"'Irrational Animals, Creatures of Instinct, Bred to be

Caught and Killed:'

Hybridity, Alterity and Name-Calling in 2 Peter 2."

Robert Paul Seesengood

University of North Carolina, Pembroke

2 Peter 2 (and its parallel texts in Jude) famously

utilizes ad hominem attacks against "false teachers who will

secretly bring in destructive heresies." The author of 2

Peter argues these "arrogant," "base," and "deceitful"

teachers ("waterless springs") espouse false prophecy. The

author assures us that they, and any who follow them, face

God's wrath. They are enslaved anew in lasciviousness, and

have turned back to their former ideology as a "dog

returning to his own vomit."

2 Peter 2 reflects a heady and eclectic mix of

theological influences and clearly seeks, in its rhetoric, a

domination of its own. The condemnation of the "heretics"

is defended by allusion to Bible (Noah, Lot, Balaam), Jewish

pseudepigrapha (the Assumption of Moses and Noahide legends)

and Greek cosmology (tartaros and perhaps also hades).

Further, "no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own

interpretation." (2 Pet 1:20)

Using structures described by Homi Bhabha, we can refer

to the theology of 2 Peter as "hybrid." 2 Peter is, itself,

an eclectic mixture and mimicry of various theological and

mythological strands, largely a compilation of both altern

and sub-altern cosmologies in the religious and

philosophical world of the early Roman Empire. Using my own

eclectic mixture of postcolonial methodologies, popular

culture, narrative and autobiography, I will argue 2 Peter

uses this hybrid theology to construct a central, new,

"colonial" ideology that then attempts, itself, to enforce

compliance; it uses, in other words, a theological structure

composed by sub-altern hybridity, to manufacture a new sense

of "alterity." In its mimicry of the modes of colonial

alterity: the opponents are, very literally, "dehumanized"

and presented as less human, worthy only of being "hunted

down and slain."

2

I will, as well, explore the implications and effects

of the argumentative patterns found in 2 Peter by a focus on

the real experience of indigenous peoples in the settlement

of costal Carolina. I argue that the process of identity

construction seen among the Lumbee Indians of Robeson

County, NC offers insight into the cultural pressures likely

behind 2 Peter 2.

First Interlude

I live in Lumberton, North Carolina, in the historic district, along the

Lumber River. I walk my dog along the banks of that black water, it's current

slow, it's muddy banks lined with cypress, ash and pine. We're careful of the

snakes and stand silently, in the early mornings, should we be graced with a view

of the muskrats. To the west and south of my home is the main square and "old

downtown" of Lumberton. The shops, bank, library, law offices and courthouse,

a lively spot during the week, are empty in the evenings and weekends, save for

the two storefront holiness churches along Elm Street.

I teach at the Pembroke campus of the University of North Carolina.

UNCP lies in the center of a small, under-developed Carolina town. I drive to

work, 12 miles, past swamps, tobacco fields and sheds, and cotton fields. The

local radio station solicits prayer requests; the DJ passes on the concerns

3

dutifully. He will sometimes pray for them, himself, over the airways if he knows

the caller or if the concern is pressing.

I drive into campus and park near a statue of Hamilton McMillan, the

school's founder and a Methodist minister. His form, cast in iron, is striding

confidently toward Old Main. I walk in the same direction. I turn through the

lawns and pine trees, past the pond (with fountain) in front of the library, into my

building.

I teach Religion (Bible and Early Christianity). Today, I will cover the

problem of "authorship" and "authority" in my New Testament Intro. If history is

any indicator, I expect a large number of sleepy non-comments, a few excited

and engaged voices asking, in a variety of ways, "why wasn't I told this in

church?," and some clearly antagonistic voices, suggesting that liberal know-it-

alls are, once again, just trying to destroy the Faith. My plan and hope is to use

these two separate strands to begin to probe some questions about

interpretation itself and the role of the Bible in the modern Church. With history

as an indicator, I have absolutely no idea what the result will be, what will

emerge at the end. I've never had the same result twice.

I. Postcolonialism

Postcolonialism explores, through the analysis of

literature, the social relationships and cultural

4

transformations brought about by the process of

colonization.1 Postcolonialism originated in the 1980s and

1990s as literary critics from the former British colonies

began to examine the texts of colonization and to

extrapolate the processes of cultural transformation brought

about by colonization.

A key element of postcolonial critique is the concept

of "hybridity." "Hybridity," a term first coined by Homi K.

Bhabha (himself, a somewhat hybrid figure, the combination

of Indian birth and British educational systems), refers to

1 ? As a methodology (or, better, critical orientation), postcolonialism has been in used for well over a decade and made itself quite at home in the Humanities, in general. Rather than belabor and exhaust with an exhaustive list of sources, I wish to note two key introductory texts and some key texts for biblical studies. Note, to begin, Robert C. Young, Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction (New York: Blackwell,2002) and Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin, eds. The Postcolonial Studies Reader (New York: Routledge, 1995). For material specific to Biblical Studies, see Larua E. Donalsdon, ed. Postcolonialism and Scripture Reading (Semeia 75; Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1996); R. S. Sugirtharajah. Postcolonial Criticism and Biblical Interpretation (New York: Oxford, 2002); Asian Biblical Hermeneutics and Postcolonialism: Contesting the Interpretations. The Biblical Seminar, 64: Asian Biblical Hermeneutics and Postcolonialism (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1999); The Postcolonial Bible. Bible and Postcolonialism, 1 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1998).

5

the resulting disjunction of identity after and as a result

of colonial contact.2 In essence, hybridity argues that the

subaltern are, of necessity, "always already" altered by the

pressures of colonization. The values, structures,

language, custom, and priorities of the Colonial supervisor

are laid upon the colonized people. The colonized, sub-

altern citizens are expected to learn the modes of

interaction, discourse, and "success" generated by the

altern colonizer. This forced cultural assimilation and

accommodation forever alters the identity of the sub-

altern.3 Full assimilation is unattainable. Speaking the

cultural language of the colonizer "with an accent," the

colonized are forever confined to a cultural "third space;"

they can no longer maintain their pre-contact identity (even

2 ? Homi K. Bhabha, "Signs Taken for Wonders" in The Postcolonial Studies Reader (ed. Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tifflin), 34-35; "The Vernacular Cosmopolitan" in Voices of the Crossing: The Impact of Britain on Writers from Asia, the Caribbean, and Africa (ed. F. Dennis and N. Kahn; London: Serpent's Tail, 2000), 138-9. These and other writings are collected in Bhabha's The Location of Culture (New York: Routledge, 1994).

3 ? Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 84-6, 193.

6

resistance to colonial norms dramatizes or caricaturizes

their prior, uncolonized subjectivities). They can not,

however, ever fully attain and master the cultural language

of the colonizer.4

Hybridity serves as a link between alterity and sub-

alterity. In one sense, the disparity of social status is

the fuel for the generation of the new hybridized identity.

Even more, however, it ties together both altern and sub-

altern in ways of cultural modification. The "third space"

identity is mutual; the colonizer is altered by the moment

of contact, as well. Postcolonialism offers hybridity as a

disruption of the normal binaries of altern and subaltern,

colonizer and colonized. Via hybridity, these poles become

not "either/or" but "both/and."

"Mimicry" and "mockery" are central structures in

hybridity. By "mimicry," Bhabha refers to the attempts of

the sub-altern to incorporate or adopt the cultural norms of

4 ? Bhabha, "Vernacular," 139.

7

the altern.5 In essence, it is the attempt to speak and

live without accent. This process, however, is inherently

doomed to failure. Further, there are also moments of

seeming "compliance" by the subaltern that result in moments

of assertion of independence. The sub-altern use their

inability to offer subtle moments of resistance (Bhabha's

"mockery").6 The subaltern may also use the "master's

tools" in efforts to construct resistant identities to the

altern and assert their own independence or control over

groups deemed more subaltern in turn via the values and

cultural technologies of the colonizer.7 Ironically, they

may employ the values and cultural technologies of the

altern in their resistance of alterity and colonial control,

itself.8 Imitation, then, as well as co-option or

"syncretism" is a critical dynamic. It scripts both

5 ? Bhabha, Location, 86. See, as well, Jas. C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistence (New Haven: Yale, 1990).

6 ? Ibid., 86.

7 ? Gayatri Chakavorty Spivak, "Can the Subaltern Speak?"in Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory (ed. P. Williams and L. Chrisman; New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993), 66-11.

8

compliance and resistance, but also recrafts both alterity

and subalterity. Those "with an accent" are forever marked

as subaltern, even as their hybridity and attempts to comply

re-inscribe the "authoritative" posture of the altern.

(Sub)alterity, commodification, control, (self)definition,

hybridity, synchronicity are all key themes explored by

postcolonial critique.

Some important caveats are worth noting. First,

postcolonialsim, while dealing alterity, subalterity, and

means of production is not, in its essence, Marxist.9

Further, it is not oriented only around resistance and

control, but also compliance and co-construction. Second,

hybridity has positive and constructive implications; it is

not limited to articulation of loss or diminishment (though,

8 ? A move shown by the engaging new readings of Paul found in the two volumes edited by Richard Horsley: Paul and Politics: Ekklesia, Israel, Imperium, Interpretation: Essays in Honor of Krister Stendahl (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2000) and Paul and Empire: Religion and Power in Roman Imperial Society (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1997).

9 ? R. J. Sugirtharajah, The Bible in the Third World: Precolonial, Colonial and Postcolonial Encounters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 250-75.

9

to be sure, the cultural playing field is, by definition, an

unequal one).10 Hybridity expresses alteration, not merely

destruction. The point (and the value) of postcolonialism

is the ambivalence found in the cultural exchanges and the

inherent paradoxes that arise when defining the limits and

types of cultural power and influence.

Third, hybridity is not about a simplistic notion of

cultural "mixture" and, in no way reducible to lamentation

over the loss of some pre-contact cultural "purity."

Fourth, it is, to a degree, anachronistic to apply

postcolonialism, rigidly, to biblical texts. The most

unproblematic value is to explore how the Bible has been

used to spread and develop colonial culture.11 In other

words, postcolonial criticism of the original context and

composition of biblical texts risks charges of anachronism.

Postcolonial discourse centralizes key themes and

foregrounds major issues of the colonial exchange.

10 ? Bhabha, Location, 193.11 ? Elegantly demonstrated in Sugirtharajah's The Bible in the Third World.

10

Substantial methodological concerns remain. We can not

assume full continuity across cultures and eras.

Structuralism has been rightly critiqued for its

homogenization of human communities and experiences. The

problem is not rooted in some pure notion of "history;" the

problem is that, if colonial contexts do not exist in the

Roman Empire in ways similar to those of the 18th and 19th

century, simply put, will postcolonialism "work."

In a similar way, postcolonialism (leaving aside, for

the moment, debates about nomenclature - "post-colonialsm"

verses "postcolonialism" and what, precisely, "post"

designates) in biblical readings needs to be aware of its

own limitations. Fernando Segovia has famously identified

three major areas for postcolonial critique.12 Roughly

summarized, they are: 1. an examination of the colonial

context of the original, nascent Christian community; 2. an

examination of the way the bible served as an implement of

12 ? Fernando F. Segovia, "Biblical Criticism and Postcolonial Studies: Toward a Postcolonial Optic," in The Postcolonial Bible (ed. R. S. Sugirtharajah; BP 1; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1998), 58-63.

11

cultural control and suppression or alteration of pre-

colonial cultures; 3. the "writing back" by the subaltern in

their use, adoption and/or alteration of biblical ideas,

motifs and texts.

The first optic is the most vulnerable to charges of

anachronism. The concern is two pronged. First, is there a

difference between imperialism and colonialism? Certainly,

colonial systems are, themselves, imperialistic. But are

all empires, of necessity, colonial bodies? Colonization

implies foreign control and hegemony, but it also demands

clear elements of (at least partial and involuntary)

exploitation of the subaltern via commodification.

Certainly, again, within the Roman empire, taxation demands

(as well as territorial controls) produced areas of

colonized living - Palestine, for example. But, is this the

same (or similar enough)? What, for example, do we make of

Diaspora Jewish communities, integrated into the larger

economic and political mechanism of the empire itself? Are

these communities, though clearly sub-altern and under Roman

governance and hegemony, strictly speaking, "colonial."

12

composed of "colonized" citizens. Are we able to identify

the Diaspora Jew as a hybrid? Indeed, in many areas of the

empire, Jewish Diaspora communities were established long

before the emergence of any Roman empire at all and remained

long after its demise. Subaltern? Yes. "Colonial?"

Second, "race" plays centrally in postcolonial critique

and in the colonial process of the 17th and 18th centuries.

In part, hybridty as a structure is dependant upon modern

notions of "race." Within the Roman empire, however,

"ethnicity" or "race," was much less centrally defined.

Individual ethnicity was marked, in part, by language,

region of birth, kinship, and religiosity. True, these same

elements were inscripted into notions of "race" crafted in

the modern colonial period. But these are not identical.13

Rooted, in part, in Cultural Studies and

poststructuralism (by the disintegration of binaries),

postcolonialism may still have profit for primary biblical

exegesis even if (as?) it eschews structuralist assumptions

13 ? a similar tension between similarity and dissimilarity arises around notions of gender and "homosexuality" in the Greco-Roman world

13

about universality of imperial and racial constructs.

Careful to avoid two-dimensional "this is that" comparisons

as historically certain, postcolonialism as cultural studies

allows for compelling juxtapositions that produce "meaning"

by display and demonstration that awakens recognition and

comparison of embedded assumptions in the structures and gaps

present in biblical texts.14 This creates new potential for

Segovia's second and third elements: is the best way to

achieve a nuanced and controlled postcolonial exegesis as

hoped for in Segovia's first "optic," the integrated

14

? Stephen D. Moore, "A Modest Manifesto for New Testament Literary Criticism: How to Interface with a Literary Studies Field that is Post-Literary, Post-Theoretical, and Post-Methodological." Biblical Interpretation 15 (2007): 1-25. Note, as well, he finds the most potential for postcolonial, cultural studies, and autobiographical readings. He treats postcolonial studies specifically on 13-16.

Of further interest to the present essay (and its methodology) are Moore's thoughts on Cultural Studies and Biblical Studies (and, as well, on autobiographical criticism). Moore calls for a type of Cultural Studies approach to the Bible which does not simply engage the Bibleas cultural icon (18-20). In other words, he calls for an approach willing to use modern, popular culture as a means of actively generating meaning in biblical text, not merely reflecting the appropriation of biblical text.

14

comparison and analysis of a combination of Segovia's second

and third optics?

II. 2 Peter 2

The text of 2 Peter clearly identifies its author as

Peter, the Apostle (1:1), elite member of the elite "12,"

witness to the transfiguration of Jesus (1:16-18) and

nearing death (1:14-16) which 1 Clement (4-5) assigns to

Nero and the mid-sixties, C.E. The author claims

responsibility for the composition of 1 Peter, as well

(3:1).

These claims seem less than reliable or final.

The style and vocabulary of 2 Peter differs sharply

from 1 Peter; they are so different that even the suggestion

of two amanuenses (an idea as old as Jerome) feels strained.

The author is aware of the Pauline Corpus (3:16) but

concerned about its proper interpretation and deeply

concerned about "false teachers/prophets." Given the role

of Paul in Marcionite theology and the fact that there is

15

little to indicate that Pauline writings were collected

prior to the second century, suspicions of a second century

provenance are awakened. 2 Peter places an emphasis on the

authority of Scripture (1:20-21). The collection and

identification of nascent Christian writings as “Scripture”

(not to mention a listing of the contents of those writings)

is not first century. Finally, the eschatology of 2 Peter

is among the most developed in the early writings; it has

fully come to terms with a less-than-immediate eschaton and

is the only writing in the New Testament to divide human

experience into three, distinct epochs and predict that the

present world will be consumed by fire. These have prompted

many to place 2 Peter's provenance to Rome of the second

century.15

15 ? For data, see Robert E. Pircirilli, "Allusions to 2 Peter in the Apostolic Fathers" JSNT 33 (1984), 57-83. Also Richard Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter (WBC; Waco, TX: Word, 1983), 157-58, 160-63. For primary, patristic material, see Origen, Commentary on John 5.3; Eusebius, Church History 3.3, 25 or Jerome Epistles 120.11. In summary, these concerns were likely the fuel for hesitancy of the early church to accept 2 Peter as authoritative and authentic. It was among the last documents to be given canonical status. Despite its use by Origen and Eusebius (never one to lightly disagree with his beloved mentor, though with some doubts of his

16

Baukham has described the letter as a

"pseudepigraphical final testimony;" this seems as good as

any other description.16 The mask of this pseudepigraphic

voice prevents a clear look at the author even as it leave

tantalizing clues. For example, as many have noted,

lexically, 2 Peter displays a wide vocabulary, so wide, in

fact, that the impression is left of an author struggling to

appear erudite.17 The author is, most likely, using, as a

source, the epistle of Jude (particularly in 2 Pet. 2). 2

Peter also is aware of many other writings circulating among

Jews, particularly Diaspora Jews, in the late second Temple

era. Baucham and others have suggested the author was very

own), the text remained suspect. Jerome's endorsement of it(and translation) seems (as in many canonical disputes) to have settled the matter de facto if not de jure. It has, however, never been a quiet discussion among scholars. Though I grant it as significant, I am foregoing, here, bothcomparison of 2 Peter 2 and Jude (in terms of authorship/dependence) and comparison of 2 Peter and the Syriac 2 Baruch.16

? Bauckham, 133.17

? Bauckham 135-38. See, as well, Duane F. Watson, Invention, Arrangement, and Style: Rhetorical Criticism of Jude and 2 Peter.

17

likely a Diaspora Jew.18 Given a familiarity with the

writings of Paul and Jude, the author is also most likely

working very late in the first century, if not early in the

second century. 2 Peter is, throughout, an admonition to

"stay the course" of the faith despite external pressures.

More specifically, however, it is also a stern warning about

"false prophets" from within the community, teaching

doctrines that will provoke not only more trouble from those

outside the community, but spread dissent and distress among

those within the community.19 Any systematic presentation of

18

?I stress the word "suggests" Bauckham's actual word is"Hellenized." Bauckham, 159. See, as well, J. N. D. Kelly,A Commentary on the Epistles of Peter and Jude (BNTC; London: A & C Black, 1969), 285-88. 19 ? There are additional problems under the lens of 2 Peter. Most notably, they are the delay of the Parousia andthe vision of the world's end. See Richard Bauckham, "The Delay of the Parousia" TB 31 (1980), 3-36; Charles A. Talbert, "2 Peter and the Delay of the Parousia" VC 20.3 (1966), 137-45; Gale Z. Heide, "What is New About the New Heaven and the New Earth? A Theology of Creation from Rev. 21 and 2 Peter 3." JETS 40 (1997), 37-56; and Carsten Peter Thiede, "A Pagan Reader of 2 Peter: Cosmic Conflagration of2 Peter 3 and the Octavius of Minucious Felix." JSNT 26 (1986),77-86. Those these issues will not be explored in this paper, not that one could (and others have) argue they display blended Jewish and Pagan texts, motifs and arguments.

18

the teachings of these opponents, however, is now lost. We

can only attempt a theoretical recreation via 2 Peter.

The most pointed and aggressive condemnation of these

false prophets occurs in 2 Peter 2.20 The false prophets

(pseudoprophetai) are compared (2:1) with the false voices

from Jewish Biblical history who led the people into

complacency and away from God. They are destined for swift

destruction (2:1) and people of bad character (licentious

and "revilers of truth" 2:2). They are greedy and exploit

the naïve (2:3). 2 Peter then alludes to the anger of God

which punished even angels, casting them into "hell" ( 2:4,

tartarosas), an allusion to Jewish pseudepigrapha, though also

a portion of the sacred narrative invoked in 2:1. The same

point (and also a likely allusion to 1 Enoch) continues in 2

20 ? See Michael R. Dejardias. "The Portrayal of the Dissidents in 2 Peter and Jude: Does it Tell Us More about the 'Godly' than the 'Ungodly'?" JSNT 30 (1987), 89-102; HansC. C. Cavallin, "The False Teachers of 2 Peter as Pseudo-Prophets." NovT 21 (1979), 263-70; Edmond D. Hiebert, "Selected Studies from 2 Peter; pt. 3: A Portrayal of the False Teachers: An Exposition of 2 Peter 2:1-3." BibSac 141 (1984), 255-64.

19

Peter's turn to Noah, Sodom and Gomorrah (2:5-10). The

Petrine opponents here are clearly being associated with the

most dangerous opponents of God found in Jewish tradition.

Further, they are clearly marked as morally bankrupt and

hostile to authority; "bold and willful, they are not

afraid to revile the glorious ones" (2:10).

Now in a near fever pitch of condemnation, 2 Peter

asserts "These are like irrational animals, creatures of

instinct, born to be caught and killed" (2:12). In this

aggressive condemnation, 2 Peter is actually dehumanizing

his opponents. They are not only not above the angels (or

God), they are, in reality, even less than human. They

"revel in the daytime;" they are "blots and blemishes,

reveling in dissipation, carousing" with "eyes full of

adultery, insatiable for sin." (2:12-13). In short, they

are, in 2 Peter's eyes, full "savages," barbarians. They

are compared directly to Balaam's ass (2:15-16). After

repeating his charges and condemnations, 2 Peter concludes

that these "false prophets" are akin to both dogs and pigs

20

(2:22). To sum, they are animals, barbarous, savages, and

debased beasts of labor and appetite.

A key componetn of 2 Peter 2 is intertextuality. A

good example of this blending is the condemnation of the

angels to tartaros (2:4). Tartaros occurs here, Jude 6, and

once more in the Gospels. The parable of the Rich Man and

Lazarus in Luke 16:19-31 presents an image of the afterlife

that invites curiosity if not certainty. Though the

parable contains clearly Jewish elements (Father Abraham,

Moses and the Prophets) the parable uses the term hades, a

Greek term for the after world, rather than the Jewish sheol.

Use of a term deeply connected to Greek thought about post-

mortem existence suggests that investigation of non-Jewish,

especially Greek, understandings of the afterlife may be

productive. Several texts significant to Greek religious

and philosophical thought address this notion, as do several

inscriptions and documents from Greek popular culture.

Particularly interesting are some writings of Plato. Plato refers several times in his writings to a belief in a coming judgment of the dead where rewards and punishments

21

are meted out in post-mortem existence based upon the good or bad (just or unjust) behavior of individuals while alive.21 These judges were unbiased and particular care was taken to insure that their judgments were uninfluenced by the wealth or status of those whom they judged.22 In anotherdescription, the righteous are taken by spirits and messengers to a place of reward and comfort.23 The underworld is depicted as a dangerous cosmos located beneaththe surface of this world surrounded and bisected by subterranean rivers of fire.24 These rivers eventually pooled in a place called Tartaros, a particular place of torment.25 Souls were kept in darkness and punished until

21 ?Plato Phaedo, 106E; Gorgias, 524B, 526B; Republic, 615A, B. See as well, Virgil Aeneid VI. On Tartaros as abode for the incorrigible and mentioned in Gorgias, see below.

22 ?Gorgias, 523E.

23 ?Phaedo, 107D-E.

24 ?Ibid., 109A-111E; 113A-114C.

25 ?Ibid., 112A. According to Hesiod, Tartarus is also theeternal abode of the Titans, imprisoned by Zeus for insurrection in the deepest pit of the underworld. See Theogony, 713-32. There, Tartarus is described as a place of punishment in the nether world which is associated with darkness and fire. Note, as well, BAGD, 805:"Tartarus, thought of by the Greeks as a subterranean place lower than Hades where divine punishment was meted out, was so regardedin Jewish apocalyptic as well: Job 41:24; En. 20, 2; Philo,

22

purified and then they were cast out again by one of the underground rivers to traverse to other worlds. Those most egregiously sinful were kept in tartaros forever.26 Tartaros isexplicitly mentioned in 2 Pet. 2:4 and likely referred to inthat text's parallel, Jude 6.27

Contra the opinion of many current New Testament scholars, Greek religion was concerned with ethical behaviorof humans. Ethical and upright behavior was important in

Exs. 152; Jos., C. Ap. 2, 240; Sib. Or. 2, 302; 4, 186).

26 ?Phaedo, 113D-114B. Notice that the image presented earlier in this text suggests that lack of a spirit guide and insufficient navigational aid cause the wicked to be lost within the bowels of the underworld. Disregard for fellow humans in this life results in confusion and eventualruin in the next. Note, as well that, according to 114B, those punished in Tartaros could attain redemption if they were able to call out to those whom they had abused while living and obtain forgiveness from them.

27 ?Of course, Rev. 19:20; 20:10, 14, 15; and 21:8 refer to a place of post-mortem punishment which is described as alake of fire. Though flirting with the same concepts of post-mortem existence, the material in Jude (and likely muchof the imagery in 2 Peter) is probably better founded on material from 1 Enoch books I & II. Jude explicitly cites the book of Enoch and is in obvious dialog with Jewish inter-testamental apocalyptic. Note, however, both 2 Peter and Jude (and 1 Peter 5) refer to places of post-mortem punishment where there are flames, darkness and torment.

23

order to be pleasing to the gods.28 Righteous behavior in this life would insure a happy post-mortem existence.29

Luke 16:24 describes the post-mortem abode of Rich Man as a dark place with flames. Rich Man is obviously in torment. Abraham refers to a great chasm that separates thetwo regions of the nether world (though one may see from onerealm into the other). Lazarus is led to his place beside Abraham by angels. No mention is made of a guide for Rich Man. Punishment and reward are meted out based upon aspectsof the characters' life in this world.

Rather than presenting an elaborate thesis on the afterlife, Luke may be blending a Greek concept of hades with Jewish religious elements. The elements of the afterlife described in this parable might be invoked by Luketo convey a sense of post-mortem judgment using existing, culturally understood motifs and not to reveal details abouta life after this one.30 Individual elements of Luke's

28 ?Hesiod Works and Days, 220-62; Solon 1 lines 1-32; Euripides Bacchae 72; Horace, Odes 3.6; Ditt. S.I.G. III, 985.50; III, 1268, and others.

29 ?Aeschylus Agamemnon 750-81; Aristophanes Frogs 369-413; and, though he ridicules the idea Plato Republic 2.364-65A admits it's popular acceptance.

30 ?Recall that most Jewish material discussing the Judgment of God was judgment vis-a-vis the observance or non-observance of Torah (Moses and the Prophets?) and not, per se toward a righteous lifestyle in general.

24

description may, in fact, have been selected simply because they are part of the larger conceptual package of after world judgment which Luke employs. Luke's point in describing the after world might simply be to assert that individuals are judged based upon their actions and lives inthis world. Tartaros arises from the generally blended (perhaps "hybrid?") Diaspora setting. Among Diaspora Jews, there were also abundant engagement with Jewish pseupigraphic eschatological texts. These, as well, appear in 2 Peter 2.31 As Dunnett sums [with regard to the paralleltext of Jude] "material is drawn from books found in the Hebrew Scriptures, while some drawn from other sources – primarily, it appears, the Book of Enoch and the Assumption of Moses." Certainly, there is no clearly demarcated (let alone "closed") notion of canon in the first-to-mid-second century, CE. My point is not that 2 Peter deviates from some authoritative textual community; my point is that the wide range of references and inter-textual moments suggest an author schooled in Hebrew Bible and Jewish Pseudepigrapha, both of which are engaged in a Diaspora context of engagement with Greco-Roman religious terminology. In short, it would appear to be a very "hybrid" reading list.

31 ? Walter M. Dunnett, "The Hermeneutics of Jude and 2 Peter: The Use of Ancient Jewish Traditions." JETS 31 (1988),287-92 and (for an in-depth example) Frederick W. Danker, "2Peter 3:10 and Psalm of Solomon 17:10." ZNW 53.1-2 (1962), 82-6. See, also Bauckham, 138-49.

25

Jews within the Roman Empire would be considered, at least in part, as subaltern. Diaspora Jews, in particular, faced occasional expulsion from Rome and frequent tensions arising from their particular work, worship, and food needs.Jewish groups are, at times, considered less than human or "savage" by the altern classes. Notably, we here find a Diaspora Jew writing in opposition of "false prophets" (who,if indeed, something like proto-Gnostics, themselves "blend"or hybridize Christian confessions) using arguments and texts that could be said to betray a complex moment of hybridized identity. Further, 2 Peter explicitly uses thesetexts and traditions in a discourse that dehumanizes the "other," asserting they are beasts, savages, and, in turn, grossly subaltern.

Second Interlude.

Trying to settle the dust of a hectic week, I'm in a local bar having a beer.

As a rule, I try to keep my occupation quiet. I do this, in part, because I am here

to get away from the headaches and pressures of work. I do this, in part,

because I am tired of being so totally marked as the "outsider" and "other" in

this small town. I've come to this bar often (it is located just off the town square,

about five blocks from my home, within sight of the river for which it is, in part,

named). It is a favorite of the college crowd (the nearest bar to campus, as well).

I've been "outed" more than once. Most people are politely but quietly curious

about me being a professor. Several other professors come here; I'm not unique.

Once my area of work comes up, however, the quiet of the curiosity dissolves into

engaged questioning over the news of the day, some Bible or doctrinal question,

some question about belief or Religion in general. The subject of "God" comes

26

up in bar conversation more often than many tee-toting clergy or seminary

faculty would likely imagine.

It is a hot August evening, classes have resumed, a familiar group of

locals and university people have collected, and we talk. Inevitably, the

conversation turns toward the students – how they act, how they perform, what

they're like. I'm asked about my own, and I offer a generic answer about how

some are, indeed, very diligent, but others are less engaged. I'm asked, "when

you teach Religion or Bible, do you find that students often bring their own

religious ideas into the classroom?" I allow as they do. We talk for a while about

this and how one responds.A man about my age, a Lumbee, is listening but not speaking. He's slowly

considering his beer. As the conversation moves over to another topic, he turns

aside to me and asks if we can go sit at a table nearby to talk further. We do.

"You need to understand your Lumbee students. You need to understand we tell

stories. We always have. We have in our stories the ideas of our people. They're

still there in how we tell the Bible, what we add, what we take out, what we leave

in. We tell stories about how you must bury the head of a possum and not eat it

or he'll haunt you. When it rains with the sun out, we say 'the Devil's beating his

wife.' We say that if you kill a snake but hang him on a tree, he'll come back to

life just like Jesus. Our preachers use these stories. They use them in sermons.

The kids don't know Bible, because they know stories. You're telling them to

read. They don't read. Reading is what they do in white churches. It's not just

27

because they're lazy or don't want to worry their faith. It's because they tell

stories. They sing songs. They offer witnesses and testimony. They tell the Bible;

they don't read it. You need to tell them stories. They'll understand them, in

their way."

III. Lumbee

Native American encounters with Christianity and

western style Religion are marked by moments of initial and

mutual bafflement.32 Europeans, first contacting aboriginal

peoples in the "new world" announced, definitively, that the

peoples "have no religion."33 They had no organized (to a

European eye, at least) clergy, no temples, and, perhaps

most strikingly, no texts. For Native Americans, the power

32 ? For a general overview of (admittedly, western) Native American spirituality (pre and post-contact) see Joseph Epps Brown, Teaching Spirits: Understanding Native American Religious Traditions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); Larry Cebula, Plateau Indians and the Quest for Spiritual Power 1700-1850 (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2003) and, of course, John G. Neihardt, Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux (New York: Morrow, 1932).

33 ? On the European assessment of Native American religion, see Johnathan Z. Smith, "Religion, Religions, Religous" in Critical Terms for Religious Studies (ed. Mark C. Taylor;Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 269-70.

28

of the European "Talking Books" was both intriguing and

alarming (as was the casual treatment/ commodification of

Nature, sacred, in turn, to the Native Americans) .34

Originally oral mythology and ritual marked the basis

of Native American spiritualities. Each generation

protected and preserved the stories, traditions and rituals

of its ancestors. This inevitably tied native identity to

story and oral tradition and permeated it with all the power

and ambivalence of each. On European encounter, however,

the power of the written word, particularly in its ability

to inscribe identity took over.

Lumbee Indians of Robison County, NC have occupied an

ambivalent status in terms of identification as native

Americans for well over a century. Geographically, the vast

majority of the 40,000 or so members of the tribe reside in

or around Pembroke, North Carolina. At present (and since

the Eisenhower administration) they are acknowledged by the

Federal Government as "Indians," but are not fully

34 ? Peter Nabokov, ed. Native American Testimony (rev.; New York: Penguin Books, 1999), 50-67.

29

recognized as a tribal "nation," and, so, do not fall under

the auspices of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.35 At present,

they are engaged in legislation before congress to rectify

this (their, recognized-but-not status is not unique; there

are over 100 similar communities of Native peoples east of

the Mississippi alone.36

The Lumbee (under various names) have been recognized

by the State of North Carolina for well over a century.

Officially, the Lumbee "were previously assigned the names

'Croatan Indians' (1885), 'Indians of Robeson County'

(1911), and 'Cherokee Indians of Robeson County' (1913)."

They are "the largest Native American group east of teh

Mississippi and seventh largest in the United States."37

35 ?On the politics of this move, see Gerald Sider, Living Indian Histories: Lumbee and Tuscarora People in North Carolina (rev.; Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 51-89.

36 ? For current status, see www.lumbetribe.com.

37 ? For both quotes, see Walt Worlfam, Clare Dannenberg, Stanley Knick, and Linda Oxendine. Fine in the World: Lumbee Language in Time and Place (Raleigh, NC: North Carolina State University, 2002), 4-5.

30

The University of North Carolina at Pembroke was

founded in the 1880s (as Croatan Indian Normal College)

specifically to serve this community and paid for by funds

from the state. The school remained exclusively Indian38 (in

student body, largely Indian in faculty) until the 1950s

(when, for a period of time, it was the only publicly

sponsored university for Indians in the United States).

Following the desegregation of the 1960s, the school opened

to include African Americans and whites (and was renamed,

first, as Pembroke University, and later as UNCP). The

school, though founded by a member of Methodist clergy (the

Honorable Hamilton McMillan), was, from its inception, a

publicly funded and secular institution (though one where

Religious Studies held and continues to hold a central role

in the curriculum).

38

? Unlike some communities, "Indian" is the preferred term for ethnic self-identification among the Lumbee, not "Native American." I endeavor to respect and acknowledge their choice by using the term myself when referring to Lumbee in this paper. In some ways, this choice also reflects the Lumbee awareness that, to a large extent, theiridentity has now been over-written by European terminology.

31

Gerald Sider relates this anecdote which captures much

of the identity ambivalence present in Indian self-

description:

On July 4, 1973, the Independence Day holiday, theLumbee had their third annual homecoming-weekend paradedown the main street of Pembroke. It was a small-town,community, I-know-the-people-marching parade, and it was an Indian parade. Churches and clubs built floats,several dozen people on horseback went before, after, and between the floats – some in ordinary work clothes,some dressed as cowboys, some as Indians – school bandsin flashing costumes marched and played small-town school band tunes, expensive cars hauled dignitaries and local beauty queens. It was a parade rich enough to excite continual comment, and small and cheerful enough to go through town twice – to the end and back.

In the midst of it all was one stunning float – literally stunning: I turned away, seeing it as humiliating to the Indians. It was built by an Indian church on a very large flat-bed trailer-truck, the kindof rig that hauls bulky loads on interstate highways. In the middle of the trailer was a large signboard, facing the front of the trailer, a "Christian" devil was painted in red, with pointed ears, horns, tail, cloven-hoof feet, trident and all, the flames of hell forming the background. Before this painted devil, a dozen real, living, adolescent Indian boys dressed as "Indians" with feathers, bare legs, moccasins, danced in a circle.

On the other side of the signboard partition, facing the back half of the trailer, was a pulpit, Bible on top, at which stood a young Indian man in a preacher's black suit. Facing the pulpit and preacher were several rows of metal folding chairs, four across,with an aisle down the middle. On one side of the aisle were little Indian boys in sports coats and

32

slacks, on the other side little Indian girls in dresses, all neat and quiet, listening to the Bible being read to them. At the back of the truck was another signboard on which was written one word: PROGRESS. When the parade was over the Indian judges awarded this float first prize.39

The Lumbee, according to their own oral history and the

earliest (McMillan's essay of 1888) written histories,40 were

an Indian people discovered by Europeans on settlement of

Robison County in the second half of the 18th century.

Robison county, geographically, was largely Pine forest and

swamp, carved throughout by small bogs and streams that fed

into the Lumber River (also called the "Lumbee River" or

"Drowning Creek") bisecting the county, northwest to

southeast. The inaccessibility of the swamps matched with

the Herculean needs of drainage and deforestation before the

land would be arable, combined to dissuade European settlers

until fairly late in the settlement of costal Carolinas. On

contact, however, Europeans were amazed to find the area

39 ? Sider, Living Indian Histories, 53-4.40

? Hamilton McMillan, Sir Walter Raleigh's Last Colony: An Historical Sketch of the Attempts of Sir Walter Raleigh to Establish a Colony in Virginia with the Traditions of an Indian Tribe in North Carolina (Wilson, NC: Advance Press, 1888).

33

inhabited by a "mixt crew" of peoples, clearly not

"ethnically" white, but living in European style homes,

cultivating according to European methods of agriculture,

speaking English, and practicing Christianity.41 Clearly not

"white," these inhabitants were also not stereo-typically

"Indian." Their dark skin was mitigated by green and blue

eyes and a belief in Jesus articulated in proper, if

antiquated, King's English. To make matters more

complicated, many claimed British surnames, spoke formal

British English, and told unusual stories about their own

origins.42

41 ?From the report of McMillan in 1888. See, as well, Karen I. Blu, The Lumbee Problem: The Making of an American Indian People (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), 37. Note, also, 36-65. 42 ? Lumbee surnames harken back to the Register of the Lost Colony (Oxendine, Lowry, Sweet, Cummings, Dial, Sampson, Locklear, etc.) See the ardent defense of Adolph L. Dial, The Only Land I know: A History of the Lumbee (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1996), 2-10. Dial is a Lumbee.

34

Overwhelmingly, Methodism held sway among the Lumbee.43

These congregations outnumbered European congregations.

Further, they were notorious for relentless orthodoxy. Any

vestige of Lumbee pre-Christian mythology, ritual, or

clerical practice was completely absent. Indeed, even

memory of their pre-contact language had been erased. In

the early 1880s, the General Council of the Methodist

Churches issued its formal policy that "Methodist" could

apply only to congregations of whites, disenfranchising huge

numbers of African Americans and the Lumbee. Christian

practice in general and Methodism in particular, however,

remained deeply rooted in Lumbee communities. In the 19th

and 20th centuries, Southern Baptist and Holiness traditions

began to have increasing influence.

The Methodist reaction to the Lumbee was not atypical.

The Lumbee were widely considered as "less" human than

43

? See Joseph Michael Smith and Lula Jane Smith, The Lumbee Methodists: Getting to Know Them: A Folk History (Raleigh: Commission of Archives and History, North Carolina MethodistConference, 1990). Currently, the Lumbee have some of the largest Native American congregations of the Methodists.

35

Europeans, but in a particularly ambivalent cultural and

ethnic status. Clearly not "white," they were also not

"blacks." Having never been slaves (but also not "whites"),

they were designated initially as "mixed" peoples. Lumbee,

themselves, staunchly denied this in depositions that,

themselves, border on racist.44 They would assert that they

were "not mixed," "never slave," and had never "held

congress with the negros or any of negro blood."45

Eventually, they were classed by the state as "free people

of color." Such was only a nominal victory, if that. As

"free people of color," they were subject to regular

inspection and supervision, restricted in land ownership,

44 ? Note, for example, the testimony of Fannie Chavis in 1907 (in a deposition offered in support of an application for her children to enter the Indian Normal School, now UNCP: "I have taught for six years. Teach in the Indian public schools..., never have I taught negros nor have ever associated in church or schools with negroes." Her husband,Eli, testifies: "I investigated the race and nationality of my wife before I married and learned she belonged to the Indian race. Did not look like there was any negro blood inmy father in law." Sider, 78.

45 ? Admittedly, such language may not have been forced upon the deposed by the context of the question and even "allegation" of the deposer.

36

denied the right to serve on juries, denied the right to

bear arms, denied the right to vote, and denied the ability

to inter-mingle with whites. During Segregation, Lumbee

were disenfranchised from "white only" establishments and

subject to repeated attempts to declassify their votes.

Ironically, many Lumbee, even as they struggled for their

own recognition, would not ally with African Americans and

insisted on not only their own unique status, but that they

ought be given rights even if these continued to be withed

from blacks.

The Lumbee, currently, are not identifiable by any

particular set of "racial features" or characteristics.

They may as readily be blond haired with blue eyes as darker

skinned. Any remains of an original Lumbee language are

gone. They are largely identifiable, at present, only by

surname, some dialectical use of English, and by recognition

on tribal roles (which are regularly monitored and updated

by an elected community of tribal officers. Proof of birth,

documentation of ancestry and a living in or around Robison

County are key criteria).

37

The Lumbee have uniformly insisted that they were

Indian, though not affiliated with the nearby Tuscarora and

Cherokee. By the late nineteenth century, they were called

"Croatan Indians" (for reasons I will address in a moment).

The designation "Lumbee" was re-claimed mid-twentieth

century, in recognition of what was apparently the oldest

name for the river and region (analagous to the nearby

Peedee Indians of South Carolina). The name may mean

"[people on the] banks of the river." During the 1960s, yet

another branch of Lumbee began to self-identify as the

Tuscarora Indians of Eastern Carolina. These multiple names

(imprinted, in part, on the multiple names of many business

and establishments in the county, not least of which is the

University) reflect and parallel a long history of identity

moments.

Lumbee oral history asserts that the Indians first

encountered by whites along the Lumbe/r River were the

decedents of the English settlers of Raleigh's "Lost

38

Colony," initially founded on Roanoke Island.46 Those versed

in the history and lore of the earliest days of English

colonization of the Americas will recall that Raleigh's

initial colony arrived woefully unprepared for life in the

new world. Most died. After some struggle and a

"successful" year, Raleigh added a second wave of settlers,

with the ambition of a permanent, self-sustaining

settlement. War interrupted contact with the settlement.

On British return, all the settlers were gone; only the word

"Coatan" remained, incised in a tree. Years of inland

searching failed to produce any sign of the colonists.

According to Lumbee legend, these settlers, led by

friendly Indians, moved inland and south to the "Croatan"

forest (now the Croatan National Forest, a protected forest

and wetlands area, located about 75-100 miles north and east

of Robeson county at the mouth of Carolina's Southern Outer

Banks) where they settled and intermarried. The Lumbee, it

46 ? This argument is presented, and defended, by Dial. It was accepted, as well, by McMillian and, later, John R. Swanton, "Probable Identity of the Croatan Indians" (U.S. Department of Interior; Office of Indian Affairs; Washington, D.C., 1933).

39

is claimed, were the ancestors of these inter-married

communities. As such, they had a ready grasp of English,

knew European farming and construction techniques, and were

devoutly Christian.

Setting aside, for the moment, an assessment of the

historical veracity of this claim (which, for the curious,

is roundly doubted by non-Lumbee historians, but rigorously

defended by Lumbee), I would simply pause to note the way in

which this originary tale defines the Lumbee vis-à-vis other

ethnicities in Robeson County and Carolina. The

Lumbee/Croatan narrative establishes that the Lumbee are the

"same but different" from other Indian groups. It allows

the Lumbee to patch into both communities and to articulate

a hybridized form of "Indianness." This hybrid identity

creates a Lumbee community that can assert (from within) the

cultural and historical "virtues" of either identity,

seizing the alterity inherent in each, even as it leaves

them subject to critique (from without) according to the

"differentness" of each community, leaving them somewhat

"subaltern" with regard to both Indian and White. Second,

40

it creates an identity which is, in some ways, altern to

that of African Americans. Certainly, from within the

Lumbee themselves, they continue to insist they have never

"mixed" or interacted with blacks, adopting the same

rhetoric as whites for racial segregation. Third, the

identification with English settlers (who were, as well,

among the first British peoples to attempt colonization)

offers a tweak to the "white" community of Robeson county

(largely decedents of Scotts, often as not Highlanders,

relocated to Carolina by the English in The Highland

Clearings of the 17th and 18th century). The Lumbee of the

nineteenth centuries challenged the Scottish landowners by

asserting that the "same blood" ran through both, and also

by the quiet assertion, rooted in their very surnames, that

their "English blood" is the same as the blood of those the

Scottish were ruled by, in turn. As such, the appeal is

both a quiet reminder of a commonality of experience and

also a quiet assertion of power. Finally, fourth, it is an

identity seized upon by the subaltern that overtly plays

into both the history and the rhetoric of the altern

41

communities they are dominated by and struggling to resist.

It is Bhabhan hybridity to its core.

Modern archaeological data and cultural criticism

congrue, as one might expect, to problematize the oral

history of origins claimed and shared by the Lumbee. I

would suggest, however, that modern "academic" modes of

knowing are not completely neutral, themselves. Further,

the superimposition of (outsider) academic ways of defining

the Lumbee can be seen as yet another attempt of the altern

to force an identity on a particular people. Further, there

is the complicating problem of the defining of and "Indian"

peoples pre-contact. The "origins" of any native peoples is

largely a mystery. We have current "guesses" as to tribal

affinities and movements based on linguistic, ritual and

other cultural forms of comparative analysis, but,

ultimately, we may only guess. Further, for reasons I will

discuss below, the very construction of "Indianness" and

"tribe" are, to a very large degree, post-contact, European

fascinations and subject to as many potential critiques as

those that lie within the definition of "ethnicity" itself.

42

That said, archaeology of Robeson county clearly

indicates a constant record of uninterrupted habitation

along the Lumbe/r River for a potential 14,000 years.47

Early stone tools and even Clovis points combine to suggest

that this region was settled very early in the settlement of

the Americas. Further, the materials and stone used for

these tools and weapons (and even the techniques of

manufacture) are indigenous to the Piedmont, Appalachian,

and Southern costal plain, indicating that, from an early

period, the Indians of Robeson county engaged in trade among

other Indian peoples (Souxan, Tuscarora, Cherokee, etc.)

living all along the eastern seaboard from Virginia, through

the Carolinas, and perhaps as far south as Florida.48

47 ? Stan Knick, The Lumbee in Context: Toward an Understanding. 2002; Robeson Trails Archaeological Survey: Reconnaissance in Robeson County (Pembroke, NC: Native American Resource Center, 1988).

48 ? Knick, an advocate for the antiquity of Lumbee habitation and a passionate supporter of Lumbee recognition,has taken his case in summary form to the citizens of the county and to the federal government. Knick, "How Long Havethe Lumbees been Here." Robesonian 16 Jan. 1993, 4a.

43

European made items (bits of pottery, glass, and

ceramic smoking pipes) are found among archaeological strata

and by design and materials, indicate a likely provenance of

the 17th century, 100 years or more prior to Scottish

settlement of the county. Once again, we have further

indication of a wide ranging trade with peoples, perhaps

even migration of some communities. While the Lumbee may

have had no direct contact with Europeans prior to the 18th

century, they clearly had ample opportunity for indirect

contact. Along with these tangible, non-degradable items,

we may also assume some trade for blankets and cloth, and

very likely also contact with infectious disease. Indeed,

every indication is that the population of indigenous

peoples had already been decimated by illness such as

measles and small pox long before whites arrived in person.

Finally, we may also assume inter-marriage between the

Lumbee and surrounding peoples as well as language

alteration and acquisition.49

49 ? Such is the position of Knick. His thesis remains both unqualified by archaeologists and anthropologists who have studied the region. The extent of de-population by

44

Pre-contact Indians lived lives much, much different

than modern stereotype recalls. Of course, as Sider points

out, we all know that the typical image of a Plains Indian –

mounted on horseback, draped in eagle feathers, carrying a

Winchester rifle – is categorically impossible pre-contact.50

Even with such an awareness, it is often shocking to many to

learn that, post-contact, more Plains Indians owned mules

than owned horses.51 They were much more agrarian and

settled than our collective memory recalls.

Our image of eastern costal Indians as constantly

migrant hunter-gatherers subdivided into unique "tribes" is

also, however, a post-contact stereotype. Recall, for

example, that it was these peoples who helped European

disease among Indian peoples of the Eastern US is, as studies have advanced, becoming more and more stunningly gruesome with every essay. It can not, fairly, be called "decimation" (where one in ten die); indeed, it might be more far to suggest that, in some cases, only one in ten remained.

50 ? These contrasting images and this point derive from Sider, 183-85.

51 ? Sider, 200-10.

45

settlers learn farming techniques and "sold" or traded

Europeans cleared lands for farming. Clearing sufficient

acreage for farming tobacco (and removing the residual

stumps) with stone tools would require generations of work.

These fields would not be lightly abandoned. Costal Indians

were very likely far less migrant than memory retains, and

very attuned to new techniques or methods of farming. They

were settled in scattered "village cities," roughly allied

by kinship ties and language/dialect. While they may not

have left the impressive stone ruins of indigenous peoples

found in Mexico or Central and South America, they still,

very likely, possessed an intricate system of inter-

connected and partly interdependent "village-states."

Finally, Robeson county had an ancient "highway" running

east to west (not unlike the modern north to south I-95)

through the swamps.

European contact brought intense pressures of

commodification of Indian resources, peoples and lands. The

sheer volume of animal pelts being exported from the

colonies back to Europe speaks very clearly to: a. an

46

organized system of "harvest" of "managed herds" of deer and

other animals; and b. intense competition among Indian

peoples themselves to supply the Europeans with goods.52

Trade also provided steel tools, superior weaponry, and

limited alliance with Europeans. Further, having "sold"

arable land, the indigenous peoples were not able to supply

their own food sources as readily. All of this, of course,

is occurring within the context of epidemic outbreaks of

deadly disease. Trade with settlers, then, quickly became

essential, but imbalanced for the Indian. The imbalance

produced intense competition, severing old ties with nearby

villages and peoples. This competition was only exasperated

by European enslavement of some Indians (which often

resulted in scenarios of Indian vs. Indian in an attempt to

52 ? On tribal trade, see Sider 207. For but one example of Indian decimation by disease and slave trade, see Sider, 191: "Columbus, as is well known, arrived in the Americas in1492. What is much less well known is that he returned to Hispanola in 1493 with 1,200 colonists; by 1497 about one-third of the substantial native population of that island were dead; by 1507 the entire population, at least several thousand people, were all gone – dead from disease, killed in the "wars" to take slaves or land, or enslaved."

47

provide slaves for trade) and deliberately duplicitous

"treaties." In short, colonization occurred, and, with it,

a system of alterity and sub-alterity and an intense re-

structuring of "identity." Forces of segregation along with

attendant "benefits" of colonial technologies were present

in Robeson County long, long before settlement by whites.

A particularly important moment in Lumbee identity

surrounds the career of Henry Berry Lowry.53 Sider boldly

suggests that it is the "Indian wars" that solidify the

Indian identity of the Lumbee.54 During the civil war,

Lumbee boys, then regarded as "free people of color," were

often impressed into the Confederate army. Military

service, itself, was not the critical factor; indeed, many

Lumbee voluntarily joined the Confederacy (marking yet

another moment of racial identity ambivalence).55 The Lumbee

53 ? For a full treatment of Lowry, see William McKee Evans, To Die Game: The Story of the Lowry Band, Indian Guerrillas of Reconstruction (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1995).

54 ? Sider, 158. See, as well, 164, 165, 175-6.

55 ? On Lumbee involvement in the US military, see Delano Cummings, Moon Dash Warrior: The Story of an American Indian in Vietnam, a Marine from the Land of the Lumbee (Livermoore, MD: Signal Tree

48

troops were sent to nearby Wilmington and forced to work in

ship construction and harbor dredging. They died by the

thousands of illness and disease. Law and order in Robeson

County was controlled by the Home Guards, men notoriously

brutal, anti-Indian, and above appeal or redress.

According to reports, Lowry's career began when he and

several other Lumbee boys escaped Home Guard control and hid

in the swamps. Attempts to restore order (and to intimidate

Lumbee and control Lumbee lands and livelihoods), resulted

in the murder of several Lumbee men. Lowry and his gang

responded to this violence with their own violence, killing

the high sheriff and the head of the home guard. What

ensued was a decade of guerrilla warfare and attempted

suppression which lasted well into Reconstruction.

According to Lumbee oral history, the killings did not end

until Indians were extended the right to vote. Henry Berry

then simply vanished, his mission complete.

There is substantial Lumbee pride in Lowry as the

pivotal figure who fought white oppression. Clearly a

Pub., 1988)..

49

"social bandit," Lowry and his gang survived for so long by

patching deep into Lumbee Indian community resources.56 The

community, in turn, kept his memory alive, perpetuating

stories about him. Admitting (indeed, at times celebrating)

the raw brutality in Lowry's violence, Lumbee memory depicts

him as a Robin Hood figure, robbing to feed the poor and

defending those who had no other outlet for justice. Every

summer, the Lumbee produce and perform a series of outdoor

dramas called "Strike at the Wind" about Lowry's life and

exploits.

Lowry and his gang were identified by the local

community (as recorded in newspaper accounts from the

period) as "Indian." Among the whites of the county, this

was hardly a complimentary move. It was a pejorative

reference to Lowry's wildness and savagery. As his legend

grew, Lowry became able to paddle his canoe for days on end,

haul nearly 50 pounds of weaponry through the swamps at a

56 ? Eric J. Hobsbawm, Bandits (rev.; New York: Pantheon, 1991). On the place of retaliatory action or "mean-ness" inIndian identity, see Blu, 144-49. She treats Lowry as an example (149-56) and Lumbee conflict with the KKK in Maxton,NC, 156-60.

50

dead run, creep silently into the very homes of the

prominent men of the county, and single-handedly fight 20

well armed soldiers until they retreated. Were that not

enough, he was dangerously handsome and a good singer (and

devoutly Christian, as well). His most notable attribute,

however, was his Indianness; a hybrid, he was able to

combine the finest refinement of the European with the

savageness and "woodsmanship" of the native.

The "free people of color" of Robeson county became

"Indians" through Henry Berry. Toward the end of his

career, they were, actually offered formal rights to vote

(as were all people of color, thanks to the Reconstruction

campaign of the Republicans). Shortly after being

infranchised, they became the Croatan Indians, complete with

their first historian (McMillan) and a newly founded normal

school.

While outside groups have struggled to identify the

Lumbee, we should not imagine the Lumbee, themselves, are

ambivalent. To quote one, "We know who we are, we know and

51

have always known; y'all are the ones who are trying to

identify something."57

In many ways, Indian tribal identity was superimposed

by whites. The Lumbee were not clearly defined and

acknowledged as "Indians" until Henry Berry Lowry. Lowry's

(and his companions') "Indianness" was a mark of his

"savagery" to the whites of Robeson County; it was proof of

his "less than" status. For Lowry and the Lumbee, armed

resistance was required to prove "personhood." In other

words, for the white community, Lowry, as an Indian, was

less human; for the Lumbee, Lowry, as an Indian under arms,

proved his humanity equal and, by extension, their own.

This sense of defiant "Indianness" (and its attendant

establishment of full, equal "humanness") still pervades

Lumbee culture. The Lumbee pursuit of Federal recognition

is not driven (at least not argued as driven) by a desire

for reparations, but from a deep desire to finally be

acknowledged as Indians by the state and by the other,

recognized Indian groups in North Carolina. The Lumbee have

57 ? Wolfram, et al., 4.

52

also always maintained a fierce allegiance to the United

States military, seizing the notion of the "Indian

brave/warrior" (a figure, for the record, a figure which is

very much a myth of European making) and maintain devout

religious communities which stress education and moral

restraint. According to Adolph Dial (one of the Lumbee's

most beloved and recognized historians), the intense push

toward education and religion reflect long standing Indian

values; in fact, they are, indeed, proof of "Indian-ness"

even as they establish the full humanity of the Lumbee.58

The Lumbee struggle is a struggle to define oneself as

fully human, but also fully unique from colonizer.

Construction of new religious and cultural identities,

hybridized in ways that alter colonizer as well as

colonized. Further, the integration is such that any pre-

contact religons, languages or kinship identity controls are

58 ? Dial, 106-16. In his survey of Lumbee religion, he never acknowledges any prechristian practice. Indeed, he takes comfort in the fact that no missionary ever came to the Lumbee (106); they worked out their own faith. See, as well, Bruce Barton, Religious Experience: An Important Part of Lumbee Heritage (Pembroke, NC: Lumbee Regional Development Association, 1984).

53

completely lost. Ironically, the Indians of Robison county

celebrate that loss as part of their identity, continued

community power and prominence, and success. Achievement

and progress are defined in terms of imitation of the

colonizer and resistance, simultaneously.

Third Interlude

It's July, my daughter has been visiting me for the summer from her home

in New Jersey (with her mother). She and I have decided to go to see a local,

outdoor theater production of a musical play, Strike at the Wind.

Strike at the Wind is a dramatic presentation of the life of Henry Berry

Lowry. It is performed in an amphitheater, near the lake at the Indian Cultural

Heritage Center, just about 5 or so miles up the road from UNC Pembroke.

Henry's cabin has been moved to a site just outside the theater. It is remarkably

small. It stands like a shrine between the parking lot and the lake. For show

nights, it is opened. Though empty and in disrepair (my daughter and I looked

into it, but did not enter fearing injury or dirt), the house is lovingly toured by

theater-goers as we await sufficient darkness for the drama to begin.

The play is long. And it is surprisingly violent. It portrays Lowry's life in

highly sympathetic terms. He is driven to outlawry. No murder by the Lumbee is

premeditated (though they do set out for revenge. Oddly, somehow, the violence

54

that ensues seems to take everyone by surprise); some killings are accidental.

The members of clergy are presented as sympathetic to the Lumbee, but

generally ineffective. They can not stop violence; they can, at best, perform a

wedding or hide a fugitive.

The play opens with a prologue where the history of the Lumbee is related.

They are, they assert, the descendants of both the ancient Indians who roamed

these swamps and the early English settlers who arrived in Raleigh's colony.

They end with a hymn and prayer to the "God of Carolina" worshipped in the

past and in the present, but in different forms. The lead voice, a woman in

traditional Indian dress, notices a young girl sitting in the audience reading a

book. She approaches her and discovers the girl is reading about the history of

the Lumbee. She announces that "no real truth is found in books" and takes the

little girl on stage to show her the "real" story. The pair form a motif through the

play, commenting on the actions.

Lowrey's end is not portrayed. In the last scene of the play, Henry and his

wife are meeting in the woods; he is considering turning himself in. They are

interrupted by a preacher who tells them that the newspapers have declared that

Indians will soon be given the right to vote. Henry understands that this is a

result of his labors and outlawry, he vows to keep on until there is full liberty,

then runs back into the swamps. Sounds of pursuit and gunshots are heard off

55

stage. His horrified wife turns to the clergyman, who tells her that Henry will be

OK; he will live forever.

What follows can only be called "spectacular." Slowly, someone begins

singing the "Battle Hymn of the Republic." One by one, each of the characters

returns to the stage. The dead literally rise from where they fell and return in

bloodied costume. Their voices raise as the music crescendos. Smoke appears

from the wings. Atop one of the central buildings, Henry slowly rises to stand,

back lit by a red light, his silhouette made hazy by the smoke. As the chorus

reaches the reprised second chorus, Lowry raises his rifle over his head with his

right arm. Fireworks explode into the night air.

The audience was visibly moved, many to tears. I turned to my daughter

(who is 10) and asked what she thought. She had her "you can't be serious" face.

"Well, it was different." The cast lines the exits, shaking everyone's hand as we

leave. The audience, overwhelmingly Lumbee, chat with them as old friends,

comparing the evening's performance with others. At the exit, five armed

deputies from the local sheriff's office stand to offer security for us in the parking

lot.

IV. Conclusions

By this point, a reader might ask (with some fairness)

what any of the above has to do with the interpretation of

56

the New Testament. What, however interesting it might be,

does the construction of Native American identity, in

general, or even of Lumbee identity, in particular, have to

contribute to texts like 2 Peter 2. To begin, one could ask

how the Lumbee would read a passage such as 2 Peter 2, with

all its history of interpretation (and its apparent

endorsement of a brutal dehumanizing rhetoric). In my

experience with Lumbee students (admittedly, anecdotal

data), there is occasionally some concern over the language

once I point it out. There is often far, far more

insistence on the reality of biblical inspiration, Petrine

authorship, and vigorous linkage of the "false prophets"

described in 2 Peter and modern, gay-rights-supporting,

back-east educated, historically skeptical, politically

liberal religious leaders and professors (read: me).

At present, however, I don't want to address Lumbee

engagement of this passage, in all its complexity; such, in

some serious ways, is not my argument to make.59 One

59 ? There is, however, a growing body of scholarship by indigenous Americans on "reading back" against biblical text. For an engaging example, see Robert Allen Warrior's

57

possible reaction might be akin to Jay Hansford C. Vest's

(he, a Monacan Indian) reaction and analysis of the film The

Mission. He writes (resonating with our text):

Speculation concerning the origin of American Indians and questions as to whether they were men or savage beasts plagued the Spanish and European authorities as they initiated the conquest. . . . Although the Papal Donation of 1493 had declared the Indians to be men, Pope Alexander VI, with the advice of the archbishiop of Seville, decreed that the Indiansshould serve the Spaniards and that this vassalage was in accordance with the law, human and divine. Armed with their folk bestiaries and fertile imaginations, the Spaniards felt justified in the Conquest, and this policy was later rationalized in the Great Debate at Vallidolid, 1550-51, when Aristotle's theory of "Natural Slavery" was applied to American Indians. Aristotle had held that some men born of inferior race were natural slaves and that they constituted a condition of "animate possession" when held by a superior race. It was this authority that gave the Spaniards rights of natural lordship and permanent superiority over American aboriginals.60

"Canaanites, Cowboys, and Indians: Deliverance, Conquest andLiberation Theology Today" ChristC 29 (1989), 261-265.

60 ? Jay H. C. Vest, "The Jesuit Republic and Brother Carein The Mission: An Allegory of the Conquest," American Indian Culture and Research Journal 29.3 (2005), 26-7.

58

In what ways did/does the implicit permission provided

by this text to see others as "irrational animals" play into

similar racist moments?61

Instead of these questions, my suggestion, at present,

is this: the same kinds of cultural forces behind (and

tensions arising from) the segregation of Indian peoples

into "tribal" identities may well be at work behind the

rhetoric of Jewish/Christian identity found in 2 Peter.

"Pre-colonized" (or, better, "pre-imperialized") Jews were

different from "post-colonized" ("post-imperialized") Jews

in ways pre-contact Indians were different from post-contact

"Tribes." After Roman Imperial control, Judaism faced a

host of pressures (arising from disputes with and

superimposed controls from without) that triggered precisely

around what it "meant" to be a Jew and how one could be,

most authentically, Jewish. These pressures manifested in

acute sub-community divisions, many of which "warred" with

one another over identity. Further, these disputes over

61 ? On writing back, see Andrea Smith, "Dismantling the Master's Tools with the Master's House: Native Feminist Liberation Theologies." JFSR 22.2 (2006), 85-97.

59

self-definition interacted with larger cosmopolitan modes of

discourse by appropriation of forms, use of rhetoric, and

explicit modification of techniques of control. The heresy

fervor of 2 Peter, and the particular appropriation of

dehumanizing, identity-denying rhetoric, betray just such a

process.

The Lumbee display, aggressively, the process of

cultural construction of identity amidst the pressures of

commodification and colonial exploitation. Their present

identity is an amalgam of independent constructions, armed

resistance and banditry, religious accommodation and

political embellishments.

2 Peter 2 displays an intermixing of religious

traditions and values, and this display reflects similar

tensions and ambivalences experienced by the Lumbee.

Commodified and colonized by the Romans, 2 Peter uses the

rhetoric of the altern to define others as "more subaltern,"

much as the Lumbee do. 2 Peter reflects a fragmented

community, vis-a-vis ideas of ethnicity, a community unable

to agree on what it means to be "Messianic" or "Jewish."

60

The Lumbee reflect a similarly fractured identity, unable to

decide what the origins of and tribal identity of their own

people might be and what it means to be Indian. Both the

community of 2 Peter and the Lumbee endorse and manipulate

inherited (some from within, others externally imposed)

mythologies of origin and difference. Both display an

acceptance of broad range of culturally appropriated terms

and colonial controls. Both use the colonizer's rhetoric of

disruption and dehumanization to construct themselves.

Pressures of contact colonial encroachment turned

Native American life and land resources into commodities.

Further, the enhanced production demands (and increased

competition) made indigenous peoples reliant upon European

weapons and tools, and, so trade (and the over-production of

their now commodified foods and lands). These tensions led

to increased village-to-village alliances and kinship

alliances. These alliances fostered inter-alliance

competition and solidified "tribal" identities. Contact and

colonialization created Indian "Nations" and "tribes" in the

modern sense. These identities were magnified by warfare.

61

Contact forced these changes and established Indian

stereotypes. Contact produced the "Indian" identity. It

also obliterated the prior, pre-hybridized identity and

fostered intense conflict and rivalry between tribes.

Modern "Indian" identity is the result of colonial pressures

and production.

Similar forces are at work in ancient Jewish and

Christian groups. These tensions fueled the desire to mark

out boundaries of who is or is not "Diaspora" Jew - or even

who is or is not "Jew" (or what, precisely, was required to

make one a Jew). We see it within Palestinean and the

tensions between Pharisee, Sadducee, and Essene. Similar

tensions must have been at play among Diaspora Jews (note

the tensions implied by Acts 6). These tensions may also be

the fuel behind the increasing interest in Messianic

exegesis and "orthodox" teachings emerging among Jews in the

late first century. Elements of earlier cultural engagement

and domination, such as translating the Bible into Greek,

may have introduced Greek religious concepts (such as

notions of post-mortem judgement).

62

2 Peter reflects the intersecting borders of all these

forces.

Resistance to Rome and colonial forces produce

community, hybridized identities which need distinction and

division. These inner divisions become doctrinal. Some

were created by social pressures, some by real physical

threat.62

The very term "Christianity" is superimposed by Romans.

Any distinctions between the various "schools" of

Palestinian Judaism, likewise, arise from various strategies

for resistance or compliance to Rome and Roman rule, as well

as an attempt to perform a type of Judaism under Roman

observation and cultural pressures. Romans are tolerant, to

a point, with Judaism. These tolerances could, however, be

revoked in a moment. They also entailed toleration by Jews

of Roman curiosity and demanded strategies of accommodation.

No where is this more apparent than in Roman desires for

62 ? As per Daniel Boyarin. Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (Figurae: Reading Medieval Culture; Standford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999).

63

sacrifice "on behalf of" the Roman emperor and the various

responses to that demand.

I want, however, to return to two issues I raised in

the introduction and propose two, important, caveats.

First, the context of imperial control is clearly present,

but what about commodification? Second, is there a way to

acknowledge similar pressures toward hybridity behind 2

Peter and postcolonialism and to retain Greco-Roman notions

of race and ethnicity?

Ethnicity is defined, in large part, by religiosity in

the Roman empire. Further, Roman control demanded all

subordinate religiosities accommodate themselves to Roman

programs of piety - particularly emperor veneration. Romans

did allow Jews clear accommodations for their own religious

expression; there were laws that addressed unique Jewish

concerns about activity on the Sabbath, Jews were allowed to

assemble for worship and study, Jews were not forced to

practice forms of idolatry, the Jerusalem Temple was

(generally) kept free from images of the Roman state, Jews

were allowed to collect their own sacred taxes for temple

64

administration. Early Christian apologists certainly also

used these various laws as precedent for their own

acceptance by Rome.

All of these accommodations, however, could be, and

were, revoked at imperial whim. The religiosity of the Jews

was subject to Roman monitoring and Roman control. It was

allowed, and this is key, to the extent that it produced a

harmonious people who supported the general peace and piety

of the Roman empire. It was allowed to the extent that it

did not interfere with Roman religious expression and to the

degree that it supported Roman forms of religiosity. Piety

and religiosity were tangible and real products in the Roman

world.

In essence, then, religiosity, itself, is the

commodified element of Roman control of the Jews and nascent

Christians. This commodity was forced to compliance by a

conquering state. In other words, Roman political and

economic control demanded Jewish religiosity comply with

Roman standards or, at minimum, remain within its

predescribed boundaries. We need only recall how integral

65

religiosity was for ancient forms of ethnicity and

subjectivity to begin to understand how egregious this

particular form of commodification would have been to Jews.

Their oppressors are forcing them to use the very central

marker of their identity (an identity now prescribed and

controlled by the oppressor), their religiosity, to support

the agenda and venerate the presence of their oppressor.

The various forms of "otherness" of the Jew are marked out

by their responses to Rome.63

The pressures that fueled both Pharasaic purity and

Messianic fervor are not simply the resistance to a harsh

overlord who imposes taxes. They are ways of resisting the

commodification of their own religious values. Also, the

various sub-strategies of mimicry and resistance to Roman

religious terms and motifs are, themselves, colonial

products and a means of self-fashioning or control over

Roman ethnicity and distinction. These pressures arise from

63 ? I'm thinking, in particular, of Jewish resistance to Roman iconic intrusions into the Temple and its general confines. Notably, the response to these varied from acquiescence to martial suppresson.

66

superimposed notions of both "ethnicity" and "religion."

Finally, these various sub-communities each argues a form of

"orthodoxy" that will satisfy particular and segregated

ideas about what, precisely needs "resistance" in this

system of commodification and how best to go about carving

out a "legitimate," self-possessed identity and ethnicity.

Further, all communities have adopted the colonial myth of

"uniqueness" and "separation." Each is distinct, even from

the other communities lumped in by the Colonizer as

"equivalent." Finally, these sub-communities are placed at

odds with one another by Roman social and political

pressures.

Theology and emergent Messianic identity (and later,

"orthodoxy") are hybrid constructs. These are not

rudimentary "fear of mixture or perversion" but an hybrid

resistance. As such, they co-opt and adopt/adapt colonial

ideas and structures. Further, they are not just protest of

an oppressive emperor or government structure. It isn't a

matter of simple compliance or deviance. Hybridity is the

synthetic construction of identities, rooted in ambivalence,

67

accepting and rejecting (sometimes overtly, sometimes pre-

critically) the ideas, values and agendas of the colonizer.

Hybridization in both communities also reveals the

construction of elaborate systems of self-mythologies of the

hybrid. Pasts and group boundaries are modified to enhance

divisions and separations. Community values are remade in

light of colonial agendas. In both communities, notions of

purity, history, boundary, and community identity are

constructs, created by the pressures of colonizaiton and its

alteration of the hybrid.

Returning to second Peter, we see a document that is

eclectic in its incorporation of and resistance to Romanized

forms of religious commodification. We also see an author

intent upon clarifying the boundaries between his

"legitimate" community and any others, even as he is intent

upon the struggle from and with the colonial "outsider."

Ironically (and inevitably from the processes of hybridity

and mimicry), he also adopts the rhetoric of

"dehumanization" of his opponents. "They" are not correct.

"They" are failing in the central struggle to form a

68

religious identity that is properly aligned with and against

the interests of the State. "They" are less than human.

Therefore, "they" are fit only for subordination and

control. It takes little imagination to perceive how each

of these arguments could have been levied by any given Roman

against the Jews and nascent Christian.

I can not avoid noting how cleanly this also integrates

into other-originated myths of Jewish separation and

uniqueness. Further, Jews arguing against other Jews (and,

by extension, nascent Christians arguing with other

Christians) arises as a result of Roman persecution (notice

how the central issues around martyrdom are always

veneration of the Roman state, and how central issues in

intra-mural Jew and Jew Christian debates are always

oriented around distinct elements of religious ritual). And

again, these intra-mural debates, while likely not

deliberately fostered by the Roman state, certainly weaken

resistance via division and play into larger Roman

interests. Finally, the very modes and language of intra-

mural conflict are those of the colonial power, inscribing

69

the system itself. 2 Peter 2 reflects, in its abrupt

rhetoric, these many tensions.

Postlude

Sometime in the 1970s, our department was the beneficiary of a collection

of ancient stoneware – pots, lamps, a few figurines – from Israel. The material,

about 80 pieces in all, ranges from the Chalcolitic period (one, rather ordinary

looking bowl) through the Bronze and Iron II ages (the latter being our most

abundant) and up to the Roman period. This past academic term, the cabinets

in which they were normally stored had been taken in by facilities for some much

needed physical and cosmetic work. By May, the newly refurbished cabinets

were back. I was drafted to oversee the re-installation of the pieces for exhibit.

I'm not an archaeologist, by any stretch, but as a resident "Bible guy," the lot fell

to me. We carefully took out and unwrapped each item, matched it with its

cataloged identification number, reset it in its display, and put appropriate

identification next to it. I tried to concentrate on my work and not wonder about

the process of where and how these items might have come into our collections.

Normal classes were ended, exams had been graded and grades posted,

graduation was past. The hallways were fairly empty. Our work was engrossing.

None of us wanted to be the demise of an artifact that had weathered so many

years and transitions. In between the setting in of each piece, there was a

70

nervous burst of conversation and tension easing laughter. The mood was

heightened by the sense we were alone.

About mid-way through our work, a curious student appeared, a young

woman, 20ish, who stood a ways behind us, watching. As we finished with one

cabinet and closed and locked it's glass doors, she came forward to see what she

had just been watching be installed. She stood there a moment, and we let her.

Taking it in, she was drawn to a lovely Roman-period lamp. "How old is this," she

asked. I told her. "What's the oldest thing here?" I showed her the bowl and

explained that it was 4- 3000 BCE.

"Who would guess this was here," she said. "This must be the oldest stuff

on campus." I told her that, actually, that wasn't true. Just over in Old Main is

the Lumbee museum. They had stone tools and weapons that dated from the

stone age, possibly 14,000 years old. I explained that perhaps twice as old, if not

a bit more, than the oldest item in the case.

"Yeah," she said, barely looking at me. "I guess. But that's just some old

Indian shit. You find it on the ground just anywhere. This stuff is what's special."

Having one of those "where do you start" moments (and, frankly, still worn out

from a semester of teaching), I didn't answer, but left her alone to consider the

past.

71

As I edit and re-read this paper, I must admit I feel a vague sense of

intrusion. In ways, I feel my own (Scottish) voice once again intruding on the

Lumbee's hard fought struggle for identity. I feel out of place. I feel I am a

colonizer. I worry about over-writing the others, both the ancients and the

moderns, that I engage. In some ways, my attempts to unravel the careful

identity constructed by the author of 2 Peter is disrespectful. In some ways, my

engagement of Lumbee identity is heavy handed.

And I am often disloyal to both in my profession. In truth, my job involves

me teaching readers, many of whom admire 2 Peter, to approach the text with

caution. My job involves me also stressing, at times seeming to unravel, the faith

positions of many students, many of the Lumbee. Lumbee students at UNCP

often come from rural high schools, programs that suffer from underfunding

and lack of sufficient qualified teaching staff (as do most rural North Carolina

schools). They are often woefully unprepared for college level work. Frustrated

(and occasionally threatened by the content) many drop my classes. They never

come to me to talk; they simply stop coming..

On my drive home, I decide to turn left just past the old Moss Neck station

stop (it's not there anymore, the train rolls on through) towards the Old Burnt

Swamp and Union Chapel. I stop for gas at the Lost Colony Trading Post and

Exxon, then turn towards home.

72

Still restless, I opt to enjoy the late Spring weather and get out my bike. I

ride from the house, down Water Street and between two memorial parks. The

first, on the left, is a small lawn and stone marking the site of the "First Hebrew

Congregation of Robeson County, ca. 1908." Just past it, on my right, is a stone

marking the bridge site for the first crossing of "Drowning Creek" and the

establishment of Lumberton as "the First City of Robeson County" in the 1760s. I

turn east on fifth street, just as the new Courthouse comes into view, and briefly

head back toward Pembroke. Soon I'm riding along the trails along the Lumber

river, slipping through the pines into the cool shade, my reflection upon the still,

black water below.

73

On 2 Peter

Bauckham, Richard. "2 Peter: An Account of Research." Principat 25.5, pages 3713-52 in

_________________. "2 Peter: A Supplementary Bibliography." JETS 25 (Mr. 1982):

91-3.

_________________. "The Delay of the Parousia." Tyndale Bulletin 31 (1980): 3-36.

(argues using debate between Rabbi Eliezer b. Hyrcanus and Rabbi Joshua b.

Hananiah, the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch, 2 Peter 3, and Revelation showing

"Christian treatment of the delay of the parousia was able to draw on these

Jewish resources."

SA. Charles A. Talbert, "2 Peter and the Delay of the Parousia." Vigiliae christianae 20.3

(S 1966): 137-45.

Desjardins, Michael R. "The Portrayal of the Dissidents in 2Peter and Jude: Does it Tell

us More About the 'Godly' than the 'Ungodly?'" JSNT 30 (Je 1987): 89-102.

Snyder, John. "A 2 Peter bibliography." JETS 22 (s 1979): 265-67.

Thurén, Lauri, "Style Never Goes Out of Fashion: 2 Peter Re-evaluated." Pages 329-47

in Rhetoric, Scripture and Theology. Ed. XX. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic

Press, 1996.

On 2 Peter 2

74

Cavallin, Hans C C. "The False Teachers of 2 Peter as Pseudo-Prophets." Novum

testamentum 21 (Jl 1979): 263-70. (2 Pet. uses rhetoricof false prophets found

in HB).

Chang, Andrew D. "Second Peter 2:1 and the Extent of the Atonement." Bibliotheca

sacra 142 (Ja-Mr 1985): 52-63.

Dunnett, Walter M. "The Hermeneutics of Jude and 2 Peter: The Use of Ancient Jewish

Traditions." JETS 31 (S 1988): 287-92.

Hiebert D. Edmond. "Selected Studies from 2 Peter, pt. 3: A Portrayal of False Teachers:

An Exposition of 2 Peter 2:1-3." Bibliotheca sacra 141 (Jl-S 1984): 255-65.

Picirilli, Robert E. "Allusions to 2 Peter in the Apostolic Fathers." JSNT 33 (Je 1988):

57-83.

______________. "Meaning of Epignosis." Evangelical Quarterly 47 (Ap-Je 1975): 85-

93.

Skehan, Patrick William. "Note on 2 Peter 2:13." Biblica 41.1 (1960): 69-71.

Witherington, Ben. "A Petrine Source in 2 Peter." SBL Seminar Papers, no. 24 (1985):

187-92 (suggests Jude is the source for 2 Peter 2).

Other, Misc.

Danker, Frederick W. "2 Peter 3:10 and Psalm of Solomon 17:10. Zeitschrift für die

75

neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der älteren Kirche 53.1-2 (1962):

82-6.

Farmer, William Reuben. "Some Critical Reflections on 2 Peter: A Response to a Paper

on 2 Peter by Denis Farkasfalvy." Second Century 5.1 (Spr. 1985-86): 30-46.

Heide, Gale Z. "What is New about the New Heaven and New Earth? A Theology of

Creation from Revelation 21 and 2 Peter 3." JETS 40 (Mr. 1997): 37-56.

Miller, Robert J. "Is There Independent Attestation for the Transfiguration in 2 Peter."

NTS 42 (O 1996): 620-5.

Thiede, Carsten Peter, "A Pagan Reader of 2 Peter: Cosmic Conflagration in 2 Peter 3

and the Octavius of Minucius Felix." JSNT 26 (F 1986)):79-86.

Books

Birger Pearson, 2 Peter and Jude. (Anchor)Duane F. Watson, Invention, Arrangement, and Style: Rhetorical Criticism of Jude and 2 Peter. (reviewed by Webb).

Lumbee:

Joseph Michael Smith and Lula Jane Smith. The Lumbee Methodists:Getting to Know

Them: A Folk History. Raleigh, NC: Commission of Archives and History North

Carolina Methodist Conference, 1990.

Gerald Sider. Living Indian Histories: Lumbee and Tuscarora People in North Carolina.

76

Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.

Dial, Adolph L. and David K. Eliades. The Only Land I Know: A History of the Lumbee

Indians. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1996.

Nabokov, Peter, ed. Native American Testimony: A Chronicle of Indian-White Relations

From Prophecy to the Present, 1492-2000. New York: Viking, 2000.

Evans, William McKee. To Die Game: The Story of the Lowry Band, Indian Guerrillas of

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