RJH July-December of 2012 Part 2

The New Oxonian
Books etc.
 Comments and Moderation
 Vita Brevis
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Religion and Culture for the Intellectually Impatient


The Canonical Historical Jesus
by rjosephhoffmann

Reprinted with additions from The Sources of the Jesus Tradition (c) 2010 R. Joseph Hoffmann
Christ Pantocrator (Deesis mosaic detail)
The Canonical-Historical Jesus
R. Joseph Hoffmann
With the thunderous exception of the canonical version of Luke’s gospel, the historicity of Jesus is not a question for the New Testament writers.  I suggest that his historical existence cannot be established and cannot be confuted on the basis of the literary remains we possess from the late first and early second century.  Both the radical myth- school of the 19th century which advocated non-historicity and the view that serious scholarship is no longer interested in the question mark the extremes. However, the question that dominates early Christian discussion, the question through which the question of the historicity of Jesus emerges in later discussion, is fundamentally theological: It is the question of his humanity.
My argument in this modest essay is that while we cannot know for certain very much about a historical Jesus, not even for certain whether he existed, we can reconstruct fairly exactly the theological conditions under which his historical existence became indispensable for Christian theology.  This being so, the question of the selection of books that were useful in the pitched battles between two views of Jesus–call them spiritual and earthly–is central, not anterior,  to the question we call historicity.
When we think of the chronology of events that lead to the development of the New Testament, we usually think of the canon in final position.  The making of the church’s book is regarded as the last act, so to speak, in the compilation of letters, short stories, an apocalypse and gospels that make up the collection.  The way scholars and theologians have traditionally spoken about the canon suggests that it has almost nothing to do with the subject matter of the whole, but that its wholeness determines the permissible limits of the subject matter. That it is, in some sense, an executive decision imposed on unruly members. If Jesus is the protagonist of the gospels, the saving presence that inspires Paul’s letters, the heavenly king of revelation, he is, in some strange way, missing from the concept of a canon. That is because a canon is a selection of books thought to be authoritative and complete.  In Greek the word implies a hard and inflexible instrument used for writing, and its closest Latin equivalent is regula, from which we get words like ruler and rule—a standard against which other things must be judged.  The canon as it is traditionally understood, regulates what can be regarded as trustworthy, or to use a term manufactured by the church fathers, apostolic.
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The theory that has dominated NT scholarship until relatively recently has run something like this.  The historical Jesus was enshrined in memories about his life, words, and work.  This would have happened before his death and the process would have accelerated following his death, especially if his death was interpreted as a martyrdom, or otherwise thought to have significant consequences.
Of these memories (without prejudice to their historicity), the event of his resurrection was the most prominent, for obvious reasons.  The memory, embedded in oral traditions about Jesus, was not fixed and final; it moved from mouth to ear, community to community.  It became affixed to local traditions—the Jesus of Rome was not in every detail the Jesus of Antioch or Anatolia.  The Jesus of Mark is not the Jesus of the Fourth Gospel.  Scholars for the last century have described the variance in these memories as trajectories or lines of tradition rather than as a single tradition arising from a single source. Various Jesus quests and other Jesus projects have made it their business to bring the trajectories as close as possible to a defining event, and this defining event is assumed to be historical.
In time, recorders of the traditions arose. We think they worked in the service of a movement (communities of believers), not as simple biographers, and that their work was closely attached to preaching and propaganda.  They recorded things Jesus was said to have said, and said to have done.  Their words were not coherent biographies, but more of the order of aides memoires or collections of sayings, reminiscences.  They were not, as far as we can determine, transcriptional—that is, based on direct knowledge, though later, for apologetic reasons, the concept of witness and successions of witnesses becomes prominent.  The assured authority these writings lacked at the point of their composition is imposed by later writers in debates about what constitutes right belief or orthodoxy.
Some early communities seem to have possessed a class of prophets—women and men believed to be able to recall the words of Jesus on a number of topics, ranging from divorce to paying taxes to the unimportance of worldly goods and duties towards neighbours and enemies. Other strands envisioned Jesus pronouncing on the end of days and God’s judgment. Others envisioned him as a teacher of aphoristic wisdom and a revealer sent by God to preach, essentially, a message about his heavenly origins.  This last strand tended to portray Jesus as a relatively obscure figure whose sayings were mysterious and limited to a kind of spiritual elite, as in the Fourth Gospel.  But even in the so-called synoptic gospels, this strand is present with the role of the elite being played by apostles whose minds have been clouded by earthly concerns.  Since the mid 20th century it has been convenient if not exact to call this strand “Gnostic.” Gnosticism was not one thing however but many things; even Irenaeus who made bashing Gnostics a fine art, compares them to weeds.
To be brief, however: At some point at the end of the first century and continuing well into the second, gospels appear, as do letters from missionaries, apocalypses both Christian and adopted, books of oracles, stories of the apostles and their miraculous feats.  One of the remarkable things about this development is the sheer increase of letters ascribed to “the apostles” and women followers of Jesus’ day, some 75 years and more after the death of Jesus.  It is hard to hard to avoid the impression that the historical tradition began to erode in conjunction with competition between communities and their indepednent claims to possess “fuller” or more detailed representaions of the Jesus story.  It is equally difficult to ignore the fact that the work of some missionaries–Paul being the outstanding example–was so hostile to historical tradition that  it risked sacrificing it entirely to eccentric theological interests and the desire to out-perform  rival teachers.
As in the study of secular literature, scholars recognize these variant literary forms as genres or types, each type serving a slightly different confessional purpose but all tending to support the interests of Christian communities in knowing who Jesus was, what he said, what he had come to do.
Different communities said different things, however.  The most heavily gnosticized of them possessed a theology of such Pythagorean complexity that it sometimes verges on what Joseph Fitzmyer once described as crazy.  The ones we recognize as “orthodox” or canonical, for the most part, are familiar if unresolved blends of the historical and supernatural, the pedagogical and the mysterious: words about the poor, or advice about adultery, stand next to stories about raising a widow’s son from the dead, and being transfigured alongside Moses and Elijah.  The effect of this blending was to create a god-man of uncertain proportions.  How human was he?  How divine?
The literature itself did not provide the percentages, the definitions, but the questions nagged and would finally result in official decisions about the divinity and humanity of Jesus in the fourth and fifth century.
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Between the second and the fourth century however is the making of the New Testament. And this is where the canon—the process of winnowing and selection–comes into view. It is important to remember, as we look at the canon, that no one who wove the web of sayings and deeds into the form we call gospel wrote with the intention of having his work anthologized.  –Think back to those literature-survey courses you may have taken in college—Shakespeare wrote what he wrote; he did not design it to be included as a unit in the section before the Metaphysical poets and Restoration Drama. “Mark” likewise wrote what he wrote; his editors edited what they edited, and the canon-makers chose what they chose.
The canon gives an impression of consensus, evangelical uniformity, as if a vote had been taken, with all members present, to certify that what’s written is their contribution to the “authorized version” of Jesus.  This is of course the impression the proponents of canonicity (though not with one voice or at one time) wished to convey when they linked the canon to the defense of a growing body of doctrine, or teaching about Jesus, and the origins of that doctrine to another idea, belief in apostolicity.
To oversimplify this process: certain beliefs about Jesus, including above all the matter of his humanity and divinity were at the center of second and third century discussion.  This discussion does not take the form of theological point and counterpoint in its earliest phases. In its earliest phases, it must go back to the way the Jesus-story spread, or was understood, in places like Antioch, Ephesus, Rome and Sinope, or was communicated by missionaries like Paul, whose references to the historical Jesus, if there are any intentional ones, are not prominent.
What we possess are documentary traces of the discussion before it becomes an official debate by early church leaders, who will make each other orthodox and heretical in the course of the argument. In its formative stages, including the composition of the individual New Testament books, Christianity did not seek uniformity of doctrine because the shapers of the Jesus tradition did not imagine their works would be forced into alignment.
The idea of a fourfold or tetramorph gospel goes back to ancient harmonies like Tatian’s and were still being produced for use in Sunday schools, like McGarvey’s 1914 Fourfold Gospel “Resulting in a complete chronological life of Christ, divided into titled sections and sub-divisions, with comments injected in the text.”  It is too much to say that individual writers thought they had a monopoly on the whole story—an author of John’s gospel for example expressly puts his story forward as a collection, a partial one—or that individual writers wrote in order to produce a final version, though an editor of the gospel called Luke writes with an intention to sequentialize versions of the sources he knows.  That is all we know.  Because of the way in which sources were used and refashioned, however, it is tempting to think that the cache of materials that could properly be desribed as ‘historical’ (in the sense of being thought to originate very close to the time when Jesus lived) was quite small.  John’s contribution stands outside this matrix, though it presents some tantalizing possibilities.
In terms of other kinds of NT literature, Paul may have had a “canonical intention,” but the collecting and canonizing of his letters and the creation of new ones, is an event of the early second century, of a Paul-devotee known to history as a heretic—Marcion–not of his lifetime.
The canon does not arise as a spontaneous development, any more than Christian orthodoxy emerges as a single deposit in a bank account–to use an image from the second century. The canon is the regulation of sources that supported a growing consensus about who Jesus was, or rather, what was to be believed about him.  If not a majority, then a significant, well-organized, and powerful minority of voices found his complete and total humanity a non-negotiable criterion for believing the right thing about him.  They found their support for this view in a fairly small number of sources that they believed dated from apostolic times.
My argument here is that it is impossible to discuss the historicity of Jesus simply on the basis of the individual sources available in the church’s selection of books, or by parsing their contents, and equally difficult to advance the argument much further on the basis of gnostic and apocryphal sources that did not make the final cut. I am certainly not saying that research into the sayings of Jesus and attempts to construct a prototype gospel are useless.  But the endeavor is bound to be incomplete unless the theological motives for defending a fully historical Jesus are brought into the picture.  The early church, the framers of the canon especially, were not interested in an historical Jesus per se but in a fully human Jesus.  Indeed, it is partly their concern and stress on this overt humanness with no accompanying mitigation of other claims—e.g., that he ascended into heaven, calmed seas, rose from the dead—that fuels speculation about whether such a man can have existed historically at all.  The canon is not the proof of his historicity therefore but the earliest theological matrix out of which suspicions about it arise.

In any consideration of the historical Jesus , the following propositions about the canonical and human Jesus need to be weighed:
1.  The gospels make no explicit argument for the historicity of Jesus.  In the gospels, his historical existence is assumed.  In the letters of Paul—while I agree that Paul is profoundly silent on many of the historical markers—it is in the background.  In late letters, such as 1 John, acknowledgement that Jesus has come in the flesh is made decisive—those who deny it are antichrist (4.3). I regard Galatians 4.4f.  completely helpful as a “proof” of Paul’s conviction as to the existence of an earthly, flesh and blood, Jesus. ὅτε δὲ ἦλθεν τὸ πλήρωμα τοῦ χρόνου ἐξαπέστειλεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν υἱὸν αὐτοῦ, γενόμενον ἐκ γυναῖκος, γενόμενον ὑπὸ νόμον, 5 ἵνα τοὺς ὑπὸ νόμον ἐξαγοράσῃ ἵνα τὴν υἱοθεσίαν ἀπολάβωμεν. It is also significant that Paul is not willing to go much further with this claim, even though he offers it as a way of establishing Christians as the inheritors of “sonship” on the same axis he uses to establish the Abrahamic succession through Isaac.
2.  If there is a litmus test for the “physical historical” Jesus in the gospels, it is the crucifixion.  Secondarily it is his bodily resurrection—which may sound odd, but in a significant way qualifies the kind of human existence his believers thought he possessed.  In time, stories of virgin birth, fabulous details and genealogy are appended to complete the story.  The birth stories however are designed to illustrate Jesus’ exceptionality, even to correct the impressions of his human ordinariness.  Any indifferent reading of the nativity accounts of Matthew and Luke see them as epiphany stories whose closest analogies are accounts of the birth of Hermes in the Homeric “hymn,” or of Augustus’ in the account of Atia’s pregnancy. That miraculous components from biblical sources are intertwined with these allusions is equally plain and as far as I can tell uncontroversial.
3.  I believe that by the early second century a certain comfort level concerning the humanity of Jesus was being achieved among significant teachers—the names we now group under designations such as apostolic fathers, the apologists, heresiologists—men like Polycarp, Ignatius, Justin, Irenaeus and Tertullian.  At the risk of being outrageous, I would add Marcion to the list even though he was not destined to become a church father but rather an arch-heretic.  They had settled on the idea that Jesus was “truly” or “wholly” human.  In the Creed it would run,    ἐκ Πνεύματος Ἁγίου καὶ Μαρίας τῆς Παρθένου καὶ ἐνανθρωπήσαντα.   Σταυρωθέντα τε ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν ἐπὶ Ποντίου Πιλάτου, καὶ παθόντα καὶ ταφέντα.
4.  Beginning with Polycarp, that is prior to 155 or so, the practice of proof-texting or citing scriptural passages to teach doctrine and win arguments, becomes a standard method in Christian theology. This presupposes a process of selection of sources useful to root out teaching thought to be false, or to use the word that becomes fashionable by the end of the century, heretical.  The canon therefore arises in the process of these debates with false teachers.
5.  The key element in this process—which is not always explicit: that is, not a simple list of books decreed to be canonical such as the so-called Muratorian fragment or the decree of Pope Gelasius in the fifth century—is to affirm against the teachings of docetists and assorted Gnostic groups, that Jesus of Nazareth has come in the flesh (truly born and truly died).  This is the doctrinal motif of canon formation.  It also establishes once and for all the conjunction between canonicity, historicity, and humanity—three ideas now so closely interwoven theologically than they cannot easily be separated phenomenologically.
6.  But there is a second motive:  with the exception of Luke’s belated construction of an apostolic college in the book of Acts, the apostles do not fare well in the gospels.  To be kind, they are slow-witted students. Without exploring the many interesting guesses about this characterization, early Christian writers like Irenaeus and Tertullian were obsessed with their rehabilitation—especially since teachers like Marcion preferred to leave them in the mud or at the bottom of their class. The true reasons for this characterization had been lost by the second century, indeed even by Luke’s day, though there is ample reason to believe it was not historical accuracy but pedagogical necessity that sealed their reputation in Mark’s gospel. By the time Irenaeus writes his treatise against the heresies at the end of the 2nd century, the idea of a continuous tradition of truth, transmitted by faithful, inerrant followers, and a faithful passing down of teaching from apostle to later teachers (John to Polycarp and Anicetus for example) has become standard.  Canonicity has been tied to apostolicity.
7.  Irenaeus is really the first to make this motive explicit around the year 180, though an earlier church leader (how much earlier is hard to decide) named Papias hints at something of the same logic.  Actually Papias is remembered by the historian Eusebius as a man with limited intellectual powers (3.39.13), but the germ of an idea of unbroken tradition extending from Jesus to the apostles to the presbyters is present in his journalistic approach to sources.  His criterion is oral tradition handed down to presbyters; in fact he says he doesn’t put much stock in “books” and rejects the voluminous falsehoods they contain—whatever that may mean—but prizes the living “voice of truth.”  Papias’s reference to “books” is odd, and even what he says about what he says he knows, for example, about gospels like Mark and Matthew is improbable.
However that may be, Irenaeus exploits the idea of unbroken male succession to offer a fourfold attestation of truth, corresponding he says (3.11.8) to the four principal churches, the four winds, and the four corners of the earth. “It is impossible that the gospels should be greater or fewer in number than four.”
Irenaeus argues tradition as a natural principle: using his predecessors’ assumptions, he finds denial of the humanity of Jesus the benchmark of false teaching, and in a famous scene depicts his own teacher Polycarp as rejecting Marcion in a bathhouse in Ephesus calling him the first born of Satan (AH 3.3.4).  The key to overcoming the spiritualized Jesus of Gnosticism was to insist on an unbroken tradition that required his material, physical existence. An earthly, fully historical savior is the presupposition of the historical process he uses as the basis of his argument.
The historical Jesus is therefore not inherent in any gospel, nor even in the canon, but in a process.  That process was slow to develop and developed in response to specific threats, the teachings of men and women who rejected a mundane understanding of salvation and the role of Jesus in the process.  The historical Jesus was not necessitated by the gospel, but by the need for an authoritative teacher who selects and commissions other teachers, and in a self referential way, who are able to select those books where the approved story is told.  It follows that only by deconstructing that process from its canonical end-point will it be possible to reconstruct the question of Jesus.  This process is largely the opposite of Schweitzer’s approach, with his post-Enlightenment protestant faith in documentary sources in their “original” form, and conviction that the Jesus who emerged from such investigation would stand in marked opposition to the Jesus made by the church’s theology.    Important as his insights were for their era, they were based on an epistemology that now belongs to the history of biblical studies and cannot serve as a template for future research on the question.

[to be concluded]
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Published: August 1, 2012
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9 Responses to “The Canonical Historical Jesus”

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 davidjohnmills 
 August 1, 2012 at 5:17 pm
Enjoyable essay. For large parts of it, my knowledge really only skims the surface, and so, to mix up metaphors, I am out of my depth. As a result, I won’t comment….other than to make a guess….that if Joseph hoffmann ever finds an old bottle on a beach, and picks it up, and rubs it, and a genie appears, offering one wish and one wish only…..I wonder what Joseph might ask for?
Ability to time travel back and forth to/from 1st Century Judea?
I might even be tempted by that one myself, but ultimately, obviously, in my case, it would come down to a toss up between the annihilation of all religion and the legalization of barbecuing babies. To each their own.
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 G 
 August 2, 2012 at 7:02 am
This is a great foundational essay for the revived Jesus Process. One that FINALLY strikes a nice balance between the major questions. Regarding the historicity and physicality of Jesus not as things that were assuredly true; but things that were actively sought.
By the way; if the goal in mind here is the eventually full attainment of Humanity (as in Humanism, and Humanistic Theology)? I might add that in my reading, the New Testament itself offered that possiblity. After all the magical posturing and gaseous spirituality of our ascetics, finally the End Times vision of the Bible ends not even so much with a “Son of God” triumphing – as significantly, a son “of Man.”
A phrase which was rightly and famously noticed (by Casey or others?), was in effect, a common old phrase meaning simply, “mortal.” Or “human.”
In one of my (many) opinions, the Bible offered the vision you now seem to have: that one apoclalypic “day” or another, we would see the many theological and practical sins of our old holy men and angels. And then grow up. Putting aside all the magical thinking, the belief in miracles and spirits. Learning how to be just good decent, human beings. Headed by, after all, a “son of Man.” (But in some cases, unfortunately, a son of a bitch?).
To be sure, there is always the danger of a reductionistic Humanism; one that uses our all-too-human weaknesses and occasional simplicity, as if they were our end goal and guideliness. So that we will need a way to incorporate many of at least the best of the old religious ideas of our highest good, into the framework of human, but nevertheless great, ideas.
 Seeing God as returning to earth and flesh, might have been a useful part of that. Past and present.
To be sure, it was all-too-often asserted by the churches that they had already perfectly achieved the re-descent of God to earth; announcing themselves as the full and adequate and only physical “body of Christ” or “kingdom” and so forth.
So that? All this should be done, with enthusiasm, and imagination – but also mindful caution.
This essay seems to set the tone and thesis nicely though: reality, concreteness, humanity, are something to be achieved; not necessarily assumed as a fully adequate, past accomplishment. Full humanity, reality, is always something yet to be achieved, in many ways.
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 scotteus 
 August 2, 2012 at 1:06 pm
“Indeed, it is partly their concern and stress on this overt humanness with no accompanying mitigation of other claims—e.g., that he ascended into heaven, calmed seas, rose from the dead—that fuels speculation about whether such a man can have existed historically at all. The canon is not the proof of his historicity therefore but the earliest theological matrix out of which suspicions about it arise.”
So then if I’m reading correctly, the early formers of doctrine where trying to take the fantastic, miraculous, incredible etc and through their thoughs on paper, make it seem possible and reasonable; not just the masses but to intellectuals. This process would not only have taken a great deal of time, but some serious intellectual skill to make a reality. Therefore, we don’t have events like Nicea, Constantinople, Chalcedon, etc until several hundred years after the fact. Those events, despite being as big as they were, still had plenty of detractors when they were put forth.
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 rjosephhoffmann 
 August 2, 2012 at 5:31 pm
A+ Scotty m’lad
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 Bretton Garcia 
 August 3, 2012 at 2:06 pm
Personally I rather like many of these ideas, as a working hypothesis. So our task at this point is now to “flesh out” the narrative, or the historical background; for once, not by invention, but by more and more solid Mythographical studies. More and more factual support.
One minor note on the specific matter at hand: in every folk community and grade school, there are always rumors of “miracles” or supernatural happenings; so that these would not necessarily have been invented by church fathers deliberately. But would have been invented – or spontaneously fabricated – by the sheer confusion of everyday believers.
Though to be sure in either case, it was an invention or confusion. One eventually supported by the Church, moreover. Since its own assertion of its own consequent miraculous powers, gave it more status, and more power to intimidate and control.
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 davidjohnmills 
 August 3, 2012 at 4:42 pm
Just a passing query from someone who is only part familiar with no more than part of the matters in question…..
By historical detail and biography, I am kind of assuming we must be talking about the sort of thing that’s in, for example, the canonical gospels (albeit of course they are not necessarily historiographical and/or not necessarily in the form in which they were written and/or only a small selection of writings which didn’t make it into the canon?)
And if those were written mid to late 1st century…….then…if Jesus was historicized, then wouldn’t it have been pretty early?
If anyone intends to answer this, a nice brief, in-a-nutshell answer would be fab, even if it requires elaboration or lacks sophistication, because a lenghty answer will probably throw up more questions than answers for this (on this issue) agnostic Ta.
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 Jale Kamaz 
 August 13, 2012 at 11:43 am
Long but nice to read.
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 Ed Jones 
 September 22, 2012 at 8:46 pm
Our sole sufficient historical evidence for Jesus, who he was what he said and did, rest solely on NT scriptural sources containing apostolic witness to Jesus, solely on the basis of their prior faith and witness, the original and originating witness to Jesus. This is the norm for judging the validity of anything one can say about Jesus. It is the norm for traditions’ Authority of Scripture, sources judged to stand in the context of apostolic eyewitness. Just here in the earliest period of origins (30 CE-65CE) we face the fateful mistake of the history of Jesus traditions, the historical mistake which led to the early Gentile church, the winners in the struggle for dominance, in applying this criteria of apostolicity, to mistakenly name the writings of the NT, the letters of Paul, the Gospels, as well as the later writings of the NT to be apostolic witness to Jesus.
 It was on this assurance of the Authority of Scripture, however mistaken the early Gentile-Christian church’s judgment in choosing apostolic sources, developed to become a world class religion. Only with the Enlightenment , specifically with Reimarus’ challenge that the Christ of faith was not the Jesus of history, setting off the 200 year plus Quest or the Historical Jesus – “Search the NT Scriptures and see if Christianity is not based on a historical mistake”. Only within the 80’s has some of our top NT scholars fully come to the conclusion that “We now know that none of the OT writings is prophetic witness to Christ in the sense in which the early church assumed them to be, but also that none of the writings of the NT is apostolic witness to Jesus as the early itself understood apostolicity .” (Schubert M. Ogden). Now read A viable solution to the Jesus Puzzle again as if for the first time.
Following is the Present understanding of our top NT scholars of this foundational event, marking the beginning of post “Easter” Jesus traditions: The key disciples, having fled to their native Galilee, emboldened by ‘visions’ (a form of non-sensory cognition), very early (within weeks) returned to Jerusalem purposing to again take up the message of Jesus. So began the Jerusalem Jesus Movement, as documented in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:3-7:27, the SM). Betz: “From the point of view of the history of religions, the SM belongs to the early (Jesus Movement), a product of the mid first century, when the (Jesus Movement) was still part of Judaism. The Jewish (followers) who stand behind the SM and who speak through it are conscious of a strained relationship to their mother faith. They find themselves in conflict with the party of the scribes and Pharisees.- – But the polemical stance of the SM is also determined by the fact that it has knowledge of (what was at this point pro-)Gentile Christianity and sets itself off from it. Here, obviously, lies one of the critical points that served to bring the document into being in the first place. Thus the SM bears witness to a community that finds itself in the midst of a profound internal crisis. It is not only their task to maintain and defend the teachings of Jesus, but to establish first of all, what Jesus taught and desired of others, and what he did not teach and did not desire. The strange fact that such conflicting interpretations of the teachings of Jesus could arise so soon constitutes the profound dilemma of the SM in relation to the historical Jesus. We now know that the belief of the early church that the writings of the NT were apostolic witness was mistaken. We further know why and how this mistake was made. The basic mistake of the mythicists is to conflate the Christ of faith with the HJ. The real issue is to locate the Scriptural source of the apostolic witness. If there is no apostolic witness, then the question of existence may be raised. “This is a task to which specialized knowledge in the areas of philology, form and redaction criticism, literary criticism, history of religions, and New Testament theology necessarily apply – - which demands of the scholar not a little care, a great deal of time, and a considerable degree of intellectual abstinence.” (A radical rethinking of long standing notions.)
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 Ed Jones 
 November 13, 2012 at 5:06 pm
Joe, I am much encouraged by this essay. I take account of your gracious Reply to my post: A viable solution to the “Jesus Puzzle”. I hope you have taken account of Eric Zuesse’s: Christ’s Ventriloquist for his take on Paul and the Gospels. Except for some details, I find it to be quite remarkable for an outsider critic. I add the following for what it may be worth.
 Our most certain sufficient historical evidence for knowledge of Jesus, who he was, what he said and what he did rests “solely on the basis of the original and originating faith and witness of the apostles”. (Schubert M. Ogden). Over against this initial fact of history, one must take account of The FATEFUL HISTORICAL MISTAKE which took place in the earliest apostolic period 30 CE-65 CE at the very beginning of post-execution Jesus traditions. This period was marked by two distinctly different movements in deep adversarial relationship, the Jerusalem Jesus movement having claim to this apostolic witness, soon followed by the Hellenists Christ myth movement (the enemy of the Jesus movement) which developed in the Gentile world, imaging Jesus as the Christ myth, severing Jesus from his message and his Jewish roots, meeting with ready success, to become Gentile Christianity, finally to become orthodox Christianity. Soon becoming the winners in the struggle for dominance, Gentile Christianity was able to place this original Jesus movement under a conspiracy of silence; even at a later point, to have it declared a heresy, to effectively remove it from the pages of history. Under these Gentile conditions some 40 years later, the writings of the NT took place, to mistakenly to be named the official canon, the apostolic witness to Jesus. Only since the 80’s have certain of our top scholars under the force of our present historical methods and knowledge fully come to a real objective historical understanding of this mistake, not only to say none of the writings of the NT are apostolic witness to Jesus, but to understand the how and the why of this fateful mistake. This is a human mistake, one of those ultimate mistakes related to the issue of God-man relationship, which bears testimony to unknowing mankind’s pervasive fallible mistake prone history – mankind’s propensity to develop “eyes that cannot see”, forming “colored glasses” which cause blindness to seeing beyond sense perceived reality. In Jesus words:
 The lamp of the body is the eye.
“If, then your eye is healthy/good, your whole body is full of light.
 If, however, your eye is sick/evil, then your whole body s dark.
 If, therefore, the light which is in you is darkness – what darkness!”
A brief history of this fateful mistake: In this apostolic period, 30 CE – 65 CE, there were two movements each with its own interpretation of the significance of the Jesus event, placing them in the strongest adversarial relationship. Chronologically the first, the Jerusalem Jesus Movement which began (within weeks) with the key disciples, having fled to their native Galilee, overcome with grief and utter disillusionment , emboldened by Peter’s and others vision (some form of extrasensory cognition), at high risk, returning to Jerusalem, purposing to again take up the teaching of their revered Master. This was soon followed by a group of Hellenist Jews hearing talk of Jesus rising from the dead (as the visions began to be so interpreted), with their traditions of dying and rising gods, together with Jewish animal sacrificial rites, took up the sense perceived (not revelation) notion that the significance of Jesus was the salvific effects of his death and resurrection which abrogated the Torah. This was in effect treason for temple authorities. The Acts story of the stoning of Stephen, the leader of this Hellenist group, seems to reference a put-down by temple authorities of some kind of anti-Torah demonstration. Just here Paul is introduced, named as a participant holding the garments of those casting the stones. Next we find Paul having his “vision” on the road to Damascus, to where this Hellenist group fled, as persecutor, as persecutor, then converting to this group with their Christ myth beliefs. It was from this group that Paul received his Christ myth kerygma. In taking his Christ kerygma to the Gentile world, meeting with ready success, becoming Gentile Christianity as known above all in the writings of the New Testament, the letters of Paul, the Gospels, as well as the later writings of the New Testament, the source for orthodox Christianity. In becoming the winners in the struggle for dominance, they were able to declare the Jerusalem Jesus Movement heresy to effectively remove it from the pages of history. Only because Matthew included the Q material, which contained the Sermon on the Mount, do we have an alternative source which contains our sole original and originating faith and witness of the apostles, our most certain source of knowledge of the real Jesus.
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Why I Think The New Atheists are a Bloody Disaster
by rjosephhoffmann

Reprinted from BeliefNet,  (c) 2009  by Michael Ruse
By Michael Ruse.*
In my seventieth year I find myself in a very peculiar position.  Raised a  Quaker, I lost my faith in my early twenties and it has never returned.  I think  of myself as an agnostic on deities and ultimate meanings and that sort of  thing.  With respect to the main claims of Christianity – loving god, fallen  nature, Jesus and atonement and salvation – I am pretty atheistic, although some  doctrines like original sin seem to me to be accurate psychologically.  I often  refer to myself as a very conservative non-believer, meaning that I take  seriously my non-belief and I think others should do (and often don’t).  If  someone goes to the Episcopal Church for social or family reasons, or because  they love the music or ceremonies, I have no trouble with that.  Had I married a  fellow Quaker, I might still be going to Quaker meetings.  But I have little  time for someone who denies the central dogmas of Christianity and still claims  to be a Christian, except in a social sense.  No God, no Jesus as His son, no  resurrection, no eternal life – no Christianity.  As it happens, I prefer the  term “skeptic” to describe my position rather than “agnostic,” because so often  the latter means “not really interested” and I am very interested.  Like Thomas  Henry Huxley, I am deeply religious in a total absence of theology.  Unlike his  grandson Julian Huxley (and others like Edward O. Wilson), I am totally  uninterested in a “religion without revelation.”  I loathe the term and the idea  of “humanist.”  One religion in this lifetime is quite enough thank you.
Without burnishing my halo too much, I think – and I warned you that I am a  very conservative non-believer – that the most important parable is that of the  talents and that in this lifetime, although never succeeding (thanks to my own  moral frailty), I have tried hard to use that which has been given to me.  In  particular, I have striven to move beyond the comfortable life of a university  professor – and I have been a full-time philosophy prof since I was twenty five – to engage in the public sphere on issues that I think morally important.   Specifically, I have engaged in the science-religion debate – more precisely in  the Darwinism-Creationism debate – for over thirty years.  I have written on the  subject, I have lectured regularly on the subject (on average, I give a talk  about every two weeks and many are on this topic), and I have appeared as  witness in a court case to defend the US separation of Church and State.
That the Creationists and fellow travelers, notably proponents of Intelligent  Design Theory (IDT), would dislike my views I take as axiomatic.  They should  dislike my views for I spend my life fighting against these people.  I say this  notwithstanding the fact that, at the personal level, I have good and friendly  relations with many of the leaders, including Duane T. Gish, Phillip Johnson,  and Bill Dembski.  I do not consider these people to be evil or motivated by  money – anything but this latter, Gish could have made millions in the  motivational speaking arena – although I deplore their beliefs and think them  deeply dangerous.  I will say however that I was disappointed that when Ben  Stein tried to make me seem foolish in his movie Expelled, not one of  them sprang publicly to my defense.  Anyone who did not condemn that gross piece  of distortion of the issues should feel really ashamed.
Which brings me to the point of what I want to say.  I find myself in a  peculiar position.  In the past few years, we have seen the rise and growth of a  group that the public sphere has labeled the “new atheists” – people who are  aggressively pro-science, especially pro-Darwinism, and violently anti-religion  of all kinds, especially Christianity but happy to include Islam and the rest.   Actually the arguments are not that “new,” but no matter – the publicity has  been huge.  Distinctive of this group, although well known to anyone who studies  religion and the way in which sects divide and proliferate, is the fact that  (with the possible exception of the Catholic Church) nothing incurs their wrath  than those who are pro-science but who refuse to agree that all and every kind  of religious belief is wrong, pernicious, and socially and personally dangerous.  Recently, it has been the newly appointed director of the NIH, Francis Collins,  who has been incurring their hatred.  Given the man’s scientific and managerial  credentials – completing the HGP under budget and under time for a start – this  is deplorable, if understandable since Collins is a devout Christian.
I am not a devout Christian, yet if anything, the things said against me are  worse.  Richard Dawkins, in his best selling The God Delusion, likens me  to Neville Chamberlain, the pusillanimous appeaser of Hitler at Munich.  Jerry  Coyne reviewed one of my books (Can a Darwinian be a Christian?) using  the Orwellian quote that only an intellectual could believe the nonsense I  believe in.  And non-stop blogger P. Z. Myers has referred to be as a “clueless  gobshite.”  This invective is all because, although I am not a believer, I do  not think that all believers are evil or stupid, and because I do not think that  science and religion have to clash.  (Of course some science and religion  clashes.  That is the whole point of the Darwinism-Creationism debate.  The  matter is whether all science and religion clash, something I deny  strongly.)
Let me say that I believe the new atheists do the side of science a grave  disservice.  I will defend to the death the right of them to say what they do – as one who is English-born one of the things I admire most about the USA is the  First Amendment.  But I think first that these people do a disservice to  scholarship.  Their treatment of the religious viewpoint is pathetic to the  point of non-being.  Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion would fail any  introductory philosophy or religion course.  Proudly he criticizes that whereof  he knows nothing.  As I have said elsewhere, for the first time in my life, I  felt sorry for the ontological argument.  If we criticized gene theory with as  little knowledge as Dawkins has of religion and philosophy, he would be rightly  indignant.  (He was just this when, thirty years ago, Mary Midgeley went after  the selfish gene concept without the slightest knowledge of genetics.)   Conversely, I am indignant at the poor quality of the argumentation in Dawkins,  Dennett, Hitchens, and all of the others in that group.
Secondly, I think that the new atheists are doing terrible political damage  to the cause of Creationism fighting.  Americans are religious people.  You may  not like this fact.  But they are.  Not all are fanatics.  Survey after survey  shows that most American Christians (and Jews and others) fall in the middle on  social issues like abortion and gay marriage as well as on science.  They want  to be science-friendly, although it is certainly true that many have been  seduced by the Creationists.  We evolutionists have got to speak to these  people.  We have got to show them that Darwinism is their friend not their  enemy.  We have got to get them onside when it comes to science in the  classroom.  And criticizing good men like Francis Collins, accusing them of  fanaticism, is just not going to do the job.  Nor is criticizing everyone, like  me, who wants to build a bridge to believers – not accepting the beliefs, but  willing to respect someone who does have them.  For myself, I would like America  to have a healthcare system like Canada – government run, compulsory, universal.  It is cheaper and better.  But I engage with those who want free enterprise to  be involved in the business.  Likewise I engage with believers – I don’t accept  their beliefs but I respect their right to have them.
Most importantly, the new atheists are doing terrible damage to the fight to  keep Creationism out of the schools.  The First Amendment does not ban the  teaching of bad science in publicly funded schools.  It bans the teaching of  religion.  That is why it is crucial to argue that Creationism, including its  side kick IDT, is religion and not just bad science.  But sauce for the goose is  sauce for the gander.  If teaching “God exists” is teaching religion – and it is – then why is teaching “God does not exist” not teaching religion?  Obviously it  is teaching religion.  But if science generally and Darwinism specifically imply  that God does not exist, then teaching science generally and Darwinism  specifically runs smack up against the First Amendment.  Perhaps indeed teaching  Darwinism is implicitly teaching atheism.  This is the claim of the new  atheists.  If this is so, then we shall have to live with it and rethink our  strategy about Creationism and the schools.  The point is however that the new  atheists have lamentably failed to prove their point, and excoriating people  like me who show the failure is (again) not very helpful.
I think that P. Z. Myers and his crew are as disastrous to the evolution side – and people like me need to say this – as Ben Stein is disastrous to the  Creationism side – and the Creationists should have had the guts to say so.  I  have written elsewhere that The God Delusion makes me ashamed to be an  atheist.  Let me say that again.  Let me say also that I am proud to be the  focus of the invective of the new atheists.  They are a bloody disaster and I  want to be on the front line of those who say so.
 
* Michael Ruse teaches at Florida State University. His latest book, published by Cambridge University press,  is Science and Spirituality
Read more: http://blog.beliefnet.com/scienceandthesacred/2009/08/why-i-think-the-new-atheists-are-a-bloody-disaster.html#ixzz22hXAOgU4
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Published: August 5, 2012
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20 Responses to “Why I Think The New Atheists are a Bloody Disaster”

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 Franklin Percival 
 August 5, 2012 at 5:28 pm
PZM had some sort of cardiac crisis a couple of years ago, leads one to believe his brain may also have suffered.
Reply
 
 steph 
 August 5, 2012 at 7:25 pm
I can’t have read this before – I had no idea he was raised as a Quaker. While I would suggest that ‘loving god, fallen nature, Jesus and atonement and salvation’ aren’t the main claims of evolved modern ‘progressive’ and skeptical Christianity, they certainly are in traditional Christianity which predominates in certain parts of the world. Also the whole inspiration behind evolving Christianity is skepticism and the evidence of science which gradually emerged out of the Renaissance. Beliefs do not necessarily clash with science at all, except in traditional Christianity. I have the greatest respect for Christians who understand historical context and don’t take biblical claims or Church dogma literally. If Michael had a sense of metaphorical theology, he’d probably be just as ‘religious’ as they are. In fact he probably is but evolved Christianity is more about Jesus as a human being and god is more about an expression for good.
Maybe he’s been too embedded in a culture of ‘secular’ humanist movements if he thinks its ‘another religion’. In fact he comes across in his work, including this article, as very much a humanist.
As to everything else which is really more to the point of what he wanted to say, and why the atheists are a ‘bloody disaster’, I couldn’t agree more. I always enjoy what he has to say so thank you very much for posting this.
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 Stevie 
 August 5, 2012 at 8:13 pm
Having spent the last week battling in the Readercon sexual harassment debacle, linked as it has been to the Skepchick fiasco, I’m struggling to recall my generousity of spirit when it comes to excusing PZM’s behaviour on the grounds that his brain may have been fried at some point.
This is no doubt very bad of me, but fortunately I have never been under the illusion that I have the right to wander around forgiving people for unpleasant things they have done to other people…
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 steph 
 August 6, 2012 at 2:20 pm
Pan Zizzled Membrane.)
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 Ken Scaletta 
 August 5, 2012 at 11:31 pm
“The First Amendment does not ban the teaching of bad science in publicly funded schools. It bans the teaching of religion. That is why it is crucial to argue that Creationism, including its side kick IDT, is religion and not just bad science. But sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If teaching “God exists” is teaching religion – and it is – then why is teaching “God does not exist” not teaching religion? Obviously it is teaching religion. But if science generally and Darwinism specifically imply that God does not exist, then teaching science generally and Darwinism specifically runs smack up against the First Amendment. Perhaps indeed teaching Darwinism is implicitly teaching atheism. This is the claim of the new atheists.”
I get that Ruse is trying to draw a distinction between Evolution per se and what he calls “Darwinism” as some kind of ideology (which I would deny actually exists), but he’s wrong that Dawkins et al assert or imply that evolution implies the non-existence of God. Has he ever even READ Dawkins? Dawkins is very careful to make that exact point himself and makes it repeatedly, and made it repeatedly in THE GOD DELUSION.
I’m curious as to what specific harm Ruse thinks they’ve done to efforts to protect the Establishment Clause in public schools. ID is dead. Dover killed it. Ruse is long on accusations in this piece, but short on specifics. He accuses these “New Atheists” of being “disastrous the evolution side” (side of what is unclear), but gives no examples as to how. In point of fact, Dawkins and Meyers have been successful at making evolution better understood without doing any damage at all, that I’m aware of, to either the theory itself or to its acceptance.
He accuses them all of “bad argumentation,” philosphically but gives no examples. he accuses Dawkins of being religiously ignorant, which is as fatuous as saying Dawkins can’t comment on the possible existence of elves unless he’s an expert on Lord of the Rings.
This sounds like somebody more resentful of criticism than anything else. I’ve read the whole piece three times and still can’t find a single example of actual damage that the so-called NA’s have done.
I grant that PZM is gratuitously rude and hectoring a lot of the time (though this reputation is much less deserved by Dawkins), but for every PZ Myers, I can show you hundreds of obnoxious religionist demagogues, many of them in elected office. Is there anything more to substantiate the headline “disaster?”
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 Larry Tanner 
 August 6, 2012 at 8:49 am
Ruse writes: “I do not think that science and religion have to clash.”
This is the main objection that new atheists hold against “accomodationists.” Mainstream American religion, new atheists say, clashes with science. Mainstream American religion discards science in favor of traditional beliefs, devalues the scientific enterprise, and claims an undeserved moral authority for itself.
The “violent” (Ruse’s word) anti-religion tendencies of the new atheists are not so literally violent as the religious forces that have sought to infuse themselves into education, politics, state and federal law, and popular views on what humanity is doing in and to the earth.
(Forgive me for being so general with the word “religion.”)
In sum, Ruse is horribly and profoundly wrong about why the new atheists criticize his ideas. He seems deaf to the fact that very much of American Christianity, Judaism, Islam–on TV and on every Sabbath–is fighting against scientific inquiry, reasoning, methods, and (always-provisional) conclusions.
One does not have to be rabidly or dogmatically “pro-science” to see this fact as problematic. I value the new atheists for recognizing the problem and identifying it as such.
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 steph 
 August 6, 2012 at 2:13 pm
Surely every non fundamentalist in America, as anywhere else in the world, sees teaching religion as faith and Creationism as science, as profoundly wrong. Certainly many oppose it and actively and vocally fight it, drawing attention to the damage it does to learning and critical thinking and society. Both liberal religious people and atheists do this in constructive and creatively informed ways. The point is that ‘new atheists’ do it badly and as I see it, and use the same tactics as the fundamentalists. I don’t value the ‘new atheist’ bashing approach. It won’t win any battles. I value the approach of clearer critically informed people.
Personally I think the teaching of the world’s religions should be introduced to school students, as a historical critical discipline, examining the evolution of ideas and beliefs and development and history of religious thought. Children of fundamentalists need this education to demonstrate their anachronistic beliefs in historical contexts as well as children of new atheists so that they learn to understand religious people. Perhaps they can teach their parents. The hope that their parents would listen however, might be too optimistic.
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 Ken Scaletta 
 August 6, 2012 at 7:55 pm
“Surely every non fundamentalist in America, as anywhere else in the world, sees teaching religion as faith and Creationism as science, as profoundly wrong.”
This is sadly not the case in the US, as is consistently born out by poll after poll. A majority of Americans consistently say Creationism should be taught either alongside evolution as a “competing theory.” 17% say they should teach Creationism only, and not evolution at all. Only 20% of Americans say that Creationism should not be included.
A Gallup poll taken just last month shows that 46% of Americans believe in Young Earth Creationism (that is, 46% of Americans say they believe that God created humans in their present form less than ten thousand years ago). Another 32% believe in “guided evolution.” Only 15% of Americans say they believe in Evolution with divine intervention.
It’s not just fundamentalists either. It’s virtually all church goers. Only 3% of people who say they attend church regularly say they believe in evolution. Two thirds of churchgoers in the US say they believe in Young Earth Creationism.
Americans are also incredibly uneducated about it, since teachers spend an average of about 20 hours talking about in class, with an average of only six hours spent on human evolution. One in six biology teachers say they believe in YEC.
I agree, by the way, that some kind of basic survey of comparative religion should be taught in schools because Americans are incredibly ignorant about non-Christian religions, and most of them aren’t even well informed about Christianity , but that is not what is at issue here. A majority of Americans still DO want to teach Genesis as science, and it’s not just fundamentalists. We are a highly superstitious and backwards people here. I have family in Louisiana that believes in demons, and that’s not seen as abnormal or unusual there. When you get into the rural areas of the US, it’s like stepping into the Middle Ages.

 
 steph 
 August 6, 2012 at 8:09 pm
I know that the majority of ‘Christians’ in America poll that way. But the majority of ‘Christians’ in America are fundamentalists. The point is that new atheists are not the majority of the group in American society that oppose the ridiculous notion of teaching creationism as science, including the ridiculous notion of evolution as a “competing theory.” The point is that the 20% aren’t just your ‘new atheists’. The point also is that the majority of the rest of the western world is on your side and some of us actively so. I lament the state of education. Critical thinking and history including the history and evolution of human thought, are vital to a child’s developing mind and understanding. It’s a focus of change that should be a priority with government and school boards. And the final point is that eventually … we must win with co-operative constructive and informed methods and not with fundamentalist tactics which are a ‘bloody disaster’.

 
 Ken Scaletta 
 August 6, 2012 at 8:59 pm
Those polls are not of Christians, Steph, they are of All Americans. 46% of ALL AMERICANS believe in YEC, not 46% of Christians.

 
 steph 
 August 6, 2012 at 9:40 pm
I know they include all Americans. I’m not sure which part of my response was so unclear.

 
 
 Franklin Percival 
 August 7, 2012 at 6:31 pm
What exactly is this Murkin Christianity of which you speak?
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 steph 
 August 7, 2012 at 7:48 pm
Oh you mean Murikans! Like ‘Umeerikuns’ in Neuw Zild. Like those who ain’t got no songs… sort of. Neither have we. Well they have really and we have too – Maori songs. And beautiful bird songs. Murikan Christianity though? Not sure.)

 
 
 
 Jim in AZ 
 August 6, 2012 at 2:17 pm
Although I disagree with the depection of Dawkins, and including Hitchens as well., I am not surprised to see him mention Dr. Myers – twice. I used to be a huge fan but lately, the invective coming out of some of the people at FtB (note I used the word “some”) has driven me away.
It seems now that the “Athesit Movement” is all about “Social Justice”, and if a reader happens to disagree or have a different opinion, that person is driven off.
I could care less about “Social Justice”. I honestly do not even know what that means outside of the context those in the blogosphere write about. It seems to me that if there is a disagreement, then the person that disagrees is a evil, money grubbing, homophobic, misogynist.
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 Shawn 
 August 7, 2012 at 5:33 pm
“Had I married a Quaker….” This is Dr. Ruse’s “still inner voice” speaking to him today…. The logical answer is “you didn’t, so what now?” There is no fundamentally rational position to your life choices, now and again, until you have answered the fundamentally irrational corollaries, here and now… Why did I not receive the earlier, easier grace? Because I gave you a gift to overcome the harder questions in order to share them with the others…
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 rjosephhoffmann 
 August 7, 2012 at 6:18 pm
I have no idea what Ruse thinks, which is why I posted this. He seems a mire of contradictions. English Quakerism was a temporal phenomenon which is why they sought refuge with Penn and Pitt in Penn-sylvania (Pitts-burgh?) where their culture and religion flourished. They were the leaders in the abolition movement; and the best Quaker poets were poets like Whittier, whose hymn “Forgive Our Foolish Ways” is perhaps the most glorious hymn ever written. English resurgent Quakers sing it as though it had been written in England. But it wasn’t. I want it sung at my funeral. The worst thing about Ruse is that while he doesn’t like the new atheisst, he doesn’t want to be a humanist–fair enough: so what is he? I doubt his marrying a Quaker would have helped; he is just another confused undertrained British philosopher who doesn’t like social constructions of gender and hates the New Atheists because they got there first. I regard him as wholy forgettable.
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 rjosephhoffmann 
 August 7, 2012 at 6:20 pm
Sorry for the lecture; but your allusion to “still small voice of calm”–Whittiers’–perfectly expresses my view of religion: it is a manifestation of conscience.

 
 
 
 Tafacory 
 August 8, 2012 at 9:41 am
Reblogged this on Conflicting Thoughts and commented:
 My respect for and admiration of Michael Ruse has greatly increased after reading this article.
Reply
 
 brettongarcia 
 August 8, 2012 at 1:54 pm
Ruse best makes sense … if we think of him as still being, deep down, a Quaker.
Quakers themselves were long puzzling to many; and were even widely reviled too. But eventually I think I came to understand what they are about: they are attempting to be about what they might call just “plain,” “common” human decency, and toleration. Basically the idea was not to follow spectacular leaders or to have ministers; but to follow the simple decency of the heart (as Quakers might have alleged). In particular, Quakers we the great proto-liberals. IN that they seemed to feel that many types of behavior might be allowed, as long as they did not hurt anyone. Or in fact, in their efforts to respect many, they were strong on establishing hospitals, and helping the poor; following/developing, what would become known as “the social gospel.”
The reason for the word “Quaker,” by the way, was their insistence on a peaceable kingdom or society. In which as Willian Penn might have suggested, all kinds of things, beliefs, are tolerated; so long as no values are enforced on others, by way of physical punishment or execution. But because of their desire to avoid violence Quakers opposed capital punishment – and wars. Accused of being afraid to fight, of trembling or quaking with fear, they were called “quakers.”
And all that explains Ruse much better than any other label he might choose for himself. His Quaker background particularly explains his otherwise curious desire to at once be an atheist .. but also to allow Christianity to at least peacefully co-exist in our society (if it can do so). Out of the belief that so long as no particular form of credo imposes itself on us by violence … we should let it alone.
Though of course, given the history of Christianity – the Crusades and executions for heresy and so forth – it remains to be seen whether Christianity CAN peacefully exist in a society, without trying to impose itself by force, or coercive propoganda.
Which is why atheists are … more aggressive in their criticism of Christianity than Ruse.
Reply
 
 stevenbollinger 
 August 18, 2012 at 8:10 pm
“I think that P. Z. Myers and his crew are as disastrous to the evolution side – and people like me need to say this – as Ben Stein is disastrous to the Creationism side”
I completely fail to understand how Ben Stein represents a disaster for the creationists. Creationism is what it is: ridiculous. Nothing Ben Stein has does, nothing he could ever do could make it more or less ridiculous than it is. Stein’s rejection of evolutionary theory, on the other hand, has been disastrous for whatever ambitions Stein may have had to be taken seriously by sensible people.
“I have written elsewhere that The God Delusion makes me ashamed to be an atheist.”
Ah, so that’s what did it.
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Dumb America and Smart Islam
by rjosephhoffmann

There is a common western–or perhaps typically western–misperception that the Islamic world is lost in a theological fantasy that does not permit it to exit the 12th century into the 21st.
When I wrote the introduction to Ibn Warraq’s Why I am Not a Muslim (which oddly, for its brief compass, received almost as much attention as the book itself) I tried to explain to non-historians why Islamic history is, so to speak,  backwards: a golden age only a few centuries after the Prophet’s death in 632 that corresponded to the Christian “dark ages,” followed by a dark age of religious protectionism and dynastic quarrelling that corresponded to the European renaissance.  It’s an irony, of course, that religions thought to have so much in common did not run parallel tracks in terms of doctrinal development and intellectual achievement; but it is a fact that after the Renaissance  religious authority in the West was in for a long, bumpy and finally catastrophic ride, while Islam (like the Judaism of the 6th century BCE, or Christianity on the brink of the Council of Nicaea) built a hedge around its laws, customs, and holy book.  For lots of reasons, it has never been fully successful in negotiating or rationalising its isolation.

At the far end of the European renaissance, Islam encountered a West different from the West it had outlasted in the Crusades–largely as a well-equipped miltary and political overlord: colonialism was the natural result of European feelings of global entitlement and paternalism towards “other races.” The feeling of imperial superiority–especially but not exclusively British–was combined with a certain fascination with the sights, smells, and exotic beauty of the subordinated lands and people–the perspective Edward Said tried to describe in his sometimes (but not always) compelling book, Orientalism.
To this day, Islamic historiography is taught as a teleology of founding, fighting, expansion, dynastic competition, protection and usurpation.  These themes are not alien to Judaism and Christianity–or to Hindusim and Buddhism for that matter–but Islam is unique among the religions of the world–excepting only a few born-again science-despisers in the Bible Belt–in feeling its faith is at intense and constant risk from secularism, irreligion, and foreign values.  This feeling has always characterized “separatist” groups ranging from the Puritans of old and New England to the Mennonites in Europe and America.  But Islam is unique in being a culture, and a very populous and successful culture  rather than a band of persecuted renegades from a  mother religion. Its success is in its numbers: 20.12% of the world’s population is Muslim.

There is no need to explore the way in which Islamic insecurity plays itself out.  Its epochal moment was 9-11, and like the Holocaust or the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima, it is tempting to think there will never be another quite like it.  To the extent the west has iconized it as “proof” that something is rotten in Mecca (and the extent of that belief has only widened since 2001, and not only in America), the West is now directly guilty of not having learned more about Islam and not having done enough, beyond fighting two utterly useless, costly wars and killing thousands of men and women, some soldiers, to make it stop hurting.  The West has not tried hard enough to study causes rather than effects.  Instead it has promoted the same sort of paternalistic, culturally indifferent solutions that created the problem of Angry Islam– the disinherited Ishmael looking on as Isaac takes all the goodies.
It’s one of the great underanalyzed moments of the brief bonding that occurred between normally feuding allies Britain, France and America that the overlords were not stricken by the grief that arises from personal responsibility for their sequential roles in the humiliation of Islam, but united by a desire for “justice” and payback: Dan Lohrman recalled on the tenth anniversary of the event,
 [We] watched President Bush’s historic speech [before Congress] …Prime Minister, Tony Blair, sat in the crowd during the speech that was watched around the world. And yet, the events didn’t transform our foreign friends in the same way that we were impacted. Our country became more introspective, self-absorbed, determined for justice. Our new battle-cry became: the terrorists will not win.
Then, of course, the talk turned from immediate retribution–a good old fashioned biblical virtue– to security; the term “homeland” was invented to describe a government department, because the term “nation” seemed too abstract, perhaps even philosophical. (You defend your home, not your neighborhood). In a country that had no agenda, the agenda quickly became protecting the country.  If a few church groups and interfaith do-gooders preached the essence of Christianity being the practice of forgiveness, it was easy to read the code: “We are not like these Monsters and they are monsters because they are not Us.” It was scarcely helpful to say, Not all Muslims are killers.
A decade later, it is very difficult for America, or its allies,  to sustain the view that Islam, compared to them,  is the violent, backward cousin of progressive, secular, liberal modern culture.
For one thing, the country most vocal ( if not always public) in that claim is more regressive, educationally backward,  and illiberal than any country in Europe and many nations in the Islamic world.  The Hollywood successes of American science notwithstanding (because these achievements are scarely recognized, or understood, by the populace in general, and operate as an underfunded, costly and suspect subculture), the gross ignorance of Americans and their elected representatives is the nation’s greatest political and cultural liablity. As Fareed Zakaria argues in The Post-American world, it is no longer necessary to talk about the decline of America; that is obvious. It is time to acknowledge the rise of everyone else.  The burning question is not why, but when a country that was once imaginative lost interest in just about everything but food designed to make it fatter and television programmed to keep the audience at roughly the same educational level as their pets.

Its political candidates know next to nothing about physics and astronomy–areas that Muslim scientists like al-Khwarizmi pioneered in the 9th century. They appear to know very little about the circumstances under which the American republic was formed, the dumbest of them claiming that America is a Christian nation founded by Christian men with Christian ambitions for the new country. They collectivize “the American people” in a way that is unparalleled outside 1930′s Germany’s use of the phrase Das Deutsche Volk or appeals by pan-Islamicists to the Ummah in the formative days of Islam.
As to violence, taking Pakistan as a test case, the number of major suicide attacks in 2010 stood at 662, inflicting a total of 6,088 fatalities.  How does America size up? There were 52,447 deliberate and 23,237 accidental non-fatal gunshot injuries in the United States in 2000. The majority of gun-related deaths in the United States were suicides, with 17,352 (55.6%) of the total 31,224 firearm-related deaths in 2007 due to suicide, while 12,632 (40.5%) were homicide deaths. In 2009, according to the UNODC, 60% of all homicides in the United States were perpetrated using a firearm.  In 2007, 872 Americans were killed in Iraq, a figure that does not include Iraqi military and civilian casualties (on both sides), and those who suffered irreparable injuries from which they died later.  Moreover, deaths from guns in the United States is persistent; 8,775 gun deaths were reported in 2010 (a decline from previous years) but there were nearly 13,000 murders from all causes, suicides not included.  It seems unnecessary to say that Christian America is an unlikely lecturer on the topic of other people’s violence.

I’ve often argued that one way to “sensitize” people to the problems of social and global ignorance is to teach them something about other people.  A country that likes to throw around words like “multiculturalism” and “pluralism” and “diversity” as a badge of broad-mindedness has never been more ignorant of the implications of what it means to be an open society or a global citizen–this despite the border-busting properties of the internet.
Open to what, to where and to whom? In the 2010 National Report Card in Geography  (a test given to 4th, 8th and 12 graders at embarrassingly infrequent intervals), over 70% of students could not score at basic proficiency level.  70% of Americans do not hold passports: There were 61.5 million trips outside the United States in 2009, down 3% from 2008, according to the Office of Travel and Tourism Industries. About 50% of those trips were to either Mexico or Canada, destinations that didn’t require a passport until 2007.
If Americans cannot find Pakistan on a map, it is unlikely that they will care very much about what people there have for dinner, what kind of music they listen to, or what they believe. People who don’t know much about other people will always find it easy to rationalize their ignorance as wisdom and their lack of information as justifiable indifference to what just doesn’t matter.
I cynically disbelieve that the information Americans lack can be provided at the level of “interfaith”dialogue and interdisciplinary seminars at a community level. Liberal Christians and Jews don’t need the lessons and the 51% of deeply muscular evangelicals don’t want them.  What is left are the ‘Nones”–neither atheists nor believers, ensconced in their oversized sofas between a bag of Cheetos and five look-alike remotes for bringing in 280 HD menu items. For them, the motto is the less you know the happier you will be.
I am even more pessimistic that this information can be offered  by undertrained graduates of the farcical entities we call “colleges” of education. The proof of their impermanence is that in the US almost 72% of students who major in education teach for less than four years. They also tend to be the lowest scoring students on standardized tests at entry level and the weakest in subject-area tests at exit.
This is not true in the Arab world. It is not true in the UK and most of Europe. It is not true in China.  We do not see education as a remedy for our geographical ignorance, our limping economy, our national indifference to other people, other ideas and other faiths for good reason.  Americans see wealth and strength as the primary indices of status, and these things are expressed not in a classroom or in a hospital but in military adventures and political swagger. America’s indifference to learning now borders on contempt for any success that cannot be measured in warheads or capital.  The nation is unhappy that it is poor (in deficit) and jobless, but apparently happy to spend  711 billion dollars (2010) on defense.  -America’s closest competitor, China, weighs in at 143 Billion, the UK at 62 billion, Russia at 72 billion.

Guns and money, power and wealth,  will eventually drive education out of Dodge, but before that it will be driven out of New York and Chicago and  LA. Perhaps by that time we will be too fat to care–like the orbiting population of earth in the Pixar film Wall-E. Or perhaps we will be too  dumb to notice.
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Published: August 17, 2012
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11 Responses to “Dumb America and Smart Islam”

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 Michael Wilson 
 August 18, 2012 at 4:26 pm
I agree that American’s need to take more time to educate themselves about something other than football and X-box. It is a problem at every level. At the popular level, we’ve seen the History Channel and the Learning Channel switch from education to freak shows. At the primary level, all of my history and geography teachers were first and foremost athletic coaches who were asked to babysit bored teens for an hour a day. And the collage kids? I think the OWS movement spoke volumes about the quality of collage education as angry students had nothing better to offer than nostalgic imitation of sixties radicals. It was a giant out-door counter cultural “MAD MEN” party.
On the other hand, I can’t think of a majority Islamic country more progressive, educated, and liberal than the U.S. Was that just hyperbole, or do you have an example? If you are relying on the murder rate to justify this position, I personally would rather have U.S. murder rates and U.S. levels of civil rights than Saudi levels of murder and Saudi levels of civil rights. It reminds of the people who used to say of the fascist, “they made the trains run on time”. Well that fine and good, but I would just as soon wait 30 minutes for a train whose destination isn’t a death camp.
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 August 18, 2012 at 5:40 pm
Education is superb in Dubai, all of the Emirates, parts of Indonesia, even in Syria before the ugliness erupted. There is violence associated with religious feuding but I think if you look at the facts the homicide rate and crime rate is much lower than the US. Do I want to live in Muslim theocratic police state? No. I want the US to be smarter–about the world, and about violence, including guns.
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 steph 
 August 18, 2012 at 6:57 pm
Apart from the obvious – that this essay above is clear and simple history which should be common knowledge but isn’t because too many people are so prejudiced, pre-occupied with Fox News, ill educated and under informed… I’m wondering if the ‘collage’ kids and ‘collage’ education references by Mike are intentional or a Freudian slip. You know, like messy stick-up, sticky glue, patchy images;)
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 Michael Wilson 
 August 18, 2012 at 9:46 pm
Steph, definitely Freudian, I’m sure they are a number of good metaphors in there.
Everybody is upset about the state of education in this country but not enough to get anything done. You’ve been through a number of nations’ educational systems, how do they compare and what can we learn?
RJH, “Do I want to live in Muslim thecratic police state? No. I want the US to be smarter–about the world, and about violence, including guns”
I completely agree.
Reply
 
 steph 
 August 19, 2012 at 8:44 am
Mike,
Interesting question and something I think about every day. There are holes in every education system and I have plenty of ideas but not solutions. I cannot though fairly compare my experiences with the American one, because I have not of course received any training from American education. America, regrettably, is one of many countries whose education system is controlled too often by dogmatists – ie creationists, fundamentalists and so on.
I do believe, having been trained to teach early childhood age, when I first left school, that a child’s early experience is fundamental to their future development and learning ability and desire. I would have continued to teach but decided I had too much more to learn myself I felt, and too much of the world and people to discover first. As a child I had the benefit of older siblings, all of whom became teachers (except one who is a muziko-in-a-rock-band, and in later life an Aussie lawyer too concerned with Aboriginal natural law and restorative justice). My sister a little older than me used to come home from school and imitate the teachers with me as guinea pig student. She taught me to read and write and multiply before I started school, and a little French too. I also benefited from books rather than TV – we never had one and I still don’t. I never developed the need. Kiwi culture is much more outdoors.
Antipodean state education has the benefit of being secular as the land was colonised by members of English Free Thought Societies and founded on those principles. Nevertheless the first settlers still stole the land and abused the original people, and in Aotearoa NZ, they did this despite signing the Waitangi Peace treaty, and declaring, “He iwi tahi tātou” = “we are now one people”. This is the reason in Aotearoa, that the Waitangi tribunal was set up a few decades ago to pay back land and compensation to Maori people. Waiting on the whole of Australia to treat Aboriginal people as equals. There has never been any opposition to the evidence of science by silly fundamentalists, as any fundamentalism, if it exists at all, is buried, no doubt ashamed of itself, deep underground. From primary school I remember evolutionary murals lining the classroom walls, and field trips, sometimes weekly, exploring natural life, visiting estuaries, farms, horticulturalists and so on, and even survival skills in the bush. Schools approach science in very practical ways. Health, diet and exercise are also part of the curriculum and a necessity for healthy, growing, learning minds.
Teacher training, parent education (READ to your children!!), and class sizes matter, so that individuality can be recognised and special needs for both advanced and pre-advanced kids acknowledged and attended to. It’s all about equal opportunities in an egalitarian society and no kiddy left out – or left behind.
At university age, the cost of fees should be heavily subsided by governments so that more are given the opportunity to continue learning. I also believe however, in stronger examination controls limiting the entry to those who are willing and have the desire to learn rather than allow those who believe they know everything already and just want ‘tickets’ to give them ‘credibility’… Critical thinking is part of a developing primary and secondary education curriculum.
I appreciate the Antipodean approach to first university degrees, having done two very broad degrees before specialising later after having lived life a little more. The UK university system on the other hand, seems to encourage very young students to specialise early and miss out on research and experience in a broad range of sciences and humanities, culture and arts first. I was naively surprised coming to Nottingham to land in a very ‘Christian’ theology department. Since the retirement of Casey the department I think has declined. It has also replaced an atheist Jewish anthropologist, Seth Kunin, and a scholar of Islam and other religions, Hugh Goddard, with two more young conservative theologians…
Kent and Sheffield universities however, are among a number of British universities, moving ahead and expanding the humanities so ‘theologians’ explore more than just ‘theology’. The British approach is still predominantly one of a specialising early nature though, which has advantages, but disadvantages too. I do not regret my late specialisation at all. My interests are broader and my application of other disciplines perhaps freer sometimes and more pronounced. When I went to university there were so many wonderful courses, I enrolled in just about every single department… regrettably I had to drop a few papers! I knew I had greedily over indulged – I had just been unable to decide. And greedy.
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 Michael Wilson 
 August 19, 2012 at 5:13 pm
(READ to your children!!)
yes! I have a dear friend who taught at a elementary school that serviced a poor neighborhood and I heard a lot of horror stories about kids who lacked positive activities at home, kids who had never used scissors before and such. Parents cannot fool them selves into thinking the system will educate their children and give themn a better life if they don’t see you read, if they see you disparage educated people as egg-heads and know it alls. Here in the states, public school is decentralized so different regions have different problems, but universally are public schools are bad.
At the college level, along with constant tuition increases which means I will be at least 50K in debt to land a job that pays at most 40K, not enough American kids are majoring in sciences and not enough are paying atttention in the humanities. I one point I contemplated the idea that more people should be taught a trade and not spend their limited funds on the humanities, but we are not a society where drones make widgets while philosophers make our laws. Uncultured people vote for shitty politicians; it is a persons civic duty to be as well rounded in their education as is feasible.
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 rjosephhoffmann 
 August 19, 2012 at 6:54 pm
Thank you Michael. Yes! READ to your children, and show them a map, NO a globe!

 
 rjosephhoffmann 
 August 19, 2012 at 7:04 pm
Michael: thanks– brilliant.

 
 rjosephhoffmann 
 August 19, 2012 at 10:32 pm
Michael–I feel your pain:Between no health care and noe free ride in higher education, it is a wonder we aren’t living in caves. I appreciate the free enterprise/incentive ethic, but it wasn’t intended to be perpetual state of I Got Mine.

 
 Michael Wilson 
 August 20, 2012 at 2:04 pm
Just want to add, that in the big scheme of things, I could be making 40k to mine coal, so paying 50k to land an occupation that really can’t be called work in the traditional sense (if I was mining coal, I suppose I would still study religion after the 5 oclock whistle blew anyhow) isn’t so bad.

 
 
 
 scotteus 
 August 19, 2012 at 12:12 pm
Superb essay! Very well balanced despite it’s devastating critique of the current American situation. I’ve only had a few muslim friends(well, one was an atheist from Iran) but they always seemed more than willing to engage in conversation and I never found any of them to be outwardly offended by views different from their own. Live and let live seemed to be their motto.
America, however, cannot see the above mentioned because it causes them to think and thinking just hurts too much. News briefs these days at are about the 7th grade level(and that’s being generous) but I’m not an educator so I’m not sure.
What thing I am very certain of is what is mentioned in the essay: our isolationism and ignorance of the world outside our little tribal enclaves.The self absorption is such that I’m actually willing to re-consider the possibility of solipsism.
I have a solution! Education of course(okay, don’t fall over your chairs in tears of laughter). The hard part, of course, is getting through the 10 millisecond American attention span.
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Religion and Culture for the Intellectually Impatient


Liberal Scarecrows, Shadows, and Atheist Internet-Experts
by rjosephhoffmann

eorge Rupp, former president of Columbia and before that the dean of Harvard Divinity School wrote in 1979 that “Christian theology is in disarray; it has neither a goal nor a purpose,” trends follows fads with such dizzying speed, he wrote,  that the discipline is more like a carousel gone wild than an academic discipline.  If Rupp were observing the current state of New Testament scholarship in 2012, he might have written just the same thing.
Why has this situation arisen?  While generalizations are always more convenient than precise, I think it’s safe to say that three overlapping trends explain the current crisis in New Testament studies.
irst, of course, New Testament studies is simply a mess.  It is a mess because many otherwise conscientious scholars (many of them either refugees from or despondents of the Jesus Seminar) had reached the conclusion that the New Testament should be regarded as a theory in search of facts.  Accordingly, the “facts” were arranged and rearranged in sometimes ingenious ways (and sometimes absurd) to support personal theories. The harsh truisms of 100 years of serious “historical-critical” study (not atheism or scholarly extravagance) were largely responsible for the rubble out of which the scholars tried to build a plausible man, but the men they built could not all be the same character as the one described in the gospels.  They differed from each other; they differed, often, from the evidence or context, and–perhaps vitally–they differed from tradition and “standard” interpretations, which had become closely identified with orthodoxy–which in turn was identified with illiberal politics and hence ludicrous and bad. Having left a field full of half clothed and malformed scarecrows, the theorists packed their bags and asked the world to consider their art.
ECOND: the rescucitation of the myth theory as a sort of zombie of a once-interesting question.  The myth theory, in a phrase, is the theory that Jesus never existed. Let me say for the hundredth time that while it is possible that Jesus did not exist it is improbable that he did not. For the possibility to trump the probability, the mythicists (mythtics in their current state of disarray) need to produce a coherent body of evidence and interpretation that persuasively challenges the current consensus.  No argument of that strength has been proved convincing.  Moreover, there are serious heuristic questions about why many of the mythticists want the theory “proved,” the most basic of which is that many are waging a kind of counter-apologetic attack on a field they regard as excessively dominated by magical thinking.

Bruno Bauer
And the ”proof”  is unlikely to appear. As someone who actively entertained the possibility for years, I can report that the current state of the question is trending consistently in the direction of the historicity of Jesus and partly the wishful thinking of the mythtics is responsible for the trend. The myth theory, in its current, dyslectic and warmed over state,  has erected the messiest of  all the Jesuses in the field, constructed mainly from scraps discarded by the liberals and so startling (perhaps inevitably) that it looks more like an Egyptian god than a man, less a coherent approach to its object than an explosion of possibilities and mental spasms. Like all bad science, its supporters (mainly internet bloggers and scholarly wannabes)  began the quest with their pet conclusion, then looked for evidence by alleging that anything that counted against it was false, apologetically driven, or failed the conspiracy smell-test. A survey of the (highly revised and hideously written) Wikipedia article on the Christ Myth Theory shows its depressing recent history–from a theory that grew organically out of the history-of-religion approach to Christianity (which drove my own work in critical studies) to a succession of implausibilities and splices as limitless as there were analogies to splice.

The prototype of the Jesus story?
Yet the myth theory is explained by the woeful history of liberal scholarship: ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. It is a direct result of the mess liberal scholarship made of itself.  If the problem with “liberal” scholarship (the name itself suggests the fallacy that guides the work) is that a flimsy, fact-free, wordless Jesus could be a magician, a bandit, an eschatologist, a radical, a mad prophet, a sane one, a tax revolutionary, a reforming rabbi (anything but Jesus the son of God)–the mythical Jesus could be Hercules, Osiris, Mithras, a Pauline vision, a Jewish fantasy, a misremembered amalgam of folk tales, a rabbi’s targum about Joshua. In short–the mirror image of the confusion that the overtheoretical and under-resourced history of the topic had left strewn in the field.  If the scarecrows concocted  by the liberals were made from rubble, the mythtic Jesuses were their shadows. If the bad boys of the Jesus Seminar had effectively declared that the evidence to hand means Jesus can be anything you want him to be, there is some justice in the view that Jesus might be nothing at all.
he Myth Theories, in some respects, but not every detail,  are the plus ultra of the old liberal theories rooted in the Enlightenment and the philosophy of Kant and Schleiermacher, abetted by the work of Strauss and his sympathizers. Perhaps that is why New Testament scholarship is so eerily quiet or so lazy towards them, and why the proponents of the theory feel betrayed when scholars who point them to their own scarecrows  suddenly say that while the scarecrow exists, the shadow doesn’t.  That is what happened (unmysteriously) when the very liberal Bart Ehrman, thought to be a “friend” to atheists and mythtics, decided to draw a ring around his neck of the field and say that a makeshift Jesus made of doctrinal rags and literary plunder is better than no Jesus at all.  It is not nice to be driven into a field, invited to choose the most appealing strawmen to reject, and then told that only scholars can reject scarecrows. New Testament scholarship defends its nominal field with a No Trespassing sign that invites the suspicion that there is very little to protect.
inally, the New Atheism.  In a minor scholarly rhapsody called Of Love and Chairs, I tried to suggest that not believing in God is not the same as not believing in Jesus.  In fact, it is only through making a category error that the two beliefs can be bought into alignment.  It is true that both God and Jesus are “discussed” in the Bible (though Jesus only in an appendix).  And it is true that later theology understood the Bible to be saying that Jesus was a god or son of God. But of course, very few scholars today think the Bible actually says that or meant to say that.  It is also true that the God of the Hebrew Bible walks, talks, flies through the sky, makes promises, wreaks venegance, gives laws and destroys sinners. And surely, that is a myth–or at least, extravagantly legendary. Thus, if God and Jesus occupy the same book and his father is a myth, then he must be a myth as well.
This reasoning is especially appealing to a class of mythicists I’ll call “atheoementalists,” a group of bloggers who seem to have come from unusually weird religious backgrounds and who were fed verses in tablespoons on the dogma that all of the Bible is, verse for verse, completely, historically, morally and scientifically true.  To lose or reject that belief and cough up your verses means that every one of them must now be completely false.

The New Atheism comes in as a handy assist because it came on the scene as a philosophical Tsunami of militant opposition to religion in general but biblical religion in particular.  NA encouraged the category error that the rejection of a historical Jesus was nothing more than the logical complement of rejecting the tooth fairy, the sandman, Santa and the biblical God. Conversely, believing in the god of the Bible, or Jesus, was the same as believing in (why not?) a Flying Spaghetti Monster. The NAs were less driven by the belief that religion was untrue than that religion was all bad, that God is Not Great, that it is toxic, hostile to science (the true messianic courier) and a delusion, a snappy salute to Freud’s diagnosis.
While the books of all four NA “Horsemen” were roundly thumped in the literate press as hastily conceived and shoddily reasoned attacks–largely provoked by the anti-religion and anti-Muslim rage of the post-9-11 world–they became canonical, and strategic, for large numbers of people who wanted to take Dawkins’s war against religion from Battleship Mecca to Battleship Biblicana. It is intersting for example than in the Wiki article on the Christ Myth Theory referenced above, where almost anyone who has floated the notion gets a mention,  someone has felt it necessary to insert Richard Dawkins’s irrelevant opinion that “a good case can be made for the non-existence of Jesus,” though he “probably did” exist (God Delusion, 2006, 96-7).  –Irrelevant and non-supportive.
IBERAL scarecrows, mythicist shadows, and atheist internet-experts who argue history as though scholarship was a polticial slanging match of opposing “opinions.” That is not the end of a story but the description of a situation.  I do not believe that “professional” New Testament studies, divided as it still is, especially in America, by confessionally biased scholars, fame-seekers, and mere drudges, is able to put its house in order. Their agendas only touch at the Society of Biblical Literature conclaves, and there c.v. padding and preening far outweigh discussion of disarray and purpose.  I think the situation in New Testament studies has been provoked by a “Nag Hammadi” generation–myself included–who weren’t careful with the gifts inside the Pandora’s box, so greedy were we for new constructions of ancient events.
But as part of a generation that thought it was trying to professionalize a field that had been for too- long dominated by theology, Bible lovers, and ex-Bible lovers, it is disheartening now to see it dominated by the political interests that flow from the agenda-driven scholarship of the humanities in general–attempts to see the contemporary in the ancient.  The arrogance of the “impossibility of the contrary” has displaced the humility of simply not knowing but trying to find out.
I have to sympathize with the mythtics when I lecture them (to no avail) about the “backwardness “ of their views and how New Testament scholarship has “moved beyond” questions of truth and factuality–how no one in the field is (really) talking about the historicity of the resurrection any more. How the word “supernatural” is a word banned from the scholarly vocabulary, just as “providential” and “miraculous” explanations are never taken seriously in assessing the biblical texts. They missed the part where we acknowledged it wasn’t true, and so did the people in the pews. They want to know–and it’s a fair question–where it has moved to.  This is not a defense of mythicism; it a criticism of the stammering, incoherent status quo and failure to do what a discipline is supposed to do: look critically and teach responsibly.

Robert Funk, a founder of the Jesus Seminar
I do not think, either, that the voices of dissent have much, if anything to offer.  I’m well aware that many of my colleagues are grossly ignorant of the history of radical New Testament criticism.  That being so, they are unlikely respondents in the defense of sound method. Perhaps that is why they are  unresponsive, in an era where non-response is always interpreted as a sign of weakness–especially in the gotcha culture of the blogosphere.
If the challenge to mythtics is to come up with something better than the more cognizant radicals had produced by 1912, the challenge for liberal and critical scholarship is to recognize that the mess that made the mess possible–the scarecrows that created the shadows–need to be rethought.  That’s what scholarship, even New Testament scholarship, is meant to be about: rethinking. That is what the Jesus Process is all about.
See also: “Threnody, Rethinking the Thinking Behind the Jesus Project,” The Bible nd Interpretation, October 2009.

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Published: August 19, 2012
Filed Under: Uncategorized
Tags: atheism : Bible : Christ Myth theories : Fundamentalism : God : historical jesus : humanism : new atheism : New Testament : R. Joseph Hoffmann : Richard Dawkins : Skepticism ..
45 Responses to “Liberal Scarecrows, Shadows, and Atheist Internet-Experts”

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 Ed Jones 
 August 19, 2012 at 3:52 pm
Joe, I just posted this as a comment on Vridar – Only Scholars can “Know” Jesus Existed. Thought you might find it to be of interest. You did once say that you can see why Betz so understands the Sermon on the Mount. Best, Ed.
 The Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount. (Extracts from Essays on the Sermon on the Mount by Hans Dieter Betz):
“Jesus is revered by the community of the Sermon on the Mount as the teacher of the proper interpretation of the Torah and the correct praxis of piety, as well as practical philosophy in general. Christological titles are not used at all.”
A truly disturbing problem arises for the community only when they discover that there are other “Christians” who have drawn very different conclusions from the teaching of Jesus. It is not only their task to maintain and defend the teachings of Jesus, but to establish, first of all, what Jesus taught and desired of others, and what he did not teach and did not desire. The strange fact that such conflicting interpretations of the teaching of Jesus could arise so soon constitutes the profound dilemma of the SM in relation to the historical Jesus.”
 “As a general statement of its historical situation, one can say that the SM belongs, both theologically and in terms of history of religions, within the richly diverse Judaism of the first century.”
 “If the (Jerusalem Jesus Community) of the Sermon on the Mount represent a response to the teachings Jesus of Nazareth, critical of that of Gentile Christianity, then it serves unmistakably to underline the well-known fact of how little we know of Jesus and his teaching. The reasons for our lack of knowledge are of a hermeneutical sort, and cannot be overcome by an excess of good will. The Gentile-Christian authors of the Gospels transmitted to us only that part of the teaching of Jesus that they themselves understood, they handed on only that which they were able to translate into the thought categories of Gentile Christianity, and which they judged worthy of transmission. By contrast, the Sermon on the Mount stands nearer to the Jewish thought of Jesus of Nazareth, and manifests its affinity and distance over later Christianity.”
 “ – - we must leave open the possibility, and even the probability, of an image of Jesus which is completely different from that of the synoptic tradition and its Gentile-Christian redactors.”
Reply
 
A little biographical footnote « Vridar says:
 August 19, 2012 at 7:44 pm
[...] Sometimes it seems important to others who are hostile towards anyone who even offers a platform for a presentation of mythicist arguments and questions to label them as extremists or weirdos, the evidence being that some of them once belonged to “an unusually weird religious background“. [...]
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 rjosephhoffmann 
 August 20, 2012 at 8:09 am
I am not sure there is anything in this piece about offering platforms; is it the case that the Meister of Vridar has not occasionally offered his views and tried to contravene others? Why the simpering innocence? There is nothing wrong with facilitation. At the same time, a platform that energetically puts Earl Doherty, Dorothy Murdock/Acharya S., Kenneth Humphreys and their few zealous supporters up as a scholarly front has, in my view, a long way to go. It isn’t just that their views are mutually and internally inconsistent, and thus no better than the worst liberal scholarship (in fact far worse), it is that you promote the fantasy that somehow these views all fall into place under a master theory. You can add Carrier (who has grown suspiciously tenatative, probably to avoid being piled on in public), Price, and Thompson to your stage, but I am not sure that would not simply complicate the picture further. Perhaps you see my point, that to facilitate what you faciliate actually makes the myth theory increasingly untenable because you have no apparatus for sorting out the sensible from the ridiculous and no voices who are doing the job convincingly.
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 Ed Jones 
 August 20, 2012 at 2:57 pm
Joe, Your repllies to my above comment over against my earlier comment to your post, News From the Freethought Ghetto: “A viable historical solution to the Jesus Puzzle”, with your most generous reply: “Ed. Thank you so much for this – - filled with wisdom and understanding, like Job!”, leaves me in a state of complete mystification, beyond words. My use of the “V” word Vridar must have set off some beyond belief response. I am by no way a supporter of Vridar. Only by the strangest of circumstances did I even become aware of Vridar. I commented as a critic. If you have any word of explanation it might help my delimma. .

 
 steph 
 August 20, 2012 at 7:46 pm
Dear Ed,
I think I see where your confusion lies. Joe’s response wasn’t to your comment above. Your comment appears as the first comment on this post. If you look just beneath you comment, there is a link to Vridar in the comment thread, and below that link, Joe’s comment appears. Joe was responding to the link which links to Vridar’s post about himself. When someone posts a link like that in a comment, It’s called a pingback. That means that if Godfrey links to this website in a post, the ‘pingback’ to his post appears in the comments. If you click on the pingpack and read Godfrey’s post (I wouldn’t bother or waste too much time there though – he is committed to his own opinions), Joe’s comment will make sense. My comment below is also a response to Godfrey’s rather absurd, self absorbed, post in which he pretends to be what he is not, on his own blog – Vridar. Whether or not he sees out comments is irrelevant – we don’t really care. But you, Ed, are welcome here. :-)
very best wishes,
 steph

 
 
 steph 
 August 20, 2012 at 1:53 pm
“my past wayward religious experience has taught me humility” No it hasn’t. It taught him dishonesty. And perhaps not only to others, but also to himself. Taught him humility? If it had he should have realised this post isn’t about him. He isn’t even mentioned. Humble generally goes with truthful. He’s neither. As for supposed accusations of anti Jewishness – he doesn’t get it at all. It’s nothing to do with being ‘anti Jewish’. It’s the fact that the mythicist flaw is to reject historicity, and to do that it must first ignore any humanity as a Jewish human being. The mythtical flaw is to reject the image of a godman, which is a later Christian creation of the myth of the Christ, a myth that critical scholars refuted years ago. Fundamentalist Christians aren’t anti Jewish. Many fundamentalist Christians though, particularly in certain parts of the world and especially post 2001, are anti Muslim. They generally know nothing about Islam. Those fundamentalist Christians will support Israel in its war with Islam which demonstrates even more that fundamentalist Christians are not anti Jewish. Nobody is accusing anybody of being anti Jewish let alone Godfrey of being anti anything except a historically plausible figure.
Ironically his simpering innocence and pretentions of humility in his post all about himself (with reference to Tim), responding to a post which isn’t about him, is called a biographical note. It is not. It is self centred autobiography – and far from convincing.
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 steph 
 August 20, 2012 at 8:10 pm
Oh my – Unbelievable. The meister at Vridar has read the comments and copied them on his blog. I can’t work out whether he is really as vacuous as he appears. He says “Having pointed out the nonsense of her accusation that my experience somehow led me to have a problem with the Jewishness of Jesus [I had done nothing of the sort] she now suggests that her point was that being too sympathetic to Jewishness means I must be anti-Muslim …” [what????!!!!!]……
I made neither of the accusations he pretends. First I never accused him of being anti Jewish in the first place. That was his own bizarre interpretation to the implication that a historically plausible figure, given the gospel context of Jewish first century culture, is a Jewish human being, but Godfrey, as other mythicists ignore a historically plausible figure and merely deny the Christ myth which we all know clearly didn’t exist. And the anti Muslim accusation? He’s as ‘anti Muslim’ as I am. Both he and I have independently been involved in positive ways in our own countries with Muslim groups and communities. I said that some Christian fundamentalists vote in favour of the state of Israel and support the Israeli government against Iran. Some parts of the world was an indirect to Republicans. Why try to have a conversation with a self absorbed person who seems so determined to misunderstand. He will never get it.
What I said was “Nobody is accusing anybody of being anti Jewish let alone Godfrey of being anti anything except a historically plausible figure.” – something he appears to have [deliberately???] overlooked. Very odd fellow.

 
 
 
 Ed Jones 
 August 20, 2012 at 7:18 am
Just here, I feel compelled to repeat my comment from another site, which posted a quote from “Neither God nor Man” by Earl Doherty, which, however inadvertent, expresses the all-pervasive, fundamental, indisputable fallacy of the Mythicists’ argument.
 By way of pointed emphasis, I reproduce the quote in a paraphrase making but one change: the word “Christian” is replaced with the word “Universe”: “The advent of the Internet has introduced an unprecedented ‘lay’ element of scholarship in the field – the absence of peer pressure – has meant that the study of “Universe” origins is undergoing a quantum leap in the hands of a much wider consistency than traditional academia.” (Quantum and Relativity Physics).
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 Ed Jones 
 August 21, 2012 at 5:15 pm
The real point of my critical use of the Doherty quote: Mythicists’ failure to take account of present understanding of our top NT Studies scholars. To illustrate:
 Our evidence for the real Jesus, his true historical significance, rests solely on the basis of the faith and witness of the apostles. This has been the traditional basis for the Authority of NT Scripture, its norm being that it contains the source of the original and originating witness to Jesus. It is the basis for recognition of the Guild of NT Studies as a legitimate discipline.
 But just here we are brought up against the fact of the fateful mistake of the Jesus tradition. The early church, in applying its criterion of canonicity, was mistaken. “We now know not only that none of the OT writings is prophetic witness to Christ in the sense in which the early church assumed them to be, but also that none of the writings of the NT is apostolic witness to Jesus as the early church itself understood apostolicity. The sufficient evidence of this point in the case of the NT writings is that all of them depend on sources, earlier than themselves, and hence are not the original and originating witness that the early church mistook them to be in judging them to be apostolic. The witness of the apostles is still rightly taken to be the real Christian norm; even if we today have to locate this norm not in the writings of the NT but in the earliest stratum of Christian witness accessible to us given our own methods and reconstruction. This Jesus-kerygma, which is very definitely (apostolic) witness even though its Christology is merely implicit, in contrast to the explicit of the Christ kerygma that we find in Paul and John and he other NT writings, represents the earliest witness of faith that we today are in a position to recover. The first step one must take in using (NT Scripture) as a theological authority is historical rather than hermeneutical. Specifically that is the step of reconstructing the history of tradition, so as thereby to identify the earliest stratum of this tradition, which is the real Christian canon by which even Scripture has whatever authority it has.” (From the article, Faith and Freedom by Schubert M. Ogden, online). It is important to understand the How and the Why of this mistake which can only be known from such a reconstruction. See my “A viable historical solution to the Jesus Puzzle – -“
Reply
 
 
 brettongarcia 
 August 20, 2012 at 7:48 am
One of the most common complaints against Mythicism is that it is vague; that it lacks the “firm” findings. of Historicism However, I see that vagueness and lack of firmness, as a potential virtue.
Many historicists and their allies, the believers, seek and even claim to already have, an absolute firmness, a certainty, that the facts just don’t warrent. They want to hear that at least, firmly, “Jesus is real”; Jesus existed historically. However, even the more careful HJ scholars – which at the moment, might include those quoted by Ed Jones above – acknowledge that no really firm facts are in evidence.
And that being the case? Finally a certain openness, a certain lack of dogmatic certainty, might be far more honest to what we actually have.
In fact, even a certain vagueness, shadowy ghostliness about where it all came from, not only is more honest, and in closer correspondence to the (themselves vague) “facts”; in many circles, this is even considered a higher theology. God being thought to be so great, that all our merely human attempts to conceptualize him, and his “mystery,” are thought to always fall short; being inevitably too simplistic … and dogmatic.
So here a certain Christian liberal openness – now advocated by say Dr. James McGrath – might be the Christian virtue that we should pursue. Though over and above some of McGrath’s assertions, the better expression of that openness to the Larger Complexity … would not be Historicism … but Mythicism.
In a sense, Mythicism to be sure always aims – if possible – to tack things down; to generate the kind of firmly proven sketch of the provenance of the Jesus legend, with all facts and archeological and scientific evidence, in place. But if it doesn’t quite do that? Then in a sense, it has not failed. And indeed, it is better prepared to find little. Since it knew all along, better than anyone, that the facts have never been firmly in evidence. And that in the end we have nothing more substantial than “shadows.” Or “ghosts.” Or … “Myths.”
If you see a “shadow”? Maybe that is God himself, after all. Not the dramatic, showy, concrete. lurid Sunday School illustrations of zombie resurrections; but at most a “still small” and hardly-discernable voice. Or say, a slight illumination around and within ordinary objects….
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 rjosephhoffmann 
 August 20, 2012 at 7:56 am
Of course, not even a bone or an inscription is a “firm” fact, and a bone of Jesus would be discnfirmation of the gospel anyway. Between fact and myth there is a huge array of possibility; this is a process, not a light switch.
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 Ed Jones 
 August 23, 2012 at 1:39 pm
Brettoagoreta, Your reference to my comment leads me to add this and a follow up comment from another site.
 Mythicists: Imagine, do but imagine, Doherty’s quote above stated in the nonsensical context of the discipline of Quantum and Relativity Physics, over against the daily critical out pouring, with reckless abandon, evidencing complete disregard for the Guild of NT Studies having any legitimacy as a discipline, its scholars rationally deficient, faith led. Keying Earl’s Reply: “Thanks, Ed. Believe me, by now we’ve gotten your point.” To Earl’s credit, this is followed by Neil’s Reply for Earl, listing some of Earl’s arguments which are strikingly consistent, as far as they go, with significant points made in my reconstruction of origins of Jesus traditions, Ed Jones Dialogue -Vridar. However for Earl, this all seems to lead to quite different conclusions.
 Against the all too evident general misunderstanding of the Guild’s traditional basis of historical authority, I again repeat: the Guild, the oldest formal discipline, has consistently functioned on the conviction of two premises: the reality of God and the Authority of Scripture. As to the first, I make this aside: The history of history’s irrefutable fact that a significant number of the world’s finest thinkers, including a number of our most notable scientist were confirmed Theists. Including the founders and grand theorists of modern quantum and relativity physics: Einstein, Schroedinger, Heisenberg, Bohr, Eddington, Pauli, de Brogue, Jeans, and Planck. At least to say theists stands in highest intellectual company.
 As to the latter, the Authority of Scripture: The historical norm for the canon of Scripture being the sources judged to be apostolic witness to Jesus, the original and originating faith and witness of the apostles, eyewitnesses to Jesus. This was the sufficient evidence for Jesus based on the claim of the church fathers. Until the Enlightenment, there was little to question the church’s understanding of apostolic authority. With the historicism of the nineteenth century, the historicity of the apostolicity of traditional canon was raised. Specifically in the challenge of Reimarus (1750): The Christ of faith was not the historical Jesus. “Search the Scriptures and see if Christianity is not based on an historical mistake.” Indeed the early church fathers had made a fateful mistake in judging the Scriptural sources of apostolic witness. So began the 200 year plus Quest for the Real Jesus.
Reply

 Ed Jones 
 August 23, 2012 at 1:59 pm
The above post continued.
 The premise of the Authority of Scripture, the basis for the conviction that the norm of the NT canon was apostolic witness, has traditionally been taken as the reliable source for knowledge about Jesus. With Reimarus’ challenge, the Christ of faith is not the Jesus of history, the Quest for the real Jesus began. For the first 200 yrs. it took the form of Neo-Orthodoxy, an apologetic attempts to extract the real canon from traditional canon. Not until the 80s was it finally fully acknowledged (by our top NT scholars) that “we now know, given our present historical methods and knowledge, not only that none of the OT writings is prophetic witness to Jesus in the sense in which the early church assumed them to be, but also that none of the writings of the NT is apostolic witness to Jesus as the early church itself understood apostolicity”. (Schubert Ogden). Further, they have identified our most certain NT source of apostolic witness to the real Jesus, “an alternative to Gentile-Christianity.as known above all from the letters of Paul, the Gospels, as well as the later writings of the NT’ (Hans Dieter Betz). Hence we now understand how the “Jesus Puzzle” developed from this fateful mistake of the early church in missjudging the sources of apostolic witness. We can now know not only the details of the How and the Why of this historical mistake, but even more significantly, now can identify our most certain source of apostolic witness to the real Jesus, our source for knowledge of who he was and what he was about. This calls for a new reconstruction of origins of post crucifixion Jesus traditions for the period 30 CE-65 CE, before Christianity, before the Gospels, partly before Paul. This makes the term “Christian Origins” a misnomer. Christian was first used of Barnabus and Paul’s mission in Antioch, it was never used of the Jerusalem Jesus Movement. More later.
 This constitutes the Guild of NT Studies’ counter to the Mythicists argument: THE SUFFICIENT EVIDENCE FOR THE EXISTENCE OF JESUS IS THE NEW TESTAMENT APOSTOLIC WITNESS. I.e. The evidence rests “solely on the basis of their (the apostles) prior faith and witness”. (Schubert M. Ogden).
 In a comment on Vridar which included this last paragraph, PW replied: “Smartest thing I have read yet”. Both were removed within hours without explanation.

 
 
 
 stevenbollinger 
 August 20, 2012 at 10:42 am
An excellent piece, Dr Hoffmann! By all means, let’s spread the blame around a bit.
This is a bit offtopic, but, as you express once again your dislike for Dawkin’s writing on religion, I wonder what you think of his writing on zoology? The Selfish Gene is wonderful, despite its terrible title and some staggeringly stupid remarks to the effect that attempts before Charles Darwin to define mankind are worthless. Dawkins himself, while his appreciation of the learning of past ages may still be lagging a bit, in the decades since the book was published has almost admitted that its title is unfortunate. And The Ancestor’s Tale, a sort of Canterbury Tales moving from the present back in time to humankind’s earliest-known ancestor’s, is equally impressive.
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 rjosephhoffmann 
 August 20, 2012 at 10:49 am
I know Richard; like him personally; wish he had stuck to science and much admire the clarity of his science writing. He has always dabbled in theology a bit, or at least the debate about God’s existence, esp in the 1990′s and much of the book are his warmed up lecture notes from those debates.
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 barrettpashak 
 August 21, 2012 at 1:01 pm
Mythicism is indeed inherently anti-Jewish. Non-Jewish scholars have endeavored to sever Christ and the New Testament from Judaism, and mythicism is part of this tendency. It is the ultimate extension of what one scholar has called “the ultimate Western fantasy – that Christ had not, in fact, been a Jew” (Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture, and Race by Robert Young, p. 85). This de-Judaizing of Christ and the New Testament is, according to some scholars, part of the thought complex that led to the Holocaust. As one writer puts it, “[T]he treatment of Jesus in scholarship, and thereby in churches as well, had an indirect influence in preparing people to think of Jesus as disconnected from Judaism and therefore to separate the two in making moral evaluations” (The historical Jesus in the twentieth century, 1900-1950 / Walter P. Weaver, p. 256). All this dovetails neatly with the current vogue of anti-Israel Left Fascism.
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 brettongarcia 
 August 21, 2012 at 8:28 pm
The assertion that Mythicism is “anti-Jewish” is an all-too- common calumny.
The fact is that Jesus himself often began to suggest that non-Jews could enter into covenant with God; as Jesus noted that a Roman centurion for example, might have more “faith” than a native of Israel. So that Jesus himself, was beginning the process of increasing emphasis on Gentiles. One that was not anti-semetic; but that would broaden the scope of Judaism, to include Gentiles, and Gentile ides.
In fact,there are countless signs that the New Testament itself was attempting to broaden the appeal of Judaism; appealing to the “gentiles,” the goyem, the non-Jews. Paul especially, is at pains to show that the non-Jew, the “Greek,” can be “heir” to the promises of the Jewish God, simply by believing and having “faith”; without being Jewish, or literally circumcised “according to the flesh.” While indeed, Christianity was to distinguish itself from Judaism as a “different” religion, in that it essentially, hellenized Judaism; and allowed non-Jews (and non-Jewish ideas) to enter into covenant with God.
Many elements of traditional Christianity itself at times to be sure, attempted to cut themselves off from the Jewish roots of their religion; the Old Testament and so forth. In favor of a “new covenant.” But finally Christianity itself of course was not “anti-semetic”; but simply attempted to broaden out Judaism, by allowing the Gentiles, non Jews, to interact with God. Shifting some emphasis from being biologically Jewish, to a kind of “faith” that could include many different ethnicities.
Mythicism likewise does not denigrate Judaism and the Old Testament; but rather follows the attempt to ALSO integrate into the covenant, Gentiles and their culture as well.
As did Jesus himself.
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 August 22, 2012 at 5:55 am
“The fact is that Jesus himself often began to suggest that non-Jews could enter into covenant with God; as Jesus noted that a Roman centurion for example, might have more “faith” than a native of Israel.” How would this be germane; who would be this “Jesus jimself” if he is a mere cipher?

 
 
 
 brettongarcia 
 August 22, 2012 at 3:26 am
Simply put: Mythicism notes the influence of myths on Christianity; especially the influence of Greco-Roman or hellenistic stories and myths. For this reason in part, it is often accused of 1) “failing to see” the truly Jewish nature of Jesus. At times it is even accused of 2) “anti-semitism.”
But it is not inherently anti-Jewish, to simply call attention to the influence of Greco-Roman thought on Christianity.
Nor does Mythicism noting Greco-Roman and ANE influence on Jesus “fail to see” the absolutely and purely Jewish side of Jesus. In fact it demonstates that the “Jesus” of the New Testament was himself rather hellenized, and was not entirely, conservatively and strictly “Jewish” at all.
There were many, many gentile influences on Jesus.
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 brettongarcia 
 August 22, 2012 at 7:33 am
Who or what do I think Jesus was? Mythicism asserts he is a fiction, a myth.
Though here I am defending Mythicism often, note that I will at times – for the sake of convenience, and conventionality – refer to “Jesus” as if he was a real, even historical person. Though it should be understood that in effect I use the term to stand for a character; one that might be true – or might be fictional. The usual term in History and Folkloristics/Mythography, for this kind of person, is to say that he is a “legend” or “legendary.”
In any case, we can refer to fictional characters at times as if they were real: as when we say “Zeus was seen appearing in the clouds, by all the people of Athens.” Or when someone quotes “Dr House” from the TV show, etc..
So why though, why would I at times seem to attach importance to what the character “Jesus” says at times? Dr. McGrath in his blog notes that in liberal Christianity as he presently defines it, Jesus might be a mythical character. And yet, Jesus is still be presumed to have some importance I might add; since many myths after all, contain deep truths. (Intermixed, albeit, with many falsehoods too).
Sometimes to indicate that “Jesus” is in phenomenological brackets, or that his status as real is precisely what is in question here and elsewhere, I also at times just put the name in quotes: “Jesus.” Or at times I refer to the “legendary Jesus,” say. When we need to emphasize his provisional status.
To be objective I feel that the current Jesus investigation, should not just from the start present this entity as presumed to be fully real, as conventionally described. Since that would be begging much of the question at hand.
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 barrettpashak 
 August 22, 2012 at 10:52 am

That is almost a matter for surprise…. There were Greek teachers and philosophers there, and it is scarcely conceivable that Jesus should have been entirely unacquainted with their language. But that he was in any way influenced by them, that he was ever in touch with the thoughts of Plato or the Stoa, even though it may have been only in some popular redaction, it is absolutely impossible to maintain.–Das Wesen des Christentums / Adolph Harnack, p. 28 [my translation].
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 brettongarcia 
 August 25, 2012 at 4:33 am
It is too bad that Harnack cannot see the very considerable cross-cultural stratum of Greco-Roman influenced Jews. Who included no less famous contemporaries than Philo, Herod, and later Paul and Josephus. Some of whom at times worked with Greeks and Romans, and were clearly influenced by their culture.
By the way, if Jesus was in Egypt to avoid being killed by Herod, he might even have met, even been taught by, his 20-years-older Hellenistic Jewish contemporary, Philo. In Alexandria, Egypt. A major city full of Hellenized Jews.
These are just a few of the probably tens of thousands of Hellenized, Romanized Jews that Harnack finds impossible to see or imagine.

 
 
 
 brettongarcia 
 August 22, 2012 at 10:54 am
Jesus “himself” in this case would be say: 1) the Jesus indicated by at least “red-letter” words said to have been spoken by Jesus himself in the NT. Deeper than that, we might look for 2) words which are thought by historicists, to be the “real” Jesus. Or specifically say 3) words which seem to be from plausibly authentic Jesus traditions; like the “Q” source.
But for that matter? Note that Q is described as a stoic or “Cynic” philosopher/sage; but the Cynical philosophy (“blessed are the poor” etc.), is in turn, from a fellow student, with Plato, of Socrates. Antisthenes by name.
 So that if Q reflects the oldest and most authentic “Jesus” we have? Then Jesus, even in the earliest manifestations we can presently discern, seems influenced by Greek philosophy/myths/culture. Especially Platonism.
Again, the deepest “Jesus” we can present discern, seems not to be purely Jewish; but is hellenized, Platonistic. Even in Q material.
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 steph 
 August 22, 2012 at 12:42 pm
BG,
The Q hypothesis eliminates all early tradition in Mark’s gospel which appears in Matthew and/or Luke. It excludes therefore very Jewish material such as the apocalyptic sayings which appear in all three synoptic gospels where Matthew and Luke have followed Mark. The historical Jesuses constructed on the assumption that the double tradition material in Matthew and Luke represent the earliest tradition, are historically implausible and not a remotely like a first century Jewish teacher/prophet, but more like a completely unique, and ridiculously implausible ‘cynic-like’ person who isn’t very Jewish. Conveniently Doherty accepts the existence of Q uncritically. The Jesus of Q is historically implausible and clearly not a particularly Jewish Jew at all.
In any case, the Q hypothesis is a hypothesis based on the assumption that it exists, and evidence is squeezed and stretched to fit. Double tradition material in common order and close verbal agreement, appears with material which has no common order and virtually no verbal agreement at all, simply because it is double tradition and not shared by Mark. It has been refuted many times and only lives in the scholarship of the Q scholars themselves whose careers now depend on it.
Red letter sayings??? This is an irrelevant concept invented by some Christians. It is not a ‘fact’ that Jesus said that there was no greater faith in Israel than that of the centurion. I don’t think the arguments for its historicity are convincing. But even assuming it is historical and other saying attributed to Jesus which speak to Gentiles are historical also, this does not amount to Gentile inclusion in the Jewish covenant. For example, the context of the centurion story is important. The centurion says he doesn’t need Jesus to go and heal because he just has to say the word. No Jewish person would have believed that, probably not even Jesus would have claimed to have that power, so Jesus’ response was a natural response. It has nothing whatever to do with later admission of Gentiles into a Christian community which was no longer Jewish. With Paul, you have moved to the Christianity which evolved after the Jewish tradition Jesus taught.
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 brettongarcia 
 August 25, 2012 at 2:44 am
So Stephanie Fisher rejects Q theory, and its potential description of Jesus, as “ridiculously implausible.” On the grounds in part, that its potential Jesus is not entirely Jewish.
But that is exactly the point.
Nor obviously is a “Cynic” sage Jesus impossible; since the Cynic philosophy was available, from c. 300 BC, through the Greco-Roman culture that, in the time of Jesus, occupied Jerusalem. And that might be expected therefore, to have influence in and around “Jesus.”
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 Stephanie 
 August 25, 2012 at 1:16 pm
The trouble is that you have eliminated the earliest evidence. The double tradition does not include the earliest evidence such as some of the material of the Gospel of Mark, which provides massive evidence of the Jewish environment of Jesus, the Jewish nature of his teaching, and the Aramaisms of which Mark is full. This is supported by parts of Matthew and Luke as well.
This has nothing to do with whether it was possible to have a Jewish cynic in Jerusalem.
The lingua franca of Israel was Aramaic. There would have been little point Jesus teaching to the people of the countryside in Hebrew. He may well have spoken to the scribes and Pharisees in Hebrew but we do not know this as we are not told. That teaching in Aramaic would in any way conflict with the religion of Judaism, is just nonsense. That my evidence and argument is narrowly focused or solely dependent on Aramaic evidence is purely your own imagination. Just because you choose to contradict Aramaic evidence, it is you who have conflated it and ignored everything else. Aramaic evidence only forms part of our arguments which include evidence from Judaism and Hebrew texts as well as Greek ones.
I do wish you’d apply yourself to learning and an appropriate education in history instead of persistently speculating and cherry picking, and then spinning your long uninformed sermons here.

 
 
 
 steph 
 August 22, 2012 at 1:24 pm
Barratt Pashak,
 Mythicism is not inherently ‘anti Jewish’ at all. The myth theory came out of the nineteenth century, provoked by liberal Protestant German scholarship which was anti Judaism, but it wasn’t til the Nazi Christian scholarship around the second world war that the historical Jesus became a pale skinned blue eyed Aryan ‘Christian’. Post war scholarship came to recognise the prejudice and restore Jesus’ Jewish identity. See for example Maurice Casey, ‘Who’s Afraid of Jesus Christ? Some Comments on Attempts to Write a Life of Jesus’ in James Crossley and Christian Karner (editors) “Writing History, Constructing Religion” (Ashgate 2005). Casey looks at the impact of a Christian discipline and Nazism on the scholarly quest for the historical Jesus. There are still some particularly conservative Christian scholars, who concede Jesus’ Jewish, but present him as unique, and not particularly Jewish at all. This myth is strengthened by the assumption of the existence of Q, a hypthetical sayings source stripped of all the Jewish sayings present in all three synoptic gospels. The modern mythicism as inherited a non Jewish Jesus, a Christ myth which is easy to refute as historically implausible.
What on earth is “the current vogue of anti-Israel Left Fascism” other than oxymoronic? Mythicism today is not inherently anti Jewish. It is anti historical and perpetuates a not very Jewish and not very human mythical figure, but mythicists themselves are not ‘anti Jewish’. Opposition to the right wing/Republican/conservative Christian support of a political state of Israel has nothing to do with anti semiticism and is completely irrelevant to the mythicist view.
Reply

 barrettpashak 
 August 22, 2012 at 1:41 pm
I am sorry, Steph, but the connection between mythicism and de-Judaizing Liberal scholarship is quite clear:
So the sources were already being subjected to severely critical evaluation, so much so that the question could arise as to just how much of a historical figure actually lay behind them. This was the door opened by the liberal criticism, and through it marched the likes of Arthur Drews, William Benjamin Smith, and John M. Robertson.–The historical Jesus in the twentieth century, 1900-1950 / Walter P. Weaver, p. 49.
This is part of a Left Fascism that is far more insidiously evil than the fundamentalist Christianity it purports to attack. The attack on the historicity (ie. Jewishness) of Christ and the attack on the state of Israel are nothing more than genteel versions of the same old anti-semitism.
Reply

 steph 
 August 22, 2012 at 1:52 pm
Uh huh – so how does this contradict what I wrote? Historical Jesus scholarship until 1950? It doesn’t so far as I can see but it does not support any implication that today’s mythicists are anti Jewish simply because they have inherited a non Jewish figure which came out of older scholarship.
As for the latter paragraph – you have not justified your oxymoron nor any of your accusations at all. I don’t approve of Netanyahu or anyone’s ‘war on Islam’. I am not ‘anti Jewish’ or anti semitic and it would be completely ridiculous to suggest I am. So don’t.

 
 barrettpashak 
 August 22, 2012 at 2:13 pm
Post-Holocaust scholarship still has not really assimilated Christ the Jew, as one of its leading lights himself attests:
Q So what was the matrix within which Jesus lived?
A As long as the world was thought to be entirely Christian, it worked to think of Jesus in a strictly Christian matrix. But after the Holocaust, Jews said, “But Jesus was a Jew.” So we said, “Okay, okay,” and we put him back in a Jewish matrix. That was just polite. No big deal.
–Interview with John Dominic Crossan
I would also point out that the Jewish reclamation of Christ began long before the Holocaust. As Risto Santala relates:
Nowadays there is a keen interest in the person of Jesus in Israel. The first one among Jewish scholars who opened this positive approach was Constantin Brunner. In 1921 he created the motto: “Bring us back our Jesus!” “Die Heimholung Jesu” does not, however, mean the same understanding, as we have. After his motto he claimed, that “our Messiah has equally little to do with the Christ of the Christianity as the constellation of the bear has to do with the beast in its name”.
It seems to me that Gentile scholars today want a Christ who is Jewish, but not too Jewish.

 
 
 
 steph 
 August 22, 2012 at 2:44 pm
Perhaps rather than appealing to Crossan(?!) or any others belonging to
 the notorious Westar Jesus Seminar to support your accusations… (“Gentile” scholars???? who invented the concept of ‘Gentile scholars’?) how about examining contemporary critical scholarship. First become acquainted with the scholarship of Geza Vermes. Then try the book I pointed to above edited by Crossley and Karner, and Crossley’s ‘Jesus in an Age of Terror’ http://www.equinoxpub.com/equinox/books/showbook.asp?bkid=347
 and Crossley’s newly published ‘Jesus in an Age of Neoliberalism’ http://www.equinoxpub.com/equinox/books/showbook.asp?bkid=551&keyword= ‘Judaism, Jewish Identities and the Gospel Tradition’ http://www.equinoxpub.com/equinox/books/showbook.asp?bkid=250&keyword=, and even Maurice Casey, “Jesus of Nazareth” (T&T Clark, 2010) with ‘From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God’ (WJK 1991) for luck. But still, while some liberal and conservative scholarship perpetuates a “Jewish but not too Jewish” (Crossley said that a long time ago) Jesus, not Jewish enough, you cannot accuse scholarship of ‘anti-semiticism’, let alone contemporary mythicism too. It does not follow.
Reply

 barrettpashak 
 August 22, 2012 at 3:42 pm
Apparently, Crossley agrees with me and Crossan:
The end results of contemporary scholarship are not dramatically different from the results of the anti-Jewish and antisemitic scholarship of much of the twentieth century.–from the blurb for Jesus in an age of Terror.
The only antidote for the persistent anti-Judaism of non-Jewish Bible scholarship is to actually read Jewish scholarship on the subject. Vermes is fine for a starting point. However, as one reviewer points out, “Dr Vermes admits that this book needs to be supplemented by a consideration of the teaching of Jesus, yet to be done.” For this, you really need to read Our Christ, by Constantin Brunner, something that, to my knowledge, no contemporary scholar has done.
Reply
 
 
 barrettpashak 
 August 22, 2012 at 4:31 pm
As for Casey, he, too, detects a whiff of anti-Jewishness in some recent scholarship:
Arnal suggests that outstanding American scholars such as Chilton, Frederiksen and Sanders conform Jesus to the figure of an ‘Eastern European Jew’ to distance themselves from anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism in previous scholarship. He objects to ‘a Jesus who was circumcised, who had a recognizably Jewish name…I.e. Yehoshua or Yeshua…If multiple attestation tells us anything, it is that Jesus’ name was, in fact, Jesus.’ [Cipher Judaism in historical Jesus Scholarship] This is exactly the sort of rejection of Jesus’ Jewishness to which scholars such as Frederiksen and Sanders have properly objected, and Arnal’s use of the criterion of multiple attestation is quite bizarre. With arguments of this kind, Arnal’s allegation that outstanding scholars have the ‘Eastern European Jew’ at the centre of their reconstructions of the historical Jesus never appears plausible.–Jesus of Nazareth: An independent historian’s account of his life and teaching / Maurice Casey, p. 24.
Reply
 
 steph 
 August 22, 2012 at 4:44 pm
Actually BP, Crossley and Casey agree with me. They discuss the extremes and mistakes and prejudices in scholarship. You are making broad general accusations and using scholarship that was written in a context now out of date to justify your accusations against all contemporary scholarship.
Reply
 
 brettongarcia 
 August 22, 2012 at 6:04 pm
The accusation of “anti-semitism” against any and all scholars who note Greco-Roman influence in Christianity and Jesus, is simply unjustified drama. Indeed, the two most common accusations against anyone you don’t like on the Internet, probably include the accusation they are “Nazis.” (No doubt to be sure, some Nazis misused the classicists’ view of Christianity; but anyone can misuse something good. The accusation that Mythicsts are “all Nazis” therefore, is not credible).
The Bible itself CONSTANTLY shows Jesus influenced by non-Jewish ideas. Even if we reject Q material as the earliest record of Jesus, and follow Mark, we still see many signs of Jesus, in Roman-occupied Jerusalem, turning against elements of Judaism; in favor of what are in effect, Gentile practices.
1) For example, in Mark 2.23 ff, Jesus is pictured working, gathering food on a Sabbath; even though that was prohibited by the Old Testament God, on pain of death. To be sure, Jesus offers a midrashic-style justification for this; but the end is to change a major Jewish Old Testament tradition.
Then next 2) in Mark 3.31 ff, Jesus begins to suggest that you don’t have to be biologically Jewish, to be saved; opening the way for Gentiles to enter into fellowship with Jesus. As next 3) Jesus notes that he is a prophet not acknowledged in his own country, or in effect his own Jewish countrymen (5.4).
In fact, Jesus crosses so many Jewish laws that 4) soon enough, Jesus is in fact in trouble with conservative Jews; the “scribes and Pharisees” (7.1-13). While indeed, 5) the Jews are not only convinced themselves he is not authentically, conventionally Jewish; they finally execute him for that. Which 6) seems reasonable, given Jesus beginning to drop next, the traditional Jewish food prohibitions in Mark 7.14-23, As next, 7) Jesus at first rejects a “Greek” non-Jewish woman; but then finds her acceptable and heals her 7.25-30. And as 8) Jesus founds the Eucharist … with a very un-Jewish command that you must drink his blood to be saved. (Jewish kosher meat normally being drained before consumption, etc.).14.24.
So that finally far from Jews of the time validating Jesus as a Jew, 8) the Jewish high priest no less, accuses Jesus of “blasphemy” against Judaism (15.63).
These eight examples or so, are just a few of the dozens of examples of Jesus’ embrace of non-Jewish, essentially Gentile ideas, even in the text of the Gospel of Mark. To come up with the assertion that Jesus was wholly Jewish, and was in no way influenced by say Greco-Roman thought, therefore, you have to cross out an awful lot of evidence to the contrary, even in Mark.
Reply

 steph 
 August 22, 2012 at 10:01 pm
These eight examples, do not present examples of “Jesus’ embrace of non-Jewish, essentially Gentile ideas” at all. For plenty of evidence with argument to the contrary which I will not summarise here, see Maurice Casey, Aramaic Sources of Mark’s Gospel (Society for New Testament Studies, Monograph Series 102; Cambridge: University Press, 1998) and James Crossley, The Date of Mark’s Gospel: Insight from the Law in Earliest Christianity (Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series 266; London: T&T Clark, 2004). Etcetera, etcetera etcetera.
Reply
 
 
 brettongarcia 
 August 23, 2012 at 3:54 am
Steph:
Jesus breaks/changes/finesses one Jewish law after another, after another. So that finally Jesus is executed by the Jews of his time. For not being, in their judgement, a good Jew.
For 2,000 years, it has been continually argued in common sermons, that Jesus was not breaking any Jewish laws; by his own arguments in part. But here? I’ve just listed about eight major, striking, shocking conflicts between Jesus and Jewish tradition, just in the Gospel of Mark alone. Including – no less – Jesus breaking/changing one of the Ten Commandments. (The one against working on a Sabbath; breaking Jewish law in favor of gentile/Greco Roman practice). Shockingly in fact, the Jews of Jesus’ time – who should know what is Jewish – not only do not validate Jesus as a good Jew. But on the contrary, the Jewish authorities of Jesus’ time constantly object to Jesus – for breaking one Jewish law after another. So that finally they execute Jesus for blasphemy against the Jewish traditions.
Jesus finally is executed by authorites of his own time – for not being a good Jew. It seems clear to me therefore, that the “Ballad of the Wholly Jewish Jesus” has been sung far too long, among all too many too-evangelical scholars. As they support a view of Jesus that has ignored far, far, far too much Biblical evidence.
(Incidentally: to my list of eight major conflicts between Judaism and Jesus, you might add to these eight, the fact that the New Testament was written in Greek. And not Aramaic. Suggesting massive control of the New Testament by … Greek culture, more than any other. More than Jewish culture.)
1) So it is time to broaden our review of scholarship. Why keep citing just one scholar – Maurice Casey – and his limited findings? For that matter, Steph, surely you know perfectly well that there are hundreds of scholarly assertions of Greco-Roman influence on Jesus. Not least of all, was Joe Hoffmann’s simple reference to such influences, on this very blog.
2) For the sake of those blog readers not familiar with the literature, or who do not have online access to a scholarly library – why not present brief summaries, the substance of the arguments Steph merely mention, or reference? I believe Steph is presenting bare citations, and that she is not re-presenting the actual arguments – because deep down, she knows how thin the arguments against Greco-Roman influence on Jesus, really are. Merely telling readers to go read a library full of books, which – as Steph improperly assets – will back her up, uniquely, is a mere dodge; not scholarship.
3) Generations of everyday ministers have presented a million sermons (literally) to try to “harmonize” Jesus and the New Testament, with Old Testament – and in effect, jewish – tradition. Finally though we should not be overly influenced by those all-too-unscholarly harmonizations. The fact is that there are enormous conflicts between Jesus and Jewish culture. Conflicts which finally resulted in the crucifixion of Jesus by the Jews of his time; for Jesus’ heresy, apostasy against Jewish tradition.
Reply

 barrettpashak 
 August 23, 2012 at 10:59 am
What we have in the New Testament is a conflict within Judaism, with the prophetic Judaism espoused by Christ on one side, and priestly/Pharisaic Judaism on the other.
Reply
 
 
 steph 
 August 23, 2012 at 12:00 pm
Bretton Garcia.
You aren’t discussing texts and historical traditions. You’re assuming the gospel material is verbatim Jesus and literally true history. You’re muddling up history with later tradition like a biblical literalist. The problem with you not bothering to read the critical scholarship is that you pontificate your long sermons here which are full of mistakes and assumptions with no evidence or support. This is not a pulpit provided for you to preach from and expect to be received as pronouncer of some sort of ‘gospel truth’. I gave you two scholars who are current experts in Jewish tradition and law. The New Testament reflects Greco Roman influences – the historical Jesus tradition does not. You don’t appear to have the critical tools to differentiate between early material and later Christian accretions to the text, nor do you understand Jewish Law. Please preach your sermons to the mythicists but don’t sing and dance here. “For 2,000 years, it has been continually argued in common sermons, that Jesus was not breaking any Jewish laws; by his own arguments in part…” Really? I suggest you in need of a course on church history. This totally contradicts the traditional teaching of the Christian church.
Your examples of Jesus influenced by non-Jewish ideas are full of mistakes. I keep citing Casey and Crossley because in the last few years they have done so much to locate Jesus within Judaism, Casey has particularly included the Aramaic sources of Mark’s Gospel, and he has recently written Jesus of Nazareth (T&T Clark, 2010) which summarises all this work for general readers like you. You ought to read these books, they do not amount to a whole library, and I cannot summarise all the reasons why you are mistaken in a blog comment. This is not a forum for your preaching and those to pontificate while unwilling to read or listen. You have accused Hoffmann of suggesting a historical Jesus himself was influenced by non Jewish tradition, rather that Christian tradition demonstrating these influences, which is what I have said, without obviously providing references to him making such claims.
For example, Mark 2.23-28 is full of Jewish assumptions and evidence of an Aramaic source. It does not picture Jesus as ‘working’ by ‘gathering food on a Sabbath’, as ‘prohibited by the Old Testament God on pain of death’. It pictures some people described as his ‘disciples’ plucking grain on the Sabbath. They were taking ‘Peah’, the grain left at the edges of fields for the poor in accordance with Lev. 19.9-10 and eating it because they were on the verge of starvation. Jesus defended them with purely Jewish arguments, ending with a son of man statement which makes proper sense in Aramaic (Casey, Aramaic Sources of Mark’s Gospel, pp.138-73, summarised at Jesus of Nazareth, pp.321-3). The bible does not say whether taking ‘Peah’ was allowed on the Sabbath or not, and the dispute is typical in one point, it was Pharisees who were very strict about the interpretation of the Law, whereas Jesus, as a first century Jewish prophet, defended these disciples by taking a more liberal view of biblical interpretation.
Again, at Mark 3.31ff Jesus does not ‘begin to suggest that you don’t have to be biologically Jewish to be saved’. This was a Jewish meeting, at which Jesus was told that his mother and brothers were looking for him. He looked round at his (Jewish) disciples and said ‘Behold, my mother and my brothers, for whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother’. This ties Jesus to faithful and observant Jews, and has nothing to do with Gentiles, who were not present and not mentioned.
At Mark 6.1-6, Jesus has come from beside the sea of Galilee, where he healed the daughter of a synagogue leader, to his hometown. This is obviously Nazareth, where Jesus is known as ‘the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of Jacob and Joses and Judah and Simeon’ and the inhabitants also comment ‘And are not his sisters here with us?’ This is why Jesus said ‘a prophet is not without honour except in his hometown and among his relatives and in his house’. Mark reports that he was not able to do much healing there, one of the centres of his ministry in Capernaum and elsewhere in Galilee. This has nothing to do with Gentiles either.
Your worst example is the last one, where you refer to ‘the crucifixion of Jesus by the Jews of his time; for Jesus’ heresy, apostasy against Jewish traditions’. Jesus was not crucified ‘by the Jews of his time’. This is extraordinary and outrageous anti Jewish prejudice belonging to conservative Christianity and the source for anti semiticism. It demonstrates complete lack of understanding of the history of anything. Crucifixion was a Roman penalty, and Jesus was crucified by Roman soldiers after being condemned by the Roman governor, Pontius Pilatus. He had the charge ‘king of the Jews’ affixed to Jesus’ cross, so he was effectively condemned by the Roman governor as a Jewish bandit. His dispute with the chief priests was a dispute between the Jewish prophetic tradition on the one hand, and the authoritative running of Judaism centred on the Temple in Jerusalem. This has nothing to do with Gentiles either (see Casey, Jesus of Nazareth, chs 9 and 11).
All your examples are just as faulty as these. You should read some scholarship, instead of pontificating from the perspective of your prejudices.
Reply
 
 Ken Scaletta 
 August 23, 2012 at 12:18 pm
Bretton, I think you are conflating Hellenistic/Roman influence on the Gospels with Hellenistic/Roman influences on Jesus himself. Several of the examples listed above are patently ahistorical (the conviction for blasphemy and the eucharist, for instance) and others are merely tendentious attempts to characterize what was fairly normal prophetic teaching as “law breaking.” Jesus is consistently portrayed as presenting his teachings as a correct understanding of the law, not as a rejection of it. For instance, the “sabbath was made for man” story was not a rejection of the Sabbath, but a denial that the Sabbath had been broken. His argument was that it was permissible to break the Sabbath to save a life.
You mention other examples that are merely part of Mark’s overriding agenda to say that the Gentiles were the true heirs of Jesus because the Jews rejected him.
Greco-Roman influence is all over the post-Pauline (and arguably even on the Pauline) development of Christianity, but they are redactional influences, not inceptional ones. They do not describe the real life of HJ himself.
Reply

 steph 
 August 23, 2012 at 12:28 pm
You are absolutely correct, Ken, from beginning to end.
Reply

 brettongarcia 
 August 25, 2012 at 2:47 am
A conclusion no one will be allowed to rebut here

 
 
 brettongarcia 
 August 26, 2012 at 4:09 am
In the Old Testament elaboration of the meaning and strictness of the probibition on working, even preparing food on the Sabbath, an incident is narrated in which a man is found collecting “sticks” of wood on a Sabbath. That man is executed.
For various reasons, Christians try to finesse and “twist” this. Even the early Christians tried to come up with Jewish/midrashic reasons to allow some work on the sabbath. Some of these modifications of Jewish law, seem reasonable to us today. But the fact remains, that these modifications were made. And made furthermore, by arguments that were not strictly, Old Testament/Torah reasoning. But “prophetic” as you suggest? Or perhaps after all, Hellenistic. Since strict Judaism was being modified in a way that would accomodate Greco-Roman practices.
Which might be expected; since Jerusalem had been a Roman province since 64 BC.
Are these descriptions of a Hellenistic Jesus really the historical Jesus himself? That is what we need to determine here, by allowing open investigation into these subject. These very events, first of all, ARE in what many scholars take to be the earliest gospel of Mark.
Simply going into Denial, and suppressing this information, in effect will be found to be the Denial of Jesus himself.
Reply

 Stephanie 
 August 26, 2012 at 6:27 am
Your ‘examples’ of Greco Roman influence on Jesus above are full of mistakes. This has been pointed out to you in some detail. You have misinterpreted the evidence – ‘twisted’ it – to fit your assumptions. Simply going into ‘denial’, refusing to listen, and read the scholarship and recognise your commitment to your own prejudiced presumptions, is effectively a denial of Jesus’ Jewishness. The law was ‘modified’ by Pharisees etc with whom Jesus debated. But Jesus does not break Jewish law in the earliest tradition. You are merely imposing these modifications on Jesus because you do not understand the evidence, you cannot read texts and you insist on refusing to read critical scholarship. Simply parroting your previous mistakes is tedious.

 
 
 
 steph 
 August 25, 2012 at 7:13 am
My conclusions have evolved and I have changed my mind in the process of discussion and debate with critical people of learning and scholarship, who have convincing arguments supported with evidence. Years ago I found aspects of a simplistic hypothesis convincing but I have since been convinced otherwise by new evidence presented and analysed in a critical scholarly way. The problem with some people committed to argument is that they are unwilling to listen and learn and read themselves and instead, express their opinionated ideas without evidence and argument or having read current critical scholarship in a learned way. The result is generally complete hypocritical uninformed nonsense, circular speculation based on contradiction and pure rhetoric.
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Wife Rape
by rjosephhoffmann

 Reblogged from The New Oxonian:

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“O  the woman God said, “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” Genesis 3.16)
“If a husband calls his wife to his bed and she refuses and causes him to sleep in anger, the angels will curse her till morning.” (Bukhari v.4, b.54, no.460).
Read more… 1,900 more words

The case of the spiritually challenged Rep. Todd Akin of Missouri calls for more discussion of the issue of rape: what it is, what is is not, and what laws need to be framed to protect the victims.

Published: August 21, 2012
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Wife Rape
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“O  the woman God said, “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” Genesis 3.16)
“If a husband calls his wife to his bed and she refuses and causes him to sleep in anger, the angels will curse her till morning.” (Bukhari v.4, b.54, no.460).
“Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.” (St Paul, I Corinthians 11.3)

Marital or spousal rape is now illegal in most of the developed and much of the developing world.  But it is one of those subjects that came late in the discussion of women’s rights and criminal sexual abuse.
As the West tries to redefine “traditional” marriage in a way that respects the concept of a consensual relationship between equal partners of either sex,  it needs to acknowledge that its own view of traditional marriage has actually been an impediment to solving a problem enshrined in that understanding: the idea of contractual privilege–superiority–of the man over the woman.
Most of the confusion in law stems from unacknowledged theological beliefs that have been papered over by a slew of case law, but like mildew keeps seeping through to reveal the ancient conceptual rot underneath.
A lot of this is blamed ( maybe rightly) on Saint Paul, who commended women in Christian marriage not to refuse their husbands their conjugal “rights” (1 Corinthians 7.5; cf 1 Cor. 11.13), and a half-mad interpreter of Paul who saw pregnancy as the fast track to salvation for obedient wives (1 Timothy 2.15). Not that the church invented this model of nuptial happiness: it was already a part of the family law of ancient Rome, before the Church came along.  The paterfamilias–the pinnacle of patriarchal development in the West– had power of life and death over wife, children and slaves, with few legal constraints.  The Christian church made male authority canonical in the Church, where women were excluded from governance,  and in the family, and preserved the man-on-top philosophy for two millennia, with almost no one raising serious objections.
 
MATTHEW HALE: RAPE WITHIN MARRIAGE IS A LEGAL IMPOSSIBILITY
 
Christianity also went the Romans one step better: it declared that God wanted it this way.  In Book VI of his Confessions, Augustine recalls that he acquired a concubine, while waiting for his bride-in-waiting to become of marriageable age,  because “he was not a lover of marriage but a slave of lust”–a view of woman’s functionality that he scarcely budged from at any point in his career: “[O God] Thou hast granted to man that from others he should come to conclusions as to himself, and that he should believe many things concerning himself on the authority of feeble women (Conf. i)…. Woman who is simple and knoweth nothing (Conf. iii).”
Women’s consent in sexual matters was further compromised by the theological premise that they were lacking in reason, which only the male possessed in significant measure, and “nothing so casts down the manly mind from its heavenly heights as the fondling of woman and those bodily contacts which belong to the married state.” The woman is the source of pain and guilt, the incitement to lust, by God’s decree,  a permissible distraction for the eminently reasonable man who sometimes must take his fist to to the woman’s face to release his passion.
Along the way, inevitably, the theology of men on top–the male as dominant partner–seeped into the Common Law that formed the basis for the legal systems of America and the British Commonwealth. A famous 17th century treatise by Sir Matthew Hale (not published until 1736) called marital rape “an impossibility in law” because by virtue of marriage “the wife hath given up herself in this kind unto her husband, which she cannot retract.” The chatteled staus of the woman in the partnership was simply assumed as a point that need not be argued.

A number of movements in the nineteenth century began to eat away at the logic of Hale’s commentary.  Letters and diary entries from Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone and Susan B Anthony illustrate the intensity of the struggle:

Stanton: “‘Woman’s degradation is in man’s idea of his sexual rights,’ Stanton wrote to Anthony. ‘How this marriage question grows on me. It lies at the very foundation of all progress.’”
Stone: “It is clear to me, that [the marriage] question underlies, this whole movement and all our little skirmishing for better laws, and the right to vote, will yet be swallowed up, in the real question, viz, has woman, as wife, a right to herself? It is very little to me to have the right to vote, to own property &c. if I may not keep my body, and its uses, in my absolute right. Not one wife in a thousand can do that now, & so long as she suffers this bondage, all other rights will not help her to her true position.”
But after the nineteenth century there was real progress in understanding marrriage as a pact of equals–a fact not just reflected in the changing nature of marriage rituals (“love, honor and obey” becoming a rare form of the Anglican promise required of a bride after 1965) but the progressive criminalising of marital rape after 1970 and the United Nations declaration hat marital rape is a violation of human rights in 1993. In 2006, it was estimated that marital rape could be prosecuted in at least 104 countries, and since 2006 several other nations have outlawed spousal rape.  Surveys show that Islamic countries and most African countries have been the slowest to implement penalties for marital rape, and that even in those countries where the rape of a spouse has been criminalized, a category of exemptions and special considerations exists (for example, the notion that the marriage contract constitutes “implied consent”) that make prosecution of the crime a difficult matter.
HE question is at the center of the religion- and- state- issue that affects many countries around the world, but especially those trying to create a civil legal system against the backdrop of religious law and traditional attitudes about marriage.  Deference toward tradition affects not only couples living in the culture where the marriage conventions and laws were formed, but also dispersed populations, such as the Pakistani diaspora in the U.K., that embrace some but not all of the “western” values indigenous to liberal European democracies.
A recent article by Aneka Chohan highlights the problem in Islamic societies.  She puts the dilemma as starkly and forcefully as I have seen it:

When it comes to marital rape, women are often confused whether they have been raped or not. The scenario of a stranger raping a woman on the street is immediately identified as  rape, where as forceful acts by a husband upon a wife are considered acceptable. This is partly due to the cultural belief that is rooted in women’s minds that ‘submitting’ to their husband is a sign of a dutiful wife.
The West tends to feel terribly privileged and liberal in the discussion of marital rape, but the premises used by Islamic theologians and “experts” are hauntingly like the rationales used in Europe and America for centuries: it is based of a thelogy of opposites, discredited Aristotelian biology (which saw the male as “propagative” and the female as “nutritive”), and a system that was designed specifically to keep women in their place as help-meets to their masculine superiors.
Take for example the words of Sheikh Maulana Abu Sayeed, the president of the Islamic Sharia Council of Britain–a Muslim cleric living in England–where any report of spousal rape would be treated as a crime:

“Clearly there cannot be any rape with the marriage. Maybe aggression, maybe indecent activity…because when they got married, the understanding was that sexual intercourse was part of the marriage, so there cannot be anything against sex in marriage. Of course, if it happened without her desire, that is no good, that is not desirable….In Islamic sharia, rape is adultery by force. So long as the woman is his wife, it cannot be termed as rape. It is reprehensible, but we do not call it rape.”
There may be a superficial logic to this preposterous claim, but it has no more bearing on the nature of rape than the seventeenth century notions of Sir Matthew Hale.   Add to this the lack of consensuality that precedes the marriage contract in much of Islamic society and the rape provision becomes even more invidious: a woman who did not marry a man of her choosing can be held accountable for not giving that man his conjugal “rights.” A girl taken by force and gang raped can be judicially executed (“honor killing”) for bringing shame on her family, as in the case of seventeen year old Kainrat Soomro who was declared a kiri(blackened woman) by a council of elders for losing her virginity outside marriage.   As Habibi Nosheen says in her superb Atlantic article from September 2011, “The most recent report from the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan noted that in 2009 roughly 46 percent of all female murders in Pakistan that year were in the name of ‘honor’. The report noted that a total of 647 incidences of ‘honor killings’ were reported by the Pakistani press. However, experts say that actual incidences of ‘honor killings’ in Pakistan are much higher and never get reported to the police because they are passed off by the families as suicides.”
pulitzer sep26 p.jpg
Underlying the judgments of the religious experts is more than two thousand years of male superstition, male insecurity, and male power.  Coercion and dominance within marriage is the last hurrah of a concept of marriage that keeps daddy on top and mother–as the writer of I Timothy advocates–barefoot and pregnant.
It keeps women ashamed to tell the truth about the thugs they married and daughters silent about the men who drugged them and bruised them and robbed them of the right to choose.
But it is not even that easy: Because in the first instance, spousal rape is not about choice. It is about power and the mythology that supports power.  The men who do such things are supported by a vicious theology that makes God, “the almighty father,” the “compassionate, the merciful,” the “hearer of prayers”– that God– the creator of a system that sees women as what the Catholic church used to call “occasions of sin”–visual enticements to lust and pleasure.  It’s all their fault; they earned their position by being the first to transgress God’s law, surrendering (as Augustine saw it) their natural rights to the man.
This theology has been chanted and sung and and said for two millennia by thousands of under-educated clerics in the book traditions who could not make an honest living if their lives depended on it, and hence prefer the easy road: tell people what God wants and what God the father expects of them. The God who told a virgin named Miriam not to tell anyone he’d got her pregnant.  The God who abused his only son and required him to be tortured to death. The God who teased Abraham with the promise of a son for a hundred years and drove his youngest wife into the desert. The God who told the Prophet that a nine year old wife would become the mother of believers. That God. Tell them that God wants it this way: your wives submissive and silent and your daughters obedient.  If that fails, there are always fists and knives.
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Published: February 20, 2012
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7 Responses to “Wife Rape”

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 Herb Van Fleet 
 February 20, 2012 at 4:39 pm
Excellent post, as usual. I’d just like underscore your thoughts with, uh, some other thoughts. First, I am probably more of a women’s libber than many women’s libbers. Something I’ve pondered for many years is the loss of a woman’s identity when she marries; she usually, but not always, transfers her ownership by her father to her husband, occasionally connecting both owners by a hyphen. (No puns on “hyphen,” please.) I say owners because, as you point out so brilliantly above, women, in the Judaic/Christian/Islamic tradition are merely pieces of property, subordinated to men, and made available from time to time to suit their pleasure. After all, marriage was, up until recent times, and still is in many parts of the world, a property transaction. There are doweries involved, maybe a couple of pigs or a buffalo or two. Now, I know that women love their fathers and their husbands, but taking on the surnames of males announces, or at least suggests, that they are somehow giving up their individuality, not to mention their equality, not to mention that.
In respect of that observation, I see it as Ironic, with a capital “I”, that the heathens, the indigenous peoples of the world, have no problem for the most part with women having their own identity. If you were to talk about Rebecca Rolfe, fo example, it would be meaningless until you said her maiden name was Pocahontas. Now, Sacagawea, (a.k.a., Sakakawea, a.k.a., Sacajawea) was apparently sold as a slave and then married a fur trapper named Toussaint Charbonneau. However, one of her biographers, Bonnie “Spirit Wind-Walker” Butterfield, suggests that it’s unknown whether she went by the name, Sacagawea Charbonneau. On the other hand, I suppose naming your daughter “Screams and Cries All Night” might not be unique.
There are also the matriarchies of course. One of them in upstate New York is the League of the “Haudenosaunee,” a.k.a., the “Iroquois Confederacy.” As I wrote in an Op-Ed piece last year, “. . . much of the political power of the Confederacy was in the hands of the elder women. They could veto treaties or declarations of war, they appointed members of their clan to the Grand Council, and if any member failed to comply with the wishes of the women of his tribe and the Great Law, the mother could demote him. Iroquois women could also own and sell property and do so without the permission of any patriarch. This gender equality would later become an inspiration to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and others in the Women’s Suffrage movement.” (Along with Iceland and Switzerland, the Iroquois Confederacy is one of the oldest continuing democracies in the world.)
It was Ted Tuner, founder of CNN, who once said that we should pass a law saying that only women can hold elective office for the next 100 years because that’s how long it will take to clean up the messes we men have created. Men, especially men of the cloth, need to get into the 21st century.
Reply

 andom2000 
 February 21, 2012 at 3:14 am
I can’t understand the reference to the Iroquois.
 They were a matriarchial society but we know that Iroquois nations had infighting.
 So where is the advantage of the power to the women?
 The Iroquois Confederacy was formed in order to stop the squabbling Iroquoian nations and the infighting, and was formed through the efforts of two men.
Question: could you prove that the Iroquois were not a matriarchy before the constitution of the Confederacy when the nations warred ?
Reply

 Herb Van Fleet 
 February 21, 2012 at 12:24 pm
As to the matriarchy issue, check out “The Iroquois: Matriarchy or Not?” (http://voices.yahoo.com/the-iroquois-matriarchy-not-8558375.html.) It concludes, “The Iroquois, while tipping the scales toward matriarchy, is actually a great example of an egalitarian society, in the sense of women’s and men’s social power and rights. Should the third marker (defined previously) ever be dismissed, there could be a good chance that the Iroquois would be ‘pushed over the line’ just enough to be a ‘matriarchy.’ But of course you are free to make your own judgement.
Furthermore, if you’re interested, here are some of the sources I used in writing my Op-Ed piece on the Iroquois Confederacy that may help answer your question:
“What is the Iroquois Confederacy?”http://www.publicbookshelf.com/public_html/Our_Country_Vol_1/Learnabou_d.html
“Exemplar of Liberty: Native America and the Evolution of Democracy” http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/6Nations/EoL/index.html#ToC
“A Basic Call to Consciousness – The Hau de no sau nee Address to the Western World,”
Geneva, Switzerland, Autumn 1977 \http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/6Nations/BasicCtC.html

 
 
 
 TerryB 
 February 27, 2012 at 2:32 pm
I do wish that you folk would not selectively quote St. Paul (among others).
 You know that saying :- “A lot of this is blamed ( maybe rightly) on Saint Paul, who commended women in Christian marriage not to refuse their husbands their conjugal “rights” (1 Corinthians 7.5); ” is a loaded quotation!
 In actual fact Paul goes on to say “likewise the husband does not rule over his own body but the wife does”!
That the Church (including St. Augustine) twisted things out of context says more about St. Augustine and other “teachers” than about Biblically based theology.
 Do try to read the whole text before quoting a small part; Remember “a text without a context is a pretext”.
Reply
 
 TerryB 
 March 7, 2012 at 10:27 am
My daughter is an Oxford graduate (2:1 in Theology) and I always respected Oxford as a place where differing views could be expressed and questions asked. However things may now be different if you do not allow your interpretation of scripture to be questioned.
 I ask again, why do you not quote St Paul in full instead of cutting out the verse that supports your view? l Corinthians 7 verses 3 to 5 give a balanced view of the complimentarity of a wife and her husband.
 This is the second comment I have written – no doubt it will be “moderated” as was the last because it points out a different, and correct, reading of St. Paul.
Reply
 
 rjosephhoffmann 
 August 21, 2012 at 6:04 pm
Reblogged this on The New Oxonian and commented:
The case of the spiritually challenged Rep. Todd Akin of Missouri calls for more discussion of the issue of rape: what it is, what is is not, and what laws need to be framed to protect the victims.
Reply

 Stevie Gamble 
 August 23, 2012 at 1:19 pm
I live in England where we now have the Sexual Offences Act 2003 which replaced the hodgepodge of common law and statute; it’s quite easy to define rape if you wish to do so.
Of course, you have to wish to do so…
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Religion and Culture for the Intellectually Impatient


The Voodoo Gynecology of the Jesus Perverters
by rjosephhoffmann

Jesus heals the bleeding woman…
When Missouri representative Todd Akin commented honestly that he thought a woman’s reproductive system shuts down in the case of “legitimate rape,” the outcry from the Republican party was nothing short of stunning.  Everyone who was anyone wanted his head, because that’s where his mouth is: Mitch McConnell, Sarah Palin, Christine O’Donnell, and of course, candidate Romney, and his younger-brother Handpuppe Paul Ryan.
None of these people disagree with Mr Akin.  But Mr Akin spoiled their party. The idea was to run on economic issues, resuscitate the familiar once-lucky Reagan zinger (“Are you better off now than you were four years ago”), and see to the social and moral engineering repayment to the evangelical cohort that elected them later on.
That repayment would surely (or will) have included a bill to criminalize abortion in all cases, including rape and incest, and possibly even in the case of immediate endangerment to the mother.  The Republicans know that there is no likelihood that the Supreme Court will revisit Roe v Wade anytime soon. And that’s a problem, especially for Catholics and Evangelicals.
But in this great and liberal democracy, there are other ways to get what you want. And the easiest way is leglislative action.  It is unlikely that a Supreme Court of this complexion would find such an act of Congress unconstitutional. And it is certain that the evangelical-retro-Catholic-banking-gun-rights-and libertarian coalition that has been incubating like a wee antichrist since the 1980′s is now a fully formed person.
Too bad it could not have been aborted in its first trimester. The devil now walks among us.
It’s not that Mr Akin is merely stupid.  It’s clear that he simply spilled the beans.  It’s also clear that he represents a hideous, monstrous perversion of Christianity, one whose other heads are Mormonism, with its anti-contraception theology going back to the prophet Joseph Smith, Neoconservative Catholicism, which ranks the ‘right’ to life above belief in the Trinity, and fundagelical Christianity, which jumped on the anti-abortion bandwagon (it used to be the preserve of Roman Catholics) after 1972 and got louder in the 1980′s.
In the Republican monster that has been formed from this cross-fertilizing, we have at the center Mr Romney, a Mormon who has been a bishop of his church and who has five strapping boys to show for his theology. Paul Ryan, his wonkish marionette, is there for the Catholic traditionalist, rosary-saying crowd (not as ardent at Rick Santorum, who brought his wife’s miscarriage home in a bottle so that the kids might ‘get to know their brother’). And in Mr Akins, now both a knave and a fool for spilling the beans and refusing to clean them up and go home, the evangelical Jeremiah. The prophet is always the inconvenient one and Mr Akins is a prophet.
I haven’t seen much on the topic, but Mr Akins is a graduate of Covenant Theological Seminary of  the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (which later merged with the Reformed Presbyterian Church in North America to form Reformed Presbyterian Church-Evangelical Synod), who believed that their denomination was being infiltrated by liberal theology.  Think Calvin. Now think of conservative Calvinism, and then of a movement that was to the right of that.  That is Covenant Seminary.
The hydra that is now the Republican leadership thought that by chopping Mr Akins’s head off the beast would be saved and grow a new one.  But that’s not likely.  Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney and the platform committee of the RNC believe exactly what Mr Akin says he believes. Listeners blanched when Akins said he “had heard from doctors” that a woman’s body shuts down during a rape, thus explaining why “so few rape victims become pregannt.” But the expert whose opinion he was thinking of, Dr Jack C. Willke, wrote in 1992 that the emotional traumas suffered by a woman in an assault rape “can radically upset her possibility of ovulation, fertilization, implantation and even nurturing of a pregnancy.” By his calculations “assault” rape pregnancy is extremely rare at about four cases per state per year. Statistics are fugitive however because he does not adjust for illegitimate rape cases or women who are only partly traumatized.

Jesus intervenes in a stoning….
Mitt Romney’s 2007 campaign embraced Willke as “an important surrogate for Governor Romney’s pro-life and pro-family agenda”, and Romney expressed his pride to “have the support of a man who has meant so much to the pro-life movement in our country.” Akins’s views cannot have been a surprise to him. They cannot have been a surprise to Paul Ryan, who co-sponsored legislation with Akin for a complete ban on therapeutic and voluntary abortion, in all cases.  It cannot have been  a surprise to the Platform Committee of the RNC, which even while the story flew around the internet, was setting Mr Akins’s policy in stone–indeed, even while the amazingly spongey Mr Romney was declaring that his views are “not those of Congressman Akins.” What was a surprise is that Mr Akins was honest: he let the world know what was on his mind, and in so doing let everyone in on Mitt Romney’s and Paul Ryan’s medieval understanding of sex and gender.
But as we have come to expect of Mr Romney–of any Republican politician in this monstrous new form–what would you want him to do–tell the truth? Give it to the American people straight? Or hide behind the curtain of job-creation and economic flat-lining and save the surprises until after November, when along with new-old social and ethical doctrines, they can reestablish the failed economic theories of the Bush regime. This is not the argument Romney wanted. All the more reason not to let him escape from it by chopping off only one of the three heads spewing the same poisonous ideas.
The  beast in the Book of Revelation (13) has seven heads, not only three, so the Republican party has some head growing to do before is is a fully fledged tyrant who, haughtily and blaspheously “breathes deceit and is allowed to make war on the saints.”  I have faith that they will grow the other four. I am not sure the saints will persevere.

I do know that what the evangelical, the Catholic, and the Mormon have in common is not just a contempt for women, not just a disdain for the Constitution–which they constantly want amended–but for the Christian religion they claim to represent.
The sickening hypocrisy of this group  may be the foulest perversion of Christianity since Naziism or the Inquisition: by any other name, it is unrecognizable as Christianity, and what they preach is unrecognizable as the gospel of Jesus Christ.
They have forfeited the right ever to speak about the evils inherent in this society or the deficiencies of other faiths–for example, the degradation of women in Islam–when they advocate the degradation of women in America and are willing to enact legislation that will canonize violence against women and disallow remedies for that violence.  Nevermind that what they are doing has no warrant in the gospel. But it strikes me as odd that not more people see what they are doing as a perversion of the gospel.
There is no other way to put this: these are dangerous, deluded, and (to use a word I use sparingly) metaphysically evil men. They will make America not just far worse in the eyes of the world, but essentially sicker in its soul.
Slay the beast.
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Published: August 22, 2012
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33 Responses to “The Voodoo Gynecology of the Jesus Perverters”

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 scotteus 
 August 22, 2012 at 12:51 pm
Unfortunately, these men have been deluded and evil for at least the last two decades(and very likely more). It seems the most influential group of them like to to refer to themselves as “neo-conservative”. Now just exactly what is neo about their conservativism is anyone’s guess. But alas to attempt to characterize that august mind-set: anyone who remotely disagrees with them is labelled “extremist”, a traitor, unpatriotic, an enemy combatant etc, etc. Perhaps the best statement was made by the great philosopher G.W Bush II “if your not with us your againts us” or something like that.
The above mentioned is your choice if you vote Republican; the democratic choice, I am sad to say, isn’t much better.
Reply
 
 The Voodoo Gynecology of the Jesus Perverters « The New Oxonian says:
 August 22, 2012 at 2:20 pm
[...] The Voodoo Gynecology of the Jesus Perverters. Share this:FacebookTwitterEmailStumbleUponDiggRedditPrintLike this:LikeBe the first to like this. Published: August 22, 2012 Filed Under: Uncategorized [...]
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 davidjohnmills 
 August 22, 2012 at 4:55 pm
Sometimes, when I’m feeling particularly radical, I fantasize that one way to respond would be to have certain men kidnapped, heavily sedated, given a sex change operation, impregnated and made to emigrate to Peru, where, or so it is reported, 5 women die every day as a result of botched illegal abortions and 43% of all maternal hospitaluizations result from same.
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 August 22, 2012 at 5:09 pm
I would support sending mr Akin to Mars. Guess who his co-pilots would be? After all, they want to serve the country.
Reply

 davidjohnmills 
 August 22, 2012 at 5:20 pm
That anecdote about Sick Rantorum bringing home the miscarriage is …well, what can be said?

 
 
 
 Persto 
 August 22, 2012 at 5:27 pm
“and what they preach is unrecognizable as the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
Agreed. The only social questions–that I can recall–Jesus addressed were divorce and adultery. Strangely, Republican men don’t seem to have a problem with divorce or adultery unless the wife is divorcing or cheating on the husband, of course.
Furthermore, Jesus seemed to be quite forgiving of female sexual errors or, at least he was of the woman at the well, something that Republicans disregard wholeheartedly.
Reply

 Chris Nelson 
 August 22, 2012 at 8:29 pm
They seem to have also forgotten that it says in the Bible that people aren’t endowed with souls until birth, so it’s ok to kill the unborn. Go figure that one out.
Reply
 
 
 davidjohnmills 
 August 22, 2012 at 5:40 pm
Parts of America remind me (yet again) of our own little statelet, where the Democratic Unionist Party (read: Free Presbyterianism) government Minister for Health said, a couple of years ago, that she knew a ‘lovely psychiatrist’ who could cure homosexuality in gay men. That was shortly before her husband, incidentally the Prime Minister, became implicated in a dodgy property dealing scandal. Luckily, the electorate were neatly distracted when his wife’s equally dodgy allocation of public funds to her teenage lover (she herself is 60 years old) came to light, though, local politics being local politics, he is still Prime Minister.
This summer, the newly opened visitor centre for our number one tourist attraction (the World Heritage Giant’s causeway) caused a bit of a minor furore among liberals when the National Trust bowed to pressure from, you guessed it, the DUP, to include as part of the exhibition a section about the ‘debate’ as to whether or not the causeway was formed during Noah’s flood within the last 6000 years.
Not to mention that Ireland (temporarily uniting North and South) shares the honour, along with Malta, of being one of the only places in western Europe where abortion is still illegal……….
Reply
 
 jsegor23 
 August 22, 2012 at 6:53 pm
Great essay. Religion and the desire for power, an evil combination. Argie is writing about a 16 year old pregnant girl in the Dominican Republic whose cervical cancer treatment was delayed because the doctors were afraid to perform an abortion. By the time that they started treatment it was too late and she hemorrhaged to death. Religiously motivated bad policy can have terrible consequences for the individual. Especially for women.
Thanks for the heads up about Spotify. I’m working through Beethoven.
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 August 22, 2012 at 11:31 pm
Hi Joe! Feel free to copy my Playlists; i haven’t tried to do Beethoven quite yet. Too prolific.
Reply

 davidjohnmills 
 August 23, 2012 at 7:00 am
Coincidentally, on the topic of Beethoven, I am currently reading ‘The Ninth: Beethoven and the World in 1824′ by Harvey Sachs and in it the writer makes the early observation, as pertinent in the case of Beethoven’s music (and the varieties of ways in which it has been used by interested parties of all sorts) as in the matter being discussed here, if not indeed throughout human affairs, that ‘worship’ (in the broadest sense) is, and says, arguably much less about the object/figure/book of worship than about the person doing the worshipping.
Perhaps all else is commentary, as Rabbi Hillel might have said. :)

 
 
 
 vinnyjh57 
 August 22, 2012 at 10:43 pm
FYI, The fundagelicals greeted Roe v. Wade with a collective yawn. Some even thought the ruling was correct. They only got interested in the issue later in the 70′s when the IRS started revoking the tax exempt status of their segregated schools.
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 August 22, 2012 at 11:25 pm
I think soon after 1972 (as I said) evangelical Christians were active in forming a coalition with Catholics in the National Right to Life Committee, so I am not sure where you are getting this information. As I said, Catholic opposition is traditional; liberal protestants were a driving force behind the early abortion rights movement, but it was a wedge issue as soon as early as the Nixon presidency. Ah! I see, you are getting this stuff from Balmer http://www.godandculture.com/blog/making-up-evangelicalism. Bad choice.
Reply
 
 
 stevenbollinger 
 August 23, 2012 at 11:54 am
Dr Hoffmann, you and I both agree that the current crop of Republicans is a horrid beast, and we both want to slay the beast. So far, so good — and so important that I thought perhaps I shouldn’t make any further comment until after November 6.
However, I can’t go along with your description of the Republicans’ Christianity as a perversion of Christianity. To me it’s very recognizable indeed as Christianity. And I’m well aware that there are many Leftist Christians, and many politically-moderate Christians, whatever “politically-moderate” may actually mean when faced with the Right of W, Cheney, Limbaugh, Ryan et al. With the exception of some fringes which have made themselves politically irrelevant or invited themselves to be exterminated by the mainstream, by taking their religion all too seriously, Christians of all political stripes have always interpreted their Christianity to fit their politics, and not the other way around. Christians of different political tendencies have always fashioned a Christ in their own image, and accused those of other tendencies of doin it wrong.
And unfortunately, the “real” Jesus (whoever that is) here or there, it’s not as if today’s extremely-misogynistic Christians can’t point to the great majority of the history of Christianity as having been dominated by misogynists, despite the way that 21st-century liberal Christians, as eager to prove that Jesus was a 21st-century liberal as Akin and Ryan are to prove that he was a misogynistic capitalist, point to things like the discovery of the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, and the dubious existence of a Pope Joan, as if they mean that 1,900 years’ worth of history suddenly don’t count and we get a do-over.
Reply
 
 andom 
 August 24, 2012 at 6:51 am
are Dr Hoffmann arguing that true Christianity should not be interested in the protection of a child in the whomb of the mother?
Is he arguing that in order not to be considered mysoginist a mother has the right to decide an abortion until the child is delivered to term ?
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 August 24, 2012 at 7:06 am
“True Chrisianity” has no business involving itself in the question. Jesus does not talk about it. The early church did not declare that personhood begins with a zygote and enjoyed the full protection of law. The commandment Thou shalt not kill was never applied to fetal life. The ending of a pregnancy is not murder. There is no such thing two days after conception as a “child” in the womb of a mother.
Reply

 andom 
 August 25, 2012 at 4:45 am
no, Dr. Hoffmann this was not my question!
 Is ‘fetal life’ a seven/eight/nine month chid or not?
 Has the mother the right to have an abortion until the child is delivered to term or not?

 
 davidjohnmills 
 August 26, 2012 at 3:45 am
Andom,
When, in your opinion, is there a ‘child in the womb’?

 
 
 
 scotteus 
 August 24, 2012 at 12:59 pm
Exactly! At the risk of sounding positivist, if it ain’t in the Gospels then it’s no one’s business but the person carry the zygote.
Reply

 stevenbollinger 
 August 24, 2012 at 2:49 pm
At the risk of sounding like a New Atheist: if it is in the Gospels, does that make it your business what I do? To use one of my favorite examples: if someone slaps me in the face, and I hit him back, or call the police, or run away, or cover up, instead of turning the other cheek, and if I react to being robbed by doing anything except telling the thieves, “Here, take more of my things!” — is that your business, or Todd Akin’s?
My point, and I find it heartily discouraging that 1,900 years after the Gospels began to be written I still have to make such a point, is that nobody has ever followed the teachings of the Gospels, with the possible exceptions of Jesus Himself, and a few other poor sweet fools, most of whom probably met with ends as early and horrible as His. The Gospels are a dream world, with only here and there a verse with practical application to waking human reality, such as Matthew 7:6.
Reply

 andom 
 August 25, 2012 at 5:06 am
Dr Hoffmann, as a renowed scholar, what is your interpretation of the ‘turning the other cheek’ image in Mattew?

 
 scotteus 
 August 25, 2012 at 5:24 am
@Stevenbollinger,
Agreed. I just wish I would have had more time to develop my thought further; I threw the above sentence together whilst in a hurry and that’s what I get for not finishing the thought with a better explanation.

 
 
 
 Terry B 
 August 25, 2012 at 4:01 pm
Why is it, that on a blog named The New Oxonian, we have Christians labelled in US of A terms? As an English Evanglical, following in the footsteps of William Wilberforce et al: I object strongly against the slanderous use of the label “Evangelical”! There are many ‘Evangelicals’ worldwide who would deny any connection with USA “fundagelicals” and their beliefs – political or otherwise.
 Please, can we have more accurate terminology, even on tthis ‘atheistic, website.
Reply

 Stephanie 
 August 25, 2012 at 7:47 pm
The author was trained at Oxford. This post is about current events in American politics of which I think the world is aware. In the title surely ‘Jesus perverters’, and also the term ‘fundagelicals’ in relation to Republican candidates, suggests we’re not dealing with Evangelical as used elsewhere. Christianity is not consistent throughout the world and neither is the term evangelical. Non belief is not consistent throughout the world either. The Christian religion in the UK is not the same as Christianity in America or even in the Antipodes or Africa but it’s still called Christianity. This is not an ‘atheistic website’. I would describe it as one more about history, religion, ideas and humanism. It is severely critical of both certain forms of atheism and fundamentalist religion.
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 scotteus 
 August 25, 2012 at 11:48 pm
Terry,
If you have the time, I strongly encourage you to read some of the articles on this site. In doing so, you will find far more balance than what appears in just this one blog. Though the site is more akin to primarily those of a humanist bent. As I’m sure you are aware, humanists can come from any camp be it atheist, agnostic, christian or what have you. The hermeneutical methods employed will show that to be the case.
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 Terry B 
 August 26, 2012 at 2:48 pm
Scotteus,
 I have been following the blog for a good number of months and have appreciated many of the posts. That is why this one came as something of a shock, so many sweeping, unsubstantiated statements. The whole thing could be labelled ‘a political rant’! A pity when he could have made the same points more strongly if chapter and verse had been given. It does not help me much as an outsider in understanding US of A politics. It just seems that hatred has a big part to play in your thinking over there!
 Terry

 
 
 andom 
 August 26, 2012 at 4:01 am
Terry, what is the position on abortions of your English Evangelical tradiction?
Reply

 Terry B 
 August 26, 2012 at 3:05 pm
Andom
 Do you mean Conservative, Mainstream, Liberal or other?
 My own feeling on this is that there is scriptural warrant for the sanctity of life in the womb: e.g OT. Jeremiah 1 v5 and NT. Luke 1 v. 41. If the foetus (fetus always sounds as though it crawled from under a stone!) is a ‘sentient being’ then we need to be very careful in when we approve of termination. (A more accurate word than ‘abortion’). What I and many other Christians cannot approve is the boasting of some women on the number of ‘abortions’ they have had. A writer in one of our (UK) papers literally boasted of 4 and prepared to have others ‘as and when necessary’.
I realise that scripture is not accepted as a valid reason for
 questioning the accepted position on ‘abortion’. However, the well-being of the woman is, I would agree paramount and there are cases when termination must be the lesser of two evils.
 Terry

 
 davidjohnmills 
 August 27, 2012 at 7:28 pm
Terry,
Who was it that boasted of four? Do you have a link to that?

 
 
 
 TerryB 
 August 30, 2012 at 5:17 am
I am afraid that the ‘link’ is long gone , as my notes at the time are dated 2004! and I would not want to name names at this late stage without the original quote.
 However right on cue is this article (for what it is worth being in the Daily Mail!)http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2195528/Repeated-abortions-raise-risks-future-pregnancies.html
What I would be far more interested in would be a debate on something like ‘The definition of human life”. When does it begin? When does it end? When is it ‘real’? I would ask these questions because the ‘status’ of a foetus seems to depend on whether or not it is ‘wanted’. Is morality just subjective? or is there some code by which human beings should live?
 The possiblity of at least positing some answers to these and other questions is why I have been reading this and other blogs!
Reply

 davidjohnmills 
 August 31, 2012 at 3:22 am
Terry,
I suspect the whole abortion issue may never be entirely resolved. It is almost too complicated, and open to individual (or group) opinion.
My own answers to your questions are:
(a) there is no absolute/fixed code by which humans should live. I think there are only the ‘rules’ that we agree among ourselves. I’m not sure if ‘subjective’ is entirely the best word, because this might imply that it’s whatever an individual thinks it is, as opposed to what a group/society agrees it is.
(b) Human life arguably begins at conception. The zygote is, IMO, a human being, in that it is human and is a being. I have however heard it argued that this could also apply to a body of replicating human cancer cells. that is not to say the two are the same, because obviously the zygote is potentially going to develop into something that the cancer is not.
Personally, I have not heard a persuasive argument that we should, morally, save every possible zygote that we can, and similarly I have not heard a persuasive argument that we should allow full term terminations. to me, the tricky question is where to draw the line in between.
In a nutshell, I believe that there is nothing wrong with allowing early (say 1st trimester) abortions. It may even be argued that it is more ‘wrong’ not to allow them. This is not possible if one believes in the santicty of ‘human life’ above everything else.
Not enough time to elaborate…..so that is just my initial summary. :)
Reply
 
 
 TerryB 
 August 30, 2012 at 12:43 pm
If you want to know the details and number of abortions in the U.K.the full govt. report is here:-https://www.wp.dh.gov.uk/transparency/files/2012/05/Commentary1.pdf
Terry
Reply
 
 Antonio Jerez 
 September 11, 2012 at 8:02 pm
Excellent post! Both Romney and his mate Ryan are perversions of the gospel of Jesus. What else can you call folks who turn Jesus admonition of the rich giving to the poor into let the poor give more and more to the rich. The whole tea party movement is a bloody perversion of the gospel. And sometimes I get the impression that America itself, despite all the rethoric about being a beacon on a hill for all humanity to see, is a perversion of all Jesus stood for.
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The Voodoo Gynecology of the Jesus Perverters
by rjosephhoffmann

The Voodoo Gynecology of the Jesus Perverters.
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The Voodoo Gynecology of the Jesus Perverters
by rjosephhoffmann

Jesus heals the bleeding woman…
When Missouri representative Todd Akin commented honestly that he thought a woman’s reproductive system shuts down in the case of “legitimate rape,” the outcry from the Republican party was nothing short of stunning.  Everyone who was anyone wanted his head, because that’s where his mouth is: Mitch McConnell, Sarah Palin, Christine O’Donnell, and of course, candidate Romney, and his younger-brother Handpuppe Paul Ryan.
None of these people disagree with Mr Akin.  But Mr Akin spoiled their party. The idea was to run on economic issues, resuscitate the familiar once-lucky Reagan zinger (“Are you better off now than you were four years ago”), and see to the social and moral engineering repayment to the evangelical cohort that elected them later on.
That repayment would surely (or will) have included a bill to criminalize abortion in all cases, including rape and incest, and possibly even in the case of immediate endangerment to the mother.  The Republicans know that there is no likelihood that the Supreme Court will revisit Roe v Wade anytime soon. And that’s a problem, especially for Catholics and Evangelicals.
But in this great and liberal democracy, there are other ways to get what you want. And the easiest way is leglislative action.  It is unlikely that a Supreme Court of this complexion would find such an act of Congress unconstitutional. And it is certain that the evangelical-retro-Catholic-banking-gun-rights-and libertarian coalition that has been incubating like a wee antichrist since the 1980′s is now a fully formed person.
Too bad it could not have been aborted in its first trimester. The devil now walks among us.
It’s not that Mr Akin is merely stupid.  It’s clear that he simply spilled the beans.  It’s also clear that he represents a hideous, monstrous perversion of Christianity, one whose other heads are Mormonism, with its anti-contraception theology going back to the prophet Joseph Smith, Neoconservative Catholicism, which ranks the ‘right’ to life above belief in the Trinity, and fundagelical Christianity, which jumped on the anti-abortion bandwagon (it used to be the preserve of Roman Catholics) after 1972 and got louder in the 1980′s.
In the Republican monster that has been formed from this cross-fertilizing, we have at the center Mr Romney, a Mormon who has been a bishop of his church and who has five strapping boys to show for his theology. Paul Ryan, his wonkish marionette, is there for the Catholic traditionalist, rosary-saying crowd (not as ardent at Rick Santorum, who brought his wife’s miscarriage home in a bottle so that the kids might ‘get to know their brother’). And in Mr Akins, now both a knave and a fool for spilling the beans and refusing to clean them up and go home, the evangelical Jeremiah. The prophet is always the inconvenient one and Mr Akins is a prophet.
I haven’t seen much on the topic, but Mr Akins is a graduate of Covenant Theological Seminary of  the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (which later merged with the Reformed Presbyterian Church in North America to form Reformed Presbyterian Church-Evangelical Synod), who believed that their denomination was being infiltrated by liberal theology.  Think Calvin. Now think of conservative Calvinism, and then of a movement that was to the right of that.  That is Covenant Seminary.
The hydra that is now the Republican leadership thought that by chopping Mr Akins’s head off the beast would be saved and grow a new one.  But that’s not likely.  Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney and the platform committee of the RNC believe exactly what Mr Akin says he believes. Listeners blanched when Akins said he “had heard from doctors” that a woman’s body shuts down during a rape, thus explaining why “so few rape victims become pregannt.” But the expert whose opinion he was thinking of, Dr Jack C. Willke, wrote in 1992 that the emotional traumas suffered by a woman in an assault rape “can radically upset her possibility of ovulation, fertilization, implantation and even nurturing of a pregnancy.” By his calculations “assault” rape pregnancy is extremely rare at about four cases per state per year. Statistics are fugitive however because he does not adjust for illegitimate rape cases or women who are only partly traumatized.

Jesus intervenes in a stoning….
Mitt Romney’s 2007 campaign embraced Willke as “an important surrogate for Governor Romney’s pro-life and pro-family agenda”, and Romney expressed his pride to “have the support of a man who has meant so much to the pro-life movement in our country.” Akins’s views cannot have been a surprise to him. They cannot have been a surprise to Paul Ryan, who co-sponsored legislation with Akin for a complete ban on therapeutic and voluntary abortion, in all cases.  It cannot have been  a surprise to the Platform Committee of the RNC, which even while the story flew around the internet, was setting Mr Akins’s policy in stone–indeed, even while the amazingly spongey Mr Romney was declaring that his views are “not those of Congressman Akins.” What was a surprise is that Mr Akins was honest: he let the world know what was on his mind, and in so doing let everyone in on Mitt Romney’s and Paul Ryan’s medieval understanding of sex and gender.
But as we have come to expect of Mr Romney–of any Republican politician in this monstrous new form–what would you want him to do–tell the truth? Give it to the American people straight? Or hide behind the curtain of job-creation and economic flat-lining and save the surprises until after November, when along with new-old social and ethical doctrines, they can reestablish the failed economic theories of the Bush regime. This is not the argument Romney wanted. All the more reason not to let him escape from it by chopping off only one of the three heads spewing the same poisonous ideas.
The  beast in the Book of Revelation (13) has seven heads, not only three, so the Republican party has some head growing to do before is is a fully fledged tyrant who, haughtily and blaspheously “breathes deceit and is allowed to make war on the saints.”  I have faith that they will grow the other four. I am not sure the saints will persevere.

I do know that what the evangelical, the Catholic, and the Mormon have in common is not just a contempt for women, not just a disdain for the Constitution–which they constantly want amended–but for the Christian religion they claim to represent.
The sickening hypocrisy of this group  may be the foulest perversion of Christianity since Naziism or the Inquisition: by any other name, it is unrecognizable as Christianity, and what they preach is unrecognizable as the gospel of Jesus Christ.
They have forfeited the right ever to speak about the evils inherent in this society or the deficiencies of other faiths–for example, the degradation of women in Islam–when they advocate the degradation of women in America and are willing to enact legislation that will canonize violence against women and disallow remedies for that violence.  Nevermind that what they are doing has no warrant in the gospel. But it strikes me as odd that not more people see what they are doing as a perversion of the gospel.
There is no other way to put this: these are dangerous, deluded, and (to use a word I use sparingly) metaphysically evil men. They will make America not just far worse in the eyes of the world, but essentially sicker in its soul.
Slay the beast.
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33 Responses to “The Voodoo Gynecology of the Jesus Perverters”

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 scotteus 
 August 22, 2012 at 12:51 pm
Unfortunately, these men have been deluded and evil for at least the last two decades(and very likely more). It seems the most influential group of them like to to refer to themselves as “neo-conservative”. Now just exactly what is neo about their conservativism is anyone’s guess. But alas to attempt to characterize that august mind-set: anyone who remotely disagrees with them is labelled “extremist”, a traitor, unpatriotic, an enemy combatant etc, etc. Perhaps the best statement was made by the great philosopher G.W Bush II “if your not with us your againts us” or something like that.
The above mentioned is your choice if you vote Republican; the democratic choice, I am sad to say, isn’t much better.
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 The Voodoo Gynecology of the Jesus Perverters « The New Oxonian says:
 August 22, 2012 at 2:20 pm
[...] The Voodoo Gynecology of the Jesus Perverters. Share this:FacebookTwitterEmailStumbleUponDiggRedditPrintLike this:LikeBe the first to like this. Published: August 22, 2012 Filed Under: Uncategorized [...]
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 davidjohnmills 
 August 22, 2012 at 4:55 pm
Sometimes, when I’m feeling particularly radical, I fantasize that one way to respond would be to have certain men kidnapped, heavily sedated, given a sex change operation, impregnated and made to emigrate to Peru, where, or so it is reported, 5 women die every day as a result of botched illegal abortions and 43% of all maternal hospitaluizations result from same.
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 rjosephhoffmann 
 August 22, 2012 at 5:09 pm
I would support sending mr Akin to Mars. Guess who his co-pilots would be? After all, they want to serve the country.
Reply

 davidjohnmills 
 August 22, 2012 at 5:20 pm
That anecdote about Sick Rantorum bringing home the miscarriage is …well, what can be said?

 
 
 
 Persto 
 August 22, 2012 at 5:27 pm
“and what they preach is unrecognizable as the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
Agreed. The only social questions–that I can recall–Jesus addressed were divorce and adultery. Strangely, Republican men don’t seem to have a problem with divorce or adultery unless the wife is divorcing or cheating on the husband, of course.
Furthermore, Jesus seemed to be quite forgiving of female sexual errors or, at least he was of the woman at the well, something that Republicans disregard wholeheartedly.
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 Chris Nelson 
 August 22, 2012 at 8:29 pm
They seem to have also forgotten that it says in the Bible that people aren’t endowed with souls until birth, so it’s ok to kill the unborn. Go figure that one out.
Reply
 
 
 davidjohnmills 
 August 22, 2012 at 5:40 pm
Parts of America remind me (yet again) of our own little statelet, where the Democratic Unionist Party (read: Free Presbyterianism) government Minister for Health said, a couple of years ago, that she knew a ‘lovely psychiatrist’ who could cure homosexuality in gay men. That was shortly before her husband, incidentally the Prime Minister, became implicated in a dodgy property dealing scandal. Luckily, the electorate were neatly distracted when his wife’s equally dodgy allocation of public funds to her teenage lover (she herself is 60 years old) came to light, though, local politics being local politics, he is still Prime Minister.
This summer, the newly opened visitor centre for our number one tourist attraction (the World Heritage Giant’s causeway) caused a bit of a minor furore among liberals when the National Trust bowed to pressure from, you guessed it, the DUP, to include as part of the exhibition a section about the ‘debate’ as to whether or not the causeway was formed during Noah’s flood within the last 6000 years.
Not to mention that Ireland (temporarily uniting North and South) shares the honour, along with Malta, of being one of the only places in western Europe where abortion is still illegal……….
Reply
 
 jsegor23 
 August 22, 2012 at 6:53 pm
Great essay. Religion and the desire for power, an evil combination. Argie is writing about a 16 year old pregnant girl in the Dominican Republic whose cervical cancer treatment was delayed because the doctors were afraid to perform an abortion. By the time that they started treatment it was too late and she hemorrhaged to death. Religiously motivated bad policy can have terrible consequences for the individual. Especially for women.
Thanks for the heads up about Spotify. I’m working through Beethoven.
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 August 22, 2012 at 11:31 pm
Hi Joe! Feel free to copy my Playlists; i haven’t tried to do Beethoven quite yet. Too prolific.
Reply

 davidjohnmills 
 August 23, 2012 at 7:00 am
Coincidentally, on the topic of Beethoven, I am currently reading ‘The Ninth: Beethoven and the World in 1824′ by Harvey Sachs and in it the writer makes the early observation, as pertinent in the case of Beethoven’s music (and the varieties of ways in which it has been used by interested parties of all sorts) as in the matter being discussed here, if not indeed throughout human affairs, that ‘worship’ (in the broadest sense) is, and says, arguably much less about the object/figure/book of worship than about the person doing the worshipping.
Perhaps all else is commentary, as Rabbi Hillel might have said. :)

 
 
 
 vinnyjh57 
 August 22, 2012 at 10:43 pm
FYI, The fundagelicals greeted Roe v. Wade with a collective yawn. Some even thought the ruling was correct. They only got interested in the issue later in the 70′s when the IRS started revoking the tax exempt status of their segregated schools.
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 August 22, 2012 at 11:25 pm
I think soon after 1972 (as I said) evangelical Christians were active in forming a coalition with Catholics in the National Right to Life Committee, so I am not sure where you are getting this information. As I said, Catholic opposition is traditional; liberal protestants were a driving force behind the early abortion rights movement, but it was a wedge issue as soon as early as the Nixon presidency. Ah! I see, you are getting this stuff from Balmer http://www.godandculture.com/blog/making-up-evangelicalism. Bad choice.
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 stevenbollinger 
 August 23, 2012 at 11:54 am
Dr Hoffmann, you and I both agree that the current crop of Republicans is a horrid beast, and we both want to slay the beast. So far, so good — and so important that I thought perhaps I shouldn’t make any further comment until after November 6.
However, I can’t go along with your description of the Republicans’ Christianity as a perversion of Christianity. To me it’s very recognizable indeed as Christianity. And I’m well aware that there are many Leftist Christians, and many politically-moderate Christians, whatever “politically-moderate” may actually mean when faced with the Right of W, Cheney, Limbaugh, Ryan et al. With the exception of some fringes which have made themselves politically irrelevant or invited themselves to be exterminated by the mainstream, by taking their religion all too seriously, Christians of all political stripes have always interpreted their Christianity to fit their politics, and not the other way around. Christians of different political tendencies have always fashioned a Christ in their own image, and accused those of other tendencies of doin it wrong.
And unfortunately, the “real” Jesus (whoever that is) here or there, it’s not as if today’s extremely-misogynistic Christians can’t point to the great majority of the history of Christianity as having been dominated by misogynists, despite the way that 21st-century liberal Christians, as eager to prove that Jesus was a 21st-century liberal as Akin and Ryan are to prove that he was a misogynistic capitalist, point to things like the discovery of the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, and the dubious existence of a Pope Joan, as if they mean that 1,900 years’ worth of history suddenly don’t count and we get a do-over.
Reply
 
 andom 
 August 24, 2012 at 6:51 am
are Dr Hoffmann arguing that true Christianity should not be interested in the protection of a child in the whomb of the mother?
Is he arguing that in order not to be considered mysoginist a mother has the right to decide an abortion until the child is delivered to term ?
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 August 24, 2012 at 7:06 am
“True Chrisianity” has no business involving itself in the question. Jesus does not talk about it. The early church did not declare that personhood begins with a zygote and enjoyed the full protection of law. The commandment Thou shalt not kill was never applied to fetal life. The ending of a pregnancy is not murder. There is no such thing two days after conception as a “child” in the womb of a mother.
Reply

 andom 
 August 25, 2012 at 4:45 am
no, Dr. Hoffmann this was not my question!
 Is ‘fetal life’ a seven/eight/nine month chid or not?
 Has the mother the right to have an abortion until the child is delivered to term or not?

 
 davidjohnmills 
 August 26, 2012 at 3:45 am
Andom,
When, in your opinion, is there a ‘child in the womb’?

 
 
 
 scotteus 
 August 24, 2012 at 12:59 pm
Exactly! At the risk of sounding positivist, if it ain’t in the Gospels then it’s no one’s business but the person carry the zygote.
Reply

 stevenbollinger 
 August 24, 2012 at 2:49 pm
At the risk of sounding like a New Atheist: if it is in the Gospels, does that make it your business what I do? To use one of my favorite examples: if someone slaps me in the face, and I hit him back, or call the police, or run away, or cover up, instead of turning the other cheek, and if I react to being robbed by doing anything except telling the thieves, “Here, take more of my things!” — is that your business, or Todd Akin’s?
My point, and I find it heartily discouraging that 1,900 years after the Gospels began to be written I still have to make such a point, is that nobody has ever followed the teachings of the Gospels, with the possible exceptions of Jesus Himself, and a few other poor sweet fools, most of whom probably met with ends as early and horrible as His. The Gospels are a dream world, with only here and there a verse with practical application to waking human reality, such as Matthew 7:6.
Reply

 andom 
 August 25, 2012 at 5:06 am
Dr Hoffmann, as a renowed scholar, what is your interpretation of the ‘turning the other cheek’ image in Mattew?

 
 scotteus 
 August 25, 2012 at 5:24 am
@Stevenbollinger,
Agreed. I just wish I would have had more time to develop my thought further; I threw the above sentence together whilst in a hurry and that’s what I get for not finishing the thought with a better explanation.

 
 
 
 Terry B 
 August 25, 2012 at 4:01 pm
Why is it, that on a blog named The New Oxonian, we have Christians labelled in US of A terms? As an English Evanglical, following in the footsteps of William Wilberforce et al: I object strongly against the slanderous use of the label “Evangelical”! There are many ‘Evangelicals’ worldwide who would deny any connection with USA “fundagelicals” and their beliefs – political or otherwise.
 Please, can we have more accurate terminology, even on tthis ‘atheistic, website.
Reply

 Stephanie 
 August 25, 2012 at 7:47 pm
The author was trained at Oxford. This post is about current events in American politics of which I think the world is aware. In the title surely ‘Jesus perverters’, and also the term ‘fundagelicals’ in relation to Republican candidates, suggests we’re not dealing with Evangelical as used elsewhere. Christianity is not consistent throughout the world and neither is the term evangelical. Non belief is not consistent throughout the world either. The Christian religion in the UK is not the same as Christianity in America or even in the Antipodes or Africa but it’s still called Christianity. This is not an ‘atheistic website’. I would describe it as one more about history, religion, ideas and humanism. It is severely critical of both certain forms of atheism and fundamentalist religion.
Reply
 
 scotteus 
 August 25, 2012 at 11:48 pm
Terry,
If you have the time, I strongly encourage you to read some of the articles on this site. In doing so, you will find far more balance than what appears in just this one blog. Though the site is more akin to primarily those of a humanist bent. As I’m sure you are aware, humanists can come from any camp be it atheist, agnostic, christian or what have you. The hermeneutical methods employed will show that to be the case.
Reply

 Terry B 
 August 26, 2012 at 2:48 pm
Scotteus,
 I have been following the blog for a good number of months and have appreciated many of the posts. That is why this one came as something of a shock, so many sweeping, unsubstantiated statements. The whole thing could be labelled ‘a political rant’! A pity when he could have made the same points more strongly if chapter and verse had been given. It does not help me much as an outsider in understanding US of A politics. It just seems that hatred has a big part to play in your thinking over there!
 Terry

 
 
 andom 
 August 26, 2012 at 4:01 am
Terry, what is the position on abortions of your English Evangelical tradiction?
Reply

 Terry B 
 August 26, 2012 at 3:05 pm
Andom
 Do you mean Conservative, Mainstream, Liberal or other?
 My own feeling on this is that there is scriptural warrant for the sanctity of life in the womb: e.g OT. Jeremiah 1 v5 and NT. Luke 1 v. 41. If the foetus (fetus always sounds as though it crawled from under a stone!) is a ‘sentient being’ then we need to be very careful in when we approve of termination. (A more accurate word than ‘abortion’). What I and many other Christians cannot approve is the boasting of some women on the number of ‘abortions’ they have had. A writer in one of our (UK) papers literally boasted of 4 and prepared to have others ‘as and when necessary’.
I realise that scripture is not accepted as a valid reason for
 questioning the accepted position on ‘abortion’. However, the well-being of the woman is, I would agree paramount and there are cases when termination must be the lesser of two evils.
 Terry

 
 davidjohnmills 
 August 27, 2012 at 7:28 pm
Terry,
Who was it that boasted of four? Do you have a link to that?

 
 
 
 TerryB 
 August 30, 2012 at 5:17 am
I am afraid that the ‘link’ is long gone , as my notes at the time are dated 2004! and I would not want to name names at this late stage without the original quote.
 However right on cue is this article (for what it is worth being in the Daily Mail!)http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2195528/Repeated-abortions-raise-risks-future-pregnancies.html
What I would be far more interested in would be a debate on something like ‘The definition of human life”. When does it begin? When does it end? When is it ‘real’? I would ask these questions because the ‘status’ of a foetus seems to depend on whether or not it is ‘wanted’. Is morality just subjective? or is there some code by which human beings should live?
 The possiblity of at least positing some answers to these and other questions is why I have been reading this and other blogs!
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 davidjohnmills 
 August 31, 2012 at 3:22 am
Terry,
I suspect the whole abortion issue may never be entirely resolved. It is almost too complicated, and open to individual (or group) opinion.
My own answers to your questions are:
(a) there is no absolute/fixed code by which humans should live. I think there are only the ‘rules’ that we agree among ourselves. I’m not sure if ‘subjective’ is entirely the best word, because this might imply that it’s whatever an individual thinks it is, as opposed to what a group/society agrees it is.
(b) Human life arguably begins at conception. The zygote is, IMO, a human being, in that it is human and is a being. I have however heard it argued that this could also apply to a body of replicating human cancer cells. that is not to say the two are the same, because obviously the zygote is potentially going to develop into something that the cancer is not.
Personally, I have not heard a persuasive argument that we should, morally, save every possible zygote that we can, and similarly I have not heard a persuasive argument that we should allow full term terminations. to me, the tricky question is where to draw the line in between.
In a nutshell, I believe that there is nothing wrong with allowing early (say 1st trimester) abortions. It may even be argued that it is more ‘wrong’ not to allow them. This is not possible if one believes in the santicty of ‘human life’ above everything else.
Not enough time to elaborate…..so that is just my initial summary. :)
Reply
 
 
 TerryB 
 August 30, 2012 at 12:43 pm
If you want to know the details and number of abortions in the U.K.the full govt. report is here:-https://www.wp.dh.gov.uk/transparency/files/2012/05/Commentary1.pdf
Terry
Reply
 
 Antonio Jerez 
 September 11, 2012 at 8:02 pm
Excellent post! Both Romney and his mate Ryan are perversions of the gospel of Jesus. What else can you call folks who turn Jesus admonition of the rich giving to the poor into let the poor give more and more to the rich. The whole tea party movement is a bloody perversion of the gospel. And sometimes I get the impression that America itself, despite all the rethoric about being a beacon on a hill for all humanity to see, is a perversion of all Jesus stood for.
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Atheist Denominationalism
by rjosephhoffmann

 Reblogged from The New Oxonian:

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Most atheists have never read H. Richard Niebuhr. That’s too bad. Because now that unbelievers are fighting with each other about how much of God not to believe in, they have a lot to learn from the battles fought among God’s people for primacy of position.
Niebuhr was primarily an ethicist and while influenced by philosophers and theologians as far apart as Barth, Troeltsch and Tillich, he was solidly grounded in the reality of social change.
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Atheist Denominationalism
by rjosephhoffmann

Most atheists have never read H. Richard Niebuhr. That’s too bad. Because now that unbelievers are fighting with each other about how much of God not to believe in, they have a lot to learn from the battles fought among God’s people for primacy of position.
Niebuhr was primarily an ethicist and while influenced by philosophers and theologians as far apart as Barth, Troeltsch and Tillich, he was solidly grounded in the reality of social change. He knew that since the Protestant Reformation Christianity had become restless and incoherent. When monolithic belief in God’s holy church and her sacraments was demolished by the phenomenon of “fissiparation” (churches quarreling over picayune differences about inconspicuous doctrines and forming into ever more minor sects), the stage was set for a religion that could hardly claim to be what Christ had in mind when he expressed the wish that ‘all may be one’. Not of course that Jesus was speaking, if he was speaking, of the church when he said that.
Countries around the world experienced the Protestant Reformation in different ways: Europe at a theological level, and then in skirmishes that grew into full fledged wars. No longer able to contain the confusion by executing the odd heretic or sending the forces over the hill to rout the Huguenots, Europe settled finally into a state of religious détente that grew eventually to boredom and finally to a comparative loss of interest in religion and an acceptance of secular values. One of the reasons the “priest abuse scandal” has been so shocking to Europeans is that this generation of Irish, Italians, Germans and French have a hard enough time remembering the autocratic church of their grandparents’ day, when papal and episcopal fiat were good enough for relatively docile laity. It is the idea that society—the secular—stands against and above the church in all legal and judicial respects that makes the crisis almost unfathomable in modern terms.

A Protestant Scene
America experienced the Reformation as an export, a receiver nation. Whatever you might have learned about America being solidly “Christian” at its foundation is not only not true, but not true because the seventeenth century was the era when Christianity itself was being redefined. The puritans of New England did not share the religious interests of the commercial men of Massachusetts Bay, a “factorie,” and the relatively softer Baptists followed on their heels within a generation. Harvard had fallen from Calvinist grace by 1702 when Yale was founded to preserve its true religion (the mottoes are revealing: Harvard, Veritas, Yale Lux et Veritas). By then, Jews were aboard, or off ship, in Rhode Island and the first waves of Catholics were about to arrive in Lord Baltimore’s Maryland. Go a bit further south and boatloads of low church Anglicans had disembarked in Virginia decades before, and Presbyterians would squeeze into the gaps in the Carolinas, named for Charles II. Georgia (the name first suggested to a delighted George II in 1724) would be transformed by Wesley’s followers into a colony for Methodism. Go a little deeper and change colonial masters: waves of Catholics driven from New France by the pursuing forces of the British General Wolfe, would arrive in the bayous of the Mississippi Gulf region and learn to call it home.

A 'Cajun' (Acadian) Scene, 1898
The grab bag of religious immigrants that came together at the end of the eighteenth century was not an especially remarkable mix. It was a powder keg of competing denominations with explosive potential. In their wisdom, as Americans like to say of the founding fathers, the authors of the Constitution were savvy enough to make sure that religion and government should stay apart: that’s what the first amendment was devised to do. But they were equally savvy about the instincts of these displaced and largely yokel Europeans. Whether it was debt, famine, crime, adventurism, a loveless marriage, a lost fortune or religious persecution that had brought them to the New World, it was entirely likely that their faith came with them. So, what the founders gave with their right hand to government they took away again with their left by delivering to these competing sects the “free exercise” of their faith. Congress would never pass a law constraining the free exercise of religion. And in saying that they passed a law concerning the free exercise of religion. America became the most religious nation on earth and the most fertile field for growing new religions.

Mormon Trek
Niebuhr of course knew all of this, the son of a distinguished immigrant German theological family himself. He knew that the ragbag culture of American religion would always be a supermarket of choices–and not only that. There was something in the nature of Protestantism that was friendly to competition (as Weber had argued at the beginning of the twentieth century), from strong belief to weak belief, from Born Againism to Ask me Later. If ever Feuerbach needed confirmation of his idea that religion makes God in man’s image, the proof could be found in the American Experience.
Acadia
* * *
Modern Atheism is a continuation of the pattern of denominationalism and derives specifically from it. It is the fatal last step in the journey from strong to weak belief. Just as secularism emanates from the religious acceptance of tolerance and pluralism, necessities imposed by competing sects living in close cultural proximity over a long period of time, atheism is that point on the belief scale where God becomes not optional but impossible.
By saying that I don’t mean to suggest that atheism is religion. That is a limp, tiresome, historically uninformed debate. But atheists would be very foolish not to understand themselves connected through history and process to the developments that help us to understand the phenomenon of denominationalism. If a hard core atheist cannot believe in creation ex nihilo, it would be pretty silly for him to believe that any social or intellectual position can be equivalently wrought.
It also seems clear to me that atheists, in accepting that they have their origins not in Zeus’s bonnet but in a social process, should also accept that atheism will also experience its own denominationalism, its own sectarian divisions This process has been under way for a long time. We are seeing its latest eruption in the “debate’ between old and new atheists, as in the twentieth century in differences between religious humanists and secular humanists. Even the terminology used to express the differences (as Niebuhr pointed out) becomes crucially significant: Labeling is one of the properties of the protestant spirit. Just as it isn’t enough to say Baptist without specifying Southern, American, Freewill, Particular or Seventh Day, the day may come when one atheist will demand of the atheist sitting next to him at a bar “Old,” “New,” “Bright,” “Strict,” “Friendly” or “Prickly?”

What denominationalism teaches is that human beings despise norms. I suspect there will never be a more impressive “norm” than the rules and doctrines and liturgies of the Catholic church of the sixteenth century. If you want to know what God looked like at the peak of his game, it was then. But “then” is when the Reformation happened.
I suspect that atheism had something like that heyday in the 1940’s when it became, normatively speaking, a sexy bad boy philosophy associated with the likes of Julian Huxley and Bertrand Russell, and slightly later with (certain) existentialists, especially Camus. It had a prior history of course, and a later one. But I tend to think the potential for variegation in atheism goes back far into history. Maybe it goes back to Hobbes, maybe to Lucretius or Epicurus. But wherever it goes it is always in juxtaposition with religious values, and often enough (especially with the French) with particular religious doctrines. Read the forward to Marx’s doctoral thesis to see what I mean.
Atheism follows the religious pattern of denominationalism not only because it behaves religiously but because its central question is a religious question—or more precisely a question about religion. It should surprise no one that what we are seeing now are permissive, soft, hard, pluralistic, total rejectionist, possibilist, impossibilist, and accommodationist responses to the question of God’s existence and the “meaning” of religious experience. Why would we expect anything else?
What we can hope is that the process doesn’t take atheists too far down the denominational road as they jockey for position as the True Unreligion: Once-born and twice-born atheist is a distinction we can live without.
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Published: April 8, 2010
Filed Under: Uncategorized
Tags: atheism : Christianity : denominationalism. sociology of religion : humanism : R. Joseph Hoffmann : Unbelief ..
3 Responses to “Atheist Denominationalism”

.
 rjosephhoffmann 
 August 23, 2012 at 6:41 pm
Reblogged this on The New Oxonian and commented:
In celebration of yet another atheist sect, Atheism Plus, this ….
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Quote of the Day | eChurch Blog says:
 August 24, 2012 at 3:00 am
[...] SOURCE [...]
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 stevenbollinger 
 August 25, 2012 at 12:17 pm
Yesterday I read the forward to Marx’s dissertation and today I read it again. I think I know what you mean. And of course many centuries of years of Christianity will leave deep traces for a long, long time, more traces than even the most clever among us could ever fully recognize. Or as Nietzsche put it: “Nachdem Buddha todt war, zeigte man noch Jahrhunderte lang seinen Schatten in einer Höhle,—einen ungeheuren schauerlichen Schatten. Gott ist todt: aber so wie die Art der Menschen ist, wird es vielleicht noch Jahrtausende lang Höhlen geben, in denen man seinen Schatten zeigt.— Und wir—wir müssen auch noch seinen Schatten besiegen!”
Is Stoic atheism a denomination? I read a certain amount of Christian theology, not because I find it interesting. I really, really don’t. Goethe makes me smile with the third line of Faust’s first monologue, and even more with his remark to Charlotte Stein: “Die Geschichte des guten Jesus hab ich nun so satt, daß ich sie von keinem als allenfalls von ihm selbst hören mögte.” Sorry if you’ve heard that one so often already that it’s become as dreary to you as Christian theology is to me. I just really like it a lot. Da spricht mir Goethe aus der Seele, die es nicht gibt. Even Kierkegaard becomes excruciatingly dull to me as soon as he drops the ancient Greeks or the world around him to talk about God or Jeebus. And I don’t read Ambrose or Aquinas or Luther because it’s required reading, either. My major is Independent Studies — so independent, in fact, that I haven’t actually been enrolled at an institution of education in over twenty years. I read a certain amount of theology because I feel it’s important that I do.
I haven’t read anything by H. Richard Niebuhr. I haven’t even read anything by Reinhold Niebuhr, although his name has appeared often enough in what I have read that a great deal of curiosity about him has built up. Just this morning, with a heavy heart, I ordered Barth’s Einführung in die evangelische Theologie from Amazon. I hope I like it. Of course I do. Over and over I have hoped that some Christian theologian will turn out to be more than just one more appalling chore. Appalling because of the influence of his nonsense. And I love the ancient Graeco-Roman theology, which leaves me all the more appalled at the Christians who found it necessary to kill the old polytheism.
Now, am I missing something? Or are all those Christians who insist upon filtering the entire world through that one thick damned book, missing something?
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Of Atheist Tribes: A Repost and Riposte in Honor of David Silverman's Foolery
by rjosephhoffmann

 Reblogged from The New Oxonian:

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Atheism is badly served by the likes of a stammering David Silverman, recently made mincemeat by an intellectual third-rater on Fox News.
Richard Dawkins & Co. invented the term "Brights" to describe non-believers in general. A price on their head for those of us who have been disgraced by this episode.
Now we are confronted with a new phenomenon: Atheist Dims.
Read more… 671 more words

Published: August 24, 2012
Filed Under: Uncategorized
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5 Responses to “Of Atheist Tribes: A Repost and Riposte in Honor of David Silverman's Foolery”

.
 brettongarcia 
 August 27, 2012 at 2:45 am
What’s different about the “new atheism”? There’s what I would call a “nativist” side. Which explicitly eschews intellectual justification, and the need for extensive argumentation. In favor of the simple assertion that the new atheist has instinctually chosen not to believe in God.
Probably because of the most obvious evidence: 1) Christian promises of miracles are false; and 2) therefore the “higher” Christianity of “spirituality” and “morality” is also bankrupt; Christianity having issued false promises over and over.
When problems with religion are that obvious, what is the need for more extensive argumentation?
That, I would say, is part of the New Atheist position. It feels itself, finally, in no need of extensive argumentation. Why even enter the endlessly sophistical web of apologetics and counter-apologetics? The endless presentation of endless sophistical apologetics argumentation is itself, a deliberate trap; the attempt to snare the unwary in an endless bog.
Reminds me of a poem (by T.S. Eliot? Pound?). Where the simple native response of one honest man, is that “I will not eat this s**t!”
How much argumentation is needed, when they put THAT on your plate?
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 ken b. 
 August 28, 2012 at 11:04 pm
There’s no necessary connection between the existence or non-existence of God and the truth or falsity of Christian theology. It’s funny how most atheists always couch their arguments in reference to the claims of Christian apologetics. It only reveals their lack of knowledge and familiarity with any other way of looking at the issue.
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 Ken Scaletta 
 August 28, 2012 at 11:50 pm
How are you defining “the truth of Christian theology?” What is essentially “true” about it, and what is uniquely “Christian” about this truth?

 
 
 stevenbollinger 
 September 2, 2012 at 4:03 pm
brettongarcia:
“That, I would say, is part of the New Atheist position. It feels itself, finally, in no need of extensive argumentation. Why even enter the endlessly sophistical web of apologetics and counter-apologetics?”
A couple of points: one, that position is at least as old as Nietzsche. See for example Morgenroethe, aphorism 95, where Nietzsche points not to instinct, but to historical investigation which even in his time had done much to explain how religions had arisen in the first place. And think of how far those investigations have progressed since Nietzsche wrote Morgenroethe over 130 years ago.
Two, some of the representatives of the New Atheism movement — some of the authors of Freethought Blogs, for example — frequently engage in formal debates against believers on topics such as the existence of God. I’m not talking about debates in the readers’ comments of blogs, but affairs where auditoriums are rented and each side is given a certain amount of time to present its case and to rebut and so forth. In debates in readers’ comments sections of their one of these New Atheists has scolded me for taking Nietzsche’s position and thinking that I can decide that I am simply above arguing about certain questions, for thinking that I’m done with it and can move on to something else.
I don’t see a lot of cohesiveness in the definition of New Atheism. Often it has not even been a label which someone has chosen for him- or herself, but one applied by an opponent. I’ve never applied the term to myself. For a while I was indifferent when others applied it to me. Now I reject it. My opinion of the New Atheists is not yet as low as that of Michael Ruse, but they are definitely not growing on me.
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 ken b. 
 August 29, 2012 at 11:00 am
I’m not claiming there is anything true about Christian theology or that “truth” has anything to do with any organized religious tradition. The point is that arguments about the existence or nature of God do not have to be placed only within a Christian framework.
 I remember speaking to an atheist and asking him what would persuade him to give credence to the existence of God, and he responded by saying he would take the claim seriously if prayers were answered. But having your prayers answered tells us nothing about the “objective” existence of God. It could just be coincidence. The interesting thing is that the skeptic was still defining God in terms of Christian imagery, since that was the background that initially formed him and to which he rebelled. To play devil’s advocate….there could be a God who ignores prayer requests. It’s all image making. The Christian and the atheist are both still caught in the image, but in different ways. Same thing with Jesus. We like to think that Jesus, assuming he existed, looked like Jeffrey Hunter. For all we know he may have looked like Danny Devito and had the temperament of Joe Pesci.
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Of Atheist Tribes: A Repost and Riposte in Honor of David Silverman’s Foolery
by rjosephhoffmann

Confused?
Atheism is badly served by the likes of a stammering David Silverman, recently made mincemeat by an intellectual third-rater on Fox News.
Richard Dawkins & Co. invented the term “Brights” to describe non-believers in general. A price on their head for those of us who have been disgraced by this episode.
Now we are confronted with a new phenomenon: Atheist Dims. –Spokesmen [sic] who think an adequate description of religion entails the axiom that all people who take the idea of God seriously actually believe in a great Watchman in the sky who takes an interest in my personal hygiene. They don’t speak for atheists, and they don’t speak for me.
No wonder the billboards are so wasteful, not only conforming to a ‘fifties Impeach Earl Warren aesthetic, but simply dumb, as they degenerate from “You Know its a Myth,” American Humanist Association message to “You Know its a Scam,” American Atheist-style. Interesting and totally cynical change of tone: the sort of thing you get in bad music.
Atheists will not make friends or influence people by suggesting that religious persons are morons. Some are. Many aren’t. Worse, their vaunted intellectual superiority is too reminiscent of the evangelical’s vaunted spirituality. And both claims are based on premises as leaky as cheesecloth.
And then there is the puling defense of this uglification of the landscape: that you are really not preaching to religious people but to people who privately entertain doubts about religion. Please get back to me with the testimonials and statistics when the stats come in. Most of human life is lived in the spaces between what we would like to believe and what we cannot say openly. Everyone who has been married on paper but visited other sheets knows that: Why don’t the American Atheists, and why don’t they know this about religion? Or do atheists leave doubt and skepticism behind when they arrive at their position?
And even if your Dawkins-avatar whispers to you that you are the Brightest shining star, even if at night and in your left ear, be mindful that history has laid to rest countless asserverators of the idea that God is dead, senile, useless, out to lunch, gone fishin’ or the invention of paltry minds.
Silverman does one thing more that I will get to presently: He has also come up with the barking idea that it was all done consciously and with premeditation: as a lie.
Oh my goodness. Can you imagine the apostles or servitors of the Prophet planning the coming millennium around a campfire, when politicians in Whitehall and Washington can’t set policy for the next two years?
I thought not. Religion is a “lie”–maybe–in the sense that many of its cardinal tenets cannot be supported by modern science. A premeditated lie? Give me a break.
The challenge? The atheist “movement” must disown Silverman as a fool. Or acknowledge that what they are now facing is a huge fissure in the ranks between hard, foolish, trendy unbelief, Guanilo-style, and soft, educated unbelief. What we are witnessing is an outbreak of atheist piety, a conviction that unbelief is self-evidently true. We used to call this faith, not logic. Tell me where I’m wrong.
The real Brights are not atheists. They are the ones who know that science is not a messiah but one way of knowing about the good, the true and the beautiful, and a way that cannot exclude religion and the religious imagination.
Shame:
Shame on religion for abusing the gullible, the vulnerable, the innocent, for political or monetary gain.
Shame on the Atheists, old and new, for their copycat tactics in exploiting science, subverting humanism, and convincing ill-educated followers that their argot is supreme and needs no further discussion when, down to an individual, they know this is not true or honest.
=================================================

Of Atheist Tribes First of all, I refrain from mentioning any names or organizations that can properly be called atheistically thick-headed. They know who they are. I’ve named them before, without salvific effect. They are proud of who they are. They like their atheism short, sweet, rude, and raw. If they get on people’s nerves, that’s okay because religion gets on their nerves. Who can disagree? The standard cable network service, before they cut you off entirely … Read More
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Published: January 8, 2011
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31 Responses to “Of Atheist Tribes: A Repost and Riposte in Honor of David Silverman’s Foolery”

.
 Dwight Jones 
 January 8, 2011 at 8:42 pm
“The real Brights are not atheists. They are the ones who know that science is not a messiah but one way of knowing about the good, the true and the beautiful, and a way that cannot exclude religion and the religious imagination.”
Of course.
If you sat among Christians about a campfire two millennia ago, they would have sensed our human dominance over the planet as much as we do now, perhaps more. There was definitely something about their dusty mammalian lives that was over-the-top, and they had the stars signalling to them, they were winning a celestial poker game.
Search not for the Dark Matter until first you discover the Bright Matter – Life, and then harbour it.
These we will call the Brights, for what should it profit a man…
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 FreeThoughtCrime 
 January 9, 2011 at 11:02 am
“recently made mincemeat by an intellectual third-rater of Fox News. ”
“The tide goes in, the tide goes out. There is no mis-communication.”
Yup, sound like mincemeat to me.
Reply

 steph 
 January 9, 2011 at 2:37 pm
‘Atheists’ are not particularly bright.
Reply
 
 
 Seth Strong 
 January 10, 2011 at 1:57 pm
I definitely think the best thoughts are well reasoned and I like my beliefs to work like that too. But I think you’re asking too much of atheism if you’re asking it to avoid providing social trappings that suggest in crowds and out crowds. I certainly agree that not believing in beliefs “just ’cause” is no better reasoned than believing in a religion “just ’cause”. However, to the dismay of all thinkers out there, there are a lot of people who, in my opinion, not motivated by thinking it through and they are motivated by knowing there is a crowd behind the position.
Whatever position you are behind, it’s always better to be learned and reasoned but there will also be a dumbed down Twitter-ready version. I don’t have the issue your type of Humanist has and I don’t think we’re losing our battle for it. For the impatient, there is no god and let’s move on. For those willing to do the lifting, we can do our research and double check our math.
But you’re asking the average atheist to be a post grad in a world where higher education is too expensive. I think you’re asking too much. I’d be happy to reign in the reflexive atheist comments if someone else would take over rebelling against the American love of religion.
Reply

 steph 
 January 10, 2011 at 3:21 pm
Seth: Atheists are supposed to be humans too aren’t they? I don’t think it’s too much to ask people of mediocre intellect, like Silverman, not to be rude. Their rudeness demonstrates not only ignorance of religions – ie religious people are not all liars, but I think it’s slanderous too. You don’t have to have a Ph.D. to understand that.
Reply

 Pseudonym 
 August 25, 2012 at 11:18 pm
There’s a famous line about bankers from the political sitcom Yes, Prime Minister: If you’re incompetent, you have to be honest. If you’re dishonest, you have to be clever.
I think there’s something similar going on here. If you’re dumb, you have to be nice. If you’re nasty, you have to be intelligent.
Of course, even Christopher Hitchens wasn’t above evidence-free nonsense, but at least when he spoke in bumper sticker-worthy cliches, he was clever about it.

 
 
 
 Seth Strong 
 January 10, 2011 at 4:36 pm
I too think religion is a scam. I don’t think Silverman was out of line. He wasn’t calling people morons and he responded directly to Bill when Bill said that’s what Silverman is saying. Being bamboozled or scammed doesn’t imply anything on the part of the victim. The youtube for the newscast is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BCipg71LbI .
Dave had one minute within a conversation to describe his position for his actions. Silverman accomplished that. His motivation was to put up an atheist response to the Christian billboards. There are plenty of Christian billboards, church signs and random Calvary crosses in the area I live. It’s fair and I didn’t hear Dave Silverman take it over the top.
Reply

 steph 
 January 10, 2011 at 8:59 pm
I actually gave you more credit than that. I thought you knew just a little on the history of religions, not to mention history and society and cultures generally I can’t believe – or express – how enormously sad you’ve just made me feel.
Reply

 steph 
 January 10, 2011 at 9:00 pm
oh and I saw all stations reports on the day he was interviewed. Awful.

 
 Seth Strong 
 January 11, 2011 at 8:58 am
I’m not suggesting for a second that you aren’t entitled to your opinion or that I’m standing on an absolute truth. I do know something of religious history but I wouldn’t make that point confidently against Joe. I’m a person for which spirituality of any flavor simply doesn’t resonate. It’s almost a full-proof way to say that I am definitely not created with the built in capacity to follow a religion. But casual observation would suggest there are different kinds of people all around me who are spiritual.
And I don’t know how things are where you live but on government highways, we literally drive past random plots of land that are connected to no church and simply display three crosses. I can imagine in areas other than Virginia, North Carolina, and West Virginia that flagrant denial of religion is not necessary. Maybe your area is more peaceful for example. But perhaps my strategy is right for me and for my area. And if it is, then it’s not hard to believe Silverman is living in a similar place.
I have no issue with you or your differing opinion. Ditto for Joe’s. I simply have an alternate one for myself. I did think Colbert did the whole thing justice with his coverage.

 
 steph 
 January 11, 2011 at 8:26 pm
Seth – ever since I learned to talk and I heard about God, and asked who made me, and they said ‘God did’ I could never believe. I could never believe and I always wondered how other people could. I was curious as to why they believed, and what they actually believed, and if that made them different from me. But I have no idea what you mean by using the vague term ‘spiritual’. I don’t seek for explanations of reality in religions or supernatural belief and if I can’t understand them rationally, I let it go and it doesn’t bother me. But I don’t reject the term ‘spiritual’ in the sense of the emotional part of our being – that irrational capacity for love, passion, grief and tears to demonstrate their fluidity…
However I agree the youtube link you said was the best of the bunch but I think I probably appreciated it in a different way. The Fox (agghhh) presenter allowed Silverman to make a perfect exhibition of himself. It is as clear as mud that Silverman has absolutely no sense of complexity (or reality) – his concept of what people believe is completely naive and seems to be based on the beliefs of a couple of fundamentalist Christians’ kindergarten aged kiddies. And his accusations that religious people know religion is a scam and religious leaders are liars, are not only ignorant, but blatantly slanderous. I know plenty of religious believers and leaders and all express quite well why how and what they believe, in very different ways, and NONE teach that God is a ‘man in the sky’, or in fact in the sky at all. Anyone who thinks they do must have their head in the clouds.

 
 
 
 steph 
 January 11, 2011 at 2:57 pm
Goodo Seth. I’m well aware of the environment Silverman comes from but that doesn’t give him the right to stereotype religions and the religious on the basis of a the American Bible Belt’s fundamentalist extremists for example or his own religious experience in the past. There are charlatans on both sides of the debate, but religion is neither a lie nor a scam and religious people and practitioners are not all liars, scammers and morons or deluded for that matter, either. A little education can help him understand that. Of course I’m aware of the terrible state of American education…
Reply
 
 ken 
 January 12, 2011 at 11:53 am
Most atheists are easily baffled by even the simplest question they should know the answer to if they had any basic knowledge of religion.
 Like…”Who was Ashoka”?
Reply

 gordie 
 February 25, 2013 at 4:19 am
I know who Ashoka was … are you sure you mean Ashoka???
 Methinks you mean Asherah !!!!!!!!
Reply
 
 steph 
 February 25, 2013 at 4:57 am
Why do you assume that Gordie? I think Ashoka was to Buddhism, a bit like Constantine was to Christianity, converting and perceiving benefits in the religion for expansion of the empire. Or do you not regard Buddhism as a religion. If Ken had meant Asherah I think he would have written ‘Who was Asherah’.
Reply
 
 
 Seth Strong 
 January 14, 2011 at 8:55 am
@Steph. I see the sense in Silverman adopting a more social conversational style. Most of the time, my interest is uncovering common ground between myself and others because it’s too easy to see differences. Silverman’s stance is confrontational.
But for Silverman to have a positive effect on his community, the atheist one, that can happen by recruiting new non-believers which probably won’t happen or by energizing the less skeptical atheists. I don’t have a great grasp of history yet, the public denouncement of religion seems new to me. My position is absolutely the fence. I can agree that Silverman’s position is abrasive. But I like the fact that his position is getting more air time.
In my world, the religious nut jobs are trying to sucker us into mega churches, take our tithes, guide our votes, shoot abortion doctors, and wedge creationism back into school when there are actual problems for an educated world to solve. And the problem of how to deal with that is one I could use some answers myself. It’s hard not to think that the cozy belief in a secure heaven isn’t dumbing down those that were already a little dumber and a little more down when we could use some current world aspirations from everyone.
Reply
 
 steph 
 January 14, 2011 at 2:41 pm
conversational? Sounds like rhetoric to me. ‘Religious leaders are liars.’ yeah Riiiiiight.
Reply

 steph 
 January 14, 2011 at 3:38 pm
by the way Seth, I’m not unsympathetic – I just don’t think his rhetoric is very helpful. It’s easy for me to say, blessed with atheist Prime Ministers and multi moderate religious believers and non believers living without knowing or caring about each other’s (private) beliefs, and even marrying each other without caring if one says their prayers and the other one doesn’t, and my biggest problem with my own society, is people not caring enough about the environment and not planting trees… It’s a little different in the UK but still nothing as awful and incomprehensible as the Bible Belt. Fundamentalism needs to be confronted, but with knowledge, not ignorance.
Reply

 Seth Strong 
 January 14, 2011 at 3:47 pm
I agree with you that there should be better ways to solve this problem. The right path just isn’t as clear here. I do have sensible Christian friends. And if I felt like the community of Christianity at large were more like my friends, I would denounce David Silverman as well. But, some relatives of my close friends actually do not understand why everyone isn’t backing Sarah Palin and they have said so this very week. The people I should be relying on and should be able to rely on me are this far disconnected from reality. Palin, Fox, Rush Limbaugh and company all represent the continued packaging of values as an emotional righteous experience. In reality, maintaining a community should feel boring and trying because despite my viewpoints, everyone else is important and we have cooperative needs to address.
It is very cool to have nonreligious government leaders. If you’ve got a nonreligious society (or religious neutral or polytheistic) then you have my envy.

 
 steph 
 January 14, 2011 at 8:30 pm
I do understand Seth but I appreciate this comment because I was confused about your defence of Silverman when I had been sure that you knew the difference between fundamentalism and ‘sensible’ religion (for lack of a better expression). But you’re right, in your cultural environment, confronting fundamentalism needs co-operative effort.
I do dread to think what I would do I if I was born there. Apart from the possibility that I could have dropped out of fundamentalist belief myself, with much bitterness, even if I had been born the same happy and unpressured agnostic, I probably wouldn’t have developed such an early fascination, or fascination at all, for religions, and the beliefs of the (multi)religious around me. I wouldn’t have studied history and anthropology and world religions – I’d have despised them too much maybe. Perhaps all I’d know about was fundamentalism as it was on everyone’s letterbox, in every shop window, on car bumpers, in government, in law courts … the nightmare. And guns, a ‘god given right’. And my oldest brother… well he’d be a dead revolutionary.
I’ve only begun to realise the extremity of it all since living in the UK has given me the opportunity to attend international conferences and meet and mingle with american scholars. I’ve developed an interest in american scholarship (as it dominates the contemporary aspect of my thesis subject) which is quite different from the rest of the world as it tends to be divided into distinct groups and be influenced accordingly. This interest and observation naturally led to an enquiry into their cultural context – and religious (or atheistic reactionary) environment. And gradually things unfold … in my small provincial town down under, there is a general quietly assumed ‘anti americanism’. And no gods could be bothered blessing any nation state, especially ones that went to war. I am a little less naive now I hope in that I can better define my anti-ism and it isn’t broad brush ‘american’.

 
 
 
 Seth Strong 
 January 14, 2011 at 3:03 pm
Religious leaders aren’t necessarily aware that they are barking up the wrong tree. But the use of religion is misguided. It’s use as a moral compass is mistaken and poorly inherited from the sacred texts. Of course, I’m always focused on the popular religion in my area which is Christianity. I don’t necessarily care about religions that stay in the pocket of the practitioner. I care that I think Christianity is a default position in my area. And due to its influence, having belief is more acceptable than having no belief. And that there’s no such thing as a non-religious option for a chaplain in the Army (I was in Iraq for a year, it mattered directly).
Religious leaders are an impediment to the way I’d like to see people do business. They aren’t necessarily informed liars, but they are not sage like fountains of truth. Truth is something they lack in spades at the very least because they are looking in the wrong places to find it. I would go that far.
Reply
 
 rjosephhoffmann 
 January 14, 2011 at 3:16 pm
Just to jump in, I have to agree with Seth that the US may be unique in the way Christianity can be manipulated politically for popular gain. That is what makes it so noxious to so many, why atheism is “different” and perhaps even less temperate in America. Europe is, mainly, post-Christian and American style Christianity is really an oddity there. Religion here is pure Thwackumism and maybe not even that sophisticated because it appeals to the grossest and basest form of belief: bornagainism, biblical literalism, anti-science. So while I often try to talk atheists out of intractable positions, I’m under no illusions regarding why it’s tempting to fight the enemies of reason with plain talk and razors: they are incorrigibly stupid, these Evangelicals, and they are not going away.
Reply

 steph 
 January 14, 2011 at 3:47 pm
No, or rather yes, I have begun to understand that recently. There is a vast difference… and godness knows how I would react if I was born in that environment.
Reply
 
 Pseudonym 
 August 25, 2012 at 11:27 pm
You’re so right about that.
I’m not American (like Steph, I also have an atheist Prime Minster, though it’s a different one), and whenever I see the likes of Dave Silverman, I have to constantly remind myself that the stereotype of Christianity that they attack is not a straw man. There really are people like that in the US.
So I understand him and have compassion for him, even if I can’t agree. People from Europe who say the same things… they I don’t understand.
Reply
 
 
 Herb Van Fleet 
 January 15, 2011 at 6:21 pm
As I’ve said many times, the atheists are on a fool’s errand. So, it’s perfectly fitting to have a fool for a leader. Trying to disabuse a religionist of her religion is like asking her to cut off an important, but unnamed, body part.
Silverman and his merry band thus seem to be, collectively anyway, atheism’s don Quixote, charging the monstrous myths of monotheism. But, blind are they, or maybe just ignorant. Their’s is a task that requires hardcore believers to readily give up their ticket to paradise for a lecture in metaphysics; or, at a minimum, be willing to accept a little cognitive dissonance for a little common sense. And speaking of cognitive dissonance . . . .
Reply

 steph 
 January 15, 2011 at 7:58 pm
That’s a big generalisation Herb. There is a whole world with atheists all over it with various priorities, educations, backgrounds and goals. Labels are fine when they are clearly defined.
Reply

 Herb Van Fleet 
 January 16, 2011 at 2:17 pm
Steph, this is not a course in composition or rhetoric, and you are not the instructor. In fact, hyperbole and gross generalizations are common literary devises. Consider, for example, Hitchens’ “Religion poisons everything,” or Dawkin’s “Faith is an evil precisely because it requires no justification and brooks no argument,” or Sam Harris’s “Theology is nothing more than a branch of human ignorance.” All these are over-simplifications, exaggerations even, meant to provoke, and are obviously only the opinions of the authors.
I am quite aware that there is “a whole world with atheists all over it.” But, just as Hitchens and Dawkins and Harris have used hyperbole to make their points, I have done the same here. And since this is not a term paper, defining labels is unnecessary. The reader is queued by the tone of the language and understands (or should understand) that each point is implicitly prefaced with, “It is my opinion that . . . “ or something similar.
So, lighten up. If you want to offer counter-arguments, then do so. But if you want to split hairs or indulge in literary criticism, I’m not interested.

 
 
 
 Herb Van Fleet 
 January 21, 2011 at 12:45 pm
Steph, as I re-read my reactionary response to your comments of Jan 15th, I see that I was way over the top and downright mean. What I wrote was both inappropriate and insensitive. Therefore, I humbly apologize to you for my uncalled-for rant.
I hope you will feel free to offer any responses to my comments you think are appropriate and without fear of further attack from me.
Reply
 
 rjosephhoffmann 
 August 24, 2012 at 10:36 am
Reblogged this on The New Oxonian.
Reply
 
 davidjohnmills 
 August 24, 2012 at 12:57 pm
Joseph………………..cut the umbilical, man. :)
Reply
 
 Ken Scaletta 
 August 27, 2012 at 12:22 am
Ironic that is is reposted during an election season that has featured some of the most extreme religionist regressivism in recent memory. Major candidates for the Presidency advocating the criminalization for birth control [i]even for married couples[/i], parsing of what constitutes “legitimate rape” (soon, they will be talking about rape in the city vs. rape in the country), Global Warming denial (or at least obfuscation) from Romney and Ryan, state after state putting anti-same-sex marriage referendums on ballots, which panders to religious bigotry and nothing else. We also have the Texas GOP actually stating in their platform that they oppose the teaching of critical thinking skills in school. I’m not paraphrasing. This is the language.
“Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.”
That is from the official platform of the Texas Republican Party.
This is what atheists are up against in the US. Ironically, while our Constitution forbids the establishment of a state religion, religion is still functionally more “institutionalized” than a lot of countries who DO have state churches.
How about this, out of 535 members of the US Senate and House of Representatives combined, we have a total of one (1) who admits to being an atheist. It is all but impossible to get elected to higher office unless you praise Jesus. Congressman Pete Stark (D-CA), the sole atheist member of Congress I mentioned above did not come out as an atheist until after he was already elected.
The only person I can think of to actually get elected as an open atheist was a former Governor from my own state, the illustrious Jesse “the Body” Ventura, who was such an anomaly in every way that his atheism almost didn’t get noticed (what other US politician could ever get away with saying that “religions is for weak minded people who need strength in numbers” and get away with it? There is a certain kind of freedom in already being thought of as a loon).
It is unthinkable that an open atheist could be elected President. It’s actually controversial that Romney is a Mormon.
I do understand that belittling these people will not change their minds, but make no mistake, this is not atheist bullies circling a Christian, it’s atheists finally trying to swing back, not to persuade, but to at least put a stop to the oblivious sense of privilege and entitlement Religionists have always had here.
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Religion and Culture for the Intellectually Impatient


Muhammad Iqbal: The Mosque of Cordova (1932)*
by rjosephhoffmann

by admin Posted on September 11, 2012


 

Mosque of Cordoba” (c.1932)
Masjid  e- Qur-tubah
Silsilah-e roz-o-shab
In the flow of light to dark
the jeweller is hard at work.
In the spaces between light and dark,
in birth and death:
Silsilah-e roz-o-shab:
With coloured silken strands,
he works a royal robe.
In the flow of light to dark,
Azal: The pre-eternal sadness,
where the Jeweller speaks
or hisses his decisions,
Weighing you,
dangling me in the balance,
The master assaying
in the shadows, day to night.
If you are wanting–
If I am wanting:
Terii Baraat–
Marii baraat.
Death for the all the worlds
in the kingdom where
there is no day and night.
The works of our hand,
all glister and fashioning
will flash away–
Kaar e jahaa; N be-;  sabaat!
The world comes at last to this!
In the beginning was the end.
Within the form was its formlessness.
Inside the new, its destruction.
At the start of the journey, its end.
___________________________________
*This poem was written by Iqbal on a visit to Spain in 1931-32.  It consists of eight stanzas (the first of which has been translated here.)  The structure of the poem is discussed here, where there is also a very literal English translation that misses the assonance of the original Urdu text.  As the editor rightly observes, Iqbal’s sense of language suffers under any translation.  I have tried to capture some of the resonance by rendering his complex verse structure and internal rhyming, using English conventions.
r j hoffmann 2012 09
 
 
 
 
 
silsilah-e         roz-o-shab
 
 
sequence of day and night, shape-maker of events
= In silsilah there’s also the sense of ‘lineage’, and other complexities as well (*Platts*) silsilah-e roz-o-shab , naqsh-gar-e ;haadi;saat sequence of day and night, origin of life and death silsilah-e roz-o-shab , a.sl-e ;hayaat-o-mamaat 2) sequence of day and night, two-colored strand of silk silsilah-e roz-o-shab , taar-e ;hariir-e do-rang from which Being makes its robe of qualities jis se banaatii hai ;zaat apni qabaa-e .sifaat 3) sequence of day and night, wail/lament of the tone/instrument of eternity silsilah-e roz-o-shab , saaz-e azal kii fi;Gaa;N through which Being shows the treble and bass of possibilities jis se dikhaatii hai ;zaat zer-o-bam-e mumkinaat = More precisely, azal is the eternity before creation. 4) this one examines/assays you, this one examines/assays me, tujh ko parakhtaa hai yih , mujh ko parakhtaa hai yih sequence of day and night– the Jeweler of Creation silsilah-e roz-o-shab , .seraafii-e kaa))inaat = It’s apparently the Jeweler of Creation who examines the ‘sequence of day and night’, the way a jeweler would test the quality of gems. 5) if you would be of low quality, if I would be of low quality tuu ho agar kam-((ayaar , mai;N ho;N agar kam-((ayaar death is your assignment, death is my assignment maut hai terii baraat , maut hai merii baraat = This is the Arabic baraat , with no connection to the Indic one meaning “wedding procession.” 6) of your night-and-day, what other reality– tere shab-o-roz kii aur ;haqiiqat hai kyaa the movement of one age, in which is neither day nor night ek zamaane kii rau , jis me;N nah din hai nah raat ! = The “sequence of day and night” itself is doomed, and not only human works and accomplishments. 7) momentary, oblivion-bound, all the miracles of craftsmanship aanii-o-faanii tamaam mu((jizah’haa-e hunar the work of the world– without stability! the work of the world– without stability! kaar-e jahaa;N be-;sabaat ! kaar-e jahaa;N be-;sabaat ! 8) first and last– oblivion, inside and outside– oblivion avval-o-aa;xir fanaa , baa:tin-o-:zaahir fanaa whether it be an old shape or new, the final destination– oblivion naqsh-e kuhan ho kih nau , manzil-e aa;xir fanaa

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Published: September 11, 2012
Filed Under: Uncategorized
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3 Responses to “Muhammad Iqbal: The Mosque of Cordova (1932)*”

.
 Shahrukh 
 September 11, 2012 at 12:22 pm
Beautifully composed. The Urdu referrals fill up to the caveats in English translation to a large extent
Reply
 
 Ed Jones 
 September 12, 2012 at 12:13 pm
Hi Joe, Thanks so much for that. I am greatly impressed with the direction and depth of your thinking. I have avoided injecting comments to your discussions because of some seeming significant differences, mainly concerning abiding interest in rehabilitating Jesus of Nazareth from the Christ of faith image of Christianity based on the writings of the NT. I have the deep conviction that just here in the prospect of this interest, the real success of The Jesus Prospect lies. I am overwhelmed with what I see as the unique possibilities which this concern can bring, given your particular word skills and the direction The Jesus Prospect is taking. In the same vain as when I injected my March 24, 2009 letter to you about the Jesus Project, naming three of our top NT scholars: Schubert Ogden (once your intellectual hero), James M. Robinson, Hans Dieter Betz, and Merrill P. Miller, I express my deep concern that your Jesus Prospect become a success.
 I write on the strength of your generous Reply to my comment “A viable historical solution to the Jesus Puzzle – - “ on your post News From the Freethought Ghetto, and your comment elsewhere: “I can understand why Betz so understands the Sermon on the Mount.”
Best.
Reply

 steph 
 September 12, 2012 at 7:21 pm
Your comments are always welcome Ed. Joe’s is a beautiful translation of Iqbal isn’t it? He seems to capture an eternal spirit of the poet. Very best wishes, steph.
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