Wednesday, November 17, 2010

My Pap Smear Was Hgsil

A shaman-like millenarian prophet?

I gladly would refer to a post on Paulus 2.0 (which in turn refers to the blog of Loren Rosson), which indicate the books Craffert Pieter (2008) and Dale Allison (2010), as indicators of Current trends in research on the historical Jesus. According to Rosson
the two works show similarities at first sight surprising, given that one sets the figure of a shaman, the other of the classic apocalyptic prophet (and yet if, as has been argued, shamans were also the "descenders to the chariots "writings" hekhalot, "and if these are in turn a development of apocalyptic literature - that's the surprise is already resized).
A mio modesto giudizio gli approcci (e i risultati) dei due studiosi restano notevolmente differenti (Craffert ambisce addirittura a segnare una svolta storiografica), sebbene io stesso riconosca una significativa convergenza nel comune abbandono - per strade diverse - della pretesa di poter autenticare singoli detti o fatti di Gesù.

Qui vorrei però dire la mia sul confronto tra la tipologia sociale dello sciamano e quella del profeta apocalittico. Una volta riconosciuto quello che è chiaramente il maggior punto di contatto tra di esse - le esperienze di rivelazione e di accesso al mondo celeste -, la mia impressione è però che lo sciamano sia una figura decisamente più “statica” del profeta.
Lo sciamano acts in fact - in its various functions as a healer, detector, guard / innovator of cultural heritage - with respect to the benefit of a community, whose recognition is the condition of possibility of his own role.
This "integration" does not seem to be of less importance instead of the prophet, who often appears as a figure taken from the conflict (and is certainly not a coincidence that the conflictual dimension of the story of Jesus does not receive virtually no attention in the book of Craffert).
Whatever the case in the abstract, in Jesus' case I think his itinerant lifestyle, the role of outsiders and their stigmatization as deviant not s'inquadrino well within the shamanic model. I therefore prefer to see Jesus as the prophetic leader (with veins shamanic, if you will) of a movement, rather than the heavenly broker of a specific community.

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