Did Paul, with his "resurrection body", believe that a physical body of Jesus still lay in a tomb?

Tosh and tommyrot, per good British English, if one looks at what Paul actually says in I Corinthians 15, but British philosopher Jonathan M.S. Pearce believes differently. He's been corrected.

I disagree that there's massive difference between Paul and the Synoptic Gospels and that Paul's talking about two actually different bodies, unlike his claim that Paul's "resurrection body" means that Jesus' physical body was still lying in a tomb.

First, especially in Luke, it's pretty clear to me that something like Paul's "spiritual body" is being talked about, rather than a theoretically "narrow" physical resurrection. And, it's not just Luke's relatively extensive discussion of resurrection appearances by Jesus.

His argument with the Sadducees, common to all three Synoptics (Mark 12, Matthew 22, Luke 20), would seem to support this Jesus, and the gospelers here, talking about something like a spiritual body, and Mark using Sadducee beliefs specifically to introduce this as a teaching. 

Beyond that? Mark discusses nothing and Matthew next to nothing. That, then, leaves Paul only in conflict with John. And of course, as in many other things, John is not a Synoptic gospel, and also has its own long editing history, in part related to Gnosticizing issues.

Second, it's purely an argument from silence to claim that Paul believes there's a physical body still in a tomb; it's arguably also a misinterpretation of 1 Corinthians 15. (This is something I've long thought.) And, as when used by mythicists, such arguments from silence aren't good logically as well as being not good empirically.

This one is the biggie. Although Pierce has apparently finally fallen on the non-mythicist side of the fence re a historic Jesus, he's backed unwarranted arguments from silence before.

Third, Paul's "spiritual body" pretty clearly seems something out of middle Platonism, as his interpretation of what ‮ylidob‬ resurrection means. The "spiritual body," at least to me, pretty clearly is within his take on Jewish ideas of resurrection, an "ideal body." Paul, (and the pseudo-Paul of Colossians) does have Gnosticizing elements, tis true. That said, most scholars distinguish that from full-on Gnosticism, first of all. Second, per my take, there's no conflict between Paul perhaps having cadged an idea from middle Plantonism and having been influenced by Gnosticizing.

Given that the Synoptics, while they nuance Paul in many ways, also are at least indirectly dependent on Paul in some ways, a head-on conflict between them on any theological matters would be questionable. 

Pearce's fanbois rallied to his colors, though, voting down anybody who disagreed with him, both nuanced disagreers and the religious right or semi-so.

==

Update: Via Twitter, Pierce thinks he has me.

First, he notes that Jesus does eat a fish in the second half of Luke 24. True. He also eats nothing at Emmaus before that, and Luke 24:36-43 has drawn a lot of critical skepticism over the years, including whether it might be an interpolation. See here and here for starters.

As for Third Corinthians? No, Jonathan, we don't know that the author is early Christians trying to correct Paul's theology. Rather, it could be one pseudopigraphal work trying to correct the theology of an earlier pseudopigraphal work from the "school of Paul," ie, Colossians. Otherwise, the full length of Third Corinthians, shorter than Philippians and not a lot longer than Philemon, is too slender a reed to lean on too much.

But, unlike the Tippler, or John Loftus, or Gnu Godless in Dixie, I haven't gotten famous and hired by Patheos, whether myself or a "school," speaking of, to help me write.

==

Update 2: At Gary the ex-Lutheran's blog, having posted a link to this on Gary's piece about Paul and Platonism, I seemed to have picked up a shape-shifting fundagelical-like commenter known as "Aussiestockman." I've run into him a bit before; (under current name?) he's a relatively recent commenter there, so, hence my "fundagelical-like." I don't have enough data points to prove he is full-on. 

But, by current Wordpress name used there at least (Google had few hits in general with it spelled as all one word) I do have enough to say the "like." And, for Google to add his name here among search hits, as I've also added it to the SEO population.

The goalpost-shifting? After noting my graduate degree background, he raised the bar to PhD, and other things. My last response to him said, among other things, that even if that wasn't enough, it was certainly more than he had.

Per his last comment, to which I didn't respond, I made a real point in my first comment. (He also didn't respond to my note about his lack of qualifications on the issue.) Ergo, we're entering trollery land.

Did biblical Edom exist? Implications for an "Israel"? And, what politics are involved in this?

 For the unfamiliar, the Copenhagen school of interpretation of the Tanakh/Old Testament is indeed minimalist even within critical exegesis. It claims that not only did Abraham not exist, not only did Moses not exist, but David and Solomon also did not exist and almost any historical claim in the Tanakh before the return from exile and Ezra (we presume) doing editorial work on the Torah (Copenhagen folks often claim writing work, not just editorial work, taking a more fragmentary rather than documentary approach) isn't true.

Well, Smithsonian has a piece about a re-exploration of old copper mines in Israel's Arabah that were reportedly redeveloped from earlier Egyptian New Kingdom mining circa 1000 BCE. As in, time of alleged Biblical Edom and time of David. Earlier archaeological work was done there about a century ago by the renowned Nelson Glueck. Glueck claimed he had found "King Solomon's mines." Later work in the 1960s backdated it to Egyptian New Kingdom times and said that the great cataclysm of the eastern Mediterranean circa 1177 BCE led to their being shut down.

First, I'm not going to argue that whoever redeveloped the mines at Timna at this time wasn't well off. People wearing Tyrian purple, found on site in the new work by Erez Ben-Yosef.

OK, who did this mining? And, how close to 1000 BCE did it start?

First of all, the author, Matti Friedman (more on him at Wiki) doesn't mention the dating range of any material. (I Tweeted to him at the time I started writing this.)

Second, how do you know this is "Edomite"? Egypt started a partial return to glory with the 22nd Dynasty, founded by Sheshonq I, the "Shishak" of 1 Kings note, invading Judah of Rehoboam at instigation of Israel of Jereboam I. (Note: Israel Finkelstein, a minimalist but not quite of Copenhagen level, considers the story a legend; he's mentioned in the Smithsonian piece, for his comments related to Timna, plus that he, like Ben-Yosef, works at Tel Aviv University.) Why couldn't it be running the mines again? And, that is a valid question whether the part about Sheshonq invading organized kingdoms of Israel and Judah is true or not.

Sheshonq came to power 945 BCE, hence my Tweet to Friedman asking about the precision of the dating.

Third, even if run by a group called "Edom," that doesn't mean we should conceive of them as being anything like a nation-state. Ben-Yosef does, and Finkelstein has harshly criticized him.

Fourth, beyond the carbon dating range, is one of language. Got any ostraca or other items with writing on them? Until you do, and said ostraca have a language known as "Edomite" on them, this is pure conjecture.

Fourth, Friedman seems to be doing some spinning:

What Ben-Yosef has produced isn’t an argument for or against the historical accuracy of the Bible but a critique of his own profession. Archaeology, he argues, has overstated its authority. Entire kingdoms could exist under our noses, and archaeologists would never find a trace. Timna is an anomaly that throws into relief the limits of what we can know. The treasure of the ancient mines, it turns out, is humility.

Well, archaeology has always had limitations and young Turks have always been wanting to state new theories and ideas.

That said, we need to go further. Friedman says, very early in the story, and a photo is also so captioned, that Ben-Yosef is "agnostic" about the bible as history. The caption starts:

Erez Ben-Yosef, who leads the Timna excavation, is a self-described agnostic when it comes to biblical history.

Sounds simple, right? But, put an asterisk in that and see below.

And, in either case, is Friedman? Or, does he see an "opening" to run with here?

And, why not? Click the link on his name, or the Wiki page, and .... ???

He's a pretty ardent Zionist.  Per Wiki:

Following the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict, Friedman wrote an essay criticizing what he views as the international media's bias against Israel and undue focus on the country, stating that news organizations treat it as "most important story on earth". He said when he was a correspondent at the AP,

the agency had more than 40 staffers covering Israel and the Palestinian territories. That was significantly more news staff than the AP had in China, Russia, or India, or in all of the 50 countries of sub-Saharan Africa combined. It was higher than the total number of news-gathering employees in all the countries where the uprisings of the "Arab Spring" eventually erupted. [...] I don’t mean to pick on the AP—the agency is wholly average, which makes it useful as an example. The big players in the news business practice groupthink, and these staffing arrangements were reflected across the herd.[7]

Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the piece went "viral" on Facebook.[4] The Atlantic then invited Friedman to write a longer article.[18] AP issued a statement, saying that Friedman's "... arguments have been filled with distortions, half-truths and inaccuracies, both about the recent Gaza war and more distant events. His suggestion of AP bias against Israel is false".[19]

Given that he's also listed as an NYT op-ed columnist, and the likes of Bret Stephens have praised his books, uhhh ....

And, its relation to this?

Even if Ben-Yosef isn't postulating a real Moses, bank-shotting off a real Edom, he's postulating the Glueck-like idea of a real David and Solomon is true.

And, of course, that's got implications for Zionism.

Let us say the dating is correct and within a narrow band. Given that, as Ben-Yosef noted, Edom is mentioned outside the bible and as of this time, who says that proves the bible is historically true on the existence of polities named "Israel" and "Judah"? And, who says this copper was being mined for any such polity rather than for a re-emerging Egypt?

That said, per the argument between the archaeological heavyweights, per a link off the Smithsonian piece, Ben-Yosef IS, at a minimum, more agnostic than Friedman:

While I still maintain that the historical reconstruction presented in my recent publications 73 fits better the available evidence, it should be noted that the differing views of specific aspects of the early Iron Age archaeology of the south—including its identification with Edom— have little bearing on my main argument, which is methodological in essence.

But, not FULLY agnostic. Per a Jerusalem Post piece, Ben-Yosef thinks Israel (would actually be Judah???) at least indirectly controlled the mines. But, we still don't have the alleged copper basin of Solomon. We DO, per the J Post, have evidence of Timna copper of this era in ... ??? 

Egypt. (See above!)

In any case, color me less than fully convinced. That's also despite Biblical Archaeology Review playing this up, on the first 21st century work, 15 years ago. (Shock me.)

The precision of the carbon dating is not a big deal. Not having writing or any other things at Timna to specifically identify this as a people, a polity, separate from Egypt, as in not under its control, is a deal. 

But, I have my answer, per this piece. Here we are:

The results of several different types of tests conducted in recent years, including high resolution 14C dating and archaeo-magnetism from multiple slag mounds,[6] necessitated a revision in the dating suggested by Rothenberg and determined that the peak of activity at Timna took place during the early Iron Age, or 11th-9th centuries B.C.E.

And, that is broader than the Friedman piece implies. 1000 BCE is just the midpoint, but even the above doesn't specify if uncertainty on the range is higher on one end than the other.

It's also clear from that piece that Friedman is strawmanning about Ben-Yosef. He's not so agnostic about bible as history at all. 

It's even more clear at this J Post piece:

So if we understand differently the potential role of nomads, the basic attributes of archaeologists to identify power should also be changed. And if we're looking for walls and big palaces in order to understand the size, the magnitude of the united monarchy of David and Solomon, we don't necessarily have to find these attributes in order to for biblical descriptions to have a real history in them. 

This is what I'm saying. I'm not saying we can prove, but I'm saying that archaeology can definitely not disprove the description in the Bible of an influential, big kingdom, strong kingdom centered in Jerusalem. This is part of our insights from studying a nomadic society in the South

Has Finkelstein claimed that archaeology "disproves" or just that "it shows no proof," first?

Second, yes, new revelations in archaeology show, let us say "kinglets" without walls and palaces. (I say this while in the middle of the new Graeber-Wengrow book.) Big kings and big kingdoms without those things? Not so much.

Finally, to pivot this back to politics? 

The Smithsonian could have done some more editing on this. And, it possibly could just have rejected the piece, if it didn't solicit it.

If the Tacitus passage on Nero, the Great Fire, and Christians is an interpolation, why?

I addressed week before last week how John Drinkwater handles the infamous passages from Tacitus' Annals about Nero's ALLEGED cruel punishment of Christians after the Great Fire. Beyond what I already knew about the Great Fire, about Tacitus in general, and about the Greek itacism and other problems with the specific issues in the passage, I also relied on this piece from a religion Wiki (warning: friendly to Jesus mythicism) which gave me more food for thought.

Tertullian and other Church fathers cite no such passage, and it appears not to be referenced by any Christian before 400 CE.  Sulpicius Severus, ca 400 CE, appears to be the first Christian to write about it, but his account in his "Sacred History" is hugely suspect. It's basically a "blown-out" version of Tacitus. It also gets many other things wrong, starting with claiming there was a massive number of Christians at that time, then that Nero outlawed Christianity along with starting the persecutions. Clement I, especially if one goes by "traditional" date and provenance, would have readers who would have remembered this, had it happened. He doesn't mention it. Celsus surely would have flung this issue at Origin, had he known of it, and of course Origen would have found some way to try refute it. He doesn't discuss it. Tertullian, who cites Tacitus a fair amount, doesn't mention it. Nor Eusebius, the first Christian historian.

And, some early writings actually explicitly counter Tacitus' claim. Brent Shaw, in an academic journal, extracted and summarized here by Charles Mercier, has the details on the possibility this is an interpolation. (Mercier then has a Part 2, which frames Catholic touting of Neronian martyrs within Reformation hagiography.) Shaw, per Mercier's Part 1, doesn't totally agree with the Religion Wiki take on why this is possibly an interpolation. As noted, if the passage IS genuine, the best and most we can derive from it, in my opinion, is that Tacitus was doing a bank shot to smear Nero by saying his torturous deaths were so cruel that Christians got sympathy. (I'm not fully ready to commit to it being an interpolation, as that's an argument from silence, and to do otherwise risks petard-hoisting. That said, [motivated reasoning alert?] the idea that there are degrees of silence would nuance that.)

But, what if it IS an interpolation? Why?

Let's say that Christians of 300 CE or later read Suetonius, and took his account that Claudius expelled the Jews who were engaged in Messianic disturbances (sic on my interpretation of ChrEEStos) and instead took that to be Jesus. 

So, why extrapolate from there to Nero?

Per my big piece about the differences between "antichrist," "man of lawlessness" and "666/The Beast," and John Chyrsostom chiding Christians of his time for visiting synagogues? At 400 CE, Christians still would have known enough Hebrew and/or Aramaic to know that the "666" was Nero. (As I note there, "Nero Caesar" in the Hebrew alphabet is נרון קסר‎ NRON QSR, which when used as numbers represent 50 200 6 50 100 60 200, which add to 666. See the link at the top of the paragraph for more detail.) They would not have know that this could have come from a disciple of John the Baptist who wrote the non-Christian core of Revelation, so they asked, "WHY is Nero the Beast"? And, they created the answer. There may also be angles related to Constantinople as the New Rome and other things.

That said, that leads to a third theoretical option besides Tacitus being true here. That is that there were messianic disturbances at this time, tied to the precursor of the revolt and the First Jewish War in Judea. We have Claudius' previous expulsion of the Jews from Rome. Tom Holland, in his book "Dynasty," notes that, according to Valerius Maximus, the first Roman expulsion of Jews happened way back in 139 BCE. That would have been just after the establishment of the Hasmonean kingdom. And, while the Christian population of Rome at this time (setting aside the issue of them counting themselves separate from Jews or not) was only 1/10 of 1 percent, Jews made up around 5 percent of Rome's population, as the past expulsions had in general not been permanent and Jew/non-Jew and Jewish/non-Jewish, to get at both culture and religion, differences weren't as sharply noticed as in Christian Europe, making returns easier.

But, how likely is that? Suetonius had mentioned the expulsion of the Jews under Claudius; surely he would have mentioned this, too, one would think. Tacitus and Suetonius would have used more explicitly anti-Jewish language, as both were writing after the First Jewish War. And, after the "separation" started, Christians would have cited this among anti-Jewish polemics.

Of the three, an interpolation seems more likely. The double bankshot seems less likely. The Jewish Messianic revolt seems not much more likely than Tacitus telling the truth here.

Update, May 26, 2024: A person at r/AcademicBiblical, in chat with me about a main comment of hers there, where she claims that 1 Clement, stripped of legendary accretions, is about Peter and Paul being killed by fellow Christians, nonetheless, in response to me, claims that the Tacitus is not an interpolation. 

I offered as a sidebar the Option B, that, if genuine by Tacitus, it's still a double-bankshot smear, projecting back from his own interactions with Christians, of what was a non-event, so that he could smear Nero even more than Christians.

As for said person's claims rejecting the interpolation idea? They note that the Correspondence of Paul and Seneca mentions the Great Fire earlier. Two counterpoints: First, on a late dating, only about 20 years earlier. So, it's in the same milieu, even if earlier. Second, the 11th letter of said correspondence is generally believed to be by a second forger than most other letters. Severus himself? Third counterpoint? As mentioned above? Tertullian regularly cited Tacitus, so why not here?

Finally, if you've read both, Severus just reads a lot like Tacitus.

Said person does reject an actual persecution, so they're solid there.

I raised the Tertullian and Celsus issues, and got pretty much a handwaving response.

That one is rather easily explicable. The Annals does not look like it was ever completely finished by Tacitus, or did not receive the full editing required, and so it also wasn't distributed nearly as widely. In fact, Tacitus' works in general were largely ignored, and the Annals was probably just in disrepair. So this isn't surprising nor indicative of much.

We'll agree to disagree. As I said in response, at the time of Severus, Jerome references all 30 books of Annals plus Histories. And, Tertullian wrote no more than a century later. And, got more handwaving in return:

Handwaving, half-truths and more.

Jerome is also writing after Sulpicius, so the Annals were at that point becoming known to Christians, so Jerome isn't surprising or pertinent there. 

And as we know, from the late second century to the early fourth century, Tacitus' works were actually in disrepair and the Annals was not read either by Christians or by Greco-Roman authors. It was just a text almost entirely unknown until there was a revival effort to try and bring his works into public eye (by pagans specifically). Read more

First, Jerome is relevant because it shows he knows them all, and he was enough of a historian for that era to probably have looked at all of them. And, ergo, it directly refutes the "and as we know" of the second paragraph.

I had debated about direct-quoting, even with the first exchange, but this confirmed in me to direct quote both. Especially because it gets even worse after that:

No, actually it doesn't. It shows that from Tacitus' writing, until 250 years later, there is no knowledge the Annals even existed.

And as a case in point, you can read Anthony Barrett's book Rome is Burning, which specifically notes a Roman emperor actively went out of his way to rejuvenate Tacitus' works because they had fallen into disrepair and obscurity. This was the Emperor Tacitus (reigned in 275 CE to 276), who specifically ordered Tacitus' works be revived.

As Barrett notes, even in the sixth century, Cassiodorus still refers to a "certain Cornelius [Tacitus]", using distanced terminology that implies his readers probably would have no familiarity, again speaking to Tacitus' poor reception.

Both Sulpicius and Jerome are writing *after* Emperor Tacitus' attempt to revive his ancestor's work. So no, nothing here is incorrect and is in perfect alignment with the historical record. The Annals were a habitually neglected source, and it was only after Tacitus' reputed descendant the Emperor Tacitus revived his reputation that the Annals started coming to people's attention. Thus, around 70 years later, Sulpicius finally reads the Annals and sees that passage, and Jerome finally knows of them later.

OK, an Emperor who is in the middle of the The Imperial Crisis, aka The Decline of the Third Century and reigns 6 months really has time to puff his namesake? And, certainly doesn't have the reign to make it happen, even if he ordered it? And, the Anthony Barrett who barely touches 4 stars with one book, and can't crack 3.5 on most? And, a handwaving interpretation of what Cassiodorus meant, while continuing to reject my comment about Jerome?

(Update: Per my review of a Melvin Goodman book, this isn't the only bit of suspiciousness from Sulpicius Severus, either.)

Anyway, I promised Crissy the last word. On Reddit, not here.

And, here's why I think that Correspondence piece can't earlier than 380 CE on the 11th letter. Yes, Christianity was legal before that under Constantine. It didn't become the state religion until 380 CE, under Theodosius I's Edict of Thessalonica.) Obviously, despite failings here and there, the Correspondence knew better than to reference a comment from Tacitus if a legitimate one existed.) Before that, no Christian writer would have felt safe blaming Nero. But, once the gloves were off, people besides Severus could simply have reference Tacitus without creating an interpolation, if the actual Tacitus had written something.

And, this leads to me offering further thought on the WHY.

After making Christianity the state religion, Theodosius launched the first attacks on paganism. A Sulpicius Severus would have written his own piece, as well as "dropping a dime" inside Tacitus as alleged proof, in support of these attacks.

"Look at the old Rome! Since the start of Christianity, it has persecuted us!"

Rather than the approach of the biblical gospels and Acts, to have gloves fully on vis-a-vis Rome, it was now time to take the gloves off in service of the New Rome.

Drinkwater on Nero, Tacitus and early Christians: what he gets wrong

Nero: Emperor and Court by John F. Drinkwater
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book gets an overall three-star rating, which itself is a complex of three subratings and some downward rounding. (I was probably at 3.5 stars overall, but with every full review here on Goodreads going 5 stars and the total of all ratings at 4.5? Nope. Needed some evening out.)

 Update: This is why StoryGraph's fractional star ratings are good.

As promised in my review, I said I would address some parts of my review in more detail, as it was more than long enough for a Goodreads review as is. Per the header?

First, I give an easy 5 stars on his discussion of the Principate and imperial administration in the whole latter half of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. 

Second, what was actually part three of the review?

Part three is 3 1/2 stars.

I agree with much of Drinkwater’s revisionist history (which is not sui generis by any means on Nero but is part of a trend).

At some point, however, Drinkwater’s revisionist history becomes apologetics. In this, it becomes so after the Great Fire, and especially after the Pisonian conspiracy. 

Second in the review and the subject of the header? Something of close intellectual interest to me? Nero, the Great Fire, Tacitus’ chapter in the Annals, and just who may have been persecuted, or not. Drinkwater gets 3 stars here, and that may be generous. I agree with Drinkwater that the fire was an accident. I agree that Tacitus seems to have seen it that way. I disagree on who, if anybody, was scapegoated.

First, I had initial email discussions about this with Drinkwater after I got the book on interlibrary loan but before I started reading. It was clear then that we would disagree on some things, but I found more to disagree with after getting into the appropriate section of the book.

First, Drinkwater claims, riffing on the book of Acts, that “Christians” were first called such NOT at Antioch, but at Rome at this time. I strongly disagree, first on grounds that there probably were no more than 600 Christians in Rome at this time (Drinkwater seems to be in the general ballpark on numbers HE postulates, and offered no real argument when I mentioned this in an email) and so, out of a population of 600,000 could not even have been on Nero’s radar screen, and second on grounds that Christians weren’t separated from Jews at the time enough to be separately identified. Beyond that, he’s making an argument from silence, and not a good one, IMO, and he knows that it's an argument from silence, whether he thinks it's a justifiable one or not. I don’t accept that from Christian mythicists and I don’t accept it from him. Ergo, in 64 CE, there WERE NO "Christians" to be singled out by label.

Given what Tacitus writes, the word he uses for “Christ” being an itacism in Greek, and other things, plus what I mention above? There are two options besides Christians being persecuted. One is that Messianic Jewish rebels were blamed …. “a certain ChrEEstos” χρηστός (the itacism for Christos Χριστός) being “HaMosiach,” or Jewish Messianic rebels. Suetonius claims Claudius booted Jews because of this same person (CHREStus was also a name adopted by freedmen), and I find it laughable that, if there’s truth behind that, that Suetonius is referring to Christians, though Drinkwater appears to think he was. See paragraph above. (That said, the CHREStus name's backstory could be connected to the itacism by Suetonuis and Tacitus being deliberate. Under this idea of mine, they would be saying: "Look at these idiotic, disgusting Christians, making a god out of a freedman!")

There's yet more to suggest this first option is more likely than actual Christians.

First, beyond the likelihood that Christians were only 1/10 of a percent of Rome’s population at the time  Jews were probably around 3-5 percent. 

Second, both Josephus and Acts discuss Messianic pretenders at this general time. The Great Fire was two years after James was lynched by Ananus the High Priest, and just two years before the start of the Jewish Revolt.

Third, Suetonius claims Claudius booted the Jews from Rome, probably about 12-15 years earlier, if it happened. AND, he too uses the itacism CHREStos, which gets back to what I say Tacitus, that was writing about Jewish Messianic disturbances; Drinkwater still thinks they were Christians.

Fourth? Drinkwater argues for Tacitus' religious knowledge and scholarship. Sure, he knew Roman religion, both the Olympians and other things like the Vestals, household gods, etc. He knew his Greek religion. How well did he know Judaism? And, given that his "knowledge" of Christianity is largely the repetition of scurrilous rumor, his actual knowledge was probably almost nonexistent.

The second option more likely to me than actual Christians is that Tacitus is repeating another scurrilous story, like the ones he repeats about Christians in his own time, and figures he can “bank shot” a smear of Christians and a smear of Nero for his barbaric ALLEGED executions making them look sympathetic all at once. (Remember, if there was no separate identification of Christians, there was no execution of them as such.)

Really, there's several issues going on here.

I’m not absolutely sure of Drinkwater’s take on all of them, though between the book and the exchange of several emails, I think I’ve got pretty good guesses, and I offer a mix of summary of the above and expansion of some areas.

1. Did Tacitus think the fire was arson or accident? 

2. Regardless of what he thought, did he see this as a tool to scapegoat Nero, Christians or both? 

3. Did Tacitus (and Suetonius, with his claim Claudius expelled the Jews due to instigation of CHRESTus) really understand Judaism in general that much, let alone Messianic strains, let alone Xianity to the degree it was starting to separate by the time Tacitus and Suetonius wrote? 

4. What actually happened, both on fire and scapegoating? 

5. COULD there have been enough Xns to be on Nero’s radar screen AS CHRISTIANS to even have been scapegoated?

Drinkwater and I will disagree a fair amount on some of this. Let’s dig in. 

1. I am not sure, but I think Drinkwater thinks Tacitus may have thought it was. I think he considered it plausible, I’ll put it that way. 

2. I say yes to both. It’s funny, because Tacitus was “pulling the ladder up” 2,000 years ago, elevated to senatorial class by the Flavians. What if Nero had lived and had done that himself? On the second, yes, I think both he and Suetonius were projecting backward the rumors they heard about Xns in their own day, such as “ritual cannibalism” (the Euchariast) wrapped inside an orgy (the larger agape feast.) More on Tacitus: If you read the Annuals, ch 45 after the famous ch 44 in book 15, it’s clear that he thinks Xns were reprehensible but Nero even more so in how savagely he treated them.

3. Drinkwater explicitly, in exchange of emails, cites Tacitus as a religious scholar. Maybe of Roman religion. And certain aspects of Greek religion. Of Judaism, or Greek, or larger Hellenistic/eastern Mediterranean popular religion? Color me skeptical. The CHRESTus / ChristOS itacism is one reason why. Roman religion had little to do with anointing. That was more common in Greek religion, which is why Latin doesn’t even have the word commonly used. Yes, “unctus” leads to “Extreme Unction,” but seriously, that just wasn’t a word of use in Classical Latin. That relates to CHRESTus being a name taken by freedmen, but not Unctus.

In addition, Tacitus has been accused of bias against Eastern religions.

Related? Many scholars talk about Tacitus’ careful investigation. But, his large-scale copying from Pliny the Elder for his own Germania without ever crossing the borders, and without even updating Pliny’s political descriptions, puts paid to that. No less than Syme notes this. His repetition of ethnographic stereotypes (shades of Hume!) in the Germania also raises issues.

4. What actually happened? Drinkwater and I agree on the fire being accidental. We agree that Tacitus claims Nero scapegoated Xns. We disagree on who, if anybody, Nero actually DID scapegoat. Now we’re at point 5. 

5. First, I reject Drinkwater’s claim of the first use of “Christians.” I listed most of this above, but here's more. If Jews were 3-5 percent of the population of Rome, and that may be mildly conservative, enough of THEM might have been riled up (witness the Jewish quarter of Alexandria, the Kitos War and other things) it could have been an issue. So, without starting the Fire, could riotous Jews have been blamed by Nero? Yes. Could Tacitus, through a mix of anti-Xn stance and ignorance of Judaism, piggybacked on this? Yes. Is this guaranteed to be what happened? Not at all. There may have been no disturbances. See option two above.

Then, there's the issue of whether or not Tacitus wrote this.

Drinkwater rejects that it's an interpolation, but the case isn't ironclad. A religions wiki notes the problems: Not cited by Tertullian, who otherwise regularly cites Tacitus. Apparently not cited by Celsus, as Origen doesn’t fire back at any such thing. Not cited by Clement of Alexandria or Eusebius, the first two compilers of pagan stories about Christianity. Sulpicius Severus, ca 400 CE, appears to be the first Christian to write about it, but his account is hugely suspect. It also notes, contra Drinkwater, Tacitus’ overestimation of the numbers of Christians in this time. And, it states that death by burning wasn't a Roman punishment at this time. (I hadn't heard of claims that it was an interpolation before reading a review of this and other recent Nero revisionism, but ... it's plausible. I have more in a separate post.)

Brent Shaw, in an academic journal, extracted and summarized here by Charles Mercier, has the details on the possibility this is an interpolation. (Mercier then has a Part 2, which frames Catholic touting of Neronian martyrs within Reformation hagiography.) Shaw, per Mercier's Part 1, doesn't totally agree with the Religion Wiki take on why this is possibly an interpolation.

No, finally finally a second side note. Drinkwater’s an academic historian, yet uses “AD” rather than “CE” (and when needed, “BC” rather than “BCE.” I had noted it earlier, but given how wrong I think he is about Xns and the Great Fire, it may just have been the tipping point down to a third star, inasmuch as I now wonder if it’s something related to his thoughts on Tacitus. OTOH, Adrian Goldsworthy does the same; maybe it’s imperial hubris of older British historians?

(Update: Per my review of a Melvin Goodman book, this isn't the only bit of suspiciousness from Sulpicius Severus, either.)

View all my reviews

So, Marcion fabricated the Pauline Epistles? Yeah, right

Since my "Sem exit" at the end of my studies for the ministry at a conservative Lutheran seminary decades ago, I've still kept up with major trends in critical Christian theology and exegesis. For example, though I don't agree with every take of every member of its core, I know what the basic tenets of the Copenhagen school of Tanakh / Old Testament criticism are.

That said, I had not, until earlier this month, heard of the Dutch Radical School of New Testament criticism. I came across it via Wiki's page on Jesus mythicism. And, it's not new or newish, unlike Copenhagen. It started nearly 150 years ago, under the influence of Bruno Bauer, which might say something.

One of its main claims, as explicated well in this piece, is that since Marcion appears to be the first person to attest the entire Pauline corpus, he must have created it! Yes, really.

I find this silly.

Further Googling showed me one of these Dutch critics' reconstruction of Marcion's version of Galatians. Here's the standard Greek, also translated into English. Comparing chapter 1 alone shows that claims that the "orthodox" version of Galatians is full of rough transitions is laughable; Marcion's version is far more abrupt on that. (That said, maybe some other Dutch Radical critics would then trot out the old text critical tool, "the more difficult reading is to be preferred," and use that to argue for Marcion being original.)

Now, that said, there IS one other interesting point.

Some of the Jesus mythicists who claim that Marcion did create the Pauline corpus point to the amount of Gnosis or proto-Gnosticism in Paul's letters. That's pretty obvious in Pseudo-Paul II/IIa, the author of Colossians. (Pseudo-Paul I is the author of 2 Thessalonians. The "II/IIa" allows for different authors of Colossians and Ephesians; Pseudo-Paul III of course wrote the Pastorals. That's my nomenclature.)

Anyway, just looking at Galatians 1, the amount of proto-Gnosticism there is pretty big. Galatians 4, with this interlinear to illustrate, is key. You've got the "στοιχεῖα" or "elements of this world," a key Gnosticizing term also found in Colossians. Then in the next verse, Jesus is born in the fullness of time, and "fullness" is of course that old Gnosticizing "πλήρωμα".

I've often thought that 1 Corinthians 15 and Paul's creation (sic, "what I have received from the Lord [ie direct revelation, not James or Peter]) of the Eucharist is Gnosticizing, too. That's especially if the "παραδίδωμι" (exact form is "παρεδίδετο") of verse 22 is properly translated as either "arrested" or better "handed over" rather than "betrayed" and you forget the Judas story of the Gospels.

For more on παραδίδωμι see Liddell and Scott. In the NT, per Strong's, note that all translations of "betrayed" or "handed over" in other passages involve an agent, unlike here.

To whom was Jesus handed over? Well, maybe the "στοιχεῖα"? I know that "orthodox" critical scholars resist claims of Paul engaging in proto-Gnosticism. But, the language is clear in Galatians, either his earliest or second-earliest letter. And, while Colossians is indeed most likely a pseudopigraphic work, it's likely from no later than 80 CE, so a first-generation follower of Paul thought he was interpreting him correctly.

That doesn't mean that the mythicists are right that early Christians thought of Jesus as a "space being," contra the laughable claims of Mark Carrier that I skewered earlier. After all, a Gnosticized version of an "adoptionist" Christology is certainly possible, and while Paul says he doesn't really know any biography of Jesus, he DOES clearly state that Jesus was "born," and was a human being. Indeed, he said that in that same Galatians 4:4 where he talks about the "fullness of time"!

One other point undercutting the mythicists and the Dutch Radicals, and that's re the claim that Marcion fabricated the Pauline corpus. Traditional critical theology, especially in more modern versions, accepts that the Synoptic Gospels are dependent on Pauline thought. This would presume being dependent in some way on written Pauline thought.

If Irenaeus in 180 CE is explaining why "orthodox" Christianity accepts exactly four Gospels, and something quasi-canonical is already in place then, that leaves damned little time for three gospels, setting aside John, to be finalized, especially vis a vis the "Synoptic problem." It also ignores that Tatian's Diatesseron was even earlier.

Now, if one wants to go way out into Klaatu-land, I suppose one could claim the Synoptics have no dependence on a Marcion-faked Pauline corpus, but that's more laughable yet!

That Dutch Radical link I posted above engages in special pleading. I Clement and the Letters of Ignatius should also according to them not be considered genuine. That's not to say that Ignatius' letters don't have problems. But, even if they are spurious, it's still no direct support for claiming Marcion as the author of the Pauline corpus, and it still doesn't address Synoptic dating. I know Bruno Bauer put the Synoptics in the second century, but I reject that. And, what do you about the Didache, for which I accept a dating of no later than the end of the first century CE?

And claims that Pauline tropes like the ingathering of Israel in Romans MUST be dated after the second Jewish Revolt? As laughable as John A.T. Robertson claiming the entire New Testament canon had to be pre-70 because no books mention the destruction of the Temple.

Top blogging of July-September

Data is of early October. Not all posts were written in the past three months.

First was my hard-hitting modern religion piece on the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and its multiple ethical failures and looming massive legal problems over the closure of Concordia University-Portland.

Second was my long-ago, but still relevant, libertarian pseudoskepticism pseudoscience piece about Brian Dunning and Michael Shermer.

Third was my not nearly so long ago, but even more still relevant, piece about Saint Anthony of Fauci and his telling of Platonic noble lie(s). (It eventually became plural, then Not.Even.Platonic.Or.Noble, to riff on Wolfgang Pauli.)

Fourth is from about 15 months ago, but getting new eyeballs when I retweeted it about the dreck that is this year's Dallas Symphony Orchestra schedule. I said the DSO had stepped backward in hiring Fabio Luisi as music director.

Fifth? Almost as old as my Dunning-Shermer piece, but also about classical music: Stravinsky vs. Prokofiev and what constitutes neoclassicism.

Sixth, a recent piece, about how Harvey Whitehouse seemed promising on new studies on the origin of religion, until he went way wrong on both that and a definition of what religion is.

Seventh? My burning take on the often laughable, usually conceited Mark Carrier thinking early Christians believed Jesus was a space alien.

Eighth, and also recent, my philosophical take on an ambulance-chasing journalist's experience with PTSD after his own car crash, and a psychologist discussing the issue with bad takes on free will and control.

Ninth and also nearly a decade old, like No. 2 and No. 5? My take on reviews of books by Dan Dennett and Douglas Hofstadter.

Tenth and trending probably due to a tweet by my to blogging friend Tales of Whoa? My poem about the death of friend Leo Lincourt, "Sitting Shtetl for the Living."

Deconstructing David Graeber's and David Wengrow's new book

If late friend Leo Lincourt, a lover of Graeber, were still alive, he'd surely disagree with me.

But, from what I first read on the Atlantic's review, and now at the Guardian excerpt?

I think it's oversold.

That starts and ends with the title and subtitle: "The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity."

It's overarching, and oversold.

I've read multiple books that have already touched on how the old archaeological and anthropological paradigm of a straight,  permanent, line from hunter-gathering  to farming is wrong. Against the Grain covered this four years ago. Five years ago, John Wathey offered up new ideas on the development of early religion and spirituality, which this pair don't appear to cover at all.

Note: I have now given it a MUCH more thorough deconstruction at Goodreads, with a 2-star review.

Or, via Academia.edu, while not discussing the early "civilizations" of Southwest Asia, here's a paper FROM 1998 about the Fremont culture of today's Utah, discussing a mix of part-time foragers/part-time farmers, full-time foragers, full-time farmers, farmers who flipped to foraging and foragers who became farmers. (Unlike in the Old World, pastoral nomadism wasn't an option in most the New World before Columbian contact, due to lack of domesticated livestock.

So, the pair aren't saying anything new, they're building on others, and right there, it's not a new history, and it's not complete, so not "everything."

It also smacks of me of trying to build on the reputation of Graeber, who died in the last year. Now, he could have been a great capitalist within his anarchism; anarcho-capitalism is a thing, complete with its own Wiki page. But, from what I know of Graeber on my own and via Leo? Uh, no. He would have shuddered to be in the same breath (I think) as Murray Rothbard. (Per the Guardian extract, that's why it's funny for the duo to talk about capitalists talking about social connections at Christmas WITH the implication that they're doing that INSTEAD OF capitalism rather than as a marketing adjunct.)

Update, Nov. 5: At the New Yorker, Gideon Lewis-Krous also appears to give it a fluffy review.

Now, to some specifics, via a trio of (unanswered, Twitter, natch, low signal to noise ratio) Tweets to the author of the Atlantic review.

First, I noted the pair were by no means alone, per the above.

An interesting review of David Graeber's posthumous book. That said, Graeber is nowhere near alone in research & writing challenging the "conventional narrative" of human origins, agriculture, etc. 1/x .@WDeresiewicz https://t.co/0brHaL7Z8j

— Crushes Xi Jinping Thought Kool-Aid peddlers 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) October 21, 2021

Second, I noted that the HIGHLY sympathetic reviewer, William Deresciewicz, undercut himself in links in his piece, one in particular, in the claim that "towns" existed long before a permanent shift to agriculture (note that I also tagged Wengrow, also unresponsive):

2nd, if sites like Nebelivka weren't inhabited year-round, or in many cases even close, arguably anachronistic at best 4 Graeber & .@davidwengrow (& others to call them cities, or to present the case 4 what they were as "settled"; the review link itself says "up in the air" 2/x

— Crushes Xi Jinping Thought Kool-Aid peddlers 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) October 21, 2021

Finally, I said that, at least per what the review says and more importantly, doesn't say, it's NOT about "everything."

3rd, the review says nothing about new considerations on the development & cultural evolution of religion & metaphysics, that go hand in hand with new ideas on agro-humanity etc., or whether David Graber and David Wengrow tackle that issue. 3/x

— Crushes Xi Jinping Thought Kool-Aid peddlers 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) October 21, 2021

OK,

Now, off to the Guardian excerpt, since I saw that later.

First, the pair are right that just about all of us, including our African Homo sapiens ancestors before leaving Africa, have DNA and mitochondrial DNA from other species within us. Nonetheless, that's yet more dilute than the bits of Neanderthal and / or Denisovan DNA that the typical non-African has. Ergo, the concept of "DNA Adam" and "mitochondrial DNA Eve" is still a good working theory and Graber-Wengrow come close to strawmanning. (The pair actually had a chance of tackling residual racial bias in human population genetics, that said, but at least here, appear to take a pass.)

Second, since cultural evolution is not evolution, unless the pair are slaves to evolutionary psychology, this is largely irrelevant to cultural evolution, contra their claims. So, without reading the full book? Lost a star.

Third, they do next admit previous recent study of places like Göbekli Tepe, so a kudo of sorts back. That said, I see it as like Pueblo Bonito and the whole Chaco Canyon structures. We still don't know for sure what THAT was — permanent settlement, religious site with sparse permanent inhabitation, some mix of that, or something else.

Fourth, it may be true that inequalities of various sorts were actually worse before a permanent transition to agriculture and a permanent transition to settled cities. Or it may not be. Right now, there's just not enough evidence to say that. We do have enough evidence to say we should get rid of old paradigms, but not enough to create new ones. Contra cheap versions of hot takes on Thomas Kuhn, paradigm shifts as in not just abandoning an old one but immediately replacing it with a new one, just aren't that common.

Update: On to a New Yorker fellation of Graeber and the book by Molly Fischer. Fischer does remind me of Graeber not only being the "intellectual voice" behind Occupy, but a supporter of Black Bloc types, including their property destruction, which this leftist of some sort has long rejected. It also reminds me of the lies told about Occupy in general and Occupy New York in particular being "leaderless," which it was not. Fischer starts with New York City's Direct Action Network, a predecessor of Occupy NY that got a new round of prominence after the Black Bloc destructiveness at the Seattle WTO event in 1998. 

I should note that this is why, other than what I've called the pretentiousness of the name, I don't identify with the so-called "antifa": their Black Bloc roots.

With that, per Fischer's piece, I wonder if Graeber, with the Malagasy and others of his anthropology work, while being right on them being anarchist in not having formal governments, nonetheless had leadership structures that he either flat missed, or ignored by de-emphasis, or else willfully turned a blind eye to. I say that because of his claim that Occupy "worked," a claim rejected by many people who, like him, were involved with it.

Re what I said above about their work, the Graeber-Wengrow for the book, not being new? Fischer reports that professional colleagues said at first, on their first journal submission, that it was insufficiently new. They should have stuck with that.

Via Fischer leading me to a Brad DeLong Tweet, I see The Nation has some skepticism about the book, too. Daniel Immerwahr nails it, which is why DeLong Tweeted the link:

(H)e was better known for being interesting than right, and he would gleefully make pronouncements that either couldn’t be confirmed (the Iraq War was retribution for Saddam Hussein’s insistence that Iraqi oil exports be paid for in euros) or were never meant to be (“White-collar workers don’t actually do anything”).

Yep.

Just before that, Immerwahr noted a tendentious reading of Mayan ruins by the pair.

The latter third of the review raises a big-ticket item. Accepting that late Neolithic humans did indeed "experiment" with sedentary farming, state structures, etc., for 2-3 millennia or more, at some point, they "locked in" and we became "stuck." This is definitely true in most of Eurasia plus North Africa, and also true, albeit at a lower level of hierarchy and without firm territories, in the Americas and much of sub-Saharan Africa pre-Columbian contact. And, Immerwahr says they never answer why this happened, at least not in satisfactory fashion. 

Since they can't construct an overarching narrative for that? He says that makes the book a "scrapbook" as much as anything.

==

Update: My Goodreads review is now up; it's a 2-star. He's actually not bad on some American Indian things, the Maya aside. But, he doesn't even discuss the Puebloans, or their Anasazi ancestors. And, there are lots of "shoulds," as well as, yes, a fair amount of strawmanning. And, the book desperately needed an editor. And, for someone(s) who present as having studied ancient cultures, there's lots of ignorance. Also, discussions of colonialism and imperialism are often Eurocentric. It's like China doesn't even exist.

The Nones have slipped, too!

I had heard about the big PRRI survey of religious attitudes and issues this summer, but it happened right before I went on vacation, and I hadn't had a chance to unpack it. But, an actually interesting person at Medium, originally blogging elsewhere, talked about it. That said, David Gamble got one thing a bit wrong, as I told him in a comment. And, it's time to talk about that.

For my take, the biggest issue is NOT the decline of fundagelical Christians, discussed a week ago, but what this graph below says, from his post, but actually from a Pew study, not PRRI:

 

And, that's why I have the header.

Because they HAVE slipped.

So, why?

Are some nones now "nunya" and not answering? Did some of them, like fundagelicals, go to mainline Protestant churches because of COVID existential fears?

There's other stories to pull out of the full PRRI survey. The biggest is, whether in part from more diversity in US immigration patterns or what, the rise in belief in "other world religions," that is, anything besides the Judeo-fig-leaf-Christian America.

PRRI's presser also has interesting facts. The most religiously diverse spots in America are greater NYC, and Montgomery County on the Maryland side of DC, no shocks, even more so than the Bay Area ...

And ...

Navajo County, Arizona!

That's actually no shock to me. Per its name, it had the heart of the "Big Rez," plus the Fort Apache reservation AND part of the Hopi reservation. Hopis are among the most traditionalist of Pueblos. The western side of the Navajo Nation contains many of its most traditionalist peoples. It's about 50 percent American Indian.

The Nones are NOT Dan Dennett's "Brights" nor are they most likely to come from Whites

Gnu Atheist types like to sell the idea that the religiously unaffiliated in the US, the so-called Nones, are primarily atheist.

And, decades ago, Dan Dennett, with an assist from Richard Dawkins, tried to sell the idea of their brilliance when he invented the word "Brights."

Well, per religious polling organization PRRI, they'd be wrong.

Hindus would be the "Brights," if we go by post-graduate collegiate education:

Per the graph, they'd be followed by Unitarians, and the typical Unitarian church any more can include Unitarians ardent for Western deism or theism, New Agers, Wiccans, atheists or others. Jews, many of whom are not metaphysical if they're Reform, are third. Orthodox Christians are fourth, interestingly.

The Nones? Tied with mainline Protestants and behind Mormons and Muslims as well as the other above groups.

This, in line with previous blogging of mine about the new PRRI research, should also put the kibosh on claims that the Nones are atheists or even close. Their education profile in general most closely parallels White mainline Protestants.

They're likely "unaffiliated" because they've simply drifted. Other religious sociology research says that a major predictor of church going is having children or not, and how many, if you do. With better-income families, especially, having one kid and no more in many cases, church as a place for potential moral development of kids just doesn't have the same call. Plus, in an ever more mobile society, these mainline Protestant denominations probably have less hold. And, since most of them are in theological fellowship with one another, more White mainliners probably figure they don't need to identify as Lutheran or Methodist or Presbyterian. I suspect that of the total amount of Nones, one third are theist mainline Protestants, one third are deist mainline Protestants, and only one third are really something else, or else "seekers" who just aren't sure.

And, a later graph partially confirms this indirectly, but also says I shouldn't push this too much. Asians and the multiracial are most likely to be Nones. American Indians are third, which indicates that Nones includes indigenous religion. The percentage of Whites who identify as Nones is only two points ahead of Blacks, which in turn is two points ahead of Hispanics.

An alleged Beethoven's 10th? Really? Boo or yay?

The Conversation reports that a team of musicologists, in conjunction with a team of artificial intelligence researchers, recently completed the first realization of what they call Beethoven's 10th Symphony.

Or Sym-phony? 

Pardon my skepticism. But, the manipulators have well earned it.

First, on the AI side, I've heard computer-generated music before. That includes computer-generated classical music. And, without knowing in advance it was computer-generated, in some cases. It sounded nice. Or rather, "nice."

Second, on the musicologist side, I've heard Barry Cooper's realization of the first movement before. Didn't like it. Sounded more like Schubert than Beethoven, among other things.

Third, on the music theory side, Beethoven left a lot less for "his" Tenth than Mahler did for his.

On the positive side?

The musicologists involved included Robert Levin, author of a renowned realization of Mozart's Requieum.

Second, in a test run, piano score, for an audience, supposedly, listeners couldn't tell where Beethoven ended and AI began.

I don't know if there's a recording of the full thing on YouTube, but there is a link to a snippet, audio only, at the end of the piece.

Still sounds as much like Schubert as Beethoven. Maybe not "more than," but still "as much as." And, to some degree, sounds like neither one totally. It sounds a bit like what Mozart might have done had he lived another decade. (That said, the snippet is from that same first movement that I critiqued above.)

Better, as least as far as something to listen to, but not actually better? I found the ALLEGED "full audio" on YouTube.

It AIN'T really "full audio," as Beethoven never would have written a 10th Symphony clocking just 21:30. I've left comments to that effect. This is like a master's of music thesis composition. Not even a doctor of music. Master's of music.

(At the YouTube page for the embedded video, people are chiding me for not understanding the project. Look, folks, unlike Barry Cooper, this isn't marketed as a "movement," and "full audio" can at least be interpreted as "the full enchilada." Don't blame me for perceiving a marketing attempt that backfired.)

Other commenters say it sounds like middle Beethoven, not late. I can halfway buy that, but even then, it doesn't sound THAT much like Beethoven. Compare it to, say, the 4th Symphony or 3rd Piano Concerto. 

Or, like a master's of music thesis composition!

There's the added problem, which Cooper admitted he faced, in that Beethoven's own sketches contradict each other, not a problem with the Mahler 10th. The new realizers appear to have taken a different fork at times, but I still think they have too little to work on.

It doesn't jazz me up a lot more than Cooper.

Finally, on an arrogance issue? Having the general public, music or other journalists or even musicologists allegedly not able to tell where Beethoven left off and where AI begins means little, for two major reasons.

First, there's so little in the way of Beethoven sketches beyond the first movement that it's mostly AI.

Second, given that the AI composers (I refuse to call this a "realization") say they used basically the entire Beethoven corpus, that means the trained listeners can't compare it to just late Beethoven. And, given that Beethoven, a la Prokofiev, never decided to write "A Symphony in Baroque Style," or per Schnittke, never wanted to write "A Suite in Baroque Style," using his whole corpus as an AI writing guide is a "fail." A necessary one, given the paucity of actual sketches, but one that just further illustrates the problem.

Third? As for the claim that journalists and musicologists even, couldn't tell where Beethoven stopped and AI started? I could tell where Beethoven stopped and bullshit started — when the organ comes in the first time, just after the 7-minute mark.

That's also a mark that this is bullshit by the modern pseudo-realizers. Given that Beethoven wrote almost nothing for organ, no way AI says "organ here." Humans did that. Humans writing something like ...  a master's of music thesis composition!

(Also at the YouTube page, one respondent to me says, imagine Beethoven dying earlier and never writing a choral symphony, but yet, somebody coming along and brilliantly saying ... "voila." Bull. First, as I noted, Beethoven lived to 57; he didn't die at Schubert's age. Second, we can play all sorts of games with such silly counterfactuals.)

And, feeding on that? I Twitter-searched "Beethoven's 10th," and see that the artistes and the recorders-engineers are touting this with the #BeethovenX hashtag. I Tweeted to a group:

Seriously this so-called #BeethovenX is like a thesis composition somebody would write for a master of music degree, and not even a PhD, and don't blame AI for that. This is ultimately on humans at the end, making overblown claims about #AI and about themselves.

— Crushes Xi Jinping Thought Kool-Aid peddlers 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) October 13, 2021

And Deutsche Telecom's account responded:

If you didn't like the result, it's totally fine. The perception of arts is always very individual. #BeethovenX was an experiment to find out if AI and arts can match. I'm pretty sure that Beethoven himself as a visionary would have curiously followed this approach. ^susann

— Deutsche Telekom AG (@deutschetelekom) October 14, 2021

To which I said:

>>I'm pretty sure that Beethoven himself as a visionary would have curiously followed this approach<<
I'm pretty sure not. Plus, don't blame AI for inserting an organ in a middle. IMO, this gets to the real issue. This wasn't even a "realization," as normally understood.

— Crushes Xi Jinping Thought Kool-Aid peddlers 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) October 14, 2021

C'mon, we're now entering the land of intellectual dishonesty. Humans ultimately wrote this up, and since this is orchestration, not a keyboard score, chose the instrumentation.

That includes the "master's of music theses" alleged creativity of adding an organ line in the middle. I'm pretty damned sure that, because Beethoven wrote little for organ, he would NOT have "curiously followed this approach."

So, per the header? "Boo!" And, in spades. And, why I added "An alleged" at the start of the header.

And, it's sad that a Robert Levin, with his great realization of the Mozart Requiem, would be part of this dreck.

IF fundagelical Christianity is dying, why?

 In a piece a couple of days ago, looking at comments by resigned Southern Baptist Convention ethicist Russell Moore, I said that if fundagelical Christianity is dying, its wounds are self-inflicted in ways that Moore's prescription won't heal.

Moore in part worries, basically, about "Trumpism" infecting his denomination. With a sister who's a preacher's wife in the main conservative wing of Lutheranism, I know that's becoming a problem there, too. Sidebar: German-Americans, among white ethnic divisions, broke harder for Trump than anybody else.

But, in the last few years, mainline Protestantism has ticked up even as the fundagelical world has declined:

Is that in any way connected to Trumpism in religion?

An actually interesting person at Medium, originally blogging elsewhere, talked about it. That said, David Gamble may be wrong on this one.

First, the fundagelical decline has been happening for a long time, at least among Whites. And, already pre-Trump, it was sharper than the White Catholic decline.

Second, White mainline Protestants trending upward in 2017? Trumpism may have been a factor, but probably not the only one. It's likely that the majority of "leavers" of fundagelicalism were becoming Nones.

Third, and in anticipating a future post? One thing about this is problematic.

The line graph has "White" for everything but the unaffiliated, the "Nones." 

That said, that's partially rectified later with further information and additional graphs.

Asian Americans and the multiracial are most likely to be Nones. American Indians are third, which indicates that Nones includes indigenous religion. The percentage of Whites who identify as Nones is only two points ahead of Blacks, which in turn is two points ahead of Hispanics.

Is fundagelical Christianity dying?

 "Fundagelical" is an ever-more-common mashup for "fundamentalist" and "(conservative) evangelical," for the unfamiliar. The two groups may differ in some doctrinal emphases; for example, evangelicals like Pat Robertson can be old-earth creationists without any problems, and fundamentalists may worry less about evangelism.

However, their overall largely literalist focus on doctrines and beliefs is pretty much the same. Their politics definitely are.

That said, the "conservative" in parentheses is important. Readers of Sojourners magazine or people like Jimmy Carter, liberal evangelicals who aren't liberal mainline Protestants, still exist in numbers.

With that, let's dig in.

Ex-Southern Baptist Convention ethicist Russell Moore (I don't know if he's ex-SBC by church attendance or not) talks about whether or not Christianity is dying, or will be.

Actually, that's not true.

He talks about whether his version of Xianity is dying, or will be.

And, the rise of the so-called "nones" say that he's probably whistling in the dark more than he'd like to admit.

To riff on Paul and turn him upside down, Christians who have belief in the next life only, and when people are long-term unemployed, can offer nothing more than a Calvinist "will of god," or even a Christian Social Darwinian "maybe you're still a sinner," don't have anything to offer Millennials.

To riff on Russell Moore?

If your witnessing is only a gospel that fails to include a social gospel, it's tohu wevohu, per the Hebrew opening the Torah. 

If your witnessing is a gospel with less tolerance and toleration than Pope Francis, then it's only a clanging cymbal, to go back to Paul.

So, if your Christianity is, if not dying, continuing to decline into a basket case, it's because you're helping strangle it, Moore.

Harvey Whitehouse: Right on defining what religion is, until he went way wrong

Via Pocket, I saw this Nautilus piece, written by Steve Paulson, that at first looked very interesting.

British anthropologist Whitehouse, who has been to hunter-gatherer or mixed subsistence cultures in places like New Guinea, talked about how the power of rituals, especially initiation rituals, and their creation of social bonds, are a key item to the development of religion.

Sounded interesting. That's definitely the case as he further discussed the sociological aspects of this.

Until ... he went wrong.

He first went wrong with the word "transcendence," which he seemed to use even more loosely than Rudolf Otto's "numinous," and which, like the word "ineffable," comes off in his account as "anything that seems unexplainable." So, at that point, we've moved kind of New Agey. (Hold on to that thought.)

That was bad enough, until he went really wrong.

He claimed that footy (football, in the UK) fandom was itself a religion. Oh, wrong, wrong, Not.Even.Wrong. And, not just about footy, but US football or any other sport.

And, I suppose we're at the point of needing to offer my definition of religion.

First, I agree that religion is a group, sociological and social psychology function.

Second, rituals in general and initiation rituals in particular, may be part of religion's coherence. (Etymologists still debate whether or not the word comes from the Latin "religere," which means "to tie together.")

But, that's where we part company.

My definition of religious starts in the world of philosophy, where he seems not to visit, per the story:

Whitehouse directs the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at Oxford University. For years he’s been collaborating with scholars around the world to build a massive body of data that grounds the study of religion in science. Whitehouse draws on an array of disciplines—archeology, ethnography, history, evolutionary psychology, cognitive science—to construct a profile of religious practices.

And, that means that right there, he's going to be lacking, IMO. (I also wonder if, or fear that, "evolutionary anthropology" could wind up coming off like some of the current worst of "evolutionary psychology," but that will be a blog post or three for another time, if necessary. OTOH, it may be something like Scott Atran, who Wiki says, on its Whitehouse page, helped found another institute at Oxford with him. I digress.)

My definition, which I think I've uttered here before, is something like this.

Religion is about:

Metaphysical matters of ultimate concern, within a social group setting; and 

How one orients oneself within that group to a better relationship to these metaphysical matters of ultimate concern.

First, note that "metaphysical" shows we're clearly into philosophy. It means something that "transcendence" does not.

Second, note that "of ultimate concern" shows we're not talking about footy fandom. UK fans who would believe that they can conduct magic rituals to revive the career of a current player, let alone actually revive a dead star of the past, would be considered mentally ill by psychologists, and ministers, and presumably by Whitehouse.

Third, note that I did NOT say "god," or "deity/-ies" or "divinity/-ies." 

This means that Theravada Buddhists who do not believe in a personal deity are still part of a religion. They ARE, Stephen Batchelor, Robert Wright, and Buddhism flirter John Horgan. I also did NOT say "soul." Western monotheisms, and generally Hinduism, believe in some sort of personal soul, as in "your immortal soul," in the Western tradition, but Theravada claims to believe only in a "life force."

And, "karma."

To put it another way, Tottenham fans have not devised a god called "Spurs," have not devised a karma about relegation, have not recruited a community to believe this, and have not developed a cultus of worship, prayers, etc.

Rabid fandom is an "-ism," like Nazism or Communism. Neither of those is a religion, either.

And, that leads us to point the second, of the two main parts of my definition.

Karma is itself a metaphysical entity throughout Hindu and Buddhist belief, and basically similar among Jains, from what I know. Given that these religions claim one can be reincarnated as a piece of shit, or more literally, a dung beetle eating that shit, without knowing what one did wrong in a past life, or, per Theravada, even having a personal soul from a past life that COULD remember, is why I've said that karma is more offensive than original sin, following on an earlier post. But I digress.

Anyway, ethical actions, and beliefs and doctrines, are, as defined by the religious-sociological group (that's how religion is not individual) are how one "orients oneself to a better relationship" with these metaphysical entities, whatever they are in that religion. (Buddhism and Judaism have doctrines as well as ethical practice, as I said before, let's not pretend otherwise, it's called "orthodoxy" vs "orthopraxis" in philosophy of religion and critical religion, and refusal to accept that is stereotyping.) Speaking of that, Whitehouse himself, per this "modes of religiosity" Wiki page, differentiates between what he calls "imagistic" vs "doctrinal" systems. Frankly, seeing that he's also missing scholars of religion and philosophers of religion from that institute, I think this is poor language usage. It's also not good division, per a follow-up to my "as I said before"; for many a Catholic, the ringing of the transubstantiation bell is NOT Pavlov's dog, which IS what it reminds me of, nor just doctrinal, but is "imagistic," aural division. The elevation of the host certainly is imagistic. I could also mention Catholic Penitentes, Protestant "holy rollers" and "speaking in tongues," Shi'ite flagellators and more. 

Wiki then mentions a "cognitive science of religion," which has Whitehouse and another, like Atran, long-ago read, Pascal Boyer, mentioned. Cognitive science has in the past offered some insight for philosophy and probably can for religion, but its devotees often overrate it, too. That's especially true if, per Wiki, these ideas originate in ev psych. And, thus, my original worries about Whitehouse's evolutionary anthropology gain more foothold.

Yes, human psychology evolved; as a scientific and philosophical naturalist, I totally accept that. But, modern ev psych as a discipline, with its pseudoscience, sexist ideas and more? I reject.

And, with that, I'm more than done with Whitehouse.

Final sidebar note. If you claim to be "spiritual but not religious," but still follow religious leaders on social media, though not going to a church or temple, you're religious. If you claim to be "spiritual but not religious," but attend a Wiccan coven or a neo-Druid gathering? You're religious.

Actually, second sidebar note: Whitehouse reminds me a lot of James Harrod and his claim that chimps are religious, debunked by me here.

==

Update, May 10, 2024: Per a piece by Ed Buckner on Substack, where I posted a link to this, no, I do not at all think secular humanism is religious. Nor atheism in general. 

That said, certain types of Gnu Atheism that approach Camus' "antitheism" of "The Rebel"? They're close, to be honest. It's an "antibelief," or belief against, but it is a belief against metaphysical entities of ultimate concern, generally with all the communal aspects etc also listed above.

Unmaking the myth of the "white Christian worldview"

 Robert P. Jones, an ex-fundagelical of some sort, talks at Time about escaping the "white Christian worldview."

But, as two Tweets of mine say to him, to avoid typing twice, the piece is problematic and simplistic.

First, the reality of American Christianity today is more complex than his Mississippi birthland:

.@robertpjones .. several things in your piece are mix of fallacy & overstatement. Reality?
1. Not all white Xns are Protestant
2. Not all white Xn Protestants are conserv. evangelical or fundamentalist.
3. And, more and more whites are "nones" not Xn. 1/xhttps://t.co/ZWyJI9Bic2

— Crushes Xi Jinping Thought Kool-Aid peddlers 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) September 30, 2021

My midwestern Lutheranism, while socially and religiously conservative, was nothing like his religious childhood. (I've been to white and black Baptist services, I'll add.)

Within the piece, he mentions the recent sharp decline of Southern Baptists. Yes, and mainline Protestants declined before that. And Catholics are declining as well. And, as time and motion studies have shown, Americans have long lied about frequency of church attendance, even before the rise of the "nones." (That said, the rise of the nones is NOT all it's sometimes cracked up to be.)

Second, the reality of American Christianity when he was a young'un and St. Ronald of Reagan was running for president was more complicated outside the South than he notes, which leads to this.

Even if dead weight of tradition makes point three nugatory? Especially outside the South, points 1 and 2 were in effect when you and I grew up. A better piece would separate out regional and cultural politics being fused with religion and nationalized.

— Crushes Xi Jinping Thought Kool-Aid peddlers 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) September 30, 2021

It's true that Reagan (maybe told so by his horoscope, and yes, he believed them, as he turned Nancy on to astrology, not the other way around) pandered to the Religious Right and helped fuel this fusion, but that helps make the point of my second tweet! Especially when you tie this to the lying about church attendance. It's cultural Christianism, a fundagelical version of Samuel Huntington's angle.

That said, in some way, shape or form, that's been the case in much of the Christian world since Roman emperor Theodosius made Christianity the state religion of the empire nearly 1,650 years ago. Political types (and, yes, politics exists outside democracies) have long grifted on cultural Christianism. It hasn't had racism attached to it; "racism" as we know it today didn't really exist in antiquity, after all.

But, if he wants to talk about real Christian sins, he should deal with that.

Since I'm a secularist, I've written enough about another rescue attempt for American Christianity.

Note: This is part one of a three-part series. The second will expand on the decline of evangelical Christians. The third will note that the rise of the Nones has itself hit a speed bump. Both will rely on new polling and analysis from this summer by Jones' outfit, PRRI.

Sobriety for BuJews

 For those who don't know, the "BuJew" is a portmanteau, a mash-up of Buddhism and Judaism for Jews who normally have a Reform Judaism background, want something more "substantial" than that, but want something that's "spiritual, not religious," and so glom on to Buddhism.

The problem?

Buddhism IS a religion, first of all, something I eventually reiterated. Your counterarguments aren't accepted, either. Please don't reference the likes of Stephen Batchelor or Robert Wright, either. I've read both long ago and crushed Wright here, something also eventually reiterated. Also, beyond its being metaphysical, it's questionable as to whether it teaches everything that some claim. Take universal love.

So, sobriety recovery?

Refuge Recovery would certainly appear to be BuJew. Founded by Noah Levine, son of poet Stephen Levine. 

I guess Noah's a true "western Buddhist" guru in another way. Allegations of sexual misconduct, that seem to be credible.

And, going by birth family surname? I wouldn't be totally surprised if Pema Chodron is also a BuJew.

No, Luther wouldn't have agreed with Calvin on the Eucharist

Even though that new-to-me argument is making some rounds in recent years.

Many post-Zwinglian Calvinist Reformed argue that Luther actually accept Calvin's spiritual presence, while noting Zwingli believed the same, but involved in direct disputations with Luther, focused on the "no bodily presence." See here, near the end.

Yes, Melanchthon did, but ... IMO, Luther more ignored Calvin in silence than anything. He was focused on intra-Lutheran issues post-1530 more than anything else. And, this is itself a claim from silence.

Sure, Luther accepted Calvin's "spiritual presence" — as far as it went. But, that wasn't far enough. 

He explicitly condemned it for not going further. In reality, Calvin stood with Zwingli and against Luther on "local presence" vs "illocal presence," and on rejecting Luther and Rome on what's technically called "oral manducation" or similar. See here. Let us not forget that, while it was Zwingli's idea, Calvin also never explicitly rejected "finitum infinit non capax est," an idea that appalled Luther. Let us not forget that running until Barth or beyond, the Reformed have held to this.

Indeed, until writing this post, I'd never heard of claims that Calvin and Luther agreed on the Eucharist. Tosh!

That said, as noted most in my Roper Luther bio review, Luther was wrong and Karlstadt was right on this issue.