Racializing Jesus

Race, Ideology and the Formation of Modern Biblical Scholarship

Shawn Kelley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781134735525
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Altertum

Shawn Kelley's groundbreaking study shows how the major intellectual movements of the modern world, such as Orientalism and romantic nationalism, become infused with the category of race. He then traces the processes through which racially-grounded thinking has influenced modern biblical scholarship.
Dynamic and thought-provoking, the book incorporates a wide range of current debate, from critical race theory to the relationship between Martin Heidegger and National Socialism. It will give every student and scholar of biblical studies awareness of the subtle ways in which racial thinking has permeated their discipline, and encourage them to create new modes of biblical analysis.

1
RACIALIZED DISCOURSE

Modernity, race, and reason

The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line – the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea.

W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk

Recent biblical scholarship has been quite successful in exploring antiJewish or sexist sentiments within the New Testament and within modern scholarship. Few contemporary scholars continue to hold that the Jews are guilty of deicide (see Brown 383–397; Crossan 1995: 147–159) or that all the innovative leaders of the primitive Church were male. This is all for the good, and my own research would not have been possible without the pioneering work of people like Krister Stendahl, Rosemary Reuther, E.P. Sanders, and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza. My own work is deeply indebted to theirs. Yet purging offensive material and correcting mistaken ideas represent only part of the process of settling accounts with a troubled past. If we wish to reckon with the post-Auschwitz, post-Civil Rights moral and religious imperative, we need to pay as much attention to modern racism as we do to Christian hostility to the religion of Judaism and male oppression of women. We need to identify those forces which made racial atrocities both conceivable and possible. This is an important part in the discipline’s unfinished attempt to come to terms with the Holocaust and American racism. Many contemporary biblical scholars wish to engage the ethical issues raised by Auschwitz, by the end of colonial occupation, and by the dissolving of Jim Crow racism. This book intends to engage, in a systematic and rigorous manner, the relationship between modern racism and modern biblical scholarship. This particular chapter analyzes, in general and theoretical terms, the interrelation between race, ideology, and modernity. This analysis makes the case for the existence of a relationship between modern biblical scholarship and modern racialized discourse and sets the stage for my argument that the scholarly study of the Bible and of antiquity is intertwined with the racialized and often bloody encounter between Europe and the rest of the world.

Human history is replete with examples of petty hatred, bloody conquest, and economic exploitation. Ruthless exploitation seems to be ubiquitous enough to be considered virtually universal. Given this, racism seems to be yet another symptom of human cruelty and misery that, like poverty, will always be with us. Allow me to begin with an assertion that runs contrary to this common-sense conclusion. It is my contention that, rather than being a universal human temptation, racism is a particularly modern phenomenon. In order to demonstrate this claim, it is important to distinguish between heterophobia, stereotype, and racism (see Bauman 1989: 62–82; Fredrickson 1988: 189–193, 206–215; 1987: 1–3; Goldberg 90–147).

Heterophobia is generic fear of the other. Bauman defines it as “that diffuse (and sentimental rather than practical) unease, discomfort, or anxiety that people normally experience whenever they are confronted with such ‘human ingredients’ of their situation as they do not understand, cannot communicate with easily and cannot expect to behave in a routine, familiar way” (1989: 64). This unease is, according to Bauman, a manifestation of anxiety arising out of finding oneself in a situation that can be neither controlled nor influenced (ibid.). “Heterophobia may appear as either a realistic or irrealistic objectification of such anxiety – but it is likely that the anxiety in question always seeks an object on which to anchor, and that consequently heterophobia is a fairly common phenomenon at all times” (ibid.). In modern society, this anchor is often a racial, ethnic, or national “other”, although the otherness could also be found almost anywhere.

By stereotype I mean preconceptions about a particular group which are then applied to members of that group. Stereotypes can be applied to ethnic groups, to racial groups, to a particular physical type, to an occupation, to religious affiliation, to a nation, or even to a smaller local region. Stereotypes are usually thought of as negative, but they need not be so (e.g. a particular group can be viewed as hardworking and loyal). Stereotypes can be exaggerations based on common observations, but often have little to do with the actual behavior of the group in question. Furthermore, while stereotypes can be idiosyncratic, more often than not they are widely held and are manifested throughout different levels of society. Most homophobes and antiSemites, for example, have had little actual experience with homosexuals or Jews. It is highly unlikely that one would conclude, based on observing Jewish behavior, that they are parasites dedicated to the destruction of the world economy. These and other stereotypes remain widespread and fairly stable for long periods of time, despite the best efforts of Jewish or homosexual civil rights groups. Such widely held, elaborate, inaccurate, and speculative stereotypes are hardly the product of direct observation or of ignorance. They must originate elsewhere in the culture at large rather than in the agitated mind of the cruel or the ignorant. Given this, then, we can follow George Fredrickson in arguing that stereotypes tell us little about those defined by the stereotype but tell us a great deal about those doing the defining (see Fredrickson 1988: 207). So, for example, contemporary homophobia tells us little about the lived experience of homosexuals, but tells us a great deal about the sexual anxieties of homophobes and of the culture at large.

Fredrickson also points out that widely held stereotypes are often irresolvably contradictory. For example, pro-slavery literature often defined black men both as loyal, contented children and as blood-thirsty savages wanting to murder their masters and rape their mistresses (1988: 208). In the same way, Nazi intellectuals defined Jews both as capitalists and as anticapitalist socialists (see Katz 82–93). These competing stereotypes were applied to the same population, but were trotted out in response to varying social factors. So, for example, the image of the slave as bloodthirsty savage appeared in the immediate aftermath of a revolt, while the image of the contented child appeared in the aftermath of abolitionist criticisms of the cruelty of slave-owners.

Modern racism is related to heterophobia and stereotyping, both of which played an important role in the origins and function of modern racism. At the same time, racism should not be collapsed into the other two terms. Racism emerged in the early modern period, became systematized in the early nineteenth century and spread throughout the intellectual and political worlds of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe (and its colonies) and America (and its colonies). Racism covers a dizzying array of topics, beliefs, social arrangements, and political practices. Despite this diversity, nineteenth- and early twentieth-century racisms did share a relatively stable structure that permeated the thought of virtually all their adherents. Virtually all modern racists assume that all of humanity can be classified as one of a few races; that this racial classification defines physical structure, intellectual ability, moral acumen, and cultural content; that racial identity is stable, unchanging and of fundamental significance for all members of the race; and that racial identity establishes natural and proper social status. As a result, racism also establishes a social hierarchy which is strictly enforced through a variety of means: from violence to legislation and the courts. It is legitimated by intellectual elites, and it permeates both elite and popular culture. As a result, it is widely accepted by the general population, particularly by those parts of the population who benefit from the social hierarchy.

Despite these structural similarities, modern occurrences of racism do vary significantly from each other. Racists agree that the races can be classified and that the classification reveals something essential about the group in question, yet there is significant disagreement on the content of the classification and on the proper borders between groups. Racism did establish social hierarchies, but the hierarchies varied over time and from place to place. The social practices and the intellectual support varied along with the form of racism that was dominant. This diversity makes it difficult to define the term “racism”. Definitions which start with a particular topic (such as antiblack racism) have difficulty explaining other topics (e.g. radical antiSemitism), and definitions which start with a particular practice (such as genocide) have difficulty explaining other practices (e.g. slavery). The challenge, then, is to develop a way of thinking about racism which is concrete enough to recognize its existence and potency but which is also flexible enough to account for its diversity in beliefs and in practices.

David Goldberg has offered the most rigorous attempt at addressing the theoretical and definitional problems that arise in coming to terms with the category of race. He makes the persuasive argument for thinking of race with the help of Foucault’s category of a “field of discourse” (see Foucault 1972: 21–76; Goldberg 41–60). It is the field of discourse that establishes the objects (i.e. antiblack racism, racial antiSemitism) and that establishes the rules of expression (i.e. what is said about slaves or about Jews). What is said in the name of race takes a variety of forms and is expressed in a variety of modes (academic, legal, cultural, political, for example), but it is governed by and functions within a larger field of discourse (Goldberg 52–56). While the objects and the rules of expression change over time, the field of discourse that renders them possible remains stable.

The fact that “race” is fluid and that it functions within a larger discourse leads us to one of its most enigmatic aspects: its permeability. Goldberg argues that “race is chameleonic and parasitic in character: It insinuates itself into and appropriates as its own mode more legitimate forms of social and scientific expression” (Goldberg 107). The category of race does not so much exist alongside other foundational aspects of modernity, as it penetrates these foundational aspects and gains its legitimacy from them. Having penetrated the foundation of modernity, it permeates and infuses itself into modern forms of knowledge and modern culture. The discourse of modernity makes possible the category of race, and the category itself renders modern discourse racialized. For these reasons, this book will employ the term racialized discourse to signify the discursive field out of which racism emerges and the discursive statements that have been infused with the category of race. My argument will be that we can best come to terms with the functioning of race in the modern world by examining the way that race has infused itself into modern categories and terms. This study will explore the ways in which the thought and ideas employed by biblical scholars have become racialized.

Let us return to the question of the relationship between heterophobia, stereotypes, and racism. It may well be the case that heterophobia and stereotyping are universal human phenomena, that humans are naturally afraid of those with whom they are unfamiliar and that humans tend to approach the unfamiliar with the help of stereotypes. It may well be the case that the process of natural selection produces heterophobia and that the human mind necessarily appeals to stereotypes. It is also possible that heterophobia, the generic fear of the other, is exaggerated and inflamed by racial classification and by racial hostility. A number of theorists argue that racial stereotypes both predate systematic racism and later come to permeate racist societies and racialized ideologies (especially Anderson 51–61; Fredrickson 1988: 191–194; Gilman 1982; Hood 26–43; Said 1979: 55–73). Racial stereotyping, and the prejudices produced by this stereotyping, do play an important role in the practical functioning of systematic racism. There is a complex relationship between genuine racism, on the one hand, and heterophobia and stereotyping, on the other hand.

At the same time, we should not reduce racism to another example of fearing or exploiting the stranger. Heterophobia may be an unfortunate but inevitable human reaction to the unknown. It may also necessarily attach itself to unfamiliar groups and individuals. But it is not necessarily the case that it manifests itself in the face of people with different skin color, instead of, say, different hair color, different height or people who speak different languages. In the same way, stereotyping may be inevitable, but it need not be based on skin color. Many societies held nonracial stereotypes about Africans and Jews. Stereotyping and heterophobia may predate racism, but they do not necessarily produce racism. There is no necessary relationship between stereotypes and racism, no inevitable progression from heterophobia and stereotyping to racism.

Furthermore, if we collapse these three terms together, we lose sight of what is most particular, most distinctive, most enduring, and most pernicious about racism. Failure to distinguish between stereotyping and racism ends up denying racism’s power, misdiagnosing its place in modernity, and trivializing its negative effects. As I will demonstrate in the next section, much public discussion of race and racism fails to distinguish between these terms and, therefore, fails to come to grips with genuine power that racialized discourse has exerted and continues to exert in popular culture and in the elevated world of scholarship and elite culture. With this in mind, let us distinguish the approach taken in this study from some other common methods of addressing the problem of racism.

Current theories on race

The truth is that there are no races: there is nothing in the world that can do all we ask race to do for us … Talk of “race” is particularly distressing for those of us who take culture seriously. For, where race works … it works as an attempt at metonym for culture, and it does so only at the price of biologizing what is culture, ideology.

Kwame Anthony Appiah, In My Father’s House

One possible way to approach the problem of racism is to accept “race” as a legitimate, biological category and to accept racial differentiation as an intellectually sound practice. This perspective posits the existence of a few large groupings of human society, and further assumes that these racial groupings tell us something essential about the members within this grouping. While this perspective reigned throughout most of the modern era, it has fallen out of favor within the past thirty years, for both political and scientific reasons. The political reasons are well known. The centuries-long abuse of nonwhites by the Euro-American imperial powers, punctuated by the Nazi genocide, did much to delegitimize the category of race. The post-war civil rights and decolonization movements completed the process of challenging the legitimacy of the category of race.

The political contamination of the category coincided with, and helped influence, changes in the scientific approach to race (see especially Barkan 228–340). A recent issue of the journal Discover, which was dedicated to race, synthesized the current scientific consensus on the question. The editor of the journal, Paul Hoffman, argues that race is less than helpful in explaining human diversity.

What is clear is that the genetic differences between the so-called races are minute. On average there’s .2 percent difference in genetic material between any two randomly chosen people on Earth. Of that diversity, 85 percent will be found within any local group of people – say between you and your neighbor. More than half (9 percent) of the remaining 15 percent will be represented by differences between the ethnic and linguistic groups within a given race (for example, between Italians and French). Only 6 percent represents differences between races (for example, between Europeans and Asians). And remember – that’s 6 percent of .2 percent. In other words, race accounts for only a minuscule .012 percent difference in our genetic material.

(Hoffman ed. 4)

As James Shreeve explains in the same issue, there are morphological differences (i.e. teeth, hair, skin color, body shape) between various groups, but they function independently of each other (Shreeve 58). As Jared Diamond argues, scientists could classify people by antimalaria genes, lactasse, fingerprint patterns, or skin color. Each method would produce radically different configurations completely disconnected from geography. Biologically, there is no more reason to group Swedes with other Europeans than with Africans, or with American Indians, Italians, and New Guineans; it all depends upon which biological criteria become essential to the classification system (Diamond 83–89).

The furor created by the reactionary book The Bell Curve has done little to relegitimate this problematic category. A category which had for centuries been accepted by most modern intellectuals in the human, the social, and the natural sciences has, for the most part, fallen out of favor in all of them. Race tells us virtually nothing important about the biological reality of either individuals or larger groups.

There are some who wish to retain the category of race but who also wish to reject the hierarchical structure associated with European racism. This is certainly a minority position in the contemporary academic landscape, but it continues to find a hearing among some racially defined liberation movements. The question yet to be answered here is as follows: is it possible to rehabilitate the concept of race without implicitly accepting the intellectual and political flaws inherent in nineteenth-century racism? Or, does the category of race necessarily commit us to intellectually and politically dangerous positions despite the best intentions of the interpreter?

A second, antithetical way to approach the problem is to deny the reality of race entirely, rejecting it as an irrational prejudice that is intellectually groundless (Goldberg 5–6). This is the position of contemporary liberal humanism, which rejects race as a particular which has been falsely elevated to the status of human universal. A particularly lucid example of this position is offered by Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut, who argue, in their criticism of Martin Heidegger’s philosophy, that “racism can never be a humanism” (Ferry and Renaut 4–5). They conclude that “it is only through abstract universality that we can get away from all the particularisms whose absolutization in the form of a false universal leads to the plan of exclusion and even extermination” (Ferry and Renaut 5, italics theirs). This view tends to see the modern examples of racism (i.e. imperial conquest, slavery, and the holocaust) as irrational, depraved outbursts of violence. As such they are antithetical to civilization and can only be rooted out by the modern, rational, civilizing process. From this perspective, the problem is an excess of irrational barbarism and a paucity of humanism and civilized tolerance. This view does not deny that modern societies have often failed to live up to the noble ideals of enlightened humanism, but it does deny that this failure invalidate...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. Racialized discourse: Modernity, race, and reason
• 2. The Hegelian Synthesis: Early modernity, race, and culture
• 3. Jesus and the myth of the west: Tübingen and the construction of early Christianity
• 4. Aesthetic Fascism: Heidegger, National Socialism, and the Jews
• 5. In the Shadow of Heidegger: Bultmann, race, and the quest for Christian origins
• 6. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Messiah: Jesus comes to America
• 7. Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index