Andrew Parker (biblicist)

Andrew Parker (born 1942) is a British biblical scholar and social activist.

Thesis

Parker's standpoint is that, because the ancients had little or no language for talking about the natural forces and political powers which affected their lives, they developed a form of symbolic language whereby they personalised these forces in order to discuss them. He maintains that this symbolic or mythological language is found in all ancient Near Eastern texts, including the Bible, but that the presence of mythological language in an ancient text does not imply the presence of religion since mythological language was designed to talk about experienced, rather than imagined, powers. Parker's conclusion is that religion was an unwarranted, if natural, secondary development which came about when mythical symbols were misconstrued as sentient beings, influenceable through prayer and offerings.

Parker claims that the Bible, in the main, presents a Hebrew revolutionary plan for transforming the world (i.e civilisation). This plan, described by the biblical writers as a covenant with their god, Yahweh, relies on those who have been marginalised from society demonstrating the iniquity of their situation by living together in radical solidarity in order to shame the world into changing its oppressive ways.

According to Parker, the Gospels show Jesus as finally fulfilling the Mosaic covenant; first by correcting the prophets' mistaken vision of Yahweh as an angry religious God; and secondly, by politically demonstrating how to open people's eyes so that they could see for themselves what needed to be done.

Early life and education

Andrew Harry Parker was born on 6 February 1942 in Calcutta, India, the youngest child of Tom and Barbara Gordon Parker. The family returned to England when Parker was three and settled in Wilmslow, Cheshire. Parker attended Heronwater School in North Wales (1949–55) and Marlborough College, Wiltshire (1955–60). He did a science degree at the University of St Andrews, taking a first-year course in Biblical Studies. Parker went on to study Divinity at New College, Edinburgh (The Divinity Faculty of The University of Edinburgh) where his maternal great grandfather, Robert Rainy had been Principal.

Career

Parker was ordained as assistant minister of Dunfermline Abbey in 1967. However, anxious to verify his understanding of the Bible by putting it into practice, he joined the French Protestant Industrial Mission (Mission Populaire Evangelique de France) in 1968 while also working as a builders’ labourer and later as a silk screen press operator, printing motorway signs.

In 1972 he was put in charge of the Mission centre in Nemours, working two days a week at Sorbonne University, Paris to finance the centre’s activities. There he was joined by a group of young men and women, both Protestants and Maoists and together they started conducting grassroots political activities using the parish magazine Notre Foyer, seeking to give a voice to the voiceless within the community.

The group’s work greatly irritated the local mayor Etienne Dailly (an important political figure and vice president of the French Senate) who in the spring of 1973 denounced Parker and took legal measures against him, as the editor of the parish magazine. For a few months Parker and his centre became a cause célèbre as the news media, first in France and then also in England and Scotland, started reporting what he and his team had been doing. In the autumn of 1973, Parker was expelled from France ‘for political activities unbecoming in a foreigner', an expulsion later rescinded in 1976 by the Conseil d’Etat.

Parker returned to Scotland and joined Revd John Miller and his wife, Mary to work as community activists in Glasgow. He earned a living as a porter in Leverndale Hospital where he first developed the technique of communicating using cartoons because his fellow-employees, who had persuaded him to become their shop steward, refused to read the reports he wrote about his negotiations with management. His illustrated reports, however, proved popular and gave Parker the idea of using cartoons to share his understanding of the Bible. He wrote two rough, experimental works, Digging up Parables 1 & 2and in 1980 he produced his first cartoon book on the life of Jesus, Political Parables, which can be found on his webpage; The Bible in Cartoons.

In 1981 Parker and his wife, Pat, moved to the east end of London where he ceased his community activities in order to concentrate on biblical research while earning a living as a hospital porter at St. Pancras Hospital. Since his retirement, he has concentrated on identifying the biblical ideology which inspired Jesus and using this ideology to understand the biblical texts from their authors' own perspectives. His work is influential in Christian Activist circles.

Works

Books

• Painfully Clear: the Parables of Jesus argues that Jesus did not instruct people on what to do and believe but aimed to open their eyes so that they could judge matters for themselves.
• Light Denied: A Challenge to Historians (2002 - published at The Bible in Cartoons) demonstrates that scholarship has ignored the evangelists' portrayal of Jesus as Yahweh’s light which exposes the hypocrisy of civilisation by demonstrating a better way of living; a strategy taken from Second Isaiah.
• God of the Marginals: The Biblical Ideology Demonstrated by Jesus (2008 - published at The Bible in Cartoons) explains that this strategy, announced by Second Isaiah and put into practice by Jesus, had its roots in the marginal ideology depicted in the Exodus texts. Since the Hebrew marginals had no way of changing the world by force, they were obliged to adopt an approach which shames coercive ideology (including socialism) through demonstration.
• Searing Light: The Parables for Preachers (2008 - published at The Bible in Cartoons) shows that all of the parabolic material associated with Jesus consists of illustrations which in time became detached from the events which gave rise to them so that now we can only guess at their original meaning.
• The Bible as Politics claims the Bible is not essentially a religious work but is a political work written from a marginal / Hebrew perspective which priestly writers later attempted to obscure with conservative religion.

Cartoon Books

• Thinking about the Bible Part 1: Ancient Man shows that the ancients’ mythology was not a religious language but rather a language for talking politics; religion being a secondary by-product resulting from the misuse of this language.
• Thinking about the Bible Part 2: The Mesopotamian Myths shows that the Mesopotamian myths, on which the Biblical myths are based, are political works containing few if any religious aspects.
• God of the Marginals Part 1: The Myth Cycle shows that the Genesis stories are revolutionary marginal texts later edited by priests who sought to cover the marginal ideology with conservative religion.
• God of the Marginals Part 2: The Patriarchal Cycle and Exodus Stories shows that the patriarchal stories in Genesis along with the Exodus story set out the marginal Hebrew ideology and its shaming strategy.
• Politics Before and After the Exile Part 1: Kingship examines some pre-exilic books (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings and Jeremiah) and finds them to be revolutionary marginal texts which also exhibit signs of priestly revisionist editing.
• Politics Before and After the Exile Part 2: Revolutionary Prophets and Revisionist Priests examines some post-exilic books (Ezekiel, Isaiah, Ruth, Jonah, Job and Daniel) and finds them all to be revolutionary marginal texts with the exception of Ezekiel who exhibits the hallmarks of a conservative revisionist.
• The Gospels as Political Good News Part 1: Overcoming Common Misunderstandings examines some common problems which have arisen in trying to understand the historical Jesus as presented in the Gospels.
• The Gospels as Political Good News Part 2: The Historical Jesus shows how the Gospels represent Jesus as the one who overcame the prophets’ religious portrayal of an angry God, fulfilled the Mosaic covenant by demonstrating how to love the neighbour as the self and shamed civilisation, but at enormous personal cost.

Articles and Other Publications

• Contributions to the following books, while a member of the Urban Theology Unit (now the Urban Theology Union);
  • Stilling the Storm: Contemporary Responses to Mark 4.35–5.1 Highly Unusual Ideological Magic
  • Acts in Practice Volume 2: The Shame We Don't Want to Face
  • The Servant of God in Practice: The Servant in Deutero-Isaiah
• Articles in the bi-annual journal of theology;
  • Theology in Scotland Vol III no 2.  The Logic of Parables
  • Theology in Scotland Vol XVI no 1. Thirteen findings on the Bible
• Articles for the website of the Progressive Christianity Network Britain
  • What does it mean that Christ died for our sins?
  • Military Might
  • What it Means to be a Marginal
  • Charity as Beside the Point (Part 1)
  • Charity as Beside the Point (Part 2)

References

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