Crossan John Dominic – Paul the Pharisee - A Vision Beyond the Violence of Civilization

John Dominic Crossan – Paul the Pharisee - A Vision Beyond the Violence of Civilization

Matrix is a powerful word that comes from the same Greek and Latin roots that give us mother (méfér and mater). Matrix is the background you cannot omit—for example, British imperialism to understand Gandhi. Matrix is the context you cannot ignore—for example, American racism to understand King. Matrix is the common sense and general knowledge of any specific time and place—what everyone presumes and understands, be it in acceptance or rejection, about the meanings of its own language and the implications of its own culture. Since we all-too-regularly ignore context and background—especially in biblical interpretation—I prefer a single word like matrix rather than double words like text/context and foreground/background that invite separation, omission, and elimination of those latter terms.

Across my own life, from childhood in Ireland to scholarship in America, from monastic priest to university professor, and from not knowing the Bible at all to knowing it all too well, I am aware of having moved progressively through four successive matrices within which to interpret biblical claims.

That progression would be of minor and secondary interest were it merely my own individual professional development. It is, however, of major and primary interest because that progression has always been in interactive relationship with a succession of communal scholarly matrices for New Testament interpretation.

The Roman Missal did, of course, contain readings from the Old and New Testaments, quotations from the words of Jesus and the letters of Paul, but, extracted in liturgy and included as prayer, nobody ever mentioned biblical literalism. My childhood was salved and my future saved ftom the fatal fascination of fundamentalism.