As soon as one comes to terms with Origen’s historiographically and literarily sensitive criteria for how to read and understand the Gospel narratives, one may realize that the Gospels have simultaneously formed his vision of what history itself is by presenting this life to us “under the form of history” and “in figures” they reveal that history is itself a “sign of something.” Thus, for Origen, when one finally reaches into the “depths of the evangelical mind” and discerns “the naked truth of the figures therein,” one discovers a “spiritual Gospel,” yes, but one breaks through the “shell” of these historical narratives only to find history anew, even one’s very own, transfigured and “taken up into the Gospel” – the eternal Gospel – whose sacrament is the glorified Son of Man.

7.1 [472] His Excellency Julian has not only denounced the holy scriptures; he furthermore speaks so impudently and has gone so far in his love of casting blame as to reach a point where nothing we do escapes his slander. Perhaps he thought doing so would bring him a good reputation. But some might well say about people opting for this mindset, “their glory is in their shame,”1 as well, I would suggest, as that statement made in the voice of David, “Why do you, who are powerful in lawlessness, boast in wickedness? Your tongue has planned injustice all day long; […] you loved all the words of your deluge, your treacherous tongue.”2

Thirty-two years after Debendranath dictated and wrote out Brāhmo Dharma, the reformer, writer, and public intellectual Keshab Chandra Sen (Figure 3.1) created a unique institution titled “Pilgrimages to Saints.” From 1880, and lasting only a few years, this featured historical pageants to great figures in the history of religion, from the Prophet Muhammad, to Caitanya, to Ralph Waldo Emerson, and other wise men drawn from across time and space. Drawing from the spirit of comparative religion embodied most clearly by Max Müller, this pilgrimages project transcended mere appreciation of texts or ideas. Drawing from the European intellectual traditions he admired, it rather featured a synthesis of a diversity of texts and appreciation for non-textual sources. This approach, defined by him as “subjective” and which “endeavors to convert outward facts and characters into facts of consciousness,”1 included the facts and character traits of Jesus Christ, as well as a host of other individuals in religious history. Included in this line of saints were Ralph Waldo Emerson and Theodore Parker, prominent North Americans central to the mid-nineteenth-century history of religion, as analyzed in chapter 2.

Alive from 1838 to 1884, living through the 1857–1858 rebellions, which shook India, the British Empire, and the world, Keshab emerged as a figure who would pioneer new definitions of religion, building upon the comparative religious scholarship of Rammohan and Debendranath.

6.1 [411] This is the right moment to state again the words of the God-breathed scripture. For it said: “Death and life are in the power of the tongue; those who control it will eat its fruits.”1 For, although it is possible for those who wish to think well to derive benefit from the goods of the tongue, provided that it were somehow to be attuned to orderliness and the duty of speaking words that would earn everyone’s admiration for having used it best, [nonetheless] some redirect their own words towards what is inappropriate. Their perverse and wicked words have even reached such a point that [412] they think nothing of those things that exceed the bounds of every vice, they let loose their wanton tongue against God, and they take up their weapons against the ineffable glory. The inevitable result of these actions will certainly be that they are convicted for the most extreme vices.

8.1 [532] Although the clever Julian undertakes a war against the ineffable glory1 and lets loose the arrows of his own understanding against matters that transcend [our] intellect, nonetheless they all miss the target.2 For he lies and boasts and makes mention of the God-breathed scripture, pretending indeed to know what is in it, but he is exposed as in fact understanding nothing at all, as an examination of the actual facts would demonstrate for us. For those who have recently been gathered together into “a holy people”3 by their faith in Christ and who are also doers of good works and experts in radiant and admirable pursuits, these he has called defiled, extremely disgusting, pitiable, disreputable, good for nothing, and every other term of abuse like this!4 Moreover, as if this tirade against us was not enough, [533] in still other ways too he tries to prove that we do not realize just how demented we are, nor indeed do we know how to walk straight down the path of truth, but that we, so to speak, jump off5 the highway, disregarding the commandment delivered through Moses – and this entirely – and diverging from the views of Moses and the holy prophets who came after him. So he again writes as follows

Chapter 4 analyzes several common features in New Religious Movements that turn violent – a millennial and apocalyptic worldview, totalistic organizational rules, isolation, and real or perceived persecution – and how these features can help make sense of the infusion of violent expectations in the sectarian movement of the Dead Sea Scrolls as represented especially in the Rule of the Community.

Chapter one is the introduction to the book. It outlines the main goals of the book, previous scholarship, and a new methodological framework for understanding violence in the Dead Sea Scrolls. It presents an overview of the sociological approaches to the people behind the Dead Sea Scrolls and scholarship on the meaning of violence.

4.1 [254] Julian has, therefore, denounced God’s glory and cried out most disgracefully against the doctrines of Moses, as though it was otherwise impossible for him to secure a winning verdict for the Greeks’ superstitions unless he vilified the teachings of Christians1 – a tactic in keeping with his deceptions and love of slander.2 And yet, surely it would have been necessary and better, at least in my view, if he supported their opinions with the facts themselves – assuming there is something true in them – and didn’t deck them out in the inventive bombast3 of certain persons,4 just like those women, for example, who are courtesans and suppose they can dispel the shame of their activity with seductive chit-chat and superficial make-up.5

1.1 [11] Those wise and sagacious experts in the sacred doctrines marvel at the beauty of the truth and highly regard the ability to understand “a parable and an obscure word, both the sayings of the wise and their obscure utterances.”1 For by thus focusing their exact and discerning mind on the God-breathed writings, they fill up their souls with the divine light, and by setting their ambition upon achieving an upright and most lawful way of life, [12] they may also become providers to others of the highest assistance.2 For it is written, “Son, if you should become wise for yourself, you will be wise also for your neighbor.”3

Nearly a thousand years before the life and times of Rammohan Roy, another writer and polymath of Bengali origin wrote a play about the various disputes between members of different religions in the kingdom of Kashmir, under the sovereign of King Shankar Varman (r. 883–902 CE). Little is known about the author, Jayanta Bhaṭṭa, besides his Brahmin lineage as well as surviving commentaries on grammar and scriptures. Of his many writings about religion, his play Much Ado about Religion, likely written in the late ninth century CE, serves as a reminder of the deeply embedded nature of political thought on questions of religious pluralism and the various ways of assessing truths, potentials, and values inherent in different positions on religion.

The play features the leading man in the name of Sankarshana, a young graduate (snatak) of the orthodox Mimamsa school of philosophy and an ardent believer in the Vedas. He seeks out constant battles against those who oppose his viewpoints. In the first act, he debates a Buddhist monk, arguing against “universal momentariness” and “consciousness as the only reality.” He declares that Buddhists must stop deceiving themselves in the belief of a better afterlife, as the actions of Buddhists threaten the social order in India at the time. In the second act, he faces and argues against the positions of a Jain mendicant, though he does not consider them a threat to the social order.

Origen makes sense of the Gospel traditions by receiving them as if the Evangelists were themselves figurative readers of the life of Jesus. Advancing this thesis one stage further, this final chapter discovers Origen locating the inspiration for the Gospels’ literary form in the figure of Jesus himself. That is, Origen believes that the canonical records of Jesus’s life indicate that he also was a “spiritual reader” of this particular epoch in the history of Israel and, ultimately, the role of his own life therein. For an archetypal expression of Jesus’s figurative mode of discourse, no series of passages more clearly establishes Origen’s view – that Jesus himself “intended to teach what he perceived in his own understanding by way of figures” – than his interpretation of Jesus’s prophetic Son of Man sayings. Here, I show that one can take up the whole matrix of first principles developed in the preceding chapters on the nature of the Gospel narratives and may, with startling immediacy, transpose them into a distillate of the nature of Jesus’s own discourses.

Up to this point, Part II has considered Origen’s approach to particular Gospel passages without invoking parallel narratives from more than one Gospel. In the process, it has become clear that Origen’s view of the figurative nature of the Gospels does not originate merely in noticing discrepancies among the four received Gospels. Having established this more fundamental point, we may now attend to the occasions where his reading does proceed by way of comparative reading of parallel pericopes. The cluster of narratives surrounding Jesus’s ascent(s) to Jerusalem provides an especially textured model of Origen’s approach to Gospel difference. Here, Origen does not simply exhibit an inchoate awareness of the various critical difficulties that arise when one reads the four Gospels synoptically; he engages these challenges in great detail and develops a sophisticated account of the Gospels’ literary formation in light of them. Still, whatever differences or discord one discovers among the Gospels on the level of history, narrative, and even in their very ideas of Jesus, there remains, for Origen, a more fundamental agreement – a harmony of spirit – among the four Evangelists’ visions.