Jesus Christ Superstar. Robert M. Price
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Jesus Christ Superstar
The Making of a Modern Gospel
by
Robert M. Price
Copyright 2011 Robert Price,
All rights reserved.
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-0169-0
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
To Patrice Eve Taylor and Carmen St. Clair
It’s all you wanted,
Not much to ask for.
Permission
The lyrics of Jesus Christ Superstar are copyright © 1970, 1973 MCA Records, Inc. 70 Universal City, CA, 91608-USA. All rights reserved. They appear here by permission of Tim Rice and MCA Records, Inc.
Foreword
I take it as a most generous compliment that a writer such as Robert M. Price can pay so much attention to something I wrote, with Andrew Lloyd Webber, over a quarter of a century ago. And, I am glad to say, it is not only Mr. Price who retains enthusiasm for JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR after all this time.
When SUPERSTAR first appeared it was a spectacular, almost overnight, success – as a record album. It did not become a show or movie for some time after the record’s release. Some of the stagings and productions of the work since 1970 have been successful, some not, but the work has survived them all.
25 years on I can say without too much arrogance that I think it is a good piece of writing, but its endurance is probably a result of its innocence and youthful drive rather than of its (not inconsiderable) musical and lyrical qualities.
It will probably see me out!
Tim Rice
Introduction: The Scandal of Superstar
A Modern Gospel
What is a gospel? And why do I consider the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar to be one? Isn't a gospel by definition one of the books of the Bible? If so, then nothing written in recent centuries could be counted as a gospel. This is because the "canon" of scripture (the official table of contents) was settled back in the fourth century AD. Who settled the matter? Who decided what writings should be included, excluded? Various synods of bishops meeting here and there in North Africa and Constantinople. Who gave them the authority to make such a decision? Keep in mind that the Bible is a book many people have lived by and died for, believing the book to be the written Word of God. But no one ever claimed that the voice of God suddenly rang out and told the bishops which books to include. Being an editor of fiction anthologies myself, I know this would make the selection process a lot simpler. But, no, like me, the bishops made their own judgment calls. Did they make the right choices? Some religious leaders tell us that we must simply accept their ancient editorial decisions as if the bishops were just as divinely inspired as the original Bible writers themselves were supposed to have been. This is quite ironic, since on all other matters the same clergymen will warn us to listen only to the Bible, not to the words of mere mortals--and yet it was the opinions of mere mortals like ourselves who determined what was Bible and what wasn't. 1
Today many people, including religious people, are beginning to realize we must think for ourselves in this as in all other matters. Religious questions are potentially too important to leave in anyone else's hands. This means that it is we who must choose what we will consider to be our "Bible." We might choose some other sacred text, like the Koran or the Bhagavad Gita, to replace the Bible, or to be added to it. Or we might take a second look at some of the books excluded from the official Bible long ago. Luckily, copies of several of them managed to survive the attempts of churchly inquisitors to burn all of them. To define the contents of what is going to be considered sacred scripture is to try to control people's beliefs in advance by eliminating other sources of ideas.
If you're thinking about choosing a new set of "biblical" writings for yourself, you might even decide to write your own. That is what the writers of the Bible did, after all. And that is what Tim Rice did, too.
But, someone may object, the ancient apostles and scribes had an advantage over us: they were infallibly directed by the Holy Spirit to write what they wrote. That's why it's so trustworthy. In fact, critical, scientific study of the Bible, begun back in the eighteenth century, has revealed that the Bible writers quite often contradicted themselves and each other. They regularly treated myth and legend as fact, just as credulous rumor-mongers do today. They took for granted superstitions and pre-scientific beliefs common in their day. They disagree with one another even on major theological issues. Whether the Bible is "divinely inspired" or not seems to be a moot point. Even if it is inspired, that hasn't protected it from the same sort of errors and corruptions that all human writings are liable to. So what the Bible writers did was apparently no different from what modern writers are doing, whether they are poets, philosophers, essayists, fiction writers, whatever. All these literary genres are present in the Bible. It is, as is often said, a library of books, not a single, unified composition.
Which one of these genres does a "gospel" belong to? Actually, several at the same time. A gospel is a writing about Jesus in which a writer expresses his faith about Jesus and perhaps seeks to awaken the same faith in the reader. The word "gospel" is an English word, a contraction of the Old English "good spell," i.e., good report, good news. It is a translation of the Greek word euangelion. This means something like "the big news." Literally it breaks down to "good news," but by the time of early Christianity, the prefix "eu-" had been overused, beaten to death (just like our words "marvelous," "awesome," etc.). It was used to refer to things like the announcement that the Emperor would be staying the night in your village on his way back to Rome. Now this might be good news, or it might not be. He might commandeer your food, your horses, use your home as a stable for his horses, leaving you to sleep on the street. Either way, it was certainly the "big news." And the early Christians' big news was Jesus. It might be good news or bad depending on your reaction to it: "This sounds great! What must I do to be saved?" (Acts 16:30). Or "What can this babbler be trying to say?" (Acts 17:18).
At first the message preached by evangelists ("Believe in Jesus and you will be saved!" Acts 16:31) was called the gospel. It didn't mean a book, as when we refer to the four gospels, according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. This was a later stage, when some Christians decided they needed written documents to use as long-distance evangelistic tools. (Luke may have written his gospel and it's sequel, the Acts of the Apostles, in order to persuade his reader, a man named Theophilus, to accept the Christian faith, which Luke tried to make look as attractive as he could (Luke 1:1-4). John wrote with pretty much the same purpose in mind (John 20:30-31). Matthew rewrote and expanded the earlier Gospel of Mark to use as a catechetical manual for missionaries to use in teaching their converts (Matthew 28:19-20). Mark was probably an evangelistic tract (Mark 2:10; 13:10; 14:9).
If a gospel is a story of Jesus, does that mean a gospel is a history? It's not that simple. The New Testament gospels are mainly narrative, but the writers tend to treat the facts found in their source material (including previous gospels: Matthew and Luke both used most of Mark's text) with such freedom, changing the order of events, rewording what Jesus said, apparently attributing to him sayings of their own, in short, as if they were writing a piece of "historical fiction" like many novels and docudramas today. For instance, the Disney movie Pocahontas is certainly based on historical characters, but no adult thinks Pocahontas and John Smith spoke these words or did these things. Or think about Oliver Stone's movies about JFK and Nixon. Many scholars think that the gospels are ancient novels, largely fictionalizing the original events