Link list update

 Been a long time since I've done a cleanup on that.

Some, like John Horgan's old Cross-Check, Massimo's previous blogging incarnation and Skeptic's Dictionary, though not current, are still valuable and have been kept, with notes. Others are gone.

Skeptophilia — a closet semi-believer?

 Over at my main blog, I have Skeptophilia, a blog by Gordon Bonnet, on my blogroll. It's generally good stuff, but at times, more than once, I've wondered how skeptical he is on some things.

For example, I think he wants to believe that there's "life out there" and so sets the bar lower on Drake Equation issues. On something else, he linked uncritically to a guy in Houston, a pastor or similar but not a Ph.D. archaeologist from an accredited university, who claims to have found a curse tablet at Mount Ebal that had the name of Yahweh on it dated to circa 1200 BCE. (More here on how much of a circular reasoning fail it is, in a generally good r/AcademicBiblical piece except the one fundagelical there.) In another post, he claims that a coin in the name of otherwise generally unattested Roman emperor Sponson is legit, when it's nowhere near settled among numismatists. I blogged together about both, then separately about his claim about extinct gomphotheres and distribution of some trees in North America.

And, on this site, I recently noted (He's "Tales of Whoa" on Twitter) that his willingness to believe humans are hardwired to know the difference between happy and sad music was based on a survey of dubious scientific value, if any. Given that he's an avid amateur musician, he should have noted my caveats about Western vs non-Western, as well as pre-Baroque, or even more, pre-Renaissance vs modern major-minor Western music. As a retired AP science teacher, he should have noted the small sample size and other issues.

And, now, there's his post last week about ChatGPT threatening to replace pastors' sermons. First, as someone who's a PK with a graduate divinity degree, this ignores that many a pastor has been preaching out of either sermon books or online equivalents for decades if not centuries. Second, pastors and priests and rabbis, at least in denominations where they work full time, do much more than lead religious services.

Anyway, there's this from that post:

To make my own stance clear right from the get-go, I'm what the philosophers call a de facto atheist -- I'm not a hundred percent sure there's no higher power (mostly because I'm not a hundred percent sure of anything), but the complete lack of hard evidence tilts me in the direction of disbelief. As far as spiritual concerns, like the existence of a soul (or at least "something more" than our physical being), I'm an agnostic. There is a great deal of weird shit out there that might be explainable by virtue of some sort of non-materialistic model -- but it might just as well have to do with a combination of our own flawed cognitive processes and incomplete understanding of science. (If you have five minutes, watch this video by physicist Sabine Hossenfelder about why quantum wackiness doesn't support the existence of souls. I'm not as convinced as she is, but wherever you're starting, belief-wise, it'll get you thinking.)

Really?

He's interesting enough in many ways that I don't think I would de-blogroll him over there, but I wouldn't add him over here. Not even with him calling himself a hardcore skeptic on April 19.

Update, Aug. 14, 2024: He's a semi-believer in "Fortean phenomona," too, per this post with link to a Vimeo short about one short story from the book he mentions that was movie-ized. The video, at least, with all of its cliched moments, is purely in the land of tall tales, contra Bonnet.

The Origins of Judaism, Part 1: Ritual purity and foods

The Origins of Judaism: An Archaeological-Historical Reappraisal by Yonatan Adler
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Origins of Judaism

Simply a great book. Adler’s look at archaeological and related evidence for when various practices commanded in the Torah of the Pentateuch became widespread is simple, and has more and more data to be researched today. Part 2 of this expanded review covers "graven images." Part 3, about "miscellaneous" items, is also now up.

First, the exact phrasing above? Adler uses “Pentateuch” for the five books “of Moses.” Torah is used for the “teaching,” which often was law or “nomos,” within them, to then ask where it was discussed literarily centuries later, ie, Christian New Testament, Qumran, Josephus, apocrypha, etc. That’s his terminus ad quem. Therefore, he does not use the Mishna; sayings attributed to 1st century CE rabbis by the second century may not hold up.

Then, as noted, he also looks at archaeological digs and related for their evidence.

He looks at several areas of Torah: Dietary laws, ritual purity, “graven images,” tefillin and mezuzoth, all of which get longer treatment, the synagogue’s existence, and a group of items under “miscellaneous practices.”

The conclusion he has is that based on the “lived experience” of practitioners of what became Judaism, none of these were widespread before the start of the Hellenistic area, and in most cases, it wasn’t until Hasmonean times. In fact, that’s his summary — that the Torah as prescriptive not descriptive was pushed and promulgated as a Hasmonean unity document or constitution of sorts.

Notes below are my observations and stimulations, as well as what I learned. As noted in posting my review link to a couple of biblical criticism subreddits, I am going to do some more in-depth breakouts to some portions of Adler's book in a series of posts, while still providing a link to the whole review with each one.

The first big part I want to break out further?

Ritual purity laws. That's in large part because they are a big thing in the Synoptic Gospels, on some of Jesus' disputes with the Pharisees, in Acts, with Pauline vs Jerusalem Christianity, and in Paul's letters.

The ritual purity chapter was great, and especially the immersion bath subsection. Adler shows this likely didn’t become widespread until the start of the 1st century BCE. He said it may have been aided from the start of the Hellenistic world by the rise of its hip bath. The photos involved, plus quotes from Josephus as well as the New Testament? Make clear how big of a deal this was. People had to create a site big enough for a full immersion. They had to have, or find, the wherewithal, to be able to afford this. In largely semi-arid, semi-desert Judea, especially if not in a Romanized Hellenistic city with an aquaduct, they had to rig up rainfall capture or something to keep it filled. If it was outdoors, they had to skim out bugs, I would think for no other reason than most of them being unclean as food sources, in summer. Also if outdoors, in higher elevations, they might have had to break up a skim of ice at times in winter and in general, if it wasn't heated, brave brisk temperatures.

All of this illustrates the detail to which ritual purification was practices by most Pharisees, at least, in everyday life. And, it illustrates the depth of the challenge that Jesus was posing to them, especially in a place like Galilee where interactions with Gentiles would have been common for many of them. The best illustration of this is the Markan-Matthean parable of clean and unclean foods, which starts with Jesus dining with a Pharisee and talking about them purifying themselves and their utensils before getting into clean and unclean foods (whatever the final meaning of the parable is).

I also think of Paul calling out Peter for his dining hypocrisy. Maybe this was instead a “weaker brother” thing on Peter’s part, where he was OK with ignoring ritual purity concerns when by himself with Gentiles, but didn’t want to upset other Jewish Jesus-believers when they were around. And, since Paul himself talks elsewhere — and specifically on things like food sacrificed to idols, about not offending a weaker brother, that would mean that if anybody was a hypocrite, it was Paul. (Shock me.) Speaking of that, I blogged specifically about Paul and this issue recently.

That will lead me, more briefly, to clean and unclean foods.

I’d already heard about the catfish bones outside Jerusalem in approximately Davidic times, that 20 percent or more of all fish bones found there were unclean catfish.

From there, we're going to take it back to New Testament times, where in 1 Corinthians, Paul talks about both ritual purity and indirectly, unclean foods, but not in a Jewish Torah sense, over food sacrificed to idols. The idol issue itself would make such meat ritually impure, not just the person eating it, and based on purification laws, I don't see how you could purify the food without ruining it.

But, as Adler notes, food sacrificed to an idol would also normally not have been slaughtered and butchered kosher, and thus would still have the blood in it. This, of course is not Torah, but a Noahide law, which is why it would have been scandalous to the Jerusalem Jesus-believers. And, though this is beyond Adler's remit, it's why I believe there was no "Council of Jerusalem," contra Acts 15. It is also why I, per above, think that it would have been Paul, not Peter, who was the hypocrite, in his callout.

Related? I do not think all details of the actual parable of clean and unclean foods are real, though the dispute with Pharisees surely is. The Markan judgment as to what Jesus meant is surely just that — a Markan judgment. Note also I didn't call it Lukan. That's because only a briefer version of the ritual purity dispute is in Luke; the clean and unclean foods issue is moved and edited to become Peter's dream of the sheet of unclean foods in Acts, which also surely didn't happen.

Adler's conclusion, and one with which I agree?

Even if the persecution of Antiochus IV was real, it may well have targeted just the temple cult, per Daniel. The Torah was elevated in Maccabean times as part a of Hasmonean unity program. John Collins and Reinhard Kratz propose this. Hyrcanus coercing Idumeans to support "the whole law" may support this. So may the rise of Jewish sectarianism upon independence. 

Update: Jon D. Levinson thinks Adler pushes some doors too hard, not just on individual instances, but especially on the claim that before Ptolemaic times, the Torah was seen as descriptive more than prescriptive. I would respond that some of his pushback idealized Deuteronomy, assumes a relatively early date for final or semi-final redaction of Leviticus (vis a vis Ezekiel) and other things. He does, interestingly, note that Adler studied pre-PhD at an Orthodox seminary in Israel, and with a clear "is"/"ought" distinction on the Torah, would appear to still be an Orthodox Jew at heart.

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Another Pauline self-contradiction: Food sacrified to idols

I Corinthians 8 is well-known to critical scholars for largely torpedoing Luke's claim in Acts 15 of some grand "Council of Jerusalem."

Luke claims there, in v 20, that Paul agreed there to have Gentile converts abstain from food sacrified to idols. It's believed that this was due to it not being slaughtered in kosher fashion; that, in turn, is of course a Noahide law, not a Torah for Jews.

But, we have I Corinthians 8:4:

So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that “An idol is nothing at all in the world” and that “There is no God but one.”

And, this has long been understood as Paul meaning, in essence, eat away, especially when the rest of the chapter goes into Paul's "weaker brother" concern — about which I shall say something else in a future post.

But, we then have Paul appearing to contradict himself, and worse, in the same letter, just two chapters later! Here's 1 Corinthians 10, which talks eventually about the "Lord's Supper." 

A lead-up to that? Verses 19-20, part of a short pericope normally called "Idol Feasts and the Lord's Supper":

19 Do I mean then that food sacrificed to an idol is anything, or that an idol is anything? 20 No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons.

Sure sounds like a self-contradiction, namely as Paul does not make the "weaker brother" appeal here. He does later in the chapter, but that's after introducing the "Lord's Supper," which may or may not be the same as an "agape meal," or may be something like the "Eucharist" as a sanctification for a surrounding agape meal.

And, he appears to go back to his Chapter 8 point of view in 10:25:

Eat anything sold in the meat market without raising questions of conscience

But, that comes after the first "weaker brother" hint in this chapter at 23-24:

23 “I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but not everything is constructive. 24 No one should seek their own good, but the good of others.

Followed by picking that back up after verse 25.

If nothing else, this torpedoes the idea that Paul was some brilliant theologian.

Has American culture really moved past philistinism in the arts?

 That's the subthesis of "Picasso's War," reviewed below.

Picasso's War: How Modern Art Came to America by Hugh Eakin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Simply fascinating book. The title is a pun, covering both the "war" to get Picasso accepted by philistine Americans, even in NYC, and even on the board of MOMA to put up a Picasso-focused exhibition and buy his paintings, and the Spanish Civil War, which led Picasso to Guernica, which broke the ice.

The first half of the book is also a mini-bio of John Quinn, a man of whom I'd never heard before, and arguably the United States' top pre-1920 acquirer of Picasso, along with many other A-rank modern artists such as Matisse. But, I had heard of the Armory show, of which he was an organizer

There was no MOMA at this time. Quinn pushed for one, using the analogy in Paris of the Luxembourg to the Louvre as a push. Unfortunately, he died of colon cancer in his 50s, in the early 1920s. From there, the book picks up with the eventual creation of MOMA.

Among the ironies is that, 20 years before it was built, Americans were calling Picasso et al, but especially him, "degenerate art," as in exactly the phrase the Nazis used. (Stalin didn't use such a phrase in calling for "Soviet realism," but the idea was there, too. Pre-authoritarianism, Kaiserine and Weimar Germany, and Tsarist Russia, were actually the top two countries in the world, overall, to appreciate modern art pre-WWI, even more than France.)

That's plenty to whet the appetites of any general modern culture lover let alone art history person.

And, illustrated with many plates.

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In reality, color me skeptical, and I'll speak of classical music as well as the main plastic arts. 

I've lived within 125 miles or so of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex 3/4 of the past 25 years and within 90 miles or so 2/3 of that time. 

I'm a regular visitor to the Kimbell, Amon Carter and Dallas Museum of Art. I went once or twice to the McKinney Avenue Modern in Dallas. I've peeked through the glass windows at the Fort Worth Modern and the Nasher Sculpture Center.

On music, I am a former Dallas Symphony Orchestra season-ticket holder. I have been to various chamber performances on both sides of the Metromess.

In the art world, there may be truly exciting things deeper inside the glass windows at the Nasher and Fort Worth Modern. The DMA has interesting mobiles-like art at times, as well as multimedia stuff.

But, while the Kimbell has shown stuff like Rauschenbergs out of its collection, and had the great late-life Monet a few years ago, I've never seen something like a touring Cubism exhibit. The DMA did have a small exhibit of Dali's illustrations of a large-scale "Alice in Wonderland" beyond its house collection in Surrealism several years ago, but that was it. Among living or recently-deceased artists? I've never seen anything close to Serrano's "Piss Christ."

The DSO? Don't get me started. It's NEVER played a serialist work, whether by the New Vienna Trio, a later semi-serialist like Ernst Krenek, or late-life serialist Stravinsky. It's never played any of the more avant-garde modernist composers, not even biggies like Penderecki or Schnittke.

I got classical radio station WRR to play one of Alf's shorter pieces on its then-programmed Sunday listener requests time 15-plus years ago. And, have heard him played "voluntarily" once since then. Never heard, say, Penderecki's "Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima" played on Aug. 6.

So, no, contra Eakin's implication, it's still wall-to-wall Philistines in at least this portion of the heartland.

Biblical scholarship subreddits are not the answer

 A Naugrith the Nazi, or other moderators, at r/AcademicBiblical or r/AskBibleScholars, can go fishing for comments that aren't academic enough but leave up OPs like "Do you prefer in Bibles?" (sic)?

OK, getting closer to starting my own subreddit. And, actually, through being further cheesed? Started my own. It's "restricted" now on privacy levels with me explicitly noting in the "about" that I reserve booting anybody who joins from elsewhere that I don't want.