2023-11-11

Updated — the Bar Kochba-NT Connection

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by Neil Godfrey

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I have updated my annotated list of posts on the Book of Revelation. Look under “Archives by Topic” in the right margin or just click this link.

It is worth pointing out the other NT connection with the time of the Bar Kochba rebellion — the Second Letter to the Thessalonians: Identifying the “Man of Sin” in 2 Thessalonians

Another take on that letter, one that concludes with a date a little earlier than the 132-135 Jewish War — the time of Trajan (a time of mass slaughter of Jews outside Palestine): How a Spurious Letter “From Paul” Inspired the End Time Prophecies of the New Testament — And not to forget another old favourite: Little Apocalypse and the Bar Kochba Revolt

I only post these here now because they relate to my recent (and less recent) posts on Turmel and Witulski’s studies in Revelation. I’m not pronouncing any decided position of my own on their dates.

But in browsing over these older posts what did catch my eye was a pertinent point that I do think has much significance and is unjustifiably overlooked by too many conservative scholars:

First, Hermann Detering:

It is important to emphasize that neither the Ignatian letters, nor 1 Clement, nor the Epistle of Barnabas, nor the Didache, nor any other early Christian documents are able to witness with certainty to the existence of the Synoptic Gospels, whose names they nowhere mention.2 One cannot even demonstrate a knowledge of the synoptic Gospels for Justin in the middle of the second century, even if he obviously did know a kind of Gospel literature, namely the “Memoirs of the Apostles,” which was already publicly read in worship services in his time. (pp 162f – HD’s article is accessible here)

Compare Markus Vinzent:

Thus, even though Klinghardt makes a good argument that the compilation of texts known as the New Testament was already known to Justin, and perhaps even to Marcion, it is only from Irenaeus onward that the four gospels can safely be said to have been known, as supported by external evidence. . . .

Both Klinghardt and David Trobisch, on whom Klinghardt has built his thesis on the canonical editing of the New Testament, have come under heavy criticism from many of their peers; however, they have been defended by Jan Heilmann on good grounds.

I have read many of Klinghardt’s arguments for specific events in Justin’s writings indicating a knowledge of our canonical gospels but I have not yet seen a comprehensive rebuttal of this kind of reading into Justin’s work as addressed by Walter Cassels way back in 1879.

The first task of all historical researchers is to examine the provenance of their sources. I keep bumping into the same wall as Detering and Vinzent: it is only wishful imagination that can establish our biblical and apocryphal sources as early as the first century. Something happened in the early decades of the second century, though.

Since we cannot go further back than Marcion’s testimonies, I shall start with him. . . .

The fact is that we have no evidence from before the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–135 ce) and only hear and read about Christian teachers in Rome for the first time after this period. Indeed, in Marcion’s time there was evidently a migration of teachers from Asia Minor and Greece to Rome and we can recognize a rapidly flourishing Christian literature from this time onwards. This indicates to us that this Jewish war created a sociopolitical situation in which Jewish as well as Roman life was faced with new, extraordinary challenges and the corresponding impulses toward innovation. (Vinzent, pp. 327f – my bolding)

More thoughts to come…

2023-11-09

The Book of Revelation in Hadrian’s and Bar Kochba’s Time – Another Case

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by Neil Godfrey

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Before Thomas Witulski’s 2012 book (link is to posts discussing W’s work) that identified the two witnesses of Revelation with figures in the Bar Kochba War there was Joseph Turmel’s 1938 publication, which made the same fundamental point but by a different route. You can read his case from the link in my Turmel page and/or you can read some key points in what follows here.

Turmel set out the two most commonly expressed options for the date of the Book of Revelation (Apocalypse) —

  1. from soon after the time of Nero’s death, say 69 CE
  2. the late first century around the time of Domitian

Turmel eliminates the first option because it lacks motivation: the idea of a returned Nero to destroy Rome was inspired by popular rumours in the wake of a Nero-imposter who, no later than February 69 CE, came not from the Euphrates River and was slain before he reached Rome; such a figure cannot explain the details we read in Revelation.

A second Nero-imposter did appear in the year 88, this time from beyond the Euphrates (as per Revelation). So the time of Domitian is more likely, but given that the popular anticipation of a return by Nero continued through to the time of Augustine, Revelation could also have been written a good while after Domitian.

Revelation depicts God’s vengeance befalling the planet as a result of the cries of the recently slain martyrs. (Whether those martyrs are Jewish or Christian remains open at this point.) There were three periods of mass martyrdoms:

  1. Nero’s purported persecutions (64 CE),
  2. the widespread massacres in Trajan’s time (ca 117 CE)
  3. and the Bar Kochba war of 132-135 CE.

Turmel has ruled out #1; he rules out #2 on the grounds that it did not take place in Palestine or Jerusalem — as indicated in Revelation; so that leaves #3.

Are the martyrs Christians?

No, concludes Turmel, because their blood is linked to the blood of the prophets before them. The martyrs belong to the prophets. They are the Judeans.

This conclusion is confirmed by the conclusion of Revelation where the New Jerusalem descends to the place where the old Jerusalem was once situated and the twelve gates bore the names of the twelve tribes of Israel. Yes, we also read that the foundation stones were twelve in number and that the names of the apostles were inscribed on them, but how could such a large city said to be a square shape have twelve bases? No, that detail is a later addition to try to Christianize a Jewish Apocalypse.

Turmel refers to the evidence we later find in Jewish writings to depict Bar Kochba as a self-proclaimed Messiah and his promoter, the rabbi Akiba, as comparable to Ezra or Moses. These two men led a revolt that lasted around three years (132-135), thus easily inviting a Danielic reference to 1260 days / three and a half years for the time of the two witnesses. Bar Kochba was famous for being able to literally perform the magician’s trick of breathing fire from his mouth. He had coins minted with the image of the temple beneath a purported star — suggesting that he had hastily built a new temple (the star was a reference to his name and the prophecy in Numbers).

Some of those details have been disputed (successfully, I think) in more recent publications. For example, the later idea that Bar Kochba claimed to be the messiah is not supported by the earlier evidence. But see the Witulski posts for details.

Turmel and Witulski otherwise have very different readings:

Turmel — Revelation is principally a Jewish work that was supplemented with Christianizing edits; the dragon who sweeps a third of the stars down from heaven is understood to be a Christian monster leading many Judeans astray, for example.

Witulski — Revelation is principally a Christian work that focussed primarily on Hadrian and his propagandist Polemo.

Both agree on identifying Bar Kochba as one of the two witnesses. (Witulski replaces Turmel’s Akiba with the high priest Elazar.)

What I liked about Turmel’s discussion was his explanation for the site of Jerusalem being called Sodom and Egypt: Hadrian had replaced the site with his new capital Aelia Capitolina (dedicated to Jupiter). That’s why a New Jerusalem was to descend and take its place.

What I find difficult to accept in Turmel’s discussion is that a Christian editor might leave untouched the original Jewish account of the two witnesses being taken up to heaven in the sight of all if he so hated them because of their persecutions of Christians. I think Witulski’s explanation that that image was a future projection at the time of writing is preferable. (W also sees the Christian author having anti-Pauline and pro-Jewish sympathies.)

 

2023-11-07

Translations of Works by Joseph Turmel (=Henri Delafosse) Now Available

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by Neil Godfrey

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I’ve added another batch of English translations of “past masters” to this site. See the new page Turmel/Delafosse works translated into English. It’s listed with others in the right margin of this blog.

Joseph Turmel was brought to my attention by Roger Parvus a decade ago. Parvus engages with Turmel’s thoughts and offers his own modifications. See especially his series on a case for Simonian origins of Christianity (another static link in the right margin). His study of the Ignatian letters also engages with Turmel’s thoughts.

Turmel was one of the radical thinkers in the time of Alfred Loisy, Charles Guignebert, Paul-Louis Couchoud, . . .  Like Loisy, he was a Catholic priest, but unlike Loisy, he stayed undercover for quite some time publishing under a pseudonym (= Henri Delafosse).

 

2023-11-02

“A deep calm conversation about a very complicated issue”

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by Neil Godfrey

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A deep calm conversation about a very complicated issue. I tried to talk to an audience who never get exposed to our side of the story. No sound bites , no trending phrases , no attempts to score points for reach and views. Just an attempt to have our voices heard. I hope it will be something that will be used for a longer time not just for the heat of the moment. I think it will be aired tomorrow. — Bassem Youssef

 

2023-11-01

Archaeological Support for Gmirkin’s Thesis on Plato and the Hebrew Bible

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by Neil Godfrey

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Neils Peter Lemche (link is to my posts referencing NPL) has reviewed archaeologist Yonatan Adler’s The Origins of Judaism (link is to my post on Adler’s book) and related its evidence and argument to the work of Russell Gmirkin’s Plato and the Hebrew Bible. — on which I have posted in depth here.

Lemche’s review is available on the website of the Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament but Yonatan Adler has made it available to all through his academia.edu page.

The key takeaways in the review, I think, are:

This book is not written by a traditional biblical scholar but by an archaeologist having his background not in biblical studies but in Judaistic studies. . . .  His task is accordingly not to trace the development of the Torah as if it is something given from Israel’s very beginnings but to find out when its commandments were understood to be normative.

And the “trick” is to follow the normative methods of historical research as it is practised (as far as I am aware) in most fields outside biblical studies:

. . . Adler’s trick: Not to assume in advance what the Bible tells us about the institutions of ancient Israel but to trace the time when the commandments behind these institutions are operative.

And further — what I have found to be so outrageously controversial among so many with an interest in “biblical studies”:

Adler’s methodology is impeccable and indeed factual. His basis assumption is like Occam’s razor: If there is no trace of something, there is no reason to assume that this something existed.

And the point that I have posted about so often here:

The conclusion is that when we move backwards beyond the Hasmonean Period we have no evidence of the [biblical] commandment being followed.

Conclusion:

There is simply no evidence in the written or in the archaeological material that the rules of the Torah were ever followed before in the 2nd century BCE at the earliest.

I’m glad he introduced the Mesopotamian law codes that too many have casually assumed lie behind the biblical laws:He notes correctly that the very concept of a written law was unknown in the ancient Near East — the famous Babylonian law codices were scholarly or academic literature as generally accepted today. Never do we find a reference to the Codex Hammurabi in the thousands and thousands of documents of court decisions which have survived.

And then we move close to where Russell Gmirkin’s research has taken us:

However, the idea of the Torah as a written law to be followed by any person accepting its jurisdiction, is something different, and Adler looks to Greece for seeing this function of the law as a written document.

and it follows that Adler’s research . . . .

only supports the assumption that the Hebrew Bible originated within a context which was definitely impressed by Greek ideas.

Sadly Niels Peter Lemche finds it advisable to warn Yonatan Adler of a hostile reaction that many of us who have attempted to discuss these issues dispassionately with so many biblical scholars have come to expect:

But he should be prepared for what may be sent in his way in so far as his study is of the utmost importance for the present reorientation of the study of the origins of the Bible.

 

The Evolution of Free Will

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by Neil Godfrey

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After having posted sympathetically about the possibility of our lacking free will (so much so that I am not even sure I know what “thinking” entails at the most fundamental level) — I’m pleased to imagine that I am freely choosing to post a link to an argument for us having free will:

by Kevin Mitchell, a scholar of genetics and neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin.

The processes of cognition are thus mediated by the activities of neurons in the brain, but are not reducible to those activities or driven by them in a mechanical way. What matters in settling how things go is what the patterns mean – the low-level details are often arbitrary and incidental. Organisms with these capacities are thereby doing things for reasons – reasons of the whole organism, not their parts.

and

A common claim of free will skeptics is that we, ourselves, had no hand in determining what that configuration is. It is simply a product of our evolved human nature, our individual genetic make-up and neurodevelopmental history, and the accumulated effects of all our experiences. Note, however, that this views our experiences as events thathave happened to us. It thus assumes the point it is trying to make – that we have no agency because we never have had any.

If, instead, we take a more active view of the way we interact with the world, we can see that many of our experiences were either directly chosen by us or indirectly result from the actions we ourselves have taken. Not only do we make choices about what to do at any moment, we manage our behaviour in sustained ways through time. We adopt long-term plans and commitments – goals that require sustained effort to attain and that thereby constrain behavior in the moment. We develop habits and heuristics based on past experience – efficiently offloading to subconscious processes decisions we’ve made dozens or hundreds of times before. And we devise policies and meta-policies – overarching principles that can guide behaviour in new situations. We thus absolutely do play an active role in the accumulation of the attitudes, dispositions, habits, projects, and policies that collectively comprise our character.

More at his blog — http://www.wiringthebrain.com/

He also has a book titled Free Agents, subtitled How Evolution Gave Us Free Will.

The experience of one friend of mine many years ago still haunts me. He had enormous emotional, mental and behavioural problems, having come from a brutal family upbringing. There was one period when he seemed to have completely changed, to have become “whole” even, and positive. It turned out that he had had a good sleep and a healthy meal for once. I was religious at the time and could not help wondering how God would judge someone whose behaviour depended so critically on a healthy salad sandwich and 8 hours sleep.

 

2023-10-29

Gaza in Context

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Politics & Society
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For the background to what is happening now in Gaza, see the series of posts on Nur Masalha’s book, Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of “Transfer” in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948. I see that I never did complete that series. I stopped at the beginning of 1948. I shall have to rectify that — but for a serious understanding of today one does need to look at the roots — before 1948 —  to understand what Zionism is really all about, and to understand how we could be witnessing the beginning of the final chapter of that movement.

–o0o–

For those interested in the “longue durée” picture, here is my overview of Keith Whitelam discussion of the “rhythms” of Palestinian History —

Palestine lost its history first to the European imperial powers and then to a Zionist construction of the past which rapidly became its national narrative.

The Palestinians themselves have been written out of history. So much so that many even claim that they had no roots in the land and belong back in the desert with the other Arabs….

If the Palestinians do not possess a past, they cannot possess a national consciousness or be a people. Therefore, they have no right to a land or a state.

2023-10-28

Australia’s “Gaza War”

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by Neil Godfrey

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. . . . Then came Cullin-la-ringo.

After a long journey from Victoria with his family, servants, stockmen, wagons and over 7000 thousand sheep, Horatio Wills pitched his tents by the Nogoa River in early October 1861. Eight months earlier, “the perfect state of peace” on the Nogoa had been shattered by Lieutenant Patrick. More violence had followed in the months since as Patrick went about his work. . . .

[But let’s not get distracted with details of history lest some of us, God forbid, suspect I write with winking approval of what happened to the Wills family and household.]

The Willses were not to blame for any of this but, as the paper pointed out:

The blacks, like their civilised invaders, confound the individual with the race; that, in common with all people, whether savage or half-civilised, they exact the penalty from the first of the adverse nation who falls into their hands. In war, this course is sometimes followed by belligerent States, professing to rank with civilised nations. Indeed, the principle of reprisals is nothing else than punishing the innocent for the guilty.

The family had been at Cullin-la-ringo for ten days when about a hundred Gayiri men and women descended on their camp and killed them all in broad daylight. Among the nineteen dead were seven children. Though they had many guns to defend themselves, the only shot fired in the attack was from Wills’ revolver. His head was nearly severed. Bodies were left scattered among the tents. . . .  News of the killings at Cullin-la-ringo broke around the world. It remains the bloodiest massacre by blacks in the history of Australia.

“An uncontrollable desire for vengeance took possession of every heart,” [Queensland Governor] Bowen told the Duke of Newcastle, the Secretary of State for the Colonies. Bowen had no quarrel with such “just chastisement”. All over the north, settlers and Native Police rode out to kill. Scrubs and mountains were scoured. Blacks were shot and driven over cliffs. The Rockhampton Bulletin reported the clashes with something like delight.

The Native Police overtook the tribe of natives who committed the late outrage at Nogoa, and succeeded in driving them into a place from whence escape was impossible. They then shot down sixty or seventy, and they only ceased firing upon them when their ammunition was expended.

Those who sought shelter in Rockhampton – “the little town of mud and dust” – were driven back out into the bush to be shot. As it was after Hornet Bank, blacks were executed hundreds of miles from the scene of the crime. Runs on the Comet, the Nogoa, the Dawson and the Mackenzie were stripped of Aborigines. About four hundred are thought to have died in the weeks after Cullin-la-ringo, but that is no more than a cautious guess. The Yiman, Wadjigu, Gayiri and Darumbal peoples were nearly wiped out.

……..

After Cullin-la-ringo there was no hope left of reining in the Native Police. Vengeance was blessed. No limits were set on the awful powers of the force. More than ever, the government placed the highest value on the energy of its officers and their discretion – in both meanings of that slippery word: judgement and secrecy. Nowhere would the occupation of Australia prove bloodier than here, and no instrument of state as culpable as the Native Police. Slaughter was bricked into the foundations of Queensland.

  • Marr, David. Killing for Country: A Family Story. Black Inc, 2023. pp 249-253

The above took place a little more than twenty years after one of the earliest settlements in Queensland, the idealistic mission station named Zion’s Hill.

2023-10-26

From the Baptism of Dionysus to the Initiation of Christ : Iconographic Language and Religious Identity

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Ancient Religious Cultures, Biblical Studies, Early Christianities, New Testament
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I have translated an article by Anne-Françoise Jaccottet that I referenced in the previous post.

Download (PDF, 369KB)

2023-10-24

The Gospel of Mark’s Jesus as a Fearful – yet Merciful – God

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by Neil Godfrey

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In the previous post I tried to explain my startled response when, many years ago, I first read the Gospel of Mark in a translation that muffled familiar associations with the other gospels. I recall being left with a feeling of some horror, of a Jesus who was certainly not a human-loveable Lukan figure welcoming home a prodigal son, nor a Johannine “good shepherd” nor a Matthean Jesus who promised to be with his disciples at all times.

* p. 2. Also: Hellenistic Jews and early Christians also engage with the tragedy in various and interesting ways (p.2) . . . . Dionysiac mysteries became particularly popular during the Hellenistic and Roman periods (p.31) . . . . Among ancient poets, Euripides’ popularity in antiquity was second only to that of Homer. (p.41) . . . . performances of his plays became widely accessible, including, as we shall see, to both Jews and Christians (p. 42) . . . . In addition to Euripides’ general status in antiquity, the Bacchae’s popularity in particular is also well attested. (p. 45) . . . . Given the pervasive influence and popularity of tragedy in the Greco-Roman world it is likely that the Gospel’s author knew Greek tragedy. (p. 216) — (Friesen)

** Bilby, MacDonald, Moles, Wick (see bibliography below)

My impression as an outsider reading much of the relevant scholarly literature is that most scholars seem to accept that Jesus in the Gospel of Mark is the “most human” Jesus when compared with his portrayal in the other gospels. But the more I read of Greco-Roman literature that is known to have been the literary matrix from which the gospels were composed, the harder it is for me to accept Mark’s Jesus as even the least bit genuinely “human”. The Jesus in the Gospel of Mark comes across to me very much the way a certain Greek god is depicted in literature “widely popular throughout antiquity”*.

Now I do not want to say that the author of the gospel was intentionally step-by-step modeling Jesus on Dionysus. I mean no more than that he appears to have deemed appropriate for his Jesus various Dionysian tropes that were no doubt familiar in the “wider cultural air”. Others** have written about Dionysian themes in the Gospel of John and the Acts of the Apostles. But in the light of my previous post, consider:

  • I concluded earlier that the Gospel of Mark’s Jesus is a “terrifying figure” but I should have added that he is also a deliverer from suffering. He heals people of their diseases and their demonic torments. Dionysus is likewise a terrifying figure, one who leaves his enemies mystified and fearful over his mysterious origin and fearful powers. But he is also a comforter of those who suffer:

“For he is great in many ways, but above all it was he,
or so they say, who gave to mortal men
the gift of lovely wine by which our suffering
is stopped. And if there is no god of wine,
there is no love, no Aphrodite either,
nor other pleasure left to men.”

and

“Dionysus, son of Zeus, consummate god,
most terrible, and yet most gentle, to humankind.”

finally,

“filled with juice from vines,
suffering mankind forgets its grief; from it
comes sleep; with it oblivion of the troubles
of the day. There is no other medicine
for misery. And when we pour libations
to the gods, we pour the god of wine himself
that through his intercession man may win
the good things of life.”

  • Jesus comes as a man, a “son of man”, as does Dionysus:

“And here I stand, a god incognito,
disguised as man, beside the stream of Dirce
and the waters of Ismenus”

and having emptied himself of divinity ….

“To these ends I have laid divinity aside
and go disguised as man.”

  • Mark’s Jesus speaks in parables and in his last days he confounds his critics who try to trap him in his words. The god Dionysus speaks in riddles and confounds his enemies with wit. Thus :

“Your answers are designed to make me curious.” . . . “You shall regret these clever answers. . . . You wrestle well—when it comes to words” . . . “The things you say are always strange.” (Pentheus, the enemy of Dionysus, speaking to the god disguised as a man)

“The others are all blind. Only we can see.” (Tieresias, a physically blind follower of Dionysus)

On another occasion the blind prophet Tieresias explains the “true meaning” of a popular myth:

“You sneer, do you, at that story
that Dionysus was sewn into the thigh of Zeus?
Let me teach you what that really means . . . . ”

  • Jesus is the miracle worker above all else. So is Dionysus:

“Sir, this stranger who has come to Thebes is full
of many miracles. ”

and

“We cowherds and shepherds
gathered together, wondering and arguing
among ourselves at these fantastic things,
the awesome miracles those women [followers of Dionysus] did.”

and

“I am also told a foreigner [sc. Dionysus] has come to Thebes
from Lydia, one of those charlatan magicians”

and

“I wanted to report
to you and Thebes what strange fantastic things,
what miracles and more than miracles,
these women [worshipers of Dionysus] do.”

  • Jesus was mocked and humiliated. As was Dionysus. (I know of no classicist who applies the “criterion of embarrassment” to the story of Dionysus to claim that D’s story could not have been “made up” — “who would make up a story about a humiliated god?” — but must have a “historical core”.)

“For I have come
to refute that slander spoken by my mother’s sisters—
those who least had right to slander her.
They said that Dionysus was no son of Zeus,
but Semele had slept beside a man in love
and foisted off her shame on Zeus—a fraud, they sneered,
contrived by Cadmus to protect his daughter’s name.
They said she lied,”

and

“I tell you,
this god whom you ridicule shall someday have
enormous power and prestige throughout Hellas”

and

“We captured the quarry [sc. Dionysus] you sent us out to catch.
Our prey here was quite tame: refused to run,
but just held out his hands as willing as you please”

and once captured, the enemy of Dionysus announces a series of humiliating treatments, beginning with…

PENTHEUS First of all,
I shall cut off your girlish curls.

DIONYSUS My hair is holy.
My curls belong to god.

(Pentheus shears away some of the god’s curls.)”

  • One reason scholars claim Jesus in the Gospel of Mark is “more human than divine” is his loss of temper when confronting the hard-hearted Pharisees. Of Dionysus it is also complained that

“CADMUS Gods should be exempt from human passions.”

Those who know their Euripides will recognize the irony in this line. See https://vridar.org/2015/07/10/understanding-the-emotional-jesus-temple-tantrums-name-calling-and-grieving/ (also https://vridar.org/2020/08/04/jesus-the-logos-in-roman-stoic-philosophers-eyes/ and https://vridar.org/2019/05/04/once-more-we-rub-our-eyes-the-gospel-of-marks-jesus-is-no-human-character/ )

    • Another aspect used to assert the humanity, even human sinfulness, of Jesus, is the Gospel of Mark’s straightforward introduction depicting Jesus going to John to undergo a “baptism of repentance”.

No-one should respond to this point until they have read:

Jaccottet, Anne-Françoise. “A.-F. Jaccottet, « Du Baptême de Dionysos à l’initiation Du Christ : Langage Iconographique et Identité Religieuse », in N. Belayche, J.-D. Dubois (Éd.), L’oiseau et Le Poisson. Cohabitations Religieuses Dans Les Mondes Grec et Romain, PUPS, Paris 2011, 203-225.”

As Dionysus enters into his own mysteries as a neophyte Dionysiac, so Jesus identifies with those who enter his cult through baptism. As all who follow him must take up his cross, so all who are baptized will enter into baptism with him….  But that’s another post for a later time.

My point here is that Jesus in the Gospel of Mark can, with ease, be slotted into a template that was pioneered by another god who came to the Greek world from “Asia”. It may not be irrelevant to further note that even the Jewish god Yahweh has been identified with Dionysus:

  • Amzallag, Nissim. “Were YHWH and Dionysus Once the Same God?” The Ancient Near East Today: Current News About the Ancient Past, August 2017. http://asorblog.org/2017/08/15/yhwh-dionysus-god/.
  • Escarmant, Christine. “Dionysos dieu des Juifs : la mesure du mélange,” n.d. http://perso.wanadoo.fr/marincazaou/rabelais/dionyses.html.

–0–

I have only scratched the surface of the questions arising here. Dionysus come to bring about the fall of the royal house of Thebes as Jesus might be said to presage the fall of Jerusalem and its Temple. Dionysus introduces horror — the divine power leaves his enemies confused and terrified. But one step at a time.

All of the above arose in my mind as I contemplated the question of the origins of Christianity itself. It is so easy to think that the gospel narrative originated with a miracle-working teacher who attracted followers, came to be very highly esteemed, so much so that after his death he was believed to have risen to heaven and to have been the messiah. That might make some sense if the Gospel of Luke was the earliest narrative evidence we have for Jesus. But unfortunately Luke’s gospel is not witnessed by any source until the latter half of the second century. Most scholars have concluded that the Gospel of Mark is the earliest narrative about Jesus. If so, and if the original reading of Mark that makes Jesus a fearful divinity is valid, then it’s back to the drawing board to try to figure out Christian origins. The above concept of the worship of Jesus (or Dionysus) can only make sense if there was already in existence a cult of Jesus (or Dionysus). It cannot explain the origin of that cult.

Friesen, Courtney J. P. Reading Dionysus: Euripides’ Bacchae and the Cultural Contestations of Greeks, Jews, Romans, and Christians. Tü̈bingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015.

Other:

  • Bilby, Mark G. “The First Dionysian Gospel:: Imitational and Redactional Layers in Luke and John.” In Classical Greek Models of the Gospels and Acts, edited by Mark G. Bilby, Michael Kochenash, and Margaret Froelich, 3:49–68. Studies in Mimesis Criticism. Claremont Press, 2018.
  • MacDonald, Dennis. The Dionysian Gospel: The Fourth Gospel and Euripides. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2017. https://www.scribd.com/book/344902292/The-Dionysian-Gospel-The-Fourth-Gospel-and-Euripides.
  • Moles, John. “Jesus and Dionysus in ‘The Acts Of The Apostles’ and Early Christianity.” Hermathena, no. 180 (2006): 65–104.
  • Wick, Peter. “Jesus Gegen Dionysos? Ein Beitrag Zur Kontextualisierung Des Johannesevangeliums.” Biblica 85 (2004): 179–98.

All quotes from Euripides’ Bacchae are from:

  • Griffith, Mark, Glenn W. Most, David Grene, and Richmond Lattimore, eds. “The Bacchae.” In Greek Tragedies 3: Aeschylus: The Eumenides; Sophocles: Philoctetes, Oedipus at Colonus; Euripides: The Bacchae, Alcestis, Third edition., 278–374. Chicago ; London: University of Chicago Press, 2013.

2023-10-22

Reading the Gospel of Mark Alone — Imagine No Other Gospels

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, New Testament
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The Gospel of Mark is a thoroughly dark gospel when Mark 16:8 [And they went out quickly, and fled from the sepulchre; for they trembled and were amazed: neither said they any thing to any man; for they were afraid] is read as the original conclusion of the gospel. Reasons for accepting this verse as the original ending have been addressed in other posts. See Ending of the Gospel of Mark (16:8) — ANNOTATED INDEX

* On the one place in the Gospel of Mark where Nazareth is mentioned,  see https://vridar.org/2012/12/05/bart-ehrmans-unture-claims-about-the-nazareth-arguments-2/#nazareth

I can never forget the first time I read the Gospel of Mark in a modern translation — thus removed from familiar semantic reminders of the other gospels, or at best only muted echoes — and being deeply disturbed by its portrayal of Jesus.

Here was a Jesus alien to this world, at home in the world of heavenly voices and demonic spirits, not only incomprehensible to humans but deliberately speaking in mysteries to leave them blindly uncomprehending. Even his followers had no knowledge of who he was — except for a partial and dim glimpse towards the end — and deserted him in his climactic hour. Mark’s Jesus had some foreboding power  over them: they unnaturally dropped all to follow him, a mysterious stranger, who simply “came to Galilee”* without explanation about his identity or origins. The only direct introduction the reader is given is a voice from heaven after his baptism. He does not “go” into the wilderness but is “driven” by a spirit into the wilderness where he associates with wild beasts, Satan and angels. When he calls his first disciples, as though hypnotised, they instantly drop all and follow him. When he commands the storm to cease and drives out a legion of demons from a wild man among rocky tombs his disciples and the people of the region stand back in fear of him, the latter even imploring him to go away. The people react the same way as the demons — begging him to leave them alone.  Multitudes flock to him from afar to have demons cast out and to be healed. But how they know about this mysterious figure is not explained. The narrative follows the tropes of Israel and the Exodus in the Pentateuch and Isaiah. He is said to teach with authority but the crowds are not permitted to understand his parables and his message is never divulged to the reader. When he appears in his “real glory” on the mountain his closest disciples are totally confused. They remain blind to what his mission is all about. That mission is not to “save” and “enlighten” in any narrative sense but to die under the darkened sky in the middle of the day, deserted even by God, while the temple veil is mysteriously torn apart just as the sky had been torn apart at his baptism. Yet there is another kind of murky darkness even at the moment of his death since read strictly grammatically it is Simon of Cyrene — another mysterious stranger who appears out of nowhere — who is crucified. Simon appears to be introduced as a cipher for Jesus — another mystery. Ciphers for Jesus are found elsewhere in this gospel. Jesus is buried in a tomb “hewn from rock” (recalling Isaiah’s depiction of the fallen temple as a grave hewn from rock), and we recall the way the companions of the paralyzed man “hewed” a hole in the roof to allow their friend to be lowered into the house to be raised up. The paralyzed man is healed and walks out despite the earlier image of the door to the house being totally blocked. If a mature man of the wilderness and in wild clothing opened the gospel, it is closed by a youth in fine clothing within the tomb announcing that the mysterious figure of Jesus has again disappeared and returned to Galilee. Just as persons who had once been commanded to be silent felt compelled to speak out about what Jesus had done, so now those commanded to speak out are silenced by their own terror.

This is a dark gospel. Its Jesus is a terrifying and unnatural figure who does not belong to this world. His presence leaves others blinded and fearful. That includes his closest followers.

As a naturalistic narrative it makes no sense. Read in the context of the other gospels, however, the reader resolves all of the cognitive dissonances with injected explanations. The disciples had heard Jesus speak before and knew of him before he called them. The disciples struggle to understand but in the end they do grasp what it was all about, especially when Jesus clarifies it all after his resurrection. Even before then, we imagine Jesus teaching plainly about high spiritual values. And so on. But that narrative is not found in Mark. It is read into Mark from the perspective of the later gospels.

Mark’s Jesus is a terrifying and incomprehensible figure of unknown origin and clearly one who is a stranger in this world. His narrative evokes the images and tropes, artificially juxtaposed, of the Israel and prophets of the Jewish Scriptures.

I have lately imagined Jesus here as a personification of an idealized Israel but reflecting again on Mark’s presentation I have to think that that view does not fully explain this Jesus. — Unless, perhaps, we have in Mark an attempted personification of Daniel’s heavenly “son of man” figure (who first appeared as a metaphorical figure alongside the metaphors of wild beasts, the beasts representing gentiles and the son of man Israel).

2023-10-21

Truth in the Court Jester’s Barbs — (plus a positive interview with Noam Chomsky)

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Politics & Society
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Probably most readers here long before now have seen the video below (Piers Morgan interviewing Egyptian satirist Bassem Youssef on the current Israeli response in Gaza to the Hasbut I love it so much I want to display it here, too.

I confess to being a little taken aback by Ben Shapiro’s justification of the mass bombing of civilians (Dresden, Tokyo, Nagasaki …) by the Allies. I had long thought (after talking with some from that generation, including one who belonged to a bomber crew over Dresden) that “we” looked back on that kind of vengeful barbarism with some guilt and shame. Certainly not some kind of “tragic necessity”. Still naive after all these years.

As for Piers Morgan insisting in the above show that he had never spoken of “decapitated babies”, the following demonstrate that his memory failed him at that moment: Continue reading “Truth in the Court Jester’s Barbs — (plus a positive interview with Noam Chomsky)”

Knowledge, Belief — and How Humans Work

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Ethics & Human Nature
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The third post on Black Box Site addresses the difference between Knowledge and Belief. That’s a question I have sprinkled across various posts here so again I read Blackmun’s thoughts with particular interest.

Some key takeaways (at least for me):

. . . those who held their beliefs with greater persistence also tended to have more activity in the brain’s amygdala, which is involved in threat perception and anxiety, as well as in the insular cortex, which deals with emotions. In other words, a threat to belief tended to be perceived as an emotionally charged personal threat. As one of the researchers involved, Jonas Kaplan, put it in a press release for the experiment: “Political beliefs are like religious beliefs in the respect that both are part of who you are and important for the social circle to which you belong. To consider an alternative view, you would have to consider an alternative version of yourself.

. . . .

Further, unlike knowledge, a belief can be held with what seems to be absolute certainty, though that certainty is in itself a belief.

. . . .

However, knowledge is also adaptive, with mistaken conclusions (which must be tentative in any case) always subject to correction by new evidence or better understanding; while a particular belief, whether true or false, is essentially static, a thing that is assumed to be true, but never truly examined (though it might eventually be replaced by another belief – also unexamined). In other words, knowledge can steadily advance and improve, while belief, due its very nature, cannot.

I think back to the time I was moving out of mainstream religion into the thought-world of what at the time I was beginning to “believe” was a “true church” that held “the truth”. There was one moment when I innocently asked the question: “To what extent does God expect me, a student with a heavy work load, to keep Sunday holy?” I opened the package they sent me by way of an answer. I read the title of the main booklet: Which Day is the Christian Sabbath? Why was the cover title alone enough to make my heart sink? I “knew” that if I opened the booklet and read it that I would find “incontrovertible arguments” that the seventh day, Saturday (not Sunday), was the “true sabbath”. I “believed” before I even turned to the first page that what was contained in it “was true”. I felt ill because I did not want to be joining some sect or cult, and that’s what keeping Saturday would look like to others. In retrospect I can see something that I surely rationalized at the time — that I believed before I even read the arguments. The notion that I ought to step back and genuinely, objectively be open to opposing arguments or an analysis of the booklet’s rhetoric that demonstrated its psychological manipulations was simply non-existent. By the time I did read opposing arguments I was already more than capable of “shooting them down in flames”.

Even less did I think to seriously reflect on the emotional and mental processes that had led me to that point where I “believed” this particular church was “true”.

There were times when I did struggle to find the evidence I was looking for. So when I read from the same source “A True History of the True Church” I was a little disappointed that it lacked the detailed evidence I would have liked. But I was a history student and had a vast library at hand so I did my own research to complement what I had read. That led to more frustration, sadly. It looked to me like the Waldensians were not really the same sort of sabbath-keepers as we were, and I found no evidence for the Cathars keeping the sabbath but I did find details that they observed teachings we opposed. But my fundamental beliefs were not thrown overboard. I was not at a church-run college so I did not have all the resources that they stocked in their library.

I could not deny that some details of the church’s teachings were wrong, and some forms of practice and behaviour were not what I would have expected in a “biblical church”. But I convinced myself that those details were not fundamental, or would change in time, and I maintained my respectable standing by embracing a “good attitude”. A “good attitude”, I learned not so many years ago, was the same expression used in the 1930s and 40s by Nazi youth and party members who questioned aspects of Nazi practice and doctrines: as long as they asked their questions with a “good attitude” they remained lovingly embraced by the party. A “good attitude” meant that one submits to the authorities and does not cause dissension among one’s peers. In other words, one learns to be very discreet about sharing one’s doubts and questions.

I see now how I was immersed in a pattern common to so many who enter counter-culture type groups:

and many more.

The problem with belief is that a believer just “KNOWS” that one’s beliefs are true. Belief thereby binds a mind more tightly than knowledge. Enter the arrogance of belief. Or if one is so totally confident then it follows that there is no need for arrogance: one can be humble about “knowing” the truth. The arrogance of humility.

That last listed post above, The Brainwashing Myth, concludes with this line:

I reject the idea of brainwashing for three reasons: It is pseudoscientific, ignores research-based explanations for human behavior and dehumanizes people by denying their free will.

Given that this post comes on the heels of a post expressing openness to the possibility that free will is an illusion, that last reason should be modified in some way. The first two reasons draw upon “knowledge” — which is necessarily tentative pending new evidence. The third reason rests on a “belief”, even if a necessary one to maintain our dignity and humanity. And if it’s a false belief, then we have no choice but to call on our reserves of compassion and understanding to uphold our humanity.

 

Consciousness, Free Will and Artificial Intelligence

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Evolution, Science
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ChatGPT (or any Artificial Intelligence) lacks consciousness of what it is doing and hence cannot be said to have the “free will” or “subjective impulses” to determine what direction its “thoughts” will take. (See critical comments on an earlier ChatGPT post).

A nagging question persists in the back of my mind, however. Do even humans have “free will” to guide the directions of their thoughts and conclusions? Every time I read a relatively recent work on human consciousness (e.g. Greenfield, Churchland) I am left with the disturbing notion that there may be a possibility that our consciousness of ourselves and what we are doing is an illusion. Although my inner gut resists that idea I do know that my inner gut does not have an infallible record of guiding me in the way of Truth. Ditto for my notion of “common sense”.

So it was with much appreciation and interest that I read posts on a new blog, Black Box Site, especially the second item, The Color of Your Consciousness or, Getting in Front of a Mob and Calling it a Parade. The author, Blackmun, has been keeping abreast of many more publications on consciousness than I have  so it was an immense pleasure to read his survey of some research findings. His overview draws upon…

  • Aitchison, Laurence, and Máté Lengyel. “With or without You: Predictive Coding and Bayesian Inference in the Brain.” Current Opinion in Neurobiology 46 (October 2017): 219–27. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conb.2017.08.010.
  • Dehaene, Stanislas. Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts. 2014.
  • Nørretranders, Tor. The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size. 1998.
  • Sacks, Oliver. An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales. 1995.
  • ———. Awakenings. 1987.
  • ———. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: And Other Clinical Tales. 1985.
  • Schurger, Aaron, Jacobo Sitt, and Stanislas Dehaene. “An Accumulator Model for Spontaneous Neural Activity Prior to Self-Initiated Movement.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 109 (August 6, 2012): E2904-13. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1210467109.
  • Wegner, Daniel M. The Illusion of Conscious Will. 2018, 2002
  • Wilson, Timothy D. Strangers to Ourselves. 2004.

Some concluding gems:

CARTESIAN, adj. Relating to Descartes, a famous philosopher, author of the celebrated dictum, Cogito ergo sum – whereby he was pleased to suppose he demonstrated the reality of human existence. The dictum might be improved, however, thus: Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum – “I think that I think, therefore I think that I am;” as close an approach to certainty as any philosopher has yet made. (The Devil’s Dictionary of Ambrose Bierce)

. . . .

And as Isaac Bashevis Singer liked to quip: “We must believe in free will. We have no choice.”

. . . .

. . . exactly what am I?

A rational maximizer? A child of God? A lizard that thinks it knows what it’s doing?

Does the main difference between our thinking and that of AI come down to AI having fewer hidden biases and parameters than the human brain?

It’s a fearful notion. That lizard would have no option but to resist it.