Top blogging, fourth quarter 2022

 A quarterly roundup of the most read blog posts of the past three months. Not all were new to the past three months.

No. 1, "Libertarian pseudoskeptical pseudoscience," about Brian Dunning above all, but also the Novella brothers, Steve Pinker and others, from 2010, most certainly isn't new, but remains very true.

No. 2, "Do you have free will? Is that even a discussable issue?" also from 2010, is an extensive look at a critical area of philosophy.

No. 3, "Texas science ed director resigns over ID-creationist pressure" is even older, from 2007. I suspect it's gained new life due to the recent book bans plaguing public school and community libraries here in Tex-ass.

No. 4, "Antichrist vs the man of lawlessness vs the beast ..." was given new life by me when I posted this New Testament criticism piece to the Academic Biblical subreddit.

No. 5, "Genesis 6 retold," is a very old poetic look by me at the flood story possibly reflecting an Ouranos-like castration myth.

No. 6, "Paul, Passover, Gnosticism," like No. 4, got a "goose" from posting at Academic Biblical, mainly for the idea that Paul invented the Eucharist, along with his inspiration there, and more.

No. 7, "The great ahistoricity of Acts and radical thoughts about Paul's demise," is the first on the list from 2022 and is exactly what its title says.

No. 8, "Who wrote the book of Revelation?" offers my thought for a multi-stage process with a non-Christian core. Another piece from many years ago, it too was signal-boosted by me on Reddit.

No. 9, "Split the log and I am there: Reflections on the Gospel of Thomas and beyond," was inspired by high-country hiking in the Rockies last summer. It includes photography of something that was part of a "secular spiritual experience," multilingual punning and more.

No. 10: "Jeff Kloha could have a new boss soon," was about my old Sem classmate, now cleaning up the Augean stables of Hobby Lobby's Museum of the Bible, in light of the announcement that the Hobby Lobby's Green family planned to sell the company to a nonprofit (with various loopholes, like Patagonia who inspired it).

Martin Luther did not invent the Christmas tree

 Not as it's known in German lore that spread from there to elsewhere in Europe, then the US.

Try 275 years or so later.

It's also not just that part of German-based Christmas myth that's wrong.

The piece also notes that, contra anything you might think have come from Hudson Valley Dutch and Washington Irving, that Santa Claus didn't take off until the Civil War, courtesy Thomas Nast.

This piece says that an "Adam tree," decorated with ornaments we would not tie to Christmas and without candles, came into being for a winter celebration in Germany of them about the time of Luther. More here on that, which notes that they were celebrated as SAINT Adam and Eve in the Catholicism of Luther's time. I know they're not considered Lutheran saints today and am unaware of them being Catholic ones. And, per History, the use of evergreen boughs as decorations goes back to Saturnalia. (Ancient Egypt used fresh palm rushes at a festival for Ra, so Sukkoth needs to move aside as well.)

And, American-German worshipers of British monarch? It was NOT Prince Albert who popularized the tree in the UK. Think earlier.

The case against Delbert Burkett's Proto-Mark claims, part 2

  I recently read Delbert Burkett’s “The Case for Proto-Mark.” That was after someone on the AcademicBiblcal subreddit recommended his previous book, “Rethinking the Gospel Sources: From Proto-Mark to Mark,” where he first broaches his idea of TWO Proto-Marks.

 

I wound up two-starring the book, as described two weeks ago here on site.

 

This is the second of a couple of more extensive posts on issues I found with the book. It's partially in notes form, not full sentences. It's rough version. The first review part is here.

 

I reject his version, and other anti-two sourcers’ version of minor agreements. Things like Mk 6:34 vs added Mt/Lk material on page 47, for example? This is a minor similarity, not a minor agreement. And, to turn Burkett’s own claims, and cites of modern two-sourcers backpedaling from Streeter, against him? The most that can be claimed from minor similarities is that both Luke and Matthew had access to something besides Current Mark.

 

Agreements of omission is the term I will continue to use rather than lumping them under minor agreements as “agreements of absense.” The most they can prove is that, if Mt/Lk were working off a version of Mk first, that they were both were using a copy that happened to be missing that verse. Can’t say whether that’s proto-Mk, deutero, or final. And in some cases, like Mk 2;27 missing, this is almost certainly scribal transmission.

 

The use of verbs with/without specific prepositions and details of how these are counted or not counted? I reject. I know the issue of prefixed verbs is big in authentic Paul vs Pastorals, which is part of why I reject his methodology.

 

I do agree with Burkett that oral tradition’s influence on minor agreements has probably been overstated by many two-sourcers. I disagree that it’s been as overstated as he claims, and I disagree with what I think is part of WHY he claims that, and this is his lumping of “minor similarities” with “minor agreements.”

 

Finally, the fact that Burkett, after presenting arguments against Final Mark or Standard Mark versions of Markan priority, doesn’t address deutero-Mark, but just goes on to say “then proto-Mark must be it,” doesn’t sell me.

 

That’s especially after reading Kloppenborg’s “Q,” reviewed here, where he notes that Deutero-Mark is one of four ways of explaining minor agreements, along with oral tradition, scribal harmonizing and the human nature of a common editorial solution. It's almost as if Burkett knows that no one single explanatory factor is needed for all the minor agreements (and we'll tackle a related issue in the next post) but that he tries to look at each one individually (or look by silence with deutero-Mark) and insist it must address all of them, then shoot it down.

Robert Jeffress and the Dallas Observer: STRANGE bedfellows

The Dallas Observer is Dallas-Fort Worth's alt-weekly, part of the (Village) Voice Media group. Its Dec. 1-7 issue (just 24 pages at about a 50 percent adhole, not counting house) had a quarter-page ad from Robert Jeffress. Yes, THAT Robert Jeffress, wingnut Trump-schlonging pastor at Dallas First Baptist. Rexella Van Impe, wife of the late Jack Van Impe, and herself 90 years old, is also tied in.

At the same, Bob Jeffress, Rexella, and Jack Van Impe Ministries have to be just as desperate to advertise in an alt-weekly that also carries ads from all the major DFW titty bars.

Looking at the event being advertised, are the pair going to try to do a resurrection of Jack, or what? 

On the flip slide of that?

The Observer certainly isn't resurrecting itself from any financial problems with that.

Meanwhile, let's go all biblical on Bob, from Paul himself in 2 Corinthians 6:

15 What harmony is there between Christ and Belial[a]? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? 16 What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols?

Well, Bob?

Did Job originally end at the end of chapter 41? What's existentialism got to do with it?

I doubt it; I hugely doubt it.

That's as, per the Blake painting, to riff on a biblical phrase, I wonder: "Who watches the comforters?"

I digress. Back to the main point.

Someone at one of the biblical subreddits made such a claim about the ending of the book of Job a while back. He based that claim by the comment just before the speeches of Yahweh starting, at the end of Job's last response to his "comforters" in Job 31:40, which ends:

The words of Job are ended.

This meant that chapter 42 had to be an addition. 

I first said, in essence, that no, that could mean, "Job is done speaking for now," not "done, period."

Then, the better answer hit me in the face, namely the start of Job 40:

40 The Lord said to Job:

2  “Will the one who contends with the Almighty correct him? Let him who accuses God answer him!”

3 Then Job answered the Lord:

4  “I am unworthy—how can I reply to you?  I put my hand over my mouth. 5  I spoke once, but I have no answer — twice, but I will say no more.”

6 Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm:

7  “Brace yourself like a man;  I will question you, and you shall answer me.

There you go. If you really believe Job 42 is a later addition because of 31:40, then you also have to believe Job 40:3-5 is, and for linguistic smoothness, you must also believe that either 40:1-2 or 40:6 is also an interpolation.

There's also the text-historical issue. We have a copy of Job at Qumran, and it ends pretty much the way today's does, and is dated to circa 100 BCE. Given the estimated compositional history of Job, it is just possible for a later redactional addition to have been made, but not likely. See discussion here; I agree with it that IF there were an earlier version, the "whirlwind speech" of 40-41 in general was likely not part of it. 

Mainly, though, I agree that, given the prose section is clearly older, there would have had to have been SOME prose conclusion. And, there's no way of knowing whether the current and original one was the same. We DO know that, by the time of scrolls being saved at Qumran, the current prose ending was where it ended.

The correspondent, who appears to be like me, a secularist with a graduate religious degree, seemed to be looking for an "existentialist" Job. Albert Camus is in the top rank of my philosophy pantheon. I've read a fair amount of Kierkegaard, some Sartre, and in even more modern times, lots of Walter Kaufmann. It's one thing to wish for that being true; it's another thing make unsustainable redaction-critical claims to that end.

As for one other claim there, I also don't believe David Clines' insinuation (page 7 of the PDF) that there was no wager between Yahweh and (the) Satan. (Here's the homepage to download the PDF if needed.)

Rather, as I said elsewhere on the thread, gods wagering with one another is a common enough thread in antiquity, and not just in the Ancient Near East, but in Greek myth, and also in the blinding of Baldur in Norse myth that it probably has its own subsection entry in Stith Thompson's encyclopedia of folklore motifs.

I think there was a bet, and as I said in my review of "God: An Anatomy," by Francesca Stravrakopoulou (saying she gets Job wrong, too), that, the wager may have been, if Satan won, he got to sit on Yahweh's throne a week or something. And, no, that's not being facetious. Then, when this thread started, I figured Yahweh's side of the wager would be that, if he won, Satan had to ONLY "wander the earth to and fro" for a while and couldn't sit in on the divine council. (Doorknob forgive me for sounding like David Heiser.)

The problem is, as I see it, is not only that the wager idea isn't spelled out completely, in the presumably older prose stratum, but that the shift to a monotheistic framework makes the whole divine wager more problematic when it's fused with the patient sufferer poetic narratives. (Clines is right, IMO, that Yahweh is the ultimate beneficiary of Job's suffering, but IMO, that doesn't make much sense if you're denying a wager was laid.)

And so, I stand by my comment to the correspondent that, even without Paul citing a mix of Isaiah and Job in his doxology at the end of Romans 15, Job is problematic at best. Reading the book either with or without Chapter 42, he looks like a capricious cad and you're in the middle of the problem of evil. Eliminating Chapter 42 is no answer otherwise. Rather, the correspondent's claim that Yahweh's monologue is "no answer" is wrong. Rhetorical questions at staccato tempo and high volume are indeed an answer.

With chapter 42, to put it in today's terms, Job as a whole reads to me like capriciousness being covered up with a success gospel conclusion.

The prose beginning, with the implied wager, is that Job is faithful precisely because, at least in modern dual-omni god terms, he doesn't have to fear god's capriciousness. In other words, the "natural evils" portion of "the problem of evil" is something that he doesn't have to worry about. That said, given the Chaldean raiders, Job faces both natural and human evils in chapter 1, but the ancient author probably wasn't thinking of the problem of evil.

The real problem, per the "see discussion here" is that Job is internally jumbled. By Chapter 10, Job himself is saying that he can't call Yahweh to account, but yet he hints at trying anyway, and later calls out for a "defense attorney" (NOT "redeemer"). And, of course, there's the problem of Elihu jumping in out of nowhere, without either being introduced earlier, OR without being listed in need of expiation in Job 42.

There's the option of going beyond C.L. Seow, Clines elsewhere and others, and postulating that Job originally ended at 31:40 with perhaps some brief speech by Yahweh, not Elihu's five chapters followed by Yahweh's four-chapter blast. That might satisfy my existentialist friend's ideas, but, if true, would have to be early indeed in the redactional history. And, it's not the theory he presented.

Otherwise, the archaicizing language? Assuming that it is an affectation, that makes sense as far as this being a post-exilic book. The (primary/original) author is trying to provide the idea of a sage of antiquity bringing wisdom to emerging Judaism. That "emerging Judaism" as well as looking for more orthodoxy could explain the addition of Elihu. Interestingly, C.L. Seow, cited by my correspondent as believing Job 42 is an addition, thinks the Elihu speeches are original. So does the author linked there, Ragnar Andersen, who doesn't explain why Elihu is missing at both beginning and end prose segments.

There's other problems. While Elihu's speeches do foreshadow Yahweh's in talking about divine power, they don't really offer anything different than the original three friends on the problem of evil and Job allegedly having a secret sin. It is possible that the foreshadowing is why Elihu's not seen in need of expiation, and just possible that this is why he's not mentioned with Job's other friends at the start. It's still awkward literarily.

That's more than enough.

The real puzzler is why, if under my idea, the "divine gamble" idea is at least halfway botched when moving it to a monotheistic deity, Job became "canonical" for Jews. For dual-omni Christians following in Paul's misinterpretation and misthinking tracks, it's a different story.

Also, as I said to a first-time questioner there asking about Ecclesiastes being "existential" or "nihilist" (after telling him the two are not the same) that I'm hesitant about using modern philosophy terms to describe the background or authorial mindset of biblical books, starting with the much different metaphysics. If you mean "existential" in a pop psychology sense, I get where you're coming from, but I'm then going to say that you need to treat the biblical book in question like pop psychology. (That's done plenty enough anyway.)

And, that's more than enough on Job.

KERA is taking over WRR? Good after Jan. 3, I think

 I was driving home Wednesday night and wondered why I was hearing Christmas music in the 7-8 p.m. slot instead of the normal Bill McLaughlin. Then, after grocery shopping, realized I wasn't hearing the Chicago Symphony as the normal Wednesday night symphony broadcast.

So, I hit WRR's website when I got home. And found out KERA is taking over management. (Just a month after forming an agreement to take over the Denton Record Chronicle. KERA's got some big britches!)

First, the bad. WRR already played too much Christmas music from the day after Thanksgiving on. Now, we're going to get it wall to wall?

Second, the VERY good. All non-classical is being ditched. The Saturday financial shows weren't a big deal, but the Sunday church programming was an EXPLICIT First Amendment violation, given WRR being a public, as in government-owned, station. Good BYE! That explained why the Catholic priest said a week ago that he was departing. Sadly, but not surprisingly, plenty of idjits commenting on the WRR announcement on Hucksterman are clueless.

Third, the good on at least a few specific commercials. No more pseudoscience, anecdotal hawking of CBD.

Fourth, the good in another way. Ever since Laura Miller wanted to sell the frequency slot and the Cedar Hill tower, the city of Dallas has largely treated WRR like a red-haired stepchild, if not worse than that. The takeover agreement is good.

Fifth, the interesting 2.0. Going non-commercial means Friends of WRR won't need to shill. Instead, KERA says it will be converted into an advisory board.

Sixth, the hopeful? A stronger arts calendar.

Seventh, the interesting. The wall-to-wall Christmas schmaltz is so KERA can review programming options within the all-classical format. I suspect Through the Night with Peter van de Graff stays. You hear that on about ANY classical station. 

Requests?

I hope they keep the 8-10 pm symphony hall slot. 

I hope they add a block of explicitly 20th-21st century programming, preferably two hours a day.

I hope they add a slot of "world classical" music.

I hope they add a slot of American classical music.

All of this to improve the somnolent dreck they play to satisfy the blue-haired ladies that's been their angle for more than a decade at minimum.

==

I Tweeted a screengrab of the last part to Dallas Morning News classical music and arts critic Scott Cantrell, but haven't heard back.

That said, he did write several months ago about the possibility, including noting how much debt the station was racking up, and the struggles against online classical music. That would probably explain why most of the symphony broadcasts have been cut, and other syndicated broadcasting either cut or replaced. It's interesting Friends of WRR had some initial contractual concerns; let's hope, per the end of Cantrell's piece, that they were indeed addressed. Per another Cantrell piece, because of that debt, above all, this was in the works 18 months ago. Obviously, COVID added to that, and hid this from hitting my eyeballs.

Pro Publica panders to 4G, and 5G, tin-foil hatters

On my main news blog, I wrote recently about Pro Publica's reporting on a Senate committee minority report on the COVID lab-leak hypothesis, co-reported with Vanity Fair. Some people, in part due to tribalism, pushed back, claiming it got wrong either translations of Chinese documents or Chinese Communist Party tea-leaf reading, and some were saying PP had ruined its reputation.

As of the time I wrote this, PP and Vanity Fair haven't retracted or extensively modified the original piece.

On the other hand, THIS piece, claiming that there's "smoke," and posssibly "fire" behind it, on 5G 4G cellphone communication, HAS damaged its reputation. Maybe not ruined, but yes, damaged. (I thought it WAS 5G originally, but it's worse yet, if Peter Elkind is giving a platform to older, behind the curve 4G nutters, but Elkind does so to bankshot off saying, in essence, "worry about 4G and worry even more about 5G." And, that's even worse than only citing 5G.

(Spoiler alert: From everything we know on good science, it's safe.)

There are SEVERAL major "fails."

First, it's one-sided on reporting on alleged (sic) effects of 4G. Just scientist who has studied it and say there are no general fears is referenced, and he's not interviewed. He is made to look like a caricature, in my opinion.

Second, it's anecdote-based.

Third, all the claims by the tin-foil hatters about 5G have also been made in the past, when they rolled out, about 3G, and to update the original typing, are being made now about 5G. That includes semi-tin foiler DOOCCTOR (Rush Limbaugh voice) Jill Stein, 2012 and 2016 Green Party presidential candidate.

Fourth and related to that, no "professional skeptics," problematic as they can be at times, were interviewed. They and scientists alike, as in the case with Stein, would cite the "nocebo effect."

There's other problems. Strawmanning or Overton Windowing by saying the FCC hasn't updated its cell tower or cellphone standards since flip phones is one. Reality is that those things may have leaked more radiation. And, same complaints were  made at least a decade ago about phones as well as towers and specific wireless systems.

Back to the anecdotal. An increase in behavioral disorders among kids of moms who were heavy cellphone users while pregnant may be true, AND may be causational BUT not linked to cellphone radiation. Obvious counterpoint is that it could be causally correlated to psychological issues of pregnant moms who were heavy cellphone users while pregnant.

The "it irradiates sperm" was on ejaculated sperm outside of testes. Study size is TINY: 23.

Update, Jan. 4 2023: ProPublica has had Elkind write a follow-up, which is even more full of pseudoscience than the original. For example, contra PP and Elkind, electromagnetic hypersensitivity is fringe science at best, pseudoscience at worst.

So did J's early narrative originally end in famine, not flood?

 By J, of course, I'm talking about the Yahwist strand within the Torah. (And, yes, while I believe the original version of the documentary hypothesis doesn't hold water, I do believe a modern, updated version is the best explanation of the Torah's development and I reject any full-on fragmentary hypothesis.)

Now that that's out of the way?

Idan Dershowitz, who continues to show himself a name to watch in Torah exegesis, argues well in a brief paper that the earliest version of J's primeval narrative, ie, creation to Flood, did NOT end in a flood but rather a great famine.

Dershowitz starts with the descriptors of Lamech's descendants in Gen. 4. He next notes that Yahweh's promise, after Noah's post-Flood sacrifice, to never curse the ground again has language that elsewhere ties to famines. 

Specifically, that's Genesis 8:22:

“As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.”

Could be a flood, right? But, sounds more like an earth-cursing that spins off that of the expulsion from Eden.

And, here's Dershowitz's exegesis, starting with his note that the Samaritan Penteteuch and LXX differ from the Masoretic Text, which is reflected in the English above, versus the English of their translations below:

As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, for all time shall not cease.

Note that difference. He further explicates:

Without the final pair, nothing remains to support a Flood reference. The six phenomena relate to the regular cycle of seasons, guaranteed to once again follow their natural course »by day and by night«, i.e. permanently . Previously, summers had been cold, winters dry, seedtime and harvest perverted – a famine had devastated the earth.

Pretty convincing.

From there, he connects dots from Lamech to Noah. He then goes to look at the Noah references in Ezekiel and Deutero-Isaiah.

How did this become a flood narrative, then? Dershowitz says the popularity of the Babylonian tradition eventually "flooded" the original J narrative.

Related to that, on Torah criticism? He says this supports the idea of J being a separate narrative, not a supplement to P. In other words, some modernized version of the documentary hypothesis is valid.

Sidebar: Exegesis like this shows that van Seters' semi-strawmanning claim that editors didn't exist in antiquity is not true. Maybe how they worked was different from, and harder than, today. But, they were there.

Sidebar 2: See my "extended haiku stanzas" poem about Genesis 6 here.

Jeff Kloha could have a new boss soon at the Augean stables of Hobby Lobby

Old Concordia Seminary classmate Kloha, who signed on in mid-2020 to clean up the Augean stables at Hobby Lobby's Museum of the Bible, over the Dead Sea Scrolls forgery and other things, will apparently have a new boss in the future.

"Inspired" by Patagonia founder Yves Chouinard saying that he was going to "donate" Patagonia to a nonprofit trust (while not mentioning this made for some great family tax breaks, explained without a paywall here and here), Hobby Lobby founder David Green said last month he was doing the same. (And probably for the same reason, in large part.)

Indeed, Green is only two years younger than Chouinard and was likely to hand off Hobby Lobby anyway. And, he may get an even bigger tax savings. Per Wiki's articles on the two companies, Hobby Lobby has 3x the sales revenue.

RIP Kendrick Frazier — with a big caveat

Unlike Massimo Pigliucci, with some good encomia here, I didn't know Ken in person.

Unlike Massimo on the flip side, though, growing up in the Four Corners and deepening my interest in the world of the Old Ones as an adult, I also knew him, beyond skepticism, as a photographer of and writer about the world of the Anasazi.

Unlike myself until just now, reading his Wikipedia page, I did not know that from 1983-2006 he was a full-time staffer at Sandia National Laboratories. Related to that, I don't know how blank of checks he wrote to either nuclear weapons or to peaceful nuclear fission power being "just around the corner." Sadly, half the hits on Google when I search "Kendrick Frazier" + "nuclear weapons" are bits by UFO nutters claiming that there has been a big conspiracy to cover up UFOs' connection to said weapons.

Young bucks on biblical subreddits pushing young bucks with bad scholarship

The "trigger"? An OP claiming on an AcademicBiblcal a subReddit post about a British academic, Alan Garrow, claiming that the eruption of Vesuvius was the target, with VERY specific alleged terminus a quem/ad quo dates for the writing range of Revelation. Color me skeptical.

That's even more so since Alan Garrow also claims the first part of the Didache precedes even 1 Thessalonians. He gets there by saying this is the same as the "Jerusalem Council," which he claims actually happened and also claims that Acts 15 is paralleled by Galatians 2:1-10. Really? Pass.

I get the feeling that some young bucks at AcademicBiblical are looking for young bucks in biblical scholarship who have one foot, at least, halfway in the Sokol hoax camp. And, Garrow's Sokol hoax is a Didache fetish. Go to his website. Revelation? See the Didache. Paul in the two letters above? See the Didache.

==

By no means is everything there bad, though. There are several people in my general range of dating and editing ideas on both the New Testament and the Tanakh, which is to say, setting aside apologists, people who are in the left one-third of datings without being Dutch Radicals on the NT side or Copenhagians on the TNK side.

There are "apologists," or fundagelicals, there too. A few of them are goalpost shifters. A few others are karma whores. It is what it is.

Anyway, especially with doorknob knows what on the future of Twitter, it's a better alternative to Quora, though I haven't much hit political fora there yet; it's basically this and sports so far.

The case against Delbert Burkett's Proto-Mark claims, part 1

 I recently read Delbert Burkett’s “The Case for Proto-Mark.” That was after someone on the AcademicBiblcal subreddit recommended his previous book, “Rethinking the Gospel Sources: From Proto-Mark to Mark,” where he first broaches his idea of TWO Proto-Marks.

 

I wound up two-starring the book, as described two weeks ago here on site.

 

This is the first of a couple of more extensive posts on issues I found with the book. It's partially in notes form, not full sentences. It's rough version.

 

First thing Burkett gets wrong? Page 8: Lachmann (and others similar) are not proto-Mark. They’re a “common Synoptic source” arguers.

 

My answer? A “Cross Gospel” or similar, per Koester, may well have been used by Mark. That could also have been used by Mt and Lk, along with “actual Mark.” That would address minor agreements in the Passion accounts.

 

Otherwise, assuming my theory of Mark writing early 70s in Rome, spurred by Vespesian’s arrival as Emperior with Jewish slaves, including some Jesus people, in his train, either a deutero-Mark, or a proto-Mark revised just a year or two later by the same author, is possible.

Given the general train of canonical and non-canonical Gospel development, I reject any ideas of a Proto-Mark longer than the final, whether my theory on date and provenance of actual Mark is right or not.

The minor agreements issue can be explained in part by Mark using an earlier version of Q, a la Kloppenborg’s theory of its core not having John the Baptizer language and not being apocalyptic, vs Mt/Lk using Q2. They can also be explained in part by harmonization by later editors, as in hundreds of years later.

 

I also reject Burkett’s claim (also attacked by critics of his 2004 book) that there were two different Proto-Marks, one used by Mt and the other by Lk. The idea that there would be two different proto-versions that survived, and that both of them just happened to fall into the right hands 20 or more years later, but that final Mark would be the only one that survived today? Even for those highly critical of Streeter et al on the minor agreements, this should beggar belief. If it doesn’t, YOU beggar belief. (As I read through the book, I noted that at times, he was arguing for A version of proto-Mark, and at other times, for HIS two-Protos version, even though he tells readers to see his former book for details on that.

 

He later, citing Hengel, notes how many texts from the early Apostolic Fathers that we know of by title have disappeared. I don’t question that, but that’s also an argument from silence. AND, we don’t know how quickly after writing they disappeared.

 

Even without Burkett’s specific proto-Mark, I would still find a deutero-Mark more likely, especially, if allowing for my presumed background of Mark, it’s knocked out within 5 years of the original.

 

Seriously, think about the plausibility of two different proto-Marks. You then have either their author or somebody else editing both, not one, into a final Mark. And, doing that while still leaving the Greek rough and other problems, or else making those problems even worse, if not the original author.

Wrap-up note: Looking at the length of my notes, I'll likely have two more installments.

Nicholas Humphrey drops new ideas on origin of consciousness

Per an Aeon interview about a new book of his, the British philosopher has ideas that I would very largely agree with.

His analogy with "Moby-Dick" is very good, as an introduction to the idea that sensation, vs mere perception, is about brain narratives.

And, the kicker? (Aside from him ignoring or not knowing, or omitting them because extinct, that dinosaurs were also warm-blooded.) Interesting. Warm-bloodedness, and not only greater control of one's self vis a vis one's environment, but more rapid, and more active, response to it? Makes sense. And, especially since I have noted the amount of hype about the octopus in recent years, I agree with his take on them not demonstrating sentience. And, yes, it is hype.

And, I'll keep an eye open for his book!

A "Proto-Mark"? Color me unconvinced in general

The Case for Proto-Mark: A Study in the Synoptic Problem by Delbert Burkett
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I recently read Delbert Burkett’s “The Case for Proto-Mark.” That was after someone on the AcademicBiblcal subreddit recommended his previous book, “Rethinking the Gospel Sources: From Proto-Mark to Mark,” where he first broaches his idea of TWO Proto-Marks.

 

That book was back in 2004, and I thought the second book, being much newer, would have more information. Unfortunately, it talks just about the idea of “a” Proto-Mark while referring readers to his previous book for details on the idea of PM-A, used by Matthew, and PM-B, used by Luke.

 

I dropped a brief review on Goodreads, linking to longer at StoryGraph, but I wanted to do a set of blog posts in much more academic-like depth.

 

Sidebar: I had asked the Redditor if Burkett discusses dates, or loci, of composition on any of the canonical gospels (or Proto-Mark[s]) in that first book. He was going to check his notes, but never responded, probably in part because I said I had gotten this one on ILL. Sadly, Burkett has none of that in this book, which also lessens its value.

 

And, that value is, per the icon? Two stars.

 

Let’s dig in on the first post, tackling his basic thesis, from my detailed notes, partly explicating his basic thesis already.

Burkett’s thesis is basically this:
1. The two-source theory has too many shortcomings to be salvageable
1A. This includes, more in passing than in active discussion, the idea of Mark vs a deutero-Mark salvaging the two-source theory.
2. Therefore, we turn to proto-Mark, which he is at pains to stress is compatible with other theories besides an updated two-source theory … and
2A. More specifically, Burkett’s idea of both a proto-Mark-A, used by Matthew, and a proto-Mark-B, used by Luke. (That’s explicated much more, it appears in his previous monograph “Rethinking the Gospel Sources: From Proto-Mark to Mark.”)

My response?
1. While the two-source theory’s problems are greater for sure than Streeter claimed, and may be somewhat greater than more modern people like Fitzmayr say, they’re not as severe as Burkett claims and certainly not irresolvable
2. His passing by deutero-Mark largely in silence is “interesting”
3. His stipulation that two versions of proto-Mark are required is tendentious at worst, unnecessary within a proto-Mark theory in general. (One could have just one proto-Mark and a final mark, and have Mt use one and Lk another, or have both use just the one proto-Mark)
4. Burkett’s failure in this book to discuss datings of either proto-Mark, or a final Mark, or a proposed developmental, editorial and redactional history of Mark should be seen as militating against his other claims in general.
5. Burkett’s failure to discuss in depth, or even semi-depth, a defense of his particular idea of a Proto-Mark A AND a Proto-Mark-B, not even in the conclusion, yet nowhere saying he has rejected this idea of his previous book, is also problematic. Yes, he says, in essence, that’s not his focus, but, he could have incorporated bits of that in his conclusion chapter, IMO. I say that because I am not that convinced of just a single Proto-Mark, and while he tries to spin Occam in his favor, I find multiple proto-Marks even less likely.

As for the bottom line?

It was fun to dig into some serious gospel criticism. That, as well as Burkett's diligence, rescue him from a flat one star. For more of why he fell to two stars, or rather one-and-fractional stars, go link: here. And, yes, I said my review here was relatively short; that one is relatively relatively short.

My Bayesian probabilities will now go 10 percent on some version of a proto-Mark, tho 0 percent on his two-proto idea, while still saying that this is within the two-source tradition, rejecting his idea that it's outside that. Deutero-Mark goes to 30 percent, whereas before this, some version of the traditional two-source theory would be at 80 percent, and is now at 60 percent, and a deutero-Mark would be at 20 percent, not 30.

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The old 'We don't have a god in Buddhism, so karma isn't punishment' BS rises again

That was raised by the second of two people I blocked last week on the DebateReligion subreddit. The first was a "just asking questions about definitions" Hindu troll, one of a general subtype of social media trolls who always claims the burden of proof is totally and solely yours.

Anyway, Mr. Rootin Tootin or whatever his name is, apparently blocked me from replying to his second response to him. (I'm not genius-level yet on Reddit, so I don't know how you block commenting if you're not the OP, which I don't think he was, but I digress.) 

So, I updated my first sub-response with what would have been my sub-sub-sub-response, then blocked him. But, again, I digress.

His big claim was that because Buddhism has no deity, karma can't be considered punishment.

Bullshit. If you're reincarnated as something "worse," and there's a metaphysical law, which karma is, as to WHY you're reincarnated as something worse, it's punishment. It's not for your health.

Sidebar: How do Buddhists claim that there are reincarnations as something "worse" if everything here is illusion? Better yet: How do they claim that reincarnation is real, or the karma behind it is real, if everything here is illusion?

Now, I know that at this point, some Buddhist sage, like Jesus telling the young rich man that he's not far from the kingdom of god, is going to tell me I'm not far from enlightenment.

And, he or she would be right: I'm enlightened as to just how much petard-hoisting bullshit you spout.

Anyway, back to the Reddit nutter. He talked about "Lord Buddha" this and that. Sounds kind of deity-like to me, and of course that's an issue of note in taking a good critical comparative religion look at the varieties of Buddhism. (And, we haven't even talked about Pure Land and similar, which rejects reincarnation vs a one-off afterlife.)

Part two on Rootin Nutter? His talk about "Lord Buddha" and this life made it sound like we were currently living in a Buddhist version of reincarnation like the stereotypical Christian versions of heaven skewered by Mark Twain and others. That, in fact is part of why I blocked him. I didn't want to waste time even trying to wade through that much blather. I wish I had copied his nonsense before blocking him. Seriously, it came off as an (alleged) Buddhist version of something Twain caricatured in "Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven."

Part three on Rootin Tootin Nutter? Sounds like he (surely a guy) was awfully "attached" in the decidedly no-no in Buddhism sense to this current reincarnation.

This is likely to be the start of a miniseries, with separate posts addressing other problems with karma and reincarnation in both a theistic religion and a nontheistic one.

While you're here, though? Reincarnation has other problems, biological, metaphysical, logical and more, whether you're Hindu or Buddhist, or Jain, or New Ager or whatever.

Oh, Buddhism was a religion when I first blogged about that, still is a religion, and still still is. 

And, karma is still as offensive as hell. Pun intended in a non-funny way by this secularist.

Love yourself and probably start there: The Buddha vs Paul, Jesus and the Tanakh

I mentioned two weeks ago that I had a "secular spiritual experience" that, in part, involved the most famous logion from the Gospel of Thomas.

Shortly before I saw the standing dead ponderosa pine tree with sprout of whatever growing inside, I saw what I called a "namaste" rock, while hiking high on the east side of the San Juan Mountains. It reminded me of a similar rock at Middle Emerald Pool in Zion National Park, seen deliberately on a second visit. With both visits, I made "photo posters" in Photoshop of one of the better-known quotes of the Buddha, both shorter version and long version. Here's one of the photo posters, with longer version.

And, here's the new namaste rock from the most recent trip.

Finally, the short version of the quote, from the last visit I made to Zion:

First, note that I called it a "SECULAR spiritual experience." "Spiritual experience" by itself is too open to misinterpretation and I don't want to look like a pseudo-secularist, as I perceive Barbara Ehrenreich as being. 

Related to that? I invented a new word. I can't remember if it was at that moment, but it was before that hike ended. It's "humaste," a totally secular alternative to "namaste."

Now, to the meat of the header.

Jesus is, of course, asked the summary of the Torah, and he famously quoted two passages from the Torah, Deuteronomy 6:5, after the Shema in 6:4, and Leviticus 19:18 (Mark, here):

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.”

The context beyond that?

Mark 12 just thrust it into a group of brief sayings that portray Jesus being religiously tested. Matthew 22 has it in the same context, but with the parable of the wedding banquet, Q material, leading off the chapter. Luke 10 totally reframes it. It occurs at an early part of Jesus' ministry, and has neither the wedding banquet nor any of the other Markan material. Instead, it's all "Gentile mission" stuff, as the chapter starts with the "mission of the 70" and ends with Jesus pivoting from his answers to a didactic story, similar to a pronouncement story, to explain who a "neighbor" is. You know that as "The Good Samaritan," and Samaritans are picked not to shame a Jewish audience, since Jesus never told such a story in reality, but as further justification for a Gentile mission and pivot.

Within the Tanakh, I already noted the context of the "first commandment of love." The second is the summation of a set of divarim which somewhat parallel the 10 famous ones in Exodus and Deuteronomy. The parallel is partial because the set in Leviticus focus entirely on interpersonal relationships, albeit with Yahweh hovering in the background, and have no human-divine commands or warnings.

Finally, of course, there's Paul's famous chapter on love, 1 Corinthians 13.

What's missing in all of those is what's front and center in the Buddha's words. (I'll assume he actually said them.)

The concept of self-love, and even more, the need for self-love and the need for people to be reminded of this.

Christians talk about how Jesus came to save a broken world.

If you accept the concept of "broken world" but reject ideas of "original sin," or of older Jewish ideas for sacrifice, the Buddha is juxtaposed in something like this as trying to heal and nurture a broken world. (This is setting aside the metaphysics that Buddhism as a religion incorporated from pre-Hindu Indian Epic religion, and setting aside the issue of how much the Buddha himself bought into that.)

And, contra Christians who talk about Jesus' love, and focusing on this world as well as the next? The Buddha focuses on this world first, even if he did buy Indian Epic metaphysics.

That's even more true on trumping Paul. Paul, the apostle of abnegation, writes an allegedly beautiful chapter, but it's all about abnegating (and at times blind) love, and arguably rejects self love in verse 5:

It is not rude, it is not self-seeking

The Buddha would beg to differ on the "not self-seeking." In fact, I think he'd actually, per Zen, say "mu" to Paul's whole angle, not just in the verse but the chapter.

As for the Leviticus 19 background, the Buddha probably would say, to riff on Robert Frost, that good self-love makes good neighboring.

As for Deuteronomy 6? It eventually gets to the "jealous god" that heads up the Jewish version of the Ten Divarim. Enough said there.

==

Footnote: I've said repeatedly that Buddhism is a religion. Backgrounding the parenthetical expression above, per my take on the Diamond Sutra, I think Siddhartha himself was indeed a metaphysician. Once again, Bob Wright is wrong.

Perfect proof text for Paul not writing 1 Timothy

Recently, on Reddit's Academic Biblical subreddit, I'd seen claims that, yes, Paul didn't write II Timothy or Titus, but that he DID write I Timothy, and that language, and themes, were proof of that.

Let me immediately and swiftly demolish that; First, I Corinthians 7:29-31:

29 What I mean, brothers and sisters, is that the time is short. From now on those who have wives should live as if they do not; 30 those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; 31 those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away.

Clear and simple, right?

The passage obviously reflects Paul's belief in an immanent eschaton, spelled out almost breathlessly in what was likely his earliest book, I Thessalonians, but also found here, in Romans with the "ingathering of Israel" and elsewhere in his genuine epistles. (Don't forget, this is one of the main reasons II Thessalonians is considered spurious.)

Now, a famous, or infamous passage from the Pastorals, namely I Timothy 2:15:

15 But woman will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.

Also clear and simple — and diametrically and totally opposed to the I Corinthians passage.

I just sunk the battleship of any would-be or alleged critical scholars who claim Pauline authorship for just I Timothy out of the Pastorals, and of course for the fundagelicals who claim he wrote all of them.

Contra Barbara Ehrenreich, et al, on mysticism and ineffability

This is both a highly condensed and refocused version of an obit I wrote about Barbara Ehrenreich on my main blog, one that I had not intended to become a "takedown" obit, but ultimately did.

It will focus on one half of one of her books, out of the three whose reviews I extracted for the starting point of that piece.

Sadly, she had a cropper with "Living with a Wild God." Given specifically her take on New Ageyness, and in general, given the appearance that she seemed to be some sort of non-metaphysical secularist, the fact that that wasn't the total case with her personal life, plus her hinting that there were things hidden behind a thick, heavy curtain that she wouldn't talk about, left this book well short of others.

Excerpts from my review will illustrate, along with observations about an interview she had with Harper's about the book, and an even worse one with Religious News Service and Fakeist (sic) Chris Stedman.

Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth about Everything by Barbara Ehrenreich
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Call this book review "The deep loneliness of Barbara Ehrenreich" or maybe "The Tragedy of Barbara Ehrenreich."

I wrestled with exactly how to rate this book. Her alleged metaphysical experience as a teen, and her return to it at late-midlife crisis time? That part's a 1-star, and I knew that when I had read an excerpt online. She even admits that, as William James notes, the physical "symptoms" she had of her mystical experience are not uncommon. Yet, she wants to mystify them, rather than noting that hypoglycemia, sleep deprivation of a moderate sort and stress could easily have caused her own version of a common experience. (Update: With excerpts from two links at the bottom, it now IS a 1-star.)

That's especially true in light of her history of depersonalization and disassociation. There's fairly solid evidence that some people are by nature more susceptible to such things. Or -- by childhood. As in, things like child abuse, which by happenings in her childhood she acknowledges, but refuses to identify as such.

Here's the basics on her childhood:
1. Two alcoholic parents, with an emotionally manipulative father and an emotionally unavailable mother.
2. A physically abusive mother. (Yes, Barbara, that's what "slapping in the face" is, especially when done with some regularity.)
3. Frequent moves. (She notes that a stay of 18 months in Lowell, Mass., was longer than usual.)
4. Marital trauma that eventually led to divorce not too long after Barbara's "experience," both remarrying, dad divorcing a second time and mother near that point before her suicide.
5. Some history of mental health problems on her mom's side of the family.

Well, depersonalization/dissociation is a kind of common "defense mechanism" in such cases. And, perhaps she had some inherited susceptibility, too.

The "solipsism" she later on discovers in her teenage and college self is another defense mechanism. So, too, in all likelihood, are some of the ritual behaviors of her pre-teen life she describes but fleetingly. So, too, as an adult, is writing about your own life in a semi-detached, semi-third-person style.

And yet, she can be "hard" toward others who have as many, or more, depersonalization experiences than her, even referring mockingly to a self-help website for depersonalization.

It's very hard to believe that the author of Bright-Sided could have written this. Unless, again, this is seen as cri de coeur first, paean to mysticism a distant second. But, her later interviews make clear that that is NOT the case.

View all my reviews

==

And now, that Harper's interview.

She owns up to lifelong atheism, even telling her undergrad alma mater she was a "fourth generation" atheist, but yet takes her high school experience as not just "mystical," but, if you will, a "theophany." I quote:

After a night spent sleeping in a car, she went for a morning walk in the woods and felt the presence of another being — she later said she “saw God” — then spent the next several decades ignoring the experience and hoping it wouldn’t recur.

Somehow, I missed in my review that she actually said she had "seen God." I might have 1-starred the book instead (while still being sympathetic to her as a child abuse victim).

Harper's interviewer Ryann Lieberthal then asks her:

What would you attribute those experiences to now? If you saw something there in Lone Pine, what was that thing?

And, Ehrenreich simply refuses to give a straight-up answer.

The interview about the rest of her work, beyond and based on the previous books she had written? Very good stuff. This?  Even though the rest of the part of the interview that talks about "Wild God" only has her talking about consciousness of other animals, that's bad enough. A PhD scientist (she was, and in cellular immunology, a biological field, no less) strawmanning biologists as claiming that about all of them don't talk about, or even reject, consciousness in other animals. 

And, behind that, since she didn't answer Lieberthal straight up? I sense a hint at the same New Ageyness that she excoriated elsewhere. Even worse, since she read the old journals, that led to the book, while being treated for cancer — the sidebars to all of that treatment and other patients having led directly to the "Bright Sided" attack on New Ageyness.

Oh, but wait, Googling, or Duck Ducking, "Barbara Ehrenreich" + "mysticism" leads me to find out that she even had an interview with RELIGION NEWS SERVICE about this, and there claims MULTIPLE mystical experiences. 

Since millions of Theravada Buddhists are also atheists, not believing in a personal deity, I now wonder just what she meant by "atheism." Was she rather just more "irreligious," like many "Nones" of today?

And, oh fucking doorknob, this gets worse yet!!!!

The interviewer is Minnesota Nice Piety Brother Atheist Lite, or rather, Fake Atheist, Chris Stedman. And, her fuzziness level on responses goes WAY beyond the non-responsiveness to Lieberthal. Extended excerpt:

CS: You’re speaking at the third “Women in Secularism” conference this weekend. Over the last few years there has been a lot of discussion about sexism among nontheists, and this conference seeks to continue that. Why do you think the atheist community is struggling around issues of sexism and harassment? 

BE: I don’t know. I don’t spend a lot of time in what you might call the atheist community. It’s not a word that I think would adequately describe me—it’s just a starting point. I don’t believe, but that doesn’t exactly define a community, except in some circumstances when we’re up against real discrimination, which we often are. So I can’t say I know much about sexism in the atheist community. Certainly the very prominent atheists have been white men, and I don’t know what to do about that. We need to add some women to the list. 

CS: What will you be talking about at “Women in Secularism”? 

BE: I’ll base my remarks on Living with a Wild God, and I’ll talk about growing up as an atheist and coming to question some of the foundations of the science I had been taught. I hope to emphasize that atheism in itself is not a complete answer. That’s just where we start from—we don’t start with any belief. We’re still trying to figure things out. 

CS: You say that atheism is a starting point. What comes after? 

BE: Anything you like. As an atheist, you don’t start by saying, “There is a God and he or it has arranged everything as it is.” Every question is open once you put aside beliefs like that.

"Just wow." Or, since we're headed that way? To riff on an old cliché? "Oleaginous is as oleaginous does," for both of them. Or, "Oleaginous knows oleaginous."

But, the Harper's interview, revealing the mindset behind "Wild God," led me to all of Ehrenreich, not just her most famous class-based book, or class and sociology ones.

Maybe Laura Miller at Slate gets it right — as with Dostoyevsky (and St. Paul), we can blame temporal lobe epilepsy. Only problem? Ehrenreich has never said she had any type of epilepsy. On the third hand, in the book, she never made clear what the family tree of mental illness was or was not.

So, intellectual dishonesty? Yes. First, on Ehrenreich's part for not offering straight answers to straight questions on mysticism and related metaphysical issues, and what got me started on "Wild God," for not being totally forthright on childhood history.

In July, on vacation, I had what I have already called a "secular spiritual experience." For part of it, see the "Split the Log" blog post of last week. That said, I found none of it mystical. Nor "ineffable," which is where I think Ehrenreich was headed, though weirdly, she never used that word. Nor did I find any of it "metaphysical."

Third, as far as the alleged inexplicability of such events? In a word, tosh. A better word to tackle? "Ineffable." In that RNS piece, especially, I think Ehrenreich was trying to insinuate her experience was "ineffable" but she didn't want to use that word because she was already standing on two stools.

Anyway, I'll take two angles on this.

The first part is from the actual science world, the world that Ehrenreich dissed in her strawmanning of biologists. (And, per feedback, that's part of her intellectual dishonesty.) Neither the quantum physics world nor the cosmology world knows which of the two, quantum mechanics or gravitation, wins out in the final shot at a "grand unified theory," let alone what's on the other side. But, nobody this side of Deepak Chopra claims that makes a claim that any of this is "ineffable."

DON'T even think about going Deepak on me. I'll kick you hard and after that, the conversation is over.

Second angle comes from philosophy of language, primarily Wittgenstein, but also a hat tip to ideas of self-referentiality from Kurt Gödel et al as explicated by Douglas Hofstadter in "Gödel, Escher, Bach."

To be blunt?

If a person were (note the subjunctive) to have an experience that they alleged was "ineffable," they could not use the word "ineffable" to make the claim that the experience was "ineffable." And, it's not just the word "ineffable" as a word, but as a signifier; plug in any close synonym and you'll fail again.

Per Gödel, there's the self-reference issue, but that's secondary.

Per Wittgenstein or related, there's the linguistic discourse issue. If the idea of "ineffable" / "ineffability" is that an experience cannot be described, then that apples to the two actual words (concepts). Ergo, one cannot talk about what it is to be "ineffable" as THAT would be indescribable. This takes us to Hofstadter and one of the GEB essays, where "GOD" is defined by the acronym of "God Over Demons." What we have, of course, is an infinite regress, a cousin of self-reference. And, trying to say something is indescribable when you can't describe what it means to be indescribable falls in the same class.

And, this is not just in public discourse.

Individuals cannot tell themselves that, in private mental languages. You cannot, not without remaining kiloparsecs away from knowledge as philosophically defined as justified true belief.

'Split the log, I am there': reflections on the Gospel of Thomas and beyond

This particular phrase, listed as a direct quote of Jesus in Saying 77 of the Gospel of Thomas, has long stuck somewhere at least in the the back of my mind. The "long" is at least the 30 years back to my last year of seminary, when I first heard of the gospel, and read it on my own, because, not at the M.Div. level, and probably not even at the ThD level in New Testament exegesis, was Concordia Seminary going to offer a class on extracanonical gospels or even one on the study of Q. (That's even more true today.)

Well, on vacation in late July, high in the San Juan Mountains, the most beautiful of the Colorado Rockies, I saw this, shortly after having a sort of "secular spiritual experience" which included inventing the word "humaste" as a secular replacement for "namaste."

"This" is a standing dead trunk of a ponderosa pine with what's obviously new life of some sort in the center. (The full cutline on the original photo at Google Photos has more.)

So, what does the phrase mean to me now? Did I get explanation?

Yes.

It means I am there. Not Jesus, not Yahweh, not anybody else. Me, but not in a New Agey way. But, in a secular, "humaste," meditative way. Even as somewhat of an introvert, and definitely a loner, and both reinforced by being in an unintellectual rural outpost of America, "I am there" as part of being connected to nature, but also to other sentient human (and non-human) life.

[Update, Sept. 11, 2023: A year later, not much more than 100 miles as the crow flies, I saw another tree trunk that inspired me to do secular judo on this same logion: "Split the Log, there I am not!"]

And, I am an intellectual!

That said, and since I love multilingual puns anyway?

The Gospel of Thomas, per the link, is a string of bare sayings by Jesus without context. The Greek word for "saying," in the Latin alphabet, is "logion." So:

Interestingly, the next saying in Thomas is its version, though removed from the context as presented in Matthew and Luke, of what Jesus is reported in their version of Q as asking a crowd of followers after an imprisoned John the Baptizer sent disciples to Jesus to find out if he was the "real deal." There, Jesus, riffing on Isaiah, tells them to tell John they have seen the blind given sight, etc. etc. He then asked the crowd rhetorically, referring to John, "What did you come out into the desert to see?"

Interestingly, because I've regularly asked myself that question rhetorically while out hiking, and recently got the answer, and I'll blog about that shortly.

Finally, per my above multilingual pun, the Greek word for "word," as Bible scholars and many others know, per the opening of the gospel of John, is "logos."

And, that leads me to a phrase from the book of Hebrews, that "The logos is sharper than any two-edged sword." Indeed, it's sharp enough to split a logion and invite one to find one's self.

I debated about whether this was multilingual bad pun overkill, but eventually decided not. That said, because I had flattened the second picture and saved it as a .jpg and closed it, I didn't have a .psd with layers to work with to keep the text from being quite so cramped. (Non-photo editing people, it can't be explained simpler than that.)

Photo-editing discussion partially aside (not totally, because this blog IS in part about aesthetics) I went with it and not just because of a bad pun.

As I have riffed with my own thoughts on what splitting the log means, so, the two-edge sword of a word — or a statement, which is a logion — can split a saying. "Iron sharpens iron" becomes "word splits word," taking "word" as both "logos" and "logion" and being a "statement" or "saying" in both cases, not necessarily an individual word.

I don't think the author of Hebrews was referring to the Logos hymn at the start of John, or to the Stoic idea of the logos behind that. Rather, he's speaking to the power of words, sharply used (not "sharply" in the bad emotive sense) to cut through muck.

Of course, as a good secularist and skeptic, I'm cutting through different muck, including that author's belief system.

To find myself.

And, that leads back to Thomas.

Specifically, Logion 2:

Jesus said, "Whoever seeks shouldn't stop until they find. When they find, they'll be disturbed. When they're disturbed, they'll be […] amazed, and reign over the All."

What is this "all"? As a broad-minded but not New Agey skeptic, and also rejecting solipsism, is it not the finding of one's most nearly authentic self in relationship to the world around?

After all, the full Logion 77 says:

Jesus said, "I'm the light that's over all. I am the All. The All has come from me and unfolds toward me. "Split the log; I'm there. Lift the stone, and you'll find me there."

So, split the log, lift the rock, and as a non-reductionist secularist skeptic, find yourself.

(Note: None of the online versions of Thomas that I found perfectly floated my boat on some logia, including these two. Gospels.net, the top-linked one, had "split a log," which ruins the parallelism with the definite article before "stone." Either both are "the" or neither. A couple of other translations are KJV-English bad on "ye" and such, though having the classic "split the log." One or two, while numbering the logia, had NONE of them as separate paragraphs or even separate verses without headers.)

Eat your heart out, Georgia O'Keefe, while 'your' church's legend is untrue

 I had been by San Francisco de Asis Church in Taos before my most recent vacation, but it wasn't until after I got back home and shared my pictures of it with friends that I realized it was THE church made famous by Georgia O'Keefe.

On the "eat your heart out"? Well, a mix of HDR camera settings and Photoshop does this:

 

Oh, that embiggens a LOT at the original. And, more variants are in this album.

On the legend? When explaining to friends the background, I referred to the church's website and specifically its history subpage. Then I noticed this "mystery painting" it mentions, but coyly doesn't discuss.

So, I Google, and get a hit from the Taos News, which first gives me the O'Keefe backgrounder, then discusses the mystery painting in detail, complete with authorial viewing.

Problem? It's largely uncritical and in some cases outrightly untrue. Joe Nickell at Center for Inquiry had reviewed the painting 15 years earlier. It's never been scientifically examined, could have been produced by some underpainting techniques, said techniques were around at the time of the painter, and the painting gives some evidence of using them. (At least the newspaper labled the piece as "opinion.")

This is nothing new in New Mexico. I've been to Chimayó, the "Lourdes of New Mexico" at least, if not of the whole United States, and seen the then-parish priest walking with a cane and a limp. I've been to Loretto Chapel and know the truth about the non-miraculous staircase.

The great ahistoricity of Acts and radical thought on Paul's demise

 

With a flash of insight while out hiking recently, I thought of not only JUST how ahistorical the book of Acts is, beyond the “we” passages not at all being related to a possible companion of Paul, but well beyond that. (Contra William Ramsey, Paul almost certainly was not a Roman citizen, and we'll get to that as part of this piece.)

 

In fact, the flash led me to think of the likely actual reason for the demise of Paul.

 

Let’s dig in with a big-picture overview.

 

The ascension? Of course not historical.

 

As a good secularist who knows David Hume, Carl Sagan and in between on “miracles,” the tongues of fire and speaking in tongues on the Jewish Pentecost didn’t happen. So, neither did the conversion of thousands. (Besides that, such mass conversions would have had a ripple effect in total Christian numbers which we don’t actually see.)

 

The Stephen story? Critical scholarship knows it’s based on Tanakh types, tropes and stories. The stoning of the man of righteousness, for him to get a “crown” per his name in Greek, didn’t happen. Disputes between diaspora and homeland people (Greek vs Aramaic [Hebrew]) speakers? Something real may have been there, but we don’t know what. Not only did the Stephen story not happen, he didn’t exist? Beyond that, the idea that there were so, so many Jesus believers just a year or so after Jesus' death that Greek and Aramaic or Hebrew speakers would have had divisions, or that it was getting organized enough to need a group of deacons sounds like backward projection from some later time, perhaps the author's own Sitz im Leben.

 

Dorcas? Less tightly than Stephen, but, it’s based on Tanakh types, tropes and stories. See Elijah and the Shunamite widow. Didn’t happen.

 

Cornelius? If the Synoptics story about clean and unclean foods is true, Peter didn’t need a vision of a clean and unclean foods sheet to tell him about all foods being clean. That said, if the Synoptic story is true, why didn’t Mark have Jesus including the conclusion about Gentiles and a Gentile mission? But, if it’s not true, why did Luke include it? Or, since he of the three Synoptics stresses a Gentile mission, why didn’t he expand on the story in his Gospel? After all, only Luke of the Synoptics has a separate mission of the Seventy after that of the Twelve, and this is clearly a riff on the Seventy Nations of Deuteronomy.

 

On the clean vs unclean foods, some recent scholarship says that Mark's focus was to contrast internal self-purification to external purity. This ignores the Markan parenthesis, though, which Matthew omits. I consider it original. Contra the Jesus Seminar, I don't think it is a case of humor, either. Luke doesn't actually have the parallel in his gospel, unlike Matthew; rather, it's just a statement by Jesus that god made the outsides and insides both of things like cups and bowls that were ceremonially washed. 

 

So, Luke deliberately moved it. (Given Markan vs Matthean differences, it's questionable just what Jesus said, though he surely said something about foods and ritual purity, whether or not he did about clean vs unclean foods.)

 

In any case, Cornelius almost surely didn’t happen.

 

Conversion of Paul? Happened but not as Luke described it. Among other things, Damascus was almost certainly NOT under the control of Aretas IV at this time.

 

Missionary journeys? Yes, Paul went around the EASTERN Mediterranean to talk about Jesus and the pending apocalypse. (Don’t forget that part.) Did he have three specific, planned-out journeys? Maybe, maybe not.

 

And, before we forget, Paul was not a Roman citizen. Not historical. Per Roman census information, as of 14CE, the death of Augustus, by which time Paul had been born, only 10 percent of the whole Empire had citizenship. So, 7 percent outside of Rome. (I can't remember where I got that original cite, but after a mini-Me/on the spectrum mix/quasi-Nazi new mod at r/AcademicBiblical, I Googled some new information that wasn't the Wiki page on Roman citizenship I thought I had hit. Anyway, you don't get much more academic than St. Andrews, and my 7 percent guesstimate is indeed confirmed. Pages 2-3 of that link say 4-7 percent of provincials were citizens at the time of 14CE census. It gives an estimated imperial population of 33-48 million. Indeed, the author says no more than one-third of free provincials are likely to have been citizens as late as 212 CE and Caracalla's big grant. And, that's free people. Throw in slaves, and as late as 212, no more than one-quarter of provincials were citizens. More from this blog-type site confirms that at the Augustan time, no more than 10 percent of the entire imperial population, Rome and Italy as well as provinces, were citizens.

As for Tarsus? Julius Caesar gave it some freedom from taxation, and confirmed Jewish religious rights there. See here. It was NOT a Romany colony at this time, so Paul's father could not have obtained citizenship or even had the "Latin rights" that way. Colony designation did not come until Severan times.

 

OK, that gets to the end of Acts — Paul’s arrest for allegedly bringing a goy into the Holy Place. (Per above, at the time of his arrest, he doesn’t claim Roman citizenship.)

 

Obviously, if he’s not a Roman citizen, he can’t appeal to Rome. So that didn’t happen and that wasn’t his ticket for getting to Rome, which likely never happened anyway.

 

(Update, March 18, 2023: Melvin Goodman, in his very good at times, but also very uneven, "Rome and Jerusalem," assumes that Acts is largely historical and that Paul was a Roman citizen. On the matter at hand, on direct and indirect power in both worlds, in his chapter on that, he talks about Agrippa II [and Berenice] sitting in on Festus' interrogation of Paul, and even has Agrippa hinting at his innocence, as Luke writes. 

 

The idea that this is historical? Tosh. Rather, it's a doublet from Luke's account of the trial of Jesus. Luke has Pilate discovering that Jesus is a Galilean, and packing him off to Antipas. Supposedly, that resulted in them being friends from that time on. And, yes, it's ONLY Luke that has a hearing before Antipas. Real biblical scholarship should start by recognizing the doublet angle.)

 

Besides, let’s assume, contra the claims of Acts 21, that Paul DID bring a goy into the city. Maybe it was “Trophimus the Ephesian.” Or maybe, contra Acts 16 that Timothy was circumcised, maybe Paul took an uncircumcised Timothy with him.

 

In either case, while the Temple warning only explicitly threatened goys, it could be seen as also saying that Jews who assisted goys in violating the Holy Place would also risk lynching.

 

And, remember what I said about Paul preaching Jesus AND the apocalypse?

 

Maybe he thought that bringing a goy into the Temple court would “bring it on.” After all, certain theories of Jesus' arrest and demise have him welcoming the arrest for broadly similar reasons. And, other Messianic claimants from time to time have held similar ideas, as have yet other cult leaders inside and outside of Christianity. Look relatively recently at the Hale-Bopp nutters.

 

I am thinking now of, at the risk of sounding like Robert Eisenman, that, in this case, maybe Josephus' claims that High Priest Ananus had James lynched, that maybe it was actually Paul. I mean, the time frame would approximately fit.