Westar/Jesus Seminar goes in the tanks

 At one time, what seems eons ago, the Jesus Seminar did great stuff. The work of John Kloppenborg et al on Q, including its reconstruction, likely early forms, etc., was fantastic.

After that, even though a bit of the derision was earned, the four-color vote on alleged saying of Jesus was pretty good overall.

The gospels based on that weren't bad, though already then, the Seminar was starting to enter the world of clunky/wonky/idiosyncratic in its choices on translation.

Between moving away from the Metroplex more than a decade ago and shifts in focus in my non-fiction reading life, I hadn't read anything from the Seminar, now the Westar Institute. Until recently, and with this book, I shan't be reading anything else in the future for another decade.

Adapted from my Goodreads review:

After Jesus, Before Christianity: A Historical Exploration of the First Two Centuries of Jesus Movements by Erin Vearncombe
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I have enough familiarity with Westar/Jesus Seminar etc. that I wasn’t holding my breath over this book, BUT?

It’s as bad as Bart Ehrman’s recent stuff. No, ultimately it’s worse. And, much of the second half of it is basically a channeling of Karen L. King, without disclosing her own willfulness in setting herself up as a mark for a forgery.

Add in tendentious theological, exegetical and hermeneutic claims, the lack of an index and more, and this is one-star dreck.  

First, claiming that because  σοφία is feminine in Greek this opens “new ways of looking at Jesus” is laughable. (Ditto for חָכְמָה being feminine in Hebrew, of course.) I immediately thought of Mark Twain saying that a maiden is sexless in German but a turnip is not.

Claims that Rome has a focus on making conquered nations feel like semi-barbarians by violence? The Republic had a long period of forbearance with Greece, and even elsewhere, worked to co-opt the leadership class, not crush them. Slaves “transported” to Rome? Sure, because that’s where the most rich people were. Rome did NOT have an Assyria-like policy of deliberately moving whole groups of people.

People moving for work? Sure. Happens today! Uncoerced today as it was then.

The “Roman soldiers” Jesus and John the Baptizer talked to? Syrian auxiliaries, actually.

Gets Markan version of “clean and unclean foods” parable wrong! Humor isn’t the point; equality of Gentiles is.

Gets the “betrayed” vs “arrested” of Paul on the Last Supper wrong, or just ignores the “arrested” to try to offer more cosmic meaning.

Pharisees weren’t “relatively new” at time of Josephus., not with a pedigree of more than 200 years.

Insinuates pre-69 Vespasian already had an eye for the throne. Really? NEVER heard that before. Also claims Vespasian was a “plebian.” WRONG! He was a knight, the equestrian class.

Also a lie re Vespasian, and Titus? The claims that Romans never destroyed temples of other religions. It wasn't "temples," but in 54 CE Suetonius Paulinus (not the historian) is reported as destroying many Druid sacred sites in Britain, on Anglesey, as part of a brutal suppression. Druid groves were destroyed elsewhere.

Weirder yet is the talk about some Christian subgroups, like claiming that Hebrews 13:9-16 is about a subgroup that called itself “the altar.” No, really.

Claiming I Peter 1:1 and James 1:1 is about Christians who were “aliens,” rather than, as is the common interpretation, that it refers to the Jewish diaspora, or perhaps what was already considered a Christian diaspora, is ... interesting. But, if you’re going to date I Peter at 150CE, you’ll make such statements! (Personally, I can see I Peter as being as late as 125, and the persecution it references being what Pliny the Younger discusses with Trajan. It’s possible it refers to earlier bits of persecution under Diocletian.)

Of course, if you’d like to date 1 Peter as late as 150 to put it later than Gnostic writings, you’ll do that!

That said, there are somewhat refreshing ideas, such as calling groups of Christians in different cities “clubs,” like dyers or weavers. Or like followers of pagan gods. That said, it seems to go too far to even take the Pauline passage about “one God and Father of us all” as “the father of the club.” And, that was the only halfway good thing here.

Translating “Christians” as “followers of the Anointed” when they note that Roman religious and political tradition didn’t have anointing, although Greek did. (Herms in the ancient Greek world, for example, were anointed.) Then claiming that Christiani/-oi as used in Latin (or imperial Greek?) was an official imperial term? Again, a claim I've never heard before, and comes off as theologically and hermeneutically tendentious.

Yes, “βαπτίζω” can mean to wash or to bathe. Qumran shows this. BUT, these were still ceremonial washings, even if we don’t use the word “baptize” as a transliteration. (Interestingly, Christian “baptisms” are compared to those of Isis etc., but Qumran isn’t referenced.)

“Gnostic” may not be exactly right, but a Nag Hammadi work such as Testimony of Truth shows that there were differences between so-called Gnostiicism and early pre-orthodox Christianity. Note how it refers to the Lord threatening Adam and Eve with death for seeking gnosis. Strawmans Gnostic vs proto-orthodox division without noting schools within Gnosticism and how most scholars talk about these sehools, or “heresies!”

Also cites Karen King without noting the big kerfuffle over Gospel of Jesus’ Wife, namely, her being a sucker for a forgery. Beyond the link above, someone as far left politically as Chris Hedges also ripped it to shreds. And, the authors about “Secret Revelation of John” rather than normal academic title “Apocryphon of John” was puzzling.

Then, near the end, getting into what we’ll call traditional biblical scholarship, the authors accept the traditional authorship of I Clement and Ignatius, even though good traditional scholarship of the last 50 years rejects it more and more. (I think that if you date I Clement much after 100, you have to call it a forgery even if a real Clement existed. I've recently talked about Ignatius, and Marcion, per three paragraphs down.)

And, OTHER problems. I’ve NEVER seen Hegesippus spelled with a double-s before.

And, in discussing early martyrdom, the authors never wrestle with Candida Moss. (That’s probably because it would undercut their take on traditional Xianity not being in opposition to Gnosticism.)

Dates the Pastorals post-Marcion, also on tendentious grounds.

Finally, there’s no index to this book. That normally costs a star by itself and sealed the one-star rating.

View all my reviews

We don't thnk in any language, eh?

"Tosh" is my British English, thought-out answer to a clickbaity piece at 3 Quarks Daily that leaves me with not so high regard for its author and the seemingly impoverished view of what human thought is.

David J. Lobina does claim, in his title that "You don't think in any language."

First, it's clickbaity in two ways. One, that clickbait header does get caveated in the third paragraph, but that doesn't make it less clickbaity.

The point I want to make in this post is that no-one thinks in any natural language; not in English, or Italian, or whatever, but in a language of thought, an abstract, unconscious and moreover inaccessible, conceptual representational system of the mind.

Nope. Last I checked, a "language of thought" is still a language.

The study the author mentions? he limitations of one person's native language vs another I don't think is strong proof of his idea; at best, it's proof that a strong version of Sapir-Whorf is no more true for inner speech than talking to others.

Beyond that, doesn't he later engage in petard hoisting with:

And this, I have claimed, necessitates a mental language of a special kind, the language of thought I introduced last month and which I have elaborated upon a little bit here.

So, again we DO speak in a language! Not just any of the external languages. Author Lobina, or whoever wrote the headline, is then wrong. And, doing this more than once? I'm not inclined any longer to be charitable about "caveating." He's either written an egregious clickbait header or else he's blithely engaged in petard hoisting.

And, per above, I still say he's wrong otherwise on the broader issue.

Also, because thought for humans doesn't end with inner speech or cogitation, but goes on to include conscious dialogue with others, then ruminating on the ideas they provide, that also undercuts the idea that we don't think in any language. 

This isn't quite a category mistake. It is a mistake, though; it's an impoverished definition of the word "thinking," even as I silently talk to myself while typing here. a lot of theories of mind and consciousness postulate that a lot of human cogitation, development of not just second order, but third order theories of mind, etc., depend on internal self dialogue .... which is based on language.

But, they also depend on dialogue with others. Whether Aristotle's "Man is an animal of civilization," or Donne's "No man is an island," while we occasionally cogitate alone, ultimately, our thinking is fashioned within social discourse.

So, no, Mr. Lobina, I shan't stick around for Part 4 or whatever of your essay serious.

And, with all of that, with the references to Aristotle and Donne, and per discussion about this in a private Facebook group? Maybe it IS a category mistake after all, and, speaking of language and thinking, I'm not sure yet how to describe the miscategorization.

I do know one other thing, to trot out another philosopher. That's Dan Dennett and private mental states. It's arguable that Lobina has no basis for his analogizing from natural language to mental language — with the addendum that he gets funnier yet by interjecting the language of formal logic into all of this.

In this case, it's not petard hoisting, but trying to have ones cake and eat it too, on talking about private mental states via analogy to public ones.

Or, to trot out a better analogy? A digital camera may use a CMOS or other sensor instead of film, but both it and the film camera are making photographs with photons of light. Thought may ultimately be done at an unconscious level in something like a language, without us being able to analogize better than that, but that something like a language bases its thinking on natural language and the product of natural language

OnlySky is getting shit wrong already

And, I'm here to gloat.

OnlySky Media was founded by the atheist contingent formerly at Patheos after Patheos essentially said, they say, that they had to be nice to theists.

So, they formed their own sandbox. And, to be honest, there's a fair amount not to like.

First, when I decided, hey, since I missed out on Patheos atheists' rise to fame, and a few bucks, and then got blocked from commenting by not-a-bible-scholar Gnu Atheist Neil Carter (one of the OnlySky gang), let's see if I can't hook up there, especially since they say they're open for contributors. (More on individual contributors getting shite wrong below.)

In their request for submissions, they say:

New columnists are added continually based not only on quality but on whether the proposed column fills an unmet need. We already have religious criticism pretty well covered.

Uhh, no, as I note below.

The individual wrongs already?

In excoriating Kyrsten Sinema, Marcus Johnson talks about "secular values." Really? Not all secularists identify as secular humanists, and thus, there IS NO SUCH thing as secular values.

The lie is put more bluntly by Adam Lee:

Wrong, again, wrong!

Robert M. Price is a secularist, unless he's actually founded a church of Cthulhu. He's also, from what I can tell, a racist.

In the opening paragraph, Lee lies about the so-called "Nones":

The most significant, most overlooked story of the 21st century is the meteoric growth of the nonreligious, also called the “nones” (as in “none of the above”). Our numbers are rising every year, to the point that for the first time ever, Americans without membership in any house of worship constitute a majority.

First, as documented by Pew and blogged here, the Nones have flatlined in the last couple of years. Second, Pew et al don't define "Nones" as people who don't have an official membership in a church denomination, so, lying by redefinition there. 

That then leads to the lies about secularist values ...

The “nones” don’t all share a philosophy or belief system. Some are atheist, some are agnostic, some simply don’t care for organized religion, and some find the whole question irrelevant to their lives. What we do have in common—more so than you might expect—is a value system: a morality that puts human needs and human happiness first.

Wrong, wrong, wrong! (See "Robert M. Price" above.)

But, either Adam Lee really likes conflating ideas to expand envelopes, or he really likes slippery slope type thinking, or something. In another piece touting the glorious wonders of OnlySky, he conflates Nones and unbelievers, which is flat wrong.

In another piece, a "Captain Cassidy" makes this claim:

Officially, Calvinism is a sort of add-on software module or DLC for Protestantism. Any Christian Protestant church can adopt Calvinism and still consider itself Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Baptist, or whatever else. That characteristic makes Calvinism very versatile.

Erm, NO. Even within ELCA Lutheranism, even with it in fellowship with the Reformed Church of America, such an idea would be rejected. Conservative Lutherans would reject it while laughing at it. And, good conservative Calvinists would laugh at it, too.

As for contributors? I've already noted Neil Carter. James Croft? As noted at my main blog, a semi-Gnu. (OTOH, he has at times pushed back against the worst of Ev Psych.) Jennifer Hecht? Her books are error-ridden; go see my Goodreads reviews. "Doubt" was meh, and, with yet more insight, at least tinged with the BuJew virus (sue me if you don't like that mash-up). "Stay: A History of Suicide" is simply loaded with wrongness about its subject.

As for having other things covered? Phil Zuckerman supposedly writes the Secular Symphony, but his vertical has nothing about classical music. (Update, one year later: His 10 most recent posts have ONE about music and it's not about classical music.) Jonathan M.S. Pierce, as already documented here in giving a guest poster space trying to defend Bart Ehrman's most recent book, or directly here, as linked there, cutting blank checks to Jesus mythicists, has gotten issues of biblical criticism wrong. And, I mean, easily identifiable as wrong. I identify him as being a semi-Gnu, like Croft. (Update, one year later: In writing about things like "Putin's Russian sacrifice at the Chinese altar," too cute by half, he's himself decided to sacrifice at the US-NATO altar of abomination of desolation. And, within religion, his piece claiming circumcision is a mark of slavery is full of holes on issues such as his ignoring acts of religion as cost-paying signaling.)

And, I don't like needing to register to comment, rather than them using Disqus, or Wordpress commenting if they're on a Wordpress backbone, or whatever. Plus, unlike with Disqus, for example, I don't know if I have the ability to block commenters. Or to find out what stupidity they write elsewhere. Also, the sign-up page also has a "Support" link, which makes me wonder about being spammed with donation solicitations. (Unherd on politics cheesed me off when I found that registering via email still didn't let me comment; rather, it's like Slutstack that way.)

I'm feeling like once a month or so, for a while, I'll be kicking OnlySky in the nads, as I doubt they're going to approve my ideas pitches or anything related to them. I had talked about secular poetry, but if that's part of Hecht's gig, they're not going to likely ink me for that.

My impression is of politer, gentler turd-polishers of atheism than Gnu Atheist BSers like P.Z. Myers, yet with the same end goal in mind. Soon enough, the wrongful claim that atheists have either moral or skeptical superior standing will be more explicitly leveled, I'm sure.

Baruch Spinoza remains excommunicated

From Mondoweiss, late last year.

It's not just that he remains excommunicated by the Amsterdam synagogue that booted him (and he does), but that a modern Spinoza scholar is also persona non grata. Indeed, per that second link, Rabbi Joseph Sefarty claims that Spinoza's excommunication cannot be removed.

Behind all of this? A clear refutation, as I've already blogged, that Christianity is allegedly all about orthodoxy and Judaism is all about orthopraxis. It wasn't bad cantorial skill that got Spinoza excommunicated; rather, it was the claim that he was an Epicurean, code words for being an atheist.

Not true, of course. Pantheism isn't atheism.

I later noted that distinguishing between orthodoxy and orthopraxis is somewhat a Mu point (pun intended), as they're not really separate domains.

Look at Islam. No "graven images," or anicony, is a praxis. But, it's a praxis based in a doxa, the idea that God cannot be represented AND that attempts should not be made. Note also that many Sunnis consider Shi'ites about one-quarter heretics, Sufi's half there, and Alawites fully there. 

Buddhism and Hinduism? Since both are, yes, religions, while you won't be excommunicated over rejecting karma and either reincarnation or a one-off afterlife, actual Buddhists and Hindus likely won't consider you one of them. And of course, in Hinduism, the caste system is both praxis and doxy. Or, within Buddhism, at another blog post, about orthodoxy vs orthopraxis in general, again, it won't get you excommunicated, but one of the big dividing lines between Mahayana and Theravada is dogma, not praxis. Within Muslims, the succession to Muhammad, or within Shia, the split between Sevenrs and Twelvers? Dogma. Per Spinoza, definiing who Yawheh is or is not, to then wonder who can say the Shema or not? Dogma.