Review of Bart Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted

In his latest book, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them), Bart Ehrman seeks to introduce a wider audience to important aspects of the New Testament. The contradictions, tensions and diversity of viewpoints in the Bible which Ehrman highlights, and the historical-critical approach he outlines, are common knowledge to Biblical scholars, as well as to anyone who had studied in a mainline seminary in the past half century or so. Yet more often than not, such information seems to fail to filter through to the wider populace. The information Ehrman presents is not at odds with Christian faith, although it is at odds with the claims that some Christians make about the Bible. Yet ironically, those Christians who affirm the Bible’s importance seem to put no greater effort into familiarizing themselves with the details of the Bible’s contents, much less scholarship that might aid in understanding it.

Ehrman recounts in the book how he entered seminary as a conservative Christian, ready to resist the attacks liberal scholars would wage against the Bible. Instead, he discovered that this scholarly way of viewing the Bible in fact made better sense and did more justice to what one actually finds in the Bible (p.6). And so Ehrman, like many other students of the Bible from conservative backgrounds (including myself), found his view of the Bible being challenged by the evidence itself (p.xi).

Because of his experience of conservative Evangelicalism, Ehrman is able to address not only the New Testament and other ancient writings from the same period, but also the strategies some Christians have developed for avoiding the natural implications of the Biblical evidence – for instance, “harmonizing”, which usually involves creating one’s own Gospel out of the four found in the New Testament, combining them so that one ends up with a version that isn’t what any of the canonical Gospels say (pp.7, 69-70).

Through the chapters of his book, Ehrman shows how the view of Jesus evolved with time in early Christianity (pp.73-82, 245-247, 260), showing in the process what is wrong with C. S. Lewis’ famous “trilemma” that Jesus must be either “liar, lunatic or Lord”: it assumes that Jesus made the claim to be divine attributed to him in the Gospel of John and only there among the canonical Gospels. A historian cannot have this confidence, and thus must add a fourth option, namely that this claim attributed to Jesus is a “legend” (pp.141-142). The nature of historical study, and its inability to affirm miracles as probable since they are by definition improbable, is also explained (pp.175-177).

Ehrman includes material that summarizes (and thus overlaps somewhat) with earlier books such as Lost Christianities and Misquoting Jesus. But he also responds to criticisms that have been offered in the meantime, in particular of the latter (see pp.186-189). At times, one is reminded of James Dunn’s classic study, Unity and Diversity in the New Testament.

I highly recommend Ehrman’s book as a readable overview presenting information about the Bible and early Christianity that ought by now to be common knowledge. The reason it is not probably is due largely to the belief that such critical study of the Bible it antithetical to the Christian faith, and that the appropriate Christian stance is to affirm the Bible’s inerrancy rather than allow one’s view of the Bible and other matters to be shaped by the Bible’s actual contents. And thus I find a statement Ehrman makes towards the end of his book to be among his most important: “everyone already picks and chooses what they want to accept in the Bible. The most egregious instances of this can be found among people who claim not to be picking and choosing” (p.281).

LOST: Get a Glimpse of Jacob

The latest LOST news introduces the actor who will be playing Jacob, the mysterious figure behind the Others and one of the biggest unanswered questions. Will he turn out to be one of the immortal original inhabitants of the island? A time traveller? If the latter, is he from the past, or the future? Is he the ancestor or the descendant of individuals we've already met? Click through if you don't mind spoilers of what's to come.

Homosexuality and Romans 1-3

Today in my Sunday school class I emphasized that those who use the material in Romans 1 about homosexuality as a weapon with which to condemn and "clobber" others have clearly made the error of stopping reading at the end of chapter 1 - which, like all the chapter and verse divisions in the New Testament, was not in the letter Paul wrote. If we continue reading, we discover that Paul engaged in a stereotypical Jewish condemnation of Gentiles (compare for instance Wisdom of Solomon 13-15) not as an end in itself, but in order to get Jewish readers who joined in the condemnation to understand that they themselves were in the same situation.

I also noted that the dominant form of homosexual act in the Greek world in Paul's time was between a teacher and his male student. It is thus worth considering that Paul may have been more interested in condemning pederasty/paedophilia rather than addressing committed same-sex relationships. We also discussed whether an appropriate Christian outlook today is to condemn homosexuality in general, or to expect gay and lesbian Christians to hold themselves to a higher standard (monogamy) than prevails in our society, whether among homosexuals or heterosexuals. Also worth noting is that no one today practices "Biblical marriage", and to the extent that our view of the "nature" of men and women has changed (considered in Paul's time to be inherently active and passive respectively), is there any reason in our time to continue to view it as inherently demeaning for a man to take on a passive (i.e. female) role? Might such a gender-unequal first-century worldview, and more precisely its honor-shame values system, be at the heart of Paul's assumption that male-make sexual relations are fundamentally dishonoring?

It is also worth noting that in Romans 1, Paul apparently views homosexual practices as a "punishment" for Gentile turning away from God, rather than as something that itself is a cause of the divine wrath. Time prevented us from looking at the ways in which objects of wrath are turned into objects of mercy on numerous occasions in the Bible. Also left for consideration on another occasion is whether, should we wish to welcome homosexuals in a Christian community, we cannot find at least as much justification for doing so in the Scriptures as we have for other groups that might, on Scriptural grounds, be excluded (e.g. for instance the divorced).

The aim is to conclude the series on homosexuality next time, after which will follow some Easter-related topics.

LOST in a Wrinkle in Time

EW has a short but interesting article suggesting a possible insight into LOST that those who know books by Madeleine L'Engle (in particular A Swiftly Tilting Planet, from her "Time Quintet" series that also includes A Wrinkle In Time).

Even if they are wrong, it is a line of thinking about the show that is worthwhile - just as many others have been that turned out to not be pursued in the series.

Ken Ham Hypocrisy Redux

This is essentially a follow-up to my earlier post on this subject. Michael Zimmerman has responded to Ken Ham's denial of his own hypocrisy. I've decided to just reproduce what Michael has to say on the subject, since he was there!

Dear Members and Friends of The Clergy Letter Project,

Wow, Ken Ham, the head of Answers in Genesis and the impetus behind the creation museum-cum-theme-park in Kentucky, has more gall than even I imagined. Either that or he is fully delusional. Last week I sent out a note accusing him of participating in a radio ambush of me a year or so ago – an action that appeared to exactly parallel a situation in England he railed against in one of his blog postings. Well, he’s upset by my charge and has opted to rewrite history – but, oddly enough, even if one were to believe every word he writes, he still doesn’t make any sense!

Let me explain. He doesn’t deny that we ended up in a radio debate on a fundamentalist radio show. Instead he says a number of things: 1) “I did not know that he was not told I would be on the program;” 2) “I assumed he would be on after my interview with the host, but I was confused as to when;” 3) “It was no big deal for me to do a radio debate. I do radio debates all the time; so, I was still willing to go on with it;” and 4) “all I knew is that sometime during the program, a professor from Indiana–known for his anti-creation activism–was also to be on.” (You can read his full post here).

So, Ken claims that he knew that some unnamed professor was going to be a radio show but had no idea that it was to be a debate, indeed, he claims he wasn’t expecting a debate but since he does so many of them that he was willing to go forward and debate this person even though he, Ken, wasn’t prepared. Here we have Ken Ham casting himself as the victim, but willing to move forward because he’s so very good.

In fact, however, off the air, at the first break, I addressed both Ken and the host. I asked Ken directly if he knew that I was going to be on the show with him. He said he did. It was also very clear that Ken knew exactly who I was and, as I said before, the response to my question about whether or not this deception was appropriate was that since the debate was to further God’s wishes, a minor deception of this sort was acceptable. Additionally, as I reported last week, I was told that they assumed that had I been told that it was to be a debate I wouldn’t have agreed to go on the air.

Please remember what started all of this! Ken complained that a member of his staff was terribly mistreated when this happened to him recently in England. You can read his whining about the situation here, in a piece entitled “BBC Radio and Ambush Journalism.” Indeed, my ambush occurred over a year ago and I’d not made a big deal of it until now. But when I read Ken’s complaint, it was exactly what happened to me. Here, read for yourself what he had to say:

“That’s why it was not too surprising that when Dr. Lisle went on the air to be interviewed by the BBC, he quickly found out the BBC had not told us the truth—it turned out to be an attempted ambush—not an interview (as we had been led to believe), but a creation/evolution debate. On the other line was perhaps America’s best-known evolutionist defender, Dr. Eugenie Scott, whose organization has as its sole purpose to counter creationist efforts wherever they can and to uphold evolution. Of course, the BBC didn’t happen to tell us that it was to be a debate, and they didn’t happen to tell us there would be a debate opponent, and they didn’t happen to tell us who the debate opponent would be!”

The amazing Mr. Ham doesn’t stop there, though. He goes on to attack me: “What he’s charging is not even close to the truth. It is absolutely untrue—but then again, when a person is not known for checking out the facts and is in the habit of going on the attack against creationists, we are not at all surprised with the false charge. If such people use the same standards in their evolutionist research, you certainly would know you couldn’t trust what they say. Then again, they do use the same standards!!”

Nothing specific there just a great deal of name-calling of exactly the same sort that I mentioned in my last note by Robert Bowie Johnson, who, in his self-published book entitled Sowing Atheism: The National Academy of Sciences’ Sinister Scheme to Teach Our Children They’re Descended from Reptiles called all of the signers of The Clergy Letter “morons.” Turns out that Johnson wrote to me in response to my note to all of you. He clarified his position: “As you may know, the NT was written in Greek, and the Greek word for stupid is moron. Any so-called Christian pastor or minister who denies the teachings of Christ and Paul in favor of your ‘teachings’ and the ‘teachings’ of the atheistic hierarchy of the National Academy of Sciences is a moron. He or she is also metaphorically a serpent and a progeny of vipers (Matthew 23:33).”

So, there you have it. Ken Ham denies what he told me and he claims that what I said happened “is not even close to the truth,” even though his inaccurate account depicts exactly what he charged the BBC with doing. And then, to top it off, he goes off on aside of name-calling accusing me of being known for not “checking out the facts” and for being “in the habit of going on the attack against creationists.” Moreover, Robert Bowie Johnson felt the compulsion to again call Clergy Letter Project members morons.

I have the very strong suspicion that these folks are nervous about the network we have created. The Clergy Letter Project has clearly become too big to ignore. Thanks for making that happen.

Let’s not stop, though. If you haven’t yet done so, please sign up for Evolution Weekend 2010 (12-14 February 2010) now – in the last week alone, we picked up over participating congregations. To sign up, just drop me a note at mz@butler.edu. I’ll post the growing list in a couple of months, but the more participants we have early on, the easier it will be to reach out to new participants around the world.

Additionally, please encourage fellow clergy to sign one of our three Clergy Letters and your fellow scientists to join our list of scientific consultants.

Many of you wrote to me this week to say how proud you were to be considered a “moron” in this context. Let me assure you that I don’t think any less of you given your designation by Mr. Johnson!

Michael

Monsters vs. Aliens

I just got back from seeing Monsters vs. Aliens. Unfortunately it wasn't in 3D at the theater I went to. I won't give away any of the entertaining details, lest I spoil anyone's enjoyment. But I will share a thought about the message of the movie: we are prone to view those who are too different from us as monsters. Yet often those who are "insiders" with respect to our community are selfish and monstrous on the inside, while those outside can, when we look beneath the surface, be anything but monstrous.

This is a point Paul emphasizes in his letter to the Romans, and yet which many contemporary forms of Christianity seem to have overlooked. In Romans 2:6-11 (NIV), we read

God "will give to each person according to what he has done." To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger. There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile; but glory, honor and peace for everyone who does good: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For God does not show favoritism.

This passage is so difficult to reconcile with the way many people understand Christianity, that they assume Paul was speaking hypothetically, or in some other way didn't mean what he wrote.

I suppose we, all of us (including most of us Christians, but certainly neither all Christians nor Christians alone) still have a lot to learn about aliens and monsters...

Intelligent Design's Fleet of Engineers

The Uncommon Descent blog has offered an interesting attempt at responding to an analogy of evolution. The analogy in question (like all analogies except those appreciated by cdesign proponentsists, apparently) compares the "evolution" of car designs to evolution in biology.


At UD, Gil Dodgen replies that this in fact undermines the argument for evolution, since in fact cars are produced by engineers, and thus each successive "species" of car is the result of design.


I wonder if they've thought this through. Are they really going to press this, so that we end up with a model in which the successively modified forms of organisms are to be explained by a group of well-meaning but ultimately not particularly advanced aliens who visit the planet regularly with improvements they've only just come up with? Do they really want to claim that there was not merely initial design but successive tinkering, on the analogy of designers of successive models of cars, to account for what we find in nature?

Since almost all of their support comes from religious believers, I can't imagine how anyone will continue to support Intelligent Design's creationism, if it envisages the creators as successive generations of engineers who are trying out new ideas as they go along.


At any rate, what gets lost on the analogically-challenged cdesign proponensists is that the human engineers in the analogy are superfluous in the biological realm. It has been shown time and again that natural selection and genetic variation can provide all the tinkering improvements necessary to achieve the same effect.

It's just an analogy, and taking analogies too far is a pitfall in the sciences. But if those at UD are inclined to press the details of this analogy, I wonder how long it will be before they themselves feel uncomfortable with the implications.

Quote of the Day (Phil Plait)

"It’s dead obvious that creationism isn’t science, or even bad science. It’s nonsense. But I’ve long stated it’s also bad religion, because it doesn’t just take faith, it also takes a phenomenal disregard of reality."

-- Phil Plait, Bad Astronomy blog

Phil also recommends this video by a Christian who does a really good job of explaining why young-earth creationism and its various permutations should be unattractive for everyone, but in particular for Christians. I second his recommendation.

The Jesus Project

I was recently nominated and invited to become a fellow of The Jesus Project, and I've accepted. Most readers of this blog will know that I've actively participated in conversations and interactions with a number of other fellows on matters related to the historical figure of Jesus. So I figured I might as well make it "official". To get a sense of what the project is about, there are a number of helpful articles by various participants.

I'll leave you with a couple of thoughts about a quote from the project's co-chair R. Joseph Hoffmann: “The Jesus of the Westar Project is a talking doll with a questionable repertoire of thirty-one sayings. Pull a string and he blesses the poor.” If the Jesus of the Jesus Seminar seems suspect to some of us, I'm sure that the feeling is mutual. Yet even though I know that talk of aiming for "objectivity" is frowned upon these days, simply accepting that everyone will make a Jesus that suits them seems worthy of at least as harsh a frown. Although I would scarcely claim to be objective, I do not think that the failure to achieve an ideal makes striving for it any less worthwhile, and I think that the closest we can come is when we open our views and conclusions to criticism from those who disagree with us. And as I know that I disagree sharply on some issues with some other fellows of the Jesus Project, this should be a wonderful opportunity!

Sin and Sci-Fi

Charlie Anders at IO9 has a post on the 7 Deadly Sins of Religion in Science Fiction. It is definitely worth reading, as it insightfully identified examples of "all too easy" plot options in this vein.

Carmen Andres has a reflection on the most recent episode of Lost, "He's Our You", which seems to avoid such tendencies, by actually giving someone an opportunity to go back in time and decide whether or not to kill a child who in the future will grow up to be a killer.

Spiritual McCarthyism

Spencer Burke has an article "From the Third Floor of the Garage" at The Center for Progressive Christianity website. It introduces what I think is in fact an insightful term, "spiritual McCarthyism". Of course, the term relates to an era in history that is not part of the experience of many of us, but for those who know what it means, the image is vivid.

Here's a sample:

Spiritual McCarthyism...encourages people to orchestrate their lives to avoid censure and minimize risk. In short, it teaches people to live in fear - to put up and shut up. I don't know. I guess I'm just not sure that fear, intimidation and control should be the defining hallmarks of Christianity.

He then goes and spoils it by talking about "spiritual Darwinism" when I think what he means is "social Darwinism practiced by and between religions". But the article is still worth a look. And on a similar note, Michael Westmoreland-White recently posted about what Progressive Christianity is.

If that's not your cup of tea, then you can always try something different - what about the cantina music from Star Wars played on the harp? [HT SF Signal] It's actually not as far from the initial topic as might first seem to be the case - it's a great example of how something that sounds too "out there" when you're told about it can turn out to be pretty wonderful when you give it a chance...

Battlestar Galactica Finale: In The End God?

Kenneth Hynek has a fairly comprehensive treatment of the finale of Battlestar Galactica and about the series as a whole. It includes, among other things, a recollection of a discussion he and I had about the theology of the series, once upon a time.

Elsewhere in the blogosphere, Progression of Faith has video interviews in which two New Testament scholars dare to go where BSG feared to tread...

Bye Bye Battlestar

How can one encapsulate in a blog post the finale that brought to an end one of the most fascinating shows on television in recent years? A show that took a show from a couple of decades earlier and reinvented it rather than simply remaking it? [That in itself should have made us think twice about the sense in which "All this has happened before, and all this will happen again"]. A show that was discussed at the United Nations recently, not least because it tackled tough issues like torture?

In many respects, the show's finale confirmed some things I suspected quite some time ago - for instance, that the events of the show would be in our past, and that the inhabitants of our planet would turn out to be the offspring of humans and cylons. This nicely illustrates why intelligent design doesn't get us out of the problem of regression and answer the question of origins. Even if it turned out that we inherited characteristics from beings that had been designed rather than merely having evolved, we would only succeed in pushing the problem back one step, onto another world, where we would then confront the same question: where did the original designer come from?

I was happier than some about the religious element of the finale. It didn't try to wrap up the question of God, but left a fair bit of mystery. For fundamentalists, religion is about answering life's questions. For other religious believers, religion is about hints of a mystery, pointers to transcendence, and a whole lot of symbolism. And the finale did some provocative things in this vein, like emphasizing that God is not on anyone's side, calling God a "force of nature" (as opposed to a person in some anthropomorphic or cylonomorphic sense), and saying at the very end about God that "It hates to be called that".

Anyway, goodbye Battlestar Galactica - for now. Thank you for tackling serious issues and making us think. And thank you for ending before you ran out of good ideas. The worst thing one can hear from viewers of a TV series, after all, is "All this has happened before, and all this will happen again".

Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis Declares Moral Outrage Over an Action He Performed

Here's a news gem from Michael Zimmerman of the Clergy Letter Project (and of Butler University, I might add) that is well worth sharing:

This item falls well within the dictionary’s definition of hypocrisy! Ken Ham, the head of Answers in Genesis, the group that built the $27 million Creation Museum-cum-theme-park in Kentucky, has recently railed against the BBC for “ambushing” a member of his staff. As you’ll see if you read the link, Ham claims that Jason Lisle was surprised to find that his scheduled interview on the BBC was actually to be a debate with Genie Scott of the National Center for Science Education. (I’ve not checked with Genie to get her side of the story since it is actually not relevant to the point I’m making here!) Here’s how Ham summarizes the situation: “By the way—the BBC has not responded to our publicist who has challenged them concerning their deception. Then again, for those people who don’t believe in God and there is no absolute authority, not telling the truth and deception would not be ethically wrong—as they have no basis for right and wrong!”

What makes Ham’s complaints so incredibly ironic and hypocritical is that this is exactly what he did to me a year ago. I was scheduled to do an interview last year on a fundamentalist Christian radio show only to discover, upon going on the air, that Ken Ham was also on the line, ready to debate me. When asked why neither the host nor Ken had the courtesy to inform me that I was to participate in a debate rather than in an interview, I was told that they believed that I wouldn’t have accepted their offer had I been told the truth. When I questioned them about the deception, I was told that since the debate was to further God’s wishes, a minor deception of this sort was acceptable.

That’s quite a double standard!

Sunday School: Homosexuality and Leviticus 17-20

Today in my Sunday school class, we continued our discussion of homosexuality. Today's class began by focusing on the section of Leviticus that includes its two mentions of the prohibition against "lying with men the lyings of women", usually understood to prohibit same-sex male intercourse.

It was crucial to begin by pointing out that some of the things in this part of Leviticus we do not consider necessary. And in spite of slogans that affirm belief in the whole Bible, it should be clear to those who have actually read the whole Bible that those who claim to do so in fact don't. We need to be honest that we not only are not doing everything the Bible says, but deep down we don't think that we should. And so a key question becomes was whether there is any underlying rationale for why some things continue to be practiced while others do not.

One route that is sometimes followed is to defer the matter to the New Testament: those things that are reaffirmed there remain in force, those things that are set aside there do not. But apart from the question of whether all the New Testament authors agreed about what did and did not remain in force, it must be asked whether there is an underlying rationale for what is and isn't maintained in the New Testament. We will, at any rate, discussion Romans 1-3 next time.

Whether we are dealing with homosexuality, shaving, tattoos or other subjects mentioned in this part of Leviticus, we are not given a clear rationale explaining why these things are prohibited. Sometimes attempts have been made to give a rationale - e.g. pork was prohibited to prevent disease, tattoos were prohibited because infection as a result was far more likely back then. But it must be asked whether such concerns are likely to have been in the minds of the Biblical authors.

A number of issues were touched on but set aside until we can consider them in their own right in a well-informed way. These included whether homosexuality's acceptance in society threatens traditional marriage, whether this is an issue about which Christians ought to agree to disagree, and whether, even if Christians agreed in viewing homosexuality as a sin, that would necessarily translate naturally into an attempt to impose Christians' views on others through legislation. The historic Baptist committment to the separation of church and state seems to point in a particular direction on this last point.

Perhaps the most important point to note, however, is how those who claim to be "defending traditional marriage" or "defending Biblical morality" in fact are picking and choosing in ways that suggest ulterior motives on their part. This part of Leviticus includes laws about honesty in business, payment of workers' wages, and treatment of foreigners living in one's territory. Why are such topics ignored by some in favor of a focus on homosexuality? Clearly it is not a desire to be faithful to the Bible that is at the heart of this, since the other matters mentioned are scarcely less pressing issues today. Why do those claiming to "defend marriage" not focus more on divorce, which is the subject of much clearer Biblical teaching and is more obviously a threat to heterosexual marriages? It seems obvious that there must be other motivating factors than those claims. Indeed, one possibility is that this simply reflects an instinct we all have, if we are honest, namely the tendency to focus on that which others are doing, to shift blame, find scapegoats, and see the shortcomings of others more clearly than our own. But on this matter the teaching of Jesus is clear: our focus ought to be on the beams in our own eyes, not on the splinters in others'.

Living and Learning in Light of LOST

LOST is a mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a hatch built by the Dharma Initiative. But if we go back and try to remember watching, wondering and speculating during season one, we have a nice illustration of what is involved in learning and discovery, and what a key hurdle to education can be.

Imagine someone (you may actually know such a person) who formulated what they thought was the "definitive LOST theory" during the first season. Once the hatch was opened, their theory ought to have been abandoned or revised, but instead they kept adding ad hoc supplements, leaving their original theory sort of intact, but deformed and obscured by the convoluted additions needed to harmonize the original theory with what has subsequently been revealed.

This, it seems to me, nicely illustrates what is wrong with so-called scientific creationism. It starts with a particular explanation of the world from season one, and rather than revise the details, it adds implausible ad hoc pseudo-explanations as to why, in spite of all the evidence that has mounted during subsequent seasons, the theory formulated during season one is right.

Human beings have only a limited tolerance for uncertainty. The same appears to be true for other species, but the discoveries and advances of humankind, both within our minds and in our societies, have multiplied the room for uncertainty as well. We formulate explanations based on what we know, as a means to keep chaos at bay. And that isn't in itself necessarily a bad thing. But if you draw hard and fast conclusions too early, and you're unwilling to revise your views in light of subsequent learning, then you're not going to learn. It's that simple.

And so if you find yourself talking to a young-earth creationist who watches LOST, then ask them why they affirm that God made a wonderfully compelling "series" (the natural world), and yet they refuse to watch, or accept what has been revealed in, all the seasons to date. We don't have the complete picture yet. More discoveries remain to be made. But science has blown open the hatch, and even if what is found as a result requires rethinking theories formulated before that point, that's a good thing, even if it can be painful or at least uncomfortable. That's what learning involves. And you'll probably find that rethinking your original beliefs is no more painful or uncomfortable than the much more difficult process of formulating implausible support structures to try to maintain your original beliefs in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary.

Having made this point, I will now briefly retreat into willful ignorance on one particular matter: I'm avoiding all the blog posts about the finale of Battlestar Galactica until I've had a chance to watch it!

Eagle Eye vs. Indianapolis

I watched the movie Eagle Eye, and since it has enjoyable twists and surprises I won't say anything much about the details of the plot.

I will, however, note the irony (as a resident of Indianapolis) that they set some scenes in Indianapolis, and those scenes look nothing like Indianapolis. Not one of the scenes is in a place that looks like anywhere in Indianapolis or its vicinity.

What makes this ironic? A key theme in the movie (this isn't a spoiler if you've seen commercials for the movie) is universal surveillance. And indeed, one can take an address in Indianapolis mentioned in the movie and search for a satellite image via Yahoo! or Google.

That's all it would have taken for the filmmakers to see that it wasn't a good choice of address for the scene, if they wanted even a hint of realism for the sake of Indianapolis viewers.

And so accessibility of knowledge, surveillance, and many other things are increasing exponentially in the present day. But until people to take full advantage of the available information, we seem to have some way to go.

LOST: On Hearing The Numbers While Landing

Let's list all the possible explanations for the numbers playing while Ajira flight 316 was landing in the LOST episode "Namaste". I'll then suggest one is more plausible than the rest.

1) The flash that took away most of the returning Oceanic Six caused the plane to pass through/touch/hear 1977. This is unlikely because we hear the numbers after the flash when the plane seems to be solidly in one time.

2) Someone has started the broadcast again.

3) There is a second broadcast tower on the smaller island where the Hydra station is that never stopped broadcasting the numbers.

4) History has been changed, and the numbers were never stopped from broadcasting.

On the one hand, this last possibility seems the most likely - the deserted Dharma stations in 2007 ("30 years later" than when Jack, Kate, James, Juliet and the rest of them are) seem to make this conclusion necessary. Yet if the numbers have been continuously broadcasting, then some of the experiences that got the survivors into the past never happened.

I wonder if we are going to be told in the end something that wraps things up nicely, and yet is ultimately unsatisfying. I wonder if the reason this island is constantly moving and movable through time and space is precisely because it is a place where the Oceanic survivors have created time loops and other temporal paradoxes.

In other words, even though history has changed and thus it has been proven untrue that "whatever happened, happened", it may also turn out to be the case that time travel is possible on the island because time travel happened on the island. The ultimate temporal paradox!

Are there other explanations/scenarios I've missed? If so, please leave a comment and share them!

LOST in Time's Tangled Web

[SPOILERS AHEAD] Tonight's episode of LOST is pulling a closer and closer to the heart of a tangled knot of interconnected time-loops. Ben has met Sayid for the first time, but because of what has happened since Sayid first met Ben in the future, Sayid will now react to him a certain way in the past. The Oceanic survivors are in the Dharma Initiative, and presumably Hurley will fill in the requisition for the ranch dressing he'll eat later. And so we face the conundrum that the survivors turn out to be the cause of much that they have experienced "earlier" on the island - earlier for them, but in the future. Perhaps this is why the Lost Experience gave us the message "Let Your Compass Guide You": the compass which John Locke gives to Richard Alpert, which Richard Alpert gave to John Locke, becoming an artifact without origin.

We have received hints that there are forces aware of these interconnections and helping to bring things about. Juliet joked that they were building a runway so the aliens could land their spaceship, then admitted that she hadn't been told why they were building a runway on the smaller island. Now we know. The runway would be needed so that an Ajira airlines flight could land there. But who could have known that?

The same people who knew that a nuclear bomb would be needed on the island. There was a military manifest in the Lamp Post Dharma station. Presumably the bomb "Jughead" was dropped because it will be needed to cause "the incident" (which we'll see in the season finale). The incident at the Swan station will, I am guessing, turn out to have been caused by the time travellers (perhaps with advice from physicists Pierre Chang and Daniel Faraday) as a way of shifting themselves back into "the present". Perhaps when that portal is opened, we'll learn at the start of next season that other Dharma Initiative people from the past escaped through it too. And then the war between the two sides will continue, entangling temporal lines in a way that becomes even more complex. Or perhaps, as some have suggested, the "war" is staged in order to motivate the time-travelling pawns to do what they do - but if so, to what end?

Jesus, The Final Days: Dishonorable Burial

I've been reading mainly the second chapter of the recent book by Craig Evans and Tom Wright, Jesus, the Final Days: What Really Happened. One chapter each is devoted to the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. While the volume is not without its shortcomings, I am appreciateive of Evans' articulation of a persuasive argument for the likelihood of Jesus having been buried (with appropriate citation of evidence for the importance of burial in the Judaism of this time), and the likelihood that the burial was in a tomb reserved for executed criminals, i.e. a place of dishonorable burial (p.64). I make a similar argument in my book The Burial of Jesus: History and Faith.

TRON: The Gods Have Become Like One Of Us

As I've been reflecting on the far more explicit religious overtones in TRON than I recalled from watching the movie when I was younger, I've found one particular aspect of its implicit message intriguing.

At one point, Tron says to Flynn that, if he is a user, then he must be in the computer world as part of some plan. Flynn's response is that sometimes you just muddle through and take things as they come. Tron thought that is the way things are for programs, but was shocked that the same might be true for users.

Given the way, particularly at the very end of the movie, the parallels between our "real world" and the computer world are highlighted, it seems that the movie TRON would have us ask not merely "is this a simulation" (as in the Matrix films and The Thirteenth Floor) but "What if God was one of us - just a slob like one of us...?" It is a principle since the Copernican revolution that the heavenly realm is not made of different sorts of substances with different properties than the terrestrial. Is TRON suggesting a similar sort of theological revolution - that wherever and whatever "heaven" might be, it is unlikely to be populated by beings that do not face the same problems and hurdles we do? To put it another way, instead of turtles, what if it is "people" or "programs" all the way down? Of course, an infinite regression of anything is unsatisfying, but that's precisely the philosophical conundrum that plagues religious believers and atheists alike: we don't have any clear-cut reason to stop the regression at some specific point rather than another, whether at a deity or at a multiverse-making mechanism.

With multiple programmers/users, TRON may be argued to have a "radical polytheistic" outlook. Who started the company, who made it great, and who is currently in charge are not the same: there is no stability of leadership in the human realm. The figure of the Master Control Program is perhaps a rebellious Satan figure, wishing to be "the only god". The MCP is persuaded that users are imperfect and that it can rule over all worlds. Rather than monotheism, the MCP has a vision of monolithic dominance, seeking to absorb all other programs into its own self, not realizing how diminished the computer world has become, or how grotesque the MCP itself has become, in the process. And so above all else, the character of the MCP serves as a warning. The attempt to become all-powerful and all-encompassing will not lead one to greatness in any meaningful sense.

One reason I continue to value the doctrine of the Trinity (not as though it could be treated as a statement of fact about the divine essence, but as a metaphor) is because of the power of its present-day formulations to model unity in diversity. If, whether philosophically or scientifically speaking, we cannot answer the question of what the ultimate reason is that anything exists, nor identify a First Cause with attributes that we can know, then the best we can hope to do is choose a symbolic expression of the ultimate. And what better one than an image of mutual cooperation between persons? The doctrine of the Trinity is a potent religious symbol because it has the potential to get us to ask: What if it's not turtles but love all the way down?

In a sense, that message is there in TRON too. Walter Gibbs' love for the company he created in his garage leads him to talk about the spirit that he and others have left in the programs they created, to which Dillinger replies that it is getting late and he has better things to do than to have a "religious discussion" with him. And it is a plurality of cooperating persons that wins the victory, not the monolithic clinging to power of one individual, whether human or program.

Serious Sci-Fi

There is a discussion of Battlestar Galactica taking place at the United Nations right now (HT Galactica Sitrep). This may be an important factor in people continuing to take science fiction seriously even if the Sci-Fi Channel goes ahead with changing its name to something silly.

God and Gays

I want to mention a very recent documentary, God and Gays, featuring gay Christians talking about the struggles they have faced as they have worked through their spiritual and sexual identities. While the segment on the Bible in the second half of the movie could have been better in some ways, the personal experiences shared more than make up for it.

I recommend it for those interested in exploring this topic. Certainly no one should be talking about homosexuality as a topic in the abstract in churches, without also listening to the stories and catching a glimpse of the lives of actual people for whom this is not merely a theoretical issue. Indeed, a key point made in the movie is how opinions on various issues related to homosexuality differ between those who know and do not know (or better, between those who know they know and those who don't know they know) someone that is gay personally.

Und das Leben ist siegreich!

Harrassowitz Verlag seems to be becoming the publisher of scholarly books on the Mandaeans in German. Their latest such volume takes its title from the Mandaean refrain "And Life Is Victorious!" and is a collection of studies on Mandaean and Samaritan subjects in memory of Rudolf Macuch. You can see the table of contents and a sample online, the latter being from the chapter written by Macuch's daughter about her father. I'm looking forward to getting hold of a copy and reading more!

Around St. Patrick's Blogosphere

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

For the occasion, Irenic Thoughts has pointed out that the text of Patrick's Confession is available online. Indigenous Stranger has a version of St. Patrick's Breastplate.

3 Quarks Daily points to a New York Times article that is relevant to some of us New Testament scholars, since it is (more or less) about why some of the best parables would also have been the hardest to remember.

There's a new book available for pre-order on Amazon: Jesus and Paul: Global Perspectives in Honor of James D. G. Dunn for His 70th Birthday (Library of New Testament Studies). It will feature, among other things, a chapter by me on oral tradition, the Gospels and the historical Jesus. Stephen Carlson mentions another forthcoming book, on Q.

RJS at Jesus Creed has been reading Beginnings: Ancient Christian Readings of the Biblical Creation Narratives by Peter Bouteneff. After sharing some snippets from and details about the book, the question is posed starkly: "If we allow scripture to teach us how to view scripture isn't the obvious conclusion that much of the modern evangelical approach to the Bible is dead wrong?"

Vridar has been doing a series on the Testimonium Flavianum, the passage in our extant manuscripts of Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews that mentions Jesus.

TRON: The Flynncarnation

I watched the movie TRON with my son tonight, not having seen it for many years. I was afraid he might find the graphics and special effects pretty lame, having grown up with movies that featured advanced CGI effects, but fortunately that wasn't the case.

It had dawned on me at some point in my adult years that the movie echoed a lot of religious themes, in particular with a person from the world of the creators becoming a program and entering the computer world, showing himself capable of miracles, then sacrificing himself to defeat the evil ruler of the present evil age, ascending as a result to the transcendent world from which he came.

What I didn't remember was how explicit the religious element was in the movie itself. The forces of the Master Control Program expected other programs to deny belief in users (i.e. programmers), and if they did not, they were referred to as "religious fanatics".

I wonder what the sequel, the unpronounceable TR2N, will be like as far as this component is concerned.

C. S. Lewis on LOST (and vice versa)

Entertainment Weekly has an article on connections between LOST and Prince Caspian. Christianity Today has one about connections between LOST and Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

It would be ironic if the character Charlotte S. Lewis has died just as we begin to discover the connections between LOST and the writings of the author C. S. Lewis. The EW article also notes that in the single-volume collection of the Narnia Chronicles, p.316 is the dedication page for Prince Caspian. And if you turn the page, you'll find some LOST-related bells begin ringing immediately!

(HT Read the Spirit)

The Bible's Bones

A Romanian pastor, the late Rev. Mircu Cocar, apparently used to offer the following wise advice to his congregation: Read the Bible like you eat a fish. Take what's good, and leave the bones on the plate.

Sunday School: Homosexuality, Genesis 19 and Judges 19

Today we began a new topic in my Sunday school class series "When Christians Disagree": homosexuality. We're beginning with those passages that have often been singled out as relevant to the issue, although in the present instance, I suggested that Genesis 19 might not be about homosexuality but rather about hospitality, rape, violence and a number of other issues. Also noted was Ezekiel 16, which condemns Sodom in particular for lack of concern for the poor. The question of what rabbinic tradition had to say about this story was also posed, and there are some interesting web sites that address that question.

It is important to read Judges 19, one of the most horrific stories in the Bible, when considering this subject. There a rape does actually take place, and the victim dies, yet even though the originally-intended victim was a man, because the actual victim ends up being a woman, few would say that this is a story about homosexuality, i.e. about sexual orientation. In neither story are we given the impression that the men of the city who surrounded the house wanted to take the male visitors to the city to a local bar, get them drunk, and then be promiscuous with them. Whatever else the people of Sodom or of Gibeah may have been up to at other times, in both these stories we appear to be dealing with acts of violence intended to humiliate and victimize strangers who came into these cities.

Over the next few weeks we'll look at some other passages from the Bible that may be relevant to our topic. For next time we'll read Leviticus 17-20, then Romans 1-3, and after that 1 Corinthians 6-8.

I'll conclude with a clip from The West Wing that everyone has probably already seen, but which may still be useful for those interested in raising some of these issues in a discussion forum of some sort:

Review of Jesus, the Voice, and the Text

The recent volume edited by Tom Thatcher, Jesus, the Voice, and the Text: Beyond The Oral and the Written Gospel (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2008) provides both an appreciative and critical retrospective on the contribution of Werner Kelber to our understanding of orality and the Gospels, as well as explorations of methods and perspectives both old and new on this and related topics.

The first three chapters focus specifically on the work of Werner Kelber and in particular his groundbreaking book The Oral and the Written Gospel. The first chapter, by Tom Thatcher, reviews "Kelber's conclusions in each of these three areas: the hermeneutics of orality and writing, the media history of Christian origins, and the inevitable clash between a media-sensitive approach and traditional text-based models of biblical interpretation" (p.3). One particular contribution of Kelber's is his emphasis on the transitory character of oral words, existing only for the moment they are uttered. A corollary is that there can be no "transmission of content" in an oral context (p.4). This makes it impossible to speak of "originals" and "variants" - indeed, according to Kelber, each rendition was not only "an original version" but "the original version" (p.5, quoting Kelber; see too p.23). Oral speech/performance is thus characterized by a combination of stability in the overall framework and gist, and variability in the wording and precise details (p.6). Thatcher's chapter also highlights other characteristics of oral storytelling, providing in the process a helpful overview of the state of recent scholarly study of orality in early Christianity. One key point worth mentioning is the way written texts allow for repeated readings and thus foster reflection and commentary in a way not possible in a purely oral milieu (p.8). Also striking is the evidence that handwritten manuscripts share many of the characteristics of purely oral performances (p.10). Other key concepts and issues, such as "hot" and "cold" memory, Traditionsbruch, and the possibility that some sayings arose prophetic speech are also considered. Memory is of crucial importance to this topic, and the amount of attention given to it in this volume is welcome. Thatcher concludes the chapter with "five pillars" of Kelber's contribution in The Oral and the Written Gospel (pp.24-25).

The idea of "equiprimordiality", of every performance being utterly original and unrelated to prior and subsequent performances, is, to my thinking, the most problematic of Kelber's assertions. I suspect it is based on an excessive reliance on the Parry-Lord school's work on epic folksongs. But even in this very different genre, it is not at all obvious that the style and even the content of a great performer cannot influence the subsequent performances of his or her students, if not others. But for one to even speak of each performance as a unique original, there must be a traditional story or song that is so deeply rooted in social memory that one can draw on it without any consciousness of dependence on tradition - the story or song is simply there in one's memory and comes effortlessly to the lips and instrument without a conscious need to dig into one's memory. The question whether this depth and extent of social memory could have been achieved in the period between the public activity of Jesus and the time of the writing of the Gospels requires further investigation. At any rate, the notion that every performance is utterly disconnected from all others that went before may be useful hyperbole to startle readers shaped by modern textuality into imagining a different framework, but taken literally it is not clear that such language is meaningful, much less an accurate description of the realities of oral tradition.

Chapter two offers an interview of Kelber by Thatcher, and it includes one of the most crucial questions in this field, one asked all too infrequently: when we envisage a Gospel author writing his Gospel, what do we imagine the details of the process and procedure to have been (p.37). Unfortunately, there isn't much in the way of answer at this particular juncture, but it is refreshing to see the question asked so explicitly. Indeed, Kelber himself says slightly later that an exploration of the modes and processes of composition is "one of the most urgent tasks toward getting a better grip on early Christian tradition" (p.39). In chapter three, Richard Horsley seeks to take into account the ways in which oral and written traditions flowed side by side, culminating in an examination of Mark's Gospel as a whole considered in light of Kelber's work. Horsley notes, among other things, that the assumption that the oldest layer of the Jesus tradition is in aphorisms is questionable, since "no one...can communicate in "one liners" or isolated sayings" (p.59).

Joanna Dewey continues the interaction with Kelber's work on Mark's Gospel, agreeing with many key conclusions of Kelber's while also challenging his view of Mark as a radical break for the prior oral Jesus material, one that aimed to discredit oral authorities of that early period such as the inner circle of disciples and the family of Jesus (pp.72, 74-77). It is emphasized not only that Mark works well in oral performance (p.79), but actually performing the Gospel can be helpful in evaluating interpretations of it (p.74).

Holly Hearon's chapter seeks to provide a broader context for our understanding of early Christian storytelling, examing both examples of storytelling and discussions of stories and storytelling in Greco-Roman literature. Also present in this chapter is important evidence about authors' procedures, in particular the testing of drafts of written works in oral performance. Key concepts and possible categories for early Christian tradition are considered, such as "story", "myth" and "rumor" (see p.93).

Jonathan Draper's chapter considers the two ways tradition and catalogues of vices as found in the Didache and parallels. Draper focuses much attention on the crucial topic of memory, with a discussion that ranges from the work of John Miles Foley to the "memory boards" used by the Luba people of the Congo. The pegs on these boards are used to mark, and thus remind, of key elements to be remembered, and Draper suggests that keywords which turn up in similar places and orders in various vice catalogues show that words could serve as memory "pegs" in a similar way.

One of the chapters I found most interesting was April DeConick's, which represents one of the few attempts to engage in psychological research to quantify human memory capacity in ways directly relevant to the study of the Jesus tradition. DeConick has for years been telling students a modern-day parable involving a lottery ticket, and surprising them later with a request that they each individually reproduce it. Never once have they replicated it exactly, although the gist is regularly retained (pp.135-136). Building on the work of McIver and Carroll in this area, as well as earlier studies in memory by Frederic C. Bartlett, DeConick undertook experiments to assess the ability of student volunteers to retain an extracanonical saying, parable and miracle story in four different situations: oral to oral, oral to written, written to oral, and written to written. Much of the data from her results is shared in tabulated form. It is impossible to reproduce all her significant finding here, but among them are the relative stability of the opening and closing sections of material, and of the words of Jesus in comparison to other material passed on with it. Also worth mentioning is that the proverb, while most stable of all the genres, was still only reproduced verbatim in cases in which either only short term memory was required or in which the written source was retained. While the situations created in classrooms with students obviously do not precisely parallel what was involved in early Christian transmission, this work nevertheless marks a significant advance over scholars' tendency to speak about orality, memory and writing without an attempt to ground conclusions in actual practical studies of human memory. As a result of her work on memory, DeConick is able to point out how the same alterations to a story or saying could appear in different Gospels and "have absolutely nothing to do with the conscious editorial policy of a redactor or reliance upon the same source" (p.178).

Arthur Dewey's chapter looks at the "gospel" proclaimed by the Emperor Trajan's Column. Although its relevance to the volume's theme is perhaps the least initially apparent, Dewey shows how social memory and this other use of the language of "gospel" might have interplayed with the concept as found in earliest Christianity.

Then follows a chapter on violence and the cross in early Christian memory, co-authored by Chris Keith and Tom Thatcher. Contrary to Kelber's claim that a significant passage of time was needed before passion narratives could have developed reflecting on the traumatic event of the crucifixion, Keith and Thatcher suggest that memories of traumatic events often develop fixity and require a communal response almost immediately (pp.208-209). One important type of response is the "keying" of the memories of recent events by relating them to earlier and better known stories and traditions (pp.210-211). "Whether Jesus' original followers thought of him as a messiah, a Rabbi, an exorcist and magician, or some combination of these, no aspect of their thinking about him - or about themselves as his followers - was compatible with the nuclear scripts embedded in a Roman cross. In order to continue as a coherent group, the disciples were faced with the daunting task of replacing the cross script with alternate ways of remembering Jesus and his untimely demise. The violence ratio theorem would suggest that this commemorative work must have begun almost immediately" (p.213).

Alan Kirk's chapter considers the relationship between work on orality and memory on the one hand, and ancient scribal practices and the manuscripts they produced on the other. Scrolls and other ancient texts were cumbersome to use, making memory a more convenient way of accessing materials (p.218). "In chirographic transmission, the person of the scribe was kinetically, cognitively, and existentially bound up in the recreation of the text in a way that is incomprehensible in our era of mechanically mass-produced documents" (p.225).

The final chapter is contributed by Werner Kelber himself, and focuses on the broad topic of "oral-scribal memorial arts of communication in early Christianity". Here we find Kelber looking backwards, around, and forward, and we get his most important insights expressed in a way that takes many of the criticisms of colleagues and insights of other researchers into consideration. For instance, in providing eleven bullet points of problems with form criticism (pp.244-246), Kelber writes, "Oral discourse is uniquely dependent upon concrete social contextuality. To detach words from what is already a second level of narrative emplotment and to examine them in isolation will not give us oral tradition but a studied abstraction" (p.244).

Not every element of Kelber's responses are persuasive - a case in point being an attempt to draw an analogy between early Christian memory of the trauma of the cross, and German remembrance of the Holocaust or North American remembrance of slavery or treatment of Native Americans (p.257), somehow totally missing the difference between the likely difference between forgetfulness on the part of the perpetrators of atrocities and the memory of the victims. Nevertheless, Kelber is aware that, if "media blindness" is a danger he has sought to combat, "media determinism" is a danger lying at the opposite extreme (p.260).

There is little one can say to evaluate a multi-author volume in the best of cases. In the case of this extremely rich volume that dialogues between its contributors and with both past and present trends in scholarship, there is little that needs to be said about the volume as a whole apart from to express profound gratitude. The oral context of early Christianity in all its facets is extremely important, and if Werner Kelber's past contributions have been trend-setting, this volume promises to set broader, deeper, and diverse trends that will inform and inspire future scholarship in these areas in important ways.

Clearing Up The Mess (Of Pottage)

I am reminded whenever I think of the story about Jacob and Esau in Genesis 25:29-34 of a student in Romania who said that Esau sold his birthright for a bowl of tripe soup (ciorba de burta). That's a popular delicacy, much more appealing to some tastes than "pottage" - especially when it is said to be a "mess".

John Hobbins' recent comment about "giving up one's birthright for a mess of unitarian pottage" got me thinking, since this image is a particularly potent one for me. I had a dream once, as a teenager, in which someone who passed by me told me to "remember Esau". I took it as a reminder not to "sell my birthright for a mess of pottage". But in the much more complicated worldview I inhabit these days, it strikes me that both pottage and a birthright, whether it is what you are being offered or what you already have, can be harder to recognize than might first seem to be the case.

On the one hand, there is an inate human tendency to value what we already have - the views, the opinions, the beliefs, the convictions - and to assume that those who are suggesting that things might be otherwise must be wrong. We assume that all they have is pottage, and that they are trying to rob us of our birthright. They, on the other hand, assume that they are offering us a delicacy in exchange for the "mess" we have and inexplicably cherish.

In times of difficulty, things can be reversed. When our worldview begins to crumble, or our circumstances become dire, we reach out for help, sometimes to whoever or whatever comes along. We welcome a feeling of kindness and caring, and that isn't inappropriate, if it is being offered with genuine goodwill. If "whoever offers a cup of water in my name shall not lose his reward", how much more someone who offers a bowl of soup? But because of their dire circumstances, the recipient may mistake the water for living water, the tripe (soup) we share with them for a birthright of inestimable value.

What's more, Jesus called people to leave their birthrights and follow him, relying on hospitality so that sometimes the disciples got a literal mess of pottage, sometimes more and sometimes less.

Philip Kitcher has applied the image of the "mess of pottage" to what secularism and science offer to a religious worldview. He acknowledges that, unless there is a secular equivalent to the community and support often found among the religious, one might well be giving up something of great value for something that, however intellectually satisfying, may leave one feeling a strong sense of loss in other areas of life.

In short, it seems to me that the danger of selling one's birthright for a mess of pottage remains a serious one. But so does the danger of mistaking one's mess of pottage for a birthright. And the only solution I can think of is to critically examine and reflect on both what we have and what we are offered. Yet ironically, it is that critical reflection, which has challenged the simplistic certainties I once had, that some would consider to constitute selling one's birthright.

But I'm fairly confident that I know what I now have, and what it cost me, and that it is worth it. Because I've learned the importance of reading the label on the can.

God Hates Figs

HT Street Prophets

The Bible's Prophetic Postdictions

Both the Thou Shalt blog and Dr. Claude Mariottini have mentioned a recent attempt to find "Bible codes", this time supposedly foreseeing the current financial crisis. But of course, foreseeing is the wrong word, since no one seems to have picked up on this until after the fact.

It is easy to start with current events and then "find" them in the Bible, especially if you are willing to ignore the actual words of the Bible and instead skip to every nth letter until you find words and patterns. Go here for more information. You won't understand the Bible better, but you may learn a few new banking and economics terms in modern Hebrew.

There do seem to be examples of actual predictive prophecy in the Bible, mentioning specific nations, specific leaders and that sort of thing. But ancient Israel's prophets and honest readers of the Bible know something that, deep down, these people making claims of prophecy after the fact presumably know too. Real prediction is risky, because it often gets it wrong. The genuine attempts at prediction in the Bible are no exception. And so it is no wonder that so many prefer the safer route, to start what they know and then (using whatever means necessary) find a way to claim that it was foreseen in some authoritative source or other.


At any rate, clearly the actual words of the Bible just aren't good enough for some people. So go ahead and read it as though it were a word puzzle. But don't pretend this is showing any kind of respect for the Bible.

I wonder how many modern Hebrew (or ancient runic) banking terms can be found by skipping every nth consonant in The Tales of Beedle the Bard. Would that be proof of real magic? Does anyone have the patience to see if they can find such coded messages in my blog posts? Perhaps I'm inspired in all sorts of ways I never realized!

Texan Contradiction

Is it just me, or is a legislative act that has been proposed in Texas recently, aiming to exempt religiously-affiliated educational institutions from state regulation, inherently self-contradictory?
Here's the text of the bill, which is available online here:

A BILL TO BE ENTITLED
AN ACT

relating to exempting certain private nonprofit educational
institutions from state regulation applicable to degree-granting
institutions.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF TEXAS:
SECTION 1. Subchapter G, Chapter 61, Education Code, is
amended by adding Section 61.3031 to read as follows:

Sec. 61.3031. EXEMPTION FOR CERTAIN PRIVATE NONPROFIT
EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS. (a) The provisions of this subchapter
do not apply to a private educational institution, including a
separate degree-granting program, unit, or school operated by the
institution, that:
(1) does not accept state funding of any kind to
support its educational programs;
(2) does not accept state-administered federal
funding to support its educational programs;
(3) was formed as or is affiliated with or controlled
by a nonprofit corporation or nonprofit unincorporated
organization; and
(4) offers bona fide degree programs that require
students to complete substantive course work in order to receive a
degree from the institution.
(b) On the written request of a person acting on behalf of an
institution that claims to be exempt from this subchapter as
provided by this section, the board may issue a letter certifying a
determination by the board that the institution is not subject to
regulation under this subchapter.

SECTION 2. This Act takes effect immediately if it receives
a vote of two-thirds of all the members elected to each house, as
provided by Section 39, Article III, Texas Constitution. If this
Act does not receive the vote necessary for immediate effect, this
Act takes effect September 1, 2009.

According to the legislation, the institution has to be one that "offers bona fide degree programs that require students to complete substantive course work in order to receive a degree from the institution". But how on earth do you ensure that without the oversight and accreditation procedures that this bill is designed to exempt them from?

No one who keeps an eye on education laws will be surprised to learn that this is probably aimed at allowing the Institute for Creation Research to offer "degrees" (yes, those are indeed ironic scare quotes used appropriately). The National Center for Science Education has more information on the subject.

The heart of the matter in brief is this: if organizations like this one were interested in offering "bona fide degree programs that require students to complete substantive course work" that deserves to be labelled education because it accurately reflects our current state of knowledge, they wouldn't need to rewrite the laws in this way.

John Pieret puts it well: "If this bill is enacted, not only will truth in education suffer, so will truth in advertising."

Quote of the Day (Batson and Ventis)

"Synthetic symbolic religious language has creative potential only to the degree that it is recognized to be symbolic, not literal, language. If it is treated as literal, then the symbols themselves become the focus of attention, and the reality-transforming experience that they were originally coined to express tends to be ignored. Instead of facilitating a process of descent into self-examination and surrender followed by an ascent into a transformed reality, the symbols become logical answers to questions of existence. When this happens, the questions are trivialized. Treated as logical answers to life's questions, religious symbols do not stimulate the process of religious reality transformation; they stifle it by rendering it unnecessary."

-- C. Daniel Batson and W. Larry Ventis, The Religious Experience: A Social-Psychological Perspective (Oxford University Press, 1982) pp. 131-132.

Philosophy of Religion Call for Submissions

I thought I'd pass this on...

CALL FOR PAPERS

The University of Toledo student Journal of Philosophy is currently accepting submissions for the Spring 2009 volume. The general theme of this volume is

Philosophy of Religion

All undergraduate and graduate student submissions related to this theme will be considered. Examples of appropriate topics include the existence of God (arguments for or against), the nature of God, the problem of evil, religious ethics, religion and its implications on social/political thought, etc. Length of submissions is usually limited to approximately 3000 words, but longer works may be considered. A wide variety of formats will also be considered. Along with traditional essays, works of poetry and short fiction have been published in past volumes.

The deadline for submission is March 31, 2009.

Send all electronic submissions to philosophyjournal@utoledo.edu and all paper submissions to Osvil Acosta-Morales, Department of Philosophy, University of Toledo, 2801 West Bancroft Street, MS 510, Toledo, OH, 43606. Questions should also be sent to the electronic address listed above.

Inerrancy: A Live Issue

Whatever one may say about the long-term prospects of inerrancy, it is clearly a live issue in the blogosphere. Here are a few of the posts that have resulted from, responded to or interacted with my recent post on the subject:

Finitum Non Capax Finiti
Ancient Hebrew Poetry (whose post got a response from, among others, NT Wrong)
A dialogue was sparked off between Mrs. and Mr. Floppy Hat
Rev. Mark Stevens

If you know of others, please do share them!

Obama on the Bible: Protecting Isaac from Abraham

As president Obama, himself a Christian, continues to make decisions about stem cells and other matters that most Republican Christians disagree with him on, it is worth seeing again this speech about the Bible and American society given by Obama (HT The Rev's Rumbles).

I can't think of a better example of why "the Bible says" cannot be a basis for American law than the example Obama himself mentions of Abraham and Isaac. To be Biblical could mean to make laws stating that the police and child protection agencies are not to intervene if someone is seen sacrificing their child - God may be testing their faith, and to stop the test before it is done would be inappropriate, perhaps even irreligious. But to provide for a modern society in which children are protected, we must choose not to regard this component of the Biblical literature as inerrant, leave what today's Abrahams may or may not have heard between them and God, and have laws that allow the authorities to intervene and protect our children before it is too late.

Obama rightly emphasizes that this doesn't mean that one cannot discuss one's religious values in the public square. But they must be translated into some form of reasoned discourse. This is important because, in the end, if we cannot make cases for our values involving actual data and concrete examples, are we not subtly admitting that our faith is irrelevant to real life and real situations?

The Last Gasp of Inerrancy

In a recent book, G. K. Beale speaks of The Erosion of Inerrancy in Evangelicalism. His choice of metaphor is evocative: he believes that inerrancy is like the solid land upon which the house of Evangelicalism is built. It is in danger of being eroded by outside forces, harmful elements. I'd like to suggest that Beale is wrong. Inerrancy is dying of natural causes, or perhaps to choose a better metaphor, it is being eaten up by dry rot from within because it is inherently diseased in the very fiber of its being, in its very bones.

I took a look at Beale's book because it touches on two not unrelated subjects that interest me: the Christian doctrine of Scripture, and the relationship of the Bible's cosmology to that of other ancient peoples and to modern science. Beale's book will disappoint anyone who is not playing the defensive game of American conservative Evangelicalism. Such readers may take his claims on p.20 at face value, that the troubles for the conservative doctrine of Scripture arise from "eroding" influences from outside: postmodernism, and study at non-Evangelical schools. But surely, unless one wishes to posit a conspiracy to mislead and the gullibility of the students, then the study of the Bible at whatever institution ought not to have the results Beale suggests. Nor does he seem to entertain for a moment what seems to me a more plausible explanation: the doctrine of inerrancy is crumbling because thinking Evangelicals are studying the Bible more seriously, are being more honest about what it contains, and are beginning to allow their doctrine about what the Bible is to be determined by the Bible's contents rather than vice versa.

The book proceeds with a series of case studies, which seem to indicate that Beale believes that if he can just show that his own viewpoint is not decisively disproven by the evidence, then he emerges victorious from the battle. This shows just how out of touch Beale is with contemporary Christianity.

In the chapter on the question of whether the book of Isaiah could have had multiple authors, Beale purports to be defending the Bible, but he is of course defending his doctrine of Scripture, and at times it becomes clear that he is determined to defend his doctrine of Scripture even from Scripture itself. Rather than allow the contents of this influential and powerful prophetic book to determine his conclusion, he is determined to force it into a straightjacket determined by his presuppositions about the Bible in general, and about the meaning of the New Testament when it refers to "Isaiah" in particular.

Beale regularly waves reference to "phenomenological language" as though it were a magic wand that can make outmoded cosmological language cease to be a problem. While he may be correct about the Temple connections in Israel's thinking about creation, this does not change the fact that ancient Israel's authors used language so similar to that of Israel's neighbors that, if not meant literally, it opened the way for a great deal of potential confusion and misunderstanding in that context. But ultimately, the reason Beale draws the conclusions that he does is a lack of familiarity with ancient cosmologies. His discussion of whether the planets could have been embedded each in a separate dome, to account for their distinct movements, ends with the statement that "Such a view of multiple domes, however, cannot be found to have existed in the ancient world!" (p.199). Perhaps not domes, but certainly complete spheres, made of "quintessence", in which the planets and the sun and moon were embedded. Far from being unprecedented in the ancient world, this is the very ancient viewpoint, the Ptolemaic cosmology, that came to dominate much of Europe and Asia, and persisted until the time of Galileo. Since it takes very little research to become aware of this, I can only assume that Beale's interest is not in doing justice to questions of ancient and modern cosmologies and the Biblical context, but of defending his view of Scripture at all costs.

And yet, ironically, Beale is ultimately no friend of inerrancy. For in allowing that the Bible speaks about things as they appear, and not necessarily as they are, Beale has opened all the cans of worms he surely hoped to keep sealed up. If matters of cosmology can be described phenomenologically, then so can matters pertaining to our salvation. And perhaps in most instances this will seem fine to all but the most conservative of Christians. Jesus' death was like a sacrifice, our experience as Christians is like being brought from death to life, getting a new start is like a new birth. But what if the early Christians' experience of Jesus was like encountering the same human person having been physically-resurrected? Inerrancy is a zombie concept that has remarkably persisted for decades in spite of long having died the death of a thousand qualifications. The only hope for Beale and other supporters of the doctrine is that no one will ask the sorts of awkward questions or point out the awkward evidence that we've only scratched the surface of here. But I am persuaded that those days are gone, perhaps not for an older generation of conservative Christians, but for that which is growing up today. And if the stalwarts of the old guard want to protect their flocks from inconvenient truths, it will take not just sending them to Evangelical schools, but somehow censoring their internet access as well, not to mention protecting them from looking at the Bible's actual contents too closely. And once conservative Evangelicalism shows itself to be able to persist only under that sort of totalitarian regime, its downfall is assured. The Bible tells me so.

STOMP

At Butler's Christmas party last year I won two tickets to Stomp, and so I took my son to see yesterday's performance. We both really enjoyed it - about an hour an a half of music, entirely percussion, and without the use of a single object that could officially be labeled an "instrument".

Change Your Clocks

Don't forget to change your clocks if you live in a place that observes Daylight Savings Time. It's so much easier nowadays than it once was...

The End Is Rear

Someone found their way to my blog after searching for the phrase "proctology and eschatology". Apparently some people really are fascinated by everything to do with the end.

I'm guessing it was a typo and the person was actually looking for information on protology and eschatology. Still, that's quite a typo!

What amazes me most is that it brought them to my blog - I'm pretty sure this is the first time the word "proctology" has appeared on it...

Quote of the Day (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

"The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide. "

-–Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journal entry for March 4, 1831

Crazy Blessed Assurance Train

Is it just me, or can you totally fit the words to the hymn "Blessed Assurance" to the music of "Crazy Train"?

On a not unrelated note, last weekend we got to hear a wonderful performance by Rachel Barton Pine, who, in addition to being a phenomenal classical violinist, also plays crossover renditions of heavy metal songs on the violin. Here's a medley that is available on YouTube which includes "Crazy Train" and "Paranoid":

LOST LaFleur

I won't say too much about last night's episode of LOST, except that using time travel to put some of the main characters in the time of the Dharma Initiative is a brilliant move. Either it allows the writers to tell a back-story that is necessary in order to resolve mysteries from earlier seasons without simply dropping the characters that we've come to know and love, or it is something that was planned from the beginning and these characters' involvement in the past is crucial to understanding what happened to them up until now. Either way it is a brilliant move. [If you're looking for a recap and speculation, try here].

My guess is that it will turn out that Hurley became part of the Dharma Initiative in the 70s and himself filled out the requisition for large quantities of ranch dressing.

And now we wait two weeks until the next episode...

Sinful Nature and the Changeling

The reading for this past week's Sunday school class was Romans 5, to provide an opportunity to bring our last two topics (Jesus' life and work, and evolution) together. We didn't actually discuss the evolutionary aspects to any great extent, but we did focus on the question of what is meant by the "sinful nature" (NIV) or "flesh" which Paul refers to in his letters.

The image of an angel and a demon sitting on one's shoulders making suggestions was mentioned, not as a literal explanation of what is going on, but as a traditional image of what we all experience, namely feeling torn at times between something we "know is right" and another option that seems seductively appealing. Tom and Jerry seem to have had the same experience from time to time.

Understanding how much of both our morality and our temptations are genetic is not irrelevant. Nor is understanding the role of culture and upbringing. To the extent that Christians are dedicated to overcoming sin in their individual lives and standing against its systemic expressions, there is an urgent need for clarity on this topic.

I find particularly helpful the Rabbinic idea (which Paul may have presupposed) of humans having what they called a "good impulse" and an "evil impulse". There most important insight was that the "evil" impulse was not inherently evil - indeed, the impulse that drives us to eat and to procreate is essential for our survival. What brings evil into the picture is when we do not allow our values and our reason to at times override these basic instincts. Such a viewpoint seems compatible with our current biological and psychological understanding of human beings.

A couple of days ago I saw the movie Changeling, and it provides an interesting opportunity to discuss our concepts of evil, nature, and sinfulness. The instinct in each of us is to focus our attention on the character of Gordon Northcott. But if our notion of evil stops with the serial killer, however heinous his crimes, then our understanding is superficial. Nor is it enough if we ask about his parents and upbringing (a story to which there was more in real life than was included in the movie), or even whether he was better described as evil or as deranged and mentally ill. We ought also to notice that, while Northcott was free to roam about as a man, the mental hospital featured in the movie was filled with sane women who had in some way become an inconvenience to the police. Also important is that many of those entrusted with the responsibility for protecting citizens were not fulfilling that duty. If terms like "sin" and "evil" are to have any meaning at all, they must be allowed to challenge us by encompassing all our varied participations in individual actions and social interactions that allow or even directly cause or at least encourage such things to happen. It is too easy to punish the serial killer, or the single mother forced to leave her son at home while she went to work, or the corrupt police, but Christianity's power lies in the fact that it challenges us to see how we are capable of and/or contribute to the same things, and to not merely denounce others but also seek to overcome the same tendencies in ourselves, and work for changes to society so as to prevent avoidable tragedies, foster justice, and bring healing. But it is much easier to envisage a battle between good vs. evil as "us vs. them" rather than as a battle the front lines of which run through each and every one of us.

The issues of "nature" and "naturalness" (both in their modern sense and as used in Paul's letters) come up in discussions of homosexuality, and so the present topic should provide a fitting segue to a consideration of that specific concrete subject about which Christians disagree. We'll begin with what the Bible may have to say on the subject, but here too there is a danger unless we are aware of the many parts of the Bible that we do not actually practice or believe ought to be put into practice today. It simply will not do to say "the Bible says" about homosexuality while ignoring what it says about violence and vengeance, about possessions, not to mention about subjects like slavery, marriage and genocide. Hopefully some of the discussions we've had about the Bible thus far will have laid a helpful groundwork upon which we can build as our series continues.

Partial Knowlege, Totally Dangerous

We human beings have a tendency to take what little information we have and extrapolate from it into a worldview that guides our lives and our decisions. Perhaps that is inevitable. What makes it particularly pernicious, however, is our tendency not only to make generalizations based on our limited knowledge, but to then affirm with unswerving certitude that which we claim to know.

Darwin is rightly getting a lot of attention at the present, but we should not neglect the legacy of misuse of Darwin's theory. While biologists and those in related scientific fields have found his insight has led to a greater understanding and has even opened up exciting new fields and avenues of inquiry, since it was first formulated, people have appealed to Darwin's powerful insight to justify all sorts of contrasting viewpoints: Communism and unbridled Capitalism, abandonment of religion and belief in our spiritual evolution, racism and the inevitability of progress.

The danger is that, in the ensuing debates about whether or not Darwin was a racist, the more fundamental issue will get missed. To the extent that Darwin may well have had mistaken notions about "races" in his time, such ideas characterized Europeans and Americans more generally, and were widespread among Christians and even "creationists". There are, I suspect, significant numbers of racist creationists around today, too. Such views don't require Darwin's theory of evolution, and if they appeal to it as justification, it is but another sign of the ignorance of those making the appeal.

But the heart of the matter is that people continue to appeal to Darwin's theory, and to all sorts of other insights whether in science, religion or some other domain, as justification for things that they cannot legitimately justify.

Daniel Dennett is wrong when he calls Darwin's theory a "universal acid". The only force that seems to be universally corrosive is to appeal to scientific theories in illegitimate ways to justify our instinctive and emotional responses, our ideologies, biases and bigotries, and to give them a veneer of certainty and objectivity.

Darwin's scientific insight has proved its value and deserves to be celebrated. But to misuse it is no celebration, and only serves to perpetuate the anti-science biases of groups that clearly share the same sorts of bigotries and ideologies, but who appeal to other sorts of authorities to justify them.

LOST Magick

Through a round-about sort of way, I've happened across some interesting points of intersection between the TV show LOST and the writings of Aleister Crowley. Among Crowley's writings are The Book of the Law (a book with a similar title featured in an episode of LOST) and an account of "The Lost Continent of Atlantis" that features, among other things, Atlanteans who cannot have children, and a fear that further "progress" beyond the perfection they'd achieved would mean a loss of perfection and be detrimental, and thus a plan emerged to preserve the status quo.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who saw a resemblance between Daniel Faraday's diagram of space-time (also found in the Hydra station in "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham") and depictions of Gnostic emanations, Hermetic, mystical and magical diagrams, and that sort of thing.

But perhaps most intriguing is the apparent similarity between John Locke and Crowley himself. Crowley apparently believed he was special from birth, destined for greatness. And so one wonders what the message of LOST will be. Is it that belief in one's own specialness becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, one that inspires all sorts of people to do horrific things?

Another echo I missed until it was pointed out to me is of The Last Temptation of Christ. In the scene where Locke is about to kill himself and then Ben arrives, it is very reminiscent of the scene when an "angel" appears and tells Jesus he can come down from the cross, he's suffered enough. But in that movie, Judas is friend rather than traitor, and interestingly enough, given the Ben/Judas parallels, in both the necessary death comes about through Ben's/Judas' influence, but in very different ways. And so as always, there are not only echoes and parallels but inversions of other stories and their themes and characters as well.