Click to join the conversation with over 500,000 Pentecostal believers and scholars
| PentecostalTheology.com
Book Reviews
269
Giovanni B. Bazzana,Having the Spirit of Christ: Spirit Possession and Exorcism
in the Early Christ Groups(New Haven,CT: Yale University Press, 2020). 336 pp.
$65.00 hardcover.
Historically, Pentecostal and charismatic Christians have had reasons to dis- count many social science-based studies of spirit possession in early Chris- tianity. Scholars employing biomedical methods, for example, have at times explained away early Christian spirit experience as mental illness or mass hys- teria. Likewise, commentators employing certain structural-functional soci- ological theories have identified ecstatic spirit practices in early Christian- ity as a kind of “safety valve,” a means by which an oppressed and marginal group could release pent up aggression and articulate toothless critiques of the regime. These dismissive approaches in biblical studies have often mir- rored the modern, western intellectual reception of Pentecostal and charis- matic movements—particularly in the mid-twentieth century.
In contrast, Bazzana’s goal—to read New Testament and early Christian spirit possession texts as culturally productive and discursive expressions of authentic religious experience—dovetails well with those of many Pentecostal scholars, thoughHavingtheSpiritof Christarrives at its conclusions by different means. Bazzana reads exorcism and spirit possession texts in early Christian tradition in light of recent work in cultural anthropology and ethnography on contemporary spirit possession practicing communities around the world and especially in the global south. His comparative evidence focuses on communi- ties where possession is perceived as ordinary, frequent, and expected, thereby overcoming decades of misleading treatment of these phenomena in biblical studies.
In a tightly packed introduction, Bazzana outlines his method and summa- rizes the inadequacy of many previous approaches to this material. He suggests that his use of anthropological literature enables two advantages: 1) defamiliar- izing readers from well-known New Testament stories, thereby enabling new interpretations and 2) equipping readers to imagine the cultural and religious contexts in which such traditions could develop. A foundational argument is that the heritage of western, enlightenment thought about spirit possession itself has handicapped the study of these phenomena in modern biblical stud- ies. Spirit “possession,” as it is used contemporarily, is a category that devel- oped during European colonial expansion and was used to justify domination and enslavement of those peoples that supposedly practiced the suspension of their self-possession and self-ownership.
Chapter 1, “Beelzebul Against Satan: Exorcist Subjectivity and Spirit Posses- sion in the Representation of Jesus” takes on the accusation account in Mark
Pneuma
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/15700747-04202005
1
270
Book Reviews
3:22–27 and its synoptic parallels. Bazzana argues that the political idiom “a kingdom divided itself” should be taken as a literal description of the conflicts that characterize many conceptions of the spirit world both in antiquity and today. Thus, through redaction-critical analysis, Bazzana argues that in the ear- liest version of this pericope, Jesus actually acknowledges that he is casting out spirits by means of another spirit, “Beelzebul,” a figure who was then just a folk healing deity (cf. 2Kgs 2:2–4). Additionally, Bazzana identifies a key indicator for the language of possession in the Greek of early Christian writings, the rel- atively flexible prepositionen—for example, “in an impure spirit” (e.g. Mk 5:2), “in the holy spirit” (e.g. Mk 1:7–8), and, as he will argue later, “in Christ” (e.g. Gal 3:27–28).
Chapter 2 is titled, “A Ghost Among the Tombs: Mk 5:1–20 as a Ritual of Exorcism.” It situates the story of the Gerasene demoniac in multiple con- texts including the Jewish mythological tradition of the giants as well as pan- Mediterranean stories of the return of the troubled dead. The account is com- parable to contemporary accounts of spirit mediums hosting the dead in which notions of power, ethnicity, and borders are negotiated. Bazzana suggests that this Gospel narrative uses an anti-Roman political critique to reshape concep- tions of Jewish and Gentile identity in the mixed locale of Gerasa.
Chapter 3, “The Last Adam Became a Life-Giving Spirit: Christ and Pneuma in Pauline Theology” begins three chapters on Paul and the Pauline groups, which may be of most interest to Pentecostal readers. Leaning on recent schol- arship of Paul (esp. Shantz, Paul in Ecstasy, 2011), Bazzana argues that spirit possession was a central component of the religious experience of the apostle Paul and the communities that he started. He suggests that Paul conceives of Jesus as a spirit and that possession byChrist (i.e. beingenchristō) was a specific experience in which participants partake in Christ’s death and resurrection.
In chapter 4, “If One Does Not Have the Spirit of Christ, One Does Not Belong to Him: The Functions of Spirit Possession in the Pauline Groups” Bazzana piv- ots his attention towards the early Christ groups. In contrast to some readings of possession that would view it as a symptom or a deformity, Bazzana identifies “constructive” traits of spirit experience such as a means to interact with and interpret the past by making Christ “present” in the community. Counterintu- itively, he identifies possession not as a suspension of agency but as a means of empowering moral agency in the community.
Chapter 5, “Will They Not Say That You are Out of Your Mind? The Perfor- mance of Possession” reads the discourse in 1Corinthians 12–14 as a negotiation between Paul and the Corinthian community on the appropriate performance of spirit possession. He thus identifies the controversy over the intelligibility of glossolalia as just such a negotiation. Further, Paul’s discourse reveals a sensitiv-
Pneuma 42 (2020) 263–323
2
Book Reviews
271
ity to and criteria for the discernment of spirits in ecstatic experiential settings, revealing a flexible, cultural script by which the Corinthian community might more effectively perform possession.
In sum, this book should be welcomed by Pentecostal scholars. Many of Baz- zana’s conclusions are reflective of the self-descriptions that Pentecostal and charismatic Christians have attributed to Holy Spirit baptism. For example, Bazzana argues that possession does not always manifest itself as a complete loss of self-control but presents a variety of different possible relationships between host and spirit. Additionally, in many settings, spirit possession func- tions as a means to reflect dialectically on social and cultural structures, to engage with Otherness, to embody and reflect upon the historical past, and to spurn moral action. Thus, while not intended as a work of constructive the- ology, Having the Spirit of Christ can nevertheless be seen as an invitation to theologians, and perhaps especially to Pentecostal ones, to explore the mani- fold ways in which spirit experience shaped early Christ groups and the texts of the New Testament.
Reed Carlson
United Lutheran Seminary, Gettysburg and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,USA [email protected]
Pneuma 42 (2020) 263–323
3
