insideness. I am that person’s outsider and, conversely, he or she is an outsider to me. Thus, each of us has outsidedness in relation to the other and is simultaneously an outsider and an insider. There is distance between us, yet we are connected. Such connectedness

39. Mikhail Bakhtin, ‘Response to a Question from the Novy Mir Editorial Staff’, in Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, ed. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, trans. Vern W. McGee (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), 7. 40. Holquist, Dialogism, 35–7. 41. Katerina Clark and Michael Holquist, Mikhail Bakhtin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), 246.

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and the distance between the two of us create the possibility for mutuality, support and constructive dialogue.

1. Outsidedness and the Third The concept of outsidedness has relevance beyond interpersonal relations. It can be employed to discuss a person’s location in relation to a picture, a text or a movie. An ‘I’ who stands at a distance from a text, movie or context has outsidedness (or aesthetical distance) in relation to those objects. Such outsidedness enables that ‘I’ to see what those within the portals of that text or movie cannot see. Bakhtin calls the location of this ‘I’ the ‘extra-location’ or the ‘third’.42 Shakespeare in Love presents an excellent illustration of this phenomenon, too. As I have noted earlier, when Lady Viola disguises herself as Thomas Kent in order to secure a role in theatre play, others within the cast know little about her disguise. In addition to the little boy, who nds out about her true identity, audience watching the movie also have full knowledge of this drama within the drama. It is the extra-location of the audience that gives them the knowledge about happenings in the movie. Given the fact that the outsiders (the boy and the viewers) know more than the insiders (members of the cast), the motif of outsidedness is explicit in this movie. If one digs deeper, however, one would notice at least two layers of outsidedness in this movie. On one level, the little boy, who is an outsider to the cast but not to the movie, knows what the cast members themselves do not know about Thomas Kent. On a different level, viewers of the movie, who are outsiders to the cast as well as to the movie – since they are situated in a different context, a different era and on a different plane – come to know of Lady Viola’s disguise long before anyone in the cast or the movie, the little boy included, discovers it. Seen this way, the level of one’s knowledge about someone or something is determined by the extent of one’s outsidedness. It becomes apparent that the farther away one is positioned from the cast – in terms of time and/or space – the better one can see it. 2. Outsidedness and Irony From a narrative-critical point of view it might seem ironic that outsiders are more knowledgeable than the insiders, but from a Bakhtinian point of view, it is only natural that the little boy’s outsidedness in relation to the cast and the viewers’ outsidedness in relation to the movie enable them to know what insiders could not know. Wayne Booth might attribute the limited knowledge

42. Clark and Holquist, Mikhail Bakhtin, 285.

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of insiders (the characters) to the decision of the author and the readers (or viewers) to engage in a ‘secret communication’ keeping the characters out of the loop. Similarly, Joel Green might attribute it to a ‘subtle joke’ between the reader (viewer) and the narrator. Bakhtin, however, attributes it to the limitations associated with insideness. Whereas the concept of irony usually operates with the assumption that insiders have, or should have, an advantage over outsiders, the concept of exotopy operates on the premise that the aesthetical distance of outsiders enables them to see what insiders cannot see. Conversely, however, insiders can also see things that outsiders cannot perceive. Outsidedness certainly has its limitations. As one moves farther and farther away from the object seen, one’s view of it becomes limited – literally and guratively. Bakhtin does not focus much on what insideness can (and does) offer, but his emphasis on outsidedness does not negate the role of insideness.

G. Layers of Outsidedness in the Nazareth Episode At least three layers of outsidedness emerge in my interpretation of the Nazareth episode: (a) passive outsidedness; (b) the outsiders’ outsidedness in relation to the prophets; (c) the readers’ outsidedness (or extra-location, as Bakhtin calls it) in relation to this story.

1. Passive Outsidedness The Nazarenes’ failure to perceive Jesus as prophet (implied in 4.24) is connected to the enthusiastic reception they initially accorded him (4.22a) and to their exclamatory question (4.22b). It is also connected to their demand for signs (mentioned by Jesus in 4.23). Interpreting Jesus’ words ‘no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown’ in light of the concept of outsidedness, one can argue that the Nazarenes’ proximity to Jesus enervated their ability to perceive him as prophet and respond accordingly. Given their limited distance from Jesus, they see him as (only) Joseph’s son – one of them. Therefore, given the cultural obligations, they should be the sole, or at least primary, beneciaries of his mission. The expression ‘son of Joseph’ is a small part of Jesus’ identity that is relevant in the context of Nazareth. But there is more to his identity and mission. Jesus is also a prophet – something Capernaum can see but Nazareth cannot. It appears that through their less than subtle demands based on kinship, the Nazarenes have exposed their limited understanding of his identity and mission. Their proximity to Jesus attenuates their ability to have

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outsidedness that would grant them a fuller view of him. Their limited view of him prevents them from perceiving that he is not just one of them, but also the Son of God and a prophet, who ministers to all people. It is not as though the Nazarenes have no aesthetical distance from Jesus at all; since they are very much outside him they must be presumed to have outsidedness in relation to him. Yet, since outsidedness is more an activity than an actual space, not everyone who is outside something necessarily has outsidedness in relation to it. In order for the Nazarenes to perceive Jesus’ mission and identity properly, they should position themselves at a distance from him and use that distance to look intentionally and critically. Since the Nazarenes cannot position themselves far enough away from Jesus, their outsidedness is both passive and limited. Such passive and limited outsidedness attenuates their ability to perceive the mission and identity of Jesus, something others with active outsidedness in relation to Jesus – Capernaum, for instance – have been able to see. It is the outsidedness of the Capernaum crowds that enables them to respond positively to Jesus’ declaration that he ‘must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other cities also’ (4.42-43). Seen in this context, Jesus’ statement (in 4.23) that the Nazarenes would, or did, expect favours from him because of their lack of outsidedness and the resultant misperception of his mission, makes sense. Kingsbury’s argument that Jesus was warning the Nazarenes against ‘putting him to the test’43 is predicated on the assumption that the Nazarenes’ initial attitude towards Jesus (4.22a) and their exclamatory question (4.22b) were hostile,44 both of which I have shown to be unlikely. Given their positive attitude and the cultural notion of obligations on Jesus’ part, his response in 4.23 must be construed in terms of Jesus’ suggestion that the Nazarenes were expecting signs from him based on their assumption that he owes them favours because of his roots in that town, rather than anything else. From a Bakhtinian point of view, such an assumption stems from their lack of outsidedness – in relation to Jesus – and results in ‘a narrow, provincial understanding of his identity and mission’.45 The Nazarenes’ limited perception and vision of Jesus’ mission is inconsistent with Jesus’ own vision of his mission, which, according to his just-concluded declaration (4.18-19), is extended to all, regardless of kinship and neighbourly relations. Green writes that,

43. Kingsbury, Conict in Luke, 46–7. 44. Kingsbury, Conict in Luke, 46–7. 45. Green, The Gospel of Luke, 216.

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What we have seen heretofore suggests that their assumption that Jesus will act as “one of us” – that is, their inhibiting vision of who he is and what he is to accomplish – stands as a primary obstacle to their receiving through him God’s favor. His is a ministry to all, and especially, according to 4:18-19, to those who have no claim to status or favor with God.46

From the perspective of Jesus, their parochial vision of his mission and identity also means that the Nazarenes have failed to meet the criteria to become recipients of his mission. Consequently, it is not that the Nazarenes have rejected Jesus, or were hostile to him, from the beginning, as Kingsbury seems to assume. Instead, Jesus will become unacceptable to his hometown folk because their expectation of special favours based on kinship will not be met.

2. The Outsiders’ Outsidedness Meanwhile, outsiders – Capernaum in this case – have become the beneciaries of Jesus’ mission because of their distance in relation to him. On the surface level, the Elijah and Elisha stories show a pattern wherein outsiders benet from the prophets’ mission. On a deeper level, however, it emerges that the extension of the prophetic mission to outsiders is causally linked to their ability to perceive and positively respond to that mission, and is simultaneous to insiders’ failure to be receptive to it. An analysis of the structure of Luke 4.24-27 shows that the Elijah and Elisha stories illustrate the maxim in v. 24 – insiders’ failure to perceive what the outsiders are able to see. Both Naaman and the widow from Zarephath were outsiders, who perceived and responded to the prophets in ways the insiders (the Israelites) did not. At a time when those at the helm of Israel turned to Baal, a widow from Zarephath, an outsider, exhibited faith in Elijah and his God (1 Kgs 17.11-16). Unlike Elisha’s contemporaries from Israel, Naaman the Syrian sought out Elisha and placed his trust in the God of Israel (2 Kgs 5.1-19). The contrast in these stories is not so much between powerful leaders and powerless people but between insiders and outsiders. It emerges that a major emphasis in the Elijah and Elisha pericopae (Luke 4.25-27) is that, on account of at least two factors, outsiders have been able to exhibit faith in the prophets in ways the insiders have not. First, the insiders’ proximity to the prophets limits their ability to perceive and accept them as prophets. Second, the outsiders’ aesthetical distance from the prophets enables them to see the complete horizon, perceive the prophets’ real identity and respond to them properly.

46. Green, The Gospel of Luke, 217.

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Thus, it appears that the function of the Elijah and Elisha stories is to illustrate the maxim in 4.24 (Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown) as it relates to Jesus’ appearance in Nazareth. But the stories also call attention to how the insiders – in this case the Nazarenes – have failed to perceive the identity of, and accept, this prophetic particular gure. On the other hand (and by implication), the outsiders – the residents of Capernaum, in this case – have been able to respond positively to this prophet’s mission. The parallelism in 4.24-27 reinforces the motif of the outsiders’ ability to see what the insiders cannot see. Outsiders vis-à-vis patris (hometown) is to prophet as Capernaum vis-à-vis Nazareth is to Jesus as the widow/Naaman vis-à-vis Israel is to Elijah/Elisha.47 To expand on it further, a prophet would be more acceptable to outsiders than in his hometown just as the widow and Naaman connected better with Elijah and Elisha respectively than anyone in Israel. Similarly, Capernaum accepted Jesus as a prophet in ways Nazareth did not. As Christopher Schreck points out ‘what Capernaum, outsiders, and gentiles all have in common, per analogiam, is their relative distance and receptivity as outsiders to Jesus, to a prophet, or to Elijah/Elisha, respectively. What Jesus, a prophet, and Elijah/Elisha share in common is a public prophetic ministry’.48 Their aesthetical distance enabled the Zarephath widow and Naaman to perceive the prophetic functions of Elijah and Elisha respectively and benet from them, while those within Israel failed to do the same. Similarly, the outsidedness the residents of Capernaum had in relation to Jesus enabled them to perceive Jesus’ prophetic identity to benet from his mission while the Nazarenes could not achieve the same due to lack of outsidedness. This theme – outsiders’ extraordinary perceptive skills and the interconnected ability to exhibit greater faith than the insiders – appears prominently in Jesus’ remarks on other occasions too. Referring to a centurion from Capernaum, whose characteristics are similar to those of Naaman, Jesus said, ‘I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith’ (7.9). Other references such as those to the queen of the south and to the sign of Jonah (11.29-32), as well as to the grateful Samaritan who returned (17.11-17), illustrate how the outsiders or those at a distance were able to perceive what the insiders could not. What the centurion, the queen of the south, and the Ninevites had in common was their outsidedness, a favourable vantage point in Bakhtin’s view. It is this

47. This is a slight modication of the argument Brawley makes. See Brawley, Luke-Acts and the Jews, 10. 48. Christopher Schreck, ‘The Nazareth Pericope: Luke 4:16-30 in Recent Study’, in F. Neirynck (ed.), L’Evangile de Luc (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1989), 447.

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very outsidedness that enabled the widow from Zarephath, Naaman, and now Capernaum to become the recipients of the prophets’ mission. Therefore, the point of Jesus’ message in 4.23-27 is threefold. In the rst place, it suggests that due to their limited view of Jesus, the Nazarenes demand miracles based on kinship and neighbourly connections, a demand that is inconsistent with the nature of his mission. Second, outsiders – Capernaum in this case – would become the beneciary of his mission, not so much because they have become objects of God’s grace, as Green suggests,49 but because their distance has enabled them to perceive Jesus as prophet and respond accordingly. Third, when the Nazarenes, who initially received him with great enthusiasm, learn that their demands would not be met, they would nd him unacceptable. The Nazarenes’ attempt on Jesus’ life needs to be seen as a reaction to Jesus’ prediction, which has the hallmarks of a self-fullling prophecy.

3. The Readers’ Outsidedness Like the widow from Zarephath, Naaman, and Capernaum the readers of the Gospel also have outsidedness. In Bakhtinian terms, their outsidedness is described as the ‘extra-location’ or the ‘third’. It operates on two different levels in relation to the Nazareth episode. On one level, just like Capernaum, the readers have outsidedness in relation to Jesus. It allows them to perceive Jesus’ identity and mission in ways the Nazarenes could not. From their extra-location the readers know that Jesus is a prophet whose mission is not extended to anyone based on kinship or neighbourly relations but is intended for all. The angel’s announcement (2.10), Mary’s song (1.46–55) and Simeon’s prophecy (2.32) reveal to readers that the scope of Jesus’ mission extends far beyond his hometown of Nazareth. The readers also know that Jesus’ mission extends to those willing to partake in it by acknowledging the prophetic identity of Jesus, and that the Nazarenes’ demand for miracles based on kinship and neighbourly relations is not consistent with this criterion. Furthermore, they are aware that by calling Jesus the son of Joseph, the Nazarenes have revealed a specic but limited understanding of Jesus.50 On another level, unlike Capernaum, readers have outsidedness in relation to the text as well. It enables them to know what neither the Nazarenes nor the residents of Capernaum are aware of. Capernaum has aesthetical distance in relation to Jesus that enables its residents perceive and accept Jesus as prophet,

49. Green, The Gospel of Luke, 211. 50. Tannehill, The Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts, 1:68.

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even as the Nazarenes fail to do the same. Yet there is little evidence that Capernaum knows about Jesus’ status as the Son of God or about other aspects of Jesus that are expressed throughout the Gospel by various characters. One way to explain Capernaum’s inability to see Jesus’ identity as the Son of God is to suggest that although it is further away from Jesus than is Nazareth, it is not positioned far enough away from Jesus to be able to perceive his special relationship to God or the various facets of his identity, beyond his role as the prophet. In fact, few characters in the Gospel have the ability to perceive Jesus’ status as the Son of God. There are only two groups that can see Jesus as the Son of God: the supernatural beings and the readers. It turns out that each of these two groups is on a totally different plane than the characters in the Gospel. From their extra-location, however, the readers know that Jesus is both a prophet and Son of God and more. It is as though the further one moves away from Jesus the better one can view him in ways those within close proximity cannot see.51 Seen this way, the readers’ outsidedness in relation to the text allows them to see that the Luke story of Jesus’ identity is multidimensional and polyphonic. That is, they are aware that Jesus is variously perceived to be the Son of God, son of Joseph, prophet, and in many other ways. There are many, divergent perceptions of Jesus that are expressed independently by different characters throughout the Gospel. I will return to this point later in this chapter.

H. The Readers’ Outsidedness and the Layers of Dialogues about Jesus’ Identity The readers’ outsidedness in relation to the text has two different but interrelated functions. First, it allows them to see that there are intratextual and intertextual dialogues in Luke about the identity and mission of Jesus. These dialogues reveal to the readers the polyphonic nature of Luke’s story of Jesus. Second, their outsidedness brings the readers themselves into dialogue with the text.

1. Intratextual Dialogues Readers of the Gospel are able to see that the Nazareth episode is in dialogue with other Lukan pericopae regarding the issue of Jesus’ mission and identity. Their outsidedness allows them to realize that the dialogues are facilitated primarily by one or more of these three aspects of Luke’s narrative: The uniquely

51. The qualifying statement I offered earlier about the limitations of outsidedness applies in this instance as well.

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Lukan pericopae (additions), the uniqueness of Luke’s material vis-à-vis Mark’s and Matthew’s (alterations), and Luke’s juxtaposition of the material (arrangement). To begin with, the Nazareth episode is in dialogue with the preceding story of temptation (4.1-13) regarding the mission of Jesus and, to a lesser extent, about his identity. The Nazarenes’ failure to perceive the full extent of Jesus’ identity and mission comes on the heels of the devil’s challenges to Jesus regarding his mission and status as the Son of God. Joel Green’s suggestion that the Nazareth pericope contains a threefold address-response cycle during the course of which the initial friendly attitude of the people turned hostile is helpful here.52 The temptation story has a similar threefold address-response cycle in which Jesus claries to the devil the nature of his mission, although it does not have the sudden transition from enthusiasm to hostility that characterizes the other story. The two pericopae have other similarities and common themes. Both the Nazarenes and the devil demand signs, albeit for different reasons. The devil asks Jesus to perform miracles supposedly for Jesus’ own benet and, as Jesus sees it, the Nazarenes seek to use their connection to him for their own benet. The motif of dialogic tension is apparent in these pericopae. First, there is tension between two competing visions of Jesus’ role and mission as the Son of God. On the one hand is the devil’s proposal that Jesus use that status to demonstrate his glory and seek his own benet. On the other hand is Jesus’ own vision of his mission, which he articulates in his conversation with the devil. Seen in this light, the Nazareth manifesto (4.18-20) in which Jesus emphasizes his commitment to the underprivileged serves as a counter voice to the devil’s proposal. Second, the Nazarenes’ parochial demand that Jesus grant them special favours is in tension with his vision of extending mission to all the people, as eshed out in the Elijah/Elisha stories (4.25-27). Neither the temptation story nor the Nazareth episode is unique to Luke but certain aspects of these pericopae are. First, the Nazareth manifesto and the Elijah/Elisha stories, both of which explicate the nature of Jesus’ mission, can be described in terms of Luke’s additions to, or alterations of, his source. Second, the explicit focus on the nature of Jesus’ mission in Luke’s story of temptation is missing in Mark’s account, although not in Matthew’s. Third, Luke alone places the Nazareth episode immediately after the temptation story. These uniquely Lukan aspects and Luke’s juxtaposition of pericopae that emphasize similar issues facilitate and accentuate the dialogues about the

52. Green, The Gospel of Luke, 209–18.

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mission of Jesus. This conversation about the nature of Jesus’ mission continues in later pericopae, especially in 6.20-21 and 7.21-22. The Nazareth episode and the temptation story are in dialogue also regarding another key issue in the third Gospel – the identity of Jesus. This dialogue about his identity continues throughout Luke’s Gospel and reveals to the readers the multidimensional nature of his identity. It is initiated by the angel’s announcement that Jesus will be called the Son of the Most High and Son of God (1.32-35). As Sharon Ringe notes, this motif of Jesus as the Son of God ‘will reappear like a brightly colored thread woven through Luke’s account’.53 Various voices in the Gospel express disparate, contradictory perceptions of Jesus that afrm, complement or attenuate that motif. While Zechariah calls him a mighty saviour (1.69), Simeon refers to him as master (2.29). Anna sees in him Jerusalem’s deliverer (2.38). In the story about Jesus getting lost in the temple at Jerusalem, his self-perception as the Son of God is juxtaposed with, and appears to challenge, Mary’s perception of him as the son of Joseph (2.48-49). This uniquely Lukan story highlights the emphasis the Gospel places on the identity of Jesus, but it also foregrounds the tension between two competing, but not mutually exclusive, perceptions of Jesus. In the story of Jesus’ baptism, John the Baptist describes Jesus as the coming one and the greater one (3.16). By declaring him to be the Son of God (3.22), the voice from heaven refers back to, and afrms, Jesus’ perception of himself recorded in 2:49. The narrator’s voice in the genealogy, which immediately follows the declaration by the heavenly voice, concurs with that voice and further afrms Jesus’ status as the Son of God (3.38). It also continues the dialogue about the identity of Jesus. If Luke’s readers are familiar with Matthew’s Gospel, they would notice that Luke’s account of the genealogy is different from Matthew’s in two important ways. First, the content of the genealogy is different in the two accounts. Whereas Matthew traces the genealogy back to David and Abraham, Luke traces it back even further to Adam and God in order to portray Jesus as the Son of God. Second, Matthew places the account at the beginning of the Gospel. But Luke interjects it between two stories that highlight the issue of Jesus’ identity. He situates it right after the baptism episode and before the temptation story. These two differences place Luke’s account squarely within the context of an ongoing dialogue about the identity of Jesus and reinforce his status as the Son of God. The story of temptation (4.1-13) intensies the dialogue on the issue both because of its content and due to its placement right after the accounts of

53. Sharon H. Ringe, Luke, WBC (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1995), 31

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baptism and genealogy. It highlights an attempt to undermine a perception of Jesus expressed in the two pericopae that precede it. Given Luke’s placement of this story, the devil’s challenge to Jesus – ‘if you are the Son of God’ – comes as a direct response to the voice from heaven and to the genealogy, both of which afrmed Jesus’ status as the Son of God. Ringe aptly observes that ‘for two of the three tests, the “hook” used by the devil to evoke Jesus’ response recalls the heavenly voice Jesus has just heard: “If you are the Son of God, . . .’”54 But the devil’s voice responds dialogically also to the narrator’s voice in the genealogy. In fact, it functions as a counter voice to every voice that has hitherto afrmed Jesus as the Son of God. The Nazarenes’ perception that Jesus is the son of Joseph should be seen in the context of other characters’ perceptions of Jesus that appear in the pericopae before (and after) the Nazareth pericope. Despite their positive words about Jesus, their exclamatory question (Isn’t this the son of Joseph?) serves as a counter voice to the perception of Jesus expressed by the heavenly voice and the genealogy. Additionally, their question implicitly afrms Mary’s perception of Jesus as the son of Joseph (2.48). It appears that the pericope and voices that portray Jesus as the Son of God are sandwiched by those that attenuate such portrayals. Through their outsidedness in relation to the text, the readers know that such arrangement of contradictory voices is distinctively Lukan and that there is a dialogic relationship between those voices. The conversation among Lukan voices continues beyond the Nazareth episode. The man with an unclean spirit whom Jesus encountered in Capernaum refers to him as Jesus of Nazareth. Luke’s interest in highlighting the divergent perceptions of Jesus’ identity articulated by various characters becomes more evident in the next two pericopae. Although neither story is uniquely Lukan, both have a uniquely Lukan emphasis. In the story about healings at Simon’s house (4.38-41), demons call Jesus the Son of God. Of all the three synoptic accounts (Lk 4.38-41; Mk. 1.29-34; Matt. 8.14-17) Luke alone highlights the demons’ participation in the dialogue about the identity of Jesus. In the subsequent story about calling the rst disciples, Simon Peter expresses his understanding of Jesus as master and Lord (Lk. 5.1-10). Peter’s perspective, a key aspect of Luke’s account, is missing in the Markan and Matthean accounts of this story that are strikingly similar vis-à-vis Luke’s (Mk 1.16-20; Matt. 4.18-22). Furthermore, Luke alone places these two stories immediately after several other pericopae that focus on the issue of Jesus’ identity. Such

54. Ringe, Luke, 59.

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strategic placement has the effect of intensifying an ongoing dialogue about a key Lukan theme. Jesus’ participation in the conversation occurs almost throughout the narrative and highlights other aspects of his identity. He repeatedly refers to himself as son of man (7.34; 9.26, 44, 58; 12.8, 10, 40; 17.22-24, 30; 18.31; 21.27; 22.48, 69) and occasionally as prophet (4.24) and Lord (19.31). In the post-resurrection narratives he twice refers to himself as messiah (24.26, 46). The narrator, another prominent voice, often reveals his understanding of Jesus as Lord (10.1; 11.39; 12.42; 13.15; 17.5-6). The same title is used by several other voices such as the centurion (7.6), James and John (9.54), the seventy (10.17), and Martha (10.40). Peter and the other disciples call him Lord on several occasions (5.8; 12.41; 22.33, 38; 24.34) but they also addresses him by other titles such as master (5.5; 8.22, 45; 9.33). When the issue of Jesus’ identity is brought to the fore at a critical moment in the narrative, Peter reveals his perception of Jesus as the messiah of God (9.18-20). Various other characters also participate in the conversation. The residents of Nain see him as prophet (7.16). The man with the demoniac calls him Son of the Most High (8.28) and the voice from the cloud refers to him as my son, my chosen (9.35). On several occasions the title teacher is used by characters like the lawyer (10.25; 11.45), people in the crowd (12.13), the rich ruler (18.18), and others (20.21, 28; 21.7). Other perceptions of Jesus’ identity include master (17.13), Son of David (18.37-39) and King (19.38). The debate about Jesus’ identity reaches a new high during his trials (22.66-71; 23.1-5) and crucixion (23.32-43) and focuses primarily on the question of whether Jesus was Son of God, the messiah, or King of the Jews. The debate continues even after the resurrection with other, newer voices expressing their perceptions of Jesus as son of man and mighty prophet (24.7, 19). Each voice refers back to another voice and anticipates those to come. As Bakhtin suggests, ‘an utterance seeks to generate response and needs the response to bring it to life. It wants to be heard, understood and answered by other voices from other positions’.55 Such emphasis on the analeptic and proleptic aspects highlights Bakhtin’s understanding of dialogue as an unnalizable process. In his view, dialogue lies at the center of Dostoevsky’s artistic world ‘not as a means, but as an end itself. Dialogue here is not the threshold to action, it is the action itself’.56 He insists further that ‘To be means to communicate dialogically. Thus dialogue, by its very essence, cannot and must not come to

55. Bakhtin, ‘The Problem of Speech Genres’, in Speech Genres, 91. 56. Bakhtin, Problems, 252.

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an end’.57 It is not my goal – nor is it possible – to establish that what occurs in Luke is an unnalizable dialogue in the Bakhtinian sense of the term. Still, Bakhtin’s insight elucidates the seemingly unending, if not unnalizable, dialogue Luke facilitates on the issue at hand. The pattern of various characters expressing their divergent perceptions of Jesus can also be seen in Mark and Matthew. But a salient feature of Luke’s Gospel is that it places far greater emphasis on the theme and accentuates that emphasis by means of the three aforementioned aspects of the narrative. First, Luke alone records several of these stories that focus on Jesus’ identity. Second, the Lukan accounts on this theme that have synoptic parallels are noticeably different from the other two Gospels. These differences are often characterized by explicit references to the identity of Jesus. Finally, Luke often juxtaposes divergent perspectives about the identity of Jesus in a manner that foregrounds the dialogic tension on the issue throughout the Gospel. Another salient feature of Luke is the absence of a privileged or dominant perspective. The titles for Jesus the readers frequently encounter are Son of God, Lord, son of man, and teacher. The narrator, Peter and Jesus appear to be the prominent voices on this matter, but they are not necessarily the dominant voices in Luke’s narrative. These characters speak frequently, but others interrupt them repeatedly seeking to promote their own understandings of Jesus. Neither the narrator’s voice nor that of any character that might represent the author’s ideas is able to exercise complete control over the conversation. Furthermore, neither the narrator’s viewpoint nor that of any character – Jesus, disciples, or the heavenly voice – is presented as the ideal perspective. For instance, the narrator and the disciples, all of whom may be conceptually aligned with the author, often refer to Jesus as the Lord. As Dawsey observes that ‘“Lord” is a way of referring to Jesus that the author thought singularly appropriate for his narrator’.58 He also suggests that ‘by calling Jesus “Lord” the narrator denes himself as part of the believing community. He is like the disciples, and this way of referring to Jesus is appropriate to him in a way that, “Son of man,” “Teacher,” and “Son of God” are not’.59 The readers, however, nd that the authorial perspective does not automatically become authoritative. The less prominent characters rarely, if ever, change their perspectives as a result of their interaction with the prominent characters. Luke’s pattern of juxtapositions and interruptions forces the divergent

57. Bakhtin, Problems, 252. 58. Dawsey, The Lukan Voice, 10. 59. Dawsey, The Lukan Voice, 12–13.

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voices and perspectives to quarrel with each other regarding the issue of Jesus’ identity. It is also an essential aspect of Bakhtin’s concept of dialogism. On a literary level, such arrangement of voices facilitates intense, unnalizable and occasionally acrimonious conversations on the issue at hand. In her reading of the book of Job, Newsom highlights a similar juxtaposition of disparate genres by which the author of Job brought together ‘ideas and moral imaginations which may have been isolated from one another in the cultural world of ancient Israel’.60 It may be difcult to establish that Luke was in fact bringing together originally isolated elements, but one can suggest that the manner in which he arranges pericopae that express divergent ideas about the identity of Jesus plays an important role in ensuring continuous dialogues on the issue. There is also a possible ethical dimension to such juxtapositions. Using insights from Emmanuel Levinas, Newsom highlights how the various genres such as didactic prose, tale and wisdom dialogue repeatedly interrupt each other in the book of Job. Levinas sees such ‘interruption’ (of another person’s speech) as an ethical imperative because it is in such interruptions that the adequacy of a given genre or speech is challenged and the ‘necessary encounter with the Other occurs’.61 Newsom’s explication of the Levinasian notion of interruption offers helpful insights on the manner in which the disparate voices in Luke’s Gospel disrupt, contradict and challenge each other. When one looks at the divergent perspectives in Luke in light of this insight, the quarreling voices that seem rude to each other need not be seen as ‘loose and baggy monsters’ that wreak havoc in the narrative, as Henry James might describe them. Instead, they become active participants in the ethical obligation of interrupting the speeches of others. Such interruptions have the effect of attenuating the other voices’ ability to dominate the conversation. Each new voice calls attention to the inadequacy – but not invalidity – of the perspectives already offered by other voices and highlights a dimension that has not been introduced or sufciently considered hitherto. To describe it in Newsom’s words, although the existing voices speak the truth, they do not speak the whole truth.62 That is, the interrupting voices challenge the existing ones, but they also add to what has already been uttered without necessarily replacing them. Together the many voices present a fuller, more comprehensive picture of the object of perception. By juxtaposing divergent, contradictory voices and allowing them to challenge each other’s

60. Newsom, The Book of Job, 70. 61. Newsom, The Book of Job, 71. 62. Newsom, The Book of Job, 70.

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assertions, Luke appears to ensure that no single voice or character can claim monopoly over the ‘truth’. As Bakhtin might insist, the dialogic truth ‘requires a plurality of consciousnesses’ because it ‘cannot in principle be tted into the bounds of a single consciousness’.63 And the truth – more appropriately, in this case, a fuller understanding of the identity of Jesus – emerges in the process of encounter between many, disparate voices and perspectives. I will explore related ethical issues further in the nal chapter.

2. Intertextual Dialogues On the intertextual plane, Jesus’ self-perception as a prophet along the lines of Elijah and Elisha (4.25-27) places the Nazareth episode in a dialogic relationship with a few pericopae in 1 and 2 Kings and with some later Lukan pericopae that are also in dialogue with 1 and 2 Kings. This episode is also engaged in a conversation with its parallel in Mark. While reading 4.25-27, the reader recalls the Elijah and Elisha stories and hears a dialogue between Jesus’ words and 1 Kgs 17.11-16; 2 Kgs 5.2-15. In Jesus’ own self-understanding, he is a conation of himself and at least two other characters – Elijah and Elisha. Jesus draws similarities between his story and those of Elijah and Elisha (Lk. 4.25-27). Jesus’ analogy shows that all three – Jesus, Elijah and Elisha – were more successful with outsiders than with insiders. When the hearer hears Jesus comparing himself to Elijah and Elisha, there is anticipation that his ministry might resemble the work of those prophets. There is thus also a proleptic dialogue in this text. As readers will learn later in Luke, Jesus performs some of the same miracles Elijah and Elisha performed. He raises from death the only son of a widow in Nain (7.11-17) just as Elijah did in Zarephath (1 Kgs 17.17-24). And he cures a leper (Lk. 5.12-16) just as Elisha did (2 Kgs 5). Akin to Naaman expressing faith in Elisha (1 Kgs 5), a gentile centurion professes faith in Jesus (Luke 7.1-10). Thus, the characters are in dialogue, and the texts are also in dialogue. On another level, Jesus’ self-understanding as a prophet (4.24-27) is in dialogue with the Nazarenes’ perception of him (son of Joseph). The reader is gradually getting caught in a web of dialogue, for she or he is in dialogue with a text (4.23-27) that is in dialogue with several other texts. Luke looks at Mark. The Nazareth episode is engaged in an intertextual dialogue with its Markan parallel, widely considered to be the source of Luke’s Gospel. As Luke narrates the Nazareth episode, he orients it toward his audience, but he also makes use of the parallel in Mark. Yet he does not simply

63. Bakhtin, Problems, 81.

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imitate it; he engages it in conversation, questions it, relativizes it, adds some words, phrases or segments – such as the one about Jesus reading from Isaiah – and drops others. He elaborates it in some places but also shortens it in other places. For instance, Luke’s account of what Jesus did at the synagogue is much more elaborate than Mark’s (cf. Mk 6.1-6). At the same time, he makes far fewer references to the members of Jesus’ family. Joseph is the only one mentioned in Luke. In Mark’s account, however, Jesus’ brothers and sisters are mentioned as well. Additionally, while Mark places the Nazareth episode well into the public ministry of Jesus Luke re-positions it and places it at the beginning. Furthermore, just as Luke redacts and transforms Mark’s text, Mark transforms Luke’s text too, for Luke is written in relation, although not as a direct response, to Mark’s account. Thus, the text belongs to both Luke and Mark at the same time. Julia Kristeva, who developed the concept of intertextuality by employing insights from Bakhtin’s concept of dialogism, observes: The two texts meet, contradict, and relativize each other . . ., each word (text) is an intersection of word (texts) where at least one another word (text) can be read.64

This intertextual dialogue does not end with the meeting of Luke and Mark. At another level, as Mark writes his account, he himself is engaged in a dialogue with his sources – oral traditions – which he redacts and relativizes. By extension, then, as Luke writes, he is in dialogue with Mark, who is in dialogue with his sources, which are possibly engaged in dialogue with their sources. Consequently, Luke reads Mark reading his sources reading their own sources. When one brings the readers into the picture, the reader (this reader, for instance) reads Luke reading Mark reading his sources reading their own sources. Such a dialogic event proceeds perpetually, on both ends of a text, in a continuum of communication. As Kristeva has observed, the status of a word (text) is horizontal (the word in the text belongs to both the writing subject and the addressee) as well as vertical (the word in the text is oriented towards an anterior or synchronic literary corpus).65 Given the fact that a narration is structured simultaneously in relation to both an addressee (reader) as well as an anterior writing, the horizontal and the vertical meet in this episode. Finally, as the author reads an anterior text, he inserts a context (Mark, for instance) into his text, but by

64. Kristeva, ‘Word, Dialogue, and Novel’, 37. 65. Kristeva, ‘Word, Dialogue, and Novel’, 36.

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transforming/rewriting that text, he inserts himself (his text) into the context. Therefore: context into text and text into text.

I. Outsidedness, Otherness, Dialogue In the contemporary discourse on interpersonal and intercultural relations, terms such as ‘other’ and ‘otherness’ are often employed as part of differentiating between various groups or communities.66 Since any two people or communities would be different from each other, or have difference in relation to each other, each is potentially an ‘other’. When each of the two focuses on the other’s ‘otherness’, it leads to the process of mutual ‘othering’. It is a process employed by some to dene and portray themselves positively by labelling those different from them as the ‘other’. Although markers of identity such as gender, religion, language, race and ethnicity – markers that are employed to differentiate between individuals and groups – have the potential to be used constructively for the purpose of afrming the ‘other’, for the most part they have been employed to stigmatize the ‘other’ and to depict that ‘other’ as peripheral, non-essential and less than human. Therefore, intentionally or unintentionally, the process of ‘othering’ has destructive effects because of its potential and propensity to dehumanize individuals, groups and communities. As Cornelia Cyss-Wittenstein has observed, it has ‘the effect of further marginalization and even exclusion, be that of characters in Biblical texts or of entire communities of readers and interpreters’.67 The Bakhtinian concept of outsidedness has the same starting point as the notion of ‘otherness’, but it moves in a very different direction. Both these concepts have distance or differences – cultural, spatial, linguistic, etc. – between two people or communities as their starting point. Yet rather than contributing to the denigrating and dehumanizing process of ‘othering’, outsidedness, when employed properly, promotes constructive mutuality and meaningful dialogue. The concept can be employed fruitfully for a meaningful dialogue between different groups and communities. It is the distance and differences between two people, groups or communities – as much as commonalities – that enable

66. My use of the term ‘other’ is closely related to the term ‘otherness’ that was rst introduced by Hegel. See Georg W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977). 67. Cornelia Cyss-Wittenstein, ‘Layers of Outsidedness: Dialogue with the Dialogue between Jesus and the Samaritan Woman (John 4:1-43)’, unpublished paper presented at the SBL Consultation on Bakhtin and Biblical Imagination (Atlanta, Georgia, 2003).

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them to enter into meaningful conversations with each other. But the goal is to use mutual outsidedness for mutual enhancement.

Conclusion The Bakhtinian concept of outsidedness can help delineate the transitional conundrum in the Nazareth episode. The readers’ outsidedness in relation to Luke’s narrative enables them to see that the response of Jesus (4.23-27) calls attention to the Nazarenes’ inability to view him from a distance, an inability that results in a parochial understanding of his identity and mission. Since their parochial understanding will preclude them from receiving what the residents of Capernaum – viewing Jesus from a distance – were able to receive, he would become unacceptable to them. Seen this way, the aphorism in 4.24 becomes a self-fullling prophecy whereby the Nazarenes attempt to kill Jesus. Through their extra-location, the readers also know that Luke’s story of Jesus’ identity is polyphonic and that the Nazareth episode is in dialogue with other pericopae on intratextual and intertextual levels. Jesus’ multiple identities are frequently afrmed, challenged or questioned by many, divergent voices in the Lukan narrative. As a result, no single perspective regarding the identity of Jesus emerges as the dominant voice. Instead, the readers are exposed to a constant interplay and exchange of ideas. Such interplay between ideas creates a web of dialogues within the narrative. On the level of reading, the readers are drawn into the dialogue, and their own perceptions of Jesus’ identity afrm, challenge and redene the divergent perceptions of Jesus expressed in the Lukan narrative.

3 TO EACH ITS OWN LOOPHOLE: LOOPHOLE DIALOGUES AND THE T ENSION B ETWEEN H EARING AND D OING

Introduction This chapter illuminates salient aspects of Lk. 10.25-42 – especially the tension between the two prominent Lukan themes of hearing and doing – in light of the Bakhtinian concepts of loophole, essential surplus and dialogue. Using this pericope as the starting point the chapter highlights how Luke juxtaposes the two themes and places them in a dialogic relationship. It will call attention to the various strategies the author employs to accentuate the dialogic tension between the two themes. I call attention to the thoroughly loopholed nature of this pericope – the loophole in the law, the Samaritan’s loophole, the lawyer’s loophole and Jesus’ loophole – as well as to the manner in which those loopholes generate, and are intrinsically linked to, each other. I explicate how these loopholes not only enable the corresponding characters to attenuate others’ ability to dene them in nalizing terms but also engender various dialogues in Luke. I also offer an initial exploration of the ethical and theological implications of those concepts. The chapter focuses primarily on 10.25-37, the parable of the Good Samaritan in particular, but it also considers the next pericope, the story of Martha and Mary (10.38-42), and examines the nature of the interconnectedness between the two pericopae. While some scholars see no link between the two units,1 others interpret the link in terms of either the Lukan juxtaposition of related episodes2 or the inverse fullment of the twofold commandment (10.27).3 I argue that the two pericopae are linked dialogically and that the dialogue

1. Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke: Introduction, Translation and Notes (Garden City: Doubleday, 1985), 2:891; Barbara Reid, Choosing the Better Part? Women in the Gospel of Luke (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1996), 148. 2. E.g., Green, The Gospel of Luke, NICNT. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), 33. 3. E.g., I. Howard Marshall, The Gospel of Luke: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids,

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stems primarily from the Lukan Jesus’ decision to exercise his loophole in order to attenuate others’ ability to dene him in nalizing terms vis-à-vis the tension between ‘doing’ and ‘hearing’. What do these loopholes – this includes Jesus’ loophole – look like, and how do they enable the various characters to remain unnalizable? How does Jesus’ loophole, in the Bakhtinian sense of the term, facilitate a dialogue between the emphasis on ‘doing’ in 10.25-37 and the emphasis on ‘hearing’ one nds in 10.38-42? These are the key questions considered in this chapter. I will begin by highlighting the numerous loopholes in 10.25-37.

A. ‘Loophole’ Dened In their interpretation of Lk. 10.25-37 some scholars contrast the compassionate response of the Samaritan with the indifferent and callous attitude of the priest and the Levite.4 Others highlight the manner in which the Samaritan subverted the expectations of Jesus’ immediate audience and Luke’s readers by showing compassion, which earned him the oxymoronic title ‘good Samaritan’.5 These interpretations explicate important aspects of the parable of the good Samaritan, but they do not touch upon, let alone explicate, a key aspect running through this pericope. The Bakhtinian concept of ‘loophole’ is especially helpful for explicating that aspect. ‘Loophole’ and ‘unnalizability’ are employed somewhat interchangeably in this work. In non-technical terms, ‘exception’ would be a rough equivalent of ‘loophole’. I argue that several characters and entities within and outside the parable have loopholes that allow them to resist others’ attempts to dene them in nalizing terms. First, a working denition of the term ‘loophole’ is in order. Contrary to the common perception of ‘loophole’ as that which undermines the integrity of its host component – be it a person, thing, or word – Bakhtin denes and employs the term in a positive sense. In Bakhtin’s oeuvre, loophole is an aspect of a person, thing or word that grants them an element of elusiveness, which attenuates others’ ability to dene them in nalizing terms. A loophole is the retention for oneself of the possibility for altering the ultimate, nal meaning of one’s own words . . . This potential other meaning, that is, the

MI: Eerdmans, 1978); Charles H. Talbert, Reading Luke: A Literary and Theological Commentary (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2002). 4. E.g., Green, The Gospel of Luke, 29; Marshall, The Gospel of Luke, 449. 5. See John Dominic Crossan, In Parables: The Challenge of the Historical Jesus (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1973), 63–4.

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loophole left open, accompanies the word like a shadow. Judged by its meaning alone, the word with a loophole should be an ultimate word and does present itself as such, but in fact it is only the penultimate word and places after itself only a conditional, not a nal period.6

The concept of loophole can be described better in the context of one trying to perceive and dene another. Although anything that can be dened has a potential loophole, Bakhtin uses the term primarily, but not exclusively, with reference to people. A loophole offers the means or the escape route through which one can escape another person’s attempt to dene her in nalizing terms. Thus, rather than weakening a person, the presence of a loophole allows one to remain ambiguous and elusive. According to Barbara Green, ‘loopholes are precisely the ways in which we avoid nalizing judgments of others on ourselves’.7 Bakhtin uses the term ‘loophole’ somewhat interchangeably, but not synonymously, with ‘unnalizability’, another key term in his writings. There is, however, a subtle difference between these two terms. To describe the difference succinctly (and somewhat inadequately), the former refers to an aspect of a person, but the latter refers to the nature of that person or to a state of things. Loophole is the means or the agency through which one achieves unnalizability. A sentence such as ‘A person’s loophole makes her or him unnalizable to others’ should illustrate the subtle difference between the two terms. With this working denition of loophole on the table, I will proceed to illuminate the presence of various loopholes in the pericope under consideration.

B. Loophole in the Law Jesus responds to the lawyer’s second question, ‘Who is my neighbor?’ (10.29), by narrating a parable that juxtaposes the disparate responses of three individuals to the plight of an anonymous wounded man. By positioning the indenite particle tis (a or a certain) adjacent to the noun anthrpos (man), the Lukan Jesus appears to be shifting the focus of the parable away from the identity of the wounded man and toward the responses of the three individuals passing by on the road. Although there is a slight difference between the responses of the priest and the Levite,8 they are quite similar – both are characterized by indif-

6. Bakhtin, Problems, 233. 7. Green, How Are the Mighty Fallen? 382. 8. The priest simply passes by on the other side; the Levite goes near the wounded man, but does not stop to help him.

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ference and lack of compassion – and are in stark contrast to the Samaritan’s response. In their attempts to explain the responses of the priest and the Levite, several interpreters have argued that those responses were in accordance with rst-century Jewish purity laws, which curtailed the freedom of religious gures in potentially polluting circumstances. Hence, it is important to examine the merits of those arguments. To begin with, since the verb katebainen (‘he was going down’) in v. 31 indicates that the priest was returning from, rather than going to, Jerusalem, it is possible to hear Jesus as implying that purity concerns were not instrumental in his decision not to assist the wounded man. Jeremias is probably on the mark in suggesting that factors other than ritual considerations inuenced the actions of the priest and the Levite.9 At the same time, however, Charles Talbert’s argument that any rst-century Jew faithful to the scriptures would have taken purity factors seriously in such a situation, even when not en route to Jerusalem, merits consideration.10 According to him the apparent choice made by the two religious gures – who generally would have adhered to purity laws more stringently than most ordinary Jews – not to risk deling themselves through contact with a dying man is understandable. Quoting G. B. Caird, Talbert suggests that Jesus’ hearers would have sympathized with the concerns of the priest and the Levite. Talbert observes, When, therefore, Jesus’ hearers were told the priest and Levite avoided any contact with the man who was half-dead (v. 30), they would know these religious gures did exactly as they were required to do by scripture.11

His argument is intriguing, but it stems from a failure to realize that the rst-century Jewish laws regarding what a priest or a Levite could or could not have done in such a situation were probably not as monolithic as Talbert characterizes them. Duncan Derrett calls attention to the disparate views in the rst-century Jewish context on the question of whether touching a dying man would have deled a priest.12 His analysis is especially effective in illuminating the complexity of the laws dealing with this subject and the plethora of conditional clauses that anticipate and address various potential scenarios. He highlights the fact that the instructions that emphasize ritual purity to the extent of curtailing one’s ability to assist others in potentially deling circumstances

9. Joachim Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus (New York: Scribners, 1963), 203. 10. Talbert cites Num. 19.11-19 in support of his argument. See Talbert, Reading Luke, 130. 11. Talbert, Reading Luke, 130. 12. J. Duncan M. Derrett, Law in the New Testament (London: Longman and Todd, 1970), 211–17.

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are equiponderated by commandments that underscore one’s obligations to his or her neighbour in the same situations. There is, then, a creative tension between an emphasis on ritual purity on the one hand and an emphasis on obligations to one’s neighbour on the other. To describe this in slightly different terms, if one were to call the purity laws the vertical aspect and obligations to one’s neighbour the horizontal aspect, it can be said that the same Law emphasizes both the vertical and horizontal aspects. On the one hand, the divergent instructions prescribing limitations as well as obligations are a testament to the equal emphasis the Torah places on both vertical and horizontal aspects. On the other hand, those limitations and obligations highlight a certain level of ambiguity within the Law itself. As Derrett suggests, such ambiguity (my word, not his) must have meant that the priest’s decision to pass by, perhaps to avoid delement, was not without justication. The priest was thus entitled to pass on. And there is no anti-clerical sarcasm here.13 Conversely, however, if he desired, he could have found justication (within the Law) to assist the dying man. So Derrett observes, Justication for a priest’s deling himself, however, should he wish to do so, was not wanting. To save life he might do so, that is, he must have the intention of saving the life of a living person. Some might take the view that he could take the risk. The Babylonian Talmud in the Gemara to Mishnah Pes. VIII.6 (rescuing one who might turn out to be dead, or to have been when one commenced the rescue work) and Yoma VIII. 6-7 touches on the ritual commandments and the duty to save life. Doubt there operates in favor of life . . .. Even if it is doubtful whether he is an Israelite or a heathen [which will include a Samaritan for our purposes].14

In Bakhtinian terms, given the unnalizable nature of the Law, it was entirely possible for the priest to explore (and exploit) a loophole in the Law in order to assist the dying man. The implication of this line of argument is that in choosing not to explore a loophole in the Law for the purpose of assisting the dying man, the priest (and the Levite)15 failed either to recognize, or to acknowledge, the unnalizable nature of the Law. It appears that the response of the priest and the Levite stemmed not necessarily from their inability to help the dying man under those circumstances but from their decision to observe purity laws to the extent of, and even at the expense of, being oblivious to the neighbourly aspect

13. Derrett, Law in the New Testament, 214. 14. Derrett, Law in the New Testament, 214. 15. It is conceivable that similar, though not identical, considerations, restrictions and exceptions pertaining to the Law would have applied to the Levite as well.

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of the Law specied in Lev 19.18. To describe it in slightly different terms, their responses reveal their preference for one aspect of the Law over another aspect. Again, as Derrett suggests, ‘Much depends upon the inclination with which one approaches such a dilemma’.16 The signicance the priest and the Levite attached to the vertical aspect of the Law and their correlating decision not to explore a loophole to help a neighbour become clear if one contrasts their responses with that of the Samaritan. Some scholars have suggested that the Samaritan’s compassionate response was possible since the purity laws that purportedly prevented the two religious gures from helping the dying man did not necessarily apply to the Samaritan community.17 Therefore, it is pertinent to examine whether the Samaritan was possibly operating under a different set of rules than did the priest and the Levite. Derrett has contested the notion that there were few purity laws in the Samaritan community that would have curtailed this Samaritan’s freedom to assist the dying man. Based on his study of the Samaritan purity laws, he argues that the ritual constraints that supposedly inuenced the other two characters in the parable would have applied to the Samaritan as well. As he puts it, Indeed the Samaritans, who were also sons of the commandments, feared delement from the dead. But the Samaritan was moved by compassion and this obviated fears about his own or his animal’s or wares’ contamination.18

Ringe seems to agree when she says that, ‘he too would have been affected by the same regulations concerning touching a corpse that the priest and the Levite would have recognized, as well as the commandment to love’.19 If the Samaritan community had similar, though not necessarily identical, purity laws, then those three who were passing by on the road were operating under similar circumstances. What distinguishes the Samaritan from the other two is his decision to honour the horizontal aspect of the Law at the risk of deling himself and undermining the vertical aspect. A point to which I alluded earlier – that the Samaritan’s ability to assist the dying man is linked to the choice he made to explore a loophole in the purity laws – needs elaboration here. One aspect of that link pertains to the manner in which the loophole he explored enabled him to full his neighbourly responsibility. Another aspect pertains to the manner in which the Samaritan explored (and exploited)

16. Derrett, Law in the New Testament, 215. 17. E.g., see Talbert, Luke, 130. 18. Derrett, Law in the New Testament, 217. 19. Ringe, Luke, 159.

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exceptions in purity laws in order to full another important aspect of the Law seen in Lev 19.18. It emerges that he risked the vertical aspect of the Law in order to full its horizontal aspect. In what might amount to a contradiction in terms, I suggest that he risked (one aspect of) the Law in order to full (another aspect of) the Law. It appears that at the core of the Samaritan’s decision to explore and exploit a loophole in the Law is his realization that the Law is ambiguous and open-ended and hence cannot be dened in nalizing terms. To interpret this in Bakhtinian terms, the Samaritan treated the Law as an unnalizable and loopholed entity, one that retains for itself the possibility of altering the meaning of its own words and has yet to utter its nal word.20 Such an attitude, which indicates his respect for the Law, allowed him to refrain from imitating the priest and the Levite when they chose to dene the Law in nalizing terms. Dialogue in 10:25-37. Contrasting the responses of the priest and the Levite with the response of the Samaritan not only highlights the tension between vertical and horizontal aspects of the Law but also facilitates a dialogue between the two. On a different level, there is a dialogue between the lawyer’s knowing/ hearing the Law and the Samaritan’s doing it. Jesus encounters a lawyer who has heard/read the Law and mastered it, as evidenced in his ability to recite the twofold commandment. Unlike in Matthew and Mark where Jesus recites the twofold commandment (Mt. 22.37-38; Mk 12.29-31), Luke’s account suggests it was the lawyer who recited it. Jesus only afrms that the lawyer has spoken correctly. This difference in Luke’s account, specically the ease with which he recites it, suggests that the lawyer has heard the Law often and is quite familiar with it. However, since his knowledge of the Law has not been matched by his willingness to full/do the prescriptions of the Law, Jesus instructs him to ‘do’. Although there is tension between hearing and doing, the pericope places far greater emphasis on ‘doing’. To begin with, the lawyer sought to hear from Jesus what he needed to ‘do’ to inherit eternal life. Jesus exhorted the lawyer to ‘do’ in accordance with the twofold commandment (10.28). His nal instructions for the lawyer were to ‘go and do like’ the Samaritan, who is posited as the model worthy of emulation. It appears that in this pericope the Lukan Jesus repeatedly stresses the importance of doing. Readers familiar with the Markan and Matthean parallels of this story would notice that such repeated emphasis on doing is uniquely Lukan. The pericope contains another dialogue, one that pertains to the uniqueness of this pericope vis-à-vis its synoptic counterparts. Whereas Matthew and Mark

20. Bakhtin talks about this aspect of loophole in Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 232–3.

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link two originally unconnected aspects of the Law – Deut. 6.5, which focuses on the vertical aspect, and Lev. 19.18, which highlights horizontal obligations – in a manner that implies a hierarchical relationship between the two, Luke coalesces them into a twofold, but single, commandment. The non-hierarchical manner in which Luke presents the two, foregrounds the equal emphasis the third Gospel places on vertical and horizontal aspects and the dialogic tension between those two aspects. There are at least two other dialogues in Lk. 10.25-42: (1) a dialogue between Mary’s choice and Martha’s choice; and (2) Jesus’ dialogue with himself, i.e. dialogue between two different emphases of Jesus. I will explicate them at a later point. But rst, it is pertinent to highlight how the Samaritan’s recognition of the unnalizable nature of the Law offered him a loophole, one that allowed him to attenuate others’ ability and attempts to dene him in nalizing terms.

C. The Samaritan’s Loophole Several interpreters have noted how the compassionate response of the Samaritan, a member of a despised community, brings into focus the apathy of the priest and the Levite, who represented the epitome of established religion. These interpreters have argued that a motif of reversal denes this parable. Talbert, in particular, observes that, ‘The parable makes the despised Samaritan the hero and the Bible-believing-and-obeying priest and Levite the villains’.21 In a similar vein, other interpreters such as Stephen Moore have argued that the key emphasis of the parable is a contrast between the blindness of the religious leaders and the insight of the Samaritan. In the parable of the Good Samaritan (10:30-36), the blindness of those who ‘pass by’ (‘a priest was going down . . .. and when he saw [horao] him, he passed by. . . . Likewise a Levite, when he . . . saw [horao] him, passed by’) contrasts with the (in)sight of the Samaritan, who sees the victim for the neighbor that he is: ‘And when he saw [horao] him, he had compassion [splagchnizomai]’ (compare 7:13).22

While such observations are intriguing and insightful, they miss a key aspect of the parable, one that illuminates the presence of another loophole in this parable. Howard Marshall might be correct in suggesting that Jesus’ audience,

21. Talbert, Reading Luke, 130. 22. Stephen D. Moore, Mark and Luke in Poststructuralist Perspectives: Jesus Begins to Write (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 113.

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familiar with the triadic pattern of popular Jewish stories, would have expected an Israelite layman to be next in line after the priest and the Levite.23 Consistent with the subversive nature of his teaching, however, the Lukan Jesus surprises his audience and Luke’s readers by bringing a Samaritan onto the scene. As Robert Tannehill aptly remarks, ‘The Samaritan is a surprise because there is a jump in categories – priest, Levite and Samaritan do not make a logical sequence . . .’24 There is another surprise in the works, one that has signicance on both literary and ethical planes. As Jesus continued to narrate the parable, and as the Samaritan entered the narrative world of the parable, Jesus’ audience as well as Luke’s readers must have expected the Samaritan to show even less compassion toward the dying man than did the priest and the Levite. Any such expectations on their part would have historical and narrative bases. In the rst-century Palestinian context, Jewish perceptions of, mistrust toward and stereotypes about the Samaritans stemming from the history of animosity between the two communities would have engendered negative expectations on the part of Jesus’ predominantly Jewish audience.25 Again, as Tannehill states, Hatred between Jews and Samaritans would not lead a Jew to expect a Samaritan to show compassion. Priest, Levite, and lay Israelite would make a logical sequence and would confirm the expectations of some Jewish hearers, suggesting that priests and Levites lack compassion, while the lay Israelite truly fullls the law. The surprise of the Samaritan gives the story a different and disturbing impact.26

Within the context of Luke’s narrative, the treatment recently meted out to Jesus and his disciples in the Samaritan village (9.52-56) would also have engendered negative expectations on the part of Luke’s readers. To explicate this point further, having already read how a Samaritan village has shown hostility toward the entourage of Jesus, a Jewish teacher, readers would be inclined to anticipate that this Samaritan too would act in a similar fashion and not show compassion to the dying man, who was very likely Jewish.27 Any such move, on the part of either Jesus’ audience or Luke’s readers, would amount

23. Marshall, The Gospel of Luke, 449. 24. Tannehill, Luke, 183. 25. Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, Book 13 (9), trans. H. St. J. Thackeray and Ralph Marcus (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998). 26. Tannehill, Luke, 183. 27. Tannehill’s argument that a Jewish audience would assume that the injured man was Jewish makes lot of sense (Luke, 184).

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to using their knowledge about the Samaritans in order to predict the actions of this Samaritan.

D. The Bakhtinian Concept of Surplus The Bakhtinian concept of ‘surplus (of seeing)’ is relevant in this context. My ‘surplus of seeing’ is what I, from my outsidedness, know about you that you yourself do not and cannot know.28 According to Bakhtin, ‘surplus of seeing’ is that which one should not use to dene (an)other in nalizing terms by relying on disproportionate knowledge of the other derived from his/her outsidedness vis-à-vis that other. Bakhtin suggested that polyphonic authors shun characters that nalize others by using essential surplus. Barbara Green captures Bakhtin’s thought on this concept quite well: Bakhtin usefully characterizes surplus of seeing as that which an author can see of a hero who is being drawn but which remains inaccessible to that character, specied in shorthand as the space behind the hero’s head. Another way to put the same concept is that when an author works, or when a subject sees and interrelates with an other, the hero (or the other) is part of the author’s horizon, whereas the hero sees that same eld as an environment in which he or she does not perceive the self.29

Morson and Emerson dene ‘surplus of seeing’ in terms of one’s ability to ‘know what the other looks like when that other is unselfconscious of his or her appearance, knowledge forever inaccessible to the other’.30 According to them, In monologic works, authors enjoy an immense surplus of vision with respect to their characters, but the characters do not have the same surplus – indeed, often no surplus at all – with respect to the author.31

They argue that an author’s surplus of seeing vis-à-vis her/his characters, coupled with the absence of characters’ surplus of seeing, makes it impossible for the characters and the author to relate to each other as equals or to enter into a meaningful dialogue. Although Morson and Emerson employ this concept primarily to describe the relationship between an author and her/his characters, it can be employed loosely to describe a relationship between different characters,

28. Exotopy is the technical term Bakhtin employs to refer to this concept of outsidedness. 29. Green, How Are the Mighty Fallen?, 327. 30. Morson and Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin, 241. 31. Morson and Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin, 241.

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and between characters and readers. Just as an author has surplus of seeing in relation to characters and can use that surplus to nalize those characters, readers observing a character from their vantage point of outsidedness have a surplus of seeing in relation to that character. In case of this parable, then, the readers have a surplus of seeing in relation to the Samaritan, who does not have similar surplus vis-à-vis the readers. Bakhtin has extensively employed the concept of surplus of seeing, but he has not claried or highlighted subtle distinctions between different types of surplus. However, Morson and Emerson helpfully divide surplus of seeing into three types:32 (1) essential surplus, basic knowledge about a character or person to which they themselves do not have access. This is the kind of surplus monologic authors enjoy;33 (2) information-bearing surplus, the type of surplus absolutely necessary for the narrator to move the story forward; and (3) addressive surplus, which often takes the form of questions and engaging a character in a meaningful conversation. This type of surplus requires ‘an active (not duplicating) understanding, a willingness to listen’.34 Furthermore, it ‘is never used as an ambush, as a chance to sneak up and attack from behind’.35 Barbara Green elucidates this concept further. According to her, This addressive surplus uses outsidedness36 not to nalize a character but to ask good questions and to invite the other to greater self-knowledge, growth, transformation. It does not stand on its own superiority derived from a higher lookout or broader experience but allows the hero to work with his own awareness, granted it may lead their ‘owner’ along a maddeningly circuitous pathway.37

Bakhtin argued that a polyphonic author like Dostoevsky renounces ‘essential “surplus” of meaning’ but retains basic information about characters.38 A polyphonic novel requires polyphonic readers who choose addressive surplus rather than essential surplus. Yet just as few authors renounce their essential surplus in order to enter into dialogue with characters as equal partners, few

32. Morson and Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin, 241–3. Barbara Green also offers helpful insights for understanding various aspects of this concept. See Green, How Are the Mighty Fallen?, 327–30. 33. Bakhtin discusses this type of surplus in Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 72–3. 34. Mikhail Bakhtin, ‘Toward a Reworking of the Dostoevsky Book’ (1961), in Problems of Dostoevksy’s Poetics, 299. 35. Bakhtin, Problems, 299. 36. ‘Outsidedness’ in this context is dened as the aesthetical distance which the author or reader has in relation to the other. 37. Green, How Are the Mighty Fallen?, 329. 38. Bakhtin, Problems, 73.

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readers renounce their essential surplus that allows them to dene characters in nalizing terms. Will Jesus’ hearers and Luke’s readers renounce their essential surplus vis-à-vis the Samaritan and make way for addressive surplus? Assuming that the answer is ‘No’ (a ‘Yes’ is certainly possible but not probable) the essential surplus of Jesus’ hearers and Luke’s readers would nalize the Samaritan, at least from their point of view. At the same time, however, the Samaritan, faced with the threat of being nalized and objectied, does not lack the means to undermine such attempts by Jesus’ hearers and Luke’s readers. In the Bakhtinian oeuvre ‘loophole’ is often posited as a counterweight to ‘essential surplus’. It provides a balance of power by attenuating any advantage one might gain, or seek to gain, over another by relying on his or her essential surplus. Barbara Green, who employs this concept extensively in her book on 1 Samuel, helpfully observes that, ‘a loophole allows one to avoid nalization threatened by anyone who brings essential surplus to bear’.39 Any reader or Jesus’ auditor considering using essential surplus to predict the actions of the Samaritan and to dene him in nalizing terms will be surprised because he is about to escape through a loophole. The Samaritan’s compassionate response toward the dying man, which was the result of his decision to explore (and exploit) a loophole in the Law, generated for him a loophole that serves as a counterweight to the essential surplus others have in relation to him. Much to the surprise of Jesus’ auditors and Luke’s readers, the despised Samaritan has done what neither of the respected religious gures has. It emerges that he can and has indeed evolved in unexpected ways to become a ‘Good Samaritan’, a potential contradiction in terms within that cultural context.40 His response also moves the focus of this conversation to yet another loophole, which is intrinsically linked to the Samaritan’s loophole.

E. The Lawyer’s Loophole With the parable drawing to a close and Luke resuming his role as the narrator (10.37), characters such as the lawyer – who have been external to the world of the parable narrated by Jesus – return to Luke’s narrative world as characters. Accordingly, the lawyer makes a transition from being a spectator/hearer of the

39. Green, How Are the Mighty Fallen?, 369. Green explicates the concept of loophole in detail and calls attention to the loopholes various characters, Saul in particular, have in 1 Samuel. 40. Bakhtin’s views on oxymoronic combinations and his analyses of sharp contrasts in menippea can offer promising leads here. See Bakhtin, Problems, 118–19. Space and scope of this project do not permit me to pursue those leads.

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drama (in the parable) to becoming a participant in the drama (outside the parable). As a result, he no longer has the luxury of observing and evaluating the actions of characters in the parable from his vantage point as an auditor. As a character he is (once again) subjected to the objectifying gaze of the readers, who continue to observe him wondering how he might respond to the parable he has just heard. ‘Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?’ Jesus asked the lawyer toward the end of their conversation. The readers know that Jesus’ question only forces the lawyer to articulate what he already knew. But it also sets the stage for next phase of the drama in Luke’s narrative. Apparently concurring with the lawyer’s verbal response and seeking to prod him to a response in action, Jesus instructed him to ‘go and do’ like the Samaritan (10.37). Did the lawyer go and do like the despised Samaritan in the parable he has just heard? The Lukan narrator provides no answer to this question. Given Luke’s silence about the lawyer’s future, the readers following (t)his story might be prone to supply their own ‘nalizing’ endings to the lawyer’s story using their essential surplus in relation to him. Their essential surplus, in this case, comes from two seemingly nalizing statements the narrator makes about the lawyer. First, the narrator informs the readers that the lawyer’s initial question – ‘What must I do to inherit eternal life?’ – is meant (only) to test Jesus (10.25). The Greek verb ekpeiraz is semantically related to ekpeiraseis, which is used describe the devil’s attempt to tempt Jesus (4.12). By employing ekpeiraz in this instance, the narrator appears to suggest that the lawyer’s question might be driven by hostility towards Jesus rather than a genuine desire to learn. Luke Timothy Johnson correctly observes that the narrator identies the intent of the question as hostile rather than neutral.41 Second, a few verses later, the narrator makes another nalizing remark when he suggests that the lawyer’s second question – ‘And who is my neighbor?’ – was intended to justify himself (10.29). The verbal phrase theln dikaisai (‘wanting to justify’) indicates that his intention was to sidestep Jesus’ instruction ‘do this and you will live’. Taken at their face value, however, the lawyer’s questions themselves do not necessarily betray an element of hostility or sarcasm, or an intention to sidestep Jesus’ instruction. There seems to be little basis for the narrator’s nalizing remarks. Wayne Booth highlights several instances in the Gospel of Mark wherein the narrator makes similar remarks about his characters. Booth describes them as the narrator’s illicit entries into the minds of his characters.42

41. See Johnson, The Gospel of Luke, 172. 42. Booth, Rhetoric, 18–19. Interestingly, Booth makes no mention of any Lukan pericopae.

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But he does not focus sufciently on the hierarchical relationship between the author/narrator and the characters that makes such remarks possible. Umberto Eco, who is more forgiving of such intrusive narrators, suggests that these remarks require an omniscient narrator, who ‘speaks with the voice of truth and makes explicit judgments’.43 From a Bakhtinian point of view, however, such nalizing remarks are characteristic of monologic works. They stem from the narrator’s choice to employ authorial surplus – or rely on essential surplus – rather than use addressive surplus to engage the lawyer dialogically. Faced with the threat of being nalized – both by the narrator and, consequently, in the readers’ perceptions – the lawyer needs a loophole that would enable him to remain unfinalizable. It remains to be seen whether such a loophole is in the ofng and what shape it takes. Several scholars have noted how the notion of ‘Good Samaritan’ was both a contradiction in terms and a scandal or offense to Jesus’ audience. As Talbert observes, This [parable] demands the hearers say what, for them, cannot be said, what is a contradiction in terms: bad (Samaritan) cannot be good; and good (priest and Levite) cannot be bad. If, as a hearer, one accepts the judgment of the parable, then one’s whole world of values is shattered. In this way, the original parable in its setting in Jesus’ career aimed not to instruct but rather to challenge, to provoke, to shatter stereotypes.44

Further, Crossan suggests that ‘When good (clerics) and bad (Samaritan) become, respectively, bad and good, a world is being challenged and we are faced with polar reversal’.45 Given the history of acrimonious relations between the Jews and the Samaritans, and the derision with which the Jews perceived the Samaritans, such ‘polar reversal’ would have been offensive to a Jewish audience, including the lawyer. Jesus must have accentuated that offense or scandal by asking him to imitate the Samaritan (‘go and do likewise’). In Bakhtin’s view, such scandalous scenes, with their shock element, ‘free human behavior from the norms and motivations that predetermine it’.46 They can also prove to be life changing. To describe it in colloquial terms, when a person is confronted with an offense, it has the potential to make or break her/his life. The shocking or

43. Umberto Eco, The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 43. 44. Talbert, Reading Luke, 131. 45. Crossan, In Parables, 64. 46. Bakhtin, Problems, 117–18.

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offensive nature of this parable forces the hearers to make important choices. This is especially true of those most likely to be offended by it, including the lawyer in Luke’s narrative. As David McCracken observes, ‘the Scandal provides an occasion for the lawyer to become like the hated Samaritan, to live in a radically new, and formerly unthinkable, sense’.47 ‘Did the offense posed by the parable prove to be a turning point for the lawyer?’ Luke’s readers and some interpreters might ask. The lawyer’s response in 10.37 – ‘the one who showed him mercy’ – seemingly marks a step in that direction. It indicates his willingness to acknowledge that the despised Samaritan was more compassionate, and hence more righteous, than the two religious gures. Akin to McCracken’s observation, his choice of words to refer to the Samaritan – ‘the one who showed him mercy’ rather than ‘the Samaritan’ – offers proof that the lawyer is able to look past ethnic categories and dene the Samaritan by his actions rather than by his background.48 ‘True, but how did the lawyer respond to Jesus’ nal instruction? Did he “go and do likewise?”’ readers like McCracken might ask again. Much to the frustration of these readers, the narrator offers no information as to how the lawyer responded to Jesus’ instructions. It has yet to be seen whether the parable has proved to be a life-changing turning point for the lawyer. Meanwhile, on a different level, the narrative, especially 10.37, marks a turning point for the narrator. It is worth noting that in 10.37, unlike in 10.25 and 10.29, the narrator reports the lawyer’s response to Jesus’ question (10.36-37) – the one who showed him mercy – without adding nalizing observations of an omniscient narrator. The absence of any nalizing remark at this point can be taken as an indication that the narrator may have renounced essential surplus. Furthermore, the narrator’s apparent reluctance to utter a nal word as to how the lawyer responded to Jesus’ instruction (to ‘go and do likewise’) suggests that the narrator no longer operates from authorial/narratorial surplus. The narrator may have renounced his surplus. As Green remarks, To put it slightly differently, an author can renounce the right or habit of exploiting surplus and allow the character some space to articulate his or her consciousness from that character’s own angle more fully . . .. In more monologic writing, a reader can count on the reliability of such nalizing explanations. But in polyphonic works (and moves which approach that sort of creation) such certainty diminishes – or

47. David McCracken, The Scandal of the Gospels: Jesus, Story, and Offense (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 137. 48. McCracken, The Scandal of the Gospels, 135–7.

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The narrator’s act of choosing not to rely on authorial/narratorial surplus offers the lawyer a loophole that enables him to remain unnalizable and to have an open-ended future. Luke 10.37 marks the point where the narrator’s essential surplus takes a back seat and the lawyer’s loophole comes to the fore. It also marks another important development wherein the open-endedness of the lawyer’s future signies an invitation to the readers to join the conversation. It is the narrator’s means of urging – perhaps forcing – the readers to participate in the drama in the narrative and to make choices, just like, or instead of, the characters. The role of the readers is important in what Bakhtin calls a ‘polyphonic work’, which he describes in terms of a quarrelsome dialogue between voices in the narrative. He argues that readers ought to get involved in the dialogue just as bystanders get involved in a quarrel. In his view, ‘the book does not care for indifferent readers and does not respond to them. The true, engaged work on a book is not a passive appropriation but a living and passionate dialogue with it’.50 The readers must get involved also because, [t]he dialogic interaction provides no support for the viewer who would objectify an entire event according to some ordinary monologic category (thematically, lyrically or cognitively) – and this consequently makes the viewer also a participant’.51

By inviting the readers to join the conversation, the narrator lets the lawyer off the hook and puts them on the spot. In a deft move, instead of reporting whether the shocking parable was shocking enough to convince the lawyer to ‘go and do like’ the Samaritan, the narrator transfers the shock element to another plane – that of the readers. Just as the transition from Jesus’ narration of the parable to Luke’s narration of the story returned the lawyer to the center of the drama, the lawyer’s exit from this open-ended story puts the readers – ancient and modern – on the spot and forces them to participate in the story that is still being scripted. Those reading the text can no longer be privy to the dialogues

49. Green, How Are the Mighty Fallen?, 328. 50. Bakhtin, Art and Answerability, 11. 51. Bakhtin, Problems, 18.

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or to the drama without actually participating in them. The dialogues between different characters in the Gospel become dialogues that require the readers’ participation, and the unfolding drama demands that the readers/audience become active participants.52 Consequently, what began as the story of the Samaritan (and others) became the story of, and about, the lawyer and is about to become a story about the readers. Seen this way, the drama in the current pericope does not draw to a conclusion but rather continues on a different plane with new characters. In light of the new cast, the question is no longer, ‘Did the lawyer go and do likewise?’ but ‘Will the readers go and do likewise?’ It appears that the lawyer, not wanting to be dened in nalizing terms, has escaped through his loophole. Like the Law, the Samaritan and the lawyer, Jesus too has a loophole, which will be illuminated later in this chapter. But now I will explicate the second of the three aforementioned dialogues in Luke 10 – the dialogue between the disparate aspects Martha and Mary personify (10.38-42).

F. The Martha–Mary Dialogue Akin to 10.25-37, the story of Martha and Mary (10.38-42) too contains a dialogue between ‘doing’ and ‘hearing’, but Jesus’ repeated emphasis on ‘doing’, which characterizes the previous pericope, is noticeably missing in this pericope. In this story, which Luke alone records, the readers are introduced to a character named Martha, who apparently needs little exhortation to ‘do’. The story portrays Martha as being obsessed with ‘doing’, while her sister Mary sits at Jesus’ feet and listens.53 The narrator’s portrayal of Mary is consistent with Martha’s complaint that, rather than assisting her in doing the work, Mary sat at Jesus’ feet and listened. To the surprise of readers, who might expect Jesus to exhort Mary to ‘go and do’ like Martha – just as he has exhorted the lawyer to go and do like the Samaritan – he does not underscore the importance of ‘doing’. On the contrary, he afrms Mary’s choice and praises her for choosing ‘the good part, which shall not be taken away from her’. Furthermore, he seeks to undermine Martha’s emphasis on doing. It is somewhat puzzling to Luke’s readers that the same Jesus who repeatedly

52. McCracken’s insights about the readers being forced to respond are helpful here. But his focus is on the scandalous aspects of the parables rather than on the loopholes, the focus of this chapter. McCracken, The Scandal of the Gospels, 135–137. 53. This portrayal of Martha and Mary is similar to John’s portrayal of the two sisters with the same names (John 11.1-6). Yet there are certain key differences such as the circumstances under which Jesus travelled to the village of Martha and Mary.

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stressed the importance of ‘doing’ in the previous pericope not only praises Mary for choosing not to ‘do’, but also chides Martha’s choice to ‘do’. It is worth asking whether Jesus is contradicting himself or is at least altering the words he has spoken earlier. Two things merit attention at this juncture: rst, Jesus’ afrmation of Mary’s preference for ‘hearing’ and his critique of Martha’s emphasis on ‘doing’ should be seen as his attempt to challenge Martha’s excessive emphasis on ‘doing’. The phrase ‘many tasks’ (10.40a) and Martha’s complaint (10.40b) concur with Jesus’ observation regarding Martha (10.41). When seen from Jesus’ point of view, her ‘mistake’ lies not so much in doing, but in the manner in which she is doing. As Turid Seim puts it, Jesus’ reply to Martha does not concern her serving, but the way it is done, with fuss and agitation. It can thus be claimed that the fundamental antithesis is not between hearing and serving, but between hearing and agitated toil. What truly causes the problem is that Martha, in her agitated busyness with so many things, demands her sister’s assistance. Because of her own need (cf. chreia in 10:42) for help she disregards Mary’s choice, and even tries to ensure that Jesus supports this intrusion of hers.54

The text does not offer much evidence in support of Seim’s choice of words – such as ‘fuss’ and ‘agitation’ – to describe Martha’s attitude. It appears that Jesus’ criticism of Martha pertains not so much to her style or manner of doing things but to the number of things she was attempting. His instruction that ‘there is need of only one thing’ (10.42) specically calls attention to the excessive emphasis Martha appears to place on doing [many things]. Second, Jesus’ afrmation of Mary’s choice and his critique of Martha’s choice do not negate Martha’s choice as much as they question Martha’s negation of Mary’s choice. Jesus chides Martha for disregarding Mary’s choice and for implying that serving/doing takes precedence over hearing. Although most scholars translate the Greek phrase tn agathn merida (10.42b) as a comparative phrase meaning ‘the better part’, it is grammatically plausible to translate it as an adjectival phrase meaning ‘the good part’.55 And it need not be the only good part in the context of this story. Seen this way, the phrase suggests that Jesus afrms Mary’s choice not at the expense of, but in addition

54. Seim, Double Message, 105. 55. Occasionally, the phrase has the superlative force meaning ‘the best part’. Still, it is grammatically feasible to translate the phrase as ‘the good part’.

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to, Martha’s choice. By chiding Martha for overemphasizing ‘doing’, while simultaneously afrming Mary’s choice to hear, Jesus is able to equiponderate ‘doing’ and ‘hearing’. Such a balancing act allows him to facilitate a dialogue between hearing and doing. From a Bakhtinian point of view, since truth is complex and polyvalent, it requires many voices and a plurality of independent, unmerged and consciousnesses to engage in an ongoing, open-ended dialogue. This kind of dialogic discourse would counter ‘monologization’, which often attempts to subordinate one perspective to other and the many to one dominant perspective. Seen in this light, Jesus chides Martha for her monologic tendencies – for trying to subordinate Mary’s choice to hers. Juxtaposition of disparate views, rather than subordination of one view to another, is the hallmark of a dialogic text.

G. Jesus’ Loophole and the Dialogue between 10.25-37 and 10.38-42 I have argued that Jesus’ critique of Martha and his simultaneous afrmation of Mary are dialogical in nature. But I have yet to address the puzzling issue raised earlier – that there is an apparent contradiction between Jesus’ repeated emphasis on doing (10.25-37) on the one hand and his critique of Martha’s excessive emphasis on doing (10.38-42) on the other. Resolving this issue might throw light on the often-debated issue of the interconnectedness (or lack thereof) between the two pericopae.56 In his discussion of ‘the underground man’, an enigmatic character in Dostoevksy’s ‘Notes from the Underground’, Bakhtin has employed the term ‘double-voiced discourse’, one of his neologisms, to explain the difference between a monologic discourse and a dialogic discourse. According to him, a monologic or single-voiced discourse is one that recognizes only itself and its referential object57 but not other people’s words on the same theme.58 Monologic discourse ‘is directed toward its referential object and constitutes the ultimate semantic authority within the limits of a given context’.59 Dialogic or double-voiced discourse, which is characteristic of a polyphonic work, accommodates a deliberate reference to someone else’s words on the same theme. In Bakhtin’s view, such a discourse ‘has a twofold direction – it is

56. Among modern scholars, Fitzmyer, Green, and Marshall offer the most detailed analysis of the link – or lack thereof – between the two pericopae. See Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke, 2:891; Green, The Gospel of Luke, 33; and Marshall, The Gospel of Luke, 439–50. 57. Bakhtin uses ‘referential object’ synonymously with ‘theme’. 58. Bakhtin, Problems, 185–7. 59. Bakhtin, Problems, 189.

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directed both toward the referential object of speech, as in ordinary discourse, and toward another’s discourse, toward someone else’s speech’.60 In addition to making a distinction between single-voiced and double-voiced discourses, Bakhtin divides the double-voiced discourse into three types: stylization, parody and hidden polemic. ‘Stylization’, which follows, or responds to, another discourse in the same direction, is conventional in nature. It appropriates another person’s discourse, if the trajectory of the two is in the same direction, and uses it to achieve its own goals. ‘Parody’ incorporates another person’s discourse but subverts it by introducing into it a semantic intention that contradicts the original intention. By simultaneously appropriating and negating the original discourse, parody creates what Bakhtin calls ‘an arena of battle between two voices’.61 The third category, ‘hidden polemic’, is opposed to adopting another person’s thought/discourse on the same theme. Instead, it seeks to deal a polemical blow to the discourse another has already uttered on the same theme, the same referential object.62 On a peripheral level, given the fact that his words seek to undermine Martha’s discourse (emphasis) on ‘doing’, Jesus’ response to Martha seems to fall under the third category, hidden polemic. On another level, however, although the concept of double-voiced discourse is helpful for analysing an aspect of Jesus’ response to Martha, it is not entirely adequate for describing that response. Jesus’ response to Martha goes beyond the aforementioned Bakhtinian categories. Unlike a single-voiced or double-voiced discourse, Jesus’ discourse here is multi-voiced since it addresses – and seeks to deal a polemical blow to – more than one discourse. It is multi-voiced (and multi-directional) given the fact that on one level, the Jesus of 10.38-42 directly contradicts Martha while, on another level, contradicting – in a circumlocutory fashion – the Jesus of 10.25-37. That is, in chiding Martha for her obsession with ‘doing’, Jesus appears to be negating the excessive emphasis he himself has placed on ‘doing’ in 10.25-37. There is an aspect of Dostoevsky’s underground man that can aid our understanding of Jesus’ discourse in this context. Building upon Bakhtin’s elucidation of this enigmatic and elusive underground man, Morson and Emerson have made some insightful observations about him. According to them, The underground man is always trying to elude the power of the other to dene him and always trying to prevent any ‘nalized’ image of himself from xing. He

60. Bakhtin, Problems, 185. 61. Bakhtin, Problems, 193. 62. Bakhtin, Problems, 195.

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therefore continually polemicizes with the impressions his words might make, and seems to mock and retract what he said before he nished saying it. He even retracts his own tendency to retractions . . .. It is as if he understood all possible analyses of himself, including Bakhtin’s, and was trying to disarm them, to stun the analysts before the words were out of their mouths.63

Since Jesus has repeatedly emphasized the importance of doing in 10.25-37, there is a danger that his audience might dene him in nalizing terms to suggest that, in Jesus’ view, doing is more important than hearing. He anticipates and seeks to thwart such nalizing denitions by altering his own words from the previous pericope. His act of altering his own words places his current words in dialogue with his previous words. Such an act also functions as his loophole, which allows him to equiponderate doing and hearing. On more than one occasion (6.47-49; 8.8-15, 21; cf. 11.28; 14.35 later in the narrative) Jesus has already stressed the need to place equal emphasis on the two aspects – doing and hearing, but 10.25-42 goes beyond those pericopae and provides a perfect narrative expression of his own sayings. Furthermore, by emphasizing one aspect in 10.25-37 and another in the next pericope Jesus places the two aspects in a dialogic tension. He also remains unnalizable vis-à-vis the tension between those two aspects the readers encounter on several occasions. Furthermore, Luke’s juxtaposition of the two pericopae with divergent emphases accentuates the tension between the two themes. Jesus’ loophole enables him not only to equiponderate ‘hearing’ and ‘doing’ but also to attenuate the ability of his audience, and Luke’s readers, to dene him in nalizing terms. Interestingly, Jesus’ loophole comes in the form of a person. Jesus may have chided Martha for being obsessed with ‘doing’, yet on a different level Martha does not appear to be the actual target of Jesus’ critique. Since Jesus has placed excessive emphasis on ‘doing’ just as Martha has, it can be said that, in 10.38-42, Jesus afrms Mary’s hearing not only vis-à-vis Martha’s emphasis on doing, but also vis-à-vis his own excessive emphasis on doing that characterized the previous pericope. To put it differently, in challenging Martha’s obsession with doing, Jesus was, in part and indirectly, qualifying the excessive emphasis he placed on doing in 10.25-37. The addition of the story of Martha and Mary – especially the Martha character – in Luke’s narrative offers Jesus the means to alter his own words from the previous pericope. Martha, thus, becomes a loophole for Jesus. Just as there is a contrast between the clerics and the Samaritan in 10.25-37,

63. Morson and Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin, 231.

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and between Martha and Mary in 10.38-42, there is also a contrast between Jesus (10.25-37) and Jesus (10.38-42). The juxtaposition is between Jesus who accentuates doing in 10.25-37 and Jesus who offers to it a counterweight (hearing) in 10.38-42 by exercising his loophole. Such a contrast places Jesus in a dialogic relationship with himself. From a Bakhtinian perspective, this contrast undermines the notion of wholeness and nalizability one might attribute to Jesus and places him in a dialogic relationship with himself. The contrast also allows Jesus to alter his own words. By retaining for himself the possibility of altering (or adding to) the meaning of his words in 10.25-37, Jesus remains unnalizable vis-à-vis doing and hearing. In other words, Jesus becomes unnalizable to his auditors, to the readers and also to himself. As Bakhtin remarks, ‘the loophole makes the hero ambiguous and elusive even for himself’.64 Furthermore, this loophole places Luke 10.25-37 in dialogue with Luke 10.38-42 and highlights the dialogic tension between the prominent Lukan themes of doing and hearing. The author, for his part, facilitates dialogue between those two themes by employing the three aforementioned strategies of ‘alterations’, ‘additions’ and arrangement. First, Luke’s account of the conversation between Jesus and the lawyer is different from its closest parallels in Mark and Matthew (see Luke 10.25-29; Mark 12.28-34; Matthew 22.34-40). Luke appears to have ‘altered’ Mark’s version in at least three ways. A key ‘alteration’ has to do with Luke’s introduction of the lawyer’s question (‘who is my neighbor?’) that anticipates the parable of the Good Samaritan. Second, Luke ‘adds’ to that question two pericopae – the parable and the story of Martha and Mary with two disparate emphases. While the parable highlights the importance of doing, the story seems to emphasize hearing. Finally, Luke’s juxtaposition of the parable and the story has the effect of accentuating the dialogic tension between an emphasis on ‘doing’ and an emphasis on ‘hearing’.

Conclusion A Bakhtinian reading of Lk. 10.25-42 not only illuminates the loopholed and dialogic nature of this unit but also resolves the question of interconnectedness between 10.25-37 and 10.38-42. The various loopholes in this unit enable the corresponding characters, including Jesus, to attenuate the ability and undermine the attempts of others to dene them in nalizing terms. In this case, the Lukan Jesus’ loophole enables him to equiponderate his emphasis on

64. Bakhtin, Problems, 128.

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‘doing’ in 10.25-37 with his emphasis on ‘hearing’ in 10.38-42 and thus remain unnalizable vis-à-vis the tension between ‘doing’ and ‘hearing’. Just as there is a dialogic relationship between the two pericopae, there are also numerous dialogues within each pericope, such as the dialogue between Martha and Mary and the dialogue between the vertical and horizontal aspects in the parable of the Good Samaritan. Jesus’ unnalizability has theological implications, but it also has ethical implications. Similarly, the unnalizability of the Samaritan and lawyer as well as the explicit emphasis Luke 10.25-42 places on dialogue have signicant ethical implications for our time both in the context of interpersonal relations and in the context of transactions between different communities, cultures and nations. The Bakhtinian concepts of dialogue and unnalizability are especially relevant in light of both the contemporary discourse on the ‘other’ and the ever increasing need to enter into a dialogue with, rather than arrive at nalizing denitions of, that ‘other’. I will offer a more detailed discussion of the ethical implications of dialogue and unnalizability – as well as of other select Bakhtinian concepts – in the nal (fth) chapter of this book.

4 DOWNSIZING THE WEALTHY? A CARNIVALESQUE READING OF LUKE’S PORTRAYAL OF WEALTH

Introduction Aspects of carnival – such as the motif of reversal, pairing of contrasts, and lavish feasts – are ubiquitous in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man (16.19-31). Using the Bakhtinian concept of ‘carnivalization of literature’, this chapter explicates the various aspects of carnival, especially the motif of reversal, in this parable. Several interpreters have suggested that the reversal that characterizes this pericope is indicative of Luke’s discourse on, and a polemic against, wealth and the wealthy.1 There is, however, no consensus among scholars regarding the portrayal of wealth in Luke’s Gospel as a whole. The lack of consensus among scholars stems from the absence of a coherent or unitary stance on the issue in the Gospel itself.2 The parable does contain both a polemic against a rich man and a reversal that benets a poor man, but it is difcult to demonstrate conclusively that the Gospel as a whole has a bias against the rich. Using the parable of Lazarus and the rich man as the starting point this chapter explicates several Lukan pericopae dealing with wealth to show that the Gospel not only accommodates and juxtaposes divergent perspectives on wealth but also allows them to carnivalize and contest each other.3 Focusing on the ideological aspect of the Bakhtinian concept of carnivalization of literature, this chapter establishes that the Gospel presents a fragmentary and centrifugal, rather than a unitary and centripetal, view of wealth. It argues

1. Joseph Fitzmyer (The Gospel According to Luke, 2: 1118-1119) and Robert Tannehill (Luke, 251–3) advocate this line of approach. 2. Johnson offers a succinct, but sufcient, account of Luke’s not-so-coherent portrayal of wealth. See Johnson, Sharing Possessions, 11–29. 3. At a later point, a distinction will be made between the literary and ideological aspects of ‘carnivalization of literature’.

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that the carnivalesque aspects – literary and ideological – in the Gospel are more radical and liberating than those delineated in Bakhtin’s writings such as Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics and Rabelais and His World. What exactly is the Bakhtinian concept of carnivalization of literature – on both literary and ideological planes – and how does it illuminate some obscure aspects of Lukan pericopae on wealth? In what ways does it elucidate and offer new ways of looking at Luke’s seemingly incoherent portrayal of wealth? What are the ethical implications of a carnivalesque reading of Luke’s perspectives on wealth? These are the key questions that will be addressed in the next several pages. But rst, considering the fact that the term ‘carnival’ has currency in the contemporary culture, it is essential to highlight points of intersection and/or divergences between the carnival of the medieval eras and present-day carnival. The Bakhtinian concept of carnival, based on medieval carnivals, is different from the meaning modern English attributes to the term ‘carnival’. The medieval carnival was characterized by aspects such as suspension and inversion of hierarchical structures and juxtaposition of contrasting pairs, rather than by revelry, holiday culture, festivities and voyeurism that one usually associates with present-day carnivals. It can be argued that the juxtaposition of contrasts that was a hallmark of medieval carnival is retained, to an extent, in the modern carnival festival of Mardi Gras – a time of feasting and revelry that is followed immediately by fasting by piety, at least in some circles.

A. The Bakhtinian Concept of Carnival Carnival is not a spectacle seen by people; they live in it, and everyone participates because its very idea embraces all the people. While carnival lasts, there is no other life outside it. During carnival time life is subject only to its laws, that is, the laws of its own freedom . . .. carnival celebrated temporary liberation from the prevailing truth and from the established order; it marked the suspension of all hierarchical rank, privileges, norms . . .. This temporary suspension, both ideal and real, of hierarchical rank created during carnival time is a special type of communication impossible in everyday life.4

Carnival, the unofcial folk culture that originally developed as a fecundity rite, was often connected with the festival of Saturnalia, which was known for its unrestrained revelry.5 In Rabelais and His World, a revised version of his

4. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 8–10. 5. David William Foster, Spanish Literature: From Origins to 1700 (London: Routledge, 2000),

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doctoral dissertation about the world of the sixteenth-century French writer Francois Rabelais, Bakhtin offers his analysis of the prominent aspects of the social world in that era. He argues that the world of Rabelais was characterized by the phenomenon of carnival(s), which provided the underprivileged sections of the society a temporary, but necessary, escape from everyday realities. Carnival, which was celebrated as a festival during a certain time each year, offered a sense of liberation from the ofcial way of life.6 As Kenneth Craig observes, ‘the carnival occasion is provocative because it imitates an alternative view of reality and embodies a liberating escape from the status quo’.7 Carnival offered the oppressed sections of the society possibilities for relief, however brief, from the class-conscious norms, which often favour the privileged.8 Furthermore, as Bakhtin himself suggests, carnival ‘liberates [people] from fear, brings the world close to man and man to his fellow man’.9 Carnival was celebrated mainly at the public square, and the ‘marketplace was the center of all that is unofcial; it enjoyed a certain extraterritoriality in a world of ofcial order and ofcial ideology, it always remained with the people’.10 Still, rather than being conned to the public square, carnival extended itself to other spheres such as the home. A key aspect of the medieval carnival was laughter, which Bakhtin describes as a ‘festive laughter’. This kind of laugher offered the plebeians an opportunity both to satirize and parody whatever was regarded as ‘sacred’ and to subvert the structures and norms of the ofcial culture.11 In Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel, two giants with those same names can be seen parodying epic heroes. Craig discusses how the bourgeoisie, the church and the empire were often at the receiving end of folk humour that found a prominent place in Rabelais’s works.12 In turn, these ofcial establishments, in particular the church with tacit support from the empire, sought to curtail Rabelais’s inuence by banning his works. Gargantua and Pantagruel, his most colourful work,

95–7; Martin Parker, Valerie Fournier and Patrick Reedy, The Dictionary of Alternatives: Utopianism and Organization (Gordonsville, VA: Zed Books, 2007), 39. 6. In Bakhtin’s writings, the expression ‘ofcial way of life’ refers to the ofcially sanctioned norms and rules. 7. Craig, Reading Esther, 30. 8. Craig, Reading Esther, 34–5. 9. Bakhtin, Problems, 214. Although Bakhtin wrote extensively about the need to abolish hierarchical structures that separate different sections of the society, he showed little interest in inclusive language, or in talking about abolishing structures that oppress women. 10. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 153–4. 11. Francois Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, trans. M. A. Screech (New York: Penguin Classics, 2006). 12. Craig, Reading Esther, 37.

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was considered especially subversive. But despite the establishment’s efforts to suppress Rabelais’s works, a few publishers of the sixteenth century continued to disseminate his works without his name. Carnival laughter was communal and corporate rather than ‘an individual reaction to some isolated “comic” event’.13 It was universal in scope and was ‘directed at everyone, including those participating in this carnival laughter’.14 It was also ambivalent; that is, while modern-day laughter tends to be either negative or fanciful, carnival laughter was simultaneously joyous and derisive. Carnival in general and the laughter in particular can be regarded as poststructuralist in nature because those who laugh, or partake in the carnival, would be doing so from within rather than from outside. They are the subjects of the carnival but they are also its objects. They are simultaneously the spectators and the participants. As Julia Kristeva observes, a carnival participant is both actor and spectator; he loses his sense of individuality, passes through a zero point of carnivalesque activity and splits into a subject of the spectacle and an object of the game. Within the carnival, the subject is reduced to nothingness, while the structure of the author emerges as anonymity that creates and sees itself created as self and other, as man and mask.15

Carnival celebrates pure freedom of speech and temporary suspension of ofcial language. The distinction Bakhtin makes between the ofcial and the unofcial languages in the context of carnival becomes relevant here. By subverting the ofcial language, carnival makes room for unofcial language and allows it to ourish, if only temporarily. Participants in carnival speak using unofcial language that borders on being vulgar and, in so doing, mock the ‘high’ language of the establishment. Carnival dees norms and institutions and it demands that everything dogmatic be erased. It celebrates a form of antinomianism and liberates humans from ‘all that is humdrum’.16 It leads ‘to the creation of special forms of marketplace speech and gesture, frank and free, permitting no distance between those who came in contact with each other and liberating from norms of etiquette and decency imposed at other times’.17 According to Bakhtin, carnival, which developed in response to ofcial and oppressive forces, offers possibilities for creating an alternative and subversive

13. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 11–12. 14. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 11–12. 15. Kristeva, ‘Word, Dialogue and Novel’, 49. 16. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 34. 17. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 9.

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view of reality. In this sense, carnival is a chronotope, a unique time and space where people can freely express themselves. It creates an alternative reality, a way of life that parodies the ofcial way of life. It presents ‘a completely different, non-ofcial, extraecclesiastical and extrapolitical aspect of the world, of man and of human relations’.18 It is a chronotope characterized by what Bakhtin calls ‘grotesque body’, which satirized the ‘classic body’ and became a weapon against the ofcial culture. All the rituals of carnival such as ‘the feast of the fools are a grotesque degradation of various church rituals and symbols and their transfer to the material bodily level: gluttony and drunken orgies on the altar table, indecent gestures, disrobing’.19 With that historical background and a general introduction to the Bakhtinian concept of carnival on the table, I will elaborate some important aspects of carnival that can be helpful in the explication of the parable of Lazarus and the rich man.

B. Key Aspects of Carnival 1. Reversals: The World Turned Topsy-turvy At one point in his Rabelais book, Bakhtin suggested that the carnival culture of the Renaissance era involved a ‘temporary suspension of all hierarchic distinctions and barriers among men and of certain norms and prohibitions of usual life’.20 Since hierarchical structures, fostered by ofcial culture, perpetuate inequality, such structures have no place at the carnival square. Carnival seeks to promote unofcial culture that suspends those hierarchies. As Bakhtin has observed, The laws, prohibitions, and restrictions that determine the structure and order of ordinary, that is noncarnival life, are suspended during carnival . . . people who in life are separated by impenetrable hierarchical barriers enter into free familiar contact on the carnival square.21

This emphasis on suspension of barriers seems to shift the focus away from a major characteristic of carnival – reversal of the established social order and values. While carnival does involve suspension of hierarchies, it seeks to go beyond mere suspension of barriers and hierarchies. It facilitates an atmosphere

18. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 6. 19. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 74. 20. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 15. 21. Bakhtin, Problems, 122–3.

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wherein hierarchies are reversed and established norms are satirized and challenged. In other instances in his Rabelais book, Bakhtin discusses how the phenomenon of carnival was characterized by a reversal of hierarchies and a world turned topsy-turvy. Slaves and fools are crowned as kings even as kings become fools; the ‘unrighteous’ people put on priestly robes and preach blasphemous sermons while the priests are relegated to the sidelines.22 Generally accepted rules of decorum and conduct are intentionally violated and the bodily parts and functions that are generally concealed from the public eye are brought to the fore. Consistent with the spirit of carnival, however, I will subvert the argument established above and bring it full circle by suggesting that carnival went beyond reversal of hierarchies and created an atmosphere where barriers and hierarchies are suspended. This line of argument perceives and posits suspension of hierarchies as a step beyond, rather than before, the inversion of hierarchies. The logic behind this argument is that it is possible to maintain hierarchical structures even after roles have been inverted. During the carnival, as it was practiced in the world of Rabelais and dened in the Bakhtinian oeuvre, the beneciaries of the reversal, the newly dominant people, were not authoritative, monologic or oppressive like everyday rulers. Instead, they satirized and laughed at everything, including their newfound privileged status, and at everyone, including themselves. It could be suggested, then, that reversal and suspension are not mutually exclusive and that carnival consists of both these aspects. In Bakhtin’s view, closely connected with carnival is the Menippean satire, which he suggests occurs on three planes: Olympus, nether world and earth.23 While aspects of carnival can be seen in all three planes, the motifs of suspension and inversion of hierarchies that are characteristic of carnival are especially apparent in the nether world. He notes that, ‘the nether world equalizes representatives of all earthly positions in life; there the emperor and the slave, the rich man and the beggar come together on equal terms and enter into familiar contact’.24 Furthermore, the nether world was characterized by the phenomenon of reversals that are generally associated with carnival festival. It is ‘“a world upside down:” an emperor in the nether world becomes

22. Bakhtin suggests that the Gospel scenes that depict the crowning of Jesus are carnivalesque in nature. See Bakhtin, Problems, 135. 23. Bakhtin denes Menippean satire as one of the two main genres of the Middle Ages (the other one being Socratic Dialogue). See Bakhtin, Problems, 132–4. 24. Bakhtin, Problems, 133.

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a slave, a slave an emperor, and so forth’.25 Later in this chapter I will argue that Bakhtin’s analysis of the various aspects of the nether world can help illuminate the carnivalesque elements in Lk. 14-16.

2. Feasts Carnival originally consisted of many small feasts, some of which continued to exist even after the popularization of carnival. But when carnival was streamlined and ‘became the center of all popular forms of amusement, it diminished all the other feasts and deprived them of almost every free and utopian folk element’.26 Origins of carnival were pagan (as opposed to Christian) but, in his Rabelais book, Bakhtin talks about how the carnival celebrations, especially the feast of the fools, were originally considered legitimate because the church approved of them. In fact, church festivals and feasts in the Middle Ages usually featured their own version of carnival. As carnival became progressively subversive and increasingly sought to undermine the established values and the ofcial way of life, the church distanced itself from carnivals. As a result they later became somewhat unacceptable and by the close of the Middle Ages these festivals ‘were completely banned from the churches but continued to exist in the streets and in taverns, where they were absorbed into carnival merriment and amusements’.27 Carnival festivities and the comic spectacles and ritual connected with them had an important place in the life of medieval man. Besides carnivals proper, with their long and complex pageants and processions, there was the ‘feast of fools’ (festa stultorum) and the ‘feast of the ass’; there was a special free ‘Easter laughter’ (risus paschalis), consecrated by tradition. Moreover, nearly every Church feast had its comic folk aspect, which was traditionally recognized.28

3. Contrasts Another key aspect of the carnival is its propensity to accommodate and juxtapose contrasting pairs, antitheses and paradoxes.29 In his Dostoevksy book, Bakhtin discusses how contrasts – such as fasting and feasting, poor and rich, death and life, young and old, darkness and light, high and low, fat and thin, tall 25. Bakhtin, Problems, 133. 26. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 220. 27. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 74. 28. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 5. 29. Bakhtin’s characterization of the ‘earth’, the third realm in the Menippean Satire, is especially helpful for explicating contrasting pairs in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man. See Bakhtin, Problems, 133–4.

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and short, food and excrement, laughter and tears – that are seemingly mutually exclusive often coexist in the carnival festival and literature. From a carnivalesque point of view, there is an element of interconnectedness between these contrasting and antithetical images that makes it not only possible but also essential for them to coexist. Each element in the contrasting pair needs the other. Destruction and uncrowning are related to life and renewal; death is linked to renewal and regeneration. Life marks the process of death; death marks the process of new life. Every defeat sows the seed for victory; conversely, each victory makes one vulnerable to a later defeat. Crowning leads to uncrowning and, conversely, uncrowning leads to crowning.30 In Bakhtin’s oeuvre, the technical term for such juxtaposition of contrasts is syncrises. Bakhtin, who rarely applied his theories to biblical texts, suggests that the Gospels and Acts contain numerous examples of syncrises. Examples include the juxtaposition of ‘the tempted (Christ or a righteous man) with the tempter, the believer with the nonbeliever, the righteous man with the sinner, the beggar with the rich man’ and so on.31 A key question here is whether, and to what extent, the parable of Lazarus and the rich man contains carnivalesque features. In addition to arguing that the parable does indeed contain aspects of carnival such as contrasts and reversals, I will examine the implications of their presence for study of Luke’s portrayal of wealth.

C. Carnival in the Story of Lazarus and the Rich Man The parable of Lazarus and the rich man has various carnivalesque aspects such as contrasts, feasts, the motif of death, and reversals. The ‘nether world’ aspect of carnival with its focus on reversals or a world turned upside down is especially helpful for explicating this parable. My explication of these aspects under the subheadings of ‘contrasts’ and ‘reversals’ will focus on all four aspects. To begin with, there are numerous contrasts, or contrasting pairs, in this parable.

1. Contrasts in the Parable The rich man is said to be feasting sumptuously everyday while Lazarus’s hunger forces him to long for the things falling from the rich man’s table. The Greek word euphrainomenos is semantically related to the term euphranthmen,

30. Bakhtin, Problems, 164. 31. Bakhtin, Problems, 135.

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which refers to the banquet hosted by the father in the parable of the prodigal son (15.23). The text suggests that the rich man feasted as if every day were a special day. Joel Green observes that ‘Jesus has it that this [feast] was a daily fare for this wealthy man, and that in an economy where even the rich could afford to kill a calf only occasionally’.32 Lazarus, on the other hand, did not have access even to the leftovers from those banquets. Use of epithumn (‘to desire’ or ‘desiring’) in this context (16.21) suggests that Lazarus may not have succeeded in securing for himself things from the rich man’s table. The mention of dogs in this context likely suggests that they may have impeded Lazarus’s ability to eat the leftovers. The parable also contrasts the rich man’s attire of purple and ne linen, which highlights his elite status, with the depiction of Lazarus, who is clothed with sores that are licked by dogs. Furthermore, the rich man lives in a fortied building, while his gate becomes the only home for Lazarus. While both encounter death, the rich man receives a burial according to the Jewish custom of the time. In the case of Lazarus, however, there is no mention of a proper burial. The lack of burial according to custom depicts the extent of Lazarus’s abject status and humiliation in this life. As Green observes, ‘In Jewish tradition, to be refused burial, to be left exposed as carrion for scavenger animals (like dogs, v 21), was tantamount to bearing the curse of God’.33 These contrasts continue even after the death of the two central characters, but with a reversal in roles. The afterlife scene contrasts Lazarus, who now resides comfortably in Abraham’s company, with the rich man in ames and longing to cool his tongue with a drop of water from Lazarus. In addition to pairing contrasts such as hunger and banquet, abject poverty and abundant wealth, the story also juxtaposes the two realms of life on earth and the afterlife. These two realms are simultaneously similar and dissimilar, separate yet connected. In both the scenes that depict these purportedly contrasting realms, Lazarus and the rich man are very close and yet at the same time removed from each other. In the life on earth, they are in close proximity to each other, but are separated by a great social and economic divide that is symbolized by the gate. Similarly, in the afterlife, they are close enough to see each other, yet they are far apart from each other, separated by a great chasm. In both the scenes, one’s misery is highlighted by the privileged position of the other. On a different level, this parable juxtaposes the contrasting elements of the real and the supernatural, the twin ingredients of what literary critics call

32. Green, The Gospel of Luke, 605–6. 33. Green, The Gospel of Luke, 607.

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‘magical realism’. Several aspects of the story, which initially takes place in this world, call attention to a social reality characterized by economic stratication and the various things associated with it. But the story abruptly moves into the realm of the supernatural when the two central characters are taken to another plane – the nether world, the third plane of the Menippea mentioned above – where they are faced with another version of reality, one that is characterized by angels, hell and the dead.

2. Reversals in the Parable The transition in the scene from the earth to the nether world marks the beginning of reversals in this parable. First, there is reversal in the fortunes of Lazarus and the rich man. In fact, the reversal in their fortunes begins at the very moment when life on earth ends. The humiliation Lazarus suffered in not receiving a proper burial is counterpoised by his being carried away by the angels to be with Abraham, even as the rich man was headed to Hades. The rich man moves from a life of splendour and wealth to a life of eternal suffering while Lazarus makes a transition from abject poverty to Abraham’s bosom. According to Marshall, the Greek term kolpos, or the metaphor of bosom in 16.22, might suggest the proximity of a guest to a host.34 In other words, in case of Lazarus, the perpetual poverty that forced him to yearn for the leftovers from the rich man’s table was apparently replaced by the privileged position of being in Abraham’s bosom. Tannehill refers to Lazarus as being ‘in the arms of Abraham’.35 He also suggests that the language of vv. 22-23 indicates ‘the warmest welcome and continuing care’ Lazarus received.36 The rich man, on the other hand, goes from making merry every day to a dire state of longing to cool his tongue with a drop of water from Lazarus. This is a direct inversion of the previous scene wherein Lazarus longed to ll himself with things that fell from the rich man’s table. But just as Lazarus could not get even the crumbs from the rich man’s table, the rich man will not have access even to a drop of water. The one who feasted sumptuously during his earthly life ends up thirsting but the one who was constantly hungry on earth ends up celebrating in the afterlife. The rich man, who has enjoyed all the pleasures in earthly life, is now subjected to misery in Hades. Lazarus, who suffered pain and abject poverty, is now comforted and looks down upon the rich man, literally if not metaphorically.

34. Marshall, The Gospel of Luke, 636. 35. Tannehill, Luke, 252–3. 36. However, his suggestion that these verses depict a banquet scene appears to be a stretch. The use in this context of kolpos, which is employed in the context of a banquet scene in Jn 13.23, does not in itself suggest that a banquet scene is being depicted.

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Abraham himself is portrayed as suggesting some causality between the earthly fortunes of Lazarus and the rich man on the one hand and their current earthly fortunes on the other. These reversals refer analeptically to the Beatitudes and Woes (6.20-26), as Johnson observes,37 but also to the song of Mary (1.46-55). The parable depicts the reversal also by mixing death and life – a move that is consistent with the carnivalesque tendency of pairing and mixing opposites. The scene in the story constantly oscillates between life on earth and the afterlife. While Lazarus and the rich man make a transition from life on earth to the afterlife, there is also a request from the rich man to have dead people return to earth so that people on earth may end up in a better place after they are dead. The story thus highlights the close interconnectedness between the two realms. That is, it addresses the living even when it focuses on the dead. In that sense, even though the story appears to draw a line of separation between the living and the dead, it appears to blur that line. It simultaneously separates and unites the two realms. It can be said that the line that separates the two is also the line that unites them – a notion that is simultaneously Bakhtinian and poststructuralist.

3. Beyond the Bakhtinian Carnival? Bakhtin Versus Luke This parable portrays numerous reversals, but these reversals differ from the Bakhtinian concept of carnival – the carnivals found in Rabelais’s world and his writings – in at least two signicant ways. First, the parable does not portray reversals merely in terms of temporary suspension or inversion of rules. The reversal of roles in carnival is ephemeral and fugacious, and the structures of authority that are temporarily suspended, or reversed, are reversed again right after the carnival. This parable, however, presents a rather different scenario. To illustrate this further, unlike the carnival role reversals – such as kings becoming slaves and fools being crowned kings – that are temporary and reversible, the role reversals in this parable appear to be lasting and irreversible. The rich man’s agony in the ames of Hades appears to be perpetual; from the conversation between Abraham and the rich man, one can infer that even the rich man’s family will be subjected to a similar reversal in fortunes. Lazarus, on the other hand, seems poised to spend an eternity in the bosom of Abraham. While the economic gap – epitomized by the gate – that separated Lazarus and the rich man during life on earth was temporary, the great chasm that separated them in the afterlife appears to be permanent. Second, this parable (and Luke as a whole) does not advocate a reversal in

37. Johnson, The Gospel of Luke, 255–6.

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the strict sense of the term. Lazarus’s suffering and poverty are alleviated in his new life, but he is not portrayed as having accumulated wealth or as feasting sumptuously everyday, as did the rich man while on earth. The Gospel does not advocate an absolute reversal in a manner that might idealize wealth or the wealthy. In that way, the reversal in this parable, although lasting and irreversible, is not a carnivalesque reversal. It is a reversal in values rather than a complete reversal in roles. The Magnicat celebrates the dethroning of the mighty and the lifting up of the lowly, but makes no mention of placing the latter on the thrones of the hitherto mighty (1.52). One can see a similar phenomenon in the sermon on the plain (6.20-26). Since the role reversals facilitated by the carnival – in the Bakhtinian oeuvre – are temporary, one could argue that such reversals offer the plebeians little hope of an enduring structural transformation that can benet them. Furthermore, it can be said that carnival is not liberating or radical enough since it places more emphasis on direct reversal in roles rather than on reversal in values. The parable of Lazarus and the rich man, however, depicts a role reversal that not only is everlasting, but also refuses to endorse the values and structures it challenges and seeks to subvert. In this manner the Lukan carnival appears to be more carnivalesque and liberating, in at least two respects, than anything one can nd in the works of Bakhtin, Dostoevsky or Rabelais. A key question that arises at this juncture is whether the seeming polemic against the rich man in this parable indicates a coherent and unreserved attack on wealth or the wealthy in the larger context of Luke’s Gospel. I argue that the ideological aspect of the Bakhtinian concept of carnivalization of literature can be helpful in addressing this question and in elucidating Luke’s portrayal of wealth.

D. Carnivalization of Literature In Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, Bakhtin discusses the signicant inuence the phenomenon of carnival had on literature and literary genres.38 He describes how the sociocultural aspects of carnival intersected with the literary world leading to a phenomenon in which those carnivalesque aspects profoundly inuenced literature over a period of several centuries. He calls this process ‘carnivalization of literature’, which, in his view, led to two key developments in literature.39 Carnivalization of literature can be described in two ways.

38. Bakhtin, Problems, 122. 39. Bakhtin does not suggest that every literary work was shaped by aspects of carnival.

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First, carnivalesque elements – reversal in fortunes, feasts, contrasting pairs, etc. – found their way into literature. Second, literary texts were shaped ideologically in a manner that both attenuates any attempt at unitary conception and presentation of ideas, and accommodates disparate and contradictory perspectives. As a result, literature – at least those texts that were carnivalized – emerged as a unique genre that is dialogic in nature and a site of contesting worldviews and voices. ‘Carnivalization of literature’, the primary theme of Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World, challenges established paradigms, suspends hierarchical relations among different perspectives, and allows them to ourish on an equal footing. It also exposes and attenuates the hegemony of any one perspective or ideology that posits itself as the ultimate authority or the nal word about the world. This process is anti-canonical, anti-structural, anti-nalization; it is centrifugal rather than centripetal.40 It resonates with the Foucaultian notion that every point of power is accompanied by a point of resistance, which ensures ideological equilibrium. It displaces the authoritarian centers and pushes the peripheries to the forefront without necessarily privileging them. Carnivalization opposes high art and literature, emphasizes unnalizability of meaning and life, and idealizes ambivalence in ideas, concepts and worldviews. It illuminates issues in new ways, raises new questions, and offers alternative ways of perceiving and articulating reality. One can nd carnivalization in modern novels such as Midnight’s Children. This novel is carnivalesque not so much because it contains aspects of carnival, such as reversals and contrasts, but because it questions and seeks to subvert the assumption, and presentation, of [the] nation [of India] as a unied entity.41 For Bakhtin, ideal literary forms are not those that perpetuate a unitary understanding of the world, but those that subvert unitary, totalitarian structures in language. In his view, the novel represents such a genre because it ‘makes of the internal stratication of language, of its social heteroglossia and the variety of individual voices in it, the prerequisite for authentic novelistic prose’.42 Unlike Epic, which presents a centripetal, unitary and singular worldview, the novel is centrifugal, fragmentary and multifaceted. Bakhtin argues that although carnival, the festival, originally inuenced the process of carnivalization of literature, later it lost its influence. Its

40. See Michel Foucault, ‘The Subject and Power’, in Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, ed. Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 208–10. 41. Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children (New York: Random House, 2006). 42. Bakhtin, ‘Discourse in the Novel’, 264.

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inuence became secondary vis-à-vis the inuence of carnivalized literature.43 According to him, this process of carnivalization of literature reached its zenith in Gargantua and Pantagruel, Rabelais’s most famous work, but became diminished or ‘mufed’ by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and then was revived again in the polyphonic novels of Dostoevsky.44 A key question here is whether Luke’s Gospel can be read as a piece of carnivalized literature in the above sense. I will argue that it does indeed exhibit hallmarks of a carnivalized literature – that the Gospel’s perspectives on wealth are centrifugal, fragmentary and heterogeneous rather than centripetal, unitary and homogenous. This is not to suggest the Gospel was inuenced by the process of carnivalization as described above, but to demonstrate how Bakhtin’s concept of carnival can illuminate the texts in new ways.

E. Lukan Perspectives on Wealth The issue of wealth and poverty is ubiquitous in the third Gospel, and Luke has more pericopae about possessions than any other Gospel does. As Fitzmyer observes, ‘More than the other evangelists Luke either preserves sayings of Jesus about this topic or puts on his lips statements that concern wealth, money and material goods in general’.45 Although several of these pericopae – be they parables, stories or sayings – do have parallels in Mark and/or Matthew, a signicant portion of them – including Mary’s song (1.46-55), pronouncement of woes to the wealthy (6.24-26), the parable of the rich fool (12:13-21), the parable of the shrewd steward (16.1-13), the story of Lazarus and the rich man (16.19-31) and the story of Jesus meeting Zacchaeus (19.1-10) – appear only in Luke.46 At rst glance, the Gospel appears to contain a bias against the wealthy and portray wealth in a negative light, leading numerous scholars to suggest that it reserves a privileged place for the poor.47 However, a careful analysis of various pericopae dealing with these issues paints a much more complex and polychromatic picture. There are indeed numerous pericopae that contain a polemic against the rich or depict them in a poor light. Still, there are several

43. Bakhtin, Problems, 131. 44. Bakhtin, Problems, 165. 45. Fitzmyer, Luke The Theologian: Aspects of His Teaching (New York: Paulist Press, 1989), 137. 46. Fitzmyer offers an excellent discussion of the various sources behind the Lukan pericopae on wealth (Fitzmyer, Luke The Theologian, 247–8). 47. E.g., see the discussion in David Mealand, Poverty and Expectation in the Gospels (London: SPCK, 1980), 36–63.

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pericopae that are favourable, or at least neutral, toward the wealthy, and there are yet other pericopae that t into neither of these categories. I will marshal evidence in support of three divergent Lukan approaches to wealth: (a) a negative of portrayal of wealth; (b) a positive (or neutral) portrayal of wealth; and (c) an encouragement to share possessions. Furthermore, I will show how the evidence in support of each approach is made tenuous by the presence of evidence to the contrary. I will argue that Luke accommodates disparate, and sometimes contradictory, views on wealth and the wealthy, and that this heterogeneity in perspectives reveals the Gospel’s nature as a carnivalized text that seeks to subvert unitary and monologic perspectives.

1. Thesis: The Rich Portrayed Negatively A number of Lukan scholars subscribe to the view that the third Gospel portrays wealth in a negative light and that Jesus adopts a polemical attitude toward the rich.48 There is indeed a plethora of evidence that gives credence to this argument. At the very beginning of the Gospel, Mary’s Magnicat (1.46-55) celebrates a scenario wherein God ‘brought down the powerful’ and ‘lifted up the lowly’, ‘lled the hungry with good things’ and ‘sent the rich away empty’. The language of Mary’s song is a clear indicator of an anticipated, or already fullled, reversal in the fortunes of the parties involved. The song contains an explicit bias for the poor and the marginalized and, conversely, a bias against the rich and the mighty. On three occasions in the Gospel, Jesus announces his preference for the poor and/or a bias against the rich. First, as part of his Nazareth manifesto (4.18-21) in which he appropriates Isa. 61.1-2 for himself, Jesus announces his preferential option for the poor and the marginalized. Second, in the sermon on the plain, the Lukan Jesus announces a series of blessings for the poor. He also predicts a reversal in fortunes and pronounces woes to the rich (6.20-26). Warnings against the rich and the motif of reversal, prominent in the song of Mary, but missing in the Nazareth Manifesto, reappear in the sermon on the plain. Third, Jesus tells John’s disciples of his preferential option for the poor and other disadvantaged persons (7.22). Luke’s account of the sermon differs from Matthew’s account in at least two signicant ways that are relevant for the argument here. The rst difference lies in the emphasis Luke places on corporeal poverty rather than on the spiritual poverty that characterizes Mathew’s version (Matt. 5.3-12). In fact,

48. E.g., Esler, Community and Gospel in Luke-Acts, 187–91.

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Luke shows little interest in the spiritual aspect of the term ‘poor’. As Luke Timothy Johnson observes, ‘We notice that this is not moralistically shaded, as is Matt. 5.3’.49 The second difference lies in the series of woes the Lukan Jesus utters against the wealthy, in addition to announcing a series of blessings for the poor. Such juxtaposition of benedictions and maledictions is consistent with Luke’s pattern of revealing simultaneously a bias for the poor as well as a bias against the rich. The aforementioned preference for the poor, and a polemic against the rich – Luke’s polemic against the rich, and conversely a preference for the poor – receives a narrative expression in the parable of the great banquet, which has the disadvantaged replacing the privileged as the banquet guests (14.16-24). This parable also provides a narrative setting for the carnivalesque motifs of contrasts – between the rich and the poor, the proud and the humble – and reversals that have been mentioned in other pericopae such as the song of Mary and the sermon on the plain. Furthermore, the parable also depicts the humiliation suffered by a rich man for initially inviting only the rich and the inuential. Luke’s polemic against the rich receives another narrative expression in, and characterizes, the parable of Lazarus and the rich man. Also characterizing this parable are the motifs of contrast and reversal. There is a stated causal link in 16.25 between one’s fortunes in this life and the fortunes in the next life. There is also a condemnation, at least implicitly, of the lack of charity on the rich man’s part (v. 25). The rich man’s primary mistake, which led him to agony in Hades, was to enjoy all the good things during life on earth. Similarly, Lazarus’s only qualication for receiving comfort in the afterlife is that he was poor on earth (16.25). Abraham’s response to the rich man (16.25-26) appears to suggest so. In the story of the rich ruler, Jesus’ observation about the difculty the wealthy encounter in entering God’s kingdom reects his – perhaps also Luke’s – perception and depiction of the wealthy (18.18-30). In a society that considered wealth to be a sign of divine reward for one’s righteousness, the remarks of Jesus would be scarcely credible to his audience, including his disciples. As Marshall observes, ‘The implied thought is: “If even the rich (whose prosperity is generally regarded as a sign of blessing) cannot enter the kingdom, how can anybody else enter it?”’50 Jesus’ remarks would not only have run counter to the cultural assumptions of that time, but would also have revealed his ‘bias’ against the wealthy. Finally, the parable of the rich fool shows Jesus’ contempt

49. Johnson, Sharing Possessions, 4. 50. Marshall, The Gospel of Luke, 688.

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for, and perhaps a strong repudiation of, a rich man’s greed and obsession with his own well-being (12.16-21). Despite all this evidence, however, it is difcult to prove convincingly that Luke has a bias against the wealthy or the wealth itself. The difculty stems from the presence of several other Lukan pericopae that portray the wealthy in a positive light, or at least refuse to vilify them. With their counter portrayal of wealth, these pericopae subvert the perspective laid out above – that the third Gospel has a bias against the rich or that it depicts the rich in a negative light. My point here is not that Luke never reveals a bias against the rich, but that the pericopae that portray wealth in a negative light are placed in an equilibrial relationship with other pericopae that portray them in a positive light.

2. Antithesis: The Rich Portrayed Positively Of the numerous well-to-do characters that receive a positive portrayal in the third Gospel, the centurion occupies a unique place (7.1-10). Luke’s account of this man’s encounter with Jesus is signicant on at least two levels. First, Jesus’ praise of the faith of this Gentile breaks past conventional ethnic barriers and indicates that he has no bias for, or against, anyone based on their background. Second, in addition to mentioning his status as a centurion, the Gospel calls attention to his wealth, which allowed him to build a synagogue for the local Jewish community (7.5). It is worth noting that Luke’s portrayal of him as a wealthy benefactor is missing in Matthew (8.5-13). Luke’s emphasis on the centurion’s wealth foregrounds the contrast between the positive portrayal of this wealthy man and the negative portrayal of other wealthy people – an indication that the Gospel is not unitary. Furthermore, Jesus’ praise of his faith carnivalizes (challenges) the notion – in the pericopae explicated above – that Jesus has a bias against the rich and the powerful. Luke 8.1-3, which comes close on the heels of the above story, also subverts the notion that the third Gospel offers an unfavourable portrayal of the rich. By suggesting that this group of wealthy women chose to spend their resources to support Jesus’ entourage – rather than build treasure for themselves, as did some others (12.13-21) – Luke refuses to offer a unitary image of the wealthy. In addition to the two stories explicated above (7.1-10; 8.1-3), Luke has several parables that paint the rich in a good light. The rst depiction can be seen in the parable of the prodigal son (15.11-32). The pericope calls attention to the father’s economic status (15.17, 22-23, 26-27, 30-31), but there is no hint of a polemic against him or his wealth. On the contrary, most Lukan scholars agree that, within the narrative context, this wealthy father is analogous to God. In the very next pericope, the rich man is depicted as being reasonable

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in his dealings with his dishonest manager (16.1-9). In the end, he commends his manager rather than punishing him. Interestingly, the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, which portrays the wealthy man quite negatively, is preceded by two other parables – the parable of the prodigal son and the parable of the dishonest manager – that offer positive portrayals of rich people. The story about Zacchaeus receiving salvation by voluntarily giving up a great part of his money (19.1-10) is yet another pericope that subverts the notion that the third Gospel depicts the rich in a negative light.51 The same Jesus who, in the story of the rich ruler, has categorically stated that it would be easier for a camel to enter the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter God’s kingdom now announces that salvation has come to the house of this rich man. Citing 13.23, Marshall argues that ‘entering the kingdom of God’ and ‘being saved’ are synonymous in Luke.52 The close proximity of these two pericopae is meant to juxtapose the stories of two rich individuals, one who could not enter the kingdom of God and the other who could. Luke’s juxtaposition of these stories not only foregrounds the two individuals’ divergent attitudes to their wealth but also undermines possibilities for unitary interpretation of Luke’s portrayal of the rich. Finally, the parable of the wicked tenants (20.9-19), with its depiction of the poor tenants as unreasonably greedy people and justication of the landlord’s violent actions against the tenants, reveals its bias for the rich. Considering how the wealthy landlords of rst-century Palestine embarked on the process of latifundialization – turning peasant landholdings into large estates – at the expense of poor peasants, who then became tenants of the lands they previously owned, it is signicant that the Lukan Jesus vindicates the landlord rather than the tenants. Jesus’ vindication of the landlord further weakens the notion that the Gospel has a bias against the rich. William Herzog argues that, in its socio-economic context, the parable was actually meant to offer the poor a subtle warning against the futility and negative consequences of a rebellion.53 Despite the merits of his argument (or lack thereof), failure to condemn the wealthy landlord is inconsistent with the invective (against the rich) that characterizes his other parables such as the one about Lazarus and the rich man.

51. Later in this chapter, I will argue that the Lukan Jesus’ praise of this rich man is based on the latter’s decision to give his possessions to the poor. 52. Marshall, The Gospel of Luke, 687–8. 53. William Herzog, Parables as Subversive Speech: Jesus as Pedagogue of the Oppressed (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994), 103.

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3. Other Perspectives on Luke’s Portrayal of Wealth Scholars who take a middle ground between the two aforementioned approaches argue that Luke does not criticize the wealthy for possessing wealth but for being possessive of their wealth. According to this school of thought, the Gospel encourages the rich to use their wealth properly – that is, to share it with the poor.54 There is indeed some evidence in support of this notion. John the Baptist becomes the rst character in the Gospel to exhort the people to share their possessions (3.11). Both Matthew and Luke include John’s announcement about the judgment that was to befall trees not bearing good fruit. But Luke alone has people inquire what they needed to do to escape the judgment. In response, consistent with Luke’s focus on corporeal possessions, the Lukan John instructs the crowds to share their possessions, and tells the tax collectors and the soldiers not to extort money (3.10-14). In this instance, while the warning against extortion is directed primarily toward soldiers and tax collectors, the exhortation to share possessions applies to everyone regardless of their economic status. This instruction to give to others is continued in 6.30, which has a parallel in Matthew (5.42). Yet Luke’s account is different from Matthew’s in two small, but signicant, ways that accentuate Luke’s emphasis on sharing. First, while the Matthean Jesus exhorts his audience to give to ‘the one who asks’, the Lukan Jesus exhorts his audience to give to ‘everyone who ask’. Second, while Matthew employs dos, the aorist imperative form of didmi, meaning ‘give’ (once), Luke employs didou, the present imperative form that commands people to ‘keep giving’.55 This instruction to share possessions reaches a new level when it applies to the disciples, who are asked to sell possessions in order to give alms (12.33). As with the previous example, here too the Lukan emphasis on giving [to the poor] is missing in its synoptic parallel (Matt. 6.19).56 In the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, Jesus seems to suggest that the rich man ended up in Hades because of his callous attitude towards Lazarus’s abject poverty and suffering. As Gillman observes, ‘One of the sharpest

54. Mealand, Poverty and Expectation in the Gospels, 36–63. 55. Surprisingly, several interpreters either gloss over these differences (e.g. Green, The Gospel of Luke, 272) or consider them insignicant (e.g. Marshall, The Gospel of Luke, 261). 56. For a brief discussion of how Matthean and Lukan versions differ in this and other related instances, and the implications of those differences, see Mealand, Poverty and Expectation in the Gospels, 33–4. Mealand argues that ‘Matthew tended to soften the hostility to wealth which he found in his sources’. By implication, Luke simply retained, rather than accentuated, his sources’ hostility to wealth. Mealand’s argument is untenable since it cannot explain why Luke happens to contain pericopae that are more hostile to wealth than any other known Gospel sources, but it is not directly relevant to my attempt to highlight Luke’s emphasis on giving alms.

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critiques of the insular and nonresponsive life of the wealthy is found in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (16.19-31). The rich man delights in feasting splendidly but is blind to the dire needs of Lazarus’.57 The pericope about Jesus’ encounter with Zacchaeus (19.1-10), wherein the latter receives salvation after declaring his intention to share his possessions with the poor – not just the money earned by fraud but even his own money – supports the argument that the Gospel advocates sharing of wealth. As observed above, Luke juxtaposes the stories of two rich people – the rich ruler and Zacchaeus. His point is that one of them failed to enter God’s kingdom because of his unwillingness to give to the poor, despite Jesus asking him to do so, but the other received salvation by sharing wealth with the poor, even without Jesus asking him to do so. Jesus’ instruction to share possessions reaches a new level in his call for renunciation of wealth, a call that is directed especially, but not exclusively, at the disciples. On occasion, the Lukan Jesus posits renunciation of wealth as a cardinal rule for those aspiring to become his disciples (12.33; 14.33). Disciples leave everything to follow him (5.11, 28). Luke’s version of these call stories places a much greater emphasis on renunciation of possessions than does Mark’s. If one juxtaposes the two accounts, it becomes apparent that ‘[i]n the initial call story from Mark the rst four disciples, Simon and Andrew, James and John, leave their nets to follow Jesus; in Luke they leave everything to follow him (5.11; cf. Mark 1:18, 20)’.58 Seen in this light, Jesus’ instructions to his disciples (Lk. 9.4) and the seventy (10.4) not to take anything for the journey are designed to facilitate their detachment from wealth. The story of Jesus’ encounter with the rich ruler (18.18-25) combines the motifs of renouncing wealth and giving to the poor. In Jesus’ observation, it is the rich man’s attachment to his wealth and the concomitant lack of compassion for the poor – rather than his wealth itself – that make it difcult for him to enter God’s kingdom. However, even these views – that Jesus encouraged the rich to give to the poor, and that he required people, especially his followers, to detach themselves from worldly possessions – are made tenuous by evidence to the contrary. Consistent with Luke’s nature as a fragmentary – rather than a unitary – work, there are other pericopae in the Gospel that carnivalize and undermine these perspectives. In the story of a woman anointing Jesus’ feet at Simon’s house, Jesus approves of the woman’s choice to spend lavishly on him (7.36-50).

57. John Gillman, Possessions and the Life of Faith: A Reading of Luke-Acts (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1996), 26. 58. Gillman, Possessions and the Life of Faith, 14.

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The Markan and Matthean parallels of this story show some in the audience angrily objecting to the woman’s choice to spend such a fortune on Jesus rather than on the poor (Mk 14:4-5; Matt. 26.8-9), but Luke omits that aspect.59 Jesus’ approval of the woman’s choice to spend lavishly on him rather than on the poor, and the manner in which Luke turned it into a non-issue, are hardly consistent with other Lukan pericopae that emphasize the importance of giving to the poor. Luke accommodates divergent, and sometimes even mutually exclusive, views on the renunciation of possessions. Even as Jesus posits total renunciation of possessions as a prerequisite for following him (Lk. 14.33), he allows some followers to retain their wealth (8.1-3). On another level, the fact that Jesus and his entourage depended on the support of the women (8.1-3) is inconsistent with his instructions to the disciples and the seventy not to take anything for the journey and instead to rely on the hospitality of those who receive them (9.4; 10.4). Furthermore, Jesus’ instructions in Lk. 22.35-36 – permitting his disciples to take their possessions such as purse and bag – are in direct contradiction to his earlier commandment in 9.3-4 and 10.4.60 There are other instances where the Lukan Jesus contradicts himself with regard to the issue of wealth. Jesus’ afrmation of the shrewd steward’s actions and his encouragement to ‘make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes’ (16.9) is a direct contradiction of his own instruction in 6.34 where he says, ‘If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you?’ Luke 16.9 also contradicts Jesus’ own teaching on hospitality (14.12-14), which encourages people to show hospitality without expecting anything in return. Whereas Jesus’ teachings in 6.34 and 14.12-14 challenge the practice of reciprocity and the patron–client system, 16.9 afrms, or at least fails to critique, those values.

F. Luke as Carnivalized Literature Lukan scholars have long recognized the heterogeneity and inconsistency that characterize the Gospel’s portrayals of wealth. The divergence between these views makes it difcult for interpreters to offer a coherent portrayal of wealth

59. In Matthew’s version, the disciples – rather than members of the crowd – challenge the woman’s choice to spend lavishly on Jesus. In John’s version, it is Judas who challenges the woman. 60. For a brief discussion of this inconsistency on Jesus’ part, see Johnson, Sharing Possessions, 24.

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in the Lukan narrative. Acknowledging the extent of divergence in Luke’s perspectives on the issue, Luke Timothy Johnson says, The trouble is that, after all this attention, scholars have a hard time deciding just what exactly Luke wants to teach his church (and, by extension, us) about the use of possessions. If we ask the simple and straightforward question posed by the hearers of John the Baptist, ‘What, then, are we to do?’ (Luke 3:10), the answer is not altogether clear. Although Luke consistently speaks about possessions, he does not speak about possessions consistently. In what follows, I will deliberately isolate various strands within his text and refuse to harmonize them.61

Johnson’s refusal ‘to harmonize’ the various Lukan strands speaks less about his unwillingness to attempt harmonization and more about the futility of one’s attempts to arrive at a unitary understanding of Luke’s views on the issue. As my explication of the various Lukan texts addressing the issue of wealth has shown, the Gospel contains disparate, and sometimes even mutually exclusive, perspectives. Every pericope that advances a particular perspective is matched by another pericope that subverts and contests it. Every force has a counterforce that carnivalizes and challenges it. Thus, the pericopae that portray wealth in a negative light are placed in an equilibrial relationship with the pericopae that portray wealth or persons with wealth in a positive light. This equilibrium in perspectives foregrounds the third Gospel’s carnivalesque nature, not only on the literary plane but also on the ideological plane. Carnivalization of literature exposes and undermines the hegemony of any ideology that seeks to impose its view of the world as the ultimate word. It promotes alternate and marginalized perceptions of the world. The third Gospel is carnivalesque in the sense that it contains a fragmented and contrapuntal, rather than a unied, approach to wealth. By accommodating disparate views on the issue – that is, by simultaneously portraying wealth in a negative and a positive light – the Gospel facilitates a dialogue between those views. Furthermore, it refuses to let any one perspective dominate the dialogue, and thus refuses to let any interpreter reduce the text to a centripetal narrative.

Conclusion The Bakhtinian concept of carnival can contribute to a fruitful explication of the various literary features, including contrasts and reversals, which characterize

61. Johnson, Sharing Possessions, 13.

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Lukan pericopae such as the parable of Lazarus and the rich man. Furthermore, the concept of carnivalization can shed new light on the conundrum that has been facing Lukan interpreters – the disparate, and often mutually exclusive, Lukan perspectives on wealth. When one applies this concept to Luke’s portrayal of wealth, it emerges that the third Gospel is more interested in accommodating disparate perspectives and in subverting a unitary worldview on the issue of wealth than in offering a coherent portrayal of wealth or a consistent set of instructions on the issue. ‘Consistency’ appears to have been sacriced on the altar of polyphony. By including diverse, and sometimes contradictory, viewpoints on wealth, Luke facilitates what Newsom calls ‘a contest of Moral Imaginations’ and thus promotes a dialogic sense of truth.62 Accommodation of divergent perspectives and ideologies – and Luke’s facilitation of dialogue between them – has ethical implications for contemporary society. I will elaborate further on this ethical aspect in the nal chapter of this book. While the Bakhtinian concept of carnival has positive aspects, there are several negative aspects such as violence against animals and women. In his attempt to highlight the positive and liberating aspects of carnival, Bakhtin has downplayed its violence. Another problematic feature of Bakhtin’s carnival is that it advocates reversal of roles rather than reversal of values. The absence of explicit violence against women in Luke and its more radicalized version of carnival, as I have shown above, make it more carnivalesque and liberating than anything one can nd in the works of Bakhtin, Dostoevsky or Rabelais.

62. Newsom, The Book of Job, 16–21.

5 CONTRIBUTIONS OF THIS STUDY TO LUKAN SCHOLARSHIP AND THE E THICAL I MPLICATIONS OF A D IALOGIC R EADING OF L UKE

Introduction In the last few chapters, I have explicated some of the major themes and issues in Luke’s Gospel by interpreting selected pericopae in light of insights from Mikhail Bakhtin. In this chapter, I will highlight the results of the study as well as the usefulness of Bakhtin to Lukan studies vis-à-vis the aforementioned issues. Specically, I will call attention to the various aspects of dialogism in Luke and discuss how a focus on those aspects might contribute to a new understanding of the Gospel. My suggestion that the third Gospel is dialogic foregrounds the question of the potential signicance of such a Gospel for Luke’s original community within its social, cultural and religious contexts. A dialogic reading of Luke such as the one presented in this study also has signicance and possible ethical implications in the contemporary context, which is characterized by competing worldviews and ideologies. Furthermore, because Luke has been regarded as a religious and missionary document that subscribes to, and was probably written to promote, a particular worldview, a reading of this nature that highlights Luke's polyphonic nature has theological implications as well. Therefore, in addition to highlighting the signicance of Lukan dialogism for the evangelist’s community, this chapter will discuss both ethical and theological implications of this study for contemporary society.

A. Bringing Bakhtin to Luke: Goals and Results The starting point for this study was the question of how to make sense of the divergent perspectives Luke offers on major themes in the Gospel and the related question of how the divergence affects the coherence and nature of the Gospel. My primary goal has been to address those questions with an explicit

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focus on the nal form of the text rather than on the history of its formation or authorial intent. With that goal in mind and with an informed assumption that Bakhtin’s theory of the novel might offer some helpful insights for the project, I have attempted a fresh look at the issue of divergent perspectives. I have explicated relevant Lukan pericopae – as well as their synoptic parallels wherever pertinent – using Bakhtin’s concepts such as dialogism, polyphony, outsidedness, loophole, surplus and carnival. These concepts have been useful in calling attention to the dialogues among the divergent perspectives Luke presents on major themes such as poverty and wealth, the identity of Jesus, and the tension between the emphases on doing and hearing. Specically, the two interconnected motifs of dialogism and polyphony have been helpful in illuminating the larger narrative patterns that facilitate and accentuate continuous dialogues among the many voices in the Gospel of Luke. I will offer a recapitulating denition of the two motifs before discussing the ways in which they have been employed to discuss various issues in Luke. A fuller denition has been offered in the rst chapter. Bakhtin’s denition of dialogism and polyphony as two interrelated textual phenomena wherein contradictory voices and ideologies coexist in a novel, enter into a conversation with and challenge each other as equal partners was the starting point for applying his theories to Luke. In Bakhtin’s view, dialogic activity occurs between different cultures, languages, worldviews and utterances – spoken or written – but he employs the term dialogism primarily with reference to literature. He denes it as a conversation between multiple and divergent voices and utterances within the same body of literature (in a synchronic fashion) or between two or more bodies of literature (in a diachronic sense). Dialogism is not just, or even primarily, about juxtaposition of contradictory ideas in a text. Juxtaposition of contrasting viewpoints is the structural arrangement that sets the stage for dialogues, but it does not sufciently capture the essence of the term. Dialogism is about a lively and constant exchange of ideas among the many, disparate voices. It seeks intersection – rather than integration – of divergent viewpoints, and it provides a platform for them to encounter each other on equal footing without necessarily coming into agreement. Such unmergedness among the perspectives is not merely a possibility in the dialogic novels but an essential aspect. Dialogism conceives of truth as that which requires more than one perspective. In this way, it offers a new vision of truth, as I will discuss later in this chapter. Bakhtin’s insight that dialogic novels introduce the readers to a variety of viewpoints that challenge each other’s ideas, as well as the authorial viewpoints,

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has been a key aspect of this study. Some authors introduce the readers to a specic viewpoint or a set of perspectives that is generally consistent with their own worldview. But some other authors allow them to be exposed to different sides of a debate, without privileging any specic viewpoint. They enable the various voices and their viewpoints to thrive, including those that are directly at odds with their own position. By allowing contradictory voices to participate in dialogues as equal partners, these authors refuse to posit any single viewpoint as the truth, and thereby undermine the hegemony of dominant ideologies. Such authorial non-intervention is a chief characteristic of dialogic novels. It is only in relation to monologic novels that the uniqueness of dialogism becomes especially explicit. Unlike monologic novels such as War and Peace, which subordinate the many perspectives to a dominant perspective – that of the author – dialogic novels treat all viewpoints as equals. They challenge established paradigms and attenuate hierarchical relationships between different characters as well as between the author and characters.

B. Luke is Dialogic Not Dogmatic When I explicate selected Lukan pericopae using the concept of dialogism, along with other related concepts mentioned above, Luke emerges as a narrative, a unique Gospel that accommodates disparate perspectives on several issues. In addition, the Gospel employs a variety of strategies to facilitate continuous conversations among the many voices and characters that articulate those perspectives. Luke is a ‘unique’ Gospel because, as I have shown in the previous chapters, it is dialogic both in its own right and in relation to the other synoptic Gospels. In what follows, I will highlight how various dialogues run throughout Luke and discuss the signicance of this phenomenon.

1. The Identity of Jesus Luke presents disparate perceptions of Jesus expressed by different voices throughout the Gospel. Jesus is understood variously as a teacher, prophet, Lord, son of God, son of Joseph, mighty saviour, son of David, King, messiah, master, son of man, son of the most High and the chosen one. The many voices in the narrative promote their own viewpoints and are often interrupted by other voices that offer competing or complementary perceptions of Jesus from their own standpoint. There is palpable tension between these various voices that are in conversation with each other. Although a pattern of many characters expressing their divergent understandings of Jesus can also be seen in Mark and Matthew, Luke places far more emphasis on the issue of Jesus’ identity and

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on dialogue between various perspectives than Mark and Matthew. As I have highlighted in the second chapter, several of the pericopae that focus on the issue are unique to Luke. Luke also alters the Markan – and possibly Matthean – material in a manner that accentuates the tension between disparate voices and viewpoints without suppressing any of them. Furthermore, Luke promotes a conversation between the various perspectives by juxtaposing the relevant pericopae. His placement of the baptism story, the genealogy and the Nazareth episode in a succession illustrates this point. Such juxtaposition is lacking in the other Gospels that have parallel stories. It also results in an extended conversation among the characters about the identity of Jesus. In short, it can be suggested that the third Gospel achieves dialogism by employing all three strategies discussed in the rst chapter: additions, alterations and arrangement. The aforementioned conversations in the narrative world of Luke extend to the realm of reading where the readers are invited to participate in the continuous debates about Jesus and articulate their own stance. As a result, new meanings and ideas arise on the level of reading, and newer understandings of the identity of Jesus are added to the conversation. As James Dawsey aptly observes, ‘The characters and the narrator of Luke are in dialogue with each other and with the readers. Meaning arises out of that conversation’.1 The outsidedness of the readers, as dened in the second chapter, allows them to see that Luke’s story of the identity of Jesus is polyphonic and that there is no privileged perspective in the Gospel, including that of the author. Although it can be difcult to tease out the authorial perspective from the rest, one can suggest that the author may have expressed his ideas through either the narrator or one or more characters. Within the context of monologic novels such authorial perspectives occupy a central role and are posited as the ideal points of view. Newsom describes the monologic novel as one where ‘the privileged perspective may be found in the voice of the narrator or in the character of the hero, perhaps in a minor character who comments upon the action, or even in the way the plot itself renders judgment on characters and their values . . . it is the one that the book and its implied author encourage the reader to adopt’.2 In Luke’s narrative, however, neither the narrator’s viewpoint nor that of any character – Jesus, disciples or the heavenly voice – is presented as the ideal perspective. For instance, the narrator and the disciples, both of who may be conceptually aligned with the author, often refer to Jesus as the Lord. The readers, however, nd that one of the salient aspects of Luke’s narrative is that

1. Dawsey, The Lukan Voice, 12–13. 2. Newsom, The Book of Job, 17–18.

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the authorial perspective is not authoritative. Neither the narrator’s voice nor that of any character that might represent the author’s ideas is posited as the ideal perspective that has to be imitated. Several prominent voices such as that of Jesus (they are heard more frequently than others) express their viewpoints but none of the other, less prominent voices change their perception of Jesus to align themselves with the former. In addition, although some voices are prominent, they are not dominant. Their articulation of viewpoints does not suppress other voices in the narrative. Jesus frequently refers to himself as son of man, but occasionally as prophet, Lord and messiah. However, at various stages in the Gospel, other voices interrupt these prominent voices and seek to promote their own perceptions of Jesus. Such interruptions have the effect of undermining the possibility of any single voice or character enjoying a dominant status. Luke’s unique arrangement (juxtaposition) of pericopae that express competing ideas, and a refusal to privilege some at the expense of the others, results in intense, continuous and occasionally acrimonious dialogue between various characters concerning the issue of Jesus’ identity.

2. Doing versus Hearing A key feature of the third Gospel is the explicit emphases it places on doing and hearing the word. The two emphases challenge each other at various stages in the narrative. They run throughout the Gospel, usually alongside each other, but they appear prominently in two successive and interrelated pericopae – the parable of the Good Samaritan (10.25-37) and the story of Martha and Mary (10.38-42). In these pericopae the tension between the two emphases comes to the fore. As I have argued in the third chapter of this book, the two are linked dialogically on account of the frequent interaction between them and as a result of the ensuing tension. The dialogue between the two is facilitated primarily on account of the loophole the Lukan Jesus has, which has the effect of attenuating the ability of others, including the readers, to dene him in nalizing terms vis-à-vis the prominent Lukan theme – the tension between ‘doing’ and ‘hearing’. The tension between the two emphases in Luke becomes more obvious when one compares the relevant Lukan pericopae with the corresponding stories – or lack thereof – in Mark and Matthew. Unlike Mark and Matthew, Luke not only foregrounds the tension but also manages to keep the conversation about, as well as between, the two emphases alive and intense by employing the three strategies mentioned above. Luke alone records the two pericopae – the parable of the Good Samaritan and the story of Martha and Mary – that offer a narrative context for the tension between the two emphases. Luke also alters

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and arranges the material in such a way that the conversation between the two themes is accentuated.

3. The Portrayal of Wealth and the Wealthy Several pericopae in Luke’s Gospel exhibit their propensity for explicit condemnation of wealth and the wealthy. These include Mary’s Magnicat (1.46-55), the sermon on the plain (6.20-49), the parable of the rich fool (12.13-21), the parable of Lazarus and the rich man (16.19-31) and the story of the rich ruler (18.18-30). At the same time, however, several other pericopae – the story of the centurion (7.1-10), the parable of the prodigal son (15.11-32) and the story of Zacchaeus (19.1-10), for instance – portray the rich in a positive light. On the one hand, in light of the rst set of stories, it would appear that the Gospel offers little hope of salvation for the wealthy. On the other hand, however, the second set of stories provides several examples in support of the notion that the rich can indeed be saved. Most of these stories that address the issue of ownership and use of wealth are found in the third Gospel alone. In addition, several of the Lukan stories that have parallels in Mark and/or Matthew have a uniquely Lukan emphasis. Such emphasis accentuates the dialogue on wealth. Finally, Luke arranges these stories in such a way that the pericopae that have a polemic against the wealthy and highlight their hopelessness are usually followed or preceded by others that offer the wealthy some hope for a future. For instance, the author juxtaposes the story of the rich ruler with the story of Zacchaeus, another rich man. In the story of the rich ruler, who was unwilling to exchange his wealth for a ‘treasure in heaven’, Jesus suggests, in an apparently categorical fashion, that ‘it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God’. (Luke 18.22-25). Implicit in Jesus’ words is the suggestion that the wealthy have an intrinsic attachment to wealth that would make it impossible for them to enter the kingdom of God. But the pericope is succeeded by the story of Zacchaeus, who willingly gives up his wealth. He has little trouble securing salvation not just for himself but also for his entire household. The second story undermines the value statements made in the rst. The concept of carnival is pertinent here because the text juxtaposes two divergent pericopae that challenge and carnivalize each other’s viewpoints. One can even suggest that the story of Zacchaeus directly challenges the judgment offered by Jesus, the son of God and prominent voice in the narrative. Such an arrangement of diverse pericopae allows Luke to counterbalance one set of stories with the another, each offering a vision of wealth that is conceptually different from, but often also opposed to, the other. Luke’s

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arrangement of pericopae leads to lively conversations and promotes dialogism on the issue. Furthermore, the author employs two other strategies – additions and alternations – that accentuate dialogism in the Gospel. Several of the Lukan pericopae that focus on wealth are either unique to Luke or are noticeably different from their synoptic parallels. Seen in this light, the uniquely Lukan pericopae as well as those that bear Luke’s imprint play an important role in facilitating dialogues on the issue.

4. Dialogism Comes to the Fore The Gospel facilitates intense and continuous dialogues between the perspectives expressed by different voices in the narrative. As Dawsey suggests, ‘anyone who has read or heard the Gospel is aware of the interplay of its different voices’.3 He also observes that ‘the voices in the narrative can be distinguished in terms of the direct speech of the characters, . . .’4 But his focus is primarily on the distinctiveness of each character’s language. A key aspect of Luke’s narrative that receives less attention in Dawsey’s keen observations is the fact that the various voices can be distinguished also in terms of their conceptual differences vis-à-vis the various issues discussed earlier in this study. The many voices in the Gospel not only subscribe to their specic viewpoints on various issues but also advance them at various points in the narrative. In the process they frequently encounter other voices that challenge and subvert them, seeking to promote another viewpoint. Although some voices may be heard more often than others, there is usually no dominant voice in Luke. Although the narrator’s voice is heard frequently it is one among the plethora of voices and, akin to the voices of characters, it is often challenged by differing voices. Similarly, the authorial perspective does not carry any more weight than the other perspectives. The author’s voice in the conversation carries no more signicance than those of other characters in the text, although the authorial function itself might carry some signicance. The dialogic author – Luke, in this case – has a limited role in the happenings in the text. His role pertains to bringing together various characters and facilitating dialogues between them. Although his viewpoints may be expressed through the narrator and/or characters the author does not have a direct participation in the conversations. The author exercises some control over the structure of the narrative. He arranges the various pericopae in a manner that facilitates conversations between the many characters (primarily by

3. Dawsey, The Lukan Voice, 13. 4. Dawsey, The Lukan Voice, 14.

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juxtaposition of differing voices) but he does not direct the interaction between those voices. To put it differently, the author sets the stage for a pluralistic dialogue but does not exercise control over the interactions between various characters or their conversations. Such freedom enjoyed by the characters is similar in nature to the freedom Dostoevsky grants to his characters. Again, as Dawsey observes, The characters in Luke, like the characters in all stories, have different views of the events taking place. The signicance of the gospel is not simply laid out as in an essay. There is a sense in which the author backed off from what he told and allowed his characters to speak, to agree and disagree, to use their own language, and so to come alive in the story.5

The absence of a controlling author and a non-hierarchical relationship between the characters are the hallmarks of the third Gospel. Luke becomes a textual location wherein divergent views seek and promote their understandings of the truth by meeting, challenging and entering into dialogues with each other. Such patterns become apparent especially, but not exclusively, in relation to the major Lukan themes such as the portrayal of wealth and the wealthy, the tension between the emphases on hearing and on doing, and the identity of Jesus.

C. The Signicance of a Dialogic Reading for Lukan Scholarship The key argument in this study – that the third Gospel is a dialogic document, which accommodates disparate perspectives on several key themes – has signicance for modern scholarship on Luke, as it sheds new light on the issue of contradictions that has engaged the scholars during the last few decades. Unlike some existing interpretations of Luke that consider the divergence in perspectives a problem, which needs to be resolved,6 this study offers a creative analysis of the issue and a different way of looking at it. When one examines the issue in light of Bakhtin’s concepts such as dialogism and polyphony, the divergent viewpoints expressed by various voices in the narrative make the Gospel a dialogic work along the lines of Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov. Along those lines, the divergence in perspectives does not undermine the coherence of the Gospel but points to a new level of coherence, one that does not call for the multiple viewpoints on a given issue to be

5. Dawsey, The Lukan Voice, 3. 6. Luke T. Johnson’s Sharing Possessions illustrates these approaches well.

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collapsed into one single, unitary thought. This type of coherence is based on two aspects: rst, the focus is on whether a particular voice or character is able to remain committed to its idea(s) amidst the intense dialogues and maintain a coherent position throughout the Gospel. As Morson and Emerson observe, in dialogic novels an idea represents a person’s viewpoint on the world and so cannot be separated from that person.7 Building upon Bakhtin’s insights, they also note that a person espousing an idea ‘becomes a full personality by virtue of that idea. Idea is not something he happens to believe, but is an essential shaping force throughout his life’.8 Therefore, it is important for a person or voice to maintain a coherent position. Furthermore, in their view, just as an idea is an essential part of a person, dialogue between multiple ideas is central to the existence of those ideas. The goal of the dialogue is not to ensure unity of thought at the expense of the integrity of individual ideas but to facilitate a unied eld of conversation in ways that allow the various conversation partners to remain faithful to their core ideas. Given this intrinsic link between a person and idea, consistency in one’s position or commitment to one’s core ideas throughout the conversation becomes an essential aspect of dialogic works. Second, this new level of coherence pertains to the consistency with which a text makes room for disparate perspectives without privileging any of them. In other words, the new coherence stems from the presence of disparate ideas that actually appear to undermine it. Based on the two aspects, Luke can be described as a Gospel that has a new level of coherence because few characters or voices in the narrative change their positions on various issues as a result of their encounters with the perspectives of other, sometimes much more vocal, characters. And there are few dominant viewpoints in the narrative. Accordingly, the presence of contradictory voices and an active interaction among them signify Luke’s literary sophistication and unique artistry rather than any aws in the narrative. Along those lines, when a reader does not see a unitary perspective on an issue, it is not considered a aw or failure (on the reader’s part) to see a single truth that must be there because Luke is a Gospel. Rather it indicates a level of sophistication on the reader’s part that allows her to perceive the new level of coherence at work in the Gospel. The presence of divergent perspectives also leads to a dialogic vision of truth that ‘requires a plurality of consciousnesses’ because it cannot be fully

7. Morson and Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin, 237. See also Mikhail Bakhtin, Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, ed. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, trans. V. W. McGee (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), 91–2. 8. Morson and Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin, 237.

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captured by any single consciousness.9 This kind of truth ‘is born at a point of contact among many consciousnesses’.10 Accordingly, the many, contradictory voices in the Gospel are not to be downplayed or explained away but given due space and celebrated. In this way, in highlighting the dialogic nature of Luke, this study turns the perceived problem on its head and presents it as a salient feature and an asset. In addition, this way of reading the third Gospel is at odds with certain traditional readings of Luke that present it as a missionary document. For instance, Howard Marshall sees Luke (and Acts) as an evangelistic work, which not only subscribed to a particular worldview but was also written to promote it as the good news.11 Marshall characterizes Luke as a missionary document as part of his explication of the missionary nature of the New Testament as a whole. But the essence of this view, of which Marshall is not the only advocate, is that books such as Luke present a unitary, coherent perspective on various issues. He argues that ‘[books like Luke] are concerned to make converts, and then to provide for their nurture, to bring new believers to birth and to nourish them to maturity’.12 However, one rarely nds conversion or change in perspectives within Luke’s Gospel in ways that would make plausible the argument that the book is focused on making converts elsewhere. As I have argued in the previous sections, rather than facilitate conversion from one perspective to another Luke’s Gospel emphasizes conversation among various voices on equal terms. The suggestion that the third Gospel accommodates and facilitates conversations between divergent perspectives also highlights its uniqueness vis-à-vis other synoptic Gospels, especially Mark, which is generally considered a source for Luke. As I have shown in the previous chapters, the Lukan pericopae, which accentuate the dialogic nature of the Gospel, are either absent from the other Gospels or they facilitate a more active interplay among disparate voices than do their parallels in Mark and/or Matthew. The implications of the dialogic nature of Luke as well as an explication of it extend beyond an academic understanding of the Gospel. It is pertinent to explore whether, and how, dialogism in the Gospel would have had some significance for Luke’s original community. In addition, considering the theological character of Luke and its traditional reception as a missionary

9. Bakhtin, Problems, 81. 10. Bakhtin, Problems, 81. 11. I. Howard Marshall, New Testament Theology: Many Witnesses, One Gospel (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 35–6. 12. Marshall, New Testament Theology, 35.

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document, this reading also has theological implications. Similarly, several aspects of this study – loophole, surplus, outsidedness and unnalizability, to name a few – have signicant ethical implications for the contemporary society, which is characterized by the presence of contradictory worldviews. Therefore, in what follows, I will highlight the potential signicance of Lukan dialogism in the context of the diversity in Luke’s community. I will also discuss the ethical and theological implications of a dialogic reading of Luke for the contemporary society.

D. Diversity in Luke’s Community One way to highlight the signicance of the dialogism in the Gospel for Luke’s community is by examining the nature of the community and ascertaining the potential goals of the author – literary, ideological and theological – within that specic context. Along those lines, one can explore the question of what specic aspects of the community would have inspired the author to produce a Gospel that accommodates divergent voices without privileging any of them at the expense of the rest. The focus in this regard would be on the link between Luke’s context and text, specically on the question of whether there are possible connections between the composition of Luke’s community and the nature of the text. Several biblical scholars have established that Luke’s community was diverse in terms of its socio-economic, ethnic, religious and educational backgrounds.13 Philip Francis Esler’s socio-political analysis of Luke-Acts has highlighted how the community was multi-ethnic, consisting especially of Jews and God-fearers who joined the Jesus movement.14 One of Esler’s key suggestions is that the social location of the community inuenced the author’s worldview and perspectives. He focuses primarily on diversity in terms of religious and ethnic backgrounds of the community, but his work sufciently foregrounds diversity in other realms as well.15 Barbara Shellard’s observations about the nature of Luke’s community are similar to Esler’s broad portrayal of the social fabric of that community, although the focus of her work is primarily on the relation of Luke-Acts to other New Testament writings.16

13. In this case, I use the term ‘original community’ synonymously with the ‘intended audience’ or actual rst century readers of the Gospel. 14. Philip Francis Esler, Community and Gospel in Luke-Acts: Social and Political Motivations of Lucan Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 31. 15. Esler, Community and Gospel in Luke-Acts, 30–3. 16. Shellard, New Light on Luke, 37–55.

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Building upon the sociological aspects of Wayne Meeks’s and Gerd Theissen’s work on the New Testament, Kyoung-Jin Kim argues that the social fabric of Luke’s community was comparable to that of Pauline congregations in Asia Minor. Kim suggests that, like Paul’s congregations, Luke’s also included people from various economic strata, as well as members from both Jewish and Gentile backgrounds.17 She gives special attention to Rome, which she believes to be the location of Luke’s original readers. In what appears to be a response to traditional emphasis on the underprivileged nature of Luke’s intended audience, Kim highlights the motif of Theophilus to whom Luke-Acts is dedicated in order to suggest that Luke’s audience ‘probably included those who were rich and educated Gentiles’.18 Robert Karris’s work on Luke-Acts also foregrounds what it considers a stratication of rich and poor in the author’s community.19 Karris sees several key teachings in the Gospel as reecting divisions and tensions in the community that were based on economic factors.20 In a similar vein, according to Halvor Moxnes, the conicts depicted in the third Gospel, especially those between Jesus and the Pharisees, were based on larger economic issues. Discounting a theological or political basis for the clashes between Jesus and the Pharisees, Moxnes suggests that the tensions must have stemmed from economic stratication in the community. And he situates Luke’s community primarily in a rural setting.21 Luke Timothy Johnson’s work on the portrayal of wealth in the third Gospel also posits a community setting that was characterized by diversity in various realms. Johnson’s main goal is to examine Luke’s portrayal of wealth in light of Jewish and Greek ethics but his work also highlights the economic divide in the community.22 But perhaps the broadest image of the diversity in Lukan community has been painted by Douglas Buckwalter, who suggests that, Luke’s intended audience probably included a wide range of people: from the wealthy to the poor, the learned to the unlearned, the Jew to the Gentile, the

17. Kyoung-Jin Kim, Stewardship and Almsgiving in Luke’s Theology (London: Shefeld Academic Press, 1998), 45–50. 18. Kim, Stewardship and Almsgiving in Luke’s Theology, 44. 19. Robert Karris, ‘Poor and Rich: The Lukan Sitz im Leben’, in Perspectives on Luke-Acts, ed. Charles H. Talbert (Danville, VA: Association of Baptist Professors of Religion, 1978), 112–25. 20. Karris, ‘Poor and Rich: The Lukan Sitz im Leben’, 118–20. 21. Halvor Moxnes, The Economy of the Kingdom: Social Conict and Economic Relations in Luke’s Gospel (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988). 22. Johnson, Sharing Possessions.

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God-fearer to the God-less, the Greek to the Roman, the free to the enslaved, and perhaps from the believer to the unbeliever.23

For the most part Buckwalter argues that Luke wrote for a mixed audience consisting primarily of urban God-fearers and Gentile Christians from disparate socio-economic backgrounds.24 Despite this emphasis on the Gentile background of Luke’s audience, Buckwalter proposes a broad intended audience that also included Jewish Christians. In his view, the broad diversity in the community is also reected in Luke’s implied audience that can be construed from the Gospel’s narrative world. Such a broad spectrum among Gospel readers – which includes Jews, Gentiles, God-fearers; the rich, the poor, the powerful, the powerless, men and women – is rarely seen in the context of other canonical Gospels.

E. From the Author’s Context to the Dialogic (Gospel) Text? One cannot interpret the diversity in Luke’s community in modern notions or terminology. Buckwalter himself cautions against such interpretive moves.25 Nevertheless, one can ask whether, how and to what extent the diversity among the intended audience of the Gospel may have contributed to its dialogic nature. Perhaps, more aptly, the question to be explored is whether the Lukan dialogism can be seen as reecting the diversity in the community. Several recent studies have postulated a link between the Sitz im Leben of Luke’s community on the one hand and his theology and worldview on the other. A key aspect of Johnson’s thesis on the presentation of wealth in the third Gospel, as I pointed out in the fourth chapter, is that Luke’s Gospel – or the Lukan Jesus – does not offer consistent, unitary perspectives on wealth. His work primarily discusses the question of what Luke prescribes – or does not prescribe – to readers in terms of an ideal approach to possessions.26 But it implicitly foregrounds the interconnectedness between economic stratication among members of the community and the presence of contradictory perspectives in Luke regarding wealth. Such a relationship between the context of Luke’s community and the nature of the Gospel is also highlighted by William

23. H. Douglas Buckwalter, The Character and Purpose of Luke’s Christology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 36–42. 24. Buckwalter, The Character and Purpose of Luke’s Christology, 67. 25. Buckwalter, The Character and Purpose of Luke’s Christology, 36. 26. Johnson, Sharing Possessions.

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Countryman27 and Philip Esler.28 Their works, which suggest that Luke was writing to a heterogeneous community consisting of rich and poor, men and women, Jews and Gentiles, highlight the link between the context and the text of the Gospel. Esler’s work, in particular, examines the role social and political factors played in the formation and development of Luke’s theology. It also attempts to foreground the interconnectedness between the heterogeneity of the community and the diversity of perspectives in the text.29 In a similar vein, Mark Allan Powell’s brief explication of concerns in Luke’s community highlights how Luke’s theology may have developed in response to the diversity in the community.30 Such exploration of the link between context and text of the third Gospel explicitly amounts to suggesting that the heterogeneity in Luke’s community played an important role in the author’s shaping of the Gospel. One can indeed suggest that the accommodation of divergent perspectives in Luke reects the author’s commitment to accommodate many viewpoints to which various sections of the community may have subscribed. It is also possible to suggest, in light of the diverse nature of the audience, the dialogic design of the text reects the author’s desire to prescribe an inclusive worldview to his readers. But any focus on Luke’s desire or commitment, or an explication of why he would have designed the Gospel in a particular way entails a discussion about the authorial intent, which cannot be determined with any degree of certainty. The question of why Luke accommodated disparate perspectives is not considered here, mainly because any potential answers to the question would entail more speculation than concrete evidence – textual or otherwise. One can attempt a heuristic reconstruction of Luke’s situation and reasons for authoring a dialogic Gospel, similar to Newsom’s reconstruction of the origin of the Book of Job.31 Along those lines, one can suggest that Luke’s purpose was to accommodate the divergent perspectives in the community. But such an exercise would only be heuristic. While it might yield helpful insights, as Newsom’s work has, it would traverse too far into the realm of historical criticism.

27. L. William Countryman, The Rich Christian in the Church of the Early Empire: Contradictions and Accommodations (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1980), 74. 28. Esler, Community and Gospel, 68. 29. Esler’s argument that issues such as table fellowship, temple and the law reect the author’s attempt to legitimate the Gospel to the Jews is noteworthy here but not directly related to my main argument. 30. Powell, What Are They Saying about Luke?, 42. 31. Newsom, Book of Job, 16–17.

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F. Dialogism and Its Potential Signicance for Luke’s Community A more plausible way to approach the issue of the link between the text and the author’s context would be to shift the emphasis away from the ways in which the author’s context may have inuenced the text and toward an examination of the potential signicance of Lukan dialogism in the context of the heterogeneous nature of Luke’s community. Rather than suggesting that the nature of the text was determined by the fabric of the community and its various contexts or the author’s commitment to promote dialogue, this study focuses on the signicance of a Gospel such as Luke in the rst century socio-economic, religious and political environment of Luke’s community. Accordingly, the emphasis here is on explicating the potential meaning of the text in its rst-century setting. Along those lines, it can be suggested that a text written for a diverse community, whose members subscribed to divergent views on the various issues discussed above, would not have resonated with the readers if it sought to promote a monolithic worldview to the exclusion of other perspectives. But the accommodation of disparate viewpoints in Luke’s Gospel and an emphasis on continuous dialogues would have made the text signicant for both literary and ideological reasons. On a literary level, the divergent voices that quarrel – or the ‘loose and baggy monsters’ as Henry James calls them – as well as a continuous interaction among them make Luke a sophisticated narrative that provides for a lively reading. Ideologically, its accommodation of contradictory worldviews implicitly articulates a commitment towards addressing the various issues in the community’s life rather than seeking to posit a specic viewpoint as the ideal response. It refuses to nalize the debate prematurely by privileging specic ideas or ending the conversations with what might be deemed the appropriate answer. Seen through this prism, the presence of divergent voices in the Gospel would have been a matter of great signicance for the diverse sections of the community. Such inclusion becomes a means of promulgating a dialogic vision of truth, which will be discussed later in this chapter.

G. Then and Now: Similarities between Luke’s Context and Current Contexts An important aspect of this study has to do with bringing the Sitz im Leben of Luke’s community into conversation with some aspects of the contemporary context to see if there are similarities between the two contexts. A pertinent question is what those similarities, if any, might mean for this study. A related

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question is how an explication of the dialogic nature of the third Gospel might be relevant in the contemporary context. Akin to the context of Luke’s audience, diversity is the salient feature in various realms of the contemporary society as well. ‘Diversity’ here refers to the social, religious and ethnic makeup of the society, the differences in their worldviews, conicts about the ‘right’ approach to the ‘other’ (both within and outside the community), and the differing visions for the present and future. In what follows, I will highlight the diversity in two realms of the modern context in order to explicate the signicance of a dialogic reading of Luke for the contemporary society. The focus in this section will be on the Indian context (dened somewhat broadly) and the American ecclesial context. These realms are characterized by the presence of disparate and competing worldviews, which occasionally lead to acrimonious debates and clash of competing visions on various issues. In light of this reality, the specic goal here is to call attention to the insights this reading of Luke might offer to the various conversations in these contexts. My choice of these two specic realms has to do with two key aspects of my identity and location. I was born in Andhra Pradesh, a state in the southern part of India, where I spent much of my life. I am also a member of a faith community within the larger Christian tradition in the US. This background and location have shaped my worldview and continue to inform my scholarly thinking. In turn, I seek ways to make connections between my scholarly work and my location. An emphasis on these two realms allows me to highlight the specic relevance of this reading of Luke.

1. The Indian Context India is often considered one of the most diverse societies in the modern world. It is difcult to overstate this diversity, which manifests itself in various aspects of the society such as caste, religion, ethnicity, language, colour, class and political ideologies. Diversity, it would appear, is not just a salient characteristic of the modern Indian society but often the one that denes it. The same characteristic also calls attention to the absence of shared identities or common attributes in different segments of the society. At the risk of exaggeration it can be suggested that with the exception of the long, troubled history of British colonialism and the political identity the inhabitants of India inherited as a result, there is little that the disparate Indian communities have in common. Sunil Khilnani offers an excellent, although by no means comprehensive, analysis of the many aspects of diversity in the Indian society.32 He observes that,

32. Sunil Khilnani, The Idea of India (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999), 150–95.

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The truncated colonial territories inherited by the Indian state after 1947 still left (leave) it in control of a population of incomparable differences: a multitude of Hindu castes and outcastes, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists, Jains and tribes; speakers of more than a dozen major languages (and thousands of dialects); myriad ethnic and cultural communities.33

Such diversity is often rightly described as the key strength of the Indian society. In Khilnani’s view, the post-colonial India, which was a creation of the British military and commercial powers, mirrored – but did not emerge as a direct result of – the desire of leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru for a diverse and multilayered society. For the leaders of this nascent nation, the ‘Indian’ identity was broad and could not be easily dened. There were few institutions that could capture the essence of diverse Indian identity. In light of this context, the creation of the Indian National Congress, an amalgam of loosely-connected regional groups, reected a desire on the part of the leaders to accommodate a wide range of groups, worldviews, ideologies and interests in the nation. It was also consistent with their vision of India as an inclusive society. Seen through the prism of their vision for the emerging nation, diversity in the society was not just the chief characteristic but also an indicator of inclusiveness and source of celebration. Yet the same diversity has been at the root of some troublesome history in certain settings in the last 50 years. Such history has resulted, in part, from a collision of disparate identities and competing worldviews as well as from the absence of explicitly common attributes. As Khilnani puts it, This discordant material was not the stuff of which nation states are made; it suggested no common identity or basis of unity that could be reconciled within a modern state. Nor was there a compelling ideological doctrine or symbol, a ‘socialism’ or emperor, around which to unite.34

Far from serving as a helpful attribute, the multilayered identity and the disparate ideologies has undermined the social fabric and contributed to communal disharmony in parts of India. At the risk of oversimplication it can be suggested that one of the reasons for this troublesome history is a monologic approach to the divergent worldviews and ideologies in areas such as politics and religion. Integral to this approach has been the notion that ‘the truth’ or ‘the right ideology’ needs to be centripetal and unitary. The multiple worldviews

33. Khilnani, The Idea of India, 151. 34. Khilnani, The Idea of India, 152.

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are seen as mutually exclusive and each is perceived to be at the expense of the other. In the ensuing interaction among the many ideologies, dominant perspectives sought to replace the marginal, minority worldviews. Accommodation (of the many) made way for privileging (of a few). The idea of Hindu, which has been dened in a homogenous fashion, replaced the idea of India which has been characterized by heterogeneity. Exclusion replaced inclusion. The notion of dialogism as Bakhtin denes it, and as has been explicated in relation to the third Gospel, can be helpful in this context. It suggests a paradigm for peaceful coexistence of, rather than a conict between, disparate communities and groups. In light of the dialogic vision of truth, the divergent worldviews would be seen not as mutually exclusive but as mutually benecial. They exist alongside – but not at the expense of – each other. The presence of the disparate worldviews as well as an interaction among them would enrich, rather than undermine, the many understandings and the communities that subscribe to them. Luke’s skilful accommodation of contradictory voices, as well as the ability of those voices to interact with each other and engage in intense, acrimonious dialogues without sacricing their own identity or the specicity of their viewpoints, provides a textual model for a constructive interaction among the many, competing worldviews in Indian context. Relevant here are the contributions of a dialogic approach as well as the negative repercussions of a monologic approach to the presence of various ethnic and religious groups vying for dominance and inclusion in the shared space. In light of my background and location, my image of Luke’s audience as a diverse community is one that appeals to me for interpretive and ethical reasons. Having grown up in a multicultural, multiethnic, multifaith and multilingual context, I realized that dialogue with the ‘other’ – literally and guratively – is a day-to-day necessity rather than an occasional academic luxury. In various aspects of the everyday life, I was constantly made aware that any attempt to assert one’s own worldview and vision as normative or a refusal to be in conversation with people who subscribe to differing ideas has the potential for signicant violence. Such awareness has helped me to become sensitive to issues of diversity, including diversity of thought, and it has accentuated my commitment to dialogue.

2. The American Context: Ecclesial Setting A reading of Luke’s Gospel that highlights the accommodation of, and active interaction between, divergent viewpoints has relevance and implications in the context of the church in America. The two related motifs of polyphony and dialogism become especially signicant given the acrimonious debates on

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various burning issues such as the ordination of gays and lesbians, the uniqueness of Christ in the context of religious pluralism, the inspiration of scriptures, and – in the case of some churches – the ordination of women. The two motifs become pertinent in light of the signicance and impact these issues continue to have on the church in general. The aforementioned issues continue to have special relevance in several mainstream denominations. It would not be a stretch to suggest that the conicts surrounding these issues can be attributed largely to monologic interpretations of scriptures and traditions that privilege certain viewpoints at the expense of others. When one considers the role monologic, selective readings of scriptures have played in these controversies and in the marginalization of certain groups such as gays and lesbians from the church, the usefulness of Bakhtin’s insights on loophole, surplus and unnalizability becomes readily apparent. These insights, which are discussed in the third chapter, serve as reminders that scriptures have loopholes that allow them to attenuate any nalizing interpretations. Given the history of various conicts regarding the aforementioned issues, the Bakhtinian concepts of polyphony, dialogue and outsidedness offer helpful insights. Since we live in a society with competing worldviews, a dialogic reading helpfully reinforces the need for different communities and ideologies to engage each other in ongoing conversation. These implications are pertinent in the current context of the various churches, in light of their attempts to discern the truth on various burning issues. A reading of this kind that foregrounds and celebrates contradictory viewpoints in the third Gospel has signicant ethical implications in the context of the contemporary society that is, akin to Luke’s community, characterized by competing worldviews and ideologies. In such a context a dialogic reading helpfully reinforces the need for different communities and ideologies to engage each other in an ongoing dialogue. Considering the fact that Luke has traditionally been regarded as a missionary and doctrinal document that was written to promulgate a particular worldview, a dialogic reading of the Gospel has theological implications as well. I will explicate key ethical and theological implications of this study for the church and for contemporary society.

H. Ethical Implications of a Dialogic Reading in the Context of Diversity Bakhtin was intentional about calling attention to the intrinsic relationship between art and literature on the one hand and ethics on the other.35 In his view,

35. Bakhtin discussed this link in one of his later works with a similar title (Art and Answerability, 2–5).

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whatever one expresses in the realm of art and literature must – and invariably does – have relevance in the real life. Literature reects human struggles and life situations. In turn, it also inuences the attitudes of individuals and communities. In recent years, several ethicists and philosophers like Martha Nussbaum have called attention to the various ways in which literature inuences human behavior. Nussbaum suggests that there is ‘something important about the way in which a novel offers ethical education and stimulates the ethical imagination’.36 In highlighting the ethical contribution of the novel, Nussbaum goes to the extent of asserting that certain ethical and moral ideas cannot be expressed adequately outside the realm of literature, specically novels. Bakhtin has not made a similar assertion but he often emphasized the notion that literature and art – as well as one’s interpretation of them – have implications for concrete situations in the everyday life of communities. Given this emphasis, it is important to examine whether, and to what extent, an explication of dialogism in Luke has relevance and implications for the contemporary society.

1. Diversity and Dialogism In the modern society that is characterized by diversity of many types and competing ideologies, privileging one perspective at the expense of others would have the potential to create conict and violence of various forms. Similarly, a monologic reading of scriptures – one that advances a specic viewpoint to the exclusion of the rest – would have hermeneutical and ethical implications. In the context of competing perspectives, the twin motifs of polyphony and dialogism challenge domination and marginalization of subaltern perspectives. They offer a model for the inclusion of many perspectives and for a conversation between them. Seen in this light, a dialogic interpretation that attenuates ideological hegemony and challenges exclusion of peripheral worldviews becomes pertinent because of the promise it offers in the realms of ethics and interpretation. As Dale Bauer and Susan McKinstry aptly put it, dialogism recognizes ‘competing voices without making any single voice normative’.37 Furthermore, it challenges the notion that only one perspective or worldview can or should be authentic. It attenuates the suggestion that in order for a worldview to be authentic, the authenticity of the rest needs to be called into question. In short,

36. Martha Nussbaum, Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 38. 37. Dale M. Bauer and Susan Jaret McKinstry, ‘Introduction’, in Feminism, Bakhtin, and the Dialogic, ed. Dale M. Bauer and Susan Jaret McKinstry (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), 2–6.

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a focus on the dialogic nature of Luke highlights the possibilities for multiple perspectives to coexist and thrive as equally valid perspectives.

2. Dialogism, Otherness and Levinas Beyond the world of motifs, dialogism prescribes an approach to concrete situations in everyday life. By challenging hegemony and emphasizing inclusion, it highlights the need for respect of the other on both intellectual and ethical grounds. In this regard, dialogism is similar to Emmanuel Levinas’s ideas on encounters with the ‘other’. It is this encounter that, in Levinasian thought, forms the basis for ethics and demands a responsible attitude from – and to – all parties involved, especially respect for the other. Bakhtin’s thoughts on dialogism, specically his insights on loophole and surplus, resonate with Levinas’s emphasis on respect for, and tolerance of, the ‘other’. Augusto Ponzio helpfully notes that one’s relationship with the other is central to both Bakhtin’s insights on dialogue and Levinas’s work on otherness and ethics.38 Such a relationship has signicance in various realms of life, a point stressed by both scholars. Bakhtin and Levinas focused on similar issues for the most part. Interestingly, for both these theorists and ethicists, the starting point in literature is Dostoevsky. Highlighting the similarities between Bakhtin and Levinas, Ponzio suggest that, At the very core of identity, otherness involves a series of consequences divisible into three levels: linguistic, ethical and esthetic. . . . at the ethical level, otherness gives rise to absolute and unlimited answerability. At the esthetic level it leads to the outsidedness of the artwork, to its irreducibility to the values, interests, ideologies, facts and references of contemporaneity, to its life in ‘great time’. The ethical level has been placed in the middle because of its central importance in the research of both Bakhtin and Levinas. Indeed, viewed in its most fundamental aspect, that of absolute otherness, the self/other relation is in fact an ethical relation.39

It is not the otherness but the act of otherizing that both dialogism and Levinas seek to attenuate. Otherness can actually be benecial. The otherness of the other and the difference from her or him make it possible for the self to enter into a dialogue with that other. Here, otherness functions in ways similar to Bakthin’s concept of outsidedness. Seen this way, the difference between

38. For more on similarities between Bakhtin and Levinas, see Augusto Ponzio, Signs, Dialogue and Ideology, trans. Susan Petrilli; Critical Theory 11 (Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Co., 1993), 109. 39. Ponzio, Signs, Dialogue and Ideology, 109.

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divergent perspectives – in a novel, a Gospel such as Luke or a society – does not undermine dialogue, but accentuates it. And a dialogic encounter between them leads to the emergence of richer, more authentic truth that enhances each of them. Therefore, for this reason at least, the differences in perspectives should not be eliminated. And the other cannot be assimilated into the self. In Levinasian thought, the other becomes, or is to be treated as, the neighbour.40 And given the aesthetical – and often spatial – proximity of the other to the self, one cannot otherize the other. That is, one cannot offer simplistic denitions of the other or differentiate the other from oneself in a manner that highlights the distance. At the same time, however, Levinas warned against any symmetrical relationship between self and the other. He was opposed to reducing the other to a version similar to oneself. His point was that one cannot offer easy categorizations of the other by way of differentiation or assimilation. In a similar spirit, dialogism, essential surplus and the motif of outsidedness in Bakhtin’s discourse oppose easy nalizations of the ‘other’, the unfamiliar, and the less prominent.

3. Bakhtin and Unnalizability Easy nalizations signify one’s unwillingness to learn sufciently about the other, perhaps even to acknowledge the need to learn. Thus, they signal a certain lack of respect for, as well as a desire to dene, that other. The state of desiring to dene the other is a form of triumphalism that seeks the power to categorize the other and possibly reduce her or him to one’s own denitions. In this sense, Bakhtin’s insights on unnalizability of the other are similar to the postcolonial cautions against arriving at simplistic images of the other, especially the marginalized.41 Specically, the postcolonial critique of the politics of otherness (and othering or otherizing) that one may encounter in biblical studies is remarkably similar to the Bakhtinian prohibitions against offering nalizing denitions of others.42 Since postcolonial criticism is, for the most part, a critique of the politics of otherness and otherizing, Bakhtin’s concepts of unnalizability and outsidedness can offer helpful suggestions for constructive use of otherness. As Morson and Emerson have pointed out, ethical dealings and an enlightened relationship with the other require outsidedness – a

40. Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969), 72–80. 41. The term ‘postcolonial’ here refers to the discourse. 42. See Kwok Pui-lan, Postcolonial Imagination and Feminist Theology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005), 100–23; R. S. Sugirtharajah, The Bible and the Third World: Precolonial, Colonial and Postcolonial Encounters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 45–63, 215–30.

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healthy distance from that other – rather than a propensity for nalization.43 Outsidedness enables one to see aspects hitherto unseen and to refrain from easy nalizations of the other. It allows the other – or the self, the subject – to resist easy categorizations and to remain unnalizable. Jesus’ loophole and unnalizability, discussed in the third chapter of this study, have ethical implications. Similarly, the loopholes of the Samaritan and the lawyer caution against offering any nalizing denitions of them. These loopholes and the explicit emphasis Lk. 10.25-42 places on dialogue between divergent perspectives have signicant ethical implications for our time both in the context of interpersonal relations and in the context of transactions between different communities, cultures and nations. The loopholes of Jesus, lawyer, and Samaritan discourage easy categorizations and portrayals of one’s neighbour. The Bakhtinian concepts of dialogue and unnalizability are especially relevant in light of both the contemporary discourse on the ‘other’ and the ever increasing need to enter into a dialogue with, rather than arriving at nalizing denitions of, that ‘other’.

I. Theological Implications: Dialogue and Truth Bakhtin frequently highlighted the link between literary and artistic aspects of a work and its ethical implications for society. But he never explicitly discussed the theological implications of his work. This was perhaps because he did not employ his theories to discuss questions concerning the scriptures or the divine. As a devout Christian, Bakhtin may have regarded scriptures to be beyond any critical investigation. However, precisely because Luke is a scriptural text, any interpretation of it, especially one that makes some bold claims about its nature and message, has signicant theological implications. For the same reason, reading Luke as a dialogic document has more implications than reading a modern work of ction in the same way. Considering the fact that Luke continues to be understood by many as a catechetical or dogmatic document that was written to promote a particular worldview, a dialogic reading of the Gospel has theological implications for the Christian communities. In light of the many contradictory voices in Luke, one needs to ask if the divergent worldviews are mutually exclusive, and whether a text that accommodates divergent viewpoints rather than a singular conception of truth is theologically consistent with traditional Christian understandings of truth. Another pertinent question is whether the many perspectives can coexist within

43. Morson and Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin, 91–4.

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a given space without undermining the integrity of that space. Bakhtin offers some helpful insights about these questions. He argues that truth is not a given but rather emerges in the process of exchange between different perspectives. In his view, ‘Truth is not born, nor is it to be found inside the head of an individual person; it is born between people collectively searching for truth, in the process of their dialogic interaction’.44 In a similar vein, Newsom also suggests that truth is not ‘ready made’ but ‘born between people’ and ideas.45 Meaning or truth is to be made in the process of interaction between different viewpoints and is not meant to be consumed. It does not reside in any one idea but emerges in the process of dialogue. Hence, truth is not a location but an event. It is eeting, not stationary. Bakhtin also asserted that all life and truth is dialogic by nature. In Bakhtin’s understanding, truth is also polyvalent. The issue of Jesus’ identity in the second chapter of this study serves as an excellent example of a dialogic, polyphonic understanding of truth. Each character offers its own diverse understanding of Jesus. Some call him Son of God, while others refer to him as son of Joseph. Still others consider him the son of David. They promote their own perceptions with great rigour and challenge other perceptions. Yet what the different characters do not appear to understand is that Jesus is simultaneously the son of Joseph, the son of David, and the Son of God. The multiple voices testify to the various aspects of Jesus and, in doing so, call attention to as well as accentuate his multifaceted identity. Seen this way, truth (about the identity of Jesus) is a polyvalent entity that accommodates more than one perspective. An extension of the polyvalent nature of truth is the notion that in order for truth to be authentic, it requires disparate perspectives. This view suggests that divergent perspectives not only can coexist but are actually needed in order for truth to be complete. Accordingly, as he might insist, the (dialogic) truth ‘requires a plurality of consciousnesses’ because it ‘cannot in principle be tted into the bounds of a single consciousness’.46 To put it differently, it is not just that truth accommodates many viewpoints; it ought to contain numerous perspectives in order to remain authentic. From a theological point of view, Luke is unambiguously proclaiming the gospel. But a key aspect of that gospel seems to be that truth is ambiguous and often requires more than one perspective for an authentic existence. To an extent, the Socratic notion of truth is similar to

44. Bakhtin, Problems, 110. 45. Newsom, Book of Job, 25. 46. Bakhtin, Problems, 81.

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this ambiguous truth. Kristeva describes the Socratic truth as ‘the product of a dialogical relationship among speakers’.47 But there is also a key difference between the two. Unlike Bakhtin’s emphasis on dialogue of equal partners, however, the Socratic conception of truth through dialogue posits one dialogue partner – the teacher – as the leading voice. A key contribution of Bakhtin’s concept of truth is that truth, or, to be specic, the production of truth, does not have to be a zero-sum game. That is, in the context of divergent voices offering perspectives on an issue, in order for one viewpoint to be valid, the rest need not be deemed invalid. To put it differently, the validity of one voice does not depend on its ability to invalidate other voices participating in the conversation. From the perspective of dialogism, there can be multiple and divergent valid voices, and indeed there are multiple voices that convey the truth. Luke Timothy Johnson calls attention to a similar phenomenon that occurs in the Talmud, although he does not employ an explicitly Bakhtinian terminology. He observes that, In the study of Talmud one never listens to only one voice or authority. One never follows the views of Rabbi Judah through every tractate. Nor is there ever any single abstractable answer that need not be reinterpreted in the light of new circumstances. Indeed, the whole point of midrash is to hear the various voices in all their conicts and disagreements, for it is precisely in those elements of plurality and even disharmony that the texts open to new meanings, so that they are allowed to speak to the disharmonies and disjunctions of contemporary life’.48

In Johnson’s view the (midrashic) emphasis on hearing the multiple voices can help the Christian community approach the New Testament with openness to divergent principles rather than search for a single truth. He suggests that ‘Christians should learn to read the canon of the NT, not in search of an essential core or puried “canon within the canon” – not, in other words, within the frame of a single abstract principle – but in a living conversation with all the writings in all their diversity and divergence’.49 In a similar fashion, but to a lesser extent, James Dunn also highlights the diversity within the New

47. Kristeva, Reader, 51. 48. Luke Timothy Johnson, The Writings of the New Testament: An Interpretation (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2002), 613. 49. Johnson, The Writings of the New Testament, 613.

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Testament and calls for a reading that does not ‘cloak the fact of the diversity of the NT itself’.50 Building upon the insights from Johnson and Dunn one can suggest that the diverse perspectives in the New Testament – even those that seemingly contradict each other – coexist and remain in dialogue with each other without undermining the integrity of the New Testament as a whole. Their understanding of the New Testament canon, though they arrive at it via a different road, is not unlike my own conclusions about the Gospel of Luke. One might even say that, whereas Johnson and Dunn nd this dialogism within the canon, at the molecular level, I have found it within a single text – at the atomic level – within a single book.

J. Problems with Bakhtin’s Theories and Their Application to Luke An emphasis on the relevance of Bakhtin’s theories of dialogism and polyphony should not amount to uncritical celebration of their value. Despite their numerous positive contributions to the world of literature and ideas, and their signicance to ethical, theological issues in the current context, the two motifs have a few drawbacks. To begin with, few novels – or other literary works – are as polyphonic as Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov. Furthermore, as Aileen Kelly has pointed out, even in case of Dostoevsky’s novels the author’s ‘intervention as an evaluating voice in his novels was far greater than Bakhtin concedes’.51 Bakhtin himself acknowledged that most novels are, by nature, monologic. Yet Bakhtin seems to assume, somewhat naively, that all voices can be equal. Even in the supposedly polyphonic novels, it cannot be assumed that all voices have an equal say. As I have observed in the rst chapter, some voices are noticeably louder than others. Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism becomes less relevant in the context of power imbalance between different voices, especially if there is no guarantee that the softer, feebler voices can be heard. This correlates with, and is reective of, the power imbalance in the social structures. Another drawback of Bakhtinian/dialogic reading is that it is dependent on the readers’ goodwill. My argument that Luke should be read as a dialogic document raises the question of why it has not been or is not always read that way. If the dialogism and polyphony in it are so obvious, as I have argued, why do so few people read it as a dialogic document? Perhaps, this is where the

50. James D. G. Dunn, Unity and Diversity in the New Testament: An Inquiry into the Charater of Earliest Christianity (London: Trininty International Press, 1990), xx. 51. Aileen Kelly, ‘Revealing Bakhtin’ in The New York Review of Books (24 September 24 1992).

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role of the readers becomes crucial. While I read Luke as a dialogic document, Johnson perceives it as an inconsistent document, and Kingsbury sees in it a missionary document that privileges the true viewpoint. It may be that, regardless of the essence and nature of a text, its reception is mostly determined by the interpretive and hermeneutical choices made by the reading communities. Specically, their openness to indeterminacy and the degree to which assumptions about scripture shape their reading. Such reliance on the goodwill of the readers is not necessarily a drawback, as long as active and conscientious readers can ensure that polyphonic works are indeed read that way. A further limitation in Bakhtin’s thought is that, in his attempt to call attention to the positive aspects of carnival, he has ignored or downplayed carnival’s potential for perpetuating violence. Specically, violence against women, a key aspect of carnival, receives little criticism or attention in Bakhtin’s thought. Also, the role reversals facilitated by the carnival, and celebrated by critics such as Bakhtin, are often temporary. Hence, it is pertinent to ask if such reversals offer any lasting advantages to the oppressed. Luke’s parables – especially the one about Lazarus and the rich man – depict a role reversal that is not only eschatological but also seemingly everlasting. In this manner the Lukan carnival is more carnivalesque than anything one can nd in either Rabelais or Dostoevsky. Another limitation of Bakhtin’s concept of carnival is that it facilitates reversal of roles rather than promoting a change in values. Bakhtin’s ideas regarding unnalizability are not always clear or necessarily constructive. He does not clarify whether unnalizability is an end in itself or, rather, a means toward a larger goal. A dialogue that continues endlessly without moving in a direction or toward a goal can be unhelpful. Finally, the notion of unnalizability might be appropriate in relation to the novels of Dostoevsky, which appear to continue towards no specic end. But the notion may not work with Luke’s Gospel, which operates within certain limits and moves towards a conclusion. Luke places more emphasis on dialogues than other synoptic Gospels but the dialogues in Luke do come to an end.

Conclusion This study has attempted to offer a creative means of looking at a pertinent issue in Lukan studies, the ‘problem’ of divergent perspectives. When one approaches that issue in light of insights from Mikhail Bakhtin, the issue ceases to be what it had traditionally been regarded as – a problem that needs to be solved. Instead, the presence of disparate perspectives becomes an asset to the third Gospel and makes it a more sophisticated literary piece. The result

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is that the divergence in viewpoints can be celebrated rather than bemoaned. Highlighting the polyphonic nature of Luke is by no means to imply that the author’s goal was to write a polyphonic, dialogic novel. Rather it is to say that the Gospel is dialogic and can be read as such. A dialogic document would have had great signicance and relevance in the context of Luke’s audience, given the diverse nature of the author’s community. Similarly, this dialogic reading has relevance and ethical implications for contemporary society and church given the diversity in these contexts. It also has theological implications, given the manner in which Luke has been received traditionally as a dogmatic document. Luke’s use of an inconclusive, even indeterminate dialogism is especially important given the number of communities in which this text is ‘scripture’, that is, a special revelation of the will and nature of God. This study argues that disparate perspectives are essential to authentic truth, and so truth cannot be exclusive but should include many viewpoints. Meaning, then, does not reside in any one perspective but is born in the process, or as a result, of dialogue. A primary result of this study is that it offers a creative way to look at the issue of many views in the Gospel – and by extension, the world – without negating any of the insights offered by more traditional interpretive approaches. It turns a perceived problem into an asset. A Bakhtinian reading of Luke is not meant to resolve the issue of contradictory perspectives in Luke. But it does provide an alternative to conventional understandings of and approaches to the third Gospel, and it illuminates certain patterns in Luke’s narrative. The reading also has the potential to offer helpful insights for addressing various contemporary issues caused by exclusivism and the proclivity to arrive at simplistic nalizations of the other. Bakhtin’s theories do not offer solutions to any of these contemporary social problems but his insights offer a helpful alternative to monologic ways of reading, viewing the world and living in it.

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INDEX OF AUTHORS

Arndt, W. F. 36n. 12 Bakhtin, M. M. 5–19, 22–28, 33–34, 45, 47–49, 52, 58–61, 63, 65–67, 74–75, 80, 84, 86, 89–95, 98–100, 110–112, 118–119, 128–134, 136–138 Barnet, J. A. 10 Barthes, R. 11 Bauer, D. M. 130 Bauer, W. 36n. 12 Bird, M. F. 40 Booth, W. C. 18n. 41, 35n. 9, 44, 48, 77 Bovon, F. 2n. 4, Brawley, R. L. 40, 52n. 47 Buckwalter, H. D. 122–123 Burridge, R. A. 27n. 77 Cheong, C-S 10 Clark, K. 8, 12n. 17, 47, 48n. 42 Coetzee, J. M. 15 Conzelmann, H. 1, 2n. 3 Countryman, L. W. 124 Craig, K. 10, 11n. 12, 90 Crossan, J. D. 37n. 14, 66n. 5, 78 Cyss-Wittenstein, C. 63 Dawsey, J. M. 114, 117–118 Derrett, J. D. M. 68–70

Dostoevsky, F. 9, 11–12, 14, 16–17, 19–20, 22–24, 25n. 71, 26–27, 29, 58, 71n. 20, 75, 84, 89, 99, 101, 110, 118, 131, 136–137 Dunn, J. G. 135–136 Eco, U. 78 Emerson, C. 9n. 2, 12, 13n. 19, 16, 18n. 39, 19, 20, 22, 24–25, 46, 47n. 39, 74–75, 84, 85n. 62, 119, 132, 133n. 43 Esler, P. F. 39, 102n. 48, 121, 124 Fish, S. 21–22 Fitzmyer, J. A. 65n. 1, 83n. 55, 88n. 1, 101 Foster, D. W. 89n. 5 Foucault, M. 100 Gillman, J. 106, 107n. 57 Gingrich, F. W. 36n. 12 Gowler, D. 10 Green, B. 10–11, 21, 67, 74–76, 79 Green, J. B. 1, 32n. 87, 40–41, 44–45, 49–51, 53, 55, 65n. 2, 66n. 4, 83n. 55, 96, 106n. 55 Hegel, G. W. F. 63n. 66 Herzog, W. 105 Holquist, M. 8, 12n. 17, 17, 18n. 40, 46–47, 48n. 42, 119n. 7

148

Index of Authors

Jeremias, J. 68 Johnson, L. T. 3, 34n. 3, 77, 88n. 2, 98, 103,

Newsom, C. 9, 11n. 12, 18–19, 23n. 64, 25, 27, 31, 60, 110, 114, 124, 134

108n. 60, 109, 118n. 6, 122–123, 135–137 Josephus, F. 73n. 25

Neyrey, J. H. 37

Juel, D. 43–45

Nussbaum, M. 130

Karris, R. 122 Kelly, A. 136 Kelly, S. 12n. 17 Kermode, F. 42–44 Khilnani, S. 126–127 Kim, K-J. 122 Kingsbury, J. D. 3–4, 34n. 5, 37–38, 50–51, 137 Kristeva, J. 8, 11, 26, 62, 91, 135

Parsons, M. 27 Ponzio, A. 131 Powell, M. A. 27n. 79, 44–45, 124 Pui-lan, K. 132n. 42

Nolland, J. 35

Rabelais, F. 9, 12, 90–91, 98–99, 101 Reed, W. 9 Reid, B. 65n. 1 Ringe, S. H. 56–57, 70 Rushdie, S. 100n. 41

Levinas, E. 60, 131–132 MacMullen, R. 37n. 14 Malina, B. 34n. 2, 35 Marshall, I. H. 65n. 3, 66n. 4, 72–73, 83n. 55, 97, 103, 105, 106n. 55, 120 Matson, M. 29n. 85 McCracken, D. 10, 79 McKinstry, S. J. 130 Mealand, D. 101n. 47, 106n. 54 Moi, T. 11n. 13 Morson, G. S. 12, 16, 18n. 39, 19–20, 22, 24–25, 74–75, 84, 85n. 62, 119, 132, 133n. 43 Moore, S. D. 25n. 70, 72 Moxnes, H. 122

Scaer, P. J. 27 Schreck, C. 52 Seim, T. K. 2–3, 82 Shellard, B. 2n. 5, 121 Siker, J. S. 34n. 4, 38 Stanton, G. 34n. 4 Talbert, C. H. 65n. 3, 68, 70n. 17, 72, 78 Tannehill, R. 34n. 5, 39n. 17, 41–42, 53n. 50, 73, 88n. 1, 97 Todorov, T. 26n. 76 Tolstoy, L. 17–20 Wood, J. 18–19