Not much of a handle on Handel

I've not had much musical conversation on here in a while, and an expanded version of a recent book review is a good way to fix that.

Every Valley: The Desperate Lives and Troubled Times That Made Handel's Messiah by Charles King
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I said this book was 2.5 stars rounded down, rounded down in part because this book shouldn't be at 4 stars. We're going to focus more than I did at Goodreads on musical-related issues as well as my thoughts on Handel.

Tis true that the subhed makes at least halfway clear that this is not just a "biography" of the Messiah, and it's certainly not a bio of Handel. That said, it's too much a pastiche even within latitudinarian allowances.

First, a side note, that ties to that. I usually look at blurbers on the back of a book. Not one of them for "Every Valley" is a musicologist, music historian, or music director of an orchestra. I'm familiar with four of the five actual blurbers, having read one or more of their works; none has written about music. So, I wasn't holding tremendous expectations. Stacy Schiff did write about a similar historical period with her Samuel Adams bio. Henry Louis Gates is not much further away. Simon Sebag Montefiore is yet further away historically. And, Elaine Pagels? Really? Amanda Foreman, biographer of the Dutchess of Devonshire, makes absolute sense on the historical angle, but of the other four, one makes less than zero sense, and none of the other three are really good for more than 50 cents on the dollar, if that.

Second, the pastiche? Did we need to know as much about Charles Jennens, writer of "the book" for Messiah, as actually presented? Probably not. Certainly, his non-juror stance was not relevant. Given that the '45 and the Young Pretender did not influence Handel, their semi-extensive discussion was not at all relevant. Ditto on not needing to know as much as was presented about Thomas Coram. A few Black Ghanian leaders inadvertently enslaved then freed was nice, but also irrelevant. In addition, one of them was or became a slave trader himself. Yes, at least some of Handel's salary from the Crown was at least indirectly related to the slave trade. And? Paul says there is "neither slave nor free," ergo theoretically giving Christians license to ignore slave trading. Most the Holdsworth material, irrelevant.

Third? There were a couple of historical errors early on. The Holy Roman Empire had eight not nine electors at this time. Queen Anne succeeded Queen Mary, not King William, who had predeceased her by a few years. Later on, descriptions of a couple of continental wars were a bit sketchy, and also not really relevant.

Whack what you could, and you'd be down to 150 pages; not much of a book.

Flip side? And, this is where the rubber hits the road for the expanded review.

First, Handel's childhood is thin here. We read little other than his allegedly sneaking him home harpsichord practice, about his childhood musical training.

Second, what about early adulthood? Actual interactions with musicians in Italy, name-dropped by King about Handel's time there? All we get is the name-dropping, nothing more. Not discussed, nor is whether or not he met Vivaldi. Did he interact with English composers of the era? Not told.

Third? What about Messiah? From the intro, it's clear that this is an authorial love letter as much as a history. As a former Lutheran now a secularist, but one who has more than a dozen Requiems? Messiah IS kind of bombastic, more, and to its detriment, than the author portrays. It's OK music. It's rousing music. But, great music, it generally is not. Compare it to Bach's B minor Mass or St. John's Passion.

King will talk about Handel's weird meter, and blames it all on allegedly still having a relatively poor understanding of English. (He writes alleged quotes from Handel in a mock German-influenced bad accent that comes off as stupid — stupid by King, not Handel.)

The reality is that Handel had been in England more than 30 years by the time he wrote Messiah. His accented English was likely no worse than that of Arnold Schwarzenegger. If that.

Rather, per King mentioning how much Handel recycled old music, it appears that forcing of meter and accent to old tunes was as much if not more a problem.

So, why didn't he steal from others? Bach regularly did so from Vivaldi, for example. Stravinsky is known for saying many of the best of his ideas he stole from others. Or, if he was stealing from himself, why didn't he edit himself better?

But no. Instead, Handel gives us something forced, padded and bombastic. From this era, I'll take Bach's B minor Mass or St. Matthew's Passion as greater religious music.

And, as a secularist of originally Lutheran background, I'm in a place of detached observance.

And so, to the bigger picture yet. Yes, this is a love letter by King. But, is Messiah in particular, or Handel in general, worth it? Not in my book.

Years ago, I divided classical musicians into groups of seven. I thought of that after finishing this book, and thought groups of five would be better.

Top five: Bach, Vivaldi, Beethoven, Stravinsky, Shostakovich.

Second five: Rachmaninoff, Mahler, Brahms, Schubert, maybe Mozart if you force me.

Third five: Schittke (whom I might shove past Mozart), Hindemith, Prokofiev, maybe Verdi, maybe Penderecki.

Fourth five: Not sure who all would be here, but there's a low likelihood of Handel being here even. Water Music? Good. Fireworks? Almost as good, but also tending toward the bombastic. And, that's a word you can use for a lot of other works of his. 

Beyond that is one other issue. While neither Jennens nor Handel created Anglo-Israelism, both, definitely as a team, contributed to its rise. While it became big in Victorian Britain, its first mentions are in the 1600s. And bombast such as "Zadok the Priest" (text pre-Jennens) becoming a coronation hymn added to that.

This ex-Lutheran hasn't sat through the Messiah either in person or at a PBS type TV broadcast for maybe a full 20 years now, and I don't expect that to change.

View all my reviews

Alan Kirk vs David Litwa on searching for the historic Jesus

 I have vague familiarity with Litwa, and per a not bad question about him and actually good response on this post at r/AcademicBiblical, I have some thoughts on Alan Kirk's review of Litwa's "How the Gospels Became History."

I do NOT think Kirk has the better of Litwa, but that's not the only thing involved.

First, my familiarity with Litwa is not so much directly with him, but with the "bios" school of New Testament, and specifically, gospels, exegesis. As No-Moremon notes in his response, this includes Robyn Faith Walsh and others.

First, contra Kirk, the "bios" idea can be used as a scaffolding around which to construct social memory ideas. That, of course, from my point of view, though, means the scaffolding came first.

Second, on the idea that this discounts conflict between Judaism and Hellenism? While Kirk may be right that at times, Litwa strains on finding specific Hellenistic parallels rather than mining the Hebrew Bible, Kirk in turn oversells this. Mark portrays a Jesus in conflict with "Herodians" and "Pharisees" and "Sadducees," but not, contra Matthew's Passion-crowd bloodlust, let alone John's "The Jews," is Jesus shown in conflict with the Jews in general.

So this? 

“Hellenistic,” however, describes not so much a cultural homogenization as the fraught cultural encounter of rich national traditions with Greek culture, on a spectrum of assimilation, adaptation, and resistance.

Not so totally so, especially if Kirk thinks Litwa is describing homogenization.

Besides, per Lee Levine's great "Judaism and Hellenism in Antiquity: Conflict or Confluence?", the idea that Judaism wouldn't incorporate Hellenistic mythos is simply not true. 

Beyond that, as early as Justin Martyr, Christian leaders acknowledged that the tales about Jesus' virgin birth were like those in the Greek world — only true. Otherwise, Adam Gopnik notes that Elaine Pagels' new book compares early Christians' evolving views about Jesus' post-death to Lubavichers' about Rebbe Menachem Schneerson. Gopnik notes that believe in a Lubavicher Moshiach redivivus would have surged had anything like the Jewish Revolt hit the Lubavicher community. 

But? This is NOT a nod toward Litwa's "bios." Rather, it's Pagels' way of explaining how "rips" in the fabric of memory were restitched. Indeed, from there, Gopnik first pivots to Richard C. Miller, with whom I am unfamiliar, and then Walsh.

And so, why wouldn't the Gospelers use, and adapt, specific bits of Greek legend and myth? There, Pagels at least gets the overhead right. As for any Eastern myth Litwa might say backs the gospels, well, Levine notes that Judaism had been extensively Persianized before this. Emphasis on extensively, in my eyes. Idan Dershowitz, per what he says was originally The Great Famine, not Flood, has tackled this issue in detail.

Third, that said, is Litwa really that new? To riff on D.F. Straus, mentioned by Kirk, is this really that much different than a repackaged θεῖος ἀνήρ theory with a broader background?

And, per personages like Metatron in some of the Jewish apocalyptic literature from Qumran, that idea was not totally alien to Judaism before the gospels, either. Nor, however its theological interpretation is skinned, was the מַלְאַךְ יְהוָה or "angel of the Lord." And, Kirk knows this as well. 

The search for the historical Jesus

Fourth, but not spoken in detail, I think is Kirk's real plaint. And that's that, as noted, Litwa is shutting the door on new searches for the historical Jesus.

And, really, it should be shut.

On the gospels, stand or die on Markan priority or not, whether you're pushing the communal social memory idea of the gospels' writing or not. As I see it, this is in some ways, with the Synoptics, an attempt to work around, or dodge, traditional theories of transmission, as was the push for oral transmission in the 1970s-90s, riffing off the Balkan bards of Parry and Lord. And, in part because social memory can be just as malleable as individual memory, I see it as being not much more likely than oral transmission theory to say anything significantly new about composition of any of the canonical gospels, let along the Synoptics. Oh, and yes, social memory can be that malleable; it starts with the sociology of crowds.

Perhaps Litwa could use more of the traditional 20th-century exegetical forms and methods. Perhaps use new ones, like the social memory idea, without over-leaning on it.

But, accept that you'll never get back further than an author's, or an author and his community's, ideas about the historic Jesus.

Period.

That's for you, and others of like mind, Alan Kirk.

To riff on Bultmann? The Christ of faith is all you can find.

Robyn Faith Walsh: "I'm part of the Bart Ehrman team"

Via The Amateur Exegete, newly added to the blogroll here based on something I saw at the Nazi-mods biblical subreddit, I saw the following video from Walsh about dating the gospels:

And yes, she makes that statement in quotes in the header at the start of the video. 

First, ugh on multiple accounts.

Regular readers here know I have less and less regard for Ehrman each new book he writes, so that's one ugh.

Second, if you're an academic with a solid background yourself, why would you place yourself on some other academic's "team"?

Third and biggest ugh? 

Is Bart Ehrman now a "brand"? Just shoot me. 

Per her comments, where she begins with what she claims is the current consensus in the scholarship.

First, with Mark, she doesn't allow for a "Cross Gospel" or other written material.

On Matthew, is it really a "consensus" that he wrote at 80 CE? Not from what I've read.

Luke at 90? Again not what I've heard.

John? Early second. And, sorry, the "scraps of papyrus" aren't guaranteed to be from the current John. Could be from an earlier edition, the Egerton Gospel, or something else.

Then, her dating.

First, she claims Mark is post-Jewish War entirely. Her "no-temple Judaism" claim doesn't float me, and it ignores the truncated version of the "apocalypse" in Mark vs other synoptics. 

But, in her snippet, she offers nothing more detailed on her dating vs "the consensus" on the other two synoptics or John.

==

Back to that Bart Ehrman brand. Yes, she stans for his Biblical Studies Academy. Flaks for it at the end of the video. Has Bart's mugshot icon in the top left of the video.

Barf me.

Top blogging, first quarter of 2025

 A couple of weeks late, but better late than never, eh?

As is normal, and as with the monthly roundup on my main blog, these were the most read in the first three months of this year, without necessarily being written then. "Evergreen" items from the past will be so noted.

10th? My 2022 post on the great ahistoricity of Acts — and radical thoughts on Paul's demise — is trending in part because I posted it as a comment at Paul Davidson's "Is That in the Bible" site, and also because it's linked in No. 7 below.

In 9th? A recent post about putting Hindu-Buddhist theological carts before consciousness horses.

At 8 is an oldie from 2021 about the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod shutting down its Concordia University in Portland because it was too doctrinally loose on some issues, and the shitload of fallout that caused — fallout that, AFAIK, has not been totally resolved. Teh Google shows no recent news, but does show LCMS insidiousness at work earlier this year on its university in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

At No. 7, from earlier this year, is my "semi-disappointing foul ball" critique of "God's Ghostwriters" by Candida Moss.

At No. 6, from just a month ago? A hard-hitting callout of LCMS president Matthew Harrison for godawful theology in sucking up to Trumpistan. Some of it is bad theology by Lutheran vs Reformed Protestantism lights, others is just bad theology period. I suspect it's only going to get worse over the next three years and nine months.

No. 5? From a year ago, my critique of new and weird claims about Morton Smith and Secret Mark. It may be trending because I posted it on Skeptophilia blogger Gordon Bonnet's page when he wrote a post about a month ago talking about "Mysterious Mark" or something and I thought fragments of a previously unknown gospel had been found until I started reading.

No. 4? From last month, the latest installation of the gift that keeps on giving, the latest wrongness at the r/AcademicBiblical subreddit.

No. 3? A claim that a so-called (and yes, that part is needed) Plague of Cyprian nearly collapsed the Roman Empire, the subject of an entire recent book, "The Fate of Rome," is pretty much wrong in many ways, and may be close to the old physics Not.Even.Wrong. world.

No. 2? My second takedown of "Matty" Harrison, Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod president, came after the Portland issue, in 2023. This was over his handling of the "Lutefash" issue within his denomination, including pastors, including, in an update, one involved with the "Steal the Vote" effort in Georgia 2020. As with No. 6, I expect this will only get worse over the next three years and nine months because Matthew Harrison is a big "trimmer" as well as a big politician. (If you think organized religion — and not just tribes within Christianity on that — isn't politicized, you need to think again.)

No. 1? I love not only kicking touters of Buddhism, like Robert Wright and his ilk that claims it's not a religion, but kicking ideas in Buddhism behind that.  "More proof that the Buddha was no Buddha" goes back to 2007.

And, with 2, 6, and 8, I decided Harrison needed his own tag.

There's more to agnostics than meets the eye?

 Well, maybe, or maybe not, if the eye observing the agnostic is critically perceptive enough.

PsyPost confirms what I think many of us have already known.

Using "atheist" in its modern Western sense of "irreligious" (after all, tens if not hundreds of millions of Theravada Buddhists are quite religious and quite atheistic), it says that agnostics have a different psychological mindset than either atheists or the religious. 

Research findings indicate agnostics possess a distinct psychological profile characterized by higher indecisiveness, greater neuroticism, and a stronger tendency to search for alternatives in life compared to both atheists and religious believers. ... Agnostics exhibited a greater tendency to search for life alternatives, suggesting they maintain a broader orientation toward keeping options open rather than simply being uncertain atheists.

The study, from the UK, has enough participants to be reasonably solid versus small sample size issues.

The study also notes this:

Strong agnostic identifiers rated both themselves and others positively on traits associated with being a “nice person” without exhibiting the “better-than-average effect” seen in the other groups. This pattern may reflect a form of humility or reluctance to assert superiority consistent with the agnostic worldview.

Which in turn reflects on part of why people like me scorn Gnu Atheists, seeing them as the Western atheism version of the religiously fundagelical.

Speaking of?

How much can these findings about agnostics be extended to non-Gnu Atheists, especially the type of people listed in religious   atheistic (in the western sense, of course, excluding Theravada) spectra in old books, i.e., people who were once called "soft atheists"? That's probably a bit firmer than "uncertain atheists" but might still have people who have the humility issues locked in more than at least the Gnu, or fundamentalist, atheists. That said, the study doesn't talk about how the religiously fundamentalist compare to the religiously latitudinarian. Nor does it talk about how monotheisms compare to Eastern religions.

Ethical and pontifical thoughts on the death of Pope Francis

Francis, who died Monday morning at age 88, was certainly a reformer pope when contrasted with his successor, Benedict XVI. But, how much? Per the Associated Press's obituary, he really wasn't much of a reformer on the Catholic Church's sexual abuse scandal. He had a mix of defiance and diffidence for at least the first five years of his pontificate, and I'm not sure he ever really "got it."

On the broader picture, the way he distanced himself from liberation theology in his pre-bishopric days as Argentinian leader of the Jesuits, long before coming a cardinal, also means that "reformer" should be placed in context.

He was a critic of capitalism, yes. But, so too was not only Benedict but John Paul II; Benedict may not have been that vocal, but JPII was at times. Conservative Protestant fundagelicals in the US don't get how much this issue is woven into Catholic teaching. (For that matter, neither do conservative Catholic laity, or maybe the truth is more that they refuse to accept it rather than that they don't get it.) 

As for his legacy? I don't think he really stanched the decline in attendance in Catholicism in the western world, either among more liberal or more conservative attendees. As for the ethical legacy? The sexual abuse scandal still has a degree of haze over the church. Women priests and abortion, though they will be no-go lines for any pope, are alienation for some of the laity.

And, while serving longer than Benedict, it's still an issue how much he reformed the curia and the College of Cardinals. His successor will be no more reforming than him even outside the bright lines on the priesthood and abortion.  Don't forget that evolutionary biologist Francisco Ayala, who called god "the great abortionist," identifies as Catholic.

The real issue isn't Benedict. 

There are two others.

One, per "Saint Acutis," whose canonization Francis now will not see, is that Francis doubled down on John Paul II's acceleration of the sainthood process, and, with people like Acutis — and Antoni Gaudi, who is in the pipeline, tried to modernize the church by looking for "saints of the gaps." Unless a future pope canonizes Francisco Ayala (joking), or more seriously, someone like the Belgian astrophysicist and diocesan priest Georges Lemaitre, the attempts of the church to straddle two stools on scientific issues will probably see those stools widening ever further.

The other is that, despite John XXIII's pronouncements absolving "the Jews" for the death of Jesus, the whiff of past papal antisemitism stands unaddressed.

"Cultural Catholicist" Tim O'Neill, who identifies as an atheist, but acts as a papal apologist on issues like this, refuses to read the likes of David Kertzer.

The reality is that Pius XI served 17 years, from 1922-39, and cozied up to Mussolini then Hitler. Pius XII served even longer, 1939-58, continued to cozy up to fascists, did minimal work in trying to save Jews, and helped with the "rat line" to let Nazis escape to Latin America after WWII.

Kerzer has written full books not only about Pius XI and Pius XII, but about papal antisemitism. Per the first, Pius XI looked ready to backtrack at least a bit, near his deathbed, but the future Pius XII, as his Vatican Secretary of State, destroyed that statement. In the second book, Kertzer actually calls Pius XII a fascist. In the third, from 1800 through at least 1945, Kertzer notes that Catholic antisemitism emanated, in many cases, from the Vatican itself.

Will a future pope fully and honestly address this? John XXIII's absolution for "good Friday" didn't go beyond that in specific. So, I doubt it. 

On Francis? Many Zionists claim that he's led the Vatican backward from predecessor popes. Other Catholics, and the likes of Mondoweiss, say rather that it's overdue outreach to the Palestinian world. (Don't forget that Palestine still has Christians — even while taking note of Paula Fredriksen's warped take on why the Christian-Muslim ratio has declined, and that Palestinian Christianity is a mishmash of Catholicism, Lutheranism, Eastern Rite Catholic and Orthodox.)

As for jokes making the rounds of Shitter Monday that Bagger Vance was the antichrist for killing Francis?

That said, the conservative Lutheranism of my childhood — which still refuses to address the antisemitism of founder Martin Luther — thinks the office of the papacy, beyond any individual pope, is the biblical antichrist. John Calvin proclaimed the same.

That's good old Leo X in the middle if you can't tell.

Actually, it wasn't just Luther and Calvin and it didn't start there. Arnulf of Reims first made this claim in in the late 900s CE.

So, with Francis' death, per acclamations of new medieval kings? "Antichrist is dead; long live antichrist!"

Jokes aside, in reality, this is incorrect. I wrote in depth, long ago, about how "antichrist" is NOT "the beast" of the mark of such and number 666 in Revelation, and now also, neither of these is "the man of lawlessness" in 2 Thessalonians. 

That said, if used generically, and really meaning "the man of lawlessness"? Luther and Calvin weren't all wet. More correct yet since another Pius, Pius X, proclaimed papal infallibility at the First Vatican Council. And, Pius IX was pontiff at the time of the Edgardo Mortara kidnapping. What is it with these Piuses?

As a secularist, it’s of one sense no mind to me if the pontiff still is the man of lawlessness in some way, shape or form. But, since the Christian Right tries to keep control of the United States, and since there are conservative Catholics nuttier than Opus Dei — Catholic versions of dominionists like Ted Cruz’s dad — it’s a political concern. A weird part of this is the fascination many Protestants in the U.S. have with the papacy, almost as weird as the fascination many Americans have with the British monarch.

That said, there’s little new on that. When St. Ronald of Reagan officially established diplomatic relations with Vatican City, he faced little pushback from fundagelical Protestants on either theological or First Amendment grounds. I was still religiously Lutheran then; I didn’t totally like it on the first basis. Today? I find it abhorrent on First Amendment grounds.

==

Update, May 8: From my main blog, here's my take on the new pope.

Holy Week: A secularist perception 30 years out

Salvador Dali's ethereal version of The Last Supper, not the Lord's Supper. The title is theologically correct per Matthew.

It's actually been a bit over 30 years since I graduated from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri with my master's of divinity degree, realizing before graduation that, at minimum, I wasn't a fundamentalist Lutheran.

But, I "searched" for a couple of years, looking mentally at more liberal Lutheranism, and bits of other more liberal Protestantism, too. I looked at Unitarianism. Went to a few services. Looking for a possible full-time career, as I realized I couldn't do liberal Lutheranism, either, I inquired about the Unitarian ministry. I was told I'd have to do another full-year internship, and then, there was still no guarantee of a hiring, of course.

Went to a few meetings of the St. Louis chapter of The Ethical Society; already then, it may have been the largest outpost of the organization.

I also ran through Buddhist ideas, what I knew then, in my head. (And, yes, once again, contra Robert Wright, it's a religion. Still is.)

I didn't think much about Hinduism, despite Eckankar having an office or whatever across one side street from the seminary's grounds. (Said grounds, with lots of semi-forested area, also attracted several people I am guessing were Shinto. And, real Shinto, not Meiji state Shinto.) Never thought about Islam.

Anyway, I passed on all of them, and by 30 years ago, was a confirmed secularist. Here's the last of a six-part series on my journey.

A few years later, encountering the self-help world, I tried to do that. Even read some of the "manifestation" type books, and — I couldn't.

About 20 years ago or a bit more, I got lost while hiking in Canyonlands National Park, in late July. I ran out of water. I cycled through prayers to Yahweh, Jesus, Allah, Olympian and Norse divinities, Vishnu and more — and then stopped.

Anyway, here I am today.

Whipping through friends' of friends' Facebook pages yesterday, I saw .... gack.

Along with pious Lutheranism, cheapish memes. AI-generated versions of Maundy Thursday and Palm Sunday art. (This sets aside Hyam Maccoby's claim that this event probably happened on Sukkoth, not Passover [if it happened at all].)

Not on Lutheran friends' of friends' pages, but elsewhere, I've seen the "If Jesus had a gun, he'd still be alive." Some wingnuts may be trying to "own the liberals" with that, but others may not have a clue that most varieties of Christianity preach a substitutionary atonement. So, no, Jesus with a gun defeats the whole purpose, according to Christianity. (And yes, the idea that many self-professed [self-alleged?] Christians might be that theologically illiterate is no shock to me and shouldn't be to you.)

Anyway, even without the more cringey stuff on friends' of friends' pages, college or seminary alums of mine, I realized just how foreign that all is to me. 

It's not as distant as it may be for an Orthodox Jew, let alone a Buddhist, but ... it's foreign.

That said, Gnu Atheism — especially Jesus mysticism subvariants that seem to believe Jesus MUST BE and MUST BE PROVEN TO BE nonexistent for atheism to be firm, are just about as foreign. And possibly even more stupid. It's definitely more illogical.

And, with that said, as a good secular humanist, as long as fundagelically religious — and Gnu Atheist — neither pick my pocket, nor break my bones, per Thomas Jefferson, I have less and less interest on a regular basis at going attack dog on either one.