Yet more r/AcademicBiblical stupidity (briefs)

Commenters on this post need to learn something about Stith Thompson's famous (in its academic realm, at least) Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, or at least the basic gist of its ideas, along with the ATU, mentioned at the same Wiki link. If they did, they wouldn't post such stupidities, even if they're not fundagelical. Either that, or they need to have lived somewhere in the United States, or abroad, where they've had close contact with indigenous peoples.

==

Actually at AskBibleScholars, but someone bitching about the "Stockholm school" of biblical criticism when they surely mean the Copenhagen school of Old Testament/Tanakh criticism.

==

No we don't know that P52 is from the current Gospel of John, contra this thread (as well as contra the Wiki link earlier in the sentence), whether you date it fundagelical early, or with a later date. Could be from the Egerton Gospel or similar. Could be, given John's long evolutionary history to its final form, from a pre-final version of John, and thus not "canonical John."

==

Someone wanting to date Luke circa 70-80 CE, followed by ex-Mormon referencing an old comment where he adopts Alan Garrow's "Didache as Q" idea? The same Garrow who claims the Didache is even older than I Thessalonians, or that he can precisely date Revelation based on Vesuvius destroying Pompeii? I laugh.

==

Both Hot_Basis and Extispicy (surprisingly) are wrong here about the derivation of YHWH. I stand by the Theological Wordbook of the OT and others that derive it from the old Midiniate HWY, "to storm, blow or thunder," and tie that to the "Midianite hypothesis," with YHWH being a Midianite Zeus sitting atop an old volcano similar to Olympus.

==

Another poster writing a systematic theology question in violation of rules, this one about the stereotypical OT god of hate vs NT god of love (a stereotype perpetuated by Bart Ehrman in his most recent dreck), and not being taken down, as of the time of writing. And, I don't just blame lazy mods, I blame posters. The rule about not invoking theological beliefs is clearly stated on the right-hand rail of the homepage.

==

Nope, "House of David" does not imply a historical David. A second commenter in support is also wrong. This no more implies a historical David than mentions of "house of Atreus" in Greek myth (or if there's an old stele, herm or whatever that has "House of Atreus" on it) imply an actual Atreus. Also, and further ignored by everybody in comments on the whole post? Israeli archaeologists plumping for a historical David with a big kingdom are often doing so in the service of Zionism.

==

And, I find out why SmartFool believes this shit. He's a conservative evangelical apologist, per this comment citing favorably Dale Allison. And ugh, he's also now a moderator. That means that site sucks more canal water.

==

A junior Naugrith and another Nazi, r/BobbieBobby. And, by their feed, a general idiot on religious issues, as well as a massive Nazi on comment-deletion at Academic Biblical.

==

Oh: Since this is just one sub, or two if I count AskBibleScholars, on Reddit, versus the Gnu Atheist nutters at OnlySky on a separate website, I'll probably keep doing this!

Sarah Bakewell gets philosophy (and related) wrong again

Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Inquiry, and Hope by Sarah Bakewell
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

After three-starring (perhaps high?) Bakewell's "Existentialist Cafe" book, I thought I would give her another shot. This is an extended review of what's on Goodreads.

This also is a three two-star, and it also has some of the same issues as that, the biggest being falling between the stools of something in a more formal style and depth versus something more casual. With that comes the issue of not writing something long enough for a more formal book, and a circumscribed scope as well.

The second is once again privileging Sartre over Camus, and, related to that, somewhat whitewashing Sartre by omission on his biggest sin.

We'll get more to whitewashing in a minute, because, he's whitewashed less than somebody else.

A small, but not THAT small issue? It’s limited to the “west” only. Yes, Rumi is a half century older than Petrarch, but you certainly could work him in. You could definitely add much more from non-Western thinkers of newer times.

Big problem? Minimizing. Like Le Bon David’s racism. Maybe she learned that from Julian Baggini?

I had seen a few nagging things throughout earlier chapters, but stuff that probably wouldn’t add up to more than a half-star. Then, I saw the Hume minimizing at the end of the “perpetual miracles” chapter and oops! Hume was not alone, of course; plenty of Enlightenment leading lights, whether humanists or not, were racists. Look at Locke, even if not generally called a "humanist." (Perhaps Bakewell figured he was too much to whitewash.) Look at the Reformation. Luther’s early adversary Eck, considered a religious humanist, was even more an anti-Semite than Luther. I then thought of Rumi.

She does address it in the next chapter. But, only in brief and lumped with others. The real question is whether these people should be considered humanist in the first place, and no, that’s not “presentism,” not since Hume was called out at the time — and she mentions it! She also doesn’t wrestle with the issue of the Enlightenment developing modern ideas of “race” in general, and at least some of them — Hume included — articulating the idea of polygenesis. She also doesn't discuss Hume's ethnic, or ethnonationalist, stereotyping of Italians and others. I cover ALL of this in detail.

One Chinese and one Cambodian get mention in passing in the post WWII era. Manabendra Roy does get a half a page. That’s it. The non-West is presented as only a backdoor. Within the West, Sartre of post-WWII is presented as countering Heidegger. No Camus at all. (She very much privileged Sartre over Camus in Existentialist Café as well.) Nor any mention of Sartre’s ongoing toadying for Stalin. The Sartre error is compounded here re humanism, not existentialism, because she explicitly calls Communism anti-humanist.

Frankly, I think, based on the two books together, her view of Sartre is outrightly hagiographic.

Here in the US? Though Zora Neale Huston is on the cover, she gets a throwaway mention and that’s that. On Frederick Douglass, there's no mention of him being not so humanistic about American Indians, as well as stereotyping Germans and Irish. (This says nothing of Hume's ethnic stereotypes on top of his racism.)

Also missing, as far as this not being in-depth? Until mention of the Humanist Manifesto, there's really not a lot of "meta"-level discussion of what humanism was considered as being, at times, other than an antiquarian belle lettres for the early Renaissance humanists. Nor

And gets on my newly created "meh" shelf. And, I recommend against reading her further. I'm not going out to hunt her Montaigne bio. I've read enough of his individual essays, I know the basics of his life, and I fear she probably has mucked things up if a more in-depth bio. And, I just don't get what critics see in her. 

Vita brevis, ars longior. You had two bites at my reading apple; I don't have time for a third.

View all my reviews

Slate repeats old canards about church attendance

 It's a piece that is otherwise generally good, but nothing really new — it's about the closure of ever more "mainline" houses of religious worship in the face of the rise of the Nones, etc.

But, it then goes to a Gallup Poll that claims as late as just before COVID, just over one-third of Americans went to religious service weekly and it was still 40 percent in the early years of this century.

Tosh, as I told the story's author on Twitter. Time and motion studies have shown that self-reporting of church attendance (and perhaps the same for synagogues, mosques, temples, etc.) is somewhat to highly inflated. And, it's sad that these statistics still get trotted out, especially in the context of this story, and what individual congregations, parishes, minyim etc. face — whether or not to try to renovate a religious building, whether or not to move, whether or not to shut down. 

The actual number? Yes, 2020 was the first year of COVID, but it was down to 20 percent then. Even "every week" PLUS "almost every week" was just 30 percent, according to Statistia, and THAT may be high. It was down at about 25 percent at the turn of the century, and some evangelical orgs admit that, and THAT link is from 2007. But, this from 2018 concurs.

Having accurate information might help inform such decisions. (Or it might not; motivated reasoning is still real.)

The Gallup piece then gets worse with a section, a little over halfway down, about worship converting from in-person to virtual. That, too can be fudged. (Unless the congregation takes a roll call via Zoom!)

Nowhere near the first time Gallup's had idiotic polling about religiosity.

The header's central word, "canards," is not too harsh. Henry Graber had done more than a modicum of other research for the story, but then just accepted Gallup's words as gospel truth, literal pun intended.

Beyond the issue of whether individual groups of worshipers should shut down or not, such misreporting overstates the influence of churches on American life and culture, and allows religious right churches to run with that.

Grieving, friendship, family and philosophy

I grieved for

The closure that would never happen,

Even though closure is a myth

 

I grieved for

The childhood fear and anger

Of him, and about him

That I could never more fully express to him,

Never more get him to understand,

Never again try to make him understand.

 

I grieved for

The fact that he never would abandon

The myth of control

Over his family, his fatherhood

And the narratives he had spun to himself

About all of this.

 

I grieved for

The fact that he had walled himself up

Over the bits of my childhood fear and anger

That I had told him about,

As he built that wall of control higher

Against the perceived Mongol invaders,

Or whatever he thought of these challenges.

 

I grieved for

Any form of an “us”

That growing or changing, could have continued.

 

But

I grieved for

Me

Most of all

Because I still hadn’t gotten past that fear enough.

 

Real friends,

Friends for life,

Whether in families or not

Let their friends grow

In ways that are good for them,

And, offer suggestions first,

Stronger comments second,

And maybe rebukes next,

When they see friends growing in unhealthy ways.

 

— As inspired by Kieran Setiya

Once again, The Smart Fool at r/AcademicBiblical fails the first half

The Smart Fool, mentioned in these pages before, is once again not smart. He cites this essay by Paul Foster in favor of the authenticity of 2 Thessalonians. Problems? Sure. First, Nero redivivus was first mentioned in the reign of Diocletion, not Trajan. Also given that the alleged Neronic persecution of Christians didn't happen, it can't be that early, for this person to be Nero. Rather, it does seem to be a prima facie evidence of trying to explain away a delay in the parousia after the destruction of the temple. Indeed, one wonders if the author had perhaps a passing familiarity with the "little apocalypse" in Mark. Reading the whole of 2 Thessalonians 2, we have little idea who "the restrainer" is supposed to be, even less than the man of lawlessness, who is discussed by me in depth here. To me, it seems pretty clear that the time period before "the restrainer" is removed is NOT supposed to be brief. Beyond that, contra Foster, I noted that the man of lawlessness seems to at least pretend to arise from among the faithful. He is NOT, at a minimum, The Beast of Revelation, and writing anything that even leaves open the possibility that he is such, is bad exegesis.

2 Thessalonians 3, even more, seems to warn against expecting an imminent parousia. The readers are warned not to be idle, but "sober," although this doesn't use that exact word. The mindset in this sense halfway, or more, approaches the Pastorals.

The first part of 2 Thessalonians 2, before the man of lawlessness is introduced, warns again about expecting an imminent eschaton.

And, while 1 Thessalonians 4 doesn't say "it's tomorrow," the end of the chapter is laden with immanence, even, like John 21, referring to those still alive. Chapter 5 continues that.

Foster concludes with this in defense of 2 Thessalonians' authenticity in the face of all that:

The issue matters because if the authenticity of 2Thessalonians is estab-lished, then it allows a larger and richer range of material that provides insight into the apostle’s thought. Many of the debates surrounding the nature of Paul’s thought in Romans as being coherent, consistent, or otherwise, may be elucidated through the perspectives provided in 2Thessalonians in relation to eschatology. These developments reveal Paul to be capable of maturation in his theological conceptions, adaptable and responsive to pressing pastoral situations, and simul-taneously a robust defender of his core theological convictions.

I don't buy that. Some degree of immanence seems clear in not only 1 Thessalonians, but the other six authentic Pauline epistles, enough that Foster has much more explanatory burden left on WHY 2 Thessalonians is different if authentic.

==

And, I find out why he believes this shit. He's a conservative evangelical apologist, per this comment citing favorably Dale Allison. And ugh, he's also now a moderator. That means that site sucks more canal water.

 

Split the log, there I am not

A year and a month ago, on vacation, I saw a lightning-split tree trunk, a ponderosa, with what appeared to be a bud of new growth in the stump portion of the trunk still rooted. (The rest of the trunk had been totally split off; it wasn't a partial split.)

As a good secularist with a graduate divinity degree, I was inspired to offer thoughts based on the most famous logion in the Gospel of Thomas. Those thoughts, with photos of the trunk, are here, in one of my most popular blog posts here of the last year and beyond.

This year, I saw a similar trunk, but no growth at either end. (It appeared felled, not lightning-split.)

So, I started ruminating more explicitly secular and anti-metaphysical thought, which eventually came into poetic shape, as follows:

Split the log;

There I am not.

There is no secret, ancient, esoteric wisdom,

Nor any adepts to teach it.

There is no karmic destiny

To control your life, nor to be controlled in return.

There are no prayers or chants,

Poses or breaths,

Meditations or medications

To draw you closer to the Creator, the Revealer, the Healer

Or even the Destroyer.

Fools!

There is no Me!

No God, Brahman, Atman or Great Spirit;

No heaven or hell.

No rounds of reincarnation and no eternal recurrence.

“That thou art” is real, non-metaphysical and non-dualist.

Only you yourself, an embodied consciousness.

Split yourself and find the truth.

POSSIBLE new Jesus sayings fragment coming out — not Q or Thomas, but Ebionite?

 Contra some degree of perhaps too much huzzahs and handsprings at r/AcademicBiblical (note a commenter talking about this connecting the canonical gospels and Thomas when no such idea can be firmly derived from this) it is interesting to hear about a POSSIBLE new sayings source of Jesus, per this piece at The Daily Beast.

First, the manuscript fragments seem legit. They're of the items that Dirk Obbink likely either stole himself or acquired from someone else who stole them, likely for him. See my long post about his recent history. They're also tied to Hobby Lobby's Museum of the Bible, and see my not one but two pieces about old Concordia Seminary friend Jeff Kloha doing clean-up work there. (Part of the results of some of the clean-up is Hobby Lobby suing Obbink, referenced at link one.)

Second, the story is legit. It's by Candida Moss. Her Myth of Persecution downplayed most legends of early Christian martyrdom, so she knows her stuff about early Christian history in general. (She also wrote about Obbink, per my link.)

Third is the "possible." I quote:

Although the fragment does not include the phrase “Jesus said,” it appears to be a collection of sayings attributed to Jesus. As the fragment is so short, it is difficult to determine exactly what kind of text it was.

Hence, further reason for tamping down the huzzahs and handsprings.

And, per her piece, let's also tamp down potential huzzahs and hangsprings from this fundagelicals. 

This is the key there:

What is certain is that this text was at least partly concerned with the problem of worries of the world, or as ancient philosophers would put it, the care of the soul. The contents parallel passages of both canonical and non-canonical Gospels around this theme: specifically, an instruction not to worry about your life, food, or clothing (Matthew 6:25; Luke 12:22; Gospel of Thomas 27; 36); to emulate birds and their lack of cares (portions of Matt. 6:26–33; Luke 12:24–29); and a saying in the Gospel of Thomas that cautions people that even a rich man who amassed wealth still met death (saying 63). You cannot plan your way out of mortality. All life, like grass “is dried up and thrown in the oven” in the end. 

Some of the divergences are not just errors or variations in wording but may represent choices about important issues like human anthropology. Fish told me that while Matthew and Luke have Jesus say that “life is more than nourishment and the body more than clothing,” the author of this fragment omits that section. They instead warn people what will happen if they do not abandon their preoccupation with worldly affairs.

So, it's a "this life only," which goes against both Q, and arguably, Thomas with its gnosticizing angles. If anything, it sounds like it could be an Ebionite type piece. Since I got banned from AcademicBiblical for calling a Nazi mod a Nazi, I can't say that there.

It's only about 19 lines long, supposedly, per Moss' TikTok, so we can't say more.