Pope urges religions to root out fundamentalism

Pope urges religions to root out fundamentalism (BBC)

His comments were apparently made in the context of the Middle East, but could equally apply to fundamentalists worldwide (not forgetting Christian fundamentalism).

Hmmm, I suppose many of us would say you can't get much more fundie than being pope. Seems to me a case of 'I am passionate, you are a little over the top, they are fundies'.

>2 Booksloth: Well, a lot would depend on how one defines fundamentalism. I would suggest that contemporary Roman Catholicism as a whole is not generally considered a fundamentalist denomination and does not encourage the sort of attitudes and actions which are generally associated with fundamentalism.

True - and I'm exaggerating somewhat as a means of pointing out that we all think our own way is, of course, rational and entirely normal. In terms of literalism, though, you definitely get the point this time ;-)

At least IMO, you can't get more "fundamental" than the Catholic Church. After all, when it comes down to it, they claim to be the only "true" church.

Well, it all depends on how one defines the term "fundamentalism," doesn't it? As I recall, John and I have discussed that matter before and we disagree. I mean by the term the following http://www.shelfari.com/groups/29350/discussions/74005/Fundamentalism As I recall, he was arguing for some definition used by a Shi'a sect in the part of the world where he was resident - a definition I never quite understood, but which made "fundamentalism" simply the name for a respectable varient of their religious views.

John?

It depends on what you mean when you say, "Catholic Church". Are you talking about certain historical periods of the Roman Catholic Church where they handed over people they didn't like to be executed?

Or are you talking about the approach the Roman Catholic Church takes today, inaugurated, in a sense, at the Second Vatican Council, and enshrined in documents such as Nostra aetate (Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions) and Dignitatis Humanae (Declaration on Religious Liberty) -- a Catholic Church firmly committed to dialogue with and respect for, rather than persecution of, other religious traditions?

>5 rastaphrog: I think the Catholic Church's position is rather more nuanced than that, as Nathaniel points out in >8 John5918:: "a Catholic Church firmly committed to dialogue with and respect for, rather than persecution of, other religious traditions".

>6 lawecon: lawecon, I've bowed to the more common usage of the word "fundamentalism".

As one accused by others on LT as being a fundamentalist let me make it clear that at no point have I ever condoned violence against someone who disagrees with me, nor do I make it a point to call those who disagree with me names, even though that is what is often done towards me. I would agree that I am a fundamentalist if the definition means someone who believes the Bible to be true and that therefore are certain fundamental beliefs which are necessary for eternal life. I will gladly stand up and call myself a fundamentalist under those terms. However, I have always said that I believe anyone has the right to believe anything they want to believe. If you want to worship Buddha, Muhammad, the stars, a rock, or even yourself, as long as it does not lead to violence towards others, then go for it. I choose to worship Jesus and God the Father with the help of the Holy Spirit.

>3 John5918: When you say "the sort of attitudes and actions which are generally associated with fundamentalism," could you clarify that a little?

I am a fundamentalist if the definition means someone who believes the Bible to be true and that therefore are certain fundamental beliefs which are necessary for eternal life

But when, in the Bible, Jesus is asked by someone what is necessary for eternal life, he doesn't tell him to believe anything at all, but to act justly and support the poor.

>10 ambrithill: When you say "the sort of attitudes and actions which are generally associated with fundamentalism," could you clarify that a little?

Violence, intolerance, closed-mindedness, refusal to respect alternative viewpoints, persecution, theocracy ... I'm not trying to define it, simply to mention what I reckon is "generally associated" with it in the media and probably in much of the western public consciousness.

I actually quite like your definition of fundamentalism, which does not automatically nor necessarily lead to the "generally associated" attitudes and actions. In that case another adjective (extremist, militant, violent, whatever) would need to be added to the term to describe what the pope and most other moderate people are condemning. However I had an inconclusive discussion with lawecon on the meaning of fundamentalism some time ago (referred to in >6 lawecon:), where I referred to a usage I had found in some Sudanese Islamic thought whereby fundamentalists are those who stick to the fundamentals (much as you say) and reject later Sufi accretions. In this thread I decided it would cause me less grief to stick to the more populist meaning (>9 John5918:).

Having said that, I would, like MyopicBpookworm (>11 MyopicBookworm:), almost certainly disagree with you about what are the fundamentals of the Christian faith.

I think implicit in the term fundamentalism when it is used in the political sphere is a certain directive or obligation to impose a set of beliefs and practices on others or expel people who refuse to accept those beliefs and practices from the community. Asking "what is fundamentalism" is very different from asking "what is fundamental" about a particular belief.

~10

Rather than making up vague and self-congratulatory definitions like "someone who believes the Bible to be true." Let's work from the definition referred to in post ~6 above. Are you a fundamentalist by that definition? If not, where do you differ?

>11 MyopicBookworm: Actually in John 6:26-29 we read:

26Jesus answered them and said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled.
27Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him.”
28Then they said to Him, “What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?”
29Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent.”

Also John 3:16:

16For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

I think this is pretty clear that Jesus did indeed tell people to believe something. And while Jesus does expect us to act justly and care for the poor, neither is mentioned in these instances. The only thing required according to what Jesus said here is believing in Him.

>14 lawecon: Why do you get to choose which definition is the correct one?

~10

"Why do you get to choose which definition is the correct one?"

I don't, Ambrithill, that wasn't the point. No one "gets to choose which definition is the correct one." Definitions don't work that way, as I'm sure you know since you are a mathematician.

The point is that you are unwilling to say what your attitudes are with respect n the points of the definition/characterization I cited to, or how your views differ from the points of that definition/characterization. "I am right, because I believe what the Bible says (as I interpret it, of course)." Doesn't say anything at all. It is just circular. (As you also well know as a mathematician.)

So why not cut out the silly evasions that don't fool anyone with a brain and answer a question for a change?

>15 ambrithill: The problem, ambrithill, is that Jesus said many things (or rather the evangelists quote him as saying many things; there is a lot of scholarly discussion as to which of them were actual word for word quotes, which were paraphrases of things which he had actually said, and which were the evangelists' interpretations of his teaching, but for the moment let's not get into that). How do you choose which of the things he said are the be all and end all, "the only thing required", and which aren't? For example, the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-11) and the story of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25:31-46 seem to be very clear teaching about what we need to do. You say, "while Jesus does expect us to act justly and care for the poor, neither is mentioned" in the two passages you chose from John. I could respond, while Jesus does expect us to believe, it is not mentioned in the two passages I chose from Matthew.

Part of it comes down to interpretation; however literally one wants to take the bible, one still has to interpret it, as it says so many different things. I think that Christianity is more complex than a one-liner about belief, but if there is to be a one-liner then it seems to me that "Love God and love your neighbour" is the one which Jesus himself picked out as being the most fundamental, both in that he said it himself and that it sums up most of the rest of his teaching.

~18

John, you are doing it again. You don't really think that ambrithill doesn't know all of that, do you? He is a smart guy (as he has shown repeatedly in these discussions). He knows that the Bible doesn't have a "plain meaning." He knows that there are inconsistencies in the text (particularly given that it is not all one text written by one person). That isn't what he or any other fundamentalist is about.

> 18 You are correct John that it cannot be about one-liners. My answer was in response to the following:

"But when, in the Bible, Jesus is asked by someone what is necessary for eternal life, he doesn't tell him to believe anything at all, but to act justly and support the poor."

I tried to make it clear that I was only saying what Jesus said in those verses but I probably didn't do a very good job of it.

>19 lawecon: Thanks

>20 ambrithill: And I don't disagree with you that that is what Jesus says in those verses, but I do disagree that those verses sum up the totality of "what is necessary" to the exclusion of other things he said.

~20

It wasn't a complement. I've made it very clear previously what I think fundamentalists are about.

You're simply one of those fundamentalists who engages in saying one thing with one breath and the opposite with another breath. The prime example being that you claim no personal knowledge of what is absolutely true or ability to predict what is next, but you simultaneously claim that the Bible tells you all those things and more. So you alone are without merit. It is only through your faith in G-d's Inerrant Word that you become superman and should never be opposed. (Because, of course, to oppose what you want is to oppose God's Word, and thus to oppose G-d. You are, after all, only defending G-d and carrying out His Will).

Unfortunately many people started to see through that ploy and evasion about 600 years ago.

Maybe the problem is that while we want to boil it all down to One True Thing, the fact is, most faiths are complex and resist being dumbed down.

John 13:34: "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another."

(Seems like a decent place to start the boiling down to One True Thing...)

I have no problem boiling Christianity down to Love, but Michelle Bachmann and I differ greatly on what that looks like.

>22 lawecon: "It is only through your faith in G-d's Inerrant Word that you become superman and should never be opposed."

Never, and I repeat, never have I said I should be unopposed. Nor have I said I become superman. I have said I beleve in the inspired Word of God and that I believe it is without error. That does not mean that I claim that everything I believe is correct, because I am human and quite capable of being wrong, and often times I am. Sometimes I realize it and admit it (something you still refuse to do) and sometimes I do not realize it, so that makes it rather difficult to admit. It actually appears to me that you think your beliefs are the only ones that are right and without error.

>21 John5918: Again, I agree with you, and that was not what I was trying to do. Sorry if it came across that way.

~26

So let me try to understand.

You believe in a text that you hold to be "the inspired Word of God... (and) without error," but you could be wrong? Now numerous posters to numerous threads have pointed out to you that said text has been imperfectly transmitted (as witnessed by the numerous different copies that are still extant), that it was first of all compiled by men who claimed authority as the successors of the Apostles - authority which you reject, that it seems to be addressing issues and situations long past, and many other problems with your "basic belief." But you haven't concluded that you are wrong, or even that there is any real doubt that you are right.

So what, exactly, is needed for you to admit that your basic beliefs are wrong?

Focus now. I am not asking you to believe that my beliefs and conclusions are right, because I would never expect you to come to those conclusions. I wouldn't expect you to even entertain beliefs anything like mine, even if you tomorrow became a Unitarian Universalist. I am merely asking you to state what sort of evidence or argument would cause you to conclude that your fundamental beliefs are mistaken and without any substantial basis.

Could you stop dodging around in that ridiculous manner, trying everything possible to draw attention away from your absolute dogmatism, and just answer the question?

>28 lawecon: I believe you are the master of evasion. You choose to never answer the questions you do not like but instead accuse others of evading. Just because you choose to play this little game does not mean that I have follow your rules for playing. So why don't you tell me some of your beliefs that are wrong first.

~29

So your answer is that you won't address any of the problems with your beliefs - EVER.

You see, that was all I was trying to explain to John in post # 19 above. Trying to reason with you, or present contrary evidence to you is without any hope of success, because you DO BELIEVE. (And that is the end of it.)

15

There is a subtle but large difference between "believe" and "believe in". The first - which 11 was referring to, would naturally be followed by the word "that"; it is belief as a mental standpoint or exercise. "Believe in" however, is a kind of trust, i.e. you believe "in" what the object stands for or represents, whether that be a religious leader, your marriage partner, the essential goodness of people, or the wrongness of eating animal flesh. It is more of an emotional or moral standpoint.

So when Jesus speaks of "believe in", he is surely speaking of his message of love, which is something you DO, not sit and write an essay about. But what fundamentalists often do is belabour people with texts from the Bible, i.e. they are using the word more as "believe that" than "believe in" - even when (and I'm not accusing you of this) they use the "believe in" text that you quoted.

It's the difference between head and heart.

>30 lawecon: So rather than state which of your beliefs are wrong you are sticking your fingers and saying, "Nah, nah, nah,nah." And then you add, "The game is over cause I don't like the way you are playing."

It is not that I can not reason with someone, but why is it that you refuse to answer the same type of questions that you expect me to answer?

Ambrithill, meet Lawecon. Oh, nevermind... You already have.

>31 Tid: I agree that believing in Jesus means we have to follow His example and love others. I also agree that it is the difference between the head and the heart. My point in 15 was simply that, as I read it, 11 was wrong in saying that Jesus never said to believe in (I guess if felt implied to me) anything.

34

I take your point, but in 15 you were replying to 11, and that exchange was :

"I am a fundamentalist if the definition means someone who believes the Bible to be true and that therefore are certain fundamental beliefs which are necessary for eternal life"

But when, in the Bible, Jesus is asked by someone what is necessary for eternal life, he doesn't tell him to believe anything at all, but to act justly and support the poor.

To expand on my reply, Jesus didn't give two figs about the Bible - half of it wasn't even written yet, and the other half - though he could quote from it at will - he was at great pains to point out contained certain practical truths which he illustrated with parables. He got to the spirit of the text, and told off the Pharisees and Scribes for their pedantic adherence to rules .. and let's face it, the OT is jam packed with rules in places, e.g. Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Nowhere does he tell people they have to believe (literally or otherwise) the Hebrew Bible. Far from it, his emphasis was on people's deeds, not their beliefs.

I never said Jesus did say anything about the Bible. I said that He said to believe in Him when asked what works must be done to have eternal life. And that in the context of that question and answer session Jesus did not mention anything about deeds. As I said, I believe that we are to follow His example and love other, but do you think we are to belief in Him as the One that was sent by the Father?

36

"I never said Jesus did say anything about the Bible. I said that He said to believe in Him when asked what works must be done to have eternal life. And that in the context of that question and answer session Jesus did not mention anything about deeds. As I said, I believe that we are to follow His example and love other, but do you think we are to belief in Him as the One that was sent by the Father?"

This is pure Lutheranism. The Catholic Church - which he fought and tried to reform - was, despite their corrupt state in the 15thC, very strong on what a person does, hence the value of the confessional. However, the new Protestantism - especially Calvin - preached that deeds could not bring salvation, only 'belief in Jesus as Son of God and Saviour'.

Early Christians were closer to Jesus than anyone, but we have no records of them following the Roman sack of Jerusalem in the early 70s AD. But what we do know, from how later theology grew and changed, is that they had formed a strong community among themselves, where the teachings of Jesus were practised and they shared among each other, worshipped together, and looked after one another. The concept of 'belief in Jesus' was probably alien to them. They were 'followers of' rather than 'believers in'. At that time, there was no theology of Jesus being Son of God, or the source of salvation - he was their leader, teacher, and guide, and they had oral stories about him, which got passed down and formed the earliest writings.

The reading at mass last week was from James:

What good is it, my brothers and sisters,
if someone says he has faith but does not have works?
Can that faith save him?
If a brother or sister has nothing to wear
and has no food for the day,
and one of you says to them,
"Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well, "
but you do not give them the necessities of the body,
what good is it?
So also faith of itself,
if it does not have works, is dead.

Indeed someone might say,
"You have faith and I have works."
Demonstrate your faith to me without works,
and I will demonstrate my faith to you from my works.

The reader read it perfectly, driving home the message just as James surely intended. It's the first time I've heard the congregation—well, they sort of gasped.

Needless to say, Martin Luther's love of the Bible didn't extend to this epistle, which argued should be excluded entirely from the New Testament because, of course, it conflicted with that odd misunderstanding of his.

>37 Tid: They were 'followers of' rather than 'believers in'

Very well put, Tid.

In Protestantism, works are just attached to another part of doctrine. Works are not necessary for salvation, works are the result of being saved.

E.g. the Heidelberg Catechism says in Question 86:

Q. Since we have been delivered from our misery by grace through Christ without any merit of our own, why then should we do good works?

A. Because Christ, having redeemed us by his blood, is also restoring us by his Spirit into his image, so that with our whole lives we may show that we are thankful to God for his benefits, so that he may be praised through us, so that we may be assured of our faith by its fruits, and so that by our godly living our neighbors may be won over to Christ.

Even according to Calvinist views, faith is dead without works.

40

That's a weird one. The answer implies that EVERYONE is redeemed (by the blood of Christ) whether or not there is faith. That seems to be suggesting that works are more important than faith, after all. In fact, it seems to be directly saying that the 'fruits' of people's works assists faith. "so that with our whole lives ... we may be assured of our faith by its fruits". That's not my understanding of Calvinism, or at least, how it's been interpreted.

I think it just shows that real faith leads to works.

For context, Q86 is the 1st question of Part III "Gratitude". Who is redeemed is defined earlier.

This is only one question in the catechism, and there are two more documents, i.e. the Belgic Confession and Canons of Dordt ("The Three Forms of Unity"; you might also consider the Westminster Confession). Also, every statement is accompanied by so called proof texts (or better: hints where to start your own investigation of the subject):

Because Christ, having redeemed us by his blood,
is also restoring us by his Spirit into his image,
so that with our whole lives
we may show that we are thankful to God
for his benefits, (1)
so that he may be praised through us, (2)
so that we may be assured of our faith by its fruits, (3)
and so that by our godly living
our neighbors may be won over to Christ. (4)

1 Rom. 6:13; 12:1-2; 1 Pet. 2:5-10
2 Matt. 5:16; 1 Cor. 6:19-20
3 Matt. 7:17-18; Gal. 5:22-24; 2 Pet. 1:10-11
4 Matt. 5:14-16; Rom. 14:17-19; 1 Pet. 2:12; 3:1-2

42

I fear in my case, you are preaching to the unconverted!

I recognise those words from Paul. However, I find that a text that started out as (for example) 'white' in the original, became 'off white' during various translations from one language into another, then became a colour (e.g. 'red') due to centuries of being interpreted one particular way.

This is one of the drawbacks with religion. One has to accept a kind of dogmatic formula, that all members of a sect will understand one way ('red') rather than the intent of the original writer ('white'). And this is without taking into account that Paul and Matthew never met Jesus.

(43) What makes you say that Paul and Matthew never met Jesus?

#44: Canonically, Paul never met Jesus in the flesh. The author of the book of Matthew is unidentified in the Bible; modern scholarship doesn't believe that the author of Matthew was a disciple, and there's no obligation for even the most literal Bible-believing Protestant to assume that he was.

Paul met Jesus on the road to Damascus. He wrote about meeting the Lord, and even referred to himself as an apostle 'born out of due time'.

1 Corinthians 9:1 "Am I not an apostle? am I not free? have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord? are not ye my work in the Lord?"

1 Corinthians 15:8-9 "And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time. For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God."

Paul claimed to have seen Jesus Christ, to have spoken with Him on the road to Damascus. I think seeing and speaking with someone is 'meeting' them.

The book of Matthew is supposedly written by the apostle Matthew, who saw Jesus Christ daily, face to face. If some choose to believe that "Matthew" was not written by Matthew, well, they are entitled to an opinion.

~46

Indeed. And if some believe that Jesus speaks to them daily. Well, they are entitled to an opinion.

>46 fuzzi: Paul met Jesus on the road to Damascus

Paul met the risen Lord on the road to Damascus. The narrative in Acts 9 suggests that this was a rather extraordinary event, a vision which was not seen by those travelling with him, not in any way comparable to having met the historical pre-resurrection Jesus. Many Christians throughout history up to today would say they have met the risen Christ, but they are not referring to the historical man Jesus.

If some choose to believe that "Matthew" was not written by Matthew

Some? Would you accept "most"? But, as the notes in my New Jerusalem Bible say, "the identity of the authors is less important than the guarantee of their material by the tradition of the early community, of which each must have been an authorised interpreter".

~48

" But, as the notes in my New Jerusalem Bible say, "the identity of the authors is less important than the guarantee of their material by the tradition of the early community, of which each must have been an authorised interpreter"."

But, John, isn't that one of those Bibles written at the behest and endorsed by The Whore of Babylon, the Minion of Satan, the Great Deceiver? It certainly wasn't inspired by True Faith and written in the original language of Our Lord, as, for instance, was the King James Bible. But everyone, I guess, is entitled to an opinion. And if you want to endorse Error and Blasphemy, well, that's your right to your opinion.

>49 lawecon: Damn, you're right. Apart from anything else, it's a translation taking account of the best in modern biblical scholarship and written in English that is easy to understand, so it must be wrong...

~50

Now you're showing signs of being Truly Saved.

46

John gave a great reply to your point about Paul. All I'd add is that Paul had a "religious experience" which led to his conversion to something that he was later responsible for evolving into what we know as "Christianity". If the road to Damascus was instead the road to Delhi, Paul would no doubt have interpreted his vision in terms of Krsna.

I don't understand your point about Matthew. There was a disciple called Matthew. Then later there was a Gospel writer called Matthew. What on earth makes you elide the two into one - because they happen to have the same name?? For the record, the earliest Gospel is either Mark or Q (it's not known for certain which came first), and Matthew drew on either or both of those. It's Biblical scholarship.

@Tid stated that Paul and Matthew never met Jesus. In the Scriptures it is clear that both of them did, prior or post resurrection, they met Him.

And so it is theorized that Paul just had some sort of vision, and Matthew couldn't possibly be the author of Matthew.

Why do people try so hard to 'prove' the clear writings of the Bible wrong?

Perhaps so they can feel superior to those who penned God's word, or even discount its clear but disconcerting teachings?

Anyone who has read the Bible should be aware of what God thinks of those who put their own scholarly abilities and knowledge above God's words, see Isaiah 55.

#46,53: I'm having trouble understanding your epistemology here; I understand Biblical literalism, but this is outside the written text of the Bible. The Bible is silent on the author of the Gospel of Matthew. Accusing us of trying to prove the clear writings of the Bible wrong is a false accusation; the Bible does not speak here.

Anyone who has read the Bible should be aware of what God thinks of those who put their own scholarly abilities and knowledge above God's words

I started a whole thread about this, Christianity and sex. At no point did you chime in and mention that of course the preacher was wrong to add lesbianism to the list of prohibited behaviors, as the Bible is silent on it. Nor you stand up for the prohibition in James against eating strangled animals that apparently has been formally declared no longer in effect by several Christian sects.

As I said there, if you're going to interpret the Bible literally, then do it. But be careful and precise about it; understand exactly what it says and does not say.

>53 fuzzi: fuzzi, if you read Acts 9 it seems completely clear that Paul had some sort of vision, which those travelling with him didn't have. That seems to me to be a literal interpretation of the text.

The gospel does not mention Matthew the apostle as the author. If I remember correctly, it was some time in the 2nd century that a tradition began associating Matthew the evangelist with Matthew the apostle, ie 50 to 100 years after the gospel was written. Those who study the text see good reason to assume that it couldn't have been the apostle who wrote it; look up a few bible commentaries for their views.

I don't really see how you can claim that anyone is trying "to 'prove' the clear writings of the Bible wrong" when the clear writings of the bible say nothing about who wrote Matthew's gospel and say very clearly that Paul had a vision on the road to Damascus.

Edited to add: Acts 9:3-7

It happened that while he was travelling to Damascus and approaching the city, suddenly a light from heaven shone all round him. He fell to the ground, and then he heard a voice saying, 'Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?' 'Who are you, Lord?' he asked, and the answer came, 'I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. Get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you are to do.' The men travelling with Saul stood there speechless, for though they heard the voice they could see no one.

~53

"Why do people try so hard to 'prove' the clear writings of the Bible wrong?

Perhaps so they can feel superior to those who penned God's word, or even discount its clear but disconcerting teachings?"

No, fuzzi, people aren't "trying so hard to prove the clear writings of the Bible wrong." They are trying to correct your ignorant and prejudiced reading of the Bible. You know, the reading that the voice in your mind tells you is RIGHT, despite the contrary traditions of centuries and the conclusions of those who have spent their lives learning about Biblical languages, times, and cultures. But what is that next to your FAITH in, ah, what you've made up in your head.

53

I suggest you do some Biblical scholarship, or at the very least, some basic research. If you don't, your posted opinions are going to continue to be eponymous.

>57 Tid: Eponymous... clever!

;-)

@Tid, thank you for your suggestion. The fact that I don't blindly accept the teachings of "learned men" or "church fathers" does not mean I have not read or studied the Bible.

>60 fuzzi: fuzzi, any comment on >55 John5918:? It's not 'the teachings of "learned men" or "church fathers"', it's just a reading of the actual texts. I'm genuinely curious as to how you come to the interpretation that you do.

(61) Matthew was written by Matthew, John was written by John, Isaiah was written by Isaiah. Seems the actual texts make it clear.

Paul certainly "met" Jesus on the road to Damascus: Paul was blinded by the light, but still had a short conversation with the Lord Jesus.

>62 fuzzi: Where does it say in Matthew's gospel that it was written by Matthew? And where does it say that this Matthew is the same as the apostle Matthew?

I see now that you have put "met" in inverted commas. As has been pointed out earlier, one could say that Paul "met" the risen Christi in a vision, but that's very different from saying that Paul met the physical man Jesus. If Paul was standing there talking to Jesus in the flesh, why couldn't the other people with him see Jesus?

These are questions that can be answered by looking at the text, literally; they don't even need exegesis.

You often give the impression (my apologies if I misunderstand you) that you think biblical scholars are rabid atheists trying to undermine Christianity through their pride, arrogance and unwillingness to listen to God. They're not. They're committed Christians, just like you and me, who prayerfully and conscientiously try to help us all to understand our foundational text better, guided by the Holy Spirit.

Lets assume you accept the text of the Gospel of Matthew as divinely inspired. No problem. But the title was added by men, after the fact. Nowhere in the text, or in any other biblical text does it say that the book we call Matthew was actually written by Matthew.

By insisting on it, you are putting the tradition of men above the text of Scripture.

~63

And how many times have you said this - and to the same person?

>65 lawecon: I'm following a biblical exhortation to persevere - see Luke 18:1-5

Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: "In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, 'Grant me justice against my adversary.'

"For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, 'Even though I don't fear God or care about men, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won't eventually wear me out with her coming!'" (New International Version)

Or maybe, to make it more persuasive:

And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint;

Saying, There was in a city a judge, which feared not God, neither regarded man:

And there was a widow in that city; and she came unto him, saying, Avenge me of mine adversary.

And he would not for a while: but afterward he said within himself, Though I fear not God, nor regard man;

Yet because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me. (KJV)

62

"Matthew was written by Matthew, John was written by John, Isaiah was written by Isaiah. Seems the actual texts make it clear."

One Gospel is credited to a writer called Matthew. Where do you find a correlation to the disciple Matthew? John is the last gospel written - it is extremely unlikely, particularly when you study its theology, which is clearly post-Paulian - to have been written by the disciple called John.

Remember too, there is a Gospel of Peter, which quite possibly WAS written by Peter the disciple, but was excluded by the Roman church probably because it espoused women priests. And there is a Gospel of Judas. And a Gospel of Thomas, which survives and has been published. Many Gospels, in fact. Why do you not ever refer to those?

I think you are at an impasse, Tid. If one espouses an absolutist position that the Bible is the literal truth, then one is stuck in that position. You can't question even a part of it, because that opens up the possibility that all of it may be wrong. Therefore it is necessary that Matthew be written by the apostle Matthew, that Mark, Luke, and John, all be written by the apostles Mark, Luke and John. Because if they weren't then everything falls apart.

Scholarship, in such a case, is irrelevant.

#68: As per #54, I don't believe that. Accepting Biblical literalism does not give you an excuse to believe whatever you want; it should mean building a very careful connection between the literal Bible and the outside world, with careful epistemology every step of the way. A person taking their beliefs with the appropriate seriousness should be more than willing to use that God-given reason to analyze what the Bible says about the author of the Gospel of Matthew, what outside sources say, and figure out how to put them together.

I don't have any issues with scholarship, only with those who put their opinions above God's word.

So, the book called Matthew was not written by Matthew the disciple, but someone else, maybe even someone whose name wasn't Matthew.

See how silly that sounds?

Only silly until you look at the nature of those times, and what the Gospel writers were trying to achieve. It's thought that Mark is simply pulling together an oral tradition, a collection of stories about Jesus passed down. Matthew is preaching to the Jews in particular, hence the very carefully worked out genealogy at the beginning, tracing Jesus back to King David. Luke, on the other hand, is a Greek speaker who is addressing the Jews and Greeks in Asia Minor, and widening the 'audience' if you like. By the time of John, a definite theology is starting to emerge, and the whole tenor of that Gospel is markedly different from the Synoptic Gospels.

And in the background you have the spectre of Rome, sackers of Jerusalem probably before a single gospel was written, but needing to be wooed as the ruling authorities.

There probably is some scholarship into the names assigned to the Gospel authors, but no-one knows for sure.

It doesn't sound silly at all: perhaps you're confusing it with the comment on Homer (having been written not by Homer, but by another man of the same name).

The main reason for supposing that the Gospel of Matthew was written by the Apostle is that many of the "learned men" and "church fathers" thought that it was so, and accepted it into the canon of Scripture on that basis. Why do you "blindly accept" this particular teaching? Later scholarship suggests that in the case of this and several other books of the New Testament, the judgement may have been historically faulty. You can only choose between one set of learned men and another: there is no Scriptural authority for either opinion.

Matthew's gospel is heavily into the Jewish aspects, Jesus the Messiah, Jesus the King.

Mark's is more about Jesus being a servant.

Luke, a contemporary of Paul and the other apostles, puts more emphasis on Jesus being Son of Man.

And John's gospel is more about Jesus being the Son of God, deity.

They do balance out nicely.

(72) No, I don't have to choose between groups of scholars. You see, I believe God when He said His word would not pass away, that He would preserve it. I have God's word, the Bible, here with me.

73

"They do balance out nicely"

Only that wasn't the reason for their inclusion! At least, not the main reason. Marcion had put together the first New Testament canon in the 2nd Century, which is supposed to have been quite popular, at least East of Rome. But as it conflicted somewhat with the teachings of the church in Rome, it prompted them to come up with a New Testament canon of their own, which would underpin a more orthodox form of Christianity. Thus some perfectly respectable Gospels, such as those by Peter and Thomas (which may well have been authored by the disciples of that name), were omitted for reasons that had more to do with opposing Marcionite theology, than any inherent flaws in them.

#70: ? No? Most of the various books named Hoyle's and the books named Webster's are not written by either Hoyle nor Webster. The original book called Webster's was not written by Daniel Webster, even though he is the big American of the time by the name of Webster. Add to this the fact that in that era, there were a lot of books that were attributed to big name people so they would get taken seriously, and it doesn't sound silly at all.

#74: And once again, it does not say that Matthew the Apostle authored the Gospel of Matthew. You don't simply get to pound the Bible here; it does not say what you claim it says.

70: I have a book sitting on my desk titled Talleyrand. As far as we know, Talleyrand was a real live breathing person, and yet he didn't write the book that shares his name.

One could easily find a book titled The World According to Garp, and yet we have it on pretty good authority that no one named Garp actually wrote the book.

There is a song that was reasonably popular at one point titled Matthew, and it wasn't written or sung by anyone named Matthew, let alone the Apostle Matthew. It isn't even about the Apostle Matthew. I know that sounds crazy, but it is about some entirely different person named Matthew.

I could go on.

~75

Beginning to catch on now, Tid? Probably not yet.......

I think that @Tid is well aware of what is going on. :)

"Are you the author of the plays of William Shakespeare?"

fuzzi, I don't think you are addressing the fundamental questions that are being asked of you. That's your privilege, of course, but I would find it interesting to have an answer. Usually when I disagree with you it is about something to do with scholarship or interpretation. But in this case it seems we are disagreeing about the literal reading of the bible.

Nowhere in the text of Matthew's gospel (or anywhere in scripture) does it say that it was written by Matthew the apostle. Do you agree? The name "Matthew's gospel" was given to it by the early church, not by its author, ie by "church fathers" and "learned men", as MyopicBookworm says in >72 MyopicBookworm:. Do you agree? If you don't agree, what is the basis for your disagreement since there is no scriptural basis?

And I would still go back to a literal reading of Acts 9 for the question about Paul. If he saw a bright light and the risen Christ and the blokes with him saw nothing, it seems that the literal reading of the text is that he had a vision. He "met" the Christ in a way, but not a physical meeting. Isn't that what the scriptural text says?

I do find it interesting that the early church believed that Matthew wrote Matthew, and that he wrote it before Mark wrote Mark. Modern scholarship agrees with neither of these. Why should we agree with people nearly 2000 years removed as compared to those only a hundred years or so removed from the writings?

#83: http://www.snopes.com/sports/baseball/mushball.asp points out that an umpire, 25 years later, remembered basically every major detail of an event he recounted incorrectly, even though he was there. You're telling me that we should trust a bunch of people 100 years after an event, who have no direct connection to the events?

If you want to know why scholars have those opinions, well, they write a lot, and people have summarized their positions. If you don't really care, but would rather dismiss them off-hand, I don't see why anyone should go to the work of explaining them to you.

>83 ambrithill: While I disagree with you, ambrithill, since I think there are good explanations why church tradition first took one position and then later took another, at least you are not arguing purely from bible literalism, as fuzzi is. You accept that it was church tradition which made the original decision (and I believe you have stated elsewhere that you do accept tradition and scholarship up to a point, unlike some "pure" bible literalists). fuzzi appears to be arguing that it is scripture itself which states that the author of the gospel is Matthew the apostle. I would still like to know where in scripture it states that.

I believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, and that God has preserved it for us.

Others seem to think that God needs help keeping His word pure, and act accordingly.

I don't think we're going to agree on this, john.

(84) You're telling me that we should trust a bunch of people 100 years after an event, who have no direct connection to the events?

So let's trust people 2000 years removed from the event, more than those who were there, or knew those who were there.

Yep.

83, 84

I would add to that, that Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr are not the definitive sources for everything that happened in The Beatles. They don't always agree with each other! The later scholarship of Mark Lewisohn is generally regarded as more reliable for the basic facts.

In fact, what the early Church fathers adopted / decided, were driven by motives related to the pressure of events happening around them - e.g. the growth of Christianity, the hostility of both Rome and Judaism, competing theologies emerging about Jesus, and so on. We are less in a position to judge why they did what they did, but we can apply more objective scholarship from a distance. Who is right? We can try to answer that, but our tools are scholarship and archaeology.

One question you need to answer - if you believe that Matthew was written by Matthew, where does that leave the Gospels of Thomas, Peter, and Judas, in your eyes?

87

People closer to events - as I say - are driven by subjective motives related to the pressures of events surrounding them. 2000 years on, we don't have those pressures, and can apply more objective scholarship.

~85

Well, let's say a bit more than that, shall we. As I understand the history it is that:

(1) The earliest manuscripts (presumably written by the earlier Christians) contain no attribution of the Gospel of Matthew. Neither, of course, does such an attribution exist within the text of that book.

(2) The same Church Councils that fundamentalists like Ambrithill reject as corrupt and beyond the time of the True Faith are the ones who added the attributions.

So it is somewhat disingenuous to rely on what the particular "early Christians" in question did in the case of attributing anonymous texts and then denouncing those same "early Christians" as not really Christian.

~86

And there we have it, pure Islamo-Christianity when it comes to the untainted divinity of the text. (Nevermind that the additions to the text are, in this case, well documented.) G-d will keep His Word uncorrupted, and what constitutes His Word is what fuzzi tells us is His Word after her daily conversation with the Holy Spirit.

>86 fuzzi: But fuzzi, you're not answering the question! Even assuming "the inerrancy of Scripture, and that God has preserved it for us", where in scripture does it say that Matthew's gospel was written by the apostle Matthew? And how can Acts 9 be read in any way other than Saul/Paul had a vision?

You do realize that 86 and 87 are pretty much contradictory, don't you?

In other words fuzzi, no one is questioning the validity of the scripture, they are questioning saying that you putting a human spin on it, that you are doing what you accuse others of, which is placing a human interpretation on God's word. And you have not addressed that.

93: I think that for fuzzi, questioning her interpretation of scripture is questioning the validity of scripture, given that she avers that the holy spirit showed her the "correct" interpretation.

91: Perhaps the answer lies in fuzzi's assumption that the 1611 English translation of the Bible is, in fact, the inerrant word of God, complete with authorial attributions, chapter and verse numbering, marginal notes, and what human scholarship presumptuously supposes to be textual or linguistic "errors". (Though presumably not Archbishop Ussher's chronology, which was not devised until the 1650s.)

91>
Not to mention the fact that for a few hundred years the bible or rather the stories that would eventually be included in the bible were copied again and again by scribes, some of whom graduated from the bottom half of the class in scribe school. They also added or subtracted some parts that were not politically correct for the time or likewise added some parts that made the text sound better or fit with the thought at the time.
I don't know how anyone can think that the bible has any direct quotes in it by now.

Would you also say the same about Socrates?

97

Good analogy. After all, Socrates was a peripatetic teacher who stood up against the established religion and authorities of his day, died for his beliefs, had a movement begun in his name started by the writings of a man called P____, and who left no writings or direct sayings of his own that survive.

#87: You're not forced to trust one or the other; you can take the position that neither is a reliable source, and thus that we don't really know who wrote Matthew. The real question here is do you trust the people 100 years after the event or not, and if so why?

#97: On one hand, I tend to believe that Plato started writing down Socrates closer to the events, and given the nature of Greek society (unlike itinerant Jewish fishers) quite likely he had other renditions to work from. On the other hand, he didn't deify his teacher, and I think Plato felt more freedom to vary from what Socrates actually said then the synoptic gospels did. (I personally believe that the Gospel of John is based as carefully off the real Jesus and personal knowledge thereof as Kahlil Gibran's works.)

Of course there is a typical 21st bias here; we forget how important the oral tradition is and was among illiterate societies (and we assume that illiteracy equal stupid). The whole search for Q thing is really best explained by reliance on an oral tradition. Being literate people of the 21st century we tend to overlook a) how accurate and b) how extensive that tradition is in other places.

Aside: I knew a family that homeschooled their children. The youngest was a late reader, and did not really pick up reading until he was close to ten years old. The family was a birding family and they notices that when they were out the youngest was usually the quickest to identify the birds. The reason was that he did not have to thumb through the Guide to find the bird. Not being able to read, he had a huge inventory of birds cataloged in his head. When he saw one one once, or heard about it, he filed it away, and when he ran across it in the field, he could immediately pull it out of his head, while the read of the family was searching the National Geographic Guide.

~95 & 96

I don't think that you guys are listening to what fuzzi is saying and probably you don't know what she has previously said. What she is saying now is that G_d preserves His Word from corruption. So the hands of the scribes copying His Word were guided by his hand. (Never mind the variants in the existing manuscripts.) She has previously informed us that if there is ambiguity in The Word, as translated or transmitted, she simply prays and the Holy Spirit tells her what the True Interpretation really is.

I think it is high handed and elitist and just plain rude for you not to take fuzzi at her word. She is very clear about what she believes. Why do you feel compelled to make up excuses for what she says when she doesn't want excuses for her very clearly stated beliefs?

>101 Arctic-Stranger: he did not have to thumb through the Guide to find the bird. Not being able to read, he had a huge inventory of birds cataloged in his head.

There is a funny scene in Mary Renault's The Praise Singer where Simonides of Ceos comes upon his protege scritching out the words to a poem onto wax to help him remember it. He's appalled--he thinks writing will be the death of poetry.

>103 southernbooklady:: "He's appalled--he thinks writing will be the death of poetry."

A perennial theme -- recall the entire chapter in The Hunchback of Notre Dame* devoted to a disquisition on how the printing press will be the death of good architecture.

-----------------
*Disney's adaptation has left the touchstones so screwed up that I had to go to Victor Hugo's author page and pull the work number in order to force the touchstone to point to the original.

(88) I don't believe that any of us 'need, to answer anything here. None of us signed a contract with LT requiring us to reply to every post/query tossed our way. ;)

However, since you appear to be sincere in your question...I've not read either the gospel of Thomas or Judas, but from what I have heard of them, neither of those books belong in the Bible. I'm familiar with Peter 1 & Peter 2, but not a 'gospel' by Peter.

But I certainly may take the time to read them in the future.

105

The Gospels of Peter and Judas can be widely researched on the internet, if you're interested. The Gospel of Thomas was only discovered post-WW2, but it has been published, though I believe it's not complete.

As for 'belonging' in the Bible, I guess you and I will never agree on that particular issue. I understand that the NT canon has some political purposes behind its compilation, also some theological and dogmatic reasons. You believe it was compiled under the guidance of God's spirit. We'll have to disagree.

I've not read either the gospel of Thomas or Judas, but from what I have heard of them, neither of those books belong in the Bible.

The books that are in the Bible are only there because one particular set of men decided they should be. Why do you trust in the "wisdom of men" on this issue?

His disciples said to him, "When will the kingdom come?"

Jesus said, "It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be a matter of saying 'here it is' or 'there it is.' Rather, the kingdom of the father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it."

I'm rather fond of the Jesus of the Gospel of Thomas. He's a bit of a Buddhist.

>107 StormRaven: Agreed, StormRaven. One of the issues I have with bible literalists is that they don't seem to recognise how the bible as we know it actually came into being, that by the time the NT was being written there was already a community who formed the nascent Church, that it was from the Church that the authors of the NT were drawn, that the theology they express in their writings is the theology of the early Church (and differences can be seen, eg Pauline and Johannine), that the canon of scripture was decided by the Church.

>108 southernbooklady: To be fair, that is not only found in the Gospel of Thomas. The canonical gospels also give the sense that the Kingdom of God is amongst us, in the here and now. Maybe it was Jesus who was a bit of a Buddhist?

>109 John5918: Maybe it was Jesus who was a bit of a Buddhist?

Is that not what I said?

>109 John5918: The canonical gospels also give the sense that the Kingdom of God is amongst us, in the here and now.

I wish this were more emphasized by the various religions that espouse it. It might prevent some people from being so willing to sacrifice this world for the doubtful rewards of the afterlife.

>109 John5918: Is that not what I said?

Sorry, that is indeed what you said. What I meant was the Jesus of the canonical gospels, not only the Jesus of the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas, but I didn't make that clear.

>109 John5918:-112: I think what John is trying to get at is the perplexing attitude that dismisses the canonical gospels (which are, in fact, the oldest witnesses to the Jesus tradition outside of the letters of Paul) as propaganda and instead thinks that to get at the "real", "historical" Jesus, we should trust apocryphal gospels written centuries later -- because they are somehow more reliable than the four canonical ones.

Well, since I'm not a believer, I don't think of any of the Gospels in terms of "real" or "not real." They are narrative texts to me--some with emphasis on one idea, some with emphasis on another. For example, I've always liked John because how could a reader and a writer not like a text that starts off "In the beginning was the Word"? Such an intellectual, John was. Whoever he was/they were.

And the apocryphal Gospels do hold interest as alternate interpretations of scriptural messages. There may indeed be some emphasis on the Kingdom of Heaven on earth in the four canonical gospels, but there is also quite a lot about getting into heaven and how hard it is to do. Likewise, the Gospel of Judas--it is interesting to contemplate, for example, that when Jesus says to his followers "he that dips his hand in this bowl shall betray me" and then hands the darn thing to Judas, he is not on some level giving Judas a command. It is certainly a different way of looking at the text.

But then, I regard all this as literature, so the state of my soul is not at stake when playing in this particular playground.

>114 southernbooklady:: And when I'm wearing my "historical theologian" hat, I tend to approach the texts with a similar methodology, even if "the state of my soul" is at stake.

Edited to clarify: What I mean by "even if the state of my soul is at stake" is that I do believe in the claims of the Gospels, I do believe in the Christian faith. But I do not think that the speculative theology that uses methods and approaches similar to southernbooklady's (i.e. asking literary-critical questions of the texts, analyzing themes and structures, and pondering the motivations of both Jesus and Judas at the Last Supper) in any way threatens the state of my soul.

~115

" And when I'm wearing my "historical theologian" hat, I tend to approach the texts with a similar methodology, even if "the state of my soul" is at stake."

Re the existence of an alternative, have you ever heard of the "private language argument?"

>116 lawecon:: No, I haven't. Could you elaborate?

Thomas has some interesting "hard to get in" stories as well. For example, Jesus is teaching, and Mary shows up. Peter pitches a fit because women are not qualified to hear the Word of God. Jesus tells Peter to cool his heels because he has "made Mary a man for the sake of the kingdom."

Good stuff, that Thomas. I cannot imagine why he did not make the cut.

113

Are you sure about that? Certainly the three Synoptic gospels are among the earliest, but who knows how many were written between their tradition and the later tradition of, say, John? And do we have any surviving record of the actual selection process itself, even though we do know when it occurred?

I'm not sure we will ever find a "real", "historical" Jesus, unless manuscripts as radical as the Dead Sea Scrolls or those found at Nag Hammadi are unearthed. I certainly don't think we should "dismiss" the canonical gospels, but neither should we dismiss those that didn't make the cut, especially when we know that the cut was made long afterwards, in response to Marcion's canon.

116

I'd ask for elaboration here too. I assumed that when Nat spoke of wearing a "historical theologian" hat, that the alternative would be his "Roman Catholic believer" hat, which of course wouldn't be a private language. But I may be wrong about what Nat meant we should take as his other hat?

~117

It is a late Wittgensteinian argument that purports to show that words that refer to purely "internal" objects or experiences are without meaning as communicative language. Google it. It was quite a fad at one time. The application here is, of course, that religion meaningfully refers to historical facts (or claims of historical fact) but not to some mystical experience of the divine that you have to experience (internally) to understand.

121

Are you putting that forward as an argument, or simply as an explanation of terms? If the latter, then thanks for the elaboration.

However, as an argument I'm not sure. Religions don't overly concern themselves with historical facts or accuracy, being more concerned with community building, morality, individual example, and spiritual growth (on the positive side); dogma, fundamentalism, literal interpretation of text, and even persecution (on the negative).

It takes scholars and theologians to seek after historical fact, but the sad fact is that their valuable findings are too often 'invisible' to the average congregation. As for mystical experience, I stand by my assertion that although religion can help to foster this, by no means is it confined to religion; atheists can practise - and have - Zen Buddhist meditation or T'ai Chi, for example, to find an inner state that improves their life, even if they define that change in totally non-religious terms.

>120 Tid:: I'm not entirely sure I understand your question, especially if it assumes that one can only wear two hats. In my professional capacity as an academic, I am a "historical theologian", which means that I study the history of theology. I'm also a teacher, in which I also serve an often more skeptical role -- playing "Devil's advocate" as it were in the classroom in order to challenge my students to see things from different perspectives. (For example, whether or not I personally think that God's answer to Job is acceptable, I will challenge my students in the classroom to think of ways in which it is not acceptable.)

Perhaps it is just the odd way in which I combine postmodernist and traditional epistemologies in my own life, but I do not find it irreconcilable as a Christian both to have a firm faith in the triune God and, at the same time, to analyze that faith tradition critically. I find myself increasingly drawn to solutions that juggle different viewpoints, holding them constantly in a creative tension, rather than trying to resolve it away. The tension itself is often the most meaningful part for me. Or, to quote from a description I once provided of Hildegard of Bingen's visionary hermeneutic:

She moves effortlessly from metaphor to metaphor, from one image to the next, never stopping in any one place long, yet often circling back around from a new direction. (...) We are faced with a volatile whirlwind that seems to juggle so many different, contrasting, and even paradoxical images, keeping all of them in the air at once and letting none fall to the floor. On the one hand, it seems disordered, chaotic, even nonsensical—how are we to navigate such stormy waters as this jumble and juxtaposition of visionary moments? Yet, within the chaos we begin to discern order—but not order as we would have it in our everyday lives; no, in her inimitable and fascinating visionary style, Hildegard has succeeded in offering a glimpse, rarely in focus and always on the verge of slipping away, teetering on the edge of falling into the abyss, of an order that transcends any notion of order that our feeble minds can grasp. She achieves what Goethe called “true symbolism”—“the living momentary revelation of what is unanalysable.”

>119 Tid:: "Who knows how many were written between their tradition and the later tradition of, say, John?"

The problem is, we just don't have any evidence for other major traditions in the first century. By the time we get to the second century (i.e. post John), we have the development of a variety of heterodoxies that we commonly, though problematically, group under the heading "gnostic". Depending on when you date the First Letter of John, it may provide the earliest evidence of those movements, but its evidence is "negative" in the sense that it is clearly opposed to such movements.

(As an aside, I'd point out to those who criticize Christianity for its "hellenizing" aspects, that the "gnostic" traditions were far more rooted in Greek thought and far less sympathetic to Jewish roots than the orthodoxy; indeed, one of the biggest battles between the heterodox movements of the second century, led by men such as Marcion, and the mainstream Christian communities, was over whether to accept the Jewish Scriptures as authoritative or to reject them as the delusions of an evil demigod.)

"And do we have any surviving record of the actual selection process itself, even though we do know when it occurred?"

It's misleading to think of it as a "selection" process. The four canonical gospels simply ended up that way from common, widespread usage. Nobody really sat down and said, "these are the ones", until much later (3rd and 4th centuries). The earliest century or more of Christianity was very much "non-hierarchical", along the lines of how, for example, many modern leftie protest groups (like Occupy) claim to be leaderless collectives. Decisions were made by communal consensus, and those decisions were rarely committed to writing.

When there are written records besides the NT (see e.g. the documents collected in Early Christian Writings), they indicate (1) a general consensus in favor of most of what is now in the New Testament canon (though the Apocalypse of John is both very late and took a long time to catch on; and some of the writings in the aforementioned volume, such as the Letters of Polycarp and Barnabas, were held with the same esteem and authority as the letters now comprising the NT canon) and (2) that the heterodox views represented by the gnostic / apocryphal documents (Thomas, Peter, etc.) were always in the minority.

124

And yet, Marcion's precedes the orthodox NT canon as we now have it, and was apparently very popular in parts of the Empire - so much so, that the Roman church were forced to counter it with what, in their eyes, was the more orthodox canon.

Orthodoxy, of course, comes down through history as established 'fact', i.e. the view of the majority, or history as written 'by the winners'. It's interesting to reflect however, the twin orthodoxies of the Western Empire (Roman Catholicism) and the Eastern Empire (the Orthodox Church) - on both sides of the divide, each regards its position as sacrosanct over the other, the Schism having occurred a thousand years ago and showing no sign of healing. Who is right? I would say neither, as the Schism occurs over an abstruse point of how the Trinity is to be regarded, and that simply does not occur in Biblical times, or even in Pauline writings or the Gospels. The Trinity is one of the theological outcomes that followed a good 200 years or more of arguing over the precise nature of Christ's divinity. Yet the Trinity has been Christian orthodoxy for a millennium and a half.

Who is to say whether the NT canon is any closer to the very early, and vanished Jerusalem church, than the more heterodox forms? After all, the Diggers and their ilk of the Seventeenth Century, regarded themselves as the purest form of Christianity and closest to the actual teachings of Jesus, yet have never been regarded as more than a cultish minority.

It could simply be that the gnostic strains of Christianity were doomed once the Church became established in Rome (even before Constantine), from which vantage point it could exert a centralised influence over 'orthodoxy' and what was acceptable practice. For example, the role of women in the early church was subject to a form of crude censorship - the faces of women in mosaics of early bishops being scrubbed out, and clumsy attempts made to change names like Honoria to Honorius, Theodora to Theodor, etc etc.

>125 Tid:: I suppose one could make the argument that the lack of evidence for significant heterodoxies (i.e. heterodoxies that were as widespread as the common practice of Christianity that was later enshrined in the canon) is because the "winners" erased it.

But making such an argument from silence seems to put us on shaky ground. What's to stop me from saying that there was major opposition to Augustus' assumption of imperial authority, but that all of the evidence for it was wiped away? Or that there was major opposition to the death sentence of Socrates, but that the evidence for it was wiped away? Or that aliens built the pyramids, but the evidence for it was wiped away?

126

Except that we do have the evidence of the Nag Hammadi scrolls having been buried, and though we don't know for certain that it was to escape the censure of the established Church, it's as good an explanation as any.

And the crude censorship of the later Empire over women bishops in the earlier paintings / mosaics, can be seen today.

As for the Trinity, there surely isn't a theologian alive who will argue for its Biblical authority, and yet it has been Christian orthodoxy for more than 3/4 of its history.

What's been 'wiped away' is pure speculation, you're right. But plenty of evidence for the 'battle for orthodoxy' remains. (I haven't even mentioned the Visigoth basilica where their journey from 'heterodox' Arianism to 'orthodox' Nicene Christianity, can be traced across the mosaic that stretches from one side of the building to the other.)

>127 Tid:: "Except that we do have the evidence of the Nag Hammadi scrolls having been buried"

And the Nag Hammadi scrolls all date to the 2nd century or later, i.e. post-John (taking the Gospel of John as a convenient ante quem for most of what constitutes the NT canon). I don't deny that there is evidence for heterodoxy in the 2nd century, since to do so would deny, well, the evidence. There was very much a "battle for orthodoxy", from the early to mid 2nd century forwards.

But that evidence indicates only the existence of heterodoxy in the second century. The preponderance of evidence indicates that such heterodoxies were minority opinions developed in later generations of Christianity, rather than fundamental ideas from the beginnings of Christianity that were later curtailed.

"As for the Trinity, there surely isn't a theologian alive who will argue for its Biblical authority"

I'm not sure what theologians you're reading, but the majority of those whom I know / study / amongst whose number I humbly count myself do believe that there is biblical basis for the Trinity -- though we readily concede that it (as well as most of what we call systematic theology) is in no way systematized in the Bible, and that our intellectualized expressions of what we may call the poetical truth of the Bible are the products of many generations of theological grappling.

It is only an oddly reductive modern interpretation of sola scriptura (i.e. an interpretation that would even have left Luther shaking his head) that problematizes such theology because (1) it insists that every single Christian doctrine must be plain to see in the words of scripture and (2) it allows no room at all for human agency (guided, of course, by the Holy Spirit) in grappling with and understanding the theological truths that are found in Scripture, not revealed by but hidden beneath the letter (as Paul says, for example, in Colossians 2:17).

>127 Tid:, 128 Tid, I think it depends on what you mean by "biblical authority".

If you mean biblical authority in the literalist sense, then you are probably right: the NT does not explicitly set out the doctrine of the Trinity as it came to be understood later. I believe in a recent thread one or two of our fundamentalist bible literalist posters did claim that the Trinity is found explicitly in a word for word literal reading of the bible, but I don't think that is a mainstream position.

But I think most Christian theologians that I'm aware of would accept Nathaniel's explanation "that there is biblical basis for the Trinity -- though we readily concede that it (as well as most of what we call systematic theology) is in no way systematized in the Bible, and that our intellectualized expressions... are the products of many generations of theological grappling".

128 129

I'm not sure where the biblical basis for the Trinity is? The earliest Christian writings we can be sure of, are those of Paul, and he doesn't even mention a miracle birth, explaining Jesus' divinity as God "raising Jesus up" (i.e. the Ascension) on account of his perfection. Paul doesn't refer to Jesus' existence from all time, as John does : "In the Beginning was the Word".

It is true that Jesus refers to God separately as both "Abba" (a peculiarly Jewish patronymic), and as a "Spirit" (in John, for example), but nowhere does he refer to those as distinct aspects of a Triune Godhead.

It surely took a few centuries for this to be resolved - rather clumsily - in the Creeds? Certainly, it never became EARLY orthodoxy in the way that some other aspects of Christianity did. If it was such a significant part of the religion, wouldn't it be there all along? It did not - for example - take all that long for Hebrew prophecies to be brought into play to show that Jesus was the foretold Messiah, again a peculiarly Jewish strand that became a lot less relevant as the Gentile world adopted the religion.

The Eastern Orthodox church sees the Trinity as an 'illogical, inexplicable mystery to be meditated on'.

If I was a Christian, I wouldn't be a Trinitarian, that's for sure! But I guess this is something we will never agree upon.

>130 Tid:: "The Eastern Orthodox church sees the Trinity as an 'illogical, inexplicable mystery to be meditated on'. "

So does the Western Church. I think what you're having trouble seeing is that many Christian doctrines aren't explicitly laid out systematically in Scripture. They have to pieced be together from a little revelation here, a little meditation there, and a lot of mystery everywhere. If Scripture is indeed the Word of God (and I'm intentionally playing with the idea of identity slippage here), then its meaning is, indeed, in that paradoxical, illogical place of infinity encapsulated in finititude -- the Bible is God's revelation of his (or her or its) infinity incarnated / illiterated (meaning enlettered -- pesky assimilation of in- to il- makes this a difficult concept to express verbally -- perhaps that's intentional?).

I think cjbanning likes to describe the Trinity as the "perichoretic dialectic of conversation within Godself: Parent, Begotten One, and Spirit." (See here). What this gets at is that the idea of the Trinity is an attempt to understand the relational, active, emanative nature of the divinity. It's an attempt to express in human language a truth about God that is, indeed, revealed throughout Scripture, in that the God scripture reveals is one of relationship, of activity, of emanative love and the human yearning to return.

(A lot of this can simply be rehashed from the Holy Spirit thread in the Christianity group from earlier this year, which dealt at length with the development of Trinitarian doctrine out scriptural sources, and included several reposts from Christians who reject the Trinitarian doctrine as "non-biblical".)

131

I've dipped into that Holy Spirit thread (thank you for the pointer), but I get the familiar weariness when I realise I have to read through 200+ posts, many lengthy. However, I read about 30+ posts which gave a flavour of the thread.

I'm not convinced yet. It seems to me that another argument for the origins of the Trinity is that those "little revelations" here, "meditations" and "mystery" could have led Church Fathers to add 1 plus 1 and get 3 (pun intended). In other words the Trinity arose precisely because the quest for scriptural understanding allied to theological questions that needed to be answered in a particular way, gave a direction that was biased towards a Trinitarian answer.

However, it leaves as many questions as answers (which I'm sure you will agree!). To those who say that the Holy Spirit was left to take the place of Jesus, my questions would be : "Why then does Jesus describe God as already a Spirit (in John)?" "Did humanity before Jesus, have no access to a holy spirit?" "Could it not be that Jesus simply meant 'Although I will no longer be with you, you have known me, and therefore the Spirit will be strong in you' "?

Other religions seem to have dealt with this without resorting to Trinitarian solutions. And the one other occurrence, in Hinduism, has Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma, who are co-equal, sempiternal, and of three clear functions (creator, preserver, and dissolver). Over all three is the eternal Brahman, who is the "one God", who pre-exists creation unlike the other three. This seems far less problematic than Christianity's Trinity, which (to me, who would be a natural Unitarian if I was a believer) appears to be a 'marriage of convenience', and would never have arisen if - for example - Arianism had prevailed.

>89 lawecon: "The earliest manuscripts (presumably written by the earlier Christians) contain no attribution of the Gospel of Matthew."

Where are these mss, and why is the textual apparatus of my NA27 silent concerning them? There may have once been such mss, but they are not extant.

There is indeed a hypothesis, popularised by von Harnack and Zahn, that the Gospels circulated anonymously and only acquired their ascriptions later when collected and needing to be distinguished. This continues to be widely repeated, but there doesn't seem to be any material evidence for it. Their work predates our modern papyrus discoveries (the few which include the beginning of a gospel invariably give the familiar 'Euangelion kata N.' subscriptio), and Martin Hengel gives reasons (convincing to me) to think the titles go back very early indeed (Studies in the Gospel of Mark, pp.65ff), going to far as to claim "a considerable degree of probability they can be traced back to the time of the origin of the four Gospels between 69 and 100" (p.84).

>75 Tid:,119 (Marcion's canon)

We don't know the 'cut' was made long afterwards, in response to Marcion's canon. That the (proto-)orthodox church was pushed towards formalising its (larger and more inclusive - not exactly cut!) canon in response to Marcion's example is a plausible hypothesis (once again due, I think, to von Harnack) eminently satisfying in its irony, but we have no direct evidence to that effect, and there are similarly plausible hypotheses advanced to the contrary. As Bruce Metzger writes, "the question whether the Church's canon preceded or followed Marcion's canon continues to be debated." (The Canon of the New Testament, p.98)

(Remember also that Marcion only had one Gospel in his canon, a modified version of Luke - his followers had nothing to do with the Gospels of Peter, Thomas, etc. His choice of Luke appears to presuppose its attribution to the disciple of Paul.)

>67 Tid: "Remember too, there is a Gospel of Peter, which quite possibly WAS written by Peter the disciple, but was excluded by the Roman church probably because it espoused women priests."

I don't think I've previously read a serious suggestion the Gospel of Peter was genuinely written by Peter the disciple (though it certainly claims to be so in a far more direct manner than any Synoptic: "But I, Simon Peter, and Andrew my brother, took our nets..."), and the only priests it mentions are male, Jewish and blood-guilty. (I would surmise your mention of women priests derives indirectly from some speculation or other that it was suppressed because of the comparatively prominent role of Mary Magdalene in its resurrection narrative? There is no evidence for this, and it certainly wasn't the reason given by Serapion of Antioch, its earliest recorded suppressor.)

>98 Tid:,100 (Socrates, etc.)

In pursuing the Quest for the Historical Socrates, one could also consider the Socratic 'Gospel' according to Xenophon - or indeed Aristophanes! And then consider the weight to be given to 'apocryphal' dialogues in the Platonic canon...

~133

The introduction to the NAB translation of the Gospel of Matthew states:

"The ancient tradition that the author was the disciple and apostle of Jesus named Matthew (see Mt 10:3) is untenable because the gospel is based, in large part, on the Gospel according to Mark (almost all the verses of that gospel have been utilized in this), and it is hardly likely that a companion of Jesus would have followed so extensively an account that came from one who admittedly never had such an association rather than rely on his own memories. The attribution of the gospel to the disciple Matthew may have been due to his having been responsible for some of the traditions found in it, but that is far from certain."

http://www.nccbuscc.org/bible/matthew/0

There is also an extensive discussion of this question here.

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/matthew.html

I think that those discussions are probably better than your argument from absence, don't you?

I think you are at an impasse, Tid. If one espouses an absolutist position that the Bible is the literal truth, then one is stuck in that position. You can't question even a part of it, because that opens up the possibility that all of it may be wrong. Therefore it is necessary that Matthew be written by the apostle Matthew, that Mark, Luke, and John, all be written by the apostles Mark, Luke and John. Because if they weren't then everything falls apart.

I abhor Biblical literalism, but it would be intellectually consistent to argue that the Bible was absolutely true but that the names of the books were not necessarily so. The point here is frequently made by more liberal commentators—the evidence is that the titles and "authors" of the biblical books were not originally part of the texts. (This is pretty common in antiquity.) As an extreme case, the biblical literalist doesn't need to defend the section numbering, section heading or footnotes just because they are in a Bible.

> 135

Yes, it's only fair to distinguish between the text and the apparatus; and in the case of the Bible, the titles of the books are part of the latter.

>135 timspalding: The point here is frequently made by more liberal commentators—the evidence is that the titles and "authors" of the biblical books were not originally part of the texts. (This is pretty common in antiquity.)

I don't disagree, but if your belief is founded on a specific idea that the Bible comes to us directly from God and is without error, and if you've been raised to believe that Matthew was written by the apostle Matthew, etc, then you can't question it, can you? Because if it wasn't, then there was an error and you believe the Bible is without error, being the word of God.

As one who does believe the Bible comes from God through man being led by the Holy Spirit (verbal plenary inspiration) I can answer the question in 137, "if your belief is founded on a specific idea that the Bible comes to us directly from God and is without error, and if you've been raised to believe that Matthew was written by the apostle Matthew, etc, then you can't question it, can you?" Absolutely you can question it. I just happen to think the evidence from the early church is clear that they had no doubt that Matthew was written by Matthew, so why should I doubt their opinion because someone almost 2000 years later decides that they don't think it is so.

Edited for spelling error.

>134 lawecon:

Forgive me if I have missed the pertinent passage, but I don't believe either of those introductions you link touch on the attribution (as opposed to authorship) of Matthew?

I appear to have been unclear - I did not intend to argue for apostolic authorship. I merely point out that we have no direct knowledge of a time when this Gospel was not ascribed to 'Matthew' (I think we can safely enough assume the Apostle Matthew, though the slender internal evidence is only the change of name from Levi to Matthew in Mt 9.9 vs Mk 2.14), and, though there can be no definitive proof either way, some respected scholars make the case there was no such time and that the work bore this pseudonym from its earliest circulation. No early unattributed manuscripts of the canonical gospels exist today, and it may well be that none ever did.

I hope this is not too pedantic a correction. There has been a lot of hearsay passed on as fact on this thread by many different posters, and I was hoping to clear up a few bits of it.

I can sympathise with John reasoning with Fuzzi the way he is (#68, #82, &c), and am hesitant to disagree with both Tim and Pseuodoxosalpha (#135, #136) but I think their approach is mistaken insofar as it wholly discounts the Inscriptios as part of the canonical text of the Gospels. (The case may be more complicated where the textual tradition is divergent - eg. the Subscriptio to the Epistle to the Hebrews.)

I would compare this to the status of the titles of the psalms, or of the twelve/minor prophets. Although almost all liturgical psalters and some modern protestant bibles wholly omit the former, and their ascriptions to eg. David are often not credible, we do not have a text of the Book of Psalms that precedes them, and indeed some of Augustine's best preaching was on somewhat garbled Latin translations of these titles. (I would welcome your input here from a Jewish perspective.)

>138 ambrithill:I just happen to think the evidence from the early church is clear that they had no doubt that Matthew was written by Matthew, so why should I doubt their opinion because someone almost 2000 years later decides that they don't think it is so.

You state this as if the person 2000 years later is de facto wrong just because of the length of time between events. But presumably he/she has reasons for his/her opinion, and you seem to ignore what those might be. You use the word "decides" as if it were the arbitrary act of a capricious mind.

I presume (I am not a Biblical scholar) that there are reasons for concluding that the Gospels were not written by the apostles they are named for, and such reasons might include linguistic analysis, archaeological evidence, comparative analysis of such contemporary sources as are available, examination of the internal evidence of the text, studies of various translations and where and when they differ.

I did not mean to say that they are de facto wrong because of the length of time between events, but that I believe the early church is de facto right, unless there is actual evidence they were wrong. Things such as the writings of a supposed Q source does not count as evidence since there is not even one shard of this source in existence. Most, not all, of the people who use the linguistic analysis and textual anyalsis did so, imho, as a way to disprove the Bible as being the Word of God. Therefore, I prefer to accept what was believed by the early church.

>141 ambrithill: Most, not all, of the people who use the linguistic analysis and textual anyalsis did so, imho, as a way to disprove the Bible as being the Word of God

ambrithill, I think you do an injustice to Christian biblical scholars. As far as I can see, "most, not all, of the people who use the linguistic analysis and textual anyalsis did so" in order to try to help us to understand the Word of God. I think you assume that those who do not accept bible literalism do not accept the bible as the Word of God. They do. They simply do not accept the fairly modern minority Christian position of bible literalism.

I don't disagree, but if your belief is founded on a specific idea that the Bible comes to us directly from God and is without error, and if you've been raised to believe that Matthew was written by the apostle Matthew, etc, then you can't question it, can you? Because if it wasn't, then there was an error and you believe the Bible is without error, being the word of God.

Right. I have little respect for fundamentalism. It's intellectually bogus and, to speak of both my church (Catholicism) and the vast majority of Christians, it is quite simply a heresy and therefore offensive to God as well as logic, scholarship, etc. But it doesn't need to embrace what it's sometimes said to.

Things such as the writings of a supposed Q source does not count as evidence since there is not even one shard of this source in existence

It depends what you mean by "evidence." Has a separate text come to our attention? No. But the text can be inferred from other texts.

If two students turned in different exams, but with large portions largely identical with each other, a rational, reasonable teacher would conclude that there was a common source. He would bring them before the principal and his "evidence" would be these uncanny similarities. If one of the students said, "but you haven't got the text we were said to copy from" the teacher would explain that the evidence are the texts they have already.

The example was not chosen to be offensive. Ancient copying isn't like modern copying—basic texts on other texts was common and, at least in some genres, without negative implications. But it's hard to talk about textual analysis of this sort to a modern whose whole writing and publishing system avoids copying.

~141

"I did not mean to say that they are de facto wrong because of the length of time between events, but that I believe the early church is de facto right, unless there is actual evidence they were wrong."

And, once again, I must ask: what would count as "actual evidence" in your world? Certainly nothing we've talked about so far.

#139: I merely point out that we have no direct knowledge of a time when this Gospel was not ascribed to 'Matthew' (I think we can safely enough assume the Apostle Matthew, though the slender internal evidence is only the change of name from Levi to Matthew in Mt 9.9 vs Mk 2.14)

I don't understand why we can safely assume that. LibraryThing has had to split a great many authors, and even if we assume that Matthew was the signature of the author and not the name the author wrote under, that doesn't mean it was the Matthew of the Gospels.

141

"I believe the early church is de facto right, unless there is actual evidence they were wrong. ... Therefore, I prefer to accept what was believed by the early church."

I can understand why you would lean that way, and in most circumstances you could promote a very good case for it ("closer to the events" etc). However, I believe there are two strong arguments against it when attempting to speak for the "early church".

1. Early Christianity was a Jewish sect. Jesus was a Jew, the disciples were Jews, the early Christians were Jews. The early centre is most likely to have been Jerusalem. We don't know if that community had written records, or simply an oral tradition, but what there was, was destroyed in the Roman sack of Jerusalem after 70AD. An entire first generation of possible evidence is thus lost to us.

2. Post-Masada, the only evidence we have for the early church is the written account of the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles of Paul. We see how Paul was largely influential for the spread of the early church from its Jewish base into the Gentile world. That Gentile world was part of the Roman Empire. Much, then, of the work of the early church, must have involved trying to either appease (at worst) or convert (at best) the Roman world. One of the crucial missions of this work must have been to absolve Rome of responsibility for the death of Jesus - after all, you don't convert people to a new religion by starting with accusations of murder.

The Gospel account of the trial of Jesus is riddled with contraventions of Jewish law (though these were codified later, there is no evidence that they would have been much different at the trial). If you put all the 'legal errors' together with the fact that Caiaphas was a Roman appointee, a puppet, then it becomes clear that the Gospel account of Jesus's trial serves two purposes : 1. it appears to absolve Rome of direct responsibility (e.g. the fictionalised 'wavering' character of the brutal Pontius Pilate) but 2. it also appears to say to the Jews "look at the legal procedures, and how many legal errors were perpetrated - only you would know, as a people so reliant on your own laws, that this account of the trial is therefore something of a fabrication; only you will know that this was indeed largely a Roman act".

Placed into context, therefore, the work of the early church is so complex politically, and many of the pressures and subtleties of that period now lost to us, that to assign to it 2000 years later, a foundation of belief, is, at best, problematic.

>145 prosfilaes: (Identification of 'Matthew' with the apostle of that name)

Many (most?) later gospels claim an authoritative author in their titles - eg. Peter and Thomas (in both these cases the text makes it explicit that the apostle is intended). Mark and Luke are notable exceptions. So there is a good-ish prior probability that the title of the Gospel according to Matthew was similarly intended, and, if not intended, near certainty that it would quickly become understood thus.

The conjunction of the Gospel's name and the small but seemingly significant name-change to the tax-collector whom Mark and Luke call Levi, and his identification with the apostle (Mt 10.3), strengthens the probability that it was so intended, or would be so understood.

It does remain possible there was an early misidentification and conflation of two distinct Matthews (though I think this unlikely), but the Gospel has been linked to the apostle as far back as we can trace it, and other than to rescue it from the stigma of pseudonymity I can't see what is to be gained by assuming otherwise.

> 147 It does remain possible there was an early misidentification and conflation of two distinct Matthews (though I think this unlikely),

Unlikely why? Records suggest that in the communities concerned, the name Matthew (a Hellenized form of Nathaniel) was common as dirt. We can see that very process operating in the conflation of the author of the fourth gospel with that of the Apocalypse. Even if neither document involves pseudepigraphy, they were certainly written by different "Johns," as the current scholarly consensus will attest.

>148 paradoxosalpha:: "the name Matthew (a Hellenized form of Nathaniel)"

I did not know that -- you learn something new every day, eh?

I believe the early church is de facto right, unless there is actual evidence they were wrong. ... Therefore, I prefer to accept what was believed by the early church.

I agree. Why aren't you a Catholic? Protestants sometimes like to imagine that the church of the New Testament itself was like them, and there's some appeal to this. But the church that speaks of Matthew as Matthew's—the church that starts to come into focus in the second century—is quite another thing. Priests, bishops, apostolic succession, veneration of saints, veneration of Mary, liturgies, relics… it's all very Catholic.

For what it's worth, however, there is considerable evidence it's wrong—that Matthew was not in fact written by Matthew. For starters, if written by the apostle, why would he chose to copy almost all of it from Mark and an unknown source shared with Luke?

Post-Masada, the only evidence we have for the early church is the written account of the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles of Paul.

"Early church" is a fuzzy concept. What period are you pointing to, exactly?

~146

"Early Christianity was a Jewish sect. Jesus was a Jew, the disciples were Jews, the early Christians were Jews. The early centre is most likely to have been Jerusalem. We don't know if that community had written records, or simply an oral tradition, but what there was, was destroyed in the Roman sack of Jerusalem after 70AD. An entire first generation of possible evidence is thus lost to us."

Yes, that is certainly the standard interpretation, but what is really the evidence for it? As you subsequently point out, there is virtually no evidence. To me, your use of the term "Early Christianity" seems to be highly equivocal. Let's unwrap that:

(1) From what we know, Jesus was a Jew. It has been suggested, however, that he was a mamzer Rabbi Jesus and thus may not have the full ritual rights of a Jew in his community.

(2) Further, his community was a small town in a district remote from Jerusalem - this latter is also true of many of his immediate disciples. So, yes, Jesus and the disciples were Jews, but given the diversity in Judaism and the diversity in their background from the "standard" of Judaism in his day, I'm not sure how much that tells us.

(3) The next uncertainty is even a more important one: what was Jesus' level of education? Again, the evidence, what little evidence we have, points in two quite different directions. The Christian Scriptures make a great deal of Jesus' knowledge of Jewish law, the Jewish scriptures and his sophistication in interpreting these. Jesus is frequently portrayed as besting Scribes, Pharisees and Saducees in arguments. Strangely, the quotations we have from him from the Jewish Scriptures are generally from the Greek version of those Scriptures, rather than the Hebrew or Aramaic versions. Yet, at the same time, we have the above claims about Jesus' origins. How does the son of a skilled craftsman from a rural area in a generally impoverished society who may have been barred from such synagogue functions as reading the Torah in assembly obtain such profound knowledge of Jewish Law and Jewish Scriptures in Greek ?

(4) Now, expanding the term "Early Church" beyond Jesus' immediate precrucifixion circle there are two questions of note: (1) If Jesus was as famous as the Gospels portray him as being, why is there no record at all of him during his life outside of those Gospels, and (2) If the Church was truly centered in Jerusalem and was a significant force in Jerusalem - rather than something like the Branch Davidians of our day - why was Paul taking up donations to support its continued existence several decades later?

>141 ambrithill: Most, not all, of the people who use the linguistic analysis and textual anyalsis did so, imho, as a way to disprove the Bible as being the Word of God.

There is a difference between setting out to prove a theory and seeing where the evidence takes you. The former is bad scholarship, because the conclusion is predetermined and therefore it is likely that evidence which contradicts the desired end result will be ignored. Seeing where the evidence takes you, however, requires an open mind and a willingness to revise or even abandon your theory if the evidence suggests you are wrong. That is good scholarship.

It's the one thing that seems foreign to a fundamentalist approach to life--that we learn as much from being wrong as from being right.

>143 timspalding: I have little respect for fundamentalism. It's intellectually bogus

It arouses all my ire as well. I can't see it as anything but an abdication of personal responsibility to think for oneself.

I can't see it as anything but an abdication of personal responsibility to think for oneself.

I think that's too easy. It supposes a model of knowledge that just doesn't hold any more, if it ever did.

This gets me into something Lawecon will grimace at. But I think it's a neglected truth about knowledge today. We don't actually think our way all the way through most problems. We trust experts.

For example, I know nothing whatsoever about the mechanics of internal combustion engines. But if a high-school-educated handyman were to announce that he'd invented one that was twice as efficient, I'd be skeptical. This skepticism wouldn't be unjustified—it would merely be based on meta-knowledge. I know that thousands of genius engineers have worked on such engines for decades, and that progress is incremental and has largely stopped. I understand the dynamics of science and of markets enough to know that, generally, gigantic technical advances in large, well-understood fields like engine design are exceedingly rare. I know that if progress were to be made, it would probably be by someone with an advanced degree, working in a team. I know how autodidacticism works, and the low rate of major scientific discoveries among autodidacts without education. All this doesn't get me to a proof that the fellow didn't do what he's claiming. I'll have to wait for real experts for that; it's their job to look past meta-knowledge and do the hard work. But meta-knowledge gets me to reasonable and almost certainly correct belief.

The case with fundamentalism and the opposition to biblical scholarship is not a failure of knowledge. I don't expect the regular person to be able to reason through and discover what modern textual critics know about the New Testament. It took very smart people centuries to reach the current state of knowledge. The error is in meta-knowledge—in knowing whom to trust and what knowledge looks like. Someone who understands that sees that modern Biblical scholarship is a thing of generations of smart people with extensive technical training working in a peer-reviewed and self-correcting field—and that the fundamentalist response is a shadow of it.

>153 timspalding: The error is in meta-knowledge—in knowing whom to trust and what knowledge looks like.

But at the foundation of this is the idea that the path to knowledge is there to be retraced, by anyone, whenever they are so inclined. It is never off-limits. "Why?" is my favorite question. "Because I said so" is never an appropriate response.

“One of the reasons I think that our youth is so badly educated—and it is inconceivably badly educated—is because education demands a certain daring, a certain independence of mind. You have to teach young people to think, and in order to do that you have to teach them to think about everything. There mustn't be something they cannot think about. If there is one thing they cannot think about, then very shortly they cannot think about anything.” --James Baldwin

>154 southernbooklady:

I guess I'm more concerned about people who make real-sounding arguments for silly things—Biblical fundamentalism, anti-climate change, intelligent design, etc. If someone has a completely different theory of knowledge and avoids such arguments, well, I have a certain respect for that. I have respect for an Amish guy who trusts in the literal truth of the Bible and that's that. They're wrong, but they're not abusing knowledge.

>155 timspalding: people who make real-sounding arguments for silly things

That is intellectual fraud. I think there is a circle of hell for that in the afterlife. ;-)

150

Specifically I meant by "early church" the immediate post-crucifixion generation, that would have had a base in Jerusalem, and about which we know little or nothing after the Roman sack of Jerusalem, apart from the accounts in Acts and letters of Paul.

151

1. I had to look up "mamzer", I wonder where the evidence for that is? I'm not familiar with that book, but I have read Jesus the Jew (Vermes).

2. Yes, Galileans were not exactly respected or respectable folk in Jerusalem at that time. And there was still quite a split between Israel and Judah, yes?

3. We know nothing outside the Bible accounts for Jesus's childhood and education, though those accounts do suggest he was fluent in Jewish Law. I'm not sure he knew Greek - surely the earliest sources we have are translations into Greek from Aramaic? Or, composed in Greek by those Jews of the Asia Minor diaspora who had become fluent in Greek, qua Luke? Jesus's ability, or otherwise, to speak Greek, is not relevant, I think.

4. Exactly. Why does a child who as a baby was so famous that Herod supposedly ordered the deaths of all first-borns in order to eradicate him and so famous that wise men from the East travel to his birth, then suddenly disappear utterly from the pages of history?
As for the early Christian base in Jerusalem, I agree that is supposition based on accounts in Acts. I don't think I ever said it was a significant force, though? It was much more likely to have been a minor cult in Jerusalem, its influence spreading through the Eastern Mediterranean thanks to Paul, who was the real force in giving Christianity its unique and independent identity. After the events of 70-72AD, if there had been sceptical, uninterested, or even hostile Jewish voices raised, they would have been effectively silenced.

>157 Tid:

Right, but this is confused. Acts ends and Paul dies before the sack of Jerusalem. Jerusalem was sacked in AD 70. That's still "early" but it's not the first years. By 70 the disciples would have been in their 60s and 70s, at least.

>153 timspalding: I don't expect the regular person to be able to reason through and discover what modern textual critics know about the New Testament.

Agreed. And yet I know plenty of Catholics of "simple faith" who know nothing about exegesis and not much about heavy-duty science but who still have a common sense attitude, perhaps bolstered by hints that they've received from their priests, towards interpreting the bible. This type of common sense faith does not lead to fundamentalism and literalism.

~157

So, in what respect does Christianity have its roots in Judaism, or, as you put it, "was a Jewish sect"? It seems a whole lot more likely that it was a Greek-culture sect who were "Godfearers" and decided to give their already eccentric and eclectic views of Judaism an addition more-Greek twist.

>160 lawecon:

parti pris

I believe the early church is de facto right, unless there is actual evidence they were wrong. ... Therefore, I prefer to accept what was believed by the early church.

I agree. Why aren't you a Catholic?

Tim, why aren't you Orthodox?

>148 paradoxosalpha: Unlikely why?

For the reasons I outlined in the preceding two paragraphs - (1) other Gospels do attribute themselves to authoritative figures (including John - whosoever the mysterious Beloved Disciple may be 'this is the disciple who is testifying to these things'); (2) the redaction of this Gospel shows a (slight) interest in the apostolic figure of Levi/Matthew, which could plausibly either result from, or have resulted in, such an attribution.

We don't leap to the hypothesis of two itinerant preachers called Paul with disciples called Timothy to explain the Deutero-Paulines.

Tim, why aren't you Orthodox?

Oh, I considered it. My answer is something like this:

The Orthodox church is static. They've hell-bent on preserving the early church—or a slightly medieval view of the early church—but they forget that the early church was dynamic and popular. The Catholic church got over this, especially in Vatican II, deciding, for example, that although Latin was "ancient" the appropriately early-church and patristic thing is to do the mass in the language of the people.

Similarly, while I respect the Orthodox for holding onto their ancient rites and beliefs, I can't believe that God really wanted the last ecumenical council to be the Second Council of Nicaea in 787, that God wanted the organization of patriarchs to be largely unchanged (and geographically crazy). The example of this can be multiplied for quite some time. (Indeed, the only innovation they've really done is in creating self-governing churches which are in fact disturbingly independent of all authority.)

Lastly, the Orthodox church is disturbingly insular and ethnocentric. It's virtually given up on the world outside of its traditional areas. It's in a 1,000 year crouch. I can't believe that THAT is the true church, and the more dynamic, adaptive, and expansive Catholic church is not.

I could write that better if I have more time, but I have to run.

158

I may have worded things confusingly. Yes, Paul predates the fall of Jerusalem, and therefore his ministry does too. But the WRITTEN accounts (Acts, Epistles) come afterwards. And there are questions yet unanswered: How much conflict was there between Paul and the Apostles / Jewish church over the direction of the church? How far did the events of the Pentecost (if true) change things? How Jewish was the church in Jerusalem?

160

It depends how you define "Christianity". If you see it as largely a creation of Paul, and its early locus as being Asia Minor / the Diaspora, then yes, it is a very Hellenistic religion.
But if you define it from its earliest post-crucifixion days, then it begins as a group of Jews, followers of Jesus, who attempted to carry out his instructions and follow his example. This aspect we only know from The Acts, which - by the time it was written - was written IN Greek BY a Greek, a member of an already Hellenised church.
Yet another strand was the early church in Antioch, which ultimately became the Syriac Church, and preserves to this day a strain of Aramaic, and the earliest Christian liturgy. This early expansion eastwards did not incorporate a Hellenised version of Christianity.

> 163 We don't leap to the hypothesis of two itinerant preachers called Paul with disciples called Timothy to explain the Deutero-Paulines.

Talk about apples and oranges. My "Johns" example is closer, and even that is tendentious in requiring both Johns to be scriptural authors, whereas a simple hypothesis of Matthew-the-Apostle vs. Matthew-the-Evangelist is even more parsimonious.

> 161

Wait, in an effort to account for Christianity, are you trying to say that you're less partisan than lawecon, Tim?

I'll ponder that.

But I agree with him on the point at issue.

#153: But I think it's a neglected truth about knowledge today. We don't actually think our way all the way through most problems. We trust experts.

For example, I know nothing whatsoever about the mechanics of internal combustion engines.

That's because you have no emotional attachment to that problem. Most of the problems that get people yelling are ones with emotional issues--global warming, creationism, JFK's death, 9/11 denialism. People who are willing to trust experts when they talk about expert things aren't willing to accept them when it hits home. Sometimes they're wrong; an expect told Galveston, Texas that they were safe from hurricanes; the Galveston Hurricane of 1900 disproved that claim and killed 8,000. When do you abdicate your right to analyze an issue important to you for experts?

There's a review at LT of Contributions to the Founding of the Theory of Transfinite Numbers that dismisses it as "it was not a part of the standard arithmetical game, for he made several errors"; if the author understood that it has been a foundational part of mathematics for most of a century, that's an example of this that's less emotionally attached. A budget of paradoxes lists a lot of these, where people had a non-standard value for pi or a way to square the circle.

~165

"It depends how you define "Christianity". If you see it as largely a creation of Paul, and its early locus as being Asia Minor / the Diaspora, then yes, it is a very Hellenistic religion.
But if you define it from its earliest post-crucifixion days, then it begins as a group of Jews, followers of Jesus, who attempted to carry out his instructions and follow his example. This aspect we only know from The Acts, which - by the time it was written - was written IN Greek BY a Greek, a member of an already Hellenised church.
Yet another strand was the early church in Antioch, which ultimately became the Syriac Church, and preserves to this day a strain of Aramaic, and the earliest Christian liturgy. This early expansion eastwards did not incorporate a Hellenised version of Christianity."

I would appreciate recommended sources on the "other strand" and its representatives today. The Christianity I am familiar with is essentially a Greek body, and any influence of the "Jewishness" of Jesus and his Disciples is not only heterodox Jewishness but pretty much nonexistent.

>165 Tid:

Acts was surely written after the fall of Jerusalem, but the non-pseudonymous letters of Paul were certainly written before—no less than 12 years before, for the last.

Wait, in an effort to account for Christianity, are you trying to say that you're less partisan than lawecon, Tim?

It depends on the question—whether I am discussing history or, basically, opinion. I don't think my Christian religion is making me think Lawecon's analysis of Christianity as not really a Jewish thing at all, but something cooked up by God-fearers, is slanted. Mainstream academic scholarship is squarely on my side here. The Jewish roots and context of Christianity have become nothing but clearer in the last half-century.

So, I suppose I disagree with you too. I don't think Christianity was "largely a creation of Paul." I don't think the evidence supports that. I'd give him great credit for influencing it, but his influence was more of a theologian interpreting a religion than of a charismatic religious leading dreaming one up. (One might analogize Luther, who created Protestantism and its very different slant on Christian truth, but did not create Christianity.) We shall perhaps have to differ on that.

The other big question is "what does Greek mean in this context?" Sometimes people mean that, for example, Jesus' being God or the son of God is a fundamentally syncretic and Greek notion—Heracles and so forth—and was clearly not a Jewish idea. I think the evidence goes against that and points to a deep Jewish context for the core beliefs of the Christian community. But it may also hinge on what differences are significant enough. Jewish Christian adoptionists are still squarely Christians in my book.

That's because you have no emotional attachment to that problem

That's important, certainly. I think tribalism is as important as anything else. But your point is well taken.

When do you abdicate your right to analyze an issue important to you for experts?

Right, or responsibility?

Well, I think that's the $64,000 question. As someone who, like most or all of us here, is better educated and more intellectually inquisitive than 95% of Americans, I draw the line pretty far. I don't know much about internal combustion engines, but I've tried to understand other subjects outside my direct interests to some degree. Expertise is a scalar, not a binary. If everyone in the United States had a decent understanding of science and its methods, while they may not be able to speak with authority on evolution, they would understand some of the more important flaws in those who oppose it. Still, we aren't reasoning and investigating much all the way through. That's life in the modern world.

#170: Right, or responsibility?

"Right". You're asking people who "know" that the second law of thermodynamics means evolution couldn't work to put their trust in scientists rather then their own understanding. Responsibility comes into play, too, but I was talking about the people who want to believe in something the experts disagree with.

If everyone in the United States had a decent understanding of science and its methods,

I don't know. Evolution is a pretty audacious claim, where the visible part takes place over thousands of times longer then a human life. The evidence for global warming is a lot more current, a lot more accessible, and yet there's still quite a bit of push-back from those who should know their science.

Still, we aren't reasoning and investigating much all the way through.

No. I certainly agree on that.

>170 timspalding: That's because you have no emotional attachment to that problem

>171 prosfilaes: The evidence for global warming is a lot more current, a lot more accessible, and yet there's still quite a bit of push-back from those who should know their science

Perhaps not only emotional but also ideological. Many who have certain political and financial vested interests deny global warming; many who have a particular religious interest deny evolution. The former appear to be putting short-term interests against the longer-term common good; the latter (at least in the view of most religionists) are misunderstanding (or misusing) religion.

I don't know. Evolution is a pretty audacious claim, where the visible part takes place over thousands of times longer then a human life. The evidence for global warming is a lot more current, a lot more accessible, and yet there's still quite a bit of push-back from those who should know their science.

I'll agree with you on the visibility. Indeed, with global warming, that's even a problem. So much of the stupid science that's worked against the real science in global warming has involved confusing global climate with weather events.

As far as the science, evolution is well past global warming. Yes, virtually all mainstream scientists believe the climate is being changed by carbon dioxide. But we don't have a clear handle on how quickly, how bad it will get, what can be done to mitigate the effects, etc. Evolution is the very basis of modern biology.

>166 paradoxosalpha:

There are external reasons to multiply Johns (eg. Papias' distinction, at least as interpreted by Eusebius, between John the Apostle and John the Elder; Dionysius of Alexandria's attribution of Revelation to another John; &c) and possibly internal reasons too (no indication of a connection between the Twelve Apostles and the authorial voice in Rev 21.14?). It isn't immediately clear who "I, John" is supposed to be, whereas it is clear who we are intended to understand by "Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ" in 1 Tim 1.1; Matthew falls somewhere between these cases.

In case this is where I have caused confusion: we can distinguish Matthew-the-Apostle from the author of the Gospel who bears his name, and it it convenient to refer to the (unknown) latter by the name 'Matthew'. This is a common contemporary use. My 'safe' assumption did not concern this, but the (ancient) reference of the Title - whose name does the Gospel bear: Matthew-the-Apostle or A.N. Unknown?

If we dug up the opening lines of a 'Gospel according to Paul' from the sands of Egypt, we wouldn't take for granted it was the genuine work of Paul-of-Tarsus, but I don't think a lot of time would be spent canvassing the notion that the title referred to another hitherto unknown Paul.

#173: As far as the science, evolution is well past global warming. Yes, virtually all mainstream scientists believe the climate is being changed by carbon dioxide. But we don't have a clear handle on how quickly, how bad it will get, what can be done to mitigate the effects, etc. Evolution is the very basis of modern biology.

We have passable climate simulations, but nothing remotely approaching even the most rudimentary simulation of any part of evolution. Evolution is the very basis of modern biology, and the complexity of biology on so many levels makes a solid start on an understanding hard. There's evolutionary biologists and climatologists, because evolution is hard and global warming is just another problem climatologists solve.

#171 Evolution is a pretty audacious claim, where the visible part takes place over thousands of times longer then a human life.

Not if one's a fruit fly or a moth adapting to reduction of soot in the environment. :)

We have passable climate simulations, but nothing remotely approaching even the most rudimentary simulation of any part of evolution. Evolution is the very basis of modern biology, and the complexity of biology on so many levels makes a solid start on an understanding hard. There's evolutionary biologists and climatologists, because evolution is hard and global warming is just another problem climatologists solve.

Hmmm. Well, as you say, we're to some extent comparing apples to oranges. One's a deep principle the other mostly a tricky empirical problem. But, look, it's not that long ago that serious academic researchers doubted global warming (eg., Richard Muller), and there are major open questions about it. No serious biologist doubts evolution, or has for many decades.

>176 margd:: "Not if one's a fruit fly"

That depends on what you're looking at. The last common ancestor of D. melanogaster and D. simulans was several million years ago. You can still force them (under the right conditions) to mate, but the hybrids are at best sterile and at worst lethal at various stages of oogenic development.

169

The Syriac Orthodox Church actually exists today, so I wonder what more sources you want or need? However, you'd have to live in Turkey or that region to appreciate its flavour of Christianity, and I'd agree that it has had very little impact on Christianity for 1500 years. Though the Church at Antioch WAS very active and influential up to at least Nicea, for example.

The 'Greekness' of Christianity goes back to very early days, and I'm sure that many of the dogmas that are taken for granted today, go back to Hellenistic roots, though many 'ordinary worshippers' probably aren't aware of these.

However, there are many strands that can be pointed to - particularly Jewish ones would be the annual Christmas re-statements of OT prophecies - e.g. Isaiah - of the coming of a 'Messiah', and the frequency with which Hebrew Bible (OT) readings are a part of church services.

Then there is the 'reply to Roman Imperium' strand. Read Marcus Borg on the subject of how the origins of Jesus as the 'Son of God' could be traced back to the habit of Caesars of becoming 'Sons of Gods' after their death. What was good enough for a Roman Emperor was good enough for Jesus, especially if Christianity was to survive in the Empire.

I agree that there is much Greek thought and philosophy that emerges in the early Church, but I would hardly say it's the only, or main, influence. Jesus was NOT Greek, and the Gospels do not portray him as anything but Jewish, albeit a very radical and heterodox one.

And neither fruit flies or moths are very impressive. A variation in the number of black and white moths is not a deep proof of evolution. And while fruit flies are impressive to scholars, they're not photogenic; it's hard to get most people real driven by them. Even personally, results about fruit flies tend to be data instead of cool stuff about the Mohave ground squirrel or something. There's a reason why the international symbol of the paleontologists is the T-rex, not the trilobite, even if most of them are going to come across way more of the latter in their days.

~179

"The Syriac Orthodox Church actually exists today, so I wonder what more sources you want or need? However, you'd have to live in Turkey or that region to appreciate its flavour of Christianity, and I'd agree that it has had very little impact on Christianity for 1500 years. Though the Church at Antioch WAS very active and influential up to at least Nicea, for example."

For some reason we are again not communicating. I maintained that the "early Church" was really Greek, not Jewish in its orientation. You said "look at the Syriac branch of the Church" (paraphrasing). I am simply asking you for your recommendation of what to look at, since you are obviously more conversant with that topic than I am. A few key touchstones or links to English sources would be appreciated.

"I agree that there is much Greek thought and philosophy that emerges in the early Church, but I would hardly say it's the only, or main, influence. Jesus was NOT Greek, and the Gospels do not portray him as anything but Jewish, albeit a very radical and heterodox one."

Once again, there seems to be some equivocation going on here. When I use the term "early Church, " I am NOT referring to Jesus and what he and the Apostles did during his life. I AM referring to what the Jerusalem based Apostles (thus excluding Paul) and any they directly converted did after his death in forming a community. Church = community. What I am maintaining is basically two points: (1) The Church in Jerusalem never was very significant in Jerusalem society or in the wider Christian Church. It started out and remained as basically a small cult that was rejected by most Jews, and particularly by those Jews who lived in the ritual and doctrinal center of Judaism of those days. (2) The "early Church" (for instance, the Church being addressed by Paul in most of correspondence) was mostly Gentile and "Greek" or very Hetrodox Jewish (Jews as you might find them in the diaspora or in one of the Greek cities in Judea) and thus mostly "Greek" in culture and in its intellectual presumptions.

As I understood your rebutal it was that there were Jews in the Syraic speaking countries who carried on more or less pure traditions from the Jerusalem Church. I am requesting references to their writings that I can read in English.

Of course it should be noted that in the first century, more Jews lived in the city of Rome than in Jerusalem. I assume you mean that first century Christianity does not reflect Palestinian Judaism, and not Judaism as a whole.

I'd point out that the Muratorian Fragment, which dates to c. 170 and is the earliest witness besides Marcion to an attempt to establish a "canon" of the New Testament, includes the Wisdom of Solomon, which is clearly a Jewish text, as it was written probably in the second century B.C. in Alexandria.

I think the issue we need to consider here is that, before Christ was ever born, many of the diaspora communities of Jews were already quite heavily hellenized, like those at Alexandria who produced the Septuagint and Wisdom.

But we all know that, despite scholarly consensus (as in the Jewish Annotated New Testament), lawecon has made it his personal mission to deny that Christianity has any connection to any form of Judaism that he personally considers authoritative.

The odd thing is that lawecon also has repeatedly said that there is no single definition of Jewishness and that Jews are free to define the boundaries of Jewishness however they see fit -- so how it is that what some people (including the Jewish scholars who put together the Jewish Annotated New Testament) consider Jewish about the roots of Christianity aren't Jewish just because he says so, isn't at all clear.

~182

In my view, as I have said many times before, there is no such thing as "Judaism as a whole," just as, as least by the time we get to the "Middle Ages," there is no such thing as "Christianity as a whole."

If we believe the narratives in the Torah, there were substantive divisions in "Judaism" going all the way back to the time of Moses. There were certainly such material divisions both within Judean society and between Judean society and the diaspora by the time we get to the mid or late Second Temple period.

It is difficult to believe, for instance, that most educated Jews around Jerusalem would have found Philo palatable, albeit he was apparently palatable to the major Jewish community in Egypt (or at least to those in the Egyptian majority that said community were addressing). Look at your own scriptural sources. It was a continuing problem for Paul and then for his successors that Christianity did not grow among those who were suppose to be "converted first," but did grown among "gentiles."

~183

"I think the issue we need to consider here is that, before Christ was ever born, many of the diaspora communities of Jews were already quite heavily hellenized, like those at Alexandria who produced the Septuagint and Wisdom."

I think that this is quite accurate and I made the same point immediately above before reading your post.

"But we all know that, despite scholarly consensus (as in the Jewish Annotated New Testament), lawecon has made it his personal mission to deny that Christianity has any connection to any form of Judaism that he personally considers authoritative."

It is interesting that the Christians in this group that want to maintain this perspective keep returning to this one volume, a volume that clearly has an agenda. An agenda which, incidentally, I completely agree with but which I apparently read as quite different than you guys read it to be. Further, if you are bothering to read what I am saying in this thread, it is not that Jesus and his immediate disciples were not a type of Jew, it is that the "Early Church" was mostly not Jewish, even not hetrodox/rural/partly Greek Jewish. It was just Greek.

"The odd thing is that lawecon also has repeatedly said that there is no single definition of Jewishness and that Jews are free to define the boundaries of Jewishness however they see fit -- so how it is that what some people (including the Jewish scholars who put together the Jewish Annotated New Testament) consider Jewish about the roots of Christianity aren't Jewish just because he says so, isn't at all clear."

The scholars who put together the Jewish Annotated New Testament are a type of Jew, and, again, so were Jesus and His disciples. However, the "Early Church" was not. There is a different between historical roots and the resulting plant, as we can see in virtually every religion and ideological movement.

>185 lawecon:: I'd just like to apologize for the snarky and disrespectful tone that I took in post 183. You have shown a graciously nuanced perspective in these comments, and in taking cheap shots at you, I failed to match the standard you have set.

181

Ah, I see the root of the misunderstanding, and it has much to do with my poor phraseology (I really must avoid replying to LT topics when it's past my bedtime!).

I think we are broadly in agreement. The "very early church" (i.e. in Jerusalem before its sack) must have had little influence, being a minor cult - and probably none on the Jews. Whereas the "early church" (Pauline) was spread throughout Asia Minor and picked up many Hellenistic influences as a result. I thought you were also suggesting that Christianity as it emerged was almost wholly Hellenistic in origin? (I may have read you wrong on that point). My reference to the Syriac Church was simply to point to an example of the Christian church that emerged in the early days that had Semitic rather than Greek influences.

My sources are (blushing) mostly online - for example this excellent article:

"Few Christian denominations can claim the antiquity of the Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch, whose foundations can be traced back to the very dawn of Christianity. The Church justifiably prides itself as being one of the earliest established apostolic churches. It was in Antioch, after all, that the followers of Jesus were called Christians as we are told in the New Testament, “The disciples were first called Christians in Antioch.” (Acts 11:26).

According to ecclesiastical tradition, the Church of Antioch is the second established church in Christendom after Jerusalem, and the prominence of its Apostolic See is well documented. In his Chronicon (I, 2), the church historian Eusebius of Caesarea tells us that St. Peter the Apostle established a bishopric in Antioch and became its first bishop. He also tells us that St. Peter was succeeded by Evodius. In another historical work, Historia Ecclesiastica, Eusebius tells us that Ignatius the Illuminator, “a name of note to most men, was the second after Peter to the bishopric of Antioch” (III, 36).

... The See of Antioch continues to flourish till our day, with His Holiness Patriarch Ignatius Zakka I, being the 122nd in the line of legitimate patriarchs.

....

The Syriac Orthodox Church is quite unique for many reasons. Firstly, it presents a form of Christianity, which is Semitic in nature, with a culture not far from the one Christ himself experienced. Secondly, it employs in its liturgy the Syriac language, an Aramaic dialect akin to the Aramaic spoken by Christ and the Apostles. Thirdly, its liturgy is one of the most ancient, and has been handed from one generation to another. Fourthly, and most importantly, it demonstrates the unity of the body of Christ by the multiethnic nature of its faithful: A visit to your local Syriac Orthodox Church in Europe or the Americas would demonstrate, for example, the blend of Near Eastern and Indian cultures in the motifs and vestments of clergy. The Syriac Orthodox faithful today live primarily in Middle Eastern countries and the Indian State of Kerala, with many communities in the diaspora. "

The url for that - http://sor.cua.edu/Intro/index.html

182

Yes, good point. Christianity - once the Marcionite attempt to reject the entire Hebrew Bible, i.e. OT, had failed - has always incorporated Judaic elements, especially at Christmas with the oft-read prophecy in Isaiah about the coming of a "Messiah", and the regular Sunday reading of OT passages in the church services of virtually every Christian denomination.

~167

Thank you very much. That is quite helpful.

As coincidence would have it, I am just now reading a book on Orthodox Christianity by Timothy Ware The Orthodox Church which mentions in the first Chapter what he calls the Oriental Christian Church. According to his brief account, this Church is "semitic" and broke off from the Orthodox Church around 500 C.E.. Many, but not all, of the member churches of what he calls the Oriental Church have "Syriac" as part of their names.

It turns out that there is one such Church in the Phoenix area. Curiously, however, it would appear that none of their basic liturigical materials are available in English translation. Although there is a standard critical edition of their Bible in Syriac from The Peshitta Institute, the same seems to be true for that volume. (They apparently do not recognize the Lamsa translation, and I have heard bad things about it from several other sources.)

189

On the subject of the Oriental Church (which got as far as China) you might want to look at The Jesus Sutras, which has a great deal to say about the differences between Western and post-Augustinian Christianity, and the Far Eastern church which was cut off from the Western church pre-Augustine (so never developed, for example, the concept of "original sin").

~190

Thank you again. I have added it to my Amazon wish list, as I am currently in the state of being (once again) far behind in my reading. But I'll get to it in the next several months.

I just love watching all these kilt-wearers running around: "You're no True Scotsman!" "No, no! You're no True Scotsman!" "No! Yours is no True Scots Kilt!"

http://irrev-black.com/?p=219
(Go on. Have a look at a nicely different take on the fallacy.)

Not sure I should disturb you when some of you are trying to turn the others into atheists. Or take away their faith, to use that wording. Which is precisely what I suspect the "fundamentalists" think you're doing: they tend to see little point in bothering with the bible if it isn't literally true (using the standard meanings of those two words). Good for them!

And let me say some things in defence of these "fundamentalists" and "literalists" some of you look down your noses at. I know of some of them who have made great personal sacrifices for the sake of doing good in this world, for instance teaching the poor simple things like how to sew, rather than encouraging them to "suffer with christ". And it wouldn't surprise me if those catholic nuns who have provoked the ire of their bishops by caring a tad too much about the poor, also were more "fundamentalism"-leaning.

And returning to your attempts to take their faith away from them, though phrasing myself poorly I fear: Do you really not see that they are in fact far closer to "the divine" than you are? That's how they see it. And I'd have to agree with them. Except of course for the fact that what they think is rightly labelled "the divine", I'd call "feelings" or whatever. Unless the direction you other True Scotsmen take is more correct and "the divine" properly should be labelled "the imaginative"...

I very much prefer the fundamentalists. Why? Simply because we share a - fundamental - understanding of silly little words like "truth". If any of those literalists are willing to heed advice from an atheist, I'd like to suggest "The Bible Unearthed" by Finkelstein and Silberman for the Old Testament. I have yet to get round to reading about the NT, but there are various interesting videos on YouTube featuring Bart Ehrman that you might find interesting.

Worried that becoming an atheist will mean that McDonalds will no longer be open when you expect? That Everest won't be there for you to climb? That your realtionships no longer will be warm and fuzzy? Don't be. I myself find much more pleasure in rainbows with that horrid fiction of Yahweh's mass murder out of the way.

>192 DiogenesOfSinope: I've been told (and not only in "Carry on up the Khyber") that no true Scotsman wears anything under his kilt, but I'm not is a position to judge whether that is true or not.

I know of some of them {fundamentalists and literalists, not Scotsmen, although I suppose it might also be true of Scotsmen} who have made great personal sacrifices for the sake of doing good in this world, for instance teaching the poor simple things like how to sew, rather than encouraging them to "suffer with christ".

I think you'll find that Christians of all stripes do these things too.

And it wouldn't surprise me if those catholic nuns who have provoked the ire of their bishops by caring a tad too much about the poor, also were more "fundamentalism"-leaning.

It certainly would surprise me.

>193 John5918: "It certainly would surprise me."

Are you suggesting it might be the bishops who lean more to "fundamentalism"? (Are we even using the same meaning of the word?) And I mentioned the nuns only as an attempt to show the courtesy of assuming that there might be people closer to the ground within the "non-literal" brands of religion who are less into wiffle waffle, but by all means, I do not insist.

How would we find out anyway? You seem to imply knowing no more about them than I do.

>193 John5918: Isn't it funny how atheists too do these things.

Some of them at least. The nice thing about atheists being that when they do tell people to "suffer in Darwin", oh, right, let's see if I can find something they might actually do - when they do terrorise children with butcher's knives, they don't get out of jail free by claiming that "Darwin told me to".

~192

"I just love watching all these kilt-wearers running around: "You're no True Scotsman!" "No, no! You're no True Scotsman!" "No! Yours is no True Scots Kilt!"

But I guess you're a true atheist. Mao wasn't. Stalin wasn't. But you are.

Got it.

>192 DiogenesOfSinope:: "And it wouldn't surprise me if those catholic nuns who have provoked the ire of their bishops by caring a tad too much about the poor, also were more "fundamentalism"-leaning."

And you wonder why some of us aren't taking your posts here seriously. If you're going to bring up an example, you could at least do us the courtesy of having a vague idea of its background and implications. Anybody with even half an understanding of the LCWR vs. the Vatican situation knows that the LCWR have gotten in trouble--rightly or wrongly--for being too "liberal" in areas such as feminism and abortion. (You can read the Doctrinal Assessment here: http://www.usccb.org/loader.cfm?csModule=security/getfile&pageid=55544 )

Take a look, for example, at the 2007 general address at the LCWR assembly by Sr. Laurie Brink (available here: https://lcwr.org/sites/default/files/calendar/attachments/2007_Keynote_Address-L... ). One of the things she got in trouble for was proposing that some religious communities would enter into a period of "sojourning beyond the Church" that in many ways is "post-Christian". That's about as far away from fundamentalism as you can get.

You can criticize us for measuring each others' kilts all you want, but given that you seem to have no idea what Christian kilts even look like, it might be better for you not to enter this fray.

>194 DiogenesOfSinope: I mentioned the nuns only as an attempt to show the courtesy of assuming that there might be people closer to the ground within the "non-literal" brands of religion who are less into wiffle waffle

Now there I might agree with you, but it's got little to do with fundamentalism.

You seem to imply knowing no more about them than I do.

I'm implying I know more about them than you do, and I think it's almost certainly a true implication. Although I'm not sure about that "no" in the middle of your sentence. Either it's a typo or I don't understand what you're saying.

>196 lawecon: "Got it."

Nope, you haven't. When theists terrorise children, they have a bad habit of claiming that they have been told to do so. And somehow that idiotic excuse is accepted by rational people. The disbelief in Wotan or Chrestus does not authorise you to do anything whatsoever, and is not accepted as such authorisation.

Stalin and Mao's problematic want was not theism, but humanism. Is it possible for us to agree on that?

>197 nathanielcampbell: After rooting for those nuns earlier this year, I promptly forgot about them and their details. Thanks, but I prefer my news sources non-authorised by clerics. I've seen that they were more liberal, or humane, as I might put it. Interesting how some consult "the divine" to discover that abortion is "the greatest destroyer of peace", where others ignore "the divine" in favour of simple empathy with women. (Or are nuns more likely to be True Scots? It's so hard to tell these things from outside the heads of the "diviners"...)

You see how the mentality of "divining" affects you? I've discovered that the best way to learn is to make mistakes. And where better to do that than... in the fray? (I so loved Aristotle's humaneness in Nicomachean Ethics versus the inhumanity of "the straight and narrow".)

>198 John5918: Depends on our definition of "fundamentalism"?

I read your statement differently.

I think we'd all do best to focus discussion on threads and people that are focusing. That means not getting sidetracked and derailed with absurdities. Fundamentalist nuns? Honestly, we'd all have much more interesting discussions if we didn't take the bait.

~199

"Nope, you haven't. When theists terrorise children, they have a bad habit of claiming that they have been told to do so. And somehow that idiotic excuse is accepted by rational people. The disbelief in Wotan or Chrestus does not authorise you to do anything whatsoever, and is not accepted as such authorisation."

I believe that Stalin and Mao claimed to be told to do what they were doing by the dictates of History and Material Progress - neither obvious gods.

"Stalin and Mao's problematic want was not theism, but humanism. Is it possible for us to agree on that?"

Nope, can't agree on that. In fact, I can't imagine anyone further from humanism than Mao and Stalin. Well, maybe Hitler and Ghenghis Khan.

It really would be a good idea for you to master at least the first steps in political philosophy before engaging in this sort of silliness. But whatever makes you a legend in your own mind.

>199 DiogenesOfSinope:: "When theists terrorise children"

You're going to have to explain what you mean by this. I am opposed to anyone terrorizing anyone.

"Thanks, but I prefer my news sources non-authorised by clerics."

And now we begin to see how your thinking works. We're talking about a doctrinal dispute between two groups of Christians, and yet you think that you can understand it by ignoring the doctrine.

You love to criticize people for their beliefs, but you won't actually take the time to understand the people or their beliefs that you criticize. I can just imagine the creationist saying, "Thanks, but I prefer my new sources non-authorised by biologists."

Because there's no fallaciousness in that approach...

"Stalin and Mao's problematic want was not theism, but humanism. Is it possible for us to agree on that?"

Nope, can't agree on that. In fact, I can't imagine anyone further from humanism than Mao and Stalin. Well, maybe Hitler and Ghenghis Khan.

Actually, I think that was his point. "Want" in that sentence appears to be used as a noun—that is, what did they lack? Did they lack for theism or humanism? They lacked for humanism.

It is mixing apples and oranges, since theism is a bare-bones philosophical binary, without any necessary cultural, aesthetic or ethical adjuncts. Humanism is a big, messy ball of ideas and attitudes, including ethical ones. It is without question that Stalin would have been a nicer fellow if he had been Pico della Mirandola. There have been many theists, good and bad. Ghengis Khan was a theist. But Stalin might perhaps have also been better if he were St. Francis.

>201 lawecon: "problematic want" You seem to have missed a word? Have a second go.

>202 nathanielcampbell: How about Abraham and Isaac? And if you can't think of examples from daily theism for yourself, I suspect you're not going to take my word for it. Probably claim it's "for their salvational good" or some such.

I'm not quite sure what problem you're having with that as the non-authorised sources agree with you about what they were criticised for?

_____________
(I returned here this evening to correct a way I phrased myself, only to discover that you haven't picked on that, so I'll see how long it remains below your radar.)

>203 timspalding: Thanks for noticing that Tim.

Yes, I agree that "humanism" is not a narrowly defined label. And I see what you're saying. But if that is what Diogenes is saying it is a rather weak evasion. Further, it is an evasion that can be applied universally. If the problem with Mao and Stalin was a "lack of humanism" then such is also the case for despicable theists. If they were only more humanistic theists in that they loved their fellow men as their religion would seem to dictate. But Diogenes just rejected such "reasoning" as "the true Scottsman fallacy."

Mao and Stalin were indisputably atheists. They were quite clear that opposing that aspect of their views was grounds for extermination. To claim that homicidal psychotic theists are that way because of their theism but homicidal psychotic atheists never do bad things (like kill theists) due to their atheism is simply factually false.

>203 timspalding: "theism is a bare-bones philosophical binary"

That does seem like something of an oversimplification, what?

Without Wotan, I'm stuck with myself, other people, that little thing I call the real world.

With Wotan, there suddenly seems to be this need for priests to tell me what he thinks and wants, like tithes, and non-blasphemy, and chopping off of bits... oops wrong theos..., anyways...

Fair enough?

206

Exactly. "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely". How often have we seen that of tyrants, kings, rulers, oligarchies, aristocracies, mobs, bullies, irrespective of their religious - or otherwise - beliefs? There is nothing endemic in either religion or atheism per se that would lead inevitably to torture and murder and war.

>203 timspalding: "theism is a bare-bones philosophical binary"

That does seem like something of an oversimplification, what?

Not at all. Certainly there are many highly-developed religions and philosophies slotted into "theism," and, statistically, most theists believe additional things about God, but theism is simply the belief in one or more deities. Your example is quite wrong. Theism per se has nothing whatsoever to say about priests and interpreters. This would be true even if all religions actually had priests. It's not made less or more true by the ignorant wrongness of this belief.

Now, all this doesn't hold if by theism you mean "the thing I hate." We are all, perhaps, entitled to invent the object of our hatred, and add details to our fancy. Imagination is good for you. But words between people are used to communicate meaning, and "theism" simply doesn't carry much in the way of content other than the belief in one or more deities.

>206 lawecon: No, you're jumping around there somewhat. Which you started doing in #201.

"the dictates of History and Material Progress" don't derive from atheism, so you don't get to blame atheism for the stupidity that those represent.

You seem to want to imply that my criticism of theism is that Holy Joe once stole a loaf of bread because he was hungry???

Religion does not dictate that we should love our fellow man. It does sometimes say "love your neighbour", and sometimes "suffer not a witch to live". The theist gets to pick and choose from a wide range. And does. He even get's to claim that he "loves" witches. All of it with Yahweh's blessing. From where I stand, theists seem to act more to my approval when they ignore what their "scriptures" tell them about witches, and rather learn from science that "oops, apparently there ain't no such thing as witches. Bummer."

I do wish my reasoning was more recognisable (to myself at least) in your representation of it...

When Holy Joe or Evil Dave murder their wives in fits of jealousy, they have to answer the court as equals. When Holy Joe omits to provide his child with appropriate medical care because of his "faith in God" he stands in a very different position from Evil Dave who makes the exact same omission because "nobody whispered in my ear". Dave gets shunted off to see a psychiatrist, whereas Joe on the other hand....

>204 DiogenesOfSinope:: "How about Abraham and Isaac?"

A mythical human being had a symbolic relationship with the nation to which he gave birth in order to express Israel's cultural identity as the Chosen People, and somehow you reduce that to "theists terrorizing children." I think you need to recalibrate your hermeneutical meter...

"And if you can't think of examples from daily theism for yourself, I suspect you're not going to take my word for it. Probably claim it's "for their salvational good" or some such."

In other words, your concept of "theists terrorizing children" is a prejudiced ideological construct rather than an accurate description of what theists actually believe and do.

By the way, what is "daily theism"? Can you offer any actual examples? Or would that involve listening and learning from "cleric authorised" sources which you cannot tolerate and cannot be bothered to listen to and learn from?

Since I'm not a cleric, can you learn from me?

I think you need to recalibrate your hermeneutical meter...

You might start by asking the city to turn the gas on.

daily theism

Is there a twice-daily theism?

~210

"When Holy Joe or Evil Dave murder their wives in fits of jealousy, they have to answer the court as equals. When Holy Joe omits to provide his child with appropriate medical care because of his "faith in God" he stands in a very different position from Evil Dave who makes the exact same omission because "nobody whispered in my ear". Dave gets shunted off to see a psychiatrist, whereas Joe on the other hand...."

Yes, "on the other hand" what? You don't really have a clue what, do you?

>210 DiogenesOfSinope: When Holy Joe omits to provide his child with appropriate medical care because of his "faith in God" he stands in a very different position from Evil Dave who makes the exact same omission because "nobody whispered in my ear".

Actually there was a high-profile case of this in Kenya recently, where a couple refused to provide their child with medical care because of their fringe religious beliefs. The husband was arrested and eventually tried and sent to prison for child neglect, and when the wife still refused, the child was taken by social workers for medical treatment. How was the religious man treated differently from a non-religious one?

I was listening to the BBC World Service today and they were interviewing a Somali (Muslim) pundit about the AU forces' capture/liberation of Kismayo. Referring to Al Shabab, the Islamist ("fundamentalist") group that has abandoned the town following the Kenyan armed forces' amphibious assault, he called them "fantasists"; they want to impose their way on everybody but deep down they know it is not possible. I find that an interesting way of describing fundamentalists, of whatever stripe. Fantasists.

>209 timspalding: "theism is a bare-bones philosophical binary"

Meet Mr hypothetical philosopher. One random day the question pops into his head: "does a supernatural being (SB) exist? (Yes/No)" He flips a coin: Yes. He continues on his way without putting any more thought to the question. No thought to whatever "form" the SB might take, eg how does it smell? Or to what it might want, or in fact that it might want anything at all. Is there anything about such a theist, or at least his position on theism, that you would find worth bothering yourself with? Does such a theist even exist? Quite frankly if you yourself are just such a flippin' theist, I can't imagine why I would bother reading your posts?

Meet Mr practical theist. By which I don't mean his skill with his hands. I mean that his views on, and derived from, his particular SB have practical implications in his lived life (seeing that you seemingly didn't understand what I meant by daily theism), eg "Wotan wants me to stuff a carnation up my left nostril". But I further mean the category of theist I'm more likely to actually encounter.

This kind of theist has not flipped a coin. And presumably neither have you? The vast majority of such theists, again presumably including yourself?, have their notions about their SB from someone else, whether a priest, missionary, parents, a book (written by someone or other). Even Saul/Paul would have derived notions about his new SB from his persecutory dealings before seeing the light that his career would be better served by this new rather than his old SB.

And though there may indeed be as many flippin' atheists as flippin' theists around, and a lot who have never even heard of a particular SB, eg Wotan, and therefore have no opinion on him, the kind of atheist that I'd find interesting to talk about is someone who has been presented with a description of Wotan, or whichever SB you prefer as an example, doesn't see anyone matching that description anywhere, and therefore never centres any of his decisions around Wotan. Whether such an atheist stuffs carnations up his left nostril or not will be entirely independent of the Wotanite's notions about Wotan. Unless he "heretically" chooses to stuff a carnation up his right nostril to mock the Wotanite (as opposed to mocking Wotan who does after all not exist to the atheist).

What exactly is "not made less or more true by the ignorant wrongness of" your apparent belief that I am unaware of the existence of non-priested religions?

Well, I do hate more than one thing. No, child rape isn't flippin' theism. Falsely presenting poverty maintenance as love isn't flippin' theism.

And please Tim, do tell me that I'm talking nonsense by confusing "practical theism" with "religion", or whatever you'll have to say about it. If you give me clear definitions of what you mean, I'll try to express how I see what you're saying. (My experience is that people don't want to give anywhere near clear enough definitions for me to get to grips with.)

That's very interesting John and Lawecon. Let's talk some more.

How about these calibrations of "I think you need to recalibrate your hermeneutical meter..." from #211:

- "I, Matthew Campbell, did a poor job of editing on a fiction called Genesis."

- "I, Nate, leave all my money to DiogenesOfSinope." G... Thanks. I think.

- "Abraham was commanded by my very favouritest Supernatural Being to butcher his son. And you might just be next. You never know :-)."

>209 timspalding: "But words between people are used to communicate meaning"

If, Tim, you wish to get rid of me, just try explaning away... err, I mean, just throw some hermeneutics my way. It might work.

>211 nathanielcampbell: "can you learn from me?"

How'm I doing so far?

>213 lawecon: "You don't really have a clue what, do you?"

Are you being hermeneutical here? I feel so uncalibrated sometimes.

>214 John5918: Well, well, waddaya know. Darkest Africa is more civilised than the country I'm a lot more worried about.

>200 timspalding: "Fundamentalist nuns?" & 215 "Fantasists"

Well, I can't say I've gotten to know any nuns all that well, so maybe you're right. No. Fantasist. Nuns. Gotcha. (Come on. A little light-heartedness? OKaaay. Sorrrry.)

>216 DiogenesOfSinope:: It might be worth my time to respond to your arguments, if they weren't so completely made-up out of whole cloth. You offer such oddly distorted and imaginary versions of theists and philosophers (have you ever even read any philosophy?) that I'm sure you've made some straw merchant somewhere very rich.

I mean really, what kind of "hypothetical philosopher" determines anything of value by the flip of a coin?

Diogenes was indeed once described as "Socrates, gone insane." Perhaps that's the point of the name?

>218 DiogenesOfSinope:: Fine, let's dig into the Abraham and Isaac story (how is it that my college freshmen understand the nuances here better than you do?).

What does Abraham say to the young men who have accompanied him and his son on their journey to Mt. Moriah? "Stay here with the ass; I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you." (Gen. 22:5) So from the very start, we see that Abraham knows that he and Isaac will come back from the mountain. He has faith and trust that God will resolve the tension between the promise that Isaac will be the progeny that leads to countless generations (cf. Gen. 15:4-6, 17:7-8 and 17:19, and ch. 21) and the commandment to "offer him up" (Gen. 22:2). Abraham witnesses this same trust in his answer to Isaac's question about where the sacrifice will come from: "God will provide himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son." (Gen. 22:8)

There are crucial details revealed in the specifics of the language used here. The Hebrew used in Gen. 22:2 in God's command to "offer him there as a burnt offering" is missing a crucial definite article -- Jewish commentators have pointed out that the phrase really should mean "offer him up as if he were a burnt offering", thus making the sacrifice an act of analogy rather than an actual killing.

Furthermore, it should be noted that the mountain on which Abraham is commanded to do this is Mt. Moriah, the Temple Mount. The way in which the stories of Genesis embed and establish Jewish cultural identity indicates that the sacrifice of Isaac is to be understood analogously with the sacrifices performed on the Temple Mount -- and crucially, the sacrifice that is offered on Mt. Moriah, in the Holy of Holies, is not a flesh sacrifice (which can only take place in the courtyard) but a sacrifice of incense (the name "Moriah" comes from the Hebrew word, "mor", which is the name of one of the spices used in the incense burned in the Holy of Holies). A fundamental symbol of God's presence in the Torah is smoke and fire -- e.g. God's presence as a smoking fire-pot in the establishment of the covenant with Abraham in Gen. 15; and the presence as burning and smoke and fire throughout the theophanies of Exodus. Thus, the name of the place where God instructs Abraham to gi indicates that what will happen on the mountain is not the death of Isaac but a theophany, a revelation of God's being and love and promise to Abraham.

There are indeed other clues in the text that indicate that God never intended for Abraham actually to sacrifice Isaac. For example, the name used for God in Gen. 22 (Elohim), is never used elsewhere in the Torah in connection with sacrifices. And at none of the other altars that Abraham builds in Genesis (12:7-8, 3:4, 13:18) does he perform sacrifice; rather, at each one he "calls upon the name of the Lord". The text itself, then, offers indications that the sacrifice is to be understood symbolically, not literally.

The important symbolic meanings of the story of the 'Akeidah (Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac) are not about torturing a child. Rather, the story reveals symbolically the journey of faith, up the mountain of the unknown, where we come to understand the ineffable presence of God -- and then, as Abraham promises in Gen. 22:5, to return to human society to share that understanding.

(I have relied for my understanding of Jewish exegesis here on the commentary Echoes of Eden by Rabbi Ari D. Kahn.)

Nobody ever seems to consider that story from Isaac's point of view. I personally suspect the origin of the narrative to have been an initiatory rite in which the candidate ("Isaac") was threatened with death, and which ceased to be understood when it was no longer practiced, so that a strange tale grew up around it to exceptionalize and justify the act of a father nearly putting his son to death by divine command.

>222 paradoxosalpha:: Actually, the commentary I mentioned (Echoes of Eden) does look at how the 'akeidah serves, from Isaac's perspective, to parallel and "bind" his own experiences with those of his father. Building on the Jewish tradition (found in the commentaries, not the Torah) that, before leaving Mesopotamia, Abram was persecuted for his belief in the one God by being thrown into a furnace, where he miraculously survived (yes, there are parallels here to the three Hebrew youths at the court of Nebuchadnezzar -- but then, symbolic parallelism is a fundamental principle of the Hebrew Bible), Rabbi Kahn parallels their experiences of near-death in the service of God.

He concludes that the ‘akeidah (which means "the binding"), is that of Abraham and Isaac to God, bound by love and Covenant: "After the ‘akeidah, Avraham and Yitzhak had even more in common than before: both were willing to give up their lives for their love of God. They were both almost burnt offerings, and they were both elevated by that experience. More importantly, they walked together." (Kahn, p. 121)

~217

On what topic? On the topic of denial of medical care for a minor on religious grounds there is really nothing to talk about. The legal rule is pretty firm at this point. You can be prosecuted for the appropriate crime if the denial of medical care threatens life or permanent health (e.g., denying your child aspirin for a headache won't to it).

216

"Meet Mr hypothetical philosopher. One random day the question pops into his head: "does a supernatural being (SB) exist? (Yes/No)" He flips a coin: Yes. He continues on his way without putting any more thought to the question. No thought to whatever "form" the SB might take..."

You seem to know little or nothing about philosophy if you think that, as a discipline, it involves random thoughts leading to the flip of a coin leading to no further thought. A particular philosopher may or may not give consideration to the existence of a SB, but you can bet your life that any question will be explored fully, and not dismissed so flippantly (pun intended).

Nobody ever seems to consider that story from Isaac's point of view. I personally suspect the origin of the narrative to have been an initiatory rite in which the candidate ("Isaac") was threatened with death, and which ceased to be understood when it was no longer practiced, so that a strange tale grew up around it to exceptionalize and justify the act of a father nearly putting his son to death by divine command.

Equally unconfirmable, I suspect it's an aetiology for the lack of human sacrifice in Judaism—as compared to neighbors. There are similar Greek stories--a lot more stories about human sacrifice than attested human sacrifice, as some wag once put the Greek situation. Or rather an aetiology is the lowest layer, onto which has accumulated a rich (and wise) superstructure.

#221 Ah right - so Abraham knew all along that the whole thing was a sham? So, rather than it being a test of his faith (as numerous sources seem to accept) it was just a bit of play acting? Nice way to treat your kid.

Of course, like everything else in the Bible it's now the done thing to reinterpret it in light of modern sensibilities. We think it would be a dreadful thing to do and so it's easy enough to slip in a few extra words and pretend it wasn't like that at all, though when read alongside the myriad other examples of the OT god and his predilection for 'smiting' it's certainly not out of character.

227

Unfortunately, what you say ignores that this is a theme running through Bronze Age mythology. As Tim said in 226, the Greek story of Iphigenia is an even more complex tale, where a king's daughter has to be sacrificed to allow the wind to set fair for the Greek expedition to Troy. Luckily there are many more sources for that story, from Homer to Euripides; in some, Iphigenia dies, in some she doesn't, in some she is murdered, in others she is a willing 'sacrifice'. The OT account should be read in the same light - it's post-Bronze Age mythology and should not be read as a modern religious morality tale.

~227

"#221 Ah right - so Abraham knew all along that the whole thing was a sham? So, rather than it being a test of his faith (as numerous sources seem to accept) it was just a bit of play acting? Nice way to treat your kid.

Of course, like everything else in the Bible it's now the done thing to reinterpret it in light of modern sensibilities. We think it would be a dreadful thing to do and so it's easy enough to slip in a few extra words and pretend it wasn't like that at all, though when read alongside the myriad other examples of the OT god and his predilection for 'smiting' it's certainly not out of character."

It may interest you to know (but probably it won't) that there have been rabbinical interpretations of this episode for centuries (not "modern sensibilities" exactly) that are quite unlike Christian interpretations. One of these interpretations is that this was a test. It wasn't a test of Abraham's faith and obedience to G-d, it was a test of what Abraham had learned. One of the main teachings of Hashem was no child sacrifice, no killing of innocents. Such practices were common in Abraham's day and were engaged in with great honor, as opposed to the hypocrisy that exists in our "modern" world.

Abraham had himself argued with Hashem over the mass destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah on this basis. You can't destroy cities because by doing so you will destroy the righteous along with the corrupt. Such is a constant theme in the Jewish Scriptures.

Yet when called upon to sacrifice his son Abraham did not even protest. (It is often observed at this point that rules that we follow with respect to others we do not apply to our own family.) Abraham failed the test, and although there is a passage praising his obedience, Hashem never thereafter spoke to him - never spoke to Abraham, the man who regularly talked with G-d.

Perhaps you'd next like to talk about the interpretations of "Am I my brother's keeper?"

#228 You're right. I really must learn to centre my thoughts on Bronze Age mythology.

>229 lawecon:: But lawecon (the atheists will say), how can there be multiple ways of understanding the story of Abraham and Isaac, ways that seem contradictory?

And there we have the single biggest stumbling block that seems to keep the atheists and theists from understanding each other. (Many of) the latter are perfectly comfortable with the idea that religious texts can have multiple and even contradictory meanings; the former, however, insist that a text can have only one proper meaning.

Maybe we need to get us all into a research lab with brain scans, to see if there is in fact a difference in cognitive processing between those who insist that for every datum there is only one exact interpretation and those who allow data to be polyvalent and even self-contradictory.

>231 nathanielcampbell: And there we have the single biggest stumbling block that seems to keep the atheists and theists from understanding each other. (Many of) the latter are perfectly comfortable with the idea that religious texts can have multiple and even contradictory meanings; the former, however, insist that a text can have only one proper meaning.

I don't get that at all. In fact, just the opposite. I read religious texts as literature and see a myriad of interpretations. But the religious people in my little corner of the planet tend to focus on single interpretations of texts--usually those sanctioned by their church or pastor.

> 226

I'd take Jephthah's daughter as a sort of back-handed confirmation of your hypothesis, actually. But I'll agree that any such aetiological reading is highly speculative.

But the religious people in my little corner of the planet tend to focus on single interpretations of texts--usually those sanctioned by their church or pastor.

Move out of the sticks! ;)

>232 southernbooklady: But the religious people in my little corner of the planet tend to focus on single interpretations of texts--usually those sanctioned by their church or pastor

Some religious people do that. My sympathy that you live somewhere where they are apparently very visible.

>234 timspalding: The provincialism is ameliorated by the stunning view from my front porch.

>236 southernbooklady:

The eternal dilemma. It's why we're in Portland, not Boston. I think, perhaps, this is why people buy another house.

~230

What thoughts?

230

Your sarcasm is duly noted. However that doesn't actually argue against what I said in 228.

An atheist who argues for a single, simple, unvarying interpretation of a religious text (in order to attack it) is no better/different than a religious fundamentalist who takes the same line in order to bolster their belief system. Ironic, isn't it?

#228: The OT account should be read in the same light - it's post-Bronze Age mythology and should not be read as a modern religious morality tale.

"Should be read"? "Should be read" for what? I read the same work very different, depending on what I'm reading it for. If I'm reading it for understanding of the religious groups I have to interact with, I'm not going to read it in a directly clashing way from the way they read it. If I'm reading it for an understanding of religious groups that accept it as part of their holy work and treat it as post-Bronze Age mythology-- well, I'm not going to read it. I don't think it has much impact on their belief system or actions, and worse, I don't understand how it connects to their belief system and actions, and treating it the same as the story of Iphigenia is less then helpful; after all, I'm not dealing with modern people who count Iphigneia in their canon.

240

"after all, I'm not dealing with modern people who count Iphigneia in their canon."

I think you've made my point for me. To interpret the Abraham / Isaac text in a modern light - whether atheist or theist - is to miss the entire context and historicity of the original (the subtleties of which may be partly lost to us anyway).

If you are trying to "understand the religious groups you have to interact with", then I assume you must be referring to Christian fundamentalists, as only they would regard that particular story as literally and meaningfully true. However, if you were interacting with Jewish groups, your approach would have to be entirely different, as there are centuries of rabbinical commentary surrounding the story, which would interpret it rather differently from the fundamentalists. As would, of course, the majority of Christians.

#241: To interpret the Abraham / Isaac text in a modern light - whether atheist or theist - is to miss the entire context and historicity of the original

Again, I'm not a professor of mythology or Ancient Near East lore or anything of the like. The vast majority of people don't care about these works as mythology, they care about their connection to the Abrahamic religions. Lecturing them about the original is silly; that's not what they care about.

As would, of course, the majority of Christians.

How liberal Christians supposedly interpret this story I have no f'ing clue. They probably ignore it. I don't suspect, like you do, that the majority of Christians dismiss it; I rather suspect that if actually polled, most churched Christians would say that it actually happened.

~235

Yep, it is interesting isn't it? On the one hand you have rather sophisticated nonbeliever like Tid, whose criticisms of religious doctrines or practices are quite nuanced, well educated and often highly effective. On the other hand you have raving assholes whose exposure to religion is apparently solely limited to their local fundamentalist church (of which they were usually a member until age 30) who just spew uninformed venom. Very revealing.

How liberal Christians supposedly interpret this story I have no f'ing clue. They probably ignore it. I don't suspect, like you do, that the majority of Christians dismiss it; I rather suspect that if actually polled, most churched Christians would say that it actually happened.

"Most Christians" in the world are Catholics. If you add the Orthodox and "liberal" Christianity you have a very considerable majority. Fundamentalism is explicitly rejected by the first two of these, and the latter pretty much defines itself in opposition to it.

>243 lawecon:

Indeed, I frequently mistake Tid for a believer, because his posts generally come across as well-informed, reasoned, nuanced and fair-minded.

#244: "Most Christians" in the world are Catholics. If you add the Orthodox and "liberal" Christianity you have a very considerable majority. Fundamentalism is explicitly rejected by the first two of these, and the latter pretty much defines itself in opposition to it.

Is there a list of sections of the Bible that you have to be fundamentalist to believe in? Why is this more like the Creation story then the Resurrection?

No. It's a hermeneutical principle. In practice, all but the most fundamentalist and "liberal" churches contain and encourage a wide diversity of views. Beliefs of parishioners vary even more.

Tangent: The Catholic church likes to say that it is the final interpreter of the Bible. Many Protestants, I think, believe this means that the Pope or whoever has an approved interpretation for most or even considerable parts of scripture. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Sure, some interpretations are closed. Christians who believed that Jesus wasn't God until he was "adopted" at baptism are, in the church's eyes, wrong. But the Catholic church around the world--people, professors or bishops--surely includes more actual diversity of opinions about how to read any given passage than anyone else--with the possible exception of the Anglicans.

Why is this more like the Creation story then the Resurrection?

Actually, I think both of those are more amenable to a "fundamentalist" reading. Catholics really must believe that God created the universe, and the Pope at least has made it clear that completely mechanistic, "unguided" evolution of life is not acceptable; however you conceptualize his involvement, God is involved in his creation. Obvious the Resurrection is a red line too. By contrast, the sacrifice of Isaac may be true or false, but it has no "necessary" element to it.

>243 lawecon:, 244 Agreed. Thanks, Tid, for the courtesy and thoughtfulness that you bring to the conversation - and for helping to make it a "conversation" rather than a polarised polemical slanging match.

I frequently mistake Tid for a believer

Me too, although I think you'll find it's "her", not "his".

Ha. Fair enough!

the Catholic church around the world--surely includes more actual diversity of opinions about how to read any given passage than anyone else--with the possible exception of the Anglicans.

I think I'd support that exception, since among Anglicans there are probably readings representing most of the possible Catholic opinions (from papalist through liberation theology to the mystical), plus a good number which are beyond the Catholic pale (such as frankly non-Trinitarian or even post-Christian ones).

Catholics really must believe that God created the universe

I am beginning to wonder about that one. The Nicene Creed, now liturgical rather than dogmatic in context, states a belief that God is "Creator", but it doesn't state explicitly that he "created" the universe (past tense) rather than "is creating" it.

>249 MyopicBookworm:: "but it doesn't state explicitly that he "created" the universe (past tense) rather than "is creating" it."

A distinction in tenses only makes sense from the creaturely perspective, living as we do within time. Since God is understood to be outside of time, existing in an "eternal now", so to speak (human words begin to fail us), the distinction between "created", "is creating", and "will create" is quite meaningless; or rather, there is only "is creating" (God has neither past nor future tense, but only present {present progressive?}).

>249 MyopicBookworm: plus a good number which are beyond the Catholic pale

Including evangelical or "low church" Anglicans. Anglicanism in South Sudan tends to be quite low church, in part as a result of the East African revival.

"is creating"

Nice way of putting it.

God is understood to be outside of time

That does rather stretch the meaning of the word "understood"...

>249 MyopicBookworm:

Right. I think Anglicanism encompasses most Catholic opinions—at least in theory—but, well, Sponge would probably have been excommunicated if he were a Catholic.

I am beginning to wonder about that one. The Nicene Creed, now liturgical rather than dogmatic in context, states a belief that God is "Creator", but it doesn't state explicitly that he "created" the universe (past tense) rather than "is creating" it.

Many if not most theologians would agree. But if he's creating it, he was also creating it before, so he created it, right? :)

>250 nathanielcampbell:, 253 Some African languages have tenses rather different to ours. In Nuer there is a fairly clear past perfect tense, a tense that can be past or present, and then one which is a sort of tense of being which can be present or future (and possibly past as well; I haven't spoken the language for many years and memory is fading). That latter tense might make it easier for Nuer-speakers to understand this dynamic of creation. Not everybody in the world has the western mindset.

It's a subtle distinction, I know, but assertions about primordial creation tend to drag one into the Argument from Design so beloved of Richard Dawkins, and could also risk setting theism up against steady-state cosmology just as it was previously set against heliocentrism. (Not that I don't accept the current Big Bang cosmology, but I don't think it wise to base one's entire belief system on its veracity.)

>224 lawecon:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5U4prBnQss

Not the video I had in mind, but hopefully good enough.

Indeed, I frequently mistake Tid for a believer, because his posts generally come across as well-informed, reasoned, nuanced and fair-minded.

I really just wanted to see that again.

>256 DiogenesOfSinope: Seems to me this video is about the sort of fundamentalism which the pope is probably warning against.

243 244 247 257

I'm blushing at all those compliments! Thank you for the gender correction, John, though as a feminist I shouldn't mind too much. I'm always reminded of the (no doubt apocryphal) Confucianism Women who seek equality with men, lack ambition

Believer or not? I've never really been a religious believer as such, though I've been a church-goer, brought up High Church Anglican. One set of grandparents were strict Nonconformists, and the others were socialist agnostics. The nearest I've ever come to membership of a church was the Quakers, but they encompass every shade of belief from 'Jesus-centred' to 'Universalist' (which includes agnostics).

I suppose I now inhabit the vast hinterland between religious believers and materialist atheists. I find philosophy seeks the answers to the most difficult and ultimate questions, and like most agnostics, am prepared to accept whatever proof - if any - comes around.

I suppose we are all believers in a sense, though materialist atheists will claim they are not - however, it's a kind of belief to base all one's conclusions only on evidence, though it would take a philosopher (or maybe a particle physicist?) to explain exactly WHY that's a belief position too.

>258 John5918: You must feel relieved to have stopped before the catholics got mentioned :-). Or maybe there exist fundamentalist catholics? Just not fundmentalist catholic nuns of course; I got that memo.

>260 DiogenesOfSinope: My internet connection isn't usually good enough to watch long videos. I was quite impressed that I managed the first five minutes!

~260

You, of course, wouldn't know..............

165: Paul predates the fall of Jerusalem, and therefore his ministry does too. But the WRITTEN accounts (Acts, Epistles) come afterwards.

A bit late to pick up a topic so far up the page, but it's taken me that long to work through Wenham's Redating Matthew, Mark & Luke, which makes the pertinent point that the simplest explanation for the silence of Acts on Paul's death is that it hadn't happened by the time the book was written. I have no particular reason to doubt that Luke's Gospel preceded Acts in composition, which pushes all the Synoptic Gospels before about AD 62 (unless you take the minority position that Luke is the earliest Gospel).

which makes the pertinent point that the simplest explanation for the silence of Acts on Paul's death is that it hadn't happened by the time the book was written

This is simple, but it's an argument from silence up against arguments from evidence that Luke was written after Mark, and after 70. To use an argument from silence to "push" all the synoptics is a lot of pushing! But I need to think and read up more on the structure of Acts and just why it ends where and how it does. At first glance when it was written doesn't matter—the ending is jarring either way. I wonder if it might be the same process at work at the end of Mark and Plutarch's Life of Alexander—the loss of a few final pages. Anyone?

No, it's not against arguments that Luke was written after Mark, if Mark is also early. (There is a school of thought which believes Luke to precede Mark -- Griesbach thought Mark was a conflation of Matthew and Luke -- but Wenham dismantles that case and argues for the priority of Matthew.) There is at least some evidence that Mark predates 70: the case has been made that a fragment of Mark 6 appears in Qumran text 7Q5, which is thought to have been sealed into a cave in 68.

One main argument for a post-70 date for the synoptics seems to be the fatuous one that Jesus cannot have predicted the fall of Jerusalem, so the oracles on that topic must postdate it. C. H. Dodd noted that these predictions in Luke are cast in generalized Old Testament language and show no sign of direct historical reference (except perhaps to the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC).

Any reference to the fall of Jerusalem is also lacking in Acts (along with any hint of the Jewish War of 66, the Neronian persecution of 64-68, or even the death of James in c62). The main argument for dating Acts after 70 is the assumption that it must postdate Luke, and a priori that Luke must be post-70.

On mainly patristic evidence, Wenham argues for early dates: Matthew around 41, probably in Jerusalem and probably initially in Hebrew, Mark around 45 in Rome, Luke probably in the early 50s, and Acts around 62.

>258 John5918: The point of the video is for me not that christians (of fundamentalist or other persuasion) do bad things, but that the law often accepts god-whisperings as excuses for bad behaviour. Which was a point I tried to make earlier, but someone decided to claim I didn't know what I was talking about. A lot of that happening. Claiming I don't know stuff. (I'm beginning to wonder if people are deliberately baiting me in a reverse psychology attempt to provide them with the knowledge they lack?)

~266

"The point of the video is for me not that christians (of fundamentalist or other persuasion) do bad things, but that the law often accepts god-whisperings as excuses for bad behaviour. Which was a point I tried to make earlier, but someone decided to claim I didn't know what I was talking about."

It of course depends on whose law you are talking about, but should you be talking about American law you don't know what you are talking about. Religious belief is no excuse for criminal behavior under American law. Period. Get use to it.

>267 lawecon: Are you in any way saying that Faircloth is wrong? Are you in any way saying that I am misunderstanding Faircloth?

I ask because saying that "Religious belief is no excuse for criminal behavior under American law" doesn't mean anything.

What is criminal, is what the law declares to be criminal. So if the law says that "everyone must pay tax, except self-proclaimed god-marketers" then it is not criminal for a self-proclaimed god-marketer to abstain from paying tax.

If the law says that "parents must provide proper medical care for their children, except self-declared theist parents" then it is not criminal for self-declared theist parents to allow their children to suffer from a lack of proper medical care.

~268

This is simple sophistry. What is criminal is what is defined as criminal in a statute. Virtually every American jurisdiction has abolished common law crimes. There is no ambiguity as to what is a crime. You look it up.

And, what I am telling you, for the third time, is that there are no statutes that provide an exemption for criminal injury done to another on the basis of religious belief. (There may be a few statutes that provide religious exemptions for things that should not be crimes to start with - like ingesting peyote or forced oaths, but they are the rare exception to the rule.)

To specifically answer your question, your interpretation of what Faircloth is saying is wrong and Faircloth's imputation that the particular cases he cites are "exemptions from health and safety regulations" because they are religious is disingenuous.

We have had this discussion, regarding treatment of children, before in this group. If you favor the view that children are property of the state and that the parents of these children are mere agents of the state, then, of course, the state would govern the most minute decisions regarding rearing of children. Fortunately, however, this society hasn't quite reached that totalitarian philosophy. If you believe that your child is delinquent and requires training that you cannot easily give yourself you can enroll them in a military academy or a religious school. In each of those settings they will be treated without the greatest respect. They will be treated, in other words, as a delinquent child, not as a responsible adult. They will often be yelled at, and they will sometimes be subject to deprivation or corporal punishment. It has nothing to do with religion per se. It has to do with the parent's philosophy of child rearing. You may not agree with that philosophy, but it is not criminal for a parent to make that choice - at least not yet. It is also not, per se, a religious choice, and to claim that it must be is simply to evidence ignorance or deceit.

>268 DiogenesOfSinope:-269: I think Diogenes is taking issue with that tricky point of American law that states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."

In his mind, this privileges religious people because Congress can't do anything about them...

~270

And that is, of course, a wholly false interpretation of the first amendment. If you commit a crime it doesn't matter whether or not you are religious. Congress can and does do as much about religious persons as it does about nonreligious persons (albeit there is a good argument that the law of crimes should be strictly a state law matter).

What is criminal, is what the law declares to be criminal

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why we have a Bill of Rights. If someone passes a law "declaring" reading left-wing literature to be criminal, the First Amendment kills it. And if someone criminalizes the exercise of a religion, well, sorry, the First Amendment strikes that down too.

>265 MyopicBookworm: MyopicBookworm

Thank you for this note. I'm still mulling it, and looking for things to read. Do you want to give me some things you think I should read?

>272 timspalding: "If someone passes a law "declaring" reading left-wing literature to be criminal, the First Amendment kills it."

"The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America" (Wikipedia) so... duh.

>270 nathanielcampbell: You read my mind soooo well. Not.

>269 lawecon: "What is criminal is what is defined as criminal in a statute." So we seem to agree at some level. Where exactly are we disagreeing?

Well, at least "your interpretation of what Faircloth is saying is wrong and Faircloth's imputation that the particular cases he cites are "exemptions from health and safety regulations" because they are religious is disingenuous." is a fairly clear statement. (Though I find the thought that I double a mistake by misinterpreting Faircloth's disingenuousness slightly amusing.) Now how to get to the bottom of whether you or I or Faircloth (who after all is a politician advocating a particular viewpoint) is right... (Will rewatching that video help me I wonder?)

~272

This discussion is really beginning to drift. There is nothing per se about the first amendment in anything that has been said recently, so let's not get off on a tangent.

I would like to return to the point we were just considering before the aside. Now Diogenes and the commentator who he cites (who, frankly, I have never heard of before) apparently believe that there are numerous "exceptions" in American law for religious belief. I would like to see those exception by explicit citation to the written law.

Just to clarify, Diogenes apparently believes that acts are crimes or not crimes depending on whatever a court says is a crime. Diogenes was arguing that courts generally "let off" religious people and convict nonreligious people of crimes. I was pointing out that crimes are what is defined in a statute. There are, in most jurisdictions, no more common law crimes.

So where are the statutes containing the exceptions that are numerous and egregious? Where are they? Come on now, if they are prevalent it should be possible to cite to a dozen or so.

Having just read the immediately proceeding post, which was posted while I was working on this one, I can easily point out how Diogenes is misinterpreting Faircloth. Faircloth is referring to the application of regulations. Regulations, to start with, are not "laws" in the ordinary sense of that term. They are what a government agency itself "enacts" to guide its administration of laws. Administrative agencies have often broad discretion but what they do is neither law nor does it create a precedent that becomes law.

Now, Diogenes, I would like an answer to my question. See above in this post if you didn't get the question the last time around.

>275 lawecon: I keep feeling that we are talking past each other and/or that you are putting words in my mouth (though I've realised that you're partly addressing things Faircloth says, and I'm mixing up your responses to him with your responses to me)...

Yes, you are (at least partially) right that "Faircloth is referring to the application of regulations". Though to separate constitution, statutes, regulations and yes, even common law from each other seems like a technicality not really befitting this discussion. If a regulation allows behaviour, then either that regulation is illegal, in which case it needs to be struck or amended (Faircloth's intentions I believe), or I will continue to assume the behaviour to be non-criminal.

Now, I find it interesting that the way I phrased myself earlier, "everyone must pay tax, except self-proclaimed god-marketers", seems to my mind to match, in basic principle, the language of § 63.2-1716 of the Code of Virginia:
"Notwithstanding any other provisions of this chapter, a child day center, including a child day center that is a child welfare agency operated or conducted under the auspices of a religious institution shall be exempt from the licensure requirements of this subtitle, but shall comply with the provisions of this section unless it chooses to be licensed."

In other words: "All child day centers are equal, but religious child day centers are more equal."

Yes, I realise that this example probably won't satisfy your request for egregious exceptions, but I do believe that it is a statute?

Edit: Oh, forgot. Nice challenge. Thanks :-)

>275 lawecon:
I'm not sure why I made those qualifications about lack of egregiousness above when you merely state that you "would like to see those exception"s "in American law for religious belief" "by explicit citation to the written law."

Here's another exception, from the Florida Statutes:
"The provisions of ss. 402.301-402.319, except for the requirements regarding screening of child care personnel, shall not apply to a child care facility which is an integral part of church or parochial schools"
- http://www.dcf.state.fl.us/programs/childcare/religiousexempt.shtml

The example of Lillie Laster Jones to show why such exceptions are problematic is possibly a bit thin, but you may find it interesting anyway:
http://secular.org/issues/childcare

I'm not going through all 14 states to "cite to a dozen or so" for you.

Let's see. Your first example appears to say that a religious institution doesn't have to be licensed, but must act as if it were licensed. Your second example says, well, we don't really know what either of these examples say, since they cite to other provisions that aren't quoted or described.

Very convincing.

You, of course, haven't at all addressed my point above, about exemptions applying to all sorts of institutions under particular circumstances (like specific parental consent to particular practices that could not be applied without parental consent), and religious exemptions not being somehow special in that respect.

But keep trying, I'm sure that you'll find better examples of this fundamental and pervasive principle of American law that you and your fellow Church members keep talking about.

And, ah, the last time I looked there were 50 states, not 14. The statutes in AZ alone, which is one of the least legislated states, take up a shelf that is either 4 feet long (in the fine type unannotated edition) or 10 feet long (in the regular type annotated edition). It shouldn't be that hard to fine a dozen examples in those statutes alone. Now multiply by at least 50......
(Come on, you can do it......)

#273 Thank you for this note. I'm still mulling it, and looking for things to read. Do you want to give me some things you think I should read?

My note is based entirely on Wenham's Redating Matthew, Mark & Luke, and authors that he cites. I haven't read much else on the topic since studying the synoptics at school a long time ago, other than Ehrman, who seems mainstream, and Ludemann, who I presume goes for a post-70 date since he attributes much of the Gospel material to the post-70 church.

One of Wenham's basic lines is that, the vagaries of ancient literature notwithstanding, it is unreasonable to assume authors such as Papias and Eusebius to have been lying through their teeth, and to dismiss church traditions out of hand. (For example, he supports the idea that Peter might really have founded the Church in Rome and exercised oversight there for a period, rather than simply turning up to be martyred and being called first Bishop of Rome only in some honorary fashion.)

(Wenham's book has been on my shelf a long time: I bought it when it came out in 1991, and he signed it for me, but I never got around to ploughing through it.)

>278 lawecon: "You, of course," lawecon, are trying to move the goal posts, which I believe I set waaaay back in #195, somewhere else. (Trying to change my question as happened on another thread too for me.) So, No Thank You.

"Very convincing."

Well Thank You. I myself didn't think it amounted to very much, but I'm glad to see that you see more in it than I do.

"And, ah, the last time I looked there were 50 states, not 14."

All you did there was show that you din't read what I linked to. :-)

(I have found some exceptions in more interesting areas than child day centre licencing, so I'll see if I bother putting it in a separate post in case there are others around who actually DO read my links, but don't hold your breath.)

(A digression from exceptions as further comment to #195.)

Looking for something from Hitch, I came across this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpMdj7MfJSk
which, other than "he's got his hermeneutics in order" and "he seems like a really nice guy", I have just absolutely no idea whatsoever how to comment on. Moving on...

I think I've seen Hitch cover this a bit more graphically, but this is what I found:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xx_ov2NiNo4

I suppose that the law wouldn't prevent atheists from performing the same ...procedure, but how would we hermeneuticise it?

An article from the State Bar of Wisconsin that I found interesting:
http://www.wisbar.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=InsideTrack&Template=/CustomSo...
It kind of implies that if the girl's parents had had a change of heart during her final two days, thus preventing her actual death, then the fact that "For weeks before her death, Madeline felt weak, tired, and thirsty" (what I would call "abuse") would have been acceptable to the law?

An overview of different types of exceptions and which states have them:
http://childrenshealthcare.org/?page_id=24
No, I'm not gonna check them, and I don't know how up-to-date it is. I haven't even looked at all of it, much of it looks somewhat like "nanny state" to me, but if it's good for the atheist, I'm sure it's good for the theist too. The bit that I find interesting is: "Seventeen states have religious defenses to felony crimes against children: Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Minnesota, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin".

One state where they have recently improved things. At least temporarily:
http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2011/03/bill_ending_faith_healing_e...

The purported reasons why this garbage exists in the first place:
http://www.atheistsforhumanrights.org/child.htm

Surely, lawecon, there can't be much grounds for disagreement among us as to the undesirability of these laws?

Though I don't expect you to agree when I throw in what Hitch said: "Religion now comes to us in this smiling-face, ingratiating way, because it’s had to give so much ground, and because we know so much more." The reason why there is so little on the statute books, the reason we at all have statute books rather than some self-proclaimed god-mouthpiece, is that we've forced religion to behave itself. By "we", I don't mean atheists, I mean human beings. The "sheep" are just as interested in protecting themselves as we atheists are.

>281 DiogenesOfSinope: That guy in the first example. Any proof that he's real? Looks/sounds like a typical caricature to me. A set-up to discredit a repulsive practice by making it sound repulsive. As has been said in these threads before, circumcision is all about being accepted in the community. (I think the phrase "not being looked down on" has been used. You'll know what that means.) So if that's the case there's no need for all that sucking of blood, not even through a tube.

>281 DiogenesOfSinope: The rabbi in the second clip was a different sort of chap altogether, more worldly, reasoned, and restrained. More like lawecon in fact. But he deserved that trouncing he got from Hitch. Is there are problem with American Judaism, the same as there is with American Christianity? So many extremes that are not reflected in the rest of the world? Certainly the rabbis I've heard in the UK are a different bunch altogether from the two in those clips. Nowhere near as nutty as some of the Anglican bishops. But perhaps some Jews would say that they are not true Jews, not Jonathan Sacks for instance.

>283 jbbarret: I'd be very interested to hear if I've been duped, my excuse would be that, as far as I know, the practice is an actual and real practice.

Here's an article by Hitch in which he talks about the health risks of it:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2005/08/cut_it_of...
(Now if only I could've found that video where he is graphical at this level debating with some other rabbi which I'm sure I've seen...)

He does here state that "metzitzah b'peh carries a serious health risk and is, for that reason alone, a violation of Jewish law" which is interesting, but he also makes it clear that the practice is likely to continue among the orthodox.

Yeah, yeah, I know orthodox is synonymous with fundamentalist... But there you have some Imaginary Being commanding us to perform some meaningless task without giving us clear enough instructions about the inherent dangers and how to avoid them. G thanks Dude. Wikipedia doesn't tell me when that specific sub-practice started, but that "around the 18th century" it was discovered to be dangerous, so one wonders how many suffered from Yahweh's incomplete instructions.

"Did you just call it meaningless?" A different means for "being accepted in the community" can't be found?

"a repulsive practice by making it sound repulsive"

Oddly enough, I wasn't repulsed by him. I think I may just have more empathy for "someone like him who lives within a certain world-view with it's accompanying mindset" (assuming admittedly that he's real...) than someone like Kushner who is "more worldly" (interesting phrase, isn't it? Less of Yahweh, more of science?), but not quite worldly enough.

~282

No, I don't think we do agree about these matters. You think that how a child is reared is the responsibility of the state. I think it is the responsibility of the child's parents. I do think parents have a responsibility and that once they step outside of certain bounds criminal charges may be appropriate. But I don't think that the basic question is any more than who typically makes decisions abou child rearing within those boundaries.

You think that you can turn the private control of a parent over rearing their children into some sort of argument about how religion is an evil force whose ignorance causes damage and death, but the very Wisconsin article you cited states that the parents were convicted of multiple crimes when they took acts that actually physically damaged their children. .

I'm so sorry, but I'm not going to create a barracks socialism state just because you and yours are dogmatic atheists willing to sacrifice every human liberty to your idol.

So we don't agree.

~281

I've always like Hitch, but I don't see any argument in this piece. Neither do I see you making any argument about the rabbis' comments. There is an entire thread on going on Librarything about circumcision. There is also no argument advanced there. The critics simply state, with no evidence, that this practice is per se Mean, Cruel, Inhuman, Torture, etc.

You know, you guys are so blinded by your faith that you simply miss the obvious. Jews have been circumcising their male children for thousands of years. Not one of those children have ever, when they reach the age of maturity, brought a civil tort action against his parents or sought to have his parents criminally prosecuted, or anything even close. You can't even find male jews who want to claim that they have been maimed and unmanned. Why not? Why are you the defenders of those who do not believe that they have been injured?

Finally, the article that you cite in a subsequent post refutes your whole position. The article concerns whether certain orthodox jews should be criminally prosecuted. It is the same question as the question about gays who have aids but continue to have sex without informing their sexual partners. The general answer is that criminal prosecution is possible if the perpetrator knew of his condition, but only civil tort actions are possible if he didn't know. Same here.

And, incidentally, there is one more parallel with this orthodox practice. You find this orthodox practice to be disgusting and want it banned. Many people have traditionally found gay sex to be disgusting and wanted it banned. Yet you think that you are progressive and modern, while we know what the people are who abhor gay sex and would use the law to put an end to it (even if cameras need to be installed in every bedroom). I, unlike you, am simply consistent.

>287 lawecon: "You think that how a child is reared is the responsibility of the state"

You are soooo good at reading my mind. Not. Except of course that that isn't what you're doing is it? Just rhetorical trickery.

I stated clearly that "if it's good for the atheist, I'm sure it's good for the theist too", by which it should be clear to anyone not donning the "crimson cloak" of "persecution" that I'm saying that if you want to allow religious parents to send their children to unlicensed schools then you must allow atheist parents to send their children to unlicensed schools too. You are the one who is forcing atheist parents to send their children to safe(r) child care (for which they know to be thankful). What your argument boils down to is this: people have the right to believe the earth is flat, they have the right to be ignorant, they have the right to expose their children to sub-par child care through trusting that self-proclaimed god-marketers by dint of their god-whispers run schools which are on a par, or even better, than schools that are supervised by human beings.

You don't give a hoot for the children. You don't give a hoot for their parents. You're just protecting the business interests of people who think the mutterings of bronze age savages are more worth listening to than a modern government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Shame on you.

>288 lawecon: "The critics simply state, with no evidence, that this practice is per se Mean, Cruel, Inhuman, Torture, etc."

It's funny how you (plural, possibly not you specifically) have no problem seeing our perspective on female genital mutilation, but simply seem to feign blindness to your own practices. (As Hitch already mentioned in that video.)

"Not one of those children have ever, when they reach the age of maturity, brought a civil tort action against his parents or sought to have his parents criminally prosecuted"

What? A good and even (or rather, almost) valid point? What's coming over you? I'll add to your point: circumcision has weeded out (some of) the weak by exposing them early to a potential threat, thus strengthening "the race" (as if there is such a thing as human races). And yet. There are actually men (whether Jews and/or gentiles, I do not know) out there who make the effort to regrow their foreskin (Penn & Teller episode). And by the way, just out of vague and mild curiosity..., what, if I may ask, would be the statute of limitations on these cases? Two years? Twenty one? Enough time to understand the workings of the world and to overcome the embarrassment of speaking about this in front of a judge? Just mildly curious as I said...

"Finally, the article that you cite in a subsequent post refutes your whole position."

I note that you assert my position to be a desire "to create a barracks socialism state", and that you make the fallacy of associating me with the gay-banners, rather than engaging with the actual things I say and link to. But don't worry about it. I'm grateful for the challenge. Allows me to discover and learn stuff. So my efforts aren't entirely wasted.

>298 ambrithill: trusting that self-proclaimed god-marketers by dint of their god-whispers run schools which are on a par, or even better, than schools that are supervised by human beings

I'm never quite sure what you mean, DiogenesOfSinope, but by this are you agreeing that church-run schools are often better than state schools, or are you suggesting that this is a piece of dodgy propaganda perpetuated by god-whispering spin doctors? I prefer "god botherers", incidentally; I think it has a nicer ring to it and it rolls off the tongue so much better.

All I can say is that in many parts of the world non-Christians are queuing up to get their children into Christian schools because they have a perception that those schools are better. It's not only the academic results, but often because of the atmosphere, the discipline, the caring and other less tangible things. Of course these are generally not Christian fundamentalist schools as you probably have in the USA, and they teach proper science.

Not sure what you mean by schools that "are supervised by human beings". Are you implying that there are schools supervised by animals, robots or Martians?

than schools that are supervised by human beings

Human beings?! We're not human beings? And this from the man who whined that Catholic language about living in the knowledge of God makes you fully human was "dehumanizing." ( http://www.librarything.com/topic/143162 )

>291 timspalding:: You caught the irony, too, eh? Yeah, it sounds to me that, in Diogenes' eyes, "god whisperers" / "god botherers" / "god marketers" aren't really human beings, so why should he respect them?

> 290, 291 and 292 Clever :-)

"supervised by human beings"

It was of course foolish of me to think that you could read my mind in which I was trying to counter the nonsensical notion about state socialism. The schools that submit to inspection are being inspected by human beings, not governments.

Please choose to read it as you wish.

(At least you're paying attention.)

>290 John5918: No John. I have no problem accepting that privately run schools will often be better run than state run schools. In fact anything private vs state. But I am not advocating that the schools should be run by the state. I am in fact not even suggesting that the state must inspect any schools, though I suspect that independent inspection most likely generally is a good idea. A dedicated inspector will have specialised knowledge and can tell a school what problem areas to look at. We are after all not talking in the main about schools that have been running for hundreds of years, though they too can develop problems, we are talking about new schools starting up without having learnt the ropes yet. Or at least that was the one example given, if you took the time to read it.

I am trying to say as clearly as I can that religious schools, and people, are treated differently by the law. I am claiming that IF inspections serve NO purpose in religious schools, then they should be dropped in secular schools too. I am pretty convinced that these inspections ARE on the whole beneficial, and can therefore imagine no serious reason why any religious school would at all wish to evade such inspections.

>293 lawecon: Thank you for that response lawecon.

And thanks for that offer, but I am in fact not that way inclined.

Studies show that schools that start after a voucher program is instituted in a state do much worse on performance scores than public schools.

Could you link those studies?

~296

Strange, I thought that a narcissus would be auto-sexual.

>294 DiogenesOfSinope:, 295 Thanks for the clarification, Diogenes. As I said, I often have difficulty understanding what you are actually getting at and I understood you to be making a comment about Christian schools, not newly-opened schools. In places where I am familiar with the education system (which of course does not include the USA), private schools are subject to the same standards and the same inspections as state schools. Those inspections are indeed carried out by human beings, but by human beings who represent the state, so it's not either/or. And these schools are expected to teach proper science. I've been both a headmaster and head of science department in secondary (high) schools, incidentally.

Yes, it may take a while, because I did the research when I was working on a voucher bill for Alaska last April. (I was not working to its passage, I should add.) I am sure where the studies are, but I can probably find them by end of the week. (I have to find them by then because I am changing jobs.)