William W. Mountcastle,
The Secret Ministry of Jesus: Pioneer Prophet of Interfaith Dialogue.
University Press of America, 2008.
Reviewed by Robert M. Price
This
book voluntarily bears the stereotype of the undisciplined, fanciful
scholarship one has come to expect from Unitarian Universalists, whose
theological Prime Directive seems to be “Anything Goes.” The author is
one of those with a mind so open it needs to be closed for repairs.
Mountcastle seems never to have read a piece of shoddy
pseudo-scholarship he did not like: From Baigent, Lincoln, and Leigh’s
Holy Blood, Holy Grail, to Notovitch’s Life of Saint Issa,
to Elizabeth Claire Prophet’s crazy screeds, to Morton Smith’s Secret
Gospel, to The Da Vinci Code, to the old Crucifixion of
Jesus by an Eyewitness. He thinks to find genuine data for the life
of Jesus in the Koran and the Syriac Acts of Thomas as well as
the Bhavishya Mahapurana (a polemical work against non-Hindu
faiths written 1200-1400 CE)! One suspects his underlying drive here is
to be ecumenical to the max in the choice of sources: a case of
“affirmative action scholarship.” Every type of shrill voice is given
the same respectful hearing, resulting in a Mulligan Stew historical
product. This procedure mirrors his particular angle on the perilous
modernization of Jesus: he wants a Jesus who was a “pioneer of
interfaith dialogue.” Along the way we discover that Jesus was also big
on teaching techniques of nonviolent conflict resolution. Did he also
invent the Internet?
Mountcastle argues for the
Swoon Theory, a position almost universally derided (though I think with
nervous laughter), but not without merit. I believe there are indeed
major clues in all four gospels that they all knew an earlier (not
the earlier) version of the story in which Jesus escaped death. What
actually happened to Jesus I think we shall never know. But Mountcastle
and his chorus of quack sources are pretty sure they know. Mountcastle
likes the Ahmadiyya legend that Jesus survived crucifixion and made his
way to Srinagar and India. With this he combines the Notovitch/Elizabeth
Claire Prophet business about Jesus going to India, China, and Tibet,
only whereas these worthies place the Oriental journey before John’s
baptism, Mountcastle streamlines the legends by transferring the
Notovitch journeys till after the crucifixion. Mountcastle takes
advantage of dislocation theories of the Gospel of John, positing that
the Beloved Disciple (Mary Magdalene, another recent chic theory)
originally arranged the material with all the “Where I am going you
cannot come” sayings leading up to the post-crucifixion departure for
Central Asia, and all the “I am” discourses as part of a second
Palestinian ministry where Jesus’ sayings are heavily colored by his
recently learned Hinduism and Buddhism. And it was Jesus’ lasting
influence among Theravada Buddhists that led to the development of more
theistic Mahayana Buddhism. This is doubly ironic since it is Mahayana
Buddhism, not Theravada, which so closely parallels the Christian
atonement doctrine, which Mountcastle regards as a Pauline distortion of
the simpler, ethical preaching of Jesus. It’s even triply ironic, since
the effect of Mountcastle’s cherry-picking from far-flung Jesus junk
apocrypha (I’m surprised he doesn’t cite the Book of Mormon and have
Jesus visit America, too!) is to make Jesus central, not just to
Christianity, but to other faiths as well. Shouldn’t this count as a new
Jesus-imperialism? Like Karl Rahner making everyone else “Anonymous
Christians”?
The only sober (albeit
futile) aspect of Mountcastle’s endeavor is the initial section in which
he places the actions of Jesus in the tradition of what he calls
“prophetic street theatre” (a great choice of words): Isaiah’s nude
peregrinations, Jeremiah’s “the yoke’s on me” stunt, Hosea’s honeymoon
with a streetwalker, etc. Jesus, he says, was trying the same sort of
symbolic charade by, get this, arranging his own arrest, crucifixion,
and survival of it. What did he want to communicate by this? He played
the role of Israel/Judah in a performance of the Servant Song of Isaiah
52-53, which he took to imply a last-minute escape from death and a
subsequent ministry to the nations. And yet Mountcastle says Jesus kept
his subterfuge secret, so who would have seen enough of the puzzle
pieces to get the total point? Who but Mountcastle himself? He seems, as
is typical in such treatments, to be the only one to catch on, so late
in the day, to what Jesus was getting at.
I looked nervously at the
book’s index, relieved not to find my name listed there. Burton L. Mack,
John Dominic Crossan, and Bruce Chilton are not so lucky, I’m afraid.