Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
It’s in the various news sites, but I like to get as close to the source as possible to see what it says: Here’s the link to The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists website and its own news release.
One still reads enlightened (or benighted) twenty-first century scholars asserting that there can be no purpose in life, no standard for morality, if we are “merely nothing more” than a set of chemicals and our minds the product of “nothing more than electro-chemical reactions”.
By couching the argument in the rhetoric of “merely” or “nothing more”, I am reminded of Douglas Adams’ famous quip:
If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a non-working cat.
That our level of consciousness, aesthetics, ethics, and all that goes to make us the species we are, have evolved as the products of chemistry and physics is not something to be dismissed as a “merely” or a “nothing more”. It is a staggering, mind-blowing thing to grasp. What makes it so damn hard to get my mind around is my inability to comprehend the vastness of the time involved.
None of our abilities, apart perhaps from our language faculty, is a sudden or unique leap that stands in total isolation from everything else. Consciousness is not unique. We can see gradients of consciousness across various species. Social and personal rules of conduct, with punishments for breaches, are observed in many other species that live in social groups. There even seems to be some sort of aesthetic sense at work among bower birds who plant blue objects in a nest to impress a mate, and will notice if human vandalizes their efforts by relocating a blue peg in their nest, and will immediately restore the original layout.
I loved watching the magpies in my backyard in Australia. If a male found a particularly interesting grub or beetle, its female partner would only have to sing out and the male would bring it over for her to eat instead. A kookaburra agonized us all at the office one day by perching on our office window ledge and holding a struggling lizard in its beak. Why wouldn’t it eat the thing quickly and put it out of its misery? We waited some minutes till finally its partner flew up to stand beside him. We realized he had been waiting for her when he then gave her the lizard to eat. Our agonies over the distress of the lizard turned to “Ohhs!” on seeing this act of affection or love in another species. An ill mouse that could not make it up the ladder to its bed of tissues was soon covered in those tissues to keep it warm — its partner had dragged the tissues down and covered its ill mate with them.
Are all such animals “merely bunches of chemicals”? If in one sense they are, it only magnifies the grandeur and mystery of it all. We can either attribute all this to an imaginary being wrapped up in a mystery itself, or we can attribute it to the laws and evidence we see in operation around us. To my mind, the latter attribution is cause for the greater sense of awe and wonder. Being able to explain it all eventually will not rob us of any of this feeling. Continue reading “If we are “merely” a bunch of chemicals . . .”
Evangelical Textual Criticism discusses the successfully defended thesis of Gunnar Samuelsson that the ancient textual evidence fails to support our image of Jesus dying on a cross. From the ETC site:
Last Friday Gunnar Samuelsson successfylly defended his thesis “Crucifixion in Antiquity: An Inquiry into the Background of the New Testament Terminology of Crucifixion” at Gothenburg University (supervisor Samuel Byrskog).
Abstract
This study investigates the philological aspects of how ancient Greek, Latin and Hebrew/Aramaic texts, including the New Testament, depict the practice of punishment by crucifixion. A survey of the ancient text material shows that there has been a too narrow view of the “crucifixion” terminology. The various terms are not simply used in the sense of “crucify” and “cross,” if by “crucifixion” one means the punishment that Jesus was subjected to according to the main Christian traditions. The terminology is used much more diversely. Almost none of it can be elucidated beyond verbs referring vaguely to some form(s) of suspension, and nouns referring to tools used in such suspension. As a result, most of the crucifixion accounts that scholars cite in the ancient literature have to be rejected, leaving only a few. The New Testament is not spared from this terminological ambiguity. The accounts of the death of Jesus are strikingly sparse. Their chief contribution is usage of the unclear terminology in question. Over-interpretation, and probably even pure imagination, have afflicted nearly every wordbook and dictionary that deals with the terms related to crucifixion as well as scholarly depictions of what happened on Calvary. The immense knowledge of the punishment of crucifixion in general, and the execution of Jesus in particular, cannot be supported by the studied texts.
The same blog site offers contact details for purchasing the dissertation, and additional notes from its concluding chapter. There is also a discussion of the archaeological evidence.
I picked up The Genesis Enigma: Why the Bible is Scientifically Accurate by Andrew Parker curious to see what arguments could possibly earn back cover blurbs like ‘Parker’s arguments seem very plausible to me’ by none other than Francis Crick of DNA fame, through to the Daily Mail’s “Jaw dropping – an astounding work . . .” Okay, I wasn’t really persuaded by the Daily Mail cites, but I was curious when I noticed the author really IS a reputable scientist.
Amidst what I see as the chaff in the book there is something I really did see as A Good Thing. After pages of warming up to less than inspiring arguments supposedly proving the divine inspiration of the Bible by claiming that its Genesis account is a “metaphoric” template of the facts of evolution, he pulls no punches in declaring to his readers that evolution really is a fact. Evolution is not a theory, he insists. Evolution is true. He deplores Creationism and its modern deceitful garb of Intelligent Design.
Parker says point blank that to call evolution “a theory” is “dangerous”. Continue reading “The Genesis Enigma”
Following on from the 17+ mantras of biblical scholarship —-
It is highly unlikely that the Church went out of its way to create the cause of its own embarrassment. [i.e. the account of the baptism of Jesus]
Once again, it is highly unlikely that the Church would have taken pains to invent a saying that emphasized the ignorance of its risen Lord, only to turn around and seek to suppress it.
Both of these sentences appear on page 169 of A Marginal Jew, volume 1, by John P. Meier (1991).
And both demonstrate how a biblical scholar is subject to the tyranny of the Gospel narrative when framing questions about the narrative’s historicity.
Meier here has fallen into the trap of assuming that there was a single church entity that started out recording certain events on account of their historical nature, but over time came to see some of these as PR liabilities, and accordingly set about re-spinning them.
But his scenario actually raises more questions than it answers, and there are simpler explanations for the existing evidence that it overlooks.
I have discussed the fallacies at the heart of this criterion a number of times from different perspectives. The whole idea of using “criteria” to “discover bedrock evidence” is itself fallacious; this particular criterion stands in conflict with other criteria; and what the evidence points to is the embarrassment was over rival theologies or christologies among different communities, not over what we would call historical facts themselves. All of this has been discussed in previous posts that I have archived here.
But since John P. Meier lists this criterion as # 1 of “primary criteria”, I am adding to those posts a response from a slightly different perspective this time.
Mantra #1 (from 17+ mantras of biblical scholarship)
Any narrative which purports, on the face of it, to be telling about events that actually happened deserves to be treated as true unless it can be demonstrated not to be.
Rational alternative
Withhold judgement about the truth of any narrative until one has evidence to decide either way.
Discussion
This reminds me of Dieter Georgi’s observation that I noted in How Jesus has been re-imaged:
The reversal of the principle of burden of proof in favor of those who claimed authenticity of material that was obviously and thoroughly shaped by faith in the continued presence of Jesus after his death did not happen by way of methodological argument but by way of decree.
It is not a sin to say “I don’t know” pending evidence that allows one to decide either way. I suspect that biblical scholars who mouth this mantra are really only interested in applying it to the certain selected biblical literature. Continue reading “The pseudo-scholarly “hermeneutics of charity””
The creation and Adam and Eve narratives are often said to be nice moral tales that convey spiritual truths. Being myth does not disqualify them from containing meaningful messages for modern readers.
So at wedding ceremonies and in Sunday school classes bible-believers are regaled with the “beautiful story” of the God practising a bit of psychic surgery as his hand penetrates Adam’s side to pull out a rib which he used to create Eve. And since this story is not something that has been uncovered in modern times among cuneiform tablets alongside myths of sea-monsters and sky-gods, but is one we have been as familiar with as our soft pillows and teddy bear toys since childhood, we call it a “beautiful metaphor” of the marriage relationship.
And I suspect many theologians would prefer to keep it that way. Meaningful myth or symbol is sophisticated. Literal images of God taking the penis bone from Adam and using it to create Eve, thus explaining both marriage and the reason males of humans alone (almost) lack this bit of anatomy would probably go a long way to discrediting not only a “beautiful and meaningful story”, but opening up a few more people’s minds to the irrelevance of the Bible in an enlightened age.
I’m probably the last to know this little tidbit of trivia, but thanks to chance I recently discovered in a bookshop The Uncensored Bible: The Bawdy and Naughty Bits of the Good Book by John Kaltner, Stephen L. McKenzie and Joel Kilpatrick. John Shelby Spong calls it “a terrific book!”; Jonathan Kirsch, “smart, savvy, scholarly, and funny, all at once”; and Jonathan Reed, “Based on the best contemporary scholarship of the Bible — but funny as hell!” How could I resist it?
So what’s wrong with the rib meaning the rib? Continue reading “Which “Bone” Was Eve Made From?”
This post is being regularly updated with links to responses to each of the mantras. Here are some lines that seem to me to have acquired the “power” of mantras in biblical scholarship. I call them mantras because I have seen each of them so often in the books, papers, theses and articles I have read by biblical scholars, and they appear to be used as statements whose words carry unassailable potency in an argument. Like Motherhood Statements or the Apostle’s Creed they do not require justification. They are their own justification. And their presence in an argument is clearly intended to have the power to ward off all that is contrary. They may read like formulaic debating lines, but I see them as substitutes for rigorous argument. They are, for the most part, dogmatic and circular assertions that really ought to be made to justify themselves. (Some that may not be circular are simply false; or if not false, vacuous.)
If you can apply them to any particular argument you can say you have won without even having to do a surveillance of whatever might exalt itself against “fair-mindedness and reason”.
Of course, if some do toss in one of these mantras as a cherry on top of a major serious argument, that is fine (I think). But one so often encounters them as complete “arguments” in themselves.
The points that follow were all most conveniently found in a single four-page article. Hence their convenience for isolating and repeating here. (Now I don’t mean to put down their author. Many biblical scholars use these, many of whose works I learn much and highly value. And the particular scholar whose article I took them from is one I have particularly found to be insightful and informative reading in other respects.)
I substitute ZZZZ of COCO etc for the name of a text or person. They represent blanks to be filled in with just about whatever text or name you like. Continue reading “17+ Mantras of biblical scholarship”
This is from David Heath of ITWire:
Following the arrest of the person suspected of leaking the “Collateral Murder” video, WikiLeaks feels that it is under attack and is seeking urgent support.
iTWire received the following message in the past few minutes, it’s meaning is very clear. We ask readers to assist where they can.
WikiLeaks may be under attack.
You were generous enough to write to us, but we have not had the labor resources to respond.
Your support is important to us. Please read all of this email to understand what is going on. We apologize for not getting back to you before. It is not through any lack of interest on our part, but an enforced lack of resources.
One of our alleged sources, a young US intelligence analyst, Bradley Manning, has been detained and shipped to a US military prison in Kuwait, where he is being held without trail. Mr. Manning is alleged to have acted according to his conscious and leaked to us the Collateral Murder video and the video of a massacre that took place in Afghanistan last year at Garani.
The Garani massacre, which we are still working on, killed over 100 people, mostly children.
Mr. Manning allegedly also sent us 260,000 classified US Department cables, reporting on the actions of US Embassy’s engaging in abusive actions all over the world. We have denied the allegation, but the US government is acting as if the allegation is true and we do have a lot of other material that exposes human rights abuses by the United States government.
Mr. Manning was allegedly exposed after talking to an unrelated “journalist” who then worked with the US government to detain him.
Some background on the Manning case:
http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/06/11/transcript-daniel-ellsberg-says-he-fears-us-might-assasinate-wikileaks-founder/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Manning
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/leak/
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/wikileaks-chat/
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/state-department-anxious/
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2010/06/143011.htm[ note that there are some questions about the Wired reportage, see: http://www.boingboing.net/2010/06/13/video-wikileaks-foun.html#comment-809677 ]
WikiLeaks a small organization going through enormous growth and operating in an adverserial, high-security environment which can make communication time consuming and the acquisition of new staff and volunteers, also difficult since they require high levels of trust.
To try and deal with our growth and the current difficult situation, we want to get you to work together with our other supporters to set up a “Friends of WikiLeaks” group in your area. We have multiple supporters in most countries and would like to see them be a strong and independent force.
Please write to friends@sunshinepress.org if you are interested in helping with Friends of WikiLeaks in your area. You will receive further instructions.
We also have significant unexpected legal costs (for example flying a legal team to Kuwait, video production. Collateral Murder production costs were $50,000 all up).
Any financial contributions will be of IMMEDIATE assistance.
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Special:Support
Please donate and tell the world that you have done so. Encourage all your friends to follow the example you set, after all, courage is contagious.
Julian Assange
Editor in Chief
WIKILEAKS
The comparison of Christ Mythicism with Holocaust denial is flippant and derisive (or maybe sometimes ignorant). So nothing I post here will deepen the thoughts of those who make the comparison.
But I also think it is not a bad idea to have some attempt on record — however brief — a simple exposure of the fallacy of this analogy.
From Wikiquote:
The very logic that tells us there was no Jesus is the same logic that pleads that there was no Holocaust. (Nicholas Perrin)
Most scholars regard the arguments for Jesus’ non-existence as unworthy of any response—on a par with claims that the Jewish Holocaust never occurred or that the Apollo moon landing took place in a Hollywood studio. (Michael James McClymond)
One has to look at historical evidence. And if you… If you say that historical evidence doesn’t count, then I think you get into huge trouble. Because then, how do… I mean… then why not just deny the Holocaust? (Bart Ehrman)
The denial that Christ was crucified is like the denial of the Holocaust. (John Piper)
And Richard Bauckham even uses the Holocaust to indirectly prove by inverted analogy the “historical truth” of the resurrection! (Bauckham 18d and 18g)
I personally think there is something obscene about biblical scholars using the Holocaust to leverage their intellectual positions. I can’t imagine being completely relaxed about it if the Holocaust had immediate personal associations in my own life.
The comparison of Christ Mythicism with Holocaust denial is flippant and derisive (or maybe simply ignorant in some cases). So nothing I post here will deepen the thoughts of those who make the comparison.
But I also think it is not a bad idea to have some attempt on record — however brief — a simple exposure of the fallacy of this analogy.
(Another common analogy is to insist rhetorically that there is as much or more evidence for the historical existence of Jesus as there is for Julius Caesar or other ancient figures. I have dealt with that argument several times now, most recently here. Those who say this might be absent-mindedly flippant or simply ignorant.)
A couple of months ago I tried to spotlight the fallacious circularity at the heart of historical Jesus studies by describing what it would mean if detectives were to use the same starting assumptions in relation to their evidence as biblical scholars use when studying the historical Jesus. (Biblical Historians Make Detectives Look Silly.) One biblical doctoral scholar regularly complained that my analogy was not valid because I “made it up”. Well, of course I made up the analogy. I had no choice. Detectives are not really so silly as to approach evidence the same way HJ scholars do. They would only be that silly if they approached criminal evidence the way historical Jesus scholars approach biblical evidence.
Now on my iPhone some months back I downloaded the collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, and I have since read quite a number of them commuting to and from work. After reading a dozen or more of them I am getting a feel for how to predict where and among which characters Sherlock Holmes is going to find his culprits.
The stories all start with either a mysterious set of facts or a narrative that seems on the face of it to point to but one conclusion but that Holmes realizes is not the solution at all.
It’s all clever stuff. Holmes pieces this little clue here with that little clue there. Generally, he will go out of his way to do extra research that takes him away from the immediate scene of the crime and return with fresh insights that astound the mystified.
What he is attempting to do is re-create what happened.
Sherlock Holmes is attempting to solve fictional narratives. And I’m not the only reader, no doubt, who attempts to enter the game and attempt to solve things before they are all revealed at the end.
Historians, on the other hand, can generally see what has happened, and seek to explain why or how it happened. Continue reading “Detectives make biblical historians look like Sherlock Holmes”
One who identifies himself as an Irish Anglican here has asked me if I would like to address the arguments of John A. T. Robinson in Redating the New Testament. While I have had such an exercise on my list of “to-do” items for some time, it is unlikely that I will get around to doing anything in depth for quite some time. I would have thought, from the fact that Robinson’s arguments for early dates seem to have made little significant impact on mainstream scholarship, we can see the arguments have not been overwhelmingly persuasive — apart from the more apologetically inclined who have a theological interest in seeing the gospels dated as early as possible to the events they narrate. (But not being a part of academia I might be misinformed on this point.)
As if the narrative is itself some external historical reality and not, indeed, just a lot of creative words making up the theological parable or story. Sound historical method, at least as found practiced outside the sheltered ranks of historical Jesus studies, and as well recognized by the likes of Albert Schweitzer himself, requires that there be some indisputable reference point or control that is external to the narrative itself before one can rightfully assume any narrative has some historical basis. But Schweitzer lost that battle and it appears that today many mainstream believers in the historical Jesus can only respond with insult in place of reasoned argument when challenged with this basic premise. That’s understandable. There is no reasoned rebuttal available to them.
Well, let’s see. I’m digressing. Back to dating the gospels.
There is one simple reason John A. T. Robinson’s dating arguments fail. There are a number of more detailed reasons. But one overall methodological reason undermines his entire effort. Continue reading “How to date the gospels”
There’s a comment by humanist Dwight Jones in response to Hoffmann’s post titled Did Jesus Exist? Yes and No that begins
As a Humanist I view Christ as one too, a philosopher who was instructing our species
Jones’ and Hoffmann’s concept of humanism is too effete, elitist, esoteric and impractical for my taste, but that aside, Jones’ comment sums up what Jesus means as a cultural icon. Biblical scholars can see how the gospel authors put words into Jesus’ mouth so that He could serve as the spokesman for their own theological agendas. Schweitzer famously said that historical Jesus scholars each tend to recreate a Jesus in their own image. Existentialist John Carroll even finds an existentialist Jesus in Mark’s gospel. Jesus is not just for the religious. He is the focal icon of the western culture through whom religious and nonreligious alike have sought to advance their own philosophies, political programs, ethics, values.
Dieter Georgi had an article titled “The Interest in Life of Jesus Theology as a Paradigm for the Social History of Biblical Criticism” in the Harvard Theological Review in 1992 (85:1, 51-83) that surveys how evolving and changing societies simultaneously changed their views of Jesus to reflect their own needs and interests.
I summarize here a few examples to illustrate how Jesus has changed with the times. I conclude with a note on the context of current historical Jesus studies, and their fragile foundation in a certain defensive dogmatism.
I must be bored. Here is a repeat of a few truisms.
Bishop John Spong has said that, as a matter of general observation, atheists are more relaxed than religious believers. The latter, by contrast, tend to have an up-tightness about them. Pastor Jim West says atheists are angry and forever attempting to deny what they “really know” — that torments of hell await them. But Spong is something of a liberal theologian, and West is, at least by my standards and definitions, a fundamentalist. Neither likes the thought of anyone becoming an atheist, but I can imagine their different religious stances explains their different observations of atheists.
When religious believers impugn some sort of intellectual dishonesty to atheists, accusing them of “knowing better deep down in their hearts” — a false accusation also found in the Bible, both in Psalms and the writings of Paul — they apparently fail to realize that they are declaring themselves to being ethically immature.
All the ethics taught in the Bible are meant to keep people at the level of children. One can even suggest, as Nietzsche did, that the ethical teachings of the Bible function to instill a mentality of subservience. But slaves are not part of our society and most of us can relate more easily to the immaturity of children.
I see nothing noble in the teachings of Jesus. They are all predicated on the threat of damnation if you don’t obey, and nice happy big fat rewards if you do. What sort of ethic is that? But even if we reflect on the noblest principles of Jesus quite apart from their reward-punishment matrix, they don’t ring an unambiguous clarion call for the ethical progress of humanity.
His most famous “love one another” passages in the Gospel of John are all about the importance of loving those in your own circle of like-minded subservients to the exclusion of others. Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. Love one another.
It seems that the Gospel of John is an attack on the sentiments put into the mouth of Jesus by the Gospel of Matthew. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?
But Jesus’ command to “love your enemies” is justified on some quite inhuman precepts. Jesus is appealing to his followers here to prove themselves to be “more righteous” than others in their community. His command is presented as a challenge, or more accurately a threat, to win the contest of showing themselves to be superior ethically to Pharisees and such. And to do this, they must set their minds to become as impersonal and perfect as an impersonal and perfect agent that sends rain and sunshine on the just and unjust alike.
Now all of this sort of rationale for a particular behaviour sounds very primitive, very immature, and very inhuman to me. I am reminded of Vardis Fisher’s novel, Peace Like A River, where one meets ascetics rivaling one another to show off badges of greater ‘godliness’. Or more close to home (at least here in Singapore), I am reminded of the devotees parading through the streets showing off their glorious feats of suffering and endurance at their Thaipusam festival.
Would not humanity be better off — more relaxed and “naturally” good for goodness’ sake — if it ever can eventually leave behind the immaturity of the extrinsic reward and punishment ethics that religion generally spawns?
Actually I do think that many people do tend to be “good for goodness sake”, even many of the ostensibly religious. But the religious rationale does still keep intruding itself far too often, and the result is not always the greater happiness for the greater number.
The poverty of religiosity is also apparent when devotees cannot conceive of any reason to live if there is no reward for them in an afterlife. If only they could be reminded of Jesus’ injunction that to enter the kingdom one must be like a child. Now that can be too often a pernicious little saying in the hands of the religious in that it serves to keep people in a constant state of immaturity and failure to accept personal responsibility for their own lives. But turn it around and see how it can look without God. Children don’t need “a reason” to live. Life fills them with all that is meaningful without thoughts for tomorrow. Reasons and causes follow. They are not the engine.
