Jesus Christ Superstar. Robert M. Price
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be using to interpret the Superstar libretto throughout this book. More on that soon.
The third key text for the characterization of Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar is Mark's conclusion to the "Little Apocalypse" on the Mount of Olives: "But of that day and that hour no man knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father" (Mark 13:32). The fourth major passage is the Garden of Gethsemane scene (Mark 14:32-42), in which Jesus' resolve to follow the redemptive plan seems to falter momentarily and he pleads with God to let him skip the whole thing. Why not? After all, God is all-wise: surely he must be able to think of some other way to accomplish his purpose. The fifth is Mark 15:34, the Cry of Dereliction, part of the crucifixion story, when Jesus laments, in the words of Psalm 22, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Here is another text that Luke and John (though this time not Matthew) have rewritten because they found it unworthy of the more-than-human Jesus they had come to believe in. Jesus? Reproaching his heavenly Father for abandoning him? None of these passages portray Jesus in a manner that emerging orthodoxy was coming to brand as heresy, i.e., thought crime.
When critics like Bob Larson and other fundamentalists upbraid Tim Rice for depicting Jesus in an unworthy manner they seem not to notice that they are upholding a Jesus who is more biblical than the Bible. I suppose that generations of gospel readers have managed to ignore the same passages that later gospel writers tried to editorially de-fuse.
Leighton Ford, an evangelistic colleague of Billy Graham, wrote in a leaflet called Jesus Christ Superstar-Or Son of God?, "The rock opera, 'Jesus Christ Superstar,' leaves us with a haunting question: 'Who are you? Who are you?' The New Testament leaves us with a triumphant affirmation. He is not 'Superstar.' He is the Son of God. He is not dead. He is alive, forever more." On the whole, of course, Ford is quite correct: the gospels and epistles are full of theological affirmations about Jesus, but, as we have just seen, there are a few lingering traces of an earlier stage where such certainties had not yet solidified. And he is equally correct in saying that Rice's Superstar leaves us with a haunting question. I have been trying to suggest that, even religiously speaking, haunting uncertainty is not a bad thing. Paul Tillich even said that "faith" should not be understood as unwavering acceptance of a prescribed set of beliefs, but rather as an ultimate concern with a set of issues or questions. Faith is not the antithesis of doubt; rather, faith includes doubt. In some ways doubt is even constitutive of faith, since without an element of uncertainty we would not speak of "faith" at all, but of knowledge. Uncertainty, doubt, "haunting questions" keep the nerve endings sensitized; certainties make them comfortably numb.
From the standpoint of secular literary theory, Tzvetan Todorov makes exactly the same point in his discussion of what he calls "the fantastic," what Lovecraft tended to call "the weird tale." In other words, a tale of the unexpected, the eerie, the tale that raises uneasy suspicions, fears and dreads, not so much fears of a concrete known danger, but rather of what awesome thing may be awaiting. It is the element of uncertainty that keeps the adrenalin pumping, the chills running down the spine. Todorov distinguishes the fantastic tale from the tale of the uncanny on the one hand and that of the marvelous on the other. The uncanny tale is one which begins with unsettling and alarming possibilities of ghosts or the supernatural but ends with a rational, naturalistic explanation, as in Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue" or Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles. The tale of the marvelous, by contrast, also resolves itself, only in the opposite direction. The reader learns that the ghost or vampire is real. Todorov regards both the marvelous and the uncanny (defined in these specific senses) as less effective than the tale of the fantastic in which the suspense, the dramatic tension is never resolved. One is left with the frightening feeling, "Suppose it was a vampire?" Shiver. But if the detective proves it was all an elaborate ruse, the suspense leaks away. We feel a sense of relief even though the ending is anticlimactic, disappointing. We like this because we want not to be disturbed. We don't like haunting ambiguity. We want to know one way or the other.
If the vampire turns out to be real, the dramatic tension drains away, too. Instantly the terms of the story change. As van Helsing pursues Dracula, we still have an exciting movie, but the supernaturalism is no longer so fearful, having come out into the light of day. Now the vampire is just a dangerous opponent in a world in which the supernatural has been reclassified as mundane. We take it for granted, and all we have left for thrills is to hope the hero has the speed to avoid the deadly fangs and the strength to plunge in the stake. Really just an action-adventure film (or story). The wonder and the breathe-holding awe are dissipated. But the author of the "fantastic" tale refuses to let you off the hook. The tension, the mystery, is sustained. "The fantastic occupies the duration of this uncertainty. Once we choose one answer or the other, we leave the fantastic for a neighboring genre, the uncanny or the marvelous. The fantastic is that hesitation experienced by a person who knows only the laws of nature, confronting an apparently [but possibly not genuinely] supernatural event.” 24 One leaves the theater or puts down the book, but it's still not over. You look over your shoulder as you head for your bed.
Tim Rice is on record (no pun intended!) as saying, "We've just tried to tell a story. It's a fantastic story."25 It is even "fantastic" in Todorov's specific sense. Rice knew that a resolution of the tale either way (Jesus was just a self-important media idol, now fallen--or Jesus was the redeemer Son of God) would dissipate the crucial mystery: "our intention was to take no religious stand on the subject, but rather to ask questions." 26 We could dismiss Jesus in the same terms Pilate does ("Yes, he's misguided, thinks he's important...") or we could become one of Eric Hoffer's "true believers" ("Jesus, I am with you! Did you see? I waved! I believe in you and God, so tell me that I'm saved!"). Those options, that question, were open in the days of Jesus. They remain open now, as Judas still knows at the end of the opera, from the perspective of 2,000 years later. Leighton Ford is glad that the canonical gospels resolve the story of Jesus into a tale of the marvelous, but then it is simply one more drifting dream in our dogmatic slumber. Judas wants to be done with the whole thing, and he will be if he can only reduce the story of a once-mysterious Jesus to a tale of the uncanny, of a "jaded mandarin" who has to be turned in "like a common criminal." But he knows better: he knows that he does not know, can never know for sure. His hell is to be ever tormented with the question "Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, who are you? What have you sacrificed? Don't you get me wrong--I only want to know!" That, Tillich would say, is faith, the wrestling with one's ultimate concern. "He scares me so... Does he love me, too? Does he care for me?"
Then When We Retire We Can Write the Gospels
One reviewer dismissed Jesus Christ Superstar as "A sorry redaction, in short, of one of the greatest books we possess" (Brendan Gill). 27 What is a redaction? It is, quite simply, and edited and/or revised version of a prior document. It may have been redacted by the original writer, trimming it of what now seems superfluous verbiage or erroneous notions. Or it may have been redacted by a later author. In the latter case, the original writer may himself have submitted his manuscript to an editor believing the latter has a more objective judgment. Or it may be that a much later editor/redactor has taken it upon himself to update, revise, improve an older work.
The gospels of the New Testament all represent works of redaction. None of them seem to have been written up from whole cloth, like a novel or an original biography. None seems to have been eye-witness reportage either. Mark, apparently the oldest of the official four, seems to have been working with various traditional individual sayings attributed to Jesus as well as stories of various types about him. These had filtered down over some decades by word-of-mouth transmission--yes, like a game of "Telephone." There is no telling how much of it really goes back to Jesus at all, much less in its extant form. But at any rate, Mark must have edited these various bits and pieces. How much flexibility, how much creative freedom did he allow himself? Opinions differ. It is beginning to look as if the wording is pretty much all his, i.e., he preserved very little of the wording as he had heard it but felt free to put everything into his own distinctive idiom. (See Frans Neiyrinck, Duality in Mark; Robert Fowler, Let the Reader Understand). A modern parallel would be one of those celebrity "autobiographies" that credit authorship this way: "By Charles W. Kingsfield [and in fine print:] with Michael de Leeuw."
Other scholars think he preserved a good bit of the wording in the sayings and anecdotes as he received them, but that he combined the bits and pieces